Tell Mrs. Bryant we depend on her at the Club.
To his Daughter Mary.
SHEFFIELD, March 4, 1850.
. . . As I suppose you are tormented with the question, "What's your
father doing in Sheffield?" you may tell them that I have taken to
lecturing the people, and that I give a second lecture to-morrow
evening, and mean to give a third. Forbye reading Hegel every morning,
and what do you think he said this morning? Why, that he had read of a
government of women, "ein Weiberstaat," in Africa, where they killed
all the men in the first place, and then all the male children, and
finally destined all that should be born to the same fate. And what
do you think your mother said when I told her of these atrocities?
Even this: "That shows what bad creatures the men must have been." And
that's all I get when trying to enlighten her upon the wickedness of
her sex.
And I'm just getting through with Guizot's four volumes, too. Oh, a
very magnificent, calm, and beautiful course of lectures. You must read
them. It's the best French history, so far as it goes.
[218] To Rev. Henry W. Bellows.
SHEFFIELD, March 6, 1850.
. . . To my poor apprehension this is an awful crisis, especially
if pushed in the way the Northern doctrinaires desire. I feel it so
from what I saw of Southern feeling in Washington the winter I passed
there. I fear disunion, and no mortal line can sound the depth of
that calamity. I sometimes think that it would be well if we could
wear around this last, terrible, black headland by sounding, and
trimming sails, rather than attempt to sail by compass and quadrant.
Do not mistake my figure. I am no moral trimmer, and that you know.
Conscience must be obeyed. But conscience does not forbid that we
should treat the Southern people with great consideration. What we must
do, we may do in the spirit of love, and not of wrath or scorn. Oh,
what a mystery of Providence, that this terrible burden--I had almost
said millstone--should ever have been hung around the neck of this
Confederation!
To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.
SHEFFIELD, June 7, 1850.
MY DEAR SIR,--You should n't have lived in New York, and you should
n't have been master of the French language, and you should n't have
been Mr. Bryant, and, in fact, you should n't have been at all, if you
expected to escape all sorts of trouble in this world! Since all these
conditions pertain to you, see the inference, which, stated in the most
skilfully inoffensive way I am able, stands or runs thus:
[Here followed a request that Mr. Bryant would make [219] some
inquiries concerning a French teacher who had applied, and the letter
continued:]
Now, in fine, if you don't see that all this letter is strictly
logical,--an inference from the premises at the beginning,--I am sorry
for you; and if you do see it, I am sorry for you. So you are pitied at
any rate.
The 19th draws nigh. If any of the Club are with you and Mrs. Bryant
in coming up, do not any of you be so deluded as to listen to any
invitation to dine at Kent, but come right along, hollow and merry,
and--I don't say I promise you a dinner, but what will suffice for
natzir, anyhow. Art, to be sure, is out of the question, as it is
when I subscribe myself, and ourselves, to you and Mrs. Bryant, with
affectionate regard,
Yours truly,