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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sketches from Concord and Appledore
+by Frank Preston Stearns
+#3 in our series by Frank Preston Stearns
+
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+Title: Sketches from Concord and Appledore
+
+Author: Frank Preston Stearns
+
+Release Date: August, 2005 [EBook #8641]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on July 29, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONCORD AND APPLEDORE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Concord Elms, on Main Street.]
+
+
+SKETCHES FROM CONCORD AND APPLEDORE
+
+CONCORD THIRTY YEARS AGO; NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE; LOUISA M. ALCOTT;
+RALPH WALDO EMERSON; MATTHEW ARNOLD; DAVID A. WASSON; WENDELL PHILLIPS;
+APPLEDORE AND ITS VISITORS; JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
+
+BY FRANK PRESTON STEARNS
+
+
+
+TO A JACQUEMINOT ROSE.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+CONCORD THIRTY-ODD YEARS AGO
+
+HAWTHORNE
+
+LOUISA M. ALCOTT
+
+EMERSON HIMSELF
+
+MATTHEW ARNOLD'S LECTURE
+
+DAVID A. WASSON
+
+WENDELL PHILLIPS
+
+APPLEDORE AND THE LAIGHTONS
+
+WHITTIER
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+CONCORD ELMS, ON MAIN STREET
+
+THE CONCORD RIVER, NEAR BATTLE GROUND
+
+HAWTHORNE, AFTER AN ENGRAVING FROM THE PAINTING BY C. G. THOMPSON
+
+THE OLD MANSE, RESIDENCE OF DR. RIPLEY
+
+LOUISA ALCOTT, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN 1868
+
+THE ALCOTT HOUSE
+
+KING'S BUST OF EMERSON, MODELLED IN 1854
+
+AUTOGRAPH LETTER FROM MATTHEW ARNOLD
+
+DAVID A. WASSON IN 1878, FROM A PORTRAIT BY HIS SON GEORGE
+
+WENDELL PHILLIPS AS HE APPEARED BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA
+
+TWILIGHT AT THE ISLES OF SHOALS
+
+CELIA THAXTER, PHOTOGRAPHED BY MISS ANNIE RICHARDS IN 1890
+
+WHITTIER'S HOUSE AT AMESBURY
+
+JOHN G. WHITTIER IN HIS SEVENTY-SECOND YEAR, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY THOMPSON
+
+THE MERRIMAC RIVER, NEAR AMESBURY, BY MOONLIGHT
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+A volume of reminiscences is commonly the last book that an author
+publishes, if indeed he does not leave the task to his literary
+administrator. There are not wanting, however, instances to the
+contrary; and in the present case my object is more especially to
+attract public attention to the lives and works of two distinguished
+men, one of whom has hitherto been little appreciated, and the other,
+as it seems to me, greatly misunderstood. My position in regard to
+David A. Wasson has already been challenged, but I have faith that it
+will endure the test of time. If these pages shall also succeed in
+restoring to Wendell Phillips a portion of the fame which he lost
+by the wayward course of his declining years, they will not have
+been written in vain. The other characters that I have brought upon
+this stage are such as both the writer and the public have long taken
+an interest in. To the few living personages who have been introduced,
+I would apologize, and excuse myself on the ground that the picture
+would be imperfect without them.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES FROM CONCORD AND APPLEDORE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONCORD THIRTY YEARS AGO.
+
+
+To one looking westward from Boston State House there appears a line of
+rugged, precipitous hills extending across the country from southwest to
+northeast. Having ascended these heights, we perceive beyond them an
+irregular line of pale blue mountains, of which Wachusett is the most
+southerly peak, and which is in fact a portion of the White Mountain
+range extending through New Hampshire and into the northern part of
+Maine. The watershed between these two forms the valley of the Concord
+and Merrimac Rivers, which is the first military line of defence in New
+England west of the sea-coast. It is for this reason that the first
+struggle for American independence took place on the banks of the
+Concord River, and not elsewhere; a fact that might have been predicted,
+though not of course with certainty, when Boston was first settled.
+
+One would like to know how this rural community with martial destiny
+before it happened to obtain the name of Concord. Did the Rev. Peter
+Bulkley, descendant of the Plantagenets, who first organized society in
+that valley, did he come there for peace and repose after a religious
+controversy in Boston? No doubt the sloping hillsides and broad sunny
+plain with the sluggish river winding through it looked very restful to
+him, after the rugged country through which he had passed; but we fear
+that he found discord and contention already before him, as many have
+who came there since for a like purpose. Was there a strange fatality in
+the name, so that Patrick Henry might say with added force, "Gentlemen
+may cry peace, peace, but there is no peace"? Is it true that peace and
+war are reciprocal like night and day,--one a rest and preparation for
+the other, and at the same time its natural consequence? Certain it is
+that no individual life is interesting or valuable in which there has
+not been a severe struggle; and periods of warfare have often proved to
+be powerful stimulants for human energy and intellect. In one respect,
+however, the Rev. Peter Bulkley was fully justified, for Concord has
+become more famous in the arts of peace than if a Marengo or Gravelotte
+had been fought there. It has a place in the history of literature, and
+its name is pleasant either to speak or think of.
+
+The town is beautifully situated and seems to sleep in the hollow of the
+hills. It is now a suburb of Boston, with artistic bridges, water from
+Sandy Pond, a bronze statue of the minute man, and a good deal of
+suburban elegance; but thirty years ago it was one of the neat,
+unpretending, yet so respectable looking, New England villages, such as
+are still to be met with in the central part of Massachusetts. The
+country roads wound into the town and wound out of it; the river crept
+lazily by with only a slight swirl or eddy on its surface; and the wild
+flowers on its banks bloomed and faded without attracting more attention
+than in the days of the Indians. Early in the morning ten or a dozen
+well-dressed gentlemen might be seen hastening to the railway station;
+then after the children had gone to school there was a nearly unbroken
+silence until they came out again. Occasionally a farmer in his hay-cart
+or other rude vehicle would jingle through the village, or a woman with
+a shawl and sun-bonnet would call at one of the stores, make some small
+purchase, and return as she came.
+
+Towards evening the children would come out of school, and fill the
+streets with noise and excitement for a time; the gentlemen would return
+from Boston looking quite as much fatigued as if they had been working
+all day in a cornfield. The houses on Main Street were mostly so white
+as to be hardly distinguishable from the snow in winter, though many of
+them belonged, architecturally at least, to the last century, and had
+brass knockers on the doors. Yet there was a certain harmony among them;
+and it seemed as if the place must always have been as it was at that
+time.
+
+There is, however, a compensation in the dullness of country life, which
+may be expressed in the word nature. The real architecture of Concord
+was not in private or public edifices, but in its magnificent elms,
+whose branches spanned the streets like the arches of a Gothic
+cathedral. The largest of them stands in front of the town hall, and its
+trunk measures just sixteen feet in circumference; though Doctor Holmes
+has failed to enumerate it in his list of the great trees of the State.
+Another on the road to Lexington is remarkable for its straight stem and
+perfect wineglass form. In autumn the scarlet maples set between the
+elms are no bad substitute for stained-glass windows.
+
+There were no fine pictures in the town, but every turn of the river
+disclosed a landscape equal to a Claude or a Kenset. It is rare good
+fortune to live by a river of clear, pure water which serves equally
+well for boating and swimming or skating. There are very few such
+rivers. In the larger ones the current is usually too strong to make a
+long rowing expedition pleasant entertainment, and tide rivers are
+always inconvenient. In small rivers shoals and sand-bars commonly
+abound. River skating, also, is a science by itself, and requires, like
+Alpine climbing, well-seasoned knowledge and experience. It is a very
+different matter from whirling around in a city rink with half an inch
+of snow on the ice. The young men of Concord used to skate to Lowell, on
+favorable occasions, and back again, nearly thirty miles in all, and
+thought nothing of it. Concord River with its grassy banks, picturesque
+bridges and continual change of hill and meadow scenery is one of the
+prettiest that can be found anywhere.
+
+Then such walks and drives as there were in the town! From Concord
+Common roads branch off in all directions like the spokes of a wheel.
+The oldest road, by which the British troops made their entry and exit,
+runs northeasterly to the Hawthorne house and Lexington with a firm, dry
+sidewalk for more than a mile; another goes northwesterly to the
+battle-ground and Esterbrook farm, where there were magnificent chestnut
+trees equal in size and shape to the Persian walnuts of Europe, as well
+as huge granite boulders scattered about from some pre-historic glacier.
+
+The Emerson farm lies between two interesting roads, one going straight
+over the hills of Boston, and the other to Walden Lake and Thoreau's
+hermitage, or where it was. Between them runs a lively, gurgling brook,
+which used to be frequented by woodcock, and the Virginia rail, and
+passes close by Mrs. Emerson's garden.
+
+Two or three miles to the south there is another lakelet called
+Fairhaven Bay, the south branch of the river flowing through it, quite
+equal in its way to Walden, or to an Irish lake, for that matter. On the
+outskirts of the village, there was many a quaint old weather-beaten
+house with a well-sweep, perhaps, for accompaniment,--excellent subjects
+for a sketchbook,--and Walden woods were always full of natural
+side-shows and those charming effects of color and shadow which artists
+delight in.
+
+On the western side, there were the two mile square, the three mile
+square, and five mile square, for those who liked an exact measure for
+their constitutional exercise; and on the north the road went straight
+to Sleepy Hollow, now one of the famous cemeteries of the world. Thence,
+paths went through the fields and woods to the Lexington road on one
+side and to the north bridge on the other; and these paths are memorable
+from the fact that they were Hawthorne's favorite walk during the last
+years of his life.
+
+A curious accident happened somewhere about 1860 just beyond Sleepy
+Hollow. A farmer returning to the next town felt the earth shaking under
+his wagon, and looked behind him just in time to see a piece of the road
+disappear into a pool of black water. The natives thought it had gone
+down to China for they were all summer filling the place up, and the
+expense was not less than that of a new district school-house.
+
+The Indian name of the river was Muskataquid, and there was formerly an
+Indian encampment on the site of the old Ripley manse and battleground.
+A great quantity of arrow-heads of flint, jasper and quartz have been
+found in the neighboring fields, and Emerson used sometimes to bring his
+visitors to search for them. The Ripley family had a fine collection of
+Indian relics, and it is almost pathetic to think of the pains and labor
+the aborigines must have expended in manufacturing those household and
+warlike implements,--the arrows especially being often so soon lost
+again.
+
+It is likely that they chose this situation for its sunny exposure, and
+as a favorable landing for their canoes, rather than from a decided
+feeling for landscape beauty. No doubt they had their battles and
+invasions, and perhaps repulsed their enemies from the same ground where
+the British line was afterwards formed.
+
+What one wonders at, in regard to the Concord fight, is that the English
+commander should have drawn off his men after the first volley and so
+slight a loss. He had as good a position as his opponents, and after an
+obstinate struggle might have succeeded in carrying the bridge, the
+bayonets of his soldiers giving him a certain advantage. This would seem
+to have been more prudent than to retreat so long a distance before a
+confident enemy. It has been agreed that the position of the minute men
+was the best they could have selected, for after repulsing the British
+troops they were able to send a detachment across by Sleepy Hollow and
+Hawthorne's path to attack them again in flank on the Lexington road.
+This success was as fortunate for the colonies as in the summer of 1861
+Bull Run was unlucky for our Southern friends.
+
+The men who were drawn up to be shot at on Lexington Common were no
+doubt as brave as their friends who contested the battle of the old
+north bridge, but their position was not a favorable one to hold against
+a superior force. It was an excellent position to retreat from, and
+perhaps that is what their commander had in view. Evidently they should
+have withdrawn to Concord, or have intrenched themselves on the nearest
+hillside commanding the Boston and Concord road. Such was the difference
+between these two fights.
+
+[Illustration: The Concord river, near battleground.]
+
+The life of Concord, at the time of which we write, was not its
+celebrated people so much as Mr. Frank B. Sanborn's school for youth of
+both sexes. There were not young people enough in the town to make a
+dance or a picnic out of, and this school introduced an element from the
+outside world which was both useful and improving. Most of his pupils
+came from the vicinity of Boston, but there were many also from
+Springfield, now and then one from the West Indies, and finally a
+Sandwich Islander, a genuine Kanaka. They supported several
+boarding-houses, the candy-store and the corner grocery, besides greatly
+increasing the revenue of the post-office.
+
+It was a cheerful sight to see these ruddy youths and blooming maidens
+of a winter's day come trooping in to get the evening mail with their
+skates in their hands. There was also a daily delegation of farmers'
+boys from Acton, staunch, worthy fellows, and generally better behaved
+than their more aristocratic companions.
+
+Mr. Sanborn himself, (afterwards for more than twenty years the
+efficient inspector of our state charities,) was the most genial and
+good-humored of schoolmasters. He enjoyed teaching, and wished his
+scholars to enjoy learning. He liked to see the bright young faces about
+him, and it was their own fault if he was not liked by his pupils. He
+was impartial, frank, and perfectly sincere; knew how to keep discipline
+without being a martinet. He was especially a good instructor for young
+ladies for he never showed them any sentimental tenderness.
+
+It was not a very good training school, like the Boston Latin School, or
+Phillips Academy at Exeter, and this is usually the case in a school
+where there are pretty young women; but, as Emerson indeed said, much
+could be learned with Mr. Sanborn which was not to be had at other
+schools,--especially this, that the true aim of life should not be
+riches or success or even scholarship, but moral and intellectual
+development. Mr. Sanborn's ideal of his profession was a high one, and
+but for his interest in the larger field of philanthropy he might have
+succeeded in realizing it.
+
+Mr. Sanborn's most troublesome boy had a scriptural name, which we will
+call David,--afterwards quite a distinguished lawyer. There was no harm
+in David, but an immense deal of mischief. In fact he was irrepressible.
+"David, stand up on the floor," was part of the customary routine; and
+when this was accompanied by the use of a large lexicon his situation
+was a truly amusing one. If he succeeded in escaping this penalty of
+transgression until the first recess he was considered fortunate. He
+usually returned from the school sports too much exhausted for any
+further exertion, but in half an hour was as lively again as ever. All
+veneration for authority seemed to have been replaced in David by a
+strong sense of the ridiculous. His seat was immediately under the eye
+of the master, with his face to the wall, and a large map of ancient
+Rome before him, but this did not prevent him from turning about on all
+possible occasions and expressing his various states of mind in such
+ludicrous pantomime as would set off the young girls and small boys like
+a row of torpedoes. Whatever might be said or done in the school without
+bringing condign punishment on his head David was sure to say or do; and
+his criticism of passing events and comments during recitations were
+quite as edifying as those of the instructor,--which is saying a good
+deal. He had committed to memory one of the longest lists of exceptions
+in the Latin grammar, and never missed an opportunity of repeating it as
+rapidly as possible and with a comical look.
+
+His one object of aversion was Mr. Sanborn's rattan, and what to do
+about it he did not know; until coming to school one morning very early
+with another youth of the same disposition, they cut it into sections
+and smoked it. After this he was in great terror for several days lest
+the theft should be discovered, but as the rattan was more for ornament
+than exercise, its absence did not appear to have been noticed. Of
+course these performances made quite a hero of him with the girls, and
+he was rewarded with their smiles and favor at the school dances and
+other social occasions.
+
+As an artistic contrast to this picture we remember three beautiful
+girls who boarded with the wife of the village blacksmith, in one of the
+whitest and most neatly kept houses in the town. They were not merely
+pretty young women, but each possessed a style of beauty peculiarly her
+own. One was a bright, rosy blonde, with sparkling eyes and a lively,
+spirited manner; another more quiet and composed, with an ivory-white
+complexion, and large, dreamy, tender-looking eyes; and the third was a
+light brunette with an oval face and regular features, reserved and
+dignified. Slightly idealized, with these fine qualities, they might
+have served for a picture of the Three Graces. They had the advantage of
+pretty manners, and being fast friends and of a single mind, made a
+strong impression wherever they went. Though the eldest was not more
+than seventeen, the Bigelow girls, as they were called from the
+blacksmith's family name, took the lead in Concord social life for the
+time being, and gave a tone to it. Their influence helped to make the
+boys more manly and the other girls more respectful.
+
+Such a trio could not long escape the notice of the Harvard students, a
+number of whom made their acquaintance through graduates of the school;
+and one of them, inspired with admiration, composed a song which was
+quite popular at the time, beginning thus:
+
+  "There was an old lady in Concord did dwell,
+   Who had but three boarders, and each one a belle;
+   Grace, Jennie and Maggie, more priceless than pearls;
+   Then here's to the health of the Bigelow girls."
+
+
+Truly the days of their youth were the days of their glory; but it is
+not so for everyone. In fact many of us never obtain any glory. And who
+is that plainly dressed girl with the meekly determined look who goes
+back and forth so quietly and regularly? If you speak to her she will
+smile, but her voice is not often heard. It is Miss Evans' Mary Garth,
+or the prototype of Louisa Alcott's "Old Fashioned Girl." She is the
+best scholar in school, and already has important plans in her mind for
+the future.
+
+Mr. Alcott would sometimes come in on a Wednesday afternoon, listen to
+the declamations and afterwards give his young friends a conversation on
+the faculties of the human mind. He was an agreeable speaker, and knew
+how to hold the attention of his youthful audience. On one of these
+occasions while he was discoursing on the higher mental faculties which
+are not possessed by the lower animals, a small boy suddenly called out
+from his corner, "Dogs have a conscience; I've seen it." The whole
+school roared at this, and it nearly disconcerted Mr. Alcott; but he
+quickly recovered himself, and explained that the apprehension of
+punishment often supplies the place of a conscience in dogs, as well as
+in boys and men; and a highly interesting discussion ensued on this
+subject. Such a method of instruction was highly refreshing after the
+dry routine in Latin and mathematics.
+
+There was a yearly nutting excursion in October to Esterbrook farm where
+there were tall chestnut trees, flying squirrels and plenty of wood for
+a bonfire. May-day was usually celebrated at Conantum,--a pine-clad hill
+on the south side of Fairhaven Bay, opposite the cliffs. As soon as
+winter came committees were chosen to provide dancing or theatricals for
+every Friday evening; but the climax of pleasure was a half-holiday for
+a skating carnival on Walden Pond,--where Thoreau was sure to be
+present, and also a Miss Caroline Moore, daughter of the deputy sheriff,
+and afterwards widely known in Europe and America as the skatorial
+queen.
+
+"Three cheers for the Giver of this glorious afternoon," and then the
+caps would go up in the air, and the rocks and hills echo the hoarse
+shouts of the boys. I can hear now the jingling of the skates, the
+crackling of the snow and the merry laughter as we came from under the
+pine trees of Walden into the keen starlight, with the great comet
+streaming in front of us.
+
+On the first of May, 1859, Emerson wrote in a letter to Carlyle: "My boy
+divides his time between Cicero and cricket,--and will go to college
+next year. Sam Ward and I tickled each other the other day, in looking
+over a very good company of young people, by finding in the newcomers a
+marked improvement on their parents."
+
+There are those who still remember seeing the two distinguished men on
+the Concord playground, and wondering what they thought of it. Mr. Ward
+came to place his boy under Mr. Sanborn's care; and a remarkable boy he
+proved to be,--equally generous, fearless and high-minded. Twenty years
+later, that same boy, looking out of his New York office window, saw his
+former guide and preceptor striding through Wall Street. He rushed down
+the stairs, and out upon the sidewalk, but the friend of his youth had
+disappeared and was nowhere to be found.
+
+With two or three exceptions, Mr. Sanborn's young men held him in high
+regard, and when, in 1860, the United States marshals tried to carry him
+off by force to testify at Washington in regard to the Harper's Ferry
+invasion, they all rushed to his rescue, and foremost among them a
+Baltimore boy, who had been cursing his teacher as an infernal
+abolitionist for the previous six months.
+
+Mr. Sanborn is much better known for his connection with the Harper's
+Ferry invasion than for his Concord school, or later service on the
+board of State Charities. He was secretary of the Kansas Aid Committee
+in Boston during 1856, and in this way became acquainted with John
+Brown, who visited the school, and the two were afterwards intimate
+friends.
+
+None of Brown's New England supporters approved of his invasion of
+Virginia, and Mr. Sanborn especially argued the matter with him and
+endeavored to dissuade him from it. He thus became acquainted, however,
+with Brown's plans, and was the only person outside of Brown's immediate
+followers who knew of the proposed attack on Harper's Ferry. When the
+attempt failed and John Brown was a prisoner in Charlestown jail, Mr.
+Sanborn found himself, as an accessory before the act, in a most trying
+situation. If carried to Virginia either as a witness or as "particeps
+criminis" his chance for life would be a slight one. The question was,
+would General Banks, who was then governor of Massachusetts, refuse to
+surrender him. John A. Andrew did not consider it safe to rely on him;
+and Mr. Sanborn accordingly disappeared for the winter, his school being
+carried on meanwhile by an assistant and some public spirited Concord
+ladies, one of whom was a sister of Hon. E. R. Hoar.
+
+In the spring Mr. Sanborn reappeared, and was almost immediately
+summoned by a United States marshal to give an account of himself before
+the senate committee in Washington. This he declined to do, believing
+that the townspeople would forcibly resist any attempts to carry him
+off.
+
+The marshal, however, set a trap for him that missed little of being
+successful. He came to Concord at midnight, and secreted himself in an
+old barn which was close to the school-house, and belonged to one Mr.
+Holbrook, a custom-house officer. There he remained all the next day,
+keeping watch of Mr. Sanborn's movements through the cracks in the
+boards. A little after nine in the evening he was joined by four
+assistants in a carriage. They then proceeded to Mr. Sanborn's house,
+seized him at the door, and in spite of his great size and strength,
+would certainly have carried him off had it not been for the courage and
+energy of his sister Sarah. She screamed "murder," and seizing the
+carriage-whip, made such good use of it that the horses were with
+difficulty prevented from running away.
+
+Her cries waked up the blacksmith in the next house, and he quickly came
+to the rescue. The "Bigelow girls" ran through the village like wild
+cats ringing door-bells and calling on the people. In less than twenty
+minutes nearly every man in town, Emerson included, was on the spot. The
+crowd showed a determined spirit, and the marshals were probably glad
+enough when Judge Hoar appeared with a writ of "habeas corpus," and took
+the prisoner out of their hands in a legal manner. The case was tried in
+Boston next day, and Mr. Sanborn was adjudged to have the right of it. A
+lively celebration followed in the Concord town hall that evening, and
+Miss Sarah Sanborn was presented with an elegant revolver; but the old
+borough had not been so stirred up since '75.
+
+The place was not without some small entertainments. Every autumn there
+was an annual cattle-show at which the same bulls, horses and poultry
+were brought for exhibition, and one might suppose also the same fruit
+and vegetables; for they differed little in appearance from one year to
+another. A live bittern in a cage of laths was an unusual curiosity.
+Ventriloquists and every kind of a juggler, as well as native Indians
+and the wild men of Borneo, came to perform in the town hall.
+
+Then there was the Concord Lyceum. People in those days believed in
+obtaining nourishment for the mind as well as the body. Pretty dry
+nourishment it often proved to be; but it served to bring them together
+for an hour or two, and take them out of themselves and their dull
+routine. Wiser remarks and more fresh information were sometimes heard
+upon the stairway than in the lecture-hall.
+
+Yet Emerson was always good, and every man and woman who came to hear
+him probably felt better for it, even if they were unable to comprehend
+what he said to them. In the mind's eyes one can see now his spare
+figure standing at the desk between two large kerosene lamps, bending
+forward slightly to catch the familiar sentence with his eye, and then
+calmly surveying his audience as if to see where he could deliver it
+most effectively.
+
+Henry Ward Beecher drew the largest house, and produced great enthusiasm
+by comparing the United States to an elephant,--though at that time
+there can hardly be said to have been any United States; but the fine
+oratory of Wendell Phillips made the strongest impression, rather too
+rhetorical to be permanent--but it was intense while it lasted. A young
+lady who was obliged to take laughing-gas a few days after his lecture
+on Toussaint L'Ouverture repeated passages from it with appropriate
+gestures, in the dentist's chair, and finally concluded, not with the
+name of the negro statesman, but of the Concord high-school teacher.
+Phillips was an especial favorite with the older ladies of the town, who
+organized a local anti-slavery society in his honor, and held a meeting
+of it whenever he came there.
+
+But neither Phillips nor Beecher could equal a lecture by the Unitarian
+clergyman on the naval policy of England, which was based on valuable
+facts and might well be compared to a few grains of wheat in the midst
+of infinite chaff.
+
+Judge Hoar did not lecture before the lyceum, which seemed strange, for
+he was not only a man of vigorous intellect, but had, as Lowell said,
+
+  "More wit and gumption and shrewd Yankee sense
+   Than there are mosses on an old stone-fence,"
+
+and he could have made any subject interesting in which he was
+interested himself.
+
+The Hoar family for some time past had been almost kings in Concord, as
+frequently happens where there is an uncommonly strong man, either a
+lawyer or a manufacturer, in a town of two or three thousand
+inhabitants. They were a hardy New England race, lawyers by an inherited
+tendency, and had now made their mark in public affairs for three
+generations. They can count among their immediate relatives more
+senators and representatives to Congress than any other American family.
+It was said in 1775 that while Samuel Adams represented the force and
+virtue of New England life, John Adams was the best product of its
+cultivated side; and it would seem as if old Samuel Hoar, the founder of
+his line, were a mean between the two. Fortunate is such a father if he
+has a son who inherits his talents and virtues as well as his property;
+and fortunate is the son whose father knows from his own experience what
+is best to do for him.
+
+The Judge was always an interesting figure in the Concord streets, and
+also a pleasant person to meet, for there was never the least pretention
+about him. He usually had the air of a man with an object before him,
+and yet it was sufficiently evident that he did not intend to claim more
+than his rightful share. He walked the ground with a tenacious step, but
+with no unseemly haste. There was a keen, frosty sparkle in his eye, and
+a certain severity of manner which, however, covered a great deal of
+kindness. He liked successful men such as were his own equal in ability,
+but he was quite as likely to take an interest in those who were
+unfortunate. A brother of Dr. Holmes, a constant invalid and great
+sufferer, who required much consideration, was a more frequent visitor
+at his house than Lowell or Agassiz. His face bore a striking
+resemblance to Raphael's portrait of the war-like Pope Julius Second,
+the last of the great popes. He admired Emerson, and was frequently seen
+in his company; but Alcott and Thoreau he seemed to have little respect
+for. Mr. Alcott once said, "I suppose Judge Hoar looks on me as the most
+useless person on the continent; but I can at least appreciate
+_him_."
+
+He was the youngest judge that had ever been appointed to the supreme
+bench of Massachusetts, member of Congress, president of the Harvard
+Alumni, etc.; but his real distinction now is that as a member of
+General Grant's cabinet he was the first American in public life to take
+a determined stand in regard to civil-service reform.
+
+For thirty years he had seen the government patronage turned into an
+enormous engine of political corruption, and endure it longer he could
+not. He went to Washington, much to his own inconvenience, mainly to
+strike a blow at this monster. Did he realize the magnitude of the work
+before him--one which thousands of patriotic men have since attempted
+and signally failed to accomplish? It was like taking the meat away from
+a tiger, or trying to lift the Mitgard serpent. Judge Hoar found himself
+quite alone in the president's cabinet, and with the exception of
+Sumner, Garfield, and a few others, senators and representatives united
+against him in a massive phalanx. Even the friendship of General Grant
+was unable to protect him from the fury of his opponents. He returned,
+not unwillingly, to his native heath and the practice of a better
+profession than Washington politics.
+
+In his report to Congress on the battle of Bull Run, General Winfield
+Scott gave the opinion that it was lost through the lack of capable
+officers for the volunteer regiments; and it is generally true that men
+who like to play soldier in time of peace are not the best material to
+make real soldiers out of. This would not apply however to Captain
+George L. Prescott of Concord, who commanded the embattled farmers in
+that engagement. He was leading an advance on the enemy's centre--"a
+magnificent sight to look at," his colonel said--when the right wing of
+the army was outflanked by General Kirby Smith, and the Union forces
+obliged to retreat. The colonel also appears to have done his duty
+there, and being severely wounded at this juncture could hear nothing in
+the feverish condition he was in for the next few days but Prescott
+saying, "Steady, men, steady!" to the soldiers. Previous to 1861 he was
+station master at Concord, and also carried on a business in lumber,
+cement, and other building materials, which he could easily do, for
+trains in those days were not so very numerous. He was the first person
+that attracted the attention of visitors to the town; for he had a
+commanding figure and a frank, manly countenance, only too fearless and
+kindly,--a very handsome man. The Hoar family were evidently Yankees,
+and so were Emerson, Alcott, and Sanborn, but Captain Prescott was an
+American without seeming to belong to any particular part of the
+country. His cordial frankness and independence of manner reminded one
+of a Virginian.
+
+The refined side of his nature is indicated by an anecdote of his first
+few days in camp on the Potomac. A cadet freshly graduated from West
+Point was directed by General McDowell to drill the different companies
+of the regiment in succession, and having but slight respect for
+volunteer soldiers, he gave an emphasis to his orders by the plentiful
+use of profane language. When he came to the Concord company, Captain
+Prescott, who was standing at one side, walked across to him and said,
+"I must request you, Sir, to give your orders in the plain terms of the
+military code, for my men do not like profanity. If you do otherwise, I
+shall order them to march off the ground; and they will obey me and not
+you." This brought the cadet to terms very quickly.
+
+In the spring of 1862 he recruited another company for the Massachusetts
+Thirty-second; soon rose to the rank of colonel; and after escaping the
+peril of a dozen hard-fought battles, he was finally killed, with nearly
+half his command, in Grant's advance upon Richmond. Perhaps no other man
+would have been so greatly missed in his native town.
+
+Thoreau used to walk through Concord with the long step of an Indian,
+looking straight before him, but at the same time observing everything.
+Occasionally he would stop, make an incision in the bark of a tree with
+his knife, or pick up a stone and examine it. It was not often that he
+was met with in anybody's house, or seen in company with other men.
+
+His profession was that of a surveyor; and it is easy to imagine how,
+with his poetic temperament, while laying out roads and measuring
+wood-lots, he came to be what he was. Many people thought his peculiar
+ways were an affectation, but I believe that he was one of the plainest
+and simplest of men; as plain and single-minded as President Lincoln
+himself. It was his theory of the way men should live. He was a Diogenes
+without being a cynic.
+
+James Russell Lowell (as he himself tells us) was sent to Concord to
+rusticate while he was at college, and conceived at that time an
+aversion for Thoreau which never left him. In his celebrated "Fable for
+Critics" he satirized him as an imitator of Emerson, and so plainly that
+there was no mistaking the portrait. This could not have troubled
+Thoreau much for he was a perfect stoic, and cared little for the
+opinions of others so long as he satisfied his own conscience. Emerson,
+however, felt it keenly, for it was equally a reflection on his friend
+and his own sagacity. In his last volume of poems Lowell also speaks of
+Emerson in a way which indicates rather a diminished respect for him.
+
+It is true that Thoreau imitated Emerson's manner of speech a good
+deal--and it was often difficult to avoid doing this while in Emerson's
+company--but Lowell also in his younger days affected a grave and
+reserved demeanor which he afterwards became tired of and threw entirely
+aside. About the time of which we speak Emerson complained that he saw
+too little of Thoreau, and was afraid that he avoided him. The man was
+sufficiently original. He did not pretend to be a poet, and his prose
+writing is not at all like Emerson. In point of style it is purer and
+more classic than either Emerson's or Lowell's; and these two lines of
+his,
+
+  "In the good then who can trust.
+   Only the wise are just,"
+
+certainly deserve to be set up somewhere in letters of gold.
+
+He had a strong dislike of matrimony. Once while walking across a field
+with David A. Wasson he kicked a skunk-cabbage with his boot and said,
+"There, marriage is like that." Lowell was without doubt right about him
+in this respect. Thoreau's notions of life, like the socialistic
+theories of Henry George, would if generally adopted put an end to
+civilization. He wanted like the French theorists of the last century to
+separate himself from the history of his race; a most dangerous attempt.
+It is like cutting a tree from its roots. Wasson had many a hard
+argument with him on this point, and tried to show him that customs are
+the good logic of the human race: but it was too late. However, logic is
+one thing and character another.
+
+The best eulogy of Thoreau is to be found in Emerson's poetry. He is
+evidently the subject of the beautiful little poem called "Forbearance."
+The opening lines,
+
+  "Thou who hast named the birds without a gun;
+   Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk;
+   At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse;--"
+
+
+This describes the hermit of blue Walden exactly. A large portion of
+"Woodnotes" is devoted to an account of his pilgrimage in the forests
+of Maine; and the ode to "Friendship" must have been inspired either
+by him or Carlyle.
+
+  "I fancied he was fled--
+   And after many a year,
+   Glowed unexhausted kindliness,
+   Like daily sunrise there."
+
+
+He delivered a lecture one winter before the Concord lyceum on wild
+apple-trees. The subject made his audience laugh, but their laughter
+was of short duration. The man who had lived there so long unknown was
+at last revealed before them, It was the best lecture of the season,
+and at its close there was long continued applause.
+
+
+
+
+HAWTHORNE.
+
+
+The literary celebrities of Concord, with the exception of Thoreau, were
+not indigenous. Emerson may have gone there from an hereditary tendency,
+but more likely because his cousins the Ripleys dwelt there. Hawthorne
+came there by way of the Brook Farm experiment. How, with his reserved
+and solitary mode of life, he should have embarked in such a gregarious
+enterprise is not very clear; but the election of General Harrison had
+deprived him of a small government office--it seems as if Webster might
+have interfered in his behalf--his writings brought him very little, and
+perhaps he hardly knew what to do with himself.
+
+All accounts agree that he joined the West Roxbury association of his
+own free-will, and without solicitation of any kind. He not only threw
+himself into this hazardous scheme with an energy that astounded his
+friends but he embarked in it all the money he had in the world, which
+was nearly a thousand dollars. He has left no explanation from which we
+might infer what his hopes or his motives were.
+
+Since three wise men went to sea in a bowl, or the army of German
+children set out for the Holy Land in the twelfth century, there was
+never a more hare-brained or chimerical undertaking. I once knew of a
+boy who after much reading of Robinson Crusoe, started for the woods at
+five o'clock of a summer afternoon, with the full intention of spending
+the night there alone. He took with him a light fowling-piece, and some
+crackers in his jacket pocket. He gathered some berries and shot some
+small birds, and cooked them after the Indian fashion. When it grew
+dark, however, he became frightened and climbed into a tree; but he
+could not sleep there, and finally returned home about one o'clock in
+the morning to find his family in great agitation.
+
+This was not very unlike the Brook Farm enterprise, which was inspired
+by the writings of Fourier, a seductive French socialist and one of the
+most unreasonable of men. He considered, like Diogenes, that since all
+men could not be rich and comfortable, it was better that they should
+all be needy and miserable. It was one of the sentimental out-growths of
+the French Revolution, for which Napoleonism is always the proper
+remedy. One of his peculiar notions was that every man should black his
+own boots.
+
+George Ripley and his friends do not seem to have made any definite
+calculation of what might be the result of their experiment. They
+expected, by working six hours a day and limiting themselves to the
+simplest and most frugal living, to have six left for literary pursuits
+and the enjoyment of profound conversation. Any practical farmer would
+have told them that this could not be done and make both ends meet at
+the close of the year. Any political economist would have told them that
+a community which disregards the advantage of division of labor, could
+not compete with one which recognizes that advantage. The principles of
+Fourier, if generally adopted, would produce general starvation and soon
+reduce the population of Europe to one fourth of its present numbers.
+London, which depends for its size on its commercial and political
+importance, would become almost as desolate as ancient Thebes.
+
+There was lately an essay published in one of our magazines entitled,
+"Why Socialism appeals to Artists," and the reason alleged was that
+artists, being more sensitive and delicately organized than most people,
+were less capable of enduring the hard struggle with the world which all
+are obliged to sustain who make their own way in it. This is no doubt
+the true explanation of the Brook Farm enterprise, and it carries with
+it its own contradiction. The more realistic sort of literature might
+survive in the communistic order, but sculpture and painting, which
+depend upon the undivided surplus of production which we call wealth,
+would inevitably perish. Even literature would disappear at length, then
+science, or at least all advancement of science, precedent in law would
+be disregarded, and the dark ages come again. The present organization
+of society is the accumulated wisdom of mankind for thousands of years.
+Like the language we speak, it was rather an intellectual growth than
+the invention of an individual or any number of individuals. Those who
+have done the most for it have added but little to the whole. It may be
+subverted by revolution for a time, but will always reassert itself
+again. It may be amended or modified by reason, but cannot be replaced,
+either by the ingenuity of one man or that of a whole generation.
+
+The logic of custom is the most cogent of all reasoning, for it is
+inherited in our veins from our ancestors. The man who tries to escape
+from it is like a plant being pulled up by the roots. It is exactly this
+which writers like Fourier and Henry George leave out of their
+reckoning. They see that in individual cases custom is often blind,
+cruel, and oppressive, and being kind-hearted and sympathetic they hate
+it; but they might as well hate the earth itself because there are
+deserts and swamps and malarious places on its surface. It is, no doubt,
+the special business of man to remodel the earth as much as possible; to
+drain its swamps, and level its forests; but in spite of that its rivers
+and mountains will always remain the same, and separate ourselves from
+it we cannot.
+
+The greater number of the Brook Farm community were transcendentalists,
+and we have no desire to depreciate the work which the transcendentalists
+accomplished. They were the needful men and women of their time; the
+importers of fresh thought and a more elevated mental activity. The most
+critical and conservative of American reviews has said of them:
+
+"They put aside worldly ambition and desire as truly as ever did
+medieval monk or oriental ascetic, and thus gave what was essential in
+their surroundings, a practical proof of their sincerity. The result was
+almost startling. Their Yankee audience first ridiculed them as
+dreamers; but when they found that what the transcendentalists actually
+recommended to them was dreaming, their ridicule changed to wonder, and
+finally to a sort of awe-struck admiration, something like that we
+imagine a Roman to have felt on learning that a Christian was capable of
+giving up his fish-ponds and nightingales' tongues, and his afternoons
+at the amphitheatre, for the sake of what he called 'Truth' proclaimed
+by an obscure few."
