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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924089403848 
 
CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 gtiie SJitjetiSibe ptt^^, CamitiBBe 
 
 MDCCCXCIX 
 
COPYHIGHT, 1S99, BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
NOTE 
 
 Most of the sketches included in this volume 
 have appeared at different times, and often un- 
 signed, either in the " Atlantic Monthly " or in 
 the New York " Nation," the rest having been 
 printed respectively in the " Century Magazine," 
 the " Chautauquan," and the "Independent," 
 in the " Correspondence " of Dr. T. W. Harris, 
 in Redpath's "Life of Captain John Brown," 
 and in "Eminent Women of the Age." They 
 are now brought together and reprinted, partly 
 from the natural instinct of preserving one's 
 own work, and partly because a group of such 
 personal delineations has some increase of value 
 when recognized as proceeding from one mind, 
 and thus expressing the same general point of 
 view. These papers have all received such 
 revision as was made necessary by the develop- 
 ment of new facts or by the reconsideration of 
 opinions ; the only exception to this being in the 
 case of one paper of a strictly narrative nature, 
 which it was thought best to leave untouched, 
 as the only mode of preserving the precise at- 
 mosphere of the thrilling period when it was 
 originally written. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMEKSON I 
 
 AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT 23 
 
 THEODORE PARKER 34 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 60 
 
 WALT WHITMAN 72 
 
 SIDNEY LANIER 85 
 
 AN EVENING WITH MRS. HAWTHORNE . . . 102 
 
 LYDIA MARIA CHILD I08 
 
 HELEN JACKSON (" H. H.") I42 
 
 JOHN HOLMES 168 
 
 THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS I92 
 
 A VISIT TO JOHN BROWN'S HOUSEHOLD IN 1859 . 219 
 
 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 244 
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS 257 
 
 CHARLES SUMNER 280 
 
 DR. HOWE'S ANTI-SLAVERY CAREER .... 294 
 
 ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT 302 
 
 THE ECCENTRICITIES OF REFORMERS . . . 329 
 
 THE ROAD TO ENGLAND 349 
 
 INDEX 37S 
 
CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Bos- 
 ton, Mass., May 25, 1803, being the son of the 
 Rev. William Emerson and Ruth (Haskins) 
 Emerson. The Rev. William Emerson was one 
 of the most eminent of the Boston clergy of 
 his day; and his father, also named William, 
 was the minister of Concord at the time of the 
 " Concord fight," and had on the Sunday pre- 
 vious preached from the text, "Resistance to 
 tyrants is obedience to God." On the mother's 
 side, as well as on the father's, Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson came not merely of unmixed New 
 England blood, but of an emphatically clerical 
 stock. He had had a minister among his an- 
 cestors in every generation for eight genera- 
 tions back, on the one side or the other. Like 
 his friend and teacher, William EUery Chan- 
 ning, he was reared under the especial and 
 controlling influence of strong women, for his 
 father died when he was but eight years old, so 
 
2 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 that his mother and his aunt, Miss Mary Emer- 
 son, were the guiding influences of his early 
 life. The Rev. Dr. Frothingham once wrote 
 of Mrs. Emerson, the elder : " Both her mind 
 and character were of a superior order, and 
 they set their stamp upon manners of peculiar 
 softness and natural grace and quiet dignity." 
 Mrs. Ripley wrote of Miss Mary Emerson, 
 "Her power over the minds of her young 
 friends was almost despotic ; " and her eminent 
 nephew said of her that her influence upon him 
 was as great as that of Greece or Rome. The 
 household atmosphere was one of " plain living 
 and high thinking," and Mr. Emerson used to 
 relate, according to Mr. Cooke, that he had 
 once gone without the second volume of a book 
 because his aunt had convinced him that his 
 mother could not afford to pay six cents for it 
 at the circulating library. He was fitted for 
 Harvard College at the public schools of Bos- 
 ton, and when he entered, at the age of four- 
 teen, in 1817, he became " President's fresh- 
 man," as the position was then called, doing 
 official errands for compensation. He was then 
 described as being "a slender, delicate youth, 
 younger than most of his classmates, and of a 
 sensitive, retiring nature." 
 
 All his college careef showed the conscien- 
 tiousness which was to control his life, and also 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 3 
 
 his strong literary tendency. In his junior year 
 he won a " Bowdoin prize " for an essay on 
 " The Character of Socrates," and again in his 
 senior year a second prize for a dissertation on 
 "The Present State of Ethical Philosophy," 
 these two being the only opportunities then 
 afforded by the college for such competition. 
 He also won a " Boylston prize " for declama- 
 tion, was Class Poet, and had a "part " at Com- 
 mencement in a conference on the character 
 of John Knox. Josiah Quincy, of Boston, a 
 member of the same class, remarked in his col- 
 lege diary, as quoted by himself in the " New 
 York Independent," that Emerson's disserta- 
 tion on ethics was " dull and dry." As he him- 
 self had won the first prize, his criticism could 
 have afforded, it would seem, to be generous ; 
 but as he also regarded Emerson's Class Day 
 poem as "rather poor," it is necessary to re- 
 member that there is no known criticism quite 
 so merciless as that of college boys on one 
 another. At any rate it was with these creden- 
 tials that Emerson went forth to the world in 
 1821 ; and as his destiny was to be literature, 
 we must pause for a moment to consider what 
 then was the condition of this nation in that 
 regard. 
 
 We must remember that it was only the po- 
 litical life of America which came into being 
 
4 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 in 1776 : its literary life was not yet born ; and 
 though Horace Walpole had written two years 
 earlier that there would one day be a Thucydi- 
 des in Boston and a Xenophon in New York, 
 nobody on this side of the Atlantic believed it, 
 or even stopped to think about it. The Gov- 
 ernment was born with such travail, and this 
 was prolonged for so many years, that the 
 thoughts of public men went little farther. 
 Fisher Ames wrote about 1807 an essay on 
 "American Literature" to prove that there 
 would never be any such thing. He said : — 
 
 " Except the authors of two able works on 
 our pohtics we have no authors. Shall we 
 match Joel Barlow against Homer or Hesiod ? 
 Can Thomas Paine contend against Plato .' " ^ 
 He then shows how in each department of liter- 
 ature America is probably foredoomed to fail, 
 and closes with the hopeful suggestion that, 
 when liberty shall yield to despotism, literature 
 and luxury may arrive together. 
 
 It is well known that John Adams, a few 
 years later, took a somewhat similar view of 
 affairs. He wrote in 1819 to a French artist 
 who wished to make a bust of him : — 
 
 " The age of sculpture and painting has not 
 yet arrived in this country, and I hope it will 
 not arrive very soon. I would not give six- 
 1 Works of Fisher Ames, pp. 460, 461. ' 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 5 
 
 pence for a picture of Raphael or a statue of 
 Phidias." 
 
 When we wonder at the political ability of 
 that day, we must remember that men concen- 
 trated absolutely everything upon it ; they could 
 not give even a thought to creating a cultivated 
 nation ; the thing that amazes us is that they 
 should have created a nation at all. 
 
 Two years after John Adams had made the 
 above remark about painting, and only four- 
 teen years after Fisher Ames had written thus 
 hopelessly of American literature, Emerson was 
 graduated at Harvard. It is to be noted of 
 him that he was the very first of that long line 
 of well-known authors who received their first 
 literary criticism from Professor Edward Tyrrel 
 Channing. Up to that time there had been no 
 such thing as a professional author in America, 
 except Brockden Brown, who died in 18 10. 
 Channing was a clergyman ; Bryant was a law- 
 yer ; Cooper was not yet known, his novel of 
 " Precaution " having been published anony- 
 mously ; Bancroft was still in Germany, and 
 Irving in England. The "North American 
 Review" had been six years established, but 
 still reached only a small circle. Sydney Smith 
 had lately written (in 1818) : "There does not 
 seem to be in America, at this moment, one 
 man of any considerable talents." Such was 
 
6 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 the condition of affairs when Emerson took his 
 diploma and went forth as Bachelor of Arts. 
 
 For five years after leaving college he was an 
 assistant teacher in a school for girls, taught by 
 his elder brother, William. In 1823 he began 
 to study for the ministry, the accumulated tra- 
 ditions of his ancestry being quite too strong 
 for him. He did not join the Harvard Divinity 
 School, then newly established, but he was duly 
 " appointed to preach " in 1 826. His health 
 was delicate, and he took a trip southward for 
 small parishes under temporary engagements. 
 He evidently felt at this time a premonition of 
 that longing for studious retirement to which 
 he afterward yielded ; for the graceful verses, 
 
 " Good-by, proud world, I 'm going home," 
 
 belong to this period of his life and not to the 
 later time. On March 11, 1829, he was or- 
 dained as colleague to the Rev. Henry Ware, 
 Jr., of the Second Unitarian Society in Boston. 
 Here he remained for three years, faithfully 
 discharging his professional duties, and indeed 
 construing them with a liberality beyond most 
 of his profession, inasmuch as he twice opened 
 his pulpit for anti-slavery addresses. The Rev. 
 Mr. Ware was absent in Europe during a large 
 part of Mr. Emerson's term of service, and re- 
 turned only to resign his post from ill-health, 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 7 
 
 saying to the people in regard to his young 
 colleague : " Providence presented to you at 
 once a man on whom your hearts could rest." 
 
 Emerson's preaching seems to have prefig- 
 ured his later lecturing in earnestness and sin- 
 cerity, and it had the same ideal aspect ; he 
 spoke of himself once as "killing the utility 
 swine" in a sermon on ethics. He had some 
 duties outside his own pulpit, was Chaplain of 
 the State Senate, and member of the City 
 School Committee. He seems to have liked 
 his work, but was compelled by his conscience 
 to preach a sermon (September g, 1832) against 
 the further observance of the so-called " Lord's 
 Supper." This sermon was not printed at the 
 time, but may be found in Frothingham's " His- 
 tory of Transcendentalism." It does not seem 
 very aggressive when tried beside the more 
 trenchant heresies of to-day, but it sufficed to 
 separate him from his parish. Yet it is evi- 
 dent that the separation was without bitterness, 
 inasmuch as he furnished for the ordination of 
 his successor, the Rev. Chandler Robbins, dur- 
 ing the next year, the fine hymn beginning — 
 
 " We love the venerable house 
 Our fathers built to God." 
 
 During this pastorate he was married (in 
 September, 1829) to Ellen Louise Tucker, to 
 whom he addressed the lines entitled "To 
 
8 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 Ellen at the South." She died of consumption 
 in February, 1832, and at the end of that year 
 he sailed for Europe, being gone nearly a year. 
 It was during this visit that he made the ac- 
 quaintance of Landor and Wordsworth, as de- 
 scribed in " English Traits," and he also went 
 to Craigenputtock to see Carlyle, who long 
 afterward described his visit (in conversation 
 with Longfellow), as being "like the visit of 
 an angel." Then began that friendship which 
 lasted for a lifetime, and which had such a hold 
 upon the high-minded Carlyle, that he scarcely 
 seemed a cynic when the name of Emerson 
 was uttered. 
 
 After his return to Boston Mr. Emerson 
 preached a few times — once in his old pulpit 
 — and declined a call from the large Unitarian 
 Society in New Bedford. He gave public lec- 
 tures on "Italy," on "Water," and on "The 
 Relation of Man to the Globe." In 1834 he 
 gave in Boston a series of biographical lectures 
 on Michael Angelo, Milton, Luther, George 
 Fox, and Edmund Burke, — a different pan- 
 theon, it will be observed, from his later " Re- 
 presentative Men." It is well remembered that 
 there was even at that time a charm in his man- 
 ner which arrested the attention of very young 
 people ; and from that time forward, for haK a 
 century, he was one of the leading lecturers of 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 9 
 
 America. He lectured in forty successive sea- 
 sons before a single " lyceum " — that of Salem, 
 Mass. His fine delivery unquestionably did a 
 great deal for the dissemination of his thought. 
 After once hearing him, that sonorous oratory 
 seemed to roll through every sentence that the 
 student read ; and his very peculiarities, — the 
 occasional pause accompanied with a deep gaze 
 of the eyes, or the apparent hesitation in the 
 selection of a word, always preparing the way, 
 like Charles Lamb's stammer, for some stroke 
 of mother - wit, — these identified themselves 
 with his personality, and secured his hold. He 
 always shrank from extemporaneous speech, 
 though sometimes most effective in its use ; he 
 wrote of himself once as " the worst known pub- 
 lic speaker, and growing continually worse ; " 
 but his most studied remarks had the effect of 
 off-hand conviction from the weight and beauty 
 of his elocution. 
 
 From the time, however, when he retired to 
 his father's birthplace. Concord (in 1834), and 
 published his first thin volume, entitled " Na- 
 ture," it became plain that it was through the 
 press that his chief work was to be done. It is 
 sometimes doubtful how far one who initiates 
 a fresh impulse, whether in literature or life, 
 does it with full and conscious purpose. There 
 can be no such doubt in the case of Emerson. 
 
10 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 From the beginning to the end of this first vol- 
 ume, the fact is clear that it was consciously 
 and deliberately a new departure. Those ninety 
 brief pages were an undisguised challenge to 
 the world. On the very first page the author 
 complains that our age is retrospective, — that 
 others have "beheld God and nature face to 
 face ; we only through their eyes. Why should 
 not we," he says, "also enjoy an original rela- 
 tion to the universe ? Why should not we have 
 a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of 
 tradition ? " Thus the book begins, and on the 
 very last page it ends, " Build, therefore, your 
 own world ! " 
 
 At any time, and under any conditions, the 
 first reading of such words by any young per- 
 son would be a great event in life, but in the 
 comparative conventionalism of the literature 
 of that period it had the effect of a revelation. 
 It was soon followed by other similar appeals. 
 On the very first page of the first number of 
 the "Dial" (July, 1840) the editors speak of 
 "the strong current of thought and feeling 
 which for a few years past has led many sin- 
 cere persons in New England to make new 
 demands on literature, and to repudiate that 
 rigor of our conventions of religion and educa- 
 tion which is turning us to stone." 
 
 Emerson's "Thoughts on Modern Litera- 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON ii 
 
 ture," contained in the second number of the 
 "Dial" (October, 1840), struck the keynote of 
 a wholly new demand. In this he has a frank 
 criticism of Goethe, whom he boldly arraigns 
 for not rising above the sphere of the conven- 
 tional, and for not giving us a new heaven and 
 a new earth. Goethe, he says, tamely takes 
 life as it is, " accepts the base doctrine of Fate, 
 and gleans what straggling joys may yet re- 
 main out of its ban." 
 
 "He was content to fall into the track of 
 vulgar poets, and spend on common aims his 
 splendid endowments, and has declined the 
 office proffered now and then to a man in many 
 centuries, in the power of his genius — of a 
 Redeemer of the human mind. . . . Let him 
 pass. Humanity must wait for its physician 
 still, at the side of the road, and confess as this 
 man goes out that they have served it better 
 who assured it out of the innocent hope in 
 their hearts that a Physician will come, than 
 this majestic Artist, with all the treasures of 
 wit, of science, and of power at Jiis command." 
 Again, Emerson says in the same paper : — 
 " He who doubts whether this age or this 
 country can yield any contribution to the litera- 
 ture of the world only betrays his blindness 
 tO: the necessities of the human soul. . . . 
 What shall hinder the Genius of the Time 
 
12 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 from speaking its thought ? It cannot be silent 
 if it would. It will write in a higher spirit, and 
 a wider knowledge, and with a grander practi- 
 cal aim, than ever yet guided the pen of poet ; 
 . . . and that which was ecstasy shall become 
 daily bread." 
 
 It was the direct result of words like these to 
 arouse what is the first great need in a new 
 literature — self-reliance. The impulse in this 
 direction, given during the so-called Transcen- 
 dental period was responsible for many of the 
 excesses of that time, but it was the only way 
 to make strong men and women. The " Dial " 
 itself revealed liberally some of the follies of 
 the movement it represented, but nothing can 
 ever deprive it of its significance as offering the 
 first distinctly American movement in litera- 
 ture. And while it is difficult, in this period of 
 perhaps temporary reaction against the ideal 
 school of thought, to fix Emerson's permanent 
 standing among thinkers, his influence as a 
 stimulus was quite unequaled during the era 
 when our original literature was taking form. 
 
 In 1835 Mr. Emerson was married for the 
 second time, his wife being Miss Lidian Jack- 
 son, daughter of Charles Jackson, of Plymouth, 
 and sister of Dr. Charles T. Jackson, well 
 known in connection with the discovery of 
 anaesthetics. He then went to reside in the 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 13 
 
 house which was thenceforth his home, and was 
 for many years, as Lord Clarendon said of the 
 house of Lord Falkland, " a college situated in 
 purer air" and "a university in less volume" 
 to the many strangers who came thither. In 
 this house his children were bom, and here his 
 devoted mother resided with him until she died. 
 From this time forth, too, he identified himself 
 with all the local affairs of Concord, writing a 
 hymn for the dedication of the Revolutionary 
 Monument, giving an historical address, and 
 recognized by all as the chief pride and orna- 
 ment of that little town — as sturdy and cour- 
 ageous in its individuality as any free city of 
 the later Middle Ages. 
 
 His books appeared in steady succession, the 
 material having been often, though not always, 
 used previously in lectures. The two volumes 
 of "Essays" appeared in 1841 and 1844, the 
 "Poems" in 1846, "Representative Men" in 
 1850, the "Life of Margaret Fuller Ossoli" 
 (of which he was part editor) in 1852, "English 
 Traits" in 1856, "The Conduct of Life" in 
 i860, "May-Day and Other Poems," with "So- 
 ciety and Solitude," in 1869. This list does 
 not include the various addresses and ora- 
 tions which were published in separate pam- 
 phlets, and remained uncollected in America 
 until 1849, though reprinted in a cheap form in 
 
14 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 England in 1844. Some of these special ad- 
 dresses attracted quite as much attention as 
 any of his books — this being especially true 
 of those entitled "The Method of Nature," 
 " Man Thinking," " Literary Ethics," and above 
 all, the "Address before the Senior Class at 
 Divinity College, Cambridge," delivered July 15, 
 1838. It would be difficult to exaggerate the 
 hold taken by these addresses upon the young 
 people who read them, or the extent to which 
 their pithy and heroic maxims became a part 
 of the very fibre of manhood to the genera- 
 tion then entering upon the stage of life. The 
 perfect personal dignity of the leader, his ele- 
 vation of thought, his freedom from all petty 
 antagonisms, his courage in all practical tests 
 enhanced this noble influence. Pure idealist as 
 he was, he went through the difficult ordeal 
 of the anti-slavery excitement without a stain, 
 and more than once endured the novel experi- 
 ence of hisses and interruptions with his philo- 
 sophic bearmg undisturbed, and seeming, in- 
 deed, to find only new material for thought in 
 this unwonted aspect of life. He also identi- 
 fied himself with certain other reforms : signed 
 the call for the first National Woman's Suffrage 
 Convention, in 1850, and was one of the speak- 
 ers at the first meeting of the Free Religious 
 Association, of which he was ever after a Vice- 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 15 
 
 President. It is needless to say that he was in 
 warm sympathy with the national cause during 
 the war for the Union ; and he was a Republi- 
 can in politics. 
 
 Mr. Emerson's fame extended far beyond his 
 native land ; and it is probable that no writer 
 of the English tongue had more influence in 
 England, thirty years ago, before the all- 
 absorbing interest of the new theories of evo- 
 lution threw all the so - called transcendental 
 philosophy into temporary shade. When we 
 consider, for instance, his marked influence on 
 three men so utterly unlike one another as 
 Carlyle, Tyndall, and Matthew Arnold, the 
 truth of this remark can hardly be disputed. 
 On the continent his most ardent admirers and 
 commentators were Edgar Quinet in France, 
 and Herman Grimm in Germany. 
 
 It will be remembered by many that during 
 Kossuth's very remarkable tour in this country 
 
 — when he adapted himself to the local tradi- 
 tions and records of every village as if he had 
 just been editing for pubhcation its local annals 
 
 — he had the tact to identify Emerson, in his 
 fine way, with Concord, and said in his speech 
 there, turning to him, " You, sir, are a philoso- 
 pher. Lend me, I pray you, the aid of your 
 philosophical analysis," etc., etc. He addressed 
 him, in short, as if he had been Kant or Hegel. 
 
i6 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 But in reality nothing could be remoter from 
 Emerson than such a philosophic type as this. He 
 was only a philosopher in the vaguer ancient 
 sense ; his mission was to sit, like Socrates, 
 beneath the plane-trees, and offer profound and 
 beautiful aphorisms, without even the vague 
 thread of the Socratic method to tie them to- 
 gether. Once, and once only, in his life, he 
 seemed to be approaching the attitude of sys- 
 tematic statement — this being in his course of 
 lectures on "The Natural Method of Intellec- 
 tual Philosophy," given in 1868 or thereabouts ; 
 the fundamental proposition of these lectures 
 being that "every law of nature is a law of 
 mind," and all material laws are symbolical 
 statements. These few lectures certainly in- 
 spired his admirers with the belief that their 
 great poetic seer might commend himself to the 
 systematizers also. But for some reason, even 
 these lectures were not published till after 
 Emerson's death, and his latest books had the 
 same detached and fragmentary character as 
 his earliest. He remained still among the poets, 
 not among the philosophic doctors, and must be 
 permanently classified in that manner. 
 
 Yet it may be fearlessly said that, within the 
 limits of a single sentence, no man who ever 
 wrote the English tongue has put more mean- 
 ing into words than Emerson. In his hands, to 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 7 
 
 adopt Ben Jonson's phrase, words " are rammed 
 with thought." No one has reverenced the 
 divine art of speech more than Emerson, or 
 practiced it more nobly. "The Greeks," he 
 once said in an unpubHshed lecture, " antici- 
 pated by their very language what the best 
 orator could say ; " and neither Greek precision 
 nor Roman vigor could produce a phrase that 
 Emerson could not match. Who stands in all 
 literature as the master of condensation if not 
 Tacitus ? Yet Emerson, in his speech at the 
 anti-Kansas meeting in Cambridge, quoted that 
 celebrated remark by Tacitus when mentioning 
 that the effigies of Brutus and Cassius were not 
 carried at a certain state funeral ; and in trans- 
 lating it, bettered the original. The indignant 
 phrase of Tacitus is, " Prasfulgebant . . . eo 
 ipso quod . . . non visebantur," thus giving 
 a grand moral lesson in six words ; but Emer- 
 son gives it in five, and translates it, even 
 more powerfully : " They glared through their 
 absences." Look through all Emerson's writ- 
 ings, and then consider whether in all literature 
 you can find a man who has better fulfilled that 
 aspiration stated in such condensed words by 
 Joubert, " to put a whole book into a page, a 
 whole page into a phrase, and that phrase into a 
 word." After all, it is phrases and words won 
 like this which give immortality. And if you 
 
i8 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 say that, nevertheless, this is nothing, so long 
 as an author has not given us a system of the 
 universe, it can only be said that Emerson never 
 desired to do this, but left on record the opinion 
 that " it is too young by some ages yet to form 
 a creed." The system-makers have their place, 
 no doubt; but when we consider how many 
 of them have risen and fallen since Emerson 
 began to write, — Coleridge, Schelling, Cousin, 
 Comte, Mill, down to the Hegel of yesterday 
 and the Spencer of to-day, — it is really evi- 
 dent that the absence of a system cannot prove 
 much more short-lived than the possession of 
 that commodity. 
 
 It must be left for future generations to de- 
 termine Emerson's precise position even as a 
 poet. There is seen in him the tantalizing com- 
 bination of the profoundest thoughts with the 
 greatest possible variation in artistic work, — 
 sometimes mere boldness and almost wayward- 
 ness, while at other times he achieves the most 
 exquisite melody touched with a certain wild 
 grace. He has been likened to an seolian harp, 
 which now gives and then perversely withholds 
 its music. Nothing can exceed the perfection 
 of the lines — 
 
 " Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, 
 Nor dip thy paddle in the lake, 
 But it carves the bow of beauty there, 
 
 And the ripples in rhyme the oar forsake." 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 19 
 
 Yet within the compass of this same fine poem 
 (" Wood - Notes ") there are passages which 
 elicited from Theodore Parker, one of the poet's 
 most ardent admirers, the opinion that a pine- 
 tree which should talk as Mr. Emerson's tree 
 talks would deserve to be plucked up and cast 
 into the sea. His poetic reputation was dis- 
 tinctly later in time than his fame as an essayist 
 and lecturer ; and Horace Greeley was one of 
 the first, if not the first, to claim for him a rank 
 at the very head of our American bards. Like 
 Wordsworth and Tennyson, he educated the 
 public mind to himself. The same verses which 
 were received with shouts of laughter when they 
 first appeared in the " Dial " were treated with re- 
 spectful attention when collected into a volume, 
 and it was ultimately discovered that they were 
 among the classic poems of aU literature. In 
 part this was due to the fact that Emerson actu- 
 ally did what Margaret Fuller had reproached 
 Longfellow for not doing, — he took his allusions 
 and his poetic material from the woods and 
 waters around him, and wrote fearlessly even of 
 the humble-bee. This was called by some critics 
 "a foolish affectation of the familiar," but it 
 was recognized by degrees as true art. There 
 was thus a gradual change in the public mind, 
 and it turned out that in the poems of Emerson, 
 not less than in his prose, the birth of a litera- 
 
20 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 It must, on the other hand, be remembered, 
 in justice to the public mind, that Emerson dis- 
 armed his critics by some revision of his poems, 
 so that they appeared, and actually were, less 
 crude and whimsical when transplanted into the 
 volume. In the very case just mentioned, the 
 original opening, 
 
 " Fine humble-bee I fine humble-bee I " 
 
 had a flavor of affectation, whereas the substi- 
 tuted line, 
 
 " Burly, dozing humble-bee," 
 
 added two very effective adjectives to the origi- 
 nal description. Again, in the pretty verses 
 about the maiden and the acorn, the lines as 
 originally published stood thus : — 
 
 " Pluck it now I In vain — thou canst not I 
 It has shot its rootlets down'rd. 
 Toy no longer, it has duties ; 
 It is anchored in the ground." 
 
 There probably is not a rougher rhyme in Eng- 
 lish verse than that between "down'rd" and 
 " ground ; " but, after revision, this softer line 
 was substituted, 
 
 " Its roots have pierced yon shady mound," 
 
 which, if less vigorous, at least propitiates the 
 ear. It is evident from Emerson's criticisms 
 in the " Dial " — as that on Ellery Channing's 
 poems — that he had a horror of what he calls 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 21 
 
 " French correctness," and could more easily 
 pardon what was rough than what was tame. 
 When it came to passing judgment on the de- 
 tails of poetry, he was sometimes a whimsical 
 critic; his personal favorites were apt to be 
 swans. He undoubtedly felt some recoil from 
 his first ardent praise of Whitman, for instance, 
 and at any rate was wont to protest against his 
 " priapism," as he tersely called it. On the other 
 hand, there were whole classes of writers whom 
 he scarcely recognized at all. This was true of 
 Shelley, for example, about whom he wrote: 
 " Though uniformly a poetic mind, he is never 
 a poet." His estimate of prose authors seemed 
 more definite and trustworthy than in the case 
 of verse, yet he probably never quite appreciated 
 Hawthorne, and certainly discouraged young 
 people from reading his books. 
 
 " Of all writers," says Sir Philip Sidney, " the 
 poet is the least liar;" and we might almost 
 say that of all poets Emerson is the most direct 
 and unfaltering in his search for truth. To this 
 must be added, as his highest gift, a nature so 
 noble and so calm that he was never misled for 
 one instant by temper, by antagonism, by con- 
 troversy. The spirit in which he received and 
 disarmed the criticisms of his colleague, Henry 
 Ware, on the publication of his Divinity Hall 
 address, was the spirit of his whole life ; it was 
 
22 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 "first pure, then peaceable." The final verdict 
 of posterity upon him must be essentially that 
 epitaph which he himself placed upon the grave 
 of the friend and brother-poet who but just pre- 
 ceded him. On his return from Mr. Longfel- 
 low's funeral he said to a friend, — with that 
 vague oblivion of names which alone beclouded 
 his closing years, — " That gentleman whose 
 funeral we have been attending was a sweet and 
 beautiful soul, but I forget his name." These 
 high words of praise might fitly be applied to the 
 speaker himself ; but his name shows no signs 
 of being forgotten. He died at Concord, Mass., 
 April 27, 1882. 
 
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT 
 
 Amos Bronson Alcott was born at Wol- 
 cott, Conn., November 29, 1799, and died at 
 Boston, Mass., March 4, 1888. 
 
 It is often noticed, when the tie between two 
 lifelong associates is broken by the death of 
 one of them, that the other shows the effect of 
 the shock from that moment, as if left only 
 half alive — nee superstes integer. So close 
 was the intercourse, for many years, between 
 Mr. Alcott and Mr. Emerson — so perfect their 
 mutual love and reverence — so constant their 
 cooperation in the kind of work they did and 
 the influence they exerted — that it was diffi- 
 cult to conceive of Mr. Alcott as living long 
 alone; and it seemed eminently appropriate 
 that part of the remaining interval of his life 
 should be employed in delineating his friend's 
 traits. They were singularly different in tem- 
 perament, and yet singularly united. They 
 were alike in simplicity and integrity of nature, 
 as well as in their chosen place of residence 
 and in the elevated influence they exercised. 
 In all other respects they were unlike. Mr. 
 
24 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 Alcott was conspicuously an instance of what 
 may be called the self - made man in litera- 
 ture. Without early advantages, and with no 
 family traditions of culture, he took his place 
 among the most refined though not among the 
 most powerful exponents of the ideal atti- 
 tude ; whereas Mr. Emerson came of what Dr. 
 Holmes called Brahmin blood, had behind him 
 a line of educated clergymen, and had received 
 the best that could be given in the way of 
 training by the New England of his youth. 
 Their temperaments were in many ways differ- 
 ent : Emerson was shy and reserved, Alcott 
 was effusive and cordial ; Emerson repressed 
 personal adulation, Alcott expanded under it ; 
 Emerson found in literature his natural func- 
 tion, Alcott came to it with such difficulty that 
 Lowell wrote of him, 
 
 " In this, as in all things, a lamb among men. 
 He goes to sure death when he goes to his pen." 
 
 Emerson's style was enriched by varied know- 
 ledge, his use of which made one always wish 
 for more. Alcott's reading lay only in one or 
 two directions, and his use of it was sometimes 
 fatiguing. Emerson's most serious poems were 
 prolonged lyrics ; Alcott could put no lyric line 
 into his grave and sometimes weighty sonnets. 
 Emerson was thrifty, and a good steward of 
 his own affairs ; Alcott always seemed in a 
 
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT 25 
 
 stately way penniless, until the successful career 
 of his daughter gave him ampler means. Emer- 
 son gave lectures with an air of such gracious 
 humility that every hearer seemed to do part 
 of the thinking ; Alcott called his lectures 
 " conversations," and then was made obviously 
 unhappy if his monologue was seriously dis- 
 turbed by any one else. Emerson's most star- 
 tling early paradoxes were given with such dig- 
 nity that those hearers most hilariously dis- 
 posed were subdued to gravity ; Alcott' s most 
 thoughtful sentences, at the same period, some- 
 times came with such a flavor of needless whim- 
 sicality as to make even the faithful smile. 
 
 Yet there was between them a tie as incapa- 
 ble of severance as that which united the Siam- 
 ese twins. Mr. Emerson found in the once 
 famous Chardon-Street and Bible Conventions 
 no result so interesting as the "gradual but 
 sure ascendency " of Mr. Alcott's spirit — "in 
 spite," wrote this plain-spoken friend, " of the 
 incredulity and derision with which he is at 
 first received, and in spite, we might add, of his 
 own failures." Mr. Alcott, as has been said, 
 devoted his last years to the delineation of 
 Emerson as the greatest of men. Yet so sin- 
 cere was this mutual admiration, so noble this 
 love, that it is impossible to speak of it with 
 anvtbintr but reverence : and the far wider 
 
26 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 fame and influence of Emerson made it for 
 Alcott, during his whole life, an immense advan- 
 tage to have the unfailing support of a friend 
 so eminent. 
 
 For it must be remembered that during many 
 years the public was scarcely in the habit of 
 taking Mr. Alcott seriously. It received him, 
 as Emerson said, "with incredulity and deri- 
 sion." His antecedents seemed a little ques- 
 tionable, to begin with. Born in a country vil- 
 lage in Connecticut, and occupied for many 
 years in the humble vocation of a traveling 
 salesman in Virginia, — not to say peddler, — 
 he came, in 1828, before the somewhat narrow 
 intellectual circles of Boston in a wholly differ- 
 ent light from Emerson, who had every advan- 
 tage of local prestige. Alcott's school, which 
 became celebrated through the " Record of a 
 School," by his friend and assistant. Miss Eliz- 
 abeth P. Peabody (Boston, 1835 > 2d ed., 1836), 
 was generally regarded as coming near the 
 edge of absurdity, because of the rather obtru- 
 sive reverence paid in it to the offhand re- 
 marks of children six years old, and because 
 of the singular theory of vicarious punishment 
 which sometimes led to the giving of physical 
 pain to teacher instead of pupil. Yet this 
 school undoubtedly anticipated in some respects 
 the views of teaching now recognized ; it won 
 
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT 27 
 
 the warm approval of James Pierrepont Greaves, 
 the pupil and English interpreter of Pestalozzi ; 
 and it led to the establishment of an " Alcott 
 House School " at Ham (Surrey), in England, 
 by Henry G. Wright, afterward Mr. Alcott's 
 colaborer in another direction. Mr. Alcott him- 
 self visited this school in 1842, and was lionized 
 to his heart's content — which is saying a good 
 deal — among English reformers. Some ac- 
 count of this visit and of the English enter- 
 prise will be found in a paper by Mr. Emerson 
 in the " Dial " for October, 1842. Mr. Alcott's 
 first conspicuous social movement was in the 
 very vague direction of the Fruitlands Com- 
 munity, at Harvard, Mass., a scheme which 
 was as much wilder than Brook Farm as Brook 
 Farm was than Stewart's dry-goods shop, and 
 which was amusingly delineated by Miss Louisa 
 Alcott in one of her minor sketches. His first 
 intellectual demonstrations were in the " Orphic 
 Sayings" of the "Dial," which were regarded 
 at the time as the reductio ad absurdum of 
 those daring pages. How were people to take 
 a man seriously who wrote, " The popular gene- 
 sis is historical," and "Love globes, wisdom 
 orbs everything " .? These sentences now seem 
 quite harmless, though perhaps a little enig- 
 matical; but they were then held to be the 
 
 ■arnrai- eViiVi Villi f>f1i nf tTnnt nPTV lni<rbftar. Tran- 
 
28 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 scendentalism ; and they represented the most 
 unpopular aspect of the " Dial," while the more 
 plain-spoken essays of Theodore Parker were 
 what sold the numbers, so far as they ever did 
 sell. Then, what Mr. Alcott called conversa- 
 tions, in his earlier days, were such startling 
 improvisations, so full of seemingly studied 
 whim and utter paradox, that those who went 
 to learn remained to smile. There was plenty 
 of thought in them, and much out-of-the-way 
 literary knowledge ; but, after all, the theories 
 of race, food, genesis, and what not, left but 
 little impression on the public mind. It awak- 
 ened some surprise when the first volume of 
 "Appletons' Cyclopaedia" (in 1857) contained a 
 sketch of Alcott, written by Emerson. Thence- 
 forward Alcott's claim to recognition stood on a 
 basis a little firmer ; but he had up to this time 
 paid the price which a hopelessly ideal temper- 
 ament must pay before it has established its 
 right to live. 
 
 It was fortunate for Mr. Alcott that with this 
 ideal tendency he combined in a high degree 
 the qualities of moral and physical courage 
 which have in all ages been held essential to 
 the true sage. This was hardly tested in the 
 milder and safer reforms, in which he took a 
 certain enjoyment, partly founded on the promi- 
 nence they gave him. He was unquestionably 
 
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT 29 
 
 one of those who like to sit upon a platform, to 
 be pointed out, digito monstrari, and he may- 
 have liked to feel that his venerable aspect had 
 the effect of a benediction. But he was equally 
 true to the anti-slavery movement, when that 
 meant the sacrifice of friends, the diminution 
 of his always scanty finances, and even the 
 physical danger involved in mobs. Once at 
 least, in a notable instance, he proved himself 
 ■personally brave when many others seemed 
 cowards, this being on the night of the at- 
 tempted rescue of the fugitive Anthony Bums, 
 in Boston (May 26, 1854).^ 
 
 It is probably true that in the later years of 
 his life Mr. Alcott felt some reaction from the 
 theological radicalism which at one time marked 
 him, and which made him in this direction a 
 source of influence over others. At the first 
 annual meeting of the Free Religious Asso- 
 ciation in 1868, he affirmed his belief of the 
 simple humanity of Jesus Christ, and of the 
 essential identity of all forms of the religious 
 sentiment. He said of this position : — 
 
 " So fine, so sublime a religion as ours, older 
 than Christ, old as the Godhead, old as the 
 soul, eternal as the heavens, solid as the rock, 
 is and only is ; nothing else is but that, and it 
 
 1 For the details of Mr. Alcott's demeanor during this 
 
 ...T..1 Tr.. 
 
30 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 is in us and is us ; and nothing is our real 
 selves but that in the breast." 
 
 So identified was he with the whole spirit of 
 that meeting as to say of it, " I have seen 
 many charmed days, and shared sublime hopes ; 
 but this, of all days I have yet seen, is the 
 most sublime." But during the later years of 
 his life, though he shared in the very last meet- 
 ing of this same Association, he seemed to re- 
 vert more towards the historical Christianity 
 in which his childhood was reared, taking an 
 active part in various " symposia " held by Mr. 
 Joseph Cook, at which the veteran free-thinker 
 was received with many blandishments, and was 
 introduced without compunction to strangers as 
 "Mr. Alcott, the American Plato." 
 
 Mr. Alcott's published volumes were as fol- 
 lows : " Conversations with Children on the 
 Gospels, conducted and edited by A, B. Al- 
 cott," 2 vols. (Boston : Munroe, 1836-37) ; 
 "Spiritual Culture, or Thoughts for the Con- 
 sideration of Parents and Teachers " (Boston : 
 Dowe, 1 84 1 [this was anonymous, but was at- 
 tributed to Mr. Alcott by Charles Lane in 
 "Dial" iii. 417]); "Tablets" (Boston: Rob- 
 erts, 1868); "Concord Days" (Boston: Rob- 
 erts, 1872) ; " Sonnets and Canzonets" (Boston : 
 Roberts, 1882). To these must be added a 
 preliminary sketch of Emerson, printed but not 
 
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT 31 
 
 published, and also many contributions to the 
 "Dial" (1840-44), the "Radical," and other 
 magazines. In the " Atlantic Monthly," (ix. 
 443) he wrote one of the best sketches yet 
 made of Thoreau, under the title "The For- 
 ester." But he was less disposed to pride him- 
 self upon his books than upon his chosen mode 
 of influence, conversation ; and it was through 
 this, rather than by anything placed in the per- 
 manent record of print, that his influence was 
 exerted. He wrote in the "Dial," in 1842, 
 " We must come to the simplest intercourse — 
 to Conversation and the Epistle. These are 
 most potent agencies — the reformers of the 
 world" (ii. 431). And he might well feel it a 
 tribute to his real power in this chosen form of 
 propagandism, that, after his audiences in the 
 Eastern States had grown less numerous and 
 less attentive, he should have found a wide cir- 
 cle scattered through different Western cities, 
 where parlors and pulpits were opened to him 
 for an annual tour of conversation and discourse, 
 sending him back each year happy, refreshed, 
 and — wonder of all wonders — with money in 
 his purse. 
 
 Mr. Alcott contributed even less than Emer- 
 son to anything that can be called systematic 
 thought ; he was indeed by nature more remote 
 
 f-lipn Trmpronn frnm anvf-V>incr tn hp rallpH n <!vs- 
 
32 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 tem. Yet the good that he did was not merely 
 fragmentary and sporadic ; it might rather be 
 called, using one of his own high-sounding ad- 
 jectives, atmospheric ; it lay in the atmosphere 
 of the man, his benign face, his pure life, his 
 only too willing acceptance of everything that 
 looked like original thought in others. More 
 than all, it lay in the persistent moral activity 
 that could outlive what Emerson called his 
 " failure," could outgrow the censure of his 
 critics, outgrow even his earlier self. In some 
 respects he always remained the same, even 
 to his weaknesses ; there was always a cer- 
 tain air of high-souled attitudinizing ; he still 
 seemed to be in a manner " an innocent charla- 
 tan." Even his latest achievement, the " Con- 
 cord Summer School of Philosophy," had al- 
 ways an indefinable air of posing for something 
 that it was not. It undoubtedly fulfilled Mr. 
 Alcott's most delicious visions to find himself 
 the centre of an admiring group of young dis- 
 ciples, having the Assabet River for an Ilissus 
 and the Concord elms for the historic plane- 
 trees ; but, after all, the institution, like its 
 name, was a little incongruous ; there was 
 plenty of summer, something of philosophy, 
 and very little school. Probably most of those 
 who were assembled came simply with a desire 
 to place themselves in contact with Mr. Alcott ; 
 
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT 33 
 
 and this was the highest compliment they could 
 pay him. They instinctively felt, as all may 
 well feel, that the essential fidelity of the man 
 to great abstract principles made him a living 
 exponent, not merely of the temporary school 
 of Transcendentalism, but of the whole ideal 
 attitude. Now that he has passed away, all his 
 little vanities, if he had them, — all his oracular 
 way of peering into the dark and winning but 
 little out of it, — these defects, if they were 
 defects, disappear in the sweetness and dignity 
 of a life so prolonged and so honorable. There 
 lives no man who ever found in Mr. Alcott an 
 enemy ; there exists no man who ever went to 
 him for counsel and found him unsympathetic 
 or impatient ; while there are many men who, 
 at the forming period of their intellectual ex- 
 istence, have derived from him a lifelong im- 
 petus towards noble aims. 
 
THEODORE PARKER 
 
 " Sir LauQcelot ! ther thou lyest ; thou were never matched of none 
 earthly knights hands ; thou were the truest freende to thy lover that ever 
 bestrood horse; and thou were the kindest man that ever strooke with 
 sword ; and thou were the sternest knight to thy mortall foe that ever put 
 spere in the rest.*' 
 
 La Morie cf Arthur. 
 
 In the year 1828 there was a young man of 
 eighteen at work upon a farm in Lexington, 
 Massachusetts, performing bodily labor to the 
 extent of twenty hours in a day sometimes, and 
 that for several days together, and at other 
 times studying intensely when outdoor work 
 was less pressing. Thirty years after, that 
 same man sat in the richest private library 
 in Boston, working habitually from twelve to 
 seventeen hours a day in severer toil. The 
 interval was crowded with labors, with acqui- 
 sitions, with reproaches, with victories, with 
 honors ; and he who experienced all this died 
 exhausted at the end of it, less than fifty years 
 old, but looking seventy. That man was Theo- 
 dore Parker, who was bom at Lexington, August 
 24, 1 8 10, and died at Florence, Italy, May 10, 
 i860. 
 
 Theodore Parker was so strong and self- 
 
THEODORE PARKER 35 
 
 sufficing upon his own ground, he needed so 
 little from any other person, whUe giving so 
 freely to all, that one would hardly venture to 
 add anything to the autobiographies he has left, 
 but for the high example he set of fearlessness 
 in dealing with the dead. There may be some 
 whose fame is so ill-established, that one shrinks 
 from speaking of them precisely as one saw 
 them ; but this man's place is secure, and that 
 friend best praises him who paints him just as 
 he seemed. To depict him as he actually was 
 must be the work of many men, and no single 
 narrator, however intimate, need attempt it. 
 
 The first thing that struck an observer, in lis- 
 tening to the words of public and private feeling 
 elicited by his departure, was the predominance 
 in them all of the sentiment of love. His ser- 
 vices, his speculations, his contests, his copious 
 eloquence, his many languages, — these came 
 in as secondary things, but the predominant 
 testimony was emotional. Men mourned the 
 friend even more than the warrior. As he sat 
 in his library, in Boston, he was not only the 
 awakener of a thousand intellects, but the centre 
 of a thousand hearts ; he furnished the natural 
 home for every foreign refugee, every hunted 
 slave, every stray thinker, every vexed and sor- 
 rowing woman. Never was there one of these 
 who went away uncomforted, and from every 
 
36 CONTEMi'OKAK.IJiS 
 
 part of this broad nation their scattered hands 
 have flung roses upon his grave. 
 
 This immense debt of gratitude was not 
 bought by any mere isolated acts of virtue, but 
 by the habit of a life. In the midst of his great- 
 est cares there never was a moment when he 
 was not all too generous of his time, his wisdom, 
 and his money. Borne down by the accumula- 
 tion of labors, — grudging, as a student grudges, 
 the precious hour that once lost can never be 
 won back, — he yet was always holding himself 
 at the call of some poor criminal at the Police 
 Office, or some fugitive from Southern bond- 
 age, or some sick girl in a suburban town, not 
 of his recognized parish, perhaps, but longing 
 for the ministry of the only preacher who had 
 touched her soul. Not a mere wholesale re- 
 former, he wore out his life by retailing its great 
 influences to the poorest comer. Not generous 
 in money only, — though the readiness of his 
 beneficence in that direction had few equals, — 
 he always hastened past that minor bestowal to 
 ask if there were not some other added gift 
 possible, some personal service or correspond- 
 ence, some life-blood, in short, to be lavished in 
 some other form, to eke out the already liberal 
 donation of dollars. 
 
 There is an impression that he was unforgiv- 
 ing. Unforgetting he certainly was ; for he 
 
THEODORE PARKER 37 
 
 had no power of forgetfulness, whether for good 
 or evil. He had none of that convenient 
 oblivion which in softer natures covers sin and 
 saintliness with one common, careless pall. So 
 long as a man persisted in a wrong attitude be- 
 fore God or man, there was no day so laborious 
 or exhausting, no night so long or drowsy, but 
 Theodore Parker's unsleeping memory stood on 
 guard full-armed, ready to do battle at a mo- 
 ment's warning. This is generally known ; but 
 what may not be known so widely is that, the 
 moment the adversary lowered his spear, were 
 it for only an inch or an instant, that moment 
 Theodore Parker's weapons were down and his 
 arms open. Make but the slightest concession, 
 give him but the least excuse to love you, and 
 never was there seen such promptness in par- 
 doning. His friends found it sometimes harder 
 to justify his mildness than his severity. I con- 
 fess that I, with others, have often felt inclined 
 to criticise a certain caustic tone of his, in pri- 
 vate talk, when the name of an offender was 
 alluded to ; but I have also felt almost indignant 
 at his lenient good-nature to that very person, 
 let him once show the smallest symptom of 
 contrition, or seek, even in the clumsiest way, 
 or for the most selfish purpose, to disarm his 
 generous antagonist. His forgiveness in such 
 cases was more exuberant than his wrath had 
 
38 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 It is inevitable, in describing him, to charac- 
 terize his life first by its quantity. He belonged 
 to the true race of the giants of learning ; he 
 took in knowledge at every pore, and his desires 
 were insatiable. Not, perhaps, precocious in 
 boyhood, — for it is not precocity to begin Latin 
 at ten and Greek at eleven, to enter the Fresh- 
 man class at twenty and the professional school 
 at twenty-three, — he was equaled by few stu- 
 dents in the tremendous rates at which he pur- 
 sued every study, when once begun. With 
 strong body and great constitutional industry, 
 always acquiring and never forgetting, he was 
 doubtless at the time of his death the most va- 
 riously learned of living Americans, as well as 
 one of the most prolific of orators and writers. 
 
 Why did Theodore Parker die ? He died pre- 
 maturely worn out through this enormous activ- 
 ity, — a warning, as well as an example. To 
 all appeals for moderation, during the latter 
 years of his life, he had but one answer, — that 
 he had six generations of long-lived farmers be- 
 hind him, and had their strength to draw upon. 
 All his physical habits, except in this respect, 
 were unexceptionable: he was abstemious in 
 diet, but not ascetic, kept no unwholesome 
 hours, tried no dangerous experiments, commit- 
 ted no excesses. But there is no man who can 
 habitually study from twelve to seventeen hours 
 
THEODORE PARKER 39 
 
 a day — his friend James Freeman Clarke con- 
 tracts it to " from six to twelve," but I have 
 Mr. Parker's ovm statement of the fact — with- 
 out ultimate self-destruction. Nor was this the 
 practice during his period of health alone, but it 
 was pushed to the last moment. He continued 
 in the pulpit long after a withdrawal was per- 
 emptorily prescribed for him ; and when forbid- 
 den to leave home for lecturing, during the win- 
 ter of 1858, he straightway prepared the most 
 laborious literary works of his life, for delivery 
 as lectures in the Fraternity Course at Boston. 
 He worked thus, not from ambition, nor alto- 
 gether from principle, but from an immense 
 craving for mental labor, which had become 
 second nature to him. His great, omnivorous, 
 hungry intellect must have constant food, — new 
 languages, new statistics, new historical investi- 
 gations, new scientific discoveries, new systems 
 of scriptural exegesis. He did not for a day in 
 the year nor an hour in the day make rest a 
 matter of principle, nor did he ever indulge in 
 it as a pleasure, for he knew no enio)mient so 
 great as labor. Wordsworth's "wise passive- 
 ness " was utterly foreign to his nature. Had 
 he been a mere student, this had been less de- 
 structive. But to take the standard of study of 
 a German professor, and superadd to that the 
 senarate exhaustions of a Sundav nreacher. a 
 
40 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 lyceum lecturer, a radical leader, and a practical 
 philanthropist, was simply to apply half a dozen 
 distinct suicides to the abbreviation of a single 
 life. And as his younger companions had long 
 assured him, the tendency of his career was 
 not only to kill himself, but them ; for each 
 assumed that he must at least attempt what 
 Theodore Parker accomplished. 
 
 It is very certain that his career was much 
 shortened by these enormous labors, and it is 
 not certain that its value was increased in a 
 sufficient ratio to compensate for that evil. He 
 justified his incessant winter lecturing by the 
 fact that the whole country was his parish, 
 though this was not an adequate excuse. But 
 what right had he to deprive himself even of the 
 accustomed summer respite of ordinary preach- 
 ers, and waste the golden July hours in studying 
 Sclavonic dialects .■' No doubt his work in the 
 world was greatly aided both by the fact and 
 the fame of learning, and, as he himself some- 
 what disdainfully said, the knowledge of Greek 
 and Hebrew was " a convenience " in theologi- 
 cal discussions ; but, after all, his popular power 
 did not mainly depend on his mastery of twenty 
 languages, but of one. Theodore Parker's learn- 
 ing was undoubtedly a valuable possession to 
 the community, but it was not worth the price 
 of Theodore Parker's life. 
 
THEODORE PARKER 41 
 
 " Strive constantly to concentrate yourself," 
 said the laborious Goethe; "never dissipate 
 your powers ; incessant activity, of whatever 
 kind, leads finally to bankruptcy." But Theo- 
 dore Parker's whole endeavor was to multiply 
 his channels, and he exhausted his life in the 
 effort to do all men's work. He was a hard man 
 to relieve, to help, or to cooperate with. Thus, 
 the " Massachusetts Quarterly Review," his 
 especial organ, began with a promising corps 
 of contributors; but when it appeared that its 
 editor, if left alone, would willingly undertake 
 all the articles, — science, history, literature, 
 everything, — of course the others yielded to 
 inertia and dropped away. So, some years later, 
 when some of us met at his house to consult on 
 a cheap series of popular theological works, he 
 himself was so rich in his own private plans that 
 all the rest were impoverished ; nothing could 
 be named but he had been planning just that 
 for years, and should by and by get leisure for 
 it, and there really was not enough left to call 
 out the energies of any one else. Not from 
 any petty egotism, but simply from inordinate 
 activity, he stood ready to take all the parts. 
 
 He thus distanced everybody ; every com- 
 panion scholar found soon that it was impos- 
 sible to keep pace with one who was always ac- 
 cumulating and losing nothing. Most students 
 
42 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 find it necessary to be constantly forgetting some 
 things to make room for later arrivals ; but the 
 peculiarity of his memory was that he let no- 
 thing go. I have more than once heard him give 
 a minute analysis of the contents of some dull 
 book read by him twenty years before, and 
 have afterwards found the statement correct 
 and exhaustive. His great library, although 
 latterly collected more for public than personal 
 uses, was one which no other man in the nation, 
 probably, had at that time the bibliographical 
 knowledge to select. It seems as if its pos- 
 sessor, putting all his practical and popular side 
 into his eloquence and action, had indemnified 
 himself by investing all his scholarship in a 
 library of which less than one quarter of the 
 books were in the English language. 
 
 All unusual learning, however, brings with 
 it the suspicion of superficiality ; and in this 
 country, where, as Parker himself said, " every 
 one gets a mouthful of education, but scarce 
 one a full meal," — where every one who makes 
 a Latin quotation is styled " a ripe scholar," — 
 it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the true 
 from the counterfeit. It is, however, possible 
 to apply some tests. I remember, for instance, 
 that one of the few undoubted classical scholars, 
 in the old-fashioned sense, whom New England 
 has seen, — the late John Glen King of Salem, 
 
THEODORE PARKER 43 
 
 — while speaking with very limited respect of 
 the acquirements of Rufus Choate in this direc- 
 tion, and with utter contempt of those of Daniel 
 Webster, always became enthusiastic on coming 
 to Theodore Parker. " He is the only man," 
 said Mr. King more than once to the writer, 
 " with whom I can sit down and seriously dis- 
 cuss a disputed reading and find him familiar 
 with all that has been written upon it." Yet 
 Greek and Latin were only the preliminaries 
 of Parker's scholarship. 
 
 I know, for one, — and there are many who 
 will bear the same testimony, — that I never 
 went to Parker to talk over a subject which 
 I had just made a specialty, without finding 
 that on that particular matter he happened to 
 know, without any special investigation, more 
 than I did. This extended beyond books, some- 
 times stretching into things where his ques- 
 tioner's opportunities of knowledge had seemed 
 considerably greater, — as, for instance, in points 
 connected with the habits of our native animals 
 and the phenomena of outdoor Nature. Such 
 were his wonderful quickness and his infallible 
 memory, that glimpses of these things did for 
 him the work of years. But of course it was 
 in the world of books that this wonderful supe- 
 riority was chiefly seen, and the following ex- 
 
 -imn1f> mov sf>nr(» pa r>np nf the. mnst strikine' 
 
44 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 It happened to me, many years since, in the 
 course of some historical inquiries, to wish for 
 fuller information in regard to the barbarous 
 feudal codes of the Middle Ages, — as the Salic, 
 Burgundian, and Ripuarian, — before the time 
 of Charlemagne. The common historians, even 
 Hallam, gave no very satisfactory information 
 and referred to no very available books ; and 
 supposing it to be a matter of which every well- 
 read lawyer would at least know something, I 
 asked help of the most scholarly member of 
 that profession within my reach — a man who 
 is now, by the way, a leader in the United 
 States Senate. He regretted his inability to 
 give me any aid, but referred me to a friend 
 of his, who was soon to visit him, a young man 
 who was already eminent for legal learning. 
 The friend soon arrived, but owned, with some 
 regret, that he had paid no attention to that 
 particular subject, and did not even know what 
 books to refer to ; but he would at least ascer- 
 tain what they were, and let me know. [I may 
 add that although he is now a Justice of the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, I have 
 never heard from him again.] Stimulated by 
 ill-success, I aimed higher, and struck at the 
 Supreme Bench of Massachusetts, breaking in 
 on the mighty repose of his Honor with the 
 name of Charlemagne. " Charlemagne .' " re- 
 
THEODORE PARKER 45 
 
 sponded my lord judge, rubbing his burly brow, 
 — " Charlemagne lived, I think, in the sixth 
 century ? " Dismayed, I retreated, with little 
 further inquiry ; and sure of one man, at least, 
 to whom law meant also history and literature, 
 I took refuge with Charles Sumner. That 
 accomplished scholar, himself for once at fault, 
 could only frankly advise me to do at last what 
 I ought to have done at first, — to apply to 
 Theodore Parker. I did so. " Go," he replied 
 instantly, "to alcove twenty -four, shelf one 
 hundred and thirteen, of the College Library at 
 Cambridge, and you will find the information 
 you need in a thick quarto, bound in vellum, 
 and lettered 'Potgiesser de Statu Servorum.' " 
 I straightway sent for Potgiesser, and found my 
 fortune made. It was one of those patient old 
 German treatises which cost the labor of one 
 man's life to compile and another's to exhaust, 
 and I had no reason to suppose that any reader 
 had disturbed its repose until that unwearied 
 industry had explored the library. 
 
 Amid such multiplicity of details he must 
 sometimes have made mistakes, and with his 
 great quickness of apprehension he sometimes 
 formed hasty conclusions. But no one has a 
 right to say that his great acquirements were 
 bought by any habitual sacrifice of thorough- 
 ness. To sav that they sometimes impaired 
 
46 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 the quality of his thought would undoubtedly 
 be more just ; and this is a serious charge to 
 bring. Learning is not accumulation, but as- 
 similation ; every man's real acquirements must 
 pass into his own organization, and undue or 
 hasty nutrition does no good. The most price- 
 less knowledge is not worth the smallest im- 
 pairing of the quality of the thinking. The 
 scholar cannot afford, any more than the farmer, 
 to lavish his strength in clearing more land 
 than he can cultivate; and Theodore Parker 
 was compelled by the natural limits of time and 
 strength to let vast tracts lie fallow, and to 
 miss something of the natural resources of the 
 soil. One sometimes wished that he had stud- 
 ied less and dreamed more. 
 
 But it was in popularizing thought and know- 
 ledge that his great and wonderful power lay. 
 Not an original thinker, in the same sense with 
 Emerson, he yet translated for tens of thou- 
 sands that which Emerson spoke to hundreds 
 only. No matter who had been heard on any 
 subject, the great mass of intelligent, "pro- 
 gressive " New England thinkers waited to hear 
 the thing summed up by Theodore Parker. 
 This popular interest went far beyond the cir- 
 cle of his avowed sympathizers ; he might be 
 a heretic, but nobody could deny that he was a 
 marksman. No matter how well others seemed 
 
THEODORE PARKER 47 
 
 to have hit the target, his shot was the tri- 
 umphant one, at last. Thinkers might find no 
 new thought in the new discourse, leaders of 
 action no new plan, yet, after all that had been 
 said and done, his was the statement that told 
 upon the community. He knew this power 
 of his, and had analyzed some of the methods 
 by which he had attained it, though, after all, 
 the best part was an unconscious and magnetic 
 faculty. But he early learned, so he once told 
 me, that the New England people dearly love 
 two things, — a philosophical arrangement and 
 a plenty of statistics. To these, therefore, he 
 treated them thoroughly ; in some of his " Ten 
 Sermons " the demand made upon the syste- 
 matizing power of his audience was really for- 
 midable ; and I have always remembered a 
 certain lecture of his on the Anglo-Saxons as 
 the most wonderful instance that ever came 
 within my knowledge of the adaptation of solid 
 learning to the popular intellect. Nearly two 
 hours of almost unadorned fact, — for there 
 was far less than usual of relief and illustra- 
 tion, — and yet the lyceum audience listened 
 to it as if an angel sang to them. So perfect 
 was his sense of purpose and of power, so 
 clear and lucid was his delivery, with such won- 
 derful composure did he lay out, section by 
 section, his historical chart, that he grasped his 
 
48 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 hearers as absolutely as he grasped his sub- 
 ject, — one was compelled to believe that he 
 might read the people the Sanskrit Lexicon, 
 and they would listen with ever fresh delight. 
 Without actual grace or beauty or melody, his 
 mere elocution was sufificient to produce effects 
 for which melody and grace and beauty might 
 have sighed in vain. I always felt that he well 
 described his own eloquence while describing 
 Luther's, in one of the most admirably moulded 
 sentences he ever achieved, — " The homely 
 force of Luther, who, in the language of the 
 farm, the shop, the boat, the street, or the 
 nursery, told the high truths that reason or 
 religion taught, and took possession of his audi- 
 ence by a storm of speech, then poured upon 
 them all the riches of his brave plebeian soul, 
 baptizing every head anew, — a man who with 
 the people seemed more mob than they, and 
 with kings the most imperial man." 
 
