LIBRARY^F CONGRESS. ®i^pi'.~i:- ^m'"M 1»*---.- UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. FRATERNITY PAPERS BY EDWARD HENRY ELWELL Aiitlior of "The Boys of TiriuTY-FiVK" ^ MAY 191 see' ) PORTLAND ELWELL, riCKARD & CO. HOYT, FOGG & DONHAM 1886 R^ COPYRIGHT BY EDWARD HENRY ELAVELL 1886 Transcript Press James S. Staples, printer Portland PREFACE. ■ Manuscrip.ts are but idle and cumbersome things at the best. These fugitive papers, having served their purpose in the reading before the Club which drew them forth, have been thrown into book form that they may the more readily be placed upon the shelf, there to gather dust, or to be occasionally taken down and passed from hand to hand as their interest, or the lack of it, may determine. E. H. E. May, 1886. CONTENTS. What We Stumbled upon one day in Flohence, - Page 7 The Building of the House, ------ 37 Humor of Dialect, - - - 72 Dkeams, ----- ^^ Conversation, - - - - xokj UlSCOVEKY OF the MISSISSIPPI, ------ 163 The White Mountains, - 1^6 The Aborigines of Maine, - 213 The Puritan Sermon, 254 After-Thoughts, - - - ^^^ WHAT WE STUMBLED UPON ONE DAY IN FLORENCE. There are two ways of looking upon most things, and this is particularly true of new and strange scenes. The traveller who, duly guided, and with Baedeker in hand, wanders through a foreign city, has the proper objects of interest pointed out to him, and goes away thinking he has seen all there is of it. That depends upon whether he has really employed his own powers of observation, or used the eyes of his guide. The observing faculty is not so much in the eye as in the mind, and we see not those objects which are pointed out to us, but those which we have the capacity to see. My friend, the artist, had his own way of capturing a city. He took it by assault. With a fine scorn of all guides, commissionaires, custodians, and other like banditti, he strode forth, and with only his all-observing eyes, and a pair of seven-league boots, which never tired, he marched on, until all he saw was his. It was in this spirit that we salHed forth, one blazing day in the month of July, in pursuit of the Academy of 8 FRATERNITY PAPERS. Fine Arts, in the city of Florence, where are to be seen the master-pieces of modern Italian artists, as well as the works of the ancient masters. Fair Florence, city of flow- ers, is not beautiful in its outward aspect. Its streets are narrow, its architecture plain, its palaces heavy, somber, and severe, with walls dark, massive, and frowning like for- tresses, as indeed they had need to be in the troublous times in which they were built. But within these forbid- ding walls there is a wealth of art and beauty. Churches which are dilapidated in their exterior, within are gorgeous with marble, gold, pictures, monuments and statues. How formal are the close-chpped walks of the Bobali Gardens, and what a mediieval look has the old ducal Palace, with its massive square walls, its great projecting battlements, and tall watch tower, whose alarm bell summoned the peo- ple to arms in the days of the republic. But that which most pressed itself upon our attention on this bright summer day was the piercing quality of the Italian sunshine. It strikes through one like a lance. No wonder the Florentines made their streets narrow, and built their houses high. They afford a grateful shade, as striking in its coolness as is the sunshine in its fervor. We crept through the narrow streets in the shadow of the buildings, and when we encountered an open square a-flood with dazzling light and heat, to cross it was like advancing on a battery under a hot fire. The Italians have a say- ing that only dogs and Englishmen walk in the sunshine. I thought that counted us in. We had not even the yel- ONE DAY IN FLORENCE. 9 low umbrella which the Italian carries as habitually to shield him from the sun, as the Englishman carries his black one to protect him from his leaky skies. The delight- ful uncertainty of our course added its friction to the heat of the day. But nothing melted the determination of the artist. He has an instinct for finding his way, and at all events was certain that in this storied city, the home of art, he could go nowhere and see nothing that would not have an interest for him. Yet we missed the object of our search. We peered behind the heavy curtains, which, in place of doors, shut out from the churches the glare and noise of the outer world, — but it was not there. There is nothing attractive or dis- tinctive in the external aspect of the ordinary Italian basil- ica. No spire points out the house of God, and you may not distinguish a church from a museum. The white con- vent walls shutting in everything that is remarkable within, in straight lines of blank enclosure, are scarcely less inter- esting outside, than is the lofty gable-end which forms the fagade of most churches in Florence, whether clothed in shining lines of marble or rugged coat of plaster. At last -we crossed a sunshiny square, and dashed boldly into a respectable building, that promised at least a refuge from the blazing sun. How grateful was the coolness and dimness of the place. The architecture of Italy is based on the plan of shutting out the sun and shutting in the gloom and dampness. In summer the churches and art galleries are refreshing in their coolness ; in winter they are chilly as caverns. 10 FRATERNITY PAPERS. The inevitable custodian was at hand. We asked no questions, but followed him between cloistered walls, cov- ered with those wrecks of faded pictures, which one scarce thinks to look at until he is told they are things to be admired, — he wonders why. We were first taken into a lofty hall which proved to be a library, and were there shown a collection of illuminated missals. Each page was illuminated with a beautiful miniature picture, in water col- ors and burnished gold, and the text was most elegantly done. The binding of these old volumes, which ante-date the art of printing, was most curiously substantial. "Fra Angelico," said our guide. It was the key that opened the whole building to us. This then Avas the convent of San Marco, of all the historical edifices of the city, sacred by right of the feet that have trodden there, perhaps the most interesting and attractive. It was here that the Domini- can brother, of blessed memory, painted his immortal pic- tures ; it was here that the good Archbishop Antonio earned his canonization by his saintly deeds ; it was here that Savonarola preached to excited crowds, and it was here that he was beseiged by mad Florence, wildly seeking the blood of the prophet who had not given it the miracle it sought. It is not always easy, even in the midst of historical scenes, to transport ourselves into the past. The hurry of travel, the distraction of the actual present, the incongru- ity of surrounding objects, all conspire to dispel the charm of antiquity, to make it difficult to realize that we stand in ONE DAY IN FLORENCE. H the presence of the mighty dead. But this was a spot that made the fifteenth century as yesterday, and placed us in the very heart of the past. Its stillness, its seclusion, shut out the present from us, while all of its associations were of another age. The life of the place had departed, for San Marco is no longer a convent. No black-and-white monk now bars smilingly, to profane feminine feet, the en- trance to the sunny cloister ; no brethren of St. Dominic inhabit the hushed and empty cells. Chapter-house, refec- tory, library, all lie vacant and open — a museum for the state — a blank piece of public property, open to any chance comer. But it is only since 1868 that the necessity of state has emptied it of its traditionary inhabitants, and converted it into a repository of the precious things of the past. It was to this fact that we owed our admittance to it, and the strange thing about it was that it so succeeded in disguis- ing its antiquity. Is this the house that Cosmo de Medici built for the monks more than four hundred years ago ? It seemed of a piece with all its surroundings, and no older than its neighbors. But that is the spell of these old cities ; everything is in harmony because everything is ancient. As we followed our silent guide along the corridors, and up the stairs, we thought of the stirring scenes these old walls had witnessed, as well as of the long years of quiet occupation by the Dominican brotherhood. He led us to the attic story, with its open timbered roof, and a long cor- ridor running through its center, on each side of which was 12 FRATERNITY PAPERS. a row of small cells. This was the dormitory, and it was here that Fra Angelico painted his luminous frescoes, which are still the admiration of all lovers of art. The cells are severely simple, narrow and low, with barely room for a table, a chaii' and a narrow bed, and each dimly lighted by a little arched window high up in the wall, but each is also illuminated by one glorious pa^e in the life of the Saviour, painted on the wall by the loving artist. There are the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Presentation in the Tem- ple, the Adoration of the Magi, the Baptism of Christ, the Sermon on the Mount, with many others, including the Cru- cifixion, the Burial, and the Descent into Hell. Scratched, defaced, faded, as many of them are, the coloring is still full of sweetness and tenderness. As we entered cell after cell, we encountered in one and another, a silent artist engaged in copying these works of the Angelical brother. Italian art of to-day is largely a reproduction of the past. An ItaHan artist told us that the cause of his lack of success was that he could not copy, — he could paint only original pictures. When Fra Angel- ico painted these pictures, more than four jenturies ago, this large dormitory was not divided into cells as now. It was one large room, like a ward in a hospital, with a row of small arched windows high up in the wall, on either side, each of which apparently gave a little light and a limited space to the monk whose bed flanked the window. To decorate this large bare room was the work of the artist brother, who painted not for fame, but for the love ONE BAY IN FLORENCE. 13 of God. He put his utmost skill into these works, although the strict rule of the convent excluded them from the admiration and inspection of the people, and they could be seen only by the brethren of the Order. Each brother had his own work to do, for these were not idle monks. One was copying manuscripts, for the monks were the book- makers of the time ; another was busy illuminating them ; another was meditating his sermon for the next fast or festival, and while all this work went on the artist of the Fraternity painted the picture beneath which each brother was to sleep and dream. Each one must have taken a hvely, and perhaps a jealous interest, in that picture which was to be his own. How they must have watched for the completion of each picture — the soft, fair faces looking out of the blank walls, clothing them with good company, with solace and protection. What discussions there may have been as to the comparative merits of Angelico's pictures and those of his brother, Benedetto, who assisted him in the work. Doubtless these monks, simple as they may have been, had their standards of taste, their enthusiasm for art. One would like to have looked into that long room, and seen them all at their work. To be a monk in those days was to be a busy, well-occupied and useful man, in no way shut out from nature. But all now has changed. The government of to-day found their successors useless cum- berers of the ground. It took from them the endowment which- Cosmo de Medici had given them, and in 1868 erected their convent into a museum of the State. 14 FRATERNITY PAPERS. How silent was this dormitoiy, as we stole from cell to cell. The warning figure of the martyred Peter which Angelico painted over the doorway below, with finger on his lip, was having it all his own way now. The bustle and hum of the busy community was no longer heard. Not even the vanishing trail of monkish garments could be seen in the dim vista of the long corridor. Each cell has its own little secluded window, deep in the wall, its own patch of sunshine, its own picture — and that is all. There is no fire-place, and no longer a bed. The only occupants are the figures on the walls, faded out of their past glory — less like a picture at all than like celestial shadows, some sweet phantasmagoria of lovely things that cannot be quite effaced from the very stones that once saw them. Angelico painted other pictures in this convent, some of which glisten in gold and are well-preserved, but none of them brings the gentle old monk so near to us as these heavenly shadows beneath which his brethren slept the sleep of the righteous. Guido, the son of Peter, was born in the neighborhood of Florence in the year 1387. In his Hfctime he had no lack of other names. Some say his family name was Santi Tosini. When he became a monk he took the name Gio- vanni. In later years his brethren called him Fra Angel- ico , later still his devoted admirers entitled him the Blessed Angelico. So his name grew until at last he was known as "The Blessed John, called the Angelic, of Fiesole." Where, or with whom he studied his art is not known. ONE DAT IN FLORENCE. 15 Perhaps it came to him as a divine gift. We only know that at'twenty he entered the Dominican convent at Fie- sole. There, in that quiet retreat, on that beautiful hill- side, overlooking the lovely valley of the Arno, with the busy city of Florence in full view — though no noble dome had'^yet crowned the Cathedral, and Giotto's Campanile, divinely tall, fair, and light as a lilly-stalk, had not yet thrown itself up into mid air, only then as now the rugged tower of the Signoria raising up its protecting standard from the lower level of ancient domes and lofty houses — there on that mount of vision, looking out, as he must have done on his solitary evening walks, over the wide landscape, with the Arno glittering through its midst like a silver thread, the lights and shades of the setting sun giving a hundred variations of sweet color, soft glooms, and heav- enly shadows, — the Angelical brother dwelt for thirty happy years. They must have been happy years, for all this time he was busy with his divine art, which was solely devoted to the cause of religion, for Angelico painted as he said his prayers, out of pure devotion. They believed in art in those days as a divine thing. Dominici, the founder of the convent, had recommended painting as "a powerful means of elevating the soul and developing the holy thoughts of the heart." Ano;elico seems first to have distinofuished himself as a miniaturist, and painter of beautiful manuscripts. Many a pure and holy soul in those days devoted itself to the embellishment of monastic manuscripts, and truly praised IQ FRATEBNITY PAPERS. God in colors. The larger part of Angelico's easel pic- tures were done in these years, and he was sought bj every one to execute work for churches, convents and palaces. To all such would-be patrons he used to say, "Get my Pri- or's consent, and I will always do what will please you." He sought not wealth nor fame. He would not touch the money that was given for his paintings, but turned it into the treasury of the brotherhood ; wherefore it may well be supposed that the Prior was usually very prompt in per- mittinii; the mfted brother to exercise his talents on outside commissions. But these monks were eager to return to Florence from which they had been banished long years before. At last Cosmo de Medici gave them the opportunity by transfer- ring to them, and rebuilding the convent of San Marco, originally the property of an order of Silvestrini. The monks came down from Fiesole in triumphal procession, making the narrow hillside ways resound with psalms, and winding in long trains of black-and-white throuo;h the streets of their regained home. But their new convent was dilapidated and scarcely inhab- itable. Cosmo de Medici, who not long before had come back to rule the turbulent city that had exiled him, took the case in hand, and rebuilt their convent for them, while they encamped in huts and watched over the work. No doubt they lent a hand, for in those days the monkish orders furnished carpenters and masons, as well as sculptors and glass-painters. The royal Cosmo gave a commission to a ONE BAY IN FLORENCE. 17 certain monk of the Dominicans to decorate with pictures the new walls. Thus Fra Angelico came to this work when he was fifty years old. His great picture of the Crucifix- ion he painted in the chapter house of the convent, and under it monks of San Marco deliberated for four centuries. It survives everything — long ages of peace, brief storms of violence in which moments count for years ; and again the silent ages — quiet, tranquility, monotony, tedium. Pope Eugenius himself came to consecrate the new-built house, and when he saw what the Angelical painter had done, he called him to Rome to execute some work there, and with the primitive certainty of his age that excellence in one thing must mean excellence in all, he offered Angel- ico — humble brother John — the vacant See of Florence. Modest Fra Giovanni knew that though it was in him to paint, it was not in him to govern monks, so he told the Pope that this was not his vocation, but that in his convent there was another Frate whose shoulders were equal to the burden. The Pope took the advice of this humble brother, and made the good Antonino Archbishop — the good Arch- bishop who ordered that all that was found in his palace when he died, should be given to the poor. All that could be found were four ducats I So true had he been to his vows of poverty. And this was at a time when the poor were more poor, and the rich more brutally indifferent to them than we can understand, and every familiar human crime with which we are acquainted in these latter days set out in rampant breadth of color and shameless openness. 18 FRATERNITY PAPERS. As for Fra Angelico he stayed and painted at Rome until the death'of Eugenius. Then as the most famous of all the painters of Italy, he was called to decorate the chapel of the vast basilica of Orvieto, and according to the terms of the contract, was to have two hundred ducats of gold, of the value of seven pounds each, for every season of four months that he should devote to the work. He came but once, and of his chosen subject, the Last Judgment, painted only the Christ and the choir of prophets. The maj- estic figure of Christ, holding the world in one hand, and curbing the reprobate with the other, was the source of Michael Angelo's inspiration in his Christ at the Sistine chapel. Fra Angelico returned to Rome to execute some commissions for the new Pope, Nicholas, and there he died at the age of sixty-eight, having painted to the end of his life with all the freshness of youth. Angelico was the embodiment of that devotion of art to the service of religion which characterized the Middle Ages. His pictures were painted as aids to devotion, and their place is in the dim shrines of churches, and not the garish light of museums to which most of them have been removed. Other artists excel him in science, in elegance, and in nat- ural beauty, but none are kis superiors in holiness, purity and spiritual beauty. He was the last of the men who painted kneeling, whose pictures were unsigned and rarely paid for, and were concerned with the sole object of lead- ing the thoughts of men and women towards the sufterings and the glory of the Saviour and His saints. His earlier ONE DAY IN FLORENCE. 19 works are filled with exuberance, freshness, tenderness, and simplicity, as those of a later period excel in grace and noble- ness. His angels are lovely beyond description. They are indeed mystic, supernal, the highest product of imaginative spirituality. He has been called "the grand master of mysticism— the greatest painter of the Christian style." He could not argue or exhort, but he could set before the sinner the sweetest heaven that ever appeared to poetic vision, the tenderest friendly angels, the gentlest and loveU- est of virgin mothers. He appealed to God for inspiration, and so would alter nothing, the will of God being that it should be as it was. But his gift had its limitations. He could not adequately represent scenes of confusion, terror and evil. The dev- ils in his pictures are by no means formidable, and the con- demned souls appear like naughty children rather than beings lost forever. The infinite purity of his seraphs is not endowed with power, and their unsearchable love could never result in helpfulness. He was as incapable of under- standing evil as a child. His atmosphere was innocence, holiness and purity. To pure and holy persons he could give a noble and beautiful individuality ; but absolute ugli- ness, grotesque and unreal, was all the notion he had of the wicked. He could not paint agony, or passion, or suffer- ing. But he could rise above the prejudice of the cloister and deal out impartial justice, as may be seen in his picture of the Last Judgment, where several Cardinals and a great throng of monks are in the hands of the exultant devils who 20 FRATERNITY PAPERS. are dragging them pell-mell towards the seven circles of hell. As an artist he was pure, serene and spiritual ; as a man he was simple, humble, loving and patient. But our guide moved on, as guides are apt to do. He gave us little time to bring back the past of this still and silent attic, but since our entrance centuries had rolled over us. We passed through another long corridor. We came to a corner cell, small, and without even one of Angelico's angels to glorify it. A bust stood on the wall. "Savona- rola," said the guide. We were in the presence of the high-hearted monk who undertook the hopeless task of reforming the church, when at its worst. This was the cell to which he retired to pray, and to which, since his time, many a pilgrimage has been made. The rugged face looking down upon us from the Avail gave us the sense of an actual presence. Here, too, were his writings, showing a fine and dehcate hand. We seemed to see him at his work, and our thoughts went back to that strange episode in the history of Florence, when it was governed by a monk, and stood up single-handed against the world, the Pope and the Devil. This was the scene of his labors, his triumphs and his fall. Strange contrast between the painter and the prophet, both of whom are so closely associated with this historic building — the one so powerful and so full of beauty, the other so stormy, and so tragic in its end. Savonarola made quick work of life. His active career, so crowded with events, is all comprised within little more than twenty years. Born in Ferrara, in 1452, we see him ONE DAY IN FLORENCE. 21 first a sad and silent youth, given to the utterance of strong emotions, in solitary places. He was laboring then with the burden of his life. Yet this solitary youth had his dream of love, from which he was rudely awakened, by the scornful rejection of his suit. His family was not suf- ficiently exalted to mate with that of Strozzi. He sought the lover's relief in poetry, one hope remaining to him still, he says : "I cannot let it leave me like the rest — That in that other life, the best, Well will be known which soul most highly springs, And which to noblest flight uplifts its wings." This was the key-note of his life. He had an ever-abiding faith in the ultimate triumph of all that is best and purest in this life. He came upon the stage of action in a dark and troubled time. "He could not endure," he says, "the enormous wickedness of the blinded people of Italy." So when he was twenty-three we see him secretly and silently, — that he might not pain his mother's heart with the scene of parting, — leaving his father's house on a holiday, when all the family were gone out to witness the gay doings of the time, and taking his lonely way across the sunny plain to Bologna, where he presented himself at the convent of St. Dominic. The reasoa he gave to his father in the let- ter left behind him was, "the great misery of the world, the iniquities of men." Here he spends seven years in quiet study, occasionally preaching in his native Ferrara, and other cities of Lom- bardy, until the fame of his eloquence calls him to Flor- 22 FRATERNITY PAPERS. ence. Public expectation, there, however, is sadly disap- pointed by the diminutive size of the new preacher, his awkward gestures, violence of manner, and harsh accents. Florence is nothing if not critical. It first ridicules and then neglects him. He turns his back upon the city and goes out to preach among the hills. At Reggio, young Pico, friend and flatterer of the magnificent Lorenzo, hears him and is charmed. At his solicitation Lorenzo orders Savonarola back into Florence — him, the only, man who can withstand his blandishments, and dares to stand face to face with him and tell him he has done wrong. So he comes here to San Marco, first as reader, after- wards as Prior of the Convent. This is in 1489. The angehcal painter has been dead these thirty years, and more. The good Archbishop, Antonino, has glided peace- fully out of the world, in 1459. A new generation of monks is occupying the cells which the one had painted, and the other sanctified by his presence. Neither is Flor- ence the same. Spell-bound under the sway of Lorenzo de Medici, it has lost at once its freedom and its religion. It is as near a pagan city as it is possible for its rulers to make it. Society was never more dissolute, more selfish, or utterly deprived of high aims, than now, — full of de- bauchery, corruption, cruelty, the violation of oaths, the betraying of trusts, caring for nothing but pleasure. Is it any wonder that Savonarola — he who has ever a burning indignation at the sight of wrong, who has a fervent behef in an unseen justice that will put an end to the wrong — is ONE BAY IN FLORENCE. 23 it any wonder that his ardent, powerful nature is stirred to its utmost depths^ that he thunders from the pulpit and announces that the wicked shall be scourged. All the city flocks to hear him now. The Duomo is piled high with seats to accommodate the crowds. Some come to scoff, but many more to pray. Savonarola preaches incessantly, thundering with terrible vehemence against the sins and corruptions of both court and people, and threat- ening the most fearful penalties. In vain the Medici seek to propitiate him with gifts ; he will not hold his peace. In 1492 Lorenzo dies, and his son Peter is kicked out by the people, who can tolerate a strong tyrant, but not a weak one. Charles VIII of France comes sweeping down over the Alps to take possession of Naples, and Savonarola welcomes him as at once a deliverer and a scourge. He shall deliver the city ; he shall scourge the wicked. Charles is astonished to find himself a messenger of God, and Flor- ence considers itself well rid of him, at the end of ten days. But at least he has enabled it to keep the hated Peter at a distance. And this is Savonarola's opportunity. He becomes a political as well as a religious leader, vindicates the rights of the Republic against foreign aggressions, and gives the State a new constitution, partly theocratic and partly popular. '*If you wish to have a good government," he says, "it must be derived from God." And so he stands up in the Duomo, and proposes those laws which he feels come to him direct from heaven. In good time, in the full plenitude of democratic freedom, the Signory of 24 FRATEBNITT PAPERS. eight, proposes them as if emanating from themselves, the Council of eighty discusses them, and then the Great Council, composed of some thousands of selected citizens, serving by turn, in three sections, silently votes upon them. Curious reversal of our parliamentary customs — the laws come down instead of going up, and the Great Council in which they are finally acted upon, has no voice, but only a vote. It may not discuss, but it may accept or reject. What a reformed Congress that would be in which this rule were enforced. To Savonarola this is the reign of God, and wise and noble laws are passed under it. He employs his power for no end but the benefit of the people. He has no thought of himself. He turns the Carnival, which has been a Saturnalia of license, into a holocaust of earthly vanities. He converts the stone-throwing gamins of the streets into white-robed messengers of reform, who -go about demanding the sacrifice of personal ornaments, of the women's false hair, of tapestries and brocades of immod- est design, of pictures and sculptures held too likely to in- cite vice, of dice and playing cards; perhaps some copies of the poets get thrown in, perhaps some precious w^orks of art — but Savonarola is no enemy of art, he wishes only to destroy all that is false, and evil, and impure. These are piled high in the great square of the Signoria, in front of the old Palace — a new sort of bonfire, — the burn- ing of vanities. This sort of rule goes on for two years. It could not ONE DAY IN FLORENCE. 