* * * * *

=_220._= CHAUCER'S LOVE OF NATURE.

He was the first great poet who really loved outward nature as the

source of conscious pleasurable emotion. The Troubadour hailed the

return of spring, but with him it was a piece of empty ritualism.

Chaucer took a true delight in the new green of the leaves, and the

return of singing birds--a delight as simple as that of Robin Hood:--

"In summer when the shaws be sheen,

And leaves be large and long,

It is full merry in fair forest

To hear the small birds' song."

He has never so much as heard of the burthen and the mystery of all

this unintelligible world. His flowers and trees and birds have never

bothered themselves with Spinoza. He himself sings more like a bird than

any other poet, because it never occurred to him, as to Goethe, that he

ought to do so. He pours himself out in sincere joy and thankfulness.

When we compare Spenser's imitations of him with the original passages,

we feel that the delight of the later poet was more in the expression

than in the thing itself. Nature, with him, is only to be transfigured

by art. We walk among Chaucer's sights and sounds; we listen to

Spenser's musical reproduction of them. In the same way the pleasure

which Chaucer takes in telling his stories, has, in itself, the effect

of consummate skill, and makes us follow all the windings of his fancy

with sympathetic interest. His best tales run on like one of our inland

rivers, sometimes hastening a little and turning upon themselves in

eddies, that dimple without retarding the current, sometimes loitering

smoothly, while here and there a quiet thought, a tender feeling, a

pleasant image, a golden-hearted verse, opens quietly as a water-lily to

float on the surface without breaking it into ripple.... Chaucer never

shows any signs of effort, and it is a main proof of his excellence that

he can be so inadequately sampled by detached passages, by single lines

taken away from the connection in which they contribute to the general

effect. He has that continuity of thought, that evenly prolonged power,

and that delightful equanimity, which characterize the higher orders of

mind. There is something in him of the disinterestedness that made the

Greeks masters in art. His phrase is never importunate. His simplicity

is that of elegance, not of poverty. The quiet unconcern with which he

says his best things is peculiar to him among English poets, though

Goldsmith, Addison, and Thackeray, have approached it in prose. He

prattles inadvertently away, and all the while, like the princess in the

story, lets fall a pearl at every other word. It is such a piece of

good luck to be natural. It is the good gift which the fairy god-mother

brings to her prime favorites in the cradle. If not genius, it is alone

what makes genius amiable in the arts. If a man have it not he will

never find it; for when it is sought it is gone.

* * * * *

=_Edgar Allen Poe, 1811-1849._= (Manual, p. 510.)

From "The Masque of the Red Death."

=_221._= CHIMING OF THE CLOCK.

... The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet

tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in

heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this

chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the

decorations. The panes here were scarlet--a deep blood color. Now in no

one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the

profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro, or depended

from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or

candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed

the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing

a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and

so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of

gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber,

the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings

through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced

so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there

were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at

all.

It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western

wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a

dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit

of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen

lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep, and

exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at

each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained

to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound;

and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a

brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the

clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the

more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows, as if in

confused revery or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a

light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at

each other and smiled, as if at their own nervousness and folly, and

made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the

clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the

lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred

seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of

the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and

meditation as before.

* * * * *

From his "Essays."

=_222._= The Philosophy of Composition.

There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of constructing

a story. Either history affords a thesis--or one is suggested by an

incident of the day--or, at best, the author sets himself to work in

the combination of striking events to form merely the basis of his

narrative--designing, generally, to fill in with description, dialogue,

or autorial comment, whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, from

page to page, render themselves apparent.

I prefer commencing with the consideration of an _effect_, keeping

originality _always_ in view--for he is false to himself who ventures to

dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest.

I say to myself, in the first place, "Of the innumerable effects, or

impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally)

the soul, is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion,

select?" Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid, effect, I

consider whether it can be best wrought by incident or tone, whether by

ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity

both of incident and tone--afterward looking about me (or rather within)

for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the

construction of the effect.

I have often thought how interesting a magazine paper might be written

by any author who would--that is to say, who could--detail, step by

step, the process by which any one of his compositions attained its

ultimate point of completion. Why such a paper has never been given to

the world, I am much at a loss to say--but, perhaps, the autorial vanity

has had more to do with the omission than any one other cause. Most

writers, poets in especial, prefer having it understood that they

compose by a species of fine frenzy, an ecstatic intuition, and would

positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes,

at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought--at the true

purposes seized only at the last moment--at the innumerable glimpses of

idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view--at the fully matured

fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable--at the cautious selections

and rejections--at the painful erasures and interpolations--in a

word, at the wheels and pinions, the tackle for scene-shifting--the

step-ladders and demon-traps--the cock's feathers, the red paint and

the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred,

constituted the properties of the literary _histrio_.

I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by no means common in

which an author is at all in condition to retrace the steps by which his

conclusions have been attained. In general, suggestions having arisen

pell-mell, are pursued and forgotten in a similar manner.

* * * * *

=_Henry T. Tuckerman, 1813-._=

From "New England Philosophy," an Essay from "The Optimist."

=_223._= THE HEART SUPERIOR TO THE INTELLECT.

Constant supplies of knowledge to the intellect, and the exclusive

cultivation of reason, may, indeed, make a pedant and a logician; but

the probability is, these benefits--if such they are--will be gained at

the expense of the soul. Sentiment, in its broadest acceptation, is as

essential to the true enjoyment and grace of life as mind. Technical

information, and that quickness of apprehension which New Englanders

call smartness, are not so valuable to a human being as sensibility to

the beautiful, and a spontaneous appreciation of the divine influences

which fill the realms of vision and of sound, and the world of action

and, feeling. The tastes, affections, and sentiments are more absolutely

the man than his talents or acquirements. And yet it is by, and through,

the latter that we are apt to estimate character, of which they are

at best but fragmentary evidences. It is remarkable that in the New

Testament, allusions to the intellect are so rare, while the "heart" and

the "spirit we are of" are ever appealed to....

To what end are society, popular education, churches, and all the

machinery of culture, if no living truth is elicited which fertilizes,

as well as enlightens. Shakespeare undoubtedly owed his marvelous

insight into the human soul, to his profound sympathy with man. He might

have conned whole libraries on the philosophy of the passions, he might

have coldly observed facts for years, and never have conceived of

jealousy like Othello's,--the remorse of Macbeth, or love like that of

Juliet....

Sometimes, in musing upon genius in its simpler manifestations, it seems

as if the great art of human culture consisted chiefly in preserving the

glow and freshness of the heart. It is certain that, in proportion as

its merely mental strength and attainment take the place of natural

sentiment, in proportion as we acquire the habit of receiving all

impressions through the reason, the teachings of Nature grow indistinct

and cold.... It is when we are overcome, and the pride of intellect

vanquished before the truth of nature, when instead of coming to a

logical decision we are led to bow in profound reverence before the

mysteries of life, when we are led back to childhood, or up to God, by

some powerful revelation of the sage or minstrel, it is then our natures

grow. To this end is all art. Exquisite vocalism, beautiful statuary,

and painting, and all true literature, have not for their great object

to employ the ingenuity of prying critics, or furnish the world with a

set of new ideas, but to move the whole nature by the perfection and

truthfulness of their appeal. There is a certain atmosphere exhaled from

the inspired page of genius, which gives vitality to the sentiments, and

through these, quickens the mental powers. And this is the chief good of

books.

* * * * *

=_H.N. Hudson, 1814-._= (Manual, pp. 480, 501.)

From "Preface to the Works of Shakespeare."

=_224._= Shakespeare's Works Instructive.

It is true, he often lays on us burdens of passion that would not be

borne in any other writer. But whether he wrings the heart with pity, or

freezes the blood with terror, or fires the soul with indignation, the

genial reader still rises from his pages refreshed. The reason of which

is, instruction keeps pace with excitement: he strengthens the mind

in proportion as he loads it. He has been called the great master of

passion: doubtless he is so; yet he makes us think as intensely as he

requires us to feel; while opening the deepest fountains of the heart,

he at the same time unfolds the highest energies of the head. Nay, with

such consummate art does he manage the fiercest tempests of our being,

that in a healthy mind the witnessing of them is always attended with

an overbalance of pleasure. With the very whirlwinds of passion he so

blends the softening and alleviating influences of poetry, that they

relish of nothing but sweetness and health.... He is not wont to exhibit

either utterly worthless or utterly faultless monsters; persons too

good, or too bad, to exist; too high to be loved, or too low to be

pitied; even his worst characters (unless we should except Goneril and

Regan, and even their blood is red like ours) have some slight fragrance

of humanity about them, some indefinable touches, which redeem them from

utter hatred and execration, and keep them within the pale of human

sympathy, or at least of human pity.

* * * * *

=_Mary Henderson Eastman,[53]_= about =_1815-._=

From "The American Aboriginal Port Folio."

=_225._= Lake Itasca, the Source of the Mississippi.

There it lay--the beautiful lake--swaying its folds of crystal water

between the hills that guarded it from its birth. There it lay, placid

as a sleeping child, the tall pines on the surrounding summits standing

like so many motionless and watchful sentinels for its protection.

There was the sequestered birthplace of that mighty mass of waters,

that, leaving the wilderness of beauty where they lived undisturbed and

unknown, wound their way through many a desolate prairie, and fiercely

lashed the time-worn bluffs, whose sides were as walls to the great

city, where lived and died the toiling multitude. The lake was as some

fair and pure, maiden, in early youth, so beautiful, so full of repose

and truth, that it was impossible to look and not to love.... There was

but one landing to the lake, our travellers found. It was on a small

island, that they called Schoolcraft's Island. On a tall spruce tree

they raised the American flag. There was enough in the novelty of the

scenery, and of the event, to interest the white men of the party. There

was a solemnity mingled with their pleased emotions; for who had made

this grand picture, stretching out in its beauty and majesty before

them? What were they, in comparison with the great and good Being upon

whose works they were gazing?

[Footnote 53: This lady--a native of Virginia--has written several

interesting books, chiefly relating to Indian tradition.]

* * * * *

=_226._= A PLEA FOR THE INDIANS.

The light of the great council-fire--its blaze once illumined the entire

country we now call our own--is faintly gleaming out its unsteady and

dying rays. Our fathers were guests, and warmed themselves by its

hospitable rays; now we are lords, and rule with an iron hand over those

who received kindly, and entertained generously, the wanderer who came

from afar to worship his God according to his own will. The very hearth

where moulder the ashes of this once never-ceasing fire, is becoming

desolate, the decaying embers sometimes starting into a brief

brilliancy, and then fading into a gloom more sad, more silent, than

ever. Soon will be scattered, as by the winds of heaven, the last ashes

that remain. Think of it, O legislator! as thou standest in the Capitol,

the great council-hall of thy country; plead for them, "upon whose

pathway death's dark shadow falls."

* * * * *

=_Mary E. Moragne,[54] 1815-._=

From "The Huguenot Town."