+
+This is not saying too much, but if anything too little. Since the time
+of the early Christians there was never a more pure-minded and
+loyal-hearted congregation than that which was gathered at Brook Farm.
+They were really the best society of the day. George Ripley himself, one
+of the finest scholars and most agreeable writers of that time,
+afterwards found his right place as literary editor of the New York
+Tribune, where for twenty-five years he disseminated the knowledge of
+the best thought and literature broadcast over the land. When we
+consider the immense circulation of that periodical and the quality of
+its readers, we can hardly overestimate the value of his work. Many have
+become famous for less.
+
+There were poets, painters, musicians in the community; especially John
+S. Dwight, who as the life-long editor of the "Journal of Music," also
+deserves a place on the roll of our public educators. George William
+Curtis was one of the youngest members of the community, but always one
+of the most brilliant. Sometimes of a rainy day there was very good
+cheer and entertainment in the "Hive" as they called their most
+commodious building, but generally the men were too drowsy and fatigued
+after their work was done for much intellectual activity.
+
+It is necessary, however, to distinguish between the New England
+transcendentalists and the German school of philosophy, from which they
+are supposed to have derived their inspiration. A German critic has said
+of them that they were not so much philosophers as poetical rhapsodists,
+and this is about the truth of it. Their business was not so much
+thinking, as to celebrate thinking. There was also in the composition of
+their creed a strong element of French naturalism, which is not easily
+reconciled with the teachings of the German transcendentalists. Kant,
+Fichte, and Schelling were true metaphysicians, and would never have
+encouraged their pupils to establish a socialistic community in the
+suburbs of Leipsic, nor would they have approved of Emerson's lines:
+
+  "Who liveth with the stalwart pine
+   Foundeth an heroic line;
+   Who liveth in the palace hall
+   Waneth fast and spendeth all;--"
+
+for they would have said, "There are the Hohenzollerns; and the
+experience of mankind is also worth something." It was this empirical
+French quality in New England transcendentalism which gave it a certain
+popularity, but at the same time prevented it from striking its roots
+deeply into the national soil. The law of nature has its value, but
+where it conflicts with the historical method it is invariably defeated.
+
+Emerson was the elected chief of the transcendental movement on account
+of his influence with the public, but its true leader and representative
+character was Margaret Fuller.
+
+This remarkable woman, whose life was adventure from the cradle, who
+lived in everybody's house except her own, who went everywhere and did
+everything on nothing a year, who made enemies by the dozen and friends
+by the score, still remains one of the most distinguished persons of
+that period. With some faults of character, she still possessed those
+strong qualities which are required for the conduct of a great
+enterprise. She had that personal magnetism which comes from courage,
+confidence, and clear perceptions. She inspired great enthusiasm in
+others for whatever she was interested in herself.
+
+As a talker, she was the rival of Carlyle and Coleridge; the best we
+have ever had on this side of the water, and with such an artistic style
+that one could hardly decide whether it was studied or natural. She was
+a terrible antagonist; for she united the tongue of a woman to the
+logical faculty of a man, and it was impossible to get the better of
+her. Her faults were the faults of youth, as she was occasionally vain,
+saucy or overbearing, and always self-conscious. It was this last trait
+that Lowell referred to when he represented her as saying that since her
+earliest years she had "lived cheek by jowl with the Infinite Soul."
+Much youthful vanity, however, can be forgiven to those who are generous
+and faithful. Besides, Margaret Fuller was splendidly domestic. She
+advocated women's rights to a certain extent; but she was no forerunner
+to the modern brood of platform women who fumble their night-keys while
+they discourse on the duties of wives and mothers. She carried a helping
+hand into the families that she entered, as well as stirring all the
+inmates to an unwonted mental activity. She would knit socks while she
+talked Plato: but the best testimony to her character is the character
+of her friends. People are known by the company they keep.
+
+The one quality which Hawthorne had in common with the
+transcendentalists, except such qualities as are common to all good
+people, was ideality. Next to the grand structure of his head, this is
+the most noticeable characteristic in the pictures of him. He seems to
+have been attracted to them at first, and was even mistaken for a
+transcendentalist by Edgar A. Poe, and was attacked by that fiery
+Virginian in a most belligerent manner.
+
+At Brook Farm, however, he soon began to differentiate from them, and
+finally acquired for them something like an aversion. Neither is this to
+be wondered at. Hawthorne was an artist pure and simple. He looked for
+ideality in human life; not in the ideas that control and direct it. He
+was not like Raphael and Shakspeare, men who could enjoy philosophy and
+make their art so much the richer and deeper for it. He saw everything
+in a pictorial form; facts and conditions which did not make a picture
+had no value for him, and reasoning was a weariness and a disagreeable
+effort. Nevertheless he did the best he could.
+
+It is delightful to think of the tremendous energy with which he worked
+at Brook Farm. No one else seems to have done so much hard labor there.
+He was better fitted for this than many of his colleagues, having a
+strong, full-chested frame, and is said in his youth to have been a very
+swift runner and skater; but nothing indicates better the latent force
+that was in this quiet and usually inactive man. Many of the Brook Farm
+adventurers were not physically equal to a solid day's work, but this
+was a contingency which nobody had foreseen.
+
+[Illustration: HAWTHORNE. AFTER AN ENGRAVING FROM THE PAINTING BY
+C. G. THOMPSON.]
+
+Hawthorne was one of the first to discover the futility of the
+experiment. Early in the following year he wrote to Miss Sophia Peabody
+to whom he was then engaged: "It has become quite evident to me that our
+fortunes are not to be found in this place;" a conclusion which he no
+doubt arrived at from an examination of the accounts of the association.
+It was Hawthorne's salvation in the difficult path of life he had
+chosen; a path as difficult and dangerous as that of an Alpine climber,
+that, poet as he was, he always looked facts sternly in the face and did
+not permit himself to be misled by romantic or sentimental illusions.
+
+It had been expected that the more brilliant members of the community
+would be able to write magazine articles, or other remunerative
+literature, in their hours of leisure, and money thus obtained would go
+into the common fund. Hawthorne found that he could do nothing of the
+kind. Two or three hours' work in the sun did not quite deprive him of
+the use of his brains, but it left him without either fancy or
+imagination. He also felt the want of that external refinement which a
+nature like Hawthorne's requires as a fulfilment of its internal
+condition. The lack of nicety in the housekeeping became continually
+more and more unpleasant to him. The expenditures at the end of the
+first year were largely in excess of the receipts; in fact the inmates
+had eaten up nearly everything that the farm produced. His friend
+Franklin Pierce, who was just beginning to be prominent in politics,
+asked him the salutary question, "What are you gaining by this peculiar
+mode of life?"
+
+His experience there served as a foundation for the "Blithedale
+Romance," and caused no further injury than the loss of his money. It
+would have required a Thackeray to have realized and described the
+humorous side of it--the highly practical joke of so many well-educated
+and cultivated people making life unnecessarily hard for themselves.
+
+In the autumn of 1841 a reverend gentleman, the brother of Mrs. L. Maria
+Child, went to visit his friend at Brook Farm accompanied by his niece,
+who is one of the few persons now living who have a distinct memory of
+the place. On calling at the "Hive" they learned that only a few members
+of the association were present at that moment, but Mr. Ripley himself
+could be found in the turnip field, where they soon discovered him with
+two others, throwing turnips into a cart. On the approach of his
+friends, Mr. Ripley came forward and said, "Dr. Francis, this is really
+kind of you, to come such a distance to see an old fellow. You perceive
+I am occupied with the philosophy of 'de cart.'" This referred to some
+writings he had lately published on Descartes' philosophy, and made his
+audience laugh heartily.
+
+Mr. Dwight then appeared and gave an interesting account of a flock of
+wild geese which he had discovered early in the morning marching through
+the cornfield. He said they looked exactly like tame geese, but as soon
+as he came in sight of them they flew away in a most surprising manner.
+Mr. Bradford, who is frequently mentioned in Hawthorne's note-book,
+looked sunburnt and very thin, and averred that milking the cows on a
+frosty morning was a chilly kind of business. Hawthorne himself had gone
+to Boston; probably to sell the pig referred to in his conversation with
+Franklin Pierce. The visitors walked about the premises and were shown
+through the "Hive," but found it rather a dreary and comfortless
+building. The farm did not appear to be well kept. There was too
+evidently a lack of order and discipline there; and without order and
+discipline no enterprise in which numbers are concerned can succeed.
+
+Having discovered nothing better than fool's gold at Brook Farm,
+Hawthorne suddenly came across the true metal in the domestic privacy
+of his married life at Concord. It would appear from one of Mrs.
+Hawthorne's letters that George Ripley was so sanguine of the success of
+his experiment that he had given Hawthorne a sort of guarantee for the
+thousand dollars which the latter had invested in it. When, at the close
+of the first year, Hawthorne had decided to withdraw from the
+association, he naturally hoped to regain a portion of his capital. Mr.
+Ripley was too deeply involved to accommodate him in that way, and
+offered instead the rent of the old Ripley mansion in Concord, which
+then happened to be vacant. So Hawthorne and Miss Peabody were happily
+married, with no immediate fund save the rent of an ancient house in the
+country, and no better expectations than the uncertain income from his
+pen.
+
+It was a hazardous undertaking, but he was now nearly forty years old,
+his _fiancee_ more than thirty, nor could the sharpest foresight
+discover any advantage from waiting longer. Emerson, in his lecture on
+heroism, has signalled especially the heroism of the scholar, and
+selected as an example the Frenchman Anquetil Duperron, who worked his
+passage on a vessel to India, and then worked his way, mostly on foot,
+through Afghanistan and Persia, learning languages as he went, in order
+to obtain copies of the sacred books of the Persians, which were then
+unknown in Europe. Were it not for fear of giving offence he might have
+found a finer heroism in literary genius, and selected an example from
+his own village.
+
+For fifteen years Hawthorne had been like a ship detained from port by
+adverse winds. The handsomest and most gifted man in America had nearly
+reached to forty years without being married or finding a home of his
+own. It was a life of hardship; of social starvation almost like exile.
+It tested his courage, his faith in human nature, to the utmost. How
+difficult were the earlier years of Irving and Bryant and Longfellow.
+That he remained always true to himself and never lost sight of that
+ideal of excellence which was his guiding-star.
+
+We are not surprised to learn that his difficulties were rather
+augmented than diminished by matrimony. Even in plain, rural Concord he
+found at the end of three years, that his expenses had exceeded his
+income by what seemed to him quite a formidable debt. This distressed
+him the more because he had not yet learned that all men must lose in
+some manner, and that the whole community is bound to take a share in
+such losses as are honestly incurred. This is what charity and
+philanthropy, as well as the various forms of insurance, finally result
+in. But Hawthorne was the last man to apply such a principle to his own
+case. He had continually hoped that when a balance-sheet was drawn up at
+Brook Farm some portion of his investment there would be returned to
+him; but this resource also failed him.
+
+At last Bancroft the historian, whom James K. Polk strangely enough had
+made secretary of the navy, heard of his situation, and had him
+appointed collector of the port at Salem. He was again removed from that
+position by President Taylor, and it has been said that his wife
+heroically supported him by her skill in drawing and painting until the
+"Scarlet Letter" could be finished and money procured from its
+publication. The nomination of Franklin Pierce for the presidency was a
+piece of good fortune for Hawthorne such as the wildest expectation
+could never have imagined; and at length in his fiftieth year, with the
+consulate of Liverpool, he finally saw the wolves driven from his door.
+This realistic side of his life seems to have escaped the attention of
+his biographers.
+
+Yet he may be called fortunate to have lived when he did. It is easy to
+say that we should have appreciated Emerson and Hawthorne better than
+their cotemporaries appreciated them, but it is one thing to recognize a
+genius when we meet him and a very different matter to admire him after
+we have been informed that he is a famous man. It is doubtful if writers
+in whom the ideality is so strongly marked would be received with favor
+at the present time either by editors or the public. The tendency to
+materialism would have been too strong for them. Lyceum lectures, on
+which Emerson depended chiefly, are not what they were; and either of
+them in a magazine would appear in too startling a contrast with the
+smooth impersonal writing of to-day. The two cardinal sins of a writer
+now are to have a style of his own and ideas of his own.
+
+Complaint is frequently made that we have no great men like those of the
+past; but such grand individualities as Hawthorne and Webster, or even
+self-centred characters like Horace Greeley, are no longer possible.
+Everywhere, in the college, in the market, and in society, war is waged
+upon originality and independence of character. It is the same in
+politics as in literature. Our novelist critic said of the rage for
+Christmas cards, some years since, "The truth is that art must obey the
+popular will or cease to be." There was not much art certainly in
+Christmas cards; but nothing could express better the truculent spirit
+of the age.
+
+Most husbands are fortunate if their honeymoon lasts a month, but
+Hawthorne's lasted two years. It would seem as if during that space not
+a cloud came across his sky. He gathered flowers for his wife--water
+lilies, which he must have sought for in a boat, fringed gentians and
+the queenly "Lilium Canadensis"--and then felt that the most beautiful
+of them were unequal to the loveliness of her nature. After the first
+months, few visitors came to see them. "George Prescott," he says,
+"sometimes enters our paradise to bring us the products of the soil, but
+for weeks the snow in our avenue has been untrodden by any other guest."
+Mrs. Hawthorne's letters at this period are exceedingly interesting, for
+nowhere in her husband's writings, or in those of others, do we come so
+close to this rare and remarkable man. The following description of his
+character seems to have been a genuine case of thought transferrence, so
+much is it like his own writing in grace and purity of expression:
+
+"He loves power as little as any mortal I ever knew; and it is never a
+question of private will between us, but of absolute right. His
+conscience is too fine and high to permit him to be arbitrary. His will
+is strong, but not to govern others. He is so simple, so transparent, so
+just, so tender, so magnanimous, that my highest instinct could only
+correspond to his will. I never knew such delicacy of nature."
+
+This is a classic gem, and nothing could be added to it. The character
+of Hilda in "The Marble Faun," is simply Mrs. Hawthorne at the age of
+twenty-two. She was a pure-hearted, unselfish person, but not
+self-reliant or over wise. There is a golden edge or rainbow hue to his
+description of the old manse which distinguishes it from his other
+writings and betrays the deeply penetrating happiness he felt there. It
+is like a morning landscape painted while the dew is on the grass. One
+notices especially his delight in the great yellow squash-blossoms and
+the way in which he idealizes them. This, and the three years he spent
+in Europe after the expiration of his consulate, were the holidays of
+his life and the reward of all the rest.
+
+With the exception of William Ellery Channing, he made no friends in
+Concord, though he speaks kindly of Thoreau, and compares Channing to
+him. It is to be suspected that this was largely on account of his
+political principles--or the lack of them. He had held office under a
+democratic administration and felt that his interests were connected
+with that party. Further than that, he does not appear to have
+distinguished between the two parties. Of his most intimate friends, one
+was a democrat and the other a whig. But the annexation of Texas was now
+in sight, and Concord was stirred again with the spirit of '75.
+Hawthorne, as is well known, did not take interest in the antislavery
+movement, and a heated discussion of any subject must have been jarring
+and unpleasant to him.
+
+It is not impossible that in this way he came into conflict with
+Margaret Fuller and conceived an abiding dislike to her. Miss Fuller
+would not have spared her eloquence in regard to what she considered a
+matter of principle, nor is it likely that she would have been more
+considerate of the respect which is due in such matters from a woman to
+a man.
+
+There were not a few persons whom she offended by too much "bounce." To
+a reverend gentleman who asked her, as they were parting at the house of
+a mutual friend, where her office was in Boston, she replied, "Oh! look
+in the directory for it"; instead of politely giving him the street and
+number. Thus she lost a pleasant acquaintance and a subscriber to "The
+Dial." Hawthorne and his wife had not been four days in Concord before
+she came to them with a proposition that they should take Ellery
+Channing and his wife, who was her own sister, into their family as
+boarders. One cannot help some astonishment at this proceeding, for it
+is an instinct with all women to know that a newly married couple do not
+like to be interfered with. No word has ever been published from which
+we can infer how the grievance between them originated, but it is
+morally certain that there was a grievance of some kind, and as
+Hawthorne was the most inoffensive of men, it is not likely that he was
+responsible for it.
+
+Now in regard to what follows, it is well to carry in mind two important
+points. In the first place, a writer of fiction acquires a habit, very
+naturally, of dealing with all tales and anecdotes as if they were
+subjects for his art, and is not therefore so accurate a judge of their
+veracity as a lawyer or a critic might be. Whatever holds together as a
+story is to him as good as true. The second point is that although
+Hawthorne understood human nature better than the rest of us, it is
+nevertheless with certain limitations. His romance characters are of a
+rare sort and are well sustained, but they form a group by themselves.
+He has not the range of Scott, Thackeray, or Goethe. There is not the
+slightest evidence that he appreciated the character of Emerson; and if
+so, he would not be likely to appreciate Emerson's intimate friends. A
+man like John Brown, always ready to rush upon destruction for an idea,
+must have been an inexplicable riddle to him. Yet John Brown was the
+only American who could match Hawthorne in ideality--totally different
+as they were in other respects.
+
+Twelve years later, while Hawthorne was in Rome, he became acquainted
+with a sculptor named Mosier, who gave him a most disparaging account of
+Margaret Fuller's marriage to Count D'Ossoli. This informant said that
+the D'Ossoli family, though pretending to be noble, actually lived like
+peasants; that the count's brother had for some years been a servant to
+a gentleman he knew of; that the count himself was an exceedingly
+handsome man, but ignorant and clownish; that he could not even speak
+Italian; and that Margaret Fuller had become a good deal demoralized in
+Rome, and could neither write nor converse with her former brilliancy.
+Hawthorne accepted this statement and entered it in his diary with
+inferences of his own which are still more unfavorable to Miss Fuller.
+
+We like to believe that he wrote this rather to relieve his own mind
+than with the expectation of influencing the minds of others. We can
+easily forgive him for it, for in the whole course of his life there is
+no other instance of the same kind; but he was most certainly in error
+to believe such an imputation on the character of a respectable lady
+from the authority of a single witness. C. P. Cranch, the poet and
+landscape-painter, says that this Mr. Mosier was the veriest Munchausen,
+and nobody in Rome thought of crediting his stories. But Mosier's
+statement shows on its face signs of internal weakness. When he says
+that Count D'Ossoli in attempting to model a foot placed the big-toe on
+the wrong side, he states what is altogether incredible, and discloses
+his own splenetic humor. Neither is it more likely that Margaret Fuller
+permitted him to examine her manuscripts so that she might obtain his
+assistance in regard to their publication. Whatever may be said of her,
+she was not a fool, and was better acquainted with both English and
+American publishers than all the sculptors in Italy.
+
+Miss Fuller's marriage was rather a peculiar one, but nothing is more
+common than for a highly intellectual woman to select a mate who is a
+decided contrast to her. Hawthorne has given us an example of this in
+the romance of Monte Beni--the brilliant Miriam falling in love with
+that Italian child of nature Donatello. Margaret Fuller was always
+attracted strongly by personal beauty, and when she was a girl at school
+she chose her favorites rather for that than for their mental
+endowments. The handsome D'Ossoli was no doubt all the more interesting
+to her because he belonged to a noble family which had come to
+misfortune. Is it not better for us to look at the matter in this way?
+Margaret Fuller's marriage, voyage, and final destruction against the
+rocks of her native land, would form the subject for a magnificent poem.
+
+How could it happen that Hawthorne deceived himself? Is it possible that
+he was in the right, and men like Emerson, Ripley, and James Freeman
+Clarke in the wrong? Why does he consider Miss Fuller to have had a
+strong, coarse nature, and to have been morally unsound? Here we enter
+into the deepest recesses of the author's nature.
+
+Hawthorne was not wholly a fatalist, or he never could have conceived
+the character of Donatello, but he was very largely so. A man for whom a
+life of action is impossible, and who is thus unable to escape wholly
+from his own shadow, naturally comes to look on any series of events as
+an inevitable chain of cause and effect. He speaks somewhere of Byron's
+virtues and vices as being so closely interwoven that he could not have
+had one without the other, and if the objectionable passages in his
+poetry were expurgated, the life and genius of it would go with them.
+His story of "The Birth-mark" is an allegory of the same description. He
+did not agree with Shakspeare, that the best men are moulded out of
+faults, but believed that as we are in the beginning, so we remain
+essentially till the end.
+
+He says that whenever Margaret Fuller heard of a rare virtue, she wished
+to possess it and adorn herself with it; so that she finally became a
+sort of brilliant external patchwork, dazzling to the eye, but
+internally quite different. There is a certain truth in this, but it is
+not a whole truth; for there is Socrates--a compendium of all the
+ancient virtues, consistent throughout, and who formed himself in the
+manner Hawthorne describes. It is true that in a search after rare and
+exceptional virtues we are apt to lose sight of the more homely kind
+which form the bone and sinew of human-life. But is not this effort a
+virtue in itself? Is not all progress in this world accomplished as the
+frog escaped from the well, by jumping up three feet and falling back
+two? Is not the very crown of character that which we derive from
+failure, penitence, and self-reproach? Human nature is a mysterious
+labyrinth and the wisest have only found a partial clue to it.
+
+George S. Hillard--a brilliant amateur sort of writer, orator and
+editor--came to visit Hawthorne one of the last Sundays while he
+remained in the Old Manse, and the two went together to spend the
+forenoon in Walden woods, calling on Emerson by the way to inquire what
+the best road might be. Emerson prudently detained them until after the
+townspeople were safely in their churches, and then accompanied them. It
+is a pleasant retrospect to think of those two mighty men, so like and
+yet so unlike, together with their amiable and gifted friend, going off
+on this Sunday excursion. Mr. Hillard was a fortunate companion for him,
+for no one could serve better as a mean between two extremes. At the
+close of Hawthorne's rehearsal of this episode, he makes this note, in
+commentary:--
+
+"I find that my respect for clerical people, as such, and my faith in
+the utility of their office, decrease daily. We certainly do need a new
+Revelation, a new system; for there seems to be no life in the old one."
+
+Was this the summary and net result of their stroll in Walden woods? It
+must be confessed that such was the opinion of the most thoughtful and
+high-minded people in those days; but we do not feel so now. Schism and
+separation have done their work, and liberal thinkers everywhere are now
+returning to the Christian fold.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About the first of June 1860 the Hawthorne family returned from their
+long residence in England and Italy. There was no little curiosity
+concerning them in the quiet old settlement, which was increased by the
+fact that nothing was seen of them for several months after they came.
+
+If Thoreau was a recluse, Hawthorne was an anchorite. He brought up his
+children in such purity and simplicity as is scarcely credible,--not
+altogether a wise plan. It was said that he did not even take a daily
+paper. In the following year Martin F. Conway, the first United States
+representative from Kansas, went to Concord to call on Emerson, and
+Emerson invited Hawthorne to dine with them. Judge Conway afterwards
+remarked that Mr. Hawthorne said very little during the dinner, and
+whenever he spoke he blushed. Imagine a man five times as sensitive as a
+young lady in her first season, with the will of a Titan, and a mind
+like a crown-glass mirror, and you have Nathaniel Hawthorne. While he
+was in a state of observation, the expression of his face reflected
+everything that was going on about him; in his reflective moods, it was
+like looking in at the window of a dark room, or perhaps a
+picture-gallery; and if any accident disturbed him his look was
+something like a cracked pane of glass.
+
+Moreover there was something unearthly or superterrestrial about him, as
+if he had been born and brought up in the planet Saturn. Wherever he
+went he seemed to carry twilight with him. He walked in perfect silence
+looking furtively about for fear he might meet some one that he knew.
+His large frame and strong physique ought to have lasted him till the
+year 1900. There would seem to be something strange and mysterious about
+his death, as there was in his life. His head was massive, and his face
+handsome without being attractive. [Footnote: This, however, was near
+the close of his life.] The brow was finely chiseled, and the eyes
+beneath it were dark, luminous and fathomless. I never saw him smile,
+except slightly with his eyes.
+
+If his son invited a friend to dinner it was always when his father was
+away from home. Neither do I remember seeing him at his daughter's
+out-coming party,--an occasion when the town musician declined to appear
+because the sister of his particular friend had not been invited.
+
+Emerson has given an account of this trait in Hawthorne's character, but
+he has failed to discover the mainspring of it. Who indeed can explain
+it? It was part of the man, and without it we could not have had
+Hawthorne. Perhaps the easiest solution is that of Thoreau's wild
+apple-tree. When the sprout from an apple-seed comes up in the grass a
+cow pretty soon bites it off. The next year it puts out two more shoots,
+and the ends of these are again nipped off. Thus it continues to grow
+under severe restrictions and forms at length a large thorn-bush, from
+which finally the tree is able to shoot up beyond the cow's reach and
+bears its proper fruit. So no doubt Hawthorne in his youth, being a
+tender plant, was greatly annoyed by brutal and inconsiderate people. A
+sensitive, proud and refined nature inevitably becomes a target for all
+the cheap wits and mischievous idlers in the neighborhood. To escape
+from this we may suppose that Hawthorne surrounded himself with an
+invisible network of reserve, behind which his pure and lofty spirit
+could develop itself in a harmonious manner.
+
+This he certainly succeeded in doing. In purity of expression and a
+graceful diction Hawthorne takes the lead of his century. He was the
+romance writer of the Anglo-Saxon race; in that line only Goethe has
+surpassed him. Nor is it possible for pure and beautiful work to emanate
+from a mind which is not equally pure and beautiful. Wells of English
+undefiled cannot flow from a turbid spring.
+
+In purity Emerson probably equaled him, but not in his sense of beauty.
+Where he surpassed Hawthorne was in manliness, and in his broad
+humanitarian interests. Otherwise no two men could be more unlike than
+these, and it would seem to be part of the irony of fate that they
+should have lived on the same street, and been obliged to meet and speak
+with each other. One was like sunshine, the other shadow. Emerson was
+transparent, and wished to be so, he had nothing to conceal from friend
+or enemy. Hawthorne was simply impenetrable. Emerson was cordial and
+moderately sympathetic. Hawthorne was reserved, but his sympathies were
+as profound as the human soul itself. To study human nature as Hawthorne
+and Shakespeare did, and to make models of their acquaintances for works
+of fiction, Emerson would have considered a sin; while the evolution of
+sin and its effect on character was the principal study of Hawthorne's
+life. One was an optimist, and the other what is sometimes unjustly
+called a pessimist: that is, one who looks facts in the face and sees
+people as they are. Hawthorne could not have felt quite comfortable in
+the presence of a man who asked such searching questions as Emerson
+frequently did, and Emerson could scarcely have found satisfaction in
+conversing with one who never had any opinion to express.
+
+A good many people claimed to have been Hawthorne's friends after his
+death who were sufficiently afraid of him while he was alive. He does
+not appear to have ever had but two very intimate friends, Franklin
+Pierce and George S. Hillard, both remarkably amiable and sympathetic
+men,--qualities to which they owed equally their successes and failures
+in life. Ex-president Pierce used to come to Concord and carry Hawthorne
+off to the White Mountains, the Isles of Shoals or Philadelphia, just as
+two college-students will drop their books and go off somewhere to have
+a good time. Once while Hawthorne was in Boston, Mr. Hillard tried to
+persuade him to go to Cambridge and dine with Longfellow; but he would
+not, and went home by the next train.
+
+He was pro-slavery in politics, partly because his two friends were so,
+and partly because he disliked the abolitionists. It is not necessary to
+suppose that the pro-slavery people of the North in those days believed
+that human slavery was morally right. It is doubtful if any one believed
+that. A great many considered it, as Webster did, a serious evil but a
+dangerous matter to interfere with (and so it proved); some were
+influenced by mercenary motives; and the northern Democrats, misled by
+the illogical doctrine of State Sovereignty, believed they had no right
+to interfere with it. Mr. Hillard held the first of these positions, and
+General Pierce the last. Very likely Hawthorne shared in both of them;
+but he never explained himself, and what he thought on the subject will
+always remain a mystery. The political element seems almost to have been
+left out of his composition; and in one of his books he speaks of the
+Concord fight with a certain kind of indifference.
+
+Alcott was almost the only man in Concord who had the courage to call on
+Hawthorne. Sometimes they even went to walk together. How much
+satisfaction Hawthorne found in these visits it would be difficult to
+say, for the very philosophic breadth and extension of Alcott's interest
+were enough to make Hawthorne feel rather shy of him. Alcott's
+conversation about books and literature was often very fine, but even
+this could not have given Hawthorne much entertainment. His own library,
+as he states himself somewhere, was of a miscellaneous character, and
+contained the works of scarcely any author of repute except Shakespeare.
+Alcott's sense of humor and keen knowledge of human nature may have been
+a sort of common ground between them.
+
+Meanwhile Hawthorne, as afterwards appeared, was making a study of
+Alcott to see whether he would serve his purpose as the mainspring for a
+new work of fiction. The manuscript plot of a romance was found among
+Hawthorne's papers in which he describes a personage in general outline
+like his neighbor Alcott, but without his ideality and good-humor. This
+imaginary character was supposed to live in a retired manner, together
+with an old housekeeper, a boy of whom he is the legal guardian, and a
+huge spider in which his interest and solicitude are more especially
+centred. What the catastrophe of this strange story was to have been, we
+are not informed, but it naturally would have arisen from the unhealthy
+and oppressive social position in which the boy must have found himself
+as he advanced towards manhood. At the close of his memoranda Hawthorne
+says, "In person and figure Mr. Alcott--". To be selected as the
+mainspring of a romance is properly a compliment.
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD MANSE, RESIDENCE OF DR. RIPLEY.]
+
+There was a certain Dutch artist who made a specialty of sheep, and
+painted them so well that Goethe said of him, "This painter so entered
+into the life of his subject that I think he must have been a sheep, and
+I shall become one if I continue to look at his pictures." In the same
+way Hawthorne had such penetrating sympathy for all living things, that
+he unconsciously absorbed certain qualities from those with which he was
+most familiar. He would sometimes write a letter to his publisher, Mr.
+Fields, which was almost like what Mr. Fields would have written to him.
+
+Venomous creatures appeared to have been especially interesting to him,
+and he even fancied a poisonous influence in the Roman sunshine. Perhaps
+his liking for spiders may account for a certain cobwebby feeling which
+comes over one at times while reading his books. There can be no doubt
+of this, for when I once spoke of it, a lawyer who was present replied,
+"I have said the same myself; and when I was in Paris reading a French
+newspaper, I had a feeling as if cobwebs were being drawn across my
+face, and looking down to the end of the column, I saw that it was a
+translation from Hawthorne." But these peculiarities are like the soil
+which gives flavor to the grape, and the wine that comes from the grape.
+
+If the reader thinks that in these few paragraphs Hawthorne has hardly
+received proper justice, he may not be far wrong. Yet how can any
+personal account of such a man do him justice. It may be said of him
+that he was a model husband, a kind father, and an exemplary citizen,
+and that is all. During his lifetime there were people who did him great
+injustice. His reserved life was looked upon as a morbid selfishness.
+The rare publication of his writings was supposed to arise from
+indolence. It was thought that he wrote the life of Franklin Pierce for
+the sake of a government office, and when he was actually appointed
+consul at Liverpool, the case was proved beyond a doubt. The
+anti-slavery people looked upon him as a lamentable exception to the
+other literary men of America, who were all on their side: they doubted
+if he had been born with any sense of right and wrong. What answer can
+be made to such accusations? When it is a question of motive, of moral
+consciousness, how are such charges to be refuted?
+
+So President Garfield has often been accused of appointing an efficient
+and honest collector for the port of New York, in the interest of
+mercenary politics. Charles Sumner for preventing the annexation of San
+Domingo, was called a traitor to the negro race, and it was said that
+his speech on the subject was delivered under the influence of brandy. A
+college-professor informed his class that Sumner was a man of small
+erudition, and Garrison spoke of him as one who had evidently joined the
+anti-slavery cause from interested motives. A Boston merchant whose word
+had been as good as his note for thirty years was gibbetted soon after
+his death by a high-minded journalist, as the type of mendacious
+duplicity.
+
+But why multiply these unpleasant examples of misrepresentation? Hardly
+a great and good man has ever lived without suffering from it at one
+time or another. They originate in bad temper, in partisan malice, and
+those believe them who have no just criterion to distinguish truth from
+falsehood.
+
+After all, what other American has accomplished a literary work equal to
+Hawthorne's. He was an artist, purely an artist, and of the finest
+quality. The raw material may be in us, but to develop it requires pains
+and labor. The greater the talent the more difficult is its fruition.
+Hawthorne's life was absorbed in this. His habitual mood was a dreamy,
+brooding observation. When Englishmen say that no great work of art has
+been produced in America; that Allston's magnificent pictures remain
+half-finished; that neither Emerson or Lowell has been able to write a
+book, but only essays; that we have no historian as good as Macaulay,
+and that the best of our poetry consists of ballads and other short
+pieces; my reply is, "The Scarlet Letter" and "The Marble Faun." These
+are great works of art. The most unique and original, perhaps, of the
+present century; and if they have not the lyrical form they are
+exquisitely written, and none the less poetic.
+
+There is a difference in kind between a great work and a small one. A
+good sonnet may be finished in an hour, and is a pleasant recreation;
+but the composition of a tragedy requires a severe, protracted and
+laborious effort. Goethe's finest songs were written in a moment, a
+flash of inspiration; but Faust may be called the work of his lifetime.
+He himself describes the difficulties which attend the composition of a
+tragedy, in such a manner as may well deter others from attempting it.
+How few, indeed, are the dramatic poets in all times and countries! Even
+Byron did not succeed in this. Mrs. Hawthorne said that during the
+period while her husband was occupied with the "Scarlet Letter," there
+were a contraction of his brow, and a look of care and anxiety in his
+face, which were reflected in her own nerves and made her unhappy,
+although she knew little of what he was writing. Both these romances are
+tragedies; and there is something in tragedy that places it at the top
+of all literature. Their subjects also indicate that he was in full
+sympathy with his own time, and perhaps understood the nineteenth
+century better than it does itself.
+
+Emerson has been called a Greek, but Hawthorne was more Hellenic than
+he. This may be perceived in his version of the Greek legends in
+"Tanglewood Tales." His style is much like that of Isocrates. Where
+Webster or Emerson would use Saxon words, Hawthorne would use Greek or
+Latin ones, and gain in grace and flexibility what he lost in force and
+vigor. He would seem to have been a southerner by nature, fond of warm
+weather and an inactive life.
+
+His short stories are of equal value comparatively with those that are
+longer and more complete. I remember in my youth being attracted by the
+title of one of them. It was called "The Unpardonable Sin," and
+described a man, who, having spent many years in search of this
+iniquity, finds it too heavy a burden for his soul to carry, and
+destroys himself one night in a limekiln. Next morning the lime-burner
+discovered a marble heart floating on the surface of the seething lime.
+This was the unpardonable sin,--to have a cold, unfeeling heart. Such
+allegories make a more lasting impression than many sermons. His
+note-books also are of great value, especially the American ones. He
+makes dramatic situations out of the simplest incidents, and we read
+between the lines sentences he never wrote. We remember them without in
+the least intending to do so, and find ourselves reflecting upon them as
+if they were important events. No writer since Fielding has given so
+faithful a picture of the time in which he lived.
+
+One can envy such a man the three years he spent in Italy. During that
+time he resided chiefly in a villa on the height called Bellosguardo,
+near Florence, a villa which he has described with some changes, in the
+"Marble Faun," as the mountain residence of Donatello. A more delightful
+summer abode cannot be conceived, for it has the advantage of mountain
+air, and the view from it is unsurpassable. Picturesque Florence, with
+its towers and battlements, lies almost beneath it, while the green and
+sylvan valley of the Arno stands before it, with the far-off purple
+mists of the Mediterranean. Behind it the Apennines stretch from Livorno
+to Rome. The interior of this chateau, finished in ancient marble, he
+has described himself.
+
+Hawthorne's life was not a very easy one, as judged by ordinary
+standards; and until he went to England it was a weary and uncomfortable
+struggle. Let us be thankful that for once he had a full measure of rest
+and enjoyment, and let us be grateful to the man who made this possible
+for him.
+
+More than ten years after his death on a summer afternoon Mr. Alcott was
+entertaining some friends, and as they looked towards the Hawthorne
+house one of them said, "Would you be surprised, Mr. Alcott, to see
+Nathaniel Hawthorne some day gliding past your rustic fence as he used
+to do?" "No, sir, I should not," replied the old philosopher, "for while
+he lived he always seemed to me like an apparition from some other
+world. I used to see him coming down from the woods between five and six
+o'clock, and if he caught sight of any one in the road he would go under
+cover like a partridge. Then those strange suspicious side-glances of
+his! They are not anywhere in his writings. I believe they were
+inherited from some ancestor who was a smuggler, or perhaps even an old
+pirate. In his investigation of sin he was expiating the sins of his
+progenitors." There is reason for believing that Alcott was not far
+wrong in this conjecture.
+
+Julian Hawthorne, in the biography of his father, says of their
+ancestors: "His forefathers, whatever their less obvious qualities may
+have been, were at all events enterprising, active, practical men, stern
+and courageous, accustomed to deal with and control lawless and rugged
+characters; they were sea-captains, farmers, soldiers, magistrates; and,
+in whatever capacity, they were used to see their iron will prevail, and
+to be answerable to no man."
+
+A man who does not subordinate his will to the common law and the common
+good must eventually become a lawless man; unless restrained by such
+natural refinement and rare sense of propriety as we meet with in
+Hawthorne himself. It is not necessary to suppose that any of them were
+pirates, which was probably a mere flourish of Alcott's rhetoric.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is another legend that Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate and Nathaniel
+Hawthorne were all distantly related through the Batchelder family.
+There are said to be red and black Batchelders, like the Douglas family
+in Scotland; and the black Batchelders have a rare gift of intellect
+which only comes to the surface when united with some other stock. One
+would like to know how much truth there is in this. There are indeed
+certain striking points of resemblance between these three; each in his
+own line surpassing all others of the same period. Their complexion, and
+their great physical strength, their deeply arched eye-brows, their
+genius for language, their reticent and contemplative habits, and
+especially a certain pregnant gloominess of expression, would seem to
+indicate a nearer unity than the general one of the Aryan races. Yet the
+case remains to be proven by documentary evidence.
+
+
+
+
+LOUISA M. ALCOTT.
