[247]Mr. Dewey had been asked repeatedly, since his retirement from
New York, to take charge of Church Green, in Boston, a pulpit left
vacant by the death of Dr. Young; and he consented to go there in the
beginning of 1858, with the understanding that he should preach but
once on a Sunday. He had an idea of a second service, which should be
more useful to the people and less exhausting to the minister than
the ordinary afternoon service, which very few attended, and those
only from a sense of duty. He had written for this purpose a series of
"Instructions," as he called them, on the 104th Psalm. Each was about
an hour long, and they were, in short, simple lectures on religious
subjects. To use his own words, "This was not preaching, and was
attended with none of the exhaustion that follows the morning service.
Many people have no idea, nor even suspicion, of the difference between
praying and preaching for an hour, with the whole mind and heart poured
into it, and any ordinary public speaking for an hour. They seem to
think that in either case it is vox et preterea nihil, and the more
voice the more exhaustion; but the truth is, the more the feelings are
enlisted in any way, the more exhaustion, and the difference is the
greatest possible."
[248] To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.
BOSTON, Sept. 7, 1858.
DEAR BRYANT,-You have got home. If you pronounce the charm-word four
times after the dramatic (I mean the true dramatic) fashion, all is
told. It makes me think of what Mrs. Kemble told us the other day.
In a play where she acted the mistress, and her lover was shot,--or
was supposed to be, but was reprieved, and came rushing to her
arms,--instead of repeating a long and pretty speech which was set down
for her, the dramatic passion made her exclaim: "ALIVE! ALIVE! alive!
alive!"
Well, you are such a nomadic cosmopolitan, that I won't answer for you;
but I will be bound it is so with. Mrs. Bryant, and I guess Julia too.
How you all are, and how she is especially, is the question in all our
hearts; and without waiting for forty things to be done, all working
you like forty-power presses, pray write us three words and tell us.
. . . I hope that some time in the winter I shall get a sight of you.
You and the Club would make my measure full. And yet Boston is great.
To Mrs. David Lane.
BOSTON, Sept. 20, 1858.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--Dr. Jackson is fast turning me into a vegetable,-homo
multi-cotyledonous is the species. My head is a cabbage--brain,
cauliflower; my eyes are two beans, with a short cucumber between
them, for a nose; my heart is a squash (very soft); my lungs--cut a
watermelon in two, lengthwise, and you have them; [249]my legs are
cornstalks, and my feet, potatoes. I eat nothing but these things, and
I am fast becoming nothing else. I am potatoes and corn and cucumber
and cabbage,--like the chameleon, that takes the color of the thing
it lives on. Dr. Jackson will have a great deal to answer for to the
world. Had n't you better come into town and see about it? Perhaps you
can arrest the process. . . .
I declare I think it is too bad to send such a poor dish to you as
this, and especially in your loneliness; but it is all. Dr. Jackson's
fault.
Think of mosquito-bars in Boston! They must be very trying things--to
the mosquitoes. You see they don't know what to make of it; and very
likely their legs and wings get caught sometimes in the "decussated,
reticulated interstices," as Dr. Johnson calls them. At any rate, from
their noise, they evidently consider themselves as the most ill-treated
and unfortunate outcasts upon earth. Paganini wrote the "Carnival
of Venice." I wonder somebody does n't write the no-carnival of the
mosquitoes.
To the Same.
BOSTON, Dec. 30, 1858.
DEAR MY FRIEND,--I cannot let the season of happy wishes pass by
without sending mine to you and yours. But you must begin to gather
up patience for your venerable friend, for the happy anniversaries
somehow begin to gather shadows around them; they are both reminders
and admonishers.
Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that the "Happy New Year!" is never
sounded out in the minor key; always it has a ring of joyousness and
hope in it. Read that [250] little piece of Fanny Kemble's,{22} on the
179th page,--the "Answer to a Question." I send you the volume 1 by
this mail. Ah! what a clear sense and touching sensibility and bracing
moral tone there is, running through the whole volume! But I was going
to say that that little piece tells you what I would write better than
I can write it. We all send "Merry Christmas" and "Happy New Year" to
you all, in a heap; that is, a heap of us to a heap of you, and a heap
of good wishes.
{FN 22: Mrs. Kemble's Poems}
My poor head is rather improving, but it is n't worth much yet, as you
plainly see. Nevertheless, in the other and sound part of me I am,
As ever, your friend,