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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Book of Autographs, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+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: A Book of Autographs
+
+Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+Posting Date: December 23, 2010 [EBook #9250]
+Release Date: November, 2005
+First Posted: September 25, 2003
+Last Updated: February 8, 2007
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BOOK OF AUTOGRAPHS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger.  HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                 THE DOLIVER ROMANCE AND OTHER PIECES
+
+                         TALES AND SKETCHES
+
+                       By Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+
+                        A BOOK OF AUTOGRAPHS
+
+
+
+We have before us a volume of autograph letters, chiefly of soldiers and
+statesmen of the Revolution, and addressed to a good and brave man,
+General Palmer, who himself drew his sword in the cause. They are
+profitable reading in a quiet afternoon, and in a mood withdrawn from
+too intimate relation with the present time; so that we can glide
+backward some three quarters of a century, and surround ourselves with
+the ominous sublimity of circumstances that then frowned upon the
+writers.  To give them their full effect, we should imagine that these
+letters have this moment been brought to town by the splashed and
+way-worn postrider, or perhaps by an orderly dragoon, who has ridden in a
+perilous hurry to deliver his despatches.  They are magic scrolls, if
+read in the right spirit.  The roll of the drum and the fanfare of the
+trumpet is latent in some of them; and in others, an echo of the oratory
+that resounded in the old halls of the Continental Congress, at
+Philadelphia; or the words may come to us as with the living utterance
+of one of those illustrious men, speaking face to face, in friendly
+communion.  Strange, that the mere identity of paper and ink should be
+so powerful.  The same thoughts might look cold and ineffectual, in a
+printed book.  Human nature craves a certain materialism and clings
+pertinaciously to what is tangible, as if that were of more importance
+than the spirit accidentally involved in it.  And, in truth, the
+original manuscript has always something which print itself must
+inevitably lose.  An erasure, even a blot, a casual irregularity of
+hand, and all such little imperfections of mechanical execution, bring
+us close to the writer, and perhaps convey some of those subtle
+intimations for which language has no shape.
+
+There are several letters from John Adams, written in a small, hasty,
+ungraceful hand, but earnest, and with no unnecessary flourish.  The
+earliest is dated at Philadelphia, September 26, 1774, about twenty days
+after the first opening of the Continental Congress.  We look at this
+old yellow document, scribbled on half a sheet of foolscap, and ask of
+it many questions for which words have no response.  We would fain know
+what were their mutual impressions, when all those venerable faces, that
+have since been traced on steel, or chiselled out, of marble, and thus
+made familiar to posterity, first met one another's gaze!  Did one
+spirit harmonize them, in spite of the dissimilitude of manners between
+the North and the South, which were now for the first time brought into
+political relations?  Could the Virginian descendant of the Cavaliers,
+and the New-Englander with his hereditary Puritanism,--the aristocratic
+Southern planter, and the self-made man from Massachusetts or
+Connecticut,--at once feel that they were countrymen and brothers?  What
+did John Adams think of Jefferson?--and Samuel Adams of Patrick Henry?
+Did not North and South combine in their deference for the sage
+Franklin, so long the defender of the colonies in England, and whose
+scientific renown was already world-wide?  And was there yet any
+whispered prophecy, any vague conjecture, circulating among the
+delegates, as to the destiny which might be in reserve for one stately
+man, who sat, for the most part, silent among them?--what station he was
+to assume in the world's history?--and how many statues would repeat his
+form and countenance, and successively crumble beneath his immortality?
+
+The letter before us does not answer these inquiries.  Its main feature
+is the strong expression of the uncertainty and awe that pervaded even
+the firm hearts of the Old Congress, while anticipating the struggle
+which was to ensue.  "The commencement of hostilities," it says, "is
+exceedingly dreaded here.  It is thought that an attack upon the troops,
+even should it prove successful, would certainly involve the whole
+continent in a war.  It is generally thought that the Ministry would
+rejoice at a rupture in Boston, because it would furnish an excuse to
+the people at home" [this was the last time, we suspect, that John Adams
+spoke of England thus affectionately], "and unite them in an opinion of
+the necessity of pushing hostilities against us."