 Another key to his strong hold upon the 
 popular mind was to be found in his thorough 
 Americanism of training and sympathy. Sur- 
 charged with European learning, he yet re- 
 mained at heart the Lexington farmer's boy, 
 and his whole harvest was indigenous, not ex- 
 otic. Not haunted by any of the distrust and 
 over-criticism which are apt to effeminate the 
 American scholar, he plunged deep into the 
 
THEODORE PARKER 49 
 
 current of hearty national life around him, loved 
 it, trusted it, believed in it ; and the combina- 
 tion of this vital faith with such tremendous 
 criticism of public and private sins formed an 
 irresistible power. He could condemn with- 
 out crushing, — denounce mankind, yet save it 
 from despair. Thus his pulpit became one of 
 the great forces of the nation, like the New 
 York "Tribune." His printed volumes had 
 but a limited circulation, owing to a defective 
 system of publication, which his friends tried 
 in vain to correct; but the circulation of his 
 pamphlet discourses was very great ; he issued 
 them faster and faster, latterly often in pairs, 
 and they instantly spread far and wide. Ac- 
 cordingly he found his listeners everywhere ; 
 he could not go so far West but his abundant 
 fame had preceded him; his lecture room in 
 the remotest places was crowded, and his hotel 
 chamber also, until late at night. Probably 
 there was no private man in the nation, un- 
 less it were Beecher or Greeley, whom personal 
 strangers were so eager to see ; while from a 
 transatlantic direction he was sought by vis- 
 itors to whom the two other names were utterly 
 unknown. Learned men from the continent of 
 Europe always found their way, first or last, to 
 Exeter Place ; and it is said that Thackeray, on 
 his voyage to this country, declared that the 
 
so CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 thing in America which he most desired was to 
 hear Theodore Parker talk. 
 
 Indeed, his conversational power was so won- 
 derful that no one could go away from a first 
 interview without astonishment and delight. 
 There are those among us, it may be, more 
 brilliant in anecdote or repartee, more eloquent, 
 more profoundly suggestive ; but for the out- 
 pouring of vast floods of various and delightful 
 information, I believe that he could have had 
 no Anglo-Saxon rival, except Macaulay. In 
 Parker's case, moreover, there was no alloy 
 of conversational arrogance or impatience of 
 opposition. He monopolized not because he 
 was ever unwilling to hear others, but because 
 they did not care to hear themselves when he 
 was by. The subject made no difference ; he 
 could talk on anything. I was once with him 
 in the society of an intelligent Quaker farmer, 
 when the conversation fell on agriculture : the 
 farmer held his own ably for a time ; but long 
 after he was drained dry, our wonderful com- 
 panion still flowed on exhaustless, with ac- 
 counts of Nova Scotia ploughing and Tennes- 
 see hoeing, and all things rural, ancient and 
 modern, good and bad, till it seemed as if the 
 one amusing and interesting theme in the uni- 
 verse were the farm. But it soon proved that 
 this was only one among his thousand depart- 
 
THEODORE PARKER 51 
 
 ments, and his hearers felt, as was said of old 
 Fuller, as if he had served his time at every 
 trade in town. 
 
 But it must now be owned that these aston- 
 ishing results were bought by some intellectual 
 sacrifices which his nearer friends do not all re- 
 cognize, but which posterity will mourn. Such 
 a rate of speed is incompatible with the finest 
 literary execution. A delicate literary ear he 
 might have had, perhaps, but he very seldom 
 stopped to cultivate or even indulge it. This 
 neglect was not produced by his frequent habit 
 of extemporaneous speech alone ; for it is a 
 singular fact that Wendell Phillips, who rarely 
 wrote a line, yet contrived to give to his has- 
 tiest efforts the air of elaborate preparation, 
 while Theodore Parker's most scholarly per- 
 formances were still stump speeches. Vigor- 
 ous, rich, brilliant, copious, they yet seldom 
 afford a sentence which falls in perfect cadence 
 upon the ear ; under a show of regular method, 
 they are loose and diffuse, and often have the 
 qualities which he himself attributed to the 
 style of John Quincy Adams, — " disorderly, ill- 
 compacted, and homely to a fault." He said 
 of Dr. Channing, — " Diffuseness is the old 
 Adam of the pulpit. There are always two 
 ways of hitting the mark, — one with a single 
 bullet, the other with a shower of small shot : 
 
52 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 Dr. Channing chose the latter, as most of our 
 pulpit orators have done." Theodore Parker 
 chose it also. 
 
 Perhaps nature and necessity chose it for 
 him. If not his temperament, at least the cir- 
 cumstances of his position cut him off from all 
 high literary finish. He created the congrega- 
 tion at the Music Hall, and that congregation, 
 in turn, moulded his whole life. For that great 
 stage his eloquence became inevitably a kind of 
 brilliant scene painting, — large, fresh, profuse, 
 rapid, showy ; masses of light and shade, won- 
 derful effects, but farewell forever to all finer 
 touches and delicate gradations ! No man 
 can write for posterity while hastily snatching 
 a half day from a week's lecturing, during 
 which to prepare a telling Sunday harangue 
 for three thousand people. In the perpetual 
 rush and hurry of his life, he had no time to 
 select, to discriminate, to omit anything, or to 
 mature anything. He had the opportunities, 
 the provocatives, and the drawbacks which 
 make the work and mar the fame of the pro- 
 fessional journalist. His intellectual existence, 
 after he left the quiet of West Roxbury, was 
 from hand to mouth. Needing above all men 
 to concentrate himself, he was compelled by 
 his whole position to lead a profuse and mis- 
 cellaneous life. 
 
THEODORE PARKER 53 
 
 All popular orators must necessarily repeat 
 themselves, — preachers chiefly among orators, 
 and Theodore Parker chiefly among preachers. 
 The mere frequency of production makes this 
 inevitable, — a fact which always makes every 
 finely organized intellect, first or last, grow 
 weary of the pulpit. But in his case there 
 were other compulsions. Every Sunday a 
 quarter part of his vast congregation consisted 
 of persons who had never, or scarcely ever, 
 heard him before, and who might never hear 
 him again. Not one of those visitors must go 
 away, therefore, without hearing the great 
 preacher define his position on every point, — 
 not theology alone, but all current events and 
 permanent principles, the presidential nomina- 
 tion or message, the laws of trade, the laws of 
 Congress, woman's rights, woman's costume, 
 Boston slave-kidnappers, and Dr. Banbaby, — 
 he must put it all in. His ample discourse 
 must be like an Oriental poem, which begins 
 with the creation of the universe, and includes 
 all subsequent facts incidentally. It is astonish- 
 ing to look over his published sermons and 
 addresses, and see under how many different 
 names the same stirring speech has been re- 
 printed : new illustrations, new statistics, and all 
 remoulded with such freshness that the hearer 
 
54 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 and yet the same essential thing. Simday dis- 
 course, lyceum lecture, convention speech, it 
 made no difference, he must cover all the points 
 every time. No matter what theme might be 
 announced, the people got the whole latitude 
 and longitude of Theodore Parker, and that 
 was precisely what they wanted. He, more 
 than any other man among us, broke down 
 the traditional non-committalism of the lecture 
 room, and oxygenated all the lyceums of the 
 land. He thus multiplied his audience very 
 greatly, while doubtless losing to some degree 
 the power of close logic and of addressing a 
 specific statement to a special point. Yet it 
 seemed as if he could easily leave the lancet 
 to others, grant him only the hammer and the 
 forge. 
 
 Ah, but the long centuries, where the read- 
 ing of books is concerned, set aside all con- 
 siderations of quantity, of popularity, of im- 
 mediate influence, and sternly test by quality 
 alone, — judge each author by his most golden 
 sentence, and let all else go. The deeds make 
 the man, but it is the style which makes or 
 dooms the writer. History, which always 
 sends great men in groups, gave us Emerson 
 by whom to test the intellectual qualities of 
 Parker. They cooperated in their work from 
 the beginning, but not in the same mutual re- 
 
THEODORE PARKER 55 
 
 lation as now ; in looking back over the rich 
 volumes of the " Dial," the reader now passes 
 by the contributions of Parker to glean every 
 sentence of Emerson's, but we have the latter's 
 authority for the fact that it was the former's 
 articles which originally sold the numbers. In- 
 tellectually, the two men formed the comple- 
 ment to each other ; it was Parker who reached 
 the mass of the people, but it is probable that 
 all his writings put together have not had so pro- 
 found an influence on the intellectual leaders 
 of the nation as the single address of Emerson 
 at Divinity Hall. 
 
 And it is difficult not to notice, in that essay 
 in which Theodore Parker ventured on higher 
 intellectual ground, perhaps, than anywhere else 
 in his writings, — his critique on Emerson in 
 the "Massachusetts Quarterly," — the indica- 
 tions of this mental disparity. It is in many 
 respects a noble essay, full of fine moral appre- 
 ciations, bravely generous, admirable in the loy- 
 alty of spirit shown towards a superior mind, and 
 all warm with a personal friendship which could 
 find no superior. But so far as literary execu- 
 tion is concerned, the beautiful sentences of 
 Emerson stand out like fragments of carved 
 marble from the rough plaster in which they 
 are imbedded. Nor this alone ; but on draw- 
 
 inrr npar i-hp vpotiVmlp nf thp nntVinr'a finpst: 
 
56 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 thoughts, the critic almost always stops, unable 
 quite to enter their sphere. Subtile beauties 
 puzzle him ; the titles of the poems, for in- 
 stance, giving by delicate allusion the keynote 
 of each, — as "Astraea," " Mithridates," "Ha- 
 matreya," and " Etienne de la Bo6ce," — seem 
 to him the work of "mere caprice;" he pro- 
 nounces the poem of "Monadnoc" "poor and 
 weak," and condemns and satirizes the " Wood- 
 Notes." 
 
 The same want of fine discrimination was 
 usually visible in his delineations of great men 
 in public life. Immense in accumulation of 
 details, terrible in the justice which held the 
 balance, they yet left one with the feeling, 
 that, after all, the delicate mainsprings of char- 
 acter had been missed. Broad contrasts, heaps 
 of good and evil, almost exaggerated praises, 
 pungent satire, catalogues of sins that seemed 
 pages from some recording angel's book, — 
 these were his mighty methods ; but for the 
 subtilest analysis, the deepest insight into the 
 mysteries of character, one must look else- 
 where. It was still scene painting, not portrait- 
 ure ; and the same thing which overwhelmed 
 with wonder when heard in the Music Hall, 
 produced a slight sense of insufficiency when 
 read in print. It was certainly very great in 
 its way, but not quite in the highest way ; it was 
 
THEODORE PARKER 57 
 
 preliminary work, not final; it was Parker's 
 Webster, not Emerson's Swedenborg or Na- 
 poleon. 
 
 The same thing was often manifested in his 
 criticisms on current events. The broad 
 truths were stated without fear or favor, the 
 finer aspects were sometimes passed over, and 
 the special opportunity was thus sometimes 
 missed. His sermons on current revivals, for 
 instance, had an enormous circulation, and told 
 with great force upon those who had not been 
 swept into the movement, and even upon some 
 who had been. The difficulty was that they 
 were just such discourses as he would have 
 preached in the time of Edwards and the 
 " Great Awakening ; " and the point which 
 many thought the one astonishing feature of 
 the new excitement, its almost entire omission 
 of the "terrors of the Lord, " — the far gentler 
 and more winning type of religion which it 
 displayed, and from which it confessedly drew 
 much of its power, — this was entirely ignored 
 in Mr. Parker's sermons. He was too hard at 
 work in combating the evangelical theology to 
 recognize its altered phases. Forging light- 
 ning-rods against the tempest, he did not see 
 that the height of the storm had passed by. 
 
 These are legitimate criticisms to make on 
 Theodore Parker, for he was laree enouerh to 
 
S8 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 merit them. It is only the loftiest trees of 
 which it occurs to us to remark that they do 
 not touch the sky, and a man must comprise a 
 great deal before we complain of him for not 
 comprising everything. But though the closest 
 scrutiny may sometimes find cases where he 
 failed to see the most subtile and precious truth, 
 it will never discover an instance where, seeing, 
 he failed to proclaim it, or, proclaiming, failed 
 to give it force and power. He lived his life 
 much as he walked the streets of Boston, — 
 not quite gracefully, nor yet statelily, but with 
 quick, strong, solid step, with sagacious eyes 
 wide open, and thrusting his broad shoulders a 
 little forward, as if butting away the throng of 
 evil deeds around him and scattering whole at- 
 mospheres of unwholesome cloud. Wherever he 
 went, there went a glance of sleepless vigilance, 
 an unforgetting memory, a tongue that never 
 faltered, and an arm that never quailed. Not 
 primarily an administrative nor yet a military 
 mind, he yet exerted a positive control over the 
 whole community around him, by sheer mental 
 and moral strength. He mowed down harvests 
 of evil as in his youth he had mowed the grass, 
 and all his hours of study were but whetting 
 the scythe. 
 
 And for this great work it was not essential 
 that the blade should have a razor's edge. 
 
THEODORE PARKER 59 
 
 Grant that Parker was not also Emerson ; no 
 matter, he was Parker. If ever a man seemed 
 sent into the world to find a certain position, 
 and found it, he was that man. He made 
 his great qualities seem so natural and inev- 
 itable, we forgot that all did not share them. 
 We forgot the scholar's proverbial reproach 
 of timidity and selfishness, in watching him. 
 While he lived, it seemed a matter of course 
 that the greatest acquirements and the heartiest 
 self-devotion should go together. Can we keep 
 our strength, without the tonic of his example ? 
 How petty it now seems to ask for any fine- 
 drawn subtilties of poet or seer in him who 
 gave his life to the cause of the humblest ! 
 Life speaks the loudest. We do not ask what 
 Luther said or wrote, but only what he did ; 
 and the name of Theodore Parker will not only 
 long outlive his books, but will last far beyond 
 the special occasions out of which he moulded 
 his grand career. 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 The popular poet laureate of this country 
 passed away in peace on September 7, 1892, in 
 the eighty-fifth year of his age, having been 
 born at Haverhill, Mass., December 17, 1807. 
 This longevity, aided by numerous biographies, 
 has made the principal facts of his uneventful 
 life well known to the public. Neither of the 
 careers which he would fain have determined 
 for himself was destined to be his. From jour- 
 nalism as from politics the farmer's son was 
 turned back to that simple inspiration of poet 
 which was first recognized in him by his neigh- 
 bor, the editor of the Newburyport "Free 
 Press," afterwards the editor of the Boston 
 " Liberator," William Lloyd Garrison. The 
 friendship of these two men might well have led 
 the younger, as disciple, to become entirely ab- 
 sorbed in the agitation against slavery, in which 
 he did, in fact, for a time do editorial service. 
 Yet partly his political and partly his religious 
 bias drew him away from Garrison at the time 
 of the schism in the abolition ranks growing 
 out of the political and sectarian differences, 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 6i 
 
 though in after years they came together with- 
 out bitterness and with their old affection. 
 Moreover, the poet was physically unfitted 
 
 " to ride 
 The winged Hippogriff Refonn." 
 
 He was all his life a victim of ill-health, having 
 brought on neuralgia and headache by over- 
 work in the early days of his journalism. For 
 many years he could not write fifteen minutes 
 at a time without a headache, and it is certain 
 that his delicate health was for almost all his 
 life a drawback to continuous mental exertion, 
 although care and watchfulness greatly bene- 
 fited his general condition during his later 
 years. This improved health, together with 
 other causes, produced in him an increase, not 
 a diminution, as years went on, of sociability 
 and freedom of intercourse. He became more 
 frequently a guest at private houses, where 
 nothing but a growing deafness prevented him 
 from being a most delightful companion. His 
 shyness visibly diminished — a quality so marked 
 in early life that it sometimes seemed a posi- 
 tive distress to him to be face to face with half 
 a dozen people in a room. 
 
 This habit showed itself chiefly in what is 
 called society ; with men met for political or 
 even business purposes he was more at home. 
 
 
 -»/\li^i/- 
 
62 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 183 s and 1836 he was a member of the Mas- 
 sachusetts legislature), and was esteemed — 
 though a poet — a man of excellent judgment 
 in all public matters. He was a keen judge of 
 character, was perfectly unselfish, and always 
 appeared to look at affairs more with the eyes 
 of a man of the people than with those of a 
 student. Without making any words about it, 
 he seemed held by early associations as well 
 as principle to the point of view of the labor- 
 ing class. His whole position in this respect 
 was very characteristic of American life; had 
 he lived in England' and among the social re- 
 strictions of that more stereotyped society, he 
 would, perhaps, have been simply some Corn- 
 Law Rhymer, some Poet of the People. As it 
 was, there was nothing to keep him from full 
 identification with the most cultivated class, 
 and yet he was always able to remain in full 
 sympathy with the least cultivated. In this 
 respect he was more typically national than most 
 of our bards. His liberal attitude was aided 
 also by his training in the Society of Friends. 
 Of this body Mr. Whittier was always a faithful 
 member, though never narrow or technical in 
 his spirit. In his youth his anti-slavery associ- 
 ations sometimes brought him into danger of 
 discipline ; and he used to say jokingly in his 
 later years that the Society would gladly have 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 63 
 
 then put upon him, would he but consent, all 
 the committee work and the little dignities from 
 which his position as a reformer had excluded 
 him in his youth. He always held to the pre- 
 scribed garb so far as the cut of his coat was 
 concerned, but conformed to the ways of the 
 world in his other attire. He did not use the 
 " thee " to members of his own society alone, 
 as is the case with some, but presented it in his 
 intercourse with the world at large. 
 
 It is difEciilt to say whether in his life, as in 
 Irving's, an early romance led the way to a 
 career of celibacy. A few^passages in his writ- 
 ings, but only a few, might bear this interpre- 
 tation, while the view was discouraged by his 
 nearest kindred. It is certain that in later life 
 he sometimes permitted himself to express re- 
 gret that he had never married, since all his 
 tastes and habits were eminently domestic. He 
 always appeared to advantage in the society of 
 women. His manners had all the essentials of 
 courtliness in their dignity and consideration 
 for others, and while he had little small-talk, he 
 had plenty to say about men and affairs ; this 
 being always said with sympathy and with 
 quaint humor. Utterly free from self-esteem, 
 he was always glad to keep the current of con- 
 versation away from himself, and might indeed 
 be said to rejoice in any evidences of obsciuity. 
 
64 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 He was a wide reader and had a tenacious 
 memory, but he spoke no language except his 
 own, nor did he — although he translated one 
 or two simple French poems — read much in 
 any foreign tongue. He never visited Europe. 
 He used to say that in early life he had a great 
 yearning for travel, but that after reading a 
 book about any foreign place, he retained in 
 his mind a picture so vivid that his longing for 
 that particular place was satisfied. Yet, as 
 Thoreau said that he had traveled a great deal, 
 — in Concord, — so Whittier was familiar with 
 New England and Pennsylvania, and has done 
 far more than any poet — perhaps as much 
 as all other poets together — to preserve the 
 legends and immortalize the localities of these 
 portions of our country. It is only necessary 
 to look through the New England volumes of 
 Longfellow's " Poems of Places " to be satisfied 
 of this. In his treatment of legends, Whittier's 
 Quaker truthfulness comes in, and he generally 
 produces his poetic effects while keeping close 
 to history. But his great skill lay in discovery : 
 everything he found was turned to account, 
 and he preceded even Hawthorne in demon- 
 strating that the early New England life was 
 as rich in poetic material as the Scotch. 
 
 Of his poetry it may thus safely be said that 
 it has two permanent grounds of fame : he was 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 65 
 
 the Tyrtseus of the greatest moral agitation of 
 the age, and he was the creator of the New 
 England legend. He was also the exponent of 
 a pure and comprehensive religious feeling ; 
 but this he shared with others, while the first 
 two branches of laurel were unmistakably his 
 own. His drawbacks were almost as plain and 
 unequivocal as his merits. Brought up at a 
 period when Friends disapproved of music, he 
 had no early training in this direction and per- 
 haps no natural endowment. He wrote in a 
 letter of 1882, — "I don't know anything of 
 music, not one tune from another." This at 
 once defined the limits of his verse and re- 
 stricted him to the very simplest strains. He 
 wrote mostly in the four-line ballad metre, 
 which he often made not only effective, but 
 actually melodious. That he had a certain 
 amount of natural ear is shown by his use of 
 proper names, in which, after his early period 
 of Indian experiments had passed, he rarely 
 erred. In one of his very best poems, " My 
 Playmate," a large part of the effectiveness 
 comes from the name of the locality : — 
 " The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill 
 The slow song of the sea." 
 
 In "Amy Wentworth," another of his best, he 
 gives to one of his verses the unconscious 
 flavor of an old ballad by using, as simply as a 
 
66 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 nameless Scottish minstrel would have used, 
 
 the names at his own door : — 
 
 " The sweetbriar blooms on Kittery-side 
 And green are Elliot's bowers." 
 
 These are the very names of the villages where 
 the scene was laid, and even the K.ittery-stde 
 is vernacular. Whittier sometimes prolonged 
 his narrative too much, and often obtruded his 
 moral a little, but, so far as flavor of the soil 
 went, he was far beyond Longfellow or Holmes 
 or Lowell. If he lost by want of ear for music, 
 the result was chiefly injurious in that it im- 
 paired his self-confidence; and where he had 
 trusted his ear to admit a bolder strain, he was 
 easily overawed by some prosaic friend with a 
 foot-rule, who convinced him that he was tak- 
 ing a dangerous liberty. Thus, in "The New 
 Wife and the Old," in describing the night 
 sounds, he finally closed with — 
 
 " And the great sea waves below, 
 Pulse o' the midnight, beating slow." 
 
 This "Pulse o' the midnight" was an unusual 
 rhythmic felicity for him, but, on somebody's 
 counting the syllables, he tamely submitted, 
 substituting 
 
 " Like the night's pulse, beating slow," 
 
 which is spondaic and heavy ; but he after- 
 wards restored the better line. In the same 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 67 
 
 way, when he sang of the shoemakers in the 
 best of his " Songs of Labor," he originally 
 wrote : — 
 
 " Thy songs, Hans Sachs, are living yet 
 In strong and hearty German, 
 And Canning's craft and Gifford's wit, 
 And the rare good sense of Sherman." 
 
 Under similar pressure of criticism he was in- 
 duced to substitute 
 
 " And patriot fame of Sherman." 
 
 and this time he did not repent. It is painful 
 to think what would have become of the liquid 
 measure of Coleridge's " Christabel " had some 
 tiresome acquaintance, possibly "a person on 
 business from Porlock," insisted on thus putting 
 that poem in the stocks. 
 
 Whittier's muse probably gained in all ways 
 from the strong toiiic of the anti-slavery agita- 
 tion. That gave a training in directness, sim- 
 plicity, genuineness ; it taught him to shorten 
 his sword and to produce strong effects by com- 
 mon means. It made him permanently high- 
 minded also, and placed him, as he himself 
 always said, above the perils and temptations of 
 a merely literary career. Though always care- 
 ful in his work, and a good critic of the work 
 of others, he usually talked by preference upon 
 subjects not literary — politics, social science, 
 the riffhts of labor. He would speak at times, 
 
68 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 if skillfully led up to it, about his poems, and 
 was sometimes, though rarely, known to repeat 
 them aloud ; but his own personality was never 
 a favorite theme with him, and one could easily 
 fancy him as going to sleep, like La Fontaine, 
 at the performance of his own opera. 
 
 Few men of limited early training have brought 
 from that experience so few literary defects as 
 Whittier. He soon outgrew all flavor of pro- 
 vincialism, and entered into the world-wide 
 atmosphere of literature. The result is that 
 when he uses a mispronunciation or makes a 
 slip in grammar, it has the effect of an over- 
 sight or a whim, not of ignorance. Thus he 
 always accents the word " romance " on the 
 first syllable, as in 
 
 " Young Romance raised his dreamy eyes ; '' 
 
 and in the poem "The Knight of St. John" 
 he has this bit of hopelessly bad grammar : — 
 
 " For since the day when Warkworth wood 
 Closed o'er my steed and I." 
 
 Yet these things suggest no flavor of illiteracy. 
 A worse fault is that of occasional dilution 
 and the reiteration of some very simple moral. 
 D'Alembert said of Richardson's novels, once 
 so famous, " Nature is a good thing, but do not 
 bore us with her {non fas jusqu'd V ennui)." 
 Whittier never reaches the point of ennui, but 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 69 
 
 he sometimes makes us fear that another verse 
 will bring us to it ; and yet, when he will, he 
 can be thoroughly terse and vigorous. He is 
 always simple — always free from that turgid- 
 ness and mixture of metaphors which often 
 mar the verse of LowelL On the other hand, 
 he does not so often as Lowell broaden into 
 the strong assertion of great general maxims. 
 Lowell's "Verses Suggested by the Present 
 Crisis " followed not long after Whittier's 
 "Massachusetts to Virginia," and, being printed 
 anonjmiously, were at first attributed to the 
 same author. Whittier's poem had even more 
 lyric fire and produced an immediate impres- 
 sion even greater, but it touched universal prin- 
 ciples less broadly, and is therefore now rarely 
 quoted, while Lowell's 
 
 "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the 
 throne " 
 
 is immortal on the lips of successive orators. 
 
 But while this is true, it is also certain that 
 there is room, even in the United States, for 
 such a function as that of poet of the people ; 
 and here Whittier filled a mission apart from 
 that of the other members of his particular 
 group of New England bards. The difference 
 was indeed ante-natal, and affords a most inter- 
 esting study. Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, 
 and Lowell belonged more or less completely 
 
70 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 to what one of them described well enough 
 as " Brahmin blood," representing traditions of 
 hereditary cultivation, if not always of station 
 or wealth. Their ancestors were to a great ex- 
 tent clergymen or lawyers, gens de robe. With 
 the questionable exception of Father Bachiler, 
 Whittier had a widely different ancestry. But 
 here came in a new element of interest : since 
 he stood for a race which had a culture of its 
 own, namely, that implied in " birthright mem- 
 bership " of the Society of Friends. He could 
 say for himself in good faith what Lowell said 
 with less of strict personal significance : — 
 
 " We draw our lineage from the oppressed." 
 
 Nor was it from the oppressed alone, but he 
 derived it from those who had suffered in a 
 spirit so lofty and with such elevation of pur- 
 pose as to yield through transmitted spiritual 
 influence many of the results of the finest train- 
 ing. No one appreciated better than he the 
 essential dignity of the early New England 
 aristocracy — he whose imagination could trace 
 back his heroine's lineage through the streets 
 of Portsmouth, N. H. : — 
 
 " Her home is brave in JafEray Street, 
 With stately stairways worn 
 By feet of old Colonial knights 
 And ladies gentle-born. 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 71 
 
 " And on her, from the wainscot old, 
 Ancestral faces frown — 
 And this had worn the soldier's sword. 
 And that the judge's gown." 
 
 But what was all this to him who had learned 
 at his mother's knee to go in fancy with Wil- 
 liam Penn into the wilderness, or to walk with 
 Barclay of Ury through howling mobs ? There 
 is no better Brahmin blood than the Quaker 
 blood, after all. It was, then, as from kinsman 
 to kinsman, that Whittier's last verses were 
 addressed to Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
WHITMAN 
 
 Walt, or Walter, Whitman was bom at West 
 Hills, Long Island, on the 31st of May, 18 19, 
 and was educated in the public schools of Brook- 
 lyn and New York city. He afterwards learned 
 printing, and worked at that trade in summer, 
 teaching in winter. Later on he acquired a 
 good deal of skill as a carpenter. For brief 
 periods of his career he edited newspapers in 
 New Orleans and on Long Island, and in 1847- 
 48 he made long pedestrian tours through the 
 United States, generally following the courses 
 of the great Western rivers. He also made pe- 
 destrian explorations in Canada. His ' Leaves 
 of Grass' was first published in 1855. During 
 the Civil War his brother was wounded on the 
 battle-field, and he hastened to visit him in camp, 
 becoming a volunteer army nurse, in which ca- 
 pacity he served for three years in Washington 
 and in Virginia. His experiences are recorded 
 in " Drum-Taps " and other poems. Want of 
 rest and nervous strain brought on a severe 
 illness in 1864, from the effects of which he 
 never fully recovered. In 1870 he published 
 
WHITMAN 73 
 
 his "Democratic Vistas." From 1865 to 1874 
 he held a government clerkship in Washington. 
 In the latter year he was stricken by paralysis 
 and retired to Camden, where he was gradually 
 recovering when the sudden death of his mother 
 in his presence caused a relapse, and he re- 
 mained in a somewhat crippled condition, though 
 his intellectual powers remained unaffected. In 
 his prime Whitman had a magnificent physique, 
 and to the last his presence was imposing, his 
 white hair giving him a most venerable appear- 
 ance in his later years. At times he felt the 
 pinch of poverty, but his wants were few and 
 simple, and he had friends who were always 
 ready to contribute to the relief of his necessi- 
 ties. Among his published works may be men- 
 tioned " Leaves of Grass," " Passage to India," 
 "After All, Not to Create Only," "Two Rivu- 
 lets," " Specimen Days and Collect," " Novem- 
 ber Boughs," and " Sands at Seventy." 
 
 '■ It was for a long time the curious experience 
 of Walt Whitman to find his inspiration almost 
 wholly in his own country, and his admirers al- 
 most wholly in another. The rhythmic apostle 
 of democracy, he had, in the words of one of his 
 stanchest admirers, " absolutely no popular fol- 
 lowing " at home ; and the gradual increase of 
 his circle of special readers, even here, has been 
 larsrelv amon? the class he least anoroved — 
 
74 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 those who desire to be English even in their 
 fads. The same thing was true, years ago, of 
 " Joaquin " Miller ; but while he has gradually- 
 faded from view, the robuster personality of 
 Whitman has held its own, aided greatly by his 
 personal picturesqueness, by recognition of his 
 services as an army nurse, and by that rise in 
 pecuniary value which awaits all books classed 
 by the book venders as "facetias" or "curiosa." 
 All this constituted a combination quite unique. 
 To many the mere fact of foreign admiration is 
 a sufficient proof of the greatness of an Ameri- 
 can ; they have never outgrown that pithy pro- 
 verb, the result of the ripe experience of a 
 young Philadelphian of twenty -one, that "a 
 foreign country is a kind of contemporaneous 
 posterity." But when we remember that the 
 scene of this particular fame was England, 
 and that it was long divided with authors now 
 practically forgotten, — with "Artemus Ward" 
 and " Josh Billings " and the author of " Sam 
 Slick," — when we remember how readily the 
 same recognition is still given in England to 
 any American who mispells or makes fritters of 
 English, or who enters literature, as Lady Mor- 
 gan's Irish hero entered a drawing-room, by 
 throwing a back somersault in at the door, — the 
 judicious American can by no means regard this 
 experience as final. It must be remembered, 
 
WHITMAN 75 
 
 too, that all the malodorous portions of Whit- 
 man's earlier poems were avowedly omitted 
 from the first English edition of his works ; he 
 was expurgated and fumigated in a way that 
 might have excited the utmost contempt from 
 M. Guy de Maupassant, or indeed from himself ; 
 and so the first presentation of this poet to his 
 English admirers showed him, as it were, clothed 
 and in his right mind. Again, it is to be re- 
 membered that much of the vague sentiment 
 of democracy in his works, while wholly pictur- 
 esque and novel to an Englishman, — provided he 
 can tolerate it at all, — is to us comparatively trite 
 and almost conventional It is the rhythmic 
 or semi-rhythmic reproduction of a thousand 
 Fomrth of July orations, and as we grow less and 
 less inclined to hear this oft-told tale in plain 
 prose, we are least of all tempted to read it in 
 what is not even plain verse. There was, there- 
 fore, nothing inexplicable in the sort of parallax 
 which long exhibited the light of Whitman's 
 fame at so different an angle in his own coun- 
 try and in England. 
 
 But while an English fame does not of itself 
 prove an American to be great, — else were we 
 aU suing for Buffalo BUl's social favor as if we 
 were members of the British aristocracy, — it 
 certainly does not prove that he is not great ; 
 and it is for us to view Whitman as disnassion- 
 
76 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 ately as if he were an author all our own, like 
 Whittier or Parkman, of whom an English vis- 
 itor will tell you, with labored politeness, that he 
 has a vague impression of having heard of him. 
 The first distinct canonization ever afforded to 
 Whitman on our own shores was when Mr. 
 Stedman placed him among the Dii majores of 
 our literature by giving him a separate chapter 
 in his " Poets of America ; " and though it is 
 true that this excellent critic had rather cheap- 
 ened that honor by extending it to Bayard Tay- 
 lor, yet that was easily explainable in part by 
 personal friendship ; and it is impossible not to 
 see in the Whitman chapter a slightly defensive 
 and apologetic tone such as appears nowhere 
 else in the book. Mr. Stedman's own sense of 
 form is so strong, his instinct of taste so trust- 
 worthy, and his love-poetry in particular of so 
 high and refined a quality, that he could not 
 possibly approach Whitman with the predeter- 
 mined sympathy that we might be ready to 
 expect from some less cultivated or more impul- 
 sive critics. 
 
 There seems to be a provision in nature for a 
 class of poets who appear at long intervals, and 
 who resolutely confine themselves to a few very 
 simple stage properties, and substitute mere 
 cadence for form. There was for many years 
 an Ossianic period, when simple enthusiasts sat 
 
WHITMAN Tj 
 
 up at night and read until they were sleepy about 
 the waving of the long grass on the blasted 
 heath, and the passing of the armed warrior 
 and the white-bosomed maiden. Ossian is not 
 much read now, but Napoleon Bonaparte ad- 
 mired him and Goethe studied him. Neither 
 is Tupper now much cultivated ; but men not 
 very old assure us that his long, rambling lines 
 were once copied by the page into extract 
 books, and that he was welcomed as relieving 
 mankind from the tiresome restraints of verse. 
 It would be a great mistake, doubtless, to class 
 Whitman with Ossian on the one side, or Tup- 
 per on the other ; but it would be a still greater 
 error to overlook the fact that the mere revolt 
 against the tyranny of form has been made again 
 and again, before him, and that without securing 
 immortal fame to the author of the experiment 
 It is no uncommon thing, moreover, for the 
 fiercest innovating poets to revert to the ranks 
 of order before they die. Whitman abstained, 
 through all his later publications, from those pro- 
 clamations of utter nudity which Emerson, in 
 my hearing, called "priapism," and was far more 
 compressed and less simply enumerative than 
 when he began. True poetry is not merely the 
 putting of thoughts into words, but the putting 
 of the best thoughts into the best words ; it 
 secures for us what Ruskin calls "the nerfec- 
 
78 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 tion and precision of the instantaneous line." 
 It fires a rifle-bullet instead of a shower of bird- 
 shot ; it culls the very best phrase out of lan- 
 guage, instead of throwing a dozen epithets to 
 see if one may chance to stick. For example, 
 Emerson centres his "Problem" in "a cowled 
 churchman ; " Browning singles out an indi- 
 vidual bishop or rabbi, as the case may be ; but 
 Whitman enumerates "priests on the earth, 
 oracles, sacrificers, brahmins, sabians, llamas, 
 monks, muftis, exhorters." In " The Song of the 
 Broad-Axe" there are nineteen successive lines 
 beginning with the word "Where;" in " Salut 
 au Monde ! " eighteen beginning with " I see." 
 In "I sing the body electric," he specifies in 
 detail "Wrists and wrist -joints, hand, palm, 
 knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints, finger- 
 nails," with thirteen more lines of just such 
 minutiae. In the same poem he explains that 
 he wishes his verses to be regarded as " Man's, 
 Woman's, child's, youth's, wife's, husband's, 
 mother's, father's, young man's, young woman's 
 poems." This is like bringing home a sackful 
 of pebbles from the beach and asking you to 
 admire the collected heap as a fine sea view. 
 But it is to be noticed that these follies diminish 
 in his later works : the lines grow shorter ; and 
 though he does not acquiesce in rhyme, he oc- 
 casionally accepts a rhythm so well defined that 
 
WHITMAN 79 
 
 it may be called conventional, as in the fine 
 verses entitled " Barest thou now, O Soul ? " j 
 And it is a fact which absolutely overthrows 
 the whole theory of poetic structure or struc- 
 turelessness implied in Whitman's volumes, 
 that his warmest admirers usually place first 
 among his works the poem on Lincoln's death, 
 " My Captain," which comes so near to recog- 
 nized poetic methods that it actually falls into 
 rhyme. 
 
 Whitman can never be classed, as Spinoza 
 was by Schleiermacher, among "God-intoxi- 
 cated " men ; but he was early inebriated with! 
 two potent draughts — himself and his coun- 
 try: — 
 
 " One's self I sing, a simple separate person, 
 Yet utter the word Democratic, the word, En Masse." , 
 
 With these words his collected poems open, 
 and to these he has always been true. They 
 have brought with them a certain access of 
 power, and they have also implied weakness ; 
 on the personal side leading to pruriency and 
 on the national side to rant. For some reason 
 or other our sexual nature is so ordained that it 
 is very hard for a person to dwell much upon 
 it, even for noble and generous purposes, with- 
 out developing a tendency to morbidness ; the 
 lives of philanthropists and reformers have 
 sometimes shown this ; and when one insists on 
 
8o CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 this part of our nature for purposes of self- 
 glorification, the peril is greater. Whitman 
 did not escape the danger ; it is something tha 
 he outgrew it ; and it is possible that if let 
 entirely alone, which could hardly be expected, 
 he might have dropped " Children of Adam," 
 and some of the more nauseous passages in 
 other effusions, from his published works. 
 One thing which has always accentuated the 
 seeming grossness of the sensual side of his 
 poems has been the entire absence of that 
 personal and ideal side of passion which alone 
 can elevate and dignify it. Probably no poet 
 of equal pretensions was ever so entirely want- 
 ing in the sentiment of individual love for wo- 
 man ; not only has he given us no love-poem, 
 in the ordinary use of that term, but it is as 
 difficult to conceive of his writing one as of his 
 chanting a serenade beneath the window of his 
 mistress. His love is the blunt, undisguised 
 attraction of sex to sex ; and whether this appe- 
 tite is directed towards a goddess or a street- 
 walker, a Queensbury or a handmaid, is to him 
 absolutely unimportant. This not only sepa- 
 rates him from the poets of thoroughly ideal 
 emotion, like Poe, but from those, like Rossetti, 
 whose passion, though it may incarnate itself in 
 the body, has its sources in the soul. 
 
WHITMAN 8l 
 
 As time went on, this less pleasing aspect be- 
 came softened ; his antagonisms were disarmed 
 by applauses ; although this recognition some- 
 times took a form so extreme and adulatory 
 that it obstructed his path to that simple and 
 unconscious life which he always preached but 
 could not quite be said to practice. No oneT 
 can be said to lead a noble life who writes puffs 
 of himself and offers them to editors, or who 
 borrows money of men as poor as himself and 
 fails to repay it. Yet his career purified itself, 
 as many careers do, in the alembic of years, 
 and up to the time of his death (March 26, 
 1892) he gained constantly both in friends and 
 in readers. Intellectually speaking, all critics 
 now admit that he shows in an eminent degree 
 that form of the ideal faculty which Emerson 
 conceded to Margaret Fuller — he has "lyric 
 glimpses." /Rarely constructing anything, he 
 is yet singularly gifted in phrases, in single 
 cadences, in casual wayward strains as from an 
 jEolian harpj It constantly happens that the 
 titles or catch-words of his poems are better 
 than the poems themselves ; as we sometimes 
 hear it said in praise of a clergyman that he 
 has beautiful texts. "Proud Music of the 
 Storm," "When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard 
 Bloomed," and others, will readily occur to 
 memory. Often, on the other hand, thev are 
 
82 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 inflated, as " Chanting the Square Deific, " or 
 affected and feeble, as " Eidolons." One of 
 the most curiously un-American traits in a poet 
 professedly so national is his way of interlard- 
 ing foreign, and especially French, words to a 
 degree that recalls the fashionable novels of 
 the last generation, and gives an incongruous 
 effect comparable only to Theodore Parker's 
 description of an African chief seen by some 
 one at Sierra Leone, — " With the exception of 
 a dress-coat, his Majesty was as naked as a 
 pestle." In the opening lines, already quoted 
 from one of his collected volumes (ed. 1881), 
 Whitman defines "the word Democratic, the 
 word En Masse ; " and everywhere French 
 phrases present themselves. The vast sublim- 
 ity of night on the prairies only suggests to him 
 " how plenteous ! how spiritual ! how rSsumi" 
 whatever that may mean ; he talks of " Mdange 
 mine own, the seen and the unseen ; " writes 
 poems "with reference to ensemble ; " says "the 
 future of the States I harbinge glad and sub- 
 lime ; " and elsewhere, " I blow through my 
 embouchures my loudest and gayest for them." 
 He is "the extolled of amies" — meaning ap- 
 parently mistresses ; and says that neither 
 youth pertains to him. "nor delicatesse" 
 Phrases like these might be multiplied inde- 
 finitely, and when he says, "No dainty dolce 
 
WHITMAN 83 
 
 affettuoso I," he seems vainly to disclaim being 
 exactly what he is. He cannot even introduce 
 himself to the audience without borrowing a 
 foreign word, — " I, Walt Whitman, one of the 
 roughs, a kosmos, " — and really stands in this 
 respect on a plane not much higher than that 
 of those young girls at boarding-school who 
 commit French phrases to memory in order to 
 use them in conversation and give a fancied 
 tone of good society. 
 
 But after all, the offense, which is a trivial 
 affectation in a young girl, has a deeper foun- 
 dation in a man who begins his literary career 
 at thirty-seven. The essential fault of Whit- 
 man's poetry was well pointed out by a man of 
 more heroic nature and higher genius, Lanier, 
 who defined him as a dandy. Of all our poets, 
 he is really the least simple, the most mere- 
 tricious ; and this is the reason why the honest 
 consciousness of the classes which he most 
 celebrates, — the drover, the teamster, the 
 soldier, — has never been reached by his songs. 
 He talks of labor as one who has never really 
 labored; his "Drum-Taps" proceed from one 
 who has never personally responded to the tap 
 of the drum. This is his fatal and insurmount- 
 able defect ; and it is because his own country- 
 men instinctively recognize this, and foreigners 
 do not. that his foUowiner has alwavs been larsrer 
 
84 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 abroad than at home. But it is also true that 
 he has, in a fragmentary and disappointing way, 
 some of the very highest ingredients of a poet's 
 nature : a keen eye, a ready sympathy, a strong 
 jtouch, a vivid but not shaping imagination. In 
 his cyclopaedia of epithets, in his accumulated 
 directory of details, in his sandy wastes of iter- 
 ation, there are many scattered particles of 
 gold — never sifted out by him, not always 
 abundant enough to pay for the sifting, yet un- 
 mistakable gold. He has something of the 
 turgid wealth, the self-conscious and mouthing 
 amplitude of Victor Hugo, and much of his 
 broad, vague, indolent desire for the welfare 
 of the whole human race ; but he has none of 
 Hugo's structural power, his dramatic or melo- 
 dramatic instinct, and his occasionally terse 
 and brilliant condensation. It is not likely 
 that he will ever have that place in the future 
 which is claimed for him by his English ad- 
 mirers or even by the more cautious indorse- 
 ment of Mr. Stedman; for, setting aside all 
 other grounds of criticism, he has phrase, but 
 not form — and without form there is no im- 
 mortality. 
 
LANIER 
 
 Emerson said of Shelley — quite unjustly, 
 to my thinking — that although uniformly a 
 poetic mind, he was never a poet. As to all 
 the Southern poets of the United States ex- 
 cept Lanier, even as to Hayne and Pinkney, 
 the question still remains whether they got 
 actually beyond the poetic mind. In Lanier's 
 case alone was the artistic work so continuous 
 and systematic, subject to such self-imposed 
 laws and tried by so high a standard, as to 
 make it safe, in spite of his premature death, 
 to place him among those whom we may with- 
 out hesitation treat as " master-singers." Even 
 among these, of course, there are grades ; but 
 as Lowell once said of Thoreau, " To be a mas- 
 ter is to be a master." 
 
 With Lanier, music and poetry were in the 
 blood. We in America are beginning to study 
 "heredity" with renewed interest, not in the 
 narrow way in which pedigrees are studied in 
 England, but with reference to the inheritance 
 of brains and high qualities. It is a satisfac- 
 tion to know that Sidney Lanier had an an- 
 
86 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 cestor, Jerome, who was probably a musical 
 composer at the court of Queen Elizabeth; 
 and that Nicholas, the son of this Jerome, was 
 director of music for James I. and Charles I., 
 and was a friend of Van Dyck, who painted his 
 portrait. Still another Nicholas Lanier was the 
 first presiding officer of the Society of Musi- 
 cians, incorporated at the restoration of Charles 
 II., and four other Laniers were among the 
 corporate members of this society. A Sir John 
 Lanier fought at the Battle of the Boyne and 
 fell at Steinkirk. These facts are brought to- 
 gether by the Rev. W. H. Ward, in his life of 
 Sidney Lanier ; and he also assures us that the 
 progenitor of the American branch of the fam- 
 ily, Thomas Lanier, came to this country in 
 1 716 — not very long since, as American pedi- 
 grees go, — and that he settled with other im- 
 migrants on a grant ten miles square, including 
 the site of the present city of Richmond, Va. 
 The father of the poet was Robert S. Lanier, 
 a lawyer who was still living in 1884, at Macon, 
 Ga. His mother was Mary (Anderson) Lanier, 
 a Virginian of Scotch descent. The poet was 
 bom at Macon February 3, 1842, and died at 
 Lynn, N. C, September 7, 1881. 
 
 In addition to the musical tradition, prevail- 
 ing in the Lanier family, he is said to have had 
 kindred inheritances on the " spindle side." 
 
LANIER 87 
 
 Music was at any rate his first passion. As a 
 boy he taught himself to play the flute, organ, 
 piano, violin, guitar, and banjo; the first-named 
 instrument being always his favorite, or, per- 
 haps, that of his father, who " feared for him 
 the powerful fascination of the violin." But 
 his parents rather dreaded this absorption in 
 music, apparently thinking with Dr. Johnson 
 that musicians were "amusing vagabonds." 
 The same thought caused a struggle in the 
 boy's own mind, for he wrote at eighteen that 
 though he was conscious of having "an extraor- 
 dinary musical talent," yet music seemed to 
 him " so small a business in comparison with 
 other things " which he might do that he wished 
 to forsake the art. It appears from the same 
 note-book that he already felt himself called to 
 a literary career. He was at this time a stu- 
 dent at Oglethorpe College, a Presb)rterian in- 
 stitution, now extinct, near Midway, Ga. Here 
 he graduated at eighteen, with the first honors 
 of his class, although he had lost a year during 
 which he was a clerk in the post-ofiice at 
 Macon. At Oglethorpe College he came under 
 the influence of Professor James Woodrow, to 
 whom he always expressed great obligations. 
 Lanier became a tutor in the college on gradu- 
 ating, but left his post to enlist as a private in 
 the Confederate army. 
 
88 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 He enlisted in the Macon Volunteers of the 
 Second Georgia Battalion, the first military 
 force which left Georgia for the seat of war. 
 He remained in the service during the whole 
 war, and, though three times offered promo- 
 tion, would never accept it, from a desire to re- 
 main near his younger brother, who was in the 
 same regiment. He was in the battle of Seven 
 Pines, that of Drewry's Bluffs, and the seven 
 days of fighting about Richmond, Va., includ- 
 ing Malvern Hill. After this campaign he was 
 transferred with his brother to the signal ser- 
 vice, because, as envious companions said, he 
 could play the flute. In 1863 his detachment 
 was mounted ; and later, each of the two bro- 
 thers was detailed to take charge of a ves- 
 sel which was to run the blockade. Sidney 
 was captured and spent five months as a pris- 
 oner at Point Lookout, having concealed his 
 flute in his sleeve and keeping it always as a 
 companion. He describes this period in his 
 story, " Tiger Lilies ; " and it was almost at 
 the end of the war that he was exchanged. 
 This event took place in February, 1865 ; and 
 he returned home on foot, having only his flute 
 and the twenty-dollar gold piece which had not 
 been taken from him when his pockets were 
 searched, on his capture. He reached home 
 March 15, and was dangerously ill for six 
 
LANIER 89 
 
 weeks, during which his mother died of the 
 pulmonary disease which he had plainly inher- 
 ited. 
 
 For nearly eighteen months he filled a clerk- 
 ship at Montgomery, Ala., and soon after vis- 
 ited New York to publish his novel, " Tiger 
 Lilies," which had been written in three weeks 
 during April, 1867. It is an extravagant and 
 high-flown book, and with something of the 
 exuberance of color that its name implies. In 
 September of that year he took charge of an 
 academy at Prattville, Ala., and was married 
 in December to Miss Mary Day of Macon, Ga. 
 His disease soon developed ; he gave up his 
 school and went to Macon, studying law with 
 his father, and even practicing; going to New 
 York for treatment, to Texas for health, but 
 always with declining strength and increased 
 longings for a literary career. 
 
 At last, in December, 1873, he took up his 
 abode in Baltimore, having made an engage- 
 ment as first flute for the Peabody Symphony 
 Concerts. Here he resided for the rest of his 
 life, engaged always in a threefold struggle, for 
 health, for bread, and for a literary career. To 
 his father, who kept open for him a place in 
 the law oiifice at Macon, he wrote (November 
 29, 1873) that, first, his chance for life was ten 
 times greater at Baltimore; that, secondly, he 
 
90 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 could not consent to be a third-rate struggling 
 lawyer for the rest of his life ; and that in the 
 third place, he had been assured by good judges 
 that he was "the greatest flute player in the 
 world," and had also every encouragement for 
 success in literature. As a result he stayed, 
 breaking down at short intervals, but playing 
 in the orchestra winter after winter, — writing, 
 lecturing, teaching. From time to time he 
 sought health in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, 
 North Carolina, or Virginia. He studied labo- 
 riously, as his books bear witness ; and he cor- 
 responded largely with Bayard Taylor, always 
 friendly to unappreciated genius. In Taylor's 
 " Memoirs " some of these letters are included. 
 No passage in them tells so much of Lanier's 
 earlier life as this extract, written August 7, 
 1875: — 
 
 " I could never describe to you what a mere 
 drought and famine my life has been, as regards 
 that multitude of matters which I fancy one 
 absorbs when one is in conversational relation 
 with men of letters, with travelers, with per- 
 sons who have either seen or written or done 
 large things. Perhaps you know that with us 
 of the younger generation in the South since 
 the war, pretty much the whole of life has been 
 merely not dying." (Memorial by W. H. Ward, 
 jcxiv.) 
 
LANIER 91 
 
 Thus far I have followed mainly the lines in- 
 dicated by Mr. Ward, his biographer. From this 
 time forth Lanier's life can be traced from book 
 to book. His early novel seems to have fallen 
 dead, like the early novels of most people. Be- 
 fore this time he had published a few poems in 
 Southern newspapers, and then in the " Round 
 Table " (New York) ; but the iirst thing that 
 brought public attention to him was a poem on 
 " Corn " in " Lippincott's Magazine " for Febru- 
 ary, 1875. After this he printed many poems, 
 there and elsewhere ; published a volume on 
 Florida (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1876) ; and a 
 thin volume of collected poems (same publishers, 
 1877). There are less than a hundred pages of 
 this little venture, and but ten separate poems, 
 yet they strike the whole range of his ambition, 
 his sensitiveness, his dream of elaborate musi- 
 cal construction, — the longest is, indeed, called 
 "A Symphony," — and his peculiar effects of 
 rhythm. They are daring, impetuous, bristling 
 with strophe and antistrophe, with dramatic 
 appeal and response, but always single-minded, 
 noble, pure. Even where the effect is merely 
 startling and scintillating, lighted by Roman 
 candles instead of electric lights, there is still a 
 signal purity in the illumination, and even if the 
 flame goes out, no bad odor is left behind. 
 
 But it was not enough for him to write poetry ; 
 
92 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 he must give to the world his methods and his 
 principles. He had theories of poetic art, and 
 it was these theories, more than any personal 
 celebrity, which he desired the world to accept. 
 In a fine letter to his wife he writes, "It is 
 of little consequence whether / fail ; the / in 
 the matter is a small business. ' Que mon nom 
 soit fl^tri, que la France soit litre,' quoth Dan- 
 ton." (Ward's Memorial, xxiii.) To keep the 
 wolf from the door, he compiled "The Boy's 
 Froissart" (1878), "The Boy's King Arthur" 
 {1880), "The Boy's Mabinogion" (1881), and 
 "The Boy's Percy" (1882), — all published by 
 Scribners' Sons in New York, and all excellent 
 bits of work, done with enthusiasm. 
 
 He did in these for the mediaeval and later 
 legends what Hawthorne and others had done 
 for the Greek mythology ; and many a child 
 owes to him all that he knows of these delight- 
 ful sources of romance. But it was into his 
 "Science of English Verse" that he was to 
 pour his whole enthusiasm, and it was this, in 
 connection with his own poems, that was to 
 prove his monument. How large its circulation 
 has been, I do not know ; but the condition of 
 the copy before me — belonging to Harvard 
 College Library — is a sufficient proof that it 
 has had and still holds a powerful attraction for 
 young students. By the record of dates at the 
 
LANIER 93 
 
 end of the copy, I find that it was taken out 
 once in 1880, five times in 1881, twice in 1882, 
 four times in 1883, seven times in 1884, six 
 times in 1885, and nineteen times in 1886, be- 
 ing afterwards put upon the list of books to be 
 kept only a fortnight, and being out, the libra- 
 rian tells me, literally all the time. Any author 
 might be proud to find his book so appreciated 
 by students six years after its first appearance. 
 This is no place for analyzing its theory, even 
 were my technical knowledge of music sufficient 
 to do it justice. To me it seems ingenious, 
 suggestive, and overstrained, but it is easy to 
 believe that to one who takes it on that middle 
 ground where Lanier dwelt, halfway between 
 verse and music, it might seem conclusive and 
 even become a text-book in art. 
 
 Most of us associate its fundamental proposi- 
 tion with the poet Coleridge, who in his " Chris- 
 tabel " announced it as a new principle in Eng- 
 lish verse that one should count by accents, not 
 by syllables. This bold assertion, which at once 
 made the transition from the measured strains 
 of Dryden and Pope to the free modern rhythm, 
 was true in the sense in which Coleridge prob- 
 ably meant it ; nor does it seem likely that Cole- 
 ridge overlooked what Lanier points out, — that 
 all our nursery rhymes and folk songs are writ- 
 ten on the same principle. But waiving this 
 
94 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 criticism on Coleridge, there is certainly no- 
 thing more interesting in Lanier's book than 
 when he shows that, just as a Southern negro 
 will improvise on the banjo daring variations, 
 such as would, if Haydn employed them, be 
 called high art, so Shakespeare often employed 
 the simplest devices of sound such as are fa- 
 miliar in nursery songs, and thus produced 
 effects which are lyrically indistinguishable 
 from those of Mother Goose. (Science, etc., 
 p. 190.) 
 
 But Lanier would have been only hindered, 
 rather than helped, by his attempts at a science 
 of verse, had he written his own poetry upon a 
 theory alone. In that case there might have 
 been applied to him Thoreau's incidental epitaph 
 on certain writers, "Thus do poets go down 
 stream and drift into science and prose." But 
 Lanier, too true a poet to do this, saves himself 
 on his last page in a brief chapter entitled " On 
 the Educated Love of Beauty as the Artist's 
 only Law." Here he tersely explains that all 
 his previous propositions are hints only, and not 
 laws. " For the artist in verse there is no law ; 
 the perception and love of beauty constitute the 
 whole outfit ; and what is herein set forth is to 
 be taken merely as enlarging that perception 
 and exalting that love. In all cases the appeal 
 is, the ear ; but the ear should for that purpose 
 
LANIER 95 
 
 be educated up to the highest possible plane of 
 culture." 
 
 When we turn from Lanier's theory to his 
 practice we find this perpetual appeal to the ear, 
 and see that the application of his own theory 
 is implicit rather than explicit. But we must 
 read his poetry also in the light of his last prose 
 book, entitled "The English Novel, and the 
 Principle of its Development." This book is 
 made up of lectures given before the Johns 
 Hopkins University at Baltimore, and was never 
 revised by himself ; but the editor, in his prefa- 
 tory note, states that this work and its prede- 
 cessor formed really but successive " parts of 
 a comprehensive philosophy of formal and sub- 
 stantial beauty in literature ; " and as the first 
 book dealt with the forms of poetic execution, 
 so this takes up the substantials, — the selec- 
 tion of themes, treatment of accessories, and 
 the like, — and gives us admirable incidental 
 criticism of various authors. 
 
 Lanier was a critic of the best kind, for his 
 criticism is such as a sculptor receives from a 
 brother sculptor, not such as he gets from the 
 purchaser on one side or the marble worker on 
 the other. It is admirable, for instance, when 
 he says of Swinburne, " He invited me to eat ; 
 the service was silver and gold, but no food 
 therein save pepper and salt ; " or of William 
 
96 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 Morris, " He caught a crystal cupful of yellow 
 light of sunset, and persuading himself to deem 
 it wine, drank it with a sort of smile." But 
 the best and fullest of these criticisms are those 
 made on Whitman. 
 
 Whitman represented to Lanier a literary 
 spirit alien to his own. There could be little 
 in common between the fleshliness of " Leaves 
 of Grass " and the refined chivalry that could 
 write in "The Symphony" lines like these : — 
 
 " Shall ne'er prevail the woman's plea, 
 We maids would far, far whiter be. 
 If that our eyes might sometimes see 
 Men maids in purity ? " 
 
 A man who, with pulmonary disease upon him, 
 could still keep in his saddle as a soldier, could 
 feel but little sympathy with one who, with 
 a superb physique, elected to serve in hospi- 
 tal — honorable though that service might be 
 for the feeble-bodied. One who viewed poetic 
 structure as a matter of art could hardly sym- 
 pathize with what he would regard as mere 
 recitative ; and one who chose his material 
 and treatment with touch and discrimination, 
 could make no terms with one who was, as he 
 said, "poetry's butcher," and offered as food 
 only " huge raw collops cut from the rump of 
 poetry, and never mind gristle." (Memoir, 
 xxxviii.) But it was Whitman's standard of 
 
LANIER ^j 
 
 what he called " democracy " that troubled La- 
 nier most. " As near as I can make it out," 
 he writes, "Whitman's argument seems to be 
 that, because a prairie is wide, therefore de- 
 bauchery is admirable, and because the Missis- 
 sippi is long, therefore every American is 
 God." Whitman uniformly speaks of modern 
 poetry, he says, with the contempt which he 
 everywhere affects for the dandy. But what 
 age of time ever yielded such a dandy as the 
 founder of this school.'' (The English Novel, 
 pp. 59, 60.) Then he explains himself by show- 
 ing the attitudinizing and self-consciousness of 
 Whitman's style, "everywhere posing to see 
 if it cannot assume a naive and thinking atti- 
 tude, everywhere screwing up its eyes, not into 
 an eyeglass, like the conventional dandy, but 
 into an expression supposed to be rough and bar- 
 baric and frightful to the general reader. . . . 
 It is the extreme of sophistication in writing." 
 (p. 61.) Elsewhere again he takes up Whit- 
 man's rejoicing in America because " here are 
 the roughs, beards, . . . combativeness, and 
 the like," and shows indignantly how foreign 
 this all is to the conception of the founders of 
 the nation, — Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, 
 and the like. And he declares — this man of 
 delicate fibre, who had fought through four 
 years of wasting war — that he finds "more 
 
98 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 true manfulness " in the life of many an un- 
 selfish invalid woman than in "an aeon of 
 muscle-growth and sinew-breeding." He ends 
 with this fine aphorism, — "A republic is 
 the government of the spirit ; a republic de- 
 pends upon the self-control of each member; 
 you cannot make a republic out of muscles and 
 prairies and rocky mountains ; republics are 
 made of the spirit." (The English Novel, p. 
 