=_227._= RUINS OF THE OLD FRENCH SETTLEMENT.

An ignorance of the common methods of agriculture practised here, as

well as strong prejudices in favor of their former habits of living,

prevented them from seizing with avidity on large bodies of land, by

individual possession; but the site of a town being selected, a lot of

four acres was apportioned to every citizen. In a short time a hundred

houses had risen, in a regularly compact body, in the square of which

stood a building superior in size and construction to the rest....

... The town was soon busy with the industry of its tradesmen; silk and

flax were manufactured, whilst the cultivators of the soil were taxed

with the supply of corn and wine. The hum of cheerful voices arose

during the week, mingled with the interdicted songs of praise; and on

the Sabbath the quiet worshippers assembled in their rustic church,

listened with fervent response to that faithful pastor, who had been

their spiritual leader through perils by sea and land, and who now

directed their free, unrestrained devotion to the Lord of the forest.

... The woods still wave on in melancholy grandeur, with the added glory

of near a hundred years; but they who once lived and worshipped beneath

them--where are they? Shades of my ancestors,--where? No crumbling

wreck, no mossy ruin, points the antiquarian research to the place of

their sojourn, or to their last resting-places! The traces of a narrow

trench, surrounding a square plat of ground, now covered with the

interlacing arms of hawthorn and wild honey-suckle, arrest the attention

as we are proceeding along a strongly beaten track in the deep woods,

and we are assured that this is the site of the "old French town" which

has given its name to the portion of country around.

[Footnote 54: One of the best female writers of South Carolina, who has

of late years laid aside her pen.]

* * * * *

=_Richard H. Dana, Jr., 1815-._= (Manual, p. 504.)

From "Two years before the Mast."

=_228._= LOSS OF A MAN AT SEA.

Death is at all tunes solemn, but never so much so as at sea. A man dies

on shore; his body remains with his friends, and "the mourners go about

the streets;" but when a man falls overboard at sea and is lost, there

is a suddenness in the event, and a difficulty in realizing it, which

give to it an air of awful mystery. A man dies on shore--you follow his

body to the grave, and a stone marks the spot. You are often prepared

for the event. There is always something which helps you to realize it

when it happens, and to recall it when it has passed. A man is shot down

by your side in battle, and the mangled body remains an object, and a

real evidence; but at sea, the man is near you--at your side--you hear

his voice, and in an instant he is gone, and nothing but a vacancy shows

his loss. Then too, at sea--to use a homely but expressive phrase--you

miss a man so much. A dozen men are shut up together in a little bark,

upon the wide, wide sea, and for months and months see no forms and hear

no voices but their own, and one is taken suddenly from among them, and

they miss him at every turn. It is like losing a limb. There are no new

faces or new scenes to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth

in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night watch is

mustered. There is one less to take the wheel, and one less to lay out

with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound of his voice,

for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and each of your senses

feels the loss.

All these things make such a death peculiarly solemn, and the effect of

it remains upon the crew for some time. There is more kindness shown by

the officers to the crew, and by the crew to one another. There is more

quietness and seriousness. The oath and the loud laugh are gone. The

officers are more watchful, and the crew go more carefully aloft. The

lost man is seldom mentioned, or is dismissed with a sailor's rude

eulogy, "Well, poor George is gone. His cruise is up soon. He knew his

work, and did his duty, and was a good shipmate." Then usually follows

some allusion to another world, for sailors are almost all believers;

but their notions and opinions are unfixed, and at loose ends. They

say,--"God won't be hard upon the poor fellow," and seldom get beyond

the common phrase which seems to imply that their sufferings and hard

treatment here, will excuse them hereafter. _To work hard, live hard,

die hard, and go to hell after all_, would be hard indeed.

Yet a sailor's life is at best but a mixture of a little good with much

evil, and a little pleasure with much pain. The beautiful is linked with

the revolting, the sublime with the common-place, and the solemn with

the ludicrous.

We had hardly returned on board with our sad report, before an auction

was held of the poor man's clothes. The captain had first, however,

called all hands aft, and asked them if they were satisfied that

everything had been done to save the man, and if they thought there was

any use in remaining there longer. The crew all said that it was in

vain, for the man did not know how to swim, and was very heavily

dressed. So we then filled away and kept her off to her course.

* * * * *

=_Evert A. Duyckinck, 1816--._= (Manual, p. 502.)

Essay from "Arcturus."

=_229._= NEWSPAPERS.

No one, it has been said, ever takes up a newspaper without interest, or

lays it down without regret. There is a deeper truth in this observation

than at first thought strikes the mind; it is not the casual

disappointment at the loss of fine writing, or the absence of particular

topics of news, or the variety of subjects that dispel all deep-settled

reflection; but a newspaper is in some measure a picture of human life,

and we can no more read its various paragraphs with pleasure, than

we can look back upon the events of any single day with, unmingled

satisfaction.... A man may learn, sitting by his fireside, more than

an angel would desire to know of human life, by reading well a single

newspaper. It is an instrument of many tones, running through the whole

scale of humanity; from the lightest gayety to the gravest sadness; from

the large interests of nations to the humblest affairs of the smallest

individual. On its single page we read of Births, Marriages, and Deaths;

the daily, almost hourly, register of royalty, how it eat, walked, and

laughed; and the single incident the world deems worth recording of the

life of poverty--how it died. It is a picture of motley human life;

a poet's thought, or an orator's eloquence in one column, and the

condemnation of a pickpocket in another....

Doubtless it was a very satisfactory thing for a Roman poet, when the

wind was quiet, to get an audience about him, under a portico, and

unwind his well-written scroll for an hour or two; but there must have

been a vast deal of secret machinery, and influence, and agitation,

to keep up his name with the people. The followers of Pythagoras, in

another country, we know, said he had a golden leg, and this satisfied

the people that his philosophy was divine. Truly were they the dark ages

before the invention of newspapers. Besides, what became of literature

when the poet's voice in the public bath, or library, where he recited,

was drowned by the din of arms?...

What would we not give for a newspaper of the days of Homer, with

personal recollections of the contractors and commanders in the siege of

Troy; a reminiscence of Helen; the unedited fragments of Nestor; or a

traditional saying of Ulysses, who may be supposed too wise to have

published? What such a passage of literature would be to us, the journal

of to-day may be to some long distant age, when it is disentombed from

the crumbling corner-stone of some Astor House, Exchange, or Trinity

Church, on the deserted shore of an island, once New York. What

matters of curiosity would be poured fourth for the attention of the

inquisitive; how many learned theories which had sprung up in the

interim, put to rest; what anxiety moralists would be under to know the

number of churches, the bookseller's advertisements, and the convictions

at the Sessions! Some might be supposed to sigh over our lack of

improvement, the infant state of the arts, and our ineffectual attempts

at electro-magnetism, while others would dwell upon the old times when

Broadway was gayer with life, and the world got along better, than it

has ever done since.

* * * * *

=_Horace Binney Wallace,[55] 1817-1852._=

From "Art, Scenery, and Philosophy in Europe."

=_230._= ART AN EMANATION OF RELIGIOUS AFFECTION.

The spirit, conscious of an emotion of reverence for some unseen subject

of its own apprehension, desires to substantiate and fix its deity, and

to bring the senses into the same adoring attitude; and this can be done

only by setting before them a material representation of the divine.

This is illustrated in the universal and inveterate tendency of early

nations to idolatry....

How and why was it that the sculpture of the Greeks attained a character

so exalted that it shines on through our time, with a beam of glory

peculiar and inextinguishable? When we enter the chambers of the

Vatican, we are presently struck with the mystic influence that rays

from those silent forms that stand ranged along the walls. Like the

moral prestige that might encircle the vital presence of divine beings,

we behold divinities represented in human shapes idealized into a

significance altogether irresistible. What constitutes that idealizing

modification we know not; but we feel that it imparts to the figures

an interest and impressiveness which natural forms possess not. These

sculptured images seem directly to address the imagination. They do not

suffer the cold and critical survey of the eye, but awaken an instant

and vivid mental consideration.

... It has sometimes been suggested that the superiority of the Greeks

in delineating the figure, arose from the familiarity with it which they

acquired from their frequent opportunities of viewing it nude,--on

account of their usages, costumes, climate, &c. This is too superficial

an account of that vital faculty of skill and knowledge upon this

subject, which was a part of the inherent capacity of the Greek.... The

outflow and characteristic exercise of Grecian inspiration in sculpture,

was in the representation of their mythology, which included heroes, or

deified men, as well as gods of the first rank. Later, it extended to

winners at the public games, athletes, runners, boxers;--but this class

of persons partook, in the national feeling, of a heroic or half-divine

superiority. A particular type of form, highly ideal, became appropriate

to them, as to the heroes, and to each of the gods. It may be added,

that a capacity thus derived from religious impressibility, extended to

a great number of natural forms, which were to the Greeks measurably

objects of a divine regard. Many animals as connected with the gods, or

with sacrifices, were sacred beings to them, and became subjects of

their surpassing gift in sculpture. In general, nature,--the visible,

the sensible, the actual, was to the Hellenic soul, Religion; as inward

and reflective emotions were and are, to the modern European.

[Footnote 55: A young writer of great cultivation and of uncommon

promise. His premature death occurred while on a tour in Europe. A

native of Philadelphia.]

* * * * *

=_Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862._= (Manual, p. 532.)

From "Autumnal Tints."

=_231._= DESCRIPTION OF "POKE" OR GARGET, (_Phytolacca Decandra_.)

Some which stand under our cliffs quite dazzle me with their purple

stems now, and early in September. They are as interesting to me as most

flowers, and one of the most important fruits of our autumn. Every part

is flower, (or fruit,) such is its superfluity of color,--stem,

branch, peduncle, pedicel, petiole, and even the at length yellowish

purple-veined leaves. Its cylindrical racemes of berries of various

hues, from green to dark purple, six or seven inches long, are

gracefully drooping on all sides, offering repasts to the birds; and

even the sepals from which the birds have picked the berries are a

brilliant lake-red, with crimson, flame-like reflections, equal to

anything of the kind,--all on fire with ripeness. Hence the _lacca_,

from lac, lake. There are at the same time flower-buds, flowers, green

berries, dark purple or ripe ones, and these flower-like sepals, all on

the same plant.