+
+His next letter bears on the superscription, "Favored by General
+Washington."  The date is June 20, 1775, three days after the battle of
+Bunker Hill, the news of which could not yet have arrived at
+Philadelphia.  But the war, so much dreaded, had begun, on the quiet
+banks of Concord River; an army of twenty thousand men was beleaguering
+Boston; and here was Washington journeying northward to take the
+command.  It seems to place us in a nearer relation with the hero, to
+find him performing the little courtesy of leaving a letter between
+friend and friend, and to hold in our hands the very document intrusted
+to such a messenger.  John Adams says simply, "We send you Generals
+Washington and Lee for your comfort"; but adds nothing in regard to the
+character of the Commander-in-Chief.  This letter displays much of the
+writer's ardent temperament; if he had been anywhere but in the hall of
+Congress, it would have been in the intrenchment before Boston.
+
+"I hope," he writes, "a good account will be given of Gage, Haldiman,
+Burgoyne, Clinton, and Howe, before winter.  Such a wretch as Howe, with
+a statue in honor of his family in Westminster Abbey, erected by the
+Massachusetts, to come over with the design to cut the throats of the
+Massachusetts people, is too much.  I most sincerely, coolly, and
+devoutly wish that a lucky ball or bayonet may make a signal example of
+him, in warning to all such unprincipled, unsentimental miscreants for
+the future!"
+
+He goes on in a strain that smacks somewhat of aristocratic feeling:
+"Our camp will be an illustrious school of military virtue, and will be
+resorted to and frequented, as such, by gentlemen in great numbers from
+the other colonies."  The term "gentleman" has seldom been used in this
+sense subsequently to the Revolution.  Another letter introduces us to
+two of these gentlemen, Messrs. Acquilla Hall and Josias Carvill,
+volunteers, who are recommended as "of the first families in Maryland,
+and possessing independent fortunes."
+
+After the British had been driven out of Boston, Adams cries out,
+"Fortify, fortify; and never let them get in again!" It is agreeable
+enough to perceive the filial affection with which John Adams, and the
+other delegates from the North, regard New England, and especially the
+good old capital of the Puritans.  Their love of country was hardly yet
+so diluted as to extend over the whole thirteen colonies, which were
+rather looked upon as allies than as composing one nation.  In truth,
+the patriotism of a citizen of the United States is a sentiment by
+itself of a peculiar nature, and requiring a lifetime, or at least the
+custom of many years, to naturalize it among the other possessions of
+the heart.
+
+The collection is enriched by a letter dated "Cambridge, August 26,
+1775" from Washington himself.  He wrote it in that house,--now so
+venerable with his memory,--in that very room, where his bust now stands
+upon a poet's table; from this sheet of paper passed the hand that held
+the leading-staff!  Nothing can be more perfectly in keeping with all
+other manifestations of Washington than the whole visible aspect and
+embodiment of this letter.  The manuscript is as clear as daylight; the
+punctuation exact, to a comma.  There is a calm accuracy throughout,
+which seems the production of a species of intelligence that cannot err,
+and which, if we may so speak, would affect us with a more human warmth,
+if we could conceive it capable of some slight human error.  The
+chirography is characterized by a plain and easy grace, which, in the
+signature, is somewhat elaborated, and becomes a type of the personal
+manner of a gentleman of the old school, but without detriment to the
+truth and clearness that distinguish the rest of the manuscript.  The
+lines are as straight and equidistant as if ruled; and from beginning to
+end, there is no physical symptom--as how should there be?--of a varying
+mood, of jets of emotion, or any of those fluctuating feelings that pass
+from the hearts into the fingers of common men.  The paper itself (like
+most of those Revolutionary letters, which are written on fabrics fit to
+endure the burden of ponderous and earnest thought) is stout, and of