+
+
+Mr. Alcott's house in Concord was situated on the Lexington road about
+three-quarters of a mile from the village centre. It was the
+best-looking house almost in the town, being of simple but faultless
+architecture, while the others were mostly either too thin or too thick,
+or out of proportion in some way. It lacked a coat of fresh paint
+sometimes, but this was to its advantage from an artistic point of view.
+Fine old elm-trees shaded the path in front of it, and across the road a
+broad level meadow stretched away to Walden woods. In the rear it was
+half surrounded by low pine-wooded hills, which protected it from the
+north-easterly storms and the cold draughts of winter. Mr. Alcott had
+quite a genius for rustic architecture, as is proved by the summer-house
+which he and Thoreau built for Emerson, and the fences, seats and arbors
+with which he adorned his little place added a final charm to the rural
+picture. In summer nights the droning of the bittern could be heard
+across the meadows, and woodcock came down familiarly from the hills to
+look for worms in the vegetable-garden. The snow melted here in Spring
+and the grass grew green earlier than in other places. It was the
+fitting abode and haven of rest for a family that had found the conflict
+of life too hard for them.
+
+Within the house was as pleasant as without. There is no better
+decoration for a room than a good library, and though Mr. Alcott's books
+were not handsomely bound one could see at a glance they were not of a
+common sort. They gave his study an air of distinction, which was well
+carried out by the refined look and calm demeanor of its occupant. The
+room opposite, which was both parlor and living-room, always had a
+cheerful homelike appearance; and after the youngest daughter May
+entered on her profession as a painter, it soon became an interesting
+museum of sketches, water-colors and photographs. I remember an
+engraving of Murillo's Virgin, with the moon under her feet, hanging on
+the wall, and some excellent copies of Turner's water-color studies. The
+Alcotts were a hospitable family, not easily disturbed by callers, and
+ready to share what they had with others. The house had a style of its
+own.
+
+How Emerson accomplished what he did, with his slight physique and
+slender strength, will always be one of the marvels of biography. His is
+the only instance, I believe, on record of a man who was able to support
+a family by writing and talking on abstract subjects. It is true he
+inherited a small property, enough to support a single man in a modest
+way, and without this his career would not have been possible; but the
+main source of his income was winter lecturing--a practice which
+evidently killed Theodore Parker, naturally a strong and powerful man.
+Yet he was not satisfied with this, but wished also to provide for
+others who had no claims of relationship upon him. His generous efforts
+in behalf of Carlyle have long since been made public; but the help he
+gave Mr. Alcott will probably never be known. Least of all would Emerson
+have wished it to be known. One can imagine that he said to himself:
+"Here is a man of rare spiritual quality, with whom I am in the closest
+sympathy: I cannot permit him to suffer any longer." So after the
+philosophic school in the Masonic Temple had come to an end, he invited
+him to Concord and cared for him like a brother. Mr. Alcott deserved
+this, for though he was not more a philosopher than Thoreau was a
+naturalist, and equally with Thoreau he was a character. The primal
+tenet in his creed was like the ancient mariner's, to harm neither man
+nor bird nor beast; and he exemplified this doctrine with incredible
+consistency for full fifty years. He lived a blameless life. Many
+laughed at him for his unpractical theories; but the example of one such
+man, even in a reactionary way, is worth more to the community than the
+practical efforts of ten ordinary men. He has besides the distinction of
+being the person, whom, during the middle portion of his life, Emerson
+most liked to converse with.
+
+Froude the historian calls Charles the Fifth one of nature's gentlemen:
+so was Mr. Alcott. It is easy to distinguish the man whose behavior is
+an emanation of himself from people of well-bred manners or of
+cultivated manners. Well-bred manners come from habit and association,
+and though always pleasant may be nothing more than a superficial
+varnish; while cultivated manners imply a certain amount of
+self-restraint. No man was ever more free from formality or affectation.
+He was neither condescending to inferiors nor would he yield ground to
+those who considered themselves above him, but met all people on the
+broad equality of self-respect. He was always most respected where
+society was most polite and refined. Neither was he lacking in personal
+courage. During the Anthony Burns excitement in Boston in 1852, he took
+a prominent position among the rescuers, and if a collision of the
+guards had taken place he would likely have been killed.
+
+He had a fine philosophical mind, and if it had only been trained
+properly in early life he might have won a distinguished place among
+metaphysicians. That however was hardly possible in the America of that
+time. He was not a philosopher in the modern sense, but he was in the
+ancient sense--a disciple of Pythagoras, dropped down from the pure
+Grecian sky into the restless turmoil of the nineteenth century. He
+wished to discover everything anew for himself, instead of building upon
+the discoveries of others. His conversations, usually in the parlors of
+some philanthropic gentlemen, were made up partly of Pythagorean
+speculation and partly of fine ethical rhapsody which sometimes rose to
+genuine eloquence. They served to interest neophytes in the operations
+of their own minds, and the more experienced found much the same
+satisfaction in it as in Emerson's discourses. He was an excellent
+speaker; confident, quick-witted and conciliatory. I remember a very
+eloquent address that he delivered at an anniversary meeting in 1868,
+and at an anti-slavery convention, where Garrison and Phillips fell out,
+Mr. Alcott made the best speech of the occasion, discriminating between
+the two leaders in a just and sensible manner.
+
+He was memorable for shrewd observations. He said once to a lady who was
+fretting because the clergyman did not cone in time, "Meanwhile, Mrs.
+D., there is providence." Of a good-humored young radical who wished to
+make war on all conventional forms, religious and political parties, he
+remarked, "Unless our friend changes his ideas he will not be the happy
+man at forty that he is now;" and the saying came true. If we are to
+judge the value of Alcott's thought by the constant cheerfulness and
+contentment of his daily life, his ideas must have been of an excellent
+quality. His flowing white hair, and the calmness and purity of his
+aspect, gave him quite an apostolic look; and once while visiting at the
+house of a friend, a certain small boy--the same for whom John Brown
+afterwards wrote his autobiography of a boy--asked his mother if that
+man was one of Christ's disciples. Such was the father of "Little
+Women."
+
+The Alcotts received their friends weather permitting on Monday
+evenings, and some favored youths of Mr. Sanborn's school would go there
+to play whist, make poker-sketches, and talk with the ladies; while Mrs.
+Alcott, who had played with the famous automaton in her younger days,
+would have a quiet game of chess with some older person in a corner.
+Louisa usually sat by the fire-place, knitting rapidly with an open book
+in her lap, and if required to make up a table would come forward with a
+quiet look of resignation and some such remark as "You know I am not a
+Sarah Battles." Then after a while her love of fun would break forth,
+and her bright flashes of wit would play about the heads of all who were
+in the room. Just after ten Mr. Alcott would come in with a dish of
+handsome apples and his wife produce some ginger cakes; a lively chat
+for fifteen or twenty minutes would follow, and then the guests would
+walk home. It was in this way Louisa acquired that stock of information
+about young people and their affairs which she made such good use of
+afterwards. Human nature to the poet and novelist is like a Calumet and
+Hecla mine which never becomes exhausted.
+
+Louisa Alcott resembled her mother in figure, features and color, and in
+her ardent and impulsive temperament. In the greater number of families
+the eldest child resembles the father; the second and third are more
+like their mother, and the fifth (if there be so many) is often like the
+grandparents. In the Alcott family however it was just the reverse of
+this, for May the youngest daughter was the only one like her father,
+inheriting the artistic side of his nature, instead of the
+philosophical. Neither did Louisa resemble her grandmother's family, the
+Sewalls. She was emphatically a May, and the best of all the Mays,
+though there have been many of them who were excellent. I think she was
+indebted to her father for her enterprising spirit and keen sense of
+character. Mr. Alcott knew the people of Concord much better than they
+understood him, and was always most interesting when he talked of the
+distinguished people with whom he had been acquainted. May was fond of
+society, and a walk to and from the school dances cold winter nights;
+and then ready next morning for a skating party on Walden pond; but she
+said her sisters had little entertainment in their youth, dressing
+always in the plainest manner and practising a stoical self-denial.
+Louisa liked to look at other people dancing, and generally it made her
+happy to see the young folks enjoy themselves. This shows the true woman
+in her. The portrait she has given of herself as Jo in "Little Women" is
+not to be taken too literally. Like Thackeray in "Pendennis" she has
+purposely left out the noble side of her nature,--for indeed that was
+only disclosed at rare intervals and for those who had eyes to see. She
+had the strongest features of the family, and a quick decisive manner
+which was sometimes mistaken for arrogance.
+
+[Illustration: LOUISA ALCOTT. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN 1858.]
+
+Louisa and her sister Annie (now Mrs. Pratt) were excellent actresses,
+and were always in demand when private theatricals were on foot. To see
+them perform in the "Two Buzzards" with her sister and F. B. Sanborn was
+a treat of the first order. I can hear Louisa now saying, "Brother
+Benjamin, brother Benjamin!" in a scene of which all the rest is gone
+from my memory. Another favorite _role_ of hers was Dickens'
+character of Sarah Gamp in the nocturnal interview with her friend Betsy
+Prig. As Mrs. Jarley exhibiting her wax tableaux she was inimitable. She
+did it with a snap. Once she was called upon to assist at an
+entertainment given at the house of the village blacksmith: she invented
+a charade which was both novel and appropriate. She arranged her father
+to look like the Boston statue of Franklin--and the resemblance was a
+very striking one--and then came in with another gentleman in a
+travelling dress, and surveyed and criticized him. When she said, "He
+seems to have rather a brassy expression," Mr. Alcott could scarcely
+hold his face. This was the first part: the second consisted of the
+scene from the "Two Buzzards" already mentioned, and for the third a
+witty dialogue about Mr. Sanborn's school. As more than half of the
+audience was composed of Mr. Sanborn's pupils this charade produced a
+great effect.
+
+Her acting had this peculiarity, that she seemed always to be herself
+and the character she was representing at the same time. This is the
+case also with some professional actors and actresses, notably with
+Madame Ristori and Edwin Booth: but it is not the finest kind of acting.
+
+The anti-slavery conflict and the civil-war with which it ended appealed
+strongly to her ardent and sympathetic nature; and this finally resulted
+in her enlisting as a nurse to tend the wounded soldiers. Her lively and
+picturesque "Hospital Sketches" written at Washington for the "Boston
+Commonwealth" are the echo of this period. Very few passed through that
+crisis without bearing the scars of it for life, and the fever which
+Louisa Alcott contracted in the camp sapped her vitality and probably
+shortened her days. She was one of the veterans, and deserved a pension.
+
+While she was convalescing she said to a friend who condoled with her on
+her misfortunes, "The loss of my hair was the worst of it" (this had
+been cut off by order of the doctor); "I felt as if that were a
+disgrace." When some one asked her how she amused herself she replied,
+"I think out sketches of stories and put them away in little
+pigeon-holes in my brain for future use."
+
+On the Fourth of July 1864 there was an evening-party at the house of
+Hon. E. R. Hoar, and nearly at the close of it Miss Alcott came to me
+with a humorous twinkle in her eye and said: "A few of us are going to
+have a picnic to-morrow at Conantum"--a picturesque bluff owned by one
+Conant, about three miles up the river--"and Mrs. Austin and I have
+engaged a boat for the occasion and are now looking for a muscular
+heathen to row it. Will you come?" Nothing could have pleased me better;
+so next morning we all started in the best of spirits. There was however
+a head wind, the boat was without a rudder, and the Concord River is
+very crooked. I think Miss May Alcott was also in the party. I found it
+terribly hard rowing, and finally exclaimed, "This is the darnedest boat
+I ever pulled." "Frank," said Louisa, "never say darn. Much better to be
+profane than vulgar. I had rather live in hell than in some places on
+earth. Strong language, but true. Here, take some cold tea." She had a
+claret-bottle full of this beverage, and gave me a good drink of it. Her
+vigorous piece of common-sense was also very refreshing, and Conantum
+being now in sight, Miss Alcott and her sister insisted on landing at
+the next bridge, leaving Mrs. Austin [Footnote: Mrs. Jane G. Austin, a
+bright little story-writer of those days and very much like her English
+namesake.] and myself to continue the way alone. Unluckily there was no
+one now to care for the bottle of cold tea, and rolling about in the
+stern of the boat the cork came out and the tea was spilled. This was a
+severe loss to Miss Alcott who was not yet strong enough for an all-day
+picnic, and when I explained it to her she said, "Don't talk to me. I
+know you college-boys. That cork never came out by accident. You drank
+the tea yourself, and now in what way I am going to punish you for it I
+cannot tell." With such biting humor she partly relieved and partly
+concealed her just vexation.
+
+Characteristic writers are commonly the last to be appreciated, and Miss
+Alcott's first novel did not meet with an encouraging reception from the
+public. Some tender critics even complained that the story was
+subversive of conservative morality. "I cannot help that," Louisa
+remarked in her emphatic manner, "I did not make morality or human
+nature, and am not responsible for either: but people who are given to
+moods act as I have described; sometimes they like one person and
+sometimes another." Perhaps she was thinking not so much of moody
+natures as of those contradictory characters who have inherited the
+traits of very dissimilar ancestors. She wrote another novel which she
+herself liked much better and had great hopes of, which was lost in some
+miraculous way by her publisher Mr. Fields. He paid her for it what many
+people would consider a handsome compensation--exactly the sum that
+Stuart Mill paid Carlyle for burning up the first volume of his "French
+Revolution"--but it was a trying affair for both sides. How so bulky an
+object as a novel in manuscript could have been lost without its falling
+into the hands of some person who knew what to do with it, is most
+difficult to imagine.
+
+That so many of the world's benefactors are doomed to incalculable
+torments here on earth may be a good argument for immortality, but for
+Divine Providence it is no better evidence than the Lisbon earthquake
+which so startled the optimists and thinking men of the last century.
+There is no telling why this is so; for misfortune falls upon the just
+as well as the unjust, and often no human foresight can prevent it.
+Louisa Alcott supposed that she was nearly well of her fever when
+inflammatory rheumatism set in. The worst of this was the loss of sleep
+which it occasioned. Long continued wakefulness is a kind of nervous
+cremation, and resembles in its physical effect the perpetual drop of
+water on the head with which the Spanish inquisitors used to torment
+their heretics. Any mental agitation makes the case very much worse, and
+it requires great self-control to prevent this. It was melancholy to
+behold her at that time. Her pallid face, the dark rings about her eyes,
+and her dreary, hopeless expression might have penetrated the most
+obdurate heart. "I don't suppose it is going to kill me," she said, "but
+I shall never get over it. I go to bed at nine o'clock and think
+steadily of the wood-box in order to keep my mind from more serious
+subjects."
+
+It is not always darkest before dawn, especially when the moon is on its
+last quarter, but happily it was so in this instance. Three years later
+she was in much better health, and had published "Little Women." First
+the young people read it; then their fathers and mothers; and then the
+grandparents read it. Grave merchants and lawyers meeting on their way
+down town in the morning said to each other, "Have you read 'Little
+Women'"; and laughed as they said it. The clerks in my office read it,
+so also did the civil engineer, and the boy in the elevator. It was the
+rage in '69 as "Pinafore" was in '78. It was re-published in London,--a
+rare compliment for a book of its kind.
+
+Rumors of this unusual success had reached the little household in
+Concord and filled their home with pleasant expectations; but they had
+no idea of the extent of it. The evening papers announced on the night
+before Christmas that Miss Alcott's publishers had sent her that day a
+very large cheque. There were many glad hearts at this news beside those
+in the Alcott family; where, I fancy, tears and prayers were not wanting
+to complete the sacrament. The long struggle was ended, and peace and
+rest had come at last. Louisa had won a glorious victory, and the laurel
+wreath was on her brow.
+
+The style of "Little Women" is not classic; but as Goldsmith says in his
+preface to the "Vicar of Wakefield," "It matters not." It filled a
+vacant place in American and perhaps also in English literature, and
+must continue to fill it. Novelists usually take up their characters at
+the age of twenty-one, or somewhere in the twenties, and there have also
+been many excellent books written for children; but to describe the
+transition period between fifteen and twenty there had not as yet been
+anything adequate--if we partially except Thomas Hughes' sketches of
+life at Rugby and Oxford. It is a period of life which deserves much
+more consideration than it often receives. It is the integrating period,
+during which we make our characters and form those habits of thought and
+action which mainly determine our destiny. The bloom of youth may
+conceal this internal conflict, but it is there none the less, and
+frequently a very severe one. "You have no idea how many trials I have,"
+I once heard a schoolgirl of sixteen say, the perfect picture of health
+and happiness; and those who remember well their own youth will not be
+inclined to laugh at this. The tragedy of childhood is the commonest
+form of tragedy; and youth is a melodrama in which pathos and humor are
+equally mingled. Those who by some chance have escaped this experience
+and have had the path of early life made smooth for them, may grow to be
+thrifty trees but are not likely to bear much fruit. It is for her clear
+perception of these conditions and her skill and address in dealing with
+them that Miss Alcott deserves the celebrity that is now attached to her
+name. Her simple pictures of domestic country life are drawn with a firm
+and confident hand. They stand out in strong relief, and take their
+color from her own warm-hearted womanly nature. Her characters act
+unconsciously before us as if we looked at them through a window. In
+American fiction "Little Women" holds the next place to the "Scarlet
+Letter" and "Marble Faun."
+
+There is one of Boccaccio's stories which differs so much from the
+others in closeness of statement and fulness of detail that it is judged
+to have been an experience of his own. As the critics say, he knew too
+much about his subject. Louisa Alcott wisely avoided this error. Her
+characters are always real, but,--in her best work at least,--not
+realistic. There are people in natural life, full of peculiarities, whom
+it would take pages to describe, while others can be hit off in a few
+sentences. Miss Alcott knew that characters of a few simple traits were
+best suited to her purpose; and she was too good an artist to imitate
+her model. Her impersonation of herself as Jo was pretty near the truth,
+but Beth, Amy, and Meg only resemble her sisters in a very general way.
+If the book were more of a biography it would not be good fiction. Some
+of the incidents in it were taken from her own or the family
+experiences, but more are either imaginary or conventional. It is said
+that her primary intention was to leave Jo in a state of single
+blessedness, and that Roberts Brothers fairly declined to publish the
+second volume unless she was married off to somebody. Thus originated
+the episode of the German Professor, one of the best in the story.
+Laurie was supposed to have been taken from Julian Hawthorne, because he
+lived in the next house and was rather an attractive kind of boy. Louisa
+herself said there was no ground for this: and yet Laurie seems to me a
+good deal like him.
+
+I remember meeting her at the radical club in Boston in January 1868,
+and her drawing me into a corner where she told me that she was writing
+a book for young people and would like to know about the game of
+cricket. This fixes the time pretty closely when "Little Women" was
+begun. She was frequently to be seen at the meetings of the radical
+club, afterwards called the Chestnut Street club, where her father was
+one of the leading members. She did not care for lectures, but greatly
+enjoyed listening to the discussion of learned and thoughtful men. It
+was an era of large designs and great mental activity; and in such
+periods the best literary work is always accomplished. Once she said (in
+her father's presence), "It requires three women to take care of a
+philosopher, and when the philosopher is old the three women are pretty
+well used up." But at another time she said, "To think of the money I
+make by writing this trash, while my father's, words of immortal wisdom
+only bring him a little celebrity." She honored her father, and lived
+more for him than for anybody else, including herself.
+
+Her journey through Europe was like a triumphal procession. Doors were
+opened to her everywhere; not the palace of the Rothschilds or the
+apartments of the ex-Queen of Naples, but those of distinguished artists
+and literary people. Mr. Healy, the best American painter in Rome,
+requested permission to paint her portrait. This she consented to, and
+was rather surprised when he afterwards presented it to her. "I
+wondered," she said while we were looking at the picture, "what was
+going to come next; when one day Mr. Healy's daughter appeared with a
+novel in manuscript which she wished I would give an opinion of. I found
+it to be good and sent it to my London publisher, who happily published
+it for her." Posterity ought to be grateful for Healy's little
+manoeuvre.
+
+[Illustration: THE ALCOTT HOUSE.]
+
+The same attentions followed her on her return to Boston; but she did
+not care for them. She had learned that the satisfaction of good work is
+the only one which we never have to regret. She was busy with plans for
+the future, considering especially how she might order and arrange her
+affairs for the benefit of her family. Ladies whose names she had never
+heard, came in fine carriages and sent in their cards to her. This
+amused her very much. "I don't care who their grandfathers and
+grandmothers were," she said. "John Hancock was my great-great-grandfather,
+but nobody ever came to see me on his account." If she had leisure she
+received them: otherwise not. In her next novel, the "Old Fashioned Girl,"
+she introduces herself with the name of Katie King, and says to her young
+friends: "Beware of popularity; it is a delusion and a snare; it puffeth
+up the heart of man, and just as one gets to liking the taste of this
+intoxicating draught, it suddenly faileth."
+
+When "Little Men" was published a rather censorious critic complained
+that Miss Alcott's boys and girls had no very good manners, and made
+some inquiry after the insipid "Rollo" books which were in circulation
+forty years ago. It is true their manners are not of the best, but they
+are the Concord manners of that period. Were they otherwise they would
+not be true to life. Very few boys and girls of sixteen have fine
+manners; and even after they have acquired the art of good behavior in
+company they continue to act in quite a different fashion towards each
+other. What else can we expect of them? Exactly the same objection has
+been made to "School Days at Rugby"; and when some one complained of
+Goethe that the characters in "Wilhelm Meister" did not belong to good
+society he replied in verse, "I have often been in society called
+'good,' from which I could not obtain an idea for the smallest poem."
+
+Concord was large enough for Thoreau, but not for Louisa Alcott. She had
+no proclivity for paddling up and down Concord River in search of ideas.
+She had a broad cosmopolitan mind, and the slow routine of a
+country-town was irksome to her. She did not care for nature; and the
+great world was not too large a field of observation for her. Even in
+Rome she preferred the living image of a healthy bambino to the statue
+of the gladiator who has been dying in marble for so many centuries. She
+loved the society of people who were abreast of the times, who could
+give her fresh thought and valuable information. The books she read were
+of the most vigorous description. When some one asked her if she had
+read Mallock's "New Republic" she replied, "I do not read cotemporary
+writers; only Emerson and the classics." "Louisa," said I, "you speak to
+my soul." "Do I?" said she, with a tenderness of feeling such as I had
+never noticed before. Her attachments were strong; but her resentments
+were of long duration.
+
+
+
+
+EMERSON HIMSELF.
+
+
+Emerson might be seen on his way to the post-office at precisely
+half-past five every afternoon, after the crowd there had dispersed. His
+step was deliberate and dignified, and though his tall lean figure was
+not a symmetrical one, nor were his movements graceful, yet there was
+something very pleasant in the aspect of him even at a distance. The
+same has also been said of good statuary, even before we know what is
+its subject. He knew all the people old and young in the village, and
+had a kindly word or a smile for every one of them. His smile was better
+than anything he said. There is no word in the language that describes
+it. It was neither sweet nor saintly, but more like what a German poet
+called the mild radiance of a hidden sun. No picture, photograph or bust
+of Emerson has ever done him justice for this reason; only such a master
+as Giorgione could have painted his portrait.
+
+Every morning after reading the "Boston Advertiser" he would go to his
+study, to take up the work of the day previous and cross out every word
+in it that could possibly be spared. This procedure and his taste for
+unusual words is what gives the peculiar style to his writing. It was
+characteristic of him physically and mentally. He had a spare figure;
+was sparing of speech, sparing of praise, and sparing of time; in all
+things temperate and stoical. He had an aquiline face, made up of
+powerful features without an inch of spare territory.
+
+  "With beams December planets dart
+   His keen eye truth and conduct scanned."
+
+
+His eyes were sometimes exceedingly brilliant; his nose was strong and
+aquiline; and the lower part of his face, especially the mouth, was
+notably like the busts of Julius Caesar. His voice was a baritone of
+rapid inflections, and when he was very much in earnest it changed to a
+deep bass. He once said, "Whenever I look in the glass I feel a
+depression of spirits"; but his friends did not feel so. He was always
+an agreeable object to them, even in his last years when he looked in
+his study like an old eagle in his eyrie. Mental power is more
+attractive than beauty even to ladies.
+
+He was a modern Stoic, and carried that kind of life to a high degree of
+perfection. He sometimes smoked a cigar, and sometimes drank a glass of
+wine, but the only real luxury he indulged in was dining with the
+Atlantic Club once a month in Boston. During his lecturing tours he was
+the recipient of a great deal of hospitality, and became the objective
+centre of many a social gathering; but how much he enjoyed this it would
+be difficult to tell. He was too modest and genuine to like being
+lionized. He had neither pride, vanity, nor self-conceit; and his great
+celebrity never weighed heavily upon him, or discovered itself in his
+manners. In this respect he carried his stoicism a little too far, for
+he never would permit any one to talk with him about himself, and
+enthusiastic admirers of his genius commonly met with a rather cold
+reception. He repelled everything in the shape of a compliment. Dr.
+Edward Emerson says somewhere that his father was used to eat whatever
+was set before him with Spartan-like indifference. This mistake may have
+arisen from the good quality of Mrs. Emerson's housekeeping, and the
+excellent fare which she provided for her husband and his friends.
+Emerson wished to bear the hardships of life without complaining, but he
+also knew that to make life unnecessarily hard is not only unwise but
+has an injurious effect on character. As he would have said, it is not
+according to nature. A horse seeks the best of the road, and a cow the
+freshest grass in the pasture. Studious people and others who live
+mostly indoors are obliged to be careful of what they eat. You could not
+call Emerson an epicure, but he knew how to appreciate a fine dinner.
+Several witnesses have given their testimony in regard to his partiality
+for what he called "pie." He was also fond of pears; knew the best
+varieties and the order in which they ripened. He used to say that there
+is only ten minutes in which a pear is fairly ripe: before that it is
+too hard and afterwards too soft. His friend Dr. F. H. Hedge once made a
+similar remark concerning ripe scholars.
+
+Perhaps the most remarkable trait in his character was his absolute
+self-poise. He had a balanced mind if there ever was one. Carlyle
+considered the "Conduct of Life" to be Emerson's best book, and there
+was reason why it should be. It was the subject of all others which he
+knew most about. Conduct had been the study of his life. Behavior was a
+fine art with him, cultivated partly from motives of prudence but more
+for its own sake. From early morning till bed-time he was always the
+same, always self-possessed. There was no relaxation of it; he was like
+an athlete in full training. It was difficult to place him in a position
+where he did not appear to advantage. But he expected nearly as much
+from others, and had small patience with those who from ignorance or
+carelessness infringed the rules of etiquette. One of his expressions
+was, that death or mutilation was the only excuse for being late to
+dinner. The notion that poets are an unpractical class of people is pure
+illusion. The lives of our chief American poets will be sufficient to
+contradict it; if Dante had not been a just governor of Florence and
+Aeschylus had not fought like a tiger in the battle of Salamis. Bryant
+was the able editor of a newspaper; Lowell made an excellent ambassador;
+and Longfellow also had the reputation with his publishers of being a
+very shrewd man of business. So was Emerson in all things eminently
+practical. He would sometimes say, "I allow myself to be cheated by one
+Irishman"; but I do not think he was cheated very much.
+
+In fair weather he always left his books half an hour or so before
+dinner and walked out, to get fresh-air and see what was going forward
+on his little place. The poem called "Hamatreya" and many of his best
+thoughts were evidently suggested by these short excursions. He says in
+the "Conduct of Life": "The scholar goes into his garden to obtain a
+juster statement of his thought. He puts down his hand to pull up a
+weed. Behind that is a second; behind the second is a third; behind the
+third a fourth; and beyond that a thousand and four." Who can doubt that
+this was a personal experience with him, as it has been with some
+others?
+
+There are many anecdotes of his good sense and sagacity, and the
+following is perhaps equal to any of them. One summer there was a
+camp-meeting of spiritualists at Walden Pond, and every evening they
+held an entertainment of speeches, singing and music, to which a small
+admittance-fee was charged. It happened, however, that the picnic
+pavilion was situated close to Mr. Emerson's land, and numbers of
+Concord people went out of curiosity and leaning against his fence heard
+and saw everything that went on. A committee of spiritualists
+consequently called on Mr. Emerson and requested permission to collect
+fees from those who stole their entertainment in this manner. At first
+thought this might not seem to be unreasonable; but Emerson replied,
+"No, I have always enjoyed the privilege of walking upon my neighbors'
+fields, and I cannot now refuse the same right to them." Could a chief
+justice have decided the case better?
+
+Emerson's _no_ was always decisive, and if one person could not
+induce him to change his mind I do not believe twenty millions would
+have succeeded in doing so. When he was involved in a lawsuit regarding
+some property, and the suggestion was made that he should compromise it,
+he said: "By no means. If it is mine I want the whole of it; if it is
+not mine I do not want any of it."
+
+He avoided controversies and often showed great tact in escaping from an
+argument. What he had once published was of no consequence to him, and
+he cared little whether others liked it or not. If people advanced
+opinions or judgments with which he disagreed he made a plain statement
+of the fact and then changed the subject of conversation. Opponents who
+wished to corner him, and had perhaps set snares for him to fall into,
+found themselves outwitted by his unfailing desire for peace and
+harmony.
+
+He went to the polls and voted; he attended town-meetings and political
+caucuses, but never took an active share in them. The prohibition of
+liquor, the tariff question, the woman suffrage movement, and other like
+vexatious matters he left severely alone. I doubt if any one discovered
+from first to last what his real opinions were on these subjects. At the
+Boston Radical Club in 1868 he was asked to give an opinion on woman
+suffrage, and he replied that he had no doubt that when all women had
+agreed as to what they wanted, what was in fact best for them, they
+could easily obtain it through the home influence. These he would say
+are questions of judgment. The slavery question was a matter of
+principle; and on that point he gave forth no uncertain sound. He did
+not, however, engage actively in the controversy till the passage of the
+fugitive-slave bill warned him how seriously the republic was in danger.
+Then he threw himself into the struggle with all the energy of his
+nature, and stumped the Middlesex district for the free-soil candidate
+Dr. Palfrey. In one of his speeches at this time referring to Webster's
+support of the bill, he forged this terrible figure, "Every drop of
+blood in the man's veins has eyes that look downward."
+
+The final test of a deep mind is to respect forms and at the same time
+recognize how little comparatively they are worth. The technical skill
+of the pianist requires years of laborious effort, and yet it has no
+value unless he can also appreciate the intention and spirit of the
+composer whose music he plays. So it is in art, politics, religion,--and
+all human affairs. When the national government was captured by the
+slavocracy, and converted in all its branches into an engine for the
+oppression of the negro race and white laborers as well, Emerson saw
+clearly that the season of respect for law had passed by, and he
+celebrated John Brown as the apostle and martyr of a holy cause. This
+accurate historical penetration on the part of one who knew but little
+of history is the finest flower in the poet's crown. What he said of
+John Brown may now seem somewhat exaggerated; but the importance of the
+event has never been exaggerated.
+
+An argument, however, is not always to be avoided even at such times as
+we are least inclined for it. In February 1865 the good people of
+Concord called a town-meeting to consider the advisability of building a
+new high-school house. Alcott, who held some office connected with the
+town schools, was strongly in favor of the project, and on his way to
+the meeting called on Emerson to secure his vote for it. He soon found,
+however, that he had waked up the wrong person. Emerson, who was
+finishing his dinner, considered that in time of war retrenchment and
+economy were first to be thought of, and that the new school-house had
+better be deferred for three years at least. But Alcott had also good
+reasons for his opinion, and with all his deference for Emerson in
+philosophy and literature he did not seem inclined to yield on the
+present occasion. So the two friends argued the case together with equal
+good humor and determination, and the discussion had not ceased when
+they left the house.
+
+The popular legend that during the Mexican war Mr. Alcott refused to pay
+taxes that supported an unjust invasion, and was imprisoned for this, is
+so far true; but it can not be true that when Emerson came to visit him
+in jail to pay the tax-bill he said, "Bronson, why are you here?" and
+that Alcott answered, "Waldo, why are you not here?"; for they never
+called each other anything but Mr. Emerson and Mr. Alcott. The story of
+Emerson's going with Margaret Fuller to see Fanny Ellsler, the danseuse,
+was a pure invention of the enemy and had not even the corner-stone of a
+foundation in fact.
+
+Goethe says in his analysis of manners that the man of noble manners may
+sometimes give way to his emotions, the man of well-bred manners never.
+Emerson's manners were half way between these two; a fortunate union of
+natural courtesy and dignified reserve. It was not possible to be
+familiar with him. They were better than fine manners, or even well-bred
+manners, for they were so natural and simple as scarcely to attract
+attention. Yet he was not a man of noble manners, for he never fully
+acted out himself. Carlyle had noble manners, but was lacking in
+courtesy.
+
+Emerson's house stands about twenty-five yards from the street, and
+there is a smooth white-marble walk from his gate to the front-door.
+This, together with the pine trees he planted for protection against the
+north wind, had a cool refreshing effect in midsummer, but at other
+seasons gave the visitor rather a chilly reception. There was something
+in Emerson himself that reminded one of this white-marble walk; not that
+he was cold-hearted, far from it, nor was he lacking in tenderness; but
+warmth of color he had not. He was too purely moral to be altogether
+human. He never could have written a tragedy, or made a speech like that
+of John Adams on the question of separation. How could it be otherwise?
+Can the descendant of five generations of New England clergymen have the
+same blood in his veins that warmed the hearts of Marshal Ney and
+Mirabeau? Perpetual constraint and self-denial may strengthen character,
+but will human nature be better for it in the end?
+
+Constant trimming must finally weaken the tree; and if we consider
+history we find that the greatest services to mankind have been those
+ardent, self-forgetful natures who lived in a large, grand manner, and
+who cared more for the affairs they have in hand than for their
+reputations or the salvation of their souls. It was not the just and
+virtuous Aristides but the bold reckless Themistocles who saved Greece
+from the Persian invasion. Luther and Shakespeare are brilliant examples
+of it. Our American poets have all except Poe a high reputation for
+virtue and good behavior, but I do not find in them the summer climate
+of Burns or the magnetism of Byron and Heine. There is such a thing as
+valuing our faults too highly.
+
+Emerson did not like such men, and was apt to do them injustice. He
+admired Napoleon and Goethe--a generous nature cannot help that--and his
+estimate of Napoleon's character is the best that has yet been made; but
+he preferred Lafayette to Mirabeau, considered Caesar wholly lacking in
+principle, and thought Machiavelli was the fiend incarnate. His friends
+were like himself, cool-headed and scrupulous; but they were not the
+persons who cared most for him and appreciated him the best. Such men as
+Theodore Parker, M. D. Conway, David A. Wasson and Wendell Phillips did
+more for Emerson almost than his own writings, in spreading his
+reputation and celebrating his genius. Wherever Phillips and Parker
+lectured in the west and were asked, as often happened, who were the
+best of the New England lecturers, they always placed Emerson at the
+head of the list. They served as mediators between him and the large
+class of persons who could not readily understand him.
+
+If he was an exacting moralist, he was never a narrow or pettifogging
+one. It is true he laid down the rule that a young lady had always the
+right to break off an engagement, but not so a gentleman, for he has the
+opportunity, which she has not, of making his own choice,--what no man
+would have said who was aware of the arts and stratagems which women
+often practise to obtain the man they desire; but he was not generally a
+censorious man.
+
+[Illustration: KING'S BUST OF EMERSON. MODELLED IN 1854.]
+
+He believed firmly in the old saying of every man to his trade. He never
+preached sermons on week-days; or discoursed on public and private
+duties; or lectured about self-sacrifice and the necessity of living for
+others. He believed that such talk did quite as much harm as good. "Do
+not try to be good," he would say, "but true to yourself." Wisdom was
+the best of all virtues because it included all. He thought there were
+cases in which divorce from incompatibility is justifiable. When a
+certain transcendentalist left his wife and children in Newport, and
+came to Concord to write poetry and live the life of an old bachelor,
+there were many who blamed him severely; but Emerson said, "He is no
+doubt to blame, but you cannot tell how much; perhaps this is the only
+way in which he can live." So that there was a large portion of
+liberality mixed with his natural severity.
+
+Literature is the most satisfactory of all professions, but it is also
+the most difficult to succeed in. The high-minded writer easily finds
+themes congenial to his own lofty thoughts, and in the contemplation of
+these and the companionship of fine books he escapes the weariness and
+loneliness which often pursue those who are engaged in the busiest
+avocations. His life is like working in a rose-garden: beautiful images
+are always before him. His time is his own: he can arrange his own hours
+for study, rest, and recreation. Especially he can avoid the friction
+and annoyance of dealing with rude and uncongenial people.
+
+But how is he to persuade others to take an interest in these subjects?
+The currents of men's thoughts run in certain habitual channels, and to
+change their course, as every writer who becomes popular is sure to do,
+is sometimes as great an undertaking as changing the bed of a river. It
+requires many years for some to be appreciated, and others never are.
+"We know those who have reached the goal, but who can tell how many have
+fallen by the way?" Emerson's term of probation, however, was a short
+one. More fortunate than many, there was a demand for him before he
+came. Besides the so-called transcendental movement carried him forward
+in a swift current. He said of it: "At first everybody laughed at me.
+Then I had ten readers; then a hundred; and then a thousand." And those
+who laughed at him at first were his most devoted admirers after he had
+become famous.
+
+If Emerson had not inherited a good property early in life, his career
+would hardly have been possible. He never was able to publish more than
+a third of what he wrote, and his books were not a source of large
+profit to him. He was obliged to make up the deficiency by lecturing.
+With what fortitude he did this, considering his slender physique,
+travelling long distances in the coldest weather over such railroads as
+then were, with a dismal hotel and bad food at the end of every journey,
+will always be remembered of him. No wonder that he consoled himself
+with such maxims as, "No man has ever estimated his own troubles too
+lightly," and such verses as, "Cast the bantling on the rock." Truly it
+was severe discipline. At Niagara Falls in 1863 the hotel caught fire
+and Emerson rushed forth at midnight, manuscripts in hand, as Caesar
+formerly swam with his "Commentaries" from a sinking vessel. The
+compensation for it was that in this way he made the acquaintance of
+many interesting and distinguished persons. It also added to his
+celebrity.