 5S-) 
 
 I have followed out this line of thought 
 about Whitman, not merely because it seems 
 to me fine and true, but because it draws 
 Lanier into sharper expression and more char- 
 acteristic statement than are to be found any- 
 where else in his works. That he could criti- 
 cise profoundly one much nearer to himself 
 than Whitman is plain when he comes to speak 
 of Shelley, of whom he has a sentence that 
 iseems to me, coming fresh from Dowden's ex- 
 haustive memoir of that rare spirit, another 
 shot in the bull's-eye of the target. He says : — 
 
 "In truth, Shelley appears always to have 
 labored under an essential immaturity; it is 
 very possible that if he had lived a hundred 
 years he would never have become a man ; he 
 was penetrated with modern ideas, but pene- 
 trated as a boy would be, crudely, overmuch, 
 and with a constant tendency to the extrava- 
 
LANIER 99 
 
 gant and illogical, — so that I call him the 
 Modern Boy." (The English Novel, p. 99.) 
 Again, much of the book is given to a discus- 
 sion of George Eliot, in whom he finds the 
 best type of the recent novelist. He stops 
 short of the later realism which proclaims its 
 own merits with such honest frankness ; and 
 his real plan is to trace " the growth of human 
 personality " from ^schylus through Plato and 
 Aristotle, then down through the Renaissance, 
 Shakespeare, Richardson, and Fielding, to Dick- 
 ens and George Eliot. There he stops, but 
 the book is full of suggestion, freshness, life, 
 and manliness. 
 
 It remains to be said that in Lanier's poetry 
 we find the working out of these ideas, but in 
 the free faith which he held. There is uni- 
 formly a wonderful beat and cadence to them, 
 — a line of a dozen syllables mating with a line 
 of a single syllable in as satisfactory a move- 
 ment as can be found in his favorite Mother 
 Goose or in the " patting Juba " of a planta- 
 tion singer. The volume of his poetry is less 
 than that of Hayne, but its wealth and depth 
 is greater. Having spent so much of his life 
 in playing the flute in an orchestra, he has also 
 an ear for the distribution of instruments, and 
 this gives him a desire for the antiphonal, for 
 introducing an answer or echo or compensating 
 
100 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 note. In the poem that most arrested atten- 
 tion, — the "Cantata" at the opening of the 
 Philadelphia Exposition, — this characteristic 
 was so developed as to give an effect of exag- 
 geration and almost of grotesqueness, which 
 was, however, so relieved by the music that the 
 impression soon passed away. But in his de- 
 scription of sunrise in the first of his hymns 
 of the marshes he puts not merely such a 
 wealth of outdoor observation as makes even 
 Thoreau seem thin and arid, but combines with 
 it a roll and range of rhythm such as Lowell's 
 " Commemoration Ode " cannot equal, and only 
 some of Browning's early ocean cadences can 
 surpass. There are inequalities in the poem, 
 little spasmodic phrases here and there, or 
 fancies pressed too hard, — he wrote it, poor 
 fellow, when far gone in his last illness, with 
 his pulse at one hundred and four degrees, and 
 when unable to raise his food to his mouth, — 
 but the same is true of Keats's great frag- 
 ments, and there are lines and phrases of La- 
 nier's that are not excelled in "Endymion," 
 and perhaps not in " Hyperion." 
 
 It was a piece of good fortune for his fame — 
 or rather, perhaps, a service won by his own high 
 merits — that Lanier secured a biographer and 
 editor so admirably equipped as Mr. W. H.Ward. 
 All that Lanier did, afforded merely a glimpse 
 
LANIER loi 
 
 of what he might have done, had health and 
 time been given him, but these were not given, 
 and his literary monument remains unfinished. 
 He died of consumption at Baltimore, at the 
 age of thirty-nine, September 7, 1881, leaving 
 a wife and four boys. His work will long live 
 as that of the Sir Galahad among our Ameri- 
 can poets. 
 
AN EVENING WITH MRS. HAW- 
 THORNE 
 
 The news of Mrs. Hawthorne's death re- 
 minded me of a happy evening spent beneath 
 the roof of that most gracious and lovable 
 woman, at a time when for me to visit Haw- 
 thorne's house was to make a pilgrimage to a 
 shrine. I will not dwell on the more private 
 and personal interests of the occasion, but I re- 
 member that in approaching the house I thought 
 of Keats' s fine description of his visit to the 
 home of Burns, when he "felt as if he were 
 going to a tournament." 
 
 Beginning with some such emotion, I felt 
 very rich that evening when Mrs. Hawthorne 
 put into my hand several volumes of those 
 diaries which carry us so near the heart of this 
 great writer. As I reverently opened one, it 
 seemed a singular Sortes Virgiliance that my 
 eye should first fall upon this passage , " I am 
 more an Abolitionist in feeling than in princi- 
 ple." It was in a description of some festival 
 day in Maine, when Hawthorne's keen eye had 
 noted the neat looks and courteous demeanor 
 
AN EVENING WITH MRS. HAWTHORNE 103 
 
 of a party of colored people. It removed at 
 once the slight barrier by which the suspicious 
 conscience of a reformer had seemed to sepa- 
 rate me from him. I had seen him but twice, 
 — remotely, as ♦a boy looks at a celebrated 
 man, — but it had always been painful to me 
 that he, alone among the prominent literary 
 men of New England, should be persistently 
 arrayed on what seemed to me the wrong side. 
 From that moment I convinced myself that 
 his heart was really on our side, and that only 
 the influence of his early friend Pierce had led 
 him to different political conclusions. 
 
 Then, I remember, Mrs. Hawthorne asked 
 her younger daughter to sing to us ; and she 
 sang dreamy and thoughtful songs, such as 
 " Consider the Lilies," and Tennyson's " Break, 
 break, break," and "Too Late." "It is not 
 singing, it is eloquence," said afterwards the 
 proud and loving mother, from whose own 
 thrilling and sympathetic voice the eloquence 
 seemed well inherited. Mrs. Hawthorne had 
 always seemed to dwell in an ideal world, 
 through her own poetic nature as well as 
 through her husband's. I watched her as she 
 sat on her low chair by the fire, while the 
 music lasted ; her hair was white, her cheeks 
 pallid, and her eyes full of tender and tremu- 
 lous light. To have been the object of Haw- 
 
104 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 thorne's love imparted an immortal charm and 
 sacredness to a life that, even without that 
 added association, would have had an undying 
 grace of its own. She having thus lived and 
 loved, gelebt und geliebet, it seemed as if her 
 existence never could become more spiritual or 
 unworldly than it already was. 
 
 After her children had left us for the night, 
 we sat and talked together ; or rather I ques- 
 tioned and she answered, telling me of her 
 husband's home life and also of his intercourse 
 with strangers ; saying, what touched but did 
 not surprise me, that men who had committed 
 great crimes or whose memories held tragic 
 secrets would sometimes write to him, or would 
 even come great distances to see him, and unbur- 
 den their souls. This was after the publication 
 of the " Scarlet Letter," which made them re- 
 gard him as the father-confessor for all hidden 
 sins. And that which impressed me most, after 
 all, was her description of the first reading of 
 that masterpiece. For this I have not to rely 
 on memory alone, because I wrote it down, just 
 afterwards, in my chamber, — a room beneath 
 Hawthorne's study, in the tower which he had 
 added to the house. 
 
 She said that it was not her husband's 
 custom to sit with her while he wrote, or to 
 tell her about any literary work till it was 
 
AN EVENING WITH MRS. HAWTHORNE 105 
 
 finished, but that then he was always impatient 
 to read it to her. In writing the " Wonder- 
 Book," to be sure, he liked to read his day's 
 work to the children in the evening, by way 
 of test. She added that while thus occupied 
 with that particular book, he was in high spirits ; 
 and this, as I knew, meant a good deal, for his 
 daughter had once told me that he was capable 
 of being the very gayest person she ever saw, 
 ' and that " there never was such a playmate in 
 all the world." 
 
 But during the whole winter when the "Scar- 
 let Letter " was being written he seemed de- 
 pressed and anxious. " There was a knot in 
 his forehead all the time," Mrs. Hawthorne 
 said, but she thought it was from some pecun- 
 iary anxiety, such as sometimes affected that 
 small household. One evening he came to her 
 and said that he had written something which 
 he wished to read aloud; it was worth very 
 little, but as it was finished, he might as well read 
 it. He read aloud all that evening ; but as the 
 romance was left unfinished when they went to 
 bed, not a word was said about it on either side. 
 He always disliked, she said, to have anything 
 criticised until the whole had been heard. He 
 read a second evening, and the concentrated 
 excitement had grown so great that she could 
 scarcely bear it. At last it grew unendurable ; 
 
io6 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 and in the midst of the scene, near the end 
 of the book, where Arthur Dimmesdale meets 
 Hester and her child in the forest, Mrs. Haw- 
 thorne sank from her low stool upon the floor, 
 pressed her hands upon her ears, and said that 
 she could hear no more. 
 
 Hawthorne put down the manuscript and 
 looked at her in perfect amazement. " Do you 
 really feel it so much ?" he said. "Then there 
 must be something in it." He prevailed on 
 her to rise and to hear the few remaining 
 chapters of the romance. 
 
 To those who knew Mrs. Hawthorne's im- 
 pressible nature, this reminiscence of hers will 
 have no tinge of exaggeration, but will appear 
 very characteristic, — she had borne to the 
 utmost the strain upon her emotions, before 
 yielding. The next day, she said, the manu- 
 script was delivered to Mr. Fields ; on the fol- 
 lowing morning he appeared early at the door, 
 and when admitted, caught up her boy in his 
 arms, saying, " You splendid little fellow, do 
 you know what a father you have > " Then he 
 ran upstairs to Hawthorne's study, telling her, 
 as he went, that he (and I think Mr. Whipple) 
 had sat up all night to read it, and had come 
 to Salem as early as possible in the morning. 
 She did not go upstairs, but soon her husband 
 came down, with fire in his eyes, and walked 
 about the room, a different man. 
 
AN EVENING WITH MRS. HAWTHORNE 107 
 
 I have hesitated whether to print this brief 
 
 narrative ; and yet everything which illustrates 
 
 the creation of a great literary work belongs to 
 
 the world. How it would delight us all, if the 
 
 Shakespeare societies were to bring to light a 
 
 description like this of the very first reading 
 
 of " Macbeth " or of " Hamlet " ! To me it is 
 
 somewhat the same thing to have got so near 
 
 to the birth-hour of the " Scarlet Letter. " So 
 
 I felt, at least, that evening ; and she who had 
 
 first heard those wondrous pages was there 
 
 before me, still sitting on the same low chair 
 
 whence she had slipped to the floor, with her 
 
 hands over her ears, just as the magician had 
 
 wrought his spell to its climax. Now his voice 
 
 and hers, each so tender and deep and with the 
 
 modulation of some rare instrument, have alike 
 
 grown silent, only to blend elsewhere, let us 
 
 hope, in some loftier symphony. 
 
 " Now long that instrument has ceased to sound, 
 Now long that gracious form in earth hath lain, 
 Tended by nature only, and unwound 
 Are all those mingled threads of love and pain ; 
 So let us weep, and bend 
 Our heads, and wait the end, 
 Knowing that God creates not thus in vaiu." 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD 
 
 To those of us who were by twenty years or 
 more the juniors of Mrs. Child, she always pre- 
 sented herself rather as an object of love than of 
 cool criticism, even if we had rarely met her face 
 to face. In our earliest recollections she came 
 before us less as author or philanthropist than 
 as some kindly and omnipresent aunt, beloved 
 forever by the heart of childhood, — some one 
 gifted with all lore, and furnished with un- 
 fathomable resources, — some one discoursing 
 equal delight to all members of the household. 
 In those days she seemed to supply a sufficient 
 literature for any family through her own 
 unaided pen. Thence came novels for the 
 parlor, cookery books for the kitchen, and the 
 "Juvenile Miscellany" for the nursery. In 
 later years the intellectual provision still con- 
 tinued. We learned, from her anti-slavery 
 writings, where to find our duties; from her 
 " Letters from New York, " where to seek our 
 highest pleasures ; while her " Progress of Re- 
 ligious Ideas " introduced us to those profounder 
 truths on which pleasures and duties alike rest. 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD 109 
 
 It is needless to debate whether she did the 
 greatest or most permanent work in any especial 
 department of literature, since she did pioneer 
 work in so many. She showed memorable in- 
 dependence in repeatedly leaving beaten paths 
 to strike out for herself new literary directions, 
 and combined the authorship of more than 
 thirty books and pamphlets with a singular de- 
 votion both to public and private philanthropies, 
 and with almost too exacting a faithfulness to 
 the humblest domestic duties. 
 
 Lydia Maria Francis was born at Medford, 
 Mass., February 11, 1802. Her ancestor, 
 Richard Francis, came from England in 1636, 
 and settled in Cambridge, where his tombstone 
 may still be seen in the burial-ground. Her 
 paternal grandfather, a weaver by trade, was in 
 the Concord fight, and is said to have killed 
 five of the enemy. Her father, Convers Fran- 
 cis, was a baker, first in West Cambridge, then 
 in Medford, where he first introduced the article 
 of food still known as " Medford crackers." He 
 was a man of strong character and great indus- 
 try. Though without much cultivation, he had 
 uncommon love of reading ; and his anti-slavery 
 convictions were peculiarly zealous, and must 
 have influenced his children's later career. He 
 married Susannah Rand, of whom it is only 
 recorded that " she had a simple, loving heart, 
 and a spirit busy in doing good." 
 
no CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 They had six children, of whom Lydia Maria 
 was the youngest, and Convers the next in age. 
 Convers Francis was afterwards eminent among 
 the most advanced thinkers and scholars of the 
 Unitarian body, at a time when it probably sur- 
 passed all other American denominations in the 
 intellectual culture of its clergy. He had less 
 ideality than his sister, less enthusiasm, and far 
 less moral courage; yet he surpassed most of 
 his profession in all these traits. He was 
 Theodore Parker's first scholarly friend, and 
 directed his studies in preparation for the 
 theological school. Long after, Mr. Parker 
 used still to head certain pages of his journal, 
 " Questions to ask Dr. Francis. " The modest 
 "study" at Watertown was a favorite head- 
 quarters of what were called "the transcen- 
 dentalists " of those days. Emerson, Margaret 
 Fuller, Ripley, and the rest came often thither, 
 in the days when the "Dial" was just eman- 
 cipating American thought from old-world tra- 
 ditions. Afterwards, when Dr. Francis was 
 appointed to the rather responsible and con- 
 servative post of professor in the Harvard The- 
 ological School, he still remained faithful to 
 the spirit of earlier days, never repressing free 
 inquiry, but always rejoicing to encourage it. 
 He was a man of rare attainments in a vari- 
 ety of directions ; and though his great read- 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD in 
 
 ing gave a desultory habit to his mind, and his 
 thinking was not quite in proportion to his 
 receptive power, he still was a most valuable 
 instructor, as he was a most delightful friend. 
 In face and figure he resembled the pictures of 
 Martin Luther, and his habits and ways always 
 seemed like those of some genial German pro- 
 fessor. With the utmost frugality in other re- 
 spects, he spent money profusely on books, and 
 his library — part of which he bequeathed to 
 Harvard College — was to me the most attractive 
 I had ever seen ; more so than even Theodore 
 Parker's. 
 
 His sister had, undoubtedly, the superior 
 mind of the two ; but he who influenced others 
 so much must have influenced her still more. 
 " A dear good sister has she been to me ; 
 would that I had been half as good a bro- 
 ther to her." This he wrote, in self-depre- 
 ciation, long after. While he was fitting for 
 college, a process which took but one year, 
 she was his favorite companion, though more 
 than six years younger. They read together, 
 and she was constantly bringing him Milton 
 and Shakespeare to explain. He sometimes 
 mystified her, — as brothers will, in dealing 
 with maidens nine years old, — and once told 
 her that "the raven down of darkness," which 
 was made to smile, was but the fur of a black 
 
112 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 cat that sparkled when stroked ; though it still 
 perplexed her small brain why fur should be 
 called down. 
 
 Their earliest teacher was a maiden lady, 
 named Elizabeth Francis, — but not a relative, 
 — and known universally as "Ma'am Betty." 
 She is described as " a spinster of supernatural 
 shyness, the never-forgotten calamity of whose 
 life was that Dr. Brooks once saw her drinking 
 water from the nose of her tea-kettle." She 
 kept school in her bedroom, — it was never 
 tidy, and she chewed a great deal of tobacco ; 
 but the children were fond of her, and always 
 carried her a Sunday dinner. Such simple 
 kindnesses went forth often from that thrifty 
 home. Mrs. Child once told me that always 
 on the night before Thanksgiving, all the hum- 
 ble friends of the household — " Ma'am Betty," 
 the washerwoman, the berry-woman, the wood- 
 sawyer, the journeymen-bakers, and so on — 
 some twenty or thirty in all, were summoned to a 
 preliminary entertainment. They here partook 
 of an immense chicken-pie, pumpkin-pies (made 
 in milk-pans), and heaps of doughnuts. They 
 feasted in the large old-fashioned kitchen, and 
 went away loaded with crackers and bread by 
 the father, and with pies by the mother, not 
 forgetting "turnovers" for their children. 
 Such homely applications of the doctrine " It is 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD 113 
 
 more blessed to give than to receive " may have 
 done more to mould the Lydia Maria Child of 
 maturer years than all the faithful labors of 
 good Dr. Osgood, to whom she and her brother 
 used to repeat the Westminster Assembly's 
 Catechism once a month. 
 
 Apart from her brother's companionship, the 
 young girl had, as was then usual, a very subordi- 
 nate share of educational opportunities ; attend- 
 ing only the public schools, with one year at the 
 private seminary of Miss Swan, in Medford. 
 Her mother died in 18 14, after which the fam- 
 ily removed for a time to Maine. In 18 19 Con- 
 vers Francis was ordained over the First Parish 
 in Watertown, and there occurred in his study, 
 in 1824, an incident which was to determine the 
 whole life of his sister. 
 
 Dr. J. G. Palfrey had written in the " North 
 American Review" for April, 1821, a review 
 of the now forgotten poem of " Yamoyden," in 
 which he had ably pointed out the use that might 
 be made of early American history for the pur- 
 poses of fictitious writing. Miss Francis read 
 this article, at her brother's house, one summer 
 Sunday noon. Before attending the afternoon 
 service, she wrote the first chapter of a novel. 
 It was soon finished, and was published that 
 year, — a thin volume of two hundred pages, 
 without her name, under the title of " Hobo- 
 
114 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 mok: a Tale of Early Times. By an Ameri- 
 can." 
 
 In judging of this little book, it is to be re- 
 membered that it marked the very dawn of 
 American imaginative literature. Irving had 
 printed only his " Sketch Book ; " Cooper only 
 " Precaution." This new production was the 
 hasty work of a young woman of nineteen — 
 an Indian tale by one who had scarcely even 
 seen an Indian. Accordingly, " Hobomok " 
 now seems very crude in execution, very 
 improbable in plot ; and is redeemed only 
 by a certain earnestness which carries^ the 
 reader along, and by a sincere attempt after 
 local coloring. It is an Indian " Enoch Arden," 
 with important modifications, which unfortu- 
 nately all tend away from probability. Instead 
 of the original lover who heroically yields his 
 place, it is to him that the place is given up. 
 The hero of this self-sacrifice is an Indian, a 
 man of high and noble character, whose wife 
 the heroine had consented to become, at a time 
 when she had been almost stunned with the 
 false tidings of her lover's death. The least 
 artistic things in the book are these sudden 
 nuptials, and the equally sudden resolution of 
 Hobomok to abandon his wife and child on the 
 reappearance of the original betrothed. As 
 the first work whose scene was laid in Puritan 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD iij 
 
 days, " Hobomok " will always have a historic 
 interest, but it must be read in very early 
 youth to give it any other attraction. 
 
 The success of this first effort was at any 
 rate such as to encourage the publication of a 
 second tale in the following year. This was 
 " The Rebels ; or, Boston before the Revolution. 
 By the author of ' Hobomok.' " It was a great 
 advance on its predecessor, with more vigor, 
 more variety, more picturesque grouping, and 
 more animation of style. The historical point 
 was well chosen, and the series of public and 
 private events well combined, with something 
 of that tendency to the over-tragic which is 
 common with young authors, — it is so much 
 easier to kill off superfluous characters than to 
 do anything else with them. It compared not 
 unfavorably with Cooper's revolutionary novels, 
 and had in one respect a remarkable success. 
 It contained an imaginary sermon by White- 
 field and an imaginary speech by James Otis. 
 Both of these were soon transplanted into 
 " School Readers " and books of declamation, 
 and the latter, at least, soon passed for a piece 
 of genuine revolutionary eloquence. I remem- 
 ber learning it by heart, under that impression; 
 and was really astonished, on recently reading 
 "The Rebels" for the first time, to discover 
 that the high-sounding periods which I had 
 
Il6 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 always attributed to Otis were really to be 
 found in a young lady's romance. 
 
 This book has a motto from Bryant, and is 
 "most respectfully inscribed " to George Tick- 
 nor. The closing paragraph states with some 
 terseness the author's modest anxieties : — 
 
 " Many will complain that I have dwelt too 
 much on political scenes, familiar to every one 
 who reads our history ; and others, on the con- 
 trary, will say that the character of the book is 
 quite too tranquil for its title. I might men- 
 tion many doubts and fears still more impor- 
 tant ; but I prefer silently to trust this humble 
 volume to that futurity which no one can fore- 
 see and every one can read." 
 
 The fears must soon have seemed useless, 
 for the young novelist early became almost a 
 fashionable lion. She was an American Fanny 
 Burney, with rather reduced copies of Burke 
 and Johnson around her. Her personal quali- 
 ties soon cemented some friendships, which 
 lasted her life long, except where her later 
 anti-slavery action interfered. She opened a 
 private school in Watertown, which lasted from 
 1 825, to 1828. She established, in 1827, the 
 "Juvenile Miscellany," that delightful pioneer 
 among children's magazines in America ; and 
 it was continued for eight years. In October, 
 1828, she was married to David Lee Child, a 
 lawyer of Boston. 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD 117 
 
 In those days it seemed to be held necessary 
 for American women to work their passage into 
 literature by first compiling some kind of cook- 
 ery book. They must be perfect in that pre- 
 liminary requisite before they could proceed to 
 advanced standing. It was not quite as in Mar- 
 veil's satire on Holland, " Invent a shovel and 
 be a magistrate," but, as Charlotte Hawes has 
 since written, " First this steak and then that 
 stake." So Mrs. Child published in 1829 her 
 " Frugal Housewife," a book which proved so 
 popular that in 1836 it had reached its twen- 
 tieth edition, and in 1855 its thirty-third. 
 
 The " Frugal Housewife " now lies before 
 me, after a great many years of abstinence from 
 its appetizing pages. The words seem as famil- 
 iar as when we children used to study them 
 beside the kitchen fire, poring over them as if 
 their very descriptions had power to allay an 
 unquenched appetite or prolong the delights 
 of one satiated. There were the animals in 
 the frontispiece, sternly divided by a dissecting 
 knife of printer's ink, into sections whose culi- 
 nary names seemed as complicated as those of 
 surgical science, — chump and spring, sirloin 
 and sperib, — for I faithfully follow the original 
 spelling. There we read with profound acqui- 
 escence that " hard gingerbread is good to have 
 in the family," but demurred at the reason 
 
ii8 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 given, "it keeps so well." It never kept well 
 in ours ! There we all learned that one should 
 be governed in housekeeping by higher consid- 
 erations than mere worldly vanity, knowing 
 that " many people buy the upper part, of the 
 sparerib of pork, thinking it the most genteel ; 
 but the lower part is more sweet and juicy, and 
 there is more meat in proportion to the bone." 
 
 Going beyond mere carnal desires, we read 
 also the wholesome directions " to those who 
 are not ashamed of economy." We were in- 
 formed that " children could early learn to take 
 care of their own clothes," — a responsibility at 
 which we shuddered; and also that it was a 
 good thing for children to gather blackberries, 
 — in which we heartily concurred. There, too, 
 we were taught to pick up twine and paper, to 
 write on the backs of old letters, like paper- 
 sparing Pope, and if we had a dollar a day, 
 which seemed a wild supposition, to live on 
 seventy-five cents. We all read, too, with in- 
 terest, the hints on the polishing of furniture 
 and the education of daughters, and we got 
 our first glimpses of political economy from the 
 " Reasons for Hard Times." So varied and 
 comprehensive was the good sense of the book 
 that it surely would have seemed to our child- 
 ish minds infallible, but for one fatal admission, 
 which through life I have recalled with dismay. 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD ng 
 
 — the assertion, namely, that "economical peo- 
 ple will seldom use preserves." "They are un- 
 healthy, expensive, and useless to those who 
 are well" This was a sumptuary law, against 
 which the soul of youth revolted. 
 
 The wise coimsels thus conveyed in this 
 more-than-cookery book may naturally have led 
 the way to a " Mother's Book," of more direct 
 exhortation. This was published in 1831, and 
 had a great success, reaching its eighth Ameri- 
 can edition in 1845, besides twelve English edi- 
 tions and a German translation. Doubtless it is 
 now out of print, but one may still find at the 
 antiquarian bookstores the " Girl's Own Book," 
 by Mrs. Child, published during the same year. 
 This is a capital manual of indoor games, and 
 is worth owning by any one who has a house- 
 ful of children, or is liable to serve as the Lord 
 of Misrule at Christmas parties. It is illus- 
 trated with vignettes by that wa)nvard child of 
 genius, Francis Graeter, a German, whom Mrs. 
 Child afterwards described in the " Letters from 
 New York." He was a personal friend of hers, 
 and his pencil is also traceable in some of her 
 later books. Indeed, the drollest games which 
 he has delineated in the " Girl's Own Book " 
 are not so amusing as the unintentional comedy 
 of his attempts at a "Ladies' Sewing Circle," 
 which illustrates American life in the " History 
 
I20 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 of Woman." The fair laborers sit about a 
 small round table, with a smirk of mistimed 
 levity on their faces, and one feels an irresisti- 
 ble impulse to insert in their very curly hair- 
 the twisted papers employed in the game of 
 " Genteel lady, always genteel," in the " Girl's 
 Own Book." 
 
 The " History of Woman " appeared in 1832, 
 as one of a series projected by Carter & Hen- 
 dee, of which Mrs. ChUd was to be the editor, 
 but which was interrupted at the fifth volume 
 by the failure of the publishers. She compiled 
 for this the " Biographies of Good Wives," the 
 " Memoirs " of Madame De Stael and Madame 
 Roland, those of Lady Russell and Madame 
 Guion, and the two volumes of "Woman." All 
 these aimed at a popular, not a profound, treat- 
 ment. She was, perhaps, too good a compiler, 
 showing in such work the traits of her bro- 
 ther's mind, and carefully excluding all those 
 airy flights and bold speculations which after- 
 wards seemed her favorite element. The "His- 
 / tory of Woman," for instance, was a mere 
 assemblage of facts, beginning and ending ab- 
 ruptly, and with no glimpse of any leading 
 thought or general philosophy. It was, how- 
 ever, the first American storehouse of informa- 
 tion upon that whole question, and no doubt 
 helped the agitation along. Its author evi- 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD 121 
 
 dently looked with distrust, however, on that 
 rising movement for the equality of the sexes, 
 of which Frances Wright was then the rather 
 formidable leader. 
 
 The " Biographies of Good Wives " reached 
 a fifth edition in the course of time, as did the 
 "History of Woman." I have a vague child- 
 ish recollection of her next book, " The Coro- 
 nal," published in 1833, which was of rather a 
 fugitive description. The same year brought 
 her to one of those bold steps which made suc- 
 cessive eras in her literary life, — the publica- 
 tion of her " Appeal for that Class of Ameri- 
 cans called Africans." 
 
 The name was rather cumbrous, like all at- 
 tempts to include an epigram in the title-page, 
 but the theme and the word " Appeal " were 
 enough. It was under the form of an "Ap- 
 peal " that the colored man, Alexander Walker, 
 had thrown a firebrand into Southern society 
 which had been followed by Nat Turner's insur- 
 rection ; and now a literary lady, amid the culti- 
 vated circles of Boston, dared also to " appeal." 
 Only two years before (1831), Garrison had be- 
 gun the " Liberator," and only two years later 
 (1835), he was dragged through Boston streets, 
 with a rope around his body, by " gentlemen of 
 property and standing," as the newspapers said 
 next day. It was just at the very most dan- 
 
\^Wi^ lILlVlX"l^XV/lX\.i.JLO 
 
 gerous moment of the rising storm that Mrs. 
 Child appealed. 
 
 Miss Martineau in her article, " The Martyr 
 Age in America," — pubhshed in the "London 
 and Westminster Review" in 1839, ^^^^ ^^ o^^ce 
 reprinted in America, — gives by far the most 
 graphic picture yet drawn of that perilous time. 
 She describes Mrs. Child as " a lady of whom 
 society was exceedingly proud before she pub- 
 lished her Appeal, and to whom society has 
 been extremely contemptuous ever since." She 
 adds : " Her works were bought with avidity 
 before, but fell into sudden oblivion as soon as 
 she had done a greater deed than writing any 
 of them." 
 
 It is evident that this result was not unex- 
 pected, for the preface to the book explicitly 
 recognizes the probable dissatisfaction of the 
 public. She says : — 
 
 " I am fully aware of the unpopularity of the 
 task I have undertaken ; but though I expect 
 ridicule and censure, I cannot fear them. A 
 few years hence, the opinion of the world will 
 be a matter in which I have not even the most 
 transient interest ; but this book will be abroad 
 on its mission of humanity long after the hand 
 that wrote it is mingling with the dust. Should 
 it be the means of advancing, even one single 
 hour, the inevitable progress of truth and jus- 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD 12; 
 
 tice, I would not exchange the consciousness 
 for all Rothschild's wealth or Sir Walter's 
 fame." 
 
 These words have in them a genuine ring 
 and the hook is really worthy of them. Ir 
 looking over its pages, after the lapse of man) 
 years, it seems incredible that it should have 
 drawn upon her such hostility. The tone ii 
 calm and strong, the treatment systematic, the 
 points well put, the statements well guarded 
 The successive chapters treat of the histor) 
 of slavery, its comparative aspect in differeni 
 ages and nations, its influence on politics, the 
 profitableness of emancipation, the evils of the 
 colonization scheme, the intellect of negroes, 
 their morals, the feeling against them, and the 
 duties of the community in their behalf. As 
 it was the first anti-slavery work ever printed 
 in America in book form, so I have always 
 thought it the ablest; that is, it covered the 
 whole ground better than any other. I knovs 
 that, on reading it for the first time, nearly ten 
 years after its first appearance, it had more 
 formative influence on my mind in that direc- 
 tion than any other, although of course the elo 
 quence of public meetings was a more exciting 
 stimulus. It never -surprised me to hear thai 
 even Dr. Channing attributed a part of his own 
 anti-slavery awakening to this admirable book. 
 
124 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 He took pains to seek out its author immedi- 
 ately on its appearance, and there is in her bio- 
 graphy an interesting account of their meeting. 
 His own work on slavery did not appear until 
 
 1835- 
 
 Undaunted and perhaps stimulated by oppo- 
 sition, Mrs. Child followed up her self-appointed 
 task. During the next year she published the 
 " Oasis," a sort of anti-slavery annual, the pre- 
 cursor of Mrs. Chapman's " Liberty Bell," of 
 later years. She also published, about this 
 time, an " Anti-Slavery Catechism " and a small 
 book called "Authentic Anecdotes of Ameri- 
 can Slavery." These I have never seen, but 
 find them advertised on the cover of a third 
 pamphlet, which, with them, went to a second 
 edition in 1839. "The Evils of Slavery and 
 the Cure of Slavery ; the first proved by the 
 opinions of Southerners themselves, the last 
 shown by historical evidence." This is a com- 
 pact and sensible little work. 
 
 While thus seemingly absorbed in reforma- 
 tory work, she still kept an outlet in the direc- 
 tion of pure literature, and was employed for 
 several years on " Philothea," which appeared 
 in 1836. The scene of this novel was laid in 
 ancient Greece. I well remember the admira- 
 tion with which this romance was hailed ; and 
 for me personally it was one of those delights 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD 125 
 
 of boyhood which the criticism of maturity can- 
 not disturb. What mattered it if she brought 
 Anaxagoras and Plato on the stage together, 
 whereas in truth the one died about the year 
 when the other was born ? What mattered it 
 if in her book the classic themes were treated 
 in a romantic spirit ? That is the fate of almost 
 all such attempts, — compare, for instance, the 
 choruses of Swinburne's "Atalanta," which 
 might have been written on the banks of the 
 Rhine, and very likely were. But childhood 
 never wishes to discriminate, only to combine ; 
 a period of life which likes to sugar its bread 
 and butter prefers also to have its classic and 
 romantic in one. 
 
 "Philothea" was Mrs. Child's first attempt 
 to return, with her anti-slavery cross still upon 
 her, into the ranks of literature. Mrs. S. J. 
 Hale, who, in her "Woman's Record," re- 
 proves her sister writer for " wasting her soul's 
 wealth" in radicalism, and "doing incalculable 
 injury to humanity," seems to take a stem sat- 
 isfaction in the fact that "the bitter feelings 
 engendered by the strife have prevented the 
 merits of this remarkable book from being ap- 
 preciated as they deserve." This was perhaps 
 true ; nevertheless it went through three edi- 
 tions, and Mrs. ChUd, still keeping up the full 
 circle of her labors, printed nothing but a rather 
 
126 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 short-lived " Family Nurse " (in 1837) before 
 entering the anti-slavery arena again. 
 
 In 1 84 1 Mr. and Mrs. Child were engaged by 
 the American Anti-Slavery Society to edit the 
 "Anti-Slavery Standard,'' a weekly newspaper 
 published in New York. Mr. Child's health 
 being impaired, his wife undertook the task 
 alone, and conducted the newspaper in that 
 manner for two years, after which she aided 
 her husband in the work, remaining there for 
 eight years in all. She was very successful as 
 an editor, her management being brave and efH- 
 cient, while her cultivated taste made the 
 " Standard " attractive to many who were not 
 attracted by the plainer fare of the "Libera- 
 tor." The good judgment shown in her 
 poetical and literary selections was always ac- 
 knowledged with especial gratitude by those 
 who read the " Standard " at that time. 
 
 During all this period she was a member of 
 the family of the well-known Quaker philan- 
 thropist, Isaac T. Hopper, whose biographer 
 she afterwards became. This must have been 
 the most important and satisfactory time in 
 Mrs. Child's whole life. She was placed where 
 her sympathetic nature found abundant outlet 
 and plenty of cooperation. Dwelling in a home 
 where disinterestedness and noble labor were 
 as daily breath, she had great opportunities. 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD 127 
 
 There was no mere almsgiving there, no mere 
 secretaryship of benevolent societies ; but sin 
 and sorrow must be brought home to the fire- 
 side and to the heart ; the fugitive slave, the 
 drunkard, the outcast woman, must be the 
 chosen guest of the abode, — must be taken 
 and held and loved into reformation or hope. 
 Since the stern tragedy of city life began, it has 
 seen no more efficient organization for relief 
 than when Isaac Hopper and Mrs. Child took 
 up their abode beneath one roof in New York. 
 For a time she did no regular work in the 
 cause of permanent literature, — though she 
 edited an anti-slavery almanac in 1843, — but 
 she found an opening for her best eloquence in 
 writing letters to the " Boston Courier," then 
 under the charge of Joseph T. Buckingham. 
 This was the series of " Letters from New 
 York " that afterwards became famous. They 
 were the precursors of that modern school 
 of newspaper correspondence in which women 
 have so large a share, and which has something 
 of the charm of women's private letters, — a 
 style of writing where description preponder- 
 ates over argument and statistics make way for 
 fancy and enthusiasm. Many have since fol- 
 lowed in this path, and perhaps Mrs. Child's 
 letters would not now be hailed as they then 
 were. Others may have equaled her, but she 
 
128 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 gave us a new sensation, and that epoch was 
 perhaps the climax of her purely literary ca- 
 reer. 
 
 Their tone also did much to promote the 
 tendency, which was showing itself in those 
 days, towards a fresh inquiry into the founda- 
 tions of social science. The Brook Farm ex- 
 periment was at its height; and though she 
 did not call herself an Associationist, yet she 
 quoted Fourier and Swedenborg, and other 
 authors who were thought to mean mischief; 
 and her highest rhapsodies about poetry and 
 music were apt to end in some fervent appeal 
 for some increase of harmony in daily life. 
 She seemed always to be talking radicalism in 
 a greenhouse ; and there were many good people 
 who held her all the more dangerous for her per- 
 fumes. There were young men and maidens, 
 also, who looked to her as a teacher, and were 
 influenced for life, perhaps, by what she wrote. 
 I knew, for instance, a young lawyer, just en- 
 tering on the practice of his profession under 
 the most flattering auspices, who withdrew 
 from the courts forever — wisely or unwisely, 
 — because Mrs. Child's book had taught him to 
 hate their contests and their injustice. 
 
 It was not long after this that James Russell 
 Lowell, in his " Fable for Critics," gave him- 
 self up to one impulse of pure poetry in de- 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD 129 
 
 scribing Mrs. Child. It is by so many degrees 
 the most charming sketch ever made of her 
 that the best part of it must be inserted here : — 
 
 " There comes Philothea, her face all aglow, 
 She has just been dividing some poor creature's woe, 
 And can't tell which pleases her most, to relieve 
 His want, or his story to hear and believe ; 
 
 " The pole, science tells us, the magnet controls, 
 But she is a magnet to emigrant Poles, 
 And folks with a mission that nobody knows 
 Throng thickly about her as bees round a rose ; 
 She can fill up the carets in such, make their scope 
 Converge to some focus of rational hope, 
 And with sympathies fresh as the morning, their gall 
 Can transmute into honey, — but this is not all ; 
 Not only for these she has solace, oh, say. 
 Vice's desperate nursling adrift in Broadway, 
 Who clingest with all that is left of thee human 
 To the last slender spar from the wreck of the woman. 
 Hast thou not found one shore where those tired drooping 
 
 feet 
 Could reach firm mother earth, one full heart on whose beat 
 The soothed head in silence reposing could hear 
 The chimes of far childhood throb back on the ear ? 
 Ah, there 's many a beam from the fountain of day 
 That, to reach us unclouded, must pass on its way 
 Through the soul of a woman, and hers is wide ope 
 To the influence of Heaven as the blue eyes of Hope ; 
 Yes, a great heart is hers, one that dares to go in 
 To the prison, the slave-hut, the alleys of sin. 
 And to bring into each, or to find there, some line 
 Of the never completely out-trampled divine ; 
 If her heart at high floods swamps her brain now and then, 
 Tis but richer for that when the tide ebbs again. 
 As after old Nile has subsided, his plain 
 
130 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 Overflows with a second broad deluge of grain ; 
 What a wealth would it bring to the narrow and sour, 
 Could they be as a Child but for one little hour ! " 
 
 The two series of "Letters from New 
 York" appeared in 1843 and 1845, and went 
 through seven or more editions. They were 
 followed in 1846 by a collection of tales, mostly 
 printed, entitled "Fact and Fiction." The 
 book was dedicated to "Anna Loring, the 
 Child of my Heart," and wds a series of power- 
 ful and well-told narratives, some purely ideal, 
 but mostly based upon the sins of great cities, 
 especially those of man against woman. She 
 might have sought more joyous themes, but 
 none which at that time lay so near her heart. 
 There was more sunshine in her next literary 
 task, for, in 1852, she collected three small 
 volumes of her stories from the " Juvenile Mis- 
 cellany " and elsewhere, under the title of 
 "Flowers for Children." 
 
 In 1853 she published her next book, en- 
 titled " Isaac T. Hopper ; a True Life." This 
 gave another new sensation to the public, for 
 her books never seemed to repeat each other, 
 and belonged to almost as many different de- 
 partments as there were volumes. The critics 
 complained that this memoir was a little frag- 
 mentary, a series of interesting stories without 
 sufHcient method or unity of conceptioa Per- 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD 131 
 
 haps it would have been hard to make it other- 
 wise. Certainly, as the book stands, it seems 
 like the department of " Benevolence " in the 
 " Percy Anecdotes," and serves as an encyclo- 
 paedia of daring and noble charities. 
 
 Her next book was the most arduous intel- 
 lectual labor of her life, and, as often happens 
 in such cases, the least profitable in the way 
 of money. "The Progress of Religious Ideas 
 through Successive Ages" was published in 
 three large volumes in 1855. She had begun 
 it long before in New York, with the aid of the 
 Mercantile Library and the Commercial Li- 
 brary, then the best in the city. It was finished 
 in Wayland, with the aid of her brother's store 
 of books, and with his and Theodore Parker's 
 counsel as to her course of reading. It seems, 
 from the preface, that more than eight years 
 elapsed between the planning and the printing, 
 and for six years it was her main pursuit. For 
 this great labor she had absolutely no pecun- 
 iary reward ; the book paid its expenses and 
 nothing more. It is now out of print and not 
 easy to obtain. 
 
 This disappointment was no doubt due partly 
 to the fact that the book set itself in decided 
 opposition, unequivocal though gentle, to the 
 prevailing religious impressions of the commu- 
 nity. It may have been, also, that it was too 
 
132 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 learned for a popular book and too popular for 
 a learned one. Learning, indeed, she distinctly 
 disavowed. " If readers complain of want of 
 profoundness, they may perchance be willing 
 to accept simplicity and clearness in exchange 
 for depth." ..." Doubtless a learned person 
 would have performed the task far better in 
 many respects; but, on some accounts, my 
 want of learning is an advantage. Thoughts 
 do not range so freely when the storeroom of 
 the brain is overloaded with furniture." And 
 she gives at the end, with her usual frankness, 
 a list of works consulted, all being in English 
 except seven, which are in French. It was a bold 
 thing to base a history of religious ideas on 
 such books as Enfield's Philosophy and Taylor's 
 Plato. The trouble was not so much that the 
 learning was second-hand, — for such is most 
 learning, — as that the authorities were second- 
 rate. The stream could hardly go higher than 
 its source ; and a book based on such very in- 
 adequate researches could hardly be accepted, 
 even when tried by that very accommodating 
 standard, popular scholarship. 
 
 In 1857 Mrs. Child published a volume en- 
 titled " Autumnal Leaves ; Tales and Sketches 
 in Prose and Rhyme." It might seem from 
 this title that she regarded her career of action 
 as drawing to a close. If so she was soon unde- 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD 133 
 
 ceived, and the attack of Captain John Brown 
 upon Harper's Ferry aroused her, like many 
 others, from a dream of peace. Immediately 
 on the arrest of Captain Brown she wrote him 
 a brief letter, asking permission to go and 
 nurse him, as he was wounded and among ene- 
 mies, and as his wife was supposed to be be- 
 yond immediate reach. This letter she inclosed 
 in one to Governor Wise. She then went home 
 and packed her trunk, with her husband's full 
 approval, but decided not to go until she heard 
 from Captain Brown, not knowing what his pre- 
 cise wishes might be. She had heard that he 
 had expressed a wish to have the aid of some 
 lawyer not identified with the anti-slavery move- 
 ment, and she thought he was entitled to the 
 same considerations of policy in regard to a 
 nurse. Meantime Mrs. Brown was sent for and 
 promptly arrived, while Captain Brown wrote 
 Mrs. Child one of his plain and characteristic 
 letters, declining her offer, and asking her kind 
 aid for his family, which was faithfully given. 
 
 But with this letter came one from Governor 
 Wise, — courteous, but rather diplomatic, — 
 and containing some reproof of her expressions 
 of sympathy for the prisoner. To this she 
 wrote an answer, well worded and quite effec- 
 tive, which, to her great surprise, soon ap- 
 peared in the New York "Tribune." She 
 
134 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 wrote to the editor (November lo, 1859): "I 
 was much surprised to see my correspondence 
 with Governor Wise published in your columns. 
 As I have never given any person a copy, I pre- 
 sume you must have obtained it from Virginia." 
 This correspondence soon led to another. 
 Mrs. M. J. C. Mason wrote from " Alto, King 
 George's County, Virginia," a formidable de- 
 monstration, beginning thus : " Do you read 
 your Bible, Mrs. Child .' If you do, read there, 
 ' Woe unto you hypocrites,' and take to your- 
 self, with twofold damnation, that terrible sen- 
 tence ; for, rest assured, in the day of judgment, 
 it shall be more tolerable for those thus scathed 
 by the awful denunciations of the Son of God 
 than for you." This startling commencement 
 — of which it must be calmly asserted that it 
 comes very near swearing, for a lady — leads to 
 something like bathos at the end, where Mrs. 
 Mason adds in conclusion, "No Southerner 
 ought, after your letters to Governor Wise, to 
 read a line of your composition, or to touch 
 a magazine which bears your name in its list 
 of contributors." To begin with double-dyed 
 future torments, and come gradually to the 
 climax of " Stop my paper," admits of no other 
 explanation than that Mrs. Mason had dabbled 
 in literature herself, and knew how to pierce 
 the soul of a sister in the trade. 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD 135 
 
 Bat the great excitement of that i>eriod, and 
 the general loss of tanper that prevailed, may 
 plead a httle in vindication of Mis. Mason's 
 vehemence and must certainly enhance the 
 dignity of Mrs. Child's reply. It is one of the 
 best things she ever wrote; She refuses to 
 dwdl on the invectives of her assailant, and 
 only " wishes her well, both in this woiid and 
 the next" Nor will she even debate the spe- 
 cific case (^ John !&own, whose Ixxfy was in 
 charge of the comts and his reputation sure 
 to be in charge of posterity. " Men, however 
 great they may b^" she says, " are of small 
 consequoice in comparison with piinc^les, and 
 the principle for which John Brown died is the 
 question at issue between us." 
 
 She accordingl}' proceeds to discuss this ques- 
 tion, first scripturally (following the lead of hex 
 assailant), then on goieial princqriles ; and gives 
 one ol her usual clear summaries of the whole 
 argument. Now that the eadtements of the 
 hour have passed, the sjorit of her ^diole state- 
 ment must claim just praise. The series <^ 
 letters was published in pamphl^ form in i860, 
 and secured a wider circulation than an}-thing 
 she ever wrot^ embracing some three hundred 
 thousand cc^es. In return she received many 
 private liters from the slave States, mostly 
 anonymous, and often grossly insulting. 
 
136 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 Having gained so good a hearing, she fol- 
 lowed up her opportunity. During the same 
 year she printed two small tracts, " The Patri- 
 archal Institution " and " The Duty of Disobe- 
 dience to the Fugitive Slave Law," and then 
 one of her most elaborate compilations, enti- 
 tled "The Right Way the Safe Way, proved 
 by Emancipation in the British West Indies 
 and Elsewhere." This shows the same syste- 
 matic and thorough habit of mind with its pre- 
 decessors ; and this business-like way of dealing 
 with facts is hard to reconcile with the dreamy 
 and almost uncontrolled idealism which she 
 elsewhere shows. In action, too, she has usu- 
 ally shown the same practical thoroughness, 
 and in case of this very book forwarded copies 
 at her own expense to fifteen hundred persons 
 in the slave States. 
 
 In 1864 she published " Looking towards 
 Sunset," — a very agreeable collection of prose 
 and verse, by various authors, all bearing upon 
 the aspects of old age. This was another of 
 those new directions of literary activity with 
 which she so often surprised her friends. The 
 next year brought still another in the " Free 
 men's Book," — a collection of short tales a: 
 sketches suited to the mental condition of t 
 Southern freedmen, and published for their 
 benefit. It was sold for that purpose at cost, 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD 137 
 
 and a good many copies were distributed 
 through teachers and missionaries. 
 
 Her last publication, and perhaps (if one 
 might venture to guess) her favorite among the 
 whole series, appeared in 1867, — "A Romance 
 of the Republic." It was received with great 
 cordiality, and is in some respects her best fic- 
 titious work. The scenes are laid chiefly at 
 the South, where she has given the local color- 
 ing in a way really remarkable for one who 
 never visited that region, while the results of 
 slavery are painted with the thorough know- 
 ledge of one who had devoted a lifetime to their 
 study. The leading characters are of that type 
 which has since become rather common in fic- 
 tion, because American society affords none 
 whose situation is so dramatic, — young quad- 
 roons educated to a high grade of culture, and 
 sold as slaves after all. All the scenes are 
 handled in a broad spirit of humanity, and be- 
 tray no trace of that subtle sentiment of caste 
 which runs through and through some novels 
 written ostensibly to oppose caste. The char- 
 acterization is good, and the events interesting 
 and vigorously handled. The defect of the 
 book is a common one, — too large a frame- 
 work, too many vertebra to the plot. Even 
 the established climax of a wedding is a safer 
 experiment than to prolong the history into 
 
138 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 the second generation, as here. The first two 
 thirds of the story would have been more effec- 
 tive without the conclusion. But it will always 
 possess value as one of the few really able de^ 
 lineations of slavery in fiction, and the author 
 may well look back with pride on this final 
 offering upon that altar of liberty where so 
 much of her life had been already laid. 
 
 In later life Mrs. Child left not only the 
 busy world of New York, but almost the world 
 of society, and took up her abode (after a short 
 residence at West Newton) in the house be- 
 queathed to her by her father, at Wayland, 
 Mass. In that quiet village she and her hus- 
 band peacefully dwelt, avoiding even friend- 
 ship's intrusion. Times of peace have no his- 
 torian, and the later career of Mrs. Child had 
 few of what the world calls events. Her do- 
 mestic labors, her studies, her flowers, and her 
 few guests kept her ever busy. She had never 
 had children of her own, — though, as some 
 one has said, she had a great many of other 
 people's, — but more than one whom she had 
 befriended came to dwell with her after her re- 
 tirement, and she came forth sometimes to find 
 new beneficiaries. But for many of her kind- 
 nesses she did not need to leave home, since 
 they were given in the form least to be ex- 
 pected from a literary woman, — that of pecun- 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD 139 
 
 iary bounty. Few households in the country 
 contributed on a scale so very liberal, in pro- 
 portion to their means. 
 
 One published letter, however, may serve as 
 a sample of many. It was addressed to an 
 Anti-Slavery Festival at Boston, and not only 
 shows the mode of action adopted by Mr. and 
 Mrs. Child, but their latest opinions as to pub- 
 lic affairs : — 
 
 Wayland, January i, 1868. 
 
 Dear Friend Phillips, — We inclose fifty 
 dollars as our subscription to the Anti-Slavery 
 Society. If our means equaled our wishes, we 
 would send a sum as large as the legacy Fran- 
 cis Jackson intended for that purpose, and of 
 which the society was deprived, as we think, by 
 an unjust legal decision. If our sensible and ju- 
 dicious friend could speak to us from the other 
 side of Jordan, we doubt not he would say that 
 the vigilance of the Anti-Slavery Society was 
 never more needed than at the present crisis, 
 and that, consequently, he was never more dis- 
 posed to aid it liberally. . . . 
 
 The British Anti-Slavery Society deserted 
 their post too soon. If they had been as watch- 
 ful to protect the freed people of the West 
 Indies as they were zealous to emancipate them, 
 that horrid catastrophe in Jamaica might have 
 
140 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 been avoided. The state of things in those 
 islands warns us how dangerous it is to trust 
 those who have been slaveholders, and those 
 who habitually sympathize with slaveholders, 
 to frame laws and regulations for liberated 
 slaves. As well might wolves be trusted to 
 guard a sheepfold. 
 
 We thank God, friend Phillips, that you are 
 preserved and strengthened to be a wakeful 
 sentinel on the watch-tower, ever to warn a 
 drowsy nation against selfish, timid politicians, 
 and dawdling legislators, who manifest no trust 
 either in God or the people. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 David L. Child, 
 L. Maria Child. 
 
 Mrs. Child outlived her husband six years, 
 and died at Wayland, October 20, 1880. She 
 was one of those prominent instances in our 
 literature of persons born for the pursuits of 
 pure intellect, whose intellects were yet bal- 
 anced by their hearts, both being absorbed in 
 the great moral agitations of the age. "My 
 natural inclinations," she once wrote to me, 
 "drew me much more strongly towards litera- 
 ture and the arts than towards reform, and the 
 weight of conscience was needed to turn the 
 scale." In a community of artists, she would 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD 141 
 
 have belonged to that class, for she had that 
 instinct in her soul. But she was placed where 
 there was as yet no exacting literary standard ; 
 she wrote better than most of her contempora- 
 ries, and well enough for her public. She did 
 not, therefore, win that intellectual immortal- 
 ity which only the very best writers command, 
 and which few Americans have attained. But 
 she won a meed which she would value more 
 highly, — that warmth of sympathy, that min- 
 gled gratitude of intellect and heart which men 
 give to those who have faithfully served their 
 day and generation. 
 
HELEN JACKSON ("H. H.") 
 
 It is curious to see how promptly time be- 
 gins to apply to the memory of remarkable 
 persons, as to their tombstones, an effacing 
 process that soon makes all inscriptions look 
 alike. Already we see the beginnings of this 
 tendency in regard to the late Mrs. Helen Jack- 
 son. The most brilliant, impetuous, and thor- 
 oughly individual woman of her time, — one 
 whose very temperament seemed mingled of 
 sunshine and fire, — she is already being por- 
 trayed simply as a conventional Sunday-school 
 saint. It is undoubtedly true that she wrote 
 her first poetry as a bereaved mother and her 
 last prose as a zealous philanthropist. Her 
 life comprised both these phases, and she thor- 
 oughly accepted them ; but it included so much 
 more, — it belonged to a personality so unique 
 and in many respects so fascinating, — that 
 those who knew her best can by no means spare 
 her for a commonplace canonization which 
 takes the zest out of her memory. To analyze 
 her would be impossible except to the trained 
 
HELEN JACKSON 143 
 
 skill of some French novdist ; and she would 
 have been a sealed book to him. because no 
 Frenchman could compr^end the carious 
 thread <rf firm Xew England texture that ran 
 through her whole bein^ tempering Tvayward- 
 ness, keqping impulse from malfing shq)wreck 
 of itsdf , and leading h& \siiole life to a hi^ 
 and concentrated purpose at last And when 
 we remamber that she hated gossqp about her 
 own afEairs, wrote only under two initTa1«;, and 
 was rar^ willing to moition to reporters any 
 fact about herself exc^t her birthday, — which 
 she usualty, with characteristic willfnJness, put 
 a year eailia- than it was, — it is peculiarly 
 hard to do tar her now that worft which she 
 hdd in sndi aversicHi. No fame or publici^ 
 could ever make her seam, to those who knew 
 her. anything but the most |Hivate and intimate 
 of friends ; and to write about ha at all seems 
 the b^iayal of a omfidoice: 
 
 Heloa Maria Fiske;, the daughter of Nathan 
 \\Tey and Ddwrah ^Mnal) Fiske^ was bom at 
 Ambas^ Mass., October 18, 1831. Har father 
 was 3. native of Weston, Mass., was a graduate 
 of Dartmouth CoD^e, and, after being a tutor 
 in that institution, became jsof essor first of lan- 
 goa^s and thai (tf philosophy in Amhost 
 Collie, having been previously offered a pro- 
 f esscHshq) (^ mathematics at Middleboiy Col- 
 
144 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 lege, — a combination of facts indicating the 
 variety of his attainments. He was also a Con- 
 gregationalist minister and an author, publish- 
 ing a translation of Eschenburg's " Manual of 
 Classical Literature " and one or two books for 
 children. He died May 27, 1847, ^t Jerusalem, 
 whither he had gone for the benefit of his health. 
 His wife was a native of Boston, and is men- 
 tioned with affection by all who knew her ; and 
 the daughter used to say that her own sunny 
 temperament came from the mother's side. 
 She also had literary tastes, and wrote the 
 "Letters from a Cat," which her daughter after- 
 wards edited, and which show a genuine humor 
 and a real power of expression. She died Feb- 
 ruary 19, 1844, when her daughter Helen was 
 twelve years old. Both parents held the strict 
 Calvinistic faith, and the daughter was reared 
 in it, though she did not long remain there. 
 
 She was a child of dangerous versatility and 
 vivacity; and her bright sayings were often 
 quoted, when she was but ten or twelve years 
 old, in the academical circle of the little college 
 town. She has herself described in a lively 
 paper, "The Naughtiest Day of my Life" 
 ("St. Nicholas," September-October, 1880), a 
 childish feat of running away from home in 
 company with another little girl, — on which 
 occasion the two children walked to Hadley, 
 
HELEN JACKSON 145 
 
 four miles, before they were brought back. 
 The whole village had joined in the search 
 for them, and two professors from the col- 
 lege finally reclaimed the wanderers. There is 
 something infinitely characteristic of the ma- 
 ture woman in the description written by her 
 mother, at the time, of the close of that anx- 
 ious day : " Helen walked in at a quarter be- 
 fore ten o'clock at night, as rosy and smiling 
 as possible, and saying in her brightest tone, 
 'Oh, mother, I've had a perfectly splendid 
 time.' " 
 
 A child of this description may well have 
 needed the discipline of a variety of schools ; 
 and she had the advantage of at least two 
 good ones, — the well-known Ipswich (Massa- 
 chusetts) Female Seminary, and the private 
 school of Rev. J. S. C. Abbott in New York 
 city. She was married in Boston, when just 
 twenty-one — October 28, 1852, — to Captain 
 (afterwards Major) Edward B. Hunt, United 
 States Army, whom she had first met at Al- 
 bany, N. Y., his brother, the Hon. Washing- 
 ton Hunt, being at that time governor of the 
 State. Captain and Mrs. Hunt led the usual 
 wandering life of military households, and were 
 quartered at a variety of posts. As an engineer 
 officer he held high army rank, and he was 
 also a man of considerable scientific attain- 
 
146 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 ments. Their first child, Murray, a beautiful 
 boy, died of dropsy in the brain, when eleven 
 months old, at Taiiytovm, N. Y., in August, 
 1854. Major Hunt was killed, October 2, 
 1863, at Brooklyn, N. Y., while experiment- 
 ing with an invention of his own, called a 
 " sea-miner," for firing projectiles under water. 
 Mrs. Hunt still had her second boy, named 
 Warren Horsford, after her friends. General 
 G. K. Warren and Professor Horsford, but com- 
 monly called " Rennie." He had, by testimony 
 of all, a rare combination of gifts and qualities, 
 but died suddenly of diphtheria at his aunt's 
 home in West Roxbury, Mass., on April 13, 
 1865. Mrs. Hunt was thus left utterly be- 
 reaved, and the blow was crushing. It shows 
 the strong relation between mother and child, 
 and also the precocious character of her boy, 
 that he made her promise not to take her own 
 life after he should be gone. She made him pro- 
 mise, in return, that if it were a possible thing 
 he would overcome all obstacles and come back 
 from the other world to speak to her ; and the 
 fact that this was never done kept her all her 
 life a disbeliever in Spiritualism : what Rennie 
 could not do, she felt must be impracticable. 
 For months after his death she shut herself up 
 from her nearest friends ; and when she appeared 
 
HELEN JACKSON 147 
 
 among them at last, she was smiling, vivacious, 
 and outwardly unchanged. 
 