+excellent quality, and bears the water-mark of Britannia, surmounted by
+the Crown.  The subject of the letter is a statement of reasons for not
+taking possession of Point Alderton; a position commanding the entrance
+of Boston Harbor.  After explaining the difficulties of the case,
+arising from his want of men and munitions for the adequate defence of
+the lines which he already occupies, Washington proceeds: "To you, sir,
+who are a well-wisher to the cause, and can reason upon the effects of
+such conduct, I may open myself with freedom, because no improper
+disclosures will be made of our situation.  But I cannot expose my
+weakness to the enemy (though I believe they are pretty well informed of
+everything that passes), by telling this and that man, who are daily
+pointing out this, and that, and t' other place, of all the motives that
+govern my actions; notwithstanding I know what will be the consequence
+of not doing it,--namely, that I shall be accused of inattention to the
+public service, and perhaps of want of spirit to prosecute it.  But this
+shall have no effect upon my conduct.  I will steadily (as far as my
+judgment will assist me) pursue such measures as I think conducive to
+the interest of the cause, and rest satisfied under any obloquy that
+shall be thrown, conscious of having discharged my duty to the best of
+my abilities."
+
+The above passage, like every other passage that could be quoted from
+his pen, is characteristic of Washington, and entirely in keeping with
+the calm elevation of his soul.  Yet how imperfect a glimpse do we
+obtain of him, through the medium of this, or any of his letters!  We
+imagine him writing calmly, with a hand that never falters; his majestic
+face neither darkens nor gleams with any momentary ebullition of
+feeling, or irregularity of thought; and thus flows forth an expression
+precisely to the extent of his purpose, no more, no less.  Thus much we
+may conceive.  But still we have not grasped the man; we have caught no
+glimpse of his interior; we have not detected his personality.  It is
+the same with all the recorded traits of his daily life.  The collection
+of them, by different observers, seems sufficiently abundant, and
+strictly harmonizes with itself, yet never brings us into intimate
+relationship with the hero, nor makes us feel the warmth and the human
+throb of his heart.  What can be the reason?  Is it, that his great
+nature was adapted to stand in relation to his country, as man stands
+towards man, but could not individualize itself in brotherhood to an
+individual?
+
+There are two from Franklin, the earliest dated, "London, August 8,
+1767," and addressed to "Mrs. Franklin, at Philadelphia."  He was then
+in England, as agent for the colonies in their resistance to the
+oppressive policy of Mr. Grenville's administration.  The letter,
+however, makes no reference to political or other business.  It contains
+only ten or twelve lines, beginning, "My dear child," and conveying an
+impression of long and venerable matrimony which has lost all its
+romance, but retained a familiar and quiet tenderness.  He speaks of
+making a little excursion into the country for his health; mentions a
+larger letter, despatched by another vessel; alludes with homely
+affability to "Mrs. Stevenson," "Sally," and "our dear Polly"; desires
+to be remembered to "all inquiring friends"; and signs himself, "Your
+ever loving husband."  In this conjugal epistle, brief and unimportant
+as it is, there are the elements that summon up the past, and enable us
+to create anew the man, his connections and circumstances.  We can see
+the sage in his London lodgings,--with his wig cast aside, and replaced
+by a velvet cap,--penning this very letter; and then can step across the
+Atlantic, and behold its reception by the elderly, but still comely
+Madam Franklin, who breaks the seal and begins to read, first
+remembering to put on her spectacles.  The seal, by the way, is a
+pompous one of armorial bearings, rather symbolical of the dignity of
+the Colonial Agent, and Postmaster General of America, than of the
+humble origin of the Newburyport printer.  The writing is in the free,
+quick style of a man with great practice of the pen, and is particularly
+agreeable to the reader.
