At a little country-town, the other day, not within a thousand miles

of Chicago, a family about leaving for a distant place advertised

their movables for sale at auction. There was such a stir throughout

the settlement as called forth an expression of wonder from a

stranger. "Ah!" said a good lady, "auctions are the only gayety we

have here!"

Joking apart, there was a deep American truth in this seeming

_niaiserie_.

Chicago has, as we have said, with all her wealth, no public park or

other provision for out-door recreation. She has no gallery of Art, or

the beginning of one,--no establishment of music, no public

library,--no social institution whatever, except the church. Without

that blessed bond, her people would be absolute units, as independent

of each other as the grains of sand on the seashore, swept hither and

thither by the ocean winds.

But even before these words have found their way to the Garden City,

they will, perhaps, be inapplicable,--so rapid is progress at the

West. The people are like a great family moving into a new house.

There is so much sweeping and dusting to do, so much finding of places

for the furniture, so much time to spend in providing for breakfast,

dinner, and tea, lodging and washing, that nobody thinks of unpacking

the pictures, taking the books out of their boxes, or getting up

drives or riding-parties. All these come in good time, and will be the

better done for a little prudent delay.

There is, to the stranger, an appearance of extreme hurry in Chicago,

and the streets are very peculiar in not having a lady walking in

them. Day after day I traversed them, meeting crowds of men, who

looked like the representatives of every nation and tongue and

people,--and every class of society, from the greenest rustic, or the

most undisguised sharper, to the man of most serious respectability,

or him of highest _ton_. Yet one lady walking in the streets I saw

not; and when I say not one lady, I mean that I did not meet a woman

who seemed to claim that title, or any title much above that of an

ordinary domestic. Perhaps this is only a spring symptom, which passes

off when the mud dries up a little,--but it certainly gave a rather

forlorn or funereal aspect to the streets for the time.

There is, nevertheless, potent inspiration in the resolute and

occupied air of these crowds. Hardly any one stays long among them

without feeling a desire to share their excitement, and do something

towards the splendid future which is evidently beckoning them on.

Preparing the future! It is glorious business. No wonder it makes the

pulse quicken and the eye look as if it saw spirits. It may be said,

that in some sense we are all preparing the future; but in the West

there is a special meaning in the expression. In circumstances so new

and wondrous, first steps are all-important. Those who have been

providentially led to become early settlers have immense power for

good or evil. One can trace in many or most of our Western towns, and

even States, the spirit of their first influential citizens. Happy is

it for Chicago that she has been favored in this respect,--and to her

honor be it said, that she appreciates her benefactors. Of one

citizen, who has been for twenty years past doing the quiet and modest

work of a good genius in the city of his adoption, it is currently

said, that he has built a hundred miles of her streets,--and there is

no mark of respect and gratitude that she would not gladly show him.

Other citizens take the most faithful and disinterested care of her

schools; and to many she is indebted for an amount of liberality and

public spirit which is constantly increasing her enormous prosperity.

Happy the city which possesses such citizens! Happy the citizens who

have a city so nobly deserving of their best services!

AN EVENING WITH THE TELEGRAPH-WIRES.

My cousin Moses has made the discovery that he is a powerful

magnetizer.

Like many others who have newly come into possession of a small tract

in those mysterious, outlying, unexplored wildernesses of Nature,

which we call by so many names, but which as yet refuse to be defined

or classed, he has been naturally eager to commence operations, and

_exploit_ and farm it a little. He is making experiments on a narrow

border of his wild lands. He is a man of will and of strong

_physique_, with an inquiring and scientific turn of mind, which

inclines him chiefly to metaphysical studies. It is not to be wondered

at, that, having lately discovered that he possesses the mesmeric

gift, he should not sufficiently discriminate as to its application.

Later he will see that it is an agent not to be tampered with, and

never to be used on healthy subjects, but applied only to invalids.

To-day he is like a newly-armed knight-errant, bounding off on his

steed at sunrise, in search of adventures.

One afternoon, not long since, he was telling me of his extraordinary

successes with somnambulists and _somnoparlists_,--of old ladies cured

of nervous headaches and face-twitches, and of young ones put to sleep

at a distance from the magnetizer, dropping into a trance suddenly as

a bird struck by a gun-shot, simply by an act of his volition,--of

water turned into wine, and wine into brandy, to the somnambulic

taste,--and so on, till we got wandering into crooked by-paths of

physics and metaphysics, that seemed to lead us nowhere in

particular,--when I said, "Come, Cousin Moses, suppose you try it on

me, by way of experiment. But I have my doubts if you'll ever put me

to sleep."

My cousin yielded to my request with alacrity;--every subject for

mesmerism was for him legitimate;--and I relinquished myself to his

passes with the docility of a man about to be shaved.

The passes from the head downward were kept up perseveringly for half

an hour, without my experiencing any change, or manifesting the least

symptom of drowsiness. At last the charm began to work. I began to be

conscious of a singular trickling or creeping sensation following the

motion of his passes down my arms. My respiration grew short. I

experienced, however, no tendency to sleep, and my mind was perfectly

calm and unexcited. My cousin was satisfied with his experiment so

far, but we both concluded it had better end here. So he made the

reverse passes, in order to undo the knot he was beginning to tie in

my nerves. He did not, however, entirely succeed in untying it. I was

a healthy subject, and the magnetism continued to affect my nerves, in

spite of the untangling passes.

Soon after, I rose and took my leave. I was strangely excited, but it

was a purely physical, and not a mental excitement. Thinking that a

walk would quiet me, I went through street after street, until I

reached the outskirts of the city. It was a mild September evening.

The fine weather and the sight of the trees and fields tempted me to

continue my walk. It was near sunset, and I strolled on and on,

watching the purple gray and ruddy gold of the clouds, until I had got

fairly into the country.

As I rambled on, I was suddenly seized with a fancy to climb a tree

which stood by the roadside, and rest myself in a convenient notch

which I observed between two of the limbs. I was soon seated in among

the branches, with a canopy of leaves around and over me,--feeling, in

my still nervous condition, as I leaned my back against the mossy

bark, like a magnified tree-toad in clothes.

The air was balmy and fragrant, and against the amber of the western

sky rose and fell numberless little clouds of insects. The birds were

chirping and fluttering about me, and made their arrangements for

their night's lodging, in manifest dread of the clothed tree-toad who

had invaded their leafy premises.

The peculiar nervousness which had taken possession of me was now

passing off, to be replaced by a species of mental exaltation. I was

becoming conscious of something approaching semi-clairvoyance, and yet

not in the ordinary form. Sensation, emotion, thought were

intensified. The landscape around me was dotted with farm-houses,

pillowed in soft, dark clumps of trees. One by one, the lights began

to appear at the windows,--soft rising stars of home-joys. The

glorious September sunset was fading, but still resplendent in the

west. The landscape was pervaded with a deeper repose, the glowing

clouds with a diviner splendor than that which filled the eye. Then

thronging memories awoke. My remembrances of all my past life in the

crowded cities of America and Europe rose vividly before me. In the

long strata of solid gray clouds, where the sun had gone down, leaving

only a few vapory gold-fishes swimming in the clear spaces above, I

could fancy I saw the lonely Roman Campagna and the wondrous dome of

St. Peter's, as when first beheld on the horizon ten years ago. Then,

as from the slopes of San Miniato at sunset, gray, red-tiled Florence,

with its Boboli gardens, full of nightingales, its old towers and

cathedrals, and its soaring Giotto Campanile. Then Genoa, with its

terraces and marble palaces, and that huge statue of André Doria. Then

Naples, gleaming white in the eye of day over her pellucid depths of

sea. The golden days of Italy floated by me. Then came the memories,

glad or sad, of days that had passed in my own native land,--in the

very city that lay behind me,--the intimate communings with dear

friends,--the musical and the merry nights,--the trials, anxieties,

sorrows----

But all this is very egotistical and unnecessary. I merely meant to

say that I was in a peculiar, almost abnormal state of mind, that

evening. The spirit had, as it were, been drawn outwards, and perhaps

slightly dislocated, by those mesmeric passes of my cousin, and I had

not succeeded as yet in adjusting it quite satisfactorily in its old

bodily grooves and sockets. The condition I was in was not as pleasant

as I could have wished; for I was as alive to painful remembrances and

imaginations, as to pleasant ones. I seemed to myself like a revolving

lantern of a light-house,--now dark, now glowing with a fiery

radiance.

I asked myself, Is it that I have been blind and deaf and dull all my

life, and am just waking into real existence? or am I developing into

a _medium_,--Heaven forbid!--and the spirits pushing at some unguarded

portal of the nervous system, and striving to take possession? Shall I

hear raps and knockings when I return to my solitary chamber, and sit

a powerless beholder of damaged furniture, which the spirits will

never have the conscience to promise payment for, when my landlady's

bill comes in? (By the way, have the spirits _ever_ behaved like

gentlemen in this respect, and settled up fair and square for the

breakages they have indulged in by way of exemplifying the doctrine of

a future state?)

As I soliloquized thus, I was attracted by a low vibrating note among

the leaves. Looking through them, I saw, for the first time, that two

or three telegraph-wires, which I had observed skirting the road, ran

directly through the tree in which I was seated. It was a strange sort

of sound, that came in hurried jerks, as it were, accompanied with a

corresponding jerk of the wire.

A gigantic fancy flashed across me:--This State of New York is a great

guitar; yonder, at Albany, are the legislative pegs and screws; down

there in Manhattan Island is the great sounding-board; these iron

wires are the strings! The spirits are singing, perhaps, with their

heads up there in the sweet heavens and the rosy clouds,--and this

vibration of the wires is a sort of loose jangling accompaniment of

their unpractised hands on earth. The voice is always above the

strings.--This I thought in my semi-mesmeric condition, perhaps. I

soon laughed at my Brobdignagian nonsense, and said,--There is a

telegraphic despatch passing. Now if I could only find out what it

is!--that would be something new in science,--a discovery worth

knowing,--to be able to hear or feel the purport of a telegraphic

message, simply by touching the wire along which it runs!