We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It

is the color of colors. This plant speaks to our blood. It asks a bright

sun on it to make it show to best advantage, and it must be seen at

this season of the year. On warm hill-sides its stems are ripe by the

twenty-third of August. At that date I walked through a beautiful grove

of them, six or seven feet high, on the side of one of our cliffs, where

they ripen early. Quite to the ground they were a deep brilliant purple

with a bloom, contrasting with the still clear green leaves. It appears

a rare triumph of Nature to have produced and perfected such a plant, as

if this were enough for a summer. What a perfect maturity it arrives

at! It is the emblem of a successful life concluded by a death not

premature, which is an ornament to Nature. What if we were to mature as

perfectly, root and branch, glowing in the midst of our decay, like the

Poke! I confess that it excites me to behold them. I cut one for a cane,

for I would fain handle and lean on it. I love to press the berries

between my fingers, and see their juice staining my hand. To walk amid

these upright, branching casks of purple wine, which retain and diffuse

a sunset glow, tasting each one with your eye, instead of counting the

pipes on a London dock,--what a privilege! For Nature's vintage is not

confined to the vine. Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a

foreign plant which commonly they never saw, as if our own plants had

no juice in them more than the singers. Indeed, this has been called by

some the American grape, and though a native of America, its juices are

used in some foreign countries to improve the color of the wine; so that

the poetaster maybe celebrating the virtues of the Poke without knowing

it. Here are berries enough to paint afresh the western sky, and play

the bacchanal with, if you will. And what flutes its ensanguined stems

would make, to be used in such a dance! It is truly a royal plant. I

could spend the evening of the year musing amid the Poke-stems. And

perchance amid these groves might arise at last a new school of

philosophy or poetry.

* * * * *

From "Walden, or Life in the Woods."

=_232._= WALDEN POND.

The greatest depth was exactly one hundred and two feet, to which may

be added the five feet which it has risen since, making one hundred and

seven. This is a remarkable depth for so small an area; yet not an inch

of it can be spared by the imagination. What if all ponds were shallow?

Would it not react on the minds of men? I am thankful that this pond was

made deep and pure for a symbol. While men believe in the infinite, some

ponds will be thought to be bottomless.

* * * * *

From "Life without Principle."

=_233._= WANTS OF THE AGE.

I saw, the other day, a vessel which had been wrecked, and many lives

lost, and her cargo of rags, juniper-berries, and bitter almonds, was

strewn along the shore. It seemed hardly worth the while to tempt the

dangers of the sea between Leghorn and New York, for the sake of a cargo

of juniper-berries and bitter almonds. America sending to the Old World

for her bitters! Is not the sea-brine,--is not shipwreck, bitter enough,

to make the cup of life go down here? Yet such, to a great extent, is

our boasted commerce; and there are those who style themselves statesmen

and philosophers who are so blind as to think that progress and

civilization depend on precisely this kind of interchange and

activity,--the activity of flies about a molasses-hogshead. Very well,

observes one, if men were oysters. And very well, answer I, if men were

mosquitoes.

Lieutenant Herndon, whom our Government sent to explore the Amazon,

and, it is said, to extend the area of Slavery, observed that there was

wanting there "an industrious and active population, who know what the

comforts of life are, and who have artificial wants to draw out the

great resources of the country." But what are the "artificial wants" to

be encouraged? Not the love of luxuries, like the tobacco and slaves

of, I believe, his native Virginia, nor the ice and granite and other

material wealth of our native New England; nor are "the great resources

of a country" that fertility or barrenness of soil which produces these.

The chief want, in every State that I have been into, was a high and

earnest purpose in its inhabitants. This alone draws out "the great

resources" of Nature and at last taxes her beyond her resources; for man

naturally dies out of her. When we want culture more than potatoes, and

illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world

are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not

slaves, nor operatives, but men,--those rare fruits called heroes,

saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.

* * * * *

=_Elisabeth F. Ellett, 1818-._= (Manual, pp. 484, 490.)

From "Pioneer Women of the West"

=_234._= ESCAPE OF MARY BLEDSOE FROM THE INDIANS.

It was not consistent with Spencer's chivalrous character to attempt to

save himself by leaving his companion to the mercy of the foe. Bidding

her retreat as fast as possible, and encouraging her to keep her seat

firmly, he protected her by following more slowly in her rear, with his

trusty rifle in his hand. When the Indians in pursuit came too near,

he would raise his weapon as if to fire; and as he was known to be an

excellent marksman, the savages were not willing to encounter him, but

hastened to the shelter of trees, while he continued his retreat. In

this manner he kept them at bay for some miles, not firing a single

shot--for he knew that his threatening had more effect--until Mrs.

Bledsoe reached a station. Her life and his own, were, on this occasion,

saved by his prudence and presence of mind; for both would have been

lost had he yielded to the temptation to fire....

Bereaved of her husband, sons, and brother-in-law, by the murderous

savages, Mrs. Bledsoe was obliged to undertake not only the charge of

her husband's estate, but the care of the children, and their education

and settlement in life. These duties were discharged with unwavering

energy and Christian patience.... The record of her worth, and of what

she did and suffered, may win little attention from the careless many,

who regard not the memory of our "pilgrim mothers;" but the recollection

of her gentle virtues has not yet faded from the hearts of her

descendants, and those to whom they tell the story of her life will

acknowledge her the worthy companion of those noble men to whom belongs

the praise of having originated a new colony, and built up a goodly

state in the bosom of the forest. Their patriotic labors, their

struggles with the surrounding savages, their efforts in the maintenance

of the community they had founded,--sealed, as they finally were, with

their own blood, and the blood of their sons and relatives,--will never

be forgotten while the apprehension of what is noble, generous, and

good, survives in the hearts of their countrymen.

* * * * *

=_James Jackson Jarves, 1818-._= (Manual, p. 531.)

From "Art Hints."

=_235._= THE ART IDEA.

The first duty of art, as we have already intimated, is to make our

public buildings and places, as instructive and enjoyable as possible.

They should be pleasurable, full of attractive beauty and eloquent

teachings. Picturesque groupings of natural objects, architectural

surprises, sermons from the sculptor's chisel and the painter's palette,

the ravishment of the soul by its superior senses, the refinement of

mind and body by the sympathetic power of beauty,--these are a

portion of the means which a due estimation of art, as an element of

civilization, inspires the ruling will to provide freely for all. If art

be kept a rare and tabooed thing, a specialty for the rich and powerful,

it excites in the vulgar mind, envy and hate; but proffer it freely to

the public, and the public soon learns to delight in and protect it as

its rightful inheritance. It also tends to develop a brotherhood of

thought and feeling. During the civil strifes of Italy, art flourished

and was respected. Indeed, to some extent, it operated as a sort of

peace society, and was held sacred when nothing else was. Even rude

soldiers, amid the perils and necessities of sieges, turned aside

destruction from the walls that sheltered it. The history of art is full

of records of its power to soften and elevate the human heart. As soon

would man, were it possible, mar one of God's sunsets, as cease to

respect what genius has confided to his care, when once his mind has

been awakened to its meaning.

The desire for art being awakened, museums to illustrate its technical

and historical progress, and galleries to exhibit its master-works,

become indispensable. In the light of education, appropriations for such

purposes are as much a duty of the government as for any other purpose

connected with the true welfare of the people; for its responsibilities

extend over the entire social system.

* * * * *

=_Edwin P. Whipple, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 501.)

From "Literature and Life."

=_236._= WIT AND HUMOR IN LITERATURE.

Every student of English theological literature knows that much of its

best portions gleams with wit. Five of the greatest humorists that ever

made the world ring with laughter were priests,--Rabelais, Scarron,

Swift, Sterne, and Sydney Smith. The prose works of Milton are radiant

with satire of the sharpest kind. Sydney Smith, one of the most

benevolent, intelligent and influential Englishmen of the nineteenth

century, a man of the most accurate insight and extensive information,

embodied the large stores of his practical wisdom in almost every form

of the ludicrous. Many of the most important reforms in England are

directly traceable to him. He really laughed his countrymen out of some

of their most cherished stupidities of legislation.

And now let us be just to Mirth. Let us be thankful that we have in Wit

a power before which the pride of wealth and the insolence of office are

abased; which can transfix bigotry and tyranny with arrows of lightning;

which can strike its object over thousands of miles of space, across

thousands of years of time; and which, through its sway over an

universal weakness of man, is an everlasting instrument to make the bad

tremble and the foolish wince. Let us be grateful for the social and

humanizing influences of Mirth. Amid the sorrow, disappointment, agony,

and anguish of the world,--over dark thoughts and tempestuous passions,

the gloomy exaggerations of self-will, the enfeebling illusions of

melancholy,--Wit and Humor, light and lightning, shed their soft

radiance, or dart their electric flash. See how life is warmed and

illumined by Mirth! See how the beings of the mind, with which it has

peopled our imaginations, wrestle with the ills of existence,--feeling

their way into the harshest or saddest meditations, with looks that defy

calamity; relaxing muscles made rigid with pain; hovering o'er the couch

of sickness, with sunshine and laughter in their beneficent faces;

softening the austerity of thoughts whose awful shadows dim and

darken the brain,--loosening the gripe of Misery as it tugs at the

heart-strings! Let us court the society of these gamesome, and genial,

and sportive, and sparkling beings,--whom Genius has left to us as a

priceless bequest; push them not from the daily walks of the world's

life: let them scatter some humanities in the sullen marts of business;

let them glide in through the open doors of the heart; let their glee

lighten up the feast, and gladden the fireside of home:

"That the night may be filled with music,

And the cares that infest the day

May fold their tents, like the Arabs,

And as silently steal away."

* * * * *

=_Jane T.L. Worthington,-1847._= (Manual, p. 524.)

From "Love Sketches."

=_237._= THE SISTERS.

The sisters were together, together for the last time in the happy home

of their childhood. The window before them was thrown open, and the

shadows of evening were slowly passing from each familiar outline on

which the gazers looked. They were both young and fair; and one, the

elder, wore that pale wreath the maiden wears but once. The accustomed

smile had forsaken her lip now, and the orange-flowers were scarcely

whiter than the cheek they shaded. The sister's hands were clasped in

each other, and they sat silently watching the gradual brightening of

the crescent moon, and the coming forth, one by one, of the stars. Not a

cloud was floating in the quiet sky; the light wind hardly stirred the

young leaves, and the air was fraught with the fragrance of early spring

flowers. It was the hour when reverie is deepest, and fantasies have the

earnestness of truth, when memory is melancholy in its vividness, and we

feel, "almost like a reality," the presence of those who may bless our

pathway no more. The loved, the lost--

"So many, yet how few!"--

gather around us, not as they are, chastened and troubled by battling

with trials and disappointments, but as they used to be, in the glow of

unwearied expectation. Old fears flit before us altered into pleasures,

and old hopes return bathed in tears.

* * * * *

=_Alice Cary, 1820-1871._= (Manual, p. 484.)

From "Clovernook."

=_238._= THE END OF THE HISTORY.

And so with the various seasons of the year. May, with her green lap

full of sprouting leaves and bright blossoms, her song-birds making the

orchards and meadows vocal, and rippling streams and cultivated gardens;

June, with full-blown roses and humming-bees, plenteous meadows and wide

cornfields, with embattled lines rising thick and green; August, with

reddened orchards and heavy-headed harvests of grain, October, with

yellow leaves and swart shadows; December, palaced in snow, and idly

whistling through his numb fingers;-all have their various charm; and in

the rose-bowers of summer, and as we spread our hands before the torches

of winter, we say joyfully, "Thou hast made all things beautiful in

their time." We sit around the fireside, and the angel feared and

dreaded by us all comes in, and one is taken from our midst. Hands that

have caressed us, locks that have fallen over us like a bath of beauty,

are hidden beneath shroud-folds. We see the steep edges of the grave,

and hear the heavy rumble of the clods; and, in the burst of passionate

grief, it seems that we can never still the crying of our hearts. But

the days rise and set, dimly at first, and seasons come and go, and,

by little and little, the weight rises from the heart, and the shadows

drift from before the eyes, till we feel again the spirit of gladness,

and see again the old beauty of the world.

