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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Complete Prose Works, by Walt Whitman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Complete Prose Works
+       Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy
+
+Author: Walt Whitman
+
+
+Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8813]
+This file was first posted on August 22, 2003
+Last Updated: June 2, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMPLETE PROSE WORKS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Marc D'Hooghe and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+COMPLETE PROSE WORKS
+
+Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Good Bye My Fancy
+
+By Walt Whitman
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+SPECIMEN DAYS
+
+  A Happy Hour's Command
+  Answer to an Insisting Friend
+  Genealogy--Van Velsor and Whitman
+  The Old Whitman and Van Velsor Cemeteries
+  The Maternal Homestead
+  Two Old Family Interiors
+  Paumanok, and my Life on it as Child and Young Man
+  My First Reading--Lafayette
+  Printing Office--Old Brooklyn
+  Growth--Health--Work
+  My Passion for Ferries
+  Broadway Sights
+  Omnibus Jaunts and Drivers
+  Plays and Operas too
+  Through Eight Years
+  Sources of Character--Results--1860
+  Opening of the Secession War
+  National Uprising and Volunteering
+  Contemptuous Feeling
+  Battle of Bull Run, July, 1861
+  The Stupor Passes--Something Else Begins
+  Down at the Front
+  After First Fredericksburg
+  Back to Washington
+  Fifty Hours Left Wounded on the Field
+  Hospital Scenes and Persons
+  Patent-Office Hospital
+  The White House by Moonlight
+  An Army Hospital Ward
+  A Connecticut Case
+  Two Brooklyn Boys
+  A Secesh Brave
+  The Wounded from Chancellorsville
+  A Night Battle over a Week Since
+  Unnamed Remains the Bravest Soldier
+  Some Specimen Cases
+  My Preparations for Visits
+  Ambulance Processions
+  Bad Wounds--the Young
+  The Most Inspiriting of all War's Shows
+  Battle of Gettysburg
+  A Cavalry Camp
+  A New York Soldier
+  Home-Made Music
+  Abraham Lincoln
+  Heated Term
+  Soldiers and Talks
+  Death of a Wisconsin Officer
+  Hospitals Ensemble
+  A Silent Night Ramble
+  Spiritual Characters among the Soldiers
+  Cattle Droves about Washington
+  Hospital Perplexity
+  Down at the Front
+  Paying the Bounties
+  Rumors, Changes, Etc.
+  Virginia
+  Summer of 1864
+  A New Army Organization fit for America
+  Death of a Hero
+  Hospital Scenes--Incidents
+  A Yankee Soldier
+  Union Prisoners South
+  Deserters
+  A Glimpse of War's Hell-Scenes
+  Gifts--Money--Discrimination
+  Items from My Note Books
+  A Case from Second Bull Run
+  Army Surgeons--Aid Deficiencies
+  The Blue Everywhere
+  A Model Hospital
+  Boys in the Army
+  Burial of a Lady Nurse
+  Female Nurses for Soldiers
+  Southern Escapees
+  The Capitol by Gas-Light
+  The Inauguration
+  Attitude of Foreign Governments During the War
+  The Weather--Does it Sympathize with These Times?
+  Inauguration Ball
+  Scene at the Capitol
+  A Yankee Antique
+  Wounds and Diseases
+  Death of President Lincoln
+  Sherman's Army Jubilation--its Sudden Stoppage
+  No Good Portrait of Lincoln
+  Releas'd Union Prisoners from South
+  Death of a Pennsylvania Soldier
+  The Armies Returning
+  The Grand Review
+  Western Soldiers
+  A Soldier on Lincoln
+  Two Brothers, one South, one North
+  Some Sad Cases Yet
+  Calhoun's Real Monument
+  Hospitals Closing
+  Typical Soldiers
+  "Convulsiveness"
+  Three Years Summ'd up
+  The Million Dead, too, Summ'd up
+  The Real War will never get in the Books
+  An Interregnum Paragraph
+  New Themes Enter'd Upon
+  Entering a Long Farm-Lane
+  To the Spring and Brook
+  An Early Summer Reveille
+  Birds Migrating at Midnight
+  Bumble-Bees
+  Cedar-Apples
+  Summer Sights and Indolences
+  Sundown Perfume--Quail-Notes--the Hermit Thrush
+  A July Afternoon by the Pond
+  Locusts and Katy-Dids
+  The Lesson of a Tree
+  Autumn Side-Bits
+  The Sky--Days and Nights--Happiness
+  Colors--A Contrast
+  November 8, '76
+  Crows and Crows
+  A Winter-Day on the Sea-Beach
+  Sea-Shore Fancies
+  In Memory of Thomas Paine
+  A Two Hours' Ice-Sail
+  Spring Overtures--Recreations
+  One of the Human Kinks
+  An Afternoon Scene
+  The Gates Opening
+  The Common Earth, the Soil
+  Birds and Birds and Birds
+  Full-Starr'd Nights
+  Mulleins and Mulleins
+  Distant Sounds
+  A Sun-Bath--Nakedness
+  The Oaks and I
+  A Quintette
+  The First Frost--Mems
+  Three Young Men's Deaths
+  February Days
+  A Meadow Lark
+  Sundown Lights
+  Thoughts Under an Oak--A Dream
+  Clover and Hay Perfume
+  An Unknown
+  Bird Whistling
+  Horse-Mint
+  Three of Us
+  Death of William Cullen Bryant
+  Jaunt up the Hudson
+  Happiness and Raspberries
+  A Specimen Tramp Family
+  Manhattan from the Bay
+  Human and Heroic New York
+  Hours for the Soul
+  Straw-Color'd and other Psyches
+  A Night Remembrance
+  Wild Flowers
+  A Civility Too Long Neglected
+  Delaware River--Days and Nights
+  Scenes on Ferry and River--Last Winter's Nights
+  The First Spring Day on Chestnut Street
+  Up the Hudson to Ulster County
+  Days at J.B.'s--Turf Fires--Spring Songs
+  Meeting a Hermit
+  An Ulster County Waterfall
+  Walter Dumont and his Medal
+  Hudson River Sights
+  Two City Areas Certain Hours
+  Central Park Walks and Talks
+  A Fine Afternoon, 4 to 6
+  Departing of the Big Steamers
+  Two Hours on the Minnesota
+  Mature Summer Days and Night
+  Exposition Building--New City Hall--River-Trip
+  Swallows on the River
+  Begin a Long Jaunt West
+  In the Sleeper
+  Missouri State
+  Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas
+  The Prairies--(and an Undeliver'd Speech)
+  On to Denver--A Frontier Incident
+  An Hour on Kenosha Summit
+  An Egotistical "Find"
+  New Scenes--New Joys
+  Steam-Power, Telegraphs, Etc.
+  America's Back-Bone
+  The Parks
+  Art Features
+  Denver Impressions
+  I Turn South and then East Again
+  Unfulfill'd Wants--the Arkansas River
+  A Silent Little Follower--the Coreopsis
+  The Prairies and Great Plains in Poetry
+  The Spanish Peaks--Evening on the Plains
+  America's Characteristic Landscape
+  Earth's Most Important Stream
+  Prairie Analogies--the Tree Question
+  Mississippi Valley Literature
+  An Interviewer's Item
+  The Women of the West
+  The Silent General
+  President Hayes's Speeches
+  St. Louis Memoranda
+  Nights on the Mississippi
+  Upon our Own Land
+  Edgar Poe's Significance
+  Beethoven's Septette
+  A Hint of Wild Nature
+  Loafing in the Woods
+  A Contralto Voice
+  Seeing Niagara to Advantage
+  Jaunting to Canada
+  Sunday with the Insane
+  Reminiscence of Elias Hicks
+  Grand Native Growth
+  A Zollverein between the U. S. and Canada
+  The St. Lawrence Line
+  The Savage Saguenay
+  Capes Eternity and Trinity
+  Chicoutimi, and Ha-ha Bay
+  The Inhabitants--Good Living
+  Cedar-Plums Like--Names
+  Death of Thomas Carlyle
+  Carlyle from American Points of View
+  A Couple of Old Friends--A Coleridge Bit
+  A Week's Visit to Boston
+  The Boston of To-Day
+  My Tribute to Four Poets
+  Millet's Pictures--Last Items
+  Birds--and a Caution
+  Samples of my Common-Place Book
+  My Native Sand and Salt Once More
+  Hot Weather New York
+  "Ouster's Last Rally"
+  Some Old Acquaintances--Memories
+  A Discovery of Old Age
+  A Visit, at the Last, to R. W. Emerson
+  Other Concord Notations
+  Boston Common--More of Emerson
+  An Ossianic Night--Dearest Friends
+  Only a New Ferry Boat
+  Death of Longfellow
+  Starting Newspapers
+  The Great Unrest of which We are Part
+  By Emerson's Grave
+  At Present Writing--Personal
+  After Trying a Certain Book
+  Final Confessions--Literary Tests
+  Nature and Democracy--Morality
+
+
+COLLECT
+
+ONE OR TWO INDEX ITEMS
+
+DEMOCRATIC VISTAS
+
+ORIGINS OF ATTEMPTED SECESSION
+
+PREFACES TO "LEAVES OF GRASS"
+
+  Preface, 1855, to first issue of "Leaves of Grass"
+  Preface, 1872, to "As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free"
+  Preface, 1876, to L. of G. and "Two Rivulets"
+
+POETRY TO-DAY IN AMERICA--SHAKESPEARE--THE FUTURE
+
+A MEMORANDUM AT A VENTURE
+
+DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
+
+TWO LETTERS
+
+NOTES LEFT OVER
+
+  Nationality (and Yet)
+  Emerson's Books (the Shadows of Them)
+  Ventures, on an Old Theme
+  British Literature
+  Darwinism (then Furthermore)
+  "Society"
+  The Tramp and Strike Questions
+  Democracy in the New World
+  Foundation Stages--then Others
+  General Suffrage, Elections, Etc.
+  Who Gets the Plunder?
+  Friendship (the Real Article)
+  Lacks and Wants Yet
+  Rulers Strictly Out of the Masses
+  Monuments--the Past and Present
+  Little or Nothing New After All
+  A Lincoln Reminiscence
+  Freedom
+  Book-Classes-America's Literature
+  Our Real Culmination
+  An American Problem
+  The Last Collective Compaction
+
+PIECES IN EARLY YOUTH
+
+  Dough Face Song
+  Death in the School-Room
+  One Wicked Impulse
+  The Last Loyalist
+  Wild Frank's Return
+  The Boy Lover
+  The Child and the Profligate
+  Lingave's Temptation
+  Little Jane
+  Dumb Kate
+  Talk to an Art Union
+  Blood-Money
+  Wounded in the House of Friends
+  Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight
+
+
+NOVEMBER BOUGHS
+
+OUR EMINENT VISITORS, Past, Present and Future
+
+THE BIBLE AS POETRY
+
+FATHER TAYLOR (AND ORATORY)
+
+THE SPANISH ELEMENT IN OUR NATIONALITY
+
+WHAT LURKS BEHIND SHAKSPERE'S HISTORICAL PLAYS?
+
+A THOUGHT ON SHAKSPERE
+
+ROBERT BURNS AS POET AND PERSON
+
+A WORD ABOUT TENNYSON
+
+SLANG IN AMERICA
+
+AN INDIAN BUREAU REMINISCENCE
+
+SOME DIARY NOTES AT RANDOM
+
+  Negro Slaves in New York
+  Canada Nights
+  Country Days and Nights
+  Central Park Notes
+  Plate Glass Notes
+
+SOME WAR MEMORANDA
+
+  Washington Street Scenes
+  The 195th Pennsylvania
+  Left-hand Writing by Soldiers
+  Central Virginia in '64
+  Paying the First Color'd Troops
+
+FIVE THOUSAND POEMS
+
+THE OLD BOWERY
+
+NOTES TO LATE ENGLISH BOOKS
+
+  Preface to Reader in British Islands
+  Additional Note, 1887
+  Preface to English Edition "Democratic Vistas"
+
+ABRAHAM LINCOLN
+
+NEW ORLEANS IN 1848
+
+SMALL MEMORANDA
+
+  Attorney General's Office, 1865
+  A Glint Inside of Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet Appointments
+  Note to a Friend
+  Written Impromptu in an Album
+  The Place Gratitude fills in a Fine Character
+
+LAST OF THE WAR CASES
+
+ELIAS HICKS, Notes (such as they are)
+
+  George Fox and Shakspere
+
+GOOD-BYE MY FANCY
+
+AN OLD MAN'S REJOINDER
+
+OLD POETS
+
+  Ship Ahoy
+  For Queen Victoria's Birthday
+
+AMERICAN NATIONAL LITERATURE
+
+GATHERING THE CORN
+
+A DEATH BOUQUET
+
+SOME LAGGARDS YET
+
+  The Perfect Human Voice
+  Shakspere for America
+  "Unassailed Renown"
+  Inscription for a Little Book on Giordano Bruno
+  Splinters
+  Health (Old Style)
+  Gay-heartedness
+  As in a Swoon
+  L. of G.
+  After the Argument
+  For Us Two, Reader Dear
+
+
+MEMORANDA
+
+  A World's Show
+  New York--the Bay--the Old Name
+  A Sick Spell
+  To be Present Only
+  "Intestinal Agitation"
+  "Walt Whitman's Last 'Public'"
+  Ingersoll's Speech
+  Feeling Fairly
+  Old Brooklyn Days
+  Two Questions
+  Preface to a Volume
+  An Engineer's Obituary
+  Old Actors, Singers, Shows, Etc., in New York
+  Some Personal and Old Age Jottings
+  Out in the Open Again
+  America's Bulk Average
+  Last Saved Items
+
+WALT WHITMAN'S LAST
+
+
+
+
+SPECIMEN DAYS
+
+
+
+
+A HAPPY HOUR'S COMMAND
+
+_Down in the Woods, July 2d, 1882_.-If I do it at all I must delay no
+longer. Incongruous and full of skips and jumps as is that huddle of
+diary-jottings, war-memoranda of 1862-'65, Nature-notes of 1877-'81,
+with Western and Canadian observations afterwards, all bundled up and
+tied by a big string, the resolution and indeed mandate comes to me this
+day, this hour,--(and what a day! What an hour just passing! the luxury
+of riant grass and blowing breeze, with all the shows of sun and sky and
+perfect temperature, never before so filling me, body and soul),--to
+go home, untie the bundle, reel out diary-scraps and memoranda, just as
+they are, large or small, one after another, into print-pages,[1]
+and let the melange's lackings and wants of connection take care of
+themselves. It will illustrate one phase of humanity anyhow; how few of
+life's days and hours (and they not by relative value or proportion, but
+by chance) are ever noted. Probably another point, too, how we give long
+preparations for some object, planning and delving and fashioning, and
+then, when the actual hour for doing arrives, find ourselves still quite
+unprepared, and tumble the thing together, letting hurry and crudeness
+tell the story better than fine work. At any rate I obey my happy
+hour's command, which seems curiously imperative. May be, if I don't
+do anything else, I shall send out the most wayward, spontaneous,
+fragmentary book ever printed.
+
+
+Note:
+
+[1] The pages from 1 to 15 are nearly verbatim an off-hand letter of
+mine in January, 1882, to an insisting friend. Following, I give some
+gloomy experiences. The war of attempted secession has, of course, been
+the distinguishing event of my time. I commenced at the close of 1862,
+and continued steadily through '63, '64 and '65, to visit the sick
+and wounded of the army, both on the field and in the hospitals in and
+around Washington city. From the first I kept little note-books
+for impromptu jottings in pencil to refresh my memory of names and
+circumstances, and what was specially wanted, &c. In these, I brief'd
+cases, persons, sights, occurrences in camp, by the bed-side, and
+not seldom by the corpses of the dead. Some were scratch'd down from
+narratives I heard and itemized while watching, or waiting, or tending
+somebody amid those scenes. I have dozens of such little note-books
+left, forming a special history of those years, for myself alone, full
+of associations never to be possibly said or sung. I wish I could convey
+to the reader the associations that attach to these soil'd and creas'd
+livraisons, each composed of a sheet or two of paper, folded small to
+carry in the pocket, and fasten'd with a pin. I leave them just as I
+threw them by after the war, blotch'd here and there with more than one
+blood-stain, hurriedly written, sometimes at the clinique, not seldom
+amid the excitement of uncertainty, or defeat, or of action, or getting
+ready for it, or a march. Most of the pages from 20 to 75 are verbatim
+copies of those lurid and blood-smuch'd little notebooks.
+
+Very different are most of the memoranda that follow. Some time after
+the war ended I had a paralytic stroke, which prostrated me for several
+years. In 1876 I began to get over the worst of it. From this date,
+portions of several seasons, especially summers, I spent at a secluded
+haunt down in Camden county, New Jersey--Timber creek, quite a little
+river (it enters from the great Delaware, twelve miles away)--with
+primitive solitudes, winding stream, recluse and woody banks,
+sweet-feeding springs, and all the charms that birds, grass,
+wild-flowers, rabbits and squirrels, old oaks, walnut trees, &c., can
+bring. Through these times, and on these spots, the diary from page 76
+onward was mostly written.
+
+The COLLECT afterwards gathers up the odds and ends of whatever pieces
+I can now lay hands on, written at various times past, and swoops all
+together like fish in a net.
+
+I suppose I publish and leave the whole gathering, first, from that
+eternal tendency to perpetuate and preserve which is behind all Nature,
+authors included; second, to symbolize two or three specimen interiors,
+personal and other, out of the myriads of my time, the middle range of
+the Nineteenth century in the New World; a strange, unloosen'd, wondrous
+time. But the book is probably without any definite purpose that can be
+told in a statement.
+
+
+ANSWER TO AN INSISTING FRIEND
+
+You ask for items, details of my early life--of genealogy and
+parentage, particularly of the women of my ancestry, and of its far-back
+Netherlands stock on the maternal side--of the region where I was
+born and raised, and my mother and father before me, and theirs before
+them--with a word about Brooklyn and New York cities, the times I lived
+there as lad and young man. You say you want to get at these details
+mainly as the go-befores and embryons of "Leaves of Grass." Very good;
+you shall have at least some specimens of them all. I have often thought
+of the meaning of such things--that one can only encompass and complete
+matters of that kind by 'exploring behind, perhaps very far behind,
+themselves directly, and so into their genesis, antecedents, and
+cumulative stages. Then as luck would have it, I lately whiled away the
+tedium of a week's half-sickness and confinement, by collating these
+very items for another (yet unfulfilled, probably abandon'd,) purpose;
+and if you will be satisfied with them, authentic in date-occurrence and
+fact simply, and told my own way, garrulous-like, here they are. I shall
+not hesitate to make extracts, for I catch at anything to save labor;
+but those will be the best versions of what I want to convey.
+
+
+GENEALOGY--VAN VELSOR AND WHITMAN
+
+The later years of the last century found the Van Velsor family, my
+mother's side, living on their own farm at Cold Spring, Long Island, New
+York State, near the eastern edge of Queen's county, about a mile from
+the harbor.[2] My father's side--probably the fifth generation from the
+first English arrivals in New England--were at the same time farmers
+on their own land--(and a fine domain it was, 500 acres, all good soil,
+gently sloping east and south, about one-tenth woods, plenty of grand
+old trees,) two or three miles off, at West Hills, Suffolk county. The
+Whitman name in the Eastern States, and so branch and South, starts
+undoubtedly from one John Whitman, born 1602, in Old England, where he
+grew up, married, and his eldest son was born in 1629. He came over in
+the "True Love" in 1640 to America, and lived in Weymouth, Mass., which
+place became the mother-hive of the New-Englanders of the name; he died
+in 1692. His brother, Rev. Zechariah Whitman, also came over in the
+"True Love," either at that time or soon after, and lived at Milford,
+Conn. A son of this Zechariah, named Joseph, migrated to Huntington,
+Long Island, and permanently settled there. Savage's "Genealogical
+Dictionary" (vol. iv, p. 524) gets the Whitman family establish'd at
+Huntington, per this Joseph, before 1664. It is quite certain that from
+that beginning, and from Joseph, the West Hill Whitmans, and all others
+in Suffolk county, have since radiated, myself among the number. John
+and Zechariah both went to England and back again divers times; they
+had large families, and several of their children were born in the old
+country. We hear of the father of John and Zechariah, Abijah Whitman,
+who goes over into the 1500's, but we know little about him, except that
+he also was for some time in America.
+
+These old pedigree-reminiscences come up to me vividly from a visit I
+made not long since (in my 63d year) to West Hills, and to the burial
+grounds of my ancestry, both sides. I extract from notes of that visit,
+written there and then:
+
+
+Note:
+
+[2] Long Island was settled first on the west end by the Dutch from
+Holland, then on the east end by the English--the dividing line of the
+two nationalities being a little west of Huntington where my father's
+folks lived, and where I was born.
+
+
+THE OLD WHITMAN AND VAN VELSOR CEMETERIES
+
+_July 29, 1881_.--After more than forty years' absence, (except a brief
+visit, to take my father there once more, two years before he died,)
+went down Long Island on a week' s jaunt to the place where I was born,
+thirty miles from New York city. Rode around the old familiar spots,
+viewing and pondering and dwelling long upon them, every-thing coming
+back to me. Went to the old Whitman homestead on the upland and took a
+view eastward, inclining south, over the broad and beautiful farm lands
+of my grandfather (1780,) and my father. There was the new house (1810,)
+the big oak a hundred and fifty or two hundred years old; there
+the well, the sloping kitchen-garden, and a little way off even the
+well-kept remains of the dwelling of my great-grandfather (1750-'60)
+still standing, with its mighty timbers and low ceilings. Near by, a
+stately grove of tall, vigorous black-walnuts, beautiful, Apollo-like,
+the sons or grandsons, no doubt, of black-walnuts during or before 1776.
+On the other side of the road spread the famous apple orchard, over
+twenty acres, the trees planted by hands long mouldering in the grave
+(my uncle Jesse's,) but quite many of them evidently capable of throwing
+out their annual blossoms and fruit yet.
+
+I now write these lines seated on an old grave (doubtless of a century
+since at least) on the burial hill of the Whitmans of many generations.
+Fifty or more graves are quite plainly traceable, and as many more
+decay'd out of all form--depress'd mounds, crumbled and broken stones,
+cover'd with moss--the gray and sterile hill, the clumps of chestnuts
+outside, the silence, just varied by the soughing wind. There is
+always the deepest eloquence of sermon or poem in any of these ancient
+graveyards of which Long Island has so many; so what must this one have
+been to me? My whole family history, with its succession of links,
+from the first settlement down to date, told here--three centuries
+concentrate on this sterile acre.
+
+The next day, July 30, I devoted to the maternal locality, and if
+possible was still more penetrated and impress'd. I write this paragraph
+on the burial hul of the Van Velsors, near Cold Spring, the most
+significant depository of the dead that could be imagin'd, without the
+slightest help from art, but far ahead of it, soil sterile, a mostly
+bare plateau-flat of half an acre, the top of a hill, brush and well
+grown trees and dense woods bordering all around, very primi-tive,
+secluded, no visitors, no road (you cannot drive here, you have to bring
+the dead on foot, and follow on foot.) Two or three-score graves quite
+plain; as many more almost rubb'd out. My grandfather Cornelius and my
+grandmother Amy (Naomi) and numerous relatives nearer or remoter, on
+my mother's side, lie buried here. The scene as I stood or sat, the
+delicate and wild odor of the woods, a slightly drizzling rain, the
+emotional atmosphere of the place, and the inferr'd reminiscences, were
+fitting accompaniments.
+
+
+THE MATERNAL HOMESTEAD
+
+I went down from this ancient grave place eighty or ninety rods to the
+site of the Van Velsor homestead, where my mother was born (1795,)
+and where every spot had been familiar to me as a child and youth
+(1825-'40.) Then stood there a long rambling, dark-gray, shingle-sided
+house, with sheds, pens, a great barn, and much open road-space. Now of
+all those not a vestige left; all had been pull'd down, erased, and the
+plough and harrow pass'd over foundations, road-spaces and everything,
+for many summers; fenced in at present, and grain and clover growing
+like any other fine fields. Only a big hole from the cellar, with some
+little heaps of broken stone, green with grass and weeds, identified
+the place. Even the copious old brook and spring seem'd to have mostly
+dwindled away. The whole scene, with what it arous'd, memories of
+my young days there half a century ago, the vast kitchen and ample
+fireplace and the sitting-room adjoining, the plain furniture, the
+meals, the house full of merry people, my grandmother Amy's sweet old
+face in its Quaker cap, my grandfather "the Major," jovial, red, stout,
+with sonorous voice and characteristic physiognomy, with the actual
+sights themselves, made the most pronounc'd half-day's experience of my
+whole jaunt.
+
+For there with all those wooded, hilly, healthy surroundings, my dearest
+mother, Louisa Van Velsor, grew up--(her mother, Amy Williams, of the
+Friends' or Quakers' denomination--the Williams family, seven sisters
+and one brother--the father and brother sailors, both of whom met their
+deaths at sea.) The Van Velsor people were noted for fine horses, which
+the men bred and train'd from blooded stock. My mother, as a young
+woman, was a daily and daring rider. As to the head of the family
+himself, the old race of the Netherlands, so deeply grafted on Manhattan
+island and in Kings and Queens counties, never yielded a more mark'd and
+full Americanized specimen than Major Cornelius Van Velsor.
+
+
+TWO OLD FAMILY INTERIORS
+
+Of the domestic and inside life of the middle of Long Island, at and
+just before that time, here are two samples:
+
+"The Whitmans, at the beginning of the present century, lived in a long
+story-and-a-half farm-house, hugely timber'd, which is still standing.
+A great smoke-canopied kitchen, with vast hearth and chimney, form'd one
+end of the house. The existence of slavery in New York at that time, and
+the possession by the family of some twelve or fifteen slaves, house and
+field servants, gave things quite a patriarchial look. The very young
+darkies could be seen, a swarm of them, toward sundown, in this kitchen,
+squatted in a circle on the floor, eating their supper of Indian pudding
+and milk. In the house, and in food and furniture, all was rude, but
+substantial. No carpets or stoves were known, and no coffee, and tea or
+sugar only for the women. Rousing wood fires gave both warmth and light
+on winter nights. Pork, poultry, beef, and all the ordinary vegetables
+and grains were plentiful. Cider was the men's common drink, and used at
+meals. The clothes were mainly homespun. Journeys were made by both men
+and women on horseback. Both sexes labor'd with their own hands-the men
+on the farm--the women in the house and around it. Books were scarce.
+The annual copy of the almanac was a treat, and was pored over through
+the long winter evenings. I must not forget to mention that both these
+families were near enough to the sea to behold it from the high places,
+and to hear in still hours the roar of the surf; the latter, after
+a storm, giving a peculiar sound at night. Then all hands, male and
+female, went down frequently on beach and bathing parties, and the men
+on practical expeditions for cutting salt hay, and for clamming and
+fishing."--_John Burroughs's_ NOTES.
+
+"The ancestors of Walt Whitman, on both the paternal and maternal
+sides, kept a good table, sustained the hospitalities, decorums, and an
+excellent social reputation in the county, and they were often of mark'd
+individuality. If space permitted, I should consider some of the men
+worthy special description; and still more some of the women. His
+great-grandmother on the paternal side, for instance, was a large
+swarthy woman, who lived to a very old age. She smoked tobacco, rode on
+horseback like a man, managed the most vicious horse, and, becoming
+a widow in later life, went forth every day over her farm-lands,
+frequently in the saddle, directing the labor of her slaves, in
+language in which, on exciting occasions, oaths were not spared. The
+two immediate grandmothers were, in the best sense, superior women. The
+maternal one (Amy Williams before marriage) was a Friend, or Quakeress,
+of sweet, sensible character, house-wifely proclivities, and deeply
+intuitive and spiritual. The other (Hannah Brush,) was an equally noble,
+perhaps stronger character, lived to be very old, had quite a family of
+sons, was a natural lady, was in early life a school-mistress, and had
+great solidity of mind. W. W. himself makes much of the women of his
+ancestry."--_The Same_.
+
+Out from these arrieres of persons and scenes, I was born May 31,
+1819. And now to dwell awhile on the locality itself--as the successive
+growth-stages of my infancy, childhood, youth and manhood were all
+pass'd on Long Island, which I sometimes feel as if I had incorporated.
+I roam'd, as boy and man, and have lived in nearly all parts, from
+Brooklyn to Montauk point.
+
+
+PAUMANOK, AND MY LIFE ON IT AS CHILD AND YOUNG MAN
+
+Worth fully and particularly investigating indeed this Paumanok, (to
+give the spot its aboriginal name[3],) stretching east through Kings,
+Queens and Suffolk counties, 120 miles altogether--on the north Long
+Island sound, a beautiful, varied and picturesque series of inlets,
+"necks" and sea-like expansions, for a hundred miles to Orient point.
+On the ocean side the great south bay dotted with countless hummocks,
+mostly small, some quite large, occasionally long bars of sand out two
+hundred rods to a mile-and-a-half from the shore. While now and then,
+as at Rockaway and far east along the Hamptons, the beach makes right
+on the island, the sea dashing up without intervention. Several
+light-houses on the shores east; a long history of wrecks tragedies,
+some even of late years. As a youngster, I was in the atmosphere and
+traditions of many of these wrecks--of one or two almost an observer.
+Off Hempstead beach for example, was the loss of the ship "Mexico" in
+1840, (alluded to in "the Sleepers" in L. of G.) And at Hampton, some
+years later, the destruction of the brig "Elizabeth," a fearful affair,
+in one of the worst winter gales, where Margaret Fuller went down, with
+her husband and child.
+
+Inside the outer bars or beach this south bay is everywhere
+comparatively shallow; of cold winters all thick ice on the surface.
+As a boy I often went forth with a chum or two, on those frozen fields,
+with hand-sled, axe and eel-spear, after messes of eels. We would cut
+holes in the ice, sometimes striking quite an eel-bonanza, and filling
+our baskets with great, fat, sweet, white-meated fellows. The scenes,
+the ice, drawing the hand-sled, cutting holes, spearing the eels, &c.,
+were of course just such fun as is dearest to boyhood. The shores of
+this bay, winter and summer, and my doings there in early life, are
+woven all through L. of G. One sport I was very fond of was to go on
+a bay-party in summer to gather sea-gull's eggs. (The gulls lay two or
+three eggs, more than half the size of hen's eggs, right on the sand,
+and leave the sun's heat to hatch them.)
+
+The eastern end of Long Island, the Peconic bay region, I knew quite
+well too--sail'd more than once around Shelter island, and down to
+Montauk--spent many an hour on Turtle hill by the old light-house, on
+the extreme point, looking out over the ceaseless roll of the Atlantic.
+I used to like to go down there and fraternize with the blue-fishers,
+or the annual squads of sea-bass takers. Sometimes, along Montauk
+peninsula, (it is some 15 miles long, and good grazing,) met the
+strange, unkempt, half-barbarous herdsmen, at that time living there
+entirely aloof from society or civilization, in charge, on those rich
+pasturages, of vast droves of horses, kine or sheep, own'd by farmers
+of the eastern towns. Sometimes, too, the few remaining Indians, or
+half-breeds, at that period left on Montauk peninsula, but now I believe
+altogether extinct.
+
+More in the middle of the island were the spreading Hempstead plains,
+then (1830-'40) quite prairie-like, open, uninhabited, rather sterile,
+cover'd with kill-calf and huckleberry bushes, yet plenty of fair
+pasture for the cattle, mostly milch-cows, who fed there by hundreds,
+even thousands, and at evening, (the plains too were own'd by the towns,
+and this was the use of them in common,) might be seen taking their way
+home, branching off regularly in the right places. I have often been out
+on the edges of these plains toward sundown, and can yet recall in
+fancy the interminable cow-processions, and hear the music of the tin or
+copper bells clanking far or near, and breathe the cool of the sweet and
+slightly aromatic evening air, and note the sunset.
+
+Through the same region of the island, but further east, extended wide
+central tracts of pine and scrub-oak, (charcoal was largely made here,)
+monotonous and sterile. But many a good day or half-day did I have,
+wandering through those solitary crossroads, inhaling the peculiar
+and wild aroma. Here, and all along the island and its shores, I spent
+intervals many years, all seasons, sometimes riding, sometimes boating,
+but generally afoot, (I was always then a good walker,) absorbing
+fields, shores, marine incidents, characters, the bay-men, farmers,
+pilots-always had a plentiful acquaintance with the latter, and with
+fishermen--went every summer on sailing trips--always liked the bare
+sea-beach, south side, and have some of my happiest hours on it to this
+day.
+
+As I write, the whole experience comes back to me after the lapse of
+forty and more years--the soothing rustle of the waves, and the saline
+smell--boyhood's times, the clam-digging, bare-foot, and with trowsers
+roll'd up--hauling down the creek--the perfume of the sedge-meadows--the
+hay-boat, and the chowder and fishing excursions;--or, of later years,
+little voyages down and out New York bay, in the pilot boats. Those same
+later years, also, while living in Brooklyn, (1836-'50) I went regularly
+every week in the mild seasons down to Coney Island, at that time a
+long, bare unfrequented shore, which I had all to myself, and where I
+loved, after bathing, to race up and down the hard sand, and declaim
+Homer or Shakspere to the surf and sea gulls by the hour. But I am
+getting ahead too rapidly, and must keep more in my traces.
+
+
+
+Note:
+
+[3] "Paumanok, (or Paumanake, or Paumanack, the Indian name of Long
+Island,) over a hundred miles long; shaped like a fish--plenty of sea
+shore, sandy, stormy, uninviting, the horizon boundless, the air too
+strong for invalids, the bays a wonderful resort for aquatic birds,
+the south-side meadows cover'd with salt hay, the soil of the island
+generally tough, but good for the locust-tree, the apple orchard, and
+the blackberry, and with numberless springs of the sweetest water in the
+world. Years ago, among the bay-men--a strong, wild race, now extinct,
+or rather entirely changed--a native of Long Island was called a
+_Paumanacker_, or _Creole-'Paumanacker_."--_John Burroughs_.
+
+
+MY FIRST READING--LAFAYETTE
+
+From 1824 to '28 our family lived in Brooklyn in Front, Cranberry and
+Johnson streets. In the latter my father built a nice house for a home,
+and afterwards another in Tillary street. We occupied them, one after
+the other, but they were mortgaged, and we lost them. I yet remember
+Lafayette's visit.[4] Most of these years I went to the public schools.
+It must have been about 1829 or '30 that I went with my father and
+mother to hear Elias Hicks preach in a ball-room on Brooklyn heights. At
+about the same time employ'd as a boy in an office, lawyers', father and
+two sons, Clarke's, Fulton street, near Orange. I had a nice desk and
+window-nook to myself; Edward C. kindly help'd me at my handwriting
+and composition, and, (the signal event of my life up to that time,)
+subscribed for me to a big circulating library. For a time I now revel'd
+in romance-reading of all kinds; first, the "Arabian Nights," all
+the volumes, an amazing treat. Then, with sorties in very many other
+directions, took in Walter Scott's novels, one after another, and his
+poetry, (and continue to enjoy novels and poetry to this day.)
+
+
+Note:
+
+[4] "On the visit of General Lafayette to this country, in 1824, he came
+over to Brooklyn in state, and rode through the city. The children of
+the schools turn'd out to join in the welcome. An edifice for a free
+public library for youths was just then commencing, and Lafayette
+consented to stop on his way and lay the corner-stone. Numerous children
+arriving on the ground, where a huge irregular excavation for the
+building was already dug, surrounded with heaps of rough stone, several
+gentlemen assisted in lifting the children to safe or convenient
+spots to see the ceremony. Among the rest, Lafayette, also helping the
+children, took up the five-year-old Walt Whitman, and pressing the child
+a moment to his breast, and giving him a kiss, handed him down to a safe
+spot in the excavation."--John Burroughs.
+
+
+PRINTING OFFICE--OLD BROOKLYN
+
+After about two years went to work in a weekly newspaper and printing
+office, to learn the trade. The paper was the "Long Island Patriot,"
+owned by S. E. Clements, who was also postmaster. An old printer in
+the office, William Hartshorne, a revolutionary character, who had seen
+Washington, was a special friend of mine, and I had many a talk with him
+about long past times. The apprentices, including myself, boarded with
+his grand-daughter. I used occasionally to go out riding with the boss,
+who was very kind to us boys; Sundays he took us all to a great old
+rough, fortress-looking stone church, on Joralemon street, near where
+the Brooklyn city hall now is--(at that time broad fields and country
+roads everywhere around.[5]) Afterward I work'd on the "Long Island
+Star," Alden Spooner's paper. My father all these years pursuing his
+trade as carpenter and builder, with varying fortune. There was a
+growing family of children--eight of us--my brother Jesse the oldest,
+myself the second, my dear sisters Mary and Hannah Louisa, my brothers
+Andrew, George, Thomas Jefferson, and then my youngest brother, Edward,
+born 1835, and always badly crippled, as I am myself of late years.
+
+
+Note:
+
+[5] Of the Brooklyn of that time (1830-40) hardly anything remains,
+except the lines of the old streets. The population was then between ten
+and twelve thousand. For a mile Fulton street was lined with magnificent
+elm trees. The character of the place was thoroughly rural. As a sample
+of comparative values, it may be mention'd that twenty-five acres in
+what is now the most costly part of the city, bounded by Flatbush and
+Fulton avenues, were then bought by Mr Parmentier, a French _emigre_,
+for $4000. Who remembers the old places as they were? Who remembers the
+old citizens of that time? Among the former were Smith & Wood's, Coe
+Downing's, and other public houses at the ferry, the old Ferry itself,
+Love lane, the Heights as then, the Wallabout with the wooden bridge,
+and the road out beyond Fulton street to the old toll-gate. Among the
+latter were the majestic and genial General Jeremiah Johnson, with
+others, Gabriel Furman, Rev. E. M. Johnson, Alden Spooner, Mr.
+Pierrepont, Mr. Joralemon, Samuel Willoughby, Jonathan Trotter, George
+Hall, Cyrus P. Smith, N. B. Morse, John Dikeman, Adrian Hegeman, William
+Udall, and old Mr. Duflon, with his military garden.
+
+
+GROWTH--HEALTH--WORK
+
+I develop'd (1833-4-5) into a healthy, strong youth (grew too fast,
+though, was nearly as big as a man at 15 or 16.) Our family at this
+period moved back to the country, my dear mother very ill for a long
+time, but recover'd. All these years I was down Long Island more or less
+every summer, now east, now west, sometimes months at a stretch. At
+16, 17, and so on, was fond of debating societies, and had an active
+membership with them, off and on, in Brooklyn and one or two country
+towns on the island. A most omnivorous novel-reader, these and later
+years, devour'd everything I could get. Fond of the theatre, also, in
+New York, went whenever I could--sometimes witnessing fine performances.
+
+1836-7, work'd as compositor in printing offices in New York city. Then,
+when little more than 18, and for a while afterwards, went to teaching
+country schools down in Queens and Suffolk counties, Long Island, and
+"boarded round." (This latter I consider one of my best experiences and
+deepest lessons in human nature behind the scenes and in the masses.)
+In '39, '40, I started and publish'd a weekly paper in my native town,
+Huntington. Then returning to New York city and Brooklyn, work'd on as
+printer and writer, mostly prose, but an occasional shy at "poetry".
+
+
+MY PASSION FOR FERRIES
+
+Living in Brooklyn or New York city from this time forward, my life,
+then, and still more the following years, was curiously identified with
+Fulton ferry, already becoming the greatest of its sort in the world
+for general importance, volume, variety, rapidity, and picturesqueness.
+Almost daily, later, ('50 to '60,) I cross'd on the boats, often up
+in the pilot-houses where I could get a full sweep, absorbing
+shows, accompaniments, surroundings. What oceanic currents, eddies,
+underneath--the great tides of humanity also, with ever-shifting
+movements. Indeed, I have always had a passion for ferries; to me they
+afford inimitable, streaming, never-failing, living poems. The river
+and bay scenery, all about New York island, any time of a fine day--the
+hurrying, splashing sea-tides--the changing panorama of steamers, all
+sizes, often a string of big ones outward bound to distant ports--the
+myriads of white-sail'd schooners, sloops, skiffs, and the marvellously
+beautiful yachts--the majestic sound boats as they rounded the Battery
+and came along towards 5, afternoon, eastward bound--the prospect off
+towards Staten Island, or down the Narrows, or the other way up the
+Hudson--what refreshment of spirit such sights and experiences gave me
+years ago (and many a time since.) My old pilot friends, the Balsirs,
+Johnny Cole, Ira Smith, William White, and my young ferry friend, Tom
+Gere--how well I remember them all.
+
+
+BROADWAY SIGHTS
+
+Besides Fulton ferry, off and on for years, I knew and frequented
+Broadway--that noted avenue of New York's crowded and mixed humanity,
+and of so many notables. Here I saw, during those times, Andrew Jackson,
+Webster, Clay, Seward, Martin Van Buren, filibuster Walker, Kossuth,
+Fitz Greene Halleck, Bryant, the Prince of Wales, Charles Dickens, the
+first Japanese ambassadors, and lots of other celebrities of the time.
+Always something novel or inspiriting; yet mostly to me the hurrying and
+vast amplitude of those never-ending human currents. I remember seeing
+James Fenimore Cooper in a court-room in Chambers street, back of the
+city hall, where he was carrying on a law case--(I think it was a charge
+of libel he had brought against some one.) I also remember seeing Edgar
+A. Poe, and having a short interview with him, (it must have been in
+1845 or '6,) in his office, second story of a corner building, (Duane
+or Pearl street.) He was editor and owner or part owner of "the Broadway
+Journal." The visit was about a piece of mine he had publish'd. Poe was
+very cordial, in a quiet way, appear'd well in person, dress, &c. I
+have a distinct and pleasing remembrance of his looks, voice, manner and
+matter; very kindly and human, but subdued, perhaps a little jaded. For
+another of my reminiscences, here on the west side, just below Houston
+street, I once saw (it must have been about 1832, of a sharp, bright
+January day) a bent, feeble but stout-built very old man, bearded,
+swathed in rich furs, with a great ermine cap on his head, led and
+assisted, almost carried, down the steps of his high front stoop (a
+dozen friends and servants, emulous, carefully holding, guiding him) and
+then lifted and tuck'd in a gorgeous sleigh, envelop'd in other furs,
+for a ride. The sleigh was drawn by as fine a team of horses as I ever
+saw. (You needn't think all the best animals are brought up nowadays;
+never was such horseflesh as fifty years ago on Long Island, or south,
+or in New York city; folks look'd for spirit and mettle in a nag, not
+tame speed merely.) Well, I, a boy of perhaps 13 or 14, stopp'd and
+gazed long at the spectacle of that fur-swathed old man, surrounded by
+friends and servants, and the careful seating of him in the sleigh. I
+remember the spirited, champing horses, the driver with his whip, and a
+fellow-driver by his side, for extra prudence. The old man, the subject
+of so much attention, I can almost see now. It was John Jacob Astor.
+
+The years 1846, '47, and there along, see me still in New York City,
+working as writer and printer, having my usual good health, and a good
+time generally.
+
+
+OMNIBUS JAUNTS AND DRIVERS
+
+One phase of those days must by no means go unrecorded--namely, the
+Broadway omnibuses, with their drivers.
+
+The vehicles still (I write this paragraph in 1881) give a portion
+of the character of Broadway--the Fifth avenue, Madison avenue, and
+Twenty-third street lines yet running. But the flush days of the old
+Broadway stages, characteristic and copious, are over. The Yellow-birds,
+the Red-birds, the original Broadway, the Fourth avenue, the
+Knickerbocker, and a dozen others of twenty or thirty years ago, are all
+gone. And the men specially identified with them, and giving vitality
+and meaning to them--the drivers--a strange, natural, quick-eyed and
+wondrous race--(not only Rabelais and Cervantes would have gloated upon
+them, but Homer and Shakspere would)--how well I remember them, and
+must here give a word about them. How many hours, forenoons and
+afternoons--how many exhilarating night-times I have had--perhaps June
+or July, in cooler air-riding the whole length of Broadway, listening
+to some yarn, (and the most vivid yarns ever spun, and the rarest
+mimicry)--or perhaps I declaiming some stormy passage from Julius Caesar
+or Richard, (you could roar as loudly as you chose in that heavy, dense,
+uninterrupted street-bass.) Yes, I knew all the drivers then, Broadway
+Jack, Dressmaker, Balky Bill, George Storms, Old Elephant, his brother
+Young Elephant (who came afterward,) Tippy, Pop Rice, Big Frank,
+Yellow Joe, Pete Callahan, Patsey Dee, and dozens more; for there were
+hundreds. They had immense qualities, largely animal--eating, drinking;
+women--great personal pride, in their way--perhaps a few slouches here
+and there, but I should have trusted the general run of them, in their
+simple good-will and honor, under all circumstances. Not only for
+comradeship, and sometimes affection--great studies I found them also.
+(I suppose the critics will laugh heartily, but the influence of those
+Broadway omnibus jaunts and drivers and declamations and escapades
+undoubtedly enter'd into the gestation of "Leaves of Grass.")
+
+
+PLAYS AND OPERAS TOO
+
+And certain actors and singers, had a good deal to do with the business.
+All through these years, off and on, I frequented the old Park, the
+Bowery, Broadway and Chatham-square theatres, and the Italian operas
+at Chambers-street, Astor-place or the Battery--many seasons was on
+the free list, writing for papers even as quite a youth. The old Park
+theatre--what names, reminiscences, the words bring back! Placide,
+Clarke, Mrs. Vernon, Fisher, Clara F., Mrs. Wood, Mrs. Seguin,
+Ellen Tree, Hackett, the younger Kean, Macready, Mrs. Richardson,
+Rice--singers, tragedians, comedians. What perfect acting! Henry Placide
+in "Napoleon's Old Guard" or "Grandfather Whitehead,"--or "the Provoked
+Husband" of Gibber, with Fanny Kemble as Lady Townley--or Sheridan
+Knowles in his own "Virginius"--or inimitable Power in "Born to Good
+Luck." These, and many more, the years of youth and onward. Fanny
+Kemble--name to conjure up great mimic scenes withal--perhaps the
+greatest. I remember well her rendering of Bianca in "Fazio," and
+Marianna in "the Wife." Nothing finer did ever stage exhibit--the
+veterans of all nations said so, and my boyish heart and head felt it in
+every minute cell. The lady was just matured, strong, better than merely
+beautiful, born from the footlights, had had three years' practice in
+London and through the British towns, and then she came to give America
+that young maturity and roseate power in all their noon, or rather
+forenoon, flush. It was my good luck to see her nearly every night she
+play'd at the old Park--certainly in all her principal characters. I
+heard, these years, well render'd, all the Italian and other operas
+in vogue, "Sonnambula," "the Puritans," "Der Freischutz," "Huguenots,"
+"Fille d'Regiment," "Faust," "Etoile du Nord," "Poliuto," and others.
+Verdi's "Ernani," "Rigoletto," and "Trovatore," with Donnizetti's
+"Lucia" or "Favorita" or "Lucrezia," and Auber's "Massaniello," or
+Rossini's "William Tell" and "Gazza Ladra," were among my special
+enjoyments. I heard Alboni every time she sang in New York and
+vicinity--also Grisi, the tenor Mario, and the baritone Badiali, the
+finest in the world.
+
+This musical passion follow'd my theatrical one. As a boy or young man
+I had seen, (reading them carefully the day beforehand,) quite all
+Shakspere's acting dramas, play'd wonderfully well. Even yet I cannot
+conceive anything finer than old Booth in "Richard Third," or "Lear,"
+(I don't know which was best,) or Iago, (or Pescara, or Sir Giles
+Overreach, to go outside of Shakspere)--or Tom Hamblin in "Macbeth"--or
+old Clarke, either as the ghost in "Hamlet," or as Prospero in "the
+Tempest," with Mrs. Austin as Ariel, and Peter Richings as Caliban. Then
+other dramas, and fine players in them, Forrest as Metamora or Damon or
+Brutus--John R. Scott as Tom Cringle or Rolla--or Charlotte Cushman's
+Lady Gay Spanker in "London Assurance." Then of some years later, at
+Castle Garden, Battery, I yet recall the splendid seasons of the Havana
+musical troupe under Maretzek--the fine band, the cool sea-breezes,
+the unsurpass'd vocalism--Steffan'one, Bosio, Truffi, Marini in "Marino
+Faliero," "Don Pasquale," or "Favorita." No better playing or singing
+ever in New York. It was here too I afterward heard Jenny Lind. (The
+Battery--its past associations--what tales those old trees and walks and
+sea-walls could tell!)
+
+
+THROUGH EIGHT YEARS.
+
+In 1848, '49, I was occupied as editor of the "daily Eagle" newspaper,
+in Brooklyn. The latter year went off on a leisurely journey and working
+expedition (my brother Jeff with me) through all the middle States, and
+down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Lived awhile in New Orleans, and
+work'd there on the editorial staff of "daily Crescent" newspaper. After
+a time plodded back northward, up the Mississippi, and around to, and by
+way of the great lakes, Michigan, Huron, and Erie, to Niagara falls and
+lower Canada, finally returning through central New York and down the
+Hudson; traveling altogether probably 8,000 miles this trip, to and fro.
+'51, '53, occupied in house-building in Brooklyn. (For a little of
+the first part of that time in printing a daily and weekly paper,
+"the Freeman.") '55, lost my dear father this year by death. Commenced
+putting "Leaves of Grass" to press for good, at the job printing office
+of my friends, the brothers Rome, in Brooklyn, after many MS. doings
+and undoings--(I had great trouble in leaving out the stock "poetical"
+touches, but succeeded at last.) I am now (1856-'7) passing through my
+37th year.
+
+
+SOURCES OF CHARACTER--RESULTS--1860
+
+To sum up the foregoing from the outset (and, of course, far, far more
+unrecorded,) I estimate three leading sources and formative stamps to
+my own character, now solidified for good or bad, and its subsequent
+literary and other outgrowth--the maternal nativity-stock brought
+hither from far-away Netherlands, for one, (doubtless the best)--the
+subterranean tenacity and central bony structure (obstinacy, wilfulness)
+which I get from my paternal English elements, for another--and the
+combination of my Long Island birth-spot, sea-shores, childhood's
+scenes, absorptions, with teeming Brooklyn and New York--with, I
+suppose, my experiences afterward in the secession outbreak, for the
+third.
+
+For, in 1862, startled by news that my brother George, an officer in
+the 51st New York volunteers, had been seriously wounded (first
+Fredericksburg battle, December 13th,) I hurriedly went down to the
+field of war in Virginia. But I must go back a little.
+
+
+OPENING OF THE SECESSION WAR
+
+News of the attack on fort Sumter and _the flag_ at Charleston harbor,
+S. C., was receiv'd in New York city late at night (13th April, 1861,)
+and was immediately sent out in extras of the newspapers. I had been to
+the opera in Fourteenth street that night, and after the performance was
+walking down Broadway toward twelve o'clock, on my way to Brooklyn,
+when I heard in the distance the loud cries of the newsboys, who came
+presently tearing and yelling up the street, rushing from side to side
+even more furiously than usual. I bought an extra and cross'd to the
+Metropolitan hotel (Niblo's) where the great lamps were still brightly
+blazing, and, with a crowd of others, who gather'd impromptu, read the
+news, which was evidently authentic. For the benefit of some who had no
+papers, one of us read the telegram aloud, while all listen'd silently
+and attentively. No remark was made by any of the crowd, which had
+increas'd to thirty or forty, but all stood a minute or two, I remember,
+before they dispers'd. I can almost see them there now, under the lamps
+at midnight again.
+
+
+NATIONAL UPRISING AND VOLUNTEERING
+
+I have said somewhere that the three Presidentiads preceding 1861 show'd
+how the weakness and wickedness of rulers are just as eligible here in
+America under republican, as in Europe under dynastic influences. But
+what can I say of that prompt and splendid wrestling with secession
+slavery, the arch-enemy personified, the instant he unmistakably show'd
+his face? The volcanic upheaval of the nation, after that firing on
+the flag at Charleston, proved for certain something which had been
+previously in great doubt, and at once substantially settled the
+question of disunion. In my judgment it will remain as the grandest and
+most encouraging spectacle yet vouchsafed in any age, old or new,
+to political progress and democracy. It was not for what came to the
+surface merely--though that was important--but what it indicated
+below, which was of eternal importance. Down in the abysms of New World
+humanity there had form'd and harden'd a primal hardpan of national
+Union will, determin'd and in the majority, refusing to be tamper'd with
+or argued against, confronting all emergencies, and capable at any time
+of bursting all surface bonds, and breaking out like an earthquake. It
+is, indeed, the best lesson of the century, or of America, and it is
+a mighty privilege to have been part of it. (Two great spectacles,
+immortal proofs of democracy, unequall'd in all the history of the past,
+are furnish'd by the secession war--one at the beginning, the other at
+its close. Those are, the general, voluntary, arm'd upheaval, and the
+peaceful and harmonious disbanding of the armies in the summer of 1865.)
+
+
+CONTEMPTUOUS FEELING
+
+Even after the bombardment of Sumter, however, the gravity of the
+revolt, and the power and will of the slave States for a strong and
+continued military resistance to national authority, were not at all
+realized at the North, except by a few. Nine-tenths of the people of
+the free States look'd upon the rebellion, as started in South Carolina,
+from a feeling one-half of contempt, and the other half composed of
+anger and incredulity. It was not thought it would be join'd in by
+Virginia, North Carolina, or Georgia. A great and cautious national
+official predicted that it would blow over "in sixty days," and folks
+generally believ'd the prediction. I remember talking about it on a
+Fulton ferry-boat with the Brooklyn mayor, who said he only "hoped the
+Southern fire-eaters would commit some overt act of resistance, as they
+would then be at once so effectually squelch'd, we would never hear of
+secession again--but he was afraid they never would have the pluck to
+really do anything."
+
+I remember, too, that a couple of companies of the Thirteenth Brooklyn,
+who rendezvou'd at the city armory, and started thence as thirty days'
+men, were all provided with pieces of rope, conspicuously tied to their
+musket-barrels, with which to bring back each man a prisoner from the
+audacious South, to be led in a noose, on our men's early and triumphant
+return!
+
+
+BATTLE OF BULL RUN, JULY, 1861
+
+All this sort of feeling was destin'd to be arrested and revers'd by a
+terrible shock--the battle of first Bull Run--certainly, as we now know
+it, one of the most singular fights on record. (All battles, and their
+results, are far more matters of accident than is generally thought; but
+this was throughout a casualty, a chance. Each side supposed it had won,
+till the last moment. One had, in point of fact, just the same right
+to be routed as the other. By a fiction, or series of fictions, the
+national forces at the last moment exploded in a panic and fled from the
+field.) The defeated troops commenced pouring into Washington over the
+Long Bridge at daylight on Monday, 22d--day drizzling all through with
+rain. The Saturday and Sunday of the battle (20th, 21st,) had been
+parch'd and hot to an extreme--the dust, the grime and smoke, in layers,
+sweated in, follow'd by other layers again sweated in, absorb'd by those
+excited souls--their clothes all saturated with the clay-powder filling
+the air--stirr'd up everywhere on the dry roads and trodden fields by
+the regiments, swarming wagons, artillery, &c.--all the men with this
+coating of murk and sweat and rain, now recoiling back, pouring over the
+Long Bridge--a horrible march of twenty miles, returning to Washington
+baffed, humiliated, panic-struck. Where are the vaunts, and the proud
+boasts with which you went forth? Where are your banners, and your bands
+of music, and your ropes to bring back your prisoners? Well, there isn't
+a band playing--and there isn't a flag but clings ashamed and lank to
+its staff.
+
+The sun rises, but shines not. The men appear, at first sparsely and
+shame-faced enough, then thicker, in the streets of Washington--appear
+in Pennsylvania avenue, and on the steps and basement entrances. They
+come along in disorderly mobs, some in squads, stragglers, companies.
+Occasionally, a rare regiment, in perfect order, with its officers (some
+gaps, dead, the true braves,) marching in silence, with lowering faces,
+stern, weary to sinking, all black and dirty, but every man with his
+musket, and stepping alive; but these are the exceptions. Sidewalks
+of Pennsylvania avenue, Fourteenth street, &c., crowded, jamm'd with
+citizens, darkies, clerks, everybody, lookers-on; women in the windows,
+curious expressions from faces, as those swarms of dirt-cover'd return'd
+soldiers there (will they never end?) move by; but nothing said, no
+comments; (half our lookers-on secesh of the most venomous kind--they
+say nothing; but the devil snickers in their faces.) During the
+forenoon Washington gets all over motley with these defeated
+soldiers--queer-looking objects, strange eyes and faces, drench'd (the
+steady rain drizzles on all day) and fearfully worn, hungry, haggard,
+blister'd in the feet. Good people (but not over-many of them either,)
+hurry up something for their grub. They put wash-kettles on the fire,
+for soup, for coffee. They set tables on the side-walks--wagon-loads
+of bread are purchas'd, swiftly cut in stout chunks. Here are two aged
+ladies, beautiful, the first in the city for culture and charm, they
+stand with store of eating and drink at an improvis'd table of rough
+plank, and give food, and have the store replenished from their house
+every half-hour all that day; and there in the rain they stand, active,
+silent, white-hair'd, and give food, though the tears stream down their
+cheeks, almost without intermission, the whole time. Amid the deep
+excitement, crowds and motion, and desperate eagerness, it seems strange
+to see many, very many, of the soldiers sleeping--in the midst of all,
+sleeping sound. They drop down anywhere, on the steps of houses, up
+close by the basements or fences, on the sidewalk, aside on some vacant
+lot, and deeply sleep. A poor 17 or 18 year old boy lies there, on the
+stoop of a grand house; he sleeps so calmly, so profoundly. Some clutch
+their muskets firmly even in sleep. Some in squads; comrades, brothers,
+close together--and on them, as they lay, sulkily drips the rain.
+
+As afternoon pass'd, and evening came, the streets, the bar-rooms, knots
+everywhere, listeners, questioners, terrible yarns, bugaboo, mask'd
+batteries, our regiment all cut up, &c.--stories and story-tellers,
+windy, bragging, vain centres of street-crowds. Resolution, manliness,
+seem to have abandon'd Washington. The principal hotel, Willard's, is
+full of shoulder-straps--thick, crush'd, creeping with shoulder-straps.
+(I see them, and must have a word with them. There you are,
+shoulder-straps!--but where are your companies? where are your men?
+Incompetents! never tell me of chances of battle, of getting stray'd,
+and the like. I think this is your work, this retreat, after all. Sneak,
+blow, put on airs there in Willard's sumptuous parlors and bar-rooms, or
+anywhere--no explanation shall save you. Bull Run is your work; had you
+been half or one-tenth worthy your men, this would never have happen'd.)
+
+Meantime, in Washington, among the great persons and their entourage, a
+mixture of awful consternation, uncertainty, rage, shame, helplessness,
+and stupefying disappointment. The worst is not only imminent, but
+already here. In a few hours--perhaps before the next meal--the secesh
+generals, with their victorious hordes, will be upon us. The dream of
+humanity, the vaunted Union we thought so strong, so impregnable--lo!
+it seems already smash'd like a china plate. One bitter, bitter
+hour--perhaps proud America will never again know such an hour. She must
+pack and fly--no time to spare. Those white palaces--the dome-crown'd
+capitol there on the hill, so stately over the trees--shall they be
+left--or destroy'd first? For it is certain that the talk among certain
+of the magnates and officers and clerks and officials everywhere, for
+twenty-four hours in and around Washington after Bull Run, was loud
+and undisguised for yielding out and out, and substituting the southern
+rule, and Lincoln promptly abdicating and departing. If the secesh
+officers and forces had immediately follow'd, and by a bold Napoleonic
+movement had enter'd Washington the first day, (or even the second,)
+they could have had things their own way, and a powerful faction north
+to back them. One of our returning colonels express'd in public that
+night, amid a swarm of officers and gentlemen in a crowded room, the
+opinion that it was useless to fight, that the southerners had made
+their title clear, and that the best course for the national government
+to pursue was to desist from any further attempt at stopping them, and
+admit them again to the lead, on the best terms they were willing to
+grant. Not a voice was rais'd against this judgment, amid that large
+crowd of officers and gentlemen. (The fact is, the hour was one of the
+three or four of those crises we had then and afterward, during the
+fluctuations of four years, when human eyes appear'd at least just as
+likely to see the last breath of the Union as to see it continue.)
+
+
+THE STUPOR PASSES--SOMETHING ELSE BEGINS
+
+But the hour, the day, the night pass'd, and whatever returns, an
+hour, a day, a night like that can never again return. The President,
+recovering himself, begins that very night--sternly, rapidly sets about
+the task of reorganizing his forces, and placing himself in positions
+for future and surer work. If there were nothing else of Abraham Lincoln
+for history to stamp him with, it is enough to send him with his wreath
+to the memory of all future time, that he endured that hour, that day,
+bitterer than gall--indeed a crucifixion day--that it did not conquer
+him--that he unflinchingly stemm'd it, and resolv'd to lift himself and
+the Union out of it.
+
+Then the great New York papers at once appear'd, (commencing that
+evening, and following it up the next morning, and incessantly through
+many days afterwards,) with leaders that rang out over the land with
+the loudest, most reverberating ring of clearest bugles, full
+of encouragement, hope, inspiration, unfaltering defiance; Those
+magnificent editorials! they never flagg'd for a fortnight. The "Herald"
+commenced them--I remember the articles well. The "Tribune" was equally
+cogent and inspiriting--and the "Times," "Evening Post," and other
+principal papers, were not a whit behind. They came in good time,
+for they were needed. For in the humiliation of Bull Run, the popular
+feeling north, from its extreme of superciliousness, recoil'd to the
+depth of gloom and apprehension.
+
+(Of all the days of the war, there are two especially I can never
+forget. Those were the day following the news, in New York and Brooklyn,
+of that first Bull Run defeat, and the day of Abraham Lincoln's death.
+I was home in Brooklyn on both occasions. The day of the murder we heard
+the news very early in the morning. Mother prepared breakfast--and
+other meals afterward--as usual; but not a mouthful was eaten all day by
+either of us. We each drank half a cup of coffee; that was all. Little
+was said. We got every newspaper morning and evening, and the frequent
+extras of that period, and pass'd them silently to each other.)
+
+
+DOWN AT THE FRONT
+
+FALMOUTH, VA., _opposite Fredericksburgh, December 21, 1862_.--Begin my
+visits among the camp hospitals in the army of the Potomac. Spend a
+good part of the day in a large brick mansion on the banks of the
+Rappahannock, used as a hospital since the battle--seems to have
+receiv'd only the worst cases. Out doors, at the foot of a tree, within
+ten yards of the front of the house, I notice a heap of amputated feet,
+legs, arms, hands, &c., a full load for a one-horse cart. Several dead
+bodies lie near, each cover'd with its brown woolen blanket. In the
+door-yard, towards the river, are fresh graves, mostly of officers,
+their names on pieces of arrel-staves or broken boards, stuck in the
+dirt. (Most of these bodies were subsequently taken up and transported
+north to their friends.) The large mansion is quite crowded upstairs
+and down, everything impromptu, no system, all bad enough, but I have
+no doubt the best that can be done; all the wounds pretty bad, some
+frightful, the men in their old clothes, unclean and bloody. Some of
+the wounded are rebel soldiers and officers, prisoners. One, a
+Mississippian, a captain, hit badly in leg, I talk'd with some time; he
+ask'd me for papers, which I gave him. (I saw him three months afterward
+in Washington, with his leg amputated, doing well.) I went through the
+rooms, downstairs and up. Some of the men were dying. I had nothing to
+give at that visit, but wrote a few letters to folks home, mothers, &c.
+Also talk'd to three or four, who seem'd most susceptible to it, and
+needing it.
+
+
+AFTER FIRST FREDERICKSBURG
+
+_December 23 to 31_.--The results of the late battle are exhibited
+everywhere about here in thousands of cases, (hundreds die every day,)
+in the camp, brigade, and division hospitals. These are merely tents,
+and sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, lucky if
+their blankets are spread on layers of pine or hemlock twigs, or small
+leaves. No cots; seldom even a mattress. It is pretty cold. The ground
+is frozen hard, and there is occasional snow. I go around from one case
+to another. I do not see that I do much good to these wounded and dying;
+but I cannot leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds on to me
+convulsively, and I do what I can for him; at any rate, stop with him
+and sit near him for hours, if he wishes it.
+
+Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours through the
+camps, talking with the men, &c. Sometimes at night among the groups
+around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes. These are
+curious shows, full of characters and groups. I soon get acquainted
+anywhere in camp, with officers or men, and am always well used.
+Sometimes I go down on picket with the regiments I know best. As to
+rations, the army here at present seems to be tolerably well supplied,
+and the men have enough, such as it is, mainly salt pork and hard tack.
+Most of the regiments lodge in the flimsy little shelter-tents. A few
+have built themselves huts of logs and mud, with fire-places.
+
+
+BACK TO WASHINGTON
+
+_January, '63_.--Left camp at Falmouth, with some wounded, a few days
+since, and came here by Aquia creek railroad, and so on government
+steamer up the Potomac. Many wounded were with us on the cars and boat.
+The cars were just common platform ones. The railroad journey of ten or
+twelve miles was made mostly before sunrise. The soldiers guarding the
+road came out from their tents or shebangs of bushes with rumpled hair
+and half-awake look. Those on duty were walking their posts, some on
+banks over us, others down far below the level of the track. I saw
+large cavalry camps off the road. At Aquia creek landing were numbers
+of wounded going north. While I waited some three hours, I went around
+among them. Several wanted word sent home to parents, brothers, wives,
+&c., which I did for them, (by mail the next day from Washington.) On
+the boat I had my hands full. One poor fellow died going up.
+
+I am now remaining in and around Washington, daily visiting the
+hospitals. Am much in Patent-office, Eighth street, H street,
+Armory-square, and others. Am now able to do a little good, having
+money, (as almoner of others home,) and getting experience. To-day,
+Sunday afternoon and till nine in the evening, visited Campbell
+hospital; attended specially to one case in ward I, very sick with
+pleurisy and typhoid fever, young man, farmer's son, D. F. Russell,
+company E, 60th New York, downhearted and feeble; a long time before he
+would take any interest; wrote a letter home to his mother, in Malone,
+Franklin county, N. Y., at his request; gave him some fruit and one
+or two other gifts; envelop'd and directed his letter, &c. Then went
+thoroughly through ward 6, observ'd every case in the ward, without, I
+think, missing one; gave perhaps from twenty to thirty persons, each one
+some little gift, such as oranges, apples, sweet crackers, figs, &c.
+
+_Thursday, Jan. 21._--Devoted the main part of the day to Armory-square
+hospital; went pretty thoroughly through wards F, G, H, and I; some
+fifty cases in each ward. In ward F supplied the men throughout with
+writing paper and stamp'd envelope each; distributed in small portions,
+to proper subjects, a large jar of first-rate preserv'd berries, which
+had been donated to me by a lady--her own cooking. Found several cases
+I thought good subjects for small sums of money, which I furnish'd. (The
+wounded men often come up broke, and it helps their spirits to have
+even the small sum I give them.) My paper and envelopes all gone, but
+distributed a good lot of amusing reading matter; also, as I thought
+judicious, tobacco, oranges, apples, &c. Interesting cases in ward I;
+Charles Miller, bed 19, company D, 53d Pennsylvania, is only 16 years
+of age, very bright, courageous boy, left leg amputated below the knee;
+next bed to him, another young lad very sick; gave each appropriate
+gifts. In the bed above, also, amputation of the left leg; gave him a
+little jar of raspberries; bed J, this ward, gave a small sum; also to
+a soldier on crutches, sitting on his bed near.... (I am more and more
+surprised at the very great proportion of youngsters from fifteen to
+twenty-one in the army. I afterwards found a still greater proportion
+among the southerners.)
+
+Evening, same day, went to see D. F. R., before alluded to; found him
+remarkably changed for the better; up and dress'd--quite a triumph; he
+afterwards got well, and went back to his regiment.
+
+Distributed in the wards a quantity of note-paper, and forty or fifty
+stamp'd envelopes, of which I had recruited my stock, and the men were
+much in need.
+
+
+FIFTY HOURS LEFT WOUNDED ON THE FIELD
+
+Here is a case of a soldier I found among the crowded cots in the
+Patent-office. He likes to have some one to talk to, and we will listen
+to him. He got badly hit in his leg and side at Fredericksburgh that
+eventful Saturday, 13th of December. He lay the succeeding two days and
+nights helpless on the field, between the city and those grim terraces
+of batteries; his company and regiment had been compell'd to leave him
+to his fate. To make matters worse, it happen'd he lay with his head
+slightly down hill, and could not help himself. At the end of some fifty
+hours he was brought off, with other wounded, under a flag of truce. I
+ask him how the rebels treated him as he lay during those two days and
+nights within reach of them--whether they came to him--whether they
+abused him? He answers that several of the rebels, soldiers and
+others, came to him at one time and another. A couple of them, who
+were together, spoke roughly and sarcastically, but nothing worse. One
+middle-aged man, however, who seem'd to be moving around the field,
+among the dead and wounded, for benevolent purposes, came to him in
+a way he will never forget; treated our soldier kindly, bound up his
+wounds, cheer'd him, gave him a couple of biscuits and a drink of
+whiskey and water; asked him if he could eat some beef. This good
+secesh, however, did not change our soldier's position, for it might
+have caused the blood to burst from the wounds, clotted and stagnated.
+Our soldier is from Pennsylvania; has had a pretty severe time; the
+wounds proved to be bad ones. But he retains a good heart, and is at
+present on the gain. (It is not uncommon for the men to remain on the
+field this way, one, two, or even four or five days.)
+
+
+HOSPITAL SCENES AND PERSONS
+
+_Letter Writing_.--When eligible, I encourage the men to write, and
+myself, when called upon, write all sorts of letters for them (including
+love letters, very tender ones.) Almost as I reel off these memoranda, I
+write for a new patient to his wife. M. de F., of the 17th Connecticut,
+company H, has just come up (February 17th) from Windmill point, and is
+received in ward H, Armory-square. He is an intelligent looking man, has
+a foreign accent, black-eyed and hair'd, a Hebraic appearance. Wants a
+telegraphic message sent to his wife, New Canaan, Conn. I agree to send
+the message--but to make things sure I also sit down and write the wife
+a letter, and despatch it to the post-office immediately, as he fears
+she will come on, and he does not wish her to, as he will surely get
+well.
+
+_Saturday, January 30th._--Afternoon, visited Campbell hospital. Scene
+of cleaning up the ward, and giving the men all clean clothes--through
+the ward (6) the patients dressing or being dress'd--the naked upper
+half of the bodies--the good-humor and fun--the shirts, drawers, sheets
+of beds, &c., and the general fixing up for Sunday. Gave J. L. 50 cents.
+
+_Wednesday, February 4th._--Visited Armory-square hospital, went pretty
+thoroughly through wards E and D. Supplied paper and envelopes to all
+who wish'd--as usual, found plenty of men who needed those articles.
+Wrote letters. Saw and talk'd with two or three members of the Brooklyn
+14th regt. A poor fellow in ward D, with a fearful wound in a fearful
+condition, was having some loose splinters of bone taken from the
+neighborhood of the wound. The operation was long, and one of great
+pain--yet, after it was well commenced, the soldier bore it in silence.
+He sat up, propp'd--was much wasted--had lain a long time quiet in one
+position (not for days only but weeks,) a bloodless, brown-skinn'd face,
+with eyes full of determination--belong'd to a New York regiment. There
+was an unusual cluster of surgeons, medical cadets, nurses, &c., around
+his bed--I thought the whole thing was done with tenderness, and done
+well. In one case, the wife sat by the side of her husband, his sickness
+typhoid fever, pretty bad. In another, by the side of her son, a
+mother--she told me she had seven children, and this was the youngest.
+(A fine, kind, healthy, gentle mother, good-looking, not very old, with
+a cap on her head, and dress'd like home--what a charm it gave to the
+whole ward.) I liked the woman nurse in ward E--I noticed how she sat
+a long time by a poor fellow who just had, that morning, in addition to
+his other sickness, bad hemorrhage--she gently assisted him, reliev'd
+him of the blood, holding a cloth to his mouth, as he coughed it up--he
+was so weak he could only just turn his head over on the pillow.
+
+One young New York man, with a bright, handsome face, had been lying
+several months from a most disagreeable wound, receiv'd at Bull Run. A
+bullet had shot him right through the bladder, hitting him front, low in
+the belly, and coming out back. He had suffer'd much--the water came out
+of the wound, by slow but steady quantities, for many weeks--so that
+he lay almost constantly in a sort of puddle--and there were other
+disagreeable circumstances. He was of good heart, however. At present
+comparatively comfortable, had a bad throat, was delighted with a stick
+of horehound candy I gave him, with one or two other trifles.
+
+
+PATENT-OFFICE HOSPITAL
+
+_February 23._--I must not let the great hospital at the Patent-office
+pass away without some mention. A few weeks ago the vast area of the
+second story of that noblest of Washington buildings was crowded close
+with rows of sick, badly wounded and dying soldiers. They were placed in
+three very large apartments. I went there many times. It was a strange,
+solemn, and, with all its features of suffering and death, a sort
+of fascinating sight. I go sometimes at night to soothe and relieve
+particular cases. Two of the immense apartments are fill'd with high and
+ponderous glass cases, crowded with models in miniature of every kind of
+utensil, machine or invention, it ever enter'd into the mind of man to
+conceive; and with curiosities and foreign presents. Between these cases
+are lateral openings, perhaps eight feet wide and quite deep, and in
+these were placed the sick, besides a great long double row of them
+up and down through the middle of the hall. Many of them were very bad
+cases, wounds and amputations. Then there was a gallery running above
+the hall in which there were beds also. It was, indeed, a curious scene,
+especially at night when lit up. The glass cases, the beds, the forms
+lying there, the gallery above, and the marble pavement under
+foot--the suffering, and the fortitude to bear it in various
+degrees--occasionally, from some, the groan that could not be
+repress'd--sometimes a poor fellow dying, with emaciated face and glassy
+eye, the nurse by his side, the doctor also there, but no friend, no
+relative--such were the sights but lately in the Patent-office. (The
+wounded have since been removed from there, and it is now vacant again.)
+
+
+THE WHITE HOUSE BY MOONLIGHT
+
+_February 24th._--A spell of fine soft weather. I wander about a good
+deal, sometimes at night under the moon. Tonight took a long look at
+the President's house. The white portico--the palace-like, tall,
+round columns, spotless as snow--the walls also--the tender and
+soft moonlight, flooding the pale marble, and making peculiar faint
+languishing shades, not shadows--everywhere a soft transparent
+hazy, thin, blue moon-lace, hanging in the air--the brilliant and
+extra-plentiful clusters of gas, on and around the facade, columns,
+portico, &c.--everything so white, so marbly pure and dazzling, yet
+soft--the White House of future poems, and of dreams and dramas, there
+in the soft and copious moon--the gorgeous front, in the trees, under
+the lustrous flooding moon, full of realty, full of illusion--the forms
+of the trees, leafless, silent, in trunk and myriad--angles of branches,
+under the stars and sky--the White House of the land, and of beauty and
+night--sentries at the gates, and by the portico, silent, pacing there
+in blue overcoats--stopping you not at all, but eyeing you with sharp
+eyes, whichever way you move.
+
+
+AN ARMY HOSPITAL WARD
+
+Let me specialize a visit I made to the collection of barrack-like
+one-story edifices, Campbell hospital, out on the flats, at the end
+of the then horse railway route, on Seventh street. There is a long
+building appropriated to each ward. Let us go into ward 6. It contains,
+to-day, I should judge, eighty or a hundred patients, half sick, half
+wounded. The edifice is nothing but boards, well whitewash'd inside, and
+the usual slender-framed iron bedsteads, narrow and plain. You walk down
+the central passage, with a row on either side, their feet towards you,
+and their heads to the wall. There are fires in large stoves, and the
+prevailing white of the walls is reliev'd by some ornaments, stars,
+circles, &c., made of evergreens. The view of the whole edifice and
+occupants can be taken at once, for there is no partition. You may hear
+groans or other sounds of unendurable suffering from two or three of
+the cots, but in the main there is quiet--almost a painful absence of
+demonstration; but the pallid face, the dull'd eye, and the moisture
+of the lip, are demonstration enough. Most of these sick or hurt are
+evidently young fellows from the country, farmers' sons, and such like.
+Look at the fine large frames, the bright and broad countenances, and
+the many yet lingering proofs of strong constitution and physique. Look
+at the patient and mute manner of our American wounded as they lie in
+such a sad collection; representatives from all New England, and from
+New York, and New Jersey, and Pennsylvania--indeed from all the States
+and all the cities--largely from the west. Most of them are entirely
+without friends or acquaintances here--no familiar face, and hardly a
+word of judicious sympathy or cheer, through their sometimes long and
+tedious sickness, or the pangs of aggravated wounds.
+
+
+A CONNECTICUT CASE
+
+This young man in bed 25 is H. D. B. of the 27th Connecticut, company
+B. His folks live at Northford, near New Haven. Though not more than
+twenty-one, or thereabouts, he has knock'd much around the world, on sea
+and land, and has seen some fighting on both. When I first saw him he
+was very sick, with no appetite. He declined offers of money--said
+he did not need anything. As I was quite anxious to do something,
+he confess'd that he had a hankering for a good home-made rice
+pudding--thought he could relish it better than anything. At this
+time his stomach was very weak. (The doctor, whom I consulted, said
+nourishment would do him more good than anything; but things in the
+hospital, though better than usual, revolted him.) I soon procured B.
+his rice pudding. A Washington lady, (Mrs. O'C.), hearing his wish,
+made the pudding herself, and I took it up to him the next day. He
+subsequently told me he lived upon it for three or four days. This B. is
+a good sample of the American eastern young man--the typical Yankee.
+I took a fancy to him, and gave him a nice pipe for a keepsake. He
+receiv'd afterwards a box of things from home, and nothing would do but
+I must take dinner with him, which I did, and a very good one it was.
+
+
+TWO BROOKLYN BOYS
+
+Here in this same ward are two young men from Brooklyn, members of the
+51st New York. I had known both the two as young lads at home, so they
+seem near to me. One of them, J. L., lies there with an amputated
+arm, the stump healing pretty well. (I saw him lying on the ground at
+Fredericksburgh last December, all bloody, just after the arm was taken
+off. He was very phlegmatic about it, munching away at a cracker in the
+remaining hand--made no fuss.) He will recover, and thinks and talks yet
+of meeting Johnny Rebs.
+
+
+A SECESH BRAVE
+
+The grand soldiers are not comprised in those of one side, any more
+than the other. Here is a sample of an unknown southerner, a lad
+of seventeen. At the War department, a few days ago, I witness'd a
+presentation of captured flags to the Secretary. Among others a soldier
+named Gant, of the 104th Ohio volunteers, presented a rebel battle-flag,
+which one of the officers stated to me was borne to the mouth of our
+cannon and planted there by a boy but seventeen years of age, who
+actually endeavor'd to stop the muzzle of the gun with fence-rails. He
+was kill'd in the effort, and the flag-staff was sever'd by a shot from
+one of our men.
+
+
+THE WOUNDED FROM CHANCELLORSVILLE
+
+_May '63_.--As I write this, the wounded have begun to arrive from
+Hooker's command from bloody Chancellorsville. I was down among the
+first arrivals. The men in charge told me the bad cases were yet to
+come. If that is so I pity them, for these are bad enough. You ought to
+see the scene of the wounded arriving at the landing here at the foot of
+Sixth street, at night. Two boat loads came about half-past seven last
+night. A little after eight it rain'd a long and violent shower. The
+pale, helpless soldiers had been debark'd, and lay around on the wharf
+and neighborhood anywhere. The rain was, probably, grateful to them;
+at any rate they were exposed to it. The few torches light up the
+spectacle. All around--on the wharf, on the ground, out on side
+places--the men are lying on blankets, old quilts, &c., with bloody rags
+bound round heads, arms, and legs. The attendants are few, and at
+night few outsiders also--only a few hard-work'd transportation men
+and drivers. (The wounded are getting to be common, and people grow
+callous.) The men, whatever their condition, lie there, and patiently
+wait till their turn comes to be taken up. Near by, the ambulances are
+now arriving in clusters, and one after another is call'd to back up
+and take its load. Extreme cases are sent off on stretchers. The men
+generally make little or no ado, whatever their sufferings. A few groans
+that cannot be suppress'd, and occasionally a scream of pain as they
+lift a man into the ambulance. To-day, as I write, hundreds more are
+expected, and to-morrow and the next day more, and so on for many days.
+Quite often they arrive at the rate of 1000 a day.
+
+
+A NIGHT BATTLE OVER A WEEK SINCE
+
+_May 12_.--There was part of the late battle at Chancellorsville,
+(second Fredericksburgh,) a little over a week ago, Saturday, Saturday
+night and Sunday, under Gen. Joe Hooker, I would like to give just a
+glimpse of--(a moment's look in a terrible storm at sea--of which a few
+suggestions are enough, and full details impossible.) The fighting had
+been very hot during the day, and after an intermission the latter part,
+was resumed at night, and kept up with furious energy till 3 o'clock in
+the morning. That afternoon (Saturday) an attack sudden and strong by
+Stonewall Jackson had gain'd a great advantage to the southern army, and
+broken our lines, entering us like a wedge, and leaving things in that
+position at dark. But Hooker at 11 at night made a desperate push, drove
+the secesh forces back, restored his original lines, and resumed his
+plans. This night scrimmage was very exciting, and afforded countless
+strange and fearful pictures. The fighting had been general both at
+Chancellorsville and northeast at Fredericksburgh. (We hear of some poor
+fighting, episodes, skedaddling on our part. I think not of it. I
+think of the fierce bravery, the general rule.) One corps, the 6th,
+Sedgewick's, fights four dashing and bloody battles in thirty-six hours,
+retreating in great jeopardy, losing largely but maintaining itself,
+fighting with the sternest desperation under all circumstances, getting
+over the Rappahannock only by the skin of its teeth, yet getting over.
+It lost many, many brave men, yet it took vengeance, ample vengeance.
+
+But it was the tug of Saturday evening, and through the night and Sunday
+morning, I wanted to make a special note of. It was largely in the
+woods, and quite a general engagement. The night was very pleasant, at
+times the moon shining out full and clear, all Nature so calm in itself,
+the early summer grass so rich, and foliage of the trees--yet there the
+battle raging, and many good fellows lying helpless, with new accessions
+to them, and every minute amid the rattle of muskets and crash of
+cannon, (for there was an artillery contest too,) the red life-blood
+oozing out from heads or trunks or limbs upon that green and dew-cool
+grass. Patches of the woods take fire, and several of the wounded,
+unable to move, are consumed--quite large spaces are swept over, burning
+the dead also--some of the men have their hair and beards singed--some,
+burns on their faces and hands--others holes burnt in their clothing.
+The flashes of fire from the cannon, the quick flaring flames and smoke,
+and the immense roar--the musketry so general, the light nearly bright
+enough for each side to see the other--the crashing, tramping of
+men--the yelling--close quarters--we hear the secesh yells--our men
+cheer loudly back, especially if Hooker is in sight--hand to hand
+conflicts, each side stands up to it, brave, determin'd as demons, they
+often charge upon us--a thousand deeds are done worth to write newer
+greater poems on--and still the woods on fire--still many are not only
+scorch'd--too many, unable to move, are burned to death.
+
+Then the camps of the wounded--O heavens, what scene is this?--is this
+indeed _humanity_--these butchers' shambles? There are several of them.
+There they lie, in the largest, in an open space in the woods, from 200
+to 300 poor fellows--the groans and screams--the odor of blood,
+mixed with the fresh scent of the night, the grass, the trees--that
+slaughter-house! O well is it their mothers, their sisters cannot see
+them--cannot conceive, and never conceiv'd, these things. One man is
+shot by a shell, both in the arm and leg--both are amputated--there
+lie the rejected members. Some have their legs blown off--some bullets
+through the breast--some indescribably horrid wounds in the face
+or head, all mutilated, sickening, torn, gouged out--some in the
+abdomen--some mere boys--many rebels, badly hurt--they take their
+regular turns with the rest, just the same as any--the surgeons use
+them just the same. Such is the camp of the wounded--such a fragment, a
+reflection afar off of the bloody scene--while all over the clear, large
+moon comes out at times softly, quietly shining. Amid the woods,
+that scene of flitting souls--amid the crack and crash and yelling
+sounds--the impalpable perfume of the woods--and yet the pungent,
+stifling smoke--the radiance of the moon, looking from heaven at
+intervals so placid--the sky so heavenly the clear-obscure up there,
+those buoyant upper oceans--a few large placid stars beyond, coming
+silently and languidly out, and then disappearing--the melancholy,
+draperied night above, around. And there, upon the roads, the fields,
+and in those woods, that contest, never one more desperate in any age or
+land--both parties now in force--masses--no fancy battle, no semi-play,
+but fierce and savage demons fighting there--courage and scorn of death
+the rule, exceptions almost none.
+
+What history, I say, can ever give--for who can know--the mad,
+determin'd tussle of the armies, in all their separate large and little
+squads--as this--each steep'd from crown to toe in desperate, mortal
+purports? Who know the conflict, hand-to-hand--the many conflicts in
+the dark, those shadowy-tangled, flashing moonbeam'd woods--the
+writhing groups and squads--the cries, the din, the cracking guns and
+pistols--the distant cannon--the cheers and calls and threats and
+awful music of the oaths--the indescribable mix--the officers'
+orders, persuasions, encouragements--the devils fully rous'd in human
+hearts--the strong shout, _Charge, men, charge_--the flash of the naked
+sword, and rolling flame and smoke? And still the broken, clear and
+clouded heaven--and still again the moonlight pouring silvery soft its
+radiant patches over all. Who paint the scene, the sudden partial panic
+of the afternoon, at dusk? Who paint the irrepressible advance of the
+second division of the Third corps, under Hooker himself, suddenly
+order'd up--those rapid-filing phantoms through the woods? Who show what
+moves there in the shadows, fluid and firm--to save, (and it did save,)
+the army's name, perhaps the nation? as there the veterans hold the
+field. (Brave Berry falls not yet--but death has mark'd him--soon he
+falls.)
+
+
+UNNAMED REMAINS THE BRAVEST SOLDIER
+
+Of scenes like these, I say, who writes--whoe'er can write the story? Of
+many a score--aye, thousands, north and south, of unwrit heroes, unknown
+heroisms, incredible, impromptu, first-class desperations--who tells?
+No history ever--no poem sings, no music sounds, those bravest men of
+all--those deeds. No formal general's report, nor book in the library,
+norcolumn in the paper, embalms the bravest, north or south, east or
+west. Unnamed, unknown, remain, and still remain, the bravest soldiers.
+Our manliest--our boys--our hardy darlings; no picture gives them.
+Likely, the typic one of them (standing, no doubt, for hundreds,
+thousands,) crawls aside to some bush-clump, or ferny tuft, on receiving
+his death-shot--there sheltering a little while, soaking roots, grass
+and soil, with red blood--the battle advances, retreats, flits from the
+scene, sweeps by--and there, haply with pain and suffering (yet less,
+far less, than is supposed,) the last lethargy winds like a serpent
+round him--the eyes glaze in death----none recks--perhaps the
+burial-squads, in truce, a week afterwards, search not the secluded
+spot--and there, at last, the Bravest Soldier crumbles in mother earth,
+unburied and unknown.
+
+
+SOME SPECIMEN CASES
+
+_June 18th_.--In one of the hospitals I find Thomas Haley, company M,
+4th New York cavalry--a regular Irish boy, a fine specimen of youthful
+physical manliness--shot through the lungs--inevitably dying--came
+over to this country from Ireland to enlist--has not a single friend or
+acquaintance here--is sleeping soundly at this moment, (but it is the
+sleep of death)--has a bullet-hole straight through the lung. I saw Tom
+when first brought here, three days since, and didn't suppose he could
+live twelve hours--(yet he looks well enough in the face to a casual
+observer.) He lies there with his frame exposed above the waist, all
+naked, for coolness, a fine built man, the tan not yet bleach'd from his
+cheeks and neck. It is useless to talk to him, as with his sad hurt, and
+the stimulants they give him, and the utter strangeness of every object,
+face, furniture, &c., the poor fellow, even when awake, is like some
+frighten'd, shy animal. Much of the time he sleeps, or half sleeps.
+(Sometimes I thought he knew more than he show'd.) I often come and sit
+by him in perfect silence; he will breathe for ten minutes as softly and
+evenly as a young babe asleep. Poor youth, so handsome, athletic, with
+profuse beautiful shining hair. One time as I sat looking at him while
+he lay asleep, he suddenly, without the least start, awaken'd, open'd
+his eyes, gave me a long steady look, turning his face very slightly to
+gaze easier--one long, clear, silent look--a slight sigh--then turn'd
+back and went into his doze again. Little he knew, poor death-stricken
+boy, the heart of the stranger that hover'd near.
+
+_W.H.E., Co. F, 2nd N.Y._--His disease is pneumonia. He lay sick at
+the wretched hospital below Aquia creek, for seven or eight days before
+brought here. He was detail'd from his regiment to go there and help
+as nurse, but was soon taken down himself. Is an elderly, sallow-faced,
+rather gaunt, gray-hair'd man, a widower, with children. He express'd a
+great desire for good, strong green tea. An excellent lady, Mrs. W.,
+of Washington, soon sent him a package; also a small sum of money. The
+doctor said give him the tea at pleasure; it lay on the table by his
+side, and he used it every day. He slept a great deal; could not talk
+much, as he grew deaf. Occupied bed 15, ward I, Armory. (The same lady
+above, Mrs. W., sent the men a large package of tobacco.)
+
+J. G. lies in bed 52, ward I; is of company B, 7th Pennsylvania. I
+gave him a small sum of money, some tobacco, and envelopes. To a man
+adjoining also gave twenty-five cents; he flush'd in the face when I
+offer'd it--refused at first, but as I found he had not a cent, and was
+very fond of having the daily papers to read, I prest it on him. He was
+evidently very grateful, but said little.
+
+J.T.L., of company F, 9th New Hampshire, lies in bed 37, ward I. Is
+very fond of tobacco. I furnish him some; also with a little money. Has
+gangrene of the feet; a pretty bad case; will surely have to lose three
+toes. Is a regular specimen of an old-fashion'd, rude, hearty, New
+England countryman, impressing me with his likeness to that celebrated
+singed cat, who was better than she look'd.
+
+Bed 3, ward E, Armory, has a great hankering for pickles, something
+pungent. After consulting the doctor, I gave him a small bottle of
+horse-radish; also some apples; also a book. Some of the nurses
+are excellent. The woman-nurse in this ward I like very much. (Mrs.
+Wright--a year afterwards I found her in Mansion house hospital,
+Alexandria--she is a perfect nurse.)
+
+In one bed a young man, Marcus Small, company K, 7th Maine--sick with
+dysentery and typhoid fever--pretty critical case--I talk with him
+often--he thinks he will die--looks like it indeed. I write a letter for
+him home to East Livermore, Maine--I let him talk to me a little,
+but not much, advise him to keep very quiet--do most of the talking
+myself--stay quite a while with him, as he holds on to my hand--talk
+to him in a cheering, but slow, low and measured manner--talk about his
+furlough, and going home as soon as he is able to travel.
+
+Thomas Lindly, 1st Pennsylvania cavalry, shot very badly through the
+foot--poor young man, he suffers horridly, has to be constantly dosed
+with morphine, his face ashy and glazed, bright young eyes--I give him
+a large handsome apple, lay it in sight, tell him to have it roasted
+in the morning, as he generally feels easier then, and can eat a little
+breakfast. I write two letters for him.
+
+Opposite, an old Quaker lady sits by the side of her son, Amer Moore,
+2d U. S. artillery--shot in the head two weeks since, very low, quite
+rational--from hips down paralyzed--he will surely die. I speak a very
+few words to him every day and evening--he answers pleasantly--wants
+nothing--(he told me soon after he came about his home affairs,
+his mother had been an invalid, and he fear'd to let her know his
+condition.) He died soon after she came.
+
+
+MY PREPARATIONS FOR VISITS
+
+In my visits to the hospitals I found it was in the simple matter of
+personal presence, and emanating ordinary cheer and magnetism, that I
+succeeded and help'd more than by medical nursing, or delicacies,
+or gifts of money, or anything else. During the war I possess'd the
+perfection of physical health. My habit, when practicable, was to
+prepare for starting out on one of those daily or nightly tours of from
+a couple to four or five hours, by fortifying myself with previous rest,
+the bath, clean clothes, a good meal, and as cheerful an appearance as
+possible.
+
+
+AMBULANCE PROCESSIONS
+
+_June 23, Sundown._--As I sit writing this paragraph I see a train of
+about thirty huge four-horse wagons, used as ambulances, fill'd with
+wounded, passing up Fourteenth street, on their way, probably, to
+Columbian, Carver, and Mount Pleasant hospitals. This is the way the men
+come in now, seldom in small numbers, but almost always in these long,
+sad processions. Through the past winter, while our army lay opposite
+Fredericksburg, the like strings of ambulances were of frequent
+occurrence along Seventh street, passing slowly up from the steamboat
+wharf, with loads from Aquia creek.
+
+
+BAD WOUNDS--THE YOUNG
+
+The soldiers are nearly all young men, and far more American than is
+generally supposed--I should say nine-tenths are native-born. Among
+the arrivals from Chancellorsville I find a large proportion of Ohio,
+Indiana, and Illinois men. As usual, there are all sorts of wounds. Some
+of the men fearfully burnt from the explosions of artillery caissons.
+One ward has a long row of officers, some with ugly hurts. Yesterday was
+perhaps worse than usual. Amputations are going on--the attendants are
+dressing wounds. As you pass by, you must be on your guard where
+you look. I saw the other day a gentlemen, a visitor apparently from
+curiosity, in one of the wards, stop and turn a moment to look at an
+awful wound they were probing. He turn'd pale, and in a moment more he
+had fainted away and fallen to the floor.
+
+
+THE MOST INSPIRITING OF ALL WAR'S SHOWS
+
+_June 29._--Just before sundown this evening a very large cavalry force
+went by--a fine sight. The men evidently had seen service. First came a
+mounted band of sixteen bugles, drums and cymbals, playing wild martial
+tunes--made my heart jump. Then the principal officers, then company
+after company, with their officers at their heads, making of course the
+main part of the cavalcade; then a long train of men with led horses,
+lots of mounted negroes with special horses--and a long string of
+baggage-wagons, each drawn by four horses--and then a motley rear guard.
+
+It was a pronouncedly warlike and gay show; the sabres clank'd, the men
+look'd young and healthy and strong; the electric tramping of so many
+horses on the hard road, and the gallant bearing, fine seat, and bright
+faced appearance of a thousand and more handsome young American men,
+were so good to see. An hour later another troop went by, smaller in
+numbers, perhaps three hundred men. They too look'd like serviceable
+men, campaigners used to field and fight.
+
+_July 3_.--This forenoon, for more than an hour, again long strings
+of cavalry, several regiments, very fine men and horses, four or five
+abreast. I saw them in Fourteenth street, coming in town from north.
+Several hundred extra horses, some of the mares with colts, trotting
+along. (Appear'd to be a number of prisoners too.) How inspiriting
+always the cavalry regiments. Our men are generally well mounted, feel
+good, are young, gay on the saddle, their blankets in a roll behind
+them, their sabres clanking at their sides. This noise and movement
+and the tramp of many horses' hoofs has a curious effect upon one. The
+bugles play--presently you hear them afar off, deaden'd, mix'd with
+other noises. Then just as they had all pass'd, a string of ambulances
+commenc'd from the other way, moving up Fourteenth street north, slowly
+wending along, bearing a large lot of wounded to the hospitals.
+
+
+BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG
+
+_July 4th_.--The weather to-day, upon the whole, is very fine, warm,
+but from a smart rain last night, fresh enough, and no dust, which is
+a great relief for this city. I saw the parade about noon, Pennsylvania
+avenue, from Fifteenth street down toward the capitol. There were three
+regiments of infantry, (I suppose the ones doing patrol duty here,) two
+or three societies of Odd Fellows, a lot of children in barouches, and
+a squad of policemen. (A useless imposition upon the soldiers--they have
+work enough on their backs without piling the like of this.)
+
+As I went down the Avenue, saw a big flaring placard on the bulletin
+board of a newspaper office, announcing "Glorious Victory for the Union
+Army!" Meade had fought Lee at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, yesterday and
+day before, and repuls'd him most signally, taken 3,000 prisoners, &c.
+(I afterwards saw Meade's despatch, very modest, and a sort of order of
+the day from the President himself, quite religious, giving thanks to
+the Supreme, and calling on the people to do the same.)
+
+I walk'd on to Armory hospital--took along with me several bottles of
+blackberry and cherry syrup, good and strong, but innocent. Went through
+several of the wards, announc'd to the soldiers the news from Meade,
+and gave them all a good drink of the syrups with ice water, quite
+refreshing--prepar'd it all myself, and serv'd it around. Meanwhile the
+Washington bells are ringing their sun-down peals for Fourth of July,
+and the usual fusilades of boys' pistols, crackers, and guns.
+
+
+A CAVALRY CAMP
+
+I am writing this, nearly sundown, watching a cavalry company (acting
+Signal service,) just come in through a shower, making their night's
+camp ready on some broad, vacant ground, a sort of hill, in full view
+opposite my window. There are the men in their yellow-striped jackets.
+All are dismounted; the freed horses stand with drooping heads and wet
+sides; they are to be led off presently in groups, to water. The little
+wall-tents and shelter tents spring up quickly. I see the fires already
+blazing, and pots and kettles over them. Some among the men are driving
+in tent-poles, wielding their axes with strong, slow blows. I see great
+huddles of horses, bundles of hay, groups of men (some with unbuckled
+sabres yet on their sides,) a few officers, piles of wood, the flames
+of the fires, saddles, harness, &c. The smoke streams upward, additional
+men arrive and dismount--some drive in stakes, and tie their horses to
+them; some go with buckets for water, some are chopping wood, and so on.
+
+_July 6th_.--A steady rain, dark and thick and warm. A train of six-mule
+wagons has just pass'd bearing pontoons, great square-end flatboats, and
+the heavy planking for overlaying them. We hear that the Potomac above
+here is flooded, and are wondering whether Lee will be able to get back
+across again, or whether Meade will indeed break him to pieces. The
+cavalry camp on the hill is a ceaseless field of observation for me.
+This forenoon there stand the horses, tether'd together, dripping,
+steaming, chewing their hay. The men emerge from their tents, dripping
+also. The fires are half quench'd.
+
+_July 10th_.--Still the camp opposite--perhaps fifty or sixty tents.
+Some of the men are cleaning their sabres (pleasant to-day,) some
+brushing boots, some laying off, reading, writing--some cooking, some
+sleeping. On long temporary cross-sticks back of the tents are cavalry
+accoutrements--blankets and overcoats are hung out to air--there are the
+squads of horses tether'd, feeding, continually stamping and whisking
+their tails to keep off flies. I sit long in my third story window and
+look at the scene--a hundred little things going on--peculiar objects
+connected with the camp that could not be described, any one of them
+justly, without much minute drawing and coloring in words.
+
+
+A NEW YORK SOLDIER
+
+This afternoon, July 22d, I have spent a long time with Oscar F. Wilber,
+company G, 154th New York, low with chronic diarrhoea, and a bad
+wound also. He asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testament.
+I complied, and ask'd him what I should read. He said, "Make your
+own choice." I open'd at the close of one of the first books of the
+evangelists, and read the chapters describing the latter hours of
+Christ, and the scenes at the crucifixion. The poor, wasted young man
+ask'd me to read the following chapter also, how Christ rose again. I
+read very slowly, for Oscar was feeble. It pleased him very much, yet
+the tears were in his eyes. He ask'd me if I enjoy'd religion. I said,
+"Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you mean, and yet, may-be, it is the
+same thing." He said, "It is my chief reliance." He talk'd of death, and
+said he did not fear it. I said, "Why, Oscar, don't you think you will
+get well?" He said, "I may, but it is not probable." He spoke calmly
+of his condition. The wound was very bad, it discharg'd much. Then the
+diarrhoea had prostrated him, and I felt that he was even then the same
+as dying. He behaved very manly and affectionate. The kiss I gave him
+as I was about leaving he return'd fourfold. He gave me his mother's
+address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilber, Alleghany pest-office, Cattaraugus
+county, N. Y. I had several such interviews with him. He died a few days
+after the one just described.
+
+
+HOME-MADE MUSIC
+
+_August 8th_.--To-night, as I was trying to keep cool, sitting by a
+wounded soldier in Armory-square, I was attracted by some pleasant
+singing in an adjoining ward. As my soldier was asleep, I left him, and
+entering the ward where the music was, I walk'd halfway down and took a
+seat by the cot of a young Brooklyn friend, S. R., badly wounded in the
+hand at Chancellorsville, and who has suffer'd much, but at that moment
+in the evening was wide awake and comparatively easy. He had turn'd
+over on his left side to get a better view of the singers, but the
+mosquito-curtains of the adjoining cots obstructed the sight. I stept
+round and loop'd them all up, so that he had a clear show, and then sat
+down again by him, and look'd and listen'd. The principal singer was a
+young lady-nurse of one of the wards, accompanying on a melodeon, and
+join'd by the lady-nurses of other wards. They sat there, making a
+charming group, with their handsome, healthy faces, and standing up
+a little behind them were some ten or fifteen of the convalescent
+soldiers, young men, nurses, &c., with books in their hands, singing.
+Of course it was not such a performance as the great soloists at the
+New York opera house take a hand in, yet I am not sure but I receiv'd as
+much pleasure under the circumstances, sitting there, as I have had from
+the best Italian compositions, express'd by world-famous performers.
+The men lying up and down the hospital, in their cots, (some badly
+wounded--some never to rise thence,) the cots themselves, with their
+drapery of white curtains, and the shadows down the lower and upper
+parts of the ward; then the silence of the men, and the attitudes they
+took--the whole was a sight to look around upon again and again. And
+there sweetly rose those voices up to the high, whitewash'd wooden roof,
+and pleasantly the roof sent it all back again. They sang very well,
+mostly quaint old songs and declamatory hymns, to fitting tunes. Here,
+for instance:
+
+    My days are swiftly gliding by, and I a pilgrim stranger,
+    Would not detain them as they fly, those hours of toil and danger;
+    For O we stand on Jordan's strand, our friends are passing over,
+    And just before, the shining shore we may almost discover.
+    We'll gird our loins my brethren dear, our distant home discerning,
+    Our absent Lord has left us word, let every lamp be burning,
+    For O we stand on Jordan's strand, our friends are passing over,
+    And just before, the shining shore we may almost discover.
+
+
+ABRAHAM LINCOLN
+
+_August 12th_.--I see the President almost every day, as I happen to
+live where he passes to or from his lodgings out of town. He never
+sleeps at the White House during the hot season, but has quarters at a
+healthy location some three miles north of the city, the Soldiers' home,
+a United States military establishment. I saw him this morning about 8
+1/2 coming in to business, riding on Vermont avenue, near L street. He
+always has a company of twenty-five or thirty cavalry, with sabres drawn
+and held upright over their shoulders. They say this guard was against
+his personal wish, but he let his counselors have their way. The party
+makes no great show in uniform or horses. Mr. Lincoln on the saddle
+generally rides a good-sized, easy-going gray horse, is dress'd in plain
+black, somewhat rusty and dusty, wears a black stiff hat, and looks
+about as ordinary in attire, &c., as the commonest man. A lieutenant,
+with yellow straps, rides at his left, and following behind, two by
+two, come the cavalry men, in their yellow-striped jackets. They are
+generally going at a slow trot, as that is the pace set them by the one
+they wait upon. The sabres and accoutrements clank, and the entirely
+unornamental _cortege_ as it trots towards Lafayette square arouses
+no sensation, only some curious stranger stops and gazes. I see very
+plainly ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S dark brown face, with the deep-cut lines, the
+eyes, always to me with a deep latent sadness in the expression. We
+have got so that we exchange bows, and very cordial ones. Sometimes
+the President goes and comes in an open barouche. The cavalry always
+accompany him, with drawn sabres. Often I notice as he goes out
+evenings--and sometimes in the morning, when he returns early--he turns
+off and halts at the large and handsome residence of the Secretary of
+War, on K street, and holds conference there. If in his barouche, I can
+see from my window he does not alight, but sits in his vehicle, and Mr.
+Stanton comes out to attend him. Sometimes one of his sons, a boy of ten
+or twelve, accompanies him, riding at his right on a pony. Earlier in
+the summer I occasionally saw the President and his wife, toward the
+latter part of the afternoon, out in a barouche, on a pleasure ride
+through the city. Mrs. Lincoln was dress'd in complete black, with a
+long crape veil. The equipage is of the plainest kind, only two horses,
+and they nothing extra. They pass'd me once very close, and I saw the
+President in the face fully, as they were moving slowly, and his look,
+though abstracted, happen'd to be directed steadily in my eye. He bow'd
+and smiled, but far beneath his smile I noticed well the expression I
+have alluded to. None of the artists or pictures has caught the deep,
+though subtle and indirect expression of this man's face. There is
+something else there. One of the great portrait painters of two or three
+centuries ago is needed.
+
+
+HEATED TERM
+
+There has lately been much suffering here from heat; we have had it upon
+us now eleven days. I go around with an umbrella and a fan. I saw two
+cases of sun-stroke yesterday, one in Pennsylvania avenue, and another
+in Seventh street. The City railroad company loses some horses every
+day. Yet Washington is having a livelier August, and is probably putting
+in a more energetic and satisfactory summer, than ever before during its
+existence. There is probably more human electricity, more population to
+make it, more business, more light-heartedness, than ever before.
+The armies that swiftly circumambiated from Fredericksburgh--march'd,
+struggled, fought, had out their mighty clinch and hurl at
+Gettysburg--wheel'd, circumambiated again, return'd to their ways,
+touching us not, either at their going or coming. And Washington feels
+that she has pass'd the worst; perhaps feels that she is henceforth
+mistress. So here she sits with her surrounding hills spotted with guns,
+and is conscious of a character and identity different from what it
+was five or six short weeks ago, and very considerably pleasanter and
+prouder.
+
+
+SOLDIERS AND TALKS
+
+Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers, you meet everywhere about the city,
+often superb-looking men, though invalids dress'd in worn uniforms, and
+carrying canes or crutches. I often have talks with them, occasionally
+quite long and interesting. One, for instance, will have been all
+through the peninsula under McClellan--narrates to me the fights, the
+marches, the strange, quick changes of that eventful campaign, and
+gives glimpses of many things untold in any official reports or books or
+journals. These, indeed, are the things that are genuine and precious.
+The man was there, has been out two years, has been through a dozen
+fights, the superfluous flesh of talking is long work'd off him, and he
+gives me little but the hard meat and sinew. I find it refreshing, these
+hardy, bright, intuitive, American young men, (experienc'd soldiers with
+all their youth.) The vocal play and significance moves one more than
+books. Then there hangs something majestic about a man who has borne his
+part in battles, especially if he is very quiet regarding it when you
+desire him to unbosom. I am continually lost at the absence of blowing
+and blowers among these old-young American militaires. I have found some
+man or other who has been in every battle since the war began, and have
+talk'd with them about each one in every part of the United States, and
+many of the engagements on the rivers and harbors too. I find men
+here from every State in the Union, without exception. (There are more
+Southerners, especially border State men, in the Union army than is
+generally supposed. [A]) I now doubt whether one can get a fair idea
+of what this war practically is, or what genuine America is, and her
+character, without some such experience as this I am having.
+
+
+DEATH OF A WISCONSIN OFFICER
+
+Another characteristic scene of that dark and bloody 1863, from notes of
+my visit to Armory-square hospital, one hot but pleasant summer day. In
+ward H we approach the cot of a young lieutenant of one of the Wisconsin
+regiments. Tread the bare board floor lightly here, for the pain and
+panting of death are in this cot. I saw the lieutenant when he was first
+brought here from Chancellorsville, and have been with him occasionally
+from day to day and night to night. He had been getting along pretty
+well till night before last, when a sudden hemorrhage that could not be
+stopt came upon him, and to-day it still continues at intervals. Notice
+that water-pail by the side of the bed, with a quantity of blood and
+bloody pieces of muslin, nearly full; that tells the story. The poor
+young man is struggling painfully for breath, his great dark eyes with
+a glaze already upon them, and the choking faint but audible in his
+throat. An attendant sits by him, and will not leave him till the last;
+yet little or nothing can be done. He will die here in an hour or two,
+without the presence of kith or kin. Meantime the ordinary chat and
+business of[6] the ward a little way off goes on indifferently. Some
+of the inmates are laughing and joking, others are playing checkers or
+cards, others are reading, &c.
+
+I have noticed through most of the hospitals that as long as there
+is any chance for a man, no matter how bad he may be, the surgeon and
+nurses work hard, sometimes with curious tenacity, for his life, doing
+everything, and keeping somebody by him to execute the doctor's orders,
+and minister to him every minute night and day. See that screen there.
+As you advance through the dusk of early candle-light, a nurse will step
+forth on tip-toe, and silently but imperiously forbid you to make any
+noise, or perhaps to come near at all. Some soldier's life is flickering
+there, suspended between recovery and death. Perhaps at this moment the
+exhausted frame has just fallen into a light sleep that a step might
+shake. You must retire. The neighboring patients must move in their
+stocking feet. I have been several times struck with such mark'd
+efforts--everything bent to save a life from the very grip of the
+destroyer. But when that grip is once firmly fix'd, leaving no hope or
+chance at all, the surgeon abandons the patient. If it is a case
+where stimulus is any relief, the nurse gives milk-punch or brandy, or
+whatever is wanted, _ad libitum_. There is no fuss made. Not a bit
+of sentimentalism or whining have I seen about a single death-bed in
+hospital or on the field, but generally impassive indifference. All is
+over, as far as any efforts can avail; it is useless to expend emotions
+or labors. While there is a prospect they strive hard--at least most
+surgeons do; but death certain and evident, they yield the field.
+
+
+Note:
+
+[6]MR. GARFIELD (_In the House of Representatives, April 15,'79_.) "Do
+gentlemen know that (leaving out all the border States) there were fifty
+regiments and seven companies of white men in our army fighting for the
+Union from the States that went into rebellion? Do they know that from
+the single State of Kentucky more Union soldiers fought under our flag
+than Napoleon took into the battle of Waterloo? more than Wellington
+took with all the allied armies against Napoleon? Do they remember that
+186,000 color'd men fought under our flag against the rebellion and for
+the Union, and that of that number 90,000 were from the States which
+went into rebellion?"
+
+
+HOSPITALS ENSEMBLE
+
+_Aug., Sept., and Oct., '63._--I am in the habit of going to all, and
+to Fairfax seminary, Alexandria, and over Long bridge to the great
+Convalescent camp. The journals publish a regular directory of them--a
+long list. As a specimen of almost any one of the larger of these
+hospitals, fancy to yourself a space of three to twenty acres of ground,
+on which are group'd ten or twelve very large wooden barracks, with,
+perhaps, a dozen or twenty, and sometimes more than that number, small
+buildings, capable altogether of accommodating from five hundred to a
+thousand or fifteen hundred persons. Sometimes these wooden barracks or
+wards, each of them perhaps from a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet
+long, are rang'd in a straight row, evenly fronting the street; others
+are plann'd so as to form an immense V; and others again are ranged
+around a hollow square. They make altogether a huge cluster, with the
+additional tents, extra wards for contagious diseases, guard-houses,
+sutler's stores, chaplain's house; in the middle will probably be an
+edifice devoted to the offices of the surgeon in charge and the ward
+surgeons, principal attaches, clerks, &c. The wards are either letter'd
+alphabetically, ward G, ward K, or else numerically, 1, 2, 3, &c. Each
+has its ward surgeon and corps of nurses. Of course, there is, in the
+aggregate, quite a muster of employes, and over all the surgeon in
+charge. Here in Washington, when these army hospitals are all fill'd,
+(as they have been already several times,) they contain a population
+more numerous in itself than the whole of the Washington of ten or
+fifteen years ago. Within sight of the capitol, as I write, are some
+thirty or forty such collections, at times holding from fifty to seventy
+thousand men. Looking from any eminence and studying the topography in
+my rambles, I use them as landmarks. Through the rich August verdure
+of the trees, see that white group of buildings off yonder in the
+outskirts; then another cluster half a mile to the left of the first;
+then another a mile to the right, and another a mile beyond, and still
+another between us and the first. Indeed, we can hardly look in any
+direction but these clusters are dotting the landscape and environs.
+That little town, as you might suppose it, off there on the brow of a
+hill, is indeed a town, but of wounds, sickness, and death. It is Finley
+hospital, northeast of the city, on Kendall green, as it used to be
+call'd. That other is Campbell hospital. Both are large establishments.
+I have known these two alone to have from two thousand to twenty-five
+hundred inmates. Then there is Carver hospital, larger still, a wall'd
+and military city regularly laid out, and guarded by squads of sentries.
+Again, off east, Lincoln hospital, a still larger one; and half a mile
+further Emory hospital. Still sweeping the eye around down the river
+toward Alexandria, we see, to the right, the locality where the
+Convalescent camp stands, with its five, eight, or sometimes ten
+thousand inmates. Even all these are but a portion. The Harewood, Mount
+Pleasant, Armory-square, Judiciary hospitals, are some of the rest, and
+all large collections.
+
+
+A SILENT NIGHT RAMBLE
+
+_October 20th_.--To-night, after leaving the hospital at 10 o'clock, (I
+had been on self-imposed duty some five hours, pretty closely confined,)
+I wander'd a long time around Washington. The night was sweet, very
+clear, sufficiently cool, a voluptuous halfmoon, slightly golden, the
+space near it of a transparent blue-gray tinge. I walk'd up Pennsylvania
+avenue, and then to Seventh street, and a long while around the
+Patent-office. Somehow it look'd rebukefully strong, majestic, there in
+the delicate moonlight. The sky, the planets, the constellations all
+so bright, so calm, so expressively silent, so soothing, after those
+hospital scenes. I wander'd to and fro till the moist moon set, long
+after midnight.
+
+
+SPIRITUAL CHARACTERS AMONG THE SOLDIERS
+
+Every now and then, in hospital or camp, there are beings I
+meet--specimens of unworldliness, disinterestedness, and animal purity
+and heroism--perhaps some unconscious Indianian, or from Ohio or
+Tennessee--on whose birth the calmness of heaven seems to have
+descended, and whose gradual growing up, whatever the circumstances of
+work-life or change, or hardship, or small or no education that attended
+it, the power of a strange spiritual sweetness, fibre and inward health,
+have also attended. Something veil'd and abstracted is often a part of
+the manners of these beings. I have met them, I say, not seldom in the
+army, in camp, and in the hospitals. The Western regiments contain many
+of them. They are often young men, obeying the events and occasions
+about them, marching, soldiering, righting, foraging, cooking, working
+on farms or at some trade before the war--unaware of their own nature,
+(as to that, who is aware of his own nature?) their companions only
+understanding that they are different from the rest, more silent,
+"something odd about them," and apt to go off and meditate and muse in
+solitude.
+
+
+CATTLE DROVES ABOUT WASHINGTON
+
+Among other sights are immense droves of cattle with their drivers,
+passing through the streets of the city. Some of the men have a way
+of leading the cattle by a peculiar call, a wild, pensive hoot, quite
+musical, prolong'd, indescribable, sounding something between the cooing
+of a pigeon and the hoot of an owl. I like to stand and look at the
+sight of one of these immense droves--a little way off--(as the dust
+is great.) There are always men on horseback, cracking their whips
+and shouting--the cattle low--some obstinate ox or steer attempts to
+escape--then a lively scene--the mounted men, always excellent riders
+and on good horses, dash after the recusant, and wheel and turn--a
+dozen mounted drovers, their great slouch'd, broad-brim'd hats, very
+picturesque--another dozen on foot--everybody cover'd with dust--long
+goads in their hands--an immense drove of perhaps 1000 cattle--the
+shouting, hooting, movement, &c.
+
+
+HOSPITAL PERPLEXITY
+
+To add to other troubles, amid the confusion of this great army of sick,
+it is almost impossible for a stranger to find any friend or relative,
+unless he has the patient's specific address to start upon. Besides the
+directory printed in the newspapers here, there are one or two general
+directories of the hospitals kept at provost's head-quarters, but they
+are nothing like complete; they are never up to date, and, as things
+are, with the daily streams of coming and going and changing, cannot
+be. I have known cases, for instance such as a farmer coming here from
+northern New York to find a wounded brother, faithfully hunting round
+for a week, and then compell'd to leave and go home without getting any
+trace of him. When he got home he found a letter from the brother giving
+the right address.
+
+
+DOWN AT THE FRONT
+
+CULPEPPER, VA., _Feb. '64._--Here I am FRONT pretty well down toward the
+extreme front. Three or four days ago General S., who is now in chief
+command, (I believe Meade is absent, sick,) moved a strong force
+southward from camp as if intending business. They went to the Rapidan;
+there has since been some manoeuvering and a little fighting, but
+nothing of consequence. The telegraphic accounts given Monday morning
+last, make entirely too much of it, I should say. What General S.
+intended we here know not, but we trust in that competent commander. We
+were somewhat excited, (but not so very much either,) on Sunday, during
+the day and night, as orders were sent out to pack up and harness, and
+be ready to evacuate, to fall back towards Washington. But I was very
+sleepy and went to bed. Some tremendous shouts arousing me during the
+night, I went forth and found it was from the men above mention'd, who
+were returning. I talk'd with some of the men; as usual I found them
+full of gayety, endurance, and many fine little outshows, the signs of
+the most excellent good manliness of the world. It was a curious
+sight to see those shadowy columns moving through the night. I stood
+unobserv'd in the darkness and watch'd them long. The mud was very
+deep. The men had their usual burdens, overcoats, knapsacks, guns and
+blankets. Along and along they filed by me, with often a laugh, a song,
+a cheerful word, but never once a murmur. It may have been odd, but I
+never before so realized the majesty and reality of the American people
+_en masse_. It fell upon me like a great awe. The strong ranks moved
+neither fast nor slow. They had march'd seven or eight miles already
+through the slipping unctuous mud. The brave First corps stopt here.
+The equally brave Third corps moved on to Brandy station. The famous
+Brooklyn 14th are here, guarding the town. You see their red legs
+actively moving everywhere. Then they have a theatre of their own here.
+They give musical performances, nearly everything done capitally. Of
+course the audience is a jam. It is good sport to attend one of these
+entertainments of the 14th. I like to look around at the soldiers, and
+the general collection in front of the curtain, more than the scene on
+the stage.
+
+
+PAYING THE BOUNTIES
+
+One of the things to note here now is the arrival of the paymaster with
+his strong box, and the payment of bounties to veterans re-enlisting.
+Major H. is here to-day, with a small mountain of greenbacks, rejoicing
+the hearts of the 2d division of the First corps. In the midst of a
+rickety shanty, behind a little table, sit the major and clerk Eldridge,
+with the rolls before them, and much moneys. A re-enlisted man gets in
+cash about $200 down, (and heavy instalments following, as the pay-days
+arrive, one after another.) The show of the men crowding around is quite
+exhilarating; I like to stand and look. They feel elated, their pockets
+full, and the ensuing furlough, the visit home. It is a scene of
+sparkling eyes and flush'd cheeks. The soldier has many gloomy and harsh
+experiences, and this makes up for some of them. Major H. is order'd to
+pay first all the re-enlisted men of the First corps their bounties and
+back pay, and then the rest. You hear the peculiar sound of the rustling
+of the new and crisp greenbacks by the hour, through the nimble fingers
+of the major and my friend clerk E.
+
+
+RUMORS, CHANGES, ETC.
+
+About the excitement of Sunday, and the orders to be ready to start,
+I have heard since that the said orders came from some cautious minor
+commander, and that the high principalities knew not and thought not of
+any such move; which is likely. The rumor and fear here intimated a long
+circuit by Lee, and flank attack on our right. But I cast my eyes at the
+mud, which was then at its deepest and palmiest condition, and retired
+composedly to rest. Still it is about time for Culpepper to have a
+change. Authorities have chased each other here like clouds in a stormy
+sky. Before the first Bull Run this was the rendezvous and camp of
+instruction of the secession troops. I am stopping at the house of a
+lady who has witness'd all the eventful changes of the war, along this
+route of contending armies. She is a widow, with a family of young
+children, and lives here with her sister in a large handsome house. A
+number of army officers board with them.
+
+
+VIRGINIA
+
+Dilapidated, fenceless, and trodden with war as Virginia is, wherever
+I move across her surface, I find myself rous'd to surprise and
+admiration. What capacity for products, improvements, human life,
+nourishment and expansion. Everywhere that I have been in the Old
+Dominion, (the subtle mockery of that title now!) such thoughts have
+fill'd me. The soil is yet far above the average of any of the northern
+States. And how full of breadth the scenery, everywhere distant
+mountains, everywhere convenient rivers. Even yet prodigal in forest
+woods, and surely eligible for all the fruits, orchards, and flowers.
+The skies and atmosphere most luscious, as I feel certain, from more
+than a year's residence in the State, and movements hither and yon. I
+should say very healthy, as a general thing. Then a rich and elastic
+quality, by night and by day. The sun rejoices in his strength, dazzling
+and burning, and yet, to me, never unpleasantly weakening. It is not the
+panting tropical heat, but invigorates. The north tempers it. The nights
+are often unsurpassable. Last evening (Feb. 8,) I saw the first of the
+new moon, the outlined old moon clear along with it; the sky and air
+so clear, such transparent hues of color, it seem'd to me I had never
+really seen the new moon before. It was the thinnest cut crescent
+possible. It hung delicate just above the sulky shadow of the Blue
+mountains. Ah, if it might prove an omen and good prophecy for this
+unhappy State.
+
+
+SUMMER OF 1864
+
+I am back again in Washington, on my regular daily and nightly rounds.
+Of course there are many specialties. Dotting a ward here and there are
+always cases of poor fellows, long-suffering under obstinate wounds,
+or weak and dishearten'd from typhoid fever, or the like; mark'd cases,
+needing special and sympathetic nourishment. These I sit down and either
+talk to, or silently cheer them up. They always like it hugely, (and so
+do I.) Each case has its peculiarities, and needs some new adaptation. I
+have learnt to thus conform--learnt a good deal of hospital wisdom.
+Some of the poor young chaps, away from home for the first time in their
+lives, hunger and thirst for affection; this is sometimes the only thing
+that will reach their condition. The men like to have a pencil, and
+something to write in. I have given them cheap pocket-diaries, and
+almanacs for 1864, interleav'd with blank paper. For reading I generally
+have some old pictorial magazines or story papers--they are always
+acceptable. Also the morning or evening papers of the day. The best
+books I do not give, but lend to read through the wards, and then take
+them to others, and so on; they are very punctual about returning the
+books. In these wards, or on the field, as I thus continue to go round,
+I have come to adapt myself to each emergency, after its kind or call,
+however trivial, however solemn, every one justified and made real
+under its circumstances--not only visits and cheering talk and little
+gifts--not only washing and dressing wounds, (I have some cases where
+the patient is unwilling any one should do this but me)--but passages
+from the Bible, expounding them, prayer at the bedside, explanations of
+doctrine, &c. (I think I see my friends smiling at this confession, but
+I was never more in earnest in my life.) In camp and everywhere, I was
+in the habit of reading or giving recitations to the men. They were very
+fond of it, and liked declamatory poetical pieces. We would gather in
+a large group by ourselves, after supper, and spend the time in such
+readings, or in talking, and occasionally by an amusing game called the
+game of twenty questions.
+
+
+A NEW ARMY ORGANIZATION FIT FOR AMERICA
+
+It is plain to me out of the events of the war, north and south, and out
+of all considerations, that the current military theory, practice, rules
+and organization, (adopted from Europe from the feudal institutes, with,
+of course, the "modern improvements," largely from the French,) though
+tacitly follow'd, and believ'd in by the officers generally, are not at
+all consonant with the United States, nor our people, nor our days. What
+it will be I know not--but I know that as entire an abnegation of the
+present military system, and the naval too, and a building up from
+radically different root-bases and centres appropriate to us, must
+eventually result, as that our political system has resulted and become
+establish'd, different from feudal Europe, and built up on itself from
+original, perennial, democratic premises. We have undoubtedly in the
+United States the greatest military power--an exhaustless, intelligent,
+brave and reliable rank and file--in the world, any land, perhaps all
+lands. The problem is to organize this in the manner fully appropriate
+to it, to the principles of the republic, and to get the best service
+out of it. In the present struggle, as already seen and review'd,
+probably three-fourths of the losses, men, lives, &c., have been sheer
+superfluity, extravagance, waste.
+
+
+DEATH OF A HERO
+
+I wonder if I could ever convey to another--to you, for instance, reader
+dear--the tender and terrible realities of such cases, (many, many
+happen'd,) as the one I am now going to mention. Stewart C. Glover,
+company E, 5th Wisconsin--was wounded May 5, in one of those fierce
+tussles of the Wilderness-died May 21--aged about 20. He was a small
+and beardless young man--a splendid soldier--in fact almost an ideal
+American, of his age. He had serv'd nearly three years, and would have
+been entitled to his discharge in a few days. He was in Hancock's corps.
+The fighting had about ceas'd for the day, and the general commanding
+the brigade rode by and call'd for volunteers to bring in the wounded.
+Glover responded among the first--went out gayly--but while in the act
+of bearing in a wounded sergeant to our lines, was shot in the knee by
+a rebel sharpshooter; consequence, amputation and death. He had resided
+with his father, John Glover, an aged and feeble man, in Batavia,
+Genesee county, N. Y., but was at school in Wisconsin, after the war
+broke out, and there enlisted--soon took to soldier-life, liked it,
+was very manly, was belov'd by officers and comrades. He kept a little
+diary, like so many of the soldiers. On the day of his death he wrote
+the following in it, _to-day the doctor says I must die--all is over
+with me--ah, so young to die_. On another blank leaf he pencill'd to his
+brother, _dear brother Thomas, I have been brave but wicked--pray for
+me._
+
+
+HOSPITAL SCENES--INCIDENTS
+
+It is Sunday afternoon, middle of summer, hot and oppressive, and very
+silent through the ward. I am taking care of a critical case, now lying
+in a half lethargy. Near where I sit is a suffering rebel, from the
+8th Louisiana; his name is Irving. He has been here a long time, badly
+wounded, and lately had his leg amputated; it is not doing very well.
+Right opposite me is a sick soldier-boy, laid down with his clothes on,
+sleeping, looking much wasted, his pallid face on his arm. I see by the
+yellow trimming on his jacket that he is a cavalry boy. I step softly
+over and find by his card that he is named William Cone, of the 1st
+Maine cavalry, and his folks live in Skowhegan.
+
+_Ice Cream Treat_.--One hot day toward the middle of June, I gave the
+inmates of Carver hospital a general ice cream treat, purchasing a large
+quantity, and, under convoy of the doctor or head nurse, going
+around personally through the wards to see to its distribution. _An
+Incident_.--In one of the rights before Atlanta, a rebel soldier, of
+large size, evidently a young man, was mortally wounded top of the head,
+so that the brains partially exuded. He lived three days, lying on
+his back on the spot where he first dropt. He dug with his heel in the
+ground during that time a hole big enough to put in a couple of
+ordinary knapsacks. He just lay there in the open air, and with little
+intermission kept his heel going night and day. Some of our soldiers
+then moved him to a house, but he died in a few minutes.
+
+_Another_.--After the battles at Columbia, Tennessee, where we repuls'd
+about a score of vehement rebel charges, they left a great many wounded
+on the ground, mostly within our range. Whenever any of these wounded
+attempted to move away by any means, generally by crawling off, our men
+without exception brought them down by a bullet. They let none crawl
+away, no matter what his condition.
+
+
+A YANKEE SOLDIER
+
+As I turn'd off the Avenue one cool October evening into Thirteenth
+street, a soldier with knapsack and overcoat stood at the corner
+inquiring his way. I found he wanted to go part of the road in my
+direction, so we walk'd on together. We soon fell into conversation. He
+was small and not very young, and a tough little fellow, as I judged in
+the evening light, catching glimpses by the lamps we pass'd. His answers
+were short, but clear. His name was Charles Carroll; he belong'd to
+one of the Massachusetts regiments, and was born in or near Lynn. His
+parents were living, but were very old. There were four sons, and all
+had enlisted. Two had died of starvation and misery in the prison at
+Andersonville, and one had been kill'd in the west. He only was left.
+He was now going home, and by the way he talk'd I inferr'd that his time
+was nearly out. He made great calculations on being with his parents to
+comfort them the rest of their days.
+
+
+UNION PRISONERS SOUTH
+
+Michael Stansbury, 48 years of age, a seafaring man, a southerner by
+birth and raising, formerly captain of U. S. light ship Long Shoal,
+station'd at Long Shoal point, Pamlico sound--though a southerner, a
+firm Union man--was captur'd Feb. 17, 1863, and has been nearly two
+years in the Confederate prisons; was at one time order'd releas'd by
+Governor Vance, but a rebel officer re-arrested him; then sent on to
+Richmond for exchange--but instead of being exchanged was sent down
+(as a southern citizen, not a soldier,) to Salisbury, N. C., where he
+remain'd until lately, when he escap'd among the exchang'd by assuming
+the name of a dead soldier, and coming up via Wilmington with the rest.
+Was about sixteen months in Salisbury.
+
+Subsequent to October, '64, there were about 11,000 Union prisoners in
+the stockade; about 100 of them southern unionists, 200 U. S. deserters.
+During the past winter 1500 of the prisoners, to save their lives,
+join'd the confederacy, on condition of being assign'd merely to guard
+duty. Out of the 11,000 not more than 2500 came out; 500 of these were
+pitiable, helpless wretches--the rest were in a condition to travel.
+There were often 60 dead bodies to be buried in the morning; the daily
+average would be about 40. The regular food was a meal of corn, the cob
+and husk ground together, and sometimes once a week a ration of sorghum
+molasses. A diminutive ration of meat might possibly come once a month,
+not oftener. In the stockade, containing the 11,000 men, there was a
+partial show of tents, not enough for 2000. A large proportion of the
+men lived in holes in the ground, in the utmost wretchedness. Some froze
+to death, others had their hands and feet frozen. The rebel guards would
+occasionally, and on the least pretence, fire into the prison from mere
+demonism and wantonness. All the horrors that can be named, starvation,
+lassitude, filth, vermin, despair, swift loss of self-respect, idiocy,
+insanity, and frequent murder, were there. Stansbury has a wife and
+child living in Newbern--has written to them from here--is in the U. S.
+light-house employ still--(had been home to Newbern to see his family,
+and on his return to the ship was captured in his boat.) Has seen men
+brought there to Salisbury as hearty as you ever see in your life--in
+a few weeks completely dead gone, much of it from thinking on their
+condition--hope all gone. Has himself a hard, sad, strangely deaden'd
+kind of look, as of one chill' d for years in the cold and dark, where
+his good manly nature had no room to exercise itself.
+
+
+DESERTERS
+
+_Oct. 24_.--Saw a large squad of our own deserters (over 300) surrounded
+with a cordon of arm'd guards, marching along Pennsylvania avenue. The
+most motley collection I ever saw, all sorts of rig, all sorts of hats
+and caps, many fine-looking young fellows, some of them shame-faced,
+some sickly, most of them dirty, shirts very dirty and long worn, &c.
+They tramp'd along without order, a huge huddling mass, not in ranks. I
+saw some of the spectators laughing, but I felt like anything else but
+laughing. These deserters are far more numerous than would be thought.
+Almost every day I see squads of them, sometimes two or three at a time,
+with a small guard; sometimes ten or twelve, under a larger one. (I
+hear that desertions from the army now in the field have often averaged
+10,000 a month. One of the commonest sights in Washington is a squad of
+deserters.)
+
+
+A GLIMPSE OF WAR'S HELL-SCENES
+
+In one of the late movements of our troops in the valley, (near
+Upperville, I think,) a strong force of Moseby's mounted guerillas
+attack'd a train of wounded, and the guard of cavalry convoying them.
+The ambulances contain'd about 60 wounded, quite a number of them
+officers of rank. The rebels were in strength, and the capture of
+the train and its partial guard after a short snap was effectually
+accomplish'd. No sooner had our men surrender'd, the rebels instantly
+commenced robbing the train and murdering their prisoners, even the
+wounded. Here is the scene, or a sample of it, ten minutes after.
+Among the wounded officers in the ambulances were one, a lieutenant of
+regulars, and another of higher rank. These two were dragg'd out on
+the ground on their backs, and were now surrounded by the guerillas,
+a demoniac crowd, each member of which was stabbing them in different
+parts of their bodies. One of the officers had his feet pinn'd firmly
+to the ground by bayonets stuck through them and thrust into the ground.
+These two officers, as afterwards found on examination, had receiv'd
+about twenty such thrusts, some of them through the mouth, face, &c. The
+wounded had all been dragg'd (to give a better chance also for plunder,)
+out of their wagons; some had been effectually dispatch'd, and their
+bodies were lying there lifeless and bloody. Others, not yet dead,
+but horribly mutilated, were moaning or groaning. Of our men who
+surrender'd, most had been thus maim'd or slaughter'd.
+
+At this instant a force of our cavalry, who had been following the
+train at some interval, charged suddenly upon the secesh captors, who
+proceeded at once to make the best escape they could. Most of them got
+away, but we gobbled two officers and seventeen men, in the very acts
+just described. The sight was one which admitted of little discussion,
+as may be imagined. The seventeen captur'd men and two officers were put
+under guard for the night, but it was decided there and then that they
+should die. The next morning the two officers were taken in the
+town, separate places, put in the centre of the street, and shot. The
+seventeen men were taken to an open ground, a little one side. They
+were placed in a hollow square, half-encompass'd by two of our cavalry
+regiments, one of which regiments had three days before found the bloody
+corpses of three of their men hamstrung and hung up by the heels to
+limbs of trees by Moseby's guerillas, and the other had not long before
+had twelve men, after surrendering, shot and then hung by the neck to
+limbs of trees, and jeering inscriptions pinn'd to the breast of one of
+the corpses, who had been a sergeant. Those three, and those twelve, had
+been found, I say, by these environing regiments. Now, with revolvers,
+they form'd the grim cordon of the seventeen prisoners. The latter were
+placed in the midst of the hollow square, unfasten'd, and the ironical
+remark made to them that they were now to be given "a chance for
+themselves." A few ran for it. But what use? From every side the deadly
+pills came. In a few minutes the seventeen corpses strew'd the hollow
+square. I was curious to know whether some of the Union soldiers, some
+few, (some one or two at least of the youngsters,) did not abstain from
+shooting on the helpless men. Not one. There was no exultation, very
+little said, almost nothing, yet every man there contributed his shot.
+
+Multiply the above by scores, aye hundreds--verify it in all the forms
+that different circumstances, individuals, places, could afford--light
+it with every lurid passion, the wolf's, the lion's lapping thirst for
+blood--the passionate, boiling volcanoes of human revenge for comrades,
+brothers slain--with the light of burning farms, and heaps of smutting,
+smouldering black embers--and in the human heart everywhere black, worse
+embers--and you have an inkling of this war.
+
+
+GIFTS--MONEY--DISCRIMINATION
+
+As a very large proportion of the wounded came up from the front without
+a cent of money in their pockets, I soon discover'd that it was about
+the best thing I could do to raise their spirits, and show them that
+somebody cared for them, and practically felt a fatherly or brotherly
+interest in them, to give them small sums in such cases, using tact and
+discretion about it. I am regularly supplied with funds for this purpose
+by good women and men in Boston, Salem, Providence, Brooklyn, and
+New York. I provide myself with a quantity of bright new ten-cent and
+five-cent bills, and, when I think it incumbent, I give 25 or 30
+cents, or perhaps 50 cents, and occasionally a still larger sum to some
+particular case. As I have started this subject, I take opportunity to
+ventilate the financial question. My supplies, altogether voluntary,
+mostly confidential, often seeming quite Providential, were numerous
+and varied. For instance, there were two distant and wealthy ladies,
+sisters, who sent regularly, for two years, quite heavy sums, enjoining
+that their names should be kept secret. The same delicacy was indeed a
+frequent condition. From several I had _carte blanche_. Many were entire
+strangers. From these sources, during from two to three years, in the
+manner described, in the hospitals, I bestowed, as almoner for others,
+many, many thousands of dollars. I learn'd one thing conclusively--that
+beneath all the ostensible greed and heartlessness of our times there
+is no end to the generous benevolence of men and women in the United
+States, when once sure of their object. Another thing became clear to
+me--while _cash_ is not amiss to bring up the rear, tact and magnetic
+sympathy and unction are, and ever will be, sovereign still.
+
+
+ITEMS FROM MY NOTE BOOKS
+
+Some of the half-eras'd, and not over-legible when made, memoranda of
+things wanted by one patient or another, will convey quite a fair idea.
+D. S. G., bed 52, wants a good book; has a sore, weak throat; would like
+some horehound candy; is from New Jersey, 28th regiment. C. H. L., 145th
+Pennsylvania, lies in bed 6, with jaundice and erysipelas; also wounded;
+stomach easily nauseated; bring him some oranges, also a little tart
+jelly; hearty, full-blooded young fellow--(he got better in a few days,
+and is now home on a furlough.) J. H. G., bed 24, wants an undershirt,
+drawers, and socks; has not had a change for quite a while; is evidently
+a neat, clean boy from New England--(I supplied him; also with a comb,
+tooth-brush, and some soap and towels; I noticed afterward he was the
+cleanest of the whole ward.) Mrs. G., lady-nurse, ward F, wants a bottle
+of brandy--has two patients imperatively requiring stimulus--low with
+wounds and exhaustion. (I supplied her with a bottle of first-rate
+brandy from the Christian commission rooms.)
+
+
+A CASE FROM SECOND BULL RUN
+
+Well, Poor John Mahay is dead. He died yesterday. His was a painful and
+long-lingering case (see p. 24 _ante_.) I have been with him at times
+for the past fifteen months. He belonged to company A, 101st New York,
+and was shot through the lower region of the abdomen at second Bull Run,
+August, '62. One scene at his bedside will suffice for the agonies of
+nearly two years. The bladder had been perforated by a bullet going
+entirely through him. Not long since I sat a good part of the morning by
+his bedside, ward E, Armory square. The water ran out of his eyes from
+the intense pain, and the muscles of his face were distorted, but he
+utter'd nothing except a low groan now and then. Hot moist cloths were
+applied, and reliev'd him somewhat. Poor Mahay, a mere boy in age, but
+old in misfortune. He never knew the love of parents, was placed in
+infancy in one of the New York charitable institutions, and subsequently
+bound out to a tyrannical master in Sullivan county, (the scars of whose
+cowhide and club remain'd yet on his back.) His wound here was a most
+disagreeable one, for he was a gentle, cleanly, and affectionate boy.
+He found friends in his hospital life, and, indeed, was a universal
+favorite. He had quite a funeral ceremony.
+
+
+ARMY SURGEONS--AID DEFICIENCIES
+
+I must bear my most emphatic testimony to the zeal, manliness, and
+professional spirit and capacity, generally prevailing among the
+surgeons, many of them young men, in the hospitals and the army. I will
+not say much about the exceptions, for they are few; (but I have met
+some of those few, and very incompetent and airish they were.) I never
+ceas'd to find the best men, and the hardest and most disinterested
+workers, among the surgeons in the hospitals. They are full of genius,
+too. I have seen many hundreds of them and this is my testimony. There
+are, however, serious deficiencies, wastes, sad want of system, in the
+commissions, contributions, and in all the voluntary, and a great part
+of the governmental nursing, edibles, medicines, stores, &c. (I do not
+say surgical attendance, because the surgeons cannot do more than human
+endurance permits.) Whatever puffing accounts there may be in the papers
+of the North, this is the actual fact. No thorough previous preparation,
+no system, no foresight, no genius. Always plenty of stores, no doubt,
+but never where they are needed, and never the proper application.
+Of all harrowing experiences, none is greater than that of the days
+following a heavy battle. Scores, hundreds of the noblest men on earth,
+uncomplaining, lie helpless, mangled, faint, alone, and so bleed to
+death, or die from exhaustion, either actually untouch'd at all, or
+merely the laying of them down and leaving them, when there ought to be
+means provided to save them.
+
+
+THE BLUE EVERYWHERE
+
+This city, its suburbs, the capitol, the front of the White House, the
+places of amusement, the Avenue, and all the main streets, swarm with
+soldiers this winter, more than ever before. Some are out from the
+hospitals, some from the neighboring camps, &c. One source or another,
+they pour plenteously, and make, I should say, the mark'd feature in the
+human movement and costume-appearance of our national city. Their blue
+pants and overcoats are everywhere. The clump of crutches is heard up
+the stairs of the paymasters' offices, and there are characteristic
+groups around the doors of the same, often waiting long and wearily
+in the cold. Toward the latter part of the afternoon, you see the
+furlough'd men, sometimes singly, sometimes in small squads, making
+their way to the Baltimore depot. At all times, except early in the
+morning, the patrol detachments are moving around, especially during the
+earlier hours of evening, examining passes, and arresting all soldiers
+without them. They do not question the one-legged, or men badly disabled
+or main'd, but all others are stopt. They also go around evenings
+through the auditoriums of the theatres, and make officers and all show
+their passes, or other authority, for being there.
+
+
+A MODEL HOSPITAL
+
+_Sunday, January 29th, 1865_.--Have been in Armory-square this
+afternoon. The wards are very comfortable, new floors and plaster walls,
+and models of neatness. I am not sure but this is a model hospital after
+all, in important respects. I found several sad cases of old lingering
+wounds. One Delaware soldier, William H. Millis, from Bridgeville, whom
+I had been with after the battles of the Wilderness, last May, where he
+receiv'd a very bad wound in the chest, with another in the left arm,
+and whose case was serious (pneumonia had set in) all last June and
+July, I now find well enough to do light duty. For three weeks at the
+time mention'd he just hovered between life and death.
+
+
+BOYS IN THE ARMY
+
+As I walk'd home about sunset, I saw in Fourteenth street a very young
+soldier, thinly clad, standing near the house I was about to enter. I
+stopt a moment in front of the door and call'd him to me. I knew that an
+old Tennessee regiment, and also an Indiana regiment, were temporarily
+stopping in new barracks, near Fourteenth street. This boy I found
+belonged to the Tennessee regiment. But I could hardly believe he
+carried a musket. He was but 15 years old, yet had been twelve months a
+soldier, and had borne his part in several battles, even historic
+ones. I ask'd him if he did not suffer from the cold, and if he had
+no overcoat. No, he did not suffer from cold, and had no overcoat, but
+could draw one whenever he wish'd. His father was dead, and his mother
+living in some part of East Tennessee; all the men were from that
+part of the country. The next forenoon I saw the Tennessee and Indiana
+regiments marching down the Avenue. My boy was with the former, stepping
+along with the rest. There were many other boys no older. I stood and
+watch'd them as they tramp'd along with slow, strong, heavy, regular
+steps. There did not appear to be a man over 30 years of age, and a
+large proportion were from 15 to perhaps 22 or 23. They had all the look
+of veterans, worn, stain'd, impassive, and a certain unbent, lounging
+gait, carrying in addition to their regular arms and knapsacks,
+frequently a frying-pan, broom, &c. They were all of pleasant
+physiognomy; no refinement, nor blanch'd with intellect, but as my eye
+pick'd them, moving along, rank by rank, there did not seem to be a
+single repulsive, brutal or markedly stupid face among them.
+
+
+BURIAL OF A LADY NURSE
+
+Here is an incident just occurr'd in one of the hospitals. A lady named
+Miss or Mrs. Billings, who has long been a practical friend of soldiers,
+and nurse in the army, and had become attached to it in a way that no
+one can realize but him or her who has had experience, was taken sick,
+early this winter, linger'd some time, and finally died in the hospital.
+It was her request that she should be buried among the soldiers, and
+after the military method. This request was fully carried out. Her
+coffin was carried to the grave by soldiers, with the usual escort,
+buried, and a salute fired over the grave. This was at Annapolis a few
+days since.
+
+
+FEMALE NURSES FOR SOLDIERS
+
+There are many women in one position or another, among the hospitals,
+mostly as nurses here in Washington, and among the military stations;
+quite a number of them young ladies acting as volunteers. They are a
+help in certain ways, and deserve to be mention'd with respect. Then
+it remains to be distinctly said that few or no young ladies, under the
+irresistible conventions of society, answer the practical requirements
+of nurses for soldiers. Middle-aged or healthy and good condition'd
+elderly women, mothers of children, are always best. Many of the wounded
+must be handled. A hundred things which cannot be gainsay'd, must occur
+and must be done. The presence of a good middle-aged or elderly woman,
+the magnetic touch of hands, the expressive features of the mother, the
+silent soothing of her presence, her words, her knowledge and privileges
+arrived at only through having had children, are precious and final
+qualifications. It is a natural faculty that is required; it is not
+merely having a genteel young woman at a table in a ward. One of the
+finest nurses I met was a red-faced illiterate old Irish woman; I have
+seen her take the poor wasted naked boys so tenderly up in her arms.
+There are plenty of excellent clean old black women that would make
+tip-top nurses.
+
+
+SOUTHERN ESCAPEES
+
+_Feb. 23, '65_.--I saw a large procession of young men from the rebel
+army, (deserters they are call'd, but the usual meaning of the word does
+not apply to them,) passing the Avenue to-day. There were nearly 200,
+come up yesterday by boat from James river. I stood and watch'd them
+as they shuffled along, in a slow, tired, worn sort of way; a large
+proportion of light-hair'd, blonde, light gray-eyed young men among
+them. Their costumes had a dirt-stain'd uniformity; most had been
+originally gray; some had articles of our uniform, pants on one, vest
+or coat on another; I think they were mostly Georgia and North Carolina
+boys. They excited little or no attention. As I stood quite close to
+them, several good looking enough youths, (but O what a tale of misery
+their appearance told,) nodded or just spoke to me, without doubt
+divining pity and fatherliness out of my face, for my heart was full
+enough of it. Several of the couples trudg'd along with their arms about
+each other, some probably brothers, as if they were afraid they might
+somehow get separated. They nearly all look'd what one might call
+simple, yet intelligent, too. Some had pieces of old carpet, some
+blankets, and others old bags around their shoulders. Some of them here
+and there had fine faces, still it was a procession of misery. The two
+hundred had with them about half a dozen arm'd guards. Along this week
+I saw some such procession, more or less in numbers, every day, as they
+were brought up by the boat. The government does what it can for them,
+and sends them north and west.
+
+_Feb. 27_.--Some three or four hundred more escapees from the
+confederate army came up on the boat. As the day has been very pleasant
+indeed, (after a long spell of bad weather,) I have been wandering
+around a good deal, without any other object than to be out-doors and
+enjoy it; have met these escaped men in all directions. Their apparel is
+the same ragged, long-worn motley as before described. I talk'd with a
+number of the men. Some are quite bright and stylish, for all their poor
+clothes--walking with an air, wearing their old head-coverings on one
+side, quite saucily. I find the old, unquestionable proofs, as all
+along the past four years, of the unscrupulous tyranny exercised by the
+secession government in conscripting the common people by absolute force
+everywhere, and paying no attention whatever to the men's time being
+up--keeping them in military service just the same. One gigantic young
+fellow, a Georgian, at least six feet three inches high, broad-sized in
+proportion, attired in the dirtiest, drab, well smear'd rags, tied
+with strings, his trousers at the knees all strips and streamers, was
+complacently standing eating some bread and meat. He appear'd contented
+enough. Then a few minutes after I saw him slowly walking along. It was
+plain he did not take anything to heart.
+
+_Feb. 28._--As I pass'd the military headquarters of the city, not far
+from the President's house, I stopt to interview some of the crowd of
+escapees who were lounging there. In appearance they were the same as
+previously mention'd. Two of them, one about 17, and the other perhaps
+25 or '6, I talk'd with some time. They were from North Carolina, born
+and rais'd there, and had folks there. The elder had been in the rebel
+service four years. He was first conscripted for two years. He was then
+kept arbitrarily in the ranks. This is the case with a large proportion
+of the secession army. There was nothing downcast in these young
+men's manners; the younger had been soldiering about a year; he was
+conscripted; there were six brothers (all the boys of the family) in
+the army, part of them as conscripts, part as volunteers; three had been
+kill'd; one had escaped about four months ago, and now this one had got
+away; he was a pleasant and well-talking lad, with the peculiar North
+Carolina idiom (not at all disagreeable to my ears.) He and the elder
+one were of the same company, and escaped together--and wish'd to remain
+together. They thought of getting transportation away to Missouri, and
+working there; but were not sure it was judicious. I advised them rather
+to go to some of the directly northern States, and get farm work for the
+present. The younger had made six dollars on the boat, with some tobacco
+he brought; he had three and a half left. The elder had nothing; I
+gave him a trifle. Soon after, met John Wormley, 9th Alabama, a West
+Tennessee rais' d boy, parents both dead--had the look of one for a long
+time on short allowance--said very little--chew'd tobacco at a fearful
+rate, spitting in proportion--large clear dark-brown eyes, very
+fine--didn't know what to make of me--told me at last he wanted much
+to get some clean underclothes, and a pair of decent pants. Didn't care
+about coat or hat fixings. Wanted a chance to wash himself well, and
+put on the underclothes. I had the very great pleasure of helping him to
+accomplish all those wholesome designs.
+
+_March 1st_.--Plenty more butternut or clay-color'd escapees every
+day. About 160 came in to-day, a large portion South Carolinians. They
+generally take the oath of allegiance, and are sent north, west, or
+extreme south-west if they wish. Several of them told me that the
+desertions in their army, of men going home, leave or no leave, are far
+more numerous than their desertions to our side. I saw a very forlorn
+looking squad of about a hundred, late this afternoon, on their way to
+the Baltimore depot.
+
+
+THE CAPITOL BY GAS-LIGHT
+
+To-night I have been wandering awhile in the capitol, which is all lit
+up. The illuminated rotunda looks fine. I like to stand aside and look a
+long, long while, up at the dome; it comforts me somehow. The House and
+Senate were both in session till very late. I look'd in upon them, but
+only a few moments; they were hard at work on tax and appropriation
+bills. I wander'd through the long and rich corridors and apartments
+under the Senate; an old habit of mine, former winters, and now more
+satisfaction than ever. Not many persons down there, occasionally a
+flitting figure in the distance.
+
+
+THE INAUGURATION
+
+_March 4th._--The President very quietly rode down to the capitol in his
+own carriage, by himself, on a sharp trot, about noon, either because
+he wish'd to be on hand to sign bills, or to get rid of marching in line
+with the absurd procession, the muslin temple of liberty and pasteboard
+monitor. I saw him on his return, at three o'clock, after the
+performance was over. He was in his plain two-horse barouche, and look'd
+very much worn and tired; the lines, indeed, of vast responsibilities,
+intricate questions, and demands of life and death, cut deeper than ever
+upon his dark brown face; yet all the old goodness, tenderness, sadness,
+and canny shrewdness, underneath the furrows. (I never see that man
+without feeling that he is one to become personally attach'd to, for his
+combination of purest, heartiest tenderness, and native western form of
+manliness.) By his side sat his little boy, of ten years. There were no
+soldiers, only a lot of civilians on horseback, with huge yellow scarfs
+over their shoulders, riding around the carriage. (At the inauguration
+four years ago, he rode down and back again surrounded by a dense
+mass of arm'd cavalrymen eight deep, with drawn sabres; and there were
+sharpshooters station'd at every corner on the route.) I ought to make
+mention of the closing levee of Saturday night last. Never before was
+such a compact jam in front of the White House--all the grounds fill'd,
+and away out to the spacious sidewalks. I was there, as I took a
+notion to go--was in the rush inside with the crowd--surged along the
+passage-ways, the blue and other rooms, and through the great east room.
+Crowds of country people, some very funny. Fine music from the Marine
+band, off in a side place. I saw Mr. Lincoln, drest all in black, with
+white kid gloves and a claw-hammer coat, receiving, as in duty bound,
+shaking hands, looking very disconsolate, and as if he would give
+anything to be somewhere else.
+
+
+ATTITUDE OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS DURING THE WAR
+
+Looking over my scraps, I find I wrote the following during 1864. The
+happening to our America, abroad as well as at home, these years, is
+indeed most strange. The democratic republic has paid her today the
+terrible and resplendent compliment of the united wish of all the
+nations of the world that her union should be broken, her future
+cut off, and that she should be compell'd to descend to the level
+of kingdoms and empires ordinarily great. There is certainly not one
+government in Europe but is now watching the war in this country, with
+the ardent prayer that the United States may be effectually split,
+crippled, and dismember'd by it. There is not one but would help toward
+that dismemberment, if it dared. I say such is the ardent wish to-day of
+England and of France, as governments, and of all the nations of Europe,
+as governments. I think indeed it is to-day the real, heartfelt wish
+of all the nations of the world, with the single exception of
+Mexico--Mexico, the only one to whom we have ever really done wrong,
+and now the only one who prays for us and for our triumph, with genuine
+prayer. Is it not indeed strange? America, made up of all, cheerfully
+from the beginning opening her arms to all, the result and justifier of
+all, of Britain, Germany, France and Spain--all here--the accepter, the
+friend, hope, last resource and general house of all--she who has
+harm'd none, but been bounteous to so many, to millions, the mother of
+strangers and exiles, all nations--should now, I say, be paid this dread
+compliment of general governmental fear and hatred. Are we indignant?
+alarm'd? Do we feel jeopardized? No; help'd, braced, concentrated,
+rather. We are all too prone to wander from ourselves, to affect Europe,
+and watch her frowns and smiles. We need this hot lesson of general
+hatred, and henceforth must never forget it. Never again will we trust
+the moral sense nor abstract friendliness of a single _government_ of
+the old world.
+
+
+THE WEATHER--DOES IT SYMPATHIZE WITH THESE TIMES?