So, regardless of any electric shock I might receive, I thrust out my

hand through the leaves of the tree, and boldly grasped the wire. The

jerks instantly were experienced in my elbow, and it was not long

before certain short sentences were conveyed, magnetically, to my

brain. In my amazement at the discovery, I almost dropped out of the

tree. However, I kept firm hold of the wire, and my sensorium made me

aware of something passing like this:--"Market active. Fair demand for

exchange. Transactions from five to ten thousand shares. Aristides

railroad-stock scarce. Rates of freight to Liverpool firm. Yours

respectfully, Grabber and Holdham."

Upon my word, said I, this is rather dry!--only a merchant! I expected

something better than this, to commence with.

The wire being now quiet, I fell into a musing upon the singular

discovery I had made,--and whether I should get anything from the

public or the government for revealing it. And then my thoughts

wandered across the Atlantic, and I remembered those long rows of

telegraphic wires in France, ruled along the tops of high

barrier-walls, and looking against the sky like immense

music-lines,--and those queer inverted-coffee-cup-like supports for

the wires, on the tall posts. Then I thought of music and coffee at

the Jardin Mabille. Then my fancy wandered down the Champs Elysées to

those multitudinous spider-web wires that radiate from the palace of

the Tuileries, where the Imperial spider sits plotting and weaving his

meshes around the liberties of France. Then I thought, What a thing

this discovery of mine would be for political conspirators,--to

reverse the whispering-gallery of Dionysius, and, instead of the

tyrant hearing the secrets of the people, the people hearing the

secrets of the tyrant! Then I thought of Robespierre, and Marat, and

Charlotte Corday, and Marie Antoinette,--then of Delaroche's and

Müller's pictures of the unfortunate Queen,--then of pictures in

general,--then of landscape-scenery,--till I almost fell into a doze,

when I was startled by a faint sound along the wire, as of a sigh,

like the first thrill of the AEolian harp in the evening wind. Another

message was passing. I reached my hand out to the iron thread. A

confused sadness began to oppress me. A mother's voice weeping over

her sick child pulsed along the wire. Her husband was far away. Her

little daughter lay very ill. "Come quick," said the voice. "I have

little hope; but if you were only here, I should be calmer. If she

must die, it would be such a comfort to have you here!"

I drew my hand away. I saw the whole scene too vividly. Who this

mother was I knew not; but the news of the death of a child whom I

knew and loved could not have affected me more strangely and keenly

than this semi-articulate sob which quivered along the iron airtrack,

in the silence of the evening, from one unknown--to another unknown.

I roused myself from my sadness, and thought I would descend the tree

and stroll home. The moon was up, and a pleasant walk before me, with

enough to meditate upon in the singular discovery I had made. I was

about to get down from my crotch in the tree, and was just reaching

out my dexter leg to feel if I could touch a bough below me, when a

low, wild shriek ran along the wire,--as when the wind-harp, above

referred to for illustration, is blown upon by some rude, sharp

northwester. In spite of myself, I touched the vibrating cord. The

message was brief and abrupt, like a sea-captain's command:--"Ship

Trinidad wrecked off Wildcat's Beach,--all hands lost,--no insurance!"

Do you recollect, when sitting alone sometimes in your room, at

midnight, in the month of November, how, after a lull in the blast,

the bleak wind will all at once seem to clutch at the windows, with a

demoniac howl that makes the house rock? Do you remember the

half-whistles and half-groans through the key-holes and crevices,--the

cries and shrieks that rise and fall,--the roaring in the

chimney,--the slamming of distant doors and shutters? Well, all this

seemed to be suggested in the ringing of the iron cord. The very

leaves, green and dewy, and the delicate branches, seemed to quiver as

the dreary message passed.

I thought,--This is a little too much! This old tree is getting to be

a very lugubrious spot. I don't want to hear any more such messages. I

almost wish I had never touched the wire. Strange! one reads such an

announcement in a newspaper very coolly;--why is it that I can't take

it coolly in a telegraphic despatch? We can read a thing with

indifference which we hear spoken with a shudder,--such prisoners are

we to our senses! I have had enough of this telegraphing. I sha'n't

close my eyes to-night, if I have any more of it.

I had now fairly got my foot on the branch below, and was slipping

myself gradually down, when the wire began to ring like a horn, and in

the merriest of strains. I paused and listened. I could fancy the

joyful barking of dogs in accompaniment. Ah, surely, this is some

sportsman,--"the hunter's call, to faun and dryad known." This smacks

of the bright sunshine and the green woods and the yellow fields. I

will stop and hear it.--It was just what I expected,--a jolly citizen

telegraphing his country friend to meet him with his guns and dogs at

such a place.

And immediately afterwards, in much the same key, came a musical note

and a message babbling of green fields, from a painter:--"I shall

leave town to-morrow. Meet me at Bullshornville at ten, A.M. Don't

forget to bring my field-easel, canvases, and the other traps."

If there is more of this music, I said, I think I shall stay. I love

the sportsmen and the artists, and am glad they are going to have a

good time. The weather promises well for them.

There was a little pause, and then a strain of perfect jubilation came

leaping along the wire, like the flying song of the bobolink over

tracts of blowing clover and apple-blossoms. I expected something very

rare,--a strain of poetry at least. It was only this:--"Mr. Grimkins,

Sir, we shall expect rooms for the bridal party at your hotel, on the

side overlooking the lake, if possible. Yours, P. Simpkins."

Ah, I said, that's all Greek to me,--poor, lonely bachelor that I am!

I wonder, by the way, if they ever wrote their love-letters by

telegraph.--But what is this coming? I am clearly getting back to my

normal condition:--"Miss Polly Wogg wishes to say that she has been

unable to procure the silk for Mrs. Papillon for less than five

dollars a yard."--Nonsense! I'm not in the dry-goods, nor millinery,

nor young-lady department.

And here was another:--"I have found an excellent school for Adolphus

in Birchville, near Mastersville Corners. Send him up without delay,

with all the school-books you can find."

And another,--important, very:--"I find that 'One touch of Nature

makes the whole world kin' is in 'Troilus and Cressida.' Don't send

the MS. without this correction."

But what's this, accompanied with a long, low whistle?--"The cars have

run off the track at Breakneck Hollow. Back your engine and wait for

further orders."

We are getting into the minor key again, I thought. Listen!--"Mr. S.

died last night. You must be here to-morrow, if possible, at the

opening of the will."

Well, said I, I have had plenty of despatches, and have expended

enough sympathy, for one night. I have been very mysteriously

affected,--how, I can't exactly tell. But who will ever believe my

evening's adventure? Who will not laugh at my pretended discovery?

Even my cousin Moses will be incredulous. I shall be at least looked

upon as a _medium_, and so settled.

And here allow me to remark,--Have you not observed how easily things

apparently difficult and mysterious are arranged in the popular

understanding by the use of certain stereotyped names applied to them?

Only give a name to a wonder, or an unclassified phenomenon, or even

an unsound notion, and you instantly clear away all the fog of

mystery. Let an unprincipled fellow call his views Latitudinarianism

or Longitudinarianism, he may, with a little adroitness, go for a

respectable and consistent member of some sect. A filibuster may pass

current under some such label as Political or Territorial

Extensionist;--the name is a long, decent overcoat for his shabby

ideas. So when wonderful phenomena in the nervous system are

observed,--when tables are smashed by invisible hands,--when people

see ghosts through stone walls, and know what is passing in the heart

of Africa,--how easily you unlock your wardrobe of terms and clap on

the back of every eccentric fact your ready-made phrase-coat,--Animal

Magnetism, Biology, Odic Force, Optical Illusion, Second Sight,

Spirits, and what not! It is a wonderful labor-saving and faith-saving

process. People say, "Oh, is that all?" and pass on complacently.

There are such explanatory labels to be met with everywhere. They save

a deal of trouble. All the shops keep these overcoats,--shops

ecclesiastical, medical, juridical, professional, political, social.

Now all I have to do is, not to go to the second-hand slop-shops for

the phrase-coat I need for my naked discovery, but look for some

unfamiliar robe,--some name more _recherché_, learned, and

transcendental than my neighbors sport,--and then I shall pass muster.

The classic togas seem to be the most imposing. The Germans, who weave

their names out of their indigenous Saxon roots, are much too _naïve_.

I will get a Greek Lexicon and set about it this very night.

After all, why should it be thought so improbable, in this age of

strange phenomena, that the ideas transmitted through the

electro-magnetic wire may be communicated to the brain,--especially

when there exist certain abnormal or semi-abnormal conditions of that

brain and its nerves? Is it not reasonable to suppose that all

magnetisms are one in essence? The singular experiences above related

seem to hint at the truth of such a view. If it be true that certain

delicately-organized persons have the power of telling the character

of others, who are entire strangers to them, simply by holding in

their hands letters written by those strangers, is it not full as much

within the scope of belief that there are those who, under certain

physical conditions, may detect the purport of an electro-magnetic

message,--that message being sent by vibrations of the wire through

the nerves to the brain? If all magnetisms are one in essence,--as I

am inclined to believe,--and if the nerves, the brain, and the mind

are so swayed by what we term animal magnetism, why not allow for the

strong probability of their being also, under certain conditions,

equally impressible by electro-magnetism? I put these questions to

scientific men; and I do not see why they should be answered by

silence or ridicule, merely because the whole subject is veiled in

mystery.

It may be asked,--How can an electro-magnetic message be communicated

to the mind, without a knowledge of the alphabet used by the

telegraphers? This question may seem a poser to some minds. But I

don't see that it raises any grave difficulty. I answer the question

by asking another:--How can persons in the somnambulic state read with

the tops of their heads?

Besides, I once had the telegraph alphabet explained to me by one of

the wire-operators,--though I have forgotten it,--and it is possible,

that, in my semi-mesmeric condition, the recollection revived, so that

I knew that such and such pulsations of the wire stood for such and

such letters.