* * * * *

=_Donald G. Mitchell, 1822-._= (Manual, pp. 504, 531.)

From "Wayside Hints."

=_239._= A TALK ABOUT PORCHES.

A country house without a porch is like a man without an eyebrow; it

gives expression, and gives expression where you most want it. The least

office of a porch is that of affording protection against the rain-beat

and the sun-beat. It is an interpreter of character; it humanizes bald

walls and windows; it emphasizes architectural tone; it gives hint of

hospitality; it is a hand stretched out (figuratively and lumberingly,

often) from the world within to the world without.

At a church door even, a porch seems to me to be a blessed thing, and

a most worthy and patent demonstration of the overflowing Christian

charity, and of the wish to give shelter. Of all the images of wayside

country churches which keep in my mind, those hang most persistently

and agreeably, which show their jutting, defensive rooflets to keep the

brunt of the storm from the church-goer while he yet fingers at the

latch of entrance.

I doubt if there be not something beguiling in a porch over the door of

a country shop--something that relieves the odium of bargaining, and

imbues even the small grocer with a flavor of cheap hospitalities. The

verandas (which is but a long translation of porch) that stretch along

the great river front of the Bellevue Hospital diffuse somehow a

gladsome cheer over that prodigious caravansery of the sick; and I never

see the poor creatures in their bandaged heads and their flannel

gowns, enjoying their convalescence in the sunshine of those exterior

corridors, but I reckon the old corridors for as much as the young

doctors, in bringing them from convalescence into strength, and a new

fight with the bedevilments of the world.

What shall we say, too, of inn porches? Does anybody doubt their

fitness? Is there any question of the fact--with any person of

reasonably imaginative mood--that Falstaff and Nym and Bardolph, and the

rest, once lolled upon the benches of the porch that overhung the door

of the Boar's Head Tavern, Eastcheap? Any question about a porch, and a

generous one, at the Tabard, Southwark--presided over by that wonderful

host who so quickened the story-telling humors of the Canterbury

pilgrims of Master Chaucer?

Then again, in our time, if one were to peel away the verandas and the

exterior corridors from our vast watering-place hostelries, what an arid

baldness of wall and of character would be left! All sentiment, all

glowing memories, all the music of girlish footfalls, all echoes of

laughter and banter and rollicking mirth, and tenderly uttered vows

would be gone.

King David when he gave out to his son Solomon the designs for the

building of the Temple, included among the very first of them, (1 Chron.

XXVIII. 11) the "pattern of a porch." It is not, however, of porches

of shittim-wood and of gold, that I mean to talk just now--nor even of

those elaborate architectural features which will belong of necessity

to the entrance-way of every complete study of a country house. I plead

only for some little mantling hood about every exterior door-way,

however humble.

There are hundreds of naked, vulgar-looking dwellings, scattered up and

down our country highroads, which only need a little deft and adroit

adaptation of the hospitable feature which I have made the subject of

this paper, to assume an air of modest grace, in place of the present

indecorous exposure of a wanton.

* * * * *

=_Richard Grant White,[56] 1822-._=

From "Memoirs of the Life of William Shakespeare."

=_240._= THE CHARACTER OF SHAKESPEARE'S STYLE.

Writing for the general public, he used such language as would convey

his meaning to his auditors,--the common phraseology of his period.

But what a language was that! In its capacity for the varied and exact

expression of all moods of mind, all forms of thought, all kinds of

emotion, a tongue unequaled by any other known to literature! A language

of exhaustless variety; strong without ruggedness, and flexible without

effeminacy. A manly tongue; yet bending itself gracefully and lovingly

to the tenderest and the daintiest needs of woman, and capable of giving

utterance to the most awful and impressive thoughts, in homely words

that come from the lips, and go to the heart, of childhood. It would

seem as if this language had been preparing itself for centuries to be

the fit medium of utterance for the world's greatest poet. Hardly more

than a generation had passed since the English tongue had reached its

perfect maturity; just time enough to have it well worked into the

unconscious usage of the people, when Shakespeare appeared, to lay upon

it a burden of thought which would test its extremest capability. He

found it fully formed and developed, but not yet uniformed and cramped

and disciplined by the lexicographers and rhetoricians,--those martinets

of language, who seem to have lost for us in force and flexibility as

much as they have gained for us in precision. The phraseology of that

day was notably large and simple among ordinary writers and speakers.

Among the college-bred writers and their imitators, there was too

great a fondness for little conceits; but even with them this was an

extraneous blemish, like that sometimes found in the ornament upon a

noble building. Shakespeare seized this instrument to whose tones all

ears were open, and with the touch of a master he brought out all its

harmonies. It lay ready to any hand; but his was the first to use it

with absolute control; and among all its successors, great as some

are, he has had, even in this single respect, no rival. No unimportant

condition of his supreme mastery over expression was his entire freedom

from restraint--it may almost be said from consciousness--in the choice

of language. He was no precisian, no etymologist, no purist. He was not

purposely writing literature. The only criticism that he feared was that

of his audience, which represented the English people of all grades

above the peasantry. These he wished should not find his writing

incomprehensible or dull: no more. If we except the translators of the

Bible, Shakespeare wrote the best English that has yet been written.

[Footnote 56: A native of New York City; distinguished as a student and

editor of Shakespeare, and more recently for his critical articles on

the English language and grammar.]

* * * * *

=_Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1823-._= (Manual, p. 531).

From "Atlantic Essays."

=_241._= ELEGANCE OF FRENCH STYLE.

In France alone among living nations is literature habitually pursued

as an art; and in consequence of this, despite the seeds of decay which

imperialism sowed, French prose-writing has no rival in contemporary

literature. We cannot fully recognize this fact through translations,

because only the most sensational French books appear to be translated.

But as French painters and actors now habitually surpass all others even

in what are claimed as the English qualities,--simplicity and truth,--so

do French prose-writers excel. To be set against the brutality of

Carlyle and the shrill screams of Ruskin, there is to be seen across

the Channel the extraordinary fact of an actual organization of good

writers, the French Academy, whose influence all nations feel. Under

their authority we see introduced into literary work an habitual

grace and perfection, a clearness and directness, a light and pliable

strength, and a fine shading of expression, such as no other tongue can

even define. We see the same high standard in their criticism, in their

works of research, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and in short throughout

literature. What is there in any other language, for instance, to be

compared with the voluminous writings of Sainte-Beuve, ranging over all

history and literature, and carrying into all, that incomparable style,

so delicate, so brilliant, so equable, so strong,--touching all themes,

not with the blacksmith's hand of iron, but with the surgeon's hand of

steel.

In the average type of French novels, one feels the superiority to

the English in quiet power, in the absence of the sensational and

exaggerated, and in keeping close to the level of real human life. They

rely for success upon perfection of style, and the most subtle analysis

of human character; and therefore they are often painful,--just as

Thackeray is painful,--because they look at artificial society, and

paint what they see. Thus they dwell often on unhappy marriages, because

such things grow naturally from the false social system in France. On

the other hand, in France there is very little house-breaking, and

bigamy is almost impossible, so that we hear delightfully little about

them: whereas, if you subtract these from the current English novels,

what is there left?

* * * * *

=_Charles Godfrey Leland,[57] 1824._=

From "Meister Karl's Sketch-book."

=_242._= ASPECT OF NUREMBERG.

There is a picturesque disorder--a lyrical confusion about the entire

place, which is perfectly irresistible. Turrets shoot up in all sorts of

ways, on all sorts of occasions, upon all sorts of houses; and little

boxes, with delicate Gothic windows, cling to their sides and to one

another, like barnacles to a ship; while the houses themselves are

turned round and about in so many positions that you wonder that a few

are not upside down or lying on their sides by way of completing the

original arrangement of no arrangement at all. It always seemed to me as

if the buildings in Nuremberg had, like the furniture in Irving's tale,

been indulging over night in a very irregular dance, and suddenly

stopped in the most complicated part of a confusion worse confounded.

Galleries, quaint staircases, and towers with projecting upper stories,

as well as eccentric chimneys, demented door-ways, insane weather-vanes,

and highly original steeples, form the most common-place materials in

building; and it has more than once occurred to me that the architects

of this city, even at the present day, must have imbibed their

principles; not from the lecture-room, but from the most remarkable

inspirations of some romantic scene-painter. During the last two

centuries men appear to have striven, with a most uncommendable zeal,

all over Christendom, to root out and extirpate every trace of the

Gothic. In Nuremberg alone they have religiously preserved what little

they originally had in domestic architecture, and added to it....

Nuremberg, like Avignon, is one of the very few cities which have

retained in an almost perfect state, the feudal walls and turrets with

which they were invested by the middle ages. At regular intervals along

these walls occur little towers, for their defence, reminding one of

beads strung on a rosary; the great watch-tower at the gate, with its

projecting machicolation, forming the pendent cross,--the whole serving

to guard the town within from the dangers of war, even as the rosary

protects the city of Mansoul from the attacks of Sin and Death--though,

sooth to say, since the invention of gunpowder and the Reformation, both

the one and the other appear to have lost much of their former efficacy.

Directly through the center of the town runs a small stream called the

Pegnitz, "dividing the town into two nearly equal halves, named after

the two great churches situated within them; the northern being termed

St. Sebald's, and the southern, St. Lawrence side."

In the northern part of the division of St. Sebaldus rises a high hill,

formed, at the summit, of vast rocks, on which is situated the ancient

Reicheveste, or Imperial Castle, whose origin is fairly lost in the dark

old days of Heathenesse. From it the traveller can obtain an admirable

view of the romantic town below. In regarding it, I was irresistibly

reminded of the remarkable resemblance existing between most of its

buildings and the children's toys manufactured by the ingenious artisans

of Nuremberg and its vicinity.

[Footnote 57: A native of Philadelphia, who has resided much abroad, and

pursued a varied literary career; he possesses a familiarity with the

German language and character, which he has turned to good account in

the comic ballads by Hans Breitman.]

* * * * *

=_George William Curtis, 1824-._= (Manual, p. 504.)

From "Nile Notes of a Howadji."

=_243._= UNDER THE PALMS.

Thenceforward, in the land of Egypt, palms are perpetual. They are the

only foliage of the Nile; for we will not harm the modesty of a few

mimosas and sycamores, by foolish claims. They are the shade of the mud

villages, marking their site in the landscape, so that the groups of

palms are the number of villages. They fringe the shore and the horizon.

