'W AMEBieAN LITE .w A, XA. Qass__Zlo; Ronk C :5 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE A TEXTBOOK FOR SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES BY MARY EDWARDS CALHOUN ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL OF THE LEETE SCHOOL AND EMMA LEONORA MacALARNEY TEACHER OF ENGLISH, HORACE MANN HIGH SCHOOL COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GINN AND COMPANY BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY MARY EDWARDS CALHOUN AND EMMA LEONORA MacALARNEY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 315-3 X /J/0 Cfte gtfaenaum jgrega (,1NN AND COMPANY- I'KO- PKIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. APR I 1915 (S)CI.A398164 PREFACE That this volume of " Readings from American Literature " was made because of a real need is, perhaps, its first and best excuse for being. The editors found in their own classrooms the demand for a compact anthology, ranging in time from colonial days to the present and adapted to the high-school student and the college undergraduate. Because of this they have essayed a task, not simple in itself, but simplified to a degree, in their case, by experience in teaching the material presented here. It is happily a fact that to-day we are not neglectful in the school curriculum of a historical survey of American literature. Better still, we link such study with history proper in a natural correlation that vitalizes both. But to read about an author is not enough ; we must read his works — all of which is trite, but so true that it may be said safely many times. Not all schools are so fortunate as to have adequate and extensive reference shelves. Nor do home and town libraries meet all requirements. Few collections, however well selected, supply much material prior to Irving. And even when reference reading is practicable, the de- sirability of a text for classroom study is still obvious. With this by way of explanation, not apology, the editors are content. Thanks are gratefully extended to all who have helped to make the book — to the boys and girls whose frank expressions of inter- est or boredom have shown us what appeals to younger readers ; to the fellow teachers who have advised from their experience ; to the publishers who have made adequate selection possible. If there are any lingering regrets, and what compiler ever saw in his book a true compendium of his desires, it is that the number of selections could not be more generous. We are sorry not to be able to include any of Mark Twain, and we wish that our excerpts iv READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE from Bret Harte and from Thomas Bailey Aldrich were not so few in number. The book, however, is fairly comprehensive. Especially do we acknowledge our indebtedness to many pub- lishers for permission to use material still in copyright — to Houghton Mifflin Company for selections from the early New Eng- land poets and from Harte, Aldrich, Sill, Warner, and Stedman ; to Charles Scribner's Sons for Sidney Lanier and Eugene Field ; to the B. F. Johnson Publishing Co. for Henry Timrod ; to Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. for Paul Hamilton Hayne ; to Mr. Horace Traubel for Walt Whitman ; to the Whitaker & Ray-Wiggin Co. for Joaquin Miller ; to Little, Brown, and Company for Emily Dickinson ; and to The Bobbs-Merrill Company for James Whitcomb Riley. MARY E. CALHOUN EMMA L. MacALARNEY CONTENTS COLONIAL PERIOD CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH ^^^^ A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as hath happened in Virginia etc i Powhatan's Reception of Smith i General History of Virginia 3 The Pocahontas Story 3 The Capture of Pocahontas 5 WILLIAM BRADFORD The History " Of Plymouth Plantation " 8 The Pilgrims leave Leyden 8 The Compact of the Pilgrims 11 Early Trials of the Pilgrim Fathers 12 Christmas Pastimes 14 MOURT'S RELATION Youthful Exuberance on the " Mayflower " 15 Exploring Cape Cod 15 The Landing of the Pilgrims 16 Indian Courtesies 17 JOHN WINTHROP History of New England 18 An Election in the Colonial Times 18 Items covering Period from 1631-1648 19 Letters of John Winthrop and his Third Wife, Margaret 23 JOHN COTTON A Defense of Persecution 25 Poem on the Reverend Thomas Hooker 27 V vi READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE NATHANIEL WARD PAGE The Simple Cobbler of Aggawam in America 28 Women's Fashions 28 In Praise of Anne Bradstreet 33 ANNE BRADSTREET The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America 33 The Prologue 33 Of the Four Ages of Man 35 A Love-Letter to her Husband 36 The Author to her Book 38 For the Restoration of my Dear Husband from a Burning Ague, June, 1661 38 EDWARD JOHNSON W^onder-Working Providence 39 Of the First Preparation of the Merchant Adventurers in the Massa- chusetts 39 Of the First Promotion of Learning in New England 40 JOHN ELIOT A Late and Further Manifestation of the Progress of the Gospel among the Indians in New England 44 Scandal among the Converts 44 MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH The Day of Doom 47 Introduction : To the Christian Reader 47 THE BURWELL PAPERS History of Bacon and Ingram's Rebellion 51 Bacon's Death 51 Bacon's Epitaph, made by his Man 52 Lovewell's Fight : A Popular Ballad 53 MARY ROWLANDSON Narrative of the Captivity and Restouration of Mrs. Mary Roulandson . . 56 Attack by Indians 5'^ Her Experiences in Captivity 57 CONTENTS vii COTTON MATHER ^^ge The Wonders of the Invisible World 59 The Origin of Witchcraft in New England en Some of the Evidence given at the Witch Trials 6i SAMUEL SEW^ALL Diary 66 Discipline at Harvard 66 Christmas Day in Boston 67 Notes on the W^itchcraft Trials 67 Family Discipline 68 Reflections on Slavery 68 A Colonial Wedding 68 A Chief Justice in Search of a Wife 69 ROBERT BEVERLY History and Present State of Virginia 74 Inhabitants of Virginia 74 Pastimes in Virginia 76 Servants and Slaves in Virginia 78 WILLIAM BYRD The History of the Dividing Line 79 North Carolina Farming 79 Runaway Slaves in Hiding So Conviviality in the Colonies 8i A Journey to the Land of Eden 81 Dentistry in Primitive Days 81 JONATHAN EDWARDS Resolutions formed in Early Life (Extracts) S3 Extracts from Edwards's Diary 83 Sarah Pierrepont, afterward his Wife 84 A Farewell Sermon at Northampton, 1750 (Extracts) 85 THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER Alphabets of 1727 and 1762 SS The Dutiful Child's Promises 90 Verses 90 Good Children Must 91 Learn These Four Lines by Heart 91 The Infant's Grace before and after Meat 91 Additional Alphabet Verses 91 viii READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE PAGE THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD BENJAMIN FRANKLIN The Almanacs 92 The Way to Wealth 93 The Autobiography (Extracts) 100 His Early Interest in Books 100 Seeking his Fortune 104 THOMAS GODFREY The Wish no Amyntor in NATHANIEL EVANS Poems on Several Occasions 112 To May 112 Ode to my Ingenious Friend, Mr. Thomas Godfrey n4 JOHN WOOLMAN Journal n5 Chief Events during the Years 1749 to 1753 n5 SAMUEL ADAMS On American Independence — in Philadelphia, August i, 1776 (Extract) . 118 JAMES OTIS On the Writs of Assistance — Before the Superior Court of Massachusetts, February, 1761 (Extract) 119 PATRICK HENRY Speech in the Convention of Delegates, March 28, 1775 (Extracts) .... 120 GEORGE WASHINGTON Speech in Congress on his being made Commander-in-Chief, June 16, 1775 123 Letter to his Wife upon being made Commander-in-Chief of the Army . . 124 THOMAS JEFFERSON Inaugural Address, as President of the United States, March 4, i8ci (Extract) 125 Autobiography 127 An Anecdote of Dr. Franklin 127 A Tribute to France 128 CONTENTS ix ALEXANDER HAMILTON ^age On the Expediency of Adopting the Federal Constitution — Convention of New York, June 24, 1788 (Extracts) 129 THOMAS PAINE Common Sense 130 On the Separation of Britain and America 130 Rights of Man 132 The Foppery of Titles 132 Liberty Tree 134 PHILIP FRENEAU The Pictures of Columbus 135 Columbus addresses King Ferdinand 135 Columbus in Chains 136 The House of Night 137 Death's Epitaph 137 The Indian Burying-Ground 138 The Wild Honeysuckle 139 To a Honey Bee 140 JOHN TRUMBULL McFingal. A Modern Epic Poem 141 Converting a Tory 141 TIMOTHY DWIGHT Columbia 146 JOEL BARLOW The Hasty Pudding 147 Canto I 147 St. GEORGE TUCKER Days of my Youth 152 OCCASIONAL POEMS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD The Battle of the Kegs (Francis Hopkinson) 153 The Ballad of Nathan Hale 156 Battle of Trenton 1 58 X READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE ROVALL TYLER PAGE The Contrast, a Comedy in Five Acts 159 From the "Advertisement" 159 Prologue, in Rebuke of the Prevailing Anglomania 160 Act I, Scene i 161 CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN Wieland; or the Transformation 167 Wieland's Defence 167 EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE The Culprit Fay 177 The Fay's Sentence 177 The Second Quest 179 The American Flag 180 FITZ-GREENE HALLECK On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake 182 Marco Bozzaris 183 WASHINGTON IRVING A History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker 186 Governor Wouter Van Twiller 186 The Sketch Book 190 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow 190 The Alhambra 219 Interior of the Alhambra 219 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER The Last of the Mohicans 225 Chap. XXIII 225 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT Thanatopsis 239 To a Waterfowl 241 To the Fringed Gentian 242 The Death of the Flowers 243 O Fairest of the Rural Maids 244 Song of Marion's Men 245 CONTENTS xi PAGE The Yellow Violet 247 The Death of Lincoln 248 Robert of Lincoln 24S The Planting of the Apple-Tree 251 The May Sun Sheds an Amber Light 253 EDGAR ALLAN POE The Raven 254 Annabel Lee 258 The Haunted Palace 259 The Bells 260 To Helen 264 To One in Paradise 264 Israfel 265 The Coliseum 267 The Conqueror Worm 268 The Masque of the Red Death 269 THE LATER NATIONAL PERIOD DANIEL WEBSTER The Bunker Plill Address (Extracts) 276 ABRAHAM LINCOLN The Gettysburg Speech 291 The Second Inaugural Address 292 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT The Conquest of Mexico (Extracts) 294 Vol. II, Book V, Chap. II 294 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY The Rise of the Dutch Republic 301 Vol. I, Chap. I, Par. 1-15 301 FRANCIS PARKMAN The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century 312 Vol. I, Chap. XVI (Extract) 312 xii READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE RALPH WALDO EMERSON ^^^'^ Concord Hymn 316 The Rhodora 316 The Humble-bee 317 Good-bye 319 Each and All 320 The Snow-storm 321 April 322 Forbearance 323 Fable 323 The Enchanter 324 Woodnotes 324 Selections 324 Voluntaries 327 Self-reliance 328 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE Twice-Told Tales 352 The Gray Champion 352 A Rill from the Town-Pump 360 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW A Psalm of Life 366 The Light of Stars 367 Footsteps of Angels 368 Hymn to the Night 370 The Skeleton in Armor 371 The Rainy Day 376 Endymion 376 Maidenhood 377 Serenade from "The Spanish Student" 379 Sleep 380 Tales of a Wayside Inn 380 The Birds of Killingworth 380 King Robert of Sicily 388 Evangeline. Selections 394 The Song of Hiawatha 420 Introduction 420 Hiawatha's Childhood 423 The Famine 430 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER Proem to the First Edition of his Collected Works 435 The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother \}6 CONTENTS xiii PAGE Ichabod ^-^g Skipper Ireson's Ride ^^o The Barefoot Boy ^_^2 Telling the Bees ^_^c In School-Days ^^7 The Eternal Goodness Laus Deo ! .... 449 452 My Triumph ac^ My Playmate 456 Snow-bound. A Winter Idyl 4^8 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Old Ironsides 4S0 The Last Leaf 481 The Boys 482 The Deacon's Masterpiece, or The Wonderful " One-IIoss Shay " . . . . 484 The Chambered Nautilus 488 A Sun-Day Hymn 489 The Voiceless 490 The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table 490 Chap. II 490 HENRY THOREAU Walden 507 507 Solitude JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL My Love 515 She Came and Went 517 To the Dandelion 317 The First Snow-Fall 519 Aladdin 520 Longing 521 Sonnet 522 The Biglow Papers 523 What Mr. Robinson Thinks 523 The Courtin' 525 The Vision of Sir Launfal 528 The Commemoration Ode (July 21, 1865) 539 Abraham Lincoln. An Essay 551 WALT WHITMAN I Hear America Singing 573 By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame 574 xiv READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE PAGE O Captain ! My Captain ! 574 A Sight in Camp in the Day-break Grey and Dim 575 A Noiseless, Patient Spider 576 Hush'd be the Camps To-Day 576 To the Man-of-War-Bird 577 Come up from the Fields, Father 577 Darest Thou Now, O Soul 579 When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd 580 Selections 5S0 SIDNEY LANIER Song of the Chattahoochee 584 A Ballad of Trees and the Master 5S6 The Marshes of Glynn 5S6 THE LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS BAYARD TAYLOR Bedouin Song 591 The Song of the Camp 592 The National Ode, July 4, 1876 593 America 593 HENRY TIMROD Spring 595 At Magnolia Cemetery 597 PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE Aspects of the Pines 598 A Little While I Fain Would Linger Yet 599 A Storm in the Distance 600 FRANCIS BRET HARTE Grizzly 601 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH When the Sultan Goes to Ispahan 602 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER Camping Out 603 CONTENTS XV EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN ^^ge Pan in Wall Street 614 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL The Fool's Prayer 617 JOAQUIN MILLER Crossing the Plains 618 By the Pacific Ocean 619 Columbus 619 EMILY DICKINSON The Humming-Bird 621 Out of the Morning 621 Chartless 622 The Robin 622 In the Garden 622 Autumn 623 If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking 624 EUGENE FIELD Wynken, Blynken, and Nod 624 Little Boy Blue 626 In the Firelight 626 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY When She Comes Home 627 The Raggedy Man 628 The Days Gone By 629 INDEX 631 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE COLONIAL PERIOD CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH [Born at Willoughby, Lincolnshire, England, January, 1579; died at London, June 21, 1631] POWHATAN'S RECEPTION OF SMITH From " A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as hath happened in Virginia etc." London, 1608 Arriving at Weramocomoco their Emperor proudly lying upon a bedstead a foot high, upon ten or twelve mats richly hung with many chains of great pearls about his neck, and covered with a great covering of Rahaughcums. At his head sat a woman, at his feet another ; on each side sitting upon a mat upon the ground, were ranged his chief men on each side the fire, ten in a rank and behind them as many young women, each a great chain of white beads over their shoulders, their heads painted in red ; and with such a grave and majestical countenance, as drave me into admiration to see such state in a naked salvage. He kindly welcomed me with good words, and great platters of sundry victuals, assuring me his friendship, and my liberty within four days. He much delighted in Opechan Comough's relation of what I had described to him, and oft examined me upon the same. He asked me the cause of our coming. I told him being in fight with the Spaniards, our enemy, being overpowered, near put to retreat, and by extreme weather put to 2 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE this shore, where landing at Chesipiack, the people shot us, but at Kequoughtan they kindly used us ; we by signs demanded fresh water, they described us up the river was all fresh water : at Pas- pahegh also they kindly used us : our pinnace being leaky, we were enforced to stay to mend her, till Captain Newport, my father, came to conduct us away. He demanded why we went further with our boat. I told him, in that I would have occasion to talk of the back sea, that on the other side the main where was salt water. My father had a child slain which we supposed Monocan, his enemy had done ; whose death we intended to revenge. After good deliberation, he began to describe me the countries beyond the falls, with many of the rest ; confirming what not only Opechancanoyes, and an Indian which had been prisoner to Pewhatan had before told me : but some one called it five days, some six, some eight, where the said water dashed amongst many stones and rocks, each storm ; which caused oft times the head of the river to be brackish. Anchanachuck he described to be the people that had slain my brother : whose death he would revenge. He described also upon the same sea, a mighty nation called Pocoughtronack, a fierce nation that did eat men, and warred with the people of Moyaoncer and Pataromerke, nations upon the top of the head of the Bay, under his territories : where the year before they had slain an hun- dred. He signified their crowns were shaven, long hair in the neck, tied on a knot, swords like pollaxes. Beyond them, he described people with short coats, and sleeves to the elbows, that passed that way in ships like ours. Many king- doms he described me, to the head of the bay, which seemed to be a mighty river issuing from mighty mountains betwixt the two seas: The people clothed at Ocamahowan, he also confirmed. And the southerly countries also, as the rest that reported us to be within a day and a half of Mangoge, two days of Chawwonock, six from Roonock, to the south part of the back sea. He described a coun- try called Anone, where they have abundance of brass, and houses walled as ours. I requited his discourse (seeing what pride he had in his great COLONIAL PERIOD 3 and spacious dominions, seeing that all he knew were under his territories) in describing to him the territories of Europe, which was subject to our great king whose subject I was, the innumer- able multitude of his ships, I gave him to understand the noise of trumpets, and terrible manner of fighting [which] were under Cap- tain Newport my father : whom I intituled the Meworames, which they call the king of all the waters. At his greatness he admired : and not a little feared. He desired me to forsake Paspahegh, and to live with him upon his river, a country called Capa Howasicke. He promised to give me corn, venison, or what I wanted to feed us : Hatchets and copper we should make him, and none should disturb us. THE POCAHONTAS STORY From the "General History of Virginia," etc. (1624), Lin. HI Opitchapam the King's brother invited him to his house, where, with as many platters of bread, fowl, and wild beasts, as did en- viron him, he bid him welcome ; but not any of them would eat a bit with him, but put up all the remainder in baskets. At his returne to Opechancanough's all the King's women and their children, flocked about him for their parts, as a due by custom, to be merry with such fragments. But his waking mind in hideous dreams did oft see wondrous shapes Of bodies strange and huge in growth, and of stupendous makes. At last they brought him to Werowocomoco, where was Pow- hatan their Emperor. Here more then two hundred of those grim courtiers stood wondering at him, as he had been a monster ; till Powhatan and his train had put themselves in their greatest brav- eries. Before a fire upon a seat like a bedstead, he sat covered with a great robe, made of raccoon skins, and all the tails hanging by. On either hand did sit a young wench of 16 or 18 years, and along on each side the house, two rows of men, and behind them as many women, with all their heads and shoulders painted red ; many of their heads bedecked with the white down of birds ; but every one with something : and a great chain of white beads about their necks. 4 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE At his entrance before the King, all the people gave a great shout. The Queen of Appamatuck was appointed to bring him water to wash his hands, and another brought him a bunch of feathers, instead of a towel to dry them. Having feasted him after their best barbarous manner they could, a long consultation was held, but the conclusion was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan : then as many as could laid hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beat out his brains, Pocahontas the King's dearest daughter, when no entreaty could prevail, got his head in her arms, and laid her own upon his to save his from death : whereat the Emperor was contented he should live to make him hatchets, and her bells, beads, and copper ; for they thought him as well of all occupations as themselves. For the King himself will make his own robes, shoes, bows, arrows, pots ; plant, hunt, or do any thing so well as the rest. They say he bore a pleasant show, But sure his heart was sad. For who can pleasant be, and rest, That lives in fear and dread : And having life suspected, doth It still suspected lead. Two days after, Powhatan having disguised himself in the most fearfulest manner he could, caused Captain Smith to be brought forth to a great house in the woods, and there upon a mat by the fire to be left alone. Not long after from behind a mat that divided the house, was made the most dolefulest noise he ever heard : then Powhatan more like a devil than a man, with some two hundred more as black as himself, came unto him and told him now they were friends, and presently he should go to Jamestown, to send him two great guns, and a grindstone, for which he would give him the County of Capahowosick, and for ever esteem him as his son Nantaquoud. So to Jamestown with 1 2 guides Powhatan sent him. That night they quartered in the woods, he still expecting (as he had done all this long time of his imprisonment) every hour to be put to one death or other for all their feasting. But almighty God by his COLONIAL PERIOD 5 divine providence, had mollified the hearts of those stern barba- rians with compassion. The next morning betimes they came to the fort, where Smith having used the savages with what kindness he could, he showed Rawhunt, Powhatan's trusty servant, two demi- culverins and a millstone to carry Powhatan : they found them somewhat too heavy ; but when they did see him discharge them, being loaded with stones, among the boughs of a great tree loaded with icicles, the ice and branches came so tumbling down, that the poor savages ran away half dead with fear. But at last we regained some confidence with them, and gave them such toys : and sent to Powhatan his women, and children such presents, as gave them in general full content. THE CAPTURE OF POCAHONTAS From Lib. IV But to conclude our peace, thus it happened. Captain Argall having entered into a great acquaintance with Japazaws, an old friend of Captain Smith's, and so to all our nation, ever since he discovered the Country : hard by him there was Pocahontas, whom Captain Smith's Relations intituleth the Numpareli of Virginia, and though she had been many times a preserver of him and the whole colony, yet till this accident she was never seen at Jamestown since his departure. Being at Patawomeke, as it seems, thinking her self unknown, was easily by her friend Japazaws persuaded to go abroad with him and his wife to see the ship, for Captaine Argall had promised him a copper kettle to bring her but to him, promising no way to hurt her, but keep her till they could conclude a peace with her father. The savage for this copper kettle would have done any thing, it seemed by the Relation. For though she had seen and been in many ships, yet he caused his wife to fain how desirous she was to see one, and that he offered to beat her for her importunity, till she wept. But at last he told her, if Pocahontas would go with her, he was content : and thus they betrayed the poor innocent Pocahontas aboard, where they were all kindly feasted in the cabin. Japazaws treading oft on the 6 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Captain's foot, to remember he had done his part, the Captain when he saw his time, persuaded Pocahontas to the gun-room, faining to have some conference with Japazaws, which was only that she should not perceive he was any way guilty of her captivity : so sending for her again, he told her before her friends, she must go with him, and compound peace betwixt her country and us, before she ever should see Powhatan, whereat the old Jew and his wife began to howl and cry as fast as Pocahontas, that upon the Captain's fair persuasions, by degrees pacifying her self, and Japazaws and his wife, with the kettle and other toys, went merrily on shore, and she to Jamestown. A messenger forthwith was sent to her father, that his daughter Pocahontas he loved so dearly, he must ransom with our men, swords, pieces, tools, &c., he treacherously had stolen. This unwelcome news much troubled Powhatan, because he loved both his daughter and our commodities well, yet it was three months after ere he returned us any answer : then by the persuasion of the Council, he returned seven of our men, with each of them an unserviceable musket, and sent us word, that when we would deliver his daughter, he would make us satisfaction for all injuries done us, and give us five hundred bushels of corn, and forever be friends with us. That he sent, we received in part of payment, and returned him this answer : — That his daughter should be well used, but we could not believe the rest of our arms were either lost or stolen from him, and therefore till he sent them, we would keep his daughter. This answer, it seemed, much displeased him, for we heard no more from him a long time after, when with Captain Argall's ship and some other vessels belonging to the Colony, Sir Thomas Dale, with a hundred and fifty men well appointed, went up into his own River, to his chief habitation, with his daughter. With many scornful bravados they affronted us, proudly demand- ing why we came thither ; our reply was, we had brought his daughter, and to receive the ransom for her that was promised, or to have it perforce. They nothing dismayed thereat, told us. We were welcome if we came to fight, for they were provided for us, but advised us, if COLONIAL PERIOD 7 we loved our lives to retire ; else they would use us as they had done Captain Ratcliffe. We told them, we would presently have a better answer ; but we were no sooner within shot of the shore than they let fly their Arrows among us in the ship. Being thus justly provoked, we presently manned our boats, went on shore, burned all their houses, and spoiled all they had we could find ; and so the next day proceeded higher up the river, where they demanded why we burnt their houses, and we, why they shot at us : They replied it was some straggling savage, with many other excuses ; they intended no hurt, but were our friends. We told them, we came not to hurt them, but visit them as friends also. Upon this we concluded a peace, and forthwith they dispatched messengers to Powhatan, whose answer, they told us, wee must ex- pect four and twenty hours ere the messengers could return : . . . Then they told us, our men were run away for fear we would hang them, yet Powhatan's men were run after them : as for our swords and pieces, they should be brought us the next day, which was only but to delay time : for the next day they came not. Then we went higher, to a house of Powhatan's, called Machot, where we saw about four hundred men well appointed : here they dared us to come on shore which we did : no show of fear they made at all, nor offered to resist our landing, but walking boldly up and down amongst us, demanded to confer with our captain, of his coming in that manner, and to have truce till they could but once more send to their king to know his pleasure, which if it were not agreeable to their expectations, then they would fight with us, and defend their own as they could. Which was but only to defer the time, to carry away their provisions : yet we promised them truce till the next day at noon, and then if they would fight with us, they should know when we would begin by our drums and trumpets. Upon this promise two of Powhatan's sons came unto us to see their sister, at whose sight, seeing her well, though they heard to the contrary, they much rejoiced, promising they would persuade her father to redeem her, and forever be friends with us. And upon this the two brethren went aboard with us, and we sent Master John Rolfe and Master Sparkes to Powhatan, to acquaint him with the 8 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE business ; kindly they were entertained, but not admitted the pres- ence of Powhatan, but they spoke with Opechancanough, his brother and successor ; he promised to do the best he could to Powhatan, all might be well. So it being April and time to prepare our ground and set our corn, we returned to Jamestown, promising the forbearance of their performing their promise, till the next harvest. Long before this. Master John Rolfe, an honest gentleman, and of good behaviour, had been in love with Pocahontas, and she with him, which thing at that instant I made known to Sir Thomas Dale by a letter from him, wherein he entreated his advice, and she ac- quainted her brother with it, which resolution Sir Thomas Dale well approved. The bruit of this mariage came soon to the knowledge of Powhatan, a thing acceptable to him, as appeared by his sudden consent, for within ten days he sent Opachisco, an old uncle of hers, and two of his sons, to see the manner of the mariage, and to do in that behalf what they requested, for the confirmation thereof, as his deputy ; which was accordingly done about the first of April. And ever since we have had friendly trade and commerce, as well with Powhatan himself, as all his subjects. WILLIAM BRADFORD [Born at Austerfield, England, 1590; died at Plymouth, Massachusetts, May 9, 1657] THE PILGRIMS LEAVE LEYDEN (1620) From the History " Of Plymouth Plantation," Book I THE SEVENTH CHAPTER Of their departure from Leydcii, and other things there about, tvith their arrival at Southampton, where they all met together, and took in tJieir protnsions. At length, after much travail and these debates, all things were got ready and provided. A small ship was bought and fitted in Holland which was intended as to serve to help to transport them, so to stay in the country, and attend upon fishing and such other COLONIAL PERIOD 9 affairs as might be for the good and benefit of the colony when they came there. Another was hired at London, of burden about 9. score ; and all other things got in readiness. So being ready to depart, they had a day of solemn humiliation, their pastor taking his text from Ezra 8.21. Ajid there at the river, by Ahava, I pro- claimed a fast that we might humble ourselves before our God, and seek of him a right way for ?ts, and for our ehildrcn, aud for all 02ir substance. Upon which he spent a good part of the day very profitably, and suitable to their present occasion. The rest of the time was spent in pouring out prayers to the Lord with great fervency mixed with abundance of tears. And the time being come that they must depart, they were accompanied with most of their brethren out of the city, unto a town sundry miles off called Delfes Haven, where the ships lay ready to receive them. So they left that goodly and pleasant city, which had been their resting place, near 1 2 years ; but they knew they were pilgrims and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits. When they came to the place they found the ship and all things ready. And such of their friends as could not come with them followed after them, and sun- dry also came from Amsterdam to see them shipped and to take their leave of them. That night was spent with little sleep by the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian love. The next day the wind being fair they went aboard, and their friends with them, where truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting ; To see what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound amongst them, what tears did rush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each heart ; that sundry of the Dutch strangers that stood on the quay as spectators, could not refrain from tears. Yet comfortable and sweet it was to see such lively and true expressions of dear and unfained love. But the tide (which stays for no man) calling them away that were thus loath to depart, their reverend pastor falling down on his knees (and they all with him,) with watery cheeks commended them with most fervent prayers to the Lord and his blessing. And then with mutual embraces and many tears, they took their leaves one of another; which proved to be the last leave to many of them. lO READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Thus hoisting sail, with a prosperous wind they came in short time to Southampton, where they found the bigger ship come from London, lying ready with all the rest of their company. After a joy- ful welcome, and mutual congratulations, with other friendly enter- tainments, they fell to parley about their business, how to dispatch with the best expedition ; as also with their agents, about the altera- tion of the conditions. Mr. Carver pleaded he was employed here at Hampton and knew not well what the other had done at London. Mr. Cushman answered, he had done nothing but what he was urged to partly by the grounds of equity and more especially by necessity, otherwise all had been dashed and many undone. And in the be- ginning he acquainted his fellow agents herewith, who consented unto him, and left it to him to execute, and to receive the money at London, and send it down to them at Hampton, where they made the provisions ; the which he accordingly did, though it was against his mind, and some of the merchants, that they were there made. And for giving them notice at Leyden of this change, he could not well in regard of the shortness of the time ; again, he knew it would trouble them and hinder the business, which was already delayed overlong in regard of the season of the year, which he feared they would find to their cost. But these things gave not content at present. Mr. Weston, likewise, came up from London to see them dispatched and to have the conditions confirmed ; but they refused, and answered him, that he knew right well that these were not according to the first agreement, neither could they yield to them without the con- sent of the rest that were behind and indeed they had special charge when they came away, from the chief of those that were behind, not to do it. At which he was much offended, and told them, they must then look to stand on their own legs. So he returned in dis- pleasure, and this was the first ground of discontent between them. And whereas there wanted well near ^loo to clear things at their going away, he would not take order to disburse a penny, but let them shift as they could. So they were forced to sell off some of their provisions to stop this gap which was some 3. or 4. score firkins of butter, which commodity they might best spare, having provided too large a quantity of that kind. COLONIAL PERIOD II THE COMPACT OF THE PILGRIMS From Book II THE 2 BOOKE The rest of this History (if God gives me Hfe, and opportunity) I shall, for brevity's sake, handle by way of Annals, noting only the heads of principal things, and passages as they fell in order of time, and may seem to be profitable to know, or to make use of. And this may be as the second Book. The Remainder of Anno : 1620 I shall a little return back and begin with a combination made by them before they came ashore, being the first foundation of their government in this place ; occasioned partly by the discontented mutinous and speeches that some of the strangers amongst them had let fall from them in the ship — That when they came ashore they would use their own liberty ; for none had power to command them, the patent they had being for Virginia, and not for New England, which belonged to another Government, with which the Virginia Company had nothing to do. And partly that such an act by them done (this their condition considered) might be as firm as any patent, and in some respects more sure. The form was as followeth. In y^ name of God, Amen. We whose names are vnderwriten, the loyall subjects of our dread soueraigne Lord, Ki/ig James, by y<= grace of God, of great Britaine, Franc, & Ireland king, defender of y^ faith, &c. Haueing vndertaken, for y' glorie of God, and advancemente of y*^ christian faith and honour of our king & countrie, a voyage to plant y*^ first colonic in y'^ Northerne parts of Virginia. Doe by these presents solemnly & mutualy in y^ presence of God, and one of another, couenant, & combine our selues to- geather into a Ciuill body politick, for our better ordering, & preseruation & furtherance of y^ ends aforesaid ; and by Vertue hearof to enacte, constitute, and frame, such just & equall lawes, ordinances, Acts, constitutions, & offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meete & conuenient for y^ gen- eral! good of y"^ Colonic, vnto which we promise all due submission and obedi- ence. In witnes whereof we haue herevnder subscribed our names at Cap-Codd y*^. II. of Nouember, in y'= year of y'= raigne of our soueraigne Lord, King lames, of England, France, & Ireland y° eighteenth, and of Scotland y'= fiftie fourth. An°: Dom. 1620. 12 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE EARLY TRIALS OF THE PlLCiRLM FATHERS (1620) From Book II In these hard and difficult beginnings they found some discon- tents and murmurings arise amongst some, and mutinous speeches and carriages in others ; but they were soon quelled, and overcome, by the wisdom, patience, and just and equal carriage of things, by the Governor and better part which clave faithfully together in the main. But that which. was most sad, and lamentable, was, that in two or three months' time half of their company died, especially in January and February, being the depth of winter, and wanting houses and other comforts ; being infected with scurvy and other diseases, which this long voyage and their inaccommodate condi- tion had brought upon them ; so as there died sometimes two or three of a day, in the foresaid time ; that of one hundred and odd persons scarce fifty remained : and of these in the time of most distress there was but six or seven sound persons ; who to their great commendations, be it spoken, spared no pains, night nor day, but with abundance of toil and hazard of their own health, fetched them wood, made them fires, drest them meat, made their beds, washed their loathsome clothes, clothed and unclothed them ; in a word did all the homely, and necessary offices for them, which dainty and queasy stomachs cannot endure to hear named and all this willingly and cheerfully, without any grudging in the least, showing herein their true love unto their friends and brethren ; a rare example and worthy to be remembered. Two of these seven were Mr. William Brewster their reverend Elder, and Myles Standish their Captain and military commander (unto whom my- self, and many others were much beholden in our low, and sick condition) and yet the Lord so upheld these persons, as in this general calamity they were not at all infected either with sickness, or lameness. And what I have said of these, I may say of many others who died in this general visitation and others yet living ; that whilst they had health, yea or any strength continuing they were not wanting to anv that had need of them ; and I doubt not but their recompense is with the Lord. COLONIAL PERIOD 13 But I may not here pass by another remarkable passage not to be forgotten. As this calamity fell among the passengers that were to be left here to plant, and were hasted ashore and made to drink water, that the seamen might have the more beer, and one in his sickness desiring but a small can of beer, it was an- swered, that if he were their own father he should have none ; the disease began to fall amongst them also, so as almost half of their company died before they went away, and many of their officers and lustiest men, as the boatswain, gunner, three quartermasters, the cook, and others. At which the master was something struck and sent to the sick ashore and told the Governor he should send for beer for them that had need of it, though he drunk water home- ward bound. But now amongst his company there was far another kind of carriage in this misery than amongst the passengers ; for they that before had been boon companions in drinking and jollity in the time of their health and welfare, began now to desert one another in this calamity, saying they would not hazard their lives for them, they should be infected by coming to help them in their cabins, and so, after they came to die by it, would do little or nothing for them, but if they died let them die. But such of the passengers as were yet aboard showed them what mercy they could, which made some of their hearts relent, as the boatswain (and some others), who was a proud young man, and would often curse and scoff at the passengers : but when he grew weak, they had com- passion on him and helped him ; then he confessed he did not deserve it at their hands, he had abused them in word and deed. O ! saith he, you, I now see, show your love like Christians indeed one to another, but we let one another lie and die like dogs. An- other lay cursing his wife, saying if it had not been for her he had never come this unlucky voyage, and anon cursing his fellows, say- ing he had done this and that, for some of them, he had spent so much, and so much, amongst them, and they were now weary of him, and did not help him, having need. Another gave his com- panion all he had, if he died, to help him in his weakness : he went and got a little spice and made him a mess of meat once or twice, and because he died not so soon as he expected, he went 14 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE amongst his fellows, and swore the rogue would cozen him, he would see him choked before he made him any more meat : and yet the poor fellow died before morning. All this while the Indians came skulking about them, and would sometimes show themselves aloof of, but when any approached near them, they would run away ; and once they stole away their tools where they had been at work and were gone to dinner. But about the i6 of March a certain Indian came boldly amongst them, and spoke to them in broken English, which they could well under- stand, but marvelled at it. At length they understood by discourse with him, that he was not of these parts, but belonged to the east- ern parts where some English ships came to fish, with whom he. was acquainted, and could name sundry of them by their names, amongst whom he had got his language. He became profitable to them in acquainting them with many things concerning the state of the country in the East-parts where he lived, which was after- wards profitable unto them ; as also of the people here, of their names, number and strength, of their situation and distance from this place, and who was chief amongst them. His name was Sama- sett; he told them also of another Indian whose name was Squanto, a native of this place, who had been in England and could speak better English than himself. Being after some time of entertain- ment, and gifts dismissed, a while after he came again, and five more with him, and they brought again all the tools that were stolen away before, and made way for the coming of their great Sachem, called Massasoyt. Who about four or five days came with the chief of his friends, and other attendance with the aforesaid Squanto. With whom after friendly entertainment, and some gifts given him, they made a peace with him (which hath now continued this twenty-four years). CHRISTMAS PASTIMES (1622) From Book II On the day called Christmas-day, the Governor called them out to work, (as was used) but the most of this new company excused themselves, and said it went against their consciences to work on that day. So the Governor told them that if they made it matter COLONIAL PERIOD 15 of conscience, he would spare them, till they were better informed ; so he led away the rest and left them ; but when they came home at noon, from their work, he found them in the street at play openly ; some pitching the bar, and some at stool-ball, and such like sports. So he went to them, and took away their implements, and told them, that was against his conscience, that they should play, and others work ; if they made the keeping of it matter of devotion, let them keep their houses, but there should be no gam- ing, or revelling in the streets. Since which time nothing hath been attempted that way, at least openly, . . . MOURT'S RELATION [Relation or journal of the beginning and proceeding of the English planta- tion settled at Plimoth in New England, by certain English adventurers. . . . London, 1622] YOUTHFUL EXUBERANCE ON THE "MAYFLOWER" The fifth day [Dec, 5, 1620] we through God's mercy escaped a great danger by the foolishness of a boy, one of Francis Billington's sons, who in his father's absence had got gunpowder and had shot off a piece or two and made squibs, and there being a fowling piece charged in his father's cabin shot her off in the cabin, there being a little barrel of powder half-full scattered in and about the cabin, the fire being within four foot of the bed between the decks, and many flints and iron things about the cabin, and many people about the fire, and yet, by God's mercy, no harm done, EXPLORING CAPE COD Wednesday, the 6th of December, we set out, being very cold and hard weather. We were a long while after we launched from the ship before we could get clear of a sandy point which lay within less than a furlong of the same. In which time two were very sick, and Edward Tilley had like to have sounded [swooned] with cold ; the gunner was also sick unto death, (but hope of tru[c]king made him to go) and so remained all that day and the next night ; at l6 READINGS FROM AMERICAN Ll'lERATURE length we got clear of the sandy point and got up our sails, and within an hour or two we got under the weather shore, and then had smoother water and better sailing, but it was very cold, for the water froze on our clothes, and made them many times like coats of iron. . . . . . . We then directed our course along the sea sands, to the place where we first saw the Indians ; when we were there, we saw it was also a grampus which they were cutting up ; they cut it into long rands or pieces, about an ell long and two handful broad ; we found here and there a piece scattered by the way, as it seemed, for haste. This place the most were minded we should call the Grampus Bay because we found so many of them there. We fol- lowed the tract of the Indians' bare feet a good way on the sands. At length we saw where they struck into the woods by the side of a pond. As we went to view the place, one said he thought he saw an Indian house among the trees, so went up to see. . . , So we lit on a path but saw no house and followed a great way into the woods. At length we found where corn had been set but not that year. Anon we found a great burying place one part whereof was encompassed with a great palisado like a churchyard. . . . Those graves were more sumptuous than those at Cornhill, yet we digged none of them up, but only viewed them and went our way. THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS That night we returned again ashipboard with resolution the next morning to settle on some of those places. So, in the morn- ing, after we had called on God for direction, we came to this resolution, to go presently ashore again, and to take a better view of two places which we thought most fitting for us ; for we could not now take time for further search or consideration, our victuals being much spent, especially our beer, and it being now the 19th [new style 29th] of December. After our landing and viewing of the places so well as we could, we came to a conclusion by most voices to set on the mainland, on the first place, on an high ground where there is a great deal of land cleared and hath been planted with corn three or four years ago, and there is a very sweet brook runs under the hillside and many delicate springs of as good water COLONIAL PERIOD 17 as can be drunk, and where we may harbor our shallops and boats exceeding well, and in this brook much good fish in their season. On the further side of the river also much cornground cleared. In one field is a great hill [t.e. Burial Hill] on which we point to make a platform and plant our ordnance which will command all round about ; from thence we may see into the bay and far into the sea, and we may see thence Cape Cod. Our greatest labor will be fetching of our wood, which is half a quarter of an English mile, but there is enough so far off. What people inhabit here we yet know not, for as yet we have seen none. . . . Monday, the 25th, being Christmas Day [new style, Jan. 4th] we began to drink water aboard, but at night the master caused us to have some beer, and so on board we had divers times now and then some beer, but on shore none at all. . , . Thursday the 28th of December [new style, Jan. 7th] ... in the afternoon we went to measure out the ground, and first we took notice how many families they were, willing all single men that had no wives to join with some family as they thought fit, that so we might build fewer houses ; which was done and we reduced them to nineteen families. To greater families we allotted larger plots ; to every person half a pole in breadth and three in length, and so lots were cast where every man should lie ; which was done and staked out. We thought this proportion was large enough at the first, for houses and gardens to impale them round, considering the weakness of our people, many of them growing ill with colds, for our former discoveries in frost and storms and the wading at Cape Cod had brought much weakness amongst us. . . . INDIAN COURTESIES Thursday the 22 nd of March [new style April ist]. . . . Samoset came again and Squanto, the only native of Patuxat where we now inhabit, who was one of the twenty captives that by Hunt were carried away and had been in England and dwelt in Cornhill with Master John Slanie, a merchant, and could speak a little English, with three others ; and they brought with them some few skins to truck and some red herrings newly taken and dried but not salted, and signified unto us that their great Sagamore, Massasoit, was 1 8 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE hard by with Ouadequina, his brother, and all their men. They could not well express in English what they would, but after an hour the King came to the top of an hill over against us, and had in his train sixty men, tJiat we could well behold them and they us. We were not willing to send our Governor to them and they un- willing to come to us ; so Squanto went again unto him, who brought word that we should send one to parley with him, which we did, which was Edward Winslow, to know his mind and to signify the mind and the will of our Governor, which was to have trading and peace with them. We sent to the King a pair of knives and a copper chain with a jewel at it. To Ouadequina we sent likewise a knife and a jewel to hang in his ear, and withal a pot of strong water, a good quantity of biscuit and some butter, which were all willingly accepted. JOHN WINTHROP [Born at Groton, England, January 12, 1587; died at Boston, Massachusetts, March 26, 1649] AN ELECTION IN THE COLONIAL TIMES From Winthrop's " History of New England " [1637. May 17.] Our court of elections was at Newtown. So soon as the court was set, being about one of the clock, a petition was preferred by those of Boston. The governor would have read it, but the deputy said it was out of order ; it was a court for elec- tions, and those must first be despatched, and then their petitions should be heard. Divers others also opposed that course, as an ill precedent, etc. ; and the petition, being about pretence of liberty, etc., (though intended chiefly for revoking the sentence given against Mr. Wheelwright,) would have spent all the day in debate, etc. ; but yet the governor and those of that party would not proceed to election, except the petition was read. Much time was already spent about this debate, and the people crying out for election, it was moved by the deputy, that the people should divide themselves, and the greater number must carry it. And so it was done, and COLONIAL PERIOD 19 the greater number by many were for election. But the governor and that side kept their place still, and would not proceed. Where- upon the deputy told him, that, if he would not go to election, he and the rest of that side would proceed. Upon that, he came from his company, and they went to election ; and Mr. Winthrop was chosen governor, Mr. Dudley deputy, and Mr. Endecott of the standing council ; and Mr. Israel Stoughton and Mr. Richard Saltonstall were called in to be assistants ; and Mr. Vane, Mr. Coddington, and Mr. Dummer, (being all of that faction,) were left quite out. There was great danger of a tumult that day ; for those of that side grew into fierce speeches, and some laid hands on others ; but seeing themselves too weak, they grew quiet. They expected a great advantage that day, because the remote towns were allowed to come in by proxy ; but it fell out, that there were enough beside. But if it had been otherwise, they must have put in their deputies, as other towns had done, for all matters beside elections. Boston, having deferred to choose deputies till the election was passed, went home that night, and the next morning they sent Mr, Vane, the late governor, and Mr. Coddington, and Mr. Hoffe, for their deputies ; but the court, being grieved at it, found a means to send them home again, for that two of the freemen of Boston had no notice of the election. So they went all home, and the next morn- ing they returned the same gentlemen again upon a new choice ; and the court not finding how they might reject them, they were admitted, . . . ITEMS FROM WINTHROP'S HISTORY COVERING PERIOD FROM 1631-1648 163 1. June 14.] At this court one Philip Ratcliff, a servant of Mr. Cradock, being convict, ore temis, of most foul, scandalous invectives against our churches and government, was censured to be whipped, lose his ears, and be banished from the plantation, which was presently executed. 1632.] At Watertown there was (in the view of divers wit- nesses) a great combat between a mouse and a snake ; and after a long fight, the mouse prevailed and killed the snake. The pastor 20 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE of Boston, Mr. Wilson, a very sincere, holy man, hearing of it, gave this interpretation : That the snake was the devil ; the mouse was a poor contemptible people, which God had brought hither, which should overcome Satan here, and dispossess him of his Kingdom. 1633.] Two little girls of the governor's family were sitting under a great heap of logs, plucking of birds, and the wind driv- ing the feathers into the house, the governor's wife caused them to remove away. They were no sooner gone, but the whole heap of logs fell down in the place, and had crushed them to death, if the Lord, in his special providence, had not delivered them. Aug. 6.] Two men servants to one Moodye, of Roxbury, re- turning in a boat from the windmill, struck upon the oyster bank. They went out to gather oysters, and not making fast their boat, when the flood came, it floated away, and they were both drowned, although they might have waded out on either side ; but it was an evident judgment of God upon them, for they were wicked persons. . . . 1639.] There happened a memorable thing at Plymouth about this time. One Keysar, of Lynn, being at Plymouth in his boat, and one Dickerson with him, a professor, but a notorious thief, was coming out of the harbor with the ebb, and the wind southerly, a fresh gale ; yet, with all their skill and labor, they could not in three hours, get the boat above one league, so as they were forced to come to an anchor, and, at the flood, to go back to the town, and, as soon as they were come in, the said Dickerson was arrested upon suspicion of a gold ring and some other pieces of gold, which, upon search, were found about him, and he was then whipped for it, . . . These and many other examples of discovering hypocrites and other lewd persons, and bringing them under their deserved punishments, do (among other things) show the presence of power of God in his ordinances, and his blessing upon his people while they endeavor to walk before him with uprightness. 1640.] At the court of assistants, one Hugh Bewett was ban- ished for holding publicly and maintaining that he was free from original sin and from actual also for half a year before, and that all true christians after ... are enabled to live without committing actual sin. COLONIAL PERIOD 21 1640.] About this time there fell out a thing worthy of observa- tion. Mr. Winthrop the younger, one of the magistrates, having many books in a chamber where there was corn of divers sorts, had among them one wherein the Greek Testament, the Psalms, and the Common Prayer were bound together. He found the Common Prayer eaten with mice, every leaf of it, and not any of the two other touched, nor any other of his books, though there were above a thousand. 1 64 1.] A young man, a tanner in Boston, going to wash him- self in a creek, said, jestingly, I will go and drown myself now, which fell out accordingly; for by the slipperiness of the earth, he was carried beyond his depth, and having no skill to swim, was drowned, though company were at hand, and one in the water with him. 1642.] Nine bachelors commenced at Cambridge ; they were young men of good hope, and performed their acts, so as gave good proof of their proficiency in the tongues and arts. The Gen- eral Court had settled a government or superintendency over the college, viz. all the magistrates and elders over the six nearest churches and the president, or the greatest part of these. Most of them were now present at this first commencement, and dined at the college with the scholars' ordinary commons, which was done of purpose for the students' encouragement, etc., and it gave good content to all. 1645.] At Ipswich there was a calf brought forth with one head and three mouths, three noses, and six eyes. What these prodigies portended the Lord only knows, which in his due time he will manifest. 1646.] Mention was made before of some beginning to instruct the Indians, etc. Mr. John Eliot, teacher of the church of Rox- bury, found such encouragement, as he took great pains to get their language, and in a few months could speak of the things of God to their understanding ; and God prospered his endeavors, so as he kept a constant lecture to them in two places, one week at the wigwam of one Wabon, a new sachem near Watertown mill, and the other the next week in the wigwam of Cutshamekin near Dorchester mill. And for the furtherance of the work of God, 22 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE divers of the English resorted to his lecture, and the governor and other of the magistrates and elders sometimes ; and the Indians began to repair thither from other parts. His manner of proceeding was thus : he would persuade one of the other elders or some magistrate to begin the exercise with prayer in English ; then he took a text, and read it first in the Indian lan- guage, and after in English ; then he preached to them in Indian about an hour (but first I should have spoke of the catechising their children, who were soon brought to answer him some short ques- tions, whereupon he gave each of them an apple or a cake) ; then he demanded of some of the chiefs, if they understood him ; if they answered, yea, then he asked of them if they had any questions to propound. And they had usually two or three or more questions, which he did resolve. At one time (when the governor was there and about two hundred people, Indian and English, in one wigwam of Cutshamekin's) an old man asked him, if God would receive such an old man as he was ; to whom he answered by opening the parable of the work- men that were hired into the vineyard ; and when he had opened it, he asked the old man, if he did believe it, who answered he did, and was ready to weep, . . . The Indians were usually very attentive, and kept their children so quiet as caused no disturbance. Some of them began to be seri- ously affected, and to understand the things of God, and they were generally ready to reform whatsoever they were told to be against the word of God, as their sorcery (which they call powwowing), their whoredoms, etc., idleness, etc. The Indians grew very inquisitive after knowledge both in things divine and also human, so as one of them, meeting with an honest plain Englishman, would needs know of him, what were the first beginnings (which we call prin- ciples) of a commonwealth. The Englishman, being far short in the knowledge of such matters, yet ashamed that an Indian should find an Englishman ignorant of any thing, bethought himself what answer to give him, at last resolved upon this, viz., that the first principle of a commonwealth was salt, for (saith he) by means of salt we can keep our flesh and fish, to have it ready when we need it, whereas you lose much for want of it, and are sometimes ready COLONIAL PERIOD 23 to starve. A second principle is iron, for thereby we fell trees, build houses, till our land, etc. A third is, ships, by which we carry forth such commodities as we have to spare, and fetch in such as we need, as cloth, wine, etc. Alas ! (saith the Indian) then I fear, we shall never be a commonwealth, for we can neither make salt, nor iron, nor ships. LETTERS OF JOHN WINTJiROP AND HIS THIRD WIFE, MARGARET JOHN WINTHROP TO HIS WIFE, APRIL 3, 1630 My love, my joy, my faithful one, I suppose thou didst not expect to have any more letters from me till the return of our ships ; but so is the good pleasure of God, that the wind should not serve yet to carry us hence. He will do all things in his own time, and that shall be for the best in the end. We acknowledge it a great mercy to us, that we went not out to sea on Monday, when the wind was fair for one day ; for we had been exposed, ever since, to sore tem- pests and contrary winds. I praise God, we are all in good health, and want nothing. For myself, I was never at more liberty of body and mind these many years. The Lord make me thankful and wise to improve his blessings for the furtherance of his own work. I desire to resign myself wholly to his gracious disposing. Oh that I had an heart so to do, and to trust perfectly in him for his assistance in all our ways. We find him still going along with us. He hath brought in the heart of the master of our ship to afford us all good respect, and to join with us in every good action. Yesterday he caused his seamen to keep a fast with us, wherein the Lord assisted us and our minister very comfortably ; and when five of the clock came, I had respite to remember thee (it being Friday), and to parley with thee, and to meet thee in spirit before the Lord. . . . I am uncertain whether I shall have opportunity to send these to thee ; for, if the wind turn, we shall soon be gone. Therefore I will not write much. I know it will be sufficient for thy present comfort, to hear of our welfare ; and this is the third letter I have written to thee, since I came to Hampton, in requital of those two I received from thee, which I do often read with much delight, 24 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE apprehending so much love and sweet affection in them, as I am never satisfied with reading, nor can read them without tears ; but whether they proceed from joy, sorrow, or desire, or from that con- sent of affection which I always hold with thee, I cannot conceive. Ah, my dear heart, I ever held thee in high esteem, as thy love and goodness hath well deserved ; but (if it be possible) I shall yet prize thy virtue at a greater rate, and long more to enjoy thy sweet society than ever before. I am sure thou art not short of me in this desire. Let us pray hard, and pray in faith, and our God, in his good time, will accomplish our desire. Oh, how loath am I to bid thee farewell ! but, since it must be, farewell, my sweet love, fare- well. Farewell, my dear children and family. The Lord bless you all, and grant me to see your faces once again. Come (my dear), take him and let him rest in thine arms, who will ever remain, Thy faithful husband Jo. WiNTHROP Commend my love to all our friends at Castleins, Mr. Leigh and his wife, my neighbor Cole and his wife, and all the rest of our good friends and neighbors, and our good friends at Maplested, when you see them, and those our worthy and kind friends at Assington, etc. My brother Arthur hath carried himself very soberly since he came on shipboard, and so hath Mr. Brand's son, and my cousin Ro. Sampson. I hope their friends shall hear well of them. From aboard the Arbclla, riding before Yarmouth, in the Isle of Wight, April 3, 1630. To my very loving Wife, Mrs. Winthrop, the elder, at Groton, in Suffolk, ifd. MRS. WINTHROP TO HER HUSBAND Dear in my thoughts, I blush to think how much I have neglected the opportunity of presenting my love to you. Sad thoughts possess my spirits, and I cannot repulse them ; which makes me unfit for any thing, wondering what the Lord means by all these troubles among us. Sure I am, that all shall work to the best to them that COLONIAL PERIOD 25 love God, or rather are loved of him. I know he will bring light out of obscurity, and make his righteousness shine forth as clear as the noonday. Yet I find in myself an adverse spirit, and a trem- bling heart, not co-willing to submit to the will of God as I desire. There is a time to plant, and a time to pull up that which is planted, which I could desire might not be yet. But the Lord knoweth what is best, and his will be done. But I will write no more. Hoping to see thee to-morrow, my best affections being commended to your- self, the rest of our friends at Newton, I commend thee to God. Your loving wife Margaret Winthrop Sad Boston, 1637 To her honored Husband, \ these be delivered J JOHN COTTON [Born at Derby, England, 1585; died at Boston, Massachusetts, 1652] A DEFENCE OF PERSECUTION From " An Answer of Mr. John Cotton of Boston in New England, TO THE Aforesaid Arguments against Persecution for Cause of Conscience," printed in Williams' " Bloody Tenent " Your second head of reasons is taken from the profession and practice of famous princes. King James, Stephen of Poland, King of Bohemia. Whereunto a treble answer may briefly be returned. First, we willingly acknowledge, that none is to be persecuted at all, no more than they may be oppressed for righteousness sake. Again, we acknowledge that none is to be punished for his con- science, though misinformed, as hath been said, unless his error be fundamental, or seditiously and turbulently promoted, and that after due conviction of his conscience, that it may appear he is not punished for his conscience, but for sinning against his conscience. Furthermore, we acknowledge none is to be constrained to believe or profess the true religion till he be convinced in judgment of the 26 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE truth of it : but yet restrained he may (be) from blaspheming the truth, and from seducing any unto pernicious errors. 2. We answer, what princes profess or practice, is not a rule of conscience : they many times tolerate that in point of State policy, which cannot justly be tolerated in point of true Christianity. Again, princes many times tolerate offenders out of very necessity, when the offenders are either too many, or too mighty for them to punish, in which respect David tolerated Joab and his murthers, but against his will. 3. We answer further, that for those three princes named by you, who tolerated religion, we can name you more and greater who have not tolerated Heretics and Schismatics, notwithstanding their pretence of conscience, and arrogating the crown of martyrdom to their sufferings. Constantine the Great at the request of the general Council of Nice, banished Arius with some of his fellows. Sozom. lib. i. Eccles. Hist. cap. 19. 20. The same Constantine made a severe law against the Donatists. And the like proceedings against them were used by Valentinian, Gratian, and Theodosius, as Augustine reporteth in Epist. 166. Only Julian the Apostate granted liberty to Heretics as well as to Pagans, that he might by tolerating all weeds to grow, choke the vitals of Christianity, which was also the practice and sin of Valens the Arian. Queen Elizabeth, as famous for her government as any of the former, it is well known what laws she made and executed against Papists. Yea and King James (one of your own witnesses) though he was slow in proceeding against Papists (as you say) for conscience sake, yet you are not ignorant how sharply and severely he punished those whom the malignant world calleth Puritans, men of more conscience and better faith than he tolerated. I come now to your third and last argument, taken from the judgment of ancient and later writers, yea even of Papists them- selves, who have condemned persecution for conscience sake. You begin with Hilary, whose testimony we might admit without any prejudice to the truth : for it is true, the Christian Church did not persecute, but is persecuted. But to excommunicate an Heretic, is not to persecute ; that is, it is not to punish an innocent, but a COLONIAL PERIOD 27 culpable and damnable person, and that not for conscience, but for persisting in error against light of conscience, whereof it hath been convinced. It is true also what he saith, that neither the Apostles did, nor may we propagate (the) Christian Religion by the sword : but if Pagans cannot be won by the word, they are not to be compelled by the sword. Nevertheless, this hindreth not, but if they or any others should blaspheme the true God, and his true religion, they ought to be severely punished : and no less do they deserve, if they seduce from the truth to damnable heresies or idolatry. ON MY REVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER, MR. THOMAS HOOKER, LATE PASTOR OF THE CHURCH AT HARTFORD ON CONNECTIQUOT To see three things was holy Austin's wish, Rome in her Flower, Christ Jesus in the Plesh, And Paul i' th Pulpit ; Lately men might see. Two first, and more, in Hooker's Ministry. Zion in Beauty, is a fairer sight. Than Rome in Flower, with all her Glory dight : Yet Zion's Beauty did most clearly shine. In Hooker's Rule, and Doctrine ; both Divine. Christ in the Spirit, is more than Christ in P^lesh, Our Souls to quicken, and our States to bless : Yet Christ in Spirit brake forth mightily. In Faithful Hooker's searching Ministry. Paul in the Pulpit, Hooker could not reach. Yet did He Christ in Spirit so lively Preach : That living Hearers thought He did inherit A double Portion of Paul's lively spirit. Prudent in Rule, in Argument quick, full : Fervent in Prayer, in Preaching powerful : That well did learned Ames record bear, The like to Him He never wont to hear. 28 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE 'Twas of Geneva's Worthies said, with wonder, (Those Worthies Three : ) Farell was wont to thunder ; Viret, Hke Rain, on tender grass to shower, But Calvin, Hvely Oracles to pour. All these in Hooker's spirit did remain : A Son of Thunder, and a Shower of Rain, A pourer forth of lively Oracles, In saving souls, the sum of miracles. Now blessed Hooker, thou art set on high, Above the thankless world, and cloudy sky : Do thou of all thy labor reap the Crown, Whilst we here reap the seed, which thou hast sowen. NATHANIEL WARD [Born at Haverhill (?), England, about 1578; died in England about 1653] WOMEN'S FASHIONS From "The Simple Cobler of Aggawam i\ America" Should I not keep promise in speaking a little to Women's fashions, they would take it unkindly. I was loath to pester better matter with such stuff ; I rather thought it meet to let them stand by themselves, like the Qhcb Genus in the grammar, being deficients, or redundants, not to be brought under any rule : I shall therefore make bold for this once, to borrow a little of their loose-tongued liberty, and misspend a word or two upon their long- waisted, but short-skirted patience : a little use of my stirrup will do no harm. . . . It is known more than enough, that I am neither niggard, nor cynic, to the due bravery of the true gentry. I honor the woman that can honor herself with her attire ; a good text always deserves a fair margent ; I am not much offended if I see a trim far trimmer than she that wears it. In a word, whatever Christianity or civility will allow, I can afford with London measure : but when I hear a nugiperous gentledame inquire what dress the queen is in this COLONIAL PERIOD 29 week : what the nudiustertian fashion of the court ; I mean the very newest ; with egg to be in it in all haste, whatever it be ; I look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cipher, the epitome of nothing, fitter to be kicked, if she were of a kickable substance, than either honored or humored. To speak moderately, I truly confess it is beyond the ken of my understanding to conceive how those women should have any true grace, or valuable virtue, that have so little wit, as to disfigure themselves with such exotic garbs, as not only dismantles their native lovely lustre, but transclouts them into gant bargeese, ill- shapen-shotten shell-fish, Egyptian hieroglyphics, or at the best into French flurts of the pastery, which a proper English woman should scorn with her heels. It is no marvel they wear drails on the hinder part of their heads, having nothing as it seems in the forepart, but a few squirrels' brains to help them frisk from one ill-favored fashion to another. These whim Crown 'd shes, these fashion-fancying wits, Are empty thin brain'd shells, and fiddling Kits. The very troublers and impoverishers of mankind, I can hardly forbear to commend to the world a saying of a lady living some time with the Queen of Bohemia ; I know not where she found it, but it is pity it should be lost. The world is full of care, much like unto a bubble, Women and care, and care and Women, and Women and care and trouble. The verses are even enough for such odd pegma's. I can make myself sick at any time, with comparing the dazzling splendor wherewith our gentlewomen were embellished in some former habits, with the gut-foundered goosedom, wherewith they are now surcingled and debauched. We have about five or six of them in our colony : if I see any of them accidentally, I cannot cleanse my fancy of them for a month after. I have been a solitary widower almost twelve years, purposed lately to make a step over to my native country for a yoke-fellow : but when I consider how women there have tripe-wifed themselves with their cladments, I have no heart to the voyage, lest their nauseous shapes and the sea, should work too sorely upon my stomach, I speak sadly ; methinks it 30 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE should break the hearts of l^^nglish men, to see so many goodly English women imprisoned in French cages, peering out of their hood holes for some men of mercy to help them with a little wit, and nobody relieves them. It is a more common than convenient saying, that nine tailors make a man : it were well if nineteen could make a woman to her mind. If tailors were men indeed, well furnished but with mere moral principles, they would disdain to be led about like apes, by such mimic marmosets. It is a most unworthy thing for men that have bones in them, to spend their lives in making fiddle-cases for futilous women's fancies ; which are the very pettitoes of infirmity, the giblets of perquisquilian toys. I am so charitable to think, that most of that mystery would work the cheerfuller while they live, if they might be well discharged of the tiring slavery of mistiring women. It is no little labor to be continually putting up English women, into outlandish casks ; who if they be not shifted anew, once in a few months, grow too sour for their husbands. What this trade will answer for themselves when God shall take measure of tailors' consciences is beyond my skill to imagine. There was a time when, The joining of the Red Rose with the White, Did set our State into a Damask plight. But now our roses are turned to jiorc dc liccs, our carnations to tulips, our gillyflowers to daisies, our city dames, to an indenomin- able quaemalry of overturcased things. He that makes coats for the moon, had need take measures every noon : and he that makes for women, as often, to keep them from lunacy. I have often heard divers ladies vent loud feminine complaints of the wearisome varieties and chargeable changes of fashions : I marvel themselves prefer not a bill of redress. I would Essex ladies would lead the chore, for the honor of their county and persons ; or rather the thrice honorable ladies of the court, whom it best beseems : who may well presume of a Lc Roy Ic vciilt from our sober King, a Lcs Scigncui's out asscntns from our prudent peers, and the like Asscntns, from our considerate, I dare not say wife- worn Commons ; who I believe had much rather pass one such bill, than pay so many tailor's bills as they are forced to do. COLONIAL PERIOD 31 Most dear and unparalleled ladies, be pleased to attempt it : as you have the precellency of the women of the world for beauty and feature ; so assume the honor to give, and not take law from any, in matter of attire. If ye can transact so fair a motion among yourselves unanimously, I dare say, they that most renite, will least repent. What greater honor can your honors desire, than to build a promontory precedent to all foreign ladies, to deserve so eminently at the hands of all the English gentry present and to come : and to confute the opinion of all the wise men in the world ; who never thought it possible for women to do so good a work. If any man think I have spoken rather merrily than seriously he is much mistaken, I have written what I write with all the in- dignation I can, and no more than I ought. I confess I veered my tongue to this kind of language dc indnstria though unwillingly, supposing those I speak to are uncapable of grave and rational arguments. I desire all ladies and gentlewomen to understand that all this while I intend not such as through necessary modesty to avoid morose singularity, follow fashions slowly, a flight shot or two off, showing by their moderation, that they rather draw countermont with their hearts, than put on by their examples. I point my pen only against the light-heeled beagles that lead the chase so fast, that they run all civility out of breath, against these ape-headed pullets, which invent antique fool-fangles, merely for fashion and novelty sake. In a word, if I begin once to declaim against fashions, let men and women look well about them, there is somewhat in the busi- ness ; I confess to the world, I never had grace enough to be strict in that kind ; and of late years, I have found syrup of pride very wholesome in a due dose, which makes me keep such store of that drug by me, that if any body comes to me for a question-full or two about fashions, they never complain of me for giving them hard measure, or under weight. But I address myself to those who can both hear and mend all if they please : I seriously fear, if the pious Parliament do not find time to state fashions, as ancient Parliaments have done in some part, God will hardly find a time to state religion or peace. They 32 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE are the surquedries of pride, the wantonness of idleness, provoking sins, the certain prodromies of assured judgment, Zeph. i. 7, 8. It is beyond all account how many gentlemen's and citizens' estates are deplumed by their feather-headed wives, what useful supplies the pannage of England would afford other countries, what rich returns to itself, if it were not sliced out into male and female fripperies : and what a multitude of misemployed hands might be better improved in some more manly manufactures for the public weal. It is not easily credible, what may be said of the preter- pluralities of tailors in London : I have heard an honest man say, that not long since there were numbered between Temple-bar and Charing-Cross, eight thousand of that trade ; let it be conjectured by that proportion how many there are in and about London, and in all England they will appear to be very numerous. If the Par- liament would please to mend women, which their husbands dare not do, there need not so many men to make and mend as there are, I hope the present doleful estate of the realm will persuade more strongly to some considerate course herein than I now can. Knew I how to bring it in, I would speak a word to long hair, whereof I will say no more but this : if God proves not such a Barber to it as he threatens, unless it be amended, Esa. vii. 20, before the peace of the state and church be well settled, then let my prophecy be scorned, as a sound mind scorns the riot of that sin, and more it needs not. If those who are termed rattleheads and impuritans, would take up a resolution to begin in moderation of hair, to the just reproach of those that are called Puritans and Roundheads, I would honor their manliness as much as the others' godliness, so long as I knew what man or honor meant : if neither can find a barber's shop, let them turn in, to Psal. Ixviii. 21, Jer. vii. 29, i Cor. xi. 14. If it be thought no wisdom in men to distinguish themselves in the field by the scissors, let it be thought no injustice in God, not to distinguish them by the sword. I had rather God should know me by my sobriety, than mine enemy not know me by my vanity. He is ill kept, that is kept by his own sin. A short promise is a far safer guard than a long lock : it is an ill distinction which God is loath to look at, and his angels can not know his saints by. Though it be not the mark of the beast, yet COLONIAL PERIOD 33 it may be the mark of a beast prepared to slaughter. I am sure men use not to wear such names ; I am also sure soldiers use to wear other marklets or notadoes in time of battle. IN PRAISE OF ANNE BRADSTREET Prefixed to "The Tenth Muse," 1650 Mercury show'd Apollo, Bartas' book, Minerva this, and wish'd him well to look. And tell uprightly, which did which excel : He view'd and view'd, and vow'd he could not tell. They bid him hemisphere his mouldy nose. With 's crack'd leering glasses, for it would pose The best brains he had in 's old pudding-pan, Sex weigh 'd, which best, the woman or the man ? He peer'd, and por'd, and glar'd, and said for wore, I'm even as wise now, as I was before. They both 'gan laugh, and said, it was no mar'l The auth'ress was a right Du Bartas girl. Good sooth, quoth the old Don, tell me ye so, I muse whither at length these girls will go. It half revives my chill frost-bitten blood. To see a woman once do aught that 's good ; And chode by Chaucer's boots and Homer's furs, Let men look to 't, lest women wear the spurs. ANNE BRADSTREET [Born at Northampton, England, 161 2; died at Andover, Massachusetts, September 16, 1672] THE PROLOGUE From "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America" To sing of wars, of captains, and of kings, Of cities founded, commonwealths begun, For my mean pen are too superior things : Or how they all, or each, their dates have run. 34 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Let poets and historians set these forth, My obscure Hnes shall not so dim their worth. But when my wondering eyes and envious heart Great Bartas' sugared lines do not read o'er, Fool I do grudge the Muses did not part 'Twixt him and me that ever fluent store : — A Bartas can do what a Bartas will, But simple I according to my skill. From school-boys' tongue no rhetoric we expect. Not yet a sweet consort from broken strings. Nor perfect beauty where 's a main defect : My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings : And this to mend, alas, no art is able, 'Cause nature made it so irreparable. Nor can I, like that fluent, sweet-tongued Greek Who lisped at first, in future time speak plain ; By art he gladly found what he did seek — A full requital of his striving pain ; Art can do much, but this maxim 's most sure : A weak or wounded brain admits no cure. I am obnoxious to each carping tongue Who says my hand a needle better fits ; A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong ; For such despite they cast on female wits ; If what I do prove well, it won't advance — They '11 say it 's stolen, or else it was by chance. But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild, Else of our sex why feigned they those nine, And Poesy made Calliope's own child ? So 'mongst the rest they placed the Arts Divine ; But this weak knot they will full soon untie — The Greeks did naught but play the fools and lie. COLONIAL PERIOD 35 Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are. Men have precedency, and still excel, It is but vain unjustly to wage war : Men can do best, and women know it well ; Preeminence in all and each is yours — Yet grant some small acknowledgment of ours. And oh, ye high flown quills that soar the skies. And ever with your prey still catch your praise. If e'er you deign these lowly lines your eyes. Give thyme or parsley wreath ; I ask no bays, This mean and unrefined ore of mine Will make you glistering gold, but more to shine. OF THE FOUR AGES OF MAN Lo, now four other act upon the stage, Childhood and Youth, the Manly and Old Age : The first son unto phlegm, grandchild to water, Unstable, supple, cold and moist 's his nature. The second, frolic, claims his pedigree From blood and air, for hot and moist is he. The third of fire and choler is compos'd, Vindicative and quarrelsome dispos'd. The last of earth and heavy melancholy. Solid, hating all lightness and all folly. Childhood was cloth'd in white and green to show His spring was intermixed with some snow : Upon his head nature a garland set Of Primrose, Daisy and the Violet. Such cold mean flowers the spring puts forth betime, Before the sun hath throughly heat the clime. His hobby striding did not ride but run, And in his hand an hour-glass new begun, In danger every moment of a fall. And when 't is broke then ends his life and all : 36 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE But if he hold till it have run its last, Then may he live out threescore years or past. Next Youth came up in gorgeous attire (As that fond age doth most of all desire), His suit of crimson and his scarf of green, His pride in 's countenance was quickly seen ; Garland of roses, pinks and gillyflowers Seemed on 's head to grow bedew'd with showers. His face as fresh as is Aurora fair, When blushing she first 'gins to light the air. No wooden horse, but one of mettle tried. He seems to fly or swim, and not to ride. Then prancing on the stage, about he wheels, But as he went death waited at his heels. The next came up in a much graver sort, As one that cared for a good report, His sword by 's side, and choler in his eyes. But neither us'd as yet, for he was wise ; Of Autumn's fruits a basket on his arm, His golden god in 's purse, which was his charm. And last of all to act upon this stage Leaning upon his staff came up Old Age, Under his arm a sheaf of wheat he bore, An harvest of the best, what needs he more ? In 's other hand a glass ev'n almost run, Thus writ about : " This out, then am I done." A LOVE-LETTER TO HER HUSBAND Froivi the Edition of 1678 Phoebus make haste, the day 's too long, begone. The silent night 's the fittest time for moan ; But stay this once, unto my suit give ear. And tell my griefs in either Hemisphere : (And if the whirling of thy wheels don't drown'd The woful accents of my doleful sound). COLONIAL PERIOD 37 If in thy swift career thou canst make stay, I crave this boon, this errand by the way : Commend me to the man more lov'd than hfe. Show him the sorrows of his widow'd wife. My dumpish thoughts, my groans, my brackish tears, My sobs, my longing hopes, my doubting fears, And, if he love, how can he there abide ? My interest 's more than all the world beside. He that can tell the stars or Ocean sand, Or all the grass that in the meads do stand. The leaves in th' woods, the hail or drpps of rain. Or in a cornfield number every grain, Or every mote that in the sunshine hops. May count my sighs and number all my drops. Tell him, the countless steps that thou dost trace. That once a day thy spouse thou mayst embrace ; And when thou canst not treat by loving mouth. Thy rays afar, salute her from the south. But for one month I see no day (poor soul) Like those far situate under the pole. Which day by day long wait for thy arise, O how they joy when thou dost light the skies. O Phoebus, hadst thou but thus long from thine Restrain 'd the beams of thy beloved shine, At thy return, if so thou couldst or durst. Behold a Chaos blacker than the first. Tell him here 's worse than a confused matter, His little world 's a fathom under water, Naught but the fervor of his ardent beams Hath power to dry the torrent of these streams. Tell him I would say more, but cannot well, Opressed minds abruptest tales do tell. Now post with double speed, mark what I say, By all our loves conjure him not to stay. 38 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE THE AUTHOR TO HER BOOK Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain, Who after birth didst by my side remain Till snatched from thence by friends less wise than true Who thee abroad exposed to public view, Made thee, in rags, halting, to the press to trudge, Where errors were not lessened, all may judge. At thy return my blushing was not small. My rambling brat — in print — should mother call. I cast thee by as one unfit for light. Thy visage was so irksome in my sight ; Yet being mine own, at length affection would Thy blemishes amend, if so I could, I washed thy face, but more defects I saw, And rubbing off a spot still made a flaw. I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet. Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet. In better dress to trim thee was my mind. But naught save homespun cloth i' th' house I find. In this array 'mongst vulgars mayst thou roam. In critics' hands beware thou dost not come. And take thy way where yet thou art not known. If for thy father asked, say thou hadst none ; And for thy mother, she, alas, is poor. Which caused her thus to send thee out of door. FOR THE RESTORATION OF MY DEAR HUSBAND FROM A BURNING AGUE, JUNE, 1661 When fears and sorrows me beset. Then didst thou rid me out ; When heart did faint and spirits quail, Thou comforts me about. Thou rais'st him up I feared to lose, Regav'st me him again ; COLONIAL PERIOD 39 Distempers thou didst chase away, With strength didst him sustain. My thankful heart, with pen record The goodness of thy God : Let thy obedience testify He taught thee by his rod, And with his staff did thee support, That thou by both mayst learn, And 'twixt the good and evil way At last thou might'st discern. Praises to him who hath not left My soul as destitute, Nor turned his ear away from me. But granted hath my suit. EDWARD JOHNSON [Born at Heme Hill, Kent, England, about i 599 ; died at Woburn, Massachusetts, April 23, 1672] OF THE FIRST PREPARATION OF THE MERCHANT ADVEN- TURERS IN THE MASSACHUSETTS From the "Wonder-Working Providence," London, 1654, Chap. IX ... At the place of their abode they began to build a Town, which is called Salem, after some little space of time having made trial of the sordid spirits of the neighboring Indians, the most bold among them began to gather to divers places, which they began to take up for their own ; those that were sent over servants, having itching desires after novelties, found a readier way to make an end of their masters' provisions, than they could find means to get more. They that came over their own men had but little left to feed on, and most began to repent when their strong beer and full cups ran as small as water in a large land, but little corn, and the poor Indians 40 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE so far from relieving them, that they were forced to lengthen out their own food with acorns, and that which added to their present distracted thoughts, the ditch between England and their now place of abode was so wide, that they could not leap over with a lope-staff, yet some delighting their eye with the rarity of things present, and feeding their fancies with new discoveries at the Spring's approach, they made shift to rub out the Winter's cold by the fire-side, having fuel enough growing at their doors, turning down many a drop of the bottle, and burning tobacco with all the ease they could, discoursing between one while and another, of the great progress they would make after the Summer's-sun had changed the earths white furr'd gown into a green mantel. OF THE FIRST PROMOTION OF LEARNING IN NEW ENG- LAND AND THE EXTRAORDINARY PROVIDENCES THAT THE LORD WAS PLEASED TO SEND FOR FURTHERING OF THE SAME From Book II, Chap. XIX Toward the latter end of this summer came over the learned, . reverend, and judicious Mr. Henry Dunster, before whose coming the Lord was pleased to provide a patron for erecting a college, as you have formerly heard, his provident hand being now no less powerful in pointing out with his unerring finger a president abun- dantly fitted, this his servant, and sent him over for to manage the work. And as in all the other passages of this history the Wonder- working Providence of Sion's Saviour hath appeared, so more espe- cially in this work, the fountains of learning being in a great measure stopped in our native country at this time, so that the sweet waters of Shilo's streams must ordinarily pass into the churches through the stinking channel of prelatical pride, beside all the filth that the fountains themselves were daily encumbered withal, insomuch that the Lord turned aside often from them, and refused the breathings of his blessed Spirit among them, which caused Satan (in these latter days of his transformation into an angel of light) to make it a means to persuade people from the use of learning altogether, that so in the next generation they might be destitute of such helps as the COLONIAL PERIOD 41 Lord hath been pleased hitherto to make use of, as chief means for the conversion of his people and building them up in the holy faith, as also for breaking down the Kingdom of Antichrist. And verily had not the Lord been pleased to furnish New England with means for the attainment of learning, the work would have been carried on very heavily, and the hearts of godly parents would have vanished away with heaviness for their poor children, whom they must have left in a desolate wilderness, destitute of the means of grace. It being a work (in the apprehension of all whose capacity could reach to the great sums of money the edifice of a mean college would cost) past the reach of a poor pilgrim people, who had expended the greatest part of their estates on a long voyage, travelling into foreign countries being unprofitable to any that have undertaken it, although it were but with their necessary attendance, whereas this people were forced to travel with wives, children, and servants ; besides they con- sidered the treble charge of building in this new populated desert, in regard of all kind of workmanship, knowing likewise, that young students could make up a poor progress in learning, by looking on the bare walls of their chambers, and that Diogenes would have the better of them by far, in making use of a tun to lodge in ; not being ignorant also, that many people in this age are out of conceit with learning, and that although they were not among a people who counted ignorance the mother of devotion, yet were the greater part of the people wholly devoted to the plough (but to speak up- rightly, hunger is sharp, and the head will retain little learning, if the heart be not refreshed in some competent measure with food, although the gross vapors of a glutted stomach are the bane of a bright understanding, and brings barrenness to the brain). But how to have both go on together, as yet they know not. Amidst all these difficulties, it was thought meet learning should plead for itself, and (as many other men of good rank and quality in this barren desert) plot out a way to live. Hereupon all those who had tasted the sweet wine of Wisdom's drawing, and fed on the dainties of knowledge, began to set their wits a work, and verily as the whole progress of this work had a farther dependency than on the present-eyed means, so at this time chiefly the end being firmly fixed on a sure founda- tion, namely, the glory of God and good of all his elect people the 42 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE world throughout, in vindicating the truths of Christ and promoting his glorious Kingdom, who is now taking the heathen for his inheri- tance and the utmost ends of the earth for his possession, means they know there are, many thousand uneyed of mortal man, which every day's Providence brings forth. Upon these resolutions, to work they go, and with thankful ac- knowledgment readily take up all lawful means as they come to hand. For place they fix their eye upon New-Town, which to tell their posterity whence they came, is now named Cambridge. And withal to make the whole world understand that spiritual learning was the thing they chiefly desired, to sanctify the other and make the whole lump holy, and that learning being set upon its right object might not contend for error instead of truth, they chose this place, being then under the orthodox and soul-flourishing ministry of Mr. Thomas Shepard, of whom it may be said, without any wrong to others, the Lord by his Ministry hath saved many a hun- dred soul. The situation of this College is very pleasant, at the end of a spacious plain, more like a bowling-green than a wilder- ness, near a fair navigable river, environed with many neighboring towns of note, being so near, that their houses join with her sub- urbs. The building thought by some to be too gorgeous for a wil- derness, and yet too mean in others' apprehensions for a college, it is at present enlarging by purchase of the neighbor houses. It hath the conveniences of a fair hall, comfortable studies, and a good library, given by the liberal hand of some magistrates and ministers, with others. The chief gift towards the founding of this college was by Mr. John Harvard, a reverend minister; the country, being very weak in their public treasury, expended about ;!^5oo towards it, and for the maintenance thereof, gave the yearly rev- enue of a ferry passage between Boston and Charles-Town, the which amounts to about ^40 or ^50 per annum. The commis- sioners of the four united colonies also taking into consideration of what common concernment this work would be, not only to the whole plantations in general, but also to all our English Nation, they endeavored to stir up all the people in the several colonies to make a yearly contribution toward it, which by some is ob- served, but by the most very much neglected. The government COLONIAL PERIOD 43 hath endeavored to grant them all the privileges fit for a college, and accordingly the Governor and magistrates, together with the President of the College for the time being, have a continual care of ordering all matters for the good of the whole. This college hath brought forth and nurst up very hopeful plants, to the supplying some churches here, as the gracious and godly Mr, Wilson, son to the grave and zealous servant of Christ, Mr. John Wilson; this young man is pastor to the Church of Christ at Dorchester; as also Mr. Buckly, son to the reverend Mr. Buckly, of Concord ; as also a second son of his, whom our native country hath now at present help in the ministry, and the other is over a people of Christ in one of these Colonies, and if I mistake not, England hath I hope not only this young man of New England nurturing up in learning, but many more, as Mr. Sam. and Na- thaniel Mathers, Mr. Wells, Mr. Downing, Mr. Barnard, Mr. Allin, Mr. Brewster, Mr. William Ames, Mr. Jones. Another of the first-fruits of this college is employed in these western parts in Mevis, one of the Summer Islands ; besides these named, some help hath been had from hence in the study of physic, as also the godly Mr. Sam. Danforth, who hath not only studied divinity, but also astronomy ; he put forth many almanacs, and is now called to the office of a teaching elder in the Church of Christ at Rox- bury, who was one of the fellows of this College. The number of students is much increased of late, so that the present year, 165 i, on the twelfth of the sixth month, ten of them took the degree of Bachelors of Art, among whom the Sea-born son of Mr. John Cotton was one. . , . 44 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE JOHN ELIOT [Born at Nasing, Essex, England, 1 604 ; died at Roxbury, Massachusetts, May 20, 1690] SCANDAL AMONG THE CONVERTS From "A Late and Further Manifestation of the Progress of THE Gospel among the Lndians in New England " DECLARING THEIR CONSTANT LOVE AND ZEAL TO THE TRUTH WITH A READINESS TO GIVE ACCOUNT OF THEIR FAITH AND HOPE AS OF THEIR DESIRES IN CHURCH COM- MUNION TO BE PARTAKERS OF THE ORDINANCES OF CHRIST, BEING A NARRATIVE OF THE EXAMINATION OF THE INDIANS ABOUT THEIR KNOWLEDGE IN RELIGION BY THE ELDERS OF THE CHURCHES. RELATED BY MR. JOHN ELIOT, PUBLISHED BY THE CORPORATION, ESTABLISHED BY ACT OF PARLIAMENT FOR PROPAGATING THE GOSPEL THERE. [LONDON, 1655] There fell out a very great discouragement a little before the time, which might have been a scandal unto them, and I doubt not but Satan intended it so ; but the Lord improved it to stir up faith and prayer, and so turned it another way. Thus it was : Three of the unsound sort of such as are among them that pray unto God, who are hemmed in by relations, and other means, to do that which their hearts love not, and whose vices Satan improveth to scandalize and reproach the better sort withal ; while many, and some good people are too ready to say they are all alike. I say three of them had gotten several quarts of strong water (which sundry out of a greedy desire of a litde gain, are too ready to sell unto them, to the offence and grief of the better sort of Indians, and of the godly English too), and with these liquors, did not only make themselves drunk, but got a child of eleven years of age, the son of Toteswamp, whom his father had sent for a little corn and fish to that place near Watertowne, where they were. Unto this child they first gave two spoonfuls of strongwater, which was more than his head could bear ; and another of them put a bottle, or such like vessel to his mouth, and caused him to drink till he was very drunk; and then one of them domineered, and said, '" Now COLONIAL PERIOD 45 we will see whether your father will punish us for drunkenness (for he is a ruler among them) seeing you are drunk with us for company ; " and in this case lay the child abroad all night. They also fought, and had been several times punished formerly for drunkenness. When Toteswamp heard of this, it was a great shame and break- ing of heart unto him, and he knew not what to do. The rest of the rulers with him considered of the matter, they found a complication of many sins together. 1. The sin of drunkenness, and that after many former punish- ments for the same. 2. A wilful making of the child drunk, and exposing him to danger also. ' 3. A degree of reproaching the rulers. 4. Fighting. Word was brought to me of it, a little before I took horse to go to Natick to keep the Sabbath with them, being about ten days before the appointed meeting. The tidings sunk my spirit extremely, I did judge it to be the greatest frown of God that ever I met withal in the work, I could read nothing in it but displeasure, I began to doubt about our intended work : I knew not what to do, the black- ness of the sins, and the persons reflected on, made my very heart fail me. For one of the offenders (though least in the offence) was he that hath been my interpreter, whom I have used in translating a good part of the Holy Scriptures ; and in that respect I saw much of Satan's venom, and in God I saw displeasure. For this and some other acts of apostasy at this time, I had thoughts of casting him off from that work, yet now the Lord hath found a way to humble him. But his apostasy at this time was a great trial, and I did lay him by for that day of our examination, I used an- other in his room. Thus Satan aimed at me in this their miscarry- ing ; and Toteswamp is a principal man in the work, as you shall have occasion to see anon, God willing. By some occasion our ruling elder and I being together, I opened the case unto him, and the Lord guided him to speak some gracious words of encouragement unto me, by which the Lord did relieve my spirit ; and so I committed the matter and issue unto the Lord, 46 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE to do what pleased him, and in so doing my soul was quiet in the Lord. I went on my journey being the sixth day of the week ; when I came at Natick, the rulers had then a court about it. Soon after I came there, the rulers came to me with a question about this matter, they related the whole business unto me, with much trouble and grief. Then Toteswamp spake to this purpose, " I am greatly grieved about these things, and now God trieth me whether I love Christ or my child best. They, say they will try me ; but I say God will try me. Christ saith, He that loveth father, or mother, or wife, or child, better than me, is not worthy of me. Christ saith, I must correct my child, if I should refuse to do that, I should not love Christ. God bid Abraham kill his son, Abraham loved God, and therefore he would have done it, had not God withheld him. God saith to me, only punish your child, and how can I love God, if I should refuse to do that .? " These things he spake in more words, and much affection, and not with dry eyes. Nor could I refrain from tears to hear him. When it was said, The child was not so guilty of the sin, as those that made him drunk ; he said, that he was guilty of sin, in that he feared not sin, and in that he did not believe his councils that he had often given him, to take heed of evil company ; but he had believed Satan and sinners more than him, therefore he needed to be punished. After other such like discourse, the rulers left me, and went unto their business, which they were about before I came, which they did bring unto this conclusion and judgment. They judged the three men to sit in the stocks a good space of time, and thence to be brought to the whipping-post, and have each of them twenty lashes. The boy to be put in the stocks a little while, and the next day his father was to whip him in the school, before the children there ; all which judgment was executed. When they came to be whipped, the con- stable fetched them one after another to the tree (which they make use of instead of a post) where they all received their punishments : which done, the rulers spake thus, one of them said, " The punish- ments for sin are the Commandments of God, and the work of God, and his end was, to do them good, and bring them to repent- ance." And upon that ground he did in more words exhort them COLONIAL PERIOD 47 to repentance, and amendment of life. When he had done, another spake unto them to this purpose, " You are taught in catechism, that the wages of sin are all miseries and calamities in this life, and also death and eternal damnation in hell. Now you feel some smart as the fruit of your sin, and this is to bring you to repentance, that so you may escape the rest." And in more words he exhorted them to repentance. When he had done, another spake to this purpose, '" Hear all ye people " (turning himself to the people who stood round about, I think not less than two hundred, small and great) " this is the commandment of the Lord, that thus it should be done unto sinners ; and therefore let all take warning by this, that you commit not such sins, lest you incur these punishments." And with more words he exhorted the people. Others of the rulers spake also, but some things spoken I understood not, and some things slipped from me. But these which I have related remained with me. When I returned to Roxbury, I related these things to our elder, to whom I had before related the sin, and my grief : who was much affected to hear it, and magnified God. He said also. That their sin was but a transient act, which had no rule, and would vanish. But these judgments were an ordinance of God, and would remain, and do more good every way, than their sin could do hurt, telling me what cause I had to be thankful for such an issue. Which I therefore relate, because the Lord did speak to my heart, in this exigent, by his words. MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH [Born in England, 1631 ; died at Maiden, MassachuseUs, June 10, 1705] THE DAY OF DOOM INTRODUCTION: TO THE CHRISTIAN READER Reader, I am a fool And have adventured To play the fool this once for Christ, The more his fame to spread. 48 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE If this my foolishness Help thee to be more wise, I have attained what I seek, And what I only prize. Thou wonderest, perhaps, That I in print appear, Who to the pulpit dwell so nigh, Yet come so seldom there. The God of Heaven knows What grief to me it is. To be withheld from serving Christ ; No sorrow like to this. This is the sorest pain That I have felt or feel ; Yet have I stood some shocks that might Make stronger men to reel. I find more true delight In serving of the Lord, Than all the good things upon Earth, Without it, can afford. And could my strength endure That work I count so dear, Not all the riches of Peru Should hire me to forbear. But I'm a prisoner. Under a heavy chain ; Almighty God's afflicting hand Doth me by force restrain. Yet some (/ knoiv) do judge Mine inability To come abroad and do Christ's work. To be melancholy ; And that I'm not so weak As I myself conceit ; COLONIAL PERIOD 49 But who in other things have found Me so conceited yet ? Or who of all my friends That have my trials seen, Can tell the time in. seven years When I have dumpish been ? Some think my voice is strong, Most times when I do preach ; But ten days after, what I feel And suffer few can reach. My prison 'd thoughts break forth. When open'd is the door, With greater force and violence, And strain my voice the more. But vainly do they tell That I am growing stronger, Who hear me speak in half an hour, Till I can speak no longer. Some for because they see not My cheerfulness to fail. Nor that I am disconsolate, Do think I nothing ail. If they had borne my griefs, Their courage might have fail'd them,^ And all the town (perhaps) have known (Once and again) what ail'd them. But why should I complain That have so good a God, That doth mine heart with comfort fill Ev'n whilst I feel his rod ? In God I have been strong. But wearied and worn out. And joy'd in him, when twenty woes Assail'd me round about. so READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Nor speak I this to boast, But make apology For mine own self, and answer those That fail in charity. I am, alas ! as frail. Impatient a creature, As most that tread upon the ground, And have as bad a nature. Let God be magnified. Whose everlasting strength Upholds me under sufferings Of more than ten years' length ; Through whose Almighty pow'r. Although I am surrounded With sorrows more than can be told, Yet am I not confounded. For his dear sake have I This service undertaken. For I am bound to honor him Who hath not me forsaken. I am a debtor, too. Unto the sons of men. Whom, wanting other means, I would Advantage with my pen. • I would, but ah ! my strength, When tried, proves so small. That to the ground without effect My wishes often fall. Weak heads, and hands, and states, Great things cannot produce ; And therefore I this little piece Have publish'd for thine use. Although the thing be small, Yet my good will therein COLONIAL PERIOD 51 Is nothing less than if it had A larger volume been. Accept it then in love, And read it for thy good ; There's nothing in't can do thee hurt, If rightly understood. The God of Heaven grant These lines so well to speed, That thou the things of thine own peace Through them may'st better heed ; And may'st be stirred up To stand upon thy guard. That Death and Judgment may not come To find thee unprepar'd. Oh, get a part in Christ, And make the Judge thy friend ; So shalt thou be assured of A happy, glorious end. Thus prays thy real friend And servant for Christ's sake. Who, had he strength, would not refuse More pains for thee to take. THE BURWELL PAPERS BACON'S DEATH An Anonymous " History of Bacon's and Ingram's Rebellion," first printed by the massachusetts historical society, 1814 Bacon having for some time been besieged by sickness, and now not able to hold out any longer, all his strength and provisions be- ing spent, surrendered up that fort he was no longer able to keep, into the hands of that grim and all-conquering captain. Death, after that he had implored the assistance of the above-mentioned minister, for the well making his articles of rendition. The only religious 52 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE duty (as they say) he was observed to perform during these intrigues of affairs, in which he was so considerable an actor, and so much concerned, that rather than he would decline the cause, he became so deeply engaged in the first rise thereof, though much urged by arguments of dehortations by his nearest relations and best friends, that he subjected himself to all those inconveniences that, singly, might bring a man of a more robust frame to his last home. After he was dead he was bemoaned in these following lines (drawn by the man that waited upon his person, as it is said), and who attended his corpse to their burial place, but where deposited till the general day, not known, only to those who are resolutely silent in that par- ticular. There was many copies of verses made after his departure, calculated to the latitude of their affections who composed them ; as a relish taken from both appetites I have here sent you a couple : BACON'S EPITAPH, MADE BY HIS MAN Death, why so cruel .'' What ! no other way To manifest thy spleen, but thus to slay Our hopes of safety, liberty, our all. Which, through thy tyranny, with him must fall To its late chaos .'' Had thy rigid force Been dealt by retail, and not thus in gross, Grief had been silent. Now we must complain. Since thou, in him, hast more than thousand slain, Whose lives and safeties did so much depend On him their life, with him their lives must end. If 't be a sin to think Death brib'd can be We must be guilty ; say 't was bribery Guided the fatal shaft. Virginia's foes. To whom for secret crimes just vengeance owes Deserved plagues, dreading their just desert, Corrupted Death by Paracelsian art Him to destroy ; whose well tried courage such, Their heartless hearts, nor arms, nor strength could touch. Who now must heal those wounds, or stop that blood The Heathen made, and drew into a flood ? COLONIAL PERIOD 53 Who is 't must plead our cause ? nor trump, nor drum Nor Deputation ; these, alas ! are dumb And cannot speak. Our Arms (though ne'er so strong) Will want the aid of his commanding tongue, Which conquer'd more than Cassar. He o'erthrew Only the outward frame : this could subdue The rugged works of nature. Souls replete With dull chill cold, he'd animate with heat Drawn forth of reason's limbec. In a word, Mars and Minerva both in him concurred For arts, for arms, whose pen and sword alike As Cato's did, may admiration strike Into his foes ; while they confess withal It was their guilt styl'd him a criminal. Only this difference does from truth proceed : They in the guilt, he in the name must bleed. While none shall dare his obsequies to sing In deserv'd measures ; until time shall bring Truth crown 'd with freedom, and from danger free To sound his praises to posterity. Here let him rest ; while we this truth report He's gone from hence unto a higher Court To plead his cause, where he by this doth know Whether to Caesar he was friend, or foe. LOVEWELL'S FIGHT A Popular Ballad written shortly after the Battle of May 8, 1 725 Of worthy Captain Lovewell, I purpose now to sing, How valiantly he served his country and his King ; He and his valiant soldiers did range the woods full wide, 'And hardships they endured to quell the Indian's pride. 'T was nigh unto Pigwacket, on the eighth day of May, They spied a rebel Indian soon after break of day ; He on a bank was walking, upon a neck of land. Which leads into a pond as we 're made to understand. 54 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Our men resolved to have him, and travelled two miles round, Until they met the Indian, who boldly stood his ground ; Then up speaks Captain Lovewell, "Take you good heed," says he, " This rogue is to decoy us, I very plainly see. " The Indians lie in ambush, in some place nigh at hand, In order to surround us upon this neck of land ; Therefore we '11 march in order, and each man leave his pack ; That we may briskly fight them when they make their attack." They came unto this Indian, who did them thus defy. As soon as they came nigh him, two guns he did let fly. Which wounded Captain Lovewell, and likewise one man more, But when this rogue was running, they laid him in his gore. Then having scalped the Indian, they went back to the spot. Where they had laid their packs down, but there they found them not, For the Indians having spied them, when they them down did lay, Did seize them for their plunder, and carry them away. These rebels lay in ambush, this very place hard by. So that an English soldier did one of them espy. And cried out, " Here's an Indian " ; with that they started out, As fiercely as old lions, and hideously did shout. With that our valiant English all gave a loud huzza, To show the rebel Indians they feared them not a straw : So now the fight began, and as fiercely as could be. The Indians ran up to them, but soon were forced to flee. Then spake up Captain Lovewell, when first the fight began, " Fight on my valiant heroes ! you see they fall like rain." For as we are informed, the Indians were so thick, A man could scarcely fire a gun and not some of them hit. Then did the rebels try their best our soldiers to surround. But they could not accomplish it, because there was a pond. COLONIAL PERIOD 55 To which our men retreated and covered all the rear, The rogues were forced to flee them, although they skulked for fear. Two logs there were behind them that close together lay. Without being discovered, they could not get away ; Therefore our valiant English they travelled in a row. And at a handsome distance as they were wont to go. 'T was ten o'clock in the morning when first the fight begun. And fiercely did continue until the setting sun ; Excepting that the Indians some hours before 't was night, Drew off into the bushes and ceased awhile to fight. But soon again returned, in fierce and furious mood, Shouting as in the morning, but yet not half so loud ; -For as we are informed, so thick and fast they fell. Scarce twenty of their number at night did get home well. And that our valiant English till midnight there did stay, To see whether the rebels would have another fray ; But they no more returning, they made off towards their home, And brought away their wounded as far as they could come. Of all our valiant English there were but thirty-four. And of the rebel Indians there were about fourscore. And sixteen of our English did safely home return. The rest were killed and wounded, for which we all must mourn. Our worthy Captain Lovewell among them there did die. They killed Lieut. Robbins, and wounded good young Frye, Who was our English Chaplain ; he many Indians slew, And some of them he scalped when bullets round him flew. Young Fullam too I '11 mention, because he fought so well. Endeavoring to save a man, a sacrifice he fell : But yet our valiant Englishmen in fight were ne'er dismayed, But still they kept their motion, and Wyman's Captain made, 56 RKADINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Who shot the old chief Paugus, which did the foe defeat, Then set his men in order, and brought off the retreat ; And braving many dangers and hardships by the way, They safe arrived at Dunstable, the thirteenth day of May. MARY ROWLANDSON [Flourished in the year 1682] ATTACK BY INDIANS From " Narrative of the Captivity and Restouration of Mrs. Mary Roulandson," 1682 At length they came and beset our house, [at Lancaster, Feb- ruary 10, 1675, O. S.] and quickly it was the dolefulest day that ever mine eyes saw. The house stood upon the edge of a hill ; some of the Indians got behind the hill, others into the barn, and others behind anything that would shelter them ; from all which places they shot against the house, so that the bullets seemed to fly like hail, and quickly they wounded one man among us, then another, then a third. About two hours (according to my observa- tion in that amazing time) they had been about the house before they prevailed to fire it, (which they did with flax and hemp which they brought out of the barn, and there being no defence about the house, only two flankers at two opposite corners, and one of them not finished) they fired it once, and one ventured out and quenched it, but they quickly fired it again, and that took. Now is the dread- ful hour come that I have often heard of (in time of the war, as it was the case of others) but now mine eyes see it. Some in our house were fighting for their lives, others wallowing in blood, the house on fire over our heads, and the bloody heathen ready to knock us on the head if we stirred out. Now might we hear mothers and children crying out for themselves and one another. Lord, what shall we do ! Then I took my children (and one of my sisters hers) to go forth and leave the house : but, as soon as we came to the door and appeared, the Indians shot so thick that the bullets rattled against the house as if one had taken a handful of stones and threw COLONIAL PERIOD 57 them, so that we were forced to give back. We had six stout dogs belonging to our garrison, but none of them would stir, though at another time if an Indian had come to the door, they were ready to fly upon him and tear him down. The Lord hereby would make us the more to acknowledge his hand, and to see that our help is always in him. But out we must go, the fire increasing, and coming along behind us roaring, and the Indians gaping before us with their guns, spears, and hatchets to devour us. No sooner were we out of the house, but my brother-in-law (being before wounded in de- fending the house, in or near the throat) fell down dead, whereat the Indians scornfully shouted and hallowed, and were presently upon him, stripping off his clothes. The bullets flying thick, one went through my side, and the same (as would seem) through the bowels and hand of my poor child in my arms. One of my elder sister's children (named William) had then his leg broke, which the Indians perceiving they knocked him on the head. Thus were we butchered by those merciless heathens, standing amazed, with the blood running down to our heels. My eldest sister being yet in the house, and seeing those woful sights, the infidels hauling mothers one way and children another, and some wallowing in their blood; and her eldest son telling her that her son William was dead, and myself was wounded, she said, " and Lord, let me die with them ; " which was no sooner said, but she- was struck with a bullet, and fell down dead over the threshold. I hope she is reaping the fruit of her good labors, being faithful to the service of God in her place. . , . HER EXPERIENCES IN CAPTIVITY I had often before this said, that if the Indians should come, I should choose rather to be killed by them than taken alive, but when it came to the trial, my mind changed ; their glittering weapons so daunted my spirit, that I chose rather to go along with those (as I may say) ravenous bears, than that moment to end my days. And that I may the better declare what happened to me during that grievous captivity, I shall particularly speak of the several Removes we had up and down the wilderness. 58 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE THE FIRST REMOVE Now away wc must go with those barbarous creatures, with our bodies wounded and bleeding, and our hearts no less than our bodies. About a mile we went that night, up upon a hill, within sight of the town, where we intended to lodge. There was hard by a vacant house (deserted by the English before, for fear of the Indians) ; I asked them whether I might not lodge in the house that night.? to which they answered, "What, will you love Eng- lishmen still ? " This was the dolefulest night that ever my eyes saw. Oh, the roaring and singing, and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell. And miserable was the waste that was there made, of horses, cattle, sheep, swine, calves, lambs, roasting pigs, and fowls (which they had plundered in the town), some roasting, some lying and burning, and some boiling, to feed our merciless enemies ; who were joyful enough, though we were disconsolate. To add to the dolefulness of the former day, and the dismalness of the present night, my thoughts ran upon my losses and sad, bereaved condition. All was gone, my husband gone (at least sepa- rated from me, he being in the Bay ; and to add to my grief, the Indians told me they would kill him as he came homeward), my children gone, my relations and friends gone, our house and home, and all our comforts within door and without, all was gone (except my life), and I knew not but the next moment that might go too. There remained nothing to me but one poor, wounded babe, and it seemed at present worse than death, that it was in such a pitiful condition, bespeaking compassion, and I had no refreshing for it, nor suitable things to revive it. Little do many think, what is the savageness and brutishness of this barbarous enemy, those even that seem to profess more than others among them, when the English have fallen into their hands. . . . THE SECOND REMOVE But now (the next morning) I must turn my back upon the town, and travel with them into the vast and desolate wilderness, I know not whither. It is not my tongue or pen can express the sorrows COLONIAL PERIOD 59 of my heart, and bitterness of my spirit, that I had at this depar- ture ; but God was with me in a wonderful manner, carrying me along and bearing up my spirit, that it did not quite fail. One of the Indians carried my poor wounded babe upon a horse ; it went moaning all along: "I shall die, I shall die." I went on foot after it, with sorrow that cannot be expressed. At length I took it off the horse, and carried it in my arms, till my strength failed and I fell down with it. Then they set me upon a horse with my wounded child in my lap, and there being no furniture on the horse's back, as we were going down a steep hill, we both fell over the horse's head, at which they, like inhuman creatures, laughed, and rejoiced to see it, though I thought we should there have ended our days, overcome with so many difficulties. But the Lord renewed my strength still, and carried me along, that I might see more of his power, yea so much that I could never have thought of, had I not experienced it. . . . COTTON MATHER [Born at Boston, Massachusetts, February 12, 1663 ; died at Boston, February 13, 172S] THE ORIGIN OF WITCHCRAFT IN NEW ENGLAND- From "The Wonders of the Invisible World," 1693 We have been advised by some credible Christians yet alive, that a malefactor, accused of witchcraft as well as murder, and executed in this place more than forty years ago, did then give notice of an horrible plot against the country by witchcraft, and a foundation of witchcraft then laid, which if it were not seasonably discovered would probably blow up and pull down all the churches in the country. And we have now with horror seen the discovery of such a witchcraft ! An army of devils is horribly broke in upon the place which is the centre, and, after a sort, the first-born of our English settlements ; and the houses of the good people there are fill'd with the doleful shrieks of their children and servants, tormented by invisible hands, with tortures altogether preternatural. 