But is there not a certain spiritual significance, also, in these

singular experiences here related?

We may safely lay down this doctrine,--a very old and much-thumbed

doctrine, but none the less true for all its dog-ears:--No man lives

for himself alone. He is related not only to the silent stars and the

singing-birds and the sunny landscape, but to every other human soul.

You say, This should not be stated so sermonically, but symbolically.

That is just what I have been doing in my narrative of the wires.

It gives one a great idea of human communion,--this power of sending

these spark-messages thousands of miles in a second. Far more

poetical, too,--is it not?--as well as more practical, than tying

billets under the wings of carrier-pigeons. It is removing so much

time and space out of the way,--those absorbents of spirits,--and

bringing mind into close contact with mind. But when one can read

these messages without the aid of machinery, by merely touching the

wires, how much greater does the symbol become!

All mankind are one. As some philosophers express it,--one great mind

includes us all. But then, as it would never do for all minds to be

literally one, any more than it would for all magnetisms to be

identical in their modes of manifestation, or for all the rivers,

creeks, and canals to flow together, so we have our natural barriers

and channels, our _propriums_, as the Swedish seer has it,--and so we

live and let live. We feel with others and think with others, but with

strict reservations. That evening among the wires, for instance,

brought me into wonderful intimate contact with a few of the joys and

sorrows of some of my fellow-beings; but an excess of such experiences

would interfere with our freedom and our happiness. It is our

self-hood, properly balanced, which constitutes our dignity, our

humanity. A certain degree, and a very considerable degree of

insulation is necessary, that individual life and mental equanimity

may go on.

But there may be a degree of insulation which is unbecoming a member

of the human family. It may become brutish,--or it may amount to the

ridiculous. In Paris, there was an old lady, of uncertain age, who

lived in the apartment beneath mine. I think I never saw her but

twice. She manifested her existence sometimes by complaining of the

romping of the children overhead, who called her the "bonne femme."

Why they gave her the name I don't know; for she seemed to have no

human ties in the world, and wasted her affections on a private

menagerie of parrots, canaries, and poodle-dogs. A few shocks of the

electric telegraph might have raised her out of her desert island, and

given her some glimpses of the great continents of human love and

sympathy.

A man who lives for himself alone sits on a sort of insulated glass

stool, with a _noli-me-tangere_ look at his fellow-men, and a

shivering dread of some electric shock from contact with them. He is a

non-conductor in relation to the great magnetic currents which run

pulsing along the invisible wires that connect one heart with another.

Preachers, philanthropists, and moralists are in the habit of saying

of such a person,--"How cold! how selfish! how unchristian!" I

sometimes fancy a citizen of the planet Venus, that social star of

evening and morning, might say,--"How absurd!" What a figure he cuts

there, sitting in solitary state upon his glass tripod,--in the middle

of a crowd of excited fellow-beings, hurried to and fro by their

passions and sympathies,--like an awkward country-bumpkin caught in

the midst of a gay crowd of polkers and waltzers at a ball,--or an

oyster bedded on a rock, with silver fishes playing rapid games of

hide and seek, love and hate, in the clear briny depths above and

beneath! If the angels ever look out of their sphere of intense

spiritual realities to indulge in a laugh, methinks such a lonely

tripod-sitter, cased over with his invulnerable, non-conducting cloak

and hood,--shrinking, dodging, or bracing himself up on the defensive,

as the crowd fans him with its rush or jostles up against him,--like

the man who fancied himself a teapot, and was forever warning people

not to come too near him,--might furnish a subject for a planetary

joke not unworthy of translation into the language of our dim earth.

One need not be a lonely bachelor, nor a lonely spinster, in order to

live alone. The loneliest are those who mingle with men bodily and yet

have no contact with them spiritually. There is no desert solitude

equal to that of a crowded city where you have no sympathies. I might

here quote Paris again, in illustration,--or, indeed, any foreign

city. A friend of mine had an _atelier_ once in the top of a house in

the Rue St. Honoré. He knew not a soul in the house nor in the

neighborhood. There was a German tailor below, who once made him a

pair of pantaloons,--so they were connected sartorically and

pecuniarily, and, when they met, recognized one another: and there was

the _concierge_ below, who knew when he came in and went out,--that

was all. All day long the deafened roar of carts and carriages, and

the muffled cry of the _marchands des légumes_, were faintly heard

from below. And in an adjoining room a female voice (my friend could

never tell whether child's or woman's, for he never saw any one)

overflowed in tones of endearment on some unresponding creature,--he

could never guess whether it was a baby, or a bird, or a cat, or a

dog, or a lizard, (the French have such pets sometimes,) or an

enchanted prince, like that poor half-marble fellow in the "Arabian

Nights." In that garret the painter experienced for six months the

perfection of Parisian solitude. Now I dare say he or I might have

found social sympathies, by hunting them up; but he didn't, and I dare

say he was to blame, as I should be in the same situation,--and I am

willing to place myself in the same category with the menagerie-loving

old lady, above referred to, omitting the feathered and canine pets.

As to my mesmerico-telegraphic discovery, it may pass for what it is

worth. I shall submit it at least to my cousin Moses, as soon as he

returns from the South. People may believe it or not. People may say

it may be of practical use, or not. I shall overhaul my terminologies,

and, with the "metaphysical aid" of my cousin, fit it with a

scientific name which shall overtop all the _ologies_.

Having dressed my new Fact in a respectable and scholarlike coat, I

shall let him take his chance with the judicious public,--and content

myself, for the present, with making him a sort of humble _colporteur_

of the valuable tract on Human Brotherhood of which I have herewith

furnished a few dry specimens.

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

EVERY MAN HIS OWN BOSWELL.

The company looked a little flustered one morning when I came in,--so

much so, that I inquired of my neighbor, the divinity-student, what

had been going on. It appears that the young fellow whom they call

John had taken advantage of my being a little late (I having been

rather longer than usual dressing that morning) to circulate several

questions involving a quibble or play upon words,--in short,

containing that indignity to the human understanding, condemned in the

passages from the distinguished moralist of the last century and the

illustrious historian of the present, which I cited on a former

occasion, and known as a _pun_. After breakfast, one of the boarders

handed me a small roll of paper containing some of the questions and

their answers. I subjoin two or three of them, to show what a tendency

there is to frivolity and meaningless talk in young persons of a

certain sort, when not restrained by the presence of more reflective

natures.--It was asked, "Why tertian and quartan fevers were like

certain short-lived insects." Some interesting physiological relation

would be naturally suggested. The inquirer blushes to find that the

answer is in the paltry equivocation, that they _skip_ a day or

two.--"Why an Englishman must go to the Continent to weaken his grog

or punch." The answer proves to have no relation whatever to the

temperance-movement, as no better reason is given than that

island--(or, as it is absurdly written, _ile and_) water won't

mix.--But when I came to the next question and its answer, I felt that

patience ceased to be a virtue. "Why an onion is like a piano" is a

query that a person of sensibility would be slow to propose; but that

in an educated community an individual could be found to answer it in

these words,--"Because it smell odious," _quasi_, it's melodious,--is

not credible, but too true. I can show you the paper.

Dear reader, I beg your pardon for repeating such things. I know most

conversations reported in books are altogether above such trivial

details, but folly will come up at every table as surely as purslain

and chickweed and sorrel will come up in gardens. This young fellow

ought to have talked philosophy, I know perfectly well; but he

didn't,--he made jokes.

I am willing,--I said,--to exercise your ingenuity in a rational and

contemplative manner.--No, I do not proscribe certain forms of

philosophical speculation which involve an approach to the absurd or

the ludicrous, such as you may find, for example, in the folio of the

Reverend Father Thomas Sanchez, in his famous tractate, "De Sancto

Matrimonio." I will therefore turn this levity of yours to profit by

reading you a rhymed problem, wrought out by my friend the Professor.

THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE: OR THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS-SHAY."

A LOGICAL STORY.

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss-shay,

That was built in such a logical way

It ran a hundred years to a day,

And then, of a sudden, it----ah, but stay,

I'll tell you what happened without delay,

Scaring the parson into fits,

Frightening people out of their wits,--

Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.

_Georgius Secundus_ was then alive,--

Snuffy old drone from the German hive!

That was the year when Lisbon-town

Saw the earth open and gulp her down,

And Braddock's army was done so brown,

Left without a scalp to its crown.

It was on the terrible Earthquake-day

That the Deacon finished the one-hoss-shay.

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what,

There is always _somewhere_, a weakest spot,--

In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,

In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,

In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,--lurking still

Find it somewhere you must and will,--

Above or below, or within or without,--

And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,

A chaise _breaks down_, but doesn't _wear out_,

But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do,

With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell _yeou_,")

He would build one shay to beat the taown

'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun';

It should be so built that it _couldn'_ break daown:

--"Fur," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain

Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain;

'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain,

Is only jest

To make that place uz strong uz the rest."

So the Deacon inquired of the village folk

Where he could find the strongest oak,

That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,--

That was for spokes and floor and sills;

He sent for lancewood to make the thills;

The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees;

The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,

But lasts like iron for things like these;

The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"--

Last of its timber,--they couldn't sell 'em,--

Never an axe had seen their chips,

And the wedges flew from between their lips,

Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;

Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,

Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too,

Steel of the finest, bright and blue;

Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide;

Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide

Found in the pit when the tanner died.

That was the way he "put her through."--

"There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew!"

Do! I tell you, I rather guess

She was a wonder, and nothing less!

Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,

Deacon and deaconess dropped away,

Children and grand-children--where were they?

But there stood the stout old one-hoss-shay

As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day!

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED;--it came and found

The Deacon's Masterpiece strong and sound.

Eighteen hundred increased by ten;--

"Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then.

Eighteen hundred and twenty came;--

Running as usual; much the same.

Thirty and forty at last arrive,

And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE.

Little of all we value here

Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year

Without both feeling and looking queer.

In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth,

So far as I know, but a tree and truth.