The sun sets golden behind them, and birds sit swinging upon their

boughs and float gloriously among their trunks; on the ground beneath

are flowers; the sugar-cane is not harmed by the ghostly shade, nor the

tobacco, and the yellow flowers of the cotton-plant star its dusk at

evening. The children play under them; the old men crone and smoke; the

surly bison and the conceited camels repose. The old Bible-pictures

are ceaselessly painted, but with softer, clearer colors, than in the

venerable book.

... But the eye never wearies of palms, more than the ear of

singing-birds. Solitary they stand upon the sand, or upon the level,

fertile land in groups, with a grace and dignity that no tree surpasses.

Very soon the eye beholds in their forms the original type of the

columns which it will afterwards admire in the temples. Almost the first

palm is architecturally suggestive, even in those western gardens--but

to artists living among them and seeing only them! men's hands are not

delicate in the early ages, and the fountain fairness of the palms is

not very flowingly fashioned in the capitals; but in the flowery

perfection of the Parthenon the palm triumphs. The forms of those

columns came from Egypt, and that which was the suspicion of the earlier

workers, was the success of more delicate designing. So is the palm

inwound with our art, and poetry, and religion, and of all trees would

the Howadji be a palm, wide-waving peace and plenty, and feeling his kin

to the Parthenon and Raphael's pictures.

But nature is absolute taste, and has no pure ornament, so that the

palm is no less useful than beautiful. The family is infinite, and ill

understood. The cocoa-nut, date, and sago, are all palms. Ropes and

sponges are wrought of their tough interior fibre. The various fruits

are nutritious; the wood, the roots, and the leaves, are all consumed.

It is one of nature's great gifts to her spoiled sun-darlings. Whoso is

born of the sun is made free of the world. Like the poet Thompson, he

may put his hands in his pockets and eat apples at leisure.

* * * * *

=_John L. McConnell, 1826-._= (Manual, p. 510.)

From "Western Characters."

=_244._= THE EARLY WESTERN POLITICIAN.

He was tall, gaunt, angular, swarthy, active, and athletic. His hair was

invariably black as the wing of the raven. Even in that small portion

which the cap of raccoon-skin left exposed to the action of sun and

rain, the gray was but thinly scattered, imparting to the monotonous

darkness only a more iron character.... A stoop in the shoulders

indicated that, in times past, he had been in the habit of carrying a

heavy rifle, and of closely examining the ground over which he walked;

but what the chest thus lost in depth it gained in breadth. His lungs

had ample space in which to play. There was nothing pulmonary even in

the drooping shoulders....

From shoulders thus bowed hung long, muscular arms, sometimes, perhaps,

dangling a little ungracefully, but always under the command of their

owner, and ready for any effort, however violent. These were terminated

by broad, bony hands, which looked like grapnels; their grasp, indeed,

bore no faint resemblance to the hold of those symmetrical instruments.

Large feet, whose toes were usually turned in, like those of the Indian,

were wielded by limbs whose vigor and activity were in keeping with the

figure they supported. Imagine, with these peculiarities, a free, bold,

rather swaggering gait, a swarthy complexion, and comformable features

and tones of voice, and, excepting his costume, you have before your

fancy a complete picture of the early western politician.

* * * * *

=_Sarah J. Lippincott,[58]_= about =_1833-_=. (Manual p. 484.)

From "Records of Five Years."

=_245._= DEATH IN TOWN AND COUNTRY.

Up the long ascent it moved,--that shadow of our mortal sorrow and

perishable earthly estate, that shadow of the dead man's hearse, along

the way his feet had often trod, past the spring over whose brink he

may have often bent with thirsting lip, past lovely green glades, mossy

banks, and fairy forests of waving ferns, on which his eye had often

dwelt with a vague and soft delight; and so passed out of our view. But

its memory went not out of our hearts that day.

In this pure, healthful region, where nature seems so unworn, so

youthful and vigorous, where dwell simplicity, humble comfort, and quiet

happiness, death has startled us as something strange and unnatural....

How different is it in the city!... There, on many a corner, one

is confronted with the black, significant sign of the undertaker's

"dreadful trade," or comes upon some marble-yard, filled with a ghastly

assemblage of anticipatory gravestones and monuments; graceful broken

columns, which are to typify the lovely incompleteness of some young

life now full of beauty and promise; melancholy, drooping figures, types

of grief forever inconsolable, destined, perhaps, to stand proxy for

mourning young widows now happy wives; sculptured lambs, patiently

waiting to take their places above the graves of little children whom

yet smiling mothers nightly lay to sleep in soft cribs, without the

thought of a deeper dark and silence of a night not far away, or of the

dreary beds soon to be prepared for their darlings "i' the earth."

[Footnote 58: Originally and very favorably known by the assumed name of

"Grace Greenwood."]

* * * * *

=_Francis Bret Harte,[59] 1837-._=

From "The Luck of Roaring Camp," &c.

=_246._= BIRTH OF A CHILD IN A MINER'S CAMP.

... The camp lay in a triangular valley, between two hills and a river.

The only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of a hill that faced

the cabin, now illuminated by the rising moon. The suffering woman might

have seen it from the rude bunk whereon she lay,--seen it winding like a

silver thread until it was lost in the stars above.

A fire of withered pine-boughs added sociability to the gathering. By

degrees the natural levity of Roaring Camp returned. Bets were freely

offered and taken regarding the result. Three to five that "Sal would

get through with it," even, that the child would survive; side bets as

to the sex and complexion of the coming stranger....

In the midst of an excited discussion an exclamation came from those

nearest the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and

moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of

the fire, rose a sharp, querulous cry. The pines stopped moaning, the

river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It seemed as if Nature

had stopped to listen too.

The camp rose to its feet as one man! It was proposed to explode a

barrel of gunpowder; but, in consideration of the situation of the

mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were

discharged; for, whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some

other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. Within an hour she had

climbed, as it were, the rugged road that led to the stars, and so passed

out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame, forever....

I do not think that the announcement disturbed them much, except in

speculation as to the fate of the child, "Can he live now?" was asked of

Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal's

sex and maternal condition in the settlement, was an ass. There was some

conjecture as to fitness, but the experiment was tried. It was less

problematical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, and

apparently as successful.

Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of

the mountain camp was compensation for maternal deficiencies. Nature

took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the

Sierra foot-hills--that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal

cordial at once bracing and exhilarating--he may have found food and

nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted asses' milk to lime

and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter

and good nursing, "Me and that ass," he would say, "has been father and

mother to him! Don't you," he would add, apostrophizing the helpless

bundle before him, "never go back on us."

[Footnote 59: Prominent among the more recent American writers; a native

of New York, but long resident in California; noted for his vivid

portraiture of the early life, and remarkable scenery of that State, in

a style uncommonly suggestive.]

* * * * *

=_William Dean Howells, 1837-._= (Manual, p. 531.)

From "Venetian Life."

=_247._= SNOW IN VENICE.

... The lofty crest of the bell-tower was hidden in the folds of falling

snow, and I could no longer see the golden angel upon its summit. But

looked at across the Piazza, the beautiful outline of St. Mark's Church

was perfectly penciled in the air, and the shifting threads of the

snow-fall were woven into a spell of novel enchantment around a

structure that always seemed to me too exquisite in its fantastic

loveliness to be anything but the creation of magic. The tender snow had

compassionated the beautiful edifice for all the wrongs of time, and so

hid the stains and ugliness of decay that it looked as if just from the

hands of the builder--or, better said, just from the brain of the

architect. There was marvellous freshness in the colors of the mosaics

in the great arches of the facade; and all that glorious harmony into

which the temple rises, of marble scrolls and leafy exuberance airily

supporting the statues of the saints, was a hundred times etherialized

by the purity and whiteness of the drifting flakes. The snow lay lightly

on the golden globes that tremble like peacock-crests above the vast

domes, and plumed them with softest white; it robed the saints in

ermine; and it danced over all its work as if exulting in its beauty....

Through the wavering snow-fall, the Saint Theodore upon one of the

granite pillars of the Piazzetta did not show so grim as his wont is,

and the winged lion on the other might have been a winged lamb, so mild

and gentle he looked by the tender light of the storm. The towers of the

island churches loomed faint and far away in the dimness; the sailors in

the rigging of the ships that lay in the Basin, wrought like phantoms

among the shrouds; the gondolas stole in and out of the opaque distance,

more noiselessly and dreamily than ever; and a silence almost palpable,

lay upon the mutest city in the world.

* * * * *

=_Mary Abigail Dodge,[60] 1838-._=

From "Wool Gathering."

=_248._= SCENERY OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI.

Up the broad, cold, steel-blue river we wind steadily to its Northern

home. No flutter of its orange groves, no fragrance of its Southern

roses, no echo of its summer lands, can penetrate these distances. Only

prophecies of the sturdy North are here,--the glitter of the Polar sea,

the majesty of Arctic solitudes. The imagination is touched. The eye

looks out upon a hemisphere. Vast spaces, lost ages, the unsealed

mysteries of cold and darkness and eternal silence, sweep around the

central thought, and people the wilderness with their solemn symbolism,

Prettiness of gentle slope, wealth, and splendor of hue, are not

wanting, but they shine with veiled light. Mountains come down to meet

the Great River. The mists of the night lift slowly away, and we are

brought suddenly into the presence-chamber. One by one they stand out in

all their rugged might, only softened here and there by fleecy clouds

still clinging to their sides, and shining pink in the ruddy dawn. Bold

bluffs that have come hundreds of miles from their inland home guard the

river. They rise on both sides, fronting us, bare and black, layer of

solid rock piled on solid rock, defiant fortifications of some giant

race, crowned here and there with frowning tower; here and there

overborne and overgrown with wild-wood beauty, vine and moss and

manifold leafage, gorgeous now with the glory of the vanishing summer.

It is as if the everlasting hills had parted to give the Great River

entrance to the hidden places of the world. And then the bold bluffs

break into sharp cones, lonely mountains rising head and shoulders above

their brethren, and keeping watch over the whole country; groups of

mountains standing sentinels on the shores, almost leaning over the

river, and hushing us to breathless silence as we sail through their

awful shadow. And then the earth smiles again, the beetling cliffs

recede into distances, and we glide through a pleasant valley. Green

levels stretch away to the foot of the far cliffs, level with the

river's blue, and as smooth,--sheltered and fertile, and fit for future

homes. Nay, already the pioneer has found them, and many a hut and

cottage and huddle of houses show whence art and science and all the

amenities of human life, shall one day radiate. And even as we greet

them we have left them, and the heights clasp us again, the hills

overshadow us, the solitude closes around us.

[Footnote 60: Born in Massachusetts, author of numerous magazine articles

of merit and earnestness, afterwards republished as books; known to her

readers as Gail Hamilton.]

* * * * *

LATER MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.

=_George Washington[61], 1732-1799._=

From a Letter to Sir John Sinclair.

=_249._= NATURAL ADVANTAGES OF VIRGINIA.

The United States, as you well know, are very extensive, more than

fifteen hundred miles between the northeastern and southwestern

extremities; all parts of which, from the seaboard to the Appalachian

Mountains, which divide the eastern from the western waters, are

entirely settled; though not as compactly as they are susceptible of;

and settlements are progressing rapidly beyond them.

