Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover's pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall.
All down the hills of Habersham,
All through the valleys of Hall,
The rushes cried, "Abide, abide,"
The willful waterweeds held me thrall,
The loving laurel turned my tide,
The ferns and the fondling grass said, "Stay,"
The dewberry dipped for to work delay,
And the little reeds sighed, "Abide, abide,"
Here in the hills of Habersham,
Here in the valleys of Hall.
High o'er the hills of Habersham,
Veiling the valleys of Hall,
The hickory told me manifold
Fair tales of shade; the poplar tall
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold;
The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine,
Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign,
Said, "Pass not so cold, these manifold
Deep shades of the hills of Habersham,
These glades in the valleys of Hall."
And oft in the hills of Habersham,
And oft in the valleys of Hall,
The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook stone
Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl;
And many a luminous jewel lone
(Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist,
Ruby, garnet, or amethyst)
Made lures with the lights of streaming stone
In the clefts of the hills of Habersham,
In the beds of the valleys of Hall.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 13: By Sidney Lanier, an American musician and poet
(1842-1881). From the _Poems of Sidney Lanier_, published by Charles
Scribner's Sons.]
EXPRESSION: Compare this poem with the one which precedes it.
Compare them both with Tennyson's "Song of the Brook" ("Fifth
Reader," p. 249). Which is the most musical? Which is the best
simply as a description?
Make a list of the unusual words in this last poem, and refer to
the dictionary for their meaning. In what state is the
Chattahoochee River? "Habersham" and "Hall" are the names of two
counties in the same state.
If you have access to a library, find Southey's poem, "The Cataract
of Lodore," and read it aloud.
WAR AND PEACE
I. WAR AS THE MOTHER OF VALOR AND CIVILIZATION[14]
We still hear war extolled at times as the mother of valor and the prime
agency in the world's advancement. By it, we are told, civilization has
spread and nations have been created, slavery has been abolished and the
American Union preserved. It is even held that without war human
progress would have been impossible.
The answer: Men were at first savages who preyed upon each other like
wild beasts, and so they developed a physical courage which they shared
with the brutes. Moral courage was unknown to them. War was almost their
sole occupation. Peace existed only for short periods that tribes might
regain strength to resume the sacred duty of killing each other.
Advancement in civilization was impossible while war reigned. Only as
wars became less frequent and long intervals of peace supervened could
civilization, the mother of true heroism, take root. Civilization has
advanced just as war has receded, until in our day peace has become the
rule and war the exception.
Arbitration of international disputes grows more and more in favor.
Successive generations of men now live and die without seeing war; and
instead of the army and navy furnishing the only careers worthy of
gentlemen, it is with difficulty that civilized nations can to-day
obtain a sufficient supply of either officers or men.
In the past, man's only method for removing obstacles and attaining
desired ends was to use brute courage. The advance of civilization has
developed moral courage. We use more beneficent means than men did of
old. Britain in the eighteenth century used force to prevent American
independence. In more recent times she graciously grants Canada the
rights denied America.
The United States also receives an award of the powers against China,
and, finding it in excess of her expenditures, in the spirit of newer
time, returns ten million dollars. Won by this act of justice, China
devotes the sum to the education of Chinese students in the republic's
universities. The greatest force is no longer that of brutal war, but
the supreme force of gentlemen and generosity--the golden rule.
The pen is rapidly superseding the sword. Arbitration is banishing war.
More than five hundred international disputes have already been
peacefully settled. Civilization, not barbarism, is the mother of true
heroism. Our lately departed poet and disciple of peace, Richard Watson
Gilder, has left us the answer to the false idea that brute force
employed against our fellows ranks with heroic moral courage exerted to
save or serve them:--
'Twas said: "When roll of drum and battle's roar
Shall cease upon the earth, oh, then no more
The deed, the race, of heroes in the land."
