Here, just at the head of the murmuring rapids, Joe now proceeded to skin

the moose with a pocket-knife, while I looked on; and a tragical business

it was,--to see that still warm and palpitating body pierced with a

knife, to see the warm milk stream from the rent udder, and the ghastly

naked red carcass appearing from within its seemly robe, which was made to

hide it. The ball had passed through the shoulder-blade diagonally and

lodged under the skin on the opposite side, and was partially flattened.

My companion keeps it to show to his grandchildren. He has the shanks of

another moose which he has since shot, skinned and stuffed, ready to be

made into boots by putting in a thick leather sole. Joe said, if a moose

stood fronting you, you must not fire, but advance toward him, for he will

turn slowly and give you a fair shot. In the bed of this narrow, wild, and

rocky stream, between two lofty walls of spruce and firs, a mere cleft in

the forest which the stream had made, this work went on. At length Joe had

stripped off the hide and dragged it trailing to the shore, declaring that

it weighed a hundred pounds, though probably fifty would have been nearer

the truth. He cut off a large mass of the meat to carry along, and

another, together with the tongue and nose, he put with the hide on the

shore to lie there all night, or till we returned. I was surprised that he

thought of leaving this meat thus exposed by the side of the carcass, as

the simplest course, not fearing that any creature would touch it; but

nothing did. This could hardly have happened on the bank of one of our

rivers in the eastern part of Massachusetts; but I suspect that fewer

small wild animals are prowling there than with us. Twice, however, in

this excursion I had a glimpse of a species of large mouse.

This stream was so withdrawn, and the moose-tracks were so fresh, that my

companions, still bent on hunting, concluded to go farther up it and camp,

and then hunt up or down at night. Half a mile above this, at a place

where I saw the aster puniceus and the beaked hazel, as we paddled along,

Joe, hearing a slight rustling amid the alders, and seeing something black

about two rods off, jumped up and whispered, "Bear!" but before the hunter

had discharged his piece, he corrected himself to "Beaver!"--"Hedgehog!"

The bullet killed a large hedgehog, more than two feet and eight inches

long. The quills were rayed out and flattened on the hinder part of its

back, even as if it had lain on that part, but were erect and long between

this and the tail. Their points, closely examined, were seen to be finely

bearded or barbed, and shaped like an awl, that is, a little concave, to

give the barbs effect. After about a mile of still water, we prepared our

camp on the right side, just at the foot of a considerable fall. Little

chopping was done that night, for fear of scaring the moose. We had moose-

meat fried for supper. It tasted like tender beef, with perhaps more

flavor,--sometimes like veal.

After supper, the moon having risen, we proceeded to hunt a mile up this

stream, first "carrying" about the falls. We made a picturesque sight,

wending single-file along the shore, climbing over rocks and logs,--Joe,

who brought up the rear, twirling his canoe in his hands as if it were a

feather, in places where it was difficult to get along without a burden.

We launched the canoe again from the ledge over which the stream fell, but

after half a mile of still water, suitable for hunting, it became rapid

again, and we were compelled to make our way along the shore, while Joe

endeavored to get up in the birch alone, though it was still very

difficult for him to pick his way amid the rocks in the night. We on the

shore found the worst of walking, a perfect chaos of fallen and drifted

trees, and of bushes projecting far over the water, and now and then we

made our way across the mouth of a small tributary on a kind of net-work

of alders. So we went tumbling on in the dark, being on the shady side,

effectually scaring all the moose and bears that might be thereabouts. At

length we came to a standstill, and Joe went forward to reconnoitre; but

he reported that it was still a continuous rapid as far as he went, or

half a mile, with no prospect of improvement, as if it were coming down

from a mountain. So we turned about, hunting back to the camp through the

still water. It was a splendid moonlight night, and I, getting sleepy as

it grew late,--for I had nothing to do,--found it difficult to realize

where I was. This stream was much more unfrequented than the main one,

lumbering operations being no longer carried on in this quarter. It was

only three or four rods wide, but the firs and spruce through which it

trickled seemed yet taller by contrast. Being in this dreamy state, which

the moonlight enhanced, I did not clearly discern the shore, but seemed,

most of the time, to be floating through ornamental grounds,--for I

associated the fir-tops with such scenes;--very high up some Broadway, and

beneath or between their tops, I thought I saw an endless succession of

porticos and columns, cornices and façades, verandas and churches. I did

not merely fancy this, but in my drowsy state such was the illusion. I

fairly lost myself in sleep several times, still dreaming of that

architecture and the nobility that dwelt behind and might issue from it;

but all at once I would be aroused and brought back to a sense of my

actual position by the sound of Joe's birch horn in the midst of all this

silence calling the moose, _ugh, ugh, oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo_, and I prepared

to hear a furious moose come rushing and crashing through the forest, and

see him burst out on to the little strip of meadow by our side.

But, on more accounts than one, I had had enough of moose-hunting. I had

not come to the woods for this purpose, nor had I foreseen it, though I

had been willing to learn how the Indian manoeuvred; but one moose killed

was as good, if not as bad, as a dozen. The afternoon's tragedy, and my

share in it, as it affected the innocence, destroyed the pleasure of my

adventure. It is true, I came as near as is possible to come to being a

hunter and miss it, myself; and as it is, I think that I could spend a

year in the woods, fishing and hunting, just enough to sustain myself,

with satisfaction. This would be next to living like a philosopher on the

fruits of the earth which you had raised, which also attracts me. But this

hunting of the moose merely for the satisfaction of killing him,--not even

for the sake of his hide,--without making any extraordinary exertion or

running any risk yourself, is too much like going out by night to some

wood-side pasture and shooting your neighbor's horses. These are God's own

horses, poor, timid creatures, that will run fast enough as soon as they

smell you, though they _are_ nine feet high. Joe told us of some hunters

who a year or two before had shot down several oxen by night, somewhere in

the Maine woods, mistaking them for moose. And so might any of the

hunters; and what is the difference in the sport, but the name? In the

former case, having killed one of God's and _your own_ oxen, you strip off

its hide,--because that is the common trophy, and, moreover, you have

heard that it may be sold for moccasins,--cut a steak from its haunches,

and leave the huge carcass to smell to heaven for you. It is no better, at

least, than to assist at a slaughter-house.

This afternoon's experience suggested to me how base or coarse are the

motives which commonly carry men into the wilderness. The explorers and

lumberers generally are all hirelings, paid so much a day for their labor,

and as such they have no more love for wild nature than wood-sawyers have

for forests. Other white men and Indians who come here are for the most

part hunters, whose object is to slay as many moose and other wild animals

as possible. But, pray, could not one spend some weeks or years in the

solitude of this vast wilderness with other employments than these,--

employments perfectly sweet and innocent and ennobling? For one that comes

with a pencil to sketch or sing, a thousand come with an axe or rifle.

What a coarse and imperfect use Indians and hunters make of Nature! No

wonder that their race is so soon exterminated. I already, and for weeks

afterward, felt my nature the coarser for this part of my woodland

experience, and was reminded that our life should be lived as tenderly and

daintily as one would pluck a flower.

With these thoughts, when we reached our camping-ground, I decided to

leave my companions to continue moose-hunting down the stream, while I

prepared the camp, though they requested me not to chop much nor make a

large fire, for fear I should scare their game. In the midst of the damp

fir-wood, high on the mossy bank, about nine o'clock of this bright

moonlight night, I kindled a fire, when they were gone, and, sitting on

the fir-twigs, within sound of the falls, examined by its light the

botanical specimens which I had collected that afternoon, and wrote down

some of the reflections which I have here expanded; or I walked along the

shore and gazed up the stream, where the whole space above the falls was

filled with mellow light. As I sat before the fire on my fir-twig seat,

without walls above or around me, I remembered how far on every hand that

wilderness stretched, before you came to cleared or cultivated fields, and

wondered if any bear or moose was watching the light of my fire; for

Nature looked sternly upon me on account of the murder of the moose.

Strange that so few ever come to the woods to see how the pine lives and

grows and spires, lifting its evergreen arms to the light,--to see its

perfect success; but most are content to behold it in the shape of many

broad boards brought to market, and deem that its true success! But the

pine is no more lumber than man is, and to be made into boards and houses

is no more its true and highest use than the truest use of a man is to be

cut down and made into manure. There is a higher law affecting our

relation to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead pine, is no

more a pine than a dead human carcass is a man. Can he who has discovered

only some of the values of whalebone and whale oil be said to have

discovered the true use of the whale? Can he who slays the elephant for

his ivory be said to have "seen the elephant"? These are petty and

accidental uses; just as if a stronger race were to kill us in order to

make buttons and flageolets of our bones; for everything may serve a lower

as well as a higher use. Every creature is better alive than dead, men and

moose and pine-trees, and he who understands it aright will rather

preserve its life than destroy it.

Is it the lumberman, then, who is the friend and lover of the pine, stands

nearest to it, and understands its nature best? Is it the tanner who has

barked it, or he who has boxed it for turpentine, whom posterity will

fable to have been changed into a pine at last? No! no! it is the poet; he

it is who makes the truest use of the pine,--who does not fondle it with

an axe, nor tickle it with a saw, nor stroke it with a plane,--who knows

whether its heart is false without cutting into it,--who has not bought

the stumpage of the township on which it stands. All the pines shudder and

heave a sigh when _that_ man steps on the forest floor. No, it is the

poet, who loves them as his own shadow in the air, and lets them stand. I

have been into the lumber-yard, and the carpenter's shop, and the tannery,

and the lampblack-factory, and the turpentine clearing; but when at length

I saw the tops of the pines waving and reflecting the light at a distance

high over all the rest of the forest, I realized that the former were not

the highest use of the pine. It is not their bones or hide or tallow that

I love most. It is the living spirit of the tree, not its spirit of

turpentine, with which I sympathize, and which heals my cuts.

Ere long, the hunters returned, not having seen a moose, but, in

consequence of my suggestions, bringing a quarter of the dead one, which,

with ourselves, made quite a load for the canoe.

After breakfasting on moose-meat, we returned down Pine Stream on our way

to Chesuncook Lake, which was about five miles distant. We could see the

red carcass of the moose lying in Pine Stream when nearly half a mile off.

Just below the mouth of this stream were the most considerable rapids

between the two lakes, called Pine-Stream Falls, where were large flat

rocks washed smooth, and at this time you could easily wade across above

them. Joe ran down alone while we walked over the portage, my companion

collecting spruce gum for his friends at home, and I looking for flowers.

Near the lake, which we were approaching with as much expectation as if it

had been a university,--for it is not often that the stream of our life

opens into such expansions,--were islands, and a low and meadowy shore

with scattered trees, birches, white and yellow, slanted over the water,

and maples,--many of the white birches killed, apparently by inundations.

There was considerable native grass; and even a few cattle--whose

movements we heard, though we did not see them, mistaking them at first

for moose--were pastured there.

On entering the lake, where the stream runs southeasterly, and for some

time before, we had a view of the mountains about Katadn,

(_Katahdinauquoh_ one says they are called,) like a cluster of blue fungi

of rank growth, apparently twenty-five or thirty miles distant, in a

southeast direction, their summits concealed by clouds. Joe called some of

them the _Souadneunk_ mountains. This is the name of a stream there, which

another Indian told us meant "Running between mountains." Though some

lower summits were afterward uncovered, we got no more complete view of

Katadn while we were in the woods. The clearing to which we were bound was

on the right of the mouth of the river, and was reached by going round a

low point, where the water was shallow to a great distance from the shore.

Chesuncook Lake extends northwest and southeast, and is called eighteen

miles long and three wide, without an island. We had entered the northwest

corner of it, and when near the shore could see only part way down it. The

principal mountains visible from the land here were those already

mentioned, between southeast and east, and a few summits a little west of

north, but generally the north and northwest horizon about the St. John

and the British boundary was comparatively level.