+
+Whether the rains, the heat and cold, and what underlies them all,
+are affected with what affects man in masses, and follow his play of
+passionate action, strain'd stronger than usual, and on a larger scale
+than usual--whether this, or no, it is certain that there is now, and
+has been for twenty months or more, on this American continent north,
+many a remarkable, many an unprecedented expression of the subtile world
+of air above us and around us. There, since this war, and the wide and
+deep national agitation, strange analogies, different combinations, a
+different sunlight, or absence of it; different products even out of the
+ground. After every great battle, a great storm. Even civic events the
+same. On Saturday last, a forenoon like whirling demons, dark, with
+slanting rain, full of rage; and then the afternoon, so calm, so bathed
+with flooding splendor from heaven's most excellent sun, with atmosphere
+of sweetness; so clear, it show'd the stars, long long before they were
+due. As the President came out on the capitol portico, a curious little
+white cloud, the only one in that part of the sky, appear'd like a
+hovering bird, right over him.
+
+Indeed, the heavens, the elements, all the meteorological influences,
+have run riot for weeks past. Such caprices, abruptest alternation of
+frowns and beauty, I never knew. It is a common remark that (as last
+summer was different in its spells of intense heat from any preceding
+it,) the winter just completed has been without parallel. It has
+remain'd so down to the hour I am writing. Much of the daytime of the
+past month was sulky, with leaden heaviness, fog, interstices of bitter
+cold, and some insane storms. But there have been samples of another
+description. Nor earth nor sky ever knew spectacles of superber beauty
+than some of the nights lately here. The western star, Venus, in the
+earlier hours of evening, has never been so large, so clear; it seems
+as if it told something, as if it held rapport indulgent with humanity,
+with us Americans. Five or six nights since, it hung close by the moon,
+then a little past its first quarter. The star was wonderful, the moon
+like a young mother. The sky, dark blue, the transparent night, the
+planets, the moderate west wind, the elastic temperature, the miracle of
+that great star, and the young and swelling moon swimming in the west,
+suffused the soul. Then I heard, slow and clear, the deliberate notes of
+a bugle come up out of the silence, sounding so good through the night's
+mystery, no hurry, but firm and faithful, floating along, rising,
+falling leisurely, with here and there a long-drawn note; the bugle,
+well play'd, sounding tattoo, in one of the army hospitals near here,
+where the wounded (some of them personally so dear to me,) are lying
+in their cots, and many a sick boy come down to the war from Illinois,
+Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the rest.
+
+
+INAUGURATION BALL
+
+_March 6_.--I have been up to look at the dance and supper-rooms,
+for the inauguration ball at the Patent office; and I could not help
+thinking, what a different scene they presented to my view a while
+since, fill'd with a crowded mass of the worst wounded of the war,
+brought in from second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburgh.
+To-night, beautiful women, perfumes, the violin's sweetness, the polka
+and the waltz; then the amputation, the blue face, the groan, the glassy
+eye of the dying, the clotted rag, the odor of wounds and blood, and
+many a mother's son amid strangers, passing away untended there, (for
+the crowd of the badly hurt was great, and much for nurse to do, and
+much for surgeon.)
+
+
+SCENE AT THE CAPITOL
+
+I must mention a strange scene at the capitol, the hall of
+Representatives, the morning of Saturday last, (March 4th.) The day just
+dawn'd, but in half-darkness, everything dim, leaden, and soaking. In
+that dim light, the members nervous from long drawn duty, exhausted,
+some asleep, and many half asleep. The gas-light, mix'd with the
+dingy day-break, produced an unearthly effect. The poor little sleepy,
+stumbling pages, the smell of the hall, the members with heads leaning
+on their desks, the sounds of the voices speaking, with unusual
+intonations--the general moral atmosphere also of the close of this
+important session--the strong hope that the war is approaching its
+close--the tantalizing dread lest the hope may be a false one--the
+grandeur of the hall itself, with its effect of vast shadows up toward
+the panels and spaces over the galleries--all made a mark'd combination.
+
+In the midst of this, with the suddenness of a thunderbolt, burst one of
+the most angry and crashing storms of rain and hail ever heard. It
+beat like a deluge on the heavy glass roof of the hall, and the wind
+literally howl'd and roar'd. For a moment, (and no wonder,) the nervous
+and sleeping Representatives were thrown into confusion. The slumberers
+awaked with fear, some started for the doors, some look'd up with
+blanch'd cheeks and lips to the roof, and the little pages began to cry;
+it was a scene. But it was over almost as soon as the drowsied men were
+actually awake. They recover'd themselves; the storm raged on, beating,
+dashing, and with loud noises at times. But the House went ahead with
+its business then, I think, as calmly and with as much deliberation as
+at any time in its career. Perhaps the shock did it good. (One is not
+without impression, after all, amid these members of Congress, of both
+the Houses, that if the flat routine of their duties should ever be
+broken in upon by some great emergency involving real danger, and
+calling for first-class personal qualities, those qualities would be
+found generally forthcoming, and from men not now credited with them.)
+
+
+A YANKEE ANTIQUE
+
+_March 27, 1865_.--Sergeant Calvin F. Harlowe, company C, 29th
+Massachusetts, 3d brigade, 1st division, Ninth corps--a mark'd sample
+of heroism and death, (some may say bravado, but I say heroism, of
+grandest, oldest order)--in the late attack by the rebel troops, and
+temporary capture by them, of fort Steadman, at night. The fort was
+surprised at dead of night. Suddenly awaken'd from their sleep, and
+rushing from their tents, Harlowe, with others, found himself in the
+hands of the secesh--they demanded his surrender--he answer'd, _Never
+while I live_. (Of course it was useless. The others surrender'd; the
+odds were too great.) Again he was ask'd to yield, this time by a rebel
+captain. Though surrounded, and quite calm, he again refused, call'd
+sternly to his comrades to fight on, and himself attempted to do so.
+The rebel captain then shot him--but at the same instant he shot the
+captain. Both fell together mortally wounded. Harlowe died almost
+instantly. The rebels were driven out in a very short time. The body
+was buried next day, but soon taken up and sent home, (Plymouth county,
+Mass.) Harlowe was only 22 years of age--was a tall, slim, dark-hair'd,
+blue-eyed young man--had come out originally with the 29th; and that
+is the way he met his death, after four years' campaign. He was in the
+Seven Days fight before Richmond, in second Bull Run, Antietam, first
+Fredericksburgh, Vicksburgh, Jackson, Wilderness, and the campaigns
+following--was as good a soldier as ever wore the blue, and every old
+officer in the regiment will bear that testimony. Though so young, and
+in a common rank, he had a spirit as resolute and brave as any hero
+in the books, ancient or modern--It was too great to say the words "I
+surrender"--and so he died. (When I think of such things, knowing them
+well, all the vast and complicated events of the war, on which history
+dwells and makes its volumes, fall aside, and for the moment at any rate
+I see nothing but young Calvin Harlowe's figure in the night, disdaining
+to surrender.)
+
+
+WOUNDS AND DISEASES
+
+The war is over, but the hospitals are fuller than ever, from former and
+current cases. A large' majority of the wounds are in the arms and legs.
+But there is every kind of wound, in every part of the body. I should
+say of the sick, from my observation, that the prevailing maladies
+are typhoid fever and the camp fevers generally, diarrhoea, catarrhal
+affections and bronchitis, rheumatism and pneumonia. These forms of
+sickness lead; all the rest follow. There are twice as many sick as
+there are wounded. The deaths range from seven to ten per cent, of those
+under treatment.[7]
+
+
+Note:
+
+[7] In the U. S. Surgeon-General's office since, there is a formal
+record and treatment of 153, 142 cases of wounds by government surgeons.
+What must have been the number unofficial, indirect--to say nothing of
+the Southern armies?
+
+
+DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN
+
+_April 16, '65_.--I find in my notes of the time, this passage on the
+death of Abraham Lincoln: He leaves for America's history and biography,
+so far, not only its most dramatic reminiscence--he leaves, in my
+opinion, the greatest, best, most characteristic, artistic, moral
+personality. Not but that he had faults, and show'd them in the
+Presidency; but honesty, goodness, shrewdness, conscience, and (a new
+virtue, unknown to other lands, and hardly yet really known here, but
+the foundation and tie of all, as the future will grandly develop,)
+UNIONISM, in its truest and amplest sense, form'd the hard-pan of his
+character. These he seal'd with his life. The tragic splendor of his
+death, purging, illuminating all, throws round his form, his head, an
+aureole that will remain and will grow brighter through time, while
+history lives, and love of country lasts. By many has this Union been
+help'd; but if one name, one man, must be pick'd out, he, most of all,
+is the conservator of it, to the future. He was assassinated--but the
+Union is not assassinated--_ca ira_! One falls and another falls. The
+soldier drops, sinks like a wave--but the ranks of the ocean
+eternally press on. Death does its work, obliterates a hundred, a
+thousand--President, general, captain, private,--but the Nation is
+immortal.
+
+
+SHERMAN'S ARMY'S JUBILATION--ITS SUDDEN STOPPAGE
+
+When Sherman's armies, (long after they left Atlanta,) were marching
+through Southand North Carolina--after leaving Savannah, the news of
+Lee's capitulation having been receiv'd--the men never mov'd a mile
+without from some part of the line sending up continued, inspiriting
+shouts. At intervals all day long sounded out the wild music of those
+peculiar army cries. They would be commenc'd by one regiment or brigade,
+immediately taken up by others, and at length whole corps and armies
+would join in these wild triumphant choruses. It was one of the
+characteristic expressions of the western troops, and became a habit,
+serving as a relief and outlet to the men--a vent for their feelings of
+victory, returning peace, &c. Morning, noon, and afternoon, spontaneous,
+for occasion or without occasion, these huge, strange cries, differing
+from any other, echoing through the open air for many a mile, expressing
+youth, joy, wildness, irrepressible strength, and the ideas of advance
+and conquest, sounded along the swamps and uplands of the South,
+floating to the skies. ("There never were men that kept in better
+spirits in danger or defeat--what then could they do in victory?"--said
+one of the 15th corps to me, afterwards.) This exuberance continued till
+the armies arrived at Raleigh. There the news of the President's murder
+was receiv'd. Then no more shouts or yells, for a week. All the marching
+was comparatively muffled. It was very significant--hardly a loud word
+or laugh in many of the regiments. A hush and silence pervaded all.
+
+
+NO GOOD PORTRAIT OF LINCOLN
+
+Probably the reader has seen physiognomies (often old farmers,
+sea-captains, and such) that, behind their homeliness, or even ugliness,
+held superior points so subtle, yet so palpable, making the real life
+of their faces almost as impossible to depict as a wild perfume or
+fruit-taste, or a passionate tone of the living voice--and such was
+Lincoln's face, the peculiar color, the lines of it, the eyes, mouth,
+expression. Of technical beauty it had nothing--but to the eye of a
+great artist it furnished a rare study, a feast and fascination. The
+current portraits are all failures--most of them caricatures.
+
+
+RELEAS'D UNION PRISONERS FROM SOUTH
+
+The releas'd prisoners of war are now coming up from the southern
+prisons. I have seen a number of them. The sight is worse than any sight
+of battle-fields, or any collection of wounded, even the bloodiest.
+There was, (as a sample,) one large boat load, of several hundreds,
+brought about the 25th, to Annapolis; and out of the whole number only
+three individuals were able to walk from the boat. The rest were carried
+ashore and laid down in one place or another. Can those be _men_--those
+little livid brown, ash-streak'd, monkey-looking dwarfs?--are they
+really not mummied, dwindled corpses? They lay there, most of them,
+quite still, but with a horrible look in their eyes and skinny lips
+(often with not enough flesh on the lips to cover their teeth.) Probably
+no more appalling sight was ever seen on this earth. (There are deeds,
+crimes, that may be forgiven; but this is not among them. It steeps its
+perpetrators in blackest, escapeless, endless damnation. Over 50,000
+have been compell' d to die the death of starvation--reader, did
+you ever try to realize what _starvation_ actually is?--in those
+prisons--and in a land of plenty.) An indescribable meanness, tyranny,
+aggravating course of insults, almost incredible--was evidently the rule
+of treatment through all the southern military prisons. The dead there
+are not to be pitied as much as some of the living that come from
+there--if they can be call' d living--many of them are mentally
+imbecile, and will never recuperate.[8]
+
+
+Note:
+
+[8] _From a review of_ "ANDERSONVILLE, A STORY OF SOUTHERN MILTTARY
+PRISONS," _published serially in the Toledo "Blade" in 1879, and
+afterwards in book form_.
+
+"There is a deep fascination in the subject of Andersonville--for that
+Golgotha, in which lie the whitening bones of 13,000 gallant young
+men, represents the dearest and costliest sacrifice of the war for the
+preservation of our national unity. It is a type, too, of its class. Its
+more than hundred hecatombs of dead represent several times that number
+of their brethren, for whom the prison gates of Belle Isle, Danville,
+Salisbury, Florence, Columbia, and Cahaba open'd only in eternity. There
+are few families in the North who have not at least one dear relative or
+friend among these 60,000 whose sad fortune it was to end their service
+for the Union by lying down and dying for it in a southern prison pen.
+The manner of their death, the horrors that cluster'd thickly around
+every moment of their existence, the loyal, unfaltering steadfastness
+with which they endured all that fate had brought them, has never been
+adequately told. It was not with them as with their comrades in the
+field, whose every act was perform'd in the presence of those whose duty
+it was to observe such matters and report them to the world. Hidden from
+the view of their friends in the north by the impenetrable veil
+which the military operations of the rebels drew around the so-called
+confederacy, the people knew next to nothing of their career or their
+sufferings. Thousands died there less heeded even than the hundreds
+who perish'd on the battlefield. Grant did not lose as many men kill'd
+outright, in the terrible campaign from the Wilderness to the James
+river--43 days of desperate fighting--as died in July and August at
+Andersonville. Nearly twice as many died in that prison as fell from the
+day that Grant cross'd the Rapidan, till he settled down in the trenches
+before Petersburg. More than four times as many Union dead lie under
+the solemn soughing pines about that forlorn little village in southern
+Georgia, than mark the course of Sherman from Chattanooga to Atlanta.
+The nation stands aghast at the expenditure of life which attended the
+two bloody campaigns of 1864, which virtually crush'd the confederacy,
+but no one remembers that more Union soldiers died in the rear of the
+rebel lines than were kill'd in the front of them. The great military
+events which stamp'd out the rebellion drew attention away from the sad
+drama which starvation and disease play'd in those gloomy pens in the
+far recesses of sombre southern forests."
+
+_From a letter of "Johnny Bouquet," in N. Y. "Tribune," March 27, '81._
+
+"I visited at Salisbury, N. C., the prison pen or the site of it, from
+which nearly 11,000 victims of southern politicians were buried, being
+confined in a pen without shelter, exposed to all the elements could do,
+to all the disease herding animals together could create, and to all
+the starvation and cruelty an incompetent and intense caitiff government
+could accomplish. From the conversation and almost from the recollection
+of the northern people this place has dropp' d, but not so in the gossip
+of the Salisbury people, nearly all of whom say that the half was
+never told; that such was the nature of habitual outrage here that when
+Federal prisoners escaped the townspeople harbor'd them in their barns,
+afraid the vengeance of God would fall on them, to deliver even their
+enemies back to such cruelty. Said one old man at the Boyden House, who
+join'd in the conversation one evening: 'There were often men buried out
+of that prison pen still alive. I have the testimony of a surgeon that
+he had seen them pull'd out of the dead cart with their eyes open and
+taking notice, but too weak to lift a finger. There was not the least
+excuse for such treatment, as the confederate government had seized
+every sawmill in the region, and could just as well have put up shelter
+for these prisoners as not, wood being plentiful here. It will be hard
+to make any honest man in Salisbury say that there was the slightest
+necessity for those prisoners having to live in old tents, caves
+and holes half-full of water. Representations were made to the Davis
+government against the officers in charge of it, but no attention
+was paid to them. Promotion was the punishment for cruelty there. The
+inmates were skeletons. Hell could have no terrors for any man who died
+there, except the inhuman keepers.'"
+
+
+DEATH OF A PENNSYLVANIA SOLDIER
+
+_Frank H. Irwin, company E, 93rd Pennsylvania--died May 1, '65--My
+letter to his mother_--Dear madam: No doubt you and Frank's friends have
+heard the sad fact of his death in hospital here, through his uncle,
+or the lady from Baltimore, who took his things. (I have not seen them,
+only heard of them visiting Frank.) I will write you a few lines--as
+a casual friend that sat by his death-bed. Your son, corporal Frank H.
+Irwin, was wounded near fort Fisher, Virginia, March 25th, 1865--the
+wound was in the left knee, pretty bad. He was sent up to Washington,
+was receiv'd in ward C, Armory-square hospital, March 28th--the wound
+became worse, and on the 4th of April the leg was amputated a little
+above the knee--the operation was perform' d by Dr. Bliss, one of the
+best surgeons in the army--he did the whole operation himself--there was
+a good deal of bad matter gather'd--the bullet was found in the knee.
+For a couple of weeks afterwards he was doing pretty well. I visited
+and sat by him frequently, as he was fond of having me. The last ten or
+twelve days of April I saw that his case was critical. He previously had
+some fever, with cold spells. The last week in April he was much of
+the time flighty--but always mild and gentle. He died first of May. The
+actual cause of death was pyaemia, (the absorption of the matter in the
+system instead of its discharge.) Frank, as far as I saw, had everything
+requisite in surgical treatment, nursing, &c. He had watches much of the
+time. He was so good and well-behaved and affectionate, I myself liked
+him very much. I was in the habit of coming in afternoons and sitting by
+him, and soothing him, and he liked to have me--liked to put his arm out
+and lay his hand on my knee--would keep it so a long while. Toward the
+last he was more restless and flighty at night--often fancied himself
+with his regiment--by his talk sometimes seem'd as if his feelings
+were hurt by being blamed by his officers for something he was entirely
+innocent of--said, "I never in my life was thought capable of such a
+thing, and never was." At other times he would fancy himself talking as
+it seem'd to children or such like, his relatives I suppose, and giving
+them good advice; would talk to them a long while. All the time he was
+out of his head not one single bad word or idea escaped him. It was
+remark'd that many a man's conversation in his senses was not half as
+good as Frank's delirium. He seem'd quite willing to die--he had become
+very weak and had suffer'd a good deal, and was perfectly resign'd, poor
+boy. I do not know his past life, but I feel as if it must have
+been good. At any rate what I saw of him here, under the most trying
+circumstances, with a painful wound, and among strangers, I can say
+that he behaved so brave, so composed, and so sweet and affectionate,
+it could not be surpass'd. And now like many other noble and good men,
+after serving his country as a soldier, he has yielded up his young life
+at the very outset in her service. Such things are gloomy--yet there
+is a text, "God doeth all things well"--the meaning of which, after due
+time, appears to the soul.
+
+I thought perhaps a few words, though from a stranger, about your son,
+from one who was with him at the last, might be worth while--for I loved
+the young man, though I but saw him immediately to lose him. I am merely
+a friend visiting the hospitals occasionally to cheer the wounded and
+sick.
+
+W. W.
+
+
+THE ARMIES RETURNING
+
+_May 7_.--Sunday.--To-day as I was walking a mile or two south of
+Alexandria, I fell in with several large squads of the returning Western
+army, (Sherman's men as they call'd themselves) about a thousand in all,
+the largest portion of them half sick, some convalescents, on their way
+to a hospital camp. These fragmentary excerpts, with the unmistakable
+Western physiognomy and idioms, crawling along slowly--after a great
+campaign, blown this way, as it were, out of their latitude--I mark'd
+with curiosity, and talk'd with off and on for over an hour. Here and
+there was one very sick; but all were able to walk, except some of
+the last, who had given out, and were seated on the ground, faint and
+despondent. These I tried to cheer, told them the camp they were to
+reach was only a little way further over the hill, and so got them up
+and started, accompanying some of the worst a little way, and helping
+them, or putting them under the support of stronger comrades.
+
+_May 21_.--Saw General Sheridan and his cavalry to-day; a strong,
+attractive sight; the men were mostly young, (a few middle-aged,)
+superb-looking fellows, brown, spare, keen, with well-worn clothing,
+many with pieces of water-proof cloth around their shoulders, hanging
+down. They dash'd along pretty fast, in wide close ranks, all spatter'd
+with mud; no holiday soldiers; brigade after brigade. I could have
+watch'd for a week. Sheridan stood on a balcony, under a big tree,
+coolly smoking a cigar. His looks and manner impress'd me favorably.
+
+_May 22_.--Have been taking a walk along Pennsylvania avenue and Seventh
+street north. The city is full of soldiers, running around loose.
+Officers everywhere, of all grades. All have the weatherbeaten look of
+practical service. It is a sight I never tire of. All the armies are
+now here (or portions of them,) for to-morrow's review. You see them
+swarming like bees everywhere.
+
+
+THE GRAND REVIEW
+
+For two days now the broad spaces of Pennsylvania avenue along to
+Treasury hill, and so by detour around to the President's house, and so
+up to Georgetown, and across the aqueduct bridge, have been alive with a
+magnificent sight, the returning armies. In their wide ranks stretching
+clear across the Avenue, I watch them march or ride along, at a brisk
+pace, through two whole days--infantry, cavalry, artillery--some 200,000
+men. Some days afterwards one or two other corps; and then, still
+afterwards, a good part of Sherman's immense army, brought up from
+Charleston, Savannah, &c.
+
+
+WESTERN SOLDIERS
+
+_May 26-7_.--The streets, the public buildings and grounds of
+Washington, still swarm with soldiers from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio,
+Missouri, Iowa, and all the Western States. I am continually meeting and
+talking with them. They often speak to me first, and always show great
+sociability, and glad to have a good interchange of chat. These Western
+soldiers are more slow in their movements, and in their intellectual
+quality also; have no extreme alertness. They are larger in size, have a
+more serious physiognomy, are continually looking at you as they pass in
+the street. They are largely animal, and handsomely so. During the war
+I have been at times with the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and
+Twentieth Corps. I always feel drawn toward the men, and like their
+personal contact when we are crowded close together, as frequently these
+days in the street-cars. They all think the world of General Sherman;
+call him "old Bill," or sometimes "uncle Billy."
+
+
+A SOLDIER ON LINCOLN
+
+_May 28_.--As I sat by the bedside of a sick Michigan soldier in
+hospital to-day, a convalescent from the adjoining bed rose and came to
+me, and presently we began talking. He was a middleaged man, belonged
+to the 2d Virginia regiment, but lived in Racine, Ohio, and had a family
+there. He spoke of President Lincoln, and said: "The war is over, and
+many are lost. And now we have lost the best, the fairest, the truest
+man in America. Take him altogether, he was the best man this country
+ever produced. It was quite a while I thought very different; but some
+time before the murder, that's the way I have seen it." There was deep
+earnestness in the soldier. (I found upon further talk he had known Mr.
+Lincoln personally, and quite closely, years before.) He was a veteran;
+was now in the fifth year of his service; was a cavalry man, and had
+been in a good deal of hard fighting.
+
+
+TWO BROTHERS, ONE SOUTH, ONE NORTH
+
+_May 28-9_.--I staid to-night a long time by the bedside of a new
+patient, a young Baltimorean, aged about 19 years, W. S. P., (2d
+Maryland, southern,) very feeble, right leg amputated, can't sleep
+hardly at all--has taken a great deal of morphine, which, as usual,
+is costing more than it comes to. Evidently very intelligent and well
+bred--very affectionate--held on to my hand, and put it by his face, not
+willing to let me leave. As I was lingering, soothing him in his pain,
+he says to me suddenly, "I hardly think you know who I am--I don't wish
+to impose upon you--I am a rebel soldier." I said I did not know that,
+but it made no difference. Visiting him daily for about two weeks after
+that, while he lived, (death had mark'd him, and he was quite alone,) I
+loved him much, always kiss'd him, and he did me. In an adjoining ward
+I found his brother, an officer of rank, a Union soldier, a brave and
+religious man, (Col. Clifton K. Prentiss, sixth Maryland infantry,
+Sixth corps, wounded in one of the engagements at Petersburgh, April
+2--linger'd, suffer'd much, died in Brooklyn, Aug. 20, '65). It was
+in the same battle both were hit. One was a strong Unionist, the other
+Secesh; both fought on their respective sides, both badly wounded, and
+both brought together here after a separation of four years. Each died
+for his cause.
+
+
+SOME SAD CASES YET
+
+_May 31_.--James H. Williams, aged 21, 3d Virginia cavalry.-About as
+mark'd a case of a strong man brought low by a complication of diseases,
+(laryngitis, fever, debility and diarrhoea,) as I have ever seen--has
+superb physique, remains swarthy yet, and flushed and red with fever-is
+altogether flighty--flesh of his great breast and arms tremulous, and
+pulse pounding away with treble quickness--lies a good deal of the time
+in a partial sleep, but with low muttering and groans--a sleep in which
+there is no rest. Powerful as he is, and so young, he will not be able
+to stand many more days of the strain and sapping heat of yesterday and
+to-day. His throat is in a bad way, tongue and lips parch'd. When I ask
+him how he feels, he is able just to articulate, "I feel pretty bad
+yet, old man," and looks at me with his great bright eyes. Father, John
+Williams, Millensport, Ohio.
+
+_June 9-10_.--I have been sitting late to-night by the bedside of a
+wounded captain, a special friend of mine, lying with a painful fracture
+of left leg in one of the hospitals, in a large ward partially vacant.
+The lights were put out, all but a little candle, far from where I
+sat. The full moon shone in through the windows, making long, slanting
+silvery patches on the floor. All was still, my friend too was silent,
+but could not sleep; so I sat there by him, slowly wafting the fan, and
+occupied with the musings that arose out of the scene, the long shadowy
+ward, the beautiful ghostly moonlight on the floor, the white beds, here
+and there an occupant with huddled form, the bed-clothes thrown off. The
+hospitals have a number of cases of sun-stroke and exhaustion by heat,
+from the late reviews. There are many such from the Sixth corps, from
+the hot parade of day before yesterday. (Some of these shows cost the
+lives of scores of men.)
+
+_Sunday, Sep. 10_.--Visited Douglas and Stanton hospitals. They are
+quite full. Many of the cases are bad ones, lingering wounds, and old
+sickness. There is a more than usual look of despair on the countenances
+of many of the men; hope has left them. I went through the wards,
+talking as usual. There are several here from the confederate army whom
+I had seen in other hospitals, and they recognized me. Two were in a
+dying condition.
+
+
+CALHOUN'S REAL MONUMENT
+
+In one of the hospital tents for special cases, as I sat to-day tending
+a new amputation, I heard a couple of neighboring soldiers talking to
+each other from their cots. One down with fever, but improving, had come
+up belated from Charleston not long before. The other was what we now
+call an "old veteran," (_i.e._, he was a Connecticut youth, probably of
+less than the age of twenty-five years, the four last of which he had
+spent in active service in the war in all parts of the country.) The two
+were chatting of one thing and another. The fever soldier spoke of John
+C. Calhoun's monument, which he had seen, and was describing it. The
+veteran said: "I have seen Calhoun's monument. That you saw is not the
+real monument. But I have seen it. It is the desolated, ruined south;
+nearly the whole generation of young men between seventeen and
+thirty destroyed or maim'd; all the old families used up--the rich
+impoverish'd, the plantations cover'd with weeds, the slaves unloos'd
+and become the masters, and the name of southerner blacken'd with every
+shame--all that is Calhoun's real monument."
+
+
+HOSPITALS CLOSING
+
+_October 3_.--There are two army hospitals now remaining. I went to the
+largest of these (Douglas) and spent the afternoon and evening. There
+are many sad cases, old wounds, incurable sickness, and some of the
+wounded from the March and April battles before Richmond. Few realize
+how sharp and bloody those closing battles were. Our men exposed
+themselves more than usual; press'd ahead without urging. Then the
+southerners fought with extra desperation. Both sides knew that with the
+successful chasing of the rebel cabal from Richmond, and the occupation
+of that city by the national troops, the game was up. The dead and
+wounded were unusually many. Of the wounded the last lingering driblets
+have been brought to hospital here. I find many rebel wounded here, and
+have been extra busy to-day 'tending to the worst cases of them with the
+rest.
+
+_Oct., Nov. and Dec., '65--Sundays_--Every Sunday of these months
+visited Harewood hospital out in the woods, pleasant and recluse, some
+two and a half or three miles north of the capitol. The situation is
+healthy, with broken ground, grassy slopes and patches of oak woods, the
+trees large and fine. It was one of the most extensive of the hospitals,
+now reduced to four or five partially occupied wards, the numerous
+others being vacant. In November, this became the last military hospital
+kept up by the government, all the others being closed. Cases of the
+worst and most incurable wounds, obstinate illness, and of poor fellows
+who have no homes to go to, are found here.
+
+_Dec. 10--Sunday_--Again spending a good part of the day at Harewood.
+I write this about an hour before sundown. I have walk'd out for a few
+minutes to the edge of the woods to soothe myself with the hour and
+scene. It is a glorious, warm, golden-sunny, still afternoon. The only
+noise is from a crowd of cawing crows, on some trees three hundred
+yards distant. Clusters of gnats swimming and dancing in the air in all
+directions. The oak leaves are thick under the bare trees, and give a
+strong and delicious perfume. Inside the wards everything is gloomy.
+Death is there. As I enter'd, I was confronted by it the first thing;
+a corpse of a poor soldier, just dead, of typhoid fever. The attendants
+had just straighten'd the limbs, put coppers on the eyes, and were
+laying it out.
+
+_The roads_--A great recreation, the past three years, has been in
+taking long walks out from Washington, five, seven, perhaps ten miles
+and back; generally with my friend Peter Doyle, who is as fond of it as
+I am. Fine moonlight nights, over the perfect military roads, hard
+and smooth--or Sundays--we had these delightful walks, never to be
+forgotten. The roads connecting Washington and the numerous forts around
+the city, made one useful result, at any rate, out of the war.
+
+
+TYPICAL SOLDIERS
+
+Even the typical soldiers I have been personally intimate with,--it
+seems to me if I were to make a list of them it would be like a city
+directory. Some few only have I mention'd in the foregoing pages--most
+are dead--a few yet living. There is Reuben Farwell, of Michigan,
+(little "Mitch;") Benton H. Wilson, color-bearer, 185th New York; Wm.
+Stansberry; Manvill Winterstein, Ohio; Bethuel Smith; Capt. Simms, of
+51st New York, (kill'd at Petersburgh mine explosion,) Capt. Sam. Pooley
+and Lieut. Fred. McReady, same reg't. Also, same reg't., my brother,
+George W. Whitman--in active service all through, four years,
+re-enlisting twice--was promoted, step by step, (several times
+immediately after battles,) lieutenant, captain, major and lieut.
+colonel--was in the actions at Roanoke, Newbern, 2d Bull Run, Chantilly,
+South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburgh, Vicksburgh, Jackson, the
+bloody conflicts of the Wilderness, and at Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor,
+and afterwards around Petersburgh; at one of these latter was taken
+prisoner, and pass'd four or five months in secesh military prisons,
+narrowly escaping with life, from a severe fever, from starvation and
+half-nakedness in the winter. (What a history that 51st New York had!
+Went out early--march'd, fought everywhere--was in storms at sea, nearly
+wreck'd--storm'd forts--tramp'd hither and yon in Virginia,
+night and day, summer of '62--afterwards Kentucky and
+Mississippi--re-enlisted--was in all the engagements and campaigns, as
+above.) I strengthen and comfort myself much with the certainty that
+the capacity for just such regiments, (hundreds, thousands of them) is
+inexhaustible in the United States, and that there isn't a county nor a
+township in the republic--nor a street in any city--but could turn out,
+and, on occasion, would turn out, lots of just such typical soldiers,
+whenever wanted.
+
+
+"CONVULSIVENESS"
+
+As I have look'd over the proof-sheets of the preceding pages, I have
+once or twice fear'd that my diary would prove, at best, but a batch of
+convulsively written reminiscences. Well, be it so.
+
+They are but parts of the actual distraction, heat, smoke and excitement
+of those times. The war itself, with the temper of society preceding it,
+can indeed be best described by that very word _convulsiveness_.
+
+
+THREE YEARS SUMM'D UP
+
+During those three years in hospital, camp or field, I made over six
+hundred visits or tours, and went, as I estimate, counting all, among
+from eighty thousand to a hundred thousand of the wounded and sick,
+as sustainer of spirit and body in some degree, in time of need. These
+visits varied from an hour or two, to all day or night; for with dear
+or critical cases I generally watch'd all night. Sometimes I took up my
+quarters in the hospital, and slept or watch'd there several nights
+in succession. Those three years I consider the greatest privilege
+and satisfaction, (with all their feverish excitements and physical
+deprivations and lamentable sights,) and, of course, the most profound
+lesson of my life. I can say that in my ministerings I comprehended
+all, whoever came in my way, northern or southern, and slighted none. It
+arous'd and brought out and decided undream'd-of depths of emotion. It
+has given me my most fervent views of the true _ensemble_ and extent of
+the States. While I was with wounded and sick in thousands of cases from
+the New England States, and from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania,
+and from Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and all the
+Western States, I was with more or less from all the States, North
+and South, without exception. I was with many from the border States,
+especially from Maryland and Virginia, and found, during those lurid
+years 1862-63, far more Union southerners, especially Tennesseans, than
+is supposed. I was with many rebel officers and men among our wounded,
+and gave them always what I had, and tried to cheer them the same as
+any. I was among the army teamsters considerably, and, indeed, always
+found myself drawn to them. Among the black soldiers, wounded or sick,
+and in the contraband camps, I also took my way whenever in their
+neighborhood, and did what I could for them.
+
+
+THE MILLION DEAD, TOO, SUMM'D UP
+
+The dead in this war--there they lie, strewing the fields and woods and
+valleys and battle-fields of the south--Virginia, the Peninsula--Malvern
+hill and Fair Oaks--the banks of the Chickahominy--the terraces of
+Fredericksburgh--Antietam bridge--the grisly ravines of Manassas--the
+bloody promenade of the Wilderness--the varieties of the _strayed_ dead,
+(the estimate of the War department is 25,000 national soldiers kill'd
+in battle and never buried at all, 5,000 drown'd--15,000 inhumed
+by strangers, or on the march in haste, in hitherto unfound
+localities--2,000 graves cover'd by sand and mud by Mississippi
+freshets, 3,000 carried away by caving-in of banks, &c.,)--Gettysburgh,
+the West, Southwest--Vicksburgh--Chattanooga--the trenches of
+Petersburgh--the numberless battles, camps, hospitals everywhere--the
+crop reap'd by the mighty reapers, typhoid, dysentery,
+inflammations--and blackest and loathesomest of all, the dead and living
+burial-pits, the prison-pens of Andersonville, Salisbury, Belle-Isle,
+&c., (not Dante's pictured hell and all its woes, its degradations,
+filthy torments, excell'd those prisons)--the dead, the dead, the
+dead--_our_ dead--or South or North, ours all, (all, all, all,
+finally dear to me)--or East or West--Atlantic coast or Mississippi
+valley--somewhere they crawl'd to die, alone, in bushes, low gullies,
+or on the sides of hills--(there, in secluded spots, their skeletons,
+bleach'd bones, tufts of hair, buttons, fragments of clothing, are
+occasionally found yet)--our young men once so handsome and so joyous,
+taken from us--the son from the mother, the husband from the wife,
+the dear friend from the dear friend--the clusters of camp graves, in
+Georgia, the Carolinas, and in Tennessee--the single graves left in
+the woods or by the roadside, (hundreds, thousands, obliterated)--the
+corpses floated down the rivers, and caught and lodged, (dozens, scores,
+floated down the upper Potomac, after the cavalry engagements, the
+pursuit of Lee, following Gettysburgh)--some lie at the bottom of the
+sea--the general million, and the special cemeteries in almost all the
+States--the infinite dead--(the land entire saturated, perfumed with
+their impalpable ashes' exhalation in Nature's chemistry distill'd, and
+shall be so forever, in every future grain of wheat and ear of corn, and
+every flower that grows, and every breath we draw)--not only Northern
+dead leavening Southern soil--thousands, aye tens of thousands, of
+Southerners, crumble to-day in Northern earth.
+
+And everywhere among these countless graves--everywhere in the many
+soldier Cemeteries of the Nation, (there are now, I believe, over
+seventy of them)--as at the time in the vast trenches, the depositories
+of slain, Northern and Southern, after the great battles--not only where
+the scathing trail passed those years, but radiating since in all
+the peaceful quarters of the land--we see, and ages yet may see, on
+monuments and gravestones, singly or in masses, to thousands or tens of
+thousands, the significant word UNKNOWN.
+
+(In some of the cemeteries nearly all the dead are unknown. At
+Salisbury, N. C., for instance, the known are only 85, while the unknown
+are 12,027, and 11,700 of these are buried in trenches. A national
+monument has been put up here, by order of Congress, to mark the
+spot--but what visible, material monument can ever fittingly commemorate
+that spot?)
+
+
+THE REAL WAR WILL NEVER GET IN THE BOOKS
+
+And so good-bye to the war. I know not how it may have been, or may be,
+to others--to me the main interest I found, (and still, on recollection,
+find,) in the rank and file of the armies, both sides, and in those
+specimens amid the hospitals, and even the dead on the field. To me the
+points illustrating the latent personal character and eligibilities
+of these States, in the two or three millions of American young
+and middle-aged men, North and South, embodied in those armies--and
+especially the one-third or one-fourth of their number, stricken by
+wounds or disease at some time in the course of the contest--were of
+more significance even than the political interests involved. (As so
+much of a race depends on how it faces death, and how it stands personal
+anguish and sickness. As, in the glints of emotions under emergencies,
+and the indirect traits and asides in Plutarch, we get far profounder
+clues to the antique world than all its more formal history.)
+
+Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal
+background of countless minor scenes and interiors, (not the official
+surface-courteousness of the Generals, not the few great battles) of the
+Secession war; and it is best they should not--the real war will never
+get in the books. In the mushy influences of current times, too, the
+fervid atmosphere and typical events of those years are in danger of
+being totally forgotten. I have at night watch'd by the side of a sick
+man in the hospital, one who could not live many hours. I have seen his
+eyes flash and burn as he raised himself and recurr'd to the cruelties
+on his surrender'd brother, and mutilations of the corpse afterward.
+(See in the preceding pages, the incident at Upperville--the seventeen
+kill'd as in the description, were left there on the ground. After they
+dropt dead, no one touch'd them--all were made sure of, however. The
+carcasses were left for the citizens to bury or not, as they chose.)
+
+Such was the war. It was not a quadrille in a ball-room. Its interior
+history will not only never be written--its practicality, minutia; of
+deeds and passions, will never be even suggested. The actual soldier
+of 1862-'65, North and South, with all his ways, his incredible
+dauntlessness, habits, practices, tastes, language, his fierce
+friendship, his appetite, rankness, his superb strength and animality,
+lawless gait, and a hundred unnamed lights and shades of camp, I say,
+will never be written--perhaps must not and should not be.
+
+The preceding notes may furnish a few stray glimpses into that life, and
+into those lurid interiors, never to be fully convey'd to the future.
+The hospital part of the drama from '61 to '65, deserves indeed to
+be recorded. Of that many-threaded drama, with its sudden and strange
+surprises, its confounding of prophecies, its moments of despair, the
+dread of foreign interference, the interminable campaigns, the bloody
+battles, the mighty and cumbrous and green armies, the drafts and
+bounties--the immense money expenditure, like a heavy-pouring constant
+rain--with, over the whole land, the last three years of the struggle,
+an unending, universal mourning-wail of women, parents, orphans--the
+marrow of the tragedy concentrated in those Army Hospitals--(it seem'd
+sometimes as if the whole interest of the land, North and South, was
+one vast central hospital, and all the rest of the affair but
+flanges)--those forming the untold and unwritten history of the
+war--infinitely greater (like life's) than the few scraps and
+distortions that are ever told or written. Think how much, and
+of importance, will be--how much, civic and military, has already
+been--buried in the grave, in eternal darkness.
+
+
+AN INTERREGNUM PARAGRAPH
+
+Several years now elapse before I resume my diary. I continued at
+Washington working in the Attorney-General's department through '66 and
+'67, and some time afterward. In February '73 I was stricken down by
+paralysis, gave up my desk, and migrated to Camden, New Jersey, where
+I lived during '74 and '75, quite unwell--but after that began to grow
+better; commenc'd going for weeks at a time, even for months, down in
+the country, to a charmingly recluse and rural spot along Timber creek,
+twelve or thirteen miles from where it enters the Delaware river.
+Domicil'd at the farm-house of my friends, the Staffords, near by, I
+lived half the time along this creek and its adjacent fields and lanes.
+And it is to my life here that I, perhaps, owe partial recovery (a
+sort of second wind, or semi-renewal of the lease of life) from the
+prostration of 1874-'75. If the notes of that outdoor life could only
+prove as glowing to you, reader dear, as the experience itself was to
+me. Doubtless in the course of the following, the fact of invalidism
+will crop out, (I call myself _a half-Paralytic_ these days, and
+reverently bless the Lord it is no worse,) between some of the
+lines--but I get my share of fun and healthy hours, and shall try to
+indicate them. (The trick is, I find, to tone your wants and tastes low
+down enough, and make much of negatives, and of mere daylight and the
+skies.)
+
+
+NEW THEMES ENTERED UPON
+
+_1876, '77_.--I find the woods in mid-May and early June my best places
+for composition.[9] Seated on logs or stumps there, or resting on rails,
+nearly all the following memoranda have been jotted down. Wherever I go,
+indeed, winter or summer, city or country, alone at home or traveling, I
+must take notes--(the ruling passion strong in age and disablement, and
+even the approach of--but I must not say it yet.) Then underneath the
+following excerpta--crossing the _t's_ and dotting the _i's_ of certain
+moderate movements of late years--I am fain to fancy the foundations
+of quite a lesson learn'd. After you have exhausted what there is in
+business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on--have found that none
+of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear--what remains? Nature
+remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of
+a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of
+seasons--the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night. We will begin
+from these convictions. Literature flies so high and is so hotly spiced,
+that our notes may seem hardly more than breaths of common air, or
+draughts of water to drink. But that is part of our lesson.
+
+Dear, soothing, healthy, restoration-hours--after three confining years
+of paralysis--after the long strain of the war, and its wounds and
+death.
+
+
+Note:
+
+[9] Without apology for the abrupt change of field and atmosphere--after
+what I have put in the preceding fifty or sixty pages--temporary
+episodes, thank heaven!--I restore my book to the bracing and buoyant
+equilibrium of concrete outdoor Nature, the only permanent reliance for
+sanity of book or human life.
+
+Who knows, (I have it in my fancy, my ambition,) but the pages now
+ensuing may carry ray of sun, or smell of grass or corn, or call of
+bird, or gleam of stars by night, or snow-flakes falling fresh
+and mystic, to denizen of heated city house, or tired workman or
+workwoman?--or may-be in sick-room or prison--to serve as cooling
+breeze, or Nature's aroma, to some fever'd mouth or latent pulse.
+
+
+ENTERING A LONG FARM-LANE
+
+As every man has his hobby-liking, mine is for a real farm-lane fenced
+by old chestnut-rails gray-green with dabs of moss and lichen, copious
+weeds and briers growing in spots athwart the heaps of stray-pick' d
+stones at the fence bases--irregular paths worn between, and horse and
+cow tracks--all characteristic accompaniments marking and scenting
+the neighborhood in their seasons--apple-tree blossoms in forward
+April--pigs, poultry, a field of August buckwheat, and in another the
+long flapping tassels of maize--and so to the pond, the expansion of
+the creek, the secluded-beautiful, with young and old trees, and such
+recesses and vistas.
+
+
+TO THE SPRING AND BROOK
+
+So, still sauntering on, to the spring under the willows--musical as
+soft clinking glasses-pouring a sizeable stream, thick as my neck, pure
+and clear, out from its vent where the bank arches over like a
+great brown shaggy eyebrow or mouth-roof--gurgling, gurgling
+ceaselessly--meaning, saying something, of course (if one could only
+translate it)--always gurgling there, the whole year through--never
+giving out--oceans of mint, blackberries in summer--choice of light and
+shade--just the place for my July sun-baths and water-baths too--but
+mainly the inimitable soft sound-gurgles of it, as I sit there hot
+afternoons. How they and all grow into me, day after day--everything in
+keeping--the wild, just-palpable perfume, and the dappled leaf-shadows,
+and all the natural-medicinal, elemental-moral influences of the spot.
+
+Babble on, O brook, with that utterance of thine! I too will express
+what I have gather'd in my days and progress, native, subterranean,
+past--and now thee. Spin and wind thy way--I with thee, a little while,
+at any rate. As I haunt thee so often, season by season, thou knowest,
+reckest not me, (yet why be so certain? who can tell?)--but I will learn
+from thee, and dwell on thee--receive, copy, print from thee.
+
+
+AN EARLY SUMMER REVEILLE
+
+Away then to loosen, to unstring the divine bow, so tense, so long.
+Away, from curtain, carpet, sofa, book--from "society"--from city house,
+street, and modern improvements and luxuries--away to the primitive
+winding, aforementioned wooded creek, with its untrimm'd bushes and
+turfy banks--away from ligatures, tight boots, buttons, and the whole
+cast-iron civilized life--from entourage of artificial store, machine,
+studio, office, parlor--from tailordom and fashion's clothes--from any
+clothes, perhaps, for the nonce, the summer heats advancing, there in
+those watery, shaded solitudes. Away, thou soul, (let me pick thee
+out singly, reader dear, and talk in perfect freedom, negligently,
+confidentially,) for one day and night at least, returning to the
+naked source-life of us all--to the breast of the great silent savage
+all-acceptive Mother. Alas! how many of us are so sodden--how many have
+wander'd so far away, that return is almost impossible.
+
+But to my jottings, taking them as they come, from the heap, without
+particular selection. There is little consecutiveness in dates. They run
+any time within nearly five or six years. Each was carelessly pencilled
+in the open air, at the time and place. The printers will learn this
+to some vexation perhaps, as much of their copy is from those
+hastily-written first notes.
+
+
+BIRDS MIGRATING AT MIDNIGHT
+
+Did you ever chance to hear the midnight flight of birds passing through
+the air and darkness overhead, in countless armies, changing their early
+or late summer habitat? It is something not to be forgotten. A friend
+called me up just after 12 last night to mark the peculiar noise of
+unusually immense flocks migrating north (rather late this year.) In
+the silence, shadow and delicious odor of the hour, (the natural perfume
+belonging to the night alone,) I thought it rare music. You could _hear_
+the characteristic motion--once or twice "the rush of mighty wings,"
+but often a velvety rustle, long drawn out--sometimes quite near--with
+continual calls and chirps, and some song-notes. It all lasted from 12
+till after 3. Once in a while the species was plainly distinguishable;
+I could make out the bobolink, tanager, Wilson's thrush, white-crown'd
+sparrow, and occasionally from high in the air came the notes of the
+plover.
+
+
+BUMBLE-BEES
+
+May-month--month of swarming, singing, mating birds--the bumble-bee
+month--month of the flowering lilac-(and then my own birth-month.) As
+I jot this paragraph, I am out just after sunrise, and down towards the
+creek. The lights, perfumes, melodies--the blue birds, grass birds
+and robins, in every direction--the noisy, vocal, natural concert. For
+undertones, a neighboring wood-pecker tapping his tree, and the distant
+clarion of chanticleer. Then the fresh-earth smells--the colors, the
+delicate drabs and thin blues of the perspective. The bright green of
+the grass has receiv'd an added tinge from the last two days' mildness
+and moisture. How the sun silently mounts in the broad clear sky, on
+his day's journey! How the warm beams bathe all, and come streaming
+kissingly and almost hot on my face.
+
+A while since the croaking of the pond-frogs and the first white of
+the dog-wood blossoms. Now the golden dandelions in endless profusion,
+spotting the ground everywhere. The white cherry and pear-blows--the
+wild violets, with their blue eyes looking up and saluting my feet, as
+I saunter the wood-edge--the rosy blush of budding apple-trees--the
+light-clear emerald hue of the wheat-fields--the darker green of the
+rye--a warm elasticity pervading the air--the cedar-bushes profusely
+deck'd with their little brown apples--the summer fully awakening--the
+convocation of black birds, garrulous flocks of them, gathering on some
+tree, and making the hour and place noisy as I sit near.
+
+_Later._--Nature marches in procession, in sections, like the corps of
+an army. All have done much for me, and still do. But for the last two
+days it has been the great wild bee, the humble-bee, or "bumble," as the
+children call him. As I walk, or hobble, from the farm-house down to the
+creek, I traverse the before-mention'd lane, fenced by old rails, with
+many splits, splinters, breaks, holes, &c., the choice habitat of those
+crooning, hairy insects. Up and down and by and between these rails,
+they swarm and dart and fly in countless myriads. As I wend slowly
+along, I am often accompanied with a moving cloud of them. They play a
+leading part in my morning, midday or sunset rambles, and often dominate
+the landscape in a way I never before thought of--fill the long lane,
+not by scores or hundreds only, but by thousands. Large and vivacious
+and swift, with wonderful momentum and a loud swelling, perpetual hum,
+varied now and then by something almost like a shriek, they dart to and
+fro, in rapid flashes, chasing each other, and (little things as they
+are,) conveying to me a new and pronounc'd sense of strength, beauty,
+vitality and movement. Are they in their mating season? or what is the
+meaning of this plenitude, swiftness, eagerness, display? As I walk'd, I
+thought I was follow'd by a particular swarm, but upon observation I saw
+that it was a rapid succession of changing swarms, one after another.
+
+As I write, I am seated under a big wild-cherry tree--the warm day
+temper'd by partial clouds and a fresh breeze, neither too heavy nor
+light--and here I sit long and long, envelop'd in the deep musical
+drone of these bees, flitting, balancing, darting to and fro about me
+by hundreds--big fellows with light yellow jackets, great glistening
+swelling bodies, stumpy heads and gauzy wings--humming their perpetual
+rich mellow boom. (Is there not a hint in it for a musical composition,
+of which it should be the back-ground? some bumble-bee symphony?) How
+it all nourishes, lulls me, in the way most needed; the open air, the
+rye-fields, the apple orchards. The last two days have been faultless
+in sun, breeze, temperature and everything; never two more perfect days,
+and I have enjoy'd them wonderfully. My health is somewhat better, and
+my spirit at peace. (Yet the anniversary of the saddest loss and sorrow
+of my life is close at hand.)
+
+Another jotting, another perfect day: forenoon, from 7 to 9, two
+hours envelop'd in sound of bumble-bees and bird-music. Down in the
+apple-trees and in a neighboring cedar were three or four russet-back'd
+thrushes, each singing his best, and roulading in ways I never heard
+surpass'd. Two hours I abandon myself to hearing them, and indolently
+absorbing the scene. Almost every bird I notice has a special time in
+the year--sometimes limited to a few days--when it sings its best; and
+now is the period of these russet-backs. Meanwhile, up and down the
+lane, the darting, droning, musical bumble-bees. A great swarm again for
+my entourage as I return home, moving along with me as before.
+
+As I write this, two or three weeks later, I am sitting near the brook
+under a tulip tree, 70 feet high, thick with the fresh verdure of its
+young maturity--a beautiful object--every branch, every leaf perfect.
+From top to bottom, seeking the sweet juice in the blossoms, it swarms
+with myriads of these wild bees, whose loud and steady humming makes an
+undertone to the whole, and to my mood and the hour. All of which I
+will bring to a close by extracting the following verses from Henry A.
+Beers's little volume:
+
+    As I lay yonder in tall grass
+    A drunken bumble-bee went past
+
+    Delirious with honey toddy.
+    The golden sash about his body
+    Scarce kept it in his swollen belly
+    Distent with honeysuckle jelly.
+    Rose liquor and the sweet-pea wine
+    Had fill' d his soul with song divine;
+    Deep had he drunk the warm night through,
+    His hairy thighs were wet with dew.
+    Full many an antic he had play'd
+    While the world went round through sleep and shade.
+    Oft had he lit with thirsty lip
+    Some flower-cup's nectar'd sweets to sip,
+    When on smooth petals he would slip,
+    Or over tangled stamens trip,
+    And headlong in the pollen roll'd,
+    Crawl out quite dusted o'er with gold;
+    Or else his heavy feet would stumble
+    Against some bud, and down he'd tumble
+    Amongst the grass; there lie and grumble
+    In low, soft bass--poor maudlin bumble!
+
+
+CEDAR-APPLES
+
+As I journey'd to-day in a light wagon ten or twelve miles through the
+country, nothing pleas'd me more, in their homely beauty and novelty (I
+had either never seen the little things to such advantage, or had
+never noticed them before) than that peculiar fruit, with its profuse
+clear-yellow dangles of inch-long silk or yarn, in boundless profusion
+spotting the dark green cedar bushes--contrasting well with their bronze
+tufts--the flossy shreds covering the knobs all over, like a shock of
+wild hair on elfin pates. On my ramble afterward down by the creek I
+pluck'd one from its bush, and shall keep it. These cedar-apples last
+only a little while however, and soon crumble and fade.
+
+
+SUMMER SIGHTS AND INDOLENCIES
+
+_June 10th_.--As I write, 5-1/2 P.M., here by the creek, nothing can
+exceed the quiet splendor and freshness around me. We had a heavy
+shower, with brief thunder and lightning, in the middle of the day; and
+since, overhead, one of those not uncommon yet indescribable skies
+(in quality, not details or forms) of limpid blue, with rolling
+silver-fringed clouds, and a pure-dazzling sun. For underlay, trees
+in fulness of tender foliage--liquid, reedy, long-drawn notes of
+birds--based by the fretful mewing of a querulous cat-bird, and the
+pleasant chippering-shriek of two kingfishers. I have been watching the
+latter the last half hour, on their regular evening frolic over and in
+the stream; evidently a spree of the liveliest kind. They pursue each
+other, whirling and wheeling around, with many a jocund downward dip,
+splashing the spray in jets of diamonds--and then off they swoop, with
+slanting wings and graceful flight, sometimes so near me I can plainly
+see their dark-gray feather-bodies and milk-white necks.
+
+
+SUNDOWN PERFUME--QUAILNOTES--THE HERMIT-THRUSH
+
+_June 19th, 4 to 6-1/2, P.M._--Sitting alone by the creek--solitude
+here, but the scene bright and vivid enough--the sun shining, and quite
+a fresh wind blowing (some heavy showers last night,) the grass and
+trees looking their best--the clare-obscure of different greens,
+shadows, half-shadows, and the dappling glimpses of the water, through
+recesses--the wild flageolet-note of a quail near by--the just-heard
+fretting of some hylas down there in the pond--crows cawing in the
+distance--a drove of young hogs rooting in soft ground near the oak
+under which I sit--some come sniffing near me, and then scamper away,
+with grunts. And still the clear notes of the quail--the quiver of
+leaf-shadows over the paper as I write--the sky aloft, with white
+clouds, and the sun well declining to the west--the swift darting
+of many sand-swallows coming and going, their holes in a neighboring
+marl-bank--the odor of the cedar and oak, so palpable, as evening
+approaches--perfume, color, the bronze-and-gold of nearly ripen'd
+wheat--clover-fields, with honey-scent--the well-up maize, with long and
+rustling leaves--the great patches of thriving potatoes, dusky green,
+fleck'd all over with white blossoms--the old, warty, venerable oak
+above me--and ever, mix'd with the dual notes of the quail, the soughing
+of the wind through some near-by pines.
+
+As I rise for return, I linger long to a delicious song-epilogue (is
+it the hermit-thrush?) from some bushy recess off there in the swamp,
+repeated leisurely and pensively over and over again. This, to the
+circle-gambols of the swallows flying by dozens in concentric rings in
+the last rays of sunset, like flashes of some airy wheel.
+
+
+A JULY AFTER-NOON BY THE POND
+
+The fervent heat, but so much more endurable in this pure air--the
+white and pink pond-blossoms, with great heart-shaped leaves; the glassy
+waters of the creek, the banks, with dense bushery, and the picturesque
+beeches and shade and turf; the tremulous, reedy call of some bird
+from recesses, breaking the warm, indolent, half-voluptuous silence; an
+occasional wasp, hornet, honey-bee or bumble (they hover near my hands
+or face, yet annoy me not, nor I them, as they appear to examine, find
+nothing, and away they go)--the vast space of the sky overhead so clear,
+and the buzzard up there sailing his slow whirl in majestic spirals
+and discs; just over the surface of the pond, two large slate-color'd
+dragon-flies, with wings of lace, circling and darting and occasionally
+balancing themselves quite still, their wings quivering all the time,
+(are they not showing off for my amusement?)--the pond itself, with
+the sword-shaped calamus; the water snakes--occasionally a flitting
+blackbird, with red dabs on his shoulders, as he darts slantingly
+by--the sounds that bring out the solitude, warmth, light and shade--the
+quawk of some pond duck--(the crickets and grasshoppers are mute in
+the noon heat, but I hear the song of the first cicadas;)--then at some
+distance the rattle and whirr of a reaping machine as the horses draw
+it on a rapid walk through a rye field on the opposite side of the
+creek--(what was the yellow or light-brown bird, large as a young hen,
+with short neck and long-stretch'd legs I just saw, in flapping and
+awkward flight over there through the trees?)--the prevailing delicate,
+yet palpable, spicy, grassy, clovery perfume to my nostrils; and over
+all, encircling all, to my sight and soul, the free space of the
+sky, transparent and blue--and hovering there in the west, a mass of
+white-gray fleecy clouds the sailors call "shoals of mackerel"--the sky,
+with silver swirls like locks of toss'd hair, spreading, expanding--a
+vast voiceless, formless simulacrum--yet may-be the most real reality
+and formulator of everything--who knows?
+
+
+LOCUSTS AND KATY-DIDS
+
+_Aug. 22_.--Reedy monotones of locust, or sounds of katydid--I hear the
+latter at night, and the other both day and night. I thought the morning
+and evening warble of birds delightful; but I find I can listen to these
+strange insects with just as much pleasure. A single locust is now heard
+near noon from a tree two hundred feet off, as I write--a long whirring,
+continued, quite loud noise graded in distinct whirls, or swinging
+circles, increasing in strength and rapidity up to a certain point, and
+then a fluttering, quietly tapering fall. Each strain is continued
+from one to two minutes. The locust-song is very appropriate to the
+scene--gushes, has meaning, is masculine, is like some fine old wine,
+not sweet, but far better than sweet.
+
+But the katydid--how shall I describe its piquant utterances? One sings
+from a willow-tree just outside my open bedroom window, twenty yards
+distant; every clear night for a fortnight past has sooth'd me to sleep.
+I rode through a piece of woods for a hundred rods the other evening,
+and heard the katydids by myriads--very curious for once; but I like
+better my single neighbor on the tree. Let me say more about the song of
+the locust, even to repetition; a long, chromatic, tremulous crescendo,
+like a brass disk whirling round and round, emitting wave after wave
+of notes, beginning with a certain moderate beat or measure, rapidly
+increasing in speed and emphasis, reaching a point of great energy and
+significance, and then quickly and gracefully dropping down and out. Not
+the melody of the singing-bird--far from it; the common musician might
+think without melody, but surely having to the finer ear a harmony of
+its own; monotonous--but what a swing there is in that brassy drone,
+round and round, cymballine--or like the whirling of brass quoits.
+
+
+THE LESSON OF A TREE
+
+_Sept. 1_.--I should not take either the biggest or the most picturesque
+tree to illustrate it. Here is one of my favorites now before me, a fine
+yellow poplar, quite straight, perhaps 90 feet high, and four thick
+at the butt. How strong, vital, enduring! how dumbly eloquent! What
+suggestions of imperturbability and _being_, as against the human
+trait of mere _seeming_. Then the qualities, almost emotional, palpably
+artistic, heroic, of a tree; so innocent and harmless, yet so savage. It
+_is_, yet says nothing. How it rebukes by its tough and equable serenity
+all weathers, this gusty-temper'd little whiffet, man, that runs indoors
+at a mite of rain or snow. Science (or rather half-way science) scoffs
+at reminiscence of dryad and hamadryad, and of trees speaking. But,
+if they don't, they do as well as most speaking, writing, poetry,
+sermons--or rather they do a great deal better. I should say indeed that
+those old dryad-reminiscences are quite as true as any, and profounder
+than most reminiscences we get. ("Cut this out," as the quack mediciners
+say, and keep by you.) Go and sit in a grove or woods, with one or more
+of those voiceless companions, and read the foregoing, and think.
+
+One lesson from affiliating a tree--perhaps the greatest moral lesson
+anyhow from earth, rocks, animals, is that same lesson of inherency, of
+_what is_, without the least regard to what the looker-on (the critic)
+supposes or says, or whether he likes or dislikes. What worse--what more
+general malady pervades each and all of us, our literature, education,
+attitude toward each other, (even toward ourselves,) than a morbid
+trouble about _seems_, (generally temporarily seems too,) and no trouble
+at all, or hardly any, about the sane, slow-growing, perennial, real
+parts of character, books, friendship, marriage--humanity's invisible
+foundations and hold-together? (As the all-basis, the nerve, the
+great-sympathetic, the plenum within humanity, giving stamp to
+everything, is necessarily invisible.)
+
+_Aug. 4, 6 P.M._--Lights and shades and rare effects on tree-foliage and
+grass--transparent greens, grays, &c., all in sunset pomp and dazzle.
+The clear beams are now thrown in many new places, on the quilted,
+seam'd, bronze-drab, lower tree-trunks, shadow'd except at this
+hour--now flooding their young and old columnar ruggedness with strong
+light, unfolding to my sense new amazing features of silent, shaggy
+charm, the solid bark, the expression of harmless impassiveness, with
+many a bulge and gnarl unreck'd before. In the revealings of such light,
+such exceptional hour, such mood, one does not wonder at the old story
+fables, (indeed, why fables?) of people falling into love-sickness with
+trees, seiz'd extatic with the mystic realism of the resistless silent
+strength in them--_strength_, which after all is perhaps the last,
+completest, highest beauty.
+
+_Trees I am familiar with here_.
+
+   Oaks, (many kinds--one sturdy                       Willows.
+     old fellow, vital, green, bushy,                  Catalpas.
+     five feet thick at the butt, I sit                Persimmons.
+     under every day,)                                 Mountain-ash.
+   Cedars plenty.                                      Hickories.
+   Tulip trees, (_Liriodendron,_) is of                Maples, many kinds.
+     the magnolia family--I have                       Locusts.
+     seen it in Michigan and southern                  Birches.
+     Illinois, 140 feet high and                       Dogwood.
+     8 feet thick at the butt [A]; does                Pine.
+     not transplant well; best rais'd                  the Elm.
+     from seeds--(the lumbermen                        Chesnut.
+     call it yellow poplar.)                           Linden.
+   Sycamores.                                          Aspen.
+   Gum trees, both sweet and sour.                     Spruce.
+   Beeches.                                            Hornbeam.
+   Black-walnuts.                                      Laurel.
+   Sassafras.                                          Holly.
+
+
+AUTUMN SIDE-BITS
+
+_Sept. 20_.--Under an old black oak, glossy and green, exhaling
+aroma--amid a grove the Albic druids might have chosen--envelop'd in
+the warmth and light of the noonday sun, and swarms[10] of flitting
+insects--with the harsh cawing of many crows a hundred rods away--here
+I sit in solitude, absorbing, enjoying all. The corn, stack'd in its
+cone-shaped stacks, russet-color'd and sere--a large field spotted thick
+with scarlet-gold pumpkins--an adjoining one of cabbages, showing
+well in their green and pearl, mottled by much light and shade--melon
+patches, with their bulging ovals, and great silver-streak'd, ruffled,
+broad-edged leaves--and many an autumn sight and sound beside--the
+distant scream of a flock of guinea-hens--and pour'd over all the
+September breeze, with pensive cadence through the tree tops.
+
+_Another Day_.--The ground in all directions strew'd with _debris_ from
+a storm. Timber creek, as I slowly pace its banks, has ebb'd low, and
+shows reaction from the turbulent swell of the late equinoctial. As I
+look around, I take account of stock--weeds and shrubs, knolls, paths,
+occasional stumps, some with smooth'd tops, (several I use as seats
+of rest, from place to place, and from one I am now jotting these
+lines,)--frequent wild-flowers, little white, star-shaped things, or the
+cardinal red of the lobelia, or the cherry-ball seeds of the perennial
+rose, or the many-threaded vines winding up and around trunks of trees.
+
+_Oct. 1, 2 and 3_.--Down every day in the solitude of the creek. A
+serene autumn sun and westerly breeze to-day (3d) as I sit here, the
+water surface prettily moving in wind-ripples before me. On a stout old
+beech at the edge, decayed and slanting, almost fallen to the stream,
+yet with life and leaves in its mossy limbs, a gray squirrel, exploring,
+runs up and down, flirts his tail, leaps to the ground, sits on his
+haunches upright as he sees me, (a Darwinian hint?) and then races up
+the tree again.
+
+_Oct. 4_.--Cloudy and coolish; signs of incipient winter. Yet pleasant
+here, the leaves thick-falling, the ground brown with them already; rich
+coloring, yellows of all hues, pale and dark-green, shades from lightest
+to richest red--all set in and toned down by the prevailing brown of
+the earth and gray of the sky. So, winter is coming; and I yet in my
+sickness. I sit here amid all these fair sights and vital influences,
+and abandon myself to that thought, with its wandering trains of
+speculation.
+
+
+Note:
+
+[10] There is a tulip poplar within sight of Woodstown, which is twenty
+feet around, three feet from the ground, four feet across about eighteen
+feet up the trunk, which is broken off about three or four feet higher
+up. On the south side an arm has shot out from which rise two stems,
+each to about ninety-one or ninety-two feet from the ground. Twenty-five
+(or more) years since the cavity in the butt was large enough for,
+and nine men at one time, ate dinner therein. It is supposed twelve to
+fifteen men could now, at one time, stand within its trunk. The severe
+winds of 1877 and 1878 did not seem to damage it, and the two stems send
+out yearly many blossoms, scenting the air immediately about it with
+their sweet perfume. It is entirely unprotected by other trees, on a
+hill.--_Woodstown, N. J., "Register," April 15, '79_.
+
+
+THE SKY--DAYS AND NIGHTS--HAPPINESS
+
+_Oct. 20_.--A clear, crispy day--dry and breezy air, full of oxygen.
+Out of the sane, silent, beauteous miracles that envelope and fuse
+me--trees, water, grass, sunlight, and early frost--the one I am looking
+at most to-day is the sky. It has that delicate, transparent blue,
+peculiar to autumn, and the only clouds are little or larger white
+ones, giving their still and spiritual motion to the great concave. All
+through the earlier day (say from 7 to 11) it keeps a pure, yet vivid
+blue. But as noon approaches the color gets lighter, quite gray for two
+or three hours--then still paler for a spell, till sun-down--which last
+I watch dazzling through the interstices of a knoll of big trees--darts
+of fire and a gorgeous show of light-yellow, liver-color and red, with a
+vast silver glaze askant on the water--the transparent shadows, shafts,
+sparkle, and vivid colors beyond all the paintings ever made.
+
+I don't know what or how, but it seems to me mostly owing to these
+skies, (every now and then I think, while I have of course seen them
+every day of my life, I never really saw the skies before,) have had
+this autumn some wondrously contented hours--may I not say perfectly
+happy ones? As I have read, Byron just before his death told a friend
+that he had known but three happy hours during his whole existence. Then
+there is the old German legend of the king's bell, to the same point.
+While I was out there by the wood, that beautiful sunset through the
+trees, I thought of Byron's and the bell story, and the notion started
+in me that I was having a happy hour. (Though perhaps my best moments
+I never jot down; when they come I cannot afford to break the charm by
+inditing memoranda. I just abandon myself to the mood, and let it float
+on, carrying me in its placid extasy.)
+
+What is happiness, anyhow? Is this one of its hours, or the like
+of it?--so impalpable--a mere breath, an evanescent tinge? I am not
+sure--so let me give myself the benefit of the doubt. Hast Thou,
+pellucid, in Thy azure depths, medicine for case like mine? (Ah, the
+physical shatter and troubled spirit of me the last three years.) And
+dost Thou subtly mystically now drip it through the air invisibly upon
+me?
+
+_Night of Oct. 28._--The heavens unusually transparent--the stars out by
+myriads--the great path of the Milky Way, with its branch, only seen
+of very clear nights--Jupiter, setting in the west, looks like a huge
+hap-hazard splash, and has a little star for companion.
+
+    Clothed in his white garments,
+    Into the round and clear arena slowly entered the brahmin,
+    Holding a little child by the hand,
+    Like the moon with the planet Jupiter in a cloudless night-sky.
+
+    _Old Hindu Poem._
+
+_Early in November._--At its farther end the lane already described
+opens into a broad grassy upland field of over twenty acres, slightly
+sloping to the south. Here I am accustom'd to walk for sky views and
+effects, either morning or sundown. To-day from this field my soul is
+calm'd and expanded beyond description, the whole forenoon by the clear
+blue arching over all, cloudless, nothing particular, only sky and
+daylight. Their soothing accompaniments, autumn leaves, the cool dry
+air, the faint aroma--crows cawing in the distance--two great buzzards
+wheeling gracefully and slowly far up there--the occasional murmur of
+the wind, sometimes quite gently, then threatening through the trees--a
+gang of farm-laborers loading cornstalks in a field in sight, and the
+patient horses waiting.
+
+
+COLORS--A CONTRAST
+
+Such a play of colors and lights, different seasons, different hours of
+the day--the lines of the far horizon where the faint-tinged edge of the
+landscape loses itself in the sky. As I slowly hobble up the lane toward
+day-close, an incomparable sunset shooting in molten sapphire and gold,
+shaft after shaft, through the ranks of the long-leaved corn, between me
+and the west. _Another day_--The rich dark green of the tulip-trees and
+the oaks, the gray of the swamp-willows, the dull hues of the sycamores
+and black-walnuts, the emerald of the cedars (after rain,) and the light
+yellow of the beeches.
+
+
+NOVEMBER 8, '76
+
+The forenoon leaden and cloudy, not cold or wet, but indicating both.
+As I hobble down here and sit by the silent pond, how different from the
+excitement amid which, in the cities, millions of people are now waiting
+news of yesterday's Presidential election, or receiving and discussing
+the result--in this secluded place uncared-for, unknown.
+
+
+CROWS AND CROWS
+
+_Nov. 14_.--As I sit here by the creek, resting after my walk, a warm
+languor bathes me from the sun. No sound but a cawing of crows, and no
+motion but their black flying figures from over-head, reflected in the
+mirror of the pond below. Indeed a principal feature of the scene to-day
+is these crows, their incessant cawing, far or near, and their countless
+flocks and processions moving from place to place, and at times almost
+darkening the air with their myriads. As I sit a moment writing this
+by the bank, I see the black, clear-cut reflection of them far below,
+flying through the watery looking-glass, by ones, twos, or long
+strings. All last night I heard the noises from their great roost in a
+neighboring wood.
+
+
+A WINTER DAY ON THE SEA-BEACH
+
+One bright December mid-day lately I spent down on the New Jersey
+sea-shore, reaching it by a little more than an hour's railroad trip
+over the old Camden and Atlantic. I had started betimes, fortified by
+nice strong coffee and a good breakfast (cook'd by the hands I love, my
+dear sister Lou's--how much better it makes the victuals taste, and
+then assimilate, strengthen you, perhaps make the whole day comfortable
+afterwards.) Five or six miles at the last, our track enter'd a broad
+region of salt grass meadows, intersected by lagoons, and cut up
+everywhere by watery runs. The sedgy perfume, delightful to my nostrils,
+reminded me of "the mash" and south bay of my native island. I could
+have journey'd contentedly till night through these flat and odorous
+sea-prairies. From half-past 11 till 2 I was nearly all the time along
+the beach, or in sight of the ocean, listening to its hoarse murmur, and
+inhaling the bracing and welcome breezes. First, a rapid five-mile drive
+over the hard sand--our carriage wheels hardly made dents in it. Then
+after dinner (as there were nearly two hours to spare) I walk'd off in
+another direction, (hardly met or saw a person,) and taking possession
+of what appear'd to have been the reception-room of an old bath-house
+range, had a broad expanse of view all to myself--quaint, refreshing,
+unimpeded--a dry area of sedge and Indian grass immediately before and
+around me--space, simple, unornamented space. Distant vessels, and the
+far-off, just visible trailing smoke of an inward bound steamer; more
+plainly, ships, brigs, schooners, in sight, most of them with every sail
+set to the firm and steady wind.
+
+The attractions, fascinations there are in sea and shore! How one dwells
+on their simplicity, even vacuity! What is it in us, arous'd by those
+indirections and directions? That spread of waves and gray-white beach,
+salt, monotonous, senseless--such an entire absence of art, books, talk,
+elegance--so indescribably comforting, even this winter day--grim,
+yet so delicate-looking, so spiritual--striking emotional, impalpable
+depths, subtler than all the poems, paintings, music, I have ever read,
+seen, heard. (Yet let me be fair, perhaps it is because I have read
+those poems and heard that music.)
+
+
+SEA-SHORE FANCIES
+
+Even as a boy, I had the fancy, the wish, to write a piece, perhaps
+a poem, about the sea-shore--that suggesting, dividing line, contact,
+junction, the solid marrying the liquid--that curious, lurking
+something, (as doubtless every objective form finally becomes to the
+subjective spirit,) which means far more than its mere first sight,
+grand as that is--blending the real and ideal, and each made portion
+of the other. Hours, days, in my Long Island youth and early manhood,
+I haunted the shores of Rockaway or Coney island, or away east to the
+Hamptons or Montauk. Once, at the latter place, (by the old lighthouse,
+nothing but sea-tossings in sight in every direction as far as the eye
+could reach,) I remember well, I felt that I must one day write a book
+expressing this liquid, mystic theme. Afterward, I recollect, how it
+came to me that instead of any special lyrical or epical or literary
+attempt, the sea-shore should be an invisible _influence_, a pervading
+gauge and tally for me, in my composition. (Let me give a hint here to
+young writers. I am not sure but I have unwittingly follow'd out the
+same rule with other powers besides sea and shores--avoiding them,
+in the way of any dead set at poetizing them, as too big for formal
+handling--quite satisfied if I could indirectly show that we have met
+and fused, even if only once, but enough--that we have really absorb'd
+each other and understand each other.)
+
+There is a dream, a picture, that for years at intervals, (sometimes
+quite long ones, but surely again, in time,) has come noiselessly up
+before me, and I really believe, fiction as it is, has enter'd largely
+into my practical life--certainly into my writings, and shaped and
+color'd them. It is nothing more or less than a stretch of interminable
+white-brown sand, hard and smooth and broad, with the ocean perpetually,
+grandly, rolling in upon it, with slow-measured sweep, with rustle and
+hiss and foam, and many a thump as of low bass drums. This scene, this
+picture, I say, has risen before me at times for years. Sometimes I wake
+at night and can hear and see it plainly.
+
+
+IN MEMORY OF THOMAS PAINE.
+
+_Spoken at Lincoln Hall, Philadelphia, Sunday, Jan. 28, '77, for 140th
+anniversary of T. P.'s birthday._
+
+Some thirty-five years ago, in New York city, at Tammany hall, of
+which place I was then a frequenter, I happen'd to become quite well
+acquainted with Thomas Paine's perhaps most intimate chum, and certainly
+his later years' very frequent companion, a remarkably fine old man,
+Col. Fellows, who may yet be remember'd by some stray relics of that
+period and spot. If you will allow me, I will first give a description
+of the Colonel himself. He was tall, of military bearing, aged about 78,
+I should think, hair white as snow, clean-shaved on the face, dress'd
+very neatly, a tail-coat of blue cloth with metal buttons, buff vest,
+pantaloons of drab color, and his neck, breast and wrists showing the
+whitest of linen. Under all circumstances, fine manners; a good but not
+profuse talker, his wits still fully about him, balanced and live
+and undimm'd as ever. He kept pretty fair health, though so old. For
+employment--for he was poor--he had a post as constable of some of the
+upper courts. I used to think him very picturesque on the fringe of a
+crowd holding a tall staff, with his erect form, and his superb, bare,
+thick-hair'd, closely-cropt white head. The judges and young lawyers,
+with whom he was ever a favorite, and the subject of respect, used to
+call him Aristides. It was the general opinion among them that if manly
+rectitude and the instincts of absolute justice remain'd vital anywhere
+about New York City Hall, or Tammany, they were to be found in Col.
+Fellows. He liked young men, and enjoy'd to leisurely talk with them
+over a social glass of toddy, after his day's work, (he on these
+occasions never drank but one glass,) and it was at reiterated meetings
+of this kind in old Tammany's back parlor of those days, that he told
+me much about Thomas Paine. At one of our interviews he gave me a minute
+account of Paine's sickness and death. In short, from those talks, I
+was and am satisfied that my old friend, with his mark'd advantages, had
+mentally, morally and emotionally gauged the author of "Common Sense,"
+and besides giving me a good portrait of his appearance and manners, had
+taken the true measure of his interior character.
+
+Paine's practical demeanor, and much of his theoretical belief, was a
+mixture of the French and English schools of a century ago, and the best
+of both. Like most old-fashion'd people, he drank a glass or two every
+day, but was no tippler, nor intemperate, let alone being a drunkard.
+He lived simply and economically, but quite well--was always cheery and
+courteous, perhaps occasionally a little blunt, having very positive
+opinions upon politics, religion, and so forth. That he labor'd well and
+wisely for the States in the trying period of their parturition, and in
+the seeds of their character, there seems to me no question. I dare
+not say how much of what our Union is owning and enjoying to-day--its
+independence--its ardent belief in, and substantial practice of
+radical human rights--and the severance of its government from all
+ecclesiastical and superstitious dominion--I dare not say how much of
+all this is owing to Thomas Paine, but I am inclined to think a good
+portion of it decidedly is.
+
+But I was not going either into an analysis or eulogium of the man.
+I wanted to carry you back a generation or two, and give you by
+indirection a moment's glance--and also to ventilate a very earnest and
+I believe authentic opinion, nay conviction, of that time, the fruit
+of the interviews I have mention'd, and of questioning and
+cross-questioning, clench'd by my best information since, that Thomas
+Paine had a noble personality, as exhibited in presence, face, voice,
+dress, manner, and what may be call'd his atmosphere and magnetism,
+especially the later years of his life. I am sure of it. Of the foul and
+foolish fictions yet told about the circumstances of his decease, the
+absolute fact is that as he lived a good life, after its kind, he died
+calmly and philosophically, as became him. He served the embryo Union
+with most precious service--a service that every man, woman and child
+in our thirty-eight States is to some extent receiving the benefit of
+to-day--and I for one here cheerfully, reverently throw my pebble on the
+cairn of his memory. As we all know, the season demands--or rather, will
+it ever be out of season?--that America learn to better dwell on her
+choicest possession, the legacy of her good and faithful men--that she
+well preserve their fame, if unquestion'd--or, if need be, that she fail
+not to dissipate what clouds have intruded on that fame, and burnish it
+newer, truer and brighter, continually.
+
+
+A TWO HOURS ICE-SAIL
+
+_Feb. 3, '77_--From 4 to 6 P. M. crossing the Delaware, (back again at
+my Camden home,) unable to make our landing, through the ice; our boat
+stanch and strong and skilfully piloted, but old and sulky, and poorly
+minding her helm. (_Power_, so important in poetry and war, is also
+first point of all in a winter steamboat, with long stretches of
+ice-packs to tackle.) For over two hours we bump'd and beat about,
+the invisible ebb, sluggish but irresistible, often carrying us long
+distances against our will. In the first tinge of dusk, as I look'd
+around, I thought there could not be presented a more chilling, arctic,
+grim-extended, depressing scene. Everything was yet plainly visible; for
+miles north and south, ice, ice, ice, mostly broken, but some big
+cakes, and no clear water in sight. The shores, piers, surfaces,
+roofs, shipping, mantled with snow. A faint winter vapor hung a fitting
+accompaniment around and over the endless whitish spread, and gave it
+just a tinge of steel and brown.
+
+_Feb. 6_.--As I cross home in the 6 P. M. boat again, the transparent
+shadows are filled everywhere with leisurely falling, slightly slanting,
+curiously sparse but very large, flakes of snow. On the shores, near and
+far, the glow of just-lit gas-clusters at intervals. The ice, sometimes
+in hummocks, sometimes floating fields, through which our boat goes
+crunching. The light permeated by that peculiar evening haze, right
+after sunset, which sometimes renders quite distant objects so
+distinctly.
+
+
+SPRING OVERTURES--RECREATIONS
+
+_Feb. 10_.--The first chirping, almost singing, of a bird to-day. Then
+I noticed a couple of honey-bees spirting and humming about the open
+window in the sun.
+
+_Feb. 11_.--In the soft rose and pale gold of the declining light, this
+beautiful evening, I heard the first hum and preparation of awakening
+spring--very faint--whether in the earth or roots, or starting of
+insects, I know not--but it was audible, as I lean'd on a rail (I am
+down in my country quarters awhile,) and look'd long at the western
+horizon. Turning to the east, Sirius, as the shadows deepen'd, came
+forth in dazzling splendor. And great Orion; and a little to the
+north-east the big Dipper, standing on end.
+
+_Feb. 20_.--A solitary and pleasant sundown hour at the pond, exercising
+arms, chest, my whole body, by a tough oak sapling thick as my wrist,
+twelve feet high--pulling and pushing, inspiring the good air. After
+I wrestle with the tree awhile, I can feel its young sap and virtue
+welling up out of the ground and tingling through me from crown to toe,
+like health's wine. Then for addition and variety I launch forth in my
+vocalism; shout declamatory pieces, sentiments, sorrow, anger, &c., from
+the stock poets or plays--or inflate my lungs and sing the wild tunes
+and refrains I heard of the blacks down south, or patriotic songs I
+learn'd in the army. I make the echoes ring, I tell you! As the twilight
+fell, in a pause of these ebullitions, an owl somewhere the other side
+of the creek sounded _too-oo-oo-oo-oo_, soft and pensive (and I fancied
+a little sarcastic) repeated four or five times. Either to applaud the
+negro songs--or perhaps an ironical comment on the sorrow, anger, or
+style of the stock poets.
+
+
+ONE OF THE HUMAN KINKS
+
+How is it that in all the serenity and lonesomeness of solitude, away
+off here amid the hush of the forest, alone, or as I have found in
+prairie wilds, or mountain stillness, one is never entirely without the
+instinct of looking around, (I never am, and others tell me the same of
+themselves, confidentially,) for somebody to appear, or start up out
+of the earth, or from behind some tree or rock? Is it a lingering,
+inherited remains of man's primitive wariness, from the wild animals? or
+from his savage ancestry far back? It is not at all nervousness or fear.
+Seems as if something unknown were possibly lurking in those bushes, or
+solitary places. Nay, it is quite certain there is--some vital unseen
+presence.
+
+
+AN AFTERNOON SCENE
+
+_Feb. 22_.--Last night and to-day rainy and thick, till mid-afternoon,
+when the wind chopp'd round, the clouds swiftly drew off like curtains,
+the clear appear'd, and with it the fairest, grandest, most wondrous
+rainbow I ever saw, all complete, very vivid at its earth-ends,
+spreading vast effusions of illuminated haze, violet, yellow,
+drab-green, in all directions overhead, through which the sun beam'd--an
+indescribable utterance of color and light, so gorgeous yet so soft,
+such as I had never witness'd before. Then its continuance: a full hour
+pass'd before the last of those earth-ends disappear'd. The sky behind
+was all spread in translucent blue, with many little white clouds and
+edges. To these a sunset, filling, dominating the esthetic and soul
+senses, sumptuously, tenderly, full. I end this note by the pond,
+just light enough to see, through the evening shadows, the western
+reflections in its water-mirror surface, with inverted figures of trees.
+I hear now and then the _flup_ of a pike leaping out, and rippling the
+water.
+
+
+THE GATES OPENING
+
+_April 6_.--Palpable spring indeed, or the indications of it. I am
+sitting in bright sunshine, at the edge of the creek, the surface just
+rippled by the wind. All is solitude, morning freshness, negligence.
+For companions my two kingfishers sailing, winding, darting, dipping,
+sometimes capriciously separate, then flying together. I hear their
+guttural twittering again and again; for awhile nothing but that
+peculiar sound. As noon approaches other birds warm up. The reedy notes
+of the robin, and a musical passage of two parts, one a clear delicious
+gurgle, with several other birds I cannot place. To which is join'd,
+(yes, I just hear it,) one low purr at intervals from some impatient
+hylas at the pond-edge. The sibilant murmur of a pretty stiff breeze
+now and then through the trees. Then a poor little dead leaf, long
+frost-bound, whirls from somewhere up aloft in one wild escaped
+freedom-spree in space and sunlight, and then dashes down to the waters,
+which hold it closely and soon drown it out of sight. The bushes and
+trees are yet bare, but the beeches have their wrinkled yellow leaves of
+last season's foliage largely left, frequent cedars and pines yet green,
+and the grass not without proofs of coming fullness. And over all a
+wonderfully fine dome of clear blue, the play of light coming and going,
+and great fleeces of white clouds swimming so silently.
+
+
+THE COMMON EARTH, THE SOIL
+
+The soil, too--let others pen-and-ink the sea, the air, (as I sometimes
+try)--but now I feel to choose the common soil for theme--naught else.
+The brown soil here, (just between winter-close and opening spring
+and vegetation)--the rain-shower at night, and the fresh smell next
+morning--the red worms wriggling out of the ground--the dead leaves,
+the incipient grass, and the latent life underneath--the effort to start
+something--already in shelter'd spots some little flowers--the distant
+emerald show of winter wheat and the rye-fields--the yet naked trees,
+with clear insterstices, giving prospects hidden in summer--the tough
+fallow and the plow-team, and the stout boy whistling to his horses for
+encouragement--and there the dark fat earth in long slanting stripes
+upturn'd.
+
+
+BIRDS AND BIRDS AND BIRDS
+
+_A little later--bright weather_.--An unusual melodiousness, these days,
+(last of April and first of May) from the blackbirds; indeed all sorts
+of birds, darting, whistling, hopping or perch'd on trees. Never before
+have I seen, heard, or been in the midst of, and got so flooded and
+saturated with them and their performances, as this current month. Such
+oceans, such successions of them. Let me make a list of those I find
+here:
+
+Black birds (plenty,) Meadow-larks (plenty,) Ring doves, Cat-birds
+(plenty,) Owls, Cuckoos, Woodpeckers, Pond snipes (plenty,) King-birds,
+Cheewinks, Crows (plenty,) Quawks, Wrens, Ground robins, Kingfishers,
+Ravens, Quails, Gray snipes, Turkey-buzzards, Eagles, Hen-hawks,
+High-holes, Yellow birds, Herons, Thrushes, Tits, Reed birds,
+Woodpigeons.
+
+Early came the
+
+Blue birds, Meadow-lark, Killdeer, White-bellied swallow, Plover,
+Sandpiper, Robin, Wilson's thrush, Woodcock, Flicker.
+
+
+FULL-STARR'D NIGHTS
+
+_May 2l_.--Back in Camden. Again commencing one of those unusually
+transparent, full-starr'd, blue-black nights, as if to show that however
+lush and pompous the day may be, there is something left in the
+not-day that can outvie it. The rarest, finest sample of long-drawn-out
+clear-obscure, from sundown to 9 o'clock. I went down to the Delaware,
+and cross'd and cross'd. Venus like blazing silver well up in the west.
+The large pale thin crescent of the new moon, half an hour high, sinking
+languidly under a bar-sinister of cloud, and then emerging. Arcturus
+right overhead. A faint fragrant sea-odor wafted up from the south.
+The gloaming, the temper'd coolness, with every feature of the scene,
+indescribably soothing and tonic--one of those hours that give hints to
+the soul, impossible to put in a statement. (Ah, where would be any food
+for spirituality without night and the stars?) The vacant spaciousness
+of the air, and the veil'd blue of the heavens, seem'd miracles enough.
+
+As the night advanc'd it changed its spirit and garments to ampler
+stateliness. I was almost conscious of a definite presence, Nature
+silently near. The great constellation of the Water-Serpent stretch'd
+its coils over more than half the heavens. The Swan with outspread wings
+was flying down the Milky Way. The northern Crown, the Eagle, Lyra, all
+up there in their places. From the whole dome shot down points of light,
+rapport with me, through the clear blue-black. All the usual sense of
+motion, all animal life, seem'd discarded, seem'd a fiction; a curious
+power, like the placid rest of Egyptian gods, took possession, none
+the less potent for being impalpable. Earlier I had seen many bats,
+balancing in the luminous twilight, darting their black forms hither
+and yon over the river; but now they altogether disappear'd. The evening
+star and the moon had gone. Alertness and peace lay camly couching
+together through the fluid universal shadows.
+
+_Aug. 26_.--Bright has the day been, and my spirits an equal _forzando_.
+Then comes the night, different, inexpressibly pensive, with its
+own tender and temper'd splendor. Venus lingers in the west with a
+voluptuous dazzle unshown hitherto this summer. Mars rises early, and
+the red sulky moon, two days past her full; Jupiter at night's meridian,
+and the long curling-slanted Scorpion stretching full view in the south,
+Aretus-neck'd. Mars walks the heavens lord-paramount now; all through
+this month I go out after supper and watch for him; sometimes getting
+up at midnight to take another look at his unparallel'd lustre. (I see
+lately an astronomer has made out through the new Washington telescope
+that Mars has certainly one moon, perhaps two.) Pale and distant, but
+near in the heavens, Saturn precedes him.
+
+
+MULLEINS AND MULLEINS
+
+Large, placid mulleins, as summer advances, velvety in texture, of a
+light greenish-drab color, growing everywhere in the fields--at first
+earth's big rosettes in their broad-leav'd low cluster-plants, eight,
+ten, twenty leaves to a plant--plentiful on the fallow twenty-acre
+lot, at the end of the lane, and especially by the ridge-sides of the
+fences--then close to the ground, but soon springing up--leaves as broad
+as my hand, and the lower ones twice as long--so fresh and dewy in the
+morning--stalks now four or five, even seven or eight feet high. The
+farmers, I find, think the mullein a mean unworthy weed, but I have
+grown to a fondness for it. Every object has its lesson, enclosing
+the suggestion of everything else--and lately I sometimes think all is
+concentrated for me in these hardy, yellow-flower'd weeds. As I come
+down the lane early in the morning, I pause before their soft wool-like
+fleece and stem and broad leaves, glittering with countless diamonds.
+Annually for three summers now, they and I have silently return'd
+together; at such long intervals I stand or sit among them,
+musing--and woven with the rest, of so many hours and moods of partial
+rehabilitation--of my sane or sick spirit, here as near at peace as it
+can be.
+
+
+DISTANT SOUNDS
+
+The axe of the wood-cutter, the measured thud of a single
+threshing-flail, the crowing of chanticleer in the barn-yard, (with
+invariable responses from other barn-yards,) and the lowing of
+cattle--but most of all, or far or near, the wind--through the high
+tree-tops, or through low bushes, laving one's face and hands so gently,
+this balmy-bright noon, the coolest for a long time, (Sept. 2)--I will
+not call it _sighing_, for to me it is always a firm, sane, cheery
+expression, through a monotone, giving many varieties, or swift or slow,
+or dense or delicate. The wind in the patch of pine woods off there--how
+sibilant. Or at sea, I can imagine it this moment, tossing the waves,
+with spirits of foam flying far, and the free whistle, and the scent
+of the salt--and that vast paradox somehow with all its action and
+restlessness conveying a sense of eternal rest.
+
+_Other adjuncts._--But the sun and the moon here and these times. As
+never more wonderful by day, the gorgeous orb imperial, so vast,
+so ardently, lovingly hot--so never a more glorious moon of nights,
+especially the last three or four. The great planets too--Mars never
+before so flaming bright, so flashing-large, with slight yellow tinge,
+(the astronomers say--is it true?--nearer to us than any time the past
+century)--and well up, lord Jupiter, (a little while since close by
+the moon)--and in the west, after the sun sinks, voluptuous Venus, now
+languid and shorn of her beams, as if from some divine excess.
+
+
+A SUN-BATH-NAKEDNESS
+
+_Sunday, Aug. 27_.--Another day quite free from mark'd prostration
+and pain. It seems indeed as if peace and nutriment from heaven subtly
+filter into me as I slowly hobble down these country lanes and across
+fields, in the good air--as I sit here in solitude with Nature--open,
+voiceless, mystic, far removed, yet palpable, eloquent Nature. I
+merge myself in the scene, in the perfect day. Hovering over the clear
+brook-water, I am sooth'd by its soft gurgle in one place, and
+the hoarser murmurs of its three-foot fall in another. Come, ye
+disconsolate, in whom any latent eligibility is left--come get the sure
+virtues of creek-shore, and wood and field. Two months (July and August,
+'77,) have I absorb'd them, and they begin to make a new man of me.
+Every day, seclusion--every day at least two or three hours of freedom,
+bathing, no talk, no bonds, no dress, no books, no _manners_.
+
+Shall I tell you, reader, to what I attribute my already much-restored
+health? That I have been almost two years, off and on, without drugs and
+medicines, and daily in the open air. Last summer I found a particularly
+secluded little dell off one side by my creek, originally a large
+dug-out marl-pit, now abandon'd, fill'd, with bushes, trees, grass, a
+group of willows, a straggling bank, and a spring of delicious water
+running right through the middle of it, with two or three little
+cascades. Here I retreated every hot day, and follow it up this summer.
+Here I realize the meaning of that old fellow who said he was seldom
+less alone than when alone. Never before did I get so close to Nature;
+never before did she come so close to me. By old habit, I pencill'd down
+from time to time, almost automatically, moods, sights, hours, tints and
+outlines, on the spot. Let me specially record the satisfaction of
+this current forenoon, so serene and primitive, so conventionally
+exceptional, natural.
+
+An hour or so after breakfast I wended my way down to the recesses of
+the aforesaid dell, which I and certain thrushes, cat-birds, &c.,
+had all to ourselves. A light south-west wind was blowing through the
+tree-tops. It was just the place and time for my Adamic air-bath and
+flesh-brushing from head to foot. So hanging clothes on a rail near by,
+keeping old broadbrim straw on head and easy shoes on feet, havn't I had
+a good time the last two hours! First with the stiff-elastic bristles
+rasping arms, breast, sides, till they turn'd scarlet--then partially
+bathing in the clear waters of the running brook--taking everything very
+leisurely, with many rests and pauses--stepping about barefooted every
+few minutes now and then in some neighboring black ooze, for unctuous
+mud-bath to my feet--a brief second and third rinsing in the crystal
+running waters--rubbing with the fragrant towel--slow negligent
+promenades on the turf up and down in the sun, varied with occasional
+rests, and further frictions of the bristle-brush--sometimes carrying
+my portable chair with me from place to place, as my range is quite
+extensive here, nearly a hundred rods, feeling quite secure from
+intrusion, (and that indeed I am not at all nervous about, if it
+accidentally happens.)
+
+As I walk'd slowly over the grass, the sun shone out enough to show the
+shadow moving with me. Somehow I seem'd to get identity with each and
+every thing around me, in its condition. Nature was naked, and I was
+also. It was too lazy, soothing, and joyous-equable to speculate
+about. Yet I might have thought somehow in this vein: Perhaps the inner
+never-lost rapport we hold with earth, light, air, trees, &c., is not to
+be realized through eyes and mind only, but through the whole corporeal
+body, which I will not have blinded or bandaged any more than the eyes.
+Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature!--ah if poor, sick, prurient
+humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness
+then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your
+sophistication, your tear, your respectability, that is indecent. There
+come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear,
+but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free
+exhilarating extasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and
+how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is--nor
+what faith or art or health really is. (Probably the whole curriculum
+of first-class philosophy, beauty, heroism, form, illustrated by the
+old Hellenic race--the highest height and deepest depth known to
+civilization in those departments--came from their natural and religious
+idea of Nakedness.)
+
+Many such hours, from time to time, the last two summers--I attribute my
+partial rehabilitation largely to them. Some good people may think it a
+feeble or half-crack'd way of spending one's time and thinking. May-be
+it is.
+
+
+THE OAKS AND I
+
+_Sept. 5, '77._--I write this, 11 A.M., shelter'd under a dense oak
+by the bank, where I have taken refuge from a sudden rain. I came down
+here, (we had sulky drizzles all the morning, but an hour ago a lull,)
+for the before-mention'd daily and simple exercise I am fond of--to
+pull on that young hickory sapling out there--to sway and yield to its
+tough-limber upright stem--haply to get into my old sinews some of
+its elastic fibre and clear sap. I stand on the turf and take these
+health-pulls moderately and at intervals for nearly an hour, inhaling
+great draughts of fresh air. Wandering by the creek, I have three or
+four naturally favorable spots where I rest--besides a chair I lug with
+me and use for more deliberate occasions. At other spots convenient I
+have selected, besides the hickory just named, strong and limber boughs
+of beech or holly, in easy-reaching distance, for my natural gymnasia,
+for arms, chest, trunk-muscles. I can soon feel the sap and sinew rising
+through me, like mercury to heat. I hold on boughs or slender trees
+caressingly there in the sun and shade, wrestle with their innocent
+stalwartness--and _know_ the virtue thereof passes from them into me.
+(Or may-be we interchange--may-be the trees are more aware of it all
+than I ever thought.)
+
+But now pleasantly imprison'd here under the big oak--the rain dripping,
+and the sky cover'd with leaden clouds--nothing but the pond on one
+side, and the other a spread of grass, spotted with the milky blossoms
+of the wild carrot--the sound of an axe wielded at some distant
+wood-pile--yet in this dull scene, (as most folks would call it,) why am
+I so (almost) happy here and alone? Why would any intrusion, even from
+people I like, spoil the charm? But am I alone? Doubtless there comes a
+time--perhaps it has come to me--when one feels through his whole being,
+and pronouncedly the emotional part, that identity between himself
+subjectively and Nature objectively which Schelling and Fichte are so
+fond of pressing. How it is I know not, but I often realize a presence
+here--in clear moods I am certain of it, and neither chemistry nor
+reasoning nor esthetics will give the least explanation. All the past
+two summers it has been strengthening and nourishing my sick body and
+soul, as never before. Thanks, invisible physician, for thy silent
+delicious medicine, thy day and night, thy waters and thy airs, the
+banks, the grass, the trees, and e'en the weeds!
+
+
+A QUINTETTE
+
+While I have been kept by the rain under the shelter of my great oak,
+(perfectly dry and comfortable, to the rattle of the drops all around,)
+I have pencill'd off the mood of the hour in a little quintette, which I
+will give you:
+
+    At vacancy with Nature,
+    Acceptive and at ease,
+    Distilling the present hour,
+    Whatever, wherever it is,
+    And over the past, oblivion.
+
+Can you get hold of it, reader dear? and how do you like it anyhow?
+
+
+THE FIRST FROST--MEMS
+
+Where I was stopping I saw the first palpable frost, on my sunrise walk,
+October 6; all over the yet-green spread a light blue-gray veil, giving
+a new show to the entire landscape. I had but little time to notice it,
+for the sun rose cloudless and mellow-warm, and as I returned along the
+lane it had turn'd to glittering patches of wet. As I walk I notice
+the bursting pods of wild-cotton, (Indian hemp they call it here,) with
+flossy-silky contents, and dark red-brown seeds--a startled rabbit--I
+pull a handful of the balsamic life-ever-lasting and stuff it down in my
+trowsers-pocket for scent.
+
+
+THREE YOUNG MEN'S DEATHS
+
+_December 20_.--Somehow I got thinking to-day of young men's deaths--not
+at all sadly or sentimentally, but gravely, realistically, perhaps a
+little artistically. Let me give the following three cases from budgets
+of personal memoranda, which I have been turning over, alone in my room,
+and resuming and dwelling on, this rainy afternoon. Who is there to whom
+the theme does not come home? Then I don't know how it may be to
+others, but to me not only is there nothing gloomy or depressing in such
+cases--on the contrary, as reminiscences, I find them soothing, bracing,
+tonic.
+
+ERASTUS HASKELL.--[I just transcribe verbatim from a letter written by
+myself in one of the army hospitals, 16 years ago, during the secession
+war.] _Washington, July 28, 1863._--Dear M.,--I am writing this in the
+hospital, sitting by the side of a soldier, I do not expect to last many
+hours. His fate has been a hard one--he seems to be only about 19 or
+20--Erastus Haskell, company K, 141st N. Y.--has been out about a year,
+and sick or half-sick more than half that time--has been down on the
+peninsula--was detail'd to go in the band as fifer-boy. While sick, the
+surgeon told him to keep up with the rest--(probably work'd and march'd
+too long.) He is a shy, and seems to me a very sensible boy--has fine
+manners--never complains--was sick down on the peninsula in an old
+storehouse--typhoid fever. The first week this July was brought up
+here--journey very bad, no accommodations, no nourishment, nothing
+but hard jolting, and exposure enough to make a well man sick; (these
+fearful journeys do the job for many)--arrived here July 11th--a silent
+dark-skinn'd Spanish-looking youth, with large very dark blue eyes,
+peculiar looking. Doctor F. here made light of his sickness--said he
+would recover soon, etc.; but I thought very different, and told F.
+so repeatedly; (I came near quarreling with him about it from the
+first)--but he laugh'd, and would not listen to me. About four days ago,
+I told Doctor he would in my opinion lose the boy without doubt--but F.
+again laugh'd at me. The next day he changed his opinion--brought the
+head surgeon of the post--he said the boy would probably die, but they
+would make a hard fight for him.
+
+The last two days he has been lying panting for breath--a pitiful
+sight. I have been with him some every day or night since he arrived. He
+suffers a great deal with the heat--says little or nothing--is flighty
+the last three days, at times--knows me always, however--calls me
+"Walter"--(sometimes calls the name over and over and over again,
+musingly, abstractedly, to himself.) His father lives at Breesport,
+Chemung county, N. Y., is a mechanic with large family--is a steady,
+religious man; his mother too is living. I have written to them, and
+shall write again to-day--Erastus has not receiv'd a word from home for
+months.
+
+As I sit here writing to you, M., I wish you could see the whole scene.
+This young man lies within reach of me, flat on his back, his hands
+clasp'd across his breast, his thick black hair cut close; he is dozing,
+breathing hard, every breath a spasm--it looks so cruel. He is a noble
+youngster,--I consider him past all hope. Often there is no one with him
+for a long while. I am here as much as possible.
+
+WILLIAM ALCOTT, fireman. _Camden, Nov., 1874_.--Last Monday afternoon
+his widow, mother, relatives, mates of the fire department, and his
+other friends, (I was one, only lately it is true, but our love grew
+fast and close, the days and nights of those eight weeks by the chair
+of rapid decline, and the bed of death,) gather'd to the funeral of
+this young man, who had grown up, and was well-known here. With nothing
+special, perhaps, to record, I would give a word or two to his memory.
+He seem'd to me not an inappropriate specimen in character and elements,
+of that bulk of the average good American race that ebbs and flows
+perennially beneath this scum of eructations on the surface. Always very
+quiet in manner, neat in person and dress, good temper'd--punctual and
+industrious at his work, till he could work no longer--he just lived his
+steady, square, unobtrusive life, in its own humble sphere, doubtless
+unconscious of itself. (Though I think there were currents of emotion
+and intellect undevelop'd beneath, far deeper than his acquaintances
+ever suspected--or than he himself ever did.) He was no talker. His
+troubles, when he had any, he kept to himself. As there was nothing
+querulous about him in life, he made no complaints during his last
+sickness. He was one of those persons that while his associates never
+thought of attributing any particular talent or grace to him, yet all
+insensibly, really, liked Billy Alcott.
+
+I, too, loved him. At last, after being with him quite a good
+deal--after hours and days of panting for breath, much of the time
+unconscious, (for though the consumption that had been lurking in his
+system, once thoroughly started, made rapid progress, there was still
+great vitality in him, and indeed for four or five days he lay
+dying, before the close,) late on Wednesday night, Nov. 4th, where we
+surrounded his bed in silence, there came a lull--a longer drawn breath,
+a pause, a faint sigh--another--a weaker breath, another sigh--a pause
+again and just a tremble--and the face of the poor wasted young man (he
+was just 26,) fell gently over, in death, on my hand, on the pillow.
+
+CHARLES CASWELL.--[I extract the following, verbatim, from a letter
+to me dated September 29, from my friend John Burroughs, at
+Esopus-on-Hudson, New York State.] S. was away when your picture came,
+attending his sick brother, Charles--who has since died--an event that
+has sadden'd me much. Charlie was younger than S., and a most attractive
+young fellow. He work'd at my father's and had done so for two years.
+He was about the best specimen of a young country farm-hand I ever knew.
+You would have loved him. He was like one of your poems. With his
+great strength, his blond hair, his cheerfulness and contentment, his
+universal good will, and his silent manly ways, he was a youth hard to
+match. He was murder'd by an old doctor. He had typhoid fever, and the
+old fool bled him twice. He lived to wear out the fever, but had not
+strength to rally. He was out of his head nearly all the time. In the
+morning, as he died in the afternoon, S. was standing over him, when
+Charlie put up his arms around S.'s neck, and pull'd his face down and
+kiss'd him. S. said he knew then the end was near. (S. stuck to him day
+and night to the last.) When I was home in August, Charlie was cradling
+on the hill, and it was a picture to see him walk through the grain. All
+work seem'd play to him. He had no vices, any more than Nature has, and
+was belov'd by all who knew him.
+
+I have written thus to you about him, for such young men belong to
+you; he was of your kind. I wish you could have known him. He had the
+sweetness of a child, and the strength and courage and readiness of a
+young Viking. His mother and father are poor; they have a rough, hard
+farm. His mother works in the field with her husband when the work
+presses. She has had twelve children.
+
+
+FEBRUARY DAYS
+
+_February 7, 1878_.--Glistening sun today, with slight haze, warm
+enough, and yet tart, as I sit here in the open air, down in my country
+retreat, under an old cedar. For two hours I have been idly wandering
+around the woods and pond, lugging my chair, picking out choice spots to
+sit awhile--then up and slowly on again. All is peace here. Of course,
+none of the summer noises or vitality; to-day hardly even the winter
+ones. I amuse myself by exercising my voice in recitations, and in
+ringing the changes on all the vocal and alphabetical sounds. Not even
+an echo; only the cawing of a solitary crow, flying at some distance.
+The pond is one bright, flat spread, without a ripple--a vast Claude
+Lorraine glass, in which I study the sky, the light, the leafless trees,
+and an occasional crow, with flapping wings, flying overhead. The brown
+fields have a few white patches of snow left.
+
+_Feb. 9_.--After an hour's ramble, now retreating, resting, sitting
+close by the pond, in a warm nook, writing this, shelter'd from the
+breeze, just before noon. The _emotional_ aspects and influences of
+Nature! I, too, like the rest, feel these modern tendencies (from all
+the prevailing intellections, literature and poems,) to turn everything
+to pathos, ennui, morbidity, dissatisfaction, death. Yet how clear it is
+to me that those are not the born results, influences of Nature at all,
+but of one's own distorted, sick or silly soul. Here, amid this wild,
+free scene, how healthy, how joyous, how clean and vigorous and sweet!
+
+_Mid-afternoon_.--One of my nooks is south of the barn, and here I am
+sitting now, on a log, still basking in the sun, shielded from the wind.
+Near me are the cattle, feeding on corn-stalks. Occasionally a cow or
+the young bull (how handsome and bold he is!) scratches and munches
+the far end of the log on which I sit. The fresh milky odor is quite
+perceptible, also the perfume of hay from the barn. The perpetual rustle
+of dry corn-stalks, the low sough of the wind round the barn gables, the
+grunting of pigs, the distant whistle of a locomotive, and occasional
+crowing of chanticleers, are the sounds.
+
+_Feb. 19._--Cold and sharp last night--clear and not much wind--the full
+moon shining, and a fine spread of constellations and little and big
+stars--Sirius very bright, rising early, preceded by many-orb'd Orion,
+glittering, vast, sworded, and chasing with his dog. The earth hard
+frozen, and a stiff glare of ice over the pond. Attracted by the calm
+splendor of the night, I attempted a short walk, but was driven back
+by the cold. Too severe for me also at 9 o'clock, when I came out this
+morning, so I turn'd back again. But now, near noon, I have walk'd
+down the lane, basking all the way in the sun (this farm has a pleasant
+southerly exposure,) and here I am, seated under the lee of a bank,
+close by the water. There are bluebirds already flying about, and I
+hear much chirping and twittering and two or three real songs, sustain'd
+quite awhile, in the mid-day brilliance and warmth. (There! that is a
+true carol, coming out boldly and repeatedly, as if the singer meant
+it.) Then as the noon strengthens, the reedy trill of the robin--to my
+ear the most cheering of bird-notes. At intervals, like bars and breaks
+(out of the low murmur that in any scene, however quiet, is never
+entirely absent to a delicate ear,) the occasional crunch and cracking
+of the ice-glare congeal'd over the creek, as it gives way to the
+sunbeams--sometimes with low sigh--sometimes with indignant, obstinate
+tug and snort.
+
+(Robert Burns says in one of his letters: "There is scarcely any earthly
+object gives me more--I do not know if I should call it pleasure--but
+something which exalts me--something which enraptures me--than to walk
+in the shelter' d side of a wood in a cloudy winter day, and hear the
+stormy wind howling among the trees, and raving over the plain. It is
+my best season of devotion." Some of his most characteristic poems were
+composed in such scenes and seasons.)
+
+
+A MEADOW LARK
+
+_March 16_.--Fine, clear, dazzling morning, the sun an hour high, the
+air just tart enough. What a stamp in advance my whole day receives
+from the song of that meadow lark perch'd on a fence-stake twenty rods
+distant! Two or three liquid-simple notes, repeated at intervals,
+full of careless happiness and hope. With its peculiar shimmering slow
+progress and rapid-noiseless action of the wings, it flies on a way,
+lights on another stake, and so on to another, shimmering and singing
+many minutes.
+
+
+SUNDOWN LIGHTS
+
+_May 6, 5 P. M._--This is the hour for strange effects in light and
+shade-enough to make a colorist go delirious--long spokes of molten
+silver sent horizontally through the trees (now in their brightest
+tenderest green,) each leaf and branch of endless foliage a lit-up
+miracle, then lying all prone on the youthful-ripe, interminable grass,
+and giving the blades not only aggregate but individual splendor, in
+ways unknown to any other hour. I have particular spots where I get
+these effects in their perfection. One broad splash lies on the
+water, with many a rippling twinkle, offset by the rapidly deepening
+black-green murky-transparent shadows behind, and at intervals all along
+the banks. These, with great shafts of horizontal fire thrown among the
+trees and along the grass as the sun lowers, give effects more and more
+peculiar, more and more superb, unearthly, rich and dazzling.
+
+
+THOUGHTS UNDER AN OAK--A DREAM
+
+_June 2_.--This is the fourth day of a dark northeast storm, wind and
+rain. Day before yesterday was my birthday. I have now enter'd on
+my 60th year. Every day of the storm, protected by overshoes and a
+waterproof blanket, I regularly come down to the pond, and ensconce
+myself under the lee of the great oak; I am here now writing these
+lines. The dark smoke-color'd clouds roll in furious silence athwart the
+sky; the soft green leaves dangle all around me; the wind steadily keeps
+up its hoarse, soothing music over my head--Nature's mighty whisper.
+Seated here in solitude I have been musing over my life--connecting
+events, dates, as links of a chain, neither sadly nor cheerily, but
+somehow, to-day here under the oak, in the rain, in an unusually
+matter-of-fact spirit.
+
+But my great oak--sturdy, vital, green-five feet thick at the butt. I
+sit a great deal near or under him. Then the tulip tree near by--the
+Apollo of the woods--tall and graceful, yet robust and sinewy,
+inimitable in hang of foliage and throwing-out of limb; as if the
+beauteous, vital, leafy creature could walk, if it only would. (I had
+a sort of dream-trance the other day, in which I saw my favorite trees
+step out and promenade up, down and around, very curiously--with a
+whisper from one, leaning down as he pass'd me, _We do all this on the
+present occasion, exceptionally, just for you_.)
+
+
+CLOVER AND HAY PERFUME
+
+_July 3d, 4th, 5th._--Clear, hot, favorable weather--has been a good
+summer--the growth of clover and grass now generally mow'd. The familiar
+delicious perfume fills the barns and lanes. As you go along you see the
+fields of grayish white slightly tinged with yellow, the loosely stack'd
+grain, the slow-moving wagons passing, and farmers in the fields with
+stout boys pitching and loading the sheaves. The corn is about beginning
+to tassel. All over the middle and southern states the spear-shaped
+battalia, multitudinous, curving, flaunting--long, glossy, dark-green
+plumes for the great horseman, earth. I hear the cheery notes of my old
+acquaintance Tommy quail; but too late for the whip-poor-will, (though
+I heard one solitary lingerer night before last.) I watch the broad
+majestic flight of a turkey-buzzard, sometimes high up, sometimes low
+enough to see the lines of his form, even his spread quills, in relief
+against the sky. Once or twice lately I have seen an eagle here at early
+candle-light flying low.
+
+
+AN UNKNOWN
+
+_June 15_.--To-day I noticed a new large bird, size of a nearly grown
+hen--a haughty, white-bodied dark-wing'd hawk--I suppose a hawk from his
+bill and general look--only he had a clear, loud, quite musical, sort of
+bell-like call, which he repeated again and again, at intervals, from a
+lofty dead tree-top, overhanging the water. Sat there a long time, and I
+on the opposite bank watching him. Then he darted down, skimming pretty
+close to the stream--rose slowly, a magnificent sight, and sail'd with
+steady wide-spread wings, no flapping at all, up and down the pond
+two or three times, near me, in circles in clear sight, as if for my
+delectation. Once he came quite close over my head; I saw plainly his
+hook'd bill and hard restless eyes.
+
+
+BIRD-WHISTLING
+
+How much music (wild, simple, savage, doubtless, but so tart-sweet,)
+there is in mere whistling. It is four-fifths of the utterance of birds.
+There are all sorts and styles. For the last half-hour, now, while I
+have been sitting here, some feather'd fellow away off in the bushes has
+been repeating over and over again what I may call a kind of throbbing
+whistle. And now a bird about the robin size has just appear'd, all
+mulberry red, flitting among the bushes--head, wings, body, deep red,
+not very bright--no song, as I have heard. _4. o'clock_: There is a real
+concert going on around me--a dozen different birds pitching in with
+a will. There have been occasional rains, and the growths all show its
+vivifying influences. As I finish this, seated on a log close by the
+pond-edge, much chirping and trilling in the distance, and a feather'd
+recluse in the woods near by is singing deliciously--not many notes,
+but full of music of almost human sympathy--continuing for a long, long
+while.
+
+
+HORSE-MINT
+
+_Aug. 22_.--Not a human being, and hardly the evidence of one, in
+sight. After my brief semi-daily bath, I sit here for a bit, the
+brook musically brawling, to the chromatic tones of a fretful cat-bird
+somewhere off in the bushes. On my walk hither two hours since, through
+fields and the old lane, I stopt to view, now the sky, now the mile-off
+woods on the hill, and now the apple orchards. What a contrast from
+New York's or Philadelphia's streets! Everywhere great patches of
+dingy-blossom'd horse-mint wafting a spicy odor through the air,
+(especially evenings.) Everywhere the flowering boneset, and the
+rose-bloom of the wild bean.
+
+
+THREE OF US
+
+_July 14_.--My two kingfishers still haunt the pond. In the bright sun
+and breeze and perfect temperature of to-day, noon, I am sitting here
+by one of the gurgling brooks, dipping a French water-pen in the limpid
+crystal, and using it to write these lines, again watching the feather'd
+twain, as they fly and sport athwart the water, so close, almost
+touching into its surface. Indeed there seem to be three of us. For
+nearly an hour I indolently look and join them while they dart and turn
+and take their airy gambols, sometimes far up the creek disappearing for
+a few moments, and then surely returning again, and performing most
+of their flight within sight of me, as if they knew I appreciated and
+absorb'd their vitality, spirituality, faithfulness, and the rapid,
+vanishing, delicate lines of moving yet quiet electricity they draw for
+me across the spread of the grass, the trees, and the blue sky. While
+the brook babbles, babbles, and the shadows of the boughs dapple in the
+sunshine around me, and the cool west-by-nor'-west wind faintly soughs
+in the thick bushes and tree tops.
+
+Among the objects of beauty and interest now beginning to appear quite
+plentifully in this secluded spot, I notice the humming-bird, the
+dragon-fly with its wings of slate-color'd guaze, and many varieties of
+beautiful and plain butterflies, idly flapping among the plants and wild
+posies. The mullein has shot up out of its nest of broad leaves, to a
+tall stalk towering sometimes five or six feet high, now studded
+with knobs of golden blossoms. The milk-weed, (I see a great gorgeous
+creature of gamboge and black lighting on one as I write,) is in flower,
+with its delicate red fringe; and there are profuse clusters of a
+feathery blossom waving in the wind on taper stems. I see lots of these
+and much else in every direction, as I saunter or sit. For the last half
+hour a bird has persistently kept up a simple, sweet, melodious song,
+from the bushes. (I have a positive conviction that some of these birds
+sing, and others fly and flirt about here for my special benefit.)
+
+
+DEATH OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
+
+_New York City_.--Came on from West Philadelphia, June 13, in the 2 P.
+M. train to Jersey City, and so across and to my friends, Mr. and Mrs.
+J. H. J., and their large house, large family (and large hearts,)
+amid which I feel at home, at peace--away up on Fifth avenue, near
+Eighty-sixth street, quiet, breezy, overlooking the dense woody
+fringe of the park--plenty of space and sky, birds chirping, and air
+comparatively fresh and odorless. Two hours before starting, saw the
+announcement of William Cullen Bryant's funeral, and felt a strong
+desire to attend. I had known Mr. Bryant over thirty years ago, and he
+had been markedly kind to me. Off and on, along that time for years as
+they pass'd, we met and chatted together. I thought him very sociable in
+his way, and a man to become attach'd to. We were both walkers, and when
+I work'd in Brooklyn he several times came over, middle of afternoons,
+and we took rambles miles long, till dark, out towards Bedford or
+Flatbush, in company. On these occasions he gave me clear accounts
+of scenes in Europe--the cities, looks, architecture, art, especially
+Italy--where he had travel'd a good deal.
+
+_June 14.--The Funeral_.--And so the good, stainless, noble old citizen
+and poet lies in the closed coffin there--and this is his funeral. A
+solemn, impressive, simple scene, to spirit and senses. The remarkable
+gathering of gray heads, celebrities--the finely render'd anthem, and
+other music--the church, dim even now at approaching noon, in its light
+from the mellow-stain'd windows-the pronounc'd eulogy on the bard who
+loved Nature so fondly, and sung so well her shows and seasons--ending
+with these appropriate well-known lines:
+
+    I gazed upon the glorious sky,
+      And the green mountains round,
+    And thought that when I came to lie
+      At rest within the ground,
+    'Twere pleasant that in flowery June,
+    When brooks send up a joyous tune,
+      And groves a cheerful sound,
+    The sexton's hand, my grave to make,
+    The rich green mountain turf should break.
+
+
+JAUNT UP THE HUDSON
+
+_June 20th_.--On the "Mary Powell," enjoy'd everything beyond precedent.
+The delicious tender summer day, just warm enough--the constantly
+changing but ever beautiful panorama on both sides of the river--(went
+up near a hundred miles)--the high straight walls of the stony
+Palisades--beautiful Yonkers, and beautiful Irvington--the never-ending
+hills, mostly in rounded lines, swathed with verdure,--the distant
+turns, like great shoulders in blue veils--the frequent gray and
+brown of the tall-rising rocks--the river itself, now narrowing, now
+expanding--the white sails of the many sloops, yachts, &c., some near,
+some in the distance--the rapid succession of handsome villages and
+cities, (our boat is a swift traveler, and makes few stops)--the
+Race--picturesque West Point, and indeed all along--the costly and often
+turreted mansions forever showing in some cheery light color, through
+the woods--make up the scene.
+
+
+HAPPINESS AND RASPBERRIES
+
+_June 21_.--Here I am, on the west bank of the Hudson, 80 miles
+north of New York, near Esopus, at the handsome, roomy,
+honeysuckle-and-rose-enbower'd cottage of John Burroughs. The place,
+the perfect June days and nights, (leaning toward crisp and cool,)
+the hospitality of J. and Mrs. B., the air, the fruit, (especially my
+favorite dish, currants and raspberries, mixed, sugar'd, fresh and ripe
+from the bushes--I pick 'em myself)--the room I occupy at night, the
+perfect bed, the window giving an ample view of the Hudson and the
+opposite shores, so wonderful toward sunset, and the rolling music
+of the RR. trains, far over there--the peaceful rest--the early
+Venus-heralded dawn--the noiseless splash of sunrise, the light and
+warmth indescribably glorious, in which, (soon as the sun is well up,)
+I have a capital rubbing and rasping with the flesh-brush--with an extra
+scour on the back by Al. J., who is here with us--all inspiriting my
+invalid frame with new life, for the day. Then, after some whiffs
+of morning air, the delicious coffee of Mrs. B., with the cream,
+strawberries, and many substantials, for breakfast.
+
+A SPECIMEN TRAMP FAMILY
+
+_June 22_.--This afternoon we went out (J. B., Al. and I) on quite a
+drive around the country. The scenery, the perpetual stone fences,
+(some venerable old fellows, dark-spotted with lichens)--the many
+fine locust-trees--the runs of brawling water, often over descents of
+rock--these, and lots else. It is lucky the roads are first-rate here,
+(as they are,) for it is up or down hill everywhere, and sometimes steep
+enough. B. has a tip-top horse, strong, young, and both gentle and
+fast. There is a great deal of waste land and hills on the river edge
+of Ulster county, with a wonderful luxuriance of wild flowers and
+bushes--and it seems to me I never saw more vitality of trees--eloquent
+hemlocks, plenty of locusts and fine maples, and the balm of Gilead,
+giving out aroma. In the fields and along the road-sides unusual crops
+of the tall-stemm'd wild daisy, white as milk and yellow as gold.
+
+We pass'd quite a number of tramps, singly or in couples--one squad, a
+family in a rickety one-horse wagon, with some baskets evidently their
+work and trade--the man seated on a low board, in front, driving--the
+gauntish woman by his side, with a baby well bundled in her arms, its
+little red feet and lower legs sticking out right towards us as we
+pass'd--and in the wagon behind, we saw two (or three) crouching little
+children. It was a queer, taking, rather sad picture. If I had been
+alone and on foot, I should have stopp'd and held confab. But on our
+return nearly two hours afterward, we found them a ways further along
+the same road, in a lonesome open spot, haul'd aside, unhitch'd, and
+evidently going to camp for the night. The freed horse was not far off,
+quietly cropping the grass. The man was busy at the wagon, the boy had
+gather'd some dry wood, and was making a fire--and as we went a little
+further we met the woman afoot. I could not see her face, in its
+great sun-bonnet, but somehow her figure and gait told misery, terror,
+destitution. She had the rag-bundled, half-starv'd infant still in
+her arms, and in her hands held two or three baskets, which she had
+evidently taken to the next house for sale. A little barefoot five-year
+old girl-child, with fine eyes, trotted behind her, clutching her gown.
+We stopp'd, asking about the baskets, which we bought. As we paid the
+money, she kept her face hidden in the recesses of her bonnet. Then as
+we started, and stopp'd again, Al., (whose sympathies were evidently
+arous'd,) went back to the camping group to get another basket. He
+caught a look of her face, and talk'd with her a little. Eyes, voice and
+manner were those of a corpse, animated by electricity. She was quite
+young--the man she was traveling with, middle-aged. Poor woman--what
+story was it, out of her fortunes, to account for that inexpressibly
+scared way, those glassy eyes, and that hollow voice?
+
+
+MANHATTAN FROM THE BAY
+
+_June 25_.--Returned to New York last night. Out to-day on the waters
+for a sail in the wide bay, southeast of Staten island--a rough, tossing
+ride, and a free sight--the long stretch of Sandy Hook, the highlands
+of Navesink, and the many vessels outward and inward bound. We came up
+through the midst of all, in the full sun. I especially enjoy'd the last
+hour or two. A moderate sea-breeze had set in; yet over the city, and
+the waters adjacent, was a thin haze, concealing nothing, only adding to
+the beauty. From my point of view, as I write amid the soft breeze, with
+a sea-temperature, surely nothing on earth of its kind can go beyond
+this show. To the left the North river with its far vista--nearer, three
+or four war-ships, anchor'd peacefully--the Jersey side, the banks of
+Weehawken, the Palisades, and the gradually receding blue, lost in the
+distance--to the right the East river--the mast-hemm'd shores--the grand
+obelisk-like towers of the bridge, one on either side, in haze,
+yet plainly defin'd, giant brothers twain, throwing free graceful
+interlinking loops high across the tumbled tumultuous current
+below--(the tide is just changing to its ebb)--the broad water-spread
+everywhere crowded--no, not crowded, but thick as stars in the sky--with
+all sorts and sizes of sail and steam vessels, plying ferry-boats,
+arriving and departing coasters, great ocean Dons, iron-black, modern,
+magnificent in size and power, fill'd with their incalculable value of
+human life and precious merchandise--with here and there, above all,
+those daring, careening things of grace and wonder, those white and
+shaded swift-darting fish-birds, (I wonder if shore or sea elsewhere
+can outvie them,) ever with their slanting spars, and fierce, pure,
+hawk-like beauty and motion--first-class New York sloop or schooner
+yachts, sailing, this fine day, the free sea in a good wind. And
+rising out of the midst, tall-topt, ship-hemm'd, modern, American,
+yet strangely oriental, V-shaped Manhattan, with its compact mass, its
+spires, its cloud-touching edifices group'd at the centre--the green of
+the trees, and all the white, brown and gray of the architecture well
+blended, as I see it, under a miracle of limpid sky, delicious light of
+heaven above, and June haze on the surface below.
+
+
+HUMAN AND HEROIC NEW YORK
+
+The general subjective view of New York and Brooklyn--(will not the
+time hasten when the two shall be municipally united in one, and named
+Manhattan?)--what I may call the human interior and exterior of these
+great seething oceanic populations, as I get it in this visit, is to
+me best of all. After an absence of many years, (I went away at the
+outbreak of the secession war, and have never been back to stay since,)
+again I resume with curiosity the crowds, the streets, I knew so
+well, Broadway, the ferries, the west side of the city, democratic
+Bowery--human appearances and manners as seen in all these, and along
+the wharves, and in the perpetual travel of the horse-cars, or the
+crowded excursion steamers, or in Wall and Nassau streets by day--in the
+places of amusement at night--bubbling and whirling and moving like
+its own environment of waters--endless humanity in all phases--Brooklyn
+also--taken in for the last three weeks. No need to specify
+minutely--enough to say that (making all allowances for the shadows
+and side-streaks of a million-headed-city) the brief total of the
+impressions, the human qualities, of these vast cities, is to me
+comforting, even heroic, beyond statement. Alertness, generally fine
+physique, clear eyes that look straight at you, a singular combination
+of reticence and self-possession, with good nature and friendliness--a
+prevailing range of according manners, taste and intellect, surely
+beyond any elsewhere upon earth--and a palpable outcropping of that
+personal comradeship I look forward to as the subtlest, strongest future
+hold of this many-item'd Union--are not only constantly visible here
+in these mighty channels of men, but they form the rule and average.
+To-day, I should say--defiant of cynics and pessimists, and with a full
+knowledge of all their exceptions--an appreciative and perceptive study
+of the current humanity of New York gives the directest proof yet
+of successful Democracy, and of the solution of that paradox, the
+eligibility of the free and fully developed individual with the
+paramount aggregate. In old age, lame and sick, pondering for years on
+many a doubt and danger for this republic of ours--fully aware of all
+that can be said on the other side--I find in this visit to New York,
+and the daily contact and rapport with its myriad people, on the scale
+of the oceans and tides, the best, most effective medicine my soul has
+yet partaken--the grandest physical habitat and surroundings of land and
+water the globe affords--namely, Manhattan island and Brooklyn, which
+the future shall join in one city--city of superb democracy, amid superb
+surroundings.
+
+
+HOURS FOR THE SOUL
+
+_July 22d, 1878_.--Living down in the country again. A wonderful
+conjunction of all that goes to make those sometime miracle-hours after
+sunset--so near and yet so far. Perfect, or nearly perfect days, I
+notice, are not so very uncommon; but the combinations that make perfect
+nights are few, even in a life time. We have one of those perfections
+to-night. Sunset left things pretty clear; the larger stars were visible
+soon as the shades allow'd. A while after 8, three or four great black
+clouds suddenly rose, seemingly from different points, and sweeping
+with broad swirls of wind but no thunder, underspread the orbs from
+view everywhere, and indicated a violent heatstorm. But without storm,
+clouds, blackness and all, sped and vanish'd as suddenly as they had
+risen; and from a little after 9 till 11 the atmosphere and the whole
+show above were in that state of exceptional clearness and glory just
+alluded to. In the northwest turned the Great Dipper with its pointers
+round the Cynosure. A little south of east the constellation of the
+Scorpion was fully up, with red Antares glowing in its neck; while
+dominating, majestic Jupiter swam, an hour and a half risen, in the
+east--(no moon till after 11.) A large part of the sky seem'd just
+laid in great splashes of phosphorus. You could look deeper in, farther
+through, than usual; the orbs thick as heads of wheat in a field. Not
+that there was any special brilliancy either--nothing near as sharp as
+I have seen of keen winter nights, but a curious general luminousness
+throughout to sight, sense, and soul. The latter had much to do with it.
+(I am convinced there are hours of Nature, especially of the atmosphere,
+mornings and evenings, address'd to the soul. Night transcends, for that
+purpose, what the proudest day can do.) Now, indeed, if never before,
+the heavens declared the glory of God. It was to the full sky of the
+Bible, of Arabia, of the prophets, and of the oldest poems. There,
+in abstraction and stillness, (I had gone off by myself to absorb the
+scene, to have the spell unbroken,) the copiousness, the removedness,
+vitality, loose-clear-crowdedness, of that stellar concave spreading
+overhead, softly absorb'd into me, rising so free, interminably high,
+stretching east, west, north, south--and I, though but a point in the
+centre below, embodying all.
+
+As if for the first time, indeed, creation noiselessly sank into and
+through me its placid and untellable lesson, beyond--O, so infinitely
+beyond!--anything from art, books, sermons, or from science, old or new.
+The spirit's hour--religion's hour--the visible suggestion of God in
+space and time--now once definitely indicated, if never again. The
+untold pointed at--the heavens all paved with it. The Milky Way, as if
+some superhuman symphony, some ode of universal vagueness, disdaining
+syllable and sound--a flashing glance of Deity, address'd to the soul.
+All silently--the indescribable night and stars--far off and silently.
+
+THE DAWN.--_July 23_.--This morning, between one and two hours before
+sunrise, a spectacle wrought on the same background, yet of quite
+different beauty and meaning. The moon well up in the heavens, and past
+her half, is shining brightly--the air and sky of that cynical-clear,
+Minerva-like quality, virgin cool--not the weight of sentiment or
+mystery, or passion's ecstasy indefinable--not the religious sense,
+the varied All, distill'd and sublimated into one, of the night just
+described. Every star now clear-cut, showing for just what it is, there
+in the colorless ether. The character of the heralded morning, ineffably
+sweet and fresh and limpid, but for the esthetic sense alone, and for
+purity without sentiment. I have itemized the night--but dare I attempt
+the cloudless dawn? (What subtle tie is this between one's soul and the
+break of day? Alike, and yet no two nights or morning shows ever exactly
+alike.) Preceded by an immense star, almost unearthly in its effusion
+of white splendor, with two or three long unequal spoke-rays of diamond
+radiance, shedding down through the fresh morning air below--an hour of
+this, and then the sunrise.
+
+THE EAST.--What a subject for a poem! Indeed, where else a more
+pregnant, more splendid one? Where one more idealistic-real, more
+subtle, more sensuous-delicate? The East, answering all lands, all
+ages, peoples; touching all senses, here, immediate, now--and yet so
+indescribably far off--such retrospect! The East--long-stretching--so
+losing itself--the orient, the gardens of Asia, the womb of history
+and song--forth-issuing all those strange, dim cavalcades--Florid
+with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion. Sultry with
+perfume, with ample and flowing garment. With sunburnt visage, intense
+soul and glittering eyes. Always the East--old, how incalculably old!
+And yet here the same--ours yet, fresh as a rose, to every morning,
+every life, to-day--and always will be.
+
+_Sept. 17_. Another presentation--same theme--just before sunrise again,
+(a favorite hour with me.) The clear gray sky, a faint glow in the
+dull liver-color of the east, the cool fresh odor and the moisture--the
+cattle and horses off there grazing in the fields--the star Venus again,
+two hours high. For sounds, the chirping of crickets in the grass, the
+clarion of chanticleer, and the distant cawing of an early crow. Quietly
+over the dense fringe of cedars and pines rises that dazzling, red,
+transparent disk of flame, and the low sheets of white vapor roll and
+roll into dissolution.
+
+THE MOON.--_May 18_.--I went to bed early last night, but found myself
+waked shortly after 12, and, turning awhile, sleepless and mentally
+feverish, I rose, dress'd myself, sallied forth and walk'd down the
+lane. The full moon, some three or four hours up--a sprinkle of light
+and less-light clouds just lazily moving--Jupiter an hour high in the
+east, and here and there throughout the heavens a random star appearing
+and disappearing. So beautifully veiled and varied--the air, with that
+early-summer perfume, not at all damp or raw--at times Luna languidly
+emerging in richest brightness for minutes, and then partially envelop'd
+again. Far off a poor whip-poor-will plied his notes incessantly. It was
+that silent time between 1 and 3.
+
+The rare nocturnal scene, how soon it sooth'd and pacified me! Is there
+not something about the moon, some relation or reminder, which no poem
+or literature has yet caught? (In very old and primitive ballads I have
+come across lines or asides that suggest it.) After a while the clouds
+mostly clear'd, and as the moon swam on, she carried, shimmering and
+shifting, delicate color-effects of pellucid green and tawny vapor. Let
+me conclude this part with an extract, (some writer in the "Tribune,"
+May 16, 1878):
+
+  No one ever gets tired of the moon. Goddess that she is by dower of
+  her eternal beauty, she is a true woman by her tact--knows the charm
+  of being seldom seen, of coming by surprise and staying but a little
+  while; never wears the same dress two nights running, nor all night
+  the same way; commends herself to the matter-of-fact people by her
+  usefulness, and makes her uselessness adored by poets, artists, and
+  all lovers in all lands; lends herself to every symbolism and to
+  every emblem; is Diana's bow and Venus's mirror and Mary's throne;
+  is a sickle, a scarf, an eyebrow, his face or her face, and look'd
+  at by her or by him; is the madman's hell, the poet's heaven, the
+  baby's toy, the philosopher's study; and while her admirers follow
+  her footsteps, and hang on her lovely looks, she knows how to keep
+  her woman's secret--her other side--unguess'd and unguessable.
+
+_Furthermore. February 19, 1880_.--Just before 10 P.M. cold and entirely
+clear again, the show overhead, bearing southwest, of wonderful and
+crowded magnificence. The moon in her third quarter--the clusters of
+the Hyades and Pleiades, with the planet Mars between--in full crossing
+sprawl in the sky the great Egyptian X, (Sirius, Procyon, and the main
+stars in the constellations of the Ship, the Dove, and of Orion;) just
+north of east Bootes, and in his knee Arcturus, an hour high, mounting
+the heaven, ambitiously large and sparkling, as if he meant to challenge
+with Sirius the stellar supremacy.
+
+With the sentiment of the stars and moon such nights I get all the
+free margins and indefiniteness of music or poetry, fused in geometry's
+utmost exactness.
+
+
+STRAW-COLOR'D AND OTHER PSYCHES
+
+_Aug. 4_.--A pretty sight! Where I sit in the shade--a warm day, the sun
+shining from cloudless skies, the forenoon well advanc'd--I look over
+a ten-acre field of luxuriant clover-hay, (the second crop)--the
+livid-ripe red blossoms and dabs of August brown thickly spotting
+the prevailing dark-green. Over all flutter myriads of light-yellow
+butterflies, mostly skimming along the surface, dipping and oscillating,
+giving a curious animation to the scene. The beautiful, spiritual
+insects! straw-color'd Psyches! Occasionally one of them leaves his
+mates, and mounts, perhaps spirally, perhaps in a straight line in the
+air, fluttering up, up, till literally out of sight. In the lane as I
+came along just now I noticed one spot, ten feet square or so, where
+more than a hundred had collected, holding a revel, a gyration-dance, or
+butterfly good-time, winding and circling, down and across, but always
+keeping within the limits. The little creatures have come out all of a
+sudden the last few days, and are now very plentiful. As I sit outdoors,
+or walk, I hardly look around without somewhere seeing two (always two)
+fluttering through the air in amorous dalliance. Then their inimitable
+color, their fragility, peculiar motion--and that strange, frequent
+way of one leaving the crowd and mounting up, up in the free ether, and
+apparently never returning. As I look over the field, these yellow-wings
+everywhere mildly sparkling, many snowy blossoms of the wild carrot
+gracefully bending on their tall and taper stems--while for sounds, the
+distant guttural screech of a flock of guinea-hens comes shrilly yet
+somehow musically to my ears. And now a faint growl of heat-thunder in
+the north--and ever the low rising and falling wind-purr from the tops
+of the maples and willows.
+
+_Aug. 20_.--Butterflies and butterflies, (taking the place of the
+bumble-bees of three months since, who have quite disappear'd,) continue
+to flit to and fro, all sorts, white, yellow, brown, purple--now and
+then some gorgeous fellow flashing lazily by on wings like artists'
+palettes dabb'd with every color. Over the breast of the pond I notice
+many white ones, crossing, pursuing their idle capricious flight. Near
+where I sit grows a tall-stemm'd weed topt with a profusion of rich
+scarlet blossoms, on which the snowy insects alight and dally, sometimes
+four or five of them at a time. By-and-by a humming-bird visits
+the same, and I watch him coming and going, daintily balancing and
+shimmering about. These white butterflies give new beautiful contrasts
+to the pure greens of the August foliage, (we have had some copious
+rains lately,) and over the glistening bronze of the pond-surface. You
+can tame even such insects; I have one big and handsome moth down here,
+knows and comes to me, likes me to hold him up on my extended hand.
+
+_Another Day, later_.--A grand twelve-acre field of ripe cabbages with
+their prevailing hue of malachite green, and floating-flying over and
+among them in all directions myriads of these same white butterflies. As
+I came up the lane to-day I saw a living globe of the same, two or three
+feet in diameter, many scores cluster'd together and rolling along
+in the air, adhering to their ball-shape, six or eight feet above the
+ground.
+
+
+A NIGHT REMEMBRANCE
+
+_Aug. 23, 9-10 A.M._--I sit by the pond, everything quiet, the broad
+polish'd surface spread before me--the blue of the heavens and the
+white clouds reflected from it--and flitting across, now and then, the
+reflection of some flying bird. Last night I was down here with a friend
+till after midnight; everything a miracle of splendor--the glory of the
+stars, and the completely rounded moon--the passing clouds, silver and
+luminous-tawny--now and then masses of vapory illuminated scud--and
+silently by my side my dear friend. The shades of the trees, and patches
+of moonlight on the grass--the softly blowing breeze, and just-palpable
+odor of the neighboring ripening corn--the indolent and spiritual night,
+inexpressibly rich, tender, suggestive--something altogether to filter
+through one's soul, and nourish and feed and soothe the memory long
+afterwards.
+
+
+WILD FLOWERS
+
+This has been and is yet a great season for wild flowers; oceans of them
+line the roads through the woods, border the edges of the water-runlets,
+grow all along the old fences, and are scatter'd in profusion over the
+fields. An eight-petal'd blossom of gold-yellow, clear and bright, with
+a brown tuft in the middle, nearly as large as a silver half-dollar, is
+very common; yesterday on a long drive I noticed it thickly lining the
+borders of the brooks everywhere. Then there is a beautiful weed cover'd
+with blue flowers, (the blue of the old Chinese teacups treasur'd by our
+grand-aunts,) I am continually stopping to admire--a little larger than
+a dime, and very plentiful. White, however, is the prevailing color. The
+wild carrot I have spoken of; also the fragrant life-everlasting. But
+there are all hues and beauties, especially on the frequent tracts of
+half-opened scrub-oak and dwarf cedar hereabout--wild asters of all
+colors. Notwithstanding the frost-touch the hardy little chaps maintain
+themselves in all their bloom. The tree-leaves, too, some of them are
+beginning to turn yellow or drab or dull green. The deep wine-color of
+the sumachs and gum-treesis already visible, and the straw-color of the
+dog-wood and beech. Let me give the names of some of these perennial
+blossoms and friendly weeds I have made acquaintance with hereabout one
+season or another in my walks:
+
+Wild azalea, dandelions wild honeysuckle, yarrow, wild roses, coreopsis,
+golden rod, wild pea, larkspur, woodbine, early crocus, elderberry,
+sweet flag, (great patches of it,) poke-weed, creeper, trumpet-flower,
+sun-flower, scented marjoram, chamomile, snakeroot, violets, Solomon's
+seal, clematis, sweet balm, bloodroot mint, (great plenty,) swamp
+magnolia, wild geranium, milk-weed, wild heliotrope, wild daisy,
+(plenty,) burdock, wild chrysanthemum.
+
+
+A CIVILITY TOO LONG NEGLECTED
+
+The foregoing reminds me of something.
+
+As the individualities I would mainly portray have certainly been
+slighted by folks who make pictures, volumes, poems, out of them--as
+a faint testimonial of my own gratitude for many hours of peace and
+comfort in half-sickness, (and not by any means sure but they will
+somehow get wind of the compliment,) I hereby dedicate the last half of
+these Specimen Days to the
+
+  bees,                                     glow-worms, (swarming millions
+  black-birds,                                of them indescribably
+  dragon-flies,                               strange and beautiful at night
+  pond-turtles,                               over the pond and creek,)
+  mulleins, tansy, peppermint,              water-snakes,
+  moths, (great and little, some            crows,
+          splendid fellows,)                millers,
+  mosquitoes,                               cedars,
+  butterflies,                              tulip-trees, (and all other trees,)
+  wasps and hornets,                          and to the spots and memories
+  cat-birds, (and all other birds,)           of those days, and the creek.
+
+
+DELAWARE RIVER--DAYS AND NIGHTS
+
+_April 5, 1879_.-With the return of spring to the skies, airs, waters of
+the Delaware, return the sea-gulls. I never tire of watching their broad
+and easy flight, in spirals, or as they oscillate with slow unflapping
+wings, or look down with curved beak, or dipping to the water after
+food. The crows, plenty enough all through the winter, have vanish'd
+with the ice. Not one of them now to be seen. The steamboats have again
+come forth--bustling up, handsome, freshly painted, for summer work--the
+Columbia, the Edwin Forrest, (the Republic not yet out,) the Reybold,
+Nelly White, the Twilight, the Ariel, the Warner, the Perry, the
+Taggart, the Jersey Blue--even the hulky old Trenton--not forgetting
+those saucy little bull-pups of the current, the steamtugs.
+
+But let me bunch and catalogue the affair--the river itself, all the
+way from the sea--Cape island on one side and Henlopen light on the
+other--up the broad bay north, and so to Philadelphia, and on further to
+Trenton;--the sights I am most familiar with, (as I live a good part
+of the time in Camden, I view matters from that outlook)--the great
+arrogant, black, full-freighted ocean steamers, inward or outward
+bound--the ample width here between the two cities, intersected by
+Windmill island--an occasional man-of-war, sometimes a foreigner, at
+anchor, with her guns and port-holes, and the boats, and the brown-faced
+sailors, and the regular oar-strokes, and the gay crowds of "visiting
+day"--the frequent large and handsome three-masted schooners, (a
+favorite style of marine build, hereabout of late years,) some of
+them new and very jaunty, with their white-gray sails and yellow pine
+spars--the sloops dashing along in a fair wind--(I see one now, coming
+up, under broad canvas, her gaff-topsail shining in the sun, high and
+picturesque--what a thing of beauty amid the sky and waters!)--the
+crowded wharf-slips along the city--the flags of different
+nationalities, the sturdy English cross on its ground of blood, the
+French tricolor, the banner of the great North German empire, and the
+Italian and the Spanish colors--sometimes, of an afternoon, the whole
+scene enliven'd by a fleet of yachts, in a half calm, lazily returning
+from a race down at Gloucester;--the neat, rakish, revenue steamer
+"Hamilton" in mid-stream, with her perpendicular stripes flaunting
+aft--and, turning the eyes north, the long ribands of fleecy-white
+steam, or dingy-black smoke, stretching far, fan-shaped, slanting
+diagonally across from the Kensington or Richmond shores, in the
+west-by-south-west wind.
+
+
+SCENES ON FERRY AND RIVER--LAST WINTER'S NIGHTS
+
+Then the Camden ferry. What exhilaration, change, people, business, by
+day. What soothing, silent, wondrous hours, at night, crossing on the
+boat, most all to myself--pacing the deck, alone, forward or aft. What
+communion with the waters, the air, the exquisite _chiaroscuro_--the
+sky and stars, that speak no word, nothing to the intellect, yet so
+eloquent, so communicative to the soul. And the ferry men--little they
+know how much they have been to me, day and night--how many spells of
+listlessness, ennui, debility, they and their hardy ways have dispell'd.
+And the pilots--captains Hand, Walton, and Giberson by day, and captain
+Olive at night; Eugene Crosby, with his strong young arm so often
+supporting, circling, convoying me over the gaps of the bridge, through
+impediments, safely aboard. Indeed all my ferry friends--captain Frazee
+the superintendent, Lindell, Hiskey, Fred Rauch, Price, Watson, and
+a dozen more. And the ferry itself, with its queer scenes--sometimes
+children suddenly born in the waiting-houses (an actual fact--and more
+than once)--sometimes a masquerade party, going over at night, with a
+band of music, dancing and whirling like mad on the broad deck, in their
+fantastic dresses; sometimes the astronomer, Mr. Whitall, (who posts
+me up in points about the stars by a living lesson there and then, and
+answering every question)--sometimes a prolific family group, eight,
+nine, ten, even twelve! (Yesterday, as I cross'd, a mother, father, and
+eight children, waiting in the ferry-house, bound westward somewhere.)
+
+I have mention'd the crows. I always watch them from the boats. They
+play quite a part in the winter scenes on the river, by day. Their black
+splatches are seen in relief against the snow and ice everywhere at that
+season--sometimes flying and flapping--sometimes on little or larger
+cakes, sailing up or down the stream. One day the river was mostly
+clear--only a single long ridge of broken ice making a narrow stripe by
+itself, running along down the current for over a mile, quite rapidly.
+On this white stripe the crows were congregated, hundreds of them--a
+funny procession--("half mourning" was the comment of some one.)
+
+Then the reception room, for passengers waiting--life illustrated
+thoroughly. Take a March picture I jotted there two or three weeks
+since. Afternoon, about 3-1/2 o'clock, it begins to snow. There has been
+a matinee performance at the theater--from 4-1/2 to 5 comes a stream
+of homeward bound ladies. I never knew the spacious room to present a
+gayer, more lively scene--handsome, well-drest Jersey women and girls,
+scores of them, streaming in for nearly an hour--the bright eyes and
+glowing faces, coming in from the air--a sprinkling of snow on bonnets
+or dresses as they enter--the five or ten minutes' waiting--the chatting
+and laughing--(women can have capital times among themselves, with
+plenty of wit, lunches, jovial abandon)--Lizzie, the pleasant-manner'd
+waiting-room woman--for sound, the bell-taps and steam-signals of the
+departing boats with their rhythmic break and undertone--the
+domestic pictures, mothers with bevies of daughters, (a charming
+sight)--children, countrymen--the railroad men in their blue clothes
+and caps--all the various characters of city and country represented
+or suggested. Then outside some belated passenger frantically running,
+jumping after the boat. Towards six o' clock the human stream
+gradually thickening--now a pressure of vehicles, drays, piled railroad
+crates--now a drove of cattle, making quite an excitement, the drovers
+with heavy sticks, belaboring the steaming sides of the frighten'd
+brutes. Inside the reception room, business bargains, flirting,
+love-making, _eclaircissements_, proposals--pleasant, sober-faced Phil
+coming in with his burden of afternoon papers--or Jo, or Charley (who
+jump'd in the dock last week, and saved a stout lady from drowning,) to
+replenish the stove, and clearing it with long crow-bar poker.
+
+Besides all this "comedy human," the river affords nutriment of a
+higher order. Here are some of my memoranda of the past winter, just as
+pencill'd down on the spot.
+
+_A January Night_.--Fine trips across the wide Delaware to-night. Tide
+pretty high, and a strong ebb. River, a little after 8, full of ice,
+mostly broken, but some large cakes making our strong-timber'd steamboat
+hum and quiver as she strikes them. In the clear moonlight they spread,
+strange, unearthly, silvery, faintly glistening, as far as I can see.
+Bumping, trembling, sometimes hissing like a thousand snakes, the
+tide-procession, as we wend with or through it, affording a grand
+undertone, in keeping with the scene. Overhead, the splendor
+indescribable; yet something haughty, almost supercilious, in the night.
+Never did I realize more latent sentiment, almost _passion_, in those
+silent interminable stars up there. One can understand, such a night,
+why, from the days of the Pharaohs or Job, the dome of heaven, sprinkled
+with planets, has supplied the subtlest, deepest criticism on human
+pride, glory, ambition.
+
+_Another Winter Night_.--I don't know anything more _filling_ than to be
+on the wide firm deck of a powerful boat, a clear, cool, extra-moonlight
+night, crushing proudly and resistlessly through this thick, marbly,
+glistening ice. The whole river is now spread with it--some immense
+cakes. There is such weirdness about the scene--partly the quality of
+the light, with its tinge of blue, the lunar twilight--only the large
+stars holding their own in the radiance of the moon. Temperature sharp,
+comfortable for motion, dry, full of oxygen. But the sense of power--the
+steady, scornful, imperious urge of our strong new engine, as she
+ploughs her way through the big and little cakes.
+
+_Another_.--For two hours I cross'd and recross'd, merely for
+pleasure--for a still excitement. Both sky and river went through
+several changes. The first for awhile held two vast fan-shaped echelons
+of light clouds, through which the moon waded, now radiating, carrying
+with her an aureole of tawny transparent brown, and now flooding the
+whole vast with clear vapory light-green, through which, as through an
+illuminated veil, she moved with measur'd womanly motion. Then, another
+trip, the heavens would be absolutely clear, and Luna in all her
+effulgence. The big Dipper in the north, with the double star in the
+handle much plainer than common. Then the sheeny track of light in the
+water, dancing and rippling. Such transformations; such pictures and
+poems, inimitable.
+
+_Another_.--I am studying the stars, under advantages, as I cross
+tonight. (It is late in February, and again extra clear.) High toward
+the west, the Pleiades, tremulous with delicate sparkle, in the soft
+heavens,--Aldebaran, leading the V-shaped Hyades--and overhead Capella
+and her kids. Most majestic of all, in full display in the high south,
+Orion, vast-spread, roomy, chief historian of the stage, with his shiny
+yellow rosette on his shoulder, and his three kings--and a little to
+the east, Sirius, calmly arrogant, most wondrous single star. Going late
+ashore, (I couldn't give up the beauty, and soothingness of the night,)
+as I staid around, or slowly wander'd I heard the echoing calls of
+the railroad men in the West Jersey depot yard, shifting and switching
+trains, engines, etc.; amid the general silence otherways, and something
+in the acoustic quality of the air, musical, emotional effects, never
+thought of before. I linger'd long and long, listening to them.
+
+_Night of March 18, '79_.--One of the calm, pleasantly cool, exquisitely
+clear and cloudless, early spring nights--the atmosphere again that rare
+vitreous blue-black, welcom'd by astronomers. Just at 8, evening, the
+scene overhead of certainly solemnest beauty, never surpass'd. Venus
+nearly down in the west, of a size and lustre as if trying to outshow
+herself, before departing. Teeming, maternal orb--I take you again to
+myself. I am reminded of that spring preceding Abraham Lincoln's murder,
+when I, restlessly haunting the Potomac banks, around Washington city,
+watch'd you, off there, aloof, moody as myself:
+
+    As we walk'd up and down in the dark blue so mystic,
+    As we walk'd in silence the transparent shadowy night,
+    As I saw you had something to tell, as you bent to me night after
+      night,
+    As you droop from the sky low down, as if to my side, (while the
+      other stars all look'd on,)
+    As we wander'd together the solemn night.
+
+With departing Venus, large to the last, and shining even to the edge
+of the horizon, the vast dome presents at this moment, such a spectacle!
+Mercury was visible just after sunset--a rare sight. Arcturus is now
+risen, just north of east. In calm glory all the stars of Orion hold the
+place of honor, in meridian, to the south,--with the Dog-star a little
+to the left. And now, just rising, Spica, late, low, and slightly
+veil'd. Castor, Regulus and the rest, all shining unusually clear, (no
+Mars or Jupiter or moon till morning.) On the edge of the river, many
+lamps twinkling--with two or three huge chimneys, a couple of miles up,
+belching forth molten, steady flames, volcano-like, illuminating all
+around--and sometimes an electric or calcium, its Dante-Inferno
+gleams, in far shafts, terrible, ghastly-powerful. Of later May nights,
+crossing, I like to watch the fishermen's little buoy-lights--so pretty,
+so dreamy--like corpse candles--undulating delicate and lonesome on the
+surface of the shadowy waters, floating with the current.
+
+
+THE FIRST SPRING DAY ON CHESTNUT STREET
+
+Winter relaxing its hold, has already allow'd us a foretaste of spring.
+As I write, yesterday afternoon's softness and brightness, (after
+the morning fog, which gave it a better setting, by contrast,) show'd
+Chestnut street--say between Broad and Fourth--to more advantage in its
+various asides, and all its stores, and gay-dress'd crowds generally,
+than for three months past. I took a walk there between one and two.