But scarce that word was breathed when one small hand
Lifted victorious o'er a giant wrong
That had its victims crushed through ages long;
Some woman set her pale and quivering face,
Firm as a rock, against a man's disgrace;
A little child suffered in silence lest
His savage pain should wound a mother's breast;
Some quiet scholar flung his gauntlet down
And risked, in Truth's great name, the synod's frown;
A civic hero, in the calm realm of laws,
Did that which suddenly drew a world's applause;
And one to the pest his lithe young body gave
That he a thousand thousand lives might save.
On the field of carnage men lose all human instincts in the struggle to
protect themselves. The true heroism inspired by moral courage prompts
firemen, policemen, sailors, miners, and others to volunteer and risk
their lives to save the lives of their fellowmen. Such heroism is now of
everyday occurrence.
In our age there is no more reason for permitting war between civilized
nations than for relaxing the reign of law within nations, which compels
men to submit their personal disputes to peaceful courts, and never
dreams that by so doing they will be made less heroic....
When war ceases, the sense of human brotherhood will be strengthened and
"heroism" will no longer mean to kill, but only to serve or save our
fellows.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 14: By Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish-American manufacturer and
philanthropist (1837- ).]
II. FRIENDSHIP AMONG NATIONS[15]
Let us suppose that four centuries ago some far-seeing prophet dared to
predict to the duchies composing the kingdom of France that the day
would come when they would no longer make war upon each other. Let us
suppose him saying:--
"You will have many disputes to settle, interests to contend for,
difficulties to resolve; but do you know what you will select instead of
armed men, instead of cavalry, and infantry, of cannon, lances, pikes,
and swords?
"You will select, instead of all this destructive array, a small box of
wood, which you will term a ballot-box, and from what shall issue--what?
An assembly--an assembly in which you shall all live; an assembly which
shall be, as it were, the soul of all; a supreme and popular council,
which shall decide, judge, resolve everything; which shall say to each,
'Here terminates your right, there commences your duty: lay down your
arms!'
"And in that day you will all have one common thought, common interests,
a common destiny; you will embrace each other, and recognize each other
as children of the same blood and of the same race; that day you shall
no longer be hostile tribes--you will be a people; you will be no longer
merely Burgundy, Normandy, Brittany, Provence--you will be France!
You will no longer make appeals to war; you will do so to civilization."
If, at that period I speak of, some one had uttered these words, all men
would have cried out: "What a dreamer! what a dream! How little this
pretended prophet is acquainted with the human heart!" Yet time has gone
on and on, and we find that this dream has been realized.
Well, then, at this moment we who are assembled here say to France, to
England, to Spain, to Italy, to Russia: "A day will come, when from your
hands also the arms they have grasped shall fall. A day will come, when
war shall appear as impossible, and will be as impossible, between Paris
and London, between St. Petersburg and Berlin, as it is now between
Rouen and Amiens, between Boston and Philadelphia.
"A day will come, when you, France; you, Russia; you, Italy; you,
England; you, Germany; all of you nations of the continent, shall,
without losing your distinctive qualities and your glorious
individuality, be blended into a superior unity, and shall constitute an
European fraternity, just as Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Lorraine,
have been blended into France. A day will come when the only battle
field shall be the market open to commerce, and the mind open to new
ideas. A day will come when bullets and shells shall be replaced by
votes, by the universal suffrage of nations, by the arbitration of a
great sovereign senate.
Nor is it necessary for four hundred years to pass away for that day to
come. We live in a period in which a year often suffices to do the work
of a century.
Suppose that the people of Europe, instead of mistrusting each other,
entertaining jealousy of each other, hating each other, become fast
friends; suppose they say that before they are French or English or
German they are men, and that if nations form countries, human kind
forms a family. Suppose that the enormous sums spent in maintaining
armies should be spent in acts of mutual confidence. Suppose that the
millions that are lavished on hatred, were bestowed on love, given to
peace instead of war, given to labor, to intelligence, to industry, to
commerce, to navigation, to agriculture, to science, to art.