(This is a moral that runs at large;

Take it.--You're welcome--No extra charge.)

FIRST OF NOVEMBER,--the Earthquake-day.--

There are traces of age in the one-hoss-shay,

A general flavor of mild decay,

But nothing local, as one may say.

There couldn't be,--for the Deacon's art

Had made it so like in every part

That there wasn't a chance for one to start.

For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,

And the floor was just as strong as the sills,

And the panels just as strong as the floor,

And the whippletree neither less nor more,

And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore,

And spring and axle and hub _encore_.

And yet, _as a whole_, it is past a doubt

In another hour it will be _worn out_!

First of November, 'Fifty-five!

This morning the parson takes a drive.

Now, small boys, get out of the way!

Here comes the wonderful one-hoss-shay,

Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.

"Huddup!" said the parson.--Off went they.

The parson was working his Sunday's text,--

Had got to _fifthly_, and stopped perplexed

At what the--Moses--was coming next.

All at once the horse stood still,

Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill.

--First a shiver, and then a thrill,

Then something decidedly like a spill,--

And the parson was sitting upon a rock,

At half-past nine by the meet'n'-house-clock,--

Just the hour of the Earthquake-shock!

--What do you think the parson found,

When he got up and stared around?

The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,

As if it had been to the mill and ground!

You see, of course, if you're not a dunce,

How it went to pieces all at once,--

All at once, and nothing first,--

Just as bubbles do when they burst.

End of the wonderful one-hoss-shay.

Logic is logic. That's all I say.

--I think there is one habit,--I said to our company a day or two

afterwards,--worse than that of punning. It is the gradual

substitution of cant or flash terms for words which truly characterize

their objects. I have known several very genteel idiots whose whole

vocabulary had deliquesced into some half dozen expressions. All

things fell into one of two great categories,--_fast_ or _slow_. Man's

chief end was to be a _brick_. When the great calamities of life

overtook their friends, these last were spoken of as being _a good

deal cut up_. Nine-tenths of human existence were summed up in the

single word, _bore_. These expressions come to be the algebraic

symbols of minds which have grown too weak or indolent to

discriminate. They are the blank checks of intellectual

bankruptcy;--you may fill them up with what idea you like; it makes no

difference, for there are no funds in the treasury upon which they are

drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smoking-clubs are the places

where these conversational fungi spring up most luxuriantly. Don't

think I undervalue the proper use and application of a cant word or

phrase. It adds piquancy to conversation, as a mushroom does to a

sauce. But it is no better than a toadstool, odious to the sense and

poisonous to the intellect, when it spawns itself all over the talk of

men and youths capable of talking, as it sometimes does. As we hear

flash phraseology, it is commonly the dishwater from the washings of

English dandyism, school-boy or full-grown, wrung out of a

three-volume novel which had sopped it up, or decanted from the

pictured urn of Mr. Verdant Green, and diluted to suit the provincial

climate.

----The young fellow called John spoke up sharply and said, it was

"rum" to hear me "pitchin' into fellers" for "goin' it in the slang

line," when I used all the flash words myself just when I pleased.

----I replied with my usual forbearance.--Certainly, to give up the

algebraic symbol, because _a_ or _b_ is often a cover for ideal

nihility, would be unwise. I have heard a child laboring to express a

certain condition, involving a hitherto undescribed sensation, (as it

supposed,) all of which could have been sufficiently explained by

the participle--_bored_. I have seen a country-clergyman, with a

one-story intellect and a one-horse vocabulary, who has consumed his

valuable time (and mine) freely, in developing an opinion of a

brother-minister's discourse which would have been abundantly

characterized by a peach-down-lipped sophomore in the one

word--_slow_. Let us discriminate, and be shy of absolute

proscription. I am omniverbivorous by nature and training. Passing by

such words as are poisonous, I can swallow most others, and chew such

as I cannot swallow.

Dandies are not good for much, but they are good for something. They

invent or keep in circulation those conversational blank checks or

counters just spoken of, which intellectual capitalists may sometimes

find it worth their while to borrow of them. They are useful, too, in

keeping up the standard of dress, which, but for them, would

deteriorate, and become, what some old fools would have it, a matter

of convenience, and not of taste and art. Yes, I like dandies well

enough,--on one condition.

----What is that, Sir?--said the divinity-student.

----That they have pluck. I find that lies at the bottom of all true

dandyism. A little boy dressed up very fine, who puts his finger in

his mouth and takes to crying, if other boys make fun of him, looks

very silly. But if he turns red in the face and knotty in the fists,

and makes an example of the biggest of his assailants, throwing off

his fine Leghorn and his thickly-buttoned jacket, if necessary, to

consummate the act of justice, his small toggery takes on the

splendors of the crested helmet that frightened Astyanax. You remember

that the Duke said his dandy officers were his best officers. The

"Sunday blood," the super-superb sartorial equestrian of our annual

Fast-day, is not imposing or dangerous. But such fellows as Brummel

and D'Orsay and Byron are not to be snubbed quite so easily. Look out

for "la main de fer sous le gant de velours" (which I printed in

English the other day without quotation-marks, thinking whether any

_scarabaeus criticus_ would add this to his globe and roll in glory

with it into the newspapers,--which he didn't do it, in the charming

pleonasm of the London language, and therefore I claim the sole merit

of exposing the same). A good many powerful and dangerous people have

had a decided dash of dandyism about them. There was Alcibiades, the

"curled son of Clinias," an accomplished young man, but what would be

called a "swell" in these days. There was Aristoteles, a very

distinguished writer, of whom you have heard,--a philosopher, in

short, whom it took centuries to learn, centuries to unlearn, and is

now going to take a generation or more to learn over again. Regular

dandy, he was. So was Marcus Antonius: and though he lost his game, he

played for big stakes, and it wasn't his dandyism that spoiled his

chance. Petrarca was not to be despised as a scholar or a poet, but he

was one of the same sort. So was Sir Humphrey Davy; so was Lord

Palmerston, formerly, if I am not forgetful. Yes,--a dandy is good for

something as such; and dandies such as I was just speaking of have

rocked this planet like a cradle,--aye, and left it swinging to this

day.--Still, if I were you, I wouldn't go to the tailor's, on the

strength of these remarks, and run up a long bill which will render

pockets a superfluity in your next suit. _Elegans "nascitur, non

fit._" A man is born a dandy, as he is born a poet. There are heads

that can't wear hats; there are necks that can't fit cravats; there

are jaws that can't fill out collars--(Willis touched this last point

in one of his earlier ambrotypes, if I remember rightly); there are

_tournures_ nothing can humanize, and movements nothing can subdue to

the gracious suavity or elegant languor or stately serenity which

belong to different styles of dandyism.

We are forming an aristocracy, as you may observe, in this

country,--not a _gratiâ-Dei_, nor a _jure-divino_ one,--but a

_de-facto_ upper stratum of being, which floats over the turbid waves

of common life as the iridescent film you may have seen spreading over

the water about our wharves,--very splendid, though its origin may

have been tar, tallow, train-oil, or other such unctuous commodities.

I say, then, we are forming an aristocracy; and, transitory as its

individual life often is, it maintains itself tolerably, as a whole.

Of course, money is its corner-stone. But now observe this. Money kept

for two or three generations transforms a race,--I don't mean merely

in manners and hereditary culture, but in blood and bone. Money buys

air and sunshine, in which children grow up more kindly, of course,

than in close, back streets; it buys country-places to give them happy

and healthy summers, good nursing, good doctoring, and the best cuts

of beef and mutton. When the spring-chickens come to market----I beg

your pardon,--that is not what I was going to speak of. As the young

females of each successive season come on, the finest specimens among

them, other things being equal, are apt to attract those who can

afford the expensive luxury of beauty. The physical character of the

next generation rises in consequence. It is plain that certain

families have in this way acquired an elevated type of face and

figure, and that in a small circle of city-connections one may

sometimes find models of both sexes which one of the rural counties

would find it hard to match from all its townships put together.

Because there is a good deal of running down, of degeneration and

waste of life, among the richer classes, you must not overlook the

equally obvious fact I have just spoken of,--which in one or two

generations more will be, I think, much more patent than just now.

The weak point in our chryso-aristocracy is the same I have alluded to

in connection with cheap dandyism. Its thorough manhood, its

high-caste gallantry, are not so manifest as the plate-glass of its

windows and the more or less legitimate heraldry of its coach-panels.

It is very curious to observe of how small account military folks are

held among our Northern people. Our young men must gild their spurs,

but they need not win them. The equal division of property keeps the

younger sons of rich people above the necessity of military service.

Thus the army loses an element of refinement, and the moneyed upper

class forgets what it is to count heroism among its virtues. Still I

don't believe in any aristocracy without pluck as its backbone. Ours

may show it when the time comes, if it ever does come.

----These United States furnish the greatest market for intellectual

_green fruit_ of all the places in the world. I think so, at any rate.

The demand for intellectual labor is so enormous and the market so far

from nice, that young talent is apt to fare like unripe

gooseberries--get plucked to make a fool of. Think of a country which

buys eighty thousand copies of the "Proverbial Philosophy," while the

author's admiring countrymen have been buying twelve thousand! How can

one let his fruit hang in the sun until it gets fully ripe, while

there are eighty thousand such hungry mouths ready to swallow it and

proclaim its praises? Consequently, there never was such a collection

of crude pippins and half-grown windfalls as our native literature

displays among its fruits. There are literary green-groceries at every

corner, which will buy anything, from a button-pear to a pine-apple.

It takes a long apprenticeship to train a whole people to reading and

writing. The temptation of money and fame is too great for young

people. Do I not remember that glorious moment when the late Mr. ----

we won't say who,--editor of the ---- we won't say what, offered me

the sum of fifty cents _per_ double-columned quarto page for shaking

my young boughs over his foolscap apron? Was it not an intoxicating

vision of gold and glory? I should doubtless have revelled in its

wealth and splendor, but for learning the fact that the _fifty cents_

was to be considered a rhetorical embellishment, and by no means a

literal expression of past fact or present intention.

----Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative

virtues. It is good to abstain, and teach others to abstain, from all

that is sinful or hurtful. But making a business of it leads to

emaciation of character, unless one feeds largely also on the more

nutritious diet of active sympathetic benevolence.

----I don't believe one word of what you are saying,--spoke up the

angular female in black bombazine.

I am sorry you disbelieve it, Madam,--I said, and added softly to my

next neighbor,--but you prove it.

The young fellow sitting near me winked; and the divinity-student

said, in an undertone,--_Optime dictum_.

Your talking Latin,--said I,--reminds me of an odd trick of one of my

old tutors. He read so much of that language, that his English half

turned into it. He got caught in town, one hot summer, in pretty close

quarters, and wrote, or began to write, a series of city pastorals.

Eclogues he called them, and meant to have published them by

subscription. I remember some of his verses, if you want to hear

them.--You, Sir, (addressing myself to the divinity-student,) and all

such as have been through college, or, what is the same thing,

received an honorary degree, will understand them without a

dictionary. The old man had a great deal to say about "aestivation,"

as he called it, in opposition, as one might say, to _hibernation_.

Intramural festivation, or town-life in summer, he would say, is a

peculiar form of suspended existence or semi-asphyxia. One wakes up

from it about the beginning of the last week in September. This is

what I remember of his poem:--

AESTIVATION.

_An Unpublished Poem, by my late Latin Tutor._

In candent ire the solar splendor flames;

The foles, languescent, pend from arid rances;

His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes,

And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes.

How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes,

Dorm on the herb with none to supervise,

Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine,

And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine!

To me, alas! no verdurous visions come,

Save yon exigous pool's conferva-scum,--

No concave vast repeats the tender hue

That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue!

Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades!

Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids!

Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump,--

Depart,--be off,--excede,--evade,--crump!

--I have lived by the sea-shore and by the mountains.--No, I am not

going to say which is best. The one where your place is is the best

for you. But this difference there is: you can domesticate mountains,

but the sea is _ferae naturae_. You may have a hut, or know the owner

of one, on the mountain-side; you see a light half-way up its ascent

in the evening, and you know there is a home, and you might share it.

You have noted certain trees, perhaps; you know the particular zone

where the hemlocks look so black in October, when the maples and

beeches have faded. All its reliefs and intaglios have electrotyped

themselves in the medallions that hang round the walls of your

memory's chamber.--The sea remembers nothing. It is feline. It licks

your feet,--its huge flanks purr very pleasantly for you; but it will

crack your bones and eat you, for all that, and wipe the crimsoned

foam from its jaws as if nothing had happened. The mountains give

their lost children berries and water; the sea mocks their thirst and

lets them die. The mountains have a grand, stupid, lovable

tranquillity; the sea has a fascinating, treacherous intelligence. The

mountains lie about like huge ruminants, their broad backs awful to

look upon, but safe to handle. The sea smooths its silver scales until

you cannot see their joints,--but their shining is that of a snake's

belly, after all.--In deeper suggestiveness I find as great a

difference. The mountains dwarf mankind and foreshorten the procession

of its long generations. The sea drowns out humanity and time; it has

no sympathy with either; for it belongs to eternity, and of that it

sings its monotonous song forever and ever.

Yet I should love to have a little box by the sea-shore. I should love

to gaze out on the wild feline element from a front window of my own,

just as I should love to look on a caged panther, and see it stretch

its shining length, and then curl over and lap its smooth sides, and

by-and-by begin to lash itself into rage and show its white teeth and

spring at its bars, and howl the cry of its mad, but, to me, harmless

fury.--And then,--to look at it with that inward eye,--who does not

love to shuffle off time and its concerns, at intervals,--to forget

who is President and who is Governor, what race he belongs to, what

language he speaks, which golden-headed nail of the firmament his

particular planetary system is hung upon, and listen to the great

liquid metronome as it beats its solemn measure, steadily swinging

when the solo or duet of human life began, and to swing just as

steadily after the human chorus has died out and man is a fossil on

its shores?

--What should decide one, in choosing a summer

residence?--Constitution, first of all. How much snow could you melt

in an hour, if you were planted in a hogshead of it? Comfort is

essential to enjoyment. All sensitive people should remember that

persons in easy circumstances suffer much more from cold in

summer--that is, the warm half of the year--than in winter, or the

other half. You must cut your climate to your constitution, as much as

your clothing to your shape. After this, consult your taste and

convenience. But if you would be happy in Berkshire, you must carry

mountains in your brain; and if you would enjoy Nahant, you must have

an ocean in your soul. Nature plays at dominos with you; you must

match her piece, or she will never give it up to you.

----The schoolmistress said, in rather a mischievous way, that she was

afraid some minds or souls would be a little crowded, if they took in

the Rocky Mountains or the Atlantic.

Have you ever read the little book called "The Stars and the

Earth?"--said I.--Have you seen the Declaration of Independence

photographed in a surface that a fly's foot would cover? The forms or

conditions of Time and Space, as Kant will tell you, are nothing in

themselves,--only our way of looking at things. You are right, I

think, however, in recognizing the category of Space as being quite as

applicable to minds as to the outer world. Every man of reflection is

vaguely conscious of an imperfectly-defined circle which is drawn

about his intellect. He has a perfectly clear sense that the fragments

of his intellectual circle include the curves of many other minds of

which he is cognizant. He often recognizes those as manifestly

concentric with his own, but of less radius. On the other hand, when

we find a portion of an arc outside of our own, we say it _intersects_

ours, but are very slow to confess or to see that it _circumscribes_

it. Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or

sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. After

looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had been stretched beyond the

limits of its elasticity, and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of

space that I had to spread these to fit it.

----If I thought I should ever see the Alps!--said the schoolmistress.

Perhaps you will, some time or other,--I said.

It is not very likely,--she answered.--I have had one or two

opportunities, but I had rather be anything than governess in a rich

family.

Proud, too, you little soft-voiced woman! Well, I can't say I like you

any the worse for it. How long will schoolkeeping take to kill you? Is

it possible the poor thing works with her needle, too? I don't like

those marks on the side of her forefinger.

_Tableau_. Chamouni. Mont Blanc in full view. Figures in the

foreground; two of them standing apart; one of them a gentleman

of----oh,--ah,--yes! the other a lady in a white cashmere, leaning on

his shoulder.--The ingenuous reader will understand that this was an

internal, private, personal, subjective diorama, seen for one instant

on the background of my own consciousness, and abolished into black

non-entity by the first question which recalled me to actual life, as

suddenly as if one of those iron shop-blinds (which I always pass at

dusk with a shiver, expecting to stumble over some poor but honest

shop-boy's head, just taken off by its sudden and unexpected descent,

and left outside upon the sidewalk) had come down "by the run."

----Should you like to hear what moderate wishes life brings one to at

last? I used to be very ambitious,--wasteful, extravagant, and

luxurious in all my fancies. Head too much in the "Arabian Nights."

Must have the lamp,--couldn't do without the ring. Exercise every

morning on the brazen horse. Plump down into castles as full of little

milk-white princesses as a nest is of young sparrows. All love me

dearly at once.--Charming idea of life, but too high-colored for the

reality. I have outgrown all this; my tastes have become exceedingly

primitive,--almost, perhaps, ascetic. We carry happiness into our

condition, but must not hope to find it there. I think you will be

willing to hear some lines which embody the subdued and limited

desires of my maturity.

CONTENTMENT.

"Man wants but little here below."

Little I ask; my wants are few;

I only wish a hut of stone,

(A _very plain_ brown stone will do,)

That I may call my own:--

And close at hand is such a one,

In yonder street that fronts the sun.

Plain food is quite enough for me;

Three courses are as good as ten;--

If Nature can subsist on three,

Thank Heaven for three. Amen!

I always thought cold victual nice;--

My _choice_ would be vanilla-ice.

I care not much for gold or land;--

Give me a mortgage here and there,--

Some good bank-stock,--some note of hand,

Or trifling railroad share;--

I only ask that Fortune send

A _little_ more than I shall spend.

Honors are silly toys, I know,

And titles are but empty names;--

I would, _perhaps_, be Plenipo,--

But only near St. James;--

I'm very sure I should not care

To fill our Gubernator's chair.

Jewels are baubles; 'tis a sin

To care for such unfruitful things;--

One good-sized diamond in a pin,--

Some, _not so large_, in rings,--

A ruby, and a pearl, or so,

Will do for me;--I laugh at show.

My dame should dress in cheap attire;

(Good, heavy silks are never dear;)--

I own perhaps I _might_ desire

Some shawls of true cashmere,--

Some marrowy crapes of China silk,

Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk.

I would not have the horse I drive

So fast that folks must stop and stare;

An easy gait--two, forty-five--

Suits me; I do not care;--

Perhaps, for just a _single spurt_,

Some seconds less would do no hurt.

Of pictures, I should like to own

Titians and Raphaels three or four,--

I love so much their style and tone,--

One Turner, and no more

(A landscape,--foreground golden dirt;

The sunshine painted with a squirt).

Of books but few,--some fifty score

For daily use, and bound for wear;

The rest upon an upper floor;--

Some _little_ luxury _there_

Of red morocco's gilded gleam,

And vellum rich as country cream.

Busts, cameos, gems,--such things as these,

Which others often show for pride,

_I_ value for their power to please,

And selfish churls deride;--

_One_ Stradivarius, I confess,

_Two_ Meerschaums, I would fain possess.

Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn,

Nor ape the glittering upstart fool;--

Shall not carved tables serve my turn,

But _all_ must be of buhl?

Give grasping pomp its double share,--

I ask but _one_ recumbent chair.

Thus humble let me live and die,

Nor long for Midas' golden touch;

If Heaven more generous gifts deny,

I shall not miss them _much_.--

Too grateful for the blessing lent

Of simple tastes and mind content!

MY LAST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS.

(_A Parenthesis_.)