 Up to this time, although her life had been 
 full of variety and activity, it had been mainly 
 domestic and social, and she had shown no 
 special signs of a literary vocation. She loved 
 society, was personally very attractive, dressed 
 charmingly, and had many friends of both 
 sexes. Through her husband she knew many 
 superior men, but they belonged almost wholly 
 to the military class, or were those men of 
 science whom she was wont to meet at the 
 scientific gatherings to which she accompa- 
 nied Major Hunt. It was not till she went, 
 at the age of thirty-four, to live in Newport, 
 R. I., that she was brought much in contact 
 with people whose pursuits were literary ; and 
 it was partly, no doubt, through their compan- 
 ionship that a fresh interest and a new em- 
 ployment opened almost unexpectedly before 
 her. How wholly she regarded her life as 
 prematurely ended at the close of its first 
 phase, may be seen by a letter written soon 
 after establishing herself in Newport, whence 
 she had made a trip to West Point to superin- 
 tend the removal of the remains of her husband 
 and children to that spot. After speaking of 
 the talents and acquirements whose career was 
 finished, she bitterly added, " And I alone am 
 
148 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 left, who avail nothing." She had yet to learn 
 how much her own life was to avail. 
 
 When she went to live in Newport (Febru- 
 ary 10, 1866), she had already written poems, 
 and had shown them to her friends. She had, 
 indeed, when in her teens, published some girl- 
 ish verses in the Boston " Press and Post," but 
 her mature compositions had all related, so far 
 as I know, to her personal bereavements. Of 
 these she had published one in the " Nation " 
 (July 20, 1865); this being in the very first 
 volume of that periodical, which was edited by 
 a personal friend, and which gave at first more 
 space to poetry than now. This poem was 
 called " Lifted Over," and consisted of fourteen 
 lines of blank verse, referring to the death of 
 her boy, and signed "Marah." The fact of its 
 publication makes it likely that, wherever she 
 had taken up her residence, she would have 
 published more poetry of the elegiac kind ; but 
 it is doubtful whether her lyre would have 
 reached a wide variety of notes, or whether she 
 would have been known as a prose writer at 
 all but for the stimulus and fresh interests 
 developed by her change of abode. In the 
 society of her new friends she began for the 
 first time to make a study of literary style 
 and methods ; she interchanged criticism with 
 others, and welcomed it as applied to her own 
 
HELEN JACKSON 149 
 
 attempts; she soon ventured to publish more 
 poems, and then to try herself in prose. The 
 signature " H. H." first appeared, I believe, in 
 connection with the first thing she published 
 after her removal to Newport This was a 
 poem called "Tryst," in the "Nation" (April 
 
 12, 1866), followed soon by a translation — 
 almost the only one she ever made — from 
 Victor Hugo's "Le Soir" ("Nation," April 26, 
 1866) and by two poems called "A Burial Ser- 
 vice" (May 22) and "Old Lamps for New" 
 (May 29), — this last being, perhaps by accident, 
 unsigned. 
 
 These were soon followed by poems in the 
 New York " Independent," — beginning with 
 "Hagar" (August 2, 1866) and "Bread on the 
 Waters " (August 9, 1866) ; she stiU keeping 
 mainly to her experiences of sorrow. Her first 
 attempt in prose, under her own signature, ap- 
 peared in the same newspaper for September 
 
 13, 1866, and was entitled "In the \Vhite 
 Mountains." It was a sketch of a walk up 
 Mount Washington from the Glen House, and, 
 though spiritedly written, gave little indica- 
 cation of her rising so far above the grade of 
 the average summer correspondent as she 
 idtimately attained. She also wrote an un- 
 signed review of " Felix Holt " in the same 
 number. From thi§ time till her death she 
 
ISO CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 was an occasional correspondent of that jour- 
 nal, — writing for it, as its editors say, three 
 hundred and seventy-one articles in all. She 
 wrote also in " Hearth and Home," and pub- 
 lished a few poems in the New York " Even- 
 ing Post." 
 
 Thus launched into literature, she entered 
 with the enthusiasm of a child upon her new 
 work. She distrusted herself, was at first fear- 
 ful of each new undertaking, yet was eager to 
 try everything, and the moment each plunge 
 was taken lost all fear. I remember the sur- 
 prise with which she received the suggestion 
 that no doubt publishers would be happy to 
 send her their books if she would only review 
 them ; and her delight, as in a new world, when 
 she opened the first parcels. From the begin- 
 ning she composed with great rapidity, writ- 
 ing on large sheets of yellow post-office paper, 
 eschewing pen and ink, and insisting that a 
 lead pencil alone could keep pace with the swift- 
 ness of her thoughts. The remarkable thing 
 was that, with all this quickness, she was al- 
 ways ready to revise and correct, and was also 
 a keen and minute critic on the writings of 
 others. It was very surprising that one who 
 was not really familiar with any language but 
 her own — for the Latin of her school days 
 had already faded and even her French was at 
 
HELEN JACKSON 151 
 
 that time very imperfect — should have such a 
 perception of the details of style. She had, 
 however, been well trained in English at school, 
 and used to quote Kames's " Elements of Criti- 
 cism " as one of the books she had read there. 
 Both her father and her mother had also taken 
 an interest in her early school compositions. 
 
 A statement has sometimes appeared, on the 
 authority of the late Mr. R. W. Emerson, that 
 she sent poems to the " Atlantic " in those 
 early days, and that they were rejected. It is 
 possible that my memory may not include all 
 the facts, but I am confident that this state- 
 ment is an error. It is certain that she was 
 repeatedly urged to send something in that direc- 
 tion by a friend who then contributed largely 
 to the magazine, namely, myself, but she for 
 a long time declined, saying that the editors 
 were overwhelmed with poor poetry, and that 
 she would wait for something of which she felt 
 sure. At last she gave me her poem called 
 " Coronation," with permission to show it to 
 Mr. Fields and let him have it if he wished, 
 at a certain price. It was a high price for a 
 new-comer to demand ; but she was inexorable, 
 including rather curiously among her traits that 
 of being an excellent business woman, and gen- 
 erally getting for her wares the price she set 
 upon them. Fields read it at once, and ex- 
 
IS2 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 claimed, " It 's a good poem ; " then read it 
 again, and said, " It 's a devilish good poem," 
 and accepted it without hesitation. It appeared 
 in the "Atlantic" for February, 1869, and an- 
 other poem, " The Way to Sing," followed it 
 a year after; but Fields, while greatly admir- 
 ing her prose, never quite did justice to her 
 poetry, so that she offered but little verse to his 
 magazine. Her "German Landlady" appeared 
 there (October, 1870), and was followed by a 
 long line of prose papers, continuing nearly 
 until her death. Her little volume of "Verses" 
 was printed rather reluctantly by Fields, Os- 
 good & Co. (1870), she paying for the stereo- 
 type plates, as was also the case with her first 
 prose volume, "Bits of Travel" (1873), pub^ 
 lished by their successors, James R. Osgood & 
 Co. Soon after this she transferred her books 
 to Roberts Brothers, who issued " Bits of Talk 
 about Home Matters " (1873) and a much en- 
 larged edition of "Verses" (1874). After this 
 she was a very prosperous author. 
 
 She spent in all five winters at Newport, 
 always at the same hospitable home, — Mrs. 
 Hannah Dame's boarding-house, — and always 
 going somewhere among the mountains in sum- 
 mer early enough to keep off hay fever, from 
 which she suffered. Then she returned, late 
 in autumn, preceded by great trunks and chests 
 
HELEN JACKSON 153 
 
 full of pressed ferns and autumn leaves, which 
 she dispensed royally among her friends during 
 the whole winter-time. These Newport sea- 
 sons were interrupted by an absence of some\ 
 fourteen months in Europe (November, 1868, 
 to February, 1870), and she had several serious 
 illnesses toward the latter part of the period. 
 Indeed, she had an almost fatal attack while in 
 Rome, and I am informed by the friend with 
 whom she traveled. Miss Sarah F. Clarke, of a 
 peculiarly characteristic act of hers when con- 
 valescent. Going to Albano to recruit, she re- 
 fused to carry with her a professed nurse, as 
 her friends desired, but insisted on taking a 
 young Italian girl of sixteen, who had never 
 had a vacation in her hard-working life, and to 
 whom the whole period of attendance would be 
 a prolonged felicity. 
 
 In May, 1872, she went to California with 
 her friend Miss Sarah C. Woolsey, and in 1873- 
 74, being convinced that her health needed a 
 thorough change of climate, tried the experi- 
 ment of a winter in Colorado. This State be- 
 came soon after her permanent home, — she 
 being married in October, 1875, at her sister's 
 house in Wolfboro, N. H., to Mr. William 
 Sharpless Jackson, of Colorado Springs. They 
 were married by the ceremonial of the Society 
 of Friends, the bridegroom being of that persua- 
 
IS4 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 sion. For the remaining ten years of her career 
 she had a delightful abode and a happy do- 
 mestic life, although the demands of her health 
 and her literary work, joined with a restless 
 and adventurous disposition, kept her a great 
 deal in motion between her new and her old 
 haunts. Nobody was ever a more natural wan- 
 derer. She always carried with her a compact 
 store of favorite pictures, Japanese prints, and 
 the like; so that, within an hour after she 
 had taken possession of a room at the Parker 
 House in Boston or the Berkeley in New York, 
 she would be sitting in a tasteful boudoir of 
 her own arranging. With this came an equally 
 ready acceptance of the outdoor surroundings 
 of each place ; and in migrating farther west, 
 she soon knew more of Omaha or San Fran- 
 cisco than the oldest inhabitant. Her wonder- 
 ful eye for external nature traveled with her; 
 she planned her house at Colorado Springs with 
 an unerring adaptation to the landscape, and 
 on one occasion welcomed a friend with more 
 than twenty different vases of the magnificent 
 wild flowers of that region — each vase filled 
 with a great sheaf of a single species. She 
 had always lavished so much adornment on one 
 or two rooms that her friends had wondered 
 what she would do with a whole house ; and 
 those who visited her at Colorado Springs be- 
 held the fulfillment of their wonderings. 
 
HELEN JACKSON 155 
 
 For the second time she was to encounter a 
 wholly new intellectual experience after adopt- 
 ing a new abode. The literary development, 
 which had begun somewhat late, was to be 
 merged into a moral enthusiasm, beginning still 
 later. She wrote to an intimate friend (Janu- 
 ary 17, 1880) : — 
 
 " I have done now, I believe, the last of the 
 things I had said I never would do ; I have be- 
 come what I have said a thousand times was 
 the most odious thing in life, — ' a woman with 
 a hobby.' But! cannot help it. I think I feel 
 as you must have felt in the old abolition days. 
 I cannot think of anything else from night to 
 morning and from morning to night. ... I 
 believe the time is drawing near for a great 
 change in our policy toward the Indian. In 
 some respects, it seems to me, he is really worse 
 off than the slaves ; they did have in the ma- 
 jority of cases good houses, and they were not 
 much more arbitrarily controlled than the In- 
 dian is by the agent on a reservation. He can 
 order a corporal's guard to fire on an Indian at 
 any time he sees fit. He is ' duly empbwered 
 by the government.' " 
 
 In this same letter she announces her inten- 
 tion of going to work for three months at the 
 Astor Library on her " Centiuy of Dishonor ; " 
 and it is worth noticing that with all her en- 
 
IS6 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 thusiasm she does not disregard that careful 
 literary execution which is to be the means to 
 her end ; for in the same letter she writes to 
 this friend, one of her earliest critics : " I shall 
 never write a sentence, so long as I live, with- 
 out studying it over from the standpoint of 
 whether you would think it could be bettered." 
 This shows that she did not, as some have sup- 
 posed, grow neglectful of literature in the inter- 
 est of reform ; as it a carpenter were supposed 
 to neglect his tools in order to finish his job. 
 
 Her especial interest in the Indians was not 
 the instantaneous result of her Colorado life, 
 but the travels and observations of those first 
 years were doubtless preparing the way for it. 
 It came to a crisis in 1879, when she heard the 
 Indians " Standing Bear " and " Bright Eyes " 
 lecture in Boston on the wrongs of the Poncas, 
 and. afterwards met them in New York, at the 
 house of her friend Mrs. Botta. Her immedi- 
 ate sympathy for them seemed very natural to 
 those who knew her, but it was hardly foreseen 
 how strong and engrossing that interest would 
 become. Henceforth she subordinated litera- 
 ture not to an ulterior aim, merely, for that she 
 had often done before, but to a single aim. It 
 must be remembered, in illustration of this, that 
 at least half the papers in her " Bits of Talk " 
 were written with a distinct moral purpose, and 
 
HELEN JACKSON 157 
 
 SO were many of her poems ; and from this 
 part of her work she had always great enjoy- 
 ment. So ready were her sympathies that she 
 read with insatiable pleasure the letters that 
 often came to her from lonely women or anx- 
 ious schoolgirls who had found help in her 
 simple domestic or religious poems, while her 
 depths of passion would only have frightened 
 them, and they would have listened bewildered 
 to those sonnets which Emerson carried in his 
 pocket-book and pulled out to show his friends. 
 No, there was always a portion of her litera- 
 ture itself which had as essentially a moral mo- 
 tive as had " Ramona ; " and, besides, she had 
 always been ready to throw aside her writing 
 and devote whole days, in her impulsive way, to 
 some generous task. For instance, she once, 
 at the risk of great unpopularity, invoked the 
 aid of the city solicitor and half the physicians 
 in Newport to investigate the case of a poor 
 boy who was being, as she believed, starved to 
 death, and whom the investigation came too 
 late to save. 
 
 Nor was the Indian question the first reform 
 that had set her thinking, although she was by 
 temperament fastidious, and therefore conser- 
 vative. On the great slavery question she had 
 always, I suspect, taken regular-army views ; 
 she liked to have colored people about her as 
 
158 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 servants, but was disposed to resent anything 
 like equality; yet she went with me to a jubilee 
 meeting of the colored people of Newport, after 
 emancipation, and came away full of enthusi- 
 asm and sympathy, with much contrition as to 
 things she had previously said and done. She 
 tried to prevent her Newport hostess from re- 
 ceiving a highly educated young quadroon lady 
 as a temporary boarder in the house ; but when 
 the matter was finally compromised by her com- 
 ing to tea only, Mrs. Hunt lavished kindnesses 
 upon her, invited her to her private parlor, and 
 won her heart. The same mixture of prejudice 
 and generosity marked her course in matters re- 
 lating to the advancement of her own sex. Pro- 
 fessedly abhorring woman suffrage, she went 
 with me to a convention on the subject in New 
 York, under express contract to write a satir- 
 ical report in a leading newspaper ; but was so 
 instantly won over — as many another has been 
 — by the sweet voice of Lucy Stone, that she 
 defaulted as a correspondent, saying to me, 
 " Do you suppose I ever could write against 
 anything which that woman wishes to have 
 done.'" Afterwards she hospitably enter- 
 tained the same lecturer when visiting Colo- 
 rado ; and a few months before her death she 
 gave an English advocate of the cause a letter 
 to one of her Eastern friends, saying that her 
 
HELEN JACKSON 159 
 
 old prejudices were somewhat shaken. A Cali- 
 fornia friend tells me, indeed, that she some- 
 times felt moved to write something on the 
 legal and other disabilities of women. 
 
 But if other reforms had touched her a little, 
 they had never controlled or held her, until the 
 especial interest in the Poncas arose. After 
 that she took up work in earnest, studied the 
 facts, corresponded with statesmen, and finally 
 wrote her " Century of Dishonor," as has been 
 said. Over this she fairly worked herself ill, 
 and was forced to go to Norway for refresh- 
 ment with her friends the Horsfords, leaving 
 the proofreading to be done by myself. Sev- 
 eral charming memorials of this trip appeared 
 in the magazines. She afterwards received an 
 appointment from the United States govern- 
 ment to report on the condition and needs of 
 the California " Mission Indians," in connec- 
 tion with Abbott Kinney, Esq., and she visited 
 all or most of those tribes for this purpose in 
 the spring of 1883. The report of the com- 
 missioners, which is understood to have been 
 mainly prepared by her, is as clear, as full, and 
 as sensible as if it had been written by the 
 most prosaic of mankind. She also explored the 
 history of the early Spanish missions, whose 
 story of enthusiasm and picturesqueness won 
 her heart, and she wrote the series of papers 
 
i6o CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 in regard to these missions which appedred in 
 the " Century Magazine." 
 
 During this whole period, moreover, she did 
 not neglect her earlier productions, but gath- 
 ered them into volumes, publishing " Bits of 
 Talk for Young Folks" (1876) and "Bits of 
 Travel at Home " (1878). She also issued sep- 
 arately (1879) a single poem, "The Story of 
 Boon." This was founded on a tale told in 
 "The English Governess at the Siamese Court," 
 by Mrs. A. H. Leonowens, a lady whose enthu- 
 siasm and eloquence found ardent sympathy in 
 Mrs. Hunt, who for her sake laid down her 
 strong hostility to women's appearance on the 
 platform, and zealously organized two lectures 
 for her friend. She published also a little book 
 of her mother's, " Letters from a Cat" (1880), 
 and followed it up by "Mammy Tittleback's 
 Stories" (1881), of her own, and "The Hunter 
 Cats of Connorloa" (1884). Another book, 
 for rather older children, was " Nelly's Silver 
 Mine" (1878), and she wrote a little book called 
 "The Training of Children" (1882). Then 
 came " Ramona," first published in the " Chris- 
 tian Union" in 1884, appearing there because 
 it had been written, as it were, at a white heat, 
 and she could not wait for the longer delays of 
 a magazine. It was issued in book form that 
 same year, and completes the list of her ac- 
 
HELEN JACKSON i6i 
 
 knowledged works. It was no secret, however, 
 that she wrote, in the " No Name " series, 
 " Mercy Philbrick's Choice " (i 876) and " Hetty's 
 Strange History" (1877). Into the question of 
 other works that may have been rightly or 
 wrongly attributed to her, the present writer 
 does not propose to enter. 
 
 The sad story of her last illness need not 
 here be recapitulated. She seemed the victim 
 of a series of misfortunes, begiiming with the 
 long confinement incident to a severe fracture 
 of the leg in June, 1884, this being followed by 
 her transfer to a malarious residence in Cali- 
 fornia, and at last by the discovery of a con- 
 cealed cancerous affection that had baffled her 
 physicians and herself. During all this period 
 — much of it spent alone, with only a hired 
 attendant, far from all old friends, though she 
 was cheered by the constant kindness of newer 
 ones — her sunny elasticity never failed ; and 
 within a fortnight of her death she wrote long 
 letters, in a clear and vigorous hand, expressing 
 only cheerful hopes for the future, whether she 
 should live or die. One of the last of these 
 was to President Cleveland, to thank him for 
 sustaining the rights of the Indians. Her hus- 
 band, who had been previously detained in Col- 
 orado by important business, was with her at 
 the last, and she passed away quietly but un- 
 
i62 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 consciously, on the afternoon of August 12, 
 1885. A temporary interment took place in 
 San Francisco, the services being performed by 
 the Rev. Horatio Stebbins, who read, very ap- 
 propriately, the " Last Words," with which her 
 little volume of verses ends. It was the pre- 
 cise memorial she would have desired. 
 
 The poetry of Mrs. Jackson unquestionably 
 takes rank above that of any American woman, 
 and its only rival would be found, curiously 
 enough, in that of her early schoolmate, Emily 
 Dickinson. Emerson, as is well known, rated 
 it above that of almost all American men. Her 
 works include, first, the simple poetry of do- 
 mestic life ; secondly, love poems of extraordi- 
 nary intensity and imaginative fullness ; thirdly, 
 verses showing most intimate sympathy with 
 external nature ; and lastly, a few poems of the 
 highest dignity and melody in the nature of 
 odes, such as "A Christmas Symphony" and 
 "A Funeral March." The poem which com- 
 bines the most of depth and the most of popu- 
 lar appreciation is that called " Spinning," where 
 a symbol drawn from common life assumes the 
 sort of solemn expressiveness that belongs to 
 the humble actions of peasants in the pictures 
 of the French Millet. Emerson's favorite was 
 her sonnet called " Thought ; " and other critics 
 have given the palm for exquisiteness of musi- 
 
HELEN JACKSON 163 
 
 cal structure to her " Gondolieds." But her 
 poetry was only a small portion of her literary 
 work ; and of the range and value of this pro- 
 duct, a good conception will be given when we 
 say that a plan was at one time seriously formed, 
 by the late Dr. Holland and his associate in 
 charge of the " Century Magazine," to let Mrs. 
 Jackson's contributions accumulate sufficiently 
 to fill one number of the periodical, — poetry, 
 fiction, travels, criticism, and all, — and then 
 send it all forth as the product of one person. 
 The plan was finally dismissed, as I am assured, 
 not from the slightest doubt of its practicabil- 
 ity, but only because it might be viewed as sen- 
 sational. It would have been the greatest com- 
 pliment ever yet paid by editors, in the whole 
 history of magazine literature, to the resources 
 of a single contributor. 
 
 There is in her prose writings an even excel- 
 lence of execution which is not always to be 
 found in her poetry, and which is surpassed by 
 hardly any American writer. It is always clear, 
 strong, accurate, spirited, and forcible ; she had 
 a natural instinct for literary structure, as well 
 as style, and a positive genius for giving char- 
 acteristic and piquant titles to what she wrote. 
 It was her delight not merely to explore the 
 new, but to throw novel and unexpected fresh- 
 ness around the old. Before she had become 
 
i64 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 SO wide a traveler she used to plan a book, to 
 be called " Explorations " or some such title, in 
 which all the most familiar scenery was to be 
 described under fictitious names ; and only the 
 map appended would gradually reveal, through 
 its new local phraseology, that " Hide and Seek 
 Town " was Princeton, Mass., and so on indefi- 
 nitely. Her poetry sometimes offered deeper 
 enigmas than these superficial ones, and some 
 of the best of it will never be fully compre- 
 hended but by the few who had the key to 
 the events or emotions that called it forth. So 
 ardent were her sympathies that everything 
 took color from her personal ties ; and her read- 
 iness to form these ties with persons of all 
 ages, both sexes, and every condition not only 
 afforded some of her greatest joys, but also 
 brought the greatest perils of her life ; often 
 involving misconception, perplexity, and keen 
 disappointment to herself and to others. Her 
 friendships with men had the frankness and 
 openness that most women show only to one 
 another ; and her friendships with women had 
 the romance and ideal atmosphere that her sex 
 usually reserves for men. There was an utterly 
 exotic and even tropical side of her nature, 
 strangely mingled with the traits that came 
 from her New England blood. Where her sym- 
 pathy went, even in the least degree, there she 
 
HELEN JACKSON 165 
 
 was ready to give all she had, — attention, time, 
 trouble, money, popularity, reputation, — and 
 this with only too little thought of the morrow. 
 The result was found not merely in many un- 
 reasonable requests, but in inconvenient and 
 unlooked-for expectations. During the middle 
 period of her life there was never any security 
 that the morning postman might not bring an 
 impassioned letter from some enamored young 
 girl, proposing to come and spend her life with 
 her benefactress ; or a proffer of hand and 
 heart from some worthy man, with whom she 
 had mistakenly supposed herself to be on a 
 footing of the plainest good-fellowship. It some- 
 times taxed all her great resources of kindness 
 and ready wit to extract herself from such en- 
 tanglements ; and she never could be made to 
 understand how they had come about or why 
 others in turn succeeded them. 
 
 She had great virtues, marked inconsisten- 
 cies, and plenty of fascinating faults that came 
 near to virtues. She was never selfishly un- 
 generous, but she was impulsive in her scorn of 
 mean actions, and was sometimes very unjust 
 to those whom she simply did not understand ; 
 this misconception usually occurring, however, 
 in the too Quixotic defense of a friend or a prin- 
 ciple. To those who knew her best she was a 
 person quite unique and utterly inexhaustible ; 
 
i66 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 and though her remoteness of residence during 
 the last ten years had separated her from the 
 society of many of her earUer friends, there is 
 not one of them who did not feel the world 
 deeply impoverished by her going out of it. 
 She did not belong to a class ; she left behind 
 her no second ; and neither memory nor fancy 
 can restore her as she was, or fully reproduce, 
 even for those who knew her best, that ardent 
 and joyous personality. And those who recall 
 her chiefly in gayer moods will find their re- 
 membrance chastened by the thought that she 
 could write, when finally face to face with 
 death, such a poem as " Habeas Corpus," " Ac- 
 quainted with Grief," and "A Last Prayer," or 
 even a letter like this : — 
 
 "I feel that my work is done, and I am heart- 
 ily, honestly, and cheerfully ready to go. In 
 fact, I am glad to go. You have never fully 
 realized how for the last four years my whole 
 heart has been full of the Indian cause — how 
 I felt, as the Quakers say, ' a concern ' to work 
 for it. My 'Century of Dishonor' and 'Ra- 
 mona' are the only things I have done of which 
 I am glad now. The rest is of no moment. 
 They will live and they will bear fruit. They 
 already have. The change in public feeling on 
 the Indian question in the last three years is 
 marvelous ; an Indian Rights' Association in 
 
HELEN JACKSON 167 
 
 every large city in the land. . . . Every word 
 of the Indian history in ' Ramona ' is literally 
 true, and it is being reenacted here every day. 
 
 " I did mean to write a child's story on the 
 same theme as ' Ramona/ but I doubt if I could 
 have made it so telling a stroke, so perhaps it 
 is as well that I should not do it. And per- 
 haps I shall do it after all, but I cannot con- 
 ceive of getting well after such an illness as 
 this." 
 
JOHN HOLMES 
 
 It is now some years since I spent a certain 
 agreeable evening, at the house of a Cambridge 
 neighbor, with the celebrated P^re Hyacinthe 
 and his accomplished American wife. They 
 had with them their only child, a little boy 
 eight or ten, who had been described in some 
 of the French journals as a monster of deform- 
 ity, inasmuch as his father had been a priest, 
 but who was in reality beautiful in form and 
 face, and altogether attractive. The child was 
 in his first enthusiasm of autograph collecting. 
 He had a pile of little squares of paper, neatly 
 cut, and whenever a new guest entered the 
 room, he would run to his mother or to the 
 hostess, asking eagerly in respect to the latest 
 visitor, " Est-il cd^bre ? " Whenever told that 
 the new-comer was at least sufficiently cele- 
 brated for autographic purposes, the child would 
 come shyly and gracefully up to him and ask 
 in the sweetest of voices for his signature. At 
 last there entered a short, squarely built man, 
 with white hair, white mustache, and thick 
 eyebrows still black — with erect figure, fine 
 
JOHN HOLMES 169 
 
 carriage of the head, and a bearing often de- 
 scribed as military. The hostess, after the 
 usual inquiry, explained to the little boy that 
 this new guest, though not personally famous, 
 was the only brother of the celebrated Dr. 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. The newly arrived 
 guest, being therefore offered his little piece of 
 paper and having presumably heard the con- 
 sultation, wrote upon it this brief inscription, 
 "John Holmes, /r^re de monfrhe'' 
 
 The statement, however felicitous under the 
 circumstances, would not bear more than a 
 general acceptance as to the facts. Few bro- 
 thers so gifted were less alike in looks and 
 in habits, and although without the slightest 
 visible disagreement, and residing but a few 
 miles from each other, they had practically 
 lived much apart. In their personal habits, 
 indeed, they covered the whole range, from 
 the most vivacious and companionable existence 
 to the most reticent and reserved. The elder 
 brother was born to live among cheery, social 
 groups. He was fond of society, not averse to 
 admiration, always ready for new acquaintances 
 and novel experiences. The younger brother, 
 while the more distinguished and noticeable in 
 appearance of the two, was in the last degree 
 self-withdrawing and modest, more than con- 
 tent to be held by the world at arm's length. 
 
170 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 yet capable of the most devoted and unselfish 
 loyalty to the few real intimates he loved. 
 Perhaps my first vivid association with him is 
 when my elder brother, one of his especial cro- 
 nies and then a law student, came home with 
 two volumes of a newly published set of the 
 Waverley novels, the first American edition. 
 He said to my mother, "Johnny has just given 
 me these, and he says he is going to give me 
 the whole set." "But you ought not to accept 
 them," said my mother. "He cannot afford 
 such a gift." "But he has already subscribed 
 for them," said my brother, "and he says if I 
 don't take them he '11 put them in the fire, and 
 it would be just like Johnny to do it." From 
 this there was no appeal, and it would be dif- 
 ficult to tell how much of the enjoyment of my 
 boyhood I owe to this imprudent generosity of 
 John Holmes. 
 
 Bom at Cambridge (March 29, 18 12) in the 
 " gambrel-roofed house " made famous by his 
 brother; graduating at Harvard in 1832 and at 
 the Harvard Law School in 1839; he was for 
 years of early life kept by chronic lameness a 
 prisoner in his chair, with one foot on a f ootrest. 
 He never practiced law, nor did he attempt any 
 other profession, and he never married, — his 
 betrothed having died of consumption in his 
 early youth. He lived alone for many years 
 
JOHN HOLMES 171 
 
 with his aged mother, who died at the age of 
 ninety-three, on August 19, 1862. A quaint por- 
 trait of her will be found engraved in Morse's 
 Life of Dr. Holmes (ii. 164). Her elder son 
 describes her as "keeping her lively sensibili- 
 ties and sweet intelligence to the last," and goes 
 on to add : " My brother John had long cared 
 for her in the most tender way, and it almost 
 broke his heart to part with her. She was a 
 daughter to him, she said, and he had fondly 
 thought that love and care could keep her frail 
 life to the filling up of a century or beyond it. 
 It was a pity to look on him in his first grief ; 
 but Time, the great consoler, is busy with his 
 anodyne, and he is coming back to himseK " 
 (Morse's Holmes, ii 165). 
 
 Not long after Mrs. Holmes's death the old 
 house became the property of Harvard Univer- 
 sity and John Holmes lived for the rest of his 
 life in a little cottage on the short street called 
 Appian Way. Here he boarded with an excellent 
 and faithful woman who had been for many years 
 in the service of the Holmes household. His 
 mode of life, always blameless and abstemious, 
 was now almost Spartan in its simplicity ; few 
 college students at the present day have rooms 
 so bare, and he would allow himself no indul- 
 gence beyond occasional carriage driving with 
 old friends. His circle of intimates included 
 
172 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 only six or eight persons in Cambridge : James 
 Russell Lowell, John Bartlett, Dr. Estes Howe 
 (Holmes's classmate and Lowell's brother-in- 
 law), Professor Jame§ B. Thayer, and for a time 
 James Murray Howe, Dr. Howe's younger bro- 
 ther. With these he used to take walks on Cam- 
 bridge Common, which he called the "philoso- 
 pher's camp," and with the first three of these 
 he used regularly to play whist. There were 
 included in his circle also a few ladies whom he 
 had known from youth, and also the late Robert 
 Carter, Lowell's associate in editing " The Pio- 
 neer," whom the poet had christened Don 
 Roberto Wagonero, or, more briefly, the Don. 
 Holmes owned a little real estate in Cambridge, 
 yielding him a modest support and freeing him 
 from pecuniary anxiety. He had at intervals 
 recurrences of the old lameness and also of 
 weak eyes, but his buoyancy of temperament 
 made these quite subordinate. His friends 
 read aloud to him a great deal. His neighbor 
 and business manager, George P. Lawrence, 
 Esq., tells me that he read to Holmes nearly 
 the whole series of the Erckmann - Chatrian 
 historical novels ; the reader receiving from his 
 friend the brevet name of Cobus, from a ser- 
 geant in one of the stories, and being habitually 
 called on for the countersign before entering 
 the door. Lowell's letters, on the other hand, 
 
JOHN HOLMES '73 
 
 Holmes never wished to have read to him, 
 saying that he " knew it all before." He had 
 plenty of such little whims, as for instance in 
 disliking to have flowers sent to him, and saying 
 he did not enjoy their odor. He was never 
 prominent in the circle of his brother's friends, 
 except in the case of Lowell. His name does 
 not once occur in the index to Longfellow's 
 memoirs, though the two men lived within a 
 few blocks of each other and although the 
 poet's eldest daughter was in later life a kind 
 and devoted friend to him. It is indeed found 
 but four times in the index to Morse's Life 
 of Dr. O. W. Holmes. In the two volumes 
 of Lowell's letters, on the other hand, John 
 Holmes appears nearly as often as his more 
 famous brother. 
 
 The main incidents of John Holmes's eighty- 
 seven years of life, — for he died on January 27, 
 1899 — consisted of two visits to Europe, one 
 in 1839 when a young law student, and again 
 when he went with Mr. and Mrs. J. R. Lowell 
 in July, 1872, remaining this time until June of 
 the following year, having spent most of the 
 period in Paris, but also a month in Italy and a 
 short time in Germany. He was never a pro- 
 fuse letter writer, and even his brief European 
 epistles give us little beyond routine. In 
 spite of the companionship of Lowell, he was 
 
174 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 restrained by his own infirmities in respect to 
 sight and locomotion ; so that he says in one of 
 these letters to Mr. Bartlett (Paris, November 
 26, 1872 :) " You see that it is by no means a 
 gay life that I lead away from home, though 
 now a very comfortable one, and so far as 
 domestic life is concerned a very pleasant one, 
 except that I am necessarily a great deal alone. 
 J. L. [Lowell] has to go out a good deal, and 
 I cannot of course accompany him. Paris is 
 more beautiful than I remember it to be, and a 
 more solid city than London, if stone is con- 
 sidered more massive than brick." Compare, 
 on the other hand, the endless amusement he 
 extracts in Cambridge from the midsummer 
 desertion of a college town : — 
 
 " Solitude reigns here. The average number 
 of people that pass for twelve hours from 6 to 
 6, per hour is Jg- -^-t 10^ p. m. the travel (of 
 pedestrians) is o, and from that time till 6 the 
 next morning, you can hear a small dog bark, 
 over the river. I should like to hear a hand- 
 organ, or some fire crackers, or some saw-filing 
 or something. The only amusement we have 
 is the burglaries. You would be surprised to 
 see how cheerful everybody looks when there 
 has been a 'breaking and entering' (Legal 
 expression). But they are very rare. Of 
 course we can't count the funerals that pass 
 
JOHN HOLMES 175 
 
 through town as gaieties : but I fear that some 
 people — I hesitate to express my thought — 
 yes, I will say it — that some people begin to 
 enjoy them. The city government foresaw the 
 dullness & melancholy of midsummer and by 
 a happy thought, they instituted repairs on the 
 old burial ground to keep people's spirits up. 
 There are no mosquitoes nor bugs and I confess 
 I miss them, — they make things lively, at any 
 rate." 
 Then follows : — 
 
 DIARY OF A CITIZEN OF CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 August I. Repairs of meetinghouse & bury- 
 ing ground going on — a dorbug flew in at a 
 window — caused alarm of burglars — great 
 excitement in the town. 
 
 August 2. Repairs still going on; a man 
 who had n't left enough in his bottle fell off his 
 cart, but escaped without broken legs — a great 
 deal of excitement in the town — 
 
 August 3. Repairs still going on. 
 
 August 4. Repairs continued. 
 
 August 5. Repairs on the meetinghouse 
 going on. 
 
 August 6. Repairs of meetinghouse & bur- 
 ial ground very considerably advanced. 
 
 August 7. Workmen still busy on the 
 meetinghouse. 
 
176 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 August 8. The repairs of the church are 
 continued. 
 
 August 9. The meetinghouse still under 
 repair. 
 
 Later in the season he notes the premonitions 
 of the autumnal return of his Cambridge neigh- 
 bors : " You see at dusk a little procession move 
 wearily along Appian Way. The smallest child 
 has something or other to carry. It does n't 
 look like a jubilant return." 
 
 While in Paris Holmes studied French most 
 faithfully, though perhaps tardily ; and he used 
 every summer afterwards to work away at 
 his French grammar on the piazza of my 
 brother's house at Cohasset, or that of Dr. 
 Charles Ware, their classmate and boyish play- 
 mate, at Rindge, N. H. My sister-in-law 
 described him as the pleasantest of inmates, — 
 always able to amuse himself even in the inter- 
 vals of French grammar ; a little whimsical and 
 old-bachelorish, but never taking offense and 
 never moody or suffering from ennui. This 
 was all in keeping. The mere wit is lost with- 
 out a companion with whom to cross swords, 
 but the humorist finds a companion in the pass- 
 ing stranger, in a stray dog, in a butterfly, or in 
 a cankerworm. This at least, was true of John 
 Holmes. 
 
JOHN HOLMES 177 
 
 I do not suppose that there was ever a mo- 
 ment in John Holmes's peaceful and prolonged 
 existence when he could really have been said 
 to have envied his more famous brother. The 
 " cool sequestered vale of life " was the choice 
 of his temperament, and he certainly had it. 
 When Ralph Waldo Emerson once said of him, 
 "John Holmes represents humor, while his 
 elder brother stands for wit," he really placed 
 the younger the higher of the two; but it is 
 doubtful whether the latter ever heard the re- 
 mark, or would have paid much attention to it 
 had it reached him. Wits are not uncommon 
 and are seldom unappreciated, but the inborn 
 humorist, for whom daily life furnishes its own 
 entertainment, is less recognized by the public 
 and yet seldom suffers by the omission. The 
 most commonplace event, the most uninterest- 
 ing tramp who wandered through the little 
 street, was enough to feed John Holmes's 
 thoughts and to supply his conversation with 
 spice. He kept piles of assorted coins on his 
 window seat with which to supply, according to 
 his whim, these stray passers-by, sometimes 
 questioning them and getting an ample money's 
 worth before they left him. Next to them in 
 his confidence were his friends' children, to 
 whom also the intrinsic charm of a little bit of 
 silver must be taught. His devices in over- 
 
178 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 coming their scruples were varied and indeed 
 endless. I have heard him say to one of them, 
 " My dear, did you know that a toll has to be 
 paid for every child who passes through this 
 street ? " And when met by an anxious and 
 wondering glance, he would persevere : " Yes ! 
 it is true, it always must be paid, but it makes 
 no difference who pays it ; you may pay it to 
 me, or I will pay it to you. It will be the same 
 thing. So you will have to take this quarter of 
 a dollar, " — a sum which the child would then 
 receive and bear away with a vague sense of 
 that virtue which is its own reward. 
 
 His humor was singularly spontaneous, and 
 took oftenest the form of a droll picture cul- 
 minating in a little dramatic scene in which he 
 enacted all the parts. A grave discussion, for 
 instance, as to the fact, often noticed, that 
 men are apt to shorten in size as they grow 
 older, suggested to him the probable working 
 of this process in some vast period of time like 
 the longevity of the Old Testament patriarchs. 
 His busy fancy at once conjured up a picture 
 of Methuselah in his literally declining years, 
 when he had shrunk to be less than knee-high 
 compared with an ordinary man. The patriarch 
 is running about the room, his eyes streaming 
 with tears. " What 's the matter, Thuse ? " 
 says a benevolent stranger. " Why are you 
 
JOHN HOLMES 179 
 
 crying ?" " I ain't crying," responds the aged 
 patriarch, brushing away the drops. "It's 
 these plaguy shoestrings that keep getting 
 into my eyes." Again, in answer to an inquiry 
 about a child, I made some commonplace re- 
 mark on the tormenting rapidity with which 
 one's friends' children grow up, and he said 
 eagerly : " That 's it ! That 's it ! It is always 
 the way ! You meet an old friend, and- say to 
 her in a friendly manner, ' By the way, how 
 is that little girl of yours .' ' and she answers, 
 ' Very well, I thank you. She is out in Kansas, 
 visiting her grand-daughter.' " Did any other 
 man ever concentrate four whole generations 
 of human life into so brief a formula ? 
 
 These odd fancies were never worked up 
 in advance, rarely duplicated, often forgotten. 
 You might tell him his own bits of humor six 
 months after, and he would credit them to you, 
 as your own. Often the fun consisted merely 
 in an expression of surprise, a drawing up of 
 the mouth, a shutting of the eyelids, so whim- 
 sical that in any other hands the story would 
 have failed. Such was one that he was some- 
 times called upon to duplicate, where a young 
 man at a party, having been served with tea 
 and cake, and finding the tea too hot to drink, 
 and no table near on which to rest it, seeks in 
 vain to pour it into his saucer for cooling. He 
 
l8o CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 is unable to pour it, because of the piece of 
 cake in his hand. At last a happy thought 
 occurs to him. He will put the cake in his 
 mouth, and leave his hands free. The tea is 
 poured with success, and he is about to drink it, 
 when it suddenly occurs to him that he still has 
 the cake in his mouth, and is as far off as ever 
 from relief. John Holmes's look of sudden 
 despair and hopelessness, when the young man 
 makes this discovery, is something which no 
 one else could equal. Hopeless, also, was the 
 attempt of any one else to render the look 
 which he gave to the betrayed mother, when 
 her boy, again and again replenished with ice- 
 cream before company, still obtains new sup- 
 plies by the threat, " If you don't give it to 
 me, I '11 tell." On being finally met with re- 
 fusal, he shouts forth to the embarrassed guests 
 the awful domestic mystery, " My new breeches 
 are made out of the old window curtains ! " 
 Stories that in themselves were nothing rose 
 to dramatic episodes when acted out by Holmes. 
 Another of John Holmes's spontaneous dra- 
 matic pictures was this. Something was said 
 about the increasing number of students who 
 failed to complete their undergraduate course 
 in the accustomed four years, but had to be 
 dropped from class to class before they could 
 finish it. It was admitted that the number of 
 
JOHN HOLMES i8i 
 
 these unfortunates was increasing, and Holmes 
 predicted without hesitation that a race of Har- 
 vard students would be ultimately developed 
 who would never get through at all, but might 
 perhaps die at the age of ninety on the very day 
 before Commencement, thus depriving the in- 
 stitution of the glory of their final diploma. In 
 his lively imagination, a group of President and 
 Faculty was seen gathered around the bed of 
 the aged man, imploring him to make the final 
 effort necessary to hold out just one day longer. 
 " Think," they said, " what an honor it would be 
 to the university to have graduated you at last, 
 and what a disappointment should you expire 
 an undergraduate after all ! Rouse yourself ! 
 Make one more effort ! Live until to-morrow, 
 and die a Bachelor of Arts ! " 
 
 John Holmes was an admirable mimic, which 
 his brother Wendell was not, and he had a 
 favorite story of a Yankee farmer of his ac- 
 quaintance who used to preface a sentence by 
 five different enunciations of the word " Well." 
 The first would come lightly, as if finding the 
 question trivial, " Well ! " The second more 
 drawlingly, on beginning to see the importance 
 of the matter, " We-ell ! " The third more drawl- 
 ingly still, but solemnly, as if grappling medi- 
 tatively with the whole extent of the subject, 
 " We-e-ell ! " The next impatiently, relapsing 
 
i82 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 into the vernacular and bringing the whole 
 thing emphatically into the field of action, 
 " Wal ! '' — as if to be settled now or never. 
 And then at last decisively, as if the case were 
 made up, and no human power could overrule 
 it, "Well!" 
 
 This creative and dramatic quality of John 
 Holmes's humor is vividly shown in his com- 
 ment — made in a private letter to his friend 
 John Bartlett — on the appendix to that gentle- 
 man's well-known " Shakespeare Phrase Book," 
 in which the careful editor gives by way of 
 appendix eighty pages of " comparative read- 
 ings," faithfully setting down all the Shake- 
 spearean lines from various editors, preserved 
 because rejected by him. Holmes thus por- 
 trays the probable mental conflicts of his friend 
 in deciding which reading to adopt, in each 
 case, and which to assign to what he calls " the 
 wastebasket : " — 
 
 " I am glad that the brief episode of the 
 wastebasket is attached to the magnum opus. 
 The bold emancipation of the author from his 
 own tyranny, the ferocious hurling of his work 
 to apparent destruction, the savage exultation 
 of the mob (of one), the calm resistance of the 
 conservative party (of one), the return of the 
 mob to reason and of the tyrant to power, when 
 the outcast of the night before is raised and 
 
JOHN HOLMES 183 
 
 hugged by the repentant populace, ... it is 
 altogether an admirable dramatic arrangement, 
 in which a terrific combination of tragic ele- 
 ments (all that the supposed spectator can 
 bear) suddenly culminates in wise resolution, 
 unanimous action, and general happiness. Had 
 not the insensate mob changed its mind, 
 
 '"You had then left unseen a wonderful 
 piece of work.' " 
 
 To appreciate the following extract from 
 Lowell's letters, it must be remembered that in 
 the rural days of Cambridge the Holmes par- 
 sonage and its surrounding acres constituted 
 a considerable farm, with all the accompani- 
 ments of garden lot, mowing lot, large barn, 
 corn bam, horse stable, cow stable, and dog 
 kennel. Lowell says in a letter (Letters, i. 
 313), "Cambridge boasts of two distinguished 
 farmers, John Holmes of Holmes Place, and 
 him who would be, in the properly constituted 
 order of things, the Marquess of Thompson Lot 
 with a/." (This is Lowell himself, the char- 
 acter being taken from a then favorite play 
 of Toodles.) Lowell goes on : "The Marquess, 
 fearing that (since Squire Holmes cultivated 
 his own estate with his own hands and a camp 
 stool) his rival might be in want of food and 
 too proud to confess it, generously resolved to 
 give him a dinner, which, to save his feelings, 
 
l84 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 he adroitly veiled with the pretense of an agri- 
 cultural festival and show of vegetables." In 
 the subsequent narrative, the chairman gives 
 the toast " Speed the Plough, " which is " ac- 
 knowledged by Mr. Holmes in a neat speech ; " 
 — but the speech as given is so thoroughly 
 Lowell's, and so remote from Holmes, by reason 
 of its multitude of poor but ingenious puns, 
 that the personal Holmes evidently disappears 
 from the scene. John Holmes's humor some- 
 times, however, took the form of puns, but 
 always with an apology, while Lowell never 
 spared anything but the apology. 
 
 Holmes was Lowell's favorite guest, and 
 when he asks Howells in 1869 to eat roast pig 
 with him on Saturday at half -past four p. m. — 
 an abnormal dinner hour, now happily obsolete 
 — he says to him: "Your commensals will be 
 J. H. [John Holmes], Charles Storey [father of 
 Moorfield Storey], and Professor [George M.] 
 Lane, — all true blades who will sit till Monday 
 morning, if needful. The pig is just ripe, and so 
 tender that he would fall from his tail if lifted 
 by it, like a mature cantaloupe from its stem " 
 (Letters, i. 313). These were all clever men, 
 and Lowell must have had his fill of that 
 " Lambish quintessence of John " which he de- 
 scribed in verse. Again on Christmas Day, 
 1876, Lowell writes : "I had expected my two 
 
JOHN HOLMES iSj 
 
 grandsons to dinner, but the weather will not 
 let them run the risk, so I am to have my friend 
 John Holmes (the best and most delightful of 
 men) and a student whom I found to be without 
 any chance at other than a dinner in Commons." 
 It was but two or three times in John 
 Holmes's life that he trusted himself in print, 
 and here also he kept carefully on his own 
 ground, — Old Cambridge. One may have faith- 
 fully perused Lowell's delightful " Fireside Trav- 
 els" without getting the very inmost glimpse 
 of village life in the earlier Cambridge, unless 
 he has also read John Holmes's "Harvard 
 Square " in the Harvard Book. Here live again, 
 for instance, " P. & S. Snow," the veteran oyster 
 dealers whom Lowell has immortalized in de- 
 licious rhyme ; but John Holmes's imagination 
 goes beyond the dealers to the articles in which 
 they dealt, and says of them, "The oysters 
 seemed to know the brothers personally as old 
 familiars of their element, and appeared satis- 
 fied and serene when they saw who had forced 
 their doors." Lowell speaks of the old First 
 Church, but no one has ever described like 
 Holmes the outlet given to youthful vivacity, 
 even in Puritan strongholds, by the dropping 
 of the pew seats. " The seats, which were in- 
 dependent of one another, were made to fold 
 back, that their occupants might find support 
 
i86 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 against the wall or the side of the pew during 
 the time of prayers, when, at that day, all stood 
 up; and leaves, suspended on the side of the 
 pew, which could be extended and supported 
 by an appropriate pine rod, seemed to recall an 
 older Puritan time, when taking notes was an 
 important part of the exercises. When the 
 seats were let down, at the close of prayer, 
 the effect was much like that of the abrupt dis- 
 charge of a load of boards from a cart, but with 
 more numerous percussions. They were low- 
 ered every way but quietly. Childhood was 
 quick and energetic, age was slow, and between 
 them were all modes of sublapsarianism. Per- 
 haps they came down more violently after a 
 very long prayer than at other times. It was a 
 phenomenon, and the only one I recollect, at 
 variance with the very strict decorum observed. 
 It drew no attention whatever." 
 
 Lowell himself has not described so graphi- 
 cally as John Holmes the great colonial festival 
 which the Harvard Commencement furnished 
 in the middle of the eighteenth century. 
 
 ... "A day or two beforehand the agent, 
 charged with that duty, measured the spaces 
 on the Common allotted by the town for a con- 
 sideration, to the occupants of tents, and scored 
 the number of each in the sod. Grave citi- 
 zens watched the numerals ; children circulated 
 
JOHN HOLMES 187 
 
 their reports with increase. The popular test 
 of Commencement was the number of tents 
 erected. When the work of construction be- 
 gan, fathers led out little children that they 
 might themselves, without reproach, loiter near 
 the delightful tumult. Selectmen are said to 
 have hovered around the spot in a semi-official 
 attitude. The inhabitants of the town, alive to 
 their responsibility, prepared, and tradition says 
 worthily, to bestow their hospitalities. And 
 truly it was time to be up and doing. A man 
 might pass the whole year, until Commence- 
 ment, without knowing the number and value 
 of his friends. Then everybody and everything 
 turned up. A prodigal son, supposed on a 
 voyage up the Straits, arrived on Monday by 
 coaster from Chappequiddick, to eat the fatted 
 calf. In the afternoon an unappreciated rela- 
 tive, presumed to have perished in the late war, 
 appeared with an appetite improved by open- 
 air residence among the Indians. The more 
 remote affinities at this period revealed their 
 strength. On Tuesday, after the nearer rela- 
 tives had arrived, there might drop in at even- 
 ing a third cousin of a wife's half-brother from 
 Agawam, or an uncle of a brother-in-law's step- 
 sister from Contoocook, to re-knit the family 
 ties. The runaway apprentice, who was ready 
 to condone offenses and accept hospitality, was 
 
i88 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 referred to the barn, as well as the Indian from 
 Mr. Wheelock's Seminary, whose equipment 
 was an Indian catechism and a bow and arrow, 
 with which latter he expected to turn a fugitive 
 penny by shooting at a mark on the morrow. 
 The wayward boy, over whose watery grave 
 Mr. Sam Stedman had so many times fired his 
 long ducking-gun (cannon being scarce in those 
 days), returned from a truant visit to his uncle 
 on the 'New Hampshire Grants' [Vermont]. 
 The College sloop, that shadowy craft which 
 floats in time indefinitely, always arrived in 
 time for the floodtide on Tuesday. The Water- 
 town lighter was uniformly driven ashore on 
 Tuesday evening by the perils of the seas ; that 
 is, by the strong current that prevailed in the 
 river about Commencement time. The captain 
 and crew, like judicious men, made it a point to 
 improve their minds while detained and always 
 attended the literary exercises on the Common." 
 We may be sure that John Holmes describes 
 in full the Commencement procession of 1750 
 and its accompanying services : " The sober 
 academic colors were relieved by occasional 
 gold-laced hats and coats, by a sprinkling of his 
 Majesty's uniforms, and by the scores of silver 
 shoe-buckles which glistened in the sun at every 
 footstep, to the delight of the public and of the 
 wearers of them. . . . The President occupied 
 
JOHN HOLMES 189 
 
 the pulpit, and the Governor the great chair in 
 front ; the rest, with mutual conghs, self-sac- 
 rificing offers, and deprecatory acceptances of 
 seats, distributed themselves on the stage. The 
 cocked hats were hung on the brass-headed 
 nails which lined the beams projecting from 
 the wall between the pulpit and the galleries. 
 . . . The [Latin] Salutatory goes off brilliantly, 
 — that is to say, nobody seems depressed by it ; 
 the audience chats in a lively manner. A Latin 
 thesis is called for, which goes rather heavily, 
 but is relieved by the arrival of old Judge 
 Trowbridge, who comes up the outside stairs, 
 and with multiplied attentions is seated on the 
 stage. He is the most famous recondite old 
 lawyer in the Province, and has lost himself in 
 a lucubration this morning so as to forget the 
 time. Another Latin thesis is helped off by a 
 row at the west door of the church, at the sound 
 of which young James Winthrop slips out and 
 witnesses the victory of the ' constable and six 
 men ' over two drunken English sailors." 
 
 In describing the Commencement dinner of 
 the same period. Holmes draws a new and un- 
 expected moral from the creation of the mos- 
 quito. "There was," he says, "no great 
 affinity between the EngUsh gentleman, or 
 courtier, of that day and the average New Eng- 
 land colonist. . . . Two topics, under these cir- 
 
190 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 cumstances, did excellent service, — the heat of 
 to-day and the mosquitoes of last night. On 
 these points there was a cordial unanimity, with 
 an amount of circumstantial difference that ex- 
 tended the conversation most profitably. The 
 patient who tosses and kicks under the lancet 
 of the mosquito, or, worse, listens to his hum, 
 as he selects the spot for puncture, is not in 
 a mood for reflection. Let him, however, re- 
 member that the torment of the night will be- 
 come a social medium on the morrow to draw 
 him nearer friends and soften his relation to 
 strangers." 
 
 In those days there was, in the afternoon, a 
 separate series of addresses and a separate pro- 
 cession. "The afternoon audience, we may 
 suppose, was largely composed of those who 
 attend everything on principle. All reasonable 
 people were now in a blissful state. The ex- 
 cellent Dr. Appleton, the minister of the par- 
 ish, walking in the afternoon procession, smiled 
 unconsciously on the collective license of the 
 crowd. The rough village doctor, though wit- 
 nessing the abominable breach of hygienic law 
 everywhere, felt the cheering influence of the 
 day, and his old mare with perplexity missed 
 half her usual allowance of cowhide. The dry, 
 skeptical village lawyer, returned from his din- 
 ner at Miss Chadbourne's to his dusty office in 
 
JOHN HOLMES 191 
 
 his best mood, prepared to deny everything ad- 
 vanced by anybody, and demand proof. On 
 the Common, the Natick Indians, having made 
 large gain by their bows and arrows, proceeded 
 to a retired spot, and silently and successfully 
 achieved the process of inebriation." 
 
 For one to whom the past was thus vivid, it 
 might seem that the present must be shadowy 
 in comparison ; yet the latest visitor, the most 
 recent passer-by, was to him a figure equally 
 animated ; nor was any picture of past or pre- 
 sent so characteristic and original, after all, as 
 was the inexhaustibly fertile mind from which 
 it came. It is this which gives to those who 
 knew John Holmes a sense of loss so unique 
 and irreparable. Men and events will come and 
 go, but we shall no longer listen to hear what 
 he will say about them ; it is as if the art of 
 instantaneous photography had perished with 
 its inventor. 
 
THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS 
 
 '' Were I to be required to say, in one word, wliat is the system of 
 Nature, I should say — Variety." 
 
 Dr. Harris to Edward Newman, 1844. 
 
 One of the ablest of American botanists, 
 Edward Tuckerman, writes in respect to Dr. 
 Harris : " Of other genuine naturalists I have 
 read, but he is the only one I ever knew." 
 This is hardly too strong a statement of the 
 loyalty entertained toward this eminent man by 
 those who had the privilege of being his pupils 
 in natural history. In him there lived for us 
 the very spirit of Linnaeus, or whatever name 
 best represents the simplest and purest type of 
 the naturalist. The personal attachment thus 
 won, the healthy influence thus exerted, and 
 the slow and gradual recognition of the merit 
 of his methods are a form of success more con- 
 genial to the temperament of Dr. Harris than 
 would have been any more immediate and su- 
 perficial applauses. 
 
 Thaddeus William Harris was born in Dor- 
 chester, Mass., November 12, 1795. He was 
 the son of Thaddeus Mason Harris, D. D., and 
 
THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS 193 
 
 Mary (Dix) Harris. The elder Dr. Harris was 
 a native of Charlestown, Mass., born in 1768, 
 graduated at Harvard College in 1787, and was 
 librarian of that institution from 1791 to 1793. 
 He left that position to be ordained over the 
 First Congregational Church in Dorchester, 
 where he remained until within a few years of 
 his death, which occurred in 1842. I remem- 
 ber in my boyhood the little quaint old man, 
 bent almost incredibly, but still wearing a hale 
 aspect, who used to haunt the alcoves of the 
 old library in Harvard Hall. It was rumored 
 among us that he had once been appointed pri- 
 vate secretary to Washington, but had resigned 
 from illness ; and it was known that he was 
 arranging and indexing for Mr. Sparks the one 
 hundred and thirty-two manuscript volumes of 
 Washington's correspondence. He was not 
 without his poetic laurels, too, since it was 
 whispered that he had composed for Edward 
 Everett's youthful recitation the verses, — 
 
 " Yoo'd scarce expect one of my age 
 To speak in public on the stage." 
 
 He was, moreover, a learned antiquarian and 
 divine, and had come to natural history by a 
 strictly professional path ; for besides his pro- 
 per harvest of fifty-eight occasional sermons, 
 and seventeen other publications,^ he had found 
 1 See a list of them in an admirable memoir of the elder 
 
194 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 time for an elaborate " Natural History of the 
 Bible," which was published in 1820, and long 
 remained a standard work, both here and in 
 Europe. It aimed to describe and identify 
 every animal, plant, and precious stone men- 
 tioned in Scripture ; and must have evolved, on 
 many of these points, enough of minute inves- 
 tigation to enlist the whole family in the work. 
 And as Mrs. Harris was at the same period a 
 diligent rearer of silkworms, and supplied her- 
 self for ten years with sewing-silk from their 
 labors, it is evident that natural history must 
 have been a topic of habitual household inter- 
 est. It is certain that at this time (1820), the 
 younger Dr. Harris began his permanent col- 
 lection of insects. 
 
 He entered Harvard College in 181 1, in his 
 sixteenth year, and graduated, with respectable 
 rank, in 1815. One of his classmates describes 
 him as " a timid, sensitive, rather nervous and 
 recluse youth," who was not at that time con- 
 spicuous for his love of natural history. There 
 was a college society, called first the " Lavoise- 
 rian," and then the " Hermetic," for the study 
 of natural philosophy, and especially of chemis- 
 try. It is very probable that Dr. Harris was 
 inclined to this last study, as he was appointed, 
 
 Dr. Harris, by N. L. Frothingham, D, D., in the Mass. Hist. 
 Coll., 4th serieS) II. 130. 
 
THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS 195 
 
 some years after his graduation, a member of 
 the Examining Committee in that department. 
 The college afforded no direct instruction in 
 natural history at that time, except in the lec- 
 tures of Professor W. D. Peck. These were 
 accessible by a special fee, and do not seem to 
 have left a very palatable impression on those 
 who heard them. Dr. Harris, however, attrib- 
 utes to Dr. Peck his first interest in his favorite 
 study. " It was this early and much esteemed 
 friend who first developed my taste for ento- 
 mology, and stimulated me to cultivate it." 
 This probably refers, however, not to college 
 days, but to a renewal of intercourse with the 
 professor, about 1820. Professor Peck died 
 two years later, and his manuscripts were sub- 
 mitted for examination to the two Doctors Har- 
 ris, who reported adversely to the publication, 
 finding them apparently correct and faithful, 
 but a little behind the times. Yet Professor 
 Peck was reputed a man of real science in his 
 day, and a recommendation of him by Sir Jo- 
 seph Banks used to be quoted. His only memo- 
 rial now remains in the baptismal name of one 
 minute insect, the Xenos Peckii of Kirby, which 
 as being at that time the only species of its 
 genus, and the only genus of its order, repre- 
 sented in a certain degree the very aristocracy 
 of science. 
 
196 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 After his graduation Dr. Harris devoted him- 
 self to the study of medicine, took his medical 
 degree in 1820, and entered on the practice of 
 his profession at Milton, in connection with Dr. 
 Amos Holbrook, whose daughter (Catherine) 
 he afterwards married. Dr. Holbrook was an 
 eminent practitioner in his day, being vice-presi- 
 dent of the Massachusetts Medical Society, and 
 corresponding member of several foreign asso- 
 ciations. After two or three years, Dr. Harris 
 took an ofHce for himself in Dorchester village, 
 near Milton Lower Mills. I do not know how 
 far he became really attached to his profession; 
 he never refers to it in his correspondence, and 
 seems to have entirely quitted it after his aca- 
 demical appointment, except when he once took 
 for a few weeks the practice of Dr. Plympton, 
 during the illness of that well-known Cam- 
 bridge physician. It was while he was a resi- 
 dent of Milton and Dorchester that the greater 
 part of his outdoor researches in entomology 
 must have been made. Yet he wrote to Pro- 
 fessor Hentz (June S, 1829), that he "had but 
 very little time to devote to the study of in- 
 sects." "My leisure moments," he adds, "are 
 principally employed in collecting and preserv- 
 ing such as I can discover, in order to replenish 
 my cabinet of duplicates." For this reason, 
 and from pecuniary anxieties, it is evident that 
 
THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS 197 
 
 he was quite ready to contemplate a change of 
 residence. For instance, when Professor Hentz 
 was about taking a professorship in an Alabama 
 university, Dr. Harris was evidently not indis- 
 posed to go with him. He wrote March 25, 
 1829 : — 
 
 "As to the intimation respecting a profes- 
 sor's chair, I can but repeat what I once men- 
 tioned, that my qualifications are not adequate ; 
 but if the climate should admit, I could pre- 
 pare myself for the department of obstetrics 
 or materia medica. Some experience for ten 
 years in the former, and my knowledge of bot- 
 any, and necessary acquaintance with the ma- 
 nipulation of drugs, would not render it difficult 
 to attain, in a short time, a tolerable knowledge 
 of either of these branches." 
 
 Two months later (June 5, 1829) he wrote to 
 the same friend : — 
 
 " I am very desirous to learn the issue of 
 your contemplated change of place. Such are 
 the embarrassments and anxieties of my pre- 
 sent situation, that your hints in regard to 
 myself would receive serious consideration, — 
 especially if the climate, the professional de- 
 partment, and the emolument should coincide 
 with my wishes. You may not know that my 
 friends endeavored, some time ago, to procure 
 for me an appointment as librarian at Harvard 
 
198 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 University, a situation which would have suited 
 me exactly ; but unfortunately the place was 
 pre-engaged." 
 
 This refers, doubtless, to the appointment of 
 Mr. Benjamin Peirce to the librarianship in 
 1826. It would appear from this that Dr. Har- 
 ris had for some time looked with hope to this 
 appointment, which he finally received in 183 1, 
 on the death of Mr. Peirce. It would also ap- 
 pear that he found the librarianship attractive 
 for its own sake, and not (as it was perhaps 
 viewed by some of his friends) as a stepping- 
 stone toward a professorship of natural history. 
 Be this as it may, he accepted the post, and 
 held it during the remaining twenty-five years 
 of his life. 
 
 No doubt he looked forward with delight to 
 the change. The librarian's salary was low, but 
 the dignity and permanence of the new post 
 must have appeared in agreeable contrast to 
 the struggle for life of a country physician, 
 whose very acquirements as a naturalist may 
 have impeded his professional career. Then 
 the methodical and accurate habits of Dr. Har- 
 ris promised to make the daily routine of duty 
 agreeable; he had a genuine love of antiqua- 
 rian research, though always kept under by 
 the greater attractions of natural science ; and 
 he might reasonably hope for many books and 
 
THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS 199 
 
 some leisure. In both he was disappointed ; 
 of leisure he had almost none, and of books no 
 liberal supply. The library at the time of his 
 accession numbered but about thirty thousand 
 volumes, though he left it swelled to sixty-five 
 thousand. Its means of increase were then ex- 
 ceedingly small, and the great cost of works on 
 natural history precluded much investment in 
 that direction. 
 
 Dr. Harris was appointed ere long to a quasi- 
 scientific post in the college, in addition to his 
 librarianship. The professorship of natural his- 
 tory was at this time vacant for want of funds, 
 and Dr. Augustus A. Gould gave, until 1837, 
 an annual course of lectures on this subject to 
 the senior class. On his resignation, Dr. Harris 
 took his place and had charge of that depart- 
 ment from February 16, 1837, till the appoint- 
 ment of a permanent professor in 1842. I was 
 fortimate enough to be among his pupils. There 
 were exercises twice a week, which included 
 recitations in Smellie's " Philosophy of Natural 
 History," with occasional elucidations and fa- 
 miliar lectures by Dr. Harris. There were also 
 special lectures on botany. This was the only 
 foothold which natural history had then secured 
 in what we hopefully called the "university." 
 Even these scanty lessons were, if I rightly re- 
 member, a voluntary affair ; we had no "marks " 
 
200 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 for attendance, and no demerits for absence, 
 and they were thus to a merely ambitious stu- 
 dent a waste of time, so far as college rank 
 was concerned. Still they proved so interest- 
 ing that Dr. Harris formed, in addition, a pri- 
 vate class in entomology, to which I also be- 
 longed. It included about a dozen young men 
 from different college classes, who met on one 
 evening of every week at the room where our 
 teacher kept his cabinet, in Massachusetts Hall. 
 These were very delightful exercises, accord- 
 ing to my recollection, though we never got be- 
 yond the Coleoptera. Dr. Harris was so simple 
 and eager, his tall, spare form and thin face 
 took on such a glow and freshness, he dwelt 
 so lovingly on antennae and tarsi, and handled 
 so fondly his little insect-martyrs, that it was 
 enough to make one love this study for life, be- 
 yond all branches of natural science, and I am 
 sure that it had that effect on me. 
 
 As one fruit of these lessons, several of us 
 undertook, during the following year, to ar- 
 range for the Harvard Natural History Society 
 its collection of insects, then very much aug- 
 mented, and only partially arranged by my pre- 
 decessor in the Curatorship of Entomology, 
 Henry Bryant, since well known to the world 
 of science. This task kept us in contact with 
 Dr. Harris ; we had the aid of his cabinet in 
 
THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS 201 
 
 identif jdng the species ; but the more we used 
 this ready assistance, the more profound became 
 the wonder how Dr. Harris himself had identi- 
 fied them. There were no manuals, no descrip- 
 tions, no figures accessible to us ; even in the 
 college library there were only a few books on 
 tropical insects, and a few vast encyclopaedias, 
 which appeared to hold everything but what 
 was wanted. It seemed as if a special flight 
 of insects must have come to Dr. Harris from 
 the skies, all ready pinned and labeled. Older 
 heads than ours were equally perplexed, and 
 the mystery was never fairly solved until after 
 the death of our dear preceptor, and the trans- 
 fer of his cabinet and papers to the Boston 
 Society of Natural History. 
 
 It was then apparent by what vast labor Dr. 
 Harris had compiled for himself the literary 
 apparatus of his scientific study. A mass of 
 manuscript books, systematized with French 
 method, but written in the clearest of English 
 handwriting, show how he opened his way 
 through the mighty maze of authorities. First 
 comes, for instance, a complete systematic 
 index to the butterflies described by Godart and 
 Latreille, in the Encyclopddie M^thodique. 
 Every genus or species is noted, with authority, 
 reference, and s)monyms, — the notes being 
 then rearranged alphabetically and pasted into 
 
202 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 a volume, perhaps three thousand titles in all. 
 This was done in 1835. 
 
 Then comes a similar compilation of the 
 Coleoptera from Olivier ; twenty foolscap pages, 
 giving genus, species, locality, and even measure- 
 ments, to the fraction of an inch. Then there 
 are three manuscript volumes containing an 
 index to the four volumes of Cramer's " Papil- 
 lons Exotiques ; " one devoted to Stoll's " Sup- 
 plement," and two to Hiibner's "Exotische 
 Schmetterlinge." For Drury's " Illustrations 
 of Natural History" there are two of these 
 elaborate indices, made at different periods ; 
 one based on the original edition in 1770-73, 
 and the other on Westwood's reprint of 1837. 
 So beautifully executed is all this laborious 
 work, that it is still as easily accessible as print, 
 though the earlier sheets are yellow and torn. 
 The Natural History Society thus possesses not 
 merely the results of Dr. Harris's researches, 
 but the very tools which he himself forged for 
 their prosecution. 
 
 This immense preliminary labor always 
 brings with it some compensation to the iso- 
 lated explorer, in the thorough drill it implies. 
 " Writing maketh an exact man." But the per- 
 son who will undertake such labor is generally 
 exact by nature, and Dr. Harris, at any rate, 
 needed no such drudgery to fit him for the 
 
THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS 203 
 
 higher work of science. Yet there is an in- 
 estimable moral in his labor for our younger 
 generation of savants, and the saying of Rivarol 
 that " genius is only great patience " had never 
 a better illustration. 
 
 In this destitution of books and cabinets, 
 there was another compensation which gave to 
 Dr. Harris a more practical satisfaction. The 
 conditions of a new coimtry, implying these 
 drawbacks, imply also a great wealth of mate- 
 rial. In older countries it is rare to discover a 
 new species ; it is something to detect even a 
 new habitat. But these lonely American ento- 
 mologists seem, as one reads their correspond- 
 ence, like so many scientific Robinson Crusoes, 
 each with the insect-wealth of a new island at 
 his disposal. They are monarchs of all they 
 survey. With what affluence they exhibit their 
 dozens of undescribed species ; with what auto- 
 cratic power they divide and recombine genera ! 
 How ardently writes Hentz to Harris, " Oh ! 
 why must we live at such a distance from each 
 other.' What pleasures we might enjoy to- 
 gether." Or, " Mourn no longer for the single- 
 ness or solitude of your Amphicoma vulpina ! 
 I have foimd another." Yet they were richer 
 for the loneliness, and perhaps it was better 
 that Massachusetts and Carolina, even in scien- 
 tific jurisdiction, should remain at a reasonable 
 
204 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 distance. Had these students shared one en- 
 tomological region, they would have had less 
 wealth to interchange. 
 
 Nothing among the papers of Dr. Harris con- 
 tains so much of his scientific biography as a 
 letter written by him to Dr. D. H. Storer of 
 Boston, from which I shall therefore take ample 
 extracts. 
 
 Cambridge, November 2, 1836. 
 
 Dear Sir : Your kind note will cause you the 
 trouble of reading a long answer, if indeed you 
 can spare the time to do so. My plans are by no 
 means so nearly matured as you seem to imagine, 
 nor indeed is there any very great chance of the 
 obj ect of my wishes being speedily accomplished. 
 The want of a manual of American entomology 
 struck me very forcibly fifteen years ago, when 
 I was turning some of my attention to the 
 study of insects, and this want greatly impeded 
 my progress. There were then very few per- 
 sons who paid any attention to entomology in 
 this country ; none of them, excepting Professor 
 Peck, were then known to me ; and the infor- 
 mation which I could have gathered from him 
 was suddenly lost to me by his death. Some- 
 time afterwards I became known to Mr. Say 
 through our mutual acquaintance, Professor 
 Nuttall, and a correspondence was continued, at 
 protracted intervals it is true, between us till his 
 
THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS 205 
 
 decease. I often urged Mr. Say to prepare a 
 manual which would serve for American in- 
 sects, as Pursh's Flora and Eaton's Manual did 
 for plants, and he assured me that he was col- 
 lecting materials for the purpose. The de- 
 scribing of an immense number of new or sup- 
 posed new species occupied all the time that 
 he could give to entomology, and I do not find 
 among his papers anything like an outline or 
 commencement of the desired work. 
 
 In the meanwhile I had formed the idea of a 
 local fauna insectorum, which should include 
 only the species common in this vicinity, and I 
 began to write descriptions of these species, 
 but found myself embarrassed for the want of 
 books. This difficulty rather increased, or ap- 
 peared of more importance, as my knowledge 
 of species was enlarged, and I soon found my- 
 self in possession of a very large number of 
 insects, which could not, with any propriety, be 
 arranged in any of the genera described in my 
 books. To supply myself with all the works 
 necessary for determining these species and re- 
 ducing them to their proper genera, required a 
 much larger sum of money than I could com- 
 mand, and I have been compelled to wait even 
 till this time without having my wants in this re- 
 spect supplied. In the meanwhile some of my de- 
 scriptions were published in the " New England 
 
2o6 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 Farmer," and the series would have been con- 
 tinued there if I could have hoped to excite any 
 interest in the science among those who had 
 the power, if not the inclination, to aid it. 
 
 The lectures which I was called upon to de- 
 liver before the Natural History Society in 
 Boston gave a different direction to my studies 
 for a while; but about that time I wrote an 
 introduction, or rather made something like a 
 systematic abstract from the scientific part 
 of Kirby and Spence's Entomology on the 
 subject of the external anatomy, transforma- 
 tions, and different states of insects, which I 
 supposed it would be necessary to prefix to my 
 local fauna. Additions to this and to the de- 
 scriptive part of the contemplated work have 
 been made at subsequent periods, but still a 
 large part of the labor remains to be done. I 
 have no idea how large a book it would make 
 when finished, nor do I see any prospect of 
 my being able at present to finish it and indeed 
 I have nearly abandoned all hope of bringing it 
 to a successful termination. 
 
 The difificulties met with, at length led me 
 to think of some means of making entomo- 
 logy popular, and I looked to the young as the 
 proper subjects to begin with. With the hope 
 that by exciting a taste among children for 
 this branch of natural history, the parents 
 
THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS 207 
 
 might become interested also, I have rewritten 
 my introduction in plain and simple language, 
 divested as much as possible of all hard words, 
 and intend to add to it brief descriptions of 
 some of our most common insects. This you 
 may think is small business, but I hope it may 
 at least be useful and entertaining to those for 
 whom it is intended. 
 
 Dr. Pickering of Philadelphia some months 
 ago urged me to undertake a synopsis of Amer- 
 ican insects, and said so much on this subject 
 that I was induced to take his proposition seri- 
 ously into consideration. I then wrote to him 
 that if he would examine Say's insects for me, 
 and answer such inquiries as I might find ne- 
 cessary to make respecting the species con- 
 tained in his cabinet, I would undertake to 
 make "a descriptive catalogue of the insects 
 named in the second edition of Professor Hitch- 
 cock's Report on the Geology, etc., of Massa- 
 chusetts," but I could promise nothing more ; 
 for I was determined not to undertake to de- 
 scribe any insects but those which I had before 
 my own eyes. Hereupon Dr. Pickering obtained 
 leave of the Academy of Natural Sciences to 
 send me the whole of Say's collections, only 
 stipulating that I should put them in good 
 order, and return them in a condition to be 
 preserved after I had examined and arranged 
 
2o8 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 them. They arrived about the middle of July, 
 but on examination were found to be in a de- 
 plorable condition, most of the pins having be- 
 come loose, the labels detached, and the insects 
 themselves without heads, antennae, and legs, or 
 devoured by destructive larvae, and ground to 
 powder by the perilous shakings which they 
 had received in their transportation from New 
 Harmony. This irremediable destruction has 
 in great measure defeated my expectation of 
 deriving benefit from examining the specimens 
 and comparing them with those in my own col- 
 lection, and in that of Professor Hentz. . . . 
 
 Mr. Hentz's collection of insects is a most 
 capital and valuable one ; it proves on exam- 
 ination to be far better than I had anticipated. 
 I am sorely disappointed and mortified in not 
 having been able to raise subscriptions enough 
 to pay for it, and for the beautiful and useful 
 works of Olivier and Voet which accompanied it. 
 
 In spite of the closing sentence of this letter, 
 it appears that the books and cabinet of Pro- 
 fessor Hentz were finally paid for (the price 
 being ;^i35o), though mainly through the per- 
 sonal efforts of Dr. Harris. Professor Hentz 
 was of French birth, but American by adop- 
 tion, and it is surprising to find that his name 
 does not occur in our encyclopaedias, except in 
 
THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS 209 
 
 connection with his wife, well known as a nov- 
 elist. He has not even the meagre mention 
 which these works assign to those other pio- 
 neers of American entomology, Say and the 
 elder Le Conte. They, with Melsheimer, were 
 the early compeers of Dr. Harris, whether they 
 were or were not his peers ; while his chief aid 
 in collecting seems to have come from his friend 
 and classmate, Rev. L. W. Leonard of Dublin, 
 N. H. In truth, the number who seriously ap- 
 plied themselves to this science, in those days, 
 might almost have been counted upon one's 
 fingers. His foreign correspondence, when it 
 came, gave more substantial assistance, and I 
 especially remember the zeal aroused in Cam- 
 bridge by the visit of Mr. Edward Doubleday. 
 
 Yet the society of accomplished foreign nat- 
 uralists perhaps made Dr. Harris feel his own 
 loneliness the more. He writes (September 
 23, 1839) to Mr. Doubleday: — 
 
 " You have never, and can never know what 
 it is to be alone in your pursuits, to want the 
 s)mipathy and the aid and coimsel of kindred 
 spirits ; you are not compelled to pursue sci- 
 ence as it were by stealth, and to feel all the 
 time, while so employed, that you are exposing 
 yourself if discovered to the ridicule, perhaps, 
 at least to the contempt, of those who cannot 
 perceive in such pursuits any practical and use- 
 
210 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 f ul results. But such has been my lot, — and 
 you can therefore form some idea how grateful 
 to my feelings must be the privilege of an in- 
 terchange of views and communication with the 
 more favored votaries of science in another 
 land." 
 
 Dr. Harris prepared his catalogues of insects 
 as laboriously as he made his indices of books. 
 They were made on the plan of the card cata- 
 logues now used in libraries, upon uniform 
 pieces of paper, three or four inches square, 
 which he afterwards tied in bundles and care- 
 fully labeled. Each card contained the name 
 of the insect, with synonyms and authorities, 
 and the number it bore in his catalogue, — but 
 no description. Mr. Say's collection was cata- 
 logued by Dr. Harris in the same manner. 
 Most of this sort of work was apparently done 
 in 1837, and all these manuscripts are in pos- 
 session of the Boston Society. This institution 
 also holds copies of almost all his entomological 
 letters, transcribed with a neatness and clear- 
 ness peculiarly his own. 
 
 His entomological cabinet — of which he 
 wrote to Mr. Westermann, February 22, 1842, 
 "My collection is not only the best, but the 
 only general one of North American insects in 
 this country" — is now in possession of the 
 same association. He wrote of this cabinet to 
 
THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS 2H 
 
 Mr. C. J. Ward of Ohio, March 8, 1837, as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 " My object in making a collection, and for 
 this purpose asking the aid of my friends, has 
 not been merely personal gratification ; it has 
 been my desire to add something to the cause 
 of science in this country. . . . Even should 
 death surprise me before the results of my 
 labors are before the public, I shall leave an 
 extensive, well arranged and named collection, 
 which, from the care bestowed upon it, will be 
 in a condition for preservation, and will remain 
 as a standard of comparison when I am gone. 
 You will judge of the importance and value of 
 such a collection when I assure you that Mr. 
 Say's cabinet does not contain one half of the 
 species which he has described ; of the insects 
 in it, many are without names, and all more or 
 less mutilated, and so badly preserved that most 
 of them are now absolutely worthless." 
 
 The value thus claimed for this collection 
 is not too great. The delicate and systematic 
 care with which Dr. Harris preserved his in- 
 sects has secured for them a permanent useful- 
 ness. It is well known that no class of speci- 
 mens in natural history requires such watchful 
 pains. Almost all his American insects remain 
 labeled and arranged as he left them, thus fix- 
 ing firmly and indisputably every step he made 
 
212 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 in their classification. His foreign collection 
 was almost ruined before it came into posses- 
 sion of the Natural History Society, and that 
 of Professor Hentz was long since almost to- 
 tally destroyed. 
 
 Yet with all this care in his indoor labors, no 
 man knew better than Dr. Harris that the best 
 work of a naturalist must be done out of doors. 
 He had few leisure hours, and even the blessed 
 summer vacation must be largely devoted to the 
 annual examination of the dusty library. But 
 his minute observations on insect transforma- 
 tion still remain something extraordinary, and 
 many an experienced entomologist has won- 
 dered how or where Dr. Harris traced from the 
 egg the varied forms of some little insect which 
 others hardly knew in its completeness. His 
 rare skill with the pencil aided him in this work, 
 as in his studies of classification. As he learned 
 to classify butterflies by drawing the nervures 
 of their wings, so he fixed by copying each suc- 
 cessive stage of development. His excursions, 
 too, though rare, were effectual ; he had the quick 
 step, the roving eye and the prompt fingers of 
 a born naturalist ; he could convert his um- 
 brella into a net, and his hat into a collecting- 
 box ; he prolonged his quest into the night with 
 a lantern, and into November by searching be- 
 neath the bark of trees. Every great discovery 
 
THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS 213 
 
 was an occasion for enthusiasm, and it seemed 
 the climax of his life when he found for the 
 first time, on August 5, 1840, the larvae of the 
 southern butterfly, Papilio Philenor, on a shrub 
 in the Botanic Garden.^ He had previously 
 written of it to Hentz — February 18, 1838 
 — that "this insect must belong to a type of 
 which there is no other in the United States." 
 I very well remember that he gave me one of 
 his few specimens, and when I deposited the 
 lovely butterfly in the cabinet of the Harvard 
 Natural History Society, I felt as if I had 
 founded a professorship. 
 
 But the zeal of Dr. Harris was not confined 
 to entomology ; it extended to all branches of 
 zoology, and to botany, too. Indeed, this was 
 his favorite study next to that of insects, and 
 he left in manuscript an elaborate monograph of 
 the natural order Cucurbitaceae. I remember 
 the perennial eagerness with which he urged 
 upon us, each spring, to rediscover the Coral- 
 lorhiza vema in a certain field near the Obser- 
 vatory. It had been found there once, and once 
 only, by my classmate. Dr. Woodward. It had 
 certainly been found — and yet it seemed im- 
 probable that it should have been found, and it 
 was never found again, — and Dr. Harris's eyes 
 would always kindle when the little flower was 
 
 1 See p. 147 following. 
 
214 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 mentioned, and he would ponder, and debate, 
 and state over and over again the probabilities 
 and improbabilities, and discuss the possibility 
 of some error in the precise location, and draw 
 little plans of that field and the adjoining fields, 
 and urge us on to the pursuit or cheer us when 
 drooping and defeated, until it seemed as if the 
 quest after the Holy Grail was a thing insignifi- 
 cant and uninspiring compared -with the search 
 for that plain little orchid. This was the true 
 spirit of the observer, — appreciation of the un- 
 speakable value of a fact. 
 
 Still the certainty remains that for all pro- 
 ductive purposes of natural history the last 
 fifteen years of his life yielded constantly less 
 and less. Genius works many miracles, but 
 it cannot secure leisure for science to a man 
 who has twelve children, no private means, and 
 the public library of a university to administer. 
 As the library grew larger, his opportunities 
 grew less, and it is pathetic to read in his cor- 
 respondence the gradual waning of his hopes of 
 release. 
 
 The Professorship of Natural History in the 
 University, which had remained vacant for want 
 of funds since 1834, was filled (April 20, 1842) 
 by the appointment of Dr. Asa Gray. During 
 this interval the duties of the department had 
 been partly discharged by Dr. Harris, and it 
 
THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS 215 
 
 was inevitable that he and his friends should 
 indulge a hope of his permanent appointment. 
 The matter was the subject of much conversa- 
 tion at the time, and is several times mentioned 
 in his more familiar correspondence. It was 
 fortunate that the very eminent claims of Dr. 
 Gray, and the especial propriety of selecting a 
 botanist to take charge of the Botanical Gar- 
 den, relieved the appointment from all appear- 
 ance of discourtesy to Dr. Harris. But all lovers 
 of science must regret that no way was found of 
 securing for its exclusive benefit the maturity 
 of a naturalist so gifted. 
 
 In spite of all obstacles, Dr. Harris always 
 contributed very largely to scientific, agricul- 
 tural, and other periodicals, and a catalogue 
 of these papers — more or less complete — is 
 appended to the volume of his letters edited 
 by Dr. S. H. Scudder. He prepared in 1831 
 the catalogue of insects appended to Hitch- 
 cock's Massachusetts Geological Report. In 
 the condition of American science at that day, 
 it was a work of inestimable value, though his 
 only material compensation was one copy of 
 the Report and several copies of the Appendix. 
 At a later period he was appointed by the State 
 as one of a scientific commission for a more 
 thorough geological and botanical survey. In 
 this capacity he prepared his " Report on In- 
 
2i6 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 sects Injurious to Vegetation," first published 
 in 1 84 1, reprinted by himself under the name of 
 "Treatise," instead of "Report," in 1842, and 
 again in a 'revised form in 1852. The whole 
 sum received by him, from the State, for this 
 labor, was one hundred and seventy-five dollars. 
 After his death the book was reprinted by the 
 State in an admirable form, with engravings, and 
 it is upon it that his scientific reputation will 
 mainly rest. 
 
 Dr. Harris died on the i6th of January, 1856, 
 at the age of sixty. His life, with whatever 
 disappointments and drawbacks, must not be 
 regarded as a sad one. It was certainly a great 
 loss both to himself and the world that the 
 maturity of his powers should have been given 
 to anything but natural history ; yet the work 
 which was assigned him was not uncongenial, 
 except by comparison. As he could not be 
 wholly a naturalist, he found enjoyment in be- 
 ing a librarian. His father had held the same 
 ofiSce, almost to the year of his own birth, and 
 he seemed born with the librarian's instinct for 
 alcoves and pamphlets and endless genealogies. 
 He had in preparation a very elaborate genea- 
 logical history of the Mason family, and was 
 often consulted as an expert upon such mat- 
 ters. He kept his official records with exquisite 
 accuracy, and described his methods to other 
 
THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS 217 
 
 librarians as lovingly as if he were describing a 
 chrysalis. To that, indeed, the college library 
 of those days had much resemblance. 
 
 The steady growth of Dr. Harris's reputa- 
 tion is not due alone to his position as pioneer 
 in American science during its barest period. 
 It has grown because he proves to have united 
 qualities that are rare in any period. He com- 
 bined a fidelity that never shrank from the 
 most laborious details with an intellectual ac- 
 tivity that always looked beyond details to 
 principles. No series of observations made 
 by him ever needed revision or verification by 
 another; and yet his mind always looked in- 
 stinctively towards classification and generali- 
 zation. He had also those scientific qualities 
 which are moral qualities as well ; he had the 
 modesty and unselfishness of science, and he 
 had what may be called its chivalry. He would 
 give whole golden days of his scanty summer 
 vacations to arranging and labeling the collec- 
 tions of younger entomologists. And it roused 
 all the wrath of which his soul was capable 
 when even a rival was wronged, as when De- 
 jean ignored Say's descriptions because he had 
 not learned English enough to read them. 
 
 I remember his once holding up to us, as 
 the true type of a scientific reputation, that of 
 Robert Brown, supreme among botanists, yet 
 
2i8 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 unknown even by name to all the world beside. 
 More fortunate than Robert Brown, Dr. Harris 
 combined with this high aristocracy of science 
 a peculiar capacity of practical application, and 
 has left a rare example of the scientific and the 
 popular spirit in one. 
 
A VISIT TO JOHN BROWN'S HOUSE- 
 HOLD IN 1859! 
 
 The traveler into the enchanted land of the 
 Adirondacks has his choice of two routes from 
 Keeseville to the Lower Saranac Lake, where 
 his outdoor life is to begin. The one least fre- 
 quented and most difificult should be selected,, 
 for it has the grandest mountain pass that 
 the Northern States can show. After driving 
 twenty-two miles of mountain road from Keese- 
 ville, past wild summits bristling with stumps, 
 and through villages where every other man is 
 black from the iron foundry, and every alter- 
 nate one black from the charcoal pit, your path- 
 way makes a turn at the little hamlet of Wil- 
 mington, and you soon find yourself facing a 
 wall of mountain, with only glimpses of one 
 wild gap, through which you must penetrate. 
 In two miles more you have passed the last 
 house this side the Notch, and you then drive 
 on over a rugged way, constantly ascending, 
 with no companion but the stream which rip- 
 ples and roars below. Soon the last charcoal 
 
 1 Reprinted without alteration from Redpath's Life of 
 Captain John Brown, 1859. 
 
220 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 clearing is past, and thick woods of cedar and 
 birch close around you : the high mountain on 
 your right comes nearer and nearer, and close 
 beside, upon your left, are glimpses of a wall, 
 black and bare as iron, rising sheer for four 
 hundred feet above your head. Coming from 
 the soft marble country of Vermont, and from 
 the pale granite of Massachusetts, there seems 
 something weird and forbidding in this utter 
 blackness. On your left the giant wall now 
 appears nearer — now retreats again ; on your 
 right foams the merry stream, breaking into 
 graceful cascades — and across it the great 
 mountain Whiteface, seamed with slides. Now 
 the woods upon your left are displaced by the 
 wall, almost touching the roadside ; against its 
 steep abruptness scarcely a shrub can cling, 
 scarcely a fern flutter — it takes your breath 
 away ; but five miles of perilous driving con- 
 duct you through it ; and beyond this stern 
 passway, this cave of iron, lie the lovely lakes 
 and mountains of the Adirondacks, and the 
 homestead of John Brown. 
 
 The Notch seems beyond the world. North 
 Elba and its half-dozen houses are beyond the 
 Notch, and there is a wilder little mountain 
 road which rises beyond North Elba. But the 
 house we seek is not even on that road, but 
 behind it and beyond it ; you ride a mile or 
 
JOHN BROWN'S HOUSEHOLD 221 
 
 two, then take down a pair of bars ; beyond the 
 bars, faith takes you across a half-cleared field, 
 through the most difficult of wood paths, and 
 after half a mile of forest you come out upon 
 a clearing. There is a little frame house, un- 
 painted, set in a girdle of black stumps, and 
 with all heaven about it for a wider girdle ; on a 
 high hill-side, forests on north and west, — the 
 glorious line of the Adirondacks on the east, 
 and on the south one slender road leading off to 
 Westport, — a road so straight that you could 
 sight a United States marshal for five miles. 
 
 There stands the little house with no orna- 
 ment or relief about it — it needs none with 
 the setting of mountain horizon. Yes, there is 
 one decoration which at once takes the eye, and 
 which, stern and misplaced as it would seem 
 elsewhere, seems appropriate here. It is a 
 strange thing to see any thing so old, where 
 all the works of man are new! but it is an 
 old, mossy, time-worn tombstone — not mark- 
 ing any grave, not set in the ground, but 
 resting against the house as if its time were 
 either past or not yet come. Both are true — 
 it has a past duty and a future one. It bears 
 the name of Captain John Brown, who died 
 during the Revolution, eighty-three years ago ; 
 it was brought hither by his grandson bearing 
 the same name and title ; the latter caused to 
 
222 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 be inscribed upon it, also, the name of his son 
 Frederick, "murdered at Osawatomie for his 
 adherence to the cause of freedom " (so reads 
 the inscription) ; and he himself has said, for 
 years, that no other tombstone should mark his 
 own grave. 
 
 For two years, now, that stone has stood 
 there. No oath has been taken upon it, no 
 curses been invoked upon it. It marks the 
 abode of a race who do not curse. But morn- 
 ing and noon, as the sons have gone out to 
 their work on that upland farm, they have 
 passed by it ; the early light over the Adiron- 
 dacks has gilded it, the red reflection of sun- 
 set has glowed back upon it ; its silent appeal 
 has perpetually strengthened and sanctified that 
 home — and as the two lately wedded sons 
 went forth joyfully on their father's call to keep 
 their last pledge at Harper's Ferry, they issued 
 from that doorway between their weeping wives 
 on the one side and that ancestral stone upon 
 the other. 
 
 The farm is a wild place, cold and bleak. 
 It is too cold to raise corn there; they can 
 scarcely, in the most favorable seasons, obtain 
 a few ears for roasting. Stock must be win- 
 tered there nearly six months in every year. I 
 was there on the first of November ; the ground 
 was snowy, and winter had apparently begun, 
 
JOHN BROWN'S HOUSEHOLD 223 
 
 and it would last till the middle of May. They 
 never raise anything to sell off that farm, ex- 
 cept sometimes a few fleeces. It was well, they 
 said, if they raised their own provisions, and 
 could spin their own wool for clothing. 
 
 Do you ask why they live in such a bleak 
 spot .' With John Brown and his family there 
 is a reason for everything, and it is always the 
 same reason. Strike into their lives anywhere, 
 and you find the same firm purpose at bottom, 
 and to the widest questioning the same prompt 
 answer comes ringing back, — the very motto 
 of the tombstone, — " For adherence to the 
 cause of freedom." The same purpose, nay, 
 the selfsame project that sent John Brown to 
 Harper's Ferry sent him to the Adirondacks. 
 
 Twenty years ago John Brown made up his 
 mind that there was an irrepressible conflict 
 between freedom and slavery, and that in that 
 conflict he must take his share. He saw at a 
 glance, moreover, what the rest of us are only 
 beginning to see, even now — that slavery must 
 be met, first or last, on its own ground. The 
 time has come to tell the whole truth now — 
 that John Brown's whole Kansas life was the 
 result of this self-imposed mission, not the cause 
 of it. Let us do this man justice; he was not a 
 vindictive guerrilla, nor a maddened Indian ; nor 
 was he of so shallow a nature that it took the 
 
224 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 death of a son to convince him that right was 
 right, and wrong was wrong. He had long be- 
 fore made up his mind to sacrifice every son he 
 ever had, if necessary, in fighting slavery. If 
 it was John Brown against the world, no mat- 
 ter ; for, as his friend Frederick Douglass had 
 truly said, " In the right one is a majority." 
 On this conviction, therefore, he deliberately 
 determined, twenty years ago this summer, that 
 at some future period he would organize an 
 armed party, go into a slave State, and liberate 
 a large number of slaves. Soon after, survey- 
 ing professionally in the mountains of Virginia, 
 he chose the very ground for his purpose. Vis- 
 iting Europe afterwards, he studied military 
 strategy for this purpose, even making designs 
 (which I have seen) for a new style of forest 
 fortification, simple and ingenious, to be used 
 by parties of fugitive slaves when brought to 
 bay. He knew the ground, he knew his plans, 
 he knew himself ; but where should he find his 
 men .' He came to the Adirondacks to look for 
 them. 
 
 Ten years ago Gerrit Smith gave to a num- 
 ber of colored men tracts of ground in the 
 Adirondack Mountains. The emigrants were 
 grossly defrauded by a cheating surveyor, who, 
 being in advance of his age, practically antici- 
 pated Judge Taney's opinion, that black men 
 
JOHN BROWN'S HOUSEHOLD 225 
 
 have no rights which white men are bound 
 to respect. By his villainy the colony was 
 almost ruined in advance ; nor did it ever re- 
 cover itself ; though some of the best farms 
 which I have seen in that region are still in the 
 hands of colored men. John Brown heard of 
 this ; he himself was a surveyor, and he would 
 have gone to the Adirondacks, or anywhere else, 
 merely to right this wrong. But he had an- 
 other object — he thought that among these 
 men he should find coadjutors in his cherished 
 plan. He was not wholly wrong, and yet he 
 afterwards learned something more. Such men 
 as he needed are not to be found ordinarily ; 
 they must be reared. John Brown did not 
 merely look for men, therefore ; he reared them 
 in his sons. During long years of waiting and 
 postponement, he found others ; but his sons 
 and their friends (the Thompsons) formed the 
 nucleus of his force in all his enterprises. What 
 services the women of his family may have ren- 
 dered it is not yet time to tell ; but it is a sat- 
 isfaction to think that he was repaid for his 
 early friendship to these New York colored men 
 by some valuable aid from freed slaves and fugi- 
 tive slaves at Harper's Ferry ; especially from 
 Dangerfield Newby, who, poor fellow! had a 
 slave wife and nine slave children to fight for, 
 all within thirty miles of that town. 
 
226 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 To appreciate the character of the family, it 
 is necessary to know these things ; to under- 
 stand that they have all been trained from 
 childhood on this one principle, and for this one 
 special project ; taught to believe in it as they 
 believed in their God or their father. It has 
 given them a wider perspective than the Adi- 
 rondacks. Five years before, when they first 
 went to Kansas, the father and sons had a plan 
 of going to Louisiana, trying this same project, 
 and then retreating into Texas with the liber- 
 ated slaves. Nurtured on it so Jong, for years 
 sacrificing to it all the other objects of life, the 
 thought of its failure never crossed their min'Js ; 
 and it is an extraordinary fact that when the 
 disastrous news first came to North Elba, the 
 family utterly refused to believe it and were 
 saved from suffering by that incredulity till the 
 arrival of the next weekly mail. 
 
 I had left the world outside, to raise the 
 latch of this humble door amid the mountains ; 
 and now my pen falters on the threshold, as 
 my steps did then. This house is a home of 
 sacred sorrow. How shall we enter it ? Its 
 inmates are bereft and ruined men and women, 
 as the world reckons; what cap we say to 
 them .'' Do not shrink ; you are not near the 
 world ; you are near John Brown's household. 
 " In the world ye shall have tribulation ; but 
 
JOHN BROWN'S HOUSEHOLD 227 
 
 be of good cheer : they have overcome the 
 world." 
 
 It had been my privilege to live in the best 
 society all my life — namely, that of abolition- 
 ists and fugitive slaves. I had seen the most 
 eminent persons of the age : several men on 
 whose heads tens of thousands of dollars had 
 been set ; a black woman, who, after escaping 
 from slavery herself, had gone back secretly 
 eight times into the jaws of death to bring out 
 persons whom she had never seen ; and a white 
 man, who, after assisting away fugitives by the 
 thousand, had twice been stripped of every dol- 
 lar of his property in fines, and, when taunted 
 by the court, had mildly said, " Friend, if thee 
 knows any poor fugitive in need of a breakfast, 
 send him to Thomas Garrett's door." I had 
 known these, and such as these ; but I had not 
 known the Browns. Nothing short of knowing 
 them can be called a liberal education. Lord 
 Byron could not help clinging to Shelley, be- 
 cause he said he was the only person in whom 
 he saw anything like disinterested benevolence. 
 He really believed that Shelley would give his 
 life for another. Poor Byron! he might well 
 have exchanged his wealth, his peerage, and his 
 genius for a brief training at North Elba. 
 
 Let me pause a moment, and enumerate the 
 members of the family. John Brown was born 
 
228 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 in 1800, and his wife in 18 16, though both 
 might have been supposed older than the ages 
 thus indicated. He has had in all twenty chil- 
 dren — seven being the offspring of his first 
 wife, thirteen of his second. Four of each race 
 are living — eight in all. The elder division of 
 the surviving family comprises John and Jason, 
 both married, and living in Ohio ; Owen, un- 
 married, who escaped from Harper's Ferry, and 
 Ruth, the wife of Henry Thompson, who lives 
 on an adjoining farm at North Elba, an intelli- 
 gent and noble woman. The younger division 
 consists of Salmon, aged twenty-three, who re- 
 sides with his young wife in his mother's house, 
 and three unmarried daughters, Anne (sixteen), 
 Sarah (thirteen), and Ellen (five). In the same 
 house dwell also the widows of the two slain 
 sons — young girls, aged but sixteen and twenty. 
 The latter is the sister of Henry Thompson, 
 and of the two Thompsons who were killed at 
 Harper's Ferry ; they also lived in the same 
 vicinity, and one of them also has left a widow. 
 Thus complicated and intertangled is this gene- 
 alogy of sorrow. 
 
 All these young men went deliberately from 
 North Elba for no other purpose than to join 
 in this enterprise. " They could not," they told 
 their mother and their wives, "live for them- 
 selves alone ; " and so they went. One young 
 
JOHN BROWN'S HOUSEHOLD 229 
 
 wife, less submissive than the others, prevailed 
 on her husband to remain ; and this is the only- 
 reason why Salmon Brown survives. Oliver 
 Brown, the youngest son, only twenty, wrote 
 back to his wife from Harper's Ferry in a sort 
 of premonition of what was coming, " If I can 
 do a single good action, my life will not have 
 been all a failure." 
 
 Having had the honor of Captain Brown's 
 acquaintance for some years, I was admitted 
 into the confidence of the family, though I 
 could see them observing me somewhat suspi- 
 ciously as I approached the door. Everything 
 that was said of the absent father and husband 
 bore testimony to the same simple, upright char- 
 acter. Though they had been much sepa- 
 rated from him for the last few years, they 
 all felt it to be a necessary absence, and had 
 not only no complaint to make, but cordially 
 approved it. Mrs. Brown had been always 
 the sharer of his plans. " Her husband always 
 believed," she said, " that he was to be an in- 
 strument in the hands of Providence," and she 
 believed it too. "This plan had occupied his 
 thoughts and prayers for twenty years. " " Many 
 a night he had lain awake, and prayed concern- 
 ing it." "Even now," she did not doubt, "he 
 felt satisfied because he thought it would be 
 overruled by Providence for the best." " For 
 
230 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 herself," she said, " she had always prayed that 
 her husband might be killed in fight rather than 
 fall alive into the hands of slaveholders ; but 
 she could not regret it now, in view of the 
 noble words of freedom which it had been his 
 privilege to utter." When, the next day, on 
 the railway, I was compelled to put into her 
 hands the newspaper containing the death 
 warrant of her husband, I felt no fears of her 
 exposing herself to observation by any undue 
 excitement. She read it, and then the tall, 
 strong woman bent her head for a few minutes 
 on the back of the seat before us; then she 
 raised it, and spoke calmly as before. 
 
 I thought that I had learned the lesson once 
 for all in Kansas, which no one ever learns frohi 
 books of history alone, of the readiness with 
 which danger and death fit into the ordinary 
 grooves of daily life, so that on the day of a 
 battle, for instance, all may go on as usual, 
 — breakfast and dinner are provided, children 
 cared for, and all external existence has the 
 same smoothness that one observes at Niagara, 
 just above the American Fall ; but it impressed 
 me anew on visiting this household at this 
 time. Here was a family out of which four 
 young men had within a fortnight been killed. 
 I say nothing of a father under sentence of 
 death, and a brother fleeing for his life, but 
 
JOHN BROWN'S HOUSEHOLD 231 
 
 only speak of those killed. Now that word 
 "killed" is a word which one hardly cares to 
 mention in a mourning household circle, even 
 under all mitigating circumstances, when sad 
 unavailing kisses and tender funeral rites have 
 softened the last memories ; how much less here, 
 then, where it suggested not merely wounds 
 and terror, and agony, but also coffinless graves 
 in a hostile land, and the last ignominy of the 
 dissecting-room. 
 
 Yet there was not one of that family who 
 could not pronoimce that awful word with per- 
 fect quietness ; never, of course, lightly, but 
 always quietly. For instance, as I sat that 
 evening, with the women busily sewing around 
 me, preparing the mother for her sudden depar- 
 ture with me on the morrow, some daguerreo- 
 types were brought out to show me and some 
 one said, "This is Oliver, one of those who were 
 killed at Harper's Ferry." I glanced up sidelong 
 at the young, fair-haired girl, who sat near me 
 by the little table — a wife at fifteen, a widow at 
 sixteen ; and this was her husband, and he was 
 killed. As the words were spoken in her hear- 
 ing, not a muscle quivered, and her finger did 
 not tremble as she drew the thread Her life 
 had become too real to leave room for win- 
 cing at mere words. She had lived through, 
 beyond the word, to the sterner fact, and having 
 
232 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 confronted that, language was an empty shell. 
 To the Browns, killing means simply dying — 
 nothing more ; one gate into heaven, and that 
 one a good deal frequented by their family ; that 
 is all. 
 
 There was no hardness about all this, no 
 mere stoicism of will; only God had inured 
 them to the realities of things. They were 
 not supported by any notions of worldly honor 
 or applause, nor by that chilly reflection of it, 
 the hope of future fame. In conversing with 
 the different members of this family, I cannot 
 recall a single instance of any heroics of that 
 description. There, in that secluded home 
 among the mountains, what have they to do 
 with the world's opinion, even now, still less 
 next century ? You remember Carlyle and his 
 Frenchman, to whom he was endeavoring to 
 expound the Scottish Covenanters. "These 
 poor, persecuted people," said Carlyle, — "they 
 made their appeal." "Yes," interrupted the 
 Frenchman, "they appealed to posterity, no 
 doubt." "Not a bit of it," quoth Carlyle,— 
 " they appealed to the Eternal God ! " So with 
 these whom I visited. I was the first person 
 who had penetrated their solitude from the 
 outer world since the thunderbolt had fallen. 
 Do not imagine that they asked. What is the 
 world saying of us ? WUl justice be done to the 
 
JOHN BROWN'S HOUSEHOLD 233 
 
 memory of our martyrs ? Will men build the 
 tombs of the prophets ? Will the great think- 
 ers of the age affirm that our father "makes 
 the gallows glorious like the cross ? " Not at 
 all; they asked but one question after I had 
 told them how little hope there was of acquittal 
 or rescue. " Does it seem as if freedom were 
 to gain or lose by this ? " That was all. Their 
 mother spoke the spirit of them all to me, next 
 day, when she said, " I have had thirteen chil- 
 dren, and only four are left ; but if I am to see 
 the ruin of my house, I cannot but hope that 
 Providence may bring out of it some benefit to 
 the poor slaves." 
 
 No ; this family works for a higher price 
 than fame. You know it is said that in all 
 Wellington's dispatches you never meet with 
 the word Glory ; it is always Duty. In Napo- 
 leon's you never meet with the word Duty ; it 
 is always Glory. The race of John Brown is 
 of the Wellington type. Principle is the word 
 I brought away with me as most familiar in 
 their vocabulary. That is their standard of 
 classification. A man may be brave, ardent, 
 generous ; no matter — if he is not all this 
 from principle, it is nothing. The daughters, 
 who knew all the Harper's Ferry men, had no 
 confidence in Cook because "he was not a 
 man of principle;," They would trust Stevens 
 
234 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 round the world, because "he was a man of 
 principle." " He tries the hardest to be good," 
 said Annie Brown, in her simple way, " of any 
 man I ever saw." 
 
 It is pleasant to add that this same brave- 
 hearted girl, who had known most of her father's 
 associates, recognized them all but Cook as be- 
 ing men of principle. "People are surprised," 
 she said, " at father's daring to invade Virginia 
 with only twenty-three men ; but I think if they 
 knew what sort of men they were, there would 
 be less surprise. I never saw such men." 
 
 And it pleases me to remember that since 
 this visit, on the day of execution, while our 
 Worcester bells were tolling their melancholy 
 refrain, I took from the post-office a letter from 
 this same young girl, expressing pity and sorrow 
 for the recreant Cook, and uttering the hope 
 that allowances might be made for his con- 
 duct, "though she could not justify it." And 
 on the same day I read that infuriated letter of 
 Mrs. Mahala Doyle — a letter which common 
 charity bids us suppose a forgery, uttering 
 fiendish revenge in regard to a man against 
 whom, by her own showing, there is not one 
 particle of evidence to identify him with her 
 wrongs. Nothing impressed me more in my 
 visit to the Brown family, and in subsequent 
 correspondence with them, than the utter ab- 
 
JOHN BROWN'S HOUSEHOLD 235 
 
 sence of the slightest vindictive spirit, even in 
 words. 
 
 The children spoke of their father as a per- 
 son of absolute rectitude, thoughtful kindness, 
 unfailing foresight, and inexhaustible activity. 
 On his flying visits to the farm, every moment 
 was used ; he was " up at three A. m., seeing to 
 everything himself," providing for everything, 
 and giving heed to the minutest points. It was 
 evident that some of the older ones had stood 
 a little in awe of him in their childish years. 
 " We boys felt a little pleased sometimes, after 
 all," said the son, " when father left the farm 
 for a few days." "We girls never did," said 
 the married daughter, reproachfully, the tears 
 gushing to her eyes. " Well," said the brother, 
 repenting, " we were always glad to see the old 
 man come back again ; for if we did get more 
 holidays in his absence, we always missed 
 him." 
 
 Those dramatic points of character in him, 
 which will of course make him the favorite 
 hero of all American romance hereafter, are 
 nowhere appreciated more fully than in his 
 own family. In the midst of all their sorrow, 
 their strong and healthy hearts could enjoy 
 the record of his conversations with the Vir- 
 ginians, and applaud the keen, wise, simple an- 
 swers which I read to them, selecting here and 
 
236 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 there from the ample file of newspapers I car- 
 ried with me. When, for instance, I read the 
 inquiry, "Did you go out under the auspices 
 of the Emigrant Aid Society ? " and the an- 
 swer, " No, sir ; I went out under the auspices of 
 John Brown," three voices eagerly burst in with, 
 " That 's true," and " That 's so." And when it 
 was related that the young Virginia volunteer 
 taxed him with want of military foresight in 
 bringing so small a party to conquer Virginia, 
 and the veteran imperturbably informed the 
 young man that probably their views on military 
 matters would materially differ, there was a 
 general delighted chorus of, "That sounds just 
 like father." And his sublimer expressions of 
 faith and self-devotion produced no excitement 
 or surprise among them, — since they knew in 
 advance all which we now know of him — and 
 these things only elicited, at times, a half -stifled 
 sigh as they reflected that they might never 
 hear that beloved voice again. 
 
 References to their father were constant. 
 This book he brought them; the one sitting- 
 room had been plastered with the last money he 
 sent ; that desk, that gun, were his ; this was his 
 daguerreotype ; and at last the rosy little Ellen 
 brought me, with reverent hands, her prime 
 treasure. It was a morocco case, inclosing a 
 small Bible ; and in the beginning, written in 
 
JOHN BROWN'S HOUSEHOLD 237 
 
 the plain, legible hand I knew so well, the fol- 
 lowing inscription, which would alone (in its 
 touching simplicity) have been worthy the 
 pilgrimage to North Elba to see. 
 
 This Bible, presented to my dearly beloved 
 daughter Ellen Brown, is not intended for com- 
 mon use, but to be carefully preserved /^r her 
 and by her, in remembrance of her father (of 
 whose care and attentions she was deprived in 
 her infancy), he being absent in the territory of 
 Kansas from the summer of 1855. 
 
 May the Holy Spirit of God incline your 
 heart, in earliest childhood, "to receive the truth 
 in the love of it," and to form your thoughts, 
 words, and actions by its wise and holy pre- 
 cepts, is my best wish and most earnest prayer 
 to Him in whose care I leave you. Amen. 
 From your affectionate father, 
 
 John Brown. 
 
 April 2, 1857. 
 
 This is dated two years ago; but the prin- 
 ciples which dictated it were permanent. Al- 
 most on the eve of his last battle, October i, 
 1859, he wrote home to his daughter Anne, in 
 a letter which I saw, " Anne, I want you first of 
 all to become a sincere, humble, and consistent 
 Christian, and then [this is characteristic], to ac- 
 quire good and efficient business habits. Save 
 
238 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 this to remember your father by, Anne. God 
 Almighty bless and save you all " 
 
 John Brown is almost the only radical abo- 
 litionist I have ever known who was not more 
 or less radical in religious matters also. His 
 theology was Puritan, like his practice ; and 
 accustomed as we now are to see Puritan doc- 
 trines and Puritan virtues separately exhibited, 
 it seems quite strange to behold them com- 
 bined in one person again. He and his wife 
 were regular communicants of the Presbyterian 
 church ; but it tried his soul to see the juvenile 
 clerical gentlemen who came into the pulpits 
 up that way, and dared to call themselves Pres- 
 byterians — preachers of the gospel with all the 
 hard applications left out. Since they had lived 
 in North Elba, his wife said, but twice had the 
 slave been mentioned in the Sunday services, 
 and she had great doubts about the propriety 
 of taking part in such worship as that. But 
 when the head of the family made his visits 
 home from Kansas, he commonly held a Sunday 
 meeting in the little church, "under the au- 
 spices of John Brown," and the Lord heard the 
 slave mentioned pretty freely then. 
 
 In speaking of religious opinions, Mrs. Brown 
 mentioned two preachers whose sermons her 
 sons liked to read, and " whose anti-slavery prin- 
 ciples she enjoyed, though she could not agree 
 
JOHN BROWN'S HOUSEHOLD 239 
 
 with all their doctrines." She seemed to regard 
 their positions as essentially the same. I need 
 not say who the two are — the thunders of 
 Brooklyn and of Boston acquire much the same 
 sound as they roll up among the echoes of the 
 Adirondacks. 
 
 In respect to politics, Mrs. Brown told me 
 that her husband had taken Uttle interest in 
 them since the election of Jackson, because he 
 thought that politics merely followed the con- 
 dition of public sentiment on the slavery ques- 
 tion, and that this public sentiment was mainly 
 created by actual collisions between slavery and 
 freedom. Such, at least, was the view which I 
 was led to attribute to him, by combining this 
 fact which she mentioned with my own personal 
 knowledge of his opinions. He had an almost 
 exaggerated aversion to words and speeches, 
 and a profound conviction of the importance 
 of bringing all questions to a direct issue, and 
 subjecting every theory to the test of practical 
 application. 
 
 I did not, of course, insult Mrs. Brown by any 
 reference to that most shallow charge of insan- 
 ity against her husband, which some even of his 
 friends have, with what seems most cruel kind- 
 ness, encouraged, — thereby doing their best to 
 degrade one of the age's prime heroes into a 
 mere monomaniac, — but it may be well to re- 
 
240 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 cord that she spoke of it with surprise, and said 
 that if her husband were insane, he had been 
 consistent in his insanity from the first moment 
 she knew him. 
 
 Now that all is over, and we appear to have 
 decided, for the present, not to employ any car- 
 nal weapons, such as steel or iron, for the res- 
 cue of John Brown, but only to use the safer 
 metals of gold and silver for the aid of his fam- 
 ily, it may be natural for those who read this 
 narrative to ask. What is the pecuniary con- 
 dition of this household ? It is hard to answer, 
 because the whole standard is different, as to 
 such matters, in North Elba and in Massachu- 
 setts. The ordinary condition of the Brown 
 family may be stated as follows : They own the 
 farm, such as it is, without incumbrance, except 
 so far as unfelled forest constitutes one. They 
 have ordinarily enough to eat of what the farm 
 yields, namely, bread and potatoes, pork and 
 mutton — not any great abundance of these, 
 but ordinarily enough. They have ordinarily 
 enough to wear, at least of woolen clothing, 
 spun by themselves. And they have absolutely 
 no money. When I say this I do not merely 
 mean that they have no superfluous cash to go 
 shopping with, but I mean almost literally that 
 they have none. For nearly a whole winter, 
 Mrs. Brown said, they had no money with 
 
JOHN BROWN'S HOUSEHOLD 241 
 
 which to pay postage, except a tiny treasury 
 which the younger girls had earned for that ex- 
 press object, during the previous summer, by 
 picking berries for a neighbor three miles off. 
 
 The reason of these privations simply was, 
 that it cost money to live in Kansas in "ad- 
 herence to the cause of freedom " (see the 
 tombstone inscription again), but not so much 
 to live at North Elba; and therefore the wo- 
 men must stint themselves that the men might 
 continue their Kansas work. When the father 
 came upon his visits he never came empty- 
 handed, but brought a little money, some plain 
 household stores, flour, sugar, rice, salt fish ; tea 
 and coffee they do not use. But what their 
 standard of expense is may be seen from the 
 fact that Mrs. Brown seemed to speak as if 
 her youngest widowed daughter were not totally 
 and absolutely destitute, because her husband 
 had left a property of five sheep, which would 
 belong to her. These sheep, I found on in- 
 quiry, were worth, at that place and season, two 
 dollars apiece : a child of sixteen, left a widow 
 in the world, with an estate amounting to ten 
 dollars ! The immediate financial anxieties of 
 Mrs. Brown herself seemed chiefly to relate to 
 a certain formidable tax bill, due at New Year's 
 time ; if they could only weather that, all was 
 clear for the '.immediate future. How much was 
 
242 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 it, I asked, rather surprised that that wild coun- 
 try should produce a high rate of taxation. It 
 was from eight to ten dollars, she gravely said ; 
 and she had put by ten dollars for the purpose, 
 but had had occasion to lend most of it to a 
 poor black woman, with no great hope of re- 
 payment. And one of the first things done by 
 her husband, on recovering his money in Vir- 
 ginia, was to send her, through me, fifteen dol- 
 lars, to make sure of that tax bill. 
 
 I see, on looking back, how bare and inex- 
 pressive this hasty narrative is ; but I could not 
 bear to suffer such a privilege as this visit to 
 pass away unrecorded. I spent but one night 
 at the house, and drove away with Mrs. Brown, 
 in the early frosty morning, from that breezy 
 mountain home, which her husband loved (as 
 one of them told me) "because he seemed 
 to think there was something romantic in that 
 kind of scenery." There was, indeed, always 
 a sort of thrill in John Brown's voice when he 
 spoke of mountains. I never shall forget the 
 quiet way in which he once told me that " God 
 had established the Alleghany Mountains from 
 the foundation of the world that they might one 
 day be a refuge for fugitive slaves." I did not 
 then know that his own home was among the 
 Adirondacks. 
 
 Just before we went, I remember, I said 
 
JOHN BROWN'S HOUSEHOLD 243 
 
 something or other to Salmon Brown about 
 the sacrifices of their family ; and he looked up 
 in a quiet, manly way, which I shall never for- 
 get, and said briefly, " I sometimes think that 
 is what we came into the world for — to make 
 sacrifices." And I know that the murmuring 
 echo of those words went with me all that day, 
 as we came down from the mountains, and out 
 through the iron gorge ; and it seemed to me 
 that any one must be very unworthy the so- 
 ciety I had been permitted to enter who did not 
 come forth from it a wiser and a better man. 
 