Within so great a space, you are not to be told, that there is a great

variety of climates, and you will readily suppose, too, that there

are all sorts of land, differently improved, and of various prices,

according to the quality of the soil, its contiguity to, or remoteness

from, navigation, the nature of the improvements, and other local

circumstances....

Notwithstanding these abstracts, and although I may incur the charge of

partiality in hazarding such an opinion at this time, I do not hesitate

to pronounce, that the lands on the waters of the Potomac will in a few

years be in greater demand and in higher estimation, than in any other

part of the United States. But, as I ought not to advance this doctrine

without assigning reasons for it, I will request you to examine a

general map of the United States; and the following facts will strike

you at first view; that they lie in the most temperate latitude of

the United States, that the main river runs in a direct course to the

expanded parts of the western country, and approximates nearer to the

principal branches of the Ohio, than any other eastern water, and of

course must become a great, if not (under all circumstances), the best

highway into that region; that the upper seaport of the Potomac is

considerably nearer to a large portion of Pennsylvania, than that

portion is to Philadelphia, besides accommodating the settlers thereof

with inland navigation for more than two hundred miles; that the amazing

extent of tide navigation, afforded by the bay and rivers of the

Chesapeake, has scarcely a parallel.

When to these it is added, that a site at the junction of the inland and

tide navigations of that river is chosen for the permanent seat of the

general government, and is in rapid preparation for its reception;

that the inland navigation is nearly completed, to the extent above

mentioned; that its lateral branches are capable of great improvement

at a small expense, through the most fertile parts of Virginia in

a southerly direction, and crossing Maryland and extending into

Pennsylvania in a northerly one, through which, independently of what

may come from the western country, an immensity of produce will be

water-borne, thereby making the Federal City the great emporium of the

United States; I say, when these things are taken into consideration, I

am under no apprehension of having the opinion I have given, relative to

the value of land on the Potomac, controverted by impartial men.

[Footnote 61: Washington's correspondence was voluminous, and on the

subjects relating to climate, agriculture, and internal improvements,

he wrote with interest and ability. The letter to Sinclair is

characteristic.]

* * * * *

=_Matthew F. Maury,[62] 1806-1873._=

From "The Physical Geography of the Sea."

=_250._= THE MARINER'S GUIDE ACROSS THE DEEP.

So to shape the course on voyages as to make the most of the winds and

currents at sea, is the perfection of the navigator's art. How the winds

blow, and the currents flow, along this route or that, is no longer

matter of opinion or subject of speculation, but it is a matter of

certainty determined by actual observation.... The winds and the weather

daily encountered by hundreds who have sailed on the same voyage before

him, and "the distance made good" by each one from day to day, have been

tabulated in a work called Sailing Directions, and they are so arranged

that he may daily see how much he is ahead of time, or how far he is

behind time; nay, his path has been literally blazed through the winds

for him on the sea; mile-posts have been set up on the waves, and

finger-boards planted, and time-tables furnished for the trackless

waste, by which the ship-master, on his first voyage to any port, may

know as well as the most experienced trader whether he be in the right

road or no.

... The route that affords the bravest winds, the fairest sweep, and the

fastest running to be found among ships, is the route to and from

Australia. But the route which most tries a ship's prowess is the

outward-bound voyage to California. The voyage to Australia and back,

carries the clipper ship along a route which, for more than three

hundred degrees of longitude, runs with the "brave west winds" of the

southern hemisphere. With these winds alone, and with their bounding

seas which follow fast, the modern clipper, without auxiliary power, has

accomplished a greater distance in a day than any sea-steamer has ever

been known to reach. With these fine winds and heaving seas, those ships

have performed their voyages of circumnavigation in sixty days.

[Footnote 62: Formerly an officer of the navy, eminent for his scientific

researches and writings on maritime subjects; a native of Virginia.]

* * * * *

=_251._= THE GULF STREAM.

As a rule, the hottest water of the Gulf Stream is at, or near, the

surface; and as the deep-sea thermometer is sent down, it shows that

these waters, though still far warmer than the waters on either side

at corresponding depths, gradually become less and less warm until the

bottom of the current is reached. There is reason to believe that the

warm waters of the Gulf Stream are nowhere permitted, in the oceanic

economy, to touch the bottom of the sea. There is everywhere a cushion

of cool water, between them and the solid parts of the earth's crust.

This arrangement is suggestive, and strikingly beautiful. One of the

benign offices of the Gulf Stream is to convey heat from the Gulf of

Mexico, where otherwise it would become excessive, and to dispense it in

regions beyond the Atlantic, or the amelioration of the climates of the

British Islands and of all Western Europe. Now cold water is one of the

best non-conductors of heat, and if the warm water of the Gulf Stream

was sent across the Atlantic in contact with the solid crust of the

earth,--comparatively a good conductor of heat,--instead of being sent

across, as it is, in contact with a cold non-conducting cushion of cool

water to fend it from the bottom, much of its heat would be lost in the

first part of the way, and the soft climates of both France and England

would be, as that of Labrador, severe In the extreme, icebound, and

bitterly cold.

* * * * *

=_Ormsby M. Mitchell,[63] 1810-1862._=

=_252._= THE GREAT UNFINISHED PROBLEMS OF THE UNIVERSE.

I do not pretend to indorse the theory of Mädler with reference to his

central sun. If I did indorse it, it would amount simply to nothing at

all, for he needs no indorsement of mine. But it is one of the great

unfinished problems of the universe, which remains yet to be solved.

Future generations yet are to take it up. Materials for its solution are

to accumulate from generation to generation, and possibly from century

to century. Nay, I know not but thousands of years will roll away before

the slow movements of these far distant orbs shall so accumulate as to

give us the data whereby the resolution may be absolutely accomplished.

But shall we fail to work because the end is far off? Had the old

astronomer that once stood upon the watch-tower in Babylon, and there

marked the coming of the dreaded eclipse, said. "I care not for this;

this is the business of posterity; let posterity take care of itself; I

will make no record"--and had, in succeeding ages, the sentinel in the

watch-tower of the skies said, "I will retire from my post; I have no

concern with these matters, which can do me no good; it is nothing

that I can do for the age in which I live,"--where should we have been

to-night? Shall we not do, for those who are to follow us, what has

been done for us by our predecessors? Let us not shrink from the

responsibility which comes down upon the age in which we live. The great

and mighty problem of the universe has been given to the whole human

family for its solution. Not by any clime, not by any age, not by any

nation, not by any individual man or mind, however great or grand, has

this wondrous solution been accomplished; but it is the problem of

humanity, and it will last as long as humanity shall inhabit the globe

on which we live and move.

* * * * *

No, here is the temple of our Divinity. Around us and above us rise sun

and system, cluster and universe. And I doubt not that in every region

of this vast empire of God, hymns of praise and anthems of glory are

rising and reverberating from sun to sun, and from, system to system,

heard by Omnipotence alone, across immensity, and through eternity.

[Footnote 63: An astronomer, and a favorite lecturer on the science; a

native of Kentucky.]

* * * * *

WRITERS ON NATURAL HISTORY, SCENERY, &c.

=_William Bartram, 1739-1813._= (Manual, p. 490.)

From the "Travels through the Carolinas," &c.

=_253._= SCENES ON THE UPPER OCONEE.

At this rural retirement were assembled a charming circle of mountain

vegetable beauties.... Some of these roving beauties stroll over the

mossy, shelving, humid rocks, or from off the expansive wavy boughs of

trees, bending over the floods, salute their delusive shade, playing on

the surface; some plunge their perfumed heads and bathe their flexile

limbs in the silver stream; whilst others by the mountain breezes

are tossed about, their blooming tuffts bespangled with pearly and

crystalline dew-drops collected from the falling mists, glistening in

the rainbow arch. Having collected some valuable specimens at this

friendly retreat, I continued my lonesome pilgrimage. My road for a

considerable time led me winding and turning about the steep rocky

hills: the descent of some of which was very rough and troublesome, by

means of fragments of rocks, slippery clay and talc: but after this I

entered a spacious forest, the land having gradually acquired a more

level surface: a pretty grassy vale appears on my right, through which

my wandering path led me, close by the banks of a delightful creek,

which sometimes falling over steps of rocks, glides gently with

serpentine meanders through the meadows.

After crossing this delightful brook and mead, the land rises again with

sublime magnificence, and I am led over hills and vales, groves and

high forests, vocal with the melody of the feathered songsters; the

snow-white cascades glittering on the sides of the distant hills.

It was now afternoon; I approached a charming vale, amidst sublimely

high forests, awful shades! Darkness gathers around; far distant thunder

rolls over the trembling hills: the black clouds with august majesty

and power move slowly forwards, shading regions of towering hills, and

threatening all the destruction of a thunder-storm: all around is now

still as death, not a whisper is heard, but a total inactivity and

silence seem to pervade the earth; the birds afraid to utter a chirrup,

in low tremulous voices take leave of each other, seeking covert and

safety: every insect is silenced, and nothing heard but the roaring of

the approaching hurricane. The mighty cloud now expands its sable wings,

extending from north to south, and is driven irresistibly on by the

tumultuous winds, spreading its livid wings around the gloomy concave,

armed with terrors of thunder and fiery shafts of lightning. Now the

lofty forests bend low beneath its fury; their limbs and wavy boughs are

tossed about and catch hold of each other; the mountains tremble

and seem to reel about, and the ancient hills to be shaken to their

foundations: the furious storm sweeps along, smoking through the vale

and over the resounding hills: the face of the earth is obscured by the

deluge descending from the firmament, and I am deafened by the din of

the thunder. The tempestuous scene damps my spirits, and my horse sinks

under me at the tremendous peals, as I hasten on for the plain.

* * * * *

From his "Travels in the Carolinas, Florida," &c.

=_254._= THE WOOD PELICAN OF FLORIDA.

This solitary bird does not associate in flocks, but is generally seen

alone, commonly near the banks of great rivers, in vast marshes or

meadows, especially such as are caused by inundations, and also in the

vast deserted rice plantations: he stands alone on the topmost limb

of tall dead cypress trees, his neck contracted or drawn in upon his

shoulders, and beak resting like a long scythe upon his breast: in

this pensive posture and solitary situation, it looks extremely grave,

sorrowful, and melancholy, as if in the deepest thought.

* * * * *

=_Alexander Wilson, 1766-1813._= (Manual, p. 504.)

From the "American Ornithology."

=_255._= NEST OF THE RED-HEADED WOODPECKER.