6o READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE After the mischiefs there endeavored, and since in part conquered, the terrible plague, of evil angels, hath made its progress into some other places, where other persons have been in like manner diabolically handled. These our poor afflicted neighbors, quickly after they become infected and infested with these daemons, ar- rive to a capacity of discerning those which they conceive the shapes of their troulDJers ; and notwithstanding the great and just suspicion, that the daemons might impose the shapes of innocent persons in their spectral exhibitions upon the sufferers (which may perhaps prove no small part of the witch-plot in the issue), yet many of the persons thus represented being examined, sev- eral of them have been convicted of a very damnable witchcraft. Yea, more than one twenty have confessed that they have signed unto a book which the devil show'd them, and engaged in his hellish design of bewitching and ruining our land. We know not, at least I know not, how far the delusions of Satan may be inter- woven into some circumstances of the confessions ; but one would think all the rules of understanding human affairs are at an end, if after so many most voluntary harmonious confessions, made by intelligent persons of all ages, in sundry towns, at several times, we must not believe the main strokes wherein those confessions all agree ; especially when we have a thousand preternatural things every day before our eyes, wherein the confessors do acknowledge their concernment, and give demonstration of their being so con- cerned. If the devils now can strike the minds of men with any poisons of so fine a composition and operation, that scores of inno- cent people shall unite in confessions of a crime which we see actually committed, it is a thing prodigious, beyond the wonders of the former ages, and it threatens no less than a sort of dissolu- tion upon the world. Now, by these confessions 't is agreed that the devil has made a dreadful knot of witches in the country, and by the help of witches has dreadfully increased that knot ; that these witches have driven a trade commissioning their confederate spirits, to do all sorts of mischiefs to the neighbors, whereupon there have ensued such mischievous consequences upon the bodies and estates of the neighborhood, as could not otherwise be ac- counted for. Yea, that at prodigious witch-meetings, the wretches COLONIAL PERIOD 6l have proceeded so far as to concert and consult the methods of rooting out the Christian rehgion from this country, and setting up instead of it, perhaps a more gross diaboHsm than ever the world saw before. And yet it will be a thing little short of miracle, if in so spread a business as this, the devil should not get in some of his juggles to confound the discovery of all the rest. . . . SOME OF THE EVIDENCE GIVEN AT THE WITCH TRIALS From the Same FROM THE TRIAL OF GEORGE BURROUGHS Glad should I have been if I had never known the name of this man ; or never had this occasion to mention so much as the first letters of his name. But the government requiring some account of his trial to be inserted in this book, it becomes me with all obedience to submit unto the order. This G. B. was indicted for witch-craft, and in the prosecution of the charge against him he was accused by five or six of the be- witched, as the author of their miseries ; he was accused by eight of the confessing witches, as being a head actor at some of their hellish randezvouzes, and one who had the promise of being a king in Satan's kingdom, now going to be erected. He was accused by nine persons for extraordinary lifting, and such feats of strength as could not be done without a diabolical assistance. And for other such things he was accused, until about thirty testimonies were brought in against him ; nor were these judg'd the half of what might have been considered for his conviction. However they were enough to fix the character of a witch upon him according to the rules of reasoning, by the judicious Gaule, in that case directed. . . . The testimonies of the other sufferers concurred with these ; and it was remarkable that, whereas biting was one of the ways which the witches used for the vexing of the sufferers, when they cry'd out of G. B. biting them, the print of the teeth would be seen on the flesh of the complainers, and just such a set of teeth as G. B.'s would then appear upon them, which could be distin- guished from those of some other men's. Others of them testified 62 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE that in their torments G. B. tempted them to go unto a sacrament, unto which they perceived him with a sound of trumpet summon- ing of other witches, who quickly after the sound would come from all quarters unto the rendezvous. One of them falling into a kind of trance affirmed that G. B. had carried her away into a very high mountain, where he shewed her mighty and glorious kingdoms, and said, " He would give them all to her, if she would write in his book " ; but she told him, " They were none of his to give " ; and refused the motions ; enduring of much misery for that refusal. It cost the Court a wonderful deal of trouble, to hear the testi- monies of the sufferers ; for when they were going to give in their depositions, they would for a long time be taken with fits that made them uncapable of saying any thing. The chief judge asked the prisoner, who he thought hindered these witnesses from giving their testimonies. And he answered, " He supposed it was the devil." That honorable person replied, " How comes the devil then to be so loath to have any testimony borne against you .? " Which cast him into very great confusion, . , , Accordingly several of the bewitched had given in their testi- mony, that they had been troubled with the apparitions of two women, who said that they were G. B.'s two wives, and that he had been the death of them ; and that the magistrates must be told of it, before whom if B. upon his trial denied it, that they did not know but that they should appear again in court. Now G. B. had been infamous for the barbarous usage of his two late wives, all the country over. Moreover, it was testified, the spectre of G. B. threatening of the sufferers told them he had killed (besides others) Mrs. Lawson and her daughter Ann. And it was noted, that these were the virtuous wife and daughter of one at whom this G. B. might have a prejudice for his being serviceable at Salem Village, from whence himself had in ill terms removed some years before ; and that when they died, which was long since, there were some odd circumstances about them, which made some of the attendants there suspect something of witch-craft, though none imagined from what quarter it should come. Well, G. B. being now upon his trial, one of the bewitched persons was cast into horror at the ghost of B's two deceased COLONIAL PERIOD 63 wives then appearing before him, and crying for vengeance against him. Hereupon several of the bewitched persons were successively called in, who all, not knowing what the former had seen and said, concurred in their horror of the apparition, which they affirmed that he had before him. But he, though much appalled, utterly deny'd that he discern'd any thing of it ; nor was it any part of his conviction. . . . A famous divine recites this among the convictions of a witch : " The testimony of the party bewitched, whether pining or dying ; together with the joint oaths of sufficient persons that have seen certain prodigious pranks or feats wrought by the party accused." Now, God had been pleased so to leave this G. B, that he had ensnared himself by several instances, which he had formerly given of a preternatural strength, and which were now produced against him. He was a very puny man, yet he had often done things beyond the strength of a giant. A gun of about seven foot barrel, and so heavy that strong men could not steadily hold it out with both hands ; there were several testimonies, given in by persons of credit and honor, that he made nothing of taking up such a gun behind the lock with but one hand, and holding it out like a pistol at arms-end. G. B. in his vindication was so foolish as to say, " That an Indian was there, and held it out at the same time." Whereas none of the spectators ever saw any such Indian ; but they supposed, the " Black Man " (as the witches call the devil ; and they generally say he resembles an Indian) might give him that assistance. There was evidence likewise brought in, that he made nothing of taking up whole barrels fill'd with molasses or cider in very disadvantageous postures and carrying of them through the difficultest places out of a canoe to the shore. Yea, there were two testimonies, that G. B. with only putting the forefinger of his right hand into the muzzle of an heavy gun, a fowling-piece of about six or seven foot barrel, did lift up the gun, and hold it out at arms-end ; a gun which the depo- nents thought strong men could not with both hands lift up and hold out at the butt-end, as is usual. Indeed, one of these wit- nesses was over-persuaded by some persons to be out of the way upon G. B.'s trial ; but he came afterwards with sorrow for his 64 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE withdraw [al], and gave in his testimony. Nor were either of these witnesses made use of as evidences in the trial. . . . Faltering, faulty, unconstant, and contrary answers upon judicial and deliberate examination, are counted some unlucky symptoms of guilt, in all crimes, especially in witchcrafts. Now there never was a prisoner more eminent for them than G. B. both at his examination and on his trial. His tergiversations, contradictions, and falsehoods were very sensible. He had little to say, but that he had heard some things that he could not prove, reflecting upon the reputation of some of the witnesses. Only he gave in a paper to the jury ; wherein, although he had many times before granted, not only that there are witches, but also that the present sufferings of the country are the effects of horrible witchcrafts, yet he now goes to evince it, " That there neither are, nor ever were witches, that having made a compact with the devil can send a devil to torment other people at a dis- tance." This paper was transcribed out of Ady ; which the Court presently knew, as soon as they heard it. But he said, he had taken none of it out of any book ; for which his evasion after- wards was, that a gentleman gave him the discourse in a manu- script, from whence he transcribed it. The jury brought him in guilty. But when he came to die, he utterly denied the fact whereof he had been thus convicted. FROM THE TRIAL OF MARTHA CARRIER Martha Carrier was indicted for the bewitching certain persons, according to the form usual in such cases pleading not guilty to her indictment ; there were first brought in a considerable number of the bewitched persons ; who not only made the court sensible of a horrid witchcraft committed upon them, but also deposed that it was Martha Carrier or her shape that grievously tormented them by biting, pricking, pinching and choking of them. It was further deposed that while this Carrier was on her examination before the magistrates, the poor people were so tortured that every one ex- pected their death upon the very spot, but that upon the binding of Carrier they were eased. Moreover the look of Carrier then laid the afflicted people for dead ; and her touch, if her eye at the COLONIAL PERIOD 65 same time were off them, raised them again. Which things were also now seen upon her trial. And it was testified, that upon the mention of some having their necks twisted almost round by the shape of this Carrier, she replied, " It 's no matter though their necks had been twisted quite off." Before the trial of this prisoner several of her own children had frankly and fully confessed, not only that they were witches them- selves, but that this their mother had made them so. This con- fession they made with great shews of repentance, and with much demonstration of truth. They related place, time, occasion ; they gave an account of journeys, meetings and mischiefs by them per- formed, and were very credible in what they said. Nevertheless, this evidence was not produced against the prisoner at the bar, inasmuch as there was other evidence enough to proceed upon, . , . Allin Toothaker testify 'd that Richard, the son of Martha Car- rier, having some difference with him, pull'd him down by the hair of the head. When he rose again he was going to strike at Richard Carrier ; but fell down fiat on his back to the ground and had not power to stir hand or foot, until he told Carrier he yielded ; and then he saw the shape of Martha Carrier go off his breast. This Toothaker had received a wound in the wars ; and he now testify'd that Martha Carrier told him he should never be cured. Just afore the apprehending of Carrier, he could thrust a knitting needle into his wound, four inches deep ; but presently after her being seized, he was thoroughly healed, , , , One Foster, who confessed her own share in the witchcraft for which the prisoner stood indicted, affirmed that she had seen the prisoner at some of their witch meetings, and that it was this Carrier, who persuaded her to be a witch. She confess'd, that the devil carry'd them on a pole to a witch-meeting ; but the pole broke, and she hanging about Carrier's neck, they both fell down, and she then received an hurt by the fall whereof she was not at this very time recovered. . , , In the time of this prisoner's trial, one Susanna Sheldon in open court had her hands unaccountably ty'd together with a wheel- band, so fast that without cutting it could not be loosed. It was done by a spectre ; and the sufferer affirm'd it was the prisoner's. 66 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Memorandum. This rampant hag, Martha Carrier, was the person, of whom the confessions of the witches, and of her own children among the rest, agreed, that the devil had promised her she should be Oueen of Hell. SAMUEL SEWALL [Born at Bishopstoke, England, March 28, 1652; died at Boston, Massa- chusetts, January i, 1730] FROM THE DIARY OF SAMUEL SEWALL DISCIPLINE AT HARVARD Monday, June 15, 1674. . . . Thomas Sargeant was examined by the Corporation : finally, the advice of Mr. Danforth, Mr. Stoughton, Mr. Thatcher, Mr. Mather {then present) was taken. This was his sentence. That being convicted of speaking blasphemous words concerning the H. G. he should be therefore publicly whipped before all the Scholars, 2. That he should be suspended as to taking his degree of Bachelor (this sentence read before him twice at the Prts. before this committee, and in the library i up before execution.) 3. Sit alone by himself in the Hall uncovered at meals, during the pleasure of the President and Fellows, and be in all things obedient, doing what exercise was appointed him by the President, or else be finally expelled from the College. The first was presently put in execution in the Library (Mr. Danforth Jr. being present) before the Scholars. He kneeled down and the instrument Goodman Hely attended the President's word as to the performance of his part in the work. Prayer was had before and after by the President. July i, 1674. Sir Thatcher commonplaced, Justification was his head. He had a good solid piece : stood above an hour and yet brake off before he came to any use. By reason that there was no warning given, none (after the undergraduates) were present, save Mr. Dan Gookin, Sr., the President and myself. July 3, 1674. N.B. Mr. Gookin, Jr., was gone a fishing with his brothers. COLONIAL PERIOD 67 CHRISTMAS DAY IN BOSTON Dec. 25, Friday, 1685. Carts come to Town and shops open as is usual. Some somehow observe the day ; but are vexed I be- heve that the body of the people profane it, and blessed be God no authority yet to compell them to keep it. A great snow fell last night so this day and night very cold. NOTES ON THE WITCHCRAFT TRIALS April I ith, 1692. Went to Salem, where, in the Meeting-house, the persons accused of Witchcraft were examined ; was a very great Assembly ; 'twas awful to see how the afflicted persons were agitated. Mr. Noyes pray'd at the beginning, and Mr. Higginson concluded. (In the margiii) Vse, Vas, Vae, Witchcraft. Augt. 19th, 1692. . . . This day {in t/ic inaj-gin, Doleful Witch- craft) George Burrough, John Willard, J no. Procter, Martha Carrier, and George Jacobs were executed at Salem, a very great number of spectators being present. Mr. Cotton Mather was there, Mr. Sims, Hale, Noyes, Chiever &c. All of them said they were innocent. Carrier and all. Mr. Mather said they all died by a righteous sentence. Mr. Burrough by his speech, prayer, protestation of his innocence, did much move unthinking persons, which occasions their speaking hardly concerning his being executed. Monday, Sept. 19, 1692. About noon, at Salem, Giles Corey was press'd to death for standing mute ; much pains were used with him two days, one after another, by the Court and Capt. Gardner of Nantucket who had been of his acquaintance ; but all in vain. Sept. 20. Now I hear from Salem that about 18 years ago, he was suspected to have stamped and press'd a man to death, but was cleared. 'Twas not remembered till Anne Putnam was told of it by Corey's spectre the Sabbath-day night before the execution. Sept. 21, 1692. A petition is sent to Town in behalf of Dorcas Hoar who now confesses : Accordingly an order is sent to the 68 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Sheriff to forbear her execution, notwithstanding her being in the warrant to die to-morrow. This is the first condemned person who has confess'd. FAMILY DISCIPLINE Nov. 6, 1692. Joseph threw a knop of brass and hit his Sister Betty on the forehead so as to make it bleed and swell ; upon which, and for his playing at Prayer-time, and eating when Return Thanks, I whipped him pretty smartly. When I first went in (called by his Grandmother) he sought to shadow and hide him- self from me behind the head of the cradle : which gave me the sorrowful remembrance of Adam's carriage. REFLECTIONS ON SLAVERY Fourth-day, June 19, 1700. , . . Having been long and much dissatisfied with the trade of fetching Negroes from Guinea ; at last I had a strong inclination to write something about it ; but it wore off. At last reading Bayne, Ephes. about servants, who men- tions Blackamoors ; I began to be uneasy that I had so long neglected doing anything. When I was thus thinking, in came Bro. Belknap to show me a petition he intended to present to Gen' Court for the freeing of a Negro and his wife, who were unjustly held in bondage. And there is a motion by a Boston Committee to get a law that all importers of Negroes shall pay 40s per head, to discourage the bringing of them. And Mr. C. Mather resolves to publish a sheet to exhort masters to labor their conversion. Which makes me hope that I was called of God to write this apology for them. Let his blessing accompany the same. A COLONIAL WEDDING Octobr. 29, 1 71 3. . . . In the Evening Mr. Ebenezer Pemberton marries my son Joseph Sewall and Mrs. Elizabeth Walley. Wait Winthrop esqr. and Lady, Samuel Porter esqr., Edmund Ouinsey esqr., Ephriam Savage esqr. and wife, Madam Usher, Mr. Mice and wife, Jer. Dummer esqr.. Cousin Sam. Storke, Cous. Carter, and many more present. Sung out of the 1 1 5th Ps. 2^ staves from Colonial PERloi) 69 the nth to the end. W, which I set. Each had a piece of cake and sack-posset. Mr. Pemberton craved a blessing and returned Thanks at eating the sack-posset. Came away between 9 and 10. Daughter Sewall came in the^coach with my wife, who invited her to come in and lodge here with her husband ; but she refus'd, and said she had promised to go to her Sister Wainwright's and did so. A CHIEF JUSTICE IN SEARCH OF A WIFE June 9, 1 718. . . . Mrs. D n came in the morning about nine o'clock and I took her up into my chamber and discoursed thoroughly with her ; She desired me to provide another and better nurse, I gave her the two last News Letters — told her I intended to visit her at her own house next Lecture Day. She said 'twould be talked of. I answered : In such cases, persons must run the gauntlet. Gave her Mr. Whiting's Oration for Abijah Walter, who brought her on horseback to town. I think little or no notice was taken of it. 7''. 30. Mr. Colman's Lecture : Daughter Sewall acquaints Madam Winthrop that if she pleas'd to be within at 3. p.m. I would wait on her. She answer'd she would be at home. Octob'. 3. Waited on Madam Winthrop again ; 'twas a little while before she came in. Her daughter Noyes being there alone with me, I said, I hoped my waiting on her mother would not be disagreeable to her. She answer'd she should not be against that that might be for her comfort. ... By and by in came Mr. Airs, Chaplain of the Castle, and hang'd up his hat, which I was a little startled at, it seeming as if he was to lodge there. At last Madam Winthrop came too. After a considerable time, I went up to her and said, if it might not be inconvenient I desired to speak with her. She assented, and spake of going into another room ; but Mr. Airs and Mrs. Noyes presently rose up, and went out, leaving us there alone. Then I usher'd in discourse from the names in the Fore-seat ; at last I pray'd that Catharine [Mrs. Winthrop] might be the person assign'd for me. She instantly took it up in the way of denial, as if she had catch'd at an opportunity to do it, saying JO READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE she could not do it before she was asked. Said that was her mind unless she should change it, which she believed she should not ; could not leave her children. I express'd my sorrow that she should do it so speedily, pray'd her consideration, and ask'd her when I should wait on her again. She setting on time, I mention'd that day sennight. Gave her Mr. Willard's Fountain Open'd with the little print and verses ; saying, I hop'd if we did well read that book, we should meet together hereafter, if we did not now. She took the book, and put it in her pocket. Took leave. . . . 8^ 12. Mrs. Anne Cotton came to door ('twas before 8.) said Madam Winthrop was within, directed me into the little room, where she was full of work behind a stand ; Mrs. Cotton came in and stood. Madam Winthrop pointed to her to set me a chair. Madam Winthrop's countenance was much changed from what 'twas on Monday, look'd dark and lowering. At last, the work, (black stuff or silk) was taken away, I got my chair in place, had some converse, but very cold and indifferent to what 'twas before. Ask'd her to acquit me of rudeness if I drew off her glove. Enquir- ing the reason, I told her 'twas great odds between handling a dead goat, and a living lady. Got it off. I told her I had one petition to ask of her, that was, that she would take off the negative she laid on me the third of October ; She readily answer'd she could not, and enlarg'd upon it ; She told me of it so soon as she could ; could not leave her house, children, neighbours, business. I told her she might do some good to help and support me. Mentioning Mrs. Gookin, Nath., the widow Weld was spoken of ; said I had visited Mrs. Denison. I told her Yes ! Afterward I said, If after a first and second vagary she would accept of me returning, her victorious kindness and good will would be very obliging. She thank'd me for my book, (Mr. Mayhew's Sermon), but said not a word of the letter. When she insisted on the negative, I pray'd there might be no more thunder and lightning. I should not sleep all night. I gave her Dr. Preston, The Church's Marriage and the Church's Carriage, which cost me 6^ at the sale. The door standing open, Mr. Airs came in, hung up his hat, and sat down. After awhile, Madam Winthrop moving, he went out. Jn° Eyre look'd in, I said COLONIAL PERIOD 71 How do ye, or, your servant Mr. Eyre : but heard no word from him. Sarah fill'd a glass of wine, she drank to me, I to her. She sent Juno home with me with a good lantern, I gave her 6^. and bid her thank her mistress. In some of our discourse, I told her I had rather go the Stone-House adjoining to her, than to come to her against her mind. Told her the reason why I came every other night was lest I should drink too deep draughts of pleasure. She had talk'd of Canary, her kisses were to me better than the best Canary. Explain'd the expression concerning Columbus. 8^. 20. . . . Madam Winthrop not being at Lecture, I went thither first; found her very serene with her daughter Noyes, Mrs. Bering, and the widow Shipreev sitting at a little table, she in her arm'd chair. She drank to me, and I to Mrs. Noyes. After awhile pray'd the favour to speak with her. She took one of the candles, and went into the best room, clos'd the shutters, sat down upon the couch. She told me Madam Usher had been there, and said the coach must be set on wheels, and not by rusting. She spake some- thing of my needing a wig. Ask'd me what her sister said to me. I told her. She said, If her sister were for it, she would not hinder it. But I told her, she did not say she would be glad to have me for her brother. Said, I shall keep you in the cold, and asked her if she would be within to morrow night, for we had had but a run- ning feat. She said she could not tell whether she should, or no. I took leave. As were drinking at the Governour's, he said : In England the ladies minded little more than that they might have money, and coaches to ride in. I said, And New England brooks its name. At which Mr. Dudley smiled. Gov"", said they were not quite so bad here. Octob''. 24. I went in the Hackney Coach through the Common, stop'd at Madam Winthrop's (had told her I would take my depar- ture from thence) . Sarah came to the door with Katy in her arms : but I did not think to take notice of the child. Call'd her mistress. I told her, being encourag'd by David Jeffries' loving eyes, and sweet words, I was come to enquire whether she could find in her heart to leave that house and neighbourhood, and go and dwell with me at the South-end ; I think she said softly, Not yet. I told 72 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE her it did not lie in my lands to keep a coach. If I should, I should be in danger to be brought to keep company with her neighbour Brooker, (he was a little before sent to prison for debt). Told her I had an antipathy against those who would pretend to give them- selves ; but nothing of their estate. I would a proportion of my estate with my self. And I supposed she would do so. As to a Perriwig, My best and greatest Friend, I could not possibly have a greater, began to find me with hair before I was born, and had continued to do so ever since ; and I could not find in my heart to go to another. She commended the book I gave her, Dr. Preston, the Church Marriage ; quoted him saying 'twas inconvenient keep- ing out of a fashion commonly used. I said the time and tide did circumscribe my visit. She gave me a dram of black-cherry brandy, and gave me a lump of the Sugar that was in it. She wish'd me a good journey. I pray'd God to keep her, and came away. Had a very pleasant journey to Salem. , . . Nov, 2. Midweek, went again and found Mrs. Alden there, who quickly went out. Gave her about | pound of sugar almonds, cost 3^ per J[^. Carried them on Monday. She seem'd pleas'd with them, ask'd what they cost. Spake of giving her a hundred pounds per annum if I died before her. Ask'd her what sum she would give me, if she should die first .'' Said I would give her time to consider of it. She said she heard as if I had given all to my chil- dren by deeds of gift. I told her 'twas a mistake, Point-Judith was mine &c. That in England I own'd, my father's desire was that it should go to my eldest son ; 'twas 20 J[, per annum ; she thought 'twas forty. I think when I seem'd to excuse pressing this, she seemed to think 'twas best to speak of it ; a long winter was coming on. Gave me a glass or two of Canary. Nov"". 4"^. Friday, Went again, about 7. o'clock ; found there Mr. John Walley and his wife : sat discoursing pleasantly. I shew'd them Isaac Moses's [an Indian] writing. Madam W. serv'd com- fits to us. After a-while a table was spread, and supper was set. I urg'd Mr. Walley to crave a blessing ; but he put it upon me. About 9. they went away. I ask'd Madam what fashioned neck- lace I should present her with. She said, None at all. I ask'd her COLONIAL PERIOD 73 Whereabout we left off last time ; mention'd what I had offer'd to give her; Ask'd her what she would give me; She said she could not change her condition : She had said so from the beginning ; could not be so far from her children, the Lecture. Quoted the Apostle Paul affirming that a single life was better than a married. I answer'd That was for the present distress. Said she had not pleasure in things of that nature as formerly : I said, you are the fitter to make a wife. If she held in that mind, I must go home and bewail my rashness in making more haste than good speed. However, considering the supper, I desired her to be within next Monday night, if we liv'd so long. Assented. She charg'd me with saying, that she must put away Juno, if she came to me : I utterly denied it, it never came in my heart ; yet she insisted upon it ; saying it came in upon discourse about the Indian woman that obtained her freedom this Court. About 10. I said I would not disturb the good orders of her house, and came away. She not seeming pleas'd with my coming away. Spake to her about David Jeffries, had not seen him. Monday, Nov'', y^^. My son pray'd in the Old Chamber. Our time had been taken up by son and daughter Cooper's Visit ; so that I only read the 130^^. and 143. Psalm. Twas on the account of my courtship, I went to Mad. Winthrop ; found her rocking her little Katy in the cradle. I excus'd my coming so late (near eight). She set me an arm'd chair and cushion ; and so the cradle was between her arm'd chair and mine. Gave her the remnant of my almonds ; She did not eat of them as before ; but laid them away ; I said I came to enquire whether she had alter'd her mind since Friday, or remained of the same mind still. She said, Thereabouts. I told her I loved her, and was so fond as to think that she loved me : she said had a great respect for me. I told her, I had made her an offer, without asking any advice ; she had so many to advise with, that 'twas an hindrance. The fire was come to one short brand besides the block, which brand was set up in end ; at last it fell to pieces, and no recruit was made : She gave me a glass of wine. I think I repeated again that I would go home and bewail my rash- ness in making more haste than good speed. I would endeavour 74 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE to contain myself, and not go on to sollicit her to do that which she could not consent to. Took leave of her. As came down the steps she bid me have a care. Treated me courteously. Told her she had enter'd the 4th year of her widowhood. I had given her the News- Letter before : I did not bid her draw off her glove as sometime I had done. Her dress was not so clean as sometime it had been. Jehovah jireh ! Copy of a Letter to Mrs. Mary Gibbs, Widow, at Newtown, Jany I2'h, 1 72 1/2. Madam : Your removal out of town and the severity of the winter, are the reason of my making you this epistolatofy visit. In times past (as I remember) you were minded that I should marry you, by giving you to your desirable bridegroom. Some sense of this intended respect abides with me still ; and puts me upon enquiring whether you be willing that I should marry you now, by becoming your husband. Aged, feeble and exhausted as I am, your favorable answer to this enquiry, in a few lines, the candor of it will much oblige Madam your humble serv^ S. S. Madam Gibbs. ROBERT BEVERLY [Born in Virginia about 1675; died 1716] INHABITANTS OF VIRGINIA From the " History and Present State of Virginia," Book IV, Part II, Chap. XV §65. I can easily imagine with Sir Josiah Child, that this as well as all the rest of the plantations, was for the most part at first peopled by persons of low circumstances, and by such as were will- ing to seek their fortunes in a foreign country. Nor was it hardly possible it should be otherwise ; for 'tis not likely that any man of a plentiful estate should voluntarily abandon a happy certainty, to roam after imaginary advantages, in a new world. Besides which COLONIAL PERIOD 75 uncertainty, he must have proposed to himself to encounter the infinite difficulties and dangers that attend a new settlement. These discouragements were sufficient to terrify any man that could live easy in England, from going to provoke his fortune in a strange land. § 66. Those that went over to that country first, were chiefly single men, who had not the incumbrance of wives and children in England ; and if they had they did not expose them to the fatigue and hazard of so long a voyage, until they saw how it should fare with themselves. From hence it came to pass, that when they were settled there in a comfortable way of subsisting a family, they grew sensible of the misfortune of wanting wives, and such as had left wives in England sent for them ; but the single men were put to their shifts. They excepted against the Indian women, on account of their being pagans, as well as their com- plexions, and for fear they should conspire with those of their own nation, to destroy their husbands. Under this difficulty they had no hopes, but that the plenty in which they lived, might invite modest women, of small fortunes, to go over thither from England. However, they would not receive any, but such as could carry suf- ficient certificate of their modesty and good behavior. Those, if they were but moderately qualified in other respects, might depend upon marrying very well in those days, without any fortune. Nay, the first planters were so far from expecting money with a woman, that 'twas a common thing for them to buy a deserving wife that carried good testimonials of her character, at the price of lOO pounds, and make themselves believe they had a bargain. ^Oy. But this way of peopling the colony was only at first; for after the advantages of the climate, and the fruitfulness of the soil were well known, and all the dangers incident to infant settle- ment were over, people of better condition retired thither with their families, either to increase the estates they had before, or else to avoid being persecuted for their principles of religion, or government. Thus in the time of the Rebellion in England, several good cavalier families went thither with their effects to escape the tyr- anny of the Usurper, or acknowledgement of his title, and so y6 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE again, upon the Restoration, many people of the opposite party took refuge there, to shelter themselves from the king's resent- ment. But Virginia had not many of these last, because that country was famous for holding out the longest for the royal family, of any of the English dominions ; for which reason, the Round- heads went for the most part to New- England, as did most of those, that in the reign of King Charles II. were molested on ac- count of their religion, though some of these fell likewise to the share of Virginia. As for malefactors condemned to transporta- tion, tho' the greedy planter will always buy them, yet it is to be feared they will be very injurious to the country, which has already suffered many murthers and robberies, the effects of that new law of England. PASTIMES IN VIRGINIA From Book IV, Part II For their recreation, the plantations, orchards, and gardens con- stantly afford them fragrant and delightful walks. In their woods and fields, they have an unknown variety of vegetables, and other rarities of nature to discover and observe. They have hunting, fishing, and fowling, with which they entertain themselves an hun- dred ways. Here is the most good-nature and hospitality practised in the world, both toward friends and strangers ; but the worst of it is, this generosity is attended now and then with a little too much intemperance. The neighborhood is at much the same dis- tance as in the country in England ; but with this advantage, that all the better sort of people have been abroad, and seen the world, by which means they are free from that stiffness and formality, which discover more civility than kindness. And besides, the goodness of the roads and the fairness of the weather bring people oftener together. The Indians, as I have already observed, had in their hunting a way of concealing themselves, and coming up to the deer, under the blind of a stalking-head, in imitation of which many people have taught their horses to stalk it, that is, to walk gently by the huntsman's side, to cover him from the sight of the deer. Others COLONIAL PERIOD -jj cut down trees for the deer to browse upon, and lie in wait behind them. Others again set stakes at a certain distance within their fences, where the deer had been used to leap over into a field of peas, which they love extremely ; these stakes they so place, as to run into the body of the deer, when he pitches, by which means they impale him. They hunt their hares (which are very numerous) a-foot, with mongrels or swift dogs, which either catch them quickly, or force them to a hole in a hollow tree, whither all their hares generally tend, when they are closely pursued. As soon as they are thus holed, and have crawled up into the body of a tree, the business is to kindle a fire and smother them with smoke till they let go their hold and fall to the bottom stifled ; from whence they take them. If they have a mind to spare their lives, upon turning them loose they will be as fit as ever to hunt at another time : for the mischief done them by the smoke immediately wears off again. They have another sort of hunting, which is very diverting, and that they call vermin-hunting ; it is performed a-foot, with small dogs in the night, by the light of the moon or stars. Thus in summer time they find abundance of raccoons, opossums, and foxes in the corn-fields, and about their plantations ; but at other times they must go into the woods for them. The method is to go out with three or four dogs, and, as soon as they come to the place, they bid the dogs seek out, and all the company follow immedi- ately. Wherever a dog barks, you may depend upon finding the game ; and this alarm draws both men and dogs that way. If this sport be in the woods, the game by that time you come near it is perhaps mounted to the top of an high tree, and then they detach a nimble fellow up after it, who must have a scuffle with the beast, before he can throw it down to the dogs ; and then the sport increases, to see the vermin encounter those little curs. . . . For wolves they make traps, and set guns baited in the woods, so that, when he offers to seize the bait, he pulls the trigger, and the gun discharges upon him. What Elian and Pliny write of the horses being benumbed in their legs, if they tread in the track of a wolf, does not hold good here ; for I myself, and many others, have rid full speed after wolves in the woods, and have seen live 78 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE ones taken out of a trap, and dragged at a horse's tail ; and yet those that followed on horse-back have not perceived any of their horses to falter in their pace. . . . The inhabitants are very courteous to travellers, who need no other recommendation, but the being human creatures. A stranger has no more to do, but to inquire upon the road where any gentle- man or good housekeeper lives, and there he may depend upon being received with hospitality. This good nature is so general among their people, that the gentry, when they go abroad, order their principal servant to entertain all visitors with everything the plantation affords. And the poor planters, who have but one bed, will very often sit up, or lie upon a form or couch all night, to make room for a weary traveller to repose himself after his journey. If there happen to be a churl, that either out of covetousness, or ill-nature, would not comply with this generous custom, he has a mark of infamy set upon him, and is abhorred by all. SERVANTS AND SLAVES IN VIRGINIA From Book IV, Part I § 50. Their servants they distinguish by the names of slaves for life, and servants for a time. Slaves are the negroes, and their posterity, following the con- dition of the mother, according to the maxim, partus sequitur ventrem. They are called slaves in respect to the time of their servi- tude, because it is for life. Servants are those which serve only for a few years, according to the time of indenture, or the custom of the country. The cus- tom of the country takes place upon such as have no indentures. The law in this case is, that if such servants be under nineteen years of age, they must be brought into court, to have their age adjudged ; and from the age they are judged to be of, they must serve until they reach four and twenty. But if they be adjudged upwards of nineteen they are then only to be servants for the term of five years. §51. The male-servants, and slaves of both sexes, are employed together in tilling and manuring the ground, in sowing and planting COLONIAL PERIOD 79 tobacco, corn, etc. Some distinction, indeed, is made between them in their clothes, and food ; but the work of both is no other than what the overseers, the freemen, and the planters themselves do. Sufificient distinction is also made between the female-servants, and slaves ; for a white woman is rarely or never put to work in the ground, if she be good for anything else : and to discourage all planters from using any women so, their law makes female- servants working in the ground tithable, while it suffers all other white women to be absolutely exempted : Whereas on the other hand, it is a common thing to work a woman slave out of doors ; nor does the law make any distinction in her taxes, whether her work be abroad, or at home. § 52. Because I have heard how strangely cruel, and severe, the service of this country is represented in some parts of Eng- land ; I can't forbear affirming, that the work of their servants and slaves is no other than what every common freeman does. Neither is any servant required to do more in a day, than his over- seer. And I can assure you with great truth, that generally their slaves are not worked near so hard, nor so many hours in a day, as the husbandmen, and day-laborers in England. An overseer is a man, that having served his time, has acquired the skill and character of an experienced planter, and is therefore intrusted with the direction of the servants and slaves. WILLIAM BYRD [Born at Westover, Virginia, March 28(?) 1674; died at Westover, August 26, 1744] NORTH CAROLINA FARMING From " The History of the Dividing Line " March loth 1728. The Sabbath happened very opportunely to give some ease to our jaded people, who rested religiously from every work, but that of cooking the kettle. We observed very few cornfields in our walks, and those very small, which seemed the stranger to us, because we could see no other token of husbandry 8o READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE or improvement. But, upon further inquiry, we were given to understand people only made corn for themselves and not for their stocks, which know very well how to get their own living. Both cattle and hogs ramble into the neighboring marshes and swamps, where they maintain themselves the whole winter long, and are not fetched home till the spring. Thus these indolent wretches, during one half of the year, lose the advantage of the milk of their cattle as well as their dung, and many of the poor creatures perish in the mire, into the bargain, by this ill-management. Some who pique themselves more upon industry than their neighbors, will, now and then, in compliment to their cattle, cut down a tree whose limbs are loaded with the moss afore-mentioned. The trouble would be too great to climb the tree in order to gather this provender, but the shortest way (which in this country is always counted the best) is to fell it, just like the lazy Indians, who do the same by such trees as bear fruit, and so make one harvest for all. RUNAWAY SLAVES IN HIDING From the Same March nth 1728. , . . We had encamped so early, that we found time in the evening to walk near half a mile into the woods. There we came upon a family of mulattoes that called themselves free, though by the shyness of the master of the house, who took care to keep least in sight, their freedom seemed a little doubtful. It is certain many slaves shelter themselves in this obscure part of the world, nor will any of their righteous neighbors discover them. On the contrary, they find their account in settling such fugitives on some out-of-the-way corner of their land, to raise stocks for a mean and inconsiderable share, well-knowing their condition makes it necessary for them to submit to any terms. Nor were these worthy borderers content to shelter runaway slaves, but debtors and criminals have often met with the like indulgence. But if the government of North Carolina has encouraged this unneighborly policy in order to increase their people, it is no more than what ancient Rome did before them, which was made a city of refuge for all debtors and fugitives, and from that wretched beginning COLONIAL PERIOD 8i grew up in time to be mistress of a great part of the world. And, considering how fortune delights in bringing great things out of small, who knows but Carolina may, one time or other, come to be the seat of some other great empire ? CONVIVIALITY IN THE COLONIES From the Same March 26th 1728. Since we were like to be confined to this place till the people returned out of the Dismal, it was agreed that our chaplain might safely take a turn to Edenton, to preach the Gospel to the infidels there, and christen their children. He was accompanied thither by Mr. Little, one of the Carolina Commis- sioners, who, to show his regard for the Church, offered to treat him on the road with a fricassee of rum. They fried half a dozen rashers of very fat bacon in a pint of rum, both which being dished up together, served the company at once both for meat and drink. Most of the rum they get in this country comes from New Eng- land, and is so bad and unwholesome, that it is not improperly called '" kill-devil." It is distilled there from foreign molasses, which, if skilfully managed, yields near gallon for gallon. Their molasses comes from the same country, and has the name of " long sugar " in Carolina, I suppose from the ropiness of it, and serves all the purposes of sugar, both in their eating and drinking. When they entertain their friends bountifully, they fail not to set before them a capacious bowl of Bombo, so called from the Admiral of that name. This is a compound of rum and water in equal parts, made palatable with the said " long sugar." As good humor begins to flow, and the bowl to ebb, they take care to replenish it with sheer rum, of which there is always a reserve under the table. But such generous doings happen only when that balsam of life is plenty. . . . DENTISTRY IN PRIMITIVE DAYS From '' A Journey to the Land of Eden " Oct. 9th 1733. Major Mayo's survey being no more than half done, we were obliged to amuse ourselves another day in this place. And that the time might not be quite lost, we put our garments 82 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE and baggage into good repair. I for my part never spent a day so well during the whole voyage. I had an impertinent tooth in my upper jaw, that had been loose for some time, and made me chew with great caution. Particularly I could not grind a biscuit but with much deliberation and presence of mind. Tooth-drawers we had none amongst us, nor any of the instruments they make use of. However, invention supplied this want very happily, and I con- trived to get rid of this troublesome companion by cutting a caper. I caused a twine to be fastened round the root of my tooth, about a fathom in length, and then tied the other end to the snag of a log that lay upon the ground, in such a manner that I could just stand upright. Having adjusted my string in this manner, I bent my knees enough to enable me to spring vigorously off the ground, as perpendicularly as I could. The force of the leap drew out the tooth with so much ease that I felt nothing of it, nor should have believed it was come away, unless I had seen it dangling at the end of the string. An under tooth may be fetched out by standing off the ground and fastening your string at due distance above you. And having so fixed your gear, jump off your standing, and the weight of your body, added to the force of the spring, will prize out your tooth with less pain than any operator upon earth could draw it. This new way of tooth-drawing, being so silently and deliberately performed, both surprised and delighted all that were present, who could not guess what I was going about. I immediately found the benefit of getting rid of this troublesome companion, by eating my supper with more comfort than I had done during the whole expedition. COLONIAL PERIOD 83 JONATHAN EDWARDS [Born at East Windsor, Connecticut, October 5, 1703 ; died at Princeton, New Jersey, March 22, 1758] RESOLUTIONS FORMED IN EARLY LIFE (EXTRACTS) 4, Resolved never to Do, Be or Suffer, anything in soul or body, less or more, but what tends to the glory of God, 34. Resolved, never to speak in narrations anything but the pure and simple verity. 41. Resolved, to ask myself at the end of every day, week, month, and year, wherein I could possibly in any respect have done better. 43. Resolved, never to act as if I were anyway my own, but entirely and altogether God's. 47. Resolved, to endeavor to my utmost to deny whatever is not most agreeable to a good, and universally sweet and benevolent, quiet, peaceable, contented, easy, compassionate, generous, humble, meek, modest, submissive, obliging, diligent and industrious, chari- table, even, patient, moderate, forgiving, serene temper ; and to do at all times what such a temper would lead me to. Examine strictly every week, whether I have done so. 52. I frequently hear persons in old age say how they would live, if they were to live their lives over again : Resolved, that I will live just so as I can think I shall wish I had done, supposing I live to old age. EXTRACTS FROM EDWARDS'S DIARY Saturday, March 2 (1723) O, how much pleasanter is humility than pride ! O, that God would fill me with exceeding great humility, and that he would evermore keep me from all pride ! The pleasures of humility are really the most refined, inward, and exquisite delights in the world. How hateful is a proud man ! How hateful is a worm that lifts up itself with pride ! What a foolish, silly, miserable, blind, deceived, poor worm am I, when pride works ! 84 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Wednesday, March 6, near sunset. Felt the doctrines of elec- tion, free grace, and of one not being able to do anything without the grace of God, and that holiness is entirely, throughout, the work of God's spirit, with more pleasure than before. ********** Saturday night, April 13. I could pray more heartily this night, for the forgiveness of my enemies, than ever before. ********** Thursday, May 2. I think it a very good way to examine dreams every morning when I awake ; what are the nature, circumstances, principles, and ends of my imaginary actions and passions in them, to discern what are my chief inclinations, etc. SARAH PIERREPONT, AFTERWARD HIS WIFE Written on a Blank Leaf, in 1723 They say there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved of that Great Being, who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything, except to meditate on him — that she expects after a while to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven ; being assured that he loves her too well to let her remain at a dis- tance from him always. There she is to dwell with him, and to be ravished with his love and delight forever. Therefore, if you pre- sent all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she disregards and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her mind and singular purity in her affections ; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct ; and you could not persuade her to do anything wrong or sinful, if you would give her all the world, lest she should offend this Great Being. She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness and universal benevolence of mind ; especially after this great God has manifested himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place, singing sweetly ; and seems to be always full of joy COLONIAL PERIOD 85 and pleasure ; and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible always conversing with her. A FAREWELL SERMON (EXTRACTS) Preached at Northamptox, June 22, 1750 My parting with you is in some respects in a peculiar manner a melancholy parting ; inasmuch as I leave you in most melancholy circumstances ; because I leave you in the gall of bitterness, and bond of iniquity, having the wrath of God abiding on you, and remaining under condemnation to everlasting misery and destruc- tion. Seeing I must leave you, it would have been a comfortable and happy circumstance of our parting, if I had left you in Christ, safe and blessed in that sure refuge and glorious rest of the saints. But it is otherwise. I leave you far off, aliens and strangers, wretched subjects and captives of sin and Satan, and prisoners of vindictive justice ; without Christ, and without God in the world. Your consciences bear me witness, that while I had opportunity, I have not ceased to warn you, and set before you your danger. I have studied to represent the misery and necessity of your circum- stances in the clearest manner possible. I have tried all ways that I could think of tending to awaken your consciences, and make you sensible of the necessity of your improving your time, and being speedy in flying from the wrath to come, and thorough in the use of means for your escape and safety. I have diligently endeavored to find out and use the most powerful motives to per- suade you to take care for your own welfare and salvation. I have not only endeavored to awaken you, that you might be moved with fear, but I have used my utmost endeavors to win you : I have sought out acceptable words, that if possible I might prevail upon you to forsake sin, and turn to God, and accept of Christ as your Saviour and Lord. I have spent my strength very much in these things. But yet, with regard to you whom I am now speak- ing to, I have not been successful ; but have this day reason to complain in those words, Jer. 6 : 29 : " The bellows are burnt, the lead is consumed of the fire, the founder melteth in vain, for the 86 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE wicked are not plucked away." It is to be feared that all my labors, as to many of you, have served no other purpose but to harden you ; and that the word which I have preached, instead of being a savor of life unto life, has been a savor of death unto death. Though I shall not have any account to give for the future of such as have openly and resolutely renounced my ministry, as of a betrustment committed to me : yet remember you must give account for yourselves, of your care of your own souls, and your improvement of all means past and future, through your whole lives. God only knows what will become of your poor perishing souls, what means you may hereafter enjoy, or what disadvantages and temptations you may be under. May God in his mercy grant, that however all past means have been unsuccessful, you may have future means which may have a new effect ; and that the word of God, as it shall be hereafter dispensed to you, may prove as the fire and the hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces. However, let me now at parting exhort and beseech you not wholly to forget the warnings you have had while under my ministry. When you and I shall meet at the day of judgment, then you will remember them : the sight of me, your former minister, on that occasion, will soon revive them to your memory : and that in a very affect- ing manner. O do not let that be the first time that they are so revived. You and I are now parting one from another as to this world ; let us labor that we may not be parted after our meeting at the last day. If I have been your faithful pastor (which will that day appear whether I have or no) then I shall be acquitted, and shall ascend with Christ. O do your part that in such a case, it may not be so, that you should be forced eternally to part from me, and all that have been faithful in Christ Jesus. This is a sorrowful parting that now is between you and me, but that would be a more sorrowful parting to you than this. This you may perhaps bear without being much affected with it, if you are not glad of it ; but such a parting in that day will most deeply, sensibly, and dreadfully affect you. COLONIAL PERIOD 87 Having briefly mentioned these important articles of advice, nothing remains, but that I now take my leave of you, and bid you all farewell; wishing and praying for your best prosperity. I would now commend your immortal souls to Him, who formerly committed them to me, expecting the day, when I must meet you before Him, who is the Judge of quick and dead. I desire that I may never forget this people, who have been so long my special charge, and that I may never cease fervently to pray for your prosperity. May God bless you with a faithful pastor, one that is well acquainted with his mind and will, thoroughly warning sinners, wisely and skillfully searching professors, and conducting you in the way to eternal blessedness. May you have truly a burning and shining light set up in this candlestick ; and may you, not only for a season, but during his whole life, and that a long life, be willing to rejoice in his light. And let me be remembered in the prayers of all God's people that are of a calm spirit, and are peaceable and faithful in Israel, of whatever opinion they may be with respect to terms of church communion. And let us all remember, and never forget our future solemn meet- ing on that great day of the Lord ; the day of infallible decision, and of the everlasting and unalterable sentence. Amen. 88 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER ENLARGED FOR THE MORE EASY ATTAINING THE TRUE READING OF ENGLISH TO WHICH IS ADDED THE ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES CATECHISM [The New England Primer, first printed between 1687 and 1690. To it was added John Cotton's Shorter Catechism, " The Milk for Babes "] SELECTIONS 1727 In Adam's Fall We sinned all. Thy Life to mend This Book attend. The Cat doth play, And after slay. A Dog will bite, The Thief at Night. An Eagle's flight, Is out of sight. The idle Fool, Is whipt at School. As runs the Glass Man's Life doth pass. My Book and Heart Shall never part. Job feels the rod Yet blesses God. 1762 In Adam's Fall We sinned all. Heaven to find, The Bible mind. Christ crucy'd For sinners dy'd. The Deluged drown'd The Earth around. Elijah hid By ravens fed. The judgement made Felix afraid. As runs the Glass, Our Life doth pass. My Book and Heart Must never part. Job feels the Rod Yet blesses God. COLONIAL PERIOD 89 Our King the good No man of blood. The Lion bold, The Lamb doth hold. The Moon gives Light In time of night. Nightingales sing, In time of Spring. Proud Korah's troop Was swallowed up. Lot fled to Zoar. Saw fiery shower, On Sodom pour. Moses was he Who Israel's Host Led thro' the Sea. Noah did view The old world & new. The Royal Oak it was the Tree, Young Obadius, That sav'd his Royal Majesty. David, Josias, All were Pious. Peter denies His Lord and cries. Queen Esther comes In Royal state To save the Jews From dismal fate. Rachel doth mourn For her first born. Samuel anoints Whom God appoints. Time cuts down all, Both great and small, Uriah's beauteous Wife, Made David seek his life. Whales in the Sea God's Voice obey. Peter deny'd His Lord and cry'd. Queen Esther sues. And saves the Jews. Young pious Ruth Left all for Truth. Young Sam'l dear The Lord did fear. Young Timothy Learnt Sin to fly. Vashti for Pride, Was set aside. Whales in the Sea, God's Voice obey. 90 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Xerxes the great did die Xerxes did die, And so must you & I. And so must I. Youth forward shps While Youth do chear Death soonest nips. Death may be near. Zacheus he Zaccheus he Did cHmb the Tree Did chmb the Tree, His Lord to see. Our Lord to see. Now the Child being entred in his Letters and Spelling, let him learn these and such like Sentences by Heart, whereby he will be both instructed in his Duty, and encouraged in his Learning. THE DUTIFUL CHILD'S PROMISES I will fear GOD, and honour the KING. I will honour my Father & Mother. I will obey my Superiours. I will submit to my Elders. I will Love my Friends, I will hate no Man. I will forgive my Enemies, and pray to God for them. I will as much as in me lies keep all God's Holy Commandments. I will learn my Catechism. I will keep the Lord's Day Holy. I will reverence God's sanctuary. For our GOD is a consuming Fire. VERSES I in the Burying Place may see Graves Shorter there than I ; From Death's Arrest no Age is free, Young Children too may die ; My God, may such an awful Sight, Awakening be to me ! Oh ! that by early Grace I might For Death prepared be. COLONIAL PERIOD 91 GOOD CHILDREN MUST Fear God all Day Love Christ alway Parents obey In Secret Pray No False thing Say Mind little Play By no Sin Stray Make no delay In doing Good LEARN THESE FOUR LINES BY HEART Have communion with few. Be intimate with ONE. Deal justly with all. Speak Evil of none. THE INFANT'S GRACE BEFORE AND AFTER MEAT Bless me, O Lord, and let my food strengthen me to serve Thee, for Jesus Christ's sake. Ajhoi. I desire to thank God who gives me food to eat every day of my life. Amen. ALPHABET VERSES (1791) (1797) Kings should be good The British King Not men of Blood. Lost States Thirteen. (1825) Queens and Kings 'Tis Youth's Delight Are gaudy things. To fly their Kite. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD BENJAMIN FRANKLIN [Born at Boston, Massachusetts, January 17, 1706; died at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 1 7, 1 790] THE ALMANACS In 1732 I first published my Almanac, under the name of " Richard Saunders ; " it was continued by me about twenty-five years, and commonly called " Poor Richard's Almanac." I en- deavored to make it both entertaining and useful, and it accord- ingly came to be in such demand that I reaped considerable profit from it, vending annually near ten thousand. And observing that it was generally read, scarce any neighborhood in the province being without it, I considered it as a proper vehicle for conveying instruction among the common people, who bought scarcely any other books. I therefore filled all the little spaces that occurred between the remarkable days in the calendar with proverbial sen- tences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality as the means of procuring wealth, and thereby securing virtue ; it being more difficult for a man in want to act always honestly, as (to use here one of those proverbs), "it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright." These proverbs, which contained the wisdom of many ages and nations, I assembled and formed into a connected discourse, pre- fixed to the Almanac of 1757 as the harangue of a wise old man to the people attending an auction. The bringing all these scat- tered counsels thus into a focus enabled them to make greater im- pression. The piece, being universally approved, was copied in all the newspapers of the Continent, reprinted in Britain on a broad- side, to be stuck up in houses, two translations were made of it in 92 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 93 French, and great numbers bought by the clergy and gentry to distribute gratis among their poor parishioners and tenants. In Pennsylvania, as it discouraged useless expense in foreign super- fluities, some thought it had its share of influence in producing that growing plenty of money which was observable for several years after its publication. THE WAY TO WEALTH As CLEARLY SHOWN IN THE PREFACE OF AN OlD PENNSYLVANIA AlMANAC ENTITLED " PoOR RiCHARD IMPROVED " Courteous Reader : I have heard that nothing gives an author so great pleasure as to find his works respectfully quoted by other learned authors. This pleasure I have seldom enjoyed ; for, though I have been, if I may say it without vanity, an eminent author (of almanacs) annually, now a full quarter of a century, my brother authors in the same way, for what reason I know not, have ever been very sparing in their applauses and no other author has taken the least notice of me ; so that, did not my writings produce me some solid pudding, the great deficiency of praise would have quite discouraged me. I concluded at length that the people were the best judges of my merit, for they buy my works ; and, besides, in my rambles where I am not personally known, I have frequently heard one or other of my adages repeated with " As Poor Richard says " at the end of it. This gave me some satisfaction, as it showed not only that my instructions were regarded, but discovered likewise some respect for my authority ; and I own that, to encourage the practice of remembering and reading those wise sentences, I have sometimes quoted myself with great gravity. Judge, then, how much I must have been gratified by an inci- dent I am going to relate to you. I stopped my horse lately where a great number of people were collected at an auction of merchants' goods. The hour of the sale not being come, they were conversing on the badness of the times ; and one of the company called to a plain, clean old man with \^hite locks, '" Pray, Father Abraham, 94 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE what think you of the times ? Will not these heavy taxes quite ruin the country? How shall we ever be able to pay them? What would you advise us to do ? " Father Abraham stood up and replied, " If you would have my advice, I will give it to you in short ; for A word to the wise is enough, as Poor Richard says," They joined in desiring him to speak his mind, and gathering around him, he proceeded as follows : " Friends," said he, " the taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them ; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly ; and from these taxes the commission- ers cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an abatement. However, let us hearken to good advice, and something may be done for us ; God helps them that helps themselves, as Poor Richard says. I. "It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part of their time, to be employed in its service ; but idleness taxes many of us much more ; sloth, by bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens life. Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while The used key is always bright, as Poor Richard says. But dost thou love life ? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of, as Poor Richard says. How much more than is necessary do we spend in sleep, forget- ting that the sleeping fox catches no poultry, and that there will be sleeping enough in the grave, as Poor Richard says. If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be, as Poor Richard says, the greatest prodigality ; since, as he elsewhere tells us. Lost time is never found again, and what we call time enough always proves little enough. Let us, then, be up and be doing, and doing to the purpose ; so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity. Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry, all easy ; and, He that riseth late must trot all day and shall scarce overtake his business at night ; while Laziness travels so slowly that Poverty soon overtakes him. Drive thy business, let not that drive thee ; and. Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise, as Poor Richard says. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 95 " So what signifies wishing and hoping for better times ? We make these times better if we bestir ourselves. Industry need not wish, and he that hves upon hopes will die fasting. There are no gains without pains ; then help, hands, for I have no lands ; or, if I have, they are smartly taxed. He that hath a trade hath an estate ; and he that hath a calling, hath an office of profit and honor, as Poor Richard says ; but then the trade must be worked at and the calling followed, or neither the estate nor the office will enable us to pay our taxes. If we are industrious, we shall never starve ; for, At the workingman's house hunger looks in, but dares not enter. Nor will the bailiff or the constable enter ; for Industry pays debts, while Despair increaseth them. What though you have found no treasure, nor has any rich relation left you a legacy ; Diligence is the mother of good luck, and God gives all things to Industry. Then plow deep while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and to keep. Work while it is called to-day, for you know not how much you may be hindered to-morrow. One to-day is worth two to-morrows, as Poor Richard says ; and, further. Never leave that till to-morrow which you can do to-day. If you were a good servant, would you not be ashamed that a good master should catch you idle ? Are you, then, your own master ? Be ashamed to catch yourself idle, when there is so much to be done for yourself, your family, your country, your kin. Handle your tools without mittens ; remember that The cat in gloves catches no mice, as Poor Richard says. It is true there is much to be done, and perhaps you are weak-handed ; but stick to it steadily, and you will see great effects ; for, Constant dropping wears away stones ; and, By diligence and patience the mouse ate in two the cable ; and, Little strokes fell great oaks. " Methinks I hear some of you say. Must a man afford himself no leisure ? I will tell thee, my friend, what Poor Richard says : Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure ; and since thou art not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour. Leisure is time for doing something useful ; this leisure the diligent man will obtain, but the lazy man never ; for, A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. Many, without labor, would live by their wits only, but they break for want of stock ; whereas industry gives 96 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE comfort and plenty and respect. Fly pleasures and they will follow you. The diligent spinner has a large shift ; and now I have a sheep and a cow, every one bids me good morrow. II. " But with our industry we must likewise be steady and care- ful, and oversee our own affairs with our own eyes, and not trust too much to others ; for, as Poor Richard says : I never saw an oft-removed tree, Nor yet an oft-removed family, That throve so well as those that settled be. And again. Three removes are as bad as a fire ; and again. Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee ; and again. If you would have your business done, go ; if not, send ; and again : He that by the plow would thrive, Himself must either hold or drive. And again, The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands ; and again. Want of care does us more damage than want of knowledge ; and again. Not to oversee workmen is to leave them your purse open. Trusting too much to others' care is the ruin of many ; for, In the affairs of this world men are saved, not by faith, but by the want of it. But a man's own care is profitable ; for, If you would have a faithful servant and one that you like, serve yourself. A little neglect may breed great mischief ; for want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, and for want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy ; all for want of a little care about a horseshoe nail. III. "So much for industry, my friends, and attention to one's own business ; but to these we must add frugality, if we would make our industry more certainly successful. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a groat at last. A fat kitchen makes a lean will ; and Many estates are spent in the getting, Since women forsook spinning and knitting, And men for punch forsook hewing and splitting. If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as of getting. The Indies have not made Spain rich, because her outgoes are greater than her incomes. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 97 " Away, then, with your expensive foUies, and you will not then have so much cause to complain of hard times, heavy taxes, and chargeable families ; for Pleasure and wine, game and deceit, Make the wealth small, and the want great. And further, What maintains one vice would bring up two children. You may think, perhaps, that a little tea or a little punch now and then, diet a little more costly, clothes a little finer, and a little entertainment now and then, can be no great matter ; but remember. Many a little makes a mickle. Beware of little expenses ; A small leak will sink a great ship, as Poor Richard says ; and again. Who dainties love shall beggars prove ; and moreover, Fools make feasts and wise men eat them. " Here you are all got together at this sale of fineries and knick- knacks. You call them goods ; but, if you do not take care, they will prove evils to some of you. You expect they will be sold cheap, and perhaps they may for less than they cost ; but, if you have no occasion for them, they must be dear to you. Remember what Poor Richard says : Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries. And again. At a great pennyworth pause awhile. He means that perhaps the cheapness is apparent only, and not real ; or, the bargain, by straitening thee in thy busi- ness, may do thee more harm than good. For in another place he says. Many have been ruined by buying good pennyworths. Again, It is foolish to lay out money in a purchase of repentance ; and yet this folly is practiced every day at auctions for want of minding the Almanac. Many for the sake of finery on the back have gone hungry and half-starved their families. Silks and satins, scarlet and velvets, put out the kitchen fire, as Poor Richard says. " These are not the necessaries of life ; they can scarcely be called the conveniences ; and yet, only because they look pretty, how many want to have them. By these and other extravagances the genteel are reduced to poverty, and forced to borrow of those whom they formerly despised, but who, through industry and frugal- ity, have maintained their standing ; in which case it appears plainly that, A plowman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees, as Poor Richard says. Perhaps they have a small estate left 98 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE them which they knew not the getting of ; they think, It is day and it never will be night ; that a little to be spent out of so much is not worth minding ; but, Always taking out of the meal tub and never putting in, soon comes to the bottom, as Poor Richard says ; and then. When the well is dry, they know the worth of water. But this they might have known before, if they had taken his ad- vice. If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some ; for, He that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing, as Poor Richard says ; and, indeed, so does he that lends to such people, when he goes to get it again. Poor Dick further advises and says : Fond pride of dress is sure a very curse ; Ere fancy you consult, consult your purse. And again, Pride is as loud a beggar as Want, and a great deal more saucy. When you have bought one fine thing, you must buy ten more, that your appearance may be all of a piece ; but Poor Dick says. It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it. And it is as truly folly for the poor to ape the rich, as for the frog to swell in order to equal the ox. Vessels large may venture more, But little boats should keep near shore. It is, however, a folly soon punished ; for, as Poor Richard says, Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt. Pride breakfasted with Plenty, dined with Poverty, and supped with Infamy. And, after all, of what use is this pride of appearance, for which so much is risked, so much is suffered ? It cannot promote health nor ease pain ; it makes no increase of merit in the person ; it creates envy ; it hastens misfortune. " But what madness must it be to run in debt for these super- fluities ? We are offered by the terms of this sale six months' credit ; and that, perhaps, has induced some of us to attend it, because we cannot spare the ready money, and hope now to be fine without it. But ah ! think what you do when you run in debt ; you give to another power over your liberty. If you cannot pay at the time, you will be ashamed to see your creditor ; you will be in fear when you speak to him ; you will make poor, pitiful, sneaking excuses, and by degrees come to lose your veracity, and sink into base, THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 99 downright lying ; for, The second vice is lying, the first is running in debt, as Poor Richard says ; and again to the same purpose, Lying rides upon debt's back ; whereas a freeborn Englishman ought not to be ashamed nor afraid to see or speak to any riian living. But poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue. It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright. " What would you think of that prince, or of that government, who should issue an edict forbidding you to dress like a gentleman or gentlewoman, on pain of imprisonment or servitude ? Would you not say that you are free, have a right to dress as you please, and that such an edict would be a breach of your privileges and such a government tyrannical ? And yet you are about to put your- self under such tyranny, when you run in debt for such dress. Your creditor has authority, at his pleasure, to deprive you of your liberty by confining you in jail till you shall be able to pay him. When you have got your bargain, you may, perhaps, think little of payment ; but, as Poor Richard says. Creditors have better memo- ries than debtors ; creditors are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times. The day comes round before you are aware, and the demand is made before you are prepared to satisfy it ; or, if you bear your debt in mind, the term, which at first seemed so long, will, as it lessens, appear extremely short. Time will seem to have added wings to his heels as well as his shoulders. Those have a short Lent who owe money to be paid at Easter. At present, perhaps, you may think yourselves in thriving circumstances, and that you can bear a little extravagance without injury ; but For age and want save while you may ; No morning sun lasts a whole day. Gain may be temporary and uncertain, but ever, while you live, expense is constant and certain ; and. It is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel, as Poor Richard says ; so, Rather go to bed supperless than rise in debt. Get what you can, and what you get, hold, 'Tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold. And when you have got the philosopher's stone, be sure you will no longer complain of bad times or the difficulty of paying taxes. lOO READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE IV. " This doctrine, my friends, is reason and wisdom ; but, after all, do not depend too much upon your own industry and frugality and prudence, though excellent things ; for they may all be blasted, without the blessing of Heaven ; and, therefore, ask that blessing humbly, and be not uncharitable to those that at present seem to want it, but comfort and help them. Remember Job suffered, and was afterward prosperous. "And now, to conclude. Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, as Poor Richard says, and scarce in that ; for, it is true, we may give advice, but we cannot give con- duct. However, remember this : They that will not be counseled cannot be helped ; and further that. If you will not hear Reason, she will surely rap your knuckles, as Poor Richard says." Thus the old gentleman ended his harangue. The people heard it, and approved the doctrine, and immediately practiced the con- trary, just as if it had been a common sermon ; for the auction opened and they began to buy extravagantly. I found the good man had thoroughly studied my almanacs, and digested all I had dropped on these topics during the course of twenty-five years. The frequent mention he made of me must have tired any one else ; but my vanity was wonderfully delighted with it, though I was conscious that not a tenth part of the wisdom was my own which he ascribed to me, but rather the gleanings that I had made of the sense of all ages and nations. However, I resolved to be the better for the echo of it ; and, though I had at first determined to buy stuff for a new coat, I went away resolved to wear my old one a little longer. Reader, if thou wilt do the same, thy profit will be as great as mine. I am, as ever, thine to serve thee, Richard Saunders THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY (EXTRACTS) Part I, Chap. I FRANKLIN'S EARLY INTEREST IN BOOKS From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the Pilgrim's Progress, my first collection was of John Bunyan's THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD lOi works in separate little volumes. I afterward sold them to enable me to buy R. Burton's Historical Collections ; they were small chapmen's books, and cheap, forty or fifty in all. My father's little library consisted chiefly of books in polemic divinity, most of which I read, and have since often regretted that, at a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper books had not fallen in my way, since it was now resolved I should not be a clergyman. Plutarch's Lives there was in which I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to great advantage. There was also a book of De Foe's, called an Essay on Projects, and another of Dr. Mather's, called Essays to do Good, which perhaps gave me a turn of think- ing that had an influence on some of the principal future events of my life. This bookish inclination at length determined my father to make me a printer, though he had already one son (James) of that pro- fession. In 1 71 7 my brother James returned from England with a press and letters to set up his business in Boston. I liked it much better than that of my father, but still had a hankering for the sea. To prevent the apprehended effect of such an inclination, my father was impatient to have me bound to my brother. I stood out some time, but at last was persuaded, and signed the indentures when I was yet but twelve years old. I was to serve as an appren- tice till I was twenty-one years of age, only I was to be allowed journeyman's wages during the last year. In a little time I made great proficiency in the business, and became a useful hand to my brother. I now had access to better books. An acquaintance with the apprentices of booksellers enabled me sometimes to borrow a small one, which I was careful to return soon and clean. Often I sat up in my room reading the greatest part of the night, when the book was borrowed in the evening and to be returned early in the morning, lest it should be missed or wanted. And after some time an ingenious tradesman, Mr. Matthew Adams, who had a pretty collection of books, and who frequented our printing-house, took notice of me, invited me to his library, and very kindly lent me such books as I chose to read. I now took a fancy to poetry, and made some little pieces ; my brother, thinking it might turn to account, encouraged me, and put me I02 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE • on composing occasional ballads. One was called TJic Lighthouse Tragedy, and contained an account of the drowning of Captain Worthilake, with his two daughters ; the other was a sailor's song, on the taking of Teach (or Blackbeard), the pirate. They were wretched stuff, in the Grub Street ballad style ; and when they were printed he sent me about the town to sell them. The first sold wonderfully, the event being recent, having made a "great noise. This flattered my vanity ; but my father discouraged me by ridiculing my performances, and telling me verse-makers were generally beggars. So I escaped being a poet, most probably a very bad one ; but as prose writing has been of great use to me in the course of my life, and was a principal means of my advance- ment, I shall tell you how, in such a situation, I acquired what little ability I have in that way. There was another bookish lad in the town, John Collins by name, with whom I was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed, and very fond w^e were of argument, and very desirous of confuting one another, which disputatious turn, by the way, is apt to become a very bad habit, making people often extremely disagreeable in company by the contradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice ; and thence, besides souring and spoiling the conversation, is productive of disgusts and perhaps enmities where you may have occasion for friendship. I had caught it by reading my father's books of dispute about religion. Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts that have been bred at Edinburgh. A question was once, somehow or other, started between Collins and me, of the propriety of educating the female sex in learning, and their abilities for study. He was of opinion that it was im- proper, and that they were naturally unequal to it. I took the contrary side, perhaps a little for dispute's sake. He was naturally more eloquent, had a ready plenty of words ; and sometimes, as I thought, bore me down more by his fluency than by the strength of his reasons. As we parted without settling the point, and were not to see one another again for some time, I sat down to put my arguments in writing, which I copied fair and sent to him. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 103 He answered, and I replied. Three or four letters of a side had passed, when my father happened to find my papers and read them. Without entering into the discussion, he took occasion to talk to me about the manner of my writing ; observed that, though I had the advantage of my antagonist in correct spelling and point- ing {which I owed to the printing-house), I fell far short in elegance of expression, in method, and in perspicuity, of which he con- vinced me by several instances. I saw the justice of his remarks, and thence grew more attentive to the manner in writing, and determined to endeavor at improvement. About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. It was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I took some of the papers, and making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, dis- covered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses ; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse ; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and complete the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them ; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars I04 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious. My time for these exercises and for reading was at night, after work, or before it began in the morning, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the printing-house alone, evad- ing as much as I could the common attendance on public worship which my father used to exact of me when I was under his care, and which indeed I still thought a duty, though I could not, as it seemed to me, afford time to practice it. From Part I, Chap. II SEEKING HIS FORTUNE My inclinations for the sea were by this time worn out, or I might now have gratified them. But, having a trade, and suppos- ing myself a pretty good workman, I offered my service to the printer in the place, old Mr. William Bradford, who had been the first printer in Pennsylvania, but removed from thence upon the quarrel of George Keith. He could give me no employment, having little to do, and help enough already ; but says he, " My son at Philadelphia has lately lost his principal hand, Aquila Rose, by death ; if you go thither, I believe he may employ you." Phil- adelphia was a hundred miles further ; I set out, however, in a boat for Amboy, leaving my chest and things to follow me round by sea. In crossing the bay, we met with a squall that tore our rotten sails to pieces, prevented our getting into the Kill, and drove us upon Long Island. In our way, a drunken Dutchman, who was a passenger too, fell overboard ; when he was sinking, I reached through the water to his shock pate, and drew him up, so that we got him in again. His ducking sobered him a little, and he went to sleep, taking first out of his pocket a book, which he desired I would dry for him. It proved to be my old favorite author, Bunyan's Pilgrim s Progress, in Dutch, finely printed on good paper, with copper cuts, a dress better than I had ever seen it wear in its own language. I have since found that it has been THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 105 translated into most of the languages of Europe, and suppose it has been more generally read than any other book, except perhaps the Bible. Honest John was the first that I know of who mixed narration and dialogue ; a method of writing very engaging to the reader, who in the most interesting parts finds himself, as it were, brought into the company and present at the discourse. De Foe in his Cntsoe, his Moll Flanders, Religions Courtship, Family Instmctor, and other pieces, has imitated it with success, and Richardson has done the same in his Pamela, etc. When we drew near the island, we found it was at a place where there could be no landing, there being a great surf on the stony beach. So we dropped anchor, and swung round towards the shore. Some people came down to the water edge and hal- looed to us, as we did to them ; but the wind was so high, and the surf so loud, that we could not hear so as to understand each other. There were canoes on the shore, and we made signs, and hallooed that they should fetch us ; but they either did not under- stand us, or thought it impracticable, so they went away, and night coming on, we had no remedy but to wait till the wind should abate ; and, in the mean time, the boatman and I concluded to sleep, if we could ; and so crowded into the scuttle, with the Dutchman, who was still wet ; and the spray beating over the head of our boat, leaked through to us, so that we were soon almost as wet as he. In this manner we lay all night, with very little rest ; but the wind abating the next day, we made a shift to reach Amboy before night, having been thirty hours on the water, without victuals, or any drink but a bottle of filthy rum, the water we sailed on being salt. In the evening I found myself very feverish, and went in to bed ; but having read somewhere that cold water drank plentifully was good for a fever, I followed the prescription, sweat plentifully most of the night, my fever left me, and in the morning, crossing the ferry, I proceeded on my journey on foot, having fifty miles to Burlington, where I was told I should find boats that would carry me the rest of the way to Philadelphia. It rained very hard all the day ; I was thoroughly soaked, and by noon a good deal tired ; so I stopped at a poor inn, where I io6 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE stayed all night, beginning now to wish that I had never left home. I cut so miserable a figure, too, that I found, by the ques- tions asked me, I was suspected to be some runaway servant, and in danger of being taken up on that suspicion. However, I pro- ceeded the next day, and got in the evening to an inn, within eight or ten miles of Burlington, kept by one Dr. Brown. He entered into conversation with me while I took some refreshment, and, finding I had read a little, became very sociable and friendly. Our acquaintance continued as long as he lived. He had been, I imagine, an itinerant doctor, for there was no town in England, or country in Europe, of which he could not give a very particular account. He had some letters, and was ingenious, but much of an unbeliever, and wickedly undertook, some years after, to travesty the Bible in doggerel verse, as Cotton had done Virgil. By this means he set many of the facts in a very ridiculous light, and might have hurt weak minds if his work had been published ; but it never was. At his house I lay that night, and the next morning reached Burlington, but had the mortification to find that the regular boats were gone a little before my coming, and no other expected to go before Tuesday, this being Saturday ; wherefore I returned to an old woman in the town, of whom I had bought gingerbread to eat on the water, and asked her advice. She invited me to lodge at her house till a passage by water should offer ; and being tired with my foot traveling, I accepted the invitation. She, under- standing I was a printer, would have had me stay at that town and follow my business, being ignorant of the stock necessary to begin with. She was very hospitable, gave me a dinner of ox-cheek with great goodwill, accepting only of a pot of ale in return ; and I thought myself fixed till Tuesday should come. However, walking in the evening by the side of the river, a boat came by, which I found was going towards Philadelphia, with several people in her. They took me in, and, as there was no wind, we rowed all the way ; and about midnight, not having yet seen the city, some of the company were confident we must have passed it, and would row no farther ; the others knew not where we were ; so we put toward the shore, got into a creek, landed near an old fence, with THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 107 the rails of which we made a fire, the night being cold, in October, and there we remained till daylight. Then one of the company knew the place to be Cooper's Creek, a little above Philadelphia, which we saw as soon as we got out of the creek, and arrived there about eight or nine o'clock on the Sunday morning, and landed at the Market Street wharf. I have been the more particular in this description of my journey, and shall be so of my first entry into that city, that you may in your mind compare such unlikely beginnings with the fig- ure I have since made there. I was in my working-dress, my best clothes being to come round by sea. I was dirty from my journey; my pockets were stuffed out with shirts and stockings, and I knew no soul nor where to look for lodging. I was fatigued with travel- ing, rowing, and want of rest, I was very hungry ; and my whole stock of cash consisted of a Dutch dollar, and about a shilling in copper. The latter I gave the people of the boat for my passage, who at first refused it on account of my rowing ; but I insisted on their taking it. A man being sometimes more generous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps through fear of being thought to have but little. Then I walked up the street, gazing about till near the market- house I met a boy with bread. I had made many a meal on bread, and inquiring where he got it, I went immediately to the baker's he directed me to, in Second Street, and asked for biscuit, intend- ing such as we had in Boston ; but they, it seems, were not made in Philadelphia. Then I asked for a three-penny loaf, and was told they had none such. So not considering or knowing the dif- ference of money, and the greater cheapness nor the names of his bread, I bade him give me three-penny worth of any sort. He gave me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls. I was surprised at the quantity, but took it, and having no room in my pockets, walked off with a roll under each arm, and eating the other. Thus I went up Market Street as far as Fourth Street, passing by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife's father ; when she, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awk- ward, ridiculous appearance. Then I turned and went down Chest- nut Street and part of Walnut Street, eating my roll all the way, io8 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE and coming round, found myself again at Market Street wharf, near the boat I came in, to which I went for a draught of the river water ; and being filled with one of my rolls, gave the other two to a woman and her child that came down the river in the boat with us, and were waiting to go farther. Thus refreshed, I walked again up the street, which by this time had many clean-dressed people in it, who were all walking the same way. I joined them, and thereby was led into the great meeting-house of the Quakers near the market. I sat down among them, and after looking round a while and hearing nothing said, being very drowsy through labor and want of rest the preceding night, I fell fast asleep, and continued so till the meeting broke up, when one was kind enough to rouse me. This was, therefore, the first house I was in or slept in, in Philadelphia. Walking down again toward the river, and looking in the faces of people, I met a young Quaker man, whose countenance I liked, and, accosting him, requested he would tell me where a stranger could get lodging. We were then near the sign of the Three Mariners. " Here," says he, ""is one place that entertains strangers, but it is not a reputable house ; if thee wilt walk with me, I '11 show thee a better." He brought me to the Crooked Billet in Water Street. Here I got a dinner ; and while I was eating it, several sly questions were asked me, as it seemed to be suspected from my youth and appearance that I might be some runaway. After dinner, my sleepiness returned, and being shown to a bed, I lay down without undressing, and slept till six in the evening, was called to supper, went to bed again very early, and slept soundly till next morning. Then I made myself as tidy as I could, and went to Andrew Bradford the printer's. I found in the shop the old man his father, whom I had seen at New York, and who, traveling on horseback, had got to Philadelphia before me. He introduced me to his son, who received me civilly, gave me a breakfast, but told me he did not at present want a hand, being lately supplied with one ; but there was another printer in town, lately set up, one Keimer, who, perhaps, might employ me ; if not, I should be welcome to lodge at his house, and he would give me a little work to do now and then till fuller business should offer. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 1 09 The old gentleman said he would go with me to the new printer; and when we found him, "Neighbor," says Bradford, " I have brought to see you a young man of your business ; per- haps you may want such a one," He asked me a few questions, put a composing stick in my hand to see how I worked, and then said he would employ me soon, though he had just then nothing for me to do ; and taking old Bradford, whom he had never seen before, to be one of the town's people that had a good will for him, entered into a conversation on his present undertaking and prospects ; while Bradford, not discovering that he was the other printer's father, on Keimer's saying he expected soon to get the greatest part of the business into his own hands, drew him on by artful questions, and starting little doubts, to explain all his views, what interests he relied on, and in what manner he intended to proceed. I, who stood by and heard all, saw immediately that one of them was a crafty old sophister, and the other a mere novice. Bradford left me with Keimer, who was greatly surprised when I told him who the old man was. Keimer's printing-house, I found, consisted of an old shattered press, and one small, worn-out font of English, which he was then using himself, composing an Elegy on Aquila Rose, before men- tioned, an ingenious young man, of excellent character, much respected in the town, clerk of the Assembly, and a pretty poet. Keimer made verses too, but very indifferently. He could not be said to write them, for his manner was to compose them in the types directly out of his head. So there being no copy, but one pair of cases, and the Elegy likely to require all the letter, no one could help him. I endeavored to put his press (which he had not yet used, and of which he understood nothing) into order fit to be worked with ; and promising to come and print off his Elegy as soon as he should have got it ready, I returned to Bradford's, who gave me a little job to do for the present, and there I lodged and dieted. A few days after, Keimer sent for me to print off the Elegy. And now he had got another pair of cases, and a pamphlet to reprint, on which he set me to work. These two printers I found poorly qualified for their business. Bradford had not been bred to it, and was very illiterate ; and no READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Keimer, though something of a scholar, was a mere compositor knowing nothing of presswork. He had been one of the French prophets, and could act their enthusiastic agitations. At this time he did not profess any particular religion, but something of all on occasion ; was very ignorant of the world, and had, as I afterward found, a good deal of the knave in his composition. He did not like my lodging at Bradford's while I worked with him. He had a house indeed, but without furniture, so he could not lodge me ; but he got me a lodging at Mr. Read's before mentioned, who was the owner of his house ; and my chest and clothes being come by this time, I made rather a more respectable appearance in the eyes of Miss Read than I had done when she first happened to see me eating my roll in the street. . . . THOMAS GODFREY [Born at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, December 4, 1 736 ; died in North Caro- lina, August 3, 1763] THE WISH I only ask a moderate fate. And, though not in obscurity, I would not, yet, be placed too high ; Between the two extremes Fd be. Not meanly low, nor yet too great", From both contempt and envy free. If no glittering wealth I have. Content of bounteous heaven I crave, For that is more Than all the Indian's shining store, To be unto the dust a slave. With heart, my little I will use, Nor let pain my life devour. Or for a griping heir refuse Myself one pleasant hour. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 1 1 1 No stately edifice to rear ; My wish would bound a small retreat, In temperate air, and furnished neat : No ornaments would I prepare. No costly labors of the loom Should e'er adorn my humble room ; To gild my roof I naught require But the stern Winter's friendly fire. Free from tumultuous cares and noise, If gracious Heaven my wish would give. While sweet content augments my joys. Thus my remaining hours I'd live. By arts ignoble never rise. The miser's ill-got wealth despise ; But blest my leisure hours I'd spend. The Muse enjoying, and my friend. AMYNTOR Long had Amyntor free from love remained ; The God, enraged to see his power disdained, Bent his best bow, and, aiming at his breast The fatal shaft, he thus the swain addrest : " Hear me, hear me, senseless rover, — Soon thou now shalt be a lover, Cupid will his power maintain ; Haughty Delia shall enslave thee. Thou, who thus insulting brav'st me. Shall, unpitied, drag the chain." He ceased, and quick he shot the pointed dart ; Far short it fell, nor reached Amyntor's heart ; The angry God was filled with vast surprise ; Abashed he stood, while thus the swain replies : 112 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE " Think not, Cupid, vain deceiver, I will own thy power ever. Guarded from thy arts by wine ; Haughty Beauty ne'er shall grieve me, Bacchus still shall e'er relieve me, All his rosy joys are mine ; All his rosy joys are mine." NATHANIEL EVANS [Born at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 8, 1742; died at Philadelphia, October 29, 1767] TO MAY From "Poems on Several Occasions," 1772 Now had the beam of Titan gay Ushered in the blissful May, Scattering from his pearly bed. Fresh dew on every mountain's head ; Nature mild and debonair, To thee, fair maid, yields up her care. May, with gentle plastic hand. Clothes in floweiy robe the land ; O'er the vales the cowslip spreads. And eglantine beneath the shades ; Violets blue befringe each fountain, Woodbines lace each steepy mountain ; Hyacinths their sweets diffuse, And the rose its blush renews ; With the rest of Flora's train, Decking lowly dale or plain. Through creation's range, sweet May ! Nature's children own thy sway — Whether in the crystal flood, Amorous, sport the finny brood ; THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 113 Or the feathered tribes declare That they breathe thy genial air, While they warble in each grove Sweetest notes of artless love ; Or their wound the beasts proclaim, Smitten with a fiercer flame ; Or the passions higher rise, Sparing none beneath the skies, But swaying soft the human mind With feelings of ecstatic kind — Through wide creation's range, sweet May! All nature's children own thy sway. Oft will I, (e'er Phosphor's light Quits the glimmering skirts of night) Meet thee in the clover field. Where thy beauties thou shalt yield To my fancy, quick and warm. Listening to the dawn's alarm, Sounded loud by Chanticleer, In peals that sharply pierce the ear. And, as Sol his flaming car Urges up the vaulted air. Shunning quick the scorching ray, I will to some covert stray, Coolly bowers or latent dells. Where light-footed Silence dwells, And whispers to my heaven-born dream. Fair Schuylkill, by thy winding stream ! There I '11 devote full many an hour. To the still-fingered Morphean power. And entertain my thirsty soul With draughts from Fancy's fairy bowl ; Or mount her orb of varied hue. And scenes of heaven and earth review. 114 READINGS F'ROM AMERICAN LITERATURE ODE TO MY INGENIOUS FRIEND, MR. THOMAS GODFREY While you, dear Tom, are forced to roam, In search of fortune, far from home. O'er bays, o'er seas and mountains ; I too, debarred the soft retreat Of shady groves, and murmur sweet Of silver prattling fountains, Must mingle with the bustling throng, And bear my load of cares along, Like any other sinner : For, where 's the ecstasy in this, To loiter in poetic bliss. And go without a dinner ? Flaccus, we know, immortal Bard ! With mighty kings and statesmen fared. And lived in cheerful plenty : But now, in these degenerate days, The slight reward of empty praise. Scarce one receives in twenty. Well might the Roman swan, along The pleasing Tiber pour his song, When blessed with ease and quiet ; Oft did he grace Maecenas' board. Who would for him throw by the lord. And in Falernian riot. But dearest Tom ! these days are past, And we are in a climate cast Where few the muse can relish ; Where all the doctrine now that 's told. Is that a shining heap of gold Alone can man embellish. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 1 15 Then since 't is thus, my honest friend, If you be wise, my strain attend, And counsel sage adhere to ; With me, henceforward, join the crowd, And Hke the rest proclaim aloud. That money is all virtue ! Then may we both, in time, retreat To some fair villa, sweetly neat. To entertain the muses ; And then life's noise and trouble leave — Supremely blest, we '11 never grieve At what the world refuses. JOHN WOOLMAN [Born at Northampton, New Jersey, 1720; died at York, England, October 7, i 772] CHIEF EVENTS DURING THE YEARS 1749 TO 1753 From the "Journal," 1772, Chap. Ill About this time, believing it good for me to settle, and thinking seriously about a companion, my heart was turned to the Lord, with desire that he would give me wisdom to proceed therein agreeably to his will ; and he was pleased to give me a well-inclined damsel, Sarah Ellis; to whom I was married the i8th day of the eighth month, in the year 1749. In the fall of the year 1750, died my father, Samuel Woolman, with a fever, aged about sixty years. In his lifetime he manifested much care for us his children, that in our youth we might learn to fear the Lord ; often endeavoring to imprint in our minds the true principles of virtue, and particularly to cherish in us a spirit of tenderness, not only towards poor people, but also towards all creatures of which we had the command. After my return from Carolina, in the year 1746, I made some observations on keeping slaves, which some time before his decease li6 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE I showed him. He perused the manuscript, proposed a few altera- tions, and appeared well satisfied that I found a concern on that account. In his last sickness, as I was watching with him one night, he being so far spent that there was no expectation of his recovery, but had the perfect use of his understanding, he asked me concern- ing the manuscript, whether I expected soon to proceed to take the advice of Friends in publishing it ; and, after some conversation thereon, said, I have all along been deeply affected with the oppres- sion of the poor negroes ; and now, at last, my concern for them is as great as ever. By his direction, I had written his will in a time of health, and that night he desired me to read it to him, which I did, and he said it was agreeable to his mind. He then made mention of his end, which he believed was now near, and signified that, though he was sensible of many imperfections in the course of his life, yet his ex- perience of the power of truth, and of the love and goodness of God from time to time, even until now, was such that he had no doubt but that, in leaving this life, he should enter into one more happy. The next day his sister Elizabeth came to see him, and told him of the decease of their sister Ann, who died a few days before. He said, I reckon sister Ann was free to leave this world ? Elizabeth said she was. He then said, I also am free to leave it ; and being in great weakness of body, said, I hope I shall shortly go to rest. He continued in a weighty frame of mind, and was sensible until near the last. On the second day of the ninth month, in the year 175 i, feeling drawings in my mind to visit friends at the Great Meadows, in the upper part of West Jersey, with the unity of our monthly meeting, I went there, and had some searching, laborious exercise amongst friends in those parts, and found inward peace therein. In the ninth month of the year 1753, in company with my well- esteemed friend John Sykes, and with the unity of Friends, I trav- elled about two weeks, visiting Friends in Buck County. We labored in the love of the gospel, according to the measure received ; and, through the mercies of him who is strength to the poor who trust in him, we found satisfaction in our visit. In the next winter, way opening to visit Friends' families within the compass of our monthly THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD . 1 17 meeting, partly by the labors of two Friends from Pennsylvania, I joined in some part of the work ; having had a desire for some time that it might go forward amongst us. About this time, a person at some distance lying sick, his brother came to me to write his will. I knew he had slaves; and asking his brother, was told he intended to leave them as slaves to his children. As writing is a profitable employ, and as offending sober people was disagreeable to my inclination, I was straitened in my mind ; but as I looked to the Lord, he inclined my heart to his testimony. I told the man that I believed the practice of continuing slavery to this people was not right, and had a scruple in my mind against doing writings of that kind ; that, though many in our Society kept them as slaves, still I was not easy to be concerned in it, and desired to be excused from going to write the will. I spake to him in the fear of the Lord ; and he made no reply to what I said, but went away : he also had some concern in the practice, and I thought he was dis- pleased with me. In this case, I had a fresh confirmation that act- ing contrary to present outward interests, from a motive of divine love, and in regard to truth and righteousness, and thereby incurring the resentments of people, opens the way to a treasure better than silver, and to a friendship exceeding the friendship of men. The manuscript before mentioned having laid by me several years, the publication of it rested weightily upon me ; and this year I offered it to the revisal of Friends, who, having examined and made some small alterations in it, directed a number of copies thereof to be published and dispersed amongst Friends. Ii8 . READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE SAMUEL ADAMS [Born at Boston, Massachusetts, September 27, 1722; died at Boston, October 2, 1803] ON AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE — IN PHILADELPHIA, AUGUST 1, 1776 (EXTRACT) Countrymen and Brethren : I would gladly have declined an honor to which I find myself unequal. I have not the calmness and impartiality which the infinite importance of this occasion demands. I will not deny the charges of my enemies, that resent- ment for the accumulated injuries of our country, and an ardor for her glory, rising to enthusiasm, may deprive me of that ac- curacy of judgment and expression which men of cooler passions may possess. Let me beseech you then, to hear me with caution, to examine without prejudice, and to correct the mistakes into which I may be hurried by zeal. Truth loves an appeal to the common sense of mankind. Your unperverted understandings can best determine on subjects of a practical nature. The positions and plans which are said to be above the comprehension of the multitude may be always suspected to be visionary and fruitless. He who made all men hath made the truths necessary to human happiness obvious to all. Our forefathers threw off the yoke of Popery in religion ; for you is reserved the honor of levelling the Popery of politics. They opened the Bible to all, and maintained the capacity of every man to judge for himself in religion. Are we sufficient for the compre- hension of the sublimest spiritual truths, and unequal to material and temporal ones ? Heaven hath trusted us with the management of things for eternity, and man denies us ability to judge of the present, or to know from our feelings the experience that will make us happy. "You can discern," say they, "objects distant and remote, but cannot perceive those within your grasp. Let us have the distribution of present goods, and cut out and manage as you please the interests of futurity." This day, I trust, the reign of political Protestantism will commence. We have explored the temple of royalty, and found that the idol we have bowed down to, THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 119 has eyes which see not, ears that hear not our prayers, and a heart Hke the nether millstone. We have this day restored the Sover- eign, to whom alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven, and with a propitious eye beholds His subjects assuming that freedom of thought and dignity of self-direction which He bestowed upon them. From the rising to the setting sun, may His kingdom come, JAMES OTIS [Born at Barnstable, Massachusetts, February 5, 1725 ; died at Andover, Massachusetts, May 23, 1783] ON THE WRITS OF ASSISTANCE — BEFORE THE SUPERIOR COURT OF MASSACHUSETTS, FEBRUARY, 1761 (EXTRACT) May it please your Honors : I was desired by one of the court to look into the books, and consider the question now before them concerning Writs of Assistance. I have accordingly consid- ered it, and appear not only in obedience to your order, but likewise in behalf of the inhabitants of this town, who have presented an- other petition, and out of regard to the liberties of the subject. And I take this opportunity to declare, that whether under a fee or not (for in such a cause as this I despise a fee), I will to my dying day oppose with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand and villainy on the other, as this writ of assistance is. It appears to me the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law-book. I must there- fore beg your honors' patience and attention to.the whole range of an argument, that may perhaps appear uncommon in many things, as well as to points of learning that are more remote and unusual ; that the whole tendency of my design may the more easily be perceived, the conclusions better descend, and the force of them be better felt. I shall not think much of my pains in this cause, as I engage in it from principle. I was solicited to argue this cause as Advocate-General ; and because I would not, I have been charged with desertion from my office. To this charge I can give I20 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE a very sufificient answer. I renounce that office, and I argue this cause from the same principle ; and I argue it with the greater pleasure, as it is in favor of British liberty, at a time when we hear the greatest monarch upon earth declaring from his throne that he glories in the name of Briton, and that the privileges of his people are dearer to him than the most valuable prerogatives of his crown ; and as it is in opposition to a kind of power, the exercise of which in former periods of history cost one king of England his head, and another his throne. I have taken more pains in this cause than I ever will take again, although my engaging in this and an- other popular cause has raised much resentment. But I think I can sincerely declare, that I cheerfully submit myself to every odious name for conscience' sake ; and from my soul I despise all those whose guilt, malice, or folly has made them my foes. Let the consequences be what they will, I am determined to proceed. The only principles of public conduct, that are worthy of a gentle- man or a man, are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of his country. These manly sentiments, in private life, make the good citizens ; in public life, the patriot and the hero. I do not say that, when brought to the test, I shall be invincible. I pray God that I may never be brought to the melancholy trial, but if ever I should, it will be then known how far I can reduce to practice principles which I know to be founded in truth. In the meantime I will proceed to the subject of this writ. PATRICK HENRY [Born at Studley, Virginia, May 29, 1736; died at Red Hill, Virginia, June 6, 1 799] SPEECH IN THE CONVENTION OF DELEGATES, MARCH 28, 1775 (EXTRACTS) Mr. President : No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subjects in different lights ; and, therefore, I hope that it THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD I2i will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen, if, entertain- ing as I do, opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is not time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to the country. For my own part I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery ; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and ful- fil the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offence, I should consider myself as guilty of treason toward my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the majesty of heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings, Mr, President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty ,? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation ? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth ; to know the worst and to provide for it, I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience, I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House, Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received ? Trust it not, sir ; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious re- ception of our petition comports with these warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation.? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love } Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation ; the last arguments 122 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this mar- tial array, if its purpose is not to force us to submission ? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it ? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies ? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us ; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British min- istry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose them ? Shall we try argument ? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer on the subject.? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable ; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication ? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted .? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, de- ceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned ; we have remonstrated ; we have supplicated ; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its inter- position to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and parlia- ment. Our petitions have been slighted ; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult ; our supplications have been disregarded ; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free — if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending — if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious ob- ject of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight ! I repeat it, sir, we must fight ! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us ! ********** It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry peace, peace — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun ! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 123 the clash of resounding arms ! Our brethren are already in the field ! Why stand we here idle ? What is it that gentlemen wish ? What would they have ? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery ? Forbid it. Almighty God ! I know not what course others may take ; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death ! GEORGE WASHINGTON [Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, February 22, 1732; died at Mount Vernon, Virginia, December 14, 1799] SPEECH IN CONGRESS ON HIS BEING MADE COMMANDER- IN-CHIEF, JUNE 16, 1775 TO THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS Mr. President : Though I am truly sensible of the high honor done me, in this appointment, yet I feel great distress, from a con- sciousness that my abilities and military experience may not be equal to the extensive and important trust. However, as the Con- gress desire it, I will enter upon the momentous duty, and exert every power I possess in their service, and for the support of the glorious cause. I beg they will accept my most cordial thanks for this distinguished testimony of their approbation. But, lest some unlucky event should happen, unfavorable to my reputation, I beg it may be remembered by every gentleman in the room, that I, this day, declare with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with. As to pay, sir, I beg leave to assure the Congress, that, as no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to accept this arduous employment at the expense of my domestic ease and happiness, I do not wish to make any profit from it. I will keep an exact account of my expenses. Those, I doubt not, they will discharge ; and that is all I desire. 124 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE LETTER TO HIS WIFE UPON BEING MADE COMMANDER- IN-CHIEF OF THE ARMY TO MRS. MARTHA WASHINGTON My Dearest : I am now set down to write to you on a subject which fills me with inexpressible concern, and this concern is greatly aggravated and increased when I reflect upon the uneasi- ness I know it will give you. It has been determined in Congress, that the whole army raised for the defence of the American cause shall be put under my care, and that it is necessary for me to pro- ceed immediately to Boston to take upon me the command of it. You may believe me, my dear Patsy, when I assure you in the most solemn manner, that, so far from seeking this appointment, I have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a con- sciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity, and that I should enjoy more real happiness in one month with you at home, than I have the most distant prospect of finding abroad, if my stay were to be seven times seven years. But as it has been a kind of destiny that has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that my undertaking it is designed to answer some good purpose. You might, and I suppose did perceive, from the tenor of my letters, that I was apprehensive I could not avoid this appoint- ment, as I did not pretend to intimate when I should return. That was the case. It was utterly out of my power to refuse this appointment without exposing my character to such censures as would have reflected dishonor upon myself, and given pain to my friends. This, I am sure, could not, and ought not, to be pleasing to you, and must have lessened me considerably in my own esteem. I shall rely, therefore, confidently on that Providence which has heretofore preserved and been bountiful to me, not doubting but that I shall return safe to you in the fall. I shall feel no pain from the toil or the danger of the campaign ; my unhappiness will flow from the uneasiness I know you will feel from being left alone. I therefore beg that you will summon your whole fortitude, and pass your time as agreeably as possible. Nothing will give me so much sincere satisfaction as to hear this, and to hear it THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 125 from your own pen. My earnest and ardent desire is, that you would pursue any plan that is most likely to produce content and a tolerable degree of tranquillity ; as it must add greatly to my uneasy feelings to hear that you are dissatisfied or complaining at what I really could not avoid. As life is always uncertain, and common prudence dictates to every man the necessity of settling his temporal concerns while it is in his power, and while the mind is calm and undisturbed, I have, since I came to this place (for I had not time to do it before I left home), got Colonel Pendleton to draft a will for me, by the directions I gave him, which I will now enclose. The provision made for you in case of my death, will, I hope, be agreeable. I shall add nothing more, as I have several letters to write, but to desire that you will remember me to your friends, and to assure you that I am, with the most unfeigned -regard, my dear Patsy, your affectionate, &c. THOMAS JEFFERSON [Born at Shadwell, Virginia, April 3, 1743 ; died at Monticello, Virginia, July 4, 1 8 26] INAUGURAL ADDRESS, AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, MARCH 4, 1801 (EXTRACT) Friends and Fellow-Citizens : Called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow-citizens which is here assembled, to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments, which the greatness of the charge, and the weakness of my powers, so justly inspire. A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advanc- ing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye ; when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the 126 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contempla- tion, and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, indeed, should I despair, did not the presence of many, whom I see here, remind me, that in other high authorities provided by our Constitution, I shall find resources of wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal, on which to rely under all difficulties. To you, then, gentle- men, who are charged with the sovereign functions of legislation, and to those associated with you, I look with encouragement for that guidance and support which may enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which we are all embarked, amidst the conflicting elements of a troubled world. ********** Let us then, with courage and confidence, pursue our federal and republican principles ; our attachment to union and represent- ative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe ; too high-minded to endure the degradation of the others, possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation, entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisition of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow- citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them, enlightened by a benign religion, professed indeed and practised in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man, acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which, by all its dispensa- tions, proves that it delights in the happiness of man here, and bis greater happiness hereafter ; with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people .-' Still one thing more, fellow-citizens, a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and im- provement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government ; and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 1 27 AN ANECDOTE OF DOCTOR FRANKLIN From Jefferson's "Autobiography" When the Declaration of Independence was under the considera- tion of Congress, there were two or three unlucky expressions in it which gave offence to some members. The words " Scotch and other foreign auxiliaries " excited the ire of a gentleman or two of that country. Severe strictures on the conduct of the British King, in negotiating our repeated repeals of the law which permitted the importation of slaves, were disapproved by some Southern gentle- men, whose reflections were not yet matured to the full abhorrence of that traffic. Although the offensive expressions were immediately yielded, these gentlemen continued their depredations on other parts of the instrument. I was sitting by Dr. Franklin, who perceived that I was not insensible to these mutilations. " I have made it a rule," he said, " whenever in my power, to avoid being the draughts- man of papers to be reviewed by a public body, I took my lesson from an incident which I will relate to you. When I was a journey- man printer, one of my companions, an apprentice hatter, having served out his time, was about to open shop for himself. His first concern was to have a handsome sign-board, with a proper inscrip- tion. He composed it in these words, ' John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money,' with a figure of a hat sub- joined ; but he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he showed it to thought the word Hatter tautologous, because followed by the words ' makes hats,' which showed he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next observed that the word makes might as well be omitted, because his cus- tomers would not care who made the hats. If good and to their minds, they would buy, by whomsoever made. He struck it out. A third said he thought the words for ready uiojiey were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit. Everyone who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with, and the inscription now stood, "John Thompson sells hats.' 'Sells hats,' says his next friend ! ' Why nobody would expect you to give them away, what then is the use of that word }' It was stricken out, and 128 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Jiats followed it, the rather as there was one painted on the board. So the inscription was reduced ultimately to " John Thompson ' with the figure of a hat subjoined." A TRIBUTE TO FRANCE From the " Autobiography " And here, I cannot leave this great and good country without expressing my sense of its pre-eminence of character among the nations of the earth. A more benevolent people I have never known, nor greater warmth and devotedness in their select friend- ships. Their kindness and accommodation to strangers is unpar- alleled, and the hospitality of Paris is beyond anything I had conceived to be practicable in a large city. Their eminence, too, in science, the communicative dispositions of their scientific men, the politeness of the general manners, the ease and vivacity of their conversation, give a charm to their society, to be found no where else. In a comparison of this, with other countries, we have the proof of primacy, which was given to Themistocles, after the battle of Salamis. Every general voted to himself the first reward of valor, and the second to Themistocles. So, ask the travelled inhabitant of any nation, in what country on earth would you rather live } Certainly, in my own, where are all my friends, my relations, and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life. Which would be your second choice .'' France. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 129 ALEXANDER HAMILTON [Born in the island of Nevis, West Indies, January 11, 1757; died at New York, July 12, 1804] ON THE EXPEDIENCY OF ADOPTING THE FEDERAL CON- STITUTION—CONVENTION OF NEW YORK, JUNE 24, 1788 (EXTRACTS) I am persuaded, Mr. Chairman, that I in my turn shall be in- dulged, in addressing the committee. We all, in equal sincerity, profess to be anxious for the establishment of a republican govern- ment, on a safe and solid basis. It is the object of the wishes of every honest man in the United States, and I presume that I shall not be disbelieved, when I declare, that it is an object, of all others, the nearest and most dear to my own heart. The means of accom- plishing this great purpose become the most important study which can interest mankind. It is our duty to examine all those means with peculiar attention, and to choose the best and most effectual. It is our duty to draw from nature, from reason, from examples, the best principles of policy, and to pursue and apply them in the formation of our government. We should contemplate and com- pare the systems, which, in this examination, come under our view ; distinguish, with a careful eye, the defects and excellencies of each, and discarding the former, incorporate the latter, as far as circum- stances will admit, into our Constitution. If we pursue a different course and neglect this duty, we shall probably disappoint the expectations of our country and of the world. Gentlemen, in their reasoning, have placed the interests of the several States and those of the United States in contrast ; this is not a fair view of the subject ; they must necessarily be involved in each other. What we apprehend is, that some sinister prejudice, or some prevailing passion, may assume the form of genuine in- terest. The influence of these is as powerful as the most perma- nent conviction of the public good ; and against this influence we ought to provide. The logical interests of a State ought in every I30 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE case to give way to the interests of the Union ; for when a sacri- fice of one or the other is necessary, the former becomes only an apparent, partial interest, and should yield, on the principle that the small good ought never to oppose the great one. When you assemble from your several counties in the Legislature, were every member to be guided only by the apparent interests of his county, government would be impracticable. There must be a perpetual accommodation and sacrifice of local advantages to general expedi- ency ; but the spirit of a mere popular assembly would rarely be actuated by this important principle. It is therefore absolutely necessary that the Senate should be so formed, as to be unbiassed by false conceptions of the real interests, or undue attachment to the apparent good of their several States. THOMAS PAINE [Born at Thetford, England, January 29, 1737; died at New York, June 8, 1 809] ON THE SEPARATION OF BRITAIN AND AMERICA From "Common Sense," 1776 Everything that is right or natural pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, " 'tis time to part." Even the distance at which the Almighty hath placed England and America is a strong and natural proof that the author- ity of the one over the other was never the design of heaven. The time, likewise, at which the continent was discovered, adds weight to the argument, and the manner in which it was peopled increases the force of it. The Reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanc- tuary to the persecuted in future vears, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety. The authority of Great Britain over this continent is a form of government which sooner or later must have an end : and a serious mind can draw no true pleasure by looking forward, under the painful and positive conviction, that what he calls " the present THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 131 constitution " is merely temporary. As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to insure anything that we may bequeath to posterity ; and by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life ; that eminence will present a prospect which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight. Though I would carefully avoid giving unnecessary offence, yet I am inclined to believe that all those who espouse the doctrine of reconciliation may be included within the following descriptions : Interested men, who are not to be trusted ; weak men, who cannot see ; and a certain set of moderate men, who think better of the European world than it deserves : and this last class, by an ill- judged deliberation, will be the cause of more calamities to this continent than all the other three. It is the good fortune of many to live distant from the scene of sorrow ; the evil is not sufficiently brought to their doors to make them feel the precariousness with which all American prop- erty is possessed. But let our imaginations transport us a few moments to Boston ; that seat of wretchedness will teach us wis- dom, and instruct us forever to renounce a power in whom we can have no trust. The inhabitants of that unfortunate city, who but a few months ago were in ease and affluence, have now no other alternative than to stay and starve, or turn out to beg. Endangered by the fire of their friends if they continue within the city, and plundered by the soldiery if they leave it. In their present situation they are prisoners without the hope of redemption, and in a general attack for their relief they would be exposed to the fury of both armies. Men of passive tempers look somewhat lightly over the offences of Britain, and, still hoping for the best, are apt to call out, " Come, come, we shall be friends again for all this." But ex- amine the passions and feelings of mankind, bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchstone of nature, and then tell me whether you can hereafter love, honor, and faithfully serve the power 132 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE that hath carried fire and sword into your land ? If you cannot do all these, then you are only deceiving yourselves, and by your delay bringing ruin upon your posterity. Your future connection with Britain, whom you can neither love nor honor, will be forced and unnatural, and being formed only on the plan of present con- venience, will in a little time fall into a relapse more wretched than the first. But if you say that you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, hath your house been burnt ? Hath your prop- erty been destroyed before your face ? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on .? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor .? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and can still shake hands with the murderers, then are you unworthy the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward and the spirit of a sycophant. THE FOPPERY OF TITLES From the "Rights of Man," Part I, 1791 Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title. The thing is perfectly harmless in itself, but it marks a sort of foppery in the human character which degrades it. It renders man diminu- tive in things which are great, and the counterfeit of women in things which are little. It talks about its fine riband like a girl, and shows its garter like a child. A certain writer of some antiquity, says, '' When I was a child, I thought as a child ; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." It is, properly, from the elevated mind of France that the folly of titles has been abolished. It has outgrown the baby-clothes of count and duke, and breeched itself in manhood. France has not levelled, it has exalted. It has put down the dwarf to put up the man. The insignificance of a senseless word like duke, count, or earl, has ceased to please. Even those who possess them have disowned the gibberish, and, as they outgrew the rickets, have despised the rattle. The genuine mind of man, thirsting for its native home, society, condemns the gewgaws that separate him THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 133 from it. Titles are like circles drawn by the magician's wand, to contract the sphere of man's felicity. He lives immured within the Bastile of a word, and surveys at a distance the envied life of man. Is it, then, any wonder that titles should fall in France ? Is it not a greater wonder that they should be kept up anywhere ? What are they ? What is their worth, nay, " what is their amount? " When we think or speak of a judge, or a general, we associate with it the ideas of office and character ; we think of gravity in the one, and bravery in the other ; but when we use a word merely as a title, no ideas associate with it. Through all the vocabulary of Adam, there is not such an animal as a duke or a count ; neithefr can we connect any certain idea to the words. Whether they mean strength or weakness, wisdom or folly, a child or a man, or a rider or a horse,- is all equivocal. What respect, then, can be paid to that which describes nothing, and which means nothing ? Imagination has given figure and charac- ter to centaurs, satyrs, and down to all the fairy tribes ; but titles baffle even the powers of fancy, and are a chimerical nondescript. But this is not all. If a whole country is disposed to hold them in contempt, all their value is gone, and none will own them. It is common opinion only that makes them anything or nothing, or worse than nothing. There is no occasion to take titles away, for they take themselves away when society concurs to ridicule them. This species of imaginary consequence has visibly declined in every part of Europe, and it hastens to its exit as the world of reason continues to rise. There was a time when the lowest class of what are called nobility was more thought of than the highest is now, and when a man in armor riding through Christendom in search of adventures was more stared at than a modern duke. The world has seen this folly fall, and it has fallen by being laughed at, and the farce of titles will follow its fate. The patriots of France have discovered in good time that rank and dignity in society must take a new ground. The old one has fallen through. It must now take the substantial ground of character, instead of the chimerical ground of titles : and they have brought their titles to the altar, and made of them a burnt-offering to reason. 134 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE LIBERTY TREE Published in the Fennsylvaiiia Magazine, 1775 In a chariot of light from the regions of day, The Goddess of Liberty came ; Ten thousand celestials directed the way, And hither conducted the dame. A fair budding branch from the gardens above, Where millions with millions agree, She brought in her hand as a pledge of her love. And the plant she named Liberty Tree. The celestial exotic struck deep in the ground, Like a native it flourished and bore ; The fame of its fruit drew the nations around, To seek out this peaceable shore. Unmindful of names or distinctions they came. For freemen like brothers agree ; With one spirit endued, they one friendship pursued. And their temple was Liberty Tree. Beneath this fair tree, like the patriarchs of old, Their bread in contentment they ate, Unvexed with the troubles of silver and gold. The cares of the grand and the great. With timber and tar they old England supplied. And supported her power on the sea ; Her battles they fought, without getting a groat. For the honor of Liberty Tree. But hear, O ye swains, 't is a tale most profane. How all the tyrannical powers, Kings, Commons and Lords, are uniting amain, To cut down this guardian of ours ; From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms. Through the land let the sound of it flee. Let the far and the near, all unite with a cheer. In defence of our Liberty Tree. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 135 PHILIP FRENEAU [Born at New York, i 752 ; died near Freehold, New Jersey, December 18, 1832] THE PICTURES OF COLUMBUS PICTURE IV. COLUMBUS ADDRESSES KING FERDINAND Prince and pride of Spain ! while meaner crowns, Pleas 'd with the shadow of monarchial sway, Exact obedience from some paltry tract Scarce worth the pain and toil of governing, Be thine the generous care to send thy fame Beyond the knowledge, or the guess of man. This gulphy deep (that bounds our western reign So long by civil feuds and wars disgrac'd) Must be the passage to some other shore Where nations dwell, children of early time, Basking in the warm sunshine of the south, Who some false deity, no doubt, adore. Owning no virtue in the potent cross : What honor, sire, to plant your standards there. And souls recover to our holy faith That now in paths of dark perdition stray, Warp'd to his worship by the evil one ! Think not that Europe and the Asian waste. Of Africa, where barren sands abound, Are the sole gems in Neptune's bosom laid : Think not the world a vast extended plain : See yond bright orbs, that through the ether move. All globular ; this earth a globe like them Walks her own rounds, attended by the moon, Bright comrade, but with borrowed lustre bright. If all the surface of this mighty round Be one wide ocean of unfathom'd depth Bounding the little space already known, Nature must have forgot her wonted wit 136 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And made a monstrous havock of proportion. If her proud depths were not restrain'd by lands, And broke by continents of vast extent Existing somewhere under western skies, Far other waves would roll before the storms Than ever yet have burst on Europe's shores, Driving before them deluge and confusion. But Nature will preserve what she has plann'd : And the whole suffrage of antiquity, Platonic dreams, and reason's plainer page All point at something that we ought to see Buried behind the waters of the west, Clouded with shadows of uncertainty. The time is come for some sublime event Of mighty fame : — mankind are children yet, And hardly dream what treasures they possess Jn the dark bosom of the fertile main, Unfathom'd, unattempted, unexplor'd. These, mighty prince, I offer to reveal, And by the magnet's aid, if you supply Ships and some gallant hearts, will hope to bring From distant climes, news worthy of a king. PICTURE XII. COLUMBUS IN CHAINS Are these the honors they reserve for me. Chains for the man that gave new worlds to Spain ! Rest here, my swelling heart ! — O kings, O queens. Patrons of monsters, and their progeny. Authors of wrong, and slaves to fortune merely ! Why was I seated by my prince's side, Honour'd, caress'd like some first peer of Spain.? Was it that I might fall most suddenly From honour's summit to the sink of scandal ? 'Tis done, 'tis done ! — what madness is ambition ! What is there in that little breath of men. Which they call Fame, that should induce the brave To forfeit ease and that domestic bliss THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 137 Which is the lot of happy ignorance, Less glorious aims, and dull humility ? — Whoe'er thou art that shall aspire to honour. And on the strength and vigor of the mind Vainly depending, court a monarch's favour, Pointing the way to vast extended empire ; First count your pay to be ingratitude, Then chains and prisons, and disgrace like mine ! Each wretched pilot now shall spread his sails. And treading in my footsteps, hail new worlds, Which, but for me, had still been empty visions. DEATH'S EPITAPH From "The House of Night" Death in this tomb his weary bones hath laid, Sick of dominion o'er the human kind ; Behold what devastations he hath made, Survey the millions by his arm confined. " Six thousand years has sovereign sway been mine, None but myself can real glory claim ; Great Regent of the world I reigned alone, And princes trembled when my mandate came. " Vast and unmatched throughout the world, my fame Takes place of gods, and asks no mortal date — No : by myself, and by the heavens, I swear Not Alexander's name is half so great. " Nor swords nor darts my prowess could withstand. All quit their arms, and bowed to my decree, — Even mighty Julius died beneath thy hand. For slaves and Caesars were the same to me ! " Traveller, wouldst thou his noblest trophies seek, Search in no narrow spot obscure for those ; The sea profound, the surface of all land, Is moulded with the myriads of his foes. 138 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE THE INDIAN BURYING-GROUND In spite of all the learned have said, I still by old opinion keep ; The posture that we give the dead Points out the soul's eternal sleep. Not so the ancients of these lands ; — The Indian, when from life released. Again is seated with his friends. And shares again the joyous feast. His imaged birds, and painted bowl, And venison, for a journey dressed. Bespeak the nature of the soul, Activity, that wants no rest. His bow for action ready bent. And arrows with a head of stone. Can only mean that life is spent, And not the old ideas gone. Thou, stranger, that shall come this way, No fraud upon the dead commit, — Observe the swelling turf, and say. They do not lie, but here they sit. Here still a lofty rock remains. On which the curious eye may trace (Now wasted half by wearing rains) The fancies of a ruder race. Here still an aged elm aspires. Beneath whose far projecting shade (And which the shepherd still admires) The children of the forest played. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 139 There oft a restless Indian queen (Pale Shebah with her braided hair), And many a barbarous form is seen To chide the man that lingers there. By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews, In habit for the chase arrayed, The hunter still the deer pursues, The hunter and the deer — a shade ! And long shall timorous Fancy see The painted chief, and pointed spear, And Reason's self shall bow the knee To shadows and delusions here. THE WILD HONEYSUCKLE Fair flower, that dost so comely grow. Hid in this silent, dull retreat. Untouched thy honied blossoms blow. Unseen thy little branches greet : No roving foot shall crush thee here, No busy hand provoke a tear. By Nature's self in white arrayed. She bade thee shun the vulgar eye. And planted here the guardian shade. And sent soft waters murmuring by ; Thus quietly thy summer goes, Thy days declining to repose. Smit with those charms, that must decay, I grieve to see your future doom ; They died — nor were those flowers more gay, The flowers that did in Eden bloom ; Unpitying frosts and Autumn's power Shall leave no vestige of this flower. I40 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE From morning suns and evening dews At first thy little being came ; If nothing once, you nothing lose, For when you die you are the same ; The space between is but an hour, The frail duration of a flower. TO A HONEY BEE Thou, born to sip the lake or spring, Or quaff the waters of the stream. Why hither come, on vagrant wing ? Does Bacchus tempting seem, — Did he for joy this glass prepare ? Will I admit you to a share ? Did storms harass or foes perplex, Did wasps or king-birds bring dismay, — Did wars distress, or labors vex, Or did you miss your way ? A better seat you could not take Than on the margin of this lake. Welcome ! — I hail you to my glass : All welcome here you find ; Here let the cloud of trouble pass, Here be all care resigned. This fluid never fails to please, And drown the grief of men or bees. What forced you here we cannot know. And you will scarcely tell, But cheery we would have you go And bid a glad farewell : On lighter wings we bid you fly, — Your dart will now all foes defy. Yet take not, oh ! too deep a drink, And in this ocean die ; THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 141 Here bigger bees than you might sink, Even bees full six feet high. Like Pharaoh, then, you would be said To perish in a sea of red. Do as you please, your will is mine ; Enjoy it without fear, And your grave will be this glass of wine. Your epitaph — a tear ; Go, take your seat in Charon's boat ; We '11 tell the hive, you died afloat. JOHN TRUMBULL [Born at Westbury, Connecticut, April 24, 1750; died at Detroit, Michigan, May 10, 1 831] CONVERTING A TORY From " McFingal. A Modern Epic Poem," 1782 Meanwhile beside the pole, the guard A Bench of Justice had prepared, Where sitting round in awful sort The grand Committee hold their Court ; While all the crew, in silent awe, Wait from their lips the lore of law. Few moments with deliberation They hold the solemn consultation ; When soon in judgment all agree, And Clerk proclaims the dread decree ; " That 'Squire McFingal having grown The vilest Tory in the town, And now in full examination Convicted by his own confession, Finding no tokens of repentance. This Court proceeds to render sentence : That first the Mob a slip-knot single Tie round the neck of said McFingal, 142 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And in due form do tar him next, And feather, as the law directs ; Then through the town attendant ride him In cart with Constable beside him, And having held him up to shame. Bring to the pole, from whence he came." Forthwith the crowd proceed to deck With halter'd noose McFingal's neck. While he in peril of his soul Stood tied half-hanging to the pole ; Then lifting high the ponderous jar, Pour'd o'er his head the smoaking tar. With less profusion once was spread Oil on the Jewish monarch's head. That down his beard and vestments ran. And cover 'd all his outward man. As when (So Claudian sings) the Gods And earth-born Giants fell at odds, The stout Enceladus in malice Tore mountains up to throw at Pallas ; And while he held them o'er his head, The river, from their fountains fed, Pour'd down his back its copious tide, And wore its channels in his hide : So from the high-raised urn the torrents Spread down his side their various currents ; His flowing wig, as next the brim. First met and drank the sable stream ; Adown his visage stern and grave Roll'd and adhered the viscid wave ; With arms depending as he stood, Each cup capacious holds the flood ; From nose and chin's remotest end The tarry icicles descend ; Till all o'erspread, with colors gay, He glitter'd to the western ray. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 143 Like sleet-bound trees in wintry skies, Or Lapland idol carved in ice. And now the feather-bag display'd Is waved in triumph o'er his head, And clouds him o'er with feathers missive, And down, upon the tar, adhesive : Not Maia's son, with wings for ears. Such plumage round his visage wears, Nor Milton's six-wing'd angel gathers Such superfluity of feathers. Now all complete appears our 'Squire, Like Gorgon or Chimaera dire ; Nor more could boast on Plato's plan To rank among the grace of man. Or prove his claim to human nature, As a two-legg'd unfeather'd creature. Then on the fatal cart, in state They raised our grand Duumvirate. And as at Rome a like committee, Who found an owl within their city, With solemn rites and grave processions At every shrine perform'd lustrations ; And lest infection might take place From such grim fowl with feather'd face. All Rome attends him through the street In triumph to his country seat : With like devotion all the choir Paraded round our awful 'Squire ; In front the martial music comes Of horns and fiddles, fifes and drums, With jingling sound of carriage bells. And treble creak of rusted wheels. Behind, the crowd, in lengthen'd row With proud procession, closed the show. And at fit periods every throat Combined in universal shout, 144 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And hail'd great Liberty in chorus, Or brawl'd '^ confusion to the Tories." Not louder storm the welkin braves From clamors of conflicting waves ; Less dire in Libyan wilds the noise When rav'ning lions lift their voice ; Or triumphs at town-meetings made, On passing votes to regulate trade. Thus having borne them round the town, Last at the pole they set them down ; And to the tavern take their way To end in mirth the festal day. And now the Mob, dispersed and gone, Left 'Squire and Constable alone. The Constable with rueful face Lean'd sad and solemn o'er a brace ; And fast beside him, cheek by jowl, Stuck 'Squire McFingal 'gainst the pole, Glued by the tar t' his rear applied, Like barnacle on vessel's side. But though his body lack'd physician, His spirit was in worse condition. ' He found his fears of whips and ropes By many a drachm outweigh 'd his hopes. As men in jail without mainprize View everything with other eyes, And all goes wrong in Church and State, Seen through perspective of the grate : So now McFingal's second-sight Beheld all things in gloomier light ; His visual nerve, well purged with tar, Saw all the coming scenes of war. As his prophetic soul grew stronger. He found he could hold in no longer. First from the pole, as fierce he shook, His wig from pitchy durance broke, THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 145 His mouth unglued, his feathers flutter'd, His tarr'd skirts crack'd, and thus he utter'd : " Ah, Mr. Constable, in vain We strive 'gainst wind and tide and rain ! Behold my doom ! This feathery omen Portends what dismal times are coming. Now future scenes, before my eyes, And second-sighted forms arise. I hear a voice, that calls away, And cries ' The Whigs will win the day.' My beck'ning Genius gives command, And bids me fly the fatal land. Where changing name and constitution. Rebellion turns to Revolution, While Loyalty, oppress'd in tears, Stands trembling for its neck and ears. " Go summon all our brethren, greeting. To muster at our usual meeting ; There my prophetic voice shall warn 'em Of all things future that concern 'em, And scenes disclose on which, my friend, Their conduct and their lives depend. There I — but first 'tis more of use. From this vile pole to set me loose ; Then go with cautious steps and steady, While I steer home and make all ready." 146 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE TIMOTHY DWIGHT [Born at Northampton, Massachusetts, May 14, 1752; died at New Haven, Connecticut, January 11, 181 7] COLUMBIA Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise. The queen of the world, and the child of the skies ! Thy genius commands thee ; with rapture behold. While ages on ages thy splendors unfold. Thy reign is the last, and the noblest of time. Most fruitful thy soil, most inviting thy clime ; Let the crimes of the east ne'er encrimson thy name, Be freedom, and science, and virtue thy fame. To conquest and slaughter let Europe aspire ; Whelm nations in blood, and wrap cities in fire ; Thy heroes the rights of mankind shall defend, And triumph pursue them, and glory attend. A world is thy realm : for a world be thy laws, Enlarged as thine empire, and just as thy cause ; On Freedom's broad basis, that empire shall rise. Extend with the main, and dissolve with the skies. Fair Science her gates to thy sons shall unbar. And the east see thy morn hide the beams of her star. New bards, and new sages, unrivalled shall soar To fame unextinguished, when time is no more ; To thee, the last refuge of virtue designed, Shall fly from all nations the best of mankind ; Here, grateful to heaven, with transport shall bring Their incense, more fragrant than odors of spring. Nor less shall thy fair ones to glory ascend. And genius and beauty in harmony blend ; The graces of form shall awake pure desire. And the charms of the soul ever cherish the fire ; THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 147 Their sweetness unmingled, their manners refined, And virtue's bright image, instamped on the mind, With peace and soft rapture shall teach life to glow, And light up a smile in the aspect of woe. Thy fleets to all regions thy power shall display, The nations admire, and the ocean obey ; Each shore to thy glory its tribute unfold, And the east and the south yield their spices and gold. As the day-spring unbounded, thy splendor shall flow. And earth's little kingdoms before thee shall bow : While the ensigns of union, in triumph unfurled. Hush the tumult of war, and give peace to the world. Thus, as down a lone valley, with cedars o'erspread, From war's dread confusion I pensively strayed — The gloom from the face of fair heaven retired ; The winds ceased to murmur ; the thunders expired ; Perfumes, as of Eden, flowed sweetly along. And a voice, as of angels, enchantingly sung : " Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise. The queen of the world, and the child of the skies." JOEL BARLOW [Born at Reading, Connecticut, i 754 ; died near Cracow, Poland, December 24, 181 2] THE HASTY PUDDING CANTO I Ye Alps audacious, through the heavens that rise. To cramp the day and hide me from the skies ; Ye Gallic flags, that o'er their heights unfurled. Bear death to kings, and freedom to the world, I sing not you. A softer theme I choose, A virgin theme, unconscious of the Muse, But fruitful, rich, well suited to inspire The purest frenzy of poetic fire. 148 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Despise it not, ye bards to terror steel'd, Who hurl your thunders round the epic field, Nor ye who strain your midnight throats to sing Joys that the vineyard and the still-house bring ; Or on some distant fair your notes employ, And speak of raptures that you ne'er enjoy. I sing the sweets I know, the charms I feel, My morning incense, and my evening meal, The sweets of Hasty Pudding. Come, dear bowl, Glide o'er my palate, and inspire my soul. The milk beside thee, smoking from the kine. Its substance mingle, married in with thine. Shall cool and temper thy superior heat. And save the pains of blowing while I eat. Oh ! could the smooth, the emblematic song Flow like thy genial juices o'er my tongue. Could those mild morsels in my numbers chime. And, as they roll in substance, roll in rhyme, No more thy awkward unpoetic name Should shun the Muse, or prejudice thy fame ; But rising grateful to the accustom'd ear. All bards should catch it, and all realms revere ! Assist me first with pious toil to trace Through wrecks of time, thy lineage and thy race ; Declare what lovely squaw, in days of yore, (Ere great Columbus sought thy native shore) First gave thee to the world ; her works of fame Have lived indeed, but lived without a name. Some tawny Ceres, goddess of her days. First learn 'd with stones to crack the well dried maize. Through the rough sieve to shake the golden shower, In boiling water stir the yellow flour : The yellow flour, bestrew'd and stirr'd with haste, Swells in the flood and thickens to a paste, Then puffs and wallops, rises to the brim, Drinks the dry knobs that on the surface swim ; THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 149 The knobs at last the busy ladle breaks, And the whole mass its true consistence takes. Could but her sacred name, unknown so long, Rise, like her labors, to the son of song. To her, to them, I 'd consecrate my lays. And blow her pudding with the breath of praise. If 't was Oella whom I sang before I here ascribe her one great virtue more. Not through the rich Peruvian realms alone The fame of Sol's sweet daughter should be known, But o'er the world's wide clime should live secure, Far as his rays extend, as long as they endure. Dear Hasty Pudding, what unpromised joy Expands my heart, to meet thee in Savoy ! Doom'd o'er the world through devious paths to roam. Each clime my country, and each house my home, My soul is soothed, my cares have found an end, I greet my long lost, unforgotten friend. For thee through Paris, that corrupted town. How long in vain I wandered up and down. Where shameless Bacchus, with his drenching hoard, Cold from his cave usurps the morning board, London is lost in smoke and steep'd in tea ; No Yankee there can lisp the name of thee ; The uncouth word, a libel on the town. Would call a proclamation from the crown. From climes oblique, that fear the sun's full rays, Chill'd in their fogs, exclude the generous maize : A grain, whose rich, luxuriant growth requires Short gentle showers, and bright ethereal fires. But here, though distant from our native shore. With mutual glee, we meet and laugh once more. The same ! I know thee by that yellow face. That strong complexion of true Indian race. Which time can never change, nor soil impair. Nor Alpine snows, nor Turkey's morbid air ; ISO READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE For endless years, through every mild domain, Where grows the maize, there thou art sure to reign. But man, more fickle, the bold license claims, In different realms to give thee different names. Thee the soft nations round the warm Levant Polenta call, the French of course Polcnic. E'en in thy native regions, how I blush To hear the Pennsylvanians call thee Mush ! On Hudson's banks, while men of Belgic spawn Insult and eat thee by the name Suppaivn. All spurious appellations, void of truth ; I 've better known thee from my earliest youth, Thy name is Hasty Pudding ! thus my sire Was wont to greet thee fuming from his fire ; And while he argued in thy just defence With logic clear, he thus explain'd the sense : — " In Jiaste the boiling cauldron o'er the blaze. Receives and cooks the ready powder'd maize ; In haste \ is served, and then in equal Jiaste, With cooling milk, we make the sweet repast. No carving to be done, no knife to grate The tender ear, and wound the stony plate ; But the smooth spoon, just fitted to the lip, And taught with art the yielding mass to dip, By frequent journeys to the bowl well stored, Performs the hasty honors of the board." Such is thy name, significant and clear, A name, a sound to every Yankee dear. But most to me, whose heart and palate chaste Preserve my pure hereditary taste. There are who strive to stamp with disrepute The luscious food, because it feeds the brute, In tropes of high-strain'd wit ; while gaudy prigs Compare thy nursling, man, to pamper'd pigs ; With sovereign scorn I treat the vulgar jest, Nor fear to share thy bounties with the beast. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 151 What though the generous cow gives me to quaff The milk nutritious : am I then a calf ? Or can the genius of the noisy swine, Though nursed on pudding, claim a kin to mine ? Sure the sweet song, I fashion to thy praise. Runs more melodious than the notes they raise. My song resounding in its grateful glee. No merit claims : I praise myself in thee. My father loved thee through his length of days ! For thee his fields were shaded o'er with maize ; From thee what health, what vigor he possess'd, Ten sturdy freemen from his loins attest ; Thy constellation ruled my natal morn, And all my bones were made of Indian corn. Delicious grain ! whatever form it take, To roast or boil, to smother or to bake. In every dish 't is welcome still to me, But most, my Hasty Pudding; most in thee. Let the green succotash with thee contend, Let beans and corn their sweetest juices blend, Let butter drench them in its yellow tide. And a long slice of bacon grace their side ; Not all the plate, how famed soe'er it be, Can please my palate like a bowl of thee. Some talk of Hoe-Cakc, fair Virginia's pride, "^XQ^a. Johnny -Cake this mouth has often tried ; Both please me well, their virtues much the same, Alike their fabric, as allied their fame, Except in dear New England, where the last Receives a dash of pumpkin in the paste, To give it sweetness and improve the taste. But place them all before me, smoking hot, The big, round dumpling, rolling from the pot, The pudding of the bag, whose quivering breast. With suet lined, leads on the Yankee feast. The Charlotte brown, within whose crusty sides 152 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE A belly soft the pulpy apple hides ; The yellow bread whose face like amber glows, And all of Indian that the bake-pan knows, — You tempt me not — my fav'rite greets my eyes, To that loved bowl my spoon by instinct flies. ST. GEORGE TUCKER [Born at Bermuda, June 29, 1752 ; died in Nelson County, Virginia, November, 1827] DAYS OF MY YOUTH Days of my youth, Ye have glided away ; Hairs of my youth, Ye are frosted and gray ; Eyes of my youth. Your keen sight is no more ; Cheeks of my youth. Ye are furrowed all o'er ; Strength of my youth, All your vigor is gone ; Thoughts of my youth, Your gay visions are flown. Days of my youth, I wish not your recall ; Hairs of my youth, I 'm content ye should fall ; Eyes of my youth, You much evil have seen ; Cheeks of my youth, Bathed in tears have you been ; Thoughts of my youth. You have led me a?tray ; Strength of my youth. Why lament your decay } THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 1 53 Days of my age, Ye will shortly be past ; Pains of my age, Yet awhile ye can last ; Joys of my age, In true wisdom delight ; Eyes of my age. Be religion your light ; Thoughts of my age, Dread ye not the cold sod ; Hopes of my age, Be ye fixed on your God. OCCASIONAL POEMS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD THE BATTLE OF THE KEGS This ballad was occasioned by a real incident. Certain machines, in the form of kegs, charged with gunpowder, were sent down the river to annoy the British shipping then at Philadelphia. The danger of these machines being discovered, the British manned the wharfs and shipping, and discharged their small arms and cannons at everything they saw floating in the river during the ebb-tide. — A ut/ior's Note. Gallants attend and hear a friend Trill forth harmonious ditty. Strange things I '11 tell which late befell In Philadelphia city. 'T was early day, as poets say. Just when the sun was rising. A soldier stood on a log of wood, And saw a thing surprising. As in amaze he stood to gaze. The truth can't be denied, sir, He spied a score of kegs or more Come floating down the tide, sir. 154 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE A sailor too in jerkin blue, This strange appearance viewing, First damned his eyes, in great surprise. Then said, " Some mischief 's brewing. " These kegs, I 'm told, the rebels hold, Packed up like pickled herring ; And they 're come down to attack the town, In this new way of ferrying." The soldier flew, the sailor too. And scared almost to death, sir. Wore out their shoes, to spread the news, And ran till out of breath, sir. Now up and down throughout the town. Most frantic scenes were acted ; And some ran here, and others there, Like men almost distracted. Some fire cried, which some denied, But said the earth had quaked ; And girls and boys, with hideous noise. Ran through the streets half naked. Sir William he, snug as a flea, Lay all this time a-snoring. Nor dreamed of harm as he lay warm, In bed with Mrs. Loring. Now in a fright, he starts upright, Awaked by such a clatter ; He rubs both eyes, and boldly cries, '" For God's sake, what 's the matter ? " At his bedside he then espied, Sir Erskine at command, sir, Upon one foot he had one boot, And th' other in his hand, sir. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 155 ''Arise, arise," Sir Erskine cries, '" The rebels — more 's the pity, Without a boat are all afloat, And ranged before the city. " The motley crew, in vessels new. With Satan for their guide, sir, Packed up in bags, or wooden kegs. Come driving down the tide, sir. " Therefore prepare for bloody war, These kegs must all be routed. Or surely we despised shall be. And British courage doubted." The royal band now ready stand All ranged in dread array, sir, With stomach stout to see it out. And make a bloody day, sir. The cannons roar from shore to shore, The small arms make a rattle ; Since wars began I 'm sure no man E'er saw so strange a battle. The rebel dales, the rebel vales. With rebel trees surrounded. The distant woods, the hills and floods, With rebel echoes sounded. The fish below swam to and fro. Attacked from every quarter ; Why sure, thought they, the devil 's to pay, 'Mongst folks above the water. The kegs, 't is said, though strongly made, Of rebel staves and hoops, sir, Could not oppose their powerful foes. The conquering British troops, sir. 156 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE From morn to night these men of might Displayed amazing courage ; And when the sun was fairly down, Retired to sup their porridge. A hundred men with each a pen, Or more upon my word, sir, It is most true would be too few, Their valor to record, sir. Such feats did they perform that day, Against these wicked kegs, sir. That years to come, if they get home. They '11 make their boasts and brags, sir. Francis Hopkinson THE BALLAD OF NATHAN HALE The breezes went steadily through the tall pines, A-saying, " Oh ! hu-ush ! " a-saying " Oh ! hu-ush ! " As stilly stole by a bold legion of horse, For Hale in the bush ; for Hale in the bush. " Keep still ! " said the thrush as she nestled her young, In a nest by the road ; in a nest by the road. '" For the tyrants are near, and with them appear What bodes us no good ; what bodes us no good." The brave captain heard it, and thought of his home In a cot by the brook ; in a cot by the brook. With mother and sister and memories dear. He so gayly forsook ; he so gayly forsook. Cooling shades of the night were coming apace, The tattoo had beat ; the tattoo had beat. The noble one sprang from his dark lurking-place, To make his retreat ; to make his retreat. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 157 He warily trod on the dry rustling leaves, As he passed through the wood ; as he passed through the wood ; And silently gained his rude launch on the shore, As she played with the flood ; as she played with the flood. The guards of the camp, on that dark, dreary night, Had a murderous will ; had a murderous will. They took him and bore him afar from the shore, To a hut on the hill ; to a hut on the hill. No mother was there, nor a friend who could cheer. In that little stone cell ; in that little stone cell. But he trusted in love, from his Father above. In his heart all was well ; in his heart all was well. An ominous owl, with his solemn bass voice, Sat moaning hard by ; sat moaning hard by : " The tyrant's proud minions most gladly rejoice. For he must soon die ; for he must soon die." The brave fellow told them, no thing he restrained, — The cruel general ! the cruel general ! — His errand from camp, of the ends to be gained, And said that was all ; and said that was all. They took him and bound him and bore him away, Down the hill's grassy side ; down the hill's grassy side. 'T was there the base hirelings, in royal array. His cause did deride ; his cause did deride. Five minutes were given, short moments, no more. For him to repent ; for him to repent. He prayed for his mother, he asked not another, To Heaven he went ; to Heaven he went. The faith of a martyr the tragedy showed, As he trode the last stage ; as he trode the last stage. 158 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And Britons will shudder at gallant Hale's blood, As his words do presage ; as his words do presage. " Thou pale king of terrors, thou life's gloomy foe, Go frighten the slave ; go frighten the slave ; Tell tyrants, to you their allegiance they owe. No fears for the brave ; no fears for the brave." Anonymous BATTLE OF TRENTON On Christmas-day in seventy-six, Our ragged troops, with bayonets fixed, For Trenton marched away. The Delaware see ! the boats below ! The light obscured by hail and snow ! But no signs of dismay. Our object was the Hessian band. That dared invade fair freedom's land, And quarter in that place. Great Washington he led us on. Whose streaming flag, in storm or sun, Had never known disgrace. In silent march we passed the night. Each soldier panting for the fight. Though quite benumbed with frost. Greene on the left at six began. The right was led by Sullivan, Who ne'er a moment lost. Their pickets stormed, the alarm was spread. That rebels risen from the dead Were marching into town. Some scampered here, some scampered there, And some for action did prepare ; But soon their arms laid down. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 159 Twelve hundred servile miscreants, With all their colors, guns, and tents, Were trophies of the day. The frolic o'er, the bright canteen, In centre, front, and rear was seen Driving fatigue away. Now, brothers of the patriot bands. Let 's sing deliverance from the hands Of arbitrary sway. And as our life is but a span, Let 's touch the tankard while we can. In memory of that day. Anonymous ROYALL TYLER [Born at Boston, Massachusetts, July 18, 1757 ; died at Brattleboro, Vermont, August 16, 1826] THE CONTRAST, A COMEDY IN FIVE ACTS The First American Comedy Regularly Produced. Written by a Citizen of the United States. Performed in 1787, at the Theatre IN John Street, New York, 1790 FROM THE "ADVERTISEMENT" "In justice to the Author it may be proper to observe that this Comedy has many claims to the public indulgence, independent of its intrinsic merits : It is the first essay of American genius in a difficult species of composition ; it was written by one who never critically studied the rules of the drama, and indeed, has seen but few of the exhibitions of the stage ; it was undertaken and finished in the course of three weeks ; and the profits of one night's per- formance were appropriated to the benefit of the sufferers by the fire at Boston." l6o READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE PROLOGUE, IN REBUKE OF THE PREVAILING ANGLOMANIA Exult each patriot heart ! — this night is shown A piece which we may fairly call our own ; Where the proud titles of " My Lord ! Your Grace ! " To humble " Mr." and plain "' Sir " give place. Our author pictures not from foreign climes The fashions, or the follies of the times ; But has confined the subject of his work To the gay scenes — the circles of New York. On native themes his Muse displays her powers ; If ours the faults, the virtues too are ours. Why should our thoughts to distant countries roam, When each refinement can be found at home ? Who travels now to ape the rich or great, To deck an equipage and roll in state ; To court the graces, or to dance with ease, — Or by hypocrisy to strive to please .■' Our free-born ancestors such arts despised ; Genuine sincerity alone they prized ; Their minds with honest emulation fired. To solid good — not ornament — aspired ; Or, if ambition roused a bolder flame, Stern virtue throve, where indolence was shame. But modern youths, with imitative sense. Deem taste in dress the proof of excellence ; And spurn the meanness of your homespun arts. Since homespun habits would obscure their parts ; Whilst all, which aims at splendor and parade, Must come from Europe, and be ready made. Strange we should thus our native worth disclaim, And check the progress of our rising fame. Yet one, whilst imitation bears the sway. Aspires to nobler heights, and points the way. Be roused, my friends ! his bold example view ; Let your own bards be proud to copy you ! Should rigid critics reprobate our play, THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD l6i At least the patriotic heart will say, '" Glorious our fall, since in a noble cause ; The bold attempt alone demands applause." Still may the wisdom of the Comic Muse Exalt your merits, or your faults accuse. But think not 't is her aim to be severe ; — We all are mortals, and as mortals err. If candor pleases, we are truly blest ; Vice trembles, when compelled to stand confessed. Let not light censure on your faults offend, Which aims not to expose them, but amend. Thus does our author to your candor trust ; Conscious the free are generous, as just. ACT I, SCENE 1 — CHIT-CHAT OF TWO MANHATTAN BELLES Scene. An Aparimeiit at CJiarlotte's Charlotte and Letitia discovered Letitia. And so, Charlotte, you really think the pocket-hoop unbecoming. Charlotte. No, I don't say so. It may be very becoming to saunter round the house of a rainy day ; to visit my grandmamma, or to go to Quakers' meeting ; but to swim in a minuet with the eyes of fifty well-dressed beaux upon me, to trip it in the Mall, or walk on the Battery, give me the luxurious, jaunty, flow- ing bell-hoop. It would have delighted you to have seen me the last evening, my charming girl ; I was dangling o'er the Battery with Billy Dimple ; a knot of young fellows were upon the plat- form ; as I passed them I faltered with one of the most bewitch- ing false steps you ever saw, and then recovered myself with such a pretty confusion, flirting my hoop to discover a jet-black shoe and brilliant buckle. Gad ! how my little heart thrilled to hear the confused raptures of — " Demme, Jack, what a delicate foot ! " " Ha ! General, what a well turned — " Let. Fie ! fie ! Charlotte (Stopping her moictJi) I protest you are quite a libertine. 1 62 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Charl. Why, my dear little prude, are we not all such liber- tines ? Do you think that when I sat tortured two hours under the hands of my friseur, and an hour more at my toilet, that I had any thought of my aunt Susan, or my cousin Betsey ? though they are both allowed to be critical judges of dress. Let. Why, whom should we dress to please, but those who are judges of its merit ? CnARL. Why a creature who does not know Bujfon from Souflce — Man ! — my Letitia — Man ! for whom we dress, walk, dance, talk, lisp, languish, and smile. Does not the grave Spectator assure us, that even our much bepraised diffidence, modesty, and blushes, are all directed to make ourselves good wives and mothers as fast as we can. Why, I '11 undertake with one flirt of this hoop to bring more beaux to my feet in one week, than the grave Maria, and her senti- mental circle, can do, by sighing sentiment till their hairs are gray. Let. Well, I won't argue with you ; you always out-talk me ; let us change the subject. I hear that Mr. Dimple and Maria are soon to be married, Charl. You hear true. I was consulted in the choice of the wedding clothes. She is to be married in a delicate white satin, and has a monstrous pretty brocaded lutestring for the second day. It would have done you good to have seen with what an affected indifference the dear sentimentalist turned over a thousand pretty things, just as if her heart did not palpitate with her approaching happiness, and at last made her choice, and arranged her dress with such apathy, as if she did not know that plain white satin, and a simple blond lace, would show her clear skin, and dark hair, to the greatest advantage. Let. But they say her indifference to dress, and even to the gentleman himself, is not entirely affected. Charl. How .? Let. It is whispered that if Maria gives her hand to Mr. Dimple, it will be without her heart. Charl. Though the giving of the heart is one of the last of all laughable considerations in the marriage of a girl of spirit, yet I should like to hear what antiquated notions the dear little piece of old-fashioned prudery has got in her head. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 163 Let. Why you know that old Mr. John-Richard-Robert-Jacob- Isaac-Abraham-Cornehus Van DumpHng, Billy Dimple's father (for he has thought fit to soften his name as well as his manners, during his English tour), was the most intimate friend of Maria's father. The old folks, about a year before Mr. Van Dumpling's death, proposed this match : the young folks were accordingly in- troduced, and told they must love one another. Billy was then a good-natured, decent, dressing young fellow, with a little dash of the coxcomb, such as our young fellows of fortune usually have. At this time, I really believe, she thought she loved him ; and had they then been married, I doubt not, they might have jogged on, to the end of the chapter, a good kind of sing-song lackadaisical life, as other honest married folks do. Charl. Why did they not then marry ? Let. Upon the death of his father, Billy went to England to see the world and rub off a little of the patroon rust. During his absence, Maria, like a good girl, to keep herself constant to her own true love, avoided company, and betook herself, for her amuse- ment, to her books, and her dear Billy's letters. But, alas ! how many ways has the mischievous demon of inconstancy of stealing into a woman's heart ! Her love was destroyed by the very means she took to support it. Charl. How ? — Oh ! I have it — some likely young beau found the way to her study. Let. Be patient, Charlotte, your head so runs upon beaux. — Why she read " Sir Charles Grandison," " Clarissa Harlowe," " Shenstone," and the "Sentimental Journey"; and between whiles, as I said, Billy's letters. But as her taste improved, her love declined. The contrast was so striking betwixt the good sense of her books, and the flimsiness of her love-letters, that she dis- covered that she had unthinkingly engaged her hand without her heart ; and then the whole transaction managed by the old folks now appeared so unsentimental, and looked so like bargaining for a bale of goods, that she found she ought to have rejected, accord- ing to every rule of romance, even the man of her choice, if im- posed upon her in that manner — Clary Harlowe would have scorned such a match. 1 64 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Charl. Well, how was it on Mr. Dimple's return ? Did he meet a more favorable reception than his letters ? Let. Much the same. She spoke of him with respect abroad, and with contempt in her closet. She watched his conduct and conversation, and found that he had by travelling acquired the wickedness of Lovelace without his wit, and the politeness of Sir Charles Grandison without his generosity. The ruddy youth who washed his face at the cistern every morning, and swore and looked eternal love and constancy, was now metamorphosed into a flippant, pallid, polite beau, who devotes the morning to his toilet, reads a few pages of "Chesterfield's Letters," and then minces out, to put the infamous principles in practice upon every woman he meets. Charl. But if she is so apt at conjuring up these sentimental bugbears, why does she not discard him at once ? Let. Why, she thinks her word too sacred to be trifled with. Besides, her father, who has a great respect for the memory of his deceased friend, is ever telling her how he shall renew his years in their union, and repeating the dying injunctions of old Van Dumpling. Charl. A mighty pretty story ! And so you would make me believe that the sensible Maria would give up Dumpling manor, and the all-accomplished Dimple as a husband, for the absurd, ridiculous reason, forsooth, because she despises and abhors him. Just as if a lady could not be privileged to spend a man's fortune, ride in his carriage, be called after his name, and call him her ozuii dear-lovee when she wants money, without loving and respecting the great he-creature. Oh ! my dear girl, you are a monstrous prude. Let. I don't say what I would do ; I only intimate how I sup- pose she wishes to act. Charl. No, no, no ! a fig for sentiment. If she breaks, or wishes to break, with Mr. Dimple, depend upon it, she has some other man in her eye. A woman rarely discards one lover until she is sure of another. — Letitia little thinks what a clew I have to Dimple's conduct. The generous man submits to render himself disgusting to Maria, in order that she may leave him at liberty to address me. I must change the subject. {Aside, and rings a bell.) THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 165 Enter Servant Frank, order the horses to. — Talking of marriage — did you hear that Sally Bloomsbury is going to be married next week to Mr. Indigo, the rich Carolinian ? Let. Sally Bloomsbury married ! — Why she is not yet in her teens. Charl. I do not know how that is, but you may depend upon it, 't is a done ai¥air. I have it from the best authority. There is my Aunt Wyerley's Hannah (You know Hannah — though a black, she is a wench that was never caught in a lie in her life) ; now Hannah has a brother who courts Sarah, Mrs. Catgut the milliner's girl, and she told Hannah's brother, and Hannah, who, as I said before, is a girl of undoubted veracity, told it directly to me, that Mrs. Catgut was making a new cap for Miss Bloomsbury, which, as it was very dressy, it is very probable is designed for a wed- ding cap ; now, as she is to be married, who can it be to, but to Mr. Indigo } Why, there is no other gentleman that visits at her papa's. Let. Say not a word more, Charlotte. Your intelligence is so direct and well grounded, it is almost a pity that it is not a piece of scandal. Charl. Oh ! I am the pink of prudence. Though I cannot charge myself with ever having discredited a tea-party by my silence, yet I take care never to report anything of my acquaintance, es- pecially if it is to their credit — discredit I mean — until I have searched to the bottom of it. It is true there is infinite pleasure in this charitable pursuit. Oh ! how delicious to go and condole with the friends of some backsliding sister, or to retire with some old dowager or maiden aunt of the family, who love scandal so well, that they cannot forbear gratifying their appetite at the expense of the reputation of their nearest relations. And then to return full- fraught with a rich collection of circumstances, to retail to the next circle of our acquaintance under the strongest injunctions of secrecy, — ha, ha, ha ! — interlarding the melancholy tale with so many doleful shakes of the head, and more doleful "Ah ! who would have thought it ! so amiable, so prudent a young lady, as we all thought her, what 1 66 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE a monstrous pity ! well, I have nothing to charge myself with ; I acted the part of a friend, I warned her of the principles of that rake, I told her what would be the consequence ; I told her so, I told her so." — Ha, ha, ha ! Let. Ha, ha, ha ! Well, but Charlotte, you don't tell me what you think of Miss Bloomsbury's match. Charl. Think ! why I think it is probable she cried for a play- thing, and they have given her a husband. Well, well, well, the puling chit shall not be deprived of her plaything : 't is only ex- changing London dolls for American babies — apropos, of babies, have you heard what Mrs. Affable's high flying notions of delicacy have come to .'' Let, Who, she that was Miss Lovely } Charl. The same ; she married Bob Affable of Schenectady. Don't you remember ? Enter Servant Servant. Madam, the carriage is ready. Let. Shall we go to the stores first, or visiting } Charl. I should think it rather too early to visit ; especially Mrs. Prim : you know she is so particular. Let. But what of Mrs. Affable .? Charl. Oh, I '11 tell you as we go ; come, come, let us hasten. I hear Mrs. Catgut has some of the prettiest caps arrived, you ever saw. I shall die if I have not the first sight of them. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 167 CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN [Born at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 17, 1771 ; died February 22, 1810] WIELAND'S DEFENCE (WiELAND ; OR THE TRANSFORMATION, 1 798) Theodore Wieland, the prisoner at the bar, was now called upon for his defence. He looked around him for some time in silence, and with a mild countenance. At length he spoke : — "It is strange : I am known to my judges and my auditors. Who is there present a stranger to the character of Wieland ? who knows him not as a husband, — as a father, — as a friend ? yet here am I arraigned as a criminal. I am charged with dia- bolical malice ; I am accused of the murder of my wife and my children ! "It is true, they were slain by me ; they all perished by my hand. The task of vindication is ignoble. What is it that I am called to vindicate .'' and before whom .-' " You know that they are dead, and that they were killed by me. What more would you have ? Would you extort from me a state- ment of my motives ? Have you failed to discover them already .? You charge me with malice ; but your eyes are not shut ; your reason is still vigorous ; your memory has not forsaken you. You know whom it is that you thus charge. The habits of his life are known to you ; his treatment of his wife and his offspring is known to you ; the soundness of his integrity, and the unchangeableness of his principles, are familiar to your apprehension ; yet you per- sist in this charge ! You lead me hither manacled as a felon ; you deem me worthy of a vile and tormenting death ! " Who are they whom I have devoted to death .'' My wife — the little ones, that drew their being from me — that creature who, as she surpassed them in excellence, claimed a larger affection than those whom natural affinities bound to my heart. Think ye that malice could have urged me to do this deed ? Hide your audacious fronts from the scrutiny of heaven. Take refuge in some cavern 1 68 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE unvisited by human eyes. Ye may deplore your wickedness or folly, but ye cannot expiate it. " Think not that I speak for your sakes. Hug to your hearts this detestable infatuation. Deem me still a murderer, and drag me to untimely death. I make not an effort to dispel your illusion ; I utter not a word to cure you of your sanguinary folly ; but there are probably some in this assembly who have come from far ; for their sakes, whose distance has disabled them from knowing me, I will tell what I have done and why. "It is needless to say that God is the object of my supreme passion. I have cherished in his presence a single and upright heart. I have thirsted for the knowledge of his will. I have burnt with ardor to approve my faith and my obedience. " My days have been spent in searching for the revelation of that will ; but my days have been mournful, because my search failed. I solicited direction ; I turned on every side where glimmerings of light could be discovered. I have not been wholly uninformed ; but my knowledge has always stopped short of certainty. Dissat- isfaction has insinuated itself into all of my thoughts. My pur- poses have been pure, my wishes indefatigable ; but not till lately were those purposes thoroughly accomplished and these wishes fully gratified. " I thank thee, my Father, for thy bounty ; that thou didst not ask a less sacrifice than this ; that thou placedst me in a condition to testify my submission to thy will ! What have I withheld which it was thy pleasure to exact ? Now may I, with dauntless eye, claim my reward, since I have given thee the treasure of my soul. '" I was at my own house ; it was late in the evening ; my sister had gone to the city, but proposed to return. It was in expectation of her return that my wife and I delayed going to bed beyond the usual hour ; the rest of the family, however, were retired. '" My mind was contemplative and calm, — not wholly devoid of apprehension on account of my sister's safety. Recent events, not easily explained, had suggested the existence of some danger ; but this danger was without a distinct form in our imagination, and scarcely ruffled our tranquillity. " Time passed, and my sister did not arrive. Her house is at THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 169 some distance from mine, and, though her arrangements had been made with a view to residing with us, it was possible that, through forgetfulness, or the occurrence of unforeseen emergencies, she had returned to her own dwelhng. " Hence it was conceived proper that I should ascertain the truth by going thither. I went. On my way my mind was full of those ideas which related to my intellectual condition. In the tor- rent of fervid conceptions, I lost sight of my purpose. Sometimes, I stood still ; sometimes I wandered from my path, and experienced some difficulty, on recovering from my fit of musing, to regain it. " The series of my thoughts is easily traced. At first every vein beat with raptures known only to the man whose parental and con- jugal love is without limits, and the cup of whose desires, immense as it is, overflows with gratification. I know not why emotions that were perpetual visitants should now have recurred with un- usual energy. The transition was not new from sensations of joy to a consciousness of gratitude. The Author of my being was em- bellished. The service to which a benefactor like this was entitled could not be circumscribed. My social sentiments were indebted to their alliance with devotion for all their value. All passions are base, all joys feeble, all energies malignant, which are not drawn from this source. " For a time my contemplations soared above earth and its in- habitants. I stretched forth my hands ; I lifted my eyes, and ex- claimed, ' Oh that I might be admitted to thy presence ! that mine were the supreme delight of knowing thy will, and of performing it ! — the blissful privilege of direct communication with thee, and of listening to the audible enunciation of thy pleasure ! What task would I not undertake, what privation would I not cheerfully endure, to testify my love of thee ? Alas ! thou hidest thyself from my view ; glimpses only of thy excellence and beauty are afforded me. Would that a momentary emanation from thy glory would visit me ! that some unambiguous token of thy presence would salute my senses ! ' "In this mood I entered the house of my sister. It was vacant. Scarcely had I regained recollection of the purpose that brought me hither. Thoughts of a different tendency had such absolute •I/O READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE possession of my mind, that the relations of time and space were almost obliterated from my understanding. These wanderings, however, were restrained, and I ascended to her chamber. " I had no light, and might have known by external observation that the house was without any inhabitant. With this, however, I was not satisfied. I entered the room, and, the object of my search not appearing, I prepared to return. "The darkness required some caution in descending the stair. I stretched my hand to seize the balustrade by which I might regulate my steps. How shall I describe the lustre which at that moment burst upon my vision } " I was dazzled. My organs were bereaved of their activity. My eyelids were half closed, and my hands withdrawn from the balustrade. A nameless fear chilled my veins, and I stood motion- less. This irradiation did not retire or lessen. It seemed as if some powerful effulgence covered me like a mantle. " I opened my eyes and found all about me luminous and glow- ing. It was the element of heaven that flowed around. Nothing but a fiery stream was at first visible ; but, anon, a shrill voice from behind called upon me to attend. " I turned. It is forbidden to describe what I saw ; words, in- deed, would be wanting to the task. The lineaments of that being whose veil was now lifted and whose visage beamed upon my sight, no hues of pencil or of language can portray. "As it spoke, the accents thrilled to my heart : — " Thy prayers are heard. In proof of thy faith, render me thy wife. This is the victim I choose. Call her hither and here let her fall.' The sound, and visage, and light vanished at once. " What demand was this ? The blood of Catherine was to be shed ! My wife was to perish by my hand ! I sought opportunity to attest my virtue. Little did I expect that a proof like this would have been demanded. " " My wife ! ' I exclaimed ; ' O God ! substitute some other victim. Make me not the butcher of my wife. My own blood is cheap. This will I pour out before thee with a willing heart ; but spare, I beseech thee, this precious life, or commission some other than her husband to perform the bloody deed.' THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 1 71 '" In vain. The conditions were prescribed ; the decree had gone forth, and nothing remained but to execute it. I rushed out of the house and across the intermediate fields, and stopped not till I entered my own parlor. " My wife had remained here during my absence, in anxious expectation of my return with some tidings of her sister. I had none to communicate. For a time I was breathless with my speed. This, and the tremors that shook my frame, and the wildness of my looks, alarmed her. She immediately suspected some disaster to have happened to her friend, and her own speech was as much overpowered by emotion as mine. " She was silent, but her looks manifested her impatience to hear what I had to communicate. I spoke, but with so much pre- cipitation as scarcely to be understood ; catching her, at the same time, by the arm, and forcibly pulling her from her seat. " " Come along with me ; fly ; waste not a moment ; time will be lost, and the deed will be omitted. Tarry not ; question not ; but fly with me ! ' "' This deportment added fresh to her alarms. Her eyes pursued mine, and she said, ' What is the matter ? For God's sake, what is the matter ? Where would you have me go ? ' " My eyes were fixed upon her countenance while she spoke. I thought upon her virtues, I viewed her as the mother of my babes ; as my wife. I recalled the purpose for which I thus urged her attendance. My heart faltered, and I saw that I must rouse to this work all my faculties. The danger of the least delay was imminent. " I looked away from her, and again exerting my force, drew her towards the door : — ' You must go with me ; indeed you must.' "In her fright she half resisted my efforts, and again exclaimed, ' Good heaven ! what is it you mean .-' Where go ? What has hap- pened ? Have you found Clara ? ' " ' Follow me, and you will see,' I answered, still urging her reluctant steps forward. " ' What frenzy has seized you .-• Something must needs have happened. Is she sick ? Have you found her ? ' " ' Come and see. Follow me, and know for yourself.' 172 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE " Still she expostulated, and besought me to explain this mys- terious behavior. I could not trust myself to answer her, to look at her ; but grasping her arm, I drew her after me. She hesitated, rather through confusion of mind than from unwillingness to ac- company me. This confusion gradually abated, and she moved forward, but with irresolute footsteps and continual exclamations of wonder and terror. Her interrogations of ' what was the matter ? ' and ' whither was I going ? ' were ceaseless and vehement. " It was the scope of my efforts not to think ; to keep up a con- flict and uproar in my mind in which all order and distinctness should be lost ; to escape from the sensations produced by her voice. I was therefore silent. I strove to abridge this interval by my haste, and to waste all my attentions in furious gesticulations. " In this state of mind we reached my sister's door. She looked at the windows and saw that all was desolate. " Why come we here .'' There is nobody here. I will not go in.' " Still I was dumb ; but, opening the door, I drew her into the entry. This was the allotted scene ; here she was to fall. I let go her hand, and pressing my palms against my forehead, made one mighty effort to work up my, soul to the deed. "In vain, it would not be ; my courage was appalled, my arms nerveless. I muttered prayers that my strength might be aided from above. They availed nothing. "Horror diffused itself over me. This conviction of my coward- ice, my rebellion, fastened upon me, and I stood rigid and cold as marble. From this state I was somewhat relieved by my wife's voice, who renewed her supplications to be told why we came hither and what was the fate of my sister. "What could I answer.? My words were broken and inarticulate. Her fears naturally acquired force from the observation of these symptoms ; but these fears were misplaced. The only inference she deduced from my conduct was that some terrible mishap had befallen Clara. " She wrung her hands, and exclaimed, in an agony, " Oh, tell me, where is she.? What has become of her,? Is she sick.? Dead.? Is she in her chamber .? Oh, let me go thither and know the worst ! ' THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 173 " This proposal set my thoughts once more in motion. Perhaps what my rebellious heart refused to perform here, I might obtain strength enough to execute elsewhere. " ' Come, then,' said I ; 'let us go.' '" ' I will, but not in the dark. We must first procure a light.' " ' Fly, then, and procure it ; but, I charge you, linger not. I will await for your return.' " While she was gone I strode along the entry. The fellness of a gloomy hurricane but faintly resembled the discord that reigned in my mind. To omit this sacrifice must not be ; yet my sinews had refused to perform it. No alternative was offered. To rebel against the mandate was impossible ; but obedience would render me the executioner of my wife. My will was strong but my limbs refused their office. " She returned with a light. I led the way to the chamber : she looked round her ; she lifted the curtain of the bed ; she saw nothing. "' At length she fixed inquiring eyes upon me. The light now enabled her to discover in my visage what darkness had hitherto concealed. Her cares were now transferred from my sister to my- self, and she said, in a tremulous voice, ' Wieland, you are not well : what ails you ? Can I do nothing for you .'* ' "That accents and looks so winning should disarm me of my resolution, was to be expected. My thoughts were thrown anew into anarchy. I spread my hand before my eyes that I might not see her, and answered only by groans. She took my other hand between hers, and pressing it to her heart, spoke with that voice which had ever swayed my will and wafted away sorrow, '" ' My friend ! my soul's friend ! tell me thy cause of grief. Do I not merit to partake with thee in thy cares ? Am I not thy wife ? ' " This was too much. I broke from her embrace, and retired to a corner of the room. In this pause, courage was once more infused into me. I resolved to execute my duty. She followed me, and renewed her passionate entreaties to know the cause of my distress. " I raised my head and regarded her with steadfast looks. I muttered something about death, and the injunctions of my duty. 174 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE At these words she shrunk back, and looked at me with a new expression of anguish. After a pause, she clasped her hands, and exclaimed, — "' " Oh, Wieland ! Wieland ! God grant that I am mistaken ! but something surely is wrong. I see it ; it is too plain ; thou art undone, lost to me and to thyself ! ' At the same time she gazed on my features with intensest anxiety, in hope that different symptoms would take place. I replied to her with vehemence, — " ' Undone ! No ; my duty is known, and I thank my God that my cowardice is now vanquished, and I have power to fulfill it. Catherine, I pity the weakness of thy nature ; I pity thee, but must not spare. Thy life is claimed from my hands ; thou must die ! ' " Fear was now added to her grief. ' What mean you ? Why talk you of death ? Bethink yourself, Wieland ; bethink yourself, and this fit will pass. Oh, why came I hither.? Why did you drag me hither .? ' " " I brought thee hither to fulfill a divine command. I am appointed thy destroyer, and destroy thee I must.' Saying this, I seized her wrists. She shrieked aloud, and endeavored to free herself from my grasp ; but her efforts were vain. " ' Surely, surely, Wieland, thou dost not mean it. Am I not thy wife ? and would'st thou kill me } Thou wilt not ; and yet — I see — thou art Wieland no longer ! A fury resistless and horri- ble possesses thee : — spare me — spare — help — help — ' "Till her breath was stopped she shrieked for help, — for mercy. When she could speak no longer, her gestures, her looks appealed to my compassion. My accursed hand was irresolute and tremulous. I meant thy death to be sudden, thy struggles to be brief. Alas ! my heart was infirm, my resolves mutable. Thrice I slacked my grasp, and life kept its hold, though in the midst of pangs. Her eyeballs started from their sockets. Grimness and distortion took place of all that used to bewitch me into transport and subdue me into reverence, " ' I was commissioned to kill thee, but not to torment thee with the foresight of thy death ; not to multiply thy fears and prolong thy agonies. Haggard, and pale, and lifeless, at length thou ceased'st to contend with thy destiny.' THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 1/5 ' This was a moment of triumph. Thus had I successfully sub- dued the stubbornness of human passions : the victim which had been demanded was given ; the deed was done past recall. " I lifted the corpse in my arms and laid it on the bed. I gazed upon it with delight. Such was the elation of my thoughts, that I even broke into laughter. I clapped my hands and exclaimed, " It is done ! My sacred duty is fulfilled ! To that I have sacrificed, my God ! thy last and best gift, my wife ! ' " For a while I thus soared against frailty. I imagined I had set myself forever beyond the reach of selfishness ; but my im- aginations were false. This rapture quickly subsided. I looked again at my wife. My joyous ebullitions vanished, and I asked myself who it was whom I saw. Methought it could not be Catherine. It could not be the woman who had lodged for years in my heart ; whom I had watched with delight, and cherished with a fondness ever new and perpetually growing ; it could not be the same. Where was her bloom .? These deadly and blood- suffused orbs but ill resemble the azure and ecstatic tenderness of her eyes. The lucid stream that meandered over that bosom, the glow of love that was wont to sit upon that cheek, are much unlike these livid stains and this hideous deformity. Alas ! these were the traces of agony ; the gripe of the assassin had been there ! " I will not dwell upon my lapse into desperate and outrageous sorrow. The breath of heaven that sustained me was withdrawn, and I sunk into mere man. I leaped from the floor ; I dashed my head against the wall ; I uttered screams of horror ; I panted after torment and pain. Eternal fire, and the bickerings of hell, compared with what I felt, were music and a bed of roses. " I thank my God that this degeneracy was transient, — that he deigned once more to raise me aloft. I thought upon what I had done as a sacrifice to duty, and xvas calm. My wife was dead ; but 1 reflected that though this source of human consolation was closed, yet others were still open. If the transports of a husband were no more, the feelings of a father had still scope for exercise. When remembrance of their mother should excite too keen a pang, I would look upon them and be comforted. 176 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE " While I resolved these ideas, new warmth flowed in upon my heart — I was wrong. These feelings were the growth of selfish- ness. Of this I was not aware, and, to dispel the mist that ob- scured my perceptions, a new effulgence, and a new mandate were necessary. " From these thoughts I was recalled by a ray that was shot into the room. A voice spake like that which I had before heard : — 'Thou hast done well. But all is not done — the sacrifice is incomplete — thy children must be offered — they must perish with their mother ! — ' " EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE [Born at New York City, August 7, 1795 ; died at New York City, September 21, 1820] THE FAY'S SENTENCE From " The Culprit Fay " The monarch sat on his judgment-seat, On his brow the crown imperial shone, The prisoner Fay was at his feet, And his peers were ranged around the throne. He waved his sceptre in the air ; He looked around and calmly spoke ; His brow was grave and his eye severe, But his voice in a softened accent broke : " Fairy ! Fairy ! list and mark. Thou hast broken thine elfin chain. Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark. And thy wings are dyed with a deadly stain — Thou hast sullied thine elfin purity In the glance of a mortal maiden's eye, Thou hast scorned our dread decree, And thou shouldst pay the forfeit high, But well I know her sinless mind Is pure as the angel forms above. Gentle and meek and chaste and kind, Such as a spirit well might love ; Fairy ! had she spot or taint. Bitter had been thy punishment. 177 178 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Tied to the hornet's shardy wings ; Tossed on the pricks of nettle's stings ; Or seven long ages doomed to dwell With the lazy worm in the walnut-shell ; Or every night to writhe and bleed Beneath the tread of the centipede ; Or bound in a cobweb dungeon dim, Your jailor a spider huge and grim, Amid the carrion bodies to lie. Of the worm, and the bug, and the murdered fly ; These it had been your lot to bear, Had a stain been found on the earthly fair. Now list, and mark our mild decree — Fairy, this your doom must be : " Thou shalt seek the beach of sand Where the water bounds the elfin land, Thou shalt watch the oozy brine Till the sturgeon leaps in the bright moonshine, Then dart the glistening arch below. And catch a drop from his silver bow. And dash around, with roar and rave, And vain are the woodland spirits' charms, They are the imps that rule the wave. Yet trust thee in thy single might, — If thy heart be pure and thy spirit right. Thou shalt win the warlock fight. " If the spray-bead gem be won, The stain of thy wing is washed away, But another errand must be done Ere the crime be lost for aye ; Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark, Thou must re-illumine its spark. Mount thy steed and spur him high To the heaven's blue canopy ; And when thou seest a shooting star, Follow it fast, and follow it far — I EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 179 The last faint spark of its burning train Shall light the elfin lamp again. Thou hast heard our sentence, Fay ; Hence ! to the water-side, away ! " THE SECOND QUEST Up, Fairy ! quit thy chickweed bower, The cricket has called the second hour. Twice again, and the lark will rise To kiss the streaking of the skies — Up ! thy charmed armor don, Thou 'It need it ere the night be gone. He put his acorn helmet on ; It was plumed of the silk of the thistle-down ; The corselet plate that guarded his breast Was once the wild bee's golden vest ; His cloak, of a thousand mingled dyes. Was formed of the wings of butterflies ; His shield was the shell of a lady-bug queen. Studs of gold on a ground of green ; And the quivering lance which he brandished bright, Was the sting of a wasp he had slain in fight. Swift he bestrode his fire-fly steed ; He bared his blade of the bent- grass blue ; He drove his spurs of the cockle-seed. And away like a glance of thought he flew, To skim the heavens and follow far The fiery trail of the rocket-star. The moth-fly, as he shot in air. Crept under the leaf, and hid her there ; The katy-did forgot its lay. The prowling gnat fled fast away, The fell mosquito checked his drone, And folded his wings till the Fay was gone. l8o READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And the wily beetle dropped his head, And fell on the ground as if he were dead ; They crouched them close in the darksome shade, They quaked all o'er with awe and fear, For they had felt the blue-bent blade, And writhed at the prick of the elfin spear ; Many a time, on a summer's night, When the sky was clear and the moon was bright. They had been roused from the haunted ground By the yelp and bay of the fairy hound ; They had heard the tiny bugle-horn. They had heard the twang of the maize-silk string, When the vine-twig bows were tightly drawn, And the nettle-shaft through air was borne. Feathered with down of the humbird's wing. And now they deemed the courier ouphe. Some hunter-sprite of the elfin ground ; And they watched till they saw him mount the roof That canopies the world around ; Then glad they left their covert lair. And freaked about in the midnight air. THE AMERICAN FLAG When Freedom from her mountain height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure celestial white With streakings of the morning light ; Then from his mansion in the sun She called her eagle bearer down. And gave into his mighty hand The symbol of her chosen land. EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD l8l Majestic monarch of the cloud. Who rear'st aloft thy regal form, To hear the tempest trumpings loud And see the lightning lances driven, When strive the warriors of the storm, And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven, Child of the sun ! to thee 't is given To guard the banner of the free, To hover in the sulphur smoke. To bid its blendings shine afar, Like rainbows on the cloud of war, The harbingers of victory ! Flag of the brave ! thy folds shall fly. The sign of hope and triumph high, When speaks the signal trumpet tone, And the long line comes gleaming on. Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet. Has dimmed the glistening bayonet. Each soldier eye shall brightly turn To where the sky-born glories burn, And, as his springing steps advance. Catch war and vengeance from the glance. And when the cannon-mouthings loud Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud, And gory sabres rise and fall Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall. Then shall thy meteor glances glow, And cowering foes shall shrink beneath Each gallant arm that strikes below That lovely messenger of death. Flag of the seas ! On ocean wave Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave ; When death, careering on the gale, Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail. 1 82 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And frightened waves rush wildly back Before the broadside's reeling rack, Each dying wanderer of the sea Shall look at once to heaven and thee, And smile to see thy splendors fiy In triumph o'er his closing eye. Flag of the free heart's hope and home ! By angel hands to valor given ; Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, And all thy hues were born in heaven. Forever float that standard sheet ! Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us ? FITZ-GREENE HALLECK [Born at Guilford, Connecticut, July 8, i 790 ; died at Guilford, Connecticut, November 19, 1867] ON THE DEATH OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE Green be the turf above thee, Friend of my better days ! None knew thee but to love thee, Nor named thee but to praise. Tears fell when thou wert dying, From eyes unused to weep. And long, where thou art lying. Will tears the cold turf steep. When hearts, whose truth was proven, Like thine, are laid in earth, There should a wreath be woven To tell the world their worth ; EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD i8; And I who woke each morrow To clasp thy hand in mine, Who shared thy joy and sorrow, Whose weal and woe were thine ; It should be mine to braid it Around thy faded brow, But I 've in vain essayed it. And feel I cannot now. While memory bids me weep thee, Nor thoughts nor words are free, — The grief is fixed too deeply That mourns a man like thee. MARCO BOZZARIS At midnight, in his guarded tent, The Turk was dreaming of the hour When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent. Should tremble at his power : In dreams, through camp and court, he bore The trophies of a conqueror ; In dreams his song of triumph heard ; Then wore his monarch's signet ring : Then pressed that monarch's throne — a king; As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing. As Eden's garden bird. At midnight, in the forest shades, Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band. True as the steel of their tried blades, Heroes in heart and hand. There had the Persian's thousands stood. There had the glad earth drunk their blood On old Platsea's day ; And now there breathed that haunted air 1 84 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE The sons of sires who conquered there, With arm to strike and soul to dare, As quick, as far as they. An hour passed on — the Turk awoke ; That bright dream was his last ; He woke — to hear his sentries shriek, " To arms ! they come ! the Greek ! the Greek ! " He woke — to die midst flame, and smoke, And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke. And death-shots falling thick and fast As lightnings from the mountain-cloud ; And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, Bozzaris cheer his band : " Strike — till the last armed foe expires ; Strike — for your altars and your fires ; Strike — for the green graves of your sires ; God — and your native land ! " They fought — like brave men, long and well ; They piled that ground with Moslem slain, They conquered — but Bozzaris fell, Bleeding at every vein. His few surviving comrades saw His smile when rang their proud hurrah. And the red field was won ; Then saw in death his eyelids close Calmly, as to a night's repose. Like flowers at set of sun. Come to the bridal-chamber. Death ! Come to the mother's, when she feels, For the first time, her first-born's breath ; Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke ; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm ; EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 185 Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet-song and dance, and wine ; And thou art terrible — the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know, or dream, or fear Of agony, are thine. But to the hero, when his sword Has won the battle for the free. Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word ; And in its hollow tones are heard The thanks of millions yet to be. Come, when his task of fame is wrought — Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought — Come in her crowning hour — and then Thy sunken eye's unearthly light To him is welcome as the sight Of sky and stars to prisoned men ; Thy grasp is welcome as the hand Of brother in a foreign land ; Thy summons welcome as the cry That told the Indian isles were nigh To the world-seeking Genoese, When the land wind, from woods of palm, And orange-groves, and fields of balm, Blew o'er the Haytian seas. Bozzaris ! with the storied brave Greece nurtured in her glory's time, Rest thee — there is no prouder grave, Even in her own proud clime. She wore no funeral-weeds for thee. Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume Like torn branch from death's leafless tree In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, The heartless luxury of the tomb ; But she remembers thee as one 1 86 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Long loved and for a season gone ; For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed ; For thee she rings the birthday bells ; Of thee her babe's first lisping tells ; For thine her evening prayer is said At palace-couch and cottage-bed ; Her soldier, closing with the foe. Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow ; His plighted maiden, when she fears For him the joy of her young years, Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears ; And she, the mother of thy boys, Though in her eye and faded cheek Is read the grief she will not speak, The memory of her buried joys, And even she who gave thee birth Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth. Talk of thy doom without a sigh ; For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's : One of the few, the immortal names. That were not born to die. WASHINGTON IRVING [Born at New York City, April 3, 1 7S3 ; died at " Sunnyside,'' near Tarrytown, New York, November 28, 1859] GOVERNOR WOUTER VAN TWILLER From "A Histoky of Nkw York by Diedrich Knickerbocker" It was in the year of our Lord 1629 that Mynheer Wouter Van Twiller was appointed governor of the province of Nieuw Nether- lands, under the commission and control of their High Mighti- nesses the Lords States General of the United Netherlands, and privileged West India Company. EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 187 This renowned old gentleman arrived at New Amsterdam in the merry month of June, the sweetest month in all the year ; when Dan Apollo seems to dance up the transparent firmament, — when the robin, the thrush, and a thousand other wanton song- sters, make the woods to resound with amorous ditties, and the luxurious little boblincon revels among the clover blossoms of the meadows, — all which happy coincidence persuaded the old dames of New Amsterdam, who were skilled in the art of fore- telling events, that this was to be a happy and prosperous administration. The renowned Wouter (or Walter) Van Twiller was descended from a long line of Dutch burgomasters, who had successively dozed away their lives, and grown fat upon the bench of magis- tracy in Rotterdam ; and who had comported themselves with such singular wisdom and propriety, that they were never either heard or talked of — which, next to being universally applauded, should be the object of ambition of all magistrates and rulers. There are two opposite ways by which some men make a figure in the world : one, by talking faster than they think, and the other, by holding their tongues and not thinking at all. By the first, many a smatterer acquires the reputation of a man of quick parts ; by the other, many a dunderpate, like the owl, the stupidest of birds, comes to be considered the very type of wisdom. This, by the way, is a casual remark, which I would not for the universe, have it thought that I apply to Governor Van Twiller. It is true he was a man shut up within himself, like an oyster, and rarely spoke, except in monosyllables ; but then it was allowed he sel- dom said a foolish thing. So invincible was his gravity that he was never known to laugh, or even to smile, through the whole course of a long and prosperous life. Nay, if a joke were uttered in his presence, that set light-minded hearers in a roar, it was observed to throw him into a state of perplexity. Sometimes he would deign to inquire into the matter, and when, after much explanation, the joke was made as plain as a pike-staff, he would continue to smoke his pipe in silence, and at length, knocking out the ashes, would exclaim, " Well, I see nothing in all that to laugh about." 1 88 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE With all his reflective habits, he never made up his mind on a subject. His adherents accounted for this by the astonishing mag- nitude of his ideas. He conceived every subject on so grand a scale that he had not room in his head to turn it over and examine both sides of it. Certain it is, that if any matter were propounded to him on which ordinary mortals would rashly determine at first glance, he would put on a vague, mysterious look, shake his capa- cious head, smoke some time in profound silence, and at length observe, that "" he had his doubts about the matter " ; which gained him the reputation of a man slow of belief and not easily imposed upon. What is more, it gained him a lasting name ; for to this habit of the mind has been attributed his surname Twiller ; which is said to be a corruption of the original Twijfler, or, in plain English, Doubter. The person of this illustrious old gentleman was formed and proportioned, as though it had been moulded by the hands of some cunning Dutch statuary, as a model of majesty and lordly grandeur. He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere, and of such stupendous dimensions, that Dame Nature, with all her sex's ingenuity, would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it ; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and settled it firmly on the top of his backbone, just between the shoulders. His body was oblong and particularly capacious at bottom ; which was wisely ordered by Providence, seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits, and very averse to the idle labor of walking. His legs were short, but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain ; so that when erect he had not little the appearance of a beer-barrel on skids. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small grey eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament, and his full red cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like a Spitzenberg apple. EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 189 His habits were as regular as his person. He daily took his four stated meals, appropriating exactly an hour to each ; he smoked and doubted eight hours, and he slept the remaining twelve of the twenty-four. Such was the renowned Wouter Van Twiller, — a true philosopher, for his mind was either elevated above, or tranquilly settled below, the cares and perplexities of this world. He had lived in it for years, without feeling the least curiosity to know whether the sun revolved round it, or it round the sun ; and he had watched, for at least half a century, the smoke curling from his pipe to the ceiling, without once troubling his head with any of those numerous theories by which a philoso- pher would have perplexed his brain, in accounting for its rising above the surrounding atmosphere. In his council he presided with great state and solemnity. He sat in a huge chair of solid oak, hewn in the celebrated forest of the Hague, fabricated by an experienced timberman of Amsterdam, and curiously carved about the arms and feet, into exact imitations of gigantic eagle's claws. Instead of a sceptre, he swayed a long Turkish pipe, wrought with jasmin and amber, which had been presented to a stadtholder of Holland at the conclusion of a treaty with one of the petty Barbary powers. In this stately chair would he sit, and this magnificent pipe would he smoke, shaking his right knee with a constant motion, and fixing his eye for hours together upon a little print of Amsterdam, which hung in a black frame against the opposite wall of the council-chamber. Nay, it has even been said, that when any deliberation of extraordinary length and intricacy was on the carpet, the renowned Wouter would shut his eyes for full two hours at a time, that he might not be dis- turbed by external objects ; and at such times the internal com- motion of his mind was evinced by certain regular guttural sounds, which his admirers declared were merely the noise of conflict, made by his contending doubts and opinions. I90 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW Found among the Papers of the Late Diedrich Knickerbocker A pleasing land of drowsy head it was, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye ; And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, Forever flushing round a summer sky. Castle of Indolence In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they ahvays prudently shortened sail and implored the pro- tection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good house- wives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose ; and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity. I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel- shooting was in a grove of tall walnut-trees that shades one side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noontime, when all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own gun, as it broke the Sabbath stillness around and was prolonged and rever- berated by the angry echoes. If ever I should wish for a retreat whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley. From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 191 settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a high German doctor, during the early days of the settlement ; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his pow-wows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs ; are subject to trances and visions ; and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions ; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole nine-fold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols. The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War, and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk, hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church at no great distance. Indeed, certain of the most authen- tic historians of those parts, who have been careful in collecting and collating the floating facts concerning this spectre, allege that the body of the trooper having been buried in the churchyard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head, and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated, and in a hurry to get back to the churchyard before daybreak. Such is the general purport of this legendary superstition, which has furnished materials for many a wild story in that region of 192 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE shadows ; and the spectre is known at all the country firesides, by the name of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. It is remarkable that the visionary propensity I have mentioned is not confined to the native inhabitants of the valley, but is uncon- sciously imbibed by every one who resides there for a time. How- ever wide awake they may have been before they entered that sleepy region, they are sure, in a little time, to inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow imaginative, to dream dreams, and see apparitions, I mention this peaceful spot with all possible laud ; for it is in such little retired Dutch valleys, found here and there embosomed in the great State of New York, that population, manners, and cus- toms remain fixed ; while the great torrent of migration and improve- ment, which is making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless country, sweeps by them unobserved. They are like those little nooks of still water which border a rapid stream ; where we may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic harbor, undisturbed by the rush of the passing current. Though many years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy shades of Sleepy Hollow, yet I question whether I should not still find the same trees and the same families vegetating in its sheltered bosom. In this by-place of nature, there abode, in a remote period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or, as he ex- pressed it, " tarried," in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instruct- ing the children of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut, a State which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 193 striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scare- crow eloped from a cornfield. His schoolhouse was a low building of one large room, rudely constructed of logs ; the windows partly glazed, and partly patched with leaves of old copy-books. It was most ingeniously secured at vacant hours, by a withe twisted in the handle of the door, and stakes set against the window shutters ; so that though a thief might get in with perfect ease, he would find some embarrassment in get- ting out, — an idea most probably borrowed by the architect, Yost Van Houten, from the mystery of an eelpot. The schoolhouse stood in a rather lonely but pleasant situation, just at the foot of a woody hill, with a brook running close by, and a formidable birch-tree grow- ing at one ^nd of it. From hence the low murmur of his pupils' voices, conning over their lessons, might be heard in a drowsy sum- mer's day, like the hum of a beehive ; interrupted now and then by the authoritative voice of the master, in the tone of menace or command ; or, peradventure, by the appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowl- edge. Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden maxim, " Spare the rod and spoil the child." Ichabod Crane's scholars certainly were not spoiled. I would not have it imagined, however, that he was one of those cruel potentates of the school who joy in the smart of their sub- jects; on the contrary, he administered justice with discrimination rather than severity, taken the burthen off the backs of the weak, and laying it on those of the strong. Your mere puny stripling, that winced at the least flourish of the rod, was passed by with indulgence ; but the claims of justice were satisfied by inflicting a double portion on some little, tough, wrong-headed, broad-skirted Dutch urchin, who sulked, and swelled, and grew dogged and sullen beneath the birch. All this he called "doing his duty" by their parents ; and he never inflicted a chastisement without fol- lowing it by the assurance, so consolatory to the smarting urchin, that "he would remember it, and thank him for it the longest day he had to live." 194 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE When school-hours were over, he was even the companion and playmate of the larger boys ; and, on holiday afternoons, would con- voy some of the smaller ones home, who happened to have pretty sisters or good housewives for mothers noted for the comforts of the cupboard. Indeed, it behooved him to keep on good terms with his pupils. The revenue arising from his school was small and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and, though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda; but to help out his maintenance, he was, according to country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers, whose children he instructed. With these he lived successively a week at a time ; thus going the rounds of the neighbor- hood, with all his worldly effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief. That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of his rustic patrons, who are apt to consider the cost of schooling a grievous burden, and schoolmasters as mere drones, he had various ways of rendering himself both useful and agreeable. He assisted the farmers occasionally in the lighter labors of their farms, helped to make hay, mended the fences, took the horses to water, drove the cows from pasture, and cut wood for the winter fire. He laid aside, too, all the dominant dignity and absolute sway with which he lorded it in his little empire, the school, and became wonder- fully gentle and ingratiating. He found favor in the eyes of the mothers by petting the children, particularly the youngest ; and like the lion bold, which whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold, he would sit with a child on one knee, and rock a cradle with his foot for whole hours together. In addition to his other vocations, he was the singing-master of the neighborhood, and picked up many bright shillings by in- structing the young folks in psalmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to him on Sundays, to take his station in front of the church gallery, with a band of chosen singers ; where, in his own mind, he completely carried away the palm from the parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of the congregation ; and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in that church, and which may even be heard half a mile off, quite to the opposite side of the mill-pond, on a still Sunday morning, which are said to be EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD' 195 legitimately descended from the nose of Ichabod Crane. Thus, by divers little makeshifts in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated "by hook and by crook," the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought, by all who understood nothing of the labor of headwork, to have a wonderfully easy life of it. The schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance in the female circle of a rural neighborhood ; being considered a kind of idle, gentleman-like personage, of vastly superior taste and accomplishments to the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning only to the parson. His appearance, therefore, is apt to occasion some little stir at the tea-table of a farm-house, and the addition of a supernumerary dish of cakes or sweetmeats, or, peradventure, the parade of a silver tea-pot. Our man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the country damsels. How he would figure among them in the church-yard, between services on Sundays ! gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that overrun the surrounding trees ; reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tombstones ; or sauntering with a whole bevy of them, along the banks of the adjacent mill- pond ; while the more bashful country bumpkins hung sheepishly back, envying his superior elegance and address. From his half itinerant life, also, he was a kind of travelling gazette, carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house : so that his appearance was always greeted with satis- faction. He was, moreover, esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, for he had read several books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather's " History of New England Witchcraft," in which, by the way, he most firmly and potently believed. He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity. His appetite for the marvellous, and his powers of digest- ing it. were equally extraordinary ; and both had been increased by his lesidence in this spell-bound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after his school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover bordering the little brook that whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con over old Mather's direful tales, 196 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE until the gathering dusk of evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then, as he wended his way by swamp and stream and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, flut- tered his excited imagination, — the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, to the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path ; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with a witch's token. His only resource on such occasions, either to drown thought or drive away evil spirits, was to sing psalm-tunes ; and the good people of Sleepy Hollow, as they sat by their doors of an evening, were often filled with awe, at hearing his nasal melody, " in linked sweetness long drawn out," floating from the distant hill, or along the dusky road. Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was, to pass long winter evenings with the old Dutch wives, as they sat spinning by the fire, with a row of apples roasting and spluttering along the hearth, and listen to their marvellous tales of ghosts and gob- lins, and haunted fields, and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses, and particularly of the headless horseman, or Galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they sometimes called him. He would delight them equally by his anecdotes of witchcraft, and of the direful omens and portentous sights and sounds in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut ; and would frighten them wofully with speculations upon comets and shooting stars, and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely turn round, and that they were half the time topsy-turvy ! But if there was a pleasure in all this, while snugly cuddling in the chimney-corner of a chamber that was all of a ruddy glow from the crackling wood-fire, and where, of course, no spectre dared to show his face, it was dearly purchased by the terrors of his subsequent walk homewards. What fearful shapes and EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 197 shadows beset his path amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night ! With what wistful look did he eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window ! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which, like a sheeted spectre, beset his very path ! How often did he shrink with curdling awe at the sound of his own steps on the frosty crust beneath his feet ; and dread to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold some uncouth being tramping close behind him ! and how often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing blast, howling among the trees, in the idea that it was the Galloping Hessian on one of his nightly scourings ! All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness ; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils ; and he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the Devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was — a woman. Among the musical disciples who assembled, one evening in each week, to receive his instructions in psalmody, was Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen ; plump as a partridge ; ripe and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her father's peaches, and universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but her vast expectations. She was withal a little of a coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and modern fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold, which her great-great- grandmother had brought over from Saardam ; the tempting stom- acher of the olden time ; and withal a provokingly short petticoat, to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round. Ichabod Crane had a soft and foolish heart toward the sex ; and it is not to be wondered at that so tempting a morsel soon found favor in his eyes ; more especially after he had visited her in her 198 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE paternal mansion. Old Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving, contented, liberal-hearted farmer. He seldom, it is true, sent either his eyes or his thoughts beyond the boundaries of his own farm ; but within those everything was snug, happy, and well- conditioned. He was satisfied with his wealth, but not proud of it ; and piqued himself upon the hearty abundance rather than the style in which he lived. His stronghold was situated on the banks of the Hudson, in one of those green, sheltered, fertile nooks in which the Dutch farmers are so fond of nestling. A great elm- tree spread its broad branches over it ; at the foot of which bubbled up a spring of the softest and sweetest water, in a little well formed of a barrel ; and then stole sparkling away through the grass, to a neighboring brook, that bubbled along among alders and dwarf willows. Hard by the farm-house was a vast barn, that might have served for a church ; every window and crevice of which seemed bursting forth with the treasures of the farm ; the flail was busily resounding within it from morning till night ; swallows and martins skimmed twittering about the eaves ; and rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned up, as if watching the weather, some with their heads under their wings, or buried in their bosoms, and others swelling, and cooing, and bowing about their dames, were enjoying the sunshine on the roof. Sleek unwieldy porkers were grunting in the repose and abundance of their pens ; whence sallied forth, now and then, troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks ; regiments of turkeys were gob- bling through the farm-yard, and Guinea fowls fretting about it, like ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish, discontented cry. Before the barn door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a husband, a warrior, and a fine gentleman, clapping his burnished wings and crowing in the pride and gladness of his heart, — some- times tearing up the earth with his feet, and then generously call- ing his ever-hungry family of wives and children to enjoy the rich morsel which he had discovered. The pedagogue's mouth watered as he looked upon this sump- tuous promise of luxurious winter fare. In his devouring mind's eye, he pictured to himself every roasting-pig running about with EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 199 a pudding in his belly, and an apple in his mouth ; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust ; the geese were swimming in their own gravy ; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce. In the porkers he saw carved out the future sleek side of bacon, and juicy relishing ham ; not a turkey but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing, and, peradventure, a necklace of savory sausages ; and even bright chanticleer himself lay sprawling on his back, in a side dish, with uplifted claws, as if craving that quarter which his chivalrous spirit disdained to ask while living. As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled his great green eyes over the fat meadow-lands, the rich fields of wheat, of rye, of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards burthened with ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tassel, his heart yearned after the damsel who was to in- herit these domains, and his imagination expanded with the idea, how they might be readily turned into cash, and the money in- vested in immense tracts of wild land, and shingle palaces in the wilderness. Nay, his busy fancy already realized his hopes, and presented to him the blooming Katrina, with a whole family of children, mounted on the top of a wagon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and kettles dangling beneath ; and he beheld himself bestriding a pacing mare, with a colt at her heels, setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee, or the Lord knows where. When he entered the house, the conquest of his heart was com- plete. It was one of those spacious farm-houses, with high-ridged, but lowly-sloping roofs, built in the style handed down from the first Dutch settlers ; the low projecting eaves forming a piazza along the front, capable of being closed up in bad weather. Under this were hung flails, harness, various utensils of husbandry, and nets for fishing in the neighboring river. Benches were built along the sides for summer use ; and a great spinning-wheel at one end, and a churn at the other, showed the various uses to which this important porch might be devoted. From this piazza the wondering Ichabod entered the hall, which formed the centre of the mansion and the place of usual residence. Here, rows of resplendent pewter, 200 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE ranged on a long dresser, dazzled his eyes. In one corner stood a huge bag of wool ready to be spun ; in another a quantity of linsey-woolsey just from the loom ; ears of Indian corn and strings of dried apples and peaches, hung in gay festoons along the walls, mingled with the gaud of red peppers ; and a door left ajar gave him a peep into the best parlor, where the claw- footed chairs and dark mahogany tables shone like mirrors ; and irons, with their accompanying shovel and tongs, glistened from their covert of asparagus tops ; mock-oranges and conch-shells decorated the mantelpiece ; strings of various-colored birds' eggs were suspended above it ; a great ostrich' egg was hung from the centre of the room, and a corner cupboard, knowingly left open, displayed immense treasures of old silver and well-mended china. From the moment Ichabod laid his eyes upon these regions of delight, the peace of his mind was at an end, and his only study was how to gain the affections of the peerless daughter of Van Tassel. In this enterprise, however, he had more real difficulties than generally fell to the lot of a knight-errant of yore, who seldom had anything but giants, enchanters, fiery dragons, and such like easily conquered adversaries, to contend with ; and had to make his way merely through gates of iron and brass, and walls of adamant to the castle keep, where the lady of his heart was con- fined ; all which he achieved as easily as a man would carve his way to the centre of a Christmas pie ; and then the lady gave him her hand as a matter of course. Ichabod, on the contrary, had to win his way to the heart of a country coquette, beset with a laby- rinth of whims and caprices, which were forever presenting new difficulties and impediments ; and he had to encounter a host of fearful adversaries of real flesh and blood, the numerous rustic ad- mirers, who beset every portal to her heart, keeping a watchful and angry eye upon each other, but ready to fly out in the common cause against any new competitor. Among these the most formidable was a burly, roaring, royster- ing blade, of the name of Abraham, or, according to the Dutch abbreviation, Brom Van Brunt, the hero of the country round, which rang with his feats of strength and hardihood. He was EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 20i broad-shouldered and double-jointed, with short curly black hair, and a bluff, but not unpleasant countenance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogance. From his Herculean frame and great powers of limb, he had received the nickname of Brom Bones, by which he was universally known. He was famed for great knowledge and skill in horsemanship, being as dexterous on horseback as a Tartar. He was foremost at all races and cock-fights ; and, with the ascendency which bodily strength acquires in rustic life, was the umpire in all disputes, setting his hat on one side, and giving his decisions with an air and tone admitting of no gainsay or appeal. He was always ready for either a fight or a frolic ; but had more mischief than ill-will in his composition ; and, with all his over- bearing roughness, there was a strong dash of waggish good humor at bottom. He had three or four boon companions, who regarded him as their model, and at the head of whom he scoured the country, attending every scene of feud or merriment for miles round. In cold weather he was distinguished by a fur cap, sur- mounted with a flaunting fox's tail ; and when the folks at a country gathering descried this well-known crest at a distance, whisking about among a squad of hard riders, they always stood by for a squall. Sometimes his crew would be heard dashing along past the farmhouses at midnight, with whoop and halloo, like a troop of Don Cossacks ; and the old dames, startled out of their sleep, would listen for a moment till the hurry-scurry had clattered by, and then exclaim, "Ay, there goes Brom Bones and his gang! " The neighbors looked upon him with a mixture of awe, admiration, and good-will ; and, when any madcap prank or rustic brawl occurred in the vicinity, always shook their heads, and warranted Brom Bones was at the bottom of it. This rantipole hero had for some time singled out the blooming Katrina for the object of his uncouth gallantries, and though his amorous toyings were something like the gentle caresses and en- dearments of a bear, yet it was whispered that she did not altogether discourage his hopes. Certain it is, his advances were signals for rival candidates to retire, who felt no inclination to cross a lion in his amours ; insomuch, that when his horse was seen tied to Van Tassel's paling, on a Sunday night, a sure sign that his master 202 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE was courting, or, as it is termed, "' sparking," within, all other suitors passed by in despair, and carried the war into other quarters. Such was the formidable rival with whom Ichabod Crane had to contend, and, considering all things, a stouter man than he would have shrunk from the competition, and a wiser man would have de- spaired. He had, however, a happy mixture of pliability and perse- verance in his nature ; he was in form and spirit like a supple-jack — yielding, but tough ; though he bent, he never broke ; and though he bowed beneath the slightest pressure, yet, the moment it was away — jerk ! he was as erect, and carried his head as high as ever. To have taken the field openly against his rival would have been madness ; for he was not a man to be thwarted in his amours, any more than that stormy lover, Achilles. Ichabod, therefore, made his advances in a quiet and gently insinuating manner. Under cover of his character of singing-master, he had made frequent visits at the farm-house ; not that he had anything to apprehend from the meddlesome interference of parents, which is so often a stumbling-block in the path of lovers. Bait Van Tassel was an easy, indulgent soul ; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her way in everything. His notable little wife, too, had enough to do to attend to her housekeeping and manage her poultry ; for, as she sagely observed, ducks and geese are foolish things, and must be looked after, but girls can take care of themselves. Thus while the busy dame bustled about the house, or plied her spinning- wheel at one end of the piazza, honest Bait would sit smoking his evening pipe at the other, watching the achievements of a little wooden warrior, who, armed with a sword in each hand, was most valiantly fighting the wind on the pinnacle of the barn. In the meantime, Ichabod would carry on his suit with the daughter by the side of the spring under the great elm, or sauntering along in the twilight, — that hour so favorable to the lover's eloquence. I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access, while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain the EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 203 former, but a still greater proof of generalship to maintain posses- sion of the latter, for the man must battle for his fortress at every door and window. He who wins a thousand common hearts is therefore entitled to some renown ; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette, is indeed a hero. Certain it is, this was not the case with the redoubtable Brom Bones ; and from the moment Ichabod Crane made his advances, the interests of the former evidently declined ; his horse was no longer seen tied at the palings on Sunday nights, and a deadly feud gradually arose between him and the preceptor of Sleepy Hollow. Brom, who had a degree of rough chivalry in his nature, would fain have carried matters to open warfare and have settled their pretensions to the lady, according to the mode of those most con- cise and simple reasoners, the knights-errant of yore, — by single combat ; but Ichabod was too conscious of the superior might of his adversary to enter the lists against him ; he had overheard a boast of Bones, that he would " double the schoolmaster up, and lay him on a shelf of his own schoolhouse," and he was too wary to give him an opportunity. There was something extremely pro- voking in this obstinately pacific system ; it left Brom no alternative but to draw upon the funds of rustic waggery in his disposition, and to play off boorish practical jokes upon his rival. Ichabod be- came the object of whimsical persecution to Bones and his gang of rough riders. They harried his hitherto peaceful domains, smoked out his singing-school by stopping up the chimney, broke into the schoolhouse at night, in spite of its formidable fastenings of withe and window stakes, and turned everything topsy-turvy, so that the poor schoolmaster began to think all the witches in the country held their meetings there. But what was still more annoy- ing, Brom took all opportunities of turning him into ridicule in presence of his mistress, and had a scoundrel dog whom he taught to whine in the most ludicrous manner, and introduced as a rival of Ichabod's, to instruct her in psalmody. In this way matters went on for some time, without producing any material effect on the relative situations of the contending powers. On a fine autumnal afternoon, Ichabod, in pensive mood, sat enthroned on the lofty stool from whence he usually watched 204 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE all the concerns of his Httle literary realm. In his hand he swayed a ferule, that sceptre of despotic power ; the birch of justice reposed on three nails behind the throne, a constant terror to evil doers ; while on the desk before him might be seen sundry contraband articles and prohibited weapons, detected upon the persons of idle urchins, such as half-munched apples, popguns, whirligigs, fly-cages, and whole legions of rampant little paper game-cocks. Apparently there had been some appalling act of justice recently inflicted, for his scholars were all busily intent upon their books, or slyly whispering behind them with one eye kept upon the master ; and a kind of buzzing stillness reigned throughout the schoolroom. It was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a negro in tow- cloth jacket and trowsers, a round-crowned fragment of a hat, like the cap of Mercury, and mounted on the back of a ragged, wild, half-broken colt, which he managed with a rope by way of halter. He came clattering up to the school-door with an invitation to Ichabod to attend a merry-making or " quilting-frolic," to be held that evening at Mynheer Van Tassel's ; and having delivered his message with that air of importance and effort at fine language which a negro is apt to display on petty embassies of the kind, he dashed over the brook, and was seen scampering away up the Hollow, full of the importance and hurry of his mission. All was now bustle and hubbub in the late quiet schoolroom. The scholars were hurried through their lessons, without stopping at trifles ; those who were nimble skipped over half with impunity, and those who were tardy had a smart application now and then in the rear, to quicken their speed, or help them over a tall word. Books were flung aside without being put away on the shelves, inkstands were overturned, benches thrown down, and the whole school was turned loose an hour before the usual time, bursting forth like a legion of young imps, yelping and racketing about the green, in joy at their early emancipation. The gallant Ichabod now spent at least an extra half hour at his toilet, brushing and furbishing up his best, and indeed only suit of rusty black, and arranging his locks by a bit of broken looking-glass, that hung up in the schoolhouse. That he might make his appear- ance before his mistress in the true style of a cavalier, he borrowed EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 205 a horse from the farmer with whom he was domicihated, a choleric old Dutchman, of the name of Hans Van Ripper, and, thus gallantly mounted, issued forth, like a knight-errant in quest of adventures. But it is meet I should, in the true spirit of romantic story, give some account of the looks and equipments of my hero and his steed. The animal he bestrode was a broken-down plough-horse, that had outlived almost every thing but his viciousness. He was gaunt and shagged, with a ewe neck and a head like a hammer ; his rusty mane and tail were tangled and knotted with burrs ; one eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring and spectral ; but the other had the gleam of a genuine devil in it. Still he must have had fire and mettle in his day, if we may judge from the name he bore of Gunpowder. He had, in fact, been a favorite steed of his master's, the choleric Van Ripper, who was a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of his own spirit into the animal ; for, old and broken-down as he looked, there was more of the lurking devil in him than in any young filly in the country. Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed. He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle ; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers' ; he carried his whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and as his horse jogged on, the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings. A small wool hat rested on the top of his nose, for so his scanty strip of forehead might be called, and the skirts of his black coat fluttered out almost to the horse's tail. Such was the appearance of Ichabod and his steed as they shambled out of the gate of Hans Van Ripper, and it was altogether such an apparition as is seldom to be met with in broad daylight. It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day ; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks began to make their appearance high in the air ; the bark of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory-nuts, and the pensive whistle of the quail at intervals from the neighboring stubble field. 