+Doubtless, there were plenty of hard-up folks along the pavements, but
+nine-tenths of the myriad-moving human panorama to all appearance seem'd
+flush, well-fed, and fully-provided. At all events it was good
+to be on Chestnut street yesterday. The peddlers on the
+sidewalk--("sleeve-buttons, three for five cents")--the handsome little
+fellow with canary-bird whistles--the cane men, toy men, toothpick
+men--the old woman squatted in a heap on the cold stone flags, with
+her basket of matches, pins and tape--the young negro mother, sitting,
+begging, with her two little coffee-color'd twins on her lap--the beauty
+of the cramm'd conservatory of rare flowers, flaunting reds, yellows,
+snowy lilies, incredible orchids, at the Baldwin mansion near Twelfth
+street--the show of fine poultry, beef, fish, at the restaurants--the
+china stores, with glass and statuettes--the luscious tropical
+fruits--the street cars plodding along, with their tintinnabulating
+bells--the fat, cab-looking, rapidly driven one-horse vehicles of
+the post-office, squeez'd full of coming or going letter-carriers, so
+healthy and handsome and manly-looking, in their gray uniforms--the
+costly books, pictures, curiosities, in the windows--the gigantic
+policemen at most of the corners will all be readily remember'd and
+recognized as features of this principal avenue of Philadelphia.
+Chestnut street, I have discover'd, is not without individuality, and
+its own points, even when compared with the great promenade-streets of
+other cities. I have never been in Europe, but acquired years' familiar
+experience with New York's, (perhaps the world's) great thoroughfare,
+Broadway, and possess to some extent a personal and saunterer's
+knowledge of St. Charles street in New Orleans, Tremont street in
+Boston, and the broad trottoirs of Pennsylvania avenue in Washington. Of
+course it is a pity that Chestnut were not two or three times wider; but
+the street, any fine day, shows vividness, motion, variety, not easily
+to be surpass'd. (Sparkling eyes, human faces, magnetism, well-dress'd
+women, ambulating to and fro--with lots o fine things in the
+windows--are they not about the same, the civilized world over?)
+
+    How fast the flitting figures come!
+        The mild, the fierce, the stony face;
+    Some bright with thoughtless smiles--and some
+        Where secret tears have left their trace.
+
+A few days ago one of the six-story clothing stores along here had
+the space inside its plate-glass show-window partition'd into a little
+corral, and litter'd deeply with rich clover and hay, (I could smell the
+odor outside,) on which reposed two magnificent fat sheep, full-sized
+but young--the handsomest creatures of the kind I ever saw. I stop's
+long and long, with the crowd, to view them--one lying down chewing the
+cud, and one standing up, looking out, with dense-fringed patient
+eyes. Their wool, of a clear tawny color, with streaks of glistening
+black--altogether a queer sight amidst that crowded promenade of
+dandies, dollars and dry-goods.
+
+
+UP THE HUDSON TO ULSTER COUNTY
+
+_April 23._--Off to New York on a little tour and visit. Leaving the
+hospitable, home-like quarters of my valued friends, Mr. and Mrs. J. H.
+Johnston--took the 4 P. M. boat, bound up the Hudson, 100 miles or so.
+Sunset and evening fine. Especially enjoy'd the hour after we passed
+Cozzens's landing--the night lit by the crescent moon and Venus, now
+swimming in tender glory, and now hid by the high rocks and hills of the
+western shore, which we hugg'd close. (Where I spend the next ten days
+is in Ulster county and its neighborhood, with frequent morning and
+evening drives, observations of the river, and short rambles.)
+
+_April 24--Noon._--A little more and the sun would be oppressive. The
+bees are out gathering their bread from willows and other trees. I watch
+them returning, darting through the air or lighting on the hives, their
+thighs covered with the yellow forage. A solitary robin sings near. I
+sit in my shirt sleeves and gaze from an open bay-window on the indolent
+scene--the thin haze, the Fishkill hills in the distance--off on
+the river, a sloop with slanting mainsail, and two or three little
+shad-boats. Over on the railroad opposite, long freight trains,
+sometimes weighted by cylinder-tanks of petroleum, thirty, forty, fifty
+cars in a string, panting and rumbling along in full view, but the sound
+soften'd by distance.
+
+
+DAYS AT J. B.'S TURF-FIRES--SPRING SONGS
+
+_April 26_.--At sunrise, the pure clear sound of the meadow lark. An
+hour later, some notes, few and simple, yet delicious and perfect, from
+the bush-sparrow-towards noon the reedy trill of the robin. To-day is
+the fairest, sweetest yet--penetrating warmth--a lovely veil in the air,
+partly heat-vapor and partly from the turf-fires everywhere in patches
+on the farms. A group of soft maples near by silently bursts out in
+crimson tips, buzzing all day with busy bees. The white sails of sloops
+and schooners glide up and down the river; and long trains of cars, with
+ponderous roll, or faint bell notes, almost constantly on the opposite
+shore. The earliest wild flowers in the woods and fields, spicy arbutus,
+blue liverwort, frail anemone, and the pretty white blossoms of the
+bloodroot. I launch out in slow rambles, discovering them. As I go along
+the roads I like to see the farmers' fires in patches, burning the dry
+brush, turf, debris. How the smoke crawls along, flat to the ground,
+slanting, slowly rising, reaching away, and at last dissipating. I like
+its acrid smell--whiffs just reaching me--welcomer than French perfume.
+
+The birds are plenty; of any sort, or of two or three sorts, curiously,
+not a sign, till suddenly some warm, gushing, sunny April (or even
+March) day--lo! there they are, from twig to twig, or fence to fence,
+flirting, singing, some mating, preparing to build. But most of them _en
+passant_--a fortnight, a month in these parts, and then away. As in all
+phases, Nature keeps up her vital, copious, eternal procession. Still,
+plenty of the birds hang around all or most of the season--now their
+love-time, and era of nest-building. I find flying over the river,
+crows, gulls and hawks. I hear the afternoon shriek of the latter,
+darting about, preparing to nest. The oriole will soon be heard here,
+and the twanging _meoeow_ of the cat-bird; also the king-bird, cuckoo
+and the warblers. All along, there are three peculiarly characteristic
+spring songs--the meadow-lark's, so sweet, so alert and remonstrating
+(as if he said, "don't you see?" or, "can't you understand?")--the
+cheery, mellow, human tones of the robin--(I have been trying for years
+to get a brief term, or phrase, that would identify and describe that
+robin call)--and the amorous whistle of the high-hole. Insects are out
+plentifully at midday.
+
+_April 29_.--As we drove lingering along the road we heard, just after
+sundown, the song of the wood-thrush. We stopp'd without a word, and
+listen'd long. The delicious notes--a sweet, artless, voluntary, simple
+anthem, as from the flute-stops of some organ, wafted through the
+twilight--echoing well to us from the perpendicular high rock, where, in
+some thick young trees' recesses at the base, sat the bird--fill'd our
+senses, our souls.
+
+
+MEETING A HERMIT
+
+I found in one of my rambles up the hills a real hermit, living in a
+lonesome spot, hard to get at, rocky, the view fine, with a little patch
+of land two rods square. A man of youngish middle age, city born and
+raised, had been to school, had travel'd in Europe and California. I
+first met him once or twice on the road, and pass'd the time of day,
+with some small talk; then, the third time, he ask'd me to go along a
+bit and rest in his hut (an almost unprecedented compliment, as I heard
+from others afterwards.) He was of Quaker stock, I think; talk'd with
+ease and moderate freedom, but did not unbosom his life, or story, or
+tragedy, or whatever it was.
+
+
+AN ULSTER COUNTY WATERFALL
+
+I jot this mem, in a wild scene of woods and hills, where we have come
+to visit a waterfall. I never saw finer or more copious hemlocks, many
+of them large, some old and hoary. Such a sentiment to them, secretive,
+shaggy--what I call weather-beaten and let-alone--a rich underlay of
+ferns, yew sprouts and mosses, beginning to be spotted with the early
+summer wild-flowers. Enveloping all, the monotone and liquid gurgle
+from the hoarse impetuous copious fall--the greenish-tawny, darkly
+transparent waters, plunging with velocity down the rocks, with patches
+of milk-white foam--a stream of hurrying amber, thirty feet wide, risen
+far back in the hills and woods, now rushing with volume--every hundred
+rods a fall, and sometimes three or four in that distance. A primitive
+forest, druidical, solitary and savage--not ten visitors a year--broken
+rocks everywhere--shade overhead, thick underfoot with leaves--a just
+palpable wild and delicate aroma.
+
+
+WALTER DUMONT AND HIS MEDAL
+
+As I saunter'd along the high road yesterday, I stopp'd to watch a man
+near by, ploughing a rough stony field with a yoke of oxen. Usually
+there is much geeing and hawing, excitement, and continual noise and
+expletives, about a job of this kind. But I noticed how different,
+how easy and wordless, yet firm and sufficient, the work of this young
+ploughman. His name was Walter Dumont, a farmer, and son of a farmer,
+working for their living. Three years ago, when the steamer "Sunnyside"
+was wreck'd of a bitter icy night on the west bank here, Walter went
+out in his boat--was the first man on hand with assistance--made a
+way through the ice to shore, connected a line, perform'd work of
+first-class readiness, daring, danger, and saved numerous lives. Some
+weeks after, one evening when he was up at Esopus, among the usual
+loafing crowd at the country store and post-office, there arrived
+the gift of an unexpected official gold medal for the quiet hero. The
+impromptu presentation was made to him on the spot, but he blush'd,
+hesitated as he took it, and had nothing to say.
+
+
+HUDSON RIVER SIGHTS
+
+It was a happy thought to build the Hudson river railroad right
+along the shore. The grade is already made by nature; you are sure of
+ventilation one side--and you are in nobody's way. I see, hear, the
+locomotives and cars, rumbling, roaring, flaming, smoking, constantly,
+away off there, night and day--less than a mile distant, and in full
+view by day. I like both sight and sound. Express trains thunder and
+lighten along; of freight trains, most of them very long, there cannot
+be less than a hundred a day. At night far down you see the headlight
+approaching, coming steadily on like a meteor. The river at night has
+its special character-beauties. The shad fishermen go forth in their
+boats and pay out their nets--one sitting forward, rowing, and one
+standing up aft dropping it properly-marking the line with little
+floats bearing candles, conveying, as they glide over the water, an
+indescribable sentiment and doubled brightness. I like to watch the tows
+at night, too, with their twinkling lamps, and hear the husky panting
+of the steamers; or catch the sloops' and schooners' shadowy forms, like
+phantoms, white, silent, indefinite, out there. Then the Hudson of a
+clear moonlight night.
+
+But there is one sight the very grandest. Sometimes in the fiercest
+driving storm of wind, rain, hail or snow, a great eagle will appear
+over the river, now soaring with steady and now overbended wings--always
+confronting the gale, or perhaps cleaving into, or at times literally
+_sitting_ upon it. It is like reading some first-class natural tragedy
+or epic, or hearing martial trumpets. The splendid bird enjoys the
+hubbub--is adjusted and equal to it--finishes it so artistically.
+His pinions just oscillating--the position of his head and neck--his
+resistless, occasionally varied flight--now a swirl, now an upward
+movement--the black clouds driving--the angry wash below--the hiss
+of rain, the wind's piping (perhaps the ice colliding, grunting)--he
+tacking or jibing--now, as it were, for a change, abandoning himself to
+the gale, moving with it with such velocity--and now, resuming control,
+he comes up against it, lord of the situation and the storm--lord, amid
+it, of power and savage joy.
+
+Sometimes (as at present writing,) middle of sunny afternoon, the
+old "Vanderbilt" steamer stalking ahead--I plainly hear her rhythmic,
+slushing paddles--drawing by long hawsers an immense and varied
+following string, ("an old sow and pigs," the river folks call it.)
+First comes a big barge, with a house built on it, and spars towering
+over the roof; then canal boats, a lengthen'd, clustering train,
+fasten'd and link'd together--the one in the middle, with high staff,
+flaunting a broad and gaudy flag--others with the almost invariable
+lines of new-wash'd clothes, drying; two sloops and a schooner aside the
+tow--little wind, and that adverse--with three long, dark, empty barges
+bringing up the rear. People are on the boats: men lounging, women in
+sun-bonnets, children, stovepipes with streaming smoke.
+
+
+TWO CITY AREAS, CERTAIN HOURS
+
+NEW YORK, _May 24, '79_.--Perhaps no quarters of this city (I have
+return'd again for awhile,) make more brilliant, animated, crowded,
+spectacular human presentations these fine May afternoons than the two
+I am now going to describe from personal observation. First: that
+area comprising Fourteenth street (especially the short range between
+Broadway and Fifth avenue) with Union square, its adjacencies, and so
+retrostretching down Broadway for half a mile. All the walks here are
+wide, and the spaces ample and free--now flooded with liquid gold from
+the last two hours of powerful sunshine. The whole area at 5 o'clock,
+the days of my observations, must have contain'd from thirty to
+forty thousand finely-dress'd people, all in motion, plenty of them
+good-looking, many beautiful women, often youths and children,
+the latter in groups with their nurses--the trottoirs everywhere
+close-spread, thick-tangled, (yet no collision, no trouble,) with masses
+of bright color, action, and tasty toilets; (surely the women dress
+better than ever before, and the men do too.) As if New York would show
+these afternoons what it can do in its humanity, its choicest physique
+and physiognomy, and its countless prodigality of locomotion, dry goods,
+glitter, magnetism, and happiness.
+
+Second: also from 5 to 7 P.M. the stretch of Fifth avenue, all the way
+from the Central Park exits at Fifty-ninth street, down to Fourteenth,
+especially along the high grade by Fortieth street, and down the hill.
+A Mississippi of horses and rich vehicles, not by dozens and scores, but
+hundreds and thousands--the broad avenue filled and cramm'd with them--a
+moving, sparkling, hurrying crush, for more than two miles. (I wonder
+they don't get block'd, but I believe they never do.) Altogether it is
+to me the marvel sight of New York. I like to get in one of the Fifth
+avenue stages and ride up, stemming the swift-moving procession. I doubt
+if London or Paris or any city in the world can show such a carriage
+carnival as I have seen here five or six times these beautiful May
+afternoons.
+
+
+CENTRAL PARK WALKS AND TALKS
+
+_May 16 to 22_.--I visit Central Park now almost every day, sitting,
+or slowly rambling, or riding around. The whole place presents its very
+best appearance this current month--the full flush of the trees, the
+plentiful white and pink of the flowering shrubs, the emerald green of
+the grass spreading everywhere, yellow dotted still with dandelions--the
+specialty of the plentiful gray rocks, peculiar to these grounds,
+cropping out, miles and miles--and over all the beauty and purity,
+three days out of four, of our summer skies. As I sit, placidly,
+early afternoon, off against Ninetieth street, the policeman, C. C., a
+well-form'd sandy-complexion'd young fellow, comes over and stands near
+me. We grow quite friendly and chatty forth-with. He is a New Yorker
+born and raised, and in answer to my questions tells me about the life
+of a New York Park policeman, (while he talks keeping his eyes and ears
+vigilantly open, occasionally pausing and moving where he can get full
+views of the vistas of the road, up and down, and the spaces around.)
+The pay is $2.40 a day (seven days to a week)--the men come on and work
+eight hours straight ahead, which is all that is required of them out of
+the twenty-four. The position has more risks than one might suppose--for
+instance if a team or horse runs away (which happens daily) each man is
+expected not only to be prompt, but to waive safety and stop wildest nag
+or nags--(_do it_, and don't be thinking of your bones or face)--give
+the alarm-whistle too, so that other guards may repeat, and the vehicles
+up and down the tracks be warn'd. Injuries to the men are continually
+happening. There is much alertness and quiet strength. (Few appreciate,
+I have often thought, the Ulyssean capacity, derring do, quick readiness
+in emergencies, practicality, unwitting devotion and heroism, among
+our American young men and working-people--the firemen, the railroad
+employes, the steamer and ferry men, the police, the conductors and
+drivers--the whole splendid average of native stock, city and country.)
+It is good work, though; and upon the whole, the Park force members like
+it. They see life, and the excitement keeps them up. There is not so
+much difficulty as might be supposed from tramps, roughs, or in keeping
+people "off the grass." The worst trouble of the regular Park employe is
+from malarial fever, chills, and the like.
+
+
+A FINE AFTERNOON, 4 TO 6
+
+Ten thousand vehicles careering through the Park this perfect afternoon.
+Such a show! and I have seen all--watch'd it narrowly, and at
+my leisure. Private barouches, cabs and coupes, some fine
+horseflesh--lapdogs, footmen, fashions, foreigners, cockades on hats,
+crests on panels--the full oceanic tide of New York's wealth and
+"gentility." It was an impressive, rich, interminable circus on a grand
+scale, full of action and color in the beauty of the day, under
+the clear sun and moderate breeze. Family groups, couples, single
+drivers--of course dresses generally elegant--much "style," (yet perhaps
+little or nothing, even in that direction, that fully justified itself.)
+Through the windows of two or three of the richest carriages I saw
+faces almost corpse-like, so ashy and listless. Indeed the whole affair
+exhibited less of sterling America, either in spirit or countenance,
+than I had counted on from such a select mass-spectacle. I suppose, as
+a proof of limitless wealth, leisure, and the aforesaid "gentility," it
+was tremendous. Yet what I saw those hours (I took two other occasions,
+two other afternoons to watch the same scene,) confirms a thought that
+haunts me every additional glimpse I get of our top-loftical general or
+rather exceptional phases of wealth and fashion in this country--namely,
+that they are ill at ease, much too conscious, cased in too many
+cerements, and far from happy--that there is nothing in them which
+we who are poor and plain need at all envy, and that instead of the
+perennial smell of the grass and woods and shores, their typical
+redolence is of soaps and essences, very rare may be, but suggesting the
+barber shop--something that turns stale and musty in a few hours anyhow.
+
+Perhaps the show on the horseback road was prettiest. Many groups
+(threes a favorite number,) some couples, some singly--many
+ladies--frequently horses or parties dashing along on a full run--fine
+riding the rule--a few really first-class animals. As the afternoon
+waned, the wheel'd carriages grew less, but the saddle-riders seemed to
+increase. They linger'd long--and I saw some charming forms and faces.
+
+
+DEPARTING OF THE BIG STEAMERS
+
+_May 25._--A three hours' bay-trip from 12 to 3 this afternoon,
+accompanying "the City of Brussels" down as far as the Narrows, in
+behoof of some Europe-bound friends, to give them a good send off.
+Our spirited little tug, the "Seth Low," kept close to the great black
+"Brussels," sometimes one side, sometimes the other, always up to her,
+or even pressing ahead, (like the blooded pony accompanying the
+royal elephant.) The whole affair, from the first, was an animated,
+quick-passing, characteristic New York scene; the large, good-looking,
+well-dress'd crowd on the wharf-end--men and women come to see their
+friends depart, and bid them God-speed--the ship's sides swarming with
+passengers--groups of bronze-faced sailors, with uniform' d officers at
+their posts--the quiet directions, as she quickly unfastens and moves
+out, prompt to a minute--the emotional faces, adieus and fluttering
+handkerchiefs, and many smiles and some tears on the wharf--the
+answering faces, smiles, tears and fluttering handkerchiefs, from the
+ship--(what can be subtler and finer than this play of faces on
+such occasions in these responding crowds?--what go more to one's
+heart?)--the proud, steady, noiseless cleaving of the grand oceaner
+down the bay--we speeding by her side a few miles, and then turning,
+wheeling,--amid a babel of wild hurrahs, shouted partings, ear-splitting
+steam whistles, kissing of hands and waving of handkerchiefs.
+
+This departing of the big steamers, noons or afternoons--there is no
+better medicine when one is listless or vapory. I am fond of going down
+Wednesdays and Saturdays--their more special days--to watch them and the
+crowds on the wharves, the arriving passengers, the general bustle and
+activity, the eager looks from the faces, the clear-toned voices, (a
+travel'd foreigner, a musician, told me the other day she thinks an
+American crowd has the finest voices in the world,) the whole look of
+the great, shapely black ships themselves, and their groups and lined
+sides--in the setting of our bay with the blue sky overhead. Two days
+after the above I saw the "Britannic," the "Donau," the "Helvetia" and
+the "Schiedam" steam out, all off for Europe--a magnificent sight.
+
+
+TWO HOURS ON THE MINNESOTA
+
+From 7 to 9, aboard the United States school-ship Minnesota, lying up
+the North river. Captain Luce sent his gig for us about sundown, to the
+foot of Twenty-third street, and receiv'd us aboard with officer-like
+hospitality and sailor heartiness. There are several hundred youths on
+the Minnesota to be train'd for efficiently manning the government navy.
+I like the idea much; and, so far as I have seen to-night, I like the
+way it is carried out on this huge vessel. Below, on the gun-deck, were
+gather'd nearly a hundred of the boys, to give us some of their singing
+exercises, with a melodeon accompaniment, play'd by one of their number.
+They sang with a will. The best part, however, was the sight of the
+young fellows themselves. I went over among them before the singing
+began, and talk'd a few minutes informally. They are from all the
+States; I asked for the Southerners, but could only find one, a lad from
+Baltimore. In age, apparently, they range from about fourteen years to
+nineteen or twenty. They are all of American birth, and have to pass a
+rigid medical examination; well-grown youths, good flesh, bright eyes,
+looking straight at you, healthy, intelligent, not a slouch among them,
+nor a menial--in every one the promise of a man. I have been to many
+public aggregations of young and old, and of schools and colleges, in
+my day, but I confess I have never been so near satisfied, so comforted,
+(both from the fact of the school itself, and the splendid proof of our
+country, our composite race, and the sample-promises of its good average
+capacities, its future,) as in the collection from all parts of the
+United States on this navy training ship. ("Are there going to be _any
+men_ there?" was the dry and pregnant reply of Emerson to one who had
+been crowding him with the rich material statistics and possibilities of
+some western or Pacific region.)
+
+_May 26_.--Aboard the Minnesota again. Lieut. Murphy kindly came for
+me in his boat. Enjoy'd specially those brief trips to and fro--the
+sailors, tann'd, strong, so bright and able-looking, pulling their oars
+in long side-swing, man-of-war style, as they row'd me across. I saw
+the boys in companies drilling with small arms; had a talk with Chaplain
+Rawson. At 11 o'clock all of us gathered to breakfast around a long
+table in the great ward room--I among the rest--a genial, plentiful,
+hospitable affair every way--plenty to eat, and of the best; became
+acquainted with several new officers. This second visit, with its
+observations, talks, (two or three at random with the boys,) confirm'd
+my first impressions.
+
+
+MATURE SUMMER DAYS AND NIGHTS
+
+_Aug. 4_.--Forenoon--as I sit under the willow shade, (have retreated
+down in the country again,) a little bird is leisurely dousing and
+flirting himself amid the brook almost within reach of me. He evidently
+fears me not--takes me for some concomitant of the neighboring earthy
+banks, free bushery and wild weeds. _6 p.m._--The last three days have
+been perfect ones for the season, (four nights ago copious rains, with
+vehement thunder and lightning.) I write this sitting by the creek
+watching my two kingfishers at their sundown sport. The strong,
+beautiful, joyous creatures! Their wings glisten in the slanted sunbeams
+as they circle and circle around, occasionally dipping and dashing the
+water, and making long stretches up and down the creek. Wherever I go
+over fields, through lanes, in by-places, blooms the white-flowering
+wild-carrot, its delicate pat of snow-flakes crowning its slender stem,
+gracefully oscillating in the breeze,
+
+
+EXPOSITION BUILDING--NEW CITY HALL--RIVER TRIP
+
+PHILADELPHIA, _Aug. 26_.--Last night and to-night of unsurpass'd
+clearness, after two days' rain; moon splendor and star splendor. Being
+out toward the great Exposition building, West Philadelphia, I saw it
+lit up, and thought I would go in. There was a ball, democratic but
+nice; plenty of young couples waltzing and quadrilling--music by a good
+string-band. To the sight and hearing of these--to moderate strolls up
+and down the roomy spaces--to getting off aside, resting in an arm-chair
+and looking up a long while at the grand high roof with its graceful and
+multitudinous work of iron rods, angles, gray colors, plays of light and
+shade, receding into dim outlines--to absorbing (in the intervals of the
+string band,) some capital voluntaries and rolling caprices from the big
+organ at the other end of the building--to sighting a shadow'd figure
+or group or couple of lovers every now and then passing some near or
+farther aisle--I abandon'd myself for over an hour.
+
+Returning home, riding down Market street in an open summer car,
+something detain'd us between Fifteenth and Broad, and I got out to view
+better the new, three-fifths-built marble edifice, the City Hall,
+of magnificent proportions--a majestic and lovely show there in the
+moonlight--flooded all over, facades, myriad silver-white lines and
+carv'd heads and mouldings, with the soft dazzle--silent, weird,
+beautiful--well, I know that never when finish'd will that magnificent
+pile impress one as it impress'd me those fifteen minutes.
+
+To-night, since, I have been long on the river. I watch the C-shaped
+Northern Crown, (with the star Alshacca that blazed out so suddenly,
+alarmingly, one night a few years ago.) The moon in her third quarter,
+and up nearly all night. And there, as I look eastward, my long-absent
+Pleiades, welcome again to sight. For an hour I enjoy the soothing and
+vital scene to the low splash of waves--new stars steadily, noiselessly
+rising in the east.
+
+As I cross the Delaware, one of the deck-hands, F. R., tells me how
+a woman jump'd overboard and was drown'd a couple of hours since. It
+happen'd in mid-channel--she leap'd from the forward part of the boat,
+which went over her. He saw her rise on the other side in the swift
+running water, throw her arms and closed hands high up, (white hands
+and bare forearms in the moonlight like a flash,) and then she sank. (I
+found out afterwards that this young fellow had promptly jump'd in, swam
+after the poor creature, and made, though unsuccessfully, the bravest
+efforts to rescue her; but he didn't mention that part at all in telling
+me the story.)
+
+
+SWALLOWS ON THE RIVER
+
+_Sept. 3_--Cloudy and wet, and wind due east; air without palpable fog,
+but very heavy with moisture--welcome for a change. Forenoon, crossing
+the Delaware, I noticed unusual numbers of swallows in flight, circling,
+darting, graceful beyond description, close to the water. Thick, around
+the bows of the ferry-boat as she lay tied in her slip, they flew; and
+as we went out I watch'd beyond the pier-heads, and across the broad
+stream, their swift-winding loop-ribands of motion, down close to it,
+cutting and intersecting. Though I had seen swallows all my life, seem'd
+as though I never before realized their peculiar beauty and character in
+the landscape. (Some time ago, for an hour, in a huge old country barn,
+watching these birds flying, recall'd the 22d book of the Odyssey, where
+Ulysses slays the suitors, bringing things to _eclaircissement_, and
+Minerva, swallow-bodied, darts up through the spaces of the hall, sits
+high on a beam, looks complacently on the show of slaughter, and feels
+in her element, exulting, joyous.)
+
+
+BEGIN A LONG JAUNT WEST
+
+The following three or four months (Sept. to Dec. '79) I made quite a
+western journey, fetching up at Denver, Colorado, and penetrating the
+Rocky Mountain region enough to get a good notion of it all. Left
+West Philadelphia after 9 o'clock one night, middle of September, in a
+comfortable sleeper. Oblivious of the two or three hundred miles across
+Pennsylvania; at Pittsburgh in the morning to breakfast. Pretty good
+view of the city and Birmingham--fog and damp, smoke, coke-furnaces,
+flames, discolor'd wooden houses, and vast collections of coal-barges.
+Presently a bit of fine region, West Virginia, the Panhandle, and
+crossing the river, the Ohio. By day through the latter State--then
+Indiana--and so rock'd to slumber for a second night, flying like
+lightning through Illinois.
+
+
+IN THE SLEEPER
+
+What a fierce weird pleasure to lie in my berth at night in the
+luxurious palace-car, drawn by the mighty Baldwin--embodying, and
+filling me, too, full of the swiftest motion, and most resistless
+strength! It is late, perhaps midnight or after--distances join'd like
+magic--as we speed through Harrisburg, Columbus, Indianapolis. The
+element of danger adds zest to it all. On we go, rumbling and flashing,
+with our loud whinnies thrown out from time to time, or trumpet-blasts,
+into the darkness. Passing the homes of men, the farms, barns,
+cattle--the silent villages. And the car itself, the sleeper, with
+curtains drawn and lights turn'd down--in the berths the slumberers,
+many of them women and children--as on, on, on, we fly like lightning
+through the night--how strangely sound and sweet they sleep! (They say
+the French Voltaire in his time designated the grand opera and a ship of
+war the most signal illustrations of the growth of humanity's and art's
+advance beyond primitive barbarism. Perhaps if the witty philosopher
+were here these days, and went in the same car with perfect bedding and
+feed from New York to San Francisco, he would shift his type and sample
+to one of our American sleepers.)
+
+
+MISSOURI STATE
+
+We should have made the run of 960 miles from Philadelphia to St. Louis
+in thirty-six hours, but we had a collision and bad locomotive smash
+about two-thirds of the way, which set us back. So merely stopping over
+night that time in St. Louis, I sped on westward. As I cross'd Missouri
+State the whole distance by the St. Louis and Kansas City Northern
+Railroad, a fine early autumn day, I thought my eyes had never looked on
+scenes of greater pastoral beauty. For over two hundred miles successive
+rolling prairies, agriculturally perfect view'd by Pennsylvania and New
+Jersey eyes, and dotted here and there with fine timber. Yet fine as the
+land is, it isn't the finest portion; (there is a bed of impervious clay
+and hard-pan beneath this section that holds water too firmly, "drowns
+the land in wet weather, and bakes it in dry," as a cynical farmer told
+me.) South are some richer tracts, though perhaps the beauty-spots of
+the State are the northwestern counties. Altogether, I am clear, (now,
+and from what I have seen and learn'd since,) that Missouri, in climate,
+soil, relative situation, wheat, grass, mines, railroads, and every
+important materialistic respect, stands in the front rank of the Union.
+Of Missouri averaged politically and socially I have heard all sorts of
+talk, some pretty severe--but I should have no fear myself of getting
+along safely and comfortably anywhere among the Missourians. They raise
+a good deal of tobacco. You see at this time quantities of the light
+greenish-gray leaves pulled and hanging out to dry on temporary
+frameworks or rows of sticks. Looks much like the mullein familiar to
+eastern eyes.
+
+
+LAWRENCE AND TOPEKA, KANSAS
+
+We thought of stopping in Kansas City, but when we got there we found
+a train ready and a crowd of hospitable Kansians to take us on to
+Lawrence, to which I proceeded. I shall not soon forget my good days
+in L., in company with Judge Usher and his sons, (especially John and
+Linton,) true westerners of the noblest type. Nor the similar days in
+Topeka. Nor the brotherly kindness of my RR. friends there, and the
+city and State officials. Lawrence and Topeka are large, bustling,
+half-rural, handsome cities. I took two or three long drives about the
+latter, drawn by a spirited team over smooth roads.
+
+
+THE PRAIRIES (_and an Undeliver'd Speech_)
+
+At a large popular meeting at Topeka--the Kansas State Silver Wedding,
+fifteen or twenty thousand people--I had been erroneously bill'd
+to deliver a poem. As I seem'd to be made much of, and wanted to be
+good-natured, I hastily pencill'd out the following little speech.
+Unfortunately, (or fortunately,) I had such a good time and rest, and
+talk and dinner, with the U. boys, that I let the hours slip away and
+didn't drive over to the meeting and speak my piece. But here it is just
+the same:
+
+"My friends, your bills announce me as giving a poem; but I have no
+poem--have composed none for this occasion. And I can honestly say I am
+now glad of it. Under these skies resplendent in September beauty--amid
+the peculiar landscape you are used to, but which is new to me--these
+interminable and stately prairies--in the freedom and vigor and sane
+enthusiasm of this perfect western air and autumn sunshine--it seems
+to me a poem would be almost an impertinence. But if you care to have a
+word from me, I should speak it about these very prairies; they impress
+me most, of all the objective shows I see or have seen on this, my first
+real visit to the West. As I have roll'd rapidly hither for more than
+a thousand miles, through fair Ohio, through bread-raising Indiana and
+Illinois--through ample Missouri, that contains and raises everything;
+as I have partially explor'd your charming city during the last two
+days, and, standing on Oread hill, by the university, have launch'd my
+view across broad expanses of living green, in every direction--I have
+again been most impress'd, I say, and shall remain for the rest of my
+life most impress'd, with that feature of the topography of your western
+central world--that vast Something, stretching out on its own unbounded
+scale, unconfined, which there is in these prairies, combining the real
+and ideal, and beautiful as dreams.
+
+"I wonder indeed if the people of this continental inland West know how
+much of first-class _art_ they have in these prairies--how original and
+all your own--how much of the influences of a character for your future
+humanity, broad, patriotic, heroic and new? how entirely they tally on
+land the grandeur and superb monotony of the skies of heaven, and the
+ocean with its waters? how freeing, soothing, nourishing they are to the
+soul?
+
+"Then is it not subtly they who have given us our leading modern
+Americans, Lincoln and Grant?--vast-spread, average men--their
+foregrounds of character altogether practical and real, yet (to those
+who have eyes to see) with finest backgrounds of the ideal, towering
+high as any. And do we not see, in them, foreshadowings of the future
+races that shall fill these prairies?
+
+"Not but what the Yankee and Atlantic States, and every other
+part--Texas, and the States flanking the south-east and the Gulf of
+Mexico--the Pacific shore empire--the Territories and Lakes, and the
+Canada line (the day is not yet, but it will come, including Canada
+entire)--are equally and integrally and indissolubly this Nation, the
+_sine qua non_ of the human, political and commercial New World. But
+this favor'd central area of (in round numbers) two thousand miles
+square seems fated to be the home both of what I would call America's
+distinctive ideas and distinctive realities."
+
+
+ON TO DENVER--A FRONTIER INCIDENT
+
+The jaunt of five or six hundred miles from Topeka to Denver took me
+through a variety of country, but all unmistakably prolific, western,
+American, and on the largest scale. For a long distance we follow the
+line of the Kansas river, (I like better the old name, Kaw,) a stretch
+of very rich, dark soil, famed for its wheat, and call'd the Golden
+Belt--then plains and plains, hour after hour--Ellsworth county, the
+centre of the State--where I must stop a moment to tell a characteristic
+story of early days--scene the very spot where I am passing--time 1868.
+In a scrimmage at some public gathering in the town, A. had shot
+B. quite badly, but had not kill'd him. The sober men of Ellsworth
+conferr'd with one another and decided that A. deserv'd punishment. As
+they wished to set a good example and establish their reputation the
+reverse of a Lynching town, they open an informal court and bring both
+men before them for deliberate trial. Soon as this trial begins the
+wounded man is led forward to give his testimony. Seeing his enemy
+in durance and unarm'd, B. walks suddenly up in a fury and shoots A.
+through the head--shoots him dead. The court is instantly adjourn'd, and
+its unanimous members, without a word of debate, walk the murderer B.
+out, wounded as he is, and hang him.
+
+In due time we reach Denver, which city I fall in love with from the
+first, and have that feeling confirm'd, the longer I stay there. One of
+my pleasantest days was a jaunt, via Platte canon, to Leadville.
+
+
+AN HOUR ON KENOSHA SUMMIT
+
+Jottings from the Rocky Mountains, mostly pencill'd during a day's trip
+over the South Park RR., returning from Leadville, and especially the
+hour we were detain'd, (much to my satisfaction,) at Kenosha summit. As
+afternoon advances, novelties, far-reaching splendors, accumulate under
+the bright sun in this pure air. But I had better commence with the day.
+
+The confronting of Platte canon just at dawn, after a ten miles' ride in
+early darkness on the rail from Denver--the seasonable stoppage at
+the entrance of the canon, and good breakfast of eggs, trout, and nice
+griddle-cakes--then as we travel on, and get well in the gorge, all the
+wonders, beauty, savage power of the scene--the wild stream of water,
+from sources of snows, brawling continually in sight one side--the
+dazzling sun, and the morning lights on the rocks--such turns and
+grades in the track, squirming around corners, or up and down hills--far
+glimpses of a hundred peaks, titanic necklaces, stretching north and
+south--the huge rightly-named Dome-rock--and as we dash along, others
+similar, simple, monolithic, elephantine.
+
+
+AN EGOTISTICAL "FIND"
+
+"I have found the law of my own poems," was the unspoken but
+more-and-more decided feeling that came to me as I pass'd, hour after
+hour, amid all this grim yet joyous elemental abandon--this plenitude
+of material, entire absence of art, untrammel'd play of primitive
+Nature--the chasm, the gorge, the crystal mountain stream,
+repeated scores, hundreds of miles--the broad handling and absolute
+uncrampedness--the fantastic forms, bathed in transparent browns, faint
+reds and grays, towering sometimes a thousand, sometimes two or three
+thousand feet high--at their tops now and then huge masses pois'd, and
+mixing with the clouds, with only their outlines, hazed in misty lilac,
+visible. ("In Nature's grandest shows," says an old Dutch writer, an
+ecclesiastic, "amid the ocean's depth, if so might be, or countless
+worlds rolling above at night, a man thinks of them, weighs all, not for
+themselves or the abstract, but with reference to his own personality,
+and how they may affect him or color his destinies.")
+
+
+NEW SENSES: NEW JOYS
+
+We follow the stream of amber and bronze brawling along its bed,
+with its frequent cascades and snow-white foam. Through the canon we
+fly--mountains not only each side, but seemingly, till we get near,
+right in front of us--every rood a new view flashing, and each flash
+defying description--on the almost perpendicular sides, clinging
+pines, cedars, spruces, crimson sumach bushes, spots of wild grass--but
+dominating all, those towering rocks, rocks, rocks, bathed in delicate
+vari-colors, with the clear sky of autumn overhead. New senses, new
+joys, seem develop'd. Talk as you like, a typical Rocky Mountain canon,
+or a limitless sea-like stretch of the great Kansas or Colorado plains,
+under favoring circumstances, tallies, perhaps expresses, certainly
+awakes, those grandest and subtlest element-emotions in the human
+soul, that all the marble temples and sculptures from Phidias to
+Thorwaldsen--all paintings, poems, reminiscences, or even music,
+probably never can.
+
+
+STEAM-POWER, TELEGRAPHS, ETC
+
+I get out on a ten minutes' stoppage at Deer creek, to enjoy the
+unequal'd combination of hill, stone and wood. As we speed again,
+the yellow granite in the sunshine, with natural spires, minarets,
+castellated perches far aloft--then long stretches of straight-upright
+palisades, rhinoceros color--then gamboge and tinted chromos. Ever
+the best of my pleasures the cool-fresh Colorado atmosphere, yet
+sufficiently warm. Signs of man's restless advent and pioneerage, hard
+as Nature's face is--deserted dug-outs by dozens in the side-hills--the
+scantling-hut, the telegraph-pole, the smoke of some impromptu chimney
+or outdoor fire--at intervals little settlements of log-houses, or
+parties of surveyors or telegraph builders, with their comfortable
+tents. Once, a canvas office where you could send a message by
+electricity anywhere around the world! Yes, pronounc'd signs of the man
+of latest dates, dauntlessly grappling with these grisliest shows of the
+old kosmos. At several places steam saw-mills, with their piles of logs
+and boards, and the pipes puffing. Occasionally Platte canon expanding
+into a grassy flat of a few acres. At one such place, toward the end,
+where we stop, and I get out to stretch my legs, as I look skyward, or
+rather mountain-topward, a huge hawk or eagle (a rare sight here) is
+idly soaring, balancing along the ether, now sinking low and coming
+quite near, and then up again in stately-languid circles--then higher,
+higher, slanting to the north, and gradually out of sight.
+
+
+AMERICA'S BACK-BONE
+
+I jot these lines literally at Kenosha summit, where we return,
+afternoon, and take a long rest, 10,000 feet above sea-level. At
+this immense height the South Park stretches fifty miles before me.
+Mountainous chains and peaks in every variety of perspective, every hue
+of vista, fringe the view, in nearer, or middle, or far-dim distance,
+or fade on the horizon. We have now reach'd, penetrated the Rockies,
+(Hayden calls it the Front Range,) for a hundred miles or so; and though
+these chains spread away in every direction, specially north and south,
+thousands and thousands farther, I have seen specimens of the utmost
+of them, and know henceforth at least what they are, and what they look
+like. Not themselves alone, for they typify stretches and areas of half
+the globe--are, in fact, the vertebrae or back-bone of our hemisphere.
+As the anatomists say a man is only a spine, topp'd, footed, breasted
+and radiated, so the whole Western world is, in a sense, but an
+expansion of these mountains. In South America they are the Andes, in
+Central America and Mexico the Cordilleras, and in our States they
+go under different names--in California the Coast and Cascade
+ranges--thence more eastwardly the Sierra Nevadas--but mainly and more
+centrally here the Rocky Mountains proper, with many an elevation such
+as Lincoln's, Grey's, Harvard's, Yale's, Long's and Pike's peaks, all
+over 14,000 feet high. (East, the highest peaks of the Alleghanies, the
+Adirondacks, the Catskills, and the White Mountains, range from 2000 to
+5500 feet-only Mount Washington, in the latter, 6300 feet.)
+
+
+THE PARKS
+
+In the midst of all here, lie such beautiful contrasts as the sunken
+basins of the North, Middle, and South Parks, (the latter I am now on
+one side of, and overlooking,) each the size of a large, level, almost
+quandrangular, grassy, western county, wall'd in by walls of hills, and
+each park the source of a river. The ones I specify are the largest in
+Colorado, but the whole of that State, and of Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and
+western California, through their sierras and ravines, are copiously
+mark'd by similar spreads and openings, many of the small ones of
+paradisiac loveliness and perfection, with their offsets of mountains,
+streams, atmosphere and hues beyond compare.
+
+
+ART FEATURES
+
+Talk, I say again, of going to Europe, of visiting the ruins of feudal
+castles, or Coliseum remains, or kings' palaces--when you can come
+_here_. The alternations one gets, too; after the Illinois and Kansas
+prairies of a thousand miles--smooth and easy areas of the corn and
+wheat of ten million democratic farms in the future----here start up in
+every conceivable presentation of shape, these non-utilitarian piles,
+coping the skies, emanating a beauty, terror, power, more than Dante
+or Angelo ever knew. Yes, I think the chyle of not only poetry and
+painting, but oratory, and even the metaphysics and music fit for the
+New World, before being finally assimilated, need first and feeding
+visits here.
+
+_Mountain streams._--The spiritual contrast and etheriality of the whole
+region consist largely to me in its never-absent peculiar streams--the
+snows of inaccessible upper areas melting and running down through the
+gorges continually. Nothing like the water of pastoral plains, or creeks
+with wooded banks and turf, or anything of the kind elsewhere. The
+shapes that element takes in the shows of the globe cannot be fully
+understood by an artist until he has studied these unique rivulets.
+
+_Aerial effects._--But perhaps as I gaze around me the rarest sight
+of all is in atmospheric hues. The prairies--as I cross'd them in my
+journey hither--and these mountains and parks, seem to me to afford
+new lights and shades. Everywhere the aerial gradations and sky-effects
+inimitable; nowhere else such perspectives, such transparent lilacs
+and grays. I can conceive of some superior landscape painter, some fine
+colorist, after sketching awhile out here, discarding all his previous
+work, delightful to stock exhibition amateurs, as muddy, raw and
+artificial. Near one's eye ranges an infinite variety; high up, the bare
+whitey-brown, above timber line; in certain spots afar patches of snow
+any time of year; (no trees, no flowers, no birds, at those chilling
+altitudes.) As I write I see the Snowy Range through the blue mist,
+beautiful and far off, I plainly see the patches of snow.
+
+
+DENVER IMPRESSIONS
+
+Through the long-lingering half-light of the most superb of evenings
+we return'd to Denver, where I staid several days leisurely exploring,
+receiving impressions, with which I may as well taper off this
+memorandum, itemizing what I saw there. The best was the men,
+three-fourths of them large, able, calm, alert, American. And cash! why
+they create it here. Out in the smelting works, (the biggest and most
+improv'd ones, for the precious metals, in the world,) I saw long rows
+of vats, pans, cover'd by bubbling-boiling water, and fill'd with pure
+silver, four or five inches thick, many thousand dollars' worth in a
+pan. The foreman who was showing me shovel'd it carelessly up with a
+little wooden shovel, as one might toss beans. Then large silver bricks,
+worth $2000 a brick, dozens of piles, twenty in a pile. In one place
+in the mountains, at a mining camp, I had a few days before seen rough
+bullion on the ground in the open air, like the confectioner's pyramids
+at some swell dinner in New York. (Such a sweet morsel to roll over with
+a poor author's pen and ink--and appropriate to slip in here--that
+the silver product of Colorado and Utah, with the gold product of
+California, New Mexico, Nevada and Dakota, foots up an addition to the
+world's coin of considerably over a hundred millions every year.)
+
+A city, this Denver, well-laid out--Laramie street, and 15th and 16th
+and Champa streets, with others, particularly fine--some with tall
+storehouses of stone or iron, and windows of plate-glass--all the
+streets with little canals of mountain water running along the
+sides--plenty of people, "business," modernness--yet not without a
+certain racy wild smack, all its own. A place of fast horses, (many
+mares with their colts,) and I saw lots of big greyhounds for antelope
+hunting. Now and then groups of miners, some just come in, some starting
+out, very picturesque.
+
+One of the papers here interview'd me, and reported me as saying
+off-hand: "I have lived in or visited all the great cities on the
+Atlantic third of the republic--Boston, Brooklyn with its hills, New
+Orleans, Baltimore, stately Washington, broad Philadelphia, teeming
+Cincinnati and Chicago, and for thirty years in that wonder, wash'd by
+hurried and glittering tides, my own New York, not only the New World's
+but the world's city--but, newcomer to Denver as I am, and threading
+its streets, breathing its air, warm'd by its sunshine, and having what
+there is of its human as well as aerial ozone flash'd upon me now for
+only three or four days, I am very much like a man feels sometimes
+toward certain people he meets with, and warms to, and hardly knows why.
+I, too, can hardly tell why, but as I enter'd the city in the slight
+haze of a late September afternoon, and have breath'd its air, and
+slept well o' nights, and have roam'd or rode leisurely, and watch'd the
+comers and goers at the hotels, and absorb'd the climatic magnetism of
+this curiously attractive region, there has steadily grown upon me a
+feeling of affection for the spot, which, sudden as it is, has become so
+definite and strong that I must put it on record."
+
+So much for my feeling toward the Queen city of the plains and peaks,
+where she sits in her delicious rare atmosphere, over 5000 feet above
+sea-level, irrigated by mountain streams, one way looking east over
+the prairies for a thousand miles, and having the other, westward,
+in constant view by day, draped in their violet haze, mountain tops
+innumerable. Yes, I fell in love with Denver, and even felt a wish to
+spend my declining and dying days there.
+
+
+I TURN SOUTH AND THEN EAST AGAIN
+
+Leave Denver at 8 A.M. by the Rio Grande RR. going south. Mountains
+constantly in sight in the apparently near distance, veil'd slightly,
+but still clear and very grand--their cones, colors, sides, distinct
+against the sky--hundreds, it seem'd thousands, interminable necklaces
+of them, their tops and slopes hazed more or less slightly in that
+blue-gray, under the autumn sun, for over a hundred miles--the most
+spiritual show of objective Nature I ever beheld, or ever thought
+possible. Occasionally the light strengthens, making a contrast of
+yellow-tinged silver on one side, with dark and shaded gray on the
+other. I took a long look at Pike's peak, and was a little disappointed.
+(I suppose I had expected something stunning.) Our view over plains
+to the left stretches amply, with corrals here and there, the frequent
+cactus and wild sage, and herds of cattle feeding. Thus about 120
+miles to Pueblo. At that town we board the comfortable and well-equipt
+Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe RR., now striking east.
+
+
+UNFULFILLED WANTS--THE ARKANSAS RIVER
+
+I had wanted to go to the Yellowstone river region--wanted specially to
+see the National Park, and the geysers and the "hoodoo" or goblin land
+of that country; indeed, hesitated a little at Pueblo, the turning
+point--wanted to thread the Veta pass--wanted to go over the Santa
+Fe trail away southwestward to New Mexico--but turn'd and set my face
+eastward--leaving behind me whetting glimpse-tastes of southeastern
+Colorado, Pueblo, Bald mountain, the Spanish peaks, Sangre de Christos,
+Mile-Shoe-curve (which my veteran friend on the locomotive told me was
+"the boss railroad curve of the universe,") fort Garland on the plains,
+Veta, and the three great peaks of the Sierra Blancas. The Arkansas
+river plays quite a part in the whole of this region--I see it, or
+its high-cut rocky northern shore, for miles, and cross and recross it
+frequently, as it winds and squirms like a snake. The plains vary here
+even more than usual--sometimes a long sterile stretch of scores of
+miles--then green, fertile and grassy, an equal length. Some very large
+herds of sheep. (One wants new words in writing about these plains, and
+all the inland American West--the terms, _far, large, vast_, &c., are
+insufficient.)
+
+
+A SILENT LITTLE FOLLOWER-THE COREOPSIS
+
+Here I must say a word about a little follower, present even now before
+my eyes. I have been accompanied on my whole journey from Barnegat to
+Pike's peak by a pleasant floricultural friend, or rather millions of
+friends--nothing more or less than a hardy little yellow five-petal'd
+September and October wild-flower, growing I think everywhere in the
+middle and northern United States. I had seen it on the Hudson and over
+Long Island, and along the banks of the Delaware and through New Jersey,
+(as years ago up the Connecticut, and one fall by Lake Champlain.) This
+trip it follow'd me regularly, with its slender stem and eyes of gold,
+from Cape May to the Kaw valley, and so through the canons and to these
+plains. In Missouri I saw immense fields all bright with it. Toward
+western Illinois I woke up one morning in the sleeper and the first
+thing when I drew the curtain of my berth and look'd out was its pretty
+countenance and bending neck.
+
+_Sept. 25th_.--Early morning--still going east after we leave Sterling,
+Kansas, where I stopp'd a day and night. The sun up about half an hour;
+nothing can be fresher or more beautiful than this time, this region. I
+see quite a field of my yellow flower in full bloom. At intervals dots
+of nice two-story houses, as we ride swiftly by. Over the immense area,
+flat as a floor, visible for twenty miles in every direction in the
+clear air, a prevalence of autumn-drab and reddish-tawny herbage--sparse
+stacks of hay and enclosures, breaking the landscape--as we rumble by,
+flocks of prairie-hens starting up. Between Sterling and Florence a
+fine country. (Remembrances to E. L., my old-young soldier friend of war
+times, and his wife and boy at S.)
+
+
+THE PRAIRIES AND GREAT PLAINS IN POETRY
+
+(_After traveling Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Colorado_) Grand as
+is the thought that doubtless the child is already born who will see
+a hundred millions of people, the most prosperous and advanc'd of the
+world, inhabiting these Prairies, the great Plains, and the valley of
+the Mississippi, I could not help thinking it would be grander still
+to see all those inimitable American areas fused in the alembic of
+a perfect poem, or other esthetic work, entirely western, fresh and
+limitless--altogether our own, without a trace or taste of Europe's
+soil, reminiscence, technical letter or spirit. My days and nights, as I
+travel here--what an exhilaration!--not the air alone, and the sense
+of vastness, but every local sight and feature. Everywhere something
+characteristic--the cactuses, pinks, buffalo grass, wild sage--the
+receding perspective, and the far circle-line of the horizon all times
+of day, especially forenoon--the clear, pure, cool, rarefied nutriment
+for the lungs, previously quite unknown--the black patches and streaks
+left by surface-conflagrations--the deep-plough'd furrow of the
+"fire-guard"--the slanting snow-racks built all along to shield
+the railroad from winter drifts--the prairie-dogs and the herds
+of antelope--the curious "dry rivers"--occasionally a "dug-out" or
+corral--Fort Riley and Fort Wallace--those towns of the northern plains,
+(like ships on the sea,) Eagle-Tail, Coyote, Cheyenne, Agate, Monotony,
+Kit Carson--with ever the ant-hill and the buffalo-wallow--ever the
+herds of cattle and the cow-boys ("cow-punchers") to me a strangely
+interesting class, bright-eyed as hawks, with their swarthy complexions
+and their broad-brimm'd hats--apparently always on horseback, with loose
+arms slightly raised and swinging as they ride.
+
+
+THE SPANISH PEAKS--EVENING ON THE PLAINS
+
+Between Pueblo and Bent's fort, southward, in a clear afternoon
+sun-spell I catch exceptionally good glimpses of the Spanish peaks.
+We are in southeastern Colorado--pass immense herds of cattle as our
+first-class locomotive rushes us along--two or three times crossing
+the Arkansas, which we follow many miles, and of which river I get fine
+views, sometimes for quite a distance, its stony, upright, not very
+high, palisade banks, and then its muddy flats. We pass Fort Lyon--lots
+of adobie houses--limitless pasturage, appropriately fleck'd with those
+herds of cattle--in due time the declining sun in the west--a sky of
+limpid pearl over all--and so evening on the great plains. A calm,
+pensive, boundless landscape--the perpendicular rocks of the north
+Arkansas, hued in twilight--a thin line of violet on the southwestern
+horizon--the palpable coolness and slight aroma--a belated cow-boy with
+some unruly member of his herd--an emigrant wagon toiling yet a little
+further, the horses slow and tired--two men, apparently father and son,
+jogging along on foot--and around all the indescribable _chiaroscuro_
+and sentiment, (profounder than anything at sea,) athwart these endless
+wilds.
+
+
+AMERICA'S CHARACTERISTIC LANDSCAPE
+
+Speaking generally as to the capacity and sure future destiny of that
+plain and prairie area (larger than any European kingdom) it is the
+inexhaustible land of wheat, maize, wool, flax, coal, iron, beef and
+pork, butter and cheese, apples and grapes--land of ten million virgin
+farms--to the eye at present wild and unproductive--yet experts say
+that upon it when irrigated may easily be grown enough wheat to feed the
+world. Then as to scenery (giving my own thought and feeling,) while
+I know the standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara falls, the upper
+Yellowstone and the like, afford the greatest natural shows, I am not
+so sure but the Prairies and the Plains, while less stunning at first
+sight, last longer, fill the esthetic sense fuller, precede all the
+rest, and make North America's characteristic landscape.
+
+Indeed through the whole of this journey, with all its shows and
+varieties, what most impress'd me, and will longest remain with me, are
+these same prairies. Day after day, and night after night, to my eyes,
+to all my senses--the esthetic one most of all--they silently and
+broadly unfolded. Even their simplest statistics are sublime.
+
+
+EARTH'S MOST IMPORTANT STREAM
+
+The valley of the Mississippi river and its tributaries, (this stream
+and its adjuncts involve a big part of the question,) comprehends more
+than twelve hundred thousand square miles, the greater part prairies. It
+is by far the most important stream on the globe, and would seem to have
+been marked out by design, slow-flowing from north to south, through
+a dozen climates, all fitted for man's healthy occupancy, its outlet
+unfrozen all the year, and its line forming a safe, cheap continental
+avenue for commerce and passage from the north temperate to the torrid
+zone. Not even the mighty Amazon (though larger in volume) on its line
+of east and west--not the Nile in Africa, nor the Danube in Europe, nor
+the three great rivers of China, compare with it. Only the Mediterranean
+sea has play'd some such part in history, and all through the past,
+as the Mississippi is destined to play in the future. By its demesnes,
+water'd and welded by its branches, the Missouri, the Ohio, the
+Arkansas, the Red, the Yazoo, the St. Francis and others, it already
+compacts twenty-five millions of people, not merely the most peaceful
+and money-making, but the most restless and warlike on earth. Its
+valley, or reach, is rapidly concentrating the political power of the
+American Union. One almost thinks it _is_ the Union--or soon will be.
+Take it out, with its radiations, and what would be left? From the car
+windows through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, or stopping some days along
+the Topeka and Santa Fe road, in southern Kansas, and indeed wherever
+I went, hundreds and thousands of miles through this region, my eyes
+feasted on primitive and rich meadows, some of them partially inhabited,
+but far, immensely far more untouch'd, unbroken--and much of it more
+lovely and fertile in its unplough'd innocence than the fair and
+valuable fields of New York's, Pennsylvania's, Maryland's or Virginia's
+richest farms.
+
+
+PRAIRIE ANALOGIES--THE TREE QUESTION
+
+The word Prairie is French, and means literally meadow. The cosmical
+analogies of our North American plains are the Steppes of Asia, the
+Pampas and Llanos of South America, and perhaps the Saharas of Africa.
+Some think the plains have been originally lake-beds; others attribute
+the absence of forests to the fires that almost annually sweep over
+them--(the cause, in vulgar estimation, of Indian summer.) The tree
+question will soon become a grave one. Although the Atlantic slope,
+the Rocky mountain region, and the southern portion of the Mississippi
+valley, are well wooded, there are here stretches of hundreds and
+thousands of miles where either not a tree grows, or often useless
+destruction has prevail'd; and the matter of the cultivation and spread
+of forests may well be press'd upon thinkers who look to the coming
+generations of the prairie States.
+
+
+MISSISSIPPI VALLEY LITERATURE
+
+Lying by one rainy day in Missouri to rest after quite a long
+exploration--first trying a big volume I found there of "Milton, Young,
+Gray, Beattie and Collins," but giving it up for a bad job--enjoying
+however for awhile, as often before, the reading of Walter Scott's
+poems, "Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Marmion," and so on--I stopp'd and
+laid down the book, and ponder'd the thought of a poetry that should in
+due time express and supply the teeming region I was in the midst
+of, and have briefly touch'd upon. One's mind needs but a moment's
+deliberation anywhere in the United States to see clearly enough that
+all the prevalent book and library poets, either as imported from
+Great Britain, or follow'd and _doppel-gang'd_ here, are foreign to our
+States, copiously as they are read by us all. But to fully understand
+not only how absolutely in opposition to our times and lands, and how
+little and cramp'd, and what anachronisms and absurdities many of their
+pages are, for American purposes, one must dwell or travel awhile in
+Missouri, Kansas and Colorado, and get rapport with their people and
+country.
+
+Will the day ever come--no matter how long deferr'd--when those
+models and lay-figures from the British islands--and even the precious
+traditions of the classics--will be reminiscences, studies only? The
+pure breath, primitiveness, boundless prodigality and amplitude, strange
+mixture of delicacy and power, of continence, of real and ideal, and
+of all original and first-class elements, of these prairies, the Rocky
+mountains, and of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers--will they ever
+appear in, and in some sort form a standard for our poetry and art? (I
+sometimes think that even the ambition of my friend Joaquin Miller to
+put them in, and illustrate them, places him ahead of the whole crowd.)
+
+Not long ago I was down New York bay, on a steamer, watching the sunset
+over the dark green heights of Navesink, and viewing all that inimitable
+spread of shore, shipping and sea, around Sandy Hook. But an intervening
+week or two, and my eyes catch the shadowy outlines of the Spanish
+peaks. In the more than two thousand miles between, though of infinite
+and paradoxical variety, a curious and absolute fusion is doubtless
+steadily annealing, compacting, identifying all. But subtler and wider
+and more solid, (to produce such compaction,) than the laws of the
+States, or the common ground of Congress, or the Supreme Court, or the
+grim welding of our national wars, or the steel ties of railroads,
+or all the kneading and fusing processes of our material and business
+history, past or present, would in my opinion be a great throbbing,
+vital, imaginative work, or series of works, or literature, in
+constructing which the Plains, the Prairies, and the Mississippi river,
+with the demesnes of its varied and ample valley, should be the concrete
+background, and America's humanity, passions, struggles, hopes, there
+and now--an _eclaircissement_ as it is and is to be, on the stage of
+the New World, of all Time's hitherto drama of war, romance and
+evolution--should furnish the lambent fire, the ideal.
+
+
+AN INTERVIEWER'S ITEM
+
+_Oct. 17, '79_.--To-day one of the newspapers of St. Louis prints the
+following informal remarks of mine on American, especially Western
+literature: "We called on Mr. Whitman yesterday and after a somewhat
+desultory conversation abruptly asked him: 'Do you think we are to have
+a distinctively American literature?' 'It seems to me,' said he,'that
+our work at present is to lay the foundations of a great nation
+in products, in agriculture, in commerce, in networks of
+intercommunication, and in all that relates to the comforts of vast
+masses of men and families, with freedom of speech, ecclesiasticism, &c.
+These we have founded and are carrying out on a grander scale than ever
+hitherto, and Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas and Colorado,
+seem to me to be the seat and field of these very facts and ideas.
+Materialistic prosperity in all its varied forms, with those other
+points that I mentioned, intercommunication and freedom, are first to
+be attended to. When those have their results and get settled, then
+a literature worthy of us will begin to be defined. Our American
+superiority and vitality are in the bulk of our people, not in a gentry
+like the old world. The greatness of our army during the secession war,
+was in the rank and file, and so with the nation. Other lands have their
+vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of the people.
+Our leading men are not of much account and never have been, but the
+average of the people is immense, beyond all history. Sometimes I think
+in all departments, literature and art included, that will be the way
+our superiority will exhibit itself. We will not have great individuals
+or great leaders, but a great average bulk, unprecedentedly great.'"
+
+
+THE WOMEN OF THE WEST
+
+_Kansas City_.--I am not so well satisfied with what I see of the women
+of the prairie cities. I am writing this where I sit leisurely in a
+store in Main street, Kansas City, a streaming crowd on the sidewalks
+flowing by. The ladies (and the same in Denver) are all fashionably
+drest, and have the look of "gentility" in face, manner and action, but
+they do _not_ have, either in physique or the mentality appropriate
+to them, any high native originality of spirit or body, (as the men
+certainly have, appropriate to them.) They are "intellectual" and
+fashionable, but dyspeptic-looking and generally doll-like; their
+ambition evidently is to copy their eastern sisters. Something far
+different and in advance must appear, to tally and complete the superb
+masculinity of the west, and maintain and continue it.
+
+
+THE SILENT GENERAL
+
+_Sept. 28, '79_.--So General Grant, after circumambiating the world,
+has arrived home again, landed in San Francisco yesterday, from the
+ship City of Tokio from Japan. What a man he is! what a history! what an
+illustration--his life--of the capacities of that American individuality
+common to us all. Cynical critics are wondering "what the people can
+see in Grant" to make such a hubbub about. They aver (and it is no
+doubt true) that he has hardly the average of our day's literary and
+scholastic culture, and absolutely no pronounc'd genius or conventional
+eminence of any sort. Correct: but he proves how an average western
+farmer, mechanic, boatman, carried by tides of circumstances,
+perhaps caprices, into a position of incredible military or civic
+responsibilities, (history has presented none more trying, no born
+monarch's, no mark more shining for attack or envy,) may steer his way
+fitly and steadily through them all, carrying the country and himself
+with credit year after year--command over a million armed men--fight
+more than fifty pitch'd battles--rule for eight years a land larger than
+all the kingdoms of Europe combined--and then, retiring, quietly (with
+a cigar in his mouth) make the promenade of the whole world, through its
+courts and coteries, and kings and czars and mikados, and splendidest
+glitters and etiquettes, as phlegmatically as he ever walk'd the
+portico of a Missouri hotel after dinner. I say all this is what people
+like--and I am sure I like it. Seems to me it transcends Plutarch. How
+those old Greeks, indeed, would have seized on him! A mere plain man--no
+art, no poetry--only practical sense, ability to do, or try his best to
+do, what devolv'd upon him. A common trader, money-maker, tanner, farmer
+of Illinois--general for the republic, in its terrific struggle with
+itself, in the war of attempted secession--President following, (a task
+of peace, more difficult than the war itself)--nothing heroic, as the
+authorities put it--and yet the greatest hero. The gods, the destinies,
+seem to have concentrated upon him.
+
+
+PRESIDENT HAYES'S SPEECHES
+
+_Sept. 30_.--I see President Hayes has come out West, passing quite
+informally from point to point, with his wife and a small cortege of
+big officers, receiving ovations, and making daily and sometimes
+double-daily addresses to the people. To these addresses--all impromptu,
+and some would call them ephemeral--I feel to devote a memorandum. They
+are shrewd, good-natur'd, face-to-face speeches, on easy topics not
+too deep; but they give me some revised ideas of oratory--of a new,
+opportune theory and practice of that art, quite changed from the
+classic rules, and adapted to our days, our occasions, to American
+democracy, and to the swarming populations of the West. I hear them
+criticised as wanting in dignity, but to me they are just what they
+should be, considering all the circumstances, who they come from, and
+who they are address'd to. Underneath, his objects are to compact and
+fraternize the States, encourage their materialistic and industrial
+development, soothe and expand their self-poise, and tie all and each
+with resistless double ties not only of inter-trade barter, but human
+comradeship.
+
+From Kansas City I went on to St. Louis, where I remain'd nearly three
+months, with my brother T.J.W., and my dear nieces.
+
+
+ST. LOUIS MEMORANDA
+
+_Oct., Nov., and Dec., '79_.--The points of St. Louis are its position,
+its absolute wealth, (the long accumulations of time and trade, solid
+riches, probably a higher average thereof than any city,) the unrivall'd
+amplitude of its well-laid-out environage of broad plateaus, for
+future expansion--and the great State of which it is the head. It fuses
+northern and southern qualities, perhaps native and foreign ones, to
+perfection, rendezvous the whole stretch of the Mississippi and Missouri
+rivers, and its American electricity goes well with its German phlegm.
+Fourth, Fifth and Third streets are store-streets, showy, modern,
+metropolitan, with hurrying crowds, vehicles, horse-cars, hubbub, plenty
+of people, rich goods, plate-glass windows, iron fronts often five or
+six stories high. You can purchase anything in St. Louis (in most of the
+big western cities for the matter of that) just as readily and cheaply
+as in the Atlantic marts. Often in going about the town you see
+reminders of old, even decay'd civilization. The water of the west, in
+some places, is not good, but they make it up here by plenty of very
+fair wine, and inexhaustible quantities of the best beer in the world.
+There are immense establishments for slaughtering beef and pork--and I
+saw flocks of sheep, 5000 in a flock. (In Kansas City I had visited a
+packing establishment that kills and packs an average of 2500 hogs a
+day the whole year round, for export. Another in Atchison, Kansas, same
+extent; others nearly equal elsewhere. And just as big ones here.)
+
+
+NIGHTS ON THE MISSISSIPPI
+
+_Oct. 29th, 30th, and 31st_.--Wonderfully fine, with the full harvest
+moon, dazzling and silvery. I have haunted the river every night lately,
+where I could get a look at the bridge by moonlight. It is indeed a
+structure of perfection and beauty unsurpassable, and I never tire of
+it. The river at present is very low; I noticed to-day it had much more
+of a blue-clear look than usual. I hear the slight ripples, the air
+is fresh and cool, and the view, up or down, wonderfully clear, in the
+moonlight. I am out pretty late: it is so fascinating, dreamy. The cool
+night-air, all the influences, the silence, with those far-off eternal
+stars, do me good. I have been quite ill of late. And so, well-near the
+centre of our national demesne, these night views of the Mississippi.
+
+
+UPON OUR OWN LAND
+
+"Always, after supper, take a walk half a mile long," says an old
+proverb, dryly adding, "and if convenient let it be upon your own land."
+I wonder does any other nation but ours afford opportunity for such a
+jaunt as this? Indeed has any previous period afforded it? No one, I
+discover, begins to know the real geographic, democratic, indissoluble
+American Union in the present, or suspect it in the future, until he
+explores these Central States, and dwells awhile observantly on their
+prairies, or amid their busy towns, and the mighty father of waters. A
+ride of two or three thousand miles, "on one's own land," with hardly a
+disconnection, could certainly be had in no other place than the United
+States, and at no period before this. If you want to see what the
+railroad is, and how civilization and progress date from it--how it
+is the conqueror of crude nature, which it turns to man's use, both on
+small scales and on the largest--come hither to inland America.
+
+I return'd home, east, Jan. 5, 1880, having travers'd, to and fro and
+across, 10,000 miles and more. I soon resumed my seclusions down in
+the woods, or by the creek, or gaddings about cities, and an occasional
+disquisition, as will be seen following.
+
+
+EDGAR POE'S SIGNIFICANCE
+
+_Jan. 1, '80_.--In diagnosing this disease called humanity--to assume
+for the nonce what seems a chief mood of the personality and writings of
+my subject--I have thought that poets, somewhere or other on the list,
+present the most mark'd indications. Comprehending artists in a mass,
+musicians, painters, actors, and so on, and considering each and all of
+them as radiations or flanges of that furious whirling wheel, poetry,
+the centre and axis of the whole, where else indeed may we so well
+investigate the causes, growths, tally-marks of the time--the age's
+matter and malady?
+
+By common consent there is nothing better for man or woman than a
+perfect and noble life, morally without flaw, happily balanced in
+activity, physically sound and pure, giving its due proportion, and no
+more, to the sympathetic, the human emotional element--a life, in all
+these, unhasting, unresting, untiring to the end. And yet there is
+another shape of personality dearer far to the artist-sense, (which
+likes the play of strongest lights and shades,) where the perfect
+character, the good, the heroic, although never attain'd, is never
+lost sight of, but through failures, sorrows, temporary downfalls, is
+return'd to again and again, and while often violated, is passionately
+adhered to as long as mind, muscles, voice, obey the power we call
+volition. This sort of personality we see more or less in Burns, Byron,
+Schiller, and George Sand. But we do not see it in Edgar Poe. (All this
+is the result of reading at intervals the last three days a new volume
+of his poems--I took it on my rambles down by the pond, and by degrees
+read it all through there.) While to the character first outlined the
+service Poe renders is certainly that entire contrast and contradiction
+which is next best to fully exemplifying it.
+
+Almost without the first sign of moral principle, or of the concrete
+or its heroisms, or the simpler affections of the heart, Poe's verses
+illustrate an intense faculty for technical and abstract beauty, with
+the rhyming art to excess, an incorrigible propensity toward nocturnal
+themes, a demoniac undertone behind every page--and, by final judgment,
+probably belong among the electric lights of imaginative literature,
+brilliant and dazzling, but with no heat. There is an indescribable
+magnetism about the poet's life and reminiscences, as well as the poems.
+To one who could work out their subtle retracing and retrospect, the
+latter would make a close tally no doubt between the author's birth
+and antecedents, his childhood and youth, his physique, his so-call'd
+education, his studies and associates, the literary and social
+Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia and New York, of those times--not only
+the places and circumstances in themselves, but often, very often, in a
+strange spurning of, and reaction from them all.
+
+The following from a report in the Washington "Star" of November 16,
+1875, may afford those who care for it something further of my point
+of view toward this interesting figure and influence of our era.
+There occurr'd about that date in Baltimore a public reburial of Poe's
+remains, and dedication of a monument over the grave:
+
+"Being in Washington on a visit at the time, 'the old gray' went over
+to Baltimore, and though ill from paralysis, consented to hobble up and
+silently take a seat on the platform, but refused to make any speech,
+saying, 'I have felt a strong impulse to come over and be here to-day
+myself in memory of Poe, which I have obey'd, but not the slightest
+impulse to make a speech, which, my dear friends, must also be obeyed.'
+In an informal circle, however, in conversation after the ceremonies,
+Whitman said: 'For a long while, and until lately, I had a distaste
+for Poe's writings. I wanted, and still want for poetry, the clear sun
+shining, and fresh air blowing--the strength and power of health, not of
+delirium, even amid the stormiest passions--with always the background
+of the eternal moralities. Non-complying with these requirements, Poe's
+genius has yet conquer'd a special recognition for itself, and I too
+have come to fully admit it, and appreciate it and him.
+
+"'In a dream I once had, I saw a vessel on the sea, at midnight, in a
+storm. It was no great full-rigg'd ship, nor majestic steamer, steering
+firmly through the gale, but seem'd one of those superb little schooner
+yachts I had often seen lying anchor'd, rocking so jauntily, in the
+waters around New York, or up Long Island sound--now flying uncontroll'd
+with torn sails and broken spars through the wild sleet and winds and
+waves of the night. On the deck was a slender, slight, beautiful
+figure, a dim man, apparently enjoying all the terror, the murk, and the
+dislocation of which he was the centre and the victim. That figure of my
+lurid dream might stand for Edgar Poe, his spirit, his fortunes, and his
+poems--themselves all lurid dreams.'"
+
+Much more may be said, but I most desired to exploit the idea put at the
+beginning. By its popular poets the calibres of an age, the weak spots
+of its embankments, its sub-currents, (often more significant than the
+biggest surface ones,) are unerringly indicated. The lush and the weird
+that have taken such extraordinary possession of Nineteenth century
+verse-lovers--what mean they? The inevitable tendency of poetic culture
+to morbidity, abnormal beauty--the sickliness of all technical thought
+or refinement in itself--the abnegation of the perennial and democratic
+concretes at first hand, the body, the earth and sea, sex and the
+like--and the substitution of something for them at second or third
+hand--what bearings have they on current pathological study?
+
+
+BEETHOVEN'S SEPTETTE
+
+_Feb. 11, '80_.--At a good concert to-night in the foyer of the opera
+house, Philadelphia--the band a small but first-rate one. Never
+did music more sink into and soothe and fill me--never so prove its
+soul-rousing power, its impossibility of statement. Especially in the
+rendering of one of Beethoven's master septettes by the well-chosen and
+perfectly-combined instruments (violins, viola, clarionet, horn, 'cello
+and contrabass,) was I carried away, seeing, absorbing many wonders.
+Dainty abandon, sometimes as if Nature laughing on a hillside in the
+sunshine; serious and firm monotonies, as of winds; a horn sounding
+through the tangle of the forest, and the dying echoes; soothing
+floating of waves, but presently rising in surges, angrily lashing,
+muttering, heavy; piercing peals of laughter, for interstices; now
+and then weird, as Nature herself is in certain moods--but mainly
+spontaneous, easy, careless--often the sentiment of the postures of
+naked children playing or sleeping. It did me good even to watch the
+violinists drawing their bows so masterly--every motion a study. I
+allow'd myself, as I sometimes do, to wander out of myself. The conceit
+came to me of a copious grove of singing birds, and in their midst
+a simple harmonic duo, two human souls, steadily asserting their own
+pensiveness, joyousness.
+
+
+A HINT OF WILD NATURE
+
+_Feb. 13_.--As I was crossing the Delaware to-day, saw a large flock
+of wild geese, right overhead, not very high up, ranged in V-shape,
+in relief against the noon clouds of light smoke-color. Had a capital
+though momentary view of them, and then of their course on and on
+southeast, till gradually fading--(my eyesight yet first rate for
+the open air and its distances, but I use glasses for reading.) Queer
+thoughts melted into me the two or three minutes, or less, seeing
+these creatures cleaving the sky--the spacious, airy realm--even the
+prevailing smoke-gray color everywhere, (no sun shining)--the
+waters below--the rapid flight of the birds, appearing just for a
+minute--flashing to me such a hint of the whole spread of Nature, with
+her eternal unsophisticated freshness, her never-visited recesses of
+sea, sky, shore--and then disappearing in the distance.
+
+
+LOAFING IN THE WOODS
+
+_March 8_.--I write this down in the country again, but in a new spot,
+seated on a log in the woods, warm, sunny, midday. Have been loafing
+here deep among the trees, shafts of tall pines, oak, hickory, with
+a thick undergrowth of laurels and grapevines--the ground cover'd
+everywhere by debris, dead leaves, breakage, moss--everything solitary,
+ancient, grim. Paths (such as they are) leading hither and yon--(how
+made I know not, for nobody seems to come here, nor man nor
+cattle-kind.) Temperature to-day about 60, the wind through the
+pine-tops; I sit and listen to its hoarse sighing above (and to the
+_stillness_) long and long, varied by aimless rambles in the old roads
+and paths, and by exercise-pulls at the young saplings, to keep my
+joints from getting stiff. Blue-birds, robins, meadow-larks begin to
+appear.
+
+_Next day, 9th_.--A snowstorm in the morning, and continuing most of the
+day. But I took a walk over two hours, the same woods and paths, amid
+the falling flakes. No wind, yet the musical low murmur through the
+pines, quite pronounced, curious, like waterfalls, now still'd,
+now pouring again. All the senses, sight, sound, smell, delicately
+gratified. Every snowflake lay where it fell on the evergreens,
+holly-trees, laurels, &c., the multitudinous leaves and branches piled,
+bulging-white, defined by edge-lines of emerald--the tall straight
+columns of the plentiful bronze-topt pines--a slight resinous odor
+blending with that of the snow. (For there is a scent to everything,
+even the snow, if you can only detect it--no two places, hardly any
+two hours, anywhere, exactly alike. How different the odor of noon from
+midnight, or winter from summer, or a windy spell from a still one.)
+
+
+A CONTRALTO VOICE
+
+_May 9, Sunday_.--Visit this evening to my friends the J.'s--good
+supper, to which I did justice--lively chat with Mrs. J. and I. and
+J. As I sat out front on the walk afterward, in the evening air, the
+church-choir and organ on the corner opposite gave Luther's hymn, _Ein
+feste berg_, very finely. The air was borne by a rich contralto. For
+nearly half an hour there in the dark (there was a good string of
+English stanzas,) came the music, firm and unhurried, with long pauses.
+The full silver star-beams of Lyra rose silently over the church's dim
+roof-ridge. Vari-color'd lights from the stain'd glass windows broke
+through the tree-shadows. And under all--under the Northern Crown up
+there, and in the fresh breeze below, and the _chiaroscuro_ of the
+night, that liquid-full contralto.
+
+
+SEEING NIAGARA TO ADVANTAGE
+
+_June 4, '80_.--For really seizing a great picture or book, or piece of
+music, or architecture, or grand scenery--or perhaps for the first time
+even the common sunshine, or landscape, or may-be even the mystery
+of identity, most curious mystery of all--there comes some lucky
+five minutes of a man's life, set amid a fortuitous concurrence of
+circumstances, and bringing in a brief flash the culmination of years of
+reading and travel and thought. The present case about two o'clock this
+afternoon, gave me Niagara, its superb severity of action and color and
+majestic grouping, in one short, indescribable show. We were very slowly
+crossing the Suspension bridge-not a full stop anywhere, but next to
+it--the day clear, sunny, still--and I out on the platform. The
+falls were in plain view about a mile off, but very distinct, and no
+roar--hardly a murmur. The river tumbling green and white, far below
+me; the dark high banks, the plentiful umbrage, many bronze cedars, in
+shadow; and tempering and arching all the immense materiality, a clear
+sky overhead, with a few white clouds, limpid, spiritual, silent. Brief,
+and as quiet as brief, that picture--a remembrance always afterwards.
+Such are the things, indeed, I lay away with my life's rare and blessed
+bits of hours, reminiscent, past--the wild sea-storm I once saw one
+winter day, off Fire island--the elder Booth in Richard, that famous
+night forty years ago in the old Bowery--or Alboni in the children's
+scene in Norma--or night-views, I remember, on the field, after battles
+in Virginia--or the peculiar sentiment of moonlight and stars over the
+great Plains, western Kansas--or scooting up New York bay, with a stiff
+breeze and a good yacht, off Navesink. With these, I say, I henceforth
+place that view, that afternoon, that combination complete, that five
+minutes' perfect absorption of Niagara--not the great majestic gem
+alone by itself, but set complete in all its varied, full, indispensable
+surroundings.
+
+
+JAUNTING TO CANADA
+
+To go back a little, I left Philadelphia, 9th and Green streets, at 8
+o'clock P.M., June 3, on a first-class sleeper, by the Lehigh Valley
+(North Pennsylvania) route, through Bethlehem, Wilkesbarre, Waverly, and
+so (by Erie) on through Corning to Hornellsville, where we arrived at 8,
+morning, and had a bounteous breakfast. I must say I never put in such a
+good night on any railroad track--smooth, firm, the minimum of jolting,
+and all the swiftness compatible with safety. So without change to
+Buffalo, and thence to Clifton, where we arrived early afternoon; then
+on to London, Ontario, Canada, in four more--less than twenty-two hours
+altogether. I am domiciled at the hospitable house of my friends Dr. and
+Mrs. Bucke, in the ample and charming garden and lawns of the asylum.
+
+
+SUNDAY WITH THE INSANE
+
+_June 6_.--Went over to the religious services (Episcopal) main Insane
+asylum, held in a lofty, good-sized hall, third story. Plain boards,
+whitewash, plenty of cheap chairs, no ornament or color, yet all
+scrupulously clean and sweet. Some three hundred persons present, mostly
+patients. Everything, the prayers, a short sermon, the firm, orotund
+voice of the minister, and most of all, beyond any portraying, or
+suggesting, _that audience_, deeply impress'd me. I was furnish'd with
+an arm-chair near the pulpit, and sat facing the motley, yet perfectly
+well-behaved and orderly congregation. The quaint dresses and bonnets
+of some of the women, several very old and gray, here and there like
+the heads in old pictures. O the looks that came from those faces! There
+were two or three I shall probably never forget. Nothing at all markedly
+repulsive or hideous--strange enough I did not see one such. Our common
+humanity, mine and yours, everywhere:
+
+    "The same old blood--the same red, running blood;"
+
+yet behind most, an inferr'd arriere of such storms, such wrecks, such
+mysteries, fires, love, wrong, greed for wealth, religious problems,
+crosses--mirror'd from those crazed faces (yet now temporarily so
+calm, like still waters,) all the woes and sad happenings of life and
+death--now from every one the devotional element radiating--was it not,
+indeed, _the peace of God that passeth all understanding_, strange as it
+may sound? I can only say that I took long and searching eyesweeps as
+I sat there, and it seem'd so, rousing unprecedented thoughts, problems
+unanswerable. A very fair choir, and melodeon accompaniment. They sang
+"Lead, kindly light," after the sermon. Many join'd in the beautiful
+hymn, to which the minister read the introductory text, _In the daytime
+also He led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire_.
+Then the words:
+
+    Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom,
+             Lead thou me on.
+    The night is dark, and I am far from home;
+             Lead thou me on.
+    Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
+    The distant scene; one step enough for me.
+
+    I was not ever thus, nor pray'd that thou
+             Should'st lead me on;
+    I lov'd to choose and see my path; but now
+             Lead thou me on.
+    I loved the garish day, and spite of fears
+    Pride ruled my will; remember not past years.
+
+A couple of days after, I went to the "Refractory building," under
+special charge of Dr. Beemer, and through the wards pretty thoroughly,
+both the men's and women's. I have since made many other visits of the
+kind through the asylum, and around among the detach'd cottages. As far
+as I could see, this is among the most advanced, perfected, and kindly
+and rationally carried on, of all its kind in America. It is a town in
+itself, with many buildings and a thousand inhabitants.
+
+I learn that Canada, and especially this ample and populous province,
+Ontario, has the very best and plentiest benevolent institutions in all
+departments.
+
+
+REMINISCENCE OF ELIAS HICKS
+
+_June 8_.--To-day a letter from Mrs. E. S. L., Detroit, accompanied in
+a little post-office roll by a rare old engraved head of Elias Hicks,
+(from a portrait in oil by Henry Inman, painted for J. V. S., must have
+been 60 years or more ago, in New York)--among the rest the following
+excerpt about E. H. in the letter:
+
+  "I have listen'd to his preaching so often when a child, and sat with
+  my mother at social gatherings where he was the centre, and every one
+  so pleas'd and stirr'd by his conversation. I hear that you contemplate
+  writing or speaking about him, and I wonder'd whether you had a picture
+  of him. As I am the owner of two, I send you one."
+
+
+GRAND NATIVE GROWTH
+
+In a few days I go to lake Huron, and may have something to say of
+that region and people. From what I already see, I should say the young
+native population of Canada was growing up, forming a hardy, democratic,
+intelligent, radically sound, and just as American, good-natured and
+_individualistic_ race, as the average range of best specimens among
+us. As among us, too, I please myself by considering that this element,
+though it may not be the majority, promises to be the leaven which must
+eventually leaven the whole lump.
+
+
+A ZOLLVEREIN BETWEEN THE U.S. AND CANADA
+
+Some of the more liberal of the presses here are discussing the question
+of a zollverein between the United States and Canada. It is proposed to
+form a union for commercial purposes--to altogether abolish the frontier
+tariff line, with its double sets of custom house officials now existing
+between the two countries, and to agree upon one tariff for both, the
+proceeds of this tariff to be divided between the two governments on the
+basis of population. It is said that a large proportion of the merchants
+of Canada are in favor of this step, as they believe it would materially
+add to the business of the country, by removing the restrictions that
+now exist on trade between Canada and the States. Those persons who
+are opposed to the measure believe that it would increase the material
+welfare or the country, but it would loosen the bonds between Canada
+and England; and this sentiment overrides the desire for commercial
+prosperity. Whether the sentiment can continue to bear the strain
+put upon it is a question. It is thought by many that commercial
+considerations must in the end prevail. It seems also to be generally
+agreed that such a zollverein, or common customs union, would bring
+practically more benefits to the Canadian provinces than to the United
+States. (It seems to me a certainty of time, sooner or later, that
+Canada shall form two or three grand States, equal and independent, with
+the rest of the American Union. The St. Lawrence and lakes are not for a
+frontier line, but a grand interior or mid-channel.)
+
+
+THE ST. LAWRENCE LINE
+
+_August 20_.--Premising that my three or four months in Canada were
+intended, among the rest, as an exploration of the line of the St.
+Lawrence, from lake Superior to the sea, (the engineers here insist upon
+considering it as one stream, over 2000 miles long, including lakes and
+Niagara and all)--that I have only partially carried out my programme;
+but for the seven or eight hundred miles so far fulfill'd, I find that
+the _Canada question_ is absolutely control'd by this vast water line,
+with its first-class features and points of trade, humanity, and
+many more--here I am writing this nearly a thousand miles north of my
+Philadelphia starting-point (by way of Montreal and Quebec) in the midst
+of regions that go to a further extreme of grimness, wildness of
+beauty, and a sort of still and pagan _scaredness_, while yet Christian,
+inhabitable, and partially fertile, than perhaps any other on earth. The
+weather remains perfect; some might call it a little cool, but I wear my
+old gray overcoat and find it just right. The days are full of sunbeams
+and oxygen. Most of the forenoons and afternoons I am on the forward
+deck of the steamer.
+
+
+THE SAVAGE SAGUENAY
+
+Up these black waters, over a hundred miles--always strong, deep,
+(hundreds of feet, sometimes thousands,) ever with high, rocky hills for
+banks, green and gray--at times a little like some parts of the Hudson,
+but much more pronounc'd and defiant. The hills rise higher--keep their
+ranks more unbroken. The river is straighter and of more resolute flow,
+and its hue, though dark as ink, exquisitely polish'd and sheeny
+under the August sun. Different, indeed, this Saguenay from all other
+rivers--different effects--a bolder, more vehement play of lights
+and shades. Of a rare charm of singleness and simplicity. (Like the
+organ-chant at midnight from the old Spanish convent, in "Favorita"--one
+strain only, simple and monotonous and unornamented--but indescribably
+penetrating and grand and masterful.) Great place for echoes: while
+our steamer was tied at the wharf at Tadousac (taj-oo-sac) waiting, the
+escape-pipe letting off steam, I was sure I heard a band at the hotel up
+in the rocks--could even make out some of the tunes. Only when our pipe
+stopp'd, I knew what caused it. Then at cape Eternity and Trinity rock,
+the pilot with his whistle producing similar marvellous results, echoes
+indescribably weird, as we lay off in the still bay under their shadows.
+
+
+CAPES ETERNITY AND TRINITY
+
+But the great, haughty, silent capes themselves; I doubt if any crack
+points, or hills, or historic places of note, or anything of the kind
+elsewhere in the world, outvies these objects--(I write while I am
+before them face to face.) They are very simple, they do not startle--at
+least they did not me--but they linger in one's memory forever. They are
+placed very near each other, side by side, each a mountain rising flush
+out of the Saguenay. A good thrower could throw a stone on each in
+passing--at least it seems so. Then they are as distinct in form as a
+perfect physical man or a perfect physical woman. Cape Eternity is bare,
+rising, as just said, sheer out of the water, rugged and grim (yet with
+an indescribable beauty) nearly two thousand feet high. Trinity rock,
+even a little higher, also rising flush, top-rounded like a great head
+with close-cut verdure of hair. I consider myself well repaid for coming
+my thousand miles to get the sight and memory of the unrivall'd duo.
+They have stirr'd me more profoundly than anything of the kind I have
+yet seen. If Europe or Asia had them, we should certainly hear of them
+in all sorts of sent-back poems, rhapsodies, &c., a dozen times a year
+through our papers and magazines.
+
+
+CHICOUTIMI AND HA-HA BAY
+
+No indeed--life and travel and memory have offer'd and will preserve to
+me no deeper-cut incidents, panorama, or sights to cheer my soul, than
+these at Chicoutimi and Ha-ha bay, and my days and nights up and down
+this fascinating savage river--the rounded mountains, some bare and
+gray, some dull red, some draped close all over with matted green
+verdure or vines--the ample, calm, eternal rocks everywhere--the long
+streaks of motley foam, a milk-white curd on the glistening breast of
+the stream--the little two-masted schooner, dingy yellow, with patch'd
+sails, set wing-and-wing, nearing us, coming saucily up the water with a
+couple of swarthy, black-hair'd men aboard--the strong shades falling on
+the light gray or yellow outlines of the hills all through the forenoon,
+as we steam within gunshot of them--while ever the pure and delicate
+sky spreads over all. And the splendid sunsets, and the sights of
+evening--the same old stars, (relatively a little different, I see, so
+far north) Arcturus and Lyra, and the Eagle, and great Jupiter like
+a silver globe, and the constellation of the Scorpion. Then northern
+lights nearly every night.
+
+
+THE INHABITANTS--GOOD LIVING
+
+Grim and rocky and black-water'd as the demesne hereabout is, however,
+you must not think genial humanity, and comfort, and good-living are not
+to be met. Before I began this memorandum I made a first-rate breakfast
+of sea-trout, finishing off with wild raspberries. I find smiles and
+courtesy everywhere--physiognomies in general curiously like those in
+the United States--(I was astonish'd to find the same resemblance all
+through the province of Quebec.) In general the inhabitants of this
+rugged country (Charlevoix, Chicoutimi and Tadousac counties, and lake
+St. John region) a simple, hardy population, lumbering, trapping furs,
+boating, fishing, berry-picking and a little farming. I was watching a
+group of young boatmen eating their early dinner--nothing but an immense
+loaf of bread, had apparently been the size of a bushel measure, from
+which they cut chunks with a jack-knife. Must be a tremendous winter
+country this, when the solid frost and ice fully set in.
+
+
+CEDAR-PLUMS LIKE-NAMES (_Back again in Camden and down in Jersey_)
+
+One time I thought of naming this collection "Cedar-Plums Like" (which I
+still fancy wouldn't have been a bad name nor inappropriate.) A melange
+of loafing, looking, hobbling, sitting, traveling--a little thinking
+thrown in for salt, but very little--not only summer but all
+seasons--not only days but nights--some literary meditations--books,
+authors examined, Carlyle, Poe, Emerson tried, (always under my
+cedar-tree, in the open air, and never in the library)--mostly the
+scenes everybody sees, but some of my own caprices, meditations,
+egotism--truly an open air and mainly summer formation--singly, or in
+clusters--wild and free and somewhat acrid--indeed more like cedar-plums
+than you might guess at first glance.
+
+But do you know what they are? (To city man, or some sweet parlor lady,
+I now talk.) As you go along roads, or barrens, or across country,
+anywhere through these States, middle, eastern, western, or southern,
+you will see, certain seasons of the year, the thick woolly tufts of
+the cedar mottled with bunches of china-blue berries, about as big as
+fox-grapes. But first a special word for the tree itself: everybody
+knows that the cedar is a healthy, cheap, democratic wood, streak'd red
+and white--an evergreen--that it is not a _cultivated_ tree--that it
+keeps away moths--that it grows inland or seaboard, all climates, hot
+or cold, any soil--in fact rather prefers sand and bleak side
+spots--content if the plough, the fertilizer and the trimming-axe, will
+but keep away and let it alone. After a long rain, when everything looks
+bright, often have I stopt in my wood-saunters, south or north, or far
+west, to take in its dusky green, wash'd clean and sweet, and speck'd
+copiously with its fruit of clear, hardy blue. The wood of the cedar
+is of use--but what profit on earth are those sprigs of acrid plums?
+A question impossible to answer satisfactorily. True, some of the herb
+doctors give them for stomachic affections, but the remedy is as bad as
+the disease. Then in my rambles down in Camden county I once found an
+old crazy woman gathering the clusters with zeal and joy. She show'd,
+as I was told afterward, a sort of infatuation for them, and every year
+placed and kept profuse bunches high and low about her room. They had a
+strange charm on her uneasy head, and effected docility and peace. (She
+was harmless, and lived near by with her well-off married daughter.)
+Whether there is any connection between those bunches, and being out of
+one's wits, I cannot say, but I myself entertain a weakness for them.
+Indeed, I love the cedar, anyhow--its naked ruggedness, its just
+palpable odor, (so different from the perfumer's best,) its silence,
+its equable acceptance of winter's cold and summer's heat, of rain or
+drouth--its shelter to me from those, at times--its associations--(well,
+I never could explain _why_ I love anybody, or anything.) The service I
+now specially owe to the cedar is, while I cast around for a name for my
+proposed collection, hesitating, puzzled--after rejecting a long, long
+string, I lift my eyes, and lo! the very term I want. At any rate, I go
+no further--I tire in the search. I take what some invisible kind spirit
+has put before me. Besides, who shall say there is not affinity enough
+between (at least the bundle of sticks that produced) many of these
+pieces, or granulations, and those blue berries? their uselessness
+growing wild--a certain aroma of Nature I would so like to have in
+my pages--the thin soil whence they come--their content in being let
+alone--their stolid and deaf repugnance to answering questions, (this
+latter the nearest, dearest trait affinity of all.)
+
+Then reader dear, in conclusion, as to the point of the name for the
+present collection, let us be satisfied to _have_ a name--something to
+identify and bind it together, to concrete all its vegetable, mineral,
+personal memoranda, abrupt raids of criticism, crude gossip of
+philosophy, varied sands and clumps--without bothering ourselves because
+certain pages do not present themselves to you or me as coming under
+their own name with entire fitness or amiability. (It is a profound,
+vexatious never-explicable matter--this of names. I have been exercised
+deeply about it my whole life.[11])
+
+After all of which the name "Cedar-Plums Like" got its nose put out of
+joint; but I cannot afford to throw away what I pencill'd down the
+lane there, under the shelter of my old friend, one warm October noon.
+Besides, it wouldn't be civil to the cedar tree.
+
+
+Note:
+
+[11] In the pocket of my receptacle-book I find a list of suggested and
+rejected names for this volume, or parts of it--such as the following:
+
+              _As the wild bee hums in May,
+              & August mulleins grow,
+              & Winter snow-flakes fall,
+              & stars in the sky roll round._
+
+             _Away from Books--away from Art,
+             Now for the Day and Night--the lessons done,
+             Now for the Sun and Stars._
+
+    _Notes of a Half-Paralytic,         As Voices in the Dusk, from
+    Week in and Week out,               Speakers far or hid,
+    Embers of Ending Days,              Autochthons....Embryons,
+    Ducks and Drakes,                   Wing-and-Wing,
+    Flood Tide and Ebb,                 Notes and Recalles.
+    Gossip at Early Candle-light,       Only Mulleins and Bumble-Bees,
+    Echoes and Escapades,               Pond-Babble....Tete-a-Tetes,
+    Such as I....Evening Dews,          Echoes of a Life in the 19th
+    Notes and Writing a Book,             Century in the New World,
+    Far and Near at 63,                 Flanges of Fifty Years,
+    Drifts and Cumulus,                 Abandons....Hurry Notes,
+    Maize-Tassels....Kindlings,         A Life-Mosaic....Native Moments,
+    Fore and Aft....Vestibules,         Types and Semi-Tones,
+    Scintilla at 60 and after,          Oddments....Sand-Drifts,
+    Sands on the Shores of 64,          Again and Again._
+
+
+DEATH OF THOMAS CARLYLE
+
+_Feb. 10, '81_.--And so the flame of the lamp, after long wasting and
+flickering, has gone out entirely.
+
+As a representative author, a literary figure, no man else will bequeath
+to the future more significant hints of our stormy era, its fierce
+paradoxes, its din, and its struggling parturition periods, than
+Carlyle. He belongs to our own branch of the stock too; neither Latin
+nor Greek, but altogether Gothic. Rugged, mountainous, volcanic, he
+was himself more a French revolution than any of his volumes. In some
+respects, so far in the Nineteenth century, the best equipt, keenest
+mind, even from the college point of view, of all Britain; only he had
+an ailing body. Dyspepsia is to be traced in every page, and now and
+then fills the page. One may include among the lessons of his life--even
+though that life stretch'd to amazing length--how behind the tally of
+genius and morals stands the stomach, and gives a sort of casting vote.
+
+Two conflicting agonistic elements seem to have contended in the
+man, sometimes pulling him different ways like wild horses. He was a
+cautious, conservative Scotchman, fully aware what a foetid gas-bag
+much of modern radicalism is; but then his great heart demanded reform,
+demanded change--often terribly at odds with his scornful brain. No
+author ever put so much wailing and despair into his books, sometimes
+palpable, oftener latent. He reminds me of that passage in Young's poems
+where as death presses closer and closer for his prey, the soul rushes
+hither and thither, appealing, shrieking, berating, to escape the
+general doom.
+
+Of short-comings, even positive blur-spots, from an American point of
+view, he had serious share.
+
+Not for his merely literary merit, (though that was great)--not as
+"maker of books," but as launching into the self-complacent atmosphere
+of our days a rasping, questioning, dislocating agitation and shock, is
+Carlyle's final value. It is time the English-speaking peoples had some
+true idea about the verteber of genius, namely power. As if they must
+always have it cut and bias'd to the fashion, like a lady's cloak! What
+a needed service he performs! How he shakes our comfortable reading
+circles with a touch of the old Hebraic anger and prophecy--and indeed
+it is just the same. Not Isaiah himself more scornful, more threatening:
+"The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under
+feet: And the glorious beauty which is on the head of the fat valley
+shall be a fading flower." (The word prophecy is much misused; it seems
+narrow'd to prediction merely. That is not the main sense of the Hebrew
+word translated "prophet;" it means one whose mind bubbles up and pours
+forth as a fountain, from inner, divine spontaneities revealing God.
+Prediction is a very minor part of prophecy. The great matter is to
+reveal and outpour the God-like suggestions pressing for birth in the
+soul. This is briefly the doctrine of the Friends or Quakers.)
+
+Then the simplicity and amid ostensible frailty the towering strength
+of this man--a hardy oak knot, you could never wear out--an old
+farmer dress'd in brown clothes, and not handsome--his very foibles
+fascinating. Who cares that he wrote about Dr. Francia, and "Shooting
+Niagara"--and "the Nigger Question,"--and didn't at all admire our
+United States? (I doubt if he ever thought or said half as bad words
+about us as we deserve.) How he splashes like leviathan in the seas of
+modern literature and politics! Doubtless, respecting the latter, one
+needs first to realize, from actual observation, the squalor, vice and
+doggedness ingrain'd in the bulk-population of the British islands, with
+the red tape, the fatuity, the flunkeyism everywhere, to understand the
+last meaning in his pages. Accordingly, though he was no chartist or
+radical, I consider Carlyle's by far the most indignant comment or
+protest anent the fruits of feudalism to-day in Great Britain--the
+increasing poverty and degradation of the homeless, landless twenty
+millions, while a few thousands, or rather a few hundreds, possess the
+entire soil, the money, and the fat berths. Trade and shipping, and
+clubs and culture, and prestige, and guns, and a fine select class of
+gentry and aristocracy, with every modern improvement, cannot begin to
+salve or defend such stupendous hoggishness.
+
+The way to test how much he has left his country were to consider,
+or try to consider, for a moment, the array of British thought, the
+resultant _ensemble_ of the last fifty years, as existing to-day, _but
+with Carlyle left out_. It would be like an army with no artillery. The
+show were still a gay and rich one--Byron, Scott, Tennyson, and many
+more--horsemen and rapid infantry, and banners flying--but the last
+heavy roar so dear to the ear of the train'd soldier, and that settles
+fate and victory, would be lacking.
+
+For the last three years we in America have had transmitted glimpses of
+a thin-bodied, lonesome, wifeless, childless, very old man, lying on
+a sofa, kept out of bed by indomitable will, but, of late, never well
+enough to take the open air. I have noted this news from time to time
+in brief descriptions in the papers. A week ago I read such an item just
+before I started out for my customary evening stroll between eight
+and nine. In the fine cold night, unusually clear, (Feb. 5, '81,) as
+I walk'd some open grounds adjacent, the condition of Carlyle, and his
+approaching--perhaps even then actual--death, filled me with thoughts
+eluding statement, and curiously blending with the scene. The planet
+Venus, an hour high in the west, with all her volume and lustre
+recover'd, (she has been shorn and languid for nearly a year,) including
+an additional sentiment I never noticed before--not merely voluptuous,
+Paphian, steeping, fascinating--now with calm commanding seriousness and
+hauteur--the Milo Venus now. Upward to the zenith, Jupiter, Saturn, and
+the moon past her quarter, trailing in procession, with the Pleiades
+following, and the constellation Taurus, and red Aldebaran. Not a cloud
+in heaven. Orion strode through the southeast, with his glittering
+belt--and a trifle below hung the sun of the night, Sirius. Every star
+dilated, more vitreous, nearer than usual. Not as in some clear nights
+when the larger stars entirely outshine the rest. Every little star or
+cluster just as distinctly visible, and just as nigh. Berenice's hair
+showing every gem, and new ones. To the northeast and north the Sickle,
+the Goat and kids, Cassiopeia, Castor and Pollux, and the two Dippers.
+While through the whole of this silent indescribable show, inclosing
+and bathing my whole receptivity, ran the thought of Carlyle dying. (To
+soothe and spiritualize, and, as far as may be, solve the mysteries of
+death and genius, consider them under the stars at midnight.)
+
+And now that he has gone hence, can it be that Thomas Carlyle, soon to
+chemically dissolve in ashes and by winds, remains an identity still?
+In ways perhaps eluding all the statements, lore and speculations of ten
+thousand years--eluding all possible statements to mortal sense--does he
+yet exist, a definite, vital being, a spirit, an individual--perhaps
+now wafted in space among those stellar systems, which, suggestive and
+limitless as they are, merely edge more limitless, far more suggestive
+systems? I have no doubt of it. In silence, of a fine night, such
+questions are answer'd to the soul, the best answers that can be given.
+With me, too, when depress'd by some specially sad event, or tearing
+problem, I wait till I go out under the stars for the last voiceless
+satisfaction.
+
+
+CARLYLE FROM AMERICAN POINTS OF VIEW
+
+_Later Thoughts and Jottings_
+
+There is surely at present an inexplicable _rapport_ (all the more
+piquant from its contradictoriness) between that deceas'd author and our
+United States of America--no matter whether it lasts or not[13] As we
+Westerners assume definite shape, and result in formations and fruitage
+unknown before, it is curious with what a new sense our eyes turn to
+representative outgrowths of crises and personages in the Old World.
+Beyond question, since Carlyle's death, and the publication of Froude's
+memoirs, not only the interest in his books, but every personal bit
+regarding the famous Scotchman--his dyspepsia, his buffetings, his
+parentage, his paragon of a wife, his career in Edinburgh, in the
+lonesome nest on Craigenputtock moor, and then so many years in
+London--is probably wider and livelier to-day in this country than
+in his own land. Whether I succeed or no, I, too, reaching across the
+Atlantic and taking the man's dark fortune-telling of humanity and
+politics, would offset it all, (such is the fancy that comes to me,)
+by a far more profound horoscope-casting of those themes--G. F.
+Hegel's.[14]
+
+First, about a chance, a never-fulfill'd vacuity of this pale cast of
+thought--this British Hamlet from Cheyne row, more puzzling than the
+Danish one, with his contrivances for settling the broken and spavin'd
+joints of the world's government, especially its democratic dislocation.
+Carlyle's grim fate was cast to live and dwell in, and largely embody,
+the parturition agony and qualms of the old order, amid crowded
+accumulations of ghastly morbidity, giving birth to the new.
+
+But conceive of him (or his parents before him) coming to America,
+recuperated by the cheering realities and activity of our people and
+country--growing up and delving face-to-face resolutely among us here,
+especially at the West--inhaling and exhaling our limitless air and
+eligibilities--devoting his mind to the theories and developments
+of this Republic amid its practical facts as exemplified in Kansas,
+Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, or Louisiana. I say _facts_, and
+face-to-face confrontings--so different from books, and all those
+quiddities and mere reports in the libraries, upon which the man (it
+was wittily said of him at the age of thirty, that there was no one in
+Scotland who had glean'd so much and seen so little,) almost wholly fed,
+and which even his sturdy and vital mind but reflected at best.
+
+Something of the sort narrowly escaped happening. In 1835, after more
+than a dozen years of trial and non-success, the author of "Sartor
+Resartus" removing to London, very poor, a confirmed hypochondriac,
+"Sartor" universally scoffed at, no literary prospects ahead,
+deliberately settled on one last casting throw of the literary
+dice--resolv'd to compose and launch forth a book on the subject of
+_the French Revolution_--and if that won no higher guerdon or prize than
+hitherto, to sternly abandon the trade of author forever, and emigrate
+for good to America. But the venture turn'd out a lucky one, and there
+was no emigration.
+
+Carlyle's work in the sphere of literature as he commenced and carried
+it out, is the same in one or two leading respects that Immanuel
+Kant's was in speculative philosophy. But the Scotchman had none of the
+stomachic phlegm and never-perturb'd placidity of the Konigsberg sage,
+and did not, like the latter, understand his own limits, and stop when
+he got to the end of them. He clears away jungle and poisonvines and
+underbrush--at any rate hacks valiantly at them, smiting hip and thigh.
+Kant did the like in his sphere, and it was all he profess'd to do;
+his labors have left the ground fully prepared ever since--and greater
+service was probably never perform'd by mortal man. But the pang and
+hiatus of Carlyle seem to me to consist in the evidence everywhere that
+amid a whirl of fog and fury and cross-purposes, he firmly believ'd he
+had a clue to the medication of the world's ills, and that his bounden
+mission was to exploit it.[15]
+
+There were two anchors, or sheet-anchors, for steadying, as a last
+resort, the Carlylean ship. One will be specified presently. The other,
+perhaps the main, was only to be found in some mark'd form of personal
+force, an extreme degree of competent urge and will, a man or men "born
+to command." Probably there ran through every vein and current of the
+Scotchman's blood something that warm'd up to this kind of trait and
+character above aught else in the world, and which makes him in my
+opinion the chief celebrater and promulger of it in literature--more
+than Plutarch, more than Shakspere. The great masses of humanity stand
+for nothing--at least nothing but nebulous raw material; only the big
+planets and shining suns for him. To ideas almost invariably languid or
+cold, a number-one forceful personality was sure to rouse his eulogistic
+passion and savage joy. In such case, even the standard of duty
+hereinafter rais'd, was to be instantly lower'd and vail'd. All that
+is comprehended under the terms republicanism and democracy were
+distasteful to him from the first, and as he grew older they became
+hateful and contemptible. For an undoubtedly candid and penetrating
+faculty such as his, the bearings he persistently ignored were
+marvellous. For instance, the promise, nay certainty of the democratic
+principle, to each and every State of the current world, not so much
+of helping it to perfect legislators and executives, but as the only
+effectual method for surely, however slowly, training people on a large
+scale toward voluntarily ruling and managing themselves (the ultimate
+aim of political and all other development)--to gradually reduce the
+fact of _governing_ to its minimum, and to subject all its staffs
+and their doings to the telescopes and microscopes of committees and
+parties--and greatest of all, to afford (not stagnation and obedient
+content, which went well enough with the feudalism and ecclesiasticism
+of the antique and medieval world, but) a vast and sane and recurrent
+ebb and tide action for those floods of the great deep that have
+henceforth palpably burst forever their old bounds--seem never to have
+enter'd Carlyle's thought. It was splendid how he refus'd any compromise
+to the last. He was curiously antique. In that harsh, picturesque, most
+potent voice and figure, one seems to be carried back from the present
+of the British islands more than two thousand years, to the range
+between Jerusalem and Tarsus. His fullest best biographer justly says of
+him:
+
+He was a teacher and a prophet, in the Jewish sense of the word. The
+prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah have become a part of the permanent
+spiritual inheritance of mankind, because events proved that they had
+interpreted correctly the sign of their own times, and their prophecies
+were fulfill'd. Carlyle, like them, believ'd that he had a special
+message to deliver to the present age. Whether he was correct in that
+belief, and whether his message was a true message, remains to be seen.
+He has told us that our most cherish'd ideas of political liberty, with
+their kindred corollaries, are mere illusions, and that the progress
+which has seem'd to go along with them is a progress towards anarchy
+and social dissolution. If he was wrong, he has misused his powers. The
+principles of his teachings are false. He has offer'd himself as a guide
+upon a road of which he had no knowledge; and his own desire for himself
+would be the speediest oblivion both of his person and his works. If, on
+the other hand, he has been right; if, like his great predecessors,
+he has read truly the tendencies of this modern age of ours, and his
+teaching is authenticated by facts, then Carlyle, too, will take his
+place among the inspired seers.
+
+To which I add an amendment that under no circumstances, and no matter
+how completely time and events disprove his lurid vaticinations, should
+the English-speaking world forget this man, nor fail to hold in honor
+his unsurpass'd conscience, his unique method, and his honest fame.
+Never were convictions more earnest and genuine. Never was there less
+of a flunkey or temporizer. Never had political progressivism a foe it
+could more heartily respect.
+
+The second main point of Carlyle's utterance was the idea of _duty being
+done_. (It is simply a new codicil--if it be particularly new, which
+is by no means certain--on the time-honor'd bequest of dynasticism,
+the mould-eaten rules of legitimacy and kings.) He seems to have been
+impatient sometimes to madness when reminded by persons who thought
+at least as deeply as himself, that this formula, though precious, is
+rather a vague one, and that there are many other considerations to a
+philosophical estimate of each and every department either.
+
+Altogether, I don't know anything more amazing than these persistent
+strides and throbbings so far through our Nineteenth century of
+perhaps its biggest, sharpest, and most erudite brain, in defiance
+and discontent with everything; contemptuously ignoring, (either from
+constitutional inaptitude, ignorance itself, or more likely because he
+demanded a definite cure-all here and now,) the only solace and solvent
+to be had.
+
+There is, apart from mere intellect, in the make-up of every superior
+human identity, (in its moral completeness, considered as _ensemble_,
+not for that moral alone, but for the whole being, including physique,)
+a wondrous something that realizes without argument, frequently without
+what is called education, (though I think it the goal and apex of all
+education deserving the name)--an intuition of the absolute balance, in
+time and space, of the whole of this multifarious, mad chaos of fraud,
+frivolity, hoggishness--this revel of fools, and incredible make-believe
+and general unsettledness, we call _the world_; a soul-sight of that
+divine clue and unseen thread which holds the whole congeries of
+things, all history and time, and all events, however trivial, however
+momentous, like a leash'd dog in the hand of the hunter. Such soul-sight
+and root-centre for the mind--mere optimism explains only the surface
+or fringe of it--Carlyle was mostly, perhaps entirely without. He seems
+instead to have been haunted in the play of his mental action by a
+spectre, never entirely laid from first to last, (Greek scholars,
+I believe, find the same mocking and fantastic apparition attending
+Aristophanes, his comedies,)--the spectre of world-destruction.
+
+How largest triumph or failure in human life, in war or peace, may
+depend on some little hidden centrality, hardly more than a drop of
+blood, a pulse-beat, or a breath of air! It is certain that all these
+weighty matters, democracy in America, Carlyleism, and the temperament
+for deepest political or literary exploration, turn on a simple point in
+speculative philosophy.
+
+The most profound theme that can occupy the mind of man--the problem
+on whose solution science, art, the bases and pursuits of nations, and
+everything else, including intelligent human happiness, (here to-day,
+1882, New York, Texas, California, the same as all times, all lands,)
+subtly and finally resting, depends for competent outset and argument,
+is doubtless involved in the query: What is the fusing explanation and
+tie--what the relation between the (radical, democratic) Me, the human
+identity of understanding, emotions, spirit, &c., on the one side, of
+and with the (conservative) Not Me, the whole of the material objective
+universe and laws, with what is behind them in time and space, on the
+other side? Immanuel Kant, though he explain'd or partially explain'd,
+as may be said, the laws of the human understanding, left this question
+an open one. Schelling's answer, or suggestion of answer, is (and very
+valuable and important, as far as it goes,) that the same general and
+particular intelligence, passion, even the standards of right and wrong,
+which exist in a conscious and formulated state in man, exist in an
+unconscious state, or in perceptible analogies, throughout the entire
+universe of external Nature, in all its objects large or small, and all
+its movements and processes--thus making the impalpable human mind,
+and concrete nature, notwithstanding their duality and separation,
+convertible, and in centrality and essence one. But G. F. Hegel's fuller
+statement of the matter probably remains the last best word that has
+been said upon it, up to date. Substantially adopting the scheme just
+epitomized, he so carries it out and fortifies it and merges everything
+in it, with certain serious gaps now for the first time fill'd, that it
+becomes a coherent metaphysical system, and substantial answer (as far
+as there can be any answer) to the foregoing question--a system which,
+while I distinctly admit that the brain of the future may add to,
+revise, and even entirely reconstruct, at any rate beams forth
+to-day, in its entirety, illuminating the thought of the universe, and
+satisfying the mystery thereof to the human mind, with a more consoling
+scientific assurance than any yet.
+
+According to Hegel the whole earth, (an old nucleus-thought, as in the
+Vedas, and no doubt before, but never hitherto brought so absolutely to
+the front, fully surcharged with modern scientism and facts, and made
+the sole entrance to each and all,) with its infinite variety, the
+past, the surroundings of to-day, or what may happen in the future,
+the contrarieties of material with spiritual, and of natural with
+artificial, are all, to the eye of the _ensemblist_, but necessary sides
+and unfoldings, different steps or links, in the endless process
+of Creative thought, which, amid numberless apparent failures and
+contradictions, is held together by central and never-broken unity--not
+contradictions or failures at all, but radiations of one consistent
+and eternal purpose; the whole mass of everything steadily, unerringly
+tending and flowing toward the permanent _utile_ and _morale_, as rivers
+to oceans. As life is the whole law and incessant effort of the visible
+universe, and death only the other or invisible side of the same, so the
+_utile_, so truth, so health are the continuous-immutable laws of the
+moral universe, and vice and disease, with all their perturbations, are
+but transient, even if ever so prevalent expressions.
+
+To politics throughout, Hegel applies the like catholic standard and
+faith. Not any one party, or any one form of government, is absolutely
+and exclusively true. Truth consists in the just relations of objects to
+each other. A majority or democracy may rule as outrageously and do as
+great harm as an oligarchy or despotism--though far less likely to
+do so. But the great evil is either a violation of the relations just
+referr'd to, or of the moral law. The specious, the unjust, the cruel,
+and what is called the unnatural, though not only permitted but in a
+certain sense, (like shade to light,) inevitable in the divine scheme,
+are by the whole constitution of that scheme, partial, inconsistent,
+temporary, and though having ever so great an ostensible majority, are
+certainly destin'd to failures, after causing great suffering.
+
+Theology, Hegel translates into science.[16] All apparent contradictions
+in the statement of the Deific nature by different ages, nations,
+churches, points of view, are but fractional and imperfect expressions
+of one essential unity, from which they all proceed--crude endeavors or
+distorted parts, to be regarded both as distinct and united. In short
+(to put it in our own form, or summing up,) that thinker or analyzer
+or overlooker who by an inscrutable combination of train'd wisdom and
+natural intuition most fully accepts in perfect faith the moral unity
+and sanity of the creative scheme, in history, science, and all life
+and time, present and future, is both the truest cosmical devotee or
+religioso, and the profoundest philosopher. While he who, by the spell
+of himself and his circumstance, sees darkness and despair in the sum
+of the workings of God's providence, and who, in that, denies or
+prevaricates, is, no matter how much piety plays on his lips, the most
+radical sinner and infidel.
+
+I am the more assured in recounting Hegel a little freely here,[17] not
+only for offsetting the Carlylean letter and spirit-cutting it out
+all and several from the very roots, and below the roots--but to
+counterpoise, since the late death and deserv'd apotheosis of Darwin,
+the tenets of the evolutionists. Unspeakably precious as those are to
+biology, and henceforth indispensable to a right aim and estimate in
+study, they neither comprise or explain everything--and the last word or
+whisper still remains to be breathed, after the utmost of those
+claims, floating high and forever above them all, and above technical
+metaphysics. While the contributions which German Kant and Fichte and
+Schelling and Hegel have bequeath'd to humanity--and which English
+Darwin has also in his field--are indispensable to the erudition of
+America's future, I should say that in all of them, and the best of
+them, when compared with the lightning flashes and flights of the old
+prophets and _exaltes_, the spiritual poets and poetry of all lands,
+(as in the Hebrew Bible,) there seems to be, nay certainly is, something
+lacking--something cold, a failure to satisfy the deepest emotions
+of the soul--a want of living glow, fondness, warmth, which the old
+_exaltes_ and poets supply, and which the keenest modern philosophers so
+far do not.
+
+Upon the whole, and for our purposes, this man's name certainly belongs
+on the list with the just-specified, first-class moral physicians of
+our current era--and with Emerson and two or three others--though
+his prescription is drastic, and perhaps destructive, while theirs is
+assimilating, normal and tonic. Feudal at the core, and mental offspring
+and radiation of feudalism as are his books, they afford ever-valuable
+lessons and affinities to democratic America. Nations or individuals, we
+surely learn deepest from unlikeness, from a sincere opponent, from the
+light thrown even scornfully on dangerous spots and liabilities. (Michel
+Angelo invoked heaven's special protection against his friends and
+affectionate flatterers; palpable foes he could manage for himself.) In
+many particulars Carlyle was indeed, as Froude terms him, one of those
+far-off Hebraic utterers, a new Micah or Habbakuk. His words at times
+bubble forth with abysmic inspiration. Always precious, such men; as
+precious now as any time. His rude, rasping, taunting, contradictory
+tones--what ones are more wanted amid the supple, polish'd,
+money--worshipping, Jesus-and-Judas-equalizing, suffrage-sovereignty
+echoes of current America? He has lit up our Nineteenth century with the
+light of a powerful, penetrating, and perfectly honest intellect of
+the first class, turn'd on British and European politics, social life,
+literature, and representative personages--thoroughly dissatisfied with
+all, and mercilessly exposing the illness of all. But while he announces
+the malady, and scolds and raves about it, he himself, born and bred in
+the same atmosphere, is a mark'd illustration of it.
+
+
+Notes:
+
+[13] It will be difficult for the future--judging by his books, personal
+dissympathies, &c.,--to account for the deep hold this author has taken
+on the present age, and the way he has color'd its method and thought.
+I am certainly at a loss to account for it all as affecting myself.
+But there could be no view, or even partial picture, of the middle and
+latter part of our Nineteenth century, that did not markedly include
+Thomas Carlyle. In his case (as so many others, literary productions,
+works of art, personal identities, events,) there has been an impalpable
+something more effective than the palpable. Then I find no better text,
+(it is always important to have a definite, special, even oppositional,
+living man to start from,) for sending out certain speculations
+and comparisons for home use. Let us see what they amount to--those
+reactionary doctrines, fears, scornful analyses of democracy--even from
+the most erudite and sincere mind of Europe.
+
+[14] Not the least mentionable part of the case, (a streak, it may
+be, of that humor with which history and fate love to contrast their
+gravity,) is that although neither of my great authorities during their
+lives consider'd the United States worthy of serious mention, all the
+principal works of both might not inappropriately be this day collected
+and bound up under the conspicuous title: _Speculations for the use of
+North America, and Democracy there with the relations of the same to
+Metaphysics, including Lessons and Warnings (encouragements too, and of
+the vastest,) from the Old World to the New._
+
+[15] I hope I shall not myself fall into the error I charge upon him, of
+prescribing a specific for indispensable evils. My utmost pretension is
+probably but to offset that old claim of the exclusively curative power
+of first-class individual men, as leaders and rulers, by the claims,
+and general movement and result, of ideas. Something of the latter kind
+seems to me the distinctive theory of America, of democracy, and of the
+modern--or rather, I should say, it _is_ democracy, and _is_ the modern.
+
+[16] I am much indebted to J. Gostick's abstract.
+
+[17] I have deliberately repeated it all, not only in offset to Carlyle'
+s everlurking pessimism and world-decadence, but as presenting the most
+thoroughly _American points of view_ I know. In my opinion the above
+formulas of Hegel are an essential and crowning justification of New
+World democracy in the creative realms of time and space. There is that
+about them which only the vastness, the multiplicity and the vitality
+of America would seem able to comprehend, to give scope and illustration
+to, or to be fit for, or even originate. It is strange to me that they
+were born in Germany, or in the old world at all. While a Carlyle, I
+should say, is quite the legitimate European product to be expected.
+
+
+A COUPLE OF OLD FRIENDS--A COLERIDGE BIT
+
+_Latter April_.--Have run down in my country haunt for a couple of days,
+and am spending them by the pond. I had already discover'd my kingfisher
+here (but only one--the mate not here yet.) This fine bright morning,
+down by the creek, he has come out for a spree, circling, flirting,
+chirping at a round rate. While I am writing these lines he is
+disporting himself in scoots and rings over the wider parts of the pond,
+into whose surface he dashes, once or twice making a loud _souse_--the
+spray flying in the sun--beautiful! I see his white and dark-gray
+plumage and peculiar shape plainly, as he has deign'd to come very near
+me. The noble, graceful bird! Now he is sitting on the limb of an old
+tree, high up, bending over the water--seems to be looking at me while I
+memorandize. I almost fancy he knows me. _Three days later._--My second
+kingfisher is here with his (or her) mate. I saw the two together flying
+and whirling around. I had heard, in the distance, what I thought was
+the clear rasping staccato of the birds several times already--but I
+couldn't be sure the notes came from both until I saw them together.
+To-day at noon they appear'd, but apparently either on business, or for
+a little limited exercise only. No wild frolic now, full of free fun and
+motion, up and down for an hour. Doubtless, now they have cares, duties,
+incubation responsibilities. The frolics are deferr'd till summer-close.
+
+I don't know as I can finish to-day's memorandum better than with
+Coleridge's lines, curiously appropriate in more ways than one:
+
+    All Nature seems at work--slugs leave their lair,
+    The bees are stirring--birds are on the wing,
+    And winter, slumbering in the open air,
+    Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring;
+    And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,
+    Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.
+
+
+A WEEK'S VISIT TO BOSTON
+
+_May 1, '81._--Seems as if all the ways and means of American
+travel to-day had been settled, not only with reference to speed and
+directness, but for the comfort of women, children, invalids, and old
+fellows like me. I went on by a through train that runs daily from
+Washington to the Yankee metropolis without change. You get in a
+sleeping-car soon after dark in Philadelphia, and after ruminating an
+hour or two, have your bed made up if you like, draw the curtains,
+and go to sleep in it--fly on through Jersey to New York--hear in your
+half-slumbers a dull jolting and bumping sound or two--are unconsciously
+toted from Jersey City by a midnight steamer around the Battery and
+under the big bridge to the track of the New Haven road--resume your
+flight eastward, and early the next morning you wake up in Boston. All
+of which was my experience. I wanted to go to the Revere house. A tall
+unknown gentleman, (a fellow-passenger on his way to Newport he told
+me, I had just chatted a few moments before with him,) assisted me out
+through the depot crowd, procured a hack, put me in it with my traveling
+bag, saying smilingly and quietly, "Now I want you to let this be _my_
+ride," paid the driver, and before I could remonstrate bow'd himself
+off.
+
+The occasion of my jaunt, I suppose I had better say here, was for a
+public reading of "the death of Abraham Lincoln" essay, on the sixteenth
+anniversary of that tragedy; which reading duly came off, night of
+April 15. Then I linger'd a week in Boston--felt pretty well (the mood
+propitious, my paralysis lull'd)--went around everywhere, and saw all
+that was to be seen, especially human beings. Boston's immense material
+growth--commerce, finance, commission stores, the plethora of goods, the
+crowded streets and sidewalks--made of course the first surprising show.
+In my trip out West, last year, I thought the wand of future prosperity,
+future empire, must soon surely be wielded by St. Louis, Chicago,
+beautiful Denver, perhaps San Francisco; but I see the said wand
+stretch'd out just as decidedly in Boston, with just as much certainty
+of staying; evidences of copious capital--indeed no centre of the New
+World ahead of it, (half the big railroads in the West are built with
+Yankees' money, and they take the dividends.) Old Boston with its zigzag
+streets and multitudinous angles, (crush up a sheet of letter-paper
+in your hand, throw it down, stamp it flat, and that is a map of old
+Boston)--new Boston with its miles upon miles of large and costly
+houses--Beacon street, Commonwealth avenue, and a hundred others. But
+the best new departures and expansions of Boston, and of all the cities
+of New England, are in another direction.
+
+
+THE BOSTON OF TO-DAY
+
+In the letters we get from Dr. Schliemann (interesting but fishy) about
+his excavations there in the far-off Homeric area, I notice cities,
+ruins, &c., as he digs them out of their graves, are certain to be in
+layers--that is to say, upon the foundation of an old concern, very
+far down indeed, is always another city or set of ruins, and upon
+that another superadded--and sometimes upon that still another--each
+representing either a long or rapid stage of growth and development,
+different from its predecessor, but unerringly growing out of and
+resting on it. In the moral, emotional, heroic, and human growths, (the
+main of a race in my opinion,) something of this kind has certainly
+taken place in Boston. The New England metropolis of to-day may
+be described as sunny, (there is something else that makes warmth,
+mastering even winds and meteorologies, though those are not to be
+sneez'd at,) joyous, receptive, full of ardor, sparkle, a certain
+element of yearning, magnificently tolerant, yet not to be fool'd; fond
+of good eating and drinking--costly in costume as its purse can buy;
+and all through its best average of houses, streets, people, that
+subtle something (generally thought to be climate, but it is not--it is
+something indefinable in the _race_, the turn of its development) which
+effuses behind the whirl of animation, study, business, a happy and
+joyous public spirit, as distinguish'd from a sluggish and saturnine
+one. Makes me think of the glints we get (as in Symonds's books) of the
+jolly old Greek cities. Indeed there is a good deal of the Hellenic in
+B., and the people are getting handsomer too--padded out, with freer
+motions, and with color in their faces. I never saw (although this is
+not Greek) so many _fine-looking gray-hair'd women_. At my lecture
+I caught myself pausing more than once to look at them, plentiful
+everywhere through the audience--healthy and wifely and motherly, and
+wonderfully charming and beautiful--I think such as no time or land but
+ours could show.
+
+
+MY TRIBUTE TO FOUR POETS
+
+_April 16_.--A short but pleasant visit to Longfellow. I am not one
+of the calling kind, but as the author of "Evangeline" kindly took the
+trouble to come and see me three years ago in Camden, where I was ill,
+I felt not only the impulse of my own pleasure on that occasion, but a
+duty. He was the only particular eminence I called on in Boston, and I
+shall not soon forget his lit-up face and glowing warmth and courtesy,
+in the modes of what is called the old school.
+
+And now just here I feel the impulse to interpolate something about the
+mighty four who stamp this first American century with its birthmarks of
+poetic literature. In a late magazine one of my reviewers, who ought
+to know better, speaks of my "attitude of contempt and scorn and
+intolerance" toward the leading poets--of my "deriding" them, and
+preaching their "uselessness." If anybody cares to know what I
+think--and have long thought and avow'd--about them, I am entirely
+willing to propound. I can't imagine any better luck befalling these
+States for a poetical beginning and initiation than has come from
+Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, and Whittier. Emerson, to me, stands
+unmistakably at the head, but for the others I am at a loss where to
+give any precedence. Each illustrious, each rounded, each distinctive.
+Emerson for his sweet, vital-tasting melody, rhym'd philosophy, and
+poems as amber-clear as the honey of the wild bee he loves to sing.
+Longfellow for rich color, graceful forms and incidents--all that makes
+life beautiful and love refined--competing with the singers of Europe
+on their own ground, and, with one exception, better and finer work than
+that of any of them. Bryant pulsing the first interior verse-throbs of a
+mighty world--bard of the river and the wood, ever conveying a taste of
+open air, with scents as from hayfields, grapes, birch-borders--always
+lurkingly fond of threnodies--beginning and ending his long career with
+chants of death, with here and there through all, poems, or passages
+of poems, touching the highest universal truths, enthusiasms,
+duties--morals as grim and eternal, if not as stormy and fateful, as
+anything in Eschylus. While in Whittier, with his special themes--(his
+outcropping love of heroism and war, for all his Quakerdom, his verses
+at times like the measur'd step of Cromwell's old veterans)--in Whittier
+lives the zeal, the moral energy, that founded New England--the splendid
+rectitude and ardor of Luther, Milton, George Fox--I must not, dare not,
+say the wilfulness and narrowness--though doubtless the world needs
+now, and always will need, almost above all, just such narrowness and
+wilfulness.
+
+
+MILLET'S PICTURES LAST ITEMS
+
+_April 18_.--Went out three or four miles to the house of Quincy Shaw,
+to see a collection of J. F. Millet's pictures. Two rapt hours. Never
+before have I been so penetrated by this kind of expression. I stood
+long and long before "the Sower." I believe what the picture-men
+designate "the first Sower," as the artist executed a second copy, and
+a third, and, some think, improved in each. But I doubt it. There is
+something in this that could hardly be caught again--a sublime murkiness
+and original pent fury. Besides this masterpiece, there were many
+others, (I shall never forget the simple evening scene, "Watering the
+Cow,") all inimitable, all perfect as pictures, works of mere art; and
+then it seem'd to me, with that last impalpable ethic purpose from the
+artist (most likely unconscious to himself) which I am always looking
+for. To me all of them told the full story of what went before and
+necessitated the great French revolution--the long precedent crushing
+of the masses of a heroic people into the earth, in abject poverty,
+hunger--every right denied, humanity attempted to be put back for
+generations--yet Nature's force, titanic here, the stronger and hardier
+for that repression--waiting terribly to break forth, revengeful--the
+pressure on the dykes, and the bursting at last--the storming of the
+Bastile--the execution of the king and queen--the tempest of massacres
+and blood. Yet who can wonder?
+
+    Could we wish humanity different?
+    Could we wish the people made of wood or stone?
+    Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?
+
+The true France, base of all the rest, is certainly in these pictures. I
+comprehend "Field-People Reposing," "the Diggers," and "the Angelus"
+in this opinion. Some folks always think of the French as a small race,
+five or five and a half feet high, and ever frivolous and smirking.
+Nothing of the sort. The bulk of the personnel of France, before the
+revolution, was large-sized, serious, industrious as now, and simple.
+The revolution and Napoleon's wars dwarf'd the standard of human size,
+but it will come up again. If for nothing else, I should dwell on my
+brief Boston visit for opening to me the new world of Millet's pictures.
+Will America ever have such an artist out of her own gestation, body,
+soul?
+
+_Sunday, April 17._--An hour and a half, late this afternoon, in silence
+and half light, in the great nave of Memorial hall, Cambridge, the walls
+thickly cover'd with mural tablets, bearing the names of students and
+graduates of the university who fell in the secession war.
+
+_April 23._--It was well I got away in fair order, for if I had staid
+another week I should have been killed with kindness, and with eating
+and drinking.
+
+
+BIRDS--AND A CAUTION
+
+_May 14._--Home again; down temporarily in the Jersey woods. Between 8
+and 9 A.M. a full concert of birds, from different quarters, in keeping
+with the fresh scent, the peace, the naturalness all around me. I am
+lately noticing the russet-back, size of the robin or a trifle less,
+light breast and shoulders, with irregular dark stripes--tail long--sits
+hunch'd up by the hour these days, top of a tall bush, or some tree,
+singing blithely. I often get near and listen, as he seems tame; I like
+to watch the working of his bill and throat, the quaint sidle of his
+body, and flex of his long tail. I hear the woodpecker, and night and
+early morning the shuttle of the whip-poor-will--noons, the gurgle of
+thrush delicious, and _meo-o-ow_ of the cat-bird. Many I cannot name;
+but I do not very particularly seek information. (You must not know too
+much, or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers
+and water-craft; a certain free margin, and even vagueness--perhaps
+ignorance, credulity--helps your enjoyment of these things, and of the
+sentiment of feather'd, wooded, river, or marine Nature generally. I
+repeat it--don't want to know too exactly, or the reasons why. My own
+notes have been written off-hand in the latitude of middle New Jersey.
+Though they describe what I saw--what appear'd to me--I dare say the
+expert ornithologist, botanist or entomologist will detect more than one
+slip in them.)
+
+
+SAMPLES OF MY COMMON-PLACE BOOK
+
+I ought not to offer a record of these days, interests, recuperations,
+without including a certain old, well-thumb'd common-place book,[18]
+filled with favorite excerpts, I carried in my pocket for three summers,
+and absorb'd over and over again, when the mood invited. I find so much
+in having a poem or fine suggestion sink into me (a little then goes a
+great ways) prepar'd by these vacant-sane and natural influences.
+
+
+Note:
+
+[18] _Samples of my common-place book down at the creek:_
+
+I have--says old Pindar--many swift arrows in my quiver which speak to
+the wise, though they need an interpreter to the thoughtless. Such a man
+as it takes ages to make, and ages to understand. _H. D. Thoreau._
+
+If you hate a man, don't kill him, but let him live.--_Buddhistic._
+Famous swords are made of refuse scraps, thought worthless.
+
+Poetry is the only verity--the expression of a sound mind speaking after
+the ideal--and not after the apparent.--_Emerson_.
+
+The form of oath among the Shoshone Indians is, "The earth hears me. The
+sun hears me. Shall I lie?"
+
+The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of
+cities, nor the crops--no, but the kind of a man the country turns
+out.--_Emerson_.
+
+    The whole wide ether is the eagle's sway:
+    The whole earth is a brave man's fatherland.--_Euripides_.
+
+    Spices crush'd, their pungence yield,
+      Trodden scents their sweets respire;
+    Would you have its strength reveal'd?
+      Cast the incense in the fire.
+
+Matthew Arnold speaks of "the huge Mississippi of falsehood called
+History."
+
+    The wind blows north, the wind blows south,
+        The wind blows east and west;
+    No matter how the free wind blows,
+         Some ship will find it best.
+
+Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you, and
+be silent.--_Epictetus_.
+
+Victor Hugo makes a donkey meditate and apostrophize thus:
+
+    My brother, man, if you would know the truth,
+    We both are by the same dull walls shut in;
+    The gate is massive and the dungeon strong.
+    But you look through the key-hole out beyond,
+    And call this knowledge; yet have not at hand
+    The key wherein to turn the fatal lock.
+
+"William Cullen Bryant surprised me once," relates a writer in a
+New York paper, "by saying that prose was the natural language of
+composition, and he wonder'd how anybody came to write poetry."
+
+    Farewell! I did not know thy worth;
+        But thou art gone, and now 'tis prized:
+    So angels walk'd unknown on earth,
+        But when they flew were recognized.--_Hood_.
+
+John Burroughs, writing of Thoreau, says: "He improves with age--in fact
+requires age to take off a little of his asperity, and fully ripen him.
+The world likes a good hater and refuser almost as well as it likes a
+good lover and accepter--only it likes him farther off."
+
+_Louise Michel at the burial of Blanqui, (1881.)_
+
+Blanqui drill'd his body to subjection to his grand conscience and his
+noble passions, and commencing as a young man, broke with all that is
+sybaritish in modern civilization. Without the power to sacrifice self,
+great ideas will never bear fruit.
+
+    Out of the leaping furnace flame
+    A mass of molten silver came;
+    Then, beaten into pieces three,
+    Went forth to meet its destiny.
+    The first a crucifix was made,
+    Within a soldier's knapsack laid;
+    The second was a locket fair,
+    Where a mother kept her dead child's hair;
+    The third--a bangle, bright and warm,
+    Around a faithless woman's arm.
+
+    A mighty pain to love it is,
+    And'tis a pain that pain to miss;
+    But of all pain the greatest pain,
+    It is to love, but love in vain.
+
+_Maurice F. Egan on De Guerin._
+
+    A pagan heart, a Christian soul had he,
+      He followed Christ, yet for dead Pan he sigh'd,
+      Till earth and heaven met within his breast:
+    As if Theocritus in Sicily
+      Had come upon the Figure crucified,
+      And lost his gods in deep, Christ-given rest.
+
+    And if I pray, the only prayer
+      That moves my lips for me,
+    Is, leave the mind that now I bear,
+      And give me Liberty.--_Emily Bronte._
+
+    I travel on not knowing,
+      I would not if I might;
+    I would rather walk with God in the dark,
+      Than go alone in the light;
+    I would rather walk with Him by faith
+      Than pick my way by sight
+
+
+MY NATIVE SAND AND SALT ONCE MORE
+
+_July 25, '81.--Far Rockaway, L. I._--A good day here, on a jaunt,
+amid the sand and salt, a steady breeze setting in from the sea, the sun
+shining, the sedge-odor, the noise of the surf, a mixture of hissing and
+booming, the milk-white crest curling. I had a leisurely bath and naked
+ramble as of old, on the warm-gray shore-sands, my companions off in a
+oat in deeper water--(I shouting to them Jupiter's menaces against the
+gods, from Pope's Homer) _July 28--to Long Branch_--8-1/2 A.M., on the
+steamer "Plymouth Rock," foot of 23d street, New York, for Long
+Branch. Another fine day, fine sights, the shores, the shipping and
+bay--everything comforting to the body and spirit of me. (I find the
+human and objective atmosphere of New York city and Brooklyn more
+affiliative to me than any other.) _An hour later_--Still on the
+steamer, now sniffing the salt very plainly--the long pulsating _swash_
+as our boat steams seaward--the hills of Navesink and many passing
+vessels--the air the best part of all. At Long Branch the bulk of the
+day, stopt at a good hotel, took all very leisurely, had an excellent
+dinner, and then drove for over two hours about the place, especially
+Ocean avenue, the finest drive one can imagine, seven or eight miles
+right along the beach. In all directions costly villas, palaces,
+millionaires--(but few among them I opine like my friend George W.
+Childs, whose personal integrity, generosity, unaffected simplicity, go
+beyond all worldly wealth.)
+
+
+HOT WEATHER NEW YORK
+
+_August_.--In the big city awhile. Even the height of the dog-days,
+there is a good deal of fun about New York, if you only avoid fluster,
+and take all the buoyant wholesomeness that offers. More comfort, too,
+than most folks think. A middle-aged man, with plenty of money in his
+pocket, tells me that he has been off for a month to all the swell
+places, has disburs'd a small fortune, has been hot and out of kilter
+everywhere, and has return' d home and lived in New York city the last
+two weeks quite contented and happy. People forget when it is hot here,
+it is generally hotter still in other places.
+
+New York is so situated, with the great ozonic brine on both sides, it
+comprises the most favorable health-chances in the world. (If only the
+suffocating crowding of some of its tenement houses could be broken
+up.) I find I never sufficiently realized how beautiful are the upper
+two-thirds of Manhattan island. I am stopping at Mott Haven, and have
+been familiar now for ten days with the region above One-hundredth
+street, and along the Harlem river and Washington heights. Am dwelling a
+few days with my friends Mr. and Mrs. J. H. J., and a merry houseful of
+young ladies. Am putting the last touches on the printer's copy of my
+new volume of "Leaves of Grass"--the completed book at last. Work at it
+two or three hours, and then go down and loaf along the Harlem river;
+have just had a good spell of this recreation. The sun sufficiently
+veil'd, a soft south breeze, the river full of small or large shells
+(light taper boats) darting up and down, some singly, now and then
+long ones with six or eight young fellows practicing--very inspiriting
+sights. Two fine yachts lie anchor'd off the shore. I linger long,
+enjoying the sundown, the glow, the streak'd sky, the heights,
+distances, shadows. _Aug. 10._--As I haltingly ramble an hour or two
+this forenoon by the more secluded parts of the shore, or sit under
+an old cedar half way up the hill, the city near in view, many young
+parties gather to bathe or swim, squads of boys, generally twos or
+threes, some larger ones, along the sand-bottom, or off an old pier
+close by. A peculiar and pretty carnival--at its height a hundred lads
+or young men, very democratic, but all decent behaving. The laughter,
+voices, calls, re-responses--the springing and diving of the bathers
+from the great string-piece of the decay'd pier, where climb or stand
+long ranks of them, naked, rose-color'd, with movements, postures ahead
+of any sculpture. To all this, the sun, so bright, the dark-green shadow
+of the hills the other side, the amber-rolling waves, changing as the
+tide comes in to a trans-parent tea-color--the frequent splash of the
+playful boys, sousing--the glittering drops sparkling, and the good
+western breeze blowing.
+
+
+CUSTER'S LAST RALLY
+
+Went to-day to see this just-finish'd painting by John Mulvany, who
+has been out in far Dakota, on the spot, at the forts, and among the
+frontiersmen, soldiers and Indians, for the last two years, on purpose
+to sketch it in from reality, or the best that could be got of it. Sat
+for over an hour before the picture, completely absorb'd in the first
+view. A vast canvas, I should say twenty or twenty-two feet by twelve,
+all crowded, and yet not crowded, conveying such a vivid play of color,
+it takes a little time to get used to it. There are no tricks; there
+is no throwing of shades in masses; it is all at first painfully real,
+overwhelming, needs good nerves to look at it. Forty or fifty figures,
+perhaps more, in full finish and detail in the mid-ground, with three
+times that number, or more, through the rest--swarms upon swarms of
+savage Sioux, in their war-bonnets, frantic, mostly on ponies, driving
+through the background, through the smoke, like a hurricane of demons.
+A dozen of the figures are wonderful. Altogether a western, autochthonic
+phase of America, the frontiers, culminating, typical, deadly, heroic to
+the uttermost--nothing in the books like it, nothing in Homer, nothing
+in Shakspere; more grim and sublime than either, all native, all our
+own, and all a fact. A great lot of muscular, tan-faced men, brought
+to bay under terrible circumstances--death ahold of them, yet every man
+undaunted, not one losing his head, wringing out every cent of the pay
+before they sell their lives. Custer (his hair cut short stands in
+the middle), with dilated eye and extended arm, aiming a huge cavalry
+pistol. Captain Cook is there, partially wounded, blood on the
+white handkerchief around his head, aiming his carbine coolly, half
+kneeling--(his body was afterwards found close by Custer's.) The
+slaughter'd or half-slaughter'd horses, for breastworks, make a peculiar
+feature. Two dead Indians, herculean, lie in the foreground, clutching
+their Winchester rifles, very characteristic. The many soldiers, their
+faces and attitudes, the carbines, the broad-brimm'd western hats, the
+powder-smoke in puffs, the dying horses with their rolling eyes
+almost human in their agony, the clouds of war-bonneted Sioux in the
+background, the figures of Custer and Cook--with indeed the whole scene,
+dreadful, yet with an attraction and beauty that will remain in my
+memory. With all its color and fierce action, a certain Greek continence
+pervades it. A sunny sky and clear light envelop all. There is an
+almost entire absence of the stock traits of European war pictures. The
+physiognomy of the work is realistic and Western. I only saw it for an
+hour or so; but it needs to be seen many times--needs to be studied over
+and over again. I could look on such a work at brief intervals all
+my life without tiring; it is very tonic to me; then it has an ethic
+purpose below all, as all great art must have. The artist said the
+sending of the picture abroad, probably to London, had been talk'd of.
+I advised him if it went abroad to take it to Paris. I think they might
+appreciate it there--nay, they certainly would. Then I would like to
+show Messieur Crapeau that some things can be done in America as well as
+others.
+
+
+SOME OLD ACQUAINTANCES--MEMORIES
+
+_Aug. 16._--"Chalk a big mark for today," was one of the sayings of an
+old sportsman-friend of mine, when he had had unusually good luck--come
+home thoroughly tired, but with satisfactory results of fish or birds.
+
+Well, to-day might warrant such a mark for me. Everything propitious
+from the start. An hour's fresh stimulation, coming down ten miles of
+Manhattan island by railroad and 8 o'clock stage. Then an excellent
+breakfast at Pfaff's restaurant, 24th street. Our host himself, an old
+friend of mine, quickly appear'd on the scene to welcome me and bring
+up the news, and, first opening a big fat bottle of the best wine in
+the cellar, talk about ante-bellum times, '59 and '60, and the jovial
+suppers at his then Broadway place, near Bleecker street. Ah, the
+friends and names and frequenters, those times, that place. Most are
+dead--Ada Clare, Wilkins, Daisy Sheppard, O'Brien, Henry Clapp, Stanley,
+Mullin, Wood, Brougham, Arnold--all gone. And there Pfaff and I, sitting
+opposite each other at the little table, gave a remembrance to them in a
+style they would have themselves fully confirm'd, namely, big, brimming,
+fill'd-up champagne-glasses, drain'd in abstracted silence, very
+leisurely, to the last drop. (Pfaff is a generous German _restaurateur_,
+silent, stout, jolly, and I should say the best selecter of champagne in
+America.)
+
+
+A DISCOVERY OF OLD AGE
+
+Perhaps the best is always cumulative. One's eating and drinking one
+wants fresh, and for the nonce, right off, and have done with it--but I
+would not give a straw for that person or poem, or friend, or city,
+or work of art, that was not more grateful the second time than the
+first--and more still the third. Nay, I do not believe any grandest
+eligibility ever comes forth at first. In my own experience, (persons,
+poems, places, characters,) I discover the best hardly ever at first,
+(no absolute rule about it, however,) sometimes suddenly bursting
+forth, or stealthily opening to me, perhaps after years of unwitting
+familiarity, unappreciation, usage.
+
+
+A VISIT, AT THE LAST, TO R. W. EMERSON
+
+_Concord, Mass._--Out here on a visit--elastic, mellow, Indian-summery
+weather. Came to-day from Boston, (a pleasant ride of 40 minutes by
+steam, through Somerville, Belmont, Waltham, Stony Brook, and other
+lively towns,) convoy'd by my friend F. B. Sanborn, and to his ample
+house, and the kindness and hospitality of Mrs. S. and their fine
+family. Am writing this under the shade of some old hickories and elms,
+just after 4 P.M., on the porch, within a stone's throw of the Concord
+river. Off against me, across stream, on a meadow and side-hill,
+haymakers are gathering and wagoning-in probably their second or third
+crop. The spread of emerald-green and brown, the knolls, the score or
+two of little haycocks dotting the meadow, the loaded-up wagons, the
+patient horses, the slow-strong action of the men and pitchforks--all in
+the just-waning afternoon, with patches of yellow sun-sheen, mottled
+by long shadows--a cricket shrilly chirping, herald of the dusk--a boat
+with two figures noiselessly gliding along the little river, passing
+under the stone bridge-arch--the slight settling haze of aerial
+moisture, the sky and the peacefulness expanding in all directions and
+overhead--fill and soothe me.
+
+_Same Evening._--Never had I a better piece of luck befall me: a long
+and blessed evening with Emerson, in a way I couldn't have wish'd better
+or different. For nearly two hours he has been placidly sitting where
+I could see his face in the best light, near me. Mrs. S.'s back-parlor
+well fill'd with people, neighbors, many fresh and charming faces,
+women, mostly young, but some old. My friend A. B. Alcott and his
+daughter Louisa were there early. A good deal of talk, the subject Henry
+Thoreau--some new glints of his life and fortunes, with letters to and
+from him--one of the best by Margaret Fuller, others by Horace Greeley,
+Channing, &c.--one from Thoreau himself, most quaint and interesting.
+(No doubt I seem'd very stupid to the roomful of company, taking hardly
+any part in the conversation; but I had "my own pail to milk in," as the
+Swiss proverb puts it.) My seat and the relative arrangement were such
+that, without being rude, or anything of the kind, I could just look
+squarely at E., which I did a good part of the two hours. On entering,
+he had spoken very briefly and politely to several of the company,
+then settled himself in his chair, a trifle push'd back, and, though a
+listener and apparently an alert one, remain'd silent through the whole
+talk and discussion. A lady friend quietly took a seat next him, to
+give special attention. A good color in his face, eyes clear, with the
+well-known expression of sweetness, and the old clear-peering aspect
+quite the same.
+
+_Next Day_.--Several hours at E.'s house, and dinner there. An
+old familiar house, (he has been in it thirty-five years,) with
+surroundings, furnishment, roominess, and plain elegance and fullness,
+signifying democratic ease, sufficient opulence, and an admirable
+old-fashioned simplicity--modern luxury, with its mere sumptuousness and
+affectation, either touch'd lightly upon or ignored altogether. Dinner
+the same. Of course the best of the occasion (Sunday, September 18,
+'81) was the sight of E. himself. As just said, a healthy color in the
+cheeks, and good light in the eyes, cheery expression, and just the
+amount of talking that best suited, namely, a word or short phrase only
+where needed, and almost always with a smile. Besides Emerson himself,
+Mrs. E., with their daughter Ellen, the son Edward and his wife, with
+my friend F. S. and Mrs. S., and others, relatives and intimates. Mrs.
+Emerson, resuming the subject of the evening before, (I sat next to
+her,) gave me further and fuller information about Thoreau, who, years
+ago, during Mr. E.'s absence in Europe, had lived for some time in the
+family, by invitation.
+
+
+OTHER CONCORD NOTATIONS
+
+Though the evening at Mr. and Mrs. Sanborn's, and the memorable family
+dinner at Mr. and Mrs. Emerson's, have most pleasantly and permanently
+fill'd my memory, I must not slight other notations of Concord. I went
+to the old Manse, walk'd through the ancient garden, enter'd the rooms,
+noted the quaintness, the unkempt grass and bushes, the little panes in
+the windows, the low ceilings, the spicy smell, the creepers embowering
+the light. Went to the Concord battle ground, which is close by, scann'd
+French's statue, "the Minute Man," read Emerson's poetic inscription on
+the base, linger'd a long while on the bridge, and stopp'd by the grave
+of the unnamed British soldiers buried there the day after the fight
+in April, '75. Then riding on, (thanks to my friend Miss M. and her
+spirited white ponies, she driving them,) a half hour at Hawthorne's and
+Thoreau's graves. I got out and went up of course on foot, and stood a
+long while and ponder'd. They lie close together in a pleasant wooded
+spot well up the cemetery hill, "Sleepy Hollow." The flat surface of the
+first was densely cover'd by myrtle, with a border of arbor-vitae,
+and the other had a brown headstone, moderately elaborate, with
+inscriptions. By Henry's side lies his brother John, of whom much
+was expected, but he died young. Then to Walden pond, that beautiful
+embower'd sheet of water, and spent over an hour there. On the spot in
+the woods where Thoreau had his solitary house is now quite a cairn of
+stones, to mark the place; I too carried one and deposited on the heap.
+As we drove back, saw the "School of Philosophy," but it was shut up,
+and I would not have it open'd for me. Near by stopp'd at the house
+of W.T. Harris, the Hegelian, who came out, and we had a pleasant chat
+while I sat in the wagon. I shall not soon forget those Concord drives,
+and especially that charming Sunday forenoon one with my friend Miss M.,
+and the white ponies.
+
+
+BOSTON COMMON--MORE OF EMERSON
+
+_Oct. 10-13._--I spend a good deal of time on the Common, these
+delicious days and nights--every mid-day from 11.30 to about 1--and
+almost every sunset another hour. I know all the big trees, especially
+the old elms along Tremont and Beacon streets, and have come to a
+sociable silent understanding with most of them, in the sunlit air, (yet
+crispy-cool enough,) as I saunter along the wide unpaved walks. Up
+and down this breadth by Beacon street, between these same old elms,
+I walk'd for two hours, of a bright sharp February mid-day twenty-one
+years ago, with Emerson, then in his prime, keen, physically and
+morally magnetic, arm'd at every point, and when he chose, wielding the
+emotional just as well as the intellectual. During those two hours
+he was the talker and I the listener. It was an argument-statement,
+reconnoitring, review, attack, and pressing home, (like an army corps in
+order, artillery, cavalry, infantry,) of all that could be said against
+that part (and a main part) in the construction of my poems, "Children
+of Adam." More precious than gold to me that dissertion--it afforded
+me, ever after, this strange and paradoxical lesson; each point of E.'s
+statement was unanswerable, no judge's charge ever more complete or
+convincing, I could never hear the points better put--and then I felt
+down in my soul the clear and unmistakable conviction to disobey all,
+and pursue my own way. "What have you to say then to such things?" said
+E., pausing in conclusion. "Only that while I can't answer them at all,
+I feel more settled than ever to adhere to my own theory, and exemplify
+it," was my candid response. Whereupon we went and had a good dinner
+at the American House. And thenceforward I never waver'd or was touch'd
+with qualms, (as I confess I had been two or three times before.)
+
+
+AN OSSIANIC NIGHT--DEAREST FRIENDS
+
+_Nov., '81_.--Again back in Camden. As I cross the Delaware in long trips
+tonight, between 9 and 11, the scene overhead is a peculiar one--swift
+sheets of flitting vapor-gauze, follow'd by dense clouds throwing an
+inky pall on everything. Then a spell of that transparent steel-gray
+black sky I have noticed under similar circumstances, on which the moon
+would beam for a few moments with calm lustre, throwing down a broad
+dazzle of highway on the waters; then the mists careering again. All
+silently, yet driven as if by the furies they sweep along, sometimes
+quite thin, sometimes thicker--a real Ossianic night--amid the
+whirl, absent or dead friends, the old, the past, somehow tenderly
+suggested--while the Gael-strains chant themselves from the mists--"Be
+thy soul blest, O Carril! in the midst of thy eddying winds. O that thou
+wouldst come to my hall when I am alone by night! And thou dost come,
+my friend. I hear often thy light hand on my harp, when it hangs on the
+distant wall, and the feeble sound touches my ear. Why dost thou not
+speak to me in my grief, and tell me when I shall behold my friends? But
+thou passest away in thy murmuring blast; the wind whistles through the
+gray hairs of Ossian."
+
+But most of all, those changes of moon and sheets of hurrying vapor and
+black clouds, with the sense of rapid action in weird silence, recall
+the far-back Erse belief that such above were the preparations for
+receiving the wraiths of just-slain warriors--["We sat that night in
+Selma, round the strength of the shell. The wind was abroad in the oaks.
+The spirit of the mountain roar'd. The blast came rustling through the
+hall, and gently touch'd my harp. The sound was mournful and low, like
+the song of the tomb. Fingal heard it the first. The crowded sighs of
+his bosom rose. Some of my heroes are low, said the gray-hair'd king
+of Morven. I hear the sound of death on the harp. Ossian, touch the
+trembling string. Bid the sorrow rise, that their spirits may fly with
+joy to Morven's woody hills. I touch'd the harp before the king; the
+sound was mournful and low. Bend forward from your clouds, I said,
+ghosts of my fathers! bend. Lay by the red terror of your course.