Ansell Smith's, the oldest and principal clearing about this lake,

appeared to be quite a harbor for _bateaux_ and canoes; seven or eight of

the former were lying about, and there was a small scow for hay, and a

capstan on a platform, now high and dry, ready to be floated and anchored

to tow rafts with. It was a very primitive kind of harbor, where boats

were drawn up amid the stumps,--such a one, methought, as the Argo might

have been launched in. There were five other huts with small clearings on

the opposite side of the lake, all at this end and visible from this

point. One of the Smiths told me that it was so far cleared that they came

here to live and built the present house four years before, though the

family had been here but a few months.

I was interested to see how a pioneer lived on this side of the country.

His life is in some respects more adventurous than that of his brother in

the West; for he contends with winter as well as the wilderness, and there

is a greater interval of time at least between him and the army which is

to follow. Here immigration is a tide which may ebb when it has swept away

the pines; there it is not a tide, but an inundation, and roads and other

improvements come steadily rushing after.

As we approached the log-house, a dozen rods from the lake, and

considerably elevated above it, the projecting ends of the logs lapping

over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very

rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-

boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with

many large apartments. The walls were well clayed between the logs, which

were large and round, except on the upper and under sides, and as visible

inside as out, successive bulging cheeks gradually lessening upwards and

tuned to each other with the axe, like Pandean pipes. Probably the musical

forest-gods had not yet cast them aside; they never do till they are split

or the bark is gone. It was a style of architecture not described by

Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of

Orpheus; none of your frilled or fluted columns, which have cut such a

false swell, and support nothing but a gable end and their builder's

pretensions,--that is, with the multitude; and as for "ornamentation," one

of those words with a dead tail which architects very properly use to

describe their flourishes, there were the lichens and mosses and fringes

of bark, which nobody troubled himself about. We certainly leave the

handsomest paint and clapboards behind in the woods, when we strip off the

bark and poison ourselves with white-lead in the towns. We get but half

the spoils of the forest. For beauty, give me trees with the fur on. This

house was designed and constructed with the freedom of stroke of a

forester's axe, without other compass and square than Nature uses.

Wherever the logs were cut off by a window or door, that is, were not kept

in place by alternate overlapping, they were held one upon another by very

large pins driven in diagonally on each side, where branches might have

been, and then cut off so close up and down as not to project beyond the

bulge of the log, as if the logs clasped each other in their arms. These

logs were posts, studs, boards, clapboards, laths, plaster, and nails, all

in one. Where the citizen uses a mere sliver or board, the pioneer uses

the whole trunk of a tree. The house had large stone chimneys, and was

roofed with spruce-bark. The windows were imported, all but the casings.

One end was a regular logger's camp, for the boarders, with the usual fir

floor and log benches. Thus this house was but a slight departure from the

hollow tree, which the bear still inhabits,--being a hollow made with

trees piled up, with a coating of bark like its original.

The cellar was a separate building, like an ice-house, and it answered for

a refrigerator at this season, our moose-meat being kept there. It was a

potato-hole with a permanent roof. Each structure and institution here was

so primitive that you could at once refer it to its source; but our

buildings commonly suggest neither their origin nor their purpose. There

was a large, and what farmers would call handsome, barn, part of whose

boards had been sawed by a whip-saw; and the saw-pit, with its great pile

of dust, remained before the house. The long split shingles on a portion

of the barn were laid a foot to the weather, suggesting what kind of

weather they have there. Grant's barn at Caribou Lake was said to be still

larger, the biggest ox-nest in the woods, fifty feet by a hundred. Think

of a monster barn in that primitive forest lifting its gray back above the

tree-tops! Man makes very much such a nest for his domestic animals, of

withered grass and fodder, as the squirrels and many other wild creatures

do for themselves.

There was also a blacksmith's shop, where plainly a good deal of work was

done. The oxen and horses used in lumbering operations were shod, and all

the iron-work of sleds, etc., was repaired or made here. I saw them load a

_bateau_ at the Moosehead carry, the next Tuesday, with about thirteen

hundred weight of bar iron for this shop. This reminded me how primitive

and honorable a trade was Vulcan's. I do not hear that there was any

carpenter or tailor among the gods. The smith seems to have preceded these

and every other mechanic at Chesuncook as well as on Olympus, and his

family is the most widely dispersed, whether he be christened John or

Ansell.

Smith owned two miles down the lake by half a mile in width. There were

about one hundred acres cleared here. He cut seventy tons of English hay

this year on this ground, and twenty more on another clearing, and he uses

it all himself in lumbering operations. The barn was crowded with pressed

hay and a machine to press it. There was a large garden full of roots,

turnips, beets, carrots, potatoes, etc., all of great size. They said that

they were worth as much here as in New York. I suggested some currants for

sauce, especially as they had no apple-trees set out, and showed how

easily they could be obtained.

There was the usual long-handled axe of the primitive woods by the door,

three and a half feet long,--for my new black-ash rule was in constant

use,--and a large, shaggy dog, whose nose, report said, was full of

porcupine quills. I can testify that he looked very sober. This is the

usual fortune of pioneer dogs, for they have to face the brunt of the

battle for their race, and act the part of Arnold Winkelried without

intending it. If he should invite one of his town friends up this way,

suggesting moose-meat and unlimited freedom, the latter might pertinently

inquire, "What is that sticking in your nose?" When a generation or two

have used up all the enemies' darts, their successors lead a comparatively

easy life. We owe to our fathers analogous blessings. Many old people

receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a

compensation for having lived a long time ago. No doubt, our town dogs

still talk, in a snuffling way, about the days that tried dogs' noses. How

they got a cat up there I do not know, for they are as shy as my aunt

about entering a canoe. I wondered that she did not run up a tree on the

way; but perhaps she was bewildered by the very crowd of opportunities.

Twenty or thirty lumberers, Yankee and Canadian, were coming and going,--

Aleck among the rest,--and from time to time an Indian touched here. In

the winter there are sometimes a hundred men lodged here at once. The most

interesting piece of news that circulated among them appeared to be, that

four horses belonging to Smith, worth seven hundred dollars, had passed by

further into the woods a week before.

The white-pine-tree was at the bottom or further end of all this. It is a

war against the pines, the only real Aroostook or Penobscot war. I have no

doubt that they lived pretty much the same sort of life in the Homeric

age, for men have always thought more of eating than of fighting; then, as

now, their minds ran chiefly on the "hot bread and sweet cakes"; and the

fur and lumber trade is an old story to Asia and Europe. I doubt if men

ever made a trade of heroism. In the days of Achilles, even, they

delighted in big barns, and perchance in pressed hay, and he who possessed

the most valuable team was the best fellow.

We had designed to go on at evening up the Caucomgomoc, whose mouth was a

mile or two distant, to the lake of the same name, about ten miles off;

but some Indians of Joe's acquaintance, who were making canoes on the

Caucomgomoc, came over from that side, and gave so poor an account of the

moose-hunting, so many had been killed there lately, that my companions

concluded not to go there. Joe spent this Sunday and the night with his

acquaintances. The lumberers told me that there were many moose

hereabouts, but no caribou or deer. A man from Oldtown had killed ten or

twelve moose, within a year, so near the house that they heard all his

guns. His name may have been Hercules, for aught I know, though I should

rather have expected to hear the rattling of his club; but, no doubt, he

keeps pace with the improvements of the age, and uses a Sharpe's rifle

now; probably he gets all his armor made and repaired at Smith's shop. One

moose had been killed and another shot at within sight of the house within

two years. I do not know whether Smith has yet got a poet to look after

the cattle, which, on account of the early breaking up of the ice, are

compelled to summer in the woods, but I would suggest this office to such

of my acquaintances as love to write verses and go a-gunning.

After a dinner, at which apple-sauce was the greatest luxury to me, but

our moose-meat was oftenest called for by the lumberers, I walked across

the clearing into the forest, southward, returning along the shore. For my

dessert, I helped myself to a large slice of the Chesuncook woods, and

took a hearty draught of its waters with all my senses. The woods were as

fresh and full of vegetable life as a lichen in wet weather, and contained

many interesting plants; but unless they are of white pine, they are

treated with as little respect here as a mildew, and in the other case

they are only the more quickly cut down. The shore was of coarse, flat,

slate rocks, often in slabs, with the surf beating on it. The rocks and

bleached drift-logs, extending some way into the shaggy woods, showed a

rise and fall of six or eight feet, caused partly by the dam at the

outlet. They said that in winter the snow was three feet deep on a level

here, and sometimes four or five,--that the ice on the lake was two feet

thick, clear, and four feet, including the snow-ice. Ice had already

formed in vessels.

We lodged here this Sunday night in a comfortable bed-room, apparently the

best one; and all that I noticed unusual in the night--for I still kept

taking notes, like a spy in the camp--was the creaking of the thin split

boards, when any of our neighbors stirred.

Such were the first rude beginnings of a town. They spoke of the

practicability of a winter-road to the Moosehead carry, which would not

cost much, and would connect them with steam and staging and all the busy

world. I almost doubted if the lake would be there,--the self-same lake,--

preserve its form and identity, when the shores should be cleared and

settled; as if these lakes and streams which explorers report never

awaited the advent of the citizen.

The sight of one of these frontier-houses, built of these great logs,

whose inhabitants have unflinchingly maintained their ground many summers

and winters in the wilderness, reminds me of famous forts, like

Ticonderoga, or Crown Point, which have sustained memorable sieges. They

are especially winter-quarters, and at this season this one had a

partially deserted look, as if the siege were raised a little, the snow-

banks being melted from before it, and its garrison accordingly reduced. I

think of their daily food as rations,--it is called "supplies"; a Bible

and a great coat are munitions of war, and a single man seen about the

premises is a sentinel on duty. You expect that he will require the

countersign, and will perchance take you for Ethan Allen, come to demand

the surrender of his fort in the name of the Continental Congress. It is a

sort of ranger service. Arnold's expedition is a daily experience with

these settlers. They can prove that they were out at almost any time; and

I think that all the first generation of them deserve a pension more than

any that went to the Mexican war.

[To be continued.]

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

EVERY MAN HIS OWN BOSWELL.

_Aquí está encerrada el alma del licenciado

Pedro Garcias_.

If I should ever make a little book out of these papers, which I hope you

are not getting tired of, I suppose I ought to save the above sentence for

a motto on the title-page. But I want it now, and must use it. I need not

say to you that the words are Spanish, nor that they are to be found in

the short Introduction to "Gil Blas," nor that they mean, "Here lies

buried the soul of the licentiate Pedro Garcias."

I warned all young people off the premises when I began my notes referring

to old age. I must be equally fair with old people now. They are earnestly

requested to leave this paper to young persons from the age of twelve to

that of four-score years and ten, at which latter period of life I am sure

that I shall have at least one youthful reader. You know well enough what

I mean by youth and age;--something in the soul, which has no more to do

with the color of the hair than the vein of gold in a rock has to do with

the grass a thousand feet above it.

I am growing bolder as I write. I think it requires not only youth, but

genius, to read this paper. I don't mean to imply that it required any

whatsoever to talk what I have here written down. It did demand a certain

amount of memory, and such command of the English tongue as is given by a

common school education. So much I do claim. But here I have related, at

length, a string of trivialities. You must have the imagination of a poet

to transfigure them. These little colored patches are stains upon the

windows of a human soul; stand on the outside, they are but dull and

meaningless spots of color; seen from within, they are glorified shapes

with empurpled wings and sunbright aureoles.

My hand trembles when I offer you this. Many times I have come bearing

flowers such as my garden grew; but now I offer you this poor, brown,

homely growth, you may cast it away as worthless. And yet--and yet--it is

something better than flowers; it is a _seed-capsule_. Many a gardener

will cut you a bouquet of his choicest blossoms for small fee, but he does

not love to let the seeds of his rarest varieties go out of his own hands.