I can't say just how many walks she and I had taken together before

this one. I found the effect of going out every morning was decidedly

favorable on her health. Two pleasing dimples, the places for which

were just marked when she came, played, shadowy, in her freshening

cheeks when she smiled and nodded good-morning to me from the

schoolhouse-steps.

I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. At any rate, if I

should try to report all that I said during the first half-dozen walks

we took together, I fear that I might receive a gentle hint from my

friends the publishers, that a separate volume, at my own risk and

expense, would be the proper method of bringing them before the

public.

--I would have a woman as true as Death. At the first real lie which

works from the heart outward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into

a better world, where she can have an angel for a governess, and feed

on strange fruits which will make her all over again, even to her

bones and marrow.--Whether gifted with the accident of beauty or not,

she should have been moulded in the rose-red clay of Love, before the

breath of life made a moving mortal of her. Love-capacity is a

congenital endowment; and I think, after a while, one gets to know the

warm-hued natures it belongs to from the pretty pipe-clay counterfeits

of it.--Proud she may be, in the sense of respecting herself; but

pride, in the sense of contemning others less gifted than herself,

deserves the two lowest circles of a vulgar woman's Inferno, where the

punishments are Small-pox and Bankruptcy.--She who nips off the end of

a brittle courtesy, as one breaks the tip of an icicle, to bestow upon

those whom she ought cordially and kindly to recognize, proclaims the

fact that she comes not merely of low blood, but of bad blood.

Consciousness of unquestioned position makes people gracious in proper

measure to all; but if a woman puts on airs with her real equals, she

has something about herself or her family she is ashamed of, or ought

to be. Middle, and more than middle-aged people, who know family

histories, generally see through it. An official of standing was rude

to me once. Oh, that is the maternal grandfather,--said a wise old

friend to me,--he was a boor.--Better too few words, from the woman we

love, than too many: while she is silent, Nature is working for her;

while she talks, she is working for herself.--Love is sparingly

soluble in the words of men; therefore they speak much of it; but one

syllable of woman's speech can dissolve more of it than a man's heart

can hold.

--Whether I said any or all of these things to the schoolmistress, or

not,--whether I stole them out of Lord Bacon,--whether I cribbed them

from Balzac,--whether I dipped them from the ocean of Tupperian

wisdom,--or whether I have just found them in my head, laid there by

that solemn fowl, Experience, (who, according to my observation,

cackles oftener than she drops real live eggs,) I cannot say. Wise men

have said more foolish things,--and foolish men, I don't doubt, have

said as wise things. Anyhow, the schoolmistress and I had pleasant

walks and long talks, all of which I do not feel bound to report.

--You are a stranger to me, Ma'am.--I don't doubt you would like to

know all I said to the schoolmistress.--I sha'n't do it;--I had rather

get the publishers to return the money you have invested in this.

Besides, I have forgotten a good deal of it. I shall tell only what I

like of what I remember.

--My idea was, in the first place, to search out the picturesque spots

which the city affords a sight of, to those who have eyes. I know a

good many, and it was a pleasure to look at them in company with my

young friend. There were the shrubs and flowers in the Franklin-Place

front-yards or borders; Commerce is just putting his granite foot upon

them. Then there are certain small seraglio-gardens, into which one

can get a peep through the crevices of high fences,--one in Myrtle

Street, or backing on it,--here and there one at the North and South

Ends. Then the great elms in Essex Street. Then the stately

horse-chestnuts in that vacant lot in Chambers Street, which hold

their outspread hands over your head, (as I said in my poem the other

day,) and look as if they were whispering, "May grace, mercy, and

peace be with you!"--and the rest of that benediction. Nay, there are

certain patches of ground, which, having lain neglected for a time,

Nature, who always has her pockets full of seeds, and holes in all her

pockets, has covered with hungry plebeian growths, which fight for

life with each other, until some of them get broad-leaved and

succulent, and you have a coarse vegetable tapestry which Raphael

would not have disdained to spread over the foreground of his

masterpiece. The Professor pretends that he found such a one in

Charles Street, which, in its dare-devil impudence of rough-and-tumble

vegetation, beat the pretty-behaved flower-beds of the Public Garden

as ignominiously as a group of young tatterdemalions playing

pitch-and-toss beats a row of Sunday-school-boys with their teacher at

their head.

But then the Professor has one of his burrows in that region, and puts

everything in high colors relating to it. That is his way about

everything.--I hold any man cheap,--he said,--of whom nothing stronger

can be uttered than that all his geese are swans.----How is that,

Professor?--said I;--I should have set you down for one of that

sort.--Sir,--said he,--I am proud to say, that Nature has so far

enriched me, that I cannot own so much as a _duck_ without seeing in

it as pretty a swan as ever swam the basin in the garden of the

Luxembourg. And the Professor showed the whites of his eyes devoutly,

like one returning thanks after a dinner of many courses.

I don't know anything sweeter than this leaking in of Nature through

all the cracks in the walls and floors of cities. You heap up a

million tons of hewn rocks on a square mile or two of earth which was

green once. The trees look down from the hill-sides and ask each

other, as they stand on tiptoe,--"What are these people about?" And

the small herbs at their feet look up and whisper back,--"We will go

and see." So the small herbs pack themselves up in the least possible

bundles, and wait until the wind steals to them at night and

whispers,--"Come with me." Then they go softly with it into the great

city,--one to a cleft in the pavement, one to a spout on the roof, one

to a seam in the marbles over a rich gentleman's bones, and one to the

grave without a stone where nothing but a man is buried,--and there

they grow, looking down on the generations of men from mouldy roofs,

looking up from between the less-trodden pavements, looking out

through iron cemetery-railings. Listen to them, when there is only a

light breath stirring, and you will hear them saying to each

other,--"Wait awhile!" The words run along the telegraph of those

narrow green lines that border the roads leading from the city, until

they reach the slope of the hills, and the trees repeat in low murmurs

to each other,--"Wait awhile!" By-and-by the flow of life in the

streets ebbs, and the old leafy inhabitants--the smaller tribes always

in front--saunter in, one by one, very careless seemingly, but very

tenacious, until they swarm so that the great stones gape from each

other with the crowding of their roots, and the feldspar begins to be

picked out of the granite to find them food. At last the trees take up

their solemn line of march, and never rest until they have encamped in

the market-place. Wait long enough and you will find an old doting oak

hugging a huge worn block in its yellow underground arms; that was the

corner-stone of the State-House. Oh, so patient she is, this

imperturbable Nature!

--Let us cry!--

But all this has nothing to do with my walks and talks with the

schoolmistress. I did not say that I would not tell you something

about them. Let me alone, and I shall talk to you more than I ought

to, probably. We never tell our secrets to people that pump for them.

Books we talked about, and education. It was her duty to know

something of these, and of course she did. Perhaps I was somewhat more

learned than she, but I found that the difference between her reading

and mine was like that of a man's and a woman's dusting a library. The

man flaps about with a bunch of feathers; the woman goes to work

softly with a cloth. She does not raise half the dust, nor fill her

own eyes and mouth with it,--but she goes into all the corners, and

attends to the leaves as much as the covers.--Books are the _negative_

pictures of thought, and the more sensitive the mind that receives

their images, the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced. A

woman, (of the right kind,) reading after a man, follows him as Ruth

followed the reapers of Boaz, and her gleanings are often the finest

of the wheat.

But it was in talking of Life that we came most nearly together. I

thought I knew something about that,--that I could speak or write

about it somewhat to the purpose.

To take up this fluid earthly being of ours as a sponge sucks up

water,--to be steeped and soaked in its realities as a hide fills its

pores lying seven years in a tan-pit,--to have winnowed every wave of

it as a mill-wheel works up the stream that runs through the flume

upon its float-boards,--to have curled up in the keenest spasms and

flattened out in the laxest languors of this breathing-sickness, which

keeps certain parcels of matter uneasy for three or four score

years,--to have fought all the devils and clasped all the angels of

its delirium,--and then, just at the point when the white-hot passions

have cooled down to cherry-red, plunge our experience into the

ice-cold stream of some human language or other, one might think would

end in a rhapsody with something of spring and temper in it. All this

I thought my power and province.

The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once in a while one meets with

a single soul greater than all the living pageant that passes before

it. As the pale astronomer sits in his study with sunken eyes and thin

fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a balance, so there are

meek, slight women who have weighed all that this planetary life can

offer, and hold it like a bauble in the palm of their slender hands.

This was one of them. Fortune had left her, sorrow had baptized her;

the routine of labor and the loneliness of almost friendless city-life

were before her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil face, gradually

regaining a cheerfulness that was often sprightly, as she became

interested in the various matters we talked about and places we

visited, I saw that eye and lip and every shifting lineament were made

for love,--unconscious of their sweet office as yet, and meeting the

cold aspect of Duty with the natural graces which were meant for the

reward of nothing less than the Great Passion.

----I never spoke one word of love to the schoolmistress in the course

of these pleasant walks. It seemed to me that we talked of everything

but love on that particular morning. There was, perhaps, a little more

timidity and hesitancy on my part than I have commonly shown among our

people at the boarding-house. In fact, I considered myself the master

at the breakfast-table; but, somehow, I could not command myself just

then so well as usual. The truth is, I had secured a passage to

Liverpool in the steamer which was to leave at noon,--with the

condition, however, of being released in case circumstances occurred

to detain me. The schoolmistress knew nothing about all this, of

course, as yet.

It was on the Common that we were walking. The _mall_, or boulevard of

our Common, you know, has various branches leading from it in

different directions. One of these runs downward from opposite Joy

Street southward across the whole length of the Common to Boylston

Street. We called it the long path, and were fond of it.

I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably robust habit) as we

came opposite the head of this path on that morning. I think I tried

to speak twice without making myself distinctly audible. At last I got

out the question,----Will you take the long path with me?--

Certainly,--said the schoolmistress,--with much pleasure.----Think,--I

said,--before you answer; if you take the long path with me now, I

shall interpret it that we are to part no more!----The schoolmistress

stepped back with a sudden movement, as if an arrow had struck her.

