More than twenty years ago, being pastor of a church in one of our
Western cities, I was sitting, one evening, meditating over my coal
fire, which was cheerfully blazing up and gloomily subsiding again, in
the way that Western coal fires in Western coal grates were then very
much in the habit of doing. I was a young, and inexperienced minister.
I had come to the West, fresh from a New England divinity-school, with
magnificent ideas of the vast work which was to be done, and with rather
a vague notion of the way in which I was to do it. My views of the West
were chiefly derived from two books, both of which are now obsolete.
When a child, with the omnivorous reading propensity of children, I had
perused a thin, pale octavo, which stood on the shelves of our library,
containing the record of a journey by the Rev. Thaddeus Mason Harris, of
Dorchester, from Massachusetts to Marietta, Ohio. Allibone, whom nothing
escapes, gives the title of the book, "Journal of a Tour into the
Territory Northwest of the Allegheny Mountains in 1803, Boston, 1805."
That a man should write an octavo volume about a journey to Marietta now
strikes us as rather absurd; but in those days the overland journey to
Ohio was as difficult as that to California is now. The other book was a
more important one, being Timothy Flint's "Ten Years' Recollections
of the Mississippi Valley," published in 1826. Mr. Flint was a man of
sensibility and fancy, a sharp observer, and an interesting writer. His
book opened the West to us in its scenery and in its human interest.
I was sitting in my somewhat lonely position, watching my coal fire, and
thinking of the friends I had left on the other side of the mountains.
I had not succeeded as I had hoped in my work. I came to the West
expecting to meet with opposition, and I found only indifference. I
expected infidelity, and found worldliness. I had around me a company
of good Christian friends, but they were no converts of mine; they were
from New England, like myself, and brought their religion with them.
Upon the real Western people I had made no impression, and could not see
how I should make any. Those who were religious seemed to be bigots;
those who were not religious cared apparently more for making money, for
politics, for horseracing, for duelling, than for the difference between
Homoousians and Homoiousians. They were very fond of good preaching, but
their standard was a little different from that I had been accustomed
to. A solid, meditative, carefully written sermon had few attractions
for them. They would go to hear our great New England divines on account
of their reputation, but they would run in crowds to listen to John
Newland Maffit. What they wanted, as one of them expressed it, was "an
eloquent divine and no common orator." They liked sentiment run out into
sentimentalism, fluency, point, plenty of illustration, and knock-down
argument. How could a poor boy, fresh from the groves of our Academy,
where Good Taste reigned supreme, and where to learn how to manage one's
voice was regarded as a sin against sincerity, how could he meet such
demands as these?
I was more discouraged than I need to have been; for, after all, the
resemblances in human beings are more than their differences. The
differences are superficial,--the resemblances radical. Everywhere men
like, in a Christian minister, the same things,--sincerity, earnestness,
and living Christianity. Mere words may please, but not long. Men differ
in taste about the form of the cup out of which they drink this wine of
Divine Truth, but they agree in their thirst for the same wine.
But to my story.
I was sitting, therefore, meditating somewhat sadly, when a knock came
at the door. On opening it, a negro boy, with grinning face, presented
himself, holding a note. The great fund of good-humor which God has
bestowed on the African race often makes them laugh when we see no
occasion for laughter. Any event, no matter what it is, seems to them
amusing. So this boy laughed merely because he had brought me a note,
and not because there was anything peculiarly amusing in the message
which the note contained. It is true that you sometimes meet a
melancholy negro. But such, I fancy, have some foreign blood in
them,--they are not Africans _pur sang_. The race is so essentially
joyful, that centuries of oppression and hardship cannot depress its
good spirits. It is cheerful in spite of slavery, and in spite of cruel
prejudice.
The note the boy brought me did not seem adapted to furnish much
provocation for laughter. It was as follows:--
"_United States Hotel_, Jan. 4th, 1834.
"SIR,--I hope you will excuse the liberty of a stranger addressing you
on a subject he feels great interest in. It is to require a place of
interment for his friend[s] in the church-yard, and also the expense
attendant on the purchase of such place of temporary repose.
"Your communication on this matter will greatly oblige,
"Sir,
"Your respectful and
"Obedient Servant,
"J.B. BOOTH."
It will be observed that after the word "friend" an [s] follows in
brackets. In the original the word was followed by a small mark which
might or might not give it the plural form. It could be read either
"friend" or "friends"; but as we do not usually find ourselves called
upon to bury more than one friend at a time, the hasty reader would
not notice the mark, but would read it "friend." So did I; and only
afterward, in consequence of the _dénouement_, did I notice that it
might be read in the other way.
Taking my hat, I stepped into the street. Gas in those days was not;
an occasional lantern, swung on a wire across the intersection of the
streets, reminded us that the city was once French, and suggested the
French Revolution and the cry, "_À la lanterne!_" First I went to my
neighbor, the mayor of the city, in pursuit of the desired information.