It is by little things that we know ourselves; a soul would very probably

mistake itself for another, when once disembodied, were it not for

individual experiences that differed from those of others only in details

seemingly trifling. All of us have been thirsty thousands of times, and

felt, with Pindar, that water was the best of things. I alone, as I think,

of all mankind, remember one particular pailful of water, flavored with

the white-pine of which the pail was made, and the brown mug out of which

one Edmund, a red-faced and curly-haired boy, was averred to have bitten a

fragment in his haste to drink; it being then high summer, and little

full-blooded boys feeling very warm and porous in the low-"studded"

school-room where Dame Prentiss, dead and gone, ruled over young children,

many of whom are old ghosts now, and have known Abraham for twenty or

thirty years of our mortal time.

Thirst belongs to humanity, everywhere, in all ages; but that white-pine

pail and that brown mug belong to me in particular; and just so of my

special relationships with other things and with my race. One could never

remember himself in eternity by the mere fact of having loved or hated any

more than by that of having thirsted; love and hate have no more

individuality in them than single waves in the ocean;--but the accidents

or trivial marks which distinguished those whom we loved or hated make

their memory our own forever, and with it that of our own personality

also.

Therefore, my aged friend of five-and-twenty, or thereabouts, pause at the

threshold of this particular record, and ask yourself seriously whether

you are fit to read such revelations as are to follow. For observe, you

have here no splendid array of petals such as poets offer you,--nothing

but a dry shell, containing, if you will get out what is in it, a few

small seeds of poems. You may laugh at them, if you like. I shall never

tell you what I think of you for so doing. But if you can read into the

heart of these things, in the light of other memories as slight, yet as

dear to your soul, then you are neither more nor less than a POET, and can

afford to write no more verses during the rest of your natural life,--

which abstinence I take to be one of the surest marks of your meriting the

divine name I have just bestowed upon you.

[May I beg of you who have begun this paper, nobly trusting to your own

imagination and sensibilities to give it the significance which it does

not lay claim to without your kind assistance,--may I beg of you, I say,

to pay particular attention to the _brackets_ which enclose certain

paragraphs? I want my "asides," you see, to whisper loud to you who read

my notes, and sometimes I talk a page or two to you without pretending

that I said a word of it to our boarders. You will find a very long

"aside" to you almost as soon as you begin to read. And so, dear young

friend, fall to at once, taking such things as I have provided for you;

and if you turn them, by the aid of your powerful imagination, into a fair

banquet, why, then, peace be with you, and a summer by the still waters of

some quiet river, or by some yellow beach, where, as my friend, the

Professor, says, you can sit with Nature's wrist in your hand and count

her ocean-pulses.]

I should like to make a few intimate revelations relating especially to my

early life, if I thought you would like to hear them.

[The schoolmistress turned a little in

her chair, and sat with her face directed partly towards me.--Half-

mourning now;--purple ribbon. That breastpin she wears has _gray_ hair in

it; her mother's, no doubt;--I remember our landlady's daughter telling

me, soon after the school-mistress came to board with us, that she had

lately "buried a payrent." That's what made her look so pale,--kept the

poor sick thing alive with her own blood. Ah! long illness is the real

vampyrism; think of living a year or two after one is dead, by sucking the

life-blood out of a frail young creature at one's bedside!--Well, souls

grow white, as well as cheeks, in these holy duties; one that goes in a

nurse may come out an angel.--God bless all good women!--to their soft

hands and pitying hearts we must all come at last!----The schoolmistress

has a better color than when she came.---- ---- Too late!----"It might

have been."----Amen!

----How many thoughts go to a dozen heart-beats, sometimes! There was no

long pause after my remark addressed to the company, but in that time I

had the train of ideas and feelings I have just given flash through my

consciousness sudden and sharp as the crooked red streak that springs out

of its black sheath like the creese of a Malay in his death-rage, and

stabs the earth right and left in its blind rage.

I don't deny that there was a pang in it,--yes, a stab; but there was a

prayer, too,--the "Amen" belonged to that.--Also, a vision of a four-story

brick house, nicely furnished,--I actually saw many specific articles,--

curtains, sofas, tables, and others, and could draw the patterns of them

at this moment,--a brick house, I say, looking out on the water, with a

fair parlor, and books and busts and pots of flowers and bird-cages, all

complete; and at the window, looking on the water, two of us.--"Male and

female created He them."--These two were standing at the window, when a

little boy that was playing near them looked up at me with such a look

that I---- ----poured out a glass of water, drank it all down, and then

continued.]

I said I should like to tell you some things, such as people commonly

never tell, about my early recollections. Should you like to hear them?

Should we _like_ to hear them?--said the schoolmistress;--no, but we

should _love_ to.

[The voice was a sweet one, naturally, and had something very pleasant in

its tone, just then.--The four-story brick house, which had gone out like

a transparency when the light behind it is quenched, glimmered again for a

moment; parlor, books, busts, flower-pots, bird-cages, all complete,--and

the figures as before.]

We are waiting with eagerness, Sir,--said the divinity-student.

[The transparency went out as if a flash of black lightning had struck

it.]

If you want to hear my confessions, the next thing--I said--is to know

whether I can trust you with them. It is only fair to say that there are a

great many people in the world that laugh at such things. _I_ think they

are fools, but perhaps you don't all agree with me.

Here are children of tender age talked to as if they were capable of

understanding Calvin's "Institutes," and nobody has honesty or sense

enough to tell the plain truth about the little wretches: that they are as

superstitious as naked savages, and such miserable spiritual cowards--that

is, if they have any imagination--that they will believe anything which is

taught them, and a great deal more which they teach themselves.

I was born and bred, as I have told you twenty times, among books and

those who knew what was in books. I was carefully instructed in things

temporal and spiritual. But up to a considerable maturity of childhood I

believed Raphael and Michel Angelo to have been super-human beings. The

central doctrine of the prevalent religious faith of Christendom was

utterly confused and neutralized in my mind for years by one of those too

common stories of actual life, which I overheard repeated in a whisper.--

Why did I not ask? you will say.--You don't remember the rosy pudency of

sensitive children. The first instinctive movement of the little creatures

is to make a _cache_, and bury in it beliefs, doubts, dreams, hopes, and

terrors. I am uncovering one of these _caches_. Do you think I was

necessarily a greater fool and coward than another?

I was afraid of ships. Why, I could never tell. The masts looked

frightfully tall,--but they were not so tall as the steeple of our old

yellow meeting-house. At any rate, I used to hide my eyes from the sloops

and schooners that were wont to lie at the end of the bridge, and I

confess that traces of this undefined terror lasted very long.--One other

source of alarm had a still more fearful significance. There was a great

wooden HAND,--a glove-maker's sign, which used to swing and creak in the

blast, as it hung from a pillar before a certain shop a mile or two

outside of the city. Oh, the dreadful hand! Always hanging there ready to

catch up a little boy, who would come home to supper no more, nor yet to

bed,--whose porringer would be laid away empty thenceforth, and his half-

worn shoes wait until his small brother grew to fit them.

As for all manner of superstitious observances, I used once to think I

must have been peculiar in having such a list of them, but I now believe

that half the children of the same age go through the same experiences. No

Roman soothsayer ever had such a catalogue of _omens_ as I found in the

Sibylline leaves of my childhood. That trick of throwing a stone at a tree

and attaching some mighty issue to hitting or missing, which you will find

mentioned in one or more biographies, I well remember. Stepping on or over

certain particular things or spots--Dr. Johnson's especial weakness--I got

the habit of at a very early age.--I won't swear that I have not some

tendency to these not wise practices even at this present date. [How many

of you that read these notes can say the same thing!]

With these follies mingled sweet delusions, which I loved so well I would

not outgrow them, even when it required a voluntary effort to put a

momentary trust in them. Here is one which I cannot help telling you.

The firing of the great guns at the Navy-yard is easily heard at the place

where I was born and lived. "There is a ship of war come in," they used to

say, when they heard them. Of course, I supposed that such vessels came in

unexpectedly, after indefinite years of absence,--suddenly as falling

stones; and that the great guns roared in their astonishment and delight

at the sight of the old warship splitting the bay with her cutwater. Now,

the sloop-of-war the Wasp, Captain Blakely, after gloriously capturing the

Reindeer and the Avon, had disappeared from the face of the ocean, and was

supposed to be lost. But there was no proof of it, and, of course, for a

time, hopes were entertained that she might be heard from. Long after the

last real chance had utterly vanished, I pleased myself with the fond

illusion that somewhere on the waste of waters she was still floating, and

there were _years_ during which I never heard the sound of the great guns

booming inland from the Navy-yard without saying to myself, "The Wasp has

come!" and almost thinking I could see her, as she rolled in, crumpling

the water before her, weather-beaten, barnacled, with shattered spars and

threadbare canvas, welcomed by the shouts and tears of thousands. This was

one of those dreams that I nursed and never told. Let me make a clean

breast of it now, and say, that, so late as to have outgrown childhood,

perhaps to have got far on towards manhood, when the roar of the cannon

has struck suddenly on my ear, I have started with a thrill of vague

expectation and tremulous delight, and the long-unspoken words have

articulated themselves in the mind's dumb whisper, _The Wasp has come!_

----Yes, children believe plenty of queer things. I suppose all of you

have had the pocket-book fever when you were little?--What do I mean? Why,

ripping up old pocket-books in the firm belief that bank-bills to an

immense amount were hidden in them.--So, too, you must all remember some

splendid unfulfilled promise of somebody or other, which fed you with

hopes perhaps for years, and which left a blank in your life which nothing

has ever filled up.--O.T. quitted our household carrying with him the

passionate regrets of the more youthful members. He was an ingenious

youngster; wrote wonderful copies, and carved the two initials given above

with great skill on all available surfaces. I thought, by the way, they

were all gone; but the other day I found them on a certain door which I

will show you some time. How it surprised me to find them so near the

ground! I had thought the boy of no trivial dimensions. Well, O.T. when he

went, made a solemn promise to two of us. I was to have a ship, and the

other a mar_tin_-house (last syllable pronounced as in the word _tin_).

Neither ever came; but, oh, how many and many a time I have stolen to the

corner,--the cars pass close by it at this time,--and looked up that long

avenue, thinking that he must be coming now, almost sure, as I turned to

look northward, that there he would be, trudging toward me, the ship in

one hand and the mar_tin_-house in the other!

[You must not suppose that all I am going to say, as well as all I have

said, was told to the whole company. The young fellow whom they call John

was in the yard, sitting on a barrel and smoking a cheroot, the fumes of

which came in, not ungrateful, through the open window. The divinity-

student disappeared in the midst of our talk. The poor relation in black

bombazine, who looked and moved as if all her articulations were elbow-

joints, had gone off to her chamber, after waiting with a look of soul-

subduing decorum at the foot of the stairs until one of the male sort had

passed her and ascended into the upper regions. This is a famous point of

etiquette in our boarding-house; in fact, between ourselves, they make

such an awful fuss about it, that I, for one, had a great deal rather have

them simple enough not to think of such matters at all. Our land-lady's

daughter said, the other evening, that she was going to "retire"; where-

upon the young fellow called John took up a lamp and insisted on lighting

her to the foot of the staircase. Nothing would induce her to pass by him,

until the schoolmistress, saying in good plain English that it was her

bed-time, walked straight by them both, not seeming to trouble herself

about either of them.

I have been led away from what I meant the portion included in these

brackets to inform my readers about. I say, then, most of the boarders had

left the table about the time when I began telling some of these secrets

of mine, all of them, in fact, but the old gentleman opposite and the

schoolmistress. I understand why a young woman should like to hear these

homely but genuine experiences of early life, which are, as I have said,

the little brown seeds of what may yet grow to be poems with leaves of

azure and gold; but when the old gentleman pushed up his chair nearer to

me, and slanted round his best ear, and once, when I was speaking of some

trifling, tender reminiscence, drew a long breath, with such a tremor in

it that a little more and it would have been a sob, why, then I felt there

must be something of nature in them which redeemed their seeming

insignificance. Tell me, man or woman with whom I am whispering, have you

not a small store of recollections, such as these I am uncovering, buried

beneath the dead leaves of many summers, perhaps under the unmelting snows

of fast-returning winters,--a few such recollections, which, if you

should write them all out, would be swept into some careless editor's

drawer, and might cost a scanty half-hour's lazy reading to his

subscribers,--and yet, if Death should cheat you of them, you would not

know yourself in eternity?]