2o6 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE The small birds were taking their farewell banquets. In the fulness of their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and frolicking, from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very pro- fusion and variety around them. There was the honest cock-robin, the favorite game of stripling sportsmen, with its loud querulous notes ; and the twittering blackbirds flying in sable clouds ; and the golden-winged woodpecker, with his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splendid plumage ; and the cedar-bird, with its red-tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail, and its litde monteiro cap of feathers ; and the blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in his gay light- blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering, nod- ding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove. As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye, ever open to every symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the treasures of jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld vast stores of apples ; some hanging in oppressive opulence on the trees ; some gathered into baskets and barrels for the market ; others heaped up in rich piles for the cider-press. Farther on he beheld great fields of Indian corn, with its golden ears peeping from their leafy coverts, and holding out the promise of cakes and hasty- pudding ; and the yellow pumpkins lying beneath them, turning up their round bellies to the sun, and giving ample prospects of the most luxurious of pies ; and anon he passed the fragrant buck- wheat fields, breathing the odor of the bee-hive, and as he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over his mind of dainty slapjacks, well buttered and garnished with honey or treacle, by the delicate little dimpled hand of Katrina Van Tassel. Thus feeding his mind with many sweet thoughts and '" sugared suppositions," he journeyed along the sides of a range of hills which look out upon some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson. The sun gradually wheeled his broad disk down in the west. The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay motionless and glassy, excepting that here and there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated in the sky, without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 207 into a pure apple green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven. A slanting ray lingered on the woody crests of the precipices that overhung some parts of the river, giving greater depth to the dark gray and purple of their rocky sides. A sloop was loitering in the distance, dropping slowly down with the tide, her sail hanging uselessly against the mast ; and as the reflection of the sky gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was suspended in the air. It was toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the Herr Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent country. Old farmers, a spare leathern- faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles. Their brisk, withered little dames, in close crimped caps, long-waisted short-gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pin-cushions, and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside. Buxom lasses, almost as antiquated as their mothers, excepting where a straw hat, a fine ribbon, or per- haps a white frock, gave symptoms of city innovation. The sons, in short square-skirted coats with rows of stupendous brass but- tons, and their hair generally queued in the fashion of the times, especially if they could procure an eel-skin for the purpose, it being esteemed, throughout the country, as a potent nourisher and strengthener of the hair. Brom Bones, however, was the hero of the scene, having come to the gathering on his favorite steed, Daredevil, a creature, like himself, full of mettle and mischief, and which no one but him- self could manage. He was, in fact, noted for preferring vicious animals, given to all kinds of tricks, which kept the rider in constant risk of his neck, for he held a tractable well-broken horse as unworthy of a lad of spirit. Fain would I pause to dwell upon the world of charms that burst upon the enraptured gaze of my hero, as he entered the state parlor of Van Tassel's mansion. Not those of the bevy of buxom lasses, with their luxurious display of red and white, but the ample charms of a genuine Dutch country tea-table, in the sumptuous time of autumn. Such heaped-up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives ! 2o8 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE There was the doughty doughnut, the tenderer oly koek, and the crisp and crumbUng cruller ; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger- cakes and honey-cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple-pies and peach-pies and pumpkin pies ; besides slices of ham and smoked beef ; and moreover delectable dishes of preserved plums^ and peaches, and pears, and quinces ; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens ; together with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy-piggledy, pretty much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly teapot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst — Heaven bless the mark ! I want breath and time to discuss this banquet as it deserves, and am too eager to get on with my story. Happily, Ichabod Crane was not in so great a hurry as his historian, but did ample justice to every dainty. He was a kind and thankful creature, whose heart dilated in proportion as his skin was filled with good cheer, and whose spirits rose with eating, as some men's do with drink. He could not help, too, rolling his large eyes round him as he ate, and chuckling with the possibility that he might one day be lord of all this scene of almost unimaginable luxury and splendor. Then, he thought, how soon he 'd turn his back upon the old schoolhouse ; snap his fingers in the face of Hans Van Ripper, and every other niggardly patron, and kick any itinerant pedagogue out of doors that should dare to call him comrade! Old Baltus Van Tassel moved about among his guests with a face dilated with content and good-humor, round and jolly as the harvest moon. His hospitable attentions were brief, but expres- sive, being confined to a shake of the hand, a slap on the shoul- der, a loud laugh, and a pressing invitation to '" fall to, and help themselves." And now the sound of the music from the common room, or hall, summoned to the dance. The musician was an old gray- headed negro, who had been the itinerant orchestra of the neigh- borhood for more than half a century. His instrument was as old and battered as himself. The greater part of the time he scraped on two or three strings, accompanying every movement of the bow with a motion of the head ; bowing almost to the ground, and stamping with his foot whenever a fresh couple were to start. EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 209 Ichabod prided himself upon his dancing as much as upon his vocal powers. Not a limb, not a fibre about him was idle ; and to have seen his loosely hung frame in full motion, and clattering about the room, you would have thought Saint Vitus himself, that blessed patron of the dance, was figuring before you in person. He was the admiration of all the negroes ; who, having gathered, of all ages and sizes, from the farm and the neighborhood, stood forming a pyramid of shining black faces at every door and win- dow, gazing with delight at the scene, rolling their white eye-balls, and showing grinning rows of ivory from ear to ear. How could the flogger of urchins be otherwise than animated and joyous .-' the lady of his heart was his partner in the dance, and smiling graciously in reply to all his amorous oglings ; while Brom Bones, sorely smitten with love and jealousy, sat brooding by himself in one corner. When the dance was at an end, Ichabod was attracted to a knot of the sager folks, who, with old Van Tassel, sat smoking at one end of the piazza, gossiping over former times, atid drawing out long stories about the war. This neighborhood, at the time of which I am ''speaking, was one of those highly favored places which abound with chronicle and great men. The British and American line had run near it during the war ; it had, therefore, been the scene of marauding, and infested with refugees, cow-boys, and all kinds of border chivalry. Just sufficient time had elapsed to enable each story teller to dress up his tale with a little becoming fiction, and, in the indistinctness of his recollection, to make himself the hero of every exploit. There was the story of Doffue Martling, a large blue-bearded Dutchman, who had nearly taken a British frigate with an old iron nine-pounder from a mud breastwork, only that his gun burst at the sixth discharge. And there was an old gentleman who shall be nameless, being too rich a mynheer to be lightly mentioned, who, in the battle of White-Plains, being an excellent master of defence, parried a musket-ball with a small sword, insomuch that he absolutely felt it whiz round the blade, and glance off at the hilt ; in proof of which he was ready at any time to show the sword, with the hilt a little bent. There were several more that 2IO READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE had been equally great in the field, not one of whom but was persuaded that he had a considerable hand in bringing the war to a happy termination. But all these were nothing to the tales of ghosts and apparitions that succeeded. The neighborhood is rich in legendary treasures of the kind. Local tales and superstitions thrive best in these shel- tered, long-settled retreats ; but are trampled under foot by the shifting throng that forms the population of most of our country places. Besides, there is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for they have scarcely had time to finish their first nap and turn themselves in their graves, before their surviving friends have travelled away from the neighborhood ; so that when they turn out at night to walk their rounds, they have no acquaint- ance left to call upon. This is perhaps the reason why we so seldom hear of ghosts except in our long-established Dutch communities. The immediate cause, however, of the prevalence of super- natural stories in these parts, was doubtless owing to the vicinity of Sleepy Hollow. There was a contagion in the very air that blew from that haunted region ; it breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies infecting all the land. Several of the Sleepy Hollow people were present at Van Tassel's, and, as usual, were doling out their wild and wonderful legends. Many dismal tales were told about funeral trains, and mourning cries and wailings heard and seen about the great tree where the unfortunate Major Andre was taken, and which stood in the neighborhood. Some mention was made also of the woman in white, that haunted the dark glen at Raven Rock, and was often heard to shriek on winter nights before a storm, having perished there in the snow. The chief part of the stories, however, turned upon the favorite spectre of Sleepy Hollow, the headless horseman, who had been heard several times of late, patrolling the country ; and, it was said, tethered his horse nightly among the graves in the church-yard. The sequestered situation of this church seems always to have made it a favorite haunt of troubled spirits. It stands on a knoll, surrounded by locust-trees and lofty elms, from among which its decent whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like Christian purity EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 21 1 beaming through the shades of retirement. A gentle slope de- scends from it to a silver sheet of water, bordered by high trees, between which peeps may be caught at the blue hills of the Hud- son. To look upon its grass-grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace. On one side of the church extends a wide woody dell, along which raves a large brook among broken rocks and trunks of fallen trees. Over a deep black part of the stream, not far from the church, was formerly thrown a wooden bridge ; the road that led to it, and the bridge itself, were thickly shaded by overhanging trees, which cast a gloom about it, even in the day time, but occasioned a fearful darkness at night. This was one of the favorite haunts of the headless horseman ; and the place where he was most frequently encountered. The tale was told of old Brouwer, a most heretical disbeliever in ghosts, how he met the horseman returning from his foray into Sleepy Hollow, and was obliged to get up behind him ; how they galloped over bush and brake, over hill and swamp, until they reached the bridge ; when the horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton, threw old Brouwer into the brook, and sprang away over the tree-tops with a clap of thunder. This story was immediately matched by a thrice marvellous ad- venture of Brom Bones, who made light of the Galloping Hessian as an arrant jockey. He affirmed that on returning one night from the neighboring village of Sing Sing, he had been overtaken by this midnight trooper ; that he had offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and should have won it too, for Daredevil beat the goblin horse all hollow, but just as they came to the church bridge, the Hessian bolted, and vanished in a flash of fire. All these tales, told in that drowsy undertone with which men talk in the dark, the countenances of the listeners only now and then receiving a casual gleam from the glare of a pipe, sank deep in the mind of Ichabod. He repaid them in kind with large ex- tracts from his invaluable author. Cotton Mather, and added many marvellous events that had taken place in his native State of Con- necticut, and fearful sights which he had seen in his nightly walks about Sleepy Hollow. 212 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE The revel now gradually broke up. The old farmers gathered together their families in their wagons, and were heard for some time rattling along the hollow roads, and over the distant hills. Some of the damsels mounted on pillions behind their favorite swains, and their light-hearted laughter, mingling with the clatter of hoofs, echoed along the silent woodlands, sounding fainter and fainter, until they gradually died away, — and the late scene of noise and frolic was all silent and deserted. Ichabod only lingered behind, according to the custom of country lovers, to have a tete-a- tete with the heiress ; fully convinced that he was now on the high road to success. What passed at this interview I will not pretend to say, for in fact I do not know. Something, however, I fear me, must have gone wrong, for he certainly sallied forth, after no very great interval, with an air quite desolate and chopfallen. — Oh, these women ! these women ! Could that girl have been playing off any of her coquettish tricks ? — Was her encouragement of the poor pedagogue all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his rival ? — - Heaven only knows, not I ! — Let it suffice to say, Icha- bod stole forth with the air of one who had been sacking a hen- roost rather than a fair lady's heart. Without looking to the right or left to notice the scene of rural wealth on which he had so often gloated, he went straight to the stable, and with several hearty cuffs and kicks, roused his steed most uncourteously from the comfortable quarters in which he was soundly sleeping, dream- ing of mountains of corn and oats, and whole valleys of timothy and clover. It was the very witching time of night that Ichabod, heavy- hearted and crest-fallen, pursued his travels homewards, along the sides of the lofty hills which rise above Tarry Town, and which he had traversed so cheerily in the afternoon. The hour was as dismal as himself. Far below him the Tappan Zee spread its dusky and indistinct waste of waters, with here and there the tall mast of a sloop, riding quietly at anchor under the land. In the dead hush of midnight, he could even hear the barking of the watch-dog from the opposite shore of the Hudson ; but it was so vague and faint as only to give an idea of his distance from this faithful companion of man. Now and then, too, the long-drawn crowing of a cock, EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 213 accidentally awakened, would sound far, far off, from some farm- house away among the hills — but it was like a dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bull-frog from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably and turning suddenly in his bed. All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the afternoon now came crowding upon his recollection. The night grew darker and darker ; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight. He had never felt so lonely and dismal. He was, moreover, approach- ing the very place where many of the scenes of the ghost stories had been laid. In the centre of the road stood an enormous tulip tree, which towered like a giant above all the other trees of the neighborhood, and formed a kind of landmark. Its limbs were gnarled and fantastic, large enough to form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth, and rising again into the air. It was connected with the tragical story of the unfortunate Andre, who had been taken prisoner hard by; and was universally known by the name of Major Andre's tree. The common people regarded it with a mixture of respect and superstition, partly out of sympathy for the fate of its ill-starred namesake, and partly from the tales of strange sights and doleful lamentations told concerning it. As Ichabod approached this fearful tree, he began to whistle : he thought his whistle was answered — it was but a blast sweeping sharply through the dry branches. As he approached a little nearer, he thought he saw something white hanging in the midst of the tree — ■ he paused and ceased whistling ; but on looking more nar- rowly, perceived that it was a place where the tree had been scathed by lightning, and the white wood laid bare. Suddenly he heard a groan — his teeth chattered and his knees smote against the saddle: it was but the rubbing of one huge bough upon another, as they were swayed about by the breeze. He passed the tree in safety, but new perils lay before him. About two hundred yards from the tree a small brook crossed the road, and ran into a marshy and thickly wooded glen, known by the name of Wiley's swamp. A few rough logs, laid side by <^ 214 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE side, served for a bridge over this stream. On that side of the road where the brook entered the wood, a group of oaks and chestnuts, matted thick with wild grape-vines, threw a cavernous gloom over it. To pass this bridge was the severest trial. It was at this iden- tical spot that the unfortunate Andre was captured, and under the covert of those chestnuts and vines were the sturdy yeomen con- cealed who surprised him. This has ever since been considered a haunted stream, and fearful are the feelings of the schoolboy who has to pass it alone after dark. As he approached the stream, his heart began to thump ; he summoned up, however, all his resolution, gave his horse half a score of kicks in the ribs, and attempted to dash briskly across the bridge ; but instead of starting forward, the perverse old animal made a lateral movement, and ran broadside against the fence. Ichabod, whose fears increased with the delay, jerked the reins on the other side, and kicked lustily with the contrary foot : it was all in vain ; his steed started, it is true, but it was only to plunge to the opposite side of the road into a thicket of brambles and alder bushes. The schoolmaster now bestowed both whip and heel upon the starveling ribs of old Gunpowder, who dashed forward, snuf- fling and snorting, but came to a stand just by the bridge, with a suddenness that had nearly sent his rider sprawling over his head. Just at this moment a plashy tramp by the side of the bridge caught the sensitive ear of Ichabod, In the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen, black and towering. It stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the gloom, like some gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveller. The hair of the affrighted pedagogue rose upon his head with terror. What was to be done .'' To turn and fly was now too late ; and besides, what chance was there of escaping ghost or goblin, if such it was, which could ride upon the wings of the wind .? Sum- moning up, therefore, a show of courage, he demanded in stam- mering accents, "Who are you.?" He received no reply. He repeated his demand in a still more agitated voice. Still there was no answer. Once more he cudgelled the sides of the inflexible Gunpowder, and, shutting his eyes, broke forth with involuntary EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 215 fervor into a psalm tune. Just then the shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion, and with a scramble and a bound stood at once in the middle of the road. Though the night was dark and dismal, yet the form of the unknown might now in some degree be ascer- tained. He appeared to be a horseman of large dimensions, and mounted on a- black horse of powerful frame. He made no offer of molestation or sociability, but kept aloof on one side of the road, jogging along on the blind side of old Gunpowder, who had now got over his fright and waywardness. Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange midnight companion, and bethought himself of the adventure of Brom Bones with the Galloping Hessian, now quickened his steed in hopes of leaving him behind. The stranger, however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up, and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind, — the other did the same. His heart began to sink within him ; he endeavored to resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a stave. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against "the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror- struck on perceiving that he was headless ! but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle ! His terror rose to desperation ; he rained a shower of kicks and blows upon Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden move- ment to give his companion the slip ; but the spectre started full jump with him. Away, then, they dashed through thick and thin ; stones flying and sparks flashing at every bound. Ichabod's flimsy garments fluttered in the air, as he stretched his long lank body away over his horse's head, in the eagerness of his flight. They had now reached the road which turns off to Sleepy Hollow ; but Gunpowder, who seemed possessed with a demon, instead of keeping up it, made an opposite turn, and plunged headlong down hill to the left. This road leads through a sandy hollow, shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile, where it 2i6 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE crosses the bridge famous in goblin story ; and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church. As yet the panic of the steed had given his unskilful rider an apparent advantage in the chase ; but just as he had got half-way through the hollow, the girths of the saddle gave way, and he felt it slipping from under him. He seized it by the pommel, and endeavored to hold it firm, but in vain ; and had just time to save himself by clasping old Gunpowder round the neck, when the saddle fell to the earth, and he heard it trampled underfoot by his pursuer. For a moment the terror of Hans Van Ripper's wrath passed across his mind — for it was his Sunday saddle ; but this was no time for petty fears ; the goblin was hard on his haunches ; and (unskilful rider that he was !) he had much ado to maintain his seat ; sometimes slipping on one side, sometimes on another, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse's backbone, with a violence that he verily feared would cleave him asunder. An opening in the trees now cheered him with the hopes that the church-bridge was at hand. The wavering reflection of a silver star in the bosom of the brook told him that he was not mistaken. He saw the walls of the church dimly glaring under the trees beyond. He recollected the place where Brom Bones's ghostly competitor had disappeared. " If I can but reach that bridge," thought Ichabod, "' I am safe." Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him ; he even fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge ; he thundered over the re- sounding planks ; he gained the opposite side ; and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of hurling his head at him. Ichabod endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash, — he was tumbled headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider, passed by like a whirlwind. The next morning the old horse was found without his saddle, and with the bridle under his feet, soberly cropping the grass at his master's gate. Ichabod did not make his appearance at breakfast ; EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 21/ dinner-hour came, but no Ichabod. The boys assembled at the schoolhouse, and strolled idly about the banks of the brook ; but no schoolmaster. Hans Van Ripper now began to feel some uneasi- ness about the fate of poor Ichabod, and his saddle. An inquiry was set on foot, and after diligent investigation they came upon his traces. In one part of the road leading to the church was found the saddle trampled in the dirt ; the tracks of horses' hoofs deeply dented in the road, and evidently at furious speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on the bank of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black, was found the hat of the un- fortunate Tchabod, and close beside it a shattered pumpkin. The brook was searched, but the body of the schoolmaster was not to be discovered, Hans Van Ripper, as executor of his estate, examined the bundle which contained all his worldly effects. They consisted of two shirts and a half ; two stocks for the neck ; a pair or two of worsted stockings ; an old pair of corduroy small-clothes ; a rusty razor ; a book of psalm-tunes, full of dogs' ears, and a broken pitch-pipe. As to the books and furniture of the schoolhouse, they belonged to the community, excepting Cotton Mather's " History of Witchcraft," a "' New England Almanac," and a book of dreams and fortune-telling ; in which last was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in honor of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van Ripper ; who from that time forward determined to send his children no more to school ; observing that he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing. Whatever money the schoolmaster possessed, and he had received his quar- ter's pay but a day or two before, he must have had about his person at the time of his disappearance. The mysterious event caused much speculation at the church on the following Sunday. Knots of gazers and gossips were collected in the churchyard, at the bridge, and at the spot where the hat and pumpkin had been found. The stories of Brouwer, of Bones, and a whole budget of others, were called to mind ; and when they had diligently considered them all, and compared them with the symp- toms of the present case, they shook their heads, and came to the 2i8 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE conclusion that Ichabod had been carried off by the galloping Hessian. As he was a bachelor, and in nobody's debt, nobody troubled his head any more about him. The school was removed to a different quarter of the hollow, and another pedagogue reigned in his stead. It is true, an old farmer, who had been down to New York on a visit several years after, and from whom this account of the ghostly adventure was received, brought home the intelligence that Ichabod Crane was still alive ; that he had left the neighborhood, partly through fear of the goblin and Hans Van Ripper, and partly in mortification at having been suddenly dismissed by the heiress ; that he had changed his quarters to a distant part of the country ; had kept school and studied law at the same time, had been ad- mitted to the bar, turned politician, electioneered, written for the newspapers, and finally had been made a justice of the Ten Pound Court. Brom Bones too, who shortly after his rival's disappearance conducted the blooming Katrina in triumph to the altar, was ob- served to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related, and always burst into a hearty laugh at the mention of the pumpkin ; which led some to suspect that he knew more about the matter than he chose to tell. The old country wives, however, who are the best judges of these matters, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means ; and it is a favorite stoiy often told about the neighborhood round the winter evening fire. The bridge be- came more than ever an object of superstitious awe ; and that may be the reason why the road has been altered of late years, so as to approach the church by the border of the mill-pond. The school- house being deserted soon fell to decay, and was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate pedagogue ; and the plough-boy, loitering homeward of a still summer evening, has often fancied his voice at a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow. EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 219 INTERIOR OF THE ALHAMBRA From "The Alhambra" The Alhambra has been so often and so minutely described by travellers, that a mere sketch will probably be sufficient for the reader to refresh his recollection ; I will give, therefore, a brief account of our visit to it the morning after our arrival in Granada. Leaving our posada of La Espada, we traversed the renowned square of the Vivarrambla, once the scene of Moorish jousts and tournaments, now a crowded market place. From thence we pro- ceeded along the Zacatin, the main street of what was the great Bazaar, in the time of the Moors, where the small shops and nar- row alleys still retain their Oriental character. Crossing an open place in front of the palace of the captain-general, we ascended a confined and winding street, the name of which reminded us of the chivalric days of Granada. It is called the Callc, or street of the Gomeres : from a Moorish family, famous in chronicle and song. This street led up to a mansion gateway of Grecian archi- tecture, built by Charles V,, forming the entrance to the domains of the Alhambra. At the gate were two or three ragged and superannuated soldiers, dozing on a stone bench, the successors of the Zegris and the Abencerrages ; while a tall, meagre varlet, whose rusty brown cloak was, evidently, intended to conceal the ragged state of his nether garments, was lounging in the sunshine, and gossipping with an ancient sentinel, on duty. He joined us as we entered the gate, and offered his services to show us the fortress. I have a traveller's dislike to officious ciceroni, and did not altogether like the garb of the applicant : '" You are well acquainted with the place, I presume 1 " " Ninguno mas — pues, sefior, soy hijo de la Alhambra." (Nobody better — in fact, sir, I am a son of the Alhambra.) The common Spaniards have certainly a most poetical way of expressing themselves — "A son of the Alhambra! " the appel- lation caught me at once ; the very tattered garb of my new acquaintance assumed a dignity in my eyes. It was emblematic of the features of the place, and became the progeny of a ruin. 220 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE I put some further questions to him, and found his title was legitimate. His family had lived in the fortress from generation to generation ever since the time of the conquest. His name was Mateo Ximenes. "Then, perhaps," said I, "you may be a descendant from the great Cardinal Ximenes." " Dios sabe ! God knows, senor. It may be so. We are the oldest family in the Alhambra. Vicjos Cristianos, old Christians, without any taint of Moor or Jew. I know we belong to some great family or other, but I forget who. My father knows all about it. He has the coat of arms hanging up in his cottage, up in the fortress." — There is never a Spaniard, however poor, but has some claim to high pedigree. The first title of this ragged worthy, however, had completely captivated me, so I gladly accepted the services of the " son of the Alhambra." We now found ourselves in a deep, narrow ravine, filled with beautiful groves, with a steep avenue, and various footpaths wind- ing through it, bordered with stone seats, and ornamented with fountains. To our left we beheld the towers of the Alhambra beetling above us ; to our right, on the opposite side of the ravine, we were equally dominated by rival towers on a rocky eminence. These, we were told, were the Torres Vermejos, or vermilion towers, so called from their ruddy hue. No one knows their origin. They are of a date much anterior to the Alhambra : some suppose them to have been built by the Romans ; others, by some wander- ing colony of Phoenicians. Ascending the steep and shady avenue, we arrived at the foot of a huge square Moorish tower, forming a kind of barbican, through which passed the main entrance to the fortress. Within the barbican was a group of veteran invalids, one mounting guard at the portal, while the rest, wrapped in their tattered cloaks, slept on the stone benches. This portal is called the Gate of Justice, from the tribunal held within its porch during the Moslem domination, for the immediate trial of petty causes : a custom common to the Oriental nations, and occasionally alluded to in the Sacred Scriptures. The great vestibule, or porch of the gate, is formed by an im- mense Arabian arch, of the horseshoe form, which springs to half the height of the tower. On the keystone of this arch is engraven EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 221 a gigantic hand. Within the vestibule on the keystone of the portal, is sculptured, in like manner, a gigantic key. Those who pretend to some knowledge of Mohammedan symbols, affirm that the hand is the emblem of doctrine and the key of faith ; the latter, we are told, was emblazoned on the standard of the Moslems in opposition to the Christian emblem of the cross, when they subdued Andalusia, A different explanation of these emblems, however, was given by the legitimate son of the Alhambra, and one more in unison with the notions of the common people, who attach something of mystery and magic to everything Moorish, and have all kinds of superstitions connected with this old Moslem fortress. According to Mateo, it was a tradition handed down from the oldest inhabitants, and which he had from his father and grand- father, that the hand and key were magical devices on which the fate of the Alhambra depended. The Moorish king who built it was a great magician, or, as some believed, had sold himself to the devil, and had laid the whole fortress under a magic spell. By this means it had remained standing for several hundred years, in de- fiance of storms and earthquakes, while almost all other buildings of the Moors had fallen to ruin and disappeared. This spell, the tradition went on to say, would last until the hand on the outer arch should reach down and grasp the key, when the whole pile would tumble to pieces, and all the treasures buried beneath it by the Moors would be revealed. Notwithstanding this ominous prediction, we ventured to pass through the spell-bound gateway, feeling some little assurance against magic art in the protection of the Virgin, a statue of whom we observed above the portal. After passing through the Barbican, we ascended a narrow lane, winding between walls, and came on an open esplanade within the fortress, called the Plaza de los Algibes, or Place of the Cis- terns, from great reservoirs which undermine it, cut in the living rock by the Moors, for the supply of the fortress. Here, also, is a well of immense depth, furnishing the purest and coldest of water, — another monument of the delicate taste of the Moors, who were indefatigable in their exertions to obtain that element in its crystal purity. 222 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE In front of this esplanade is the splendid pile, commenced by Charles V., intended, it is said, to eclipse the residence of the Moslem kings. With all its grandeur and architectural merit, it appeared to us like an arrogant intrusion, and passing by it we entered a simple unostentatious portal, opening into the interior of the Moorish palace. The transition was almost magical ; it seemed as if we were at once transported into other times and another realm, and were treading the scenes of Arabian story. We found ourselves in a great court paved with white marble and decorated at each end with light Moorish peristyles. It is called the court of the Alberca. In the centre was an immense basin, or fish-pool, a hundred and thirty feet in length, by thirty in breadth, stocked with gold-fish, and bordered by hedges of roses. At the upper end of this court, rose the great tower of Comares. From the lower end, we passed through a Moorish arch-way into the renowned Court of Lions. There is no part of the edifice that gives us a more complete idea of its original beauty and mag- nificence than this ; for none has suffered so little from the ravages of time. In the centre stands the fountain famous in song and story. The alabaster basins still shed their diamond drops, and the twelve lions which support them, cast forth their crystal streams as in the days of Boabdil. The court is laid out in flower beds, and surrounded by light Arabian arcades of open filigree work, sup- ported by slender pillars of white marble. The architecture, like that of all the other parts of the palace, is characterized by ele- gance, rather than grandeur, bespeaking a delicate and graceful taste, and a disposition to indolent enjoyment. When one looks upon the apparently fragile fretwork of the walls, it is difficult to believe that so much has survived the wear and tear of centuries, the shocks of earthquakes, the violence of war, and the quiet, though no less baneful, pilferings of the tasteful traveller ; it is almost sufficient to excuse the popular tradition, that the whole is protected by a magic charm. On one side of the court, a portal richly adorned opens into a lofty hall paved with white marble, and called the Hall of the Two Sisters. A cupola or lantern admits a tempered light from above, EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 223 and a free circulation of air. The lower part of the walls is incrusted with beautiful Moorish tiles, on some of which are emblazoned the escutcheons of the Moorish monarchs : the upper part is faced with the fine stucco work invented at Damascus, consisting of large plates cast in moulds and artfully joined, so as to have the appearance of having been laboriously sculptured by the hand into light relievos and fanciful arabesques, intermingled with texts of the Koran, and poetical inscriptions in Arabian and Celtic characters. These dec- orations of the walls and cupolas are richly gilded, and the inter- stices panelled with lapis lazuli and other brilliant and enduring colours. On each side of the wall are recesses for ottomans and arches. Above an inner porch, is a balcony which communicated with the women's apartment. The latticed balconies still remain, from whence the dark-eyed beauties of the harem might gaze unseen upon the entertainments of the hall below. It is impossible to contemplate this scene, so perfectly Oriental, without feeling the early associations of Arabian romance, and almost expecting to see the white arm of some mysterious princess beckon- ing from the gallery, or some dark eye sparkling through the lattice. The abode of beauty is here as if it had been inhabited but yesterday ; but where are the two sisters, where the Zoraydas and Lindaraxas ! On the opposite side of the Court of the Lions is the Hall of the Abencerrages, so called from the gallant cavaliers of that illus- trious line, who were here perfidiously massacred. There are some who doubt the whole truth of this story, but our humble attendant, Mateo, pointed out the very wicket of the portal through which they are said to have been introduced, one by one, and the white marble fountain in the centre of the hall, where they were beheaded. He showed us also certain broad ruddy stains in the pavement, traces of their blood, which, according to popular belief, can never be effaced. Finding we listened to him with easy faith, he added, that there was often heard at night, in the Court of the Lions, a low confused sound, resembling the murmurings of a multitude ; with now and then a faint tinkling, like the distant clank of chains. These noises are probably produced by the bubbling currents and tinkling falls of water, conducted under the pavement through 224 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE pipes and channels to supply the fountains ; but according to the legend of the son of the Alhambra, they are made by the spirits of the murdered Abencerrages, who nightly haunt the scene of their suffering, and invoke the vengeance of Heaven on their destroyer. From the Court of Lions, we retraced our steps through the court of the Alberca, or great fish-pool, crossing which, we pro- ceeded to the tower of Comares, so called from the name of the Arabian architect. It is of massive strength, and lofty height, domineering over the rest of the edifice, and overhanging the steep hill-side, which descends abruptly to the banks of the Darro. A Moorish archway admitted us into a vast and lofty hall, which occupies the interior of the tower, and was the grand audience chamber of the Moslem monarchs, thence called the hall of Am- bassadors. It still bears the traces of past magnificence. The walls are richly stuccoed and decorated with arabesques, the vaulted ceil- ings of cedar wood almost lost in obscurity from its height, still gleam with rich gilding and the brilliant tints of the Arabian pencil. On three sides of the saloon are deep windows, cut through the immense thickness of the walls, the balconies of which look down upon the verdant valley of the Darro, the streets and convents of the Albaycin, and command a prospect of the distant Vega. I might go on to describe the other delightful apartments of this side of the palace ; the Tocador or toilet of the Queen, an open belvedere on the summit of the tower, where the Moorish sultanas enjoyed the pure breezes from the mountain and the prospect of the surrounding paradise. The secluded little patio or garden of Lin- daraxa, with its alabaster fountain, its thickets of roses and myrtles, of citrons and oranges. The cool halls and grottoes of the baths, where the glare and heat of day are tempered into a self-mysterious light and a pervading freshness. But I appear to dwell minutely on these scenes. My object is merely to give the reader a gen- eral introduction into an abode, where, if disposed, he may linger and loiter with me through the remainder of this work, gradually becoming familiar with all its beauties. An abundant supply of water, brought from the mountains by old Moorish aqueducts, circulates throughout the palace, supplying its baths and fish-pools, sparkling in jets within its halls, or murmuring EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 225 in channels along the marble pavements. When it has paid its tribute to the royal pile, and visited its gardens and pastures, it flows down the long avenue leading to the city, tinkling in rills, gushing in fountains, and maintaining a perpetual verdure in those groves that embower and beautify the whole hill of the Alhambra. Those, only, who have sojourned in the ardent climates of the South, can appreciate the delights of an abode combining the breezy coolness of the mountain with the freshness and verdure of the valley. While the city below pants with the noon-tide heat, and the parched Vega trembles to the eye, the delicate airs from the Sierra Nevada play through the lofty halls, bringing with them the sweet- ness of the surrounding gardens. Every thing invites to that indo- lent repose, the bliss of Southern climes ; and while the half-shut eye looks out from shaded balconies upon the glittering landscape, the ear is lulled by the rustling of groves, and the murmur of running streams. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER [Born at Burlington, New Jersey, September 15, 1789; died at Cooperstown, New York, September 14, 1851] THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS Chap. XXIII But though the beast of game The privilege of chase may claim ; Though space and law the stag we lend Ere hound we slip, or bow we bend ; Who ever reeked, where, how, or when The prowling fox was trapped or slain ? Lady of the Lake It is unusual to find an encampment of the natives, like those of the more instructed whites, guarded by the presence of armed men. Well informed of the approach of every danger, while it is yet at a distance, the Indian generally rests secure under his knowl- edge of the signs of the forest, and the long and difficult paths that 226 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE separate him from those he has most reason to dread. But the enemy who, by any lucky concurrence of accidents, has found means to elude the vigilance of the scouts, will seldom meet with sentinels nearer home to sound the alarm. In addition to this general usage, the tribes friendly to the French knew too well the weight of the blow that had just been struck, to apprehend any immediate danger from the hostile nations that were tributary to the crown of Britain. When Duncan and David, therefore, found themselves in the centre of the children, who played the antics already mentioned, it was without the least previous intimation of their approach. But so soon as they were observed the whole of the juvenile pack raised, by common consent, a shrill and warning whoop ; and then sank, as it were, by magic, from before the sight of their visitors. The naked, tawny bodies of the crouching urchins blended so nicely at that hour, with the withered herbage, that at first it seemed as if the earth had, in truth, swallowed up their forms ; though when surprise permitted Duncan to bend his look more curiously about the spot, he found it everywhere met by dark, quick, and rolling eyeballs. Gathering no encouragement from this startling presage of the nature of the scrutiny he was likely to undergo from the more mature judgments of the men, there was an instant when the young soldier would have retreated. It was, however, too late to appear to hesitate. The cry of the children had drawn a dozen warriors to the door of the nearest lodge, where they stood clustered in a dark and savage group, gravely awaiting the nearer approach of those who had unexpectedly come among them. David, in some measure familiarized to the scene, led the way with a steadiness that no slight obstacle was likely to disconcert, into this very building. It was the principal edifice of the village, though roughly constructed of the bark and branches of trees ; being the lodge in which the tribe held its councils and public meetings during their temporary residence on the borders of the English province. Duncan found it difficult to assume the neces- sary appearance of uhconcern, as he brushed the dark and powerful frames of the savages who thronged its threshold ; but, conscious that his existence depended on his presence of mind, he trusted to EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 227 the discretion of his companion, whose footsteps he closely fol- lowed, endeavoring, as he proceeded, to rally his thoughts for the occasion. His blood curdled when he found himself in absolute contact with such fierce and implacable enemies ; but he so far mastered his feelings as to pursue his way into the centre of the lodge, with an exterior that did not betray the weakness. Imitating the example of the deliberate Gamut, he drew a bundle of fragrant brush from beneath a pile that filled the corner of the hut, and seated himself in silence. So soon as their visitor had passed, the observant warriors fell back from the entrance, and arranging themselves about him, they seemed patiently to await the moment when it might comport with the dignity of the stranger to speak. By far the greater number stood leaning, in lazy, lounging attitudes, against the upright posts that supported the crazy building, while three or four of the oldest and most distinguished of the chiefs placed themselves on the earth a little more in advance, A flaring torch was burning in the place, and sent its red glare from face to face and figure to figure, as it waved in the currents of air. Duncan profited by its light to read the probable character of his reception, in the countenances of his hosts. But his in- genuity availed him little against the cold artifices of the people he had encountered. The chiefs in front scarce cast a glance at his person, keeping their eyes on the ground, with an air that might have been intended for respect, but which it was quite easy to construe into distrust. The men in shadow were less reserved. Duncan soon detected their searching, but stolen looks, which, in truth, scanned his person and attire inch by inch ; leaving no emotion of the countenance, no gesture, no line of the paint, nor even the fashion of a garment, unheeded, and without comment. At length one whose hair was beginning to be sprinkled with gray, but whose sinewy limbs and firm tread announced that he was still equal to the duties of manhood, advanced out of the gloom of a corner, whither he had probably posted himself to make his observations unseen, and spoke. He used the language of the Wyandots, or Hurons ; his words were, consequently, unin- telligible to Heyward, though they seemed, by the gestures that 228 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE accompanied them, to be uttered more in courtesy than anger. The latter shook his head, and made a gesture indicative of his inability to reply. "" Do none of my brothers speak the French or the English .? " he said, in the former language, looking about him from counte- nance to countenance, in hopes of finding a nod of assent. Though more than one had turned, as if to catch the meaning of his words, they remained unanswered. "" I should be grieved to think," continued Duncan, speaking slowly, and using the simplest French of which he was the master, "to believe that none of this wise and brave nation understand the language that the ' Grand Monarque ' uses when he talks to his children. His heart would be heavy did he believe his red warriors paid him so little respect! " A long and grave pause succeeded, during which no movement of a limb, nor any expression of an eye, betrayed the impression produced by his remark. Duncan, who knew that silence was a virtue among his hosts, gladly had recourse to the custom, in order to arrange his ideas. At length the same warrior who had before addressed him replied, by dryly demanding in the language of the Canadas : — " When our Great Father speaks to his people, is it with the tongue of a Huron .? " '" He knows no difference in his children, whether the color of the skin be red, or black, or white," returned Duncan, evasively ; " though chiefly is he satisfied with the brave Hurons." " In what manner will he speak," demanded the wary chief, " when the runners count to him the scalps which five nights ago grew on the heads of the Yengeese ? " " They were his enemies," said Duncan, shuddering involun- tarily ; "and doubtless, he will say, it is good; my Hurons are very gallant." " Our Canada father does not think it. Instead of looking for- ward to reward his Indians, his eyes are turned backward. He sees the dead Yengeese, but no Huron. What can this mean } " " A great chief, like him, has more thoughts than tongues. He looks to see that no enemies are on his trail." EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 229 " The canoe of a dead warrior will not float on the Horican," returned the savage, gloomily. "His ears are open to the Dela- wares, who are not our friends, and they fill them with lies." " It cannot be. See ; he has bid me, who am a man that knows the art of healing, to go to his children, the red Hurons of the great lakes, and ask if any are sick ! " Another silence succeeded this annunciation of the character Duncan had assumed. Every eye was simultaneously bent on his person, as if to inquire into the truth or falsehood of the declara- tion, with an intelligence and keenness that caused the subject of their scrutiny to tremble for the result. He was, however, relieved again by the former speaker. " Do the cunning men of the Canadas paint their skins ? " the Huron coldly continued ; "we have heard them boast that their faces were pale." " When an Indian chief comes among his white fathers," returned Duncan, with great steadiness, " he lays aside his buf- falo robe, to carry the shirt that is offered him. My brothers have given me paint, and I wear it." A low murmur of applause announced that the compliment to the tribe was favorably received. The elderly chief made a gesture of commendation, which was answered by most of his companions, who each threw forth a hand and uttered a brief exclamation of pleasure. Duncan began to breathe more freely, believing that the weight of his examination was past ; and as he had already prepared a simple and probable tale to support his pretended occupation, his hopes of ultimate success grew brighter. After a silence of a few moments, as if adjusting his thoughts, in order to make a suitable answer to the declaration their guest had just given, another warrior arose, and placed himself in an attitude to speak. While his lips were yet in the act of parting, a low but fearful sound arose from the forest, and was immediately succeeded by a high, shrill yell, that was drawn out, until it equalled the longest and most plaintive howl of the wolf. The sudden and terrible interruption caused Duncan to start from his seat, uncon- scious of everything but the effect produced by so frightful a cry. At the same moment, the warriors glided in a body from the 230 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE lodge, and the outer air was filled with loud shouts, that nearly drowned those awful sounds, which were still ringing beneath the arches of the woods. Unable to command himself any longer, the youth broke from the place, and presently stood in the centre of a disorderly throng, that included nearly everything having life, within the limits of the encampment. Men, women, and children ; the aged, the infirm, the active, and the strong, were alike abroad, some exclaiming aloud, others clapping their hands with a joy that seemed frantic, and all expressing their savage pleasure in some unexpected event. Though astounded, at first, by the uproar, Heyward was soon enabled to find its solution by the scene that followed. There yet lingered sufficient light in the heavens to exhibit those bright openings among the tree-tops, where different paths left the clearing to enter the depths of the wilderness. Beneath one of them, a line of warriors issued from the woods, and ad- vanced slowly toward the dwellings. One in front bore a short pole, on which, as it afterward appeared, was suspended several human scalps. The startling sounds that Duncan had heard, were what the whites have not inappropriately called the " death hal- loo " ; and each repetition of the cry was intended to announce to the tribe the fate of an enemy. Thus far the knowledge of Heyward assisted him in the explanation ; and as he now knew that the interruption was caused by the unlooked-for return of a successful war-party, every disagreeable sensation was quieted in inward congratulation, for the opportune relief and insignificance it conferred on himself. When at the distance of a few hundred feet from the lodges, the newly arrived warriors halted. Their plaintive and terrific cry, which was intended to represent equally the wailings of the dead and the triumph of the victors, had entirely ceased. One of their number now called aloud, in words that were far from appalling, though not more intelligible to those for whose ears they were intended, than their expressive yells. It would be difficult to con- vey a suitable idea of the savage ecstasy with which the news thus imparted was received. The whole encampment in a moment be- came a scene of the most violent bustle and commotion. The EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 231 warriors drew their knives, and flourishing them, they arranged themselves in two lines, forming a lane that extended from the war-party to the lodges. The squaws seized clubs, axes, or what- ever weapon of offence first offered itself to their hands, and rushed eagerly to act their part in the cruel game that was at hand. Even the children would not be excluded ; but boys, little able to wield the instruments, tore the tomahawks from the belts of their fathers, and stole into the ranks, apt imitators of the savage traits exhibited by their parents. Large piles of brush lay scattered about the clearing, and a wary and aged squaw was occupied in firing as many as might serve to light the coming exhibition. As the flame arose, its power exceeded that of the parting day, and assisted to render objects at the same time more distinct and more hideous. The whole scene formed a striking picture, whose frame was composed of the dark and tall border of pines. The warriors just arrived were the most distant figures. A little in advance stood two men, who were ap- parently selected from the rest, as the principal actors in what was to follow. The light was not strong enough to render their features distinct, though it was quite evident that they were governed by very different emotions. While one stood erect and firm, prepared to meet his fate like a hero, the other bowed his head, as if palsied by terror or stricken with shame. The high-spirited Duncan felt a powerful impulse of admiration and pity toward the former, though no opportunity could offer to exhibit his generous emo- tions. He watched his slightest movement, however, with eager eyes ; and as he traced the fine outline of his admirably propor- tioned and active frame, he endeavored to persuade himself that if the powers of man, seconded by such noble resolution, could bear one harmless through so severe a trial, the youthful captive before him might hope for success in the hazardous race he was about to run. Insensibly the young man drew nigher to the swarthy lines of the Hurons, and scarcely breathed, so intense became his interest in the spectacle. Just then the signal yell was given, and the momentar)^ quiet which had preceded it was broken by a burst of cries, that far exceeded any before heard. The most abject of the two victims continued motionless ; but the other bounded from 2 32 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE the place at the cry with the activity and swiftness of a deer. Instead of rushing through the hostile lines, as had been expected, he just entered the dangerous defile, and before time was given for a single blow, turned short, and leaping the heads of a row of children, he gained at once the exterior and safer side of the formidable array. The artifice was answered by a hundred voices raised in imprecations ; and the whole of the excited multitude broke from their order, and spread themselves about the place in wild confusion. A dozen blazing piles now shed their lurid brightness on the place, which resembled some unhallowed and supernatural arena, in which malicious demons had assembled to act their bloody and lawless rites. The forms in the background looked like unearthly beings, gliding before the eye, and cleaving the air with frantic and unmeaning gestures ; while the savage passions of such as passed the flames, were rendered fearfully distinct by the gleams that shot athwart their inflamed visages. It will easily be understood, that amid such a concourse of vindictive enemies, no breathing time was allowed the fugitive. There was a single moment when it seemed as if he would have reached the forest, but the whole body of his captors threw them- selves before him, and drove him back into the centre of his relentless persecutors. Turning like a headed deer, he shot, with the swiftness of an arrow, through a pillar of forked flame, and passing the whole multitude harmless, he appeared on the opposite side of the clearing. Here too he was met and turned by a few of the older and more subtle of the Hurons. Once more he tried the throng, as if seeking safety in its blindness, and then several moments succeeded, during which Duncan believed the active and courageous young stranger was lost. Nothing could be distinguished but a dark mass of human forms tossed and involved in inexplicable confusion. Arms, gleaming knives, and formidable clubs, appeared above them, but the blows were evidently given at random. The awful effect was heightened by the piercing shrieks of the women and the fierce yells of the warriors. Now and then Duncan caught a glimpse of a light form cleaving the air in some desperate bound, and he rather hoped EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 233 than believed that the captive yet retained the command of his astonishing powers of activity. Suddenly the multitude rolled backward, and approached the spot where he himself stood. The heavy body in the rear pressed upon the women and children in front, and bore them to the earth. The stranger reappeared in the confusion. Human power could not, however, much longer endure so severe a trial. Of this the captive seemed conscious. Profiting by the momentary opening, he darted from among the warriors, and made a desperate, and what seemed to Duncan a final effort to gain the wood. As if aware that no danger was to be appre- hended from the young soldier, the fugitive nearly brushed his person in his flight. A tall and powerful Huron, who had hus- banded his forces, pressed close upon his heels, and with an uplifted arm menaced a fatal blow. Duncan thrust forth a foot, and the shock precipitated the eager savage headlong, many feet in advance of his intended victim. Thought itself is not quicker than was the motion with which the latter profited by the advantage ; he turned, gleamed like a meteor again before the eyes of Duncan, and at the next moment, when the latter recovered his recollection, and gazed around in quest of the captive, he saw him quietly lean- ing against a small painted post, which stood before the door of the principal lodge. Apprehensive that the part he had taken in the escape might prove fatal to himself, Duncan left the place without delay. He followed the crowd, which drew nigh the lodges, gloomy and sullen, like any other multitude that had been disappointed in an execu- tion. Curiosity, or perhaps a better feeling, induced him to approach the stranger. He found him, standing with one arm cast about the protecting post, and breathing thick and hard, after his exer- tions, but disdaining to permit a single sign of suffering to escape. His person was now protected by immemorial and sacred usage, until the tribe in council had deliberated and determined on his fate. It was not difficult, however, to foretell the result, if any presage could be drawn from the feelings of those who crowded the place. There was no term of abuse known to the Huron vocabulary that the disappointed women did not lavishly expend on the suc- cessful stranger. They flouted at his efforts, and told him, with 234 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE bitter scoffs, that his feet were better than his hands ; and that he merited wings, while he knew not the use of an arrow or a knife. To all this the captive made no reply ; but was content to preserve an attitude in which dignity was singularly blended with disdain. Exasperated as much by his composure as by his good- fortune, their words became unintelligible, and were succeeded by shrill, piercing yells. Just then the crafty squaw, who had taken the necessary precaution to fire the piles, made her way through the throng, and cleared a place for herself in front of the captive. The squalid and withered person of this hag might well have obtained for her the character of possessing more than human cunning. Throwing back her light vestment, she stretched forth her long skinny arm, in derision, and using the language of the Lenape, as more intelligible to the subject of her gibes, she commenced aloud : — " Look you, Delaware," she said, snapping her fingers in his face ; " your nation is a race of women, and the hoe is better fitted to your hands than the gun. Your squaws are the mothers of deer; but if a bear, or a wild-cat or a serpent were born among you, ye would flee. The Huron girls shall make you petticoats, and we will find you a husband." A burst of savage laughter succeeded this attack, during which the soft and musical merriment of the younger females strangely chimed with the cracked voice of their older and more malignant companion. But the stranger was superior to all their efforts. His head was immovable ; nor did he betray the slightest consciousness that any were present, except when his haughty eye rolled toward the dusky forms of the warriors, who stalked in the background, silent and sullen observers of the scene. Infuriated at the self-command of the captive, the woman placed her arms akimbo ; and throwing herself into a posture of defiance, she broke out anew, in a torrent of words that no art of ours could commit successfully to paper. Her breath was, however, expended in vain ; for although distinguished in her nation as a proficient in the art of abuse, she was permitted to work herself into such a fury as actually to foam at the mouth, without causing a muscle to vibrate in the motionless figure of the stranger. The effect of his EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 235 indifference began to extend itself to the other spectators ; and a youngster, who was just quitting the condition of a boy, to enter the state of manhood, attempted to assist the termagant, by flour- ishing his tomahawk before their victim, and adding his empty boasts to the taunts of the woman. Then, indeed, the captive turned his face toward the hght, and looked down on the stripling with an expression that was superior to contempt. At the next moment he resumed his quiet and reclining attitude against the post. But the change of posture had permitted Duncan to exchange glances with the firm and piercing eyes of Uncas. Breathless with amazement, and heavily oppressed with the crit- ical situation of his friend, Heyward recoiled before the look, trem- bling lest its meaning might, in some unknown manner, hasten the prisoner's fate. There was not, however, any instant cause for such an apprehension. Just then a warrior forced his way into the exasperated crowd. Motioning the woman and children aside with a stern gesture, he took Uncas by the arm, and led him toward the door of the council lodge. Thither all the chiefs, and most of the distinguished warriors, followed; among whom the anxious Heyward found means to enter without attracting any dangerous attention to himself. A few minutes were consumed in disposing of those present in a manner suitable to their rank and influence in the tribe. An order very similar to that adopted in the preceding interview was observed ; the aged and superior chiefs occupying the area of the spacious apartment, within the powerful light of a glaring torch, while their juniors and inferiors were arranged in the background, presenting a dark outline of swarthy and marked visages. In the very centre of the lodge, immediately under an opening that ad- mitted the twinkling light of one or two stars, stood Uncas, calm, elevated, and collected. His high and haughty carriage was not lost on his captors, who often bent their looks on his person, with eyes which, while they lost none of their inflexibility of purpose, plainly betrayed their admiration of the stranger's daring. The case was different with the individual whom Duncan had observed to stand forth with his friend, previously to the desper- ate trial of speed ; and who, instead of joining in the chase, had 2 36 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE remained, throughout its turbulent uproar, Hke a cringing statue, expressive of shame and disgrace. Though not a hand had been extended to greet him, nor yet an eye had condescended to watch his movements, he had also entered the lodge, as though impelled by a fate to whose decrees he submitted, seemingly, without a struggle. Heyward profited by the first opportunity to gaze in his face, secretly apprehensive he might find the features of another acquaintance ; but they proved to be those of a stranger, and, what was still more inexplicable, of one who bore all the distinctive marks of a Huron warrior. Instead of mingling with his tribe, however, he sat apart, a solitary being in a multitude, his form shrinking into a crouching and abject attitude, as if anxious to fill as little space as possible. When each individual had taken his proper station, and silence reigned in the place, the gray-haired chief already introduced to the reader spoke aloud, in the language of the Lenni Lenape. " Delaware," he said, " though one of a nation of women, you have proved yourself a man. I would give you food ; but he who eats with a Huron should become his friend. Rest in peace till the morning sun, when our last words shall be spoken." '" Seven nights, and as many summer days, have I fasted on the trail of the Hurons," Uncas coldly replied; "the children of the Lenape know how to travel the path of the just without lingering to eat." "Two of my young men are in pursuit of your companion," resumed the other, without appearing to regard the boast of his captive ; " when they get back, then will our wise men say to you, — ' live ' or ' die.' " " Has a Huron no ears ? " scornfully exclaimed Uncas ; " twice, since he has been your prisoner, has the Delaware heard a gun that he knows. Your young men will never come back ! " A short and sullen pause succeeded this bold assertion. Duncan, who understood the Mohican to allude to the fatal rifle of the scout, bent forward in earnest observation of the effect it might produce on the conquerors ; but the chief was content with simply retorting: — " If the Lenape are so skilful, why is one of their bravest warriors here .-' " EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 237 " He followed in the steps of a flying coward, and fell into a snare. The cunning beaver may be caught." As Uncas thus replied, he pointed with his finger toward the solitary Huron, but without deigning to bestow any other notice on so unworthy an object. The words of the answer and the air of the speaker produced a strong sensation among his auditors. Every eye rolled sullenly toward the individual indicated by the simple gesture, and a low, threatening murmur passed through the crowd. The ominous sounds reached the outer door, and the women and children pressing into the throng, no gap had been left, between shoulder and shoulder, that was not now filled with the dark lineaments of some eager and curious human countenance. In the meantime, the more aged chiefs, in the centre, communed with each other in short and broken sentences. Not a word was uttered that did not convey the meaning of the speaker, in the sim- plest and most energetic form. Again, a long and deeply solemn pause took place. It was known, by all present, to be the grave precursor of a weighty and important judgment. They who com- posed the outer circle of faces were on tiptoe to gaze ; and even the culprit for an instant forgot his shame in a deeper emotion, and exposed his abject features, in order to cast an anxious and troubled glance at the dark assemblage of chiefs. The silence was finally broken by the aged warrior so often named. He arose from the earth, and moving past the immovable form of Uncas, placed himself in a dignified attitude before the offender. At that moment, the withered squaw already mentioned moved into the circle, in a slow, sidling sort of a dance, holding the torch, and muttering the indistinct words of what might have been a species of incantation. Though her presence was altogether an intrusion, it was unheeded. Approaching Uncas, she held the blazing brand in such a manner as to cast its red glare on his person, and to expose the slightest emotion of his countenance. The Mohican maintained his firm and haughty attitude ; and his eye so far from deigning to meet her inquisitive look, dwelt steadily on the distance, as though it penetrated the obstacles which impeded the view and looked into futurity. Satisfied with her examination, she left him, 238 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE with a slight expression of pleasure, and proceeded to practise the same trying experiment on her delinquent countryman. The young Huron was in his war paint, and very little of a finely moulded form was concealed by his attire. The light rendered every limb and joint discernible, and Duncan turned away in horror when he saw they were writhing in irrepressible agony. The woman was commencing a low and plaintive howl at the sad and shameful spectacle, when the chief put forth his hand and gently pushed her aside. " Reed-that-bends," he said, addressing the young culprit by name, and in his proper language, "though the Great Spirit has made you pleasant to the eyes, it would have been better that you had not been born. Your tongue is loud in the village, but in battle it is still. None of my young men strike the tomahawk deeper into the war-post — none of them so lightly on the Yen- geese. The enemy know the shape of your back, but they have never seen the color of your eyes. Three times have they called on you to come, and as often did you forget to answer. Your name will never be mentioned again in your tribe — it is already forgotten." As the chief slowly uttered these words, pausing impressively between each sentence, the culprit raised his face, in deference to the other's rank and years. Shame, horror, and pride struggled in its lineaments. His eye, which was contracted with inward anguish, gleamed on the persons of those whose breath was his fame ; and the latter emotion for an instant predominated. He arose to his feet, and baring his bosom, looked steadily on the keen, glittering knife, that was already upheld by his inexorable judge. As the weapon passed slowly into his heart he even smiled, as if in joy at having found death less dreadful than he had antici- pated, and fell heavily on his face, at the feet of the rigid and unyielding form of Uncas. The squaw gave a loud and plaintive yell, dashed the torch to the earth, and buried everything in darkness. The whole shudder- ing group of spectators glided from the lodge like troubled sprites ; and Duncan thought that he and the yet throbbing body of the victim of an Indian judgment had now become its only tenants. EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 239 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT [Born at Cummington, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794; died at New York City, June 12, 1878] THANATOPSIS To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language ; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over the spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall. And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart ; — Go forth, under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings, while from all around — Earth and her waters, and the depths of air — Comes a still voice — Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course ; nor yet in the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix for ever with the elements. To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. 240 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Yet not to thine eternal resting-place Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world — with kings, The powerful of the earth — the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past. All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, — the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between ; The venerable woods — rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green ; and, poured round all, Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste, — Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven. Are shining on the sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom. — Take the wings Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness. Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound. Save his own dashings — yet the dead are there : And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep — the dead reign there alone. So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure ? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom ; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men. EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 24 1 The youth in hfe's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid. The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man — Shall one by one be gathered to thy side. By those, who in their turn shall follow them. So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death. Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night. Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. TO A WATERFOWL Whither, midst falling dew. While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way ? Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide. Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean-side ? There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast — The desert and illimitable air — Lone wandering, but not lost. 242 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near. And soon that toil shall end ; Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. Thou 'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet, on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given. And shall not soon depart. He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright. TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, And colored with the heaven's own blue, That openest when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night, Thou comest not when violets lean O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, Or columbines, in purple dressed. Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. Thou waitest late and com'st alone. When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frost and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end. EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 243 Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue — blue — as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall. I would that thus, when I shall see The hour of death draw near to me, Hope, blossoming within my heart, May look to heaven as I depart. THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead ; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread ; The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay. And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day. Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood ? Alas ! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again. The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow ; But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood. And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood. Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men. And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen. 244 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And now, when comes the cahn mild day, as still such days will come. To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home ; When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still, And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill. The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore. And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more. And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died, The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side. In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the leaf, And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief : Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours, So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers. O FAIREST OF THE RURAL MAIDS O fairest of the rural maids ! Thy birth was in the forest shades ; Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky, Were all that met thine infant eye. Thy sports, thy wanderings, when a child. Were ever in the sylvan wild ; And all the beauty of the place Is in thy heart and on thy face. The twilight of the trees and rocks Is in the light shade of thy locks ; Thy step is as the wind, that weaves . Its playful way among the leaves. Thine eyes are springs, in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen ; Their lashes are the herbs that look On their young figures in the brook. EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 245 The forest depths, by foot unpressed, Are not more sinless than thy breast ; The holy peace, that fills the air Of those calm solitudes, is there. SONG OF MARION'S MEN Our band is few but true and tried, Our leader frank and bold ; The British soldier trembles When Marion's name is told. Our fortress is the good greenwood, Our tent the cypress-tree : We know the forest round us, As seamen know the sea. We know its walls of thorny vines, Its glades of reedy grass, Its safe and silent islands Within the dark morass. Woe to the English soldiery That little dread us near ! On them shall light at midnight A strange and sudden fear : When, waking to their tents on fire They grasp their arms in vain, And they who stand to face us Are beat to earth again ; And they who fly in terror deem A mighty host behind, And hear the tramp of thousands Upon the hollow wind. Then sweet the hour that brings release From danger and from toil : We talk the battle over. And share the battle's spoil. 246 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE The woodland rings with laugh and shout, As if a hunt were up, And woodland flowers are gathered To crown the soldier's cup. With merry songs we mock the wind That in the pine-top grieves. And slumber long and sweetly On beds of oaken leaves. Well knows the fair and friendly moon The band that Marion leads — The glitter of their rifles. The scampering of their steeds. 'T is life to guide the fiery barb Across the moonlight plain ; 'T is life to feel the night-wind That lifts the tossing mane. ^ A moment in the British camp — A moment — and away Back to the pathless forest Before the peep of day. Grave men there are by broad Santee, Grave men with hoary hairs ; Their hearts are all with Marion, For Marion are their prayers. And lovely ladies greet our band With kindliest welcoming, With smiles like those of summer. And tears like those of spring. For them we wear these trusty arms. And lay them down no more Till we have driven the Briton, Forever, from our shore. EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 247 THE YELLOW VIOLET When beechen buds begin to swell, And woods the bluebird's warble know, The yellow violet's modest bell Peeps from the last year's leaves below. Ere russet fields their green resume. Sweet flower, I love, in forest bare. To meet thee, when thy faint perfume Alone is in the virgin air. Of all her train, the hands of Spring First plant thee in the watery mould, And I have seen thee blossoming Beside the snow-bank's edges cold. Thy parent sun, who bade thee view Pale skies, and chilling moisture sip. Has bathed thee in his own bright hue. And streaked with jet thy glowing lip. Yet slight thy form, and low thy seat, And earthward bent thy gentle eye. Unapt the passing view to meet, When loftier flowers are flaunting nigh. Oft, in the sunless April day. Thy early smile has stayed my walk ; But midst the gorgeous blooms of May, I passed thee on thy humble stalk. So they, who climb to wealth, forget The friends in darker fortunes tried. I copied them — but I regret That I should ape the ways of pride. 248 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And when again the genial hour Awakes the painted tribes of hght, I '11 not o'erlook the modest flower That made the woods of April bright. THE DEATH OF LINCOLN Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare, Gentle and merciful and just ! Who, in the fear of God, didst bear The sword of power, a nation's trust ! In sorrow by thy bier we stand, Amid the awe that hushes all. And speak the anguish of a land That shook with horror at thy fall. Thy task is done ; the bond are free : We bear thee to an honored grave, Whose proudest monument shall be The broken fetters of the slave. Pure was thy life ; its bloody close Hath placed thee with the sons of light. Among the noble host of those Who perished in the cause of Right. ROBERT OF LINCOLN Merrily swinging on brier and weed. Near to the nest of his little dame. Over the mountain-side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name : Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink ; Snug and safe is that nest of ours. Hidden among the summer flowers. Chee, chee, chee. EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 249 Robert of Lincolrt is gayly drest, Wearing a bright black wedding-coat ; White are his shoulders and white his crest. Hear him call in his merry note : Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink ; Look, what a nice new coat is mine, Sure there was never a bird so fine. Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife. Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, Passing at home a patient life, Broods in the grass while her husband sings : Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, .Spink, spank, spink ; Brood, kind creature ; you need not fear Thieves and robbers while I am here. Chee, chee, chee. Modest and shy as a nun is she ; One weak chirp is her only note. Braggart and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat : Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink ; Never was I afraid of man ; Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can ! Chee, chee, chee. Six white eggs on a bed of hay. Flecked with purple, a pretty sight ! There as the mother sits all day, Robert is singing with all his might : Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink ; 2 50 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Nice good wife, that never goes out, Keeping house while I frolic about. Chee, chee, chee. Soon as the little ones chip the shell, Six wide mouths are open for food ; Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well, Gathering seeds for the hungry brood. Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink ; This new life is likely to be Hard for a gay young fellow like me. Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln at length is made Sober with work, and silent with care ; Off is his holiday garment laid. Half forgotten that merry air : Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink ; Nobody knows but my mate and I Where our nest and our nestlings lie. Chee, chee, chee. Summer wanes ; the children are grown ; Fun and frolic no more he knows ; Robert of Lincoln 's a humdrum crone ; Off he flies, and we sing as he goes : Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink ; When you can pipe that merry old strain, Robert of Lincoln, come back again. Chee, chee, chee. EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 251 THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE-TREE Come, let us plant the apple-tree. Cleave the tough greensward with the spade ; Wide let its hollow bed be made ; There gently lay the roots, and there Sift the dark mould with kindly care, And press it o'er them tenderly. As, round the sleeping infant's feet, We softly fold the cradle-sheet ; So plant we the apple-tree. What plant we in this apple-tree ? Buds, which the breath of summer days Shall lengthen into leafy sprays ; Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast, Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest ; We plant, upon the sunny lea, A shadow for the noontide hour, A shelter from the summer shower, When we plant the apple-tree. What plant we in this apple-tree ? Sweets for a hundred flowery springs To load the May-wind's restless wings. When, from the orchard-row, he pours Its fragrance through our open doors ; A world of blossoms for the bee. Flowers for the sick girl's silent room. For the glad infant sprigs of bloom, We plant with the apple-tree. What plant we in this apple-tree ? Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, And redden in the August noon. And drop, when gentle airs come by. That fan the blue September sky. 252 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE While children come, with cries of glee, And seek them where the fragrant grass Betrays their bed to those who pass, At the foot of the apple-tree. And when, above this apple-tree, The winter stars are quivering bright, And winds go howling through the night, Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, Shall peel its fruit by cottage-hearth, And guests in prouder homes shall see, Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine And golden orange of the line, The fruit of the apple-tree. The fruitage of this apple-tree Winds and our flag of stripe and star Shall bear to coasts that lie afar. Where men shall wonder at the view, And ask in what fair groves they grew ; And sojourners beyond the sea Shall think of childhood's careless day. And long, long hours of summer play, In the shade of the apple-tree. Each year shall give this apple-tree A broader flush of roseate bloom, A deeper maze of verdurous gloom. And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower, The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower. The years shall come and pass, but we Shall hear no longer, where we lie, The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh. In the boughs of the apple-tree. And time shall waste this apple-tree. Oh, when its aged branches throw Thin shadows on the ground below, EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 253 Shall fraud and force and iron will Oppress the weak and helpless still ? What shall the tasks of mercy be, Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears Of those who live when length of years Is wasting this little apple-tree ? " Who planted this old apple-tree ? " The children of that distant day Thus to some aged man shall say ; And, gazing on its mossy stem. The gray-haired man shall answer them : " A poet of the land was he. Born in the rude but good old times ; 'T is said he made some quaint old rhymes, On planting the apple-tree." THE MAY SUN SHEDS AN AMBER LIGHT The May sun sheds an amber light On new-leaved woods and lawns between ; But she, who with a smile more bright. Welcomed and watched the springing green. Is in her grave. Low in her grave. The fair white blossoms of the wood In groups beside the pathway stand ; But one, the gentle and the good. Who cropped them with a fairer hand, Is in her grave. Low in her grave. Upon the woodland's morning airs The small birds' mingled notes are flung ; But she, whose voice, more sweet than theirs, Once bade me listen while they sung, Is in her grave. Low in her grave. 2 54 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE That music of the early year Brings tears of anguish to my eyes ; My heart aches when the flowers appear ; For then I think of her who Hes Within her grave, Low in her grave. EDGAR ALLAN POE [Born at Boston, January 19, i8og; died at Baltimore, October 7, 1849] THE RAVEN Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, — While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. " 'T is some visitor," I muttered, " tapping at my chamber door : Only this and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow ; — vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore, For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore ; — Nameless here for evermore. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before ; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating " 'T is some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door, — Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door ; — This it is and nothing more." Presently my soul grew stronger ; hesitating then no longer, " Sir," said I, " or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore ; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 255 That I scarce was sure I heard you" — here I opened wide the door ; — Darkness there and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before ; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, " Lenore ? " This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, " Lenore ! " Merely this and nothing more. Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. " Surely," said I, " surely that is something at my window lattice ; Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore — Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore ; — 'T is the wind and nothing more." Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he ; not a minute stopped or stayed he ; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door, — Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door : Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling By the grave and §tern decorum of the countenance it wore, — "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven. Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore : Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore ! " Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly. Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy bore ; 256 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE For we cannot help agreeing that no hving human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door, — Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as " Nevermore." But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour, Nothing further then he uttered, not a feather then he fluttered, Till I scarcely more than muttered, — ' ' Other friends have flown before ; On the morrow lie will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before." Then the bird said, " Nevermore." Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, " Doubtless," said I, " what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom' unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore : Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore Of ' Never — ^ nevermore.' " But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling. Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door ; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore. What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking '" Nevermore." This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core ; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er. But whose velvet violet lining \vith the lamp-light gloating o'er She shall press, ah, nevermore ! Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 257 "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee — by these angels he hath sent thee Respite — respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore ! Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore ! " Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." "' Prophet ! " said I, " thing of evil ! prophet stilf, if bird or devil ! Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore. Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted — On this home by Horror haunted — tell me truly, I implore : Is there — is there balm in Gilead ? — tell me — tell me, I implore ! " Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." " Prophet ! " said I, " thing of evil — prophet still, if bird or devil ! By that Heaven that bends above us, by that God we both adore, Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore : Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore ! " Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." "Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend ! " I shrieked, upstarting : " Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore ! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken ! Leave my loneliness unbroken ! quit the bust above my door ! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door ! " Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore," And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door ; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor : And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted — nevermore ! 258 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE ANNABEL LEE It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee ; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child. In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabel Lee ; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago. In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee ; So that her highborn kinsman came And bore her away from me. To shut her up in a sepulcher In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven. Went envying her and me ; Yes ! that was the reason {as all men know. In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night. Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we, Of many far wiser than we ; And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea. Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee : EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 259 For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee ; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee ; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling — my darling — my life and my bride, In her sepulcher there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea. THE HAUNTED PALACE In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace — Radiant palace — reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion, It stood there ; Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair. Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow (This — all this — was in the olden Time long ago), And every gentle air that dallied. In that sweet day. Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away. Wanderers in that happy valley Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically, To a lute's well-tuned law, Round about a throne where, sitting, (Porphyrogene !) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. 26o READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty. The wit and wisdom of their king. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate ; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate !) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed. Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. And travelers, now, within that valley, Through the red-litten windows see Vast forms, that move fantastically To a discordant melody ; While, like a ghastly rapid river, Through the pale door A hideous throng rush out forever. And laugh — but smile no more. THE BELLS Hear the sledges with the bells, Silver bells ! What a world of merriment their melody foretells ! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. In the icy air of night ! While the stars, that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight ; EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 261 Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme. To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells. Bells, bells, bells — From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. Hear the mellow wedding bells, Golden bells ! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells ! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight ! From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon ! Oh, from out the sounding cells. What a gush of euphony voluminously wells ! How it swells ! How it dwells On the Future ! how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells. Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells — To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells ! Hear the loud alarum bells — Brazen bells ! What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells ! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright ! Too much horrified to speak. They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune. 262 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, Leaping higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire. And a resolute endeavor Now — now to sit or never. By the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells ! What a tale their terror tells Of Despair ! How they clang, and clash, and roar ! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air ! Yet the ear it fully knows, By the twanging. And the clanging, ^ How the danger ebbs and flows ; Yet the ear distinctly tells. In the jangling. And the wrangling. How the danger sinks and swells. By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells - Of the bells — Of the bells, bells, bells, bells. Bells, bells, bells — In the clamor and the clangor of the bells ! Hear the tolling of the bells — Iron bells ! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels ! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone ! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 263 And the people — ah, the people — They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone. Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone — They are neither man nor woman — They are neither brute nor human — They are Ghouls : And their king it is who tolls ; And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A paean from the bells ! And his merry bosom swells With the paean of the bells ! And he dances, and he yells ; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the pasan of the bells — Of the bells : Keeping time, time, time. In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the throbbing of the bells — Of the bells, bells, bells — To the sobbing of the bells ; Keeping, time, time, time. As he knells, knells, knells. In a happy Runic rhyme. To the rolling of the bells, Of the bells, bells, bells : To the tolling of the bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells. Bells, bells, bells — To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. 264 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE TO HELEN Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore. That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome. Lo ! in yon brilliant window niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand ! Ah, Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy- Land ! TO ONE IN PARADISE Thou wast all that to me, love, For which my soul did pine — A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine. All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine. Ah, dream too bright to last ! Ah, starry Hope ! that didst arise But to be overcast ! A voice from out the Future cries, " On ! on ! " — but o'er the Past (Dim gulf !) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast ! EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 265 For, alas ! alas ! with me The light of Life is o'er ! " No more — no more — no more — " (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore) Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, Or the stricken eagle soar ! And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy dark eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams — In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams. ISRAFEL In Heaven a spirit doth dwell '" Whose heart-strings are a lute ; " None sing so wildly well As the angel Israfel, And the giddy stars (so legends tell). Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell Of his voice, all mute. Tottering above In her highest noon, The enamored moon Blushes with love. While, to listen, the red levin (With the rapid Pleiads, even, Which were seven). Pauses in heaven. And they say (the starry choir And the other listening things) That Israfeli's fire Is owing to that lyre 266 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE By which he sits and sings, — The trembhng hving wire Of those unusual strings. But the skies that angel trod, Where deep thoughts are a duty, Where Love 's a grown-up God, Where the Houri glances are Imbued with all the beauty Which we worship in a star. Therefore thou art not wrong, Israfeli, who despisest An unimpassioned song ; To thee the laurels belong. Best bard, because the wisest : Merrily live, and long ! The ecstasies above With thy burning measures suit : Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love. With the fervor of thy lute : Well may the stars be mute ! Yes, Heaven is thine ; but this Is a world of sweets and sours ; Our flowers are merely — flowers. And the shadow of thy perfect bliss Is the sunshine of ours. If I could dwell Where Israfel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody. While a bolder note than this might swell From my lyre within the sky. EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 267 THE COLISEUM Type of the antique Rome ! Rich rehquary Of lofty contemplation left to Time By buried centuries of pomp and power ! At length — at length — after so many days Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst, (Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie) I kneel, an altered and an humble man. Amid thy shadows, and so drink within My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory ! Vastness ! and Age ! and Memories of Eld ! Silence ! and Desolation ! and Dim Night ! I feel thee now — I feel ye in your strength — O spells more sure than e'er Judasan king Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane ! O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldees Ever drew down from out the quiet stars ! Here, where a hero fell, a column falls ! Here where the mimic eagle glared in gold, A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat ! Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle ! Here, where on gilded throne the monarch lolled, Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home. Lit by the wan light of the horned moon. The swift and silent lizard of the stones ! But stay ! these walls — these ivy-clad arcades — These mouldering plinths — these sad and blackened shafts — These vague entablatures — this crumbling frieze — These shattered cornices — this wreck — this ruin — These stones — alas ! these gray stones — are they all — All of the famed, and the colossal left By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me ? 268 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE '" Not all " — the Echoes answer me — " not all ! Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise. As melody from Memnon to the Sun, We rule the hearts of mightiest men — we rule With a despotic sway all giant minds. We are not impotent — we pallid stones. Not all our power is gone — not all our fame — Not all the magic of our high renown — Not all the wonder that encircles us — Not all the mysteries that in us lie — Not all the memories that hang upon And cling around about us as a garment, Clothing us in a robe of more than glory." THE CONQUEROR WORM Lo ! 't is a gala night Within the lonesome latter years ! An angel throng, bewinged, bedight In veils, and drowned in tears, Sits in a theatre, to see A play of hopes and fears, While the orchestra breathes fitfully The music of the spheres. Mimes, in the form of God on high, Mutter and mumble low, And hither and thither fly — Mere puppets they, who come and go At bidding of vast formless things That shift the scenery to and fro. Flapping from out their Condor wings Invisible Woe ! That motley drama — oh, be sure It shall not be forgot ! With its Phantom chased forevermore, By a crowd that seize it not, EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 269 Through a circle that ever returneth in To the self-same spot, And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot. But see, amid the mimic rout A crawling shape intrude ! A blood-red thing that writhes from out The scenic solitude ! It writhes ! — it writhes ! — with mortal pangs The mimes become its food, And the angels sob at vermin fangs In human gore imbued. Out — out are the lights — out all ! And, over each quivering form. The curtain, a funeral pall. Comes down with the rush of a storm. And the angels, all pallid and wan. Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, " Man," And its hero the Conqueror Worm. THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH The " Red Death " had long devastated the country. No pesti- lence had ever been so fatal or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal, — the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body, and especially upon the face, of the victim were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow- men. And the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease were the incidents of half an hour. But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the 270 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an ex- tensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provi- sioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the mean time it was folly to grieve or to think. The prince had pro- vided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet dancers, there were musicians, there was beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the " Red Death." It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence. It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. There were seven, — an imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different, as might have been expected from the prince's love of the bizarre. The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass, whose color varied in accord- ance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for ex- ample, in blue, and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange, EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 271 the fifth with white, the sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But, in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet, — a deep blood-color. Now in no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that fol- lowed the suite there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all. It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang ; and, when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their perform- ance, to hearken to the sound ; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions ; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company ; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly ; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whis- pering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion ; and then, after the 272 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE lapse of sixty minutes (which embrace three thousand and six hun- dred seconds of the Time that flies), there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before. But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The tastes of the prince were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colors and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he was not. He had directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fete ; and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masquer- aders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm — much of what has been since seen in Hernani. There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these — the dreams — writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away, — they have endured but an instant, — and a light, half-sub- dued laughter floats after them as they depart. And now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more mer- rily than ever, taking hue from the many tinted windows through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven there are now none of the mask- ers who venture : for the night is waning away, and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes ; and the blackness of the sable drapery appalls ; and, to him whose foot falls upon the EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 273 sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote gayeties of the other apartments. But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told ; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted ; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock ; and thus it happened, per- haps, that more of thought crept, with more of time, into the medi- tations of the thoughtful among those who reveled. And thus too it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And the rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise, — then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust. In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited ; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince's indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jests can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to re- semble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scru- tiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revelers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type 274 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood; and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror. When the eyes of Prince Prosper© fell upon this spectral image (which with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sus- tain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in the first moment, with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste ; but, in the next, his brow reddened with rage. "Who dares.?" he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him, — "who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery } Seize him and unmask him that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise from the battlements ! " It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince Prospero as he uttered these words. They rang throughout the seven rooms loudly and clearly ; for the prince was a bold and robust man, and the music had become hushed at the waving of his hand. It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the in- truder, who at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. But, from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumption of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none who put forth hand to seize him, so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince's person ; and, while the vast assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the centres of the rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber to the purple — through the purple to the green — through the green to the orange — through this again to the white — and even thence to the violet, ere a de- cided movement had been made to arrest him. It was then, how- ever, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 275 approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pur- suer. There was a sharp cry — and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell pros- trate in death the Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revelers at once threw them- selves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave cere- ments and corpse-like mask, which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form. And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all. THE LATER NATIONAL PERIOD DANIEL WEBSTER [Born at Salisbury, New Hampshire, January i8, 1782; died at Marshfield, Massachusetts, October 24, 1852] AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNER STONE OF THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT AT CHARLES- TOWN, MASSACHUSETTS, JUNE 17, 1825 (EXTRACTS) This uncounted multitude before me and around me proves the feehng which the occasion has excited. These thousands of human faces, glowing with sympathy and joy, and from the impulses of a common gratitude turned reverently to heaven in this spacious temple of the firmament, proclaim that the day, the place, and the purpose of our assembling have made a deep impression on our hearts. If, indeed, there be anything in local association fit to affect the mind of man, we need not strive to repress the emotions which agitate us here. We are among ttte sepulchres of our fathers. We are on ground distinguished by their valor, their constancy, and the shedding of their blood. We are here, not to fix an uncertain date in our annals, nor to draw into notice an obscure and unknown spot. If our humble purpose had never been conceived, if we our- selves had never been born, the 17th of June, 1775, would have been a day on which all subsequent history would have poured its light, and the eminence where we stand a point of attraction to the eyes of successive generations. But we are Americans. We live in what may be called the early age of this great continent ; and we know that our posterity, through all time, are here to enjoy and suffer the allotments of humanity. We see before us a probable train of great events ; we know that our own fortunes have been happily cast ; and it is natural, therefore, that we should be moved 276 LATER NATIONAL PERIOD . 277 by the contemplation of occurrences which have guided our destiny before many of us were born, and settled the condition in which we should pass that portion of our existence which God allows to men on earth. We do not read even of the discovery of this continent, without feeling something of a personal interest in the event ; without being reminded how much it has affected our own fortunes and our own existence. It would be still more unnatural for us, there- fore, than for others, to contemplate with unaffected minds that interesting, I may say that most touching and pathetic scene, when the great discoverer of America stood on the deck of his shattered bark, the shades of night falling on the sea, yet no man sleeping ; tossed on the billows of an unknown ocean, yet the stronger billows of alternate hope and despair tossing his own troubled thoughts ; extending forward his harassed frame, straining westward his anx- ious and eager eyes, till Heaven at last granted him a moment of rapture and ecstasy, in blessing his vision with the sight of the unknown world. Nearer to our times, more closely connected with our fates, and therefore still more interesting to our feelings and affections, is the settlement of our own country by colonists from England. We cherish every memorial of these worthy ancestors ; we celebrate their patience and fortitude ; we admire their daring enterprise ; we teach our children to venerate their piety ; and we are justly proud of being descended from men who have set the world an example of founding civil institutions on the great and united prin- ciples of human freedom and human knowledge. To us, their chil- dren, the story of their labors and sufferings can never be without interest. We shall not stand unmoved on the shore of Plymouth, while the sea continues to wash it ; nor will our brethren in another early and ancient Colony forget the place of its first establishment, till their river shall cease to flow by it. No vigor of youth, no maturity of manhood, will lead the nation to forget the spots where its infancy was cradled and defended. But the great event in the history of the continent, which we are now met here to commemorate, that prodigy of modern times, at once the wonder and the blessing of the world, is the American 278 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Revolution. In a day of extraordinary prosperity and happiness, of high national honor, distinction, and power, we are brought together, in this place, by our love of country, by our admiration of exalted character, by our gratitude for signal services and patriotic devotion. The Society whose organ I am was formed for the purpose of rearing some honorable and durable monument to the memory of the early friends of American Independence. They have thought that for this object no time could be more propitious than the present prosperous and peaceful period ; that no place could claim preference over this memorable spot ; and that no day could be more auspicious to the undertaking, than the anniversary of the battle which was here fought. The foundation of that monument we have now laid. With solemnities suited to the occasion, with prayers to Almighty God for his blessing, and in the midst of this cloud of witnesses, we have begun the work. We trust it will be prosecuted, and that, springing from a broad foundation, rising high in massive solidity and unadorned grandeur, it may remain as long as Heaven permits the works of man to last, a fit emblem, both of the events in memory of which it is raised, and of the gratitude of those who have reared it. ********** We live in a most extraordinary age. Events so various and so important that they might crowd and distinguish centuries are, in our times, compressed within the compass of a single life. When has it happened that history has had so much to record, in the same term of years, as since the 17th of June, 1775 .'* Our own revolution, which, under other circumstances, might itself have been expected to occasion a war of half a century, has been achieved ; twenty-four sovereign and independent States erected ; and a gen- eral government established over them, so safe, so wise, so free, so practical, that we might well wonder its establishment should have been accomplished so soon, were it not far the greater wonder that it should have been established at all. Two or three millions of people have been augmented to twelve, the great forests of the West prostrated beneath the arm of successful industry, and the dwellers on the banks of the Ohio and the Mississippi become LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 279 the fellow-citizens and neighbors of those who cultivate the hills of New England. We have a commerce that leaves no sea unexplored ; navies which take no law from superior force ; revenues adequate to all the exigencies of government, almost without taxation ; and peace with all nations, founded on equal rights and mutual respect. Europe, within the same period, has been agitated by a mighty revolution, which, while it has been felt in the individual condition and happiness of almost every man, has shaken to the centre her political fabric, and dashed against one another thrones which had stood tranquil for ages. On this, our continent, our own example has been followed, and colonies have sprung up to be nations. Unaccustomed sounds of liberty and free government have reached us from beyond the track of the sun ; and at this moment the dominion of European power in this continent, from the place where we stand to the south pole, is annihilated for ever. In the mean time, both in Europe and America, such has been the general progress of knowledge, such the improvement in legislation, in commerce, in the arts, in letters, and, above all, in liberal ideas and the general spirit of the age, that the whole world seems changed. Yet, notwithstanding that this is but a faint abstract of the things -which have happened since the day of the battle of Bunker Hill, we are but fifty years removed from it ; and we now stand here to enjoy all the blessings of our own condition, and to look abroad on the brightened prospects of the world, while we still have among us some of those who were active agents in the scenes of 1775, and who are now here, from every quarter of New England, to visit once more, and under circumstances so affecting, I had almost said so overwhelming, this renowned theatre of their courage and patriotism. Venerable men ! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago, this very hour, with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for your country. Behold, how altered ! The same heavens are indeed over your heads ; the same ocean rolls at your feet ; but all else how 28o READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE changed ! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charles- town. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying ; the impetuous charge ; the steady and successful repulse ; the loud call to repeated assault ; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance ; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death ; — all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more. All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and chil- dren and countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population, come out to welcome and greet you with a universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mount, and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you, but your country's own means of distinction and defence. All is peace ; and God has granted you this sight of your country's happiness, ere you slumber in the grave. He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your patriotic toils ; and he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty, to thank you ! But, alas ! you are not all here ! Time and the sword have thinned your ranks. Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, Bridge ! our eyes seek for you in vain amid this broken band. You are gathered to your fathers, and live only to your country in her grateful remembrance and your own bright example. But let us not too much grieve, that you have met the common fate of men. You lived at least long enough to know that your work had been nobly and successfully accomplished. You lived to see your country's independence established, and to sheathe your swords from war. On the light of Liberty you saw arise the light of Peace, like " another morn, Risen on mid-noon ; " and the sky on which you closed your eyes was cloudless. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 281 But, ah ! Him ! the first great martyr in this great cause ! Him! the premature victim of his own self-devoting heart! Him! the head of our civil councils, and the destined leader of our mili- tary bands, whom nothing brought hither but the unquenchable fire of his own spirit ! Him ! cut off by Providence in the hour of overwhelming anxiety and thick gloom ; falling ere he saw the star of his country rise ; pouring out his generous blood like water, before he knew whether it would fertilize a land of freedom or of bondage ! — how shall I struggle with the emotions that stifle the utterance of thy name ! Our poor work may perish ; but thine shall endure ! This monument may moulder away ; the solid ground it rests upon may sink down to a level with the sea ; but thy memory shall not fail ! Wheresoever among men a heart shall be found that beats to the transports of patriotism and liberty, its aspirations shall be to claim kindred with thy spirit. But the scene amidst which we stand does not permit us to con- fine our thoughts or our sympathies to those fearless spirits who hazarded or lost their lives on this consecrated spot. We have the happiness to rejoice here in the presence of a most worthy repre- sentation of the survivors of the whole Revolutionary army. Veterans ! you are the remnant of many a well-fought field. You bring with you marks of honor from Trenton and Monmouth, from Yorktown, Camden, Bennington, and Saratoga. Veterans OF HALF A CENTURY ! when in your youthful days you put every thing at hazard in your country's cause, good as that cause was, and sanguine as youth is, still your fondest hopes did not stretch onward to an hour like this ! At a period to which you could not reasonably have expected to arrive, at a moment of national pros- perity such as you could never have foreseen, you are now met here to enjoy the fellowship of old soldiers, and to receive the overflowings of a universal gratitude. But your agitated countenances and your heaving breasts inform me that even this is not an unmixed joy. I perceive that a tumult of contending feelings rushes upon you. The images of the dead, as well as the persons of the living, present themselves before you. The scene overwhelms you, and I turn from it. May the Father of all mercies smile upon your declining years, and bless them ! 