+
+Another letter from the same famous hand is addressed to General Palmer,
+and dated, "Passy, October 27, 1779."  By an indorsement on the outside
+it appears to have been transmitted to the United States through the
+medium of Lafayette.  Franklin was now the ambassador of his country at
+the Court of Versailles, enjoying an immense celebrity, caressed by the
+French ladies, and idolized alike by the fashionable and the learned,
+who saw something sublime and philosophic even in his blue yarn
+stockings.  Still, as before, he writes with the homeliness and
+simplicity that cause a human face to look forth from the old, yellow
+sheet of paper, and in words that make our ears re-echo, as with the
+sound of his long-extinct utterance.  Yet this brief epistle, like the
+former, has so little of tangible matter that we are ashamed to copy it.
+
+Next, we come to the fragment of a letter by Samuel Adams; an autograph
+more utterly devoid of ornament or flourish than any other in the
+collection.  It would not have been characteristic, had his pen traced
+so much as a hair-line in tribute to grace, beauty, or the elaborateness
+of manner; for this earnest-hearted man had been produced out of the
+past elements of his native land, a real Puritan, with the religion of
+his forefathers, and likewise with their principles of government,
+taking the aspect of Revolutionary politics.  At heart, Samuel Adams was
+never so much a citizen of the United States, as he was a New-Englander,
+and a son of the old Bay Province.  The following passage has much of
+the man in it: "I heartily congratulate you," he writes from
+Philadelphia, after the British have left Boston, "upon the sudden and
+important change in our affairs, in the removal of the barbarians from
+the capital.  We owe our grateful acknowledgments to Him who is, as he
+is frequently styled in Sacred Writ, 'The Lord of Hosts.' We have not
+yet been informed with certainty what course the enemy have steered.  I
+hope we shall be on our guard against future attempts.  Will not care be
+taken to fortify the harbor, and thereby prevent the entrance of
+ships-of-war hereafter?"
+
+From Hancock, we have only the envelope of a document "on public
+service," directed to "The Hon. the Assembly, or Council of Safety of
+New Hampshire," and with the autograph affixed, that, stands out so
+prominently in the Declaration of Independence.  As seen in the
+engraving of that instrument, the signature looks precisely what we
+should expect and desire in the handwriting of a princely merchant,
+whose penmanship had been practised in the ledger which he is
+represented as holding, in Copley's brilliant picture, but to whom his
+native ability, and the circumstances and customs of his country, had
+given a place among its rulers.  But, on the coarse and dingy paper
+before us, the effect is very much inferior; the direction, all except
+the signature, is a scrawl, large and heavy, but not forcible; and even
+the name itself, while almost identical in its strokes with that of the
+Declaration, has a strangely different and more vulgar aspect.  Perhaps
+it is all right, and typical of the truth.  If we may trust tradition,
+and unpublished letters, and a few witnesses in print, there was quite
+as much difference between the actual man, and his historical aspect, as
+between the manuscript signature and the engraved one.  One of his
+associates, both in political life and permanent renown, is said to have
+characterized him as a "man without a head or heart."  We, of an after
+generation, should hardly be entitled, on whatever evidence, to assume
+such ungracious liberty with a name that has occupied a lofty position
+until it, has grown almost sacred, and which is associated with memories
+more sacred than itself, and has thus become a valuable reality to our
+countrymen, by the aged reverence that clusters round about it.
+Nevertheless, it may be no impiety to regard Hancock not precisely as a
+real personage, but as a majestic figure, useful and necessary in its
+way, but producing its effect far more by an ornamental outside than by
+any intrinsic force or virtue.  The page of all history would be half
+unpeopled if all such characters were banished from it.
+
+From General Warren we have a letter dated January 14, 1775, only a few
+months before he attested the sincerity of his patriotism, in his own
+blood, on Bunker Hill.  His handwriting has many ungraceful flourishes.