+Receive the falling chief; whether he comes from a distant land, or
+rises from the rolling sea. Let his robe of mist be near; his spear that
+is form'd of a cloud. Place a half-extinguish'd meteor by his side, in
+the form of a hero's sword. And oh! let his countenance be lovely, that
+his friends may delight in his presence. Bend from your clouds, I said,
+ghosts of my fathers, bend. Such was my song in Selma, to the lightly
+trembling harp."]
+
+How or why I know not, just at the moment, but I too muse and think of
+my best friends in their distant homes--of William O'Connor, of
+Maurice Bucke, of John Burroughs, and of Mrs. Gilchrist--friends of my
+soul--stanchest friends of my other soul, my poems.
+
+
+ONLY A NEW FERRY-BOAT
+
+_Jan. 12, '82_.--Such a show as the Delaware presented an hour before
+sundown yesterday evening, all along between Philadelphia and Camden,
+is worth weaving into an item. It was full tide, a fair breeze from the
+southwest, the water of a pale tawny color, and just enough motion to
+make things frolicsome and lively. Add to these an approaching sunset
+of unusual splendor, a broad tumble of clouds, with much golden haze and
+profusion of beaming shaft and dazzle. In the midst of all, in the clear
+drab of the afternoon light, there steam'd up the river the large,
+new boat, "the Wenonah," as pretty an object as you could wish to see,
+lightly and swiftly skimming along, all trim and white, cover'd with
+flags, transparent red and blue, streaming out in the breeze. Only a new
+ferry-boat, and yet in its fitness comparable with the prettiest product
+of Nature's cunning, and rivaling it. High up in the transparent ether
+gracefully balanced and circled four or five great sea hawks, while here
+below, amid the pomp and picturesqueness of sky and river, swam this
+creation of artificial beauty and motion and power, in its way no less
+perfect.
+
+
+DEATH OF LONGFELLOW
+
+_Camden, April, '82_.--I have just return'd from an old forest haunt,
+where I love to go occasionally away from parlors, pavements, and the
+newspapers and magazines--and where, of a clear forenoon, deep in the
+shade of pines and cedars and a tangle of old laurel-trees and vines,
+the news of Longfellow's death first reach'd me. For want of anything
+better, let me lightly twine a sprig of the sweet ground-ivy trailing so
+plentifully through the dead leaves at my feet, with reflections of that
+half hour alone, there in the silence, and lay it as my contribution on
+the dead bard's grave.
+
+Longfellow in his voluminous works seems to me not only to be eminent
+in the style and forms of poetical expression that mark the present age,
+(an idiosyncrasy, almost a sickness, of verbal melody,) but to bring
+what is always dearest as poetry to the general human heart and taste,
+and probably must be so in the nature of things. He is certainly the
+sort of bard and counteractant most needed for our materialistic,
+self-assertive, money-worshipping, Anglo-Saxon races, and especially for
+the present age in America--an age tyrannically regulated with reference
+to the manufacturer, the merchant, the financier, the politician and
+the day workman--for whom and among whom he comes as the poet of melody,
+courtesy, deference--poet of the mellow twilight of the past in
+Italy, Germany, Spain, and in Northern Europe--poet of all sympathetic
+gentleness--and universal poet of women and young people. I should have
+to think long if I were ask'd to name the man who has done more, and in
+more valuable directions, for America.
+
+I doubt if there ever was before such a fine intuitive judge and
+selecter of poems. His translations of many German and Scandinavian
+pieces are said to be better than the vernaculars. He does not urge or
+lash. His influence is like good drink or air. He is not tepid either,
+but always vital, with flavor, motion, grace. He strikes a splendid
+average, and does not sing exceptional passions, or humanity's jagged
+escapades. He is not revolutionary, brings nothing offensive or new,
+does not deal hard blows. On the contrary, his songs soothe and heal, or
+if they excite, it is a healthy and agreeable excitement. His very
+anger is gentle, is at second hand, (as in the "Quadroon Girl" and the
+"Witnesses.")
+
+There is no undue element of pensiveness in Longfellow's strains. Even
+in the early translation, the Manrique, the movement is as of strong
+and steady wind or tide, holding up and buoying. Death is not avoided
+through his many themes, but there is something almost winning in his
+original verses and renderings on that dread subject--as, closing "the
+Happiest Land" dispute,
+
+    And then the landlord's daughter
+      Up to heaven rais'd her hand,
+    And said, "Ye may no more contend,
+      There lies the happiest land."
+
+To the ungracious complaint-charge of his want of racy nativity and
+special originality, I shall only say that America and the world may
+well be reverently thankful--can never be thankful enough--for any such
+singing-bird vouchsafed out of the centuries, without asking that the
+notes be different from those of other songsters; adding what I have
+heard Longfellow himself say, that ere the New World can be worthily
+original, and announce herself and her own heroes, she must be well
+saturated with the originality of others, and respectfully consider the
+heroes that lived before Agamemnon.
+
+
+STARTING NEWSPAPERS
+
+_Reminiscences (From the "Camden Courier")_. As I sat taking my evening
+sail across the Delaware in the staunch ferry-boat "Beverly," a night or
+two ago, I was join'd by two young reporter friends. "I have a message
+for you," said one of them; "the C. folks told me to say they would like
+a piece sign'd by your name, to go in their first number. Can you do
+it for them?" "I guess so," said I; "what might it be about?" "Well,
+anything on newspapers, or perhaps what you've done yourself, starting
+them." And off the boys went, for we had reach'd the Philadelphia side.
+The hour was fine and mild, the bright half-moon shining; Venus, with
+excess of splendor, just setting in the west, and the great Scorpion
+rearing its length more than half up in the southeast. As I cross'd
+leisurely for an hour in the pleasant night-scene, my young friend's
+words brought up quite a string of reminiscences.
+
+I commenced when I was but a boy of eleven or twelve writing sentimental
+bits for the old "Long Island Patriot," in Brooklyn; this was about
+1832. Soon after, I had a piece or two in George P. Morris's then
+celebrated and fashionable "Mirror," of New York city. I remember
+with what half-suppress'd excitement I used to watch for the big, fat,
+red-faced, slow-moving, very old English carrier who distributed the
+"Mirror" in Brooklyn; and when I got one, opening and cutting the leaves
+with trembling fingers. How it made my heart double-beat to see _my
+piece_ on the pretty white paper, in nice type.
+
+My first real venture was the "Long Islander," in my own beautiful
+town of Huntington, in 1839. I was about twenty years old. I had been
+teaching country school for two or three years in various parts of
+Suffolk and Queens counties, but liked printing; had been at it while
+a lad, learn'd the trade of compositor, and was encouraged to start a
+paper in the region where I was born. I went to New York, bought a press
+and types, hired some little help, but did most of the work myself,
+including the press-work. Everything seem'd turning out well; (only
+my own restlessness prevented me gradually establishing a permanent
+property there.) I bought a good horse, and every week went all round
+the country serving my papers, devoting one day and night to it. I never
+had happier jaunts--going over to south side, to Babylon, down the south
+road, across to Smithtown and Comac, and back home. The experiences of
+those jaunts, the dear old-fashion'd farmers and their wives, the stops
+by the hay-fields, the hospitality, nice dinners, occasional evenings,
+the girls, the rides through the brush, come up in my memory to this
+day.
+
+I next went to the "Aurora" daily in New York city--a sort of free
+lance. Also wrote regularly for the "Tattler," an evening paper. With
+these and a little outside work I was occupied off and on, until I
+went to edit the "Brooklyn Eagle," where for two years I had one of the
+pleasantest sits of my life--a good owner, good pay, and easy work and
+hours. The troubles in the Democratic party broke forth about those
+times (1848-'49) and I split off with the radicals, which led to rows
+with the boss and "the party," and I lost my place.
+
+Being now out of a job, I was offer'd impromptu, (it happen'd between
+the acts one night in the lobby of the old Broadway theatre near Pearl
+street, New York city,) a good chance to go down to New Orleans on the
+staff of the "Crescent," a daily to be started there with plenty of
+capital behind it. One of the owners, who was north buying material,
+met me walking in the lobby, and though that was our first acquaintance,
+after fifteen minutes' talk (and a drink) we made a formal bargain, and
+he paid me two hundred dollars down to bind the contract and bear my
+expenses to New Orleans. I started two days afterwards; had a good
+leisurely time, as the paper wasn't to be out in three weeks. I enjoy'd
+my journey and Louisiana life much. Returning to Brooklyn a year or two
+afterward I started the "Freeman," first as a weekly, then daily. Pretty
+soon the secession war broke out, and I, too, got drawn in the current
+southward, and spent the following three years there, (as memorandized
+preceding.)
+
+Besides starting them as aforementioned, I have had to do, one time or
+another, during my life, with a long list of papers, at divers places,
+sometimes under queer circumstances. During the war, the hospitals at
+Washington, among other means of amusement, printed a little sheet among
+themselves, surrounded by wounds and death, the "Armory Square Gazette,"
+to which I contributed. The same long afterward, casually, to a paper--I
+think it was call'd the "Jimplecute"--out in Colorado where I stopp'd at
+the time. When I was in Quebec province, in Canada, in 1880, I went into
+the queerest little old French printing-office near Tadousac. It was far
+more primitive and ancient than my Camden friend William Kurtz's place
+up on Federal street. I remember, as a youngster, several characteristic
+old printers of a kind hard to be seen these days.
+
+
+THE GREAT UNREST OF WHICH WE ARE PART
+
+My thoughts went floating on vast and mystic currents as I sat to-day in
+solitude and half-shade by the creek--returning mainly to two principal
+centres. One of my cherish'd themes for a never-achiev'd poem has been
+the two impetuses of man and the universe--in the latter, creation's
+incessant unrest,[19] exfoliation, (Darwin's evolution, I suppose.)
+Indeed, what is Nature but change, in all its visible, and still
+more its invisible processes? Or what is humanity in its faith, love,
+heroism, poetry, even morals, but _emotion_?
+
+
+Note:
+
+[19] "Fifty thousand years ago the constellation of the Great Bear or
+Dipper was a starry cross; a hundred thousand years hence the imaginary
+Dipper will be upside down, and the stars which form the bowl and handle
+will have changed places. The misty nebulae are moving, and besides
+are whirling around in great spirals, some one way, some another. Every
+molecule of matter in the whole universe is swinging to and fro; every
+particle of ether which fills space is in jelly-like vibration. Light
+is one kind of motion, heat another, electricity another, magnetism
+another, sound another. Every human sense is the result of motion; every
+perception, every thought is but motion of the molecules of the brain
+translated by that incomprehensible thing we call mind. The processes
+of growth, of existence, of decay, whether in worlds, or in the minutest
+organisms, are but motion."
+
+
+BY EMERSON'S GRAVE
+
+_May 6, '82._--We stand by Emerson's new-made grave without
+sadness--indeed a solemn joy and faith, almost hauteur--our soul-benison
+no mere
+
+    "Warrior, rest, thy task is done,"
+
+for one beyond the warriors of the world lies surely symboll'd here.
+A just man, poised on himself, all-loving, all-inclosing, and sane and
+clear as the sun. Nor does it seem so much Emerson himself we are here
+to honor--it is conscience, simplicity, culture, humanity's attributes
+at their best, yet applicable if need be to average affairs, and
+eligible to all. So used are we to suppose a heroic death can only
+come from out of battle or storm, or mighty personal contest, or amid
+dramatic incidents or danger, (have we not been taught so for ages by
+all the plays and poems?) that few even of those who most sympathizingly
+mourn Emerson's late departure will fully appreciate the ripen'd
+grandeur of that event, with its play of calm and fitness, like evening
+light on the sea.
+
+How I shall henceforth dwell on the blessed hours when, not long since,
+I saw that benignant face, the clear eyes, the silently smiling mouth,
+the form yet upright in its great age--to the very last, with so much
+spring and cheeriness, and such an absence of decrepitude, that even the
+term _venerable_ hardly seem'd fitting.
+
+Perhaps the life now rounded and completed in its mortal development,
+and which nothing can change or harm more, has its most illustrious
+halo, not in its splendid intellectual or esthetic products, but as
+forming in its entirety one of the few (alas! how few!) perfect and
+flawless excuses for being, of the entire literary class.
+
+We can say, as Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, It is not we who come to
+consecrate the dead--we reverently come to receive, if so it may be,
+some consecration to ourselves and daily work from him.
+
+
+AT PRESENT WRITING--PERSONAL
+
+_A letter to a German friend--extract_
+
+_May 31, '82._--"From to-day I enter upon my 64th year. The paralysis
+that first affected me nearly ten years ago, has since remain'd, with
+varying course--seems to have settled quietly down, and will probably
+continue. I easily tire, am very clumsy, cannot walk far; but my spirits
+are first-rate. I go around in public almost every day--now and then
+take long trips, by railroad or boat, hundreds of miles--live largely
+in the open air--am sunburnt and stout, (weigh 190)--keep up my activity
+and interest in life, people, progress, and the questions of the day.
+About two-thirds of the time I am quite comfortable. What mentality
+I ever had remains entirely unaffected; though physically I am a
+half-paralytic, and likely to be so, long as I live. But the principal
+object of my life seems to have been accomplish'd--I have the most
+devoted and ardent of friends, and affectionate relatives--and of
+enemies I really make no account."
+
+
+AFTER TRYING A CERTAIN BOOK
+
+I tried to read a beautifully printed and scholarly volume on "the
+Theory of Poetry," received by mail this morning from England--but gave
+it up at last for a bad job. Here are some capricious pencillings that
+follow'd, as I find them in my notes:
+
+In youth and maturity Poems are charged with sunshine and varied pomp of
+day; but as the soul more and more takes precedence, (the sensuous still
+included,) the Dusk becomes the poet's atmosphere. I too have sought,
+and ever seek, the brilliant sun, and make my songs according. But as I
+grow old, the half-lights of evening are far more to me.
+
+The play of Imagination, with the sensuous objects of Nature for symbols
+and Faith--with Love and Pride as the unseen impetus and moving-power of
+all, make up the curious chess-game of a poem.
+
+Common teachers or critics are always asking "What does it mean?"
+Symphony of fine musician, or sunset, or sea-waves rolling up the
+beach--what do they mean? Undoubtedly in the most subtle-elusive sense
+they mean something--as love does, and religion does, and the best
+poem;--but who shall fathom and define those meanings? (I do not intend
+this as a warrant for wildness and frantic escapades--but to justify the
+soul's frequent joy in what cannot be defined to the intellectual part,
+or to calculation.)
+
+At its best, poetic lore is like what may be heard of conversation in
+the dusk, from speakers far or hid, of which we get only a few broken
+murmurs. What is not gather'd is far more--perhaps the main thing.
+
+Grandest poetic passages are only to be taken at free removes, as we
+sometimes look for stars at night, not by gazing directly toward them,
+but off one side.
+
+(_To a poetic student and friend._)--I only seek to put you in rapport.
+Your own brain, heart, evolution, must not only understand the matter,
+but largely supply it.
+
+
+FINAL CONFESSIONS--LITERARY TESTS
+
+So draw near their end these garrulous notes. There have doubtless
+occurr'd some repetitions, technical errors in the consecutiveness of
+dates, in the minutiae of botanical, astronomical, &c., exactness,
+and perhaps elsewhere;--for in gathering up, writing, peremptorily
+dispatching copy, this hot weather, (last of July and through August,
+'82,) and delaying not the printers, I have had to hurry along, no time
+to spare. But in the deepest veracity of all--in reflections of objects,
+scenes, Nature's outpourings, to my senses and receptivity, as they
+seem'd to me--in the work of giving those who care for it, some
+authentic glints, specimen-days of my life--and in the _bona fide_
+spirit and relations, from author to reader, on all the subjects
+design'd, and as far as they go, I feel to make unmitigated claims.
+
+The synopsis of my early life, Long Island, New York city, and so forth,
+and the diary-jottings in the Secession war, tell their own story. My
+plan in starting what constitutes most of the middle of the book, was
+originally for hints and data of a Nature-poem that should carry one's
+experiences a few hours, commencing at noon-flush, and so through
+the after-part of the day--I suppose led to such idea by my own
+life-afternoon now arrived. But I soon found I could move at more ease,
+by giving the narrative at first hand. (Then there is a humiliating
+lesson one learns, in serene hours, of a fine day or night. Nature seems
+to look on all fixed-up poetry and art as something almost impertinent.)
+
+Thus I went on, years following, various seasons and areas, spinning
+forth my thought beneath the night and stars, (or as I was confined to
+my room by half-sickness,) or at midday looking out upon the sea, or far
+north steaming over the Saguenay's black breast, jotting all down in the
+loosest sort of chronological order, and here printing from my
+impromptu notes, hardly even the seasons group'd together, or anything
+corrected--so afraid of dropping what smack of outdoors or sun or
+starlight might cling to the lines, I dared not try to meddle with or
+smooth them. Every now and then, (not often, but for a foil,) I carried
+a book in my pocket--or perhaps tore out from some broken or cheap
+edition a bunch of loose leaves; most always had something of the sort
+ready, but only took it out when the mood demanded. In that way, utterly
+out of reach of literary conventions, I re-read many authors.
+
+I cannot divest my appetite of literature, yet I find myself eventually
+trying it all by Nature--_first premises_ many call it, but really the
+crowning results of all, laws, tallies and proofs. (Has it never occur'd
+to any one how the last deciding tests applicable to a book are
+entirely outside of technical and grammatical ones, and that any truly
+first-class production has little or nothing to do with the rules and
+calibres of ordinary critics? or the bloodless chalk of Allibone's
+Dictionary? I have fancied the ocean and the daylight, the mountain
+and the forest, putting their spirit in a judgment on our books. I have
+fancied some disembodied human soul giving its verdict.)
+
+
+NATURE AND DEMOCRACY--MORALITY
+
+Democracy most of all affiliates with the open air, is sunny and hardy
+and sane only with Nature--just as much as Art is. Something is required
+to temper both--to check them, restrain them from excess, morbidity. I
+have wanted, before departure, to bear special testimony to a very old
+lesson and requisite. American Democracy, in its myriad personalities,
+in factories, work-shops, stores, offices--through the dense streets and
+houses of cities, and all their manifold sophisticated life--must either
+be fibred, vitalized, by regular contact with out-door light and air and
+growths, farm-scenes, animals, fields, trees, birds, sun-warmth and free
+skies, or it will certainly dwindle and pale. We cannot have grand races
+of mechanics, work people, and commonalty, (the only specific purpose
+of America,) on any less terms. I conceive of no flourishing and heroic
+elements of Democracy in the United States, or of Democracy maintaining
+itself at all, without the Nature-element forming a main part--to be
+its health-element and beauty-element--to really underlie the whole
+politics, sanity, religion and art of the New World.
+
+Finally, the morality: "Virtue," said Marcus Aurelius, "what is it,
+only a living and enthusiastic sympathy with Nature?" Perhaps indeed the
+efforts of the true poets, founders, religions, literatures, all ages,
+have been, and ever will be, our time and times to come, essentially the
+same--to bring people back from their persistent strayings and sickly
+abstractions, to the costless average, divine, original concrete.
+
+
+
+
+
+COLLECT
+
+
+
+
+ONE OR TWO INDEX ITEMS
+
+
+Though the ensuing COLLECT and preceding SPECIMEN DAYS are both largely
+from memoranda already existing, the hurried peremptory needs of copy
+for the printers, already referr'd to--(the musicians' story of a
+composer up in a garret rushing the middle body and last of his score
+together, while the fiddlers are playing the first parts down in the
+concert-room)--of this haste, while quite willing to get the consequent
+stimulus of life and motion, I am sure there must have resulted sundry
+technical errors. If any are too glaring they will be corrected in a
+future edition.
+
+A special word about PIECES IN EARLY YOUTH at the end. On jaunts over
+Long Island, as boy and young fellow, nearly half a century ago, I heard
+of, or came across in my own experience, characters, true occurrences,
+incidents, which I tried my 'prentice hand at recording--(I was
+then quite an "abolitionist" and advocate of the "temperance" and
+"anti-capital-punishment" causes)--and publish'd during occasional
+visits to New York city. A majority of the sketches appear'd first in
+the "Democratic Review," others in the "Columbian Magazine," or the
+"American Review," of that period. My serious wish were to have all
+those crude and boyish pieces quietly dropp'd in oblivion--but to avoid
+the annoyance of their surreptitious issue, (as lately announced, from
+outsiders,) I have, with some qualms, tack'd them on here. _A Dough-Face
+Song_ came out first in the "Evening Post"--_Blood-Money_, and _Wounded
+in the House of Friends_, in the "Tribune."
+
+_Poetry To-day in America_, &c., first appear'd (under the name of "_The
+Poetry of the Future_,") in "The North American Review" for February,
+1881. _A Memorandum at a Venture_, in same periodical, some time
+afterward.
+
+Several of the convalescent out-door scenes and literary items,
+preceding, originally appear'd in the fortnightly "Critic," of New York.
+
+
+
+
+DEMOCRATIC VISTAS
+
+
+As the greatest lessons of Nature through the universe are perhaps the
+lessons of variety and freedom, the same present the greatest lessons
+also in New World politics and progress. If a man were ask'd, for
+instance, the distinctive points contrasting modern European and
+American political and other life with the old Asiatic cultus, as
+lingering-bequeath'd yet in China and Turkey, he might find the amount
+of them in John Stuart Mill's profound essay on Liberty in the future,
+where he demands two main constituents, or sub-strata, for a truly grand
+nationality--1st, a large variety of character--and 2d, full play
+for human nature to expand itself in numberless and even conflicting
+directions--(seems to be for general humanity much like the influences
+that make up, in their limitless field, that perennial health-action of
+the air we call the weather--an infinite number of currents and forces,
+and contributions, and temperatures, and cross-purposes, whose ceaseless
+play of counterpart upon counterpart brings constant restoration and
+vitality.) With this thought--and not for itself alone, but all it
+necessitates, and draws after it--let me begin my speculations.
+
+America, filling the present with greatest deeds and problems,
+cheerfully accepting the past, including feudalism, (as, indeed, the
+present is but the legitimate birth of the past, including feudalism,)
+counts, as I reckon, for her justification and success, (for who, as
+yet, dare claim success?) almost entirely on the future. Nor is that
+hope unwarranted. To-day, ahead, though dimly yet, we see, in vistas, a
+copious, sane, gigantic offspring. For our New World I consider far less
+important for what it has done, or what it is, than for results to come.
+Sole among nationalities, these States have assumed the task to put in
+forms of lasting power and practicality, on areas of amplitude rivaling
+the operations of the physical kosmos, the moral political speculations
+of ages, long, long deferr'd, the democratic republican principle, and
+the theory of development and perfection by voluntary standards, and
+self-reliance. Who else, indeed, except the United States, in history,
+so far, have accepted in unwitting faith, and, as we now see, stand, act
+upon, and go security for, these things? But preluding no longer, let
+me strike the key-note of the following strain. First premising that,
+though the passages of it have been written at widely different
+times, (it is, in fact, a collection of memoranda, perhaps for future
+designers, comprehenders,) and though it may be open to the charge of
+one part contradicting another--for there are opposite sides to the
+great question of democracy, as to every great question--I feel the
+parts harmoniously blended in my own realization and convictions, and
+present them to be read only in such oneness, each page and each claim
+and assertion modified and temper'd by the others. Bear in mind, too,
+that they are not the result of studying up in political economy, but of
+the ordinary sense, observing, wandering among men, these States, these
+stirring years of war and peace. I will not gloss over the appaling
+dangers of universal suffrage in the United States. In fact, it is to
+admit and face these dangers I am writing. To him or her within whose
+thought rages the battle, advancing, retreating, between democracy's
+convictions, aspirations, and the people's crudeness, vice, caprices, I
+mainly write this essay. I shall use the words America and democracy as
+convertible terms. Not an ordinary one is the issue. The United States
+are destined either to surmount the gorgeous history of feudalism, or
+else prove the most tremendous failure of time. Not the least doubtful
+am I on any prospects of their material success. The triumphant future
+of their business, geographic and productive departments, on larger
+scales and in more varieties than ever, is certain. In those respects
+the republic must soon (if she does not already) outstrip all examples
+hitherto afforded, and dominate the world.[20]
+
+Admitting all this, with the priceless value of our political
+institutions, general suffrage, (and fully acknowledging the latest,
+widest opening of the doors,) I say that, far deeper than these, what
+finally and only is to make of our western world a nationality superior
+to any hither known, and out-topping the past, must be vigorous,
+yet unsuspected Literatures, perfect personalities and sociologies,
+original, transcendental, and expressing (what, in highest sense, are
+not yet express'd at all,) democracy and the modern. With these, and
+out of these, I promulge new races of Teachers, and of perfect Women,
+indispensable to endow the birth-stock of a New World. For feudalism,
+caste, the ecclesiastic traditions, though palpably retreating from
+political institutions, still hold essentially, by their spirit, even in
+this country, entire possession of the more important fields, indeed the
+very subsoil, of education, and of social standards and literature.
+
+I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it
+founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools,
+theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere
+in the past, under opposite influences. It is curious to me that
+while so many voices, pens, minds, in the press, lecture-rooms, in our
+Congress, &c., are discussing intellectual topics, pecuniary dangers,
+legislative problems, the suffrage, tariff and labor questions, and the
+various business and benevolent needs of America, with propositions,
+remedies, often worth deep attention, there is one need, a hiatus the
+profoundest, that no eye seems to perceive, no voice to state. Our
+fundamental want to-day in the United States, with closest, amplest
+reference to present conditions, and to the future, is of a class,
+and the clear idea of a class, of native authors, literatuses, far
+different, far higher in grade than any yet known, sacerdotal, modern,
+fit to cope with our occasions, lands, permeating the whole mass of
+American mentality, taste, belief, breathing into it a new breath of
+life, giving it decision, affecting politics far more than the popular
+superficial suffrage, with results inside and underneath the elections
+of Presidents or Congresses--radiating, begetting appropriate teachers,
+schools, manners, and, as its grandest result, accomplishing, (what
+neither the schools nor the churches and their clergy have hitherto
+accomplish'd, and without which this nation will no more stand,
+permanently, soundly, than a house will stand without a substratum,) a
+religious and moral character beneath the political and productive
+and intellectual bases of the States. For know you not, dear, earnest
+reader, that the people of our land may all read and write, and may
+all possess the right to vote--and yet the main things may be entirely
+lacking?--(and this to suggest them.)
+
+View'd, to-day, from a point of view sufficiently over-arching,
+the problem of humanity all over the civilized world is social and
+religious, and is to be finally met and treated by literature. The
+priest departs, the divine literatus comes. Never was anything more
+wanted than, to-day, and here in the States, the poet of the modern is
+wanted, or the great literatus of the modern. At all times, perhaps, the
+central point in any nation, and that whence it is itself really sway'd
+the most, and whence it sways others, is its national literature,
+especially its archetypal poems. Above all previous lands, a great
+original literature is surely to become the justification and reliance,
+(in some respects the sole reliance,) of American democracy.
+
+Few are aware how the great literature penetrates all, gives hue to
+all, shapes aggregates and individuals, and, after subtle ways, with
+irresistible power, constructs, sustains, demolishes at will. Why tower,
+in reminiscence, above all the nations of the earth, two special lands,
+petty in themselves, yet inexpressibly gigantic, beautiful, columnar?
+Immortal Judah lives, and Greece immortal lives, in a couple of poems.
+
+Nearer than this. It is not generally realized, but it is true, as
+the genius of Greece, and all the sociology, personality, politics
+and religion of those wonderful states, resided in their literature
+or esthetics, that what was afterwards the main support of European
+chivalry, the feudal, ecclesiastical, dynastic world over there--forming
+its osseous structure, holding it together for hundreds, thousands
+of years, preserving its flesh and bloom, giving it form, decision,
+rounding it out, and so saturating it in the conscious and unconscious
+blood, breed, belief, and intuitions of men, that it still prevails
+powerful to this day, in defiance of the mighty changes of time--was its
+literature, permeating to the very marrow, especially that major part,
+its enchanting songs, ballads, and poems.[21]
+
+To the ostent of the senses and eyes, I know, the influences which
+stamp the world's history are wars, uprisings or downfalls of dynasties,
+changeful movements of trade, important inventions, navigation, military
+or civil governments, advent of powerful personalities, conquerors,
+etc.. These of course play their part; yet, it may be, a single new
+thought, imagination, abstract principle, even literary style, fit for
+the time, put in shape by some great literatus, and projected among
+mankind, may duly cause changes, growths, removals, greater than the
+longest and bloodiest war, or the most stupendous merely political,
+dynastic, or commercial overturn.
+
+In short, as, though it may not be realized, it is strictly true, that
+a few first-class poets, philosophs, and authors, have substantially
+settled and given status to the entire religion, education, law,
+sociology, &c., of the hitherto civilized world, by tinging and often
+creating the atmospheres out of which they have arisen, such also
+must stamp, and more than ever stamp, the interior and real democratic
+construction of this American continent, to-day, and days to come.
+Remember also this fact of difference, that, while through the antique
+and through the mediaeval ages, highest thoughts and ideals realized
+themselves, and their expression made its way by other arts, as much
+as, or even more than by, technical literature, (not open to the mass of
+persons, or even to the majority of eminent persons,) such literature in
+our day and for current purposes, is not only more eligible than all
+the other arts put together, but has become the only general means of
+morally influencing the world. Painting, sculpture, and the dramatic
+theatre, it would seem, no longer play an indispensable or even
+important part in the workings and mediumship of intellect, utility, or
+even high esthetics. Architecture remains, doubtless with capacities,
+and a real future. Then music, the combiner, nothing more spiritual,
+nothing more sensuous, a god, yet completely human, advances, prevails,
+holds highest place; supplying in certain wants and quarters what
+nothing else could supply. Yet in the civilization of to-day it is
+undeniable that, over all the arts, literature dominates, serves beyond
+all--shapes the character of church and school--or, at any rate, is
+capable of doing so. Including the literature of science, its scope is
+indeed unparallel'd.
+
+Before proceeding further, it were perhaps well to discriminate on
+certain points. Literature tills its crops in many fields, and some
+may flourish, while others lag. What I say in these Vistas has its main
+bearing on imaginative literature, especially poetry, the stock of all.
+In the department of science, and the specialty of journalism, there
+appear, in these States, promises, perhaps fulfilments, of highest
+earnestness, reality, and life, These, of course, are modern. But in
+the region of imaginative, spinal and essential attributes, something
+equivalent to creation is, for our age and lands, imperatively demanded.
+For not only is it not enough that the new blood, new frame of
+democracy shall be vivified and held together merely by political means,
+superficial suffrage, legislation, &c., but it is clear to me that,
+unless it goes deeper, gets at least as firm and as warm a hold in
+men's hearts, emotions and belief, as, in their days, feudalism or
+ecclesiasticism, and inaugurates its own perennial sources, welling from
+the centre forever, its strength will be defective, its growth doubtful,
+and its main charm wanting. I suggest, therefore, the possibility,
+should some two or three really original American poets, (perhaps
+artists or lecturers,) arise, mounting the horizon like planets, stars
+of the first magnitude, that, from their eminence, fusing contributions,
+races, far localities, &c., together, they would give more compaction
+and more moral identity, (the quality to-day most needed,) to these
+States, than all its Constitutions, legislative and judicial ties, and
+all its hitherto political, warlike, or materialistic experiences. As,
+for instance, there could hardly happen anything that would more serve
+the States, with all their variety of origins, their diverse climes,
+cities, standards, &c., than possessing an aggregate of heroes,
+characters, exploits, sufferings, prosperity or misfortune, glory or
+disgrace, common to all, typical of all--no less, but even greater would
+it be to possess the aggregation of a cluster of mighty poets, artists,
+teachers, fit for us, national expressers, comprehending and effusing
+for the men and women of the States, what is universal, native, common
+to all, inland and seaboard, northern and southern. The historians say
+of ancient Greece, with her ever-jealous autonomies, cities, and states,
+that the only positive unity she ever own'd or receiv'd, was the sad
+unity of a common subjection, at the last, to foreign conquerors.
+Subjection, aggregation of that sort, is impossible to America; but
+the fear of conflicting and irreconcilable interiors, and the lack of
+a common skeleton, knitting all close, continually haunts me. Or, if it
+does not, nothing is plainer than the need, a long period to come, of
+a fusion of the States into the only reliable identity, the moral
+and artistic one. For, I say, the true nationality of the States, the
+genuine union, when we come to a moral crisis, is, and is to be, after
+all, neither the written law, nor, (as is generally supposed,) either
+self-interest, or common pecuniary or material objects--but the fervid
+and tremendous IDEA, melting everything else with resistless heat,
+and solving all lesser and definite distinctions in vast, indefinite,
+spiritual, emotional power.
+
+It may be claim'd, (and I admit the weight of the claim,) that common
+and general worldly prosperity, and a populace well-to-do, and with all
+life's material comforts, is the main thing, and is enough. It may be
+argued that our republic is, in performance, really enacting to-day the
+grandest arts, poems, &c., by beating up the wilderness into fertile
+farms, and in her railroads, ships, machinery, &c. And it may be ask'd,
+Are these not better, indeed, for America, than any utterances even of
+greatest rhapsode, artist, or literatus?
+
+I too hail those achievements with pride and joy: then answer that
+the soul of man will not with such only--nay, not with such at all--be
+finally satisfied; but needs what, (standing on these and on all things,
+as the feet stand on the ground,) is address'd to the loftiest, to
+itself alone.
+
+Out of such considerations, such truths, arises for treatment in
+these Vistas the important question of character, of an American
+stock-personality, with literatures and arts for outlets and
+return-expressions, and, of course, to correspond, within outlines
+common to all. To these, the main affair, the thinkers of the United
+States, in general so acute, have either given feeblest attention, or
+have remain'd, and remain, in a state of somnolence.
+
+For my part, I would alarm and caution even the political and business
+reader, and to the utmost extent, against the prevailing delusion
+that the establishment of free political institutions, and plentiful
+intellectual smartness, with general good order, physical plenty,
+industry, &c., (desirable and precious advantages as they all are,) do,
+of themselves, determine and yield to our experiment of democracy the
+fruitage of success. With such advantages at present fully, or almost
+fully, possess'd--the Union just issued, victorious, from the struggle
+with the only foes it need ever fear, (namely, those within itself,
+the interior ones,) and with unprecedented materialistic
+advancement--society, in these States, is canker'd, crude,
+superstitious, and rotten. Political, or law-made society is, and
+private, or voluntary society, is also. In any vigor, the element of
+the moral conscience, the most important, the verteber to State or man,
+seems to me either entirely lacking, or seriously enfeebled or ungrown.
+
+I say we had best look our times and lands searchingly in the face, like
+a physician diagnosing some deep disease. Never was there, perhaps,
+more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States.
+Genuine belief seems to have left us. The underlying principles of the
+States are not honestly believ'd in, (for all this hectic glow, and
+these melo-dramatic screamings,) nor is humanity itself believ'd in.
+What penetrating eye does not everywhere see through the mask? The
+spectacle is appaling. We live in an atmosphere of hypocrisy throughout.
+The men believe not in the women, nor the women in the men. A scornful
+superciliousness rules in literature. The aim of all the _litterateurs_
+is to find something to make fun of. A lot of churches, sects, &c., the
+most dismal phantasms I know, usurp the name of religion. Conversation
+is a mass of badinage. From deceit in the spirit, the mother of all
+false deeds, the offspring is already incalculable. An acute and candid
+person, in the revenue department in Washington, who is led by the
+course of his employment to regularly visit the cities, north, south
+and west, to investigate frauds, has talk'd much with me about his
+discoveries. The depravity of the business classes of our country is
+not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater. The official
+services of America, national, state, and municipal, in all their
+branches and departments, except the judiciary, are saturated in
+corruption, bribery, falsehood, mal-administration; and the judiciary
+is tainted. The great cities reek with respectable as much as
+non-respectable robbery and scoundrelism. In fashionable life,
+flippancy, tepid amours, weak infidelism, small aims, or no aims at
+all, only to kill time. In business, (this all-devouring modern word,
+business,) the one sole object is, by any means, pecuniary gain. The
+magician's serpent in the fable ate up all the other serpents; and
+money-making is our magician's serpent, remaining today sole master of
+the field. The best class we show, is but a mob of fashionably dress'd
+speculators and vulgarians. True, indeed, behind this fantastic farce,
+enacted on the visible stage of society, solid things and stupendous
+labors are to be discover'd, existing crudely and going on in the
+background, to advance and tell themselves in time. Yet the truths are
+none the less terrible. I say that our New World democracy, however
+great a success in uplifting the masses out of their sloughs, in
+materialistic development, products, and in a certain highly-deceptive
+superficial popular intellectuality, is, so far, an almost complete
+failure in its social aspects, and in really grand religious, moral,
+literary, and esthetic results. In vain do we march with unprecedented
+strides to empire so colossal, outvying the antique, beyond Alexander's,
+beyond the proudest sway of Rome. In vain have we annex'd Texas,
+California, Alaska, and reach north for Canada and south for Cuba. It
+is as if we were somehow being endow'd with a vast and more and more
+thoroughly-appointed body, and then left with little or no soul.
+
+Let me illustrate further, as I write, with current observations,
+localities, &c. The subject is important, and will bear repetition.
+After an absence, I am now again (September, 1870) in New York city and
+Brooklyn, on a few weeks' vacation. The splendor, picturesqueness,
+and oceanic amplitude and rush of these great cities, the unsurpass'd
+situation, rivers and bay, sparkling sea-tides, costly and lofty new
+buildings, facades of marble and iron, of original grandeur and elegance
+of design, with the masses of gay color, the preponderance of white
+and blue, the flags flying, the endless ships, the tumultuous streets,
+Broadway, the heavy, low, musical roar, hardly ever intermitted, even
+at night; the jobbers' houses, the rich shops, the wharves, the great
+Central Park, and the Brooklyn Park of hills, (as I wander among
+them this beautiful fall weather, musing, watching, absorbing)--the
+assemblages of the citizens in their groups, conversations, trades,
+evening amusements, or along the by-quarters--these, I say, and the like
+of these, completely satisfy my senses of power, fulness, motion, &c.,
+and give me, through such senses and appetites, and through my esthetic
+conscience, a continued exaltation and absolute fulfilment. Always and
+more and more, as I cross the East and North rivers, the ferries, or
+with the pilots in their pilot-houses, or pass an hour in Wall street,
+or the gold exchange, I realize, (if we must admit such partialisms,)
+that not Nature alone is great in her fields of freedom and the open
+air, in her storms, the shows of night and day, the mountains, forests,
+seas--but in the artificial, the work of man too is equally great--in
+this profusion of teeming humanity--in these ingenuities, streets,
+goods, houses, ships--these hurrying, feverish, electric crowds of men,
+their complicated business genius, (not least among the geniuses,) and
+all this mighty, many-threaded wealth and industry concentrated here.
+
+But sternly discarding, shutting our eyes to the glow and grandeur of
+the general superficial effect, coming down to what is of the only real
+importance, Personalities, and examining minutely, we question, we ask,
+Are there, indeed, _men_ here worthy the name? Are there athletes? Are
+there perfect women, to match the generous material luxuriance? Is there
+a pervading atmosphere of beautiful manners? Are there crops of fine
+youths, and majestic old persons? Are there arts worthy freedom and a
+rich people? Is there a great moral and religious civilization--the
+only justification of a great material one? Confess that to severe eyes,
+using the moral microscope upon humanity, a sort of dry and flat Sahara
+appears, these cities, crowded with petty grotesques, malformations,
+phantoms, playing meaningless antics.
+
+Confess that everywhere, in shop, street, church, theatre, bar-room,
+official chair, are pervading flippancy and vulgarity, low cunning,
+infidelity--everywhere the youth puny, impudent, foppish, prematurely
+ripe--everywhere an abnormal libidinousness, unhealthy forms, male,
+female, painted, padded, dyed, chignon'd, muddy complexions, bad blood,
+the capacity for good motherhood deceasing or deceas'd, shallow
+notions of beauty, with a range of manners, or rather lack of manners,
+(considering the advantages enjoy'd,) probably the meanest to be seen in
+the world.[22]
+
+Of all this, and these lamentable conditions, to breathe into them
+the breath recuperative of sane and heroic life, I say a new founded
+literature, not merely to copy and reflect existing surfaces, or pander
+to what is called taste--not only to amuse, pass away time, celebrate
+the beautiful, the refined, the past, or exhibit technical, rhythmic,
+or grammatical dexterity--but a literature underlying life, religious,
+consistent with science, handling the elements and forces with competent
+power, teaching and training men--and, as perhaps the most precious
+of its results, achieving the entire redemption of woman out of these
+incredible holds and webs of silliness, millinery, and every kind of
+dyspeptic depletion--and thus insuring to the States a strong and sweet
+Female Race, a race of perfect Mothers--is what is needed.
+
+And now, in the full conception of these facts and points, and all that
+they infer, pro and con--with yet unshaken faith in the elements of the
+American masses, the composites, of both sexes, and even consider'd as
+individuals--and ever recognizing in them the broadest bases of the
+best literary and esthetic appreciation--I proceed with my speculations,
+Vistas.
+
+First, let us see what we can make out of a brief, general, sentimental
+consideration of political democracy, and whence it has arisen, with
+regard to some of its current features, as an aggregate, and as the
+basic structure of our future literature and authorship. We shall, it is
+true, quickly and continually find the origin-idea of the singleness of
+man, individualism, asserting itself, and cropping forth, even from the
+opposite ideas. But the mass, or lump character, for imperative reasons,
+is to be ever carefully weigh'd, borne in mind, and provided for. Only
+from it, and from its proper regulation and potency, comes the other,
+comes the chance of individualism. The two are contradictory, but our
+task is to reconcile them.[23]
+
+The political history of the past may be summ'd up as having grown out
+of what underlies the words, order, safety, caste, and especially out of
+the need of some prompt deciding authority, and of cohesion at all cost.
+Leaping time, we come to the period within the memory of people
+now living, when, as from some lair where they had slumber'd long,
+accumulating wrath, sprang up and are yet active, (1790, and on eyen to
+the present, 1870,) those noisy eructations, destructive iconoclasms, a
+fierce sense of wrongs, amid which moves the form, well known in modern
+history, in the old world, stain'd with much blood, and mark'd by savage
+reactionary clamors and demands. These bear, mostly, as on one inclosing
+point of need.
+
+For after the rest is said--after the many time-honor'd and really true
+things for subordination, experience, rights of property, &c., have
+been listen'd to and acquiesced in--after the valuable and well-settled
+statement of our duties and relations in society is thoroughly conn'd
+over and exhausted--it remains to bring forward and modify everything
+else with the idea of that Something a man is, (last precious
+consolation of the drudging poor,) standing apart from all else, divine
+in his own right, and a woman in hers, sole and untouchable by any
+canons of authority, or any rule derived from precedent, state-safety,
+the acts of legislatures, or even from what is called religion, modesty,
+or art. The radiation of this truth is the key of the most significant
+doings of our immediately preceding three centuries, and has been the
+political genesis and life of America. Advancing visibly, it still more
+advances invisibly. Underneath the fluctuations of the expressions of
+society, as well as the movements of the politics of the leading nations
+of the world, we see steadily pressing ahead and strengthening itself,
+even in the midst of immense tendencies toward aggregation, this image
+of completeness in separatism, of individual personal dignity, of a
+single person, either male or female, characterized in the main, not
+from extrinsic acquirements or position, but in the pride of himself or
+herself alone; and, as an eventual conclusion and summing up, (or else
+the entire scheme of things is aimless, a cheat, a crash,) the simple
+idea that the last, best dependence is to be upon humanity itself, and
+its own inherent, normal, fullgrown qualities, without any superstitious
+support whatever. This idea of perfect individualism it is indeed that
+deepest tinges and gives character to the idea of the aggregate. For it
+is mainly or altogether to serve independent separatism that we favor a
+strong generalization, consolidation. As it is to give the best vitality
+and freedom to the rights of the States, (every bit as important as the
+right of nationality, the union,) that we insist on the identity of the
+Union at all hazards.
+
+The purpose of democracy--supplanting old belief in the necessary
+absoluteness of establish'd dynastic rulership, temporal,
+ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security against
+chaos, crime, and ignorance--is, through many transmigrations, and amid
+endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures, to illustrate,
+at all hazards, this doctrine or theory that man, properly train'd in
+sanest, highest freedom, may and must become a law, and series of laws,
+unto himself, surrounding and providing for, not only his own personal
+control, but all his relations to other individuals, and to the State;
+and that, while other theories, as in the past histories of nations,
+have proved wise enough, and indispensable perhaps for their conditions,
+_this,_ as matters now stand in our civilized world, is the only scheme
+worth working from, as warranting results like those of Nature's laws,
+reliable, when once establish'd, to carry on themselves.
+
+The argument of the matter is extensive, and, we admit, by no means all
+on one side. What we shall offer will be far, far from sufficient. But
+while leaving unsaid much that should properly even prepare the way
+for the treatment of this many-sided question of political liberty,
+equality, or republicanism--leaving the whole history and consideration
+of the feudal plan and its products, embodying humanity, its politics
+and civilization, through the retrospect of past time, (which plan
+and products, indeed, make up all of the past, and a large part of the
+present)--leaving unanswer'd, at least by any specific and local answer,
+many a well-wrought argument and instance, and many a conscientious
+declamatory cry and warning--as, very lately, from an eminent and
+venerable person abroad[24]--things, problems, full of doubt, dread,
+suspense, (not new to me, but old occupiers of many an anxious hour in
+city's din, or night's silence,) we still may give a page or so, whose
+drift is opportune. Time alone can finally answer these things. But as
+a substitute in passing, let us, even if fragmentarily, throw forth a
+short direct or indirect suggestion of the premises of that other plan,
+in the new spirit, under the new forms, started here in our America.
+
+As to the political section of Democracy, which introduces and breaks
+ground for further and vaster sections, few probably are the minds, even
+in these republican States, that fully comprehend the aptness of that
+phrase, "THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE,"
+which we inherit from the lips of Abraham Lincoln; a formula whose
+verbal shape is homely wit, but whose scope includes both the totality
+and all minutiae of the lesson.
+
+The People! Like our huge earth itself, which, to ordinary scansion,
+is full of vulgar contradictions and offence, man, viewed in the lump,
+displeases, and is a constant puzzle and affront to the merely educated
+classes. The rare, cosmical, artist-mind, lit with the Infinite, alone
+confronts his manifold and oceanic qualities--but taste, intelligence
+and culture, (so-called,) have been against the masses, and remain so.
+There is plenty of glamour about the most damnable crimes and hoggish
+meannesses, special and general, of the feudal and dynastic world
+over there, with its _personnel_ of lords and queens and courts, so
+well-dress'd and so handsome. But the People are ungrammatical, untidy,
+and their sins gaunt and ill-bred.
+
+Literature, strictly consider'd, has never recognized the People,
+and, whatever may be said, does not to-day. Speaking generally, the
+tendencies of literature, as hitherto pursued, have been to make mostly
+critical and querulous men. It seems as if, so far, there were some
+natural repugnance between a literary and professional life, and the
+rude rank spirit of the democracies. There is, in later literature, a
+treatment of benevolence, a charity business, rife enough it is
+true; but I know nothing more rare, even in this country, than a fit
+scientific estimate and reverent appreciation of the People--of their
+measureless wealth of latent power and capacity, their vast, artistic
+contrasts of lights and shades--with, in America, their entire
+reliability in emergencies, and a certain breadth of historic grandeur,
+of peace or war, far surpassing all the vaunted samples of book-heroes,
+or any _haut ton_ coteries, in all the records of the world.
+
+The movements of the late secession war, and their results, to any sense
+that studies well and comprehends them, show that popular democracy,
+whatever its faults and dangers, practically justifies itself beyond the
+proudest claims and wildest hopes of its enthusiasts. Probably no future
+age can know, but I well know, how the gist of this fiercest and most
+resolute of the world's war-like contentions resided exclusively in the
+unnamed, unknown rank and file; and how the brunt of its labor of death
+was, to all essential purposes, volunteer'd. The People, of their own
+choice, fighting, dying for their own idea, insolently attack'd by the
+secession-slave-power, and its very existence imperil'd. Descending
+to detail, entering any of the armies, and mixing with the private
+soldiers, we see and have seen august spectacles. We have seen the
+alacrity with which the American-born populace, the peaceablest and most
+good-natured race in the world, and the most personally independent
+and intelligent, and the least fitted to submit to the irksomeness and
+exasperation of regimental discipline, sprang, at the first tap of the
+drum, to arms--not for gain, nor even glory, nor to repel invasion--but
+for an emblem, a mere abstraction--for the life, _the safety of the
+flag_. We have seen the unequal'd docility and obedience of these
+soldiers. We have seen them tried long and long by hopelessness,
+mismanagement, and by defeat; have seen the incredible slaughter toward
+or through which the armies (as at first Fredericksburg, and afterward
+at the Wilderness,) still unhesitatingly obey'd orders to advance. We
+have seen them in trench, or crouching behind breastwork, or tramping
+in deep mud, or amid pouring rain or thick-falling snow, or under forced
+marches in hottest summer (as on the road to get to Gettysburg)--vast
+suffocating swarms, divisions, corps, with every single man so grimed
+and black with sweat and dust, his own mother would not have known
+him--his clothes all dirty, stain'd and torn, with sour, accumulated
+sweat for perfume--many a comrade, perhaps a brother, sun-struck,
+staggering out, dying, by the roadside, of exhaustion--yet the great
+bulk bearing steadily on, cheery enough, hollow-bellied from hunger, but
+sinewy with unconquerable resolution.
+
+We have seen this race proved by wholesale by drearier, yet more fearful
+tests--the wound, the amputation, the shatter'd face or limb, the
+slow hot fever, long impatient anchorage in bed, and all the forms of
+maiming, operation and disease. Alas! America have we seen, though only
+in her early youth, already to hospital brought. There have we watch'd
+these soldiers, many of them only boys in years--mark'd their decorum,
+their religious nature and fortitude, and their sweet affection.
+Wholesale, truly. For at the front, and through the camps, in countless
+tents, stood the regimental, brigade and division hospitals; while
+everywhere amid the land, in or near cities, rose clusters of huge,
+white-wash'd, crowded, one-story wooden barracks; and there ruled agony
+with bitter scourge, yet seldom brought a cry; and there stalk'd death
+by day and night along the narrow aisles between the rows of cots, or
+by the blankets on the ground, and touch'd lightly many a poor sufferer,
+often with blessed, welcome touch.
+
+I know not whether I shall be understood, but I realize that it is
+finally from what I learn'd personally mixing in such scenes that I am
+now penning these pages. One night in the gloomiest period of the war,
+in the Patent-office hospital in Washington city, as I stood by
+the bedside of a Pennsylvania soldier, who lay, conscious of quick
+approaching death, yet perfectly calm, and with noble, spiritual manner,
+the veteran surgeon, turning aside, said to me, that though he had
+witness'd many, many deaths of soldiers, and had been a worker at Bull
+Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, &c., he had not seen yet the first case
+of man or boy that met the approach of dissolution with cowardly qualms
+or terror. My own observation fully bears out the remark.
+
+What have we here, if not, towering above all talk and argument,
+the plentifully-supplied, last-needed proof of democracy, in its
+personalities? Curiously enough, too, the proof on this point comes,
+I should say, every bit as much from the south, as from the north.
+Although I have spoken only of the latter, yet I deliberately include
+all. Grand, common stock! to me the accomplish'd and convincing growth,
+prophetic of the future; proof undeniable to sharpest sense, of perfect
+beauty, tenderness and pluck, that never feudal lord, nor Greek, nor
+Roman breed, yet rival'd. Let no tongue ever speak in disparagement of
+the American races, north or south, to one who has been through the war
+in the great army hospitals.
+
+Meantime, general humanity, (for to that we return, as, for our
+purposes, what it really is, to bear in mind,) has always, in every
+department, been full of perverse maleficence, and is so yet. In
+downcast hours the soul thinks it always will be--but soon recovers
+from such sickly moods. I myself see clearly enough the crude, defective
+streaks in all the strata of the common people; the specimens and vast
+collections of the ignorant, the credulous, the unfit and uncouth, the
+incapable, and the very low and poor. The eminent person just mention'd
+sneeringly asks whether we expect to elevate and improve a nation's
+politics by absorbing such morbid collections and qualities therein. The
+point is a formidable one, and there will doubtless always be numbers of
+solid and reflective citizens who will never get over it. Our answer
+is general, and is involved in the scope and letter of this essay.
+We believe the ulterior object of political and all other government,
+(having, of course, provided for the police, the safety of life,
+property, and for the basic statute and common law, and their
+administration, always first in order,) to be among the rest, not
+merely to rule, to repress disorder, &c., but to develop, to open up to
+cultivation, to encourage the possibilities of all beneficent and manly
+outcroppage, and of that aspiration for independence, and the pride and
+self-respect latent in all characters. (Or, if there be exceptions, we
+cannot, fixing our eyes on them alone, make theirs the rule for all.)
+
+I say the mission of government, henceforth, in civilized lands, is not
+repression alone, and not Authority alone, not even of law, nor by that
+favorite standard of the eminent writer, the rule of the best men, the
+born heroes and captains of the race, (as if such ever, or one time out
+of a hundred, get into the big places, elective or dynastic)--but higher
+than the highest arbitrary rule, to train communities through all their
+grades, beginning with individuals and ending there again, to rule
+themselves. What Christ appear'd for in the moral-spiritual field for
+human-kind, namely, that in respect to the absolute soul, there is
+in the possession of such by each single individual, something so
+transcendent, so incapable of gradations, (like life,) that, to that
+extent, it places all beings on a common level, utterly regardless
+of the distinctions of intellect, virtue, station, or any height or
+lowliness whatever--is tallied in like manner, in this other field, by
+democracy's rule that men, the nation, as a common aggregate of living
+identities, affording in each a separate and complete subject for
+freedom, worldly thrift and happiness, and for a fair chance for growth,
+and for protection in citizenship, &c., must, to the political extent
+of the suffrage or vote, if no further, be placed, in each and in the
+whole, on one broad, primary, universal, common platform.
+
+The purpose is not altogether direct; perhaps it is more indirect. For
+it is not that democracy is of exhaustive account, in itself. Perhaps,
+indeed, it is, (like Nature,) of no account in itself. It is that, as
+we see, it is the best, perhaps only, fit and full means, formulater,
+general caller-forth, trainer, for the million, not for grand material
+personalities only, but for immortal souls. To be a voter with the
+rest is not so much; and this, like every institute, will have its
+imperfections.
+
+But to become an enfranchised man, and now, impediments removed,
+to stand and start without humiliation, and equal with the rest; to
+commence, or have the road clear'd to commence, the grand experiment of
+development, whose end, (perhaps requiring several generations,) may
+be the forming of a full-grown man or woman--that _is_ something. To
+ballast the State is also secured, and in our times is to be secured, in
+no other way.
+
+We do not, (at any rate I do not,) put it either on the ground that
+the People, the masses, even the best of them, are, in their latent or
+exhibited qualities, essentially sensible and good--nor on the ground of
+their rights; but that good or bad, rights or no rights, the democratic
+formula is the only safe and preservative one for coming times. We endow
+the masses with the suffrage for their own sake, no doubt; then, perhaps
+still more, from another point of view, for community's sake. Leaving
+the rest to the sentimentalists, we present freedom as sufficient in
+its scientific aspect, cold as ice, reasoning, deductive, clear and
+passionless as crystal.
+
+Democracy too is law, and of the strictest, amplest kind. Many suppose,
+(and often in its own ranks the error,) that it means a throwing aside
+of law, and running riot. But, briefly, it is the superior law, not
+alone that of physical force, the body, which, adding to, it supersedes
+with that of the spirit. Law is the unshakable order of the universe
+forever; and the law over all, and law of laws, is the law of
+successions; that of the superior law, in time, gradually supplanting
+and overwhelming the inferior one. (While, for myself, I would
+cheerfully agree--first covenanting that the formative tendencies shall
+be administer'd in favor, or at least not against it, and that this
+reservation be closely construed--that until the individual or community
+show due signs, or be so minor and fractional as not to endanger
+the State, the condition of authoritative tutelage may continue, and
+self-government must abide its time.) Nor is the esthetic point, always
+an important one, without fascination for highest aiming souls. The
+common ambition strains for elevations, to become some privileged
+exclusive. The master sees greatness and health in being part of the
+mass; nothing will do as well as common ground. Would you have in
+yourself the divine, vast, general law? Then merge yourself in it.
+
+And, topping democracy, this most alluring record, that it alone can
+bind, and ever seeks to bind, all nations, all men, of however various
+and distant lands, into a brotherhood, a family. It is the old, yet
+ever-modern dream of earth, out of her eldest and her youngest, her
+fond philosophers and poets. Not that half only, individualism, which
+isolates. There is another half, which is adhesiveness or love, that
+fuses, ties and aggregates, making the races comrades, and fraternizing
+all. Both are to be vitalized by religion, (sole worthiest elevator of
+man or State,) breathing into the proud, material tissues, the breath
+of life. For I say at the core of democracy, finally, is the religious
+element. All the religions, old and new, are there. Nor may the scheme
+step forth, clothed in resplendent beauty and command, till these,
+bearing the best, the latest fruit, the spiritual, shall fully appear.
+
+A portion of our pages we might indite with reference toward Europe,
+especially the British part of it, more than our own land, perhaps not
+absolutely needed for the home reader. But the whole question hangs
+together, and fastens and links all peoples. The liberalist of to-day
+has this advantage over antique or mediaeval times, that his doctrine
+seeks not only to individualize but to universalize. The great word
+Solidarity has arisen. Of all dangers to a nation, as things exist in
+our day, there can be no greater one than having certain portions of
+the people set off from the rest by a line drawn--they not privileged
+as others, but degraded, humiliated, made of no account. Much quackery
+teems, of course, even on democracy's side, yet does not really affect
+the orbic quality of the matter. To work in, if we may so term it, and
+justify God, his divine aggregate, the People, (or, the veritable horn'd
+and sharp-tail'd Devil, _his_ aggregate, if there be who convulsively
+insist upon it)--this, I say, is what democracy is for; and this is what
+our America means, and is doing--may I not say, has done? If not, she
+means nothing more, and does nothing more, than any other land. And as,
+by virtue of its kosmical, antiseptic power, Nature's stomach is fully
+strong enough not only to digest the morbific matter always presented,
+not to be turn'd aside, and perhaps, indeed, intuitively gravitating
+thither--but even to change such contributions into nutriment for
+highest use and life--so American democracy's. That is the lesson we,
+these days, send over to European lands by every western breeze.
+
+And, truly, whatever may be said in the way of abstract argument, for
+or against the theory of a wider democratizing of institutions in any
+civilized country, much trouble might well be saved to all European
+lands by recognizing this palpable fact, (for a palpable fact it is,)
+that some form of such democratizing is about the only resource now
+left. _That_, or chronic dissatisfaction continued, mutterings which
+grow annually louder and louder, till, in due course, and pretty swiftly
+in most cases, the inevitable crisis, crash, dynastic ruin. Anything
+worthy to be call'd statesmanship in the Old World, I should say, among
+the advanced students, adepts, or men of any brains, does not debate
+to-day whether to hold on, attempting to lean back and monarchize, or
+to look forward and democratize--but _how_, and in what degree and part,
+most prudently to democratize.
+
+The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and
+revolutionists are indispensable, to counterbalance the inertness and
+fossilism making so large a part of human institutions. The latter will
+always take care of themselves--the danger being that they rapidly tend
+to ossify us. The former is to be treated with indulgence, and even with
+respect. As circulation to air, so is agitation and a plentiful degree
+of speculative license to political and moral sanity. Indirectly, but
+surely, goodness, virtue, law, (of the very best,) follow freedom.
+These, to democracy, are what the keel is to the ship, or saltness to
+the ocean.
+
+The true gravitation-hold of liberalism in the United States will be
+a more universal ownership of property, general homesteads, general
+comfort--a vast, intertwining reticulation of wealth. As the human
+frame, or, indeed, any object in this manifold universe, is best kept
+together by the simple miracle of its own cohesion, and the necessity,
+exercise and profit thereof, so a great and varied nationality,
+occupying millions of square miles, were firmest held and knit by the
+principle of the safety and endurance of the aggregate of its middling
+property owners. So that, from another point of view, ungracious as it
+may sound, and a paradox after what we have been saying, democracy looks
+with suspicious, ill-satisfied eye upon the very poor, the ignorant, and
+on those out of business. She asks for men and women with occupations,
+well-off, owners of houses and acres, and with cash in the bank--and
+with some cravings for literature, too; and must have them, and hastens
+to make them. Luckily, the seed is already well-sown, and has taken
+ineradicable root.[25]
+
+Huge and mighty are our days, our republican lands--and most in their
+rapid shiftings, their changes, all in the interest of the cause. As I
+write this particular passage, (November, 1868,) the din of disputation
+rages around me. Acrid the temper of the parties, vital the pending
+questions. Congress convenes; the President sends his message;
+reconstruction is still in abeyance; the nomination and the contest
+for the twenty-first Presidentiad draw close, with loudest threat and
+bustle. Of these, and all the like of these, the eventuations I know
+not; but well I know that behind them, and whatever their eventuations,
+the vital things remain safe and certain, and all the needed work goes
+on. Time, with soon or later superciliousness, disposes of Presidents,
+Congressmen, party platforms, and such. Anon, it clears the stage of
+each and any mortal shred that thinks itself so potent to its day; and
+at and after which, (with precious, golden exceptions once or twice in
+a century,) all that relates to sir potency is flung to moulder in
+a burial-vault, and no one bothers himself the least bit about it
+afterward. But the People ever remain, tendencies continue, and all the
+idiocratic transfers in unbroken chain go on.
+
+In a few years the dominion-heart of America will be far inland, toward
+the west. Our future national capital may not be where the present one
+is. It is possible, nay likely, that in less than fifty years, it will
+migrate a thousand or two miles, will be re-founded, and every thing
+belonging to it made on a different plan, original, far more superb. The
+main social, political, spine-character of the States will probably run
+along the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi rivers, and west and north
+of them, including Canada. Those regions, with the group of powerful
+brothers toward the Pacific, (destined to the mastership of that sea and
+its countless paradises of islands,) will compact and settle the traits
+of America, with all the old retain'd, but more expanded, grafted on
+newer, hardier, purely native stock. A giant growth, composite from
+the rest, getting their contribution, absorbing it, to make it more
+illustrious. From the north, intellect, the sun of things, also the idea
+of unswayable justice, anchor amid the last, the wildest tempests.
+From the south the living soul, the animus of good and bad, haughtily
+admitting no demonstration but its own. While from the west itself
+comes solid personality, with blood and brawn, and the deep quality of
+all-accepting fusion.
+
+Political democracy, as it exists and practically works in America,
+with all its threatening evils, supplies a training-school for making
+first-class men. It is life's gymnasium, not of good only, but of
+all. We try often, though we fall back often. A brave delight, fit for
+freedom's athletes, fills these arenas, and fully satisfies, out of the
+action in them, irrespective of success. Whatever we do not attain, we
+at any rate attain the experiences of the fight, the hardening of the
+strong campaign, and throb with currents of attempt at least. Time is
+ample. Let the victors come after us. Not for nothing does evil play
+its part among us. Judging from the main portions of the history of the
+world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy, peace walks amid hourly
+pitfalls, and of slavery, misery, meanness, the craft of tyrants and the
+credulity of the populace, in some of their protean forms, no voice can
+at any time say, They are not. The clouds break a little, and the sun
+shines out--but soon and certain the lowering darkness falls again, as
+if to last forever. Yet is there an immortal courage and prophecy
+in every sane soul that cannot, must not, under any circumstances,
+capitulate. _Vive_, the attack--the perennial assault! _Vive_, the
+unpopular cause--the spirit that audaciously aims--the never-abandon'd
+efforts, pursued the same amid opposing proofs and precedents.
+
+Once, before the war, (alas! I dare not say how many times the mood has
+come!) I, too, was fill'd with doubt and gloom. A foreigner, an acute
+and good man, had impressively said to me, that day--putting in form,
+indeed, my own observations: "I have travel'd much in the United States,
+and watch'd their politicians, and listen'd to the speeches of the
+candidates, and read the journals, and gone into the public houses, and
+heard the unguarded talk of men. And I have found your vaunted America
+honeycomb'd from top to toe with infidelism, even to itself and its own
+programme. I have mark'd the brazen hell-faces of secession and slavery
+gazing defiantly from all the windows and doorways. I have everywhere
+found, primarily, thieves and scalliwags arranging the nominations to
+offices, and sometimes filling the offices themselves. I have found the
+north just as full of bad stuff as the south. Of the holders of public
+office in the Nation or the States or their municipalities, I have found
+that not one in a hundred has been chosen by any spontaneous selection
+of the outsiders, the people, but all have been nominated and put
+through by little or large caucuses of the politicians, and have got
+in by corrupt rings and electioneering, not capacity or desert. I have
+noticed how the millions of sturdy farmers and mechanics are thus the
+helpless supple-jacks of comparatively few politicians. And I have
+noticed more and more, the alarming spectacle of parties usurping the
+government, and openly and shamelessly wielding it for party purposes."
+
+Sad, serious, deep truths. Yet are there other, still deeper, amply
+confronting, dominating truths. Over those politicians and great and
+little rings, and over all their insolence and wiles, and over the
+powerfulest parties, looms a power, too sluggish maybe, but ever holding
+decisions and decrees in hand, ready, with stern process, to execute
+them as soon as plainly needed--and at times, indeed, summarily crushing
+to atoms the mightiest parties, even in the hour of their pride.
+
+In saner hours far different are the amounts of these things from what,
+at first sight, they appear. Though it is no doubt important who
+is elected governor, mayor, or legislator, (and full of dismay when
+incompetent or vile ones get elected, as they sometimes do,) there are
+other, quieter contingencies, infinitely more important. Shams, &c.,
+will always be the show, like ocean's scum; enough, if waters deep and
+clear make up the rest. Enough, that while the piled embroider'd shoddy
+gaud and fraud spreads to the superficial eye, the hidden warp and weft
+are genuine, and will wear forever. Enough, in short, that the race,
+the land which could raise such as the late rebellion, could also put it
+down. The average man of a land at last only is important. He, in these
+States, remains immortal owner and boss, deriving good uses, somehow,
+out of any sort of servant in office, even the basest; (certain
+universal requisites, and their settled regularity and protection, being
+first secured,) a nation like ours, in a sort of geological formation
+state, trying continually new experiments, choosing new delegations,
+is not served by the best men only, but sometimes more by those that
+provoke it--by the combats they arouse. Thus national rage, fury,
+discussions, &c., better than content. Thus, also, the warning signals,
+invaluable for after times.
+
+What is more dramatic than the spectacle we have seen repeated, and
+doubtless long shall see--the popular judgment taking the successful
+candidates on trial in the offices--standing off, as it were, and
+observing them and their doings for a while, and always giving, finally,
+the fit, exactly due reward? I think, after all, the sublimest part of
+political history, and its culmination, is currently issuing from
+the American people. I know nothing grander, better exercise, better
+digestion, more positive proof of the past, the triumphant result of
+faith in human-kind, than a well-contested American national election.
+
+Then still the thought returns, (like the thread-passage in overtures,)
+giving the key and echo to these pages. When I pass to and fro,
+different latitudes, different seasons, beholding the crowds of the
+great cities, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chicago, St.
+Louis, San Francisco, New Orleans, Baltimore--when I mix with these
+interminable swarms of alert, turbulent, good-natured, independent
+citizens, mechanics, clerks, young persons--at the idea of this mass
+of men, so fresh and free, so loving and so proud, a singular awe falls
+upon me. I feel, with dejection and amazement, that among our geniuses
+and talented writers or speakers, few or none have yet really spoken to
+this people, created a single image-making work for them, or absorb'd
+the central spirit and the idiosyncrasies which are theirs--and
+which, thus, in highest ranges, so far remain entirely uncelebrated,
+unexpress'd.
+
+Dominion strong is the body's; dominion stronger is the mind's. What
+has fill'd, and fills to-day our intellect, our fancy, furnishing the
+standards therein, is yet foreign. The great poems, Shakspere included,
+are poisonous to the idea of the pride and dignity of the common people,
+the life-blood of democracy. The models of our literature, as we get
+it from other lands, ultra-marine, have had their birth in courts, and
+bask'd and grown in castle sunshine; all smells of princes' favors. Of
+workers of a certain sort, we have, indeed, plenty, contributing after
+their kind; many elegant, many learn'd, all complacent. But touch'd by
+the national test, or tried by the standards of democratic personality,
+they wither to ashes. I say I have not seen a single writer, artist,
+lecturer, or what-not, that has confronted the voiceless but ever erect
+and active, pervading, underlying will and typic aspiration of the
+land, in a spirit kindred to itself. Do you call those genteel little
+creatures American poets? Do you term that perpetual, pistareen,
+paste-pot work, American art, American drama, taste, verse? I think I
+hear, echoed as from some mountain-top afar in the west, the scornful
+laugh of the Genius of these States.
+
+Democracy, in silence, biding its time, ponders its own ideals, not of
+literature and art only--not of men only, but of women. The idea of the
+women of America, (extricated from this daze, this fossil and unhealthy
+air which hangs about the word _lady_,) develop'd, raised to become the
+robust equals, workers, and, it may be, even practical and political
+deciders with the men--greater than man, we may admit, through their
+divine maternity, always their towering, emblematical attribute--but
+great, at any rate, as man, in all departments; or, rather, capable of
+being so, soon as they realize it, and can bring themselves to give up
+toys and fictions, and launch forth, as men do, amid real, independent,
+stormy life.
+
+Then, as towards our thought's finale, (and, in that, overarching the
+true scholar's lesson,) we have to say there can be no complete or
+epical presentation of democracy in the aggregate, or anything like it,
+at this day, because its doctrines will only be effectually incarnated
+in any one branch, when, in all, their spirit is at the root and centre.
+Far, far, indeed, stretch, in distance, our Vistas! How much is still
+to be disentangled, freed! How long it takes to make this American world
+see that it is, in itself, the final authority and reliance!
+
+Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for
+politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there
+that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruits in manners, in
+the highest forms of interaction between men, and their beliefs--in
+religion, literature, colleges, and schools--democracy in all public and
+private life, and in the army and navy.[26] I have intimated that, as a
+paramount scheme, it has yet few or no full realizers and believers.
+I do not see, either, that it owes any serious thanks to noted
+propagandists or champions, or has been essentially help'd, though often
+harm'd, by them. It has been and is carried on by all the moral forces,
+and by trade, finance, machinery, intercommunications, and, in fact,
+by all the developments of history, and can no more be stopp'd than the
+tides, or the earth in its orbit. Doubtless, also, it resides, crude and
+latent, well down in the hearts of the fair average of the American-born
+people, mainly in the agricultural regions. But it is not yet, there or
+anywhere, the fully-receiv'd, the fervid, the absolute faith.
+
+I submit, therefore, that the fruition of democracy, on aught like a
+grand scale, resides altogether in the future. As, under any profound
+and comprehensive view of the gorgeous-composite feudal world, we see
+in it, through the long ages and cycles of ages, the results of a deep,
+integral, human and divine principle, or fountain, from which issued
+laws, ecclesia, manners, institutes, costumes, personalities, poems,
+(hitherto unequall'd,) faithfully partaking of their source, and
+indeed only arising either to betoken it, or to furnish parts of that
+varied-flowing display, whose centre was one and absolute--so, long
+ages hence, shall the due historian or critic make at least an equal
+retrospect, an equal history for the democratic principle. It too must
+be adorn'd, credited with its results--then, when it, with imperial
+power, through amplest time, has dominated mankind--has been the source
+and test of all the moral, esthetic, social, political, and religious
+expressions and institutes of the civilized world--has begotten them
+in spirit and in form, and has carried them to its own unprecedented
+heights--has had, (it is possible,) monastics and ascetics, more
+numerous, more devout than the monks and priests of all previous
+creeds--has sway'd the ages with a breadth and rectitude tallying
+Nature's own--has fashion'd, systematized, and triumphantly finish'd and
+carried out, in its own interest, and with unparallel'd success, a new
+earth and a new man.
+
+Thus we presume to write, as it were, upon things that exist not, and
+travel by maps yet unmade, and a blank. But the throes of birth are
+upon us; and we have something of this advantage in seasons of strong
+formations, doubts, suspense--for then the afflatus of such themes haply
+may fall upon us, more or less; and then, hot from surrounding war and
+revolution, our speech, though without polish'd coherence, and a failure
+by the standard called criticism, comes forth, real at least as the
+lightnings.
+
+And may-be we, these days, have, too, our own reward--(for there are yet
+some, in all lands, worthy to be so encouraged.) Though not for us the
+joy of entering at the last the conquer'd city--not ours the chance ever
+to see with our own eyes the peerless power and splendid _eclat_ of
+the democratic principle, arriv'd at meridian, filling the world with
+effulgence and majesty far beyond those of past history's kings, or
+all dynastic sway--there is yet, to whoever is eligible among us, the
+prophetic vision, the joy of being toss'd in the brave turmoil of these
+times--the promulgation and the path, obedient, lowly reverent to the
+voice, the gesture of the god, or holy ghost, which others see not, hear
+not--with the proud consciousness that amid whatever clouds, seductions,
+or heart-wearying postponements, we have never deserted, never
+despair'd, never abandon'd the faith.
+
+So much contributed, to be conn'd well, to help prepare and brace our
+edifice, our plann'd Idea--we still proceed to give it in another of its
+aspects--perhaps the main, the high facade of all. For to democracy,
+the leveler, the unyielding principle of the average, is surely join'd
+another principle, equally unyielding, closely tracking the first,
+indispensable to it, opposite, (as the sexes are opposite,) and whose
+existence, confronting and ever modifying the other, often clashing,
+paradoxical, yet neither of highest avail without the other,
+plainly supplies to these grand cosmic politics of ours, and to the
+launch'd-forth mortal dangers of republicanism, to-day or any day, the
+counterpart and offset whereby Nature restrains the deadly original
+relentlessness of all her first-class laws. This second principle is
+individuality, the pride and centripetal isolation of a human being in
+himself--identity--personalism. Whatever the name, its acceptance and
+thorough infusion through the organizations of political commonalty now
+shooting Aurora-like about the world, are of utmost importance, as the
+principle itself is needed for very life's sake. It forms, in a sort,
+or is to form, the compensating balance-wheel of the successful working
+machinery of aggregate America.
+
+And, if we think of it, what does civilization itself rest upon--and
+what object has it, with its religions, arts, schools, &c., but rich,
+luxuriant, varied personalism? To that, all bends; and it is because
+toward such result democracy alone, on anything like Nature's scale,
+breaks up the limitless fallows of humankind, and plants the seed, and
+gives fair play, that its claims now precede the rest. The literature,
+songs, esthetics, &c., of a country are of importance principally
+because they furnish the materials and suggestions of personality
+for the women and men of that country, and enforce them in a thousand
+effective ways.[27] As the topmost claim of a strong consolidating
+of the nationality of these States, is, that only by such powerful
+compaction can the separate States secure that full and free swing
+within their spheres, which is becoming to them, each after its kind,
+so will individuality, with unimpeded branchings, flourish best under
+imperial republican forms.
+
+Assuming Democracy to be at present in its embryo condition, and that
+the only large and satisfactory justification of it resides in the
+future, mainly through the copious production of perfect characters
+among the people, and through the advent of a sane and pervading
+religiousness, it is with regard to the atmosphere and spaciousness
+fit for such characters, and of certain nutriment and cartoon-draftings
+proper for them, and indicating them for New-World purposes, that
+I continue the present statement--an exploration, as of new ground,
+wherein, like other primitive surveyors, I must do the best I can,
+leaving it to those who come after me to do much better. (The service,
+in fact, if any, must be to break a sort of first path or track, no
+matter how rude and ungeometrical.)
+
+We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet I cannot too often
+repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite
+unawaken'd, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests
+out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great
+word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history
+has yet to be enacted. It is, in some sort, younger brother of another
+great and often-used word, Nature, whose history also waits unwritten.
+As I perceive, the tendencies of our day, in the States, (and I entirely
+respect them,) are toward those vast and sweeping movements, influences,
+moral and physical, of humanity, now and always current over the planet,
+on the scale of the impulses of the elements. Then it is also good to
+reduce the whole matter to the consideration of a single self, a man, a
+woman, on permanent grounds. Even for the treatment of the universal, in
+politics, metaphysics, or anything, sooner or later we come down to one
+single, solitary soul.
+
+There is, in sanest hours, a consciousness, a thought that rises,
+independent, lifted out from all else, calm, like the stars, shining
+eternal. This is the thought of identity--yours for you, whoever
+you are, as mine for me. Miracle of miracles, beyond statement, most
+spiritual and vaguest of earth's dreams, yet hardest basic fact, and
+only entrance to all facts. In such devout hours, in the midst of the
+significant wonders of heaven and earth, (significant only because of
+the Me in the centre,) creeds, conventions, fall away and become of no
+account before this simple idea. Under the luminousness of real vision,
+it alone takes possession, takes value. Like the shadowy dwarf in the
+fable, 'once liberated and look'd upon, it expands over the whole earth,
+and spreads to the roof of heaven.
+
+The quality of BEING, in the object's self, according to its own central
+idea and purpose, and of growing therefrom and thereto--not criticism by
+other standards, and adjustments thereto--is the lesson of Nature.
+True, the full man wisely gathers, culls, absorbs; but if, engaged
+disproportionately in that, he slights or overlays the precious
+idiocrasy and special nativity and intention that he is, the man's self,
+the main thing, is a failure, however wide his general cultivation.
+Thus, in our times, refinement and delicatesse are not only attended
+to sufficiently, but threaten to eat us up, like a cancer. Already, the
+democratic genius watches, ill-pleased, these tendencies. Provision for
+a little healthy rudeness, savage virtue, justification of what one has
+in one's self, whatever it is, is demanded. Negative qualities, even
+deficiencies, would be a relief. Singleness and normal simplicity
+and separation, amid this more and more complex, more and more
+artificialized state of society--how pensively we yearn for them! how we
+would welcome their return!
+
+In some such direction, then--at any rate enough to preserve the
+balance--we feel called upon to throw what weight we can, not for
+absolute reasons, but current ones. To prune, gather, trim, conform, and
+ever cram and stuff, and be genteel and proper, is the pressure of our
+days. While aware that much can be said even in behalf of all this,
+we perceive that we have not now to consider the question of what
+is demanded to serve a half-starved and barbarous nation, or set of
+nations, but what is most applicable, most pertinent, for numerous
+congeries of conventional, over-corpulent societies, already becoming
+stifled and rotten with flatulent, infidelistic literature, and polite
+conformity and art. In addition to establish'd sciences, we suggest a
+science as it were of healthy average personalism, on original-universal
+grounds, the object of which should be to raise up and supply through
+the States a copious race of superb American men and women, cheerful,
+religious, ahead of any yet known.
+
+America has yet morally and artistically originated nothing. She seems
+singularly unaware that the models of persons, books, manners, &c.,
+appropriate for former conditions and for European lands, are but exiles
+and exotics here. No current of her life, as shown on the surfaces of
+what is authoritatively called her society, accepts or runs into social
+or esthetic democracy; but all the currents set squarely against it.
+Never, in the Old World, was thoroughly upholster'd exterior appearance
+and show, mental and other, built entirely on the idea of caste, and on
+the sufficiency of mere outside acquisition--never were glibness, verbal
+intellect, more the test, the emulation--more loftily elevated as head
+and sample--than they are on the surface of our republican States this
+day. The writers of a time hint the mottoes of its gods. The word of the
+modern, say these voices, is the word Culture.
+
+We find ourselves abruptly in close quarters with the enemy. This word
+Culture, or what it has come to represent, involves, by contrast, our
+whole theme, and has been, indeed, the spur, urging us to engagement.
+Certain questions arise. As now taught, accepted and carried out, are
+not the processes of culture rapidly creating a class of supercilious
+infidels, who believe in nothing? Shall a man lose himself in countless
+masses of adjustments, and be so shaped with reference to this, that,
+and the other, that the simply good and healthy and brave parts of him
+are reduced and clipp'd away, like the bordering of box in a garden? You
+can cultivate corn and roses and orchards--but who shall cultivate the
+mountain peaks, the ocean, and the tumbling gorgeousness of the clouds?
+Lastly--is the readily-given reply that culture only seeks to help,
+systematize, and put in attitude, the elements of fertility and power, a
+conclusive reply?
+
+I do not so much object to the name, or word, but I should certainly
+insist, for the purposes of these States, on a radical change of
+category, in the distribution of precedence. I should demand a programme
+of culture, drawn out, not for a single class alone, or for the parlors
+or lecture-rooms, but with an eye to practical life, the west, the
+working-men, the facts of farms and jack-planes and engineers, and of
+the broad range of the women also of the middle and working strata,
+and with reference to the perfect equality of women, and of a grand and
+powerful motherhood. I should demand of this programme or theory a scope
+generous enough to include the widest human area. It must have for its
+spinal meaning the formation of a typical personality of character,
+eligible to the uses of the high average of men--and _not_ restricted
+by conditions ineligible to the masses. The best culture will always be
+that of the manly and courageous instincts, and loving perceptions, and
+of self-respect--aiming to form, over this continent, an idiocrasy
+of universalism, which, true child of America, will bring joy to its
+mother, returning to her in her own spirit, recruiting myriads of
+offspring, able, natural, perceptive, tolerant, devout believers in
+her, America, and with some definite instinct why and for what she has
+arisen, most vast, most formidable of historic births, and is, now and
+here, with wonderful step, journeying through Time.
+
+The problem, as it seems to me, presented to the New World, is,
+under permanent law and order, and after preserving cohesion,
+(ensemble-individuality,) at all hazards, to vitalize man's free play of
+special Personalism, recognizing in it something that calls ever more
+to be consider'd, fed, and adopted as the substratum for the best
+that belongs to us, (government indeed is for it,) including the new
+esthetics of our future.
+
+To formulate beyond this present vagueness--to help line and put
+before us the species, or a specimen of the species, of the democratic
+ethnology of the future, is a work toward which the genius of our land,
+with peculiar encouragement, invites her well-wishers. Already certain
+limnings, more or less grotesque, more or less fading and watery, have
+appear'd. We too, (repressing doubts and qualms,) will try our hand.
+
+Attempting, then, however crudely, a basic model or portrait of
+personality for general use for the manliness of the States, (and
+doubtless that is most useful which is most simple and comprehensive
+for all, and toned low enough,) we should prepare the canvas well
+beforehand. Parentage must consider itself in advance. (Will the time
+hasten when fatherhood and motherhood shall become a science--and the
+noblest science?) To our model, a clear-blooded, strong-fibred
+physique, is indispensable; the questions of food, drink, air, exercise,
+assimilation, digestion, can never be intermitted. Out of these we
+descry a well-begotten selfhood--in youth, fresh, ardent, emotional,
+aspiring, full of adventure; at maturity, brave, perceptive, under
+control, neither too talkative nor too reticent, neither flippant nor
+sombre; of the bodily figure, the movements easy, the complexion showing
+the best blood, somewhat flush'd, breast expanded, an erect attitude,
+a voice whose sound outvies music, eyes of calm and steady gaze, yet
+capable also of flashing--and a general presence that holds its own
+in the company of the highest. (For it is native personality, and that
+alone, that endows a man to stand before presidents or generals, or in
+any distinguish'd collection, with _aplomb_--and _not_ culture, or any
+knowledge or intellect whatever.) With regard to the mental-educational
+part of our model, enlargement of intellect, stores of cephalic
+knowledge, &c., the concentration thitherward of all the customs of our
+age, especially in America, is so overweening, and provides so fully
+for that part, that, important and necessary as it is, it really needs
+nothing from us here--except, indeed, a phrase of warning and restraint.
+Manners, costumes, too, though important, we need not dwell upon here.
+Like beauty, grace of motion, &c., they are results. Causes, original
+things, being attended to, the right manners unerringly follow. Much
+is said, among artists, of "the grand style," as if it were a thing by
+itself. When a man, artist or whoever, has health, pride, acuteness,
+noble aspirations, he has the motive-elements of the grandest style. The
+rest is but manipulation, (yet that is no small matter.)
+
+Leaving still unspecified several sterling parts of any model fit for
+the future personality of America, I must not fail, again and ever,
+to pronounce myself on one, probably the least attended to in modern
+times--a hiatus, indeed, threatening its gloomiest consequences after
+us. I mean the simple, unsophisticated Conscience, the primary moral
+element. If I were asked to specify in what quarter lie the grounds of
+darkest dread, respecting the America of our hopes, I should have to
+point to this particular. I should demand the invariable application to
+individuality, this day and any day, of that old, ever-true plumb-rule
+of persons, eras, nations. Our triumphant modern civilizee, with his
+all-schooling and his wondrous appliances, will still show himself but
+an amputation while this deficiency remains. Beyond, (assuming a more
+hopeful tone,) the vertebration of the manly and womanly personalism
+of our western world, can only be, and is, indeed, to be, (I hope,) its
+all-penetrating Religiousness.
+
+The ripeness of Religion is doubtless to be looked for in this field of
+individuality, and is a result that no organization or church can
+ever achieve. As history is poorly retain'd by what the technists call
+history, and is not given out from their pages, except the learner
+has in himself the sense of the well-wrapt, never yet written, perhaps
+impossible to be written, history--so Religion, although casually
+arrested, and, after a fashion, preserv'd in the churches and creeds,
+does not depend at all upon them, but is a part of the identified
+soul, which, when greatest, knows not bibles in the old way, but in new
+ways--the identified soul, which can really confront Religion when it
+extricates itself entirely from the churches, and not before.
+
+Personalism fuses this, and favors it. I should say, indeed, that only
+in the perfect uncontamination and solitariness of individuality may the
+spirituality of religion positively come forth at all. Only here, and on
+such terms, the meditation, the devout ecstasy, the soaring flight.
+Only here, communion with the mysteries, the eternal problems, whence?
+whither? Alone, and identity, and the mood--and the soul emerges, and
+all statements, churches, sermons, melt away like vapors. Alone,
+and silent thought and awe, and aspiration--and then the interior
+consciousness, like a hitherto unseen inscription, in magic ink, beams
+out its wondrous lines to the sense. Bibles may convey, and priests
+expound, but it is exclusively for the noiseless operation of one's
+isolated Self, to enter the pure ether of veneration, reach the divine
+levels, and commune with the unutterable.
+
+
+To practically enter into politics is an important part of American
+personalism. To every young man, north and south, earnestly studying
+these things, I should here, as an offset to what I have said in former
+pages, now also say, that may be to views of very largest scope, after
+all, perhaps the political, (perhaps the literary and sociological,)
+America goes best about its development its own way--sometimes, to
+temporary sight, appaling enough. It is the fashion among dillettants
+and fops (perhaps I myself am not guiltless,) to decry the whole
+formulation of the active politics of America, as beyond redemption, and
+to be carefully kept away from. See you that you do not fall into
+this error. America, it may be, is doing very well upon the whole,
+notwithstanding these antics of the parties and their leaders, these
+half-brain'd nominees, the many ignorant ballots, and many elected
+failures and blatherers. It is the dillettants, and all who shirk their
+duty, who are not doing well. As for you, I advise you to enter more
+strongly yet into politics. I advise every young man to do so. Always
+inform yourself; always do the best you can; always vote. Disengage
+yourself from parties. They have been useful, and to some extent remain
+so; but the floating, uncommitted electors, farmers, clerks, mechanics,
+the masters of parties--watching aloof, inclining victory this side
+or that side--such are the ones most needed, present and future. For
+America, if eligible at all to downfall and ruin, is eligible within
+herself, not without; for I see clearly that the combined foreign world
+could not beat her down. But these savage, wolfish parties alarm me.
+Owning no law but their own will, more and more combative, less and less
+tolerant of the idea of ensemble and of equal brotherhood, the perfect
+equality of the States, the ever-overarching American ideas, it behooves
+you to convey yourself implicitly to no party, nor submit blindly to
+their dictators, but steadily hold yourself judge and master over all of
+them.
+
+So much, (hastily toss'd together, and leaving far more unsaid,) for
+an ideal, or intimations of an ideal, toward American manhood. But the
+other sex, in our land, requires at least a basis of suggestion.
+
+I have seen a young American woman, one of a large family of daughters,
+who, some years since, migrated from her meagre country home to one of
+the northern cities, to gain her own support. She soon became an expert
+seamstress, but finding the employment too confining for health and
+comfort, she went boldly to work for others, to house-keep, cook, clean,
+&c. After trying several places, she fell upon one where she was suited.
+She has told me that she finds nothing degrading in her position; it is
+not inconsistent with personal dignity, self-respect, and the respect of
+others. She confers benefits and receives them. She has good health; her
+presence itself is healthy and bracing; her character is unstain'd; she
+has made herself understood, and preserves her independence, and has
+been able to help her parents, and educate and get places for her
+sisters; and her course of life is not without opportunities for mental
+improvement, and of much quiet, uncosting happiness and love.
+
+I have seen another woman who, from taste and necessity conjoin'd, has
+gone into practical affairs, carries on a mechanical business, partly
+works at it herself, dashes out more and more into real hardy life, is
+not abash'd by the coarseness of the contact, knows how to be firm
+and silent at the same time, holds her own with unvarying coolness and
+decorum, and will compare, any day, with superior carpenters, farmers,
+and even boatmen and drivers. For all that, she has not lost the charm
+of the womanly nature, but preserves and bears it fully, though through
+such rugged presentation.
+
+Then there is the wife of a mechanic, mother of two children, a woman of
+merely passable English education, but of fine wit, with all her
+sex's grace and intuitions, who exhibits, indeed, such a noble female
+personality, that I am fain to record it here. Never abnegating her own
+proper independence, but always genially preserving it, and what
+belongs to it--cooking, washing, child-nursing, house-tending--she
+beams sunshine out of all these duties, and makes them illustrious.
+Physiologically sweet and sound, loving work, practical, she yet knows
+that there are intervals, however few, devoted to recreation, music,
+leisure, hospitality--and affords such intervals. Whatever she does,
+and wherever she is, that charm, that indescribable perfume of genuine
+womanhood attends her, goes with her, exhales from her, which belongs of
+right to all the sex, and is, or ought to be, the invariable atmosphere
+and common aureola of old as well as young.
+
+My dear mother once described to me a resplendent person, down on Long
+Island, whom she knew in early days. She was known by the name of the
+Peacemaker. She was well toward eighty years old, of happy and sunny
+temperament, had always lived on a farm, and was very neighborly,
+sensible and discreet, an invariable and welcom'd favorite, especially
+with young married women. She had numerous children and grandchildren.
+She was uneducated, but possess'd a native dignity. She had come to be a
+tacitly agreed upon domestic regulator, judge, settler of difficulties,
+shepherdess, and reconciler in the land. She was a sight to draw near
+and look upon, with her large figure, her profuse snow-white hair,
+(uncoil'd by any head-dress or cap,) dark eyes, clear complexion, sweet
+breath, and peculiar personal magnetism.
+
+The foregoing portraits, I admit, are frightfully out of line from these
+imported models of womanly personality--the stock feminine characters of
+the current novelists, or of the foreign court poems, (Ophelias, Enids,
+princesses, or ladies of one thing or another,) which fill the envying
+dreams of so many poor girls, and are accepted by our men, too, as
+supreme ideals of feminine excellence to be sought after. But I present
+mine just for a change.
+
+Then there are mutterings, (we will not now stop to heed them here, but
+they must be heeded,) of something more revolutionary. The day is coming
+when the deep questions of woman's entrance amid the arenas of practical
+life, politics, the suffrage, &c., will not only be argued all around
+us, but may be put to decision, and real experiment.
+
+Of course, in these States, for both man and woman, we must entirely
+recast the types of highest personality from what the oriental, feudal,
+ecclesiastical worlds bequeath us, and which yet possess the imaginative
+and esthetic fields of the United States, pictorial and melodramatic,
+not without use as studies, but making sad work, and forming a strange
+anachronism upon the scenes and exigencies around us. Of course, the old
+undying elements remain. The task is, to successfully adjust them to new
+combinations, our own days. Nor is this so incredible. I can conceive a
+community, to-day and here, in which, on a sufficient scale, the
+perfect personalities, without noise meet; say in some pleasant western
+settlement or town, where a couple of hundred best men and women, of
+ordinary worldly status, have by luck been drawn together, with nothing
+extra of genius or wealth, but virtuous, chaste, industrious, cheerful,
+resolute, friendly and devout. I can conceive such a community organized
+in running order, powers judiciously delegated--farming, building,
+trade, courts, mails, schools, elections, all attended to; and then the
+rest of life, the main thing, freely branching and blossoming in each
+individual, and bearing golden fruit. I can see there, in every young
+and old man, after his kind, and in every woman after hers, a true
+personality, develop'd, exercised proportionately in body, mind,
+and spirit. I can imagine this case as one not necessarily rare or
+difficult, but in buoyant accordance with the municipal and general
+requirements of our times. And I can realize in it the culmination
+of something better than any stereotyped _eclat_ of history or poems.
+Perhaps, unsung, undramatized, unput in essays or biographies--perhaps
+even some such community already exists, in Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, or
+somewhere, practically fulfilling itself, and thus outvying, in cheapest
+vulgar life, all that has been hitherto shown in best ideal pictures.
+
+In short, and to sum up, America, betaking herself to formative
+action, (as it is about time for more solid achievement, and less
+windy promise,) must, for her purposes, cease to recognize a theory of
+character grown of feudal aristocracies, or form'd by merely literary
+standards, or from any ultramarine, full-dress formulas of culture,
+polish, caste, &c., and must sternly promulgate her own new standard,
+yet old enough, and accepting the old, the perennial elements, and
+combining them into groups, unities, appropriate to the modern, the
+democratic, the west, and to the practical occasions and needs of our
+own cities, and of the agricultural regions. Ever the most precious in
+the common. Ever the fresh breeze of field, or hill, or lake, is
+more than any palpitation of fans, though of ivory, and redolent with
+perfume; and the air is more than the costliest perfumes.
+
+And now, for fear of mistake, we may not intermit to beg our absolution
+from all that genuinely is, or goes along with, even Culture. Pardon us,
+venerable shade! if we have seem'd to speak lightly of your office. The
+whole civilization of the earth, we know, is yours, with all the glory
+and the light thereof. It is, indeed, in your own spirit, and seeking to
+tally the loftiest teachings of it, that we aim these poor utterances.
+For you, too, mighty minister! know that there is something greater than
+you, namely, the fresh, eternal qualities of Being. From them, and by
+them, as you, at your best, we too evoke the last, the needed help, to
+vitalize our country and our days. Thus we pronounce not so much against
+the principle of culture; we only supervise it, and promulge along with
+it, as deep, perhaps a deeper, principle. As we have shown the New World
+including in itself the all-leveling aggregate of democracy, we show
+it also including the all-varied, all-permitting, all-free theorem of
+individuality, and erecting therefor a lofty and hitherto unoccupied
+framework or platform, broad enough for all, eligible to every farmer
+and mechanic--to the female equally with the male--a towering selfhood,
+not physically perfect only--not satisfied with the mere mind's and
+learning's stores, but religious, possessing the idea of the infinite,
+(rudder and compass sure amid this troublous voyage, o'er darkest,
+wildest wave, through stormiest wind, of man's or nation's
+progress)--realizing, above the rest, that known humanity, in deepest
+sense, is fair adhesion to itself, for purposes beyond--and that,
+finally, the personality of mortal life is most important with reference
+to the immortal, the unknown, the spiritual, the only permanently real,
+which as the ocean waits for and receives the rivers, waits for us each
+and all.
+
+Much is there, yet, demanding line and outline in our Vistas, not only
+on these topics, but others quite unwritten. Indeed, we could talk the
+matter, and expand it, through lifetime. But it is necessary to return
+to our original premises. In view of them, we have again pointedly
+to confess that all the objective grandeurs of the world, for highest
+purposes, yield themselves up, and depend on mentality alone. Here, and
+here only, all balances, all rests. For the mind, which alone builds
+the permanent edifice, haughtily builds it to itself. By it, with
+what follows it, are convey'd to mortal sense the culminations of
+the materialistic, the known, and a prophecy of the unknown. To
+take expression, to incarnate, to endow a literature with grand and
+archetypal models--to fill with pride and love the utmost capacity, and
+to achieve spiritual meanings, and suggest the future--these, and these
+only, satisfy the soul. We must not say one word against real materials;
+but the wise know that they do not become real till touched by emotions,
+the mind. Did we call the latter imponderable? Ah, let us rather
+proclaim that the slightest song-tune, the countless ephemera of
+passions arous'd by orators and tale-tellers, are more dense, more
+weighty than the engines there in the great factories, or the granite
+blocks in their foundations.
+
+Approaching thus the momentous spaces, and considering with reference to
+a new and greater personalism, the needs and possibilities of American
+imaginative literature, through the medium-light of what we have already
+broach'd, it will at once be appreciated that a vast gulf of difference
+separates the present accepted condition of these spaces, inclusive of
+what is floating in them, from any condition adjusted to, or fit for,
+the world, the America, there sought to be indicated, and the copious
+races of complete men and women, along these Vistas crudely outlined.
+It is, in some sort, no less a difference than lies between that
+long-continued nebular state and vagueness of the astronomical worlds,
+compared with the subsequent state, the definitely-form'd worlds
+themselves, duly compacted, clustering in systems, hung up there,
+chandeliers of the universe, beholding and mutually lit by each other's
+lights, serving for ground of all substantial foothold, all vulgar
+uses--yet serving still more as an undying chain and echelon of
+spiritual proofs and shows. A boundless field to fill! A new creation,
+with needed orbic works launch'd forth, to revolve in free and lawful
+circuits--to move, self-poised, through the ether, and shine like
+heaven's own suns! With such, and nothing less, we suggest that New
+World literature, fit to rise upon, cohere, and signalize in time, these
+States.
+
+What, however, do we more definitely mean by New World literature? Are
+we not doing well enough here already? Are not the United States this
+day busily using, working, more printer's type, more presses, than any
+other country? uttering and absorbing more publications than any other?
+Do not our publishers fatten quicker and deeper? (helping themselves,
+under shelter of a delusive and sneaking law, or rather absence of law,
+to most of their forage, poetical, pictorial, historical, romantic,
+even comic, without money and without price--and fiercely resisting
+the timidest proposal to pay for it.) Many will come under this
+delusion--but my purpose is to dispel it. I say that a nation may
+hold and circulate rivers and oceans of very readable print, journals,
+magazines, novels, library-books, "poetry," &c.--such as the States
+to-day possess and circulate--of unquestionable aid and value--hundreds
+of new volumes annually composed and brought out here, respectable
+enough, indeed unsurpass'd in smartness and erudition--with
+further hundreds, or rather millions, (as by free forage or theft
+aforemention'd,) also thrown into the market--and yet, all the while,
+the said nation, land, strictly speaking, may possess no literature at
+all.
+
+Repeating our inquiry, what, then, do we mean by real literature?
+especially the democratic literature of the future? Hard questions to
+meet. The clues are inferential, and turn us to the past. At best, we
+can only offer suggestions, comparisons, circuits.
+
+It must still be reiterated, as, for the purpose of these memoranda, the
+deep lesson of history and time, that all else in the contributions of
+a nation or age, through its politics, materials, heroic personalities,
+military eclat, &c., remains crude, and defers, in any close and
+thorough-going estimate, until vitalized by national, original
+archetypes in literature. They only put the nation in form, finally tell
+anything--prove, complete anything--perpetuate anything. Without doubt,
+some of the richest and most powerful and populous communities of the
+antique world, and some of the grandest personalities and events, have,
+to after and present times, left themselves entirely unbequeath'd.
+Doubtless, greater than any that have come down to us, were among those
+lands, heroisms, persons, that have not come down to us at all, even
+by name, date, or location. Others have arrived safely, as from voyages
+over wide, century-stretching seas. The little ships, the miracles that
+have buoy'd them, and by incredible chances safely convey'd them, (or
+the best of them, their meaning and essence,) overlong wastes, darkness,
+lethargy, ignorance, &c., have been a few inscriptions--a few immortal
+compositions, small in size, yet compassing what measureless values of
+reminiscence, contemporary portraitures, manners, idioms and beliefs,
+with deepest inference, hint and thought, to tie and touch forever the
+old, new body, and the old, new soul! These! and still these! bearing
+the freight so dear--dearer than pride--dearer than love. All the best
+experience of humanity, folded, saved, freighted to us here. Some of
+these tiny ships we call Old and New Testament, Homer, Eschylus, Plato,
+Juvenal, &c. Precious minims! I think, if we were forced to choose,
+rather than have you, and the likes of you, and what belongs to, and has
+grown of you, blotted out and gone, we could better afford, appaling as
+that would be, to lose all actual ships, this day fasten'd by wharf,
+or floating on wave, and see them, with all their cargoes, scuttled and
+sent to the bottom.
+
+Gather'd by geniuses of city, race or age, and put by them in highest
+of art's forms, namely, the literary form, the peculiar combinations
+and the outshows of that city, age, or race, its particular modes of the
+universal attributes and passions, its faiths, heroes, lovers and gods,
+wars, traditions, struggles, crimes, emotions, joys, (or the subtle
+spirit of these,) having been pass'd on to us to illumine our own
+selfhood, and its experiences--what they supply, indispensable and
+highest, if taken away, nothing else in all the world's boundless
+store-houses could make up to us, or ever again return.
+
+For us, along the great highways of time, those monuments stand--those
+forms of majesty and beauty. For us those beacons burn through all the
+nights. Unknown Egyptians, graving hieroglyphs; Hindus, with hymn and
+apothegm and endless epic; Hebrew prophet, with spirituality, as in
+flashes of lightning, conscience like red-hot iron, plaintive songs and
+screams of vengeance for tyrannies and enslavement; Christ, with bent
+head, brooding love and peace, like a dove; Greek, creating eternal
+shapes of physical and esthetic proportion; Roman, lord of satire, the
+sword, and the codex;--of the figures, some far off and veil'd, others
+nearer and visible; Dante, stalking with lean form, nothing but fibre,
+not a grain of superfluous flesh; Angelo, and the great painters,
+architects, musicians; rich Shakspere, luxuriant as the sun, artist and
+singer of feudalism in its sunset, with all the gorgeous colors, owner
+thereof, and using them at will; and so to such as German Kant and
+Hegel, where they, though near us, leaping over the ages, sit again,
+impassive, imperturbable, like the Egyptian gods. Of these, and the like
+of these, is it too much, indeed, to return to our favorite figure,
+and view them as orbs and systems of orbs, moving in free paths in the
+spaces of that other heaven, the kosmic intellect, the soul?
+
+Ye powerful and resplendent ones! ye were, in your atmospheres, grown
+not for America, but rather for her foes, the feudal and the old--while
+our genius is democratic and modern. Yet could ye, indeed, but breathe
+your breath of life into our New World's nostrils--not to enslave us, as
+now, but, for our needs, to breed a spirit like your own--perhaps, (dare
+we to say it?) to dominate, even destroy, what you yourselves have left!
+On your plane, and no less, but even higher and wider, must we mete
+and measure for to-day and here. I demand races of orbic bards, with
+unconditional uncompromising sway. Come forth, sweet democratic despots
+of the west!
+
+By points like these we, in reflection, token what we mean by any land's
+or people's genuine literature. And thus compared and tested, judging
+amid the influence of loftiest products only, what do our current
+copious fields of print, covering in manifold forms, the United States,
+better, for an analogy, present, than, as in certain regions of the sea,
+those spreading, undulating masses of squid, through which the whale
+swimming, with head half out, feeds?
+
+Not but that doubtless our current so-called literature, (like an
+endless supply of small coin,) performs a certain service, and may-be,
+too, the service needed for the time, (the preparation-service, as
+children learn to spell.) Everybody reads, and truly nearly everybody
+writes, either books, or for the magazines or journals. The matter has
+magnitude, too, after a sort. But is it really advancing? or, has it
+advanced for a long while? There is something impressive about the huge
+editions of the dailies and weeklies, the mountain-stacks of white
+paper piled in the press-vaults, and the proud, crashing, ten-cylinder
+presses, which I can stand and watch any time by the half hour. Then,
+(though the States in the field of imagination present not a single
+first-class work, not a single great literatus,) the main objects,
+to amuse, to titillate, to pass away time, to circulate the news, and
+rumors of news, to rhyme and read rhyme, are yet attain'd, and on
+a scale of infinity. To-day, in books, in the rivalry of writers,
+especially novelists, success, (so-call'd,) is for him or her who
+strikes the mean flat average, the sensational appetite for stimulus,
+incident, persiflage, &c., and depicts, to the common calibre, sensual,
+exterior life. To such, or the luckiest of them, as we see, the
+audiences are limitless and profitable; but they cease presently. While
+this day, or any day, to workmen portraying interior or spiritual life,
+the audiences were limited, and often laggard--but they last forever.
+
+Compared with the past, our modern science soars, and our journals
+serve--but ideal and even ordinary romantic literature, does not,
+I think, substantially advance. Behold the prolific brood of the
+contemporary novel, magazine-tale, theatre-play, &c. The same endless
+thread of tangled and superlative love-story, inherited, apparently from
+the Amadises and Palmerins of the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries over
+there in Europe. The costumes and associations brought down to date, the
+seasoning hotter and more varied, the dragons and ogres left out--but
+the _thing_, I should say, has not advanced--is just as sensational,
+just as strain'd--remains about the same, nor more, nor less.
+
+What is the reason our time, our lands, that we see no fresh local
+courage, sanity, of our own--the Mississippi, stalwart Western men,
+real mental and physical facts, Southerners, &c., in the body of our
+literature? especially the poetic part of it. But always, instead, a
+parcel of dandies and ennuyees, dapper little gentlemen from abroad, who
+flood us with their thin sentiment of parlors, parasols, piano-songs,
+tinkling rhymes, the five-hundredth importation--or whimpering and
+crying about something, chasing one aborted conceit after another,
+and forever occupied in dyspeptic amours with dyspeptic women. While,
+current and novel, the grandest events and revolutions and stormiest
+passions of history, are crossing to-day with unparallel'd rapidity and
+magnificence over the stages of our own and all the continents, offering
+new materials, opening new vistas, with largest needs, inviting the
+daring launching forth of conceptions in literature, inspired by them,
+soaring in highest regions, serving art in its highest (which is only
+the other name for serving God, and serving humanity,) where is the man
+of letters, where is the book, with any nobler aim than to follow in the
+old track, repeat what has been said before--and, as its utmost triumph,
+sell well, and be erudite or elegant?
+
+Mark the roads, the processes, through which these States have arrived,
+standing easy, henceforth ever-equal, ever-compact in their range
+to-day. European adventures? the most antique? Asiatic or African? old
+history--miracles--romances? Rather our own unquestion'd facts. They
+hasten, incredible, blazing bright as fire. From the deeds and days of
+Columbus down to the present, and including the present--and especially
+the late secession war--when I con them, I feel, every leaf, like
+stopping to see if I have not made a mistake, and fall'n on the splendid
+figments of some dream. But it is no dream. We stand, live, move, in
+the huge flow of our age s materialism--in its spirituality. We have had
+founded for us the most positive of lands. The founders have pass'd to
+other spheres--but what are these terrible duties they have left us?
+
+Their politics the United States have, in my opinion, with all their
+faults, already substantially establish'd, for good, on their own
+native, sound, long-vista'd principles, never to be overturn'd, offering
+a sure basis for all the rest. With that, their future religious forms
+sociology, literature, teachers, schools, costumes, &c., are of course
+to make a compact whole, uniform, on tallying principles. For how can
+we remain, divided, contradicting ourselves, this way?[28] I say we can
+only attain harmony and stability by consulting ensemble and the ethic
+purports, and faithfully building upon them. For the New World, indeed,
+after two grand stages of preparation-strata, I perceive that now a
+third stage, being ready for, (and without which the other two were
+useless,) with unmistakable signs appears. The First stage was the
+planning and putting on record the political foundation rights of
+immense masses of people--indeed all people--in the organization of
+republican National, State, and municipal governments, all constructed
+with reference to each, and each to all. This is the American programme,
+not for classes, but for universal man, and is embodied in the compacts
+of the Declaration of Independence, and, as it began and has now
+grown, with its amendments, the Federal Constitution--and in the State
+governments, with all their interiors, and with general suffrage; those
+having the sense not only of what is in themselves, but that their
+certain several things started, planted, hundreds of others in the same
+direction duly arise and follow. The Second stage relates to material
+prosperity, wealth, produce, labor-saving machines, iron, cotton, local,
+State and continental railways, intercommunication and trade with all
+lands, steamships, mining, general employment, organization of great
+cities, cheap appliances for comfort, numberless technical schools,
+books, newspapers, a currency for money circulation, &c. The
+Third stage, rising out of the previous ones, to make them and
+all illustrious, I, now, for one, promulge, announcing a native
+expression-spirit, getting into form, adult, and through mentality, for
+these States, self-contain'd, different from others, more expansive,
+more rich and free, to be evidenced by original authors and poets
+to come, by American personalities, plenty of them, male and female,
+traversing the States, none excepted--and by native superber
+tableaux and growths of language, songs, operas, orations, lectures,
+architecture--and by a sublime and serious Religious Democracy sternly
+taking command, dissolving the old, sloughing off surfaces, and from
+its own interior and vital principles, reconstructing, democratizing
+society.
+
+For America, type of progress, and of essential faith in man, above
+all his errors and wickedness--few suspect how deep, how deep it really
+strikes. The world evidently supposes, and we have evidently supposed
+so too, that the States are merely to achieve the equal franchise, an
+elective government--to inaugurate the respectability of labor, and
+become a nation of practical operatives, law-abiding, orderly and well
+off. Yes, those are indeed parts of the task of America; but they
+not only do not exhaust the progressive conception, but rather arise,
+teeming with it, as the mediums of deeper, higher progress. Daughter of
+a physical revolution--mother of the true revolutions, which are of
+the interior life, and of the arts. For so long as the spirit is not
+changed, any change of appearance is of no avail.
+
+The old men, I remember as a boy, were always talking of American
+independence. What is independence? Freedom from all laws or bonds
+except those of one's own being, control'd by the universal ones. To
+lands, to man, to woman, what is there at last to each, but the inherent
+soul, nativity, idiocrasy, free, highest-poised, soaring its own flight,
+following out itself?
+
+At present, these States, in their theology and social standards, (of
+greater importance than their political institutions,) are entirely held
+possession of by foreign lands. We see the sons and daughters of the
+New World, ignorant of its genius, not yet inaugurating the native, the
+universal, and the near, still importing the distant, the partial, and
+the dead. We see London, Paris, Italy--not original, superb, as where
+they belong--but second-hand here, where they do not belong. We see the
+shreds of Hebrews, Romans, Greeks; but where, on her own soil, do we
+see, in any faithful, highest, proud expression, America herself? I
+sometimes question whether she has a corner in her own house.
+
+Not but that in one sense, and a very grand one, good theology, good
+art, or good literature, has certain features shared in common. The
+combination fraternizes, ties the races--is, in many particulars, under
+laws applicable indifferently to all, irrespective of climate or
+date, and, from whatever source, appeals to emotions, pride, love,
+spirituality, common to human kind. Nevertheless, they touch a man
+closest, (perhaps only actually touch him,) even in these, in their
+expression through autochthonic lights and shades, flavors, fondnesses,
+aversions, specific incidents, illustrations, out of his own
+nationality, geography, surroundings, antecedents, &c. The spirit and
+the form are one, and depend far more on association, identity and
+place, than is supposed. Subtly interwoven with the materiality
+and personality of a land, a race--Teuton, Turk, Californian, or
+what-not--there is always something--I can hardly tell what it
+is--history but describes the results of it--it is the same as the
+untellable look of some human faces. Nature, too, in her stolid forms,
+is full of it--but to most it is there a secret. This something is
+rooted in the invisible roots, the profoundest meanings of that place,
+race, or nationality; and to absorb and again effuse it, uttering words
+and products as from its midst, and carrying it into highest regions,
+is the work, or a main part of the work, of any country's true author,
+poet, historian, lecturer, and perhaps even priest and philosoph. Here,
+and here only, are the foundations for our really valuable and permanent
+verse, drama, &c.
+
+But at present, (judged by any higher scale than that which finds the
+chief ends of existence to be to feverishly make money during one-half
+of it, and by some "amusement," or perhaps foreign travel, flippantly
+kill time, the other half,) and consider'd with reference to purposes
+of patriotism, health, a noble personality, religion, and the democratic
+adjustments, all these swarms of poems, literary magazines, dramatic
+plays, resultant so far from American intellect, and the formation of
+our best ideas, are useless and a mockery. They strengthen and nourish
+no one, express nothing characteristic, give decision and purpose to no
+one, and suffice only the lowest level of vacant minds.
+
+Of what is called the drama, or dramatic presentation in the United
+States, as now put forth at the theatres, I should say it deserves to
+be treated with the same gravity, and on a par with the questions
+of ornamental confectionery at public dinners, or the arrangement of
+curtains and hangings in a ball-room--nor more, nor less. Of the other,
+I will not insult the reader's intelligence, (once really entering into
+the atmosphere of these Vistas,) by supposing it necessary to show,
+in detail, why the copious dribble, either of our little or well-known
+rhymesters, does not fulfil, in any respect, the needs and august
+occasions of this land. America demands a poetry that is bold, modern,
+and all-surrounding and kosmical, as she is herself. It must in no
+respect ignore science or the modern, but inspire itself with science
+and the modern. It must bend its vision toward the future, more than
+the past. Like America, it must extricate itself from even the greatest
+models of the past, and, while courteous to them, must have entire faith
+in itself, and the products of its own democratic spirit only. Like her,
+it must place in the van, and hold up at all hazards, the banner of
+the divine pride of man in himself, (the radical foundation of the new
+religion.) Long enough have the People been listening to poems in which
+common humanity, deferential, bends low, humiliated, acknowledging
+superiors. But America listens to no such poems. Erect, inflated, and
+fully self-esteeming be the chant; and then America will listen with
+pleased ears.
+
+Nor may the genuine gold, the gems, when brought to light at last, be
+probably usher'd forth from any of the quarters currently counted on.
+To-day, doubtless, the infant genius of American poetic expression,
+(eluding those highly-refined imported and gilt-edged themes,
+and sentimental and butterfly flights, pleasant to orthodox
+publishers--causing tender spasms in the coteries, and warranted not to
+chafe the sensitive cuticle of the most exquisitely artificial gossamer
+delicacy,) lies sleeping far away, happily unrecognized and uninjur'd by
+the coteries, the art-writers, the talkers and critics of the saloons,
+or the lecturers in the colleges--lies sleeping, aside, unrecking
+itself, in some western idiom, or native Michigan or Tennessee repartee,
+or stumpspeech--or in Kentucky or Georgia, or the Carolinas--or in some
+slang or local song or allusion of the Manhattan, Boston, Philadelphia
+or Baltimore mechanic--or up in the Maine woods--or off in the hut of
+the California miner, or crossing the Rocky mountains, or along
+the Pacific railroad--or on the breasts of the young farmers of
+the northwest, or Canada, or boatmen of the lakes. Rude and coarse
+nursing-beds, these; but only from such beginnings and stocks,
+indigenous here, may haply arrive, be grafted, and sprout, in time,
+flowers of genuine American aroma, and fruits truly and fully our own.
+
+I say it were a standing disgrace to these States--I say it were a
+disgrace to any nation, distinguish'd above others by the variety and
+vastness of its territories, its materials, its inventive activity,
+and the splendid practicality of its people, not to rise and soar above
+others also in its original styles in literature and art, and its
+own supply of intellectual and esthetic masterpieces, archetypal, and
+consistent with itself. I know not a land except ours that has not, to
+some extent, however small, made its title clear. The Scotch have their
+born ballads, subtly expressing their past and present, and expressing
+character. The Irish have theirs. England, Italy, France, Spain, theirs.
+What has America? With exhaustless mines of the richest ore of epic,
+lyric, tale, tune, picture, etc., in the Four Years' War; with, indeed,
+I sometimes think, the richest masses of material ever afforded a
+nation, more variegated, and on a larger scale--the first sign of
+proportionate, native, imaginative Soul, and first-class works to match,
+is, (I cannot too often repeat,) so far wanting.
+
+Long ere the second centennial arrives, there will be some forty to
+fifty great States, among them Canada and Cuba. When the present century
+closes, our population will be sixty or seventy millions. The Pacific
+will be ours, and the Atlantic mainly ours. There will be daily electric
+communication with every part of the globe. What an age! What a land!
+Where, elsewhere, one so great? The individuality of one nation must
+then, as always, lead the world. Can there be any doubt who the leader
+ought to be? Bear in mind, though, that nothing less than the mightiest
+original non-subordinated SOUL has ever really, gloriously led, or ever
+can lead. (This Soul--its other name, in these Vistas, is LITERATURE.)
+
+In fond fancy leaping those hundred years ahead, let us survey America's
+works, poems, philosophies, fulfilling prophecies, and giving form and
+decision to best ideals. Much that is now undream'd of, we might then
+perhaps see establish'd, luxuriantly cropping forth, richness, vigor of
+letters and of artistic expression, in whose products character will be
+a main requirement, and not merely erudition or elegance.
+
+Intense and loving comradeship, the personal and passionate attachment
+of man to man--which, hard to define, underlies the lessons and ideals
+of the profound saviours of every land and age, and which seems to
+promise, when thoroughly develop'd, cultivated and recognized in manners
+and literature, the most substantial hope and safety of the future of
+these States, will then be fully express'd.[29]
+
+A strong fibred joyousness and faith, and the sense of health _al
+fresco_, may well enter into the preparation of future noble American
+authorship. Part of the test of a great literatus shall be the absence
+in him of the idea of the covert, the lurid, the maleficent, the devil,
+the grim estimates inherited from the Puritans, hell, natural depravity,
+and the like. The great literatus will be known, among the rest, by his
+cheerful simplicity, his adherence to natural standards, his limitless
+faith in God, his reverence, and by the absence in him of doubt, ennui,
+burlesque, persiflage, or any strain'd and temporary fashion.
+
+Nor must I fail, again and yet again, to clinch, reiterate more plainly
+still, (O that indeed such survey as we fancy, may show in time this
+part completed also!) the lofty aim, surely the proudest and the purest,
+in whose service the future literatus, of whatever field, may gladly
+labor. As we have intimated, offsetting the material civilization of our
+race, our nationality, its wealth, territories, factories, population,
+products, trade, and military and naval strength, and breathing breath
+of life into all these, and more, must be its moral civilization--the
+formulation, expression, and aidancy whereof, is the very highest height
+of literature. The climax of this loftiest range of civilization, rising
+above all the gorgeous shows and results of wealth, intellect, power,
+and art, as such--above even theology and religious fervor--is to be its
+development, from the eternal bases, and the fit expression, of absolute
+Conscience, moral soundness, Justice. Even in religious fervor there
+is a touch of animal heat. But moral conscientiousness, crystalline,
+without flaw, not Godlike only, entirely human, awes and enchants
+forever. Great is emotional love, even in the order of the rational
+universe. But, if we must make gradations, I am clear there is something
+greater. Power, love, veneration, products, genius, esthetics, tried by
+subtlest comparisons, analyses, and in serenest moods, somewhere fail,
+somehow become vain. Then noiseless, withflowing steps, the lord,
+the sun, the last ideal comes. By the names right, justice, truth, we
+suggest, but do not describe it. To the world of men it remains a
+dream, an idea as they call it. But no dream is it to the wise--but the
+proudest, almost only solid, lasting thing of all. Its analogy in the
+material universe is what holds together this world, and every object
+upon it, and carries its dynamics on forever sure and safe. Its lack,
+and the persistent shirking of it, as in life, sociology, literature,
+politics, business, and even sermonizing, these times, or any times,
+still leaves the abysm, the mortal flaw and smutch, mocking civilization
+to-day, with all its unquestion'd triumphs, and all the civilization so
+far known.[30]
+
+Present literature, while magnificently fulfilling certain popular
+demands, with plenteous knowledge and verbal smartness, is profoundly
+sophisticated, insane, and its very joy is morbid. It needs tally and
+express Nature, and the spirit of Nature, and to know and obey the
+standards. I say the question of Nature, largely consider'd, involves
+the questions of the esthetic, the emotional, and the religious--and
+involves happiness. A fitly born and bred race, growing up in right
+conditions of out-door as much as in-door harmony, activity and
+development, would probably, from and in those conditions, find it
+enough merely _to live_--and would, in their relations to the sky, air,
+water, trees, &c., and to the countless common shows, and in the fact of
+life itself, discover and achieve happiness--with Being suffused night
+and day by wholesome extasy, surpassing all the pleasures that wealth,
+amusement, and even gratified intellect, erudition, or the sense of art,
+can give.
+
+In the prophetic literature of these States, (the reader of my
+speculations will miss their principal stress unless he allows well for
+the point that a new Literature, perhaps a new Metaphysics, certainly a
+new Poetry, are to be, in my opinion, the only sure and worthy supports
+and expressions of the American Democracy,) Nature, true Nature, and
+the true idea of Nature, long absent, must, above all, become fully
+restored, enlarged, and must furnish the pervading atmosphere to poems,
+and the test of all high literary and esthetic compositions. I do not
+mean the smooth walks, trimm'd hedges, poseys and nightingales of the
+English poets, but the whole orb, with its geologic history, the kosmos,
+carrying fire and snow, that rolls through the illimitable areas, light
+as a feather, though weighing billions of tons. Furthermore, as by
+what we now partially call Nature is intended, at most, only what is
+entertainable by the physical conscience, the sense of matter, and
+of good animal health--on these it must be distinctly accumulated,
+incorporated, that man, comprehending these, has, in towering
+superaddition, the moral and spiritual consciences, indicating his
+destination beyond the ostensible, the mortal.
+
+To the heights of such estimate of Nature indeed ascending, we proceed
+to make observations for our Vistas, breathing rarest air. What is
+I believe called Idealism seems to me to suggest, (guarding against
+extravagance, and ever modified even by its opposite,) the course
+of inquiry and desert of favor for our New World metaphysics, their
+foundation of and in literature, giving hue to all.[31]
+
+The elevating and etherealizing ideas of the unknown and of unreality
+must be brought forward with authority, as they are the legitimate heirs
+of the known, and of reality, and at least as great as their parents.
+Fearless of scoffing, and of the ostent, let us take our stand,
+our ground, and never desert it, to confront the growing excess and
+arrogance of realism. To the cry, now victorious--the cry of sense,
+science, flesh, incomes, farms, merchandise, logic, intellect,
+demonstrations, solid perpetuities, buildings of brick and iron, or
+even the facts of the shows of trees, earth, rocks, &c., fear not, my
+brethren, my sisters, to sound out with equally determin'd voice,
+that conviction brooding within the recesses of every envision'd
+soul--illusions! apparitions! figments all! True, we must not condemn
+the show, neither absolutely deny it, for the indispensability of its
+meanings; but how clearly we see that, migrate in soul to what we can
+already conceive of superior and spiritual points of view, and, palpable
+as it seems under present relations, it all and several might, nay
+certainly would, fall apart and vanish.
+
+I hail with joy the oceanic, variegated, intense practical energy, the
+demand for facts, even the business materialism of the current age,
+our States. But we to the age or land in which these things, movements,
+stopping at themselves, do not tend to ideas. As fuel to flame, and
+flame to the heavens, so must wealth, science, materialism--even this
+democracy of which we make so much--unerringly feed the highest mind,
+the soul. Infinitude the flight: fathomless the mystery. Man, so
+diminutive, dilates beyond the sensible universe, competes with,
+outcopes space and time, meditating even one great idea. Thus, and
+thus only, does a human being, his spirit, ascend above, and justify,
+objective Nature, which, probably nothing in itself, is incredibly and
+divinely serviceable, indispensable, real, here. And as the purport
+of objective Nature is doubtless folded, hidden, somewhere here--as
+somewhere here is what this globe and its manifold forms, and the light
+of day, and night's darkness, and life itself, with all its experiences,
+are for--it is here the great literature, especially verse, must get its
+inspiration and throbbing blood. Then may we attain to a poetry worthy
+the immortal soul of man, and widen, while absorbing materials, and,
+in their own sense, the shows of Nature, will, above all, have, both
+directly and indirectly, a freeing, fluidizing, expanding, religious
+character, exulting with science, fructifying the moral elements, and
+stimulating aspirations, and meditations on the unknown.
+
+The process, so far, is indirect and peculiar, and though it may be
+suggested, cannot be defined. Observing, rapport, and with intuition,
+the shows and forms presented by Nature, the sensuous luxuriance, the
+beautiful in living men and women, the actual play of passions, in
+history and life--and, above all, from those developments either in
+Nature or human personality in which power, (dearest of all to the sense
+of the artist,) transacts itself-out of these, and seizing what is in
+them, the poet, the esthetic worker in any field, by the divine magic
+of his genius, projects them, their analogies, by curious removes,
+indirections, in literature and art. (No useless attempt to repeat
+the material creation, by daguerreotyping the exact likeness by mortal
+mental means.) This is the image-making faculty, coping with material
+creation, and rivaling, almost triumphing over it. This alone, when
+all the other parts of a specimen of literature or art are ready and
+waiting, can breathe into it the breath of life, and endow it with
+identity.
+
+"The true question to ask," says the librarian of Congress in a paper
+read before the Social Science Convention at New York, October, 1869,
+"The true question to ask respecting a book, is, _has it help'd any
+human soul?_" This is the hint, statement, not only of the great
+literatus, his book, but of every great artist. It may be that all works
+of art are to be first tried by their art qualities, their image-forming
+talent, and their dramatic, pictorial, plot-constructing, euphonious and
+other talents. Then, whenever claiming to be first-class works, they are
+to be strictly and sternly tried by their foundation in, and radiation,
+in the highest sense, and always indirectly, of the ethic principles,
+and eligibility to free, arouse, dilate.
+
+As, within the purposes of the Kosmos, and vivifying all meteorology,
+and all the congeries of the mineral, vegetable and animal worlds--all
+the physical growth and development of man, and all the history of the
+race in politics, religions, wars, &c., there is a moral purpose, a
+visible or invisible intention, certainly underlying all--its results
+and proof needing to be patiently waited for--needing intuition,
+faith, idiosyncrasy, to its realization, which many, and especially
+the intellectual, do not have--so in the product, or congeries of
+the product, of the greatest literatus. This is the last, profoundest
+measure and test of a first-class literary or esthetic achievement, and
+when understood and put in force must fain, I say, lead to works, books,
+nobler than any hitherto known. Lo! Nature, (the only complete, actual
+poem,) existing calmly in the divine scheme, containing all, content,
+careless of the criticisms of a day, or these endless and wordy
+chatterers. And lo! to the consciousness of the soul, the permanent
+identity, the thought, the something, before which the magnitude even
+of democracy, art, literature, &c., dwindles, becomes partial,
+measurable--something that fully satisfies, (which those do not.) That
+something is the All, and the idea of All, with the accompanying idea
+of eternity, and of itself, the soul, buoyant, indestructible, sailing
+space forever, visiting every region, as a ship the sea. And again lo!
+the pulsations in all matter, all spirit, throbbing forever--the eternal
+beats, eternal systole and diastole of life in things--wherefrom I feel
+and know that death is not the ending, as was thought, but rather the
+real beginning--and that nothing ever is or can be lost, nor ever die,
+nor soul, nor matter.
+
+In the future of these States must arise poets immenser far, and make
+great poems of death. The poems of life are great, but there must be the
+poems of the purports of life, not only in itself, but beyond itself.
+I have eulogized Homer, the sacred bards of Jewry, Eschylus, Juvenal,
+Shakspere, &c., and acknowledged their inestimable value. But,
+(with perhaps the exception, in some, not all respects, of the
+second-mention'd,) I say there must, for future and democratic purposes,
+appear poets, (dare I to say so?) of higher class even than any of
+those--poets not only possess'd of the religious fire and abandon of
+Isaiah, luxuriant in the epic talent of Homer, or for proud characters
+as in Shakspere, but consistent with the Hegelian formulas, and
+consistent with modern science. America needs, and the world needs, a
+class of bards who will, now and ever, so link and tally the rational
+physical being of man, with the ensembles of time and space, and with
+this vast and multiform show, Nature, surrounding him, ever tantalizing
+him, equally a part, and yet not a part of him, as to essentially
+harmonize, satisfy, and put at rest. Faith, very old, now scared away
+by science, must be restored, brought back by the same power that caused
+her departure--restored with new sway, deeper, wider, higher than ever.
+Surely, this universal ennui, this coward fear, this shuddering at
+death, these low, degrading views, are not always to rule the spirit
+pervading future society, as it has the past, and does the present. What
+the Roman Lucretius sought most nobly, yet all too blindly, negatively
+to do for his age and its successors, must be done positively by some
+great coming literatus, especially poet, who, while remaining fully
+poet, will absorb whatever science indicates, with spiritualism, and
+out of them, and out of his own genius, will compose the great poem
+of death. Then will man indeed confront Nature, and confront time and
+space, both with science, and _con amore_, and take his right place,
+prepared for life, master of fortune and misfortune. And then that which
+was long wanted will be supplied, and the ship that had it not before in
+all her voyages, will have an anchor.
+
+There are still other standards, suggestions, for products of high
+literatuses. That which really balances and conserves the social and
+political world is not so much legislation, police, treaties, and dread
+of punishment, as the latent eternal intuitional sense, in humanity,
+of fairness, manliness, decorum, &c. Indeed, this perennial regulation,
+control, and oversight, by self-suppliance, is _sine qua non_ to
+democracy; and a highest widest aim of democratic literature may well
+be to bring forth, cultivate, brace, and strengthen this sense, in
+individuals and society. A strong mastership of the general inferior
+self by the superior self, is to be aided, secured, indirectly, but
+surely, by the literatus, in his works, shaping, for individual or
+aggregate democracy, a great passionate body, in and along with which
+goes a great masterful spirit.
+
+And still, providing for contingencies, I fain confront the fact, the
+need of powerful native philosophs and orators and bards, these States,
+as rallying points to come, in times of danger, and to fend off ruin
+and defection. For history is long, long, long. Shift and turn the
+combinations of the statement as we may, the problem of the future
+of America is in certain respects as dark as it is vast. Pride,
+competition, segregation, vicious wilfulness, and license beyond
+example, brood already upon us. Unwieldy and immense, who shall hold in
+behemoth? who bridle leviathan? Flaunt it as we choose, athwart and
+over the roads of our progress loom huge uncertainty, and dreadful,
+threatening gloom. It is useless to deny it: Democracy grows rankly up
+the thickest, noxious, deadliest plants and fruits of all--brings worse
+and worse invaders--needs newer, larger, stronger, keener compensations
+and compellers.
+
+Our lands, embracing so much, (embracing indeed the whole, rejecting
+none,) hold in their breast that flame also, capable of consuming
+themselves, consuming us all. Short as the span of our national life has
+been, already have death and downfall crowded close upon us--and will
+again crowd close, no doubt, even if warded off. Ages to come may never
+know, but I know, how narrowly during the late secession war--and more
+than once, and more than twice or thrice--our Nationality, (wherein
+bound up, as in a ship in a storm, depended, and yet depend, all our
+best life, all hope, all value,) just grazed, just by a hair escaped
+destruction. Alas! to think of them! the agony and bloody sweat of
+certain of those hours! those cruel, sharp, suspended crises!
+
+Even to-day, amid these whirls, incredible flippancy, and blind fury of
+parties, infidelity, entire lack of first-class captains and leaders,
+added to the plentiful meanness and vulgarity of the ostensible
+masses--that problem, the labor question, beginning to open like a
+yawning gulf, rapidly widening every year--what prospect have we? We
+sail a dangerous sea of seething currents, cross and under-currents,
+vortices--all so dark, untried--and whither shall we turn? It seems
+as if the Almighty had spread before this nation charts of imperial
+destinies, dazzling as the sun, yet with many a deep intestine
+difficulty, and human aggregate of cankerous imperfection-saying, lo!
+the roads, the only plans of development, long and varied with all
+terrible balks and ebullitions. You said in your soul, I will be empire
+of empires, overshadowing all else, past and present, putting
+the history of Old-World dynasties, conquests behind me, as of no
+account--making a new history, a history of democracy, making old
+history a dwarf--I alone inaugurating largeness, culminating time. If
+these, O lands of America, are indeed the prizes, the determinations of
+your soul, be it so. But behold the cost, and already specimens of the
+cost. Thought you greatness was to ripen for you like a pear? If you
+would have greatness, know that you must conquer it through ages,
+centuries--must pay for it with a proportionate price. For you too, as
+for all lands, the struggle, the traitor, the wily person in office,
+scrofulous wealth, the surfeit of prosperity, the demonism of greed,
+the hell of passion, the decay of faith, the long postponement, the
+fossil-like lethargy, the ceaseless need of revolutions, prophets,
+thunder-storms, deaths, births, new projections and invigorations of
+ideas and men.
+
+Yet I have dream'd, merged in that hidden-tangled problem of our fate,
+whose long unraveling stretches mysteriously through time--dream'd out,
+portray'd, hinted already--a little or a larger band--a band of brave
+and true, unprecedented yet--arm'd and equipt at every point--the
+members separated, it may be, by different dates and States, or south,
+or north, or east, or west--Pacific, Atlantic, Southern, Canadian--a
+year, a century here, and other centuries there--but always one, compact
+in soul, conscience-conserving, God-inculcating, inspirid achievers, not
+only in literature, the greatest art, but achievers in all art--a new,
+undying order, dynasty, from age to age transmitted--a band, a class,
+at least as fit to cope with current years, our dangers, needs, as those
+who, for their times, so long, so well, in armor or in cowl, upheld
+and made illustrious, that far-back feudal, priestly world. To offset
+chivalry, indeed, those vanish'd countless knights, old altars, abbeys,
+priests, ages and strings of ages, a knightlier and more sacred cause
+to-day demands, and shall supply, in a New World, to larger, grander
+work, more than the counterpart and tally of them.
+
+Arrived now, definitely, at an apex for these Vistas, I confess that
+the promulgation and belief in such a class or institution--a new and
+greater literatus order--its possibility, (nay certainty,) underlies
+these entire speculations--and that the rest, the other parts, as
+superstructures, are all founded upon it. It really seems to me the
+condition, not only of our future national and democratic development,
+but of our perpetuation. In the highly artificial and materialistic
+bases of modern civilization, with the corresponding arrangements and
+methods of living, the force-infusion of intellect alone, the depraving
+influences of riches just as much as poverty, the absence of all high
+ideals in character--with the long series of tendencies, shapings, which
+few are strong enough to resist, and which now seem, with steam-engine
+speed, to be everywhere turning out the generations of humanity like
+uniform iron castings--all of which, as compared with the feudal ages,
+we can yet do nothing better than accept, make the best of, and even
+welcome, upon the whole, for their oceanic practical grandeur, and their
+restless wholesale kneading of the masses--I say of all this tremendous
+and dominant play of solely materialistic bearings upon current life in
+the United States, with the results as already seen, accumulating, and
+reaching far into the future, that they must either be confronted and
+met by at least an equally subtle and tremendous force-infusion for
+purposes of spiritualization, for the pure conscience, for genuine
+esthetics, and for absolute and primal manliness and womanliness--or
+else our modern civilization, with all its improvements, is in vain,
+and we are on the road to a destiny, a status, equivalent, in its real
+world, to that of the fabled damned.
+
+Prospecting thus the coming unsped days, and that new order in
+them--marking the endless train of exercise, development, unwind, in
+nation as in man, which life is for--we see, fore-indicated, amid these
+prospects and hopes, new law-forces of spoken and written language--not
+merely the pedagogue-forms, correct, regular, familiar with precedents,
+made for matters of outside propriety, fine words, thoughts definitely
+told out--but a language fann'd by the breath of Nature, which leaps
+overhead, cares mostly for impetus and effects, and for what it plants
+and invigorates to grow--tallies life and character, and seldomer tells
+a thing than suggests or necessitates it. In fact, a new theory of
+literary composition for imaginative works of the very first class, and
+especially for highest poems, is the sole course open to these States.
+Books are to be call'd for, and supplied, on the assumption that the
+process of reading is not a half-sleep, but, in highest sense, an
+exercise, a gymnast's struggle; that the reader is to do something for
+himself, must be on the alert, must himself or herself construct indeed
+the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay--the text furnishing the
+hints, the clue, the start or frame-work. Not the book needs so much
+to be the complete thing, but the reader of the book does. That were
+to make a nation of supple and athletic minds, well-train'd, intuitive,
+used to depend on themselves, and not on a few coteries of writers.
+
+Investigating here, we see, not that it is a little thing we have, in
+having the bequeath'd libraries, countless shelves of volumes, records,
+etc.; yet how serious the danger, depending entirely on them, of the
+bloodless vein, the nerveless arm, the false application, at second or
+third hand. We see that the real interest of this people of ours in the
+theology, history, poetry, politics, and personal models of the past,
+(the British islands, for instance, and indeed all the past,) is not
+necessarily to mould ourselves or our literature upon them, but to
+attain fuller, more definite comparisons, warnings, and the insight to
+ourselves, our own present, and our own far grander, different, future
+history, religion, social customs, &c. We see that almost everything
+that has been written, sung, or stated, of old, with reference to
+humanity under the feudal and oriental institutes, religions, and
+for other lands, needs to be re-written, re-sung, re-stated, in terms
+consistent with the institution of these States, and to come in range
+and obedient uniformity with them.
+
+We see, as in the universes of the material kosmos, after
+meteorological, vegetable, and animal cycles, man at last arises, born
+through them, to prove them, concentrate them, to turn upon them with
+wonder and love--to command them, adorn them, and carry them upward
+into superior realms--so, out of the series of the preceding social and
+political universes, now arise these States. We see that while many were
+supposing things establish'd and completed, really the grandest things
+always remain; and discover that the work of the New World is not ended,
+but only fairly begun.
+
+We see our land, America, her literature, esthetics, &c., as,
+substantially, the getting in form, or effusement and statement, of
+deepest basic elements and loftiest final meanings, of history and
+man--and the portrayal, (under the eternal laws and conditions of
+beauty,) of our own physiognomy, the subjective tie and expression of
+the objective, as from our own combination, continuation, and points of
+view--and the deposit and record of the national mentality, character,
+appeals, heroism, wars, and even liberties--where these, and
+all, culminate in native literary and artistic formulation, to be
+perpetuated; and not having which native, first-class formulation, she
+will flounder about, and her other, however imposing, eminent greatness,
+prove merely a passing gleam; but truly having which, she will
+understand herself, live nobly, nobly contribute, emanate, and,
+swinging, poised safely on herself, illumin'd and illuming, become a
+full-form'd world, and divine Mother not only of material but spiritual
+worlds, in ceaseless succession through time--the main thing being the
+average, the bodily, the concrete, the democratic, the popular, on which
+all the superstructures of the future are to permanently rest.
+
+
+Notes:
+
+[20] "From a territorial area of less than nine hundred thousand
+square miles, the Union has expanded into over four millions and
+a half--fifteen times larger than that of Great Britain and France
+combined--with a shore-line, including Alaska, equal to the entire
+circumference of the earth, and with a domain within these lines far
+wider than that of the Romans in their proudest days of conquest and
+renown. With a river, lake, and coastwise commerce estimated at over two
+thousand millions of dollars per year; with a railway traffic of four to
+six thousand millions per year, and the annual domestic exchanges of the
+country running up to nearly ten thousand millions per year; with over
+two thousand millions of dollars invested in manufacturing, mechanical,
+and mining industry; with over five hundred millions of acres of land
+in actual occupancy, valued, with their appurtenances, at over seven
+thousand millions of dollars, and producing annually crops valued at
+over three thousand millions of dollars; with a realm which, if the
+density of Belgium's population were possible, would be vast enough to
+include all the present inhabitants of the world; and with equal rights
+guaranteed to even the poorest and humblest of our forty millions of
+people--we can, with a manly pride akin to that which distinguish'd the
+palmiest days of Rome, claim," &c., &c., &c.--_Vice-President Colfax's
+Speech, July 4, 1870_.
+
+LATER--_London "Times," (Weekly,) June 23, '82_.
+
+"The wonderful wealth-producing power of the United States defies and
+sets at naught the grave drawbacks of a mischievous protective tariff,
+and has already obliterated, almost wholly, the traces of the greatest
+of modern civil wars. What is especially remarkable in the present
+development of American energy and success is its wide and equable
+distribution. North and south, east and west, on the shores of the
+Atlantic and the Pacific, along the chain of the great lakes, in the
+valley of the Mississippi, and on the coasts of the gulf of Mexico,
+the creation of wealth and the increase of population are signally
+exhibited. It is quite true, as has been shown by the recent
+apportionment of population in the House of Representatives, that some
+sections of the Union have advanced, relatively to the rest, in an
+extraordinary and unexpected degree. But this does not imply that the
+States which have gain'd no additional representatives or have actually
+lost some have been stationary or have receded. The fact is that the
+present tide of prosperity has risen so high that it has overflow' d all
+barriers, and has fill'd up the back-waters, and establish'd something
+like an approach to uniform success."
+
+[21] See, for hereditaments, specimens, Walter Scott's Border
+Minstrelsy, Percy's collection, Ellis's early English Metrical
+Romances, the European continental poems of Walter of Aquitania, and the
+Nibelungen, of pagan stock, but monkish-feudal redaction; the history of
+the Troubadours, by Fauriel; even the far-back cumbrous old Hindu epics,
+as indicating the Asian eggs out of which European chivalry was hatch'd;
+Ticknor's chapters on the Cid, and on the Spanish poems and poets of
+Calderon's time. Then always, and, of course, as the superbest poetic
+culmination-expression of feudalism, the Shaksperean dramas, in
+the attitudes, dialogue, characters, &c., of the princes, lords and
+gentlemen, the pervading atmosphere, the implied and express'd standard
+of manners, the high port and proud stomach, the regal embroidery of
+style, &c.
+
+[22] Of these rapidly-sketch'd hiatuses, the two which seem to me most
+serious are, for one, the condition, absence, or perhaps the singular
+abeyance, of moral conscientious fibre all through American society;
+and, for another, the appaling depletion of women in their powers of
+sane athletic maternity, their crowning attribute, and ever making the
+woman, in loftiest spheres, superior to the man.
+
+I have sometimes thought, indeed, that the sole avenue and means of a
+reconstructed sociology depended, primarily, on a new birth, elevation,
+expansion, invigoration of woman, affording, for races to come, (as the
+conditions that antedate birth are indispensable,) a perfect motherhood.
+Great, great, indeed, far greater than they know, is the sphere of
+women. But doubtless the question of such new sociology all goes
+together, includes many varied and complex influences and premises, and
+the man as well as the woman, and the woman as well as the man.
+
+[23] The question hinted here is one which time only can answer. Must
+not the virtue of modern Individualism, continually enlarging, usurping
+all, seriously affect, perhaps keep down entirely, in America, the like
+of the ancient virtue of Patriotism, the fervid and absorbing love of
+general country? I have no doubt myself that the two will merge, and
+will mutually profit and brace each other, and that from them a greater
+product, a third, will arise. But I feel that at present they and their
+oppositions form a serious problem and paradox in the United States.
+
+[24] "SHOOTING NIAGARA."--I was at first roused to much anger and
+abuse by this essay from Mr. Carlyle, so insulting to the theory of
+America--but happening to think afterwards how I had more than once been
+in the like mood, during which his essay was evidently cast, and seen
+persons and things in the same light, (indeed some might say there are
+signs of the same feeling in these Vistas)--I have since read it again,
+not only as a study, expressing as it does certain judgments from the
+highest feudal point of view, but have read it with respect as coming
+from an earnest soul, and as contributing certain sharp-cutting metallic
+grains, which, if not gold or silver, may be good, hard, honest iron.
+
+[25] For fear of mistake, I may as well distinctly specify, as
+cheerfully included in the model and standard of these Vistas,
+a practical, stirring, worldly, money-making, even materialistic
+character. It is undeniable that our farms, stores, offices, dry-goods,
+coal and groceries, enginery, cash-accounts, trades, earnings, markets,
+&c., should be attended to in earnest, and actively pursued, just as
+if they had a real and permanent existence. I perceive clearly that the
+extreme business energy, and this almost maniacal appetite for wealth
+prevalent in the United States, are parts of amelioration and progress,
+indispensably needed to prepare the very results I demand. My theory
+includes riches, and the getting of riches, and the amplest products,
+power, activity, inventions, movements, &c. Upon them, as upon
+substrata, I raise the edifice design'd in these Vistas.
+
+[26] The whole present system of the officering and personnel of the
+army and navy of these States, and the spirit and letter of their
+trebly-aristocratic rules and regulations, is a monstrous exotic, a
+nuisance and revolt, and belong here just as much as orders of nobility,
+or the Pope's council of cardinals. I say if the present theory of
+our army and navy is sensible and true, then the rest of America is an
+unmitigated fraud.
+
+[27] A: After the rest is satiated, all interest culminates in the field
+of persons, and never flags there. Accordingly in this field have the
+great poets and literatuses signally toil'd. They too, in all ages, all
+lands, have been creators, fashioning, making types of men and women,
+as Adam and Eve are made in the divine fable. Behold, shaped, bred by
+orientalism, feudalism, through their long growth and culmination, and
+breeding back in return--(when shall we have an equal series, typical of
+democracy?)--behold, commencing in primal Asia, (apparently formulated,
+in what beginning we know, in the gods of the mythologies, and coming
+down thence,) a few samples out of the countless product, bequeath'd to
+the moderns, bequeath'd to America as studies. For the men, Yudishtura,
+Rama, Arjuna, Solomon, most of the Old and New Testament characters;
+Achilles, Ulysses, Theseus, Prometheus, Hercules, Aeneas, Plutarch's
+heroes; the Merlin of Celtic bards; the Cid, Arthur and his knights,
+Siegfried and Hagen in the Nibelungen; Roland and Oliver; Roustam in
+the Shah-Nemah; and so on to Milton's Satan, Cervantes' Don Quixote,
+Shakspere's Hamlet, Richard II., Lear, Marc Antony, &c., and the modern
+Faust. These, I say, are models, combined, adjusted to other standards
+than America's, but of priceless value to her and hers.
+
+Among women, the goddesses of the Egyptian, Indian and Greek
+mythologies, certain Bible characters, especially the Holy Mother;
+Cleopatra, Penelope; the portraits of Brunhelde and Chriemhilde in the
+Nibelungen; Oriana, Una, &c.; the modern Consuelo, Walter Scott's Jeanie
+and Effie Deans, &c., &c. (Yet woman portray'd or outlin'd at her best,
+or as perfect human mother, does not hitherto, it seems to me, fully
+appear in literature.)
+
+[28] Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict.
+Science, (twin in its fields, of Democracy in its)--Science, testing
+absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the
+world--a sun, mounting, most illuminating, most glorious--surely never
+again to set. But against it, deeply entrench'd, holding possession, yet
+remains, (not only through the churches and schools, but by imaginative
+literature, and unregenerate poetry,) the fossil theology of
+the mythic-materialistic, superstitious, untaught and credulous,
+fable-loving, primitive ages of humanity.
+
+[29] It is to the development, identification, and general prevalence
+of that fervid comradeship, (the adhesive love, at least rivaling the
+amative love hitherto possessing imaginative literature, if not going
+beyond it,) that I look for the counterbalance and offset of
+our materialistic and vulgar American democracy, and for the
+spiritualization thereof. Many will say it is a dream, and will not
+follow my inferences: but I confidently expect a time when there will
+be seen, running like a half-hid warp through all the myriad audible and
+visible worldly interests of America, threads of manly friendship, fond
+and loving, pure and sweet, strong and life-long, carried to degrees
+hitherto unknown--not only giving tone to individual character, and
+making it unprecedently emotional, muscular, heroic, and refined, but
+having the deepest relations to general politics. I say democracy infers
+such loving comradeship, as its most inevitable twin or counterpart,
+without which it will be incomplete, in vain, and incapable of
+perpetuating itself.
+
+[30] I am reminded as I write that out of this very conscience, or idea
+of conscience, of intense moral right, and in its name and strain'd
+construction, the worst fanaticisms, wars, persecutions, murders, &c.,
+have yet, in all lands, in the past, been broach'd, and have come to
+their devilish fruition. Much is to be said--but I may say here, and
+in response, that side by side with the unflagging stimulation of the
+elements of religion and conscience must henceforth move with
+equal sway, science, absolute reason, and the general proportionate
+development of the whole man. These scientific facts, deductions, are
+divine too--precious counted parts of moral civilization, and, with
+physical health, indispensable to it, to prevent fanaticism. For
+abstract religion, I perceive, is easily led astray, ever credulous, and
+is capable of devouring, remorseless, like fire and flame. Conscience,
+too, isolated from all else, and from the emotional nature, may but
+attain the beauty and purity of glacial, snowy ice. We want, for these
+States, for the general character, a cheerful, religious fervor, endued
+with the ever-present modifications of the human emotions, friendship,
+benevolence, with a fair field for scientific inquiry, the right of
+individual judgment, and always the cooling influences of material
+Nature.
+
+[31] The culmination and fruit of literary artistic expression, and
+its final fields of pleasure for the human soul, are in metaphysics,
+including the mysteries of the spiritual world, the soul itself, and the
+question of the immortal continuation of our identity. In all ages, the
+mind of man has brought up here--and always will. Here, at least, of
+whatever race or era, we stand on common ground. Applause, too, is
+unanimous, antique or modern. Those authors who work well in this
+field--though their reward, instead of a handsome percentage, or
+royalty, may be but simply the laurel-crown of the victors in the great
+Olympic games--will be dearest to humanity, and their works, however
+esthetically defective, will be treasur'd forever. The altitude of
+literature and poetry has always been religion--and always will be. The
+Indian Vedas, the Nackas of Zoroaster, the Tal mud of the Jews, the Old
+Testament, the Gospel of Christ and his disciples, Plato's works, the
+Koran of Mohammed, the Edda of Snorro, and so on toward our own day, to
+Swedenborg, and to the invaluable contributions of Leibnitz, Kant and
+Hegel--these, with such poems only in which, (while singing well
+of persons and events, of the passions of man, and the shows of the
+material universe,) the religious tone, the consciousness of mystery,
+the recognition of the future, of the unknown, of Deity over and under
+all, and of the divine purpose, are never absent, but indirectly give
+tone to all--exhibit literature's real heights and elevations, towering
+up like the great mountains of the earth.
+
+Standing on this ground--the last, the highest, only permanent
+ground--and sternly criticising, from it, all works, either of the
+literary, or any art, we have peremptorily to dismiss every pretensive
+production, however fine its esthetic or intellectual points, which
+violates or ignores, or even does not celebrate, the central divine
+idea of All, suffusing universe, of eternal trains of purpose, in
+the development, by however slow degrees, of the physical, moral, and
+spiritual kosmos. I say he has studied, meditated to no profit,
+whatever may be his mere erudition, who has not absorbed this simple
+consciousness and faith. It is not entirely new--but it is for Democracy
+to elaborate it, and look to build upon and expand from it, with
+uncompromising reliance. Above the doors of teaching the inscription is
+to appear, Though little or nothing can be absolutely known, perceiv'd,
+except from a point of view which is evanescent, yet we know at least
+one permanency, that Time and Space, in the will of God, furnish
+successive chains, completions of material births and beginnings,
+solve all discrepancies, fears and doubts, and eventually fulfil
+happiness--and that the prophecy of those births, namely spiritual
+results, throws the true arch over all teaching, all science. The local
+considerations of sin, disease, deformity, ignorance, death, &c., and
+their measurement by the superficial mind, and ordinary legislation and
+theology, are to be met by science, boldly accepting, promulging this
+faith, and planting the seeds of superber laws--of the explication of
+the physical universe through the spiritual--and clearing the way for a
+religion, sweet and unimpugnable alike to little child or great savan.
+
+
+
+
+ORIGINS OF ATTEMPTED SECESSION
+
+_Not the whole matter, but some side facts worth conning to-day and any
+day_.
+
+I consider the war of attempted secession, 1860-'65, not as a struggle
+of two distinct and separate peoples, but a conflict (often happening,
+and very fierce) between the passions and paradoxes of one and the same
+identity--perhaps the only terms on which that identity could really
+become fused, homogeneous and lasting. The origin and conditions out
+of which it arose, are full of lessons, full of warnings yet to the
+Republic--and always will be. The underlying and principal of those
+origins are yet singularly ignored. The Northern States were really
+just as responsible for that war, (in its precedents, foundations,
+instigations,) as the South. Let me try to give my view. From the age of
+21 to 40, (1840-'60,) I was interested in the political movements of the
+land, not so much as a participant, but as an observer, and a regular
+voter at the elections. I think I was conversant with the springs of
+action, and their workings, not only in New York city and Brooklyn,
+but understood them in the whole country, as I had made leisurely tours
+through all the middle States, and partially through the western and
+southern, and down to New Orleans, in which city I resided for some
+time. (I was there at the close of the Mexican war--saw and talk'd with
+General Taylor, and the other generals and officers, who were feted and
+detain'd several days on their return victorious from that expedition.)
+
+Of course many and very contradictory things, specialties, developments,
+constitutional views, &c., went to make up the origin of the war--but
+the most significant general fact can be best indicated and stated as
+follows: For twenty-five years previous to the outbreak, the controling
+"Democratic" nominating conventions of our Republic--starting from their
+primaries in wards or districts, and so expanding to counties,
+powerful cities, States, and to the great Presidential nominating
+conventions--were getting to represent and be composed of more and more
+putrid and dangerous materials. Let me give a schedule, or list, of
+one of these representative conventions for a long time before, and
+inclusive of, that which nominated Buchanan. (Remember they had come to
+be the fountains and tissues of the American body politic, forming, as
+it were, the whole blood, legislation, office-holding, &c.) One of these
+conventions, from 1840 to '60, exhibited a spectacle such as could
+never be seen except in our own age and in these States. The members who
+composed it were, seven-eighths of them, the meanest kind of bawling and
+blowing office-holders, office-seekers, pimps, malignants, conspirators,
+murderers, fancy-men, custom-house clerks, contractors, kept-editors,
+spaniels well-train'd to carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels,
+disunionists, terrorists, mail-riflers, slave-catchers, pushers of
+slavery, creatures of the President, creatures of would-be Presidents,
+spies, bribers, compromisers, lobbyers, sponges, ruin'd sports,
+expell'd gamblers, policy-backers, monte-dealers, duellists, carriers
+of conceal'd weapons, deaf men, pimpled men, scarr'd inside with vile
+disease, gaudy outside with gold chains made from the people's money
+and harlots' money twisted together; crawling, serpentine men, the lousy
+combings and born freedom-sellers of the earth. And whence came they?