25 last longer. Such an heroic episode in history can but be brief. It is a reaction too extreme to endure. Evil is still strong in the world. The Florentines have not all be- come Puritans. The Medicians plot for the return of Peter. The dissolute nobles who hate the Medici, hate still more the Puritannic rule of Savonarola. There are scoffers among the people. Young Nicholas Machiavelli is already beginning to earn the infamous reputation which justly attaches to his name, by the clever wickedness of his talk. It is not anything that he does that makes this man detestable ; it is what he pronounces it right to do. He is the antithesis of Savonarola. The one speaks with the voice of God ; the other of the devil. The one pro- claims the decrees of Divine order, purity and right ; the other scientifically formulates the principles of evil. The one believes in an unseen Purity to which lying and un- cleanness are abominations ; the other sees no beauty in virtue, and recognizes no duty. The one is held by many to be an impostor and a cheat ; the other is esteemed as an honorable citizen. But worse than all, Rodrigo Borgia, a lustful, greedy, lying, and murderous old man, is Pope of Rome, head of the Christian Church. When this embodiment of evil hears of the preaching monk, he thinks to silence him with a Cardinal's hat. Savonarola replies, "I want no red hat, but one reddened by my own blood, the hat given to the saints." The astounded Pope can only mutter, "Let me hear no more of this man, good or bad." But Savonarola 26 FRATERNITY PAPERS. will be heard, and then the Pope forbids him to preach. Silenced, but not inactive, Savonarola is still a power, and the struggle between him and the Pope goes on for three years. Then comes the long threatened blow; the bolt of ex- communication is launched against him. Savonarola shuts himself up in his convent, but he cannot rest under this wrong. He is not a Luther to rise up against the author- ity of the church. But this man is not the true Pope at all ; he is a monstrous usurper and pretender, having no real authority over the consciences oF the faithful. Being a vicious unbeliever, elected by corruption and governing by simony, he is not rightfully Pope and should be deposed. Savonarola is capable of great enterprise ; he has far- reaching plans. He will bring about a General Council of the church, and overthrow this wicked Pope. To this end he writes letters to the king of France ; they are intercepted by his enemies and sent to Pope Alexander, and from this hour there is no help nor hope for him. He has still a circle of true followers, men of religious minds and pure hearts, but the mass are falling away from him. To a great multitude who have profited by his political wisdom, his prophetic threatenings are folly, his purity distasteful, his piety superstition. He is no longer a pohtical leader ; he is but the head of a religious party, the Piagnoiii, the Puritans. Spite of the Pope he preaches once more in the Duomo, and then, driven by the rising storm of opposition, he proposes the daring ex- periment of a solemn appeal to heaven. ONE DAY IN FLORENCE. 27 In this very square of St. Mark, now so still in the summer sunshine, a strange spectacle is seen on a spring morning four hundred years ago. The square is filled with many thousands of men, through whom comes the procession of monks, surrounding their prophet. He is about to appeal to Heaven to attest his work. In the presence of the awed and silent multitude, he prays, "Lord, if I have not wrought in sincerity of soul, if my word Cometh not from thee, strike me in this moment with thy thunder, and let the fires of thy wrath enclose me. " The kneeling multitude pray with him, and then all are silent, as the prophet stands above them, his rugged and homely, but inspired countenance raised to heaven, his pyx in his hands. And no fire comes from the blue Italian sky — shining over them, in that serene calm of nature which stupifies with its tranquility the eager, restless soul, looking in vain for an answering and visible God. When the solemn half hour is done the prophet and his monks go back, chanting a Te Beum, to their cloister. But this is but a negative test. It proves nothing, but it gives his adversaries, the Franciscans, the opportunity to entrap him with a positive trial. It is easy to ask God to strike him, if false, with fire from heaven, but can he walk through the fire and come out unscathed? The Franciscans will put him to this test that, through its fail- ure, he may be delivered over to his enemies. It is not himself, however, who is at first challenged, but 28 FRATERNITY PAPERS. his devoted brother and retainer, Fra Domenico, a simple hero of unfaltering faith, who accepts the challenge with delighted eagerness. But Savonarola, with something of inconsistency, refuses this ordeal. Perhaps he sees it is but a trap ; at any rate he gives good reasons for declining it. He has too many great works in hand to lose his time in such miserable contests ; when his enemies have answered his arguments in respect to the excommunication, it will be time enough to prove its justice by fire. But his enemies will not listen, and even his own followers demand the test. Has he not prophecied, has he not promised miracles ; now let him be tried by the ordeal of fire. Fra Domenico never falters ; he will walk through the fire with the Franciscan, never doubting that he will come through unscathed. So with immense preparation, and great eagerness of the people, the ordeal by fire is appointed to take place on the 7th of April, the Friday before Palm Sunday. Strange scene, even for the fifteenth century. On the one hand, scoffing unbelief in all things divine ; on the other unfal- tering faith that will walk through fire. All the city pours into the great Square of the Signoria on chat momentous morning. There it is — the same Square we see to-day, with the massive old Palace, the government Palace — old even then — looking down upon it, and opposite, the Loggia, or open Portico of Orcagna, now a gallery of Art, then, for the day, divided into two parts, and allotted to the rival convents, San Marco having one side, and the Franciscans the other. ONE DAT IN FLORENCE. 29 The Square is alive with human beings, clinging to the very walls. The people are at last to be gratified with a miracle — or at least with a great and surpassing spectacle— perhaps the humiUation of the hated monk. His enemies are all there— five hundred of them armed, under the com- mand of Dolfo Spini, the leader of the Wicked Companions, the dissolute nobility who hate Savonarola. The Signory, too, who are also his enemies, have five hundred armed men to preserve order ; even Savonarola has his troops, three hundred armed Piagnoni, under the leadership of Salviati, pledged to protect their leader against his enemies. And now the people are impatient for the spectacle. There before their eyes is the long platform, eight feet broad and twenty yards long, heaped high on either side with dry fuel, through which the champions are to walk when all aflame. When will they appear ? Domenico, in his flame-colored cope, is at his post in the Loggia, kneel- ing before the altar awaiting his summons. But the Fran- ciscan champion remains within the old Palace, from which he does not mean to come out. He resorts to excuses and subterfuges. How does he know that Savonarola will not resort to magic. He finds fault with Domenico's flame- colored cope, and the stout-hearted monk at once throws it off; then with his Dominican habit, which may be enchanted against the fire, and he immediately exchanges that for the dress of another. So the day goes on in endless and vain struggle. The people grow impatient ; they are wearied with cling- 30 FRATERNITY PAPERS. ing to walls and pillars, thej are wet to the skin by a pass- ing thunder-storm. They do not understand the causes of delay. Why does not Savonarola go on with the ordeal ? There are taunts and scoffings. At last, as the day wanes, the Signory, finding it impossible to screw up their cham- pion to the sticking point, put a stop to the ordeal alto- gether, and send word to Savonarola to depart. He re- monstrates, but in vain. Then it is clearly seen that his enemies sought no other miracle than the death of Savon- arola. They are eager to seize him now that the disap- pointed rabble will be on their side. The Signory, for very shame, cannot refuse him the protection of their five hun- dred troops, and it is all they and the three hundred armed Piagnoni can do to protect him from the mob as the strange procession moves back to San Marco. The very Piagnoni are disappointed and down-hearted. The Wicked Com- panions are wild with the thought of losing their opportun- ity ; the baser multitude maddened by the loss of the ex- pected miracle, surge around the returning band like an angry sea. Even Savonarola's former friends join the cry. There is a great and terrible revulsion of feehng in Flor- ence. The prophet has fallen, fallen from his high estate. He who had once been king, and more than king, in Flor- ence, has been hooted through the streets and preserved with difficulty from the disappointed mob. What remains is a sad tale, to be briefly told. Next day San Marco is attacked by the mob. A fight goes on for a time. Savonarola surrenders himself to the Signory. ONE DAY IN FLORENCE. 31 The Pope demands him as a sacrifice to his vengeance, but thrifty Florence drives a bargain with him for the priv- ilege of hanging and burning its own prophet on its own piazza. He is tortured, tried and condemned by two Papal Commissaries. And then in the same Square, in the pres- ence of the same crowd that had come to see him perform a miracle, he is stripped of his priestly robes, pronounced a heretic and a schismatic, hanged to a gibbet, and his body burned before the eyes of the multitude. Here is the very scene before us on the walls of his cell, a quaint old picture of the great fire, like an immense grid- iron, at the door of the old Palace, in the great Square. It is the same Palace we see to-day, yet how strange and far-away it seems, looking older than it now does, as if we were looking down the ages instead of up to their begin- ning. It was two hundred years old then ; it is six hun- dred years old now ; to recount the scenes it has witnessed would be to relate the historj'' of Florence. What shall we say of Savonarola, preacher, prophet and reformer ? That he was an ardent, power-loving soul, not untouched with fanaticism, but believing in great and good ends, and longing to achieve those ends by the exertion of his own strong will — a mind possessed by a never silent hunger after purity and simplicity, yet caught in a tangle of egotistic demands, and difficult outward conditions that made simplicity impossible. The one man that for three years had the courage to stand up against that impersona- tion of medieval crime and corruption. Pope Alexander 32 FRATERNITY PAPERS. Sixth, and who would have organized a general revolt against the corruption of his times. His reign in Florence was of too high purpose to be of long continuance, but so long as it lasted, immorality and luxury were out of fashion, the vileness which calls itself pleasure was paralyzed, and immodesty and impurity scared into corners out of sight. The Millenium itself must have arrived had that great voice continued dominant, as it was for a time. Power rose against him, not because of his sins, not because of his greatness, not because he sought to deceive the world, but because he sought to make it noble. The guide moves on, and the curtain falls on Savonarola. But there are other great memories, it seems, preserved in San Marco. We come next to a long, narrow, sunken chamber, into which we descend by a flight of stairs lead- ing down from the door opening into it. The high walls on both sides are draped with banners, splendid banners of heavy silk, superb in colors, with long fringes of gold depending from them. They line the walls like tapestry. At the far end of the hall, looking down between these two lines of banners, is a bust. It is that of Dante Aligh- ieri, and these are the banners borne by the representa- tives of the cities of Italy on the occasion of the celebra- tion of the sixth centennial anniversary of his birthday, in the year 1865. Having served their purpose in the grand procession they were presented to the city of Florence, and are here preserved in the national museum of St. Mark. Thus three great names of Florence are brought together in this historical building. ONE DAT IN FLORENCE. 33 The name of Dante carries us back two centuries earlier than San Marco itself. It is six hundred years since he walked the earth, a wanderer and an exile, in the evil days of Guelphs and Ghibelhnes. Florence was then in the throes of that fierce struggle of the Papacy with the empire, which while it gave the ItaUan cities a quasi-independence armed them against each other. Nay, more, divided the citizens of each into factions habituated to rancorous party strife involving exile and proscription. The bare idea of genuine Uberty never entered into a society where power was only desired as an instrument of oppression, and where commonwealths and individuals alike regarded license to slay or prosecute as the highest prerogative of authority. The early annals of Florence, like those of all her sister municipaUties, are written in blood, for the first vivifying spirit that animated these little political units was an in- stinct of mutual destruction. The internecine war revealed by the microscope among the denizens of a drop of water, is not more unreasoning and ferocious than the series of reciprocal aggressions with which the Italian repubhcs made their debut in history. There was not even a con- ception of such a thing as national life, much less of na- tional unity. The desire of all parties was to organize anarchy, in which they could pursue the small local inter- ests of the separate towns to the sacrifice of any care for the common good of Italy. It is the glory of Dante that his far-reaching vision went out beyond all this disorder, and rested on the idea of a 34 FRATERNITY PAPERS. comprehensive and ordevlj political system. His treatise on Monarchy is a cry for political unity, for a common union for the common good, for orderly subordination to righteous laws. ''0 miserable race of men," he says, "by how many storms and shipwrecks, by how many destruc- tions must you be overwhelmed, while like a many-headed monster you pull in different ways. Behold how good and joyful a thing it is, brethren, to dwell together in unity." How slow are the movements of society. How long it has taken Italy to see this good, foretold by her great poet, who was prophet as well. Six centuries have rolled away, and it is only to-day that we see Italy united, and the long warring cities come together, as parts of a great whole, to do homage to his memory by hanging these banners on the wall. They testify to his desire for a national union which is at last accomplished. Dante fell a victim to the factions of his time. There is something very pitiful in his long exile. We can scarcely conceive the hardship of it. To be driven out from his native city was to become an outcast and a wanderer, among alien peoples, having nothing in common with him, with no career possible to him, a supplicant at the courts of petty princes who could not even grasp his ideas of national unity, sunk as they were in petty schemes for their own aggrandizement. Yet, that Dante preserved his independent spirit through all this misery is seen in that noble letter in which he refuses the unsener- ous offer of a recall to Florence, if he would submit to a ONE DAY IN FLORENCE. 35 short imprisonment and do public penance, "This is no way of return to my country. If Florence cannot be entered in an honorable way I will never enter it. What, are not the sun and the stars to be seen in every land? Shall I not be able in every part of heaven to meditate sweet truth, unless I first make myself inglorious, nay, ignominious to my people and my country ? Bread at least will never fail me." True to this noble resolve, Dante never saw fair Flor- ence again, and died in exile. We lament his hard fate, yet doubtless all the world has been the gainer by it. Dante in Florence would no doubt have become a great name in Florentine literature ; but he never would have written the Divine Comedy. It was adversity that brought him face to face with the realities of things ; from the furnace of afilictions his beliefs and thoughts came out refined and purified. The Divine Comedy was the work of the last years of his life, after he had enjoyed, and labored, and suffered and thought. Into it he put not only the mystery of the world's being, but his own life, taking up into himself the world that then was, and re- producing it with such cosmopolitan truth to human nature, and to his own individuality, as to reduce all contemporary history to a mere comment on his vision. It is real with the realism of his age ; it is symbolical with a symbolism all its own, it is at once the apotheosis of woman, and the mirror of the middle ages. We went out from San Marco feeling that we had been 36 FRATERNITY PAPERS. communing with a past still living in the present. The poet, the painter, and the preacher, still live in Florence. History seems nowhere so vivid as in this city, where the stones of the old palaces testify with mute eloquence to the scenes they have witnessed, where every street has a mem- ory, and every house is a monument. Even the Ponte Vecchio, the old bridge, the jeweller's bridge, across which runs the covered gallery connecting the Ufizzi Gallery on one side of the Arno with the Pitti Palace on the other, has its story to tell, so well interpreted by our own poet Longfellow : "Thaddeo Gaddi built me. I am old, Five centuries old. I plant my foot of stone Upon the Arno, as St. Michael's own Was planted on the dragon. Fold by fold Beneath me, as it struggles, I behold Its glistening scales. Twice has it overthrown My kindred and my comjianions. Me alone It moveth not, but is by me controlled. I can remember when the Medici Were driven from Florence; longer still ago The final wars of Ghibelline and Guelph. Florence adorns me with her jewelry. And when 1 think that Michael Angelo Hath leaned on me I glory in myself." The whole city glories in Michael Angelo and to-day he is a living presence there. How is the fact thus kept alive, great memories preserved, great deeds commemor- ated, and ever held in mind as examples to be emulated by the generation of to-day ? By the all pervading influence of art. Everywhere in public squares, in Loggias and niches stand the statues of the mighty dead ; everywhere their monuments are built, everywhere their portraits hang upon the wall. The boys in the streets know them ; their memory is ever present. THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE. I have oftened wondered why some poet has not done for the house what Longfellow has done for the ship. The latter is undoubtedly the more picturesque object of the two, and has larger suggestions of possible perils and adventures, but how much more closely is the former associated with all the events of human life,— "Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears!" • How many hopes go with the laying of the foundation stones ; how many plans for the future rise with the walls ; what tastes and ambitions are gratified in the stately structure ; what thoughts of festivity, of hospitahty, of family ties, of long years of happy life cluster around it. How the bright recollections of childhood go back to the early home in the clouded years of after life. Many can say with Tom Hood — 'I remember, I remember, The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn: He never came a wink too soon, Nor brought too long a day; But now I often wish the night Had borne my breath away." 38 FRATERNITY PAPERS. What tender thoughts are associated with the rooms in which our children have been born, in which we ha^e seen them married and go out from us into the world, and in which some loved one has passed awaj. Longfellow himself tells us that — "All houses wherein men have lived and died Are haunted houses. Through the open door The harmless phantoms on their errands glide, With feet that make no sound upon the floor." We go back to the homes of our youth with large recol- lections of their size and splendor, born of childish wonder and inexperience of the world, and are disappointed to find them so small and mean. Is this narrow flight the grand staircase down which we rode on the rail, and are those contracted rooms the apartments which to our young eyes seemed so grand and spacious. This is not the house we knew when life was young ; it has fallen from its high estate, but in our recollections it still lives with all the glamour of youth about it. So does our budding life glorify the house. When inquiry was made of the ancient dame who occu- pies a portion of the old mansion, still standing at the foot of Hancock street, in the city of Portland, if that was the house in which Longfellow was born, she replied, "0 yes, Mr. Longfellow has been here and walked through all the rooms." Doubtless as the poet looked around upon those once familiar apartments his own lines came to mind : — THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE. 39 •'The stranger at my fireside cannot see The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear; He but perceives what is; while unto me All that has been is visible and clear." He remembered the old house in all its glory, but alas ! the old house had forgotten him. The occupant of the shop in the basement, when the same inquiry was put to him, replied, "Who the devil is Longfellow ? " It is perhaps the saddest thing about the house that it comes to know us no more forever. We build for those who come after us, and the stranger improves what we have planned. The house outlasts many generations, but none but the builder, who has put into it a part of his life, can truly call it his. The later comers " — have no title deeds to house or lands; Owners and occupants of earlier dates, From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands, And hold in mortmain still their old estates." There is a human interest in the biography of an old house. It is the story of generations which "come like shadows, so depart ;" of famihes which burgeoned and blossomed, and filled the old rooms with life and laughter, and grew up to maturity and strength, and spread wide their branches, and struck their roots deep into the soil, and seemed to hold possession forevermore, and then fell away limb by limb, and were shattered by the blasts of adversity, and sank into forgetfulness and sheer oblivion, and w^ere succeeded by others who know them not, who in their turn flourished and decayed, and were alike forgotten. Can we 40 FRATERNITY PAPERS. wonder that men believe in haunted houses ! Can so much life have come and gone and left no impress here ? "Impalpable impressions on the air, A sense of something moving to and fro?" If the departed ever do return to earthly scenes, to what spot would they be so attracted as to that around which has centered all their ties of home ? And yet, — and yet — perhaps, with the old shell of the body they cast off all earthly ties, and out-worn associations, and soar to wider realms and brighter mansions. Its our fond hearts that people their old homes with shades of the departed. There is something pathetic in the story of an old house whose glory has departed, that has survived all its great- ness, sunk into dilapidation and decay, a melancholy wreck, emblematic of the fallen fortunes of its once proud occu- pants. Think of the stately mansion that not long after the close of the Revolution rose on the banks of the St. George's river, -in Thomaston. See the hearty and hospitable Gen. Knox, bringing thither his aristocratic lady, and setting up his house-keeping in great state. What stories are told of the grand style of living in vogue at the mansion ! Twenty sheep consumed in a week ; oxen roasted whole before the immense fire-places ; twenty saddle-horses in the stable ; the whole tribe of Penobscot Indians feasting on the Gen- eral's bounty for weeks together ; distinguished foreigners entertained as «i;uests, and all the hi«i;h life and extra va- THE BUILDING OF THE U'OUSE, 41 gant outlay of prosperous years. And then the inevitable reverse of the picture ; the failure of unconsidered enter- prises, the slipping away, Httle by little, of the great estate, and the hero of so many battle-fields dying at last from swallowing a chicken-bone. His proud lady survives to see the fickleness of fortune, and then is laid by her husband's side. In 1837 "Montpelier" is a "ruinous old mansion, with some grandeur of architecture," occupied by the youngest daughter of Gen. Knox, who contrives to keep up the family pride on six hundred a year. In 1854 the last child of Knox dies, and the heirs sell the house and furniture by auction. The relics of family greatness are dispersed among families of the town, and the mansion is left to neg- lect and decay. In 1860 it is a tenement house, occupied by the families of ship-builders, and is fast crumbling into ruins. The piazzas are gone, the balconies have disappear- ed, the American eagle which once guarded the entrance to the spacious grounds has folded his wings and fallen from his perch; the entrance itself has become a street, hned with rows of houses, the front yard, which sloped green to the water's edge, has been transformed from a smooth lawn into a ship-yard, filled with piles of timber and the noise of busy workmen. A few years later the tumbling mansion is abandoned by its tenants. The large oval reception room where Louis Phillippe, Talleyrand and other distin- guished guests had been welcomed, is a carpenter's shop. An air of sadness pervades the rooms where once thronged 42 FRATERNITY PAPERS. brilliant assemblies. Up and down tbe long wide stair-cases troop shadows of the past. It is like "some banquet hall deserted." Then comes, last scene of all, the great lev eller of the age, and what is left of Montpelier is pulled down to make way for the Knox and Lincoln Railroad and the farm-house is converted into a station-house. Thus the shrill whistle of the engine drowns the voices of the past. The building instinct is strong in man, and of early de- velopment. Little children hollow out houses in the sand, and build castles of blocks and stones. What boy has not labored hard and long at the construction of a bower in the woods, or a shanty in the back-yard — so great a joy while in the building, so useless and unsatisfying when completed. My boy has constructed a castle in the corner of the fence. the nails and pounded thumbs that have gone into the making of it. Its greatest triumph and treasure is a fire- place of his own invention. Said he to me with great fervor, "the idea came into my mind when I was in school and I could'nt rest until I got free." lie rushed home. A dozen bricks and three sections of drain-pipe, all happily lying to his hand, and there were your fii'c-place and your chimney. The thing was done — the happy thought was realized. But alas ! there is a draw-back to every earthly bliss, and now his greatest sorrow is that his mother won't let him build a lire in this triumph of inventive genius ! "What is home without a mother ?" What is a house with- out a fire? Do not all the household gods hover around the hearth-stone — or rather, did they not before they were ban- ished by the introduction of stoves and furnaces ? THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE. 43 Every young man comes to a time when he has thoughts of makmg himself a home. The building of the house be- comes then a matter of all-absorbing interest to him — es- pecially when there is another to share it with him. It is a fine thing to see the young man and .maiden planning their future home. I once saw this going on opposite my own door. The young man was w^isely building his house before his marriage that it might be ready on the wedding day. As the walls went up, and the floors were laid, and the enclosed space began to take the shape of habitable rooms, his interest in the work grew too strong to be un- shared. He brought the dainty maiden, all smiles and blushes, to see the realization of their hopes and plans. It was like a poem to see these two turtle doves building their nest. At last the walls were up, the roof was on, the plumb- ing was done, and then came a rainy day. Then the young man saw the first movement of the machinery of household life. The rain fell upon the roof, it was gathered by the conductors, it ran through the pipes, it dashed into the cis- tern. What music to his ears ! The home was actually in runnins order. It was too o;reat a consummation to be enjoyed unshared. He rushed away in the rain. Pres- ently we saw him returning with his betrothed, umbrellaed and waterproofed, and together they enjoyed the delight- ful spectacle of the rain, gathered upon their own roof, running into their own cistern. The young man is now a portly citizen ; the fair maiden is a blooming matron ; they have outgrown the early home, and have built a larger and 44 FRATERNITY PAPERS. a fairer mansion, but I doubt if any of their after experi- ences of the joys of domestic hfe has given them a purer pleasure than that first realization of the building of the house. The building instinct in woman concerns itself chiefly with ornamentation and the details of household convenien- ces. Man builds the house but woman gives it the charm of home. Her taste beautifies and adorns it, placing a pic- ture here, a bracket there, harmonizing colors, and so ar- ranging furniture as to make it most effective. And then there is no end to the closets she can contrive, the conven- iences she demands. Her feminine ingenuity is at times su- perior to masculine planning. I once knew a lady whose new house pleased her well with the single exception that it had no back stairs. She must have back stairs. But the architect declared that the plan did not admit of them, there was no space for them in the place where she wanted them. She insisted, he protested. She seized the plans, set her woman's wits at work, and through turns and around angles, in unconsidered scraps of space, contrived her staircase, without altering the original plan. The archi- tect owned himself beaten at his own trade. In some men the instinct of building runs to seed. It is ever propagating itself, ever renewing without completing. This is a trait of the nomadic Yankee, ever on the move. He builds a house — or rather throws together a quantity of boards and timbers — moves in, and the next morning puts up a notice on the outer gate-post, "This house for sale.'* THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE. 45 He never settles down, but is always building and moving. As the existence of ante-diluvial animals is revealed by their fossilized foot-prints on the ancient sea-beaches, so the lives of some men may be traced by the houses they have built. I knew a man whose business it was to build houses, but who was never content to let a new one go out of his hands without first inhabiting it himself — as though a tailor should insist on wearing for a week or two every new coat he made before parting with it to a customer. The habit was hard on his wife. She had no sooner got one house well broken in than another was thrown on her hands. She bore up bravely for a long time, but excess of novelty is as weari- some as too much monotony, and at 4ast the poor woman succumbed — she died of too much new house. Everything enters into the planning of a house — all the needs of humanity, all the wants of a family, all the con- veniences of life, all the improvements of the age, all the demands of health, refinement and luxury. But most men build their houses first and plan them afterwards. Houses so built are ever assuming new forms — an L thrown out here, a bay-window there, the underpinning raised, a story added, a new French roof clapped on, one room divided into two, two rooms knocked into one, a wardrobe here and a closet there, until the old house no longer knows itself, and is a wonder to all who knew it. Where there was no plan at first no consistent plan can come from alter- ations, but it is still worse where an original plan is thrown into confusion by after adaptation to other uses. 46 FRATERNITY PAPERS. The worst instance of this kind I ever saw was in the hotel at Stresa, on Lake Maggiore. It had been a mon- astery built around a central court yard, which was open to the heavens. But to meet the increasing demands of tourists the thrifty proprietors had built up in this inner space a labyrinth of rooms in the intricate passages be- tween which one was in danger of being as much immured and lost to the world, as were the monks who inhabited the original edifice. An Englishman who knew the building in its first estate, and was attracted to it by its quaint, old- time arrangement, and the novelty of inhabiting a former abode of monks, told me that on returning to it after the alterations were made, he found the charm was gone. A well planned house should meet the needs of all man's forces and faculties, physical, social, mental and moral. The law of correspondences here comes into play. Con- trivances for ventilation answer to the needs of the lungs, the kitchen to the demands of the digestive organs, the living room to the family ties, the parlor to social inter- course, the library to the intellectual faculties, the cham- ber to the privacy, meditation and devotion which enter into all well-ordered lives, and the attic to the recollec- tions, associations and relics of the past. But how dispro- portioned are the parts of most houses one sees. Some are all kitchen, where perpetual roasting and baking and gormandizing go on, and everything is subordinated to the grosser needs of the flesh. Others starve the kitchen that the parlors may shine. In others again social life is sac- THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE, 47 rificed to the preservation of formal neatness and order, and the parlor becomes the abode of gloom, rather than of life and sociability. In many the library is reduced to a shelf, and the mind is starved that the body may be gor- geously apparelled, while in a few instances intellect runs away with the house, as in the case of Rufus Choate, whose library overflowed its apartments, invading parlor, sitting- room, and stairway, prevailing over all housewifely remon- strances, filling the whole house, crowding the owner out of it into his grave. Henry Cavendish, the eccentric English philosopher, furnishes another instance of overgrown intellectuality, but he managed better than Choate. When his library crowded him out of one house he took another. He lived in London in one street, and had another house in another street devoted exclusively to his books. It is well man cannot develop on all sides to this enor- mous extent. Fancy a being possessed not only of Choate's ravenous brain, but a stomach of equal capacity, a social nature as importunate in its demands, a meditative mood as all-absorbing, each in turn demanding gratification, and compelling the building of a separate house for each, while the dismembered individuality has nowhere to dwell, turned out of house and home by an overplus of both ! In some climates, as in our Southern States, the house is a thing of fragments, the main part consisting only of parlors and sleeping-rooms, the dining room being a detached build- ing, the kitchen a separate structure beyond, the wash-room 48 FRATERNITY PAPERS. another still farther on, the spring-house and the well-room each standing by itself, and the servants' quarters still more remote. All very charming in fine weather, but not so romantic on a rainy day, when one must don water- proof and rubbers to go to the table. This scatteration of the house destroys its unity, and with that goes much of its comfort and convenience. The ideal house is comprised under one roof, and, cor- responding to a well-balanced physical and mental con- stitution, is disproportioned or defective in none of its parts. It does not even omit the attic. I have no sympathy with those modern houses which aie finished off to the very roof, and leave no lumber room as a limbo for all out-worn things. As every well constructed mind has a corner reserved apart for the recollections of the past, the associ- ations of childhood, memories of old famihar faces, and tender thoughts of departed joys, so every house should have its garret as a haven of refuge for the belongings which fall behind us as we journey on in life — a place for rummaging, for the finding of treasures of the past, old heirlooms, forgotten documents, remembrances of other days, family relics, letters of lost friendships, and out- worn articles which come to new uses in these later days. In the preservation of historic lore and family records how much the garrets of old houses have done for us all. Dusty, of course, but what is dust but the bloom of years, shaken from the wings of time ; cobwebbed, too, but what are cobwebs but the curtains of forgetfulness ? One such THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE. 49 attic I remember, the grandfather of all garrets. "Come," said mj friend, the Professor, with whom I was examining the treasures of the Essex Institute, in Salem, "let us go up into the Doctor's Den." So we ascended a long steep flight of stairs until we found ourselves in the attic of the building, and in the midst of a most rare collection of what may be called the raw material of history. It was a place to delight the heart of the mousing antiquary or compiler. There, ranged on the beams, and on a great drum-like structure in the center, were piles upon piles of old newspaper files, extending far back into the last cen- tury. Volumes, bound and unbound, heaps of pamphlets, piles of old directories — on the floor, high overhead, and extending into dim vistas of remote and dusty recesses. The records of how many forgotten deeds and eventful lives were there stored away, awaiting the reviving touch of romancer and poet ! Houses have recognizable types, like the different races of men. It is the houses more than the people that gives the general aspect to a locality. The buildings are the "larger inhabitants" and impress us more. Entering a strange city, we take our first, and perhaps most lasting impression of it from its houses. We know Boston by its swell fronts, New York by its brown stone, Philadelphia by its white marble and Portland by its detached mansions and extensive gardens. Each region has a distinctive char- acter in its dwellings, and this is heightened where the cus- tom prevails, — as it does more generally in Europe than 50 FRATERNITY PAPERS. in this country, — of building with the material under the feet of the inhabitants — the native rock. Landing in the north of Ireland I was struck with the building material used in the little town of Portrush, the rock in place, even the black trap rock of the Giant's Causeway, near at hand, entering into the ornamentation of churches. Crossing to England I found in the vicinity of Chester that the prevailing building stone was the soft red sandstone of the region, which in the Cathedral and the ancient church of St. John had been literally gnawed away by the tooth of time, great cavities eaten into it, until it has become a thing of rags and tatters. Going north into the lake region I found the buildings constructed of the cold gray slate of the neighborhood, with the edges in some instances projecting beyond the mortar, thus giving the walls the appearance of a pile of loose stones. So each district had its distinct style of building. In Maine we have scarcely begun to make use of the building material aftbrded by our native stone. I have seen but one distinctively Maine house. That is a man- sion at Brownville, Piscata(|uis County, in the region of slate quarries. It is not only shingled, but clapboarded with slate. It is a slate edifice, and so far fire-proof and comparatively indestructible. The slates are put on to the boarding of the walls w^ith only paper between. They are in the form of segments of a circle, overlapping each other, and have a very ornamental effect. The natural color of the slate is pleasing to the eye, and no paint is needed. THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE. 51 The whole establishment is elegant in appearance, and shows what can be done with native materials. The front steps are of beautiful slabs of slate ; the sinks, mantles, shelves, are of slate ; the woodwork is of brown ash, a native wood, which takes a handsome finish. But houses have not only distinctive types ; they have individuahty of character. As every man puts a part of himself into whatever he builds, it comes about that every house has a character of its own. Some dwellings you like at first sight, while there are others for which you can never get a friendly feeling. There are the square old mansions telling of the flush times of 1800 ; they have a hearty, substantial, solid aspect, which remind you of the jolly old sea captains and portly merchants of those days. There are other consumptive looking dwellings, thin in the shoulders, ill-proportioned, indicating some latent defect of character which prevents your getting on good terms with them. Some are a positive offence in their deformity or their want of harmony of color. Some houses get a bad name, and then it is all over with them. It clings like a stain on a man's character. The house has fever in it, or they say it is haunted, and then it comes to stand apart like a thing of evil. Pres- ently the windows are broken in some mysterious way, no- body knows when or how. The very stones seem to fly of themselves against such pariahs and outcasts. There are some houses so deformed, so slouching, so desperate look- ing, that one would go a mile round to avoid a glimpse of 52 FRATERNITY PAPERS. them. They seem ready for anything that is bad ; as if, when dark comes, they might shift their ground, and go in search of villainy if it did not come to them. There are others which are repulsive from their squalidness and low, disreputable ways. They seem to take kindly to dirt and dissipation. There is a house which as long ago as I can remember was known as the "Every-day House," because some wretched family was perpetually movmg in or out. It has always been an offence to decency, not so much from positive vice, as for its squalor and sheer wretchedness. Many changes have occurred around it, but there it stands to-day as disgusting as ever, dirty, dilapidated, shiftless and impudent, like a sturdy beggar by the roadside, with pipe in mouth, displaying his sores to the public gaze. Why should landlords be permitted to keep such houses standing, in all their wretchedness, perpetuating an offence against good morals ! Think of the influence for evil which the mere aspect of such a house must have exerted during the past half century ? Think of what might be done for the good of society, if all houses, including the habitations of even the devil's poor, could be well-built^ tastefully painted, and interiorly arranged with a due regard to the health and convenience of the occupants. The immorality of society is seen in its habitations. It is a relief to turn to dwellings of another class. There are some houses that are positively jolly ; that laugh at you out of their windows, that hospitably invite you in at their open door. Some squat little structures THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE. ^ 53 are really droll, and seem to wink at you In a comical way. Then there are your eminently staid and respectable, church-going houses, with a pious aspect in the closed blinds, the latched gate and the well-swept path. One sees occasionally a modest little mansion that seems to be the home of industry and contentment, and then again there is your pretentious house which thrusts out its bay- windows at you, and spreads itself on the public way. The physiognomy of houses, indeed, is as varied as that of humanity. I abominate all houses that present their gable ends to the street, and I don't care who knows it. In the city, where men of moderate means can seldom command more than thirty or forty feet front, there may be a shadow of excuse for elongating the house, and thrusting it in end- wise hke a wedge. But when a man has a spacious lot, when he goes into the suburbs and buys himself a garden spot, and then proceeds to erect a slab-sided structure, pre- senting a narrow gable end to the road, with the rooms running off one behind the other, like a string of sausages, there can be no justification of such folly. An honest house should face the world, and not stand peeping over its shoulder. One of those structures which are all sides, and no front, is but a slice of a house ; every wind blows through it, and it is a pity every wind wouldn't blow it over. Such a house presents no life to the street; the blinds are closed and the front door seldom opened. The family Hves in the rear end of the house, and the front par- 54 g FRATERNITY PAPERS. lor, which with the hall occupies the whole width of the gable-end, only shows signs of animation on great company occasions. Now one owes something to the public, and every house that has life in it should contribute to the pleasure of the passer-by. Consider the difference in the aspect of a street, say half a mile in length, all the houses on which present their gable-ends to the road, and are con- sequently closed and dismal, and another street of the same length the houses on which front the road, and give evidences of life and hospitaUty, smiling out upon the world with plants in the windows, and cheerful lights, in the evening hours. The house, like everything else, is a result of evolution. It would afford an interesting study if one could take his stand on some height above the stream of time,. and sweep at a glance over the habitations of men in all ages and all countries, observing how the main features of construction have been determined by a consideration of habits, exe- gencies of climate and situation, the nature of materials and the means of execution at the command of the build- ers. It would be seen that every style is best where it originated, and out of place elsewhere, unless the conditions are the same. Yet it would also be seen that emigrating races, like the snail, have carried their houses with them, reproducing them in distant lands under varying conditions. We should see habitations, in widely different lands, built in the same manner, by branches of the same race, separated long ages ago. The Aryan tribes can trace their houses THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE. 55 like their languages to a common origin. The chalets of Switzerland are precisely like the dwellings on the slopes of the Himalayas and vale of Cashmere. The high-pitched roofs of Northern climes, built as if to shed the snow, are in striking contrast to the flat roofs of semi-tropical regions, constructed so as to afford an airy retreat from heated apartments. In Venice, where there is no land for gardens, every man sits under his own vine and fig-tree on the roof of his own house, a ledge twenty or thirty feet in length, lined with trees and plants in pots affording him an airing at the sunset hour. The origin of races may be traced in the style of their architecture, and the history of man might be written from an inspection of his dwellings in all ages. This outer gar- ment of humanity which has covered it in all climes, taken shape from its needs, and, in reciprocal action, given direc- tion to its habits and its moralities, finds its primitive type in the subterranean cave. Man at first nestled in the bosom of his mother Earth. The Troglodytes were the infants of the race. When, by the survival of the fittest, man evolved himself out of his native cave, his first attempt at architecture doubtless took the form of huts composed of branches of trees inter- woven with grass. The Aryan race next achieved the log hut, which was succeeded by a habitation of stone. Com- ing down from the mountains into the plains we find the light, convenient bamboo houses of the Chinese, the low, wide, turtle-like tents of the Mongolian Tartars, the reed 56 FRATERNITY PAPERS. habitations of the primitive Egyptians, and also their rock dwelHngs hollowed out of the natural ledge. Then come the two-storied tents, covered with woolen stuffs, of the Aryans in the desert, the tents made of skins of beasts, the Median houses of trunks of trees, placed vertically with forked branches for posts ; the cone-like houses of the Pelasgi, constructed of branches of trees covered with reeds or twigs ; the stone-roofed houses of Syria, still standing desolate in the deserted villages of the centuries ; the light pavilions of Cathay, with copper roofs ; the lake buildings built for safety in the edge of the water, and found alike in Switzerland and in Burmah ; the Esqui- maux house of snow, hollowed out of the very element which makes a house imperative, and having the advantage over all other dwellings that it performs its own spring- cleaning, melting away when from the accumulation of filth it is no longer habitable ; the Mexican communal houses, which the Spaniards mistook for palaces ; the tree dwel- lings of Venezuela, the low stone houses of the Peruvians, covered with earth or branches of trees, and the wigwams of the North American Indians. From the various types of these primitive dwellings were evolved the palaces of Assyria, the gorgeous Hindoo palaces, and the feudal cas- tles of medieval Europe, with keep and donjon, perched on some impregnable cliff. Most of these ancient habitations have passed away like the generations of men who inhabited them. The Roman house has been preserved for us by the volcanic energy THjy BUILDING OF THE HOUSE. 57 which is so often an element of destruction. In uncovered Pompeii we see it as it existed in a later stage of Roman civilization when the family life of earlier times had been succeeded by the celibate life of a period in which mar- riage had fallen into contempt. So perfect in the old Ro- man world was the harmony between man and his habita- tion that the house was a true architectural expression of character. Striking differences may be seen between an- cient and modern domestic architecture, corresponding to similar differences in manners and customs. While the modern house looks out upon the road, and aims at out- ward display and ornament, the Roman house turned its back upon the street, and looked inward. It was built around a central court, partially open to the sky, and enclosed within its walls the arbors, ponds, fountains, and flower-beds, with which we surround our houses. These were of course on a very small scale, as were all the domestic "arrangements. We moderns like to have a good prospect from our houses, a pleasant outlook from our windows, and a chance to see the passers-by. On the other hand, the rooms of the Roman house, being lighted for the most part from the open court, presented few or no windows to the street, which became a mere pathway, lined with two blank walls. This style of house gave great privacy of domestic life, for the reason that the social life of the people was all in public. The sleeping rooms were mere closets because the Pompeiian gentlemen on arising went to the public baths to perform his ablutions. The 58 FRATERNITY PAPERS. houses contained no spacious apartments, but the amphithe- ater of the little citj of twenty or thirty thousand inhabi- tants would seat ten thousand people. The spacious forum was the public assembly room and the theaters, and basilica, or hall of justice, were the common resorts of the people. They did not meet in each other's houses, but in these pub- lic places, designed for amusement, for gossip, and the transaction of business. The same thing is seen to-day in Venice, where, of a summer evening, the people flock from their narrow contracted homes, to the space and freedom, the music, ices and conversation of the great square of St. Mark, which thus becomes the public assembly room of the city. To the Roman architecture succeeded the Gothic. The •first added only the arch to that which had gone before ; the latter was a combination of all the old forms, Egyp- tian, Grecian and Roman, and found its highest expression in the house of God. It is exceedingly interesting to trace the development of the medieval cathedral from the ancient basilica or hall of justice. The Grecian and Roman tem- ples, being designed only for the habitation of the gods and the priests, were too small for the purposes of Chris- tian worship. So the new religionists, Avhen they came into power, seized upon the court-houses, — spacious, oblong structures, designed for the accommodation of the people, who then, as now, flocked to the trial of a case of murder or divorce — and converted them into churches, though we do not read that the lawyers became high priests of the THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE. 59 new religion. The elevated tribunal of the judge became an apsis, gradually extended to a choir, to accommodate the numerous priests and singers. At first the ceiling was low and the arches semi-circular resting on heavy pillars, like those of the Norman style which we see in the chapel in the Tower of London. The pillars were short, the tow- ers heavy, the windows narrow and deep, giving a general effect of gloom, a reminiscence of the catacombs in the days of persecution. But as the Popes became triumphant, and the power of the church increased, so did the house of God lift its head in splendid and lofty aspiration. The low ceilino; became vaulted, the semi-circular arches became lofty and pointed, the short heavy columns stretched up in high and graceful clusters, rose windows appeared, and stained glass, and lofty spires. No longer was the church mournful, but varied, gay and jubilant, symbolical of a tri- umphant religion. .And as this religion absorbed all the art and all the higher life of the people, so there entered into the cathedral everything in life, in nature, in art, until it became not only the consummate flower of Chris- tian architecture, but the condensed expression of human nature in its levity as well as its solemnity, as seen in the grotesque heads of gargogles, the grinning figures which look down upon you from the Avails of choirs, and the fid- dler on the highest pinnacle of York Minster. The development of the house in this country has been of comparatively slow growth. It is only a strong and aggressive race that can impress itself upon a new conti- 60 FRATEBNJTT PAPERS. nent, and rise superior to the conditions which it finds there. The Spaniard in South America has sunk nearly to the condition of the native race, and his habitation, except in the cities is that of the aborigines. The Mexican peasant dwells in a thatched shed, with a floor of beaten earth, sim- ilar to those in which the Aztecs and Toltecs dwelt before them. The Frenchman gained a foothold in Canada onlj by fraternizing with the Indians and living pretty much as they lived. Our English ancestors who settled on the coast of Maine were for a long time mere adventurers, pioneers with no assurance of a permanent home here. They found the land not only an impenetrable wilderness, but inhabited by a race by no means wanting in intelligence and courage, whom it was not easy to supplant and impossible to convert to the wajs of civilization. What wonder then that for a time the event hung in the balance, and it was by no means certain that the white man, instead of impressing his civili- zation on the land, would not himself adopt the habits and customs of the Indians. A great many did so, and be- came strongly attached to the Indian mode of life. Many of those who were captured by the savages refused to re- turn, when they might, to the habitude and customs of civ- ilization. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that for a long time the house of the settler did not afford much better shelter than the wigwam of the savage. It was built of logs, cemented by clay. It was very, small, con- taining at the most, but two or three rooms. It had a THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE. 61 large fire-place, but no glazed windows. Its furnishing was of the simplest sort. We have an inventory, in Bourne's History of Wells and Kennebunk, of the household fur- niture of some of the principal men of the town. A table, a pewter pot, a hanger, a little mortar, a dripping-pan, and a skillet ; no crockery, tin, or glass ware ; no knives, forks, or spoons ; not a chair to sit in. Another gives a kettle, a pot and pot hooks, a pair of tongs, a pail and a pitcher, and in the chamber a bed and bedding, and some trifling articles worth about fifty cents. And this is the house of Nicholas Cole, one of the Selectmen — for many years the manager of town lands, constable, and acting in various public offices. The Indian in his wigwam had about as many appliances for cooking, eating and sleeping, as had these representatives of civilized society. An iron pot was the one grand article for household equipment. Such a legacy in a will was regarded as a great benefaction. A clam shell in a split stick answered the purpose of a spoon. But there were no knives with which to carve the pork of which they consumed an immense amount. They had no looking-glasses and no conveniences for performing their ablutions. One considerable citizen was rich in the possession of a looking-glass and a carpet, but had no chairs. The beds were made of cat-o'-nine-tails, and the pitch-knot served for the evening light. This state of things continued for more than a hundred years after the first settlement was made. As late as 1748 the assessed value of the houses in Kennebunk was but (32 FRATERNITY PAPERS. twenty dollars each, and there was not a house in the town that had a square of glass in it, all being lighted by block windows only. As late as 1798 Rev. Caleb Bradley, jour- neying from Dracut, writes in his diary of Mr. Little, of Kennebunk, that "he has one of the most beautiful minis- terial situations I ever saw ; a very convenient house ;" and yet, says Bourne, "this house of Mr. Little was a very ordinary building, without symmetry, painted red; and yet this worthy man from Dracut speaks of it as the most beautiful establishment he had ever seen, thereby clearly suo;o;estino; the fact that in all the towns through which he had passed but little progress had been made in the style and architecture of houses." The people in those days were content with very hum- ble accommodations. Many of them thought more of the house of God than of their own, and would deny them- selves comforts for an honorable seat in it. The house of one citizen who died in 1779 was appraised at thirty-three dollars, while his pew in the charch was valued at sixty- seven. It was not until the flush times of 1800, when the coun- try had recovered from the exhaustion of a seven years' war, and the wars of Napoleon had given our ships the carrying trade of the world, that our people felt them- selves able to build larger and better. Then arose those stately mansions of which a few well-preserved specimens still remain ; mansions with large square rooms, with wide halls running through from front to rear, opening out into THE BUILDING OF TUB HOUSE. (33 high fenced gardens. They had no modern miprovements, no furnaces, no gas, no Sebago, but they had wide fire- places, roaring fires, a free circulation of air, and the pump stood handy at the back-door. If they had not the con- veniences of modern mansions they escaped some of their dangers. For the house of to-day everything is provided ready made ; the old-time mansion was the scene of diverse indus- tries. Our domestic manufactures took their rise in the household. Here was spun and woven the cloth which the family wore ; here candles were run, and soap was made, and carpets were manufactured ; hither came, once a year, the busheler to do the family mending and making, and the circulating cobbler to manufacture the one pair of shoes annually allowed to each member of the family. How changed is all this ! Through the sub-division of labor, and the growth of manufactures, all things are made to hand, and the house has largely ceased to be a scene of industry. Yet so great and complicated have become the require- ments of domestic life that the labors of the household are scarcely lessened, and the burden of the housewife's cry is — " Help, help !" The house of to-day is a thing of transition and experi- ment. We run riot in architecture and adopt all styles save one of our own. We have no end of modern improve- ments, but scarce one of them is perfected. They subject us to annoyances and dangers which largely detract from their convenience. In the endeavor to shut out all dis- 64 FRATERNITY PAPERS. comfort, we have shut m disease and death. The cheer- ful open fire has given place to a dismal hole in the floor, which is nearly as apt to give forth deadly gases as com- forting warmth. The old-fashioned patriotism that was ready to strike for its altars and its fires is in danger of dying out. Strike for your stoves and your furnaces ! Not I ! Our houses are brilliantly lighted, but with explo- sive elements not yet brought into safe control. Water flows freely in all the rooms except when the pipes freeze or burst. We have a system of sewers, and they bring death into our kitchens and bed-chambers. We have got rid of filth by covering it up under our noses. The old- fashioned sink-spout that discharged upon the surface of the ground was not an agreeable object, but at least it was open to the winds of heaven which bore away its noxious odors. Now our drains are systematically ventilated into our kitchens ; we have excluded the sight and preserved the smell. We heat every room in the house, — and our houses burn down over our heads, at the rate of two or three per day. Last year the loss by fires in Maine was a million and a half of dollars, — not in great conflagra- tions, but mostly in the destruction of scattered buildings, and of the dwelling-houses the greater part were burned through faulty construction, defective flues, and a lack of those brick arches and walls which in Italy render it impos- sible for a fire to spread beyond the apartment in which it orimnates. We have made so little advance in the art of building that, not to speak of the construction of fire-proof THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE. 65 dwellings, we scarcely build a house which does not itself invite the flames and provide for their spreading when once ahght. Great part of each year's accumulated wealth is dissipated in smoke and flames and the burden of insur- ance rests heavily on the community. Our public build- ings even— our State-houses, court-houses, public halls, school-houses, churches, jails, asylums, are not constructed in accordance with the simplest requirements of hygiene. The lungs and blood of legislators are mysteriously poi- soned ; a crowded court-room is little better than the Black Hole of Calcutta, and the children in our school-houses are frequently ruined in health for Ufe by a total disregard of the most elementary sanitary principles in the warming and ventilation of school-rooms. In short, the house of to-day is in an inchoate condition ; its boasted improve- ments are simply begun and are far from completion. This brings us to the consideration of the house of the future, and of this it may be briefly said that its require- ments are— the free admission of sunhght into bed- rooms and living-rooms ; the toning down of colors on both outer and inner walls to prevent the injurious efl:ect of a glare on the eyes ; a perfect system of ventilation ; the construc- tion of water closets and drains on a system which shall render them as nearly as possible odorless ; the construc- tion of ceilings and staircases of such materials that they may be as nearly as possible fire-proof; the adaptation of durable materials and the simplifying the interior finish so as to secure complete cleanliness in apartments, halls, and 6Q FRATERNITY PAPERS. stairways, without great waste of time and labor on the part of those employed in keeping the house in order. The methods of attaining these conditions are well mapped out in Dr. Benjamin Ward Richardson's "Hjgeia — a Citj of Health." Here we have the ideal house of the future, built on principles of sanitary architecture. In the first place the walls are built of a glazed brick quite impermeable to water, and so perforated transversely as to allow the cir- culation of a constant body of air, let in by side openings in the outer wall, which air can be changed at pleasure, and if required, can be heated from the fire-grates of the house. The inside walls of the rooms are also of brick, glazed in difl:erent colors, according to the taste of the owner, and laid so neatly that the after adornment of the w^alls is considered unnecessary, and, indeed objectionable. By this means those most unhealthy parts of household accommodations, layers of mouldy paste and size, layers of poisonous paper, or layers of absorbing color stuft' or dis- temper, are entirely done away with, and the walls can be made clean at any time by the simple use of water. Then the cellar, that fertile source of disease, is abolished. There is not permitted to be one room underground. The Hving part of every house begins on the level of the street. The house is built on arched subways, affording great con- venience for conveying sewage from, and for conducting water and gas into the domicile. All pipes are conveyed along the subways and enter the house from beneath, thus giving easy access to them in case of leakage. The sew- THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE. 67 ers of the house run along the floors of the subways, and are built of bricks ; they are trapped for each house, and as the water supply is continuous, they are kept well flushed. The sewers are ventilated into tall shafts from the mains by means of a pneumatic engine. The water- closets are situated on the middle and basement floors, and the continuous water supply flushes them without dan- ger of charging the drinking water with gases emanatmg from the closet ; a danger so imminent in the method of cisterns, which supply drinking as well as flushing water. The chimneys are so constructed that the smoke passes through a gas furnace to destroy the free carbon, and is discharged colorless into the open air. The roof is level, covered with asphalt or flat tile, barricaded round with iron palisades, or covered with glass, so that there may be a garden on the top (»f each house. The kitchen is re- moved from the basement and placed immediately beneath this garden roof, on the upper floor of the house instead of the lower. By this means all odors from the preparation of food are kept out of the living rooms, and the convey- ance of hot water to the bed-rooms is made much easier ; the dust bin shaft, open to the air from the roof, has a slid- ing door opening into it on each floor to receive the dust, and extends to the bin under the basement of the house. A basket lift conveys articles of food and fuel from the entrance hall up to the kitchen. The bed-rooms are thor- oughly lighted, roomy, and ventilated. The staircase in- stead of being in the center of the house is a distinct shaft (58 FRATERNITY PAPERS. at the back. The coal bin is off the scullery, and is ven- tilated into the air through a separate shaft, which also passes into the roof. The warming and ventilation of the house is carried out on a simple plan, which does not sacri- fice the cheerfulness of the fireside. There is still the open grate in every room, but at the back of the fire-stove there is an air-box or case, which, distinct from the chim- ney, communicates by an opening Avith the outer air, and by another opening with the room. Such a house is com- plete within itself, has no need of cellars or back premises, lets in air and light in abundance, and yet shuts out all that is injurious to health. It is, of course, beyond pres- ent reach, but something similar may be hoped for in the future. Indeed, without an undue indulgence of fancy we may go even further than Dr. Richardson in eliminating from the house what still remains of domestic processes. Wa- ter and light are already supplied from common reservoirs ; why not fire and food ? Each district of a city may have its separate steam apparatus from which mains may run to every house, and the occupants will have only to turn a faucet and let on the heat. What an escape from the ex- asperating stove pipe and the wood and coal nuisances ! The kitchen must go next. Why not have a great central cookery from which meals may be sent as ordered, by sub- terranean railways to the basement of each house, and there lifted by elevators to the dining room ! No more baking, no more setting the table, no more washing dishes, no more THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE. 69 Bridget. The laundry goes of course, with the kitchen, and washing-day, when we all know "there is no comfort in the house," is forever abolished. Already the telephone carries speech from every man's house to that of his friend or neighbor. It will soon be possible to turn on the elec- tricity with the same facility with which we now turn on the water or the gas. Consider now the difference between getting up of a win- ter morning in the house of the past, or the present, and the abode of the future. In the first case there were the ashes to be raked open, with the thermometer at zero, and if no lingering spark remained, fire was to be lighted with flint and steel, the benumbed fingers fumbling about the tin- der box in the dim light of the cold gray morning. The green wood at last sputtering and snapping, there was then water to be brought from the icy well or the frozen pump^ there was wood to be split, and no end of chores to be done, and when breakfast was at last achieved one could at least say that it had been well earned. In the house of to-day we rise to look after the furnace, to sift ashes, to administer coal, to find the water pipes out of order, and to scold Bridget for spoiling the coffee, or overdoing the steak. In the house of the future all these annoyances disap- pear. No more morning chores. The heat is turned on, breakfast comes in ready cooked, and with it the newspa- per and we discuss the morning news, by telephone, with Jones over the way or Smith down the street. 70 FRATERNITY PAPERS. A great moral question now arises. What is to be the influence of the house of the future on the coming man ? Will it conduce to his elevation, or will he become corrupt- ed bj its ease and luxury? There are those who believe that human progress travels in a circle so that the highest civilization ends in barbarism. Freed from the every-day cares and duties of domestic life, the annoyances and frets of the household machinery, left in serene repose to the contemplation of the higher problems of life, will man sink into effeminacy and lose the robust virtues of the days of tinder-box and tallow candles ? Forbid it, Heaven ! No, with his perfected domicile man will enter upon a new stage of development. Old things will be cast aside, and all things will become new. Out-worn professions, made necessary only by the imperfect conditions of human exist- ence, will be cast aside with the discarded household im- plements of modern times. Perfect health being restored and established by the new sanitary conditions of the house, the medical profession will disappear with the flint and steel of other days. Sound health and freedom from do- mestic annoyances will work such perfect rectitude that the lawyer's occupation will be gone, and the legal profession will become as obsolete as the household bellows. Where there are no doctors nor lawyers there can be no need of the clergy, for there will be few dead to bury or sinners to save. Then will the newspaper, freed from the necessity of recording the evil deeds of men, become the great teacher THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE. 71 of the age, through which will be diffused all knowledge, all literature, all that is pure and of good report ; and the journalist will take his rightful position as the acknowledged "guide, philosopher and friend" of all mankind. Thus, through the perfected house, will mankind enter upon the millenium ! HUMORS OF DIALECT. Speech is the natural concomitant of human nature. It is the necessary result of the constitution of man — and especially of woman. It is an emanation from the common soul of humanity, through the organs of the body, grows with its growth, expands with' its intellect, multiphes with its surroundings — in short is but the outward expression of man's inward consciousness. Adam in the garden of Eden, took to speech as naturally as ducklings take to water, and when he named the animal kingdom he merely gave ex- pression to the impressions which the prominent attributes of each animal made upon his mind. Eve fell into a flir- tation with Satan simply from the want of somebody else to talk with — which shows how dangerous it is for married men to neglect conversation with their wives. Language being thus a thing of growth, springing spontaneously from the ground of human nature, it follows that the speech of the common people must have the native flavor of the soil in which it has its origin. Thus we find in the speech of the people, of whatever race, a vigor of life, a raciness of idiom, an aptness and originality, a picturesqueness of ex- HUMORS OF DIALECT. 73 pression, which we look for in vain in the language of refined society. Nor is its coarseness always vulgarity ; it is but the strength of the fibre which shows the vigor of its growth. As a language becomes literate it grows pedantic and for- eign ; as it is refined it fades into a pale reflection of its native strength. The euphuist is the effeminate dandy of speech. "I saw the blood run down the face," said a peasant de- scribing a murder. How much more vivid an impression does this produce upon the mind than the language of the fastidious gentleman who said, "A sanguinary stream flow- ed across his countenance." The strength of every lan- guage lies in the dialects in which it has its roots, the racy vernacular idiom smacking of the soil. It has been well said that "no language after it has faded into diction, none that cannot suck up the feeding juices secreted for it in the rich mother earth of common folks, can bring forth a sound and lusty book." Pilgrim's Progress is immortal because it was written in the dialect of the people. A fastidious gentleman once translated it into elegant English, but his work was spewed out of the mouths even of refin- ed society. Our version of the Holy Scriptures maintains its position because of its idiomatic English. We shrink with a sense of sacrilege from a bible written in choice diction. What portion of any work of fiction do we read with the greatest relish ? Always the idiomatic dialogue — the dialect of the Cockney, the Scotchman, the Irishman, the Yankee, or the negro. When Topsy says, in account- 74 FRATERNITY PAPERS. ing for her origin, "I specs I growed," the humor is as much in the form of expression as the thought. The charm of Sir Walter Scott's novels lies in his spontaneous and instructive use of the Scotch dialect — though to be sure we have all heard of the young lady who said she had read all the Waverley novels — skipping the Scotch. What would even Burns' poetry be without the flavor of his native speech ? He contrived to write very poor verse and prose in English. How could Lowell have given such point to his satire without employing the Yankee dialect of which he is so great a master ? Wit, being but the flash of intellect, may be expressed in polished language, but humor, which is of the heart, and has the native flavor of character, seeks utterance in the dialect of the people, and much of it lies in the very form of the words employed. A Yankee giving an account of a combat between a woman and a goat said, "she had him by the horns, but was afeard to hold on, and dars'ent let go. I see 'twas a hurrying time 'o year with 'em, so I shut up my jacknife, and put it in my pocket, and then went and separated the critters." Here the ludicrous exaggeration of applying to the strug- gles of the woman and the goat, the characteristic expres- sion of the Yankee farmer for the busy season of the year, gives unconscious humor to the narrative. That poetry is best which has the simplest form of ex- pression, and partakes of the vigor and heartiness of spoken dialect. "Vulgarisms," says Lowell, "are often poetry in HUMORS OF DIALECT. 75 the egg." Just because of its limitations the speech of the common people is full of metaphor's. When the Yan- kee speaks of a ''steep price," or says he "froze" to a thing, or calls a skunk "an essence-peddler," or accuses a neighbor of being "mean enough to steal acorns from a blind hog," or sajs of a stuck-up old maid that she is "as cold as the' north side of a Jenooary gravestone by star- light," or declares himself to be "as hungry as a graven image," or tells you he'll "thrash you quicker'n greased lightning," or describes a penurious person as "stingy enough to skim his milk at both eends," or after drinking a glass of soda water for the first time says it "tastes like sweetened wind," he is unconsciously exercising the poetic faculty, and using his vernacular idiom just as Shakespeare used EngHsh. The English language is a stream flowing from many sources. It has been enlarged and enriched by numerous affluents, but it has its headwaters in the dialects of the Anglo-Saxon speech. Of the many millions of English speaking people only a few hundred thousands, at most, employ what may be called the bookish form of the lan- guage. The vast majority use only some one of its many dialects. In these, the popular idioms, racy with life and vigor and originality, lies the strength of the written speech. As Lowell has said, "It is only from its roots in the living generations of men that a language can be reinforced with fresh vigor for its needs." It dies in books and is buried in dictionaries. 76 FBATEENITT PAPERS. The Scotch contend that their speech is by no means a dialect or corruption of English, but most decidedly a national language, having its roots, like the Enghsh, in the Teutonic, and flowing on for centuries by its side, a par- allel tongue. For the present purpose it is not necessary to discuss this question, though it may be remarked that whether a branch dialect or a distinct language, the Scotch is an affluent of English, flowing into it, and assimilating with it. What I purpose to deal with now is its idiomatic strength, and especially its adaptation to the purposes of poetry and humor. It is a dialect rich in apt words and peculiar turns of expressions, a racy and picturesque tongue, with a phraseology exactly fitted to express the character of the people who speak it. It is as much Scotch as the Scotchman himself, because it is a part of himself, native to the soil. Language is expressive of character, and changes with it ; as a people grow more polished and conventional, their language becomes less marked and peculiar in its expres- sion — an observation emphatically true of the Scotch lan- guage, which, as the people who speak it assimilate with the English, loses its raciness and humor. It is richer in literature than any other dialect known to the English speaking world. The works of Ramsay, Ferguson, Burns and ScOtt attest its wealth of expression. They are full of passages of great power, which would lose their charm altogether were they imscottified. What a wealth of affection may be expressed in its HUMOBS OF DIALECT. 77 diminutievs, in which it is so much richer than the muscu- lar and sibilant English. An Englishman may speak in praise of "a pretty little girl," but a Scotchman sings of "a bonnie wee lassie." The former may invent pet names for his wife and children, but the latter can run through the sliding scale of tvife, wifie, ivifikie^ and hairn, bairnie, and hairnikie. How beautifully adapted this is to the pur- poses of poetry we may see in the song of Burns — "She is a winsome wee tiling, Slie is a handsome wee thing, She is a bonnie wee thing. This sweet wee wife o' mine." The euphuist may speak in polished phrase of a diminu- tive animal of the canine species, but a Scotchman will tell you of "a wee bit doggiekie." This diminutive form is capable of giving great expression to contempt as well as to endearment. A diminutive specimen of humanity may be spoken of in English as "a very small man," but how far short of the extreme of littleness does this fall in comparison with "a peerie wee bit o' a manikinie." By its dropping of consonants the Scotch becomes almost as soft as the Italian. The English, like the Teutonic, bristles with them, but the Scotch is spangled with vowels as a meadow with dandelions in the month of June. It has words, too, of tenderness and pathos, which have no equivalent in English. What phrase so expressive of old familiar places, — old companions, pleasures and pursuits — the long past which we recall with melancholy pleasure, as the Scotchman's "Auld Lang Syne." 78 FRATERNITY PAPERS. "And here's a hand, my trusty fiere, And gie's a hand o' thine ; And we'll take a right guid-willie waught, For auld lang syne." This is untranslateable, but speaks straight to the heart. Who that has heard Dempster sing "Duncan Gray" will ever forget the sweetness and humor of Scottish song ? And for the delineation of humble matrimonial happiness and affection where is the song that equals that of "The Mariner's Wife," written by the poet Mickle, to express the joyous agitation of the sailor's wife when' she hears that the ship is in sight, and her husband has arrived safe home from his long voyage. "But are ye sure the news is true? And are ye sure he's weel? Is this a time to tliink o' wark? Ye jauds, fling bye your wheel, For there's nae luck about the house, There's nae luck at a', There's nae luck about the house "When our gude man's awa. "Is this a time to think o' wark, When Colin's at the door? Kax down my cloak — I'll to the key, And see him come ashore. "Rise up and mak a clean fireside, Put on the mickle pot; Gie little Kate her cotton gown , And Jock his Sunday's coat. "And mak their shoon as black as slaes. Their stockins white as snaw ; It's a' to pleasure our gudeman — He likes to see them braw. "There are twa hens into the crib, Hae fed this month and mair, Mak haste and thraw their necks about That Colin weel may fare. HirjMORS OF DIALECT. 79 "My Turkey slii-pers I'll put on, My stockins pearl blue— Ifs a' to pleasure our gucleman, For he's baitli leal and true. "Sae sweet his voice, sae smooth his tongue; His breath's like caller air; His very fit has music in't, As he comes up the stair." *'And will I see his face again? . And will I hear him speak? I'm downright dizzy with the thought : In troth I'm like to greet." -, The characteristics of Scotch humor are perhaps best expressed by its own untranslatable word jjawky, which means sly, wise, witty, cautious, discreet and insinuating, all in one.* It is dry, caustic, sparing of words, uncon- scious in manner, as if it slipped out unaware?, and much of its charm lies in the quaint and picturesque modes of expressing it.. It is the Scottishness that gives the zest. Good Dean Ramsay, in his most amusing "Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character," takes particular pains to say "if my anecdotes should occasionally excite amuse- ment, or even laughter, there is no harm done ; but remem- ber, this is not the ohjecV' This is worthy of a true Scotchman, who, while he is saying the most humorous things, preserves a discreet and sober air, and would not have you think he intends to be funny though all the while there may be seen — "A wise Surmise Peeping from the twinkle at the corner of his eyes." 80 FRATEBNITY PAPERS. Do jou suppose that old laird, of the hard drinking school, had no consciousness of humor, when affecting great indignation at the charge brought agai-nst hard drinking, that it had actually killed people, he said, "Na, na, I never knew onybody killed wi' drinking, but I hae kend some that deed in the training !" And was the humor wholly unconscious in the reply of the Highlander, who, having been present when a lawyer, disappointed at not meeting his noble client at the appointed time, gave vent to his indignation by a most elaborate course of swearing, on being asked, ''But whom did he swear at?" "Ou, he didna swear at onything parteecular, but just stude in ta middle of ta road and swocg* at lairge." Or agatn the naive remark of that sister, who speaking of her brother as much addicted to swearing said — "Our John sweers awfu', and we try to cori-ect him ; but, nae doubt it is a great set aff to conversation." The old servant of the choleric Colonel Erskine, who in his fits of anger was wont to swear terribly, had even greater faith in the virtue of an oath. Having on one occasion greatly displeased his master, the ColoneFs wrath became quite uncontrollable, his utterance was choked, and his countenance became pale as death. The servant grew uneasy, and at last said, "Eh, sir! maybe an oath would relieve ye !" Whether this unconsciousness of humor is assumed or not, there is no lack of keen and conscious wit in Scotch lassies, whatever may be said of the laddies. "Is't a lad- HUMORS OF DIALECT. 81 die or a lassie?" said the old gardener to the nursery maid out for an airing with the baby. "A laddie." "Weel, I'm glad o' that, for there's ower mony women in the world." "Hech, sir," said Jess, "Dis ye no ken there's aye maist sawn o' the best crap?" "Weel, Jenny, haven't I been unco ceevil ?" said a rustic bridegroom to his bride, on the day of his marriage, alluding to the fact that during their whole courtship he had never even given her a kiss. Jenny's (juiet reply was, "Ou, ay, man ; senselessly ceevil." She was probably much of the mind of one of those Montrose sisters, who in giving her little dinner parties was very desirous that there should be at least one gen- tleman in the company. This was not always attainable, and her sister, who did not see the same necessity, quietly said Avhen discussing the matter, "But, indeed, oor Jean thinks a man a perfect salvation." Of the humor that lies simply in expression Dean Ram- say gives a fine example in the exclamation of the Fife lass who upon first observing the brilliant comet then visi- ble in the sky, ran breathlessly into the house, calling to her fellow servants — "Come oot, come oot, and see a new star that hasna got its tail cuttit aif yet." Mr. Mair, a Scotch minister who was rather quick tem- pered, and occasionally had a little tiff] with his wife, was accustomed to make frequent entries in his diary like this — "Becky and I had a rippet, for which I desire to be humble." A gentleman was relating this to the wife of 82 FRATERNITY PAPERS. another Scotch mmister, when the good lady said — " Weel, weel, he must be an excellent man, that Mr. Mair. My husband and I sometimes have rippets, but deil tak me if he^s ever humbie." Of the caustic quality of Scotch humor we have a good example in the reply of the farmer to the young minister, who dining with the farmer after service, thought it neces- sary to apologize for his appetite by saying, ''You see, I'm always very hungry after preaching." The old gentleman, not much admiring the youth's pulpit ministrations, sar- castically replied, "Indeed, sir, I'm no surprised at it, considering the trash that came aff your stomach in the morning." Scotch thrift and quaintness of expression are well illus- trated in an anecdote told of a worthy Scotch dame, and notable housewife, who was one of our early settlers, and whose descendants rank among our most respected citi- zens. Finding a poor little drowned mouse one day in her pan of cream, she took the intruder up by the tail, coated as he was with the thick cream, and exclaiming, "Ye darg, ye ; ye broot naething in, and ye shall carry naething oot," stripped him down to the very nose. Dining once with a Scotch gentleman in Montreal, when another Scotchman from Chicago was at the table, the latter was saying that he had taken out naturalization papers and intended to become an American citizen. The Montreal Scotchman demurred at this, saying he could never give up his nationality. The Chicago man replied HUMORS OF DIALECT. 