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diff --git a/8813.txt b/8813.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8a25bc3 --- /dev/null +++ b/8813.txt @@ -0,0 +1,24721 @@ +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 + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMPLETE PROSE WORKS *** + +***** This file should be named 8813.txt or 8813.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/8/1/8813/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Marc D'Hooghe and the Project +Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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