+
+He was the same under all circumstances. It has been said that in his
+poems we feel the essayist; but perhaps even more we recognize the poet
+in his essays. So too in his conversation at table and in the parlor,
+there was something that reminded one of the lecturer: when he appeared
+on the platform before his audience he was always the plain country
+gentleman. He affected no graces of oratory, and shunned everything like
+rhetorical flourish. He was the first of our public speakers to
+introduce this improvement which has since found its way into the
+court-room and the theatre. His manner was direct, terse and earnest,
+with an habitual pause or hesitation to select just the right verb or
+adjective that would convey the idea he wished to express. His delivery
+was suited to his thought. His hearers were not commonly pleased with it
+at first, but if they continued to listen most of them came to have a
+great liking for it. He had a habit of pausing now and then and turning
+over the pages before him, as if he had lost his place or was looking
+for a passage which he could not find; but he never made any explanation
+for it, and his own family did not know the reason. It may have been
+done to rest himself; or perhaps to give time for his ideas to settle in
+the minds of his audience. Some people were foolishly annoyed by it; but
+not those who understood him. He used to say that either a speaker
+commands his audience, or his audience commands him.
+
+He was the best lecturer of his time: the one who wore the best. Between
+1860 and 1870 he gave four courses of lectures in Boston which were well
+and profitably attended. No one else could have done this, except
+perhaps Agassiz. There were others who drew larger houses, but the
+quality was not so good. Very rarely have such cultivated and
+intellectual audiences been brought together. A few of his most ardent
+admirers used to carry opera-glasses with them in order to watch the
+expression of his face.
+
+William Robinson, the ablest political critic of that time, wrote in
+1868, "In spite of an increased hesitation in his delivery Emerson is of
+all men the one most worth hearing, even better than Phillips and his
+matchless oratory." He had the most telling way of saying a thing, and
+knew how to give their full force to his wonderfully brilliant
+sentences. These would sometimes electrify his hearers, as people are
+roused on the announcement of some great and fortunate event.
+
+He liked the society of statesmen, scientists, business men, railroad
+managers, of all who could tell him about what was going on in the
+world--something, he complained, that the newspapers would not do for
+him. He preferred their society to that of other poets and scholars.
+Though an unlimited reader of books he was not properly a scholar
+himself, and perhaps he felt his own limitation too much in their
+company.
+
+He studied little at college and it is doubtful if he afterwards made a
+thorough and systematic investigation of any subject. He was called a
+philosopher, but he knew little more than the outlines of metaphysics.
+He could read French fairly, but Latin was the only language with which
+he was well acquainted. Carlyle tried to persuade him to study German.
+He did not believe in study, but in the inspiration of nature. This did
+well enough for him, but he made a mistake in applying the same
+principle to others.
+
+He was wont to excuse Alcott's rambling rhapsodical conversations on the
+ground that it was the only talent the man had, that he must do that or
+nothing; but many people considered that Emerson was more to blame in
+the matter than Alcott himself. A person who makes a profession of
+philosophy, as Alcott certainly did, ought to be well acquainted with
+the writings of other philosophers of his own time; and it surely would
+have done no harm for Emerson to have suggested this to him. When the
+Boston Radical Club was formed Emerson thought it would be a good
+opportunity for Alcott to place his ideas before the public, but Alcott
+found himself at a disadvantage among the scholarly minds he encountered
+there.
+
+At the close of his essay on Plato Emerson says, "I am sorry to see him
+after so many fine thoughts throwing a little mathematical dust in our
+eyes." Does he partially expose here a peculiarity in his literary
+procedure? Other people do not read Plato for his fine thoughts, though
+there are many such, but for the charm of his discourse and his
+beautiful exposition of Greek Philosophy. From this and from hints let
+fall in conversation we may suspect that he read books not so much for
+what was in them as for ideas which they suggested to him, and which he
+might make use of in his essays and lectures. Alcott said that he
+carried slips of paper with him on which to jot down these
+considerations by the way. Thus he came to value books too much from a
+single point of view, and his friends were sometimes surprised at what
+he recommended them to read. He would estimate a second-rate novel like
+"Christie Johnstone" above Thackeray's "Newcomes."
+
+However, it may generally be said that the greater and more high-minded
+an author might be the better was Emerson a judge of him. He liked in a
+writer what he called the eternal spirit, that is, what makes his work
+valuable for all time. He prized Plato, Shakespeare, and Goethe above
+others; and gave the next place to Homer, Dante, and Swedenborg. He gave
+Carlyle a very high rank: considered his history of Frederick the Second
+even better than Thucydides. During the last year of his life, when he
+had almost lost his memory for names and people, he said to a visitor
+who called on him, "I have lately been reading a most interesting book
+about--" he hesitated for some time, "the greatest man that has lived
+for more than two centuries." Then he walked across the room and
+pointing to a long row of books added, "About that man." His friend
+looked and saw it was an edition of Goethe's forty volumes. Grimm's
+lectures on Goethe had lately been published.
+
+The colored students of Howard University requested Emerson to give them
+a conversation on books, and tell them what they had better read; and
+he, remembering his own maxim, that the greatest prudence lies in
+concentration, limited himself purposely to a very few. He recommended
+Shakespeare and Milton of course; Gibbon's "Decline and Fall"; Boswell's
+"Life of Johnson"; Goethe's conversations with Eckermann and Goethe's
+autobiography. "Faust" he spoke of in rather a slighting manner; he did
+not think it possessed the eternal spirit. That so much of a puritan as
+Emerson should have admired Goethe is as remarkable as Goethe's
+admiration for so stanch an old puritan as Milton. The English writers
+of his own time, with the exception of Carlyle and possibly Tennyson, he
+did not like. He met Macaulay at one of Lady Holland's celebrated show
+dinners, and conceived a decided aversion for him. Such severely
+critical writers as Froude, Ruskin, and Matthew Arnold he never could
+like. He once had an interview with Ruskin, but it did not prove to be
+satisfactory. They differed on all points, and Ruskin complained that
+Emerson did not understand him. Six months afterwards Emerson remarked
+with his most amiable smile, "I expect Mr. Ruskin is still miserable
+because I could not understand him." But Ruskin's province lay outside
+of Emerson's, who cared little either for painting, sculpture, or music,
+or even for literature considered as an art. He had in his study a copy
+of Giotto's portrait of Dante which he evidently prized; and also
+Raphael Morghen's engraving of Guido's Aurora: but these were presents
+from his friends, and it is doubtful if he ever purchased a picture
+himself.
+
+He was a frequent visitor at the Boston Athenaeum, and seized upon every
+new book of value as soon as it appeared: was the first to read
+translations of the Zendavesta and Confucius. He read almost every
+readable book in the English language as well as translations from all
+languages. He said he would as soon think of swimming across Charles
+River when he might make use of a bridge as to read a foreign book in
+the original if he could obtain a good translation.
+
+This statement contains a good deal of truth, though it has been often
+traversed by those who learn languages easily and think because they get
+the literal meaning of Tacitus or Rousseau that they know all about the
+matter. The full significance, however, of any good writer can only be
+obtained by reflecting while we read, and the continuous exertion
+required to decipher a foreign tongue interferes with this not a little.
+If the reader can think in the language before him well and good, but
+few are so fortunate; and of those few not more than one in ten will be
+able to think in three or four different languages. Any person who has
+merely a conversational knowledge of Italian, for instance, would do
+much better to read the excellent translation we now have of Machiavelli
+than to read the original; and no one except a Greek professor would
+think of stumbling over Thucydides instead of using Jowett's version of
+it. So it is with Taine's "English Literature" and Von Hoist's history
+of American politics. On the other hand it may be said that no
+translation of the "Odes" of Horace has any value at all; and a faithful
+study of one book of the "Iliad" is worth all the translations from
+Homer that have ever been made. But the subject is an extensive one.
+
+The tendency of pure democracy to Caesarism or imperialism has often
+been noticed, and the frequent change from one to the other has now
+become an established historical fact. Of this principle there is a
+curious illustration in Emerson's political opinions. He was in theory a
+pure democratist, but he would now and then make a remark which showed
+that he also believed in the rule of the strong hand. In his prose
+writings may be found two distinct lines of political thought emanating
+from these opposite views. He wrote a poem on Cromwell, and an essay on
+Napoleon, and evidently admired them both. In his "Boston Hymn" and in
+several other poems he comes very close to socialism. In "Woodnotes" he
+says:
+
+  "The lord is the peasant that was;
+   The peasant the lord that shall be,
+   The lord is the hay, the peasant the grass;
+   One dry, and one the living tree."
+
+
+Democracy is limited in America by the conservative structure of our
+government and the good sense of the community. During Jackson's
+administration we came rather close to pure democracy, and nearly as
+close also to absolute despotism. Emerson was far from knowing this, but
+he felt that something was wrong. He wrote to Carlyle, "We have a most
+unfit man for President." On another occasion he wrote, "Politics are
+now in such a condition that the best principles are in one party, and
+the best men in the other." He appears to have voted with the best men.
+Again he would say, "If we can only once get the best man at the head of
+affairs we should be only too glad to turn everything over to him."
+Emerson, however, did not allow these theories to affect his practice.
+He always voted the whig ticket till 1844, and after that the free-soil
+and republican tickets.
+
+It was the same with his doctrine of living according to nature. He
+never thought of doing this himself, except so far as a sensible mode of
+life and unaffected behavior may be considered so. He was the most
+conventional man in Concord, and as scrupulous of etiquette as an
+English clergyman. He was oftener seen with a silk-hat--what Mr. Howells
+calls a cylinder-hat--than any other person in the town. In his later
+years he declined to wear a wig, because it was not according to nature;
+but neither had he formerly worn a beard, which was quite as little
+according to nature.
+
+In his earlier writings he celebrates the advantages of living in the
+country, but at sixty he concludes that the city is after all the best,
+if one has sufficient means,--especially for women, who require a
+current of human life to keep their minds healthy and cheerful. This
+reminds one of Thorwaldsen's four seasons; in which spring and summer
+are represented by an out-of-door life, in autumn the corner of a house
+appears, and winter is wholly within doors. We expect a certain change
+of opinion in the course of years: it is the sign of a veracious
+character. Neither is it inconsistent for a practical man to sometimes
+deviate from the rules he has laid down for himself.
+
+Emerson's real fault, if he may be said to have had one, was his
+optimism. Because he had been born with genius and was otherwise
+fortunate he thought every one else might succeed as easily as he had.
+In this way he often did people great injustice. If they were
+unfortunate he concluded that it must be their own fault. "Wherever
+there is failure," he said, "there is some giddiness, some lack of
+adaptation of means to ends." If he heard of anyone who could not obtain
+work he would say there is always plenty to do for willing hands. Those
+who were incapacitated by nature from earning their own living fared no
+better. He thought there was something which every one could do better
+than anybody else--which might possibly be true if there were as many
+professions as individuals. When some one spoke of a young German poet,
+whom it was thought but for his untimely death might have been the rival
+of Schiller, he said, "Yes, but he died: that was against him."
+
+This line of thought logically resulted also in a kind of pessimism. He
+seemed at times to despise human nature. Somewhere about 1860 he wrote
+to a friend, "There is not one man in twenty that is worth the ground he
+stands on"; and speaking of Napoleon he affirms that, in the well-nigh
+universal negligence and inefficiency of mankind, we cannot be too
+thankful for this prompt and ready actor. No one who realizes the hard
+and bitter struggle for daily bread with which three-fourths of the
+human race are constantly occupied, would have written such a sentence.
+The transition from optimism to pessimism is very much like that from
+democracy to imperialism. [Footnote: The peculiar type of Emerson's
+optimism is illustrated in his poem called "Sea Shore" where he makes a
+fine catalogue of the gifts and advantages which the ocean brings to
+mankind, but says nothing of the terrible destructive power of the sea.
+He forgot that his old friend the Greek represented Neptune as even more
+cruel than the god of war. Did this man of heroic nature lack the
+courage to face tragedy?]
+
+We regret to see him deciding the discovery of etherization in favor of
+his brother-in-law, Dr. Jackson; a question which a Congressional
+committee found itself unable to determine.
+
+He had one trait of character which his biographers have not mentioned,
+and which might pass by the name of incredulity. He was the most
+difficult of men to persuade of any strange and remarkable event.
+Neither did he take the least pains to conceal his disbelief; and when
+you were telling him the living truth this was rather difficult to bear.
+When we said that a woodpecker had been seen in Walden woods nearly as
+large as a crow and quite as black, he shook his head and looked up at
+the pine trees. That was not according to his idea of a woodpecker.
+Neither did he like to hear anything which tended to prove the depravity
+of human nature. Stories of fraud and corruption in commercial or
+political life were not pleasant to his ears; and if the perpetrators
+escaped punishment he was evidently much annoyed. He liked to tell the
+truth better than he did to hear it.
+
+When nearly sixty years of age both Emerson and Alcott fell in love with
+a charming young school-teacher of the transcendental sort, and it is
+rather pleasant to think that there was so much human nature still left
+in those grave old philosophers.
+
+He was the most famous American of his time; not so celebrated perhaps
+in his own country as President Lincoln, but in foreign countries he
+surpassed all others,--such is the deep impression which a great writer
+makes on the minds of men. In Europe he was looked upon as the best
+representative of our Western Hemisphere. Carlyle celebrated him in
+England, and Grimm in Germany. The latter said, "There is no other
+living writer to whom I feel that I owe so much."
+
+He had no public receptions in foreign cities, but everywhere the finest
+people united to honor him. On his second visit to England he complained
+that his time was almost consumed in answering letters of invitation. An
+English guest at the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa dinner said that when he
+returned home he would be asked two questions,--if he had seen Niagara
+Falls, and if he had met Emerson. He was a particular favorite with the
+English nobility, and whenever we saw a glittering carriage rolling down
+Concord turn-pike we felt sure it contained some earl or viscount who
+was paying his compliments to the poet of the pines. Emerson liked to
+entertain these distinguished visitors in his modest little parlor, but
+he never slighted his old friends for them; for he lived the wisdom that
+he taught, and the final virtue of this man was the religious humility
+of his nature.
+
+
+
+
+MATTHEW ARNOLD'S LECTURE.
+
+
+During the earlier part of Emerson's career his religious philosophy met
+with such decided opposition that his friends were, very properly, all
+the more enthusiastic in his defence; and when the tide turned in his
+favor, and his fame rose continually higher and higher, the enthusiasm
+of his admirers reached a climax, and, like Webster before him, he
+became a veritable subject of idolization. His opponents, finding the
+current too strong for them, retreated into smooth water, waiting, like
+a defeated political party, for a favorable change of the tide. When,
+therefore, Matthew Arnold came to America in the autumn of 1883
+expressly to lecture on Emerson, as a writer and thinker, there was
+great expectation on both sides, and both were equally disappointed. His
+friends who knew that he liked Emerson, thought he had found too much
+fault with him, and the other party considered he had praised him too
+highly.
+
+Few men have ever done so much good in England as Matthew Arnold.
+Somewhere about the year 1830 Goethe remarked, that Englishmen, as such,
+were without reflection; party politics and the interests of trade
+interfered to prevent it; but they were great as practical men. This
+continued to be the order of the day, in spite of an occasional warning
+from Macaulay, for thirty years more, until finally Matthew Arnold came
+forward and said, "Do not be blinded any longer by the prejudices of
+self-interest, but endeavor to see things as they actually are." This
+was the continual chant of his life, repeated in a hundred different
+forms. He made use of the popularity he had gained by his fine, classic
+poetry, to teach his countrymen a lesson in culture. [Footnote: Lowell
+also made an excellent point when he warned Englishmen, at the Coleridge
+memorial, that if they were to regain the intellectual altitude of their
+ancestors, they must give up the adoration of common-sense, and pay more
+respect to imagination and ideality.]
+
+Never did Demosthenes expose their faults to the Athenians more frankly
+and fearlessly, and with such manliness that at the time of his death
+there was no person in the British Islands more generally respected. On
+a trial vote that was taken by a London newspaper for membership to a
+proposed British Academy, Gladstone received the largest number of
+ballots, Tennyson the next and Matthew Arnold came third. He was
+considered the best literary critic in England, and if he had outlived
+Tennyson he would have succeeded him as laureate. He showed a dignified
+reserve in only publishing a very few books. Two small volumes of
+poetry, his "Essays in Criticism", which has become a standard work, and
+his American essays, are all that I know of. For all that, few writers
+were more celebrated in his own time, and it may be said that he fully
+deserved his monument in Westminster Abbey.
+
+However, it must be admitted that as a critic he had certain
+peculiarities. He was, perhaps, too sensitive and impressible; too
+easily thrown off his guard by qualities in a writer for which he had an
+aversion. He would not only mention them once, but again and again. He
+ignored Schiller, who was at least one of the world's greatest
+dramatists; he was dissatisfied with Tennyson and could not endure
+Shelley at all. His attack on Francis Newman's translation of the
+"Iliad" was so severe that he finally discovered the fact himself. His
+preference for the classic style in literature was rather too decided;
+for we must never forget that Shakespeare himself was chiefly romantic.
+He liked poetry which was like his own, and seems to have unconsciously
+judged other poets by that standard. He had no patience with idiomatic
+writing like that of Carlyle or Jean Paul; and he made incessant warfare
+on the subjective method. It is true that subjectivity may be called the
+peculiar vice of the nineteenth century, and yet it is a vice like the
+self-consciousness of the early Christians, that ought finally to end in
+virtue. There are thousands of readers whose minds cannot be reached in
+any other way.
+
+Allowances must sometimes be made also for the physical condition of a
+writer. Not always; for Carlyle wrote the greatest of dramatic histories
+while he was suffering from dyspepsia in the most distressing manner.
+However, I think in Matthew Arnold's case something may be conceded to
+him. He came to lecture in America for a double purpose--to tell the
+truth and to repair his fortunes. It was a sad story. His son had failed
+in business; his father, of course, had endorsed his notes, and he found
+himself at the threshold of old age as poor as in the beginning. Such a
+shock is felt severely enough by tough, hard-fisted men of the world,
+but to the tender sensibility of a poet it must have been a crushing
+blow. There can be as little doubt that it brought on the malady that
+abbreviated his life, as that it gave a melancholic tone to his thought
+and filled his mind with gloomy forebodings.
+
+The opening of his address was very beautiful. He recalls the impression
+made upon him in his youth by the writing of Carlyle, Goethe, Emerson
+and Francis Newman, and says:
+
+"Forty years ago, when I was an undergraduate at Oxford, voices were in
+the air which haunt my memory still. Happy the man who in that
+susceptible season of youth hears such voices! they are a possession to
+him forever. No such voices are there now. Oxford has more criticism
+now, more knowledge, more light; but such voices as those of our youth
+it has no longer. The name of Cardinal Newman is a great name to the
+imagination still; his genius and his style are things of power..... A
+greater voice still,--the greatest voice of the century,--came to us in
+those youthful years through Carlyle: the voice of Goethe. To this
+day,--such is the force of youthful associations,--I read his 'Wilhelm
+Meister' with more pleasure in Carlyle's translation than in the
+original. The large, liberal view of human life in 'Wilhelm Meister,'
+how novel it was to the Englishman in those days! and it was salutary,
+too, and educative for him, doubtless, as well as novel..... And besides
+those voices, there came to us in that old Oxford time a voice also from
+this side of the Atlantic,--a clear and pure voice, which for my ear, at
+any rate, brought a strain as new, and moving, and unforgettable, as the
+strain of Newman, or Carlyle, or Goethe.... He was your Newman, your man
+of soul and genius visible to you in the flesh, speaking to your bodily
+ears, a present object for your heart and imagination. That is surely
+the most potent of all influences!"
+
+I confess I enjoy these clear classic sentences so full of tenderness,
+and yet with the latent fire of manhood in them, much better than
+Emerson's weird, concentrated epigrams, wonderful as those sometimes
+are. Comparatively speaking it is like the difference between a living
+elm and oak timber. But the writer does not long maintain this elevated
+tone. He soon becomes despondent, and his glorious sunrise, like that in
+Shakespeare's sonnet, is lost to him again.
+
+  "For out alack, he was but one hour mine;
+   The region cloud hath veiled him from me now."
+
+
+He remembers that Francis Newman is now Cardinal Newman; that Carlyle's
+career had ended with his furious "Latter-day Pamphlets," and even in
+Emerson he had found a certain kind of disappointment.
+
+Yet there may be a deeper reason in this;--the reason that sometimes
+underlies a coincidence. We too in early life were strengthened and
+filled with enthusiasm by the earnest voice of Emerson, the trenchant
+eloquence of Wendell Phillips, and the brilliant wit and penetrating
+humor of Lowell; but the public activity of Emerson soon afterwards
+ceased; Phillips became a socialist and ultimately a demagogue; while
+Lowell changed his verses for foreign missions and after-dinner
+speeches. There is a prevalent feeling that the nineteenth century,
+which was ushered in to the sound of Napoleon's cannon and is now going
+rather tamely out in a discussion of the laws of economics, has not more
+than half accomplished the work that was assigned it. There is
+everywhere among thinking men a feeling of distrust and half
+disappointment. Lowell felt it here, George Eliot in England; and Herman
+Grimm in Germany, a sanguine man, speaks of the deep-seated unrest which
+almost drives us to despair.
+
+As I turn from my desk to the morning's newspaper I find in it the
+following extract from one of Emerson's earlier essays:
+
+"Trust the time. What a fatal prodigality to condemn our age--we cannot
+overvalue it--it is our all. As the wandering sea-bird which, crossing
+the ocean, alights on some rock or islet to rest for a moment its wings,
+and to look back on the wilderness of waves behind, and onward to the
+wilderness of waters before--so stand we perched on this rock or shoal
+of time, arrived out of the immensity of the past, bound and road-ready
+to plunge into immensity again. Not for nothing it dawns out of
+everlasting peace, this great discontent, this self-accusing reflection.
+The very time sees for us, thinks for us. It is a microscope such as
+philosophy never had. Insight is for us which was never for any, and
+doubt not, the moment and the opportunity are divine. Wondering we come
+into this lodge of watchmen, this office of espial; let us not retreat
+astonished and ashamed. Let us go out of the hall door, and doubt never
+but a good genius brought us in and will carry us out."
+
+Now this is a prose poem, so beautiful that it seems hardly to need the
+help of rhyme and metre to make it sing; and, as high art always must,
+it covers a profound truth,--truth that lies at the foundation of all
+tragedy,--namely, that we are obliged to trust time though time destroys
+us; that we must trust our fellow men though they often deceive us; that
+we must trust the ground we stand on though the earthquake devour us.
+
+But Emerson does not say this, and I doubt if he anywhere says it. He
+was too much of an optimist to perceive it. He wished all the stories he
+read to turn out fortunately, and if they did not so much the worse for
+them. Gladstone is the same kind of a man. He believes that the right
+will always finally conquer; and so it may when the day of judgment
+arrives and the affairs of the universe are at last wound up. It gives
+him, as it did Emerson, a tremendous energy,--almost like fanaticism,
+but it must in the nature of things affect his political judgment. The
+lives of these two stretch nearly across the nineteenth century, and
+their popularity is evidence that they represent their own time better
+than most others.
+
+What does Emerson intend by trusting the time? Does he mean the spirit
+of the age? If we replace the word time by Divine Providence, the
+passage becomes intelligible and notably significant; but if he meant
+the prevailing spirit of the time, the earlier part of Emerson's career
+is a perfect contradiction of it. If in his youth he had trusted the
+prevailing tendency of his time he would have become a conservative
+formalist, and never heard of as an independent thinker. It might even
+be said that few men have ever trusted their own time less. Like
+Gladstone, he was dissatisfied with the present and looked toward the
+future. They both exerted themselves with all their might to
+revolutionize public opinion and give to the future the stamp of their
+own ideas. The old Hebrew prophets whom Emerson so much resembled did
+not trust their own time, but were constantly complaining of it. So
+Cicero cried out, "O tempora, O mores!" and Savonarola, and many others.
+
+It would seem as if in this poetic rhapsody the writer had lost sight of
+his subject almost immediately upon stating it, and had substituted
+Providence for it in his mind. This was not unfrequently the case with
+him, and may account for those vague aerial flights which his
+commentators have referred to. Hawthorne says, "Mr. Emerson is a great
+searcher for facts, but they seem to melt away and become unsubstantial
+in his grasp." However, it was not facts but ideas that he was in quest
+of.
+
+The whole of Matthew Arnold's essay is thoughtful and interesting, but
+it has one grand defect. After saying that Emerson's writings
+constituted the most important prose work of the nineteenth century, he
+fails to support the statement by sufficient arguments. If he had
+developed this point to such a length as its importance deserved, and
+then finished his discourse with a glowing tribute to Emerson as a man,
+his audience might have found slight cause to complain of him; but after
+simply stating the fact, he proceeded to a lengthy discussion of
+Emerson's stoical philosophy, and finally branched off on a criticism of
+Carlyle and the consideration of happiness as the true end of life. We
+will only pause here to remark that the true end of life does not seem
+to us to be happiness so much as development, and the evolution of such
+characters as Emerson and Matthew Arnold.
+
+His condemnation of Emerson's poetry was a still severer blow. Emerson's
+friends had endured enough already on that score. Nothing was ever made
+so much fun of by parodists and other small wits. In any social company,
+if Emerson's poetry was mentioned somebody was sure to raise a laugh;
+and there was nothing that could be done about it. It was hoped that
+Matthew Arnold's prestige would put a final end to this nonsense, which
+was nothing but a fashionable habit; but he added the weight of his
+position as professor of literature to the other side of the scale. He
+praised certain portions very highly, but averred that these were
+exceptional, and concluded with what seems to be a "reductio ad
+absurdum," namely, that Longfellow's poem of "The Bridge" or Whittier's
+"School Days" was worth the whole body of Emerson's verse. As these were
+anything but the best of Longfellow and Whittier it seemed rather
+inconsistent in Matthew Arnold to have praised Emerson's poetry at all;
+and this was the more surprising after his courageous defence of
+Wadsworth a short time before. Those who like Emerson's poetry usually
+like Wordsworth's and _vice versa_.
+
+But Emerson's poetry is a peculiar subject. Carlyle and Lowell, both
+eminent critics, did not condemn it, but at the same time they were slow
+to praise it. Dr. F. H. Hedge, who probably knew more about literature
+than either of them, considered it poetry of a very high order, and Rev.
+William Furness of Philadelphia, when some one spoke slightingly of
+Emerson as a poet, exclaimed, "He is heaven high above our other poets!"
+In many obituary notices at the time of his death, he was mentioned as
+being easily the first of American poets. Professor Tyndall has a great
+admiration for his poetry; and so has another professor we know of whom
+we will not mention, but who is an equally good chemist. Dr. O. W.
+Holmes' life of Emerson was dreaded by many for fear of the position he
+might assume on this question, but to the general surprise of the
+public, he took strong grounds in favor of it; so that since that time,
+whenever people laugh at Emerson's poetry it is only necessary to ask
+them if they have read Dr. Holmes' biography of him.
+
+Immediately after the lecture, a lively discussion began about it in the
+newspapers, in which leading writers, scholars and professors took an
+active part. How much soever they might disagree in regard to Emerson,
+they all united in a disapproval of the lecturer's estimate of him.
+Matthew Arnold did not seem to have a partisan in the country. The
+discussion was renewed a year later when his book of discourses in
+America was published, and then David A. Wasson wrote the following
+letter which was published in the "Christian Register":
+
+
+
+
+ARNOLD ON EMERSON.
+
+
+"It may be doubted whether Matthew Arnold's critical estimate of Emerson
+as a prose writer is well understood by most of those who take it in ill
+part. The judgment expressed is that Emerson is the pre-eminent prose
+writer of his century, not as being either a great philosopher or great
+in his style of workmanship, but for the reason that he is a great
+spiritual light, the purest, whitest, serenest, of a century now drawing
+toward its close. This taken together is valuable praise, and converted
+into disparagement by its denial to Emerson of two special distinctions;
+and in respect to both, the denial is taken, I think, to cover much more
+ground than it was intended to cover. To keep within the limits, I will
+here attend to but one of these, where it must be confessed, Mr. Arnold
+is himself to blame for the misconstruction put upon him, since he has
+expressed himself in a way to facilitate, if not to invite, such a
+mistake. Emerson, it is said, was the most important writer of this
+century, yet was not a great writer. How should this be, unless, indeed,
+the century as a whole is inferior, and prominence in it is no token of
+greatness? In truth, Mr. Arnold has used the term 'writer' in two widely
+different senses. In the one use it refers to the content of the
+writing, to its intellectual and moral import, its spiritual
+significance; in the other use it refers to the writing itself
+considered as showing more or less of literary power,--that is, of power
+in the ordering and verbal embodiment of thoughts and conceptions.
+
+"Declining to be misled by this ambiguity, let us inquire what is meant,
+when it is said that Emerson was not a great writer. To my apprehension
+the meaning is simply that his literary execution, taken by and for
+itself, was not of the highest order. A cotton fabric may be better
+woven than one of silk, a chain of copper be better wrought and linked
+than a chain of gold. He that should recognize the better workmanship
+where it exists would not thereby set the cheaper material above the
+more precious, for he would not institute a comparison to any effect
+whatsoever between the two. Nor would he betray a shallow and petty
+mind, as making much of things trivial. Mr. Arnold says of Emerson's
+writings, the matter is gold, but the workmanship does not evince the
+highest skill. Were this last urged as determining the value of the
+writer we might indeed say that the critic offends by exalting a
+subordinate distinction to the first place. But it is not so urged, nor
+is there anything to indicate that Mr. Arnold makes perfection of
+literary execution the be-all and end-all of excellence in literature;
+indeed one does not see that he at all exaggerates its importance. Those
+whom he mentions as great writers were for the most part second-rate
+men--second-rate men that is as measured by the standard of the ages;
+and it does not appear that he thinks of them otherwise than as such.
+Cicero receives the title while it is not given to Marcus Antoninus; but
+it is sufficiently apparent that Mr. Arnold sets a higher value upon
+Marcus Antoninus than upon Cicero. Voltaire is one of the great writers;
+but in the world's literature he is at best but first among the lesser
+lights, and there is no sign that Matthew Arnold attributed to him a
+higher importance. Or take the case of Swift. The literary talents of
+this unhappy man were indeed prodigious: he performed feats to which we
+cannot say that any other would have been equal: he is as unique as
+Shakespeare,--though, of course, in a vastly lower way. But did he
+contribute one great thought or one grand and salutary imagination to
+the world's stock? Not to my knowledge. Did he shed light upon any
+important province of human interest, upon religion, morals, politics,
+art, science, history, education, manners or whatever else? I cannot
+report that he did so. Did he lay a noble emphasis upon any great truth
+or order of truths and so recommend it effectually to the attention and
+consideration of mankind? Or did he even write a single sentence which
+one treasures up as an imperishable jewel? In fine, does his work serve
+to enlarge the souls, enlighten the minds, direct the wills or quicken
+and inspire the better powers of man? Does it so much as breathe upon
+them a salubrious air? Alas no! To all such questions the answer, or
+mine own at least, will be negative. Yet he was indeed a great writer:
+that is, he had a great, a truly wonderful power of conception and
+representation. Mr. Arnold, who for aught one can discover to the
+contrary, distinguishes the nature of Swift's genius and prizes it only
+for what it is worth, does not claim that Emerson was a greater writer
+in the same sense, but thinks his deliverance somewhat faulty,
+especially as wanting that continuity which belongs to good literary
+tissue, as to every other.
+
+"Suppose him quite wrong in this, still the error is not one to be warm
+about, since it leaves the Concord essayist in his place of
+pre-eminence, and is put forth only by way of determining the kind of
+value which shall be attributed to his writings.
+
+"D. A. Wasson."
+
+This was forwarded to Matthew Arnold, who was then at his own home, and
+in due time this reply was received from him:
+
+"COBHAM, SURREY,
+
+"Jan. 7th., 1886.
+"Dear Sir,
+
+"I have just had, on my return to England, your letter and Mr. Wasson's
+paper, and must thank you for them.
+
+"Very much of what Mr. Wasson says is true; yet literary style is more
+than he makes it--the mere dressing up of a material which may be
+inferior; it is itself in the material and has an extraordinary value.
+No great writer is to be disposed of as Mr. Wasson disposes of Addison
+and Swift; he says, nothing is to be learned from Swift; why, a sense
+for the blatant nonsense and claptrap which constitutes three-fourths of
+our public writing and speaking, and which is a greater curse to your
+country that even to ours, is to be got from him. Addison has his
+valuable criticism of life too; I doubt whether to a Taine, a hundred
+years hence, he will not seem of more importance than Emerson, who was
+above all things of value in his own day. But I love Emerson.
+
+"Truly yours,
+
+"Matthew Arnold."
+
+
+[Illustration: AUTOGRAPH LETTER FROM MATTHEW ARNOLD.]
+
+[Illustration: AUTOGRAPH LETTER FROM MATTHEW ARNOLD.]
+
+
+Taine, who preferred Macaulay to Carlyle, might also prefer Addison to
+Emerson; but it is not likely that a future Grimm or another
+Sainte-Beuve would do so. In his "Essays in Criticism," Matthew Arnold
+enters a general complaint against English prose writers for a lack of
+mental flexibility, and against Addison particularly for the
+commonplaceness of his ideas. He was a severe and exacting critic.
+
+
+
+
+DAVID A. WASSON.
+
+
+Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne and Whittier were all nearly of
+the same age, and formed a literary galaxy such as has been rare enough
+in any country or period of history. They are distinguished, however, by
+one peculiarity--a slight sentimentalism which belonged to the time in
+which they grew up, and is most strongly marked in Longfellow and least
+so in Hawthorne. Fifteen or twenty years later there appeared, as
+usually happens, a number of talented imitators or admirers, and with
+them two men of equal genius who may be looked upon as the corrective
+and antidote for their predecessors. These were James Russell Lowell and
+David Atwood Wasson.
+
+They were as different as Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson. Lowell was a fine
+poet, a humorist and man of the world. He wrote easily and lived easily.
+He was the companion of wealthy and distinguished men. He acquired
+prosperity, as it were, by natural inclination. Next to the King of
+Prussia he was the most fortunate man of his time. He knew something of
+sorrow, but of hardship and misfortune only by hearsay. He was the child
+of summer, and revelled in it; but this continual happiness brought with
+it certain limitations. Though he was a veracious man, he was rarely a
+serious one. He never became thoroughly in earnest until he was
+stimulated by partisan feeling. His best poems were inspired by the
+anti-slavery conflict, and the rendition of Mason and Slidell; and it
+was just on these occasions that his humor was most brilliant and
+pleasant flavored. His productiveness was not great, and his other
+writings do not make a strong impression. It is said that he often tried
+to write a book, but was never able to concentrate himself on one
+subject for a sufficient length of time. He is easily the first of
+American humorists. The greatest compliment ever paid Thoreau was that
+such a man as Lowell could not understand him.
+
+Wasson must have been born under the constellation of the Little Bear.
+As the Germans say, his life was always winter. Every possible obstacle
+was placed in his way, and misfortune came to him at one time or another
+in almost every shape. The difficulties he encountered in life were too
+great for him, and prevented the full fruition of his genius. The wonder
+is that they did not crush him altogether. He never acquired the
+sufficient public influence nor received the recognition his merit
+deserved. He was by nature a thinker--a seeker after truth. There was no
+problem,--social, political or philosophical,--which he was not ready to
+grapple with. He could plunge into these subjects like a pearl-diver who
+means to touch bottom, and would never come out till his last breath was
+spent. This mental habit and his continual suffering made him only too
+serious, too much in earnest. Jests were not in his line, but he
+sometimes wrote poetry of the very highest order. He is the first and
+most original of American thinkers.
+
+What these two dissimilar men had in common was good Anglo-Saxon
+manliness--which is after all the foundation of common-sense. They
+wished to live as other men had lived before them, and not in any new,
+unusual, or eccentric manner. They believed that virtue was to be found
+in the great world rather than out of it; among human habitations, and
+in dealing with all kinds of people rather than by an isolated life at
+Brook Farm or in Walden Woods. They sought not after any rare and
+Utopian excellencies, but contented themselves with a plain, sensible,
+every-day morality. They were neither vegetarians, teetotalers,
+non-resistants, nor socialists. They considered it no sin to love a
+woman or to fight a man. They may be called anti-sentimentalists.
+
+Neither were they blind followers of custom and tradition. They wished
+to be in the vanguard of civilization, and they were conscious that to
+do this they must not only accept the results of others, but add
+something of their own. They endeavored to become acquainted with the
+best that was thought and known in their time, both in literature and in
+other matters. They thus became excellent critics, as well as versatile
+and many-sided men. They were among the most cultivated men of the
+century, and are the most cosmopolitan of American writers. That they
+should not have possessed greater influence was largely owing to the
+tendencies of their time. The current of the age was too strong for
+them, and in their later years they both expressed gloomy forebodings of
+the future, both for their own country and the rest of the civilized
+world.
+
+Wasson went to Concord in 1859 intending to make it his permanent abode,
+but the offer of a philanthropic gentleman who wished to take him into
+his own house for a year and care for him, as Mr. Badams of Manchester
+entertained Carlyle, induced him to emigrate again. He continued however
+in friendly communication with the literary people there, often visited
+them, and now lies buried in Sleepy Hollow cemetery, so that he deserves
+to be classed among them, rather than with any other group of literary
+men.
+
+He was born in Brooksville, Maine, on the fourteenth of May, 1823. He
+was named David for his father, and Atwood for Miss Harriet Atwood, a
+female preacher and missionary who was at that time his mother's devoted
+friend,--and it has been said that Wasson attributed his unusual mental
+activity largely to her influence. His mother died while he was still
+too young to recollect her, but her place was fortunately supplied by a
+kindly and sensible stepmother; not such a rare phenomenon as some
+people think. His father belonged to a class of men only to be found on
+the coast of Maine, who are at once fishermen, farmers and navigators; a
+much more intelligent and cultivated class than the agricultural people
+of the interior. It is a beautiful sail among the islands from Rockland
+to Mount Desert, and the pleasantest part of it, to me at least, is the
+sight of the well kept farms with their handsome cattle and clean-shaven
+hay-fields, which line the coast. Our best ship-builders have originated
+among these people.
