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Title: Complete Prose Works
       Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy

Author: Walt Whitman

Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8813]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on August 22, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMPLETE PROSE WORKS ***




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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 _emigr_, 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 faade, 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 _cortge_ 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--_a 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 _dbris_
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 2Oth_.--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 employ
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 coups, 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 caon, 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 caon just at dawn, after a ten miles' ride
in early darkness on the rail from Denver--the seasonable stoppage at
the entrance of the caon, 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 caon 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 caon, 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 caon 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 caons 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, Coyot, 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....Tte-a-Ttes,
    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 _exalts_, 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 _exalts_ 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 _littrateurs_ 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, faades 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 final, (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 faade 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 Nakas 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 eidlons.

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 _nave_ 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 _attach_ 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, _recherch_ 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,
_littrateurs_, 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 attachs--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
faade, 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 _rou_?

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 _tat 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 Tourguneff, 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 _clbrs_
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
F_:

DEAR SIRS:--Your kind invitation to visit you and deliver a poem for
the 333d Anniversary of founding Santa F 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 _rsum_ of past Spanish history than in the
corresponding _rsum_ 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 expos--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 lite 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 faades 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,
littrateurs, 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 Franaise 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 littrateur--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 8lst 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 _tat-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
_tat-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 "Eidlons" 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 rles.

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."







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