83 that in the transaction of" business it was much more con- venient to be a citizen. '-Ah," said the Montreal gentle- man, dropping for the moment into his native dialect, "ye're a Scotchman, and I thought ye'd make it a matter o' hmvhees.^^ I once witnessed a ludicrous street scene to which the quaint inquiry of a Scotchman gave an exceedingly humor- ous effect. Walking in the streets of Montreal I met a woman bowed down beneath a most extraordinary burden. It was a bag borne upon her shoulders — and such a bag ! It was of monstrous proportions, and its contents, what- ever they might be, seemed to be struggling to protrude themselves at every possible angle. You saw more of the bag than of the woman, and it was hardly possible to escape the conviction that instead of carrying it, some bri- arian monster within it, had seized her and was bearing her away. While I was speculating on the contents of this mysterious bag, a. little dried up old Scotchman^ dressed in knee-breeches and long stockings, and carrying a cane in his hand, suddenly confronted the woman, and leaning upon his cane, said with an air of amazed authority: "In the name o' God, what hae ye in the bag ?" ''Stove-pipes r^ piped the woman. It has been said that Scotchmen have no appreciation of wit, and Sidney Smith declares that it requires a surgi- cal operation to get a joke well into a Scotchman's head. If the reverend wit had heard a story told me by a Scotch- man whom I met in Nova Scotia he might have felt called 84 FRATERNITY PAPERS. upon to modify his sweeping assertion. The gentleman was telhng us of the mineralogical collection in the Divin- ity School at Wolfville. "There is an old professor of Theology, there," he said, "who will show it you. He knows nothing about the stones, but he is prodigious on theology. Don't let him entrap you into an argument on election or free Avill, for if you do you will never hear any- thing more of the cabinet. Some years ago a party of professors and students belonging to the Divinity School set out with two Gaspereaux boatmen to visit Cape Blomi- don for the purpose of gathering mineralogical specimens. Owing to some accident the boat was capsized and all of the party, with the exception of one of the boatmen, were drowned. The old Professor wrote an account of the acci- dent for the denominational paper, and after giving all the particulars of the lamentable occurrence he wound up with these words—" Thus perished six i^recious souls and a man from Gaspereaux P^ An Englishman engaged in hunting in the Highlands of Scotland lost his way, and wandered long in an uninhabit- ed region. Night fell, a Scotch mist shut down, shrouding every object in gloom. At last weary, wet and disconso- late, he spied a dim light in the distance, and approaching it found that it proceeded from an isolated hut. Knocking loud and long at the door he gained no response. At last in desperation he cried out, "For God's sake are there no Christians in this country?" "Na, na," said an old woman, thrusting her head from an upper window, "there are na Christeeans here ; we're ahl McGreggors." HUMOES OF DIALECT. 85 The dialects spoken in England are as numerous as the races that have helped to people the island. Where Celts, Saxons, Jutes, Angles, Danes and Normans may be num- bered among the ancestors of the people, great diversity of spoken language is to be expected, especially if no sys- tem of common schools and common text-books has been introduced. The English dialects are more rude and boor- ish, and lack the raciness of the Scotch. There is little wit or sense of wit in a Dorsetshire or Somersetshire peas- ant, yet the English peasantry are not entirely destitute of a sense of humor. The Lancashire dialect, notwith- standing its broad vowels and drawling style, is anything but unmusical in the mouth of a genuine native, and is well adapted to express the broadly humorous. The na- tives of that locality are, many of them, full of ready, dry humor, and naturally see the funny side of things first. "Aw, say," said a stalwart peasant, to a party of gen- tlemen whom he met in a Lancashire public house, and who had been very learnedly discussing their geological investigations, "Aw, say, con yo' tell me how heigh Adam wur?" The gentleman addressed had never felt sufficient interest in our first parent to be so far inquisitive, but to hear what was coming he replied, Yankee fashion, "Why?" "Becos me an' another chap had an argiment, an' he swore as how Adam wur forty yards heigh." "Well," said the gentleman, that's a doubtful question ; some say he was forty-one." "Ah, but this chap wrote to the editor o't London 86 FRATERNITY PAPERS. Toimes, an' he sent -word as they couldn't tell Adam's height, becos there wur nobody theer for t'' measure himP^ It has been said that we have no dialects in America, but this is far from being true Though it may in justice be claimed that the great mass of the people of the United States speak and write their vernacular with more correct- ness than the common people of Great Britain, yet it remains true that there are certain generic dialectical dif- ferences which characterize the great divisions of the coun- try. The New Englander, the Southerner, and the West- ern man have each their vernacular speech. The first English settlers, coming from different parts of England, brought with them the various dialects then existing in the mother country. To these were added the Dutch, or the low Germanic language, in the State of New York ; the German, or the high Germanic language, spoken by hun- dreds of thousands in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, and the French and Spanish languages spoken in Louisiana and Florida. The Indians, too, have given us such words as homint/, powtvow, succotash^ and mocassin, while the peculiarities of our institutions and customs have given birth to such Americanisms as caucus, buncombe, 7nileage, bacJavoods and a one horse affair. The New England vernacular, or Yankee dialect, has its roots in old English. In general it may be said that nothing can be found in it which does not still survive in some one or other of the English provincial dialects. " Cos ichv^ is as old as Chaucer, I donH see it was the popular HUMOBS OF DIALECT. 87 slang in Colley Gibber's time, and when Gen. Banks spoke of "letting the Union slide'' he used a proverbial expres- sion found in several old English plajs. In the mouths of our people this speech is instinctive and is moulded to suit the exigencies of the speaker, the loftiest expressions being humiliated to the humblest uses. Its imaginative quality is seen in the commonest expressions. A man who is fatigued tells you he's een-a-7nost dead; if he is out of money he says he hasn't yiary red ; if he finds he has made a mistake he tells you he has been harking up the wrong tree, when he thinks matters are all right he caker- lates things are about east ; he never gives up, but some- times caves in; if a thing isn't perfectly clear to his com- prehension, he thinks it's kinder curiis ; he is not often neutral, but sometimes sits on the fence until he can see which wag the cat jumps; though not often cornered he sometimes gets into a fix and is made to fork over ; even then he doesn't leave in a hurry, he makes tracks; he considers himself equal to all emergencies, a whole team and a big dog under the wagon ; he assures you the fact is just so, there's no two wags about it; he expresses his wonder or surprise by exclaiming "i)it tell — how you du talk!" and when everything is settled to his mind he's all hunkg dory. Dean Ramsay gives an anecdote to illustrate the force of the Scotch dialect, even when confined to the inflections of a single monosyllable. Finding a festive company at a roadside cottage, and asking the occasion of the merry- 88 FRATERNITY PAPERS. making, one of the lasses standing about replied, "Ou, it's juist a wedding o' Jock Thompson and Janet Frazer." To the question ''Is the bride rich?" there was a plain, quiet "Na." ''Is she young ?" a more emphatic and decid- ed "Naa !" but to the query "Is she bonny ?" a most elab- orate and prolonged shout of "Naaa !" Now the Yankee has a monosyllable to which he gives even a greater number of inflections than the Scotch lassie gave to her JVa. It is a most useful word, and is employ- ed on all occasions. It is the opening of a speech and the conclusion of a bargain. It is at times prolonged to the trebling of the vowel and again abbreviated to the last consonant. It expresses every shade of meaning from attention, deliberation, deprecation and dissent up to de- termination, affirmation and conclusion. It is the little word well, which in its different intonations becomes wul, wal, ahl, tvahl, ooa-ahl, each expressive of a different shade of meaning. If your friend dissents from what you have advanced he begins his deprecatory remarks with wee- al ; if he is in doubt about the positions you have assumed he says ive-alll^ and if he finally assents to your views he gives an emphatic wal. I once heard a lawyer, afterwards a distinguished judge on the bench of the United States, begin a speech with his hands in his pockets, in true Yan- kee fashion — ''^ival^ non)?^ Professor Lowell relates that a friend of his once heard five "wells," like pioneers, precede the answer to an in- quiry about the price of land. The first was the ordinary HUMORS OF DIxiLECr. 89 wal, in deference to custom ; the second, the long, perpend- ing ooahl, with a falling inflection of the voice ; the third, the same, but with the voice rising as if in despair of a conclusion, into a plaintively nasal whine, ooahl, the fourth walk, ending with the asperate of a sigh, and then, fifth, came a short, sharp tual, showing that a conclusion had been reached. There is a plain, practical common sense about our New England people that often finds expression in a quaintness of speech that gives it the force of an aphorism. Indeed I have often been struck with the aptness of expression given by certain forms of speech in common use, which seem to be used instinctively. There is not a choice of language, causing hesitation in selection, as in the case of an educated man, but certain words and phrases seem to be always lying at hand, ready to be taken up and used as the ready workman employs his tools. They are adapted to all occasions and form the limited but expressive vocab- ulary of the people. They are the ready moulds into which the common thought is poured. They are not so much proverbs, as proverbial expressions, incipient axioms, serving as a short-hand method of speech and conveying much in little. I remember a weather-beaten old man who had spent his life in battling with the elements on one of the out-lying islands of our coast. He had not buffeted wind and wave for sixty years without acquiring a stock of homely wisdom relative to the conduct of life, and as he came up period- 90 FRATERNITY PAPERS. ically to mj father's house, from his home in the sea, and sat by the evening fireside, he discoursed on the changes and chances and mishaps of life, the shiftlessness of one and the head-long folly of another, always winding up his dis- sertation with the words, "Fact is, people ain't mor'n partly larnt haow to live." I thought then that the old man was a queer old codger ; I know now that he was a wise philos- opher. This quaintness of speech often serves to give forcible illustration to a statement. A man in the horse-cars speaking of the vicissitudes of fortune experienced by an acquaintance, said — "he has had as many ups and downs as a pair o' steelyards." Another, describing the stock in trade of the keeper of a variety store, said "he had everything to sell, from a needle to a clap o' thunder !" The resources of the native vocabulary are largely drawn upon in the invention of expletives which shall give force to expression without absolutely touching the verge of profanity. The Yankee believes it is wicked to swear, but like the Scotch maiden he instinctively recognizes the fact that an oath may be a great "set aff" to conversation, and so he softens the characteristic oath of the English- man into "Goll darn it ;" he expresses his astonishment by the exclamation Jerusale7n, and he swears "by gum." A favorite expression of a green down-easter whom I once knew was — "Holy 'Tarnal, yer might as well try to stick a spoon in the wall!" "Scissors and pipe-stems!" was the exclamation of an individual at the exorbitant charges HUMORS OF DIALECT. 91 of a peripatetic vender of clams. "Faith, I swan," said an old farmer to me, "I do like cowcumbers," and he had old English precedent for his pronunciation of the name of his favorite "garden sarse," if not for his peculiar oath. The humor of the Yankee, like that of the Scotchman, is pawkj/, dry, evasive and disguised bj a grave exterior and unconscious air. It has also a quality native to the soil and peculiarly its own — its exaggeration and minute- ness of detail. This latter feature is not so much mere extravagance as intensity and picturesqueness of expres- sion, showing the imaginative faculty in full and healthy play. Thus when a Yankee describes a negro as "so black that charcoal made a chalk-mark on him," declares that he painted a shingle so like marble that it sank in water," and says that "the floor of the old meetin'-'us is so uneven that in passmg up one of the aisles a person goes out of sight thirteen times," he is dealing in the raw material of poetry. This imaginative faculty is seen in the reply of the back- woodsman when asked if he would have cream and sugar. "No, thank ye, I take my tea bar'foot," and also in the description of the county jail (the one stone building where all the dwellings were of wood) as "the house whose under- pinnin' comes up to the eaves." A countryman described the abode of Satan, as "the place where they don't rake up their fires nights." Josh Billings, boasting of the crowded attendance at his lecture, said that the hall was so full that the last man who came in had to leave his 92 FRATERNITY PAPERS. walking stick outsirle I Old Uncle Higgins, a rustic wag of local celebrity, one day when he was past eighty years old, seeing a horse jockey leading an animal that gave evi- dent tokens of greater age than his owner was willing to acknowledge, exclaimed — "I hate that hoss !" "What for?" said the astonished jockey. "Because he bit me when I was a boy, and I've hated him ever since !" A Yankee at work in the hay field took a long pull at the jug of blackstrap always provided in old times for the men in the mowing season. His companioiji, alarmed for his share of the exhilarating fluid, cried out to him to hold up. "Why," said the drinker, wiping his hps with unction, "I bit it oif as short as I could." "Then your teeth must be tarnal dull," was the instant reply. Sometimes a remark is made in all seriousness which becomes ludicrous from the very unconsciousness of the speaker. Thus a worthy countryman, discoursing of his wife's illness, said, "she had been sick a long time, — one day she was up and the next day she was down again — and it was a great deal of trouble— he did wish she Avould get well, or so^nething P^ Of a similar spirit was the reply of a worthy man who was afflicted with an ailing wife, much given to "bad spells," from which, however, she speedily recovered. He was telling a neighbor that his wife was down again, suf- fering from her usual attack, and he was much dispirited about it. "Do you think she will die ?" asked the neigh- bor. "Well, no; I guess not, she aint apt to," was the disconsolate reply. HUMORS OF DIALECT. 93 Mr. Fields describes Hawthorne as nearly bursting with laughter at the solemn remark of a butcher, that "idees had got afloat in the public mind with respect to sassingers." Another peculiarity of Yankee humor is the smart, evasive answer, by which a troublesome question is avoided. "Your corn looks rather weak and yaller," said a trav- eller to a small boy hoeing in a corn-field. "We planted the yaller kind," replied the urchin. "You won't get mor'n half a crop," continued the traveller. "We don't expect to, we planted at the halves," was the ready rejoin- der. A Cape Cod school master boasting to an English- man that the Americans had always whipped the British in the war of the Revolution, was asked what he thought of the battle of White Plains, in Avhich the Americans Avere defeated. "Why," said he, "I do remember some- thing about that — though if you hadn't mentioned it I never should have thought of it. The fact is, we never thought much of that battle — somehow or other our folks couldn't seem to take no kind of interest." A sly insinuation is sometimes conveyed in a dry remark. An old grave-digger was accosted one morning by an ac- quaintance with the remark — "Well, Dr. Brackett died last night." "Yaas," said the sexton, "and it's bad busi- ness for me" — adding after a pause, "he sent me mor'n half my customers !" It has been remarked that men of great native power, when they would give strong expression to their feelings, not unfrequently make use of their native dialect. Sir 94 FRATERNITY PAPERS. Walter Scott, when in animated conversation, often dropped into broad Scotch, and when O'Connell would rouse his Irish audiences to the highest pitch of enthusiasm he addressed them in their native Celtic tongue. Bismarck's idiomatic phrase,— "leaving Paris to stew in her own gravj," has become historical. Daniel Webster once made a most effective satirical use of the Yankee dialect on the floor of the United States Senate. Mr. Foote, of Missis- sippi, a violent and inveterate talker, whose fire-eating threats in the days of Southern supremacy gained for him the nickname of "Hangman Foote," to serve some pur- pose of his own thought proper, on one occasion, to beslob- ber Mr. Webster with his offensive praise. Referring to him as the distinguished statesman of New England, he went on in fulsome strains to speak of his giant intellect and his majestic eloquence. Mr. Webster bore the inflic- tion until it became nauseating, and then turning on him a half quizzical, half contemptuous glance he squelched his tormentor by exclaiming, with the true Yankee drawl, "Gite-o-u-tr The New England dialect has played an important part in American literature. As humor is the flavor of na- tional character, it is always associated with the genius or peculiar cast of the national language. Hence nearly all our humorous writers have attempted dialect, though not always with success. Seba Smith, in his Major Jack Downing, was the first to put the Yankee vernacular to humorous use. Artemus Ward, who was a true satirist, HUMORS OF DIALECT. 95 not wanting in earnestness or depth of feeling, mercilessly exposing all kinds of humbug with extravagant humor, made effective use of his native speech, though he was not always true to nature. He distorted the Yankee dialect with a fantastic lingo of his own, inventing such Avords as singist and dostest and mucJily. His description of the undergarment of the male species as "a clean biled rag," is the quintessence of Yankee quaintness, which reduces everything to its prime elements, or rudest expression. Josh Billings's lingo is merely bad spelling, without ver- nacular truthfulness. The dialect is spurious, though the wit and wisdom are genuine. Josh commenced writing his quaint and pungent paragraphs in correct English, but finding they attracted no attention, he resorted to bad spelling to meet the popular demand for dialect in humor. It is instinctively expected by the public that humor will find expression in the vernacular speech. This explains the general resort to incorrect orthography by humorous writers, some of whom, though they may write funnily, have no command of dialect. The great master of the New England dialect is James Russell Lowell. He has evangelized it, and put it to the highest i)urposes of satire in the defence of truth and jus- tice. He has made our vernacular a close study, and gives the exact speech of the people, with all its twists of phrases and peculiarities of pronunciation. His Biglow Papers, unapproachable in the overflow and richness of their humor, full of profound earnestness and deep and 96 FRATERNITY PAPERS. practical sagacity, show the most complete command of our dialect, in all its extravagance and careless freedom. Written at the time of the Mexican war, which the author regarded as unjustly waged for the extension of slavery, they satirize it with the keenest zest. Hosea is an honest. God-fearing, Yankee farmer, with a conscientious hatred of war and slavery. Resisting the specious allurements of the recruithig sergeant he says — "Thrash away, you'll hev to rattle On them kittle drums o' yourn,— 'Taint a kuowiii' kind o' cattle Thet is ketched with mouldy corn ; Put in stiff, you titer feller, Let folks see how spry you be— Guess you'll toot till you are yeller 'Fore you git ahold o' me!" He goes home and gives expression to his indignation by writing verses. His father, Zekiel Biglow, who says of himself, "I've lived here man and boy seventy-six year cum next tater digging, and there aint no wheres a kitting spryer'n I be" — thereupon writes to Parson Wilbur — "Ar- ter I'd gone to bed, I heern him a thrashin' round like a short-tailed bull in fli-time. The old woman says she to me, says she, 'Zekle, says she, our Hosea's gut the chol- lery or suthin' another,' says she ; 'don't you be skeared,' says I, 'he's oney a makin' pottery.' " So Hosea made his pottery which Parson Wilbur pronounced to be "true grit." "Ezfur war, I call it murder- There you hev it, plain and tiat; ♦ I don't want to go no furder Than my Testyment fur that; HUMORS OF DIALECT. 97 God luis sed so plump and fairly, It's ez long ez it is broad, An' you've got to get up airly Ef you want to take in God. 'Taint your appyletts an' feathers Make the thing a grain more right; 'Taint afollerin' your bell-wetliers Will excuse ye in His sight; Ef you take a sword an' draw it, An' go stick a feller thru', Gov'ment aint to answer for it,/ God'll send the bill to you." This is the protest of religious Puritanism against war, expressed in the strongest possible form, and with that gro- tesqueness of familiarity with the Supreme Being which springs not from levity, but profound belief — as the abso- lute faith of the Roman Catholic permits him almost to joke about his saints and the Madonna. Dialect sometimes springs out of the imperfect mixture of races, and next to the Yankee element in our speech may be ranked the Dutch, forming in the Middle States a new-made provincial idiom fresh moulded to the needs of a free and careless generation. Of this dialect, which may be called the Pennsylvania German, Mr. Leland has made the most successful use in his Breitmann Ballads. His speech is not always true to life, he coins words half way between English and German, and skilfully moulds the latter element into gutteral greediness and shibboleths of sentiment. He has great humor, but differs from Low- ell in moral purpose. His hero is a scoffer and a mocker, and lacks the faith of Hosea Biglow. Hans Breitmann is 98 FRATERNITY PAPERS. a grasping, drinking, plundering, fighting, sentimental Ger- man, the embodiment of selfishness and sensuality. Thus while the Breitmann ballads approach the Biglow Papers in humor, they fall far short of them in deep, practical sagacity and profound earnestness of purpose. But they possess even more bouyancy and animal spirits, and are of more universal application, being in reality satires on cer- tain universal elements in human nature. There is humor in them, but humor with no heart in it. Take, for instance, the burlesque of sentiment in the love song — "O vere mine lofe a sugar-powl, De fery slimallest loonip Vouldt shveet de seas from bole to bole Und make de shildren shoomj)." The dialect of Mr. Leland's hero is slow and sensual, as though he were picking his way w^ith difficulty through the labyrinth of speech, but it has a delicate feeling for hu- mor and abounds in odd turns and combinations of speech. He affects to use the most familiar and ludicrous expres- sions as if they were full of sentiment. Thus in praising his lady love : "Her heafenly foice,it drills me so It really seems to lioort; She isli de holiest animiU Dat roojis oopon de dirt. De re'nbow rises when she sings; De sonn shine veil she dalk, De angels crow and flop deer vings Ven she goes out to valk." My theme has led me into discursive fields, but I return HUMOBS OF DIALECT. 99 to mj first thought, that in the speech of the people we find the hfe and raciness of language. And is it not also true that from the common people spring oftenest those strong, true souls to whom in time of peril all men look for leadership and guidance? In the hour of our national trial, when the very foundations of our political system seemed breaking up and the fragments floating into chaos, to whom did we look for hope, for safety and deliverance ? Not to the wealthy classes, not to the men of high culture, not to the statesmen experienced in affairs. From none of these came our succor and our help in time of trouble, but up from the poor and lowly, the despised white trash of the South, trodden into the mire by the lordly slaveholder, there arose a long, lank, gaunt figure, with all the flavor of his native soil about him, whom God had made, as he made Adam, out of the very earth, unancestried, unpriv- ileged, unknown, the incarnate common sense of the peo- ple, deeply conscientious and profoundly humorous, the fountain of anecdote as well as of honor, idiomatic in speech, awkward in manner, homely in figure, but conspicuous in kingship, tender in his nature, wise in his statesmanship, the very homeliness of his genius its greatest distinction, as if God would show us how much truth, how much mag- nanimity, how much statecraft even, await the call of oppor- tunity in simple manhood when it believes in the justice of God and the worth of man — declaring himself ready to die, as he did, for his country, at once its representative man, its saint and martyr, — Abraham Lincoln. DREAMS. All men dream. In waking hours the reflective mind turns inward and indulges in those reveries which take us out of our immediate surroundings. The young dream of the future ; the old see visions of the past. These day- dreams are the border-land of reality ; their castle-build- ing, though often fading into nothingness, not unfrequently results in solid edifices. He who never dreams of possibil- ities, seldom achieves actualities. But I purpose to deal with the dreams which come with sleep — visions, the poet tells us, " less beguiling far, Than waking dreams by daylight are." Sleep is a mystery. It is almost as little understood as life itself. Science has yet done little to explain its phe- nomena. It has been defined as a rest of the external life, a device common to all organic forms. We know some- thing of its action upon the machinery of the body, but very little of its relations to the machinery of the mind. Within the realm of these relations Hes the province of dreams. They are as mysterious as sleep itself, and as 1) BEAMS. . 101 universal. It is a question whether we ever sleep with- out dreaming, though we may be unconscious of it. Dreams are forgotten before we waken to recall them. Kant says, ^'to cease to dream would be to cease to live ; the mind must necessarily be active." Though so shadowy, dreams are often very real. The impressions which arise in our mind during sleep seem often to have a real and present existence. There is not unfrequently a suffering in them so acute as to waken us in a manner anything but pleasant. On the other hand they are at times as sweet and refreshing as the slumber of Ulysses, when " golden dreams (the gift of sweet repose) Lull'd all his cares, and banished all his woes." A friend once suggested to me that dreams were given us as a compensation for the trials and deprivations of life. Ah, but what shall we say of those terrible dreams which make us toss in agony and start from sleep in dread and wild alarm ? Perhaps they are sent upon us to punish us for our sins, or to counterbalance the good we enjoy in wak- ing hours — as when we indulge too heavily in sumptuous suppers. Dreams have played an important part in shaping the course of human action. We trace their influence through all the tide of time. It would be an interesting study to follow them through all the pages of history and observe their action in changing the course of events, and shaping the thoughts of men. They were early believed to be the 102 FRATERNITY PAPERS. divine medium of communication with mankind. The Bible tells us that by means of dreams God taught his chosen people that they had spiritual faculties, and that there was a spiritual universe beyond the material one. In the days of Joseph and of Daniel no doubt was enter- tained of the supernatural origin of all dreams. The his- tory of Joseph is a history of dreams, influencing the des- tiny of a family, which was to become a great nation. He dreams that the sheaves of his brothers bow down before his, and this leads to the long sojourn of Israel in Egypt. The King's butler and baker dream, and their dreams are fulfilled. At last Pharaoh dreams, and the result is that Joseph rises to power and greatness. The patriarch Jacob saw in a dream a ladder extending from heaven to earth, upon which the angels ascended and descended, and the promise then given that in him and his progeny all the fam- ihes of the earth should be blessed, became the leading tradition of the Jew^s, an(i enters into the faith of all Chris- tian nations. Saul dreamed that the persecuted One appeared and rebuked him, and he became the great expounder of the new faith. Constantine had a vision of the Cross, and the Roman world became Christian. Chris- tianity is a religion of dreams and visions. Dreams, too, entered largely into the religion of the Greeks, and influenced their daily life. The interpreters of dreams formed one of their learned professions. A Greek would consult one of these men as naturally as he would a lawyer or doctor — and doubtless with as much DREAMS. 