Dear Sir,--Your letter come to han',
Requestin' me to please be funny;
But I a'n't made upon a plan
Thet knows wut 's comin', gall or honey:
Ther' 's times the world doos look so queer,
Odd fancies come afore I call 'em;
An' then agin, for half a year,
No preacher 'thout a call 's more solemn.
You 're 'n want o' sunthin' light an' cute,
Rattlin' an' shrewd an' kin' o' jingleish,
An' wish, pervidin' it 'ould suit,
I 'd take an' citify my English.
I _ken_ write long-tailed, ef I please,--
But when I 'm jokin', no, I thankee;
Then, 'fore I know it, my idees
Run helter-skelter into Yankee.
Sence I begun to scribble rhyme,
I tell ye wut, I ha'n't ben foolin';
The parson's books, life, death, an' time
Hev took some trouble with my schoolin';
Nor th' airth don't git put out with me,
Thet love her 'z though she wuz a woman;
Why, th' a'n't a bird upon the tree
But half forgives my bein' human.
An' yit I love th' unhighschooled way
Ol' farmers hed when I wuz younger;
Their talk wuz meatier, an' 'ould stay,
While book-froth seems to whet, your hunger,
For puttin' in a downright lick
'Twixt Humbug's eyes, ther' 's few can match it,
An' then it helves my thoughts ez slick
Ez stret-grained hickory doos a hatchet.
But when I can't, I can't, thet 's all,
For Natur' won't put up with gullin';
Idees you hev to shove an' haul
Like a druv pig a'n't wuth a mullein;
Live thoughts a'n't sent for; thru all rifts
O' sense they pour an' resh ye onwards,
Like rivers when south-lyin' drifts
Feel thet the airth is wheelin' sunwards.
Time wuz, the rhymes come crowdin' thick
Ez office-seekers arter 'lection,
An' into ary place 'ould stick
Without no bother nor objection;
But sence the war my thoughts hang back
Ez though I wanted to enlist 'em,
An' substitutes,--wal, _they_ don't lack,
But then they 'll slope afore you 've mist 'em.
Nothin' don't seem like wut it wuz;
I can't see wut there is to hinder,
An' yit my brains 'jes' go buzz, buzz,
Like bumblebees agin a winder;
'Fore these times come, in all airth's row,
Ther' wuz one quiet place, my head in,
Where I could hide an' think,--but now
It 's all one teeter, hopin', dreadin'.
Where 's Peace? I start, some clear-blown night,
When gaunt stone walls grow numb an' number,
An', creakin' 'cross the snow-crust white,
Walk the col' starlight into summer;
Up grows the moon, an' swell by swell
Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer
Than the last smile thet strives to tell
O' love gone heavenward in its shimmer.
I hev ben gladder o' sech things
Than cocks o' spring or bees o' clover,
They filled my heart with livin' springs,
But now they seem to freeze 'em over;
Sights innercent ez babes on knee,
Peaceful ez eyes o' pastur'd cattle,
Jes' coz they be so, seem to me
To rile me more with thoughts o' battle.
In-doors an' out by spells I try;
Ma'am Natur' keeps her spin-wheel goin',
But leaves my natur' stiff an' dry
Ez fiel's o' clover arter mowin';
An' her jes' keepin' on the same,
Calmer than clock-work, an' not carin',
An' findin' nary thing to blame,
Is wus than ef she took to swearin'.
Snow-flakes come whisperin' on the pane
The charm makes blazin' logs so pleasant,
But I can't hark to wut they 're say'n',
With Grant or Sherman oilers present;
The chimbleys shudder in the gale,
Thet lulls, then suddin takes to flappin'
Like a shot hawk, but all's ez stale
To me ez so much sperit-rappin'.
Under the yaller-pines I house,
When sunshine makes 'em all sweet-scented,
An' hear among their furry boughs
The baskin' west-wind purr contented,--
While 'way o'erhead, ez sweet an' low
Ez distant bells thet ring for meetin',
The wedged wil' geese their bugles blow,
Further an' further South retreatin'.