A jolly mayor was he,--a Yankee melted down into a Western man,
thoroughly Westernized by a rough-and-tumble life in Kentucky during
many years. Being obliged to hold a mayor's court every day, and knowing
very little of law, his chief study was, as he expressed it, "how to
choke off the Kentucky lawyers." Mr. Mayor not being at home, I turned
next to the office of another naturalized Yankee,--a Yankee naturalized,
but never Westernized. He was one of those who do not change their mind
with their sky, who, exiled from the dear hills of New England, can
never get away from the inborn, inherent Yankee. He was a Plymouth man,
and religiously preserved every opinion, habit, and accent which he had
brought from Plymouth Rock. When Kentucky was madly Democratic and wept
over the dead Jefferson as over her saint, he had expressed the opinion
that it would have been well for the country, if he had died long
before,--for which expression he came near being lynched. He was the
most unpopular and the most indispensable man in the city,--they could
live neither with him nor without him. He founded and organized the
insurance companies, the public schools, the charitable associations,
the great canal, the banking-system,--in short, all Yankee institutions.
The city was indebted to him for much of its prosperity, but disliked
him while it respected him. For he spared no Western prejudice; he
remorselessly criticized everything that was not done as Yankees do it:
and the most provoking thing of all was that he never made a mistake; he
was always right.
Finding no one at home, and so not being able to learn about the price
of lots in the church-yard, I walked on to the hotel, and asked to see
Mr. J.B. Booth. I was shown into a private parlor, where he and another
gentleman were sitting by a table. On the table were candles, a decanter
of wine, and glasses, a plate of bread, cigars, and a book. Mr. Booth
rose when I announced myself, and I at once recognized the distinguished
actor. I had met him once before, and travelled with him for part of a
day. He was a short man, but one of those who seem tall when they choose
to do so. He had a clear blue eye and fair complexion. In repose
there was nothing to attract attention to him; but when excited, his
expression was so animated, his eye was so brilliant, and his figure so
full of life, that he became another man.
Having told him that I had not been successful in procuring the
information he desired, but would bring it to him on the following
morning, he thanked me, and asked me to sit down. It passed through my
mind, that, as he had lost a friend and was a stranger in the place, I
might be of use to him. Perhaps he needed consolation, and it was my
office to sympathize with the bereaved. So I sat down. But it did not
appear that he was disposed to seek for such comfort, or engage in such
discourse. Once or twice I endeavored, but without success, to turn
the conversation to his presumed loss. I asked him if the death of his
friend was sudden.
"Very," he replied.
"Was he a relative?"
"Distant," said he, and changed the subject.
It is twenty-seven years since these events took place, and I do not
pretend to give the conversation very accurately, but what occurred was
very much like this. It was a dialogue between Booth and myself, the
third party saying not a word during the evening. Mr. Booth first asked
me to take a glass of wine, or a cigar, both of which I declined.
"Well," said he, "let me try to entertain you in another way. When you
came in, I was reading aloud to my friend. Perhaps you would like to
hear me read."
"I certainly should," said I.
"What shall I read?"
"Whatever you like best. What you like to read I shall like to hear."
"Then suppose I attempt Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner'? Have you time for
it? It is long."
"Yes, I should like it much."
So he read aloud the whole of this magnificent poem. I have listened to
Macready, to Edmund Kean, to Rachel, to Jenny Lind, to Fanny Kemble,--to
Webster, Clay, Everett, Harrison Gray Otis,--to Dr. Channing, Henry
Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, Father Taylor, Ralph Waldo Emerson,--to
Victor Hugo, Coquerel, Lacordaire; but none of them affected me as I was
affected by this reading. I forgot the place where I was, the motive of
my coming, the reader himself. I knew the poem almost by heart, yet I
seemed never to have heard it before. I was by the side of the doomed
mariner. I was the wedding-guest, listening to his story, held by his
glittering eye. I was with him in the storm, among the ice, beneath
the hot and copper sky. Booth became so absorbed in his reading, so
identified with the poem, that his tone and manner were saturated with
a feeling of reality. He actually thought himself the mariner,--so I am
persuaded,--while he was reading. As the poem proceeded, and we plunged
deeper and deeper into its mystic horrors, the actual world receded
into a dim, indefinable distance. The magnetism of this marvellous
interpreter had caught up himself, and me with him, into Dreamland, from
which we gently descended at the end of Part VI., and "the spell was
snapt."
"And now, all in my own countree,
I stood on the firm land,"--
returned from a voyage into the inane. Again I found myself sitting in
the little hotel parlor, by the side of a man with glittering eye, with
a third somebody on the other side of the table.