If this enormous sum were expended in this manner, know you what would
happen? The face of the world would be changed. Isthmuses would be cut
through. Railroads would cover the continents; the merchant navy of the
globe would be increased a hundredfold. There would be nowhere barren
plains nor moors nor marshes. Cities would be found where now there are
only deserts. Asia would be rescued to civilization; Africa would be
rescued to man; abundance would gush forth on every side, from every
vein of the earth at the touch of man, like the living stream from the
rock beneath the rod of Moses.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 15: By Victor Hugo, a celebrated French writer (1802-1885).]
III. SOLDIER, REST[16]
Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking;
Dream of battled fields no more,
Days of danger, nights of waking.
In our isle's enchanted hall,
Hands unseen thy couch are strewing,
Fairy strains of music fall,
Every sense in slumber dewing.
Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,
Dream of fighting fields no more;
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Morn of toil nor night of waking.
No rude sound shall reach thine ear,
Armor's clang, or war steed champing,
Trump nor pibroch summon here
Mustering clan or squadron tramping.
Yet the lark's shrill fife may come
At the daybreak from the fallow,
And the bittern sound his drum,
Booming from the sedgy shallow.
Ruder sounds shall none be near,
Guards nor warders challenge here,
Here's no war steed's neigh and champing,
Shouting clans, or squadrons stamping.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 16: By Sir Walter Scott, a Scottish novelist and poet
(1771-1832).]
IV. THE SOLDIER'S DREAM[17]
Our bugles sang truce, for the night cloud had lowered,
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;
And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered,
The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.
When reposing that night on my pallet of straw,
By the wolf-scaring fagot that guarded the slain;
At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,
And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.
Methought from the battle field's dreadful array,
Far, far I had roamed on a desolate track;
'Twas autumn, and sunshine arose on the way
To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.
I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft
In life's morning march, when my bosom was young;
I heard my own mountain goats bleating aloft,
And knew the sweet strain that the corn reapers sung.
Then pledged we the wine cup, and fondly I swore
From my home and my weeping friends never to part;
My little ones kissed me a thousand times o'er,
And my wife sobbed aloud in her fullness of heart.
"Stay, stay with us--rest, thou art weary and worn;"
And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay;
But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 17: By Thomas Campbell, a Scottish poet (1777-1844).]
V. HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE[18]
How sleep the brave who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blest!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallowed mold,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.
By fairy hands their knell is rung,
By forms unseen their dirge is sung:
There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay,
And Freedom shall awhile repair
To dwell a weeping hermit there.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 18: By William Collins, an English poet (1721-1759).]
EXPRESSION: Which one of these three poems requires to be read with
most spirit and enthusiasm? Which is the most pathetic? Which is
the most musical? Which calls up the most pleasing mental pictures?
Talk with your teacher about the three authors of these poems, and
learn all you can about their lives and writings.
EARLY TIMES IN NEW YORK.[19]
In those good old days of simplicity and sunshine, a passion for
cleanliness was the leading principle in domestic economy, and the
universal test of an able housewife.
The front door was never opened, except for marriages, funerals, New
Year's Day, the festival of St. Nicholas, or some such great occasion.
It was ornamented with a gorgeous brass knocker, which was curiously
wrought,--sometimes in the device of a dog, and sometimes in that of a
lion's head,--and daily burnished with such religious zeal that it was
often worn out by the very precautions taken for its preservation.
The whole house was constantly in a state of inundation, under the
discipline of mops and brooms and scrubbing brushes; and the good
housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting
exceedingly to be dabbling in water,--insomuch that an historian of the
day gravely tells us that many of his townswomen grew to have webbed
fingers, "like unto ducks."
The grand parlor was the _sanctum sanctorum_, where the passion for
cleaning was indulged without control. No one was permitted to enter
this sacred apartment, except the mistress and her confidential maid,
who visited it once a week for the purpose of giving it a thorough
cleaning. On these occasions they always took the precaution of leaving
their shoes at the door, and entering devoutly in their stocking feet.