Or up the slippery knob I strain
An' see a hunderd hills like islan's
Lift their blue woods in broken chain
Out o' the sea o' snowy silence;
The farm-smokes, sweetes' sight on airth,
Slow thru the winter air a-shrinkin',
Seem kin' o' sad, an' roun' the hearth
Of empty places set me thinkin'.
Beaver roars hoarse with meltin' snows,
An' rattles di'mon's from his granite;
Time wuz, he snatched away my prose,
An' into psalms or satires ran it;
But he, nor all the rest thet once
Started my blood to country-dances,
Can't set me goin' more 'n a dunce
Thet ha'n't no use for dreams an' fancies.
Rat-tat-tat-tattle thru the street
I hear the drummers makin' riot,
An' I set thinkin' o' the feet
Thet follered once an' now are quiet,--
White feet ez snowdrops innercent,
Thet never knowed the paths o' Satan,
Whose comin' step ther' 's ears thet won't,
No, not lifelong, leave off awaitin'.
Why, ha'n't I held 'em on my knee?
Did n't I love to see 'em growin',
Three likely lads ez wal could be,
Handsome an' brave an' not tu knowin'?
I set an' look into the blaze
Whose natur', jes' like their'n, keeps climbin',
Ez long 'z it lives, in shinin' ways,
An' half despise myself for rhymin'.
Wut 's words to them whose faith an' truth
On War's red techstone rang true metal,
Who ventered life an' love an' youth
For the gret prize o' death in battle?
To him who, deadly hurt, agen
Flashed on afore the charge's thunder,
Tippin' with fire the bolt of men
Thet rived the Rebel line asunder?
'T a'n't right to hev the young go fust,
All throbbin' full o' gifts an' graces,
Leavin' life's paupers dry ez dust
To try an' make b'lieve fill their places:
Nothin' but tells us wut we miss,
Ther' 's gaps our lives can't never fay in,
An' thet world seems so fur from this
Lef' for us loafers to grow gray in!
My eyes cloud up for rain; my mouth
Will take to twitchin' roun' the corners;
I pity mothers, tu, down South,
For all they sot among the scorners:
I 'd sooner take my chance to stan'
At Jedgment where your meanest slave is,
Than at God's bar hol' up a han'
Ez drippin' red ez your'n, Jeff Davis!
Come, Peace! not like a mourner bowed
For honor lost an' dear ones wasted,
But proud, to meet a people proud,
With eyes thet tell o' triumph tasted!
Come, with han' grippin' on the hilt,
An' step thet proves ye Victory's daughter!
Longin' for you, our sperits wilt
Like shipwrecked men's on raf's for water!
Come, while our country feels the lift
Of a gret instinct shoutin' forwards,
An' knows thet freedom a'n't a gift
Thet tarries long in hans' o' cowards!
Come, sech ez mothers prayed for, when
They kissed their cross with lips thet quivered,
An' bring fair wages for brave men,
A nation saved, a race delivered!
"IF MASSA PUT GUNS INTO OUR HAN'S."
The record of any one American who has grown up in the nurture of
Abolitionism has but little value by itself considered; but as a
representative experience, capable of explaining all enthusiasms for
liberty which have created "fanatics" and martyrs in our time, let me
recall how I myself came to hate Slavery.
The training began while I was a babe unborn. A few months before I saw
the light, my father, mother, and sister were driven from their house in
New York by a furious mob. When they came cautiously back, their home
was quiet as a fortress the day after it has been blown up. The
front-parlor was full of paving-stones; the carpets were cut to pieces;
the pictures, the furniture, and the chandelier lay in one common
wreck; and the walls were covered with inscriptions of mingled insult
and glory. Over the mantel-piece had been charcoaled "Rascal"; over the
pier-table, "Abolitionist." We did not fare as badly as several others
who rejoiced in the spoiling of their goods. Mr. Tappan, in Rose Street,
saw a bonfire made of all he had in the world that could make a home or
ornament it.