One of the long granite blocks used as seats was hard by,--the one you

may still see close by the Gingko-tree.----Pray, sit down,--I

said.----No, no,--she answered, softly,--I will walk the _long path_

with you!

----The old gentleman who sits opposite met us walking, arm in arm,

about the middle of the long path, and said, very charmingly,--"Good

morning, my dears!"

LITERARY NOTICES.

_The Life of John Fitch, the Inventor of the Steamboat_. By THOMPSON

WESTCOTT. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.

What would not honest Sancho have given for a good biography of the

man who invented sleep? And will not the adventurous pleasure-tourist,

who has been jarred, jammed, roasted, coddled, and suffocated in a

railroad-car for a whole night, with two days to sandwich it, on being

deposited in an airy stateroom for the last two hundred miles of his

journey, think the man who invented the steamboat deserving of a

"first-rate" life? We well remember the time when nobody suspected

that person, whoever he might be,--and nobody much cared who he

was,--of any relationship to the individual whose memory Sancho

blessed, so great was the churning in the palaces that then floated.

But in our present boats this unpalace-like operation has been so

localized and mollified as to escape the notice of all but the

greenest and most inquisitive passengers. And now that we find the

luxury of travelling by water actually superior to that of staying at

home on land, we begin to feel a budding veneration for the man who

first found out that steam could be substituted, with such marvellous

advantage, for helpless dependence on the wind and miserable tugging

at oars and setting-poles. Who was he? What circumstances conspired to

shape his life and project it with so notable an aim? How did he look,

act, think, on all matters of human concernment? Here comes a book,

assuming in its title that one John Fitch, of whom his generation

seems not to have thought enough to paint his portrait, was the

inventor of the steamboat. It professes to be "The Life of John

Fitch"; but we are sorry to say it is rather a documentary argument to

prove that he was "the inventor of the steamboat." As an argument, it

is both needless and needlessly strong. We already knew to a certainty

that nobody could present a better claim to that honor than John

Fitch. True, the _idea_ did not wait for him. The engine could not

have been working a hundred years in the world without giving birth to

that. But till Watt invented it anew in 1782, by admitting the steam

alternately at both ends of the cylinder, it was too awkward and

clumsy to become a practical navigator. Moreover, though it could pump

admirably, it had not been taught to turn a crank. The French assert,

that experiments in steam-propulsion were made on the Seine, by Count

Auxiron and Perrier, in 1774, and on the Saone, by De Jouffroy, in

1782; but we know they led to no practical results, and the knowledge

of them probably did not, for some years, travel beyond the limits of

the French language. There is no satisfactory evidence that a boat was

ever moved by steam, within the boundaries of Anglo-Saxondom, before

John Fitch did it, on the 27th of July, 1786. His successful and every

way brilliant experiment on that occasion led directly to practical

results,--to wit, the formation of a company, embracing some of the

foremost men of Philadelphia, which built a small steam-packet for the

conveyance of passengers, and ran it during three summers, ending with

that of 1790. The company then failed, and broke poor Fitch's heart,

simply because the investment had not thus far proved lucrative, and

they were unwilling to make the further advances requisite to carry

out his moderate and reasonable plans. The only person who ever

claimed, in English, to have made a steamboat experiment before Fitch,

was James Rumsey, of Virginia, who, in 1788, published some testimony

to show that he had done it as early as April, 1786, that he had

broached the idea, _confidentially_, two years earlier, and that Fitch

_might_ have received it from one who violated his confidence. Fitch

promptly annihilated these pretences by a pamphlet, a reprint of which

maybe found in the Patent-Office Report for 1850. This, and a

contribution to Sparks's "American Biography," by Col. Charles

Whittlesey, of Ohio, seem quite sufficient to establish the historical

fact that John Fitch was the father of steam-navigation, whoever may

have been its prophets. Though the infant, with the royal blood of

both Neptune and Pluto in its veins, and a brand-new empire waiting to

crown it, fell into a seventeen years' swoon, during which Fitch died,

and the public at large forgot all that he had ever said or done, its

life did not become extinct. It was not created, but revived, by

Fulton, aided by the refreshing effusion of Chancellor Livingston's

money. We did not need a new book to make us more certain of these

facts, but we did need a more thorough biography of John Fitch, and,

with great respect for the industry and faithfulness of Mr. Westcott,

it is our opinion that we do still. He has demonstrated that the

materials for such a work are abundant, and a glance at the mortal

career of Fitch will show him to be an uncommonly interesting subject.

John Fitch was born in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1743. At the age of

five, while his father was absent from home, courting his stepmother,

he heroically extinguished a fire of blazing flax, which would

otherwise have consumed the house, and while he was smarting from his

burns was cruelly beaten by an elder brother, who misapprehended the

case of the little boy, very much as the world did that of the man he

became. The domestic discipline he encountered under the paternal roof

was of the severest New England pattern of those days, and between its

theology and its economy he grew out of shape, like a thrifty pumpkin

between two rocks. He loved to learn, but had few books and little

schooling. His taste tended to mechanism, and he was apprenticed to a

stingy clock-maker, who obliged him to work on his farm and kept him

ignorant of his trade. Getting his liberty at last, he set up

brass-founding, on a capital of twenty shillings, and made money at

it. Then he went into the manufacture of potash, in which he was less

successful. He married a wife who proved more caustic than the potash

and more than a match for his patience. He settled his affairs so as

to leave her all his little property in the most manageable shape, and

left her with two children, to seek a separate fortune in the wide

world. The war of the Revolution found him at Trenton, New Jersey, a

man of some substance, acquired as a silversmith and peddler of silver

and brass sleeve-buttons of his own manufacture. It made him an

officer and then an armorer in the Continental service. As a

fabricator of patriotic weapons, he incurred the displeasure of his

Methodist brethren by working on the Sabbath, and lost his orthodoxy

in his disgust at their rebukes. Towards the close of the Revolution,

getting poor in fact by getting rich in Continental money, he

endeavored to save himself by investing in Virginia land-warrants,

went to Kentucky as a surveyor, and became possessed of sixteen

hundred acres of that wilderness. On a second expedition down the

Ohio, early in 1782, he fell into the hands of the savages, in the

most melodramatic style, was led captive through the vast forests and

swamps to Detroit, had a very characteristic and remarkable

prison-experience under British authority at Prison Island, was

exchanged, and by a sea-voyage reached his home in Bucks County,

Pennsylvania, at the close of the same year. Immediately after the

establishment of peace, he formed a company to speculate in Ohio

lands, and made extensive surveys for the purpose of forestalling the

best locations. Mr. Westcott's book confuses this portion of his

chronology by misprinting two or three dates, on the 113th page. The

hopeful game was spoiled by unexpected measures of the Confederated

government; but Fitch's explorations had deeply impressed him with the

sublime character of the Western rivers, and when, in April, 1785, the

thought first struck him that steam could easily make them navigable

upwards as well as downwards, he cared no more for lands. He had

noticed the mechanical power of steam, but had never seen an engine,

and did not know that one existed out of his own brain. This is the

less wonderful, seeing there were only three then in America, and his

science extended only to arithmetic. When his minister showed him a

drawing of Newcomen's engine, in "Martin's Philosophy," he was

chagrined to find that his invention had been anticipated in regard to

the mode of producing the power, but he was confirmed in his belief of

its availability for navigation. With no better resources than a

blacksmith's shop could furnish, he set himself at work to make a

steam-engine to test his theory. His success is one of those wonders

of human ingenuity struggling with difficulties, moral, financial, and

physical combined, which deserve both a Homer and a Macaulay to

celebrate and record them. He was supposed by most people, and almost

by himself, to have gone crazy. If anything, at this day, is more

incredible than the feat which he accomplished, it is the derision

with which the public viewed his labors, decried his success, and

sneered at the rags which betokened the honesty of his poverty. To

every one who had brains capable of logic, he had demonstrated the

feasibility of his visions. But no amount of even physical

demonstration, then possible, could bring out the funds requisite to

pecuniary profit, against the head-wind of public scorn. It whistled

down his high hopes of fortune. At last, dropping the file and the

hammer, he took the pen, determined, that, if others must get rich by

his invention, he would at least save for himself the fame of it. The

result of his literary labors was an autobiography of great frankness

and detail, extending to several hundred pages, and embracing almost

every conceivable violation of standard English orthography, with

which he seems to have had very little acquaintance or sympathy. It

was placed under seal in the Philadelphia Library, not to be opened

for thirty years. At the expiration of that period, in 1823, the seal

was broken, and the quaint old manuscript, with the stamp of honest

truth on every word, stood ready to reveal what the world is but just

beginning to "want to know" about John Fitch. He afterwards went to

Europe to promote his steamboat interests,--to little purpose,

--wandered about a few years, settled in Bardstown, Kentucky,

made a model steamboat with a brass engine, drowned disappointment in

the drink of that country, and at last departed by his own will, two

years before the close of the last century. A life so full of truth

that is stranger than fiction ought not to be treated in the

Dry-as-dust style, quite so largely as Mr. Westcott has done it.

* * * * *

_Life Beneath the Waters; or, The Aquarium in America_. Illustrated by

Plates and Wood-Cuts drawn from Life. By ARTHUR M. EDWARDS. New York:

1858.

This book has appeared since the notice in our July number of two

English works on the Aquarium. Like so many books by which our

literature is discredited, it is a work got up hastily to meet a

public demand, and is deficient in method, thoroughness, and accuracy.

There is much repetition in it, and the observations of its author

seem to have been limited to the waters around New York, and to have

extended over but a short period. In spite of these and other minor

defects, it may be recommended as containing much useful information

for those just beginning an aquarium and forming an acquaintance with

the sea.

We trust that a misprint in our former notice has not brought

disappointment to any of our readers, by leading them to expose their

aquaria to too much sunshine; for the sunshine should be "_not_

enough" (and not, as it was printed, "_hot_ enough") "to raise the

water to a temperature above that of the outer air."