+
+Brooksville is a thinly scattered settlement on the westerly side of a
+rocky and even mountainous peninsula. A deep and narrow strait separates
+it from Castine, which has to be crossed in a ferry-boat. The house of
+David Wasson, Senior, is something more than half-a-mile from the ferry
+landing; a large, commodious, two-story house, much better than the
+average of farm-houses, with two large barns and numerous out-buildings.
+Between it and the street is an orchard, and on one side a latticed
+porch or piazza. West of it there is a trout-brook and beyond that a
+hemlock grove, and the blue hills of Camden in the distance. On the
+south side the sea comes up to the edge of the farm, and the road to
+Sedgwick winds about the ridge on the East. It was a fitting birthplace
+for a poet or a painter.
+
+He has left us a valuable and quite unique sketch of his early boyhood,
+[Footnote: Essays, Religious, Social, Political. D. A. Wasson. Boston:
+Lee and Shepard.] in which he confesses to having been a sensitive,
+excitable and passionate little fellow such as the more cool-headed and
+phlegmatic sort could tease and worry at pleasure. Since he was also
+very high-spirited, this resulted inevitably in a good many fights, and
+from being naturally peaceable and tender-hearted he became at last the
+most noted pugilist in that community. It is said that at seventeen he
+could smash a door-panel with his fist. That he disliked work on the
+farm is not surprising. Manual labor is injurious to boys physically and
+mentally; and they should be saved from it, except perhaps in the haying
+or harvesting seasons, as much as possible. Otherwise he was modest,
+orderly, truthful, and the finest scholar that had ever been known about
+Castine. His father recognized his superior abilities, and made an
+effort to send him to Bowdoin College.
+
+There were many obstacles in the way, however, and he did not enter
+until 1845. He never told me much about his college life. He was older
+than his companions and more serious. The light spirit that makes it a
+joyous festival to many was not in him. Of the myrtle and ivy of sweet
+two-and-twenty he knew nothing. He distinguished himself in mathematics
+(especially in geometry, which is the most logical of studies) and in
+the students' debating-societies. He was also an excellent gymnast.
+
+In almost every college class there are a number of over-grown boys who
+had better have been sent to the reform-school. On the occasion of a
+class supper, or some such celebration, young Wasson saved half-a-dozen
+of these roaring blades from disgrace and suspension, by his timely
+interference. It was already far into the night, and being fairly
+intoxicated, they took it into their minds to return and attend morning
+prayers in the college chapel. In order to prevent this catastrophe,
+Wasson arranged a bowling match for a fictitious sum of money with the
+most sober man he could find, and in that way delayed the party until
+the dangerous hour had passed. It was supposed to have been some of the
+same set who the following autumn set fire to and consumed the college
+wood-pile--a severe loss, and a dangerous precedent. No trace of the
+incendiaries could be discovered and the college faculty suspended on
+suspicion right and left. Among those whom the lightning struck were
+several that Wasson knew or felt sure could have had nothing to do with
+it; and he accordingly went to the president and argued the case with
+him. This resulted in his being summoned before the next faculty
+meeting. When asked whether he knew who the perpetrators of the outrage
+were, he declined to answer, not because he had positive knowledge but
+because he felt morally certain in regard to them. A few weeks later,
+after he had gone into the country to teach school for the winter, he
+received word that he had been suspended. Indignant at what he
+considered an injustice to his character and scholarship, he left
+Bowdoin forever: nor did he perhaps lose much by this. The philosophical
+studies of the senior year could be mastered as easily by a mind like
+Wasson's without an instructor as with one. He never studied for rank
+and cared little or nothing for college honors or degrees.
+
+There is no good art without a sense of delicacy; and this mental
+delicacy is usually matched by some kind of physical sensitiveness.
+Artists are, according to the vulgar phrase, more thin-skinned than
+other people. Both at Bowdoin College, and afterwards while at the
+divinity-school, Wasson worked hard in summer and taught school in
+winter so as to help in defraying the expense of his education. In this
+mode of life he encountered many hardships that were too severe for him.
+I notice among my own classmates that very few of those who lived in
+this manner reached the age of thirty-five. The food which Wasson
+encountered during his winter peregrinations was anything but what human
+beings are intended to eat. On one occasion he returned from his school
+to dine as usual in a cold room, and found himself provided there with
+the skeleton of a chicken, two large beets, a pie made of preserved
+barberries, and biscuits which pulled out when separated, like a
+telescope. The meat, unless fried, was always cooked too much; bread and
+vegetables insufficiently. Like many another young hero he believed in
+facing these obstacles, and overcoming them by main force. A strain
+which he received in a wrestling match during the celebrated Tippecanoe
+campaign may have done him harm; but a more serious injury was incurred
+while on a trip to Bangor in one of his father's schooners the summer
+after he was suspended from college. The captain of the schooner appears
+to have been a sea-faring brute who had a secret grudge, a sort of
+town-and-gown feeling, against the scholar, and was ready to do him any
+mischief he could. They were to take on a cargo of lumber at Bangor and
+the captain requested Wasson, who was not actually under his orders, to
+stow it away in the hold while two men on deck handed the boards to him
+as fast as possible. Wasson felt that something was wrong and might have
+protested against it, but his youthful pride, and perhaps a feeling of
+indifference in regard to his fate, prevented him. I believe he finally
+fainted from over-exertion and the close air, and was never a well man
+again. The trouble was not very bad at first, and might easily have been
+cured by suitable treatment, and a quiet, methodical life: but there was
+no doctor in that part of Maine who could prescribe properly for him. He
+tried some short sea-voyages, but these did him little good. So Prescott
+injured his eyesight through the same proud spirit; but it was this
+pride which made him afterwards what he was.
+
+His ill-health however did not prevent him from studying and writing.
+The following autumn he went into the office of a lawyer and member of
+Congress in Castine and read "Blackstone," "Chitty on Bills," and some
+other law-books. The study of law is in itself an excellent nerve tonic,
+balancing the mind and strengthening the character. Nothing could have
+been better for him at this juncture, and it is an unlimited pity that
+he did not continue it longer. But the law could never have satisfied
+the aspirations of his nature any more than Columbus might have been
+satisfied with sailing a packet in the Mediterranean. He liked the study
+of it, and once spoke with great respect of "Chitty on Bills" wishing he
+could find a work on theology or politics that contains so much good
+sense; but he longed for something beyond it. The congressman had a good
+opinion of his abilities and held out the prospect of a partnership to
+him, but personal ambition was not an ingredient in Wasson's nature. He
+was discontented and ready for a change.
+
+One day in June 1849 he was sent to a distant town on what was to his
+sensitive moral nature a most disgusting expedition; namely, to help a
+lucrative client take the poor debtor's oath, and so avoid a partially
+unjust debt. On his return home he stopped at a country store to make a
+small purchase, and there at the end of the shelf he saw a cheap dingy
+copy of Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." He purchased it, and read it in his
+wagon by the evening light. He had tried to read it before, but failed
+to make his way in it. It was the first clear message and sure token of
+a spiritual life that had yet reached him. He had lived through the
+"everlasting no," and here was the "everlasting yea" set plainly before
+him. Years afterward M. D. Conway told Carlyle of walking in the woods
+at Groveland with Wasson, and how his face became radiant with internal
+light when he spoke of "Sartor Resartus."
+
+This new-birth from above seized upon him like a fever. He now felt that
+he had a mission in life; a message to mankind. And in what way could he
+deliver this message? How could he make known to others what was in his
+full heart, except from the pulpit? For the first time he conceived the
+ministry as a high-minded and ennobling profession. He decided
+accordingly to go into the church. His family were Calvinists, and
+Calvinism was the only mode of faith of which he knew very much. That
+such a step should have been inspired by the writings of a heretic like
+Carlyle was in itself a contradiction which foreboded an ultimate
+collision. Yet no man perhaps ever lived who had a clearer sense of a
+Divine Presence in the universe than Thomas Carlyle, and it was this
+which Wasson recognized in him. Poets and philosophers are naturally
+heretical, because they take the short road of genius which others find
+it difficult to follow. But all believers finally arrive at the same
+destination.
+
+He entered the theological seminary at Bangor in 1849 and graduated in
+1851. It may be he went there with a youthful idea of reforming the
+church. At any rate his boldness of thought and free utterance brought
+him into suspicion with his fellow students, and at one time reports
+were in circulation that he was to be expelled for heresy. With his
+customary directness he went to the president, Dr. Pond, and inquired if
+there was any truth in this. The doctor, who really liked Wasson,
+received him with a kindly, patriarchal manner and said: "Do not be
+troubled, my young friend, we all have our seasons of doubt. I have had
+mine; but take my word for it that it is all right. For look at those
+saints up there in glory. How did they get there?" Such an argument was
+not likely to relieve the fermentation in his mind. Walking the streets
+of Bangor at this time was Dr. Frederick Henry Hedge, the man of all
+others who might have solved Wasson's doubts in a satisfactory manner,
+and with whom Wasson afterwards found himself in more complete moral and
+intellectual sympathy than with any other of his friends. Wasson saw him
+frequently, but had no opportunity of making his acquaintance. So nearly
+do we either hit it, or miss it, all through life!
+
+The only person who sympathized with him in his progressive views of
+religion was Miss Abbie Smith, the daughter of an apothecary in
+Newburyport, Massachusetts. She was visiting at the house of her brother
+who was one of the instructors at the Seminary. That he should have
+fallen in love with her, and soon become engaged to her is therefore not
+surprising. They were married the year after his graduation, and she
+continued a faithful, industrious and uncomplaining wife; his mainstay
+in ill-health and misfortune till the end. They were not always happy
+together; but it is a rare marriage where that is the case. Wasson's
+struggle with the world was often reflected in his own family,
+disturbing the harmony and comfort of it. His wife once said quite
+gravely, that there were others from whom her husband would probably
+have made a selection if he had not offered himself to her. He was
+always a favorite with the other sex, and equally fond of their society.
+As he never troubled himself much as to what people said of him, this
+gave rise to a good deal of talk which his opponents took advantage of
+to disparage his character. He was once a witness in a divorce case, and
+a rather tricky lawyer who had a remarkable faculty for what Bacon calls
+"turning the cat in the pan," succeeded in making him appear at a
+disadvantage; but Mrs. Wasson told me that he was in the right. If his
+wife had no suspicion of him we need have none.
+
+He went directly from Bangor to Groveland, a pleasant village
+beautifully situated on the Merrimack, which from Haverhill to the sea
+is one of the finest American rivers. His _fiancee_ had numerous
+relatives in the place, and it was owing to her influence that he
+received a call there. At first all the signs were favorable; the young
+minister was well liked, and his parishioners were only afraid that a
+man of such rare ability would soon gravitate to a larger congregation.
+So he might have done, if his ardent, aspiring soul would have permitted
+him to temporize with his conscience, and to be content with mere
+popularity and doing good on a small scale. But the thought that was
+matured within him could no longer be restrained. The dangerous seed
+sown by reading "Sartor Resartus" had now become a strong young tree and
+must have air and light or it would perish. In October 1852 he preached
+a sermon that fairly astounded his amiable parishioners. He argued that
+regeneration and salvation were not to be obtained by blind faith in
+Jesus, but by intelligent moral culture and spiritual development. This
+view was, as far as I know, original with Wasson, and should be
+distinguished from the anti-miraculous standpoint of Parker and the
+natural supernaturalism of Emerson. Almost at the same hour an English
+naturalist was applying the same principle to the origin of species, and
+the evolution of the human race from the lower animals. The Englishman's
+clear, inductive insight was matched by the philosophical penetration of
+an American. The Darwinian theory now stands uncontested among
+scientific men, and whether admitted or not there is quite as surely an
+evolution apparent in the history of religion, not very unlike it. This
+is the lesson of the nineteenth century.
+
+The following day one of the deacons of the church called upon Wasson to
+inform him that his sermon had given offence and that he must retract
+from his position. "But," replied the minister, "I cannot! I am not
+going to retract it." Thirty years after this Wasson laughed as
+heartily, as a suffering person very well could, while he recollected
+the expression of astonishment on the worthy deacon's face. That a man
+should do wrong for the sake of money or some material advantage was
+conceivable to him--he had known instances of that; but that any man
+should so stand in his own light both for this world and the next, was a
+moral incongruity which he could not understand. Wasson would not
+withdraw from his position, but followed it up the next Sunday by a
+still more energetic statement. There was nothing left now but
+deposition. A conference was called and Wasson regularly expelled from
+the Congregational brotherhood. Even some Unitarians also shared in the
+horror. About a third part of his congregation, however, were converted
+by him and established an independent church; so that after all he
+achieved a kind of victory.
+
+Wasson had now escaped in a two-fold sense from the fog-banks and
+shallow waters of his native coast and henceforward was to sail forth
+bravely upon the high seas. The conflict he had passed through attracted
+no little attention from thoughtful and cultivated people, and even
+those who did not wholly agree with him admired the honest manliness
+with which he defended his views. Polite society opened its doors to
+him. Wherever he went now he was received as a distinguished guest. He
+soon made the acquaintance of eminent scholars and men of letters,--of
+Sumner, Parker and Emerson. He made friends everywhere. He began to
+publish essays and poems; at first in the "Christian Examiner," and
+afterwards in the "Atlantic Monthly." In those days of plain living and
+high thinking it was not customary for magazine writers to sign their
+names, (so modest were they,) to their contributions; and in this way
+Wasson just missed the general celebrity which they might have brought
+him, but their merit was recognized by those of whose good opinion he
+was chiefly desirous.
+
+The effort, however, had been too much for him. The only chance of
+recovery from a nervous disorder lies in freedom from mental agitation.
+An injured nerve requires a longer time to heal than a broken bone and
+quite as much care and self-denial. Any serious disturbance to the
+circulation produces a pressure in the blood vessels of the nervous
+centres, and tears away the improvement that has commenced there. Then
+nature has to begin her work over again; and if this happens repeatedly
+nature becomes tired of working in vain and refuses to give further
+assistance. This was Wasson's misfortune. He was sensitive and excitable
+by temperament, the injury to his spine had made him still more so, and
+the mental agitation he experienced during 1852 and 1853 was enough to
+prevent him from ever being restored to perfect health. During these two
+years he must have endured nothing less than the tortures of the
+inquisition; and no doubt some of his Calvinistic neighbors considered
+it a judgment on him for his heresy. A mutilated life is not so very bad
+after one is used to it, but the beginning is terrible. It is like being
+surrounded with invisible barbed fences, which we inevitably run against
+and lacerate ourselves with, until we learn to bear in mind their exact
+position. Accidents too happen to nervous invalids which other people
+seem generally to escape from. Wasson was at one time making fair
+progress in his condition when suddenly one day, as he was walking
+through Boston, the door of a house opened and a lady slipping on some
+ice and tripping over the steps fell right into his arms. This was a
+highly diverting adventure for a young clergyman, but it cost him weeks
+of suffering. A somewhat similar strain came upon him when his first
+child was born. He does not seem to have ever met with a physician who
+understood his case. One worthy doctor in Worcester invited him to his
+house and drove with him in his sulky for more than half a year, without
+accomplishing anything for him. He went on a voyage to London and
+another to Smyrna, without any better result than suffering from bad
+food and stormy weather. After the first voyage his condition was so bad
+that, as he said of it once, he scarcely knew whether it was day or
+night: but the climate of Asia Minor agreed with him and he returned
+from Smyrna at least better for so much experience. I think his first
+real improvement came during his stay at my father's house. There he had
+plentiful repose, both of mind and body, and if good medical treatment
+had been added he might have made a substantial gain.
+
+In the spring of 1864 Bradford, the marine artist, being ambitious to
+paint icebergs in their native wilds, organized a sailing party for
+Labrador and invited Wasson to go with them. This was the first
+enterprise of the kind that gave him permanent benefit. Fortunately they
+encountered no severe storms. The cool, bracing air of the polar regions
+was better than galvanism and stimulated his nerves to work in the
+proper way. Sailing along the coast they were able to anchor almost
+every night in smooth water. The fish they caught, the strange birds
+they saw and stranger human creatures, were a cheerful entertainment to
+him. He became quite a sportsman, and even joined one day in the pursuit
+of a polar bear. He returned in the autumn practically cured of his
+trouble, but to regain his strength was out of the question: he suffered
+besides very badly from dyspepsia. However he was able to preach
+regularly, to make speeches in public, to work in his garden and write
+perhaps three hours a day. Such a person is not greatly to be pitied,
+and if he had fortunately possessed a small competency we might now look
+upon him as a prosperous man: but his only property consisted of a good
+working library and five hundred dollars which a friend had given him.
+The next eight years were the best and most productive of his life; and
+he might have continued in the same course but for another most
+unfortunate accident. The supply of coal in his government office gave
+out, and the requisition for a fresh quantity was not promptly filled.
+Wasson sat writing in a cold room. There was a sudden change of weather,
+a severe snow squall, and the result was--pleurisy. This changed to
+bronchitis which worried and weakened him for the following ten years,
+and finally carried him off in his sixty-fifth year. That he went
+through a severe fever at the house of his friend Henry A. Page of
+Medford is hardly worth considering, for he was so tenderly and
+beautifully cared for there as almost to make it an enviable experience;
+but in 1879 cataracts formed on both eyes, one of which had been injured
+long before, and when they were operated on, two years later, the sight
+was restored to his injured eye (such as it was previously) but not to
+the other, so that he was left very nearly blind. He attributed this
+catastrophe to the quantity of belladonna which had been prescribed for
+him.
+
+Such was his pathological history and a truly terrible one it is. Who
+can remember the like of it? Certainly Job's trials were not heavier nor
+were they borne with more fortitude and patience. In the midst of his
+severest troubles he wrote "All is well:" a noble religious poem equal
+to the hymn of Cleanthes or the twelfth ode of Horace; and in one of his
+earlier essays he speaks of tragedy as possessing such beauty and
+grandeur that he is almost ready to believe it is the proper goal and
+destination of earthly life. In "Epic Philosophy" he says: "Strife is
+around man, and strife is within him; the lightning thrusts its blazing
+scymitar through his roof, the thief creeps in at his door, and remorse
+at his heart. Who, looking on these things, does not acknowledge that
+man is indeed fearfully as well as wonderfully made? Who would not
+sometimes cry, 'O that my eyes were a fountain of tears, that I might
+weep, not the desolations of Israel alone, but the hate of Israel to
+Edom and of Edom to Israel, the jar, the horror, the ensanguined passion
+and ferocity of Nature'? But when we would despair, behold we cannot.
+Out of the conscious heart of humanity issues forever, more or less
+clearly, a voice of infinite, pure content. 'Through the valley of the
+shadow of death I will fear no evil, for THOU art with me.' Sometimes,
+when our trial is sorest, that voice is clearest, singing as from the
+jaws of death and the gates of hell. And now, though the tears fall,
+they become jewels as they fall; and the sorrow that begot them wears
+them in the diadem of its more than regal felicity."
+
+This is the echo of his own experience; the spiritual diagnosis of his
+case. With what fortitude he endured his maladies those who knew him
+best can bear witness. He was no ideal Stoic nor self-conscious martyr;
+but more like an Homeric hero fighting his troubles, bearing them
+bravely, talking of them sensibly, always glad to receive sympathy but
+never seeking it, and complaining when he could endure no longer. He
+never tried to comfort himself by sophistical reflections, but elevated
+thoughts were always his chief consolation. Conversation about great
+writers and thinkers always seemed to strengthen him.
+
+Mr. Frothingham in his excellent memoir speaks of Wasson as a
+self-consuming nature. Such a statement may apply to men like Schiller
+and John Sterling but it can hardly be said of one who lived to be
+sixty-four years old. If he had not been a remarkably patient, prudent,
+temperate and altogether practical man his disorder would have consumed
+him long before that time. It gave him no margin for wilfulness. Except
+when he spoke in public, his life was regulated with mathematical
+accuracy. There was something almost death-like in his self-control, and
+yet at times that also had to give way. If he had lived otherwise his
+case would have grown continually worse. The only recreation he had was
+working in his garden, and an occasional game of billiards. Four or five
+times a year he would go to a symphony concert, to hear Matthew Arnold
+lecture, or to see a distinguished actor. People who blamed him for not
+recovering his health knew not what they did. A Philadelphia doctor has
+made himself quite famous by curing women who have become nervous and
+debilitated from an unhealthy mode of life and drinking strong tea, but
+that is a very different thing from curing a true nervous disorder.
+Sumner's case was almost exceptional. He was cured in three years by Dr.
+Brown-Sequard and made perfectly well; but he had temperament, climate,
+and everything that money might give, in his favor. A good many invalids
+have been helped by Brown-Sequard after other doctors had failed to help
+them. A sturdy New Hampshire farmer wounded his foot with an axe and was
+supposed to have split a nerve in it. The wound healed perfectly but he
+never was able to do a whole day's work afterward. An oarsman in the
+international regatta of 1869 who was a man of enormous physical
+strength, deranged his nerves in some way and shot himself rather than
+endure the kind of life that was forced upon him.
+
+The Wasson family was of Ulster-Irish descent, or as it is often
+improperly called Scotch-Irish. There is little Scotch blood in Ulster
+however, and the Wassons claimed to be descended from the Lollard
+heretics who were driven out of England in Henry the Fifth's time. John
+C. Calhoun belonged also to this class of men, who are noted for their
+industry, sobriety, mental vigor and inflexible tenacity. The county of
+Ulster contains only about one-eighth of the population of Ireland and
+yet it pays forty-six per cent of the Irish taxes. David Wasson, Senior,
+was trial justice for Brooksville, and was greatly dreaded by disorderly
+persons. He presided with dignity, and maintained better order than is
+often found in a country court-room. Wasson himself was more than Saxon;
+he was a German in mind, body and character, though he never went to
+Germany till after he was fifty. He had a German figure, much like his
+father's but broader; high square shoulders, a straight forehead and
+wide mouth. His features were strong and refined without being specially
+handsome. His brow was very fine and the eyes beneath it of so clear a
+blue as to be noticeable even at some distance.
+
+There are men whom it is a delight to be with, whose "actions are as
+pleasant as roses," whose absence we regret as soon as they leave the
+room; but Wasson was not one of these. He had no personal charm like
+Longfellow or Wendell Phillips. He was more of a gentleman than many who
+pride themselves on that distinction, and he had very good manners, but
+not a very good style. A noted snob of those days and parasite of
+distinguished people said that he could have no faith in the genius of a
+man who dressed like Mr. Wasson. He would probably have dressed much
+better if he had possessed more abundant means, but I never saw him
+dressed in a way that anyone could rightfully complain of. His voice was
+pleasant but there was neither grace nor elegance in his speech. Usually
+it was direct, forcible, monotonous, with a very distinct enunciation;
+but sometimes it became drawling and wearisome with a peculiar accent on
+certain words which struck the ear too pointedly. This however was only
+among his friends; it did not happen in public. But all thought of human
+imperfections vanished as soon as he began to talk on one of his
+favorite topics; and there was a long list of them. You recognized that
+you were in the presence of a master mind, an analytical genius, who
+could take the world to pieces and put it together before your very
+eyes.
+
+His conversation was better than his writing; in form, in freedom, and
+in warmth of feeling. He must have been the finest talker of his time.
+Carlyle could match him perhaps in quite a different manner; but I have
+never heard of any others. Lowell was what would have been called in
+Shakespeare's time a "witty and conceited gentleman" and John Weiss
+still more so; but neither of them could give the flow of original
+thought which came from Wasson like a pure mountain stream. Neither were
+they such complete masters of their subject. Like Carlyle he required
+suitable auditors to bring him forth at his best: but while Carlyle was
+mightiest when, his hearers were opposed to him Wasson always needed a
+somewhat sympathetic audience. If he saw unfriendly faces around him his
+ideas became congealed and his discourse controversial. At other times
+it was like following the course of a great unknown river, full of grand
+views and surprising discoveries. Nothing interests like imagination, or
+is more wholesome than good criticism. Yet he had no desire to be an
+autocrat of the drawing-room. He welcomed the opinions of others and
+encouraged free discussion. No man could be more ready to accept
+amendments to his propositions. Pride of opinion was nowhere to be found
+in him: he was only too modest and unassuming. If his friends did not
+agree with him he would reply with a mildly interrogative "Yes?" and
+then proceed as before. The finest rhetoric and even splendid oratory
+seemed poor compared with the plain statement of this unswerving seeker
+of the truth.
+
+His knowledge was prodigious. He was a good linguist, a fine
+mathematician and versed in all the different schools of philosophy. He
+knew English literature as well as Macaulay; French and German as well
+as Carlyle. There seemed to be no period of history with which he was
+unacquainted. He remembered everything. If he had not read a book he had
+heard of it and had a pretty clear notion of what it contained. The only
+picture-gallery he ever visited was the small National Gallery in
+London, but from the few master-pieces he saw there he formed a quite
+correct judgment of the art of painting and could talk about any picture
+in an interesting way. He had also a good ear for music and divided with
+Lowell the honor among American literati of being able to appreciate
+music of the best quality. Besides this, his knowledge of practical
+affairs such as farming, gardening, housebuilding, fishing, sailing and
+other industrial arts was well-nigh endless also. How his head, which
+was not one of the largest, could contain it all I do not know. He could
+not recite the odes of Horace from memory; but he was able to repeat
+lengthy quotations from both English and foreign authors, and that
+without ever having committed them. In religious writings and
+controversies he was as much at home as a good lawyer in the statutes.
+In his wanderings he had become acquainted with many curious, strange
+and original people, and had gained their confidence by his friendly,
+open-hearted manner. Perhaps he had learned as much from the great book
+of human nature as from all other books; so that his fund of information
+was fairly inexhaustible. He may almost be said to have contained the
+material for another Shakespeare.
+
+In 1877 just after the Turco-Russian war had begun we found him one
+evening in a smoking-car on the railway, surrounded by a crowd of young
+men who were listening eagerly to his account of the various wars which
+had already taken place between Russia and Turkey, and the political
+significance of the present one. "A man who possesses such a fund within
+has need of little from without." He cannot be called poor so long as he
+has a roof to shelter him and a single suit of clothes. Yet the
+acquisition of knowledge was never with Wasson for its own sake, though
+a good deal of adventitious knowledge came to him incidentally, but
+always for the attainment of wisdom. He did not believe in the
+Emersonian doctrine of obtaining inspiration through nature. "That was
+not the way," he would say, "in which the great minds of history became
+what they were. If we are to do lasting work we must know what the world
+is made of. Emerson himself does not work in that way." He quoted
+Schiller as saying, "He who would do benefit to the age in which he
+lives must bathe deep in the spirit of classical antiquity and then
+return to his own time to be in it, but not of it." That is, if we are
+to move the world with Archimedes' lever, we must have an historical
+basis to rest on. If a man ever had this it was Wasson. He went back to
+the Vedas in his study of religion; to the German forests and the
+pyramids in his investigation of politics and history. It was this which
+gave his arguments such cogency and made his discourse so fresh,
+vigorous and original. Arguments, however, will only serve for
+reasonable people. The ram that butted the locomotive had to learn from
+experience.
+
+His sincerity was absolute. A devoted friend says of him: "During twelve
+years of familiar intercourse and eight more of less frequent
+communication, I never knew him once to take on the slightest color of
+insincerity. For it is not only in the use of words but in the tone of
+voice, the expression of the face and the movement of the body that
+duplicity can be detected." Like Sumner, he would rather lose a case
+than make use of an unfair argument. This may seem to many a
+super-sensitive morality, but it was not so for the work which these men
+had to do. Wasson believed in telling lies; to save life, to protect
+innocence, or even to prevent people from obtaining information which
+they had no right to. He considered it justifiable not only to deceive
+insane people, but also those demented creatures who do more mischief
+than lunatics because they cannot be shut up.
+
+The more honor to him therefore for his truthfulness. In the case of a
+strong temperance woman who refused to allow a gentleman to marry her
+daughter unless he took the pledge, which he did with the deliberate
+intention of breaking it afterwards, he said, "I do not like to approve
+of his action, but she might just as well have held a pistol to his
+head." Neither did his own virtue make him uncharitable towards others.
+He recognized how impossible it is for servants and many other people to
+be always veracious, and claimed that the impostures practised by
+Frederick in the Seven Years' War might be justified by the strait he
+was in and the importance of the matter in hand. The main thing was to
+do honest work. For careless, sleazy, or fraudulent work he had no
+patience. He was greatly amused at the story of Dr. Francia ordering an
+army contractor who had cheated the government of Paraguay to be
+promenaded for an hour under the gallows, and he wished that more of
+them might be treated in that manner. He thought the torrent of
+mendacity which accompanies our presidential elections must have a bad
+influence on the morals of the American people.
+
+The question of veracity was once discussed at the Chestnut Street Club,
+and Emerson said that Desdemona's lie seemed to him the best thing in
+the play of Othello. But there is, as Plato remarks, a more insidious
+evil than the deception of others and that is deceiving oneself. To
+detect an intentional falsehood is not very difficult, but when people
+tell lies with perfect assurance of their own sincerity the confusion
+that results is endless. The wisest of men are some times misled in this
+way. When we try to deceive others we have before us the danger of
+public exposure, while in self-deception we have only our own
+consciences to deal with. Neither do the two always go hand in hand.
+There are persons who are formally careful in regard to the truth, and
+yet live in perpetual delusion. Wasson recognized this danger and
+protected himself against it by a constant and severe self-examination.
+He knew himself at least better than most, and if he erred anywhere it
+was in too moderate an opinion of his own value. He had visually a clear
+consciousness of what he was about, in spite of his lively imagination.
+
+He was in fact an American Doctor Johnson: a large hearted, high minded,
+sympathetic and logical _man_; and it is only a pity that he had
+not some Boswell of a friend who could have recorded his wise sayings
+and valuable criticism of men and things. He was more of an idealist
+than Doctor Johnson, and at the same time like Doctor Johnson in
+personal solidity, his English aplomb of character. They were both men
+of sterling quality. He was in all things especially human. His
+sympathies equalled the breadth of his mind. There was scarcely a
+subject in which he did not take an interest, and was not ready to
+converse on. As soon as he obtained a little money he wanted to help
+those who were in lack of it. His sister's husband being out of work, he
+designed the model for a small yacht and gave him an order for it. He
+had known the depths of human misery, and could make his experience of
+benefit to his friends. Poignant grief for the loss of a relative I
+think he never knew, and yet he did not neglect his duty to those in
+affliction, little as such duty might be expected of him. He was not a
+humorist or wit, and his conversation was only saved from dryness by its
+elevated tone; but he had a quick appreciation of the wit of others, and
+would sometimes laugh as heartily as Carlyle's professor in "Sartor
+Resartus." Ridicule and those books which are written to make people
+laugh were intolerable to him. He had a large stock of anecdotes at
+command, but he used them wisely and sparingly. He was refined as only a
+poet can be.
+
+The general public, as Balzac says, judges only by results; and those
+who were themselves only practical in some specialty, or had made
+fortunes for themselves out of the gratuity of nature, were wont to look
+upon Wasson as a visionary and unpractical person. To those who acted
+only from motives of self-interest he was a perpetual puzzle. Neither
+was he ignorant of this unfavorable opinion, for he could see through
+people almost as if they were glass, and he endured it with true
+Emersonian serenity. If they had known what he thought of them they
+would not have felt so very comfortable. He was sufficiently practical
+for the profession to which he belonged, though not so diplomatic as
+some of them are. He could be diplomatic enough on occasion, and knew
+how to preserve an impenetrable secrecy when necessity required. He was
+too sensitive, and too dead-in-earnest to make much of an orator, but he
+was an effective speaker, and if he had remained in the law he would no
+doubt have made a success of it, and very likely would have become a
+member of Congress.
+
+His adventure with a drunken sea-captain, while crossing from England in
+a sailing vessel has become proverbial. He probably saved the ship, and
+the lives of all on board, for a terrific storm arose immediately
+afterwards, the worst he had ever known, such as only a sober captain
+could possibly have weathered. There never was a better seaman when he
+was himself, so Wasson said. His judgment in regard to the investment of
+money, buying or selling a house, or in most of the small affairs of
+life, was excellent, and his advice in more serious matters so good that
+wise men might well have gone far to obtain it. Wherever he lived his
+house soon became conspicuous among all others for its refined air and
+tasteful appearance. In his half acre of a garden, he raised as fine
+fruit and vegetables as the most accomplished horticulturist, and even
+made wine from his own grapes equal to the best Californian. No man ever
+accomplished more with inadequate means. The interior of his house at
+West Medford had a pleasant style peculiarly its own. It reminded one of
+an old Dutch painting. In one of the last summers of his life he
+hybridized a seedling grape of large size and excellent flavor. He hoped
+to make a valuable property of this but his strength failed him too
+rapidly.
+
+The house in West Medford was the only one he ever owned, and he gave a
+number of good reasons for purchasing it. It was cheap, and large enough
+for three people; there was a small garden with two fine apple-trees
+attached to it, and the salt water came almost to the foot of the
+garden. He had noticed also that the streets became dry after a rain
+more quickly in that portion of the town than elsewhere and judged from
+that it must be a healthy locality. He very quickly remodelled the place
+giving it the stamp of his own style and character.
+
+He showed good judgment also in the education of his son George, now a
+marine-painter of well recognized merit. The boy inherited his father's
+sincerity and artistic feeling but not his intellectual tastes. In many
+respects he was more like his mother. He did not take to his studies nor
+was he fond of games, but liked bathing and sailing. When he was
+thirteen his father remarked that he did not know what he should be able
+to do with him. Well-intending friends said, you should get him a place
+in a store so that he may be earning something to help his parents, but
+Wasson replied: "No! I care too much for my boy to make a drudge of him
+for life, if it is possible for him to do better."
+
+Soon after this George began to draw ships and naval engagements on the
+black-boards at school, and one of these was so good that the teacher
+gave an order to have it remain until his father could be called in to
+look at it. Wasson took notice of this talent in the boy and encouraged
+it, watching its development as time went on. There were no schools of
+art in Boston then, and one reason for his going to Germany in 1872 was
+to obtain systematic instruction for him in drawing and painting.
+Wasson's friends were now greatly discouraged. "What hope is there for
+him," they said, "in such a profession? It is not likely the boy is a
+genius, and who is going to purchase his pictures?" Yet his father
+persevered bravely in spite of many "outs" and temporary failures and
+finally lived to see the merit of his son admitted by those who were at
+first most sceptical of it. The son is now a fairly successful artist;
+especially noted for his skill in representing the motion of water and
+the attitude of floating vessels.
+
+He was never prone to think evil, but he considered it a mischievous
+habit to try to think better of people than they were--an injustice to
+character and virtue. "Treat people better than they deserve," he would
+say, "but see them as they are." His kindness of heart now and then led
+him into difficulties which those who care more for their reputation
+than anything else, would have avoided. During his Arctic expedition
+Bradford took a number of stereopticon-views from icebergs and other
+indigenous scenery with the intention of exhibiting them in public on
+his return. This he finally did, more as a private celebration than with
+a hope of making money from it, and requested Wasson to assist him by
+giving an oral explanation of the pictures. Wasson wanted to say, "That
+is not my business," but he felt under great obligation to Mr. Bradford
+for the partial recovery of his strength, and did not like to refuse. He
+had no conception however of what was in store for him. He sent to
+Bradford for a list of the different views and prepared an address
+suitable for the occasion; but when the performance took place Bradford
+either forgot this or lost his presence of mind, for he exhibited the
+pictures without order or regularity, so that Wasson soon became
+confused and was able to give but a very poor account of them. This
+affair was the more vexatious because it was quite impossible to give
+any explanation of it.
+
+Matthew Arnold distinguishes between Plato as a great writer and thinker
+and Aristotle, who is only a great thinker. In this respect Wasson was
+more like Aristotle, though he resembled Plato again in being always an
+idealist. His writing shows the influence of his early studies in the
+law, and derives much of its virtue as well as some peculiarities from
+that source. It usually takes the form of an argument and is clear,
+logical and accurate, but also in style rather hard and dry. What it
+lacks is the pictorial element--what Carlyle possessed in such
+luxuriance. No law book ever was or could be written for entertainment,
+and those who expect to be amused by reading Wasson or Aristotle had
+better look elsewhere. His essays are like hard wood. He worked hard in
+writing them and we must work also when we read them. Sometimes we meet
+with passages in them of the purest, most limpid English, though these
+are more common in his later than his earlier writings. He said once, "I
+make no effort to please my readers, or even to obtain a graceful
+diction, I only try to say what I have to in the plainest manner." There
+is a decided charm in this perfect plainness, this absence of all
+decoration. One likes to think how old Vanderbilt had the brass and
+ornaments taken off the locomotives on the New York Central road.
+Telling the truth was Wasson's business in life, and he turned neither
+to the right nor the left in doing it.
+
+However, he did not reach this philosophy at once. His earlier work is
+marred slightly by a love of the grotesque, a sort of plough-boy
+rhetoric, which is ill-assorted with the elevated character of his
+ideas. He suffers also occasionally by an hair-splitting attempt to
+prove his point beyond the possibility of contradiction. In two or three
+of his essays there is an unsuccessful effort for liveliness, the result
+of complaints from his magazine editors, and now and then will appear an
+unconscious imitation of Carlyle; but what does it all amount to? We are
+inundated now-a-days with writing that is perfect, or nearly so, in form
+and yet brings no message to mankind. It pleases the understanding, but
+it does not satisfy the soul. It gives us no new ideas: in fact ideas
+are hateful to it.
+
+  "Time and space conquering steam,
+   And the light-out-speeding telegraph
+   Bears nothing on its beam."
+
+
+Wasson's writing compared with this is as an old-time stage-coach
+journey in which an interesting conversation, moral or political, is
+carried on by men like Fisher Ames and Rev. David Osgood, compared with
+the empty elegance and despatch of a modern railway-train. It is fresh
+because it is genuine; vigorous because it is manly; and original
+because it is true. He is more original than Carlyle, and so profound
+that it seems as if only a pearl-diver could follow him to such a depth.
+Yet his natural element is so pure, calm and tranquil, that we easily
+accomplish what seems at first an impossible descent. In "Epic
+Philosophy" he has dealt with the problem of good and evil in a manner
+more noble and penetrating than was ever before attempted. In his essay
+on the "Genius of Woman" he enters on a new and important field of
+investigation, a virgin soil as yet untried. In "Unity," the greatest of
+his essays, he boldly climbs the Jacob's ladder of philosophy and walks
+serene among the stars, grappling even with Infinity. He had achieved
+unity for himself; the one complete cosmopolitan mind of his time. In
+his highest flights he is never cold or inexorable, but always human,
+tender, and sympathetic. He loved the unkind, heedless world; life was
+wonderful to him. "What do I think of Wasson?" said Professor James of
+Harvard, a few days after his death, "I look upon him as one of the
+great instructors of mankind."