Among the earliest stories which were told me in the nursery, I
recollect the martyrdom of Nat Turner,--how Lovejoy, by night, but in
light, was sent quite beyond the reach of human pelting,--and all the
things which Toussaint did, with no white man, but with the whitest
spirit of all, to help him. As to minor sufferers for the cause of
Freedom, I should know that we must have entertained Abolitionists at
our house largely, since even at this day I find it hard to rid myself
of an instinctive impression that the common way of testifying
disapprobation of a lecturer in a small country-town is to bombard him
with obsolete eggs, carried by the audience for that purpose. I saw many
at my father's table who had enjoyed the honors of that ovation.
I was four years old when I learned that my father combined the two
functions of preaching in a New England college town and ticket-agency
on the Underground Railroad. Four years old has a sort of literal
mindedness about it. Most little boys that I knew had an idea that
professors of religion and professors in college were the same, and that
a real Christian always had to wear black and speak Greek. So I could be
pardoned for going down cellar and watching behind old hogsheads by the
hour to see where the cars came in.
A year after that I casually saw my first passenger, but regretted not
also to have seen whether he came up by the coal-bin or the meat-safe.
His name was Isidore Smith; so, to protect him from Smith, my father,
being a conscientious man, baptized him into a liberty to say that his
name was John Peterson. I held the blue bowl which served for font. To
this day I feel a sort of semi-accountability for John Peterson. I have
asked after him every time I have crossed the Suspension Bridge since I
grew up. In holding that baptismal bowl I suppose I am, in a sense, his
godfather. Half a godfather is better than none, and in spite of my size
I was a very earnest one.
There are few godchildren for whom I should have had to renounce fewer
sins than for thee, brave John Peterson!
John Peterson had been baptized before. No sprinkling that, but an
immersion in hell! He had to strip to show it to us. All down his back
were welts in which my father might lay his finger; and one gash healed
with a scar into which I could put my small, boyish fist. The former
were made by the whip and branding-irons of a Virginia planter,--the
latter by the teeth of his bloodhounds. When I saw that black back, I
cried; and my father might have chosen the place to baptize in, even as
John Baptist did AEnon, "because there was much water there."
John stayed with us three or four weeks and then got moody. Nobody in
the town twitted him as a runaway. He was inexhaustibly strong in
health, and never tired of doing us service as gardener, porter,
errand-boy, and, on occasion, cook. In few places could his hard-won
freedom be less imperilled than with us. At last the secret of his
melancholy came out. He burst into tears, one morning, as he stood with
the fresh-polished boots at the door of my father's study, and sobbed,--
"Massa, I's got to go an' fetch dat yer gal 'n' little Pompey, 'r I's be
done dead afore de yeah's out!"
As always, a woman in the case!
Had it been his own case, I think I know my father well enough to
believe that he would have started directly South for "dat yer gal 'n'
little Pompey," though he had to face a frowning world. But being John's
counsellor, his _role_ was to counsel moderation, and his duty to put
before him the immense improbability of his ever making a second
passage of the Red Sea, if he now returned. If he were caught and
whipped to death, of what benefit could he be to his wife and child? Why
not stay North and buy them?
But the marital and the parental are also the automatic and the
immediate. Reason with love! As well with orange-boughs for bearing
orange-buds, or water upon its boiling-point! When John's earnestness
made my father realize that this is the truth, he gave John all the
available funds in the underground till, and started him off at six in
the morning. I was not awake when he went, and felt that my luck was
down on me. I never should see that hole where the black came up.
For six months the Care-Taker of Ravens had under His sole keeping a
brave head as black as theirs, and a heart like that of the pious negro,
who, in a Southern revival-hymn is thus referred to:--
"O! O!
Him hab face jus' like de crow,
But de Lor' gib him heart like snow."
(The most Southern slaves, who had never travelled and seen snow, found
greater reality in the image of "cotton wool," and used to sing the hymn
with that variation.) At the end of that time, contrary to our most
sanguine expectations, John Peterson appeared. Nor John Peterson alone,
for when he rang our door-bell he put into the arms of a nice-looking
mulatto woman of thirty a little youngster about two years old.
A new servant, with some trepidation, showed them up to "Massa's" study.