Notwithstanding the care which this bird, in common with the rest of its

genus, takes to place its young beyond the reach of enemies, within

the hollows of trees, yet there is one deadly foe, against whose

depredations neither the height of the tree nor the depth of the cavity

is the least security. This is the blade snake, who frequently glides

up the trunk of the tree, and, like a skulking savage, enters the

woodpecker's peaceful apartment, devours the eggs or helpless young, in

spite of the cries and flutterings of the parents, and if the place be

large enough, coils himself up in the spot they occupied, where he will

sometimes remain for several days. The eager school-boy, after hazarding

his neck to reach the woodpecker's hole, at the triumphant moment when

he thinks the nestlings his own, and strips his arm, launching it down

into the cavity, and grasping what he conceives to be the callow young,

starts with horror at the sight of a hideous snake, and almost drops

from his giddy pinnacle, retreating down the tree with terror and

precipitation. Several adventures of this kind have come to my

knowledge; and one of them was attended with serious consequences, where

both snake and boy fell to the ground, and a broken thigh, and long

confinement, cured the adventurer completely of his ambition for robbing

woodpeckers' nests.

* * * * *

=_256._= THE WHITE-HEADED, OR BALD, EAGLE.

Elevated on the high dead limb of some gigantic tree that commands

a wide view of the neighboring shore and ocean, he seems calmly to

contemplate the motions of the various feathered tribes that pursue

their busy avocations below,--the snow-white Gulls slowly winnowing

the air; the busy _Tringoe_ coursing along the sands; trains of Ducks

streaming over the surface; silent and watchful Cranes, intent and

wading; clamorous crows; and all the winged multitudes that subsist by

the bounty of this vast liquid magazine of nature. High over all these

hovers one, whose action instantly arrests his whole attention. By his

wide curvature of wing, and sudden suspension in air, he knows him to be

the Fish Hawk, settling over some devoted victim of the deep. His eye

kindles at the sight, and balancing himself with half-opened wings, on

the branch, he watches the result. Down, rapid as an arrow from heaven,

descends the distant object of his attention, the roar of its wings

reaching the ear as it disappears in the deep, making the surges foam

around. At this moment, the eager looks of the Eagle are all ardor; and

levelling his neck for flight, he sees the Fish Hawk once more emerge,

struggling with his prey, and mounting in the air with screams of

exultation. These are the signal for our hero, who launching into the

air, instantly gives chase, and soon gains on the Fish Hawk; each exerts

his utmost to mount above the other, displaying in these rencontres

the most elegant and sublime aerial evolutions. The unincumbered Eagle

rapidly advances, and is just on the point of reaching his opponent,

when, with a sudden scream, probably of despair and honest execration,

the latter drops his fish; the Eagle poising himself for a moment, as if

to take a more certain aim, descends like a whirlwind, snatches it in

his grasp ere it reaches the water, and bears his ill-gotten booty

silently away to the woods.

* * * * *

=_Stephen Elliott,[64] 1771-1830._=

From "Views of Nature."

=_257._= COMPLETENESS AND VARIETY OF NATURE.

What is there that will not be included in the history of nature? The

earth on which we tread, the air we breathe, the waters around the

earth, the material forms that inhabit its surface, the mind of man,

with all its magical illusions and all its inherent energy, the planets

that move around our system, the firmament of heaven--the smallest of

the invisible atoms which float around our globe, and the most majestic

of the orbs that roll through the immeasurable fields of space--all

are parts of one system, productions of one power, creations of one

intellect, the offspring of Him, by whom all that is inert and inorganic

in creation was formed, and from whom all that have life derive their

being.

Of this immense system,--all that we can examine,--this little globe

that we inherit, is full of animation, and crowded with forms,

organized, glowing with life, and generally sentient. No space is

unoccupied; the exposed surface of the rock is incrusted with living

substances; plants occupy the bark, and decaying limbs, of other plants;

animals live on the surface, and in the bodies, of other animals:

inhabitants are fashioned and adapted to equatorial heats, and polar

ice;--air, earth, and ocean teem with life;--and if to other worlds the

same proportion of life and of enjoyment has been distributed which has

been allotted to ours, if creative benevolence has equally filled every

other planet of every other system, nay, even the suns themselves, with

beings, organized, animated, and intelligent, how countless must be

the generations of the living! What voices which we cannot hear, what

languages that we cannot understand, what multitudes that we cannot see,

may, as they roll along the stream of time, be employed hourly, daily,

and forever, in choral songs of praise, hymning their great Creator!

And when, in this almost prodigal waste of life, we perceive that every

being, from the puny insect which flutters in the evening ray; from the

lichen which we can scarcely distinguish on the mouldering rock;

from the fungus that springs up and re-animates the mass of dead and

decomposing substances; that every living form possesses a structure as

perfect in its sphere, an organization sometimes as complex, always as

truly and completely adapted to its purposes and modes of existence

as that of the most perfect animal; when we discover them all to be

governed by laws as definite, as immutable, as those which regulate the

planetary movements, great must be our admiration of the wisdom which

has arrayed, and the power which has perfected this stupendous fabric.

Nor does creation here cease. There are beyond the limits of our system,

beyond the visible forms of matter, other principles, other powers,

higher orders of beings, an immaterial world which we cannot yet know;

other modes of existence which we cannot comprehend; yet however

inscrutable to us, this spiritual world must be guided by its own

unerring laws, and the harmonious order which reigns in all we can see

and understand, ascending through the series of immortal and invisible

existence, must govern even the powers and dominions, the seraphim and

cherubim, that surround the throne of God himself.

[Footnote 64: Distinguished as a writer and scholar, and especially for

his work on the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia; a native of South

Carolina.]

* * * * *

=_John James Audubon, 1776-1851._= (Manual, p. 504.)

From the "Ornithological Biography."

=_258._= THE PASSENGER PIGEON.

I cannot describe to you the extreme beauty of their aerial evolutions,

when a hawk chanced to press upon the rear of a flock. At once, like a

torrent, and with a noise like thunder, they rushed into a compact mass,

pressing upon each other towards the centre. In these almost solid

masses, they darted forward in undulating and angular lines, descended

and swept close over the earth with inconceivable velocity, mounted

perpendicularly so as to resemble a vast column, and when high, were

seen wheeling and twisting within their continued lines, which then

resembled the coils of a gigantic serpent.

It is extremely interesting to see flock after flock performing exactly

the same evolutions which had been traced as it were, in the air, by a

preceding flock. Thus should a hawk have charged on a group at a certain

spot, the angles, curves, and undulations that have been described by

the birds, in their efforts to escape from the dreaded talons of the

plunderer, are undeviatingly followed by the next group that comes up.

Should the by-stander happen to witness one of these affrays, and,

struck with the rapidity and elegance of the motions exhibited, feel

desirous of seeing them repeated, his wishes will be gratified, if he

only remain in the place until the next group comes up.

As soon as the pigeons discover a sufficiency of food to entice them to

alight, they fly around in circles, reviewing the country below. During

their evolutions, on such occasions, the dense mass which they form,

exhibits a beautiful appearance, as it changes its direction, now

displaying a glistening sheet of azure, when the backs of the birds come

simultaneously into view, and anon, suddenly presenting a mass of rich

purple. They then pass lower, over the woods, and for a moment are lost

among the foliage, but again emerge, and are seen gliding aloft. They

now alight, but the next moment, as if suddenly alarmed, they take to

wing, producing by the flapping of their wings a noise like the roar of

distant thunder, and sweep through the forests to see if danger is near.

Hunger, however, soon brings them to the ground. When alighted, they

are seen industriously throwing up the withered leaves in quest of the

falling mast. The rear ranks are continually rising, passing over the

main body, and alighting in front, in such rapid succession, that the

whole flock seems still on wing. The quantity of ground thus swept is

astonishing, and so completely has it been cleared, that the gleaner who

might follow in their rear, would find his labor completely lost.

* * * * *

=_259._= EMIGRANTS REMOVING WESTWARD.

I think I see them at this moment harnessing their horses and attaching

them to their wagons, which are already filled with bedding,

provisions, and the younger children; while on the outside are fastened

spinning-wheels and looms, and a bucket filled with tar and tallow

swings between the hind wheels. Several axes are secured to the bolster,

and the feeding-trough of the horses contains pots, kettles, and pans.

The servant, now become a driver, rides the near saddled horse; the wife

is mounted on another; the worthy husband shoulders his gun; and his

sons, clad in plain, substantial homespun, drive the cattle ahead, and

lead the procession, followed by the hounds and other dogs.

* * * * *

=_260._= INTEREST OF EXPLORATION IN THE REMOTE WEST.

How delightful, I have often exclaimed, must have been the feelings of

those enthusiastic naturalists, my friends Nuttall and Townsend, while

traversing the ridges of the Rocky Mountains! How grand and impressive

the scenery presented to their admiring gaze, when from an elevated

station they saw the mountain torrent hurling its foamy waters over the

black crags of the rugged ravine, while on wide-spread wings the Great

Vulture sailed overhead watching the departure of the travellers, that

he might feast on the Salmon which in striving to ascend the cataract

had been thrown on the stony beach! Now the weary travellers are resting

on the bank of a brawling brook, along which they are delighted to see

the lively Dipper frisking wren-like from stone to stone. On the stunted

bushes above them some curious Jays are chattering, and as my friends

are looking upon the gay and restless birds, they are involuntarily led

to extend their gaze to the green slope beneath the more distant

crags, where they spy a mountain sheep, watching the movements of the

travellers as well as those of yon wolves stealing silently toward the

fleet-footed animal. Again the pilgrims are in motion; they wind their

pathless way round rocks and fissures; they have reached the greatest

height of the sterile platform; and as they gaze on the valleys whose

waters hasten to join the Pacific Ocean, and bid adieu, perhaps for the

last time, to the dear friends they have left in the distant east, how

intense must be their feelings, as thoughts of the past and the

future blend themselves in their anxious minds! But now I see them,

brother-like, with lighter steps, descending toward the head waters

of the famed Oregon. They have reached the great stream, and seating

themselves in a canoe, shoot adown the current, gazing on the beautiful

shrubs and flowers that ornament the banks, and the majestic trees that

cover the sides of the valley, all new to them, and presenting a wide

field of discovery. The melodies of unknown songsters enliven their

spirits, and glimpses of gaudily plumed birds excite their desire to

search those beautiful thickets; but time is urgent, and onward they

must speed. A deer crosses the stream, they pursue and capture it;

and it being now evening, they land and soon form a camp, carefully

concealed from the prying eyes of the lurking savage. The night is past,

the dawn smiles upon the refreshed travellers, who launch their frail

bark; and, as they slowly float on the stream, both listen attentively

to the notes of the Red-and-White-winged Troopial, and wonder how

similar they are to those of the "Red-winged Starling;" they think of

the affinities of species, and especially of those of the lively birds

composing this beautiful group.

* * * * *

=_Daniel Drake,[65] 1785-1852._=

From a "Picture of Cincinnati, &c."

=_261._= OBJECTS OF THE WESTERN MOUND-BUILDERS.

No objects in the State of Ohio seem to have more forcibly arrested the

attention of travellers, nor employed a greater number of pens, than

its antiquities. It is to be regretted, however, that so hastily and

superficially have they been examined by strangers, and so generally

neglected by ourselves, that the materials for a full description have

not yet been collected....