+All the small d's spout upward in parabolic curves, and descend at a
+considerable distance.  His pen seems to have had nothing but hair-lines
+in it; and the whole letter, though perfectly legible, has a look of
+thin and unpleasant irregularity.  The subject is a plan for securing to
+the colonial party the services of Colonel Gridley the engineer, by an
+appeal to his private interests.  Though writing to General Palmer, an
+intimate friend, Warren signs himself, most ceremoniously, "Your
+obedient servant."  Indeed, these stately formulas in winding up a
+letter were scarcely laid aside, whatever might be the familiarity of
+intercourse: husband and wife were occasionally, on paper at least, the
+"obedient servants" of one another; and not improbably, among well-bred
+people, there was a corresponding ceremonial of bows and courtesies,
+even in the deepest interior of domestic life.  With all the reality
+that filled men's hearts, and which has stamped its impress on so many
+of these letters, it was a far more formal age than the present.
+
+It may be remarked, that Warren was almost the only man eminently
+distinguished in the intellectual phase of the Revolution, previous to
+the breaking out of the war, who actually uplifted his arm to do battle.
+The legislative patriots were a distinct class from the patriots of the
+camp, and never laid aside the gown for the sword.  It was very
+different in the great civil war of England, where the leading minds of
+the age, when argument had done its office, or left it undone, put on
+their steel breastplates and appeared as leaders in the field.  Educated
+young men, members of the old colonial families,--gentlemen, as John
+Adams terms them,--seem not to have sought employment in the
+Revolutionary army, in such numbers as night have been expected.
+Respectable as the officers generally were, and great as were the
+abilities sometimes elicited, the intellect and cultivation of the
+country was inadequately represented in them, as a body.
+
+Turning another page, we find the frank of a letter from Henry Laurens,
+President of Congress,--him whose destiny it was, like so many noblemen
+of old, to pass beneath the Traitor's Gate of the Tower of London,--him
+whose chivalrous son sacrificed as brilliant a future as any young
+American could have looked forward to, in an obscure skirmish.
+Likewise, we have the address of a letter to Messrs. Leroy and Bayard,
+in the handwriting of Jefferson; too slender a material to serve as a
+talisman for summoning up the writer; a most unsatisfactory fragment,
+affecting us like a glimpse of the retreating form of the sage of
+Monticello, turning the distant corner of a street.  There is a scrap
+from Robert Morris, the financier; a letter or two from Judge Jay; and
+one from General Lincoln, written, apparently, on the gallop, but
+without any of those characteristic sparks that sometimes fly out in a
+hurry, when all the leisure in the world would fail to elicit them.
+Lincoln was the type of a New England soldier; a man of fair abilities,
+not especially of a warlike cast, without much chivalry, but faithful
+and bold, and carrying a kind of decency and restraint into the wild and
+ruthless business of arms.
+
+From good old Baron Steuben, we find, not a manuscript essay on the
+method of arranging a battle, but a commercial draft, in a small, neat
+hand, as plain as print, elegant without flourish, except a very
+complicated one on the signature.  On the whole, the specimen is
+sufficiently characteristic, as well of the Baron's soldier-like and
+German simplicity, as of the polish of the Great Frederick's aide-de-camp,
+a man of courts and of the world.  How singular and picturesque an
+effect is produced, in the array of our Revolutionary army, by the
+intermingling of these titled personages from the Continent of Europe,
+with feudal associations clinging about them,--Steuben, De Kalb,
+Pulaski, Lafayette!--the German veteran, who had written from one
+famous battle-field to another for thirty years; and the young French
+noble, who had come hither, though yet unconscious of his high office,
+to light the torch that should set fire to the antiquated trumpery of
+his native institutions.  Among these autographs, there is one from
+Lafayette, written long after our Revolution, but while that of his own
+country was in full progress.  The note is merely as follows: "Enclosed
+you will find, my dear Sir, two tickets for the sittings of this day.
+One part of the debate will be on the Honors of the Pantheon, agreeably
+to what has been decreed by the Constitutional Assembly."
