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CHILDREN'S STORIES
IN
AMERICAN LITERATURE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
CHILDREN'S STORIES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE,
1861-1896. One vol., 12mo. $1.25
CHILDREN'S STORIES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE,
1660-1860. One vol., 12mo. $1.25
CHILDREN'S STORIES OF AMERICAN PROGRESS.
One vol., 12mo. Illustrated $1.25
CHILDREN'S STORIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY.
One vol., 12mo. Illustrated $1.25
CHILDREN'S STORIES OF THE GREAT SCIENTISTS.
One vol., 12mo. Illustrated $1.25
CHILDREN'S STORIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.
FROM TALIESIN TO SHAKESPEARE. One vol.,
12mo. $1.25
CHILDREN'S STORIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.
FROM SHAKESPEARE TO TENNYSON. One vol.,
12mo. $1.25
THE PRINCESS LILLIWINKINS AND OTHER STORIES.
One vol., 12mo. Illustrated $1.25
CHILDREN'S STORIES
IN
AMERICAN LITERATURE
1660-1860
BY
HENRIETTA CHRISTIAN WRIGHT
NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1909
COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
THE EARLY LITERATURE, 1
CHAPTER II
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON--1780-1851, 14
CHAPTER III
WASHINGTON IRVING--1783-1859, 28
CHAPTER IV
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER--1789-1851, 51
CHAPTER V
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT--1794-1878, 69
CHAPTER VI
WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT--1796-1859, 82
CHAPTER VII
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER--1807-1892, 96
CHAPTER VIII
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE--1804-1864, 108
CHAPTER IX
GEORGE BANCROFT--1800-1891, 123
CHAPTER X
EDGAR ALLAN POE--1809-1849, 137
CHAPTER XI
RALPH WALDO EMERSON--1803-1882, 149
CHAPTER XII
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW--1807-1882, 156
CHAPTER XIII
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY--1814-1877, 174
CHAPTER XIV
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE--1811-1896, 188
CHAPTER XV
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL--1819-1892, 203
CHAPTER XVI
FRANCIS PARKMAN--1823-1893, 219
CHAPTER XVII
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES--1809-1894, 234
CHAPTER I
THE EARLY LITERATURE
One Sunday morning, about the year 1661, a group of Indians was
gathered around a noble-looking man, listening to a story he was
reading. It was summer and the day was beautiful, and the little
Indian children who sat listening were so interested that not even the
thought of their favorite haunts by brookside or meadow could tempt
them from the spot. The story was about the life of Christ and his
mission to the world, and the children had heard it many times,
but to-day it seemed new to them because it was read in their own
language, which had never been printed before. This was the Mohegan
tongue, which was spoken in different dialects by the Indians
generally throughout Massachusetts; and although it had been used
for hundreds of years by the tribes in that part of the country
its appearance on paper was as strange to them as if it had been a
language of which they knew not a single word. It was just as strange
to them, in fact, as if they had heard one of their war cries or love
songs set to music, or had seen a picture of their dreams of the happy
hunting grounds in that invisible western world where the sun went
every night, and which they expected to see only after death.
The man who was reading the old story was John Eliot, an English
missionary, who had devoted his life to the Indians, and whose
ambition it was to leave behind him as his greatest gift the Bible
translated into their own tongue. With this in view he set about
making them familiar with the Christian faith, and established
Sunday-schools among them, where men, women, and children alike were
instructed.
From time to time they heard read stories from the New Testament which
Eliot had translated, and in which he was greatly helped by one or two
Indians who had gifts as translators, and could express the English
thought into Indian words more fitting and beautiful than Eliot
himself could have done. In all his earlier missionary work he also
had the assistance of the great sachem Waban, because, as it happened,
the first sermon Eliot ever preached to the Indians was delivered
in Waban's wigwam. The text was from the old poetic words of
Ezekiel--"Say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God," etc.
The Indian name for wind was Waban, the old sachem's name, and he
thought the sermon was addressed to him. He became an ardent convert
and helped Eliot greatly in his work of Christianizing the tribes,
and in particular in his trouble to keep peace among the sachems,
who objected to the freedom of thought which the new religion taught,
thinking that it interfered with their own authority over their
people.