+From back-yards and bar-rooms; from out of the custom-houses, marshals'
+offices, post-offices, and gambling-hells; from the President's house,
+the jail, the station-house; from unnamed by-places, where devilish
+disunion was hatch'd at midnight; from political hearses, and from the
+coffins inside, and from the shrouds inside of the coffins; from the
+tumors and abscesses of the land; from the skeletons and skulls in the
+vaults of the federal almshouses; and from the running sores of the
+great cities. Such, I say, form'd, or absolutely controll'd the forming
+of, the entire personnel, the atmosphere, nutriment and chyle, of our
+municipal, State, and National politics--substantially permeating,
+handling, deciding, and wielding everything--legislation, nominations,
+elections, "public sentiment," &c.--while the great masses of the
+people, farmers, mechanics, and traders, were helpless in their gripe.
+These conditions were mostly prevalent in the north and west, and
+especially in New York and Philadelphia cities; and the southern
+leaders, (bad enough, but of a far higher order,) struck hands and
+affiliated with, and used them. Is it strange that a thunder-storm
+follow'd such morbid and stifling cloud-strata?
+
+I say then, that what, as just outlined, heralded, and made the ground
+ready for secession revolt, ought to be held up, through all the future,
+as the most instructive lesson in American political history--the most
+significant warning and beacon-light to coming generations. I say
+that the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth terms of the American
+Presidency have shown that the villainy and shallowness of rulers
+(back'd by the machinery of great parties) are just as eligible to these
+States as to any foreign despotism, kingdom, or empire--there is not a
+bit of difference. History is to record those three Presidentiads, and
+especially the administrations of Fillmore and Buchanan, as so far our
+topmost warning and shame. Never were publicly display'd more deform'd,
+mediocre, snivelling, unreliable, false-hearted men. Never were these
+States so insulted, and attempted to be betray'd. All the main purposes
+for which the government was establish'd were openly denied. The
+perfect equality of slavery with freedom was flauntingly preach'd in the
+north--nay, the superiority of slavery. The slave trade was proposed
+to be renew'd. Everywhere frowns and misunderstandings--everywhere
+exasperations and humiliations. (The slavery contest is settled--and the
+war is long over--yet do not those putrid conditions, too many of them,
+still exist? still result in diseases, fevers, wounds--not of war and
+army hospitals--but the wounds and diseases of peace?)
+
+Out of those generic influences, mainly in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
+&c., arose the attempt at disunion. To philosophical examination,
+the malignant fever of that war shows its embryonic sources, and
+the original nourishment of its life and growth, in the north. I say
+secession, below the surface, originated and was brought to maturity
+in the free States. I allude to the score of years preceding 1860. My
+deliberate opinion is now, that if at the opening of the contest
+the abstract duality-question of _slavery and quiet_ could have been
+submitted to a direct popular vote, as against their opposite, they
+would have triumphantly carried the day in a majority of the northern
+States--in the large cities, leading off with New York and Philadelphia,
+by tremendous majorities. The events of '61 amazed everybody north and
+south, and burst all prophecies and calculations like bubbles. But even
+then, and during the whole war, the stern fact remains that (not only
+did the north put it down, but) _the secession cause had numerically
+just as many sympathizers in the free as in the rebel States_.
+
+As to slavery, abstractly and practically, (its idea, and the
+determination to establish and expand it, especially in the new
+territories, the future America,) it is too common, I repeat, to
+identify it exclusively with the south. In fact down to the opening of
+the war, the whole country had about an equal hand in it. The north had
+at least been just as guilty, if not more guilty; and the east and west
+had. The former Presidents and Congresses had been guilty--the governors
+and legislatures of every northern State had been guilty, and the mayors
+of New York and other northern cities had all been guilty--their hands
+were all stain'd. And as the conflict took decided shape, it is hard
+to tell which class, the leading southern or northern disunionists,
+was more stunn'd and disappointed at the non-action of the free-State
+secession element, so largely existing and counted on by those leaders,
+both sections.
+
+So much for that point, and for the north. As to the inception and
+direct instigation of the war, in the south itself, I shall not attempt
+interiors or complications. Behind all, the idea that it was from
+a resolute and arrogant determination on the part of the extreme
+slaveholders, the Calhounites, to carry the States-rights' portion
+of the constitutional compact to its farthest verge, and nationalize
+slavery, or else disrupt the Union, and found a new empire, with slavery
+for its corner-stone, was and is undoubtedly the true theory. (If
+successful, this attempt might--I am not sure, but it might--have
+destroy'd not only our American republic, in anything like first-class
+proportions, in itself and its prestige, but for ages at least, the
+cause of Liberty and Equality everywhere--and would have been the
+greatest triumph of reaction, and the severest blow to political and
+every other freedom, possible to conceive. Its worst result would have
+inured to the southern States themselves.) That our national democratic
+experiment, principle, and machinery, could triumphantly sustain such a
+shock, and that the Constitution could weather it, like a ship a storm,
+and come out of it as sound and whole as before, is by far the most
+signal proof yet of the stability of that experiment, Democracy, and of
+those principles, and that Constitution.
+
+Of the war itself, we know in the ostent what has been done. The numbers
+of the dead and wounded can be told or approximated, the debt posted and
+put on record, the material events narrated, &c. Meantime, elections go
+on, laws are pass'd, political parties struggle, issue their platforms,
+&c., just the same as before. But immensest results, not only in
+politics, but in literature, poems, and sociology, are doubtless waiting
+yet unform'd in the future. How long they will wait I cannot tell.
+The pageant of history's retrospect shows us, ages since, all Europe
+marching on the crusades, those arm'd uprisings of the people, stirr'd
+by a mere idea, to grandest attempt--and, when once baffled in it,
+returning, at intervals, twice, thrice, and again. An unsurpass'd series
+of revolutionary events, influences. Yet it took over two hundred years
+for the seeds of the crusades to germinate, before beginning even to
+sprout. Two hundred years they lay, sleeping, not dead, but dormant in
+the ground. Then, out of them, unerringly, arts, travel, navigation,
+politics, literature, freedom, the spirit of adventure, inquiry, all
+arose, grew, and steadily sped on to what we see at present. Far
+back there, that huge agitation-struggle of the crusades stands,
+as undoubtedly the embryo, the start, of the high preeminence of
+experiment, civilization and enterprise which the European nations have
+since sustain'd, and of which these States are the heirs.
+
+Another illustration--(history is full of them, although the war itself,
+the victory of the Union, and the relations of our equal States, present
+features of which there are no precedents in the past.) The conquest of
+England eight centuries ago, by the Franco-Normans--the obliteration of
+the old, (in many respects so needing obliteration)--the Domesday Book,
+and the repartition of the land--the old impedimenta removed, even by
+blood and ruthless violence, and a new, progressive genesis establish'd,
+new seeds sown--time has proved plain enough that, bitter as they
+were, all these were the most salutary series of revolutions that could
+possibly have happen'd. Out of them, and by them mainly, have come,
+out of Albic, Roman and Saxon England--and without them could not have
+come--not only the England of the 500 years down to the present, and of
+the present--but these States. Nor, except for that terrible dislocation
+and overturn, would these States, as they are, exist to-day.
+
+It is certain to me that the United States, by virtue of that war and
+its results, and through that and them only, are now ready to enter, and
+must certainly enter, upon their genuine career in history, as no more
+torn and divided in their spinal requisites, but a great homogeneous
+Nation--free States all--a moral and political unity in variety, such
+as Nature shows in her grandest physical works, and as much greater than
+any mere work of Nature, as the moral and political, the work of man,
+his mind, his soul, are, in their loftiest sense, greater than the
+merely physical. Out of that war not only has the nationality of the
+States escaped from being strangled, but more than any of the rest, and,
+in my opinion, more than the north itself, the vital heart and breath of
+the south have escaped as from the pressure of a general nightmare,
+and are henceforth to enter on a life, development, and active freedom,
+whose realities are certain in the future, notwithstanding all the
+southern vexations of the hour--a development which could not possibly
+have been achiev'd on any less terms, or by any other means than that
+grim lesson, or something equivalent to it. And I predict that the south
+is yet to outstrip the north.
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACES TO "LEAVES OF GRASS"
+
+
+PREFACE, 1855 To first issue of Leaves of Grass. _Brooklyn, N.Y._
+
+America does not repel the past, or what the past has produced under
+its forms, or amid other politics, or the idea of castes, or the old
+religions--accepts the lesson with calmness--is not impatient because
+the slough still sticks to opinions and manners in literature, while the
+life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the
+new forms--perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and
+sleeping rooms of the house--perceives that it waits a little while
+in the door--that it was fittest for its days--that its action has
+descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches--and that
+he shall be fittest for his days.
+
+The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth, have
+probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are
+essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto,
+the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler
+largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that
+corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here
+is action untied from strings, necessarily blind to particulars and
+details, magnificently moving in masses. Here is the hospitality which
+for ever indicates heroes. Here the performance, disdaining the trivial,
+unapproach'd in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings, and
+the push of its perspective, spreads with crampless and flowing breadth,
+and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance. One sees it must
+indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be
+bankrupt while corn grows from the ground, or the orchards drop apples,
+or the bays contain fish, or men beget children upon women.
+
+Other states indicate themselves in their deputies--but the genius of
+the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures,
+nor in its ambassadors or authors, or colleges or churches or parlors,
+nor even in its newspapers or inventors--but always most in the common
+people, south, north, west, east, in all its States, through all its
+mighty amplitude. The largeness of the nation, however, were monstrous
+without a corresponding largeness and generosity of the spirit of the
+citizen. Not swarming states, nor streets and steamships, nor prosperous
+business, nor farms, nor capital, nor learning, may suffice for the
+ideal of man--nor suffice the poet. No reminiscences may suffice
+either. A live nation can always cut a deep mark, and can have the best
+authority the cheapest--namely, from its own soul. This is the sum of
+the profitable uses of individuals or states, and of present action and
+grandeur, and of the subjects of poets. (As if it were necessary to
+trot back generation after generation to the eastern records! As if the
+beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of the
+mythical! As if men do not make their mark out of any times! As if the
+opening of the western continent by discovery, and what has transpired
+in North and South America, were less than the small theatre of the
+antique, or the aimless sleep-walking of the middle ages!) The pride of
+the United States leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities, and all
+returns of commerce and agriculture, and all the magnitude of geography
+or shows of exterior victory, to enjoy the sight and realization of
+full-sized men, or one full-sized man unconquerable and simple. The
+American poets are to enclose old and new, for America is the race of
+races. The expression of the American poet is to be transcendent and
+new. It is to be indirect, and not direct or descriptive or epic. Its
+quality goes through these to much more. Let the age and wars of other
+nations be chanted, and their eras and characters be illustrated, and
+that finish the verse. Not so the great psalm of the republic. Here
+the theme is creative, and has vista. Whatever stagnates in the flat
+of custom or obedience or legislation, the great poet never stagnates.
+Obedience does not master him, he masters it. High up out of reach
+he stands, turning a concentrated light--he turns the pivot with
+his finger--he baffles the swiftest runners as he stands, and easily
+overtakes and envelopes them. The time straying toward infidelity and
+confections and persiflage he withholds by steady faith. Faith is the
+antiseptic of the soul--it pervades the common people and preserves
+them--they never give up believing and expecting and trusting. There
+is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate
+person, that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive
+genius. The poet sees for a certainty how one not a great artist may be
+just as sacred and perfect as the greatest artist.
+
+The power to destroy or remould is freely used by the greatest poet, but
+seldom the power of attack. What is past is past. If he does not expose
+superior models, and prove himself by every step he takes, he is not
+what is wanted. The presence of the great poet conquers--not parleying,
+or struggling, or any prepared attempts. Now he has passed that way, see
+after him! There is not left any vestige of despair, or misanthropy, or
+cunning, or exclusiveness, or the ignominy of a nativity or color, or
+delusion of hell or the necessity of hell--and no man thenceforward
+shall be degraded for ignorance or weakness or sin. The greatest poet
+hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into anything that
+was before thought small, it dilates with the grandeur and life of the
+universe. He is a seer--he is individual--he is complete in himself--the
+others are as good as he, only he sees it, and they do not. He is
+not one of the chorus--he does not stop for any regulation--he is the
+president of regulation. What the eyesight does to the rest, he does
+to the rest. Who knows the curious mystery of the eyesight? The other
+senses corroborate themselves, but this is removed from any proof but
+its own, and foreruns the identities of the spiritual world. A
+single glance of it mocks all the investigations of man, and all
+the instruments and books of the earth, and all reasoning. What
+is marvellous? what is unlikely? what is impossible or baseless or
+vague--after you have once just open'd the space of a peach-pit, and
+given audience to far and near, and to the sunset, and had all things
+enter with electric swiftness, softly and duly, without confusion or
+jostling or jam?
+
+The land and sea, the animals, fishes and birds, the sky of heaven and
+the orbs, the forests, mountains and rivers, are not small themes--but
+folks expect of the poet to indicate more than the beauty and dignity
+which always attach to dumb real objects--they expect him to indicate
+the path between reality and their souls. Men and women perceive the
+beauty well enough--probably as well as he. The passionate tenacity of
+hunters, woodmen, early risers, cultivators of gardens and orchards and
+fields, the love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons,
+drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, all is an old
+varied sign of the unfailing perception of beauty, and of a residence
+of the poetic in out-door people. They can never be assisted by poets
+to perceive--some may, but they never can. The poetic quality is not
+marshal'd in rhyme or uniformity, or abstract addresses to things, nor
+in melancholy complaints or good precepts, but is the life of these
+and much else, and is in the soul. The profit of rhyme is that it drops
+seeds of a sweeter and more luxuriant rhyme, and of uniformity that it
+conveys itself into its own roots in the ground out of sight. The rhyme
+and uniformity of perfect poems show the free growth of metrical laws,
+and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs and roses on a
+bush, and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges,
+and melons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form. The
+fluency and ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations or
+recitations, are not independent but dependent. All beauty comes
+from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are
+in conjunction in a man or woman, it is enough--the fact will prevail
+through the universe; but the gaggery and gilt of a million years will
+not prevail. Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is
+lost. This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals,
+despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the
+stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants,
+argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the
+people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or
+number of men--go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the
+young, and with the mothers of families--re-examine all you have been
+told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults
+your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the
+richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its
+lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion
+and joint of your body. The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded
+work. He shall know that the ground is already plough'd and manured;
+others may not know it, but he shall. He shall go directly to the
+creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches--and
+shall master all attachment.
+
+The known universe has one complete lover, and that is the greatest
+poet. He consumes an eternal passion, and is indifferent which chance
+happens, and which possible contingency of fortune or misfortune, and
+persuades daily and hourly his delicious pay. What balks or breaks
+others is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy.
+Other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing to his
+proportions. All expected from heaven or from the highest, he is rapport
+with in the sight of the daybreak, or the scenes of the winter woods,
+or the presence of children playing, or with his arm round the neck of a
+man or woman. His love above all love has leisure and expanse--he leaves
+room ahead of himself. He is no irresolute or suspicious lover--he is
+sure--he scorns intervals. His experience and the showers and thrills
+are not for nothing. Nothing can jar him--suffering and darkness
+cannot--death and fear cannot. To him complaint and jealousy and envy
+are corpses buried and rotten in the earth--he saw them buried. The
+sea is not surer of the shore, or the shore of the sea, than he is the
+fruition of his love, and of all perfection and beauty.
+
+The fruition of beauty is no chance of miss or hit--it is as inevitable
+as life--it is exact and plumb as gravitation. From the eyesight
+proceeds another eyesight, and from the hearing proceeds another
+hearing, and from the voice proceeds another voice, eternally curious of
+the harmony of things with man. These understand the law of perfection
+in masses and floods--that it is profuse and impartial--that there is
+not a minute of the light or dark, nor an acre of the earth and sea,
+without it--nor any direction of the sky, nor any trade or employment,
+nor any turn of events. This is the reason that about the proper
+expression of beauty there is precision and balance. One part does not
+need to be thrust above another. The best singer is not the one who has
+the most lithe and powerful organ. The pleasure of poems is not in them
+that take the handsomest measure and sound.
+
+Without effort, and without exposing in the least how it is done, the
+greatest poet brings the spirit of any or all events and passions and
+scenes and persons, some more and some less, to bear on your individual
+character as you hear or read. To do this well is to compete with the
+laws that pursue and follow Time. What is the purpose must surely be
+there, and the clue of it must be there--and the faintest indication is
+the indication of the best, and then becomes the clearest indication.
+Past and present and future are not disjoin'd but join'd. The greatest
+poet forms the consistence of what is to be, from what has been and is.
+He drags the dead out of their coffins and stands them again on their
+feet. He says to the past, Rise and walk before me that I may realize
+you. He learns the lesson--he places himself where the future becomes
+present. The greatest poet does not only dazzle his rays over character
+and scenes and passions--he finally ascends, and finishes all--he
+exhibits the pinnacles that no man can tell what they are for, or
+what is beyond--he glows a moment on the extremest verge. He is most
+wonderful in his last half-hidden smile or frown; by that flash of the
+moment of parting the one that sees it shall be encouraged or terrified
+afterward for many years. The greatest poet does not moralize or make
+applications of morals--he knows the soul. The soul has that measureless
+pride which consists in never acknowledging any lessons or deductions
+but its own. But it has sympathy as measureless as its pride, and
+the one balances the other, and neither can stretch too far while it
+stretches in company with the other. The inmost secrets of art sleep
+with the twain. The greatest poet has lain close betwixt both, and they
+are vital in his style and thoughts.
+
+The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of
+letters, is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity--nothing can
+make up for excess, or for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the
+heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give all subjects
+their articulations, are powers neither common nor very uncommon. But
+to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of
+the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of
+trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless triumph
+of art. If you have look'd on him who has achiev'd it you have look'd
+on one of the masters of the artists of all nations and times. You
+shall not contemplate the flight of the gray gull over the bay, or the
+mettlesome action of the blood horse, or the tall leaning of sunflowers
+on their stalk, or the appearance of the sun journeying through heaven,
+or the appearance of the moon afterward, with any more satisfaction than
+you shall contemplate him. The great poet has less a mark'd style,
+and is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or
+diminution, and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I
+will not be meddlesome, I will not have in my writing any elegance, or
+effect, or originality, to hang in the way between me and the rest like
+curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains.
+What I tell I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or
+startle or fascinate or soothe, I will have purposes as health or heat
+or snow has, and be as regardless of observation. What I experience or
+portray shall go from my composition without a shred of my composition.
+You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with me.
+
+The old red blood and stainless gentility of great poets will be proved
+by their unconstraint. A heroic person walks at his ease through and
+out of that custom or precedent or authority that suits him not. Of the
+traits of the brotherhood of first-class writers, savans, musicians,
+inventors and artists, nothing is finer than silent defiance advancing
+from new free forms. In the need of poems, philosophy, politics,
+mechanism, science, behavior, the craft of art, an appropriate native
+grand opera, shipcraft, or any craft, he is greatest for ever and ever
+who contributes the greatest original practical example. The cleanest
+expression is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself, and makes
+one.
+
+The messages of great poems to each man and woman are, Come to us on
+equal terms, only then can you understand us. We are no better than
+you, what we inclose you inclose, what we enjoy you may enjoy. Did
+you suppose there could be only one Supreme? We affirm there can be
+unnumber'd Supremes, and that one does not countervail another any more
+than one eyesight countervails another--and that men can be good or
+grand only of the consciousness of their supremacy within them. What
+do you think is the grandeur of storms and dismemberments, and the
+deadliest battles and wrecks, and the wildest fury of the elements, and
+the power of the sea, and the motion of Nature, and the throes of human
+desires, and dignity and hate and love? It is that something in the
+soul which says, Rage on, whirl on, I tread master here and
+everywhere--Master of the spasms of the sky and of the shatter of the
+sea, Master of nature and passion and death, and of all terror and all
+pain.
+
+The American bards shall be mark'd for generosity and affection, and
+for encouraging competitors. They shall be Kosmos, without monopoly or
+secrecy, glad to pass anything to any one--hungry for equals night and
+day. They shall not be careful of riches and privilege--they shall be
+riches and privilege--they shall perceive who the most affluent man
+is. The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees
+by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself. The American bard
+shall delineate no class of persons, nor one or two out of the strata of
+interests, nor love most nor truth most, nor the soul most, nor the body
+most--and not be for the Eastern States more than the Western, or the
+Northern States more than the Southern.
+
+Exact science and its practical movements are no checks on the
+greatest poet, but always his encouragement and support. The outset and
+remembrance are there--there the arms that lifted him first, and braced
+him best--there he returns after all his goings and comings. The
+sailor and traveler--the anatomist, chemist, astronomer, geologist,
+phrenologist, spiritualist, mathematician, historian, and lexicographer,
+are not poets, but they are the lawgivers of poets, and their
+construction underlies the structure of every perfect poem. No matter
+what rises or is utter'd, they sent the seed of the conception of it--of
+them and by them stand the visible proofs of souls. If there shall be
+love and content between the father and the son, and if the greatness
+of the son is the exuding of the greatness of the father, there shall be
+love between the poet and the man of demonstrable science. In the beauty
+of poems are henceforth the tuft and final applause of science.
+
+Great is the faith of the flush of knowledge, and of the investigation
+of the depths of qualities and things. Cleaving and circling here swells
+the soul of the poet, yet is president of itself always. The depths
+are fathomless, and therefore calm. The innocence and nakedness are
+resumed--they are neither modest nor immodest. The whole theory of
+the supernatural, and all that was twined with it or educed out of it,
+departs as a dream. What has ever happen'd--what happens, and whatever
+may or shall happen, the vital laws inclose all. They are sufficient for
+any case and for all cases--none to be hurried or retarded--any special
+miracle of affairs or persons inadmissible in the vast clear scheme
+where every motion and every spear of grass, and the frames and spirits
+of men and women and all that concerns them, are unspeakably perfect
+miracles, all referring to all, and each distinct and in its place. It
+is also not consistent with the reality of the soul to admit that there
+is anything in the known universe more divine than men and women.
+
+Men and women, and the earth and all upon it, are to be taken as they
+are, and the investigation of their past and present and future shall
+be unintermitted, and shall be done with perfect candor. Upon this basis
+philosophy speculates, ever looking towards the poet, ever regarding the
+eternal tendencies of all toward happiness, never inconsistent with what
+is clear to the senses and to the soul. For the eternal tendencies of
+all toward happiness make the only point of sane philosophy. Whatever
+comprehends less than that--whatever is less than the laws of light and
+of astronomical motion--or less than the laws that follow the thief,
+the liar, the glutton and the drunkard, through this life and doubtless
+afterward--or less than vast stretches of time, or the slow formation of
+density, or the patient upheaving of strata--is of no account. Whatever
+would put God in a poem or system of philosophy as contending against
+some being or influence, is also of no account. Sanity and ensemble
+characterize the great master--spoilt in one principle, all is spoilt.
+The great master has nothing to do with miracles. He sees health
+for himself in being one of the mass--he sees the hiatus in singular
+eminence. To the perfect shape comes common ground. To be under the
+general law is great, for that is to correspond with it. The master
+knows that he is unspeakably great, and that all are unspeakably
+great--that nothing, for instance, is greater than to conceive children,
+and bring them up well--that to _be_ is just as great as to perceive or
+tell.
+
+In the make of the great masters the idea of political liberty is
+indispensable. Liberty takes the adherence of heroes wherever man and
+woman exist--but never takes any adherence or welcome from the rest more
+than from poets. They are the voice and exposition of liberty. They out
+of ages are worthy the grand idea--to them it is confided, and they
+must sustain it. Nothing has precedence of it, and nothing can warp or
+degrade it.
+
+As the attributes of the poets of the kosmos concentre in the real
+body, and in the pleasure of things, they possess the superiority of
+genuineness over all fiction and romance. As they emit themselves, facts
+are shower'd over with light--the daylight is lit with more volatile
+light--the deep between the setting and rising sun goes deeper many
+fold. Each precise object or condition or combination or process
+exhibits a beauty--the multiplication table its--old age its--the
+carpenter's trade its--the grand opera its--the huge-hull'd clean-shap'd
+New York clipper at sea under steam or full sail gleams with unmatch'd
+beauty--the American circles and large harmonies of government gleam
+with theirs--and the commonest definite intentions and actions with
+theirs. The poets of the kosmos advance through all interpositions and
+coverings and turmoils and stratagems to first principles. They are of
+use--they dissolve poverty from its need, and riches from its conceit.
+You large proprietor, they say, shall not realize or perceive more than
+any one else. The owner of the library is not he who holds a legal title
+to it, having bought and paid for it. Any one and every one is owner of
+the library, (indeed he or she alone is owner,) who can read the same
+through all the varieties of tongues and subjects and styles, and in
+whom they enter with ease, and make supple and powerful and rich and
+large.
+
+These American States, strong and healthy and accomplish'd, shall
+receive no pleasure from violations of natural models, and must not
+permit them. In paintings or mouldings or carvings in mineral or wood,
+or in the illustrations of books or newspapers, or in the patterns of
+woven stuffs, or anything to beautify rooms or furniture or costumes, or
+to put upon cornices or monuments, or on the prows or sterns of ships,
+or to put anywhere before the human eye indoors or out, that which
+distorts honest shapes, or which creates unearthly beings or places or
+contingencies, is a nuisance and revolt. Of the human form especially,
+it is so great it must never be made ridiculous. Of ornaments to a work
+nothing outre can be allow'd--but those ornaments can be allow'd that
+conform to the perfect facts of the open air, and that flow out of the
+nature of the work, and come irrepressibly from it, and are necessary
+to the completion of the work. Most works are most beautiful without
+ornament. Exaggerations will be revenged in human physiology. Clean and
+vigorous children are jetted and conceiv'd only in those communities
+where the models of natural forms are public every day. Great genius and
+the people of these States must never be demean'd to romances. As soon
+as histories are properly told, no more need of romances.
+
+The great poets are to be known by the absence in them of tricks, and by
+the justification of perfect personal candor. All faults may be forgiven
+of him who has perfect candor. Henceforth let no man of us lie, for we
+have seen that openness wins the inner and outer world, and that there
+is no single exception, and that never since our earth gather'd itself
+in a mass have deceit or subterfuge or prevarication attracted its
+smallest particle or the faintest tinge of a shade--and that through the
+enveloping wealth and rank of a state, or the whole republic of states,
+a sneak or sly person shall be discover'd and despised--and that the
+soul has never once been fool'd and never can be fool'd--and thrift
+without the loving nod of the soul is only a foetid puff--and there
+never grew up in any of the continents of the globe, nor upon any planet
+or satellite, nor in that condition which precedes the birth of babes,
+nor at any time during the changes of life, nor in any stretch of
+abeyance or action of vitality, nor in any process of formation or
+reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct hated the truth.
+
+Extreme caution or prudence, the soundest organic health, large hope and
+comparison and fondness for women and children, large alimentiveness
+and destuctiveness and causality, with a perfect sense of the oneness of
+nature, and the propriety of the same spirit applied to human affairs,
+are called up of the float of the brain of the world to be parts of
+the greatest poet from his birth out of his mother's womb, and from her
+birth out of her mother's. Caution seldom goes far enough. It has been
+thought that the prudent citizen was the citizen who applied himself to
+solid gains, and did well for himself and for his family, and completed
+a lawful life without debt or crime. The greatest poet sees and admits
+these economies as he sees the economies of food and sleep, but has
+higher notions of prudence than to think he gives much when he gives
+a few slight attentions at the latch of the gate. The premises of the
+prudence of life are not the hospitality of it, or the ripeness and
+harvest of it. Beyond the independence of a little sum laid aside for
+burial-money, and of a few clap-boards around and shingles overhead on a
+lot of American soil own'd, and the easy dollars that supply the year's
+plain clothing and meals, the melancholy prudence of the abandonment
+of such a great being as a man is, to the toss and pallor of years of
+money-making, with all their scorching days and icy nights, and all
+their stifling deceits and underhand dodgings, or infinitesimals of
+parlors, or shameless stuffing while others starve, and all the loss of
+the bloom and odor of the earth, and of the flowers and atmosphere, and
+of the sea, and of the true taste of the women and men you pass or
+have to do with in youth or middle age, and the issuing sickness and
+desperate revolt at the close of a life without elevation or naivety,
+(even if you have achiev'd a secure 10,000 a year, or election to
+Congress or the Governorship,) and the ghastly chatter of a death
+without serenity or majesty, is the great fraud upon modern civilization
+and forethought, blotching the surface and system which civilization
+undeniably drafts, and moistening with tears the immense features it
+spreads and spreads with such velocity before the reach'd kisses of the
+soul.
+
+Ever the right explanation remains to be made about prudence. The
+prudence of the mere wealth and respectability of the most esteem'd life
+appears too faint for the eye to observe at all, when little and large
+alike drop quietly aside at the thought of the prudence suitable for
+immortality. What is the wisdom that fills the thinness of a year, or
+seventy or eighty years--to the wisdom spaced out by ages, and coming
+back at a certain time with strong reinforcements and rich presents,
+and the clear faces of wedding-guests as far as you can look, in every
+direction, running gaily toward you? Only the soul is of itself--all
+else has reference to what ensues. All that a person does or thinks is
+of consequence. Nor can the push of charity or personal force ever be
+anything else' than the profoundest reason, whether it brings argument
+to hand or no. No specification is necessary--to add or subtract or
+divide is in vain. Little or big, learn'd or unlearn'd, white or black,
+legal or illegal, sick or well, from the first inspiration down the
+windpipe to the last expiration out of it, all that a male or female
+does that is vigorous and benevolent and clean is so much sure profit
+to him or her in the unshakable order of the universe, and through the
+whole scope of it forever. The prudence of the greatest poet answers
+at last the craving and glut of the soul, puts off nothing, permits
+no let-up for its own case or any case, has no particular sabbath or
+judgment day, divides not the living from the dead, or the righteous
+from the unrighteous, is satisfied with the present, matches every
+thought or act by its correlative, and knows no possible forgiveness or
+deputed atonement.
+
+The direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is to-day. If
+he does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic
+tides--if he be not himself the age transfigur'd, and if to him is not
+open'd the eternity which gives similitude to all periods and locations
+and processes, and animate and inanimate forms, and which is the bond of
+time, and rises up from its inconceivable vagueness and infiniteness
+in the swimming shapes of to-day, and is held by the ductile anchors of
+life, and makes the present spot the passage from what was to what shall
+be, and commits itself to the representation of this wave of an hour,
+and this one of the sixty beautiful children of the wave--let him merge
+in the general run, and wait his development.
+
+Still the final test of poems, or any character or work, remains. The
+prescient poet projects himself centuries ahead, and judges performer or
+performance after the changes of time. Does it live through them? Does
+it still hold on untired? Will the same style, and the direction of
+genius to similar points, be satisfactory now? Have the marches of tens
+and hundreds and thousands of years made willing detours to the right
+hand and the left hand for his sake? Is he beloved long and long after
+he is buried? Does the young man think often of him? and the young woman
+think often of him? and do the middleaged and the old think of him?
+
+A great poem is for ages and ages in common, and for all degrees and
+complexions, and all departments and sects, and for a woman as much as a
+man, and a man as much as a woman. A great poem is no finish to a man or
+woman, but rather a beginning. Has any one fancied he could sit at last
+under some due authority, and rest satisfied with explanations, and
+realize, and be content and full? To no such terminus does the greatest
+poet bring--he brings neither cessation nor shelter'd fatness and ease.
+The touch of him, like Nature, tells in action. Whom he takes he
+takes with firm sure grasp into live regions previously
+unattain'd--thenceforward is no rest--they see the space and ineffable
+sheen that turn the old spots and lights into dead vacuums. Now there
+shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos--the elder encourages the
+younger and shows him how--they two shall launch off fearlessly together
+till the new world fits an orbit for itself, and looks unabash'd on the
+lesser orbits of the stars, and sweeps through the ceaseless rings, and
+shall never be quiet again.
+
+There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. A new order
+shall arise, and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall
+be his own priest. They shall find their inspiration in real objects
+to-day, symptoms of the past and future. They shall not deign to defend
+immortality or God, or the perfection of things, or liberty, or the
+exquisite beauty and reality of the soul. They shall arise in America,
+and be responded to from the remainder of the earth.
+
+The English language befriends the grand American expression--it is
+brawny enough, and limber and full enough. On the tough stock of a race
+who through all change of circumstance was never without the idea of
+political liberty, which is the animus of all liberty, it has attracted
+the terms of daintier and gayer and subtler and more elegant tongues.
+It is the powerful language of resistance--it is the dialect of common
+sense. It is the speech of the proud and melancholy races, and of
+all who aspire. It is the chosen tongue to express growth, faith,
+self-esteem, freedom, justice, equality, friendliness, amplitude,
+prudence, decision, and courage. It is the medium that shall wellnigh
+express the inexpressible.
+
+No great literature, nor any like style of behavior or oratory, or
+social intercourse or household arrangements, or public institutions,
+or the treatment by bosses of employ'd people, nor executive detail,
+or detail of the army and navy, nor spirit of legislation or courts,
+or police or tuition or architecture, or songs or amusements, can long
+elude the jealous and passionate instinct of American standards. Whether
+or no the sign appears from the mouths of the people, it throbs a live
+interrogation in every freeman's and freewoman's heart, after that which
+passes by, or this built to remain. Is it uniform with my country?
+Are its disposals without ignominious distinctions? Is it for the
+ever-growing communes of brothers and lovers, large, well united, proud,
+beyond the old models, generous beyond all models? Is it something grown
+fresh out of the fields, or drawn from the sea for use to me to-day
+here? I know that what answers for me, an American, in Texas, Ohio,
+Canada, must answer for any individual or nation that serves for a part
+of my materials. Does this answer? Is it for the nursing of the young of
+the republic? Does it solve readily with the sweet milk of the nipples
+of the breasts of the Mother of Many Children?
+
+America prepares with Composure and good-will for the visitors that have
+sent word. It is not intellect that is to be their warrant and welcome.
+The talented, the artist, the ingenious, the editor, the statesman, the
+erudite, are not unappreciated--they fall in their place and do their
+work. The soul of the nation also does its work. It rejects none, it
+permits all. Only toward the like of itself will it advance half-way. An
+individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which make
+a superb nation. The soul of the largest and wealthiest and proudest
+nation may well go half-way to meet that of its poets.
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE, 1872 To As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free Now Thou Mother with
+thy Equal Brood, _in permanent edition_.
+
+
+The impetus and ideas urging me, for some years past, to an utterance,
+or attempt at utterance, of New World songs, and an epic of Democracy,
+having already had their publish'd expression, as well as I can expect
+to give it, in "Leaves of Grass," the present and any future pieces from
+me are really but the surplusage forming after that volume, or the wake
+eddying behind it. I fulfill'd in that an imperious conviction, and the
+commands of my nature as total and irresistible as those which make
+the sea flow, or the globe revolve. But of this supplementary volume,
+I confess I am not so certain. Having from early manhood abandon'd the
+business pursuits and applications usual in my time and country, and
+obediently yielded myself up ever since to the impetus mention'd, and
+to the work of expressing those ideas, it may be that mere habit has got
+dominion of me, when there is no real need of saying anything further.
+But what is life but an experiment? and mortality but an exercise? with
+reference to results beyond. And so shall my poems be. If incomplete
+here, and superfluous there, _n' importe_--the earnest trial and
+persistent exploration shall at least be mine, and other success failing
+shall be success enough. I have been more anxious, anyhow, to suggest
+the songs of vital endeavor and manly evolution, and furnish something
+for races of outdoor athletes, than to make perfect rhymes, or reign
+in the parlors. I ventur'd from the beginning my own way, taking
+chances--and would keep on venturing.
+
+I will therefore not conceal from any persons, known or unknown to me,
+who take an interest in the matter, that I have the ambition of devoting
+yet a few years to poetic composition. The mighty present age! To absorb
+and express in poetry, anything of it--of its world--America--cities and
+States--the years, the events of our Nineteeth century--the rapidity
+of movement--the violent contrasts, fluctuations of light and shade,
+of hope and fear--the entire revolution made by science in the poetic
+method--these great new underlying facts and new ideas rushing and
+spreading everywhere;--truly a mighty age! As if in some colossal drama,
+acted again like those of old under the open sun, the Nations of our
+time, and all the characteristics of Civilization, seem hurrying,
+stalking across, flitting from wing to wing, gathering, closing up,
+toward some long-prepared, most tremendous denouement. Not to conclude
+the infinite scenas of the race's life and toil and happiness and
+sorrow, but haply that the boards be clear'd from oldest, worst
+incumbrances, accumulations, and Man resume the eternal play anew, and
+under happier, freer auspices. To me, the United States are important
+because in this colossal drama they are unquestionably designated for
+the leading parts, for many a century to come. In them history and
+humanity seem to seek to culminate. Our broad areas are even now the
+busy theatre of plots, passions, interests, and suspended problems,
+compared to which the intrigues of the past of Europe, the wars of
+dynasties, the scope of kings and kingdoms, and even the development of
+peoples, as hitherto, exhibit scales of measurement comparatively narrow
+and trivial. And on these areas of ours, as on a stage, sooner or later,
+something like an _eclairissement_ of all the past civilization of
+Europe and Asia is probably to be evolved.
+
+The leading parts. Not to be acted, emulated here, by us again, that
+role till now foremost in history--not to become a conqueror nation,
+or to achieve the glory of mere military, or diplomatic, or commercial
+superiority--but to become the grand producing land of nobler men and
+women--of copious races, cheerful, healthy, tolerant, free--to become
+the most friendly nation, (the United States indeed)--the modern
+composite nation, form'd from all, with room for all, welcoming all
+immigrants--accepting the work of our own interior development, as the
+work fitly filling ages and ages to come;--the leading nation of peace,
+but neither ignorant nor incapable of being the leading nation of
+war;--not the man's nation only, but the woman's nation--a land of
+splendid mothers, daughters, sisters, wives.
+
+Our America to-day I consider in many respects as but indeed a vast
+seething mass of _materials_, ampler, better, (worse also,) than
+previously known--eligible to be used to carry towards its crowning
+stage, and build for good, the great ideal nationality of the future,
+the nation of the body and the soul,[32]--no limit here to land, help,
+opportunities, mines, products, demands, supplies, etc.;--with (I think)
+our political organization, National, State, and Municipal, permanently
+establish'd, as far ahead as we can calculate--but, so far, no social,
+literary, religious, or esthetic organizations, consistent with our
+politics, or becoming to us--which organizations can only come, in time,
+through great democratic ideas, religion--through science, which now,
+like a new sunrise, ascending, begins to illuminate all--and through our
+own begotten poets and literatuses. (The moral of a late well-written
+book on civilization seems to be that the only real foundation-walls and
+bases--and also _sine qua non_ afterward--of true and full civilization,
+is the eligibility and certainty of boundless products for feeding,
+clothing, sheltering everybody--perennial fountains of physical
+and domestic comfort, with intercommunication, and with civil and
+ecclesiastical freedom--and that then the esthetic and mental business
+will take care of itself. Well, the United States have establish'd this
+basis, and upon scales of extent, variety, vitality, and continuity,
+rivaling those of Nature; and have now to proceed to build an
+edifice upon it. I say this edifice is only to be fitly built by new
+literatures, especially the poetic. I say a modern image-making creation
+is indispensable to fuse and express the modern political and scientific
+creations--and then the trinity will be complete.)
+
+When I commenced, years ago, elaborating the plan of my poems, and
+continued turning over that plan, and shifting it in my mind through
+many years, (from the age of twenty-eight to thirty-five,) experimenting
+much, and writing and abandoning much, one deep purpose underlay the
+others, and has underlain it and its execution ever since--and that has
+been the religious purpose. Amid many changes, and a formulation taking
+far different shape from what I at first supposed, this basic purpose
+has never been departed from in the composition of my verses. Not of
+course to exhibit itself in the old ways, as in writing hymns or psalms
+with an eye to the church-pew, or to express conventional pietism, or
+the sickly yearnings of devotees, but in new ways, and aiming at the
+widest sub-bases and inclusions of humanity, and tallying the fresh air
+of sea and land. I will see, (said I to myself,) whether there is not,
+for my purposes as poet, a religion, and a sound religious germenancy
+in the average human race, at least in their modern development in the
+United States, and in the hardy common fiber and native yearnings and
+elements, deeper and larger, and affording more profitable returns, than
+all mere sects or churches--as boundless, joyous, and vital as Nature
+itself--a germenancy that has too long been unencouraged, unsung, almost
+unknown. With science, the old theology of the East, long in its dotage,
+begins evidently to die and disappear. But (to my mind) science--and
+may-be such will prove its principal service--as evidently prepares
+the way for One indescribably grander--Time's young but perfect
+offspring--the new theology--heir of the West--lusty and loving, and
+wondrous beautiful. For America, and for today, just the same as any
+day, the supreme and final science is the science of God--what we call
+science being only its minister--as Democracy is, or shall be also. And
+a poet of America (I said) must fill himself with such thoughts, and
+chant his best out of them. And as those were the convictions and aims,
+for good or bad, of "Leaves of Grass," they are no less the intention
+of this volume. As there can be, in my opinion, no sane and complete
+personality, nor any grand and electric nationality, without the stock
+element of religion imbuing all the other elements, (like heat in
+chemistry, invisible itself, but the life of all visible life,) so there
+can be no poetry worthy the name without that element behind all. The
+time has certainly come to begin to discharge the idea of religion,
+in the United States, from mere ecclesiasticism, and from Sundays and
+churches and church-going, and assign it to that general position,
+chiefest, most indispensable, most exhilarating, to which the others
+are to be adjusted, inside of all human character, and education, and
+affairs. The people, especially the young men and women of America,
+must begin to learn that religion, (like poetry,) is something far, far
+different from what they supposed. It is, indeed, too important to the
+power and perpetuity of the New World to be consign'd any longer to the
+churches, old or new, Catholic or Protestant--Saint this, or Saint
+that. It must be consign'd henceforth to democracy _en masse_, and to
+literature. It must enter into the poems of the nation. It must make the
+nation.
+
+The Four Years' War is over--and in the peaceful, strong, exciting,
+fresh occasions of to-day, and of the future, that strange, sad war is
+hurrying even now to be forgotten. The camp, the drill, the lines of
+sentries, the prisons, the hospitals--(ah! the hospitals!)--all have
+passed away--all seem now like a dream. A new race, a young and lusty
+generation, already sweeps in with oceanic currents, obliterating the
+war, and all its scars, its mounded graves, and all its reminiscences of
+hatred, conflict, death. So let It be obliterated. I say the life of the
+present and the future makes undeniable demands upon us each and all,
+south, north, east, west. To help put the United States (even if only in
+imagination) hand in hand, in one unbroken circle in a chant--to rouse
+them to the unprecedented grandeur of the part they are to play, and are
+even now playing--to the thought of their great future, and the attitude
+conform'd to it--especially their great esthetic, moral, scientific
+future, (of which their vulgar material and political present is but
+as the preparatory tuning of instruments by an orchestra,) these, as
+hitherto, are still, for me, among my hopes, ambitions.
+
+"Leaves of Grass," already publish'd, is, in its intentions, the song of
+a great composite _democratic individual_, male or female. And following
+on and amplifying the same purpose, I suppose I have in my mind to
+run through the chants of this volume, (if ever completed,) the
+thread-voice, more or less audible, of an aggregated, inseparable,
+unprecedented, vast, composite, electric _democratic nationality_.
+
+Purposing, then, to still fill out, from time to time through years to
+come, the following volume, (unless prevented,) I conclude this
+preface to the first instalment of it, pencil'd in the open air, on my
+fifty-third birth-day, by wafting to you, dear reader, whoever you are,
+(from amid the fresh scent of the grass, the pleasant coolness of the
+forenoon breeze, the lights and shades of tree-boughs silently dappling
+and playing around me, and the notes of the cat-bird for undertone and
+accompaniment,) my true good-will and love. W. W. _Washington, D. C.,
+May_ 31, 1872.
+
+
+Note:
+
+[32] The problems of the achievements of this crowning stage through
+future first-class National Singers, Orators, Artists, and others--of
+creating in literature an _imaginative_ New World, the correspondent and
+counterpart of the current Scientific and Political New Worlds,--and the
+perhaps distant, but still delightful prospect, (for our children, if
+not in our own day,) of delivering America, and, indeed, all Christian
+lands everywhere, from the thin moribund and watery, but appallingly
+extensive nuisance of conventional poetry--by putting something really
+alive and substantial in its place--I have undertaken to grapple with,
+and argue, in the preceding "Democratic Vistas."
+
+
+PREFACE, 1876 _To the two-volume Centennial Edition of_ Leaves of Grass
+_and_ Two Rivulets.
+
+
+At the eleventh hour, under grave illness, I gather up the pieces of
+prose and poetry left over since publishing, a while since, my first and
+main volume, "Leaves or Grass"--pieces, here, some new, some old--nearly
+all of them (sombre as many are, making this almost death's book)
+composed in by-gone atmospheres of perfect health--and preceded by
+the freshest collection, the little "Two Rivulets," now send them
+out, embodied in the present melange, partly as my contribution and
+outpouring to celebrate, in some sort, the feature of the time, the
+first centennial of our New World nationality--and then as chyle and
+nutriment to that moral, indissoluble union, equally representing all,
+and the mother of many coming centennials.
+
+And e'en for flush and proof of our America--for reminder, just as much,
+or more, in moods of towering pride and joy, I keep my special chants of
+death and immortality[33] to stamp the coloring-finish of all, present
+and past. For terminus and temperer to all, they were originally
+written; and that shall be their office at the last.
+
+For some reason--not explainable or definite to my own mind, yet
+secretly pleasing and satisfactory to it--I have not hesitated to
+embody in, and run through the volume, two altogether distinct veins,
+or strata--politics for one, and for the other, the pensive thought
+of immortality. Thus, too, the prose and poetic, the dual forms of the
+present book. The volume, therefore, after its minor episodes, probably
+divides into these two, at first sight far diverse, veins of topic and
+treatment. Three points, in especial, have become very dear to me,
+and all through I seek to make them again and again, in many forms and
+repetitions, as will be seen: 1. That the true growth-characteristics
+of the democracy of the New World are henceforth to radiate in superior
+literary, artistic and religious expressions, far more than in its
+republican forms, universal suffrage, and frequent elections, (though
+these are unspeakably important.) 2. That the vital political mission of
+the United States is, to practically solve and settle the problem of
+two sets of rights--the fusion, thorough compatibility and junction
+of individual State prerogatives, with the indispensable necessity
+of centrality and Oneness--the national identity power--the sovereign
+Union, relentless, permanently comprising all, and over all, and in that
+never yielding an inch: then 3d. Do we not, amid a general malaria of
+fogs and vapors, our day, unmistakably see two pillars of promise, with
+grandest, indestructible indications--one, that the morbid facts of
+American politics and society everywhere are but passing incidents and
+flanges of our unbounded impetus of growth? weeds, annuals, of the rank,
+rich soil--not central, enduring, perennial things? The other, that all
+the hitherto experience of the States, their first century, has been
+but preparation, adolescence--and that this Union is only now and
+henceforth, (_i.e._, since the secession war,) to enter on its full
+democratic career?
+
+Of the whole, poems and prose, (not attending at all to chronological
+order, and with original dates and passing allusions in the heat and
+impression of the hour, left shuffled in, and undisturb'd,) the chants
+of "Leaves of Grass," my former volume, yet serve as the indispensable
+deep soil, or basis, out of which, and out of which only, could come the
+roots and stems more definitely indicated by these later pages. (While
+that volume radiates physiology alone, the present one, though of the
+like origin in the main, more palpably doubtless shows the pathology
+which was pretty sure to come in time from the other.)
+
+In that former and main volume, composed in the flush of my health and
+strength, from the age of 30 to 50 years, I dwelt on birth and life,
+clothing my ideas in pictures, days, transactions of my time, to give
+them positive place, identity--saturating them with that vehemence
+of pride and audacity of freedom necessary to loosen the mind
+of still-to-be-form'd America from the accumulated folds, the
+superstitions, and all the long, tenacious and stifling anti-democratic
+authorities of the Asiatic and European past--my enclosing purport being
+to express, above all artificial regulation and aid, the eternal bodily
+composite, cumulative, natural character of one's self.[34]
+
+Estimating the American Union as so far, and for some time to come, in
+its yet formative condition, I bequeath poems and essays as nutriment
+and influences to help truly assimilate and harden, and especially to
+furnish something toward what the States most need of all, and which
+seems to me yet quite unsupplied in literature, namely, to show them, or
+begin to show them, themselves distinctively, and what they are for.
+For though perhaps the main points of all ages and nations are points of
+resemblance, and, even while granting evolution, are substantially the
+same, there are some vital things in which this Republic, as to its
+individualities, and as a compacted Nation, is to specially stand forth,
+and culminate modern humanity. And these are the very things it least
+morally and mentally knows--(though, curiously enough, it is at the same
+time faithfully acting upon them.)
+
+I count with such absolute certainty on the great future of the United
+States--different from, though founded on, the past--that I have always
+invoked that future, and surrounded myself with it, before or while
+singing my songs. (As ever, all tends to followings--America, too, is a
+prophecy. What, even of the best and most successful, would be justified
+by itself alone? by the present, or the material ostent alone? Of men or
+States, few realize how much they live in the future. That, rising
+like pinnacles, gives its main significance to all You and I are doing
+to-day. Without it, there were little meaning in lands or poems--little
+purport in human lives. All ages, all Nations and States, have been such
+prophecies. But where any former ones with prophecy so broad, so clear,
+as our times, our lands--as those of the West?)
+
+Without being a scientist, I have thoroughly adopted the conclusions
+of the great savants and experimentalists of our time, and of the last
+hundred years, and they have interiorly tinged the chyle of all my
+verse, for purposes beyond. Following the modern spirit, the real poems
+of the present, ever solidifying and expanding into the future, must
+vocalize the vastness and splendor and reality with which scientism has
+invested man and the universe, (all that is called creation) and
+must henceforth launch humanity into new orbits, consonant, with that
+vastness, splendor, and reality, (unknown to the old poems,) like new
+systems of orbs, balanced upon themselves, revolving in limitless space,
+more subtle than the stars. Poetry, so largely hitherto and even at
+present wedded to children's tales, and to mere amorousness, upholstery
+and superficial rhyme, will have to accept, and, while not denying the
+past, nor the themes of the past, will be revivified by this tremendous
+innovation, the kosmic spirit, which must henceforth, in my opinion,
+be the background and underlying impetus, more or less visible, of all
+first-class songs.
+
+Only, (for me, at any rate, in all my prose and poetry,) joyfully
+accepting modern science, and loyally following it without the slightest
+hesitation, there remains ever recognized still a higher flight, a
+higher fact, the eternal soul of man, (of all else too,) the spiritual,
+the religious--which it is to be the greatest office of scientism, in my
+opinion, and of future poetry also, to free from fables, crudities and
+superstitions, and launch forth in renew'd faith and scope a hundred
+fold. To me, the worlds of religiousness, of the conception of the
+divine, and of the ideal, though mainly latent, are just as absolute in
+humanity and the universe as the world of chemistry, or anything in the
+objective worlds. To me
+
+      The prophet and the bard,
+    Shall yet maintain themselves--in higher circles yet,
+    Shall mediate to the modern, to democracy--interpret yet to them,
+      God and eidolons.
+
+To me, the crown of savantism is to be, that it surely opens the way for
+a more splendid theology, and for ampler and diviner songs. No year, nor
+even century, will settle this. There is a phase of the real, lurking
+behind the real, which it is all for. There is also in the intellect of
+man, in time, far in prospective recesses, a judgment, a last appellate
+court, which will settle it.
+
+In certain parts in these flights, or attempting to depict or suggest
+them, I have not been afraid of the charge of obscurity, in either of
+my two volumes-because human thought, poetry or melody, must leave dim
+escapes and outlets-must possess a certain fluid, aerial character,
+akin to space itself, obscure to those of little or no imagination,--but
+indispensable to the highest purposes. Poetic style, when address'd to
+the soul, is less definite form, outline, sculpture, and becomes vista,
+music, half-tints, and even less than half-tints. True, it may be
+architecture; but again it may be the forest wild-wood, or the best
+effect thereof, at twilight, the waving oaks and cedars in the wind, and
+the impalpable odor.
+
+Finally, as I have lived in fresh lands, inchoate, and in a
+revolutionary age, future-founding, I have felt to identify the points
+of that age, these lands, in my recitatives, altogether in my own way.
+Thus my form has strictly grown from my purports and facts, and is the
+analogy of them. Within my time the United States have emerged from
+nebulous vagueness and suspense, to full orbic, (though varied,)
+decision--have done the deeds and achiev'd the triumphs of half a score
+of centuries--and are henceforth to enter upon their real history the
+way being now, (_i.e._ since the result of the secession war,) clear'd
+of death-threatening impedimenta, and the free areas around and ahead
+of us assured and certain, which were not so before--(the past century
+being but preparations, trial voyages and experiments of the ship,
+before her starting out upon deep water.)
+
+In estimating my volumes, the world's current times and deeds, and their
+spirit, must be first profoundly estimated. Out of the hundred years
+just ending, (1776-1876,) with their genesis of inevitable wilful
+events, and new experiments and introductions, and many unprecedented
+things of war and peace, (to be realized better, perhaps only realized,
+at the remove of a century hence;) out of that stretch of time,
+and especially out of the immediately preceding twenty-five years,
+(1850-'75,) with all their rapid changes, innovations, and audacious
+movements-and bearing their own inevitable wilful birth-marks--the
+experiments of my poems too have found genesis.
+
+W. W.
+
+Notes:
+
+[33] PASSAGE TO INDIA.--As in some ancient legend-play, to close the
+plot and the hero's career, there is a farewell gathering on ship's deck
+and on shore, a loosing of hawsers and ties, a spreading of sails to
+the wind--a starting out on unknown seas, to fetch up no one knows
+whither--to return no more--and the curtain falls, and there is the end
+of it--so I have reserv'd that poem, with its cluster, to finish and
+explain much that, without them, would not be explain'd, and to take
+leave, and escape for good, from all that has preceded them. (Then
+probably "Passage to India," and its cluster, are but freer vent and
+fuller expression to what, from the first, and so on throughout, more
+or less lurks in my writings, underneath every page, every line,
+everywhere.)
+
+I am not sure but the last inclosing sublimation of race or poem is,
+what it thinks of death. After the rest has been comprehended and said,
+even the grandest--after those contributions to mightiest nationality,
+or to sweetest song, or to the best personalism, male or female, have
+been glean'd from the rich and varied themes of tangible life, and
+have been fully accepted and sung, and the pervading fact of visible
+existence, with the duty it devolves, is rounded and apparently
+completed, it still remains to be really completed by suffusing through
+the whole and several, that other pervading invisible fact, so large a
+part, (is it not the largest part?) of life here, combining the rest,
+and furnishing, for person or State, the only permanent and unitary
+meaning to all, even the meanest life, consistently with the dignity of
+the universe, in Time. As from the eligibility to this thought, and the
+cheerful conquest of this fact, flash forth the first distinctive
+proofs of the soul, so to me, (extending it only a little further,) the
+ultimate Democratic purports, the ethereal and spiritual ones, are to
+concentrate here, and as fixed stars, radiate hence. For, in my opinion,
+it is no less than this idea of immortality, above all other ideas,
+that is to enter into, and vivify, and give crowning religious stamp, to
+democracy in the New World.
+
+It was originally my intention, after chanting in "Leaves of Grass"
+the songs of the body and existence, to then compose a further, equally
+needed volume, based on those convictions of perpetuity and conservation
+which, enveloping all precedents, make the unseen soul govern absolutely
+at last. I meant, while in a sort continuing the theme of my first
+chants, to shift the slides, and exhibit the problem and paradox of the
+same ardent and fully appointed personality entering the sphere of
+the resistless gravitation of spiritual law, and with cheerful face
+estimating death, not at all as the cessation, but as somehow what
+I feel it must be, the entrance upon by far the greatest part of
+existence, and something that life is at least as much for, as it is for
+itself. But the full construction of such a work is beyond my powers,
+and must remain for some bard in the future. The physical and the
+sensuous, in themselves or in their immediate continuations, retain
+holds upon me which I think are never entirely releas'd; and those holds
+I have not only not denied, but hardly wish'd to weaken.
+
+Meanwhile, not entirely to give the go-by to my original plan, and far
+more to avoid a mark'd hiatus in it, than to entirely fulfil it, I
+end my books with thoughts, or radiations from thoughts, on death,
+immortality, and a free entrance into the spiritual world. In those
+thoughts, in a sort, I make the first steps or studies toward the mighty
+theme, from the point of view necessitated by my foregoing poems, and
+by modern science. In them I also seek to set the key-stone to my
+democracy's enduring arch. I recollate them now, for the press, in
+order to partially occupy and offset days of strange sickness, and the
+heaviest affliction and bereavement of my life; and I fondly please
+myself with the notion of leaving that cluster to you, O unknown reader
+of the future, as "something to remember me by," more especially than
+all else. Written in former days of perfect health, little did I think
+the pieces had the purport that now, under present circumstances, opens
+to me.
+
+[As I write these lines, May 31, 1875, it is again early summer,--again
+my birth-day--now my fifty-sixth. Amid the outside beauty and freshness,
+the sunlight and verdure of the delightful season, O how different the
+moral atmosphere amid which I now revise this Volume, from the jocund
+influence surrounding the growth and advent of "Leaves of Grass." I
+occupy myself, arranging these pages for publication, still envelopt
+in thoughts of the death two years since of my dear Mother, the most
+perfect and magnetic character, the rarest combination of practical,
+moral and spiritual, and the least selfish, of all and any I have ever
+known--and by me O so much the most deeply loved--and also under the
+physical affliction of a tedious attack of paralysis, obstinately
+lingering and keeping its hold upon me, and quite suspending all bodily
+activity and comfort.]
+
+Under these influences, therefore, I still feel to keep "Passage to
+India" for last words even to this centennial dithyramb. Not as, in
+antiquity, at highest festival of Egypt, the noisome skeleton of death
+was sent on exhibition to the revelers, for zest and shadow to the
+occasion's joy and light--but as the marble statue of the normal Greeks
+at Elis, suggesting death in the form of a beautiful and perfect young
+man, with closed eyes, leaning on an inverted torch--emblem of rest and
+aspiration after action--of crown and point which all lives and poems
+should steadily have reference to, namely, the justified and noble
+termination of our identity, this grade of it, and outlet-preparation to
+another grade.
+
+[34] Namely, a character, making most of common and normal elements, to
+the superstructure of which not only the precious accumulations of the
+learning and experiences of the Old World, and the settled social and
+municipal necessities and current requirements, so long a-building,
+shall still faithfully contribute, but which at its foundations and
+carried up thence, and receiving its impetus from the democratic spirit,
+and accepting its gauge in all departments from the democratic formulas,
+shall again directly be vitalized by the perennial influences of Nature
+at first hand, and the old heroic stamina of Nature, the strong air
+of prairie and mountain, the dash of the briny sea, the primary
+antiseptics--of the passions, in all their fullest heat and potency,
+of courage, rankness, amativeness, and of immense pride. Not to lose at
+all, therefore, the benefits of artificial progress and civilization,
+but to re-occupy for Western tenancy the oldest though ever-fresh
+fields, and reap from them the savage and sane nourishment indispensable
+to a hardy nation, and the absence of which, threatening to become worse
+and worse, is the most serious lack and defect to-day of our New World
+literature.
+
+Not but what the brawn of "Leaves of Grass" is, I hope, thoroughly
+spiritualized everywhere, for final estimate, but, from the very
+subjects, the direct effect is a sense of the life, as it should be, of
+flesh and blood, and physical urge, and animalism. While there are other
+themes, and plenty of abstract thoughts and poems in the volume--while
+I have put in it passing and rapid but actual glimpses of the great
+struggle between the nation and the slave-power, (1861-'65,) as the
+fierce and bloody panorama of that contest unroll'd itself: while the
+whole book, indeed, revolves around that four years' war, which, as I
+was in the midst of it, becomes, in "Drum-Taps," pivotal to the rest
+entire--and here and there, before and afterward, not a few episodes
+and speculations--_that_--namely, to make a type-portrait for living,
+active, worldly, healthy personality, objective as well as subjective,
+joyful and potent, and modern and free, distinctively for the use of
+the United States, male and female, through the long future--has been,
+I say, my general object. (Probably, indeed, the whole of these varied
+songs, and all my writings, both volumes, only ring changes in some
+sort, on the ejaculation, How vast, how eligible, how joyful, how real,
+is a human being, himself or herself.)
+
+Though from no definite plan at the time, I see now that I have
+unconsciously sought, by indirections at least as much as directions, to
+express the whirls and rapid growth and intensity of the United States,
+the prevailing tendency and events of the Nineteenth century, and
+largely the spirit of the whole current world, my time; for I feel that
+I have partaken of that spirit, as I have been deeply interested in
+all those events, the closing of long-stretch'd eras and ages, and,
+illustrated in the history of the United States, the opening of larger
+ones. (The death of President Lincoln, for instance, fitly, historically
+closes, in the civilization of feudalism, many old influences--drops on
+them, suddenly, a vast, gloomy, as it were, separating curtain.)
+
+Since I have been ill, (1873-'74-'75,) mostly without serious pain, and
+with plenty of time and frequent inclination to judge my poems,
+(never composed with eye on the book-market, nor for fame, nor for any
+pecuniary profit,) I have felt temporary depression more than once, for
+fear that in "Leaves of Grass" the _moral_ parts were not sufficiently
+pronounced. But in my clearest and calmest moods I have realized that
+as those "Leaves," all and several, surely prepare the way for, and
+necessitate morals, and are adjusted to them, just the same as Nature
+does and is, they are what, consistently with my plan, they must and
+probably should be. (In a certain sense, while the Moral is the purport
+and last intelligence of all Nature, there is absolutely nothing of
+the moral in the works, or laws, or shows of Nature. Those only lead
+inevitably to it--begin and necessitate it.)
+
+Then I meant "Leaves of Grass," as publish'd, to be the Poem of average
+Identity, (of _yours_, whoever you are, now reading these lines.) A man
+is not greatest as victor in war, nor inventor or explorer, nor even
+in science, or in his intellectual or artistic capacity, or exemplar
+in some vast benevolence. To the highest democratic view, man is most
+acceptable in living well the practical life and lot which happens
+to him as ordinary farmer, sea-farer, mechanic, clerk, laborer, or
+driver--upon and from which position as a central basis or pedestal,
+while performing its labors, and his duties as citizen, son, husband,
+father and employ'd person, he preserves his physique, ascends,
+developing, radiating himself in other regions--and especially where
+and when, (greatest of all, and nobler than the proudest mere genius or
+magnate in any field,) he fully realizes the conscience, the spiritual,
+the divine faculty, cultivated well, exemplified in all his deeds and
+words, through life, uncompromising to the end--a flight loftier
+than any of Homer's or Shakspere's--broader than all poems and
+bibles--namely, Nature's own, and in the midst of it, Yourself, your own
+Identity, body and soul. (All serves, helps--but in the centre of all,
+absorbing all, giving, for your purpose, the only meaning and vitality
+to all, master or mistress of all, under the law, stands Yourself.)
+To sing the Song of that law of average Identity, and of Yourself,
+consistently with the divine law of the universal, is a main intention
+of those "Leaves."
+
+Something more may be added--for, while I am about it, I would make a
+full confession. I also sent out "Leaves of Grass" to arouse and set
+flowing in men's and women's hearts, young and old, endless streams of
+living, pulsating love and friendship, directly from them to myself, now
+and ever. To this terrible, irrepressible yearning, (surely more or less
+down underneath in most human souls)--this never-satisfied appetite
+for sympathy, and this boundless offering of sympathy--this universal
+democratic comradeship-this old, eternal, yet ever-new interchange of
+adhesiveness, so fitly emblematic of America--I have given in that book,
+undisguisedly, declaredly, the openest expression. Besides, important
+as they are in my purpose as emotional expressions for humanity, the
+special meaning of the "Calamus" cluster of "Leaves of Grass," (and
+more or less running through the book, and cropping out in "Drum-Taps,")
+mainly resides in its political significance. In my opinion, it is by
+a fervent, accepted development of comradeship, the beautiful and sane
+affection of man for man, latent in all the young fellows, north and
+south, east and west--it is by this, I say, and by what goes directly
+and indirectly along with it, that the United States of the future, (I
+cannot too often repeat,) are to be most effectually welded together,
+intercalated, anneal'd into a living union.
+
+Then, for enclosing clue of all, it is imperatively and ever to be
+borne in mind that "Leaves of Grass" entire is not to be construed as an
+intellectual or scholastic effort or poem mainly, but more as a radical
+utterance out of the Emotions and the Physique--an utterance adjusted
+to, perhaps born of, Democracy and the Modern--in its very nature
+regardless of the old conventions, and, under the great laws, following
+only its own impulses.
+
+
+
+POETRY TO-DAY IN AMERICA
+
+SHAKSPERE--THE FUTURE
+
+
+Strange as it may seem, the topmost proof of a race is its own born
+poetry. The presence of that, or the absence, each tells its story. As
+the flowering rose or lily, as the ripened fruit to a tree, the apple or
+the peach, no matter how fine the trunk, or copious or rich the branches
+and foliage, here waits _sine qua non_ at last. The stamp of entire and
+finished greatness to any nation, to the American Republic among the
+rest, must be sternly withheld till it has put what it stands for in the
+blossom of original, first-class poems. No imitations will do.
+
+And though no _esthetik_ worthy the present condition or future
+certainties of the New World seems to have been outlined in men's minds,
+or has been generally called for, or thought needed, I am clear that
+until the United States have just such definite and native expressers
+in the highest artistic fields, their mere political, geographical,
+wealth-forming, and even intellectual eminence, however astonishing
+and predominant, will constitute but a more and more expanded and
+well-appointed body, and perhaps brain, with little or no soul.
+Sugar-coat the grim truth as we may, and ward off with outward plausible
+words, denials, explanations, to the mental inward perception of the
+land this blank is plain; a barren void exists. For the meanings and
+maturer purposes of these States are not the constructing of a new world
+of politics merely, and physical comforts for the million, but even more
+determinedly, in range with science and the modern, of a new world of
+democratic sociology and imaginative literature. If the latter were not
+establish'd for the States, to form their only permanent tie and hold,
+the first-named would be of little avail.
+
+With the poems of a first-class land are twined, as weft with warp, its
+types of personal character, of individuality, peculiar, native, its
+own physiognomy, man's and woman's, its own shapes, forms, and manners,
+fully justified under the eternal laws of all forms, all manners, all
+times. The hour has come for democracy in America to inaugurate
+itself in the two directions specified--autochthonic poems and
+personalities--born expressers of itself, its spirit alone, to radiate
+in subtle ways, not only in art, but the practical and familiar, in the
+transactions between employers and employed persons, in business and
+wages, and sternly in the army and navy, and revolutionizing them. I
+find nowhere a scope profound enough, and radical and objective enough,
+either for aggregates or individuals. The thought and identity of
+a poetry in America to fill, and worthily fill, the great void, and
+enhance these aims, electrifying all and several, involves the essence
+and integral facts, real and spiritual, of the whole land, the whole
+body. What the great sympathetic is to the congeries of bones, joints,
+heart, fluids, nervous system and vitality, constituting, launching
+forth in time and space a human being--aye, an immortal soul--such
+relation, and no less, holds true poetry to the single personality, or
+to the nation.
+
+Here our thirty-eight States stand to-day, the children of past
+precedents, and, young as they are, heirs of a very old estate. One or
+two points we will consider, out of the myriads presenting themselves.
+The feudalism, of the British Islands, illustrated by Shakspere--and by
+his legitimate followers, Walter Scott and Alfred Tennyson--with all its
+tyrannies, superstitions, evils, had most superb and heroic permeating
+veins, poems, manners; even its errors fascinating. It almost seems as
+if only that feudalism in Europe, like slavery in our own South, could
+outcrop types of tallest, noblest personal character yet--strength and
+devotion and love better than elsewhere--invincible courage, generosity,
+aspiration, the spines of all. Here is where Shakspere and the others
+I have named perform a service incalculably precious to our America.
+Politics, literature, and everything else, centers at last in perfect
+_personnel_, (as democracy is to find the same as the rest;) and here
+feudalism is unrival'd--here the rich and highest-rising lessons it
+bequeaths us--a mass of foreign nutriment, which we are to work over,
+and popularize and enlarge, and present again in our own growths.
+
+Still there are pretty grave and anxious drawbacks, jeopardies, fears.
+Let us give some reflections on the subject, a little fluctuating, but
+starting from one central thought, and returning there again. Two or
+three curious results may plow up. As in the astronomical laws, the
+very power that would seem most deadly and destructive turns out to be
+latently conservative of longest, vastest future births and lives.
+We will for once briefly examine the just-named authors solely from a
+Western point of view. It may be, indeed, that we shall use the sun
+of English literature, and the brightest current stars of his system,
+mainly as pegs to hang some cogitations on, for home inspection.
+
+As depicter and dramatist of the passions at their stormiest outstretch,
+though ranking high, Shakspere (spanning the arch wide enough) is
+equaled by several, and excelled by the best old Greeks, (as Eschylus.)
+But in portraying mediaeval European lords and barons, the arrogant
+port, so dear to the inmost human heart, (pride! pride! dearest,
+perhaps, of all--touching us, too, of the States closest of all--closer
+than love,) he stands alone, and I do not wonder he so witches the
+world.
+
+From first to last, also, Walter Scott and Tennyson, like Shakspere,
+exhale that principle of caste which we Americans have come on earth to
+destroy. Jefferson's verdict on the Waverley novels was that they turned
+and condensed brilliant but entirely false lights and glamours over the
+lords, ladies, and aristocratic institutes of Europe, with all
+their measureless infamies, and then left the bulk of the suffering,
+down-trodden people contemptuously in the shade. Without stopping to
+answer this hornet-stinging criticism, or to repay any part of the
+debt of thanks I owe, in common with every American, to the noblest,
+healthiest, cheeriest romancer that ever lived, I pass on to Tennyson,
+his works.
+
+Poetry here of a very high (perhaps the highest) order of verbal
+melody, exquisitely clean and pure, and almost always perfumed, like the
+tuberose, to an extreme of sweetness--sometimes not, however, but even
+then a camellia of the hot-house, never a common flower--the verse
+of inside elegance and high-life; and yet preserving amid all its
+super-delicatesse a smack of outdoors and outdoor folk. The old Norman
+lordhood quality here, too, crossed with that Saxon fiber from which
+twain the best current stock of England springs--poetry that revels
+above all things in traditions of knights and chivalry, and deeds of
+derring-do. The odor of English social life in its highest range--a
+melancholy, affectionate, very manly, but dainty breed--pervading
+the pages like an invisible scent; the idleness, the traditions, the
+mannerisms, the stately _ennui_; the yearning of love, like a spinal
+marrow, inside of all; the costumes brocade and satin; the old
+houses and furniture--solid oak, no mere veneering--the moldy secrets
+everywhere; the verdure, the ivy on the walls, the moat, the English
+landscape outside, the buzzing fly in the sun inside the window pane.
+Never one democratic page; nay, not a line, not a word; never free and
+_naive_ poetry, but involved, labored, quite sophisticated--even when
+the theme is ever so simple or rustic, (a shell, a bit of sedge, the
+commonest love-passage between a lad and lass,) the handling of the
+rhyme all showing the scholar and conventional gentleman; showing the
+laureate too, the _attache_ of the throne, and most excellent, too;
+nothing better through the volumes than the dedication "to the Queen"
+at the beginning, and the other fine dedication, "these to his memory"
+(Prince Albert's,) preceding "Idylls of the King."
+
+Such for an off-hand summary of the mighty three that now, by the women,
+men, and young folk of the fifty millions given these States by their
+late census, have been and are more read than all others put together.
+
+We hear it said, both of Tennyson and another current leading literary
+illustrator of Great Britain, Carlyle--as of Victor Hugo in France--that
+not one of them is personally friendly or admirant toward America;
+indeed, quite the reverse. _N'importe_. That they (and more good minds
+than theirs) cannot span the vast revolutionary arch thrown by the
+United States over the centuries, fixed in the present, launched to
+the endless future; that they cannot stomach the high-life-below-stairs
+coloring all our poetic and genteel social status so far--the
+measureless viciousness of the great radical Republic, with its
+ruffianly nominations and elections; its loud, ill-pitched voice,
+utterly regardless whether the verb agrees with the nominative; its
+fights, errors, eructations, repulsions, dishonesties, audacities;
+those fearful and varied and long-continued storm and stress stages (so
+offensive to the well-regulated college-bred mind) wherewith Nature,
+history, and time block out nationalities more powerful than the
+past, and to upturn it and press on to the future;--that they cannot
+understand and fathom all this, I say, is it to be wondered at?
+Fortunately, the gestation of our thirty-eight empires (and plenty more
+to come) proceeds on its course, on scales of area and velocity immense
+and absolute as the globe, and, like the globe itself, quite oblivious
+even of great poets and thinkers. But we can by no means afford to be
+oblivious of them.
+
+The same of feudalism, its castles, courts, etiquettes, personalities.
+However they, or the spirits of them hovering in the air, might scowl
+and glower at such removes as current Kansas or Kentucky life and forms,
+the latter may by no means repudiate or leave out the former. Allowing
+all the evil that it did, we get, here and today, a balance of good out
+of its reminiscence almost beyond price.
+
+Am I content, then, that the general interior chyle of our republic
+should be supplied and nourish'd by wholesale from foreign and
+antagonistic sources such as these? Let me answer that question briefly:
+
+Years ago I thought Americans ought to strike out separate, and have
+expressions of their own in highest literature. I think so still,
+and more decidedly than ever. But those convictions are now strongly
+temper'd by some additional points, (perhaps the results of advancing
+age, or the reflection of invalidism.) I see that this world of the
+West, as part of all, fuses inseparably with the East, and with all,
+as time does--the ever new yet old, old human race--"the same subject
+continued," as the novels of our grandfathers had it for chapter-heads.
+If we are not to hospitably receive and complete the inaugurations of
+the old civilizations, and change their small scale to the largest,
+broadest scale, what on earth are we for?
+
+The currents of practical business in America, the rude, coarse,
+tussling facts of our lives, and all their daily experiences, need just
+the precipitation and tincture of this entirely different fancy world
+of lulling, contrasting, even feudalistic, anti-republican poetry and
+romance. On the enormous outgrowth of our unloos'd individualities,
+and the rank, self-assertion of humanity here, may well fall these
+grace-persuading, _recherche_ influences. We first require that
+individuals and communities shall be free; then surely comes a time
+when it is requisite that they shall not be too free. Although to such
+results in the future I look mainly for a great poetry native to us,
+these importations till then will have to be accepted, such as they are,
+and thankful they are no worse. The inmost spiritual currents of the
+present time curiously revenge and check their own compell'd tendency
+to democracy, and absorption in it, by mark'd leanings to the past--by
+reminiscences in poems, plots, operas, novels, to a far-off, contrary,
+deceased world, as if they dreaded the great vulgar gulf-tides of
+to-day. Then what has been fifty centuries growing, working in, and
+accepted as crowns and apices for our kind, is not going to be pulled
+down and discarded in a hurry.
+
+It is, perhaps, time we paid our respects directly to the honorable
+party, the real object of these preambles. But we must make
+_reconnaissance_ a little further still. Not the least part of our
+lesson were to realize the curiosity and interest of friendly foreign
+experts,[35] and how our situation looks to them. "American poetry,"
+says the London "Times,"[36] is the poetry of apt pupils, but it is
+afflicted from first to last with a fatal want of raciness. Bryant has
+been long passed as a poet by Professor Longfellow; but in Longfellow,
+with all his scholarly grace and tender feeling, the defect is more
+apparent than it was in Bryant. Mr. Lowell can overflow with American
+humor when politics inspire his muse; but in the realm of pure poetry he
+is no more American than a Newdigate prize-man. Joaquin Miller's verse
+has fluency and movement and harmony, but as for the thought, his songs
+of the sierras might as well have been written in Holland.
+
+Unless in a certain very slight contingency, the "Times" says: "American
+verse, from its earliest to its latest stages, seems an exotic, with an
+exuberance of gorgeous blossom, but no principle of reproduction. That
+is the very note and test of its inherent want. Great poets are tortured
+and massacred by having their flowers of fancy gathered and gummed down
+in the _hortus siccus_ of an anthology. American poets show better in
+an anthology than in the collected volumes of their works. Like their
+audience they have been unable to resist the attraction of the vast
+orbit of English literature. They may talk of the primeval forest, but
+it would generally be very hard from internal evidence to detect that
+they were writing on the banks of the Hudson rather than on those of the
+Thames. ....In fact, they have caught the English tone and air and mood
+only too faithfully, and are accepted by the superficially cultivated
+English intelligence as readily as if they were English born. Americans
+themselves confess to a certain disappointment that a literary curiosity
+and intelligence so diffused [as in the United States] have not taken
+up English literature at the point at which America has received it, and
+carried it forward and developed it with an independent energy. But like
+reader like poet. Both show the effects of having come into an estate
+they have not earned. A nation of readers has required of its poets a
+diction and symmetry of form equal to that of an old literature like
+that of Great Britain, which is also theirs. No ruggedness, however
+racy, would be tolerated by circles which, however superficial their
+culture, read Byron and Tennyson."
+
+The English critic, though a gentleman and a scholar, and friendly
+withal, is evidently not altogether satisfied, (perhaps he is jealous,)
+and winds up by saying: "For the English language to have been enriched
+with a national poetry which was not English but American, would have
+been a treasure beyond price." With which, as whet and foil, we shall
+proceed to ventilate more definitely certain no doubt willful opinions.
+
+Leaving unnoticed at present the great masterpieces of the antique, or
+anything from the middle ages, the prevailing flow of poetry for the
+last fifty or eighty years, and now at its height, has been and is (like
+the music) an expression of mere surface melody, within narrow limits,
+and yet, to give it its due, perfectly satisfying to the demands of the
+ear, of wondrous charm, of smooth and easy delivery, and the triumph of
+technical art. Above all things it is fractional and select. It shrinks
+with aversion from the sturdy, the universal, and the democratic.
+
+The poetry of the future, (a phrase open to sharp criticism, and not
+satisfactory to me, but significant, and I will use it)--the poetry of
+the future aims at the free expression of emotion, (which means far, far
+more than appears at first,) and to arouse and initiate, more than to
+define or finish. Like all modern tendencies, it has direct or indirect
+reference continually to the reader, to you or me, to the central
+identity of everything, the mighty Ego. (Byron's was a vehement dash,
+with plenty of impatient democracy, but lurid and introverted amid all
+its magnetism; not at all the fitting, lasting song of a grand, secure,
+free, sunny race.) It is more akin, likewise, to outside life and
+landscape, (returning mainly to the antique feeling,) real sun and gale,
+and woods and shores--to the elements themselves--not sitting at ease in
+parlor or library listening to a good tale of them, told in good rhyme.
+Character, a feature far above style or polish--a feature not absent at
+any time, but now first brought to the fore--gives predominant stamp to
+advancing poetry. Its born sister, music, already responds to the same
+influences. "The music of the present, Wagner's, Gounod's, even the
+later Verdi's, all tends toward this free expression of poetic emotion,
+and demands a vocalism totally unlike that required for Rossini's
+splendid roulades, or Bellini's suave melodies."
+
+Is there not even now, indeed, an evolution, a departure from the
+masters? Venerable and unsurpassable after their kind as are the old
+works, and always unspeakably precious as studies, (for Americans
+more than any other people,) is it too much to say that by the
+shifted combinations of the modern mind the whole underlying theory
+of first-class verse has changed? "Formerly, during the period term'd
+classic," says Sainte-Beuve, "when literature was govern'd by recognized
+rules, he was considered the best poet who had composed the most perfect
+work, the most beautiful poem, the most intelligible, the most
+agreeable to read, the most complete in every respect,--the Aeneid, the
+Gerusalemme, a fine tragedy. To-day, something else is wanted. For us
+the greatest poet is he who in his works most stimulates the reader's
+imagination and reflection, who excites him the most himself to poetize.
+The greatest poet is not he who has done the best; it is he who suggests
+the most; he, not all of whose meaning is at first obvious, and who
+leaves you much to desire, to explain, to study, much to complete in
+your turn."
+
+The fatal defects our American singers labor under are subordination of
+spirit, an absence of the concrete and of real patriotism, and in excess
+that modern esthetic contagion a queer friend of mine calls the _beauty
+disease_. "The immoderate taste for beauty and art," says Charles
+Baudelaire, "leads men into monstrous excesses. In minds imbued with a
+frantic greed for the beautiful, all the balances of truth and justice
+disappear. There is a lust, a disease of the art faculties, which eats
+up the moral like a cancer."
+
+Of course, by our plentiful verse-writers there is plenty of service
+perform'd, of a kind. Nor need we go far for a tally. We see, in
+every polite circle, a class of accomplished, good-natured persons,
+("society," in fact, could not get on without them,) fully eligible for
+certain problems, times, and duties--to mix egg-nog, to mend the broken
+spectacles, to decide whether the stewed eels shall precede the sherry
+or the sherry the stewed eels, to eke out Mrs. A. B.'s parlor-tableaux
+with monk, Jew, lover, Puck, Prospero, Caliban, or what not, and to
+generally contribute and gracefully adapt their flexibilities and
+talents, in those ranges, to the world's service. But for real crises,
+great needs and pulls, moral or physical, they might as well have never
+been born.
+
+Or the accepted notion of a poet would appear to be a sort of male
+odalisque, singing or piano-playing a kind of spiced ideas, second-hand
+reminiscences, or toying late hours at entertainments, in rooms stifling
+with fashionable scent. I think I haven't seen a new-published, healthy,
+bracing, simple lyric in ten years. Not long ago, there were verses in
+each of three fresh monthlies, from leading authors, and in every one
+the whole central _motif_ (perfectly serious) was the melancholiness
+of a marriageable young woman who didn't get a rich husband, but a poor
+one!
+
+Besides its tonic and _al fresco_ physiology, relieving such as this,
+the poetry of the future will take on character in a more important
+respect. Science, having extirpated the old stock-fables and
+superstitions, is clearing a field for verse, for all the arts, and
+even for romance, a hundred-fold ampler and more wonderful, with the new
+principles behind. Republicanism advances over the whole world. Liberty,
+with Law by her side, will one day be paramount--will at any rate be
+the central idea. Then only--for all the splendor and beauty of what has
+been, or the polish of what is--then only will the true poets appear,
+and the true poems. Not the satin and patchouly of today, not the
+glorification of the butcheries and wars of the past, nor any fight
+between Deity on one side and somebody else on the other--not Milton,
+not even Shakspere's plays, grand as they are. Entirely different and
+hitherto unknown Classes of men, being authoritatively called for in
+imaginative literature, will certainly appear. What is hitherto most
+lacking, perhaps most absolutely indicates the future. Democracy has
+been hurried on through time by measureless tides and winds, resistless
+as the revolution of the globe, and as far-reaching and rapid. But in
+the highest walks of art it has not yet had a single representative
+worthy of it anywhere upon the earth.
+
+Never had real bard a task more fit for sublime ardor and genius than
+to sing worthily the songs these States have already indicated. Their
+origin, Washington, '76, the picturesqueness of old times, the war of
+1812 and the sea-fights; the incredible rapidity of movement and breadth
+of area--to fuse and compact the South and North, the East and West,
+to express the native forms, situations, scenes, from Montauk to
+California, and from the Saguenay to the Rio Grande--the working out on
+such gigantic scales, and with such a swift and mighty play of changing
+light and shade, of the great problems of man and freedom,--how far
+ahead of the stereotyped plots, or gem-cutting, or tales of love,
+or wars of mere ambition! Our history is so full of spinal, modern,
+germinal subjects--one above all. What the ancient siege of Illium, and
+the puissance of Hector's and Agamemnon's warriors proved to Hellenic
+art and literature, and all art and literature since, may prove the
+war of attempted secession of 1861-'65 to the future esthetics, drama,
+romance, poems of the United States.
+
+Nor could utility itself provide anything more practically serviceable
+to the hundred millions who, a couple of generations hence, will inhabit
+within the limits just named, than the permeation of a sane, sweet,
+autochthonous national poetry--must I say of a kind that does not now
+exist? but which, I fully believe, will in time be supplied on scales as
+free as Nature's elements. (It is acknowledged that we of the States
+are the most materialistic and money-making people ever known. My own
+theory, while fully accepting this, is that we are the most emotional,
+spiritualistic, and poetry-loving people also.)
+
+Infinite are the new and orbic traits waiting to be launch'd forth in
+the firmament that is, and is to be, America. Lately, I have wonder'd
+whether the last meaning of this cluster of thirty-eight States is not
+only practical fraternity among themselves--the only real union, (much
+nearer its accomplishment, too, than appears on the surface)--but for
+fraternity over the whole globe--that dazzling, pensive dream of ages!
+Indeed, the peculiar glory of our lands, I have come to see, or expect
+to see, not in their geographical or republican greatness, nor wealth or
+products, nor military or naval power, nor special, eminent names in any
+department, to shine with, or outshine, foreign special names in similar
+departments,--but more and more in a vaster, saner, more surrounding
+Comradeship, uniting closer and closer not only the American States, but
+all nations, and all humanity. That, O poets! is not that a theme worth
+chanting, striving for? Why not fix your verses henceforth to the
+gauge of the round globe? the whole race? Perhaps the most illustrious
+culmination of the modern may thus prove to be a signal growth of
+joyous, more exalted bards of adhesiveness, identically one in soul, but
+contributed by every nation, each after its distinctive kind. Let us,
+audacious, start it. Let the diplomats, as ever, still deeply plan,
+seeking advantages, proposing treaties between governments, and to bind
+them, on paper: what I seek is different, simpler. I would inaugurate
+from America, for this purpose, new formulas--international poems. I
+have thought that the invisible root out of which the poetry deepest in,
+and dearest to, humanity grows, is Friendship. I have thought that both
+in patriotism and song (even amid their grandest shows past) we have
+adhered too long to petty limits, and that the time has come to enfold
+the world.
+
+Not only is the human and artificial world we have establish'd in the
+West a radical departure from anything hitherto known--not only men and
+politics, and all that goes with them--but Nature itself, in the main
+sense, its construction, is different. The same old font of type, of
+course, but set up to a text never composed or issued before. For Nature
+consists not only in itself, objectively, but at least just as much in
+its subjective reflection from the person, spirit, age, looking at
+it, in the midst of it, and absorbing it--faithfully sends back the
+characteristic beliefs of the time or individual--takes, and readily
+gives again, the physiognomy of any nation or literature--falls like a
+great elastic veil on a face, or like the molding plaster on a statue.
+
+What is Nature? What were the elements, the invisible backgrounds and
+eidolons of it, to Homer's heroes, voyagers, gods? What all through the
+wanderings of Virgil's Aeneas? Then to Shakspere's characters--Hamlet,
+Lear, the English-Norman kings, the Romans? What was Nature to Rousseau,
+to Voltaire, to the German Goethe in his little classical court gardens?
+In those presentments in Tennyson (see the "Idylls of the King"--what
+sumptuous, perfumed, arras-and-gold Nature, inimitably described, better
+than any, fit for princes and knights and peerless ladies--wrathful or
+peaceful, just the same--Vivien and Merlin in their strange dalliance,
+or the death-float of Elaine, or Geraint and the long journey of his
+disgraced Enid and himself through the wood, and the wife all day
+driving the horses,) as in all the great imported art-works, treatises
+systems, from Lucretius down, there is a constantly lurking often
+pervading something, that will have to be eliminated, as not only
+unsuited to modern democracy and science in America, but insulting to
+them, and disproved by them.[37]
+
+Still, the rule and demesne of poetry will always be not the exterior,
+but interior; not the macrocosm, but microcosm; not Nature, but Man. I
+haven't said anything about the imperative need of a race of giant bards
+in the future, to hold up high to eyes of land and race the eternal
+antiseptic models, and to dauntlessly confront greed, injustice, and all
+forms of that wiliness and tyranny whose roots never die--(my opinion
+is, that after all the rest is advanced, _that_ is what first-class
+poets are for; as, to their days and occasions, the Hebrew lyrists,
+Roman Juvenal, and doubtless the old singers of India, and the British
+Druids)--to counteract dangers, immensest ones, already looming in
+America--measureless corruption in politics--what we call religion,
+a mere mask of wax or lace;--for _ensemble_, that most cankerous,
+offensive of all earth's shows--a vast and varied community, prosperous
+and fat with wealth of money and products and business ventures--plenty
+of mere intellectuality too--and then utterly without the sound,
+prevailing, moral and esthetic health-action beyond all the money and
+mere intellect of the world.
+
+Is it a dream of mine that, in times to come, west, south, east, north,
+will silently, surely arise a race of such poets, varied, yet one
+in soul--nor only poets, and of the best, but newer, larger
+prophets--larger than Judea's, and more passionate--to meet and
+penetrate those woes, as shafts of light the darkness?
+
+As I write, the last fifth of the nineteenth century is enter'd upon,
+and will soon be waning. Now, and for a long time to come, what the
+United States most need, to give purport, definiteness, reason why, to
+their unprecedented material wealth, industrial products, education
+by rote merely, great populousness and intellectual activity, is the
+central, spinal reality, (or even the idea of it,) of such a democratic
+band of-native-born-and-bred teachers, artists, _litterateurs_, tolerant
+and receptive of importations, but entirely adjusted to the West, to
+ourselves, to our own days, combinations, differences, superiorities.
+Indeed, I am fond of thinking that the whole series of concrete and
+political triumphs of the Republic are mainly as bases and preparations
+for half a dozen future poets, ideal personalities, referring not to a
+special class, but to the entire people, four or five millions of square
+miles.
+
+Long, long are the processes of the development of a nationality Only
+to the rapt vision does the seen become the prophecy of the unseen.[38]
+Democracy, so far attending only to the real, is not for the real only,
+but the grandest ideal--to justify the modern by that, and not only to
+equal, but to become by that superior to the past.
+
+On a comprehensive summing up of the processes and present and hitherto
+condition of the United States, with reference to their future, and
+the indispensable precedents to it, my point, below all surfaces, and
+subsoiling them, is, that the bases and prerequisites of a leading
+nationality are, first, at all hazards, freedom, worldly wealth and
+products on the largest and most varied scale, common education and
+intercommunication, and, in general, the passing through of just the
+stages and crudities we have passed or are passing through in the United
+States.
+
+Then, perhaps, as weightiest factor of the whole business, and of the
+main outgrowths of the future, it remains to be definitely avow'd
+that the native-born middle-class population of quite all the United
+States--the average of farmers and mechanics everywhere--the real,
+though latent and silent bulk of America, city or country, presents a
+magnificent mass of material, never before equal'd on earth. It is this
+material, quite unexpress'd by literature or art, that in every respect
+insures the future of the republic. During the secession war I was with
+the armies, and saw the rank and file, north and south, and studied them
+for four years. I have never had the least doubt about the country in
+its essential future since.
+
+Meantime, we can (perhaps) do no better than to saturate ourselves with,
+and continue to give imitations, yet awhile, of the esthetic models,
+supplies, of that past and of those lands we spring from. Those wondrous
+stores, reminiscences, floods, currents! Let them flow on, flow hither
+freely. And let the sources be enlarged, to include not only the works
+of British origin, as now, but stately and devout Spain, courteous
+France, profound Germany, the manly Scandinavian lands, Italy's art
+race, and always the mystic Orient. Remembering that at present, and
+doubtless long ahead, a certain humility would well become us. The
+course through time of highest civilization, does it not wait the
+first glimpse of our contribution to its kosmic train of poems,
+bibles, first-class structures, perpetuities--Egypt and Palestine and
+India--Greece and Rome and mediaeval Europe--and so onward? The shadowy
+procession is not a meagre one, and the standard not a low one. All that
+is mighty in our kind seems to have already trod the road. Ah, never may
+America forget her thanks and reverence for samples, treasures such
+as these--that other life-blood, inspiration, sunshine, hourly in use
+to-day, all days, forever, through her broad demesne!
+
+All serves our New World progress, even the bafflers, head-winds,
+cross-tides. Through many perturbations and squalls, and much backing
+and filling, the ship, upon the whole, makes unmistakably for her
+destination. Shakspere has served, and serves, may-be, the best of any.
+
+For conclusion, a passing thought, a contrast, of him who, in my
+opinion, continues and stands for the Shaksperean cultus at the present
+day among all English-writing peoples--of Tennyson, his poetry. I find
+it impossible, as I taste the sweetness of those lines, to escape the
+flavor, the conviction, the lush-ripening culmination, and last honey of
+decay (I dare not call it rottenness) of that feudalism which the
+mighty English dramatist painted in all the splendors of its noon and
+afternoon. And how they are chanted--both poets! Happy those kings and
+nobles to be so sung, so told! To run their course--to get their deeds
+and shapes in lasting pigments--the very pomp and dazzle of the sunset!
+
+Meanwhile, democracy waits the coming of its bards in silence and in
+twilight--but 'tis the twilight of the dawn.
+
+
+Notes:
+
+[35] A few years ago I saw the question, "Has America produced any great
+poem?" announced as prize-subject for the competition of some university
+in Northern Europe. I saw the item in a foreign paper and made a note
+of it; but being taken down with paralysis, and prostrated for a long
+season, the matter slipp'd away, and I have never been able since to get
+hold of any essay presented for the prize, or report of the discussion,
+nor to learn for certain whether there was any essay or discussion,
+nor can I now remember the place. It may have been Upsala, or possibly
+Heidelberg. Perhaps some German or Scandinavian can give particulars. I
+think it was in 1872.
+
+[36] In a long and prominent editorial, at the time, on the death of
+William Cullen Bryant.
+
+[37] Whatever may be said of the few principal poems--or their best
+passages--it is certain that the overwhelming mass of poetic works,
+as now absorb'd into human character, exerts a certain constipating,
+repressing, indoor, and artificial influence, impossible to
+elude--seldom or never that freeing, dilating, joyous one, with which
+uncramp'd Nature works on every individual without exception.
+
+[38] Is there not such a thing as the philosophy of American history and
+politics? And if so, what is it?... Wise men say there are two sets
+of wills to nations and to persons--one set that acts and works
+from explainable motives--from teaching, intelligence, judgment,
+circumstance, caprice, emulation, greed, etc.--and then another set,
+perhaps deep, hidden, unsuspected, yet often more potent than the
+first, refusing to be argued with, rising as it were out of abysses,
+resistlessly urging on speakers, doers, communities, unwitting to
+themselves--the poet to his fieriest words--the race to pursue its
+loftiest ideal. Indeed, the paradox of a nation's life and career, with
+all its wondrous contradictions, can probably only be explain'd from
+these two wills, sometimes conflicting, each operating in its sphere,
+combining in races or in persons, and producing strangest results.
+
+Let us hope there is (indeed, can there be any doubt there is?) this
+great unconscious and abysmic second will also running through the
+average nationality and career of America. Let us hope that, amid all
+the dangers and defections of the present, and through all the processes
+of the conscious will, it alone is the permanent and sovereign force,
+destined to carry on the New World to fulfil its destinies in the
+future--to resolutely pursue those destinies, age upon age; to build,
+far, far beyond its past vision, present thought; to form and fashion,
+and for the general type, men and women more noble, more athletic than
+the world has yet seen; to gradually, firmly blend, from all the States,
+with all varieties, a friendly, happy, free, religious nationality--a
+nationality not only the richest, most inventive, most productive and
+materialistic the world has yet known, but compacted indissolubly, and
+out of whose ample and solid bulk, and giving purpose and finish to it,
+conscience, morals, and all the spiritual attributes, shall surely rise,
+like spires above some group of edifices, firm-footed on the earth, yet
+scaling space and heaven.
+
+Great as they are, and greater far to be, the United States, too, are
+but a series of steps in the eternal process of creative thought. And
+here is, to my mind, their final justification, and certain perpetuity.
+There is in that sublime process, in the laws of the universe--and,
+above all, in the moral law--something that would make unsatisfactory,
+and even vain and contemptible, all the triumphs of war, the gains of
+peace, and the proudest worldly grandeur of all the nations that
+have ever existed, or that (ours included) now exist, except that we
+constantly see, through all their worldly career, however struggling and
+blind and lame, attempts, by all ages, all peoples, according to their
+development, to reach, to press, to progress on, and ever farther on, to
+more and more advanced ideals.
+
+The glory of the republic of the United States, in my opinion, is to be
+that, emerging in the light of the modern and the splendor of science,
+and solidly based on the past, it is to cheerfully range itself, and its
+politics are henceforth to come, under those universal laws, and embody
+them, and carry them out, to serve them. And as only that individual
+becomes truly great who understands well that, while complete in himself
+in a certain sense, he is but a part of the divine, eternal scheme, and
+whose special life and laws are adjusted to move in harmonious relations
+with the general laws of Nature, and especially with the moral law, the
+deepest and highest of all, and the last vitality of man or state--so
+the United States may only become the greatest and the most continuous,
+by understanding well their harmonious relations with entire humanity
+and history, and all their laws and progress, sublimed with the creative
+thought of Deity, through all time, past, present, and future. Thus will
+they expand to the amplitude of their destiny, and become illustrations
+and culminating parts of the kosmos, and of civilization.
+
+No more considering the States as an incident, or series of incidents,
+however vast, coming accidentally along the path of time, and shaped
+by casual emergencies as they happen to arise, and the mere result of
+modern improvements, vulgar and lucky, ahead of other nations and times,
+I would finally plant, as seeds, these thoughts or speculations in the
+growth of our republic--that it is the deliberate culmination and result
+of all the past--that here, too, as in all departments of the universe,
+regular laws (slow and sure in planting, slow and sure in ripening) have
+controll'd and govern'd, and will yet control and govern; and that those
+laws can no more be baffled or steer'd clear of, or vitiated, by chance,
+or any fortune or opposition, than the laws of winter and summer, or
+darkness and light.
+
+The summing up of the tremendous moral and military perturbations of
+1861-'65, and their results--and indeed of the entire hundred years of
+the past of our national experiment, from its inchoate movement down
+to the present day (1780-1881)--is, that they all now launch the United
+States fairly forth, consistently with the entirety of civilization and
+humanity, and in main sort the representative of them, leading the van,
+leading the fleet of the modern and democratic, on the seas and voyages
+of the future.
+
+And the real history of the United States--starting from that great
+convulsive struggle for unity, the secession war, triumphantly
+concluded, and _the South_ victorious after all--is only to be written
+at the remove of hundreds, perhaps a thousand, years hence.
+
+
+
+
+A MEMORANDUM AT A VENTURE
+
+
+"All is proper to be express'd, provided our aim is only high
+enough."--_J. F. Millet._
+
+"The candor of science is the glory of the modern. It does not hide
+and repress; it confronts, turns on the light. It alone has perfect
+faith--faith not in a part only, but all. Does it not undermine the old
+religious standards? Yes, in God's truth, by excluding the devil from
+the theory of the universe--by showing that evil is not a law in itself,
+but a sickness, a perversion of the good, and the other side of the
+good--that in fact all of humanity, and of everything, is divine in its
+bases, its eligibilities."
+
+Shall the mention of such topics as I have briefly but plainly and
+resolutely broach'd in the "Children of Adam" section of "Leaves of
+Grass" be admitted in poetry and literature? Ought not the innovation
+to be put down by opinion and criticism? and, if those fail, by the
+District Attorney? True, I could not construct a poem which declaredly
+took, as never before, the complete human identity, physical, moral,
+emotional, and intellectual, (giving precedence and compass in a certain
+sense to the first,) nor fulfil that _bona fide_ candor and entirety
+of treatment which was a part of my purpose, without comprehending this
+section also. But I would entrench myself more deeply and widely than
+that. And while I do not ask any man to indorse my theory, I confess
+myself anxious that what I sought to write and express, and the ground I
+built on, shall be at least partially understood, from its own platform.
+The best way seems to me to confront the question with entire frankness.
+
+There are, generally speaking, two points of view, two conditions of the
+world's attitude toward these matters; the first, the conventional one
+of good folks and good print everywhere, repressing any direct statement
+of them, and making allusions only at second or third hand--(as
+the Greeks did of death, which, in Hellenic social culture, was not
+mention'd point-blank, but by euphemisms.) In the civilization of
+to-day, this condition--without stopping to elaborate the arguments and
+facts, which are many and varied and perplexing--has led to states of
+ignorance, repressal, and cover'd over disease and depletion,
+forming certainly a main factor in the world's woe. A nonscientific,
+non-esthetic, and eminently non-religious condition, bequeath'd to us
+from the past, (its origins diverse, one of them the far-back lessons
+of benevolent and wise men to restrain the prevalent coarseness and
+animality of the tribal ages--with Puritanism, or perhaps Protestantism
+itself for another, and still another specified in the latter part
+of this memorandum)--to it is probably due most of the ill births,
+inefficient maturity, snickering pruriency, and of that human pathologic
+evil and morbidity which is, in my opinion, the keel and reason-why of
+every evil and morbidity. Its scent, as of something sneaking,
+furtive, mephitic, seems to lingeringly pervade all modern literature,
+conversation, and manners.
+
+The second point of view, and by far the largest--as the world in
+working-day dress vastly exceeds the world in parlor toilette--is
+the one of common life, from the oldest times down, and especially in
+England, (see the earlier chapters of "Taine's English Literature," and
+see Shakspere almost anywhere,) and which our age to-day inherits from
+riant stock, in the wit, or what passes for wit, of masculine circles,
+and in erotic stories and talk, to excite, express, and dwell on, that
+merely sensual voluptuousness which, according to Victor Hugo, is the
+most universal trait of all ages, all lands. This second condition,
+however bad, is at any rate like a disease which comes to the surface,
+and therefore less dangerous than a conceal'd one.
+
+The time seems to me to have arrived, and America to be the place, for
+a new departure--a third point of view. The same freedom and faith and
+earnestness which, after centuries of denial, struggle, repression,
+and martyrdom, the present day brings to the treatment of politics and
+religion, must work out a plan and standard on this subject, not so
+much for what is call'd society, as for thoughtfulest men and women, and
+thoughtfulest literature. The same spirit that marks the physiological
+author and demonstrator on these topics in his important field, I have
+thought necessary to be exemplified, for once, in another certainly not
+less important field.
+
+In the present memorandum I only venture to indicate that plan and
+view--decided upon more than twenty years ago, for my own literary
+action, and formulated tangibly in my printed poems--(as Bacon says an
+abstract thought or theory is of no moment unless it leads to a deed or
+work done, exemplifying it in the concrete)--that the sexual passion
+in itself, while normal and unperverted, is inherently legitimate,
+creditable, not necessarily an improper theme for poet, as confessedly
+not for scientist--that, with reference to the whole construction,
+organism, and intentions of "Leaves of Grass," anything short of
+confronting that theme, and making myself clear upon it as the enclosing
+basis of everything, (as the sanity of everything was to be the
+atmosphere of the poems,) I should beg the question in its most
+momentous aspect, and the superstructure that follow'd, pretensive as
+it might assume to be, would all rest on a poor foundation, or no
+foundation at all. In short, as the assumption of the sanity of birth,
+Nature and humanity, is the key to any true theory of life and the
+universe--at any rate, the only theory out of which I wrote--it is, and
+must inevitably be, the only key to "Leaves of Grass," and every part
+of it. _That_, (and not a vain consistency or weak pride, as a late
+"Springfield Republican" charges,) is the reason that I have stood out
+for these particular verses uncompromisingly for over twenty years, and
+maintain them to this day. _That_ is what I felt in my inmost brain and
+heart, when I only answer'd Emerson's vehement arguments with silence,
+under the old elms of Boston Common.
+
+Indeed, might not every physiologist and every good physician pray
+for the redeeming of this subject from its hitherto relegation to the
+tongues and pens of blackguards, and boldly putting it for once at
+least, if no more, in the demesne of poetry and sanity--as something not
+in itself gross or impure, but entirely consistent with highest manhood
+and womanhood, and indispensable to both? Might not only every wife and
+every mother--not only every babe that comes into the world, if that
+were possible--not only all marriage, the foundation and _sine qua
+non_ of the civilized state--bless and thank the showing, or taking for
+granted, that motherhood, fatherhood, sexuality, and all that belongs
+to them, can be asserted, where it comes to question, openly, joyously,
+proudly, "without shame or the need of shame," from the highest artistic
+and human considerations--but, with reverence be it written, on such
+attempt to justify the base and start of the whole divine scheme in
+humanity, might not the Creative Power itself deign a smile of approval?
+
+To the movement for the eligibility and entrance of women amid new
+spheres of business, politics, and the suffrage, the current prurient,
+conventional treatment of sex is the main formidable obstacle. The
+rising tide of "woman's rights," swelling and every year advancing
+farther and farther, recoils from it with dismay. There will in my
+opinion be no general progress in such eligibility till a sensible,
+philosophic, democratic method is substituted.
+
+The whole question--which strikes far, very far deeper than most people
+have supposed, (and doubtless, too, something is to be said on all
+sides,) is peculiarly an important one in art--is first an ethic, and
+then still more an esthetic one. I condense from a paper read not long
+since at Cheltenham, England, before the "Social Science Congress," to
+the Art Department, by P. H. Rathbone of Liverpool, on the "Undraped
+Figure in Art," and the discussion that follow'd:
+
+"When coward Europe suffer'd the unclean Turk to soil the sacred shores
+of Greece by his polluting presence, civilization and morality receiv'd
+a blow from which they have never entirely recover'd, and the trail of
+the serpent has been over European art and European society ever since.
+The Turk regarded and regards women as animals without soul, toys to be
+play'd with or broken at pleasure, and to be hidden, partly from shame,
+but chiefly for the purpose of stimulating exhausted passion. Such is
+the unholy origin of the objection to the nude as a fit subject for art;
+it is purely Asiatic, and though not introduced for the first time
+in the fifteenth century, is yet to be traced to the source of all
+impurity--the East. Although the source of the prejudice is thoroughly
+unhealthy and impure, yet it is now shared by many pure-minded and
+honest, if somewhat uneducated, people. But I am prepared to maintain
+that it is necessary for the future of English art and of English
+morality that the right of the nude to a place in our galleries should
+be boldly asserted; it must, however, be the nude as represented by
+thoroughly trained artists, and with a pure and noble ethic purpose. The
+human form, male and female, is the type and standard of all beauty of
+form and proportion, and it is necessary to be thoroughly familiar with
+it in order safely to judge of all beauty which consists of form and
+proportion. To women it is most necessary that they should become
+thoroughly imbued with the knowledge of the ideal female form, in order
+that they should recognize the perfection of it at once, and without
+effort, and so far as possible avoid deviations from the ideal. Had
+this been the case in times past, we should not have had to deplore the
+distortions effected by tight-lacing, which destroy'd the figure and
+ruin'd the health of so many of the last generation. Nor should we have
+had the scandalous dresses alike of society and the stage. The extreme
+development of the low dresses which obtain'd some years ago, when the
+stays crush'd up the breasts into suggestive prominence, would surely
+have been check'd, had the eye of the public been properly educated by
+familiarity with the exquisite beauty of line of a well-shaped bust.
+I might show how thorough acquaintance with the ideal nude foot would
+probably have much modified the foot-torturing boots and high heels,
+which wring the foot out of all beauty of line, and throw the body
+forward into an awkward and ungainly attitude.
+
+It is argued that the effect of nude representation of women upon young
+men is unwholesome, but it would not be so if such works were admitted
+without question into our galleries, and became thoroughly familiar
+to them. On the contrary, it would do much to clear away from
+healthy-hearted lads one of their sorest trials--that prurient curiosity
+which is bred of prudish concealment. Where there is mystery there is
+the suggestion of evil, and to go to a theatre, where you have only to
+look at the stalls to see one-half of the female form, and to the
+stage to see the other half undraped, is far more pregnant with evil
+imaginings than the most objectionable of totally undraped figures. In
+French art there have been questionable nude figures exhibited; but the
+fault was not that they were nude, but that they were the portraits
+of ugly immodest women. Some discussion follow'd. There was a general
+concurrence in the principle contended for by the reader of the paper.
+Sir Walter Stirling maintain'd that the perfect male figure, rather than
+the female, was the model of beauty. After a few remarks from Rev. Mr.
+Roberts and Colonel Oldfield, the Chairman regretted that no opponent of
+nude figures had taken part in the discussion. He agreed with Sir
+Walter Stirling as to the male figure being the most perfect model of
+proportion. He join'd in defending the exhibition of nude figures,
+but thought considerable supervision should be exercis'd over such
+exhibitions.
+
+No, it is not the picture or nude statue or text, with clear aim, that
+is indecent; it is the beholder's own thought, inference, distorted
+construction. True modesty is one of the most precious of attributes,
+even virtues, but in nothing is there more pretense, more falsity, than
+the needless assumption of it. Through precept and consciousness, man
+has long enough realized how bad he is. I would not so much disturb or
+demolish that conviction, only to resume and keep unerringly with it the
+spinal meaning of the Scriptural text, _God overlook'd all that He had
+made_, (including the apex of the whole--humanity--with its elements,
+passions, appetites,) _and behold, it was very good_."
+
+Does not anything short of that third point of view, when you come to
+think of it profoundly and with amplitude, impugn Creation from the
+outset? In fact, however overlaid, or unaware of itself, does not
+the conviction involv'd in it perennially exist at the centre of
+all society, and of the sexes, and of marriage? Is it not really an
+intuition of the human race? For, old as the world is, and beyond
+statement as are the countless and splendid results of its culture and
+evolution, perhaps the best and earliest and purest intuitions of the
+human race have yet to be develop'd.
+
+
+
+
+
+DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN LECTURE
+
+_deliver'd in New York, April 14, 1879--in Philadelphia, '80--in Boston,
+'81_
+
+
+How often since that dark and dripping Saturday--that chilly April day,
+now fifteen years bygone--my heart has entertain'd the dream, the
+wish, to give of Abraham Lincoln's death, its own special thought and
+memorial. Yet now the sought-for opportunity offers, I find my notes
+incompetent, (why, for truly profound themes, is statement so idle? why
+does the right phrase never offer?) and the fit tribute I dream'd of,
+waits unprepared as ever. My talk here indeed is less because of itself
+or anything in it, and nearly altogether because I feel a desire, apart
+from any talk, to specify the day, the martyrdom. It is for this, my
+friends, I have call'd you together. Oft as the rolling years bring
+back this hour, let it again, however briefly, be dwelt upon. For my
+own part, I hope and desire, till my own dying day, whenever the 14th
+or 15th of April comes, to annually gather a few friends, and hold its
+tragic reminiscence. No narrow or sectional reminiscence. It belongs
+to these States in their entirety--not the North only, but the
+South--perhaps belongs most tenderly and devoutly to the South, of
+all; for there, really, this man's birth-stock. There and thence
+his antecedent stamp. Why should I not say that thence his manliest
+traits--his universality--his canny, easy ways and words upon the
+surface--his inflexible determination and courage at heart? Have you
+never realized it, my friends, that Lincoln, though grafted on the West,
+is essentially, in personnel and character, a Southern contribution?
+
+And though by no means proposing to resume the secession war to-night,
+I would briefly remind you of the public conditions preceding that
+contest. For twenty years, and especially during the four or five before
+the war actually began, the aspect of affairs in the United States,
+though without the flash of military excitement, presents more than
+the survey of a battle, or any extended campaign, or series, even of
+Nature's convulsions. The hot passions of the South--the strange
+mixture at the North of inertia, incredulity, and conscious power--the
+incendiarism of the abolitionists--the rascality and grip of the
+politicians, unparallel'd in any land, any age. To these I must not omit
+adding the honesty of the essential bulk of the people everywhere--yet
+with all the seething fury and contradiction of their natures more
+arous'd than the Atlantic's waves in wildest equinox. In politics, what
+can be more ominous, (though generally unappreciated then)--what more
+significant than the Presidentiads of Fillmore and Buchanan? proving
+conclusively that the weakness and wickedness of elected rulers are
+just as likely to afflict us here, as in the countries of the Old World,
+under their monarchies, emperors, and aristocracies. In that Old World
+were everywhere heard underground rumblings, that died out, only to
+again surely return. While in America the volcano, though civic yet,
+continued to grow more and more convulsive--more and more stormy and
+threatening.
+
+In the height of all this excitement and chaos, hovering on the edge at
+first, and then merged in its very midst, and destined to play a leading
+part, appears a strange and awkward figure. I shall not easily forget
+the first time I ever saw Abraham Lincoln. It must have been about the
+18th or 19th of February, 1861. It was rather a pleasant afternoon, in
+New York city, as he arrived there from the West, to remain a few hours,
+and then pass on to Washington, to prepare for his inauguration. I saw
+him in Broadway, near the site of the present Post-office. He came down,
+I think from Canal street, to stop at the Astor House. The broad spaces,
+sidewalks, and street in the neighborhood, and for some distance, were
+crowded with solid masses of people, many thousands. The omnibuses and
+other vehicles had all been turn'd off, leaving an unusual hush in that
+busy part of the city. Presently two or three shabby hack barouches made
+their way with some difficulty through the crowd, and drew up at the
+Astor House entrance. A tall figure stepp'd out of the centre of these
+barouches, paus'd leisurely on the sidewalk, look'd up at the granite
+walls and looming architecture of the grand old hotel--then, after a
+relieving stretch of arms and legs, turn'd round for over a minute to
+slowly and good-humoredly scan the appearance of the vast and silent
+crowds. There were no speeches--no compliments--no welcome--as far as
+I could hear, not a word said. Still much anxiety was conceal'd in that
+quiet. Cautious persons had fear'd some mark'd insult or indignity to
+the President-elect--for he possess'd no personal popularity at all in
+New York city, and very little political. But it was evidently tacitly
+agreed that if the few political supporters of Mr. Lincoln present
+would entirely abstain from any demonstration on their side, the immense
+majority, who were anything but supporters, would abstain on their side
+also. The result was a sulky, unbroken silence, such as certainly never
+before characterized so great a New York crowd.
+
+Almost in the same neighborhood I distinctly remember'd seeing Lafayette
+on his visit to America in 1825. I had also personally seen and heard,
+various years afterward, how Andrew Jackson, Clay, Webster, Hungarian
+Kossuth, Filibuster Walker, the Prince of Wales on his visit, and
+other celebres, native and foreign, had been welcom'd there--all that
+indescribable human roar and magnetism, unlike any other sound in the
+universe--the glad exulting thunder-shouts of countless unloos'd throats
+of men! But on this occasion, not a voice--not a sound. From the top of
+an omnibus, (driven up one side, close by, and block'd by the curbstone
+and the crowds,) I had, I say, a capital view of it all, and
+especially of Mr. Lincoln, his look and gait--his perfect composure and
+coolness--his unusual and uncouth height, his dress of complete black,
+stovepipe hat push'd back on the head, dark-brown complexion, seam'd
+and wrinkled yet canny-looking face, black, bushy head of hair,
+disproportionately long neck, and his hands held behind as he stood
+observing the people. He look'd with curiosity upon that immense sea of
+faces, and the sea of faces return'd the look with similar curiosity. In
+both there was a dash of comedy, almost farce, such as Shakspere puts in
+his blackest tragedies. The crowd that hemm'd around consisted I should
+think of thirty to forty thousand men, not a single one his personal
+friend--while I have no doubt, (so frenzied were the ferments of
+the time,) many an assassin's knife and pistol lurk'd in hip or
+breast-pocket there, ready, soon as break and riot came.
+
+But no break or riot came. The tall figure gave another relieving
+stretch or two of arms and legs; then with moderate pace, and
+accompanied by a few unknown-looking persons, ascended the portico-steps
+of the Astor House, disappear'd through its broad entrance--and the
+dumb-show ended.
+
+I saw Abraham Lincoln often the four years following that date. He
+changed rapidly and much during his Presidency--but this scene, and him
+in it, are indelibly stamp'd upon my recollection. As I sat on the top
+of my omnibus, and had a good view of him, the thought, dim and inchoate
+then, has since come out clear enough, that four sorts of genius, four
+mighty and primal hands, will be needed to the complete limning of this
+man's future portrait--the eyes and brains and finger-touch of Plutarch
+and Eschylus and Michel Angelo, assisted by Rabelais.
+
+And now--(Mr. Lincoln passing on from this scene to Washington, where
+he was inaugurated, amid armed cavalry, and sharpshooters at every
+point--the first instance of the kind in our history--and I hope it will
+be the last)--now the rapid succession of well-known events, (too
+well known--I believe, these days, we almost hate to hear them
+mention'd)--the national flag fired on at Sumter--the uprising of the
+North, in paroxysms of astonishment and rage--the chaos of divided
+councils--the call for troops--the first Bull Run--the stunning
+cast-down, shock, and dismay of the North--and so in full flood the
+secession war. Four years of lurid, bleeding, murky, murderous war.
+Who paint those years, with all their scenes?--the hard-fought
+engagements--the defeats, plans, failures--the gloomy hours, days,
+when our Nationality seem'd hung in pall of doubt, perhaps death--the
+Mephistophelean sneers of foreign lands and attaches--the dreaded
+Scylla of European interference, and the Charybdis of the tremendously
+dangerous latent strata of secession sympathizers throughout the free
+States, (far more numerous than is supposed)--the long marches
+in summer--the hot sweat, and many a sunstroke, as on the rush to
+Gettysburg in '63--the night battles in the woods, as under Hooker
+at Chancellorsville--the camps in winter--the military prisons--the
+hospitals--(alas! alas! the hospitals.)
+
+The secession war? Nay, let me call it the Union war. Though
+whatever call'd, it is even yet too near us--too vast and too closely
+overshadowing--its branches unform'd yet, (but certain,) shooting too
+far into the future--and the most indicative and mightiest of them yet
+ungrown. A great literature will yet arise out of the era of those
+four years, those scenes--era compressing centuries of native passion,
+first-class pictures, tempests of life and death--an inexhaustible mine
+for the histories, drama, romance, and even philosophy, of peoples to
+come--indeed the verteber of poetry and art, (of personal character
+too,) for all future America--far more grand, in my opinion, to the
+hands capable of it, than Homer's siege of Troy, or the French wars to
+Shakspere.
+
+But I must leave these speculations, and come to the theme I have
+assign'd and limited myself to. Of the actual murder of President
+Lincoln, though so much has been written, probably the facts are yet
+very indefinite in most persons' minds. I read from my memoranda,
+written at the time, and revised frequently and finally since.
+
+The day, April 14, 1865, seems to have been a pleasant one throughout
+the whole land--the moral atmosphere pleasant too--the long storm, so
+dark, so fratricidal, full of blood and doubt and gloom, over and ended
+at last by the sun-rise of such an absolute National victory, and utter
+break-down of Secessionism--we almost doubted our own senses! Lee had
+capitulated beneath the apple-tree of Appomattox. The other armies, the
+flanges of the revolt, swiftly follow'd. And could it really be, then?
+Out of all the affairs of this world of woe and failure and disorder,
+was there really come the confirm'd, unerring sign of plan, like a
+shaft of pure light--of rightful rule--of God? So the day, as I say, was
+propitious. Early herbage, early flowers, were out. (I remember where
+I was stopping at the time, the season being advanced, there were many
+lilacs in full bloom. By one of those caprices that enter and give tinge
+to events without being at all a part of them, I find myself always
+reminded of the great tragedy of that day by the sight and odor of these
+blossoms. It never fails.)
+
+But I must not dwell on accessories. The deed hastens. The popular
+afternoon paper of Washington, the little "Evening Star," had spatter'd
+all over its third page, divided among the advertisements in a
+sensational manner, in a hundred different places, _The President and
+his Lady will be at the Theatre this evening_.... (Lincoln was fond
+of the theatre. I have myself seen him there several times. I remember
+thinking how funny it was that he, in some respects the leading actor
+in the stormiest drama known to real history's stage through centuries,
+should sit there and be so completely interested and absorb'd in those
+human jack-straws, moving about with their silly little gestures,
+foreign spirit, and flatulent text.)
+
+On this occasion the theatre was crowded, many ladies in rich and gay
+costumes, officers in their uniforms, many well-known citizens, young
+folks, the usual clusters of gas-lights, the usual magnetism of so many
+people, cheerful, with perfumes, music of violins and flutes--(and
+over all, and saturating all, that vast, vague wonder, _Victory_,
+the nation's victory, the triumph of the Union, filling the air, the
+thought, the sense, with exhilaration more than all music and perfumes.)
+
+The President came betimes, and, with his wife, witness'd the play
+from the large stage-boxes of the second tier, two thrown into one,
+and profusely drap'd with the national flag. The acts and scenes of the
+piece--one of those singularly written compositions which have at least
+the merit of giving entire relief to an audience engaged in mental
+action or business excitements and cares during the day, as it makes
+not the slightest call on either the moral, emotional, esthetic, or
+spiritual nature--a piece, ("Our American Cousin,") in which, among
+other characters, so call'd, a Yankee, certainly such a one as was never
+seen, or the least like it ever seen, in North America, is introduced
+in England, with a varied fol-de-rol of talk, plot, scenery, and such
+phantasmagoria as goes to make up a modern popular drama--had progress'd
+through perhaps a couple of its acts, when in the midst of this comedy,
+or non-such, or whatever it is to be call'd, and to offset it, or finish
+it out, as if in Nature's and the great Muse's mockery of those poor
+mimes, came interpolated that scene, not really or exactly to be
+described at all, (for on the many hundreds who were there it seems
+to this hour to have left a passing blur, a dream, a blotch)--and yet
+partially to be described as I now proceed to give it. There is a scene
+in the play representing a modern parlor in which two unprecedented
+English ladies are inform'd by the impossible Yankee that he is not
+a man of fortune, and therefore undesirable for marriage-catching
+purposes; after which, the comments being finish'd, the dramatic trio
+make exit, leaving the stage clear for a moment. At this period came the
+murder of Abraham Lincoln.
+
+Great as all its manifold train, circling round it, and stretching into
+the future for many a century, in the politics, history, art, &c.,
+of the New World, in point of fact the main thing, the actual
+murder, transpired with the quiet and simplicity of any commonest
+occurrence--the bursting of a bud or pod in the growth of vegetation,
+for instance. Through the general hum following the stage pause, with
+the change of positions, came the muffled sound of a pistol-shot, which
+not one-hundredth part of the audience heard at the time--and yet a
+moment's hush--somehow, surely, a vague startled thrill--and then,
+through the ornamented, draperied, starr'd and striped space-way of the
+President's box, a sudden figure, a man, raises himself with hands
+and feet, stands a moment on the railing, leaps below to the stage, (a
+distance of perhaps fourteen or fifteen feet,) falls out of position,
+catching his boot-heel in the copious drapery, (the American flag,)
+falls on one knee, quickly recovers himself, rises as if nothing had
+happen'd, (he really sprains his ankle, but unfelt then)--and so
+the figure, Booth, the murderer, dress'd in plain black broadcloth,
+bare-headed, with full, glossy, raven hair, and his eyes like some mad
+animal's flashing with light and resolution, yet with a certain strange
+calmness, holds aloft in one hand a large knife--walks along not much
+back from the footlights--turns fully toward the audience his face
+of statuesque beauty, lit by those basilisk eyes, flashing with
+desperation, perhaps insanity--launches out in a firm and steady voice
+the words _Sic semper tyrannis_--and then walks with neither slow
+nor very rapid pace diagonally across to the back of the stage, and
+disappears. (Had not all this terrible scene--making the mimic ones
+preposterous--had it not all been rehears'd, in blank, by Booth,
+beforehand?)
+
+A moment's hush--a scream--the cry of _murder_--Mrs. Lincoln leaning out
+of the box, with ashy cheeks and lips, with involuntary cry, pointing
+to the retreating figure, _He has kill'd the President._ And still a
+moment's strange, incredulous suspense--and then the deluge!--then that
+mixture of horror, noises, uncertainty--(the sound, somewhere back, of
+a horse's hoofs clattering with speed)--the people burst through chairs
+and railings, and break them up--there is inextricable confusion
+and terror--women faint--quite feeble persons fall, and are trampl'd
+on--many cries of agony are heard--the broad stage suddenly fills
+to suffocation with a dense and motley crowd, like some horrible
+carnival--the audience rush generally upon it, at least the strong men
+do--the actors and actresses are all there in their play-costumes and
+painted faces, with mortal fright showing through the rouge--the screams
+and calls, confused talk--redoubled, trebled--two or three manage to
+pass up water from the stage to the President's box--others try to
+clamber up--&c., &c.
+
+In the midst of all this, the soldiers of the President's guard,
+with others, suddenly drawn to the scene, burst in--(some two hundred
+altogether)--they storm the house, through all the tiers, especially
+the upper ones, inflam'd with fury, literally charging the audience with
+fix'd bayonets, muskets and pistols, snouting _Clear out! clear out!
+you sons of_----.... Such the wild scene, or a suggestion of it rather,
+inside the play-house that night.
+
+Outside, too, in the atmosphere of shock and craze, crowds of people,
+fill'd with frenzy, ready to seize any outlet for it, come near
+committing murder several times on innocent individuals. One such case
+was especially exciting. The infuriated crowd, through some chance, got
+started against one man, either for words he utter'd, or perhaps without
+any cause at all, and were proceeding at once to actually hang him on
+a neighboring lamp-post, when he was rescued by a few heroic policemen,
+who placed him in their midst, and fought their way slowly and amid
+great peril toward the station house. It was a fitting episode of the
+whole affair. The crowd rushing and eddying to and fro--the night,
+the yells, the pale faces, many frighten'd people trying in vain to
+extricate themselves--the attack'd man, not yet freed from the jaws
+of death, looking like a corpse--the silent, resolute, half-dozen
+policemen, with no weapons but their little clubs, yet stern and steady
+through all those eddying swarms--made a fitting side-scene to the grand
+tragedy of the murder. They gain'd the station house with the protected
+man, whom they placed in security for the night, and discharged him in
+the morning.
+
+And in the midst of that pandemonium, infuriated soldiers, the audience
+and the crowd, the stage, and all its actors and actresses, its
+paint-pots, spangles, and gas-lights--the life blood from those veins,
+the best and sweetest of the land, drips slowly down, and death's ooze
+already begins its little bubbles on the lips.
+
+Thus the visible incidents and surroundings of Abraham Lincoln's murder,
+as they really occur'd. Thus ended the attempted secession of these
+States; thus the four years' war. But the main things come subtly
+and invisibly afterward, perhaps long afterward--neither military,
+political, nor (great as those are,) historical. I say, certain
+secondary and indirect results, out of the tragedy of this death, are,
+in my opinion, greatest. Not the event of the murder itself. Not that
+Mr. Lincoln strings the principal points and personages of the
+period, like beads, upon the single string of his career. Not that his
+idiosyncrasy, in its sudden appearance and disappearance, stamps this
+Republic with a stamp more mark'd and enduring than any yet given by
+any one man--(more even than Washington's;)--but, join'd with these,
+the immeasurable value and meaning of that whole tragedy lies, to me,
+in senses finally dearest to a nation, (and here all our own)--the
+imaginative and artistic senses--the literary and dramatic ones. Not in
+any common or low meaning of those terms, but a meaning precious to the
+race, and to every age. A long and varied series of contradictory
+events arrives at last at its highest poetic, single, central, pictorial
+denouement. The whole involved, baffling, multiform whirl of the
+secession period comes to a head, and is gather'd in one brief flash of
+lightning-illumination--one simple, fierce deed. Its sharp culmination,
+and as it were solution, of so many bloody and angry problems,
+illustrates those climax-moments on the stage of universal Time, where
+the historic Muse at one entrance, and the tragic Muse at the other,
+suddenly ringing down the curtain, close an immense act in the long
+drama of creative thought, and give it radiation, tableau, stranger than
+fiction. Fit radiation--fit close! How the imagination--how the student
+loves these things! America, too, is to have them. For not in all
+great deaths, nor far or near--not Caesar in the Roman senate-house,
+or Napoleon passing away in the wild night-storm at St. Helena--not
+Paleologus, falling, desperately fighting, piled over dozens deep with
+Grecian corpses--not calm old Socrates, drinking the hemlock--outvies
+that terminus of the secession war, in one man's life, here in our
+midst, in our own time--that seal of the emancipation of three million
+slaves--that parturition and delivery of our at last really free
+Republic, born again, henceforth to commence its career of genuine
+homogeneous Union, compact, consistent with itself.
+
+Nor will ever future American Patriots and Unionists, indifferently over
+the whole land, or North or South, find a better moral to their lesson.
+The final use of the greatest men of a Nation is, after all, not with
+reference to their deeds in themselves, or their direct bearing on their
+times or lands. The final use of a heroic-eminent life--especially of a
+heroic-eminent death--is its indirect filtering into the nation and the
+race, and to give, often at many removes, but unerringly, age after age,
+color and fibre to the personalism of the youth and maturity of that
+age, and of mankind. Then there is a cement to the whole people,
+subtler, more underlying, than any thing in written constitution, or
+courts or armies--namely, the cement of a death identified thoroughly
+with that people, at its head, and for its sake. Strange, (is it not?)
+that battles, martyrs, agonies, blood, even assassination, should so
+condense--perhaps only really, lastingly condense--a Nationality.
+
+I repeat it--the grand deaths of the race--the dramatic deaths of every
+nationality--are its most important inheritance-value--in some respects
+beyond its literature and art--(as the hero is beyond his finest
+portrait, and the battle itself beyond its choicest song or epic.) Is
+not here indeed the point underlying all tragedy? the famous pieces of
+the Grecian masters--and all masters? Why, if the old Greeks had had
+this man, what trilogies of plays--what epics--would have been made
+out of him! How the rhapsodes would have recited him! How quickly that
+quaint tall form would have enter'd into the region where men vitalize
+gods, and gods divinify men! But Lincoln, his times, his death--great
+as any, any age--belong altogether to our own, and our autochthonic.
+(Sometimes indeed I think our American days, our own stage--the actors
+we know and have shaken hands, or talk'd with--more fateful than
+anything in Eschylus--more heroic than the fighters around Troy--afford
+kings of men for our Democracy prouder than Agamemnon--models of
+character cute and hardy as Ulysses--deaths more pitiful than Priam's.)
+
+When, centuries hence, (as it must, in my opinion, be centuries hence
+before the life of these States, or of Democracy, can be really written
+and illustrated,) the leading historians and dramatists seek for some
+personage, some special event, incisive enough to mark with deepest
+cut, and mnemonize, this turbulent Nineteenth century of ours, (not only
+these States, but all over the political and social world)--something,
+perhaps, to close that gorgeous procession of European feudalism, with
+all its pomp and caste-prejudices, (of whose long train we in America
+are yet so inextricably the heirs)--something to identify with terrible
+identification, by far the greatest revolutionary step in the history of
+the United States, (perhaps the greatest of the world, our century)--the
+absolute extirpation and erasure of slavery from the States--those
+historians will seek in vain for any point to serve more thoroughly
+their purpose, than Abraham Lincoln's death.
+
+Dear to the Muse--thrice dear to Nationality--to the whole human
+race--precious to this Union--precious to Democracy--unspeakably and
+forever precious--their first great Martyr Chief.
+
+
+
+
+TWO LETTERS
+
+I
+
+
+TO -- -- -- LONDON, ENGLAND
+
+_Camden, N.J., U.S. America, March 17th, 1876._ DEAR FRIEND:--Yours of
+the 28th Feb. receiv'd, and indeed welcom'd. I am jogging along still
+about the same in physical condition--still certainly no worse, and I
+sometimes lately suspect rather better, or at any rate more adjusted to
+the situation. Even begin to think of making some move, some change of
+base, &c.: the doctors have been advising it for over two years, but I
+haven't felt to do it yet. My paralysis does not lift--I cannot walk
+any distance--I still have this baffling, obstinate, apparently chronic
+affection of the stomachic apparatus and liver: yet I get out of doors
+a little every day--write and read in moderation--appetite sufficiently
+good--(eat only very plain food, but always did that)--digestion
+tolerable--spirits unflagging. I have told you most of this before, but
+suppose you might like to know it all again, up to date. Of course, and
+pretty darkly coloring the whole, are bad spells, prostrations,
+some pretty grave ones, intervals--and I have resign'd myself to the
+certainty of permanent incapacitation from solid work: but things may
+continue at least in this half-and-half way for months, even years.
+
+My books are out, the new edition; a set of which, immediately on
+receiving your letter of 28th, I have sent you, (by mail, March 15,)
+and I suppose you have before this receiv'd them. My dear friend, your
+offers of help, and those of my other British friends, I think I fully
+appreciate, in the right spirit, welcome and acceptive--leaving the
+matter altogether in your and their hands, and to your and their
+convenience, discretion, leisure, and nicety. Though poor now, even to
+penury, I have not so far been deprived of any physical thing I need or
+wish whatever, and I feel confident I shall not in the future. During my
+employment of seven years or more in Washington after the war (1865-'72)
+I regularly saved part of my wages: and, though the sum has now become
+about exhausted by my expenses of the last three years, there are
+already beginning at present welcome dribbles hitherward from the sales
+of my new edition, which I just job and sell, myself, (all through this
+illness, my book-agents for three years in New York successively, badly
+cheated me,) and shall continue to dispose of the books myself. And that
+is the way I should prefer to glean my support. In that way I cheerfully
+accept all the aid my friends find it convenient to proffer.
+
+To repeat a little, and without undertaking details, understand, dear
+friend, for yourself and all, that I heartily and most affectionately
+thank my British friends, and that I accept their sympathetic generosity
+in the same spirit in which I believe (nay, know) it is offer'd--that
+though poor I am not in want--that I maintain good heart and cheer; and
+that by far the most satisfaction to me (and I think it can be done, and
+believe it will be) will be to live, as long as possible, on the sales,
+by myself, of my own works, and perhaps, if practicable, by further
+writings for the press.
+
+W. W.
+
+I am prohibited from writing too much, and I must make this candid
+statement of the situation serve for all my dear friends over there.
+
+
+II
+
+
+TO -- -- -- DRESDEN, SAXONY
+
+_Camden, New Jersey, U.S.A., Dec. 20, '81._ DEAR SIR:--Your letter
+asking definite endorsement to your translation of my "Leaves of Grass"
+into Russian is just received, and I hasten to answer it. Most warmly
+and willingly I consent to the translation, and waft a prayerful God
+speed to the enterprise.
+
+You Russians and we Americans! Our countries so distant, so unlike at
+first glance--such a difference in social and political conditions,
+and our respective methods of moral and practical development the
+last hundred years;--and yet in certain features, and vastest ones, so
+resembling each other. The variety of stock-elements and tongues, to
+be resolutely fused in a common identity and union at all hazards--the
+idea, perennial through the ages, that they both have their historic and
+divine mission--the fervent element of manly friendship throughout
+the whole people, surpass'd by no other races--the grand expanse of
+territorial limits and boundaries--the unform'd and nebulous state of
+many things, not yet permanently settled, but agreed on all hands to
+be the preparations of an infinitely greater future--the fact that both
+Peoples have their independent and leading positions to hold, keep, and
+if necessary, fight for, against the rest of the world--the deathless
+aspirations at the inmost centre of each great community, so vehement,
+so mysterious, so abysmic--are certainly features you Russians and
+we Americans possess in common. As my dearest dream is for an
+internationality of poems and poets binding the lands of the earth
+closer than all treaties and diplomacy--as the purpose beneath the rest
+in my book is such hearty comradeship, for individuals to begin with,
+and for all the nations of the earth as a result--how happy I should be
+to get the hearing and emotional contact of the great Russian peoples.
+
+To whom, now and here, (addressing you for Russia and Russians and
+empowering you, should you see fit, to print the present letter, in your
+book, as a preface,) I waft affectionate salutation from these shores,
+in America's name.
+
+W. W.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES LEFT OVER
+
+
+NATIONALITY--(AND YET) It is more and more clear to me that the main
+sustenance for highest separate personality, these States, is to come
+from that general sustenance of the aggregate, (as air, earth, rains,
+give sustenance to a tree)--and that such personality, by democratic
+standards, will only be fully coherent, grand and free, through the
+cohesion, grandeur and freedom of the common aggregate, the Union. Thus
+the existence of the true American continental solidarity of the future,
+depending on myriads of superb, large-sized, emotional and physically
+perfect individualities, of one sex just as much as the other, the
+supply of such individualities, in my opinion, wholly depends on
+a compacted imperial ensemble. The theory and practice of both
+sovereignties, contradictory as they are, are necessary. As the
+centripetal law were fatal alone, or the centrifugal law deadly and
+destructive alone, but together forming the law of eternal kosmical
+action, evolution, preservation, and life--so, by itself alone, the
+fullness of individuality, even the sanest, would surely destroy itself.
+This is what makes the importance to the identities of these States
+of the thoroughly fused, relentless, dominating Union--a moral and
+spiritual idea, subjecting all the parts with remorseless power, more
+needed by American democracy than by any of history's hitherto empires
+or feudalities, and the _sine qua non_ of carrying out the republican
+principle to develop itself in the New World through hundreds, thousands
+of years to come.
+
+Indeed, what most needs fostering through the hundred years to come, in
+all parts of the United States, north, south, Mississippi valley, and
+Atlantic and Pacific coasts, is this fused and fervent identity of the
+individual, whoever he or she may be, and wherever the place, with the
+idea and fact of AMERICAN TOTALITY, and with what is meant by the Flag,
+the stars and stripes. We need this conviction of nationality as a
+faith, to be absorb'd in the blood and belief of the People everywhere,
+south, north, west, east, to emanate in their life, and in native
+literature and art. We want the germinal idea that America, inheritor
+of the past, is the custodian of the future of humanity. Judging from
+history, it is some such moral and spiritual ideas appropriate to
+them, (and such ideas only,) that have made the profoundest glory
+and endurance of nations in the past. The races of Judea, the classic
+clusters of Greece and Rome, and the feudal and ecclesiastical clusters
+of the Middle Ages, were each and all vitalized by their separate
+distinctive ideas, ingrain'd in them, redeeming many sins, and indeed,
+in a sense, the principal reason-why for their whole career.
+
+Then, in the thought of nationality especially for the United States,
+and making them original, and different from all other countries,
+another point ever remains to be considered. There are two distinct
+principles--aye, paradoxes--at the life-fountain and life-continuation
+of the States; one, the sacred principle of the Union, the right of
+ensemble, at whatever sacrifice--and yet another, an equally sacred
+principle, the right of each State, consider'd as a separate sovereign
+individual, in its own sphere. Some go zealously for one set of these
+rights, and some as zealously for the other set. We must have both; or
+rather, bred out of them, as out of mother and father, a third set, the
+perennial result and combination of both, and neither jeopardized. I
+say the loss or abdication of one set, in the future, will be ruin to
+democracy just as much as the loss of the other set. The problem is,
+to harmoniously adjust the two, and the play of the two. [Observe the
+lesson of the divinity of Nature, ever checking the excess of one law,
+by an opposite, or seemingly opposite law--generally the other side of
+the same law.] For the theory of this Republic is, not that the General
+government is the fountain of all life and power, dispensing it forth,
+around, and to the remotest portions of our territory, but that THE
+PEOPLE are, represented in both, underlying both the General and State
+governments, and consider'd just as well in their individualities and
+in their separate aggregates, or States, as consider'd in one vast
+aggregate, the Union. This was the original dual theory and
+foundation of the United States, as distinguish'd from the feudal and
+ecclesiastical single idea of monarchies and papacies, and the divine
+right of kings. (Kings have been of use, hitherto, as representing the
+idea of the identity of nations. But, to American democracy, _both_
+ideas must be fulfill'd, and in my opinion the loss of vitality of
+either one will indeed be the loss of vitality of the other.)
+
+
+EMERSON'S BOOKS, (THE SHADOWS OF THEM)
+
+In the regions we call Nature, towering beyond all measurement, with
+infinite spread, infinite depth and height--in those regions, including
+Man, socially and historically, with his moral-emotional influences--how
+small a part, (it came in my mind to-day,) has literature really
+depicted--even summing up all of it, all ages. Seems at its best some
+little fleet of boats, hugging the shores of a boundless sea, and never
+venturing, exploring the unmapp'd--never, Columbus-like, sailing out for
+New Worlds, and to complete the orb's rondure. Emerson writes frequently
+in the atmosphere of this thought, and his books report one or two
+things from that very ocean and air, and more legibly address'd to
+our age and American polity than by any man yet. But I will begin by
+scarifying him--thus proving that I am not insensible to his deepest
+lessons. I will consider his books from a democratic and western point
+of view. I will specify the shadows on these sunny expanses. Somebody
+has said of heroic character that "wherever the tallest peaks are
+present, must inevitably be deep chasms and valleys." Mine be the
+ungracious task (for reasons) of leaving unmention'd both sunny expanses
+and sky-reaching heights, to dwell on the bare spots and darknesses. I
+have a theory that no artist or work of the very first class may be or
+can be without them.
+
+First, then, these pages are perhaps too perfect, too concentrated. (How
+good, for instance, is good butter, good sugar. But to be eating nothing
+but sugar and butter all the time! even if ever so good.) And though
+the author has much to say of freedom and wildness and simplicity
+and spontaneity, no performance was ever more based on artificial
+scholarships and decorums at third or fourth removes, (he calls it
+culture,) and built up from them. It is always a _make_, never an
+unconscious _growth_. It is the porcelain figure or statuette of lion,
+or stag, or Indian hunter--and a very choice statuette too--appropriate
+for the rosewood or marble bracket of parlor or library; never the
+animal itself, or the hunter himself. Indeed, who wants the real animal
+or hunter? What would that do amid astral and bric-a-brac and tapestry,
+and ladies and gentlemen talking in subdued tones of Browning and
+Longfellow and art? The least suspicion of such actual bull, or Indian,
+or of Nature carrying out itself, would put all those good people to
+instant terror and flight.
+
+Emerson, in my opinion, is not most eminent as poet or artist or
+teacher, though valuable in all those. He is best as critic, or
+diagnoser. Not passion or imagination or warp or weakness, or any
+pronounced cause or specialty, dominates him. Cold and bloodless
+intellectuality dominates him. (I know the fires, emotions, love,
+egotisms, glow deep, perennial, as in all New Englanders--but the
+facade, hides them well--they give no sign.) He does not see or take one
+side, one presentation only or mainly, (as all the poets, or most of the
+fine writers anyhow)--he sees all sides. His final influence is to
+make his students cease to worship anything--almost cease to believe in
+anything, outside of themselves. These books will fill, and well fill,
+certain stretches of life, certain stages of development--are, (like
+the tenets or theology the author of them preach'd when a young man,)
+unspeakably serviceable and precious as a stage. But in old or nervous
+or solemnest or dying hours, when one needs the impalpably soothing and
+vitalizing influences of abysmic Nature, or its affinities in literature
+or human society, and the soul resents the keenest mere intellection,
+they will not be sought for.
+
+For a philosopher, Emerson possesses a singularly dandified theory of
+manners. He seems to have no notion at all that manners are simply the
+signs by which the chemist or metallurgist knows his metals. To the
+profound scientist, all metals are profound, as they really are. The
+little one, like the conventional world, will make much of gold and
+silver only. Then to the real artist in humanity, what are called bad
+manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all. Suppose
+these books becoming absorb'd, the permanent chyle of American general
+and particular character--what a well-wash'd and grammatical, but
+bloodless and helpless, race we should turn out! No, no, dear friend;
+though the States want scholars, undoubtedly, and perhaps want ladies
+and gentlemen who use the bath frequently, and never laugh loud, or talk
+wrong, they don't want scholars, or ladies and gentlemen, at the expense
+of all the rest. They want good farmers, sailors, mechanics, clerks,
+citizens--perfect business and social relations--perfect fathers and
+mothers. If we could only have these, or their approximations, plenty
+of them, fine and large and sane and generous and patriotic, they might
+make their verbs disagree from their nominatives, and laugh like volleys
+of musketeers, if they should please. Of course these are not all
+America wants, but they are first of all to be provided on a large
+scale. And, with tremendous errors and escapades, this, substantially,
+is what the States seem to have an intuition of, and to be mainly aiming
+at. The plan of a select class, superfined, (demarcated from the rest,)
+the plan of Old World lands and literatures, is not so objectionable in
+itself, but because it chokes the true plan for us, and indeed is death
+to it. As to such special class, the United States can never produce any
+equal to the splendid show, (far, far beyond comparison or competition
+here,) of the principal European nations, both in the past and at the
+present day. But an immense and distinctive commonalty over our vast and
+varied area, west and east, south and north--in fact, for the first time
+in history, a great, aggregated, real PEOPLE, worthy the name, and made
+of develop'd heroic individuals, both sexes--is America's principal,
+perhaps only, reason for being. If ever accomplish'd, it will be at
+least as much, (I lately think, doubly as much,) the result of fitting
+and democratic sociologies, literatures and arts--if we ever get
+them--as of our democratic politics.
+
+At times it has been doubtful to me if Emerson really knows or feels
+what Poetry is at its highest, as in the Bible, for instance, or Homer
+or Shakspere. I see he covertly or plainly likes best superb verbal
+polish, or something old or odd--Waller's "Go, lovely rose," or
+Lovelace's lines "to Lucusta"--the quaint conceits of the old French
+bards, and the like. Of _power_ he seems to have a gentleman's
+admiration--but in his inmost heart the grandest attribute of God and
+Poets is always subordinate to the octaves, conceits, polite kinks, and
+verbs.
+
+The reminiscence that years ago I began like most youngsters to have
+a touch (though it came late, and was only on the surface) of
+Emerson-on-the-brain--that I read his writings reverently, and address'd
+him in print as "Master," and for a month or so thought of him as
+such--I retain not only with composure, but positive satisfaction. I
+have noticed that most young people of eager minds pass through this
+stage of exercise.
+
+The best part of Emersonianism is, it breeds the giant that destroys
+itself. Who wants to be any man's mere follower? lurks behind every
+page. No teacher ever taught, that has so provided for his pupil's
+setting up independently--no truer evolutionist.
+
+
+VENTURES, ON AN OLD THEME
+
+A DIALOGUE--
+
+_One party says_--We arrange our lives--even the best and boldest men
+and women that exist, just as much as the most limited--with reference
+to what society conventionally rules and makes right. We retire to our
+rooms for freedom; to undress, bathe, unloose everything in freedom.
+These, and much else, would not be proper in society.
+
+_Other party answers_--Such is the rule of society. Not always so, and
+considerable exceptions still exist. However, it must be called the
+general rule, sanction'd by immemorial usage, and will probably always
+remain so.
+
+_First party_--Why not, then, respect it in your poems?
+
+_Answer_--One reason, and to me a profound one, is that the soul of a
+man or woman demands, enjoys compensation in the highest directions for
+this very restraint of himself or herself, level'd to the average, or
+rather mean, low, however eternally practical, requirements of society's
+intercourse. To balance this indispensable abnegation, the free minds
+of poets relieve themselves, and strengthen and enrich mankind with free
+flights in all the directions not tolerated by ordinary society.
+
+_First party_--But must not outrage or give offence to it.
+
+_Answer_--No, not in the deepest sense--and do not, and cannot. The
+vast averages of time and the race _en masse_ settle these things. Only
+understand that the conventional standards and laws proper enough for
+ordinary society apply neither to the action of the soul, nor its poets.
+In fact the latter know no laws but the laws of themselves, planted in
+them by God, and are themselves the last standards of the law, and its
+final exponents--responsible to Him directly, and not at all to mere
+etiquette. Often the best service that can be done to the race, is
+to lift the veil, at least for a time, from these rules and
+fossil-etiquettes.
+
+
+NEW POETRY--_California, Canada, Texas_.--In my opinion the time has
+arrived to essentially break down the barriers of form between prose and
+poetry. I say the latter is henceforth to win and maintain its character
+regardless of rhyme, and the measurement-rules of iambic, spondee,
+dactyl, &c., and that even if rhyme and those measurements continue
+to furnish the medium for inferior writers and themes, (especially for
+persiflage and the comic, as there seems henceforward, to the perfect
+taste, something inevitably comic in rhyme, merely in itself, and
+anyhow,) the truest and greatest _Poetry_, (while subtly and necessarily
+always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily enough,) can never again, in
+the English language, be express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any
+more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion. While
+admitting that the venerable and heavenly forms of chiming versification
+have in their time play'd great and fitting parts--that the pensive
+complaint, the ballads, wars, amours, legends of Europe, &c., have, many
+of them, been inimitably render'd in rhyming verse--that there have
+been very illustrious poets whose shapes the mantle of such verse
+has beautifully and appropriately envelopt--and though the mantle
+has fallen, with perhaps added beauty, on some of our own age--it is,
+not-withstanding, certain to me, that the day of such conventional rhyme
+is ended. In America, at any rate, and as a medium of highest esthetic
+practical or spiritual expression, present or future, it palpably
+fails, and must fail, to serve. The Muse of the Prairies, of California,
+Canada, Texas, and of the peaks of Colorado, dismissing the literary,
+as well as social etiquette of over-sea feudalism and caste, joyfully
+enlarging, adapting itself to comprehend the size of the whole people,
+with the free play, emotions, pride, passions, experiences, that belong
+to them, body and soul--to the general globe, and all its relations in
+astronomy, as the savans portray them to us--to the modern, the busy
+Nineteenth century, (as grandly poetic as any, only different,)
+with steamships, railroads, factories, electric telegraphs, cylinder
+presses--to the thought of the solidarity of nations, the brotherhood
+and sisterhood of the entire earth--to the dignity and heroism of the
+practical labor of farms, factories, foundries, workshops, mines, or
+on shipboard, or on lakes and rivers--resumes that other medium of
+expression, more flexible, more eligible--soars to the freer, vast,
+diviner heaven of prose.
+
+Of poems of the third or fourth class, (perhaps even some of the
+second,) it makes little or no difference who writes them--they are good
+enough for what they are; nor is it necessary that they should be
+actual emanations from the personality and life of the writers. The very
+reverse sometimes gives piquancy. But poems of the first class, (poems
+of the depth, as distinguished from those of the surface,) are to be
+sternly tallied with the poets themselves, and tried by them and their
+lives. Who wants a glorification of courage and manly defiance from
+a coward or a sneak?--a ballad of benevolence or chastity from some
+rhyming hunks, or lascivious, glib _roue_?
+
+In these States, beyond all precedent, poetry will have to do with
+actual facts, with the concrete States, and--for we have not much more
+than begun--with the definitive getting into shape of the Union. Indeed
+I sometimes think _it_ alone is to define the Union, (namely, to give
+it artistic character, spirituality, dignity.) What American humanity is
+most in danger of is an overwhelming prosperity, "business" worldliness,
+materialism: what is most lacking, east, west, north, south, is a fervid
+and glowing Nationality and patriotism, cohering all the parts into one.
+Who may fend that danger, and fill that lack in the future, but a class
+of loftiest poets?
+
+If the United States haven't grown poets, on any scale of grandeur,
+it is certain they import, print, and read more poetry than any equal
+number of people elsewhere--probably more than all the rest of the world
+combined.
+
+Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many generations--many
+rare combinations.
+
+To have great poets, there must be great audiences, too.
+
+
+BRITISH LITERATURE
+
+To avoid mistake, I would say that I not only commend the study of
+this literature, but wish our sources of supply and comparison vastly
+enlarged. American students may well derive from all former lands--from
+forenoon Greece and Rome, down to the perturb'd mediaeval times,
+the Crusades, and so to Italy, the German intellect--all the older
+literatures, and all the newer ones--from witty and warlike France,
+and markedly, and in many ways, and at many different periods, from the
+enterprise and soul of the great Spanish race--bearing ourselves
+always courteous, always deferential, indebted beyond measure to the
+mother-world, to all its nations dead, as all its nations living--the
+offspring, this America of ours, the daughter, not by any means of the
+British isles exclusively, but of the continent, and all continents.
+Indeed, it is time we should realize and fully fructify those germs we
+also hold from Italy, France, Spain, especially in the best imaginative
+productions of those lands, which are, in many ways, loftier and subtler
+than the English, or British, and indispensable to complete our service,
+proportions, education, reminiscences, &c.... The British element
+these States hold, and have always held, enormously beyond its fit
+proportions. I have already spoken of Shakspere. He seems to me
+of astral genius, first class, entirely fit for feudalism. His
+contributions, especially to the literature of the passions, are
+immense, forever dear to humanity--and his name is always to be
+reverenced in America. But there is much in him ever offensive to
+democracy. He is not only the tally of feudalism, but I should say
+Shakspere is incarnated, uncompromising feudalism, in literature. Then
+one seems to detect something in him--I hardly know how to describe
+it--even amid the dazzle of his genius; and, in inferior manifestations,
+it is found in nearly all leading British authors. (Perhaps we will have
+to import the words Snob, Snobbish, &c., after all.) While of the great
+poems of Asian antiquity, the Indian epics, the book of Job, the Ionian
+Iliad, the unsurpassedly simple, loving, perfect idyls of the life and
+death of Christ, in the New Testament, (indeed Homer and the Biblical
+utterances intertwine familiarly with us, in the main,) and along down,
+of most of the characteristic, imaginative or romantic relics of the
+continent, as the Cid, Cervantes' Don Quixote, &c., I should say they
+substantially adjust themselves to us, and, far off as they are, accord
+curiously with our bed and board to-day, in New York, Washington,
+Canada, Ohio, Texas, California--and with our notions, both of
+seriousness and of fun, and our standards of heroism, manliness, and
+even the democratic requirements--those requirements are not only not
+fulfill'd in the Shaksperean productions, but are insulted on every
+page.
