To Rev. Henry W. Bellows.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 11, 1851.
. . . HAVE you seen the "great Hungarian"? Great indeed, and in a way
we seem not to have thought of. Is n't there a story somewhere of a
man uncaging, as he thought, a spaniel, and finding it to be a lion?
We thought we had released and were bringing over a simple, harmless,
inoffensive, heart-broken emigrant, who would be glad to settle, and
find rest, and behold, we have upon our hands a world-disturbing
propagandist, a loud pleader for justice and freedom, who does not
want to settle, but to fight; who will not rest upon his country's
wrongs, nor let anybody else if he can help it; who does not care for
processions nor entertainments, but wants help. Kossuth has doubtless
made a great mistake in taking his position here; it is the mistake of
a word-maker and of a relier on words, and he has not mended the matter
by defining. But I declare he is infinitely more respectable in my eyes
than if he had come in the character in which we expected him,--as the
protege and beneficiary of our people, who was to settle down among us
and be comfortable.
To Rev. William Ware.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 3, 1852.
. . . I MUST fool a little, else I shan't know I am writing to you.
And really I must break out somewhere, [224] life is such a solemn
abstraction in Washington to a clergyman. What has he to do, but
what's solemn? The gayety passes him by; the politics pass him by.
Nobody wants him; nobody holds him by the button but some desperate,
dilapidated philanthropist. People say, while turning a corner, "How do
you do, Doctor?" which is very much as if they said, "How do you do,
Abstraction?" I live in a "lone conspicuity," preach in a vacuum, and
call, with much ado, to find nobody. "What doest thou here, Elijah?"
one might say to a prophet in this wilderness.
What a curious fellow you are! calm as a philosopher, usually, wise
as a judge, possessed in full measure of the very Ware moderation
and wisdom, and yet every now and then taking some tremendous
lurch--against England or for Kossuth! I go far enough, go a good way,
please to observe,--but to go to war, that would I not, if I could
help it. Fighting won't prepare men for voting. Peaceful progress, I
believe, is the only thing that can carry on the world to a fitness
for self-government. I have no idea that the Hungarians are fit for
it. See what France has done with her free constitution! Oh! was
there ever such a solemn farce, before Heaven, as that voting,--those
congratulations to the Usurper-President, and his replies?
To Rev. Henry W Bellows.
WASHINGTON, March 7, 1852.
. . . I HAVE seen a good deal of Ole Bull here within a week or two.
I admire his grand and simple, reverent and affectionate Norwegian
nature very much. He has come out here now with views connected with
the welfare [225] of his countrymen; I do not yet precisely understand
them. Is it not remarkable that he and Jenny Lind should have this
noble nationality so beating at their very hearts?
To the Same.
I DON'T see but you must insert these articles in the "Inquirer" as
"Communications." Some of them will have things in them that cannot
possibly be delivered as Wegotisms. Don't be stiff about the matter.
I tell you there is no other way; and indeed I think it no harm, but
an advantage, to diversify the form, and leave out the solemn and
juridical Wego sometimes, for the more sprightly and "sniptious" Ego.
To his Daughter Mary.
WASHINGTON, May, 1852.
DEAREST MOLLY,--To be sure, how could you? And, indeed, what did you
for? Oh! for little K.'s sake. Well, anything for little K.'s sake.
Indeed, it's the duty of parents to sacrifice themselves for their
children. It's the final cause of parents to mind the children. Poor
little puss! We shall feel relieved when we hear she is in New York,
and safe under the sisterly wing. I am afraid she is getting too big
for nestling. How I want to see the good little comfort! Is she little?
Tell us how she looks and does.
Yesterday, beside preaching a sermon more than half new, and attending
a funeral (out of the society), I read skimmingly more than half
Nichol's "Architecture of the Heavens." I laid aside the book
overwhelmed. What shall we do? What shall we think? Far from our
[226] Milky Way,--there they lie, other universes,--rebuke resolved
by Rosse's telescope into stars, starry realms, numerous, seemingly
innumerable, and as vast as our system; and yet from some of them
it takes the light thirty--sixty thousand years to come to us: nay,
twenty millions, Nichol suggests, I know not on what grounds. And
yet in the minutest details such perfection! A million of perfectly
formed creatures in a drop of water! I do not doubt that it is this
overwhelming immensity of things that leads some minds to find a sort
of relief, as it were, in the idea of an Infinite Impersonal Force
working in all things. But it is a child's thought. Nay, does not the
very fact that my mind can take in so vast a range of things lead me
better to conceive of what the Infinite Mind can do? An ant's mind, if
it had one, might find it just as hard to conceive of me.
With love to you two miserable creatures, away from your parents,
Thine ever,