In a little book in which Eliot describes these grievances of the
chiefs he calls them _Pills for the Sachems_, and says they were much
harder to swallow than even the nauseous doses of their medicine men.
For the better instruction of the Indian children Eliot prepared a
small primer, which was printed in 1669, eight years after the New
Testament was printed. It was a curious little book, having the
alphabet in large and small letters on the fly-leaf, and containing
the Apostles' Creed, the Catechism, and the Lord's Prayer, with other
religious matter. Out of this primer the Indian youth learned to read
and to spell in words of one syllable. When he was able to master the
whole Bible, which was printed in 1663, his education was considered
complete.
This old Indian Bible, which Eliot was ten years in translating, was
printed at Cambridge and bound in dark blue morocco, it being the
first Bible and one of the first books ever printed in America. Two
hundred copies were made, and a second edition contained a dedication
to Charles II. of England, praising him for his goodness in
distributing the word of God among his colonies, which had not
yielded him gold and silver as the Spanish colonies had yielded their
sovereign, but which would nevertheless redound to his immortal glory
as the first-fruits of Christianity among those heathen tribes. The
dedication took up two pages, which was about all the English the
old book contained, the rest being in that curious, half-musical,
half-guttural tongue of the Mohegans, which Cotton Mather said had
been growing since the time of the confusion of tongues at the Tower
of Babel. Certainly some of the words are of such mighty length and
awful sound that we may well believe the same old preacher when he
says that he knew from personal knowledge that demons could understand
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, but that they were utterly baffled by the
speech of the American Indians.
Very few of these Bibles now exist, and those are of priceless value
to lovers of old books.
One of the earliest books that may be claimed as belonging to American
letters was a volume descriptive of the early settlements in Virginia
by Captain John Smith. It has great value as a representation of
Indian life before its contact with white civilization. Smith had
followed the army of England through the greater part of Europe and
Asia and knew the life of a soldier of fortune. He had fought with
Turks, hunted Tartars, and had always been the hero of the occasion.
The Indian to him was but another kind of heathen to subdue, and the
book is full of adventures, in which he describes himself as always
intrepid and victorious. This is the earliest book that brings the
Indians of the colonies closely before our eyes, and its style is
good, and shows that strong, terse, English fibre which characterized
the writings of the adventurous Englishman of that time. In another
book Smith gives a charming description of inland Virginia, whose
birds, flowers, wild animals, rivers, and scenery are discussed in
a poetic fashion that throws a new light on the character of
the adventurous soldier. There is in both volumes a richness of
description in the details of Indian life that possesses a rare value
to the student. The story of Smith's visit to Powhatan, the father
of Pocahontas, reads like a bit of oriental fairy lore, and the great
Indian chief, seated upon his couch of skins, with his savage guard
around him, is brought as vividly before our eyes as the hero of
a romance. And so Smith's books stand for good literature, though
written only with the idea of familiarizing the people at home with
the condition of the new colony, and they make no mean showing as the
beginning of American letters.
In New England literature from the first partook inevitably of the
Puritan character. There were long journals of the pilgrim fathers,
books on books of sermons, and volume after volume of argument on the
burning religious questions that had been heard in England since
the first Puritan defied the king and openly declared for freedom of
conscience. Among the most celebrated of these old books is the _Bay
Psalm Book_ of 1640, in which the psalms of David were done into metre
for the use of congregations. This book, in which the beautiful Hebrew
poetry is tortured into the most abominable English, is a fair example
of the religious verse-making of the day.
A curious book was the first almanac, published at Cambridge in
1689, and which contained prognostications of the weather, dates of
historical events, general news of the world, and bits of poetry,
having also blank spaces for the use of the owner, who could either
utilize them for preserving his own verses, as Cotton Mather did, or
keep therein his accounts with his wig maker and hair-dresser, as did
that worthy Puritan Thomas Prince.
Perhaps the greatest poet of those early times was Anne Bradstreet,
who wrote her famous poems on the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and
Roman monarchies, and who was called the tenth muse by an admiring
public. These works are long and learned, but they show less the
poetic spirit of the age than do the short but pointed ballads that
sprang up from time to time and which indicated the popular feeling
over the events that were making the history of New England. These
ballads were on every conceivable subject, from the Day of Judgment
to the sale of a cow. The war between England and France for the
possession of Canada gave rise to many ditties the tunes of which
remained popular long afterward. The Indian wars also furnished
material for many. They were printed in almanacs, or loose sheets, and
sometimes not printed at all. They served as news-venders long before
the first newspaper was published (in 1690) and they expressed, as
nothing else could have done, the attitude of the people toward
the church, the state, the governor, and even the "tidy man"
(tithing-man), whose duty it was to tickle with a hazel rod any
youngster who was unlucky enough to fall asleep in church. Later, in
revolutionary times, the ballad became a power second to none.