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 
 
 William Lloyd Garrison was born at New- 
 buryport, Mass., December lo, 1805, and died 
 in New York City, May 24, 1879. There 
 passed away in him the living centre of a re- 
 markable group of men and women who have 
 had no equals among us, in certain moral at- 
 tributes, since the Revolutionary period and 
 perhaps not then. The Earl of Carlisle said of 
 them that they were " fighting a battle without 
 parallel in the history of ancient or modern her- 
 oism ; " and, without assuming to indorse this 
 strong statement we may yet claim that there 
 was some foundation for it. When we consider 
 the single fact that the " Garrison mob " was 
 composed, by the current assertion of leading 
 journals, of "gentlemen of property and stand- 
 ing," and that the then mayor of the city, wish- 
 ing to protect the victim, found it necessary to 
 direct that the modest sign of the Ladies' Anti- 
 Slavery Society should be torn down and given 
 to this mob for destruction, we can form some 
 distinct impression of the opposition through 
 which the early abolitionists had to fight their 
 
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 245 
 
 way. Their period was a time when truth was 
 called treason, and when a man who spoke it 
 might be dragged through the streets with a 
 rope round his body. We must remember that 
 men thus decorated do not always find it easy 
 to be tolerant or to exhibit their gentlest side 
 in return. The so-called persecution of reform- 
 ers is often a thing too trivial to be worth talk- 
 ing about, at least in English-speaking countries. 
 Indeed, it is usually of that slight texture in 
 these days, but in the early anti-slavery period 
 it had something of the heroic quality. 
 
 A few years later, when the .abolitionists had 
 won the right to have meetings of their own, 
 there could not be a moment's doubt, for any 
 observer, as to the real centre of the gathering. 
 In first looking in upon any old-time conven- 
 tion, any observing eye would promptly have 
 selected Garrison as the leading figure on the 
 platform. His firm and well-built person, his 
 sonorous voice, and the grave and iron strength 
 of his face would have at once indicated this. I 
 never saw a countenance that could be com- 
 pared to it in respect to moral strength and 
 force ; he seemed the visible embodiment of 
 something deeper and more controlling than 
 mere intellect. His utterance was like his face, 
 — grave, powerful, with little variety or play ; 
 he had none of that rhetorical relief in which 
 
246 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 Phillips was so affluent ; he was usually monot- 
 onous, sometimes fatiguing, but always con- 
 trolling. His reason marched like an army 
 without banners ; his invective was scathing, 
 but as it was almost always mainly scriptural, 
 it did not carry an impression of personal an- 
 ger, but simply seemed like a newly discovered 
 chapter of Ezekiel. He constantly reiterated 
 and intrenched his argument with ample details, 
 and had a journalist's love for newspaper cut- 
 tings, which he inflicted without stint upon his 
 audience, bearing down all reluctance with his 
 commanding tones. For one, I cannot honestly 
 say that I ever positively enjoyed one of his 
 speeches, or that I ever failed to listen with a 
 sense of deference and of moral leadership. 
 
 At some future period the historian of the 
 anti-slavery movement may decide on the fit 
 award of credit due to each of the various in- 
 fluences that brought about the abolition of 
 slavery. The Garrisonian or Disunion Aboli- 
 tionists represented the narrowest of the streams 
 which made up the mighty river, but they un- 
 doubtedly represented the loftiest height and 
 the greatest head of water. The Garrisonians 
 were generally non-resistants, but those who be- 
 lieved in the physical rescue of fugitive slaves 
 were nevertheless their pupils. The Garrisoni- 
 ans eschewed voting, yet many who voted drew 
 
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 247 
 
 strength from them. The Garrisonians took 
 little part in raising troops for war, but the tra- 
 dition of their influence did much to impel the 
 army. The only great emotion in which they 
 took no share was the instinct of national devo- 
 tion to the Union ; tliat sentiment had grown 
 stronger in spite of them, and was largely due 
 to Webster, who had, meanwhile, been led by 
 it to make sacrifices which they had justly con- 
 demned. The forces at work during that great 
 period of our nation's life were too complex to 
 be held in any single hand, but it was to Gar- 
 rison more than to any other man, that the great 
 ultimate result was remotely due. Every other 
 participant seemed to reflect, more or less, the 
 current of popular progress around him ; Gar- 
 rison alone seemed an original and creative 
 force. On this point the verdict of posterity 
 will hardly appeal from the modest self -judg- 
 ment of Abraham Lincoln when he said : " I 
 have been only an instrument. The logic and 
 moral power of Garrison and the anti-slavery 
 people of the country and the army have done 
 all." 1 
 
 It now seems, in looking back, as if the anti- 
 slavery movement would have been a compara- 
 
 1 See " Lincoln's Conversation with Ex-Governor Chamber- 
 lain of South Carolina," in New York Tribune, November 
 4, 1883. 
 
248 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 lively easy thing had the party which assailed 
 slavery been united, and yet this is a drawback 
 which it shared apparently with every great re- 
 form that was ever attempted. There raged 
 within the anti-slavery ranks themselves a hos- 
 tility, whose causes now seem very insufficient, 
 but which vastly embarrassed the whole enter- 
 prise. The quarrel between "Old Organiza- 
 tion " and " New Organization " certainly em- 
 bittered for a time the lives of all concerned in 
 it. Beginning partly in a generous protest by 
 Garrison and others against the exclusion of 
 women from a World's Anti-Slavery Conven- 
 tion, but partly also in his views on the Sabbath 
 question and upon other side issues, it ended in 
 the creation of two rival camps, with almost 
 all the anti-slavery clergy and the voting abo- 
 litionists on one side, while Garrison and his 
 Spartan band held the other. Some blame, as 
 I always thought, was to be attached to both 
 sides, and the over-vehemence of the contest 
 may be judged from the fact that a leading 
 " Garrisonian " once went so far as to insinuate 
 a doubt whether the stainless Whittier — who 
 was then counted in the other ranks — was 
 "more knave or fool." 
 
 It is a very frequent experience of great re- 
 formers that they part company by degrees 
 with some of the ablest and most devoted of 
 
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON : 249 
 
 their early adherents ; but perhaps no man ever 
 had so large an accumulation of this painful 
 experience as had the recognized leader of the 
 anti- slavery movement. The list of severed 
 friendships included Benjamin Lundy, whom 
 Garrison properly called " the pioneer " among 
 abolitionists ; and William Goodell, whom Gar- 
 rison described as " a much older and a better 
 soldier" than himself. It included Arthur Tap- 
 pan, who had paid Garrison's fine when impris- 
 oned at Baltimore ; Lewis Tappan, whose house 
 in New York had been sacked by a pro-slavery 
 mob; James G. Birney, who had emancipated 
 his own slaves ; and Amos A. Phelps, who had 
 defended Garrison against that Clerical Appeal 
 which made so great a noise in its day. All 
 these men were led by degrees into antagonism 
 to their great leader ; it was a permanent divi- 
 sion and influenced the whole anti-slavery move- 
 ment. For this alienation on their part that 
 leader had no mercy ; it was always attributed 
 by him simply to " a mighty sectarian conspir- 
 acy " or a "jealous and envious spirit." Pos- 
 terity, less easily satisfied, quite disposed to 
 honor the great anti-slavery warrior, but by no 
 means inclined to give him exclusive laurels, 
 will perhaps not wholly indorse this conclusion. 
 I am ready to testify that, at the later period 
 of the contest, and when his personal position 
 
250 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 was thoroughly established, he seemed wholly- 
 patient and considerate with younger recruits. 
 He never demanded that they should see eye 
 to eye with him, but only that they should have 
 what abolitionists called "the root of the mat- 
 ter" in them. But I fear that the weight of 
 testimony goes to show that he had not always 
 been equally moderate in his demands. 
 
 The charge most commonly made against 
 him by these early associates was that of mani- 
 festing a quality which the pioneer Benjamin 
 Lundy called "arrogance," and the other pio- 
 neer, William Goodell, depicted in his article, 
 "How to make a Pope." "You exalt your- 
 self too much," wrote the plain-spoken Elizur 
 Wright. " I pray to God that you may be 
 brought to repent of it." Lewis Tappan at 
 about the same time wrote, — " You speak 
 of ' sedition ' and 'chastising ' Messrs. Fitch, 
 Towne, and Woodbury : I do not like such 
 language." The most fearless and formidable 
 of all these indictments, because the gentlest 
 and most unwilling, was that of Sarah Grimk6. 
 Speaking of the course pursued by Garrison 
 and his immediate circle toward her and her 
 sister, she says : " They wanted us to live out 
 William Lloyd Garrison, not the convictions of 
 our own souls ; entirely unaware that they were 
 exhibiting, in the high places of moral reform, 
 
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 251 
 
 the genuine spirit of slaveholding, by wishing 
 to curtail the sacred pfivilege of conscience.^ 
 
 This was the main complaint made against 
 him from the inside, while the criticism from 
 the outside was, and still is, that of excessive 
 harshness of language. Here again it is to be 
 observed that the charge does not rest on the 
 testimony of enemies, but of friends. We find 
 Harriet Martineau herself saying : " I do not 
 pretend to like or to approve the tone of Garri- 
 son's pointed censures. I could not use such 
 language myself toward any class of offenders, 
 nor can I sympathize in its use by others." 
 This was not said in her first book on America, 
 but in her second more deliberate one ; and 
 when we consider the kind of language that 
 Miss Martineau found herself able to use, this 
 disclaimer becomes very forcible. What such 
 critics overlooked and still overlook, is that the 
 whole vocabulary of Garrison was the logical 
 result of that stern school of old-fashioned Cal- 
 vinism in which he had been trained. "The 
 least of sins is infinite," says the Roman Cath- 
 olic poet, Faber. This was the logical attitude 
 of Calvinism, and apparently of the youthful 
 reformer's mind. At twenty-three he wrote : 
 " It is impossible to estimate the depravity and 
 wickedness of those who, at the present day, 
 1 The Sisters Grimki, p. 220. 
 
252 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 reject the gospel of Jesus Christ." When a 
 young man begins with such vehemence of epi- 
 thet, in matters of abstract belief, is it to be 
 supposed that when he is called upon to cope 
 with an institution which even the milder Wes- 
 ley called "The sum of all villanies," he will 
 suddenly develop the habit of scrupulous mod- 
 eration ? " I will be harsh as truth," he said. 
 The only question is, Was he never any harsher .' 
 That there was such a thing possible as un- 
 due harshness in speaking of individual slave- 
 holders the abolitionists themselves were com- 
 pelled sometimes to admit. When Charles 
 Remond, the eloquent colored orator, called 
 George Washington a villain, Wendell Phillips 
 replied, " Charles, the epithet is infelicitous." 
 Yet if, as was constantly assumed by Garrison, 
 the whole moral sin of slaveholding rested on 
 the head of each individual participant, it is 
 difficult to see why the epithet was not admira- 
 bly appropriate. The point of doubt is whether 
 it did so rest, — but if it did, Remond was 
 right. Such extreme statements were not al- 
 ways thus rebuked. When a slaveholder was 
 once speaking in an anti-slavery convention, 
 he was flatly contradicted by Stephen Foster, 
 who was, perhaps, next to Garrison, the hardest 
 hitter among the abolitionists. "Do you think 
 I would lie.'" retorted the slaveholder. "Why 
 
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 253 
 
 not ? " said Foster. " I know you steal." This 
 Draconian inflexibility, finding the least of sins j 
 worthy of death, and having no higher penalty ! 
 for the greatest, was a very common code upon 
 the anti-slavery platform. It was a part of its 
 power, but it brought also a certain weakness, 
 as being really based upon an untruth. 
 
 Consider this matter for a moment. Men are 
 not merely sometimes, but v^ry often, better 
 than the laws under which they live. Garrison 
 wrote in one case : — 
 
 " For myself, I hold no fellowship with slave- 
 owners. I wiU not make a truce with them 
 even for a single hour. I blush for them as 
 countrymen. I know that they are not Chris- 
 tians ; and the higher they raise their pro- 
 fessions of patriotism or piety, the stronger is 
 my detestation of their hypocrisy. They are 
 dishonest and cruel, — and God and the angels 
 and devils and the universe know that they are 
 without excuse" ^ 
 
 " Without excuse ! " Set aside all the facts 
 of ignorance, of heredity, of environment, of 
 all that makes excuse in charitable minds when 
 judging sin, and look at this one point only, — 
 the tremendous practical difficulties studiously 
 accumulated by skillful lawgivers in the way of 
 sundering the relation between master and the 
 
 1 William Lloyd Garrison : 77ie Story of his Life, \. zc&. 
 
254 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 slave. In all the great States of South Caro- 
 lina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, a man 
 becoming heir to human property was abso- 
 lutely prohibited from emancipating it except 
 by a special authority of the legislature, a per- 
 mission usually impossible to get. In one of 
 these States, Mississippi, it was also required 
 that the legislature itself could grant freedom 
 only for some special act of public or private 
 service on the part of the individual slave, and 
 the same restriction was made in North Caro- 
 lina, with the substitution of the county court 
 for the legislature as authority. In every one of 
 these States the slave-owner, had he been Gar- 
 rison himself, was as powerless to free his slaves 
 without the formal consent of the state authori- 
 ties as he would have been to swim the Atlan- 
 tic with those slaves on his back ; and yet these 
 men were said to be "without excuse." Even 
 in Virginia the converted slaveholder was met 
 with the legal requirement that the freed slaves 
 must be removed from the State within a cer- 
 tain time, in default of which they would be 
 1 sold at auction to the highest bidder. Slavery 
 ' itself had often impoverished the owner, so that 
 he could not personally remove the slaves, and 
 (the auction-block was to all these poor people 
 the last of all tragedies. Even Birney, it will 
 be remembered, freed his slaves in Kentucky, 
 
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 355 
 
 while Palfrey freed his in Louisiana, the laws 
 of both these States being exceptionally mUd. 
 The more we dwell on this complicated situa- 
 tion, the more impressed we become with the 
 vast wrong of the institution and of its avowed 
 propagandists ; but the more charitable we be- 
 come towards those exceptional slaveholders 
 who had begun to open their eyes to its evils, 
 yet found themselves bound hand and foot by 
 its laws. In view of this class of facts, such 
 general arraignments as that above cited from 
 Garrison appear to me to have been too severe.^ 
 The hostility of Garrison to the voting Abo- 
 litionists did not merely take the form of disap- 
 proval and distrust as being organized by men 
 who had revolted from his immediate leader- 
 ship, but he convinced himself that their politi- 
 cal action was contemptible and even ludi- 
 crous. When an anti-slavery candidate was 
 first nominated for the presidency, he called it 
 "folly, presumption, almost unequaled infatua- 
 tion," and if he varied from this attitude of 
 contempt it was to " denounce it," in his own 
 words, "as the worst form of pro - slavery." 
 But when the Liberty party had expanded into 
 the Free-Soil party, and that again into the 
 Republican party, much of the old bitterness 
 waned, and some of the political anti- slavery 
 
 1 Stroud's Slave Laws, pp. 146-51. 
 
2s6 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 leaders, especially Sumner and Wilson, were in 
 constant and hearty intercourse with the Garri- 
 sonian apostles. At this later period, at least, 
 as I have already said, there was visible none of 
 that exacting or domineering spirit which had 
 been earlier attributed to him. 
 
 Every candid estimate of Garrison's career 
 must always end, it would seem, at substan- 
 tially the same point. While not faultless, he 
 kept far higher laws than he broke. He did the 
 work of a man of iron in an iron age, so that 
 even those who recognized his faults might well 
 join, as they did, in the chorus of affectionate 
 congratulations that marked his closing days. 
 His fame is secure, and all the securer because 
 time has enabled us to recognize, more clearly 
 than at first, precisely what he did, and just 
 what were the limitations of his temperament. 
 It is a striking fact that in the Valhalla of con- 
 temporary statues in his own city, only two, 
 those of Webster and Everett, commemorate 
 those who stood for the party of conservatism 
 in the great anti-slavery conflict ; while all the 
 rest, Lincoln, Quincy, Sumner, Andrew, Mann, 
 Garrison, and Shaw represent the party of 
 attack. It is the verdict of time, confirming 
 in bronze and marble the great words of Em- 
 erson, "What forests of laurel we bring, and 
 the tears of mankind, to those who stood firm 
 against the opinion of their contemporaries ! " 
 
PHILLIPS 
 
 Wendell Phillips, son of John and Sarah 
 (Walley) Phillips, was born in Boston Novem- 
 ber 29, 181 1, and died in that city February 2, 
 1884. Like many eminent men in New Eng- 
 land, he traced his line of descent to a Puritan 
 clergyman ; in this case, to the Rev. George 
 Phillips, the first minister of Watertown, Mass. 
 From that ancestor was descended, in the fifth 
 generation, John Phillips, first mayor of Boston, 
 elected in 1822 as a sort of compromise can- 
 didate between Harrison Gray Otis and Josiah 
 Quincy, who equally divided public favor. John 
 Phillips is credited by tradition with " a pliable 
 disposition," which he clearly did not transmit 
 to his son. The mayor was a graduate of Har- 
 vard College in 1788, held various public offices, 
 and was for many years " Town Advocate and 
 Public Prosecutor," a function which certainly 
 became, in a less official sense, hereditary in the 
 family. He was a man of wealth and reputa- 
 tion, and he built for himself a large mansion, 
 which is conspicuous in the early engravings of 
 Boston, and is still standing at the lower corner 
 
258 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 of Beacon and Walnut streets. There Wendell 
 Phillips was born. He was placed by birth in 
 the most favored worldly position, the whole 
 Phillips family being rich and influential at a 
 time when social demarcations were more dis- 
 tinct than now. He was, however, brought up 
 wisely, since John Phillips made this rule for 
 his children : " Ask no man to do for you any- 
 thing that you are not able and willing to do 
 for yourself." Accordingly his son claimed, in 
 later life, that there was hardly any kind of ordi- 
 nary trade or manual labor practiced in New 
 England at which he had not done many a day's 
 work. He attended the Boston Latin School, 
 entered Harvard College before he was sixteen, 
 and was graduated (in 183 1) before he was 
 twenty, in the same class with Motley the his- 
 torian. My elder brother, who was two years 
 later in college, used to say that Wendell Phil- 
 lips was the only student of that period, for 
 whom the family carriage was habitually sent 
 out to Cambridge on Saturday morning to bring 
 him into Boston for Sunday. 
 
 It is rare for any striking career to have a 
 dramatic beginning ; but it may be truly said of 
 Wendell Phillips that his first recorded speech 
 established his reputation as an orator, and de- 
 termined the whole course of his life. Grad- 
 uating at the Harvard Law School in 1834, he 
 
PHILLIPS 259 
 
 was admitted to the bar in the same year. In 
 183s he witnessed the mobbing of Garrison; 
 in 1836 joined the American Anti-slavery So- 
 ciety. In 1837 occurred the great excitement 
 which raged in Congress around John Quincy 
 Adams when he stood for the right of petition ; 
 and in November of that year Elijah P. Love- 
 joy was murdered at Alton, 111., while defend- 
 ing his press from a pro-slavery mob. The 
 Rev. Dr. Channing and others asked the use of 
 Faneufl Hall for a meeting to express their in- 
 dignation, the city authorities refused it ; Dr. 
 Channing then wrote an appeal to the citizens 
 of Boston, and the authorities yielded to the 
 demand. At the Faneuil Hall meeting Jona- 
 than Phillips, a wealthy citizen and a second 
 cousin of Wendell Phillips, presided ; Dr. Chan- 
 ning spoke, and then two young lawyers, Hal- 
 lett and Hillard. James Trecothick Austin, 
 Attorney-General of the State, then addressed 
 the audience from the gallery ; and his speech 
 soon proved the meeting to be divided on the 
 main question, with a bias toward the wrong 
 side. He said that Lovejoy died as the fool 
 dieth, and compared his murderers to the men 
 who threw the tea into Boston Harbor. The 
 audience broke into applause, and seemed ready 
 to go with Austin ; when Wendell Phillips came 
 on the platform, amid opposition that scarcely 
 
26o CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 allowed him to be heard. Almost at his first 
 words, he took the meeting in his hands, and 
 brought it back to its real object. "When I 
 heard," he said, " the gentleman lay down prin- 
 ciples which placed the murderers of Alton side 
 by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy 
 and Adams, I thought these pictured lips [point- 
 ing to their portraits] would have broken into 
 voice to rebuke the recreant American, the slan- 
 derer of the dead." From that moment the 
 tide was turned, the audience carried, the ora- 
 torical fame of Wendell Phillips secured, and 
 his future career determined. From this time 
 forward, and while slavery remained, he was first 
 and chiefly an abolitionist ; all other reforms 
 were subordinate to this, and this was his life. 
 To this he sacrificed his social position, his early 
 friendships, his professional career. Possess- 
 ing a sufficient independent income, he did not 
 incur the added discomfort of poverty; but, 
 being rich, he made himself, as it were, poor 
 through life, reduced his personal wants to the 
 lowest terms, earned all the money he could by 
 lecturing and gave away all that he could spare. 
 He was fortunate in wedding a wife in perfect 
 sympathy with him, — Miss Ann T. Greene, — 
 and, indeed, he always said that her influence 
 first made him an abolitionist. A life - long 
 invalid, rarely leaving her room, she had yet 
 
PHILLIPS 261 
 
 such indomitable courage, such keenness of 
 wit, such insight into character, that she really 
 divided with him the labors of his career. It 
 is impossible for those who knew them both to 
 think of him without her. They lived on Essex 
 Street, in a region already almost deserted by 
 residences and given over to shops ; the house 
 was plain and bare without and within; they 
 had no children ; and, except during the brief 
 period when their adopted daughter was with 
 them, the home seemed almost homeless out- 
 side of the walls of Mrs. Phillips's apartment. 
 There indeed — for her husband and her few 
 intimates — peace and courage ruled, with joy 
 and hilarity not seldom added. During many 
 years, however, Mr. Phillips was absent a great 
 deal from Boston, on his lecture tours, though 
 these rarely extended far westward, or over veiy 
 long routes. Both he and his wife regarded 
 these lectures as an important mission; for 
 even if he only spoke on " The Lost Arts " or 
 "Street Life in Europe," it gave him a per- 
 sonal hold upon each community he visited, and 
 the next time, perhaps, an anti-slavery lecture 
 would be demanded, or one on temperance or 
 woman's rights. He 'always claimed this sort 
 of preliminary influence, in particular, for his 
 lecture on Daniel O'Connell, which secured for 
 him a great following among our Irish fellow 
 
262 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 citizens at a time when they were bitterly 
 arrayed against the anti-slavery movement. 
 
 Unlike his coadjutor, Edmund Quincy, Wen- 
 dell Phillips disavowed being a non-resistant. 
 That scruple, as well as the alleged pro-slavery 
 character of the Constitution, precluded most 
 of the Garrisonian abolitionists from voting or 
 holding office ; but Phillips was checked by his 
 anti-slavery convictions alone. This fact made 
 him, like Theodore Parker, a connecting link 
 between the non-resistants and the younger 
 school of abolitionists who believed in physical 
 opposition to the local encroachments, at least, 
 of the slave power. They formed various 
 loosely knit associations for this purpose, of 
 which he was not a member ; but he was ready 
 with sympathy and money. In one of their 
 efforts, the Burns rescue, he always regretted 
 the mishap, which, for want of due explana- 
 tion threw him on the side of caution, where 
 he did not belong. At the Faneuil-Hall meet- 
 ing which it was proposed to transfer bodily to 
 Court Square, Theodore Parker was notified of 
 the project, but misunderstood the signal ; Wen- 
 dell Phillips was not notified, for want of time, 
 and was very unjustly blamed afterwards. It 
 is doubtful whether he was, in his very fibre, a 
 man of action ; but he never discouraged those 
 who were such, nor had he the slightest objec- 
 
PHILLIPS 263 
 
 tion to violating law where human freedom 
 was at stake. A man of personal courage he 
 eminently was. In the intense and temporary 
 revival of mob feeling in Boston, in the autumn 
 and winter of 1 860, when a John Brown meet- 
 ing was broken up by the same class who had 
 mobbed Garrison, Wendell Phillips was the 
 object of special hostility. He was then speak- 
 ing every Sunday at the Music Hall, to Theo- 
 dore Parker's congregation, and was each Sun- 
 day followed home by a mob, while personally 
 defended by a self-appointed body guard. On 
 one occasion the demonstrations were so threat- 
 ening that he was with difficulty persuaded to 
 leave the hall by a side entrance, and was driven 
 to his home, with a fast horse, by the same Dr. 
 David Thayer who watched his dying bed. For 
 several nights his house was guarded by a small 
 number of friends within, and by the police 
 without. During all this time, there was some- 
 thing peculiarly striking and characteristic in 
 his demeanor. There was absolutely nothing of 
 bull-dog combativeness, but a careless, buoyant, 
 almost patrician air, as if nothing in the way of 
 mob violence were worth considering, and all 
 threats of opponents were simply beneath con- 
 tempt. He seemed like some English Jacobite 
 nobleman on the scaffold, carelessly taking 
 snuff, and kissing his hand to the crowd, before 
 laying his head upon the block. 
 
264 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 No other person than Garrison could be said 
 to do much in the way of guiding the " Gar- 
 risonian " anti-slavery movement ; and Wendell 
 Phillips was thoroughly and absolutely loyal to 
 his great chief while slavery existed. In the 
 details of the agitation, perhaps the leading 
 organizers were two remarkable women, Maria 
 Weston Chapman and Abby Kelley Foster. 
 The function of Wendell Phillips was to supply 
 the eloquence, but he was not wanting either in 
 grasp of principles or interest in details. He 
 thoroughly accepted the non-voting theory, and 
 was ready, not only to speak at any time, but 
 to write — which he found far harder — in op- 
 position to those abolitionists, like Lysander 
 Spooner, who were always trying to prove the 
 United States Constitution an anti-slavery in- 
 strument. Mr. Phillips's " The Constitution a 
 Pro-slavery Compact" (1844), although almost 
 wholly a compilation from the Madison papers, 
 was for many years a storehouse of argument 
 for the disunionists ; and it went through a 
 series of editions. 
 
 In later life he often wrote letters to the news- 
 papers, in which he did not always appear to 
 advantage. But he did very little writing, on 
 the whole : it always came hard to him, and he 
 had, indeed, a theory that the same person could 
 never succeed both in speaking and writing, 
 
PHILLIPS 265 
 
 because they required such different habits of 
 mind. Even as to reports of what he had said, 
 he was quite indifferent ; and it was rather hard 
 to persuade him to interest himself in the vol- 
 ume of his " Speeches, Lectures, and Essays," 
 which was prepared by James Redpath in 
 1863. That editor was a good deal censured 
 at the time for retaining in these speeches the 
 expressions of applause or disapprobation which 
 had appeared in the original newspaper reports, 
 and which the orator had erased. It is, how- 
 ever, fortunate that Mr. Redpath did this : it 
 not only increases their value as memorials of 
 the time, but it brings out that close contact 
 and intercommunion with his audience which 
 formed an inseparable part of the oratory of 
 Wendell Phillips. The latter also published 
 "The Constitution a Pro -slavery Compact" 
 (1844), " Can Abolitionists vote or take Office .' " 
 (1845), "Review of Spooner's Constitutionality 
 of Slavery " (1847), and other similar pamphlets. 
 He moreover showed real literary power and an 
 exquisite felicity in the delineation of character, 
 through his memorial tributes to some of his 
 friends ; as, for instance, the philanthropist Mrs. 
 Eliza Garnaut of Boston, whose only daughter 
 he afterward adopted. 
 
 The keynote to the oratory of Wendell 
 Phillips lay in this : that it was essentially con- 
 
266 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 versational, — the conversational raised to its 
 highest power. Perhaps no orator ever spoke 
 with so little apparent effort, or began so entirely 
 on the plane of his average hearers. It was 
 as if he simply repeated, in a little louder tone, 
 what he had just been saying to some familiar 
 friend at his elbow. The effect was absolutely 
 disarming. Those accustomed to spread-eagle 
 eloquence felt perhaps a slight sense of disap- 
 pointment. Could this quiet, easy, effortless 
 man be Wendell Phillips .' But he held them 
 by his very quietness : it did not seem to have 
 occurred to him to doubt his power to hold 
 them. The poise of his manly figure, the easy 
 grace of his attitude, the thrilling modulation 
 of his perfectly trained voice, the dignity of 
 his gesture, the keen penetration of his eye, 
 all aided to keep his hearers in hand. The 
 colloquialism was never relaxed, but it was 
 familiarity without loss of keeping. When he 
 said "isn't" and "wasn't," — or even like an 
 Englishman dropped his ^'s, and said " bein' " 
 and "doin'," — it did not seem inelegant; he 
 might almost have been ungrammatical, and it 
 would not have impaired the fine air of the man. 
 Then, as the argument went on, the voice grew 
 deeper, the action more animated, and the 
 sentences would come in a long, sonorous swell, 
 still easy and graceful, but powerful as the soft 
 
PHILLIPS 267 
 
 Stretching of a tiger's paw. He could be terse 
 as Carlyle, or his periods could be as prolonged 
 and cumulative as those of Rufus Choate or 
 Evarts : no matter ; they carried, in either case, 
 an equal charm. He was surpassed by Garri- 
 son in grave moral logic; by Parker, in the 
 grasp of facts and in merciless sarcasm ; by 
 Sumner, in copiousness of illustration ; by Doug- 
 lass, in humor and in pathos, — but, after all, 
 in the perfect moulding of the orator, he sur- 
 passed not merely each of these, but all of them 
 combined. What the Revolutionary orators 
 would now seem to us, we cannot tell ; but it is 
 pretty certain that of all our post-Revolutionary 
 speakers, save Webster only, Wendell Phillips 
 stood at the head, while he and Webster repre- 
 sented types of oratory so essentially different 
 that any comparison between them is like trying 
 to compare an oak-tree and a pine. 
 
 He was not moody or variable, or did not 
 seem so ; yet he always approached the hour of 
 speaking with a certain reluctance, and never 
 could quite sympathize with the desire to listen 
 either to him or to any one else. As he walked 
 toward the lecture-room he would say to a friend, 
 " Why do people go to lectures .' There is a 
 respectable man and woman ; they must have 
 a good home ; why do they leave it for the sake 
 of hearing somebody talk ? " This was not 
 
268 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 affectation, but the fatigue of playing too long 
 on one string. Just before coming on the plat- 
 form at a convention, he would remark with ab- 
 solute sincerity, " I have absolutely nothing to 
 say ; " and then would go on to make, especially 
 if hissed or interrupted, one of his very best 
 speeches. Nothing spurred him like opposi- 
 tion ; and it was not an unknown thing for some 
 of his young admirers to take a back seat in the 
 hall, in order to stimulate him by a counterfeited 
 hiss if the meeting seemed tame. Then the 
 unsuspecting orator would rouse himself like 
 a lion. When this opposition came not from 
 friends but foes, it was peculiarly beneficial ; and 
 perhaps the greatest oratorical triumph he ever 
 accomplished was on that occasion in Faneuil 
 Hall (January 30, 1852) when it was re-opened to 
 the abolitionists after the capture of the slave 
 Thomas Sims. Mr. Webster's friends were 
 there in force, and drowned Mr. Phillips's voice 
 by repeated cheers for their favorite, when Mr. 
 Phillips so turned the laugh against them each 
 time, in the intervals when they paused for 
 breath, that their cheers grew fainter and fainter, 
 and he had at last mobbed the mob. 
 
 He used to deny having trained himself for a 
 public speaker ; drew habitually from but few 
 books, — Tocqueville's " Democracy in Amer- 
 ica " being among the chief of these, — but read 
 
PHILLIPS 269 
 
 newspapers enonnously, and magazines a good 
 deal, while he had the memory of an orator or 
 a literary man, never letting pass an effective 
 anecdote or a telling fact. These he turned to 
 infinite account, never sparing ammunition, and 
 never fearing to repeat himself. He used to 
 say that he knew but one thing thoroughly, — 
 the history of the English Revolution, — and 
 from this he obtained morals whenever he 
 wanted them, and in fact used them in almost 
 any direction. He knew the history of the 
 American Revolution also, Sam Adams being 
 his favorite hero. He was a thorough Bos- 
 tonian, too, and his anti - slavery enthusiasm 
 never rose quite so high as when blended with 
 local patriotism. No one who heard it can ever 
 forget the thrilling modulation of his voice 
 when he said, at some special crisis of the anti- 
 slavery agitation, " I love inexpressibly these 
 streets of Boston, over whose pavements my 
 mother held up tenderly my baby feet ; and if 
 God grants me time enough, I will make them 
 too pure to bear the footsteps of a slave." At 
 the very outset he doubtless sometimes pre- 
 pared his speeches with care ; but his first 
 great success was won off-hand ; and afterward, 
 during that period of incessant practice, which 
 Emerson makes the secret of his power, he re- 
 lied generally upon his vast accumulated store 
 
270 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 of facts and illustrations, and his tried habit of 
 thinking on his legs. On special occasions he 
 would still make preparation, and sometimes, 
 though rarely, wrote out his speeches before- 
 hand. No one could possibly recognize this, 
 however. He had never seemed more at his 
 ease, more colloquial, more thoroughly extem- 
 poraneous, than in his address in later life be- 
 fore the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge ; 
 yet it had all been sent to the Boston daily 
 papers in advance, and appeared with scarcely 
 a word's variation, except where he had been 
 compelled to omit some passages for want of 
 time. That was, in some respects, the most 
 remarkable effort of his life ; it was a tardy 
 recognition of him by his own college and his 
 own literary society ; and he held an unwilling 
 audience spellbound, while bating absolutely 
 nothing of his radicalism. Many a respectable 
 lawyer or divine felt his blood run cold, the 
 next day, when he found that the fascinating 
 orator whom he had applauded to the echo had 
 really made the assassination of an emperor 
 seem as trivial as the doom of a mosquito. 
 , He occupied during most of his life the will- 
 ing position of a tribune of the people ; nor was 
 there any social class with which he was unwill- 
 ing to be, logically and politically at least, iden- 
 tified. Emerson, while thoroughly true to the 
 
PHILLIPS 271 
 
 anti- slavery movement, always confessed to 
 feeling a slight instinctive aversion to negroes ; 
 Theodore Parker uttered frankly his dislike of 
 the Irish. Yet neither of these had distinctly 
 aristocratic impulses, while Phillips had. His 
 conscience set them aside so imperatively that 
 he himself hardly knew that they were there. 
 He was always ready to be identified with the 
 colored people, always ready to give his oft-re- 
 peated lecture on O'Connell to the fellow coun- 
 trymen of that hero ; but in these and all cases 
 his democratic habit had the good-natured air of 
 some kindly young prince ; he never was quite 
 the equal associate that he seemed. The want 
 of it was never felt by his associates ; it was in 
 his dealing with antagonists that the real atti- 
 tude came out. When he once spoke contemp- 
 tuously of those who dined with a certain Bos- 
 ton club which had censured him, as "men of 
 no family," the real mental habit appeared. 
 And in his external aspect and bearing the pa- 
 trician air never quite left him, — the air that 
 he had in college days, or in that period when, 
 as Edmund Quincy delighted to tell, an Eng- 
 lish visitor pointed out to George Ticknor two 
 men walking down Park Street, and added the 
 cheerful remark, "They are the only men I 
 have seen in your country who look like gen- 
 tlemen." The two men were the abolitionists 
 
272 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 Quincy and Phillips, in whose personal aspect 
 the conservative Ticknor could see little to 
 commend. 
 
 There is no fame so intoxicating or so tran- 
 sient as that of mere oratory. Some of the 
 most accomplished public speakers whom Amer- 
 ica has produced have died in mid-career, and 
 left scarcely a ripple on the surface. It was not 
 chance that gave a longer lease of fame to 
 Wendell Phillips; a great many elements of 
 genius, studies, social prestige, and moral self- 
 sacrifice had to be combined to produce it. It 
 never turned his head ; his aims were too high 
 for that, and he was aided by the happy law 
 of compensation, which is apt to make men 
 indifferent to easily won laurels. There is no 
 doubt that, in the height of his fame as a lec- 
 turer or platform speaker, he often chafed under 
 the routine and the fatigue, and felt that, had 
 not fate or Providence betrayed him, his career 
 would have been very different. He knew 
 that, coming forward into life with his powers, 
 and at the time he did, he might probably 
 have won the positions which went easily to 
 men far less richly endowed, — as Abbott Law- 
 rence and Robert Charles Winthrop, — and 
 that, had he been once within the magic cir- 
 cle of public office, he could have used it for 
 noble ends, like his favorite. Sir Samuel Romilly. 
 
PHILLIPS 273 
 
 " What I should have liked," he said once to 
 me, "would have been the post of United 
 States Senator for Massachusetts ; " and though 
 he never even dreamed of this as possible for 
 himself, he saw his friend Sumner achieve a 
 position which he, could he once have accepted 
 its limitations, might equally have adorned. 
 
 It is impossible to say how public office might 
 have affected him ; whether it would have given 
 him just that added amount of reasonableness 
 and good judgment which in later years seemed 
 occasionally wanting, or whether it would have 
 only betrayed him to new dangers. He never 
 had it, and the perilous lifelong habits of the 
 platform told upon him. The platform speaker 
 has his especial dangers, as conspicuously as the 
 lawyer or the clergyman ; he acquires insensibly 
 the mood of a gladiator, and, the better his fen- 
 cing, the more he becomes the slave of his own 
 talent. Les hommes exerch a I'escrime ont 
 beau vouloir manager leur adversaire, V habi- 
 tude est plus fort. Us ripostent malgri eux. As 
 under this law the Vicomte de Camors se- 
 duced, almost against his will, the wife of the 
 comrade to whom he had pledged his life, so 
 Wendell Phillips, once with rapier in hand, in- 
 sensibly fought to win, as well as for the glory 
 of God. The position once taken must be 
 maintained ; the opponent must be overwhelmed 
 
274 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 by almost any means. No advocate in any 
 court was quicker than he to shift his ground, 
 to introduce a new shade of meaning, to aban- 
 don an obvious interpretation, and insist on a 
 more subtle one. Every man makes mistakes ; 
 but you might almost count upon your ten fin- 
 gers the number of times that Wendell Phil- 
 lips, during his whole lifetime, owned himself 
 to have been in the wrong, or made a conces- 
 sion to an adversary. In criticising his career 
 in this respect, we may almost reverse the cele- 
 brated censure passed on the charge of the Six 
 Hundred, and may say that it was not heroic, 
 but it was war. 
 
 If this was the case during the great contest 
 with slavery, the evil was more serious after 
 slavery fell. The civil war gave to Phillips, as 
 it gave to many men, an opportunity ; but it 
 was not, in his case, a complete opportunity. 
 At first he was disposed to welcome secession, 
 as fulfilling the wishes of years; "to build," 
 as he said, " a bridge of gold for the Southern 
 States to walk over in leaving the Union." This 
 mood passed ; and he accepted the situation, 
 aiding the departing regiments with voice and 
 purse. Yet it was long before the war took 
 a genuinely anti-slavery character, and younger 
 men than he were holding aloof from it for that 
 reason. He distrusted Lincoln for his deliber- 
 
PHILLIPS 275 
 
 ation, and believed in Fremont ; in short, for a 
 variety of reasons took no clear and unmistak- 
 able attitude. After the war had overthrown 
 slavery, the case was even worse. It was a study 
 of character to note the differing demeanors of 
 the great abolitionist leaders after that event. 
 Edmund Quincy found himself wholly out of 
 harness, d^sceuvrd; there was no other battle 
 worth fighting. He simply reverted, for the 
 rest of his life, to that career of cultivated lei- 
 sure from which the anti-slavery movement had 
 wrenched him for forty years ; he was a critic 
 of music, a frequenter of the theatres. Garri- 
 son, on the other hand, with his usual serene 
 and unabated vigor, went on contending for the 
 rights of the freedmen and of women, as earlier 
 for those of the slaves. Unlike either of these, 
 Wendell PhUUps manifested for the remainder 
 of his career a certain restlessness — always 
 seemed to be crying, like Shakspeare's Hotspur, 
 " Fye upon this idle life ! " and to be always 
 seeking for some new tournament. 
 
 This would not perhaps have been an evil, 
 had he not carried with him into each new en- 
 terprise the habits of the platform, and of the 
 anti-slavery platform in particular. There never 
 was a great moral movement so logically simple 
 as the anti-slavery reform : once grant that man 
 could not rightfully hold property in man, and the 
 
2/6 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 intellectual part of the debate was settled ; only 
 the moral appeal remained, and there Phillips 
 was master, and could speak as one having 
 authority. Slavery gone, the temperance and 
 woman suffrage agitations remained for him as 
 before. But he also found himself thrown, by 
 his own lifelong habit, into a series of new re- 
 forms, where the questions involved were wholly 
 different from those of the anti-slavery move- 
 ment, and were indeed at a different stage of 
 development. You could not settle the rela- 
 tions of capital and labor off-hand, by saying, 
 as in the case of slavery, " Let my people go ; " 
 the matter was far more complex. It was like 
 trying to adjust a chronometer with no other 
 knowledge than that won by observing a sun- 
 dial. In dealing with questions of currency it 
 was still worse. And yet Wendell Phillips 
 went on, for the remainder of his life, preach- 
 ing crusades on these difificult problems, which 
 he gave no sign of ever having profoundly stud- 
 ied, and appealing to sympathy and passion as 
 ardently as if he still had three million slaves 
 for whom to plead. 
 
 It was worse still, when, with the natural 
 habit of a reformer, he found himself readily 
 accepting the companionship into which these 
 new causes brought him. The tone of the anti- 
 slavery apostles was exceedingly high, but there 
 
PHILLIPS 277 
 
 were exceptions even there. "He is a great 
 scoundrel," said Theodore Parker of a certain 
 blatant orator in Boston, " but he loves liberty." 
 It was true, and was fairly to be taken into ac- 
 count. You do not demand a Sunday school 
 certificate from the man who is rescuing your 
 child from a burning house. But it is to be 
 said, beyond this, that, though the demagogue 
 and the true reformer are at opposite extremes, 
 they have certain points in common. Society 
 is apt to make them both for a time outcasts, 
 and outcasts fraternize. They alike distrust the 
 staid and conventional class, and they are dis- 
 trusted by it. When a man once falls into the 
 habit of measuring merit by martyrdoms, he 
 discriminates less closely than before, and the 
 best abused man, whatever the ground of abuse, 
 seems nearest to sainthood. Phillips, at his 
 best, had not always shown keen discrimination 
 as a judge of character ; and the fact that the 
 Boston newspapers thought ill of General But- 
 ler, for instance, was to him a strong point in 
 that gentleman's favor. In this he showed him- 
 self less able to discriminate than his old asso- 
 ciate, Stephen Foster, one of the most heroic 
 and frequently mobbed figures in anti-slavery 
 history : for Stephen Foster sat with reluctance 
 to see Caleb Gushing rudely silenced in Fan- 
 euil Hall by his own soldiers, after the Mexi- 
 
278 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 can war; and lamented that so good a mob, 
 which might have helped the triumph of some 
 great cause, should be wasted on one whom he 
 thought so poor a creature. Fortunate it would 
 have been for Wendell Phillips if he had gone 
 no farther than this ; but he insisted on argu- 
 ing from the mob to the man, forgetting that 
 people may be censured as well for their sins 
 as for their virtues. The last years of his life 
 thus placed him in close cooperation with one 
 whose real motives and methods were totally 
 unlike his own, — indeed, the most unscrupu- 
 lous soldier of fortune who ever posed as a 
 Friend of the People on this side the Atlantic. 
 But all these last days, and the increasing 
 irritability with which he impulsively took up 
 questions to which he could contribute little 
 beyond courage and vehemence, will be at least 
 temporarily forgotten now that he is gone. 
 They will disappear from memory, like the 
 selfishness of Hancock, or the vanity of John 
 Adams, in the light of a devoted, generous, and 
 courageous career. With all his faults, his in- 
 consistencies, his impetuous words, and his un- 
 reasoning prejudices, Wendell Phillips belonged 
 to the heroic type. Whether we regard him 
 mainly as an orator, or as a participant in im- 
 portant events, it is certain that no history of 
 the United States will ever be likely to omit 
 
PHILLIPS 279 
 
 him. It is rarely that any great moral agitation 
 bequeaths to posterity more than two or three 
 names; the English slave-trade abolition has 
 left only Clarkson and Wilberforce in memory ; 
 the great Corn Law contest, only Cobden and 
 Bright. The American anti-slavery movement 
 will probably embalm the names of Garrison, 
 Phillips, and John Brown. This is for the fu- 
 ture to decide. Meanwhile, it is certain that 
 Wendell Phillips had, during life, that quality 
 which Emerson thought the highest of all quali- 
 ties, — of being "something that cannot be 
 skipped or undermined." From the moment of 
 his death, even those who had most criticised 
 him instinctively felt that one great chapter of 
 American history was closed. 
 
SUMNER 
 
 Charles Sumner was born at Boston, Mass., 
 January 6, i8ii, and died at Washington, D. C, 
 March ii, 1874. 
 
 The most poetic delineator of the life of 
 ancient Greece, — Landor, — describes Demos- 
 thenes as boasting that there were days when 
 Athens had but one voice within her walls, and 
 the stranger, entering the gates and startled by 
 the silence, was told that Demosthenes was 
 speaking in the assembly of the people. On 
 the day before Charles Sumner's funeral it 
 seemed that Boston, too, had but one voice 
 within her walls, and that it came from the 
 mute form reposing in the Doric Hall of the 
 State House. Emerson has said 
 
 " The silent organ loudest chant3 
 Its master's requiem," 
 
 and never was there an appeal more potent 
 than came that day from the very speechless- 
 ness of that noble organ, the voice of Charles 
 Sumner. 
 
 Standing amid that crowd at the State 
 House, it was impossible not to ask one's self : 
 
SUMNER 281 
 
 " Can this be Boston ? The city whose bells 
 toll for Sumner — is it the same city that fired 
 one hundred guns for the passage of the Fugi- 
 tive Slave Law ? The King's Chapel, which is 
 to hold his funeral rites — can it be the same 
 King's Chapel which furnished from among its 
 worshipers the only Massachusetts represen- 
 tative who voted for that law? These black 
 soldiers who guard the coffin of their great 
 friend — are they of the same race with those 
 unarmed black men who were marched down 
 yonder street surrounded by the bayonets of 
 Boston militiamen ? " It is said that when 
 Sumner made his first conspicuous appearance 
 as an orator in Boston, and delivered his address 
 on " The True Grandeur of Nations," a promi- 
 nent merchant said indignantly, as he went out 
 of the building : " Well, if that young man is 
 going to talk in that way, he cannot expect 
 Boston to hold him up." Boston did not hold 
 him up ; but Massachusetts so sustained him 
 that he held up Boston, until it had learned to 
 sustain him in return. 
 
 In reviewing the life of any great public man, 
 we must consider two things — the scene and 
 the actor. When Sumner was elected to the 
 United States Senate, in 185 1, the whole situ- 
 ation was one which now seems as remote as 
 if centuries had passed since then. The nation 
 
282 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 was apparently entering on a death struggle. 
 The North was divided. Families were divided. 
 All the safeguards in which the men of the 
 Revolution had trusted were being swept away, 
 and an institution which the men of the Re- 
 volution had scarcely feared was now proving 
 more powerful than all the rest. Old John 
 Adams, in 1786, had a conversation with a 
 certain Major Langbourne, from Virginia, who 
 was lamenting the difference of character be- 
 tween that commonwealth and New England. 
 Mr. Adams gave him " a receipt for making a 
 New England in Virginia," and he named four 
 ingredients, — " town meetings, training days, 
 town schools, and ministers." But in 185 1 sla- 
 very had demoralized the town meetings ; it had 
 turned the training days into military schools 
 for slave kidnappers ; it had torn the anti-sla- 
 very pages out of the school books ; and it had 
 gagged many of the ministers, or made them 
 open their lips in such a way that they would 
 have done better to remain gagged. " Honest 
 John Davis," as he was called — Mr. Sumner's 
 first colleague — when asked by Mr. Sumner 
 what was his final opinion of public life, on 
 leaving it, in 1853, gave it in these brief words : 
 " At Washington slavery rules everything." It 
 was into such a scene as this that Mr. Sumner 
 was sent at his first election. 
 
SUMNER 283 
 
 He was sent to work out his own course 
 absolutely. He had no party ; he was to create 
 a party. He had no firm following. The 
 abolitionists watched him with hope, but not 
 without distrust ; they had seen so many fail. 
 His opponents were prepared to denounce him as 
 a man of one idea, if he devoted himself to the 
 slavery question alone ; or as a demagogue, if he 
 took up any other. When he made his first 
 speech on a general question (a land bill), it is 
 recorded that a Boston clergyman said it " be- 
 trayed the instincts of a demagogue, and was 
 designed for popularity at the West." 
 
 Then came, a few years after, the attack by 
 Brooks. At the beginning of that session, Mr. 
 Sumner had said to my brother: "This ses- 
 sion will not pass without the Senate Cham- 
 ber's becoming the scene of some unparalleled 
 outrage." Thus clearly did he understand the 
 path he was treading. The assault was the 
 legitimate result of the general spirit of vio- 
 lence then prevailing, North and South. Theo- 
 dore Parker said that the acorn from which 
 Brooks's bludgeon grew was none other than 
 the Acorn, that brig owned in Boston and char- 
 tered by the United States government to take 
 Sims into slavery. The Charleston " Mercury " 
 of July 21, 1856, said of the assault on Mr. 
 Sumner: "The whole affair has been most 
 
284 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 opportune. . . . He [Mr. Brooks] has from the 
 first conducted himself with good taste, good 
 judgment, and good spirit." Mr. Sumner "is 
 dead in the esteem of every man not a poltroon, 
 North and South." Such was the scene of 
 public service on which the great senator fig- 
 ured. Now what qualities did he bring to it ? 
 
 He brought, first, a magnificent physical 
 organization, just in its prime. There is an 
 Arabian proverb that no man is called of God 
 till the age of forty ; and Sumner was just 
 that age when he entered the Senate. He had 
 a grand, imposing presence, strong health, and 
 athletic habits. He was, if I mistake not, one 
 of the few persons who have ever swum across 
 the Niagara River just below the Falls. Nia- 
 gara first ; slavery afterward. He felt fully the 
 importance of bodily vigor, and I remember 
 that once, in looking at a fine engraving of 
 Charles Fourier, in my study, after I had re- 
 marked " What a head ! " he answered : " Yes ; 
 and what a body ! A head is almost worthless 
 without an adequate body to sustain it." His 
 whole physique marked him as a leader and 
 ruler among men; and I remember well that 
 when I first visited the English Parliament, I 
 looked in vain among Lords and Commons for 
 the bodily peer of Charles Sumner. 
 
 Then let us consider his intellect. The very 
 
SUMNER 28s 
 
 highest quality of intellect it is not safe to claim 
 for him. The highest poetic imagination, bring- 
 ing glory out of common things ; the highest 
 scientific genius, which almost partakes of the 
 poetic quality ; the finest philosophic discrimi- 
 nation ; the military or administrative genius 
 — "the art Napoleon," — these were not his. 
 He had not even the rarest manifestation of 
 statesmanlike genius — that, namely, which 
 solves the problem and gives the key, as was 
 done by Samuel Adams in the Revolutionary 
 period and by Garrison in our own day. Sum- 
 ner was in relation to Garrison a learner. He 
 had read " The Liberator " for more than ten 
 years before he entered public life. Indeed, 
 Sumner himself never claimed to belong to the 
 rarest class of original minds. He said to me 
 once, in relation to some demand upon him 
 which he thought excessive : " These people 
 forget that I am a cistern, not a fountain, and 
 require time to fill up." 
 
 But to the very highest type of secondary 
 minds he certainly belonged. Jefferson was 
 not so great as Samuel Adams, but he put 
 the thoughts of Adams into words that made 
 them immortal. Sumner, like Jefferson, con- 
 tributed the intellectual statements needed — 
 put the new " Declaration of Independence " 
 into working form. His successive orations, 
 
286 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 by their very titles, gave a series of phrases 
 that were half battles, as was said of Luther's 
 words. Grattan said that all the speeches of 
 Demosthenes were not equal to that one brief 
 utterance of Chatham's, — "America has re- 
 sisted. I rejoice, my lords ! " Sumner's phrases 
 had less electricity than this, but they had a 
 weighty and organizing value. " Freedom na- 
 tional, slavery sectional ; " " The crime against 
 Kansas ;" "The barbarism of slavery ; " — each 
 of these hit some nail precisely on the head. 
 Seward's " Irrepressible Conflict " was the only 
 phrase of equal value from any other source. 
 
 But, after all, the great characteristic of Sum- 
 ner's intellect is not to be ascertained by the 
 qualitative test, but by the quantitative. Judged 
 simply by quantity his intellectual activity was 
 unequaled among the Americans of his gener- 
 ation. Among those whom I have personally 
 known, I should say that Theodore Parker 
 alone could be compared with him in range and 
 comprehensiveness of intellectual activity ; and 
 though Parker had a far more poetic nature, 
 more humor, more pathos, more homely com- 
 mon sense, he was less accurate in his scholar- 
 ship and had less power of weighty and con- 
 secutive thought. It was said of Fox that every 
 sentence of his came rolling in like a wave of 
 the Atlantic, three thousand miles long. It 
 
SUMNER 287 
 
 was the same with the statements of Sumner. 
 They consisted of long chains of rhetoric, of 
 accumulated facts, of erudite illustration, that 
 might have been cumbrous and tedious had 
 they not been sustained by vigor such as his. 
 It is easy enough to put on an air of scholar- 
 ship ; a little goes a great way with those 
 who are not scholars. But Sumner astonished 
 scholars. The more any one had studied any 
 question, the more amazing were the floods of 
 light poured upon it when stated by Sumner. 
 Terseness, condensation, severe simplicity, were 
 not in his line. His merits and his defects lay 
 in another direction. He had what President 
 Dwight, visiting Boston in 18 10, described as 
 "the Boston style of oratory, — a florid style." 
 But this was the florid quahty of Gladstone, 
 not of Peel, of whom it was said that he knew 
 how to " make a platitude endurable by making 
 it pompous." I do not see why Sumner's great 
 orations should not be preserved by posterity 
 with those of Burke, long after their immediate 
 occasion has passed away. Sumner will have 
 the permanent advantage over Burke that he 
 loved hberty, while Burke feared it ; and Sum- 
 ner had also the temporary advantage that he 
 held his audiences together while Burke scat- 
 tered his, and was called "the dinner bell," 
 from his faculty of thinning out the House of 
 Commons. 
 
288 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 But even these resources of the physical and 
 intellectual man were secondary to that moral 
 courage and that absolute rectitude of purpose 
 which even his bitterest opponents conceded to 
 Charles Sumner. There is in Weiss's "Life 
 of Theodore Parker" a remarkable letter ad- 
 dressed by him to Mr. Sumner after his elec- 
 tion, and dated April 26, 185 1. It is as follows : 
 
 " Perhaps you had better lay this away till 
 Sunday, for I am going to preach. You told 
 me once that you were in morals, not politics. 
 Now I hope you will show that you are still in 
 morals, although in politics. I hope you will 
 be the senator with a conscience. The capital 
 error of all our politicians is this : with under- 
 standing and political sagacity, with cunning 
 and power to manage men in the heroic degree, 
 [yet] in moral power, in desire of the true 
 and the right — ' first good, first perfect, and 
 first fair ' — they are behind the carpenters and 
 the blacksmiths. ... I consider that Massachu- 
 setts has put you where you have no right to 
 consult for the ease or the reputation of your- 
 self, but for the eternal right. All of our 
 statesmen build on the opinion of to-day a house 
 that is to be admired to-morrow, and the next 
 day to be torn down with hooting. I hope you 
 will build on the Rock of Ages, and look to 
 eternity for your justification." 
 
SUMNER 289 
 
 He did look to eternity, and has now his 
 justification in it. But I think Plutarch's 
 "Lives" can show nothing more simple and 
 noble than this counsel of Parker to Sumner, 
 or than the life by which Sumner gave answer 
 to it. 
 
 It is further to be noticed that his moral 
 standard did not merely aim at ends, but ex- 
 tended to means also. The long course of the 
 anti-slavery agitation has left us men identi- 
 fied with many of the noblest aims, whose 
 low choice of means has yet plunged them 
 into inconsistency and identified them with 
 corrupt and debasing ways. No such stain 
 rested on Sumner. Can any one fancy him 
 as going about buttonholing politicians to aid in 
 his own reelection, or pulling any wires less 
 visible than the telegraphic wires which bore 
 his speeches, or appearing on the platform of a 
 political caucus marshaling people to vote for 
 himself .' 
 
 Let me not shrink from saying something, 
 lastly, as to the limitations of Charles Sumner. 
 Dr. Channing says that if a man is not great 
 enough to be painted as he is he had better not 
 be painted at all. It is perhaps fortunate that no 
 man combines all points of superiority. " Care 
 is taken," says Goethe, "that the trees shall 
 not grow up into the sky." If Sumner had 
 
290 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 combined, for instance, the extraordinary quali- 
 ties of his own nature with a personal fascina- 
 tion like that of Henry Clay, he might have 
 been so powerful as to be dangerous to the 
 liberties of the country. Who knows ? But 
 he had not this combination. This last inex- 
 plicable spell of personal magnetism was not 
 his. He convinced, persuaded, commanded, 
 was respected and loved. But when John Ran- 
 dolph, after fighting against Henry Clay all his 
 life, caused himself to be raised from his death- 
 bed and brought into the House, merely that 
 he might hear the voice of his old opponent 
 once more, it was a kind of personal triumph 
 such as Sumner never achieved. Yet his na- 
 ture was very homogeneous, complete in its 
 kind, and his very defects were "the defects 
 of his qualities," in the French phrase. His 
 lack of humor helped his earnestness, but took 
 from it the needful relief. His occasional 
 exaggeration, as in dealing with England and 
 with Grant, was the exaggeration of a practiced 
 rhetorician, so familiar with his own weapons 
 that he forgets their weight. His self-assertion 
 was the frank statement of an unquestioned 
 superiority, which a less honest man or one 
 of more sense of humor would easily have con- 
 cealed. I asked him, near the end of his life, 
 in his library at Washington, what he thought 
 
SUMNER 291 
 
 the Supreme Court would make of the claim 
 that the 14th and isth amendments had already- 
 enacted woman suffrage. He drew himself up, 
 in his stately way, and said simply : " I suppose 
 I know more about judges than any man in 
 America." The self-assertion sounded almost 
 startling, until he went back to his early know- 
 ledge of Marshall and Story, and sketched rap- 
 idly the leading judges of later years, till he 
 had fairly established his claim. Then he 
 ended by saying that there were two ways in 
 which almost any judge could regard almost any 
 question — according to the letter or to the 
 spirit ; and that whenever any man on the Su- 
 preme Bench was heartily of the opinion that 
 women ought to vote he would probably have 
 httle difficulty in seeing authority for woman 
 suffrage in these constitutional amendments. 
 
 It is impossible to say how far the alleged 
 want of magnetism or sympathetic attractive- 
 ness in Mr. Sumner's public or private manner 
 may have been due to a certain loneliness in 
 his life and to the want of the amenities of 
 home and children. Yet it is very incorrect to 
 say, as has sometimes been said, that he was 
 indifferent to persons and cared only for prin- 
 ciples. I have never known in public life so 
 prompt and faithful a correspondent ; or one 
 so ready to espouse the cause of some indi- 
 
292 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 vidual man or woman who needed aid. He had 
 no band of henchmen, no one who had been 
 won to support him for value received ; but the 
 blessings of the poor, the friendless, the power- 
 less were his. 
 