282 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And when you shall here have exchanged your embraces, when you shall once more have pressed the hands which have been so often extended to give succor in adversity, or grasped in the exul- tation of victory, then look abroad upon this lovely land which your young valor defended, and mark the happiness with which it is filled ; yea, look abroad upon the whole earth, and see what a name you have contributed to give to your country, and what a praise you have added to freedom, and then rejoice in the sym- pathy and gratitude which beam upon your last days from the improved condition of mankind ! ********** The 1 7th of June saw the four New England Colonies standing here, side by side, to triumph or to fall together ; and there was with them from that moment to the end of the war, what I hope will remain with them forever, — one cause, one country, one heart. The battle of Bunker Hill was attended with the most impor- tant effects beyond its immediate results as a military engagement. It created at once a state of open, public war. There could now be no longer a question of proceeding against individuals, as guilty of treason or rebellion. That fearful crisis was past. The appeal lay to the sword, and the only question was, whether the spirit and the resources of the people would hold out till the object should be accomplished. Nor were its general consequences confined to our own country. The previous proceedings of the Colonies, their appeals, resolutions, and addresses, had made their cause known to Europe. Without boasting, we may say, that in no age or country has the public cause been maintained with more force of argument, more power of illustration, or more of that persuasion which excited feeling and elevated principle can alone bestow, than the Revolutionary state papers exhibit. These papers will forever deserve to be studied, not only for the spirit which they breathe, but for the ability with which they were written. To this able vindication of their cause, the Colonies had now added a practical and severe proof of their own true devotion to it, and given evidence also of the power which they could bring to its support. All now saw, that if America fell, she would not fall without a struggle. Men felt sympathy and regard, as well as LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 283 surprise, when they beheld these infant states, remote, unknown, unaided, encounter the power of England, and, in the first con- siderable battle, leave more of their enemies dead on the field, in proportion to the number of combatants, than had been recently known to fall in the wars of Europe. Information of these events, circulating throughout the world, at length reached the ears of one who now hears me. He has not forgotten the emotion which the fame of Bunker Hill, and the name of Warren, excited in his youthful breast. Sir, we are assembled to commemorate the establishment of great public principles of liberty, and to do honor to the distin- guished dead. The occasion is too severe for eulogy of the living. But, Sir, your interesting relation to this country, the peculiar cir- cumstances which surround you and surround us, call on me to express the happiness which we derive from your presence and aid in this solemn commemoration. Fortunate, fortunate man ! with what measure of devotion will you not thank God for the circumstances of your extraordinary life ! You are connected with both hemispheres and with two generations. Heaven saw fit to ordain that the electric spark of liberty should be conducted, through you, from the New World to the Old ; and we, who are now here to perform this duty of patriotism, have all of us long ago received it in charge from our fathers to cherish your name and your virtues. You will account it an instance of your good fortune, Sir, that you crossed the seas to visit us at a time which enables you to be present at this solem- nity. You now behold the field, the renown of which reached you in the heart of France, and caused a thrill in your ardent bosom. You see the lines of the little redoubt thrown up by the incredible diligence of Prescott ; defended, to the last extremity, by his lion- hearted valor ; and within which the corner-stone of our monument has now taken its position. You see where Warren fell, and where Parker, Gardner, McCleary, Moore, and other early patriots fell with him. Those who survived that day, and whose lives have been prolonged to the present hour, are now around you. Some of them you have known in the trying scenes of the war. Be- hold ! they now stretch forth their feeble arms to embrace you. 284 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Behold ! they raise their trembling voices to invoke the blessing of God on you and yours forever. Sir, you have assisted us in laying the foundation of this struc- ture. You have heard us rehearse, with our feeble commendation, the names of departed patriots. Monuments and eulogy belong to the dead. We give then this day to Warren and his associates. On other occasions they have been given to your more immediate companions in arms, to Washington, to Greene, to Gates, to Sulli- van, and to Lincoln. We have become reluctant to grant these, our highest and last honors, further. We would gladly hold them yet back from the little remnant of that immortal band. " Serus in calum redcasT Illustrious as are your merits, yet far, O, very far distant be the day, when any inscription shall bear your name, or any tongue pronounce its eulogy ! ^ The leading reflection to which this occasion seems to invite us, respects the great changes which have happened in the fifty years since the battle of Bunker Hill was fought. And it peculiarly marks the character of the present age, that, in looking at these changes, and in estimating their effect on our condition, we are obliged to consider, not what has been done in our country only, but in others also. In these interesting times, while nations are making separate and individual advances in improvement, they make, too, a common progress ; like vessels on a common tide, propelled by the gales at different rates, according to their several structure and management, but all moved forward by one mighty current, strong enough to bear onward whatever does not sink beneath it. A chief distinction of the present day is a community of opinions and knowledge amongst men in different nations, existing in a degree heretofore unknown. Knowledge has, in our time, tri- umphed, and is triumphing, over distance, over difference of lan- guages, over diversity of habits, over prejudice, and over bigotry. The civilized and Christian world is fast learning the great lesson, that difference of nation does not imply necessary hostility, and that all contact need not be war. The whole world is becoming a common field for intellect to act in. Energy of mind, genius, power, wheresoever it exists, may speak out in any tongue, and the world will hear it. A great chord of sentiment and feeling LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 285 runs through two continents, and vibrates over both. Every breeze wafts inteUigence from country to country, every wave rolls it ; all give it forth, and all in turn receive it. There is a vast com- merce of ideas ; there are marts and exchanges for intellectual discoveries, and a wonderful fellowship of those individual intelli- gences which make up the mind and opinion of the age. Mind is the great lever of all things ; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered ; and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in the last half-century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously gifted by nature, competent to be com- petitors or fellow- workers on the theatre of intellectual operation. From these causes important improvements have taken place in the personal condition of individuals. Generally speaking, man- kind are not only better fed and better clothed, but they are able also to enjoy more leisure ; they possess more refinement and more self-respect. A superior tone of education, manners, and habits prevails. This remark, most true in its application to our own country, is also partly true when applied elsewhere. It is proved by the vastly augmented consumption of those articles of manu- facture and of commerce which contribute to the comforts and the decencies of life ; an augmentation which has far outrun the progress of population. And while the unexampled and almost incredible use of machinery would seem to supply the place of labor, labor still finds its occupation and its reward ; so wisely has Providence adjusted men's wants and desires to their condition and their capacity. Any adequate survey, however, of the progress made during the last half-century in the polite and the mechanic arts, in machinery and manufactures, in commerce and agriculture, in letters and in science, would require volumes. I must abstain wholly from these subjects, and turn for a moment to the contemplation of what has been done on the great question of politics and government. This is the master topic of the age ; and during the whole fifty years it has intensely occupied the thoughts of men. The nature of civil government, its ends and uses, have been canvassed and inves- tigated ; ancient opinions attacked and defended ; new ideas recom- mended and resisted, by whatever power the mind of man could 286 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE bring to the controversy. From the closet and the public halls the debate has been transferred to the field ; and the world has been shaken by wars of unexampled magnitude, and the greatest variety of fortune. A day of peace has at length succeeded ; and now that the strife has subsided, and the smoke cleared away, we may begin to see what has actually been done, permanently changing the state and condition of human society. And, without dwelling on particular circumstances, it is most apparent, that, from the before- mentioned causes of augmented knowledge and improved individual condition, a real, substantial, and important change has taken place, and is taking place, highly favorable, on the whole, to human liberty and human happiness. The great wheel of political revolution began to move in America. Here its rotation was guarded, regular, and safe. Transferred to the other continent, from unfortunate but natural causes, it received an irregular and violent impulse ; it whirled along with a fearful cel- erity ; till at length, like the chariot-wheels in the races of antiquity, it took fire from the rapidity of its own motion, and blazed onward, spreading conflagration and terror around. We learn from the result of this experiment, how fortunate was our own condition, and how admirably the character of our people was calculated for setting the great example of popular govern- ments. The possession of power did not turn the heads of the American people, for they had long been in the habit of exercising a great degree of self-control. Although the paramount authority of the parent state existed over them, yet a large field of legislation had always been open to our Colonial assemblies. They were accus- tomed to representative bodies and the forms of free government ; they understood the doctrine of the division of power among dif- ferent branches, and the necessity of checks on each. The char- acter of our countrymen, moreover, was sober, moral, and religious ; and there was little in the change to shock their feelings of justice and humanity, or even to disturb an honest prejudice. We had no domestic throne to overturn, no privileged orders to cast down, no violent changes of property to encounter. In the American Revolu- tion, no man sought or wished for more than to defend and enjoy his own. None hoped for plunder or for spoil. Rapacity was LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 287 unknown to it ; the axe was not among the instruments of its accompHshment ; and we all know that it could not have lived a single day under any well-founded imputation of possessing a tendency adverse to the Christian religion. It need not surprise us, that, under circumstances less auspicious, political revolutions elsewhere, even when well intended, have ter- minated differently. It is, indeed, a great achievement, it is the masterwork of the world, to establish governments entirely popular on lasting foundations ; nor is it easy, indeed, to introduce the popu- lar principle at all into governments to which it has been altogether a stranger. It cannot be doubted, however, that Europe has come out of the contest, in which she has been so long engaged, with greatly superior knowledge, and, in many respects, in a highly im- proved condition. Whatever benefit has been acquired is likely to be retained, for it consists mainly in the acquisition of more enlight- ened ideas. And although kingdoms and provinces may be wrested from the hands that hold them, in the same manner they were obtained ; although ordinary and vulgar power may, in human affairs, be lost as it has been won ; yet it is the glorious preroga- tive of the empire of knowledge, that what it gains it never loses. On the contrary, it increases by the multiple of its own power ; all its ends become means ; all its attainments, helps to new con- quests. Its whole abundant harvest is but so much seed wheat, and nothing has limited, and nothing can limit, the amount of ultimate product. Under the influence of this rapidly increasing knowledge, the people have begun, in all forms of government, to think, and to reason, on affairs of state. Regarding government as an institution for the public good, they demand a knowledge of its operations, and a participation in its exercise. A call for the representative system, wherever it is not enjoyed, and where there is already intelligence enough to estimate its value, is perseveringly made. Where men may speak out, they demand it ; where the bayonet is at their throats, they pray for it. When Louis the Fourteenth said, " I am the State," he ex- pressed the essence of the doctrine of unlimited power. By the rules of that system, the people are disconnected from the state ; 288 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE they are its subjects, it is their lord. These ideas, founded in the love of power, and long supported by the excess and the abuse of it, are yielding, in our age, to other opinions ; and the civilized world seems at last to be proceeding to the conviction of that fun- damental and manifest truth, that the powers of government are but a trust, and that they cannot be lawfully exercised but for the good of the community. As knowledge is more and more extended, this conviction becomes more and more general. Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power are scat- tered with all its beams. The prayer of the Grecian champion, when enveloped in unnatural clouds and darkness, is the appro- priate political supplication for the people of every country not yet blessed with free institutions : — " Dispel this cloud, the light of heaven restore, Give me to see, — and Ajax asks no more." We may hope that the growing influence of enlightened senti- ment will promote the permanent peace of the world. Wars to maintain family alliances, to uphold or to cast down dynasties, and to regulate successions to thrones, which have occupied so much room in the history of modern times, if not less likely to happen at all, will be less likely to become general and involve many nations, as the great principle shall be more and more established, that the interest of the world is peace, and its first great statute, that every nation possesses the power of establishing a government for itself. But public opinion has attained also an influence over governments which do not admit the popular principle into their organization. A necessary respect for the judgment of the world operates, in some measure, as a control over the most unlimited forms of authority. It is owing, perhaps, to this truth, that the interesting struggle of the Greeks has been suffered to go on so long, without a direct interference, either to wrest that country from its present masters, or to execute the system of pacification by force ; and, with united strength, lay the neck of Christian and civilized Greek at the foot of the barbarian Turk. Let us thank God that we live in an age when something has influence besides the bayonet, and when the sternest authority does not venture to LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 289 encounter the scorching power of pubHc reproach. Any attempt of the kind I have mentioned should be met by one universal burst of indignation ; the air of the civilized world ought to be made too warm to be comfortably breathed by any one who would hazard it. And now, let us indulge an honest exultation in the conviction of the benefit which the example of our country has produced, and is likely to produce, on human freedom and human happiness. Let us endeavor to comprehend in all its magnitude, and to feel in all its importance, the part assigned to us in the great drama of human affairs. We are placed at the head of the system of repre- sentative and popular governments. Thus far our example shows that such governments are compatible, not only with respectability and power, but with repose, with peace, with security of personal rights, with good laws, and a just administration. We are not propagandists. Wherever other systems are pre- ferred, either as being thought better in themselves, or as better suited to existing conditions, we leave the preference to be enjoyed. Our history hitherto proves, however, that the popular form is practicable, and that with wisdom and knowledge men may govern themselves ; and the duty incumbent on us is to preserve the con- sistency of this cheering example, and take care that nothing may weaken its authority with the world. If, in our case, the repre- sentative system ultimately fail, popular governments must be pronounced impossible. No combination of circumstances more favorable to the experiment can ever be expected to occur. The last hopes of mankind, therefore, rest with us ; and if it should be proclaimed, that our example had become an argument against the experiment, the knell of popular liberty would be sounded throughout the earth. These are excitements to duty ; but they are not suggestions of doubt. Our history and our condition, all that is gone before us, and all that surrounds us, authorize the belief, that popular gov- ernments, though subject to occasional variations, in form perhaps not always for the better, may yet, in their general character, be as durable and permanent as other systems. We know, indeed, that in our country any other is impossible. The principle of free 290 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE governments adheres to the American soil. It is bedded in it, immovable as its mountains. And let the sacred obligations which have devolved on this generation, and on us, sink deep into our hearts. Those who es- tablished our liberty and our government are daily dropping from among us. The great trust now descends to new hands. Let us apply ourselves to that which is presented to us, as our appropriate object. We can win no laurels in a war for independence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are there places for us by the side of Solon, and Alfred, and other founders of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us a great duty of defence and preservation ; and there is opened to us, also, a noble pursuit, to which the spirit of the times strongly invites us. Our proper business is improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In a day of peace, let us advance the arts of peace and the works of peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and gen- eration, may not perform something worthy to be remembered. Let us cultivate a true spirit of union and harmony. In pursuing the great objects which our condition points out to us, let us act under a settled conviction, and an habitual feeling, that these twenty-four States are one country. Let our conceptions be en- larged to the circle of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be, our country, our whole country, and nothing but OUR COUNTRY. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of Wisdom, of Peace, and of Liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever ! LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 291 ABRAHAM LINCOLN [Born in Kentucky, February 12, 1809; died at Washington, D.C., April 14, 1865] THE GETTYSBURG SPEECH Delivered at the Dedication of the National Cemetery Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 19, 1863 Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Hberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we can- not dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have conse- crated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 292 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS Delivered March 4, 1865 Fellow-Countrymen : At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an ex- tended address than there was at the first. Then, a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself ; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactoiy and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it ; all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to dcstr-oy it without war — seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war ; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive ; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful inter- est. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war ; while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 293 astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God ; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wring- ing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces : but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered ; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. " Woe unto the world because of offenses ! for it must needs be that offenses come ; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose American Slavery is one of those offenses which, in the provi- dence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him .'' Fondly do we hope, fer- vently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, " The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in ; to bind up the nation's wounds ; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan ; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. 294 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT [Born at Salem, Massachusetts, May 4, i 796 ; died at Boston, Massachusetts, January 28, 1859] THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO (EXTRACTS) Vol. II, Book V, Chap. II 1520 Opposite to the Spanish quarters, at only a few rods' distance, stood the great teocalli of HuitzilopotchH, This pyramidal mound, with the sanctuaries that crowned it, rising altogether to the height of near a hundred and fifty feet, afforded an elevated position that completely commanded the palace of Axayacatl, occupied by the Christians, A body of five or six hundred Mexicans, many of them nobles and warriors of the highest rank, had got possession of the teocalli, whence they discharged such a tempest of arrows on the garrison, that no one could leave his defences for a moment with- out imminent danger ; while the Mexicans, under shelter of the sanctuaries, were entirely covered from the fire of the besieged. It was obviously necessary to dislodge the enemy, if the Spaniards would remain longer in their quarters. Cortes assigned this service to his chamberlain Escobar, giving him a hundred men for the purpose, with orders to storm the teo- calli, and set fire to the sanctuaries. But that officer was thrice repulsed in the attempt, and, after the most desperate efforts, was obliged to return with considerable loss and without accomplishing his object. Cortes, who saw the immediate necessity of carrying the place, determined to lead the storming party himself. He was then suffer- ing much from the wound in his left hand, which had disabled it for the present. He made the arm serviceable, however, by fastening his buckler to it, and, thus crippled, sallied out at the head of three hundred chosen cavaliers, and several thousand of his auxiliaries. In the court-yard of the temple he found a numerous body of Indians prepared to dispute his passage. He briskly charged them, but the flat, smooth stones of the pavement were so slippery LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 295 that the horses lost their footing and many of them fell. Hastily dismounting, they sent back the animals to their quarters, and, renewing the assault, the Spaniards succeeded without much diffi- culty in dispersing the Indian warriors, and opening a free passage for themselves to the teocalli. This building, as the reader may remember, was a large pyramidal structure, about three hundred feet square at the base. A flight of stone steps on the outside, at one of the angles of the mound, led to a platform, or terraced walk, which passed round the building until it reached a similar flight of stairs directly over the preceding, that conducted to another landing as before. As there were five bodies or divisions of the teocalli, it became necessary to pass round its whole extent four times, or nearly a mile, in order to reach the summit, which, it may be recollected, was an open area, crowned only by the two sanctuaries dedicated to the Aztec deities. Cortes, having cleared a way for the assault, sprang up the lower stairway, followed by Alvarado, Sandoval, Ordaz, and the other gal- lant cavaliers of his little band, leaving a file of arquebusiers and a strong corps of Indian allies to hold the enemy in check at the foot of the monument. On the first landing, as well as on the several galleries above, and on the summit, the Aztec warriors were drawn up to dispute his passage. From their elevated position they show- ered down volleys of lighter missiles, together with heavy stones, beams, and burning rafters, which, thundering along the stairway, overturned the ascending Spaniards, and carried desolation through their ranks. The more fortunate, eluding or springing over these obstacles, succeeded in gaining the first terrace, where, throwing themselves on their enemies, they compelled them, after a short resistance, to fall back. The assailants pressed on, effectually supported by a brisk fire of the musketeers from below, which so much galled the Mexicans in their exposed situation, that they were glad to take shelter on the broad summit of the teocalli. Cortes and his comrades were close upon their rear, and the two parties soon found themselves face to face on this aerial battle-field, engaged in mortal combat in presence of the whole city, as well as of the troops in the court-yard, who paused, as if by mutual consent, from their own hostilities, gazing in silent expectation on the issue 296 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE of those above. The area, though somewhat smaller than the base of the teocalli, was large enough to afford a fair field of fight for a thousand combatants. It was paved with broad, flat stones. No impediment occurred over its surface, except the huge sacrificial block, and the temples of stone which rose to the height of forty feet, at the further extremity of the arena. One of these had been consecrated to the Cross ; the other was still occupied by the Mexican war-god. The Christian and the Aztec contended for their religions under the very shadow of their respective shrines ; while the Indian priests, running to and fro, with their hair wildly streaming over their sable mantles, seemed hovering in mid air, like so many demons of darkness urging on the work of slaughter ! The parties closed with the desperate fury of men who had no hope but in victory. Quarter was neither asked nor given ; and to fly was impossible. The edge of the area was unprotected by para- pet or battlement. The least slip would be fatal ; and the combat- ants, as they struggled in mortal agony, were sometimes seen to roll over the sheer sides of the precipice together. Cortes himself is said to have had a narrow escape from this dreadful fate. Two warriors, of strong, muscular frames, seized on him, and were drag- ging him violently towards the brink of the pyramid. Aware of their intention, he struggled with all his force, and, before they could accomplish their purpose, succeeded in tearing himself from their grasp, and hurling one of them over the walls with his own arm ! The story is not improbable in itself, for Cortes was a man of uncommon agility and strength. It has been often repeated, but not by contemporary history. The battle lasted with unintermitting fury for three hours. The. number of the enemy was double that of the Christians ; and it seemed as if it were a contest which must be determined by num- bers and brute force, rather than by superior science. But it was not so. The invulnerable armour of the Spaniard, his sword of matchless temper, and his skill in the use of it, gave him advan- tages which far outweighed the odds of physical strength and numbers. After doing all that the courage of despair could enable men to do, resistance grew fainter and fainter on the side of the Aztecs. One after another they had fallen. Two or three LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 297 priests only survived to be led away in triumph by the victors. Every other combatant was stretched a corpse on the bloody arena, or had been hurled from the giddy heights. Yet the loss of the Spaniards was not inconsiderable. It amounted to forty- five of their best men, and nearly all the remainder were more or less injured in the desperate conflict. The victorious cavaliers now rushed towards the sanctuaries. The lower story was of stone ; the two upper were of wood. Penetrating into their recesses, they had the mortification to find the image of the Virgin and the Cross removed. But in the other edifice they still beheld the grim figure of Huitzilopotchli, with his censer of smoking hearts, and the walls of his oratory reeking with gore, — not improbably of their own countrymen ! With shouts of triumph the Christians tore the uncouth monster from his niche, and tumbled him, in the presence of the horror-struck Aztecs, down the steps of the teocalli. They then set fire to the accursed building. The flame speedily ran up the slender towers, sending forth an ominous light over city, lake, and valley, to the remotest hut among the mountains. It was the funeral pyre of paganism, and proclaimed the fall of that sanguinary religion which had so long hung like a dark cloud over the fair regions of Anahuac ! It is not easy to depict the portrait of Montezuma in its true colours, since it has been exhibited to us under two aspects, of the most opposite and contradictory character. In the accounts gathered of him by the Spaniards, on coming into the country, he was uni- formly represented as bold and warlike, unscrupulous as to the means of gratifying his ambition, hollow and perfidious, the terror of his foes, with a haughty bearing which made him feared even by his own people. They found him, on the contrary, not merely affable and gracious, but disposed to waive all the advantages of his own position, and to place them on a footing with himself ; making their wishes his law ; gentle even to effeminacy in his de- portment, and constant in his friendship, while his whole nation was in arms against them, — Yet these traits, so contradictory, were truly enough drawn. They are to be explained by the extraordinary circumstances of his position. 298 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE When Montezuma ascended the throne, he was scarcely twenty- three years of age. Young, and ambitious of extending his empire, he was continually engaged in war, and is said to have been present himself in nine pitched battles. He was greatly renowned for his martial prowess, for he belonged to the Qiiachictin, the highest military order of his nation, and one into which but few even of its sovereigns had been admitted. In later life, he preferred intrigue to violence, as more consonant to his character and priestly education. In this he was as great an adept as any prince of his time, and, by arts not very honourable to himself, succeeded in filching away much of the territory of his royal kinsman of Tezcuco. Severe in the administration of justice, he made important reforms in the arrangement of the tribunals. He introduced other innovations in the royal household, creating new offices, introducing a lavish mag- nificence and forms of courtly etiquette unknown to his ruder predecessors. He was, in short, most attentive to all that concerned the exterior and pomp of royalty. Stately and decorous, he was careful of his own dignity, and might be said to be as great an "actor of majesty" among the barbarian potentates of the New World, as Louis the Fourteenth was among the polished princes of Europe. He was deeply tinctured, moreover, with that spirit of bigotry, which threw such a shade over the latter days of the French monarch. He received the Spaniards as the beings predicted by his oracles. The anxious dread, with which he had evaded their proffered visit, was founded on the same feelings which led him so blindly to resign himself to them on their approach. He felt himself rebuked by their superior genius. He at once conceded all that they demanded, — his treasures, his power, even his person. For their sake, he forsook his wonted occupations, his pleasures, his most familiar habits. He might be said to forego his nature ; and, as his subjects asserted, to change his sex and become a woman. If we cannot refuse our contempt for the pusillanimity of the Aztec monarch, it should be mitigated by the consideration, that his pusillanimity sprung from his superstition, and that super- stition in the savage is the substitute for religious principle in the civilised man. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 299 It is not easy to contemplate the fate of Montezuma without feelings of the strongest compassion ; — to see him thus borne along the tide of events beyond his power to avert or control ; to see him, like some stately tree, the pride of his own Indian forests, towering aloft in the pomp and majesty of its branches, by its very eminence a mark for the thunderbolt, the first victim of the tempest which was to sweep over its native hills ! When the wise king of Tezcuco addressed his royal relative at his coronation, he exclaimed, '" Happy the empire, which is now in the meridian of its prosperity, for the sceptre is given to one whom the Almighty has in his keeping ; and the nations shall hold him in reverence ! " Alas ! the subject of this auspicious invocation lived to see his empire melt away like the winter's wreath ; to see a strange race drop, as it were, from the clouds on his land ; to find himself a prisoner in the palace of his fathers, the companion of those who were the enemies of his gods and his people ; to be insulted, reviled, trodden in the dust, by the meanest of his subjects, by those who, a few months previous, had trembled at his glance ; drawing his last breath in the halls of the stranger, a lonely outcast in the heart of his own capital ! He was the sad victim of destiny, — a destiny as dark and irresistible in its march, as that which broods over the mythic legends of antiquity ! Montezuma, at the time of his death, was about forty-one years old, of which he reigned eighteen. His person and manners have been already described. He left a numerous progeny by his various wives, most of whom, having lost their consideration after the Conquest, fell into obscurity as they mingled with the mass of the Indian population. Two of them, however, a son and a daughter, who embraced Christianity, became the founders of noble houses in Spain. The government, willing to show its gratitude for the large extent of empire derived from their ancestor, conferred on them ample estates, and important hereditary honours ; and the Counts of Montezuma and Tula, intermarrying with the best blood of Castile, intimated by their names and titles their illustrious descent from the royal dynasty of Mexico. Montezuma's death was a misfortune to the Spaniards. While he lived, they had a precious pledge in their hands, which, in 300 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE extremity, they might possibly have turned to account. Now the last link was snapped which connected them with the natives of the country. But independently of interested feelings, Cortes and his officers were much affected by his death from personal consider- ations ; and, when they gazed on the cold remains of the ill-starred monarch, they may have felt a natural compunction as they con- trasted his late flourishing condition with that to which his friendship for them had now reduced him. The Spanish commander showed all respect for his memory. His body, arrayed in its royal robes, was laid decently on a bier, and borne on the shoulders of his nobles to his subjects in the city. What honours, if any, indeed, were paid to his remains, is uncertain. A sound of wailing, distinctly heard in the western quarters of the capital, was interpreted by the Spaniards into the moans of a funeral procession, as it bore the body to be laid among those of his an- cestors, under the princely shades of Chapoltepec. Others state, that it was removed to a burial-place in the city named Copalco, and there burnt with the usual solemnities and signs of lamentation by his chiefs, but not without some unworthy insults from the Mexican populace. Whatever be the fact, the people, occupied with the stirring scenes in which they were engaged, were probably not long mindful of the monarch, who had taken no share in their late patriotic movements. Nor is it strange that the very memory of his sepulchre should be effaced in the terrible catastrophe which afterwards overwhelmed the capital, and swept away every landmark from its surface. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 301 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY [Born at Dorchester, Massachusetts, April 15, 1814; died at Dorset, England, May 29, 1877] THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC Vol. I, Chap. I, Par. 1-15 On the twenty-fifth day of October, 1555, the estates of the Netherlands were assembled in the great hall of the palace at Brussels. They had been summoned to be the witnesses and the guarantees of the abdication which Charles V. had long before resolved upon, and which he was that day to execute. The Em- peror, like many potentates before and since, was fond of great political spectacles. He knew their influence upon the masses of mankind. Although plain, even to shabbiness, in his own costume, and usually attired in black, no one ever understood better than he how to arrange such exhibitions in a striking and artistic style. We have seen the theatrical and imposing manner in which he quelled the insurrection at Ghent, and nearly crushed the life for- ever out of that vigorous and turbulent little commonwealth. The closing scene of his long and energetic reign he had now arranged with profound study, and with an accurate knowledge of the man- ner in which the requisite effects were to be produced. The termi- nation of his own career, the opening of his beloved Philip's, were to be dramatized in a manner worthy the august character of the actors, and the importance of the great stage where they played their parts. The eyes of the whole world were directed upon that day towards Brussels ; for an imperial abdication was an event which had not, in the sixteenth century, been staled by custom. The gay capital of Brabant, of that province which rejoiced in the liberal constitution known by the cheerful title of the "joyful entrance," was worthy to be the scene of the imposing show. Brussels had been a city for more than five centuries, and, at that day, numbered about one hundred thousand inhabitants. Its walls, six miles in circumference, were already two hundred years old. Unlike most Netherland cities, lying usually upon extensive plains, 302 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE it was built along the sides of an abrupt promontory. A wide ex- panse of living verdure, cultivated gardens, shady groves, fertile corn-fields, flowed round it like a sea. The foot of the town was washed by the little river Senne, while the irregular but picturesque streets rose up the steep sides of the hill like the semicircles and stairways of an amphitheatre. Nearly in the heart of the place rose the audacious and exquisitely embroidered tower of the town- house, three hundred and sixty-six feet in height, a miracle of needlework in stone, rivalling in its intricate carving the cobweb tracery of that lace which has for centuries been synonymous with the city, and rearing itself above a facade of profusely decorated and brocaded architecture. The crest of the elevation was crowned by the towers of the old ducal palace of Brabant, with its extensive and thickly wooded park on the left, and by the stately mansions of Orange, Egmont, Aremberg, Culemburg, and other Flemish grandees, on the right. The great forest of Soignies, dotted with monasteries and convents, swarming with every variety of game, whither the citizens made their summer pilgrimages, and where the nobles chased the wild boar and the stag, extended to within a quarter of a mile of the city walls. The population, as thrifty, as intelligent, as prosperous as that of any city in Europe, was divided into fifty-two guilds of artisans, among which the most important were the armorers, whose suits of mail would turn a musket-ball ; the gardeners, upon whose gentler creations incredible sums were annually lavished ; and the tapestry-workers, whose gorgeous fabrics were the wonder of the world. Seven principal churches, of which the most striking was that of St. Gudule, with its twin towers, its charming facade, and its magnificently painted windows, adorned the upper part of the city. The number seven was a magic num- ber in Brussels, and was supposed at that epoch, during which astronomy was in its infancy and astrology in its prime, to denote the seven planets which governed all things terrestrial by their aspects and influences. Seven noble families, springing from seven ancient castles, supplied the stock from which the seven senators were selected who composed the upper council of the city. There were seven great squares, seven city gates, and upon the occasion of the present ceremony, it was observed by the lovers of wonderful LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 303 coincidences, that seven crowned heads would be congregated under a single roof in the liberty-loving city. The palace where the states-general were upon this occasion convened, had been the residence of the Dukes of Brabant since the days of John the Second, who had built it about the year 1 300. It was a spacious and convenient building, but not distinguished for the beauty of its architecture. In front was a large open square, enclosed by an iron railing ; in the rear an extensive and beautiful park, filled with forest trees, and containing gardens and labyrinths, fish-ponds and game preserves, fountains and promenades, race- courses and archery grounds. The main entrance to this edifice opened upon a spacious hall, connected with a beautiful and sym- metrical chapel. The hall was celebrated for its size, harmonious proportions, and the richness of its decorations. It was the place where the chapters of the famous order of the Golden Fleece were held. Its walls were hung with a magnificent tapestry of Arras, representing the life and achievements of Gideon, the Midianite, and giving particular prominence to the miracle of the " fleece of wool," vouchsafed to that renowned champion, the great patron of the Knights of the Fleece. On the present occasion there were various additional embellishments of flowers and votive garlands. At the western end a spacious platform or stage, with six or seven steps, had been constructed, below which was a range of benches for the deputies of the seventeen provinces. Upon the stage itself there were rows of seats, covered with tapestry, upon the right hand and upon the left. These were respectively to accommodate the knights of the order and the guests of high distinction. In the rear of these were other benches, for the members of the three great councils. In the centre of the stage was a splendid canopy, decorated with the arms of Burgundy, beneath which were placed three gilded arm-chairs. All the seats upon the platform were vacant, but the benches below, assigned to the deputies of the provinces, were already filled. Numerous representatives from all the states but two — Gelderland and Overyssel — had already taken their places. Grave magistrates, in chain and gown, and executive officers in the splendid civic uniforms for which the Netherlands were celebrated, already filled every seat within the 304 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE space allotted. The remainder of the hall was crowded with the more favored portion of the multitude which had been fortunate enough to procure admission to the exhibition. The archers and hallebardiers of the body-guard kept watch at all the doors. The theatre was filled — the audience was eager with expectation — the actors were yet to arrive. As the clock struck three, the hero of the scene appeared. Caesar, as he was always designated in the classic language of the day, entered, leaning on the shoulder of William of Orange. They came from the chapel, and were immediately followed by Philip the Second and Queen Mary of Hungary. The Archduke Maximilian, the Duke of Savoy, and other great personages came afterwards, accompanied by a glit- tering throng of warriors, councillors, governors, and Knights of the Fleece. Many individuals of existing or future historic celebrity in the Netherlands, whose names are so familiar to the student of the epoch, seemed to have been grouped, as if by premeditated design, upon this imposing platform, where the curtain was to fall forever upon the mightiest emperor since Charlemagne, and where the opening scene of the long and tremendous tragedy of Philip's reign was to be simultaneously enacted. There was the Bishop of Arras, soon to be known throughout Christendom by the more celebrated title of Cardinal Granvelle, the serene and smiling priest whose subtle influence over the destinies of so many individuals then present, and over the fortunes of the whole land, was to be so extensive and so deadly. There was that flower of Flemish chivalry, the lineal descendant of ancient Frisian kings, already distinguished for his bravery in many fields, but not having yet won those two remarkable victories which were soon to make the name of Egmont like the sound of a trumpet throughout the whole country. Tall, magnificent in costume, with dark flowing hair, soft brown eye, smooth cheek, a slight moustache, and features of almost fem- inine delicacy ; such was the gallant and ill-fated Lamoral Egmont. The Count of Horn, too, with bold, sullen face, and fan-shaped beard — a brave, honest, discontented, quarrelsome, unpopular man ; those other twins in doom — the Marquis Berghen and the Lord of Montigny ; the Baron Berlaymont, brave, intensely LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 305 loyal, insatiably greedy for office and wages, but who, at least, never served but one party ; the Duke of Arschot, who was to serve all, essay to rule all, and to betray all — a splendid seignior, magnificent in cramoisy velvet, but a poor creature, who traced his pedigree from Adam, according to the family monumental in- scriptions at Louvain, but who was better known as grand-nephew of the emperor's famous tutor, Chievres ; the bold, debauched Brederode, with handsome, reckless face and turbulent demeanor; the infamous Noircarmes, whose name was to be covered with eternal execration, for aping towards his own compatriots and kindred as much of Alva's atrocities and avarice, as he was per- mitted to exercise ; the distinguished soldiers Meghen and Arem- berg — these, with many others whose deeds of arms were to be- come celebrated throughout Europe, were all conspicuous in the brilliant crowd. There, too, was that learned Frisian, President Viglius, crafty, plausible, adroit, eloquent — a small, brisk man, with long yellow hair, glittering green eyes, round, tumid, rosy cheeks, and flowing beard. Foremost among the Spanish gran- dees, and close to Philip, stood the famous favorite, Ruy Gomez, or, as he was familiarly called, "Re y Gomez" (King and Gomez), a man of meridional aspect, with coal-black hair and beard, gleam- ing eyes, a face pallid with intense application, and slender but handsome figure ; while in immediate attendance upon the em- peror, was the immortal Prince of Orange. Such were a few only of the most prominent in that gay throng, whose fortunes, in part, it will be our humble duty to narrate ; how many of them passing through all this glitter to a dark and myste- rious doom ! — some to perish on public scaffolds, some by mid- night assassination ; others, fortunate to fall on the battlefield — nearly all, sooner or later, to be laid in bloody graves ! All the company present had risen to their feet as the Emperor entered. By his command, all immediately afterwards resumed their places. The benches at either end of the platform were accordingly filled with the royal and princely personages invited, with the Fleece Knights, wearing the insignia of their order, with the members of the three great councils, and with the governors. The Emperor, the King, and the Queen of Hungary, were left conspicuous in the 3o6 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE centre of the scene. As the whole object of the ceremony was to present an impressive exhibition, it is worth our while to examine minutely the appearance of the two principal characters. Charles the Fifth was then fifty-five years and eight months old ; but he was already decrepit with premature old age. He was of about the middle height, and had been athletic and well-proportioned. Broad in the shoulders, deep in the chest, thin in the flank, very muscular in the arms and legs, he had been able to match himself with all competitors in the tourney and the ring, and to vanquish the bull with his own hand in the favorite national amusement of Spain. He had been able in the field to do the duty of captain and soldier, to endure fatigue and exposure, and every privation except fasting. These personal advantages were now departed. Crippled in hands, knees .and legs, he supported himself with difficulty upon a crutch, with the aid of an attendant's shoulder. In face he had always been extremely ugly, and time had certainly not improved his physiognomy. His hair, once of a light color, was now white with age, close-clipped and bristling ; his beard was grey, coarse, and shaggy. His forehead was spacious and commanding ; the eye was dark-blue, with an expression both majestic and benignant. His nose was aquiline but crooked. The lower part of his face was famous for its deformity. The under lip, a Burgundian inheritance, as faithfully transmitted as the duchy and county, was heavy and hanging ; the lower jaw protruding so far beyond the upper, that it was impossible for him to bring together the few fragments of teeth which still remained, or to speak a whole sentence in an intelligible voice. Eating and talking, occupations to which he was always much addicted, were becoming daily more arduous, in consequence of this original defect, which now seemed hardly human, but rather an original deformity. So much for the father. The son, Philip the Second, was a small, meagre man, much below the middle height, with thin legs, a narrow chest, and the shrinking, timid air of an habitual invalid. He seemed so little, upon his first visit to his aunts, the Queens Eleanor and Mary, accustomed to look upon proper men in Flanders and Germany, that he was fain to win their favor by making certain attempts in the tournament, in which his success LATER NATIONAL PERIOD ' 307 was sufficiently problematical. "His body," says his professed pane- gyrist, "was but a human cage, in which, however brief and narrow, dwelt a soul to whose flight the immeasurable expanse of heaven was too contracted," The same wholesale admirer adds, that "his aspect was so reverend, that rustics who met him alone in a wood, without knowing him, bowed down with instinctive veneration." In face, he was the living image of his father, having the same broad forehead, and blue eye, with the same aquiline, but better proportioned, nose. In the lower part of the countenance, the re- markable Burgundian deformity was likewise reproduced. He had the same heavy, hanging lip, with a vast mouth, and monstrously protruding lower jaw. His complexion was fair, his hair light and thin, his beard yellow, short, and pointed. He had the aspect of a Fleming, but the loftiness of a Spaniard. His demeanor in public was still, silent, almost sepulchral. He looked habitually on the ground when he conversed, was chary of speech, embarrassed, and even suffering in manner. This was ascribed partly to a natural haughtiness which he had occasionally endeavored to overcome, and partly to habitual pains in the stomach, occasioned by his inordinate fondness for pastry. Such was the personal appearance of the man who was about to receive into his single hand the destinies of half the world ; whose single will was, for the future, to shape the fortunes of every individual then present, of many millions more in Europe, America, and at the ends of the earth, and of countless millions yet unborn. The three royal personages being seated upon chairs placed triangularly under the canopy, such of the audience as had seats provided for them, now took their places, and the proceedings commenced. Philibert de Bruxelles, a member of the privy council of the Netherlands, arose at the emperor's command, and made a long oration. He spoke of the emperor's warm affection for the provinces, as the land of his birth ; of his deep regret that his broken health and failing powers, both of body and mind, com- pelled him to resign his sovereignty, and to seek relief for his shattered frame in a more genial climate. Caesar's gout was then depicted in energetic language, which must have cost him a twinge as he sat there and listened to the councillor's eloquence. " 'T is 3o8 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE a most truculent executioner," said Pliilibert : "it invades the whole body, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, leaving nothing untouched. It contracts the nerves with intolerable anguish, it enters the bones, it freezes the marrow, it converts the lubricating fluids of the joints into chalk, it pauses not until, hav- ing exhausted and debilitated the whole body, it has rendered all its necessary instruments useless, and conquered the mind by im- mense torture." Engaged in mortal struggle with such an enemy, Caesar felt himself obliged, as the councillor proceeded to inform his audience, to change the scene of the contest from the humifl air of Flanders to the warmer atmosphere of Spain. He rejoiced, however, that his son was both vigorous and experienced, and that his recent marriage with the Queen of England had furnished the provinces with a most valuable alliance. He then again referred to the Emperor's boundless love for his subjects, and concluded with a tremendous, but superfluous, exhortation to Philip on the necessity of maintaining the Catholic religion in its purity. After this long harangue, which has been fully reported by several his- torians who were present at the ceremony, the councillor proceeded to read the deed of cession, by which Philip, already sovereign of Sicily, Naples, Milan, and titular King of England, France, and Jerusalem, now received all the duchies, marquisates, earldoms, baronies, cities, towns, and castles of the Burgundian property, including, of course, the seventeen Netherlands. As De Bruxelles finished, there was a buzz of admiration throughout the assembly, mingled with murmurs of regret, that in the present great danger upon the frontiers from the belligerent King of France and his warlike and restless nation, the provinces should be left without their ancient and puissant defender. The Emperor then rose to his feet. Leaning on his crutch, he beckoned from his seat the personage upon whose arm he had leaned as he entered the hall. A tall, handsome youth of twenty-two came for- ward — a man whose name from that time forward, and as long as history shall endure, has been, and will be, more familiar than any other in the mouths of Netherlanders. At that day he had rather a southern than a German or Flemish appearance. He had a Spanish cast of features, dark, well chiselled, and symmetrical. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 309 His head was small and well placed upon his shoulders. His hair was dark-brown, as were also his moustache and peaked beard. His forehead was lofty, spacious, and already prematurely engraved with the anxious lines of thought. His eyes were full, brown, well opened, and expressive of profound reflection. He was dressed in the magnificent apparel for which the Netherlanders were cele- brated above all other nations, and which the ceremony rendered necessary. His presence being considered indispensable at this great ceremony, he had been summoned but recently from the camp on the frontier, where, notwithstanding his youth, the em- peror had appointed him to command his army in chief against such antagonists as Admiral Coligny and the Due de Nevers. Thus supported upon his crutch and upon the shoulder of William of Orange, the Emperor proceeded to address the states, by the aid of a closely-written brief which he held in his hand. He reviewed rapidly the progress of events from his seventeenth year up to that day. He spoke of his nine expeditions into Ger- many, six to Spain, seven to Italy, four to France, ten to the Netherlands, two to England, as many to Africa, and of his eleven voyages by sea. He sketched his various wars, victories, and treaties of peace, assuring his hearers that the welfare of his subjects and the security of the Roman Catholic religion had ever been the leading objects of his life. As long as God had granted him health, he continued, only enemies could have regretted that Charles was living and reigning, but now that his strength was but vanity, and life fast ebbing away, his love for dominion, his affection for his subjects, and his regard for their interests, required his depar- ture. Instead of a decrepit man with one foot in the grave, he presented them with a sovereign in the prime of life and the vigor of health. Turning toward Philip, he observed, that for a dying father to bequeath so magnificent an empire to his son was a deed worthy of gratitude, and that when the father thus descended to the grave before his time, and by an anticipated and living burial sought to provide for the welfare of his realms and the grandeur of his son, the benefit thus conferred was surely far greater. He added, that the debt would be paid to him and with usury, should Philip conduct himself in his administration of the province with 3IO READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE a wise and affectionate regard to their true interests. Posterity would applaud his abdication, should his son prove worthy of his bounty ; and that could only be by living in the fear of God, and by maintaining law, justice, and the Catholic religion in all their purity, as the true foundation of the realm. In conclusion, he entreated the estates, and through them the nation, to render obedience to their new prince, to maintain concord and to pre- serve inviolate the Catholic faith ; begging them, at the same time, to pardon him all errors or offences which he might have committed towards them during his reign, and assuring them that he should unceasingly remember their obedience and affection in his every prayer to that Being to whom the remainder of his life was to be dedicated. Such brave words as these, so many vigorous asseverations of attempted performance of duty, such fervent hopes expressed of a benign administration in behalf of the son, could not but affect the sensibilities of the audience, already excited and softened by the impressive character of the whole display. Sobs were heard throughout every portion of the hall, and tears poured profusely from every eye. The Fleece Knights on the platform and the burghers in the background were all melted with the same emotion. As for the Emperor himself, he sank almost fainting upon his chair as he concluded his address. An ashy paleness overspread his countenance, and he wept like a child. Even the icy Philip was almost softened, as he rose to perform his part in the cere- mony. Dropping upon his knees before his father's feet, he reverently kissed his hand. Charles placed his hands solemnly upon his son's head, made the sign of the cross, and blessed him in the name of the Holy Trinity. Then raising him in his arms he tenderly embraced him, saying, as he did so, to the great poten- tates around him, that he felt a sincere compassion for the son on whose shoulders so heavy a weight had just devolved, and which only a life-long labor would enable him to support. Philip now uttered a few words expressive of his duty to his father and his affection for his people. Turning to the orders, he signified his regret that he was unable to address them either in the French or Flemish language, and was therefore obliged to ask their attention LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 31 1 to the Bishop of Arras, who would act as his interpreter, Antony Perrenot accordingly arose, and in smooth, fluent, well-turned com- monplaces, expressed at great length the gratitude of Philip towards his father, with his firm determination to walk in the path of duty, and to obey his father's counsels and example in the future admin- istration of the provinces. This long address of the prelate was responded to at equal length by Jacob Maas, member of the coun- cil of Brabant, a man of great learning, eloquence and prolixity, who had been selected to reply on behalf of the states-general, and who now, in the name of these bodies, accepted the abdica- tion in an elegant and complimentary harangue. Queen Mary of Hungary, the " Christian widow " of Erasmus, and Regent of the Netherlands during the past twenty-five years, then rose to re- sign her ofifice, making a brief address expressive of her affection for the people, her regrets at leaving them, and her hopes that all errors which she might have committed during her long administration would be forgiven her. Again the redundant Maas responded, asserting in terms of fresh compliment and elegance the uniform satisfaction of the provinces with her conduct during her whole career. The orations and replies having now been brought to a close, the ceremony was terminated. The Emperor, leaning on the shoulders of the Prince of Orange and of the Count de Buren, slowly left the hall, followed by Philip, the Queen of Hungary, and the whole court ; all in the same order in which they had entered, and by the same passage into the chapel. 312 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE FRANCIS PARKMAN [Born at Boston, Massachusetts, September i6, 1823; died at Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, November 8, 1893] THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Vol. I, Chap. XVI (Extract) In the early morning of the second of August, 1642, twelve Huron canoes were moving slowly along the northern shore of the expansion of the St. Lawrence known as the Lake of St. Peter. There were on board about forty persons, including four French- men, one of them being the Jesuit, Isaac Jogues, whom we have already followed on his missionary journey to the towns of the Tobacco Nation. In the interval he had not been idle. During the last autumn, (1641) he, with Father Charles Raymbault, had passed along the shore of Lake Huron northward, entered the strait through which Lake Superior discharges itself, pushed on as far as the Sault Sainte Marie, and preached the Faith to two thousand Ojibwas, and other Algonquins there assembled. He was now on his return from a far more perilous errand. The Huron mission was in a state of destitution. There was need of clothing for the priests, of vessels for the altars, of bread and wine for the Eucharist, of writing materials, — in short, of everything ; and, early in the summer of the present year, Jogues had descended to Three Rivers and Quebec with the Huron traders, to procure the necessary supplies. He had accomplished his task, and was on his way back to the mission. With him were a few Huron converts, and among them a noted Christian chief, Eustache Ahatsistari. Others of the party were in course of instruction for baptism ; but the greater part were heathen, whose canoes were deeply laden with the proceeds of their bargains with the French fur-traders. Jogues sat in one of the leading canoes. He was born at Or- leans in 1607, and was thirty-five years of age. His oval face and the delicate mould of his features indicated a modest, thoughtful, LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 313 and refined nature. He was constitutionally timid, with a sensitive conscience and great religious susceptibilities. He was a finished scholar, and might have gained a literary reputation ; but he had chosen another career, and one for which he seemed but ill fitted. Physically, however, he was well matched with his work ; for, though his frame was slight, he was so active, that none of the Indians could surpass him in running. With him were two young men, Rene Goupil and Guillaume Couture, domih of the mission, ^ — that is to say, laymen who, from a religious motive and without pay, had attached themselves to the service of the Jesuits. Goupil had formerly entered upon the Jesuit novitiate at Paris, but failing health had obliged him to leave it. As soon as he was able, he came to Canada, offered his services to the Superior of the mission, was employed for a time in the humblest offices, and afterwards became an attendant at the hospital. At length, to his delight, he received permission to go up to the Hurons, where the surgical skill which he had acquired was greatly needed ; and he was now on his way thither. His companion. Couture, was a man of intelligence and vigor, and of a character equally disinterested. Both were, like Jogues, in the foremost canoes ; while the fourth Frenchman was with the unconverted Hurons, in the rear. The twelve canoes had reached the western end of the Lake of St. Peter, where it is filled with innumerable islands. The forest was close on their right, they kept near the shore to avoid the cur- rent, and the shallow water before them was covered with a dense growth of tall bulrushes. Suddenly the silence was ' frightfully broken. The war-whoop rose from among the rushes, mingled with the reports of guns and the whistling of bullets ; and several Iroquois canoes, filled with warriors, pushed out from their con- cealment, and bore down upon Jogues and his companions. The Hurons in the rear were seized with a shameful panic. They leaped ashore ; left canoes, baggage, and weapons ; and fled into the woods. The French and the Christian Hurons made fight for a time ; but when they saw another fleet of canoes approaching from the opposite shores or islands, they lost heart, and those escaped who could. Goupil was seized amid triumphant yells, as 314 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE were also several of the Huron converts. Jogues sprang into the bulrushes, and might have escaped ; but when he saw Goupil and the neophytes in the clutches of the Iroquois, he had no heart to abandon them, but came out from his hiding-place, and gave him- self up to the astonished victors. A few of them had remained to guard the prisoners ; the rest were chasing the fugitives. Jogues mastered his agony, and began to baptize those of the captive converts who desired baptism. Couture had eluded pursuit ; but when he thought of Jogues and of what perhaps awaited him, he resolved to share his fate, and, turning, retraced his steps. As he approached, five Iroquois ran forward to meet him ; and one of them snapped his gun at his breast, but it missed fire. In his confusion and excitement, Couture fired his own piece, and laid the savage dead. The re- maining four sprang upon him, stripped off all his clothing, tore away his finger-nails with their teeth, gnawed his fingers with the fury of famished dogs, and thrust a sword through one of his hands. Jogues broke from his guards, and, rushing to his friend, threw his arms about his neck. The Iroquois dragged him away, beat him with their fists and war-clubs till he was senseless, and, when he revived, lacerated his fingers with their teeth, as they had done those of Couture. Then they turned upon Goupil, and treated him with the same ferocity. The Huron prisoners were left for the present unharmed. More of them were brought in every moment, till at length the number of captives amounted in all to twenty-two, while three Hurons had been killed in the fight and pursuit. The Iroquois, about seventy in number, now em- barked with their prey ; but not until they had knocked on the head an old Huron, whom Jogues, with his mangled hands, had just baptized, and who refused to leave the place. Then, under a burning sun, they crossed to the spot on which the town of Sorel now stands, at the mouth of the river Richelieu, where they encamped. Their course was southward, up the River Richelieu and Lake Champlain ; thence, by way of Lake George, to the Mohawk towns. The pain and fever of their wounds, and the clouds of mosquitoes, which they could not drive off, left the prisoners no LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 315 peace by day nor sleep by night. On the eighth day, they learned that a large Iroquois war-party, on their way to Canada, were near at hand ; and they soon approached their camp, on a small island near the southern end of Lake Champlain. The warriors, two hundred in number, saluted their victorious countrymen with vol- leys from their guns ; then, armed with clubs and thorny sticks, ranged themselves in two lines, between which the captives were compelled to pass up the side of a rocky hill. On the way, they were beaten with such fury, that Jogues, who was last in the line, fell powerless, drenched in blood and half dead. As the chief man among the French captives, he fared the worst. His hands were again mangled, and fire applied to his body ; while the Huron chief, Eustache, was subjected to tortures even more atrocious. When, at night, the exhausted sufferers tried to rest, the young warriors came to lacerate their wounds and pull out their hair and beards. In the morning they resumed their journey. And now the lake narrowed to the semblance of a tranquil river. Before them was a woody mountain, close on their right a rocky promontory, and between these flowed a stream, the outlet of Lake George. On those rocks, more than a hundred years after, rose the ramparts of Ticonderoga. They landed, shouldered their canoes and bag- gage, took their way through the woods, passed the spot where the fierce Highlanders and the dauntless regiments of England breasted in vain the storm of lead and fire, and soon reached the shore where Abercrombie landed and Lord Howe fell. First of white men, Jogues and his companions gazed on the romantic lake that bears the name, not of its gentle discoverer, but of the dull Hanoverian king. Like a fair Naiad of the wilderness, it slum- bered between the guardian mountains that breathe from crag and forest the stern poetry of war. But all then was solitude ; and the clang of trumpets, the roar of cannon, and the deadly crack of the rifle had never as yet awakened their angry echoes. i6 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE RALPH WALDO EMERSON [Born in Boston, Massachusetts, May 25, 1803 ; died at Concord, Massa- chusetts, April 27, 1882] CONCORD HYMN Sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument, April 19, 1836 By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood. And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept ; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps ; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone ; That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone. Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee. THE RHODORA ON BEING ASKED WHENCE IS THE FLOWER In May, when sea winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook. The purple petals, fallen in the pool. Made the black water with their beauty gay ; LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 317 Here might the redbird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being : Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose ! I never thought to ask, I never knew : But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same Power that brought me there brought you, THE HUMBLE-BEE Burly, dozing humble-bee, Where thou art is clime for me. Let them sail for Porto Rique, Far-off heats through seas to seek ; I will follow thee alone. Thou animated torrid zone ! Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, Let me chase thy waving lines ; Keep me nearer, me thy hearer, Singing over shrubs and vines. Insect lover of the sun, Joy of thy dominion ! Sailor of the atmosphere ; Swimmer through the waves of air ; Voyager of light and noon ; Epicurean of June ; Wait, I prithee, till I come Within earshot of thy hum, — All without is martyrdom. When the south wind, in May days, With a net of shining haze Silvers the horizon wall, • " And with softness touching all, 3i8 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Tints the human countenance With the color of romance, And infusing subtle heats, Turns the sod to violets. Thou, in sunny solitudes, Rover of the underwoods, The green silence dost displace With thy mellow, breezy bass. Hot midsummer's petted crone. Sweet to me thy drowsy tone Tells of countless sunny hours. Long days, and solid banks of flowers ; Of gulfs of sweetness without bound Of Indian wildernesses found ; Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure. Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure. Aught unsavory or unclean Hath my insect never seen ; But violets and bilberry bells. Maple-sap and daffodils. Grass with green grass half-mast high, Succory to match the sky. Columbine with horn of honey. Scented fern and agrimony. Clover, catchfly, adder's tongue And brier-roses dwelt among ; All beside was unknown waste, All was picture as he passed. Wiser far than human seer. Yellow-breeched philosopher Seeing only what is fair. Sipping only what is sweet. Thou dost mock at fate and care. Leave the chaff and take the wheat. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 319 When the fierce northwestern blast Cools sea and land so far and fast, Thou already slumberest deep ; Woe and want thou canst outsleep ; Want and woe, which torture us, Thy sleep makes ridiculous. GOOD-BYE Good-bye, proud world ! I 'm going home : Thou art not my friend, and I 'm not thine. Long through thy weary crowds I roam ; A river-ark on the ocean brine, Long I 've been tossed like the driven foam ; But now, proud world ! I 'm going home. Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face ; To Grandeur with his wise grimace ; To upstart Wealth's averted eye ; To supple Ofiice, low and high ; To crowded halls, to court and street ; To frozen hearts and hasting feet ; To those who go, and those who come ; Good-bye, proud world ! I 'm going home. I am going to my own hearth-stone. Bosomed in yon green hills alone, — A secret nook in a pleasant land, Whose groves the frolic fairies planned ; Where arches green, the livelong day. Echo the blackbird's roundelay. And vulgar feet have never trod A spot that is sacred to thought and God. O, when I am safe in my sylvan home, I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome ; And when I am stretched beneath the pines. Where the evening star so holy shines. 320 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, At the sophist schools and the learned clan ; For what are they all, in their high conceit. When man in the bush with God may meet ? EACH AND ALL Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown Of thee from the hill top looking down ; The heifer that lows in the upland farm. Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm ; The sexton, tolling his bell at noon, Deems not that great Napoleon Stops his horse, and lists with delight. Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height ; Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. All are needed by each one ; Nothing is fair or good alone. I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn on the alder bough ; I brought him home, in his nest, at even ; He sings the song, but it cheers not now. For I did not bring home the river and sky ; He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye. The delicate shells lay on the shore ; The bubbles of the latest wave Fresh pearls to their enamel gave. And the bellowing of the savage sea Greeted their safe escape to me. I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home ; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar. The lover watched his graceful maid. As mid the virgin train she strayed. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 321 Nor knew her beauty's best attire Was woven still by the snow-white choir. At last she came to his hermitage, Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage ; The gay enchantment was undone, A gentle wife, but fairy none. Then I said, " I covet truth ; Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat ; I leave it behind with the games of youth : " As I spoke, beneath my feet The ground pine curled its pretty wreath, Running over the club moss burs ; I inhaled the violet's breath ; Around me stood the oaks and firs ; Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground ; Over me soared the eternal sky. Full of light and of deity ; Again I saw, again I heard. The rolling river, the morning bird ; Beauty through my senses stole ; I yielded myself to the perfect whole. THE SNOW-STORM Announced by all the trumpets of the sky. Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight : the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the house mates sit Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm. Come, see the north wind's masonry. Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof 322 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths ; A swanlike form invests the hidden thorn ; Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, Mauger the farmer's sighs ; and at the gate A tapering turret overtops the work. And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind's night work, The frolic architecture of the snow. APRIL The April winds are magical And thrill our tuneful frames ; The garden walks are passional To bachelors and dames. The hedge is gemmed with diamonds, The air with Cupids full. The cobweb clues of Rosamond Guide lovers to the pool. Each dimple in the water, Each leaf that shades the rock Can cozen, pique and flatter, Can parley and provoke. Goodfellow, Puck and goblins, Know more than any book, Down with your doleful problems, And court the sunny brook. The south-winds are quick-witted. The schools are sad and slow. The masters quite omitted The lore we care to know. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 323 FORBEARANCE Hast thou named all the birds without a gun ? Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk ? At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse ? Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust ? And loved so well a high behavior, In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, Nobility more nobly to repay ? O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine ! FABLE The mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter " Little Prig ; " Bun replied, " You are doubtless very big ; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And a sphere. And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I 'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I, And not half so spry. I '11 not deny you make A very pretty squirrel track ; Talents differ ; all is well and wisely put ; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut." 324 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE THE ENCHANTER In the deep heart of man a poet dwells Who all the day of life his summer story tells ; Scatters on every eye dust of his spells, Scent, form, and color ; to the flowers and shells Wins the believing child with wondrous tales ; Touches a cheek with colors of romance. And crowds a history into a glance ; Gives beauty to the lake and fountain, Spies oversea the fires of the mountain ; When thrushes ope their throat, 't is he that sings, And he that paints the oriole's fiery wings. The little Shakespeare in the maiden's heart Makes Romeo of a plough-boy on his cart ; Opens the eye to Virtue's starlike meed And gives persuasion to a gentle deed. WOODNOTES SELECTIONS 'T was one of the charmed days When the genius of God doth flow, The wind may alter twenty ways, A tempest cannot blow ; It may blow north, it still is warm ; Or south, it still is clear ; Or east, it smells like a clover-farm ; Or west, no thunder fear. The musing peasant lowly great Beside the forest water sate ; The rope-like pine roots crosswise grown Composed the network of his throne ; The wide lake, edged with sand and grass, Was burnished to a floor of glass. Painted with shadows green and proud Of the tree and of the cloud. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 325 He was the heart of all the scene ; On him the sun looked more serene ; To hill and cloud his face was known, — It seemed the likeness of their own ; They knew by secret sympathy The public child of earth and sky, " You ask," he said, "' what guide Me through trackless thickets led, Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide. I found the water's bed. The watercourses were my guide ; I travelled grateful by their side, Or through their channel dry ; They led me through the thicket damp, Through brake and fern, the beavers' camp, Through beds of granite cut my road. And their resistless friendship showed : The falling waters led me, The foodful waters fed me. And brought me to the lowest land. Unerring to the ocean sand. The moss upon the forest bark Was pole-star when the night was dark ; The purple berries in the wood Supplied me necessary food ; For Nature ever faithful is To such as trust her faithfulness. When the forest shall mislead me, When the night and morning lie. When sea and land refuse to feed me, 'T will be time enough to die ; Then will yet my mother yield A pillow in her greenest field. Nor the June flowers scorn to cover The clay of their departed lover." 326 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE THE SONG OF THE PINE-TREE " Heed the old oracles, Ponder my spells ; Song wakes in my pinnacles When the wind swells. Soundeth the prophetic wind, The shadows shake on the rock behind, And the countless leaves of the pine are strings Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings. Hearken ! Hearken ! If thou wouldst know the mystic song Chanted when the sphere was young. Aloft, abroad, the paean swells ; O wise man ! hear'st thou half it tells .-' O wise man ! hear'st thou the least part .'' 'T is the chronicle of art. To the open ear it sings Sweet the genesis of things, Of tendency through endless ages, Of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages. Of rounded worlds, of space and time, Of the old flood's subsiding slime, Of chemic matter, force and form, Of poles and powers, cold, wet and warm : The rushing metamorphosis Dissolving all that fixture is. Melts things that be to things that seem. And solid nature to a dream. O, listen to the undersong, The ever old, the ever young ; And, far within those cadent pauses, The chorus of the ancient Causes ! Delights the dreadful Destiny To fling his voice into the tree, And shock thy weak ear with a note Breathed from the everlasting throat. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 327 In music he repeats the pang Whence the fair flock of Nature sprang. O mortal ! thy ears are stones ; These echoes are laden with tones Which only the pure can hear ; Thou canst not catch what they recite Of Fate and Will, of Want and Right, Of man to come, of human life. Of Death and Fortune, Growth and Strife." VOLUNTARIES ******* In an age of fops and toys, Wanting wisdom, void of right, Who shall nerve heroic boys To hazard all in Freedom's fight, — Break sharply off their jolly games. Forsake their comrades gay And quit proud homes and youthful dames For famine, toil and fray ? Yet on the nimble air benign Speed nimbler messages. That waft the breath of grace divine To hearts in sloth and ease. So nigh is grandeur to our dust. So near is God to man, When duty whispers low, T/iou must, The youth replies, / can. O, well for the fortunate soul Which Music's wings infold, Stealing away the memory Of sorrows new and old ! Yet happier he whose inward sight, Stayed on his subtile thought. Shuts his sense on toys of time. To vacant bosoms brought. 328 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE But best befriended of the God He who, in evil times, Warned by an inward voice, Heeds not the darkness and the dread, Biding by his rule and choice, Feeling only the fiery thread Leading over heroic ground, Walled with mortal terror round, To the aim which him allures, And the sweet heaven his deed secures. Peril around, all else appalling, Cannon in front and leaden rain Him duty through the clarion calling To the van called not in vain. Stainless soldier on the walls. Knowing this, — and knows no more, — Whoever fights, whoever falls. Justice conquers evermore. Justice after as before, — And he who battles on her side, God, though he were ten times slain. Crowns him victor glorified, Victor over death and pain. SELF-RELIANCE I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense ; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judg- ment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 329 merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses with- out notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts : they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. ¥Ase, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance ; that imitation is suicide ; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion ; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best ; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a deliver- ance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him ; no muse befriends ; no invention, no hope. Trust thyself : every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have 330 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predomi- nating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny ; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark. What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes ! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arith- metic has computed the strength and means opposed to our pur- pose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody : all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark ! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and em- phatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary. The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlor what the pit is in the playhouse ; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests ; he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him : he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 331 account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrahty ! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, un- bribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear. These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remem- ber an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within ? my friend suggested : " But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied : " They do not seem to me to be such ; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil," No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this ; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposi- tion, as if everything were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well- spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass .■' 332 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him : "Go love thy infant ; love thy wood-chopper : be good-natured and modest : have that grace ; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home." Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post. Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor .? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold ; for them I will go to prison, if need be ; but your miscellaneous popular charities ; the education at college of fools ; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand ; alms to sots ; and the thousandfold Relief Societies ; — - though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold. Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, — as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady, I wish it to be sound and LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 333 sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent, I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and mean- ness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion ; it is easy in solitude to live after our own ; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base house- keepers, — under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must con- sider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word } Do I not know that, with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing ? Do I not know that he is pledged to him- self not to look but at one side, — the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister ? He is a- retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached 334 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four ; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by de- grees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying ex- perience in particular which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping willfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation. For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlor. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad coun- tenance ; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment. The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency ; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loth to disappoint them. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 335 But why should you keep your head over your shoulder ? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict some- what you have stated in this or that public place ? Suppose you should contradict yourself ; when then ? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thou- sand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity ; yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern him- self with the shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day. — "Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood." — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood ? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza ; — read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. 336 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a suffi- cient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Great- ness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumu- lative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination ? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and America into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person. I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him ; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid content- ment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 337 works ; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the center of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events. Ordinarily, everybody in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else ; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must make all cir- cumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age ; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design ; — and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man ; as Monachism, of the hermit Antony ; the Reformation, of Luther ; Quakerism, of Fox ; Methodism, of Wesley ; Aboli- tion, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called " the height of Rome " ; and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons. Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, a costly book, have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, " Who are you. Sir ? " Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his facul- ties that they will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict : it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince. 338 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history, our imagination plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house and common day's work ; but the things of life are the same to both ; the sum total of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus.? Sup- pose they were virtuous ; did they wear out virtue ? As great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed their public and renowned steps. When private men shall act with original views, the luster will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen. The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so mag- netized the eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make his own scale of men and things, and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with honor, and represent the law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of every man. The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee .? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded ? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear ? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as In- tuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and be- ing also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 339 afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We he in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a pas- sage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My willful actions and acquisitions are but roving ; — the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily ; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, it is fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, — although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun. The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things ; should fill the world with his voice ; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the center of the present thought ; and new date and new create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, — means, teachers, texts, temples, fall ; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by rela- tion to it, — one as much as another. All things are dissolved to their center by their cause, and, in the universal miracle, petty and particular miracles disappear. If, therefore, a man claims to know and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old moldered nation in another country, in another world, 340 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion ? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being ? Whence, then, this worship of the past ? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light ; where it is, is day ; where it was, is night ; and history is an impertinence and an in- jury, if it be anything more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming. Man is timid and apologetic ; he is no longer upright ; he dares not say " I think," " I am," but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones ; they are for what they are ; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose ; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts ; in the full-blown flower there is no more ; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers ; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and •strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men and talents and character they chance to see, — painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke ; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing to let the words go ; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 341 as old rubbish. When a man Hves with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn. And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid ; probably cannot be said ; for all that we say is the far-off remembering of the intuition. That thought, by what I can now nearest approach to say it, is this. When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way ; you shall not discern the footprints of any other ; you shall not see the face of man ; you shall not hear any name ; — the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example and experience. You take the way from man, not to man. All persons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision, there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea, — long intervals of time, years, centuries, — ^are of no account. This which I think and feel underlay every former state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present, and what is called life, and what is called death. Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose ; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes ; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all repu- tation to shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of self-reliance ? Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be power not confident but agent. To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which relies, because it works and is. Who has more obedience than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric, when we speak of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature 342 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not. This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed One. Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it con- stitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. All things real are so by so much virtue as they contain. Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence, personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as examples of its presence and impure action. I see the same law working in nature for conservation and growth. Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and matura- tion of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufificing, and therefore self-relying soul. Thus all concentrates : let us not rove ; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches. But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in com- munication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go alone, I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary ! So let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood ? All men have my blood, and I have all men's. Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation must not be mechani- cal, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 343 world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, chent, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, " Come out unto us." But keep thy state ; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. " What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love." If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations ; let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appear- ances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. 1 will have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste hus- band of one wife, — but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself, I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you ; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions ; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day ? You will soon love what is dic- tated by your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. But so may you give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason. 344 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE when they look out into the region of absolute truth ; then will they justify me, and do the same thing. The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism ; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfill your round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct, or in the reflex way. Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, town, cat, and dog ; whether any of these can upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex stand- ard, and absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts, it enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day. And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others ! If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by dis- tinction society, he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become tim- orous, desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and do lean and beg day and night continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fdte, where strength is born. If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is mined. If LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 345 the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not " studying a profession," for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. Let a Stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves ; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear ; that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere him, — and that teacher shall restore the life of man to splendor, and make his name dear to all history. It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolu- tion in all the offices and relations of men ; in their religion ; in their education ; in their pursuits ; their modes of living ; their association ; in their property ; in their speculative views. I. In what prayers do men allow themselves ! That which they call a holy office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity, — anything less than all good, — is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer 346 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in Fletcher's Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of the god Audate, replies, — " His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors ; Our valors are our best gods." Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance : it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer ; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide : him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicit- ously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. "To the persevering mortal," said Zoroaster, "the blessed Immortals are swift." As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect. They say with those foolish Israelites, " Let not God speak to us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, and we will obey." Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors, and recites fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's God. Every new mind is a new classification. If it prove a mind of uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it imposes its classification on other men, and lo ! a new system. In proportion to the depth of the thought, and so to the number of the objects it touches and brings within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. But chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, which are also classifications of LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 347 some powerful mind acting on the elemental thought of duty, and man's relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quakerism, Swedenborgism. The pupil takes the same delight in subordinat- ing everything to the new terminology, as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. It will hap- pen for a time, that the pupil will find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his master's mind. But in all unbalanced minds, the classification is idolized, passes for the end, and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe ; the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their mas- ter built. They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to see, — how you can see ; "It must be somehow that you stole the light from us." They do not yet perceive that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they are honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the universe as on the first morning. 2. It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Traveling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveler; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet. I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of find- ing somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from him- self, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, 348 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins. Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples,' at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go. 3. But the rage of traveling is a symptom of a deeper unsound- ness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vaga- bond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate ; and what is imitation but the traveling of the mind ? Our houses are built with foreign taste ; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments ; our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the Past and the Distant. The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model ? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the govern- ment, he will create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also. Insist on yourself ; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation ; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporane- ous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet' knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare ? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Nev^on ? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 349 not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shake- speare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utter- ance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but differ- ent from all these. Not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself ; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice ; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again. 4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves. Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes ; it is bar- barous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific ; but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old in- stincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the traveler tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad ax, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe ; the equinox he knows as little ; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His notebooks impair his memory ; his libraries overload his wit ; the 350 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE insurance office increases the number of accidents ; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber ; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity intrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild vir- tue. For every Stoic was a Stoic ; but in Christendom where is the Christian ? There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard of height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever were. A singular equality may be observed between the great men of the first and of the last ages ; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of the nineteenth century avail to educate greater men than Plutarch's heroes, three or four and twenty cen- turies ago. Not in time is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be called by their name, but will be his own man, and, in his turn, the founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved machinery may com- pensate its good. Hudson and Bering accomplished so much in their fishing boats as to astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equip- ment exhausted the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since. Columbus found the New World in an un- decked boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perish- ing of means and machinery, which were introduced with loud laudation a few years or centuries before. The great genius returns to essential man. We reckoned the improvements of the art of war among the triumphs of science, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, which consisted of falling back on naked valor, and disencumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held it impossible to make a perfect army, says Las Casas, "without abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries, and carriages, until, in imitation of the Roman custom, the soldier should re- ceive his supply of corn, grind it in his handmill, and bake his bread himself." Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 351 from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them. And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long, that they have come to esteem the religious, learned, and civil institu- tions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental, — came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime ; then he feels that it is not having ; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is, does always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes. "Thy lot or portion of life," said the Caliph Ali, " is seeking after thee ; therefore be at rest from seeking after it." Our dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. The political parties meet in numerous conventions ; the greater the concourse, and with each new uproar of announcement, The delegation from Essex! The Democrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine ! The young patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers summon conventions, and vote and resolve in multitude. Not so, O friends ! will the god deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a town .? Ask nothing of men, and in the endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear the up- holder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him 352 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles ; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head. So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancelors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE [Born at Salem, Massachusetts, July 4, 1804; died at Plymouth, New Hamp- shire, May 19, 1864] THE GRAY CHAMPION From " Twice-Told Tales " There was once a time when New England groaned under the actual pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on the Revolution. James II, the bigoted successor of Charles the Voluptuous, had annulled the charters of all the colo- nies, and sent a harsh and unprincipled soldier to take away our liberties and endanger our religion. The administration of Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a single characteristic of tyranny : a Governor and Council, holding office from the King, and wholly independent of the country ; laws made and taxes levied without concurrence of the people immediate or by their representatives ; the rights of private citizens violated, and the titles of all landed property declared void ; the voice of complaint stifled by restric- tions on the press ; and, finally, disaffection overawed by the first LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 353 band of mercenary troops that ever marched on our free soil. For two years our ancestors were kept in sullen submission by that filial love which had invariably secured their allegiance to the mother country, whether its head chanced to be a Parliament, Protector, or Popish Monarch. Till these evil times, however, such allegiance had been merely nominal, and the colonists had ruled themselves, enjoying far more freedom than is even yet the privilege of the native subjects of Great Britain. At length a rumor reached our shores that the Prince of Orange had ventured on an enterprise the success of which would be the triumph of civil and religious rights and the salvation of New Eng- land. It was but a doubtful whisper ; it might be false, or the at- tempt might fail ; and, in either case, the man that stirred against King James would lose his head. Still, the intelligence produced a marked effect. The people smiled mysteriously in the streets, and threw bold glances at their oppressors ; while, far and wide, there was a subdued and silent agitation, as if the slightest signal would rouse the whole land from its sluggish despondency. Aware of their danger, the rulers resolved to avert it by an imposing dis- play of strength, and perhaps to confirm their despotism by yet harsher measures. One afternoon in April, 1689, Sir Edmund Andros and his favorite councillors, being warm with wine, assembled the redcoats of the Governor's Guard, and made their appearance in the streets of Boston. The sun was near setting when the march commenced. The roll of the drum, at that unquiet crisis, seemed to go through the streets, less as the martial music of the soldiers, than as a muster-call to the inhabitants themselves. A multitude, by various avenues, assembled in King Street, which was destined to be the scene, nearly a century afterwards, of another encounter between the troops of Britain and a people struggling against her tyranny. Though more than sixty years had elapsed since the Pilgrims came, this crowd of their descendants still showed the strong and sombre features of their character, perhaps more strikingly in such a stern emergency than on happier occasions. There were the sober garb, the general severity of mien, the gloomy but undismayed expression, the scriptural forms of speech, and the confidence 354 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE in Heaven's blessing on a righteous cause, which would have marked a band of the original Puritans, when threatened by some peril of the wilderness. Indeed, it was not yet time for the old spirit to be extinct ; since there were men in the street that day who had worshipped there beneath the trees, before a house was reared to the God for whom they had become exiles. Old soldiers of the Parliament were here, too, smiling grimly at the thought that their aged arms might strike another blow against the house of Stuart. Here, also, were the veterans of King Philip's war, who had burned villages and slaughtered young and old, with pious fierceness, while the godly souls throughout the land were helping them with prayer. Several ministers were scattered among the crowd, which, unlike all other mobs, regarded them with such reverence, as if there were sanctity in their very garments. These holy men exerted their influence to quiet the people, but not to disperse them. Meantime, the purpose of the Governor, in dis- turbing the peace of the town at a period when the slightest commotion might throw the country into a ferment, was almost the universal subject of inquiry, and variously explained. "Satan will strike his master-stroke presently," cried some, "be- cause he knoweth that his time is short. All our godly pastors are to be dragged to prison ! We shall see them at a Smithfield fire in King Street ! " Hereupon the people of each parish gathered closer round their minister, who looked calmly upward and assumed a more apostolic dignity, as well befitted a candidate for the highest honor of his profession — a crown of martyrdom. It was actually fancied at that period that New England might have a John Rogers of her own to take the place of that worthy in the Primer. " The Pope of Rome has given orders for a new St. Bartholo- mew ! " cried others. " We are to be massacred, man and male child ! " Neither was this rumor wholly discredited, although the wiser class believed the Governor's object somewhat less atrocious. His predecessor under the old charter, Bradstreet, a venerable com- panion of the first settlers, was known to be in town. There were grounds for conjecturing that Sir Edmund Andros intended, at LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 355 once, to strike terror, by a parade of military force, and to con- found the opposite faction by possessing himself of their chief. "Stand firm for the old charter, Governor! " shouted the crowd, seizing upon the idea. " The good old Governor Bradstreet ! " While this cry was at the loudest, the people were surprised by the well-known figure of Governor Bradstreet himself, a patriarch of nearly ninety, who appeared on the elevated steps of a door, and, with characteristic mildness, besought them to submit to the constituted authorities. " My children," concluded this venerable person, " do nothing rashly. Cry not aloud, but pray for the welfare of New England, and expect patiently what the Lord will do in this matter ! " The event was soon to be decided. All this time, the roll of the drum had been approaching through Cornhill, louder and deeper, till with reverberations from house to house, and the regular tramp of martial footsteps, it burst into the street. A double rank of sol- diers made their appearance, occupying the whole breadth of the passage, with shouldered matchlocks, and matches burning, so as to present a row of fires in the dusk. Their steady march was like the progress of a machine, that would roll irresistibly over every- thing in its way. Next, moving slowly, with a confused clatter of hoofs on the pavement, rode a party of mounted gentlemen, the central figure being Sir Edmund Andros, elderly, but erect and soldier-like. Those around him were his favorite councillors, and the bitterest foes of New England, At his right hand rode Edward Randolph, our arch-enemy, that "blasted wretch," as Cotton Mather calls him, who achieved the downfall of our ancient gov- ernment, and was followed with a sensible curse, through life and to his grave. On the other side was Bullivant, scattering jests and mockery as he rode along. Dudley came behind, with a downcast look, dreading, as well he might, to meet the indignant gaze of the people, who beheld him, their only countryman by birth, among the oppressors of his native land. The captain of a frigate in the harbor, and two or three civil officers under the Crown, were also there. But the figure which most attracted the public eye, and stirred up the deepest feeling, was the Episcopal clergyman of King's Chapel, riding haughtily among the magistrates in his 356 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE priestly vestments, the fitting representative of prelacy and perse- cution, the union of Church and State, and all those abominations which had driven the Puritans to the wilderness. Another guard of soldiers, in double rank, brought up the rear. The whole scene was a picture of the condition of New Eng- land, and its moral, the deformity of any government that does not grow out of the nature of things and the character of the peo- ple. On one side the religious multitude, with their sad visages and dark attire, and on the other, the group of despotic rulers, with the high churchman in the midst, and here and there a crucifix at their bosoms, all magnificently clad, flushed with wine, proud of unjust authority, and scoffing at the universal groan. And the mer- cenary soldiers, waiting but the word to deluge the street with blood, showed the only means by which obedience could be secured. " O Lord of Hosts," cried a voice among the crowd, " provide a Champion for thy people ! " This ejaculation was loudly uttered, and served as a herald's cry, to introduce a remarkable personage. The crowd had rolled back, and were now huddled together nearly at the extremity of the street, while the soldiers had advanced no more than a third of its length. The intervening space was empty — a paved solitude, between lofty edifices, which threw almost a twilight shadow over it. Suddenly, there was seen the figure of an ancient man, who seemed to have emerged from among the people, and was walking by himself along the centre of the street, to confront the armed band. He wore the old Puritan dress, a dark cloak and a steeple- crowned hat, in the fashion of at least fifty years before, with a heavy sword upon his thigh, but a staff in his hand to assist the tremulous gait of age. When at some distance from the multitude, the old man turned slowly round, displaying a face of antique majesty, rendered doubly venerable by the hoary beard that descended on his breast. He made a gesture at once of encouragement and warning, then turned again, and resumed his way. " Who is this gray patriarch ? " asked the young men of their sires. " Who is this venerable brother ? " asked the old men among themselves. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 357 But none could make reply. The fathers of the people, those of fourscore years and upwards, were disturbed, deeming it strange that they should forget one of such evident authority, whom they must have known in their early days, the associate of Winthrop, and all the old councillors, giving laws, and mak- ing prayers, and leading them against the savage. The elderly men ought to have remembered him, too, with locks as gray in their youth, as their own were now. And the young ! How could he have passed so utterly from their memories — that hoary sire, the relic of long-departed times, whose awful bene- diction had surely been bestowed on their uncovered heads, in childhood ? " Whence did he come ? What is his purpose ? Who can this old man he? " whispered the wondering crowd. Meanwhile, the venerable stranger, staff in hand, was pursuing his solitary walk along the centre of the street. As he drew near the advancing soldiers, and as the roll of their drum came full upon his ear, the old man raised himself to a loftier mien, while the decrepitude of age seemed to fall from his shoulders, leaving him in gray but unbroken dignity. Now, he marched onward with a warrior's step, keeping time to the military music. Thus the aged form advanced on one side, and the whole parade of soldiers and magistrates on the other, till, when scarcely twenty yards remained between, the old man grasped his staff by the middle and held it before him like a leader's truncheon. " Stand ! " cried he. The eye, the face and attitude of command, the solemn yet war- like peal of that voice — fit either to rule a host in the battle-field or be raised to God in prayer — were irresistible. At the old man's word and outstretched arm the roll of the drum was hushed at once and the advancing line stood still, A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the multitude. That stately form, combining the leader and the saint, so gray, so dimly seen, in such an ancient garb, could only belong to some old champion of the righteous cause whom the oppressor's drum had summoned from his grave. They raised a shout of awe and exultation, and looked for the deliverance of New England. 358 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE The governor and the gentlemen of his party, perceiving them- selves brought to an unexpected stand, rode hastily forward, as if they would have pressed their snorting and affrighted horses right against the hoary apparition. He, however, blenched not a step, but, glancing his severe eye round the group, which half encom- passed him, at last bent it sternly on Sir Edmund Andros. One would have thought that the dark old man was chief ruler there, and that the governor and council with soldiers at their back, representing the whole power and authority of the crown, had no alternative but obedience. " What does this old fellow here .-' " cried Edward Randolph, fiercely. " On, Sir Edmund ! Bid the soldiers forward and give the dotard the same choice that you give all his countrymen — to stand aside or be trampled on." " Nay, nay, let us show respect to the good grandsire," said Bullivant, laughing. "' See you not, he is some old round-headed dignitary, who hath lain asleep these thirty years, and knows nothing of the change of times ? Doubtless, he thinks to put us down with a proclamation in Old Noll's name ! " '" Are you mad, old man ? " demanded Sir Edmund Andros, in loud and harsh tones. " How dare you stay the march of King James's Governor ? " " I have stayed the march of a king himself, ere now," replied the gray figure, with stern composure. '" I am here, Sir Governor, because the cry of an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my secret place ; and beseeching this favor earnestly of the Lord, it was vouchsafed me to appear once again on earth, in the good old cause of his saints. And what speak ye of James .'' There is no longer a Popish tyrant on the throne of England, and by to-morrow noon his name shall be a byword in this very street, where ye would make it a word of terror. Back, thou that wast a Governor, back ! With this night thy power is ended, — to-morrow, the prison ! — back, lest I foretell the scaffold ! " The people had been drawing nearer and nearer, and drinking in the words of their champion, who spoke in accents long dis- used, like one unaccustomed to converse, except with the dead of many years ago. But his voice stirred their souls. They confronted LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 359 the soldiers, not wholly without arms, and ready to convert the very stones of the street into deadly weapons. Sir Edmund Andros looked at the old man ; then he cast his hard and cruel eye over the multitude, and beheld them burning with that lurid wrath, so difficult to kindle or to quench ; and again he fixed his gaze on the aged form, which stood obscurely in an open space, where neither friend nor foe had thrust himself. What were his thoughts, he uttered no word which might discover. But whether the op- pressor were overawed by the Gray Champion's look, or perceived his peril in the threatening attitude of the people, it is certain that he gave back, and ordered his soldiers to commence a slow and guarded retreat. Before another sunset, the Governor, and all that rode so proudly with him, were prisoners, and long ere it was known that James had abdicated, King William was proclaimed throughout New England. But where was the Gray Champion ? Some reported that, when the troops had gone from King Street, and the people were throng- ing tumultuously in their rear, Bradstreet, the aged Governor, was seen to embrace a form more aged than his own. Others soberly affirmed, that while they marvelled at the venerable grandeur of his aspect, the old man had faded from their eyes, melting slowly into the hues of twilight, till, where he stood, there was an empty space. But all agreed that the hoary shape was gone. The men of that generation watched for his reappearance, in sunshine and in twilight, but never saw him more, nor knew when his funeral passed, nor where his gravestone was. And who was the Gray Champion .? Perhaps his name might be found in the records of that stern Court of Justice, which passed a sentence, too mighty for the age, but glorious in all after-times, for its humbling lesson to the monarch and its high example to the subject. I have heard, that whenever the descendants of the Puritans are to show the spirit of their sires, the old man appears again. When eighty years had passed, he walked once more in King Street. Five years later, in the twilight of an April morning, he stood on the green, beside the meeting-house, at Lexington, where now the obelisk of granite, with a slab of slate inlaid, com- memorates the first fallen of the Revolution. And when our fathers 36o READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE were toiling at the breastwork on Bunker's Hill, all through that night the old warrior walked his rounds. Long, long may it be, ere he comes again ! His hour is one of darkness, and adversity, and peril. But should domestic tyranny oppress us, or the in- vader's step pollute our soil, still may the Gray Champion come, for he is the type of New England's hereditary spirit ; and his shadowy march, on the eve of danger, must ever be the pledge, that New England's sons will vindicate their ancestry. A RILL FROM THE TOWN-PUMP From " Twice-Told Tales " [Scene, the corner of two principal streets, the Town-Pump talking through its nose] Noon by the north clock ! Noon by the east ! High noon, too, by these hot sunbeams, which fall, scarcely aslope, upon my head and almost make the water bubble and smoke in the trough under my nose. Truly, we public characters have a tough time of it ! And among all the town-officers chosen at March meeting, where is he that sustains for a single year the burden of such manifold duties as are imposed in perpetuity upon the town-pump .? The title of " town-treasurer " is rightfully mine, as guardian of the best treasure that the town has. The overseers of the poor ought to make me their chairman, since I provide bountifully for the pauper without expense to him that pays taxes. I am at the head of the fire department and one of the physicians to the board of health. As a keeper of the peace all water-drinkers will confess me equal to the constable. I perform some of the duties of the town-clerk by promulgating public notices when they are posted on my front. To speak within bounds, I am the chief person of the municipality, and exhibit, moreover, an admirable pattern to my brother-officers by the cool, steady, upright, downright and impartial discharge of my business and the constancy with which I stand to my post. Summer or winter, nobody seeks me in vain, for all day long I am seen at the busiest corner, just above the market, stretching out my arms to rich and poor alike, and at LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 361 night I hold a lantern over my head both to show where I am and keep people out of the gutters. At this sultry noontide I am cupbearer to the parched populace, for whose benefit an iron goblet is chained to my waist. Like a dramseller on the mall at muster-day, I cry aloud to all and sundry in my plainest accents and at the very tiptop of my voice. Here it is, gentlemen ! Here is the good liquor ! Walk up, walk up, gentlemen ! Walk up, walk up ! Here is the superior stuff ! Here is the unadulterated ale of Father Adam — better than Cognac, Hollands, Jamaica, strong beer or wine of any price ; here it is by the hogshead or the single glass, and not a cent to pay ! Walk up, gentlemen, walk up, and help yourselves ! It were a pity if all this outcry should draw no customers. Here they come. A hot day, gentlemen ! Quaff and away again, so as to keep yourselves in a nice cool sweat. You, my friend, will need another cupful to wash the dust out of your throat, if it be as thick there as it is on your cowhide shoes. I see that you have trudged half a score of miles to-day, and like a wise man have passed by the taverns and stopped at the running brooks and well-curbs. Otherwise, betwixt heat without and fire within, you would have been burned to a cinder or melted down to nothing at all, in the fashion of a jelly-fish. Drink and make room for that other fellow, who seeks my aid to quench the fiery fever of last night's pota- tions, which he drained from no cup of mine. Welcome, most rubicund sir ! You and I have been great strangers, hitherto ; nor, to confess the truth, will my nose be anxious for a closer intimacy, till the fumes of your breath be a little less potent. Mercy on you, man ! the water absolutely hisses down your red- hot gullet, and is converted quite to steam, in the miniature tophet, which you mistake for a stomach. Fill again, and tell me, on the word of an honest toper, did you ever, in cellar, tavern, or any kind of a dram-shop, spend the price of your children's food for a swig half so delicious .'' Now, for the first time these ten years, you know the flavor of cold water. Good by ; and, whenever you are thirsty, remember that I keep a constant supply, at the old stand. Who next .-■ O, my little friend, you are let loose from school, and come hither to scrub your blooming face, and drown 362 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE the memory of certain taps of the ferule, and other school-boy troubles, in a draught from the Town Pump, Take it, pure as the current of your young life. Take it, and may your heart and tongue never be scorched with a fiercer thirst than now ! There, my dear child, put down the cup, and yield your place to this elderly gentleman, who treads so tenderly over the paving-stones, that I suspect he is afraid of breaking them. What ! he limps by, without so much as thanking me, as if my hospitable offers were meant only for people who have no wine-cellars. Well, well, sir, — no harm done, I hope ! Go draw the cork, tip the decanter ; but, when your great toe shall set you a-roaring, it will be no affair of mine. If gentlemen love the pleasant titillation of the gout, it is all one to the Town Pump. This thirsty dog, with his red tongue lolling out, does not scorn my hospitality, but stands on his hind legs, and laps eagerly out of the trough. See how lightly he capers away again ! Jowler, did your worship ever have the gout .