----I made three acquaintances at a

very early period of life, my introduction to whom was never forgotten.

The first unequivocal act of wrong that has left its trace in my memory

was this: it was refusing a small favor asked of me,--nothing more than

telling what had happened at school one morning. No matter who asked it;

but there were circumstances which saddened and awed me. I had no heart to

speak;--I faltered some miserable, perhaps petulant excuse, stole away,

and the first battle of life was lost. What remorse followed I need not

tell. Then and there; to the best of my knowledge, I first consciously

took Sin by the hand and turned my back on Duty. Time has led me to look

upon my offence more leniently; I do not believe it or any other childish

wrong is infinite, as some have pretended, but infinitely finite. Yet, oh

if I had but won that battle!

The great Destroyer, whose awful shadow it was that had silenced me, came

near me,--but never, so as to be distinctly seen and remembered, during my

tender years. There flits dimly before me the image of a little girl,

whose name even I have forgotten, a schoolmate, whom we missed one day,

and were told that she had died. But what death was I never had any very

distinct idea, until one day I climbed the low stone wall of the old

burial-ground and mingled with a group that were looking into a very deep,

long, narrow hole, dug down through the green sod, down through the brown

loam, down through the yellow gravel, and there at the bottom was an

oblong red box, and a still, sharp, white face of a young man seen through

an opening at one end of it. When the lid was closed, and the gravel and

stones rattled down pell-mell, and the woman in black, who was crying and

wringing her hands, went off with the other mourners, and left him, then I

felt that I had seen Death, and should never forget him.

One other acquaintance I made at an earlier period of life than the habit

of romancers authorizes.--Love, of course.--She was a famous beauty

afterwards.--I am satisfied that many children rehearse their parts in the

drama of life before they have shed all their milk-teeth.--I think I won't

tell the story of the golden blonde.--I suppose everybody has had his

childish fancies; but sometimes they are passionate impulses, which

anticipate all the tremulous emotions belonging to a later period. Most

children remember seeing and adoring an angel before they were a dozen

years old.

[The old gentleman had left his chair opposite and taken a seat by the

schoolmistress and myself, a little way from the table.--It's true, it's

true,--said the old gentleman.--He took hold of a steel watch-chain, which

carried a large, square gold key at one end and was supposed to have some

kind of timekeeper at the other. With some trouble he dragged up an

ancient-looking, thick, silver, bull's-eye watch. He looked at it for a

moment,--hesitated,--touched the inner corner of his right eye with the

pulp of his middle finger,--looked at the face of the watch,--said it was

getting into the forenoon,--then opened the watch and handed me the loose

outside case without a word.--The watch-paper had been pink once, and had

a faint tinge still, as if all its tender life had not yet quite faded

out. Two little birds, a flower, and, in small school-girl letters, a

date,--17...--no matter.--Before I was thirteen years old,--said the old

gentleman.--I don't know what was in that young schoolmistress's head, nor

why she should have done it; but she took out the watch-paper and put it

softly to her lips, as if she were kissing the poor thing that made it so

long ago. The old gentleman took the watch-paper carefully from her,

replaced it, turned away and walked out, holding the watch in his hand. I

saw him pass the window a moment after with that foolish white hat on his

head; he couldn't have been thinking what he was about when he put it on.

So the schoolmistress and I were left alone. I drew my chair a shade

nearer to her, and continued.]

And since I am talking of early recollections, I don't know why I

shouldn't mention some others that still cling to me,--not that you will

attach any very particular meaning to these same images so full of

significance to me, but that you will find something parallel to them in

your own memory. You remember, perhaps, what I said one day about smells.

There were certain _sounds_ also which had a mysterious suggestiveness to

me,--not so intense, perhaps, as that connected with the other sense, but

yet peculiar, and never to be forgotten.

The first was the creaking of the wood-sleds, bringing their loads of oak

and walnut from the country, as the slow-swinging oxen trailed them along

over the complaining snow, in the cold, brown light of early morning.

Lying in bed and listening to their dreary music had a pleasure in it akin

to that which Lucretius describes in witnessing a ship toiling through the

waves while we sit at ease on shore, or that which Byron speaks of as to

be enjoyed in looking on at a battle by one "who hath no friend, no

brother there."

There was another sound, in itself so sweet, and so connected with one of

those simple and curious superstitions of childhood of which I have

spoken, that I can never cease to cherish a sad sort of love for it.--Let

me tell the superstitious fancy first. The Puritan "Sabbath," as everybody

knows, began at "sundown" on Saturday evening. To such observance of it I

was born and bred. As the large, round disk of day declined, a stillness,

a solemnity, a somewhat melancholy hush came over us all. It was time for

work to cease, and for playthings to be put away. The world of active life

passed into the shadow of an eclipse, not to emerge until the sun should

sink again beneath the horizon.

It was in this stillness of the world without and of the soul within that

the pulsating lullaby of the evening crickets used to make itself most

distinctly heard,--so that I well remember I used to think that the

purring of these little creatures, which mingled with the batrachian hymns

from the neighboring swamp, was peculiar to Saturday evenings. I don't

know that anything could give a clearer idea of the quieting and subduing

effect of the old habit of observance of what was considered holy time,

than this strange, childish fancy.

Yes, and there was still another sound which mingled its solemn cadences

with the waking and sleeping dreams of my boyhood. It was heard only at

times,--a deep, muffled roar, which rose and fell, not loud, but vast,--a

whistling boy would have drowned it for his next neighbor, but it must

have been heard over the space of a hundred square miles. I used to wonder

what this might be. Could it be the roar of the thousand wheels and the

ten thousand footsteps jarring and tramping along the stones of the

neighboring city? That would be continuous; but this, as I have said, rose

and fell in regular rhythm. I remember being told, and I suppose this to

have been the true solution, that it was the sound of the waves, after a

high wind, breaking on the long beaches many miles distant. I should

really like to know whether any observing people living ten miles, more or

less, inland from long beaches,--in such a town, for instance, as

Cantabridge, in the eastern part of the Territory of the Massachusetts,--

have ever observed any such sound, and whether it was rightly accounted

for as above.

Mingling with these inarticulate sounds in the low murmur of memory, are

the echoes of certain voices I have heard at rare intervals. I grieve to

say it, but our people, I think, have not generally agreeable voices. The

marrowy organisms, with skins that shed water like the backs of ducks,

with smooth surfaces neatly padded beneath, and velvet linings to their

singing-pipes, are not so common among us as that other pattern of

humanity with angular outlines and plane surfaces, arid integuments, hair

like the fibrous covering of a cocoa-nut in gloss and suppleness as well

as color, and voices at once thin and strenuous,--acidulous enough to

produce effervescence with alkalis, and stridulous enough to sing duets

with the katydids. I think our conversational soprano, as sometimes

overheard in the cars, arising from a group of young persons, who may have

taken the train at one of our great industrial centres, for instance,--

young persons of the female sex, we will say, who have bustled in full-

dressed, engaged in loud strident speech, and who, after free discussion,

have fixed on two or more double seats, which having secured, they proceed

to eat apples and hand round daguerreotypes,--I say, I think the

conversational soprano, heard under these circumstances, would not be

among the allurements the old Enemy would put in requisition, were he

getting up a new temptation of St. Anthony.

There are sweet voices among us, we all know, and voices not musical, it

may be, to those who hear them for the first time, yet sweeter to us than

any we shall hear until we listen to some warbling angel in the overture

to that eternity of blissful harmonies we hope to enjoy.--But why should I

tell lies? If my friends love me, it is because I try to tell the truth. I

never heard but two voices in my life that frightened me by their

sweetness.

----Frightened you?--said the school-mistress.--Yes, frightened me. They

made me feel as if there might be constituted a creature with such a chord

in her voice to some string in another's soul, that, if she but spoke, he

would leave all and follow her, though it were into the jaws of Erebus.

Our only chance to keep our wits is, that there are so few natural chords

between others' voices and this string in our souls, and that those which

at first may have jarred a little by and by come into harmony with it.--

But I tell you this is no fiction. You may call the story of Ulysses and

the Sirens a fable, but what will you say to Mario and the poor lady who

followed him?

----Whose were those two voices that bewitched me so?--They both belonged

to German women. One was a chambermaid, not otherwise fascinating. The key

of my room at a certain great hotel was missing, and this Teutonic maiden

was summoned to give information respecting it. The simple soul was

evidently not long from her mother-land, and spoke with sweet uncertainty

of dialect. But to hear her wonder and lament and suggest, with soft,

liquid inflexions, and low, sad murmurs, in tones as full of serious

tenderness for the fate of the lost key as if it had been a child

that had strayed from its mother, was so winning, that, had her features

and figure been as delicious as her accents,--if she had looked like the

marble Clytie, for instance,--why, all I can say is----

[The schoolmistress opened her eyes so wide, that I stopped short.]

I was only going to say that I should have drowned myself. For Lake Erie

was close by, and it is so much better to accept asphyxia, which takes

only three minutes by the watch, than a _mésalliance_, that lasts fifty

years to begin with, and then passes along down the line of descent,

(breaking out in all manner of boorish manifestations of feature and

manner, which, if men were only as short-lived as horses, could be readily

traced back through the square-roots and the cube-roots of the family

stem, on which you have hung the armorial bearings of the De Champignons

or the De la Morues, until one came to beings that ate with knives and

said "Haow?") that no person of right feeling could have hesitated for a

single moment.

The second of the ravishing voices I have heard was, as I have said, that

of another German woman.--I suppose I shall ruin myself by saying that

such a voice could not have come from any Americanized human being.

----What was there in it?--said the schoolmistress,--and, upon my word,

her tones were so very musical, that I almost wished I had said three

voices instead of two, and not made the unpatriotic remark above

reported.--Oh, I said, it had so much _woman_ in it,--_muliebrity_, as

well as _femineity_;--no self-assertion, such as free suffrage introduces

into every word and movement; large, vigorous nature, running back to

those huge-limbed Germans of Tacitus, but subdued by the reverential

training and tuned by the kindly culture of fifty generations. Sharp

business habits, a lean soil, independence, enterprise, and east winds,

are not the best things for the larynx. Still, you hear noble voices among

us,--I have known families famous for them,--but ask the first person you

meet a question, and ten to one there is a hard, sharp, metallic, matter-

of-business clink in the accents of the answer, that produces the effect

of one of those bells which small trades-people connect with their shop-

doors, and which spring upon your ear with such vivacity, as you enter,

that your first impulse is to retire at once from the precincts.

----Ah, but I must not forget that dear little child I saw and heard in a

French hospital. Between two and three years old. Fell out of her chair

and snapped both thigh-bones. Lying in bed, patient, gentle. Rough

students round her, some in white aprons, looking fearfully business-like;

but the child placid, perfectly still. I spoke to her, and the blessed

little creature answered me in a voice of such heavenly sweetness, with

that reedy thrill in it which you have heard in the thrush's even-song,

that I hear it at this moment, while I am writing, so many, many years

afterwards.--_C'est tout comme un serin_, said the French student at my

side.

These are the voices which struck the key-note of my conceptions as to

what the sounds we are to hear in heaven will be, if we shall enter

through one of the twelve gates of pearl. There must be other things

besides aërolites that wander from their own spheres to ours; and when we

speak of celestial sweetness or beauty, we may be nearer the literal truth

than we dream. If mankind generally are the shipwrecked survivors of some

pre-Adamitic cataclysm, set adrift in these little open boats of humanity

to make one more trial to reach the shore,--as some grave theologians have

maintained,--if, in plain English, men are the ghosts of dead devils who

have "died into life," (to borrow an expression from Keats,) and walk the

earth in a suit of living rags that lasts three or four score summers,--

why, there must have been a few good spirits sent to keep them company,

and these sweet voices I speak of must belong to them.