+
+It was complained by a critic of Emerson's "Parnassus" that only two of
+Wasson's poems were to be found in that collection; and Alcott, who had
+a keen scent for superior literature, once turned a visitor out of his
+study for denying the superiority of Wasson's poetry. Many of his
+sonnets are gems, unsurpassed in any language, and the one called
+"Pride" seems to me in its grand simplicity to be without a rival. If
+there is any American poem which sings itself like "All's well," it is
+Longfellow's ballad of "Mary Garvin." "The Plover" has a pensive grace
+which is as rare as its subtile and elevated thought. They are however
+few in number and he did not think there was enough of them to publish
+in a volume. They were finally published _post mortem_ in what was,
+if the truth be told, a rather unfortunate manner. Two of his finest
+sonnets, on "Silence" and "Wendell Phillips," were by mischance omitted,
+and a good many included that were either failures or written for some
+trifling occasion, and never intended for publication. As if to prevent
+all chance of popularity, the best pieces were placed at the close of
+the book and a long unfinished Hegelian poem at the beginning. Even the
+paper they were printed on was such as Wasson especially disliked. It
+seems a pity that he should have been denied this little celebrity.
+
+He received better justice from Mr. Frothingham, who has published an
+excellent memoir of his life and work together with a number of his
+essays,--a handsome volume well bound and printed. Yet one cannot help
+thinking that here also the author's fame, as well as the interest of
+the general public, might have been better consuited by a more careful
+selection and a wider range of subjects. "Epic Philosophy" at least
+ought by no means to have been omitted, nor is there any example given
+of Wasson's fine literary criticism, in itself enough to have made a
+writer celebrated. His essay on Whittier is not only a just estimate,
+but seems also in its wise and tender application to include Whittier
+poetically, as the sea encircles an island. In this department of
+writing he was the equal of Lessing and almost of Goethe; but with
+characteristic modesty he celebrated Lowell as the first of American
+critics. Wasson's book notices in the "Boston Commonwealth" were most
+interesting reading and contained much of his finest thought.
+
+His famous Groveland address was not directed against a faith in the
+divinity of Christ, for he held that belief in profound respect, as
+signifying the divine origin and mission of mankind. He considered every
+spiritually gifted person to be the result of an immaculate conception.
+At the close of the essay on "Unity" he says:
+
+"Verily, I believe that he who was born at Bethlehem, that majestic
+witness for the soul, was Messias, Christ, one sent from the Father;
+that the eternal Godhood concurred in the production of his being; that
+the consciousness of a divine inhabitation lived in his heart."
+
+It was no new evil he complained of, but one older than the brazen
+serpent in the wilderness. It might be called the fossilization of
+religious ideas. He called to his support the testimony of a witness
+whose orthodoxy has never been questioned. This was the poet Milton, who
+says:
+
+"A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only
+because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determine, without other
+reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes
+his heresy."
+
+Then Wasson adds: "And it is no more than a different application of
+this aphorism to say that one may be an idolater in the reverence of
+that which is truly venerable; for if he render it homage only in blind
+conformity to custom, and in implicit submission to the discipline of
+ancient use and wont, though the object be worthy, yet his worship is an
+idolatry." It is indeed a type of idolatry which becomes continually
+more subtle and dangerous with the progress of civilization.
+
+In politics Wasson was a republican without being a democrat. He hailed
+the advent of the republican party in 1856 as indicating an improvement
+in our political consciousness. Democracy, he said, led to political
+selfishness and disintegration. He pointed out many years before Von
+Holst that the secession of the southern states was the legitimate fruit
+of democratic principles. He thought that suffrage ought not to be a
+right, but a privilege, the privilege of good citizenship. He was also
+the first to argue in favor of civil-service reform, and a selection of
+officials by competitive examination. He might have found sufficient
+arguments from experience, but he was not content with that. He went
+back to the first principles of political science as indicated in the
+social organization of mankind. He laid down the rule that society is
+not more for the benefit of the individual than the individual for the
+benefit of society; and our last war sufficiently proved the truth of
+this. When he first brought forward these arguments at the Boston
+Radical Club in 1879 he was met by a storm of opposition and almost
+personal invective. One reason for this was that a large portion of his
+audience was composed of what is sometimes called strong-minded women,
+who fully expected to acquire the right of suffrage on democratic
+principles. His hearers had been accustomed to think of a republic and a
+democracy as one and the same thing, and they could not understand
+Wasson at all. They concluded that he must be a monarchist, an emissary
+of Bismarck. They had no arguments to oppose him with, for it was a
+subject they had never reflected upon; so they complained that he was
+illiberal, re-actionary, and lacked faith in human nature. Since they
+were in a numerical majority they thought they had the best of the
+discussion, but the most impartial of his listeners did not find it so.
+Louisa Alcott said once after a lively discussion, in her decisive
+manner, "I like Mr. Wasson, and I admire the way in which he fights
+against odds." His views on politics were similar to those held by
+Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and most of the founders of the
+Constitution, as also by all the great minds of history, by Aristotle,
+Cicero, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and Leibnitz. Wasson however did not
+look to the past, but wished to improve in a rational manner on what we
+already have. He considered woman suffrage as a political monstrosity,
+and considered it even more dangerous in its tendencies than socialism.
+
+The true reward of a man of genius lies not in his fame but in his
+influence. His celebrity is of more value to those who receive the rich
+gifts of his intellect than to himself. Wasson's direct influence during
+his life was limited to a very small circle; but who can tell how far it
+extended indirectly beyond this? To those who knew him the thought of
+this patient, indomitable truth-seeking hero was like an elixir of moral
+and spiritual vitality. So the orders of a field-marshal are carried to
+the generals of division, and from these pass onward till every
+private-soldier feels the impulse of a single will. Perhaps the time
+will come when he will be better appreciated. The future historian of
+our literature cannot well neglect so independent and original a
+thinker, and perhaps Americans of the next century may find him more
+congenial to their modes of thought than do those of the present era. If
+he lives at all, it is likely he will outlive every other writer of his
+time. One may read Plato or Bacon or Goethe, and then return to Wasson
+and still find something new and instructive in his essays--something we
+did not know before.
+
+
+
+
+WENDELL PHILLIPS
+
+
+If Hawthorne was the antipodes of Emerson, Wendell Phillips was of
+Wasson. One might form a proportion out of these four, in which Phillips
+and Hawthorne would be the extremes, and Emerson and Wasson the mean
+terms. He was, in his way, as perfect an artist as Hawthorne, while he
+differed from him as the sea does from the land. He was more like
+Emerson in his mental methods, and was a man of action. While he took
+the same interest in public affairs as Wasson, the slavery question was
+the only point on which the two could ever agree. One was an ardent and
+unreflecting revolutionist; the other a systematic thinker and
+conservative supporter of the general order of affairs.
+
+When in 1870 he was candidate for governor of Massachusetts, on a
+hopeless ticket, and was taunted with being ambitious, he proudly
+replied, "Born of six generations of Yankees, I knew the way to office
+and turned my back on it thirty years ago." His family was one of the
+earliest and most generally respected in New England; and at one time
+was influential and flourishing, but now nearly extinct. Rev. George
+Phillips of Rainham in Norfolk, England, was a graduate of Cambridge
+University, and entered the Church of England, but soon became a
+dissenter, and embarked with Governor Winthrop on the ship Arabella, in
+1630, for the western world. He was the first minister at Watertown; a
+position in those days as important as the presidency of a trunk line is
+in our own. Cotton Mather and the early writers speak of him almost as
+the founder of the Congregational Church in New England; and he and his
+descendants were all cultivated gentlemen. Two of his great-grandsons
+founded the preparatory academies at Andover and Exeter, called by that
+name. John Phillips, the father of Wendell, graduated at Harvard in
+1788. He was the president of the Massachusetts senate for one term, and
+the first mayor of Boston, distinctly so called. His wife was a Miss
+Sarah Walley of Brookline, and Wendell himself was their eighth child,
+born November 29th, 1811--a year memorable for the appearance of a comet
+with six tails.
+
+During his boyhood, the family lived in a large mansion house in Old
+Cambridge, which has since been occupied by Professor Andrews Norton and
+his son. In a large and amiable household, with a mother for whom he
+always showed the deepest respect, his earlier years must have been
+happy much beyond the lot of ordinary mortals. He was fitted for college
+at the Boston Latin School, where he was distinguished both for
+scholarship, faultless behavior, and fine declamations. Charles Sumner
+was his companion there, as well as in college and at the law-school.
+They are both said to have given striking proof of their oratorical
+talent, though perhaps not more so than many others have before and
+since. He entered at Harvard in 1827, while Sumner was a sophomore, and
+Dr. Holmes and his celebrated twenty-niners were in their junior year.
+His college life was a dream of wonder-land. Rich, gifted, full of
+good-humor, handsome in form and feature, a brilliant scholar, he seemed
+above all others to be Fortune's favored child. Work was easy to him,
+and his play was the sport of genius. He was everywhere among the first;
+president of the Porcellian Club, president and orator of the Hasty
+Pudding Club--the Apollo Belvedere of his classmates. He also belonged
+to a society called "The Owls," which only met at midnight, and the one
+who could control his face so as to look most like an owl was considered
+the best fellow.
+
+Yet in the midst of this happiness, like the Hindoo prince, the spirit
+of sadness comes over him when he reflects that very few are so
+fortunate as himself, and that a great many seem to be born to positive
+misfortune. The change in him was so marked that his classmates took
+notice of it and attributed it to too much of a religious interest; but
+it was not that. He accepted religion as he found it, and lived and died
+in the faith of his ancestors. What is called a religious experience
+never came to him; but from this time forward he showed an especial
+tenderness and consideration for unfortunate people. It is well we bear
+this trait of his character in mind, for it is the interpretation of the
+various phases of his career.
+
+He studied law, but does not appear to have ever taken a serious
+interest in it. Sumner, on the contrary, became a shining light in the
+law-school, and there laid the solid foundation of his future eminence.
+
+Looking back at the past, we see now how the lives of these two men
+diverged. In tact and readiness, in mental gifts, and fineness of
+nature, Phillips was slightly the superior of Sumner, but Sumner easily
+surpassed him in greatness of design. Phillips wished to be an orator,
+and afterwards confessed that at this period of his life his admiration
+for Webster knew no legitimate bounds. But oratory is an art which
+requires a liberal profession for its basis; and Webster and Sumner
+became orators by virtue of their profession. An orator merely as such
+is simply an actor, and it requires a strong and well-balanced character
+to withstand the temptations of the stage and the platform. Wendell
+Phillips afterwards found a basis for his oratory in the anti-slavery
+conflict; and then, when that came to an end, his occupation was gone.
+It is also to be doubted if he had the right sort of intellect to make a
+lawyer of, though no man could be better qualified in other respects for
+practice in the courts.
+
+Although one of his professors predicted a term in Congress for him, he
+did not obtain any clients for several years; which is more remarkable
+as there could have been no question in regard to his capacity or
+popularity. Another strange fact is that when he went to Europe and
+asked Judge Story for letters-of-introduction, he failed to obtain them;
+while Sumner, who was Story's favorite, was presented a few days later
+with more than a dozen. Had Judge Story already discovered a centrifugal
+and uncontrollable element in the man?
+
+It is difficult to understand, at this distance, the persecution of the
+early abolitionists. They were the most harmless and inoffensive of men,
+and the spirit in which they approached the slavery question, and the
+arguments they used in regard to it, were like those by which the
+Christian Church obtained the abolition of serfdom in Europe. They were
+the most purely Christian people of their time; certainly much better
+Christians than those ministers of the gospel who denounced them as
+disturbers of a hollow peace. So Suetonius speaks of the Christians as
+being disturbers of the peace, and Tacitus, like a late writer in the
+"Atlantic Monthly," refers to them as enemies of society.
+
+It is true they finally became narrow-minded, intolerant, and almost
+misanthropic, as always happens when a small minority are fatally
+enclosed within an unfriendly community; but they were not so in the
+beginning. Their methods were mild and pacific: they wished to influence
+public-opinion, and even hoped to persuade the slaveholders to assist in
+general emancipation. That the slave-holder should have been somewhat
+irritated at this suggestion to part with so much valuable property is
+not surprising; but why should it have disturbed their neighbors in
+Massachusetts and Connecticut where the question of free and slave labor
+had been agitated forty years before, and satisfactorily settled? The
+same speakers who harangued against the abolitionists, would say in the
+next breath that it was contrary to democratic principles for people in
+one section of the country to concern themselves about the affairs of
+those in another. Was it an inherited public tendency from the spirit of
+intolerance which formerly persecuted the Quakers? However that may be,
+it is an historical fact that great social reformers always have begun
+in a similar manner, and their importance can fairly be measured by the
+violence and duration of the opposition to them.
+
+Wendell Phillips did not at first take an interest in the anti-slavery
+cause. The abolitionists were not personally known to him, and his mind
+was largely occupied with the pleasures of fashionable society, where he
+shone before all others. There was a certain strength and good sense in
+this; the reserve of a man who waits for opportunity, and who does not
+risk shipwreck at the start by rushing hastily into troubled waters. In
+October 1837, he was married to Miss Mary Anna Green, the daughter of
+Benjamin Green of Boston, and cousin, or other near relative, to Mrs.
+Maria Chapman, a friend of Harriet Martineau and other English
+philanthropists. In November occurred the riot at Alton, Illinois, and
+the assassination of Lovejoy. Dr. Channing's first petition for an
+indignation-meeting in Faneuil Hall was refused by the authorities; but
+a second and more urgent one was granted: evidently with the
+anticipation that the anti-slavery people might, after all, find
+themselves in a minority.
+
+As it happened, the audience was nearly divided between the two parties,
+but the pro-slavery faction, led by government officials, had the
+advantage of being able to make all the noise and disturbance they
+wished without being interfered with by the police for it. It seemed as
+if the meeting would end in confusion and a vote of disagreement.
+Twenty-five years later Wendell Phillips said of it: "I went there
+without the least intention of making a speech or taking any part in the
+proceedings. My wife and Mrs. Chapman wished to go, and I accompanied
+them. I remember wearing a long surtout, a brand-new one, with a small
+cape (as was the fashion of the day), and after the attorney-general
+made his speech denouncing Lovejoy as a fool, I suddenly felt myself
+inspired, and tearing off my overcoat, started for the platform. My wife
+seized me by the arm, half terrified, and said, 'Wendell, what are you
+going to do?' I replied, 'I am going to _speak_, if I can make
+myself heard.'" The uproar was so great that the chairman asked Dr.
+Channing if he could stand thunder; but the personal beauty and
+intrepidity of Phillips,--coming like a meteor out of the night,--so
+surprised all hearers, that they paused to listen to him, and were so
+charmed by his eloquence that they neglected to make any further
+disturbance. The attorney-general was wholly discomfited, and Dr.
+Channing's resolutions were carried by a substantial majority.
+
+It is surprising that so thorough an historian as Von Holst should have
+omitted to make mention of this speech, which really struck the key-note
+of the anti-slavery movement from first to last. As we have it now,
+revised by its author from the newspaper reports of the time, it is one
+of the purest, most spontaneous and magnetic pieces of oratory in
+existence. It deserves a place beside those two famous speeches of James
+Otis and Patrick Henry which ushered in the war of separation from
+England. It possesses even a certain advantage, in the fact that it
+never has been nor is likely to be made use of for school declamations.
+It will always remain fresh, vigorous, and original as when it was first
+delivered.
+
+But Phillips was not content merely with silencing the opposition. He
+claimed that the cause for which he spoke, and for which the meeting had
+been called, was one of higher importance than any that had preceded it
+in Faneuil Hall. When the audience murmured at this, he boldly
+continued: "Insomuch as _thought_ is better than _money_, is
+the cause for which Lovejoy died superior to that for which our
+ancestors contended. James Otis thundered within these walls when the
+king did but touch his pocket; imagine his indignant eloquence if they
+had attempted to put a gag upon his lips." For this statement, if for
+nothing else, Wendell Phillips deserves an immortality in the history of
+his country.
+
+With such an achievement at the age of twenty-six, what might not have
+been expected of his maturer years,--of the full fruition of his genius?
+What but a future candidate for the senate of the United States, or even
+for the presidency? The full fruition of his genius, the development
+that nature intended for him, never was realized. It is true, he
+accomplished much, and was in himself even more,--but by no means what
+he might have been. Even in the first hour of success, the temptation
+comes to us which determines our future destiny in one way or another.
+
+The two ladies were of course delighted at his triumph, and overwhelmed
+him with congratulations; but Mrs. Chapman, "the born duchess", as she
+was called, saw instantly what an advantage would accrue to the small
+band of abolitionists from the alliance of this able young aristocrat,
+with his suddenly revealed gift. That evening she used all the arts of
+persuasion to induce him to relinquish his profession and cast his
+fortune to sink or swim on the broad ocean of reform. She argued that
+Webster and Everett had the field; that years must elapse before he
+could win equality with those veterans; while as an anti-slavery orator,
+a fresh field would be open to his genius, in which he would meet with
+no competitor. The hour only waited for the man, and what a glorious
+reward to have finally secured--the freedom of a whole race! Unhappily
+this coincided with a natural inclination in Phillips, of which we have
+already spoken, and a few days later he decided to follow her advice.
+
+One could heartily wish that the born duchess had left Wendell Phillips
+to work out his own salvation. It is hardly the sign of a strong
+character for a man to be guided in the choice of a profession by
+feminine counsel; but he was still young, tender-hearted, and
+susceptible, and if left to himself might have escaped the impending
+danger. It was a temptation at once to his ambition as an orator and the
+latent heroism in him,--his disposition to self-sacrifice. His law
+practice was not satisfactory, and he could not look forward to
+immediate success in that direction--especially since the Faneuil Hall
+meeting.
+
+Much better however for him to have gone patiently forward in the path
+already cleared by Webster and Everett, until, fully equipped in
+experience and maturity, he could have carried his anti-slavery
+principles into the arena of practical politics and become a leader in
+the House of Representatives, or have stood by Sumner in the Senate. A
+woman can hardly be expected to understand the long-drawn persistent
+struggle by which a man rises to the top of his profession; but it seems
+as if Mrs. Chapman might have been more considerate of the fortune and
+prospects of this young Apollo, himself of more value than many negroes.
+He did not properly belong with the abolitionists. They always felt so.
+They were excellent people, stainless in thought and in action, but
+limited in education and ability. Men of the highest mental endowments
+naturally form a class by themselves, though not an exclusive one. If
+Phillips had consulted John Quincy Adams on the subject, he would have
+been answered with a "No" such as might have been heard across Court
+Street.
+
+His life was now as much changed as if spring had suddenly been
+succeeded by winter. It was like a penitential pilgrimage. He had
+inherited from his father a moderate property upon which he and his
+wife, who was already much of an invalid, could live in a moderate way.
+He resided for a time in Florence, Massachusetts, and then purchased a
+small house in Essex Street, Boston, which has since been torn down to
+make room for the extension of Harrison Avenue. It was a house of very
+small dimensions, such as is commonly occupied by a mechanic's family;
+but possessed the advantage of admitting as much sunshine as possible
+into Mrs. Phillips' lonely chamber, which was probably his reason for
+selecting it. He wished to live economically in order to save money for
+the cause of freedom, and also for private charities.
+
+The number of persons whom he assisted in the course of his life may be
+called countless; and he was even too careful in preventing a knowledge
+of this from being made public. He selected for his motto the Latin
+sentence which he had translated while at school, "Phocian always
+remained poor, though he might have been very rich." His fashionable
+friends deserted from him in a body, and old family acquaintances passed
+him in the street without recognition. The only society he had was his
+wife and Mrs. Chapman and the families of the few abolitionists who
+lived in Boston. He was as careful of his diet, exercise, and sleep, as
+a trainer is in regard to a race-horse; and was rewarded for this with
+the most magnificent health. In all things he illustrated the words of
+the poet:--
+
+  "The hero is not fed on sweets;
+   Daily his own heart he eats:
+   The chambers of the great are jails
+   And head winds right for royal sails."
+
+
+He never lost an opportunity of speaking on the slavery question. He
+joined the corps of lyceum-lecturers, and soon won the first place among
+them. If they would listen to him on slavery, or "Toussaint
+L'Ouverture," his lecture was free; otherwise it must be paid for. No
+one else did so much to arouse public consideration in regard to this
+great evil, as the conservative Webster had already designated it. All
+through the northern states, wherever the railroads went, there Wendell
+Phillips was also, exhorting the people with burning words, and warning
+especially the farmers and laboring classes that free and slave labor
+could not exist together, and unless the negroes were emancipated they
+would ultimately become enslaved themselves.
+
+Stumping New England, it was said, made Wendell Phillips an orator; and
+that, after all, was the right name for it. It was refined and elegant
+as could be, but still stump-oratory. It became so inevitably from the
+nature of the case, and in one sense this is to his credit, for it would
+seem to prove that he cared more for the cause than for his own
+reputation. He never attained to the well-considered architectural
+oratory of Webster and Burke, though in his best period he sometimes
+came very close to this, but neither did he speak to the House of
+Commons, nor before a bench of judges. Nothing is more fatiguing to
+untrained minds than a consistent and elaborate argument; and the mixed
+character of Phillips' speeches, like a bonfire made out of all
+inflammable materials, was remarkably well suited to the audiences whom
+he addressed. It is said that even Burke often emptied the benches, as
+if his associates in parliament did not appreciate him so well as those
+who now enjoy reading his works.
+
+An artist who draws with a free hand, will be able to develop his talent
+to its full extent, but one who draws in a cramped or false manner will
+always suffer more or less from the effects of it; but this was not the
+worst of the matter. Self-control does much for the artist, but
+unprejudiced criticism is also necessary. This Phillips never could
+obtain. There were persons who judged him impartially, but he was not in
+the way of obtaining their opinions. He was surrounded by a small band
+of adherents who praised him without discrimination, and who fiercely
+repelled the attacks of those who found fault with him. The newspapers
+all took sides against him, for both political parties dreaded the
+agitation of the slavery question, and Phillips could rarely look into
+one of them without meeting with a savage attack on himself by some
+subaltern who knew of no better use for his quill than the manufacture
+of these venomous darts. Neither could he walk through the streets of
+Boston without hearing himself cursed and execrated. Meanwhile Mrs.
+Chapman and Mrs. L. Maria Child extolled him to the skies. Faithful and
+undistorted picture of himself he could meet with nowhere.
+
+We read of saintly characters who have endured persecution with
+Christian humility and resignation, who have blessed those who cursed
+them, and loved those who hated them; but how many such have we been
+personally acquainted with? If we except Desdemona there are none in the
+great dramatists. It is an excellent principle, this of returning good
+for evil; but is it not also true that nature has planted hatred in us
+as a protection against future imposition? There may be such personages,
+but Wendell Phillips was not one of them.
+
+He endured the stings of the pro-slavery hornets, as they were called,
+with stoical dignity and forbearance, but in spite of all good
+resolutions, they had an effect upon the inner man. Like the good
+Maritornes when Sancho Panza mistook her for an evil spirit, he endured
+the drubbing as long as flesh-and-blood would stand it, and then
+retaliated in good earnest. It was discovered at length, that Wendell
+Phillips had a sharp tongue, as well as a silver one, and could use it
+also with some temper. Of course he was blamed for this, and very few
+considered what provocation he had, or gave him credit for his previous
+forbearance. The habit increased rather than abated in him with age, and
+finally acquired the nature of a familiar demon that would appear
+unexpectedly in the midst of a brilliant discourse and sadly mar the
+effect of it.
+
+His tendency to exaggeration, disregard of fact, and recklessness of
+statement, may all be attributed to his irregular, improvised manner of
+working. There are few public speakers, indeed, who escape these faults.
+What preparation he made for his speeches will probably never be known.
+He was always as mysterious on this point as a professional juggler. To
+a lady who once asked him about it, he replied, that he never made any
+preparation. For those of his speeches that have been published, we are
+obliged to a skilful short-hand writer named Yerrinton, who was Wendell
+Phillips' devoted admirer, and never missed an opportunity of hearing
+him on a fresh subject in Boston or New York.
+
+To judge from internal evidence, it would seem likely that having
+divided his subject, as a lawyer does his argument, into a number of
+points, and having filled his mind somewhat full of them, he wrote out a
+careful and well-studied opening to his address, and then committed it
+to memory. This would enable him to make terms, as it were, with his
+audience in those first critical moments of his speech, and afterwards
+he could rely on his native wit and genius to carry him through. When
+his subject was a criticism of public events, this was not so difficult,
+and it gave him the advantage of a certain vivacious energy which
+appealed strongly to his hearers; but it was a dangerous practice. An
+orator who has a certain length of time to fill, and a reputation to
+sustain, is obliged to go on at all hazards. He cannot afford to be
+dull, nor to stop for a moment's reflection. If his memory fails him for
+an instant, imagination must supply its place. In this manner he often
+made misstatements which were quite unintentional, and must have been
+deeply regretted afterwards. Some allowance too should be made for a man
+who feels himself in a desperate position. His historical lectures on
+"The Lost Arts," "Daniel O'Connel," and "Toussaint," must sooner or
+later have been committed to memory, and were repeated again and again
+in a nearly identical form.
+
+To amend for these deficiencies, his delivery was perfect, and even more
+than that. One of our best critics has called him matchless in this
+respect, and no other orator of the century, except possibly Canning,
+may be compared to him. Webster was more effective, but rather
+ponderous. Choate's style was peculiar, and Everett's cold and studied.
+Gladstone resembles him more, perhaps, than any other, but Gladstone has
+a decided solemnity of manner which is a help to him among his
+countrymen, but a defect as judged by classic standards. With Wendell
+Phillips, it was not only that every phase of thought and feeling was
+portrayed at once in his face, attitude, and gestures, but this was done
+with such grace and purity as only belongs to the very highest art. It
+was as if a figure in Raphael's "School at Athens" had suddenly stepped
+out from the picture and explained the thought of the master to us in
+words.
+
+There is nothing I can compare with the unconscious grace and purity of
+Phillips in his best moments except a picture by Raphael, or one of
+Milton's shorter poems. It was no lurid brilliancy or artificial light
+that shone from him, but rather the cheerful radiance of spring
+sunshine. No matter how gloomy the political outlook might be, or in
+what sombre colors he depicted it, this light from the man himself
+illuminated his subject and gave encouragement to his hearers. The most
+prolonged applause could not disturb a muscle in his countenance, and a
+storm of hisses appeared to have as little effect on him. From the first
+word to the last, he was master of the platform, and no one dreamed of
+contesting his right to it. His gestures were his own, and could not be
+imitated, for they were the creation of the moment. There was something
+magical in this art of his, and if his wisdom and judgment had only
+equalled it, he might have counted among the greatest of men.
+
+Emerson sent one of Webster's orations to Carlyle, and the latter
+complained that it was monotonous and lacked the poetic quality of
+Demosthenes. This is quite true, but at the same time it may be said
+that Webster's speeches, judged simply as literature, have not been
+surpassed by five other American writers. The grand roll of his
+sentences does not become wearisome to a lover of sound reasoning, and
+in the presentation of his subject he has rarely been equalled. An
+oration of his is not like a picture hanging on the wall, but rather a
+public building which one can walk around and look at from the four
+cardinal points. Even his speech on the fugitive-slave bill, for which
+he has been so much blamed, contains the best analysis of the slavery
+question up to that time which had yet been made. He considered slavery
+a great evil, and his mistake evidently consisted in supposing that a
+great evil could exist in one part of the nation without vitiating the
+whole of it.
+
+[Illustration: WENDELL PHILLIPS. AS HE APPEARED BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA.]
+
+Phillips looked upon slavery as a crime, and attacked it in an
+uncompromising manner. His speeches are not much like Webster's, but
+they are excellent reading; full of keen, vivid thought, bright sayings,
+and genial humor. He had the imagination of Demosthenes, but without the
+logical faculty. Many of them possess historical value, and but for too
+much _voix blanc_, like the brightness of new silver, might be
+compared with Emerson's essays. Certain passages and individual
+sentences are of rare beauty. Speaking of Lovejoy thirty years after his
+death, he said, "How cautiously men sink into nameless graves, while now
+and then one forgets himself into immortality." At the time of the Dred
+Scott decision, he exclaimed: "Is Liberty dead? Is the valley of the
+Mississippi her grave? Are the Rocky Mountains her monument; and shall
+the Falls of Niagara chant forever her requiem?" In his Brooklyn address
+of November 1st, 1859, the finest of his orations, and one which he must
+have prepared with exceptional care, after telling the story of Tsar
+Nicholas, who insisted on building a straight railroad from Moscow to
+St. Petersburg in spite of the opposition of the engineers, he
+continued: "An intelligent democracy says of slavery, or a law, or a
+creed, 'This is justice, or it is not'; the track of God's thunderbolt
+is a straight line from justice to iniquity, and the church or state
+that cannot stand it must get out of the way." Or take this illustration
+of his subject from Athenian life--which is itself Athenian, and very
+much in the vein of Demosthenes:--
+
+"Anacharsis went into the forum at Athens, and heard a case argued by
+the great minds of the day, and saw the vote. He walked out into the
+streets, and somebody said to him, 'What think you of Athenian liberty?'
+'I think,' said he, 'wise men argue causes, and fools decide them.' Just
+what the timid scholar two thousand years ago said in the streets of
+Athens, that which calls itself the scholarship of the United States
+says today of popular agitation, that it lets wise men argue questions,
+and fools decide them. But that unruly Athens, where fools decided the
+gravest questions of polity and right and wrong, where it was not safe
+to be just, and where property, which you had garnered up by the thrift
+and industry of to-day, might be wrung from you by the caprices of the
+mob to-morrow,--that very Athens probably secured the greatest human
+happiness and nobleness of its era, invented art, and sounded for us the
+depths of philosophy: God lent to it the noblest intellects, and it
+flashes to-day the torch that gilds yet the mountain-peaks of
+civilization."
+
+At a memorial meeting of Sumner's friends in 1874, Phillips concluded
+his remarks with the same expression that Cicero used in regard to
+Homer:--"There was no one like Sumner." He was not a mellow-toned orator
+of peace and conciliation, but soul-stirring, and one could detect the
+distant flash of a sword-blade in his periods.
+
+In private life, he was the most delightful of men. Good orators always
+have the finest manners, for it is from them that we learn the art of
+behavior; but Wendell Phillips never brought the great man of the world
+to the drawing-room or dining-table, but was so perfectly a gentleman
+that he seemed almost like a prince who had abdicated his hereditary
+possessions. He did not seem to have been bred to good manners, but born
+to them, so natural and unconstrained was everything he said and did.
+Never self-conscious and never self-forgetful; where consideration was
+needed he was sure to be at hand. He was at once dignified and
+deferential, even to children and servants, whom he was sure to remember
+in the homes where he visited, and usually had a kind word for them at
+the right moment. I do not think he could have treated even the meanest
+of women with disrespect.
+
+He never talked too long or too brilliantly, but seemed to be on the
+watch to give everyone present a fair chance. His presence in a room was
+stimulating, and made people brighter than their ordinary wont. Of small
+conversation, conversational pleasantries, and what is called
+table-talk, he happily knew nothing. He had no sharp wit or repartee,
+but plenty of genial humor, and could of course tell a story to
+perfection. His imitations of other orators were highly amusing,
+especially what he called Webster's Rochester speech: "The public debt;
+it must be paid; and it _shall_ be paid;--how much is it?" He would
+go through the performance and then resume his seat at the table,
+laughing like a child. When Emerson and Phillips dined together they
+would look at one another, as it seemed, with a kind of awe, as if they
+were more wonderful to each other than to ordinary mortals. It was after
+such an occasion that Emerson said, "This man is such a perfect artist
+that he ought to be walking all the galleries of Europe, and yet here he
+is fighting these hard questions." He did not appear to care much for
+society however, and always declined an invitation where he was in
+danger of being lionized, or otherwise made use of.
+
+A characteristic anecdote is told of him during the expedition of the
+abolitionists to England in 1853. They were entertained there by their
+British allies, and also by members of the nobility. A certain duchess
+(or countess perhaps) invited them to a lawn-party, and while they were
+engaged in drinking coffee on her lawn, an uncomfortable drizzling mist
+came down on the company. The gentlemen all carried their hats in their
+hands, out of respect for the duchess, who wore a sort of lace tiara;
+but in this emergency Phillips, who had a speech to make at Birmingham
+next evening, placed his on his head and continued to wear it. The
+consequence was that when the duchess gave them a second entertainment
+Phillips was not invited. He was as independent as this on all
+occasions.
+
+The anti-slavery movement carried along with it a variety of other
+social and political movements such as spiritualism, total abstinence,
+and the prevention of capital punishment; which prevented many
+sympathetic friends of the cause from joining it, and gave it a quaint,
+and sometimes even a comical aspect. These Utopian and impracticable
+notions were accepted by the abolitionists partly on the log-rolling
+principle, and partly from a tendency of those people to separate
+themselves from what is real and tangible. It seems strange that a man
+of Wendell Phillips' culture and mental endowments should not have been
+able to distinguish between a necessary and possible reform, and those
+vague theories of human happiness and perfection which are not based on
+the logic of experience, but indicate rather a wayward mental condition
+in the devotees. If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, what should
+be said of unripe and superficial thinking? We wonder what were Wendell
+Phillips' reflections concerning the women in Bloomer costume, and the
+paradoxical persons who frequented the anti-slavery fairs, and created
+disturbances at the anti-slavery conventions. If questioned about them
+he would probably have said, with a laugh, "Oh, those are our
+barnacles;" but they were only extreme cases of the general tendency.
+
+It was not the right element for a man of his calibre: he did not become
+a spiritualist, nor was he so intolerant as to object to the use of
+brandy for cooking purposes; but he published an injudicious and even
+intemperate letter to the chief-justice of Massachusetts and the
+president of Harvard College, arraigning them for drinking wine at a
+public banquet. He exerted himself strenuously to obtain the repeal of
+capital punishment; and when that failed, and also an attempt to obtain
+a pardon for a miserable murderer, whom it was merely a kindness to
+hang, he attacked the governor of the state in a sermon before the
+Theodore Parker Society, which was little better than a tirade of
+invectives. He never appeared as an advocate of woman suffrage before
+the public, but he is said to have approved of it. Neither would he go
+to the polls to vote; at first because the national constitution
+supported slavery, and afterwards because the government maintained an
+army and encouraged war.
+
+He missed a fine opportunity to escape from this narrow routine and
+enter the arena of practical politics when the Free-soil party was
+formed to prevent the extension of slavery. However, he either did not
+think of it, or preferred to hold fast to his former friends, though he
+little knew how little they cared for him, and he continued for ten
+years longer to lecture on Toussaint and talk moral-suasion,--riding
+hard on the Garrisonian formula. It seems like small business when we
+recollect the work that Seward and Sumner and Chase were doing
+meanwhile.
+
+It was the attack on Harper's Ferry that broke the spell at last, and
+awoke Wendell Phillips to a higher and more useful life. It is difficult
+to realize now, the courage that was required to appear before the
+public in defence of what was generally considered the outrage of a
+madman. It is easier for men to understand the differential calculus,
+than that rebellion against government is either the greatest of crimes
+or the highest of virtues. When government becomes so bad that honesty
+and virtue cannot endure it, revolution is imminent. Phillips, Emerson
+and Thoreau, John A. Andrew and Rev. J. M. Manning, pastor of the Old
+South church, were the ones who asserted this. Andrew and his friends
+called a meeting, nominally to obtain funds for the wife and daughters
+of John Brown. The hall was crowded with a remarkably intelligent
+looking class of people. Andrew presided, and claimed that whatever
+might be thought of his Virginia raid, John Brown himself, considered
+from his own standpoint, was in the right. Rev. Mr. Manning said, if
+John Brown had consulted him in regard to inciting a slave insurrection
+he should certainly have advised him not to do it, but he was far from
+regretting that the attempt had been made. Phillips was the last
+speaker, and treated his subject in the boldest revolutionary manner;
+and before he had finished the applause was deafening. A judge of the
+superior-court sat on the front bench clapping his hands with a noise
+like pistol shots.
+
+This served him as a preparation for the Brooklyn address already
+referred to, which, if it had been equal throughout, might be classed
+among the world's great speeches, and it is certainly one of the most
+brilliant orations of either ancient or modern times. Certain passages
+in it remind one of a shower of falling stars. It is remarkable for its
+light and shade. He began with a gay and graceful compliment to Thomas
+Corwin, an old statesman of the Henry Clay school, who was seated on the
+platform; but he soon became intensely serious. "The lesson of the hour
+is insurrection. And why is it? Because we are all recreant Americans;
+recreant to the principles of our ancestors." After a while he changed
+to a sort of rippling humor, which was peculiar to him, and delighted
+his audience immensely, describing the subterfuges which had come into
+fashion to escape using the word slavery. "Hypocrisy is the homage that
+vice pays to virtue." Then he became deeply pathetic as he referred to
+the heroic man condemned to death and lying wounded in a Virginia
+prison; and concluded with an outburst of spiritual triumph like that in
+Goethe's tragedy of Egmont. "They have brave men in Virginia: it was not
+an old, grey-headed man entering Harper's Ferry that they were afraid
+of, it was the John Brown in every man's own conscience that made them
+tremble."
+
+He achieved an equal success of a different kind soon after, in
+attempting to deliver the same speech in New York city. A portion of the
+hall was filled with pro-slavery roughs who cursed and reviled him, and
+threw various missiles at him. A stone which struck a chair near him on
+the platform might have done him very serious injury. Nothing dismayed,
+he continued his speech, and taking his text from the insults of his
+enemies, hurled defiance back in their teeth. His friends who
+accompanied him and were ready to defend him from personal violence,
+said that on this occasion Phillips surpassed any thing they had known
+of him before; and fairly quelled the mob by his courage, address, and
+personal magnetism.