We had weeded John's dialect of that word before he went away, but he
had been six months since then in a servile atmosphere. He stood at the
open study-door. My father stopped shaving, and let the lather dry on
his face, as he shielded with his hand the eyes he in vain tried to
believe. Yes, veritably, John Peterson!
But John Peterson could not speak. He choked visibly; and then, pointing
to the two beside him, blurted out,--
"I's done did it, Massa!" and broke entirely down.
Again it was AEnon generally, and there was more baptizing done.
John had made a march somewhat like Sherman's. He had crossed the entire
States of Virginia and Maryland, carrying two non-combatants, and no
weapon of his own but a knife,--subsisting his army on the enemy all the
way,--using negro guides freely, but never sending them back to their
masters,--and terminating his brilliant campaign with an act of bold,
unconstitutional confiscation. He couldn't have found a Chief-Justice in
the world to uphold him in it at that time.
Hiding by day and walking by night, with his boy strapped to his back
and his wife by his side, he had come within thirty miles of the
Maryland line, when one night the full moon flashed its Judas lantern
full upon him, and, being in the high-road, he naturally enough "tuk a
scar'." Freedom only thirty miles off,--that vast territory behind him,
three times traversed for her dear sake and Love's,--a slave-owner's
stable close by,--a wife and a baby crouching in the thicket,--God above
saying, "The laborer is worthy of his hire." No Chief-Justice in the
world could have convinced that man.
With an inspired touch,--the _tactus eruditus_ of a bitter memory and a
glorious hope,--John felt for and found the best horse in the stable,
saddled him, led him out without awakening a soul, and, mounting, took
his wife before him with the baby in her arms. A pack of deerhounds came
snuffing about him as he rode off; but, for a wonder, they never howled.
"Oh, Massa!" said John, "when I see dat, I knowed we was safe anyhow.
Dat Lor' dat stop de moufs of dem dogs was jus' de same as Him dat shut
de moufs of de lions in Dannelindelinesden." (I write it as he
pronounced it. I think he thought it was a place in the Holy Land.)
"When I knowed dat was de same Lor', an' He come down dar to help me, I
rode along jus' as quiet as little Pompey dar, an' neber feared no
moon."
When he reached the Pennsylvania border he turned back the horse, and
proceeded on his way through a land where as yet there was no
Fugitive-Slave Law, and those who sought to obstruct the progress of the
negro-hunter were, as they ever have been, many.
* * * * *
After that I got by accident into a Northern school with Southern
_principals_.
AEsthetically it was a good school. We wore kid gloves when we went to
meeting, and sat in a gallery like a sort of steamer over the boiler, in
which deacons and other large good people were stewing, through long,
hot Sunday afternoons. If we went to sleep, or ate cloves not to go to
sleep, we were punched in the back with a real gold-headed cane. The
cane we felt proud of, because it had been presented by the boys, and it
was a perpetual compliment to us to see that cane go down the street
with our principal after it; but nothing could have exceeded our
mortification at being punched with it in full sight of the
girls'-school gallery opposite, we having our kid gloves on at the time,
and in some instances coats with tails, like men.
When I say "Southern" principals, I do not mean to indicate their
nativity; for I suppose no Southerner ever taught a Northerner anything
until Bull Run, when the lesson was, not to despise one's enemy, but to
beat him. Nor do I intend to call them pro-slavery men in the obnoxious
sense. Like many good men of the day, they depended largely on Southern
patronage, and opposed all discussion of what they called "political
differences." At that day, in most famous schools, "Liberty" used to be
cut out of a boy's composition, if it meant anything more than an
exhibition-day splurge with reference to the eagle and the banner in the
immediate context.
Among the large crowd of young Southerners sent to this school, I began
preaching emancipation in my pinafore. Mounted upon a window-seat in an
alcove of the great play-hall, I passed recess after recess in
haranguing a multitude upon the subject of Freedom, with as little
success as most apostles, and with only less than their crown of
martyrdom, because, though small boys are more malicious than men, they
cannot hit so hard.
On one occasion, brought to bay by a sophism, I answered unwisely, but
made a good friend. A little Southerner (as often since a large one)
turned on me fiercely and said,--
"Would you marry a nigger?"