----I wish you could once hear my sister's voice,--said the

schoolmistress.

If it is like yours, it must be a pleasant one,--said I.

I never thought mine was anything,--said the schoolmistress.

How should you know?--said I.--People never hear their own voices,--any

more than they see their own faces. There is not even a looking-glass for

the voice. Of course, there is something audible to us when we speak; but

that something is not our own voice as it is known to all our

acquaintances. I think, if an image spoke to us in our own tones, we

should not know them in the least.--How pleasant it would be, if in

another state of being we could have shapes like our former selves for

playthings,--we standing outside or inside of them, as we liked, and they

being to us just what we used to be to others!

----I wonder if there will be nothing like what we call "play," after our

earthly toys are broken,--said the schoolmistress.

Hush,--said I,--what will the divinity-student say?

[I thought she was hit, that time;--but the shot must have gone over her,

or on one side of her; she did not flinch.]

Oh,--said the schoolmistress,--he must look out for my sister's heresies;

I am afraid he will be too busy with them to take care of mine.

Do you mean to say,--said I,--that it is _your sister_ whom that

student----

[The young fellow commonly known as John, who had been sitting on the

barrel, smoking, jumped off just then, kicked over the barrel, gave it a

push with his foot that set it rolling, and stuck his saucy-looking face

in at the window so as to cut my question off in the middle; and the

schoolmistress leaving the room a few minutes afterwards, I did not have a

chance to finish it.

The young fellow came in and sat down in a chair, putting his heels on the

top of another.

Pooty girl,--said he.

A fine young lady,--I replied.

Keeps a fust-rate school, according to accounts,--said he,--teaches all

sorts of things,--Latin and Italian and music. Folks rich once,--smashed

up. She went right ahead as smart as if she'd been born to work. That's

the kind o' girl I go for. I'd marry her, only two or three other girls

would drown themselves, if I did.

I think the above is the longest speech of this young fellow's which I

have put on record. I do not like to change his peculiar expressions, for

this is one of those cases in which the style is the man, as M. de Buffon

says. The fact is, the young fellow is a good-hearted creature enough,

only too fond of his jokes,--and if it were not for those heat-lightning

winks on one side of his face, I should not mind his fun much.]

[Some days after this, when the company were together again, I talked a

little.]

----I don't think I have a genuine hatred for anybody. I am well aware

that I differ herein from the sturdy English moralist and the stout

American tragedian. I don't deny that I hate _the sight_ of certain

people; but the qualities which make me tend to hate the man himself are

such as I am so much disposed to pity, that, except under immediate

aggravation, I feel kindly enough to the worst of them. It is such a sad

thing to be born a sneaking fellow, so much worse than to inherit a hump-

back or a couple of club-feet, that I sometimes feel as if we ought to

love the crippled souls, if I may use this expression, with a certain

tenderness which we need not waste on noble natures. One who is born with

such congenital incapacity that nothing can make a gentleman of him is

entitled, not to our wrath, but to our profoundest sympathy. But as we

cannot help hating the sight of these people, just as we do that of

physical deformities, we gradually eliminate them from our society,--we

love them, but open the window and let them go. By the time decent people

reach middle age they have weeded their circle pretty well of these

unfortunates, unless they have a taste for such animals; in which case, no

matter what their position may be, there is something, you may be sure, in

their natures akin to that of their wretched parasites.

----The divinity-student wished to know what I thought of affinities, as

well as of antipathies; did I believe in love at first sight?

Sir,--said I,--all men love all women. That is the _primâ-facie_ aspect of

the case. The Court of Nature assumes the law to be, that all men do so;

and the individual man is bound to show cause why he does not love any

particular woman. A man, says one of my old black-letter law-books, may

show divers good reasons, as thus; He hath not seen the person named in

the indictment; she is of tender age, or the reverse of that; she hath

certain personal disqualifications,--as, for instance, she is a

blackamoor, or hath an ill-favored countenance; or, his capacity of loving

being limited, his affections are engrossed by a previous comer; and so of

other conditions. Not the less is it true that he is bound by duty and

inclined by nature to love each and every woman. Therefore it is that each

woman virtually summons every man to show cause why he doth not love her.

This is not by written document, or direct speech, for the most part, but

by certain signs of silk, gold, and other materials, which say to all

men,--Look on me and love, as in duty bound. Then the man pleadeth his

special incapacity, whatsoever that may be,--as, for instance,

impecuniosity, or that he hath one or many wives in his household, or that

he is of mean figure, or small capacity; of which reasons it may be noted,

that the first is, according to late decisions, of chiefest authority.--So

far the old law-book. But there is a note from an older authority, saying

that every woman doth also love each and every man, except there be some

good reason to the contrary; and a very observing friend of mine, a young

unmarried clergyman, tells me, that, so far as his experience goes, he has

reason to think the ancient author had fact to justify his statement.

I'll tell you how it is with the pictures of women we fall in love with at

first sight.

----We a'n't talking about pictures,--said the landlady's daughter,--

we're talking about women.

I understood that we were speaking of love at sight,--I remarked, mildly.

--Now, as all a man knows about a woman whom he looks at is just what a

picture as big as a copper, or a "nickel," rather, at the bottom of his

eye can teach him, I think I am right in saying we are talking about the

pictures of women.--Well, now, the reason why a man is not desperately in

love with ten thousand women at once is just that which prevents all our

portraits being distinctly seen upon that wall. They all _are_ painted

there by reflection from our faces, but because _all_ of them are painted

on each spot, and each on the same surface, and many other objects at the

same time, no one is seen as a picture. But darken a chamber and let a

single pencil of rays in through a key-hole, then you have a picture on

the wall. We never fall in love with a woman in distinction from women,

until we can get an image of her through a pin-hole; and then we can see

nothing else, and nobody but ourselves can see the image in our mental

camera-obscura.

----My friend, the Poet, tells me he has to leave town whenever the

anniversaries come round.

What's the difficulty?--Why, they all want him to get up and make

speeches, or songs, or toasts; which is just the very thing he doesn't

want to do. He is an old story, he says, and hates to show on these

occasions. But they tease him, and coax him, and can't do without him, and

feel all over his poor weak head until they get their fingers on the

_fontanelle_, (the Professor will tell you what this means,--he says the

one at the top of the head always remains open in poets,) until, by gentle

pressure on that soft pulsating spot, they stupefy him to the point of

acquiescence.

There are times, though, he says, when it is a pleasure, before going to

some agreeable meeting, to rush out into one's garden and clutch up a

handful of what grows there,--weeds and violets together,--not cutting

them off, but pulling them up by the roots with the brown earth they grow

in sticking to them. That's his idea of a post-prandial performance. Look

here, now. These verses I am going to read you, he tells me, were pulled

up by the roots just in that way, the other day.--Beautiful entertainment,

--names there on the plates that flow from all English-speaking tongues as

familiarly as _and_ or _the_; entertainers known wherever good poetry and

fair title-pages are held in esteem; guest a kind-hearted, modest, genial,

hopeful poet, who sings to the hearts of his countrymen, the British

people, the songs of good cheer which the better days to come, as all

honest souls trust and believe, will turn into the prose of common life.

My friend, the Poet, says you must not read such a string of verses too

literally. If he trimmed it nicely below, you wouldn't see the roots, he

says, and he likes to keep them, and a little of the soil clinging to

them.

This is the farewell my friend, the Poet, read to his and our friend, the

Poet:--

A GOOD TIME GOING!

Brave singer of the coming time,

Sweet minstrel of the joyous present,

Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme,

The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant,

Good-bye! Good-bye!--Our hearts and hands,

Our lips in honest Saxon phrases,

Cry, God be with him, till he stands

His feet among the English daisies!

'Tis here we part;--for other eyes

The busy deck, the fluttering streamer,

The dripping arms that plunge and rise,

The waves in foam, the ship in tremor,

The kerchiefs waving from the pier,

The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him,

The deep blue desert, lone and drear,

With heaven above and home before him!

His home!--the Western giant smiles,

And twirls the spotty globe to find it;--

This little speck the British Isles?

'Tis but a freckle,--never mind it!--

He laughs, and all his prairies roll,

Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles,

And ridges stretched from pole to pole

Heave till they crack their iron knuckles!

But Memory blushes at the sneer,

And Honor turns with frown defiant,

And Freedom, leaning on her spear,

Laughs louder than the laughing giant:--

"An islet is a world," she said,

"When glory with its dust has blended,

And Britain keeps her noble dead

Till earth and seas and skies are rended!"

Beneath each swinging forest-bough

Some arm as stout in death reposes,--

From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow

Her valor's life-blood runs in roses;

Nay, let our brothers of the West

Write smiling in their florid pages,

One-half her soil has walked the rest

In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages!

Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp,

From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather,

The British oak with rooted grasp

Her slender handful holds together;--

With cliffs of white and bowers of green,

And Ocean narrowing to caress her,

And hills and threaded streams between,--

Our little mother isle, God bless her!

In earth's broad temple where we stand,

Fanned by the eastern gales that brought us,

We hold the missal in our hand,

Bright with the lines our Mother taught us;

Where'er its blazoned page betrays

The glistening links of gilded fetters,

Behold, the half-turned leaf displays

Her rubric stained in crimson letters!

Enough! To speed a parting friend

'Tis vain alike to speak and listen;--

Yet stay,--these feeble accents blend

With rays of light from eyes that glisten.

Good-bye! once more,--and kindly tell

In words of peace the young world's story,--

And say, besides,--we love too well

Our mother's soil, our fathers' glory!

When my friend, the Professor, found that my friend, the Poet, had been

coming out in this full-blown style, he got a little excited, as you may

have seen a canary, sometimes, when another strikes up. The Professor says

he knows he can lecture, and thinks he can write verses. At any rate, he

has often tried, and now he was determined to try again. So when some

professional friends of his called him up, one day, after a feast of

reason and a regular "freshet" of soul which had lasted two or three

hours, he read them these verses. He introduced them with a few remarks,

he told me, of which the only one he remembered was this: that he had

rather write a single line which one among them should think worth

remembering than set them all laughing with a string of epigrams. It was

all right, I don't doubt; at any rate, that was his fancy then, and

perhaps another time he may be obstinately hilarious; however, it may be

that he is growing graver, for time is a fact so long as clocks and

watches continue to go, and a cat can't be a kitten always, as the old

gentleman opposite said the other day.

You must listen to this seriously, for I think the Professor was very much

in earnest when he wrote it.

THE TWO ARMIES.

As Life's unending column pours,

Two marshalled hosts are seen,--

Two armies on the trampled shores

That Death flows black between.

One marches to the drum-beat's roll,

The wide-mouthed clarion's bray,

And bears upon a crimson scroll,

"Our glory is to slay."

One moves in silence by the stream,

With sad, yet watchful eyes,

Calm as the patient planet's gleam

That walks the clouded skies.

Along its front no sabres shine,

No blood-red pennons wave;

Its banner bears the single line,

"Our duty is to save."

For those no death-bed's lingering shade;

At Honor's trumpet-call,

With knitted brow and lifted blade

In Glory's arms they fall.

For these no clashing falchions bright,

No stirring battle-cry;

The bloodless stabber calls by night,--

Each answers, "Here am I!"

For those the sculptor's laurelled bust,

The builder's marble piles,

The anthems pealing o'er their dust

Through long cathedral aisles.

For these the blossom-sprinkled turf

That floods the lonely graves,

When Spring rolls in her sea-green surf

In flowery-foaming waves.

Two paths lead upward from below,

And angels wait above,

Who count each burning life-drop's flow,

Each falling tear of Love.

Though from the Hero's bleeding breast

Her pulses Freedom drew,

Though the white lilies in her crest

Sprang from that scarlet dew,--

While Valor's haughty champions wait

Till all their scars are shown,

Love walks unchallenged through the gate

To sit beside the Throne!

THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY.

There was no apologue more popular in the Middle Ages than that of the

hermit, who, musing on the wickedness and tyranny of those whom the

inscrutable wisdom of Providence had intrusted with the government of the

world, fell asleep and awoke to find himself the very monarch whose abject

life and capricious violence had furnished the subject of his moralizing.