After scrubbing the floor, sprinkling it with fine white sand,--which
was curiously stroked with a broom into angles and curves and
rhomboids,--after washing the windows, rubbing and polishing the
furniture, and putting a new branch of evergreens in the fireplace, the
windows were again closed to keep out the flies, and the room was kept
carefully locked, until the revolution of time brought round the weekly
cleaning day.
As to the family, they always entered in at the gate, and generally
lived in the kitchen. To have seen a numerous household assembled round
the fire, one would have imagined that he was transported to those happy
days of primeval simplicity which float before our imaginations like
golden visions.
The fireplaces were of a truly patriarchal magnitude, where the whole
family, old and young, master and servant, black and white,--nay, even
the very cat and dog,--enjoyed a community of privilege, and had each a
right to a corner. Here the old burgher would sit in perfect silence,
puffing his pipe, looking in the fire with half-shut eyes, and thinking
of nothing, for hours together; the good wife, on the opposite side,
would employ herself diligently in spinning yarn or knitting stockings.
The young folks would crowd around the hearth, listening with breathless
attention to some old crone of a negro, who was the oracle of the
family, and who, perched like a raven in a corner of the chimney, would
croak forth, for a long winter afternoon, a string of incredible stories
about New England witches, grisly ghosts, and bloody encounters among
Indians.
In those happy days, fashionable parties were generally confined to the
higher classes, or _noblesse_; that is to say, such as kept their own
cows, and drove their own wagons. The company usually assembled at three
o'clock, and went away about six, unless it was in winter time, when the
fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies might reach
home before dark.
The tea table was crowned with a huge earthen dish, well stored with
slices of fat pork, fried brown, cut up into morsels, and swimming in
gravy. The company seated round the genial board, evinced their
dexterity in launching their forks at the fattest pieces in this mighty
dish,--in much the same manner that sailors harpoon porpoises at sea, or
our Indians spear salmon in the lakes.
Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple pies, or saucers full
of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast an
enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat and called
doughnuts or _olykoeks_, a delicious kind of cake, at present little
known in this city, except in genuine Dutch families.
The tea was served out of a majestic Delft teapot, ornamented with
paintings of fat little Dutch shepherds and shepherdesses tending
pigs,--with boats sailing in the air, and houses built in the clouds,
and sundry other ingenious Dutch fancies. The beaux distinguished
themselves by their adroitness in replenishing this pot from a huge
copper teakettle. To sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid
beside each cup, and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with
great decorum; until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and
economic old lady, which was to suspend, by a string from the ceiling, a
large lump directly over the tea table, so that it could be swung from
mouth to mouth.
At these primitive tea parties, the utmost propriety and dignity
prevailed,--no flirting nor coquetting; no romping of young ladies; no
self-satisfied struttings of wealthy gentlemen, with their brains in
their pockets, nor amusing conceits and monkey divertisements of smart
young gentlemen, with no brains at all.
On the contrary, the young ladies seated themselves demurely in their
rush-bottomed chairs, and knit their own woolen stockings; nor ever
opened their lips, excepting to say "_Yah, Mynheer_," or "_Yah, yah,
Vrouw_," to any question that was asked them; behaving in all things
like decent, well-educated damsels. As to the gentlemen, each of them
tranquilly smoked his pipe, and seemed lost in contemplation of the blue
and white tiles with which the fireplaces were decorated; wherein sundry
passages of Scripture were piously portrayed. Tobit and his dog figured
to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; and Jonah
appeared most manfully leaping from the whale's mouth, like Harlequin
through a barrel of fire.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 19: From Diedrich Knickerbocker's, "History of New York," by
Washington Irving.]