Here first appears that great hero Yankee Doodle, who comes, like
will-o'-the-wisp, from no one knows where, although many learned pages
have been written to show his nationality. He seems to have been as
great a traveller as Marco Polo or Baron Munchausen, and, like them,
he must have seen many strange sights and countries. Perhaps he
may have a trace of the gypsy in him and could recall, if he
liked, strange wanderings through the Far East. He may have been a
camp-follower through the German and Flemish wars. It is more than
probable that he hobnobbed with the Italian banditti, and took an
elfish delight in depriving honest travellers of their wits and
purses. We know that he lived for a time in Holland, where he seems
to have preferred a peaceful life and was content with the humdrum
existence of those worthy Dutch farmers who invited him to their
feasts, welcomed him to their roofs, and sang his praises in their
harvest-fields in such stirring words as these:
Yanker didel doodel down,
Didel dudel lanter;
Yanke viver voover vown,
Botermilk un tanther;
which means that if the lads and lassies reaped and gleaned faithfully
they should be rewarded by a tenth of the grain, and an unlimited
supply of buttermilk.
Afterward Yankee Doodle seems to have tired of pastoral life, for we
find him in the midst of Roundhead and Cavalier upon the battle-fields
of England during the Civil War. No doubt such a jolly comrade felt a
tinge of sadness at the misfortunes of the unlucky Charles I., and he
could not have found the long-faced Puritans, with their nasal voices,
very good company for such a happy-go-lucky as himself. At any rate he
never became an Englishman, and seems only to have paused in England
while making up his mind where to settle down and spend his old age.
He probably made his first bow in America in 1775, and it is evident
that he took a fancy to the new country, and was pleased, and perhaps
flattered, by the reception he met. With his old abandon he threw
himself heart and soul into the conflict, and became, in fact, the
child of the Revolution. He was a leading spirit everywhere. Throwing
all recollections of English hospitality to the winds, he chased the
red coats at Bunker Hill, gave them a drubbing at Bennington, and
remained bravely in the rear to watch their scouts while Washington
retreated from Long Island. Many a time he was the sole support of the
faithful few stationed to guard some important outpost; many a time he
marched along with the old Continentals, grim and faithful, expecting
every moment would reveal danger and perhaps death.
He crossed the Delaware with Washington on that eventful Christmas
night, in 1775, though the Italian blood in him must have shrunk a
little from the cold. He stood shoulder to shoulder with the great
leader through all the misery and hopelessness of Valley Forge. He was
joyously welcomed by the soldiers in all their daring escapades when
breaking loose from the restraints of camp life; and the women and
children who had to remain home and suffer danger and privation alone,
never saw his honest face without a smile.
Such devotion met with its reward. When the war was over the old
veteran retired from the service with full military rank, and was
brevetted an American citizen besides. It is pleasant to think that he
has at last found a resting place among a people who will always honor
and love him.
Two other ballads very popular at that time were _The Battle of
Trenton_ and _The Massacre of Wyoming_, while innumerable ones of
lesser note were sung by fireside and camp-fire, all through the
colonies.
In New York the first liberty pole raised in the country was planted
by the Sons of Liberty, a band of patriotic Americans, who set it up
again and again as it was cut down by the Tories, accompanying their
work by singing every imaginable kind of ballad that would irritate
the breast of the British sympathizers.
During the war of 1812, came the _Star Spangled Banner_, written to
the accompaniment of shot and shell, while the author, Francis S. Key,
was a prisoner on shipboard watching the bombardment of Fort McHenry
by the British, in the harbor of Baltimore. The song was born in the
darkness of a night of terrible anxiety, and when the dawn broke and
found the flag still floating over the fort, an earnest of the victory
to come, its triumphant measures seemed the fitting paean of American
liberty.
The ballad of the camps had developed into the national anthem.