Endowed with irresponsible power, tempted by passions whose existence in

himself he had never suspected, and betrayed by the political necessities

of his position, he became gradually guilty of all the crimes and the

luxury which had seemed so hideous to him in his hermitage over a dish of

water-cresses.

The American Tract Society from small beginnings has risen to be the

dispenser of a yearly revenue of nearly half a million. It has become a

great establishment, with a traditional policy, with the distrust of

change and the dislike of disturbing questions (especially of such

as would lessen its revenues) natural to great establishments. It had been

poor and weak; it has become rich and powerful. The hermit has become

king.

If the pious men who founded the American Tract Society had been told that

within forty years they would be watchful of their publications, lest, by

inadvertence, anything disrespectful might be spoken of the African Slave-

trade,--that they would consider it an ample equivalent for compulsory

dumbness on the vices of Slavery, that their colporteurs could awaken the

minds of Southern brethren to the horrors of St. Bartholomew,--that they

would hold their peace about the body of Cuffee dancing to the music of

the cart-whip, provided only they could save the soul of Sambo alive by

presenting him a pamphlet, which he could not read, on the depravity of

the double-shuffle,--that they would consent to be fellow-members in the

Tract Society with him who sold their fellow-members in Christ on the

auction-block, if he agreed with them in condemning Transubstantiation,

(and it would not be difficult for a gentleman who ignored the real

presence of God in his brother man to deny it in the sacramental wafer,)--

if those excellent men had been told this, they would have shrunk in

horror, and exclaimed, "Are thy servants dogs, that they should do these

things?"

Yet this is precisely the present position of the Society.

There are two ways of evading the responsibility of such inconsistency.

The first is by an appeal to the Society's Constitution, and by claiming

to interpret it strictly in accordance with the rules of law as applied to

contracts, whether between individuals or States. The second is by denying

that Slavery is opposed to the genius of Christianity, and that any moral

wrongs are the necessary results of it. We will not be so unjust to the

Society as to suppose that any of its members would rely on this latter

plea, and shall therefore confine ourselves to a brief consideration of

the other.

In order that the same rules of interpretation should be considered

applicable to the Constitution of the Society and to that of the United

States, we must attribute to the former a solemnity and importance which

involve a palpable absurdity. To claim for it the verbal accuracy and the

legal wariness of a mere contract is equally at war with common sense and

the facts of the case; and even were it not so, the party to a bond who

should attempt to escape its ethical obligation by a legal quibble of

construction would be put in Coventry by all honest men. In point of fact,

the Constitution was simply the minutes of an agreement among certain

gentlemen, to define the limits within which they would accept trust-

funds, and the objects for which they should expend them.

But if we accept the alternative offered by the advocates of strict

construction, we shall not find that their case is strengthened. Claiming

that where the meaning of an instrument is doubtful, it should be

interpreted according to the contemporary understanding of its framers,

they argue that it would be absurd to suppose that gentlemen from the

Southern States would have united to form a society that included in its

objects any discussion of the moral duties arising from the institution of

Slavery. Admitting the first part of their proposition, we deny the

conclusion they seek to draw from it. They are guilty of a glaring

anachronism in assuming the same opinions and prejudices to have existed

in 1825 which are undoubtedly influential in 1858. The Antislavery

agitation did not begin until 1831, and the debates in the Virginia

Convention prove conclusively that six years after the foundation of the

Tract Society, the leading men in that State, men whose minds had been

trained and whose characters had been tempered in that school of action

and experience which was open to all during the heroic period of our

history, had not yet suffered such distortion of the intellect through

passion, and such deadening of the conscience through interest, as would

have prevented their discussing either the moral or the political aspects

of Slavery, and precluded them from uniting in any effort to make the

relation between master and slave less demoralizing to the one and less

imbruting to the other.

Again, it is claimed that the words of the Constitution are conclusive,

and that the declaration that the publications of the Society shall be

such as are "satisfactory to all Evangelical Christians" forbids by

implication the issuing of any tract which could possibly offend the

brethren in Slave States. The Society, it is argued, can publish only on

topics about which all Evangelical Christians are agreed, and must,

therefore, avoid everything in which the question of politics is involved.

But what are the facts about matters other than Slavery? Tracts have been

issued and circulated in which Dancing is condemned as sinful; are all

Evangelical Christians agreed about this? On the Temperance question;

against Catholicism;--have these topics never entered into our politics?

The simple truth is, that Slavery is the only subject about which the

Publishing Committee have felt Constitutional scruples. Till this question

arose, they were like me in perfect health, never suspecting that they had

any constitution at all; but now, like hypochondriacs, they feel it in

every pore, at the least breath from the eastward.

If a strict construction of the words "all Evangelical Christians" be

insisted on, we are at a loss to see where the Committee could draw the

dividing line between what might be offensive and what allowable. The

Society publish tracts in which the study of the Scriptures is enforced

and their denial to the laity by Romanists assailed. But throughout the

South it is criminal to teach a slave to read; throughout the South, no

book could be distributed among the servile population more incendiary

than the Bible, if they could only read it. Will not our Southern brethren

take alarm? The Society is reduced to the dilemma of either denying that

the African has a soul to be saved, or of consenting to the terrible

mockery of assuring him that the way of life is to be found only by

searching a book which he is forbidden to open.

If we carry out this doctrine of strict construction to its legitimate

results, we shall find that it involves a logical absurdity. What is the

number of men whose outraged sensibilities may claim the suppression of a

tract? Is the _taboo_ of a thousand valid? Of a hundred? Of ten? Or are

tracts to be distributed only to those who will find their doctrine

agreeable, and are the Society's colporteurs to be instructed that a

Temperance essay is the proper thing for a total-abstinent infidel, and a

sermon on the Atonement for a distilling deacon? If the aim of the Society

be only to convert men from sins they have no mind to, and to convince

them of errors to which they have no temptation, they might as well be

spending their money to persuade schoolmasters that two and two make four,

or mathematicians that there cannot be two obtuse angles in a triangle. If

this be their notion of the way in which the gospel is to be preached, we

do not wonder that they have found it necessary to print a tract upon the

impropriety of sleeping in church.

But the Society are concluded by their own action; for in 1857 they

unanimously adopted the following resolution: "That those moral duties

which grow out of the existence of Slavery, as well as those moral evils

and vices which it is known to promote, and which are condemned in

Scripture, and so much deplored by Evangelical Christians, undoubtedly do

fall within the province of this Society, and can and ought to be

discussed in a fraternal and Christian spirit." The Society saw clearly

that it was impossible to draw a Mason and Dixon's line in the world of

ethics, to divide Duty by a parallel of latitude. The only line which

Christ drew is that which parts the sheep from the goats, that great

horizon-line of the moral nature of man which is the boundary between

light and darkness. The Society, by yielding (as they have done in 1858)

to what are pleasantly called the "objections" of the South, (objections

of so forcible a nature that we are told the colporteurs were "forced to

flee,") virtually exclude the black man, if born to the southward of a

certain arbitrary line, from the operation of God's providence, and

thereby do as great a wrong to the Creator as the Episcopal Church did to

the artist when they published Ary Scheffer's _Christus Consolator_ with

the figure of the slave left out.

The Society is not asked to disseminate antislavery doctrines, but simply

to be even-handed between master and slave, and, since they have

recommended Sambo and Toney to be obedient to Mr. Legree, to remind him in

turn that he also has duties toward the bodies and souls of his bondmen.

But we are told that the time has not yet arrived, that at present the

ears of our Southern brethren are closed against all appeals, that God in

his good time will turn their hearts, and that then, and not till then,

will be the fitting occasion to do something in the premises. But if the

Society is to await this golden opportunity with such exemplary patience

in one case, why not in all? If it is to decline any attempt at converting

the sinner till after God has converted him, will there be any special

necessity for a tract society at all? Will it not be a little

presumptuous, as well as superfluous, to undertake the doing over again of

what He has already done? We fear that the studies of Blackstone, upon

which the gentlemen who argue thus have entered in order to fit themselves

for the legal and constitutional argument of the question, have confused

their minds, and that they are misled by some fancied analogy between a

tract and an action of trover, and conceive that the one, like the other,

cannot be employed till after an actual conversion has taken place.

The resolutions reported by the Special Committee at the annual meeting of

1857, drawn up with great caution and with a sincere desire to make whole

the breach in the Society, have had the usual fate of all attempts to

reconcile incompatibilities by compromise. They express confidence in the

Publishing Committee, and at the same time impliedly condemn them by

recommending them to do precisely what they had all along scrupulously

avoided doing. The result was just what might have been expected. Both

parties among the Northern members of the Society, those who approved the

former action of the Publishing Committee, and those who approved the new

policy recommended in the resolutions, those who favored silence and those

who favored speech on the subject of Slavery, claimed the victory, while

the Southern brethren, as usual, refused to be satisfied with anything

short of unconditional submission. The word Compromise, as far as Slavery

is concerned, has always been of fatal augury. The concessions of the

South have been like the "With all my worldly goods I thee endow" of a

bankrupt bridegroom, who thereby generously bestows all his debts upon his

wife, and as a small return for his magnanimity consents to accept all her

personal and a life estate in all her real property. The South is willing

that the Tract Society should expend its money to convince the slave that

he has a soul to be saved so far as he is obedient to his master, but not

to persuade the master that he has a soul to undergo a very different

process so far as he is unmerciful to his slave.

We Americans are very fond of this glue of compromise. Like so many quack

cements, it is advertised to make the mended parts of the vessel stronger

than those which have never been broken, but, like them, it will not stand

hot water,--and as the question of Slavery is sure to plunge all who

approach it, even with the best intentions, into that fatal element, the

patched-up brotherhood, which but yesterday was warranted to be better

than new, falls once more into a heap of incoherent fragments. The last

trial of the virtues of the Patent Redintegrator by the Special Committee

of the Tract Society has ended like all the rest, and as all attempts to

buy peace at too dear a rate must end. Peace is an excellent thing, but

principle and pluck are better; and the man who sacrifices them to gain it

finds at last that he has crouched under the Caudine yoke to purchase only

a contemptuous toleration that leaves him at war with his own self-respect

and the invincible forces of his higher nature.

But the peace which Christ promised to his followers was not of this

world; the good gift he brought them was not peace, but a sword. It was no

sword of territorial conquest, but that flaming blade of conscience and

self-conviction which lightened between our first parents and their lost

Eden,--that sword of the Spirit that searcheth all things,--which severs

one by one the ties of passion, of interest, of self-pride, that bind the

soul to earth,--whose implacable edge may divide a man from family, from

friends, from whatever is nearest and dearest,--and which hovers before

him like the air-drawn dagger of Macbeth, beckoning him, not to crime, but

to the legitimate royalties of self-denial and self-sacrifice, to the

freedom which is won only by surrender of the will. Christianity has never

been concession, never peace; it is continual aggression; one province of

wrong conquered, its pioneers are already in the heart of another. The

mile-stones of its onward march down the ages have not been monuments of

material power, but the blackened stakes of martyrs, trophies of

individual fidelity to conviction. For it is the only religion which is

superior to all endowment, to all authority,--which has a bishopric and a

cathedral wherever a single human soul has surrendered itself to God. That

very spirit of doubt, inquiry, and fanaticism for private judgment, with

which Romanists reproach Protestantism, is its stamp and token of

authenticity,--the seal of Christ, and not of the Fisherman.

We do not wonder at the division which has taken place in the Tract

Society, nor do we regret it. The ideal life of a Christian is possible to

very few, but we naturally look for a nearer approach to it in those who

associate together to disseminate the doctrines which they believe to be

its formative essentials, and there is nothing which the enemies of

religion seize on so gladly as any inconsistency between the conduct and

the professions of such persons. Though utterly indifferent to the wrongs

of the slave, the scoffer would not fail to remark upon the hollowness of

a Christianity which was horror-stricken at a dance or a Sunday-drive,

while it was blandly silent about the separation of families, the putting

asunder whom God had joined, the selling Christian girls for Christian

harems, and the thousand horrors of a system which can lessen the agonies

it inflicts only by debasing the minds and souls of the race on whom it

inflicts them. Is your Christianity, then, he would say, a respecter of

persons, and does it condone the sin because the sinner can contribute to

your coffers? Was there ever a Simony like this,--that does not sell, but

withholds, the gift of God for a price?