+
+It was during the following eight years that Wendell Phillips proved
+himself the great orator. Wasson, who never quite approved of him, said
+that Webster might have excelled him, but that Choate or Everett could
+not be compared with him. The largest halls could not contain the people
+who wished to hear him. He was several times mobbed, and his life was in
+continual danger. A body-guard of devoted young friends escorted him to
+and from his house. He never ceased calling for the emancipation of the
+negroes, and when that was accomplished, for their enlistment as
+volunteers and a more vigorous prosecution of the war. His criticism of
+public affairs was not always judicious, but it warmed the hearts of the
+people and strengthened the hands of the anti-slavery party in
+Washington. The real difficulty at that time was best known to Lincoln
+and his cabinet; the difficulty of organizing such large armies with so
+small a number of trained and experienced officers. Good judges have
+given an opinion that the practice of appointing noted politicians to
+important commands lengthened the war at least two years, and one after
+another, all these men had to be removed; but what else could the
+government do? The officers of the regular army nearly all belonged to
+the democratic party, and President Lincoln hardly knew whom he could
+trust. Phillips knew as little of military affairs as Grant did of
+oratory.
+
+Just one year after the Brooklyn address, he was called upon to
+celebrate the election of Abraham Lincoln in Boston Music Hall. For once
+Phillips and his audience were in perfect harmony, and also in the best
+of spirits. Men little dreamed at that time of the awful chasm that was
+to open beneath them. His speech was full of the most delicious humor;
+rather a biting humor at times, as we read it now, but it did not seem
+so in the way he spoke it. It was like a wedding feast: laughter and
+applause were so frequent that the wonder is that the speaker was able
+to keep the thread of his discourse. Among a dozen witty passages, he
+said, "Now I would like to have a law that one-third of our able men
+should not be eligible for the presidency. Then every third man could be
+depended on to tell the truth. Listen to Mr. Seward on the prairies;
+what magnificent speeches he has made there since Mr. Lincoln's
+nomination. When he ceased to be a candidate for the presidency, he
+became a man again."
+
+In the winter of 1863 he went to Washington for the first time, and
+lectured on the lesson of the hour. "Old Abe" went to hear him and
+expressed himself as being greatly pleased with the exhibition, as he
+called it. Next day a committee of influential citizens called on him to
+inquire if he could deliver his oration on "Toussaint" that evening for
+the benefit of his admirers; and then that was not enough, but they must
+have his lecture on "The Lost Arts" the evening afterward. This was a
+fine triumph for him after twenty-five years of social ostracism but his
+anxiety in regard to the condition of the country, prevented him from
+enjoying it as he might have.
+
+Meanwhile a storm was preparing for him in the quarter he least expected
+it. The old abolitionists, whom nobody had thought of since the repeal
+of the Missouri compromise and who were beginning to feel a good deal
+neglected, looked upon Phillips now as a deserter from their standard of
+non-resistance and moral suasion, and perhaps also eyed his brilliant
+course with some little jealousy. In the spring of 1865 Garrison
+returned from hoisting the flag at Fort Sumter, fully satisfied that the
+negroes could be safely trusted in future to the patriarchal care of the
+central government. Phillips thought otherwise. He argued that the black
+man still suffered from the effects of slavery; that they were very much
+at the mercy of their former masters, who would naturally bear them no
+good-will; that their future political position would depend on the
+action of Congress and not on the administration; and that it was still
+advisable for northern friends to keep watch over their interests.
+
+From this private difference of opinion an obstinate controversy soon
+developed itself, in which a large portion of the public took part on
+one side or the other. Senator Sumner and his friends supported
+Phillips; while Governor Andrew, who disliked him for no very good
+reason, and Senator Wilson for a much better one, supported Garrison.
+Both parties being thus strongly reinforced, the dispute rose to a high
+pitch. Phillips finally carried the day, and was fully justified
+afterwards for doing so; but the Garrison party took mortal offence at
+him for this, and would never afterwards recognize him except by a cold
+and distant courtesy. George Thompson, an English friend of Garrison who
+came over providentially at that time, quoted Phillips' earlier speeches
+against him (an inconsistency which was rather to his credit) and
+exclaimed, "I appeal from Phillips drunk to Phillips sober:" nor was
+this the worst of it. [Footnote: A year after this he said to two Rhode
+Island ladies, who were among the few friends that remained faithful to
+him all through life, "It seems hard that of the men whom I worked with
+for thirty years only three or four are willing to speak to me now."]
+But Phillips endured the storm like a man. He argued his case with all
+the ardor and energy of his nature, but there escaped from him not one
+opprobrious or resentful sentence towards his former associates. Emerson
+said (to quote him again, and we hope for the last time): "How
+handsomely Mr. Phillips has behaved in his controversy with Mr.
+Garrison. In fact Phillips was the same we have always known him." But
+the wound went deep into him; and seven years later, when he said at the
+Radical Club, "I have known cases in which it only took _one_ to
+make a quarrel," we all recognized what he was thinking of.
+
+This was the acme of his career, and alas! how soon he fell away from
+it. About a year before this time, his friends began to notice certain
+expressions in his speeches which puzzled them not a little. At length a
+severe and unjust attack on Senator Wilson as a frequenter of
+drinking-saloons explained the new departure to them. Phillips was
+evidently taking a hand in practical politics, and as Wilson's term was
+nearly expiring, wished to make General Butler his successor. So
+strangely are good and evil united in us, that this happened about the
+same period as the Garrison controversy. The less said about General
+Butler perhaps the better. At the same time Wendell Phillips' support of
+him would seem to be no worse than Judge Hoar's continued support of
+Blaine for the presidency; and it is also true that General Butler's
+reputation was better at this time than it afterwards became; he was
+well received at the political clubs, and even considered in the light
+of a presidential candidate by prominent republicans. Phillips'
+subsequent explanation of the matter was, that the negro was his client,
+and General Butler was the only person who had the will and ability to
+manage his case. He was not inconsistent in this, for he afterwards
+supported General Grant in the machine governments at the south for the
+same reason.
+
+Another bond of mutual interest between them was socialism. When or
+where Phillips became a socialist is uncertain. He was conservative in
+religion, and there is no more necessary connection between the
+abolition of slavery and socialism than between socialism and
+free-trade. On the contrary, the votes of the Irish laborers, who now
+divided his interest with the negroes, had always been the chief bulwark
+and mainstay of the slave power in the northern states. It must however,
+have been a question of principle with him, a theory of abstract right,
+for the course and conduct of his whole life is a true witness against
+any meaner motive. But General Butler's socialism was doubtless a matter
+of personal ambition--a bait to catch the popular vote. Nobody except
+Phillips, not even the laborers themselves, imagined anything else in
+his case. [Footnote: In the autumn of 1884 my brother asked a plumber
+then working for him, if he intended to vote for General Butler, who was
+presidential candidate that year for the labor-party. "No," replied the
+fellow, "Butler is a bad man; he will do for Governor of Massachusetts,
+but for President of the United States we want something different."]
+This unholy alliance was productive of no good to either party: Phillips
+injured his reputation by it, and what advantage Butler may have gained
+is yet to be discovered.
+
+In 1870 Phillips injured himself still more by a public attack on the
+Bird Club; a company of merchants and politicians who met together for a
+Saturday-afternoon dinner. This was done so evidently in Butler's
+interest that the general's future plans were disclosed by it. He wished
+to obtain the nomination for governor the following year, and looked
+upon the Bird Club as the chief obstacle in the way of his doing so.
+
+Frank W. Bird, who usually presided at the table, was one of the most
+patriotic and single-minded men that ever labored for the good of his
+country. He was so sincere and warm-hearted that there was no
+possibility of mistaking his character. He was in the legislature for
+nearly twenty years, and a member of the governor's council; but offices
+were not what he cared for. He was at once the most intimate friend of
+Andrew and Sumner,--two men who never could agree because one wanted to
+organize all men under his banner, and the other was equally determined
+to be independent of everybody. He might almost have been called the
+balance-wheel of Massachusetts politics. At the State House he was the
+terror of all mean and mischievous members; a sentinel always on the
+watch to prevent extravagance, fraud, and political chicanery. His
+persistent opposition to that monstrous abortion the Houssac tunnel, for
+which our children and grandchildren will be taxed _ad infinitum_,
+cost him an election to Congress. Upon this account he had numerous
+enemies, but even General Butler could not discover the smallest
+reproach against his character. He was one of the most useful men in the
+State. The club was called by his name because it had neither name nor
+organization. It originated with a few friends who used to meet at
+Chevalier Howe's office during the Kansas excitement; and Wendell
+Phillips' charge against them that they managed the politics of
+Massachusetts, had less than half a leg to stand on. While the governor
+and both senators were members of the club it must have been of course
+an influential body. Sumner certainly never made use of official
+patronage to promote his private interests. Yet this was the only
+charge, mixed with some dark insinuations, that Phillips could bring
+against them; and even this might have had some excuse if it had not
+been in the interest of General Butler.
+
+The remainder of his life was a wreck, though he may not have been aware
+of it. Frank Bird and his associates were the best friends that Wendell
+Phillips ever had. They were friends who would have held fast to him
+through everything except such an attack as he made on them. Alone now
+with his invalid wife, childless and well-nigh friendless, his life must
+have been gloomy and miserable. No company was ever invited to his
+house, and it was by the rarest chance that he went to any
+entertainment. Who his associates were in this new phase of his life, is
+often a matter of conjecture. Revolutionary socialists mostly, practical
+and unpractical--not of the harmless theoretical sort: but he never was
+seen on the street in company with other men. Whoever they were, they
+could not have been either cheerful or elevating society. The audiences
+that went to hear him were composed of quite a different class of people
+from those of the preceding era, and could not sustain him with the same
+moral force as formerly. No wonder if his temper became sharp and his
+mind melancholic; if the lines deepened in his face and the quick,
+bright look of his eye changed to a fitful, suspicious and desperate
+expression; if his splendid talent deteriorated too much into mannerism.
+Although this was his own fault, we could not help feeling pity for him,
+and the kind of regret with which we look on the fragments of a
+beautiful statue. He was evidently carried away with the ambition of
+becoming a world reformer.
+
+There is a sentence in his speech on Lincoln's election which may cast
+light on Wendell Phillips' socialistic views. He says, "Caesar crossed
+the Rubicon borne in the arms of a people trodden into poverty and
+chains by an oligarchy of slaveholders; but that oligarchy proved too
+strong even for Caesar and his legions." This was a bold and original
+opinion in those days, for Mommsen's history, to which we are mainly
+indebted for our change of sentiment in regard to Caesar, had not yet
+been translated. There is at the present time an oligarchy of land
+owners and capitalists in England of whom Froude has predicted that they
+will come to the same catastrophe as the Roman oligarchy did finally,
+and as that of Bohemia in the sixteenth century, and of France in the
+eighteenth, unless the present course of events shall be arrested by
+judicious legislation and magnanimous sacrifices. Phillips had already
+taken a hand in suppressing one American oligarchy, who have been
+compared by Mommsen to the Roman senatorial party, and he thought he
+foresaw another rising in our midst from the iron kings, and other great
+industrial magnates. He may have been far-sighted in this, for he often
+proved to be a true prophet, and there are many now who think the same;
+but that would not justify the methods by which he undertook to provide
+against the evil. The condition of the laboring classes in America,
+where a thrifty and temperate mechanic can occupy as good a house as a
+country doctor in Europe, is the most favorable yet known in history;
+much more favorable, comparatively, than that of our professional
+classes; but Phillips had seen the most wealthy and highly educated
+people ranged against him throughout the long conflict with slavery, and
+had acquired the habit of considering them a dangerous element in the
+community.
+
+There is a certain artistic perfection in the contrasts of his life.
+Thirty-seven years after his Lovejoy speech, he appeared again in
+Faneuil Hall attended by a retinue of government employees, with intent
+to capture a meeting called to protest against the interference of the
+government at Washington in Louisiana politics. There was wrong no doubt
+on both sides of this question, but the interference of the government
+was equally illegal and injudicious. Phillips appeared now more on the
+side of the oppressor than for the oppressed, and though his speech was,
+as formerly, the best of the occasion, it failed to win the sympathy of
+the audience. He was consistent in his devotion to the interests of the
+freed, men, but he would have been more true to himself if he had been
+willing to recognize, as the more reasonable anti-slavery people did,
+how absurd and even abominable, were the negro governments in the
+southern states; but he had long since lost his good judgment, and when
+President Hayes removed the troops for whose maintenance he could obtain
+no appropriation from Congress, and the pyramid which had been so long
+supported on its apex suddenly fell over, Phillips could scarcely find
+terms harsh enough to express his rage and exasperation. His attacks on
+the Hayes administration might fairly be called philippics had they
+possessed the saving grace of Hellenic self-control, but they remind us
+rather of Carlyle's furious "Latter Day Pamphlets."
+
+Yet even in December there are bright days, and when in his seventieth
+year the veteran orator was invited to deliver an address before the
+graduates of his own college, from whose festivities he had been
+excluded since the time of his Lovejoy speech, warmed with the
+recollections of his youth, his genius blazed forth with all its former
+brilliancy. With customary hardihood he selected for his subject "The
+Danger from the Educated Classes"; that is, the tendency of intellectual
+culture to exclusiveness and separation from the less fortunate portion
+of mankind. It is not to be supposed that the Harvard Alumni were well
+pleased with this topic, but he presented it with so much skill, and
+even eloquence, as to win applause from some of his most inveterate
+opponents. This sympathy for the unfortunate had been the key-note and
+true explanation of his course in life. It came to him there in the days
+of his youthful gayety like a dream, and now after fifty years he had
+returned to celebrate his last triumph in the same place where this
+vision of Heavenly mercy had appeared to him.
+
+He looked like Cicero, and there is a bust of Cicero on the Pincian hill
+at Rome, which if placed in Boston would certainly be mistaken for him.
+His figure, however, was better than Cicero's, who is reported to have
+had a long neck and rather slender legs. He resembled Cicero in his
+refined tastes, his admiration for great writers his command of
+language, his tact, fluency, fiery invective, and in the anti-climax of
+his career. If he had prepared his speeches for a body of men like the
+Roman senate, he might have been more nearly Cicero's equal. He used to
+wear a high-crowned soft felt hat, which was remarkably suited to the
+Roman-like contour of his face. He was skillful in all things, and might
+have been equally celebrated as a writer, an actor, or possibly as an
+artist, if his interest and inclination had led him in either of these
+directions. What we feel the lack of in him is contemplative depth: he
+was more Gallic than Germanic. He possessed a deep nature, but his
+character was not equal to it. He was too refined, too much of an artist
+perhaps, for the rough work fortune gave him to do. He had the heart of
+a lion, but the mind of a woman.
+
+Yet as we view his life from a distance it has grand outlines. When the
+western continent was discovered, it seemed as if it were a paradise
+which had been kept in reserve for the most civilized races; but this
+had no sooner happened, than a curse was fastened upon it,--the curse of
+slavery, which had already been abolished in Europe in its mildest type.
+This may have been necessary at first in the tropical portions of
+America, where it is impossible for a white man to labor in the sun; but
+it was contrary to the spirit of Christianity and inimical to true
+civilization. To eradicate this wide-spread, deep-rooted evil was a
+tremendous undertaking, one of the most gigantic in history; and among
+those who contributed to this, none, except perhaps John Brown and
+Charles Sumner, accomplished more--and few have done so much as Wendell
+Phillips. The right aspect then in which to regard his career, is as a
+sacrifice to this great cause. Let it be said of him that he loved
+mankind not wisely, but too well.
+
+
+
+
+APPLEDORE AND THE LAIGHTONS.
+
+
+The Isles of Shoals are seven: Duck, Appledore, Cedar, Haley's, Star,
+Londoner's, and White. Besides these there are Square Rock, Mingo Rock,
+and a number of other out-lying rocks and reefs. Appledore, Haley's,
+Cedar, Star, and Londoner's form almost a semi-circle, or horse-shoe,
+nearly a mile in width with the tips turned toward the west. Duck Island
+lies a mile-and-a-half to the north of this group, and White Island with
+it's light-house about the same distance to the south-east.
+
+They are mostly bare rocks, like mountain tops rising above the water.
+They are not however submerged mountains, for as their name indicates
+the sea is nowhere very deep about them. If the points of the horse-shoe
+had been turned toward the east instead of the west they would not have
+been habitable and the place would have been known to navigators as the
+Devil's Reef, the Devil's Horse-shoe or by some other term ominous of
+shipwrecks. The group of islands now form a cosy though not very safe
+harbor where every evening in the mackerel season a small fleet of
+fishing-vessels sail in there to anchor for the night.
+
+As might be expected the fauna and flora of the Shoals is neither rare
+nor extensive. Gulls are to be seen of course at all times,--especially
+the large burgomaster gull, one of the finest of birds in size and
+ferocity, and in power of sight nearly equal to an eagle. In spring and
+fall flocks of coot and the more fishy sort of ducks are to be found
+there together with a good many loons. Snowy owls are not uncommon in
+cold weather, and during winter almost any kind of Arctic bird may
+arrive there. A flock of eider ducks once took refuge and were shot
+under the same overhanging rock where the terrified servant-girl
+concealed herself when pursued by the murderer Wagner. There are
+probably more green snakes on Appledore than anywhere else in America.
+Wild roses and morning-glories are the only flowers large enough to
+attract the notice of a passing tourist, but Celia Thaxter has also
+written a pretty poem on the pimpernel. There are no trees to speak of.
+
+Their geological structure is more interesting. It is generally supposed
+that the soil of New England rests on a foundation of primeval granite,
+but it is not exactly that. There is very little true granite in New
+England, what is taken for it commonly being syenite, a rock indeed that
+differs from granite only in the substitution of hornblend for mica. The
+so-called Quincy granite is a finer sort of syenite, and the White
+Mountains are composed of syenite capped with granite. The Isles of
+Shoals are also mostly syenite, but there are large boulders of coarse
+granite lying about, and in some places the syenite changes suddenly to
+granite as if the two had been welded together. Then there are dykes of
+dark brown trap or ancient lava, from four to ten feet wide running
+across the islands from south-west to north-east, and others again at
+right-angles to these. This would seem to indicate that the elevation
+above the surrounding plateau was due to volcanic action. The structure
+of White Island is very different from the others, a large portion of
+the rock being studded with innumerable small garnets, while veins of
+some grayish white minerals run through it in which there are still
+smaller garnets.
+
+How did these bare, bleak and barren rocks come to be inhabited?
+Originally it was from love of gold. Men will go wherever there is money
+to be made, and wherever men go women are pretty sure to follow. In 1879
+a city suddenly arose in the most desolate and uncomfortable part of the
+Rocky Mountains; and in the middle of the last century there was a large
+settlement on the Isles of Shoals, with a young ladies' boarding-school
+at Appledore, and a fort on Star Island for protection against pirates
+and Indians. Fish merchants carried on a flourishing trade with France
+and Spain. In course of time however cod and haddock became largely
+fished out and the settlement on Appledore disappeared with them,
+boarding-school and all. So it is predicted that some day Leadville will
+again become a silent wilderness. In 1850 the population of the Shoals
+had dwindled to about a dozen families of poor fishermen when a fresh
+impulse was given to the activity of the place from a direction that
+nobody could ever have imagined.
+
+The Laightons were residents of Portsmouth. The father of Thomas B.
+Laighton was a spar-maker and did a considerable business when
+shipbuilding was thriving in those times. Thomas B. in his youth was
+afflicted with a fever which confined him to his room for many months
+and from the effects of which he never recovered. He married Miss Eliza
+Rymes, a woman of remarkable good-sense and strong physique. He
+preferred journalism to spar-making, and his connection with the New
+Hampshire Gazette soon led him into politics. He was an ardent supporter
+of "old Hickory" and rewarded for it finally with the position of
+postmaster for his native city. Whether he surrendered this position for
+the forlorn and less lucrative one of White Island lighthouse on account
+of ill-health or from a different motive, is uncertain. There was
+formerly a story in circulation that he was defeated as a candidate for
+some political office and retired in disgust from the haunts and ways of
+men. This however is not likely. Thomas Laighton was a man of a blunt
+and rugged sincerity, tenacious and determined; such as would not be
+likely to lose his mental balance at the first unfavorable turn of
+fortune.
+
+[Illustration: TWILIGHT AT THE ISLES OF SHOALS.]
+
+He went to White Island in 1838, was removed by Harrison the First and
+reappointed by Tyler. His life there must have been a rough one. Of all
+the Isles of Shoals, White Island is the most difficult of access. It is
+not easy to land there in good summer weather, and during winter
+communication with the outer world is as rare as cold days in July. From
+December till May the breakers thunder on the cliff beneath the
+light-house like the roar of artillery. One would like to know what his
+reflections may have been during this Alexander Selkirk kind of
+life,--how he and his wife managed to entertain themselves. Rev. John
+Weiss and a friend going to Portsmouth in the summer of '46 visited the
+lighthouse and made friends with the family there. They found old
+Laighton a pretty rough customer, but good humored enough, and his wife
+uncommonly glad to see them. Their daughter Celia was a very bright
+looking, rosy faced girl, and the two boys Oscar and Cedric had their
+hair cut straight across their foreheads to keep it out of their eyes.
+Mr. Weiss thought that when they were in the water they must have looked
+a good deal like seals.
+
+In 1848 he resigned his position and removed to Appledore; then as
+always on the charts of the coast-survey known as Hog Island. It would
+seem to be the last stretch of a fisherman's imagination to call every
+long sloping island by that name. There he and his brother Joseph, who
+had thus far been a grocer in Portsmouth, built cottages for themselves
+and went into the fishing business, purchasing boats, seines, and hiring
+a large number of men. This lasted for some years and finally came to an
+end through the death of Joseph and the invalidism of Thomas, who was
+always lame and unable to give the work his personal supervision.
+Meanwhile their friends came over from the mainland to visit them, and
+admired the climate so much and remained so long that the brothers
+concluded to build a small hotel where these and others could pay for
+their entertainment. It was a three-story building, almost square, the
+parent stem of that great banyan-tree which has since spread over a
+large portion of the island. The accomodations at first were primitive.
+A visitor in '51 was obliged to wait an hour for a room and an
+opportunity to wash his hands, though he was at the time the only guest
+in the house. An empty flour-barrel turned upside down served for a
+wash-stand. However, the sailing and fishing were good, as also were
+Mrs. Laighton's doughnuts, of which there was always an unfailing
+supply, so that numbers of people came there.
+
+Among them was a recent graduate of Harvard, from the vicinity of
+Boston, named Levi Thaxter. He was a young man of refined tastes and
+rare intellectual endowment; afterwards widely known as the apostle of
+Browning's poetry in America. He was not one of those college graduates
+who seemed to have been run in a mould like bullets, but already
+possessed character and a mind of his own. He was by nature rather an
+admirer of art than an artist; in fact he was a critic, and with a right
+opportunity he might have become a Froude, a Taine, or a Ruskin. A wise
+father might have done much for him, but his father belonged to that
+class of men who are only acquainted with a small circle of their own
+affairs; he had not the least conception of what was needed for his
+brilliant son. So the best years of young Thaxter's life were consumed
+in fruitless efforts to harmonize his lofty aspirations with the
+stubborn facts about him. It was like a fruit-tree planted in a stone
+quarry. Too late he learned from experience the wisdom that should have
+come to him from his ancestors. He might have succeeded better if he had
+been less unwilling to compromise his sincerity,--to duck his head to
+the golden calf. But he would not do that, he intended to remain Levi
+Thaxter or die in the attempt: and once he came very near doing so. He
+was a romance character, and if his biography could be written it would
+be more interesting than that of some of our most celebrated men.
+Socially he was delightful; and a hundred friends could bear witness to
+his integrity, his fidelity, his kindly nature, his wit, humor, and keen
+appreciation. William Hunt the painter and Doctor Henry I. Bowditch were
+his two most intimate friends.
+
+He studied dramatic reading, and nearly made a profession of it. Actors
+sometimes studied with him to learn a good pronunciation and dramatic
+effect. His partiality for Browning's poetry is quite generally known.
+He first read it to his friends; then in private companies; and finally
+in public halls. When in 1882 he went to Philadelphia to read Browning
+there he created such enthusiasm for the subject that the libraries and
+bookstores were quickly exhausted and fresh copies of Browning had to be
+sent for from other cities to supply the demand. He considered Browning,
+Aeschylus and Shakespeare the three most dramatic writers. All the
+Browning clubs that have nourished so extensively for many years past
+might be considered Levi Thaxter's lineal descendants.
+
+His conversation on art and literature was often so interesting that it
+is a pity his occasional bursts of eloquence could not have been
+preserved. But the important matter at this moment is that he fell in
+love with Celia Laighton, married her and carried her off to the
+environs of Boston, where she made valuable friends and met with larger
+opportunities for intellectual development.
+
+Hawthorne came to the Shoals on the thirtieth of August, 1852, and has
+given a full account of his visit in his usual minute and pictorial
+manner. He left Franklin Pierce, who was then candidate for the
+presidency, in Concord, New Hampshire, and embarked at Portsmouth in a
+small schooner which was then the only mode of conveyance,---and often a
+very dilatory one. On the way two of his fellow passengers became
+sea-sick, and another "sat in the stern looking very white." On arriving
+at Appledore he was met in the doorway by Mr. Laighton of whom he gives
+rather a realistic description; adding, however, "He addressed me in a
+hearty, hospitable tone, and judging that it must be my landlord, I
+delivered a letter of introduction from Pierce, which of course gave me
+the best the house afforded."
+
+It seems strange that Hawthorne, who understood human nature better than
+any other American writer, should have so rarely penetrated into the
+character of the people whom he mentions in his note-books. Old Laighton
+was a solid rock of sense and grit, and the chief impression he made
+upon strangers was of a man whom it was best to keep on the right side
+of. The detonations of his frankness sometimes cleared the air in a
+truly remarkable manner, and would scatter all light spirits to a
+prudent distance. He reminded one of Longfellow's description of Simon
+Danz:
+
+  "Restless at times with heavy strides
+     He paces his parlor to and fro;
+   He is like a ship that at anchor rides,
+   And swings with the rising and falling tides,
+     And tugs at her anchor-tow."
+
+
+Hawthorne seems to have found a kindred spirit in Mr. Thaxter, who
+invited him to their cottage to meet the ladies and drink apple-jack.
+There he also found John Weiss, a man of wit and genius little inferior
+to his own. Neither did Celia Thaxter impress him, except in a rather
+external way. He says, "We found Mrs. Thaxter sitting in a neat little
+parlor, very simply furnished, but in good taste. She is not now, I
+believe, more than eighteen years old, very pretty, and with the manners
+of a lady,--not prim and precise, but with enough of freedom and ease."
+
+The ideality in her face, which probably attracted her husband and is
+visible in her earliest pictures, was not observed by the idealist
+himself. He spent the next two weeks in company with Mr. Thaxter,
+roaming about on the water, visiting different islands, and conversing
+with the inhabitants. It must have been a rare occasion for young
+Thaxter, and Hawthorne for once found a companion who could either be
+silent or talk in an interesting manner. Hawthorne's account of it would
+suffice as a guide-book for the Shoals. He tells the story of Betty
+Moody, who was said to have concealed herself with her baby in a sort of
+cave on Star Island in order to escape from the Indians who had made a
+raid on the place while her husband was fishing out at sea. Unhappily
+the child screamed, and the wretched mother is said to have murdered it
+to prevent discovery. How the other wives and mothers on the island
+saved themselves at this juncture is not reported; and the myth no doubt
+originated from a dark red lichen growing on the rocks there which
+resembles blood-stains and has a scientific name to that effect.
+
+Much more probable is the tradition that a large heap of stones formed
+like an Esquimaux hut on the highest point of Appledore, was built there
+by Captain John Smith and his men as a memorial of their discovery of
+the islands. This heap of stones is a veritable cairn, such as climbers
+of the Alps build on the summits of those peaks which they have ascended
+for the first time. It is customary in such cases to insert a champagne
+bottle among the stones, containing the card of the fortunate explorer;
+but perhaps Captain Smith was not provided with these articles while
+cruising off the coast of North America. It is at least more interesting
+and more in keeping with the rugged aspect of the place than the
+delicate triangular plinth that has been erected to his memory on Star
+Island. Another poetic subject is the Spaniards' graves on Smutty Nose:
+hapless mariners, wrecked where no friendly or kindred eye will look on
+the cold stones which mark their interment!
+
+Eleven years elapsed before Hawthorne visited the Shoals again, and for
+the last time in his life. Meanwhile much had changed there. The hotel
+had grown by the addition of a large dormitory; and the boys, Oscar and
+Cedric, had grown up with it to be vigorous and very healthy looking
+young men. The Hon. Thomas P. Laighton had become a confirmed invalid;
+nor did he live very long after this time. The management of the
+property was wholly in the hands of his sons. Mrs. Thaxter had grown to
+a bright, self-possessed woman with three small boys to look after, and
+with her reputation as a poet now well assured to her both by critics
+and the general public. Her face, figure and manner all gave evidence of
+a concentrated personality. Her husband, a handsome and full-bearded
+man, was now in the prime of life and intellectual vigor. Rev. John
+Weiss, their never-failing friend and a constant habitue of the place,
+had written the life of Theodore Parker, and received due recognition as
+a gifted man and elegant speaker. And there was another, more
+distinguished than them all,--a tall figure, more erect than a soldier,
+pacing across the long piazza, or watching a game in the billiard-room,
+or seated in a retired corner of Mrs. Thaxter's parlor, whose face had
+long since been known to Hawthorne as that of John G. Whittier.
+
+Social life at the Shoals has had its incipient childhood, its period of
+youthful strength and gaiety, its bright noontide of maturity, and seems
+now to be lapsing into a serene and comfortable old age. Many, at least,
+of the brilliant men and women who made it what it was, are gone, and
+others do not appear to take their places. The Isles of Shoals are
+changing as all things change except the rocks and sea. The
+south-easterly parlor in Mrs. Thaxter's cottage is historic ground.
+"There have been fine people here," she said one day in September, about
+ten years ago, as the house was closing for the season, "but the summer
+is gone, and they have gone with it." Nowhere else since Margaret
+Fuller's time have so many wits, geniuses and brilliant women been
+gathered together. Whittier and Hawthorne are enough to have consecrated
+it, but there have been many others. Hunt, the painter, came there, and
+Professor Paine, the composer, as well as other fine artists and
+musicians. Even Ole Bull, that Norwegian waif and celebrated violinist,
+wandered in there of a forenoon, and entertained the company with
+accounts of sea-serpents standing on their tails in front of
+water-falls, and other marvels only visible in Norway:--supposing, I
+presume, that his hearers would believe anything that he told them.
+
+Mrs. Thaxter's poetry, like all genuine poetry, is indigenous,--native
+to the soil. She has taken her subjects from the life and incidents
+about her: the little sand-piper, the burgomaster gull, the pimpernel,
+and the wreck on White Island--where a vessel was once wrecked in a
+dense fog right under the light-house. [Footnote: In the winter of 1876,
+centennial year, a schooner laden with salt somehow ran on to the
+southerly reef of White Island and lost its rudder. The vessel
+consequently became unmanageable, and was finally thrown up on
+Londoner's, where the island is so low that at high tide the sea nearly
+divides it in two. The crew tried to escape by jumping on to the rocks.
+Only three succeeded in doing this, the captain, the cabin-boy and one
+sailor, A tremendous wave washed over them, and when it had subsided the
+sailor found himself alone. Fortunately he knew where he was, and by
+clinging flat to the rocks, like a starfish, and watching his chances,
+he succeeded after a time in reaching a point of safety. But no sooner
+was he fairly out of the water than his clothes became a mass of ice.
+There is a rude, unplastered house on Londoner's. The door was fastened,
+but he broke through it with a blow of his foot, then wiping his hands
+as well as he could on the rough boards, he felt along the first
+transverse beam-joist until, to his great delight, he came upon some
+matches. These saved his life, for there can be no doubt that otherwise
+he would have been frozen to death before morning. There was a stove in
+the house, and even a few sticks of wood. For kindling-wood he tore off
+splinters from the edges of the boards. He could see nothing within the
+house, and it is said that after his fire was lighted, he had only one
+match left. Next morning people on Haley's Island saw the wreck and the
+smoke from his fire, and went to his rescue.
+
+Mrs. Rymes is authority for the statement that White Island was not
+called so from its color, but from a family of Whites who lived on it
+before the light-house was built, and that the miser White who was
+murdered by Crowninshield in Salem was born on that island.]
+
+[Illustration: CELIA THAXTER. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN 1890.]
+
+[Illustration: DAVID A. WASSON. FROM A PORTRAIT BY HIS SON GEORGE,
+TAKEN IN 1878.]
+
+She made the best use of her material, which after all is much the same
+as Emerson's, with the difference between a barren island and a
+well-wooded country town taken into account. Another difference is that
+she looks at her subject objectively, and then treats it subjectively;
+whereas Emerson does exactly the reverse. It is like the difference
+between Schiller and Goethe, or Longfellow and Browning; and is the
+manner in which a poet always must write in order to be popular. Her
+verses are graceful, refined, and--as they should be--feminine. Yet
+there is a good deal of strength in it also: or if the phrase is
+permissible, a good deal of back-bone.
+
+Her style reminds one of Whittier, but is sufficiently original.
+Sometimes she escapes from concrete things into abstract subjects; and
+her short poem on "Heroism" seems to me the best she ever wrote. There
+was formerly a strong prejudice against this kind of poetry, but it
+seems to be disappearing. Those of her poems which Whittier included in
+his collection of English and American poetry are also fine, and may be
+said to deserve their place. Her criticism was better than is usually
+the case with poets; and her conversation about authors and literature
+always interesting. It was not didactic at all, but frank, spontaneous
+and open to correction. She liked the most diverse writers; Tennyson,
+and Dickens, and Browning. In early years I remember her speaking of
+Hawthorne in a tone of veneration; but later in life she preferred
+Emerson, even to Whittier. There was formerly a portrait of Goethe in
+her parlor with Emerson's lines about him underneath it, copied in her
+own picturesque hand-writing.
+
+It seems strange that she never tried her hand at a novel, for of all
+resorts on the coast the Isles of Shoals is the best ground to study
+human nature on. People lose their artificial ways in that atmosphere
+and their peculiarities are brought out distinctly, as oil brings out
+the veins in black walnut. The epic gift, however, is very different
+from the lyric and the two are not often united in the same person. Mrs.
+Thaxter's prose writings are almost as rare as Whittier's. She published
+a detailed account of a murder that was committed on Haley's Island
+about twenty years ago;--what would seem to be a peculiar subject for a
+cultivated person to fasten on--and yet she succeeded in giving it a
+good deal of dignity. One consequence of this has been that hundreds of
+people cross over every summer to Smutty Nose to stare at the miserable
+old shanty where the event took place, though there is absolutely
+nothing to be seen there.
+
+It was a choice occasion in the old Shoals days when Mrs. Thaxter
+consented to read Browning or Tennyson to her friends. I think it was
+the finest reading I ever heard, simply because it was neither dramatic,
+rhetorical, nor elocutionary. It was plain, distinct reading with just
+enough of the dramatic element to give fullness to the meaning,--and
+with such a voice! Why is it that some people who have unpleasant voices
+are yet able to sing sweetly, and others who cannot sing are able to
+read or converse so it is music to hear them? I was formerly acquainted
+with an old man, much beyond the period of life when singers retire from
+the stage, whose voice was nevertheless, as one heard it at some
+distance, as musical as a Stradivarius.
+
+With all her frankness and fearlessness, she was as sensitive to
+personal influences as poets usually are; and persons who called on her,
+who lacked delicacy of feeling, not only wearied her, but sometimes
+caused her positive suffering. In such cases she fortified herself with
+what she called a strong dose of conversation; would talk with great
+volubility on all possible subjects, as if in this manner to keep the
+unpleasant influence at a distance. "I wish all good people," she said,
+"were pleasant, and all the bad people disagreeable; for then life would
+be a more simple affair than it is now. The world is such a mixture that
+I never quite know how to take it."
+
+At times she was a merciless critic. An admiring Quaker in Philadelphia
+wrote some verses in honor of Whittier, which were presented to Mrs.
+Thaxter for her approval. When she was asked how she liked them, she
+replied, "I do not like it all; it goes humpety, lumpety, dumpety,
+bump;" and immediately changed the subject of conversation.
+
+On another occasion she took up a volume of poetry which had been
+printed for private circulation, and said, "There are two really fine
+poems in this, which is more than can be usually said of such
+collections." Then she read them to us with such expressive grace as
+might almost make poetry out of Latin grammar. One was called the "Whip
+of the Sky," and the other was a sonnet about Pompeii.
+
+She early discovered in herself the mesmeric power of a spiritist; and
+Wasson was present at a _seance_ which she gave at the house of a
+friend in Newburyport, reporting messages from another world to various
+persons in the room. She thus naturally became a believer in spiritism,
+and finally a Theosophist; but she found that such supernatural
+performances were physically injurious and mentally demoralizing, so
+that in later years she rarely indulged in them.
+
+One cold, foggy evening in August, 1868, we were gathered in the parlor
+of the Thaxter cottage, when some one proposed that we should make an
+experiment with planchette. So the little triangular board was produced,
+with a long pencil in the apex, and a large sheet of brown paper. Mrs.
+Thaxter placed her left hand on it, and Mrs. H., a New York lady, placed
+her right hand, while the rest of us formed a circle around the table.
+
+In five or ten minutes, planchette began to move, and wrote out "John
+Laighton," in plain, bold letters. "He was my great-uncle," said Mrs.
+Thaxter; "and there used to be a proverb in Portsmouth, 'As honest as
+John Laighton.'" Then she wrote on the paper: "Where is my father?"
+
+A few minutes afterward, Mrs. H. closed her eyes, and fell back in her
+chair, as if she were fainting. Suddenly coming to herself, she seized
+the pencil from planchette and wrote rapidly on the paper, while Mrs.
+Thaxter held her other hand. She was at the left of Mrs. Thaxter, but I
+cannot remember now whether Mrs. H. wrote with her right or left hand.
+Mrs. Thaxter was greatly excited and looked all the time in Mrs. H.'s
+face in the most earnest and impressive manner. Mrs. H. behaved like a
+person under the influence of strong emotion, and continued to write
+intermittently until the sheet of paper was nearly covered. Mrs. Thaxter
+read the sentences eagerly, but without saying a word. Several times Mr.