* * * * *

_The Exiles of Florida: or the Crimes committed by our Government

against the Maroons, who fled from South Carolina and other Slave

States, seeking Protection under Spanish Laws_. By JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS.

Columbus, Ohio: Follett, Foster, & Co. 1858.

A cruel story this, Mr. Giddings tells us. Too cruel, but too true. It

is full of pathetic and tragic interest, and melts and stirs the heart

at once with pity for the sufferers, and with anger, that sins not, at

their mean and ruthless oppressors. Every American citizen should read

it; for it is an indictment which recites crimes which have been

committed in his name, perpetrated by troops and officials in his

service, and all done at his expense. The whole nation is responsible

at the bar of the world and before the tribunal of posterity for these

atrocities, devised by members of its Cabinet and its Congress,

directed by its Presidents, and executed by its armies and its courts.

The cruelties of Alva in the Netherlands, which make the pen of Motley

glow as with fire as he tells them, the _dragonnades_ which scorched

over the fairest regions of France after the Revocation of the Edict

of Nantes, have a certain excuse, as being instigated by a sincere,

though misguided religious zeal. For Philip II. and Louis XIV. had, at

least, a fanatical belief that they were doing God service by those

holocausts of his children; while no motive inspired these massacres,

tortures, and banishments, but the most sordid rapacity and avarice,

the lowest and basest passions of the human breast.

And so carefully has the truth of this story been covered up with

lies, that, probably, very few indeed of the people of the Free States

have any just idea of the origin, character, and purposes of the

Seminole Wars, or of the character of the race against which they were

waged. And yet there is no episode in American history more full of

romantic interest, of heroic struggles, and of moving griefs. We have

been taught to believe that these wars were provoked by incursions of

the savages of Florida on the frontier, and, if the truth could not be

concealed, that an incidental motive of our war of extermination

against them was to be found in the sanctuary which the fugitive

slaves of the neighboring States found in their fastnesses. The

general impression has been, that these were mainly runaways of recent

date, who had made their escape from contemporary masters. How many of

our readers know that for more than three quarters of a century before

the purchase of Florida there had been a nation of negroes established

there, enjoying the wild freedom they loved, mingling and gradually

becoming identified with the Indians, who had made it their city of

refuge from slavery also? For the slaveholders of Carolina had no

scruples against enslaving Indians any more than Africans, until it

was discovered that the untamable nature of the red man made him an

unprofitable and a dangerous servant. These Indian slaves fled into

the wilderness, which is now the State of Georgia, pushing their way

even to the peninsula of Florida, and were followed, in their flight

and to their asylum, by many of their black companions in bondage. For

near seventy-five years this little nation lived happy and contented,

till the State of Georgia commenced the series of piratical incursions

into their country, then a Spanish dependency, from which they were

never afterwards free; the nation at last taking up the slaveholders'

quarrel and prosecuting it to the bitter and bloody end.

This whole story is told, and well told, by Mr. Giddings. And a most

touching picture it is. First, the original evasion of the slaves into

that peninsular wilderness, which they reclaimed as far as the supply

of their simple wants demanded. They planted, they hunted, they

multiplied their cattle, they intermarried with their Indian friends

and allies, their children and their children's children grew up

around them, knowing of slavery only by traditionary legend. The

original founders of the tribe passed away, and their sons and

grandsons possessed their corn-fields and their hunting-grounds in

peace. For many years no fears disturbed their security. Under the

Spanish rule they were safe and happy. Then comes the gradual

gathering of the cloud on the edges of their wilderness, its first

fitful and irregular flashes, till it closes over their heads and

bursts upon them in universal ruin and devastation. Their heroic

resistance to the invasion of the United States troops follows,

sublime from its very desperation. A more unequal contest was never

fought. On one side one of the mightiest powers on earth, with endless

stores of men and money at its beck,--and on the other a handful of

outcasts fighting for their homes, and the liberties, in no

metaphorical sense, of themselves, their wives, and their children,

and protracting the fight for as many years as the American Revolution

lasted.

Then succeeded the victory of Slavery, and the reduction to hopeless

bondage of multitudes who had been for generations free, on claim of

pretended descendants of imaginary owners, by the decision of petty

government-officials, without trial or real examination. More than

five hundred persons, some of them recent fugitives, but mostly men

born free, were thus reduced to slavery at a cost to us all of forty

millions of dollars, or eighty thousand dollars for each recovered

slave! Then comes their removal to the Cherokee lands, west of

Arkansas, under the pledge of the faith of the nation, plighted by

General Jessup, its authorized agent, that they should be sent to the

West, and settled in a village separate from the Seminole Indians, and

that, in the mean time, they should be protected, should not be

separated, "nor any of them be sold to white men or others." This,

however, was not a legitimate issue of a war waged solely for the

reduction of these exiles to slavery; and so the doubts of President

Polk as to the construction of this treaty were solved by Mr. John Y.

Mason, of Virginia, who was sandwiched in between two Free-State

Attorney-Generals for this single piece of dirty work, (of which

transaction see a most curious account, pp. 328-9 of this book,) and

who enlightened the Presidential mind by the information, that, though

the exiles were entitled to their freedom, under the treaty, and had a

right to remain in the towns assigned to them, "the Executive _could

not in any manner interfere to protect them_!"

The bordering Creeks, who by long slave-holding had sunk to the level

of the whites around them, longed to seize on these valuable

neighbors, and, indeed, they claimed rights of property in them as

fugitives in fact from themselves. The exiles were assured by the

President that they "_had the right to remain in their villages, free

from all interference or interruption from the Creeks_." Trusting to

the plighted word of the Head of the Nation, they built their huts and

planted their ground, and began again their little industries and

enjoyments.

But the sight of so many able-bodied negroes, belonging only to

themselves, and setting an evil example to the slaves in the spectacle

of an independent colony of blacks, was too tempting and too

irritating to be resisted. A slave-dealer appeared amongst the Creeks

and offered to pay one hundred dollars for every Floridian exile they

would seize and deliver to him,--he taking the risk of the title. Two

hundred armed Creek warriors made a foray into the colony and seized

all they could secure. They were repulsed, but carried their prisoners

with them and delivered them to the tempter, receiving the stipulated

pieces of silver for their reward. The Seminole agent had the

prisoners brought before the nearest Arkansas judge by Habeas Corpus,

and the whole matter was reviewed by this infamous magistrate, who

overruled the opinion of the Attorney-General as to their right to

reside in their villages, overrode the decision of the President,

repealed the treaty-stipulations, pronounced the title of the Creek

Indians, and consequently that of their vendee, legal and perfect, and

directed the kidnapped captives to be delivered up to the claimant! We

regret that Mr. Giddings has omitted the name of this wretch, and we

hope that in a future edition he will tell the world how to catalogue

this choice specimen in its collection of judicial monsters.

Then comes the last scene of this drama of exile. Finding that there

was no rest for the sole of their foot in the United States, these

peeled and hunted men resolved to turn their backs upon the country

that had thus cruelly entreated them, and to seek a new home within

the frontiers of Mexico. The sad procession began its march westward

by night, the warriors keeping themselves always in readiness for an

attack. The Creeks, finding that their prey had escaped them, went in

pursuit, but were bravely repulsed and fled, leaving their dead upon

the field,--the greatest disgrace that can befall, according to the

code of Indian honor. The exiles then pursued their march into Mexico

without further molestation. There, in a fertile and picturesque

region, they have established themselves and resumed the pursuits of

peaceful life. But they have not been permitted to live in peace even

there. At least one marauding party, in 1853, was organized in Texas,

and went in search of adventures towards the new settlement. Of the

particulars of the expedition we have no account. Only, it is known

that it returned without captives, and, as the Texan papers announcing

the fact admitted, "_with slightly diminished numbers_." How long they

will be permitted to dwell unmolested in their new homes no one can

say. Complaints are already abroad that the escape of slaves is

promoted by the existence of this colony, which receives and protects

them. And when the Government shall be ordered by its Slave-holding

Directory to add another portion of Mexico to the Area of Freedom,

these "outrages" will be sure to be found in the catalogue of

grievances to be redressed. Then they will have to dislodge again and

fly yet farther from before the face of their hereditary oppressors.

Mr. Giddings has done his task admirably well. It is worthy to be the

crowning work of his long life of public service. His style is of that

best kind which is never remarked upon, but serves as a clear medium

through which the events he portrays are seen without distortion or

exaggeration. He has done his country one more service in entire

consistency with those that have filled up the whole course of his

honorable and beneficent life. We have said that this is fit to be the

crowning work of Mr. Giddings's life; but we trust that it is far from

being the last that he will do for his country. A winter such as

rounds his days is fuller of life and promise than a century of vulgar

summers. He has won for himself an honorable and enduring place in the

hearts and memories of men by the fidelity to principle and the

unfaltering courage of his public course. Of the ignoble hundreds who

have flitted through the Capitol, since he first took his place there,

"Heads without name, no more remembered,"

his is one of the two or three that are household words on the lips of

the nation. And it will so remain and be familiar in the mouths of

posterity, with a fame as pure as it is noble. The ear that hath _not_

heard him shall bless him, and the eye that hath _not_ seen him shall

give witness to him.

* * * * *

OBITUARY.

The conductors of "The Atlantic" have the painful duty of announcing

to their readers the death of CALVIN W. PHILLEO, author of "Akin by

Marriage," published in the earlier numbers of this magazine. The plot

of the story was sketched at length, and in the brain of the writer it

was complete; but no hand save his own could give it life and form: it

must remain an unfinished work. The mind of Mr. Philleo was singularly

clear, his observation of nature and character sharp and

discriminating, and his feeling for beauty, in its more placid forms,

was intense and pervading. His previous work, "Twice Married," and the

various sketches of New England life, with which the readers of

magazine literature are familiar, are sufficient to give him a high

place among novelists. He was warm in his friendships, pure in life,

and his early death will be lamented by a wide circle of friends. _In

pace!_