The world naturally holds the Society to a stricter accountability than it

would insist upon in ordinary cases. Were they only a club of gentlemen

associated for their own amusement, it would be very natural and proper

that they should exclude all questions which would introduce controversy,

and that, however individually interested in certain reforms, they should

not force them upon others who would consider them a bore. But a society

of professing Christians, united for the express purpose of carrying both

the theory and the practice of the New Testament into every household in

the land, has voluntarily subjected itself to a graver responsibility, and

renounced all title to fall back upon any reserved right of personal

comfort or convenience.

We say, then, that we are glad to see this division in the Tract Society,

--not glad because of the division, but because it has sprung from an

earnest effort to relieve the Society of a reproach which was not only

impairing its usefulness, but doing an injury to the cause of truth and

sincerity everywhere. We have no desire to impugn the motives of those who

consider themselves conservative members of the Society; we believe them

to be honest in their convictions, or their want of them; but we think

they have mistaken notions as to what conservatism is, and that they are

wrong in supposing it to consist in refusing to wipe away the film on

their spectacle-glasses which prevents their seeing the handwriting on the

wall, or in conserving reverently the barnacles on their ship's bottom and

the dry-rot in its knees. We yield to none of them in reverence for the

Past; it is there only that the imagination can find repose and seclusion;

there dwells that silent majority whose experience guides our action and

whose wisdom shapes our thought in spite of ourselves;--but it is not

length of days that can make evil reverend, nor persistence in

inconsistency that can give it the power or the claim of orderly

precedent. Wrong, though its title-deeds go back to the days of Sodom, is

by nature a thing of yesterday,--while the right, of which we became

conscious but an hour ago, is more ancient than the stars, and of the

essence of Heaven. If it were proposed to establish Slavery to-morrow,

should we have more patience with its patriarchal argument than with the

parallel claim of Mormonism? That Slavery is old is but its greater

condemnation; that we have tolerated it so long, the strongest plea for

our doing so no longer. There is one institution to which we owe our first

allegiance, one that is more sacred and venerable than any other,--the

soul and conscience of Man.

What claim has Slavery to immunity from discussion? We are told that

discussion is dangerous. Dangerous to what? Truth invites it, courts the

point of the Ithuriel-spear, whose touch can but reveal more clearly the

grace and grandeur of her angelic proportions. The advocates of Slavery

have taken refuge in the last covert of desperate sophism, and affirm that

their institution is of Divine ordination, that its bases are laid in the

nature of man. Is anything, then, of God's contriving endangered by

inquiry? Was it the system of the universe, or the monks, that trembled at

the telescope of Galileo? Did the circulation of the firmament stop in

terror because Newton laid his daring finger on its pulse? But it is idle

to discuss a proposition so monstrous. There is no right of sanctuary for

a crime against humanity, and they who drag an unclean thing to the horns

of the altar bring it to vengeance and not to safety.

Even granting that Slavery were all that its apologists assume it to be,

and that the relation of master and slave were of God's appointing, would

not its abuses be just the thing which it was the duty of Christian men to

protest against, and, as far as might be, to root out? Would our courts

feel themselves debarred from interfering to rescue a daughter from a

parent who wished to make merchandise of her purity, or a wife from a

husband who was brutal to her, by the plea that parental authority and

marriage were of Divine ordinance? Would a police-justice discharge a

drunkard who pleaded the patriarchal precedent of Noah? or would he not

rather give him another month in the House of Correction for his

impudence?

The Antislavery question is not one which the Tract Society can exclude by

triumphant majorities, nor put to shame by a comparison of

respectabilities. Mixed though it has been with politics, it is in no

sense political, and springing naturally from the principles of that

religion which traces its human pedigree to a manger, and whose first

apostles were twelve poor men against the whole world, it can dispense

with numbers and earthly respect. The clergyman may ignore it in the

pulpit, but it confronts him in his study; the church-member, who has

suppressed it in parish-meeting, opens it with the pages of his Testament;

the merchant, who has shut it out of his house and his heart, finds it

lying in wait for him, a gaunt fugitive, in the hold of his ship; the

lawyer, who has declared that it is no concern of his, finds it thrust

upon him in the brief of the slave-hunter; the historian, who had

cautiously evaded it, stumbles over it at Bunker Hill. And why? Because it

is not political, but moral,--because it is not local, but national,

--because it is not a test of party, but of individual honesty and honor.

The wrong which we allow our nation to perpetrate we cannot localize,

if we would; we cannot hem it within the limits of Washington or Kansas;

sooner or later, it will force itself into the conscience and sit by the

hearthstone of every citizen.

It is not partisanship, it is not fanaticism, that has forced this matter

of Anti-slavery upon the American people; it is the spirit of

Christianity, which appeals from prejudices and predilections to the moral

consciousness of the individual man; that spirit elastic as air,

penetrative as heat, invulnerable as sunshine, against which creed after

creed and institution after institution have measured their strength and

been confounded; that restless spirit which refuses to crystallize in any

sect or form, but persists, a Divinely-commissioned radical and

reconstructor, in trying every generation with a new dilemma between case

and interest on the one hand, and duty on the other. Shall it be said that

its kingdom is not of this world? In one sense, and that the highest, it

certainly is not; but just as certainly Christ never intended those words

to be used as a subterfuge by which to escape our responsibilities in the

life of business and politics. Let the cross, the sword, and the arena

answer, whether the world, that then was, so understood its first

preachers and apostles. Caesar and Flamen both instinctively dreaded it,

not because it aimed at riches or power, but because it strove to conquer

that other world in the moral nature of mankind, where it could establish

a throne against which wealth and force would be weak and contemptible. No

human device has ever prevailed against it, no array of majorities or

respectabilities; but neither Caesar nor Flamen ever conceived a scheme so

cunningly adapted to neutralize its power as that graceful compromise

which accepts it with the lip and denies it in the life, which marries it

at the altar and divorces it at the church-door.

NOTE TO THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.

In our first article on the Roman Catacombs we expressed the belief that

"a year was now hardly likely to pass without the discovery" of new

burial-places of the early Christians,--the fresh interest in Christian

archaeology leading to fresh explorations in the hollow soil of the

Campagna. A letter to us from Rome, of the 2lst of April, confirms the

justness of this expectation. We quote from it the following interesting

passage:--

"The excavations on the Via Appia Nuova, which I mentioned in a former

letter, prove very interesting, and have already resulted in most

important discoveries. The spot is at the second milestone outside of the

gate of St. John Lateran. The field is on the left of the road going

towards Albano, and in it are several brick tombs of beautiful fine work,

now or formerly used as dwellings or barns. You and I crossed the very

field on a certain New Year's Day, and lingered to admire the almost

unrivalled view of the Campagna, the mountains, and Rome, which it

affords.

"The first discovery was an ancient basilica, satisfactorily ascertained

to be the one dedicated to St. Stephen, built by Santa Demetria,--the

first nun,--at the instigation of the pope, St. Leo the Great. [A.D. 440-

461.] Sig. Fortunati, who made the discovery and directs the excavations,

told me at great length how he was led to the investigation; but as he has

published this and much more in a pamphlet, which I shall send to you, I

will not repeat it here.

"Twenty-two columns have been found, many of rare and beautiful marble,

one of _verde antico_, most superb, others of _breccia_ and of _cipollino

marino_, said to be rare, and certainly very beautiful. Forty bases and

over thirty capitals of various styles have also been found, as well as

architectural ornaments without number, many of them carved with Greek or

Roman crosses. The rare and superb fragments of marble show that there

must have been costly and beautiful linings and finish. There are also

numerous inscriptions of great interest, which connect this church with

illustrious families and famous martyrs.

"Subsequently, portions of villas were found, with ruined baths, and

mosaics and frescoes, with various pieces of sculpture, some perfect and

of most excellent style. There is also a sarcophagus with bas-relief of a

Bacchic procession, remarkably fine. The government has bought all for the

Museum, and intends spending a large sum in building a basilica over the

remains of the old one, in honor of St. Stephen.

"But the most remarkable discovery is an old Roman tomb, by far the finest

I have seen in its preservation and perfection. It is about eighteen feet

square, has been lined and paved with white marble, some of which still

remains. The lofty ceiling is covered with bas-reliefs in stucco, of

charming grace and spirit, representing various mythological subjects, in

square compartments united by light and elegant arabesques. They are

really of wonderful merit, and so perfectly preserved, so fresh, that they

seem as if done last year. A massive marble doorway, beautifully corniced,

gives entrance to this superb chamber, in which were found three huge

sarcophagi, containing the bones of nine bodies;--which bones are left to

lie exposed, because the bones of pagans! These sarcophagi are of splendid

workmanship, but, unhappily, broken by former barbarians. Present

barbarians (said to be Inglesi and Americani) have stolen two skulls, and

pick up everything not closely watched. Opposite to this chamber is

another, smaller and more modest in adornment, and by the side of this

descend two flights of steps in perfect repair. Many vases of colored

glass and two very handsome rings were found at the foot of these steps.

This tomb is supposed to be of about 160 of our era.

"These stairways descend from the ancient Via Latina, which has been

excavated for some distance, and is found with wide sidewalks of stone

(lava) similar to the sidewalks in Pompeii. The narrow carriage-way is

deeply rutted, which makes one think that the old Romans had hard bumps to

contend with.

"Another tomb with perfect stairway has been discovered, but it is much

more plain. Foundations of villas, and baths with leaden pipes in great

quantity, have been exposed. I hear to-day that the government has ordered

the excavation of a mile and a half of the old Via Latina in this

neighborhood, and much interesting discovery is anticipated."

We will only add to our correspondent's account the fact that the Basilica

of St. Stephen had been sought for in vain previously to this discovery by

Signor Fortunati. The great explorer, Bosio, failed to find it, and

Aringhi, writing just two hundred years ago, says, "Formerly upon the Via

Latina stood the church erected with great pains in honor of the most

blessed Stephen, the first martyr, by Demetria, a woman of pristine piety;

of which the Bibliothecarius, in his account of Pope Leo the First, thus

makes mention: 'In these days, Demetria, the handmaid of God, made the

Basilica of St. Stephen on the Latin Way, at the third mile-stone, on her

estate:... which afterward, being decayed and near to ruin through the

long course of years, was restored by Pope Leo the Third.' Of this most

noble church, which was one of the chief monuments of the Christian

religion, as well as an ornament of the city of Rome, no vestige at this

day remains."

It is remarkable that a church restored so late as the time of Leo III.

[A.D. 795-816] should have been so lost without being utterly destroyed,

and so buried under the slowly-accumulating soil of the Campagna, that the

very tradition of the existence of its remains should have disappeared,

and its discovery have been the result of scientific archæeological

investigation.

The disappearance and the forgetting of the Church of St. Alexander were

less remarkable, because of its far greater distance from the city, and

its comparative inconspicuousness and poverty. Scarcely a more striking

proof exists of the misery and lowness of Rome during many generations in

the Dark Ages than that she should thus have forgotten the very sites of

the churches which had stood around her walls, the outpost citadels of her

faith.

LITERARY NOTICES.

_The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea_. By P.H.

GOSSE. Second Edition, revised and enlarged. With Illustrations. London:

1866.

_The Common Objects of the Seashore; including Hints for an Aquarium_. By

the REV. J.G. WOOD. With Illustrations. London: Routledge & Co. 1857.

We trust that many of our readers, stimulated by the account of an

Aquarium which was given in our number for February, are proposing to set

one up for themselves.