+H. entreated his wife to desist, but she paid no attention to him. The
+whole performance lasted nearly half an hour, and when it was over, Mrs.
+Thaxter said, "They are all answers to questions which I asked of my
+father," and remained very grave and quiet during the rest of the
+evening.
+
+The next forenoon we examined the paper and found the writing on it was
+intelligible, but at the same time conveyed no real information. They
+were such answers as a woman might herself suggest to a person who was
+slow in making a reply. One of them was, "You will know everything
+perfectly when the right time comes." Mr. H. said, "My wife never could
+have imagined all this; there must have been some occult communication
+between her and Mrs. Thaxter. Neither do I think she ever heard before
+of John Laighton." Mrs. Thaxter evidently was satisfied that she had
+received messages from her father, who had been dead about two years;
+and though the rest of us did not credit this, the fact in itself seemed
+marvellous enough.
+
+When some one remarked that he would give five dollars at any time to
+see a ghost, Mrs. Thaxter retorted, "I think you would give fifty to
+have him leave you again."
+
+Where the poetical talent of the Laighton family came from is a rare
+mystery. Both of Mrs. Thaxter's brothers inherited a share of it. A poem
+of Oscar's was published in the "Atlantic" many years ago, and
+afterwards included in her first volume of poetry. Cedric wrote a very
+amusing parody on his sister's "Little Sandpiper," and sent it to her
+when she was staying in Boston. The scene was represented in winter when
+there wasn't any little sandpiper.
+
+Mrs. Thaxter's poetry, however, was the making of Appledore as a summer
+resort. Between 1865 and 1875 thousands of people came there every
+summer to catch a sight of her. How she dared to go to the dinner-table
+in the face of such a multitude, I do not know; but after a time she
+retained a body-guard of friends, old and young, who were quite
+sufficient to keep intruders at a distance; and they could not be
+prevented from walking around her cottage, peering in at the windows,
+and stealing an occasional flower from her garden. Some even walked
+boldly into her parlor to demand an autograph. She received strange
+letters also from her unknown admirers. One was from a woman who wished
+to come to see her, but was afraid to do so on account of the green
+snakes which Hawthorne speaks of as inhabiting Appledore. (Hawthorne
+accidentally caught one of these pretty reptiles by the tail, and was
+not a little startled by it.) Another was from a naval officer who had
+been forcibly retired to a plantation in Maryland. I suppose she was
+secretly pleased by this rude homage of the vulgar, but no one knew
+better that the approval of her friends Weiss and Whittier was worth the
+whole of it.
+
+Meanwhile social life at Appledore had risen to a height. Mrs. Thaxter
+welcomed every one who had a claim upon her recognition. Open table was
+her motto, rather than exclusiveness; but those who considered
+themselves of superior clay found no chairs to sit on in her parlor. Her
+cottage was a scene of gaiety by day, and revelry at night. Beautiful
+girls, charming women, and distinguished men dazzled the beholder.
+Singing and laughter as well as instrumental music could often be heard
+there at a late hour. There are no people who are so full of good
+spirits in vacation as clergymen and college-professors--it is the
+reaction from their well-sustained gravity during the remainder of the
+year--and there was no lack of either.
+
+Among them all none was so brilliant as John Weiss, though Eichberg the
+violinist came pretty close to him. Both were German Jews; Weiss,
+however, having been born in America. He belonged to the same type of
+men as James Russell Lowell and David A. Wasson. He was the friend of
+both and equal to either in genius. He was the most eloquent preacher in
+New England at that time, and as a humorist only second to Lowell, if
+indeed second to any. His wit and his preaching were not, however, of a
+popular character: something more than phlegmatic common-sense was
+required to appreciate them. If he was not so popular as Lowell with the
+public, he was more so among his friends, in whose list might be counted
+almost every man of note and influence in Boston and vicinity. Bright
+flashes of his imagination came like the sudden gleam of a diamond, and
+would often convulse the company with laughter when one would least have
+expected it.
+
+He was an excellent pantomimist; could perform all the parts in a comedy
+himself, and with the help of Fred Loring, or some other, would
+improvise a burlesque on almost any well-known play. It was after one of
+these performances that Whittier (who sat in his quiet corner enjoying
+it as much as an honest Quaker dared to) said to Mrs. Thaxter, "Celia,
+thou knowest I have never been to the theatre, but I think at last the
+theatre has come to me." Weiss was gay with the gay, but could be
+profoundly serious again at a moment's warning, and the biting shafts of
+his satire never wounded a human soul.
+
+When some one spoke of the peculiarity of John Brown's spelling he
+exclaimed: "So much the better, so much the better! What good would a
+Webster's dictionary have been at Harper's Ferry? A whole edition of
+them could not have accomplished anything."
+
+He was always ailing, and his friends in college doubted if he would
+ever reach maturity; yet he lived to be a grey-haired man, and published
+a number of excellent books. When he died, in 1878, there were not
+wanting malicious people to spread the report that he died of
+intemperance, though the wonder is how he could have lived so long. His
+death cast a shadow over the social life at Appledore so that it never
+quite recovered its former gaiety. About the same time several
+millionaires made their appearance; cottages began to arise upon the
+rocks; a small steam-yacht plied like a water-bug between the different
+islands, and the place became continually more fashionable and
+conventional. Whittier, feeling that he did not belong to this new order
+of things, retired to a quiet little inn at West Ossipee, in the White
+Mountains.
+
+It was now that Professor John K. Paine, the musical composer,
+introduced a new element into the Shoals life. One morning he walked
+into Mrs. Thaxter's parlor with a large folio under his arm and said, "I
+am going to play you one of Beethoven's sonatas, for I think you will
+like it." Mrs. Thaxter was not quite sure that she would, but listened
+attentively. There had been a good deal of music before, in a small way;
+pupils of Eichberg playing on the violin with piano accompaniment, and
+even Eichberg himself,--which was quite a treat, though a single violin
+can never express a wide range of musical ideas. Beethoven's music she
+had also heard indifferently performed by young lady amateurs; but this
+was another affair.
+
+Professor Paine is rather an organist than a pianist, and does not
+pretend to rare technical skill; but what is much better, he understands
+the music as only players like Rubinstein and Von Bulow can understand
+it, and he brought out the meaning with such joyous fullness as even the
+master himself might have been pleased to hear. It was a revelation to
+Celia Thaxter: it was easy to see there was no affectation in her
+enjoyment; neither did she lack words to express her delight. "Mr.
+Paine," said a classical gentleman who was present, "your playing
+reminds me of what Cicero said of Caesar's Commentaries, that a fool
+might think he could improve on it, but a wise man would not like to
+try." The Professor was so much pleased with Mrs. Thaxter's frank
+enthusiasm, that he dedicated a sonata he was composing to her, which
+was performed the following winter in Boston, and greatly praised also
+by the critics.
+
+Piano recitals and concertos thus became the fashion at Appledore, and
+classical music was in good demand. Its refining and quieting influence
+on the little community was quite perceptible. It produced a change like
+the transition from flamboyant Gothic architecture to the pure Grecian
+style. At first only a few came to hear it: then the parlor was filled.
+The piazza became crowded, and finally gentlemen were obliged to find
+places on the rocks outside.
+
+It is one thing to hear music in a crowded concert-room with gas-light
+and bad air just after we have left the jarring discords of the street;
+and quite a different affair to listen to it with congenial spirits in
+the summer air of these islands, which seems to have been made for
+attuning the senses to fine perceptions. To enjoy any kind of art, the
+mind needs to be like a clean slate on which every mark tells.
+
+In 1881 Professor Paine improved his good reputation both here and in
+Europe by composing what is called his Greek music; that is, an overture
+to the play of "Oedipus Tyrannus," which was acted at Harvard in the
+spring of that year. Of course his seashore friends wished to hear him
+play it himself, and after the applause which followed had subsided, he
+said: "A little approbation is all the reward I get for my compositions.
+A good deal of money was made out of the Greek play by speculators, but
+none of it came to me." There was a general expression of regret; and
+then Mrs. Thaxter said, as if to herself, "If I were only the
+Commonwealth of Massachusetts I know what I would do." A physician at
+the house that summer warned Mrs. Paine never to let her husband work so
+hard again as he had that year.
+
+I remember William Hunt, the portrait painter, in 1872 wheeling his
+youngest child, a beautiful boy named Paul, in a go-cart in front of the
+cottage. He looked like an Arab, with a beard nearly to his waist, and a
+decidedly Semitic head; but he had an aristocratic style, and the air of
+a man who was used to command. His friends congratulated themselves on
+his resemblance to Titian, and to the French artist Horace Vernet.
+Despite his proud bearing he was a tender-hearted man, and when in
+trouble always went to Levi Thaxter, who was a rarely sympathetic
+person. In 1879 he came again to the Shoals, flying from domestic
+affliction. He was also suffering from a severe nervous strain, the
+result of painting two immense pictures in the hall of the New York
+Assembly, at Albany; and was no longer able to work. Either of these by
+itself he might have contended against, but both together were too much
+for him.
+
+One dark, rainy night he left the Thaxter cottage at a late hour,
+looking very sad and gloomy. The next morning his body was found in a
+freshwater cistern which had been built in a hollow between the rocks.
+There were some who thought that his death might have been accidental,
+but old Doctor Bowditch said, "My friends, there was only too much
+reason for it." Of all the wrecks on that dangerous coast was not this
+the most piteous and tragical! William Hunt narrowly missed being one of
+the greatest of painters. Though some of his portraits are wretched
+failures, there are others of his pictures that might grace any gallery
+in Europe.
+
+Mountain air is better than sea air, both for those who are well and
+strong, and generally speaking for invalids; but people go to the sea
+because they like it,--for love of the dark blue ocean. Few things are
+more monotonous than sailing in a yacht. It is a confining sort of
+existence, subjects of conversation soon become exhausted, there are
+many inconveniences about it, and being becalmed in a ground swell is
+worse than riding in a stage coach on a hot and dusty road; yet how many
+men prefer spending their summer vacation in this manner to any other.
+It is that rolling, lisping, gurgling, mysterious, unfathomable unity
+which attracts them. Earth is the masculine element, sea the feminine;
+and all the cycles and epicycles of organic nature have resulted from
+these two. It develops imagination and romance in persons who would
+never have been suspected of possessing either. No wonder that the
+sailor delights in marvelous tales. It is a terrible destroyer, but at
+the same time a friend that we cannot do without.
+
+Nowhere perhaps is that closeness to the ocean, this familiarity with
+the sea, so strongly felt as at the Isles of Shoals. There is really no
+land there: nothing but sky, rock and water. Living there is like a
+sea-voyage without the discomforts thereof. During the great storm of
+March '52, when the light-house on Minot's Ledge was overturned, an
+immense wave rolled across the centre of Appledore from side to side.
+There are windows in the hotel on Star Island where one can drop a
+pebble into the sea, and go to sleep listening to the murmur of the
+waves. Even in summer the surf sometimes runs so high that it is
+dangerous to approach the edge of the cliffs; and few people know how
+pleasant it is to watch the eddying swirl of the water round the
+promontories on the westerly side. One can sail in every direction, and
+if the wind does not suit one quarter it always will another. Better
+than any sailing, however, is rowing in an open boat at sunset or by
+moonlight, with one or two friends.
+
+Their climate is equally remarkable, and Doctor Bowditch considered it,
+from its soothing and also stimulating quality, one of the finest in the
+world, and much the best on the Atlantic coast. This is owing to their
+geographical position, islands on the coast of Maine being afflicted
+with cold fogs, and those south of Cape Cod with warm ones. There are no
+sultry nights in summer, and the cutting east-winds of Mount Desert are
+unknown there. The climate is warmer in April and November than on the
+mainland; in May and October about the same. The winters are
+disagreeable enough; but there is a kind of glory there in summer, and
+the view at night from the piazza of the Oceanic is beautiful beyond all
+faculty of description.
+
+
+
+
+WHITTIER.
+
+
+  From under the north star's beam,
+    Through a region wild and free,
+  The waters of a mighty stream
+    Roll onward to the sea.
+
+  In the deep clefts of the mountain,
+    Lie never melting snows;
+  And there from an icy fountain
+    A clear cold torrent flows.
+
+
+When we go to see the Falls of Niagara, we expect to be astonished, and
+are not disappointed; though the expectation takes away somewhat from
+our sensation. The grand phenomenon makes a strong and permanent
+impression on us, and yet there is no feeling of affection mingled with
+this. We have seen it once and do not care to visit the place again.
+Many pictures have been painted of it, but they are not genuine
+pictures, for the human element is wanting in them. Niagara can turn no
+mill-wheels, and will float no ships. How different is it with those
+scenes of natural beauty which we never heard of and come upon by
+surprise--which we remember always with affection and a kindred
+interest.
+
+Such were my thoughts many years ago at Amesbury, as I walked on the
+banks of the Merrimac and watched the calm, clear current of the river,
+as it hastened by, irresistible as time itself. I also reflected how
+often the poet Whittier must have walked in that same path; how dear to
+him must be that silent flood with its elm-trees, and great rolling
+hills; and how in times of darkness and discouragement he must have come
+to it for strength and consolation. The beauty of a river depends very
+much on its clearness and purity. The Rhine and the Tiber are more
+famous than the Merrimac; but their water is muddy and undrinkable.
+
+Indeed the current of Whittier's life might not improperly be compared
+to the river beside which he dwelt so long. Commencing in the pure
+mountain air of the social and religious seclusion of his sect, the
+difficulties and limitations, which in his case waited upon the
+acquisition of knowledge, may well be compared to the passage through a
+rocky and unfruitful region, leaping as it were from one granite boulder
+to another; then no sooner has he gained depth and fulness from contact
+with natures like his own than he is caught in the mill-wheels of a
+great political revolution, he enters ardently into the anti-slavery
+conflict--as he says of himself in the "Tent on the Beach,"
+
+  "And one there was a dreamer born,
+   Who with a mission to fulfill
+   Had left the muses' haunts to turn
+   The crank of an opinion mill"--
+
+and finally having escaped past all expectation from this turmoil,
+victorious and laurel-crowned, he goes calmly and steadily forward to
+the end. What makes this parallel rather surprising in its perfection is
+that Concord River empties itself into the Merrimac, and one might fancy
+that its waters carried Emerson's magnetic thought and influence to
+Whittier's own door. May not the career of any great man be compared to
+the course of a river? and especially the lives of our American poets
+would seem to resemble in their purity and transparency the rivers of
+New England.
+
+Whittier's house, however, does not stand by the river's brim, but near
+the centre of the village, almost a mile away. It was a modest looking
+structure, in appearance much like the Alcott house at Concord, but not
+nearly so well situated. It faces towards the north, and has little land
+about it, though there is a vegetable-garden in the rear. Neither is
+there any protection for it from the cold blasts of winter. Here he
+lived, at first with his sister and after her death with his niece, Miss
+Lizzie Whittier, and I believe with another niece, who married a Mr.
+Caldwell; but also a large portion of the time quite alone, except for
+one or two servants, reading, meditating and writing poetry. A man who
+has that kind of work to do, can never be very lonely. The interior of
+the house, was plainly and comfortably furnished, and contained some
+fine pictures and handsome books, the gifts of Boston friends; but its
+chief ornament was the quiet dignity and amiable courtesy of the poet
+himself.
+
+The eastern coast of New England is famous for its thunder-storms, and
+in the summer of 1872 there was one in the midst of nearly every
+afternoon. A number of persons were killed by the lightning that season,
+and Whittier also met with a narrow escape. It was one of the last days
+of June, and from our piazza we could see the masses of black cloud
+rolling down the Merrimac Valley, not thinking of the imminent peril,
+which they were bringing to our poet. At the same time Miss Lizzie
+Whittier and a lady friend were seated in the room on the right hand of
+the front-door, when crash! an electric bolt came through the wall like
+a rifle-shot, just above her friend's head, laying her out upon the
+floor, shivering a mirror into splinters; then went through the doorway
+and meeting John G. Whittier in the front hall, knocked him senseless,
+and seizing two slats from a blind it escaped through an open window
+into the garden. Miss Lizzie was the first to regain her feet, and her
+anxiety and terror, when she saw her uncle lying senseless on the floor,
+may readily be surmised. It proved, however, that none of them were
+seriously injured, though their heads were confused and unserviceable
+for several days, and they did not wholly recover from the effects of
+this _coup d' eclair_ until after an excursion to the Isles of
+Shoals.
+
+[Illustration: WHITTIER'S HOUSE AT AMESBURY.]
+
+When Whittier was asked how the stroke felt, he said, "It was like a
+blow from a pile-driver,--and I would not like to have it repeated." The
+hole which the lightning made in the side of the house, could scarcely
+be distinguished from that of a large rifle bullet. A few days
+afterwards I saw a small house set on fire by the lightning, and it was
+consumed in a very few minutes, so one may infer how narrowly the
+Whittier family escaped a double danger.
+
+He was a tall, and rather slender man, measuring almost exactly six
+feet, with sloping shoulders, and he stood so straight, as almost to be
+the personification of uprightness. No soldier was ever more erect, and
+this without the least stiffness or conventionality. His head was not
+large at the base, but high-crowned and finely arched. His eyes were
+magnificent, and can only be compared to Hawthorne's eyes, though not so
+clear. Marshal von Moltke had eyes like two brilliant lights; even the
+Emperor dared not look into them. Whittier's were not like this, but
+seemed to be lighted by hidden fires; very large, dark, and powerful. He
+had a sensitive and refined mouth, which was closed, as if by an effort
+of the will. In general appearance he resembled men of the Revolutionary
+period, as if a cotemporary of Washington had luckily been dropped out
+of the eighteenth century. He looked like Copley's portrait of Samuel
+Adams, but with a more intellectual, and less stubborn expression. From
+boyhood he was always fragile and ailing, could not sleep well at night,
+and would repeat poetry to himself (for he knew any quantity of it,
+without making an effort to memorize it) until he fell asleep again: yet
+to what an age he lived, and how much work he accomplished!
+
+I am tempted here to quote from an essay by David A. Wasson, written
+nearly thirty years ago:--
+
+"God gave Whittier a deep, hot, simple, strenuous and yet ripe and
+spherical, nature, whose twin necessities were, first that it
+_must_ lay an intense grasp upon the elements of its experience,
+and, secondly, that it _must_ work these up into some form of
+melodious completeness. History and the world gave him Quakerism,
+America, and Rural Solitude; and through this solitude went winding the
+sweet, old Merrimac Stream, the river that we would not wish to forget,
+even by the waters of the river of life! And it is into these elements
+that his genius, with its peculiar vital simplicity and intensity,
+strikes root. Historic reality, the great _facts_ of his time, are
+the soil in which he grows, as they are with all natures of depth and
+energy." "We did not wish," said Goethe, "to learn, but to live."
+
+The anti-slavery movement originated with the Quakers. It seems to have
+been their mission in America. Benjamin Lundy was a Quaker: Garrison and
+his friends were non-resistants, which is political Quakerism. Whittier
+was one of the first to join them, and none of them afterwards, except
+Wendell Phillips, had such influence with the public. Neither was he
+content with writing poetry for the cause, controversial lyrics and
+war-songs of freedom, but he took a lively interest in the affairs of
+the New England Society, went to its meetings and served on committees.
+Phillips said that once, when the socialistic element in the movement
+was threatening to come to open rupture with the more moderate
+Garrisonian party, Whittier by his tact and good sense, and a few timely
+remarks, did more than any other to harmonize matters, and prevent a
+dissolution. When Emerson was informed of this, he remarked, "I have
+always held Mr. Whittier in great respect; but this is the finest flower
+in the poet's wreath."
+
+It is astonishing enough now to reflect what the early abolitionists
+attempted to do, and the manner in which they expected to do it. The
+empire of Christianity, and of true civilization, was to be established
+here in America for the first time and finally; the slaves were to be
+emancipated, intemperance prevented, and all warfare ended. This was to
+happen in a world where the Malthusian theory of population is a
+dominant reality, where millions are fighting every day for the bread of
+life, and thousands are dying from the lack of proper food, raiment and
+shelter. One of their number whose name will not appear in history,
+published a book, entitled "True Civilization an Immediate Necessity."
+Surely enough true civilization is and always has been an immediate
+necessity: a necessity like the feast of Tantalus: but how is it to be
+realized? The purest saints and noblest statesmen have struggled and
+died in despair in the attempt to elevate humanity a single inch above
+the condition in which they found it.
+
+Of course such a chimera as that of the abolitionists could only be
+entertained by young, inexperienced and slightly educated men. Their
+effort was a noble one, a blunder in the right direction; but they had
+no conception of the explosive material which was contained in the
+doctrine of non-resistance. Instead of moral persuasion and an era of
+peace, there followed a desolating war in itself worse than fifty years
+of African Slavery. The abolitionists were blamed for that calamity very
+much as the Protestants have been blamed for the Massacre of St.
+Bartholomew; and yet without doubt they were responsible for a portion
+of it. Gunpowder cannot be made of sulphur and carbon alone, but
+saltpetre also must be added.
+
+Those who remain in this immature condition of fixed ideas throughout
+life, purchase their experience at too high a rate. Whittier's poetic
+art saved him from this and separated him finally from his Garrisonian
+allies. With Garrison himself he always remained the best of friends;
+but after the Kansas troubles began he did not continue to look upon him
+as a leader, and in 1872 they were in political antagonism, Whittier
+endorsing Sumner, and Garrison supporting Grant.
+
+Perhaps the writing of "Ichabod" and Webster's subsequent death gave an
+indication to Whittier of deeper life currents than he had known before;
+for about that time, it seems to have dawned on him that didactic poetry
+was not after all the best kind of poetry, and a work of art to be pure
+and holy, must exist for its own sake, and be justified by its own
+excellence. He refers to this intellectual change, not only in the lines
+already quoted, but in a sort of confession, written at an earlier
+period. He says--
+
+  "Art's perfect forms no moral need,
+   And beauty is its own excuse,"
+
+and regrets that the highest reward of merit will never come to him on
+this account. He realizes now that he belongs to a party and has been
+looking at the world from the stand-point of party interest. In devoting
+himself more closely to his vocation as a poet he acquired that moral
+repose and better mental balance with which alone it is possible to see
+things as they are. From this time forward the quality of his verses
+shows a steady improvement.
+
+The man possessed a deep nature and true breadth of character in spite
+of the limitations of his environment; yet there were certain prejudices
+and antipathies that adhered to him still. His unwillingness to listen
+to music, is rather to be attributed to the old quaker, puritanical
+notion that all sensuous enjoyment is sinful, than to the well known
+indifference of poets, for that sister art to which they owe so much. He
+once went so far as to take an interest in some musical glasses, and
+seemed to be pleased with the simple tunes that were played on them; but
+pianos and violins he had no liking for.
+
+He enjoyed looking at portraits of distinguished men, but did not
+approve of religious pictures. Bayard Taylor presented him with a copy
+of his translation of "Faust," and he read it, for the sake of old
+acquaintance, but he did not like it and wondered especially what
+explanation "Goethe's apologists could make for the strange, and
+extraordinary characters in the second part." When some one asked him
+why he did not make a trip to Europe he said: "Travelling does not seem
+to agree with me; but beside that, I do not think I should find pleasure
+in it. Their great cathedrals which people go to see, would not be of
+any account to me; and I am afraid I should not enjoy the works of art.
+I should like to see Switzerland; but there are also fine mountains over
+there"--pointing to New Hampshire.
+
+His prohibitory friends alleged that he was a good deal disturbed by the
+five kinds of wine provided for the seventieth birth-day dinner, with
+which his Boston publishers honored him. He endeavored to escape from
+this dinner, and Messrs. Osgood and Company were obliged to send for him
+three times, and most urgently, before he could be persuaded to come. It
+is doubtful however if he objected to people's drinking wine in their
+own homes. [Footnote: To a friend, who sent him on his seventy-fifth
+birth-day a bottle of rare old Andalusian "Olovosa" with a bouquet of
+flowers, he wrote:--
+
+"I hasten to thank thee, dear Mrs. ----, for thy kind note, and
+accompanying flowers, wreathing like Hafiz on Omar Khayyam's roses, the
+wine--not of Shiraz, but of storied Andalusia.
+
+"I am not accustomed to tarry long at the wine--in this case I shall
+remember Paul's advice to Timothy.
+
+"I am gratefully thy old friend,
+
+"JOHN G. WHITTIER.
+
+"Boston, Dec. 17, 1892."]
+
+He is the only American poet who may be fairly said to have earned his
+living by his poems, though Longfellow might have done so, if it had
+been his fortune to reside in a country town. Whittier may have assisted
+sometimes in editing the local newspaper, and he once published a volume
+of rather tame prose-studies of the Shakers and other strange people who
+are found in the southern counties of New Hampshire. I never met with
+but one copy of it, and it could not have had a large circulation. He
+was not so much an observer of life and manners, as an imaginative
+thinker,--one whose reflections took the shape of ideal pictures. This,
+as Shakespeare would have called it, is the right complexion of the
+lyric poet.
+
+His exchequer suffered however in the earlier part of his career on
+account of his principles. All the anti-slavery people suffered for
+their convictions in one way or another--just as the slave-holders
+suffered for theirs, in the end. Garrison was mobbed: Phillips, who
+might have amassed wealth, like Phocian, died in poverty: Sumner was
+murderously assaulted: John Brown, lost his life; and George L. Stearns,
+died of unresting toil during the war, and wrecked his fortune: but
+Whittier represented the heart of the American people, and after the
+publication of "Barbara Frietchie" the tide turned in his favor.
+"Snow-bound" had an extensive sale, and brought him in nearly
+ten-thousand dollars. "The Tent on the Beach" paid almost as well; and
+his collection of English and American poetry was a fortunate hit, on
+the part of his publishers, which Whittier's modest nature would not
+otherwise have thought of; so that he was well provided for, in old age,
+and could even have made a journey around the world like General Grant,
+if he had been so disposed.
+
+[Illustration: WHITTIER IN HIS SEVENTY-SECOND YEAR. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY
+THOMPSON.]
+
+His popularity soon attracted the attention of politicians who hoped to
+make use of it for the good of the country. He was too influential a
+member of the community to be overlooked. Senator Wilson, Speaker
+Colfax, Governor Claflin and others called upon him, congratulated him
+on the fortunate turn of affairs, and hoped they might be of service to
+him. Quakers have always had a good reputation for shrewdness, and
+Whittier was not lacking in that quality. He understood perfectly well
+what they wanted of him, and was a good deal amused by it, but he liked
+to converse with vigorous and experienced men, and could obtain from
+them a better understanding of affairs than was to be found in the
+newspaper. His letters on politics were always able and interesting; and
+he sometimes adopted exactly the opposite view from what his advisors
+would have liked to have him. It is true he formerly dedicated a poem to
+Colfax as an ideal statesman, but perhaps Whittier was more nearly right
+in this than public opinion has been, since that time.
+
+He disliked being lionized and was rarely seen in public. The adoration
+of young women was of all things the most disagreeable to him. He
+created quite a sensation by appearing at one of Emerson's noon-day
+lectures in May, 1866, and as soon as the discourse was over he became
+the centre of a small circle of celebrities. Yet he seemed even more
+glad to meet his humbler and more familiar friends. He said, "If I come
+again, it will be to hear that man," referring to Wendell Phillips, who
+stood a little at one side watching Emerson and Whittier with the air of
+an art critic.
+
+He said of the Boston Radical Club (which nevertheless contained the
+best intellectual life of its time) that he feared the saints went there
+not only to worship but to be worshipped:--a large part of the audience
+consisting of pretty young women. Yet he finally went there himself, for
+the sake of an interview with the most distinguished of his admirers,
+the Emperor of Brazil. This magnificent monarch, who may even be called
+the Marcus Aurelius of modern times, openly declared that there was
+nothing in North America that he wished so much to see as the poet
+Whittier. A meeting was accordingly arranged, and no sooner had Dom
+Pedro caught sight of Whittier (whom he recognized from the pictures he
+possessed) than he hastened to embrace him, and would certainly have
+kissed the astonished Quaker, after the fashion that prevails among the
+Latin races, if Whittier had permitted him the least opportunity. After
+paying his compliments in a handsome manner to the assembled company the
+Emperor took his leave again, and insisted on carrying off the poet with
+him. One might like to know what sort of a conversation two such
+different and almost antipodal friends had together for that one hour in
+a lifetime.
+
+The climate of the Isles of Shoals exactly suited Whittier's dreamy
+nature. He would wander from the piazza into the billiard-room, and back
+again to the piazza, and then look at the sea for an hour or more
+without speaking a word to any one. Indeed he talked very little even
+with those who knew him best, and strangers had no chance at all with
+him. There was something respectful in the hush of conversation whenever
+he approached a group of people who were talking loudly or laughing. I
+never met him walking over the rocks, or knew of his going out on the
+water either for sailing or fishing. One foggy evening when some of us
+were playing a game of writing verses in the hotel parlor, one of the
+ladies seeing Whittier alone, in a corner of the room, boldly invited
+him to join us, which he did with a very pleasant alacrity. It was
+noticed however that his compositions were not any better or even so
+good as those of the others, and we suspected that he took pains not to
+excel the rest of the company.
+
+Yet he could talk in a vigorous manner when the right occasion presented
+itself. There was a certain Colonel Greene who frequented Appledore in
+those years: a high-minded socialistic thinker, who had resigned a
+commission in the United States Army, during the war with the Florida
+Indians, on account of the government's breach of faith with Osceola. He
+was a born controversialist and always ready to discuss any subject in
+politics, religion or philosophy. John Weiss was not far behind him in
+this line, and delighted to set him going for the benefit of those who
+liked to hear. No sea air was sufficiently narcotic to dull the edge of
+Colonel Greene's argument. When these two were once discussing a book on
+pantheism, which had lately been published by Rev. J. W. Manning of the
+Old South Church, Whittier, who had been walking to and fro on the
+piazza just within reach of their voices, finally, came up and said: "I
+told Manning that the one kind of pantheist he had omitted from his
+book, was the orthodox pantheist. For that matter, I believe there are
+pantheists in every religious sect. They start like Professor Parsons
+the Swedenborgian, with the proposition that as even God could not make
+the universe out of nothing, he must have made it out of Himself; and
+you cannot argue them away from it. At the same time, they will insist
+that they are perfectly good Christians." He then cited several
+instances of this which had come under his own observation: and Colonel
+Greene also remembered some cases; but this was the only time we knew
+Whittier to speak on a religious question.
+
+Longfellow, Tennyson and Whittier were the three most popular poets of
+the latter part of the present century, and it is difficult to determine
+which of them may be considered the best. While neither of them rises to
+the very highest rank, each has excellences peculiarly his own. Whittier
+does not equal the others in their graceful diction and rare metrical
+skill, but he surpasses them in earnestness and intensity. He paints in
+deeper colors, and with a firmer touch. The longer and more ambitious
+poems of Tennyson and Longfellow are interesting, but they lack the
+strength, vigor and greatness of design which are inseparable from all
+the noblest works of art.
+
+They are written to please, rather than to educate the human race. Their
+shorter pieces are the best ones. Whittier's chief excellence is to be
+found in his ballads; in the "Wreck at Rivermouth," "Skipper Ireson,"
+"The Relief of Lucknow," "Barbara Frietchie" and others. Nothing is more
+rare than a fine ballad. Coleridge's ballad of the "Ancient Mariner" is
+probably the greatest English poem written since Milton's time, and
+there are many old English ballads which are nearly equal to it. The
+ballad of "Mary Garvin," simply as a work of art, takes the first place
+among Longfellow's poems. Tennyson and Whittier both tried their hands
+on the siege of Lucknow, and Whittier carried off the prize.
+
+His verses are always sensible, healthy and elevating. Complaint has
+been made that they are too much haunted by the spectre of his
+schoolmate; but without saying this, we could wish that such an immature
+affection had been replaced afterwards by a deeper and more manly
+attachment. He was assisted in the arrangement of his collection of
+poetry (which Lowell and other good critics considered the best we have)
+by his poetical friend Miss Lucy Larcom, and this was chiefly no doubt
+that she might receive a share of the profits from its publication. The
+sonnets from Shakespeare and many others, were of her selection. The art
+of poetry came so naturally to Whittier, that he said he could not
+understand why every one did not write it as well as or better than he
+could.
+
+At the time of Hawthorne's last visit to the Isles of Shoals in company
+with his friend the ex-President, there was also a party of business men
+from Concord, New Hampshire, who tried to make his acquaintance, but
+without much success. Afterwards we went to Portsmouth with the same
+party and were becalmed on the way for nearly four hours, so that we had
+an excellent chance to become acquainted with our fellow passengers. One
+of them said:--"Nathaniel Hawthorne was a very reserved man. There's
+Franklin Pierce: he has been President of the United States, and yet
+anyone can go up and speak to him; but we found Hawthorne very
+different." Of course we had to tell this on our return, and Whittier
+laughed heartily. Mrs. Thaxter said, "Reserved was no word for it;" and
+Whittier added, "Hawthorne was a strange puzzle. I never felt quite sure
+whether I knew him or not. He never seemed to be doing anything, and yet
+he did not like to be disturbed at it." He disliked to hear people say
+that Hawthorne wrote the life of General Pierce for the sake of a
+government office. They were old college friends, and without doubt he
+would have obtained the office whether he wrote it or not. If he wished
+to live in Italy Buchanan should have given him the consulship of
+Leghorn or Venice. He looked on "Septimus Felton" as a failure, and
+thought that probably Hawthorne considered it so himself. He thought it
+not unlikely that Hawthorne would outlive every other writer of his
+time.
+
+At another time he came to me and said, "What deep problems of
+government are you thinking over there all by yourself?" I laughed and
+told him that I was thinking of Rome; and how much that little patch of
+water looked like the piece of sea in Guido's Aurora; but I was glad to
+have him speak of politics, for the present condition of affairs was
+such as to give every serious man anxiety for the moral welfare of the
+country.
+
+"Indeed it is," he replied. "What we read in the newspapers is bad
+enough; but I have information from private sources which represents
+matters as being even worse than is generally supposed." [Footnote: This
+was in 1875.]
+
+"Perhaps," I said, "it is one of those evils which will cure itself
+after a certain time."
+
+"It will, no doubt," he answered, "bring about a strong reaction against
+the Republican party; but even that is a thing to be deplored. Meanwhile
+what an example we present to the monarchical governments of Europe!"
+
+[Illustration: THE MERRIMAC RIVER, NEAR AMESBURY, BY MOONLIGHT.]
+
+"I suppose," said I, "that it is one of the consequences of our civil
+war."
+
+"Yes," said he, "I am ready to agree to that,--a long and protracted war
+must have a hardening and brutalizing influence on the community even
+when it is fought for a good cause."
+
+"Did not Hawthorne," I said, "predict something like this in an article
+in the 'Atlantic Monthly'?"
+
+"Yes," he replied, "I remember that article,--it was just a year before
+his death,--and there was a good deal of wisdom in it. Some of my
+friends are inclined to think that woman suffrage would improve the
+present condition of politics, but I do not feel sure that it would."
+
+"I have no doubt it would do good if only the sensible women were
+permitted to vote," I said. "My faith is that what we need to purify
+politics in America is not an extension, but a restriction of the
+suffrage. It is easy to see, for instance, how favorably that would work
+in the city of New York, which with its custom-house is now the heaviest
+burden we have to bear."
+
+What Whittier thought of this idea I never knew; he seemed to be
+reflecting on it when the ladies of his party came in sight and we both
+rose to meet them.
+
+Though he was not fond of travelling, he liked to read books of travel;
+and once, according to his doctor's advice, spent a winter at Amesbury
+reading everything of the kind that he could hear of and obtain. He
+spoke of Wilson's book on the Himalaya Mountains as the most interesting
+of them. "It seems as if there was nothing that a cultivated Englishman
+could not and would not go through with," he said. I mentioned Humboldt.
+"Yes," he replied, "Humboldt certainly accomplished wonderful things,
+but the Germans are generally more cautious and prudent. A cultivated
+Englishman seems to be equal to anything." Among modern travellers
+however, Vambery, the Hungarian, takes the highest rank.
+
+At a later period, I was journeying through the White Mountains and
+reached West Ossipee one afternoon tired with travelling and weary from
+a sleepless night. I hastened to my room and threw myself upon the bed,
+but had scarcely closed my eyes when there was a knock at the door and
+there stood Mr. Whittier,--the pleasantest of all apparitions for some
+years. The next few days were like dwelling in the islands of the blest,
+compared with the ordinary current of human life. It was a holiday
+within a holiday. He was surrounded by charming ladies, among them his
+niece Mrs. Caldwell, and as it was late in the season we had the Bear
+Camp House--a place that now ought to be historic--almost to ourselves.
+
+We had never known Whittier to be so friendly and companionable before.
+We walked under the elms, talked about books, and our absent friends,
+gazed at the mountains, and admired the sunsets which just at that time
+were remarkably brilliant. There was one, I remember, composed largely
+of luminous clouds, and a general translucent effect of the atmosphere,
+which Whittier could not remember he had ever seen the like of. He said,
+"I don't believe Emerson loves Nature any better than I do, though he
+has written more about it." There was a delightful lady in the party who
+told us pleasant and amusing stories of New York social life. She could
+go on in this way for a very good length of time, and Whittier would
+listen to her without saying a word, exactly as if she were reading to
+him.
+
+The magnates of West Ossipee had named a mountain near Chocorua for
+Whittier and challenged him to climb to the top of it and christen it
+properly with a bottle of champagne, but he said No, that his days for
+climbing were over; that he thought mountains belonged to the whole
+country and he had no desire to appropriate any of them. He liked such
+names as Chocorua, Katahdin and Wachusett much better for mountains than
+Washington and Adams. The Bear Camp House is a rare sort of a tasteful
+country inn, and its proprietor was of course very proud of his
+distinguished guest, but at the same time sufficiently dignified to
+prevent this from being too apparent. It was there Whittier spent the
+last summers of his life, as long as he was able to leave his own home.
+
+In his old age he enjoyed the celebrity of his more vigorous years as if
+it had been the fame of a constant friend; but I think he enjoyed still
+more the consciousness of having succeeded in living through life as he
+intended to do in the beginning.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sketches from Concord and Appledore
+by Frank Preston Stearns
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONCORD AND APPLEDORE ***
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