103 profit. Artemidorus, who spent the best of his clays in reducing dreams to the obedience of exact rules, but with little success, said that to dream of a chain meant a wife, or hindrance ; and to dream of the "belly" meant children, for they cry for meat. Among the more sceptical Romans dreams had less sway. The poet Ennius wTites — "Augurs and soothsayers, astrologers, Diviners and interpreters of dreams, I ne'er consult and heartily despise. Wanderers tliemselves, they guide another's steps ; And for poor sixpences promise countless wealth : Let them, if they expect to be believed, Deduct the sixpence, and bestow the rest." The Christian fathers were believers in dreams. The learned Tertullian attached great importance to the soul's power of divining in dreams. He boldly asserts that by some connection with the disembodied state the soul is able to see into futurity. Passing to the Middle Ages, and to the darker days of the church, the interpretation of dreams became in the hands of unscrupulous priests a most dangerous power, and bore much bitter fruit. The Mahometans, too, were very superstitious about dreams. With them the most fortunate dream a man could have was to see his wife's tongue cut off at the roots ! Perhaps this was from a feel- ing that the less men's wives said about them the better. My Lord Bacon had no faith in dreams. He says, "They ought to be despised, and to serve but for winter 104 FRATERNITY PAPERS. talk by the fireside." Sir Thomas Browne is not so scep- tical. He quaintly remarks, "we are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleep, and the slumbers of the body seem to be but the waking of the soul. It is ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason ; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleep. I was born in the planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me. I am in no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardise of company ; yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the ac- tion, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself at the conceits thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams." He thinks those narrow-minded who refuse to grant that the soul in slumber may hold converse with disembodied beings. In our day, belief in dreams is confined to the uneducat- ed classes. Yet strange dreams are every day recorded in the newspapers, and every book store has its stock of dream-books, and lottery tickets are purchased, and real estate bought and sold, through faith in dreams. The popular dream-book is a small volume with the portrait of the great Corsican on its cover, and entitled "Napoleon's Complete Dream-Book, comprising full, plain and accurate explanations of fortune-telling by dreams, visions and rev- eries ; the only true and reliable treatise (consulted by the great Corsican,) upon this most useful and marvellous art." The compiler of this wonderful work asserts that it is the duty of every sagacious and intelligent person to pay heed DREAMS. 1Q5 to the prophetic communications of dreams, and to assist those who are wise she gives "fortunate numbers, enunci- ated through visions, which can be successfully used for the purpose of gain in lotteries, raffles, games of chance, and everything depending on lot or upon the hazard of the die." I refrain from tempting the reader with any of these, but some interpretations may be safely indulged in. Thus, when a man dreams his bed is on fire it signifies a disa- greement with his wife. To dream of eating cabbage very naturally signifies vexation. To dream of eating pap is a sign of gain and profit. This must refer to government pap. To dream of seeing or eating mustard seed is a bad omen, except to physicians, for whom this dream brings profit and increase of reputation. This must have refer- ence to the application of mustard plasters, a very drawino- practice. To dream of seeing many birds together signi- fies a court of law. Birds of prey must here be meant. In dismissing this wondrous volume one can but remark the freak of fortune by which the great conqueror, who dealt with terrible realities and was the terror of his ao-e has become the patron saint of dreamers and visionaries. With this brief glance at the history of the subject, I pass to consider the theory of dreams. What is a dream ? It has been defined as a mental process carried on during slumber. To dream is to think in our sleep. But what is it that thinks ? Is it an independent spirit inhabiting the body which continues active while that rests, or is it cer- tain organs of the mind, whose action is inseparable from 106 FRATERNITY PAPERS. the body ? In other words, is thinking a manifestation of spirit, or a development of matter ? The first theory has long obtained in the world ; the second is held by a class of advanced thinkers. It is not my purpose to discuss these theories here, but to take note of certain phenomena of dreams. Dreaming is thinking during slumber ; it is not the think- ing that goes on in our waking hours. It has a quahty of its own. It is characterized bv an absence of will, of con- trol over the thinking faculty. The action of a dream is very much like that of insanity. The faculties of the mind seem to run riot, and to indulge in freaks very much at their own sweet will. The supreme faculty which regu- lates, directs and controls our waking thoughts seems to abdicate its throne for the time, and give up the hour to the Lord of Misrule. It is the play-time of the mind. Yet while the loss of power over the succession of ideas is a leading phenomenon of dreams, there is often a coherency in their course, and not unfrequently a strong effort at volition. We will to do certain things, but lose the power of action. How often we strive for some object in our dreams but find it impossible to get on. Innumerable hindrances arise. We never arrive at the place for which we set out, or succeed in the action we attempt. Again, there comes at times, as a relief from an oppressive dream, a consciousness that it is only a dream, after all. This seems an effort of will to escape from the impending dan- ger, or the disagreeable dilemma, resulting in partial con- DREAMS. 107 sciousuess, while yet sleep goes on. I have sometimes, after escaping from a disagreeable dream in this way, gone on dreaming about it, in a semi-conscious state. A lady of my acquaintance dreamed that a certain event took place ; she then went on to dream that while seated at the breakfast table the next morning the event of which she had dreamed actually occurred, and she exclaimed, "My dream has come true I" Here was a dream within a dream — a consciousness of dreaming while dreaming still. Dreams are capable of many classifications, but with reference to their causes, it will be sufficient for the pur- poses of this paper to divide them into three classes ; viz : those which may be assigned to sensations of the organs of the body, or to the senses proper ; secondly, those which seem referable to mind and memory ; and thirdly, those to which, in default of further evidence, a supernat- ural origin is popularly assigned. First, as to what may be called sensorial dreams. The practical mind of Franklin was one of the first to see the connection between the external conditions of the body and the operations of the mind during sleep. In his essay on "The art of Procuring Pleasant Dreams," he urges the practice of moderation in eating, of airing the bed-clothes, and of assuming an easy and comfortable position when lying down to sleep. By the practice of these rules, and the preservation of a good conscience, the philosopher thought it possible to command agreeable dreams, and thus to add so much to the pleasures of life. Doubtless a mind 108 FRATERNITY PAPERS. at ease, in a perfectly sound body, is seldom disturbed by unpleasant dreams, yet there are hidden and deep-lying sources of dreams which even these conditions will not reach. Great muscular exertion often gives color to our dreams. I remember after my first ascent of Mt. Wash- ington, when a boy, driving down the same night through Conway, and arriving near midnight at the hotel where we expected to find lodgings. The house was all astir ; lights were glancing from the windows, and in the stable-yard as we drove in, and presently the bustling landlord appeared and assured us he could not accommodate us ; — his house w^as full. Weary as we were this was a disappointment, but we were compelled to drive on some miles farther to a private house where, the landlord thought, we might find accommodation. It took much loud rapping to arouse the sleeping occupants, and when getting into the bed offered us in the little bedroom off the front room, we found, from its warmth, that it had just been vacated by the old farmer and his wife, who had retired to a bed elsewhere. But we were too weary to insist on a fresh bed, and soon sunk into an uneasy slumber, in which my boy companion and myself tossed and turned until we tied ourselves up in the bed- clothes with all manner of inextricable knots. I dreamed of climbing the mountain, up a steep and narrow path, and as I struggled wearily on I came upon a pair of woman's shoes lying in the path. I took them in my hands and observed their form and fashion. Upon awaking in the morning the first objects my eyes fell upon was that iden- DREAMS. 109 tical pair of shoes hanging upon the wall immediately at the foot of the bed. I had not the slightest recollection of having observed them before going to bed. They must therefore have been either unconsciously seen by me, and thus obtained a lodgment in my mind, or else in the toss- ing in my sleep I must have actually touched them as they hung upon the wall, and so given them entrance into my dream. But if so, how did I see them with my closed eyes, so as to be able to recognize them again ? Our senses are probably never wholly lost in slumber ; one or another is on guard, and all are partially accessible to the impressions which act upon them in the condition of wakefulness. But it is curious to observe that the ideas produced by external impressions in sleep, are seldom or never those produced by the same causes when awake. They become associated with other images floating in the mind and suggest other scenes and conditions than those by which we are surrounded. Thus Dr. Gregory tells how, having gone to sleep with a bottle of hot water at his feet, he dreamed that he was walking up the crater of Mt. Etna. This was a recollection of his ascent not of Mt. Etna, but of Mt. Vesuvius, years before, recalled by the warmth of the hot water at his feet. Another gentleman who had a blister applied to his head dreamed that he was being scalped. Alfred Maury, having his lips, and the end of his nose, tickled with a feather, dreamed that a pitch plaster had been applied to his face, and afterwards torn away so violently as to bring with it the skin of his 110 FRATERNITY PAPERS. lips, nose and face. When he was pinched at the back of his neck, he dreamed that a bhster was apphed to his neck ; and that broui>;ht to his mind a doctor who had treated him in his infancy. The sense of hearing is often the source of dreams. The slamming of a window-blind caused a patient in a hospi- tal to awake in great alarm, exclaiming, "thank God that it was only a dream." The noise of the blind had caused him to dream that a building had toppled down upon him, the shock awaking him. Though the sound was but of a second's duration, the time of the dream caused by it seem- ed a long half hour. Thus it frequently happens that the cause of a dream, and the dream itself, take place at the same time and in the act of awaking ; the action of the dream seeming to occupy a long period of time. A mili- tary officer observed that he was often awakened by the firing of a cannon near his tent, and that in the act of awaking he had a dream, including a long series of events which might be distinctly traced to the impression made on his senses by the explosion. Bj these facts it is pretty clearly established that we have no measure of time when asleep, and this suggests the serious thought that if this be indeed the property of the soul in the disembodied state, time will appear to us eternity. The sense of smell in dreams will often recall long past scenes with which a particular odor was associated. Many persons have even been awakened suddenly by the dis- tantly heard voice of a dream image ; though it is probable DREAMS. Ill that in these instances the dream- voice was caused by some external, but unrecognized sound. Sight is sometimes so excited bj dreams that the images seen in them are actu- ally visible for a short time after the eyes are open, on awaking. Spinoza remarks that a leprous negro, seen in a dream, haunted his waking hours for a time. That our dreams are greatly affected by the systematic sensations is evident to every one who reflects on the noto- rious effects of indigestion. Starving men dream of feast- ing. The thirsty quaff deeply of flowing streams. The wretched sufferers in the shipwreck of the Medusa, dying from thirst, had perpetual dreams of shady woods and run- ninor streams. The nursino; mother is made to dream of her child by the flow of milk to her breasts. People have dreamed of spending the severest winters in Siberia, and of joining expeditions to the North Pole, simply because the bed-clothes have been thrown off" during sleep. That position has much to do with producing bad dreams is gen- erally admitted. An individual who seldom dreamed al- ways had bad dreams when he slept with his arms raised over his head. It appears evident from what has been said that dreams are often caused by external impressions acting upon the senses ; it is also apparent that we dream difterent dreams according to our different bodily states. The hidden con- dition of the physical organism reveals itself in dreams. As Dr. Maudsley remarks, "when the avenues of impres- sions upon the brain through the external senses, are closed 112 FRATERNITY PAPERS. bj sleep, and the consciousness of the outer world is m abeyance, there may well be a greater susceptibility to impressions from within the body, and so the physiological sympathies of organs may declare themselves more dis- tinctly, just as the stars, invisible in the day, shine forth brightly at night, when the sun goes down." Passing now to the consideration of dreams referable to the operations of the mind, it is obvious to observe the- influences of memory in giving shape to their form and substance. It furnishes the warp of the web across which the tricksy sprite who seems to preside over our midnight imaginings shoots the woof of fancy, and thus weaves the stuff of which dreams are made. We dream of those things which are in the mind. The thoughts that occupy us during the day furnish hints and suggestions for our midnight visions. It is curious to trace the combinations into which these fall as naturally as if they did not make the most absurd situations imaginable. There seems to be in the mind at play a sense of humor which delights itself in forming, out of the shreds and patches of memory, the most ridiculous combinations. How the Dream Spirit must laugh and chuckle at some of the dreams which are seri- ous realities to the dreamer I Perhaps I may make clearer what I mean by this, in relating the dream of a lady, which has been confided to me in strict confidence, and which I transmit to the reader on the same terms. This lady, it must be understood at the outset, had a neighbor who sometimes annoyed her by DREAMS. 113 intrusion into her grounds. She had, during the day, been interested by the fact that a lady with whom she had a slight acquaintance had given birth to twins. She had also a friend who was in the habit of driving up to her door and callino- her out for a moment's chat. Observe that these three conditions had no necessary connection Avith each other, except that the friend was a neighbor and relative of the lady who had given birth to twins. The lady dreamed that awaking on a Sunday morning, and looking from her window, she saw her obtrusive neigh- bor hanging out bed-quilts in her (the lady's) back yard. She was indignant at the liberty taken, and shocked that such work should be done on her premises on a Sunday. In deshabille as she was, she rushed down to remonstrate. She could not have those bed-quilts hanging there on a Sunday. The neighbor heard her remonstrances unmoved, but calmly said, in a listening attitude, "Don't I hear your baby crying?" Baby! why, good gracious, of course she had a baby, but she had never thought of it until now. With maternal solicitude she hastened into the house, leav- ing the objectionable neighbor mistress of the situation. She was met at the entrance by Susie, the maid of all work, who told her that one of the twins was crying. Twins ! why, of course she had twins, but she had entirely forgotten that interesting fact. As she proceeded to quiet her new-found babes she became aware that she was still in her night-dress, with her hair hanging loosely down her back. The appalling thought struck her, what if callers 114 FRATERNITY PAPERS. should come and catch her in this predicament I At that moment the door-bell rang ! The ever-ready Susie snatched a silken robe from the sofa, and told her she could put that on. The caller was her friend of the carriage, who wished her to step out to the gate. As she proceeded to comply she called to Susie to take charge of the twins. "No marm," said that long-suffering maid, "I didn't come here to take care of twins !" This was the drop that overflowed the dreamer's cup of misery. She could endure no more — the shock awoke her, and as she thus escaped from her dilemma, she might, if she had listened with the fine ear of the spirit, have heard the mocking laugh of the Dream- fiend as he vanished from the scene. Observe now with what humorous, not to say malicious, ingenuity he had contrived the situations of the dreamer's ridiculous dilemma, by adding new elements to the sugges- tions of memory. The neighbor's trespass was heightened by the act of intrusion being done on the Sabbath day. The fun of the twins was prolonged by throwing them in one by one. The dilemma of the night-dress was increased by the prompt ringing of the door-bell, and the refusal of Susie came in as the fitting climax to all household annoy- ances. But it is not merely the thoughts or occurrences of the day that mingle with our dreams. Memory recalls long past scenes of our boyhood, which in waking hours were wholly forgotten. Familiar scenes are visited again, and tales are told which we have not heard for many a year. DREAMS. 115 We may conclude from this that the mind really forgets nothing ; that somewhere in its secret recesses every event or fact is indelibly recorded, some day to be revealed. They do not enter into our consciousness, but the impres- sions remain, only awaiting the touching of the secret spring which shall again bring them under our observation. Maury relates that in his early years he visited Trilpont, a village on the Marne, where his father had built a bridge. Later in life he dreamed that he was a child playing at Trilpont, and that he saw a man clothed in a sort of uni- form, who told him his name, and that he was gate-keeper at the bridge. Maury awoke with the name in his ears, which he did not in the least remember ever to have heard. Inquiring of one of his father's old servants if she recol- lected a person bearing such a name, she instantly replied that he was gate-keeper at the Marne when the bridge was built. The recallmg of such obscure impressions of mem- ory in sleep is doubtless due in part to the fact that the mind is then withdrawn from the tracks of its habitual functions, which do not lead back to the forgotten events, and is left free to follow old and long unused paths. I suppose the physiologist would say that the blood, no longer forced in certain directions by the use of certain faculties, flows in multitudes of minute channels through the most intimate recesses of the structure of the brain, stimulating into activity the nerve cells which act upon the most remote, as well as the more recent, registrations. It even seems that some obscure and undeveloped qual- 116 FRATERNITY PAPERS. ities of the mind are revealed in dreams. Henry Ward Beecher once remarked in a lecture that he was very much accustomed to dream of flying. When, next morning, this was told to one of our old Cape Elizabeth farmers, at the breakfast table, he dropped his knife and fork, and ex- claimed, "Well, now, that's curious. I was born on the same day of the same year on which Henry Ward Beecher was born, and / am always dreaming of flying." Mr. Beecher is a man of soaring imagination, who in his dreams might well find himself in the clouds, but our old friend of the Cape, is a hard, matter-of-fact man, never suspected of any touch of imagination. Yet who shall say but that some trace of that .faculty might not be lying dormant in his mind, only disporting itself in his dreams ? What connec- tion might lie in the coincidence of birth it is difficult to say, unless we accept the old faith that men's gifts and for- tunes are ruled by the planets under which they are born. What is certain is, that imagination, as well as memory, plays a prominent part in the shaping of our dreams. It commonly runs riot, wildly mixing together incongruous ideas into the most absurd forms, but still evincing its won- derful shaping power in the vivid dramas which it represents. With all this wild riot of the imagination, however, there is often a singular coherency in dreams, in which the dreamer puts forth as much intellectual power as he ever displays when awake. Many stories are told on good au- thority of persons who have in their sleep composed poems, solved hard problems in mathematics, discovered the key DREAMS. 117 of a perplexing difficulty, or done like wonderful things. The mind, put to a strain, and disturbed bj distracting influences, sometimes fails to perform its offices in waking hours, and only recovers its native strength in the repose of sleep. Thus a ship-builder once told me that when a young man he had difficulty in working out the lines of a ship he was building. After pondering upon the matter, with no result, he retired to rest, and in his dreams worked it out to a satisfactory conclusion. So the story is told of a lawyer, perplexed as to the legal management of a case, who, in a dream conceived a method of proceeding which had not occurred to him when he was awake, and which he adopted with success. In these instances the results remained and were of ser- vice, but it often happens that thoughts and methods which seem admirable in our dreams, prove to be nonsense when we are awake. I have sometimes dreamed of a course of reasoning which might be used in a certain case, and have resolved in my dream to use it, but on awaking have found very little in it. The only result of mental operations in my dreams which abides with me is a fragment of verse, either recalled by memory, or composed in my dream. As I have no recollection of ever having seen the lines before, and have never met with them in my reading since the dream, I am led to suppose they were actually composed in it. They run thus : "So tender thoughts come through the uight, Soft-footed, like the dew, And falling on our bruised hearts, All their lost youth renew." 118 FRATERNITY PAPERS, I am afraid the metaphor here is a little mixed, but I don't feel responsible for that. It is reported of the poet Campbell that while engaged in composing "Lochiel's Warning," he became perplexed as to how he should best put into rhythmical shape an idea which was working in his brain. He had been striving a whole day to find adequate expression for his thought, but night found him still unsatisfied. It will be remembered that Campbell was fastidious and difficult to please in re- gard to niceties of language. With his mind still running in the same groove, he went to bed and fell asleep. While he slept, the idea flashed through his brain clothed in fit- ting and adequate words. He started up in bed, suddenly wide awake, rose, struck a light, sat down at a table, and instantly wrote the well-known couplet : " 'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, And events to come cast their shadows before." The poet then went to sleep again. In the morning he made a single alteration in the couplet, writing for "events to come," "coming events," the shape in which of course the lines appeared in the completed poem. In our deepest sleep, when the mind is farthest removed from the influences of daily life, there seems at times to be a revelation of low-lying traits derived from far-removed conditions — conditions which have existed beyond the life of the individual, in that of the race. Professor Shaler has remarked that the deepest level to which we fall in sleep is that of the blind fear which comes with nightmares. DREAMS. 119 He attributes the existence of this singular sense of fear, at the very bottom of consciousness, to the mental struc- ture which man has inherited. There seems to me to be much force in the observation. Primitive man, findins: himself left to contend with the mysterious forces of nature, in a world as jet unsubdued, was awed bj his surround- ings, and fear became his ruling passion. In the difficul- ties with which he was forced to contend, to gain even an animal subsistence, he believed himself surrounded by evil powers, ever bent on his destruction. In his sense of help- lessness in contending with the storm, the earthquake, and the wild beasts which then disputed with him the posses- sion of the earth, fear fell upon him, and he sought to pro- pitiate the Powers of Evil. We find here the origin of devil-worship. It was born of fear, which yet remains the strongest and deepest passion of savages. In civilized man it has been steadily overmastered by his highest qualities, by the courage which comes of experience, by his mastery over the forces of nature. "But sleep, like a truth-teller, holds up the mirror of our old existence to us — the exist- ence we have passed in other beings, and shows us how that life has been driven on, in dreadful flight by fear." Leaving now the comparatively firm ground of what may be called "sensorial" and mental dreams we come to a class of dreams, or visions, not to be explained by the causes named. They come, or are claimed to come from sources independent of the physical organization. For want of a better name we call them supernatural, though they may be 120 FRATERNITY PAPERS. as much a part of man's nature as any of his senses. It is claimed that through their agency evil has been averted, the innocent saved, and the guilty punished. They come as warnings from a superintending power, or they open communications between kindred souls far removed in space from each other. They are constantly occurring, and though often received with incredulity, are implicitly believed by the subjects of them. Instances are familiar to us all. But the other day a Nevada newspaper contained the story of a woman hastening in alarm to a distant mine, in which she had dreamed an accident had befallen her husband. The dream proved true. Then there is the story of Mrs. Mar- tin, the wife of an English farmer, who was in terrible dis- tress of mind because her daughter Maria was missing. It was feared she had been murdered by her sweet- heart in a fit of jealousy, and hidden somewhere. For a long time no trace of the body could be found. At length the mother had a dream, in which it was revealed to her that the corpse of her child was buried under the barn- floor. This proved to be the case, the body was recovered, and the murderer detected. Again, the mother of a medi- cal student dreamt that her son had got into serious trouble in London, and she could not rest until she had left her home in the Midland counties, and sought him out. To her sorrow, the dream was painfully verified, and the con- sequences might have been serious if she had not arrived in time. A Scotch clergyman who lived near Edinburgh dreamt one night, while on a visit in that town, that he DREAMS. 