Let no one who has been to Barnum's Museum, to look at what the naming

advertisement elegantly and grammatically terms "an aquaria," fancy that

he has seen the beauty of the real aquarium. The sea will not show its

treasures in a quarter of an hour, or be made a sight of for a quarter of

a dollar. An aquarium is not to be exhausted in a day, but, if favorably

placed where it may have sufficient direct sunshine, and well stocked with

various creatures, day after day developes within it new beauties and

unexpected sights. It becomes like a secret cave in the ocean, where the

processes of Nature go on in wonderful and silent progression, and the coy

sea displays its rarer beauties of life, of color, and of form before the

watching eyes. Look at it on some clear day, when the sun is bright, and

see the broad leaves of ulva, their vivid green sparkling with the

brilliant bubbles of oxygen which float up to the surface like the bubbles

of Champagne; see the glades of the pink coralline, or the purple Iceland-

moss covered with its plum-like down, in the midst of which the

transparent bodies of the shrimps or the yellow or banded shells of the

sea-snails are lying half hid. See on the brown rock, whose surface is

covered with the softest growth, the white anemone stretching its crown of

delicate tentacles to the light; or the long winding case of the serpula,

from the end of which appear the purple, brown, or yellow feathers that

decorate the head of its timid occupant. Or watch the scallop with his

turquoise eyes; or the comic crabs, or the minnows playing through the

water, in and out of the recesses of the rocks or the thickets of the

seaweed. There is no end of the pleasant sights. And day after day the

creatures will grow more tame, the serpula will not dart back into his

case when you approach, nor the pecten close his beautiful shell as your

shadow passes over it. Moreover, the habits of the creatures grow more

entertaining as you become familiar with them, and even the dull oyster

begins at last to show some signs of individual character.

And it is easy to have all this away from the seashore. The best tanks, so

far as we know, that are made in this country, are those of Mr. C.E.

Hammett, of Newport, Rhode Island. But the tank is of little importance,

if one cannot get the water, the seaweed, and the stock; and therefore Mr.

Hammett undertakes to supply these also. He will send, not the water

itself, but the salts obtained by evaporation from the quantity of water

necessary for each aquarium. These are to be dissolved in clear spring-

water, (previously boiled, to insure its containing no injurious living

matter,) and then the aquarium, having first had a bed of cleanly-washed

sand put upon its bottom for about an inch or an inch and a half in depth,

and this in turn covered with a thin layer of small pebbles,--though these

last are not essential,--is to be filled with it. Then the seaweed, which

is sent so packed as to preserve its freshness, is to be put in. It will

be attached to small bits of rock, and these should be supported by or

laid upon other pieces of stone, so raised as to secure a free passage for

the water about them, and so afford places of retreat for the animals. The

stock will be sent, if it is to go to any distance, in jars, and anemones,

crabs, shell-fish of various kinds, and many other creatures, will be

found among it. The seaweed should be a day or two in the tank before the

creatures are put into it.

And now, having got the aquarium in order, comes the point how to keep it

in order,--how to keep the creatures alive, and how to prevent the water

from growing cloudy and thick. The main rule is to secure sunlight,--hot

enough to raise the water to a temperature above that of the outer air,--

to remove all dirt and floating scum, and to furnish the tank on every

cloudy day with a supply of air and with motion by means of a syringe. The

creatures should never be fed in warm weather with any animal substance,

its decay being certain to corrupt the water. A little meal or a few

crumbs of bread may now and then be given; but even this is not necessary;

for Nature furnishes all the food that is needed, in the spores thrown off

by the seaweed, in the seaweed itself, whose growth is generally

sufficiently rapid to make up for the ravages committed upon it, and in

the host of infusoria constantly produced in the water. If any of the

creatures die, their bodies should be immediately removed,--though

sometimes the omnivorous crabs will do this work rapidly enough. As the

water evaporates, it should be filled up to its original level with fresh

spring-water,--the salts in it undergoing no diminution by evaporation.

If, suddenly, the water should grow thick, it should be taken from the

tank, a portion at a time, and filtered back into it slowly through

pounded charcoal, the process being repeated till the purity seems to be

returning, and at the same time the rocks and seaweed should be removed

and carefully washed in fresh water. If, however, the water should by any

ill chance grow tainted and emit a bad odor, nothing can be done to

restore it, and, unless it is at once changed, the creatures will die. To

meet such an emergency, which is of rare occurrence, it is well to have a

double quantity of the salts sent with the tank to secure a new supply of

water. But we have known aquariums that have kept in order for more than

a year with no change of the water, a supply of spring-water being put in

from time to time as we have directed; and at this moment, as we write,

there is an aquarium at our side which has been in active operation for

six months, and the water is as clear as it was the day it was put in. If,

spite of everything, the seawater fail, then try a fresh-water aquarium.

Use your tank for the pond instead of the ocean; and in the spotted newt,

the tortoise, the tadpole, the caddis-worm, and the thousand other

inhabitants of our inland ponds and brooks, with the weeds among which

they live, you will find as much entertainment as in watching the wonders

of the great sea.

A camel's-hair brush, a bent spoon on a long handle, a sponge tied to a

stick, and one or two other instruments which use will suggest, are all

that are needed for keeping the sides of the tank free from growth or

removing obnoxious substances from its bottom.

If, on receiving the animals, any of them should appear exhausted by the

journey, they may sometimes be revived by aerating the water in which they

are by means of a syringe. It should always be remembered, that, though

living in the water, they need a constant supply of air. And it would be

well, in getting an aquarium, to have the tank and the seaweeds sent a few

days in advance of the stock, so that on the arrival of the creatures they

may be at once transferred to their new abode.

There are no American books upon the subject, and, in the present want of

them, the two whose names are given above are the best that can be

obtained. Mr. Gosse's is expensive, costing between four and five dollars.

"The Common Objects of the Seashore," to be got for a quarter of a dollar,

contains much accurate, unpretending, and pleasant information.

_The American Drawing-Book: a Manual for the Amateur, and a Basis of Study

for the Professional Artist_. Especially adapted to the Use of Public and

Private Schools, as well as Home Instruction. By J.G. CHAPMAN, N.A. New

York: J.S. Redfield. 4to. pp. 304.

Drawing-books, in general, deserve to be put into the same category with

the numerous languages "without a master" which have deluded so many

impatient aspirants to knowledge by royal (and cheap) roads. A drawing-

book, at its very best, is only a partial and lame substitute for a

teacher, giving instruction empirically; so that, be it ever so correct in

principle, it must lack adaptation to the momentary and most pressing

wants of the pupil and to his particular frame of mind; it is too

Procrustean to be of any ultimate use to anybody, except in comparatively

unimportant matters. It is well enough for those who need only amusement

in their drawing, and whose highest idea of Art is copying prints and

pictures; but for those who want assistance from Art in order to the

better understanding of Nature, no man, be he ever so wise, can, by the

drawing-book plan, do much to smooth the way of study.

All that another mind could do for us by way of teaching Art would be to

save us time,--first, by its experience, in anticipating our failures;

second, by its trained accuracy, to correct our errors of expression more

promptly than our afterthought would do it,--and to systematize our

perceptions for us by showing us the relative and comparative importance

of truths in Nature. In the first two respects, which are merely

practical, the drawing-book, if judiciously prepared, might do somewhat to

assist us; but in the last and most important, only the experienced and

thoughtful artist, standing with us before Nature, can give us further

insight into her system of expression. A good picture may do a little, but

it is Nature's own face we need to study, and that neither book nor

picture can very deeply interpret for our proper and peculiar perception.

In the practical part, again, the drawing-book can give us no real

assistance in regard to color. And thus the efficacy of it is reduced to

the communication of methods of drawing in white and black. This Chapman's

book does to the best purpose possible under the circumstances, in what is

technically termed the right-line system of drawing,--that is, the

reduction of all forms to their approximate geometrical figures in order

to facilitate the measurements of the eye. Thus, it is easier by far to

determine the proportion which exists between the sides of a triangle

formed by the lines connecting the three principal points in any figure

than any curvilinear connections whatever. The application of the

rectilinear system consists in the use, as a basis of the drawing, of such

a series of triangles as shall at once show the exact relation of the

points of definition or expression to each other; but the successful

application of this depends much on the assistance of the trained eye and

hand of a master watching every step we make.

When we leave this section of the "American Drawing-Book," we leave all

that is of practical value to the young artist. The prescription of any

particular mode of execution is always injurious, (if in any degree

effective,) for the reason that the student must not think of execution at

all, but simply what the form is which he wants to draw, and how he can

draw it most plainly and promptly. Decision of execution should always be

the result of complete knowledge of the thing to be drawn; if from any

other source, it will assuredly be only heedless scrawling, bad in

proportion as it is energetic and decided.

The chapter on Perspective is full and well illustrated, and useful to

architectural or mechanical draughtsmen, may-be, but little so to artists.

There are, indeed, no laws of perspective which the careful draughtsman

from Nature need ever apply, for his eye will show him the tendency of

lines and the relative magnitude of bodies quicker than he can find them

by the application of the rules of perspective,--and with much better

result, since all application of science _directly_ to artistic work

endangers its poetic character, and almost invariably gives rise to a

hardness and formalism the reverse of artistic, leading the artist to

depend on what he knows ought to be rather than on what he really sees, a

tendency more to be deprecated than any want of correctness in drawing.

The book contains chapters on artistic processes and technical matters

generally, making it a useful hand-book to amateurs; but all that is

really valuable to a young student of Art might be compressed into a very

few pages of this ponderous book. To follow its prescriptions _seriatim_

would be to him a serious loss of time and heart.

_The New American Cyclopaedia_. A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge,

Edited by GEORGE RIPLEY and CHAS. A. DANA. Vol. II. New York: D. Appleton

& Co. 8vo.

We have spoken so fully of the purpose and general character of this work,

in noticing the first volume, that it is hardly necessary for us to speak

at length of the second. In a rapid glance at its contents, it appears

fully to bear out the promise of the first. We have noticed a few

omissions, and some mistakes of judgment. It is, perhaps, impossible to

preserve the gradation of reputations in such a work; but a zoologist must

be puzzled when he sees Von Baer, the great embryologist, who made a

classification of animals, founded on their development, which

substantially agrees with that of Cuvier, founded on their structure,

occupy about one tenth of the space devoted to Peter T. Barnum; however,

we suppose, that, as Barnum created new animals, he is a more wonderful

personage than Von Baer, who simply classified old ones. These occasional

omissions and disturbances of the scale of reputations are, however, more

than offset by the new information the editors have been able to

incorporate into most of their biographies of the living, and not a few of

those of the dead. Many persons who were mere names to the majority of the

public are here, for the first time, recognized as men engaged in living

lives as well as in writing books. Some of these biographies must have

been obtained at the expense of much time and correspondence. Samuel

Bayley, the author of "Essays on the Formation of Opinions," is one of

these well-known names but unknown men; but in the present volume he has

been compelled to come out of his mysterious seclusion, and present to the

public those credentials of dates and incidents which prove him to be a

positive existence on the planet.

The papers on Arboriculture, Architecture, Arctic Discovery, Armor, Army,

Asia, Atlantic Ocean, Australia, Balance of Power, Bank, and Barometer,

are excellent examples of compact and connected statement of facts and

principles. The biographies of Aristotle, Aristophanes, Augustine,

Ariosto, and Arnold, and the long article on Athens, are among the most

striking and admirable papers in the volume. As the purpose of the work is

to supply a Cyclopaedia for popular use, it is inevitable that students of

special sciences or subjects should be occasionally disappointed at the

comparatively meagre treatment of their respective departments of

knowledge. In regard to the articles in the present volume, it may be said

that such subjects as Astronomy and the Association of Ideas should have

occupied more space, even if the wants of the ordinary reader were alone

consulted. But still, when we consider the vast range and variety of

topics included in this volume, and the fact that it comprehends a dozen

subjects which a dozen octavos devoted to each would not exhaust, we are

compelled to award praise to the editors for contriving to compress into

so small a space an amount of information so great.