+
+It is a pleasant and comfortable thought, that we have no such classic
+folly as is here indicated, to lay to the charge of our Revolutionary
+fathers.  Both in their acts, and in the drapery of those acts, they
+were true to their several and simple selves, and thus left nothing
+behind them for a fastidious taste to sneer at.  But it must be
+considered that our Revolution did not, like that of France, go so deep
+as to disturb the common-sense of the country.
+
+General Schuyler writes a letter, under date of February 22, 1780,
+relating not to military affairs, from which the prejudices of his
+countrymen had almost disconnected him, but to the Salt Springs of
+Onondaga.  The expression is peculiarly direct, and the hand that of a
+man of business, free and flowing.  The uncertainty, the vague, hearsay
+evidence respecting these springs, then gushing into dim daylight
+beneath the shadow of a remote wilderness, is such as might now be
+quoted in reference to the quality of the water that supplies the
+fountains of the Nile.  The following sentence shows us an Indian woman
+and her son, practising their simple process in the manufacture of salt,
+at a fire of wind-strewn boughs, the flame of which gleams duskily
+through the arches of the forest: "From a variety of information, I find
+the smallest quantity made by a squaw, with the assistance of one boy,
+with a kettle of about ten gallons' capacity, is half a bushel per day;
+the greatest with the same kettle, about two bushels."  It is
+particularly interesting to find out anything as to the embryo, yet
+stationary arts of life among the red people, their manufactures, their
+agriculture, their domestic labors.  It is partly the lack of this
+knowledge--the possession of which would establish a ground of sympathy
+on the part of civilized men--that makes the Indian race so shadow-like
+and unreal to our conception.
+
+We could not select a greater contrast to the upright and unselfish
+patriot whom we have just spoken of, than the traitor Arnold, from whom
+there is a brief note, dated, "Crown Point, January 19, 1775," addressed
+to an officer under his command.  The three lines of which it consists
+can prove bad spelling, erroneous grammar, and misplaced and superfluous
+punctuation; but, with all this complication of iniquity, the ruffian
+General contrives to express his meaning as briefly and clearly as if
+the rules of correct composition had been ever so scrupulously observed.
+This autograph, impressed with the foulest name in our history, has
+somewhat of the interest that would attach to a document on which a
+fiend-devoted wretch had signed away his salvation.  But there was not
+substance enough in the man--a mere cross between the bull-dog and the
+fox--to justify much feeling of any sort about him personally.  The
+interest, such as it is, attaches but little to the man, and far more to
+the circumstances amid which he acted, rendering the villainy almost
+sublime, which, exercised in petty affairs, would only have been vulgar.
+
+We turn another leaf, and find a memorial of Hamilton.  It is but a
+letter of introduction, addressed to Governor Jay in favor of Mr.
+Davies, of Kentucky; but it gives an impression of high breeding and
+courtesy, as little to be mistaken as if we could see the writer's
+manner and hear his cultivated accents, while personally making one
+gentleman known to another.  There is likewise a rare vigor of
+expression and pregnancy of meaning, such as only a man of habitual
+energy of thought could have conveyed into so commonplace a thing as an
+introductory letter.  This autograph is a graceful one, with an easy and
+picturesque flourish beneath the signature, symbolical of a courteous
+bow at the conclusion of the social ceremony so admirably performed.
+Hamilton might well be the leader and idol of the Federalists; for he
+was pre-eminent in all the high qualities that characterized the great
+men of that party, and which should make even a Democrat feel proud that
+his country had produced such a noble old band of aristocrats; and he
+shared all the distrust of the people, which so inevitably and so
+righteously brought about their ruin.  With his autograph we associate
+that of another Federalist, his friend in life; a man far narrower than
+Hamilton, but endowed with a native vigor, that caused many partisans
+to grapple to him for support; upright, sternly inflexible, and of a
+simplicity of manner that might have befitted the sturdiest republican
+among us.  In our boyhood we used to see a thin, severe figure of an
+ancient mail, timeworn, but apparently indestructible, moving with a
+step of vigorous decay along the street, and knew him as "Old Tim
+Pickering."