The forests over these remains exhibit no appearances of more recent

growth than in other parts. Trees, several hundred years old, are in

many places seen growing out of the ruins of others, which appear to

have been of equal size....

Those at Cincinnati, for example, exhibit so few of the characters of a

defensive work, that General Wayne, upon attentively surveying them in

1794, was of opinion that they were not designed for that purpose. It

was from the examination of valley-works only, that Bishop Madison was

led to deny that the remains of the western country were ever intended

for defence, and to conclude that they were enclosures for permanent

residence. It would be precipitate to assert that the relics found in

the valleys were for this purpose, and those of the uplands for defence.

But while it is certain that the latter were military posts, it seems

highly probable that the former were for ordinary abode in times of

peace. They were towns and the seats of chiefs, whose perishable parts

have crumbled into earth, and disappeared with the generations which

formed them. Many of them might have been calculated for defence, as

well as for habitations; but the latter must have been the chief purpose

for which they were erected. On the contrary, the hill-constructions,

which are generally in the strongest military positions of the country,

were designed solely for defence, in open and vigorous war.

[Footnote 65: A native of New Jersey, who was taken when very young,

to the West, where he became distinguished as a medical professor and

practitioner. His recollections and sketches are very valuable.]

* * * * *

=_John Bachman,[66] 1790-1873._=

From "The Quadrupeds of North America."

=_262._= THE OPOSSUM.

We can imagine to ourselves the surprise with which the opossum was

regarded by Europeans, when they first saw it. Scarcely anything was

known of the marsupial animals, as New Holland had not as yet opened its

unrivalled stores of singularities to astonish the world. Here was a

strange animal, with the head and ears of the pig, sometimes hanging on

the limb of a tree, and occasionally swinging like the monkey by the

tail. Around that prehensile appendage a dozen sharp-nosed, sleek-headed

young had entwined their own tails, and were sitting on the mother's

back. The astonished traveller approaches this extraordinary compound of

an animal, and touches it cautiously with a stick. Instantly it seems

to be struck with some mortal disease: its eyes close, it falls to the

ground, ceases to move, and appears to be dead. He turns it on its back,

and perceives on its stomach a strange, apparently artificial opening.

He puts his fingers into the extraordinary pocket, and lo, another brood

of a dozen or more young, scarcely larger than a pea, are hanging

in clusters on the teats. In pulling the creature about, in great

amazement, he suddenly receives a gripe on the hand; the twinkling of

the half-closed eye, and the breathing of the creature, evince that it

is not dead: and he adds a new term to the vocabulary of his language,

that of "playing possum."

... When the young are four weeks old, they begin from time to time to

relax their hold on the teats, and may now be seen with their heads

occasionally out of the pouch. A week later, and they venture to steal

occasionally from their snug retreat in the pouch, and are often seen on

the mother's back, securing themselves by entwining their tails around

hers. In this situation she moves from place to place in search of food,

carrying her whole family along with her, to which she is much attached,

and in whose defence she exhibits a considerable degree of courage,

growling at any intruder, and ready to use her teeth with great severity

on man or dog. In travelling, it is amusing to see this large family

moving about. Some of the young, nearly the size of rats, have their

tails entwined around the legs of the mother, and some around her

neck,--thus they are dragged along. They have a mild and innocent look,

and are sleek, and in fine condition, and this is the only age in which

the word pretty can be applied to the Opossum. At this period, the

mother in giving sustenance to so large a family, becomes thin, and is

reduced to one-half of her previous weight. The whole family of young

remain with her about two months, and continue in the vicinity till

autumn. In the meantime, a second, and often a third brood, is produced,

and thus two or more broods of different ages may be seen, sometimes

with the mother, and at other times not far off.

... Hunting the Opossum is a very favorite amusement among domestics and

field laborers on our Southern plantations, of lads broke loose from

school in the holidays, and even of gentlemen, who are sometimes more

fond of this sport than of the less profitable and more dangerous and

fatiguing one of hunting the gray fox by moonlight. Although we have

never participated in an Opossum hunt, yet we have observed that it

afforded much amusement to the sable group that in the majority of

instances make up the hunting party, and we have on two or three

occasions been the silent and gratified observers of the preparations

that were going on, the anticipations indulged in, and the excitement

apparent around us.

[Footnote 66: A clergyman of the Lutheran church, for many years a

citizen of Charleston, South Carolina, out originally from New York;

eminent for his attainments and writings in natural history and

science.]

* * * * *

=_J. A. Lapham.[67]_=

From "Wisconsin, its Geography," &c.

=_263._= THE SMALLER LAKES.

BESIDES these immense lakes, Wisconsin abounds in those of smaller size,

scattered profusely over her whole surface. They are from one to twenty

or thirty miles in extent. Many of them are the most beautiful that

can be imagined--the water deep, and of crystal purity and clearness,

surrounded by sloping hills and promontories, covered with scattered

groves and clumps of trees. Some are of a more picturesque kind, being

more rugged in their appearance, with steep, rocky bluffs, crowned

with cedar, hemlock, spruce, and other evergreen trees of a similar

character. Perhaps a small rocky island will vary the scene, covered

with a conical mass of vegetation, the low shrubs and bushes being

arranged around the margin, and the tall trees in the centre. These

lakes usually abound in fish of various kinds, affording food for the

pioneer settler; and among the pebbles on their shores may occasionally

be found fine specimens of agate, carnelian, and other precious stones.

In the bays, where the water is shallow, and but little affected by the

winds, the wild rice grows in abundance, affording subsistence for the

Indian, and attracting innumerable water-birds to these lakes.

[Footnote 67: The age of this meritorious and industrious writer we have

not been able to learn. The second edition of his book on Wisconsin

appeared in 1846.]

* * * * *

=_264._= ANCIENT EARTHWORKS.

There is a class of ancient earthworks in Wisconsin, not before found

in any other country.... Some have a resemblance to the buffalo, the

eagle, or crane, or to the turtle or lizard. One, representing the human

form, near the Blue Mounds, is, according to R.C. Taylor, Esq.,

one hundred and twenty feet in length: it lies in an east and west

direction, the head towards the west, with the arms and legs extended.

The body or trunk is thirty feet in breadth, the head twenty-five, and

its elevation above the general surface of the prairie is about six

feet. Its conformation is so distinct, that there can be no possibility

of mistake in assigning it to the human figure.

* * * * *

=_Charles Wilkins Webber, 1819-1856._= (Manual, p. 505.)

From "Wild Scenes and Song-birds."

=_265._= THE MOCKING-BIRD.

THE next spring a new melody filled the air. A melody such as I had

never heard before burst in clear and overwhelming raptures from

the meadows where I had first seen the graceful stranger with the

white-barred wings, last year.... I saw it now leaping up from its

favorite perch on a tree-top much in the manner I had observed before,

but now it was in a different mood and seemed to mount thus spirit-like

upon the wilder ecstasies, and floating fall upon the subsiding cadence,

of that passionate song it poured into the listening ear of love, for I

could see his mate, with fainter bars across her wings, where she sat

upon a thornbush near, and listened. When this magnificent creature

commenced to sing, the very air was burdened with a thousand different

notes; but his voice rose clear and melodiously loud above them all.

As I listened, one song after another ceased suddenly, until, in a few

minutes, and before I could realize that it was so, I found myself

hearkening to that solitary voice. This is a positive fact. I looked

around me in astonishment. What! Are they awed? But his song only now

grew more exulting, and, as if feeling his triumph, he bounded yet

higher, with each new gush, and in swift and quivering raptures dived,

skimmed, and floated round--round--then rose to fall again more boldly

on the billowy storm of sound.

... This curious phenomenon I have witnessed many times since. Even in

the morning choir, when every little throat seems strained in emulation,

if the mocking-bird breathes forth in one of its mad, bewildered, and

bewildering extravaganzas, the other birds pause almost invariably, and

remain silent until his song is done. This, I assure you, is no figment

of the imagination, or illusion of an excited fancy; it is just as

substantial a fact as any other one in natural history. Whether the

other birds stop from envy, as has been said, or from awe, cannot be so

well ascertained, but I believe it is from the sentiment of awe, for as

I certainly have felt it myself in listening to the mocking-bird, I do

not know why these inferior creatures should not also.

* * * * *

=_Charles Lanman, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 505.)

From "Haw-ho-noo."

=_266._= MAPLE-SUGAR-MAKING AMONG THE INDIANS.

It is in the month of April, and the hunting season is at an end.

Albeit, the ground is covered with snow, the noonday sun has become

quite powerful; and the annual offering has been made to the Great

Spirit, by the medicine-men, of the first product of one of the earliest

trees in the district. This being the preparatory signal for extensive

business, the women of the encampment proceed to make a large number of

wooden troughs (to receive the liquid treasure), and after these are

finished, the various trees in the neighborhood are tapped, and the

juice begins to run. In the mean time the men of the party have built

the necessary fires, and suspended over them their earthen, brass, or

iron kettles. The sap is now flowing in copious streams, and from one

end of the camp to the other is at once presented an animated and

romantic scene, which continues day and night, until the end of

the sugar season. The principal employment to which the men devote

themselves, is that of lounging about the encampment, shooting at marks,

and playing the moccasin game; while the main part of the labor is

performed by the women, who not only attend to the kettles, but employ

all their leisure time in making the beautiful birchen mocucks, for the

preservation and transportation of the sugar when made; the sap being

brought from the troughs to the kettles, by the boys and girls. Less

attention than usual is paid by the Indians at such times to their

meals; and unless game is very easily obtained, they are quite content

to depend upon the sugar alone.

It was now about the middle of June, and some fifty birchen canoes have

just been launched upon the waters of Green Bay. They are occupied by

our Ottawa sugar-makers, who have started upon a pilgrimage to Mackinaw.

The distance is near two hundred miles, and as the canoes are heavily

laden not only with mocucks of sugar, but with furs collected by the

hunters during the past winter, and the Indians are travelling at their

leisure, the party will probably reach their desired haven in the course

of ten days. Well content with their accumulated treasures, both the

women and the men are in a particularly happy mood, and many a wild song

is heard to echo over the placid lake. As the evening approaches, day

after day they seek out some convenient landing place, and, pitching the

wigwams on the beach, spend a goodly portion of the night carousing and

telling stories around their camp fires, resuming their voyage after a

morning sleep, long alter the sun has risen above the blue waters of

the east. Another sunset hour, and the cavalcade of canoes is quietly

gliding into the crescent bay of Mackinaw, and, reaching a beautiful

beach at the foot of a lofty bluff, the Indians again draw up their

canoes,--again erect their wigwams. And, as the Indian traders have

assembled on the spot, the more improvident of the party immediately

proceed to exhibit their sugar and furs, which are usually disposed of

for flour and pork, blankets and knives, guns, ammunition, and a great

variety of trinkets, long before the hour of midnight.

* * * * *

=_Ephraim C. Squier, 1821-._= (Manual, p. 504.)

From "Aboriginal Monuments of the West."

=_267._= INDIAN POTTERY.