121 saw a fire, and one of his children in the midst of it. On awaking, he instantly got up, and returned home with the greatest speed. He found his house on fire, and was just in time to assist one of his children who in the alarm had been left in a place of danger. In all these instances there is a clear purpose of warning, but in some cases, the dream, though fulfilled, seemed in- consequential. A gentleman living in Yorkshire had a most vivid dream of the Tower of London, — which he had never seen — and more especially of the room in which the regaha and crown jewels are kept. He heard the old woman, who showed the room, address the audience, and treasured up carefully her very peculiarities of voice, dress, manner and features, and created considerable amusement among his friends by mimicking the phantom show-woman when he awoke. He went to London soon after, and of course visited the Tower, where he was astonished and somewhat sobered by the phantom's counterpart, which was identical in every respect. These dreams, in many instances, seem well-authenticat- ed, yet they are always open to doubt, and the sceptical mind is slow to receive them. It may be doubted in some instances, if they are related with entire faithfulness. Memory plays many strange tricks, and a story gets many a twist in passing from mouth to mouth. Still it is to be remembered that dreams of another class, involving no supernatural machinery, are taken on trust, though they are of a character far less likely to make a deep and last- 122 FRATERNITY PAPERS. ing impression on the memory of the dreamer than those we are now discussing. Again it may be said that out of the multitude of dreams it would be strange if some did not come true. Their fulfilment is a coincidence not more surprising than many that occur in our actual experiences. As to the dreams of warning — why is one warned out of many, and why does the warning often come too late ? Then as to many instances in which the dreamer becomes aware of persons or events of which he thinks he had no previous knowledge, but which are subsequently found to have a real existence, the supposition is raised that the dream was the result of unconscious cerebration — in reality the facts had been previously communicated to the dreamer, at a time when his mind was pre-occupied, and they had thus unconsciously to himself gained a lodgment in his brain, to be reproduced in dreams, by the tenacious mem- ory which holds fast to impressions too slight to make themselves felt in waking hours. Thus we may have knowledge of some things in our dreams, of which we have no consciousness when awake. It is a matter of quite general belief that anything dreamed three ni'ghts in succession is certain to come to pass. It is obvious to remark that we are quite likely to dream again the dream which has made a strong impres- sion upon us. We dream often of those things which are most in our minds. I have myself been so strongly im- pressed by a dream as to go on dreaming about it, after its action was completed. Yet there have been well-authen- DREAMS. 123 ticated instances of the triple dream coming true. Thus a gentleman, whose veracity no one would doubt, writes : "When a boy, away from home at school, I had waited long for tidings from an older brother, supposed to be at that time in California, but of whose exact whereabouts no information had been received for about a year. Three nights in succession I dreamed that he had returned and that in crossing the Isthmus he had contracted fever, arriv- ing in New York very sick, so that my father was obliged to go for him and bring him home ; that he lay sick in a certain room in the house attended by our family physi- cian, and finally died. Without any intimation of his re- turn, the third morning after the dreams, 1 received a tel- e^^ram informins: me of his return and death exactly as I had dreamed it." There is a class of dreams, partaking of the nature of visions, which, if we are to suppose them well authenti- cated, it is very difficult to explain by any of the sugges- tions here made, or as having any other than a supernatu- ral origin. I refer to alleged instances in which murders have been revealed by persons, — living far removed from the scene, and having no knowledge of the deed or the circumstances, — seeing the entire transaction in a dream, with all the accessories of time and place, and afterwards, when the fact of such a murder has come to their knowl- edge, recognizing the spot with all its surroundings. We have, of course, a disposition to take such statements with many grains of salt, yet they are made with great circum- stantiality and are beUeved by many. 124 FRATEBNITY PAPERS. With all the explanations we can give or imagine, there remains an unexplained element of mystery in these so- called supernatural dreams. It is easy for the physiolo- gist to say that soft dreams are a slight irritation of the brain ; frightful dreams are a sign of determination of blood to' the head, and that dreams of blood and red objects are signs of inflammatory conditions. But such causes are insufficient to account for coherent mental phenomena, the circumstances of which are marvellously verified by subse- quent experience. It is possible that science may yet so far extend its researches as to be able to give a rational explanation of all these phenomena. Until it does, it may be allowable to suppose that some subtle brain-wave,scarcely more wonderful than the electric telegraph, may convey impressions to and from kindred minds. Some impalpable element of the ether that surrounds us may act on mind in favorable conditions. Why may not the spirit that feels and thinks, have its own methods of communication aside from those which pertain to the physical universe as we understand it ? Surely such a supposition involves nothing more incredible than the theory that all the phenomena of dreams are the work of inert matter. Setting aside any advantages supposed to be derived from this class of visitations, the question may be asked, What is the use of dreams ? What purpose do they serve in the economy of man's existence ? The activity of the mind during sjumber involves some consumption of power ; is there any compensating advantage arising from it? The DREAMS. 125 opinion generally prevails, I think, that dreams are but idle vagaries of the mind, without benefit or purpose. But yet when Ave reflect that there is no waste of power in the machinery of the universe, it is not unreasonable to suppose that even the action of the mind in sleep is not without a purpose. God might have given us dreamless slumber, and the fact that the mind continues in some degree active during sleep is evidence of design and use. There may yet be a science of the right interpretation of dreams. If, as Professor Shaler remarks, "it is only by studying the behavior of the mind during the coming and going of sleep that we can hope to understand the peculiar relations of the will to the rest of the mental faculties ;" if "it is only in that part of our lives that we can expect to trace, however dimly, the development of those powers with which we find ourselves possessed;" if "there only can we hope to see with our own eyes the long perspective of our mental history" — then surely our dreams should not pass unobserved, for in what way other than these does the mind manifest itself "during the coming and going of sleep ?" It may be well to think of our dreams as one before us thought of them : "I will not lightly pass over my very dreams ; so neither night nor day shall be spent unprofitably ; the night shall teach me what I am, the day what I should be ; for Sleep is Death's younger brother, and so like him that I never dare trust him without my prayers." It has seemed to me that there are some lessons to be 126 FRATERNITY PAPERS. derived from dreams, which at the risk of unduly length- ening this paper I will briefly state. Firsts we may learn from them those things which have made the deepest impressions upon our minds, which have most influenced our thoughts and actions. In our waking hours a multiplicity of impressions are received, and we are at the time scarcely conscious of those which sink deepest into our being. The school-boy thinks lightly of his sports and his companions, and is all unconscious that in life's declining years it is those scenes and those boyhood friends that will shine brightest in his memory. So come back to us in our dreams the scenes, the associations, the companions, that have most impressed themselves upon our being. Thus Southey, as proof of how little he had learned at Oxford, says — ''I never remember to have dreamt of Oxford — a sure proof of how little it entered into my moral being ; of school, on the contrary, I dream perpetually." Again, dreams may reveal to us something of the con- dition of our physical organization, of our bodily health. All have had experience of the distressing dreams which come in sickness, and render the hours which should be restful more wearing than even those of conscious pain. In my own case the dreams of illness have not only taken on the most ludicrously painful aspect, but they have at times been accompanied by a gloom, an awe. a mystery, a horror of situation, an all-pervading and overwhelming weight of depression, that in waking hours can be associ- ated only with the infernal regions — if any such exist, out- DREAMS. 127 side the mind of man. But dreams are not only colored and deepened by sickness, they foretell it. The derange- ments of the physical system are revealed by them, when as yet they have scarcely made themselves apparent in waking hours. The brain feels the sympathetic trouble in sleep, and so foretells the impending calamity in its dreams, before it has waking consciousness of it. They are some- times found to go before a severe bodily illness, of which they thus serve to give warning. Dr. Maudsley remarks that "an outbreak of acute mania of an elated character is sometimes preceded by dreams of a joyous and elated character, and sad and gloomy dreams, in like manner, often go before and presage an attack of melancholia." Thus by taking note of our dreams we may be enabled to ward off, or prepare for, an attack of illness. Yet again, it is the remark of Sir Benjamin Brodie, that "dreams are at any rate, an exercise of the imagination, and one effect of them may be to increase the activity of that important faculty during our waking hours." "Young man," said an old poet to an individual who brought him a specimen of his verses, "Do you dream ? Because if jou do not, you may never hope for a successful exercise in poetry of the imaginative faculty." In sleep the imag- ination is active, and it may thus receive a certain stimu- lus, through dreams, in persons in whom the faculty has little other excitation, and may thus be kept alive. And what a dull world this would be without the play of imag- ination I 128 FRATERNITY PAPERS. But, after all, it has seemed to me that the most impor- tant service dreams may render us is in the revelation of character. "Know thyself" is the aphorism of the ages^ and as our dreams are influenced by our prevailing inclina- tions, so they may help us to form a right estimate of our own characters. The poet wished some power — " wad the giftie gie us, To see oursels' as others see us.' This mirror may be held up to us in dreams, and it may reveal more even than others see in us. We never so outside of ourselves in our dreams. They are always colored by our own personality. Whatever we are enters into them. "The coward never dreams that he is valiant, or the brave man that he is a coward ; the sordid man has no generous emotions in the land of shadows, nor does the free-handed, hospitable man become a churl in his sleep." Hidden traits may come out, powers of which we are scarcely conscious maybe revealed, but we are always our- selves, we never lose our personal identity. More than this, dreams may reveal to us inherited traits. A striking instance of this occurred in the experience of a friend of mine, who could not understand why in his dreams he was always weighed down by a sense of abase- ment, humility, and unworthiness. He was rarely con- scious of this feeling in his working hours, though to others it was apparent that he was a shy, retiring, modest man. He kncAV he was not a forth- putting man, and sometimes wondered why he could never feel himself quite on an DREAMS. 129 equality with his fellows, why there was in him a lack of self-confidence which others possessed. But this feeling was strongest in his dreams. At last a fact came to him which gave him the key to his dreams and his character. It was made known to him that while he was yet in his mother's womb, a circumstance occurred, which, whether with due reason or otherwise, gave her a sense of humility and unworthiness ; she doubtless brooded upon it ; it was impressed upon the unformed mind of her unborn child, and colored all his life, though revealed to him most clearly in his dreams. Such are some of the apparent uses of dreams. In the words of another, "it would assuredly be presumptuous to say that they may not answer some still further purpose in the economy of percipient and thinking beings." "They have been a neglected study ; nevertheless it is a study w^hich is full of promise of abundant fruit when it shall be earnestly undertaken in a painstaking and methodical way by well-trained and competent observers." It may reveal to us that we do vibrate in unison with more subtle influ- ences of earth and sky than we can yet measure in our philosophy. CONVERSATION, If, in a mixed company, the question were asked, what is the greatest enjoyment of life ? the answers would be as various as the tastes and pursuits of the individuals pres- ent. Fortunately for us all there is more than one road to happiness — though many of them are full of bogs and pit- falls. Some men find pleasure in a fast horse, many in the accumulation of money, and many more in the spending of it. Sensual pleasures aside, what is that exercise of our powers which confers the purest and most lasting pleasure, the highest earthly happiness ? It should come logically, from the employment of our highest faculties, — and not merely from one, but from all of them. The eye is an avenue of delight to the mind, the ear is the inlet of knowledge, and the brains is the seat of consciousness. But we may grow weary of seeing, tired of hearing, and become morbid from self-introspection. But when eye and ear and intellect and speech are all employed in receiving and imparting that which interests and delights, the whole being is pleasurably excited. Does not conversation nieet these conditions, and is it not CONVERSATION. 131 the most refined species of recreation — the most sparkling source of merriment, the most natural method of acquiring knowledge ? You have first the pleasure of good fellow- ship, of looking upon "old familiar faces," the sense of friendliness, of taking old acquaintances by the hand. And who has yet told us how much of our happiness comes from associations, past and present ? Secondly there is the de- light of hearing some new fact, or explanation of an old one ; the witty mot, the ready repartee, the apt anecdote, or the clear elucidation of a principle. Thirdly, there is the en- joyment of exercising our own wits, defending our own views — and compelling other people to listen to us. And are we not all very much like the man who said "I take c/reat interest in my own concerns, I assure you I do ?" Reading is a solitary pleasure — I might say vice, as it is often indulged in. Meditation is apt to run into moral hy- pochondria. Conversation dispels the mist of morbid self- consciousness, rubs off the rust of inaction, gives our minds the needed stimulus of other minds, the oxygen of intellect. It quickens our thoughts from a heavy amble into a gallop, and enables us to get over more ground in an hour than in weeks of solitary mooning meditation. A really fine talk between half a dozen well-matched and thoroughly culti- vated people, who discuss an interesting subject with the manifold wealth of allusions, arguments and illustrations, is a sort of mental Derby day wherein our brains are excited to their utmost speed. "Know thyself" is the aphorism of the ages, but can we find ourselves out by self-contempla- 132 FRATERNITY PAPERS. plation ? No : rather by measuring ourselves with other men ; by striving with them in the arena of intellect. I can conceive of great pleasure in the pursuit of some absorbing and congenial occupation ; in the delight of the artist as he sees the colors take form from his brush, or the graceful figure start into seeming life beneath his chisel ; in the moment of triumph when the patient labors of the inventor are rewarded bj success and his machine, almost a thing of life, stands perfected before him ; in the flush and glow of the philosopher when some secret of nature is at last revealed by his experiments. But all these are solitary pleasures. They do not broaden life. They do not take us out of our own narrow aims and ambitions. It is necessary at times to leap over our petty ring-fence of personal hopes, fears, and emotions of all kinds, and roam with our neighbors over their dominions, and into farther out-lying regions of pubHc and universal interest. This comes from the contact with other minds, the exchange of thoughts with our fellow men, in a word from intelligent conversation. Being thus a source of exquisite pleasure, a means of. self-culture, the most natural and interesting mode of ac- quiring knowledge, and a powerful instrument in influenc- ing public opinion, in enlightening the popular mind, and in bringing about needed reforms and improvements, the question becomes pertinent. Why is the art of conversa. tion so little cultivated? On all sides Ave are told that it is well-nigh extinct. Good dinner-table talkers are become CONVERSATION. 133 rare. We occasionally meet with a person who says as good a thing as Charles Lamb or Sydney Smith ever uttered, — but stately, old-fashioned conversation has died out. In these days nobody talks as Dr. Johnson did, and one would hardly be tolerated if he should attempt it. It is really melancholy to reflect that the era of such delight- ful talk as Boswell, Tom Moore, and Greville have recorded, is passing away. The London Spectator said not long ago, that the appearance of a wit like Luttrell or Sydney Smith, in a London drawing-room would create as great a sensa- tion as a bustard in Piccadilly. Men seem to have largely adopted the opinion of the Scotchman, who in the days of gambling and hard-drinking, was heard to say : "I tell you what, sir, I just think that conversation is the bane of society." In this country, though we abound in orators, we have few good conversers. Conversation is little cultivated either in our homes or in the social circle. One of the most melancholy spectacles in life is a company gathered of an evening for social enjoyment and sitting solemnly staring at each other for the lack of something to say, or the art of saying it. In the rural districts such occasions are positively dismal and funereal in their aspects. The farmers, awkward in their unaccustomed Sunday coats and clean shirts, sit bolt upright in .the straight-back chairs as if solemnly waiting for the services to begin, and when the girls on the front stairs strike up the usual pennyroyal hymn, one naturally looks around for the corpse. If it were not 134 FRATERNITY PAPERS. that man is blessed with a stomach it is probable that social converse would die out altogether on such occasions, and the company would sit like so many mummies, or a Quaker meeting, until the spirit moved them to depart to their several homes. Happily with the distribution of "refreshments" tongues are loosened, and there is some little flow of talk, such as it is, but it is melancholy to reflect that the highest intellectual pleasure is subordinated to the grossest physical needs. Among others, three causes may be mentioned as occa- sioning this dearth of conversational powers among our people. The first may be said to be that spirit of repres- sion and asceticism which prevailed among our Puritan ancestors, which looked with forbidding eye on all vain words and trifling conversation, and united with the prac- tice of the severest economy, in regarding as idle and use- less everything which did not tend to immediate profit. This feeling found expression in the household axiom, "Let your victuals stop your mouth," by which the inquiring spirit of childhood was repressed, and the social meal, around which should play the flash of wit, and the inter- change of amusing and instructive remark, was converted into an occasion of silent and solemn gormandizing ; as if the chief ofiice of the mouth was to swallow victuals, and the chief end of man to digest them. This somber style of dining was not confined to the mid- dle classes. Charles Jared Ingersoll relates that when a boy, playing around the residence of General Washington CON VERS A riON. 1 ?^5 in Market street, Philadelphia, Avith some of the children connected with the Washington family, he was persuaded into the house, and dined at the table of the great man, with his wife, and his military aids or secretaries. No con- versation took place during the meal. Washington filled his own glass of Madeira silently, passed the decanter to his lady, and then took wine with the guests, the boys included. It was a long and quiet repast, and the boys were glad when it w^as over. Secondly, the almost universal circulation of books and newspapers, in our day, has left us neither time nor mate- rial for conversation. Men save their best thoughts for the press, they cannot afford to squander them on diners-out, and everybody who is not writing a book is reading one. If we talk at all it is of books, which other men have writ- ten, rather than what we have thought. The press has silenced the tongue, and the communication of ideas goes on by machinery. The omnivorous reporter is abroad, and what he leaves ungleaned, as well as much that he does not leave, is not worth picking up. When all the occur- rences of the day, down to the building of a pig-pen or the shingling of your neighbor's barn, are already in print, and have been commented upon by the editor-in-chief, what is there left to talk about ? If there happens to be a man at large who is supposed to be in possession of a state secret, or to know something that other people do not, the interviewer — that highest product of Yankee inquisitive- ness — the familiar of the modern inquisition — proceeds at 136 FEATERNITT PAPERS. once to put him to the torture, nor leaves him until he has wrung from him the last drop of information. He talks for the million. All our conversation is in print before we have time to speak it. It is just what we were going to say, but the lightning presses ai-e too fast for us. Then again, when every nook and corner of the universe is ex- plored by the long arm and multitudinous fingers of the electric telegraph there comes the necessity of condensing its enormous budget of facts. "Boil it down," cries the editor in despair. "Be brief," is the word passed along the line, and hence it has become the fashion to talk short, and long flowing periods are considered wearisome. But, perhaps, after all, the principal reason of the dearth of good conversers, is the neglect of the cultivation of leisure. Conversation implies not only education, but ob- servation and reflection. These can come only from well employed leisure — the mellow hours of life when thoughts ripen into speech. But leisure does not enter into the plan of our hurried, headlong life. If we take it at all it is by snatches, as boys take stolen fruit, and with a similar sense of guilt in the enjoyment of it. The busy man is the model citizen and the busier the better, until a stroke of paralysis lays him low, when he is no longer of much account. Men and women engage in the strife and turmoil of business, and the unflagging industry of labor, with a zeal and assiduity truly laudable, but scarcely spare a thought to, much less bestow any serious or systematic attention up- coy VER SA TION. 137 on, the time when nature will compel them to lay aside work and recruit their tired energies. It is then, when the animal impulses are all gone by, that conversation comes as a relief to the tedium of life. But, how few of us make this provision for old age — the golden leisure laid up to shed a cheerful glow upon life's evening hours. When enforced idleness comes there is no provision made to stave off its wearisomeness, much less for its enjoyment. The fact is that while we respect labor we most unjustly despise leisure. Most work has something of hard compulsion in it, and while it gives a firm basis to character, fails to round it off and bring it into beautiful proportions. This can only be the work of complete liberty, and must depend greatly upon the existence of leisure and the use made of it. The over busy man who thrusts this out of sight and reserves no time for social converse, cuts off his real progress, hin- ders his development, narrows down his mind to a single line of thought, and thus renders himself just so much less effective as a power in society and so much less capable of happiness as an individual. It is a thought of Landor's that few know how sweet and sacred a thing is idleness for the reason that so many have not prepared themselves to enjoy it. Few cultivate the leisure which is essential to conversation and so we come to be a busy, short spoken people, and lose the finest relish of life. For was not Goethe right when he said ''one ought every day a't least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words ?" 138 FBATEBNITY PAPEBS. "'There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we will." The innate tendency of our nature will have vent even when we neglect or seek to repress them. Man is a talking animal, and some speech will go on in spite of all admonitions to silence, or over devotion to busi- ness. Two institutions, which may perhaps be said to be spontaneous, have preserved for us in New England the faculty of speech. These are the country store and the sewing circle. The first of these deserves a paper by itself instead of the paragraph, which only, I can give it. It is an institu- tion by itself — the center not only of trade but of amuse- ment, of local news, of gossip and of high debate. What the theatre Avas to the Greeks, what the forum was to the Romans, the country store is to our rural population. Away back in the country where they have no amusements at all, save an occasional funeral, or the annual visit of the circus, where the people live hard, bald, dry lives, and die hard, bald, dry deaths ; where the men work from early morning until sundown with their silent cattle in sohtary fields, scarcely exchanging a word with a fellow being dur- ing the live-long day, life would utterly stagnate, and the power of speech be lost, were it not for occasional visits to the country store. At nightfall the farmer washes up, harnesses Dobbin, and drives over to "the Corner." There he finds all the loungers, all the idlers, and all the village gossips, as well as those who go to buy molasses, nails, tobacco and raisins, CONVERSA TION. 1 3 9 and there all loiter, gossip and listen in the convenient rest- ing-place of the countrv-store. Hither comes the village lawyer for his letters, for the country store is also the post- office — and the parson drops in for his weekly paper, and the doctor calls on his rounds, and the old family nags, long-tailed and bob-tailed, stand drowsily before the door, while the exchange of news and gossip goes on with the bar- gaining inside. But it is in the long winter evenings that the country store is in full play as a conversational center. Then it holds its regular re-unions. Then the loungers and the gossips and the small politicians gather around the box stove, seated on the heads of kegs or the narrow ends of nail and candle boxes, while the boys perch on the smooth, worn counters, their feet swinging off, or find rest- ing places on the barrel heads in the dark corners. In the genial warmth tongues are loosened, the crops are dis- cussed, the state of the roads is canvassed, and Farmer Hayseed remarks that "If suthin' isn't done to that hole over by Jerdon's it'll be mighty bad 'doing' there 'afore spring," and Farmer Hodge inquires if "they aint never goin' to fix up that old school-house over'n the Libby neigh- borhood?" Town affairs are overhauled and the doin^^s of the "selictmen" are sharply criticized. Then perhaps some bit of local scandal opens all ears, or the coarse jest goes round, or the wag of the neighborhood plays off his accus- tomed practical joke of slyly filling the coat-tail pocket of some earnest talker with a junk of fat pork purloined from a convenient barrel, while the boys snicker in the dark 140 FRATEBNITY PA PEES. corners. Bat it is just before election that the talk becomes most earnest. Then argument runs high. The partisans on both sides stand stoutly up to the work. "Figgers'* are produced to prove that molasses is ten cents more per gallon under Republican rule than it was when the "Dem- mercrats" were in power. That corners the opponent. There is no getting away from that. Then 'Squire Riggs takes up the talk, or Deacon Blodgett makes a sally, or Captain Muggs starts a new train, and they are all in for it, every one. These are the people for whom politi- cal newspapers are printed, and no others. For them were originally published the debates in Congress, which they are as ready to quote as any eager deacon ever was to hurl texts from the Scriptures at the head of his opponent or questioner. The country store is, in short, a little Con- gress in which the affairs of the nation are discussed, and its policy shaped in no small degree. Thus even in this rude form the power of conversation is shown in breaking the dull monotony of country life, in affording amusement and relaxation to overtaxed men, in diffusing intelligence, keeping up an interest in public affairs, and in preventing the common mind from lagging too far behind the times. The early closing movement in the country would be like caulking up the last crevice in the Black Hole of Calcutta, and condemning our entire rural population to a state of mental asphyxia. Of the rival institution of the sewing circle it becomes me to speak with that delicacy and modesty which should CONVERSATION. 