+
+Side by side, too, with the autograph of Hamilton, we would place one
+from the hand that shed his blood.  It is a few lines of Aaron Burr,
+written in 1823; when all his ambitious schemes, whatever they once
+were, had been so long shattered that even the fragments had crumbled
+away, leaving him to exert his withered energies on petty law cases, to
+one of which the present note refers.  The hand is a little tremulous
+with age, yet small and fastidiously elegant, as became a man who was in
+the habit of writing billet-doux on scented note-paper, as well as
+documents of war and state.  This is to us a deeply interesting
+autograph.  Remembering what has been said of the power of Burr's
+personal influence, his art to tempt men, his might to subdue them, and
+the fascination that enabled him, though cold at heart, to win the love
+of woman, we gaze at this production of his pen as into his own
+inscrutable eyes, seeking for the mystery of his nature.  How singular
+that a character imperfect, ruined, blasted, as this man's was, excites
+a stronger interest than if it had reached the highest earthly
+perfection of which its original elements would admit!  It is by the
+diabolical part of Burr's character that he produces his effect on the
+imagination.  Had he been a better man, we doubt, after all, whether the
+present age would not already have suffered him to wax dusty, and fade
+out of sight, among the mere respectable mediocrities of his own epoch.
+But, certainly, he was a strange, wild offshoot to have sprung from the
+united stock of those two singular Christians, President Burr of
+Princeton College, and Jonathan Edwards!
+
+Omitting many, we have come almost to the end of these memorials of
+historical men.  We observe one other autograph of a distinguished
+soldier of the Revolution, Henry Knox, but written in 1791, when he was
+Secretary of War.  In its physical aspect, it is well worthy to be a
+soldier's letter.  The hand is large, round, and legible at a glance;
+the lines far apart, and accurately equidistant; and the whole affair
+looks not unlike a company of regular troops in marching order.  The
+signature has a point-like firmness and simplicity.  It is a curious
+observation, sustained by these autographs, though we know not how
+generally correct, that Southern gentlemen are more addicted to a
+flourish of the pen beneath their names, than those of the North.
+
+And now we come to the men of a later generation, whose active life
+reaches almost within the verge of present affairs; people of dignity,
+no doubt, but whose characters have not acquired, either from time or
+circumstances, the interest that can make their autographs valuable to
+any but the collector.  Those whom we have hitherto noticed were the men
+of an heroic age.  They are departed, and now so utterly departed, as
+not even to touch upon the passing generation through the medium of
+persons still in life, who can claim to have known them familiarly.
+Their letters, therefore, come to us like material things out of the
+hands of mighty shadows, long historical, and traditionary, and fit
+companions for the sages and warriors of a thousand years ago.  In spite
+of the proverb, it is not in a single day, or in a very few years, that
+a man can be reckoned "as dead as Julius Caesar."  We feel little
+interest in scraps from the pens of old gentlemen, ambassadors,
+governors, senators, heads of departments, even presidents though they
+were, who lived lives of praiseworthy respectability, and whose powdered
+heads and black knee-breeches have but just vanished out of the
+drawing-room.  Still less do we value the blotted paper of those whose
+reputations are dusty, not with oblivious time, but with present
+political turmoil and newspaper vogue.  Really great men, however, seem,
+as to their effect on the imagination, to take their place amongst past
+worthies, even while walking in the very sunshine that illuminates the
+autumnal day in which we write.  We look, not without curiosity, at the
+small, neat hand of Henry Clay, who, as he remarks with his habitual
+deference to the wishes of the fair, responds to a young lady's request
+for his seal; and we dwell longer over the torn-off conclusion of a note
+from Mr. Calhoun, whose words are strangely dashed off without letters,
+and whose name, were it less illustrious, would be unrecognizable in his
+own autograph.  But of all hands that can still grasp a pen, we know not
+the one, belonging to a soldier or a statesman, which could interest us
+more than the hand that wrote the following:
+
+"Sir, your note of the 6th inst. is received.  I hasten to answer that
+there was no man 'in the station of colonel, by the name of J. T.