+
+I add that--while England is among the greatest of lands in political
+freedom, or the idea of it, and in stalwart personal character, &c.--the
+spirit of English literature is not great, at least is not greatest--and
+its products are no models for us. With the exception of Shakspere,
+there is no first-class genius in that literature--which, with a truly
+vast amount of value, and of artificial beauty, (largely from the
+classics,) is almost always material, sensual, not spiritual--almost
+always congests, makes plethoric, not frees, expands, dilates--is cold,
+anti-democratic, loves to be sluggish and stately, and shows much of
+that characteristic of vulgar persons, the dread of saying or doing
+something not at all improper in itself, but unconventional, and that
+may be laugh'd at. In its best, the sombre pervades it; it is moody,
+melancholy, and, to give it its due, expresses, in characters and
+plots, those qualities, in an unrival'd manner. Yet not as the black
+thunder-storms, and in great normal, crashing passions, of the Greek
+dramatists--clearing the air, refreshing afterward, bracing with power;
+but as in Hamlet, moping, sick, uncertain, and leaving ever after a
+secret taste for the blues, the morbid fascination, the luxury of wo....
+
+I strongly recommend all the young men and young women of the United
+States to whom it may be eligible, to overhaul the well-freighted
+fleets, the literatures of Italy, Spain, France, Germany, so full of
+those elements of freedom, self-possession, gay-heartedness, subtlety,
+dilation, needed in preparations for the future of the States. I only
+wish we could have really good translations. I rejoice at the feeling
+for Oriental researches and poetry, and hope it will go on.
+
+
+DARWINISM--(THEN FURTHERMORE)
+
+Running through prehistoric ages--coming down from them into the
+daybreak of our records, founding theology, suffusing literature, and so
+brought onward--(a sort of verteber and marrow to all the antique races
+and lands, Egypt, India, Greece, Rome, the Chinese, the Jews, &c., and
+giving cast and complexion to their art, poems, and their politics as
+well as ecclesiasticism, all of which we more or less inherit,) appear
+those venerable claims to origin from God himself, or from gods and
+goddesses--ancestry from divine beings of vaster beauty, size, and power
+than ours. But in current and latest times, the theory of human
+origin that seems to have most made its mark, (curiously reversing the
+antique,) is that we have come on, originated, developt, from monkeys,
+baboons--a theory more significant perhaps in its indirections, or what
+it necessitates, than it is even in itself. (Of the twain, far apart as
+they seem, and angrily as their conflicting advocates to-day oppose
+each other, are not both theories to be possibly reconcil'd, and even
+blended? Can we, indeed, spare either of them? Better still, out of
+them is not a third theory, the real one, or suggesting the real one, to
+arise?)
+
+Of this old theory, evolution, as broach'd anew, trebled, with indeed
+all-devouring claims, by Darwin, it has so much in it, and is so needed
+as a counterpoise to yet widely prevailing and unspeakably tenacious,
+enfeebling superstitions--is fused, by the new man, into such grand,
+modest, truly scientific accompaniments--that the world of erudition,
+both moral and physical, cannot but be eventually better'd and broaden'd
+in its speculations, from the advent of Darwinism. Nevertheless, the
+problem of origins, human and other, is not the least whit nearer
+its solution. In due time the Evolution theory will have to abate its
+vehemence, cannot be allow'd to dominate every thing else, and will have
+to take its place as a segment of the circle, the cluster--as but one of
+many theories, many thoughts, of profoundest value--and re-adjusting
+and differentiating much, yet leaving the divine secrets just as
+inexplicable and unreachable as before--maybe more so.
+
+_Then furthermore_--What is finally to be done by priest or poet--and by
+priest or poet only--amid all the stupendous and dazzling novelties
+of our century, with the advent of America, and of science and
+democracy--remains just as indispensable, after all the work of the
+grand astronomers, chemists, linguists, historians, and explorers of the
+last hundred years--and the wondrous German and other metaphysicians of
+that time--and will continue to remain, needed, America and here,
+just the same as in the world of Europe, or Asia, of a hundred, or a
+thousand, or several thousand years ago. I think indeed _more_ needed,
+to furnish statements from the present points, the added arriere, and
+the unspeakably immenser vistas of to-day. Only, the priests and poets
+of the modern, at least as exalted as any in the past, fully absorbing
+and appreciating the results of the past, in the commonalty of all
+humanity, all time, (the main results already, for there is perhaps
+nothing more, or at any rate not much, strictly new, only more important
+modern combinations, and new relative adjustments,) must indeed recast
+the old metal, the already achiev'd material, into and through new
+moulds, current forms.
+
+Meantime, the highest and subtlest and broadest truths of modern science
+wait for their true assignment and last vivid flashes of light--as
+Democracy waits for it's--through first-class metaphysicians and
+speculative philosophs--laying the basements and foundations for those
+new, more expanded, more harmonious, more melodious, freer American
+poems.
+
+
+"SOCIETY"
+
+I have myself little or no hope from what is technically called
+"Society" in our American cities. New York, of which place I have spoken
+so sharply, still promises something, in time, out of its tremendous
+and varied materials, with a certain superiority of intuitions, and the
+advantage of constant agitation, and ever new and rapid dealings of
+the cards. Of Boston, with its circles of social mummies, swathed in
+cerements harder than brass--its bloodless religion, (Unitarianism,)
+its complacent vanity of scientism and literature, lots of grammatical
+correctness, mere knowledge, (always wearisome, in itself)--its zealous
+abstractions, ghosts of reforms--I should say, (ever admitting its
+business powers, its sharp, almost demoniac, intellect, and no lack, in
+its own way, of courage and generosity)--there is, at present, little
+of cheering, satisfying sign. In the West, California, &c., "society" is
+yet unform'd, puerile, seemingly unconscious of anything above a driving
+business, or to liberally spend the money made by it, in the usual
+rounds and shows.
+
+Then there is, to the humorous observer of American attempts at fashion,
+according to the models of foreign courts and saloons, quite a
+comic side--particularly visible at Washington city--a sort of
+high-life-below-stairs business. As if any farce could be funnier,
+for instance, than the scenes of the crowds, winter nights, meandering
+around our Presidents and their wives, cabinet officers, western or
+other Senators, Representatives, &c.; born of good laboring mechanic or
+farmer stock and antecedents, attempting those full-dress receptions,
+finesse of parlors, foreign ceremonies, etiquettes, &c.
+
+Indeed, consider'd with any sense of propriety, or any sense at all,
+the whole of this illy-play'd fashionable play and display, with their
+absorption of the best part of our wealthier citizens' time, money,
+energies, &c., is ridiculously out of place in the United States. As if
+our proper man and woman, (far, far greater words than "gentleman"
+and "lady,") could still fail to see, and presently achieve, not this
+spectral business, but something truly noble, active, sane, American--by
+modes, perfections of character, manners, costumes, social relations,
+&c., adjusted to standards, far, far different from those.
+
+Eminent and liberal foreigners, British or continental, must at times
+have their faith fearfully tried by what they see of our New World
+personalities. The shallowest and least American persons seem surest
+to push abroad, and call without fail on well-known foreigners, who are
+doubtless affected with indescribable qualms by these queer ones. Then,
+more than half of our authors and writers evidently think it a
+great thing to be "aristocratic," and sneer at progress, democracy,
+revolution, etc. If some international literary snobs' gallery were
+establish'd, it is certain that America could contribute at least her
+full share of the portraits, and some very distinguish'd ones. Observe
+that the most impudent slanders, low insults, &c., on the great
+revolutionary authors, leaders, poets, &c., of Europe, have their origin
+and main circulation in certain circles here. The treatment of Victor
+Hugo living, and Byron dead, are samples. Both deserving so well of
+America, and both persistently attempted to be soil'd here by unclean
+birds, male and female.
+
+Meanwhile I must still offset the like of the foregoing, and all it
+infers, by the recognition of the fact, that while the surfaces of
+current society here show so much that is dismal, noisome, and vapory,
+there are, beyond question, inexhaustible supplies, as of true gold ore,
+in the mines of America's general humanity. Let us, not ignoring the
+dross, give fit stress to these precious immortal values also. Let it
+be distinctly admitted, that--whatever may be said of our fashionable
+society, and of any foul fractions and episodes--only here in America,
+out of the long history and manifold presentations of the ages, has at
+last arisen, and now stands, what never before took positive form
+and sway, _the People_--and that view'd en masse, and while fully
+acknowledging deficiencies, dangers, faults, this people, inchoate,
+latent, not yet come to majority, nor to its own religious, literary, or
+esthetic expression, yet affords, to-day, an exultant justification
+of all the faith, all the hopes and prayers and prophecies of good
+men through the past--the stablest, solidest-based government of
+the world--the most assured in a future--the beaming Pharos to whose
+perennial light all earnest eyes, the world over, are tending--and that
+already, in and from it, the democratic principle, having been mortally
+tried by severest tests, fatalities of war and peace, now issues from
+the trial, unharm'd, trebly-invigorated, perhaps to commence forthwith
+its finally triumphant march around the globe.
+
+
+THE TRAMP AND STRIKE QUESTIONS: _Part of a Lecture proposed, (never
+deliver'd)_
+
+Two grim and spectral dangers--dangerous to peace, to health, to social
+security, to progress--long known in concrete to the governments of the
+Old World, and there eventuating, more than once or twice, in dynastic
+overturns, bloodshed, days, months, of terror--seem of late years to
+be nearing the New World, nay, to be gradually establishing themselves
+among us. What mean these phantoms here? (I personify them in fictitious
+shapes, but they are very real.) Is the fresh and broad demesne of
+America destined also to give them foothold and lodgment, permanent
+domicile?
+
+Beneath the whole political world, what most presses and perplexes
+to-day, sending vastest results affecting the future, is not the
+abstract question of democracy, but of social and economic organization,
+the treatment of working-people by employers, and all that goes along
+with it--not only the wages-payment part, but a certain spirit and
+principle, to vivify anew these relations; all the questions of
+progress, strength, tariffs, finance, &c., really evolving themselves
+more or less directly out of the Poverty Question, ("the Science of
+Wealth," and a dozen other names are given it, but I prefer the severe
+one just used.) I will begin by calling the reader's attention to a
+thought upon the matter which may not have struck you before--the wealth
+of the civilized world, as contrasted with its poverty--what does it
+derivatively stand for, and represent? A rich person ought to have a
+strong stomach. As in Europe the wealth of to-day mainly results from,
+and represents, the rapine, murder, outrages, treachery, hoggishness, of
+hundreds of years ago, and onward, later, so in America, after the same
+token--(not yet so bad, perhaps, or at any rate not so palpable--we have
+not existed long enough--but we seem to be doing our best to make it
+up.)
+
+Curious as it may seem, it is in what are call'd the poorest, lowest
+characters you will sometimes, nay generally, find glints of the most
+sublime virtues, eligibilities, heroisms. Then it is doubtful whether
+the State is to be saved, either in the monotonous long run, or in
+tremendous special crises, by its good people only. When the storm is
+deadliest, and the disease most imminent, help often comes from strange
+quarters--(the homoeopathic motto, you remember, _cure the bite with a
+hair of the same dog.)_
+
+The American Revolution of 1776 was simply a great strike, successful
+for its immediate object--but whether a real success judged by the scale
+of the centuries, and the long-striking balance of Time, yet remains to
+be settled. The French Revolution was absolutely a strike, and a very
+terrible and relentless one, against ages of bad pay, unjust division
+of wealth-products, and the hoggish monopoly of a few, rolling in
+superfluity, against the vast bulk of the work-people, living in
+squalor.
+
+If the United States, like the countries of the Old World, are also
+to grow vast crops of poor, desperate, dissatisfied, nomadic,
+miserably-waged populations, such as we see looming upon us of late
+years--steadily, even if slowly, eating into them like a cancer of lungs
+or stomach--then our republican experiment, notwithstanding all its
+surface-successes, is at heart an unhealthy failure.
+
+_Feb. '79._--I saw to-day a sight I had never seen before--and it
+amazed, and made me serious; three quite good-looking American men,
+of respectable personal presence, two of them young, carrying
+chiffonier-bags on their shoulders, and the usual long iron hooks in
+their hands, plodding along, their eyes cast down, spying for scraps,
+rags, bones, &c.
+
+
+DEMOCRACY IN THE NEW WORLD
+
+Estimated and summ'd-up to-day, having thoroughly justified itself
+the past hundred years, (as far as growth, vitality and power are
+concern'd,) by severest and most varied trials of peace and war,
+and having establish'd itself for good, with all its necessities and
+benefits, for time to come, is now to be seriously consider'd also
+in its pronounc'd and already developt dangers. While the battle was
+raging, and the result suspended, all defections and criticisms were
+to be hush'd, and everything bent with vehemence unmitigated toward the
+urge of victory. But that victory settled, new responsibilities advance.
+I can conceive of no better service in the United States, henceforth,
+by democrats of thorough and heart-felt faith, than boldly exposing
+the weakness, liabilities and infinite corruptions of democracy. By the
+unprecedented opening-up of humanity en-masse in the United States, the
+last hundred years, under our institutions, not only the good qualities
+of the race, but just as much the bad ones, are prominently brought
+forward. Man is about the same, in the main, whether with despotism, or
+whether with freedom.
+
+"The ideal form of human society," Canon Kingsley declares, "is
+democracy. A nation--and were it even possible, a whole world--of free
+men, lifting free foreheads to God and Nature; calling no man master,
+for One is their master, even God; knowing and doing their duties toward
+the Maker of the universe, and therefore to each other; not from fear,
+nor calculation of profit or loss, but because they have seen the beauty
+of righteousness, and trust, and peace; because the law of God is in
+their hearts. Such a nation--such a society--what nobler conception of
+moral existence can we form? Would not that, indeed, be the kingdom of
+God come on earth?"
+
+To this faith, founded in the ideal, let us hold--and never abandon
+or lose it. Then what a spectacle is _practically_ exhibited by our
+American democracy to-day!
+
+
+FOUNDATION STAGES--THEN OTHERS
+
+Though I think I fully comprehend the absence of moral tone in our
+current politics and business, and the almost entire futility of
+absolute and simple honor as a counterpoise against the enormous greed
+for worldly wealth, with the trickeries of gaining it, all through
+society our day, I still do not share the depression and despair on the
+subject which I find possessing many good people. The advent of America,
+the history of the past century, has been the first general aperture and
+opening-up to the average human commonalty, on the broadest scale, of
+the eligibilities to wealth and worldly success and eminence, and has
+been fully taken advantage of; and the example has spread hence, in
+ripples, to all nations. To these eligibilities--to this limitless
+aperture, the race has tended, en-masse, roaring and rushing and crude,
+and fiercely, turbidly hastening--and we have seen the first stages,
+and are now in the midst of the result of it all, so far. But there will
+certainly ensue other stages, and entirely different ones. In nothing
+is there more evolution than the American mind. Soon, it will be fully
+realized that ostensible wealth and money-making, show, luxury, &c.,
+imperatively necessitate something beyond--namely, the sane, eternal
+moral and spiritual-esthetic attributes, elements. (We cannot have even
+that realization on any less terms than the price we are now paying
+for it.) Soon, it will be understood clearly, that the State cannot
+flourish, (nay, cannot exist,) without those elements. They will
+gradually enter into the chyle of sociology and literature. They will
+finally make the blood and brawn of the best American individualities
+of both sexes--and thus, with them, to a certainty, (through these very
+processes of to-day,) dominate the New World.
+
+
+GENERAL SUFFRAGE, ELECTIONS, ETC.
+
+It still remains doubtful to me whether these will ever secure,
+officially, the best wit and capacity--whether, through them, the
+first-class genius of America will ever personally appear in the high
+political stations, the Presidency, Congress, the leading State
+offices, &c. Those offices, or the candidacy for them, arranged, won,
+by caucusing, money, the favoritism or pecuniary interest of rings, the
+superior manipulation of the ins over the outs, or the outs over the
+ins, are, indeed, at best, the mere business agencies of the people, are
+useful as formulating, neither the best and highest, but the average
+of the public judgment, sense, justice, (or sometimes want of judgment,
+sense, justice.) We elect Presidents, Congressmen, &c., not so much to
+have them consider and decide for us, but as surest practical means of
+expressing the will of majorities on mooted questions, measures, &c.
+
+As to general suffrage, after all, since we have gone so far, the more
+general it is, the better. I favor the widest opening of the doors. Let
+the ventilation and area be wide enough, and all is safe. We can never
+have a born penitentiary-bird, or panel-thief, or lowest gambling-hell
+or groggery keeper, for President--though such may not only emulate, but
+get, high offices from localities--even from the proud and wealthy city
+of New York.
+
+
+WHO GETS THE PLUNDER?
+
+The protectionists are fond of flashing to the public eye the glittering
+delusion of great money-results from manufactures, mines, artificial
+exports--so many millions from this source, and so many from that--such
+a seductive, unanswerable show--an immense revenue of annual cash from
+iron, cotton, woollen, leather goods, and a hundred other things, all
+bolstered up by "protection." But the really important point of all
+is, _into whose pockets does this plunder really go?_ It would be some
+excuse and satisfaction if even a fair proportion of it went to the
+masses of laboring-men--resulting in homesteads to such, men, women,
+children--myriads of actual homes in fee simple, in every State, (not
+the false glamour of the stunning wealth reported in the census, in
+the statistics, or tables in the newspapers,) but a fair division
+and generous average to those workmen and workwomen--_that_ would be
+something. But the fact itself is nothing of the kind. The profits of
+"protection" go altogether to a few score select persons--who, by
+favors of Congress, State legislatures, the banks, and other special
+advantages, are forming a vulgar aristocracy, full as bad as anything in
+the British or European castes, of blood, or the dynasties there of the
+past. As Sismondi pointed out, the true prosperity of a nation is not in
+the great wealth of a special class, but is only to be really attain'd
+in having the bulk of the people provided with homes or land in fee
+simple. This may not be the best show, but it is the best reality.
+
+
+FRIENDSHIP, (THE REAL ARTICLE)
+
+Though Nature maintains, and must prevail, there will always be plenty
+of people, and good people, who cannot, or think they cannot, see
+anything in that last, wisest, most envelop'd of proverbs, "Friendship
+rules the World." Modern society, in its largest vein, is essentially
+intellectual, infidelistic--secretly admires, and depends most on,
+pure compulsion or science, its rule and sovereignty--is, in short, in
+"cultivated" quarters, deeply Napoleonic.
+
+"Friendship," said Bonaparte, in one of his lightning-flashes of
+candid garrulity, "Friendship is but a name. I love no one--not even my
+brothers; Joseph perhaps a little. Still, if I do love him, it is from
+habit, because he is the eldest of us. Duroc? Ay, him, if any one,
+I love in a sort--but why? He suits me; he is cool, undemonstrative,
+unfeeling--has no weak affections--never embraces any one--never weeps."
+
+I am not sure but the same analogy is to be applied, in cases, often
+seen, where, with an extra development and acuteness of the intellectual
+faculties, there is a mark'd absence of the spiritual, affectional, and
+sometimes, though more rarely, the highest esthetic and moral elements
+of cognition.
+
+
+LACKS AND WANTS YET
+
+Of most foreign countries, small or large, from the remotest times
+known, down to our own, each has contributed after its kind, directly
+or indirectly, at least one great undying song, to help vitalize and
+increase the valor, wisdom, and elegance of humanity, from the points of
+view attain'd by it up to date. The stupendous epics of India, the holy
+Bible itself, the Homeric canticles, the Nibelungen, the Cid Campeador,
+the Inferno, Shakspere's dramas of the passions and of the feudal lords,
+Burns's songs, Goethe's in Germany, Tennyson's poems in England, Victor
+Hugo's in France, and many more, are the widely various yet integral
+signs or land-marks, (in certain respects the highest set up by the
+human mind and soul, beyond science, invention, political amelioration,
+&c.,) narrating in subtlest, best ways, the long, long routes of
+history, and giving identity to the stages arrived at by aggregate
+humanity, and the conclusions assumed in its progressive and varied
+civilizations.... Where is America's art-rendering, in any thing like
+the spirit worthy of herself and the modern, to these characteristic
+immortal monuments? So far, our Democratic society, (estimating its
+various strata, in the mass, as one,) possesses nothing--nor have we
+contributed any characteristic music, the finest tie of nationality--to
+make up for that glowing, blood-throbbing, religious, social, emotional,
+artistic, indefinable, indescribably beautiful charm and hold which
+fused the separate parts of the old feudal societies together, in their
+wonderful interpenetration, in Europe and Asia, of love, belief,
+and loyalty, running one way like a living weft--and picturesque
+responsibility, duty, and blessedness, running like a warp the other
+way. (In the Southern States, under slavery, much of the same.)...
+In coincidence, and as things now exist in the States, what is more
+terrible, more alarming, than the total want of any such fusion
+and mutuality of love, belief, and rapport of interest, between
+the comparatively few successful rich, and the great masses of the
+unsuccessful, the poor? As a mixed political and social question, is not
+this full of dark significance? Is it not worth considering as a problem
+and puzzle in our democracy--an indispensable want to be supplied?
+
+
+RULERS STRICTLY OUT OF THE MASSES
+
+In the talk (which I welcome) about the need of men of training,
+thoroughly school'd and experienced men, for statesmen, I would present
+the following as an offset. It was written by me twenty years ago--and
+has been curiously verified since:
+
+I say no body of men are fit to make Presidents, Judges, and Generals,
+unless they themselves supply the best specimens of the same; and that
+supplying one or two such specimens illuminates the whole body for a
+thousand years. I expect to see the day when the like of the present
+personnel of the governments, Federal, State, municipal, military, and
+naval, will be look'd upon with derision, and when qualified mechanics
+and young men will reach Congress and other official stations, sent
+in their working costumes, fresh from their benches and tools, and
+returning to them again with dignity. The young fellows must prepare
+to do credit to this destiny, for the stuff is in them. Nothing gives
+place, recollect, and never ought to give place, except to its clean
+superiors. There is more rude and undevelopt bravery, friendship,
+conscientiousness, clear-sightedness, and practical genius for any
+scope of action, even the broadest and highest, now among the American
+mechanics and young men, than in all the official persons in these
+States, legislative, executive, judicial, military, and naval, and more
+than among all the literary persons. I would be much pleas'd to see some
+heroic, shrewd, fully-inform'd, healthy-bodied, middle-aged, beard-faced
+American blacksmith or boatman come down from the West across the
+Alleghanies, and walk into the Presidency, dress'd in a clean suit of
+working attire, and with the tan all over his face, breast, and arms;
+I would certainly vote for that sort of man, possessing the due
+requirements, before any other candidate.
+
+(The facts of rank-and-file workingmen, mechanics, Lincoln, Johnson,
+Grant, Garfield, brought forward from the masses and placed in the
+Presidency, and swaying its mighty powers with firm hand--really with
+more sway than any king in history, and with better capacity in using
+that sway--can we not see that these facts have bearings far, far beyond
+their political or party ones?)
+
+
+MONUMENTS--THE PAST AND PRESENT
+
+If you go to Europe, (to say nothing of Asia, more ancient and massive
+still,) you cannot stir without meeting venerable mementos--cathedrals,
+ruins of temples, castles, monuments of the great, statues and
+paintings, (far, far beyond anything America can ever expect to
+produce,) haunts of heroes long dead, saints, poets, divinities, with
+deepest associations of ages. But here in the New World, while _those_
+we can never emulate, we have _more_ than those to build, and far more
+greatly to build. (I am not sure but the day for conventional monuments,
+statues, memorials, &c., has pass'd away--and that they are henceforth
+superfluous and vulgar.) An enlarg'd general superior humanity, (partly
+indeed resulting from those,) we are to build. European, Asiatic
+greatness are in the past. Vaster and subtler, America, combining,
+justifying the past, yet works for a grander future, in living
+democratic forms. (Here too are indicated the paths for our national
+bards.) Other times, other lands, have had their missions--Art, War,
+Ecclesiasticism, Literature, Discovery, Trade, Architecture, &c.,
+&c.--but that grand future is the enclosing purport of the United
+States.
+
+
+LITTLE OR NOTHING NEW, AFTER ALL
+
+How small were the best thoughts, poems, conclusions, except for
+a certain invariable resemblance and uniform standard in the final
+thoughts, theology, poems, &c., of all nations, all civilizations, all
+centuries and times. Those precious legacies--accumulations! They come
+to us from the far-off--from all eras, and all lands--from Egypt, and
+India, and Greece, and Rome--and along through the middle and later
+ages, in the grand monarchies of Europe--born under far different
+institutes and conditions from ours--but out of the insight and
+inspiration of the same old humanity--the same old heart and brain--the
+same old countenance yearningly, pensively, looking forth. What we have
+to do to-day is to receive them cheerfully, and to give them ensemble,
+and a modern American and democratic physiognomy.
+
+
+A LINCOLN REMINISCENCE
+
+As is well known, story-telling was often with President Lincoln a
+weapon which he employ'd with great skill. Very often he could not
+give a point-blank reply or comment--and these indirections, (sometimes
+funny, but not always so,) were probably the best responses possible. In
+the gloomiest period of the war, he had a call from a large delegation
+of bank presidents. In the talk after business was settled, one of the
+big Dons asked Mr. Lincoln if his confidence in the permanency of the
+Union was not beginning to be shaken--whereupon the homely President
+told a little story: "When I was a young man in Illinois," said he, "I
+boarded for a time with a deacon of the Presbyterian church. One night I
+was roused from my sleep by a rap at the door, and I heard the deacon's
+voice exclaiming, 'Arise, Abraham! the day of judgment has come!' I
+sprang from my bed and rushed to the window, and saw the stars falling
+in great showers; but looking back of them in the heavens I saw the
+grand old constellations, with which I was so well acquainted, fixed and
+true in their places. Gentlemen, the world did not come to an end then,
+nor will the Union now."
+
+
+FREEDOM
+
+It is not only true that most people entirely misunderstand Freedom, but
+I sometimes think I have not yet met one person who rightly understands
+it. The whole Universe is absolute Law. Freedom only opens entire
+activity and license _under the law_. To the degraded or undevelopt--and
+even to too many others--the thought of freedom is a thought of escaping
+from law--which, of course, is impossible. More precious than all
+worldly riches is Freedom--freedom from the painful constipation and
+poor narrowness of ecclesiasticism--freedom in manners, habiliments,
+furniture, from the silliness and tyranny of local fashions--entire
+freedom from party rings and mere conventions in Politics--and better
+than all, a general freedom of One's-Self from the tyrannic domination
+of vices, habits, appetites, under which nearly every man of us, (often
+the greatest brawler for freedom,) is enslav'd. Can we attain such
+enfranchisement--the true Democracy, and the height of it? While we are
+from birth to death the subjects of irresistible law, enclosing every
+movement and minute, we yet escape, by a paradox, into true free will.
+Strange as it may seem, we only attain to freedom by a knowledge of, and
+implicit obedience to, Law. Great--unspeakably great--is the Will! the
+free Soul of man! At its greatest, understanding and obeying the laws,
+it can then, and then only, maintain true liberty. For there is to the
+highest, that law as absolute as any--more absolute than any--the Law of
+Liberty. The shallow, as intimated, consider liberty a release from all
+law, from every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the
+potent Law of Laws, namely, the fusion and combination of the conscious
+will, or partial individual law, with those universal, eternal,
+unconscious ones, which run through all Time, pervade history, prove
+immortality, give moral purpose to the entire objective world, and the
+last dignity to human life.
+
+
+BOOK-CLASSES--AMERICA'S LITERATURE
+
+For certain purposes, literary productions through all the recorded ages
+may be roughly divided into two classes. The first consisting of only
+a score or two, perhaps less, of typical, primal, representative works,
+different from any before, and embodying in themselves their own main
+laws and reasons for being. Then the second class, books and writings
+innumerable, incessant--to be briefly described as radiations or
+offshoots, or more or less imitations of the first. The works of the
+first class, as said, have their own laws, and may indeed be described
+as making those laws, and amenable only to them. The sharp warning of
+Margaret Fuller, unquell'd for thirty years, yet sounds in the air:
+"It does not follow that because the United States print and read more
+books, magazines, and newspapers than all the rest of the world, that
+they really have, therefore, a literature."
+
+
+OUR REAL CULMINATION
+
+The final culmination of this vast and varied Republic will be the
+production and perennial establishment of millions of comfortable city
+homesteads and moderate-sized farms, healthy and independent, single
+separate ownership, fee simple, life in them complete but cheap, within
+reach of all. Exceptional wealth, splendor, countless manufactures,
+excess of exports, immense capital and capitalists, the
+five-dollar-a-day hotels well fill'd, artificial improvements, even
+books, colleges, and the suffrage--all, in many respects, in themselves,
+(hard as it is to say so, and sharp as a surgeon's lance,) form, more or
+less, a sort of anti-democratic disease and monstrosity, except as
+they contribute by curious indirections to that culmination--seem to me
+mainly of value, or worth consideration, only with reference to it.
+
+There is a subtle something in the common earth, crops, cattle, air,
+trees, &c., and in having to do at first hand with them, that forms the
+only purifying and perennial element for individuals and for society.
+I must confess I want to see the agricultural occupation of America at
+first hand permanently broaden'd. Its gains are the only ones on which
+God seems to smile. What others--what business, profit, wealth, without
+a taint? What fortune else--what dollar--does not stand for, and come
+from, more or less imposition, lying, unnaturalness?
+
+
+AN AMERICAN PROBLEM
+
+One of the problems presented in America these times is, how to
+combine one's duty and policy as a member of associations, societies,
+brotherhoods or what not, and one's obligations to the State and Nation,
+with essential freedom as an individual personality, without which
+freedom a man cannot grow or expand, or be full, modern, heroic,
+democratic, American. With all the necessities and benefits of
+association, (and the world cannot get along without it,) the true
+nobility and satisfaction of a man consist in his thinking and acting
+for himself. The problem, I say, is to combine the two, so as not to
+ignore either.
+
+
+THE LAST COLLECTIVE COMPACTION
+
+I like well our polyglot construction-stamp, and the retention thereof,
+in the broad, the tolerating, the many-sided, the collective. All
+nations here--a home for every race on earth. British, German,
+Scandinavian, Spanish, French, Italian--papers published, plays acted,
+speeches made, in all languages--on our shores the crowning resultant
+of those distillations, decantations, compactions of humanity, that have
+been going on, on trial, over the earth so long.
+
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+
+
+
+PIECES IN EARLY YOUTH
+
+1834-'42
+
+
+DOUGH-FACE SONG --Like dough; soft; yielding to pressure;
+pale----_Webster's Dictionary_.
+
+    We are all docile dough-faces,
+      They knead us with the fist,
+    They, the dashing southern lords,
+      We labor as they list;
+    For them we speak--or hold our tongues,
+      For them we turn and twist.
+
+    We join them in their howl against
+      Free soil and "abolition,"
+    That firebrand--that assassin knife--
+      Which risk our land's condition,
+    And leave no peace of life to any
+      Dough-faced politician.
+
+    To put down "agitation," now,
+      We think the most judicious;
+    To damn all "northern fanatics,"
+      Those "traitors" black and vicious;
+    The "reg'lar party usages"
+      For us, and no "new issues."
+
+    Things have come to a pretty pass,
+      When a trifle small as this,
+    Moving and bartering nigger slaves,
+      Can open an abyss,
+    With jaws a-gape for "the two great parties;"
+      A pretty thought, I wis!
+
+    Principle--freedom!--fiddlesticks!
+      We know not where they're found.
+    Rights of the masses--progress!--bah!
+      Words that tickle and sound;
+    But claiming to rule o'er "practical men"
+      Is very different ground.
+
+    Beyond all such we know a term
+      Charming to ears and eyes,
+    With it we'll stab young Freedom,
+      And do it in disguise;
+
+    Speak soft, ye wily dough-faces--
+      That term is "compromise."
+
+    And what if children, growing up,
+      In future seasons read
+    The thing we do? and heart and tongue
+      Accurse us for the deed?
+    The future cannot touch us;
+      The present gain we heed.
+
+    Then, all together, dough-faces!
+      Let's stop the exciting clatter,
+    And pacify slave-breeding wrath
+      By yielding all the matter;
+    For otherwise, as sure as guns,
+      The Union it will shatter.
+
+    Besides, to tell the honest truth
+      (For us an innovation,)
+    Keeping in with the slave power
+      Is our personal salvation;
+    We've very little to expect
+      From t' other part of the nation.
+
+    Besides it's plain at Washington
+      Who likeliest wins the race,
+    What earthly chance has "free soil"
+      For any good fat place?
+    While many a daw has feather'd his nest,
+      By his creamy and meek dough-face.
+
+    Take heart, then, sweet companions,
+      Be steady, Scripture Dick!
+    Webster, Cooper, Walker,
+      To your allegiance stick!
+    With Brooks, and Briggs and Phoenix,
+      Stand up through thin and thick!
+
+    We do not ask a bold brave front;
+      We never try that game;
+    'Twould bring the storm upon our heads,
+      A huge mad storm of shame;
+    Evade it, brothers--"compromise"
+      Will answer just the same.
+
+PAUMANOK.
+
+
+DEATH IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM (_A Fact_)
+
+Ting-a-ling-ling-ling! went the little bell on the teacher's desk of a
+village-school one morning, when the studies of the earlier part of the
+day were about half completed. It was well understood that this was a
+command for silence and attention; and when these had been obtained, the
+master spoke. He was a low thick-set man, and his name was Lugare.
+
+"Boys," said he, "I have had a complaint enter'd, that last night some
+of you were stealing fruit from Mr. Nichols's garden. I rather think I
+know the thief. Tim Barker, step up here, sir."
+
+The one to whom he spoke came forward. He was a slight, fair-looking boy
+of about thirteen; and his face had a laughing, good-humor'd expression,
+which even the charge now preferr'd against him, and the stern tone
+and threatening look of the teacher, had not entirely dissipated. The
+countenance of the boy, however, was too unearthly fair for health; it
+had, notwithstanding its fleshy, cheerful look, a singular cast as if
+some inward disease, and that a fearful one, were seated within. As the
+stripling stood before that place of judgment--that place so often
+made the scene of heartless and coarse brutality, of timid innocence
+confused, helpless child-hood outraged, and gentle feelings crush'
+d--Lugare looked on him with a frown which plainly told that he felt in
+no very pleasant mood. (Happily a worthier and more philosophical system
+is proving to men that schools can be better govern'd than by lashes and
+tears and sighs. We are waxing toward that consummation when one of the
+old-fashion'd school-masters, with his cowhide, his heavy birch-rod,
+and his many ingenious methods of child-torture, will be gazed upon as
+a scorn'd memento of an ignorant, cruel, and exploded doctrine. May
+propitious gales speed that day!)
+
+"Were you by Mr. Nichols's garden-fence last night?" said Lugare.
+
+"Yes, sir," answer'd the boy, "I was."
+
+"Well, sir, I'm glad to find you so ready with your confession. And
+so you thought you could do a little robbing, and enjoy yourself in a
+manner you ought to be ashamed to own, without being punish'd, did you?"
+
+"I have not been robbing," replied the boy quickly. His face was
+suffused, whether with resentment or fright, it was difficult to tell.
+"And I didn't do anything last night, that I am ashamed to own."
+
+"No impudence!" exclaim'd the teacher, passionately, as he grasp'd a
+long and heavy ratan: "give me none of your sharp speeches, or I'll
+thrash you till you beg like a dog."
+
+The youngster's face paled a little; his lip quiver'd, but he did not
+speak.
+
+"And pray, sir," continued Lugare, as the outward signs of wrath
+disappear'd from his features; "what were you about the garden for?
+Perhaps you only receiv'd the plunder, and had an accomplice to do the
+more dangerous part of the job?"
+
+"I went that way because it is on my road home. I was there again
+afterwards to meet an acquaintance; and--and--But I did not go into the
+garden, nor take anything away from it. I would not steal,--hardly to
+save myself from starving."
+
+"You had better have stuck to that last evening. You were seen, Tim
+Barker, to come from under Mr. Nichols's garden-fence, a little after
+nine o'clock, with a bag full of something or other over your shoulders.
+The bag had every appearance of being filled with fruit, and this
+morning the melon-beds are found to have been completely clear'd. Now,
+sir, what was there in that bag?"
+
+Like fire itself glow'd the face of the detected lad. He spoke not a
+word. All the school had their eyes directed at him. The perspiration
+ran down his white forehead like rain-drops.
+
+"Speak, sir!" exclaimed Lugare, with a loud strike of his ratan on the
+desk.
+
+The boy look'd as though he would faint. But the unmerciful teacher,
+confident of having brought to light a criminal, and exulting in
+the idea of the severe chastisement he should now be justified in
+inflicting, kept working himself up to a still greater and greater
+degree of passion. In the meantime, the child seem'd hardly to know what
+to do with himself. His tongue cleav'd to the roof of his mouth. Either
+he was very much frighten'd, or he was actually unwell.
+
+"Speak, I say!" again thunder'd Lugare; and his hand, grasping his
+ratan, tower'd above his head in a very significant manner.
+
+"I hardly can, sir," said the poor fellow faintly. His voice was husky
+and thick. "I will tell you some--some other time. Please let me go to
+my seat--I a'n't well."
+
+"Oh yes; that's very likely;" and Mr. Lugare bulged out his nose and
+cheeks with contempt. "Do you think to make me believe your lies? I've
+found you out, sir, plainly enough; and I am satisfied that you are as
+precious a little villain as there is in the State. But I will postpone
+settling with you for an hour yet. I shall then call you up again;
+and if you don't tell the whole truth then, I will give you something
+that'll make you remember Mr. Nichols's melons for many a month to
+come:--go to your seat."
+
+Glad enough of the ungracious permission, and answering not a sound,
+the child crept tremblingly to his bench. He felt very strangely,
+dizzily--more as if he was in a dream than in real life; and laying his
+arms on his desk, bow'd down his face between them. The pupils turn'd
+to their accustom'd studies, for during the reign of Lugare in the
+village-school, they had been so used to scenes of violence and severe
+chastisement, that such things made but little interruption in the tenor
+of their way.
+
+Now, while the intervening hour is passing, we will clear up the mystery
+of the bag, and of young Barker being under the garden fence on the
+preceding night. The boy's mother was a widow, and they both had to live
+in the very narrowest limits. His father had died when he was six years
+old, and little Tim was left a sickly emaciated infant whom no one
+expected to live many months. To the surprise of all, however, the poor
+child kept alive, and seem'd to recover his health, as he certainly
+did his size and good looks. This was owing to the kind offices of an
+eminent physician who had a country-seat in the neighborhood, and who
+had been interested in the widow's little family. Tim, the physician
+said, might possibly outgrow his disease; but everything was uncertain.
+It was a mysterious and baffling malady; and it would not be wonderful
+if he should in some moment of apparent health be suddenly taken away.
+The poor widow was at first in a continual state of uneasiness; but
+several years had now pass'd, and none of the impending evils had fallen
+upon the boy's head. His mother seem'd to feel confident that he would
+live, and be a help and an honor to her old age; and the two struggled
+on together, mutually happy in each other, and enduring much of poverty
+and discomfort without repining, each for the other's sake.
+
+Tim's pleasant disposition had made him many friends in the village, and
+among the rest a young fanner named Jones, who, with his elder brother,
+work'd a large farm in the neighborhood on shares. Jones very frequently
+made Tim a present of a bag of potatoes or corn, or some garden
+vegetables, which he took from his own stock; but as his partner was a
+parsimonious, high-tempered man, and had often said that Tim was an
+idle fellow, and ought not to be help'd because he did not work, Jones
+generally made his gifts in such a manner that no one knew anything
+about them, except himself and the grateful objects of his kindness.
+It might be, too, that the widow was both to have it understood by the
+neighbors that she received food from anyone; for there is often an
+excusable pride in people of her condition which makes them shrink from
+being consider'd as objects of "charity" as they would from the severest
+pains. On the night in question, Tim had been told that Jones would send
+them a bag of potatoes, and the place at which they were to be waiting
+for him was fixed at Mr. Nichols's garden-fence. It was this bag that
+Tim had been seen staggering under, and which caused the unlucky boy to
+be accused and convicted by his teacher as a thief. That teacher was one
+little fitted for his important and responsible office. Hasty to decide,
+and inflexibly severe, he was the terror of the little world he ruled
+so despotically. Punishment he seemed to delight in. Knowing little of
+those sweet fountains which in children's breasts ever open quickly
+at the call of gentleness and kind words, he was fear'd by all for his
+sternness, and loved by none. I would that he were an isolated instance
+in his profession.
+
+The hour of grace had drawn to its close, and the time approach'd at
+which it was usual for Lugare to give his school a joyfully-receiv'd
+dismission. Now and then one of the scholars would direct a furtive
+glance at Tim, sometimes in pity, sometimes in indifference or inquiry.
+They knew that he would have no mercy shown him, and though most of them
+loved him, whipping was too common there to exact much sympathy. Every
+inquiring glance, however, remain'd unsatisfied, for at the end of the
+hour, Tim remain'd with his face completely hidden, and his head bow'd
+in his arms, precisely as he had lean'd himself when he first went
+to his seat. Lugare look'd at the boy occasionally with a scowl which
+seem'd to bode vengeance for his sullenness. At length the last class
+had been heard, and the last lesson recited, and Lugare seated himself
+behind his desk on the platform, with his longest and stoutest ratan
+before him.
+
+"Now, Barker," he said, "we'll settle that little business of yours.
+Just step up here."
+
+Tim did not move. The school-room was as still as the grave. Not a sound
+was to be heard, except occasionally a long-drawn breath.
+
+"Mind me, sir, or it will be the worse for you. Step up here, and take
+off your jacket!"
+
+The boy did not stir any more than if he had been of wood. Lugare shook
+with passion. He sat still a minute, as if considering the best way to
+wreak his vengeance. That minute, passed in death-like silence, was
+a fearful one to some of the children, for their faces whiten'd with
+fright. It seem'd, as it slowly dropp'd away, like the minute which
+precedes the climax of an exquisitely-performed tragedy, when some
+mighty master of the histrionic art is treading the stage, and you
+and the multitude around you are waiting, with stretch'd nerves and
+suspended breath, in expectation of the terrible catastrophe.
+
+"Tim is asleep, sir," at length said one of the boys who sat near him.
+Lugare, at this intelligence, allow'd his features to relax from their
+expression of savage anger into a smile, but that smile look'd more
+malignant if possible, than his former scowls. It might be that he felt
+amused at the horror depicted on the faces of those about him; or
+it might be that he was gloating in pleasure on the way in which he
+intended to wake the slumberer.
+
+"Asleep! are you, my young gentleman!" said he; "let us see if we can't
+find something to tickle your eyes open. There's nothing like making the
+best of a bad case, boys. Tim, here, is determin'd not to be worried in
+his mind about a little flogging, for the thought of it can't even keep
+the little scoundrel awake."
+
+Lugare smiled again as he made the last observation. He grasp'd his
+ratan firmly, and descended from his seat. With light and stealthy steps
+he cross'd the room and stood by the unlucky sleeper. The boy was still
+as unconscious of his impending punishment as ever. He might be dreaming
+some golden dream of youth and pleasure; perhaps he was far away in the
+world of fancy, seeing scenes, and feeling delights, which cold reality
+never can bestow. Lugare lifted his ratan high over his head, and with
+the true and expert aim which he had acquired by long practice, brought
+it down on Tim's back with a force and whacking sound which seem'd
+sufficient to wake a freezing man in his last lethargy. Quick and fast,
+blow foliow'd blow. Without waiting to see the effect of the first cut,
+the brutal wretch plied his instrument of torture first on one side of
+the boy's back, and then on the other, and only stopped at the end of
+two or three minutes from very weariness. But still Tim show'd no signs
+of motion; and as Lugare, provoked at his torpidity, jerk'd away one of
+the child's arms, on which he had been leaning over the desk, his head
+dropp'd down on the board with a dull sound, and his face lay turn'd up
+and exposed to view. When Lugare saw it, he stood like one transfix'd
+by a basilisk. His countenance turn'd to a leaden whiteness; the ratan
+dropp'd from his grasp; and his eyes, stretch'd wide open, glared as at
+some monstrous spectacle of horror and death. The sweat started in
+great globules seemingly from every pore in his face; his skinny lips
+contracted, and show'd his teeth; and when he at length stretch'd forth
+his arm, and with the end of one of his fingers touch'd the child's
+cheek, each limb quiver'd like the tongue of a snake; and his strength
+seemed as though it would momentarily fail him. The boy was dead. He
+had probably been so for some time, for his eyes were turn'd up, and his
+body was quite cold. Death was in the school-room, and Lugare had been
+flogging A CORPSE.
+
+-_Democratic Review, August, 1841._
+
+
+ONE WICKED IMPULSE
+
+That section of Nassau street which runs into the great mart of New York
+brokers and stock-jobbers, has for a long time been much occupied by
+practitioners of the law. Tolerably well-known amid this class some
+years since, was Adam Covert, a middle-aged man of rather limited means,
+who, to tell the truth, gained more by trickery than he did in the
+legitimate and honorable exercise of his profession. He was a tall,
+bilious-faced widower; the father of two children; and had lately been
+seeking to better his fortunes by a rich marriage. But somehow or other
+his wooing did not seem to thrive well, and, with perhaps one exception,
+the lawyer's prospects in the matrimonial way were hopelessly gloomy.
+
+Among the early clients of Mr. Covert had been a distant relative named
+Marsh, who, dying somewhat suddenly, left his son and daughter, and some
+little property, to the care of Covert, under a will drawn out by that
+gentleman himself. At no time caught without his eyes open, the cunning
+lawyer, aided by much sad confusion in the emergency which had caused
+his services to be called for, and disguising his object under a cloud
+of technicalities, inserted provisions in the will, giving himself an
+almost arbitrary control over the property and over those for whom it
+was designed. This control was even made to extend beyond the time when
+the children would arrive at mature age. The son, Philip, a spirited and
+high-temper'd fellow, had some time since pass'd that age. Esther,
+the girl, a plain, and somewhat devotional young woman, was in her
+nineteenth year.
+
+Having such power over his wards, Covert did not scruple openly to use
+his advantage, in pressing his claims as a suitor for Esther's hand.
+Since the death of Marsh, the property he left, which had been in real
+estate, and was to be divided equally between the brother and sister,
+had risen to very considerable value; and Esther's share was to a man in
+Covert's situation a prize very well worth seeking. All this time, while
+really owning a respectable income, the young orphans often felt the
+want of the smallest sum of money--and Esther, on Philip's account, was
+more than once driven to various contrivances--the pawn-shop, sales of
+her own little luxuries, and the like, to furnish him with means.
+
+Though she had frequently shown her guardian unequivocal evidence of her
+aversion, Esther continued to suffer from his persecutions, until one
+day he proceeded farther and was more pressing than usual. She possess'd
+some of her brother's mettlesome temper, and gave him an abrupt and most
+decided refusal. With dignity, she exposed the baseness of his conduct,
+and forbade him ever again mentioning marriage to her. He retorted
+bitterly, vaunted his hold on her and Philip, and swore an oath that
+unless she became his wife, they should both thenceforward become
+penniless. Losing his habitual self-control in his exasperation, he even
+added insults such as woman never receives from any one deserving the
+name of man, and at his own convenience left the house. That day, Philip
+return'd to New York, after an absence of several weeks on the business
+of a mercantile house in whose employment he had lately engaged.
+
+Toward the latter part of the same afternoon, Mr. Covert was sitting in
+his office, in Nassau street, busily at work, when a knock at the door
+announc'd a visitor, and directly afterward young Marsh enter'd the
+room. His face exhibited a peculiar pallid appearance that did not
+strike Covert at all agreeably, and he call'd his clerk from an
+adjoining room, and gave him something to do at a desk near by.
+
+"I wish to see you alone, Mr. Covert, if convenient," said the newcomer.
+
+"We can talk quite well enough where we are," answer'd the lawyer;
+"indeed, I don't know that I have any leisure to talk at all, for just
+now I am very much press'd with business."
+
+"But I _must_ speak to you," rejoined Philip sternly, "at least I must
+say one thing, and that is, Mr. Covert, that you are a villain!"
+
+"Insolent!" exclaimed the lawyer, rising behind the table, and pointing
+to the door. "Do you see that, sir? Let one minute longer find you
+the other side, or your feet may reach the landing by quicker method.
+Begone, sir!"
+
+Such a threat was the more harsh to Philip, for he had rather
+high-strung feelings of honor. He grew almost livid with suppress'd
+agitation.
+
+"I will see you again very soon," said he, in a low but distinct manner,
+his lips trembling as he spoke; and left the office.
+
+The incidents of the rest of that pleasant summer day left little
+impression on the young man's mind. He roam'd to and fro without any
+object or destination. Along South street and by Whitehall, he watch'd
+with curious eyes the movements of the shipping, and the loading and
+unloading of cargoes; and listen'd to the merry heave-yo of the sailors
+and stevedores. There are some minds upon which great excitement
+produces the singular effect of uniting two utterly inconsistent
+faculties--a sort of cold apathy, and a sharp sensitiveness to all that
+is going on at the same time. Philip's was one of this sort; he
+noticed the various differences in the apparel of a gang of
+wharf-laborers--turn'd over in his brain whether they receiv'd wages
+enough to keep them comfortable, and their families also--and if they
+had families or not, which he tried to tell by their looks. In such
+petty reflections the daylight passed away. And all the while the master
+wish of Philip's thoughts was a desire to see the lawyer Covert. For
+what purpose he himself was by no means clear.
+
+Nightfall came at last. Still, however, the young man did not direct
+his steps homeward. He felt more calm, however, and entering an eating
+house, order'd something for his supper, which, when it was brought to
+him, he merely tasted, and stroll'd forth again. There was a kind of
+gnawing sensation of thirst within him yet, and as he pass'd a hotel, he
+bethought him that one little glass of spirits would perhaps be just the
+thing. He drank, and hour after hour wore away unconsciously; he drank
+not one glass, but three or four, and strong glasses they were to him,
+for he was habitually abstemious.
+
+It had been a hot day and evening, and when Philip, at an advanced
+period of the night, emerged from the bar-room into the street, he
+found that a thunderstorm had just commenced. He resolutely walk'd on,
+however, although at every step it grew more and more blustering.
+
+The rain now pour'd down a cataract; the shops were all shut; few of
+the street lamps were lighted; and there was little except the frequent
+flashes of lightning to show him his way. When about half the length of
+Chatham street, which lay in the direction he had to take, the momentary
+fury of the tempest forced him to turn aside into a sort of shelter
+form'd by the corners of the deep entrance to a Jew pawnbroker's shop
+there. He had hardly drawn himself in as closely as possible, when
+the lightning revealed to him that the opposite corner of the nook was
+tenanted also.
+
+"A sharp rain, this," said the other occupant, who simultaneously beheld
+Philip.
+
+The voice sounded to the young man's ears a note which almost made him
+sober again. It was certainly the voice of Adam Covert. He made some
+commonplace reply, and waited for another flash of lightning to show him
+the stranger's face. It came, and he saw that his companion was indeed
+his guardian.
+
+Philip Marsh had drank deeply--(let us plead all that may be possible
+to you, stern moralist.) Upon his mind came swarming, and he could not
+drive them away, thoughts of all those insults his sister had told him
+of, and the bitter words Covert had spoken to her; he reflected, too,
+on the injuries Esther as well as himself had receiv'd, and were
+still likely to receive, at the hands of that bold, bad man; how
+mean, selfish, and unprincipled was his character--what base and cruel
+advantages he had taken of many poor people, entangled in his power,
+and of how much wrong and suffering he had been the author, and might be
+again through future years. The very turmoil of the elements, the harsh
+roll of the thunder, the vindictive beating of the rain, and the fierce
+glare of the wild fluid that seem'd to riot in the ferocity of the storm
+around him, kindled a strange sympathetic fury in the young man's mind.
+Heaven itself (so deranged were his imaginations) appear'd to have
+provided a fitting scene and time for a deed of retribution, which to
+his disorder'd passion half wore the semblance of a divine justice. He
+remember'd not the ready solution to be found in Covert's pressure of
+business, which had no doubt kept him later than usual; but fancied some
+mysterious intent in the ordaining that he should be there, and that
+they two should meet at that untimely hour. All this whirl of influence
+came over Philip with startling quickness at that horrid moment. He
+stepp'd to the side of his guardian.
+
+"Ho!" said he, "have we met so soon, Mr. Covert? You traitor to my dead
+father--robber of his children! I fear to think on what I think now!"
+
+The lawyer's natural effrontery did not desert him.
+
+"Unless you'd like to spend a night in the watch-house, young
+gentleman," said he, after a short pause, "move on. Your father was a
+weak man, I remember; as for his son, his own wicked heart is his worst
+foe. I have never done wrong to either--that I can say, and swear it!"
+
+"Insolent liar!" exclaimed Philip, his eye flashing out sparks of fire
+in the darkness.
+
+Covert made no reply except a cool, contemptuous laugh, which stung
+the excited young man to double fury. He sprang upon the lawyer, and
+clutch'd him by the neckcloth.
+
+"Take it, then!" he cried hoarsely, for his throat was impeded by the
+fiendish rage which in that black hour possess'd him. "You are not fit
+to live!"
+
+He dragg'd his guardian to the earth and fell crushingly upon him,
+choking the shriek the poor victim but just began to utter. Then, with
+monstrous imprecations, he twisted a tight knot around the gasping
+creature's neck, drew a clasp knife from his pocket, and touching the
+spring, the long sharp blade, too eager for its bloody work, flew open.
+
+During the lull of the storm, the last strength of the prostrate man
+burst forth into one short loud cry of agony. At the same instant, the
+arm of the murderer thrust the blade, once, twice, thrice, deep in his
+enemy's bosom! Not a minute had passed since that fatal exasperating
+laugh--but the deed was done, and the instinctive thought which came at
+once to the guilty one, was a thought of fear and escape.
+
+In the unearthly pause which follow'd, Philip's eyes gave one long
+searching sweep in every direction, above and around him. _Above_! God
+of the all-seeing eye! What, and who was that figure there?
+
+"Forbear! In Jehovah's name forbear;" cried a shrill, but clear and
+melodious voice.
+
+It was as if some accusing spirit had come down to bear witness against
+the deed of blood. Leaning far out of an open window, appear' d a white
+draperied shape, its face possess'd of a wonderful youthful beauty.
+Long vivid glows of lightning gave Philip a full opportunity to see as
+clearly as though the sun had been shining at noonday. One hand of the
+figure was raised upward in a deprecating attitude, and his large bright
+black eyes bent down upon the scene below with an expression of horror
+and shrinking pain. Such heavenly looks, and the peculiar circumstance
+of the time, fill'd Philip's heart with awe.
+
+"Oh, if it is not yet too late," spoke the youth again, "spare him. In
+God's voice, I command, 'Thou shalt do no murder!'"
+
+The words rang like a knell in the ear of the terror-stricken and
+already remorseful Philip. Springing from the body, he gave a second
+glance up and down the walk, which was totally lonesome and deserted;
+then crossing into Reade street, he made his fearful way in a half state
+of stupor, half-bewilderment, by the nearest avenues to his home.
+
+When the corpse of the murder'd lawyer was found in the morning, and the
+officers of justice commenced their inquiry, suspicion immediately fell
+upon Philip, and he was arrested. The most rigorous search, however,
+brought to light nothing at all implicating the young man, except his
+visit to Covert's office the evening before, and his angry language
+there. That was by no means enough to fix so heavy a charge upon him.
+
+The second day afterward, the whole business came before the ordinary
+judicial tribunal, in order that Philip might be either committed for
+the crime, or discharged. The testimony of Mr. Covert's clerk stood
+alone. One of his employers, who, believing in his innocence, had
+deserted him not in this crisis, had provided him with the ablest
+criminal counsel in New York. The proof was declared entirely
+insufficient, and Philip was discharged.
+
+The crowded court-room made way for him as he came out; hundreds of
+curious looks fixed upon his features, and many a jibe pass'd upon him.
+But of all that arena of human faces, he saw only _one_--a sad, pale,
+black-eyed one, cowering in the centre of the rest. He had seen that
+face twice before--the first time as a warning spectre--the second time
+in prison, immediately after his arrest--now for the _last_ time. This
+young stranger--the son of a scorn'd race--coming to the court-room to
+perform an unhappy duty, with the intention of testifying to what he
+had seen, melted at the sight of Philip's bloodless cheek, and of his
+sister's convulsive sobs, and forbore witnessing against the murderer.
+Shall we applaud or condemn him? Let every reader answer the question
+for himself.
+
+That afternoon Philip left New York. His friendly employer own'd a small
+farm some miles up the Hudson, and until the excitement of the affair
+was over, he advised the young man to go thither. Philip thankfully
+accepted the proposal, made a few preparations, took a hurried leave of
+Esther, and by nightfall was settled in his new abode.
+
+And how, think you, rested Philip Marsh that night? _Rested_ indeed! O,
+if those who clamor so much for the halter and the scaffold to punish
+crime, could have seen that sight, they might have learn'd a lesson
+then! Four days had elapsed since he that lay tossing upon the bed there
+had slumber'd. Not the slightest intermission had come to his awaken'd
+and tensely strung sense, during those frightful days. Disturb'd waking
+dreams came to him, as he thought what he might do to gain his lost
+peace. Far, far away would he go! The cold roll of the murder'd
+man's eye, as it turn'd up its last glance into his face--the shrill
+exclamation of pain--all the unearthly vividness of the posture,
+motions, and looks of the dead--the warning voice from above--pursued
+him like tormenting furies, and were never absent from his mind, asleep
+or awake, that long weary night. Anything, any place, to escape such
+horrid companionship! He would travel inland--hire himself to do hard
+drudgery upon some farm--work incessantly through the wide summer days,
+and thus force nature to bestow oblivion upon his senses, at least a
+little while now and then. He would fly on, on, on, until amid different
+scenes and a new life, the old memories were rubb'd entirely out. He
+would fight bravely in himself for peace of mind. For peace he would
+labor and struggle--for peace he would pray!
+
+At length after a feverish slumber of some thirty or forty minutes, the
+unhappy youth, waking with a nervous start, rais'd himself in bed, and
+saw the blessed daylight beginning to dawn. He felt the sweat trickling
+down his naked breast; the sheet where he had lain was quite wet with
+it. Dragging himself wearily, he open'd the window. Ah! that good
+morning air--how it refresh'd him--how he lean'd out, and drank in the
+fragrance of the blossoms below, and almost for the first time in his
+life felt how beautifully indeed God had made the earth, and that there
+was wonderful sweetness in mere existence. And amidst the thousand mute
+mouths and eloquent eyes, which appear'd as it were to look up and speak
+in every direction, he fancied so many invitations to come among them.
+
+Not without effort, for he was very weak, he dress'd himself, and issued
+forth into the open air.
+
+Clouds of pale gold and transparent crimson draperied the eastern sky,
+but the sun, whose face gladden'd them into all that glory, was not yet
+above the horizon. It was a time and place of such rare, such Eden-like
+beauty! Philip paused at the summit of an upward slope, and gazed around
+him. Some few miles off he could see a gleam of the Hudson river, and
+above it a spur of those rugged cliffs scatter'd along its western
+shores. Nearer by were cultivated fields. The clover grew richly there,
+the young grain bent to the early breeze, and the air was filled with an
+intoxicating perfume. At his side was the large well-kept garden of his
+host, in which were many pretty flowers, grass plots, and a wide avenue
+of noble trees. As Philip gazed, the holy calming power of Nature--the
+invisible spirit of so much beauty and so much innocence, melted into
+his soul. The disturb'd passions and the feverish conflict subsided. He
+even felt something like envied peace of mind--a sort of joy even in
+the presence of all the unmarr'd goodness. It was as fair to him, guilty
+though he had been, as to the purest of the pure. No accusing frowns
+show'd in the face of the flowers, or in the green shrubs, or
+the branches of the trees. They, more forgiving than mankind, and
+distinguishing not between the children of darkness and the children of
+light--they at least treated him with gentleness. Was he, then, a being
+so accurs'd? Involuntarily, he bent over a branch of red roses, and took
+them softly between his hands--those murderous, bloody hands! But the
+red roses neither wither'd nor smell'd less fragiant. And as the young
+man kiss'd them, and dropp'd a tear upon them, it seem'd to him that he
+had found pity and sympathy from Heaven itself.
+
+Though against all the rules of story-writing, we continue our narrative
+of these mainly true incidents (for such they are,) no further. Only to
+say that _the murderer_ soon departed for a new field of action--that
+he is still living--and that this is but one of thousands of cases of
+unravel'd, unpunish'd crime--left, not to the tribunals of man, but to a
+wider power and judgment.
+
+
+THE LAST LOYALIST
+
+["_She came to me last night, The floor gave back no tread_."] The story
+I am going to tell is a traditional reminiscence of a country place, in
+my rambles about which I have often passed the house, now unoccupied,
+and mostly in ruins, that was the scene of the transaction. I cannot,
+of course, convey to others that particular kind of influence which is
+derived from my being so familiar with the locality, and with the very
+people whose grandfathers or fathers were contemporaries of the actors
+in the drama I shall transcribe. I must hardly expect, therefore, that
+to those who hear it thro' the medium of my pen, the narration will
+possess as life-like and interesting a character as it does to myself.
+
+On a large and fertile neck of land that juts out in the Sound,
+stretching to the east of New York city, there stood, in the latter part
+of the last century, an old-fashion'd country-residence. It had been
+built by one of the first settlers of this section of the New World; and
+its occupant was originally owner of the extensive tract lying adjacent
+to his house, and pushing into the bosom of the salt waters. It was
+during the troubled times which mark'd our American Revolution that
+the incidents occurr'd which are the foundation of my story. Some
+time before the commencement of the war, the owner, whom I shall call
+Vanhome, was taken sick and died. For some time before his death he had
+lived a widower; and his only child, a lad of ten years old, was thus
+left an orphan. By his father's will this child was placed implicitly
+under the guardianship of an uncle, a middle-aged man, who had been
+of late a resident in the family. His care and interest, however, were
+needed but a little while--not two years claps'd after the parents were
+laid away to their last repose before another grave had to be prepared
+for the son--the child who had been so haplessly deprived of their
+fostering care.
+
+The period now arrived when the great national convulsion burst
+forth. Sounds of strife and the clash of arms, and the angry voices of
+disputants, were borne along by the air, and week after week grew to
+still louder clamor. Families were divided; adherents to the crown, and
+ardent upholders of the rebellion, were often found in the bosom of the
+same domestic circle. Vanhome, the uncle spoken of as guardian to the
+young heir, was a man who lean'd to the stern, the high-handed and the
+severe. He soon became known among the most energetic of the loyalists.
+So decided were his sentiments that, leaving the estate which he had
+inherited from his brother and nephew, he join'd the forces of the
+British king. Thenceforward, whenever his old neighbors heard of him, it
+was as being engaged in the cruelest outrages, the boldest inroads, or
+the most determin'd attacks upon the army of his countrymen or their
+peaceful settlements. Eight years brought the rebel States and their
+leaders to that glorious epoch when the last remnant of a monarch's rule
+was to leave their shores--when the last waving of the royal standard
+was to flutter as it should be haul'd down from the staff, and its place
+fill'd by the proud testimonial of our warriors' success.
+
+Pleasantly over the autumn fields shone the November sun, when a
+horseman, of somewhat military look, plodded slowly along the road that
+led to the old Vanhome farmhouse. There was nothing peculiar in his
+attire, unless it might be a red scarf which he wore tied round his
+waist. He was a dark-featured, sullen-eyed man; and as his glance was
+thrown restlessly to the right and left, his whole manner appear'd to
+be that of a person moving amid familiar and accustom'd scenes.
+Occasionally he stopp'd, and looking long and steadily at some object
+that attracted his attention, mutter'd to himself, like one in whose
+breast busy thoughts were moving. His course was evidently to the
+homestead itself, at which in due time he arrived. He dismounted, led
+his horse to the stables, and then, without knocking, though there were
+evident signs of occupancy around the building, the traveler made his
+entrance as composedly and boldly as though he were master of the whole
+establishment.
+
+Now the house being in a measure deserted for many years, and the
+successful termination of the strife rendering it probable that the
+Vanhome estate would be confiscated to the new government, an aged,
+poverty-stricken couple had been encouraged by the neighbors to take
+possession as tenants of the place. Their name was Gills; and these
+people the traveler found upon his entrance were likely to be his host
+and hostess. Holding their right as they did by so slight a tenure,
+they ventur'd to offer no opposition when the stranger signified his
+intention of passing several hours there.
+
+The day wore on, and the sun went down in the west; still the
+interloper, gloomy and taciturn, made no signs of departing. But as
+the evening advanced (whether the darkness was congenial to his sombre
+thoughts, or whether it merely chanced so) he seem'd to grow more
+affable and communicative, and informed Gills that he should pass the
+night there, tendering him at the same time ample remuneration, which
+the latter accepted with many thanks.
+
+"Tell me," said he to his aged host, when they were all sitting around
+the ample hearth, at the conclusion of their evening meal, "tell me
+something to while away the hours."
+
+"Ah! sir," answered Gills, "this is no place for new or interesting
+events. We live here from year to year, and at the end of one we find
+ourselves at about the same place which we filled in the beginning."
+
+"Can you relate nothing, then?" rejoin'd the guest, and a singular
+smile pass'd over his features; "can you say nothing about your own
+place?--this house or its former inhabitants, or former history?"
+
+The old man glanced across to his wife, and a look expressive of
+sympathetic feeling started in the face of each.
+
+"It is an unfortunate story, sir," said Gills, "and may cast a chill
+upon you, instead of the pleasant feeling which it would be best to
+foster when in strange walls."
+
+"Strange walls!" echoed he of the red scarf, and for the first time
+since his arrival he half laughed, but it was not the laugh which comes
+from a man's heart.
+
+"You must know, sir," continued Gills, "I am myself a sort of intruder
+here. The Vanhomes--that was the name of the former residents and
+owners--I have never seen; for when I came to these parts the last
+occupant had left to join the red-coat soldiery. I am told that he is
+to sail with them for foreign lands, now that the war is ended, and his
+property almost certain to pass into other hands."
+
+As the old man went on, the stranger cast down his eyes, and listen'd
+with an appearance of great interest, though a transient smile or a
+brightening of the eye would occasionally disturb the serenity of his
+deportment.
+
+"The old owners of this place," continued the white-haired narrator,
+"were well off in the world, and bore a good name among their neighbors.
+The brother of Sergeant Vanhome, now the only one of the name, died ten
+or twelve years since, leaving a son--a child so small that the father's
+willmade provision for his being brought up by his uncle, whom I
+mention'd but now as of the British army. He was a strange man, this
+uncle; disliked by all who knew him; passionate, vindictive, and, it was
+said, very avaricious, even from his childhood.
+
+"Well, not long after the death of the parents, dark stories began to
+be circulated about cruelty and punishment and whippings and starvation
+inflicted by the new master upon his nephew. People who had business
+at the homestead would frequently, when they came away, relate the most
+fearful things of its manager, and how he misused his brother's child.
+It was half hinted that he strove to get the youngster out of the way in
+order that the whole estate might fall into his own hands. As I told you
+before, however, nobody liked the man; and perhaps they judged him too
+uncharitably.
+
+"After things had gone on in this way for some time, a countryman,
+a laborer, who was hired to do farm-work upon the place, one evening
+observed that the little orphan Vanhome was more faint and pale even
+than usual, for he was always delicate, and that is one reason why I
+think it possible that his death, of which I am now going to tell you,
+was but the result of his own weak constitution, and nothing else. The
+laborer slept that night at the farmhouse. Just before the time at which
+they usually retired to bed, this person, feeling sleepy with his day's
+toil, left the kitchen hearth and wended his way to rest. In going to
+his place of repose he had to pass a chamber--the very chamber where
+you, sir, are to sleep to-night--and there he heard the voice of the
+orphan child uttering half-suppress'd exclamations as if in pitiful
+entreaty. Upon stopping, he heard also the tones of the elder Vanhome,
+but they were harsh and bitter. The sound of blows followed. As each one
+fell it was accompanied by a groan or shriek, and so they continued for
+some time. Shock'd and indignant, the countryman would have burst
+open the door and interfered to prevent this brutal proceeding, but he
+bethought him that he might get himself into trouble, and perhaps find
+that he could do no good after all, and so he passed on to his room.
+
+"Well, sir, the following day the child did not come out among the
+work-people as usual. He was taken very ill. No physician was sent for
+until the next afternoon; and though one arrived in the course of the
+night, it was too late--the poor boy died before morning.
+
+"People talk'd threateningly upon the subject, but nothing could be
+proved against Vanhome. At one period there were efforts made to have
+the whole affair investigated. Perhaps that would have taken place, had
+not every one's attention been swallow'd up by the rumors of difficulty
+and war, which were then beginning to disturb the country.
+
+"Vanhome joined the army of the king. His enemies said that he feared to
+be on the side of the rebels, because if they were routed his property
+would be taken from him. But events have shown that, if this was indeed
+what he dreaded, it has happen'd to him from the very means which he
+took to prevent it."
+
+The old man paused. He had quite wearied himself with so long talking.
+For some minutes there was unbroken silence. Presently the stranger
+signified his intention of retiring for the night. He rose, and his host
+took a light for the purpose of ushering him to his apartment.
+
+When Gills return'd to his accustom'd situation in the large arm-chair
+by the chimney-hearth, his ancient helpmate had retired to rest. With
+the simplicity of their times, the bed stood in the same room where the
+three had been seated during the last few hours; and now the remaining
+two talk'd together about the singular events of the evening. As the
+time wore on, Gills show'd no disposition to leave his cosy chair;
+but sat toasting his feet, and bending over the coals. Gradually the
+insidious heat and the lateness of the hour began to exercise their
+influence over the old man. The drowsy indolent feeling which every one
+has experienced in getting thoroughly heated through by close contact
+with a glowing fire, spread in each vein and sinew, and relax'd its
+tone. He lean'd back in his chair and slept.
+
+For a long time his repose went on quietly and soundly. He could not
+tell how many hours elapsed; but, a while after midnight, the torpid
+senses of the slumberer were awaken'd by a startling shock. It was a
+cry as of a strong man in his agony--a shrill, not very loud cry, but
+fearful, and creeping into the blood like cold, polish'd steel. The old
+man raised himself in his seat and listen'd, at once fully awake. For a
+minute, all was the solemn stillness of midnight. Then rose that horrid
+tone again, wailing and wild, and making the hearer's hair to stand on
+end. One moment more, and the trampling of hasty feet sounded in the
+passage outside. The door was thrown open, and the form of the stranger,
+more like a corpse than living man, rushed into the room.
+
+"All white!" yell'd the conscience-stricken creature--"all white, and
+with the grave-clothes around him. One shoulder was bare, and I saw,"
+he whisper'd, "I saw blue streaks upon it. It was horrible, and I cried
+aloud. He stepp'd toward me! He came to my very bedside; his small hand
+almost touch'd my face. I could not bear it, and fled."
+
+The miserable man bent his head down upon his bosom; convulsive
+rattlings shook his throat; and his whole frame waver'd to and fro
+like a tree in a storm. Bewilder'd and shock'd, Gills look'd at his
+apparently deranged guest, and knew not what answer to make, or what
+course of conduct to pursue.
+
+Thrusting out his arms and his extended fingers, and bending down
+his eyes, as men do when shading them from a glare of lightning, the
+stranger stagger'd from the door, and, in a moment further, dash'd madly
+through the passage which led through the kitchen into the outer road.
+The old man heard the noise of his falling footsteps, sounding fainter
+and fainter in the distance, and then, retreating, dropp'd his own
+exhausted limbs into the chair from which he had been arous'd so
+terribly. It was many minutes before his energies recover'd their
+accustomed tone again. Strangely enough, his wife, unawaken'd by the
+stranger's ravings, still slumber'd on as profoundly as ever.
+
+Pass we on to a far different scene--the embarkation of the British
+troops for the distant land whose monarch was never more to wield the
+sceptre over a kingdom lost by his imprudence and tyranny. With frowning
+brow and sullen pace the martial ranks moved on. Boat after boat was
+filled, and, as each discharged its complement in the ships that lay
+heaving their anchors in the stream, it return'd, and was soon filled
+with another load. And at length it became time for the last soldier
+to lift his eye and take a last glance at the broad banner of England's
+pride, which flapp'd its folds from the top of the highest staff on the
+Battery.
+
+As the warning sound of a trumpet called together all who were
+laggards--those taking leave of friends, and those who were arranging
+their own private affairs, left until the last moment--a single
+horseman was seen furiously dashing down the street. A red scarf tightly
+encircled his waist. He made directly for the shore, and the crowd
+there gather'd started back in wonderment as they beheld his dishevel'd
+appearance and ghastly face. Throwing himself violently from his saddle,
+he flung the bridle over the animal's neck, and gave him a sharp cut
+with a small riding whip. He made for the boat; one minute later, and he
+had been left. They were pushing the keel from the landing--the stranger
+sprang--a space of two or three feet already intervened--he struck on
+the gunwale--and the Last Soldier of King George had left the American
+shores.
+
+
+WILD FRANK'S RETURN
+
+As the sun, one August day some fifty years ago, had just pass'd the
+meridian of a country town in the eastern section of Long Island, a
+single traveler came up to the quaint low-roof'd village tavern, open'd
+its half-door, and enter'd the common room. Dust cover'd the clothes of
+the wayfarer, and his brow was moist with sweat. He trod in a lagging,
+weary way; though his form and features told of an age not more than
+nineteen or twenty years. Over one shoulder was slung a sailor's jacket,
+and in his hand he carried a little bundle. Sitting down on a rude
+bench, he told a female who made her appearance behind the bar, that
+he would have a glass of brandy and sugar. He took off the liquor at a
+draught: after which he lit and began to smoke a cigar, with which he
+supplied himself from his pocket--stretching out one leg, and leaning
+his elbow down on the bench, in the attitude of a man who takes an
+indolent lounge.
+
+"Do you know one Richard Hall that lives somewhere here among you?" said
+he.
+
+"Mr. Hall's is down the lane that turns off by that big locust tree,"
+answer'd the woman, pointing to the direction through the open door;
+"it's about half a mile from here to his house."
+
+The youth, for a minute or two, puff'd the smoke from his mouth very
+leisurely in silence. His manner had an air of vacant self-sufficiency,
+rather strange in one of so few years.
+
+"I wish to see Mr. Hall," he said at length--"Here's a silver six-pence,
+for any one who will carry a message to him."
+
+"The folks are all away. It's but a short walk, and your limbs are
+young," replied the female, who was not altogether pleased with the easy
+way of making himself at home which mark'd her shabby-looking customer.
+That individual, however, seem'd to give small attention to the hint,
+but lean'd and puff'd his cigar-smoke as leisurely as before.
+
+"Unless," continued the woman, catching a second glance at the sixpence;
+"unless old Joe is at the stable, as he's very likely to be. I'll go
+and find out for you." And she push'd open a door at her back, stepp'd
+through an adjoining room into a yard, whence her voice was the next
+moment heard calling the person she had mention'd, in accents by no
+means remarkable for their melody or softness.
+
+Her search was successful. She soon return'd with him who was to act as
+messenger--a little, wither'd, ragged old man--a hanger-on there,
+whose unshaven face told plainly enough the story of his intemperate
+habits--those deeply seated habits, now too late to be uprooted, that
+would ere long lay him in a drunkard's grave. The youth inform'd him
+what the required service was, and promised him the reward as soon as he
+should return,
+
+"Tell Richard Hall that I am going to his father's house this afternoon.
+If he asks who it is that wishes him here, say the person sent no name,"
+continued the stranger, sitting up from his indolent posture, as the
+feet of old Joe were about leaving the door-stone, and his blear'd eyes
+turned to eaten the last sentence of the mandate.
+
+"And yet, perhaps you may as well," added he, communing a moment with
+himself: "you may tell him his brother Frank, Wild Frank, it is, who
+wishes him to come."
+
+The old man departed on his errand, and he who call'd himself Wild
+Frank, toss'd his nearly smoked cigar out of the window, and folded his
+arms in thought.
+
+No better place than this, probably, will occur to give a brief account
+of some former events in the life of the young stranger, resting and
+waiting at the village inn. Fifteen miles east of that inn lived a
+farmer named Hall, a man of good repute, well-off in the world, and head
+of a large family. He was fond of gain--required all his boys to labor
+in proportion to their age; and his right hand man, if he might not
+be called favorite, was his eldest son Richard. This eldest son, an
+industrious, sober-faced young fellow, was invested by his father with
+the powers of second in command; and as strict and swift obedience was
+a prime tenet in the farmer's domestic government, the children all
+tacitly submitted to their brother's sway--all but one, and that was
+Frank. The farmer's wife was a quiet woman, in rather tender health; and
+though for all her offspring she had a mother's love, Frank's kiss
+ever seem'd sweetest to her lips. She favor'd him more than the
+rest--perhaps, as in a hundred similar instances, for his being so often
+at fault, and so often blamed. In truth, however, he seldom receiv'd
+more blame than he deserv'd, for he was a capricious, high-temper'd lad,
+and up to all kinds of mischief. From these traits he was known in the
+neighborhood by the name of Wild Frank.
+
+Among the farmer's stock there was a fine young blood mare--a beautiful
+creature, large and graceful, with eyes like dark-hued jewels, and her
+color that of the deep night. It being the custom of the farmer to let
+his boys have something about the farm that they could call their
+own, and take care of as such, Black Nell, as the mare was called, had
+somehow or other fallen to Frank's share. He was very proud of her, and
+thought as much of her comfort as his own. The elder brother, however,
+saw fit to claim for himself, and several times to exercise, a privilege
+of managing and using Black Nell, notwithstanding what Frank consider'd
+his prerogative. On one of these occasions a hot dispute arose, and,
+after much angry blood, it was referr'd to the farmer for settlement. He
+decided in favor of Richard, and added a harsh lecture to his other son.
+The farmer was really unjust; and Wild Frank's face paled with rage and
+mortification. That furious temper which he had never been taught
+to curb, now swell'd like an overflowing torrent. With difficulty
+restraining the exhibition of his passions, as soon as he got by himself
+he swore that not another sun should roll by and find him under that
+roof. Late at night he silently arose, and turning his back on what he
+thought an inhospitable home, in mood in which the child should never
+leave the parental roof, bent his steps toward the city.
+
+It may well be imagined that alarm and grief pervaded the whole of the
+family, on discovering Frank's departure. And as week after week melted
+away and brought no tidings of him, his poor mother's heart grew wearier
+and wearier. She spoke not much, but was evidently sick in spirit.
+Nearly two years had claps'd when about a week before the incidents
+at the commencement of this story, the farmer's family were joyfully
+surprised by receiving a letter from the long absent son. He had been
+to sea, and was then in New York, at which port his vessel had just
+arrived. He wrote in a gay strain; appear'd to have lost the angry
+feeling which caused his flight from home; and said he heard in the city
+that Richard had married, and settled several miles distant, where he
+wished him all good luck and happiness. Wild Frank wound up his letter
+by promising, as soon as he could get through the imperative business of
+his ship, to pay a visit to his parents and native place. On Tuesday of
+the succeeding week, he said he would be with them.
+
+Within half an hour after the departure of old Joe, the form of that
+ancient personage was seen slowly wheeling round the locust-tree at the
+end of the lane, accompanied by a stout young man in primitive homespun
+apparel. The meeting between Wild Frank and his brother Richard, though
+hardly of that kind which generally takes place between persons so
+closely related, could not exactly be call'd distant or cool either.
+Richard press'd his brother to go with him to the farmhouse, and refresh
+and repose himself for some hours at least, but Frank declined.
+
+"They will all expect me home this afternoon," he said, "I wrote to them
+I would be there to-day."
+
+"But you must be very tired, Frank," rejoin'd the other; "won't you
+let some of us harness up and carry you? Or if you like--" he stopp'd
+a moment, and a trifling suffusion spread over his face; "if you like,
+I'll put the saddle on Black Nell--she's here at my place now, and you
+can ride home like a lord."
+
+Frank's face color'd a little, too. He paused for a moment in
+thought--he was really foot-sore, and exhausted with his journey that
+hot day--so he accepted his brother's offer.
+
+"You know the speed of Nell, as well as I," said Richard; "I'll warrant
+when I bring her here you'll say she's in good order as ever." So
+telling him to amuse himself for a few minutes as well as he could,
+Richard left the tavern.
+
+Could it be that Black Nell knew her early master? She neigh'd and
+rubb'd her nose on his shoulder; and as he put his foot in the stirrup
+and rose on her back, it was evident that they were both highly pleased
+with their meeting. Bidding his brother farewell, and not forgetting old
+Joe, the young man set forth on his journey to his father's house. As he
+left the village behind, and came upon the long monotonous road before
+him, he thought on the circumstances of his leaving home--and he
+thought, too, on his course of life, how it was being frittered away
+and lost. Very gentle influences, doubtless, came over Wild Frank's
+mind then, and he yearn'd to show his parents that he was sorry for the
+trouble he had cost them. He blamed himself for his former follies, and
+even felt remorse that he had not acted more kindly to Richard, and gone
+to his house. Oh, it had been a sad mistake of the farmer that he did
+not teach his children to love one another. It was a foolish thing
+that he prided himself on governing his little flock well, when sweet
+affection, gentle forbearance, and brotherly faith, were almost unknown
+among them.
+
+The day was now advanced, though the heat pour'd down with a strength
+little less oppressive than at noon. Frank had accomplish'd the greater
+part of his journey; he was within two miles of his home. The road here
+led over a high, tiresome hill, and he determined to stop on the top of
+it and rest himself, as well as give the animal he rode a few minutes'
+breath. How well he knew the place! And that mighty oak, standing just
+outside the fence on the very summit of the hill, often had he reposed
+under its shade. It would be pleasant for a few minutes to stretch his
+limbs there again as of old, he thought to himself; and he dismounted
+from the saddle and led Black Nell under the tree. Mindful of the
+comfort of his favorite, he took from his little bundle, which he had
+strapped behind him on the mare's back, a piece of strong cord, four or
+five yards in length, which he tied to the bridle, and wound and tied
+the other end, for security, over his own wrist; then throwing himself
+at full length upon the ground, Black Nell was at liberty to graze
+around him, without danger of straying away.
+
+It was a calm scene, and a pleasant. There was no rude sound--hardly
+even a chirping insect--to break the sleepy silence of the place. The
+atmosphere had a dim, hazy cast, and was impregnated with overpowering
+heat. The young man lay there minute after minute, as time glided away
+unnoticed; for he was very tired, and his repose was sweet to him.
+Occasionally he raised himself and cast a listless look at the distant
+landscape, veil'd as it was by the slight mist. At length his repose was
+without such interruptions. His eyes closed, and though at first they
+open'd languidly again at intervals, after a while they shut altogether.
+Could it be that he slept? It was so indeed. Yielding to the drowsy
+influences about him, and to his prolong'd weariness of travel, he had
+fallen into a deep, sound slumber. Thus he lay; and Black Nell, the
+original cause of his departure from his home--by a singular chance, the
+companion of his return--quietly cropp'd the grass at his side.
+
+An hour nearly pass'd away, and yet the young man slept on. The light
+and heat were not glaring now; a change had come over earth and heaven.
+There were signs of one of those thunderstorms that in our climate
+spring up and pass over so quickly and so terribly. Masses of vapor
+loom' d up in the horizon, and a dark shadow settled on the woods and
+fields. The leaves of the great oak rustled together over the youth's
+head. Clouds flitted swiftly in the sky, like bodies of armed men coming
+up to battle at the call of their leader's trumpet. A thick rain-drop
+fell now and then, while occasionally hoarse mutterings of thunder
+sounded in the distance; yet the slumberer was not arous'd. It was
+strange that Wild Frank did not awake. Perhaps his ocean life had taught
+him to rest undisturbed amid the jarring of elements. Though the storm
+was now coming on in its fury, he slept like a babe in its cradle.
+
+Black Nell had ceased grazing, and stood by her sleeping master with
+ears erect, and her long mane and tail waving in the wind. It seem'd
+quite dark, so heavy were the clouds. The blast blew sweepingly, the
+lightning flash'd, and the rain fell in torrents. Crash after crash of
+thunder seem'd to shake the solid earth. And Black Nell, she stood now,
+an image of beautiful terror, with her fore feet thrust out, her neck
+arch'd, and her eyes glaring balls of fear. At length, after a dazzling
+and lurid glare, there came a peal--a deafening crash--as if the great
+axle was rent. God of Spirits! the startled mare sprang off like a ship
+in an ocean-storm! Her eyes were blinded with light; she dashed madly
+down the hill, and plunge after plunge--far, far away--swift as an
+arrow--dragging the hapless body of the youth behind her!
+
+In the low, old-fashion'd dwelling of the farmer there was a large
+family group. The men and boys had gather'd under shelter at the
+approach of the storm; and the subject of their talk was the return
+of the long absent son. The mother spoke of him, too, and her eyes
+brighten'd with pleasure as she spoke. She made all the little domestic
+preparations--cook'd his favorite dishes--and arranged for him his
+own bed, in its own old place. As the tempest mounted to its fury they
+discuss'd the probability of his getting soak'd by it; and the provident
+dame had already selected some dry garments for a change. But the rain
+was soon over, and nature smiled again in her invigorated beauty. The
+sun shone out as it was dipping in the west. Drops sparkled on the
+leaf-tips--coolness and clearness were in the air.
+
+The clattering of a horse's hoofs came to the ears of those who were
+gather'd there. It was on the other side of the house that the wagon
+road lead; and they open'd the door and rush'd in a tumult of glad
+anticipations, through the adjoining room to the porch. What a sight it
+was that met them there! Black Nell stood a few feet from the door, with
+her neck crouch'd down; she drew her breath long and deep, and vapor
+rose from every part of her reeking body. And with eyes starting from
+their sockets, and mouths agape with stupefying terror, they beheld on
+the ground near her a mangled, hideous mass--the rough semblance of a
+human form--all batter'd, and cut, and bloody. Attach'd to it was the
+fatal cord, dabbled over with gore. And as the mother gazed--for she
+could not withdraw her eyes--and the appalling truth came upon her mind,
+she sank down without shriek or utterance, into a deep, deathly swoon.
+
+
+THE BOY LOVER
+
+Listen, and the old will speak a chronicle for the young. Ah, youth!
+thou art one day coming to be old, too. And let me tell thee how thou
+mayest get a useful lesson. For an hour, _dream thyself old_. Realize,
+in thy thoughts and consciousness, that vigor and strength are subdued
+in thy sinews--that the color of the shroud is liken'd in thy very
+hairs--that all those leaping desires, luxurious hopes, beautiful
+aspirations, and proud confidences, of thy younger life, have long been
+buried (a funeral for the better part of thee) in that grave which must
+soon close over thy tottering limbs. Look back, then, through the long
+track of the past years. How has it been with thee? Are there bright
+beacons of happiness enjoy'd, and of good done by the way? Glimmer
+gentle rays of what was scatter'd from a holy heart? Have benevolence,
+and love, and undeviating honesty left tokens on which thy eyes can rest
+sweetly? Is it well with thee, thus? Answerest thou, it is? Or answerest
+thou, I see nothing but gloom and shatter'd hours, and the wreck of good
+resolves, and a broken heart, filled with sickness, and troubled among
+its ruined chambers with the phantoms of many follies?
+
+O, youth! youth! this dream will one day be a _reality_--a reality,
+either of heavenly peace or agonizing sorrow.
+
+And yet not for all is it decreed to attain the neighborhood of the
+three-score and ten years--the span of life. I am to speak of one
+who died young. Very awkward was his childhood--but most fragile and
+sensitive! So delicate a nature may exist in a rough, unnoticed plant!
+Let the boy rest;--he was not beautiful, and dropp'd away betimes. But
+for the cause--it is a singular story, to which let crusted worldlings
+pay the tribute of a light laugh--light and empty as their own hollow
+hearts.
+
+Love! which with its cankerseed of decay within, has sent young men
+and maidens to a long'd-for, but too premature burial. Love! the
+child-monarch that Death itself cannot conquer; that has its tokens on
+slabs at the head of grass-cover'd tombs--tokens more visible to the
+eye of the stranger, yet not so deeply graven as the face and the
+remembrances cut upon the heart of the living. Love! the sweet, the
+pure, the innocent; yet the causer of fierce hate, of wishes for deadly
+revenge, of bloody deeds, and madness, and the horrors of hell. Love!
+that wanders over battlefields, turning up mangled human trunks, and
+parting back the hair from gory faces, and daring the points of swords
+and the thunder of artillery, without a fear or a thought of danger.
+
+Words! words! I begin to see I am, indeed, an old man, and garrulous!
+Let me go back--yes, I see it must be many years!
+
+It was at the close of the last century. I was at that time studying
+law, the profession my father follow'd. One of his clients was an
+elderly widow, a foreigner, who kept a little ale-house, on the banks of
+the North River, at about two miles from what is now the centre of the
+city. Then the spot was quite out of town and surrounded by fields and
+green trees. The widow often invited me to come and pay her a visit,
+when I had a leisure afternoon--including also in the invitation my
+brother and two other students who were in my father's office. Matthew,
+the brother I mention, was a boy of sixteen; he was troubled with an
+inward illness--though it had no power over his temper, which ever
+retain' d the most admirable placidity and gentleness.
+
+He was cheerful, but never boisterous, and everybody loved him; his mind
+seem'd more develop'd than is usual for his age, though his personal
+appearance was exceedingly plain. Wheaton and Brown, the names of the
+other students, were spirited, clever young fellows, with most of the
+traits that those in their position of life generally possess. The
+first was as generous and brave as any man I ever knew. He was very
+passionate, too, but the whirlwind soon blew over, and left everything
+quiet again. Frank Brown was slim, graceful, and handsome. He profess'd
+to be fond of sentiment, and used to fall regularly in love once a
+month.
+
+The half of every Wednesday we four youths had to ourselves, and were
+in the habit of taking a sail, a ride, or a walk together. One of these
+afternoons, of a pleasant day in April, the sun shining, and the air
+clear, I bethought myself of the widow and her beer--about which latter
+article I had made inquiries, and heard it spoken of in terms of
+high commendation. I mention'd the matter to Matthew and to my
+fellow-students, and we agreed to fill up our holiday by a jaunt to the
+ale-house. Accordingly, we set forth, and, after a fine walk, arrived in
+glorious spirits at our destination.
+
+Ah! how shall I describe the quiet beauties of the spot, with its long,
+low piazza looking out upon the river, and its clean homely tables,
+and the tankards of real silver in which the ale was given us, and the
+flavor of that excellent liquor itself. There was the widow; and there
+was a sober, stately old woman, half companion, half servant, Margery
+by name; and there was (good God! my fingers quiver yet as I write the
+word!) young Ninon, the daughter of the widow.
+
+O, through the years that live no more, my memory strays back, and that
+whole scene comes up before me once again-and the brightest part of
+the picture is the strange ethereal beauty of that young girl! She
+was apparently about the age of my brother Matthew, and the most
+fascinating, artless creature I had ever beheld. She had blue eyes and
+light hair, and an expression of childish simplicity which was charming
+indeed. I have no doubt that ere half an hour had elapsed from the time
+we enter'd the tavern and saw Ninon, every one of the four of us loved
+the girl to the very depth of passion.
+
+We neither spent so much money, nor drank as much beer, as we had
+intended before starting from home. The widow was very civil, being
+pleased to see us, and Margery served our wants with a deal of
+politeness--but it was to Ninon that the afternoon's pleasure was
+attributable; for though we were strangers, we became acquainted at
+once--the manners of the girl, merry as she was, putting entirely out of
+view the most distant imputation of indecorum--and the presence of the
+widow and Margery, (for we were all in the common room together, there
+being no other company,) serving to make us all disembarrass'd, and at
+ease.
+
+It was not until quite a while after sunset that we started on our
+return to the city. We made several attempts to revive the mirth and
+lively talk that usually signalized our rambles, but they seem'd forced
+and discordant, like laughter in a sick-room. My brother was the only
+one who preserved his usual tenor of temper and conduct.
+
+I need hardly say that thenceforward every Wednesday afternoon was spent
+at the widow's tavern. Strangely, neither Matthew or my two friends, or
+myself, spoke to each other of the sentiment that filled us in reference
+to Ninon. Yet we all knew the thoughts and feelings of the others; and
+each, perhaps, felt confident that his love alone was unsuspected by his
+companions.
+
+The story of the widow was a touching yet simple one. She was by birth
+a Swiss. In one of the cantons of her native land, she had grown up, and
+married, and lived for a time in happy comfort. A son was born to her,
+and a daughter, the beautiful Ninon. By some reverse of fortune, the
+father and head of the family had the greater portion of his possessions
+swept from him. He struggled for a time against the evil influence, but
+it press'd upon him harder and harder. He had heard of a people in the
+western world--a new and swarming land--where the stranger was welcom'd,
+and peace and the protection of the strong arm thrown around him. He had
+not heart to stay and struggle amid the scenes of his former prosperity,
+and he determin'd to go and make his home in that distant republic of
+the west. So with his wife and children, and the proceeds of what little
+property was left, he took passage for New York. He was never to reach
+his journey's end. Either the cares that weigh' d upon his mind, or some
+other cause, consign'd him to a sick hammock, from which he only found
+relief through the Great Dismisser. He was buried in the sea, and in due
+time his family arrived at the American emporium. But there, the son too
+sicken'd--died, ere long, and was buried likewise. They would not bury
+him in the city, but away--by the solitary banks of the Hudson; on which
+the widow soon afterwards took up her abode.
+
+Ninon was too young to feel much grief at these sad occurrences; and the
+mother, whatever she might have suffer'd inwardly, had a good deal of
+phlegm and patience, and set about making herself and her remaining
+child as comfortable as might be. They had still a respectable sum in
+cash, and after due deliberation, the widow purchas'd the little quiet
+tavern, not far from the grave of her boy; and of Sundays and holidays
+she took in considerable money--enough to make a decent support for
+them in their humble way of living. French and Germans visited the house
+frequently, and quite a number of young Americans too. Probably the
+greatest attraction to the latter was the sweet face of Ninon.
+
+Spring passed, and summer crept in and wasted away, and autumn had
+arrived. Every New Yorker knows what delicious weather we have, in these
+regions, of the early October days; how calm, clear, and divested of
+sultriness, is the air, and how decently nature seems preparing for her
+winter sleep.
+
+Thus it was the last Wednesday we started on our accustomed excursion.
+Six months had elapsed since our first visit, and, as then, we were full
+of the exuberance of young and joyful hearts. Frequent and hearty were
+our jokes, by no means particular about the theme or the method, and
+long and loud the peals of laughter that rang over the fields or along
+the shore.
+
+We took our seats round the same clean, white table, and received our
+favorite beverage in the same bright tankards. They were set before us
+by the sober Margery, no one else being visible. As frequently happen'd,
+we were the only company. Walking and breathing the keen, fine air had
+made us dry, and we soon drain'd the foaming vessels, and call'd for
+more. I remember well an animated chat we had about some poems that
+had just made their appearance from a great British author, and were
+creating quite a public stir. There was one, a tale of passion and
+despair, which Wheaton had read, and of which he gave us a transcript.
+Wild, startling, and dreamy, perhaps it threw over our minds its
+peculiar cast. An hour moved off, and we began to think it strange that
+neither Ninon or the widow came into the room. One of us gave a hint to
+that effect to Margery; but she made no answer, and went on in her usual
+way as before.
+
+"The grim old thing," said Wheaton, "if she were in Spain, they'd make
+her a premier duenna!"
+
+I ask'd the woman about Ninon and the widow. She seemed disturb'd, I
+thought; but, making no reply to the first part of my question, said
+that her mistress was in another part of the house, and did not wish to
+be with company.
+
+"Then be kind enough, Mrs. Vinegar," resumed Wheaton, good-naturedly,
+"be kind enough to go and ask the widow if we can see Ninon."
+
+Our attendant's face turn'd as pale as ashes, and she precipitately left
+the apartment. We laugh'd at her agitation, which Frank Brown assigned
+to our merry ridicule.
+
+Quite a quarter of an hour elaps'd before Margery's return. When she
+appear'd she told us briefly that the widow had bidden her obey our
+behest, and now, if we desired, she would conduct us to the daughter's
+presence. There was a singular expression in the woman's eyes, and
+the whole affair began to strike us as somewhat odd; but we arose, and
+taking our caps, follow'd her as she stepp'd through the door. Back of
+the house were some fields, and a path leading into clumps of trees. At
+some thirty rods distant from the tavern, nigh one of those clumps, the
+larger tree whereof was a willow, Margery stopp'd, and pausing a minute,
+while we came up, spoke in tones calm and low:
+
+"Ninon is there!"
+
+She pointed downward with her finger. Great God! There was a _grave_,
+new made, and with the sods loosely join'd, and a rough brown stone at
+each extremity! Some earth yet lay upon the grass near by. If we had
+look'd, we might have seen the resting-place of the widow's son, Ninon's
+brother--for it was close at hand. But amid the whole scene our eyes
+took in nothing except that horrible covering of death--the oven-shaped
+mound. My sight seemed to waver, my head felt dizzy, and a feeling of
+deadly sickness came over me. I heard a stifled exclamation, and looking
+round, saw Frank Brown leaning against the nearest tree, great sweat
+upon his forehead, and his cheeks bloodless as chalk. Wheaton gave
+way to his agony more fully than ever I had known a man before; he had
+fallen--sobbing like a child, and wringing his hands. It is impossible
+to describe the suddenness and fearfulness of the sickening truth that
+came upon us like a stroke of thunder.
+
+Of all of us, my brother Matthew neither shed tears, or turned pale,
+or fainted, or exposed any other evidence of inward depth of pain. His
+quiet, pleasant voice was indeed a tone lower, but it was that which
+recall'd us, after the lapse of many long minutes, to ourselves.
+
+So the girl had died and been buried. We were told of an illness that
+had seized her the very day after our last preceding visit; but we
+inquired not into the particulars.
+
+And now come I to the conclusion of my story, and to the most singular
+part of it. The evening of the third day afterward, Wheaton, who had
+wept scalding tears, and Brown, whose cheeks had recovered their color,
+and myself, that for an hour thought my heart would never rebound again
+from the fearful shock--that evening, I say, we three were seated around
+a table in another tavern, drinking other beer, and laughing but a
+little less cheerfully, and as though we had never known the widow or
+her daughter--neither of whom, I venture to affirm, came into our minds
+once the whole night, or but to be dismiss'd again, carelessly, like the
+remembrance of faces seen in a crowd.
+
+Strange are the contradictions of the things of life! The seventh day
+after that dreadful visit saw my brother Matthew--the delicate one, who,
+while bold men writhed in torture, had kept the same placid face, and
+the same untrembling fingers--him that seventh day saw a clay-cold
+corpse, carried to the repose of the churchyard. The shaft, rankling
+far down and within, wrought a poison too great for show, and the youth
+died.
+
+
+THE CHILD AND THE PROFLIGATE
+
+Just after sunset, one evening in summer--that pleasant hour when the
+air is balmy, the light loses its glare, and all around is imbued with
+soothing quiet--on the door-step of a house there sat an elderly woman
+waiting the arrival of her son. The house was in a straggling village
+some fifty miles from New York city. She who sat on the door-step was a
+widow; her white cap cover'd locks of gray, and her dress, though clean,
+was exceedingly homely. Her house--for the tenement she occupied was her
+own--was very little and very old. Trees clustered around it so thickly
+as almost to hide its color--that blackish gray color which belongs to
+old wooden houses that have never been painted; and to get in it you had
+to enter a little rickety gate and walk through a short path, border'd
+by carrot beds and beets and other vegetables. The son whom she was
+expecting was her only child. About a year before he had been bound
+apprentice to a rich farmer in the place, and after finishing his daily
+task he was in the habit of spending half an hour at his mother's. On
+the present occasion the shadows of night had settled heavily before the
+youth made his appearance. When he did, his walk was slow and dragging,
+and all his motions were languid, as if from great weariness. He open'd
+the gate, came through the path, and sat down by his mother in silence.
+
+"You are sullen to-night, Charley," said the widow, after a moment's
+pause, when she found that he return' d no answer to her greeting.
+
+As she spoke she put her hand fondly on his head; it seem'd moist as if
+it had been dipp'd in the water. His shirt, too, was soak'd; and as
+she pass'd her fingers down his shoulder she left a sharp twinge in her
+heart, for she knew that moisture to be the hard wrung sweat of severe
+toil, exacted from her young child (he was but thirteen years old) by an
+unyielding taskmaster.
+
+"You have work'd hard to-day, my son."
+
+"I've been mowing."
+
+The widow's heart felt another pang.
+
+"Not _all day_, Charley?" she said, in a low voice; and there was a
+slight quiver in it.
+
+"Yes, mother, all day," replied the boy; "Mr. Ellis said he couldn't
+afford to hire men, for wages are so high. I've swung the scythe ever
+since an hour before sunrise. Feel of my hands."
+
+There were blisters on them like great lumps. Tears started in the
+widow's eyes. She dared not trust herself with a reply, though her heart
+was bursting with the thought that she could not better his condition.
+There was no earthly means of support on which she had dependence enough
+to encourage her child in the wish she knew he was forming--the wish not
+utter'd for the first time--to be freed from his bondage. "Mother," at
+length said the boy, "I can stand it no longer. I cannot and will not
+stay at Mr. Ellis's. Ever since the day I first went into his house I've
+been a slave; and if I have to work so much longer I know I shall run
+off and go to sea or somewhere else. I'd as leave be in my grave as
+there." And the child burst into a passionate fit of weeping.
+
+His mother was silent, for she was in deep grief herself. After some
+minutes had flown, however, she gather'd sufficient self-possession to
+speak to her son in a soothing tone, endeavoring to win him from his
+sorrows and cheer up his heart. She told him that time was swift--that
+in the course of a few years he would be his own master.--that all
+people have their troubles--with many other ready arguments which,
+though they had little effect in calming her own distress, she hoped
+would act as a solace to the disturb'd temper of the boy. And as the
+half hour to which he was limited had now elaps'd, she took him by the
+hand and led him to the gate, to set forth on his return. The youth
+seemed pacified, though occasionally one of those convulsive sighs that
+remain after a fit of weeping, would break from his throat. At the gate
+he threw his arms about his mother's neck; each press'd a long kiss
+on the lips of the other, and the youngster bent his steps towards his
+master's house.
+
+As her child pass'd out of sight the widow return'd, shut the gate and
+enter'd her lonely room. There was no light in the old cottage that
+night--the heart of its occupant was dark and cheerless. Love, agony,
+and grief, and tears and convulsive wrestlings were there. The thought
+of a beloved son condemned to labor--labor that would break down a
+man--struggling from day to day under the hard rule of a soulless
+gold-worshipper; the knowledge that years must pass thus; the sickening
+idea of her own poverty, and of living mainly on the grudged charity of
+neighbors--thoughts, too, of former happy days--these rack'd the widow's
+heart, and made her bed a sleepless one without repose.
+
+The boy bent his steps to his employer's, as has been said. In his way
+down the village street he had to pass a public house, the only one the
+place contain'd; and when he came off against it he heard the sound of
+a fiddle--drown'd, however, at intervals, by much laughter and talking.
+The windows were up, and, the house standing close to the road, Charles
+thought it no harm to take a look and see what was going on within. Half
+a dozen footsteps brought him to the low casement, on which he lean'd
+his elbow, and where he had a full view of the room and its occupants.
+In one corner was an old man, known in the village as Black Dave--he
+it was whose musical performances had a moment before drawn Charles's
+attention to the tavern; and he it was who now exerted himself in a
+violent manner to give, with divers flourishes and extra twangs, a tune
+very popular among that thick-lipp'd race whose fondness for melody is
+so well known. In the middle of the room were five or six sailors, some
+of them quite drunk, and others in the earlier stages of that process,
+while on benches around were more sailors, and here and there a person
+dress'd in landsman's attire. The men in the middle of the room were
+dancing; that is, they were going through certain contortions and
+shufflings, varied occasionally by exceeding hearty stamps upon the
+sanded floor. In short the whole party were engaged in a drunken frolic,
+which was in no respect different from a thousand other drunken frolics,
+except, perhaps, that there was less than the ordinary amount of anger
+and quarreling. Indeed everyone seem' d in remarkably good humor.
+
+But what excited the boy's attention more than any other object was an
+individual, seated on one of the benches opposite, who, though evidently
+enjoying the spree as much as if he were an old hand at such business,
+seem' d in every other particular to be far out of his element. His
+appearance was youthful. He might have been twenty-one or two years
+old. His countenance was intelligent, and had the air of city life and
+society. He was dress'd not gaudily, but in every respect fashionably;
+his coat being of the finest broadcloth, his linen delicate and spotless
+as snow, and his whole aspect that of one whose counterpart may now and
+then be seen upon the pave in Broadway of a fine afternoon. He laugh'd
+and talk'd with the rest, and it must be confess'd his jokes--like the
+most of those that pass'd current there--were by no means distinguish'd
+for their refinement or purity. Near the door was a small table, cover'd
+with decanters and glasses, some of which had been used, but were used
+again indiscriminately, and a box of very thick and very long cigars.
+
+One of the sailors--and it was he who made the largest share of the
+hubbub--had but one eye. His chin and cheeks were cover'd with huge,
+bushy whiskers, and altogether he had quite a brutal appearance. "Come,
+boys," said this gentleman, "come, let us take a drink. I know you're
+all a getting dry;" and he clench'd his invitation with an appalling
+oath. This politeness was responded to by a general moving of the
+company toward the table holding the before-mention'd decanters and
+glasses. Clustering there around, each one help'd himself to a very
+handsome portion of that particular liquor which suited his fancy; and
+steadiness and accuracy being at that moment by no means distinguishing
+traits of the arms and legs of the party, a goodly amount of the fluid
+was spill'd upon the floor. This piece of extravagance excited the ire
+of the personage who gave the "treat;" and that ire was still further
+increas'd when he discover'd two or three loiterers who seem'd disposed
+to slight his request to drink. Charles, as we have before mention'd,
+was looking in at the window.
+
+"Walk up, boys! walk up! If there be any skulker among us, blast my eyes
+if he shan't go down on his marrow bones and taste the liquor we have
+spilt! Hallo!" he exclaim'd as he spied Charles; "hallo, you chap in the
+window, come here and take a sup."
+
+As he spoke he stepp'd to the open casement, put his brawny hands under
+the boy's arms, and lifted him into the room bodily.
+
+"There, my lads," said he, turning to his companions, "there's a new
+recruit for you. Not so coarse a one, either," he added as he took a
+fair view of the boy, who, though not what is called pretty, was fresh
+and manly looking, and large for his age.
+
+"Come, youngster, take a glass," he continued. And he pour'd one nearly
+full of strong brandy.
+
+Now Charles was not exactly frighten'd, for he was a lively fellow, and
+had often been at the country merry-makings, and at the parties of the
+place; but he was certainly rather abash'd at his abrupt introduction to
+the midst of strangers. So, putting the glass aside, he look'd up with a
+pleasant smile in his new acquaintance's face.
+
+"I've no need for anything now," he said, "but I'm just as much obliged
+to you as if I was."
+
+"Poh! man, drink it down," rejoin'd the sailor, "drink it down--it won't
+hurt you."
+
+And, by way of showing its excellence, the one-eyed worthy drain'd it
+himself to the last drop. Then filling it again, he renew'd his efforts
+to make the lad go through the same operation.
+
+"I've no occasion. Besides, _my mother has often pray'd me not to
+drink,_ and I promised to obey her."
+
+A little irritated by his continued refusal, the sailor, with a loud
+oath, declared that Charles should swallow the brandy, whether he would
+or no. Placing one of his tremendous paws on the back of the boy's head,
+with the other he thrust the edge of the glass to his lips, swearing
+at the same time, that if he shook it so as to spill its contents the
+consequences would be of a nature by no means agreeable to his back and
+shoulders. Disliking the liquor, and angry at the attempt to overbear
+him, the undaunted child lifted his hand and struck the arm of the
+sailor with a blow so sudden that the glass fell and was smash'd to
+pieces on the floor; while the brandy was about equally divided between
+the face of Charles, the clothes of the sailor, and the sand. By this
+time the whole of the company had their attention drawn to the scene.
+Some of them laugh'd when they saw Charles's undisguised antipathy to
+the drink; but they laugh'd still more heartily when he discomfited
+the sailor. All of them, however, were content to let the matter go as
+chance would have it--all but the young man of the black coat, who has
+been spoken of.
+
+What was there in the words which Charles had spoken that carried the
+mind of the young man back to former times--to a period when he was
+more pure and innocent than now? "_My mother has often pray'd me not to
+drink!_" Ah, how the mist of months roll'd aside, and presented to his
+soul's eye the picture of _his_ mother, and a prayer of exactly similar
+purport! Why was it, too, that the young man's heart moved with a
+feeling of kindness toward the harshly treated child?
+
+Charles stood, his cheek flush'd and his heart throbbing, wiping the
+trickling drops from his face with a handkerchief. At first the sailor,
+between his drunkenness and his surprise, was much in the condition
+of one suddenly awaken'd out of a deep sleep, who cannot call his
+consciousness about him. When he saw the state of things, however, and
+heard the jeering laugh of his companions, his dull eye lighting up with
+anger, fell upon the boy who had withstood him. He seized Charles with
+a grip of iron, and with the side of his heavy boot gave him a sharp and
+solid kick. He was about repeating the performance--for the child
+hung like a rag in his grasp--but all of a sudden his ears rang, as if
+pistols were snapp'd close to them; lights of various hues flicker'd
+in his eye, (he had but one, it will be remember'd,) and a strong
+propelling power caused him to move from his position, and keep moving
+until he was brought up by the wall. A blow, a cuff given in such a
+scientific manner that the hand from which it proceeded was evidently no
+stranger to the pugilistic art, had been suddenly planted in the ear of
+the sailor. It was planted by the young man of the black coat. He had
+watch'd with interest the proceeding of the sailor and the boy--two or
+three times he was on the point of interfering; but when the kick was
+given, his rage was uncontrollable. He sprang from his seat in the
+attitude of a boxer--struck the sailor in a manner to cause those
+unpleasant sensations which have been described--and would probably have
+follow'd up the attack, had not Charles, now thoroughly terrified, clung
+around his legs and prevented his advancing.
+
+The scene was a strange one, and for the time quite a silent one. The
+company had started from their seats, and for a moment held breathless
+but strain'd positions. In the middle of the room stood the young man,
+in his not at all ungraceful attitude--every nerve out, and his eyes
+flashing brilliantly.
+
+He seem'd rooted like a rock; and clasping him, with an appearance of
+confidence in his protection, clung the boy.
+
+"You scoundrel!" cried the young man, his voice thick with passion,
+"dare to touch the boy again, and I'll thrash you till no sense is left
+in your body."
+
+The sailor, now partially recover'd, made some gestures of a belligerent
+nature.
+
+"Come on, drunken brute!" continued the angry youth; "I wish you would!
+You've not had half what you deserve!"
+
+Upon sobriety and sense more fully taking their power in the brains of
+the one-eyed mariner, however, that worthy determined in his own
+mind that it would be most prudent to let the matter drop. Expressing
+therefore his conviction to that effect, adding certain remarks to the
+purport that he "meant no harm to the lad," that he was surprised
+at such a gentleman being angry at "a little piece of fun," and so
+forth--he proposed that the company should go on with their jollity just
+as if nothing had happen'd. In truth, he of the single eye was not a
+bad fellow at heart, after all; the fiery enemy whose advances he had
+so often courted that night, had stolen away his good feelings, and set
+busy devils at work within him, that might have made his hands do some
+dreadful deed, had not the stranger interposed.
+
+In a few minutes the frolic of the party was upon its former footing.
+The young man sat down upon one of the benches, with the boy by his
+side, and while the rest were loudly laughing and talking, they
+two convers'd together. The stranger learn'd from Charles all the
+particulars of his simple story--how his father had died years
+since--how his mother work' d hard for a bare living--and how he
+himself, for many dreary months, had been the servant of a hard-hearted,
+avaricious master. More and more interested, drawing the child close to
+his side, the young man listen'd to his plainly told history--and thus
+an hour pass'd away.
+
+It was now past midnight. The young man told Charles that on the morrow
+he would take steps to relieve him from his servitude--that for the
+present night the landlord would probably give him a lodging at the
+inn--and little persuading did the host need for that.
+
+As he retired to sleep, very pleasant thoughts filled the mind of the
+young man--thoughts of a worthy action perform'd--thoughts, too, newly
+awakened ones, of walking in a steadier and wiser path than formerly.
+
+That roof, then, sheltered two beings that night--one of them innocent
+and sinless of all wrong--the other--oh, to that other what evil had not
+been present, either in action or to his desires!
+
+Who was the stranger? To those that, from ties of relationship or
+otherwise, felt an interest in him, the answer to that question was not
+pleasant to dwell upon. His name was Langton--parentless--a dissipated
+young man--a brawler--one whose too frequent companions were rowdies,
+blacklegs, and swindlers. The New York police offices were not strangers
+to his countenance. He had been bred to the profession of medicine;
+besides, he had a very respectable income, and his house was in a
+pleasant street on the west side of the city. Little of his time,
+however, did Mr. John Langton spend at his domestic hearth; and the
+elderly lady who officiated as his housekeeper was by no means surprised
+to have him gone for a week or a month at a time, and she knowing
+nothing of his whereabouts.
+
+Living as he did, the young man was an unhappy being. It was not so much
+that his associates were below his own capacity--for Langton, though
+sensible and well bred, was not highly talented or refined--but that he
+lived without any steady purpose, that he had no one to attract him to
+his home, that he too easily allow'd himself to be tempted--which caused
+his life to be, of late, one continued scene of dissatisfaction. This
+dissatisfaction he sought to drive away by the brandy bottle, and mixing
+in all kinds of parties where the object was pleasure. On the present
+occasion he had left the city a few days before, and passing his time at
+a place near the village where Charles and his mother lived. He fell in,
+during the day, with those who were his companions of the tavern spree;
+and thus it happen'd that they were all together. Langton hesitated not
+to make himself at home with any associate that suited his fancy.
+
+The next morning the poor widow rose from her sleepless cot; and from
+that lucky trait in our nature which makes one extreme follow another,
+she set about her toil with a lighten'd heart. Ellis, the farmer, rose,
+too, short as the nights were, an hour before day; for his god was gain,
+and a prime article of his creed was to get as much work as possible
+from every one around him. In the course of the day Ellis was called
+upon by young Langton, and never perhaps in his life was the farmer
+puzzled more than at the young man's proposal--his desire to provide for
+the widow's family, a family that could do him no pecuniary good, and
+his willingness to disburse money for that purpose. The widow, too, was
+called upon, not only on that day, but the next and the next.
+
+It needs not that I should particularize the subsequent events of
+Langton's and the boy's history--how the reformation of the profligate
+might be dated to begin from that time--how he gradually sever'd the
+guilty ties that had so long gall'd him--how he enjoy'd his own home
+again--how the friendship of Charles and himself grew not slack with
+time--and how, when in the course of seasons he became head of a family
+of his own, he would shudder at the remembrance of his early dangers and
+his escapes.
+
+
+LINGAVE'S TEMPTATION
+
+"Another day," utter'd the poet Lingave, as he awoke in the morning,
+and turn'd him drowsily on his hard pallet, "another day comes out,
+burthen'd with its weight of woes. Of what use is existence to me?
+Crush'd down beneath the merciless heel of poverty, and no promise of
+hope to cheer me on, what have I in prospect but a life neglected and a
+death of misery?"
+
+The youth paused; but receiving no answer to his questions, thought
+proper to continue the peevish soliloquy. "I am a genius, they say," and
+the speaker smiled bitterly, "but genius is not apparel and food. Why
+should I exist in the world, unknown, unloved, press'd with cares, while
+so many around me have all their souls can desire? I behold the
+splendid equipages roll by--I see the respectful bow at the presence of
+pride--and I curse the contrast between my own lot, and the fortune
+of the rich. The lofty air--the show of dress--the aristocratic
+demeanor--the glitter of jewels--dazzle my eyes; and sharp-tooth' d envy
+works within me. I hate these haughty and favor'd ones. Why should my
+path be so much rougher than theirs? Pitiable, unfortunate man that I
+am! to be placed beneath those whom in my heart I despise--and to be
+constantly tantalized with the presence of that wealth I cannot enjoy!"
+And the poet cover'd his eyes with his hands, and wept from very passion
+and fretfulness.
+
+O, Lingave! be more of a man! Have you not the treasures of health and
+untainted propensities, which many of those you envy never enjoy? Are
+you not their superior in mental power, in liberal views of mankind, and
+in comprehensive intellect? And even allowing you the choice, how would
+you shudder at changing, in total, conditions with them! Besides,
+were you willing to devote all your time and energies, you could gain
+property too: squeeze, and toil, and worry, and twist everything into a
+matter of profit, and you can become a great man, as far as money goes
+to make greatness.
+
+Retreat, then, man of the polish'd soul, from those irritable complaints
+against your lot-those longings for wealth and puerile distinction, not
+worthy your class. Do justice, philosopher, to your own powers. While
+the world runs after its shadows and its bubbles, (thus commune in your
+own mind,) we will fold ourselves in our circle of understanding, and
+look with an eye of apathy on those things it considers so mighty and
+so enviable. Let the proud man pass with his pompous glance--let the gay
+flutter in finery--let the foolish enjoy his folly, and the beautiful
+move on in his perishing glory; we will gaze without desire on all their
+possessions, and all their pleasures. Our destiny is different from
+theirs. Not for such as we, the lowly flights of their crippled wings.
+We acknowledge no fellow-ship with them in ambition. We composedly look
+down on the paths where they walk, and pursue our own, without uttering
+a wish to descend, and be as they. What is it to us that the mass pay
+us not that deference which wealth commands? We desire no applause, save
+the applause of the good and discriminating--the choice spirits among
+men. Our intellect would be sullied, were the vulgar to approximate to
+it, by professing to readily enter in, and praising it. Our pride is a
+towering, and thrice refined pride.
+
+When Lingave had given way to his temper some half hour, or thereabout,
+he grew more calm, and bethought himself that he was acting a very silly
+part. He listen'd a moment to the clatter of the carts, and the tramp
+of early passengers on the pave below, as they wended along to commence
+their daily toil. It was just sunrise, and the season was summer. A
+little canary bird, the only pet poor Lingave could afford to keep,
+chirp'd merrily in its cage on the wall. How slight a circumstance will
+sometimes change the whole current of our thoughts! The music of that
+bird abstracting the mind of the poet but a moment from his sorrows,
+gave a chance for his natural buoyancy to act again.
+
+Lingave sprang lightly from his bed, and perform'd his ablutions and his
+simple toilet--then hanging the cage on a nail outside the window, and
+speaking an endearment to the songster, which brought a perfect flood of
+melody in return--he slowly passed through his door, descended the
+long narrow turnings of the stairs, and stood in the open street.
+Undetermin'd as to any particular destination, he folded his hands
+behind him, cast his glance upon the ground, and moved listlessly
+onward.
+
+Hour after hour the poet walk'd along--up this street and down that--he
+reck'd not how or where. And as crowded thoroughfares are hardly the
+most fit places for a man to let his fancy soar in the clouds--many a
+push and shove and curse did the dreamer get bestow'd upon him.
+
+The booming of the city clock sounded forth the hour twelve--high noon.
+
+"Ho! Lingave!" cried a voice from an open basement window as the poet
+pass'd.
+
+He stopp'd, and then unwittingly would have walked on still, not fully
+awaken'd from his reverie.
+
+"Lingave, I say!" cried the voice again, and the person to whom the
+voice belong'd stretch'd his head quite out into the area in front,
+"Stop man. Have you forgotten your appointment?"
+
+"Oh! ah!" said the poet, and he smiled unmeaningly, and descending
+the steps, went into the office of Ridman, whose call it was that had
+startled him in his walk.
+
+Who was Ridman? While the poet is waiting the convenience of that
+personage, it may be as well to describe him.
+
+Ridman was a _money-maker_. He had much penetration, considerable
+knowledge of the world, and a disposition to be constantly in the midst
+of enterprise, excitement, and stir. His schemes for gaining wealth were
+various; he had dipp'd into almost every branch and channel of business.
+A slight acquaintance of several years' standing subsisted between him
+and the poet. The day previous a boy had call'd with a note from Ridman
+to Lingave, desiring the presence of the latter at the money-maker's
+room. The poet return'd for answer that he would be there. This was the
+engagement which he came near breaking.
+
+Ridman had a smooth tongue. All his ingenuity was needed in the
+explanation to his companion of why and wherefore the latter had been
+sent for.
+
+It is not requisite to state specifically the offer made by the man
+of wealth to the poet. Ridman, in one of his enterprises, found it
+necessary to procure the aid of such a person as Lingave--a writer of
+power, a master of elegant diction, of fine taste, in style passionate
+yet pure, and of the delicate imagery that belongs to the children of
+song. The youth was absolutely startled at the magnificent and permanent
+remuneration which was held out to him for a moderate exercise of his
+talents.
+
+But the _nature_ of the service required! All the sophistry and art of
+Ridman could not veil its repulsiveness. The poet was to labor for the
+advancement of what he felt to be unholy--he was to inculcate what
+would lower the perfection of man. He promised to give an answer to the
+proposal the succeeding day, and left the place.
+
+Now during the many hours there was a war going on in the heart of the
+poor poet. He was indeed poor; often he had no certainty whether he
+should be able to procure the next day's meals. And the poet knew
+the beauty of truth, and adored, not in the abstract merely, but in
+practice, the excellence of upright principles.
+
+Night came. Lingave, wearied, lay upon his pallet again and slept. The
+misty veil thrown over him, the spirit of poesy came to his visions, and
+stood beside him, and look'd down pleasantly with her large eyes, which
+were bright and liquid like the reflection of stars in a lake.
+
+Virtue, (such imagining, then, seem'd conscious to the soul of the
+dreamer,) is ever the sinew of true genius. Together, the two in one,
+they are endow'd with immortal strength, and approach loftily to Him
+from whom both spring. Yet there are those that having great powers,
+bend them to the slavery of wrong. God forgive them! for they surely do
+it ignorantly or heedlessly. Oh, could he who lightly tosses around
+him the seeds of evil in his writings, or his enduring thoughts, or his
+chance words--could he see how, haply, they are to spring up in distant
+time and poison the air, and putrefy, and cause to sicken--would he not
+shrink back in horror? A bad principle, jestingly spoken--a falsehood,
+but of a word--may taint a whole nation! Let the man to whom the great
+Master has given the might of mind, beware how he uses that might. If
+for the furtherance of bad ends, what can be expected but that, as
+the hour of the closing scene draws nigh, thoughts of harm done, and
+capacities distorted from their proper aim, and strength so laid out
+that men must be worse instead of better, through the exertion of that
+strength--will come and swarm like spectres around him?
+
+"Be and continue poor, young man," so taught one whose counsels should
+be graven on the heart of every youth, "while others around you grow
+rich by fraud and disloyalty. Be without place and power, while others
+beg their way upward. Bear the pain of disappointed hopes, while others
+gain the accomplishment of their flattery. Forego the gracious pressure
+of a hand, for which others cringe and crawl. Wrap yourself in your own
+virtue, and seek a friend and your daily bread. If you have, in such a
+course, grown gray with unblench'd honor, bless God and die."
+
+When Lingave awoke the next morning, he despatch'd his answer to his
+wealthy friend, and then plodded on as in the days before.
+
+
+LITTLE JANE
+
+"Lift up!" was ejaculated as a signal! and click! went the glasses in
+the hands of a party of tipsy men, drinking one night at the bar of one
+of the middling order of taverns. And many a wild gibe was utter'd, and
+many a terrible blasphemy, and many an impure phrase sounded out the
+pollution of the hearts of these half-crazed creatures, as they toss'd
+down their liquor, and made the walls echo with their uproar. The first
+and foremost in recklessness was a girlish-faced, fair-hair'd fellow of
+twenty-two or three years. They called him Mike. He seem'd to be look'd
+upon by the others as a sort of prompter, from whom they were to take
+cue. And if the brazen wickedness evinced by him in a hundred freaks
+and remarks to his companions, during their stay in that place, were any
+test of his capacity--there might hardly be one more fit to go forward
+as a guide on the road of destruction. From the conversation of the
+party, it appear'd that they had been spending the early part of the
+evening in a gambling house.
+
+A second, third and fourth time were the glasses fill'd; and the effect
+thereof began to be perceiv'd in a still higher degree of noise and
+loquacity among the revellers. One of the serving-men came in at this
+moment, and whisper'd the barkeeper, who went out, and in a moment
+return'd again. "A person," he said, "wish'd to speak with Mr. Michael.
+He waited on the walk in front."
+
+The individual whose name was mention'd, made his excuses to the others,
+telling them he would be back in a moment, and left the room. As he shut
+the door behind him, and stepp'd into the open air, he saw one of his
+brothers--his elder by eight or ten years--pacing to and fro with rapid
+and uneven steps. As the man turn'd in his walk, and the glare of the
+street lamp fell upon his face, the youth, half-benumb'd as his senses
+were, was somewhat startled at its paleness and evident perturbation.
+"Come with me!" said the elder brother, hurriedly, "the illness of our
+little Jane is worse, and I have been sent for you."
+
+"Poh!" answered the young drunkard, very composedly, "is that all? I
+shall be home by-and-by," and he turn'd back again.
+
+"But, brother, she is worse than ever before. Perhaps when you arrive
+she may be dead."
+
+The tipsy one paus'd in his retreat, perhaps alarm'd at the utterance
+of that dread word, which seldom fails to shoot a chill to the hearts of
+mortals. But he soon calm'd himself, and waving his hand to the other:
+"Why, see," said he, "a score of times at least, have I been call'd away
+to the last sickness of our good little sister; and each time it proves
+to be nothing worse than some whim of the nurse or physician. Three
+years has the girl been able to live very heartily under her disease;
+and I'll be bound she'll stay on earth three years longer."
+
+And as he concluded this wicked and most brutal reply, the speaker
+open'd the door and went into the bar-room. But in his intoxication,
+during the hour that follow'd, Mike was far from being at ease. At
+the end of that hour, the words, "perhaps when you arrive she may be
+_dead_?" were not effaced from his hearing yet, and he started for home.
+The elder brother had wended his way back in sorrow.
+
+Let me go before the younger one, awhile, to a room in that home. A
+little girl lay there dying. She had been ill a long time; so it was no
+sudden thing for her parents, and her brethren and sisters, to be called
+for the witness of the death agony. The girl was not what might be
+called beautiful. And yet, there is a solemn kind of loveliness that
+always surrounds a sick child. The sympathy for the weak and helpless
+sufferer, perhaps, increases it in our own ideas. The ashiness and the
+moisture on the brow, and the film over the eyeballs--what man can look
+upon the sight, and not feel his heart awed within him? Children, I have
+sometimes fancied too, increase in beauty as their illness deepens.
+
+Besides the nearest relatives of little Jane, standing round her
+bedside, was the family doctor. He had just laid her wrist down upon the
+coverlet, and the look he gave the mother, was a look in which there was
+no hope. "My child!" she cried, in uncontrollable agony, "O! my child!"
+And the father, and the sons and daughters, were bowed down in grief,
+and thick tears rippled between the fingers held before their eyes.
+
+Then there was silence awhile. During the hour just by-gone, Jane had,
+in her childish way, bestow'd a little gift upon each of her kindred,
+as a remembrancer when she should be dead and buried in the grave.
+And there was one of these simple tokens which had not reach'd
+its destination. She held it in her hand now. It was a very small
+much-thumbed book--a religious story for infants, given her by her
+mother when she had first learn'd to read.
+
+While they were all keeping this solemn stillness-broken only by the
+suppress'd sobs of those who stood and watch'd for the passing away of
+the girl's soul--a confusion of some one entering rudely, and speaking
+in a turbulent voice, was heard in an adjoining apartment. Again the
+voice roughly sounded out; it was the voice of the drunkard Mike, and
+the father bade one of his sons go and quiet the intruder "If nought
+else will do," said he sternly, "put him forth by strength. We want no
+tipsy brawlers here, to disturb such a scene as this." For what moved
+the sick girl uneasily on her pillow, and raised her neck, and motion'd
+to her mother? She would that Mike should be brought to her side. And
+it was enjoin'd on him whom the father had bade to eject the noisy one,
+that he should tell Mike his sister's request, and beg him to come to
+her.
+
+He came. The inebriate--his mind sober'd by the deep solemnity of the
+scene--stood there, and leaned over to catch the last accounts of one
+who soon was to be with the spirits of heaven. All was the silence of
+the deepest night. The dying child held the young man's hand in one of
+hers; with the other she slowly lifted the trifling memorial she had
+assigned especially for him, aloft in the air. Her arm shook--her eyes,
+now becoming glassy with the death-damps, were cast toward her brother's
+face. She smiled pleasantly, and as an indistinct gurgle came from
+her throat, the uplifted hand fell suddenly into the open palm of her
+brother's, depositing the tiny volume there. Little Jane was dead.
+
+From that night, the young man stepped no more in his wild courses, but
+was reform'd.
+
+
+DUMB KATE
+
+Not many years since--and yet long enough to have been before the
+abundance of railroads, and similar speedy modes of conveyance--the
+travelers from Amboy village to the metropolis of our republic were
+permitted to refresh themselves, and the horses of the stage had a
+breathing spell, at a certain old-fashion'd tavern, about half way
+between the two places. It was a quaint, comfortable, ancient house,
+that tavern. Huge buttonwood trees embower'd it round about, and there
+was a long porch in front, the trellis'd work whereof, though old and
+moulder'd, had been, and promised still to be for years, held together
+by the tangled folds of a grape vine wreath'd about it like a tremendous
+serpent.
+
+How clean and fragrant everything was there! How bright the pewter
+tankards wherefrom cider or ale went into the parch'd throat of the
+thirsty man! How pleasing to look into the expressive eyes of Kate, the
+land-lord's lovely daughter, who kept everything so clean and bright!
+
+Now the reason why Kate's eyes had become so expressive was, that,
+besides their proper and natural office, they stood to the poor girl in
+the place of tongue and ears also. Kate had been dumb from her birth.
+Everybody loved the helpless creature when she was a child. Gentle,
+timid, and affectionate was she, and beautiful as the lilies of which
+she loved to cultivate so many every summer in her garden. Her light
+hair, and the like-color'd lashes, so long and silky, that droop'd over
+her blue eyes of such uncommon size and softness--her rounded shape,
+well set off by a little modest art of dress--her smile--the graceful
+ease of her motions, always attracted the admiration of the strangers
+who stopped there, and were quite a pride to her parents and friends.
+
+How could it happen that so beautiful and inoffensive a being should
+taste, even to its dregs, the bitterest unhappiness? Oh, there
+must indeed be a mysterious, unfathomable meaning in the decrees of
+Providence which is beyond the comprehension of man; for no one on earth
+less deserved or needed "the uses of adversity" than Dumb Kate. Love,
+the mighty and lawless passion, came into the sanctuary of the maid's
+pure breast, and the dove of peace fled away forever.
+
+One of the persons who had occasion to stop most frequently at the
+tavern kept by Dumb Kate's parents was a young man, the son of a wealthy
+farmer, who own'd an estate in the neighborhood. He saw Kate, and
+was struck with her natural elegance. Though not of thoroughly wicked
+propensities, the fascination of so fine a prize made this youth
+determine to gain her love, and, if possible, to win her to himself.
+At first he hardly dared, even amid the depths of his own soul, to
+entertain thoughts of vileness against one so confiding and childlike.
+But in a short time such feelings wore away, and he made up his mind to
+become the betrayer of poor Kate. He was a good-looking fellow, and made
+but too sure of his victim. Kate was lost!
+
+The villain came to New York soon after, and engaged in a business which
+prosper'd well, and which has no doubt by this time made him what is
+call'd a man of fortune.
+
+Not long did sickness of the heart wear into the life and happiness of
+Dumb Kate. One pleasant spring day, the neighbors having been called by
+a notice the previous morning, the old churchyard was thrown open, and
+a coffin was borne over the early grass that seem'd so delicate with its
+light green hue. There was a new made grave, and by its side the bier
+was rested--while they paused a moment until holy words had been said.
+An idle boy, call'd there by curiosity, saw something lying on the fresh
+earth thrown out from the grave, which attracted his attention. A little
+blossom, the only one to be seen around, had grown exactly on the spot
+where the sexton chose to dig poor Kate's last resting-place. It was a
+weak but lovely flower, and now lay where it had been carelessly toss'd
+amid the coarse gravel. The boy twirl'd it a moment in his fingers--the
+bruis'd fragments gave out a momentary perfume, and then fell to the
+edge of the pit, over which the child at that moment lean'd and gazed in
+his inquisitiveness. As they dropp'd, they were wafted to the bottom of
+the grave. The last look was bestow'd on the dead girl's face by those
+who loved her so well in life, and then she was softly laid away to her
+sleep beneath that green grass covering.
+
+Yet in the churchyard on the hill is Kate's grave. There stands a little
+white stone at the head, and verdure grows richly there; and gossips,
+some-times of a Sabbath afternoon, rambling over that gathering-place of
+the gone from earth, stop a while, and con over the dumb girl's hapless
+story.
+
+
+TALK TO AN ART-UNION
+
+_A Brooklyn fragment_
+
+It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artist in
+them. And perhaps it is the case that the greatest artists live and die,
+the world and themselves alike ignorant what they possess. Who would
+not mourn that an ample palace, of surpassingly graceful architecture,
+fill'd with luxuries, and embellish'd with fine pictures and sculpture,
+should stand cold and still and vacant, and never be known or enjoy'd
+by its owner? Would such a fact as this cause your sadness? Then be sad.
+For there is a palace, to which the courts of the most sumptuous kings
+are but a frivolous patch, and, though it is always waiting for them,
+not one of its owners ever enters there with any genuine sense of its
+grandeur and glory.
+
+I think of few heroic actions, which cannot be traced to the
+artistical impulse. He who does great deeds, does them from his innate
+sensitiveness to moral beauty. Such men are not merely artists, they are
+also artistic material. Washington in some great crisis, Lawrence on
+the bloody deck of the Chesapeake, Mary Stuart at the block, Kossuth
+in captivity, and Mazzini in exile--all great rebels and innovators,
+exhibit the highest phases of the artist spirit. The painter, the
+sculptor, the poet, express heroic beauty better in description; but the
+others _are_ heroic beauty, the best belov'd of art.
+
+Talk not so much, then, young artist, of the great old masters, who
+but painted and chisell'd. Study not only their productions. There is a
+still higher school for him who would kindle his fire with coal from
+the altar of the loftiest and purest art. It is the school of all grand
+actions and grand virtues, of heroism, of the death of patriots and
+martyrs--of all the mighty deeds written in the pages of history--deeds
+of daring, and enthusiasm, devotion, and fortitude.
+
+
+BLOOD-MONEY
+
+"_Guilty of the body and the blood of Christ_."
+
+I.
+
+    Of olden time, when it came to pass
+    That the beautiful god, Jesus, should finish his work on earth,
+    Then went Judas, and sold the divine youth,
+    And took pay for his body.
+
+    Curs'd was the deed, even before the sweat of the clutching hand
+      grew dry;
+    And darkness frown'd upon the seller of the like of God,
+    Where, as though earth lifted her breast to throw him from her,
+      and heaven refused him,
+    He hung in the air, self-slaughter'd.
+
+    The cycles, with their long shadows, have stalk'd silently forward,
+    Since those ancient days--many a pouch enwrapping meanwhile
+    Its fee, like that paid for the son of Mary.
+
+    And still goes one, saying,
+    "What will ye give me, and I will deliver this man unto you?"
+    And they make the covenant, and pay the pieces of silver.
+
+II
+
+    Look forth, deliverer,
+    Look forth, first-born of the dead,
+    Over the tree-tops of Paradise;
+    See thyself in yet continued bonds,
+    Toilsome and poor, thou bear'st man's form again,
+    Thou art reviled, scourged, put into prison,
+    Hunted from the arrogant equality of the rest;
+    With staves and swords throng the willing servants of authority,
+    Again they surround thee, mad with devilish spite;
+    Toward thee stretch the hands of a multitude, like vultures' talons,
+    The meanest spit in thy face, they smite thee with their palms;
+    Bruised, bloody, and pinion'd is thy body,
+    More sorrowful than death is thy soul.
+
+    Witness of anguish, brother of slaves,
+    Not with thy price closed the price of thine image:
+    And still Iscariot plies his trade.
+
+    _April, 1843_.
+
+    PAUMANOK.
+
+
+WOUNDED IN THE HOUSE OF FRIENDS
+
+_"And one shall say unto him. What are these wounds in thy hands?
+Then he shall answer Those with which I was wounded in the house of my
+friends."--Zechariah, xiii. 6._
+
+      If thou art balk'd, O Freedom,
+    The victory is not to thy manlier foes;
+    From the house of friends comes the death stab.
+
+      Virginia, mother of greatness,
+    Blush not for being also mother of slaves;
+    You might have borne deeper slaves--
+    Doughfaces, crawlers, lice of humanity--
+    Terrific screamers of freedom,
+    Who roar and bawl, and get hot i' the face,
+    But were they not incapable of august crime,
+    Would quench the hopes of ages for a drink--
+    Muck-worms, creeping flat to the ground,
+    A dollar dearer to them than Christ's blessing;
+    All loves, all hopes, less than the thought of gain,
+    In life walking in that as in a shroud;
+    Men whom the throes of heroes,
+    Great deeds at which the gods might stand appal'd,
+    The shriek of the drown'd, the appeal of women,
+    The exulting laugh of untied empires,
+    Would touch them never in the heart,
+    But only in the pocket.
+
+      Hot-headed Carolina,
+    Well may you curl your lip;
+    With all your bondsmen, bless the destiny
+    Which brings you no such breed as this.
+
+      Arise, young North!
+    Our elder blood flows in the veins of cowards:
+    The gray-hair'd sneak, the blanch'd poltroon,
+    The feign'd or real shiverer at tongues,
+    That nursing babes need hardly cry the less for--
+    Are they to be our tokens always?
+
+
+SAILING THE MISSISSIPPI AT MIDNIGHT
+
+    Vast and starless, the pall of heaven
+      Laps on the trailing pall below;
+    And forward, forward, in solemn darkness,
+      As if to the sea of the lost we go.
+
+    Now drawn nigh the edge of the river,
+      Weird-like creatures suddenly rise;
+    Shapes that fade, dissolving outlines
+      Baffle the gazer's straining eyes.
+
+    Towering upward and bending forward,
+      Wild and wide their arms are thrown,
+    Ready to pierce with forked fingers
+      Him who touches their realm upon.
+
+    Tide of youth, thus thickly planted,
+      While in the eddies onward you swim,
+    Thus on the shore stands a phantom army,
+      Lining forever the channel's rim.
+
+    Steady, helmsman! you guide the immortal;
+      Many a wreck is beneath you piled,
+    Many a brave yet unwary sailor
+      Over these waters has been beguiled.
+
+    Nor is it the storm or the scowling midnight,
+      Cold, or sickness, or fire's dismay--
+    Nor is it the reef, or treacherous quicksand,
+      Will peril you most on your twisted way.
+
+    But when there comes a voluptuous languor,
+      Soft the sunshine, silent the air,
+    Bewitching your craft with safety and sweetness,
+      Then, young pilot of life, beware.
+
+
+
+
+
+NOVEMBER BOUGHS
+
+
+
+
+OUR EMINENT VISITORS
+
+_Past, Present and Future_
+
+
+Welcome to them each and all! They do good--the deepest, widest, most
+needed good--though quite certainly not in the ways attempted--which
+have, at times, something irresistibly comic. What can be more farcical,
+for instance, than the sight of a worthy gentleman coming three or four
+thousand miles through wet and wind to speak complacently and at
+great length on matters of which he both entirely mistakes or knows
+nothing--before crowds of auditors equally complacent, and equally at
+fault?
+
+Yet welcome and thanks, we say, to those visitors we have, and have
+had, from abroad among us--and may the procession continue! We have
+had Dickens and Thackeray, Froude, Herbert Spencer, Oscar Wilde, Lord
+Coleridge--soldiers, savants, poets--and now Matthew Arnold and Irving
+the actor. Some have come to make money--some for a "good time"--some to
+help us along and give us advice--and some undoubtedly to investigate,
+_bona fide_, this great problem, democratic America, looming upon the
+world with such cumulative power through a hundred years, now with the
+evident intention (since the secession war) to stay, and take a leading
+hand, for many a century to come, in civilization's and humanity's
+eternal game. But alas! that very investigation--the method of that
+investigation--is where the deficit most surely and helplessly comes in.
+Let not Lord Coleridge and Mr. Arnold (to say nothing of the illustrious
+actor) imagine that when they have met and survey'd the
+etiquettical gatherings of our wealthy, distinguish'd and
+sure-to-be-put-forward-on-such-occasions citizens (New York, Boston,
+Philadelphia, &c., have certain stereotyped strings of them, continually
+lined and paraded like the lists of dishes at hotel tables--you are sure
+to get the same over and over again--it is very amusing)--and the bowing
+and introducing, the receptions at the swell clubs, the eating and
+drinking and praising and praising back--and the next "day riding
+about Central Park, or doing the" Public Institutions "--and so passing
+through, one after another, the full-dress coteries of the Atlantic
+cities, all grammatical and cultured and correct, with the toned-down
+manners of the gentlemen, and the kid-gloves, and luncheons and
+finger-glasses--Let not our eminent visitors, we say, suppose that, by
+means of these experiences, they have "seen America," or captur'd any
+distinctive clew or purport thereof. Not a bit of it. Of the pulse-beats
+that lie within and vitalize this Commonweal to-day--of the hard-pan
+purports and idiosyncrasies pursued faithfully and triumphantly by its
+bulk of men North and South, generation after generation, superficially
+unconscious of their own aims, yet none the less pressing onward
+with deathless intuition--those coteries do not furnish the faintest
+scintilla. In the Old World the best flavor and significance of a race
+may possibly need to be look'd for in its "upper classes," its gentries,
+its court, its _etat major_. In the United States the rule is revers'd.
+Besides (and a point, this, perhaps deepest of all,) the special marks
+of our grouping and design are not going to be understood in a hurry.
+The lesson and scanning right on the ground are difficult; I was going
+to say they are impossible to foreigners--but I have occasionally found
+the clearest appreciation of all, coming from far-off quarters. Surely
+nothing could be more apt, not only for our eminent visitors present and
+to come, but for home study, than the following editorial criticism of
+the London _Times_ on Mr. Froude's visits and lectures here a few years
+ago, and the culminating dinner given at Delmonico's, with its brilliant
+array of guests:
+
+"We read the list," says the _Times_, "of those who assembled to do
+honor to Mr. Froude: there were Mr. Emerson, Mr. Beecher, Mr. Curtis,
+Mr. Bryant; we add the names of those who sent letters of regret that
+they could not attend in person--Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Whittier. They are
+names which are well known--almost as well known and as much honor'd in
+England as in America; and yet what must we say in the end? The American
+people outside this assemblage of writers is something vaster and
+greater than they, singly or together, can comprehend. It cannot be said
+of any or all of them that they can speak for their nation. We who look
+on at this distance are able perhaps on that account to see the more
+clearly that there are qualities of the American people which find no
+representation, no voice, among these their spokesmen. And what is true
+of them is true of the English class of whom Mr. Froude may be said to
+be the ambassador. Mr. Froude is master of a charming style. He has the
+gift of grace and the gift of sympathy. Taking any single character as
+the subject of his study, he may succeed after a very short time in so
+comprehending its workings as to be able to present a living figure
+to the intelligence and memory of his readers. But the movements of a
+nation, the, _voiceless purpose of a people which cannot put its
+own thoughts into words, yet acts upon them in each successive
+generation_--these things do not lie within his grasp.... The functions
+of literature such as he represents are limited in their action; the
+influence he can wield is artificial and restricted, and, while he and
+his hearers please and are pleas'd with pleasant periods, his great mass
+of national life will flow around them unmov'd in its tides by action as
+powerless as that of the dwellers by the shore to direct the currents of
+the ocean."
+
+A thought, here, that needs to be echoed, expanded, permanently
+treasur'd by our literary classes and educators. (The gestation, the
+youth, the knitting preparations, are now over, and it is full time for
+definite purpose, result.) How few think of it, though it is the impetus
+and background of our whole Nationality and popular life. In the present
+brief memorandum I very likely for the first time awake "the intelligent
+reader" to the idea and inquiry whether there isn't such a thing as the
+distinctive genius of our democratic New World, universal, immanent,
+bringing to a head the best experience of the past--not specially
+literary or intellectual--not merely "good," (in the Sunday School and
+Temperance Society sense,)-some invisible spine and great sympathetic
+to these States, resident only in the average people, in their practical
+life, in their physiology, in their emotions, in their nebulous yet
+fiery patriotism, in the armies (both sides) through the whole secession
+war--an identity and character which indeed so far "finds no voice among
+their spokesmen."
+
+To my mind America, vast and fruitful as it appears to-day, is even yet,
+for its most important results, entirely in the tentative state; its
+very formation-stir and whirling trials and essays more splendid and
+picturesque, to my thinking, than the accomplish'd growths and shows
+of other lands, through European history, or Greece, or all the past.
+Surely a New World literature, worthy the name, is not to be, if it ever
+comes, some fiction, or fancy, or bit of sentimentalism or polish'd work
+merely by itself, or in abstraction. So long as such literature is no
+born branch and offshoot of the Nationality, rooted and grown from its
+roots, and fibred with its fibre, it can never answer any deep call
+or perennial need. Perhaps the untaught Republic is wiser than its
+teachers. The best literature is always a result of something far
+greater than itself--not the hero, but the portrait of the hero. Before
+there can be recorded history or poem there must be the transaction.
+Beyond the old masterpieces, the Iliad, the interminable Hindu epics,
+the Greek tragedies, even the Bible itself, range the immense facts of
+what must have preceded them, their _sine qua non_--the veritable poems
+and masterpieces, of which, grand as they are, the word-statements are
+but shreds and cartoons.
+
+For to-day and the States, I think the vividest, rapidest, most
+stupendous processes ever known, ever perform'd by man or nation, on the
+largest scales and in countless varieties, are now and here presented.
+Not as our poets and preachers are always conventionally putting it--but
+quite different. Some colossal foundry, the flaming of the fire, the
+melted metal, the pounding trip-hammers, the surging crowds of workmen
+shifting from point to point, the murky shadows, the rolling haze, the
+discord, the crudeness, the deafening din, the disorder, the dross and
+clouds of dust, the waste and extravagance of material, the shafts of
+darted sunshine through the vast open roof-scuttles aloft-the mighty
+castings, many of them not yet fitted, perhaps delay'd long, yet each in
+its due time, with definite place and use and meaning--Such, more like,
+is a symbol of America.
+
+After all of which, returning to our starting-point, we reiterate, and
+in the whole Land's name, a welcome to our eminent guests. Visits like
+theirs, and hospitalities, and hand-shaking, and face meeting face,
+and the distant brought near--what divine solvents they are! Travel,
+reciprocity, "interviewing," intercommunion of lands--what are they
+but Democracy's and the highest Law's best aids? O that our own
+country--that every land in the world--could annually, continually,
+receive the poets, thinkers, scientists, even the official magnates, of
+other lands, as honor'd guests. O that the United States, especially the
+West, could have had a good long visit and explorative jaunt, from
+the noble and melancholy Tourgueneff, before he died--or from Victor
+Hugo--or Thomas Carlyle. Castelar, Tennyson, any of the two or three
+great Parisian essayists--were they and we to come face to face, how is
+it possible but that the right understanding would ensue?
+
+
+
+
+THE BIBLE AS POETRY
+
+
+I suppose one cannot at this day say anything new, from a literary point
+of view, about those autochthonic bequests of Asia--the Hebrew Bible,
+the mighty Hindu epics, and a hundred lesser but typical works; (not
+now definitely including the Iliad--though that work was certainly
+of Asiatic genesis, as Homer himself was--considerations which seem
+curiously ignored.) But will there ever be a time or place--ever a
+student, however modern, of the grand art, to whom those compositions
+will not afford profounder lessons than all else of their kind in the
+garnerage of the past? Could there be any more opportune suggestion, to
+the current popular writer and reader of verse, what the office of
+poet was in primeval times--and is yet capable of being, anew, adjusted
+entirely to the modern?
+
+All the poems of Orientalism, with the Old and New Testaments at
+the centre, tend to deep and wide, (I don't know but the deepest and
+widest,) psychological development--with little, or nothing at all,
+of the mere esthetic, the principal verse-requirement of our day. Very
+late, but unerringly, comes to every capable student the perception that
+it is not in beauty, it is not in art, it is not even in science,
+that the profoundest laws of the case have their eternal sway and
+outcropping.
+
+In his discourse on "Hebrew Poets" De Sola Mendes said: "The fundamental
+feature of Judaism, of the Hebrew nationality, was religion; its poetry
+was naturally religious. Its subjects, God and Providence, the covenants
+with Israel, God in Nature, and as reveal'd, God the Creator and
+Governor, Nature in her majesty and beauty, inspired hymns and odes to
+Nature's God. And then the checker'd history of the nation furnish'd
+allusions, illustrations, and subjects for epic display--the glory of
+the sanctuary, the offerings, the splendid ritual, the Holy City, and
+lov'd Palestine with its pleasant valleys and wild tracts." Dr. Mendes
+said "that rhyming was not a characteristic of Hebrew poetry at all.
+Metre was not a necessary mark of poetry. Great poets discarded it;
+the early Jewish poets knew it not." Compared with the famed epics of
+Greece, and lesser ones since, the spinal supports of the Bible are
+simple and meagre. All its history, biography, narratives, &c., are as
+beads, strung on and indicating the eternal thread of the Deific purpose
+and power. Yet with only deepest faith for impetus, and such Deific
+purpose for palpable or impalpable theme, it often transcends the
+masterpieces of Hellas, and all masterpieces.
+
+The metaphors daring beyond account, the lawless soul, extravagant
+by our standards, the glow of love and friendship, the fervent
+kiss--nothing in argument or logic, but unsurpass'd in proverbs, in
+religious ecstasy, in suggestions of common mortality and death, man's
+great equalizers--the spirit everything, the ceremonies and forms of the
+churches nothing, faith limitless, its immense sensuousness immensely
+spiritual--an incredible, all-inclusive non-worldliness and dew-scented
+illiteracy (the antipodes of our Nineteenth Century business absorption
+and morbid refinement)--no hair-splitting doubts, no sickly sulking
+and sniffling, no "Hamlet," no "Adonais," no "Thanatopsis," no "In
+Memoriam."
+
+The culminated proof of the poetry of a country is the quality of its
+personnel, which, in any race, can never be really superior without
+superior poems. The finest blending of individuality with universality
+(in my opinion nothing out of the galaxies of the "Iliad," or
+Shakspere's heroes, or from the Tennysonian "Idylls," so lofty, devoted
+and starlike,) typified in the songs of those old Asiatic lands. Men
+and women as great columnar trees. Nowhere else the abnegation of self
+towering in such quaint sublimity; nowhere else the simplest human
+emotions conquering the gods of heaven, and fate itself. (The episode,
+for instance, toward the close of the "Mahabharata"--the journey of the
+wife Savitri with the god of death, Yama,
+
+    "One terrible to see--blood-red his garb,
+    His body huge and dark, bloodshot his eyes,
+    Which flamed like suns beneath his turban cloth,
+    Arm'd was he with a noose,"
+
+who carries off the soul of the dead husband, the wife tenaciously
+following, and--by the resistless charm of perfect poetic
+recitation!--eventually redeeming her captive mate.)
+
+I remember how enthusiastically William H. Seward, in his last days,
+once expatiated on these themes, from his travels in Turkey, Egypt, and
+Asia Minor, finding the oldest Biblical narratives exactly illustrated
+there to-day with apparently no break or change along three thousand
+years--the veil'd women, the costumes, the gravity and simplicity, all
+the manners just the same. The veteran Trelawney said he found the only
+real _nobleman_ of the world in a good average specimen of the mid-aged
+or elderly Oriental. In the East the grand figure, always leading, is
+the _old man_, majestic, with flowing beard, paternal, &c. In Europe and
+America, it is, as we know, the young fellow--in novels, a handsome
+and interesting hero, more or less juvenile--in operas, a tenor with
+blooming cheeks, black mustache, superficial animation, and perhaps good
+lungs, but no more depth than skim-milk. But reading folks probably get
+their information of those Bible areas and current peoples, as depicted
+in print by English and French cads, the most shallow, impudent,
+supercilious brood on earth.
+
+I have said nothing yet of the cumulus of associations (perfectly
+legitimate parts of its influence, and finally in many respects the
+dominant parts,) of the Bible as a poetic entity, and of every portion
+of it. Not the old edifice only--the congeries also of events and
+struggles and surroundings, of which it has been the scene and
+motive--even the horrors, dreads, deaths. How many ages and generations
+have brooded and wept and agonized over this book! What untellable joys
+and ecstasies--what support to martyrs at the stake--from it. (No really
+great song can ever attain full purport till long after the death of
+its singer--till it has accrued and incorporated the many passions, many
+joys and sorrows, it has itself arous'd.) To what myriads has it been
+the shore and rock of safety--the refuge from driving tempest and wreck!
+Translated in all languages, how it has united this diverse world! Of
+civilized lands to-day, whose of our retrospects has it not interwoven
+and link'd and permeated? Not only does it bring us what is clasp'd
+within its covers; nay, that is the least of what it brings. Of its
+thousands, there is not a verse, not a word, but is thick-studded with
+human emotions, successions of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters,
+of our own antecedents, inseparable from that background of us,
+on which, phantasmal as it is, all that we are to-day inevitably
+depends--our ancestry, our past.
+
+Strange, but true, that the principal factor in cohering the nations,
+eras and paradoxes of the globe, by giving them a common platform of
+two or three great ideas, a commonalty of origin, and projecting kosmic
+brotherhood, the dream of all hope, all time--that the long trains
+gestations, attempts and failures, resulting in the New World, and in
+modern solidarity and politics--are to be identified and resolv'd back
+into a collection of old poetic lore, which, more than any one thing
+else, has been the axis of civilization and history through thousands
+of years--and except for which this America of ours, with its polity and
+essentials, could not now be existing.
+
+No true bard will ever contravene the Bible. If the time ever comes when
+iconoclasm does its extremest in one direction against the Books of the
+Bible in its present form, the collection must still survive in another,
+and dominate just as much as hitherto, or more than hitherto, through
+its divine and primal poetic structure. To me, that is the living and
+definite element-principle of the work, evolving everything else. Then
+the continuity; the oldest and newest Asiatic utterance and character,
+and all between, holding together, like the apparition of the sky,
+and coming to us the same. Even to our Nineteenth Century here are the
+fountain heads of song.