 It remains for us to remember that his suc- 
 cessors are not to be found among those who 
 merely sound his name and record his deeds, 
 but among those who are doing what he left un- 
 done and bearing the cross he bore. Laurels 
 in battle do not come to him who, when the 
 standard-bearer falls, only pauses with bowed 
 head to say, " What a man he was," but rather 
 to him who grasps the falling flag, and, per- 
 haps, himself falling, hands it to another, till it 
 has passed through as many hands as there 
 are survivors in the regiment. When Charles 
 Sumner came forward into political life, it was 
 supposed that all the great questions were set- 
 tled, or, at least, stated, until he brought the 
 slavery question into politics and made it take 
 precedence of them all. The same delusion 
 exists now. The questions that still remain 
 unsettled — the rights of woman, the rights of 
 labor, the principles of temperance legislation — 
 these may yet furnish duties as arduous, tests 
 as severe as any that Sumner knew. It is said 
 of Hereward, " the last of the Saxons," that 
 if there had been six such men as he in Eng- 
 
SUMNER 293 
 
 land the Normans would never have entered 
 it, and had there been ten such men the Nor- 
 mans would have been driven out. Our Here- 
 ward has fallen ; let us see who are the other 
 nine. 
 
DR. HOWE'S ANTI-SLAVERY CAREER 
 
 In view of the world-wide fame of Dr. Sam- 
 uel Gridley Howe as a teacher of the blind and 
 a friend of Greek liberty, it must not be for- 
 gotten that in the anti-slavery movement also, 
 he played a part wholly characteristic and al- 
 most unique. He was a natural crusader or 
 paladin ; a man in whom every call to duty took 
 a certain chivalrous aspect ; who seemed a little 
 out of place in a world of Quakers or non-re- 
 sistants, even when men of those types were 
 actually leading in the bravest enterprises of 
 the time. While most of those around him 
 were either indifferent to the wrong, on the one 
 side, or eschewed carnal weapons on the other, 
 he could not forget the days when he had been 
 surgeon in the Greek war for independence, or 
 had seen the inside of a Prussian prison for 
 having been president of a Polish committee 
 in Paris. 
 
 An eminent abolitionist once told me that on 
 visiting Dr. Howe soon after his marriage, — 
 which took place in 1843, — the latter said that 
 in his opinion some movement of actual force 
 
DR. HOWE'S ANTI-SLAVERY CAREER 295 
 
 would yet have to be made against slavery, and 
 that but for the new duties he had assumed by 
 his marriage, he should very likely undertake 
 some such enterprise himself. His whole anti- 
 slavery career was predicted in those words. 
 They showed him as he was, a perfectly chival- 
 rous spirit, working under the limitations of 
 many duties and cares. 
 
 This remark must have been made about 
 1844. It does not appear that he then enrolled 
 himself in any public way among abolitionists. 
 I do not even find his name in the list of the 
 Massachusetts State Texas Committee, formed 
 in October, 1845 ; but at the first fugitive-slave 
 case, he stepped at once to the very front. 
 Many still living will remember the magnificent 
 meeting held at Faneuil Hall September 24, 
 1846, "to consider the recent case of kidnap- 
 ping on our soil." John Quincy Adams presided 
 on that occasion, he being then in his eightieth 
 year, and saying that if he had but one day to 
 live he would use it to be there. Dr. Howe 
 called the meeting to order, and organized the 
 whole, the letters of invited guests being ad- 
 dressed to him. He also made the opening 
 speech, of which every sentence was a sword- 
 thrust. John A. Andrew, then a young lawyer, 
 read the resolutions ; Sumner, Charles Francis 
 Adams, and the two Phillipses spoke; and a 
 
296 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 Vigilance Committee of forty was finally chosen 
 with Dr. Howe for a chairman. That Vigi- 
 lance Committee, afterward enlarged, contin- 
 ued in existence through all the fugitive slave 
 period; and the history of Boston will be in- 
 complete until the records of that committee 
 are published. 
 
 Dr. Howe was nominated for Congress that 
 same year against Mr. Winthrop, but he was 
 defeated, and his main services lay outside of 
 politics. The fugitive-slave period in Massa- 
 chusetts differed from any revolutionary period 
 before or since in this, that it fell in a time of 
 awkward transition from physical to spiritual 
 weapons ; and while the air was full of revolu- 
 tion, almost all the revolutionists were ham- 
 pered by reverence for law, or else by non- 
 resistance. Most of the Garrisonian abolition- 
 ists were non-combatants on principle ; while, 
 on the other hand, the voting abolitionists had 
 a controlling desire to keep within the law. 
 Even Theodore Parker, who stood between these 
 two classes, wished people to rescue slaves 
 " with only the arms their mother gave them." 
 The result was that among all the anti-slavery 
 men in Boston, there was hardly a dozen who 
 had quite made up their minds to fight. Of 
 that small number, it is needless to say that 
 Dr. Howe was one. Six weeks in a Prussian 
 
DR. HOWE'S ANTI-SLAVERY CAREER 297 
 
 prison were as good as a liberal education in 
 the way of bearing arms. 
 
 One of the most remarkable meetings held in 
 Boston, in those days, was one which occurred 
 at the Tremont Temple during the Sims case, 
 April 9, 185 1. Horace Mann had consented to 
 preside on condition that the meeting should 
 be pledged to strictly legal measures, — but 
 Dr. Howe, who regretted this scrupulousness, 
 planned to have the evening meeting less re- 
 stricted. Unluckily the material of the after- 
 noon meeting was by far the more fiery, because 
 it included many delegations from the country 
 towns, who were as a rule more ardent than 
 the city audiences, and who went home on this 
 occasion disappointed. After one speech in 
 especial, as Dr. Howe afterward said, "the 
 country was at the verge of a revolution," for 
 which, I think, he himself was ready ; but the 
 next speaker threw cold water on it, the excite- 
 ment passed, the evening meeting was tame, 
 and nothing was done. A plan of rescue was 
 afterward formed, but was defeated by putting 
 up a grating at the window of Sims's cell. 
 
 Three years later came the Bums affair. 
 During the interval, or part of it. Dr. Howe 
 had been editing the " Commonwealth ; " the 
 " coalition party " of Democrats and Anti- 
 slavery Whigs had been successful in the State, 
 
298 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 and the public mind had been a good deal edu- 
 cated. Still, when a meeting of the Vigilance 
 Committee was held, on the day of the Burns 
 riot, May 26, 1854, it was found impossible to 
 collect even twenty names pledged to physical 
 resistance under any single leader, and even 
 after a stirring speech by Dr. Howe, it ended in 
 appointing only an executive committee of six 
 men, afterward increased to seven. Napoleon 
 said that there was but one thing worse for an 
 army than a bad general, and that was two 
 good generals. We had seven ! It was worse, 
 in that respect, than Bull Run. 
 
 After the fugitive - slave cases, the seat of 
 anti-slavery excitement was transferred for" a 
 time to Kansas. Before the civil war began. 
 Dr. Howe was (in 1854) one of the original 
 corporators in the Emigrant Aid Society, by 
 which it was hoped to secure that territory 
 peaceably to freedom. Then came a time, in 
 1856, when that proved impossible, and, as you 
 may read in Theodore Parker's letters, "Dr. 
 Howe and others raised ^S,ooo one day last 
 week to buy Sharpe's rifles." Parties were then 
 organized — still emigrant parties, but armed 
 by the organizing committees — in Boston and 
 Worcester. When the Missouri River was 
 blocked up by the "border ruffians," as they 
 were called, and one of the first parties was 
 
DR. HOWE'S ANTI-SLAVERY CAREER 299 
 
 turned back, Dr. Howe went to St. Louis to 
 meet them, and to reorganize the scattered 
 forces. Through all that struggle, no Eastern 
 man, save George L. Stearns, — God bless his 
 memory ! — did more to save Kansas to free- 
 dom than he. I think the State Kansas Com- 
 mittee was organized at the Blind Asylum office 
 on Bromfield Street. Almost every one who 
 came in or out of that office was blini; but Dr. 
 Howe's keen sight restored the balance, for he 
 could see beyond the Missouri. 
 
 The next anti-slavery milestone was when, 
 in 1858, John Brown came eastward. A keen 
 thinker has said that every path on earth may 
 lead to the dwelling of a hero ; and of course 
 the track was plain enough between John 
 Brown's door and that of Dr. Howe. Few, if 
 any, knew Captain Brown's plans in full detail ; 
 but the project of a slave stampede on a large 
 scale was quite in Dr. Howe's line, and he, with 
 others, entered into it cordially. Then came 
 the betrayal by Hugh Forbes, which so dis- 
 turbed John Brown's Eastern friends that his 
 "marching on" was delayed for more than a 
 year, — a delay approved neither by Brown him- 
 self nor Dr. Howe, but accepted as inevitable 
 by both. After the failure of the Harper's 
 Ferry attempt. Dr. Howe left the United States 
 for a short time, — needlessly, as he afterward 
 
300 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 thought, — and was later examined at Washing- 
 ton before a congressional committee, but with 
 no result. There was some difference of opin- 
 ion among John Brown's friends as to their 
 duty after his death ; but Dr. Howe was never 
 much troubled by the necessity of satisfying 
 the consciences of others, if he could only 
 satisfy his own. 
 
 A year or more later, I remember him as aid- 
 ing, in the Music Hall, and in the neighboring 
 streets, to ward off danger from Wendell Phil- 
 lips during a series of riotous days. Again, on 
 the very day after the attack on our troops in 
 Baltimore, he threw himself with his old hearti- 
 ness into a project formed among us, of taking 
 a hint from John Brown and putting a guerrilla 
 party instantly into Virginia, thus saving Wash- 
 ington by kindling a back fire. The steps 
 promptly taken in recruiting troops prevented 
 this project from being carried farther, but it 
 was precisely the scheme to suit Dr. Howe. 
 His services during the civil war itself, I leave 
 to others. 
 
 His anti-slavery life was, in short, that of a 
 man of chivalrous nature, with a constitutional 
 love for freedom and for daring enterprises, 
 taking more interest in action than in mere 
 agitation, and having, moreover, other fields of 
 usefulness which divided his zeal. With a pe- 
 
DR. HOWE'S ANTI-SLAVERY CAREER 301 
 
 culiarly direct and thrilling sort of eloquence, 
 and a style of singular condensation and power, 
 abrupt, almost impetuous, — like a sword with 
 no ornament but the dents upon the blade, — 
 he yet knew that the chief end of life is action, 
 and not thought. With all his intellectual ac- 
 complishments, he would, as Thoreau said of 
 John Brown, " have left a Greek accent slant- 
 ing the wrong way, and righted up a fallen 
 man." 
 
GRANT 
 
 When any great historical event is past, fame 
 soon begins to concentrate itself on one or two 
 leading figures, dropping inexorably all minor 
 ones. How furious was the strife waged in 
 England over West India emancipation, and 
 then over the abolition of the corn - laws ! 
 Time, money, intellect, reputation, were freely 
 bestowed for both these enterprises. Those 
 great sacrifices are now forgotten ; the very 
 names of those who made them are lost ; pos- 
 terity associates only WUberforce and Clarkson 
 with the one agitation, Cobden and Bright with 
 the other. When we turn to the war which 
 saved the Union and brought emancipation, we 
 find that the roll of fame is similarly narrowing. 
 There is scarcely an American under thirty who 
 is familiar with even the name of John P. Hale, 
 whom Garrison called "the Abdiel of New 
 Hampshire;" or of Henry Wilson, Vice-Presi- 
 dent of the United States, and historian of that 
 slave power which he did so much toward over- 
 throwing. The acute and decorous Seward, 
 the stately Chase, the imperious Stanton, even 
 
GRANT 303 
 
 the high-minded and commanding Sumner, 
 with his reservoirs of knowledge, — all these 
 are steadily fading from men's memories. Fifty 
 years hence, perhaps, the mind of the nation 
 will distinctly recognize only two figures as 
 connected with aU that great upheaval, — Lin- 
 coln and Grant. 
 
 Of these two. Grant will have one immeasur- 
 able advantage, in respect to fame, — that he 
 wrote his own memoirs. A man who has done 
 this can never become a myth ; his individuality 
 is as sure of preservation as is that of Caesar. 
 Something must of course depend upon the 
 character of such an autobiography : it may by 
 some mischance reveal new weaknesses only, or 
 reaffirm and emphasize those previously known. 
 Here again Grant is fortunate : his book is one 
 of the greatest of his victories, and those who 
 most criticised his two administrations may now 
 be heard doubting whether they did, after all, 
 any justice to the man. These memoirs have 
 that first and highest quality both of literature 
 and manhood, simplicity. Without a trace of 
 attitudinizing or a suspicion of special pleading, 
 written in a style so plain and terse that it sug- 
 gests the reluctant conversation of a naturally 
 reticent man, they would have a charm if the 
 author had never emerged from obscurity except 
 to write them. Considered as the records of the 
 
304 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 foremost soldier of his time, they are unique 
 and of inestimable value. 
 
 This value is reinforced, at every point, by a 
 certain typical quality which the book possesses. 
 As with Lincoln, so with Grant, the reader hails 
 with delight this exhibition of the resources of 
 the Average American. It is not in the least 
 necessary for the success of republican govern- 
 ment that it should keep great men, so to 
 speak, on tap all the time; it is rather our 
 theory to be guided in public affairs by the 
 general good sense of the community. What 
 we need to know is whether leaders will be 
 forthcoming for specific duties when needed; 
 and in this the civil war confirmed the popu- 
 lar faith, and indeed developed it almost into 
 fatalism. It is this representative character of 
 the book which fascinates ; the way in which 
 destiny, looking about for material, took Grant 
 and moulded him for a certain work. Ap- 
 parently, there was not in him, during his 
 boyhood, the slightest impulse towards a 
 military life. He consented to go to West 
 Point merely that he might visit New York 
 and Philadelphia — that done, he would have 
 been glad of any steamboat or railroad accident 
 that should make it for a time impossible to 
 enter the Academy. The things that he enjoyed 
 were things that had scarcely the slightest 
 
GRANT 305 
 
 reference to the career that lay unconsciously 
 before him. Sydney Smith had a brother, known 
 as Bobus, who bore through life this one dis- 
 tinction : that he had been thrashed as a boy 
 by a schoolmate who subsequently became the 
 Duke of Wellington. "He began with you," 
 said Sydney Smith, "and ended with Napo- 
 leon." Grant began by breaking in a trouble- 
 some horse and ended with the Southern Con- 
 . f ederacy. 
 
 There is always a certain piquant pleasure in 
 the visible disproportion of means to ends. All 
 Grant's early preparation or non-preparation for 
 military life inspires the same feeling of gratified 
 surprise with which we read that the young 
 Napoleon, at the military school of St. Cyr, 
 was simply reported as "very healthy." At 
 West Point, Grant was at the foot of his class 
 in the tactics, and he was dropped from sergeant 
 to private in the junior year. A French or Ger- 
 man officer would have looked with contempt 
 on a military cadet who never had been a sports- 
 man, and did not think he should ever have 
 the courage to fight a duel. It would seem as 
 if fate had the same perplexing problem in 
 choosing its man for commander-in-chief that 
 every war governor found in his choice of 
 colonels and captains. Who could tell, how 
 was any one to predict, what sort of soldier 
 
3o6 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 any citizen would be ? Grant himself, when he 
 came to appoint three men in Illinois as staff 
 ofScers, failed, by his own statement, in two of 
 the selections. What traits, what tendencies, 
 shown in civil life, furnished the best guar- 
 antee for military abilities ? None, perhaps, 
 that could be definitely named, except habitual 
 leadership in physical exercises. Of all po- 
 sitions, the captaincy of a college crew or a 
 baseball club was surest to supply qualities 
 available for military command. But even for 
 athletic exercises, except so far as horses were 
 concerned. Grant had no recorded taste. 
 
 Nor does his career in the Mexican war 
 seem to have settled the point — and his ani- 
 mated sketch of that event, though one of 
 the most graphic ever written, fails to give any 
 signal proof of great attributes of leadership. 
 This part of his book is especially interesting 
 as showing the really small scale of the military 
 events which then looked large. It is hard 
 for us to believe that General Taylor invaded 
 Mexico with three thousand men, a force no 
 greater than was commanded at different times 
 by dozens of mere colonels during the war 
 for the Union. It is equally hard to believe 
 that these men carried flint-lock muskets, and 
 that their heaviest ordnance consisted of two 
 eighteen - pound guns, while the Mexican ar- 
 
GRANT 307 
 
 • 
 
 tillery was easily evaded by simply stepping 
 out of the way of the balls. It is difHcult to 
 convince ourselves that General Taylor never 
 wore uniform, and habitually sat upon his 
 horse with both feet hanging on the same side. 
 Yet it was amid so little pomp and circumstance 
 as this that Grant first practiced war. The 
 experience developed in him sufficient moral 
 insight to see, all along, that it was a contest 
 in which his own country was wrong ; and the 
 knowledge he gained of the characters of his 
 fellow officers was simply invaluable when he 
 came to fight against some of them. At Fort 
 Donelson he knew that with any force, how- 
 ever small, he could march within gunshot of 
 General Pillow's intrenchments, — and when 
 General Buckner said to him, after the sur- 
 render, that if he had been in command the 
 Union army would not have got up to the fort 
 so easily, Grant replied that if Buckner had 
 been in command he should not have tried to 
 do it in the way he did. 
 
 He was trained also by his Mexican campaign 
 in that habit of simple and discriminating justice 
 to an opponent which is so vital in war. The 
 enormous advantages gained by the Americans 
 over superior numbers during that contest have 
 always been rather a puzzle to the reader. 
 Grant makes it clear when Jie says that, though 
 
3o8 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 the Mexicans often " stood up as well as any 
 troops ever did," they were a mere mob for 
 want of trained supervision. He adds, with 
 some humor, " The trouble seemed to be the 
 lack of experience among the officers, which 
 led them, after a certain period, to simply 
 quit without being whipped, but because they 
 had fought enough." He notes also that our 
 losses in those battles were relatively far 
 greater than theirs, and that for this reason, 
 and because of the large indemnity paid at last, 
 the Mexicans still celebrate Chapultepec and 
 Molino del Rey as their victories, very much 
 as Americans, under circumstances somewhat 
 similar, celebrate the battle of Bunker Hill. 
 Finally, Grant has the justice to see that, as 
 Mexico has now a standing army and trained 
 officers, the war of 1846-48 would be an impos- 
 sibility in this generation. 
 
 When Grant comes to deal with the war for 
 the Union itself, his prevailing note of simplicity 
 gives a singularly quiet tone to the narrative. 
 In his hands the tales of Shiloh and Donelson 
 are told with far less of sound and fury than 
 the boys' football game in "Tom Brown at 
 Rugby." In reading the accounts of these 
 victories, it seems as if anybody might have 
 won them ; just as the traveler, looking from 
 Chamonix at the glittering slopes of Mont 
 
GRANT 309 
 
 Blanc, feels as if there were nothing to do but 
 to walk right up. Did any one in history ever 
 accomplish so much as Grant with so little con- 
 scious expenditure of force, or meet dangers and 
 worries so imperturbably ? " I told them that 
 I was not disturbed." " Why there should have 
 been a panic I do not see." This is the sort of 
 remark that occurs at intervals throughout the 
 memoirs, and usually at the crisis of affairs; 
 and this denotes the conquering temperament. 
 Perhaps the climax of this expression is found 
 when Grant says incidentally, " While a battle 
 is raging, one can see his enemy mowed down 
 by the thousand, or even the ten thousand, with 
 great composure; but after the battle these 
 scenes are distressing, and one is naturally dis- 
 posed to do as much to alleviate the suffering 
 of an enemy as [of] a friend." It is the word 
 " composure " that is here characteristic ; many 
 men would share in the emotion, but very few 
 would describe it by this placid phrase. Again, 
 the same quality is shown when, in describing the 
 siege of Vicksburg, after "the nearest approach 
 to a council of war " he ever held. Grant pithily 
 adds, " Against the general and almost unani- 
 mous judgment of the council, I sent the fol- 
 lowing letter," — this containing essentially the 
 terms that were accepted. Indeed, it is needless 
 to point out how imperturbable must have been 
 
310 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 the character of the man who would take with 
 him on a campaign his oldest son, a boy of 
 twelve, and say of him at the end, " My son . . . 
 caused no anxiety either to me or to his mother, 
 who was at home. He looked out for himself* 
 and was in every battle of the campaign." 
 
 This phlegmatic habit made General Grant 
 in some respects uninteresting, as compared, 
 for instance, with the impulsive and exuberant 
 Sherman ; but it gave him some solid and ad- 
 mirable minor qualities. " Our army," said 
 Uncle Toby, " swore terribly in Flanders ; " but 
 the commander of the great Union army, by 
 his own statement, was " not aware of ever hav- 
 ing used a profane expletive " in his life. There 
 is no more curious and inexplicable character- 
 istic than the use of language. Lincoln im- 
 presses one as representing, on the whole, a 
 higher type of character than Grant — more 
 sympathetic, more sensitive, more poetic. Yet 
 Lincoln would tell an indelicate story with the 
 zest of a bar-room lounger, while Grant, by the 
 general testimony of his staff officers, disliked 
 and discouraged everything of the kind. There 
 is a mediaeval tale of a monk who was asked by 
 a peasant to teach him a psalm, and he chose 
 that beginning with the verse, " I will take heed 
 to my ways that I offend not with my tongue." 
 Having learned thus much, the peasant went 
 
GRANT 311 
 
 away, saying that he would try and practice it 
 before going farther; but he never returned, 
 not having succeeded in living up to the first 
 verse. Grant was apparently more successful 
 Mere imperturbability would, however, be 
 useless to a commander without that indefin- 
 able quality known as military instinct ; and it 
 was this which Grant possessed in a higher de- 
 gree, probably, than any other man of his time. 
 Like all instinct, it is a thing hard to distin- 
 guish from the exceedingly rapid putting of this 
 and that together ; as where Grant at Fort Don- 
 elson, finding that the knapsacks of the slain 
 enemy were filled with rations, saw at once that 
 they were trying to get away, and renewed 
 the attack successfully. Again, when General 
 Buell had some needless anxiety at Nashville 
 and sent for large reinforcements, Grant told 
 him, on arriving at the scene of action, that he 
 was mistaken ; the enemy was not advancing, 
 but retreating. General Buell informed him 
 that there was fighting in progress only ten or 
 twelve miles away ; upon which Grant said that 
 this fighting was undoubtedly with the rear 
 guard of the Confederates, who were trying to 
 carry off with them all the stores they could, 
 — and so it proved. Indeed, it was from an 
 equally prompt recognition of what was really 
 needed that he pressed on Vicksburg at all. 
 
312 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 Sherman, usually classed as daring and adven- 
 turous, dissuaded him, and wished him to hold 
 fast to his base of supplies. Grant, usually 
 esteemed cautious, insisted on going on, saying 
 that the whole country needed a decisive vic- 
 tory just then, even if won at a great risk. 
 
 The very extent of Grant's military command 
 has in one respect impaired his reputation ; be- 
 cause he marshaled more men than his oppo- 
 nents, he has been assumed to be less great as 
 a soldier than they were. The " Saturday Re- 
 view," for instance, forgetting that interior lines 
 may make a small force practically equivalent 
 to a large one, treats Grant's success, to this 
 day, as merely the irresistible preponderance of 
 greater numbers. But it was precisely here 
 that Grant was tested as Lee was not. To say 
 that it is easier to succeed with a larger force 
 than a smaller one is like saying that it is easier 
 to get across the country with a four-in-hand 
 than in a pony phaeton : it is all very true if 
 the road is smooth and straight and the team 
 well broken; but if the horses are balky and 
 the road a wilderness, the inexperienced driver 
 will be safer with a single steed. The one thing 
 that crushes a general of secondary ability is 
 to have more men than he knows how to han- 
 dle ; his divisions simply get into one another's 
 way, and his four-ift-hand is in a hopeless tan- 
 
GRANT 313 
 
 gle. Many a man has failed with a great force 
 who would have been superb with a Spartan 
 band. Garibaldi himself did not fit well into 
 the complex mechanism of a German army. 
 " Captain," said a bewildered volunteer naval 
 lieutenant, accustomed to handling his own 
 small crew upon the quarter-deck of his mer- 
 chant vessel, — " captain, if you will just go 
 below, and take two thirds of these men with 
 you, I '11 have this ship about in no time." It 
 is possible that Lee might have commanded a 
 million men as effectively as Grant did, but we 
 shall never know, for that brilliant general had 
 no opportunity to make the experiment. Mean- 
 while, it is a satisfaction to observe that the 
 most willing European critic can impair the 
 fame of one great American soldier only by 
 setting up that of another. 
 
 Which is the more interesting matter of 
 study for posterity in the career of a great gen- 
 eral, the course of his campaigns or the devel- 
 opment of his character? The latter half of 
 Grant's life may be read from either of these 
 points of view; but probably its greatest and 
 most lasting interest will be from its elucida- 
 tion of the personal traits that marked the man, 
 — its biographical rather than its historical 
 aspect. Behind the battles lay the genius or 
 individual quality, whatever it was, which fought 
 
314 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 those battles ; and which, in the tremendous 
 competition of military selection, left this man 
 above all his immediate competitors in his own 
 field. Even in regard to the lives of Caesar 
 and Napoleon, we can observe that for one per- 
 son who enters into the details of the strategy, 
 there are ten who are interested in the evolu- 
 tion of the man. But in the case of Grant a 
 new and peculiar interest is developed, for this 
 reason, that he is the first great and conquer- 
 ing commander developed by modern republican 
 institutions. This makes it almost certain that 
 he will be one of the monumental men in his- 
 tory ; and there is therefore no problem of the 
 kind more interesting than to consider his char- 
 acter in the almost unerring light thrown by 
 autobiography, and to comprehend what man- 
 ner of man it is that has been added, in our 
 own day, to those of whom Plutarch wrote. 
 
 It is noticeable, in Grant's Personal Memoirs, 
 that the second volume has the same sim- 
 plicity which was shown in the first. It would 
 not have been strange if the habit of writing 
 about himself — an exercise so wholly new to 
 Grant — had by degrees impaired this quality 
 as the book went on ; but it really characterizes 
 the later pages as much as the earlier, and the 
 work might, so far as concerns this feature, 
 have been struck off at a white heat. The 
 
GRANT 315 
 
 author never poses nor attitudinizes — never 
 wavers for an instant from his purpose to tell 
 plain facts in the plainest possible way. The 
 tremendous scenes through which he has passed 
 never overwhelm or blur his statement ; he tells 
 of the manoeuvring of hundreds of thousands 
 of men as quietly as if he were narrating a con- 
 test of fishing-boats at Long Branch. When he 
 describes that famous interview between him- 
 self and General Lee, in which was settled the 
 permanent destiny of the American nation, the 
 tale is told far more quietly than the ordinary 
 reporter would describe the negotiations for a 
 college rowing-match. Such a description, read 
 in connection with Lincoln's Gettysburg ad- 
 dress, shows that simplicity stands first among 
 all literary gifts ; that the greater the occasion, 
 the more apt men are to be simple ; and sug- 
 gests that no time or place has ever surpassed, 
 in this respect, the examples left behind by 
 these two modem American men. 
 
 Next to the unconscious exhibition of char- 
 acter given by every man in writing about him- 
 self comes the light indirectly thrown upon his 
 own nature by his way of judging of others. In 
 this respect, also. Grant's quietness of tone 
 places him at great advantage. He sometimes 
 praises ardently, but he censures very moder- 
 ately. Of Bragg' s disastrous tactics at Chatta- 
 
3i6 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 nooga he only says, " I have never been able to 
 see the wisdom of this move." Of Buell's re- 
 fusal to accept a command under Sherman, on 
 the ground that he had previously ranked Sher- 
 man, Grant says, " The worst excuse a soldier 
 can give for declining service is that he once 
 ranked the commander he is ordered to report." 
 Again, when a question arose between Palmer 
 and Schofield, as to whether the latter had a 
 right to command the former, the comment is, 
 " If he [Palmer] did raise this question while an 
 action was going on, that act alone was exceed- 
 ingly reprehensible." 
 
 That besetting sin of military commanders, 
 the habit of throwing the responsibility for fail- 
 ure upon subordinates, never seems to tempt 
 Grant. In speaking of Bumside's losing an im- 
 portant advantage at Spottsylvania, he says, " I 
 attach no blame to Burnside for this, but I do 
 to myself, for not having a staff officer with 
 him to report to me his position." When we 
 compare this guardedness of tone with the 
 sweeping authoritativeness which marks many 
 of our civilian critics of campaigns, the differ- 
 ence is certainly most gratifying. The only 
 matters that rouse Grant to anything like wrath 
 in the telling are those acts which imply crimes 
 against humanity, like the massacre of colored 
 troops at Fort Pillow ;' and in this case he sim- 
 
GRANT 317 
 
 ply characterizes Forrest's report of the affair 
 as something " which shocks humanity to read." 
 He does not even allow himself the luxury of 
 vehemence against fate, or fortune, or inevita- 
 ble destiny. Even when he describes his im- 
 mense local obstacles in the country round 
 Spottsylvania, — a heavily timbered region, full 
 of little streams surrounded by wooded and 
 marshy bottom lands, — he gently says, "It 
 was a much better country to conduct a de- 
 fensive campaign in than an offensive one." 
 The man who can speak charitably of Virginia 
 swamps may certainly lay claim to that virtue 
 which is chief among the blessed three. 
 
 The severest test offered in Grant's memoirs, 
 as to his judgment on men, is in his estimate 
 of one whom he had allowed, in the opinion 
 of many, to be most grievously wronged, — the 
 late Major- General Gouverneur K. Warren. 
 The great civil war caused a vast multitude of 
 deaths, directly and indirectly, but among all 
 these there was but one conspicuous and un- 
 questionable instance of broken heart, — in the 
 case of that high-minded and most estimable 
 man who was removed by Sheridan from the 
 command of an army corps just before the 
 battle of Five Forks, and who spent the rest 
 of his life in vainly endeavoring to secure 
 even an investigation before a Court of In- 
 
3l8 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 quiry. All who remember General Warren's 
 refined and melancholy face, with its permanent 
 look of hopeless and crushing sorrow, must have 
 turned eagerly to those pages of the Personal 
 Memoirs in which his case was mentioned. 
 Instead of evading the subject, Grant met it 
 frankly. It has always been supposed among 
 the friends of General Warren that the main 
 objection to ordering a Court of Inquiry in his 
 case was the known affection of the commander- 
 in-chief for Sheridan, and his willingness to 
 let Warren be sacrificed rather than expose his 
 favorite officer to blame. Those who have read 
 this book will be satisfied that no such theory 
 will suffice. It is upon himself that Grant 
 takes the main responsibility of Warren's dis- 
 placement. He had made, as he avers, a careful 
 study of Warren's peculiar temperament, long 
 before this event occurred. He had at first 
 felt in him a confidence so great that he would 
 have put him in Meade's place had that officer 
 fallen (ii. 216), but he came gradually to a very 
 different opinion. He always regarded him as 
 a "gallant soldier, an able man," and always 
 thought him "thoroughly imbued with the 
 solemnity and importance of the duty he had 
 to perform." But he thus analyzes his character 
 (il 214) : — 
 " Warren's difficulty was twofold : when he 
 
GRANT 319 
 
 received an order to do anything, it would at 
 once occur to his mind how all the balance of 
 the army should be engaged so as to properly 
 cooperate with him. His ideas were generally 
 good, but he would forget that the person giv- 
 ing him orders had thought of others at the 
 time he had of him. In like manner, when 
 he did get ready to execute an order, after 
 giving most intelligent instructions to division 
 commanders, he would go in with one. division, 
 holding the others in reserve, until he could 
 superintend their movements in person also, 
 — forgetting that division commanders could 
 execute an order without his presence. His 
 difficulty was constitutional and beyond his con- 
 trol. He was an officer of superior abiUty, 
 quick perceptions, and personal courage to ac- 
 complish anything that could be done with a 
 small command" (ii. 214-15). 
 
 This certainly gives a very clear analysis of 
 a certain type of character; and whether the 
 observer was correct or incorrect in his diag- 
 nosis, he was bound to act upon it. It further 
 appears that Warren was again and again a 
 source of solicitude to Grant. In some cases 
 he did admirably, as at Cold Harbor. "The 
 enemy charged Warren three separate times 
 with vigor, but were repulsed each time with 
 loss. There was no officer more capable, nor 
 
320 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 one more prompt in acting, than Warren, when 
 the enemy forced him into it " (ii. 266). Again, 
 at the siege of Petersburg, Warren obeyed 
 orders perfectly, when Burnside paid no atten- 
 tion to him (ii. 313). Nevertheless Grant was 
 " very much afraid," — taking all things into 
 consideration, — " that at the last moment he 
 would fail Sheridan." He accordingly sent a 
 staff officer to Sheridan to say that, although 
 he personally liked Warren, it would not do to 
 let personal feeling stand in the way of success, 
 and " if his removal was necessary to success " 
 Sheridan must not hesitate. On this authority 
 the removal was made ; and Grant only blames 
 himself for not having assigned Warren, long 
 before, to some other field of duty (ii. 445). 
 
 All this throws light not merely upon Grant's 
 sustaining Sheridan in the removal of Warren, 
 but on his uniform refusal afterwards to order 
 any Court of Inquiry. This was the one thing 
 for which Warren and his friends longed ; and 
 it was always assumed by them that it was re- 
 fused merely in order to shield Sheridan. Yet 
 it was the one thing which would have been, 
 from Grant's point of view, utterly useless. 
 When an officer is removed for an actual moral 
 fault, as cowardice, drunkenness, or disobedi- 
 ence of orders, a formal investigation may settle 
 the matter ; for it is then a question of definite 
 
GRANT 321 
 
 charges. But where a man of the highest char- 
 acter turns out to be, from mere pecuUarities 
 of temperament, unsuited to a certain post, his 
 displacement may be just as necessary ; nor 
 can war be carried on in any other way. The 
 stake is too tremendous, the interests of the 
 nation are too momentous for the matter to rest 
 on any other basis. Nor is it essential that the 
 superior officer should be assumed as infallible ; 
 under these circumstances he must do the best 
 he can. Had there been a Court of Inquiry, 
 nothing would have been established except that 
 Grant and Sheridan honestly believed that War- 
 ren was not the man for the place, and that they 
 therefore set him aside, as they might have 
 done, under like circumstances, with any other 
 officer in himself estimable, — as, for instance, 
 Burnside. Grant may have sincerely thought 
 that to say this before a Court of Inquiry would 
 really hurt Warren more than Sheridan, and 
 that it was better for the sufferer himself to let 
 the matter rest where it lay. This was prob- 
 ably mistaken kindness, if kindness it was. A 
 man smarting under a real or supposed injus- 
 tice always prefers an investigation, even if the 
 result of that tribunal is sure to be against him. 
 Nor is it sure that it would have been techni- 
 cally against Warren. The consideration s which 
 influenced Grant and Sheridan were to some 
 
322 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 extent intangible, and General Humphreys has 
 shown that on some points they were mistaken, 
 and Warren had done rightly. But the real 
 question is whether Grant was also mistaken 
 in his final analysis of Warren's character ; and 
 it is upon this, after all, that the whole thing 
 turned. 
 
 This particular instance has been thus empha- 
 sized because it is, more than any other, a test 
 of Grant's habit of justice to his subordinates ; 
 a quality in which, we are bound to say, he sur- 
 passes almost all writers of military autobio- 
 graphies. So far as justice to himself is con- 
 cerned, he could not have well helped doing it, 
 had he tried, for any man shows himself as he 
 is, either willingly or unwillingly, when he tells 
 his own story. Nor is there any evidence that 
 he sought to help it. 
 
 The latter part of his book bears literary 
 marks of the tremendous strain under which it 
 was written, but it bears no moral marks of it ; 
 and he keeps clear, from beginning to end, of 
 all that ill-concealed enthusiasm about himself 
 which is the common bane of autobiographies. 
 He is perfectly content to stand for what he 
 was, — a combination of plain and almost com- 
 monplace qualities, developed to a very high 
 power, and becoming at length the equivalent 
 of what we call military genius. This, at least, 
 
GRANT 323 
 
 is the inference to be drawn from his book 
 Whether he was or was not, in the way of dis- 
 tinctive genius, a greater man than he thought 
 himself must be left for the military historians 
 of a future generation to determine. In any 
 case the spectacle of an eminent commander 
 who habitually underrates himself is rare enough 
 to be very pleasing. 
 
 This process of self-development is never, of 
 course, directly stated, or even intimated, by 
 Grant himself. Had it been otherwise the qual- 
 ity of unconsciousness would have been wanting. 
 But the adaptation of supreme good sense to 
 the conditions and exigencies of army life may 
 constantly be traced here, not merely between 
 the lines, but in maxim after maxim, each an 
 obiter dictum, given with a homely simplicity 
 that half disguises its real wisdom. What Lin- 
 coln would have put into an anecdote or local 
 proverb, — as when, for instance, he expressed 
 his unwillingness to swap horses while cross- 
 ing a stream or to cross Fox River before he 
 reached it, — Grant condenses into some plain 
 statement : " Accident often decides the fate 
 of battle" (ii 212). "It would be bad to be 
 defeated in two battles fought on the same day ; 
 but it would not be bad to win them " (ii. 20). 
 " It is men who wait to be selected, and not 
 those who seek, from whom we may always 
 
324 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 expect the most efficient service " (ii. 1 1 7). " The 
 fact is, troops who have fought a few battles 
 and won, and followed up their victories, im- 
 prove upon what they were before to an extent 
 that can hardly be reckoned by percentage" 
 (ii. 109). " No man is so brave that he may 
 not meet such defeats and disasters as to dis- 
 courage him and dampen his ardor for any cause, 
 no matter how just he deems it " (ii. 419). " It 
 had been my intention before this to remain at 
 the West, even if I was made lieutenant-gen- 
 eral ; but when I got to Washington, and saw 
 the situation, it was plain that here was the 
 point for the commanding-general to be. No 
 one else could probably resist the pressure that 
 would be brought to bear upon him to desist 
 from his own plans and pursue others " (ii. 116). 
 In each passage we see clearly the working 
 of Grant's mind. When once his convictions 
 had taken shape in one of these simple formulae, 
 it was no more necessary for him to reconsider 
 it than for a mathematician to go behind a pre- 
 ceding proposition. This clear and pellucid 
 mental habit, joined with much reticence and a 
 good deal of obstinacy, made a very powerful 
 combination ; kept him from being entangled 
 by his own plans or confused by those of others ; 
 enabled him to form a policy, to hold to it, to 
 overcome obstacles, to escape depression in 
 
GRANT 32s 
 
 defeat or undue excitement in victory. With 
 all this — and here comes in the habit of mind 
 generated by a republic — he never forgot that 
 he was dealing with his own fellow countrymen, 
 both as friends and foes, and that he must never 
 leave their wishes and demands, nor even their 
 whims and prejudices, out of sight. Many of 
 his early risks were based upon the conviction 
 that the friends of the Union needed a victory 
 or two, and must have it. All his strategy, 
 during the closing campaign, was based upon 
 the conviction — a conviction which Wellington 
 or Von Moltke might very probably have missed 
 — that the Confederates were thoroughly tired 
 of the war, and were losing more men by deser- 
 tion than they could possibly gain by impress- 
 ment. Even in the terms at last given to Lee, 
 the same quality of what we may call glorified 
 common-sense came in ; and there is no doubt 
 that the whole process of reconstruction was 
 facilitated when Grant decided that the van- 
 quished Confederate soldiers had better keep 
 their horses to help them in getting in their 
 crops. All these considerations were precisely 
 those we should expect a republican general to 
 apply. It would be natural for him to recognize 
 that the war in which he was engaged was not 
 a mere competitive test of military machines, 
 human or otherwise, but that it must be han- 
 
326 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 died with constant reference to the instincts and 
 habits that lay behind it. The absence of this 
 ready comprehension helped to explain the curi- 
 ous failure, in our army, of many foreign officers 
 who knew only the machine. The fact that 
 Grant and Lincoln, however they might differ 
 in other respects, had this mental habit in com- 
 mon was that which enabled them to work 
 together so well. A striking instance of this 
 was their common relation to the slavery ques- 
 tion, which both had approached reluctantly, 
 but which both accepted at last as the pivotal 
 matter of the whole conflict. Both saw that it 
 could be met in but one way, and both divined 
 that the course of events was steadily aboli- 
 tionizing all Union men. In general, Lincoln 
 with sympathetic humor and Grant with strong 
 sense kept always in mind the difference be- 
 tween a people's war and a mere contest of 
 soldiers. 
 
 In other words, they were both representa- 
 tive Americans. So much stronger is the repub- 
 lican instinct among us than any professional 
 feeling which even West Point can create that 
 Grant, though trained to the pursuit of arms, 
 never looked at things for a moment merely 
 from the soldier's point of view. This was the 
 key to his military successes, — the time, the 
 place, the combatants being what they were, — ■ 
 
GRANT 327 
 
 and this was the key to the readiness with 
 which, at last, both Grant and the soldiers 
 under him laid down their arms. Here at last, 
 Europe thought, was the crisis of danger ; here 
 was the "man on horseback," so often pro- 
 phesied as the final instrument of Providence, 
 surely destined to bring this turbulent republic 
 back among the mass of nations that obey with 
 ease. The moment of fancied peril came ; and 
 it turned out that old Israel Putnam, galloping 
 in his shirt-sleeves to the battle of Bunker 
 Hill, was not more harmless to the liberties 
 of America than this later man-on-horseback, 
 Grant. 
 
 The claims of Grant to permanent fame will 
 lie first in the fact that he commanded the 
 largest civilized armies the world ever saw; 
 secondly, that with these armies he saved the 
 integrity of the American nation ; thirdly, that 
 he did all this by measures of his own initiating, 
 rarely calling a council of war and commonly 
 differing from it when called ; fourthly, that he 
 did all this for duty, not glory, and in the spirit 
 of a citizen, not the military spirit, persisting to 
 the last that he was, as he told Bismarck, more 
 of a farmer than a soldier ; then again, that 
 when tested by the severest personal griefs and 
 losses in the decline of life, he showed the same 
 strong qualities still ; and finally, that in writ- 
 
328 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 ing his own memoirs he was simple as regards 
 himself, candid towards opponents, and thus 
 bequeathed to the world a book better worth 
 reading than any military autobiography since 
 Caesar's Commentaries, 
 
THE ECCENTRICITIES OF RE- 
 FORMERS 
 
 " Oh, why," said an exhausted American wife 
 to her husband, a moderate reformer, " why do 
 the insane so cling to you ? " This tendency of 
 every reform to surround itself with a fringe of 
 the unreasonable and half-cracked is really to 
 its credit, and furnishes one of its best disci- 
 plines. Those who are obliged by conscience to 
 disregard the peace and proprieties of the social 
 world, in the paths of reform, learn by experi- 
 ence what a trial they are to their friends by 
 observing what tortures they themselves suffer 
 from those who go a few steps farther. They 
 learn self-control by exercising moderation to- 
 ward those who have lost that quality. Thomas 
 Hughes, in his letters from America, describing 
 some one whom he likes, adds, " He is doubt- 
 less, however, a cracked fellow, in the best 
 sense," — showing that, without a little crack 
 somewhere, a man could hardly do his duty to 
 the times. Thus it is that the insane cling to 
 those who, though really sane, are content to be 
 called crazy, — "fanatic named and fool," as 
 
330 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 Lowell wrote of Phillips in a sonnet. There is 
 nothing more curious in the rich and copious 
 memoirs of Garrison than his early cordiality 
 of relations with John Humphrey Noyes, the 
 man who finally became the potent head of the 
 curious free-love community at Oneida; and 
 Garrison was, as a result, publicly charged with 
 holding doctrines which were to him peculiarly 
 offensive. Dryden wrote : — 
 
 " Great wits are sure to madness near allied, 
 And thin partitions do their bounds divide." 
 
 What he wrote is not more true of the coffee- 
 house wits whom he had in mind than of the 
 incomparably greater wits who originate and 
 carry on reforms. 
 
 The early anti-slavery meetings in particular 
 were severely tested in respect to patience by 
 those who might almost be called professional 
 lunatics, as for instance Father Lamson, Abby 
 Folsom (Emerson's "flea of conventions"), and 
 G. W. F. Mellen. Lamson's white habiliments 
 and white beard seemed almost like a stage 
 make-up for the situation ; and Abby Folsom's 
 "interminable scroll" (Emerson again), with 
 her shrill climax of all remarks, " It's the capi- 
 talists ! " seemed like the rehearsal of a play. 
 Yet it is not quite fair to assume that the pa- 
 tience of the abolitionists was invariable. There 
 were times when it gave way : and I have seen 
 
ECCENTRICITIES OF REFORMERS 331 
 
 Abby Folsom led from the hall, courteously but 
 decisively, by Wendell Phillips on the one side 
 and a man yet living on the other, — she still 
 denouncing the capitalists as she reluctantly 
 came towards the door. To the occasional 
 policeman present, for whom the abolitionists 
 themselves seemed as much lunatics as their 
 allies, the petty discrimination of putting out 
 only the craziest must have appeared an ab- 
 surdity ; Wendell Phillips at that very meeting 
 had to explain the real distinction, — namely, 
 that he and his friends were not the object of 
 persecution because they were crazy, but be- 
 cause they were known not to be. 
 
 Another striking figure on the platform, who 
 always attracted the disapproval of the profane, 
 was Charles Burleigh, who wore not merely long 
 curls on his shoulders, but also a long and rather 
 ill-trimmed beard, — in a beardless period, — and 
 had distinctly that Christ-like look which is often 
 to be found in large gatherings of reformers. 
 Lowell, who was one of the early beard - con- 
 verts, used to be amused in going about the 
 streets with Burleigh, a much taller man, to find 
 himself pointed out with a sort of subsidiary 
 emphasis, as if he were a young neophyte ac- 
 companying his father confessor. Burleigh was 
 undoubtedly one of the ablest men in the anti- 
 slavery conventions. Lowell, in one of his 
 
332 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 letters, describes him as "looking like one of 
 the old apostles who had slept in the same room 
 with a Quaker who had gone off in the morn- 
 ing with his companion's appropriate costume, 
 leaving him to accommodate himself as best 
 he might to the straight collar and the single 
 breast of the fugitive." ^ He belonged to a 
 gifted family, two of his brothers being poets, 
 and he himself was a man of singular power in 
 speech, with a rich and mellow voice, a benig- 
 nant manner and an extremely clear and logical 
 mind ; had he also possessed humor, he would 
 have been one of the most effective of orators. 
 His eloquence had every essential except this, 
 as his personal appearance had every quality of 
 distinction but neatness. 
 
 Another man of peculiar bearing was Henry 
 C. Wright, whose whim was never to address 
 the presiding officer as "Mr. Chairman," but 
 only as " Chairman," and whose erect figure 
 and commanding voice, with the frequent re- 
 currence of an occasional and imperious " Now, 
 Chairman ! " gave him a weight of manner 
 which his matter did not always confirm. He 
 had been in early life a Congregational minister, 
 and had lost his parish, it was said, for the un- 
 clerical act (in those days) of swimming across 
 the Connecticut River. His papers and his jour- 
 1 Letters of James Russell Lowell, i. no. 
 
ECCENTRICITIES OF REFORMERS 333 
 
 nals, which were profuse, are now in the Har- 
 vard College Library, and Avill one day, no 
 doubt, furnish ample and quaint materials for 
 the historian of the "Come-outers" of that day. 
 Another noticeable person on the platform was 
 Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, the New Hamp- 
 shire editor, a man of noble and beautiful charac- 
 ter, whose journalism had a spice and zest which 
 would now command a market on merely pro- 
 fessional grounds ; but who was a Non-resistant 
 of non-resistants, and would, if he could have 
 had his way, have conducted the meetings with- 
 out president, secretary, or any restrictions on 
 debate. He out-Garrisoned Garrison on this 
 and other points, and they at last parted com- 
 pany, to their mutual regret. He had one of 
 those faces of utter benignity which always sur- 
 prised Southern visitors to the anti-slavery con- 
 ventions, they usually expecting to find upon 
 the platform a set of scowling stage villains. 
 
 Another picturesque and even eccentric fea- 
 ture upon the anti-slavery platform was the 
 group of the Hutchinson family, raven-haired 
 and keen-eyed as a group of Bohemians, tall 
 and stalwart youths surrounding their rosebud 
 of a sister, Abby. They, too, had a melodra- 
 matic look, with their wide collars and long 
 locks ; they put immense fire and fury into 
 "The Car Emancipation" and their other anti- 
 
334 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 slavery songs. As years went on, they broke 
 up into detached groups, extending into the 
 second generation. The story of these experi- 
 ences has been told entertainingly in a book by 
 one of the family. Four of the brothers used 
 to give village concerts, in which they adapted 
 themselves to each place they visited, using local 
 "gags " to an extent which brought out screams 
 of laughter. I was present on one occasion, 
 in a country town, when they had refused an 
 encore, but when it finally had to be conceded 
 on the special appeal of a venerable citizen ; and 
 they selected for performance one of their most 
 absurd songs : — 
 
 " O potatoes they grow small 
 Over there ! 
 O potatoes they grow small, 
 'Cos they plants 'em in the fall. 
 And they eats 'em, tops and all. 
 Over there." 
 
 A mufHed chuckle began in all parts of the audi- 
 ence, and swelled to a tumult of applause incom- 
 prehensible to me till I afterwards learned that 
 the venerable gentleman in question was known 
 as " Small Potatoes," from an unlucky gift of 
 a basket of such inadequate vegetables to some 
 donation fund. 
 
 Whether the hit was wholly accidental on 
 the part of the Hutchinsons I never knew, 
 and the impression on the audience was soon 
 
ECCENTRICITIES OF REFORMERS 335 
 
 changed when one of the brothers, who had be- 
 fore given evidences of insanity, came forward 
 to make a speech to the audience, lecturing 
 them especially on the undue love of money. 
 He spoke to them courageously and tenderly, 
 like a troubled father, though he still looked 
 young ; and at last said, with infinite pity, " If 
 you wish for money, you can have it from me," 
 and began taking silver coins from his pockets 
 and tossing them among the audience, where 
 they were at first eagerly picked up by boys, and 
 then left untouched, while the spectators seemed 
 awed and spell-bound. I never shall forget the 
 anxious and patient look with which the bro- 
 thers watched him with their large dark eyes, 
 not, however, interfering; and even when he 
 had emptied his pockets and turned to a box 
 containing the receipts taken at the door, and 
 began to throw half-dollars and quarter-dollars 
 from that, saying to them, " May I ? " they only 
 nodded gravely, leaving him to himself. It all 
 recalled descriptions of the reverence given by 
 untaught persons to the acts of the insane. 
 He soon stopped and the music was resumed, 
 the money being honestly collected afterwards 
 and brought back to his brothers. This mem- 
 ber of the household finally committed suicide, 
 after a long period during which his disordered 
 mind evidently played with the thought of it, 
 
336 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 getting all ready for it just at the hour when he 
 knew he should be interrupted, as, for instance, 
 by men coming to the barn to feed the cattle ; 
 but finally he went too far. The career of the 
 whole family was a curious instance of the spo- 
 radic appearance of a quality akin to genius 
 in certain households, a trait which is familiar to 
 every student of life in New England farming 
 towns. 
 
 Parker Pillsbury's " Acts of the Anti-Slavery 
 Apostles" is a storehouse of facts as to the 
 decidedly extreme attitude taken for a time by 
 himself, Stephen Foster, Henry C. Wright, and 
 others, of whom it could be said, as Garrison 
 wrote to his wife about one of these, " He is 
 remarkably successful in raising the spirit of 
 mobocracy wherever he goes. I could wish," 
 
 he adds, "that brother would exercise 
 
 more judgment and discretion in the presenta- 
 tion of his views ; but it is useless to reason 
 with him, with any hope of altering his course, 
 as he is firmly persuaded that he is pursuing 
 the very best course." It was during one of 
 these mobs that Lucy Stone, urging the men 
 who had spoken to retire from the hall through 
 a back door, was met by them with the question, 
 "Who will protect you.?" "This gentleman 
 will protect me," said the sweet-voiced woman, 
 taking the arm of the ringleader of the mob as 
 
ECCENTRICITIES OF REFORMERS 337 
 
 he sprang on the platform. " Yes, I will," he 
 said, after one look at her serene face ; and he 
 piloted her safely out. So clear, however, was 
 the conviction of these especial leaders as to 
 the necessity of very strong statements that 
 one excellent Quaker woman offered this reso- 
 lution at the tenth anniversary meeting of the 
 Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, January 
 28, 1842: "Resolved, That the sectarian or- 
 ganizations called churches are combinations of 
 thieves, robbers, adulterers, pirates, and mur- 
 derers, and as such form the bulwarks of Amer- 
 ican slavery." What she meant was simply 
 what James G. Bimey had meant in his tract^ 
 "The American Churches the Bulwarks of 
 American Slavery;" but these specifications 
 which she made, though logically consistent, 
 raised natural antagonism in thousands of hon- 
 est minds. 
 
 It must be remembered, on the other hand, 
 that this was a period, even in New England, of 
 negro pews, negro cars, and even negro stages. 
 I can myself recall an instance, about 1840, 
 when a colored woman was ejected from a stage 
 on what is now Massachusetts Avenue, near the 
 Cambridge Common ; and negro cars were often 
 provided, even on Maissachusetts railways, from 
 which the white companions of such negroes 
 were forcibly put out, as were the colored peo- 
 
338 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 pie from white men's cars, even if they had 
 first-class tickets. With the curious inconsist- 
 ency of those times, an exception was made 
 if the colored people were servants of whites. 
 These outrages were particularly noticeable 
 on the Eastern Railroad, of which a Quaker 
 was the superintendent. In one number of 
 " The Liberator " (xii. 56) there is a travelers' 
 directory of the various railroads, indicating 
 whether they do or do not have negro cars.^ 
 Police justices refused to punish assaults by 
 railroad employees even on white passengers 
 who had resisted or condemned these outrages. 
 Under these circumstances, much was to be 
 pardoned to the spirit of liberty. 
 
 The woman suffrage movement, involving as 
 it did a more immediate and personal test of 
 daily habits than the anti-slavery reform, carried 
 with it, naturally, its own fringe of oddities. The 
 mere fact that it coincided with the period of 
 the Bloomer costume would have secured this ; 
 for, while it required some mental ability to 
 lengthen one's range of thoughts, it needed 
 none at all to shorten one's skirts. The dress, 
 so far from being indelicate, was scrupulously 
 and almost prudishly modest, and those who 
 wore it would have been dismayed and horrified 
 
 1 See Life of Garrison, iiL 28 ; Liberator, Vols, xi., xii.^ 
 passim. 
 
ECCENTRICITIES OF REFORMERS 339 
 
 by the modem bathing-dress ; but it brought, 
 as I can personally testify, more discomfort 
 to the speakers of the other sex than any trials 
 of a platform, since the ladies who wore it had 
 often to be escorted home through the irrev- 
 erent population of a city. But, apart from 
 this, the mere radicalism of the agitation nat- 
 urally appealed to a certain number of the un- 
 balanced, and the movement had to bear the 
 burden. 
 
 This came over me vividly for the first time 
 when attending a Woman's Rights meeting — 
 this being the early designation of the enter- 
 prise — in Philadelphia. The gathering was 
 large, and the gallery audience was made up, 
 in a considerable degree, of young medical 
 students, many of these being Southerners and 
 ripe for fun. Just after the meeting had been 
 called to order, a man of quiet appearance came 
 to me and said, " Is Miss Ora Noon present ? " 
 Struck by the oddity of the name, — which I 
 have slightly modified in telling this story, — I 
 asked him why he wished to know, and he said 
 that she was a medical student, and some friends 
 from out of town had arrived and wished to see 
 her. "Will you not call for her.'" he said; 
 and I, becoming still more suspicious, referred 
 the matter to James Mott, who was just pass- 
 ing. He recognized the name at once, to my 
 
340 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 great relief, called for her aloud with his usual 
 grave dignity, and a young girl of rather odd 
 appearance got up, made her way to the door, 
 and went out with her friends. After a little 
 tittering, the audience composed itself and we 
 heard no more of the incident. But that night, 
 after returning to the hospitable home of the 
 Motts, I was told the whole story of Ora Noon. 
 She was, it appeared, the daughter of a 
 Southern slaveholder, and was to inherit negroes 
 on coming of age. She had formed a great de- 
 sire to study medicine, to which her father was 
 vehemently opposed. After several unsuccess- 
 ful efforts, she attacked him again on her twen- 
 tieth birthday and requested, as a birthday gift, 
 his assent to her wish. He still refusing, she 
 coolly said : " Very well ; in another year I shall 
 be of age, and shall come into possession of my 
 own property. I shall then sell my slaves, and 
 this will give the means for my course of medical 
 study." The father laughed at so absurd a pro- 
 posal ; the subject rested for a year, and on the 
 eve of her twenty-first birthday she announced 
 the purpose again. The father at last surren- 
 dered, made her promise not to sell her slaves, 
 and counted out to her the money for her first 
 year at Philadelphia. This being in her hands 
 she quietly said : " To-morrow I shall emanci- 
 pate my slaves, instead of selling them ; " and 
 
ECCENTRICITIES OF REFORMERS 341 
 
 she did it. She went to Philadelphia, knowing 
 nobody, secured a boarding-place, bought a pair 
 of pistols, a season ticket to the pistol-gallery, 
 and a similar ticket to a leading theatre ; and 
 thus began her professional preparations. She 
 proved a most successful student, and led, in 
 spite of the above little eccentricities, an irre- 
 proachable life ; her success at the pistol-gallery 
 perhaps helping to protect from any disrespect 
 inspired by her habitual presence at the theatre. 
 It is all a curious illustration of the erratic ten- 
 dency sometimes visible, just at first, on each 
 step in the emancipation of any class. Very 
 probably the later demeanor of Miss Ora Noon 
 was one of scrupulous decorum ; and she may 
 never have needed to employ her pistols against 
 anj^hing more formidable than clay pigeons. 
 
 Where eccentricity lasts into middle life, it is 
 apt to be permanent. I knew well a reformer 
 who, although a working farmer, had regulated 
 his life absolutely in his own way, and was as in- 
 dependent of all others as if he lived on a lonely 
 island. He dressed uniformly in light drab 
 clothes, neatly cut and carefully brushed, and 
 wore a deep Byronic collar around a very bare 
 neck. He was scrupulously and marvelously 
 clean, and had that delicacy of skin which marks 
 the vegetarian. His wife was a sensible and 
 capable woman, apd their three little boys, of 
 
342 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 whom the eldest developed a marked musical 
 talent, were admirably cared for. One of these 
 was named Freewaldo Channing, the latter 
 name being given in honor of the celebrated 
 divine, while the first name was taken, the father ■ 
 told me from a German word which he had 
 heard {freiwiilder), meaning free-woodsman, — 
 which was what he wished his chUd to be. As 
 the father once said to me, "Neither me nor 
 my boys wants to keep always to the same dull 
 roundelay o' choppin' wood and doin' chores." 
 Percy Taylor, as I will call the father, was the 
 nearest approach I have ever known to the pro- 
 verbial man-of-one-book {homo unius libri), who 
 is justly feared by more promiscuous readers. 
 Percy Taylor's one book was Lamartine's " His- 
 tory of the Girondists," then lately published 
 and called by him " La Martin's History of the 
 Guy-rondists." He rarely engaged in any long 
 talk without drawing some moral from that 
 book, — his favorite heroes being Robespierre 
 and Vergniaud, whom he called " Robyspierry " 
 and " Virginnyord." His own conversation was 
 filled with aphorisms, sometimes sonorous and 
 resounding, as when he said to me : " As I look 
 at it. Humanity, a-ploddin' over this planet, 
 meets with considerable many left - handed 
 things : and the best way I know of is to sum- 
 mons up courage and put right through 'em." 
 