+Smith,' under my command, at the battle of New Orleans; and am,
+respectfully,
+
+"Yours,  ANDREW JACKSON.
+"OCT.  19th, 1833."
+
+
+The old general, we suspect, has been insnared by a pardonable little
+stratagem on the part of the autograph collector.  The battle of New
+Orleans would hardly have been won, without better aid than this
+problematical Colonel J. T. Smith.
+
+Intermixed with and appended to these historical autographs, there are a
+few literary ones.  Timothy Dwight--the "old Timotheus" who sang the
+Conquest of Cancan, instead of choosing a more popular subject, in the
+British Conquest of Canada--is of eldest date.  Colonel Trumbull, whose
+hand, at various epochs of his life, was familiar with sword, pen, and
+pencil, contributes two letters, which lack the picturesqueness of
+execution that should distinguish the chirography of an artist.  The
+value of Trumbull's pictures is of the same nature with that of
+daguerreotypes, depending not upon the ideal but the actual.  The
+beautiful signature of Washington Irving appears as the indorsement of a
+draft, dated in 1814, when, if we may take this document as evidence,
+his individuality seems to have been merged into the firm of "P. E.
+Irving & Co."  Never was anything less mercantile than this autograph,
+though as legible as the writing of a bank-clerk.  Without apparently
+aiming at artistic beauty, it has all the Sketch Book in it.  We find
+the signature and seal of Pierpont, the latter stamped with the poet's
+almost living countenance.  What a pleasant device for a seal is one's
+own face, which he may thus multiply at pleasure, and send letters to
+his friends,--the Head without, and the Heart within!  There are a few
+lines in the school-girl hand of Margaret Davidson, at nine years old;
+and a scrap of a letter from Washington Allston, a gentle and delicate
+autograph, in which we catch a glimpse of thanks to his correspondent
+for the loan of a volume of poetry.  Nothing remains, save a letter from
+Noah Webster, whose early toils were manifested in a spelling-book, and
+those of his later age in a ponderous dictionary.  Under date of
+February 10, 1843, he writes in a sturdy, awkward hand, very fit for a
+lexicographer, an epistle of old man's reminiscences, from which we
+extract the following anecdote of Washington, presenting the patriot in
+a festive light:--
+
+"When I was travelling to the South, in the year 1783, I called on
+General Washington at Mount Vernon.  At dinner, the last course of
+dishes was a species of pancakes, which were handed round to each guest,
+accompanied with a bowl of sugar and another of molasses for seasoning
+them, that each guest might suit himself.  When the dish came to me, I
+pushed by me the bowl of molasses, observing to the gentlemen present,
+that I had enough of that in my own country.  The General burst out with
+a loud laugh, a thing very unusual with him.  'Ah,' said he, 'there is
+nothing in that story about your eating molasses in New England.'  There
+was a gentleman from Maryland at the table; and the General immediately
+told a story, stating that, during the Revolution, a hogshead of
+molasses was stove in, in West Chester, by the oversetting of a wagon;
+and a body of Maryland troops being near, the soldiers ran hastily, and
+saved all they could by filling their hats or caps with molasses."
+
+There are said to be temperaments endowed with sympathies so exquisite,
+that, by merely handling an autograph, they can detect the writer's
+character with unerring accuracy, and read his inmost heart as easily as
+a less-gifted eye would peruse the written page.  Our faith in this
+power, be it a spiritual one, or only a refinement of the physical
+nature, is not unlimited, in spite of evidence.  God has imparted to the
+human soul a marvellous strength in guarding its secrets, and he keeps
+at least the deepest and most inward record for his own perusal.  But if
+there be such sympathies as we have alluded to, in how many instances
+would History be put to the blush by a volume of autograph letters, like
+this which we now close!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Book of Autographs, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
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