NOTES: More than two hundred and fifty years have passed since the
"good old days" described in this selection. New York in 1660 was a
small place. It was called New Amsterdam, and its inhabitants were
chiefly Dutch people from Holland. Knickerbocker's "History of New
York" gives a delightfully humorous account of those early times.
The festival of St. Nicholas occurs on December 6, and with the
Dutch colonists was equivalent to our Christmas.
WORD STUDY: _sanctum sanctorum_, a Latin expression meaning "holy
of holies," a most sacred place.
_noblesse_, persons of high rank.
_olykoeks_ (_[)o]l' y cooks_), doughnuts, or crullers.
_Mynheer_ (_m[=i]n h[=a]r'_), sir, Mr.
_Vrouw_ (_vrou_), madam, lady.
_Tobit_, a pious man of ancient times whose story is related in
"The Book of Tobit."
_Haman_ (_ha' man_), the prime minister of the king of Babylon, who
was hanged on a gibbet which he had prepared for another. See "The
Book of Esther."
_Har' le quin_, a clown well known in Italian comedy.
Look in the dictionary for: _gorgeous_, _rhomboids_, _primeval_,
_patriarchal_, _burgher_, _crone_, _porpoises_, _beverage_,
_divertisements_.
A WINTER EVENING IN OLD NEW ENGLAND
Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draft
The great throat of the chimney laughed.
The house dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons' straddling feet
The mug of cider simmered slow,
And apples sputtered in a row.
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October's woods.
What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow.
[Illustration: A Winter Evening in Old New England.]
THE OLD-FASHIONED THANKSGIVING[20]
I do not know but it is that old New England holiday of Thanksgiving
which, for one of New England birth, has most of home associations tied
up with it, and most of gleeful memories. I know that they are very
present ones.
We all knew when it was coming; we all loved turkey--not Turkey on the
map, for which we cared very little after we had once bounded it--by the
Black Sea on the east, and by something else on the other sides--but
basted turkey, brown turkey, stuffed turkey. Here was richness!
We had scored off the days until we were sure, to a recitation mark,
when it was due--well into the end of November, when winds would be
blowing from the northwest, with great piles of dry leaves all down the
sides of the street and in the angles of pasture walls.
I cannot for my life conceive why any one should upset the old order of
things by marking it down a fortnight earlier. A man in the country
wants his crops well in and housed before he is ready to gush out with a
round, outspoken Thanksgiving; but everybody knows, who knows anything
about it, that the purple tops and the cow-horn turnips are, nine times
in ten, left out till the latter days of November, and husking not half
over.
We all knew, as I said, when it was coming. We had a stock of empty
flour barrels on Town-hill stuffed with leaves, and a big pole set in
the ground, and a battered tar barrel, with its bung chopped out, to put
on top of the pole. It was all to beat the last year's bonfire--and it
did. The country wagoners had made their little stoppages at the back
door. We knew what was to come of that. And if the old cook--a monstrous
fine woman, who weighed two hundred if she weighed a pound--was brusque
and wouldn't have us "round," we knew what was to come of that, too.
Such pies as hers demanded thoughtful consideration: not very large, and
baked in scalloped tins, and with such a relishy flavor to them, as on
my honor, I do not recognize in any pies of this generation....
The sermon on that Thanksgiving (and we all heard it) was long. We boys
were prepared for that too. But we couldn't treat a Thanksgiving sermon
as we would an ordinary one; we couldn't doze--there was too much ahead.
It seemed to me that the preacher made rather a merit of holding us in
check--with that basted turkey in waiting. At last, though, it came to
an end; and I believe Dick and I both joined in the doxology.
All that followed is to me now a cloud of misty and joyful expectation,
until we took our places--a score or more of cousins and kinsfolk; and
the turkey, and celery, and cranberries, and what nots, were all in
place.
Did Dick whisper to me as we went in, "Get next to me, old fellow"?
I cannot say; I have a half recollection that he did. But bless me! what
did anybody care for what Dick said?