From a Note-Book.
April 13, 1871.
FATHER TAYLOR, of Boston, has just died,-a very remarkable person. He
was a sailor, and more than [313] forty years ago he came from before
the mast into the pulpit. He brought with him, I suppose, something of
the roughness of his calling; for I remember hearing of his preaching
in the neighborhood of New Bedford when I first went there, and of his
inveighing against paid preachers as wretched hirelings, "rocked upon
five feather-beds to hell." This, I was told, was meant for me, as I
had just been settled upon the highest salary ever paid in those parts.
In after years I became acquainted with him, and a very pleasant and
cordial acquaintance it was. His preaching improved in every way as
he went on; the pulpit proved the best of rhetorical schools for him,
and he became one of the most powerful and impressive preachers in the
country. He was one of nature's orators, and one of the rarest. It was
said of him that he showed what Demosthenes meant by "action." The
whole man, body and soul, was not only in action, but was an action
concentrated into speech. His strongly built frame,--every limb,
muscle, and fibre,--his whole being, spoke.
Waldo Emerson took me to his chapel the first time I ever heard him
preach. As we went along, speaking of his pathos, he said, "You 'll
have to guard yourself to keep from crying." So warned, I thought
myself safe enough. But I was taken down at the very beginning of the
service. The prayers of the congregation were asked by the family of a
young man,--a sailor, who had been destroyed by a shark on the coast
of Africa. In' the prayer, the scene was touchingly depicted,--how
the poor youth went down to bathe in the summer sea, thoughtless,
unconscious of any danger, when he was seized by the terrible monster
that lay in wait for him. And then the preacher prayed that none of us,
going [314]down into the summer sea of pleasure, might sink into the
jaws of destruction that were opened beneath. I think the prayer left
no dry eyes.
Father Taylor was a man of large, warm-hearted liberality. He was a
Methodist; but no sect could hold him. He often came to our Unitarian
meetings and spoke in them. In addressing one of our autumnal
conventions in New York, I recollect his congratulating us on our
freedom from all trammels of prescription, creed, and church order,
and exhorting us to a corresponding wide and generous activity in the
cause of religion. He was always ready with an illustration, and for
his purpose used this: "We have just had a visit in Boston," he said,
"from an Indian chief and some of his people. They were invited to
the house of Mr. Abbot Lawrence. As Mr. Lawrence received them in his
splendid parlor, the chief, looking around upon it, said, It is very
good; it is beautiful; but I--I walk large; I go through the woods and
hunting-grounds one day, and I rise up in the morning and go through
them the next,--I walk large. "Brethren," said the speaker, "walk
large."
Taylor's great heart was not chilled by bigotry; neither was it by
theology, nor by philosophy. His prayer was the breathing of a child's
heart to an infinitely loving father; it was strangely free and
confiding. I remember being in one of the early morning prayer-meetings
of an anniversary week in Boston, and Taylor was there. As I rose to
offer a prayer, I spoke a few words upon the kind of approach which we
might make to the Infinite Being. Something like this I said,--that
as we were taught to believe that we were made in the image of God,
and were his children, emanations from the Infinite Perfection,
[315]partakers of the divine nature; as the Infinite One had sent forth
a portion of His own nature to dwell in these forms of frail mortality
and imperfection, and no darkness, no sorrow, nor erring of ours could
reach to Him; might we not think,--God knows, I said, that I would be
guilty of no irreverence or presumption,-but might we not think that
with infinite consideration and pity he looks down upon us struggling
with our load; upon our weakness and trouble, upon our penitence and
aspiration?
As the congregation was retiring, and I was passing in the aisle, I saw
Father Taylor sitting by the pulpit, and he beckoned me aside. "Brother
Dewey," he said, in his emphatic way, "did you ever know any one to say
what you have been saying this morning?"-"Why," I replied, "does not
every one say it?"--"No," he answered; "I have talked with a thousand
ministers, and no one of them ever said that."
To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.
ST. DAVID'S, Sept. 12, 1871.
DEAR AND VENERABLE,--For it seems you grow old, and count the
diminishing days, as a bankrupt his parting ducats. I never heard
you say anything of the sort before, and have only thought of you as
growing richer in every way. I don't in any way; but though well,
considering, I find myself losing strength and good condition every
year. That is why I move about less and less, sticking closer to my own
bed and board, furnace and chimney-nook,--shelf for shoes, and pegs
for coat and trousers. [316] I am very glad to hear from you, and that
you will come and see us on your way home. Don't slip by us. Don't be
miserly about time. Odysseus took a long time for his wanderings; take
a hint from the same, not to be in a hurry.
To Mrs. David Lane.
ST. DAVID'S, Nov. 25, 1871.
DEAR me! and dear you, yet more. If I should write to you "often," what
would be the condition of us both? I very empty, and you with a great
clatter in your ears. Think of a hopper, with very little grain in it,
to keep shaking! It would be a very impolitic hopper.
I am laughing at myself, while I write this, for I am not an empty
hopper, and if I could "find it in my heart to bestow all my
tediousness upon you," you would laugh at me too. Ay, but in what sense
would you laugh? That is the question. I laugh at myself, proudly, for
calling myself empty; and you, perhaps, would laugh at me piteously, on
finding me so.
But a truce with this nonsense. Anybody will find enough to write who
will write out what is within him. Did you ever read much of German
letters,--those, for instance, of Perthes and his friends? They are
full of religion, as our American letters, I think, are not. We seem to
have been educated, especially we Unitarians, to great reserve on this
subject. I remember Channing's preaching against so much reserve. It is
partly, I believe, a reaction against profession. But there is another
reason; and that is, in religion's having become, under a more rational
culture, so a part of our whole life and thought [317] and being, that
formally to express our feelings upon it seems to us unnecessary,
and in bad taste, as if we were to say how much we love knowledge or
literature, or how much we love our friends or our children. Much talk
of this sort seems to bring a doubt, by implication, upon the very
thing talked about. Channing talked perpetually about religion,--that
is, everything ran into that,--but never about his own religious
feelings.
Do get the life of Perthes, if you have never read it. That and
"Palissy the Potter" are among the most interesting biographies I know.
It is grim November weather up here, and I like it. Everything in its
place; and we are having considerable rain, which is more in place,
as winter is approaching, than anything else could be. Wife and I are
bunged up with colds. No, I am; that ugly epithet can't attach to the
grace and delicacy of her conditions and proportions. But alas! I
am losing my old and boasted security against colds. I but went out
one evening, to give a lecture at the Friendly Union [The Sheffield
Friendly Union is the name of an association for purposes of social
entertainment and culture, which meets one evening in the week, during
winter, at a hall in the village, to enjoy music, lectures, reading,
dramas, or whatever diversion its managers can procure or its members
offer. Dancing and cards are forbidden, but other games are played
in the latter part of the evening; and there is a small but good
library, slowly enlarging, and much used and valued by the members. The
subscription fee is small, and the meetings are seldom of less than one
hundred or two hundred people, many coming three or four miles. The
society was started in 1871, and Dr. Dewey took a great interest in
it from the first. It was he who chose its name; and while his health
lasted, he was a frequent attendant, and always lectured or read a play
of Shakespeare before it two or three times every winter.] and this is
the way I [318]pay for it. If there is any barrel in town bigger than
my head, I should like to buy it, and get in.
I was sorry not to see Coquerel, and pleased to hear that he had the
grace to be disappointed at not seeing me. But I don't seek people
any more. Why, I don't think I should run in the mud to see Alexis I
himself. And to a New York lady I suppose that is about the strongest
thing I could say.
All send their love to you and yours.
Yours ever,