141 characterize the discussion of feminine affairs by the mas- culine gender. But let us consider the necessity of it. If the lives of men in the country are bald and dry, what shall we say of the condition of women ? Condemned to a round of ceaseless toil, in cheerless back rooms, sedulously secluded from whatever of movement and life the little travelled highway may offer, with neighbors few and far between, their opportunities for social intercourse are rare and are prized accordingly. Women must talk though they may not be idle. It would be considered a scandalous waste of time for them to come together with no other pur- pose than to indulge in the amusement of conversation. Hence comes the sewing circle as a disguise for the Talk- ing Match. Fortunately for the convenient fiction the meeting-house is always in want of a new carpet or a coat of paint, and woman's helpful hands are as ready as her tongue. Far be it from me to disparage her endeavors ; in public spirit she often shames the other sex, and many a worthy charity, or pubHc improvement would languish but for her always willing aid. What I am most concerned with is the sewing circle as a conversational institution, and of this I must perforce speak with caution. As the butcher said, respecting "sarsengers," "idees have got afloat in the public mind concerning sewing circles." There is a suspicion of gos- sip, of tittle-tattle, nay, even of slander attached to them, and the masculine mind affects to regard them with a feel- ing akin to contempt. But what would you have ? Shall 142 FRATERNITY PAPERS. the country store indulge in its coarse joke, and the sew- ing circle be denied its little spice of gossip ? Life, espe- cially country life, must have some seasoning, or it will become "flat, stale and unprofitable" indeed. Besides I am led to suspect that the sewing circle has been slandered in this regard, and that the feminine mind, when it unbends itself, is not insensible to the charms of genial humor or racy anecdote. When, on rare occasions, I have so far gratified the in- quisitiveness of the feminine mind as to what goes on at the club, as to impart one of those spicy and exhilarating, but entirely innocent little anecdotes with which its members enliven those weighty discussions of "fate, fore-knowledge and free-will," which chiefly occupy their minds, I have been surprised and delighted at the ready response, "That will be a capital story for me to tell at the sewing circle !" I take this as proof conclusive that the sewing circle, how- ever amenable it may be to the charge of gossip, is not without capabilities of a higher culture and a genial appre- ciation of good humor. "* This brings us to the consideration of the conversational powers of woman. In accordance with masculine selfish- ness and insolence she was first admitted to the table to serve as a carver of the meats, and was banished with the introduction of the wine. The false chivalry which re- garded her as a brainless angel permitted no conversation in her presence, save that which wandered softly among flowers and airy compliments. She was denied the higher CONVERSATION. 143 education, as being incapable of it, and as a matter of course, often justified the popular estimate of her conver- sational powers. The story of the early days of Mary Somerville, and the difficulties she encountered in the pur- suit of that mathematical knowledge for which she after- wards became so distinguished, strikingly illustrates the pre- judice against learned women which prevailed in the last century, and which still shuts the doors of some colleges in the faces of young girls. In our day it is found that women talk in society, on the whole, quite as well as men. They arc not quite so epigrammatic, and sometimes lack condensation, but they are decidedly more sprightly, and tell any story which requires quiet dramatic expression a good deal better. The brilliancy of Madame De Stael's conversation has passed into a proverb ; it triumphed so far over the plainness of her features, that Curran said she had the power of talking herself into a beauty — an extraor- dinary gift, which it must be confessed all women do not possess. Her chief fault as a talker was a race-horse rapidity of tongue — a quality which many women do pos- sess. On the question as to whether Mrs. Brown has got into her new house, or whether it was Mrs. Jones's second or third daughter that had the mumps, and above and beyond all, on the plague of servants, there is no limit to her flow of speech. Yet she is capable of repartee and of ready retort. When Napoleon, who in his treatment of women was a brute, said to a lady who had been an object t)f gossip, "Well, madam, are you as fond of men as ever ?" 144 FRATERNITY PAPERS. she had enough presence of mind to answer, "Yes, sire, when thej are }3olite." The Emperor illustrated the little- ness of his mind by depriving her husband of his place three days after. There can be no question that a prime element of con- versation is lost by the separation of the sexes. The talk may be freer after the ladies have withdrawn from the table, but it is also coarser, and gentlemen muddle them- selves with wine while the ladies are in a state of mental inanition in the drawing-room. One can sympathize with Madame De Stael, who on one occasion, after long waiting for the return of the gentlemen from the table, mattered, "this is intolerable," and sent word for the gentlemen to come up. The advantages resulting from the co-education of the sexes, are now generally admitted, and there can be no doubt that sex is an important element in conversa- tion. No circle of conversers can be complete without the presence of both men and women. T. W. Higginson has said that what contributed more than anything to the pop- ularity of the Radical Club was the real zest given to the conversation by the presence of both sexes. So compli- mentary was always the opening of the comments on the paper read, and so keen the subsequent criticism, that Mrs. Howe once compared it to the ancient punishment, whereby an offender w^as first smeared with honey and then hung up to be stung to death by wasps. The female element in conversation cannot but have a refining and brightening influence. Women wake up talk- CON VERSA TION. 145 ativeness in men — an attribute of the sex which is too often overlooked. On the other hand the effect of mascu- line conversation, when it is not of the tiowery and compli- mentary sort, tends to the strengthening of the female mind and the freeing of it from the narrowing influences of prudery. The frank interchange of opinions cannot but be beneficial to both sexes, and the meeting of either apart for purposes of conversation must be regarded as a mistake. It is the habit of men to underrate the intellect of woman. , If its grasp is not so wide as that of men, it has often a keener insight. But it is said that men and women cannot meet on an equality in conversation because the talk will inevitably degenerate into compliments on the part of the gentlemen — the element of sex will enter into it ; and that the best talk comes only Avhen men get beyond the region of com- pliment, and converse familiarly, not sparing each other's foibles or peculiarities. I reply that this is a matter of education — education of men as well as of women. Men indulge in complimentary talk to women because of their low conception of the fe- male mind, quite as much as from any feeling of gallantry. They have never considered women as their equals intel- lectually, and so think to please them with flattery, which every sensible woman takes as an insult. Let us give woman the opportunity to converse intelligently before we decry her colloquial powers. Let men lift themselves up to the level of fair play in this matter ; let them divest 146 FRATERNITY PAPERS. themselves of that false pride which makes it shameful in their ejes to be excelled by woman, let it be understood that she is to meet man on an equality, and let her stand the test. This is a position up to which man has to edu- cate himself, as w^oman has to educate herself to take her rightful position by his side. Give her the opportunity, and my word for it, it will be found that she can give and take in the game of conversation with the best of us. How long is it since it was held that woman could not Avrite, could not preach, could not practice medicine — and yet she has accomplished something in all these directions in the face of greater difficulties than ever men encoun- tered in the pursuit of the same professions. Read the letters of John and Abigail Adams, and you will see that those of the wife, in strength of thought, in intelligent interest in public affairs, do not suffer in comparison with those of her distinguished husband. And yet so low was the conception of female intellect in her day. so little atten- tion was paid to the education of women, that she never was sent to any school. Female education in the best families then went no farther than readinor. writini>; and arithmetic. Men have denied woman the opportunity for the full development of her powers, and then compla- cently declared that she had no powers to develope. They have surfeited her with sugar plums and then declared that she had no stomach for hearty victuals. They scru- pulously refrain from intelligent conversation with her, and then proclaim that she cannot talk ! No ! They don't say CONVERSATION. 147 that ; it is generally admitted, I believe, on all hands, that woman can talk — but it is held that she cannot sustain herself in an intellectual contest with man. As society is now constituted, perhaps it is true that the great majority of women could not shine in a conversational contest, but many of them could contribute a fair share of entertain- ment in such an intellectual bout, and it only needs the mingling of the sexes on an equal footing, in this matter, to so educate woman's colloquial powers, as to make her share in the highest style of conversation, by no means its least valuable or attractive element. Men do not always even as things are now, deal in com- pliments, in their intercourse with women, and when they lay them aside they often find themselves at a disadvan- tage. They do well to stick to compliments ; it is their best hold. They have woman on the weak side there, and are not themselves exposed to any trial of strength. When they come out of their covert of flowers they do not always fare so well. Men, for instance, do not usually compliment their wives,' in their private intercourse with them, and such a thing has been heard of as their coming out second best in the marital discussions which go on at times in the best regulated families. If husbands would get together and honestly exchange experiences, the conclusion arrived at on the whole, I think, would be, that women can hold their own pretty well in a nip-and-tuck conversational bout. Ma- ny, I am afraid, would sometimes have to confess that they would have done better if they had taken their wives' advice 148 FBATEENITY PAPERS. on certain occasions, even where matters of business were concerned, as well as that more than once thej had been talked over to plans and projects which in their souls thej abhorred. As to wives, how many know that their husbands are fools, and yet at the same time are exceedingly careful that their husbands shall not know that they know it ! But again it is said that it would not do to admit women to men's conversational circles because in their discursive talk the subject in hand would be wholly lost to sight. They would wander away from it over the face of the whole earth. But here again I appeal to the experience of husbands as to whether women cannot stick to the point when they have a purpose in view ? Did you ever know them to wan- der from a favorite subject of conversation when they had something to gain by it V 1 go no further into this some- what delicate investigation — it is sufficient to suggest it to the minds of those of my readers who have had experience in matrimonial life. But what if, in conversation, women do wander a Httle from the subject in hand — it is only to enrich and adorn it with the ornaments of fancy which are as necessary as the beams of argument, to the completeness of the structure. Conversation is not to be cast into iron moulds. Like the mountain rill, which while yet ever keeping its course to the sea, meanders through green fields, now broadens to a pel- lucid pool, anon narrows to a rushing torrent between im- pending banks, receiving on either hand the contributions CON VER SA TION. 149 of smaller streams flowing in its direction — conversation should sway with the suggestions of the topic, gathering to itself all themes that serve to illustrate it, or expand its scope. Discursiveness is an element needed to make con- versation elastic, and prevent its degenerating into mere controversy, in which pride of opinion, so inimical to all true conversation, largely predominates. But, after all, let me not be misunderstood. I am not arguing that woman is or may be, fitted to shine in conver- sation in the same way that men do — that she will always be as deep in thought, as strong in argument, as rich in anecdote and allusion. I only urge that while she may contribute something of all these elements, she will also add a quality peculiar to herself — a grace, an archness, a brightness, a keenness born of her mental constitution, — and, above all, a readiness of speech tending to arouse the slu<>;o;ishness of man's slower nature. This feminine ele- ment of conversation is what is needed to its completeness, and is only to be obtained when the sexes meet on the plane of a perfect and fearless quality. Wine, rather than woman, has been regarded as the best promoter of conversation. But that brilliancy which springs from artificial stimulants rather than from the natural flow of spirits, and play of intellect, is dearly purchased, and never genuine. Sydney Smith, who abjured wine because he found it interfered with the full play of his colloquial powers, continued to the last the most brilliant of talkers, always bubbling over with ideas, mad with spirits, with no 150 FRATERNITY PAPERS. elaborate impromptus, no cut-and-dry repartees, firing as he said right across the table, and ready to talk upon any subject that was started, never starting one for the sake of talking upon it. On the other hand what a melancholy picture is that of Theodore Hook, priming himself at the club with tumblers of cold brandy and Avater for the en- counter with Sydney Smith, and breaking down pitiably in the end. The only talk that is worth much is that which comes from a full mind and the natural play of the spirits. It is urged in behalf of wane and other stimulants that they produce an exhilaration of the spirits which enables one to exert his best powers, and also quickens the appre- ciation of them in others. But it seems to me that the best stimulus of all our powers is their own free exercise. We strengthen our arms by using them ; we sharpen our wits by contact with other men's minds. The Creator in bestowing upon us certain faculties could not have intended that their highest exercise should depend on artificial means, least of all on those agencies whose indisputable tendency is, in the end, to weaken and destroy them. The stimulus of wine is evanescent, and more and more is required to reproduce it. Beyond a certain point it dulls instead of quickens the intellectual powers, and towards that point it is ever dragging its votary. It was not that Theodore Hook took too much brandy on the occasion of his encoun- ter with Sydney Smith, that constitutes the lamentable fea- ture of his case, but that, having resorted to brandy as a stimulus in the first instance, he had inevitably reached CONVEESATION. 151 that point where he could not take any without taking too much. This is the danger that hes in wait for all brilliant talkers and diners-out who rely on spirituous liquors as the source of their brilliancy. In how many instances have they degenerated into sots ! But again, the stimulus of wine produces a painful reac- tion, while that which follows the natural exercise of our powers is pleasant rather than painful — the agreeable repose which follows exertion. There is no headache, no heart- ache, and no shame in it. We have not to remember that we have laughed at nonsense instead of wit, nor that we have mistaken what is coarse and boisterous for true mirth- fulness and good fellowship. There cannot be needed any stimulus to give us the proper command of our faculties beyond good health, a good con- science and the proper occasion for their display. All that goes beyond this draws on the future and bankrupts our powers. Sydney Smith, the prince of humorists and con- versers, knew that the best of spirits did not come from the use of wine. On one occasion he said: "Now I mean not to drink one drop of wine to-day, and I shall be mad with spirits, I always am when I drink no wine. It is curi- ous the effect a thimblefull of wine has upon me ; I feel as flat as Blank's jokes ; it destroys my understanding ; I for- get the number of the Muses, and think them thirty-nine, of course, and only get myself right by repeating the lines, and finding 'Descend, ye thirty-nine,' two feet too long." As to the quahties which go to the production of good 152 FRATERNITY PAPERS. conversation, it is obvious that a prime requisite is con- .genialitj of spirits. As has been said, this is the office of a good conversational cook, who brings the right ingre- dients together. In a company of talkers each man plays his part. A club consisting of Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, Goldsmith and Garrick, was like a company of actors, each of whom understands the powers of all his colleagues, and is able to co-operate towards the general effect. They could understand each other; the humorist was in no dan- ger of being taken to speak seriously ; the man of special information could not have his pet subject snatched out of his mouth. On the other hand there was a sufficient amount of variety to save the members of the little circle from boring each other too much. In the webb of conversation the argumentative man may furnish the warp, but the wit should contribute the woof, sliding in a brilliant remark, like Luttrell, who when Moore was describing the ascent of a female aeronaut, who had not since been heard of, saying that when last seen she was still ascending, ascending, slipped in, "Handed out by Enoch and Elijah." Chesterfield's rule was a good one. "Pay your own reckoning, but do not treat the whole company, this being one of the very few cases in which people do not care to be treated, every one being fully convinced that he has wherewithal to pay. " Swift's favorite maxim was, "take as many half minutes as you can get, but never talk more than half a minute without pausing and giving others an opportunity to strike in." Yet the large discourser, pro- CON VERS A TION. \ 53 vided he can keep himself within bounds, is quite as essen- tial as the sajer of good things, since a conversation made up of epigrams would be like a pudding composed wholly of plums. The misfortune of conversation is that it is but of the moment. Doubtless there have been good talkers since the world beo;an. Moses must have been a man of sood discourse, and Noah could have told us a thins; or two. In the days of Methuselah there was time to say a good thing and to laugh at it. Indeed some of the jokes of our day seem to have been in circulation since his time. But yet, of all the good things said since the flood how small is the record ! The best things were never written. We lament the loss of the Alexandrian library, but doubtless it was chiefly rubbish. In Naples, I have seen the charred parch- ments, of Pompeii unrolled with infinite patience, but there was nothing in them worth preserving. Men have not put all their wit and wisdom into books. Many philosophers have discoursed better than they have written. Of Mac- kenzie it was said that he put his melancholy into his books and saved his humor for his friends. The unwritten books of the world would be rare reading, as well as some that have been written and lost. Cicero was a brilliant talker, but the collection of his jests made by his freedman has perished. Selden was a learned man in his day, but we remember him now only by his table talk, fragments of which have been happily preserved. What would the world now care for Dr. Johnson if Boswell had not lived 154 FBATERNITY PAPJEBS. and written ? Think of Shakespeare's talk reported with like fulness and accuracy ! Of those wit combats at the Mermaid, of which Beaumont has written, "We left an air behind us, which aU:»ne Was able to make the two next companies Right witty, though but downright fools ;" of all those flashes of wit and sentiment — those spoken fire- works — we have, alas ! not a scintillation. Coming down to the days of Sydney Smith, of what a brilliant company of diners-out do we find him the bright particular star. Luttrell, who gave this illustration of the English climate, "On a fine day, like looking up a chimney, on a rainy day, like looking down it ;" Jekyll, who at one of Lady Cork's parties, where she wore an enormous plume, said "she was exactly a shuttle-cock — all cork and feathers ;" the cyni- cal Rogers, of whom it was said that he made his way in the world, as Hannibal made his across the Alps, with vin- egar ; Macaulay, too, coming in with his occasional flashes of silence, and even Coleridge, with his everlasting mono- logue, who must after all have conversed with wondrous power, since it is recorded that the landlord of an inn of- fered him board and lodging free if he would only stay in the house and talk. Of Sheridan it is said that he made his witticisms in advance and kept thena by him with a patience quite mirac- ulous, till the exact moment when they might be brought forward with best effect. This accounts for his general silence in company, and the admirable things that came CONVERSATION. 155 from him when he did speak. Yet some of his best sayings must have been impromptu. Thus when Lord Lauderdale said he would repeat some good thing which Sheridan had mentioned to him, the latter replied, "Pray don't, my dear Lauderdale ; a joke in your mouth is no laughing 7nat- tery In preparing his witticisms beforehand, Sheridan followed the learned example of my Lord Bacon, among whose papers, after his death, was found a collection of rejoinders and repartees, made, as he writes, "by way of provision or preparatory store for the furniture of speech and readiness of invention." Thus, supposing his oppo- nent to say — "You wander from the subject," — he is pre- pared with the retort — "But it was to follow you." Or, again, his opponent may say, "Come to the point," — "Why, I shall not find you there," is the cut-and dried response. Douglass Jerrold's wit was of the keenest, and most transparent character, and had an element of spon- taneity which needed no previous preparation. Thus when some one said of a person for whom he was trying to make interest, "Nature has written 'honest man' upon his face ;" "Then Nature must have had a very bad pen," was the prompt reply. At a ball, seeing a very tall gentleman waltzing with a very short lady, he said, "There's a mile dancing with a mile-stone." The author of an epic poem entitled, "A Descent into Hell," used to worry Jerrold very much. At last the wit grew irritated with the poet who, coming suddenly upon him with the question, "Ah, Jerrold! have you seen mv 'Descent into Hell?' " "No, 156 FRATERNITY PAPERS. but I should like to," was the caustic reply. This was wit of the keenest sort. There was more of humor in the reply of Sydney Smith to the church wardens when they wanted a wooden pavement around St. Paul's — "Lay ?/(?i/r heads together and the thing is done I" Samuel Foote, the actor, had a sharp wit and was unsparing in the use of it. ''Well, Foote," said the Duke of Cumberland, one night in the green-room, "here I am, ready as usual to swallow all your good things." "Really," replied the wit, "your Royal Highness must have an excellent digestion, for you never bring any up again." The Duke of Norfolk, who' was rather too fond of the bottle, asked him in what new character he should go to the masquerade. "Go sober," said Foote. A rich contractor was holding forth on the instability of the world. "Can you account for it, sir," he asked, turning to Foote. "Well, not very clearly," he re- sponded, ''unless we suppose it was built by contract" — a hit not less appreciated in our day than in his. Gar- rick's meanness was notorious, and a gentleman speaking to Foote of Garrick having reflected upon some person's parsimony, ended by observing, "Why did he not take the beam out of his own eye, before attacking the mote in other people's ?" "Because," replied Foote, "he is not sure of selling the timber." "Where on earth can it be gone "r" said Foote, when Garrick dropped a guinea, and was searching for it in vain. " To the Devil, 1 think," answered Garrick, irritably. "Let you alone, David, for making a guinea go farther than any one else I" was the reply. CONVEBSATION. 157 In this country we have had comparatively few good con- versers, and our collections of memorable sayings are but scanty. William Wirt has left on record his tribute to the colloquial powers of Dr. Franklin. Though he was sim- plicity itself, his wit was of the first order, and the stores of his mind were inexhaustible. Webster had a vein of humor, but few of his good sayings have been recorded. When Signor Blitz said to him, "Give [me one hundred thousand treasury notes to count, and watch closely, and you will find only seventy-five thousand when I return them." "Signor," responded Webster with animation, "There is no chance ; there are better magicians here than you ; there would not be fifty thousand left after their counting." We have abundance of evidence that this species of necromancy is still practiced at Washington. I remember ex-Senator Bradbury relating at a dinner table, an instance of Webster's apt use of quotation. He had come late to a ball given by Secretary Ewing, who among his friends was known as Solitude Ewing. Looking upon the disarranged tables and the broken fragments of the feast, and addressing the host, Webster exclaimed — "O, Solitude, where are the charms Which sages liave seen in your face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms, Than reign in this horrible place." Henry Clay delighted in anecdote, yet his stories, like his speeches, are forgotten. Thaddeus Stevens was strong in repartee and retort. Coi. Forney relates that when he 158 FRATERNITY PAPERS. lay upon his death-bed and felt the grim messenger fasten- ing upon him, John Hickman told him he was looking well. *'Ah, John I" was the quick reply, "it is not my appear- ance, but my disappearance that troubles me." A mem- ber of the House who was known for his uncertain course on all questions, and who often confessed that he never fully investigated a mooted point Avithout finding himself a neutral, asked for leave of absence. "Mr. Speaker," said Stevens, "I do not rise to object, but to suggest that the honorable member need not ask this favor, for he can easily pair off with himself." It is a singular illustration of the contradictions of human nature that Abraham Lin- coln, our most illustrious story-teller, was the saddest of men, yet his sense of the ridiculous Avas so keen that it bore him up under difficulties that would have broken down almost any other man. Good dinner table orators are more numerous among us -than good conversers. Our wits have run rather to public speaking than to conversation. It is worthy of considera- tion whether it would not be well to cultivate the former less and the latter more. That ready command of our re- sources so essential to success in the conflicts of life comes largely from practice in the art of conversation. "Read- ing," says my Lord Bacon, "maketh a full man ; confer- ence a ready man." Conversation is as essential to the highest culture as study or meditation. If there were fewer debating clubs and more conversational circles it might be better for the risin>>; iijeneration. Conversation CONVERSATION. 15 9 dispels prejudice and makes us not only better ac