+
+
+
+
+FATHER TAYLOR (AND ORATORY)
+
+
+I have never heard but one essentially perfect orator--one who satisfied
+those depths of the emotional nature that in most cases go through
+life quite untouch'd, unfed--who held every hearer by spells which no
+conventionalist, high or low--nor any pride or composure, nor resistance
+of intellect--could stand against for ten minutes.
+
+And by the way, is it not strange, of this first-class genius in the
+rarest and most profound of humanity's arts, that it will be necessary,
+(so nearly forgotten and rubb'd out is his name by the rushing whirl of
+the last twenty-five years,) to first inform current readers that he was
+an orthodox minister, of no particular celebrity, who during a long life
+preach'd especially to Yankee sailors in an old fourth-class church down
+by the wharves in Boston--had practically been a seafaring man through
+his earlier years--and died April 6, 1871, "just as the tide turn'd,
+going out with the ebb as an old salt should"? His name is now
+comparatively unknown, outside of Boston--and even there, (though
+Dickens, Mr. Jameson, Dr. Bartol and Bishop Haven have commemorated
+him,) is mostly but a reminiscence.
+
+During my visits to "the Hub," in 1859 and '60 I several times saw and
+heard Father Taylor. In the spring or autumn, quiet Sunday forenoons, I
+liked to go down early to the quaint ship-cabin-looking church where the
+old man minister'd--to enter and leisurely scan the building, the low
+ceiling, everything strongly timber'd (polish'd and rubb'd apparently,)
+the dark rich colors, the gallery, all in half-light--and smell the
+aroma of old wood--to watch the auditors, sailors, mates, "matlows,"
+officers, singly or in groups, as they came in--their physiognomies,
+forms, dress, gait, as they walk'd along the aisles--their postures,
+seating themselves in the rude, roomy, undoor'd, uncushion'd pews--and
+the evident effect upon them of the place, occasion, and atmosphere.
+
+The pulpit, rising ten or twelve feet high, against the rear wall, was
+back' d by a significant mural painting, in oil--showing out its bold
+lines and strong hues through the subdued light of the building--of a
+stormy sea, the waves high-rolling, and amid them an old-style ship,
+all bent over, driving through the gale, and in great peril--a vivid
+and effectual piece of limning, not meant for the criticism of artists
+(though I think it had merit even from that standpoint,) but for its
+effect upon the congregation, and what it would convey to them.
+
+Father Taylor was a moderate-sized man, indeed almost small, (reminded
+me of old Booth, the great actor, and my favorite of those and preceding
+days,) well advanced in years, but alert, with mild blue or gray eyes,
+and good presence and voice. Soon as he open'd his mouth I ceas'd to pay
+any attention to church or audience, or pictures or lights and shades;
+a far more potent charm entirely sway'd me. In the course of the sermon,
+(there was no sign of any MS., or reading from notes,) some of the parts
+would be in the highest degree majestic and picturesque. Colloquial in a
+severe sense, it often lean'd to Biblical and Oriental forms. Especially
+were all allusions to ships and the ocean and sailors' lives, of
+unrival'd power and life-likeness.
+
+Sometimes there were passages of fine language and composition, even
+from the purist's point of view. A few arguments, and of the best, but
+always brief and simple. One realized what grip there might have been in
+such words-of-mouth talk as that of Socrates and Epictetus. In the main,
+I should say, of any of these discourses, that the old Demosthenean rule
+and requirement of "action, action, action," first in its inward and
+then (very moderate and restrain'd) its outward sense, was the quality
+that had leading fulfilment.
+
+I remember I felt the deepest impression from the old man's prayers,
+which invariably affected me to tears. Never, on similar or any other
+occasions, have I heard such impassion'd pleading--such human-harassing
+reproach (like Hamlet to his mother, in the closet)--such probing to
+the very depths of that latent conscience and remorse which probably lie
+somewhere in the background of every life, every soul. For when Father
+Taylor preach'd or pray'd, the rhetoric and art, the mere words, (which
+usually play such a big part) seem'd altogether to disappear, and the
+_live feeling_ advanced upon you and seiz'd you with a power before
+unknown. Everybody felt this marvellous and awful influence. One young
+sailor, a Rhode Islander, (who came every Sunday, and I got acquainted
+with, and talk'd to once or twice as we went away,) told me, "that must
+be the Holy Ghost we read of in the Testament."
+
+I should be at a loss to make any comparison with other preachers or
+public speakers. When a child I had heard Elias Hicks--and Father Taylor
+(though so different in personal appearance, for Elias was of tall and
+most shapely form, with black eyes that blazed at times like meteors,)
+always reminded me of him. Both had the same inner, apparently
+inexhaustible, fund of latent volcanic passion--the same tenderness,
+blended with a curious remorseless firmness, as of some surgeon
+operating on a belov'd patient. Hearing such men sends to the winds all
+the books, and formulas, and polish'd speaking, and rules of oratory.
+
+Talking of oratory, why is it that the unsophisticated practices often
+strike deeper than the train'd ones? Why do our experiences perhaps of
+some local country exhorter--or often in the West or South at political
+meetings--bring the most definite results? In my time I have heard
+Webster, Clay, Edward Everett, Phillips, and such _celebres_ yet I
+recall the minor but life-eloquence of men like John P. Hale, Cassius
+Clay, and one or two of the old abolition "fanatics" ahead of all those
+stereotyped fames. Is not--I sometimes question--the first, last, and
+most important quality of all, in training for a "finish'd speaker,"
+generally unsought, unreck'd of, both by teacher and pupil? Though
+may-be it cannot be taught, anyhow. At any rate, we need to clearly
+understand the distinction between oratory and elocution. Under the
+latter art, including some of high order, there is indeed no scarcity in
+the United States, preachers, lawyers, actors, lecturers, &c. With all,
+there seem to be few real orators--almost none.
+
+I repeat, and would dwell upon it (more as suggestion than mere
+fact)--among all the brilliant lights of bar or stage I have heard in
+my time (for years in New York and other cities I haunted the courts
+to witness notable trials, and have heard all the famous actors and
+actresses that have been in America the past fifty years) though
+I recall marvellous effects from one or other of them, I never had
+anything in the way of vocal utterance to shake me through and through,
+and become fix'd, with its accompaniments, in my memory, like those
+prayers and sermons--like Father Taylor's personal electricity and the
+whole scene there--the prone ship in the gale, and dashing wave and foam
+for background--in the little old sea-church in Boston, those summer
+Sundays just before the secession war broke out.
+
+
+
+
+THE SPANISH ELEMENT IN OUR NATIONALITY
+
+
+
+[Our friends at Santa Fe, New Mexico, have just finish'd their
+long-drawn-out anniversary of the 333d year of the settlement of their
+city by the Spanish. The good, gray Walt Whitman was asked to write
+them a poem in commemoration. Instead he wrote them a letter as
+follows:--_Philadelphia Press_, August 5, 1883.]
+
+CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY, _July 20, 1883_.
+
+_To Messrs. Griffin, Martinez, Prince, and other Gentlemen at Santa Fe_:
+
+DEAR SIRS:--Your kind invitation to visit you and deliver a poem for the
+333d Anniversary of founding Santa Fe has reach'd me so late that I have
+to decline, with sincere regret. But I will say a few words offhand.
+
+We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort
+them, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed,
+and in widely different sources. Thus far, impress'd by New England
+writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion
+that our United States have been fashion'd from the British Islands
+only, and essentially form a second England only--which is a very great
+mistake. Many leading traits for our future national personality, and
+some of the best ones, will certainly prove to have originated from
+other than British stock. As it is, the British and German, valuable as
+they are in the concrete, already threaten excess. Or rather, I should
+say, they have certainly reach'd that excess. To-day, something outside
+of them, and to counterbalance them, is seriously needed.
+
+The seething materialistic and business vortices of the United States,
+in their present devouring relations, controlling and belittling
+everything else, are, in my opinion, but a vast and indispensable stage
+in the new world's development, and are certainly to be follow'd
+by something entirely different--at least by immense modifications.
+Character, literature, a society worthy the name, are yet to be
+establish'd, through a nationality of noblest spiritual, heroic
+and democratic attributes--not one of which at present definitely
+exists--entirely different from the past, though unerringly founded on
+it, and to justify it.
+
+To that composite American identity of the future, Spanish character
+will supply some of the most needed parts. No stock shows a grander
+historic retrospect--grander in religiousness and loyalty, or for
+patriotism, courage, decorum, gravity and honor. (It is time to dismiss
+utterly the illusion-compound, half raw-head-and-bloody-bones and half
+Mysteries-of-Udolpho, inherited from the English writers of the past 200
+years. It is time to realize--for it is certainly true--that there
+will not be found any more cruelty, tyranny, superstition, &c., in the
+_resume_ of past Spanish history than in the corresponding _resume_ of
+Anglo-Norman history. Nay, I think there will not be found so much.)
+
+Then another point, relating to American ethnology, past and to come,
+I will here touch upon at a venture. As to our aboriginal or Indian
+population--the Aztec in the South, and many a tribe in the North and
+West--I know it seems to be agreed that they must gradually dwindle as
+time rolls on, and in a few generations more leave only a reminiscence,
+a blank. But I am not at all clear about that. As America, from its
+many far-back sources and current supplies, develops, adapts, entwines,
+faithfully identifies its own--are we to see it cheerfully accepting
+and using all the contributions of foreign lands from the whole outside
+globe--and then rejecting the only ones distinctively its own--the
+autochthonic ones?
+
+As to the Spanish stock of our Southwest, it is certain to me that we
+do not begin to appreciate the splendor and sterling value of its
+race element. Who knows but that element, like the course of some
+subterranean river, dipping invisibly for a hundred or two years, is now
+to emerge in broadest flow and permanent action?
+
+If I might assume to do so, I would like to send you the most cordial,
+heartfelt congratulations of your American fellow-countrymen here. You
+have more friends in the Northern and Atlantic regions than you
+suppose, and they are deeply interested in the development of the great
+Southwestern interior, and in what your festival would arouse to public
+attention.
+
+Very respectfully, &c.,
+
+WALT WHITMAN.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT LURKS BEHIND SHAKSPERE'S HISTORICAL PLAYS
+
+
+We all know how much _mythus_ there is in the Shakspere question as it
+stands to-day. Beneath a few foundations of proved facts are
+certainly engulf d far more dim and elusive ones, of deepest
+importance--tantalizing and half suspected--suggesting explanations that
+one dare not put in plain statement. But coming at once to the point,
+the English historical plays are to me not only the most eminent as
+dramatic performances (my maturest judgment confirming the impressions
+of my early years, that the distinctiveness and glory of the Poet reside
+not in his vaunted dramas of the passions, but those founded on the
+contests of English dynasties, and the French wars,) but form, as we
+get it all, the chief in a complexity of puzzles. Conceiv'd out of
+the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism--personifying in
+unparallel'd ways the mediaeval aristocracy, its towering spirit of
+ruthless and gigantic caste, with its own peculiar air and arrogance
+(no mere imitation)--only one of the "wolfish earls" so plenteous in the
+plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower, might seem to be
+the true author of those amazing works--works in some respects greater
+than anything else in recorded literature.
+
+The start and germ-stock of the pieces on which the present speculation
+is founded are undoubtedly (with, at the outset, no small amount of
+bungling work) in "Henry VI." It is plain to me that as profound and
+forecasting a brain and pen as ever appear'd in literature, after
+floundering somewhat in the first part of that trilogy--or perhaps
+draughting it more or less experimentally or by accident--afterward
+developed and defined his plan in the Second and Third Parts, and from
+time to time, thenceforward, systematically enlarged it to majestic and
+mature proportions in "Richard II," "Richard III," "King John," "Henry
+IV," "Henry V," and even in "Macbeth," "Coriolanus" and "Lear." For it
+is impossible to grasp the whole cluster of those plays, however wide
+the intervals and different circumstances of their composition, without
+thinking of them as, in a free sense, the result of an _essentially
+controling plan_. 'What was that plan? Or, rather, what was veil'd
+behind it?--for to me there was certainly something so veil'd. Even the
+episodes of Cade, Joan of Arc, and the like (which sometimes seem to me
+like interpolations allow'd,) may be meant to foil the possible sleuth,
+and throw any too 'cute pursuer off the scent. In the whole matter I
+should specially dwell on, and make much of, that inexplicable element
+of every highest poetic nature which causes it to cover up and involve
+its real purpose and meanings in folded removes and far recesses. Of
+this trait--hiding the nest where common seekers may never find it--the
+Shaksperean works afford the most numerous and mark'd illustrations
+known to me. I would even call that trait the leading one through the
+whole of those works.
+
+All the foregoing to premise a brief statement of how and where I get my
+new light on Shakspere. Speaking of the special English plays, my friend
+William O'Connor says:
+
+  They seem simply and rudely historical in their motive, as aiming
+  to give in the rough a tableau of warring dynasties,--and carry to
+  me a lurking sense of being in aid of some ulterior design, probably
+  well enough understood in that age, which perhaps time and criticism
+  will reveal.... Their atmosphere is one of barbarous and tumultuous
+  gloom,--they do not make us love the times they limn,... and it is
+  impossible to believe that the greatest of the Elizabethan men could
+  have sought to indoctrinate the age with the love of feudalism which
+  his own drama in its entirety, if the view taken of it herein be true,
+  certainly and subtly saps and mines.
+
+Reading the just-specified play in the light of Mr. O'Connor's
+suggestion, I defy any one to escape such new and deep
+utterance-meanings, like magic ink, warm' d by the fire, and previously
+invisible. Will it not indeed be strange if the author of "Othello" and
+"Hamlet" is destin'd to live in America, in a generation or two, less as
+the cunning draughtsman of the passions, and more as putting on record
+the first full expose--and by far the most vivid one, immeasurably ahead
+of doctrinaires and economists--of the political theory and results, or
+the reason-why and necessity for them which America has come on earth to
+abnegate and replace?
+
+The summary of my suggestion would be, therefore, that while the more
+the rich and tangled jungle of the Shaksperean area is travers'd and
+studied, and the more baffled and mix'd, as so far appears, becomes the
+exploring student (who at last surmises everything, and remains certain
+of nothing,) it is possible a future age of criticism, diving deeper,
+mapping the land and lines freer, completer than hitherto, may discover
+in the plays named the scientific (Baconian?) inauguration of modern
+democracy--furnishing realistic and first-class artistic portraitures
+of the mediaeval world, the feudal personalities, institutes, in their
+morbid accumulations, deposits, upon politics and sociology,--may
+penetrate to that hard-pan, far down and back of the ostent of to-day,
+on which (and on which only) the progressism of the last two centuries
+has built this Democracy which now hold's secure lodgment over the whole
+civilized world.
+
+Whether such was the unconscious, or (as I think likely) the more
+or less conscious, purpose of him who fashion'd those marvellous
+architectonics, is a secondary question.
+
+
+
+
+A THOUGHT ON SHAKSPERE
+
+
+The most distinctive poems--the most permanently rooted and with
+heartiest reason for being--the copious cycle of Arthurian legends, or
+the almost equally copious Charlemagne cycle, or the poems of the Cid,
+or Scandinavian Eddas, or Nibelungen, or Chaucer, or Spenser, or _bona
+fide_ Ossian, or Inferno--probably had their rise in the great historic
+perturbations, which they came in to sum up and confirm, indirectly
+embodying results to date. Then however precious to "culture," the
+grandest of those poems, it may be said, preserve and typify results
+offensive to the modern spirit, and long past away. To state it briefly,
+and taking the strongest examples, in Homer lives the ruthless military
+prowess of Greece, and of its special god-descended dynastic houses;
+in Shakspere the dragon-rancors and stormy feudal Splendor of mediaeval
+caste.
+
+Poetry, largely consider'd, is an evolution, sending out improved
+and-ever-expanded types--in one sense, the past, even the best of it,
+necessarily giving place, and dying out. For our existing world,
+the bases on which all the grand old poems were built have become
+vacuums--and even those of many comparatively modern ones are broken and
+half-gone. For us to-day, not their own intrinsic value, vast as that
+is, backs and maintains those poems--but a mountain-high growth of
+associations, the layers of successive ages. Everywhere--their own lands
+included--(is there not something terrible in the tenacity with which
+the one book out of millions holds its grip?)--the Homeric and Virgilian
+works, the interminable ballad-romances of the middle ages, the
+utterances of Dante, Spenser, and others, are upheld by their
+cumulus-entrenchment in scholarship, and as precious, always welcome,
+unspeakably valuable reminiscences.
+
+Even the one who at present reigns unquestion'd--of Shakspere--for all
+he stands for so much in modern literature, he stands entirely for
+the mighty esthetic sceptres of the past, not for the spiritual
+and democratic, the sceptres of the future. The inward and outward
+characteristics of Shakspere are his vast and rich variety of persons
+and themes, with his wondrous delineation of each and all,--not only
+limitless funds of verbal and pictorial resource, but great excess,
+superfoetation--mannerism, like a fine, aristocratic perfume, holding
+a touch of musk (Euphues, his mark)--with boundless sumptuousness and
+adornment, real velvet and gems, not shoddy nor paste--but a good deal
+of bombast and fustian--(certainly some terrific mouthing in Shakspere!)
+
+Superb and inimitable as all is, it is mostly an objective and
+physiological kind of power and beauty the soul finds in Shakspere--a
+style supremely grand of the sort, but in my opinion stopping short of
+the grandest sort, at any rate for fulfilling and satisfying modern and
+scientific and democratic American purposes. Think, not of growths as
+forests primeval, or Yellowstone geysers, or Colorado ravines, but of
+costly marble palaces, and palace rooms, and the noblest fixings and
+furniture, and noble owners and occupants to correspond--think of
+carefully built gardens from the beautiful but sophisticated gardening
+art at its best, with walks and bowers and artificial lakes, and
+appropriate statue-groups and the finest cultivated roses and lilies
+and japonicas in plenty--and you have the tally of Shakspere. The
+low characters, mechanics, even the loyal henchmen--all in themselves
+nothing--serve as capital foils to the aristocracy. The comedies
+(exquisite as they certainly are) bringing in admirably portray'd common
+characters, have the unmistakable hue of plays, portraits, made for the
+divertisement only of the elite of the castle, and from its point
+of view. The comedies are altogether non-acceptable to America and
+Democracy.
+
+But to the deepest soul, it seems a shame to pick and choose from
+the riches Shakspere has left us--to criticise his infinitely royal,
+multiform quality--to gauge, with optic glasses, the dazzle of his
+sun-like beams.
+
+The best poetic utterance, after all, can merely hint, or remind, often
+very indirectly, or at distant removes. Aught of real perfection, or the
+solution of any deep problem, or any completed statement of the moral,
+the true, the beautiful, eludes the greatest, deftest poet--flies away
+like an always uncaught bird.
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT BURNS AS POET AND PERSON
+
+
+What the future will decide about Robert Burns and his works--what place
+will be assign'd them on that great roster of geniuses and genius which
+can only be finish'd by the slow but sure balancing of the centuries
+with their ample average--I of course cannot tell. But as we know him,
+from his recorded utterances, and after nearly one century, and its
+diligence of collections, songs, letters, anecdotes, presenting the
+figure of the canny Scotchman in a fullness and detail wonderfully
+complete, and the lines mainly by his own hand, he forms to-day, in some
+respects, the most interesting personality among singers. Then there are
+many things in Burns's poems and character that specially endear him to
+America. He was essentially a Republican--would have been at home in
+the Western United States, and probably become eminent there. He was
+an average sample of the good-natured, warm-blooded, proud-spirited,
+amative, alimentive, convivial, young and early-middle-aged man of the
+decent-born middle classes everywhere and any how. Without the race of
+which he is a distinct specimen, (and perhaps his poems) America and
+her powerful Democracy could not exist to-day--could not project with
+unparallel'd historic sway into the future.
+
+Perhaps the peculiar coloring of the era of Burns needs always first
+to be consider'd. It included the times of the '76-'83 Revolution in
+America, of the French Revolution, and an unparallel'd chaos development
+in Europe and elsewhere. In every department, shining and strange names,
+like stars, some rising, some in meridian, some declining--Voltaire,
+Franklin, Washington, Kant, Goethe, Fulton, Napoleon, mark the era.
+And while so much, and of grandest moment, fit for the trumpet of the
+world's fame, was being transacted--that little tragi-comedy of R. B,'s
+life and death was going on in a country by-place in Scotland!
+
+Burns's correspondence, generally collected and publish'd since his
+death, gives wonderful glints into both the amiable and weak (and worse
+than weak) parts of his portraiture, habits, good and bad luck, ambition
+and associations. His letters to Mrs. Dunlop, Mrs. McLehose, (Clarinda,)
+Mr. Thompson, Dr. Moore, Robert Muir, Mr. Cunningham, Miss Margaret
+Chalmers, Peter Hill, Richard Brown, Mrs. Riddel, Robert Ainslie, and
+Robert Graham, afford valuable lights and shades to the outline, and
+with numerous others, help to a touch here, and fill-in there, of
+poet and poems. There are suspicions, it is true, of "the Genteel
+Letter-Writer," with scraps and words from "the Manual of French
+Quotations," and, in the love-letters, some hollow mouthings. Yet we
+wouldn't on any account lack the letters. A full and true portrait is
+always what is wanted; veracity at every hazard. Besides, do we not
+all see by this time that the story of Burns, even for its own sake,
+requires the record of the whole and several, with nothing left out?
+Completely and every point minutely told out its fullest, explains and
+justifies itself--(as perhaps almost any life does.) He is very close
+to the earth. He pick'd up his best words and tunes directly from the
+Scotch home-singers, but tells Thompson they would not please his, T.'s,
+"learn'd lugs," adding, "I call them simple--you would pronounce them
+silly." Yes, indeed; the idiom was undoubtedly his happiest hit. Yet
+Dr. Moore, in 1789, writes to Burns, "If I were to offer an opinion, it
+would be that in your future productions you should abandon the Scotch
+stanza and dialect, and adopt the measure and language of modern English
+poetry"!
+
+As the 128th birth-anniversary of the poet draws on, (January, 1887,)
+with its increasing club-suppers, vehement celebrations, letters,
+speeches, and so on--(mostly, as William O'Connor says, from people who
+would not have noticed R. B. at all during his actual life, nor kept
+his company, or read his verses, on any account)--it may be opportune
+to print some leisurely-jotted notes I find in my budget. I take my
+observation of the Scottish bard by considering him as an individual
+amid the crowded clusters, galaxies, of the old world--and fairly
+inquiring and suggesting what out of these myriads he too may be to
+the Western Republic. In the first place no poet on record so fully
+bequeaths his own personal magnetism,[39] nor illustrates more pointedly
+how one's verses, by time and reading, can so curiously fuse with the
+versifier's own life and death, and give final light and shade to all.
+
+I would say a large part of the fascination of Burns's homely, simple
+dialect-melodies is due, for all current and future readers, to
+the poet's personal "errors," the general bleakness of his lot, his
+ingrain'd pensiveness, his brief dash into dazzling, tantalizing,
+evanescent sunshine--finally culminating in those last years of
+his life, his being taboo'd and in debt, sick and sore, yaw'd as by
+contending gales, deeply dissatisfied with everything, most of all with
+himself--high-spirited too--(no man ever really higher-spirited than
+Robert Burns.) I think it a perfectly legitimate part too. At any rate
+it has come to be an impalpable aroma through which only both the songs
+and their singer must henceforth be read and absorb'd. Through that
+view-medium of misfortune--of a noble spirit in low environments, and of
+a squalid and premature death--we view the undoubted facts, (giving, as
+we read them now, a sad kind of pungency,) that Burns's were, before all
+else, the lyrics of illicit loves and carousing intoxication. Perhaps
+even it is this strange, impalpable _post-mortem_ comment and influence
+referr'd to, that gives them their contrast, attraction, making the
+zest of their author's after fame. If he had lived steady, fat, moral,
+comfortable, well-to-do years, on his own grade, (let alone, what of
+course was out of the question, the ease and velvet and rosewood and
+copious royalties of Tennyson or Victor Hugo or Longfellow,) and died
+well-ripen'd and respectable, where could have come in that burst
+of passionate sobbing and remorse which well'd forth instantly
+and generally in Scotland, and soon follow'd everywhere among
+English-speaking races, on the announcement of his death? and which,
+with no sign of stopping, only regulated and vein'd with fitting
+appreciation, flows deeply, widely yet?
+
+Dear Rob! manly, witty, fond, friendly, full of weak spots as well as
+strong ones-essential type of so many thousands--perhaps the average, as
+just said, of the decent-born young men and the early mid-aged, not only
+of the British Isles, but America, too, North and South, just the same.
+I think, indeed, one best part of Burns is the unquestionable proof
+he presents of the perennial existence among the laboring classes,
+especially farmers, of the finest latent poetic elements in their blood.
+(How clear it is to me that the common soil has always been, and is now,
+thickly strewn with just such gems.) He is well-called the _Ploughman_.
+"Holding the plough," said his brother Gilbert, "was the favorite
+situation with Robert for poetic compositions; and some of his best
+verses were produced while he was at that exercise." "I must return
+to my humble station, and woo my rustic muse in my wonted way, at the
+plough-tail." 1787, to the Earl of Buchan. He has no high ideal of the
+poet or the poet's office; indeed quite a low and contracted notion of
+both:
+
+    "Fortune! if thou'll but gie me still
+    Hale breeks, a scone, and whiskey gill,
+    An' rowth o' rhyme to rave at will,
+    Tak' a' the rest."
+
+See also his rhym'd letters to Robert Graham invoking patronage; "one
+stronghold," Lord Glencairn, being dead, now these appeals to "Fintra,
+my other stay," (with in one letter a copious shower of vituperation
+generally.) In his collected poems there is no particular unity, nothing
+that can be called a leading theory, no unmistakable spine or skeleton.
+Perhaps, indeed, their very desultoriness is the charm of his songs: "I
+take up one or another," he says in a letter to Thompson, "just as the
+bee of the moment buzzes in my bonnet-lug."
+
+Consonantly with the customs of the time--yet markedly inconsistent in
+spirit with Burns's own case, (and not a little painful as it remains
+on record, as depicting some features of the bard himself,) the relation
+called _patronage_ existed between the nobility and gentry on one
+side, and literary people on the other, and gives one of the strongest
+side-lights to the general coloring of poems and poets. It crops out a
+good deal in Burns's Letters, and even necessitated a certain flunkeyism
+on occasions, through life. It probably, with its requirements, (while
+it help'd in money and countenance) did as much as any one cause in
+making that life a chafed and unhappy one, ended by a premature and
+miserable death.
+
+Yes, there is something about Burns peculiarly acceptable to the
+concrete, human points of view. He poetizes work-a-day agricultural
+labor and life, (whose spirit and sympathies, as well as practicalities,
+are much the same everywhere,) and treats fresh, often coarse, natural
+occurrences, loves, persons, not like many new and some old poets in a
+genteel style of gilt and china, or at second or third removes, but in
+their own born atmosphere, laughter, sweat, unction. Perhaps no one ever
+sang "lads and lasses"--that universal race, mainly the same, too, all
+ages, all lands--down on their own plane, as he has. He exhibits
+no philosophy worth mentioning; his morality is hardly more than
+parrot-talk--not bad or deficient, but cheap, shopworn, the platitudes
+of old aunts and uncles to the youngsters (be good boys and keep your
+noses clean.) Only when he gets at Poosie Nansie's, celebrating the
+"barley bree," or among tramps, or democratic bouts and drinking
+generally,
+
+    ("Freedom and whiskey gang the gither.")
+
+we have, in his own unmistakable color and warmth, those interiors
+of rake-helly life and tavern fun--the cantabile of jolly beggars in
+highest jinks--lights and groupings of rank glee and brawny amorousness,
+outvying the best painted pictures of the Dutch school, or any school.
+
+By America and her democracy such a poet, I cannot too often repeat,
+must be kept in loving remembrance; but it is best that discriminations
+be made. His admirers (as at those anniversary suppers, over the "hot
+Scotch") will not accept for their favorite anything less than the
+highest rank, alongside of Homer, Shakspere, etc. Such, in candor, are
+not the true friends of the Ayrshire bard, who really needs a different
+place quite by himself. The Iliad and the Odyssey express courage,
+craft, full-grown heroism in situations of danger, the sense of command
+and leadership, emulation, the last and fullest evolution of self-poise
+as in kings, and god-like even while animal appetites. The Shaksperean
+compositions, on vertebers and frame-work of the primary passions,
+portray (essentially the same as Homer's,) the spirit and letter of the
+feudal world, the Norman lord, ambitious and arrogant, taller and
+nobler than common men--with much underplay and gusts of heat and cold,
+volcanoes and stormy seas. Burns (and some will say to his credit)
+attempts none of these themes. He poetizes the humor, riotous blood,
+sulks, amorous torments, fondness for the tavern and for cheap objective
+nature, with disgust at the grim and narrow ecclesiasticism of his
+time and land, of a young farmer on a bleak and hired farm in Scotland,
+through the years and under the circumstances of the British politics
+of that time, and of his short personal career as author, from 1783 to
+1796. He is intuitive and affectionate, and just emerged or emerging
+from the shackles of the kirk, from poverty, ignorance, and from his
+own rank appetites--(out of which latter, however, he never extricated
+himself.) It is to be said that amid not a little smoke and gas in his
+poems, there is in almost every piece a spark of fire, and now and then
+the real afflatus. He has been applauded as democratic, and with some
+warrant; while Shakspere, and with the greatest warrant, has been called
+monarchical or aristocratic (which he certainly is.) But the splendid
+personalizations of Shakspere, formulated on the largest, freest, most
+heroic, most artistic mould, are to me far dearer as lessons, and more
+precious even as models for Democracy, than the humdrum samples
+Burns presents. The motives of some of his effusions are certainly
+discreditable personally--one or two of them markedly so. He has,
+moreover, little or no spirituality. This last is his mortal flaw and
+defect, tried by highest standards. The ideal he never reach'd (and yet
+I think he leads the way to it.) He gives melodies, and now and then the
+simplest and sweetest ones; but harmonies, complications, oratorios in
+words, never. (I do not speak this in any deprecatory sense. Blessed be
+the memory of the warm-hearted Scotchman for what he has left us, just
+as it is!) He likewise did not know himself, in more ways than one.
+Though so really fret and independent, he prided himself in his songs on
+being a reactionist and a Jacobite--on persistent sentimental adherency
+to the cause of the Stuarts--the weakest, thinnest, most faithless,
+brainless dynasty that ever held a throne.
+
+Thus, while Burns is not at all great for New World study, in the
+sense that Isaiah and Eschylus and the book of Job are unquestionably
+great--is not to be mention'd with Shakspere--hardly even with current
+Tennyson or our Emerson--he has a nestling niche of his own, all
+fragrant, fond, and quaint and homely--a lodge built near but outside
+the mighty temple of the gods of song and art--those universal strivers,
+through their works of harmony and melody and power, to ever show or
+intimate man's crowning, last, victorious fusion in himself of Real
+and Ideal. Precious, too--fit and precious beyond all singers, high
+or low--will Burns ever be to the native Scotch, especially to the
+working-classes of North Britain; so intensely one of them, and so racy
+of the soil, sights, and local customs. He often apostrophizes Scotland,
+and is, or would be, enthusiastically patriotic. His country has lately
+commemorated him in a statue.[40] His aim is declaredly to be 'a Rustic
+Bard.' His poems were all written in youth or young manhood, (he was
+little more than a young man when he died.) His collected works in
+giving everything, are nearly one half first drafts. His brightest hit
+is his use of the Scotch patois, so full of terms flavor'd like wild
+fruits or berries. Then I should make an allowance to Burns which cannot
+be made for any other poet. Curiously even the frequent crudeness,
+haste, deficiencies, (flatness and puerilities by no means absent) prove
+upon the whole not out of keeping in any comprehensive collection of
+his works, heroically printed, "following copy," every piece, every line
+according to originals. Other poets might tremble for such boldness,
+such rawness. In "this odd-kind chiel" such points hardly mar the
+rest. Not only are they in consonance with the underlying spirit of the
+pieces, but complete the full abandon and veracity of the farm-fields
+and the home-brew'd flavor of the Scotch vernacular. (Is there not
+often something in the very neglect, unfinish, careless nudity, slovenly
+hiatus, coming from intrinsic genius, and not "put on," that secretly
+pleases the soul more than the wrought and re-wrought polish of the most
+perfect verse?) Mark the native spice and untranslatable twang in the
+very names of his songs-"O for ane and twenty, Tam," "John Barleycorn,"
+"Last May a braw Wooer," "Rattlin roarin Willie," "O wert thou in the
+cauld, cauld blast," "Gude e'en to you, Kimmer," "Merry hae I been
+teething a Heckle," "O lay thy loof in mine, lass," and others.
+
+The longer and more elaborated poems of Burns are just such as would
+please a natural but homely taste, and cute but average intellect, and
+are inimitable in their way. The "Twa Dogs," (one of the best) with the
+conversation between Cesar and Luath, the "Brigs of Ayr," "the Cotter's
+Saturday Night," "Tam O'Shanter"--all will be long read and re-read and
+admired, and ever deserve to be. With nothing profound in any of them,
+what there is of moral and plot has an inimitably fresh and racy flavor.
+If it came to question, Literature could well afford to send adrift many
+a pretensive poem, and even book of poems, before it could spare these
+compositions.
+
+Never indeed was there truer utterance in a certain range of
+idiosyncrasy than by this poet. Hardly a piece of his, large or small,
+but has "snap" and raciness. He puts in cantering rhyme (often
+doggerel) much cutting irony and idiomatic ear-cuffing of the
+kirk-deacons--drilygood-natured addresses to his cronies, (he certainly
+would not stop us if he were here this moment, from classing that
+"to the De'il" among them)--"to Mailie and her Lambs," "to auld Mare
+Maggie," "to a Mouse,"
+
+    "Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie:"
+
+"to a Mountain Daisy," "to a Haggis," "to a Louse," "to the Toothache,"
+&c.--and occasionally to his brother bards and lady or gentleman
+patrons, often with strokes of tenderest sensibility, idiopathic humor,
+and genuine poetic imagination--still oftener with shrewd, original,
+sheeny, steel-flashes of wit, home-spun sense, or lance-blade
+puncturing. Then, strangely, the basis of Burns's character, with all
+its fun and manliness, was hypochondria, the blues, palpable enough in
+"Despondency," "Man was made to Mourn," "Address to Ruin," a "Bard's
+Epitaph," &c. From such deep-down elements sprout up, in very contrast
+and paradox, those riant utterances of which a superficial reading will
+not detect the hidden foundation. Yet nothing is clearer to me than
+the black and desperate background behind those pieces--as I shall now
+specify them. I find his most characteristic, Nature's masterly touch
+and luxuriant life-blood, color and heat, not in "Tam O'Shanter," "the
+Cotter's Saturday Night," "Scots wha hae," "Highland Mary," "the Twa
+Dogs," and the like, but in "the Jolly Beggars," "Rigs of Barley,"
+"Scotch Drink," "the Epistle to John Rankine," "Holy Willie's Prayer,"
+and in "Halloween," (to say nothing of a certain cluster, known still to
+a small inner circle in Scotland, but, for good reasons, not published
+anywhere.) In these compositions, especially the first, there is much
+indelicacy (some editions flatly leave it out,) but the composer reigns
+alone, with handling free and broad and true, and is an artist. You may
+see and feel the man indirectly in his other verses, all of them,
+with more or less life-likeness--but these I have named last call out
+pronouncedly in his own voice,
+
+    "I, Rob, am here."
+
+Finally, in any summing-up of Burns, though so much is to be said in the
+way of fault-finding, drawing black marks, and doubtless severe literary
+criticism--(in the present outpouring I have "kept myself in," rather
+than allow'd any free flow)--after full retrospect of his works and
+life, the aforesaid "odd-kind chiel" remains to my heart and brain as
+almost the tenderest, manliest, and (even if contradictory) dearest
+flesh-and-blood figure in all the streams and clusters of by-gone poets.
+
+
+Notes:
+
+[39] Probably no man that ever lived--a friend has made the
+statement--was so fondly loved, both by men and women, as Robert Burns.
+The reason is not hard to find: he had a real heart of flesh and blood
+beating in his bosom; you could almost hear it throb. "Some one said,
+that if you had shaken hands with him his hand would have burnt yours.
+The gods, indeed, made him poetical, but Nature had a hand in him first.
+His heart was in the right place; he did not pile up cantos of poetic
+diction; he pluck'd the mountain daisy under his feet; he wrote of
+field-mouse hurrying from its ruin'd dwelling. He held the plough or the
+pen with the same firm, manly grasp. And he was loved. The simple roll
+of the women who gave him their affection and their sympathy would make
+a long manuscript; and most of these were of such noble worth that, as
+Robert Chambers says, 'their character may stand as a testimony in favor
+of that of Burns.'" [As I understand, the foregoing is from an extremely
+rare book publish'd by M'Kie, in Kilmarnock. I find the whole beautiful
+paragraph in a capital paper on Burns, by Amelia Barr.]
+
+[40] The Dumfries statue of Robert Burns was successfully unveil'd April
+1881 by Lord Rosebery, the occasion having been made national in its
+character. Before the ceremony, a large procession paraded the streets
+of the town, all the trades and societies of that part of Scotland
+being represented, at the head of which went dairymen and ploughmen,
+the former driving their carts and being accompanied by their maids. The
+statue is of Sicilian marble. It rests on a pedestal of gray stone five
+feet high. The poet is represented as sitting easily on an old tree
+root, holding in his left hand a cluster of daisies. His face is turn'd
+toward the right shoulder, and the eyes gaze into the distance. Near by
+lie a collie dog, a broad bonnet half covering a well-thumb'd song-book,
+and a rustic flageolet. The costume is taken from the Nasmyth portrait,
+which has been follow'd for the features of the face.
+
+
+
+
+A WORD ABOUT TENNYSON
+
+
+Beautiful as the song was, the original "Locksley Hall" of half a
+century ago was essentially morbid, heart-broken, finding fault with
+everything, especially the fact of money's being made (as it ever must
+be, and perhaps should be) the paramount matter in worldly affairs;
+
+    Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden keys.
+
+First, a father, having fallen in battle, his child (the singer)
+
+    Was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward.
+
+Of course love ensues. The woman in the chant or monologue proves a
+false one; and as far as appears the ideal of woman, in the poet's
+reflections, is a false one--at any rate for America. Woman is _not_
+"the lesser man." (The heart is not the brain.) The best of the piece of
+fifty years since is its concluding line:
+
+    For the mighty wind arises roaring seaward and I go.
+
+Then for this current 1886-7, a just-out sequel, which (as an apparently
+authentic summary says) "reviews the life of mankind during the past
+sixty years, and comes to the conclusion that its boasted progress is of
+doubtful credit to the world in general and to England in particular. A
+cynical vein of denunciation of democratic opinions and aspirations runs
+throughout the poem in mark'd contrast with the spirit of the poet's
+youth." Among the most striking lines of this sequel are the following:
+
+    Envy wears the mask of love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn,
+    Cries to weakest as to strongest, 'Ye are equals, equal born,'
+    Equal-born! Oh yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat.
+    Charm us, orator, till the lion look no larger than the cat:
+    Till the cat, through that mirage of overheated language, loom
+    Larger than the lion Demo--end in working its own doom.
+    Tumble Nature heel o'er head, and, yelling with the yelling street,
+    Set the feet above the brain, and swear the brain is in the feet,
+    Bring the old dark ages back, without the faith, without the hope.
+    Beneath the State, the Church, the Throne, and roll their ruins down
+      the slope.
+
+I should say that all this is a legitimate consequence of the tone
+and convictions of the earlier standards and points of view. Then some
+reflections, down to the hard-pan of this sort of thing.
+
+The course of progressive politics (democracy) is so certain and
+resistless, not only in America but in Europe, that we can well afford
+the warning calls, threats, checks, neutralizings, in imaginative
+literature, or any department, of such deep-sounding, and high-soaring
+voices as Carlyle's and Tennyson's. Nay, the blindness, excesses, of the
+prevalent tendency--the dangers of the urgent trends of our times--in my
+opinion, need such voices almost more than any. I should, too, call it
+a signal instance of democratic humanity's luck that it has such enemies
+to contend with--so candid, so fervid, so heroic. But why do I say
+enemies? Upon the whole is not Tennyson--and was not Carlyle (like an
+honest and stern physician)--the true friend of our age?
+
+Let me assume to pass verdict, or perhaps momentary judgment, for the
+United States on this poet--a remov'd and distant position giving some
+advantages over a nigh one. What is Tennyson's service to his race,
+times, and especially to America? First, I should say--or at least not
+forget--his personal character. He is not to be mention'das a rugged,
+evolutionary, aboriginal force--but (and a great lesson is in it) he has
+been consistent throughout with the native, healthy, patriotic
+spinal element and promptings of himself. His moral line is local and
+conventional, but it is vital and genuine. He reflects the uppercrust of
+his time, its pale cast of thought--even its _ennui_. Then the simile
+of my friend John Burroughs is entirely true, "his glove is a glove of
+silk, but the hand is a hand of iron." He shows how one can be a royal
+laureate, quite elegant and "aristocratic," and a little queer and
+affected, and at the same time perfectly manly and natural. As to his
+non-democracy, it fits him well, and I like him the better for it. I
+guess we all like to have (I am sure I do) some one who presents those
+sides of a thought, or possibility, different from our own--different
+and yet with a sort of home-likeness--a tartness and contradiction
+offsetting the theory as we view it, and construed from tastes and
+proclivities not at all his own.
+
+To me, Tennyson shows more than any poet I know (perhaps has been a
+warning to me) how much there is in finest verbalism. There is such
+a latent charm in mere words, cunning collocutions, and in the voice
+ringing them, which he has caught and brought out, beyond all others--as
+in the line,
+
+    And hollow, hollow, hollow, all delight,
+
+in "The Passing of Arthur," and evidenced in "The Lady of Shalott," "The
+Deserted House," and many other pieces. Among the best (I often linger
+over them again and again) are "Lucretius," "The Lotos Eaters," and "The
+Northern Farmer." His mannerism is great, but it is a noble and welcome
+mannerism. His very best work, to me, is contain'd in the books of "The
+Idylls of the King," and all that has grown out of them. Though
+indeed we could spare nothing of Tennyson, however small or however
+peculiar--not "Break, Break," nor "Flower in the Crannied Wall," nor the
+old, eternally-told passion of "Edward Gray:"
+
+    Love may come and love may go,
+    And fly like a bird from tree to tree.
+    But I will love no more, no more
+    Till Ellen Adair come back to me.
+
+Yes, Alfred Tennyson's is a superb character, and will help give
+illustriousness, through the long roll of time, to our Nineteenth
+Century. In its bunch of orbic names, shining like a constellation
+of stars, his will be one of the brightest. His very faults, doubts,
+swervings, doublings upon himself, have been typical of our age. We are
+like the voyagers of a ship, casting off for new seas, distant shores.
+We would still dwell in the old suffocating and dead haunts, remembering
+and magnifying their pleasant experiences only, and more than once
+impell'd to jump ashore before it is too late, and stay where our
+fathers stay'd, and live as they lived.
+
+May-be I am non-literary and non-decorous (let me at least be human, and
+pay part of my debt) in this word about Tennyson. I want him to realize
+that here is a great and ardent Nation that absorbs his songs, and has
+a respect and affection for him personally, as almost for no other
+foreigner. I want this word to go to the old man at Farringford as
+conveying no more than the simple truth; and that truth (a little
+Christmas gift) no slight one either. I have written impromptu, and
+shall let it all go at that. The readers of more than fifty millions of
+people in the New World not only owe to him some of their most agreeable
+and harmless and healthy hours, but he has enter'd into the formative
+influences of character here, not only in the Atlantic cities, but
+inland and far West, out in Missouri, in Kansas, and away in Oregon, in
+farmer's house and miner's cabin.
+
+Best thanks, anyhow, to Alfred Tennyson--thanks and appreciation in
+America's name.
+
+
+
+
+SLANG IN AMERICA
+
+
+View'd freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every
+dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted
+composition of all. From this point of view, it stands for Language in
+the largest sense, and is really the greatest of studies. It involves so
+much; is indeed a sort of universal absorber, combiner, and conqueror.
+The scope of its etymologies is the scope not only of man and
+civilization, but the history of Nature in all departments, and of the
+organic Universe, brought up to date; for all are comprehended in words,
+and their backgrounds. This is when words become vitaliz'd, and stand
+for things, as they unerringly and soon come to do, in the mind that
+enters on their study with fitting spirit, grasp, and appreciation.
+
+Slang, profoundly consider'd, is the lawless germinal element, below
+all words and sentences, and behind all poetry, and proves a certain
+perennial rankness and protestantism in speech. As the United States
+inherit by far their most precious possession--the language they talk
+and write--from the Old World, under and out of its feudal institutes,
+I will allow myself to borrow a simile even of those forms farthest
+removed from American Democracy. Considering Language then as some
+mighty potentate, into the majestic audience-hall of the monarch ever
+enters a personage like one of Shakspere's clowns, and takes position
+there, and plays a part even in the stateliest ceremonies. Such is
+Slang, or indirection, an attempt of common humanity to escape from
+bald literalism, and express itself illimitably, which in highest walks
+produces poets and poems, and doubtless in pre-historic times gave
+the start to, and perfected, the whole immense tangle of the old
+mythologies. For, curious as it may appear, it is strictly the
+same impulse-source, the same thing. Slang, too, is the wholesome
+fermentation or eructation of those processes eternally active in
+language, by which froth and specks are thrown up, mostly to pass away;
+though occasionally to settle and permanently crystallize.
+
+To make it plainer, it is certain that many of the oldest and solidest
+words we use, were originally generated from the daring and license of
+slang. In the processes of word-formation, myriads die, but here and
+there the attempt attracts superior meanings, becomes valuable and
+indispensable, and lives forever. Thus the term _right_ means literally
+only straight. _Wrong_ primarily meant twisted, distorted. _Integrity_
+meant oneness. _Spirit_ meant breath, or flame. A _supercilious_ person
+was one who rais'd his eyebrows. To _insult_ was to leap against. If you
+_influenced_ a man, you but flow'd into him. The Hebrew word which is
+translated _prophesy_ meant to bubble up and pour forth as a fountain.
+The enthusiast bubbles up with the Spirit of God within him, and
+it pours forth from him like a fountain. The word prophecy is
+misunderstood. Many suppose that it is limited to mere prediction; that
+is but the lesser portion of prophecy. The greater work is to reveal
+God. Every true religious enthusiast is a prophet.
+
+Language, be it remember'd, is not an abstract construction of the
+learn'd, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the
+work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of
+humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. Its
+final decisions are made by the masses, people nearest the concrete,
+having most to do with actual land and sea. It impermeates all, the
+Past as well as the Present, and is the grandest triumph of the human
+intellect. "Those mighty works of art," says Addington Symonds,
+"which we call languages, in the construction of which whole peoples
+unconsciously co-operated, the forms of which were determin'd not by
+individual genius, but by the instincts of successive generations,
+acting to one end, inherent in the nature of the race--Those poems of
+pure thought and fancy, cadenced not in words, but in living imagery,
+fountain-heads of inspiration, mirrors of the mind of nascent nations,
+which we call Mythologies--these surely are more marvellous in their
+infantine spontaneity than any more mature production of the races which
+evolv'd them. Yet we are utterly ignorant of their embryology; the true
+science of Origins is yet in its cradle."
+
+Daring as it is to say so, in the growth of Language it is certain that
+the retrospect of slang from the start would be the recalling from
+their nebulous conditions of all that is poetical in the stores of human
+utterance. Moreover, the honest delving, as of late years, by the German
+and British workers in comparative philology, has pierc'd and dispers'd
+many of the falsest bubbles of centuries; and will disperse many more.
+It was long recorded that in Scandinavian mythology the heroes in the
+Norse Paradise drank out of the skulls of their slain enemies. Later
+investigation proves the word taken for skulls to mean _horns_ of beasts
+slain in the hunt. And what reader had not been exercis'd over the
+traces of that feudal custom, by which _seigneurs_ warm'd their feet in
+the bowels of serfs, the abdomen being open'd for the purpose? It now
+is made to appear that the serf was only required to submit his unharm'd
+abdomen as a foot cushion while his lord supp' d, and was required to
+chafe the legs of the seigneur with his hands.
+
+It is curiously in embryons and childhood, and among the illiterate,
+we always find the groundwork and start, of this great science, and its
+noblest products. What a relief most people have in speaking of a man
+not by his true and formal name, with a "Mister" to it, but by some odd
+or homely appellative. The propensity to approach a meaning not directly
+and squarely, but by circuitous styles of expression, seems indeed a
+born quality of the common people everywhere, evidenced by nick-names,
+and the inveterate determination of the masses to bestow sub-titles,
+sometimes ridiculous, sometimes very apt. Always among the soldiers
+during the secession war, one heard of "Little Mac" (Gen. McClellan),
+or of "Uncle Billy" (Gen. Sherman.) "The old man" was, of course, very
+common. Among the rank and file, both armies, it was very general to
+speak of the different States they came from by their slang names.
+Those from Maine were call'd Foxes; New Hampshire, Granite Boys;
+Massachusetts, Bay Staters; Vermont, Green Mountain Boys; Rhode Island,
+Gun Flints; Connecticut, Wooden Nutmegs; New York, Knickerbockers; New
+Jersey, Clam Catchers; Pennsylvania, Logher Heads; Delaware, Muskrats;
+Maryland, Claw Thumpers; Virginia, Beagles; North Carolina, Tar Boilers;
+South Carolina, Weasels; Georgia, Buzzards; Louisiana, Creoles; Alabama,
+Lizards; Kentucky, Corn Crackers; Ohio, Buckeyes; Michigan, Wolverines;
+Indiana, Hoosiers; Illinois, Suckers; Missouri, Pukes; Mississippi,
+Tadpoles; Florida, Fly up the Creeks; Wisconsin, Badgers; Iowa,
+Hawkeyes; Oregon, Hard Cases. Indeed I am not sure but slang names have
+more than once made Presidents. "Old Hickory," (Gen. Jackson) is one
+case in point. "Tippecanoe, and Tyler too," another.
+
+I find the same rule in the people's conversations everywhere. I heard
+this among the men of the city horse-cars, where the conductor is
+often call'd a "snatcher" (i. e. because his characteristic duty is to
+constantly pull or snatch the bell-strap, to stop or go on.) Two young
+fellows are having a friendly talk, amid which, says 1st conductor,
+"What did you do before you was a snatcher?" Answer of 2d conductor,
+"Nail'd." (Translation of answer: "I work'd as carpenter.") What is a
+"boom"? says one editor to another. "Esteem'd contemporary," says the
+other, "a boom is a bulge." "Barefoot whiskey" is the Tennessee name for
+the undiluted stimulant. In the slang of the New York common restaurant
+waiters a plate of ham and beans is known as "stars and stripes,"
+codfish balls as "sleeve-buttons," and hash as "mystery."
+
+The Western States of the Union are, however, as may be supposed,
+the special areas of slang, not only in conversation, but in names of
+localities, towns, rivers, etc. A late Oregon traveller says:
+
+"On your way to Olympia by rail, you cross a river called the
+Shookum-Chuck; your train stops at places named Newaukum, Tumwater, and
+Toutle; and if you seek further you will hear of whole counties labell'
+d Wahkiakum, or Snohomish, or Kitsar, or Klikatat; and Cowlitz, Hookium,
+and Nenolelops greet and offend you. They complain in Olympia that
+Washington Territory gets but little immigration; but what wonder? What
+man, having the whole American continent to choose from, would willingly
+date his letters from the county of Snohomish or bring up his children
+in the city of Nenolelops? The village of Tumwater is, as I am ready
+to bear witness, very pretty indeed; but surely an emigrant would think
+twice before he establish' d himself either there or at Toutle. Seattle
+is sufficiently barbarous; Stelicoom is no better; and I suspect that
+the Northern Pacific Railroad terminus has been fixed at Tacoma because
+it is one of the few places on Puget Sound whose name does not inspire
+horror."
+
+Then a Nevada paper chronicles the departure of a mining party from
+Reno: "The toughest set of roosters that ever shook the dust off any
+town left Reno yesterday for the new mining district of Cornucopia.
+They came here from Virginia. Among the crowd were four New York
+cock-fighters, two Chicago murderers, three Baltimore bruisers, one
+Philadelphia prize-fighter, four San Francisco hoodlums, three Virginia
+beats, two Union Pacific roughs, and two check guerrillas." Among
+the far-west newspapers, have been, or are, _The Fairplay_ (Colorado)
+_Flume, The Solid Muldoon_, of Ouray, _The Tombstone Epitaph_, of
+Nevada, _The Jimplecute_, of Texas, and _The Bazoo_, of Missouri.
+Shirttail Bend, Whiskey Flat, Puppytown, Wild Yankee Ranch, Squaw Flat,
+Rawhide Ranch, Loafer's Ravine, Squitch Gulch, Toenail Lake, are a few
+of the names of places in Butte county, Cal.
+
+Perhaps indeed no place or term gives more luxuriant illustrations of
+the fermentation processes I have mention'd, and their froth and specks,
+than those Mississippi and Pacific coast regions, at the present
+day. Hasty and grotesque as are some of the names, others are of an
+appropriateness and originality unsurpassable. This applies to the
+Indian words, which are often perfect. Oklahoma is proposed in Congress
+for the name of one of our new Territories. Hog-eye, Lick-skillet,
+Rake-pocket and Steal-easy are the names of some Texan towns. Miss
+Bremer found among the aborigines the following names: _Men's_,
+Horn-point; Round-Wind; Stand-and-look-out; The-Cloud-that-goes-aside;
+Iron-toe; Seek-the-sun; Iron-flash; Red-bottle; White-spindle;
+Black-dog; Two-feathers-of-honor; Gray-grass; Bushy-tail; Thunder-face;
+Go-on-the-burning-sod; Spirits-of-the-dead. _Women's_, Keep-the-fire;
+Spiritual-woman; Second-daughter-of-the-house; Blue-bird.
+
+Certainly philologists have not given enough attention to this element
+and its results, which, I repeat, can probably be found working every
+where to-day, amid modern conditions, with as much life and activity as
+in far-back Greece or India, under prehistoric ones. Then the wit--the
+rich flashes of humor and genius and poetry--darting out often from a
+gang of laborers, railroad-men, miners, drivers or boatmen! How often
+have I hover'd at the edge of a crowd of them, to hear their repartees
+and impromptus! You get more real fun from half an hour with them than
+from the books of all "the American humorists."
+
+The science of language has large and close analogies in geological
+science, with its ceaseless evolution, its fossils, and its numberless
+submerged layers and hidden strata, the infinite go-before of the
+present. Or, perhaps Language is more like some vast living body, or
+perennial body of bodies. And slang not only brings the first feeders
+of it, but is afterward the start of fancy, imagination and humor,
+breathing into its nostrils the breath of life.
+
+
+
+
+AN INDIAN BUREAU REMINISCENCE
+
+
+After the close of the secession war in 1865, I work'd several months
+(until Mr. Harlan turn'd me out for having written "Leaves of Grass") in
+the Interior Department at Washington, in the Indian Bureau. Along
+this time there came to see their Great Father an unusual number of
+aboriginal visitors, delegations for treaties, settlement of lands,
+&c.--some young or middle-aged, but mainly old men, from the West,
+North, and occasionally from the South--parties of from five to twenty
+each--the most wonderful proofs of what Nature can produce, (the
+survival of the fittest, no doubt--all the frailer samples dropt, sorted
+out by death)--as if to show how the earth and woods, the attrition of
+storms and elements, and the exigencies of life at first hand, can
+train and fashion men, indeed _chiefs_, in heroic massiveness,
+imperturbability, muscle, and that last and highest beauty consisting
+of strength--the full exploitation and fruitage of a human identity, not
+from the culmination-points of "culture" and artificial civilization,
+but tallying our race, as it were, with giant, vital, gnarl'd, enduring
+trees, or monoliths of separate hardiest rocks, and humanity holding its
+own with the best of the said trees or rocks, and outdoing them.
+
+There were Omahas, Poncas, Winnebagoes, Cheyennes, Navahos, Apaches,
+and many others. Let me give a running account of what I see and hear
+through one of these conference collections at the Indian Bureau, going
+back to the present tense. Every head and face is impressive, even
+artistic; Nature redeems herself out of her crudest recesses. Most have
+red paint on their cheeks, however, or some other paint. ("Little Hill"
+makes the opening speech, which the interpreter translates by scraps.)
+Many wear head tires of gaudy-color'd braid, wound around thickly--some
+with circlets of eagles' feathers. Necklaces of bears' claws are plenty
+around their necks. Most of the chiefs are wrapt in large blankets of
+the brightest scarlet.
+
+Two or three have blue, and I see one black. (A wise man call'd "the
+Flesh" now makes a short speech, apparently asking something. Indian
+Commissioner Dole answers him, and the interpreter translates in scraps
+again.) All the principal chiefs have tomahawks or hatchets, some
+of them very richly ornamented and costly. Plaid shirts are to be
+observ'd--none too clean. Now a tall fellow, "Hole-in-the-Day," is
+speaking. He has a copious head-dress composed of feathers and narrow
+ribbon, under which appears a countenance painted all over a
+bilious yellow. Let us note this young chief. For all his paint,
+"Hole-in-the-Day" is a handsome Indian, mild and calm, dress'd in drab
+buckskin leggings, dark gray surtout, and a soft black hat. His costume
+will bear full observation, and even fashion would accept him. His
+apparel is worn loose and scant enough to show his superb physique,
+especially in neck, chest, and legs. ("The Apollo Belvidere!" was the
+involuntary exclamation of a famous European artist when he first saw a
+full-grown young Choctaw.)
+
+One of the red visitors--a wild, lean-looking Indian, the one in the
+black woolen wrapper--has an empty buffalo head, with the horns on, for
+his personal surmounting. I see a markedly Bourbonish countenance among
+the chiefs--(it is not very uncommon among them, I am told.) Most of
+them avoided resting on chairs during the hour of their "talk" in the
+Commissioner's office; they would sit around on the floor, leaning
+against something, or stand up by the walls, partially wrapt in their
+blankets. Though some of the young fellows were, as I have said,
+magnificent and beautiful animals, I think the palm of unique
+picturesqueness, in body, limb, physiognomy, &c., was borne by the old
+or elderly chiefs, and the wise men.
+
+My here-alluded-to experience in the Indian Bureau produced one
+very definite conviction, as follows: There is something about these
+aboriginal Americans, in their highest characteristic representations,
+essential traits, and the ensemble of their physique and
+physiognomy--something very remote, very lofty, arousing comparisons
+with our own civilized ideals--something that our literature, portrait
+painting, &c., have never caught, and that will almost certainly never
+be transmitted to the future, even as a reminiscence. No biographer, no
+historian, no artist, has grasp'd it--perhaps could not grasp it. It is
+so different, so far outside our standards of eminent humanity. Their
+feathers, paint--even the empty buffalo skull--did not, to say the
+least, seem any more ludicrous to me than many of the fashions I have
+seen in civilized society. I should not apply the word savage (at any
+rate, in the usual sense) as a leading word in the description of those
+great aboriginal specimens, of whom I certainly saw many of the best.
+There were moments, as I look'd at them or studied them, when our own
+exemplification of personality, dignity, heroic presentation anyhow (as
+in the conventions of society, or even in the accepted poems and plays,)
+seem'd sickly, puny, inferior.
+
+The interpreters, agents of the Indian Department, or other whites
+accompanying the bands, in positions of responsibility, were always
+interesting to me; I had many talks with them. Occasionally I would go
+to the hotels where the bands were quarter'd, and spend an hour or
+two informally. Of course we could not have much conversation--though
+(through the interpreters) more of this than might be
+supposed--sometimes quite animated and significant. I had the good
+luck to be invariably receiv'd and treated by all of them in their most
+cordial manner.
+
+[Letter to W. W. from an artist, B. H., who has been much among the
+American Indians:]
+
+"I have just receiv'd your little paper on the Indian delegations. In
+the fourth paragraph you say that there is something about the
+essential traits of our aborigines which 'will almost certainly never be
+transmitted to the future.' If I am so fortunate as to regain my health
+I hope to weaken the force of that statement, at least in so far as
+my talent and training will permit. I intend to spend some years among
+them, and shall endeavor to perpetuate on canvas some of the finer
+types, both men and women, and some of the characteristic features
+of their life. It will certainly be well worth the while. My artistic
+enthusiasm was never so thoroughly stirr'd up as by the Indians. They
+certainly have more of beauty, dignity and nobility mingled with their
+own wild individuality, than any of the other indigenous types of man.
+Neither black nor Afghan, Arab nor Malay (and I know them all pretty
+well) can hold a candle to the Indian. All of the other aboriginal
+types seem to be more or less distorted from the model of perfect human
+form--as we know it--the blacks, thin-hipped, with bulbous limbs, not
+well mark'd; the Arabs large-jointed, &c. But I have seen many a young
+Indian as perfect in form and feature as a Greek statue--very different
+from a Greek statue, of course, but as satisfying to the artistic
+perceptions and demand.
+
+"And the worst, or perhaps the best of it all is that it will require
+an artist--and a good one--to record the real facts and impressions. Ten
+thousand photographs would not have the value of one really finely felt
+painting. Color is all-important. No one but an artist knows how much.
+An Indian is only half an Indian without the blue-black hair and
+the brilliant eyes shining out of the wonderful dusky ochre and rose
+complexion."
+
+
+
+
+SOME DIARY NOTES AT RANDOM
+
+
+NEGRO SLAVES IN NEW YORK
+
+I can myself almost remember negro slaves in New York State, as my
+grandfather and great-grandfather (at West Hills, Suffolk county, New
+York) own'd a number. The hard labor of the farm was mostly done by
+them, and on the floor of the big kitchen, toward sundown, would be
+squatting a circle of twelve or fourteen "pickaninnies," eating
+their supper of pudding (Indian corn mush) and milk. A friend of my
+grandfather, named Wortman, of Oyster Bay, died in 1810, leaving ten
+slaves. Jeanette Treadwell, the last of them, died suddenly in Flushing
+last summer (1884,) at the age of ninety-four years. I remember "old
+Mose," one of the liberated West Hills slaves, well. He was very genial,
+correct, manly, and cute, and a great friend of my childhood.
+
+
+
+CANADA NIGHTS--_Late in August_--
+
+Three wondrous nights. Effects of moon, clouds, stars, and night-sheen,
+never surpass'd. I am out every night, enjoying all. The sunset begins
+it. (I have said already how long evening lingers here.) The moon, an
+hour high just after eight, is past her half, and looks somehow more
+like a human face up there than ever before. As it grows later, we have
+such gorgeous and broad cloud-effects, with Luna's tawny halos,
+silver edgings--great fleeces, depths of blue-black in patches, and
+occasionally long, low bars hanging silently a while, and then gray
+bulging masses rolling along stately, sometimes in long procession.
+The moon travels in Scorpion to-night, and dims all the stars of that
+constellation except fiery Antares, who keeps on shining just to the big
+one's side.
+
+
+COUNTRY DAYS AND NIGHTS--
+
+_Sept. 30, '82, 4.30 A.M._--I am down in Camden county, New Jersey, at
+the farmhouse of the Staffords--have been looking a long while at
+the comet--have in my time seen longer-tail'd ones, but never one so
+pronounc'd in cometary character, and so spectral-fierce--so like some
+great, pale, living monster of the air or sea. The atmosphere and sky,
+an hour or so before sunrise, so cool, still, translucent, give the
+whole apparition to great advantage. It is low in the east. The head
+shows about as big as an ordinary good-sized saucer--is a perfectly
+round and defined disk--the tail some sixty or seventy feet--not a
+stripe, but quite broad, and gradually expanding. Impress'd with the
+silent, inexplicably emotional sight, I linger and look till all begins
+to weaken in the break of day.
+
+_October 2_.--The third day of mellow, delicious, sunshiny weather. I
+am writing this in the recesses of the old woods, my seat on a big pine
+log, my back against a tree. Am down here a few days for a change, to
+bask in the Autumn sun, to idle lusciously and simply, and to eat hearty
+meals, especially my breakfast. Warm mid-days--the other hours of
+the twenty-four delightfully fresh and mild--cool evenings, and early
+mornings perfect. The scent of the woods, and the peculiar aroma of a
+great yet unreap'd maize-field near by--the white butterflies in every
+direction by day--the golden-rod, the wild asters, and sunflowers--the
+song of the katydid all night.
+
+Every day in Cooper's Woods, enjoying simple existence and the passing
+hours--taking short walks--exercising arms and chest with the saplings,
+or my voice with army songs or recitations. A perfect week for weather;
+seven continuous days bright and dry and cool and sunny. The nights
+splendid, with full moon--about 10 the grandest of star-shows up in the
+east and south, Jupiter, Saturn, Capella, Aldebaran, and great Orion.
+Am feeling pretty well--am outdoors most of the time, absorbing the days
+and nights all I can.
+
+
+CENTRAL PARK NOTES
+
+_American Society from a Park Policeman's Point of View_
+
+Am in New York city, upper part--visit Central Park almost every day
+(and have for the last three weeks) off and on, taking observations or
+short rambles, and sometimes riding around. I talk quite a good deal
+with one of the Park policemen, C.C., up toward the Ninetieth street
+entrance. One day in particular I got him a-going, and it proved deeply
+interesting to me. Our talk floated into sociology and politics. I
+was curious to find how these things appear'd on their surfaces to my
+friend, for he plainly possess'd sharp wits and good nature, and had
+been seeing, for years, broad streaks of humanity somewhat out of
+my latitude. I found that as he took such appearances the inward
+caste-spirit of European "aristocracy" pervaded rich America, with
+cynicism and artificiality at the fore. Of the bulk of official persons,
+Executives, Congressmen, Legislators, Aldermen, Department heads, &c.,
+&c., or the candidates for those positions, nineteen in twenty, in the
+policeman's judgment, were just players in a game. Liberty, Equality,
+Union, and all the grand words of the Republic, were, in their mouths,
+but lures, decoys, chisel'd likenesses of dead wood, to catch the
+masses. Of fine afternoons, along the broad tracks of the Park, for many
+years, had swept by my friend, as he stood on guard, the carriages, &c.,
+of American Gentility, not by dozens and scores, but by hundreds
+and thousands. Lucky brokers, capitalists, contractors, grocery-men,
+successful political strikers, rich butchers, dry goods' folk, &c. And
+on a large proportion of these vehicles, on panels or horse-trappings,
+were conspicuously borne _heraldic family crests_. (Can this really be
+true?) In wish and willingness (and if that were so, what matter about
+the reality?) titles of nobility, with a court and spheres fit for the
+capitalists, the highly educated, and the carriage-riding classes--to
+fence them off from "the common people"--were the heart's desire of the
+"good society" of our great cities--aye, of North and South.
+
+So much for my police friend's speculations--which rather took me
+aback--and which I have thought I would just print as he gave them (as a
+doctor records symptoms.)
+
+
+PLATE GLASS NOTES
+
+_St. Louis, Missouri, November, '79_.--What do you think I find
+manufactur'd out here--and of a kind the clearest and largest, best, and
+the most finish'd and luxurious in the world--and with ample demand
+for it too? _Plate glass_! One would suppose that was the last dainty
+outcome of an old, almost effete-growing civilization; and yet here it
+is, a few miles from St. Louis, on a charming little river, in the wilds
+of the West, near the Mississippi. I went down that way to-day by the
+Iron Mountain Railroad--was switch'd off on a side-track four miles
+through woods and ravines, to Swash Creek, so-call'd, and there found
+Crystal city, and immense Glass Works, built (and evidently built to
+stay) right in the pleasant rolling forest. Spent most of the day, and
+examin'd the inexhaustible and peculiar sand the glass is made of--the
+original whity-gray stuff in the banks--saw the melting in the pots (a
+wondrous process, a real poem)--saw the delicate preparation the clay
+material undergoes for these great pots (it has to be kneaded finally
+by human feet, no machinery answering, and I watch'd the picturesque
+bare-legged Africans treading it)--saw the molten stuff (a great mass
+of a glowing pale yellow color) taken out of the furnaces (I shall never
+forget that Pot, shape, color, concomitants, more beautiful than any
+antique statue,) pass'd into the adjoining casting-room, lifted by
+powerful machinery, pour'd out on its bed (all glowing, a newer, vaster
+study for colorists, indescribable, a pale red-tinged yellow, of tarry
+consistence, all lambent,) roll'd by a heavy roller into rough plate
+glass, I should say ten feet by fourteen, then rapidly shov'd into the
+annealing oven, which stood ready for it. The polishing and grinding
+rooms afterward--the great glass slabs, hundreds of them, on their flat
+beds, and the see-saw music of the steam machinery constantly at work
+polishing them--the myriads of human figures (the works employ'd
+400 men) moving about, with swart arms and necks, and no superfluous
+clothing--the vast, rude halls, with immense play of shifting shade, and
+slow-moving currents of smoke and steam, and shafts of light, sometimes
+sun, striking in from above with effects that would have fill'd Michel
+Angelo with rapture.
+
+Coming back to St. Louis this evening, at sundown, and for over an
+hour afterward, we follow'd the Mississippi, close by its western
+bank, giving me an ampler view of the river, and with effects a little
+different from any yet. In the eastern sky hung the planet Mars, just
+up, and of a very clear and vivid yellow. It was a soothing and pensive
+hour--the spread of the river off there in the half-light--the glints
+of the down-bound steamboats plodding along--and that yellow orb
+(apparently twice as large and significant as usual) above the Illinois
+shore. (All along, these nights, nothing can exceed the calm, fierce,
+golden, glistening domination of Mars over all the stars in the sky.)
+
+As we came nearer St. Louis, the night having well set in, I saw some
+(to me) novel effects in the zinc smelting establishments, the tall
+chimneys belching flames at the top, while inside through the openings
+at the facades of the great tanks burst forth (in regular position)
+hundreds of fierce tufts of a peculiar blue (or green) flame, of a
+purity and intensity, like electric lights--illuminating not only the
+great buildings themselves, but far and near outside, like hues of the
+aurora borealis, only more vivid. (So that--remembering the Pot from the
+crystal furnace--my jaunt seem'd to give me new revelations in the color
+line.)
+
+
+
+
+SOME WAR MEMORANDA
+
+_Jotted Down at the Time_
+
+
+I find this incident in my notes (I suppose from "chinning" in hospital
+with some sick or wounded soldier who knew of it):
+
+When Kilpatrick and his forces were cut off at Brandy station (last
+of September, '63, or thereabouts,) and the bands struck up "Yankee
+Doodle," there were not cannon enough in the Southern Confederacy to
+keep him and them "in." It was when Meade fell back. K. had his large
+cavalry division (perhaps 5,000 men,) but the rebs, in superior force,
+had surrounded them. Things look'd exceedingly desperate. K. had two
+fine bands, and order'd them up immediately; they join'd and play'd
+"Yankee Doodle" with a will! It went through the men like lightning--but
+to inspire, not to unnerve. Every man seem'd a giant. They charged like
+a cyclone, and cut their way out. Their loss was but 20. It was about
+two in the afternoon.
+
+
+WASHINGTON STREET SCENES
+
+_Walking Down Pennsylvania Avenue_
+
+_April 7, 1864_.--Warmish forenoon, after the storm of the past few
+days. I see, passing up, in the broad space between the curbs, a big
+squad of a couple of hundred conscripts, surrounded by a strong
+cordon of arm'd guards, and others interspers'd between the ranks. The
+government has learn'd caution from its experiences; there are many
+hundreds of "bounty jumpers," and already, as I am told, eighty thousand
+deserters! Next (also passing up the Avenue,) a cavalry company, young,
+but evidently well drill'd and service-harden'd men. Mark the upright
+posture in their saddles, the bronz'd and bearded young faces, the easy
+swaying to the motions of the horses, and the carbines by their right
+knees; handsome and reckless, some eighty of them, riding with rapid
+gait, clattering along. Then the tinkling bells of passing cars, the
+many shops (some with large show-windows, some with swords, straps
+for the shoulders of different ranks, hat-cords with acorns, or other
+insignia,) the military patrol marching along, with the orderly or
+second-lieutenant stopping different ones to examine passes--the forms,
+the faces, all sorts crowded together, the worn and pale, the pleas'd,
+some on their way to the railroad depot going home, the cripples, the
+darkeys, the long trains of government wagons, or the sad strings of
+ambulances conveying wounded--the many officers' horses tied in front
+of the drinking or oyster saloons, or held by black men or boys, or
+orderlies.
+
+
+THE 195TH PENNSYLVANIA
+
+_Tuesday, Aug. 1, 1865_.--About 3 o'clock this afternoon (sun broiling
+hot) in Fifteenth street, by the Treasury building, a large and handsome
+regiment, 195th Pennsylvania, were marching by--as it happen'd, receiv'd
+orders just here to halt and break ranks, so that they might rest
+themselves awhile. I thought I never saw a finer set of men--so hardy,
+candid, bright American looks, all weather-beaten, and with warm
+clothes. Every man was home-born. My heart was much drawn toward them.
+They seem'd very tired, red, and streaming with sweat. It is a one-year
+regiment, mostly from Lancaster county, Pa.; have been in Shenandoah
+valley. On halting, the men unhitch'd their knapsacks, and sat down to
+rest themselves. Some lay flat on the pavement or under trees. The fine
+physical appearance of the whole body was remarkable. Great, very
+great, must be the State where such young farmers and mechanics are
+the practical average. I went around for half an hour and talk'd with
+several of them, sometimes squatting down with the groups.
+
+
+LEFT-HAND WRITING BY SOLDIERS
+
+_April 30, 1866_.--Here is a single significant fact, from which one may
+judge of the character of the American soldiers in this just concluded
+war: A gentleman in New York city, a while since, took it into his head
+to collect specimens of writing from soldiers who had lost their right
+hands in battle, and afterwards learn'd to use the left. He gave
+public notice of his desire, and offer'd prizes for the best of these
+specimens. Pretty soon they began to come in, and by the time specified
+for awarding the prizes three hundred samples of such left-hand writing
+by maim'd soldiers had arrived.
+
+I have just been looking over some of this writing. A great many of the
+specimens are written in a beautiful manner. All are good. The writing
+in nearly all cases slants backward instead of forward. One piece of
+writing, from a soldier who had lost both arms, was made by holding the
+pen in his mouth.
+
+
+CENTRAL VIRGINIA IN '64
+
+Culpepper, where I am stopping, looks like a place of two or three
+thousand inhabitants. Must be one of the pleasantest towns in Virginia.
+Even now, dilapidated fences, all broken down, windows out, it has the
+remains of much beauty. I am standing on an eminence overlooking the
+town, though within its limits. To the west the long Blue Mountain range
+is very plain, looks quite near, though from 30 to 50 miles distant,
+with some gray splashes of snow yet visible. The show is varied and
+fascinating. I see a great eagle up there in the air sailing with pois'd
+wings, quite low. Squads of red-legged soldiers are drilling; I suppose
+some of the new men of the Brooklyn 14th; they march off presently with
+muskets on their shoulders. In another place, just below me, are some
+soldiers squaring off logs to build a shanty--chopping away, and the
+noise of the axes sounding sharp. I hear the bellowing, unmusical
+screech of the mule. I mark the thin blue smoke rising from camp fires.
+Just below me is a collection of hospital tents, with a yellow flag
+elevated on a stick, and moving languidly in the breeze. Two discharged
+men (I know them both) are just leaving. One is so weak he can hardly
+walk; the other is stronger, and carries his comrade's musket. They move
+slowly along the muddy road toward the depot. The scenery is full of
+breadth, and spread on the most generous scale (everywhere in Virginia
+this thought fill'd me.) The sights, the scenes, the groups, have been
+varied and picturesque here beyond description, and remain so.
+
+I heard the men return in force the other night--heard the shouting, and
+got up and went out to hear what was the matter. That night scene of
+so many hundred tramping steadily by, through the mud (some big flaring
+torches of pine knots,) I shall never forget. I like to go to the
+paymaster's tent, and watch the men getting paid off. Some have
+furloughs, and start at once for home, sometimes amid great chaffing and
+blarneying. There is every day the sound of the wood-chopping axe, and
+the plentiful sight of negroes, crows, and mud. I note large droves and
+pens of cattle. The teamsters have camps of their own, and I go often
+among them. The officers occasionally invite me to dinner or supper at
+headquarters. The fare is plain, but you get something good to drink,
+and plenty of it. Gen. Meade is absent; Sedgwick is in command.
+
+
+PAYING THE 1ST U. S. C. T.
+
+One of my war time reminiscences comprises the quiet side scene of
+a visit I made to the First Regiment U. S. Color'd Troops, at their
+encampment, and on the occasion of their first paying off, July 11,
+1863. Though there is now no difference of opinion worth mentioning,
+there was a powerful opposition to enlisting blacks during the
+earlier years of the secession war. Even then, however, they had their
+champions. "That the color'd race," said a good authority, "is capable
+of military training and efficiency, is demonstrated by the testimony
+of numberless witnesses, and by the eagerness display'd in the raising,
+organizing, and drilling of African troops. Few white regiments make a
+better appearance on parade than the First and Second Louisiana
+Native Guards. The same remark is true of other color'd regiments. At
+Milliken's Bend, at Vicksburg, at Port Hudson, on Morris Island, and
+wherever tested, they have exhibited determin'd bravery, and compell'd
+the plaudits alike of the thoughtful and thoughtless soldiery. During
+the siege of Port Hudson the question was often ask'd those who beheld
+their resolute charges, how the 'niggers' behav'd under fire; and
+without exception the answer was complimentary to them. 'O, tip-top!'
+'first-rate!' 'bully!' were the usual replies. But I did not start out
+to argue the case--only to give my reminiscence literally, as jotted on
+the spot at the time."
+
+I write this on Mason's (otherwise Analostan) island, under the fine
+shade trees of an old white stucco house, with big rooms; the white
+stucco house, originally a fine country seat (tradition says the famous
+Virginia Mason, author of the Fugitive Slave Law, was born here.)
+I reach'd the spot from my Washington quarters by ambulance up
+Pennsylvania avenue, through Georgetown, across the Aqueduct bridge, and
+around through a cut and winding road, with rocks and many bad gullies
+not lacking. After reaching the island, we get presently in the midst of
+the camp of the 1st Regiment U. S. C. T. The tents look clean and good;
+indeed, altogether, in locality especially, the pleasantest camp I have
+yet seen. The spot is umbrageous, high and dry, with distant sounds of
+the city, and the puffing steamers of the Potomac, up to Georgetown and
+back again. Birds are singing in the trees, the warmth is endurable here
+in this moist shade, with the fragrance and freshness. A hundred rods
+across is Georgetown. The river between is swell'd and muddy from the
+late rains up country. So quiet here, yet full of vitality, all around
+in the far distance glimpses, as I sweep my eye, of hills, verdure-clad,
+and with plenteous trees; right where I sit, locust, sassafras, spice,
+and many other trees, a few with huge parasitic vines; just at hand the
+banks sloping to the river, wild with beautiful, free vegetation, superb
+weeds, better, in their natural growth and forms, than the best garden.
+Lots of luxuriant grape vines and trumpet flowers; the river flowing far
+down in the distance.
+
+Now the paying is to begin. The Major (paymaster) with his clerk seat
+themselves at a table--the rolls are before them--the money box is
+open'd--there are packages of five, ten, twenty-five cent pieces. Here
+comes the first Company (B), some 82 men, all blacks. Certes, we cannot
+find fault with the appearance of this crowd--negroes though they
+be. They are manly enough, bright enough, look as if they had the
+soldier-stuff in them, look hardy, patient, many of them real handsome
+young fellows. The paying, I say, has begun. The men are march'd up in
+close proximity. The clerk calls off name after name, and each walks up,
+receives his money, and passes along out of the way. It is a real study,
+both to see them come close, and to see them pass away, stand counting
+their cash--(nearly all of this company get ten dollars and three cents
+each.) The clerk calls George Washington. That distinguish'd personage
+steps from the ranks, in the shape of a very black man, good sized and
+shaped, and aged about 30, with a military mustache; he takes his "ten
+three," and goes off evidently well pleas'd. (There are about a dozen
+Washingtons in the company. Let us hope they will do honor to the name.)
+At the table, how quickly the Major handles the bills, counts without
+trouble, everything going on smoothly and quickly. The regiment numbers
+to-day about 1,000 men (including 20 officers, the only whites.)
+
+Now another company. These get $5.36 each. The men look well. They, too,
+have great names; besides the Washingtons aforesaid, John Quincy Adams,
+Daniel Webster, Calhoun, James Madison, Alfred Tennyson, John Brown,
+Benj. G. Tucker, Horace Greeley, &c. The men step off aside, count their
+money with a pleas'd, half-puzzled look. Occasionally, but not often,
+there are some thoroughly African physiognomies, very black in color,
+large, protruding lips, low forehead, &c. But I have to say that I do
+not see one utterly revolting face.
+
+Then another company, each man of this getting $10.03 also. The pay
+proceeds very rapidly (the calculation, roll-signing, &c., having been
+arranged beforehand.) Then some trouble. One company, by the rigid rules
+of official computation, gets only 23 cents each man. The company (K)
+is indignant, and after two or three are paid, the refusal to take the
+paltry sum is universal, and the company marches off to quarters unpaid.
+
+Another company (I) gets only 70 cents. The sullen, lowering,
+disappointed look is general. Half refuse it in this case. Company G, in
+full dress, with brass scales on shoulders, look'd, perhaps, as well as
+any of the companies--the men had an unusually alert look. These, then,
+are the black troops,--or the beginning of them. Well, no one can see
+them, even under these circumstances--their military career in its
+novitiate--without feeling well pleas'd with them.
+
+As we enter'd the island, we saw scores at a little distance, bathing,
+washing their clothes, &c. The officers, as far as looks go, have a fine
+appearance, have good faces, and the air military. Altogether it is a
+significant show, and brings up some "abolition" thoughts. The scene,
+the porch of an Old Virginia slave-owner's house, the Potomac rippling
+near, the Capitol just down three or four miles there, seen through the
+pleasant blue haze of this July day.
+
+After a couple of hours I get tired, and go off for a ramble. I write
+these concluding lines on a rock, under the shade of a tree on the banks
+of the island. It is solitary here, the birds singing, the sluggish
+muddy-yellow waters pouring down from the late rains of the upper
+Potomac; the green heights on the south side of the river before me.
+The single cannon from a neighboring fort has just been fired, to signal
+high noon. I have walk'd all around Analostan, enjoying its luxuriant
+wildness, and stopt in this solitary spot. A water snake wriggles down
+the bank, disturb'd, into the water. The bank near by is fringed with a
+dense growth of shrubbery, vines, &c.
+
+
+
+
+FIVE THOUSAND POEMS
+
+
+There have been collected in a cluster nearly five thousand big and
+little American poems--all that diligent and long-continued research
+could lay hands on! The author of 'Old Grimes is Dead' commenced
+it, more than fifty years ago; then the cluster was pass'd on and
+accumulated by C. F. Harris; then further pass'd on and added to by the
+late Senator Anthony, from whom the whole collection has been bequeath'd
+to Brown University. A catalogue (such as it is) has been made and
+publish'd of these five thousand poems--and is probably the most curious
+and suggestive part of the whole affair. At any rate it has led me to
+some abstract reflection like the following.
+
+I should like, for myself, to put on record my devout acknowledgment not
+only of the great masterpieces of the past, but of the benefit of _all_
+poets, past and present, and of _all_ poetic utterance--in its entirety
+the dominant moral factor of humanity's progress. In view of that
+progress, and of evolution, the religious and esthetic elements, the
+distinctive and most important of any, seem to me more indebted to
+poetry than to all other means and influences combined. In a very
+profound sense _religion is the poetry of humanity_. Then the points of
+union and rapport among all the poems and poets of the world, however
+wide their separations of time and place and theme, are much more
+numerous and weighty than the points of contrast. Without relation as
+they may seem at first sight, the whole earth's poets and poetry--_en
+masse_--the Oriental, the Greek, and what there is of Roman--the oldest
+myths--the interminable ballad-romances of the Middle Ages--the hymns
+and psalms of worship--the epics, plays, swarms of lyrics of the British
+Islands, or the Teutonic old or new--or modern French--or what there is
+in America, Bryant's, for instance, or Whittier's or Longfellow's--the
+verse of all tongues and ages, all forms, all subjects, from primitive
+times to our own day inclusive--really combine in one aggregate and
+electric globe or universe, with all its numberless parts and radiations
+held together by a common centre or verteber. To repeat it, all poetry
+thus has (to the point of view comprehensive enough) more features of
+resemblance than difference, and becomes essentially, like the planetary
+globe itself, compact and orbic and whole. Nature seems to sow countless
+seeds--makes incessant crude attempts--thankful to get now and then,
+even at rare and long intervals, something approximately good.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD BOWERY
+
+
+_A Reminiscence of New York Plays and Acting Fifty Years Ago_
+
+
+In an article not long since, "Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth," in "The
+Nineteenth Century," after describing the bitter regretfulness to
+mankind from the loss of those first-class poems, temples, pictures,
+gone and vanish'd from any record of men, the writer (Fleeming Jenkin)
+continues:
+
+  If this be our feeling as to the more durable works of art, what
+  shall we say of those triumphs which, by their very nature, la
+  no longer than the action which creates them--the triumphs of the
+  orator, the singer, or the actor? There is an anodyne in the words,
+  "must be so," "inevitable," and there is even some absurdity in
+  longing for the impossible. This anodyne and our sense of humor
+  temper the unhappiness we feel when, after hearing some great
+  performance, we leave the theatre and think, "Well, this great thing
+  has been, and all that is now left of it is the feeble print up
+  my brain, the little thrill which memory will send along my nerves,
+  mine and my neighbors; as we live longer the print and thrill must
+  be feebler, and when we pass away the impress of the great artist
+  will vanish from the world." The regret that a great art should in
+  its nature be transitory, explains the lively interest which many
+  feel in reading anecdotes or descriptions of a great actor.
+
+All this is emphatically my own feeling and reminiscence about the best
+dramatic and lyric artists I have seen in bygone days--for instance,
+Marietta Alboni, the elder Booth, Forrest, the tenor Bettini, the
+baritone Badiali, "old man Clarke"--(I could write a whole paper on the
+latter's peerless rendering of the Ghost in "Hamlet" at the Park, when
+I was a young fellow)--an actor named Ranger, who appear'd in America
+forty years ago in _genre_ characters; Henry Placide, and many others.
+But I will make a few memoranda at least of the best one I knew.
+
+For the elderly New Yorker of to-day, perhaps, nothing were more likely
+to start up memories of his early manhood than the mention of the Bowery
+and the elder Booth, At the date given, the more stylish and select
+theatre (prices, 50 cents pit, $1 boxes) was "The Park," a large and
+well-appointed house on Park Row, opposite the present Post-office.
+English opera and the old comedies were often given in capital style;
+the principal foreign stars appear'd here, with Italian opera at
+wide intervals. The Park held a large part in my boyhood's and young
+manhood's life. Here I heard the English actor, Anderson, in "Charles
+de Moor," and in the fine part of "Gisippus." Here I heard Fanny Kemble,
+Charlotte Cushman, the Seguins, Daddy Rice, Hackett as Falstaff, Nimrod
+Wildfire, Rip Van Winkle, and in his Yankee characters. (See pages 19,
+20, "Specimen Days.") It was here (some years later than the date in the
+headline) I also heard Mario many times, and at his best. In such parts
+as Gennaro, in "Lucrezia Borgia," he was inimitable--the sweetest of
+voices, a pure tenor, of considerable compass and respectable power. His
+wife, Grisi, was with him, no longer first-class or young--a fine Norma,
+though, to the last.
+
+Perhaps my dearest amusement reminiscences are those musical ones. I
+doubt if ever the senses and emotions of the future will be thrill'd as
+were the auditors of a generation ago by the deep passion of Alboni's
+contralto (at the Broadway Theatre, south side, near Pearl street)--or
+by the trumpet notes of Badiali's baritone, or Bettini's pensive and
+incomparable tenor in Fernando in "Favorita," or Marini's bass in
+"Faliero," among the Havana troupe, Castle Garden.
+
+But getting back more specifically to the date and theme I started
+from--the heavy tragedy business prevail'd more decidedly at the Bowery
+Theatre, where Booth and Forrest were frequently to be heard. Though
+Booth _pere,_ then in his prime, ranging in age from 40 to 44 years (he
+was born in 1796,) was the loyal child and continuer of the traditions
+of orthodox English play-acting, he stood out "himself alone" in many
+respects beyond any of his kind on record, and with effects and ways
+that broke through all rules and all traditions. He has been well
+describ'd as an actor "whose instant and tremendous concentration of
+passion in his delineations overwhelm'd his audience, and wrought into
+it such enthusiasm that it partook of the fever of inspiration surging
+through his own veins." He seems to have been of beautiful private
+character, very honorable, affectionate, good-natured, no arrogance,
+glad to give the other actors the best chances. He knew all stage points
+thoroughly, and curiously ignored the mere dignities. I once talk'd with
+a man who had seen him do the Second Actor in the mock play to Charles
+Kean's Hamlet in Baltimore. He was a marvellous linguist. He play'd
+Shylock once in London, giving the dialogue in Hebrew, and in New
+Orleans Oreste (Racine's "Andromaque") in French. One trait of his
+habits, I have heard, was strict vegetarianism. He was exceptionally
+kind to the brute creation. Every once in a while he would make a break
+for solitude or wild freedom, sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for
+days. (He illustrated Plato's rule that to the forming an artist of the
+very highest rank a dash of insanity or what the world calls insanity
+is indispensable.) He was a small-sized man--yet sharp observers noticed
+that however crowded the stage might be in certain scenes, Booth
+never seem'd overtopt or hidden. He was singularly spontaneous and
+fluctuating; in the same part each rendering differ'd from any and
+all others. He had no stereotyped positions and made no arbitrary
+requirements on his fellow-performers.
+
+As is well known to old play-goers, Booth's most effective part was
+Richard III. Either that, or lago, or Shylock, or Pescara in "The
+Apostate," was sure to draw a crowded house. (Remember heavy pieces were
+much more in demand those days than now.) He was also unapproachably
+grand in Sir Giles Overreach, in "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," and the
+principal character in "The Iron Chest."
+
+In any portraiture of Booth, those years, the Bowery Theatre, with its
+leading lights, and the lessee and manager, Thomas Hamblin, cannot be
+left out. It was at the Bowery I first saw Edwin Forrest (the play was
+John Howard Payne's "Brutus, or the Fall of Tarquin," and it affected
+me for weeks; or rather I might say permanently filter'd into my whole
+nature,) then in the zenith of his fame and ability. Sometimes (perhaps
+a veteran's benefit night,) the Bowery would group together five or
+six of the first-class actors of those days--Booth, Forrest, Cooper,
+Hamblin, and John R. Scott, for instance. At that time and here George
+Jones ("Count Joannes") was a young, handsome actor, and quite a
+favorite. I remember seeing him in the title role in "Julius Caesar,"
+and a capital performance it was.
+
+To return specially to the manager. Thomas Hamblin made a first-rate
+foil to Booth, and was frequently cast with him. He had a large,
+shapely, imposing presence, and dark and flashing eyes. I remember well
+his rendering of the main role in Maturin's "Bertram, or the Castle
+of St. Aldobrand." But I thought Tom Hamblin's best acting was in the
+comparatively minor part of Faulconbridge in "King John"--he himself
+evidently revell'd in the part, and took away the house's applause from
+young Kean (the King) and Ellen Tree (Constance,) and everybody else on
+the stage--some time afterward at the Park. Some of the Bowery actresses
+were remarkably good. I remember Mrs. Pritchard in "Tour de Nesle," and
+Mrs. McClure in "Fatal Curiosity," and as Millwood in "George Barnwell."
+(I wonder what old fellow reading these lines will recall the fine
+comedietta of "The Youth That Never Saw a Woman," and the jolly acting
+in it of Mrs. Herring and old Gates.)
+
+The Bowery, now and then, was the place, too, for spectacular pieces,
+such as "The Last Days of Pompeii," "The Lion-Doom'd" and the yet
+undying "Mazeppa." At one time "Jonathan Bradford, or the Murder at the
+Roadside Inn, "had a long and crowded run; John Sefton and his brother
+William acted in it. I remember well the Frenchwoman Celeste, a splendid
+pantomimist, and her emotional "Wept of the Wishton-Wish." But certainly
+the main "reason for being" of the Bowery Theatre those years was to
+furnish the public with Forrest's and Booth's performances--the latter
+having a popularity and circles of enthusiastic admirers and critics
+fully equal to the former--though people were divided as always. For
+some reason or other, neither Forrest nor Booth would accept engagements
+at the more fashionable theatre, the Park. And it is a curious
+reminiscence, but a true one, that both these great actors and their
+performances were taboo'd by "polite society" in New York and Boston
+at the time--probably as being too robustuous. But no such scruples
+affected the Bowery.
+
+Recalling from that period the occasion of either Forrest or Booth,
+any good night at the old Bowery, pack'd from ceiling to pit with
+its audience mainly of alert, well-dress'd, full-blooded young and
+middle-aged men, the best average of American-born mechanics--the
+emotional nature of the whole mass arous'd by the power and magnetism
+of as mighty mimes as ever trod the stage--the whole crowded auditorium,
+and what seeth'd in it, and flush'd from its faces and eyes, to me
+as much a part of the show as any--bursting forth in one of those
+long-kept-up tempests of hand-clapping peculiar to the Bowery--no dainty
+kid-glove business, but electric force and muscle from perhaps 2,000
+full-sinew'd men--(the inimitable and chromatic tempest of one of those
+ovations to Edwin Forrest, welcoming him back after an absence, comes up
+to me this moment)--Such sounds and scenes as here resumed will surely
+afford to many old New Yorkers some fruitful recollections.
+
+I can yet remember (for I always scann'd an audience as rigidly as
+a play) the faces of the leading authors, poets, editors, of those
+times--Fenimore Cooper, Bryant, Paulding, Irving, Charles King, Watson
+Webb, N. P. Willis, Hoffman, Halleck, Mumford, Morris, Leggett, L. G.
+Clarke, R. A. Locke and others, occasionally peering from the first tier
+boxes; and even the great National Eminences, Presidents Adams, Jackson,
+Van Buren and Tyler, all made short visits there on their Eastern tours.
+
+Awhile after 1840 the character of the Bowery as hitherto described
+completely changed. Cheap prices and vulgar programmes came in. People
+who of after years saw the pandemonium of the pit and the doings on the
+boards must not gauge by them the times and characters I am describing.
+Not but what there was more or less rankness in the crowd even then. For
+types of sectional New York those days--the streets East of the Bowery,
+that intersect Division, Grand, and up to Third avenue--types that
+never found their Dickens, or Hogarth, or Balzac, and have pass'd away
+unportraitured--the young ship-builders, cartmen, butchers, firemen (the
+old-time "soap-lock" or exaggerated "Mose" or "Sikesey," of Chanfrau's
+plays,) they, too, were always to be seen in these audiences, racy of
+the East river and the Dry Dock. Slang, wit, occasional shirt sleeves,
+and a picturesque freedom of looks and manners, with a rude good-nature
+and restless movement, were generally noticeable. Yet there never were
+audiences that paid a good actor or an interesting play the compliment
+of more sustain'd attention or quicker rapport. Then at times came the
+exceptionally decorous and intellectual congregations I have hinted it;
+for the Bowery really furnish'd plays and players you could get nowhere
+else. Notably, Booth always drew the best hearers; and to a specimen of
+his acting I will now attend in some detail.
+
+I happen'd to see what has been reckon'd by experts one of the most
+marvellous pieces of histrionism ever known. It must have been about
+1834 or '35. A favorite comedian and actress at the Bowery, Thomas Flynn
+and his wife, were to have a joint benefit, and, securing Booth for
+Richard, advertised the fact many days beforehand. The house fill'd
+early from top to bottom. There was some uneasiness behind the scenes,
+for the afternoon arrived, and Booth had not come from down in Maryland,
+where he lived. However, a few minutes before ringing-up time he made
+his appearance in lively condition.
+
+After a one-act farce over, as contrast and prelude, the curtain rising
+for the tragedy, I can, from my good seat in the pit, pretty well front,
+see again Booth's quiet entrance from the side, as, with head bent, he
+slowly and in silence, (amid the tempest of boisterous hand-clapping,)
+walks down the stage to the footlights with that peculiar and abstracted
+gesture, musingly kicking his sword, which he holds off from him by its
+sash. Though fifty years have pass'd since then, I can hear the clank,
+and feel the perfect following hush of perhaps three thousand people
+waiting. (I never saw an actor who could make more of the said hush
+or wait, and hold the audience in an indescribable, half-delicious,
+half-irritating suspense.) And so throughout the entire play, all parts,
+voice, atmosphere, magnetism, from
+
+    "Now is the winter of our discontent,"
+
+to the closing death fight with Richmond, were of the finest and
+grandest. The latter character was play'd by a stalwart young fellow
+named Ingersoll. Indeed, all the renderings were wonderfully good.
+But the great spell cast upon the mass of hearers came from Booth.
+Especially was the dream scene very impressive. A shudder went through
+every nervous system in the audience; it certainly did through mine.
+
+Without question Booth was royal heir and legitimate representative of
+the Garrick-Kemble-Siddons dramatic traditions; but he vitalized and
+gave an unnamable _race_ to those traditions with his own electric
+personal idiosyncrasy. (As in all art-utterance it was the subtle and
+powerful something _special to the individual_ that really conquer'd.)
+
+To me, too, Booth stands for much else besides theatricals. I consider
+that my seeing the man those years glimps'd for me, beyond all else,
+that inner spirit and form--the unquestionable charm and vivacity, but
+intrinsic sophistication and artificiality--crystallizing rapidly upon
+the English stage and literature at and after Shakspere's time,
+and coming on accumulatively through the seventeenth and eighteenth
+centuries to the beginning, fifty or forty years ago, of those
+disintegrating, decomposing processes now authoritatively going on. Yes;
+although Booth must be class'd in that antique, almost extinct school,
+inflated, stagy, rendering Shakspere (perhaps inevitably, appropriately)
+from the growth of arbitrary and often cockney conventions, his genius
+was to me one of the grandest revelations of my life, a lesson of
+artistic expression. The words fire, energy, _abandon_, found in him
+unprecedented meanings. I never heard a speaker or actor who could give
+such a sting to hauteur or the taunt. I never heard from any other the
+charm of unswervingly perfect vocalization without trenching at all on
+mere melody, the province of music.
+
+So much for a Thespian temple of New York fifty years since, where
+"sceptred tragedy went trailing by" under the gaze of the Dry Dock
+youth, and both players and auditors were of a character and like we
+shall never see again. And so much for the grandest histrion of modern
+times, as near as I can deliberately judge (and the phrenologists put
+my "caution" at 7)--grander, I believe, than Kean in the expression of
+electric passion, the prime eligibility of the tragic artist. For
+though those brilliant years had many fine and even magnificent actors,
+undoubtedly at Booth's death (in 1852) went the last and by far the
+noblest Roman of them all.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES TO LATE ENGLISH BOOKS
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE READER IN THE BRITISH ISLANDS--"Specimen Days in
+America"
+
+London Edition, _June 1887_ If you will only take the following pages,
+as you do some long and gossippy letter written for you by a relative or
+friend travelling through distant scenes and incidents and jotting
+them down lazily and informally, but ever veraciously (with occasional
+diversion of critical thought about sombody or something,) it might
+remove all formal or literary impediments at once, and bring you and me
+closer together in the spirt in which the jottings were collated to
+be read. You have had, and have, plenty of public events and facts
+and general statistics of America;--in the following book is a common
+individual New World _private life_, its birth and growth, its struggles
+for a living, its goings and comings and observations (or representative
+portions of them) amid the United States of America the last thirty or
+forty years, with their varied war and peace, their local coloring, the
+unavoidable egotism, and the lights and shades and sights and joys and
+pains and sympathies common to humanity. Further introductory light may
+be found in the paragraph, "A Happy Hour's Command," and the bottom note
+belonging to it at the beginning of the book. I have said in the text
+that if I were required to give good reason-for-being of "Specimen
+Days," I should be unable to do so. Let me fondly hope that it has at
+least the reason and excuse of such off-hand gossippy letter as just
+alluded to, portraying American life-sights and incidents as they
+actually occurred--their presentation, making additions as far as it
+goes, to the simple experience and association of your soul, from a
+comrade soul;--and that also, in the volume, as below any page of mine,
+anywhere, ever remains, for seen or unseen basis-phrase, GOOD-WILL
+BETWEEN THE COMMON PEOPLE OF ALL NATIONS.
+
+
+ADDITIONAL NOTE, 1887
+
+_To English Edition "Specimen Days"_
+
+As I write these lines I still continue living in Camden, New Jersey,
+America. Coming this way from Washington city, on my road to the
+sea-shore (and a temporary rest, as I supposed) in the early summer
+of 1873, I broke down disabled, and have dwelt here, as my central
+residence, all the time since--almost 14 years. In the preceding pages
+I have described how, during those years, I partially recuperated (in
+1876) from my worst paralysis by going down to Timber creek, living
+close to Nature, and domiciling with my dear friends George and Susan
+Stafford. From 1877 or '8 to '83 or '4 I was well enough to travel
+around, considerably--journey'd westward to Kansas, leisurely exploring
+the Prairies, and on to Denver and the Rocky Mountains; another time
+north to Canada, where I spent most of the summer with my friend Dr.
+Bucke, and jaunted along the great lakes, and the St. Lawrence and
+Saguenay rivers; another time to Boston, to properly print the final
+edition of my poems (I was there over two months, and had a "good
+time.") I have so brought out the completed "Leaves of Grass" during
+this period; also "Specimen Days," of which the foregoing is a
+transcript; collected and re-edited the "Democratic Vistas" cluster (see
+companion volume to the present)--commemorated Abraham Lincoln's death,
+on the successive anniversaries of its occurrence, by delivering my
+lecture on it ten or twelve times; and "put in," through many a month
+and season, the aimless and resultless ways of most human lives.
+
+Thus the last 14 years have pass'd. At present (end-days of March,
+1887--I am nigh entering my 69th year) I find myself continuing on here,
+quite dilapidated and even wreck'd bodily from the paralysis, &c.--but
+in _good heart_ (to use a Long Island country phrase,) and with about
+the same mentality as ever. The worst of it is, I have been growing
+feebler quite rapidly for a year, and now can't walk around--hardly from
+one room to the next. I am forced to stay in-doors and in my big chair
+nearly all the time. We have had a sharp, dreary winter too, and it has
+pinch'd me. I am alone most of the time; every week, indeed almost every
+day, write some--reminiscences, essays, sketches, for the magazines;
+and read, or rather I should say dawdle over books and papers a good
+deal--spend half the day at that.
+
+Nor can I finish this note without putting on record--wafting over sea
+from hence--my deepest thanks to certain friends and helpers (I would
+specify them all and each by name, but imperative reasons, outside of
+my own wishes, forbid,) in the British Islands, as well as in America.
+Dear, even in the abstract, is such flattering unction always no doubt
+to the soul! Nigher still, if possible, I myself have been, and am
+to-day indebted to such help for my very sustenance, clothing, shelter,
+and continuity. And I would not go to the grave without briefly, but
+plainly, as I here do, acknowledging--may I not say even glorying in it?
+
+
+PREFACE TO "DEMOCRATIC VISTAS" WITH OTHER PAPERS--_English Edition_
+
+Mainly I think I should base the request to weigh the following pages on
+the assumption that they present, however indirectly, some views of
+the West and Modern, or of a distinctly western and modern (American)
+tendency, about certain matters. Then, too, the pages include (by
+attempting to illustrate it,) a theory herein immediately mentioned. For
+another and different point of the issue, the Enlightenment, Democracy
+and Fair-show of the bulk, the common people of America (from sources
+representing not only the British Islands, but all the world,) means,
+at least, eligibility to Enlightenment, Democracy and Fair-show for the
+bulk, the common people of all civilized nations.
+
+That positively "the dry land has appeared," at any rate, is an
+important fact.
+
+America is really the great test or trial case for all the problems and
+promises and speculations of humanity, and of the past and present.
+
+I say, too, we[41] are not to look so much to changes, ameliorations,
+and adaptations in Politics as to those of Literature and (thence)
+domestic Sociology. I have accordingly in the following melange
+introduced many themes besides political ones.
+
+Several of the pieces are ostensibly in explanation of my own writings;
+but in that very process they best include and set forth their side of
+principles and generalities pressing vehemently for consideration our
+age.
+
+Upon the whole, it is on the atmosphere they are born in, and, (I hope)
+give out, more than any specific piece or trait, I would care to rest.
+
+I think Literature--a new, superb, democratic literature--is to be
+the medicine and lever, and (with Art) the chief influence in modern
+civilization. I have myself not so much made a dead set at this theory,
+or attempted to present it directly, as admitted it to color and
+sometimes dominate what I had to say. In both Europe and America we have
+serried phalanxes who promulge and defend the political claims: I go for
+an equal force to uphold the other.
+
+WALT WHITMAN,
+
+CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY, _April, 1888_.
+
+
+
+Note:
+
+[41] We who, in many departments, ways, make _the building up of the
+masses,_ by _building up grand individuals_, our shibboleth: and in
+brief that is the marrow of this book.
+
+
+
+
+ABRAHAM LINCOLN
+
+
+Glad am I to give--were anything better lacking--even the most brief
+and shorn testimony of Abraham Lincoln. Everything I heard about him
+authentically, and every time I saw him (and it was my fortune through
+1862 to '65 to see, or pass a word with, or watch him, personally,
+perhaps twenty or thirty times,) added to and anneal'd my respect and
+love at the moment. And as I dwell on what I myself heard or saw of the
+mighty Westerner, and blend it with the history and literature of my
+age, and of what I can get of all ages, and conclude it with his death,
+it seems like some tragic play, superior to all else I know--vaster and
+fierier and more convulsionary, for this America of ours, than Eschylus
+or Shakspere ever drew for Athens or for England. And then the Moral
+permeating, underlying all! the Lesson that none so remote--none so
+illiterate--no age, no class--but may directly or indirectly read!
+
+Abraham Lincoln's was really one of those characters, the best of which
+is the result of long trains of cause and effect--needing a certain
+spaciousness of time, and perhaps even remoteness, to properly enclose
+them--having unequal'd influence on the shaping of this Republic (and
+therefore the world) as to-day, and then far more important in
+the future. Thus the time has by no means yet come for a thorough
+measurement of him. Nevertheless, we who live in his era--who have
+seen him, and heard him, face to face, and are in the midst of, or just
+parting from, the strong and strange events which he and we have had
+to do with--can in some respects bear valuable, perhaps indispensable
+testimony concerning him.
+
+I should first like to give a very fair and characteristic likeness of
+Lincoln, as I saw him and watch'd him one afternoon in Washington, for
+nearly half an hour, not long before his death. It was as he stood on
+the balcony of the National Hotel, Pennsylvania avenue, making a short
+speech to the crowd in front, on the occasion either of a set of
+new colors presented to a famous Illinois regiment, or of the daring
+capture, by the Western men, of some flags from "the enemy," (which
+latter phrase, by the by, was not used by him at all in his remarks.)
+How the picture happen'd to be made I do not know, but I bought it a few
+days afterward in Washington, and it was endors'd by every one to whom I
+show'd it. Though hundreds of portraits have been made, by painters and
+photographers, (many to pass on, by copies, to future times,) I have
+never seen one yet that in my opinion deserv'd to be called a perfectly
+_good likeness_; nor do I believe there is really such a one in
+existence. May I not say too, that, as there is no entirely competent
+and emblematic likeness of Abraham Lincoln in picture or statue, there
+is not--perhaps cannot be--any fully appropriate literary statement or
+summing-up of him yet in existence?
+
+The best way to estimate the value of Lincoln is to think what the
+condition of America would be to-day, if he had never lived--never been
+President. His nomination and first election were mainly accidents,
+experiments. Severely view'd, one cannot think very much of American
+Political Parties, from the beginning, after the Revolutionary War, down
+to the present time. Doubtless, while they have had their uses--have
+been and are "the grass on which the cow feeds"--and indispensable
+economies of growth--it is undeniable that under flippant names they
+have merely identified temporary passions, or freaks, or sometimes
+prejudice, ignorance, or hatred. The only thing like a great and worthy
+idea vitalizing a party, and making it heroic, was the enthusiasm in '64
+for re-electing Abraham Lincoln, and the reason behind that enthusiasm.
+
+How does this man compare with the acknowledg'd "Father of his country"?
+Washington was model'd on the best Saxon, and Franklin--of the age of
+the Stuarts (rooted in the Elizabethan period)--was essentially a noble
+Englishman, and just the kind needed for the occasions and the times of
+1776-'83. Lincoln, underneath his practicality, was far less European,
+was quite thoroughly Western, original, essentially non-conventional,
+and had a certain sort of out-door or prairie stamp. One of the best of
+the late commentators on Shakspere, (Professor Dowden,) makes the height
+and aggregate of his quality as a poet to be, that he thoroughly blended
+the ideal with the practical or realistic. If this be so, I should
+say that what Shakspere did in poetic expression, Abraham Lincoln
+essentially did in his personal and official life. I should say the
+invisible foundations and vertebra of his character, more than any man's
+in history, were mystical, abstract, moral and spiritual--while upon all
+of them was built, and out of all of them radiated, under the control of
+the average of circumstances, what the vulgar call _horse-sense_, and a
+life often bent by temporary but most urgent materialistic and political
+reasons.
+
+He seems to have been a man of indomitable firmness (even obstinacy) on
+rare occasions, involving great points; but he was generally very easy,
+flexible, tolerant, almost slouchy, respecting minor matters. I note
+that even those reports and anecdotes intended to level him down, all
+leave the tinge of a favorable impression of him. As to his religious
+nature, it seems to me to have certainly been of the amplest,
+deepest-rooted, loftiest kind.
+
+Already a new generation begins to tread the stage, since the persons
+and events of the secession war. I have more than once fancied to myself
+the time when the present century has closed, and a new one open'd,
+and the men and deeds of that contest have become somewhat vague and
+mythical-fancied perhaps in some great Western city, or group collected
+together, or public festival, where the days of old, of 1863, and '4 and
+'5 are discuss'd--some ancient soldier sitting in the background as the
+talk goes on, and betraying himself by his emotion and moist eyes--like
+the journeying Ithacan at the banquet of King Alcinoiis, when the bard
+sings the contending warriors and their battles on the plains of Troy:
+
+    "So from the sluices of Ulysses' eyes
+    Fast fell the tears, and sighs succeeded sighs."
+
+I have fancied, I say, some such venerable relic of this time of ours,
+preserv'd to the next or still the next generation of America. I have
+fancied, on such occasion, the young men gathering around; the awe, the
+eager questions: "What! have you seen Abraham Lincoln--and heard him
+speak--and touch'd his hand? Have you, with your own eyes, look'd on
+Grant, and Lee, and Sherman?"
+
+Dear to Democracy, to the very last! And among the paradoxes generated
+by America, not the least curious was that spectacle of all the kings
+and queens and emperors of the earth, many from remote distances,
+sending tributes of condolence and sorrow in memory of one rais'd
+through the commonest average of life--a rail-splitter and flat-boatman!
+
+Consider'd from contemporary points of view--who knows what the future
+may decide?--and from the points of view of current Democracy and The
+Union, (the only thing like passion or infatuation in the man was the
+passion for the Union of These States,) Abraham Lincoln seems to me
+the grandest figure yet, on all the crowded canvas of the Nineteenth
+Century.
+
+
+
+
+
+NEW ORLEANS IN 1848
+
+_Walt Whitman gossips of his sojourn here years ago as a newspaper
+writer. Notes of his trip up the Mississippi and to New York._
+
+Among the letters brought this morning (Camden, New Jersey, Jan. 15,
+1887,) by my faithful post-office carrier, J.G., is one as follows:
+
+"NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 11, '87.--We have been informed that when you were
+younger and less famous than now, you were in New Orleans and perhaps
+have helped on the _Picayune_. If you have any remembrance of the
+_Picayune's_ young days, or of journalism in New Orleans of that era,
+and would put it in writing (verse or prose) for the _Picayune's_
+fiftieth year edition, Jan. 25, we shall be pleased," etc.
+
+In response to which: I went down to New Orleans early in 1848 to work
+on a daily newspaper, but it was not the _Picayune_, though I saw quite
+a good deal of the editors of that paper, and knew its personnel and
+ways. But let me indulge my pen in some gossipy recollections of that
+time and place, with extracts from my journal up the Mississippi and
+across the great lakes to the Hudson.
+
+Probably the influence most deeply pervading everything at that time
+through the United States, both in physical facts and in sentiment, was
+the Mexican War, then just ended. Following a brilliant campaign (in
+which our troops had march'd to the capital city, Mexico, and taken full
+possession,) we were returning after our victory. From the situation of
+the country, the city of New Orleans had been our channel and _entrepot_
+for everything, going and returning. It had the best news and war
+correspondents; it had the most to say, through its leading papers, the
+_Picayune_ and _Delta_ especially, and its voice was readiest listen'd
+to; from it "Chapparal" had gone out, and his army and battle letters
+were copied everywhere, not only in the United States, but in Europe.
+Then the social cast and results; no one who has never seen the society
+of a city under similar circumstances can understand what a strange
+vivacity and _rattle_ were given throughout by such a situation. I
+remember the crowds of soldiers, the gay young officers, going or
+coming, the receipt of important news, the many discussions, the
+returning wounded, and so on.
+
+I remember very well seeing Gen. Taylor with his staff and other
+officers at the St. Charles Theatre one evening (after talking with them
+during the day.) There was a short play on the stage, but the principal
+performance was of Dr. Colyer's troupe of "Model Artists," then in
+the full tide of their popularity. They gave many fine groups and solo
+shows. The house was crowded with uniforms and shoulder-straps. Gen. T.
+himself, if I remember right, was almost the only officer in civilian
+clothes; he was a jovial, old, rather stout, plain man, with a wrinkled
+and dark-yellow face, and, in ways and manners, show'd the least of
+conventional ceremony or etiquette I ever saw; he laugh'd unrestrainedly
+at everything comical. (He had a great personal resemblance to Fenimore
+Cooper, the novelist, of New York.) I remember Gen. Pillow and quite a
+cluster of other militaires also present.
+
+One of my choice amusements during my stay in New Orleans was going down
+to the old French Market, especially of a Sunday morning. The show was
+a varied and curious one; among the rest, the Indian and negro hucksters
+with their wares. For there were always fine specimens of Indians,
+both men and women, young and old. I remember I nearly always on these
+occasions got a large cup of delicious coffee with a biscuit, for my
+breakfast, from the immense shining copper kettle of a great Creole
+mulatto woman (I believe she weigh'd 230 pounds.) I never have had
+such coffee since. About nice drinks, anyhow, my recollection of the
+"cobblers" (with strawberries and snow on top of the large tumblers,)
+and also the exquisite wines, and the perfect and mild French brandy,
+help the regretful reminiscence of my New Orleans experiences of those
+days. And what splendid and roomy and leisurely bar-rooms! particularly
+the grand ones of the St. Charles and St. Louis. Bargains, auctions,
+appointments, business conferences, &c., were generally held in the
+spaces or recesses of these bar-rooms.
+
+I used to wander a midday hour or two now and then for amusement on the
+crowded and bustling levees, on the banks of the river. The diagonally
+wedg'd-in boats, the stevedores, the piles of cotton and other
+merchandise, the carts, mules, negroes, etc., afforded never-ending
+studies and sights to me. I made acquaintances among the captains,
+boatmen, or other characters, and often had long talks with
+them--sometimes finding a real rough diamond among my chance encounters.
+Sundays I sometimes went forenoons to the old Catholic Cathedral in the
+French quarter. I used to walk a good deal in this arrondissement; and I
+have deeply regretted since that I did not cultivate, while I had such
+a good opportunity, the chance of better knowledge of French and Spanish
+Creole New Orleans people. (I have an idea that there is much and of
+importance about the Latin race contributions to American nationality
+in the South and Southwest that will never be put with sympathetic
+understanding and tact on record.)
+
+Let me say, for better detail, that through several months (1848) I
+work'd on a new daily paper, _The Crescent_; my situation rather a
+pleasant one. My young brother, Jeff, was with me; and he not only grew
+very homesick, but the climate of the place, and especially the water,
+seriously disagreed with him. From this and other reasons (although I
+was quite happily fix'd) I made no very long stay in the South. In due
+time we took passage northward for St. Louis in the "Pride of the West"
+steamer, which left her wharf just at dusk. My brother was unwell,
+and lay in his berth from the moment we left till the next morning; he
+seem'd to me to be in a fever, and I felt alarm'd. However, the next
+morning he was all right again, much to my relief.
+
+Our voyage up the Mississippi was after the same sort as the voyage,
+some months before, down it. The shores of this great river are very
+monotonous and dull--one continuous and rank flat, with the exception of
+a meagre stretch of bluff, about the neighborhood of Natchez,
+Memphis, &c. Fortunately we had good weather, and not a great crowd of
+passengers, though the berths were all full. The "Pride" jogg'd along
+pretty well, and put us into St. Louis about noon Saturday. After
+looking around a little I secured passage on the steamer "Prairie Bird,"
+(to leave late in the afternoon,) bound up the Illinois river to La
+Salle, where we were to take canal for Chicago. During the day I rambled
+with my brother over a large portion of the town, search'd after a
+refectory, and, after much trouble, succeeded in getting some dinner.
+
+Our "Prairie Bird" started out at dark, and a couple of hours after
+there was quite a rain and blow, which made them haul in along shore
+and tie fast. We made but thirty miles the whole night. The boat was
+excessively crowded with passengers, and had withal so much freight that
+we could hardly turn around. I slept on the floor, and the night was
+uncomfortable enough. The Illinois river is spotted with little villages
+with big names, Marseilles, Naples, etc.; its banks are low, and the
+vegetation excessively rank. Peoria, some distance up, is a pleasant
+town; I went over the place; the country back is all rich land, for sale
+cheap. Three or four miles from P., land of the first quality can be
+bought for $3 or $4 an acre. (I am transcribing from my notes written at
+the time.)
+
+Arriving at La Salle Tuesday morning, we went on board a canal-boat, had
+a detention by sticking on a mud bar, and then jogg'd along at a slow
+trot, some seventy of us, on a moderate-sized boat. (If the weather
+hadn't been rather cool, particularly at night, it would have been
+insufferable.) Illinois is the most splendid agricultural country I ever
+saw; the land is of surpassing richness; the place par excellence for
+farmers. We stopt at various points along the canal, some of them pretty
+villages.
+
+It was 10 o'clock A.M. when we got in Chicago, too late for the steamer;
+so we went to an excellent public house, the "American Temperance," and
+I spent the time that day and till next morning, looking around Chicago.
+
+At 9 the next forenoon we started on the "Griffith" (on board of which I
+am now inditing these memoranda,) up the blue waters of Lake Michigan.
+I was delighted with the appearance of the towns along Wisconsin. At
+Milwaukee I went on shore, and walk'd around the place. They say the
+country back is beautiful and rich. (It seems to me that if we should
+ever remove from Long Island, Wisconsin would be the proper place to
+come to.) The towns have a remarkable appearance of good living, without
+any penury or want. The country is so good naturally, and labor is in
+such demand.
+
+About 5 o'clock one afternoon I heard the cry of "a woman over-board."
+It proved to be a crazy lady, who had become so from the loss of her
+son a couple of weeks before. The small boat put off, and succeeded in
+picking her up, though she had been in the water 15 minutes. She was
+dead. Her husband was on board. They went off at the next stopping
+place. While she lay in the water she probably recover'd her reason, as
+she toss'd up her arms and lifted her face toward the boat.
+
+_Sunday Morning, June 11_.--We pass'd down Lake Huron yesterday and last
+night, and between 4 and 5 o'clock this morning we ran on the "flats,"
+and have been vainly trying, with the aid of a steam tug and a lumbering
+lighter, to get clear again. The day is beautiful and the water clear
+and calm. Night before last we stopt at Mackinaw, (the island and
+town,) and I went up on the old fort, one of the oldest stations in
+the Northwest. We expect to get to Buffalo by to-morrow. The tug has
+fasten'd lines to us, but some have been snapt and the others have no
+effect. We seem to be firmly imbedded in the sand. (With the exception
+of a larger boat and better accommodations, it amounts to about the
+same thing as a becalmment I underwent on the Montauk voyage, East
+Long Island, last summer.) _Later_.--We are off again--expect to reach
+Detroit before dinner.
+
+We did not stop at Detroit. We are now on Lake Erie, jogging along at
+a good round pace. A couple of hours since we were on the river above.
+Detroit seem'd to me a pretty place and thrifty. I especially liked
+the looks of the Canadian shore opposite and of the little village
+of Windsor, and, indeed, all along the banks of the river. From the
+shrubbery and the neat appearance of some of the cottages, I think it
+must have been settled by the French. While I now write we can see a
+little distance ahead the scene of the battle between Perry's fleet and
+the British during the last war with England. The lake looks to me a
+fine sheet of water. We are having a beautiful day.
+
+_June 12_.--We stopt last evening at Cleveland, and though it was dark,
+I took the opportunity of rambling about the place; went up in the heart
+of the city and back to what appear'd to be the courthouse. The streets
+are unusually wide, and the buildings appear to be substantial and
+comfortable. We went down through Main street and found, some distance
+along, several squares of ground very prettily planted with trees and
+looking attractive enough. Return'd to the boat by way of the lighthouse
+on the hill.
+
+This morning we are making for Buffalo, being, I imagine, a little more
+than half across Lake Erie. The water is rougher than on Michigan or
+Huron. (On St. Clair it was smooth as glass.) The day is bright and dry,
+with a stiff head wind.
+
+We arriv'd in Buffalo on Monday evening; spent that night and a portion
+of next day going round the city exploring. Then got in the cars and
+went to Niagara; went under the falls--saw the whirlpool and all the
+other sights.
+
+Tuesday night started for Albany; travel'd all night. From the time
+daylight afforded us a view of the country all seem'd very rich and well
+cultivated. Every few miles were large towns or villages.
+
+Wednesday late we arriv'd at Albany. Spent the evening in exploring.
+There was a political meeting (Hunker) at the capitol, but I pass'd
+it by. Next morning I started down the Hudson in the "Alida;" arriv'd
+safely in New York that evening.
+
+_From the New Orleans Picayune, Jan. 25, 1887._
+
+
+
+
+SMALL MEMORANDA
+
+_Thousands lost--here one or two preserv'd_
+
+
+ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE, _Washington, Aug. 22, 1865_.--As I write
+this, about noon, the suite of rooms here is fill'd with Southerners,
+standing in squads, or streaming in and out, some talking with
+the Pardon Clerk, some waiting to see the Attorney General, others
+discussing in low tones among themselves. All are mainly anxious about
+their pardons. The famous 13th exception of the President's Amnesty
+Proclamation of ----, makes it necessary that every secessionist, whose
+property is worth $20,000 or over, shall get a special pardon, before he
+can transact any legal purchase, sale, &c. So hundreds and thousands of
+such property owners have either sent up here, for the last two months,
+or have been, or are now coming personally here, to get their pardons.
+They are from Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North and South
+Carolina, and every Southern State. Some of their written petitions are
+very abject. Secession officers of the rank of Brigadier General, or
+higher, also need these special pardons. They also come here. I see
+streams of the $20,000 men, (and some women,) every day. I talk now and
+then with them, and learn much that is interesting and significant. All
+the southern women that come (some splendid specimens, mothers, &c.) are
+dress'd in deep black.
+
+Immense numbers (several thousands) of these pardons have been pass'd
+upon favorably; the Pardon Warrants (like great deeds) have been issued
+from the State Department, on the requisition of this office. But for
+some reason or other, they nearly all yet lie awaiting the President's
+signature. He seems to be in no hurry about it, but lets them wait.
+
+The crowds that come here make a curious study for me. I get along, very
+sociably, with any of them--as I let them do all the talking; only now
+and then I have a long confab, or ask a suggestive question or two.
+
+If the thing continues as at present, the property and wealth of the
+Southern States is going to legally rest, for the future, on these
+pardons. Every single one is made out with the condition that the
+grantee shall respect the abolition of slavery, and never make an
+attempt to restore it.
+
+_Washington, Sept. 8, 9, &c., 1865_.--The arrivals, swarms, &c., of the
+$20,000 men seeking pardons, still continue with increas'd numbers and
+pertinacity. I yesterday (I am a clerk in the U. S. Attorney General's
+office here) made out a long list from Alabama, nearly 200, recommended
+for pardon by the Provisional Governor. This list, in the shape of a
+requisition from the Attorney General, goes to the State Department.
+There the Pardon Warrants are made out, brought back here, and then sent
+to the President, where they await his signature. He is signing them
+very freely of late.
+
+The President, indeed, as at present appears, has fix'd his mind on a
+very generous and forgiving course toward the return'd secessionists.
+He will not countenance at all the demand of the extreme Philo-African
+element of the North, to make the right of negro voting at elections a
+condition and sine qua non of the reconstruction of the United States
+south, and of their resumption of co-equality in the Union.
+
+
+A GLINT INSIDE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S CABINET APPOINTMENTS. ONE ITEM OF
+MANY.
+
+While it was hanging in suspense who should be appointed Secretary of
+the Interior, (to take the place of Caleb Smith,) the choice was very
+close between Mr. Harlan and Col. Jesse K. Dubois, of Illinois. The
+latter had many friends. He was competent, he was honest, and he was a
+man. Mr. Harlan, in the race, finally gain'd the Methodist interest, and
+got himself to be consider'd as identified with it; and his appointment
+was apparently ask'd for by that powerful body. Bishop Simpson, of
+Philadephia, came on and spoke for the selection. The President was
+much perplex'd. The reasons for appointing Col. Dubois were very strong,
+almost insuperable--yet the argument for Mr. Harlan, under the adroit
+position he had plac'd himself, was heavy. Those who press'd him adduc'd
+the magnitude of the Methodists as a body, their loyalty, more general
+and genuine than any other sect--that they represented the West, and
+had a right to be heard--that all or nearly all the other great
+denominations had their representatives in the heads of the
+government--that they as a body and the great sectarian power of the
+West, formally ask'd Mr. Harlan's appointment--that he was of them,
+having been a Methodist minister--that it would not do to offend them,
+but was highly necessary to propitiate them.
+
+Mr. Lincoln thought deeply over the whole matter. He was in more than
+usual tribulation on the subject. Let it be enough to say that though
+Mr. Harlan finally receiv'd the Secretaryship, Col. Dubois came as near
+being appointed as a man could, and not be. The decision was finally
+made one night about 10 o'clock. Bishop Simpson and other clergymen
+and leading persons in Mr. Harlan's behalf, had been talking long and
+vehemently with the President. A member of Congress who was pressing
+Col. Dubois's claims, was in waiting. The President had told the Bishop
+that he would make a decision that evening, and that he thought it
+unnecessary to be press'd any more on the subject. That night he call'd
+in the M.C. above alluded to, and said to him: "Tell Uncle Jesse that
+I want to give him this appointment, and yet I cannot. I will do almost
+anything else in the world for him I am able. I have thought the matter
+all over, and under the circumstances think the Methodists too good and
+too great a body to be slighted. They have stood by the government, and
+help'd us their very best. I have had no better friends; and as the case
+stands, I have decided to appoint Mr. Harlan."
+
+
+NOTE TO A FRIEND
+
+[_Written on the fly-leaf of a copy of_ Specimen Days, _sent to Peter
+Doyle, at Washington, June, 1883_]
+
+Pete, do you remember--(of course you do--I do well)--those great long
+jovial walks we had at times for years, (1866-'72) out of Washington
+city--often moonlight nights--'way to "Good Hope";--or, Sundays, up and
+down the Potomac shores, one side or the other, sometimes ten miles at
+a stretch? Or when you work'd on the horse-cars, and I waited for you,
+coming home late together--or resting and chatting at the Market, corner
+7th street and the Avenue, and eating those nice musk or watermelons?
+Or during my tedious sickness and first paralysis ('73) how you used to
+come to my solitary garret-room and make up my bed, and enliven me,
+and chat for an hour or so--or perhaps go out and get the medicines Dr.
+Drinkard had order'd for me--before you went on duty?... Give my love
+to dear Mrs. and Mr. Nash, and tell them I have not forgotten them, and
+never will.
+
+W.W.
+
+
+WRITTEN IMPROMPTU IN AN ALBUM
+
+_Germantown, Phila., Dec. 26, '83_. In memory of these merry Christmas
+days and nights--to my friends Mr. and Mrs. Williams, Churchie, May,
+Gurney, and little Aubrey.... A heavy snow-storm blocking up everything,
+and keeping us in. But souls, hearts, thoughts, unloos'd. And so--one
+and all, little and big--hav'n't we had a good time?
+
+W.W.
+
+
+THE PLACE GRATITUDE FILLS IN A FINE CHARACTER
+
+_From the Philadelphia Press, Nov. 27, 1884, (Thanksgiving number)_
+
+_Scene_.--A large family supper party, a night or two ago, with voices
+and laughter of the young, mellow faces of the old, and a by-and-by
+pause in the general joviality. "Now, Mr. Whitman," spoke up one of the
+girls, "what have you to say about Thanksgiving? Won't you give us a
+sermon in advance, to sober us down?" The sage nodded smilingly, look'd
+a moment at the blaze of the great wood fire, ran his forefinger right
+and left through the heavy white mustache that might have otherwise
+impeded his voice, and began: "Thanksgiving goes probably far deeper
+than you folks suppose. I am not sure but it is the source of the
+highest poetry--as in parts of the Bible. Ruskin, indeed, makes the
+central source of all great art to be praise (gratitude) to the Almighty
+for life, and the universe with its objects and play of action.
+
+"We Americans devote an official day to it every year; yet I sometimes
+fear the real article is almost dead or dying in our self-sufficient,
+independent Republic. Gratitude, anyhow, has never been made half enough
+of by the moralists; it is indispensable to a complete character, man's
+or woman's--the disposition to be appreciative, thankful. That is the
+main matter, the element, inclination--what geologists call the _trend_.
+Of my own life and writings I estimate the giving thanks part, with what
+it infers, as essentially the best item. I should say the quality of
+gratitude rounds the whole emotional nature; I should say love and faith
+would quite lack vitality without it. There are people--shall I call
+them even religious people, as things go?--who have no such trend to
+their disposition."
+
+
+
+
+LAST OF THE WAR CASES
+
+_Memorandized at the time, Washington, 1865-'66_
+
+
+[Of reminiscences of the secession war, after the rest is said, I have
+thought it remains to give a few special words--in some respects at the
+time the typical words of all, and most definite-of the samples of the
+kill'd and wounded in action, and of soldiers who linger'd afterward,
+from these wounds, or were laid up by obstinate disease or prostration.
+The general statistics have been printed already, but can bear to be
+briefly stated again. There were over 3,000,000 men (for all periods of
+enlistment, large and small) furnish'd to the Union army during the war,
+New York State furnishing over 500,000, which was the greatest number
+of any one State. The losses by disease, wounds, kill'd in action,
+accidents, &c., were altogether about 600,000, or approximating to that
+number. Over 4,000,000 cases were treated in the main and adjudicatory
+army hospitals. The number sounds strange, but it is true. More than
+two-thirds of the deaths were from prostration or disease. To-day
+there lie buried over 300,000 soldiers in the various National army
+Cemeteries, more than half of them (and that is really the most
+significant and eloquent bequest of the war) mark'd "unknown." In full
+mortuary statistics of the war, the greatest deficiency arises from
+our not having the rolls, even as far as they were kept, of most of the
+Southern military prisons--a gap which probably both adds to, and helps
+conceal, the indescribable horrors of those places; it is, however,
+(restricting one vivid point only) certain that over 30,000 Union
+soldiers died, largely of actual starvation, in them. And now, leaving
+all figures and their "sum totals," I feel sure a few genuine memoranda
+of such things--some cases jotted down '64, '65, and '66--made at the
+time and on the spot, with all the associations of those scenes and
+places brought back, will not only go directest to the right spot, but
+give a clearer and more actual sight of that period, than anything else.
+Before I give the last cases I begin with verbatim extracts from letters
+home to my mother in Brooklyn, the second year of the war.--W.W.]
+
+_Washington, Oct. 13, 1863_.--There has been a new lot of wounded and
+sick arriving for the last three days. The first and second days, long
+strings of ambulances with the sick. Yesterday the worst, many with bad
+and bloody wounds, inevitably long neglected. I thought I was cooler and
+more used to it, but the sight of some cases brought tears into my eyes.
+I had the luck yesterday, however, to do lots of good. Had provided many
+nourishing articles for the men for another quarter, but, fortunately,
+had my stores where I could use them at once for these new-comers, as
+they arrived, faint, hungry, fagg'd out from their journey, with soil'd
+clothes, and all bloody. I distributed these articles, gave partly to
+the nurses I knew, or to those in charge. As many as possible I fed
+myself. Then I found a lot of oyster soup handy, and bought it all at
+once.
+
+It is the most pitiful sight, this, when the men are first brought in,
+from some camp hospital broke up, or a part of the army moving. These
+who arrived yesterday are cavalry men. Our troops had fought like
+devils, but got the worst of it. They were Kilpatrick's cavalry; were
+in the rear, part of Meade's retreat, and the reb cavalry, knowing the
+ground and taking a favorable opportunity, dash'd in between, cut them
+off, and shell'd them terribly. But Kilpatrick turn'd and brought them
+out mostly. It was last Sunday. (One of the most terrible sights and
+tasks is of such receptions.)
+
+_Oct. 27, 1863_.--If any of the soldiers I know (or their parents
+or folks) should call upon you--as they are often anxious to have my
+address in Brooklyn--you just use them as you know how, and if you
+happen to have pot-luck, and feel to ask them to take a bite, don't be
+afraid to do so. I have a friend, Thomas Neat, 2d N.Y. Cavalry, wounded
+in leg, now home in Jamaica, on furlough; he will probably call. Then
+possibly a Mr. Haskell, or some of his folks, from western New York: he
+had a son died here, and I was with the boy a good deal. The old man and
+his wife have written me and ask'd me my Brooklyn address; he said he
+had children in New York, and was occasionally down there. (When I come
+home I will show you some of the letters I get from mothers, sisters,
+fathers, &c. They will make you cry.)
+
+How the time passes away! To think it is over a year since I left
+home suddenly--and have mostly been down in front since. The year has
+vanish'd swiftly, and oh, what scenes I have witness'd during that time!
+And the war is not settled yet; and one does not see anything certain,
+or even promising, of a settlement. But I do not lose the solid feeling,
+in myself, that the Union triumph is assured, whether it be sooner or
+whether it be later, or whatever roundabout way we may be led there;
+and I find I don't change that conviction from any reverses we meet, nor
+delays, nor blunders. One realizes here in Washington the great labors,
+even the negative ones, of Lincoln; that it is a big thing to have just
+kept the United States from being thrown down and having its throat cut.
+I have not waver'd or had any doubt of the issue, since Gettysburg.
+
+_8th September, '63_.--Here, now, is a specimen army hospital case:
+Lorenzo Strong, Co. A, 9th United States Cavalry, shot by a shell last
+Sunday; right leg amputated on the field. Sent up here Monday night,
+14th. Seem'd to be doing pretty well till Wednesday noon, 16th, when he
+took a turn for the worse, and a strangely rapid and fatal termination
+ensued. Though I had much to do, I staid and saw all. It was a
+death-picture characteristic of these soldiers' hospitals--the perfect
+specimen of physique, one of the most magnificent I ever saw--the
+convulsive spasms and working of muscles, mouth, and throat. There are
+two good women nurses, one on each side. The doctor comes in and gives
+him a little chloroform. One of the nurses constantly fans him, for
+it is fearfully hot. He asks to be rais'd up, and they put him in a
+half-sitting posture. He call'd for "Mark" repeatedly, half-deliriously,
+all day. Life ebbs, runs now with the speed of a mill race; his splendid
+neck, as it lays all open, works still, slightly; his eyes turn back.
+A religious person coming in offers a prayer, in subdued tones, bent at
+the foot of the bed; and in the space of the aisle, a crowd, including
+two or three doctors, several students, and many soldiers, has silently
+gather'd. It is very still and warm, as the struggle goes on, and
+dwindles, a little more, and a little more--and then welcome oblivion,
+painlessness, death. A pause, the crowd drops away, a white bandage is
+bound around and under the jaw, the propping pillows are removed, the
+limpsy head falls down, the arms are softly placed by the side,
+all composed, all still,--and the broad white sheet is thrown over
+everything.
+
+_April 10, 1864_.--Unusual agitation all around concentrated here.
+Exciting times in Congress. The Copperheads are getting furious, and
+want to recognize the Southern Confederacy. "This is a pretty time to
+talk of recognizing such--," said a Pennsylvania officer in hospital to
+me to-day, "after what has transpired the last three years." After first
+Fredericksburg I felt discouraged myself, and doubted whether our rulers
+could carry on the war. But that has pass'd away. The war _must_ be
+carried on. I would willingly go in the ranks myself if I thought it
+would profit more than as at present, and I don't know sometimes but I
+shall, as it is. Then there is certainly a strange, deep, fervid feeling
+form'd or arous'd in the land, hard to describe or name; it is not a
+majority feeling, but it will make itself felt. M., you don't know what
+a nature a fellow gets, not only after being a soldier a while, but
+after living in the sights and influences of the camps, the wounded,
+&c.--a nature he never experienced before. The stars and stripes, the
+tune of Yankee Doodle, and similar things, produce such an effect on
+a fellow as never before. I have seen them bring tears on some men's
+cheeks, and others turn pale with emotion. I have a little flag (it
+belong'd to one of our cavalry regiments,) presented to me by one of the
+wounded; it was taken by the secesh in a fight, and rescued by our men
+in a bloody skirmish following. It cost three men's lives to get back
+that four-by-three flag--to tear it from the breast of a dead rebel--for
+_the name_ of getting their little "rag" back again. The man that
+secured it was very badly wounded, and they let him keep it. I was with
+him a good deal; he wanted to give me some keepsake, he said,--he didn't
+expect to live,--so he gave me that flag. The best of it all is, dear
+M., there isn't a regiment, cavalry or infantry, that wouldn't do the
+like, on the like occasion.
+
+_April 12_.--I will finish my letter this morning; it is a beautiful
+day. I was up in Congress very late last night. The House had a very
+excited night session about expelling the men that proposed recognizing
+the Southern Confederacy. You ought to hear (as I do) the soldiers talk;
+they are excited to madness. We shall probably have hot times here, not
+in the military fields alone. The body of the army is true and firm as
+the North Star.
+
+_May 6, '64_.--M., the poor soldier with diarrhoea, is still living,
+but, oh, what a looking object! Death would be a relief to him--he
+cannot last many hours. Cunningham, the Ohio soldier, with leg amputated
+at thigh, has pick'd up beyond expectation; now looks indeed like
+getting well. (He died a few weeks afterwards.) The hospitals are very
+full. I am very well indeed. Hot here to-day.
+
+_May 23, '64_.--Sometimes I think that should it come when it _must_,
+to fall in battle, one's anguish over a son or brother kill'd might be
+temper'd with much to take the edge off. Lingering and extreme suffering
+from wounds or sickness seem to me far worse than death in battle. I
+can honestly say the latter has no terrors for me, as far as I myself am
+concern'd. Then I should say, too, about death in war, that our feelings
+and imaginations make a thousand times too much of the whole matter. Of
+the many I have seen die, or known of, the past year, I have not seen or
+known one who met death with terror. In most cases I should say it was
+a welcome relief and release. Yesterday I spent a good part of the
+afternoon with a young soldier of seventeen, Charles Cutter, of Lawrence
+city, Massachusetts, 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery, Battery M. He
+was brought to one of the hospitals mortally wounded in abdomen. Well,
+I thought to myself, as I sat looking at him, it ought to be a relief to
+his folks if they could see how little he really suffer'd. He lay very
+placid, in a half lethargy, with his eyes closed. As it was extremely
+hot, and I sat a good while silently fanning him, and wiping the
+sweat, at length he open'd his eyes quite wide and clear, and look'd
+inquiringly around. I said, "What is it, my boy? Do you want anything?"
+He answer'd quietly, with a good-natured smile, "Oh, nothing; I was only
+looking around to see who was with me." His mind was somewhat wandering,
+yet he lay in an evident peacefulness that sanity and health might
+have envied. I had to leave for other engagements. He died, I heard
+afterward, without any special agitation, in the course of the night.
+
+_Washington, May 26, '63_.--M., I think something of commencing a series
+of lectures, readings, talks, &c., through the cities of the North, to
+supply myself with funds for hospital ministrations. I do not like to
+be so beholden to others; I need a pretty free supply of money, and the
+work grows upon me, and fascinates me. It is the most magnetic as well
+as terrible sight: the lots of poor wounded and helpless men depending
+so much, in one ward or another, upon my soothing or talking to them,
+or rousing them up a little, or perhaps petting, or feeding them their
+dinner or supper (here is a patient, for instance, wounded in both
+arms,) or giving some trifle for a novelty or change--anything, however
+trivial, to break the monotony of those hospital hours.
+
+It is curious: when I am present at the most appalling scenes, deaths,
+operations, sickening wounds (perhaps full of maggots,) I keep cool and
+do not give out or budge, although my sympathies are very much excited;
+but often, hours afterward, perhaps when I am home, or out walking
+alone, I feel sick, and actually tremble, when I recall the case again
+before me.
+
+_Sunday afternoon, opening of 1865_.--Pass'd this afternoon among a
+collection of unusually bad cases, wounded and sick secession soldiers,
+left upon our hands. I spent the previous Sunday afternoon there also.
+At that time two were dying. Two others have died during the week.
+Several of them are partly deranged. I went around among them
+elaborately. Poor boys, they all needed to be cheer'd up. As I sat down
+by any particular one, the eyes of all the rest in the neighboring cots
+would fix upon me, and remain steadily riveted as long as I sat within
+their sight. Nobody seem'd to wish anything special to eat or drink.
+The main thing ask'd for was postage stamps, and paper for writing. I
+distributed all the stamps I had. Tobacco was wanted by some.
+
+One call'd me over to him and ask'd me in a low tone what denomination
+I belong'd to. He said he was a Catholic--wish'd to find some one of the
+same faith--wanted some good reading. I gave him something to read, and
+sat down by him a few minutes. Moved around with a word for each. They
+were hardly any of them personally attractive cases, and no visitors
+come here. Of course they were all destitute of money. I gave small sums
+to two or three, apparently the most needy. The men are from quite all
+the Southern States, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, &c.
+
+Wrote several letters. One for a young fellow named Thomas J. Byrd, with
+a bad wound and diarrhoea. Was from Russell county, Alabama; been out
+four years. Wrote to his mother; had neither heard from her nor written
+to her in nine months. Was taken prisoner last Christmas, in Tennessee;
+sent to Nashville, then to Camp Chase, Ohio, and kept there a long time;
+all the while not money enough to get paper and postage stamps. Was
+paroled, but on his way home the wound took gangrene; had diarrhoea
+also; had evidently been very low. Demeanor cool, and patient. A
+dark-skinn'd, quaint young fellow, with strong Southern idiom; no
+education.
+
+Another letter for John W. Morgan, aged 18, from Shellot, Brunswick
+county, North Carolina; been out nine months; gunshot wound in right
+leg, above knee; also diarrhoea; wound getting along well; quite a
+gentle, affectionate boy; wish'd me to put in the letter for his mother
+to kiss his little brother and sister for him. [I put strong envelopes
+on these, and two or three other letters, directed them plainly and
+fully, and dropt them in the Washington post-office the next morning
+myself.]
+
+The large ward I am in is used for secession soldiers exclusively. One
+man, about forty years of age, emaciated with diarrhoea, I was attracted
+to, as he lay with his eyes turn'd up, looking like death. His weakness
+was so extreme that it took a minute or so, every time, for him to talk
+with anything like consecutive meaning; yet he was evidently a man of
+good intelligence and education. As I said anything, he would lie a
+moment perfectly still, then, with closed eyes, answer in a low, very
+slow voice, quite correct and sensible, but in a way and tone that wrung
+my heart. He had a mother, wife, and child living (or probably living)
+in his home in Mississippi. It was long, long since he had seen them.
+Had he caus'd a letter to be sent them since he got here in Washington?
+No answer. I repeated the question, very slowly and soothingly. He could
+not tell whether he had or not--things of late seem'd to him like a
+dream. After waiting a moment, I said: "Well, I am going to walk down
+the ward a moment, and when I come back you can tell me. If you have not
+written, I will sit down and write." A few minutes after I return'd; he
+said he remember'd now that some one had written for him two or three
+days before. The presence of this man impress'd me profoundly. The
+flesh was all sunken on face and arms; the eyes low in their sockets
+and glassy, and with purple rings around them. Two or three great tears
+silently flow'd out from the eyes, and roll'd down his temples (he was
+doubtless unused to be spoken to as I was speaking to him.)Sickness,
+imprisonment, exhaustion, &c., had conquer'd the body, yet the mind held
+mastery still, and call'd even wandering remembrance back.
+
+There are some fifty Southern soldiers here; all sad, sad cases. There
+is a good deal of scurvy. I distributed some paper, envelopes, and
+postage stamps, and wrote addresses full and plain on many of the
+envelopes.
+
+I return'd again Tuesday, August 1, and moved around in the same manner
+a couple of hours.
+
+_September 22, '65_.--Afternoon and evening at Douglas hospital to see
+a friend belonging to 2d New York Artillery (Hiram W. Frazee, Serg't,)
+down with an obstinate compound fracture of left leg receiv'd in one of
+the last battles near Petersburg. After sitting a while with him,
+went through several neighboring wards. In one of them found an old
+acquaintance transferr'd here lately, a rebel prisoner, in a dying
+condition. Poor fellow, the look was already on his face. He gazed long
+at me. I ask'd him if he knew me. After a moment he utter'd something,
+but inarticulately. I have seen him off and on for the last five months.
+He has suffer'd very much; a bad wound in left leg, severely fractured,
+several operations, cuttings, extractions of bone, splinters, &c. I
+remember he seem'd to me, as I used to talk with him, a fair specimen of
+the main strata of the Southerners, those without property or education,
+but still with the stamp which comes from freedom and equality. I liked
+him; Jonathan Wallace, of Hurd co., Georgia, age 30 (wife, Susan F.
+Wallace, Houston, Hurd co., Georgia.) [If any good soul of that county
+should see this, I hope he will send her this word.] Had a family; had
+not heard from them since taken prisoner, now six months. I had written
+for him, and done trifles for him, before he came here. He made no
+outward show, was mild in his talk and behavior, but I knew he worried
+much inwardly. But now all would be over very soon. I half sat upon the
+little stand near the head of the bed. Wallace was somewhat restless.
+I placed my hand lightly on his forehead and face, just sliding it over
+the surface. In a moment or so he fell into a calm, regular-breathing
+lethargy or sleep, and remain'd so while I sat there. It was dark, and
+the lights were lit. I hardly know why (death seem'd hovering near,) but
+I stay'd nearly an hour. A Sister of Charity, dress'd in black, with
+a broad white linen bandage around her head and under her chin, and a
+black crape over all and flowing down from her head in long wide pieces,
+came to him, and moved around the bed. She bow'd low and solemn to me.
+For some time she moved around there noiseless as a ghost, doing little
+things for the dying man.
+
+_December, '65_.--The only remaining hospital is now "Harewood," out in
+the woods, northwest of the city. I have been visiting there regularly
+every Sunday during these two months.
+
+_January 24, '66_.--Went out to Harewood early to-day, and remain'd all
+day.
+
+_Sunday, February 4, 1866_.--Harewood Hospital again. Walk'd out this
+afternoon (bright, dry, ground frozen hard) through the woods. Ward 6 is
+fill'd with blacks, some with wounds, some ill, two or three with limbs
+frozen. The boys made quite a picture sitting round the stove. Hardly
+any can read or write. I write for three or four, direct envelopes, give
+some tobacco, &c.
+
+Joseph Winder, a likely boy, aged twenty-three, belongs to 10th Color'd
+Infantry (now in Texas;) is from Eastville, Virginia. Was a slave;
+belong'd to Lafayette Homeston. The master was quite willing he should
+leave. Join'd the army two years ago; has been in one or two battles.
+Was sent to hospital with rheumatism. Has since been employ'd as cook.
+His parents at Eastville; he gets letters from them, and has letters
+written to them by a friend. Many black boys left that part of Virginia
+and join'd the army; the 10th, in fact, was made up of Virginia blacks
+from thereabouts. As soon as discharged is going back to Eastville to
+his parents and home, and intends to stay there.
+
+Thomas King, formerly 2d District Color'd Regiment, discharged soldier,
+Company E, lay in a dying condition; his disease was consumption. A
+Catholic priest was administering extreme unction to him. (I have
+seen this kind of sight several times in the hospitals; it is very
+impressive.)
+
+_Harewood, April 29, 1866. Sunday afternoon_.--Poor Joseph Swiers,
+Company H, 155th Pennsylvania, a mere lad (only eighteen years of age;)
+his folks living in Reedsburgh, Pennsylvania. I have known him for
+nearly a year, transferr'd from hospital to hospital. He was badly
+wounded in the thigh at Hatcher's Run, February 6, '65.
+
+James E. Ragan, Atlanta, Georgia; 2d United States Infantry. Union
+folks. Brother impress'd, deserted, died; now no folks, left alone
+in the world, is in a singularly nervous state; came in hospital with
+intermittent fever.
+
+Walk slowly around the ward, observing, and to see if I can do anything.
+Two or three are lying very low with consumption, cannot recover; some
+with old wounds; one with both feet frozen off, so that on one only the
+heel remains. The supper is being given out: the liquid call'd tea, a
+thick slice of bread, and some stew'd apples.
+
+That was about the last I saw of the regular army hospitals.
+
+[ILLUSTRATION Here is a portrait of E.H. from life, by Henry Inman, in
+New York, about 1827 or '28. The painting was finely copper-plated
+in 1830, and the present is a fac simile. Looks as I saw him in the
+following narrative.]
+
+The time was signalized by the _separation_ of the society of Friends,
+so greatly talked of--and continuing yet--but so little really
+explain'd. (All I give of this separation is in a Note following.)
+
+
+
+
+Notes (_such as they are) founded on_
+
+ELIAS HICKS
+
+
+_Prefatory Note_--As myself a little boy hearing so much of E.H., at
+that time, long ago, in Suffolk and Queens and Kings counties--and more
+than once personally seeing the old man--and my dear, dear father and
+mother faithful listeners to him at the meetings--I remember how I
+dream'd to write perhaps a piece about E.H. and his look and discourses,
+however long afterward--for my parents' sake--and the dear Friends
+too! And the following is what has at last but all come out of it--the
+feeling and intention never forgotten yet!
+
+There is a sort of nature of persons I have compared to little rills of
+water, fresh, from perennial springs--(and the comparison is indeed an
+appropriate one)--persons not so very plenty, yet some few certainly
+of them running over the surface and area of humanity, all times, all
+lands. It is a specimen of this class I would now present. I would sum
+up in E.H., and make his case stand for the class, the sort, in all
+ages, all lands, sparse, not numerous, yet enough to irrigate the
+soil--enough to prove the inherent moral stock and irrepressible
+devotional aspirations growing indigenously of themselves, always
+advancing, and never utterly gone under or lost.
+
+Always E.H. gives the service of pointing to the fountain of all naked
+theology, all religion, all worship, all the truth to which you are
+possibly eligible--namely in _yourself_ and your inherent relations.
+Others talk of Bibles, saints, churches, exhortations, vicarious
+atonements--the canons outside of yourself and apart from man--E.H. to
+the religion inside of man's very own nature. This he incessantly labors
+to kindle, nourish, educate, bring forward and strengthen. He is the
+most _democratic_ of the religionists--the prophets.
+
+I have no doubt that both the curious fate and death of his four sons,
+and the facts (and dwelling on them) of George Fox's strange early life,
+and permanent "conversion," had much to do with the peculiar and
+sombre ministry and style of E.H. from the first, and confirmed him all
+through. One must not be dominated by the man's almost absurd saturation
+in cut and dried biblical phraseology, and in ways, talk, and standard,
+regardful mainly of the one need he dwelt on, above all the rest. This
+main need he drove home to the soul; the canting and sermonizing soon
+exhale away to any auditor that realizes what E.H. is for and after. The
+present paper, (a broken memorandum of his formation, his earlier life,)
+is the cross-notch that rude wanderers make in the woods, to remind
+them afterward of some matter of first-rate importance and full
+investigation. (Remember too, that E.H. was _a thorough believer in the
+Hebrew Scriptures_, in his way.)
+
+The following are really but disjointed fragments recall'd to serve and
+eke out here the lank printed pages of what I commenc'd unwittingly two
+months ago. Now, as I am well in for it, comes an old attack, the sixth
+or seventh recurrence, of my war-paralysis, dulling me from putting the
+notes in shape, and threatening any further action, head or body. _W.W.,
+Camden, N.J., July, 1888_.