ECCENTRICITIES OF REFORMERS 343 
 
 Here the moral is superb, and I do not see why 
 the simple figure of " Humanity a-ploddin' over 
 this planet " is not as fine as the long tradition 
 of the Wandering Jew. 
 
 Percy Taylor belonged to a family which has 
 been, in various branches, forcible and eccentric. 
 His half-brother came tolerably near being him- 
 self the Wandering Jew, having traveled widely 
 in Europe and the East, everywhere stopping 
 at short intervals in the highway, baring his 
 head and offering oral prayer. His sonorous 
 voice penetrated far at such times, and the 
 groups collecting round him were moved to si- 
 lence, not derision. Once, when staying over- 
 night in the same house with him, and occupy- 
 ing an adjoining room, I heard him presently up- 
 lifting his supplications in elaborately piled sen- 
 tences, and soon coming round to " the stranger 
 within the gates," meaning me. I do not know 
 that he confessed my sins, but I know that he 
 traced out unflinchingly my supposed duties, 
 present and future ; and when I slept and waked 
 again, he was still at work on my spiritual 
 horoscope, — nor have I ever felt so encom- 
 passed, and, as it were, shielded by a beneficent 
 interference, though one rather drowsily recog- 
 nized. It would have seemed quite impossible 
 to breakfast in the ordinary manner with such 
 a self-appointed guardian angel, and I think he 
 
344 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 must have been up and away before I descended. 
 I more than once saw him afterwards, standing 
 like a statue at street corners and making invo- 
 cation for a whole city ; but I felt that I had 
 been the subject of his concentrated care, and 
 passed on. There may have been some verita- 
 ble mystic element in the whole family, for I 
 remember that Percy had a wondrous tale of 
 having been summoned home ten miles in a 
 storm by a premonition that danger impended 
 over his wife, and of having arrived just in time 
 to defend her from a tramp at the back door. 
 
 Those who, half a century ago, attended any 
 service in the meeting-house of the old First 
 Parish at Newburyport — a fine type of an ear- 
 lier church architecture in its graceful steeple, 
 its lofty pulpit, and its sounding-board — could 
 hardly fail to notice, in the front corner pew 
 of the great gallery, a man of tall and rather 
 striking appearance, with hawk nose and viva- 
 cious look, who presided over a pew full of 
 whispering boys, and was sedulous in calling 
 their attention to the hymns, and in writing out 
 for each the text of the sermon. The task was 
 gratuitous on his part, and the boys were led to 
 this Sunday fidelity rather as a species of rever- 
 ential lark, one might say, than from any un- 
 alloyed devotion. He might have passed for 
 one of those tithing-men so essential to the 
 
ECCENTRICITIES OF REFORMERS 345 
 
 order of early Puritan worship, and still to be 
 seen in the Protestant Cathedral of Basle in 
 Switzerland. Yet his life had been wholly sec- 
 ular, and the title which preceded his name — 
 Doctor Hackett — was rumored to have been 
 won by service as hospital steward. He had 
 no visible means of support, and few obvious 
 expenses ; his profession was mainly that of 
 walking, with the aid of a staff and two exceed- 
 ingly long legs, about all the neighboring coun- 
 try, he seldom failing to be present at a reform 
 meeting, an ordination, or a funeral. In his 
 shorter walks he made it his especial mission to 
 clear away large stones from the road, bend- 
 ing his tall form to grasp them, and flinging 
 them with vigor on one side. Perhaps the oc- 
 casional reference among Scripture texts to 
 " stones of offending " may have led him to 
 this form of self-consecration, but I have often 
 wished in rural neighborhoods that there were 
 more disciples of his faith. 
 
 His dwelling-place was as weird in the ap- 
 proach as that of some enchanter in Spenser's 
 poetry. He lived alone on a wide tract then 
 known as Grasshopper Plains, dwelling in a 
 small shanty which he had bought, I think, from 
 some railroad men ; and its minute dimensions 
 caused him no repining, except that he could 
 not give it the dignity of insurance against fire. 
 
346 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 as it was valued at only five dollars, and no 
 company would take risks below ten. This 
 atom of a house was, however, less remarkable 
 than the approach to it. He had removed it 
 into the middle of a copse of young birches, 
 through which little paths penetrated, con- 
 verging toward his door. On all these paths 
 he had made piles of small wayside treasures 
 that had attracted his eye, — horseshoes, pad- 
 locks, keys, hoops, bits of iron rod too small 
 for junk, and yet carefully classed and piled. 
 Within the house the collection grew only more 
 concentrated : pins, nails, rusty knives, bits of 
 ribbon, bits of string, were hung to the raf- 
 ters, or arranged on the floor, leaving scarcely 
 room for his microscopic housekeeping. As un- 
 moved by his possessions as if it were a palace, 
 he ushered you in, kept on talking, flung out 
 flowery and long-winded words, and seemed a 
 Bourbon concealed in a junkshop. On your 
 exit, he accompanied you and escorted you 
 through his small dominions, first pausing to 
 screw upon his door a large iron plate covering 
 solidly the keyhole, since it seemed that vagrant 
 boys found a wicked delight in filling the latter 
 with gravel and small stones in the owner's ab- 
 sence. " Such conduct," he said in his Micaw- 
 ber-like way, " I should call, sir — with no dis- 
 respect to the colored population — niggardly. " 
 
ECCENTRICITIES OF REFORMERS 347 
 
 While I wrestled in bewilderment with this un- 
 expected use of language, as if John the Baptist 
 had unguardedly slipped into a pun, he came 
 back to the proposition, — "I intend, sir, no dis- 
 respect whatever to the colored population." 
 " Certainly not, Doctor Hackett, " I replied; "I 
 should not suspect you of such a thing." The 
 intercourse between us was always, I think, as 
 high-bred and decorous in tone as if it had cul- 
 minated in an interchange of snuff-boxes. 
 
 In truth, even to this day, one rarely finds a 
 country town in which there is not some half- 
 lunatic or "feeble-minded person " — more com- 
 monly a woman — who is so near the verge of 
 sanity as rather to rejoice in the freedom of 
 observation and speech that it implies. " I am," 
 said a lady of this description to me, " the only 
 person in this place who can afford to tell peo- 
 ple the absolute truth." She habitually walked 
 about with an old-fashioned cane, which had 
 been her father's ; and she came nearer than 
 any one in town to the all-observant poet de- 
 scribed in Browning's " How it Strikes a Con- 
 temporary." In one case I knew such a woman 
 who stopped a pastor, recently a widower, on 
 the sidewalk, and, holding up a warning finger, 
 cautioned him against an aspiring virgin of the 
 parish : " Luther Dalton ! Luther Dalton ! be- 
 ware of Lucy Bradley ! She 's a Cat ! " I again 
 
348 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 discreetly modify the names ; but the poor 
 man, stricken with terror, left town as soon as 
 possible, and returned in a few weeks with a 
 newly-wedded spouse, who vigilantly kept both 
 cats and their persecutors at a distance. These 
 sibylsi it is needless to say, were usually re- 
 formers ; they would have gone to the stake 
 for their principles ; but they were rather apt 
 to keep a private auto-da-f6 at hand, where the 
 troublesome Lucy Bradleys of this world might 
 be immolated for their presumption. 
 
THE ROAD TO ENGLAND 
 
 " The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the highroad 
 that leads him to England. — Boswbll's yohtuon (a. u. 1763). 
 
 It has often been a question in my mind 
 whether I was personally helped or hindered by 
 the fact of never having set foot on the shores 
 of England until forty-eight years old. The 
 very juvenile age at which young people now 
 go there, and the fact that we generally regard 
 this arrangement as a thing in itself desirable, 
 are curiously in contrast with the time when 
 early foreign travel was comparatively rare. In 
 my own case, the postponement never, on the 
 whole, seemed to be a distinct injury, since I 
 cannot but think that the strictly American 
 fibre was likely to be knit more strongly, at 
 least in those days, for persons bred in their 
 own country. The interval certainly gave time 
 for measuring men and thoughts at home, for 
 testing one's self by different forms of action, 
 and for accumulating knowledge which made 
 the new experience more valuable. Undoubt- 
 edly, during such years of waiting, the eager- 
 
350 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 ness of every American to see the home of his 
 fathers grew stronger and stronger ; and he 
 was apt to share the feeling of Johnson's imagi- 
 nary Scotchman, though perhaps from a higher 
 motive, that the noblest prospect he could see 
 would be the highroad leading to England. The 
 circumstance that, in this instance, his path was 
 to be "o'er the mountain waves," in Campbell's 
 phrase, only increased the attraction. 
 
 Yet in truth the American began to walk 
 on the road to England from the time when 
 he first encountered English literature and 
 Englishmen, even as transplanted to this con- 
 tinent. Of course, the knowledge of English 
 literature traveled to us easily, and this all the 
 more because the responsible literary authori- 
 ties, even of American imprint, were then al- 
 most wholly English ; the leader among them, 
 in my boyhood, being the weekly "Albion," 
 then published in New York. It is to be re- 
 membered, however, that the actual contact 
 with such English authors, statesmen, or men 
 of high social rank as visited this country was 
 then easier in Boston and Cambridge than 
 elsewhere, because the early Cunard steamers 
 made Boston, not New York, their terminus. 
 In the society of that city, and still more in the 
 academical society of Cambridge, it was more 
 common than now, very probably, to meet dis- 
 
THE ROAD TO ENGLAND 351 
 
 tinguished Englishmen. It was rare indeed to 
 see the Harvard Commencement events pass 
 by without visitors of this description. 
 
 Englishwomen of rank, however, rarely came 
 to America, nor do they abound even now. I 
 think that the first titled Englishwoman whom 
 I ever met was that very original and attractive 
 young representative of this class, Lady Amber- 
 ley, who visited this country about 1868, — 
 daughter of Lord Stanley of Alderley, and wife 
 of the young Lord Amberley, son and heir of. 
 Earl Russell. I had found it quite easy to 
 overcome the vague American deference for 
 the supposed authority of a title in case of the 
 Englishmen of rank who had passed before 
 my eyes ; for I could not convince myself that 
 their manners or bearing were superior to those 
 of various gentlemen — Bostonians, Philadel- 
 phians, and Virginians — whom I had met. I 
 may add that no later experience has ever 
 removed this impression, while undoubtedly 
 the Latin blood often exhibits to us, even in 
 lower social grades, finer examples of courtesy 
 than can easily be paralleled in the Germanic 
 races. 
 
 Thus much for Englishmen of rank ; and as 
 for women of the corresponding class, it is cer- 
 tain that Miss Burney's and Miss Edgeworth's 
 novels had formed for us a very imperfect an- 
 
352 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 ticipation of such a type as Lady Amberley, a 
 girlish wife of nineteen, as frank and simple as 
 any American girl, and with much more active 
 interest in real things than was to be found in 
 most of the Newport dowagers who shook their 
 heads over her heretical opinions. I had once 
 the pleasure of driving her in a pony phaeton 
 to Whitehall, a former residence of the Eng- 
 lish bishop, Berkeley, and the place where he 
 wrote his " Minute Philosopher." All the memo- 
 ries of Berkeley, I observed, did not absorb the 
 boyish husband and wife so eagerly as the old- 
 fashioned well-sweep that crowned the well ; 
 and they were never weary of pulling down the 
 buckets. I took her, on the way, to call on La 
 Farge and see his then recent designs from J 
 Browning ; being dismayed, however, to learn 
 from her that although Browning was a great 
 favorite socially at her father's house in Lon- 
 don, yet neither she nor her friends cared any- 
 thing about his poetry. She talked with the 
 greatest frankness about everything, being par- 
 ticularly interested in Vassar College, then the 
 only example of its class ; and she persistently 
 asked all the young girls why they did not go 
 there, until she was bluntly met at last by a 
 young married woman as frank in speech as 
 herself, thoiigh less enlightened, who assured 
 her that no society girl would think of going to 
 
THE ROAD TO ENGLAND 353 
 
 college, and that nobody went there except the ■ 
 daughters of " mechanics and ministers." 
 
 I remember that she in turn gave me some 
 admirable suggestions from her own point 
 of view; as, for instance, when I asked her 
 whether the highest London society was not 
 made more tame by the fact that all guests were 
 necessarily determined by rank rather than by 
 preference, and she answered that it was not 
 so at all, pointing out the simple fact that the 
 recognized aristocracy was on quite too large a 
 scale to be included in any private drawing- 
 room, so that there had to be a selection, and 
 this made it very easy to drop out the unavail- 
 able patricians, and bring in plebeians who were 
 personally attractive. Young girls, for example, 
 she said, who were staying as guests in great 
 houses, and who had strong points in the way 
 of beauty or music or conversation, might have 
 an immensely successful social career, however 
 unknown or humble their origin, while whole 
 families of magnates would come from the more 
 distant counties for the London season and en- 
 tirely fail of actual success. "I know lots of 
 dukes' daughters," she said casually, "who 
 get no attention whatever." There was really 
 something quite delicious, to my republican ears, 
 in thus sweeping, as it were, a debris of dukes' 
 daughters into this dustpan of indifference. 
 
3S4 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 Perhaps the young speaker was herself not 
 so much a type as a bit of eccentricity, yet she 
 was an interesting and high-minded one, and 
 reinforced her equally independent but person- 
 ally insignificant husband with potent strength. 
 There was a story in Cambridge that when he 
 had rashly trusted himself, one day, in a circle 
 of bright people without her, and had suffered 
 some repression, she drove out the next day 
 alone to fight the battle over again with the 
 accomplished host. "Mr. " she said im- 
 petuously, "Amberley has been telling me 
 what you were saying to him yesterday. Now 
 you know that 's all bosh.'" This story gave 
 some pleasure, I fear, to those previously dis- 
 posed to take sides against her entertainer, and 
 it suggests a somewhat similar bit of retaliation 
 which occurred in case of another English vis- 
 itor, also highly connected, but oppressively well 
 informed, who once at a Philadelphia dinner 
 table, when some suburban town in Pennsyl- 
 vania was mentioned, remarked incidentally 
 that its population was 3278. While the com- 
 pany sat dumb with admiration, a quiet man 
 farther down at the table, who had hitherto 
 been speechless, opened his lips to say : " I 
 think the gentleman is mistaken. The popu- 
 lation is 3304." An eminent Oxford professor 
 told me, years after, that this incident, which 
 
THE ROAD TO ENGLAND 355 
 
 soon got into the newspapers, might be said to 
 have delighted two continents. 
 
 When I lived at Newport, R. I., from 1864 
 to 1878, there was a constant procession of 
 foreign visitors, varying in interest and often 
 quite wanting in it. I remember one eminent 
 literary man, who, in spite of all cautions to 
 the contrary, appeared at a rather fashionable 
 day reception in what would now be called a 
 golf suit, of the loudest possible plaid, like that 
 of the Scotch cousin in Punch who comes down 
 thus dressed for church, to the terror of his 
 genteel cousins. What was more, the visitor 
 also wore a spyglass of great size, hung round 
 his neck, all through the entertainment. An- 
 other highly connected Englishman, attending 
 an evening reception given expressly for him, 
 came into the parlor with his hat and umbrella 
 in his hand, declining to be parted from them 
 through the whole evening ; which suggested 
 to a clever Newport lady the story of the show- 
 man who exhibited a picture of Daniel in the 
 lion's den, and who pointed out that Daniel was 
 to be distinguished from the lions by having a 
 blue cotton umbrella under his arm. In this 
 case, the lady remarked that the conditions 
 were reversed, since it was the lion that carried 
 the umbrella. 
 
 One certainly saw at Newport many foreigners 
 
3S6 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 of distinction and positive interest, especially 
 at the house of Mr. George Bancroft, where I 
 remember to have met the Emperor of Brazil, 
 traveling as Dom Pedro, with his wife, she hav- 
 ing with her a little lady in waiting who felt it her 
 duty to go about and whisper to the other guests 
 not to forget that her Imperial Majesty was a 
 Bourbon. When I paused to recall what that 
 name had signified through centuries of despot- 
 ism and gloom, it was startling to think that I 
 was sitting on the same sofa chatting peacefully 
 with one of its last representatives. A more 
 interesting visitor was Thomas Hughes, still dear 
 to the schoolboy heart, whom I took up on the 
 cliffs for a stroll, which he has kindly commem- 
 orated in his published journal, but which was 
 saddened to me by the fact that as we stood to- 
 gether beside the Spouting Rock, and he, despite 
 caution, went too near, a sudden jet of salt water 
 deluged his only white duck suit from top to 
 toe, and he was driven hastily back to the house. 
 I recall with pleasure, also, a visit to Newport 
 by the young Baron Mackay, now Lord Reay, 
 whom I took with me, at his request, to see a 
 public grammar school, where he talked to the 
 children with such simplicity and frankness as 
 to win their hearts, and to prefigure his fine 
 career as chairman of the London school board, 
 lord rector of St. Andrews University, presi- 
 
THE ROAD TO ENGLAND 357 
 
 dent of University College, and governor of 
 Bombay. 
 
 It may be said in return that American 
 strangers who had decent introductions were 
 most kindly received, a quarter of a century ago, 
 in London. A little flavor of foreignness was 
 not only borne patiently, but accepted as a merit ; 
 and indeed Lord Houghton told me that the 
 early Americans, as Ticknor and Sumner, had 
 been sometimes characterized as not having 
 enough flavor of their own soil. I cannot for- 
 get, however, that Miss Kate Field, then liv- 
 ing in London and having a decided circle of 
 popularity of her own, used to declare that the 
 English kindliness towards our fellow country- 
 men was strictly limited by selfishness ; that 
 it must be a poor letter of introduction which 
 would not bring forth an invitation to dinner. 
 "After that," she said, "if you do not make 
 yourself agreeable, they will drop you like a 
 hot potato." From this calamity a very short 
 stay is a sure preventive, and may work suc- 
 cessful results, like Sam Weller's brief love 
 letter. At the time of my first visit (1872) 
 many cultivated Englishmen were meditating 
 visits to America, and even lecturing tours, so 
 that such men as Tyndall, Froude, and others 
 were naturally inclined to make the acquaint- 
 ance of those familiar with the field, — and 
 
358 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 authors, too, are always fancied to be kindly 
 disposed to those who write literary criticisms 
 for the press. It was also a period when two 
 or three American writers were so enormously 
 popular in England that I could at once com- 
 mand the ear of any Englishwoman by telling 
 her that I had been a pupil of Longfellow, or 
 of any Englishman by dropping out the fact 
 that I had dined with Mark Twain in his own 
 house and that he had said grace at table. 
 
 But even apart from these phantom ties I 
 was constantly struck with the genuine spirit of 
 hospitality among Englishmen toward Ameri- 
 cans as such, even those with whose pursuits 
 they might have almost nothing in common, 
 and for whom they had not the least reason to 
 put themselves out. I liked this none the less 
 because it had definite limitations as to pecuniary 
 obligations and the like, excluding everything 
 in the nature of "treating;" all this being, in 
 my opinion, a weak point in our more gushing 
 or more self-conscious habit. I remember to 
 have once been taken by a gentleman, on whom 
 I had but the slightest claim, to the country 
 house of another, on whom I had no claim 
 whatever. The latter was not at all literary, and 
 had not even the usual vague English interest 
 in American affairs ; yet he gave up his whole 
 afternoon to drive me to Kenilworth, which he 
 
THE ROAD TO ENGLAND 359 
 
 had seen a thousand times. But that for which 
 I liked him best, and which afforded a wholly 
 new experience, was that, as we entered the 
 outer doorway, he, going first, looked back over 
 his shoulder and said simply, " They make you 
 pay threepence for admission here," and then 
 added, speaking to the attendant, " Here is my 
 threepence." After all the time and trouble 
 he had given to his stranger guest, he yet left 
 him to pay his own threepence, a thing which 
 most Americans would not have dreamed of 
 doing. It would have been the American 
 notion of good breeding to save a guest from 
 expense, as it was the English impulse to save 
 him from the sense of obligation. I confess 
 that I prefer the latter method. 
 
 On the other hand, I was much impressed 
 with the English weakness constantly shown 
 in the eagerness of even radical audiences to 
 secure, if possible, a man of rank to take the 
 chair at any public meeting ; and also with the 
 deference with which such hearers would listen 
 to very poor or dull speaking if backed by a 
 title, while they would promptly stamp down a 
 man of their own rank, with a rudeness rarely 
 paralleled in America, if he spoke a little too 
 long or not clearly enough. This I noticed, for 
 instance, at a large meeting in the Freemason's 
 Tavern (in 1878), at which I had been invited 
 
36o CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 to speak in favor of opening picture galleries 
 and museums on Sunday. Lord Rosebery and 
 Lord Dunraven both argued acceptably, followed 
 by the late Lord Dorchester, who spoke with 
 the greatest difficulty and quite inaudibly, but 
 received nevertheless a rapt attention, whereas 
 a delegate from Manchester, who spoke far 
 better and more to the point, was stamped 
 down without mercy. In following him I was 
 received and heard with the greatest cordiality 
 as an American, while I said nothing to com- 
 pare in value with what the man from Manches- 
 ter had said. Again, it is held in England 
 perfectly legitimate for a party to break up by 
 force a meeting of the opposite party, whereas 
 this is very rare with us, and always hurts the 
 rioters. Much is said about the English love 
 of fair play, but this instinct would really seem 
 less strong among the English than among our- 
 selves. 
 
 I had the great advantage, both in England 
 and France, of being sent in 1878 as a delegate 
 to some prison discipline meetings ; and al- 
 though this was a subject with which I was 
 somewhat unfamiliar, yet I went, fortunately, 
 under the wing of the late Rev. Dr. E. C. 
 Wines, whom I found everywhere to be treated 
 with great deference as the recognized leader 
 in that whole matter. I particularly enjoyed a 
 
THE ROAD TO ENGLAND 361 
 
 meeting at the Social Science Rooms in Lon- 
 don at which the late Lord Carnarvon presided. 
 I became acquainted for the first time with the 
 much more formal habits of English public 
 meetings, as compared with ours, — the elab- 
 orate proposing and seconding of everything, 
 even of votes of thanks to chairmen and secre- 
 taries, always accompanied by speeches by the 
 proposer and seconder. I noticed there, also, 
 the marked difference between English and 
 Irish public speaking, the latter exemplified by 
 the late Lord O'Hagan, and remarkable in his 
 case for its ease and flow. 
 
 But most remarkable of all, and surpassing 
 in spontaneous oratory anything I ever heard 
 in England, was the speech, at this meeting, of 
 Cardinal Manning, a man whose whole bearing 
 made him, as my friend Moncure Conway said, 
 " the very evolution of an ecclesiastic." Even 
 the shape of his head showed the development 
 of his function ; he had the noble brow and thin 
 ascetic jaw, from which ever3rthing not belong- 
 ing to the upper realms of thought and action 
 seemed to have been visibly pared away ; his 
 mouth had singular mobility ; his voice was in 
 the last degree winning and persuasive ; his 
 tones had nothing in them specifically English, 
 but might have been those of a highly culti- 
 vated American, or Frenchman, or Italian, or 
 
362 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 even German. I felt as if I had for the first 
 time met a man of the world, in the highest 
 sense, — and even of all worlds. His know- 
 ledge of the subject seemed greater than that 
 of any other speaker; his convictions were 
 wholly large and humane, and he urged them 
 with a gentle and controlling courtesy that dis- 
 armed opposition. In reading his memoirs, 
 long after, I recognized the limitations which 
 came from such a temperament and breeding ; 
 but all his wonderful career of influence in 
 England existed by implication in that one 
 speech at the Prison Congress. If I were look- 
 ing for reasons in favor of the Roman Catholic 
 Church, its strongest argument, in my opinion, 
 would be its power to develop and promote to 
 high ofl&ce one such man. The individual who 
 stands next to him in my personal experience, 
 and perhaps even as his superior, is a French 
 priest I once met by chance in one of the great 
 Continental cathedrals, and whose very name I 
 do not know ; but who impressed and charmed 
 me so profoundly by his face, manner, and voice, 
 it has seemed to me ever since that if I waked 
 up to find myself betrayed into a great crime, I 
 should wish to cross the ocean to confess it to 
 him. 
 
 In meeting the Englishman whom I had per- 
 haps most desired to encounter, — Mr. Glad- 
 
THE ROAD TO ENGLAND 363 
 
 stone, — I had a curious illustration of the uncer- 
 tain quality of a letter of introduction. On one's 
 first visit to a foreign country one collects such 
 letters with a curious interest, as if each were a 
 magic key to open a realm of unbounded pro- 
 mise ; but he may live to find that there is much 
 difference in the keys. Thus I was offered a 
 letter to Mr. Gladstone from an English clergy- 
 man, an Oxford doctor of divinity, not now living, 
 who had resided for some time in this country 
 as a very successful tutor or coach for college 
 students. He had written, when in England, a 
 pamphlet in support of Gladstone, at some im- 
 portant crisis, and in his letter of introduction 
 recalled himself to the great man's memory by 
 this good deed. On arriving in London I sent 
 out my letters with my card in the usual way, 
 and that to Mr. Gladstone was the only one 
 which remained unanswered. This state of 
 things continuing for many days, it crossed my 
 mind that I had heard a vague rumor at home 
 to the effect that the clergyman had left Eng- 
 land under a cloud, and mentioning the matter 
 to Sir John Rose, whom I had met in America 
 and whom I knew to be on intimate terms with 
 Mr. Gladstone, the matter was soon set right, 
 and the obstacle turned out to have been just 
 what I supposed. After all, however, I had but 
 a brief interview with Mr. Gladstone, by his own 
 
364 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 appointment, on which occasion, as I find by 
 my notebookj I was struck with his being in 
 voice and appearance more like an American 
 than most Englishmen I had seen. He was 
 surprisingly well acquainted with our leading 
 American authors, and came near to conceding, 
 so I fancied, that the outcome of our civil war 
 had been quite unlike what he had expected. 
 He showed great pleasure in the fact that Ed- 
 ward Everett had sent his son to the English 
 Cambridge, and expressed earnest hope that 
 this would become more common for American 
 youth. It was pleasant to carry him the first in- 
 formation that his "Juventus Mundi" had been 
 reprinted in this country, a thing which seemed 
 to please him exceedingly. I find recorded of 
 him in my brief diary : " A fine, wise, keen face, 
 a voice like Emerson's without the hesitancy." 
 My visit to London being very hurried, it was 
 necessary to decline an invitation to breakfast, 
 and through a series of circumstances we did 
 not meet again. 
 
 The radical side of London was more con- 
 spicuous then than now, and I should have been 
 extremely sorry to have missed it. I wished 
 particularly to hear Charles Bradlaugh, who was 
 just at the height of his fame as a popular 
 speaker. I was piloted to his hall by Mr. 
 Odger, a prominent workingmen's leader, — a 
 
THE ROAD TO ENGLAND 365 
 
 diminutive, sturdily built man, who ploughed his 
 way before me through the Sunday evening 
 crowd like a bluff little English tug making the 
 way for a clumsier craft. The place of meet- 
 ing was a low and dingy hall, crowded with peo- 
 ple who listened with great enthusiasm to an 
 address on "Jehovah." Bradlaugh seemed to 
 me one of the natural orators, like Beecher, a 
 man of commanding appearance and fine voice, 
 and without mere sensationalism or the pursuit 
 of antagonism for its own sake ; in all these 
 points quite surpassing Colonel Ingersoll, with 
 whom he has been often compared. I never 
 shall forget the impressiveness of one passage 
 in which he described a shipwrecked mother, 
 stranded upon a rock in the ocean during a 
 rising tide, and continually lifting her baby 
 higher and higher, still praying to her God to 
 preserve her child, until the moment when the 
 pitiless waves submerged them both. I im- 
 agined that it would be almost impossible to 
 paint a picture from the agnostic point of view 
 which would be more powerful with an Audi- 
 ence. He came to lunch with me a few days 
 later, and I found in his talk that vigor and 
 power of adaptation which made his career in 
 Parliament so remarkable. I saw him also in 
 frequent attendance at the trial of Mrs. Annie 
 Besant, an occasion which presented the strange 
 
366 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 combination of a contest for the custody of a 
 child between a Christian father and an athe- 
 istic or agnostic mother, the case being up for 
 determination before a Jewish judge. 
 
 It is a constant attraction about London that 
 the step from the associations of radicalism to 
 those of royalty is always easy, and implies 
 hardly more than the crossing of a park. So I 
 felt, at least, when, on May 13, 1878, 1 found my- 
 self taking the breezy walk on a showery morn- 
 ing from Alder shot railway station to the Com- 
 mon, amid an irregular procession of carriages 
 and pedestrians, with that fringe of vagabond 
 life, always more abundant and picturesque in 
 England than among ourselves, consisting of 
 gypsies, showmen, tinkers, peddlers, and don- 
 keys. One of the habitual English showers 
 came on. A crowd under dripping umbrella^ 
 soon loses all visible distinction of caste, and I 
 drifted easily into a very favorable position, 
 quite near the flagstaff beneath which the Ma- 
 jesty of England was to take its stand for a re- 
 view of troops. In England, when it is sun- 
 shine, men know it will soon rain ; and when it 
 rains hard they know that the sun will promptly 
 reappear. In this case the gleaming of light 
 was presently brilliant ; umbrellas were lowered, 
 raindrops glistened on horses' manes and on 
 ofi&cers' plumes, and brightly against the in- 
 
THE ROAD TO ENGLAND 367 
 
 tense green of English hills shone the scarlet 
 regiments advancing to take their places. Her 
 Majesty has the royal virtue of punctuality, 
 and all eyes were turned toward a low straw 
 wagon with two white ponies which came trot- 
 ting along the line of spectators. 
 
 But presently all eyes were turned in another 
 direction, where they were riveted so long that 
 the Queen herself became an object of second- 
 ary interest. Two soldiers had long stood ready 
 at the flagstaff to hoist the great standard, and 
 when the Queen was seen the signal for its 
 raising was given. Up it went, flapping in the 
 strong wind ; but so clumsily was the flag 
 handled that it was wrapped around the staff, 
 and not half of it blew out freely. The men 
 twitched and tugged in vain ; and her Majesty 
 drove by, apparently not noticing the mishap, 
 but nodding and smiling good-naturedly to some 
 of the ladies who sat in favored positions. 
 
 When she had gone by and had turned to 
 drive past the line of troops opposite us, there 
 was a subdued murmur of " Lower the flag, 
 and try it again." An ofificer stepped forward 
 to give orders, and down it came. Then it be- 
 gan to go up once more, this time blowing out 
 clearly, until it reached half-mast and stopped. 
 There was a general groan. Again twitching 
 and pulling were tried in vain ; the halyard was 
 
368 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 plainly choked in the block. At last a soldier 
 advanced to climb the flagstaff ; subdued cheers 
 greeted him ; the Queen was now far away, 
 driving doAAm the long line of soldiers ; there 
 was plenty of time. Up and up he went, and 
 when he stopped, halfway, to rest, the cheering 
 grew more outspoken. But more than halfway 
 up he never got, and the cheering died into a 
 muffled groan when the poor fellow, with a 
 sheepish smile, slid slowly downward, quite ex- 
 hausted ; and the flag was still at half-mast, and 
 the Queen was still advancing. 
 
 Then, after a pause and hurried consultation, 
 came forward a cavalryman, and great was the 
 relief when, on stripping off his coat, he showed 
 the tattooed arms of a sailor. " Bless him ! " 
 gasped a lady near me. " There 's but just 
 time ! " growled her husband. Up went the 
 bold dragoon, not stopping even to take off his 
 heavy boots ; no applause met him till he had 
 passed the point where his predecessor had 
 stopped ; then all seemed to take breath, and 
 the murmur of triumph swelled. But as he 
 went higher he went ominously slower ; and ten 
 feet from the top, utterly powerless to climb 
 an inch farther, he stuck helpless, an object of 
 dismay to twenty thousand people. Stretching 
 out his tired arm, bending and unbending it, as 
 if to say, " If you only knew how I feel ! " the 
 
THE ROAD TO ENGLAND 369 
 
 poor victim of unavailing patriotism slid slowly 
 down; and there was the Queen now in full 
 sight and rapidly approaching. 
 
 The commander of her advance guard had 
 just reached the flagstaff as the poor cavalry- 
 man slunk back among his mates. " Pull down 
 that flag ! " shouted the officer or somebody. 
 Down it came, and her Majesty the Queen of 
 England and Empress of India reviewed her 
 troops without a flag over her head. I do not 
 know how many Englishmen present recalled 
 the fact that a somewhat similar mishap occurred 
 when the flag of the ill-fated Charles I. was first 
 raised at Nottingham, in 1642 ; indeed, I did 
 not find a single one who remembered it ; but 
 it was at least a curious coincidence. There 
 was, at the time of this review at Aldershot, 
 quite a general impression that war with Russia 
 was impending ; and the more songs one sang 
 about "the meteor flag of England," the more 
 awkward it certainly was to have the meteor go 
 down instead of up. But so far as England's 
 Queen was concerned, this annoying test only 
 brought out her finer qualities. Her expression 
 was, as all said, unusually bright and cheerful 
 on that day ; she cast one light glance at the 
 empty flagstaff, and from that moment seemed 
 to ignore the whole matter. The effect was to 
 make every one else ignore it, and all were soon 
 absorbed in the brilliancy of the review. 
 
370 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 That is, it was called very brilliant ; and no 
 doubt the predominant English scarlet is incom- 
 parably more effective to the eye than our sober 
 blue. But the very perfection of the appoint- 
 ments made it all seem to me rather a play- 
 soldier affair ; I had grown so accustomed to 
 judging of soldiers by their look of actual ser- 
 vice that a single company of bronzed and tat- 
 tered men would have been a positive relief 
 among these great regiments of smooth-faced 
 boys. This involved no reproach to the young 
 recruits, and did not affect the mere spectacle, 
 but it impaired the moral interest. However, 
 the drill and the marching were good, though 
 there is a sort of heaviness about the British 
 soldier when compared with the wonderful vigor 
 and alertness of German infantry. As for the 
 uniforms, the arms, the appointments, the horses, 
 they were simply admirable. I do not believe 
 that there ever was an army in finer material 
 condition than those sixteen thousand men at 
 Aldershot. 
 
 And all this brilliant display was subject to a 
 woman ; and when the final salute was paid, 
 every gun was at " present arms " for her, and 
 in her honor the band played " God save the 
 Queen ! " I find written in my journal : " There 
 was something of real majesty in her manner, 
 as she stood up before her soldiers in acknow- 
 
THE ROAD TO ENGLAND 371 
 
 ledgment of the salute. She is short, stout, 
 with a rather heavy and not altogether a pleas- 
 ing face ; but in spite of all this, she has a dig- 
 nity of bearing which amounts almost to grace, 
 and is the only personal charm that her subjects 
 claim for her. Even this does not make her 
 exactly popular, and at this very time I heard 
 ungracious remarks in regard to the large 
 Highlander, John Brown, her confidential ser- 
 vant, who, in gorgeous array, sat behind her 
 Majesty, much more lofty and conspicuous than 
 herself. But I am afraid it is true that England 
 still prefers to be ruled by a queen ; and it is 
 certain that the present sovereign will hold her 
 prerogatives, such as they are, with a firm hand. 
 I never find myself quite such a ruthless repub- 
 lican anywhere else as in England — and yet 
 there is a certain historic interest and satisfac- 
 tion, after the long subordination of women, in 
 thinking that the leading monarchy of the world 
 still takes its orders from a woman's hand." 
 
 It has rarely happened in history that a single 
 sovereign, by the mere prolongation of a peace- 
 ful reign, has so influenced human history as 
 has been the case with Queen Victoria. It was 
 everywhere distinctly recognized in England, 
 in 1878, even among radicals, that this strong 
 personal influence was sure to be exerted while 
 she lived. I was struck with the remark made 
 
372 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 by one of the ablest women I met, the late Mrs. 
 Augusta Webster, who pointed out to me that, 
 in the existing state of public opinion, the Brit- 
 ish throne was a thing just suited to a woman. 
 It was largely, she said, a position of ceremony ; 
 the sovereign must reign without governing. 
 Now this would hardly be a dignified position 
 for a man ; one occupying it must either seem 
 rather insignificant, or else be tempted to acts 
 of aggression in order to enhance his dignity, 
 and this the people would not endure. An 
 English army officer of high rank told me, in 
 that same year, when I asked him if England 
 would ever become a republic, that while the 
 Queen lived it would be an absolute impos- 
 sibility ; but that if she outlived the Prince of 
 Wales, which was quite possible, and if there 
 were then to be a disputed succession, or some 
 young and imprudent sovereign were to ascend 
 the throne, it would be difficult to predict the 
 consequences. There is undoubtedly much less 
 of visible republican feeling in England to-day 
 than was the case twenty years ago ; but we 
 must always remember, on the other hand, that 
 the Emperor of Germany, with all his high-flown 
 theories of absolutism, is Queen Victoria's grand- 
 son ; that he has been claimed by some Eng- 
 lish journals as the rightful heir to the English 
 crown ; and that, even if we set this heirship 
 
THE ROAD TO ENGLAND 373 
 
 aside as wholly impossible^ we do not know what 
 influence his example might have upon that 
 still untried cousin who may succeed to the 
 throne. I have never yet met an Englishman 
 who would admit that the British people would 
 tolerate for a month any assumptions like those 
 habitually made by the present German Em- 
 peror. Great as might be the sacrifice implied 
 in the adoption of a republic, I am persuaded 
 that to the vast majority of Englishmen it would 
 be the more palatable alternative, than to be 
 ruled, I will not say by him personally, but by 
 such traditions and standards as he represents. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbott, J. S. C, 145. 
 
 Adams, C. F., 295. 
 
 Adams, John, 4, 5, 260, 278, 283. 
 
 Adams, J. Q., 51, 259, 295. 
 
 Adams, Samuel, 269, 285. 
 
 ^schylus, 99. 
 
 Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, 
 
 372- 
 Alcott, A. B., 23-33. 
 Alcott, Louisa, 27. 
 Amberley, Lady, 351, 352. 
 Amberley, Lord, 351, 354. 
 Ames, Fisher, 4, 5. 
 Auaxagoras, 125. 
 Andrew, J. A., 356, 295. 
 Angelo, Michael, 3. 
 Appleton, Nathaniel, igo. 
 Aristotle, 99. 
 Arnold, Matthew, 15. 
 Austin, J. T,, 259. 
 
 Bachiler, Father, 70. 
 Bancroft, George, g, 356. 
 Banks, Sir Joseph, 195. 
 Barclay, Robert, (of Ury), 71, 
 Barlow, Joel, 4. 
 Bartlett, John, 172, 174, 182. 
 Beecher, H. W., 49, 365. 
 Berkeley, George, 352. 
 Besant, Mrs. Annie, 365. 
 Bimey, J. G., 249, 254, 337. 
 Bismarck, C. O. von, 327, 
 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 57, 77, 233, 
 
 285, 298, 305, 314. 
 Boswell, James, 349. 
 Botta, Mrs. A. C. L., 156. 
 Bradlaugh, Charles, 364, 365. 
 Bragg, Braxton, 315- 
 Bright, John, 279, 302. 
 Brooks, Dr^ 112. 
 Brooks, P. S., 283, 284. 
 Brown, Anne, 228, 234, 237. 
 Brown, Charles Brockden, 5. 
 Brown, Ellen, 228, 236, 237. 
 
 Brown, Frederick, 222. 
 
 Brown, Jason, 228. 
 
 Brown, Capt. John, 133, 135, 219- 
 
 243. 263, 279, 299, 300, 371. 
 Brown, Mrs. John, 229, 239, 240, 
 
 241, 242. 
 Brown, John, Jr., 228. 
 Brown, Oliver, 229, 231. 
 Brown, Owen, 22S. 
 Brown, Robert, 217, 218. 
 Brown, Salmon, 228, 229, 243. 
 Brown, Sarah, 228. 
 Browne, C. F. (Artemus Ward), 74. 
 Browning, Robert, 78, 100, 347, 352. 
 Brutus, 17. 
 
 Bryant, Dr. Henry, 200. 
 Bryant, W. C, 5, 116. 
 Buckingham, J. T., 127. 
 Buckner, S. B., 307, 
 Buell, D. C, 311, 316. 
 Burke, Edmund, 8, 116, 2S7. 
 Burleigh, C. C, 331. 
 Bumey, Fanny, 116, 351. 
 Bums, Anthony, 29, 262, 297, 298. 
 Burns, Robert, 102. 
 Bumside, A. E., 316, 320, 321. 
 Butler, B. F., 277. 
 Byron, Lord, 227. 
 
 Csesar, Julius, 303, 314, 328. 
 
 Camors, Vicomte de, 273. 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, 350. 
 
 Carlisle, Earl of, 244. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 8, 15, 232, 267. 
 
 Carnarvon, Lord, 361. 
 
 Carter, Robert, 172. 
 
 Cassius, 17. 
 
 Chadbourne, Miss, igo. 
 
 Chamberlain, D. H., 247. 
 
 Channing, E. T., 5. 
 
 Channing, W. E. ^ev.), r, 123, 2S9. 
 
 Channing, W. E. (poetj, 20. 
 
 Channing, W. H., 51, 52, 259. 
 
 Chapman, Maria (Weston), 124, 264. 
 
376 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Charlemagne, 44, 45. 
 
 Charles I., 86. 
 
 Charles II., 86. 
 
 Chase, S. P., 302. 
 
 Chatham, WilUam Pitt, Earl of, 
 
 286. 
 Child, D. L., 116. 
 Child, Lydia Maria (Francis), 108- 
 
 141. 
 Choate, Ruius, 43, 267. 
 Clarendon, Lord, 13. 
 Clarke, J. F.. 39- 
 Clarke, Sarah F., 153. 
 Clarkson, Thomas, 279^ 302. 
 Clay, Henry, 290. 
 Clemens, S. L. (Mark Twain), 358. 
 Cleveland, Grover, 161. 
 Cobden, Richard, 279, 302. 
 Coleridge, S. T., 18, 67, 93. 
 Comte, Augusta, 18. 
 Conway, M. D., 361. 
 Cook, 233, 234. 
 Cook, Joseph, 30. 
 Cooke, G. W., 2. 
 Cooper, J. F., 5, 114, ns* 
 Cousin, Victor, 18. 
 Cramer, 202. 
 Cushing, Caleb, 277. 
 
 D'Alerabert, J. C. R., 68. 
 Dame, Hannah, 152. 
 Danton, G. J., 92. 
 Davis, John, 282. 
 Dejean, P. F. A., Count, 217. 
 Demosthenes, 280, 286. 
 De Stael, Madame, 120. 
 Dickens, Charles, 99. 
 Dickinson, Emily, 162. 
 Dorchester, Lord, 360. 
 Doubleday, Edward, 209. 
 Douglass, Frederick, 224, 267. 
 Dowden, Edward, 98. 
 Doyle, Mahala, 234. 
 Drury, Drew, 202. 
 Dryden, John, 93, 330. 
 Dunraven, Lord, 360. 
 Dwight, Timothy, 287. 
 
 Eaton, Amos, 205. 
 
 Edgeworth, Maria, 351. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 57. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 86. 
 
 ."Emerson, EUen Louise (Tucker), 7. 
 
 Emerson, Lidian (Jackson), 12, 
 
 Emerson, Mary, 2. 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 1-22 ; also, 23, 24, 
 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 46, 54, 
 55. 59. 69, 78, 81, 85, no, 151, 
 157, 162, 177, 269, 270, 279, 280, 
 364- 
 
 Emerson, Ruth (Haskins), i, a. 
 Emerson, William, i, 6. 
 Emerson, Rev. William, *. 
 Erckmann-Chatrian, 172, 
 Eschenburg, J. J., 144. 
 Evarts, W, M., 267. 
 Everett, Edward, 193, 256, 364. 
 
 Faber, F. W., 251. 
 Falkland, Lord, 13. 
 Fieldj Kate, 357. 
 Fielding, Henry, 99. 
 Fields, 7. T., 106, 151, 152. 
 Fiske, Deborah (Vinal), 143. 
 Fiske, Helen Maria, 143. 
 Fiske, N. W., 143. 
 Fitch, Charles, 250. 
 Folsom, Abhy, 330, 331. 
 Forbes, Hugh, 299. 
 Forrest, N. B., 317. 
 Foster, Abby (Kelley), 264. 
 Foster, S. S., 252, 253, 277, 336. 
 Fourier, Charles, 128, 284. 
 Fox, C. J., 286. 
 Fox, George, 8. 
 
 Francis, Convers, 109, no, 113. 
 Francis, Elizabeth, 112. 
 Francis, Richard, log. 
 Francis, Susannah (Rand), Z09. 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 97. 
 Fremont, J. C., 275. 
 Frothingham, N. L., 2, 194. 
 Frothingham, O. B., 7. 
 Froude, J. A., 357. 
 Fuller, Margaret (see Ossoli). 
 
 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 313. 
 Gamaut, Mrs. Eliza, 265. 
 Garrett, Thomas, 227. 
 Garrison, W. L., 244-256; also 60, 
 
 121, 263, 264, 267, 275, 279, 285, 
 
 302, 330, 333, 336, 338. 
 Gladstone, W. E., 287, 362, 363. 
 Godart, J. B., 201. 
 Goethe, J. W., von, 11, 41, 77, 289. 
 Goodell, William, 249, 250. 
 Gould, A. A., 199. 
 Graeter, Francis, 119. 
 Graut, U. S., 302-328; also 290. 
 Grattan, T. C. 286. 
 Gray, Asa, 214, 215. 
 Greaves, J. P., 27. 
 Greeley, Horace, 19, 49. 
 Grimke, Sarah, 250. 
 Grimm, Herman, 15. 
 Guion, Madame, 120. 
 
 Hackett, Doctor, 345-347. 
 Hale, J. P., 302. 
 Hale, Mrs. S. J., 125. 
 
INDEX 
 
 377 
 
 Hallam, Henry, 44. 
 Hallett, B, F., 259. 
 Hancock^ John, 260, 27S. 
 Harris, Catherine (Holbrook), 196. 
 Harris, Mary (Dix), 193, 194. 
 Harris, T. M., 192. 
 Harris, T. W., 192-218. 
 Hawes, Charlotte, 117. 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 21, 64, 92, 
 
 102, 103, 104, 106. 
 Hawthorne, Sophia (Peabody), 102- 
 
 107. 
 Haydn, Joseph, 94. 
 Hayne, P. H., 85, 99. 
 Hegel, G. W. F., 15, 18. 
 Hentz, N. M., 196, 197, 203, 208, 
 
 212, 213. 
 Hereward, 292. 
 Hesiod, 4. 
 Hillard, G- S., 259. 
 Hitchcock, Edward, 207, 215. 
 Holbrook, Amos, 196. 
 Holland, J. G., 163. 
 Holmes, John, 168-191. 
 Holmes, O. W,, 24, 66, 5g, 71, 169, 
 
 i7i» i73» 181. 
 Homer, 4. 
 
 Hopper, I. T., 126, 130. 
 Horsford, E. N., 146. 
 Houghton, Lord, 357. 
 Howe, Estes, 172. 
 Howe, J. M., 172. 
 Howe, S. G. , 294-301. 
 Howells, W. D., 184. 
 Hiibner, 202. 
 
 Hughes, Thomas, 329, 356. 
 Hugo, Victor, 84. 
 Humphreys, N. A., 322. 
 Hunt, E. B., 14s, 146. 
 Hunt, Murray, 146. 
 Hunt, Washington, 145. 
 Hunt, W. H., 146. 
 Hutchinson family, 333-336. 
 Hyacinthe, P&re, 168. 
 
 IngersoU, R. G., 365. 
 
 Irving, Washington, 5, 63, 114. 
 
 Jackson, Andrew, 239. 
 
 Jackson, Charles, 12. 
 
 Jackson, C. T., 12. 
 
 Jackson, Francis, 139. 
 
 Jackson, Helen (''H.H."), 142- 
 
 167. 
 Jackson, W. S-, 133. 
 James I., 86. 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, 97, 285. 
 Johnson, Samuel, 87, 116, 350. 
 Jonson, Ben, 17. 
 Joubert, Joseph, 17. 
 
 Karnes, Henry Home, Lord, 151. 
 
 Kant, Immanuel, 15. 
 
 Keats, John, 100, 102. 
 
 King, J. G., 43, 43- 
 
 Kinney, Abbott, 159. 
 
 Kirby, William, 206. 
 
 Knox, John, 3. 
 
 Kossuth, Louis, 15. 
 
 La Farge, John, 352. 
 
 La Fontaine, J. de, 68. 
 
 Lamartine, A. M. L. de, 342. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 9. 
 
 Lamson, Father, 330. 
 
 Landor, W. S., 8, 280. 
 
 Lane, Charles, 30. 
 
 Lane, G. M., 184. 
 
 Langboume, Major, 282. 
 
 Lanier, Jerome, 86. 
 
 Lanier, Sir John, 86. 
 
 Lanier, Mary (Anderson), 86. 
 
 Lanier, Mary (Day), 89. 
 
 Lanier, Nicholas, 86. 
 
 Lanier, R. S., 86. 
 
 Lanier, Sidney, 85-101 ; also 83. 
 
 Lanier, Thomas, 86. 
 
 Latreille, P. A., 201. 
 
 Lawrence, Abbott, 272. 
 
 Lawrence, G. P., 172. 
 
 Le Conte, J., 209. 
 
 Lee, R. E., 312, 313, 315, 325. 
 
 Leonard, L. W., 209. 
 
 Leonowens, Mrs. A. H., 160. 
 
 Lewes, Mrs. (George Eliot), 99. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 79, 247, 256, 
 
 274, 303. 304j 3IO) 31S, 323» 326-, 
 Lmnaeus, Charles von, 192. 
 Longfellow, H. W., 8, 19, 22, 64, 
 
 66. 69, 173, 358. 
 Lonng, Anna, 130. 
 Lovejoy, E. P., 259. 
 Lowell, J. R., 24, 66, 69, 70, 85, loc^ 
 
 128, 172, 173, J74, i83) 1841 i8Si 
 
 186,330,331. 
 Lowell, Mrs. J._R., 173- 
 Lundy, Benjamin, 249, 250. 
 Luther, Martin, 8, 48, 59, iiz, 286. 
 
 Macaulay, T. B,, 50. 
 Manuj Horace, 256, 297. 
 Manning, Cardinal, 361. 
 Marshall, John, 291. 
 Martineau, Harriet, 122, 251, 
 Marvell, Andrew, 117. 
 Mason family, the, 216, 
 Mason, Mrs.M. J. C, 134, 135- 
 Maupassant, Guy de, 75. 
 Meade.G. G., 318. 
 Melsheimer, 209. 
 Mellen, G. W. F., 330. 
 
378 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Methuselah} 178. 
 Mill, J. S., 18. 
 Miller, " Joaquin," 74. 
 Millet, J. F., 162. 
 Milton, John, 8, iii. 
 Moltke, H. K. B., von, 325. 
 Morgan, Lady Sidney, 74. 
 Morris, William, 96. 
 Morse, J. T., Jr., 171, 173. 
 Motley, J. L., 238. 
 Mott, James, 339. 
 
 Newby, Dangerfield, 225. 
 Newman, Edward, 192. 
 Noon, Ora, 339-341. 
 Noyes, J. H., 330. 
 Nuttall, Thomas, 204. 
 
 O'Connell, Daniel, 261, 271. 
 
 Odger, James, 364- 
 
 O'Hagan, Lord, 361. 
 
 Olivier, G. A., 202, 208. 
 
 Osgood, David, J13. 
 
 Osgood, J. R., 132. 
 
 Ossian, 77. 
 
 Ossoli, Margaret (Fuller), 13, ig, 
 
 81, no. 
 Otis, H. G., 257. 
 Otis, James, 115, 116, 260. 
 
 Paine, Thomas, 4. 
 
 Palfrey, J. G., 113, 235. 
 
 Palmer, J. M., 316, 
 
 Parker, Theodore, 34-39; also 19, 
 
 28, 82, no, III, 131, 262, 263, 267, 
 
 271, 283, 286, 288, 289, 296, 298. 
 Parkman, Francis, 76. 
 Peabody, Elizabeth P., 26. 
 Peck, W. D., 19S, 204. 
 Pedro, Dom (emperor of Brazil), 
 
 356' 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 287. 
 Peirce, Benjamin, 198. 
 Penn, William, 71. 
 Festalozzi, J. H., 27. 
 Phelps, A. A., 249. 
 Phidias, 3. 
 
 Phillips, Ann T. (Greene), 260. 
 Phillips, George, 257. 
 Phillips, John, 257, 258. 
 Phillips, Jonathan, 259. 
 Phillips, S. C, 295. 
 Phillips, Sarah (Walley), 237. 
 Phillips, Wendell, 257-279 ; also 51, 
 
 246, 252, 295, 300, 330, 331. 
 Pickenng, Charles, 207. 
 Pierce, Franklin, 103. 
 Pillow, G. J., 307. 
 Pillsbury, Parker, 336. 
 Pinkney, E. C., 85. 
 
 Plato, 4, 99, 135. 
 Plutarch, 289. 
 Plympton, Sylvanus, ig6. 
 Poe, E. A., 80,81. 
 Pope, Alexander, 93, xi8> 
 Pursh, Frederick, 205. 
 Putnam, Israel, 327. 
 
 Quincy, Edmund, 262, 271, 272, 375, 
 Quincy, Josiah, 256, 257, 260. 
 Quincy, Josiah, Jr., 3. 
 Quinet, Edgar, 15. 
 
 Randolph, John, 290. 
 Raphael, 5. 
 Reay, Lord, 336. 
 Redpath, James, 263. 
 Remond, Charles, 232. 
 Richardson, Samuel, 68, 99. 
 Ripley, George, 110. 
 Ripley, Mrs., 2. 
 Rivarol, Count de, 203. 
 Robbins, Chandler, 7. 
 Robespierre, F. J. M. L, 342. 
 Rogers, N. P., 333. 
 Roland, Madame, 120. 
 Romilly^ Sir Samuel, 272. 
 Rose, Sir John, 363. 
 Rosebery, Lord, 360. 
 Rossetti, D. G., 80. 
 Ruskin, John, 77. 
 Russell, Earl, 351. 
 Russell, Lady, 120. 
 
 Say, Thomas, 204, 205, 207, 209, 
 
 210, 211, 217. 
 Schelling, F. W. J., von, 18. 
 Schleiermacher, F. E. D., 79. 
 Schofield, J. McA., 316. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 123. 
 Scudder, S. H., 213. 
 Seward, W. H., 286, 302. 
 Shakespeare, William, 94, 99, iii. 
 Shaw, H. W. (Josh Billings), 74. 
 Shaw, R. G., 256. 
 Shelley, P. B., 21, 85, 98, 227. 
 Sheridan, P. H., 317, 318, 320, 321, 
 Sherman, W. T., 310, 312, 316. 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 21. 
 Sims, Thomas, 26S, 283, 297. 
 Smellie, William, 199. 
 Smith, " Bobus," 303. 
 Smith, Gerrit, 224. 
 Smith, Sydney, 5, 303. 
 Snow, P. & S., 183. 
 Socrates, 16. 
 Sparks, Jared, 193. 
 Spence, William, 206. 
 Spencer, Herbert, 18. 
 Spenser, Edmund, 345. 
 
INDEX 
 
 379 
 
 Spinoza, Benedict, 79. 
 
 Spooner, Lysander, 264. 
 
 Stanley, Lord (of Alderley), 351. 
 
 Stanton, £. M., 302. 
 
 Stearns, G. L., 299. 
 
 Stebbins, Horatio, 162. 
 
 Stedman, E. C, 76, 84, 
 
 Stedman, Sam, 188. 
 
 Stevens, A. D., 233. 
 
 StoU, 202. 
 
 Stone, Lucy, 158, 336. 
 
 Scorer, D. H., 204. 
 
 Storey, C. W., 184. 
 
 Storey, Moorfield, 184. 
 
 Story, Joseph, 291. 
 
 Sumner, Charles, 280-7293 ; also 45, 
 
 256, 267, 273, 29s, 303, 357. 
 Swan, Miss, 113. 
 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 57, 128. 
 Swinburne, A. C, 95, 125. 
 
 Tacitus, 17. 
 
 Taney, R. B., 224. 
 
 Tappan, Arthur, 249. 
 
 Tappan, Lewis, 249,250. 
 
 Taylor, Bayard, 76, go, 
 
 Taylor, Percy, 342-344- 
 
 Taylor, Zachary, 306, 307. 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, ig. 
 
 Thackeray, W. M., 49. 
 
 Thayer, David, 263, 
 
 Thayer, J. B., 172. 
 
 Thompson, Henry, 228. 
 
 Thompson, Ruth (Brown), 228. 
 
 Thompsons, the, 225, 228. 
 
 Thoreau, H. D., 31, 64, 85, 94, 100, 
 
 301. 
 Thucydides, 4. 
 
 Ticknor, George, 116, 271, 272, 357, 
 Toby, Uncle, 310. 
 Tocqueville, A. C. H. C. de, 268. 
 Towne, J. H., 250. 
 Trowbridge, Edmund, 189. 
 Tuckerman, Edward, 192. 
 Tupper, M. F., 77. 
 Turner, Nat, 121. 
 Tyndall, John, 15, 357. 
 Tyrtaeus, 65. 
 
 Van Dyck, Sir Anthony, 86. 
 
 Vergniaud, P. V., 342. 
 
 Victoria, Queen, 367-372. 
 
 Visit to John Brown's Household in 
 
 1859, 210-243. 
 Voet, P. E., 208. 
 
 Walker, Alexander, 121. 
 Walpole, Horace, 4. 
 Ward, C.J an. 
 Ward, W. H., 86, go, gi, 92, 100. 
 Ware, Charles, 176. 
 Ware, Henry. Jr., 6, 21. 
 Warren, G. X., 146, 317-322. 
 Washington, George, 97, 193, 252. 
 Webster, Mrs. Augusta, 372. 
 Webster, Daniel, 43, 57, 247, 256, 
 
 267, 268. 
 Weiss, John, 288. 
 Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 
 
 Duke of, 233, 305, 325. 
 Wesley, John, 252, 
 Westennann, 210. 
 Westwood, J. O., 202. 
 Wheelock, Eleazar, 188. 
 Whipple. E.,P., J06. 
 Whitefield, George, 115. 
 Whitman, Walt, 72-S4; also 97, 
 
 g8. 
 Whittier, J. G., 60-71 ; also 76, 
 
 248. . 
 Wilberforce, William, 279, 302. 
 Wilson, Henry, 256, 302. 
 Wines, E. C, 360. 
 Winthrop, James, i8g. 
 Winthrop, R. C, 272, 2g6. 
 Wise, H. A., 133, 134. 
 Woodbury, J. T., 250. 
 Woodrow, James, 87. 
 Woodward, Rufus, 213. 
 Woolsey, Sarah C, 153. 
 Wordsworth, William, 8, 19, 39. 
 Wright, Elizur, 250. 
 Wright, Frances, 121. 
 Wright, H. C, 332, 336. 
 Wright, H. G., 27. 
 
 Xenophon, 4. 
 

 1 
 
 J»»™i!li!il|l!H!lffl