+
+To begin with, my theme is comparatively featureless. The great
+historian has pass'd by the life of Elias Hicks quite without glance or
+touch. Yet a man might commence and overhaul it as furnishing one of the
+amplest historic and biography's backgrounds. While the foremost actors
+and events from 1750 to 1830 both in Europe and America were crowding
+each other on the world's stage--While so many kings, queens, soldiers,
+philosophs, musicians, voyagers, litterateurs, enter one side, cross the
+boards, and disappear--amid loudest reverberating names--Frederick
+the Great, Swedenborg, Junius, Voltaire, Rousseau, Linnaeus,
+Herschel--curiously contemporary with the long life of Goethe--through
+the occupancy of the British throne by George the Third--amid stupendous
+visible political and social revolutions, and far more stupendous
+invisible moral ones--while the many quarto volumes of the Encyclopaedia
+Francaise are being published at fits and intervals, by Diderot, in
+Paris--while Haydn and Beethoven and Mozart and Weber are working out
+their harmonic compositions--while Mrs. Siddons and Talma and Kean are
+acting--while Mungo Park explores Africa, and Capt. Cook circumnavigates
+the globe--through all the fortunes of the American Revolution, the
+beginning, continuation and end, the battle of Brooklyn, the surrender
+at Saratoga, the final peace of '83--through the lurid tempest of the
+French Revolution, the execution of the king and queen, and the Reign of
+Terror--through the whole of the meteor-career of Napoleon--through
+all Washington's, Adams's, Jefferson's, Madison's, and Monroe's
+Presidentiads--amid so many flashing lists of names, (indeed there seems
+hardly, in any department, any end to them, Old World or New,) Franklin,
+Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mirabeau, Fox, Nelson, Paul Jones, Kant, Fichte,
+and Hegel, Fulton, Walter Scott, Byron, Mesmer, Champollion--Amid
+pictures that dart upon me even as I speak, and glow and mix and
+coruscate and fade like aurora boreales--Louis the 16th threaten'd by
+the mob, the trial of Warren Hastings, the death-bed of Robert Burns,
+Wellington at Waterloo, Decatur capturing the Macedonian, or the
+sea-fight between the Chesapeake and the Shannon--During all these
+whiles,
+
+I say, and though on a far different grade, running parallel and
+contemporary with all--a curious, quiet yet busy life centred in a
+little country village on Long Island, and within sound on still
+nights of the mystic surf-beat of the sea. About this life, this
+Personality--neither soldier, nor scientist, nor litterateur--I propose
+to occupy a few minutes in fragmentary talk, to give some few melanges,
+disconnected impressions, statistics, resultant groups, pictures,
+thoughts' of him, or radiating from him.
+
+Elias Hicks was born March 19, 1748, in Hempstead township, Queens
+county, Long Island, New York State, near a village bearing the old
+Scripture name of Jericho, (a mile or so north and east of the present
+Hicksville, on the L.I. Railroad.) His father and mother were Friends,
+of that class working with their own hands, and mark'd by neither riches
+nor actual poverty. Elias as a child and youth had small education from
+letters, but largely learn'd from Nature's schooling. He grew up even in
+his ladhood a thorough gunner and fisherman. The farm of his parents lay
+on the south or sea-shore side of Long Island, (they had early removed
+from Jericho,) one of the best regions in the world for wild fowl and
+for fishing. Elias became a good horseman, too, and knew the animal
+well, riding races; also a singer fond of "vain songs," as he afterwards
+calls them; a dancer, too, at the country balls. When a boy of 13 he had
+gone to live with an elder brother; and when about 17 he changed again
+and went as apprentice to the carpenter's trade. The time of all this
+was before the Revolutionary War, and the locality 30 to 40 miles from
+New York city. My great-grandfather, Whitman, was often with Elias at
+these periods, and at merry-makings and sleigh-rides in winter over "the
+plains."
+
+How well I remember the region--the flat plains of the middle of Long
+Island, as then, with their prairie-like vistas and grassy patches in
+every direction, and the 'kill-calf' and herds of cattle and sheep. Then
+the South Bay and shores and the salt meadows, and the sedgy smell, and
+numberless little bayous and hummock-islands in the waters, the habitat
+of every sort of fish and aquatic fowl of North America. And the bay
+men--a strong, wild, peculiar race--now extinct, or rather entirely
+changed. And the beach outside the sandy bars, sometimes many miles at
+a stretch, with their old history of wrecks and storms--the weird,
+white-gray beach--not without its tales of pathos--tales, too,
+of grandest heroes and heroisms. In such scenes and elements and
+influences--in the midst of Nature and along the shores of the
+sea--Elias Hicks was fashion'd through boyhood and early manhood, to
+maturity. But a moral and mental and emotional change was imminent.
+Along at this time he says:
+
+  My apprenticeship being now expir'd, I gradually withdrew from
+  the company of my former associates, became more acquainted with
+  Friends, and was more frequent in my attendance of meetings; and
+  although this was in some degree profitable to me, yet I made but
+  slow progress in my religious improvement. The occupation of part of
+  my time in fishing and fowling had frequently tended to preser
+  me from falling into hurtful associations; but through the rising
+  intimations and reproofs of divine grace in my heart, I now began to
+  feel that the manner in which I sometimes amus'd myself with my gun
+  was not without sin; for although I mostly preferr'd going alone,
+  and while waiting in stillness for the coming of the fowl,
+  mind was at times so taken up in divine meditations, that the
+  opportunities were seasons of instruction and comfort to me; yet, on
+  other occasions, when accompanied by some of my acquaintances, and
+  when no fowls appear'd which would be useful to us after being
+  obtain'd, we sometimes, from wantonness or for mere diversion, would
+  destroy the small birds which could be of no service to us. This
+  cruel procedure affects my heart while penning these lines.
+
+In his 23d year Elias was married, by the Friends' ceremony, to Jemima
+Seaman. His wife was an only child; the parents were well off for common
+people, and at their request the son-in-law mov'd home with them and
+carried on the farm--which at their decease became his own, and he liv'd
+there all his remaining life. Of this matrimonial part of his career,
+(it continued, and with unusual happiness, for 58 years,) he says,
+giving the account of his marriage:
+
+  On this important occasion, we felt the clear and consoling evidence
+  of divine truth, and it remain'd with us as a seal upon our spirits,
+  strengthening us mutually to bear, with becoming fortitude, the
+  vicissitudes and trials which fell to our lot, and of which we h
+  a large share in passing through this probationary state. My wife,
+  although not of a very strong constitution, liv'd to be the mother
+  of eleven children, four sons and seven daughters. Our second
+  daughter, a very lovely, promising child, died when young, with the
+  small-pox, and the youngest was not living at its birth. The rest
+  all arriv'd to years of discretion, and afforded us considerable
+  comfort, as they prov'd to be in a good degree dutiful children. All
+  our sons, however, were of weak constitutions, and were not able to
+  take care of themselves, being so enfeebl'd as not to be able to
+  walk after the ninth or tenth year of their age. The two eldest died
+  in the fifteenth year of their age, the third in his seventeenth
+  year, and the youngest was nearly nineteen when he died. But,
+  although thus helpless, the innocency of their lives, and the
+  resign'd cheerfulness of their dispositions to their allotments,
+  made the labor and toil of taking care of them agreeable and
+  pleasant; and I trust we were preserv'd from murmuring or repining,
+  believing the dispensation to be in wisdom, and according to the
+  will and gracious disposing of an all-wise providence, for purposes
+  best known to himself. And when I have observ'd the great anxiety
+  and affliction which many parents have with undutiful children who
+  are favor'd with health, especially their sons, I could perceive
+  very few whose troubles and exercises, on that account, did not far
+  exceed ours. The weakness and bodily infirmity of our sons tended to
+  keep them much out of the way of the troubles and temptations
+  the world; and we believ'd that in their death they were happy, and
+  admitted into the realms of peace and joy: a reflection, the most
+  comfortable and joyous that parents can have in regard to their
+  tender offspring.
+
+Of a serious and reflective turn, by nature, and from his reading
+and surroundings, Elias had more than once markedly devotional inward
+intimations. These feelings increas'd in frequency and strength, until
+soon the following:
+
+  About the twenty-sixth year of my age I was again brought, by the
+  operative influence of divine grace, under deep concern of mind; and
+  was led, through adorable mercy, to see, that although I had ceas'd
+  from many sins and vanities of my youth, yet there were many
+  remaining that I was still guilty of, which were not yet aton'd for,
+  and for which I now felt the judgments of God to rest upon m
+  This caus'd me to cry earnestly to the Most High for pardon and
+  redemption, and he graciously condescended to hear my cry, and to
+  open a way before me, wherein I must walk, in order to experience
+  reconciliation with him; and as I abode in watchfulness and deep
+  humiliation before him, light broke forth out of obscurity, and my
+  darkness became as the noon-day. I began to have openings leading to
+  the ministry, which brought me under close exercise and deep travail
+  of spirit; for although I had for some time spoken on subjects of
+  business in monthly and preparative meetings, yet the prospe
+  of opening my mouth in public meetings was a close trial; but I
+  endeavor'd to keep my mind quiet and resign' d to the heavenly call,
+  if it should be made clear to me to be my duty. Nevertheless,
+  I was, soon after, sitting in a meeting, in much weightiness of
+  spirit, a secret, though clear, intimation accompanied me to spe
+  a few words, which were then given to me to utter, yet fear so
+  prevail'd, that I did not yield to the intimation. For this
+  omission, I felt close rebuke, and judgment seem'd, for some time,
+  to cover my mind; but as I humbl'd myself under the Lord's mighty
+  hand, he again lifted up the light of his countenance upon me, and
+  enabl'd me to renew covenant with him, that if he would pass by this
+  my offence, I would, in future, be faithful, if he should again
+  require such a service of me.
+
+The Revolutionary War following, tried the sect of Friends more than
+any. The difficulty was to steer between their convictions as patriots,
+and their pledges of non-warring peace. Here is the way they solv'd the
+problem:
+
+  A war, with all its cruel and destructive effects, having raged for
+  several years between the British Colonies in North America and the
+  mother country, Friends, as well as others, were expos' d to many
+  severe trials and sufferings; yet, in the colony of New York,
+  Friends, who stood faithful to their principles, and did not meddle
+  in the controversy, had, after a short period at first, considerable
+  favor allow'd them. The yearly meeting was held steadily, duri
+  the war, on Long Island, where the king's party had the rule; yet
+  Friends from the Main, where the American army ruled, had free
+  passage through both armies to attend it, and any other meetings
+  they were desirous of attending, except in a few instances. This was
+  a favor which the parties would not grant to their best friends, who
+  were of a war-like disposition; which shows what great advantages
+  would redound to mankind, were they all of this pacific spirit. I
+  pass'd myself through the lines of both armies six times during the
+  war, without molestation, both parties generally receiving me with
+  openness and civility; and although I had to pass over a tract of
+  country, between the two armies, sometimes more than thirty miles in
+  extent, and which was much frequented by robbers, a set, in general,
+  of cruel, unprincipled banditti, issuing out from both partie
+  yet, excepting once, I met with no interruption even from the
+  But although Friends in general experienc'd many favors and
+  deliverances, yet those scenes of war and confusion occasion
+  many trials and provings in various ways to the faithful. One
+  circumstance I am willing to mention, as it caus'd me considerable
+  exercise and concern. There was a large cellar under the new
+  meeting-house belonging to Friends in New York, which was generally
+  let as a store. When the king's troops enter'd the city, they took
+  possession of it for the purpose of depositing their warlike stores;
+  and ascertaining what Friends had the care of letting it, their
+  commissary came forward and offer'd to pay the rent; and those
+  Friends, for want of due consideration, accepted it. This caus'd
+  great uneasiness to the concern'd part of the Society, who
+  apprehended it not consistent with our peaceable principles to
+  receive payment for the depositing of military stores in our houses.
+  The subject was brought before the yearly meeting in 1779, and
+  engag'd its careful attention; but those Friends, who had been
+  active in the reception of the money, and some few others, were not
+  willing to acknowledge their proceedings to be inconsistent, nor to
+  return the money to those from whom it was receiv'd; and in order to
+  justify themselves therein, they referr'd to the conduct of Friends
+  in Philadelphia in similar cases. Matters thus appearing very
+  difficult and embarrassing, it was unitedly concluded to refer the
+  final determination thereof to the yearly meeting of Pennsylvania;
+  and several Friends were appointed to attend that meeting in
+  relation thereto, among whom I was one of the number. We accordingly
+  set out on the 9th day of the 9th month, 1779, and I was accompanied
+  from home by my beloved friend John Willis, who was likewise on the
+  appointment. We took a solemn leave of our families, they feeling
+  much anxiety at parting with us, on account of the dangers we were
+  expos'd to, having to pass not only the lines of the two armies, but
+  the deserted and almost uninhabited country that lay between them,
+  in many places the grass being grown up in the streets, and many
+  houses desolate and empty. Believing it, however, my duty to proceed
+  in the service, my mind was so settled and trust-fix'd in the divine
+  arm of power, that faith seem'd to banish all fear, and cheerfulness
+  and quiet resignation were, I believe, my constant companions during
+  the journey. We got permission, with but little difficulty, to pass
+  the outguards of the king's army at Kingsbridge, and proceeded to
+  Westchester. We afterwards attended meetings at Harrison's Purchase,
+  and Oblong, having the concurrence of our monthly meeting to take
+  some meetings in our way, a concern leading thereto having for some
+  time previously attended my mind. We pass'd from thence to Nine
+  Partners, and attended their monthly meeting, and then turn'd our
+  faces towards Philadelphia, being join'd by several others of the
+  Committee. We attended New Marlborough, Hardwick, and Kingswood
+  meetings on our journey, and arriv'd at Philadelphia on the 7th day
+  of the week, and 25th of 9th month, on which day we attended the
+  yearly meeting of Ministers and Elders, which began at the eleventh
+  hour. I also attended all the sittings of the yearly meeting until
+  the 4th day of the next week, and was then so indispos'd with a
+  fever, which had been increasing on me for several days, that I was
+  not able to attend after that time. I was therefore not present when
+  the subject was discuss' d, which came from our yearly meeting but I
+  was inform'd by my companion, that it was a very solemn opportunity,
+  and the matter was resulted in advising that the money should be
+  return'd into the office from whence it was receiv'd, accompanied
+  with our reasons for so doing: and this was accordingly done by the
+  direction of our yearly meeting the next year.
+
+Then, season after season, when peace and Independence reign'd, year
+following year, this remains to be (1791) a specimen of his personal
+labors:
+
+  I was from home on this journey four months and eleven days; rode
+  about one thousand five hundred miles, and attended forty-nine
+  particular meetings among Friends, three quarterly meetings, six
+  monthly meetings, and forty meetings among other people.
+
+And again another experience:
+
+  In the forepart of this meeting, my mind was reduc'd into such a
+  state of great weakness and depression, that my faith was almost
+  ready to fail, which produc'd great searchings of heart, so that I
+  was led to call in question all that I had ever before experienc'd.
+  In this state of doubting, I was ready to wish myself at home, from
+  an apprehension that I should only expose myself to reproach, and
+  wound the cause I was embark'd in; for the heavens seem'd like
+  brass, and the earth as iron; such coldness and hardness, I thought,
+  could scarcely have ever been experienc'd before by any creature, so
+  great was the depth of my baptism at this time; nevertheless, as I
+  endeavor'd to quiet my mind, in this conflicting dispensation, and
+  be resign'd to my allotment, however distressing, towards the latter
+  part of the meeting a ray of light broke through the surrounding
+  darkness, in which the Shepherd of Israel was pleas'd to arise, and
+  by the light of his glorious countenance, to scatter those clouds of
+  opposition. Then ability was receiv'd, and utterance given, to speak
+  of his marvellous works in the redemption of souls, and to op
+  the way of life and salvation, and the mysteries of his glorious
+  kingdom, which are hid from the wise and prudent of this world, and
+  reveal'd only unto those who are reduc'd into the state of little
+  children and babes in Christ.
+
+And concluding another jaunt in 1794:
+
+  I was from home in this journey about five months, and travell
+  by land and water about two thousand two hundred and eighty-three
+  miles; having visited all the meetings of Friends in the New England
+  states, and many meetings amongst those of other professions; and
+  also visited many meetings, among Friends and others, in the upper
+  part of our own yearly meeting; and found real peace in my labors.
+
+Another 'tramp' in 1798:
+
+  I was absent from home in this journey about five months and two
+  weeks, and rode about sixteen hundred miles, and attended about one
+  hundred and forty-three meetings.
+
+Here are some memoranda of 1813, near home:
+
+  First day. Our meeting this day pass'd in silent labor. The cloud
+  rested on the tabernacle; and, although it was a day of much rain
+  outwardly, yet very little of the dew of Hermon appear'd to distil
+  among us. Nevertheless, a comfortable calm was witness'd towards the
+  close, which we must render to the account of unmerited mercy and
+  love.
+
+  Second day. Most of this day was occupied in a visit to a sick
+  friend, who appeared comforted therewith. Spent part of the evening
+  in reading part of Paul's Epistle to the Romans.
+
+  Third day. I was busied most of this day in my common vocations.
+  Spent the evening principally in reading Paul. Found considerable
+  satisfaction in his first epistle to the Corinthians; in which he
+  shows the danger of some in setting too high a value on those who
+  were instrumental in bringing them to the knowledge of the truth,
+  without looking through and beyond the instrument, to the great
+  first cause and Author of every blessing, to whom all the praise and
+  honor are due.
+
+  Fifth day, 1st of 4th month. At our meeting to-day found it, as
+  usual, a very close steady exercise to keep the mind center'
+  where it ought to be. What a multitude of intruding thoughts
+  imperceptibly, as it were, steal into the mind, and turn it from its
+  proper object, whenever it relaxes its vigilance in watching against
+  them. Felt a little strength, just at the close, to remind Friends
+  of the necessity of a steady perseverance, by a recapitulation of
+  the parable of the unjust judge, showing how men ought always to
+  pray, and not to faint.
+
+  Sixth day. Nothing material occurr'd, but a fear lest the cares of
+  the world should engross too much of my time.
+
+  Seventh day. Had an agreeable visit from two ancient friends, which
+  I have long lov'd. The rest of the day I employ'd in manual labor,
+  mostly in gardening.
+
+But we find if we attend to records and details, we shall lay out an
+endless task. We can briefly say, summarily, that his whole life was
+a long religious missionary life of method, practicality, sincerity,
+earnestness, and pure piety--as near to his time here, as one in Judea,
+far back--or in any life, any age. The reader who feels interested must
+get--with all its dryness and mere dates, absence of emotionality
+or literary quality, and whatever abstract attraction (with even a
+suspicion of cant, sniffling,) the "Journal of the Life and Religious
+Labours of Elias Hicks, written by himself," at some Quaker book-store.
+(It is from this headquarters I have extracted the preceding
+quotations.) During E. H.'s matured life, continued from fifty to sixty
+years--while working steadily, earning his living and paying his way
+without intermission--he makes, as previously memorandized, several
+hundred preaching visits, not only through Long Island, but some of them
+away into the Middle or Southern States, or north into Canada, or the
+then far West--extending to thousands of miles, or filling several weeks
+and sometimes months. These religious journeys--scrupulously accepting
+in payment only his transportation from place to place, with his own
+food and shelter, and never receiving a dollar of money for "salary"
+or preaching--Elias, through good bodily health and strength, continues
+till quite the age of eighty. It was thus at one of his latest jaunts in
+Brooklyn city I saw and heard him. This sight and hearing shall now be
+described.
+
+Elias Hicks was at this period in the latter part (November or December)
+of 1829. It was the last tour of the many missions of the old man's
+life. He was in the 81st year of his age, and a few months before he
+had lost by death a beloved wife with whom he had lived in unalloyed
+affection and esteem for 58 years. (But a few months after this meeting
+Elias was paralyzed and died.) Though it is sixty years ago since--and I
+a little boy at the time in Brooklyn, New York--I can remember my father
+coming home toward sunset from his day's work as carpenter, and saying
+briefly, as he throws down his armful of kindling-blocks with a bounce
+on the kitchen floor, "Come, mother, Elias preaches to-night." Then my
+mother, hastening the supper and the table-cleaning afterward, gets a
+neighboring young woman, a friend of the family, to step in and keep
+house for an hour or so--puts the two little ones to bed--and as I had
+been behaving well that day, as a special reward I was allow'd to go
+also.
+
+We start for the meeting. Though, as I said, the stretch of more than
+half a century has pass'd over me since then, with its war and peace,
+and all its joys and sins and deaths (and what a half century! how it
+comes up sometimes for an instant, like the lightning flash in a storm
+at night!) I can recall that meeting yet. It is a strange place
+for religious devotions. Elias preaches anywhere--no respect to
+buildings--private or public houses, school-rooms, barns, even
+theatres--anything that will accommodate. This time it is in a handsome
+ball-room, on Brooklyn Heights, overlooking New York, and in full sight
+of that great city, and its North and East rivers fill'd with ships--is
+(to specify more particularly) the second story of "Morrison's Hotel,"
+used for the most genteel concerts, balls, and assemblies--a large,
+cheerful, gay-color'd room, with glass chandeliers bearing myriads of
+sparkling pendants, plenty of settees and chairs, and a sort of velvet
+divan running all round the side-walls. Before long the divan and all
+the settees and chairs are fill'd; many fashionables out of curiosity;
+all the principal dignitaries of the town, Gen. Jeremiah Johnson, Judge
+Furman, George Hall, Mr. Willoughby, Mr. Pierrepont, N.B. Morse, Cyrus
+P. Smith, and F.C. Tucker. Many young folks too; some richly dress'd
+women; I remember I noticed with one party of ladies a group of
+uniform'd officers, either from the U.S. Navy Yard, or some ship in the
+stream, or some adjacent fort. On a slightly elevated platform at the
+head of the room, facing the audience, sit a dozen or more Friends, most
+of them elderly, grim, and with their broad-brimm'd hats on their heads.
+Three or four women, too, in their characteristic Quaker costumes and
+bonnets. All still as the grave.
+
+At length after a pause and stillness becoming almost painful, Elias
+rises and stands for a moment or two without a word. A tall, straight
+figure, neither stout nor very thin, dress'd in drab cloth, clean-shaved
+face, forehead of great expanse, and large and clear black eyes,[42]
+long or middling-long white hair; he was at this time between 80 and 81
+years of age, his head still wearing the broad-brim. A moment looking
+around the audience with those piercing eyes, amid the perfect
+stillness. (I can almost see him and the whole scene now.) Then the
+words come from his lips, very emphatically and slowly pronounc'd, in a
+resonant, grave, melodious voice, _What is the chief end of man? I was
+told in my early youth, it was to glorify God, and seek and enjoy him
+forever._
+
+I cannot follow the discourse. It presently becomes very fervid, and in
+the midst of its fervor he takes the broad-brim hat from his head, and
+almost dashing it down with violence on the seat behind, continues with
+uninterrupted earnestness. But, I say, I cannot repeat, hardly suggest
+his sermon. Though the differences and disputes of the formal division
+of the Society of Friends were even then under way, he did not allude
+to them at all. A pleading, tender, nearly agonizing conviction,
+and magnetic stream of natural eloquence, before which all minds and
+natures, all emotions, high or low, gentle or simple, yielded entirely
+without exception, was its cause, method, and effect. Many, very many
+were in tears. Years afterward in Boston, I heard Father Taylor, the
+sailor's preacher, and found in his passionate unstudied oratory the
+resemblance to Elias Hicks's--not argumentative or intellectual, but so
+penetrating--so different from anything in the books--(different as the
+fresh air of a May morning or sea-shore breeze from the atmosphere of a
+perfumer's shop.)
+
+While he goes on he falls into the nasality and sing-song tone sometimes
+heard in such meetings; but in a moment or two more as if recollecting
+himself, he breaks off, stops, and resumes in a natural tone. This
+occurs three or four times during the talk of the evening, till all
+concludes.
+
+Now and then, at the many scores and hundreds--even thousands--of his
+discourses--as at this one--he was very mystical and radical,[43] and
+had much to say of "the light within." Very likely this same inner
+light, (so dwelt upon by newer men, as by Fox and Barclay at the
+beginning, and all Friends and deep thinkers since and now,) is perhaps
+only another name for the religious conscience. In my opinion they have
+all diagnos'd, like superior doctors, the real in-most disease of our
+times, probably any times. Amid the huge inflammation call'd society,
+and that other inflammation call'd politics, what is there to-day of
+moral power and ethic sanity as antiseptic to them and all? Though I
+think the essential elements of the moral nature exist latent in the
+good average people of the United States of to-day, and sometimes break
+out strongly, it is certain that any mark'd or dominating National
+Morality (if I may use the phrase) has not only not yet been develop'd,
+but that--at any rate when the point of view is turn'd on business,
+politics, competition, practical life, and in character and manners in
+our New World--there seems to be a hideous depletion, almost absence, of
+such moral nature. Elias taught throughout, as George Fox began it, or
+rather reiterated and verified it, the Platonic doctrine that the ideals
+of character, of justice, of religious action, whenever the highest is
+at stake, are to be conform'd to no outside doctrine of creeds, Bibles,
+legislative enactments, conventionalities, or even decorums, but are to
+follow the inward Deity-planted law of the emotional soul. In this only
+the true Quaker, or Friend, has faith; and it is from rigidly, perhaps
+strainingly carrying it out, that both the Old and New England records
+of Quakerdom show some unseemly and insane acts.
+
+In one of the lives of Ralph Waldo Emerson is a list of lessons or
+instructions, ("seal'd orders" the biographer calls them,) prepar'd by
+the sage himself for his own guidance. Here is one:
+
+    Go forth with thy message among thy fellow-creatures; teach them that
+    they must trust themselves as guided by that inner light which dwells
+    with the pure in heart, to whom it was promis'd of old that they shall
+    see God.
+
+How thoroughly it fits the life and theory of Elias Hicks. Then in Omar
+Khayyam:
+
+    I sent my soul through the Invisible,
+      Some letter of that after-life to spell,
+    And by-and-by my soul return'd to me,
+      And answer'd, "I myself am Heaven and Hell."
+
+Indeed, of this important element of the theory and practice of
+Quakerism, the difficult-to-describe "Light within" or "Inward Law, by
+which all must be either justified or condemn'd," I will not undertake
+where so many have fail'd--the task of making the statement of it for
+the average comprehension. We will give, partly for the matter and
+partly as specimen of his speaking and writing style, what Elias Hicks
+himself says in allusion to it--one or two of very many passages. Most
+of his discourses, like those of Epictetus and the ancient peripatetics,
+have left no record remaining--they were extempore, and those were not
+the times of reporters. Of one, however, deliver'd in Chester, Pa.,
+toward the latter part of his career, there is a careful transcript; and
+from it (even if presenting you a sheaf of hidden wheat that may need to
+be pick'd and thrash'd out several times before you get the grain,) we
+give the following extract:
+
+  I don't want to express a great many words; but I want you to be
+  call'd home to the substance. For the Scriptures, and all the
+  books in the world, can do no more; Jesus could do no more than to
+  recommend to this Comforter, which was the light in him. "God is
+  light, and in him is no darkness at all; and if we walk in the
+  light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another."
+  Because the light is one in all, and therefore it binds us together
+  in the bonds of love; for it is not only light, but love--that love
+  which casts out all fear. So that they who dwell in God dwell in
+  love, and they are constrain'd to walk in it; and if they "walk in
+  it, they have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus
+  Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."
+
+  But what blood, my friends? Did Jesus Christ, the Saviour, ever have
+  any material blood? Not a drop of it, my friends--not a drop of it.
+  That blood which cleanseth from the life of all sin, was the life of
+  the soul of Jesus. The soul of man has no material blood; but as the
+  outward material blood, created from the dust of the earth, is the
+  life of these bodies of flesh, so with respect to the soul, the
+  immortal and invisible spirit, its blood is that life which God
+  breath'd into it.
+
+  As we read, in the beginning, that "God form'd man of the dust of
+  the ground, and breath'd into him the breath of life, and man became
+  a living soul." He breath'd into that soul, and it became alive to
+  God.
+
+Then, from one of his many letters, for he seems to have delighted in
+correspondence:
+
+  Some may query, What is the cross of Christ? To these I answer, It
+  is the perfect law of God, written on the tablet of the hear
+  and in the heart of every rational creature, in such indelible
+  characters that all the power of mortals cannot erase nor obliterate
+  it. Neither is there any power or means given or dispens'd to the
+  children of men, but this inward law and light, by which the true
+  and saving knowledge of God can be obtain' d. And by this inward law
+  and light, all will be either justified or condemn'd, and all made
+  to know God for themselves, and be left without excuse, agreeably to
+  the prophecy of Jeremiah, and the corroborating testimony of Jesus
+  in his last counsel and command to his disciples, not to depart from
+  Jerusalem till they should receive power from on high; assuring them
+  that they should receive power, when they had receiv'd the pouring
+  forth of the spirit upon them, which would qualify them to bear
+  witness of him in Judea, Jerusalem, Samaria, and to the uttermost
+  parts of the earth; which was verified in a marvellous manner on the
+  day of Pentecost, when thousands were converted to the Christian
+  faith in one day.
+
+  By which it is evident that nothing but this inward light and law,
+  as it is heeded and obey'd, ever did, or ever can, make a true
+  and real Christian and child of God. And until the professors
+  of Christianity agree to lay aside all their non-essentials in
+  religion, and rally to this unchangeable foundation and standard of
+  truth, wars and fightings, confusion and error, will prevail, and
+  the angelic song cannot be heard in our land--that of "glory to God
+  in the highest, and on earth peace and good will to men."
+
+  But when all nations are made willing to make this inward law and
+  light the rule and standard of all their faith and works, then we
+  shall be brought to know and believe alike, that there is but one
+  Lord, one faith, and but one baptism; one God and Father, that is
+  above all, through all, and in all.
+
+  And then will all those glorious and consoling prophecies recorded
+  in the scriptures of truth be fulfill'd--"He," the Lord, "shall
+  judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they
+  shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into
+  pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up the sword against nation,
+  neither shall they learn war any more. The wolf also shall dwell
+  with the lamb; and the cow and the bear shall feed; and the lion
+  shall eat straw like the ox; and the sucking child shall play
+  the hole of the asp, and the wean'd child put his hand on the
+  cockatrice's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy
+  mountain; for the earth," that is our earthly tabernacle, "shall be
+  full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."
+
+The exposition in the last sentence, that the terms of the texts are not
+to be taken in their literal meaning, but in their spiritual one, and
+allude to a certain wondrous exaltation of the body, through religious
+influences, is significant, and is but one of a great number of
+instances of much that is obscure, to "the world's people," in the
+preachings of this remarkable man.
+
+Then a word about his physical oratory, connected with the preceding. If
+there is, as doubtless there is, an unnameable something behind oratory,
+a fund within or atmosphere without, deeper than art, deeper even than
+proof, that unnameable constitutional something Elias Hicks emanated
+from his very heart to the hearts of his audience, or carried with
+him, or probed into, and shook and arous'd in them--a sympathetic germ,
+probably rapport, lurking in every human eligibility, which no book,
+no rule, no statement has given or can give inherent knowledge,
+intuition--not even the best speech, or best put forth, but launch'd out
+only by powerful human magnetism:
+
+    Unheard by sharpest ear--unformed in clearest eye, or cunningest
+      mind,
+    Nor lore, nor fame, nor happiness, nor wealth,
+    And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world,
+      incessantly,
+    Which you and I, and all, pursuing ever, ever miss;
+    Open, but still a secret--the real of the real--an illusion;
+    Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner;
+    Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme----historians in prose;
+    Which sculptor never chisel'd yet, nor painter painted;
+    Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter' d.
+
+That remorse, too, for a mere worldly life--that aspiration towards the
+ideal, which, however overlaid, lies folded latent, hidden, in perhaps
+every character. More definitely, as near as I remember (aided by
+my dear mother long afterward,) Elias Hicks's discourse there in the
+Brooklyn ball-room, was one of his old never-remitted appeals to that
+moral mystical portion of human nature, the inner light. But it is
+mainly for the scene itself, and Elias's personnel, that I recall the
+incident.
+
+Soon afterward the old man died:
+
+  On first day morning, the 14th of 2d month (February, 1830,) he was
+  engaged in his room, writing to a friend, until a little after ten
+  o'clock, when he return'd to that occupied by the family, apparently
+  just attack'd by a paralytic affection, which nearly deprived h
+  of the use of his right side, and of the power of speech. Being
+  assisted to a chair near the fire, he manifested by signs, that the
+  letter which he had just finish'd, and which had been dropp'd
+  the way, should be taken care of; and on its being brought to him,
+  appear'd satisfied, and manifested a desire that all should sit down
+  and be still, seemingly sensible that his labours were brought to a
+  close, and only desirous of quietly waiting the final change. The
+  solemn composure at this time manifest in his countenance, w
+  very impressive, indicating that he was sensible the time of his
+  departure was at hand, and that the prospect of death brought no
+  terrors with it. During his last illness, his mental faculti
+  were occasionally obscured, yet he was at times enabled to give
+  satisfactory evidence to those around him, that all was well, and
+  that he felt nothing in his way.
+
+  His funeral took place on fourth day, the 3rd of 3rd month. It was
+  attended by a large concourse of Friends and others, and a solid
+  meeting was held on the occasion; after which, his remains were
+  interr'd in Friends' burial-ground at this place (Jericho, Queens
+  county, New York.)
+
+I have thought (even presented so incompletely, with such fearful
+hiatuses, and in my own feebleness and waning life) one might well
+memorize this life of Elias Hicks. Though not eminent in literature or
+politics or inventions or business, it is a token of not a few, and is
+significant. Such men do not cope with statesmen or soldiers--but I have
+thought they deserve to be recorded and kept up as a sample--that this
+one specially does. I have already compared it to a little flowing
+liquid rill of Nature's life, maintaining freshness. As if, indeed,
+under the smoke of battles, the blare of trumpets, and the madness of
+contending hosts--the screams of passion, the groans of the suffering,
+the parching of struggles of money and politics, and all hell's heat and
+noise and competition above and around--should come melting down from
+the mountains from sources of unpolluted snows, far up there in God's
+hidden, untrodden recesses, and so rippling along among us low in the
+ground, at men's very feet, a curious little brook of clear and cool,
+and ever-healthy, ever-living water.
+
+_Note.--The Separation_.--The division vulgarly call'd between Orthodox
+and Hicksites in the Society of Friends took place in 1827, '8 and '9.
+Probably it had been preparing some time. One who was present has since
+described to me the climax, at a meeting of Friends in Philadelphia
+crowded by a great attendance of both sexes, with Elias as principal
+speaker. In the course of his utterance or argument he made use of these
+words: "The blood of Christ--the blood of Christ--why, my friends, the
+actual blood of Christ in itself was no more effectual than the blood
+of bulls and goats--not a bit more--not a bit." At these words, after
+a momentary hush, commenced a great tumult. Hundreds rose to their
+feet.... Canes were thump'd upon the floor. From all parts of the
+house angry mutterings. Some left the place, but more remain'd, with
+exclamations, flush'd faces and eyes. This was the definite utterance,
+the overt act, which led to the separation. Families diverg'd--even
+husbands and wives, parents and children, were separated.
+
+Of course what Elias promulg'd spread a great commotion among the
+Friends. Sometimes when he presented himself to speak in the meeting,
+there would be opposition--this led to angry words, gestures, unseemly
+noises, recriminations. Elias, at such times, was deeply affected--the
+tears roll'd in streams down his cheeks--he silently waited the close of
+the dispute. "Let the Friend speak; let the Friend speak!" he would
+say when his supporters in the meeting tried to bluff off some violent
+orthodox person objecting to the new doctrinaire. But he never recanted.
+
+A reviewer of the old dispute and separation made the following comments
+on them in a paper ten years ago: "It was in America, where there had
+been no persecution worth mentioning since Mary Dyer was hang'd on
+Boston Common, that about fifty years ago differences arose, singularly
+enough upon doctrinal points of the divinity of Christ and the nature
+of the atonement. Whoever would know how bitter was the controversy,
+and how much of human infirmity was found to be still lurking under
+broad-brim hats and drab coats, must seek for the information in the
+Lives of Elias Hicks and of Thomas Shillitoe, the latter an English
+Friend, who visited us at this unfortunate time, and who exercised his
+gifts as a peace-maker with but little success. The meetings, according
+to his testimony, were sometimes turn'd into mobs. The disruption was
+wide, and seems to have been final. Six of the ten yearly meetings were
+divided; and since that time various sub-divisions have come, four
+or five in number. There has never, however, been anything like a
+repetition of the excitement of the Hicksite controversy; and Friends of
+all kinds at present appear to have settled down into a solid, steady,
+comfortable state, and to be working in their own way without troubling
+other Friends whose ways are different."
+
+_Note_.--Old persons, who heard this man in his day, and who glean'd
+impressions from what they saw of him, (judg'd from their own points
+of views,) have, in their conversation with me, dwelt on another point.
+They think Elias Hicks had a large element of personal ambition, the
+pride of leadership, of establishing perhaps a sect that should reflect
+his own name, and to which he should give especial form and character.
+Very likely. Such indeed seems the means, all through progress and
+civilization, by which strong men and strong convictions achieve
+anything definite. But the basic foundation of Elias was undoubtedly
+genuine religious fervor. He was like an old Hebrew prophet. He had the
+spirit of one, and in his later years look'd like one. What Carlyle says
+of John Knox will apply to him:
+
+  He is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes
+  heroic; it is the grand gift he has. We find in him a good, honest,
+  intellectual talent, no transcendent one;--a narrow, inconsiderable
+  man, as compared with Luther; but in heartfelt instinctive adherence
+  to truth, in _sincerity_ as we say, he has no superior; nay, one
+  might ask, What equal he has? The heart of him is of the true
+  Prophet cast. "He lies there," said the Earl of Morton at Knox's
+  grave, "who never fear'd the face of man." He resembles, more than
+  any of the moderns, an old Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexibility,
+  intolerance, rigid, narrow-looking adherence to God's truth.
+
+_A Note yet. The United States to-day_.--While under all previous
+conditions (even convictions) of society, Oriental, Feudal,
+Ecclesiastical, and in all past (or present) Despotisms, through the
+entire past, there existed, and exists yet, in ally and fusion with
+them, and frequently forming the main part of them, certain churches,
+institutes, priesthoods, fervid beliefs, &c., practically promoting
+religious and moral action to the fullest degrees of which humanity
+there under circumstances was capable, and often conserving all there
+was of justice, art, literature, and good manners--it is clear I say,
+that, under the Democratic Institutes of the United States, now and
+henceforth, there are no equally genuine fountains of fervid beliefs,
+adapted to produce similar moral and religious results, according to
+our circumstances. I consider that the churches, sects, pulpits, of the
+present day, in the United States, exist not by any solid convictions,
+but by a sort of tacit, supercilious, scornful suffrance. Few speak
+openly--none officially--against them. But the ostent continuously
+imposing, who is not aware that any such living fountains of belief in
+them are now utterly ceas'd and departed from the minds of men?
+
+_A Lingering Note_.--In the making of a full man, all the other
+consciences, (the emotional, courageous, intellectual, esthetic, &c.,)
+are to be crown'd and effused by the religious conscience. In the higher
+structure of a human self, or of community, the Moral, the Religious,
+the Spiritual, is strictly analogous to the subtle vitalization and
+antiseptic play call'd Health in the physiologic structure. To person or
+State, the main verteber (or rather _the_ verteber) is Morality.
+
+That is indeed the only real vitalization of character, and of all the
+supersensual, even heroic and artistic portions of man or nationality.
+It is to run through and knit the superior parts, and keep man or State
+vital and upright, as health keeps the body straight and blooming. Of
+course a really grand and strong and beautiful character is probably to
+be slowly grown, and adjusted strictly with reference to itself, its own
+personal and social sphere--with (paradox though it may be) the clear
+understanding that the conventional theories of life, worldly ambition,
+wealth, office, fame, &c., are essentially but glittering mayas,
+delusions.
+
+Doubtless the greatest scientists and theologians will sometimes find
+themselves saying, It isn't only those who know most, who contribute
+most to God's glory. Doubtless these very scientists at times stand with
+bared heads before the humblest lives and personalities. For there is
+something greater (is there not?) than all the science and poems of the
+world--above all else, like the stars shining eternal--above Shakspere's
+plays, or Concord philosophy, or art of Angelo or Raphael--something
+that shines elusive, like beams of Hesperus at evening--high above all
+the vaunted wealth and pride--prov'd by its practical outcropping in
+life, each case after its own concomitants--the intuitive blending of
+divine love and faith in a human emotional character--blending for all,
+for the unlearn'd, the common, and the poor.
+
+I don't know in what book I once read, (possibly the remark has been
+made in books, all ages,) that no life ever lived, even the most
+uneventful, but, probed to its centre, would be found in itself as
+subtle a drama as any that poets have ever sung, or playwrights fabled.
+Often, too, in size and weight, that life suppos'd obscure. For it isn't
+only the palpable stars; astronomers say there are dark, or almost dark,
+unnotic'd orbs and suns, (like the dusky companions of Sirius, seven
+times as large as our own sun,) rolling through space, real and potent
+as any--perhaps the most real and potent. Yet none recks of them. In the
+bright lexicon we give the spreading heavens, they have not even names.
+Amid ceaseless sophistications all times, the soul would seem to glance
+yearningly around for such contrasts--such cool, still offsets.
+
+
+Notes:
+
+[42]In Walter Scott's reminiscences he speaks of Burns as having the
+most eloquent, glowing, flashing, illuminated dark-orbed eyes he ever
+beheld in a human face; and I think Elias Hicks's must have been like
+them.
+
+[43] The true Christian religion, (such was the teaching of Elias
+Hicks,) consists neither in rites or Bibles or sermons or Sundays--but
+in noiseless secret ecstasy and unremitted aspiration, in purity, in a
+good practical life, in charity to the poor and toleration to all. He
+said, "A man may keep the Sabbath, may belong to a church and attend all
+the observances, have regular family prayer, keep a well-bound copy of
+the Hebrew Scriptures in a conspicuous place in his house, and yet not
+be a truly religious person at all." E. believ'd little in a church
+as organiz'd-even his own--with houses, ministers, or with salaries,
+creeds, Sundays, saints, Bibles, holy festivals, &c. But he believ'
+d always in the universal church, in the soul of man, invisibly rapt,
+ever-waiting, ever-responding to universal truths.--He was fond of pithy
+proverbs. He said, "It matters not where you live, but how you live."
+He said once to my father, "They talk of the devil--I tell thee, Walter,
+there is no worse devil than man."
+
+
+GEORGE FOX (AND SHAKSPERE)
+
+While we are about it, we must almost Inevitably go back to the origin
+of the Society of which Elias Hicks has so far prov'd to be the most
+mark'd individual result. We must revert to the latter part of the
+16th, and all, or nearly all of that 17th century, crowded with so many
+important historical events, changes, and personages. Throughout Europe,
+and especially in what we call our Mother Country, men were unusually
+arous'd--(some would say demented.) It was a special age of the insanity
+of witch-trials and witch-hangings. In one year 60 were hung for
+witchcraft in one English county alone. It was peculiarly an age
+of military-religious conflict. Protestantism and Catholicism were
+wrestling like giants for the mastery, straining every nerve. Only to
+think of it--that age! its events, persons--Shakspere just dead, (his
+folios publish'd, complete)--Charles 1st, the shadowy spirit and the
+solid block! To sum up all, it was the age of Cromwell!
+
+As indispensable foreground, indeed, for Elias Hicks, and perhaps sine
+qua non to an estimate of the kind of man, we must briefly transport
+ourselves back to the England of that period. As I say, it is the time
+of tremendous moral and political agitation; ideas of conflicting forms,
+governments, theologies, seethe and dash like ocean storms, and ebb and
+flow like mighty tides. It was, or had been, the time of the long feud
+between the Parliament and the Crown. In the midst of the sprouts, began
+George Fox--born eight years after the death of Shakspere. He was the
+son of a weaver, himself a shoemaker, and was "converted" before the age
+of 20. But O the sufferings, mental and physical, through which those
+years of the strange youth pass'd! He claim'd to be sent by God to
+fulfill a mission. "I come," he said, "to direct people to the spirit
+that gave forth the Scriptures." The range of his thought, even then,
+cover'd almost every important subject of after times, anti-slavery,
+women's rights, &c. Though in a low sphere, and among the masses, he
+forms a mark'd feature in the age.
+
+And how, indeed, beyond all any, that stormy and perturb'd age! The
+foundations of the old, the superstitious, the conventionally poetic,
+the credulous, all breaking--the light of the new, and of science and
+democracy, definitely beginning--a mad, fierce, almost crazy age!
+The political struggles of the reigns of the Charleses, and of the
+Protectorate of Cromwell, heated to frenzy by theological struggles.
+Those were the years following the advent and practical working of the
+Reformation--but Catholicism is yet strong, and yet seeks supremacy. We
+think our age full of the flush of men and doings, and culminations of
+war and peace; and so it is. But there could hardly be a grander and
+more picturesque and varied age than that.
+
+Born out of and in this age, when Milton, Bunyan, Dryden and John Locke
+were still living--amid the memories of Queen Elizabeth and James First,
+and the events of their reigns--when the radiance of that galaxy
+of poets, warriors, statesmen, captains, lords, explorers, wits and
+gentlemen, that crowded the courts and times of those sovereigns still
+fill'd the atmosphere--when America commencing to be explor'd and
+settled commenc'd also to be suspected as destin'd to overthrow the old
+standards and calculations--when Feudalism, like a sunset, seem'd
+to gather all its glories, reminiscences, personalisms, in one last
+gorgeous effort, before the advance of a new day, a new incipient
+genius--amid the social and domestic circles of that period--indifferent
+to reverberations that seem'd enough to wake the dead, and in a sphere
+far from the pageants of the court, the awe of any personal rank
+or charm of intellect, or literature, or the varying excitement of
+Parliamentarian or Royalist fortunes--this curious young rustic goes
+wandering up and down England.
+
+George Fox, born 1624, was of decent stock, in ordinary lower life--as
+he grew along toward manhood, work'd at shoemaking, also at farm
+labors--loved to be much by himself, half-hidden in the woods,
+reading the Bible--went about from town to town, dress'd in leather
+clothes--walk'd much at night, solitary, deeply troubled ("the inward
+divine teaching of the Lord")--sometimes goes among the ecclesiastical
+gatherings of the great professors, and though a mere youth bears
+bold testimony--goes to and fro disputing--(must have had great
+personality)--heard the voice of the Lord speaking articulately to
+him, as he walk'd in the fields--feels resistless commands not to be
+explain'd, but follow'd, to abstain from taking off his hat, to say
+_Thee_ and _Thou_, and not bid others Good morning or Good evening-was
+illiterate, could just read and write-testifies against shows, games,
+and frivolous pleasures--enters the courts and warns the judges that
+they see to doing justice--goes into public houses and market-places,
+with denunciations of drunkenness and money-making--rises in the midst
+of the church-services, and gives his own explanations of the ministers'
+explanations, and of Bible passages and texts--sometimes for such things
+put in prison, sometimes struck fiercely on the mouth on the spot, or
+knock'd down, and lying there beaten and bloody--was of keen wit, ready
+to any question with the most apropos of answers--was sometimes press'd
+for a soldier, (_him_ for a soldier!)--was indeed terribly buffeted;
+but goes, goes, goes--often sleeping out-doors, under hedges, or
+hay stacks--forever taken before justices--improving such, and all
+occasions, to _bear testimony_, and give good advice--still enters the
+"steeple-houses," (as he calls churches,) and though often dragg'd
+out and whipt till he faints away, and lies like one dead, when he
+comes-to--stands up again, and offering himself all bruis'd and bloody,
+cries out to his tormenters, "Strike--strike again, here where you have
+not yet touch'd! my arms, my head, my cheeks,"--Is at length arrested
+and sent up to London, confers with the Protector, Cromwell,--is set at
+liberty, and holds great meetings in London.
+
+Thus going on, there is something in him that fascinates one or two
+here, and three or four there, until gradually there were others who
+went about in the same spirit, and by degrees the Society of Friends
+took shape, and stood among the thousand religious sects of the world.
+Women also catch the contagion, and go round, often shamefully misused.
+By such contagion these ministerings, by scores, almost hundreds of poor
+travelling men and women, keep on year after year, through ridicule,
+whipping, imprisonment, &c.--some of the Friend-ministers emigrate to
+New England--where their treatment makes the blackest part of the early
+annals of the New World. Some were executed, others maim'd, par-burnt,
+and scourg'd--two hundred die in prison--some on the gallows, or at the
+stake.
+
+George Fox himself visited America, and found a refuge and hearers, and
+preach'd many times on Long Island, New York State. In the village
+of Oysterbay they will show you the rock on which he stood, (1672,)
+addressing the multitude, in the open air--thus rigidly following the
+fashion of apostolic times.--(I have heard myself many reminiscences of
+him.) Flushing also contains (or contain'd--I have seen them) memorials
+of Fox, and his son, in two aged white-oak trees, that shaded him while
+he bore his testimony to people gather'd in the highway.--Yes, the
+American Quakers were much persecuted--almost as much, by a sort of
+consent of all the other sects, as the Jews were in Europe in the
+middle ages. In New England, the cruelest laws were pass'd, and put in
+execution against them. As said, some were whipt--women the same as
+men. Some had their ears cut off--others their tongues pierc'd with hot
+irons--others their faces branded. Worse still, a woman and three men
+had been hang'd, (1660.)--Public opinion, and the statutes, join'd
+together, in an odious union, Quakers, Baptists, Roman Catholics and
+Witches.--Such a fragmentary sketch of George Fox and his time--and the
+advent of "the Society of Friends" in America.
+
+Strange as it may sound, Shakspere and George Fox, (think of them!
+compare them!) were born and bred of similar stock, in much the same
+surroundings and station in life--from the same England--and at
+a similar period. One to radiate all of art's, all literature's
+splendor--a splendor so dazzling that he himself is almost lost in it,
+and his contemporaries the same--his fictitious Othello, Romeo, Hamlet,
+Lear, as real as any lords of England or Europe then and there--more
+real to us, the mind sometimes thinks, than the man Shakspere himself.
+Then the other--may we indeed name him the same day? What is poor plain
+George Fox compared to William Shakspere--to fancy's lord, imagination's
+heir? Yet George Fox stands for something too--a thought--the thought
+that wakes in silent hours--perhaps the deepest, most eternal thought
+latent in the human soul. This is the thought of God, merged in the
+thoughts of moral right and the immortality of identity. Great, great is
+this thought--aye, greater than all else. When the gorgeous pageant of
+Art, refulgent in the sunshine, color'd with roses and gold--with all
+the richest mere poetry, old or new, (even Shakespere's) with all that
+statue, play, painting, music, architecture, oratory, can effect, ceases
+to satisfy and please--When the eager chase after wealth flags, and
+beauty itself becomes a loathing--and when all worldly or carnal or
+esthetic, or even scientific values, having done their office to the
+human character, and minister'd their part to its development--then,
+if not before, comes forward this over-arching thought, and brings its
+eligibilities, germinations. Most neglected in life of all humanity's
+attributes, easily cover'd with crust, deluded and abused, rejected, yet
+the only certain source of what all are seeking, but few or none finding
+it I for myself clearly see the first, the last, the deepest depths and
+highest heights of art, of literature, and of the purposes of life. I
+say whoever labors here, makes contributions here, or best of all
+sets an incarnated example here, of life or death, is dearest to
+humanity--remains after the rest are gone. And here, for these purposes,
+and up to the light that was in him, the man Elias Hicks--as the man
+George Fox had done years before him--lived long, and died, faithful in
+life, and faithful in death.
+
+
+
+
+
+GOOD-BYE MY FANCY
+
+
+
+AN OLD MAN'S REJOINDER
+
+In the domain of Literature loftily consider'd (an accomplish'd and
+veteran critic in his just out work[44] now says,) 'the kingdom of the
+Father has pass'd; the kingdom of the Son is passing; the kingdom of the
+Spirit begins.' Leaving the reader to chew on and extract the juice and
+meaning of this, I will proceed to say in melanged form what I have had
+brought out by the English author's essay (he discusses the poetic art
+mostly) on my own, real, or by him supposed, views and purports. If I
+give any answers to him, or explanations of what my books intend, they
+will be not direct but indirect and derivative. Of course this brief
+jotting is personal. Something very like querulous egotism and growling
+may break through the narrative (for I have been and am rejected by all
+the great magazines, carry now my 72d annual burden, and have been a
+paralytic for 18 years.)
+
+No great poem or other literary or artistic work of any scope, old
+or new, can be essentially consider'd without weighing first the age,
+politics (or want of politics) and aim, visible forms, unseen soul, and
+current times, out of the midst of which it rises and is formulated:
+as the Biblic canticles and their days and spirit--as the Homeric, or
+Dante's utterance, or Shakspere's, or the old Scotch or Irish ballads,
+or Ossian, or Omar Khayyam. So I have conceiv'd and launch'd, and work'd
+for years at, my 'Leaves of Grass'--personal emanations only at best,
+but with specialty of emergence and background--the ripening of the
+nineteenth century, the thought and fact and radiation of individuality,
+of America, the secession war, and showing the democratic conditions
+supplanting everything that insults them or impedes their aggregate way.
+Doubtless my poems illustrate (one of novel thousands to come for a long
+period) those conditions; but "democratic art" will have to wait long
+before it is satisfactorily formulated and defined--if it ever is.
+
+I will now for one indicative moment lock horns with what many Think
+the greatest thing, the question of _art_, so-call'd. I have not seen
+without learning something therefrom, how, with hardly an exception,
+the poets of this age devote themselves, always mainly, sometimes
+altogether, to fine rhyme, spicy verbalism, the fabric and cut of the
+garment, jewelry, _concetti_, style, art. To-day these adjuncts
+are certainly the effort, beyond all else, yet the lesson of Nature
+undoubtedly is, to proceed with single purpose toward the result
+necessitated, and for which the time has arrived, utterly regardless of
+the outputs of shape, appearance or criticism, which are always left to
+settle themselves. I have not only not bother'd much about style,
+form, art, etc., but confess to more or less apathy (I believe I have
+sometimes caught myself in decided aversion) toward them throughout,
+asking nothing of them but negative advantages--that they should never
+impede me, and never under any circumstances, or for their own purposes
+only, assume any mastery over me.
+
+From the beginning I have watch'd the sharp and sometimes heavy and
+deep-penetrating objections and reviews against my work, and I hope
+entertain'd and audited them; (for I have probably had an advantage in
+constructing from a central and unitary principle since the first, but
+at long intervals and stages--sometimes lapses of five or six years, or
+peace or war.) Ruskin, the Englishman, charges as a fearful and serious
+lack that my poems have no humor. A profound German critic complains
+that, compared with the luxuriant and well-accepted songs of the world,
+there is about my verse a certain coldness, severity, absence of spice,
+polish, or of consecutive meaning and plot. (The book is autobiographic
+at bottom, and may-be I do not exhibit and make ado about the stock
+passions: I am partly of Quaker stock.) Then E.C. Stedman finds (or
+found) mark'd fault with me because while celebrating the common people
+_en masse_, I do not allow enough heroism and moral merit and good
+intentions to the choicer classes, the college-bred, the _etat-major_.
+It is quite probable that S. is right in the matter. In the main I
+myself look, and have from the first look'd, to the bulky democratic
+_torso_ of the United States even for esthetic and moral attributes
+of serious account--and refused to aim at or accept anything less. If
+America is only for the rule and fashion and small typicality of other
+lands (the rule of the _etat-major_) it is not the land I take it for,
+and should to-day feel that my literary aim and theory had been blanks
+and misdirections. Strictly judged, most modern poems are but larger
+or smaller lumps of sugar, or slices of toothsome sweet cake--even the
+banqueters dwelling on those glucose flavors as a main part of the dish.
+Which perhaps leads to something: to have great heroic poetry we need
+great readers--a heroic appetite and audience. Have we at present any
+such?
+
+Then the thought at the centre, never too often repeated. Boundless
+material wealth, free political organization, immense geographic
+area, and unprecedented "business" and products--even the most active
+intellect and "culture"--will not place this Commonwealth of ours on the
+topmost range of history and humanity--or any eminence of "democratic
+art"--to say nothing of its pinnacle. Only the production (and on the
+most copious scale) of loftiest moral, spiritual and heroic personal
+illustrations--a great native Literature headed with a Poetry stronger
+and sweeter than any yet. If there can be any such thing as a kosmic
+modern and original song, America needs it, and is worthy of it.
+
+In my opinion to-day (bitter as it is to say so) the outputs through
+civilized nations everywhere from the great words Literature, Art,
+Religion, &c., with their conventional administerers, stand squarely in
+the way of what the vitalities of those great words signify, more than
+they really prepare the soil for them--or plant the seeds, or cultivate
+or garner the crop. My own opinion has long been, that for New World
+service our ideas of beauty (inherited from the Greeks, and so on to
+Shakspere--_query_--perverted from them?) need to be radically changed,
+and made anew for to-day's purposes and finer standards. But if so,
+it will all come in due time--the real change will be an autochthonic,
+interior, constitutional, even local one, from which our notions of
+beauty (lines and colors are wondrous lovely, but character is lovelier)
+will branch or offshoot.
+
+So much have I now rattled off (old age's garrulity,) that there is not
+space for explaining the most important and pregnant principle of all,
+viz., that Art is one, is not partial, but includes all times and forms
+and sorts--is not exclusively aristocratic or democratic, or oriental or
+occidental. My favorite symbol would be a good font of type, where the
+impeccable long-primer rejects nothing. Or the old Dutch flour-miller
+who said, "I never bother myself what road the folks come--I only want
+good wheat and rye."
+
+The font is about the same forever. Democratic art results of democratic
+development, from tinge, true nationality, belief, in the one setting up
+from it.
+
+
+Note:
+
+[44] Two new volumes, "Essays Speculative and Suggestive," by John
+Addington Symonds. One of the Essays is on "Democratic Art," in which I
+and my books are largely alluded to and cited and dissected. It is
+this part of the vols. that has caused the off-hand lines above--(first
+thanking Mr. S. for his invariable courtesy of personal treatment).
+
+
+OLD POETS
+
+Poetry (I am clear) is eligible of something far more ripen'd and ample,
+our lands and pending days, than it has yet produced from any utterance
+old or new. Modern or new poetry, too, (viewing or challenging it with
+severe criticism,) is largely a-void--while the very cognizance, or even
+suspicion of that void, and the need of filling it, proves a certainty
+of the hidden and waiting supply. Leaving other lands and languages to
+speak for themselves, we can abruptly but deeply suggest it best from
+our own--going first to oversea illustrations, and standing on them.
+Think of Byron, Burns, Shelley, Keats, (even first-raters, "the brothers
+of the radiant summit," as William O'Connor calls them,) as having done
+only their precursory and 'prentice work, and all their best and real
+poems being left yet unwrought, untouch'd. Is it difficult to imagine
+ahead of us and them, evolv'd from them, poesy completer far than any
+they themselves fulfill'd? One has in his eye and mind some very large,
+very old, entirely sound and vital tree or vine, like certain hardy,
+ever-fruitful specimens in California and Canada, or down in
+Mexico, (and indeed in all lands) beyond the chronological
+records--illustrations of growth, continuity, power, amplitude
+and _exploitation_, almost beyond statement, but proving fact and
+possibility, outside of argument.
+
+Perhaps, indeed, the rarest and most blessed quality of transcendent
+noble poetry--as of law, and of the profoundest wisdom and
+estheticism--is, (I would suggest,) from sane, completed, vital, capable
+old age.
+
+The final proof of song or personality is a sort of matured, accreted,
+superb, evoluted, almost divine, impalpable diffuseness and atmosphere
+or invisible magnetism, dissolving and embracing all--and not any
+special achievement of passion, pride, metrical form, epigram, plot,
+thought, or what is call'd beauty. The bud of the rose or the half-blown
+flower is beautiful, of course, but only the perfected bloom or apple
+or finish'd wheat-head is beyond the rest. Completed fruitage like
+this comes (in my opinion) to a grand age, in man or woman, through an
+essentially sound continuated physiology and psychology (both important)
+and is the culminating glorious aureole of all and several preceding.
+Like the tree or vine just mention'd, it stands at last in a beauty,
+power and productiveness of its own, above all others, and of a sort and
+style uniting all criticisms, proofs and adherences.
+
+Let us diversify the matter a little by portraying some of the American
+poets from our own point of view.
+
+Longfellow, reminiscent, polish'd, elegant, with the air of finest
+conventional library, picture-gallery or parlor, with ladies and
+gentlemen in them, and plush and rosewood, and ground-glass lamps, and
+mahogany and ebony furniture, and a silver inkstand and scented satin
+paper to write on.
+
+Whittier stands for morality (not in any all-accepting philosophic or
+Hegelian sense, but) filter'd through a Puritanical or Quaker filter--is
+incalculably valuable as a genuine utterance, (and the finest,)--with
+many local and Yankee and _genre_ bits--all hued with anti-slavery
+coloring--(the _genre_ and anti-slavery contributions all precious--all
+help.) Whittier's is rather a grand figure, but pretty lean and
+ascetic--no Greek-not universal and composite enough (don't try--don't
+wish to be) for ideal Americanism. Ideal Americanism would take the
+Greek spirit and law, and democratize and scientize and (thence) truly
+Christianize them for the whole, the globe, all history, all ranks
+and lands, all facts, all good and bad. (Ah this _bad_--this
+nineteen-twentieths of us all! What a stumbling-block it remains for
+poets and metaphysicians--what a chance (the strange, clear-as-ever
+inscription on the old dug-up tablet) it offers yet for being
+translated--what can be its purpose in the God-scheme of this universe,
+and all?)
+
+Then William Cullen Bryant--meditative, serious, from first to last
+tending to threnodies--his genius mainly lyrical--when reading his
+pieces who could expect or ask for more magnificent ones than such
+as "The Battle-Field," and "A Forest Hymn"? Bryant, unrolling,
+prairie-like, notwithstanding his mountains and lakes--moral enough
+(yet worldly and conventional)--a naturalist, pedestrian, gardener
+and fruiter--well aware of books, but mixing to the last in cities and
+society. I am not sure but his name ought to lead the list of American
+bards. Years ago I thought Emerson pre eminent (and as to the last
+polish and intellectual cuteness may-be I think so still)--but, for
+reasons, I have been gradually tending to give the file-leading place
+for American native poesy to W. C. B.
+
+Of Emerson I have to confirm my already avow'd opinion regarding his
+highest bardic and personal attitude. Of the galaxy of the past--of Poe,
+Halleck, Mrs. Sigourney, Allston, Willis, Dana,
+
+John Pierpont, W. G. Simms, Robert Sands, Drake, Hillhouse, Theodore
+Fay, Margaret Fuller, Epes Sargent, Boker, Paul Hayne, Lanier, and
+others, I fitly in essaying such a theme as this, and reverence for
+their memories, may at least give a heart-benison on the list of their
+names.
+
+Time and New World humanity having the venerable resemblances more than
+anything else, and being "the same subject continued," just here in
+1890, one gets a curious nourishment and lift (I do) from all those
+grand old veterans, Bancroft, Kossuth, von Moltke--and such typical
+specimen-reminiscences as Sophocles and Goethe, genius, health, beauty
+of person, riches, rank, renown and length of days, all combining and
+centering in one case.
+
+Above everything, what could humanity and literature do without the
+mellow, last-justifying, averaging, bringing-up of many, many years--a
+great old age amplified? Every really first-class production has likely
+to pass through the crucial tests of a generation, perhaps several
+generations. Lord Bacon says the first sight of any work really new
+and first-rate in beauty and originality always arouses something
+disagreeable and repulsive. Voltaire term'd the Shaksperean works "a
+huge dunghill"; Hamlet he described (to the Academy, whose members
+listen'd with approbation) as "the dream of a drunken savage, with a
+few flashes of beautiful thoughts." And not the Ferney sage alone;
+the orthodox judges and law-givers of France, such as La Harpe, J. L.
+Geoffrey, and Chateaubriand, either join'd in Voltaire's verdict, or
+went further. Indeed the classicists and regulars there still hold to
+it. The lesson is very significant in all departments. People resent
+anything new as a personal insult. When umbrellas were first used in
+England, those who carried them were hooted and pelted so furiously that
+their lives were endanger'd. The same rage encounter'd the attempt in
+theatricals to perform women's parts by real women, which was publicly
+consider'd disgusting and outrageous. Byron thought Pope's verse
+incomparably ahead of Homer and Shakspere. One of the prevalent
+objections, in the days of Columbus was, the learn'd men boldly asserted
+that if a ship should reach India she would never get back again,
+because the rotundity of the globe would present a kind of mountain, up
+which it would be impossible to sail even with the most favorable wind.
+
+"Modern poets," says a leading Boston journal, "enjoy longevity.
+Browning lived to be seventy-seven. Wordsworth, Bryant, Emerson, and
+Longfellow were old men. Whittier, Tennyson, and Walt Whitman still
+live."
+
+Started out by that item on Old Poets and Poetry for chyle to inner
+American sustenance--I have thus gossipp'd about it all, and treated it
+from my own point of view, taking the privilege of rambling wherever the
+talk carried me. Browning is lately dead; Bryant, Emerson and Longfellow
+have not long pass'd away; and yes, Whittier and Tennyson remain, over
+eighty years old--the latter having sent out not long since a fresh
+volume, which the English-speaking Old and New Worlds are yet reading. I
+have already put on record my notions of T. and his effusions: they are
+very attractive and flowery to me--but flowers, too, are at least as
+profound as anything; and by common consent T. is settled as the poetic
+cream-skimmer of our age's melody, _ennui_ and polish--a verdict in
+which I agree, and should say that nobody (not even Shakspere)
+goes deeper in those exquisitely touch'd and half-hidden hints and
+indirections left like faint perfumes in the crevices of his lines. Of
+Browning I don't know enough to say much; he must be studied deeply out,
+too, and quite certainly repays the trouble--but I am old and indolent,
+and cannot study (and never did.)
+
+Grand as to-day's accumulative fund of poetry is, there is certainly
+something unborn, not yet come forth, different from anything
+now formulated in any verse, or contributed by the past in any
+land--something waited for, craved, hitherto non-express'd. What it
+will be, and how, no one knows. It will probably have to prove itself by
+itself and its readers. One thing, it must run through entire humanity
+(this new word and meaning Solidarity has arisen to us moderns) twining
+all lands like a divine thread, stringing all beads, pebbles or gold,
+from God and the soul, and like God's dynamics and sunshine illustrating
+all and having reference to all. From anything like a cosmical point of
+view, the entirety of imaginative literature's themes and results as
+we get them to-day seems painfully narrow. All that has been put in
+statement, tremendous as it is, what is it compared with the vast fields
+and values and varieties left unreap'd? Of our own country, the splendid
+races North or South, and especially of the Western and Pacific regions,
+it sometimes seems to me their myriad noblest Homeric and Biblic
+elements are all untouch'd, left as if ashamed of, and only certain very
+minor occasional _delirium tremens_ glints studiously sought and put in
+print, in short tales, "poetry" or books.
+
+I give these speculations, or notions, in all their audacity, for the
+comfort of thousands--perhaps a majority of ardent minds, women's and
+young men's--who stand in awe and despair before the immensity of suns
+and stars already in the firmament. Even in the Iliad and Shakspere
+there is (is there not?) a certain humiliation produced to us by the
+absorption of them, unless we sound in equality, or above them,
+the songs due our own democratic era and surroundings, and the full
+assertion of ourselves. And in vain (such is my opinion) will
+America seek successfully to tune any superb national song unless the
+heart-strings of the people start it from their own breasts--to be
+return'd and echoed there again.
+
+
+SHIP AHOY
+
+    In dreams I was a ship, and sail'd the boundless seas,
+    Sailing and ever sailing--all seas and into every port, or out
+      upon the offing,
+    Saluting, cheerily hailing each mate, met or pass'd, little or big,
+    "Ship ahoy!" thro' trumpet or by voice--if nothing more, some
+      friendly merry word at least,
+    For companionship and good will for ever to all and each.
+
+
+FOR QUEEN VICTORIA'S BIRTHDAY
+
+_An American arbutus bunch to be put in a little vase on the royal
+breakfast table May 24th, 1890_.
+
+Lady, accept a birth-day thought--haply an idle gift and token, Right
+from the scented soil's May-utterance here, (Smelling of countless
+blessings, prayers, and old-time thanks,)[45] A bunch of white and pink
+arbutus, silent, spicy, shy, From Hudson's, Delaware's, or Potomac's
+woody banks.
+
+
+Note:
+
+[45] NOTE.--Very little, as we Americans stand this day, with our
+sixty-five or seventy millions of population, an immense surplus in the
+treasury, and all that actual power or reserve power (land and sea) so
+dear to nations--very little I say do we realize that curious crawling
+national shudder when the "Trent affair" promis'd to bring upon us a war
+with Great Britain--follow'd unquestionably, as that war would have, by
+recognition of the Southern Confederacy from all the leading European
+nations. It is now certain that all this then inevitable train of
+calamity hung on arrogant and peremptory phrases in the prepared and
+written missive of the British Minister, to America, which the Queen
+(and Prince Albert latent) positively and promptly cancell'd; and which
+her firm attitude did alone actually erase and leave out, against all
+the other official prestige and Court of St. James's. On such minor and
+personal incidents (so to call them,) often depend the great growths and
+turns of civilization. This moment of a woman and a queen surely swung
+the grandest oscillation of modern history's pendulum. Many sayings and
+doings of that period, from foreign potentates and powers, might well be
+dropt in oblivion by America--but never _this_, if I could have my way.
+W. W.
+
+
+
+
+AMERICAN NATIONAL LITERATURE
+
+_Is there any such thing--or can there ever be?_
+
+
+So you want an essay about American National Literature, (tremendous
+and fearful subject!) do you?[46] Well, if you will let me put down some
+melanged cogitations regarding the matter, hap-hazard, and from my own
+points of view, I will try. Horace Greeley wrote a book named "Hints
+toward Reforms," and the title-line was consider'd the best part of all.
+In the present case I will give a few thoughts and suggestions, of good
+and ambitious intent enough anyhow--first reiterating the question right
+out plainly: American National Literature--is there distinctively
+any such thing, or can there ever be? First to me comes an almost
+indescribably august form, the People, with varied typical shapes and
+attitudes-then the divine mirror, Literature.
+
+As things are, probably no more puzzling question ever offer'd itself
+than (going back to old Nile for a trope,) What bread-seeds of printed
+mentality shall we cast upon America's waters, to grow and return after
+many days? Is there for the future authorship of the United States any
+better way than submission to the teeming facts, events, activities, and
+importations already vital through and beneath them all? I have often
+ponder'd it, and felt myself disposed to let it go at that. Indeed, are
+not those facts and activities and importations potent and certain to
+fulfil themselves all through our Commonwealth, irrespective of any
+attempt from individual guidance? But allowing all, and even at that,
+a good part of the matter being honest discussion, examination, and
+earnest personal presentation, we may even for sanitary exercise and
+contact plunge boldly into the spread of the many waves and cross-tides,
+as follows. Or, to change the figure, I will present my varied little
+collation (what is our Country itself but an infinitely vast and varied
+collation?) in the hope that the show itself indicates a duty getting
+more and more incumbent every day.
+
+In general, civilization's totality or real representative National
+Literature formates itself (like language, or "the weather") not
+from two or three influences, however important, nor from any learned
+syllabus, or criticism, or what ought to be, nor from any minds
+or advice of toploftical quarters--and indeed not at all from the
+influences and ways ostensibly supposed (though they too are adopted,
+after a sort)--but slowly, slowly, curiously, from many more and more,
+deeper mixings and siftings (especially in America) and generations
+and years and races, and what largely appears to be chance--but is not
+chance at all. First of all, for future National Literature in America,
+New England (the technically moral and schoolmaster region, as a cynical
+fellow I know calls it) and the three or four great Atlantic-coast
+cities, highly as they to-day suppose they dominate the whole, will
+have to haul in their horns. _Ensemble_ is the tap-root of National
+Literature. America is become already a huge world of peoples, rounded
+and orbic climates, idiocrasies, and geographies--forty-four Nations
+curiously and irresistibly blent and aggregated in ONE NATION, with one
+imperial language, and one unitary set of social and legal standards
+over all--and (I predict) a yet to be National Literature. (In my mind
+this last, if it ever comes, is to prove grander and more important for
+the Commonwealth than its politics and material wealth and trade, vast
+and indispensable as those are.)
+
+Think a moment what must, beyond peradventure, be the real permanent
+sub-bases, or lack of them. Books profoundly considered show a great
+nation more than anything else--more than laws or manners. (This is,
+of course, probably the deep-down meaning of that well-buried but
+ever-vital platitude, Let me sing the people's songs, and I don't care
+who makes their laws.) Books too reflect humanity _en masse_, and surely
+show them splendidly, or the reverse, and prove or celebrate their
+prevalent traits (these last the main things.) Homer grew out of and
+has held the ages, and holds to-day, by the universal admiration
+for personal prowess, courage, rankness, _amour propre_, leadership,
+inherent in the whole human race. Shakspere concentrates the brilliancy
+of the centuries of feudalism on the proud personalities they produced,
+and paints the amorous passion. The books of the Bible stand for the
+final superiority of devout emotions over the rest, and of religious
+adoration, and ultimate absolute justice, more powerful than haughtiest
+kings or millionaires or majorities.
+
+What the United States are working out and establishing needs
+imperatively the connivance of something subtler than ballots and
+legislators. The Goethean theory and lesson (if I may briefly state
+it so) of the exclusive sufficiency of artistic, scientific, literary
+equipment to the character, irrespective of any strong claims of the
+political ties of nation, state, or city, could have answer'd under the
+conventionality and pettiness of Weimar, or the Germany, or even Europe,
+of those times; but it will not do for America to-day at all. We have
+not only to exploit our own theory above any that has preceded us, but
+we have entirely different, and deeper-rooted, and infinitely broader
+themes.
+
+When I have had a chance to see and observe a sufficient crowd of
+American boys or maturer youths or well-grown men, all the States, as in
+my experiences in the secession war among the soldiers, or west,
+east, north, or south, or my wanderings and loiterings through cities
+(especially New York and in Washington,) I have invariably found coming
+to the front three prevailing personal traits, to be named here for
+brevity's sake under the heads Good-Nature, Decorum, and Intelligence.
+(I make Good-Nature first, as it deserves to be--it is a splendid
+resultant of all the rest, like health or fine weather.) Essentially
+these lead the inherent list of the high average personal born and bred
+qualities of the young fellows everywhere through the United States,
+as any sharp observer can find out for himself. Surely these make the
+vertebral stock of superbest and noblest nations! May the destinies show
+it so forthcoming. I mainly confide the whole future of our Commonwealth
+to the fact of these three bases. Need I say I demand the same in the
+elements and spirit and fruitage of National Literature?
+
+Another, perhaps a born root or branch, comes under the words _Noblesse
+Oblige_, even for a national rule or motto. My opinion is that this
+foregoing phrase, and its spirit, should influence and permeate official
+America and its representatives in Congress, the Executive Departments,
+the Presidency, and the individual States--should be one of their
+chiefest mottoes, and be carried out practically. (I got the idea from
+my dear friend the democratic Englishwoman, Mrs. Anne Gilchrist, now
+dead. "The beautiful words _Noblesse Oblige_," said she to me once,
+"are not best for some develop'd gentleman or lord, but some rich and
+develop'd nation--and especially for your America.")
+
+Then another and very grave point (for this discussion is deep,
+deep--not for trifles, or pretty seemings.) I am not sure but the
+establish'd and old (and superb and profound, and, one may say, needed
+as old) conception of Deity as mainly of moral constituency (goodness,
+purity, sinlessness, &c.) has been undermined by nineteenth-century
+ideas and science. What does this immense and almost abnormal
+development of Philanthropy mean among the moderns? One doubts if there
+ever will come a day when the moral laws and moral standards will be
+supplanted as over all: while time proceeds (I find it so myself) they
+will probably be intrench'd deeper and expanded wider. Then the expanded
+scientific and democratic and truly philosophic and poetic quality
+of modernism demands a Deific identity and scope superior to all
+limitations, and essentially including just as well the so-call'd
+evil and crime and criminals--all the malformations, the defective and
+abortions of the universe.
+
+Sometimes the bulk of the common people (who are far more 'cute than the
+critics suppose) relish a well-hidden allusion or hint carelessly dropt,
+faintly indicated, and left to be disinterr'd or not. Some of the very
+old ballads have delicious morsels of this kind. Greek Aristophanes and
+Pindar abounded in them. (I sometimes fancy the old Hellenic audiences
+must have been as generally keen and knowing as any of their poets.)
+Shakspere is full of them. Tennyson has them. It is always a capital
+compliment from author to reader, and worthy the peering brains of
+America. The mere smartness of the common folks, however, does not need
+encouraging, but qualities more solid and opportune.
+
+What are now deepest wanted in the States as roots for their literature
+are Patriotism, Nationality, Ensemble, or the ideas of these, and the
+uncompromising genesis and saturation of these. Not the mere bawling
+and braggadocio of them, but the radical emotion-facts, the fervor and
+perennial fructifying spirit at fountain-head. And at the risk of being
+misunderstood I should dwell on and repeat that a great imaginative
+_literatus_ for America can never be merely good and moral in the
+conventional method. Puritanism and what radiates from it must always
+be mention'd by me with respect; then I should say, for this vast and
+varied Commonwealth, geographically and artistically, the puritanical
+standards are constipated, narrow, and non-philosophic.
+
+In the main I adhere to my positions in "Democratic Vistas," and
+especially to my summing-up of American literature as far as to-day is
+concern'd. In Scientism, the Medical Profession, Practical Inventions,
+and Journalism, the United States have press'd forward to the glorious
+front rank of advanced civilized lands, as also in the popular
+dissemination of printed matter (of a superficial nature perhaps, but
+that is an indispensable preparatory stage,) and have gone in common
+education, so-call'd, far beyond any other land or age. Yet the
+high-pitch'd taunt of Margaret Fuller, forty years ago, still sounds in
+the air: "It does not follow, because the United States print and read
+more books, magazines, and newspapers than all the rest of the world,
+that they really have therefore a literature." For perhaps it is not
+alone the free schools and newspapers, nor railroads and factories,
+nor all the iron, cotton, wheat, pork, and petroleum, nor the gold and
+silver, nor the surplus of a hundred or several hundred millions, nor
+the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, nor the last national census,
+that can put this Commonweal high or highest on the cosmical scale of
+history. Something else is indispensable. All that record is lofty, but
+there is a loftier.
+
+The great current points are perhaps simple, after all: first, that the
+highest developments of the New World and Democracy, and probably the
+best society of the civilized world all over, are to be only reach'd
+and spinally nourish'd (in my notion) by a new evolutionary sense and
+treatment; and, secondly, that the evolution-principle, which is the
+greatest law through nature, and of course in these States, has now
+reach'd us markedly for and in our literature.
+
+In other writings I have tried to show how vital to any aspiring
+Nationality must ever be its autochthonic song, and how for a really
+great people there can be no complete and glorious Name, short of
+emerging out of and even rais'd on such born poetic expression, coming
+from its own soil and soul, its area, spread, idiosyncrasies, and (like
+showers of rain, originally rising impalpably, distill'd from land and
+sea,) duly returning there again. Nor do I forget what we all owe to
+our ancestry; though perhaps we are apt to forgive and bear too much for
+that alone.
+
+One part of the national American literatus's task is (and it is not an
+easy one) to treat the old hereditaments, legends, poems, theologies,
+and even customs, with fitting respect and toleration, and at the same
+time clearly understand and justify, and be devoted to and exploit our
+own day, its diffused light, freedom, responsibilities, with all
+it necessitates, and that our New-World circumstances and stages of
+development demand and make proper. For American literature we want
+mighty authors, _not_ even Carlyle- and Heine-like, born and brought
+up in (and more or less essentially partaking and giving out) that vast
+abnormal ward or hysterical sick-chamber which in many respects Europe,
+with all its glories, would seem to be. The greatest feature in current
+poetry (perhaps in literature anyhow) is the almost total lack of
+first-class power, and simple, natural health, flourishing and produced
+at first hand, typifying our own era. Modern verse generally lacks quite
+altogether the modern, and is oftener possess'd in spirit with the past
+and feudal, dressed may-be in late fashions. For novels and plays often
+the plots and surfaces are contemporary--but the spirit, even the fun,
+is morbid and effete.
+
+There is an essential difference between the Old and New. The poems of
+Asia and Europe are rooted in the long past. They celebrate man and his
+intellections and relativenesses as they have been. But America, in as
+high a strain as ever, is to sing them all as they are and are to be. (I
+know, of course, that the past is probably a main factor in what we are
+and know and must be.) At present the States are absorb'd in business,
+money-making, politics, agriculture, the development of mines,
+intercommunications, and other material attents--which all shove forward
+and appear at their height--as, consistently with modern civilization,
+they must be and should be. Then even these are but the inevitable
+precedents and providers for home-born, transcendent, democratic
+literature--to be shown in superior, more heroic, more spiritual, more
+emotional, personalities and songs. A national literature is, of
+course, in one sense, a great mirror or reflector. There must however
+be something before--something to reflect. I should say now, since the
+secession war, there has been, and to-day unquestionably exists, that
+something.
+
+Certainly, anyhow, the United States do not so far utter poetry,
+first-rate literature, or any of the so-call'd arts, to any lofty
+admiration or advantage--are not dominated or penetrated from actual
+inherence or plain bent to the said poetry and arts. Other work, other
+needs, current inventions, productions, have occupied and to-day mainly
+occupy them. They are very 'cute and imitative and proud--can't
+bear being left too glaringly away far behind the other high-class
+nations--and so we set up some home "poets," "artists," painters,
+musicians, _literati_, and so forth, all our own (thus claim'd.) The
+whole matter has gone on, and exists to-day, probably as it should have
+been, and should be; as, for the present, it must be. To all which
+we conclude, and repeat the terrible query: American National
+Literature--is there distinctively any such thing, or can there ever be?
+
+
+Note:
+
+[46] The essay was for the _North American Review_, in answer to the
+formal request of the editor. It appear'd in March, 1891.
+
+
+GATHERING THE CORN
+
+
+_Last of October_.--Now mellow, crisp, Autumn days, bright moonlight
+nights, and gathering the corn--"cutting up," as the farmers call it.
+Now, or of late, all over the country, a certain green and brown-drab
+eloquence seeming to call out, "You that pretend to give the news, and
+all that's going, why not give us a notice?" Truly, O fields, as for the
+notice,
+
+    "Take, we give it willingly."
+
+Only we must do it our own way. Leaving the domestic, dietary, and
+commercial parts of the question (which are enormous, in fact, hardly
+second to those of any other of our great soil-products), we will just
+saunter down a lane we know, on an average West Jersey farm, and let the
+fancy of the hour itemize America's most typical agricultural show and
+specialty.
+
+Gathering the Corn--the British call it Maize, the old Yankee farmer
+Indian Corn. The great plumes, the ears well-envelop'd in their husks,
+the long and pointed leaves, in summer, like green or purple ribands,
+with a yellow stem line in the middle, all now turn'd dingy; the sturdy
+stalks, and the rustling in the breeze--the breeze itself well tempering
+the sunny noon--The varied reminiscences recall'd--the ploughing and
+planting in spring--(the whole family in the field, even the little
+girls and boys dropping seed in the hill)--the gorgeous sight through
+July and August--the walk and observation early in the day--the cheery
+call of the robin, and the low whirr of insects in the grass--the
+Western husking party, when ripe--the November moonlight gathering, and
+the calls, songs, laughter of the young fellows.
+
+Not to forget, hereabouts, in the Middle States, the old worm fences,
+with the gray rails and their scabs of moss and lichen--those old rails,
+weather beaten, but strong yet. Why not come down from literary dignity,
+and confess we are sitting on one now, under the shade of a great walnut
+tree? Why not confide that these lines are pencill'd on the edge of
+a woody bank, with a glistening pond and creek seen through the trees
+south, and the corn we are writing about close at hand on the north?
+Why not put in the delicious scent of the "life everlasting" that yet
+lingers so profusely in every direction--the chromatic song of the one
+persevering locust (the insect is scarcer this fall and the past summer
+than for many years) beginning slowly, rising and swelling to much
+emphasis, and then abruptly falling--so appropriate to the scene, so
+quaint, so racy and suggestive in the warm sunbeams, we could sit here
+and look and listen for an hour? Why not even the tiny, turtle-shaped,
+yellow-back'd, black-spotted lady-bug that has lit on the shirt-sleeve
+of the arm inditing this? Ending our list with the fall-drying grass,
+the Autumn days themselves,
+
+    Sweet days; so cool, so calm, so bright,
+
+(yet not so cool either, about noon)--the horse-mint, the wild carrot,
+the mullein, and the bumble-bee.
+
+How the half-mad vision of William Blake--how the far freer, far firmer
+fantasy that wrote "Midsummer Night's Dream"--would have revell'd night
+or day, and beyond stint, in one of our American corn fields! Truly, in
+color, outline, material and spiritual suggestiveness, where any more
+inclosing theme for idealist, poet, literary artist?
+
+What we have written has been at noon day--but perhaps better still
+(for this collation,) to steal off by yourself these fine nights, and
+go slowly, musingly down the lane, when the dry and green-gray
+frost-touch'd leaves seem whisper-gossipping all over the field in
+low tones, as if every hill had something to say--and you sit or lean
+recluse near by, and inhale that rare, rich, ripe and peculiar odor
+of the gather'd plant which comes out best only to the night air. The
+complex impressions of the far-spread fields and woods in the night, are
+blended mystically, soothingly, indefinitely, and yet palpably to you
+(appealing curiously, perhaps mostly, to the sense of smell.) All is
+comparative silence and clear-shadow below, and the stars are up there
+with Jupiter lording it over westward; sulky Saturn in the east, and
+over head the moon. A rare well-shadow'd hour! By no means the least of
+the eligibilities of the gather'd corn!
+
+
+
+
+
+A DEATH-BOUQUET
+
+_Pick'd Noontime, early January, 1890_
+
+
+Death--too great a subject to be treated so--indeed the greatest
+subject--and yet I am giving you but a few random lines about it--as one
+writes hurriedly the last part of a letter to catch the closing mail.
+Only I trust the lines, especially the poetic bits quoted, may leave a
+lingering odor of spiritual heroism afterward. For I am probably fond
+of viewing all really great themes indirectly, and by side-ways and
+suggestions. Certain music from wondrous voices or skilful players--then
+poetic glints still more--put the soul in rapport with death, or toward
+it. Hear a strain from Tennyson's late "Crossing the Bar":
+
+    Twilight and evening bell,
+        And after that the dark!
+    And may there be no sadness of farewell,
+        When I embark;
+
+    For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
+        The floods may bear me far,
+    I hope to see my Pilot face to face
+        When I have crost the bar.
+
+Am I starting the sail-craft of poets in line? Here then a quatrain of
+Phrynichus long ago to one of old Athens' favorites:
+
+    Thrice-happy Sophocles! in good old age,
+    Bless'd as a man, and as a craftsman bless'd,
+    He died; his many tragedies were fair,
+    And fair his end, nor knew he any sorrow.
+
+Certain music, indeed, especially voluntaries by a good player, at
+twilight--or idle rambles alone by the shore, or over prairie or
+on mountain road, for that matter--favor the right mood. Words are
+difficult--even impossible. No doubt any one will recall ballads or
+songs or hymns (may-be instrumental performances) that have arous'd
+so curiously, yet definitely, the thought of death, the mystic, the
+after-realm, as no statement or sermon could--and brought it hovering
+near. A happy (to call it so) and easy death is at least as much a
+physiological result as a pyschological one. The foundation of it really
+begins before birth, and is thence directly or indirectly shaped and
+affected, even constituted, (the base stomachic) by every thing from
+that minute till the time of its occurrence. And yet here is something
+(Whittier's "Burning Driftwood") of an opposite coloring:
+
+    I know the solemn monotone
+        Of waters calling unto me;
+    I know from whence the airs have blown,
+        That whisper of the Eternal Sea;
+    As low my fires of driftwood burn,
+        I hear that sea's deep sounds increase,
+    And, fair in sunset light, discern
+        Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace.
+
+Like an invisible breeze after a long and sultry day, death sometimes
+sets in at last, soothingly and refreshingly, almost vitally. In not
+a few cases the termination even appears to be a sort of ecstasy. Of
+course there are painful deaths, but I do not believe such is at all the
+general rule. Of the many hundreds I myself saw die in the fields and
+hospitals during the secession war the cases of mark' d suffering or
+agony _in extremis_ were very rare. (It is a curious suggestion of
+immortality that the mental and emotional powers remain to their
+clearest through all, while the senses of pain and flesh volition are
+blunted or even gone.)
+
+Then to give the following, and cease before the thought gets
+threadbare:
+
+    Now, land and life, finale, and farewell!
+    Now Voyager depart! (much, much for thee is yet in store;)
+    Often enough hast thou adventur'd o'er the seas,
+    Cautiously cruising, studying the charts,
+    Duly again to port and hawser's tie returning.
+    --But now obey thy cherish'd, secret wish,
+    Embrace thy friends--leave all in order;
+    To port and hawser's tie no more returning,
+    Depart upon thy endless cruise, old Sailor!
+
+
+
+
+
+SOME LAGGARDS YET
+
+
+THE PERFECT HUMAN VOICE
+
+Stating it briefly and pointedly I should suggest that the human voice
+is a cultivation or form'd growth on a fair native foundation. This
+foundation probably exists in nine cases out of ten. Sometimes nature
+affords the vocal organ in perfection, or rather I would say near enough
+to whet one's appreciation and appetite for a voice that might be truly
+call'd perfection. To me the grand voice is mainly physiological--(by
+which I by no means ignore the mental help, but wish to keep
+the emphasis where it belongs.) Emerson says _manners_ form the
+representative apex and final charm and captivation of humanity: but he
+might as well have changed the typicality to voice.
+
+Of course there is much taught and written about elocution, the best
+reading, speaking, &c., but it finally settles down to _best_ human
+vocalization. Beyond all other power and beauty, there is something in
+the quality and power of the right voice (_timbre_ the schools call
+it) that touches the soul, the abysms. It was not for nothing that
+the Greeks depended, at their highest, on poetry's and wisdom's vocal
+utterance by _tete-a-tete_ lectures--(indeed all the ancients did.)
+
+Of celebrated people possessing this wonderful vocal power, patent to
+me, in former days, I should specify the contralto Alboni, Elias Hicks,
+Father Taylor, the tenor Bettini, Fanny Kemble, and the old actor Booth,
+and in private life many cases, often women. I sometimes wonder whether
+the best philosophy and poetry, or something like the best, after all
+these centuries, perhaps waits to be rous'd out yet, or suggested, by
+the perfect physiological human voice.
+
+
+SHAKSPERE FOR AMERICA
+
+Let me send you a supplementary word to that "view" of Shakspere
+attributed to me, publish'd in your July number,[47] and so courteously
+worded by the reviewer (thanks! dear friend.) But you have left out
+what, perhaps, is the main point, as follows:
+
+"Even the one who at present reigns unquestion'd--of Shakspere--for all
+he stands for so much in modern literature, he stands entirely for
+the mighty esthetic sceptres of the past, not for the spiritual and
+democratic, the sceptres of the future." (See pp. 55-58 in "November
+Boughs," and also some of my further notions on Shakspere.)
+
+The Old World (Europe and Asia) is the region of the poetry of concrete
+and real things,--the past, the esthetic, palaces, etiquette, the
+literature of war and love, the mythological gods, and the myths anyhow.
+But the New World (America) is the region of the future, and its poetry
+must be spiritual and democratic. Evolution is not the rule in Nature,
+in Politics, and Inventions only, but in Verse. I know our age is
+greatly materialistic, but it is greatly spiritual, too, and the future
+will be, too. Even what we moderns have come to mean by _spirituality_
+(while including what the Hebraic utterers, and mainly perhaps all the
+Greek and other old typical poets, and also the later ones, meant) has
+so expanded and color'd and vivified the comprehension of the term,
+that it is quite a different one from the past. Then science, the final
+critic of all, has the casting vote for future poetry.
+
+
+Note:
+
+[47] This bit was in "Poet-lore" monthly for September, 1890.
+
+
+"UNASSAIL'D RENOWN"
+
+The N. Y. _Critic_, Nov. 24, 1889, propounded a circular to several
+persons, and giving the responses, says, "Walt Whitman's views [as
+follow] are, naturally, more radical than those of any other contributor
+to the discussion":
+
+Briefly to answer impromptu your request of Oct. 19--the question
+whether I think any American poet not now living deserves a place
+among the thirteen "English inheritors of unassail'd renown" (Chaucer,
+Spenser, Shakspere, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Burns, Wordsworth,
+Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats,)--and which American poets would be
+truly worthy, &c. Though to me the _deep_ of the matter goes down,
+down beneath. I remember the London _Times_ at the time, in opportune,
+profound and friendly articles on Bryant's and Longfellow's deaths,
+spoke of the embarrassment, warping effect, and confusion on America
+(her poets and poetic students) "coming in possession of a great
+estate they had never lifted a hand to form or earn"; and the further
+contingency of "the English language ever having annex'd to it a lot of
+first-class Poetry that would be American, not European"--proving then
+something precious over all, and beyond valuation. But perhaps that
+is venturing outside the question. Of the thirteen British immortals
+mention'd--after placing Shakspere on a sort of pre-eminence of fame not
+to be invaded yet--the names of Bryant, Emerson, Whittier and Longfellow
+(with even added names, sometimes Southerners, sometimes Western or
+other writers of only one or two pieces,) deserve in my opinion an
+equally high niche of renown as belongs to any on the dozen of that
+glorious list.
+
+
+INSCRIPTION FOR A LITTLE BOOK ON GIORDANO BRUNO
+
+As America's mental courage (the thought comes to me to-day) is so
+indebted, above all current lands and peoples, to the noble army of
+Old-World martyrs past, how incumbent on us that we clear those martyrs'
+lives and names, and hold them up for reverent admiration, as well
+as beacons. And typical of this, and standing for it and all perhaps,
+Giordano Bruno may well be put, to-day and to come, in our New World's
+thankfulest heart and memory.
+
+W.W. CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY, _February 24th, 1890_.
+
+
+SPLINTERS
+
+While I stand in reverence before the fact of Humanity, the People, I
+will confess, in writing my L. of G., the least consideration out of
+all that has had to do with it has been the consideration of "the
+public"--at any rate as it now exists. Strange as it may sound for
+a democrat to say so, I am clear that no free and original and
+lofty-soaring poem, or one ambitious of those achievements, can
+possibly be fulfill'd by any writer who has largely in his thought _the
+public_--or the question, What will establish'd literature--What will
+the current authorities say about it?
+
+As far as I have sought any, not the best laid out garden or parterre
+has been my model--but Nature has been. I know that in a sense the
+garden is nature too, but I had to choose--I could not give both.
+Besides the gardens are well represented in poetry; while Nature (in
+letter and in spirit, in the divine essence,) little if at all.
+
+Certainly, (while I have not hit it by a long shot,) I have aim'd at the
+most ambitious, the best--and sometimes feel to advance that aim (even
+with all its arrogance) as the most redeeming part of my books. I have
+never so much cared to feed the esthetic or intellectual palates--but if
+I could arouse from its slumbers that eligibility in every soul for its
+own true exercise! if I could only wield that lever!
+
+Out from the well-tended concrete and the physical--and in them and from
+them only--radiate the spiritual and heroic.
+
+Undoubtedly many points belonging to this essay--perhaps of the
+greatest necessity, fitness and importance to it--have been left out
+or forgotten. But the amount of the whole matter--poems, preface and
+everything--is merely to make one of those little punctures or eyelets
+the actors possess in the theatre-curtains to look out upon "the
+house"--one brief, honest, living glance.
+
+
+HEALTH, (OLD STYLE)
+
+In that condition the whole body is elevated to a state by others
+unknown--inwardly and outwardly illuminated, purified, made solid,
+strong, yet buoyant. A singular charm, more than beauty, flickers out
+of, and over, the face--a curious transparency beams in the eyes,
+both in the iris and the white--the temper partakes also. Nothing that
+happens--no event, rencontre, weather, &c--but it is confronted--nothing
+but is subdued into sustenance--such is the marvellous transformation
+from the old timorousness and the old process of causes and effects.
+Sorrows and disappointments cease--there is no more borrowing trouble
+in advance. A man realizes the venerable myth--he is a god walking the
+earth, he sees new eligibilities, powers and beauties everywhere; he
+himself has a new eyesight and hearing. The play of the body in motion
+takes a previously unknown grace. Merely _to move_ is then a
+happiness, a pleasure--to breathe, to see, is also. All the beforehand
+gratifications, drink, spirits, coffee, grease, stimulants, mixtures,
+late hours, luxuries, deeds of the night, seem as vexatious dreams, and
+now the awakening;--many fall into their natural places, whole-some,
+conveying diviner joys.
+
+What I append--Health, old style--I have long treasur'd--found
+originally in some scrap-book fifty years ago--a favorite of mine (but
+quite a glaring contrast to my present bodily state:)
+
+    On a high rock above the vast abyss,
+      Whose solid base tumultuous waters lave;
+    Whose airy high-top balmy breezes kiss,
+      Fresh from the white foam of the circling wave--
+
+    There ruddy HEALTH, in rude majestic state,
+      His clust'ring forelock combatting the winds--
+    Bares to each season's change his breast elate,
+      And still fresh vigor from th' encounter finds;
+
+    With mighty mind to every fortune braced,
+      To every climate each corporeal power,
+    And high-proof heart, impenetrably cased,
+      He mocks the quick transitions of the hour.
+
+    Now could he hug bleak Zembla's bolted snow,
+      Now to Arabia's heated deserts turn,
+    Yet bids the biting blast more fiercely blow,
+      The scorching sun without abatement burn.
+
+    There this bold Outlaw, rising with the morn,
+      His sinewy functions fitted for the toil,
+    Pursues, with tireless steps, the rapturous horn,
+      And bears in triumph back the shaggy spoil.
+
+    Or, on his rugged range of towering hills,
+      Turns the stiff glebe behind his hardy team;
+    His wide-spread heaths to blithest measures tills,
+      And boasts the joys of life are not a dream!
+
+    Then to his airy hut, at eve, retires,
+      Clasps to his open breast his buxom spouse,
+    Basks in his faggot's blaze, his passions fires,
+      And strait supine to rest unbroken bows.
+
+    On his smooth forehead, Time's old annual score,
+      Tho' left to furrow, yet disdains to lie;
+    He bids weak sorrow tantalize no more,
+      And puts the cup of care contemptuous by.
+
+    If, from some inland height, that, skirting, bears
+      Its rude encroachments far into the vale,
+    He views where poor dishonor'd nature wears
+      On her soft cheek alone the lily pale;
+
+    How will he scorn alliance with the race,
+      Those aspen shoots that shiver at a breath;
+    Children of sloth, that danger dare not face,
+      And find in life but an extended death:
+
+    Then from the silken reptiles will he fly,
+      To the bold cliff in bounding transports run,
+    And stretch'd o'er many a wave his ardent eye,
+      Embrace the enduring Sea-Boy as his son!
+
+    Yes! thine alone--from pain, from sorrow free,
+      The lengthen'd life with peerless joys replete;
+    Then let me, Lord of Mountains, share with thee
+      The hard, the early toil--the relaxation sweet.
+
+
+GAY-HEARTEDNESS
+
+Walking on the old Navy Yard bridge, Washington, D. C., once with a
+companion, Mr. Marshall, from England, a great traveler and observer, as
+a squad of laughing young black girls pass'd us--then two copper-color'd
+boys, one good-looking lad 15 or 16, barefoot, running after--"What _gay
+creatures_ they all appear to be," said Mr. M. Then we fell to talking
+about the general lack of buoyant animal spirits. "I think," said Mr.
+M., "that in all my travels, and all my intercourse with people of
+every and any class, especially the cultivated ones, (the literary and
+fashionable folks,) I have never yet come across what I should call a
+really GAY-HEARTED MAN."
+
+It was a terrible criticism--cut into me like a surgeon's lance. Made me
+silent the whole walk home.
+
+
+AS IN A SWOON.
+
+    As in a swoon, one instant,
+    Another sun, ineffable, full-dazzles me,
+    And all the orbs I knew--and brighter, unknown orbs;
+    One instant of the future land, Heaven's land.
+
+
+L. OF G.
+
+    Thoughts, suggestions, aspirations, pictures,
+    Cities and farms--by day and night--book of peace and war,
+    Of platitudes and of the commonplace.
+
+    For out-door health, the land and sea--for good will,
+    For America--for all the earth, all nations, the common people,
+    (Not of one nation only--not America only.)
+
+    In it each claim, ideal, line, by all lines, claims, ideals,
+      temper'd;
+    Each right and wish by other wishes, rights.
+
+
+AFTER THE ARGUMENT.
+
+    A group of little children with their ways and chatter flow in,
+    Like welcome rippling water o'er my heated nerves and flesh.
+
+
+FOR US TWO, READER DEAR.
+
+    Simple, spontaneous, curious, two souls interchanging,
+    With the original testimony for us continued to the last.
+
+
+
+
+MEMORANDA
+
+
+[Let me indeed turn upon myself a little of the light I have been so
+fond of casting on others.
+
+Of course these few exceptional later mems are far, far short of one's
+concluding history or thoughts or life-giving--only a hap-hazard pinch
+of all. But the old Greek proverb put it, "Anybody who really has a good
+quality" (or bad one either, I guess) "has _all_." There's something in
+the proverb; but you mustn't carry it too far.
+
+I will not reject any theme or subject because the treatment is too
+personal.
+
+As my stuff settles into shape, I am told (and sometimes myself
+discover, uneasily, but feel all right about it in calmer moments) it
+is mainly autobiographic, and even egotistic after all--which I finally
+accept, and am contented so.
+
+If this little volume betrays, as it doubtless does, a weakening
+hand, and decrepitude, remember it is knit together out of accumulated
+sickness, inertia, physical disablement, acute pain, and listlessness.
+My fear will be that at last my pieces show indooredness, and being
+chain'd to a chair--as never before. Only the resolve to keep up, and
+on, and to add a remnant, and even perhaps obstinately see what failing
+powers and decay may contribute too, have produced it.
+
+And now as from some fisherman's net hauling all sorts, and disbursing
+the same.]
+
+
+A WORLD'S SHOW
+
+_New York, Great Exposition open'd in 1853._--I went a long time (nearly
+a year)--days and nights--especially the latter--as it was finely
+lighted, and had a very large and copious exhibition gallery of
+paintings (shown at best at night, I tho't)--hundreds of pictures from
+Europe, many masterpieces--all an exhaustless study--and, scatter'd
+thro' the building, sculptures, single figures or groups--among the
+rest, Thorwaldsen's "Apostles," colossal in size--and very many fine
+bronzes, pieces of plate from English silversmiths, and curios from
+everywhere abroad--with woods from all lands of the earth--all sorts of
+fabrics and products and handiwork from the workers of all nations.
+
+
+NEW YORK--THE BAY--THE OLD NAME
+
+_Commencement of a gossipy travelling letter in a New York city paper,
+May 10, 1879_.--My month's visit is about up; but before I get back to
+Camden let me print some jottings of the last four weeks. Have you not,
+reader dear, among your intimate friends, some one, temporarily absent,
+whose letters to you, avoiding all the big topics and disquisitions,
+give only minor, gossipy sights and scenes--just as they come--subjects
+disdain'd by solid writers, but interesting to you because they were
+such as happen to everybody, and were the moving entourage to your
+friend--to his or her steps, eyes, mentality? Well, with an idea
+something of that kind, I suppose, I set out on the following
+hurrygraphs of a breezy early-summer visit to New York city and up the
+North river--especially at present of some hours along Broadway.
+
+_What I came to New York for_.--To try the experiment of a lecture--to
+see whether I could stand it, and whether an audience could--was my
+specific object. Some friends had invited me--it was by no means clear
+how it would end--I stipulated that they should get only a third-rate
+hall, and not sound the advertising trumpets a bit--and so I started. I
+much wanted something to do for occupation, consistent with my limping
+and paralyzed state. And now, since it came off, and since neither my
+hearers nor I myself really collaps'd at the aforesaid lecture, I intend
+to go up and down the land (in moderation,) seeking whom I may devour,
+with lectures, and reading of my own poems--short pulls, however--never
+exceeding an hour.
+
+_Crossing from Jersey city, 5 to 6 P.M._--The city part of the North
+river with its life, breadth, peculiarities--the amplitude of sea and
+wharf, cargo and commerce--one don't realize them till one has been
+away a long time and, as now returning, (crossing from Jersey city to
+Desbrosses-st.,) gazes on the unrivall'd panorama, and far down the
+thin-vapor'd vistas of the bay, toward the Narrows--or northward up the
+Hudson--or on the ample spread and infinite variety, free and floating,
+of the more immediate views--a countless river series--everything
+moving, yet so easy, and such plenty of room! Little, I say, do folks
+here appreciate the most ample, eligible, picturesque bay and estuary
+surroundings in the world! This is the third time such a conviction
+has come to me after absence, returning to New York, dwelling on its
+magnificent entrances--approaching the city by them from any point.
+
+More and more, too, the _old name_ absorbs into me--MANNAHATTA, "the
+place encircled by many swift tides and sparkling waters." How fit a
+name for America's great democratic island city! The word itself,
+how beautiful! how aboriginal! how it seems to rise with tall spires,
+glistening in sunshine, with such New World atmosphere, vista and
+action!
+
+
+A SICK SPELL
+
+_Christmas Day, 25th Dec., 1888_.--Am somewhat easier and freer to-day
+and the last three days--sit up most of the time--read and write, and
+receive my visitors. Have now been in-doors sick for seven months--half
+of the time bad, bad, vertigo, indigestion, bladder, gastric, head
+trouble, inertia--Dr. Bucke, Dr. Osler, Drs. Wharton and Walsh--now
+Edward Wilkins my help and nurse. A fine, splendid, sunny day. My
+"November Boughs" is printed and out; and my "Complete Works, Poems and
+Prose," a big volume, 900 pages, also. It is ab't noon, and I sit here
+pretty comfortable.
+
+
+TO BE PRESENT ONLY
+
+_At the Complimentary Dinner, Camden, New Jersey, May 31, 1889_.--Walt
+Whitman said: My friends, though announced to give an address, there
+is no such intention. Following the impulse of the spirit, (for I am at
+least half of Quaker stock) I have obey'd the command to come and look
+at you, for a minute, and show myself, face to face; which is probably
+the best I can do. But I have felt no command to make a speech;
+and shall not therefore attempt any. All I have felt the imperative
+conviction to say I have already printed in my books of poems or prose;
+to which I refer any who may be curious. And so, hail and farewell.
+Deeply acknowledging this deep compliment, with my best respects and
+love to you personally--to Camden--to New-Jersey, and to all represented
+here--you must excuse me from any word further.
+
+
+"INTESTINAL AGITATION"
+
+_From Pall-Mall Gazette, London, England, Feb 8, 1890_ Mr. Ernest
+Rhys has just receiv'd an interesting letter from Walt Whitman, dated
+"Camden, January 22, 1890." The following is an extract from it:
+
+I am still here--no very mark'd or significant change or
+happening--fairly buoyant spirits, &c.--but surely, slowly ebbing. At
+this moment sitting here, in my den, Mickle street, by the oakwood fire,
+in the same big strong old chair with wolf-skin spread over back--bright
+sun, cold, dry winter day. America continues--is generally busy enough
+all over her vast demesnes (intestinal agitation I call it,) talking,
+plodding, making money, every one trying to get on--perhaps to get
+towards the top--but no special individual signalism--(just as well, I
+guess.)
+
+
+"WALT WHITMAN'S LAST 'PUBLIC'"
+
+The gay and crowded audience at the Art Rooms, Philadelphia, Tuesday
+night, April 15, 1890, says a correspondent of the Boston _Transcript_,
+April 19, might not have thought that W. W. crawl'd out of a sick bed a
+few hours before, crying,
+
+    Dangers retreat when boldly they're confronted,
+
+and went over, hoarse and half blind, to deliver his memoranda and essay
+on the death of Abraham Lincoln, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of that
+tragedy. He led off with the following new paragraph:
+
+"Of Abraham Lincoln, bearing testimony twenty-five years after his
+death--and of that death--I am now my friends before you. Few realize
+the days, the great historic and esthetic personalities, with him in
+the centre, we pass'd through. Abraham Lincoln, familiar, our own, an
+Illinoisian, modern, yet tallying ancient Moses, Joshua, Ulysses, or
+later Cromwell, and grander in some respects than any of them; Abraham
+Lincoln, that makes the like of Homer, Plutarch, Shakspere, eligible our
+day or any day. My subject this evening for forty or fifty minutes' talk
+is the death of this man, and how that death will really filter into
+America. I am not going to tell you anything new; and it is doubtless
+nearly altogether because I ardently wish to commemorate the hour and
+martyrdom and name I am here. Oft as the rolling years bring back this
+hour, let it again, however briefly, be dwelt upon. For my own part I
+hope and intend till my own dying day, whenever the 14th and 15th
+of April comes, to annually gather a few friends and hold its tragic
+reminiscence. No narrow or sectional reminiscence. It belongs to these
+States in their entirety--not the North only, but the South--perhaps
+belongs most tenderly and devoutly to the South, of all; for there
+really this man's birthstock; there and then his antecedent stamp. Why
+should I not say that thence his manliest traits, his universality,
+his canny, easy ways and words upon the surface--his inflexible
+determination at heart? Have you ever realized it, my friends, that
+Lincoln, though grafted on the West, is essentially in personnel and
+character a Southern contribution?"
+
+The most of the poet's address was devoted to the actual occurrences and
+details of the murder. We believe the delivery on Tuesday was Whitman's
+thirteenth of it. The old poet is now physically wreck'd. But his voice
+and magnetism are the same. For the last month he has been under
+a severe attack of the lately prevailing influenza, the grip, in
+accumulation upon his previous ailments, and, above all, that terrible
+paralysis, the bequest of secession war times. He was dress'd last
+Tuesday night in an entire suit of French Canadian grey wool cloth, with
+broad shirt collar, with no necktie; long white hair, red face, full
+beard and moustache, and look'd as though he might weigh two hundred
+pounds. He had to be help'd and led every step. In five weeks more he
+will begin his seventy-second year. He is still writing a little.
+
+
+INGERSOLL'S SPEECH
+
+_From the Camden Post, N.J., June 2, 1890_ _He attends and makes a
+speech at the celebration of Walt Whitman's birthday_.--Walt Whitman
+is now in his seventy-second year. His younger friends, literary and
+personal, men and women, gave him a complimentary supper last Saturday
+night, to note the close of his seventy-first year, and the late curious
+and unquestionable "boom" of the old man's wide-spreading popularity,
+and that of his "Leaves of Grass." There were thirty-five in the room,
+mostly young, but some old, or beginning to be. The great feature was
+Ingersoll's utterance. It was probably, in its way, the most admirable
+specimen of modern oratory hitherto delivered in the English language,
+immense as such praise may sound. It was 40 to 50 minutes long,
+altogether without notes, in a good voice, low enough and not too low,
+style easy, rather colloquial (over and over again saying "you" to
+Whitman who sat opposite,) sometimes markedly impassion'd, once or
+twice humorous--amid his whole speech, from interior fires and volition,
+pulsating and swaying like a first-class Andalusian dancer.
+
+And such a critical dissection, and flattering summary! The Whitmanites
+for the first time in their lives were fully satisfied; and that is
+saying a good deal, for they have not put their claims low, by a long
+shot. Indeed it was a tremendous talk! Physically and mentally Ingersoll
+(he had been working all day in New York, talking in court and in his
+office,) is now at his best, like mellow'd wine, or a just ripe
+apple; to the artist-sense, too, looks at his best--not merely like a
+bequeath'd Roman bust or fine smooth marble Cicero-head, or even Greek
+Plato; for he is modern and vital and vein'd and American, and (far more
+than the age knows,) justifies us all.
+
+We cannot give a full report of this most remarkable talk and supper
+(which was curiously conversational and Greek-like) but must add the
+following significant bit of it.
+
+After the speaking, and just before the close, Mr. Whitman reverted to
+Colonel Ingersoll's tribute to his poems, pronouncing it the capsheaf
+of all commendation that he had ever receiv'd. Then, his mind still
+dwelling upon the Colonel's religious doubts, he went on to say that
+what he himself had in his mind when he wrote "Leaves of Grass" was not
+only to depict American life, as it existed, and to show the triumphs of
+science, and the poetry in common things, and the full of an individual
+democratic humanity, for the aggregate, but also to show that there
+was behind all something which rounded and completed it. "For what,"
+he ask'd, "would this life be without immortality? It would be as a
+locomotive, the greatest triumph of modern science, with no train to
+draw after it. If the spiritual is not behind the material, to what
+purpose is the material? What is this world without a further Divine
+purpose in it all?"
+
+Colonel Ingersoll repeated his former argument in reply.
+
+
+FEELING FAIRLY
+
+_Friday, July 27, 1890_.--Feeling fairly these days, and even
+jovial--sleep and appetite good enough to be thankful for--had a dish
+of Maryland blackberries, some good rye bread and a cup of tea, for
+my breakfast--relish' d all--fine weather--bright sun to-day--pleasant
+northwest breeze blowing in the open window as I sit here in my big
+rattan chair--two great fine roses (white and red, blooming, fragrant,
+sent by mail by W. S. K. and wife, Mass.) are in a glass of water on the
+table before me.
+
+Am now in my 72d year.
+
+
+OLD BROOKLYN DAYS
+
+It must have been in 1822 or '3 that I first came to live in Brooklyn.
+Lived first in Front street, not far from what was then call'd "the New
+Ferry," wending the river from the foot of Catharine (or Main) street to
+New York city.
+
+I was a little child (was born in 1819,) but tramp'd freely about the
+neighborhood and town, even then; was often on the aforesaid New
+Ferry; remember how I was petted and deadheaded by the gatekeepers and
+deckhands (all such fellows are kind to little children,) and remember
+the horses that seem'd to me so queer as they trudg'd around in the
+central houses of the boats, making the water-power. (For it was just
+on the eve of the steam-engine, which was soon after introduced on the
+ferries.) Edward Copeland (afterward Mayor) had a grocery store then at
+the corner of Front and Catharine streets.
+
+Presently we Whitmans all moved up to Tillary street, near Adams, where
+my father, who was a carpenter, built a house for himself and us all. It
+was from here I "assisted" the personal coming of Lafayette in 1824-'5
+to Brooklyn. He came over the Old Ferry, as the now Fulton Ferry (partly
+navigated quite up to that day by "horse boats," though the first
+steamer had begun to be used hereabouts) was then call'd, and was
+receiv'd at the foot of Fulton street. It was on that occasion that the
+corner-stone of the Apprentices' Library, at the corner of Cranberry
+and Henry streets--since pull'd down--was laid by Lafayette's own hands.
+Numerous children arrived on the grounds, of whom I was one, and were
+assisted by several gentlemen to safe spots to view the ceremony. Among
+others, Lafayette, also helping the children, took me up--I was five
+years old, press'd me a moment to his breast--gave me a kiss and set me
+down in a safe spot. Lafayette was at that time between sixty-five and
+seventy years of age, with a manly figure and a kind face.
+
+
+TWO QUESTIONS
+
+An editor of (or in) a leading monthly magazine ("Harper's Monthly,"
+July, 1890,) asks: "A hundred years from now will W.W. be popularly
+rated a great poet--or will he be forgotten?" ... A mighty ticklish
+question--which can only be left for a hundred years hence--perhaps more
+than that. But whether W.W. has been mainly rejected by his own times is
+an easier question to answer.
+
+All along from 1860 to '91, many of the pieces in L. of G., and its
+annexes, were first sent to publishers or magazine editors before being
+printed in the L., and were peremptorily rejected by them, and sent back
+to their author. The "Eidolons" was sent back by Dr. H., of "Scribner's
+Monthly" with a lengthy, very insulting and contemptuous letter. "To
+the Sun-Set Breeze," was rejected by the editor of "Harper's Monthly" as
+being "an improvisation" only. "On, on ye jocund twain" was rejected
+by the "Century" editor as being personal merely. Several of the pieces
+went the rounds of all the monthlies, to be thus summarily rejected.
+
+_June, '90_.--The----rejects and sends back my little poem, so I am now
+set out in the cold by every big magazine and publisher, and may as well
+understand and admit it--which is just as well, for I find I am palpably
+losing my sight and ratiocination.
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+_To a volume of essays and tales by Wm. D. O'Connor, pub'd posthumously
+in 1891_
+
+A hasty memorandum, not particularly for Preface to the following tales,
+but to put on record my respect and affection for as sane, beautiful,
+cute, tolerant, loving, candid and free and fair-intention'd a nature as
+ever vivified our race.
+
+In Boston, 1860, I first met William Douglas O'Connor.[48] As I saw
+and knew him then, in his 29th year, and for twenty-five further
+years along, he was a gallant, handsome, gay-hearted, fine-voiced,
+glowing-eyed man; lithe-moving on his feet, of healthy and magnetic
+atmosphere and presence, and the most welcome company in the world.
+He was a thorough-going anti-slavery believer, speaker and writer,
+(doctrinaire,) and though I took a fancy to him from the first. I
+remember I fear'd his ardent abolitionism--was afraid it would probably
+keep us apart. (I was a decided and out-spoken anti-slavery believer
+myself, then and always; but shy'd from the extremists, the red-hot
+fellows of those times.) O'C. was then correcting the proofs of
+_Harrington_, an eloquent and fiery novel he had written, and which
+was printed just before the commencement of the secession war. He
+was already married, the father of two fine little children, and was
+personally and intellectually the most attractive man I had ever met.
+
+Last of '62 I found myself led towards the war-field--went to Washington
+city--(to become absorb'd in the armies, and in the big hospitals, and
+to get work in one of the Departments,)--and there I met and resumed
+friendship, and found warm hospitality from O'C. and his noble New
+England wife. They had just lost by death their little child-boy,
+Phillip; and O'C. was yet feeling serious about it. The youngster had
+been vaccinated against the threatening of small-pox which alarm'd the
+city; but somehow it led to worse results than it was intended to ward
+off--or at any rate O'C. thought that proved the cause of the boy's
+death. He had one child left, a fine bright little daughter, and a great
+comfort to her parents. (Dear Jeannie! She grew up a most accomplish'd
+and superior young woman--declined in health, and died about 1881.)
+
+On through for months and years to '73 I saw and talk'd with O'C. almost
+daily. I had soon got employment, first for a short time in the Indian
+Bureau (in the Interior Department,) and then for a long while in the
+Attorney General's Office. The secession war, with its tide of varying
+fortunes, excitements--President Lincoln and the daily sight of him--the
+doings in Congress and at the State Capitols--the news from the fields
+and campaigns, and from foreign governments--my visits to the Army
+Hospitals, daily and nightly, soon absorbing everything else,--with a
+hundred matters, occurrences, personalties,--(Greeley, Wendell Phillips,
+the parties, the Abolitionists, &c.)--were the subjects of our talk and
+discussion. I am not sure from what I heard then, but O'C. was cut out
+for a first-class public speaker or forensic advocate. No audience
+or jury could have stood out against him. He had a strange charm of
+physiologic voice. He had a power and sharp-cut faculty of statement and
+persuasiveness beyond any man's else. I know it well, for I have felt
+it many a time. If not as orator, his forte was as critic, newer, deeper
+than any: also, as literary author. One of his traits was that while he
+knew all, and welcom'd all sorts of great _genre_ literature, all lands
+and times, from all writers and artists, and not only tolerated
+each, and defended every attack'd literary person with a skill or
+heart-catholicism that I never saw equal'd--invariably advocated and
+excused them--he kept an idiosyncrasy and identity of his own very
+mark'd, and without special tinge or undue color from any source. He
+always applauded the freedom of the masters, whence and whoever. I
+remember his special defences of Byron, Burns, Poe, Rabelais, Victor
+Hugo, George Sand, and others. There was always a little touch of
+pensive cadence in his superb voice; and I think there was something
+of the same sadness in his temperament and nature. Perhaps, too, in
+his literary structure. But he was a very buoyant, jovial, good-natured
+companion.
+
+So much for a hasty melanged reminiscence and note of William O'Connor,
+my dear, dear friend, and staunch, (probably my staunchest) literary
+believer and champion from the first, and throughout without halt or
+demur, for twenty-five years. No better friend--none more reliable
+through this life of one's ups and downs. On the occurrence of the
+latter he would be sure to make his appearance on the scene, eager,
+hopeful, full of fight like a perfect knight of chivalry. For he was a
+born sample here in the 19th century of the flower and symbol of olden
+time first-class knighthood. Thrice blessed be his memory! W. W.
+
+
+Note: [48] Born Jan. 2d, 1832. When grown, lived several years in
+Boston, and edited journals and magazines there--went about 1861 to
+Washington, D. C., and became a U.S. clerk, first in the Light-House
+Bureau, and then in the U.S. Life-Saving Service, in which branch he was
+Assistant Superintendent for many years--sicken'd in 1887--died there at
+Washington, May 9th, 1889.
+
+
+AN ENGINEER'S OBITUARY
+
+_From the Engineering Record, New York, Dec. 13, 1890_
+
+Thomas Jefferson Whitman was born July 18, 1833, in Brooklyn, N. Y.,
+from a father of English Stock, and mother (Louisa Van Velsor) descended
+from Dutch (Holland) immigration. His early years were spent on Long
+Island, either in the country or Brooklyn. As a lad he show'd a tendency
+for surveying and civil engineering, and about at 19 went with Chief
+Kirkwood, who was then prospecting and outlining for the great city
+water-works. He remain'd at that construction throughout, was a favorite
+and confidant of the Chief, and was successively promoted. He continued
+also under Chief Moses Lane. He married in 1859, and not long after was
+invited by the Board of Public Works of St. Louis, Missouri, to come
+there and plan and build a new and fitting water-works for that great
+city. Whitman accepted the call, and moved and settled there, and had
+been a resident of St. Louis ever since. He plann'd and built the works,
+which were very successful, and remain'd as super-intendent and chief
+for nearly 20 years.
+
+Of the last six years he has been largely occupied as consulting
+engineer (divested of his cares and position in St. Louis,) and
+has engaged in public constructions, bridges, sewers, &c., West and
+Southwest, and especially the Memphis, Tenn., city water-works.
+
+Thomas J. Whitman was a theoretical and practical mechanic of superior
+order, founded in the soundest personal and professional integrity. He
+was a great favorite among the young engineers and students; not a few
+of them yet remaining in Kings and Queens counties, and New York city,
+will remember "Jeff," with old-time good-will and affection. He was
+mostly self-taught, and was a hard student.
+
+He had been troubled of late years from a bad throat and from gastric
+affection, tending on typhoid, and had been rather seriously ill with
+the last malady, but was getting over the worst of it, when he succumb'd
+under a sudden and severe attack of the heart. He died at St. Louis,
+November 25, 1890, in his 58th year. Of his family, the wife died in
+1873, and a daughter, Mannahatta, died two years ago. Another daughter,
+Jessie Louisa, the only child left, is now living in St. Louis.
+
+[When Jeff was born I was in my 15th year, and had much care of him for
+many years afterward, and he did not separate from me. He was a very
+handsome, healthy, affectionate, smart child, and would sit on my lap
+or hang on my neck half an hour at a time. As he grew a big boy he liked
+outdoor and water sports, especially boating. We would often go down
+summers to Peconic Bay, east end of Long Island, and over to Shelter
+Island. I loved long rambles, and he carried his fowling-piece. O,
+what happy times, weeks! Then in Brooklyn and New York city he learn'd
+printing, and work'd awhile at it; but eventually (with my approval) he
+went to employment at land surveying, and merged in the studies and work
+of topographical engineer; this satisfied him, and he continued at it.
+He was of noble nature from the first; very good-natured, very plain,
+very friendly. O, how we loved each other--how many jovial good times we
+had! Once we made a long trip from New York city down over the Allegheny
+mountains (the National Road) and via the Ohio and Mississippi rivers,
+from Cairo to New Orleans.]
+
+God's blessing on your name and memory, dear brother Jeff!
+
+W. W.
+
+
+OLD ACTORS, SINGERS, SHOWS, &C., IN NEW YORK
+
+_Flitting mention--(with much left out)_
+
+Seems to me I ought acknowledge my debt to actors, singers, public
+speakers, conventions, and the Stage in New York, my youthful days,
+from 1835 onward--say to '60 or '61--and to plays and operas generally.
+(Which nudges a pretty big disquisition: of course it should be all
+elaborated and penetrated more deeply--but I will here give only some
+flitting mentionings of my youth.) Seems to me now when I look back, the
+Italian contralto Marietta Alboni (she is living yet, in Paris, 1891,
+in good condition, good voice yet, considering) with the then prominent
+histrions Booth, Edwin Forrest, and Fanny Kemble and the Italian singer
+Bettini, have had the deepest and most lasting effect upon me. I should
+like well if Madame Alboni and the old composer Verdi, (and Bettini the
+tenor, if he is living) could know how much noble pleasure and happiness
+they gave me, and how deeply I always remember them and thank them
+to this day. For theatricals in literature and doubtless upon me
+personally, including opera, have been of course serious factors. (The
+experts and musicians of my present friends claim that the new Wagner
+and his pieces belong far more truly to me, and I to them, likely. But
+I was fed and bred under the Italian dispensation, and absorb'd it, and
+doubtless show it.)
+
+As a young fellow, when possible I always studied a play or libretto
+quite carefully over, by myself, (sometimes twice through) before
+seeing it on the stage; read it the day or two days before. Tried both
+ways--not reading some beforehand; but I found I gain'd most by getting
+that sort of mastery first, if the piece had depth. (Surface effects and
+glitter were much less thought of, I am sure, those times.) There were
+many fine old plays, neither tragedies nor comedies--the names of them
+quite unknown to to-day's current audiences. "All is not Gold that
+Glitters," in which Charlotte Cushman had a superbly enacted part, was
+of that kind. C. C., who revel'd in them, was great in such pieces; I
+think better than in the heavy popular roles.
+
+We had some fine music those days. We had the English opera of
+"Cinderella" (with Henry Placide as the pompous old father, an
+unsurpassable bit of comedy and music.) We had Bombastes Furioso.
+Must have been in 1844 (or '5) I saw Charles Kean and Mrs. Kean (Ellen
+Tree)--saw them in the Park in Shakspere's "King John." He, of course,
+was the chief character. She play'd _Queen Constance._ Tom Hamblin was
+_Faulconbridge,_ and probably the best ever on the stage. It was an
+immense show-piece, too; lots of grand set scenes and fine armor-suits
+and all kinds of appointments imported from London (where it had been
+first render'd.) The large brass bands--the three or four hundred
+"supes"--the interviews between the French and English armies--the
+talk with _Hubert_ (and the hot irons) the delicious acting of _Prince
+Arthur_ (Mrs. Richardson, I think)--and all the fine blare and court
+pomp--I remember to this hour. The death-scene of the King in the
+orchard of Swinstead Abbey, was very effective. Kean rush'd in,
+gray-pale and yellow, and threw himself on a lounge in the open. His
+pangs were horribly realistic. (He must have taken lessons in some
+hospital.)
+
+Fanny Kemble play'd to wonderful effect in such pieces as "Fazio, or the
+Italian wife." The turning-point was jealousy. It was a rapid-running,
+yet heavy-timber'd, tremendous wrenching, passionate play. Such old
+pieces always seem'd to me built like an ancient ship of the line, solid
+and lock'd from keel up--oak and metal and knots. One of the finest
+characters was a great court lady, _Aldabella_, enacted by Mrs. Sharpe.
+O how it all entranced us, and knock'd us about, as the scenes swept on
+like a cyclone!
+
+Saw Hackett at the old Park many times, and remember him well. His
+renderings were first-rate in everything. He inaugurated the true "Rip
+Van Winkle," and look'd and acted and dialogued it to perfection (he was
+of Dutch breed, and brought up among old Holland descendants in Kings
+and Queens counties, Long Island.) The play and the acting of it have
+been adjusted to please popular audiences since; but there was in that
+original performance certainly something of a far higher order, more
+art, more reality, more resemblance, a bit of fine pathos, a lofty
+_brogue_, beyond anything afterward.
+
+One of my big treats was the rendering at the old Park of Shakspere's
+"Tempest" in musical version. There was a very fine instrumental band,
+not numerous, but with a capital leader. Mrs. Austin was the _Ariel_,
+and Peter Richings the _Caliban_; both excellent. The drunken song of
+the latter has probably been never equal'd. The perfect actor Clarke
+(old Clarke) was _Prospero_.
+
+Yes; there were in New York and Brooklyn some fine non-technical singing
+performances, concerts, such as the Hutchinson band, three brothers, and
+the sister, the red-cheek'd New England carnation, sweet Abby; sometimes
+plaintive and balladic--sometimes anti-slavery, anti-calomel, and comic.
+There were concerts by Templeton, Russell, Dempster, the old Alleghanian
+band, and many others. Then we had lots of "negro minstrels," with
+capital character songs and voices. I often saw Rice the original "Jim
+Crow" at the old Park Theatre filling up the gap in some short bill--and
+the wild chants and dances were admirable--probably ahead of anything
+since. Every theatre had some superior voice, and it was common to
+give a favorite song between the acts. "The Sea" at the bijou Olympic,
+(Broadway near Grand,) was always welcome from a little Englishman named
+Edwin, a good balladist. At the Bowery the loves of "Sweet William,"
+
+    "When on the Downs the fleet was moor'd,"
+
+always bro't an encore, and sometimes a treble.
+
+I remember Jenny Lind and heard her (1850 I think) several times.
+She had the most brilliant, captivating, popular musical style and
+expression of any one known; (the canary, and several other sweet
+birds are wondrous fine--but there is something in song that goes
+deeper--isn't there?)
+
+The great "Egyptian Collection" was well up in Broadway, and I got quite
+acquainted with Dr. Abbott, the proprietor--paid many visits there, and
+had long talks with him, in connection with my readings of many books
+and reports on Egypt--its antiquities, history, and how things and the
+scenes really look, and what the old relics stand for, as near as we can
+now get. (Dr. A. was an Englishman of say 54--had been settled in
+Cairo as physician for 25 years, and all that time was collecting these
+relics, and sparing no time or money seeking and getting them. By advice
+and for a change of base for himself, he brought the collection to
+America. But the whole enterprise was a fearful disappointment, in the
+pay and commercial part.) As said, I went to the Egyptian Museum many
+many times; sometimes had it all to myself--delved at the formidable
+catalogue--and on several occasions had the invaluable personal talk,
+correction, illustration and guidance of Dr. A. himself. He was very
+kind and helpful to me in those studies and examinations; once, by
+appointment, he appear'd in full and exact Turkish (Cairo) costume,
+which long usage there had made habitual to him.
+
+One of the choice places of New York to me then was the "Phrenological
+Cabinet" of Fowler & Wells, Nassau street near Beekman. Here were all
+the busts, examples, curios and books of that study obtainable. I went
+there often, and once for myself had a very elaborate and leisurely
+examination and "chart of bumps" written out (I have it yet,) by Nelson
+Fowler (or was it Sizer?) there.
+
+And who remembers the renown'd New York "Tabernacle" of those days
+"before the war"? It was on the east side of Broadway, near Pearl
+street--was a great turtle-shaped hall, and you had to walk back from
+the street entrance thro' a long wide corridor to get to it--was very
+strong--had an immense gallery--altogether held three or four thousand
+people. Here the huge annual conventions of the windy and cyclonic
+"reformatory societies" of those times were held--especially the
+tumultuous Anti-Slavery ones. I remember hearing Wendell Phillips,
+Emerson, Cassius Clay, John P. Hale, Beecher, Fred Douglas, the
+Burleighs, Garrison, and others. Sometimes the Hutchinsons would
+sing--very fine. Sometimes there were angry rows. A chap named Isaiah
+Rhynders, a fierce politician of those days, with a band of robust
+supporters, would attempt to contradict the speakers and break up
+the meetings. But the Anti-Slavery, and Quaker, and Temperance, and
+Missionary and other conventicles and speakers were tough, tough, and
+always maintained their ground, and carried out their programs fully.
+I went frequently to these meetings, May after May--learn'd much from
+them--was sure to be on hand when J. P. Hale or Cash Clay made speeches.
+
+There were also the smaller and handsome halls of the Historical and
+Athensum Societies up on Broadway. I very well remember W.C. Bryant
+lecturing on Homoeopathy in one of them, and attending two or three
+addresses by R.W. Emerson in the other.
+
+There was a series of plays and dramatic _genre_ characters by a
+gentleman bill'd as Ranger--very fine, better than merely technical,
+full of exquisite shades, like the light touches of the violin in the
+hands of a master. There was the actor Anderson, who brought us Gerald
+Griffin's "Gysippus," and play'd it to admiration. Among the actors of
+those times I recall: Cooper, Wallack, Tom Hamblin, Adams (several), Old
+Gates, Scott, Wm. Sefton, John Sefton, Geo. Jones, Mitchell, Seguin,
+Old Clarke, Richings, Fisher, H. Placide, T. Placide, Thorne, Ingersoll,
+Gale (Mazeppa) Edwin, Horncastle. Some of the women hastily remember'd
+were: Mrs. Vernon, Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. McClure, Mary Taylor, Clara
+Fisher, Mrs. Richardson, Mrs. Flynn. Then the singers, English, Italian
+and other: Mrs. Wood, Mrs. Seguin, Mrs. Austin, Grisi, La Grange,
+Steffanone, Bosio, Truffi, Parodi, Vestvali, Bertucca, Jenny Lind,
+Gazzaniga, Laborde. And the opera men: Bettini, Badiali, Marini, Mario,
+Brignoli, Amodio, Beneventano, and many, many others whose names I do
+not at this moment recall.
+
+In another paper I have described the elder Booth, and the Bowery
+Theatre of those times. Afterward there was the Chatham. The elder
+Thorne, Mrs. Thorne, William and John Sefton, Kirby, Brougham, and
+sometimes Edwin Forrest himself play'd there. I remember them all, and
+many more, and especially the fine theatre on Broadway near Pearl, in
+1855 and '6.
+
+There were very good circus performances, or horsemanship, in New York
+and Brooklyn. Every winter in the first-named city, a regular place
+in the Bowery, nearly opposite the old theatre; fine animals and fine
+riding, which I often witness'd. (Remember seeing near here, a young,
+fierce, splendid lion, presented by an African Barbary Sultan to
+President Andrew Jackson. The gift comprised also a lot of jewels, a
+fine steel sword, and an Arab stallion; and the lion was made over to a
+show-man.)
+
+If it is worth while I might add that there was a small but
+well-appointed amateur-theatre up Broadway, with the usual stage,
+orchestra, pit, boxes, &c., and that I was myself a member for some
+time, and acted parts in it several times--"second parts" as they were
+call'd. Perhaps it too was a lesson, or help'd that way; at any rate it
+was full of fun and enjoyment.
+
+And so let us turn off the gas. Out in the brilliancy of the
+foot-lights--filling the attention of perhaps a crowded audience, and
+making many a breath and pulse swell and rise--O so much passion and
+imparted life!--over and over again, the season through--walking,
+gesticulating, singing, reciting his or her part--But then sooner or
+later inevitably wending to the flies or exit door--vanishing to sight
+and ear--and never materializing on this earth's stage again!
+
+
+SOME PERSONAL AND OLD-AGE JOTTINGS
+
+Anything like unmitigated acceptance of my "Leaves of Grass" book, and
+heart-felt response to it, in a popular however faint degree, bubbled
+forth as a fresh spring from the ground in England in 1876. The time was
+a critical and turning point in my personal and literary life. Let me
+revert to my memorandum book, Camden, New Jersey, that year, fill'd with
+addresses, receipts, purchases, &c., of the two volumes pub'd then by
+myself--the "Leaves," and the "Two Rivulets"--some home customers, for
+them, but mostly from the British Islands. I was seriously paralyzed
+from the Secession war, poor, in debt, was expecting death, (the doctors
+put four chances out of five against me,)--and I had the books printed
+during the lingering interim to occupy the tediousness of glum days and
+nights. Curiously, the sale abroad proved prompt, and what one might
+call copious: the names came in lists and the money with them, by
+foreign mail. The price was $10 a set. Both the cash and the emotional
+cheer were deep medicines; many paid double or treble price, (Tennyson
+and Ruskin did,) and many sent kind and eulogistic letters; ladies,
+clergymen, social leaders, persons of rank, and high officials. Those
+blessed gales from the British Islands probably (certainly) saved me.
+Here are some of the names, for I w'd like to preserve them: Wm. M.
+and D.G. Rossetti, Lord Houghton, Edwd. Dowden, Mrs. Anne Gilchrist,
+Keningale Cook, Edwd. Carpenter, Therese Simpson, Rob't Buchanan, Alfred
+Tennyson, John Ruskin, C.G. Gates, E.T. Wilkinson, T.L. Warren, C.W.
+Reynell, W.B. Scott, A.G. Dew Smith, E.W. Gosse, T.W. Rolleston, Geo.
+Wallis, Rafe Leicester, Thos. Dixon, N. MacColl, Mrs. Matthews, R.
+Hannah, Geo. Saintsbury, R.S. Watson, Godfrey and Vernon Lushington,
+G.H. Lewes, G.H. Boughton, Geo. Fraser, W.T. Arnold, A. Ireland, Mrs. M.
+Taylor, M.D. Conway, Benj. Eyre, E. Dannreather, Rev. T.E. Brown, C.W.
+Sheppard, E.J.A. Balfour, P.B. Marston, A.C. De Burgh, J.H. McCarthy,
+J.H. Ingram, Rev. R.P. Graves, Lady Mount-temple, F.S. Ellis, W.
+Brockie, Rev. A.B. Grosart, Lady Hardy, Hubert Herkomer, Francis
+Hueffer, H.G. Dakyns, R.L. Nettleship, W.J. Stillman, Miss Blind, Madox
+Brown, H.R. Ricardo, Messrs. O'Grady and Tyrrel; and many, many more.
+
+Severely scann'd, it was perhaps no very great or vehement success; but
+the tide had palpably shifted at any rate, and the sluices were turn'd
+into my own veins and pockets. That emotional, audacious, open-handed,
+friendly-mouth'd just-opportune English action, I say, pluck'd me like a
+brand from the burning, and gave me life again, to finish my book, since
+ab't completed. I do not forget it, and shall not; and if I ever have
+a biographer I charge him to put it in the narrative. I have had the
+noblest friends and backers in America; Wm. O'Connor, Dr. R.M. Bucke,
+John Burroughs, Geo.W. Childs, good ones in Boston, and Carnegie
+and R.G. Ingersoll in New York; and yet perhaps the tenderest and
+gratefulest breath of my heart has gone, and ever goes, over the
+sea-gales across the big pond.
+
+About myself at present. I will soon enter upon my 73d year, if I
+live--have pass'd an active life, as country school-teacher, gardener,
+printer, carpenter, author and journalist, domicil'd in nearly all the
+United States and principal cities, North and South--went to the front
+(moving about and occupied as army nurse and missionary) during the
+secession war, 1861 to '65, and in the Virginia hospitals and after
+the battles of that time, tending the Northern and Southern wounded
+alike--work'd down South and in Washington city arduously three
+years--contracted the paralysis which I have suffer'd ever since--and
+now live in a little cottage of my own, near the Delaware in New Jersey.
+My chief book, unrhym'd and unmetrical (it has taken thirty years, peace
+and war, "a borning") has its aim, as once said, "to utter the same old
+human _critter_--but now in Democratic American modern and scientific
+conditions." Then I have publish'd two prose works, "Specimen Days," and
+a late one, "November Boughs." (A little volume, "Good-Bye my Fancy,"
+is soon to be out, wh' will finish the matter.) I do not propose here
+to enter the much-fought field of the literary criticism of any of those
+works.
+
+But for a few portraiture or descriptive bits. To-day in the upper story
+of a little wooden house of two stories near the Delaware river, east
+shore, sixty miles up from the sea, is a rather large 20-by-20 low
+ceiling'd room something like a big old ship's cabin. The floor, three
+quarters of it with an ingrain carpet, is half cover'd by a deep litter
+of books, papers, magazines, thrown-down letters and circulars, rejected
+manuscripts, memoranda, bits of light or strong twine, a bundle to be
+"express'd," and two or three venerable scrap books. In the room stand
+two large tables (one of ancient St. Domingo mahogany with immense
+leaves) cover'd by a jumble of more papers, a varied and copious array
+of writing materials, several glass and china vessels or jars, some with
+cologne-water, others with real honey, granulated sugar, a large bunch
+of beautiful fresh yellow chrysanthemums, some letters and envelopt
+papers ready for the post office, many photographs, and a hundred
+indescribable things besides. There are all around many books, some
+quite handsome editions, some half cover'd by dust, some within reach,
+evidently used, (good-sized print, no type less than long primer,) some
+maps, the Bible, (the strong cheap edition of the English crown,) Homer,
+Shakspere, Walter Scott, Emerson, Ticknor's "Spanish Literature," John
+Carlyle's Dante, Felton's "Greece," George Sand's "Consuelo," avery
+choice little Epictetus, some novels, the latest foreign and American
+monthlies, quarterlies, and so on. There being quite a strew of
+printer's proofs and slips, and the daily papers, the place with its
+quaint old fashion'd calmness has also a smack of something alert and
+of current work. There are several trunks and depositaries back' d up
+at the walls; (one well-bound and big box came by express lately from
+Washington city, after storage there for nearly twenty years.) Indeed
+the whole room is a sort of result and storage collection of my own past
+life. I have here various editions of my own writings, and sell them
+upon request; one is a big volume of complete poems and prose, 1000
+pages, autograph, essays, speeches, portraits from life, &c. Another is
+a little "Leaves of Grass," latest date, six portraits, morocco bound,
+in pocket-book form.
+
+Fortunately the apartment is quite roomy. There are three windows in
+front. At one side is the stove, with a cheerful fire of oak wood, near
+by a good supply of fresh sticks, whose faint aroma is plain. On another
+side is the bed with white coverlid and woollen blankets. Toward
+the windows is a huge arm-chair, (a Christmas present from Thomas
+Donaldson's young daughter and son, Philadelphia) timber'd as by some
+stout ship's spars, yellow polish'd, ample, with rattan-woven seat and
+back, and over the latter a great wide wolf-skin of hairy black and
+silver, spread to guard against cold and draught. A time-worn look and
+scent of old oak attach both to the chair and the person occupying it.
+
+But probably (even at the charge of parrot talk) I can give no more
+authentic brief sketch than "from an old remembrance copy," where I have
+lately put myself on record as follows: Was born May 31, 1819, in my
+father's farm-house, at West Hills, L.I., New York State. My parents'
+folks mostly farmers and sailors--on my father's side, of English--on
+my mother's (Van Velsor's), from Hollandic immigration. There was, first
+and last, a large family of children; (I was the second.) We moved to
+Brooklyn while I was still a little one in frocks--and there in B.
+I grew up out of frocks--then as child and boy went to the public
+schools--then to work in a printing office. When only sixteen or
+seventeen years old, and for three years afterward, I went to teaching
+country schools down in Queens and Suffolk counties, Long Island, and
+"boarded round." Then, returning to New York, work'd as printer and
+writer, (with an occasional shy at "poetry.")
+
+1848-'9.--About this time--after ten or twelve years of experiences and
+work and lots of fun in New York and Brooklyn--went off on a leisurely
+journey and working expedition (my brother Jeff with me) through all the
+Middle States, and down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Lived a while
+in New Orleans, and work'd there. (Have lived quite a good deal in
+the Southern States.) After a time, plodded back northward, up the
+Mississippi, the Missouri, &c., and around to, and by way of, the
+great lakes, Michigan, Huron and Erie, to Niagara Falls and Lower
+Canada--finally returning through Central New York, and down the Hudson.
+1852-'54--Occupied in house-building in Brooklyn. (For a little while of
+the first part of that time in printing a daily and weekly paper.)
+
+1855.--Lost my dear father this year by death.... Commenced putting
+"Leaves of Grass" to press, for good--after many MSS. doings and
+undoings--(I had great trouble in leaving out the stock "poetical"
+touches--but succeeded at last.) The book has since had some eight
+hitches or stages of growth, with one annex, (and another to come out in
+1891, which will complete it.)
+
+1862.--In December of this year went down to the field of war in
+Virginia. My brother George reported badly wounded in the Fredericksburg
+fight. (For 1863 and '64, see "Specimen Days.") 1865 to '71--Had a place
+as clerk (till well on in '73) in the Attorney.
+
+General's Office, Washington. (New York and Brooklyn seem more like
+_home_, as I was born near, and brought up in them, and lived, man
+and boy, for 30 years. But I lived some years in Washington, and
+have visited, and partially lived, in most of the Western and Eastern
+cities.)
+
+1873.--This year lost, by death, my dear dear mother--and, just before,
+my sister Martha--the two best and sweetest women I have ever seen or
+known, or ever expect to see. Same year, February, a sudden climax and
+prostration from paralysis. Had been simmering inside for several years;
+broke out during those times temporarily, and then went over. But now a
+serious attack, beyond cure. Dr. Drinkard, my Washington physician,
+(and a first-rate one,) said it was the result of too extreme bodily and
+emotional strain continued at Washington and "down in front," in 1863,
+'4 and '5. I doubt if a heartier, stronger, healthier physique, more
+balanced upon itself, or more unconscious, more sound, ever lived, from
+1835 to '72. My greatest call (Quaker) to go around and do what I
+could there in those war-scenes where I had fallen, among the sick and
+wounded, was, that I seem'd to be _so strong and well_. (I consider'd
+myself invulnerable.) But this last attack shatter'd me completely. Quit
+work at Washington, and moved to Camden, New Jersey--where I have lived
+since, receiving many buffets and some precious caresses--and now
+write these lines. Since then, (1874-'91) a long stretch of illness, or
+half-illness, with occasional lulls. During these latter, have revised
+and printed over all my books--bro't out "November Boughs"--and at
+intervals leisurely and exploringly travel'd to the Prairie States, the
+Rocky Mountains, Canada, to New York, to my birthplace in Long Island,
+and to Boston. But physical disability and the war-paralysis above
+alluded to to have settled upon me more and more the last year or so. Am
+now (1891) domicil'd, and have been for some years, in this little old
+cottage and lot in Mickle street, Camden, with a house-keeper and man
+nurse. Bodily I am completely disabled, but still write for publication.
+I keep generally buoyant spirits, write often as there comes any lull
+in physical sufferings, get in the sun and down to the river whenever
+I can, retain fair appetite, assimilation and digestion, sensibilities
+acute as ever, the strength and volition of my right arm good, eyesight
+dimming, but brain normal, and retain my heart's and soul's unmitigated
+faith not only in their own original literary plans, but in the
+essential bulk of American humanity east and west, north and south, city
+and country, through thick and thin, to the last. Nor must I forget,
+in conclusion, a special, prayerful, thankful God's blessing to my dear
+firm friends and personal helpers, men and women, home and foreign, old
+and young.
+
+
+OUT IN THE OPEN AGAIN
+
+_From the Camden Post, April 16, '91_.
+
+Walt Whitman got out in the mid-April sun and warmth of yesterday,
+propelled in his wheel chair, the first time after four months of
+imprisonment in his sick room. He has had the worst winter yet, mainly
+from grippe and gastric troubles, and threaten'd blindness; but keeps
+good spirits, and has a new little forthcoming book in the printer's
+hands.
+
+
+AMERICA'S BULK AVERAGE
+
+If I were ask'd _persona_ to specify the one point of America's people
+on which I mainly rely, I should say the final average or bulk quality
+of the whole.
+
+Happy indeed w'd I consider myself to give a fair reflection and
+representation of even a portion of shows, questions, humanity, events,
+unfoldings, thoughts, &c. &c., my age in these States.
+
+The great social, political, historic function of my time has been of
+course the attempted secession war.
+
+And was there not something grand, and an inside proof of perennial
+grandeur, in that war! We talk of our age's and the States'
+materialism--and it is too true. But how amid the whole sordidness--the
+entire devotion of America, at any price, to pecuniary success,
+merchandise--disregarding all but business and profit--this war for
+a bare idea and abstraction--a mere, at bottom, heroic dream and
+reminiscence--burst forth in its great devouring flame and conflagration
+quickly and fiercely spreading and raging, and enveloping all, defining
+in two conflicting ideas--first the Union cause--second _the other_,
+a strange deadly interrogation point, hard to define--Can we not now
+safely confess it?--with magnificent rays, streaks of noblest heroism,
+fortitude, perseverance, and even conscientiousness, through its
+pervadingly malignant darkness. What an area and rounded field, upon
+the whole--the spirit, arrogance, grim tenacity of the South--the long
+stretches of murky gloom--the general National Will below and behind
+and comprehending all--not once really wavering, not a day, not an
+hour--What could be, or even can be, grander?
+
+As in that war, its four years--as through the whole history and
+development of the New World--these States through all trials,
+processes, eruptions, deepest dilemmas, (often straining, tugging at
+society's heart-strings, as if some divine curiosity would find out how
+much this democracy could stand,) have so far finally and for more than
+a century best justified themselves by the average impalpable quality
+and personality of the bulk, the People _en masse_.... I am not sure but
+my main and chief however indefinite claim for any page of mine w'd be
+its derivation, or seeking to derive itself, f'm that average quality of
+the American bulk, the people, and getting back to it again.
+
+
+LAST SAVED ITEMS
+
+_I'm a vast batch left to oblivion_.
+
+In its highest aspect, and striking its grandest average, essential
+Poetry expresses and goes along with essential Religion--has been and
+is more the adjunct, and more serviceable to that true religion (for of
+course there is a false one and plenty of it) than all the priests and
+creeds and churches that now exist or have ever existed--even while the
+temporary prevalent theory and practice of poetry is merely one-side and
+ornamental and dainty--a love-sigh, a bit of jewelry, a feudal conceit,
+an ingenious tale or intellectual _finesse_, adjusted to the low taste
+and calibre that will always sufficiently generally prevail--(ranges of
+stairs necessary to ascend the higher.)
+
+The sectarian, church and doctrinal, follies, crimes, fanaticisms,
+aggregate and individual, so rife all thro' history, are proofs of the
+radicalness and universality of the indestructible element of humanity's
+Religion, just as much as any, and are the other side of it. Just as
+disease proves health, and is the other side of it.... The philosophy of
+Greece taught normality and the beauty of life. Christianity teaches how
+to endure illness and death. I have wonder'd whether a third philosophy
+fusing both, and doing full justice to both, might not be outlined.
+
+It will not be enough to say that no Nation ever achiev'd materialistic,
+political and money-making successes, with general physical comfort, as
+fully as the United States of America are to-day achieving them. I know
+very well that those are the indispensable foundations--the _sine
+qua non_ of moral and heroic (poetic) fruitions to come. For if those
+pre-successes were all--if they ended at that--if nothing more
+were yielded than so far appears--a gross materialistic prosperity
+only--America, tried by subtlest tests, were a failure--has not advanced
+the standard of humanity a bit further than other nations. Or, in plain
+terms, has but inherited and enjoy'd the results of ordinary claims and
+preceding ages.
+
+Nature seem'd to use me a long while--myself all well, able, strong and
+happy--to portray power, freedom, health. But after a while she seems to
+fancy, may-be I can see and understand it all better by being deprived
+of most of those.
+
+How difficult it is to add anything more to literature--and how
+unsatisfactory for any earnest spirit to serve merely the amusement of
+the multitude! (It even seems to me, said H. Heine, more invigorating to
+accomplish something bad than something empty.)
+
+The Highest said: Don't let us begin so low--isn't our range too
+coarse--too gross?... The Soul answer'd: No, not when we consider what
+it is all for--the end involved in Time and Space.
+
+Essentially my own printed records, all my volumes, are doubtless but
+off-hand utterances f'm Personality spontaneous, following implicitly
+the inscrutable command, dominated by that Personality, vaguely even if
+decidedly, and with little or nothing of plan, art, erudition, &c. If I
+have chosen to hold the reins, the mastery, it has mainly been to give
+the way, the power, the road, to the invisible steeds. (I wanted to see
+how a Person of America, the last half of the 19th century, w'd appear,
+but quite freely and fairly in honest type.)
+
+Haven't I given specimen clues, if no more? At any rate I have written
+enough to weary myself--and I will dispatch it to the printers, and
+cease. But how much--how many topics, of the greatest pointand cogency,
+I am leaving untouch'd!
+
+
+
+
+WALT WHITMAN'S LAST [49]
+
+
+
+_Good-Bye my Fancy_.--concluding Annex to _Leaves of Grass_.
+
+"The Highest said: Don't let us begin so low--isn't our range too
+coarse--too gross?... The Soul answer'd: No, not when we consider what
+it is all for--the end involved in Time and Space."--_An item from last
+page of "Good-Bye."_
+
+H. Heine's first principle of criticising a book was, What motive is the
+author trying to carry out, or express or accomplish? and the second,
+Has he achiev'd it?
+
+The theory of my _Leaves of Grass_ as a composition of verses has been
+from first to last, (if I am to give impromptu a hint of the spinal
+marrow of the business, and sign it with my name,) to thoroughly possess
+the mind, memory, cognizance of the author himself, with everything
+beforehand--a full armory of concrete actualities, observations,
+humanity, past poems, ballads, facts, technique, war and peace,
+politics, North and South, East and West, nothing too large or too
+small, the sciences as far as possible--and above all America and the
+present--after and out of which the subject of the poem, long or short,
+has been invariably turned over to his Emotionality, even Personality,
+to be shaped thence; and emerges strictly therefrom, with all its merits
+and demerits on its head. Every page of my poetic or attempt at poetic
+utterance therefore smacks of the living physical identity, date,
+environment, individuality, probably beyond anything known, and in style
+often offensive to the conventions.
+
+This new last cluster, _Good-By my Fancy_ follows suit, and yet with a
+difference. The clef is here changed to its lowest, and the little book
+is a lot of tremolos about old age, death, and faith. The physical just
+lingers, but almost vanishes. The book is garrulous, irascible (like old
+Lear) and has various breaks and even tricks to avoid monotony. It
+will have to be ciphered and ciphered out long--and is probably in some
+respects the most curious part of its author's baffling works.
+
+_Walt Whitman_.
+
+
+Note:
+
+[49] Published in _Lippincott's Magazine_, August, 1891, with the
+following note added by the editor of the magazine: "With _Good-Bye my
+Fancy_, Walt Whitman has rounded out his life-work. This book is his
+last message, and of course a great deal will be said about it by
+critics all over the world, both in praise and dispraise; but probably
+nothing that the critics will say will be as interesting as this
+characteristic utterance upon the book by the poet himself. It is
+the subjective view as opposed to the objective views of the critics.
+Briefly, Whitman gives, as he puts it, 'a hint of the spinal marrow of
+the business,' not only of _Good-Bye my Fancy_, but also of the _Leaves
+of Grass_.
+
+"It was only after considerable persuasion on the editor's part that Mr.
+Whitman consented to write the above. As a concise explanation of the
+poet's life-work it must have great value to his readers and admirers.
+After the critics 'have ciphered and ciphered out long,' they will
+probably have nothing better to say."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Complete Prose Works, by Walt Whitman
+
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