-' Are you all satisfied ? Then wipe your mouths, my good friends ; and, while my spout has a moment's leisure, I will delight the town with a few historical reminiscences. In far antiquity, beneath a darksome shadow of venerable boughs, a spring bubbled out of the leaf-strewn earth in the very spot where you now behold me on the sunny pavement. The water was as bright and clear and deemed as precious as liquid diamonds. The Indian sagamores drank of it from time immemorial till the fatal deluge of the fire- water burst upon the red men and swept their whole race away from the cold fountains. Endicott and his followers came next, and often knelt down to drink, dipping their long beards in the spring. The richest goblet then was of birch-bark. Governor Winthrop, after a journey afoot from Boston, drank here out of the hollow of his hand. The elder Higginson here wet his palm, and laid it on the brow of the first town-born child. For many years it was the watering-place, and, as it were, the wash-bowl of the vicinity, — whither all decent folks resorted, to purify their visages, and gaze at them afterwards — at least, the pretty maidens did — in the mirror which it made. On Sabbath days, whenever a babe was to be baptized, the sexton filled his basin here, and LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 363 placed it on the communion-table of the humble meeting-house, which partly covered the site of yonder stately brick one. Thus, one generation after another was consecrated to Heaven by its waters, and cast their waxing and waning shadows into its glassy bosom, and vanished from the earth, as if mortal life were but a flitting image in a fountain. Finally, the fountain vanished also. Cellars were dug on all sides and cart-loads of gravel flung upon its source, whence oozed a turbid stream, forming a mud-puddle at the corner of two streets. In the hot months, when its refresh- ment was most needed, the dust flew in clouds over the forgotten birthplace of the waters, now their grave. But in the course of time a town-pump was sunk into the source of the ancient spring ; and when the first decayed, another took its place, and then another, and still another, — till here stand I, gentlemen and ladies, to serv^e you with my iron goblet. Drink, and be refreshed ! The water is as pure and cold as that which slaked the thirst of the red sagamore, beneath the aged boughs, though now the gem of the wilderness is treasured under these hot stones, where no shadow falls, but from the brick buildings. And be it the moral of my story, that, as this wasted and long-lost fountain is now known and prized again, so shall the virtues of cold water, too little valued since your father's days — be recognized by all. Your pardon, good people ! I must interrupt my stream of elo- quence and spout forth a stream of water to replenish the trough for this teamster and his two yoke of oxen, who have come from Topsfield, or somewhere along that way. No part of my business is pleasanter than the watering of cattle. Look ! how rapidly they lower the watermark on the sides of the trough, till their capacious stomachs are moistened with a gallon or two apiece and they can afford time to breathe it in with sighs of calm enjoyment. Now they roll their quiet eyes around the brim of their monstrous drinking-vessel. An ox is your true toper. But I perceive, my dear auditors, that you are impatient for the remainder of my discourse. Impute it, I beseech you, to no defect of modesty if I insist a little longer on so fruitful a topic as my own multifarious merits. It is altogether for your good. The better you think of me, the better men and women you will find 364 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE yourselves. I shall say nothing of my all-important aid on washing- days, though on that account alone I might call myself the house- hold god of a hundred families. Far be it from me also to hint, my respectable friends, at the show of dirty faces which you would present, without my pains to keep you clean. Nor will I remind you how often when the midnight bells make you tremble for your combustible town, you have fled to the Town Pump, and found me always at my post, firm amid the confusion, and ready to drain my vital current in your behalf. Neither is it worth while to lay much stress on my claims to a medical diploma, as the physician, whose simple rule of practice is preferable to all the nauseous lore, which has found men sick or left them so, since the days of Hip- pocrates. Let us take a broader view of my beneficial influence on mankind. No ; these are trifles, compared with the merits which wise men concede to me, — if not in my single self, yet as the representa- tive of a class — of being the grand reformer of the age. From my spout, and such spouts as mine, must flow the stream that shall cleanse our earth of the vast portion of its crime and anguish, which has gushed from the fiery fountains of the still. In this mighty enterprise, the cow shall be my great confederate. Milk and water ! The Town Pump and the Cow ! Such is the glorious copartner- ship, that shall tear down the distilleries and brewhouses, uproot the vineyards, shatter the cider-presses, ruin the tea and coffee trade, and finally monopolize the whole business of quenching thirst. Blessed consummation ! Then Poverty shall pass away from the land, finding no hovel so wretched, where her squalid form may shelter herself. Then disease, for lack of other victims, shall gnaw its own heart and die. Then sin, if she do not die, shall lose half her strength. Until now the frenzy of hereditary fever has raged in the human blood, transmitted from sire to son and rekindled in every generation by fresh draughts of liquid flame. When that inward fire shall be extinguished, the heat of passion cannot but grow cool, and war — the drunkenness of nations — perhaps will cease. At least, there will be no war of households. The husband and wife, drinking deep of peaceful joy — a calm bliss of temperate affections shall pass hand in hand through life and lie down not LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 365 reluctantly at its protracted close. To them the past will be no tur- moil of mad dreams, nor the future an eternity of such moments as follow the delirium of the drunkard. Their dead faces shall express what their spirits were and are to be by a lingering smile of memory and hope. Ahem ! Dry work, this speechifying, especially to an unprac- ticed orator. I never conceived till now what toil the temperance lecturers undergo for my sake ; hereafter they shall have the busi- ness to themselves. Do, some kind Christian, pump a stroke or two, just to wet my whistle. Thank you, sir ! My dear hearers, when the world shall have been regenerated by my instrumentality, you will collect your useless vats and liquor-casks into one great pile and make a bonfire in honor of the town-pump. And when I shall have decayed like my predecessors, then, if you revere my memory, let a marble fountain richly sculptured take my place upon the spot. Such monuments should be erected everywhere and inscribed with the names of the distinguished champions of my cause. Now, listen, for something very important is to come next. There are two or three honest friends of mine — and true friends, I know, they are — who, nevertheless, by their fiery pugnacity in my behalf, do put me in fearful hazard of a broken nose or even a total overthrow upon the pavement, and the loss of the treasure which I guard. I pray you, gentlemen, let this fault be amended. Is it decent, think you, to get tipsy with zeal for temperance, and take up the honorable cause of the Town Pump in the style of a toper, fighting for his brandy-bottle ? Or, can the excellent quali- ties of cold water be not othenvise exemplified, than by plunging slapdash into hot water, and wofully scalding yourselves and other people .'* Trust me, they may. In the moral warfare which you are to wage, — and, indeed, in the whole conduct of your lives, — you cannot choose a better example than myself, who have never per- mitted the dust and sultry atmosphere, the turbulence and mani- fold disquietudes of the world around me, to reach that deep, calm well of purity, which may be called my soul. And whenever I pour out that soul, it is to cool earth's fever, or cleanse its stains. One o'clock ! Nay, then, if the dinner-bell begins to speak, I may as well hold my peace. Here comes a pretty young girl of 366 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE my acquaintance, with a large stone pitcher for me to fill. May she draw a husband, while drawing her water, as Rachel did of old. Hold out your vessel, my dear ! There it is, full to the brim ; so now run home, peeping at your sweet image in the pitcher, as you go ; and forget not, in a glass of my own liquor, to drink — " Success to the Town Pump ! " HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW [Born at Portland, Maine, February 27, 1807; died at Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 24, 1882] A PSALM OF LIFE What the Heart of the Young Man said to the Psalmist Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream ! — For the soul is dead that slumbers. And things are not what they seem. Life is real ! Life is earnest ! And the grave is not its goal ; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. • Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way ; But to act, that each to-morrow Find us farther than to-day. Art is long, and Time is fleeting. And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave. In the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle ! Be a hero in the strife ! LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 367 Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant ! Let the dead Past bury its dead ! Act, — act in the Hving Present ! Heart within, and God o'erhead ! Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time ; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us, then, be up and doing. With a heart for any fate ; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait. THE LIGHT OF STARS The night is come, but not too soon ; And sinking silently. All silently, the little moon Drops down behind the sky. There is no light in earth or heaven But the cold light of stars ; And the first watch of night is given To the red planet Mars. Is it the tender star of love ? The star of love and dreams ? O no ! from that blue tent above, A hero's armor gleams. 368 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And earnest thoughts within me rise, When I behold afar, Suspended in the evening skies, The shield of that red star. star of strength ! I see thee stand And smile upon my pain ; Thou beckonest with thy mailed hand, And I am strong again. Within my breast there is no light But the cold light of stars ; 1 give the first watch of the night To the red planet Mars, The star of the unconquered will, He rises in my breast. Serene, and resolute, and still. And calm, and self-possessed. And thou, too, whosoe'er thou art, That readest this brief psalm. As one by one thy hopes depart, Be resolute and calm. Oh, fear not in a world like this. And thou shalt know erelong. Know how sublime a thing it is To suffer and be strong. FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS When the hours of Day are numbered. And the voices of the Night Wake the better soul, that slumbered. To a holy, calm delight ; LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 369 Ere the evening lamps are lighted, And, like phantoms grim and tall, Shadows from the fitful firelight Dance upon the parlor wall ; Then the forms of the departed Enter at the open door ; The beloved, the true-hearted. Come to visit me once more ; He, the young and strong, who cherished Noble longings for the strife. By the roadside fell and perished. Weary with the march of life ! They, the holy ones and weakly. Who the cross of suffering bore, Folded their pale hands so meekly. Spake with us on earth no more ! And with them the Being Beauteous, Who unto my youth was given. More than all things else to love me, And is now a saint in heaven. With a slow and noiseless footstep Comes that messenger divine. Takes the vacant chair beside me, Lays her gentle hand in mine. And she sits and gazes at me With those deep and tender eyes, Like the stars, so still and saint-like. Looking downward from the skies. Uttered not, yet comprehended. Is the spirit's voiceless prayer, Soft rebukes, in blessings ended. Breathing from her lips of air. 370 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Oh, though oft depressed and lonely, All my fears are laid aside. If I but remember only Such as these have lived and died ! HYMN TO THE NIGHT I heard the trailing garments of the Night Sweep through her marble halls ! I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light From the celestial walls ! I felt her presence, by its spell of might, Stoop o'er me from above ; The calm, majestic presence of the Night, As of the one I love. I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight. The manifold, soft chimes, That fill the haunted chambers of the Night, Like some old poet's rhymes. From the cool cisterns of the midnight air My spirit drank repose ; The fountain of perpetual peace flows there, — From those deep cisterns flows. O holy Night ! from thee I learn to bear What man has borne before ! Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care, And they complain no more. Peace ! Peace ! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer ! Descend with broad-winged flight. The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair, The best-beloved Night ! LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 371 THE SKELETON IN ARMOR " Speak ! speak ! thou fearful guest !' Who, with thy hollow breast St'ill in rude armor drest, Comest to daunt me ! Wrapt not in Eastern balms, But with thy fleshless palms Stretched, as if asking alms, Why dost thou haunt me ? " Then from those cavernous eyes Pale flashes seemed to rise, As when the Northern skies Gleam in December ; And, like the water's flow Under December's snow, Came a dull voice of woe From the heart's chamber. '" I was a Viking old ! My deeds, though manifold. No Skald in song has told. No Saga taught thee ! Take heed, that in thy verse Thou dost the tale rehearse. Else dread a dead man's curse ; For this I sought thee. '" Far in the Northern Land, By the wild Baltic's strand, I, with my childish hand. Tamed the gerfalcon ; And, with my skates fast bound, Skimmed the half-frozen Sound, That the poor whimpering hound Trembled to walk on. 372 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE " Oft to his frozen lair Tracked I the grisly bear, While from my path the hare Fled like a shadow ; Oft through the forest dark Followed the were-wolf's bark, Until the soaring lark Sang from the meadow. " But when I older grew, Joining a corsair's crew, O'er the dark sea I flew With the marauders. Wild was the life we led ; Many the souls that sped, Many the hearts that bled, By our stern orders. " Many a wassail-bout Wore the long Winter out ; Often our midnight shout Set the cocks crowing. As we the Berserk's tale Measured in cups of ale, Draining the oaken pail, Filled to o'erflowing, " Once as I told in glee Tales of the stormy sea. Soft eyes did gaze on me. Burning yet tender ; And as the white stars shine On the dark Norway pine. On that dark heart of mine Fell their soft splendor. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 373 " I wooed the blue-eyed maid, Yielding, yet half afraid. And in the forest's shade Our vows were plighted. Under its loosened vest Fluttered her little breast, Like birds within their nest By the hawk frighted. " Bright in her father's hall Shields gleamed upon the wall, Loud sang the minstrels all, Chanting his glory ; When of old Hildebrand I asked his daughter's hand, Mute did the minstrels stand To hear my story. " While the brown ale he quaffed, Loud then the champion laughed, And as the wind gusts waft The sea foam brightly. So the loud laugh of scorn. Out of those lips unshorn. From the deep drinking horn Blew the foam lightly, " She was a Prince's child, I but a Viking wild. And though she blushed and smiled, I was discarded ! Should not the dove so white Follow the sea mew's flight ? Why did they leave that night Her nest unguarded ? 374 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE " Scarce had I put to sea, Bearing the maid with me, — Fairest of all was she Among the Norsemen ! — When on the white sea strand, Waving his armed hand. Saw we old Hildebrand, With twenty horsemen. " Then launched they to the blast, Bent like a reed each mast, Yet we were gaining fast, When the wind failed us ; And with a sudden flaw Came round the gusty Skaw, So that our foe we saw Laugh as he hailed us. '" And as to catch the gale Round veered the flapping sail, ' Death ! ' was the helmsman's hail, " Death without quarter ! ' Mid-ships with iron keel Struck we her ribs of steel ; Down her black hulk did reel Through the black water 1 " As with his wings aslant, Sails the fierce cormorant. Seeking some rocky haunt, With his prey laden, — So toward the open main, Beating to sea again, Through the wild hurricane, Bore I the maiden. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 375 " Three weeks we westward bore, And when the storm was o'er, Cloud-hke we saw the shore Stretching to leeward ; There for my lady's bower Built I the lofty tower, Which, to this very hour, Stands looking seaward. " There lived we many years ; Time dried the maiden's tears ; She had forgot her fears. She was a mother ; Death closed her mild blue eyes ; Under that tower she lies ; Ne'er shall the sun arise On such another. "' Still grew my bosom then, Still as a stagnant fen ! Hateful to me were men. The sunlight hateful ! In the vast forest here, Clad in my warlike gear, Fell I upon my spear, Oh, death was grateful ! " Thus, seamed with many scars, Bursting these prison bars, Up to its native stars My soul ascended ! There from the flowing bowl Deep drinks the warrior's soul, Skoal ! to the Northland ! skoal ! Thus the tale ended. 376 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE THE RAINY DAY The day is cold, and dark, and dreary ; It rains, and the wind is never weary ; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary. My life is cold, and dark, and dreary ; It rains, and the wind is never weary ; My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past, And the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, And the days are dark and dreary. Be still, sad heart ! and cease repining ; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining ; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall. Some days must be dark and dreary. ENDYMION The rising moon has hid the stars ; Her level rays, like golden bars, Lie on the landscape green. With shadows brown between. And silver white the river gleams, As if Diana, in her dreams. Had dropt her silver bow Upon the meadows low. On such a tranquil night as this, She woke Endymion with a kiss. When, sleeping in the grove, He dreamed not of her love. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 377 Like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought, Love gives itself, but is not bought ; Nor voice, nor sound betrays Its deep, impassioned gaze. It comes, — the beautiful, the free, The crown of all humanity, — In silence and alone To seek the elected one. It lifts the boughs, whose shadows deep Are Life's oblivion, the soul's sleep, And kisses the closed eyes Of him who slumbering lies. O weary hearts ! O slumbering eyes ! O drooping souls, whose destinies Are fraught with fear and pain, Ye shall be loved again ! No one is so accursed by fate, No one so utterly desolate. But some heart, though unknown, Responds unto its own. Responds, — as if with unseen wings An angel touched its quivering strings ; And whispers, in its song, " Where hast thou stayed so long ? " MAIDENHOOD Maiden ! with the meek, brown eyes, In whose orbs a shadow lies Like the dusk in evening skies ! Thou whose locks outshine the sun, Golden tresses, wreathed in one. As the braided streamlets run ! 378 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Standing, with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet. Womanhood and childhood fleet ! Gazing, with a timid glance, On the brooklet's swift advance, On the river's broad expanse ! Deep and still, that gliding stream Beautiful to thee must seem, As the river of a dream. Then why pause with indecision. When bright angels in thy vision Beckon thee to fields Elysian ? Seest thou shadows sailing by. As the dove, with startled eye, Sees the falcon's shadow fly ? Hearest thou voices on the shore. That our ears perceive no more. Deafened by the cataract's roar ? Oh, thou child of many prayers ! Life hath quicksands, — Life hath snares ! Care and age come unawares ! Like the swell of some sweet tune, Morning rises into noon. May glides onward into June. Childhood is the bough, where slumbered Birds and blossoms many-numbered ; — Age, that bough with snows encumbered. Gather, then, each flower that grows, When the young heart overflows, To embalm that tent of snows. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 379 Bear a lily in thy hand ; Gates of brass cannot withstand One touch of that magic wand. Bear through sorrow, wrong, and ruth, In thy heart the dew of youth, On thy lips the smile of truth. Oh, that dew, like balm, shall steal Into wounds that cannot heal, Even as sleep our eyes doth seal ; And that smile, like sunshine, dart Into many a sunless heart. For a smile of God thou art. SERENADE FROM "THE SPANISH STUDENT" Stars of the summer night ! Far in yon azure deeps. Hide, hide your golden light ! She sleeps ! My lady sleeps ! Sleeps ! Moon of the summer night ! Far down yon western steeps, Sink, sink in silver light ! She sleeps ! My lady sleeps ! Sleeps ! Wind of the summer night ! Where yonder woodbine creeps, Fold, fold thy pinions light ! She sleeps ! My lady sleeps ! Sleeps ! 38o READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Dreams of the summer night ! Tell her, her lover keeps Watch ! while in slumbers light She sleeps ! My lady sleeps ! Sleeps ! SLEEP Lull me to sleep, ye winds, whose fitful sound Seems from some faint yEolian harp-string caught ; Seal up the hundred wakeful eyes of thought As Hermes with his lyre in sleep profound The hundred wakeful eyes of Argus bound ; For I am weary, and am overwrought With too much toil, with too much care distraught, And with the iron crown of anguish crowned. Lay thy soft hand upon my brow and cheek, peaceful Sleep ! until from pain released 1 breathe again uninterrupted breath ! Ah, with what subtle meaning did the Greek Call thee the lesser mystery at the feast Whereof the greater mystery is death ! THE POET'S TALE From " Tales of a Wayside Inn " THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH It was the season when through all the land The merle and mavis build, and building sing Those lovely lyrics, written by His hand. Whom Saxon Csedmon calls the Blithe-heart King ; When on the boughs the purple buds expand, The banners of the vanguard of the Spring, And rivulets, rejoicing, rush and leap, And wave their fluttering signals from the steep. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 381 The robin and the bluebird, piping loud, Filled all the blossoming orchards with their glee ; The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be ; And hungry crows, assembled in a crowd, Clamored their piteous prayer incessantly. Knowing who hears the raven's cry, and said : " Give us, O Lord, this day, our daily bread ! " Across the Sound the birds of passage sailed, Speaking some unknown language strange and sweet Of tropic isle remote, and passing hailed The village with the cheers of all their fleet ; Or quarrelling together, laughed and railed Like foreign sailors, landed in the street Of seaport town, and with outlandish noise Of oaths and gibberish frightening girls and boys. Thus came the jocund Spring in Killingworth, In fabulous days, some hundred years ago ; And thrifty farmers, as they tilled the earth. Heard with alarm the cawing of the crow, That mingled with the universal mirth, Cassandra-like, prognosticating woe ; They shook their heads, and doomed with dreadful words To swift destruction the whole race of birds. And a town-meeting was convened straightway To set a price upon the guilty heads Of these marauders, who, in lieu of pay, Levied black-mail upon the garden-beds And cornfields, and beheld without dismay The awful scarecrow, with his fluttering shreds ; The skeleton that waited at their feast, Whereby their sinful pleasure was increased. 382 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Then from his house, a temple painted white, With fluted columns, and a roof of red, The Squire came forth, august and splendid sight ! Slowly descending, with majestic tread, Three flights of steps, nor looking left nor right, Down the long street he walked, as one who said, " A town that boasts inhabitants like me Can have no lack of good society ! " The Parson, too, appeared, a man austere, The instinct of whose nature was to kill ; The wrath of God he preached from year to year. And read with fervor, Edwards on the Will ; His favorite pastime was to slay the deer In summer on some Adirondac hill ; E'en now, while walking down the rural lane. He lopped the wayside lilies with his cane. From the Academy, whose belfry crowned The hill of Science with its vane of brass, Came the Preceptor, gazing idly round. Now at the clouds, and now at the green grass, And all absorbed in reveries profound Of fair Almira in the upper class. Who was, as in a sonnet he had said. As pure as water, and as good as bread. And next the Deacon issued from his door. In his voluminous neck-cloth, white as snow ; A suit of sable bombazine he wore ; His form was ponderous, and his step was slow ; There never was so wise a man before ; He seemed the incarnate " Well, I told you so ! " And to perpetuate his great renown There was a street named after him in town. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 383 These came together in the new town-hall, With sundry farmers from the region round. The Squire presided, dignified and tall. His air impressive and his reasoning sound. Ill fared it with the birds, both great and small ; Hardly a friend in all that crowd they found. But enemies enough, who every one Charged them with all the crimes beneath the sun. When they had ended, from his place apart Rose the Preceptor, to redress the wrong. And, trembling like a steed before the start, Looked round bewildered on the expectant throng ; Then thought of fair Almira, and took heart To speak out what was in him, clear and strong. Alike regardless of their smile or frown. And quite determined not to be laughed down : " Plato, anticipating the Reviewers, From his Republic banished without pity The Poets. In this little town of yours. You put to death, by means of a Committee, The ballad-singers and the troubadours, The street-musicians of the heavenly city, The birds, who make sweet music for us all In our dark hours, as David did for Saul. " The thrush that carols at the dawn of day From the green steeples of the piny wood; The oriole in the elm ; the noisy jay, Jargoning like a foreigner at his food ; The bluebird balanced on some topmost spray. Flooding with melody the neighborhood ; Linnet and meadow-lark, and all the throng That dwell in nests, and have the gift of song ; 384 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE " You slay them all ! And wherefore ? For the gain Of a scant handful more or less of wheat, Or rye, or barley, or some other gVain, Scratched up at random by industrious feet, Searching for worm or weevil after rain ! Or a few cherries, that are not so sweet As are the songs the uninvited guests Sing at their feast with comfortable breasts. " Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these ? Do you ne'er think who made them, and who taught The dialect they speak, where melodies Alone are the interpreters of thought ? Whose household words are songs in many keys. Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught ! Whose habitations in the tree-tops even Are halfway houses on the road to heaven ! " Think, every morning when the sun peeps through The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove, How jubilant the happy birds renew Their old, melodious madrigals of love ! And when you think of this, remember too 'T is always morning somewhere, and above The awakening continents, from shore to shore, Somewhere the birds are singing evermore. " Think of your woods and orchards without birds ! Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams As in an idiot's brain remembered words Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams ! Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds Make up for the lost music, when your teams Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more The feathered gleaners follow to your door .? LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 385 " What ! would you rather see the incessant stir Of insects in the windrows of the hay, And hear the locust and the grasshopper Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play ? Is this more pleasant to you than the whir Of meadow-lark, and her sweet roundelay. Or twitter of little fieldfares, as you take Your nooning in the shade of bush and brake ? "' You call them thieves and pillagers ; but know. They are the winged wardens of your farms, Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe. And from your harvests keep a hundred harms ; Even the blackest of them all, the crow. Renders good service as your man-at-arms. Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail. And crying havoc on the slug and snail. '" How can I teach your children gentleness. And mercy to the weak, and reverence For Life, which, in its weakness or excess, Is still a gleam of God's omnipotence, Or Death, which, seeming darkness, is no less The selfsame light, although averted hence. When by your laws, your actions, and your speech, You contradict the very things I teach ? " With this he closed ; and through the audience went A murmur, like the rustle of dead leaves ; The farmers laughed and nodded, and some bent Their yellow heads together like their sheaves ; Men have no faith in fine-spun sentiment Who put their trust in bullocks and in beeves. The birds were doomed ; and, as the record shows, A bounty offered for the heads of crows. 386 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE There was another audience out of reach, Who had no voice nor vote in making laws, But in the papers read his little speech, And crowned his modest temples with applause ; They made him conscious, each one more than each. He still was victor, vanquished in their cause. Sweetest of all the applause he won from thee, O fair Almira at the Academy ! And so the dreadful massacre began ; O'er fields and orchards, and o'er woodland crests. The ceaseless fusillade of terror ran. Dead fell the birds, with blood-stains on their breasts. Or wounded crept away from sight of man, While the young died of famine in their nests ; A slaughter to be told in groans, not words. The very St. Bartholomew of Birds ! The Summer came, and all the birds were dead ; The days were like hot coals ; the very ground Was burned to ashes ; in the orchards fed Myriads of caterpillars, and around The cultivated fields and garden beds Hosts of devouring insects crawled, and found No foe to check their march, till they had made The land a desert without leaf or shade. Devoured by worms, like Herod, was the town, Because, like Herod, it had ruthlessly Slaughtered the Innocents. From the trees spun down The canker-worms upon the passers-by, Upon each woman's bonnet, shawl, and gown. Who shook them off with just a little cry ; They were the terror of each favorite walk, The endless theme of all the village talk. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 387 The farmers grew impatient, but a few Confessed their error, and would not complain. For after all, the best thing one can do When it is raining, is to let it rain. Then they repealed the law, although they knew It would not call the dead to life again ; As school-boys, finding their mistake too late. Draw a wet sponge across the accusing slate. That year in Killingworth the Autumn came Without the light of his majestic look, The wonder of the falling tongues of flame, The illumined pages of his Doom's-Day book. A few lost leaves blushed crimson with their shame. And drowned themselves despairing in the brook, While the wild wind went moaning everywhere, Lamenting the dead children of the air ! But the next Spring a stranger sight was seen, A sight that never yet by bard was sung. As great a wonder as it would have been If some dumb animal had found a tongue ! A wagon, overarched with evergreen. Upon whose boughs were wicker cages hung. All full of singing-birds, came down the street, Filling the air with music wild and sweet. From all the country round these birds were brought. By order of the town, with anxious quest. And, loosened from their wicker prisons, sought In woods and fields the places they loved best. Singing loud canticles, which many thought Were satires to the authorities addressed. While others, listening in green lanes, averred Such lovely music never had been heard ! 388 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE But blither still and louder carolled they Upon the morrow, for they seemed to know It was the fair Almira's wedding-day, And everywhere, around, above, below. When the Preceptor bore his bride away, Their songs burst forth in joyous overflow. And a new heaven bent over a new earth Amid the sunny farms of Killingworth. THE SICILIAN'S TALE From " Tales of a Wayside Inn " KING ROBERT OF SICILY Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond, Emperor of AUemaine, Apparelled in magnificent attire. With retinue of many a knight and squire, On St. John's eve, at vespers, proudly sat And heard the priests chant the Magnificat. And as he listened, o'er and o'er again Repeated, like a burden or refrain. He caught the words, ''Dcposiiit poteiites De sedc, ct cxaltavit Jmniiles ; " And slowly lifting up his kingly head He to a learned clerk beside him said, "What mean these words ? " The clerk made answer meet, " He has put down the mighty from their seat, And has exalted them of low degree." Thereat King Robert muttered scornfully, " 'T is well that such seditious words are sung Only by priests and in the Latin tongue ; For unto priests and people be it known, There is no power can push me from my throne ! " And leaning back, he yawned and fell asleep. Lulled by the chant monotonous and deep. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 389 When he awoke, it was already night ; The church was empty, and there was no Hght, Save where the lamps, that glimmered few and faint, Lighted a little space before some saint. He started from his seat and gazed around, But saw no living thing and heard no sound. He groped towards the door, but it was locked ; He cried aloud, and listened, and then knocked. And uttered awful threatenings and complaints. And imprecations upon men and saints. The sounds reechoed from the roof and walls As if dead priests were laughing in their stalls. At length the sexton, hearing from without The tumult of the knocking and the shout, And thinking thieves were in the house of prayer, Came with his lantern, asking, " Who is there ? " Half choked with rage, King Robert fiercely said, " Open : 't is I, the King ! Art thou afraid } " The frightened sexton, muttering, with a curse, " This is some drunken vagabond, or worse ! " Turned the great key and flung the portal wide ; A man rushed by him at a single stride, Haggard, half naked, without hat or cloak, Who neither turned, nor looked at him, nor spoke. But leaped into the blackness of the night. And vanished like a spectre from his sight. Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond, Emperor of AUemaine, Despoiled of his magnificent attire. Bareheaded, breathless, and besprent with mire. With sense of wrong and outrage desperate. Strode on and thundered at the palace gate ; Rushed through the courtyard, thrusting in his rage To right and left each seneschal and page. 390 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And hurried up the broad and sounding stair, His white face ghastly in the torches' glare. From hall to hall he passed with breathless speed ; Voices and cries he heard, but did not heed. Until at last he reached the banquet-room, Blazing with light, and breathing with perfume. There on the dais sat another king, Wearing his robes, his crown, his signet-ring, King Robert's self in features, form, and height, But all transfigured with angelic light ! It was an Angel ; and his presence there With a divine effulgence filled the air. An exaltation, piercing the disguise. Though none the hidden Angel recognize. A moment speechless, motionless, amazed. The throneless monarch on the Angel gazed. Who met his look of anger and surprise With the divine compassion of his eyes ; Then said, " Who art thou .-• and why com'st thou here .-' " To which King Robert answered with a sneer, "" I am the King, and come to claim my own From an impostor, who usurps my throne ! " And suddenly, at these audacious words, Up sprang the angry guests, and drew their swords ; The Angel answered, with unruffled brow, " Nay, not the King, but the King's Jester, thou Henceforth shalt wear the bells and scalloped cape, And for thy counsellor shalt lead an ape ; Thou shalt obey my servants when they call, And wait upon my henchmen in the hall ! " Deaf to King Robert's threats and cries and prayers. They thrust him from the hall and down the stairs ; A group of tittering pages ran before, And as they opened wide the folding-door. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 391 His heart failed, for he heard, with strange alarms, The boisterous laughter of the men-at-arms, And all the vaulted chamber roar and ring With the mock plaudits of " Long live the King ! " Next morning, waking with the day's first beam, He said within himself, " It was a dream ! " But the straw rustled as he turned his head ; There were the cap and bells beside his bed ; Around him rose the bare, discolored walls ; Close by, the steeds were champing in their stalls, And in the corner, a revolting shape. Shivering and chattering sat the wretched ape. It was no dream ; the world he loved so much Had turned to dust and ashes at his touch ! Days came and went ; and now returned again To Sicily the old Saturnian reign ; Under the Angel's governance benign The happy island danced with corn and wine. And deep within the mountain's burning breast Enceladus, the giant, was at rest. Meanwhile King Robert yielded to his fate, Sullen and silent and disconsolate. Dressed in the motley garb that Jesters wear. With look bewildered and a vacant stare. Close shaven above the ears, as monks are shorn, By courtiers mocked, by pages laughed to scorn. His only friend the ape, his only food What others left, — he still was unsubdued. And when the Angel met him on his way. And half in earnest, half in jest, would say, Sternly, though tenderly, that he might feel The velvet scabbard held a sword of steel, '" Art thou the King ? " the passion of his woe Burst from him in resistless overflow, 392 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And, lifting high his forehead, he would fling The haughty answer back, " I am, I am the King ! " Almost three years were ended ; when there came Ambassadors of great repute and name From Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine, Unto King Robert, saying that Pope Urbane By letter summoned them forthwith to come On Holy Thursday to his city of Rome. The Angel with great joy received his guests, And gave them presents of embroidered vests, And velvet mantles with rich ermine lined, And rings and jewels of the rarest kind. Then he departed with them o'er the sea Into the lovely land of Italy, Whose loveliness was more resplendent made By the mere passing of that cavalcade. With plumes, and cloaks, and housings, and the stir Of jewelled bridle and of golden spur. And lo ! among the menials, in mock state, Upon a piebald steed, with shambling gait. His cloak of fox-tails flapping in the wind. The solemn ape demurely perched behind. King Robert rode, making huge merriment In all the country towns through which they went. The Pope received them with great pomp and blare Of bannered trumpets, on Saint Peter's square. Giving his benediction and embrace. Fervent, and full of apostolic grace. While with congratulations and with prayers He entertained the Angel unawares, Robert, the Jester, bursting through the crowd, Into their presence rushed, and cried aloud, I am the King ! Look, and behold in me Robert, your brother, King of Sicily ! LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 393 This man, who wears my semblance to your eyes, Is an impostor in a king's disguise. Do you not know me ? does no voice within Answer my cry, and say we are akin ? " The Pope in silence, but with troubled mien, Gazed at the Angel's countenance serene ; The Emperor, laughing, said, " It is strange sport To keep a madman for thy Fool at court ! " And the poor, baffled Jester in disgrace Was hustled back among the populace. In solemn state the Holy Week went by, And Easter Sunday gleamed upon the sky ; The presence of the Angel, with its light. Before the sun rose, made the city bright, And with new fervor filled the hearts of men. Who felt that Christ indeed had risen again. Even the Jester, on his bed of straw, With haggard eyes the unwonted splendor saw, He felt within a power unfelt before. And, kneeling humbly on his chamber- floor. He heard the rushing garments of the Lord Sweep through the silent air, ascending heavenward. And now the visit ending, and once more Valmond returning to the Danube's shore. Homeward the Angel journeyed, and again The land was made resplendent with his train, Flashing along the towns of Italy Unto Salerno, and from thence by sea. And when once more within Palermo's wall. And, seated on the throne in his great hall, He heard the Angelus from convent towers, As if the better world conversed with ours. He beckoned to King Robert to draw nigher. And with a gesture bade the rest retire ; 394 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And when they were alone, the Angel said, " Art thou the King ? " Then, bowing down his head, King Robert crossed both hands upon his breast. And meekly answered him : "' Thou knowest best ! My sins as scarlet are ; let me go hence, And in some cloister's school of penitence. Across those stones, that pave the way to heaven. Walk barefoot, till my guilty soul be shriven ! " The Angel smiled, and from his radiant face A holy light illumined all the place. And through the open window, loud and clear, They heard the monks chant in the chapel near. Above the stir and tumult of the street : " He has put down the mighty from their seat, And has exalted them of low degree ! " And through the chant a second melody Rose like the throbbing of a single string : '' I am an Angel, and thou art the King ! " King Robert, who was standing near the throne, Lifted his eyes, and lo ! he was alone ! But all apparelled as in days of old. With ermined mantle and with cloth of gold ; And when his courtiers came, they found him there Kneeling upon the floor, absorbed in silent prayer. EVANGELINE A Tale of Acadie This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hem- locks. Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twi- light. Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic. Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 395 This is the forest primeval ; but where are the hearts that beneath it Leaped hke the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman ? Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers, — Men whose lives glided on like' rivers that water the woodlands, Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven ? Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed ! Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o'er the ocean. Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pre. Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient. Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion. List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest ; List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy. PART THE FIRST In the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas, Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand-Pre Lay in the fruitful valley. Vast meadows stretched to the eastward, Giving the village its name, and pasture to flocks without number. Dikes, that the hands of the farmers had raised with labor incessant. Shut out the turbulent tides ; but at stated seasons the flood-gates Opened and welcomed the sea to wander at will o'er the meadows. West and south there were fields of flax, and orchards and corn- fields Spreading afar and unfenced o'er the plain ; and away to the northward Blomidon rose, and the forests old, and aloft on the mountains Sea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from the mighty Atlantic Looked on the happy valley, but ne'er from their station de- scended. 396 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE There, in the midst of its farms, reposed the Acadian village. Strongly built were the houses, with frames of oak and of hemlock, Such as the peasants of Normandy built in the reign of the Henries. Thatched were the roofs, with dormer-windows ; and gables pro- jecting Over the basement below protected and shaded the doorway. There in the tranquil evenings of summer, when brightly the sunset Lighted the village street, and gilded the vanes on the chimneys, Matrons and maidens sat in snow-white caps and in kirtles Scarlet and blue and green, with distaffs spinning the golden Flax for the gossiping looms, whose noisy shuttles within doors Mingled their sound with the whir of the wheels and the songs of the maidens. Solemnly down the street came the parish priest, and the children Paused in their play to kiss the hand he extended to bless them. Reverend walked he among them ; and up rose matrons and maidens. Hailing his slow approach with words of affectionate welcome. Then came the laborers home from the field, and serenely the sun sank Down to his rest, and twilight prevailed. Anon from the belfry Softly the Angelus sounded, and over the roofs of the village Columns of pale blue smoke, like clouds of incense ascending, Rose from a hundred hearths, the homes of peace and contentment. Thus dwelt together in love these simple Acadian farmers, — Dwelt in the love of God and of man. Alike were they free from Fear, that reigns with the tyrant, and envy, the vice of republics. Neither locks had they to their doors, nor bars to their windows ; But their dwellings were open as day and the hearts of the owners; There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in abundance. Somewhat apart from the village, and nearer the Basin of Minas, Benedict Bellefontaine, the wealthiest farmer of Grand-Pre, Dwelt on his goodly acres ; and with him, directing his household, Gentle Evangeline lived, his child, and the pride of the village. Stalworth and stately in form was the man of seventy winters ; LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 397 Hearty and hale was he, an oak that is covered with snow-flakes ; White as the snow were his locks, and his cheeks as brown as the oak-leaves. Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers ; Black were her eyes as the berry that grows on the thorn by the wayside. Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath the brown shade of her tresses ! Sweet was her breath as the breath of kine that feed in the meadows. When in the harvest heat she bore to the reapers at noontide Flagons of home-brewed ale, ah ! fair in sooth was the maiden. Fairer was she when, on Sunday morn, while the bell from its turret Sprinkled with holy sounds the air, as the priest with his hyssop Sprinkles the congregation, and scatters blessings upon them, Down the long street she passed, with her chaplet of beads and her missal. Wearing her Norman cap and her kirtle of blue, and the ear-rings Brought in the olden time from France, and since, as an heirloom, Handed down from mother to child, through long generations. But a celestial brightness — a more ethereal beauty — Shone on her face and encircled her form, when, after confession, Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction upon her. When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music. Firmly builded with rafters of oak, the house of the farmer Stood on the side of a hill commanding the sea ; and a shady Sycamore grew by the door, with a woodbine wreathing around it. Rudely carved was the porch, with seats beneath ; and a footpath Led through an orchard wide, and disappeared in the meadow. Under the sycamore-tree were hives overhung by a penthouse. Such as the traveller sees in regions remote by the roadside. Built o'er a box for the poor, or the blessed image of Mary. Farther down, on the slope of the hill, was the well with its moss- grown Bucket, fastened with iron, and near it a trough for the horses. 398 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Shielding the house from storms, on the north, were the barns and the farm-yard ; There stood the broad-wheeled wains and the antique ploughs and the harrows ; There were the folds for the sheep ; and there, in his feathered seraglio, Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the cock, with the selfsame Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent Peter. Bursting with hay were the barns, themselves a village. In each one Far o'er the gable projected a roof of thatch ; and a staircase. Under the sheltering eaves, led up to the odorous corn-loft. There too the dove-cot stood, with its meek and innocent inmates Murmuring ever of love ; while above in the variant breezes Numberless noisy weathercocks rattled and sang of mutation. Thus, at peace with God and the world, the farmer of Grand- Pre Lived on his sunny farm, and Evangeline governed his household. Many a youth, as he knelt in the church and opened his missal, Fixed his eyes upon her as the saint of his deepest devotion ; Happy was he who might touch her hand or the hem of her garment ! Many a suitor came to her door, by the darkness befriended. And, as he knocked and waited to hear the sound of her footsteps, Knew not which beat the louder, his heart or the knocker of iron; Or, at the joyous feast of the Patron Saint of the village, Bolder grew, and pressed her hand in the dance as he whispered Hurried words of love, that seemed a part of the music. But among all who came young Gabriel only was welcome ; Gabriel Lajeunesse, the son of Basil the blacksmith. Who was a mighty man in the village, and honored of all men ; For since the birth of time, throughout all ages and nations. Has the craft of the smith been held in repute by the people. Basil was Benedict's friend. Their children from earliest childhood Grew up together as brother and sister ; and P^ather P'elician, LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 399 Priest and pedagogue both in the village, had taught them their letters Out of the selfsame book, with the hymns of the church and the plain-song. But when th'e hymn was sung, and the daily lesson completed, Swiftly they hurried away to the forge of Basil the blacksmith. There at the door they stood, with wondering eyes to behold him Take in his leathern lap the hoof of the horse as a plaything. Nailing the shoe in its place ; while near him the tire of the cart- wheel Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a circle of cinders. Oft on autumnal eves, when without in the gathering darkness Bursting with light seemed the smithy, through every cranny and crevice, ' Warm by the forge within they watched the laboring bellows. And as its panting ceased, and the sparks expired in the ashes, Merrily laughed, and said they were nuns going into the chapel. Oft on sledges in winter, as swift as the swoop of the eagle, Down the hillside bounding, they glided away o'er the meadow. Oft in the barns they climbed to the populous nests on the rafters, Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous stone, which the swallow Brings from the shore of the sea to restore the sight of its fledg- lings ; Lucky was he who found that stone in the nest of the swallow ! Thus passed a few swift years, and they no longer were children. He was a valiant youth, and his face, like the face of the morning. Gladdened the earth with its light and ripened thought into action. She was a woman now, with the heart and hopes of a woman. " Sunshine of Saint Eulalie " was she called ; for that was the sunshine Which, as the farmers believed, would load their orchards with apples ; She, too, would bring to her husband's house delight and abundance, Filling it full of love and the ruddy faces of children. 400 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE IV Pleasantly rose next morn the sun on the village of Grand-Pre. Pleasantly gleamed in the soft, sweet air the Basin of Minas, Where the ships, with their wavering shadows, were riding at anchor. Life had long been astir in the village, and clamorous labor Knocked with its hundred hands at the golden gates of the morning. Now from the country around, from the farms and neighboring hamlets, Came in their holiday dresses the blithe Acadian peasants. Many a glad good-morrow and jocund laugh from the young folk Made the bright air brighter, as up from the numerous meadows, Where no path could be seen but the track of wheels in the greensward. Group after group appeared, and joined, or passed on the highway. Long ere noon, in the village all sounds of labor were silenced. Thronged were the streets with people ; and noisy groups at the house-doors Sat in the cheerful sun, and rejoiced and gossiped together. Every house was an inn, where all were welcomed and feasted ; For with this simple people, who lived like brothers together, All things were held in common, and what one had was another's. Yet under Benedict's roof hospitality seemed more abundant : For Evangeline stood among the guests of her father ; Bright was her face with smiles, and words of welcome and gladness Fell from her beautiful lips, and blessed the cup as she gave it. Under the open sky, in the odorous air of the orchard, Stript of its golden fruit, was spread the feast of betrothal. There in the shade of the porch were the priest and the notary seated ; There good Benedict sat, and sturdy Basil the blacksmith. Not far withdrawn from these, by the cider-press and the beehives, Michael the fiddler was placed, with the gayest of hearts and of waistcoats. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 401 Shadow and light from the leaves alternately played on his snow- white Hair, as it waved in the wind ; and the jolly face of the fiddler Glowed like a living coal when the ashes are blown from the embers. Gayly the old man sang to the vibrant sound of his fiddle, Tous les Bourgeois de ChartreSy and Le Carillon de Dunkerque, And anon with his wooden shoes beat time to the music. Merrily, merrily whirled the wheels of the dizzying dances Under the orchard-trees and down the path to the meadows ; Old folk and young together, and children mingled among them. Fairest of all the maids was Evangeline, Benedict's daughter ! Noblest of all the youths was Gabriel, son of the blacksmith ! So passed the morning away. And lo ! with a summons sonorous Sounded the bell from its tower, and over the meadows a drum beat. Thronged ere long was the church with men. Without, in the churchyard, Waited the women. They stood by the graves, and hung on the headstones Garlands of autumn-leaves and evergreens fresh from the forest. Then came the guard from the ships, and marching proudly among them Entered the sacred portal. With loud and dissonant clangor Echoed the sound of their brazen drums from ceiling and case- ment, — Echoed a moment only, and slowly the ponderous portal Closed, and in silence the crowd awaited the will of the soldiers. Then uprose their commander, and spake from the steps of the altar, Holding aloft in his hands, with its seals, the royal commission. "' You are convened this day," he said, "by his Majesty's orders. Clement and kind has he been ; but how you have answered his kindness Let your own hearts reply ! To my natural make and my temper Painful the task is I do, which to you I know must be grievous. 402 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Yet must I bow and obey, and deliver the will of our monarch : Namely, that all your lands, and dwellings, and cattle of all kinds Forfeited be to the crown ; and that you yourselves from this province Be transported to other lands. God grant you may dwell there Ever as faithful subjects, a happy and peaceable people ! Prisoners now I declare you, for such is his Majesty's pleasure! " As, when the air is serene in the sultry solstice of summer, Suddenly gathers a storm, and the deadly sling of the hailstones Beats down the farmer's corn in the field, and shatters his windows. Hiding the sun, and strewing the ground with thatch from the house-roofs, Bellowing fly the herds, and seek to break their enclosures ; So on the hearts of the people descended the words of the speaker. Silent a moment they stood in speechless wonder, and then rose Louder and ever louder a wail of sorrow and anger. And, by one impulse moved, they madly rushed to the door-way. Vain was the hope of escape ; and cries and fierce imprecations Rang through the house of prayer ; and high o'er the heads of the others Rose, with his arms uplifted, the figure of Basil the blacksmith, As, on a stormy sea, a spar is tossed by the billows. Flushed was his face and distorted with passion ; and wildly he shouted, — " Down with the tyrants of England ! we never have sworn them allegiance ! Death to these foreign soldiers, who seize on our homes and our harvests ! " More he fain would have said, but the merciless hand of a soldier Smote him upon the mouth, and dragged him down to the pavement. In the midst of the strife and tumult of angry contention, Lo ! the door of the chancel opened, and Father Felician Entered, with serious mien, and ascended the steps of the altar. Raising his reverend hand, with a gesture he awed into silence All that clamorous throng ; and thus he spake to his people ; LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 403 Deep were his tones and solemn ; in accents measured and mournful Spake he, as, after the tocsin's alarum, distinctly the clock strikes. " What is this that ye do, my children ? what madness has seized you ? Forty years of my life have I labored among you, and taught you, Not in word alone, but in deed, to love one another ! Is this the fruit of my toils, of my vigils and prayers and privations ? Have you so soon forgotten all lessons of love and forgiveness ? This is the house of the Prince of Peace, and would you profane it Thus with violent deeds and hearts overflowing with hatred ? Lo ! where the crucified Christ from His cross is gazing upon you ! See ! in those sorrowful eyes what meekness and holy compassion ! Hark ! how those lips still repeat the prayer, ' O Father, forgive them ! ' Let us repeat that prayer in the hour wTien the wicked assail us, Let us repeat it now, and say, ' O Father, forgive them ! ' " Few were his words of rebuke, but deep in the hearts of his people Sank they, and sobs of contrition succeeded the passionate out- break. While they repeated his prayer, and said, " O Father, forgive them ! " Then came the evening service. The tapers gleamed from the altar ; Fervent and deep was the voice of the priest, and the people responded. Not with their lips alone, but their hearts ; and the Ave Maria Sang they, and fell on their knees, and their souls, with devotion translated. Rose on the ardor of prayer, like Elijah ascending to heaven. Meanwhile had spread in the village the tidings of ill, and on all sides Wandered, wailing, from house to house the women and children. Long at her father's door Evangeline stood, with her right hand Shielding her eyes from the level rays of the sun, that, descending, Lighted the village street with mysterious splendor, and roofed each Peasant's cottage with golden thatch, and emblazoned its windows. 404 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Long within had been spread the snow-white cloth on the table ; There stood the wheaten loaf, and the honey fragrant with wild flowers ; There stood the tankard of ale, and the cheese fresh brought from the dairy ; And at the head of the board the great arm-chair of the farmer. Thus did Evangeline wait at her father's door, as the sunset Threw the long shadows of trees o'er the broad ambrosial meadows. Ah ! on her spirit within a deeper shadow had fallen, And from the fields of her soul a fragrance celestial ascended, — Charity, meekness, love, and hope, and forgiveness, and patience ! Then, all forgetful of self, she wandered into the village. Cheering with looks and words the mournful hearts of the women, As o'er the darkening fields with lingering steps they departed, Urged by their household cares, and the weary feet of their children. Down sank the great red sun, and in golden, glimmering vapors Veiled the light of his face, like the Prophet descending from Sinai. Sweetly over the village the bell of the Angelus sounded. Meanwhile, amid the gloom, by the church Evangeline lingered. All was silent within ; and in vain at the door and the windows Stood she, and listened and looked, until, overcome by emotion, " Gabriel ! " cried she aloud with tremulous voice ; but no answer Came from the graves of the dead, nor the gloomier grave of the living. Slowly at length she returned to the tenantless house of her father. Smouldered the fire on the hearth, on the board was the supper untasted. Empty and drear was each room, and haunted with phantoms of terror. Sadly echoed her step on the stair and the floor of her chamber. In the dead of the night she heard the disconsolate rain fall Loud on the withered leaves of the sycamore-tree by the window. Keenly the lightning flashed ; and the voice of the echoing thunder Told her that God was in heaven, and governed the world He created ! LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 405 Then she remembered the tale she had heard of the justice of Heaven ; Soothed was her troubled soul, and she peacefully slumbered till morning. Four times the sun had risen and set ; and now on the fifth day Cheerily called the cock to the sleeping maids of the farm-house. Soon o'er the yellow fields, in silent and mournful procession. Came from the neighboring hamlets and farms the Acadian women, Driving in ponderous wains their household goods to the sea-shore, Pausing and looking back to gaze once more on their dwellings. Ere they were shut from sight by the winding road and the woodland. Close at their sides their children ran, and urged on the oxen. While in their little hands they clasped some fragments of play- things. Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth they hurried ; and there on the sea-beach Piled in confusion lay the household goods of the peasants. All day long between the shore and the ships did the boats ply ; All day long the wains came laboring down from the village. Late in the afternoon, when the sun was near to his setting. Echoed far o'er the fields came the roll of drums from the churchyard. Thither the women and children thronged. On a sudden the church-doors Opened, and forth came the guard, and marching in gloomy procession Followed the long-imprisoned, but patient, Acadian farmers. Even as pilgrims, who journey afar from their homes and their country. Sing as they go, and in singing forget they are weary and wayworn, So with songs on their lips the Acadian peasants descended Down from the church to the shore, amid their wives and their daughters. 4o6 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Foremost the young men came ; and, raising together their voices, Sang with tremulous lips a chant of the Catholic Missions : — " Sacred heart of the Saviour ! O inexhaustible fountain ! Fill our hearts this day with strength and submission and patience! " Then the old men, as they marched, and the women that stood by the wayside Joined in the sacred psalm, and the birds in the sunshine above them Mingled their notes therewith, like voices of spirits departed. Half-way down to the shore Evangeline waited in silence. Not overcome with grief, but strong in the hour of affliction, — Calmly and sadly she waited, until the procession approached her. And she beheld the face of Gabriel pale with emotion. Tears then filled her eyes, and, eagerly running to meet him, Clasped she his hands, and laid her head on his shoulder, and whispered, — " Gabriel ! be of good cheer ! for if we love one another Nothing, in truth, can harm us, whatever mischances may happen ! " Smiling she spake these words ; then suddenly paused, for her father Saw she, slowly advancing. Alas ! how changed was his aspect ! Gone was the glow from his cheek, and the fire from his eye, and his footstep Heavier seemed with the weight of the hea\y heart in his bosom. But with a smile and a sigh, she clasped his neck and embraced him. Speaking words of endearment where words of comfort availed not. Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth moved on that mournful procession. There disorder prevailed, and the tumult and stir of embarking. Busily plied the freighted boats ; and in the confusion Wives were torn from their husbands, and mothers, too late, saw their children Left on the land, extending their arms, with wildest entreaties. So unto separate ships were Basil and Gabriel carried, While in despair on the shore Evangeline stood with her father. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 407 Half the task was not done when the sun went down, and the twihght Deepened and darkened around ; and in haste the refluent ocean Fled away from the shore, and left the line of the sand-beach Covered with waifs of the tide, with kelp and the slippery sea-weed. Farther back in the midst of the household goods and the wagons, Like to a gypsy camp, or a leaguer after a battle. All escape cut off by the sea, and the sentinels near them, Lay encamped for the night the houseless Acadian farmers. Back to its nethermost caves retreated the bellowing ocean. Dragging adown the beach the rattling pebbles, and leaving Inland and far up the shore the stranded boats of the sailors. Then, as the night descended, the herds returned from their pastures ; Sweet was the moist still air with the odor of milk from their udders ; Lowing they waited, and long, at the well-known bars of the farmyard, — Waited and looked in vain for the voice and the hand of the milkmaid. Silence reigned in the streets ; from the church no Angelus sounded, Rose no smoke from the roofs, and gleamed no lights from the windows. But on the shores meanwhile the evening fires had been kindled. Built of the drift-wood thrown on the sands from wrecks in the tempest. Round them shapes of gloom and sorrowful faces were gathered. Voices of women were heard, and of men, and the crying of children. Onward from fire to fire, as from hearth to hearth in his parish, Wand,ered the faithful priest, consoling and blessing and cheering, Like unto shipwrecked Paul on Melita's desolate seashore. Thus he approached the place where Evangeline sat with her father. And in the flickering light beheld the face of the old man. Haggard and hollow and wan, and without either thought or emotion, 408 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE E'en as the face of a clock from which the hands have been taken. Vainly Evangeline strove with words and caresses to cheer him, Vainly offered him food ; yet he moved not, he looked not, he spake not, But, with a vacant stare, ever gazed at the flickering fire-light. " Bcncdicite," murmured the priest, in tones of compassion. More he fain would have said, but his heart was full, and his accents Faltered and paused on his lips, as the feet of a child on a threshold, Hushed by the scene he beholds, and the awful presence of sorrow. Silently, therefore, he laid his hand on the head of the maiden. Raising his tearful eyes to the silent stars that above them Moved on their way, unperturbed by the wrongs and sorrows of mortals. Then sat he down at her side, and they wept together in silence. Suddenly rose from the south a light, as in autumn the blood-red Moon climbs the crystal walls of heaven, and o'er the horizon Titan-like stretches its hundred hands upon mountain and meadow. Seizing the rocks and the rivers, and piling huge shadows together. Broader and ever broader it gleamed on the roofs of the village. Gleamed on the sky and the sea, and the ships that lay in the roadstead. Columns of shining smoke uprose, and flashes of flame were Thrust through their folds and withdrawn, like the quivering hands of a martyr. Then as the wind seized the gleeds and the burning thatch, and, uplifting, Whirled them aloft through the air, at once from a hundred housetops Started the sheeted smoke with flashes of flame intermingled. These things beheld in dismay the crowd on the shore and on shipboard. Speechless at first they stood, then cried aloud in their anguish, " We shall behold no more our homes in the village of Grand- Pr6 ! " Loud on a sudden the cocks began to crow in the farmyards. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 409 Thinking the day had dawned ; and anon the lowing of cattle Came on the evening breeze, by the barking of dogs interrupted. Then rose a sound of dread, such as startles the sleeping encamp- ments Far in the western prairies of forests that skirt the Nebraska, When the wild horses affrighted sweep by with the speed of the whirlwind. Or the loud bellowing herds of buffaloes rush to the river. Such was the sound that arose on the night, as the herds and the horses Broke through their folds and fences, and madly rushed o'er the meadows. Overwhelmed with the sight, yet speechless, the priest and the maiden Gazed on the scene of terror that reddened and widened before them ; And as they turned at length to speak to their silent companion, Lo ! from his seat he had fallen, and stretched abroad on the seashore Motionless lay his form, from which the soul had departed. Slowly the priest uplifted the lifeless head, and the maiden Knelt at her father's side, and wailed aloud in her terror. Then in a swoon she sank, and lay with her head on his bosom. Through the long night she lay in deep, oblivious slumber ; And when she woke from the trance, she beheld a multitude near her. Faces of friends she beheld, that were mournfully gazing upon her, Pallid, with tearful eyes, and looks of saddest compassion. Still the blaze of the burning village illumined the landscape, Reddened the sky overhead, and gleamed on the faces around her, And like the day of doom it seemed to her wavering senses, Then a familiar voice she heard, as it said to the people — " Let us bury him here by the sea. When a happier season Brings us again to our homes from the unknown land of our exile. Then shall his sacred dust be piously laid in the churchyard." 4IO READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Such were the words of the priest. And there in haste by the seaside, Having the glare of the burning village for funeral torches, But without bell or book, they buried the farmer of Grand-Pre. And as the voice of the priest repeated the service of sorrow, Lo ! with a mournful sound, like the voice of a vast congregation, Solemnly answered the sea, and mingled its roar with the dirges, 'T was the returning tide, that afar from the waste of the ocean. With the first dawn of the day, came heaving and hurrying land- ward. Then recommenced once more the stir and noise of embarking ; And with the ebb of that tide the ships sailed out of the harbor, Leaving behind them the dead on the shore, and the village in ruins. PART THE SECOND II ********** It was the month of May. Far down the Beautiful River, Past the Ohio shore and past the mouth of the Wabash, Into the golden stream of the broad and swift Mississippi, Floated a cumbrous boat, that was rowed by Acadian boatmen. It was a band of exiles : a raft, as it were, from the shipwrecked Nation, scattered along the coast, now floating together, Bound by the bonds of a common belief and a common misfortune ; Men and women and children, who, guided by hope or by hearsay. Sought for their kith and their kin among the few-acred farmers On the Acadian coast, and the prairies of fair Opelousas, With them Evangeline went, and her guide, the Father Felician. Onward o'er sunken sands, through a wilderness sombre with forests. Day after day they glided adown the turbulent river ; Night after night, by their blazing fires, encamped on its borders. Now through rushing chutes, among green islands, where plumelike Cotton-trees nodded their shadowy crests, they swept with the current, LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 41 1 Then emerged into broad lagoons, where silvery sandbars Lay in the stream, and along the wimpling waves of their margin, Shining with snow-white plumes, large flocks of pelicans waded. Level the landscape grew, and along the shores of the river, Shaded by china-trees, in the midst of luxuriant gardens, Stood the houses of planters, with negro cabins and dove-cots. They were approaching the region where reigns perpetual summer, Where through the Golden Coast, and groves of orange and citron. Sweeps with majestic curve the river away to the eastward. They, too, swerved from their course ; and, entering the Bayou of Plaquemine, Soon were lost in a maze of sluggish and devious waters. Which, like a network of steel, extended in every direction. Over their heads the towering and tenebrous boughs of the cypress Met in a dusky arch, and trailing mosses in mid-air Waved like banners that hang on the walls of ancient cathedrals. Deathlike the silence seemed, and unbroken, save by the herons Home to their roosts in the cedar-trees returning at sunset. Or by the owl, as he greeted the moon with demoniac laughter. Lovely the moonlight was as it glanced and gleamed on the water, Gleamed on the columns of cypress and cedar sustaining the arches, Down through whose broken vaults it fell as through chinks in a ruin. Dreamlike, and indistinct, and strange were all things around them ; And o'er their spirits there came a feeling of wonder and sad- ness, — Strange forebodings of ill, unseen and that cannot be compassed. As, at the tramp of a horse's hoof on the turf of the prairies. Far in advance are closed the leaves of the shrinking mimosa. So, at the hoof-beats of fate, with sad forebodings of evil. Shrinks and closes the heart, ere the stroke of doom has attained it. But Evangeline's heart was sustained by a vision, that faintly Floated before her eyes, and beckoned her on through the moonlight. It was the thought of her brain that assumed the shape of a phantom. Through those shadowy aisles had Gabriel wandered before her, And every stroke of the oar now brought him nearer and nearer. 412 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Then in his place, at the prow of the boat, rose one of the oarsmen, And, as a signal sound, if others like them peradventure Sailed on those gloomy and midnight streams, blew a blast on his bugle. Wild through the dark colonnades and corridors leafy the blast rang, Breaking the seal of silence and giving tongues to the forest. Soundless above them the banners of moss just stirred to the music. Multitudinous echoes awoke and died in the distance. Over the watery floor, and beneath the reverberant branches ; But not a voice replied ; no answer came from the darkness ; And when the echoes had ceased, like a sense of pain was the silence. Then Evangeline slept ; but the boatmen rowed through the midnight. Silent at times, then singing familiar Canadian boat-songs. Such as they sang of old on their own Acadian rivers. While through the night were heard the mysterious sounds of the desert. Far off, — indistinct, — as of wave or wind in the forest. Mixed with the whoop of the crane and the roar of the grim alligator. Thus ere another noon they emerged from the shades ; and before them Lay, in the golden sun, the lakes of the Atchafalaya. Water-lilies in myriads rocked on the slight undulations Made by the passing oars, and, resplendent in beauty, the lotus Lifted her golden crown above the heads of the boatmen. Faint was the air with the odorous breath of magnolia blossoms, And with the heat of noon ; and numberless sylvan islands. Fragrant and thickly embowered with blossoming hedges of roses, Near to whose shores they glided along, invited to slumber. Soon by the fairest of these their weary oars were suspended. Under the boughs of Wachita willows, that grew by the margin. Safely their boat was moored ; and scattered about on the green- sward. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 413 Tired with their midnight toil, the weary travellers slumbered. Over them vast and high extended the cope of a cedar. Swinging from its great arms, the trumpet-flower and the grape- vine Hung their ladder of ropes aloft like the ladder of Jacob, On whose pendulous stairs the angels ascending, descending, Were the swift humming-birds, that flitted from blossom to blossom. Such was the vision Evangeline saw as she slumbered beneath it. Filled was her heart with love, and the dawn of an opening heaven Lighted her soul in sleep with the glory of regions celestial. Nearer, ever nearer, among the numberless islands, Darted a light, swift boat, that sped away o'er the water, Urged on its course by the sinewy arms of hunters and trappers. Northward its prow was turned, to the land of the bison and beaver. At the helm sat a youth, with countenance thoughtful and careworn. Dark and neglected locks overshadowed his brow, and a sadness Somewhat beyond his years on his face was legibly written. Gabriel was it, who, weary with waiting, unhappy and restless, Sought in the Western wilds oblivion of self and of sorrow. Swiftly they glided along, close under the lee of the island, But by the opposite bank, and behind a screen of palmettos ; So that they saw not the boat, where it lay concealed in the willows ; All undisturbed by the dash of their oars, and unseen, were the sleepers ; Angel of God was there none to awaken the slumbering maiden. Swiftly they glided away, like the shade of a cloud on the prairie. After the sound of their oars on the tholes had died in the distance, As from a magic trance the sleepers awoke, and the maiden Said with a sigh to the friendly priest, " O Father Felician ! Something says in my heart that near me Gabriel wanders. Is it a foolish dream, an idle and vague superstition ? Or has an angel passed, and revealed the truth to my spirit ? " Then, with a blush, she added, "" Alas for my credulous fancy ! Unto ears like thine such words as these have no meaning." But made answer the reverend man, and he smiled as he answered, — 414 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE " Daughter, thy words are not idle ; nor are they to me without meaning, FeeHng is deep and still ; and the word that floats on the surface Is as the tossing buoy, that betrays where the anchor is hidden. Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions. Gabriel truly is near thee ; for not far away to the southward. On the banks of the Teche, are the towns of St. Maur and St. Martin. There the long-wandering bride shall be given again to her bride- groom, There the long-absent pastor regain his flock and his sheepfold. Beautiful is the land, with its prairies and forests of fruit-trees ; Under the feet a garden of flowers, and the bluest of heavens Bending above, and resting its dome on the walls of the forest. They who dwell there have named it the Eden of Louisiana." With these words of cheer they arose and continued their journey. Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon Like a magician extended his golden wand o'er the landscape ; Twinkling vapors arose ; and sky and water and forest Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together. Hanging between two skies, a cloud with edges of silver, Floated the boat, with its dripping oars, on the motionless water. Filled was Evangeline's heart with inexpressible sweetness. Touched by the magic spell, the sacred fountains of feeling Glowed with the light of love, as the skies and waters around her. Then from a neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music. That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen. Plaintive at first were the tones and sad ; then soaring to madness Seemed they to follow or guide the revel of frenzied Bacchantes. Single notes were then heard, in sorrowful, low lamentation ; Till, having gathered them all, he flung them abroad in derision. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 415 As when, after a storm, a gust of wind through the tree-tops Shakes down the ratthng rain in a crystal shower on the branches. With such a prelude as this, and hearts that throbbed with emotion, Slowly they entered the Teche, where it flows through the green Opelousas, And, through the amber air, above the crest of the woodland, Saw the column of smoke that arose from a neighboring dwell- Sounds of a horn they heard, and the distant lowing of cattle. In that delightful land which is washed by the Delaware's waters. Guarding in sylvan shades the name of Penn the apostle, Stands on the banks of its beautiful stream the city he founded. There all the air is balm, and the peach is the emblem of beauty, And the streets still reecho the names of the trees of the forest. As if they fain would appease the Dryads whose haunts they molested. There from the troubled sea had Evangeline landed, an exile, Finding among the children of Penn a home and a country. There old Rene Leblanc had died ; and when he departed, Saw at his side only one of all his hundred descendants. Something at least there was in the friendly streets of the city. Something that spake to her heart, and made her no longer a stranger ; And her ear was pleased with the Thee and Thou of the Quakers, For it recalled the past, the old Acadian country. Where all men were equal, and all were brothers and sisters. So, when the fruitless search, the disappointed endeavor. Ended, to recommence no more upon earth, uncomplaining. Thither, as leaves to the light, were turned her thoughts and her footsteps. As from a mountain's top the rainy mists of the morning Roll away, and afar we behold the landscape below us, 4i6 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Sun-illumined, with shining rivers and cities and hamlets, So fell the mists from her mind, and she saw the world far below her, Dark no longer, but all illumined with love ; and the pathway Which she had climbed so far, lying smooth and fair in the distance. Gabriel was not forgotten. Within her heart was his image. Clothed in the beauty of love and youth, as last she beheld him. Only more beautiful made by his deathlike silence and absence. Into her thoughts of him time entered not, for it was not. Over him years had no power, he was not changed, but trans- figured ; He had become to her heart as one who is dead, and not absent ; Patience and abnegation of self, and devotion to others, This was the lesson a life of trial and sorrow had taught her. So was her love diffused, but, like to some odorous spices, Suffered no waste nor loss, though filling the air with aroma. Other hope had she none, nor wish in life, but to follow, Meekly with reverent steps, the sacred feet of her Saviour. Thus many years she lived as a Sister of Mercy ; frequenting Lonely and wretched roofs in the crowded lanes of the city, Where distress and want concealed themselves from the sunlight, Where disease and sorrow in garrets languished neglected. Night after night when the world was asleep, as the watchman repeated Loud, through the gusty streets, that all was well in the city. High at some lonely window he saw the light of her taper. Day after day, in the gray of the dawn, as slow through the suburbs Plodded the German farmer, with flowers and fruits for the market, Met he that meek, pale face, returning home from its watchings. Then it came to pass that a pestilence fell on the city, Presaged by wondrous signs, and mostly by flocks of wild pigeons. Darkening the sun in their flight, with naught in their craws but an acorn. And, as the tides of the sea arise in the month of September, Flooding some silver stream, till it spreads to a lake in the meadow, LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 417 So death flooded life, and, o'erflowing its natural margin, Spread to a brackish lake the silver stream of existence. Wealth had no power to bribe, nor beauty to charm, the oppressor ; But all perished alike beneath the scourge of his anger ; — Only, alas ! the poor, who had neither friends nor attendants, Crept away to die in the almshouse, home of the homeless. Then in the suburbs it stood, in the midst of meadows and woodlands ; ^ Now the city surrounds it ; but still, with its gateway and wicket Meek, in the midst of splendor, its humble walls seem to echo Softly the words of the Lord : — " The poor ye always have with you." Thither, by night and by day, came the Sister of Mercy. The dying Looked up into her face, and thought, indeed, to behold there Gleams of celestial light encircle her forehead with splendor, Such as the artist paints o'er the brows of saints and apostles, Or such as hangs by night o'er a city seen at a distance. Unto their eyes it seemed the lamps of the city celestial. Into whose shining gates erelong their spirits would enter. Thus, on a Sabbath morn, through the streets, deserted and silent, Wending her quiet way, she entered the door of the almshouse. Sweet on the summer air was the odor of flowers in the garden. And she paused on her way to gather the fairest among them, That the dying once more might rejoice in their fragrance and beauty. Then, as she mounted the stairs to the corridors, cooled by the east-wind. Distant and soft on her ear fell the chimes from the belfry of Christ Church, While, intermingled with these, across the meadows were wafted Sounds of psalms, that were sung by the Swedes in their church at Wicaco. Soft as descending wings fell the calm of the hour on her spirit ; Something within her said, " At length thy trials are ended ; " And, with light in her looks, she entered the chambers of sickness. 41 8 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Noiselessly moved about the assiduous, careful attendants, Moistening the feverish lip, and the aching brow, and in silence Closing the sightless eyes of the dead, and concealing their faces, Where on their pallets they lay, like drifts of snow by the roadside. Many a languid head, upraised as Evangeline entered, Turned on its pillow of pain to gaze while she passed, for her presence Fell on their hearts like a ray of the sun on the walls of a prison. And, as she looked around, she saw how Death, the consoler. Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it forever. Many familiar forms had disappeared in the night time ; Vacant their places were, or filled already by strangers. Suddenly, as if arrested by fear or a feeling of wonder. Still she stood, with her colorless lips apart, while a shudder Ran through her frame, and, forgotten, the flowerets dropped from her fingers, And from her eyes and cheeks the light and bloom of the morning. Then there escaped from her lips a cry of such terrible anguish, That the dying heard it, and started up from their pillows. On the pallet before her was stretched the form of an old man. Long, and thin, and gray were the locks that shaded his temples ; But, as he lay in the morning light, his face for a moment Seemed to assume once more the forms of its earlier manhood ; So are wont to be changed the faces of those who are dying. Hot and red on his lips still burned the flush of the fever. As if life, like the Hebrew, with blood had besprinkled its portals, That the Angel of Death might see the sign, and pass over. Motionless, senseless, dying, he lay, and his spirit exhausted Seemed to be sinking down through infinite depths in the darkness, Darkness of slumber and death, forever sinking and sinking. Then through those realms of shade, in multiplied reverberations. Heard he that cry of pain, and through the hush that succeeded Whispered a gentle voice, in accents tender and saint-like, " Gabriel ! O my beloved ! " and died away into silence. Then he beheld, in a dream, once more the home of his childhood ; Green Acadian meadows, with sylvan rivers among them. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 419 Village, and mountain, and woodlands ; and, walking under their shadow. As in the days of her youth, Evangeline rose in his vision. Tears came into his eyes ; and as slowly he lifted his eyelids, Vanished the vision away, but Evangeline knelt by his bedside. Vainly he strove to whisper her name, for the accents unuttered Died on his lips, and their motion revealed what his tongue would have spoken. Vainly he strove to rise ; and Evangeline, kneeling beside him, Kissed his dying lips, and laid his head on her bosom. Sweet was the light of his eyes ; but it suddenly sank into darkness, As when a lamp is blown out by a gust of wind at a casement. All was ended now, the hope, and the fear, and the sorrow, All the aching of heart, the restless, unsatisfied longing. All the dull, deep pain, and constant anguish of patience ! And, as she pressed once more the lifeless head to her bosom. Meekly she bowed her own, and murmured, "Father, I thank thee ! " Still stands the forest primeval ; but far away from its shadow, Side by side, in their nameless graves, the lovers are sleeping. Under the humble walls of the little Catholic churchyard, In the heart of the city, they lie, unknown and unnoticed. Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them. Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and forever. Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy, Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from their labors. Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their journey ! Still stands the forest primeval ; but under the shade of its branches Dwells another race, with other customs and language. Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from exile Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom. 420 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE In the fisherman's cot the wheel and the loom are still busy ; Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun, And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story, While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. THE SONG OF HIAWATHA Selections INTRODUCTION Should you ask me, whence these stories ? Whence these legends and traditions, With the odors of the forest, With the dew and damp of meadows, With the curling smoke of wigwams, With the rushing of great rivers. With their frequent repetitions. And their wild reverberations. As of thunder in the mountains ? I should answer, I should tell you, " From the forests and the prairies. From the great lakes of the Northland, From the land of the Ojibways, From the land of the Dacotahs, From the mountains, moor:^, and fen-lands, Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, Feeds among the reeds and rushes. I repeat them as I heard them From the lips of Nawadaha, The musician, the sweet singer," Should you ask where Nawadaha Found these songs so wild and wayward. Found these legends and traditions, I should answer, I should tell you, " In the bird's-nests of the forest, In the lodges of the beaver, LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 421 In the hoof-prints of the bison, In the eyry of the eagle ! "' All the wild-fowl sang them to him, In the moorlands and the fen-lands, In the melancholy marshes ; Chetowaik, the plover, sang them, Mahn, the loon, the wild goose, Wawa, The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, And the grouse, the Mushkodasa ! " If still further you should ask me, Saying, " Who was Nawadaha ? Tell us of this Nawadaha," I should answer your inquiries Straightway in such words as follow. "In the Vale of Tawasentha, In the green and silent valley, By the pleasant water-courses, Dwelt the singer Nawadaha, Round about the Indian village Spread the meadows and the cornfields. And beyond them stood the forest. Stood the groves of singing pine-trees. Green in Summer, white in Winter, Ever sighing, ever singing. " And the pleasant water-courses, You could trace them through the valley, By the rushing in the Spring-time, By the alders in the Summer, By the white fog in the Autumn, By the black line in the Winter ; And beside them dwelt the singer, In the vale of Tawasentha, In the green and silent valley, " There he sang of Hiawatha, Sang the Song of Hiawatha, Sang his wondrous birth and being, How he prayed and how he fasted, 422 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE How he lived, and toiled, and suffered, That the tribes of men might prosper, That he might advance his people ! " Ye who love the haunts of Nature, Love the sunshine of the meadow. Love the shadow of the forest, Love the wind among the branches. And the rain-shower and the snow-storm, And the rushing of great rivers Through their palisades of pine-trees. And the thunder in the mountains. Whose innumerable echoes Flap like eagles in their eyries ; — Listen to these wild traditions, To this Song of Hiawatha ! Ye who love a nation's legends. Love the ballads of a people, That like voices from afar off Call to us to pause and listen. Speak in tones so plain and childlike. Scarcely can the ear distinguish Whether they are sung or spoken ; — Listen to this Indian Legend, To this Song of Hiawatha ! Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple. Who have faith in God and Nature, Who believe that in all ages Every human heart is human, That in even savage bosoms There are longings, yearnings, strivings For the good they comprehend not. That the feeble hands and helpless. Groping blindly in the darkness. Touch God's right hand in that darkness And are lifted up and strengthened ; — Listen to this simple story. To this Song; of Hiawatha ! LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 423 Ye who sometimes, in your rambles Through the green lanes of the country, Where the tangled barberry-bushes Hang their tufts of crimson berries Over stone walls gray with mosses, Pause by some neglected graveyard, For a while to muse, and ponder On a half-effaged inscription, Written with little skill of song-craft. Homely phrases, but each letter Full of hope and yet of heart-break, Full of all the tender pathos Of the Here and the Hereafter ; — Stay and read this rude inscription, Read this Song of Hiawatha ! Ill HIAWATHA'S CHILDHOOD Downward through the evening twilight, In the days that are forgotten, In the unremembered ages, From the full moon fell Nokomis, Fell the beautiful Nokomis, She a wife but not a mother. She was sporting with her women, Swinging in a swing of grape-vines, When her rival, the rejected, Full of jealousy and hatred. Cut the leafy swing asunder. Cut in twain the twisted grape-vines. And Nokomis fell affrighted Downward through the evening twilight, On the Muskoday, the meadow, On the prairie full of blossoms, " See ! a star falls ! " said the people ; " From the sky a star is falling ! " 424 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE There among the ferns and mosses, There among the prairie lilies, On the Muskoday, the meadow, In the moonlight and the starlight. Fair Nokomis bore a daughter. And she called her name Wenonah, As the first-born of her daughters. And the daughter of Nokomis Grew up like the prairie lilies, Grew a tall and slender maiden. With the beauty of the moonlight, With the beauty of the starlight. And Nokomis warned her often. Saying oft, and oft repeating, " Oh, beware of Mudjekeewis, Of the West-Wind, Mudjekeewis ; Listen not to what he tells you ; Lie not down upon the meadow, Stoop not down among the lilies, Lest the West- Wind come and harm you ! " But she heeded not the warning. Heeded not those words of wisdom. And the West-Wind came at evening, Walking lightly o'er the prairie. Whispering to the leaves and blossoms. Bending low the flowers and grasses. Found the beautiful Wenonah, Lying there among the lilies, Wooed her with his words of sweetness, Wooed her with his soft caresses, Till she bore a son in sorrow. Bore a son of love and sorrow. Thus was born my Hiawatha, Thus was born the child of wonder ; But the daughter of Nokomis, Hiawatha's gentle mother, In her anguish died deserted LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 425 By the West-Wind, false and faithless, By the heartless Mudjekeewis. For her daughter, long and loudly Wailed and wept the sad Nokomis ; "" Oh that I were dead ! " she murmured, "Oh that I were dead, as thou art ! No more work, and no more weeping, Wahonowin ! Wahonowin ! " By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water, Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. Dark behind it rose the forest, Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees, Rose the firs with cones upon them ; Bright before it beat the water. Beat the clear and sunny water, Beat the shining Big-Sea- Water. There the wrinkled old Nokomis Nursed the little Hiawatha, Rocked him in his linden cradle, Bedded soft in moss and rushes. Safely bound with reindeer sinews ; Stilled his fretful wail by saying, " Hush ! the Naked Bear will hear thee ! " Lulled him into slumber, singing, " Ewa-yea ! my little owlet ! Who is this, that lights the wigwam ? With his great eyes lights the wigwam ? Ewa-yea ! my little owlet ! " Many things Nokomis taught him Of the stars that shine in heaven ; Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet, Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses ; Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits. Warriors with their plumes and war-clubs. Flaring far away to northward 426 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE In the frosty nights of Winter ; Showed the broad white road in heaven, Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows. Running straight across the heavens. Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows. At the door on summer evenings Sat the little Hiawatha ; • Heard the whispering of the pine-trees, Heard the lapping of the waters, Sounds of music, words of wonder ; " Minne-wawa ! " said the pine-trees. " Mudway-aushka ! " said the water. Saw the fire-fly, Wah-wah-taysee, Flitting through the dusk of evening. With the twinkle of its candle Lighting up the brakes and bushes, And he sang the song of children, Sang the song Nokomis taught him : "' Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly. Little, flitting, white-fire insect. Little, dancing, white-fire creature. Light me with your little candle. Ere upon my bed I lay me, Ere in sleep I close my eyelids ! " Saw the moon rise from the water Rippling, rounding from the water, Saw the flecks and shadows on it. Whispered, " What is that, Nokomis ? " And the good Nokomis answered : '" Once a warrior, very angry. Seized his grandmother, and threw her Up into the sky at midnight ; Right against the moon he threw her ; • 'T is her body that you see there." Saw the rainbow in the heaven. In the eastern sky, the rainbow, Whispered, " What is that, Nokomis .-' " LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 427 And the good Nokomis answered : " 'T is the heaven of flowers you see there ; All the wild-flowers of the forest, All the lilies of the prairie, When on earth they fade and perish, Blossom in that heaven above us." When he heard the owls at midnight, Hooting, laughing in the forest, "' What is that ? " he cried in terror, " What is that," he said, " Nokomis ? " And the good Nokomis answered : " That is but the owl and owlet, Talking in their native language, Talking, scolding at each other." Then the little Hiawatha Learned of every bird its language, Learned their names and all their secrets, How they built their nests in Summer, Where they hid themselves in Winter, Talked with them whene'er he met them, Called them " Hiawatha's Chickens." Of all beasts he learned the language, Learned their names and all their secrets, How the beavers built their lodges, Where the squirrels hid their acorns, How the reindeer ran so swiftly. Why the rabbit was so timid, Talked with them whene'er he met them, Called them " Hiawatha's Brothers." Then lagoo, the great boaster, He the marvellous story-teller, He the traveller and the talker, He the friend of old Nokomis, Made a bow for Hiawatha ; From a branch of ash he made it. From an oak-bough made the arrows. Tipped with flint, and winged with feathers. 428 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And the cord he made of deer-skin. Then he said to Hiawatha : " Go, my son, into the forest, Where the red deer herd together, Kill for us a famous roebuck. Kill for us a deer with antlers ! " Forth into the forest straightway All alone walked Hiawatha Proudly, with his bow and arrows ; And the birds sang round him, o'er him, " Do not shoot us, Hiawatha ! " Sang the robin, the Opechee, Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa, " Do not shoot us, Hiawatha ! " Up the oak-tree, close beside him, Sprang the squirrel, Adjidaumo, In and out among the branches, Coughed and chattered from the oak-tree, Laughed, and said between his laughing, " Do not shoot me, Hiawatha ! " And the rabbit from his pathway Leaped aside, and at a distance Sat erect upon his haunches, Half in fear and half in frolic, Saying to the little hunter, " Do not shoot me, Hiawatha ! " But he heeded not, nor heard them, For his thoughts were with the red deer On their tracks his eyes were fastened. Leading downward to the river, To the ford across the river, And as one in slumber walked he. Hidden in the alder-bushes, • There he waited till the deer came, Till he saw two antlers lifted, Saw two eyes look from the thicket. Saw two nostrils point to windward, LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 429 And a deer came down the pathway, Flecked with leafy light and shadow. And his heart within him fluttered, Trembled like the leaves above him, Like the birch-leaf palpitated, As the deer came down the pathway. Then, upon one knee uprising, Hiawatha aimed an arrow ; Scarce a twig moved with his motion. Scarce a leaf was stirred or rustled. But the wary roebuck started. Stamped with all his hoofs together. Listened with one foot uplifted, Leaped as if to meet the arrow ; Ah ! the singing, fatal arrow ; Like a wasp it buzzed and stung him ! Dead he lay there in the forest. By the ford across the river ; Beat his timid heart no longer. But the heart of Hiawatha Throbbed and shouted and exulted, As he bore the red deer homeward. And lagoo and Nokomis Hailed his coming with applauses. From the red deer's hide Nokomis Made a cloak for Hiawatha, From the red deer's flesh Nokomis Made a banquet in his honor. All the village came and feasted, All the guests praised Hiawatha, Called him Strong-Heart, Soan-ge-taha ! Called him Loon-Heart, Mahn-go-taysee ! 430 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE XX THE FAMINE O the long and dreary Winter ! O the cold and cruel Winter ! Ever thicker, thicker, thicker Froze the ice on lake and river, Ever deeper, deeper, deeper, Fell the snow o'er all the landscape, Fell the covering snow, and drifted Through the forest, round the village. Hardly from his buried wigwam Could the hunter force a passage ; With his mittens and his snow-shoes Vainly walked he through the forest, Sought for bird or beast and found none Saw no track of deer or rabbit. In the snow beheld no footprints. In the ghastly, gleaming forest Fell, and could not rise from weakness, Perished there from cold and hunger. O the famine and the fever ! O the wasting of the famine ! O the blasting of the fever ! O the wailing of the children ! O the anguish of the women ! All the earth was sick and famished ; Hungry was the air around them. Hungry was the sky above them. And the hungry stars in heaven Like the eyes of wolves glared at them ! Into Hiawatha's wigwam Came two other guests as silent As the ghosts were, and as gloomy, Waited not to be invited, Did not parley at the doorway, Sat there without word of welcome LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 43 1 In the seat of Laughing Water ; Looked with haggard eyes and hollow At the face of Laughing Water. And the foremost said : " Behold me ! I am Famine, Bukadawin ! " And the other said : " Behold me ! I am Fever, Ahkosewin ! " And the lovely Minnehaha Shuddered as they looked upon her, Shuddered at the words they uttered. Lay down on her bed in silence, Hid her face, but made no answer ; Lay there trembling, freezing, burning At the looks they cast upon her. At the fearful words they uttered. Forth into the empty forest Rushed the maddened Hiawatha ; In his heart was deadly sorrow, In his face a stony firmness ; On his brow the sweat of anguish Started, but it froze and fell not. Wrapped in furs and armed for hunting, With his mighty bow of ash-tree. With his quiver full of arrows. With his mittens, Minjekahwun, Into the vast and vacant forest On his snow-shoes strode he forward. " Gitche Manito, the Mighty ! " Cried he with his face uplifted In that bitter hour of anguish, " Give your children food, O father ! Give us food, or we must perish ! Give me food for Minnehaha, For my dying Minnehaha ! " Through the far-resounding forest, Through the forest vast and vacant Rang that cry of desolation, 432 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE But there came no other answer Than the echo of his crying, Than the echo of the woodlands, '" Minnehaha ! Minnehaha ! " All day long roved Hiawatha In that melancholy forest, Through the shadow of whose thickets, In the pleasant days of Summer, Of that ne'er forgotten Summer, He had brought his young wife homeward From the land of the Dacotahs ; When the birds sang in the thickets, And the streamlets laughed and glistened, And the air was full of fragrance, And the lovely Laughing Water Said with voice that did not tremble, " I will follow you, my husband ! " In the wigwam with Nokomis, With those gloomy guests that watched her, With the Famine and the Fever, She was lying, the Beloved, . She the dying Minnehaha. " Hark ! " she said ; " I hear a rushing, Hear a roaring and a rushing, Hear the Falls of Minnehaha Calling to me from a distance ! " " No, my child ! " said old Nokomis, " 'T is the night-wind in the pine-trees ! " "Look!" she said; "I see my father Standing lonely at his doorway. Beckoning to me from his wigwam, In the land of the Dacotahs ! " "No, my child! " said old Nokomis, " 'T is the smoke, that waves and beckons ! " " Ah 1 " said she, " the eyes of Pauguk Glare upon me in the darkness, I can feel his icy fingers LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 433 Clasping mine amid the darkness ! Hiawatha ! Hiawatha ! " And the desolate Hiawatha, Far away amid the forest, Miles away among the mountains. Heard that sudden cry of anguish, Heard the voice of Minnehaha Calling to him in the darkness, ' ' H iawatha ! H iawatha ! ' ' Over snow-fields waste and pathless. Under snow-encumbered branches. Homeward hurried Hiawatha, Empty-handed, heavy-hearted, Heard Nokomis moaning, wailing : " Wahonowin ! Wahonowin ! Would that I had perished for you. Would that I were dead as you are ! Wahonowin ! Wahonowin ! " And he rushed into the wigwam. Saw the old Nokomis slowly Rocking to and fro and moaning, Saw his lovely Minnehaha Lying dead and cold before him, And his bursting heart within him Uttered such a cry of anguish, That the forest moaned and shuddered, That the very stars in heaven Shook and trembled with his anguish. Then he sat down, still and speechless, On the bed of Minnehaha, At the feet of Laughing Water, At those willing feet, that never More would lightly run to meet him, Never more would lightly follow. With both hands his face he covered. Seven long days and nights he sat there, As if in a swoon he sat there. 434 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Speechless, motionless, unconscious Of the daylight or the darkness. Then they buried Minnehaha ; In the snow a grave they made her, In the forest deep and darksome, Underneath the moaning hemlocks ; Clothed her in her richest garments, Wrapped her in her robes of ermine, Covered her with snow, like ermine ; Thus they buried Minnehaha. And at night a fire was lighted, On her grave four times was kindled, For her soul upon its journey To the Islands of the Blessed. From his doorway Hiawatha Saw it burning in the forest. Lighting up the gloomy hemlocks ; From his sleepless bed uprising. From the bed of Minnehaha, Stood and watched it at the doorway. That it might not be extinguished. Might not leave her in the darkness. " Farewell ! " said he, " Minnehaha ! Farewell, O my Laughing Water ! All my heart is buried with you. All my thoughts go onward with you ! Come not back again to labor, Come not back again to suffer, Where the Famine and the Fever Wear the heart and waste the body. Soon my task will be completed, Soon your footsteps I shall follow To the Islands of the Blessed, To the Kingdom of Ponemah, To the Land of the Hereafter ! " LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 435 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER [Born at Haverhill, Massachusetts, December 17, 1807 ; died at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, September 7, 1892] PROEM Written to Introduce the First General Collection of his Poems I love the old melodious lays Which softly melt the ages through, The songs of Spenser's golden days, Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase, Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew. Yet, vainly in my quiet hours To breathe their marvelous notes I try ; I feel them, as the leaves and flowers In silence feel the dewy showers, And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky. The rigor of a frozen clime, The harshness of an untaught ear, The jarring words of one whose rhyme Beat often Labor's hurried time, Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here. Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace, No rounded art the lack supplies ; Unskilled the subtle lines to trace, Or softer shades of Nature's face, I view her common forms with unanointed eyes. Nor mine the seerlike power to show The secrets of the heart and mind ; To drop the plummet line below Our common world of joy and woe, A more intense despair or brighter hope to find. 436 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Yet here at least an earnest sense Of human right and weal is shown ; A hate of tyranny intense, And hearty in its vehemence, As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own. O Freedom ! if to me belong Nor mighty Milton's gift divine. Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song. Still with a love as deep and strong As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine THE FAREWELL Of a VniGixiA Slave Mother to her Daughters sold l\to Southern Bondage Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice swamp dank and lone. Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings, Where the noisome insect stings. Where the fever demon strews Poison with the falling dews. Where the sickly sunbeams glare Through the hot and misty air, — Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice swamp dank and lone. From Virginia's hills and waters ; Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice swamp dank and lone. There no mother's eye is near them. There no mother's ear can hear them ; Never, when the torturing lash Seams their back with many a gash. Shall a mother's kindness bless them, Or a mother's arms caress them. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 437 Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice swamp dank and lone, From Virginia's hills and waters ; Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice swamp dank and lone. O, when weary, sad, and slow, From the fields at night they go, Faint with toil, and racked with pain, To their cheerless homes again. There no brother's voice shall greet them ; There no father's welcome meet them. Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice swamp dank and lone. From Virginia's hills and waters ; Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! Gone, gone, — sold and gone. To the rice swamp dank and lone. From the tree whose shadow lay On their childhood's place of play ; From the cool spring where they drank ; Rock, and hill, and rivulet bank ; From the solemn house of prayer, And the holy counsels there ; Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice swamp dank and lone, From Virginia's hills and waters ; Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice swamp dank and lone ; Toiling through the weary day, And at night the spoiler's prey. Oh, that they had earlier died, Sleeping calmly, side by side, 438 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Where the tyrant's power is o'er, And the fetter galls no more ! Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice swamp dank and lone. From Virginia's hills and waters ; Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! Gone, gone, — sold and gone. To the rice swamp dank and lone. By the holy love He beareth ; By the bruised reed He spareth ; Oh, may He, to whom alone All their cruel wrongs are known, Still their hope and refuge prove. With a more than mother's love. Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice swamp dank and lone. From Virginia's hills and waters ; Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! ICHABOD Written upon hearing that Daniel Webster had made a Speech IN Favor of the Fugitive Slave Law So fallen ! so lost ! the light withdrawn Which once he wore ! The glory from his gray hairs gone Forevermore ! Revile him not, the Tempter hath A snare for all ; And pitying eyes, not scorn and wrath. Befit his fall ! Oh ! dumb be passion's stormy rage. When he who might Have lighted up and led his age. Falls back in night. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 439 Scorn ! would the angels laugh, to mark A bright soul driven, Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, From hope and heaven ! Let not the land, once proud of him, Insult him now, Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, Dishonored brow. But let its humbled sons, instead, From sea to lake, A long lament, as for the dead, In sadness make. Of all we loved and honored, naught Save power remains ; A fallen angel's pride of thought, Still strong in chains. All else is gone ; from those great eyes The 'SOul has fled : When faith is lost, when honor dies. The man is dead ! Then, pay the reverence of old days To his dead fame ; Walk backward, with averted gaze. And hide the shame ! SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE Of all the rides since the birth of time, Told in story or sung in rhyme, — On Apuleius's Golden Ass, Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass, Witch astride of a human back, Islam's prophet on Al-Borak, — 440 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE The strangest ride that ever was sped Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead ! Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead ! Body of turkey, head of owl. Wings adroop like a rained-on fowl, Feathered and ruffled in every part. Skipper Ireson stood in the cart. Scores of women, old and young. Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue, Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane. Shouting and singing the shrill refrain : " Here 's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead ! " Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips, Girls in bloom of cheek and lips, Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as cHase Bacchus round some antique vase. Brief of skirt, with ankles bare. Loose of kerchief and loose of hair. With conch shells blowing and fish horns' twang, Over and over the Maenads sang : " Here 's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead ! " Small pity for him ! — He sailed away From a leaking ship in Chaleur Bay, — Sailed away from a sinking wreck, With his own town's people on her deck ! "" Lay by ! lay by ! " they called to him. Back he answered, "' Sink or swim ! LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 441 Brag of your catch of fish again ! " And off he sailed through the fog and rain ! Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead ! Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur That wreck shall lie forevermore. Mother and sister, wife and maid, Looked from the rocks of Marblehead Over the moaning and rainy sea, — Looked for the coming that might not be ! What did the winds and the sea birds say Of the cruel captain who sailed away ? — Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart. Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead. Through the street, on either side. Up flew windows, doors swung wide ; Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray, Treble lent the fish horn's bray. Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound. Hulks of old sailors run aground, Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane. And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain : " Here 's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By, the women o' Morble'ead ! " Sweetly along the Salem road Bloom of orchard and lilac showed. Little the wicked skipper knew Of the fields so green and the skies so blue. Riding there in his sorry trim. Like an Indian idol glum and grim. 442 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear Of voices shouting, far and near : '" Here 's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead ! " " Hear me, neighbors ! " at last he cried, — " What to me is this noisy ride ? What is the shame that clothes the skin To the nameless horror that lives within ? Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck, And hear a cry from a reeling deck ! Hate me and curse me, — I only dread The hand of God and the face of the dead ! " Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead ! Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea Said, " God has touched him ! Why should we ! " Said an old wife mourning her only son, " Cut the rogue's tether and let him run ! " So with soft relentings and rude excuse. Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose, And gave him a cloak to hide him in, And left him alone with his shame and sin. Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart. Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead ! THE BAREFOOT BOY Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan ! With thy turned-up pantaloons, And thy merry whistled tunes ; With thy red lip, redder still Kissed by strawberries on the hill ; LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 443 With the sunshine on thy face, Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace ; From my heart I give thee joy, — I was once a barefoot boy ! Prince thou art, — the grown-up man Only is repubhcan. Let the million-dollared ride ! Barefoot, trudging at his side, Thou hast more than he can buy In the reach of ear and eye, — Outward sunshine, inward joy : Blessings on thee, barefoot boy ! Oh for boyhood's painless play, Sleep that wakes in laughing day. Health that mocks the doctor's rules, Knowledge never learned of schools. Of the wild bee's morning chase. Of the wild-flower's time and place. Flight of fowl and habitude Of the tenants of the wood ; How the tortoise bears his shell, How the woodchuck digs his cell. And the ground mole sinks his well ; How the robin feeds her young. How the oriole's nest is hung ; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow. Where the ground-nut trails its vine. Where the wood-grape's clusters shine ; Of the black wasp's cunning way. Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans ! For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks ; Hand in hand with her he walks. Face to face with her he talks, 444 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Part and parcel of her joy, — Blessings on the barefoot boy ! Oh, for boyhood's time of June, Crowding years in one brief moon, When all things I heard or saw Me, their master, waited for. I was rich in flowers and trees, Humming-birds and honey-bees ; For my sport the squirrel played, Plied the snouted mole his spade ; For my taste the blackberry cone Purpled over hedge and stone ; Laughed the brook for my delight Through the day and through the night, — Whispering at the garden wall. Talked with me from fall to fall ; Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, Mine the walnut slopes beyond, Mine, on bending orchard trees, Apples of Hesperides ! Still *as my horizon grew. Larger grew my riches too ; All the world I saw or knew Seemed a complex Chinese toy, Fashioned for a barefoot boy ! Oh for festal dainties spread, Like my bowl of milk and bread ; Pewter spoon and bowl of wood. On the door-stone, gray and rude ! O'er me, like a regal tent. Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, Purple-curtained, fringed with gold. Looped in many a wind-swung fold, While for music came the play Of the pied frogs' orchestra ; LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 445 And, to light the noisy choir, Lit the fly his lamp of fire. I was monarch : pomp and joy Waited on the barefoot boy ! Cheerily, then, my little man. Live and laugh, as boyhood can ! Though the flinty slopes be hard. Stubble-speared the new-mown sward, Every morn shall lead thee through Fresh baptisms of the dew ; Every evening from thy feet Shall the cool wind kiss the heat : All too soon these feet must hide In the prison cells of pride. Lose the freedom of the sod. Like the colt's for work be shod, Made to tread the mills of toil. Up and down in ceaseless moil : Happy if their track be found Never on forbidden ground ; Happy if they sink not in Quick and treacherous sands of sin. Ah ! that thou couldst know thy joy. Ere it passes, barefoot boy ! TELLING THE BEES Here is the place ; right over the hill Runs the path I took ; You can see the gap in the old wall still. And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. There is the house, with the gate red-barred. And the poplars tall ; And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard. And the white horns tossing above the wall. 446 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE There are the beehives ranged in the sun ; And down by the brink Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed o'errun, Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink. A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, Heavy and slow ; And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, And the same brook sings of a year ago. There 's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze ; And the June sun warm Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, Setting, as then, over Fernside farm. I mind me how with a lover's care From my Sunday coat I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my hair. And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat. Since we parted, a month had passed, — To love, a year ; Down through the beeches I looked at last On the little red gate and the well-sweep near. I can see it all now, — the slantwise rain Of light through the leaves. The sundown's blaze on her window-pane. The bloom of her roses under the eaves. Just the same as a month before, — The house and the trees. The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door, — Nothing changed but the hive of bees. Before them, under the garden wall. Forward and back. Went drearily singing the chore-girl small. Draping each hive with a shred of black. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 447 Trembling, I listened : the summer sun Had the chill of snow ; For I knew she was telling the bees of one Gone on the journey we all must go ! Then I said to myself, '" My Mary weeps For the dead to-day ; Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps The fret and the pain of his age away." But her dog whined low ; on the doorway sill, With his cane to his chin, The old man sat ; and the chore girl still Sang to the bees stealing out and in. And the song she was singing ever since In my ear sounds on : " Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence ! Mistress Mary is dead and gone ! " IN SCHOOL-DAYS Still sits the school-house by the road, A ragged beggar sleeping ; Around it still the sumachs grow, And blackberry vines are creeping. Within, the master's desk is seen, Deep scarred by raps official ; The warping floor, the battered seats, The jack-knife's carved initial ; The charcoal frescos on its wall ; Its door's worn sill, betraying The feet that, creeping slow to school, Went storming out to playing ! 448 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Long years ago a winter sun Shone over it at setting ; Lit up its western window-panes, And low eaves' icy fretting, It touched the tangled golden curls, And brown eyes full of grieving. Of one who still her steps delayed When all the school were leaving. For near her stood the little boy Her childish favor singled : His cap pulled low upon a face Where pride and shame were mingled. Pushing with restless feet the snow To right and left, he lingered ; — As restlessly her tiny hands The blue-checked apron fingered. He saw her lift her eyes ; he felt The soft hand's light caressing, And heard the tremble of her voice, As if a fault confessing. " I 'm sorry that I spelt the word : I hate to go above you, Because," — the brown eyes lower fell, — " Because, you see, I love you ! " Still memory to a gray-haired man That sweet child-face is showing. Dear girl ! The grasses on her grave Have forty years been growing ! He lives to learn, in life's hard school, How few who pass above him Lament their triumph and his loss. Like her, — because they love him. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 449 THE ETERNAL GOODNESS friends ! with whom my feet have trod The quiet aisles of prayer, Glad witness to your zeal for God And love of man I bear. 1 trace your lines of argument ; Your logic linked and strong I weigh as one who dreads dissent, And fears a doubt as wrong. But still my human hands are weak To hold your iron creeds : Against the words ye bid me speak My heart within me pleads. Who fathoms the Eternal Thought ? Who talks of scheme and plan .■' The Lord is God ! He needeth not The poor device of man. I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground Ye tread with boldness shod ; I dare not fix with mete and bound The love and power of God. Ye praise His justice ; even such His pitying love I deem : Ye seek a king ; I fain would touch The robe that hath no seam. Ye see the curse that overbroods A world of pain and loss ; I hear our Lord's beatitudes And prayer upon the cross. 450 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE More than your schoolmen teach, within Myself, alas ! I know : Too dark ye cannot paint the sin, Too small the merit show. I bow my forehead to the dust, I veil mine eyes for shame, And urge, in trembling self-distrust, A prayer without a claim, I see the wrong that round me lies, I feel the guilt within ; I hear, with groan and travail-cries, The world confess its sin. Yet, in the maddening maze of things, And tossed by storms and flood, To one fixed trust my spirit clings ; I know that God is good ! Not mine to look where cherubim And seraphs may not see, But nothing can be good in Him Which evil is in me. The wrong that pains my soul below I dare not throne above, I know not of His hate, — I know His goodness and His love. I dimly guess from blessings known Of greater out of sight. And, with the chastened Psalmist, own His judgments too are right. I long for household voices gone. For vanished smiles I long. But God hath led my dear ones on. And He can do no wrong. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 451 I know not what the future hath Of marvel or surprise, Assured alone that life and death His mercy underlies. And if my heart and flesh are weak To bear an untried pain, The bruised reed He will not break, But strengthen and sustain. No offering of my own I have. Nor works my faith to prove ; I can but give the gifts He gave. And plead His love for love. And so beside the Silent Sea I wait the muffled oar ; No harm from Him can come to me On ocean ©r on shore. I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air ; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care. O brothers ! if my faith is vain, If hopes like these betray, Pray for me that my feet may gain The sure and safer way. And Thou, O Lord ! by whom are seen Thy creatures as they be. Forgive me if too close I lean My human heart on Thee ! 452 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE LAUS DEO! Written on hearing the Bells ring on the Passing of the Amendment to the Constitution abolishing Slavery It is done ! Clang of bell and roar of gun Send the tidings up and down. How the belfries rock and reel ! How the great guns, peal on peal, Fling the joy from town to town ! Ring, O bells ! Every stroke exulting tells Of the burial hour of crime. Loud and long, that all may hear, Ring for every listening ear Of Eternity and Time ! Let us kneel : God's own voice is in that peal, And this spot is holy ground. Lord, forgive us ! What are we, That our eyes this glory see. That our ears have heard the sound ! For the Lord On the whirlwind is abroad ; In the earthquake he has spoken ; He has smitten with His thunder The iron walls asunder. And the gates of brass are broken ! Loud and long Lift the old exulting song ; Sing with Miriam by the sea. He has cast the mighty down ; Horse and rider sink and drown ; " He hath triumphed gloriously ! " LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 453 Did we dare, In our agony of prayer, Ask for more than He has done ? When was ever His right hand Over any time or land Stretched as now beneath the sun ? How they pale. Ancient myth and song and tale, In this wonder of our days. When the cruel rod of war Blossoms white with righteous law. And the wrath of man is praise ! Blotted out ! All within and all about Shall a fresher life begin ; Freer breathe the universe As it rolls its heavy curse On the dead and buried sin ! It is done ! In the circuit of the sun Shall the sound thereof go forth. It shall bid the sad rejoice. It shall give the dumb a voice. It shall belt with joy the earth ! Ring and swing, Bells of joy ! On morning's wing Send the sound of praise abroad ! With a sound of broken chains Tell the nation that He reigns, Who alone is Lord and God ! 454 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE MY TRIUMPH The autumn time has come ; On woods that dream of bloom, And over purpHng vines, The low sun fainter shines. The aster-flower is failing, The hazel's gold is paling ; Yet overhead more near The eternal stars appear ! And present gratitude Insures the future's good, And for the things I see I trust the things to be ; That in the paths untrod. And the long days of God, My feet shall still be led. My heart be comforted. O living friends that love me ! dear ones gone above me ! Careless of other fame, 1 leave to you my name. Hide it from idle praises, Save it from evil phrases : Why, when dear lips that spake it Are dumb, should strangers wake it .-* Let the thick curtain fall ; I better know than all How little I have gained. How vast the unattained. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 455 Not by the page word-painted Let life be banned or sainted : Deeper than written scroll The colors of the soul. Sweeter than any sung My songs that found no tongue ; Nobler than any fact My wish that failed of act. Others shall sing the song, Others shall right the wrong,— Finish what I begin, And all I fail of win. What matter, I or they ? Mine or another's day, So the right word be said And life the sweeter made ? Hail to the coming singers ! Hail to the brave light-bringers ! Forward I reach and share All that they sing and dare. The airs of heaven blow o'er me ; A glory shines before me Of what mankind shall be, — Pure, generous, brave, and free. A dream of man and woman Diviner but still human, Solving the riddle old, Shaping the Age of Gold ! The love of God and neighbor ; An equal-handed labor ; The richer life, where beauty Walks hand in hand with duty. 456 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Ring, bells in unreared steeples, The joy of unborn peoples ! Sound, trumpets far off blown, Your triumph is my own ! Parcel and part of all, I keep the festival, Fore-reach the good to be, And share the victory. I feel the earth move sunward, I join the great march onward. And take, by faith, while living, My freehold of thanksgiving. MY PLAYMATE The pines were dark on Ramoth hill. Their song was soft and low ; The blossoms in the sweet May wind Were falling like the snow. The blossoms drifted at our feet. The orchard birds sang clear ; The sweetest and the saddest day It seemed of all the year. For, more to me than birds or flowers, My playmate left her home. And took with her the laughing spring. The music and the bloom. She kissed the lips of kith and kin, She laid her hand in mine : What more could ask the bashful boy Who fed her father's kine .-• LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 457 She left us in the bloom of May : The constant years told o'er Their seasons with as sweet May morns, But she came back no more. I walk, with noiseless feet, the round Of uneventful years ; Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring And reap the autumn ears. She lives where all the golden year Her summer roses blow ; The dusky children of the sun Before her come and go. There haply with her jewelled hands She smooths her silken gown, — No more the homespun lap wherein I shook the walnuts down. The wild grapes wait us by the brook, The brown nuts on the hill, And still the May-day flowers make sweet The woods of Follymill. The lilies blossom in the pond, The bird builds in the tree. The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill The slow song of the sea. I wonder if she thinks of them, And how the old time seems, — If ever the pines of Ramoth wood Are sounding in her dreams. I see her face, I hear her voice ; Does she remember mine ? And what to her is now the boy Who fed her father's kine ? 458 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE What cares she that the orioles build For other eyes than ours, — That other hands with nuts are filled, And other laps with flowers? O playmate in the golden time ! Our mossy seat is green, Its fringing violets blossom yet. The old trees o'er it lean. The winds so sweet with birch and fern A sweeter memory blow ; And there in spring the veeries sing The song of long ago. And still the pines of Ramoth wood Are moaning like the sea, — The moaning of the sea of change Between myself and thee ! SNOW-BOUND A WINTER IDYL " As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so good Spirits which be Angels of Light are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood fire : and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same." — Cor. Agrippa, Occult Philosophy, Book I. ch. v. "Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow ; and, driving o'er the fields. Seems nowhere to alight ; the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven. And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm." Emerson, The Snow-Storm LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 459 The sun that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon. Slow tracing down the thickening sky Its mute and ominous prophecy, A portent seeming less than threat. It sank from sight before it set. A chill no coat, however stout. Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, A hard, dull bitterness of cold, That checked, mid-vein, the circling race Of life-blood in the sharpened face, The coming of the snow-storm told. The wind blew east ; we heard the roar Of Ocean on his wintry shore. And felt the strong pulse throbbing there Beat with low rhythm our inland air. Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, — Brought in the wood from out of doors, Littered the stalls, and from the mows Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows : Heard the horse whinnying for his corn ; And, sharply clashing horn on horn, Impatient down the stanchion rows The cattle shake their walnut bows ; While, peering from his early perch Upon the scaffold's pole of birch. The cock his crested helmet bent And down his querulous challenge sent. Unwarmed by any sunset light The gray day darkened into night, A night made hoary with the swarm And whirl-dance of the blinding storm. 46o READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE As zigzag wavering to and fro Crossed and recrossed the winged snow : And ere the early bedtime came The white drift piled the window-frame, And through the glass the clothes-line posts Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. So all night long the storm roared on : The morning broke without a sun ; In tiny spherule traced with lines Of Nature's geometric signs, In starry flake and pellicle All day the hoary meteor fell ; And, when the second morning shone, We looked upon a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own. Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament, No cloud above, no earth below, — A universe of sky and snow ! The old familiar sights of ours Took marvellous shapes ; strange domes and towers Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, Or garden-wall, or belt of wood ; A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, A fenceless drift what once was road ; The bridle-post an old man sat With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat ; The well-curb had a Chinese roof ; And even the long sweep, high aloof, In its slant splendor, seemed to tell Of Pisa's leaning miracle. A prompt, decisive man, no breath Our father wasted : "Boys, a path! " Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy Count such a summons less than joy .-') LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 461 Our buskins on our feet we drew ; With mittened hands, and caps drawn low To guard our necks and ears from snow, We cut the soHd whiteness through. And, where the drift was deepest, made A tunnel walled and overlaid With dazzling crystal : we had read Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave. And to our own his name we gave. With many a wish the luck were ours To test his lamp's supernal powers. We reached the barn with merry din. And roused the prisoned brutes within. The old horse thrust his long head out. And grave with wonder gazed about ; The cock his lusty greeting said, And forth his speckled harem led ; The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, And mild reproach of hunger looked ; The horned patriarch of the sheep, . Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep, Shook his sage head with gesture mute, And emphasized with stamp of foot. All day the gusty north-wind bore The loosening drift its breath before ; Low circling round its southern zone, The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone, No church-bell lent its Christian tone To the savage air, no social smoke Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. A solitude made more intense By dreary-voiced elements, The shrieking of the mindless wind, The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind. And on the glass the unmeaning beat Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. 462 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Beyond the circle of our hearth No welcome sound of toil or mirth Unbound the spell, and testified Of human life and thought outside. We minded that the sharpest ear The buried brooklet could not hear, The music of whose liquid lip Had been to us companionship, And, in our lonely life, had grown To have an almost human tone. As night drew on, and, from the crest Of wooded knolls that ridged the west. The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank From sight beneath the smothering bank, We piled with care our nightly stack Of wood against the chimney-back, — The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, And on its top the stout back-stick ; The knotty forestick laid apart. And filled between with curious art The ragged brush ; then, hovering near. We watched the first red blaze appear. Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam On whitewashed wall and sagging beam. Until the old, rude-furnished room Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom ; While radiant with a mimic flame Outside the sparkling drift became. And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. The crane and pendent trammels showed. The Turk's heads on the andirons glowed ; While childish fancy, prompt to tell The meaning of the miracle, Whispered the old rhyme: " Undej- the tree When fire outdoors bums merrily, There the witches are makinor tea.'' LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 463 The moon above the eastern wood Shone at its full ; the hill-range stood Transfigured in the silver flood, Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, Dead white, save where some sharp ravine Took shadow, or the sombre green Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black Against the whiteness of their back. For such a world and such a night Most fitting that unwarming light. Which only seemed where'er it fell To make the coldness visible. Shut in from all the world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about, Content to let the north-wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door. While the red logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat ; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed, The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head. The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall ; And, for the winter fireside meet. Between the andirons' straddling feet, The mug of cider simmered slow. The apples sputtered in a row. And, close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood. What matter how the night behaved ? What matter how the north-wind raved ? Blow high, blow low, not all its snow Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow. 464 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE O Time and Change ! — with hair as gray As was my sire's that winter day, How strange it seems, with so much gone Of Hfe and love, to still live on ! Ah, brother ! only I and thou Are left of all that circle now, — The dear home faces whereupon That fitful firelight paled and shone. Henceforward, listen as we will. The voices of that hearth are still ; Look where we may, the wide earth o'er, Those lighted faces smile no more. We tread the paths their feet have worn, We sit beneath their orchard trees. We hear, like them, the hum of bees And rustle of the bladed corn ; We turn the pages that they read. Their written words we linger o'er, But in the sun they cast no shade. No voice is heard, no sign is made. No step is on the conscious floor ! Yet Love will dream and Faith will trust (Since He who knows our need is just) That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress-trees ! Who, hopeless, lays his dead away. Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play ! Who hath not learned, in hours of faith. The truth to flesh and sense unknown. That Life is ever lord of Death, And Love can never lose its own ! We sped the time with stories old, Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told, LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 465 Or stammered from our school-book lore " The chief of Gambia's golden shore." How often since, when all the land Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand, As if a far-blown trumpet stirred The languorous, sin-sick air, I heard : ^'Does not the voice of reason cty, Claim the first right which Nature gave, From the red scourge of bondage fly, Nor deign to live a burdened slave ! " Our father rode again his ride On Memphremagog's wooded side ; Sat down again to moose and samp In trapper's hut and Indian camp ; Lived o'er the old idyllic ease Beneath St. Francois' hemlock-trees ; Again for him the moonlight shone On Norman cap and bodiced zone ; Again he heard the violin play Which led the village dance away, And mingled in its merry whirl The grandam and the laughing girl. Or, nearer home, our steps he led Where Salisbury's level marshes spread Mile-wide as flies the laden bee ; Where merry mowers, hale and strong, Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along The low green prairies of the sea. We shared the fishing off Boar's Head, And round the rocky Isles of Shoals The hake-broil on the driftwood coals ; The chowder on the sand-beach made, Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot. With spoons of clam-shell from the pot. We heard the tales of witchcraft old. And dream and sisrn and marvel told 466 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE To sleepy listeners as they lay Stretched idly on the salted hay, Adrift along the winding shores, When favoring breezes deigned to blow The square sail of the gundelow, And idle lay the useless oars. Our mother, while she turned her wheel Or run the new-knit stocking heel. Told how the Indian hordes came down At midnight on Cochecho town, And how her own great-uncle bore His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. Recalling, in her fitting phrase. So rich and picturesque and free (The common unrhymed poetry Of simple life and country ways). The story of her early days, — She made us welcome to her home ; Old hearths grew wide to give us room ; We stole with her a frightened look At the gray wizard's conjuring-book, The fame whereof went far and wide Through all the simple country-side ; We heard the hawks at twilight play, The boat-horn on Piscataqua, The loon's weird laughter far away ; We fished her little trout-brook, knew What flowers in wood and meadow grew, What sunny hillsides autumn-brown She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down, Saw where in sheltered cove and bay The duck's black squadron anchored lay. And heard the wild geese calling loud Beneath the gray November cloud. Then, haply, with a look more grave. And soberer tone, some tale she gave LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 467 From painful Sewel's ancient tome, Beloved in every Quaker home, Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom. Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint, — Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint ! — Who, when the dreary calms prevailed. And water-butt and bread-cask failed, And cruel, hungry eyes pursued His portly presence, mad for food, With dark hints muttered under breath Of casting lots for life or death, Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies, To be himself the sacrifice. Then, suddenly, as if to save The good man from his living grave, A ripple on the water grew, A school of porpoise flashed in view. "Take, eat," he said, "and be content; These fishes in my stead are sent By Him who gave the tangled ram To spare the child of Abraham." Our uncle, innocent of books. Was rich in lore of fields and brooks. The ancient teachers never dumb Of Nature's unhoused lyceum. In moons and tides and weather wise, He read the clouds as prophecies. And foul or fair could well divine, By many an occult hint and sign. Holding the cunning-warded keys To all the woodcraft mysteries ; Himself to Nature's heart so near That all her voices in his ear Of beast or bird had meanings clear. Like Apollonius of old, Who knew the tales the sparrows told. 468 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Or Hermes, who interpreted What the sage cranes of Nilus said ; A. simple, guileless, childlike man, Content to live where life began ; Strong only on his native grounds, The little world of sights and sounds Whose girdle was the parish bounds, Whereof his fondly partial pride The common features magnified, As Surrey hills to mountains grew In White of Selborne's loving view, — He told how teal and loon he shot, And how the eagle's eggs he got, The feats on pond and river done, The prodigies of rod and gun ; Till, warming with the tales he told. Forgotten was the outside cold, The bitter wind unheeded blew, From ripening corn the pigeons flew. The partridge drummed i' the wood, the mink Went fishing down the river-brink. In fields with bean or clover gay. The woodchuck, like a hermit gray. Peered from the doorway of his cell ; The muskrat plied the mason's trade. And tier by tier his mud-walls laid ; And from the shagbark overhead The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell. Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer And voice in dreams I see, and hear, — The sweetest woman ever Fate Perverse denied a household mate. Who, lonely, homeless, not the less Found peace in love's unselfishness. And welcome whereso'er she went, A calm and gracious element, LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 469 Whose presence seemed the sweet income And womanly atmosphere of home, — Called up her girlhood memories, The huskings and the apple-bees. The sleigh-rides and the summer sails. Weaving through all the poor details And homespun warp of circumstance A golden woof-thread of romance. For well she kept her genial mood And simple faith of maidenhood ; Before her still a cloud-land lay, The mirage loomed across her way ; The morning dew, that dried so soon With others, glistened at her noon ; Through years of toil and soil and care, From glossy tress to thin gray hair, All unprofaned she held apart The virgin fancies of the heart. Be shame to him of woman born Who hath for such but thought of scorn. There, too, our elder sister plied Her evening task the stand beside ; A full, rich nature, free to trust. Truthful and almost sternly just. Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act. And make her generous thought a fact, Keeping with many a light disguise The secret of self-sacrifice. O heart sore-tried ! thou hast the best That Heaven itself could give thee, — rest, Rest from all bitter thoughts and things ! How many a poor one's blessing went With thee beneath the low green tent Whose curtain never outward swings ! As one who held herself a part Of all she saw, and let her heart 470 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Against the household bosom lean, Upon the motley-braided mat Our youngest and our dearest sat, Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes Now bathed within the fadeless green And holy peace of Paradise. Oh, looking from some heavenly hill. Or from the shade of saintly palms, Or silver reach of river calms. Do those large eyes behold me still ? With me one little year ago : — The chill weight of the winter snow For months upon her grave has lain ; And now, when summer south-winds blow And brier and harebell bloom again, I tread the pleasant paths we trod, I see the violet-sprinkled sod, Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak The hillside flowers she loved to seek. Yet following me where'er I went With dark eyes full of love's content. The birds are glad ; the brier-rose fills The air with sweetness ; all the hills Stretch green to June's unclouded sky ; But still I wait with ear and eye For something gone which should be nigh, A loss in all familiar things. In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee, Am I not richer than of old ? Safe in thy immortality,* What change can reach the wealth I hold ? What chance can mar the pearl and gold Thy love hath left in trust with me ? And while in life's late afternoon, Where cool and long the shadows grow, I walk to meet the night that soon . Shall shape and shadow overflow. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 471 I cannot feel that thou art far, Since near at need the angels are, And when the sunset gates unbar. Shall I not see thee waiting stand, And, white against the evening star, The welcome of thy beckoning hand ? Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, The master of the district school Held at the fire his favored place ; Its warm glow lit a laughing face Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared The uncertain prophecy of beard. He teased the mitten-blinded cat. Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat. Sang songs, and told us what befalls In classic Dartmouth's college halls. Born the wild Northern hills among, From whence his yeoman father wrung By patient toil subsistence scant. Not competence and yet not want. He early gained the power to pay His cheerful, self-reliant way ; Could doff at ease his scholar's gown To peddle wares from town to town ; Or through the long vacation's reach In lonely lowland districts teach, Where all the droll experience found At stranger hearths in boarding round. The moonlit skater's keen delight. The sleigh-drive through the frosty night. The rustic party, with its rough Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff, And whirling plate, and forfeits paid, His winter task a pastime made. Happy the snow-locked homes wherein He tuned his merry violin, 472 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Or played the athlete in the barn, Or held the good dame's winding yarn, Or mirth-provoking versions told Of classic legends rare and old, Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome Had all the commonplace of home, And little seemed at best the odds 'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods ; Where Pindus-born Arachthus took The guise of any grist-mill brook, And dread Olympus at his will Became a huckleberry hill. A careless boy that night he seemed ; But at his desk he had the look And air of one who wisely schemed. And hostage from the future took In trained thought and lore of book. Large-brained, clear-eyed, »— of such as he Shall Freedom's young apostles be. Who, following in War's bloody trail. Shall every lingering wrong assail ; All chains from limb and spirit strike. Uplift the black and white alike ; Scatter before their swift advance The darkness and the ignorance, The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth, Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth. Made murder pastime, and the hell Of prison-torture possible ; The cruel lie of caste refute. Old forms remould, and substitute For Slavery's lash the freeman's will. For blind routine, wise-handed skill ; A school-house plant on every hill. Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence The quick wires of intelligence ; LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 473 Till North and South together brought Shall own the same electric thought, In peace a common flag salute, And, side by side in labor's free And unresentful rivalry, Harvest the fields wherein they fought. Another guest that winter night Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light. Unmarked by time, and yet not young, The honeyed music of her tongue And words of meekness scarcely told A nature passionate and bold. Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide. Its milder features dwarfed beside Her unbent will's majestic pride. She sat among us at the best, A not unfeared, half-welcome guest. Rebuking with her cultured phrase Our homeliness of words and ways. A certain pard-like, treacherous grace Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash. Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash ; And under low brows, black with night. Rayed out at times a dangerous light ; The sharp heat-lightnings of her face Presaging ill to him whom Fate Condemned to share her love or hate. A woman tropical, intense In thought and act, in soul and sense, She blended in a like degree The vixen and the devotee. Revealing with each freak or feint The temper of Petruchio's Kate, The raptures of Siena's-saint. Her tapering hand and rounded wrist Had facile power to form a fist ; 474 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE The warm, dark languish of her eyes Was never safe from wrath's surprise. Brows saintly calm and lips devout Knew every change of scowl and pout ; And the sweet voice had notes more high And shrill for social battle-cry. Since then what old cathedral town Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown, What convent-gate has held its lock Against the challenge of her knock ! Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares, Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs, Gray olive slopes of hills that hem Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem, Or startling on her desert throne The crazy Queen of Lebanon With claims fantastic as her own. Her tireless feet have held their way ; And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray, She watches under Eastern skies, With hope each day renewed and fresh. The Lord's quick coming in the flesh, Whereof she dreams and prophesies ! Where'er her troubled path may be. The Lord's sweet pity with her go ! The outward wayward life we see. The hidden springs we may not know. Nor is it given us to discern What threads the fatal sisters spun. Through what ancestral years has run The sorrow with the woman born. What forged her cruel chain of moods. What set her feet in solitudes, And held the love within her mute, LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 475 What mingled madness in the blood, A lifelong discord and annoy, Water of tears with oil of joy. And hid within the folded bud Perversities of flower and fruit. It is not ours to separate The tangled skein of will and fate, To show what metes and bounds should stand Upon the soul's debatable land. And between choice and Providence Divide the circle of events ; But He who knows our frame is just, Merciful and compassionate, And full of sweet assurances And hope for all the language is, That He remembereth we are dust ! At last the great logs, crumbling low. Sent out a dull and duller glow. The bull's-eye watch that hung in view, Ticking its weary circuit through. Pointed with mutely-warning sign Its black hand to the hour of nine. That sign the pleasant circle broke : My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke, Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray, And laid it tenderly away. Then roused himself to safely cover The dull red brand with ashes over. And while, with care, our mother laid The work aside, her steps she stayed One moment, seeking to express Her grateful sense of happiness For food and shelter, warmth and health, And love's contentment more than wealth, With simple wishes (not the weak. Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek, 4/6 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE But such as warm the generous heart, O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part) That none might lack, that bitter night. For bread and clothing, warmth and light. Within our beds awhile we heard The wind that round the gables roared, With now and then a ruder shock, Which made our very bedsteads rock. We heard the loosened clapboards tost. The board-nails snapping in the frost ; And on us, through the unplastered wall. Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall. But sleep stole on, as sleep will do When hearts are light and life is new ; Faint and more faint the murmurs grew. Till in the summer-land of dreams They softened to the sound of streams. Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars. And lapsing waves on quiet shores. Next morn we wakened with the shout Of merry voices high and clear ; And saw the teamsters drawing near To break the drifted highways out. Down the long hillside treading slow We saw the half-buried oxen go, Shaking the snow from heads uptost, Their straining nostrils white with frost. Before our door the straggling train Drew up, an added team to gain. The elders threshed their hands a-cold, Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes From lip to lip ; the younger folks Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled. Then toiled again the cavalcade LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 477 O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine, And woodland paths that wound between Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed. From every barn a team afoot. At every house a new recruit. Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law, Haply the watchful young men saw Sweet doorway pictures of the curls And curious eyes of merry girls. Lifting their hands in mock defence Against the snow-balls' compliments, And reading in each missive tost The charm with Eden never lost. We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound ; And, following where the teamsters led, The wise old Doctor went his round. Just pausing at our door to say In the brief autocratic way Of one who, prompt at Duty's call. Was free to urge her claim on all, That some poor neighbor sick abed At night our mother's aid would need. For, one in generous thought and deed, What mattered in the sufferer's sight The Quaker matron's inward light. The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed ? All hearts confess the saints elect Who, twain in faith, in love agree. And melt not in an acid sect The Christian pearl of charity ! So days went on : a week had passed Since the great world was heard from last. The Almanac we studied o'er, Read and reread our little store Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score ; 478 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE One harmless novel, mostly hid From younger eyes, a book forbid, And poetry, (or good or bad, A single book was all we had,) Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse, A stranger to the heathen Nine, Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine. The wars of David and the Jews, At last the floundering carrier bore The village paper to our door. Lo ! broadening outward as we read. To warmer zones the horizon spread ; In panoramic length unrolled We saw the marvels that it told. Before us passed the painted Creeks, And daft McGregor on his raids In Costa Rica's everglades. And up Taygetus winding slow Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks, A Turk's head at each saddle bow ! Welcome to us its week old news. Its corner for the rustic Muse, Its monthly gauge of snow and rain, Its record, mingling in a breath The wedding knell and dirge of death ; Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale. The latest culprit sent to jail ; Its hue and cry of stolen and lost. Its vendue sales and goods at cost. And traffic calling loud for gain. We felt the stir of hall and street. The pulse of life that round us beat ; The chill embargo of the snow Was melted in the genial glow ; Wide swung again our ice-locked door. And all the world was ours once more ! LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 479 Clasp, Angel of the backward look And folded wings of ashen gray And voice of echoes far away, The brazen covers of thy book ; The weird palimpsest old and vast, - Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past ; Where, closely mingling, pale and glow The characters of joy and woe ; The monographs of outlived years. Or smile-illumed or dim with tears. Green hills of life that slope to death. And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees Shade off to mournful cypresses With the white amaranths underneath. Even while I look, I can but heed The restless sands' incessant fall, Importunate Hours that hours succeed. Each clamorous with its own sharp need. And duty keeping pace with all. Shut down and clasp the heavy lids ; I hear again the voice that bids The dreamer leave his dream midway For larger hopes and graver fears : Life greatens in these later years, The century's aloe flowers to-day ! Yet, haply, in some lull of life, Some Truce of God which breaks its strife. The worldling's eyes shall gather dew. Dreaming in throngful city ways Of winter joys his boyhood knew ; And dear and early friends — the few Who yet remain — shall pause to view These Flemish pictures of old days ; Sit with me by the homestead hearth, 48o READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And stretch the hands of memory forth To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze ! And thanks untraced to hps unknown Shall greet me like the odors blown From unseen meadows newly mown, Or lilies floating in some pond, Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond ; The traveller owns the grateful sense Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, And, pausing, takes with forehead bare The benediction of the air. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES [Born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 29, 1809; died at Cambridge, October 7, 1894] OLD IRONSIDES Ay, tear her tattered ensign down ! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky ; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon's roar ; — The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more. Her decks, once red with heroes' blood. Where knelt the vanquished foe. When winds were hurrying o'er the flood. And waves were white below, No more shall feel the victor's tread. Or know the conquered knee ; — The harpies of the shore shall pluck The eagle of the sea ! LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 481 Oh, better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave ; Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave ; Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms. The lightning and the gale ! THE LAST LEAF I saw him once before, As he passed by the door. And again The pavement stones resound. As he totters o'er the ground With his cane. They say that in his prime. Ere the pruning-knife of Time Cut him down, Not a better man was found By the Crier on his round Through the town. But now he walks the streets. And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan. And he shakes his feeble head, That it seems as if he said, " They are gone." The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb. 482 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE My grandmamma has said — Poor old lady, she is dead Long ago — That he had a Roman nose, And his cheek was like a rose In the snow ; But now his nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff, And a crook is in his back. And a melancholy crack In his laugh. I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here ; But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer ! And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling. THE BOYS 1859 Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys ? If there has, take him out, without making a noise. Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's ^pite ! Old time is a liar ! We 're twenty to-night ! LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 483 We 're twenty ! We 're twenty ! Who says we are more ? He 's tipsy, — young jackanapes ! — show him the door ! '" Gray temples at twenty ? " — Yes ! white if we please ! Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there 's nothing can freeze ! Was it snowing I spoke of ? Excuse the mistake ! Look close, — you will not see a sign of a flake ! We want some new garlands for those we have shed, — And these are white roses in place of the red. We 've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told. Of talking (in public) as if we were old : — That boy we call " Doctor," and this we call " Judge " ; It 's a neat little fiction, — of course it 's all fudge. That fellow 's the " Speaker," — the one on the right ; " Mr. Mayor," my young one, how are you to-night ? That 's our " Member of Congress," we say when we chaff ; There 's the " Reverend " what 's his name ? — don't make me laugh. That boy with the grave mathematical look Made believe he had written a wonderful book, And the Royal Society thought it was true ! So they chose him right in ; a good joke it was, too ! There 's a boy, we pretend, with a three-decker brain. That could harness a team with a logical chain ; When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire. We called him "" The Justice," but now he 's " The Squire." And there 's a nice youngster of excellent pith, — Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith ; But he shouted a song for the brave and the free, — Just read on his medal, " My country," " of thee ! " You hear that boy laughing ? — You think he 's all fun ; But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done ; 484 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE The children laugh loud as they troop to his call, And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all ! Yes, we 're boys, — always playing with tongue or with pen. And I sometime have asked, — Shall we ever be men ? Shall we always be youthful, and laughing, and gay. Till the last dear companion drops smiling away ? Then here 's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray ! The stars of its winter, the dews of its May ! And when we have done with our life-lasting toys. Dear Father, take care of thy children, The Boys ! THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE, OR THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS SHAY" A LOGICAL STORY Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay. That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day. And then, of a sudden, it — ah, but stay, I '11 tell you what happened without delay, Scaring the parson into fits, Frightening people out of their wits, — Have you ever heard of that, I say ? Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. Georgius Secnndns was then alive, — Snuffy old drone from the German hive. That was the year when Lisbon-town Saw the earth open and gulp her down, And Braddock's army was done so brown, Left without a scalp to its crown. It was on the terrible Earthquake-day That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 485 Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, There is always soniezvhere a weakest spot, — In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill. In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, — lurking still, Find it somewhere you must and will, — Above or below, or within or without, — And that 's the reason, beyond a doubt, That a chaise breaks down, but does n't wear out. But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do. With an "" I dew vum," or an " I teW feo?( ") He would build one shay to beat the taown 'N' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun' ; It should be so built that it could n break daown : " Fur," said the Deacon, "' 'tis mighty plain Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain ; 'N' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, Is only jest T' make that place uz strong uz the rest." So the Deacon inquired of the village folk Where he could find the strongest oak. That could n't be split nor bent nor broke, — That was for spokes and floor and sills ; He sent for lancewood to make the thills ; The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees, The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese. But lasts like iron for things like these ; The hubs of logs from the '" Settler's ellum," — Last of its timber, — they could n't sell 'em. Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips ; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw. Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue ; 486 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide ; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he " put her through." " There ! " said the Deacon, " naow she '11 dew ! " Do ! I tell you, I rather guess She was a wonder, and nothing less ! Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, Deacon and deaconess dropped away. Children and grandchildren — where were they ? But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake day ! EIGHTEEN HUNDRED ; — it came and found The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound. Eighteen hundred increased by ten ; — " Hahnsum kerridge " they called it then. Eighteen hundred and twenty came ; — Running as usual ; much the same. Thirty and forty at last arrive, And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE. Little of all we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year Without both feeling and looking queer. In fact, there 's nothing that keeps its youth. So far as I know, but a tree and truth. (This is a moral that runs at large ; Take it. — You 're welcome. — No extra charge.) FIRST of NOVEMBER, — the Earthquake-day, - There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay, A general flavor of mild decay. But nothing local, as one may say. There could n't be, — for the Deacon's art Had made it so like in every part That there was n't a chance for one to start. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 487 For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, And the floor was just as strong as the sills, And the panels just as strong as the floor, And the whipple-tree neither less nor more. And the back crossbar as strong as the fore, And spring and axle and hub encore. And yet, as a zvhole, it is past a doubt In another hour it will be ivom out ! First of November, 'Fifty-five ! This morning the parson takes a drive. Now, small boys, get out of the way ! Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay, Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. " Huddup ! " said the parson. — Off went they. The parson was working his Sunday's text, — Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed At what the — Moses — was coming next. All at once the horse stood still. Close by the meet'n '-house on the hill. First a shiver, and then a thrill, Then something decidedly like a spill, — And the parson was sitting upon a rock, At half past nine by the meet'n'-house clock, — Just the hour of the Earthquake shock ! What do you think the parson found. When he got up and stared around } The poor old chaise in a heap or mound. As if it had been to the mill and ground ! You see, of course, if you 're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once, — All at once, and nothing first, — Just as bubbles do when they burst. End of the wonderful one-hoss shay Logic is logic. That 's all I say. 488 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main, — The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare. Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl ; Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed, — Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed ! Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil ; Still, as the spiral grew. He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee. Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn ! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn ! While on my ear it rings. Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings : Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul. As the swift seasons roll ! LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 489 Leave thy low-vaulted past ! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free. Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea ! A SUN-DAY HYMN Lord of all being ! throned afar, Thy glory flames from sun and star ; Centre and soul of every sphere, Yet to each loving heart how near ! Sun of our life, thy quickening ray Sheds on our path the glow of day ; Star of our hope, thy softened light Cheers the long watches of the night. Our midnight is thy smile withdrawn ; Our noontide is thy gracious dawn ; Our rainbow arch thy mercy's sign ; All, save the clouds of sin, are thine ! Lord of all life, below, above. Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love, Before thy ever-blazing throne We ask no lustre of our own. Grant us thy truth to make us free, And kindling hearts that burn for thee, Till all thy living altars claim One holy light, one heavenly flame ! 490 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE THE VOICELESS We count the broken lyres that rest Where the sweet waihng singers slumber, But o'er their silent sister's breast The wild-flowers who will stoop to number ? A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them : — Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them ! Nay, grieve not for the dead alone Whose song has told their hearts' sad story, — Weep for the voiceless, who have known The cross without the crown of glory ! Not where Leucadian breezes sweep O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow, But where the glistening night-dews weep On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow. O hearts that break and give no sign Save whitening lips and fading tresses, Till Death pours out his longed-for wine Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses, - If singing breath or echoing chord To every hidden pang were given. What endless melodies were poured. As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven ! THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE Chap. II I really believe some people save their bright thoughts, as being too precious for conversation. What do you think an admiring friend said the other day to one that was talking good things, — good enough to print.? "Why," said he, "you are wasting mer- chantable literature, a cash article, at the rate, as nearly as I can LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 491 tell, of fifty dollars an hour." The talker took him to the window and asked him to look out and tell him what he saw. " Nothing but a very dusty street," he said, " and a man driving a sprinkling-machine through it." " Why don't you tell the man he is wasting that water.? What would be the state of the highways of life, if we did not drive our thought-sprinklers through them with the valves open, sometimes } " Besides, there is another thing about this talking, which you forget. It shapes our thoughts for us ; — the waves of conversa- tion roll them as the surf rolls the pebbles on the shore. Let me modify the image a little. I rough out my thoughts in talk as an artist models in clay. Spoken language is so plastic, — you can pat and coax, and spread and shave, and rub out, and fill up, and stick on so easily, when you work that soft material, that there is nothing like it for modeling. Out of it comes the shapes which you turn into marble or bronze in your immortal books, if you happen to write such. Or, to use another illustration, writing or printing is like shooting with a rifle ; you may hit your reader's mind, or miss it ; — but talking is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an engine ; if it is within reach, and you have time enough, you can't help hitting it." The company agreed that this last illustration was of superior excellence, or, in the phrase used by them, " Fust-rate." — I ac- knowledged the compliment, but gently rebuked the expression. "Fust-rate," "prime," "a prime article," "a superior piece of goods," "a handsome garment," "a gent in a flowered vest," — all such expressions are final. They blast the lineage of him or her who utters them, for generations up and down. There is one other phrase which will soon come to be decisive of a man's social status, if it is not already : " That tells the whole story." It is an expression which vulgar and conceited people particularly affect, and which well-meaning ones, who know better, catch from them. It is intended to stop all debate, like the previous question in the General Court. Only it don't; simply because "that" does not usually tell the whole, nor one half of the whole story. It is an odd idea, that almost all our people have had a professional education. To become a doctor a man must study 492 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE some three years and hear a thousand lectures, more or less. Just how much study it takes to make a lawyer I cannot say, but proba- bly not more than this. Now most decent people^hear one hundred lectures or sermons (discourses) on theology every year, — and this, twenty, thirty, fifty years together. They read a great many reli- gious books besides. The clergy, however, rarely hear any sermons except what they preach themselves. A dull preacher might be conceived, therefore, to lapse into a state of quasi heathenism, simply for want of religious instruction. And on the other hand, an attentive and intelligent hearer, listening to a succession of wise teachers, might become actually better educated in theology than any one of them. We are all theological students, and more of us qualified as doctors of divinity, than have received degrees at any of the universities. It is not strange, therefore, that very good people should often find it diflticult, if not impossible, to keep their attention fixed upon a sermon treating feebly a subject which they have thought vigor- ously about for years, and heard able men discuss scores of times. I have often noticed, however, that a hopelessly dull discourse acts inductively, as electricians would say, in developing strong mental currents. I am ashamed to think with what accompaniments and variations and fioritiire I have sometimes followed the droning of a heavy speaker, — not willingly, — for my habit is reverential, but as a necessary result of a slight continuous impression on the senses and the mind, which kept both in action without furnishing the food they required to work upon. If you ever saw a crow with a king-bird after him, you will get an image of a dull speaker and a lively listener. The bird in sable plumage flaps heavily along his straightforward course, while the other sails round him, over him, under him, leaves him, comes back again, tweaks out a black feather, shoots away once more, never losing sight of him, and finally reaches the crow's perch at the same time the crow does, having cut a perfect labyrinth of loops and knots, and spirals while the slow fowl was painfully working from one end of his straight line to the other. [I think these remarks were received rather coolly. A temporary boarder from the country, consisting of a somewhat more than LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 493 middle-aged female, with a parchment forehead and a dry little " frisette " shingling it, a sallow neck with a necklace of gold beads, a black dress too rusty for recent grief, and contours in basso-rilievo, left the table prematurely, and was reported to have been very viru- lent about what I said. So I went to my good old minister, and repeated the remarks, as nearly as I could remember them, to him. He laughed good-naturedly, and said there was considerable truth in them. He thought he could tell when people's minds were wandering, by their looks. In the earlier years of his ministry he had sometimes noticed this, when he was preaching ; — a very little of late years. Sometimes, when his colleague was preaching, he observed this kind of inattention ; but after all, it was not so very unnatural. I will say, by the way, that it is a rule I have long followed, to tell my worst faults to my minister, and my best thoughts to the young people I talk with.] 1 want to make a literary confession now, which I believe nobody has made before me. You know very well that I write verses sometimes, because I have read some of them at this table. (The company assented, — two or three of them in a resigned sort of way, as I thought, as if they supposed I had an epic in my pocket, and was going to read half a dozen books or so for their benefit.) — I continued. Of course I write some lines or passages which are better than others ; some which, compared with the others, might be called relatively excellent. It is in the nature of things that I should consider these relatively excellent lines or passages as absolutely good. So much must be pardoned to hu- manity. Now I never wrote a ""good" line in my life, but the moment after it was written it seemed a hundred years old. Very commonly I had a sudden conviction that I had seen it somewhere. Possibly I may have sometimes unconsciously stolen it, but I do not remember that I ever once detected any historical truth in these sudden convictions of the antiquity of my new thought or phrase. I have learned utterly to distrust them, and never allow them to bully me out of a thought or line. This is the philosophy of it. (Here the number of the company was diminished by a small secession.) Any new formula which suddenly emerges in our consciousness has its roots in long trains 494 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE of thought ; it is virtually old when it first makes its appearance among the recognized growths of our intellect. Any crystalline group of musical words has had a long and still period to form in. Here is one theory. But there is a larger law which perhaps comprehends these facts. It is this. The rapidity with which ideas grow old in our memories is in a direct ratio to the squares of their importance. Their appar- ent age runs up miraculously, like the value of diamonds, as they increase in magnitude. A great calamity, for instance, is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened. It stains backward through all the leaves we have turned over in the book of life, be- fore its blot of tears or of blood is dry on the page we are turning. For this we seem to have lived ; it was foreshadowed in dreams that we leaped out of in the cold sweat of terror; in the '" dissolving views " of dark day-visions ; all omens pointed to it ; all paths led to it. After the tossing half-forgetfulness of the first sleep that follows such an event, it comes upon us afresh, as a surprise, at waking ; in a few moments it is old again, — old as eternity. [I wish I had not said all this then and there. I might have known better. The pale schoolmistress, in her mourning dress, w^as looking at me, as I noticed, with a wild sort of expression. All at once the blood dropped out of her cheeks as the mercury drops from a broken barometer-tube, and she melted away from her seat like an image of snow ; a slung-shot could not have brought her down better. God forgive me ! After this little episode, I continued, to some few that remained balancing tea-spoons on the edges of cups, twirling knives, or tilting upon the hind legs of their chairs until their heads reached the wall, where they left gratuitous advertisements of various popular cosmetics.] When a person is suddenly thrust into any strange, new position of trial, he finds the place fits him as if he had been measured for it. He has committed a great crime, for instance, and is sent to the State Prison. The traditions, prescriptions, limitations, privileges, all the sharp conditions of his new life, stamp themselves upon his con- sciousness as the signet on soft wax ; — a single pressure is enough. Let me strengthen the image a little. Did you ever happen to see LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 495 that most soft-spoken and velvet-handed steam-engine at the Mint ? The smooth piston shdes backward and forward as a lady might slip her delicate finger in and out of a ring. The engine lays one of its fingers calmly, but firmly, upon a bit of metal ; it is a coin now, and will remember that touch, and tell a new race about it, when the date upon it is crusted over with twenty centuries. So it is that a great silent-moving misery puts a new stamp on us in an hour or a moment, — as sharp an impression as if it had taken half a lifetime to engrave it. It is awful to be in the hands of the wholesale professional dealers in misfortune ; undertakers and jailers magnetize you in a moment, and you pass out of the individual life you were living into the rhythmical movements of their horrible machinery. Do the worst thing you can, or suffer the worst that can be thought of, you find yourself in a category of humanity that stretches back as far as Cain, and with an expert at your elbow that has studied your case all out beforehand, and is waiting for you with his implements of hemp or mahogany. I believe, if a man were to be burned in any of our cities to-morrow for heresy, there would be found a master of ceremonies that knew just how many fagots were necessary, and the best way of arranging the whole matter. So we have not won the Goodwood-cup ; mi contraire, we were a "bad fifth," if not worse than that; and trying it again, and the third time, has not yet bettered the matter. Now I am as patriotic as any of my fellow-citizens, — too patriotic in fact, for I have got into hot water by loving too much of my country ; in short, if any man, whose fighting weight is not more than eight stone four pounds, disputes it I am ready to discuss the point with him. I should have gloried to see the stars and stripes in front at the finish. I love my country, and I love horses. Stubb's old mezzo- tint of Eclipse hangs over my desk, and Herring's portrait of Pleni- potentiary, — whom I saw run at Epsom, — over my fireplace. Did I not elope from school to see Revenge, and Prospect, and Little John, and Peacemaker run over the race-course where now yon suburban village flourishes, in the year eighteen hundred and ever- so-few 1 Though I never owned a horse, have I not been the pro- prietor of six equine females, of which one was the prettiest little 496 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE " Morgin " that ever stepped ? Listen, then, to an opinion I have often expressed long before this venture of ours in England. Horse-racmg" is not a republican institution ; \\orst-trotting is. Only very rich persons can keep race-horses, and everybody knows they are kept mainly as gambling implements. All that matter about blood and speed we won't discuss ; we understand all that ; useful, very, — of course, — great obligations to the Godolphin " Arabian," and the rest. I say racing horses are essentially gam- bling implements, as much as roulette tables. Now I am not preach- ing at this moment ; I may read you one of my sermons some other morning ; but I maintain that gambling, on the great scale, is not republican. It belongs to two phases of society, — a cankered over- civilization, such as exists in rich aristocracies, and the reckless life of borderers and adventurers, or the semi-barbarism of a civilization resolved into its primitive elements. Real republicanism is stern and severe ; its essence is not in forms of government, but in the omnipotence of public opinion which grows out of it. This public opinion cannot prevent gambling with dice or stocks, but it can and does compel it to keep comparatively quiet. But horse-racing is the most public way of gambling ; and with all its immense attractions to the sense and the feelings, — to which I plead very susceptible, — the disguise is too thin that covers it, and everybody knows what it means. Its supporters are the Southern gentry, — fine fellows, no doubt, but not republicans exactly, as we understand the term, — a few Northern millionaires more or less thoroughly millioned, who do not represent the real people, and the mob of sporting men, the best of whom are commonly idlers, and the worst very bad neighbors to have near one in a crowd, or to meet in a dark alley. In England, on the other hand, with its aristocratic institutions, racing is a natural growth enough ; the passion for it spreads down- ward through all classes, from the Queen to the costermonger. London is like a shelled corn-cob on the Derby day, and there is not a clerk who could raise the money to hire a saddle with an old hack under it that can sit down on his office-stool the next day without wincing. Now just compare the racer with the trotter for a moment. The racer is incidentally useful, but essentially something to bet LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 497 upon, as much as the thimble-rigger's " Httle joker." The trotter is essentially and daily useful, and only incidentally a tool for sporting men. What better reason do you want for the fact that the racer is most cultivated and reaches his greatest perfection in England, and that the trotting horses of America beat the world .? And why should we have expected that the pick — if it was the pick — of our few and far-between racing stables should beat the pick of England and France ? Throw over the fallacious time-test, and there was nothing to show for it but a natural kind of patriotic feeling, which we all have, with a thoroughly provincial conceit, which some of us must plead guilty to. We may beat yet. As an American, I hope we shall. As a moralist and occasional sermonizer, I am not so anxious about it. Wherever the trotting horse goes, he carries in his train brisk omnibuses, lively bakers' carts, and therefore hot rolls, the jolly butcher's wagon, the cheerful gig, the wholesome afternoon drive with wife and child, — all the forms of moral excellence, except truth, which does not agree with any kind of horse-flesh. The racer brings with him gambling, cursing, swearing, drinking, the eating of oysters, and a distaste for mob-caps and the middle- aged virtues. And by the way, let me beg you not to call a trotting match a race, and not to speak of a "thoroughbred" as a ''^blooded'' horse, unless he has been recently phlebotomized. I consent to your saying "blood horse," if you like. Also, if, next year, we sent out Posterior and Posterioress, the winners of the great national four-mile race in 7:18!-, and they happen to get beaten, pay your bets, and behave like men and gentlemen about it, if you know how. [I felt a great deal better after blowing off the ill-temper con- densed in the above paragraph. To brag little, — to show well, — to crow gently, if in luck, — to pay up, to own up, and to shut up, if beaten, are the virtues of a sporting man, and I can't say that I think we have shown them in any great perfection of late.] Apropos of horses. Do you know how important good jockeying is to authors .-' Judicious management ; letting the public see your animal just enough, and not too much ; holding 498 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE him up hard when the market is too full of him ; letting him out at just the right buying intervals ; always gently feeling his mouth ; never slacking and never jerking the rein ; — this is what I mean by jockeying. When an author has a number of books out, a cunning hand will keep them all spinning, as Signor Blitz does his dinner- plates ; fetching each one up, as it begins to "wabble," by an advertisement, a puff, or a quotation. Whenever the extracts from a living writer begin to mul- tiply fast in the papers, without obvious reason, there is a new book or a new edition coming. The extracts are ground-bait. Literary life is full of curious phenomena. I don't know that here is anything more noticeable than what we may call coiivcntiojial reputations. There is a tacit understanding in every community of men of letters that they will not disturb the popular fallacy respecting this or that electro-gilded celebrity. There are various reasons for this forbearance ; one is old ; one is rich ; one is good-natured ; one is such a favorite with the pit that it would not be safe to hiss him from the manager's box. The venerable augurs of the literary or scientific temple may smile faintly when one of the tribe is mentioned ; but the farce is in general kept up as well as the Chinese comic scene of entreating and imploring a man to stay with you, with the implied compact between you that he shall by no means think of doing it. A poor wretch he must be who would wantonly sit down on one of these bandbox reputa- tions. A Prince-Rupert's-drop, which is a tear of unannealed glass, lasts indefinitely, if you keep it from meddling hands ; but break its tail off, and it explodes and resolves itself into powder. These celebrities I speak of are the Prince-Rupert's-drops of the learned and polite world. See how the papers treat them ! What an array of pleasant kaleidoscopic phrases, that can be arranged in ever so many charming patterns, is at their service! How kind the "Criti- cal Notices " — where small authorship comes to pick up chips of praise, fragrant, sugary, and sappy — always are to them ! Well, life would be nothing without paper-credit and other fictions ; so let them pass current. Don't steal their chips; don't puncture their swimming-bladders ; don't come down on their pasteboard LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 499 boxes ; don't break the ends of their brittle and unstable reputa- tions, you fellows who all feel sure that your names will be house- hold words a thousand years from now. "A thousand years is a good while," said the old gentleman who sits opposite, thoughtfully. Where have I been for the last three or four days.? Down at the Island, deer-shooting. — How many did I bag? I brought home one buck shot. — The Island is where.? No matter. It is the most splendid domain that any man looks upon in these lati- tudes. Blue sea around it, and running up into its heart, so that the little boat slumbers like a baby in lap, while the tall ships are stripping naked to fight the hurricane outside, and storm-stay-sails banging and flying in ribbons. Trees, in stretches of miles ; beeches, oaks, most numerous ; — many of them hung with moss, looking like bearded ' Druids ; some coiled in the clasp of huge, dark-stemmed grape-vines. Open patches where the sun gets in and goes to sleep, and the winds come so finely sifted that they are as soft as swan's down. Rocks scattered about, — Stonehenge-like monoliths. Fresh- water lakes; one of them, Mary's lake, crystal-clear, full of flashing pickerel lying under the lily-pads like tigers in the jungle. Six pounds of ditto one morning for breakfast. Ego fecit. The divinity-student looked as if he would like to question my Latin. No, sir, I said, — you need not trouble yourself. There is a higher law in grammar, not to be put down by Andrews and Stoddard. Then I went on. Such hospitality as that island has seen there has not been the like of in these our New England sovereignties. There is nothing in the shape of kindness and courtesy that can make life beautiful, which has not found its home in that ocean-principality. It has welcomed all who were worthy of welcome, from the pale clergy- man who came to breathe the sea-air with its medicinal salt and iodine, to the great statesman who turned his back on the affairs of empire, and smoothed his Olympian forehead, and flashed his white teeth in merriment over the long table, where his wit was the keenest and his story the best. [I don't believe any man ever talked like that in this world. I don't believe / talked just so ; but the fact is, in reporting one's 500 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE conversation, one cannot help Blair-'mg it up more or less, ironing out crumpled paragraphs, starching limp ones, and crimping and plaiting a little sometimes ; it is as natural as prinking at the looking-glass.] How can a man help writing poetry in such a place ? Every- body does write poetry that goes there. In the state archives, kept in the library of the Lord of the Isle, are whole volumes of unpub- lished verse, — some by well-known hands, and others, quite as good, by the last people you would think of as versifiers, — men who could pension off all the genuine poets in the country, and buy ten acres of Boston common, if it was for sale, with what they had left. Of course I had to write my little copy of verses with the rest ; here it is, if you will hear me read it. When the sun is in the west, ves- sels sailing in an easterly direction look bright or dark to one who observes them from the north or south, according to the tack they are sailing upon. Watching them from one of the windows of the great mansion, I saw these perpetual changes, and moralized thus : — As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green To the billows of foam-crested blue, Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue : Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray As the chaff in the stroke of the flail ; Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way The sun gleaming bright on her sail. Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun, — Of breakers that whiten and roar ; How little he cares, if in shadow or sun They see him that gaze from the shore ! He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef, To the rock that is under his lee. As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf, O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea. Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves. Where life and its ventures are laid. The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves May see us in sunshine or shade ; LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 50 1 Yet true to our course, though our shadow grow dark, We "11 trim our broad sail as before. And stand by the rudder that governs the bark. Nor ask how we look from the shore ! Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself ; stupidity often saves a man from going mad. We frequently see persons in insane hospitals, sent there in con- sequence of what are called religious mental disturbances. I con- fess that I think better of them than of many who hold the same notions, and keep their wits and appear to enjoy life very well, out- side of the asylums. Any decent person ought to go mad, if he really holds such or such opinions. It is very much to his discredit in every point of view, if he does not. What is the use of my say- ing what some of these opinions are } Perhaps more than one of you hold such as I should think ought to send you straight over to Somerville, if you have any logic in your heads or any human feel- ing in your hearts. Anything that is brutal, cruel, heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most of mankind and perhaps for entire races, — anything that assumes the necessity of the extermination of instincts which were given to be regulated, — no matter by what name you call it, — no matter whether a fakir, or a monk, or a dea- con believes it, — if received, ought to produce insanity in every well- regulated mind. That condition becomes a normal one, under the circumstances. I am very much ashamed of some people for retain- ing their reason, when they know perfectly well that if they were not the most stupid or the most selfish of human beings, they would become nonconipotcs at once. [Nobody understood this but the theological student and the schoolmistress. They looked intelligently at each other ; but whether they were thinking about my paradox or not, I am not clear. — It would be natural enough. Stranger things have hap- pened. Love and Death enter boarding-houses without asking the price of board, or whether there is room for them. Alas, these young people are poor and pallid ! Love sJiould be both rich and 502 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE rosy, but must be either rich or rosy. Talk about military duty ! What is that to the warfare of a married maid-of-all-work, with the title of mistress, and an American female constitution, which col- lapses just in the middle third of life, and comes out vulcanized India-rubber, if it happen to live through the period when health and strength are most wanted ?] Have I ever acted in private theatricals? Often. I have played the part of the " Poor Gentleman," before a great many audiences, — more, I trust, than I shall ever face again. I did not wear a stage-costume, nor a wig, nor mustaches of burnt cork ; but I was placarded and announced as a public performer, and at the proper hour I came forward with the ballet-dancer's smile upon my countenance, and made my bow and acted my part. I have seen my name stuck up in letters so big that I was ashamed to show myself in the place by daylight. I have gone to a town with a sober literary essay in my pocket, and seen myself everywhere announced as the most desperate of buffos, — one who was obliged to restrain himself in the full exercise of his powers, from pru- dential considerations. I have been through as many hardships as Ulysses, in the pursuit of my histrionic vocation. I have traveled in cars until the conductors all knew me like a brother. I have run off the rails, and stuck all night in snow-drifts, and sat behind females that would have the window open when one could not wink without his eyelids freezing together. Perhaps I shall give you some of my experiences one of these days ; — I will not now, for I have something else for you. Private theatricals, as I have figured in them in county lyceum- halls, are one thing, — and private theatricals, as they may be seen in certain gilded and frescoed saloons of our metropolis, are another. Yes, it is pleasant to see real gentlemen and ladies, who do not think it necessary to mouth, and rant, and stride, like most of our stage heroes and heroines, in the characters which show off their graces and talents ; most of all to see a fresh, unrouged, unspoiled, high-bred young maiden, with a lithe figure, and a pleasant voice, acting in those love-dramas that make us young again to look upon, when real youth and beauty will play them for us. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 503 Of course I wrote the prologue I was asked to write. I did not see the play, though. I knew there was a young lady in it, and that somebody was in love with her, and she was in love with him, and somebody (an old tutor, I believe) wanted to interfere, and, very naturally, the young lady was too sharp for him. The play of course ends charmingly ; there is a general reconciliation, and all concerned form a line and take each others' hands, as people always do after they have made up their quarrels, — and then the curtain falls, — if it does not stick, as it commonly does at private theatrical exhibitions, in which case a boy is detailed to pull it down, which he does, blushing violently. Now, then, for my prologue. I am not going to change my caesuras and cadences for anybody ; so if you do not like the heroic, or iambic trimeter brachy-catalectic, you had better not wait to hear it. THIS IS IT A Prologue ? Well, of course the ladies know ; I have my doubts. No matter, — here we go ! What is a Prologue .'' Let our Tutor teach : Pro means beforehand ; logos stands for speech. 'T is like the harper's prelude on the strings, The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings ; — Prologues in meter are to o^&x pros As worsted stockings are to engine-hose. " The world 's a stage," — as Shakespeare said, one day ; The stage a world — was what he meant to say. The outside world 's a blunder, that is clear ; The real world that Nature meant is here. Here every foundling finds its lost mamma ; Each rogue, repentant, melts his stern papa ; Misers relent, the spendthrift's debts are paid, The cheats are taken in the traps they laid ; One after one the troubles all are past Till the fifth act comes right side up at last. When the young couple, old folks, rogues, and all. Join hands, so happy at the curtain's fall. 504 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE — Here suffering virtue ever finds relief, And black-browed ruffians always come to grief. — When the lorn damsel, with a frantic screech, And cheeks as hueless as a brandy-peach, Cries, " Help, kyind Heaven ! " and drops upon her knees On the green — baize, — beneath the (canvas) trees, — See to her side avenging Valor fly : — " Ha ! Villain ! Draw ! Now, Terraitorr, yield or die ! " — When the poor hero flounders in despair, Some dear lost uncle turns up millionaire, — Clasps the young scapegrace with paternal joy. Sobs on his neck, " My boy ! Mv boy ! ! MY BOY ! ! ! " Ours, then, sweet friends, the real world to-night Of love that conquers in disaster's spite. Ladies, attend ! While woful cares and doubt Wrong the soft passion in the world without, Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere, One thing is certain : Love will triumph here ! Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule, — The world's great masters, when you 're out of school, — Learn the brief moral of our evening's play : Man has his will, — but woman has her way ! While man's dull spirit toils in smoke and fire. Woman's swift instinct threads the electric wire, — The magic bracelet stretched beneath the waves Beats the black giant with his score of slaves. All earthly powers confess your sovereign art But that one rebel, — woman's wilful heart All foes you master ; but a woman's wit Lets daylight through you ere you know you 're hit. So, just to picture what her art can do. Hear an old story made as good as new. Rudolph, professor of the headsman's trade. Alike was famous for his arm and blade. One day a prisoner Justice had to kill Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill. Bare-armed, swart-visaged, gaunt, and shaggy-browed, Rudolph the headsman rose above the crowd. His falchion lighted with a sudden gleam, As the pike's armor flashes in the streani. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 505 He sheathed his blade ; he turned as if to go ; The victim knelt, still waiting for the blow. "Why strikest not? Perform thy murderous act," The prisoner said. (His voice was slightly cracked.) " Friend, I have struck," the artist straight replied ; " Wait but one moment, and yourself decide." He held his snuff-box, — - " Now then, if you please ! " The prisoner sniffed, and, with a crashing sneeze, Off his head tumbled, — bowled along the floor, — Bounced down the steps ; — the prisoner said no more ! Woman ! thy falchion is a glittering eye ; If death lurks in it, oh, how sweet to die ! Thou takest hearts as Rudolph took the head ; We die with love, and never dream we 're dead ! The prologue went off very well, as I hear. No alterations were suggested by the lady to whom it was sent, so far as I know. Sometimes people criticise the poems one sends them, and sug- gest all sorts of improvements. Who was that silly body that wanted Burns to alter " Scots wha hae," so as to lengthen the last line thus } — " Edward ! " Chains and slavery ! Here is a little poem I sent a short time since to a committee for a certain celebration. I understood that it was to be a festive and convivial occasion, and ordered myself accordingly. It seems the president of the day was what is called a " teetotaller." I received a note from him in the following words, containing the copy subjoined, with the emendations annexed to it. "Dear Sir, — Your poem gives good satisfaction to the com- mittee. The sentiments expressed with reference to liquor are not, however, those generally entertained by this community. I have therefore consulted the clergyman of this place, who has made some slight changes, which he thinks will remove all objections, and keep the valuable portions of the poem. Please to inform me of your charge for said poem. Our means are limited, etc., etc., etc. " Yours with respect." So6 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE HERE IT IS. — WITH THE SLIGHT ALTERATIONS! Come ! fill a fresh bumper, — for why should we go logwood While the n e ctar still reddens our cups as they flow ? decoctjon Pour out the rich juices still bright with the sun, dye stuff Till o'er the brimmed crystal the rubio &shall run. half-ripened apples The purple - globed clusters their life-dews have bled ; taste sugar of lead How sweet is the breath of the fragranc e tfeey &h«4, rank poisons winesJJ I For summer's last roses lie hid in the winee stable-boys smoking long-nines That were garnered by m aidens who laughed t hrough t-h« vineo . scowl howl scoff sneer Then a s mile , and a gia ss^ and a toaet , and a choor, strychnine and whisky, and ratsbane and beer For all the good wine , a»4 w e 'v e s©H*e ©f it h e r e ! In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall, Down, down, with the tyrant that masters us all ! Leftg live- t-he- gay- s e rvant t-hat l augha fef «s- ali-! The company said I had been shabbily treated, and advised me to charge the committee double, — which I did. But as I never got my pay, I don't know that it made much difference. I am a very particular person about having all I write printed as I write it. I require to see a proof, a revise, a re-revise, and a double re-revise, or fourth-proof rectified impression of all my productions, especially verse. Manuscripts are such puzzles ! Why, I was read- ing some lines near the end of the last number of this journal, when I came across one beginning The stream flashes by, Now as no stream had been mentioned, I was perplexed to know what it meant. It proved, on inquiry, to be only a mis-print for " dream." Think of it ! No wonder so many poets die young. I have nothing more to report at this time, except two pieces of advice I gave to the young women at table. One relates to a LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 507 vulgarism of language, which I grieve to say is sometimes heard even from female lips, the other is of more serious purport, and applies to such as contemplate a change of condition, — matrimony, in fact. — The woman who " calc'lates " is lost. — Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust. HENRY THOREAU [Born at Concord, Massachusetts, July 12, 181 7; died at Concord, May 6, 1862] SOLITUDE From " Walden " This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the stony shore to the pond in my shirt-sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whippoorwill is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the flutter- ing alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath ; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled. These small waves raised by the evening wind are as remote from storm as the smooth reflecting surface. Though it is now dark, the wind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and some creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is never complete. The wildest animals do not repose, but seek their prey now ; the fox, and skunk, and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods without fear. They are Nature's watchmen, — links which connect the days of animated life. When I return to my house I find that visitors have been there and left their cards, either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath of ever- green, or a name in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip. They who come rarely to the woods take some little piece of the forest into their hands to play with by the way, which they leave, either intentionally or accidentally. One has peeled a willow wand, woven it into a ring, and dropped it on my table. I could always tell if 5o8 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE visitors had called in my absence, either by the bended twigs or grass, or the print of their shoes, and generally of what sex or age or quality they were by some slight trace left, as a flower dropped, or a bunch of grass plucked and thrown away, even as far off as the railroad, half a mile distant, or by the lingering odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was frequently notified of the passage of a traveller along the highway sixty rods off by the scent of his pipe. There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our horizon is never quite at our elbows. The thick wood is not just at our door, nor the pond, but somewhat is always clearing, familiar and worn by us, appropriated and fenced in some way, and reclaimed from Nature. For what reason have I this vast range and circuit, some square miles of unfrequented forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by men ? My nearest neighbor is a mile distant, and no house is visible from any place but the hill-tops within half a mile of my own. I have my horizon bounded by woods all to myself ; a distant view of the railroad where it touches the pond on the one hand, and of the fence which skirts the woodland road on the other. But for the most part it is as solitary where I live as on the prairies. It is as much Asia or Africa as New England. I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself. At night there was never a traveller passed my house, or knocked at my door, more than if I were the first or last man ; unless it were in the spring, when at long intervals some came from the village to fish for pouts, — they plainly fished much more in the Walden Pond of their own natures, and baited their hooks with darkness, — but they soon retreated, usually with light baskets, and left " the world to darkness and to me," and the black kernel of the night was never profaned by any human neighborhood. I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced. Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still. There was never yet LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 509 such a storm but it was /Eolian music to a healthy and innocent ear. Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house to-day is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the lowlands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me. Sometimes, when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if I were more favored by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am conscious of ; as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded. I do not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighbor- hood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time con- scious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts pre- vailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in eveiy sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friend- liness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine needle ex- panded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again. — " Mourning untimely consumes the sad ; Few are their days in the land of the living, Beautiful daughter of Toscar." 5IO READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rainstorms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the after- noon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting ; when an early twilight ushered in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves. In those driving northeast rains which tried the village houses so, when the maids stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection. In one heavy thunder-shower the lightning struck a large pitch-pine across the pond, making a very conspicuous and perfectly regular spiral groove from top to bottom, an inch or more deep, and four or five inches wide, as you would groove a walking-stick. I passed it again the other day, and was struck with awe on looking up and beholding that mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrific and resist- less bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight years ago. Men frequently say to me, " I should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially," I am tempted to reply to such, — This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instru- ments } Why should I feel lonely ? is not our planet in the Milky Way } This which you put seems to me not to be the most im- portant question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary ? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one an- other. What do we want most to dwell near to .? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-ofifice, the bar-room, the meeting- house, the schoolhouse, the grocery. Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary with different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig his cellar. ... I one eve- ning overtook one of my townsmen, who has accumulated what is called "a handsome property," — though I never got a /air LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 51 1 view of it, — on the Walden road, driving a pair of cattle to market, who inquired of me how I could bring my mind to give up so many of the comforts of life. I answered that I was very sure I liked it passably well ; I was not joking. And so I went home to my bed, and left him to pick his way throug+i the dark- ness and the mud to Brighton, — or Brighttown, — which place he would reach some time in the morning. Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man makes indifferent all times and places. The place where that may occur is always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all our senses. For the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction. Nearest to all things is that power which fash- ions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are continually be- ing executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are. " How vast and profound is the influence of the subtile powers of Heaven and of Earth ! " " We seek to perceive them, and we do not see them ; we seek to hear them, and we do not hear them ; identified with the sub- stance of things, they cannot be separated from them." " They cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify their hearts, and clothe themselves in their holiday garments to offer sacrifices and oblations to their ancestors. It is an ocean of subtile intelligences. They are everywhere, above us, on our left, on our right ; they environ us on all sides." We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little inter- esting to me. Can we not do without the society of our gossips a little while under these circumstances, — have our own thoughts to cheer us.'' Confucius says truly, "Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan ; it must of necessity have neighbors." With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences ; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on 512 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition ; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity ; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections ; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but .spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it ; and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes. I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipat- ing. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he v^ill. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed ; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can " see the folks," and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate, himself for his day's solitude ; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and "the blues" ; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it. Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 513 of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fire- side every night ; we live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. Consider the girls in a factory, — never alone, hardly in their dreams. It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him. I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we are never alone. I have a great deal of company in my house ; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few comparisons, that some one may convey an idea of my situation. I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray ? And yet it has not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone, — but the devil, he is far from being alone ; he sees a great deal of company ; he is legion. I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a humble-bee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house. I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, when the snow falls fast and the wind howls in the wood, from an old settler and original proprietor, who is reported to have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods ; who tells me stories of old time and of new eternity ; and between us we manage to 514 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE pass a cheerful evening with social mirth and pleasant views of things, even without apples or cider, — a most wise and humorous friend, whom I love much, who keeps himself more secret than ever did Goffe or Whalley ; and though he is thought to be dead, none can show where he is buried. An elderly dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll sometimes, gathering simples and listen- ing to her fables ; for she has a genius of unequalled fertility, and her memory runs back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original of every fable, and on what fact every one is founded, for the incidents occurred when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all her children yet. The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature, — of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter, — such health, such cheer, they afford forever ! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun's bright- ness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in mid- summer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth ? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself ? What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented .? Not my or thy great-grandfather's, but our great-grandmother Nature's universal, vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has kept her- self young always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day, and fed her health with their decayed fatness. For my panacea, instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture dipped from Acheron and the Dead Sea, which come out of those long shallow black-schooner looking wagons which we sometimes see made to carry bottles, let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air ! If men will not drink of this at the fountain-head of the day, why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to morning time in this world. But remember, it will not keep quite till noonday even in the coolest cellar, but drive out the stopples long ere that and follow westward the steps of Aurora. I am no worshipper of LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 515 Hygeia, who was the daughter of that old herb-doctor ^Esculapius, and who is represented on monuments holding a serpent in one hand, and in the other a cup out of which the serpent sometimes drinks ; but rather of Hebe, cupbearer to Jupiter, who was the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce, and who had the power of re- storing gods and men to the vigor of youth. She was probably the only thoroughly sound-conditioned, healthy, and robust young lady that ever walked the globe, and wherever she came it was spring. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [Born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 22, 181 9; died at Cambric August 12, 1 891] MY LOVE Not as all other women are Is she that to my soul is dear ; Her glorious fancies come from far, Beneath the silver evening star, And yet her heart is ever near. Great feelings hath she of her own. Which lesser souls may never know ; God giveth them to her alone. And sweet they are as any tone Wherewith the wind may choose to blow. Yet in herself she dwelleth not. Although no home were half so fair ; No simplest duty is forgot. Life hath no dim and lowly spot That doth not in her sunshine share. She doeth little kindnesses, Which most leave undone, or despise ; For naught that sets one heart at ease, And giveth happiness or peace. Is low esteemed in her eyes. 5l6 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE She hath no scorn of common things, And, though she seem of other birth. Round us her heart intwines and clings. And patiently she folds her wings To tread the humble paths of earth. Blessing she is : God made her so. And deeds of week-day holiness Fall from her noiseless as the snow, Nor hath she ever chanced to know That aught were easier than to bless. She is most fair, and thereunto Her life doth rightly harmonize ; Feeling or thought that was not true Ne'er made less beautiful the blue Unclouded heaven of her eyes. She is a woman : one in whom The spring-time of her childish years Hath never lost its fresh perfume, Though knowing well that life hath room For many blights and many tears, I love her with a love as still As a broad river's peaceful might. Which, by high tower and lowly mill. Seems following its own wayward will. And yet doth ever flow aright. And, on its full, deep breast serene, Like quiet isles my duties lie ; It flows around them and between, And makes them fresh and fair and green. Sweet homes wherein to live and die. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 517 SHE CAME AND WENT As a twig trembles, which a bird Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent, So is my memory thrilled and stirred ; — ■ I only know she came and went. As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven, The blue dome's measureless content, So my soul held that moment's heaven ; — I only know she came and went. As, at one bound, our swift spring heaps The orchards full of bloom and scent. So clove her May my wintry sleeps ; — I only know she came and went. An angel stood and met my gaze, Through the low doorway of my tent ; The tent is struck, the vision stays ; — I only know she came and went. O, when the room grows slowly dim. And life's last oil is nearly spent. One gush of light these eyes will brim, Only to think she came and went. TO THE DANDELION Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way. Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold. First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold. High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they An Eldorado in the grass have found. Which not the rich earth's ample round May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be. 5i8 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, Nor wrinkled the lean brow Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease ; 'T is the Spring's largess, which she scatters now To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand. Though most hearts never understand To take it at God's value, but pass by The offered wealth with unrewarded eye. Thou art my tropics and mine Italy ; To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime ; The eyes thou givest me Are in the heart, and heed not space or time : Not in mid June the golden cuirassed bee Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment In the white lily's breezy tent. His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first From the dark green thy yellow circles burst. Then think I of deep shadows on the grass. Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, Where, as the breezes pass, The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways. Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass. Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue That from the distance sparkle through Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move. My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee ; The sight of thee calls back the robin's song. Who from the dark old tree Beside the door, sang clearly all day long. And I, secure in childish piety, Listened as if I heard an angel sing With news from heaven, which he could bring LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 519 Fresh every day to my untainted ears When birds and flowers were happy peers. How like a prodigal doth nature seem, When thou, for all thy gold, so common art ! Thou teachest me to deem More sacredly of every human heart, Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, Did we but pay the love we owe, And with a child's undoubting wisdom look On all these living pages of God's book. THE FIRST SNOW-FALL The snow had begun in the gloaming, And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway With a silence deep and white. Every pine and fir and hemlock Wore ermine too dear for an earl. And the poorest twig on the elm-tree Was ridged inch deep with pearl. From sheds new-roofed with Carrara Came Chanticleer's muffled crow, The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down, And still fluttered down the snow. I stood and watched by the window The noiseless work of the sky. And the sudden flurries of snow-birds, Like brown leaves whirling by. 520 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn Where a Httle headstone stood ; How the flakes were folding it gently, As did robins the babes in the wood. Up spoke our own little Mabel, Saying, "' Father, who makes it snow ? " And I told of the good All-father Who cares for us here below. Again I looked at the snow-fall, And thought of the leaden sky That arched o'er our first great sorrow. When that mound was heaped so high. I remembered the gradual patience That fell from that cloud like snow, Flake by flake, healing and hiding The scar of our deep-plunged woe. And again to the child I whispered, '" The snow that husheth all, Darling, the merciful Father Alone can make it fall ! " Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her ; And she, kissing back, could not know That my kiss was given to her sister. Folded close under deepening snow. ALADDIN When I was a beggarly boy. And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy. But I had Aladdin's lamp ; LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 521 When I could not sleep for cold, I had fire enough in my brain, And builded, with roofs of gold. My beautiful castles in Spain ! Since then I have toiled day and night, I have money and power good store, But I 'd give all my lamps of silver bright, For the one that is mine no more ; Take, Fortune, whatever you choose. You gave, and may snatch again ; I have nothing 't would pain me to lose, For I own no more castles in Spain ! LONGING Of all the myriad moods of mind That through the soul come thronging Which one was e'er so dear, so kind, So beautiful as Longing ? The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment, Before the Present poor and bare Can make its sneering comment. Still, through our paltry stir and strife. Glows down the wished Ideal, And Longing moulds in clay what Life Carves in the marble Real ; To let the new life in, we know, Desire must ope the portal ; — Perhaps the longing to be so Helps make the soul immortal. Longing is God's fresh heavenward will With our poor earthward striving ; We quench it that we may be still Content with merely living ; 522 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE But, would we learn that heart's full scope Which we are hourly wronging, Our lives must climb from hope to hope And realize our longing. Ah ! let us hope that to our praise Good God not only reckons The moments when we tread his ways, But when the spirit beckons, — That some slight good is also wrought Beyond self-satisfaction, When we are simply good in thought, Howe'er we fail in action. SONNET Great Truths are portions of the soul of man ; Great souls are portions of Eternity ; Each drop of blood that e'er through true heart ran With lofty message, ran for thee and me ; For God's law, since the starry song began, Hath been, and still for evermore must be. That every deed which shall outlast Time's span Must spur the soul to be erect and free ; Slave is no word of deathless lineage sprung ; Too many noble souls have thought and died, Too many mighty poets lived and sung. And our good Saxon, from lips purified With martyr-fire, throughout the world hath rung Too long to have God's holy cause denied. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 523 WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS From " The Biglow Papers " SERIES I Guvener B, is a sensible man ; He stays to his home an' looks arter his folks ; He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can, An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes ; But John P. Robinson he Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B. My ! aint it terrible ? Wut shall we du ? We can't never choose him o' course, — thet 's flat; Guess we shall hev to come round, (don't you ?) An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all that ; Fer John P. Robinson he Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B. Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man : He 's ben on all sides thet give places or pelf ; But consistency still wuz a part of his plan, — He 's ben true to one party, — an' thet is himself ; — So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. Gineral C. he goes in fer the war ; He don't vally principle more 'n an old cud ; Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood ? So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. 524 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE We were gittin' on nicely up here to our village, With good old idees o' wut 's right an' wut aint, We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage, An' thet eppyletts worn't the best mark of a saint ; But John P. Robinson he Sez this kind o' thing 's an exploded idee. The side of our country must oilers be took, An' Presidunt Polk, you know, Jie is our country. An' the angel thet writes all our sins in a book Puts the debit to him, an' to us the/^r contry ; An' John P. Robinson he Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T. Parson Wilbur he calls all these argimunts lies ; Sez they 're nothin' on airth but ]QSt fee, fazv, fum : An' thet all this big talk of our destinies Is half on it ign'ance, an' t' other half rum ; But John P. Robinson he Sez it aint no sech thing ; an', of course, so must we. Parson Wilbur sez he never heerd in his life Thet th' Apostles rigged out in their swaller-tail coats, An' marched round in front of a drum an' a fife. To git some on 'em office, an' some on 'em votes ; But John P. Robinson he Sez they did n't know everythin' down in Judee. Wal, it 's a marcy we 've gut folks to tell us The rights an' the wrongs o' these matters, I vow, — God sends country lawyers, an' other wise fellers, To start the world's team wen it gits in a slough ; Fer John P. Robinson he Sez the world '11 go right, ef he hollers out Gee ! LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 525 THE COURTIN' From " The Biglow Papers " SERIES II God makes sech nights, all white an' still Fur 'z you can look or listen, Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill, All silence an' all glisten. Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown An' peeked in thru' the winder, An' there sot Huldy all alone, 'ith no one nigh to hender. A fireplace filled the room's one side With half a cord o' wood in — There warn't no stoves (tell comfort died) To bake ye to a puddin'. The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out Towards the pootiest, bless her. An' leetle flames danced all about The chiny on the dresser. Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung. An' in amongst 'em rusted The ole queen 's-arm thet gran'ther Young Fetched back from Concord busted. The very room, coz she was in, Seemed warm from floor to ceilin', An' she looked full ez rosy agin Ez the apples she was peelin'. 'Twas kin' o' kingdom-come to look On sech a blessed cretur, A dogrose blushin' to a brook Ain't modester nor sweeter. 526 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE He was six foot o' man, A i, Clear grit an' human natur' ; None could n't quicker pitch a ton Nor dror a furrer straighter. He 'd sparked it with full twenty gals, Hed squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em. Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells — All is, he could n't love 'em. But long o' her his veins 'ould run All crinkly like curled maple. The side she breshed felt full o' sun Ez a south slope in Ap'il. She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing Ez hisn in the choir ; My ! when he made Ole Hunderd ring, She knowed the Lord was nigher. An' she 'd blush scarlit, right in prayer, When her new meetin'-bunnet Felt somehow thru' its crown a pair O' blue eyes sot upon it. Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some ! She seemed to 've gut a new soul. For she felt sartin-sure he 'd come, Down to her very shoe-sole. She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu, A-raspin' on the scraper, — All ways to once her feelins flew Like sparks in burnt-up paper. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 527 He kin' o' I'itered on the mat, Some doubtfle o' the sekle. His heart kep goin' pity-pat, But hern went pity Zekle. An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk Ez though she wished him furder, An' on her apples kep' to work, Parin' away Hke murder. " You want to see my Pa, I s'pose ? " Wal ... no ... I come dasignin' " " To see my Ma .? She 's sprinklin' clo'es Agin to-morrer's i'nin'." To say why gals acts so or so, Or don't, 'ould be presumin' ; Mebby to mean yes an' say no Comes nateral to women. He stood a spell on one foot fust. Then stood a spell on t' other, An' on which one he felt the wust He could n't ha' told ye nuther. Says he, "I 'd better call agin " ; Says she, " Think likely, Mister " : Thet last word pricked him like a pin. An' . . . Wal, he up an' kist her. When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips, Huldy sot pale ez ashes. All kin' o' smily roun' the lips An' teary roun' the lashes. 528 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE For she was jes' the quiet kind Whose naturs never vary, Like streams that keep a summer mind Snovvhid in Jenooary. The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued Too tight for all expressin', Tell mother see how metters stood, An' gin 'em both her blessin'. Then her red come back like the tide Down to the Bay o' Fundy, An' all I know is they was cried In meetin' come nex' Sunday. THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL PRELUDE TO PART FIRST Over his keys the musing organist. Beginning doubtfully and far away, First lets his fingers wander as they list, And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay Then, as the touch of his loved instrument Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme, First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent Along the wavering vista of his dream. Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie ; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not. Over our manhood bend the skies ; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies : With our faint hearts the mountain strives ; I LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 529 Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite ; And to our age's drowsy blood Still shouts the inspiring sea. Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us ; The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us. We bargain for the graves we lie in ; At the Devil's booth are all things sold, Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold ; For a cap and bells our lives we pay, Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking : 'T is heaven alone that is given away, 'T is only God may be had for the asking ; No price is set on the lavish summer ; June may be had by the poorest comer. And what is so rare as a day in June ? Then, if ever, come perfect days ; Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays : Whether we look, or whether we listen. We hear life murmur, or see it glisten ; Every clod feels a stir of might. An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, groping blindly above it for light. Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers ; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys ; The cowslip startles in meadows green, The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there 's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace ; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 530 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives ; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings ; He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest, — In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best ? Now is the high-tide of the year, And whatever of life hath ebbed away Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer. Into every bare inlet and creek and bay ; Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God wills it ; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'T is enough for us now that the leaves are green ; We sit in the warm shade and feel right well How the sap creeps up and blossoms swell ; We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing That skies are clear and grass is growing ; The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near. That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing. That the river is bluer than the sky, That the robin is plastering his house hard by ; And if the breeze kept the good news back, For other couriers we should not lack ; We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing, — And hark ! how clear bold chanticleer. Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing ! Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how ; Everything is happy now. Everything is upward striving ; 'T is as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, — 'T is the natural way of living : LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 531 Who knows whither the clouds have fled ? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake ; And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, The heart forgets its sorrow and ache ; The soul partakes of the season's youth, And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. What wonder if Sir Launfal now Remembered the keeping of his vow ? PART FIRST " My golden spurs now bring to me, And bring to me my richest mail, For to-morrow I go over land and sea In search of the Holy Grail ; Shall never a bed for me be spread. Nor shall a pillow be under my head, Till I begin my vow to keep ; Here on the rushes will I sleep. And perchance there may come a vision true Ere day create the world anew." Slowly Sir Launfal 's eyes grew dim. Slumber fell like a cloud on him. And into his soul the vision flew. The crows flapped over by twos and threes, In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees, The little birds sang as if it were The one day of summer in all the year, And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees The castle alone in the landscape lay Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray : 532 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE 'T was the proudest hall in the North Countree, And never its gates might opened be, Save to lord or lady of high degree ; Summer besieged it on every side, But the churlish stone her assaults defied ; She could not scale the chilly wall, Though around it for leagues her pavilions tall Stretched left and right, Over the hills and out of sight ; Green and broad was every tent, And out of each a murmur went Till the breeze fell off at night. The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang. And through the dark arch a charger sprang. Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright It seemed the dark castle had gathered all Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall In his siege of three hundred summers long. And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, Had cast them forth : so, young and strong. And lightsome as a locust-leaf. Sir Launfal flashed forth in his unscarred mail, To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail. IV It was morning on hill and stream and tree. And morning in the young knight's heart ; Only the castle moodily Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free, And gloomed by itself apart ; The season brimmed all other things up Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 53; As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome gate, He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the same, Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate ; And a loathing over Sir Launfal came ; The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill, The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink and crawl, And midway its leap his heart stood still Like a frozen waterfall ; For this man, so foul and bent of stature, Rasped harshly against his dainty nature. And seemed the one blot on the summer morn, — So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn, VI The leper raised not the gold from the dust : " Better to me the poor man's crust, Better the blessing of the poor. Though I turn me empty from his door ; That is no true alms which the hand can hold ; He gives nothing but worthless gold Who gives from a sense of duty ; But he who gives but a slender mite, And gives to that which is out of sight. That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty Which runs through all and doth all unite, — The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms. The heart outstretches its eager palms. For a god goes with it and makes it store To the soul that was starving in darkness before." PRELUDE TO PART SECOND Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, From the snow five thousand summers old ; On open wold and hill-top bleak It had gathered all the cold, 534 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek : It carried a shiver everywhere From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare ; The little brook heard it and built a roof 'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof ; All night by the white stars' frosty gleams He groined his arches and matched his beams ; Slender and clear were his crystal spars As the lashes of light that trim the stars ; He sculptured every summer delight In his halls and chambers out of sight ; Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze ; Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew But silvery mosses that downward grew ; Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf ; Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops And hung them thickly with diamond-drops, That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, And made a star of every one : No mortal builder's most rare device Could match this winter-palace of ice ; 'T was as if every image that mirrored lay In his depths serene through the summer day. Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky. Lest the happy model should be lost, Had been mimicked in fairy masonry By the elfin builders of the frost. Within the hall are song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas grow red and jolly, LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 535 And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly ; Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide ; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind ; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death in its galleries blind ; And swift little troops of silent sparks, Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks Like herds of startled deer. But the wind without was eager and sharp, Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp. And rattles and wrings The icy strings. Singing, in dreary monotone, A Christmas carol of its own. Whose burden still, as he might guess, Was — " Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless! " The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch. And he sat in the gateway and saw all night The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, Through the window-slits of the castle old. Build out its piers of ruddy light. Against the drift of the cold. PART SECOND I There was never a leaf on bush or tree, The bare boughs rattled shudderingly ; The river was dumb and could not speak, For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun. A single crow on the tree-top bleak From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun ; 536 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, As if her veins were sapless and old, And she rose up decrepitly For a last dim look at earth and sea. Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate. For another heir in his earldom sate ; An old, bent man, worn out and frail, He came back from seeking the Holy Grail ; Little he recked of his earldom's loss, No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross, But deep in his soul the sign he wore. The badge of the suffering and the poor. Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air, For it was just at the Christmas time ; So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime. And sought for a shelter from cold and snow In the light and warmth of long-ago ; He sees the snake-like caravan crawl O'er the edge of the desert, black and small. Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one, He can count the camels in the sun. As over the red-hot sands they pass To where, in its slender necklace of grass. The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade, And with its own self like an infant played. And waved its signal of palms. " For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms ; " — The happy camels may reach the spring. But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 537 The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, That cowers beside him, a thing as lone And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas In the desolate horror of his disease. And Sir Launfal said, — "I behold in thee An image of Him who died on the tree ; Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns, — Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns. And to thy life were not denied The wounds in the hands and feet and side : Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me ; Behold, through him, I give to Thee ! " Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he Remembered in what a haughtier guise He had flung an alms to leprosie, When he girt his young life up in gilded mail And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. The heart within him was ashes and dust ; He parted in twain his single crust. He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink. And gave the leper to eat and drink : 'T was a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread, 'T was water out of a wooden bowl, — Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, And 't was red wine he drank with his thirsty soul. VII As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face, A light shone round about the place ; The leper no longer crouched at his side, But stood before him glorified, 538 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Shining and tall and fair and straight As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate, — Himself the Gate whereby men can Enter the temple of God in Man. His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine, And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine, That mingle their softness and quiet in one With the shaggy unrest they float down upon; And the voice that was calmer than silence said, " Lo, it is I, be not afraid ! In many climes, without avail. Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail ; Behold, it is here, — this cup which thou Didst fill at the streamlet for Me but now ; This crust is My body broken for thee, This water His blood that died on the tree ; The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, In whatso we share with another's need : Not what we give, but what we share, — For the gift without the giver is bare ; Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, — Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me." Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound : — " The Grail in my castle here is found ! Hang my idle armor up on the wall. Let it be thfe spider's banquet-hall ; He must be fenced with stronger mail Who would seek and find the Holy Grail." The castle gate stands open now. And the wanderer is welcome to the hall As the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough : No longer scowl the turrets tall. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 539 The Summer's long siege at last is o'er ; When the first poor outcast went in at the door, She entered with him in disguise, And mastered the fortress by surprise ; There is no spot she loves so well on ground, She lingers and smiles there the whole year round ; The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's land Has hall and bower at his command ; And there 's no poor man in the North Countree But is lord of the earldom as much as he. ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION JULY 21, 1865 I Weak-winged is song, Nor aims at that clear-ethered height Whither the brave deed climbs for light : We seem to do them wrong. Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearse Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse, Our trivial song to honor those who come With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum. And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire, Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire : Yet sometimes feathered words are strong, A gracious memory to buoy up and save From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave Of the unventurous throng. To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back Her wisest Scholars, those who understood The deeper teaching of her mystic tome, And offered their fresh lives to make it good No lore of Greece or Rome, No science peddling with the names of things, 540 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Or reading stars to find inglorious fates, Can lift our life with wings Far from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits, And lengthen out our dates With that clear fame whose memory sings In manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates Nor such thy teaching. Mother of us all ! Not such the trumpet-call Of thy diviner mood, That could thy sons entice From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest Of those half-virtues which the world calls best, Into War's tumult rude ; But rather far that stern device The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood In the dim, unventured wood, The Veritas that lurks beneath The letter's unprolific sheath, Life of whate'er makes life worth living, Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving. Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil Amid the dust of books to find her. Content at last, for guerdon of their toil. With the cast mantle she hath left behind her. Many in sad faith sought for her, Many with crossed hands sighed for her ; But these, our brothers, fought for her At life's dear peril wrought for her, So loved her that they died for her, Tasting the raptured fleetness Of her divine completeness : Their higher instinct knew Those love her best who to themselves are true, And what they dare to dream of, dare to do ; LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 541 They followed her and found her Where all may hope to find, Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind, But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her. Where faith made whole with deed Breathes its awakening breath Into the lifeless creed. They saw her plumed and mailed, With sweet, stern face unveiled. And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death. Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides Into the silent hollow of the past ; What is there that abides To make the next age better for the last ? Is earth too poor to give us Something to live for here that shall outlive us ? Some more substantial boon Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon ? The little that we see From doubt is never free ; The little that we do Is but half-nobly true ; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, After our little hour of stmt and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and desires, Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires. Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. But stay ! no age was e'er degenerate, Unless men held it at too cheap a rate. For in our likeness still we shape our fate. 542 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Ah, there is something here Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer Something that gives our feeble light A high immunity from Night, Something that leaps life's narrow bars To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven ; A seed of sunshine that can leaven Our earthly dulness with the beams of stars, And glorify our clay With light from fountains elder than the Day ; A conscience more divine than we, A gladness fed with secret tears, A vexing, forward-reaching sense Of some more noble permanence ; A light across the sea. Which haunts the soul and will not let it be, Still glimmering from the heights of undegenerate years. Whither leads the path To ampler fates that leads ? Not down through flowery meads, To reap an aftermath Of youth's vainglorious weeds, But up the steep, amid the wrath And shock of deadly-hostile creeds. Where the world's best hope and stay By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way, And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds. Peace hath her not ignoble wreath, Ere yet the sharp, decisive word Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword Dreams in its easeful sheath ; But some day the live coal behind the thought, Whether from Baal's stone obscene, Or from the shrine serene Of God's pure altar brought, LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 543 Bursts up in flame ; the war of tongue and pen Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught, And, helpless in the fiery passion caught, Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men : Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, And cries reproachful : " Was it, then, my praise, And not myself was loved ? Prove now thy truth ; I claim of thee the promise of thy youth ; Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase, The victim of thy genius, not its mate 1 " Life may be given in many ways, And loyalty to Truth be sealed As bravely in the closet as the field. So bountiful is Fate ; But then to stand beside her. When craven churls deride her, To front a lie in arms and not to yield. This shows, methinks, God's plan And measure of a stalwart man. Limbed like the old heroic breeds. Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth. Not forced to frame excuses for his birth. Fed from within with all the strength he needs. VI Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, Whom late the Nation he had led. With ashes on her head, Wept with the passion of an angry grief : Forgive me, if from present things I turn To speak what in my heart will beat and burn. And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. Nature, they say, doth dote. And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote : 544 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. How beautiful to see Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, W^ho loved his charge, but never loved to lead ; One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, Not lured by any cheat of birth. But by his clear-grained human worth, And brave old wisdom of sincerity ! They knew that outward grace is dust ; They could not choose but trust In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, And supple-tempered will That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind. Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind ; Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined. Fruitful and friendly for all human-kind. Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. Nothing of Europe here, Or, then, of Europe fronting morn-ward still, Ere any names of Serf and Peer Could Nature's equal scheme deface And thwart her genial will ; Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face, I praise him not ; it were too late ; And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends to victory Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait. Safe in himself as in a fate. So always firmly he : LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 545 He knew to bide his time, And can his fame abide, Still patient in his simple faith sublime, Till the wise years decide. Great captains, with their guns and drums, Disturb our judgment for the hour, But at last silence comes ; These all are gone, and, standing like a tower. Our children shall behold his fame. The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man. Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame. New birth of our new soil, the first American. Long as man's hope insatiate can discern Or only guess some more inspiring goal Outside of Self, enduring as the pole. Along whose course the flying axles burn Of spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier brood ; Long as below we cannot find The meed that stills the inexorable mind ; So long this faith to some ideal Good, Under whatever mortal names it masks. Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal mood That thanks the Fates for their severer tasks, Feeling its challenged pulses leap, While others skulk in subterfuges cheap, And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks, Shall win man's praise and woman's love, Shall be a wisdom that we set above All other skills and gifts to culture dear, A virtue round whose forehead we inwreathe Laurels that with a living passion breathe When other crowns grow, while we twine them, sear. What brings us thronging these high rites to pay. And seal these hours the noblest of our year. Save that our brothers found this better way ? 546 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE We sit here in the Promised Land That flows with Freedom's honey and milk ; But 'twas they won it, sword in hand, Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk. We welcome back our bravest and our best ; — Ah me ! not all ! some come not with the rest, Who went forth brave and bright as any here ! I strive to mix some gladness with my strain, But the sad strings complain, And will not please the ear : I sweep them for a paean, but they wane Again and yet again Into a dirge, and die away, in pain. In these brave ranks I only see the gaps. Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps, Dark to the triumph which they died to gain : Fitlier may others greet the living, For me the past is unforgiving ; I with uncovered head Salute the sacred dead. Who went, and who return not. — Say not so ! 'T is not the grapes of Canaan that repay. But the high faith that failed not by the way ; Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave ; No bar of endless night exiles the brave ; And to the saner mind We rather seem the dead that stayed behind. Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow ! For never shall their aureoled presence lack : I see them muster in a gleaming row. With ever-youthful brows that nobler show ; We find in our dull road their shining track ; In every nobler mood We feel the orient of their spirit glow. Part of our life's unalterable good. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 547 Of all our saintlier aspiration ; They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted ways, Beautiful evermore, and with the rays Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation ! But is there hope to save Even this ethereal essence from the grave ? What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle wrong Save a few clarion names, or golden threads of song ? Before my musing eye The mighty ones of old sweep by, Disvoiced now and insubstantial things. As noisy once as we ; poor ghosts of kings. Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust. And many races, nameless long ago. To darkness driven by that imperious gust Of ever-rushing Time that here doth blow : O visionary world, condition strange, Where naught abiding is but only Change, Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still shift and range ! Shall we to more continuance make pretence ? Renown builds tombs ; a life-estate is Wit ; And, bit by bit. The cunning years steal all from us but woe : Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest sow. But, when we vanish hence. Shall they lie forceless in the dark below. Save to make green their little length of sods, Or deepen pansies for a year or two. Who now to us are shining-sweet as gods ? Was dying all they had the skill to do ? That were not fruitless : but the Soul resents Such short-lived service, as if blind events Ruled without her, or earth could so endure ; She claims a more divine investiture 54^ READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Of longer tenure than Fame's airy rents ; Whate'er she touches doth her nature share ; Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air, Gives eyes to mountains blind, Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind, And her clear trump sings succor everywhere By lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind ; For soul inherits all that soul could dare : Yea, Manhood hath a wider span And larger privilege of life than man. The single deed, the private sacrifice, So radiant now through proudly-hidden tears, Is covered up ere long from mortal eyes With thoughtless drift of the deciduous years ; But that high privilege that makes all men peers. That leap of heart whereby a people rise Up to a noble anger's height. And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but grow more bright. That swift validity in noble veins. Of choosing danger and disdaining shame, Of being set on flame By the pure fire that flies all contact base, ^ But wraps its chosen with angelic might, These are imperishable gains, Sure as the sun, medicinal as light. These hold great futures in their lusty reins And certify to earth a new imperial race. Who now shall sneer ? Who dare again to say we trace Our lines to a plebeian race ? Roundhead and Cavalier ! Dumb are those names erewhile in battle loud ; Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud, LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 549 They flit across the ear : That is best blood that hath most iron in 't, To edge resolve with, pouring without stint For what makes manhood dear. Tell us not of Plantagenets, Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods crawl Down from some victor in a border-brawl ! How poor their outworn coronets, Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreath Our brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath, Through whose desert a rescued Nation sets Her heel on treason, and the trumpet hears Shout victory, tingling Europe's sullen ears With vain resentments and more vain regrets I Not in anger, not in pride. Pure from passion's mixture rude Ever to base earth allied, But with far-heard gratitude, Still with heart and voice renewed, To heroes living and dear martyrs dead, The strain should close that consecrates our brave. Lift the heart and lift the head ! Lofty be its mood and grave, Not without a martial ring, Not without a prouder tread And a peal of exultation : Little right has he to sing Through whose heart in such an hour Beats no march of conscious power. Sweeps no tumult of elation ! 'T is no Man we celebrate. By his country's victories great, A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, But the pith and marrow of a Nation 550 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all. For her time of need, and then Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower. Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall. Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. Come back, then, noble pride, for 't is her dower ! How could poet ever tower. If his passions, hopes, and fears, If his triumphs and his tears. Kept not measure with his people ? Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves ! Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple ! Banners, adance with triumph, bend your staves ! And from every mountain-peak Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak, Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he, And so leap on in light from sea to sea. Till the glad news be sent Across a kindling continent, Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver : " Be proud ! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her ! She that lifts up the manhood of the poor. She of the open soul and open door, With room about her hearth for all mankind ! The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more ; From her bold front the helm she doth unbind. Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin, And bids her navies, that so lately hurled Their crashing battle, hold their thunders in. Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmful shore. No challenge sends she to the elder world. That looked askance and hated ; a light scorn Plays o'er her mouth, as round her mighty knees She calls her children back, and waits the morn Of nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas." LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 551 Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release ! Thy God, in these distempered days. Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways, And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace ! Bow down in prayer and praise ! No poorest in thy borders but may now Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow, O Beautiful ! my Country ! ours once more ! Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, And letting thy set lips. Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, What words divine of lover or of poet Could tell our love and make thee know it. Among the Nations bright beyond compare ? What were our lives without thee ? What all our lives to save thee ? We reck not what we gave thee ; We will not dare to doubt thee. But ask whatever else, and we will dare ! ABRAHAM LINCOLN An Essay first published in the North American Review for January, 1864. The Final Paragraph was added later There have been many painful crises since the impatient vanity of South Carolina hurried ten prosperous Commonwealths into a crime whose assured retribution was to leave them either at the mercy of the nation they had wronged, or of the anarchy they had summoned but could not control, when no thoughtful American opened his morning paper without dreading to find that he had no longer a country to love and honor. Whatever the result of the convulsion whose first shocks were beginning to be felt, there 552 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE would still be enough square miles of earth for elbow-room ; but that ineffable sentiment made up of memory and hope, of instinct and tradition, which swells every man's heart and shapes his thought, though perhaps never present to his consciousness, would be gone from it, leaving it common earth and nothing more. Men might gather rich crops from it, but that ideal harvest of priceless associ- ations would be reaped no longer ; that fine virtue which sent up messages of courage and security from every sod of it would have evaporated beyond recall. We should be irrevocably cut off from our past, and be forced to splice the ragged ends of our lives upon whatever new conditions chance might leave dangling for us. We confess that we had our doubts at first whether the patriotism of our people were not too narrowly provincial to embrace the proportions of national peril. We felt an only too natural distrust of immense public meetings and enthusiastic cheers. That a reaction should follow the holiday enthusiasm with which the war was entered-on, that it should follow soon, and that the slackening of public spirit should be proportionate to the previous over-tension, might well be foreseen by all who had studied human nature or history. Men acting gregariously are always in extremes ; as they are one moment capable of higher courage, so they are liable, the next, to baser depression, and it is often a matter of chance whether numbers shall multiply confidence or discourage- ment. Nor does deception lead more surely to distrust of men, than self-deception to suspicion of principles. The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience. Enthu- siasm is good material for the orator, but the statesman needs something more durable to work in, — must be able to rely on the deliberate reason and consequent firmness of the people, without which that presence of mind, no less essential in times of moral than of material peril, will be wanting at the critical moment. Would this fervor of the Free States hold out ? Was it kindled by a just feeling of the value of constitutional liberty ? Had it body enough to withstand the inevitable dampening of checks, reverses, delays ? Had our population intelligence enough to comprehend that the choice was between order and anarchy, between the LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 553 equilibrium of a government by law and the tussle of misrule by prominciaviiento? Could a war be maintained without the ordinary stimulus of hatred and plunder, and with the impersonal loyalty of principle ? These were serious questions, and with no precedent to aid in answering them. At the beginning of the war there was, indeed, occasion for the most anxious apprehension. A President known to be infected with the political heresies, and suspected of sympathy with the treason, of the Southern conspirators, had just surrendered the reins, we will not say of power, but of chaos, to a successor known only as the representative of a party whose leaders, with long training in opposition, had none in the conduct of affairs ; an empty treasury was called on to supply resources beyond precedent in the history of finance ; the trees were yet growing and the iron unmined with which a navy was to be built and armored ; officers without discipline were to make a mob into an army ; and, above all, the public opinion of Europe, echoed and reinforced with every vague hint and every specious argument of despondency by a powerful faction at home, was either contemptuously sceptical or actively hostile. It would be hard to over-estimate the force of this latter element of disintegration and discouragement among a people where every citizen at home, and every soldier in the field, is a reader of news- papers. The pedlers of rumor in the North were the most effective allies of the rebellion. A nation can be liable to no more insidious treachery than that of the telegraph, sending hourly its electric thrill of panic along the remotest nerves of the community, till the excited imagination makes every real danger loom heightened with its unreal double. And even if we look only at more palpable difficulties, the problem to be solved by our civil war was so vast, both in its immediate relations and its future consequences ; the conditions of its solution were so intricate and so greatly dependent on incal- culable and uncontrollable contingencies ; so many of the data, whether for hope or fear, were, from their novelty, incapable of arrangement under any of the categories of historical precedent, that there were moments of crisis when the firmest believer in the strength and sufficiency of the democratic theor)^ of government 554 . READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE might well hold his breath in vague apprehension of disaster. Our teachers of political philosophy, solemnly arguing from the precedent of some petty Grecian, Italian, or Flemish city, whose long periods of aristocracy were broken now and then by awkward parentheses of mob, had always taught us that democracies were incapable of the sentiment of loyalty, of concentrated and prolonged effort, of far- reaching conceptions ; were absorbed in material interests ; impa- tient of regular, and much more of exceptional restraint ; had no natural nucleus of gravitation, nor any forces but centrifugal ; were always on the verge of civil war, and slunk at last into the natural almshouse of bankrupt popular government, a military despotism. Here was indeed a dreary outlook for persons who knew democracy, not by rubbing shoulders with it lifelong, but merely from books, and America only by the report of some fellow-Briton, who, having eaten a bad dinner or lost a carpet-bag here, had written to The Times demanding redress, and drawing a mournful inference of democratic instability. Nor were men wanting among ourselves who had so steeped their brains in London literature as to mistake Cockneyism for European culture, and contempt of their country for cosmopolitan breadth of view, and who, owing all they had and all they were to democracy, thought it had an air of high-breeding to join in the shallow epicedium that our bubble had burst. But beside any disheartening influences which might affect the timid or the despondent, there were reasons enough of settled gravity against any over-confidence of hope. A war — which, whether we consider the expanse of the territory at stake, the hosts brought into the field, or the reach of the principles involved, may fairly be reckoned the most momentous of modern times — was to be waged by a people divided at home, unnerved by fifty years of peace, under a chief magistrate without experience and without reputation, whose every measure was sure to be cunningly hampered by a jealous and unscrupulous minority, and who, while dealing with unheard-of complications at home, must soothe a hostile neutrality abroad, waiting only a pretext to become war. All this was to be done without warning and without preparation, while at the same time a social revolution was to be accomplished in the political condition of four millions of people, by softening the LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 555 prejudices, allaying the fears, and gradually obtaining the coopera- tion, of their unwilling liberators. Surely, if ever there were an occasion when the heightened imagination of the historian might see Destiny visible intervening in human affairs, here was a knot worthy of her shears. Never, perhaps, was any system of govern- ment tried by so continuous and searching a strain as ours during the last three years ; never has any shown itself stronger ; and never could that strength be so directly traced to the virtue and in- telligence of the people, — to that general enlightenment and prompt efficiency of public opinion possible only under the influence of a political framework like our own. We find it hard to understand how even a foreigner should be blind to the grandeur of the combat of ideas that has been going on here, — to the heroic energy, per- sistency, and self-reliance of a nation proving that it knows how much dearer greatness is than mere power ; and we own that it is impossible for us to conceive the mental and moral condition of the American who does not feel his spirit braced and heightened by being even a spectator of such qualities and achievements. That a steady purpose and a definite aim have been given to the jarring forces which, at the beginning of the war, spent themselves in the discussion of schemes which could only become operative, if at all, after the war was over ; that a popular excitement has been slowly intensified into an earnest national will ; that a somewhat impracti- cable moral sentiment has been made the unconscious instrument of a practical moral end ; that the treason of covert enemies, the jealousy of rivals, the unwise zeal of friends, have been made not only useless for mischief, but even useful for good ; that the con- scientious sensitiveness of England to the horrors of civil conflict has been prevented from complicating a domestic with a foreign war ; — all these results, any one of which might suffice to prove greatness in a ruler, have been mainly due to the good sense, the good-humor, the sagacity, the large-mindedness, and the unselfish honesty of the unknown man whom a blind fortune, as it seemed, had lifted from the crowd to the most dangerous and difficult eminence of modern times. It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of a man is tested ; it is by the sagacity to see, and the fearless honesty to admit, whatever of truth 556 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE there may be in an adverse opinion, in order more convincingly to expose the fallacy that lurks behind it, that a reasoner at length gains for his mere statement of a fact the force of argument ; it is by a wise forecast which allows hostile combinations to go so far as by the inevitable reaction to become elements of his own power, that a politician proves his genius for state-craft ; and especially it is by so gently guiding public sentiment that he seems to follow it, by so yielding doubtful points that he can be firm without seem- ing obstinate in essential ones, and thus gain the advantages of compromise without the weakness of concession ; by so instinctively comprehending the temper and prejudices of a people as to make them gradually conscious of the superior wisdom of his freedom from temper and prejudice, — it is by qualities such as these that a magistrate shows himself worthy to be chief in a commonwealth of freemen. And it is for qualities such as these that we firmly believe History will rank Mr. Lincoln among the most prudent of statesmen and the most successful of rulers. If we wish to appreciate him, we have only to conceive the inevitable chaos in which we should now be weltering, had a weak man or an unwise one been chosen in his stead. '" Bare is back," says the Norse proverb, "without brother behind it " ; and this is, by analogy, true of an elective magistracy. The hereditary ruler in any critical emergency may reckon on the in- exhaustible resources of prestige, of sentiment, of superstition, of dependent interest, while the new man must slowly and painfully create all these out of the unwilling material around him, by superi- ority of character, by patient singleness of purpose, by sagacious presentiment of popular tendencies and instinctive sympathy with the national character. Mr. Lincoln's task was one of peculiar and exceptional difficulty. Long habit had accustomed the American people to the notion of a party in power, and of a President as its creature and organ, while the more vital fact, that the executive for the time being represents the abstract idea of government as a permanent principle superior to all party and all private interest, had gradually become unfamiliar. They had so long seen the public policy more or less directed by views of party, and often even of personal advantage, as to be ready to suspect the motives LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 557 of a chief magistrate compelled, for the first time in our history, to feel himself the head and hand of a great nation, and to act upon the fundamental maxim, laid down by all publicists, that the first duty of a government is to defend and maintain its own existence. Accordingly, a powerful weapon seemed to be put into the hands of the opposition by the necessity under which the administration found itself of applying this old truth to new relations. Nor were the opposition his only nor his most dangerous opponents. The Republicans had carried the country upon an issue in which ethics were more directly and visibly mingled with politics than usual. Their leaders were trained to a method of oratory which relied for its effect rather on the moral sense than the understand- ing. Their arguments were drawn, not so much from experience as from general principles of right and wrong. When the war came, their system continued to be applicable and effective, for here again the reason of the people was to be reached and kindled through their sentiments. It was one of those periods of excite- ment, gathering, contagious, universal, which, while they last, exalt and clarify the minds of men, giving to the mere words country, human rights, democracy, a meaning and a force beyond that of sober and logical argument. They were convictions, maintained and defended by the supreme logic of passion. That penetrating fire ran in and roused those primary instincts that make their lair in the dens and caverns of the mind. What is called the great popular heart was awakened, that indefinable something which may be, according to circumstances, the highest reason or the most brutish unreason. But enthusiasm, once cold, can never be warmed over into anything better than cant, — and phrases, when once the inspiration that filled them with beneficent power has ebbed away, retain only that semblance of meaning which enables them to sup- plant reason in hasty minds. Among the lessons taught by the French Revolution there is none sadder or more striking than this, that you may make everything else out of the passions of men except a political system that will work, and that there is nothing so pitilessly and unconsciously cruel as sincerity formulated into dogma. It is always demoralizing to extend the domain of senti- ment over questions where it has no legitimate jurisdiction ; and 558 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE perhaps the severest strain upon Mr. Lincoln was in resisting a tendency of his own supporters which chimed with his own private desires while wholly opposed to his convictions of what would be wise policy. The change which three years have brought about is too remark- able to be passed over without comment, too weighty in its lesson not to be laid to heart. Never did a President enter upon office with less means at his command, outside his own strength of heart and steadiness of understanding, for inspiring confidence in the people, and so winning it for himself, than Mr, Lincoln. All that was known of him was that he was a good stump-speaker, nomi- nated for his availability, — that is, because he had no history, — and chosen by a party with whose more extreme opinions he was not in sympathy. It might well be feared that a man past fifty, against whom the ingenuity of hostile partisans could rake up no accusation, must be lacking in manliness of character, in decision of principle, in strength of will ; that a man who was at best only the representative of a party, and who yet did not fairly represent even that, would fail of political, much more of popular, support. And certainly no one ever entered upon office with so few resources of power in the past, and so many materials of weakness in the present, as Mr. Lincoln. Even in that half of the Union which acknowledged him as President, there was a large, and at that time dangerous minority, that hardly admitted his claim to the office, and even in the party that elected him there was also a large minor- ity that suspected him of being secretly a communicant with the church of Laodicea. All that he did was sure to be virulently attacked as ultra by one side ; all that he left undone, to be stig- matized as proof of lukewarmness and backsliding by the other. Meanwhile he was to carry on a truly colossal war by means of both ; he was to disengage the country from diplomatic entanglements of unprecedented peril undisturbed by the help or hinderance of either, and to win from the crowning dangers of his administra- tion, in the confidence of the people, the means of his safety and their own. He has contrived to do it, and perhaps none of our Presidents since Washington has stood so firm in the confidence of the people as he does after three years of stormy administration. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 559 Mr. Lincoln's policy was a tentative one, and rightly so. He laid down no programme which must compel him to be either in- consistent or unwise, no cast-iron theorem to which circumstances must be fitted as they rose, or else be useless to his ends. He seemed to have chosen Mazarin's motto, Lc to/ips et moi. The nwi, to be sure, was not very prominent at first ; but it has grown more and more so, till the world is beginning to be persuaded that it stands for a character of marked individuality and capacity for affairs. Time was his prime-minister, and, we began to think, at one period, his general-in-chief also. At first he was so slow that he tired out all those who see no evidence of progress but in blow- ing up the engine ; then he was so fast, that he took the breath away from those who think there is no getting on safely while there is a spark of fire under the boilers. God is the only being who has time enough ; but a prudent man, who knows how to seize occasion, can commonly make a shift to find as much as he needs. Mr. Lincoln, as it seems to us in reviewing his career, though we have sometimes in our impatience thought otherwise, has always waited, as a wise man should, till the right moment brought up all his reserves. Semper nocidt diffcre paratis, is a sound axiom, but the really efficacious man will also be sure to know when he is not ready, and be firm against all persuasion and reproach till he is. One would be apt to think, from some of the criticisms made on Mr. Lincoln's course by those who mainly agree with him in principle, that the chief object of a statesman should be rather to proclaim his adhesion to certain doctrines, than to achieve their triumph by quietly accomplishing his ends. In our opinion, there is no more unsafe politician than a conscientiously rigid doctrinaire, nothing more sure to end in disaster than a theoretic scheme of policy that admits of no pliability for contingencies. True, there is a popular image of an impossible He, in whose plastic hands the submissive destinies of mankind become as wax, and to whose com- manding necessity the toughest facts yield with the graceful pliancy of fiction ; but in real life we commonly find that the men who con- trol circumstances, as it is called, are those who have learned to allow for the influence of their eddies, and have the nerve to turn them to account at the happy instant. Mr. Lincoln's perilous task S6o READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE has been to carry a rather shaky raft through the rapids, making fast the unruHer logs as he could snatch opportunity, and the country is to be congratulated that he did not think it his duty to run straight at all hazards, but cautiously to assure himself with his setting-pole where the main current was, and keep steadily to that. He is still in wild water, but we have faith that his skill and sureness of eye will bring him out right at last. A curious, and, as we think, not inapt parallel, might be drawn between Mr. Lincoln and one of the most striking figures in mod- ern history, — Henry IV of France. The career of the latter may be more picturesque, as that of a daring captain always is ; but in all its vicissitudes there is nothing more romantic than that sudden change, as by a rub of Aladdin's lamp, from the attorney's office in a country town of Illinois to the helm of a great nation in times like these. The analogy between the characters and circumstances of the two men is in many respects singularly close. Succeeding to a rebellion rather than a crown, Henry's chief material depend- ence was the Huguenot party, whose doctrines sat upon him with a looseness distasteful certainly, if not suspicious, to the more fanatical among them. King only in name over the greater part of France, and with his capital barred against him, it yet gradually became clear to the more far-seeing even of the Catholic party that he was the only centre of order and legitimate authority round which France could reorganize itself. While preachers who held the divine right of kings made the churches of Paris ring with declamations in favor of democracy rather than submit to the heretic dog of a Bearnois, — much as our soi-disant Democrats have lately been preaching the divine right of slavery, and denounc- ing the heresies of the Declaration of Independence, — Henry bore both parties in hand till he was convinced that only one course of action could possibly combine his own interests and those of France. Meanwhile the Protestants believed somewhat doubtfully that he was theirs, the Catholics hoped somewhat doubtfully that he would be theirs, and Henry himself turned aside remonstrance, advice, and curiosity alike with a jest or a proverb (if a little high, he liked them none the worse), joking continually as his manner was. We have seen Mr. Lincoln contemptuously compared to LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 561 Sancho Panza by persons incapable of appreciating one of the deepest pieces of wisdom in the profoundest romance ever written ; namely, that, while Don Quixote was incomparable in theoretic and ideal statesmanship, Sancho, with his stock of proverbs, the ready money of human experience, made the best possible prac- tical governor. Henry IV was as full of wise saws and modern instances as Mr, Lincoln, but beneath all this was the thoughtful, practical, humane, and thoroughly earnest man, around whom the fragments of France were to gather themselves till she took her place again as a planet of the first magnitude in the European system. In one respect Mr. Lincoln was more fortunate than Henry, However some may think him wanting in zeal, the most fanatical can find no taint of apostasy in any measure of his, nor can the most bitter charge him with being influenced by motives of personal interest. The leading distinction between the policies of the two is one of circumstances. Henry went over to the nation ; Mr. Lincoln has steadily drawn the nation over to him. One left a united France ; the other, we hope and believe, will leave a re- united America. We leave our readers to trace the further points of difference and resemblance for themselves, merely suggesting a general similarity which has often occurred to us. One only point of melancholy interest we will allow ourselves to touch upon. That Mr. Lincoln is not handsome nor elegant we learn from certain English tourists, who would consider similar revelations in regard to Queen Victoria as thoroughly American in their want of bien- scancc. It is no concern of ours, nor does it affect his fitness for the high place he so worthily occupies ; but he is certainly as fortunate as Henry in the matter of good looks, if we may trust contemporary evidence. Mr. Lincoln has also been reproached with Americanism by some not unfriendly British critics ; but, with all deference, we cannot say that we like him any the worse for it, or see in it any reason why he should govern Americans the less wisely. People of more sensitive organizations may be shocked, but we are glad that in this our true war of independence, which is to free us forever from the Old World, we have had at the head of our affairs a man whom America made, as God made Adam, out of the very 562 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE earth, unancestried, unprivileged, unknown, to show us how much truth, how much magnanimity, and how much statecraft await the call of opportunity in simple manhood when it believes in the justice of God and the worth of man. Conventionalities are all very well in their proper place, but they shrivel at the touch of nature like stubble in the fire. The genius that sways a nation by its arbitrary will seems less august to us than that which multiplies and reinforces itself in the instincts and convictions of an entire people. Autocracy may have something in it more melodramatic than this, but falls far short of it in human value and interest. Experience would have bred in us a rooted distrust of improvised statesmanship, even if we did not believe politics to be a science, which, if it cannot always command men of special aptitude and great powers, at least demands the long and steady application of the best powers of such men as it can command to master even its first principles. It is curious, that, in a country which boasts of its intelligence the theory should be so generally held that the most complicated of human contrivances, and one which every day be- comes more complicated, can be worked at sight by any man able to talk for an hour or two without stopping to think. Mr. Lincoln is sometimes claimed as an example of a ready-made ruler. But no case could well be less in point ; for, besides that he was a man of such fair-mindedness as is always the raw material of wisdom, he had in his profession a training precisely the opposite of that to which a partisan is subjected. His experience as a lawyer compelled him not only to see that there is a principle underlying every phenomenon in human affairs, but that there are always two sides to every question, both of which must be fully understood in order to understand either, and that it is of greater advantage to an advocate to appreciate the strength than the weakness of his antagonist's position. Nothing is more remarkable than the un- erring tact with which, in his debate with Mr. Douglas, he went straight to the reason of the question ; nor have we ever had a more striking lesson in political tactics than the fact, that opposed to a man exceptionally adroit in using popular prejudice and bigotry to his purpose, exceptionally unscrupulous in appealing to those baser motives that turn a meeting of citizens into a mob of barbarians, LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 563 he should yet have won his case before a jury of the people. Mr. Lincoln was as far as possible from an impromptu politician. His wisdom was made up of a knowledge of things as well as of men ; his sagacity resulted from a clear perception and honest acknowledgment of difficulties, which enabled him to see that the only durable triumph of political opinion is based, not on any ab- stract right, but upon so much of justice, the highest attainable at any given moment in human affairs, as may be had in the balance of mutual concession. Doubtless he had an ideal, but it was the ideal of a practical statesman, — to aim at the best, and to take the next best, if he is lucky enough to get even that. His slow, but singularly masculine, intelligence taught him* that precedent is only another name for embodied experience, and that it counts for even more in the guidance of communities of men than in that of the individual life. He was not a man who held it good public economy to pull down on the mere chance of rebuilding better. Mr. Lincoln's faith in God was qualified by a very well-founded distrust of the wisdom of man. Perhaps it was his want of self- confidence that more than anything else won him the unlimited confidence of the people, for they felt that there would be no need of retreat from any position he had deliberately taken. The cautious, but steady, advance of his policy during the war was like that of a Roman army. He left behind him a firm road on which public confidence could follow ; he took America with him where he went ; what he gained he occupied, and his advanced posts became colonies. The very homeliness of his genius was its distinction. His kingship was conspicuous by its workday homespun. Never was ruler so absolute as he, nor so little conscious of it ; for he was the incarnate common-sense of the people. With all that tenderness of nature whose sweet sadness touched whoever saw him with something of its own pathos, there was no trace of sen- timentalism in his speech or action. He seems to have had but one rule of conduct, always that of practical and successful poli- tics, to let himself be guided by events, when they were sure to bring him out where he wished to go, though by what seemed to unpractical minds, which let go the possible to grasp at the desirable, a longer road. 564 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Undoubtedly the highest function of statesmanship is by degrees to accommodate the conduct of communities to ethical laws, and to subordinate the conflicting self-interests of the day to higher and more permanent concerns. But it is on the understanding, and not on the sentiment, of a nation that all safe legislation must be based, Voltaire's saying, that " a consideration of petty circum- stances is the tomb of great things," may be true of individual men, but it certainly is not true of governments. It is by a multitude of such considerations, each in itself trifling, but all together weighty, that the framers of policy can alone divine what is practicable and therefore wise. The imputation of inconsistency is one to which every sound politician and every honest thinker must sooner or later subject himself. The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion. The course of a great statesman resembles that of navigable rivers, avoiding immovable obstacles with noble bends of concession, seeking the broad levels of opinion on which men soonest settle and longest dwell, following and marking the almost imperceptible slopes of national tendency, yet always aiming at direct advances, always recruited from sources nearer heaven, and sometimes bursting open paths of progress and fruitful human commerce through what seem the eternal barriers of both. It is loyalty to great ends, even though forced to combine the small and opposing motives of selfish men to accomplish them ; it is the anchored cling to solid principles of duty and action, which knows how to swing with the tide, but is never carried away by it, — that we demand in public men, and not sameness of policy, or a conscientious persistency in what is impracticable. For the impracticable, however theoretically enticing, is always politically unwise, sound statesmanship being the application of that pru- dence to the public business which is the safest guide in that of private men. No doubt slavery was the most delicate and embarrassing question with which Mr. Lincoln was called on to deal, and it was one which no man in his position, whatever his opinions, could evade ; for, though he might withstand the clamor of partisans, he must sooner or later yield to the persistent importunacy of circumstances, which thrust the problem upon him at every turn and in every shape. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 565 It has been brought against us as an accusation abroad, and repeated here by people who measure their country rather by what is thought of it than by what it is, that our war has not been dis- tinctly and avowedly for the extinction of slavery, but a war rather for the preservation of our national power and greatness, in which the emancipation of the negro has been forced upon us by circum- stances and accepted as a necessity. We are very far from denying this ; nay, we admit that it is so far true that we were slow to re- nounce our constitutional obligations even toward those who had absolved us by their own act from the letter of our duty. We are speaking of the government which, legally installed for the whole country, was bound, so long as it was possible, not to overstep the limits of orderly prescription, and could not, without abnegating its own very nature, take the lead in making rebellion an excuse for revolution. There were, no doubt, many ardent and sincere persons who seemed to think this as simple a thing to do as to lead off a Virginia reel. They forgot, what should be forgotten least of all in a system like ours, that the administration for the time being represents not only the majority which elects it, but the minority as well, — a minority in this case powerful, and so little ready for emancipation that it was opposed even to war. Mr. Lincoln had not been chosen as general agent of an anti-slavery society, but President of the United States, to perform certain functions exactly defined by law. Whatever were his wishes, it was no less duty than policy to mark out for himself a line of action that would not further distract the country, by raising before their time questions which plainly would soon enough compel attention, and for which every day was making the answer more easy. Meanwhile he must solve the riddle of this new Sphinx, or be devoured. Though Mr. Lincoln's policy in this critical affair has not been such as to satisfy those who demand an heroic treatment for even the most trifling occasion, and who will not cut their coat according to their cloth, unless they can borrow the scissors of Atropos, it has been at least not unworthy of the long-headed king of Ithaca. Mr. Lincoln had the choice of Bassanio offered him. Which of the three caskets held the prize that was to redeem the fortunes of the country ? There was the golden one whose showy 566 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE speciousness might have tempted a vain man ; the silver of com- promise, which might have decided the choice of a merely acute one ; and the leaden, — dull and homely-looking, as prudence always is, — yet with something about it sure to attract the eye of practical wisdom. Mr, Lincoln dallied with his decision perhaps longer than seemed needful to those on whom its awful responsi- bility was not to rest, but when he made it, it was worthy of his cautious but sure-footed understanding. The moral of the Sphinx- riddle, and it is a deep one, lies in the childish simplicity of the solution. Those who fail in guessing it, fail because they are over- ingenious, and cast about for an answer that shall suit their own notion of the gravity of the occasion and of their own dignity, rather than the occasion itself. In a matter which must be finally settled by public opinion, and in regard to which the ferment of prejudice and passion on both sides has not yet subsided to that equilibrium of compromise from which alone a sound public opinion can result, it is proper enough for the private citizen to press his own convictions with all possible force of argument and persuasion ; but the popular magistrate, whose judgment must become action, and whose action involves the whole country, is bound to wait till the sentiment of the people is so far advanced toward his own point of view, that what he does shall find support in it, instead of merely confusing it with new elements of division. It was not unnatural that men earnestly de- voted to the saving of their country, and profoundly convinced that slavery was its only real enemy, should demand a decided policy round which all patriots might rally, — and this might have been the wisest course for an absolute ruler. But in the then un- settled state of the public mind, with a large party decrying even resistance to the slaveholders' rebellion as not only unwise, but even unlawful ; with a majority, perhaps, even of the would-be loyal so long accustomed to regard the Constitution as a deed of gift conveying to the South their own judgment as to policy and instinct as to right, that they were in doubt at first whether their loyalty were due to the country or to slavery ; and with a respect- able body of honest and influential men who still believed in the possibility of conciliation, — Mr. Lincoln judged wisely, that, LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 567 in laying down a policy in deference to one party, he should be giving to the other the very fulcrum for which their disloyalty had been waiting. It behooved a clear-headed man in his position not to yield so far to an honest indignation against the brokers of treason in the North as to lose sight of the materials for misleading which were their stock in trade, and to forget that it is not the falsehood of sophistry which is to be feared, but the grain of truth mingled with it to make it specious, — that it is not the knavery of the leaders so much as the honesty of the followers they may seduce, that gives them power for evil. It was especially his duty to do nothing which might help the people to forget the true cause of the war in fruitless disputes about its inevitable consequences. The doctrine of State rights can be so handled by an adroit demagogue as easily to confound the distinction between liberty and lawlessness in the minds of ignorant persons, accustomed always to be influenced by the sound of certain words, rather than to reflect upon the principles which give them meaning. For, though Secession involves the manifest absurdity of denying to a State the right of making war against any foreign power while permitting it against the United States ; though it supposes a compact of mutual concessions and guaranties among States without any arbiter in case of dissension ; though it contradicts common-sense in assuming that the men who framed our govern- ment did not know what they meant when they substituted Union for Confederation ; though it falsifies history, which shows that the main opposition to the adoption of the Constitution was based on the argument that it did not allow that independence in the several States which alone would justify them in seceding; — yet, as slavery was universally admitted to be a reserved right, an inference could be drawn from any direct attack upon it (though only in self-defence) to a natural right of resistance, logical enough to satisfy minds untrained to detect fallacy, as the majority of men always are, and now too much disturbed by the disorder of the times, to consider that the order of events had any legitimate bear- ing on the argument. Though Mr. Lincoln was too sagacious to give the Northern allies of the Rebels the occasion they desired 568 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE and even strove to provoke, yet from the beginning of the war the most persistent efforts have been made to confuse the pubUc mind as to its origin and motives, and to drag the people of the loyal States down from the national position they had instinctively taken to the old level of party squabbles and antipathies. The wholly unprovoked rebellion of an oligarchy proclaiming negro slavery the corner-stone of free institutions, and in the first flush of over-hasty confidence venturing to parade the logical sequence of their leading dogma, "that slavery is right in principle, and has nothing to do with difference of complexion," has been repre- sented as a legitimate and gallant attempt to maintain the true principles of democracy. The rightful endeavor of an established government, the least onerous that ever existed, to defend itself against a treacherous attack on its very existence, has been cun- ningly made to seem the wicked effort of a fanatical clique to force its doctrines on an oppressed population. Even so long ago as when Mr, Lincoln, not yet convinced of the danger and magnitude of the crisis, was endeavoring to per- suade himself of Union majorities at the South, and to carry on a war that was half peace in the hope of a peace that would have been all war, — while he was still enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law, under some theory that Secession, however it might absolve States from their obligations, could not escheat them of their claims under the Constitution, and that slaveholders in rebellion had alone among mortals the privilege of having their cake and eating it at the same time, — the enemies of free government were striving to persuade the people that the war was an Abolition crusade. To rebel without reason was proclaimed as one of the rights of man, while it was carefully kept out of sight that to sup- press rebellion is the first duty of government. All the evils that have come upon the country have been attributed to the Aboli- tionists, though it is hard to see how any party can become per- manently powerful except in one of two ways, — either by the greater truth of its principles, or the extravagance of the party opposed to it. To fancy the ship of state, riding safe at her con- stitutional moorings, suddenly engulfed by a huge kraken of Aboli- tionism, rising from unknown depths and grasping it with slimy LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 569 tentacles, is to look at the natural history of the matter with the eyes of Pontoppidan. To believe that the leaders in the Southern treason feared any danger from Abolitionism, would be to deny them ordinary intelligence, though there can be little doubt that they made use of it to stir the passions and excite the fears of their deluded accomplices. They rebelled, not because they thought slavery weak, but because they believed it strong enough, not to overthrow the government, but to get possession of it ; for it be- comes daily clearer that they used rebellion only as a means of revolution, and if they got revolution, though not in the shape they looked for, is the American people to save them from its consequences at the cost of its own existence ? The election of Mr. Lincoln, which it was clearly in their power to prevent had they wished, was the occasion merely, and not the cause, of their revolt. Abolitionism, till within a year or two, was the despised heresy of a few earnest persons, without political weight enough to carry the election of a parish constable ; and their cardinal principle was disunion, because they were convinced that within the Union the position of slavery was impregnable. In spite of the proverb, great effects do not follow from small causes, — that is, disproportionately small, — but from adequate causes acting under certain required conditions. To contrast the size of the oak with that of the parent acorn, as if the poor seed had paid all costs from its slender strong-box, may serve for a child's wonder ; but the real miracle lies in that divine league which bound all the forces of nature to the service of the tiny germ in fulfilling its destiny. Everything has been at work for the past ten years in the cause of anti-slavery, but Garrison and Phillips have been far less successful propagandists than the slaveholders themselves, with the constantly growing arrogance of their pre- tensions and encroachments. They have forced the question upon the attention of every voter in the Free States, by defiantly putting freedom and democracy on the defensive. But, even after the Kansas outrages, there was no wide-spread desire on the part of the North to commit aggressions, though there was a growing determination to resist them. The popular unanimity in favor of the war three years ago was but in small measure the result of 570 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE anti-slavery sentiment, far less of any zeal for abolition. But every month of the war, every movement of the allies of slavery in the Free States, has been making Abolitionists by the thousand. The masses of any people, however intelligent, are very little moved by abstract principles of humanity and justice, until those prin- ciples are interpreted for them by the stinging commentary of some infringement upon their own rights, and then their instincts and passions, once aroused, do indeed derive an incalculable rein- forcement of impulse and intensity from those higher ideas, those sublime traditions, which have no motive political force till they are allied with a sense of immediate personal wrong or imminent peril. Then at last the stars in their courses begin to fight against Sisera. Had any one doubted before that the rights of human nature are unitary, that oppression is of one hue the world over, no matter what the color of the oppressed, — had any one failed to see what the real essence of the contest was, — the efforts of the advocates of slavery among ourselves to throw discredit upon the fundamental axioms of the Declaration of Independence and the radical doctrines of Christianity, could not fail to sharpen his eyes. While every day was bringing the people nearer to the con- clusion which all thinking men saw to be inevitable from the be- ginning, it was wise in Mr. Lincoln to leave the shaping of his policy to events. In this country, where the rough and ready understanding of the people is sure at last to be the controlling power, a profound common-sense is the best genius for statesman- ship. Hitherto the wisdom of the President's measures has been justified by the fact that they have always resulted in more firmly uniting public opinion. One of the things particularly admirable in the public utterances of President Lincoln is a certain tone of familiar dignity, which, while it is perhaps the most difficult at- tainment of mere style, is also no doubtful indication of personal character. There must be something essentially noble in an elec- tive ruler who can descend to the level of confidential ease without losing respect, something very manly in one who can break through the etiquette of his conventional rank and trust himself to the reason and intelligence of those who have elected him. No higher compliment was ever paid to a nation than the simple confidence, LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 571 the fireside plainness, with which Mr, Lincoln always addresses himself to the reason of the American people. This was, indeed, a true democrat, who grounded himself on the assumption that a democracy can think. " Come, let us reason together about this matter," has been the tone of all his addresses to the people ; and accordingly we have never had a chief magistrate who so won to himself the love and at the same time the judgment of his countrymen. To us, that simple confidence of his in the right- mindedness of his fellow-men is very touching, and its success is as strong an argument as we have ever seen in favor of the theory that men can govern themselves. He never appeals to any vulgar sentiment, he never alludes to the humbleness of his origin ; it probably never occurred to him, indeed, that there was anything higher to start from than manhood ; and he put himself on a level with those he addressed, not by going down to them, but only by taking it for granted that they had brains and would come up to a common ground of reason. In an article lately printed in The Natiofi, Mr. Bayard Taylor mentions the striking fact, that in the foulest dens of the Five Points he found the portrait of Lincoln. The wretched population that makes its hive there threw all its votes and more against him, and yet paid this instinctive tribute to the sweet humanity of his nature. There ignorance sold its vote and took its money, but all that was left of manhood in them recognized its saint and martyr. Mr. Lincoln is not in the habit of saying, " This is my opinion, or my theory," but " This is the conclusion to which, in my judg- ment, the time has come, and to which, accordingly, the sooner we come the better for us." His policy has been the policy of public opinion based on adequate discussion and on a timely recog- nition of the influence of passing events in shaping the features of events to come. One secret of Mr. Lincoln's remarkable success in captivating the popular mind is undoubtedly an unconsciousness of self which enables him, though under the necessity of constantly using the capital /, to do it without any suggestion of egotism. There is no single vowel which men's mouths can pronounce with such differ- ence of effect. That which one shall hide away, as it were, behind 572 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE the substance of his discourse, or, if he bring it to the front, shall use merely to give an agreeable accent of individuality to what he says, another shall make an offensive challenge to the self- satisfaction of all his hearers, and an unwarranted intrusion upon each man's sense of personal importance, irritating every pore of his vanity, like a dry northeast wind, to a goose-flesh of oppo- sition and hostility. Mr. Lincoln has never studied Ouintilian ; but he has, in the earnest simplicity and unaffected American- ism of his own character, one art of oratory worth all the rest. He forgets himself so entirely in his object as to give his / the sympathetic and persuasive effect of We with the great body of his countrymen. Homely, dispassionate, showing all the rough- edged process of his thought as it goes along, yet arriving at his conclusions with an honest kind of every-day logic, he is so eminently our representative man, that, when he speaks, it seems as if the people were listening to their own thinking aloud. The dignity of his thought owes nothing to any ceremonial garb of words, but to the manly movement that comes of settled purpose and an energy of reason that knows not what rhetoric means. There has been nothing of Cleon, still less of Strepsiades striving to underbid him in demagogism, to be found in the public utterances of Mr. Lin- coln. He has always addressed the intelligence of men, never their prejudice, their passion, or their ignorance. On the day of his death, this simple Western attorney, who according to one party was a vulgar joker, and whom the doctri- naires among his own supporters accused of wanting every element of statesmanship, was the most absolute ruler in Christendom, and this solely by the hold his good-humored sagacity had laid on the hearts and understandings of his countrymen. Nor was this all, for it appeared that he had drawn the great majority, not only of his fellow-citizens, but of mankind also, to his side. So strong and so persuasive is honest manliness without a single quality of romance or unreal sentiment to help it ! A civilian during times of the most captivating military achievement, awkward, with no skill in the lower technicalities of manners, he left behind him LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 573 a fame beyond that of any conqueror, the memory of a grace higher than that of outward person, and of a gentlemanhness deeper than mere breeding. Never before that startled April morn- ing did such multitudes of men shed tears for the death of one they had never seen, as if with him a friendly presence had been taken away from their lives, leaving them colder and darker. Never was funeral panegyric so eloquent as the silent look of sympathy which strangers exchanged when they met on that day. Their common manhood had lost a kinsman. WALT WHITMAN [Born at West Hills, Long Island, New York, May 31, 181 9; died at Camden, New Jersey, March 26, 1892] I HEAR AMERICA SINGING I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear ; Those of mechanics, each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong ; The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam ; The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work ; The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deck- hand singing on the steamboat deck ; The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands ; The woodcutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morn- ing, or at noon intermission or at sundown ; The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing. Each singing what belongs to her and to none else ; The day what belongs to the day — at night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly. Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs. 574 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE BY THE BIVOUAC'S FITFUL FLAME By the bivouac's fitful flame, A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow ; — but first I note, The tents of the sleeping army, the fields' and woods' dim outline, The darkness, lit by spots of kindled fire — the silence ; Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving ; The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily watching me ;) While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts, Of life and death — of home and the past and loved, and of those that are far away ; A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground, By the bivouac's fitful flame. O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! O Captain ! my Captain ! our fearful trip is done ; The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won ; The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring : But O heart ! heart ! heart ! O the bleeding drops of red. Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. O Captain ! my Captain ! rise up and hear the bells ; Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths — for you the shores a-crowding ; For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning ; Here Captain ! dear father ! This arm beneath your head ! It is some dream that on the deck, You 've fallen cold and dead. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 575 My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still ; My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will ; The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done; From fearful trip the victor ship, comes in with object won ; Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells ! But I, with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. A SIGHT IN CAMP IN THE DAY-BREAK GREY AND DIM A sight in camp in the day-break grey and dim, As from my tent I emerge so early, sleepless, As slow I walk in the cool fresh air, the path near by the hospital tent. Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended lying. Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket, Grey and heavy blanket, folding, covering all. Curious, I halt and silent stand ; Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest, the first, just lift the blanket : Who are you, elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-grey' d hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes ,'' Who are you, my dear comrade ? Then to the second I step — and who are you, my child and darling ? Who are you, sweet boy, with cheeks yet blooming ? Then to the third — a face nor child, nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory ; Young man, I think I know you — I think this face of yours is the face of the Christ himself ; Dead and divine, and brother of all, and here again he lies. 576 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE A NOISELESS, PATIENT SPIDER A noiseless, patient spider, I mark'd, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated ; Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding, It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself ; Ever unreeling them — ever tirelessly speeding them. And you, O my Soul, where you stand. Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space. Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, — seeking the spheres, to connect them ; Till the bridge you will need, be form'd — till the ductile anchor hold ; Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul. HUSH'D BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY Hush'd be the camps to-day ; And, soldiers, let us drape our war-worh weapons ; And each with musing soul retire, to celebrate, Our dear commander's death. No more for him life's stormy conflicts ; Nor victory, nor defeat — no more time's dark events, Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky. But sing, poet, in our name ; Sing of the love we bore him — because you, dweller in camps, know it truly. As they invault the coflfin there, Sing — as they close the doors of earth upon him — one verse, For the heavy hearts of soldiers. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 577 TO THE MAN-OF-WAR-BIRD Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm, Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions, (Burst the wild storm ? above it thou ascended 'st. And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee) Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating, As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee, (Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast.) Far, far at sea. After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks. With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene, The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun, The limpid spread of air cerulean. Thou also re-appearest. Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings) To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane, Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails, Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating. At dusk that look'st on Senegal, at morn America, That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud, In them, in thy experiences, had'st thou my soul. What joys ! what joys were thine ! COME UP FROM THE FIELDS, FATHER Come up from the fields, father, here 's a letter from our Pete ; And come to the front door, mother — here 's a letter from thy dear son. Lo, 't is autumn, Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder, Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind ; 578 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the treUised vines ; (Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines ? Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing ?) Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds. Below, too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers well. Down in the fields all prospers well ; But now from the fields come, father, come at the daughter's call ; And come to the entry, mother, to the front door come right away. Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps trembling ; She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap. Open the envelope quickly ; O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is sign'd ; O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother's soul ! All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the main words only ; Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital, At present lozv,but zvill soon be better. Ah, now, the single figure to me. Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms, Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint. By the jamb of a door leans. Grieve not so, dear mother (the just-grown daughter speaks through her sobs ; The little sisters huddle around, speechless and dismay 'd;) See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete zvill soon be better. 'Alas, poor boy, he will never be better (nor may-be needs to be better, that brave and simple soul ;) While they stand at home at the door, he is dead already ; The only son is dead. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 579 But the mother needs to be better ; She with thin form presently dressed in black ; By day her meals untouch'd, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking, In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing, O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw. To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son. BAREST THOU NOW, O SOUL Barest thou now, O Soul, Walk out with me toward the Unknown Region, Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow ? No map there, nor guide. Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand. Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land. I know it not, O Soul ! Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us ; All waits undreamed of in that region, that inaccessible land. Till, when the ties loosen, All but the ties eternal. Time and Space, Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bound us. Then we burst forth, we float. In Time and Space, O Soul ! prepared for them, Equal, equipped at last, (O joy ! O fruit of all !) them to fulfil, O Soul ! 58o READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOOR-YARD BLOOM'D SELECTIONS I When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom 'd, And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, I mourn'd — and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. O ever-returning spring ! trinity sure to me you bring ; Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love. O powerful, western, fallen star ! O shades of night ! O moody, tearful night ! O great star disappear'd ! O the black murk that hides the star ! O cruel hands that hold me powerless ! O helpless soul of me ! O harsh surrounding cloud, that will not free my soul ! Ill In the door-yard fronting an old farmhouse, near the white- wash'd palings, Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green. With many a pointed blossom, rising, delicate, with the perfume strong I love. With every leaf a miracle . . . and from this bush in the door-yard. With delicate-color'd blossoms, and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, A sprig, with its flower, I break. IV In the swamp, in secluded recesses, A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song. Solitary, the thrush. The hermit, withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, Sings by himself a song. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 581 Song of the bleeding throat ! Death's outlet song of life — (for well, dear brother, I know, If thou wast not gifted to sing, thou would'st surely die.) Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities. Amid lanes, and through old woods, (where lately the violets peep'd from the ground, spotting the gray debris ;) Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes — passing the endless grass ; Passing the yellow-speared wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprising ; Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards ; Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave, Night and day journeys a coffin. Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land. With the pomp of the in-looped flags, with the cities draped in black. With the show of the States themselves as of crape- veil'd women standing. With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night. With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads, With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces. With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn ; With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour'd around the coffin, The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs — where amid these you journey, With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang. Here, coffin that slowly passes, I give you my sprig of lilac. 582 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Sing on, there in the swamp ! singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call, 1 hear, I come presently, I understand you, But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detained me ; The star my departing comrade holds and detains me. how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved ? And how shall I deck my soul for the large sweet soul that has gone ? And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love ? Sea-winds blown from east and west, Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till there on the prairies meeting. These, and with these, and the breath of my chant, 1 perfume the grave of him I love. Sing on ! sing on, you gray-brown bird ! Sing from the swamps, the recesses — pour your chant from the bushes ; Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines. Sing on, dearest brother — warble your reedy song ; Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe. O liquid, and free, and tender ! O wild and loose to my soul ! O wondrous singer ! You only I hear . . . yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart ;) Yet the lilac, with mastering odor, holds me. To the tally of my soul, Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird With pure, deliberate notes, spreading, filling the night. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 583 Loud in the pines and cedars dim, Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume ; And I with my comrades there in the night. While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed, As to long panoramas of visions. I saw askant the armies ; I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags, Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierced with missiles, I saw them, And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody ; And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs (and all in silence,) And the staffs all splintered and broken. I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them. And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them ; I saw the debris and debris of all the dead soldiers of the war. But I saw they were not as was thought, They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not ; The living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd. And the wife and the child, and the musing comrade suffer'd, And the armies that remained suffer'd. Passing the visions, passing the night ; Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands ; Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul. Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song, As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night. Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy. 584 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Covering the earth and filhng the spread of the heaven, As that powerful psahn in the night I heard from recesses, Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves, I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring. I cease from my song for thee, From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee, O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night. Yet each I keep and all, retrievements out of the night ; The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird, And the tallying chant, the echo arous'd in my soul, With the lustrous and drooping star, with the countenance full of woe. With the lilac tall, and its blossoms of mastering odor ; With the holders holding my hand, nearing the call of the bird. Comrades mine, and I in the midst, and their memory ever I keep — for the dead I loved so well ; For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands . , . and this for his dear sake ; Lilac and star and bird, twined with the chant of my soul. There in the fragrant pines, and the cedars dusk and dim. SIDNEY LANIER. [Born at Macon, Georgia, February 3, 1842; died at Lynn, North Carolina, September 7, 1881] SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE Out of the hills of Habersham, Down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plain, Run the rapid and leap the fall, Split at the rock and together again, LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 585 Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, And flee from folly on every side With a lover's pain to attain the plain Far from the hills of Habersham, Far from the valleys of Hall. All down the hills of Habersham, All through the valleys of Hall, The rushes cried Abide, abide. The wilful waterweeds held me thrall. The laving laurel turned my tide. The ferns and the fondling grass said Stay, The dewberry dipped for to work delay, And the little reeds sighed Abide, abide, Here in the hills of Habersham, Here in the valleys of Hall. High o'er the hills of Habersham, Veiling the valleys of Hall, The hickory told me manifold Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall Wrought me her shadowy self to hold, The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine, Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign. Said, Pass not, so cold, these manifold Deep shades of the hills of Habersham, These glades in the valleys of Hall. And oft in the hills of Habersham, And oft in the valleys of Hall, The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl. And many a luminous jewel lone — Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist, Ruby, garnet, and amethyst — Made lures with the lights of streaming stone In the clefts of the hills of Habersham, In the beds of the valleys of Hall. 586 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE But oh, not the hills of Habersham, And oh, not the valleys of Hall Avail : I am fain for to water the plain. Downward the voices of Duty call — Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main. The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, And a myriad flowers mortally yearn. And the lordly main from beyond the plain Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, Calls through the valleys of Hall. A BALLAD OF TREES AND THE MASTER Into the woods my Master went. Clean forspent, forspent. Into the woods my Master came, Forspent with love and shame. But the olives they were not blind to Him ; The little gray leaves were kind to Him ; The thorn-tree had a mind to Him When into the woods He came. Out of the woods my Master went, And He was well content. Out of the woods my Master came. Content with death and shame. When Death and Shame would woo Him last. From under the trees they drew Him last : 'T was on a tree they slew Him — last ; When out of the woods He came. THE MARSHES OF GLYNN Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs, — Emerald twilights, — Virginal shy lights, Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 587 When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods, Of the heavenly woods and glades, That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within The wide sea-marshes of Glynn ; — Beautiful glooms,- soft dusks in the noon-day fire, — Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire. Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves, — Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves. Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood, Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good ; — O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine. While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did shine Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine ; But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest. And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West, And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream, — Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak, And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know. And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within. That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore, And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain, — Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face The vast sweet visage of space. To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn. For a mete and a mark To the forest-dark : — 588 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE So: Affable live-oak, leaning low, — Thus — with your favor — soft, with a reverent hand, (Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land !) Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand On the firm-packed sand. Free By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea. Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land. Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl. Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight, Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light. And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high ? The world lies east : how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky ! A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high broad in the blade, Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade, Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain. To the terminal blue of the main. Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea .-' Somehow my soul seems suddenly free From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin. By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn. Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea ! Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun. Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won LATER NATIONAL PERIOD 589 God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain. As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God : I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies : By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God : Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn. And the sea lends large, as the marsh : lo, out of his plenty the sea Pours fast : full soon the time of the flood-tide must be : Look how the grace of the sea doth go About and about through the intricate channels that flow Here and there. Everywhere, Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes, And the marsh is meshed with a million veins, That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow In the rose-and-silver evening glow. Farewell, my lord Sun ! The creeks overflow : a thousand rivulets run 'Twixt the roots of the sod ; the blades of the marsh-grass stir ; Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr ; Passeth, and all is still ; and the currents cease to run ; And the sea and the marsh are one. How still the plains of the waters be ! The tide is in his ecstasy. The tide is at his highest height : And it is night. 590 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep Roll in on the souls of men, But who will reveal to our waking ken The forms that swim and the shapes that creep Under the waters of sleep ? And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in On the length and the breadth of the marvelous marshes of Glynn. THE LATER NATIONAL PERIOD MINOR WRITERS BAYARD TAYLOR [Born at Kennett Square, Chester County, Pennsylvania, January ii, 1825; died at Berlin, December 19, 1878] BEDOUIN SONG From the Desert I come to thee On a stallion shod with fire ; And the winds are left behind In the speed of my desire. Under thy window I stand, And the midnight hears my cry : I love thee, I love but thee, With a love that shall not die Till the sun groivs cold, And the stars are old, And the leaves of tJie Jiidgmejit Book unfold ! Look from thy window and see My passion and my pain ; I lie on the sands below. And I faint in thy disdain. Let the night-winds touch thy brow With the heat of my burning sigh, And melt thee to hear the vow Of a love that shall not die Till the Sim grows cold, And the stars are old. And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold I 591 592 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE My steps are nightly driven, By the feyer in my breast, To hear from thy lattice breathed The word that shall give me rest. Open the door of thy heart, And open thy chamber door, And my kisses shall teach thy lips The love that shall fade no more Till the siin grows cold. And the stars are old. And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold ! THE SONG OF THE CAMP " Give us a song ! " the soldiers cried, The outer trenches guarding, When the heated guns of the camps allied Grew weary of bombarding. The dark Redan, in silent scoff. Lay, grim and threatening, under ; And the tawny mound of the Malakoff No longer belched its thunder. There was a pause, A guardsman said " We storm the forts to-morrow ; Sing while we may, another day Will bring enough of sorrow." They lay along the battery's side. Below the smoking cannon : Brave hearts, from Severn and from Clyde, And from the banks of Shannon. They sang of love, and not of fame ; Forgot was Britain's glory : Each heart recalled a different name, But all sang " Annie Laurie." LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 593 Voice after voice caught up the song, Until its tender passion Rose Hke an anthem, rich and strong, — Their battle-eve confession. Dear girl, her name he dared not speak, But, as the song grew louder. Something upon the soldier's cheek Washed off the stains of powder. Beyond the darkening: ocean burned The bloody sunset's embers. While the Crimean valleys learned How English love remembers. And once again a fire of hell Rained on the Russian quarters, With scream of shot, and burst of shell, And bellowing of the mortars ! And Irish Nora's eyes are dim For a singer, dumb and gory ; And English Mary mourns for him Who sang of "Annie Laurie." Sleep, soldiers ! still in honored rest Your truth and valor wearing : The bravest are the tenderest, — The loving are the daring. AMERICA From the National Ode, July 4, 1876 Foreseen in the vision of sages, Foretold when martyrs bled, She was born of the longing of ages, By the truth of the noble dead And the faith of the living fed ! 594 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE No blood in her lightest veins Frets at remembered chains, Nor shame of bondage has bowed her head. In her form and features still The unblenching Puritan will, Cavalier honor. Huguenot grace, The Quaker truth and sweetness, And the strength of the danger-girdled race Of Holland, blend in a proud completeness. From the homes of all, where her being began, She took what she gave to Man ; Justice, that knew no station, Belief, as soul decreed, Free air for aspiration, Free force for independent deed ! She takes, but to give again, As the sea returns the rivers in rain ; And gathers the chosen of her seed From the hunted of every crown and creed. Her Germany dwells by a gentler Rhine ; Her Ireland sees the old sunburst shine ; Her France pursues some stream divine ; Her Norway keeps his mountain pine ; Her Italy waits by the western brine ; And, broad-based under all. Is planted England's oaken-hearted mood. As rich in fortitude As e'er went worldward from the island-wall ! Fused in her candid light, To one strong race all races here unite ; Tongues melt in hers, hereditary foemen Forget their sword and slogan, kith and clan, 'T was glory, once, to be a Roman : She makes it glory, now, to be a man ! LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 595 HENRY TIMROD [Born at Charleston, South Carolina, December 8, 1829; died at Columbia, South Carolina, October 6, 1867] SPRING Spring, with that nameless pathos in the air Which dwells with all things fair, Spring, with her golden suns and silver rain, Is with us once again. Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns Its fragrant lamps, and turns Into a royal court with green festoons The banks of dark lagoons. In the deep heart of every forest tree The blood is all aglee. And there 's a look about the leafless bowers As if they dreamed of flowers. Yet still on every side we trace the hand Of Winter in the land, Save where the maple reddens on the lawn. Flushed by the season's dawn. Or where, like those strange semblances we find That age to childhood bind, The elm puts on, as if in Nature's scorn. The brown of Autumn corn. As yet the turf is dark, although you know That not a span below, A thousand germs are groping through the gloom, And soon will burst their tomb. 596 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Already, here and there, on frailest stems Appear some azure gems. Small as might deck, upon a gala day, The forehead of a fay. In gardens you may note amid the dearth The crocus breaking earth ; And near the snowdrop's tender white and green, The violet in its screen. But many gleams and shadows need must pass Along the budding grass, And weeks go by, before the enamored South Shall kiss the rose's mouth. Still there 's a sense of blossoms yet unborn In the sweet airs of morn ; One almost looks to see the very street Grow purple at his feet. At times a fragrant breeze comes floating by, And brings, you know not why, A feeling as when eager crowds await Before a palace gate Some wondrous pageant ; and you scarce would start, If from a beech's heart, A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say, " Behold me ! I am May ! " Ah ! who would couple thoughts of war and crime With such a blessed time ! Who in the west wind's aromatic breath Could hear the call of Death ! Yet not more surely shall the Spring awake The voice of wood and brake, Than she shall rouse, for all her tranquil charms, A million men to arms. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 597 There shall be deeper hues upon her plains Than all her sunlit rains, And every gladdening influence around, Can summon from the ground. Oh ! standing on this desecrated mold, Methinks that I behold, Lifting her bloody daisies up to God, Spring kneeling on the sod, And calling, with the voice of all her rills, Upon the ancient hills To fall and crush the tyrants and the slaves Who turn her meads to graves. AT MAGNOLIA CEMETERY Sleep sweetly in your humble graves. Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause ; Though yet no marble column craves The pilgrim here to pause. In seed of laurel in the earth The blossom of your fame is blown, And somewhere, waiting for its birth. The shaft is in the stone ! Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years Which keep in trust your storied tombs, Behold ! your sisters bring their tears, And these memorial blooms. Small tributes ! but your shades will smile More proudly on these wreaths to-day, Than when some cannon-molded pile Shall overlook this bay. 59^ READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Stoop, angels, hither from the skies ! There is no hoher spot of ground Than where defeated valor lies, By mourning beauty crowned. PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE [Born at Charleston, South Carolina, January i, 1831 ; died July 6, 1886] ASPECTS OF THE PINES Tall, somber, grim, against the morning sky They rise, scarce touched by melancholy airs, Which stir the fadeless foliage dreamfully, As if from realms of mystical despairs. Tall, somber, grim, they stand with dusky gleams Brightening to gold within the woodland's core. Beneath the gracious noontide's tranquil beams — But the weird winds of morning sigh no more. A stillness, strange, divine, ineffable. Broods round and o'er them in the wind's surcease, And on each tinted copse and shimmering dell Rests the mute rapture of deep-hearted peace. Last, sunset comes — the solemn joy and might Borne from the west when cloudless day declines — Low, fiutelike breezes sweep the waves of light. And lifting dark green tresses of the pines, Till every lock is luminous — gently float. Fraught with hale odors up the heavens afar To faint when twilight on her virginal throat Wears for a gem the tremulous vesper star. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 599 A LITTLE WHILE I FAIN WOULD LINGER YET A little while (my life is almost set !) I fain would pause along the downward way, Musing an hour in this sad sunset ray, While, Sweet ! our eyes with tender tears are wet : A little hour I fain would linger yet. A little while I fain would linger yet. All for love's sake, for love that cannot tire ; Though fervid youth be dead, with youth's desire, And hope has faded to a vague regret, A little while I fain would linger yet. A little while I fain would linger here : Behold ! who knows what strange, mysterious bars 'Twixt souls that love may rise in other stars ? Nor can love deem the face of death is fair : A little while I still would linger here. A little while I yearn to hold thee fast, Hand locked in hand, and loyal heart to heart ; (O pitying Christ ! those woeful words, " We part 1 ") So ere the darkness fall, the light be past, A little while I fain would hold thee fast. A little while, when light and twilight meet, — Behind, our broken years ; before, the deep Weird wonder of the last unfathomed sleep, — A little while I still would clasp thee. Sweet, A little while, when night and twilight meet. A little while I fain would linger here ; Behold ! who knows what soul-dividing bars Earth's faithful loves may part in other stars .-' Nor can love deem the face of death is fair : A little while I still would linger here. 6oo READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE A STORM IN THE DISTANCE I see the cloud-born squadrons of the gale, Their lines of rain like glittering spears deprest, While all the affrighted land grows darkly pale In flashing charge on earth's half-shielded breast. Sounds like the rush of trampling columns float From that fierce conflict ; volleyed thunders peal, Blent with the maddened wind's wild bugle-note ; The lightnings flash, the solid woodlands reel ! Ha ! many a foliaged guardian of the height, Majestic pine or chestnut, riven and bare, Falls in the rage of that aerial fight. Led by the Prince of all the Powers of air ! Vast boughs like shattered banners hurtling fly Down the thick tumult : while, like emerald snow, Millions of orphaned leaves make wild the sky. Or drift in shuddering helplessness below. Still, still, the levelled lances of the rain At earth's half-shielded breast take glittering aim ; All space is rife with fury, racked with pain, Earth bathed in vapor, and heaven rent by flame ! At last the cloud-battalions through long rifts Of luminous mists retire : — the strife is done, And earth once more her wounded beauty lifts, To meet the healing kisses of the sun. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 6oi FRANCIS BRET HARTE [Born at Albany, New York, August 25, 1839; died at Camberley, England, May 5, 1902] GRIZZLY Coward, — of heroic size, In whose lazy muscles lies Strength we fear and yet despise ; Savage, — whose relentless tusks Are content with acorn husks ; Robber, — whose exploits ne'er soared O'er the bee's or squirrel's hoard ; Whiskered chin, and feeble nose, Claws of steel on baby toes, — Here, in solitude and shade, Shambling, shuffling plantigrade. Be thy courses undismayed ! Here, where Nature makes thy bed, Let thy rude, half-human tread Point to hidden Indian springs, Lost in ferns and fragrant grasses, Hovered o'er by timid wings. Where the wood-duck lightly passes. Where the wild bee holds her sweets. Epicurean retreats. Fit for thee, and better than Fearful spoils of dangerous man. In thy fat-jowled deviltry Friar Tuck shall live in thee ; Thou mayest levy tithe and dole ; Thou shalt spread the woodland cheer. From the pilgrim taking toll ; Match thy cunning with his fear ; Eat, and drink, and have thy fill ; Yet remain an outlaw still ! 6o2 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH [Born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, November 1 1, 1836; died at Boston, March 19, 1907] WHEN THE SULTAN GOES TO ISPAHAN W/icn the Sidtan ShaJi-Zaman Goes to the city Ispahan, Even before he gets so far As the place where the clustered palm-trees are, At the last of the thirty palace-gates, The flower of the harem, Rose-in-Bloom, Orders a feast in his favorite room — Glittering squares of colored ice, Sweetened with syrup, tinctured with spice, Creams, and cordials, and sugared dates, Syrian apples, Othmanee quinces. Limes, and citrons, and apricots. And wines that are known to Eastern princes ; And Nubian slaves, with smoking pots Of spiced meats and costliest fish And all that curious palate could wish, Pass in and out of the cedarn doors ; Scattered over mosaic floors Are anemones, myrtles, and violets, And a musical fountain throws its jets Of a hundred colors into the air. The dusk Sultana loosens her hair, And stains with the henna-plant the tips Of her pointed nails, and bites her lips Till they bloom again ; but alas, that rose Not for the Sultan buds and blows. Not for the Sultan Shah-Zaman When he goes to the city IspaJian. Then at a wave of her sunny hand The dancing-girls of Samarcand Glide in like shapes from fairy-land. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 603 Making a sudden mist in air Of fleecy veils and floating hair And white arms Hfted. Orient blood Runs in their veins, shines in their eyes. And there, in this Eastern Paradise, Filled with the breath of sandal-wood, And Khoten musk, and aloes and myrrh, Sits Rose-in-Bloom on a silk divan. Sipping the wines of Astrakhan ; And her Arab lover sits with her. TJiat 's when the Sidtan Shah-Zatnan Goes to the city Ispahan. Now, when I see an extra light. Flaming, flickering on the night From my neighbor's casement opposite, I know as well as I know to pray, I know as well as tongue can say, That the innocent Sultan Shah-Zaman Has gone to the city Ispahan. CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER [Born at Plainfield, Massachusetts, September 12, 1829; died in Hartford, Connecticut, October 20, 1900] CAMPING OUT It seems to be agreed that civilization is kept up only by a con- stant effort. Nature claims its own speedily when the effort is relaxed. If you clear a patch of fertile ground in the forest, uproot the stumps and plant it, year after year, in potatoes and maize, you say you have subdued it. But if you leave it for a season or two, a kind of barbarism seems to steal out upon it from the circling woods ; coarse grass and brambles cover it ; bushes spring up in a wild tangle ; the raspberry and the blackberry flower and fruit, and the humorous bear feeds upon them. The last state of the ground is worse than the first. 604 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Perhaps the cleared spot is called Ephesus. There is a splendid city on the plain ; there are temples and theatres on the hills ; the commerce of the world seeks its port ; the luxury of the Orient flows through its marble streets. You are there one day when the sea has receded : the plain is a pestilent marsh ; the temples, the theatres, the lofty gates, have sunken and crumbled, and the wild- brier runs over them ; and, as you grow pensive in the most desolate place in the world, a bandit lounges out of a tomb, and offers to relieve you of all that which creates artificial distinctions in society. The higher the civilization has risen, the more abject is the desola- tion of barbarism that ensues. The most melancholy spot in the Adirondacks is not a tamarack-swamp, where the traveller wades in moss and mire, and the atmosphere is composed of equal active parts of black-flies, mosquitoes, and midges. It is the village of the Adirondack Iron- Works, where the streets of gaunt houses are falling to pieces, tenantless ; the factory wheels have stopped ; the furnaces are in ruins ; the iron and wooden machinery is strewn about in helpless detachment ; and heaps of charcoal, ore, and slag proclaim an arrested industry. Beside this deserted village, even Calamity Pond, shallow, sedgy, with its ragged shores of stunted firs, and its melancholy shaft that marks the spot where the pro- prietor of the iron-works accidentally shot himself, is cheerful. The instinct of barbarism that leads people periodically to throw away the habits of civilization, and seek the freedom and discomfort of the woods, is explicable enough ; but it is not so easy to under- stand why this passion should be strongest in those who are most refined, and most trained in intellectual and social fastidiousness. Philistinism and shoddy do not like the woods, unless it becomes fashionable to do so ; and then, as speedily as possible they intro- duce their artificial luxuries, and reduce the life in the wilderness to the vulgarity of a well-fed picnic. It is they who have strewn the Adirondacks with paper collars and tin cans. The real enjoy- ment of camping and tramping in the woods lies in a return to primitive conditions of lodging, dress, and food, in as total an escape as may be from the requirements of civilization. And it remains to be explained why this is enjoyed most by those who are most highly civilized. It is wonderful to see how easily the restraints of LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 605 society fall off. Of course it is not true that courtesy depends upon clothes with the best people ; but, with others, behavior hangs almost entirely upon dress. Many good habits are easily got rid of in the woods. Doubt sometimes seems to be felt whether Sunday is a legal holiday there. It becomes a question of casuistry with a clergyman whether he may shoot at a mark on Sunday, if none of his congregation are present. He intends no harm : he only grati- fies a curiosity to see if he can hit the mark. Where shall he draw the line .'' Doubtless he might throw a stone at a chipmunk or shout at a loon. Might he fire at a mark with an air-gun that makes no noise ? He will not fish or hunt on Sunday (although he is no more likely to catch anything that day than on any other) ; but may he eat trout that the guide has caught on Sunday, if the guide swears he caught them Saturday night .-* Is there such a thing as a vacation in religion ? How much of our virtue do we owe to inherited habits ? I am not at all sure whether this desire to camp outside of civilization is creditable to human nature, or otherwise. We hear sometimes that the Turk has been merely camping for four centu- ries in Europe. I suspect that many of us are, after all, really camping temporarily in civilized conditions ; and that going into the wilderness is an escape, longed for, into our natural and pre- ferred state. Consider what this "camping out" is, that is con- fessedly so agreeable to people most delicately reared. I have no desire to exaggerate its delights. The Adirondack wilderness is essentially unbroken. A few bad roads that penetrate it, a few jolting wagons that traverse them, a few barn-like boarding-houses on the edge of the forest, where the boarders are soothed by patent coffee, and stimulated to unnatural gayety by Japan tea, and experimented on by unique cookery, do little to destroy the savage fascination of the region. In half an hour, at any point, one can put himself into solitude and every desirable discomfort. The party that covets the experience of the camp comes down to primitive conditions of dress and equipment. There are guides and porters to carry the blankets for beds, the raw provisions, and the camp equipage ; and the motley party of the temporarily decivilized files into the woods, and begins, perhaps 6o6 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE by a road, perhaps on a trail, its exhilarating and weary march. The exhilaration arises partly from the casting aside of restraint, partly from the adventure of exploration ; and the weariness, from the interminable toil of bad walking, a heavy pack, and the grim monotony of trees and bushes, that shut out all prospect, except an occasional glimpse of the sky. Mountains are painfully climbed, streams forded, lonesome lakes paddled over, long and muddy " carries " traversed. Fancy this party the victim of political exile, banished by the law, and a more sorrowful march could not be imagined ; but the voluntary hardship becomes pleasure, and it is undeniable that the spirits of the party rise as the difficulties increase. For this straggling and stumbling band the world is young again : it has come to the beginning of things ; it has cut loose from tra- dition, and is free to make a home anywhere : the movement has all the promise of a revolution. All this virginal freshness invites the primitive instincts of play and disorder. The free range of the forests suggests endless possibilities of exploration and possession. Perhaps we are treading where man since the creation never trod before ; perhaps the waters of this bubbling spring, which we deepen by scraping out the decayed leaves and the black earth, have never been tasted before, except by the wild denizens of these woods. We cross the trails of lurking animals, — paths that heighten our sense of seclusion from the world. The hammering of the infre- quent woodpecker, the call of the lonely bird, the drumming of the solitary partridge, — all these sounds do but emphasize the lone- someness of nature. The roar of the mountain brook, dashing over its bed of pebbles, rising out of the ravine, and spreading, as it were, a mist of sound through all the forest (continuous beating waves that have the rhythm of eternity in them), and the fitful movement of the air-tides through the balsams and firs and the giant pines, — how these grand symphonies shut out the little ex- asperations of our vexed life ! It seems easy to begin life over again on the simplest terms. Probably it is not so much the desire of the congregation to escape from the preacher, or of the preacher to escape from himself, that drives sophisticated people into the wilderness, as it is the unconquered craving for primitive simplicity, the revolt against the everlasting dress-parade of our civilization. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 607 From this monstrous pomposity even the artificial rusticity of a Petit Trianon is a rehef. It was only human nature that the jaded Frenchman of the regency should run away to the New World, and live in a forest-hut with an Indian squaw ; although he found little satisfaction in his act of heroism, unless it was talked about at Versailles. When our trampers come, late in the afternoon, to the bank of a lovely lake where they purpose to enter the primitive life, every- thing is waiting for them in virgin expectation. There is a little promontory jutting into the lake, and sloping down to a sandy beach, on which the waters idly lapse, and shoals of red-fins and shiners come to greet the stranger ; the forest is untouched by the axe ; the tender green sweeps the water's edge ; ranks of slender firs are marshalled by the shore ; clumps of white-birch stems shine in satin purity among the evergreens ; the boles of giant spruces, maples, and oaks, lifting high their crowns of foliage, stretch away in endless galleries and arcades ; through the shifting leaves the sunshine falls upon the brown earth ; overhead are fragments of blue sky ; under the boughs and in chance openings appear the bluer lake and the outline of the gracious mountains. The dis- coverers of this paradise, which they have entered to destroy, note the babbling of the brook that flows close at hand ; they hear the splash of the leaping fish ; they listen to the sweet, metallic song of the evening thrush, and the chatter of the red squirrel,, who angrily challenges their right to be there. But the moment of sentiment passes. This party has come here to eat and to sleep, and not to encourage Nature in her poetic attitudinizing. The spot for a shanty is selected. This side shall be its open- ing, towards the lake ; and in front of it the fire, so that the smoke shall drift into the hut, and discourage the mosquitoes ; yonder shall be the cook's fire and the path to the spring. The whole colony bestir themselves in the foundation of a new home, — an enterprise that has all the fascination, and none of the danger, of a veritable new settlement in the wilderness. The axes of the guides resound in the echoing spaces ; great trunks fall with a crash ; vistas are opened towards the lake and the mountains. The spot for the shanty is cleared of underbrush ; forked stakes are driven 6o8 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE into the ground, cross-pieces are laid on them, and poles sloping back to the ground. In an incredible space of time there is the skeleton of a house, which is entirely open in front. The roof and sides must be covered. For this purpose the trunks of great spruces are skinned. The woodman rims the bark near the foot of the tree, and again six feet above, and slashes it perpendicularly ; then, with a blunt stick, he crowds off this thick hide exactly as an ox is skinned. It needs but a few of these skins to cover the roof ; and they make a perfectly water-tight roof, except when it rains. Mean- time, busy hands have gathered boughs of the spruce and the feathery balsam, and shingled the ground underneath the shanty for a bed. It is an aromatic bed : in theory it is elastic and con- soling. Upon it are spread the blankets. The sleepers, of all sexes and ages, are to lie there in a row, their feet to the fire, and their heads under the edge of the sloping roof. Nothing could be better contrived. The fire is in front : it is not a fire, but a conflagration — a vast heap of green logs set on fire — of pitch, and split dead- wood, and crackling balsams, raging and roaring. By the time twilight falls, the cook has prepared supper. Everything has been cooked in a tin pail and a skillet, — potatoes, tea, pork, mutton, slapjacks. You wonder how everything could have been prepared in so few utensils. When you eat, the wonder ceases : everything might have been cooked in one pail. It is a noble meal ; and nobly is it disposed of by these amateur savages, sitting about upon logs and roots of trees. Never were there such potatoes, never beans that seemed to have more of the bean in them, never such curly pork, never trout with more Indian-meal on them, never mutton more distinctly sheepy ; and the tea, drunk out of a tin cup, with a lump of maple-sugar dissolved in it, — it is the sort of tea that takes hold, lifts the hair, and disposes the drinker to anec- dote and hilariousness. There is no deception about it : it tastes of tannin and spruce and creosote. Everything, in short, has the flavor of the wilderness and a free life. It is idyllic. And yet, with all our sentimentality, there is nothing feeble about the cooking. The slapjacks are a solid job of work, made to last, and not go to pieces in a person's stomach like a trivial bun > we might record on them, in cuneiform characters, our incipient civilization ; and LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 609 future generations would doubtless turn them up as Acadian bricks. Good, robust victuals are what the primitive man wants. Darkness falls suddenly. Outside the ring of light from our conflagration the woods are black. There is a tremendous impres- sion of isolation and lonesomeness in our situation. We are the prisoners of the night. The woods never seemed so vast and mysterious. The trees are gigantic. There are noises that we do not understand, — mysterious winds passing overhead, and ram- bling in the great galleries, tree-trunks grinding against each other, undefinable stirs and uneasinesses. The shapes of those who pass into the dimness are outlined in monstrous proportions. The spectres, seated about in the glare of the fire, talk about appear- ances and presentiments and religion. The guides cheer the night with bear-fights, and catamount encounters, and frozen-to-death experiences, and simple tales of great prolixity and no point, and jokes of primitive lucidity. We hear catamounts, and the stealthy tread of things in the leaves, and the hooting of owls, and, when the moon rises, the laughter of the loon. Everything is strange, spectral, fascinating. By and by we get our positions in the shanty for the night, and arrange the row of sleepers. The shanty has become a smoke- house by this time : waves of smoke roll into it from the fire. It is only by lying down, and getting the head well under the eaves, that one can breathe. No one can find her " things ; " nobody has a pillow. At length the row is laid out, with the solemn pro- testation of intention to sleep. The wind, shifting, drives away the smoke. Good-night is said a hundred times ; positions are re- adjusted, more last words, new shifting about, final remarks ; it is all so comfortable and romantic ; and then silence. Silence con- tinues for a minute. The fire flashes up ; all the row of heads is lifted up simultaneously to watch it ; showers of sparks sail aloft into the blue night ; the vast vault of greenery is a fairy spectacle. How the sparks mount and twinkle and disappear like tropical fire-flies, and all the leaves murmur, and clap their hands ! Some of the sparks do not go out : we see them flaming in the sky when the flame of the fire has died down. Well, good-night, good-night. More folding of the arms to sleep ; more grumbling about the Cio READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE hardness of a hand-bag, or the insufficiency of a pocket-handker- chief, for a pillow. Good-night. Was that a remark? — something about a root, a stub in the ground sticking into the back, "You could n't lie along a hair .? " — " Well, no : here 's another stub." It needs but a moment for the conversation to become general, — about roots under the shoulder, stubs in the back, a ridge on which it is impossible for the sleeper to balance, the non-elasticity of boughs, the hardness of the ground, the heat, the smoke, the chilly air. Subjects of remarks multiply. The whole camp is awake, and chattering like an aviary. The owl is also awake ; but the guides who are asleep outside make more noise than the owls. Water is wanted, and is handed about in a dipper. Everybody is yawning ; everybody is now determined to go to sleep in good earnest. A last good-night. There is an appalling silence. It is interrupted in the most natural way in the world. Somebody has got the start, and gone to sleep. He proclaims the fact. He seems to have been brought up on the seashore, and to know how to make all the deep-toned noises of the restless ocean. He is also like a war-horse ; or, it is suggested, like a saw-horse. How malignantly he snorts, and breaks off short, and at once begins again in another key ! One head is raised after another. " Who is that .? " " Somebody punch him," " Turn him over," " Reason with him." The sleeper is turned over. The turn was a mistake. He was before, it appears, on his most agreeable side. The camp rises in indignation. The sleeper sits up in bewilderment. Before he can go off again, two or three others have preceded him. They are all alike. You can never judge what a person is when he is awake. There are here half a dozen disturbers of the peace who should be put in solitary confinement. At midnight, when a philosopher crawls out to sit on a log by the fire, and smoke a pipe, a duet in tenor and mezzo-soprano is going on in the shanty, with a chorus always coming in at the wrong time. Those who are not asleep want to know why the smoker does n't go to bed. He is requested to get some water, to throw on another log, to see what time it is, LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 6ii to note whether it looks Hke rain, A buzz of conversation arises. She is sure she heard something behind the shanty. He says it is all nonsense. " Perhaps, however, it might be a mouse." "' Mercy ! Are there mice ? " " Plenty." '" Then that 's what I heard nibbling by my head. I shan't sleep a wink ! Do they bite ? " '" No, they nibble ; scarcely ever take a full bite out." " It 's horrid ! " Towards morning it grows chilly ; the guides have let the fire go out ; the blankets will slip down. Anxiety begins to be expressed about the dawn. '" What time does the sun rise ? " " Awful early. Did you sleep ? " "' Not a wink. And you .? " " In spots. I 'm going to dig up this root as soon as it is light enough." " See that mist on the lake, and the light just coming on the Gothics ! I 'd no idea it was so cold : all the first part of the night I was roasted." " What were they talking about all night .'' " When the party crawls out to the early breakfast, after it has washed its faces in the lake, it is disorganized, but cheerful. No- body admits much sleep ; but everybody is refreshed, and declares it delightful. It is the fresh air all night that invigorates ; or maybe it is the tea or the slapjacks. The guides have erected a table of spruce bark, with benches at the sides ; so that breakfast is taken in form. It is served on tin plates and oak chips. After breakfast begins the day's work. It may be a mountain-climbing expedition, or rowing and angling in the lake, or fishing for trout in some stream two or three miles distant. Nobody can stir far from camp without a guide. Hammocks are swung, bowers are built, novel- reading begins, worsted work appears, cards are shuffled and dealt. The day passes in absolute freedom from responsibility to one's self. At night, when the expeditions return, the camp resumes its animation. Adventures are recounted, every statement of the nar- rator being disputed and argued. Everybody has become an adept 6i2 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE in wood-craft ; but nobody credits his neighbor with Hke instinct. Society getting resolved into its elements, confidence is gone. Whilst the hilarious party are at supper, a drop or two of rain falls. The head guide is appealed to. Is it going to rain ? He says it does rain. But will it be a rainy night .-' The guide goes down to the lake, looks at the sky, and concludes that if the wind shifts a p'int more, there is no telling what sort of weather we shall have. Meantime the drops patter thicker on the leaves overhead, and the leaves, in turn, pass the water down to the table ; the sky darkens ; the wind rises ; there is a kind of shiver in the woods ; and we scud away into the shanty, taking the remains of our supper, and eating it as best we can. The rain increases. The fire sputters and fumes. All the trees are dripping, dripping, and the ground is wet. We cannot step out-doors without getting a drenching. Like sheep, we are penned in the little hut, where no one can stand erect. The rain swirls into the open front, and wets the bottom of the blankets. The smoke drives in. We curl up, and enjoy ourselves. The guides at length conclude that it is going to be damp. The dismal situation sets us all into good spirits ; and it is later than the night before when we crawl under our blankets, sure this time of a sound sleep, lulled by the storm and the rain resound- ing on the bark roof. How much better off we are than many a shelterless wretch ! We are as snug as dry herrings. At the moment, however, of dropping off to sleep, somebody unfortunately notes a drop of water on his face ; this is followed by another drop ; in an instant a stream is established. He moves his head to a dry place. Scarcely has he done so, when he feels a dampness in his back. Reaching his hand outside, he finds a puddle of water soak- ing through his blanket. By this time, somebody inquires if it is possible that the roof leaks. One man has a stream of water under him ; another says it is coming into his ear. The roof appears to be a discriminating sieve. Those who are dry see no need of such a fuss. The man in the corner spreads his umbrella, and the pro- tective measure is resented by his neighbor. In the darkness there is recrimination. One of the guides, who is summoned, suggests that the rubber blankets be passed out, and spread over the roof. The inmates dislike the proposal, saying that a shower-bath is no LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 613 worse than a tub-bath. The rain continues to soak down. The fire is only half alive. The bedding is damp. Some sit up, if they can find a dry spot to sit on, and smoke. Heartless observations are made. A few sleep. And the night wears on. The morning opens cheerless. The sky is still leaking, and so is the shanty. The guides bring in a half-cooked breakfast. The roof is patched up. There are reviving signs of breaking away, delusive signs that create momentary exhilaration. Even if the storm clears, the woods are soaked. There is no chance of stirring. The world is only ten feet square. This life, without responsibility or clean clothes, may continue as long as the reader desires. There are those who would like to live in this free fashion forever, taking rain and sun as heaven pleases ; and there are some souls so constituted that they cannot exist more than three days without their worldly baggage. Taking the party altogether, from one cause or another it is likely to strike camp sooner than was intended. And the stricken camp is a melancholy sight. The woods have been despoiled ; the stumps are ugly ; the bushes are scorched ; the pine-leaf-strewn earth is trodden into mire ; the landing looks like a cattle-ford ; the ground is littered with all the unsightly debris of a hand-to-hand life ; the dismantled shanty is a shabby object ; the charred and blackened logs, where the fire blazed, suggest the extinction of family life. Man has wrought his usual wrong upon Nature, and he can save his self-respect only by moving to virgin forests. And move to them he will, the next season, if not this. For he who has once experienced the fascination of the woods-life never escapes its enticement : in the memory nothing remains but its charm. 6l4 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN [Born at Hartford, Connecticut, October 8, 1 833 ; died in New York, January 18, 1908] PAN IN WALL STREET Just where the Treasury's marble front Looks over Wall Street's mingled nations ; Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont To throng for trade and last quotations ; Where, hour by hour, the rates of gold Outrival, in the ears of people, The quarter-chimes, serenely tolled From Trinity's undaunted steeple, — Even then I heard a strange, wild strain Sound high above the modern clamor, Above the cries of greed and gain. The curbstone war, the auction's hammer ; And swift, on Music's misty ways. It led, from all this strife for millions, To ancient, sweet-do-nothing days Among the kirtle-robed Sicilians. And as it stilled the multitude. And yet more joyous rose, and shriller, I saw the minstrel, where he stood At ease against a Doric pillar : One hand a droning organ played. The other held a Pan's-pipe (fashioned Like those of old) to lips that made The reeds give out that strain impassioned. 'T was Pan himself had wandered here A-strolling through this sordid city, And piping to the civic ear The prelude of some pastoral ditty ! LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 615 The demigod had crossed the seas, — From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr, And Syracusan times, — to these Far shores and twenty centuries later. A ragged cap was on his head ; But — hidden thus — there was no doubting That, all with crispy locks o'erspread, His gnarled horns were somewhere sprouting ; His club-feet, cased in rusty shoes, Were crossed, as in some frieze you see them, And trousers, patched of divers hues. Concealed his crooked shanks beneath them. He filled the quivering reeds with sound, And o'er his mouth their changes shifted, And with his goat's-eyes looked around Where'er the passing current drifted ; And soon, as on Trinacrian hills The nymphs and herdsmen ran to hear him. Even now the tradesmen from their tills. With clerks and porters crowded near him. The bulls and bears together drew From Jauncey Court and New Street Alley, As erst, if pastorals be true. Came beats from every wooded valley ; The random passers stayed to list — A boxer Aegon, rough and merry, A Broadway Daphnis, on his tryst With Nais at the Brooklyn Ferry. A one-eyed Cyclops halted long In tattered cloak of army pattern. And Galatea joined the throng, — A blowsy, apple-vending slattern ; 6i6 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE While old Silenus staggered out From some new-fangled lunch-house handy, And bade the piper, with a shout, To strike up Yankee Doodle Dandy ! A newsboy and a peanut-girl Like little Fauns began to caper : His hair was all in tangled curl, Her tawny legs were bare and taper ; And still the gathering larger grew. And gave its pence and crowded nigher, While aye the shepherd-minstrel blew His pipe, and struck the gamut higher. O heart of Nature, beating still With throbs her vernal passion taught her, — Even here, as on the vine-clad hill, Or by the Arethusan water ! New forms may fold the speech, new lands Arise within these ocean portals. But Music waves eternal wands, — Enchantress of the souls of mortals ! So thought I, — but among us trod A man in blue, with legal baton, And scoffed the vagrant demigod. And pushed him from the step I sat on. Doubting I mused upon the cry, " Great Pan is dead ! " — and all the people Went on their ways : — and clear and high The quarter sounded from the steeple. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 617 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL [Born at Windsor, Connecticut, 1841 ; died at Cleveland, Ohio, February 27, 1887] THE FOOL'S PRAYER The royal feast was done ; the King Sought some new sport to banish care, And to his jester cried : " Sir Fool, Kneel now, and make for us a prayer ! " The jester doffed his cap and bells. And stood the mocking court before ; They could not see the bitter smile Behind the painted grin he wore. He bowed his head, and bent his knee Upon the monarch's silken stool ; His pleading voice arose : " O Lord, Be merciful to me, a fool ! " No pity, Lord, could change the heart From red with wrong to white as wool : The rod must heal the sin ; but. Lord, Be merciful to me, a fool ! " 'T is not by guilt the onward sweep Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay ; *T is by our follies that so long We hold the earth from heaven away. " These clumsy feet, still in the mire. Go crushing blossoms without end ; These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust Among the heart-strings of a friend. 6i8 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE "The ill-timed truth we might have kept — Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung ! The word we had not sense to say — Who knows how grandly it had rung ! " Our faults no tenderness should ask, The chastening stripes must cleanse them all ; But for our blunders — oh, in shame Before the eyes of heaven we fall. " Earth bears no balsam for mistakes ; Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool That did his will ; but thou, O Lord, Be merciful to me, a fool ! " The room was hushed ; in silence rose The King and sought his gardens cool, And walked apart, and murmured low, " Be merciful to me, a fool ! " JOAQUIN MILLER [Born in Indiana, November lo, 1841 ; died in California, February 17, 191 3] CROSSING THE PLAINS What great yoked brutes with briskets low. With wrinkled necks like buffalo, With round, brown, liquid, pleading eyes, . That turned so slow and sad to you, That shone like love's eyes soft with tears. That seemed to plead, and make replies, The while they bowed their necks and drew The creaking load ; and looked at you. Their sable briskets swept the ground, Their cloven feet kept solemn sound. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 619 Two sullen bullocks led the line, Their great eyes shining bright like wine ; Two sullen captive kings were they, That had in time held herds at bay. And even now they crushed the sod With stolid sense of majesty, And stately stepped and stately trod, As if it were something still to be Kings even in captivity. BY THE PACIFIC OCEAN Here room and kingly silence keep • Companionship in state austere ; The dignity of death is here, The large, lone vastness of the deep , Here toil has pitched his camp to rest : The west is banked against the west. Above yon gleaming skies of gold One lone imperial peak is seen ; While gathered at his feet in green Ten thousand foresters are told ; And all so still ! so still the air That duty drops the web of care. Beneath the sunset's golden sheaves The awful deep walks with the deep. Where silent sea doves slip and sweep, And commerce keeps her loom and weaves, The dead red men refuse to rest ; Their ghosts illume my lurid West. COLUMBUS Behind him lay the gray Azores, Behind the Gates of Hercules ; Before him not the ghost of shores, Before him only shoreless seas. 620 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE The good mate said : " Now must we pray, For lo ! the very stars are gone. Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say ? " " Why, say, ' Sail on ! sail on ! and on ! ' " " My men grow mutinous day by day ; My men grow ghastly wan and weak." The stout mate thought of home ; a spray Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. " What shall I say, brave Admiral, say. If we sight naught but seas at dawn ? " " Why you shall say at break of day, ' Sail on ! sail on ! sail on ! and on ! ' " They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow, Until at last the blanched man said : " Why, now not even God would know Should I and all my men fall dead. Those very winds forget their way, For God from these dread seas is gone, Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say " — He said : " Sail on ! sail on ! and on ! " They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate " This mad sea shows his teeth to-night. He curls his lip, he lies in wait. With lifted teeth, as if to bite ! Brave Admiral, say but one good word : What shall we do when hope is gone .'' " The words leaped like a leaping sword : " Sail on ! sail on ! sail on ! and on ! " Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck, And peered through darkness. Ah, that night Of all dark nights ! And then a speck — A light ! A light ! A light ! A light ! LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 621 It grew, a starlit flag unfurled ! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world ; he gave that world Its grandest lesson : " On ! sail on ! " EMILY DICKINSON [Born at Amherst, Massachusetts, December 10, 1830; died at Amherst, May 15, 1886] THE HUMMING-BIRD 1 A route of evanescence With a revolving wheel ; A resonance of emerald, A rush of cochineal ; And every blossom on the bush Adjusts its tumbled head, — The mail from Tunis, probably. An easy morning's ride. OUT OF THE MORNING 1 Will there really be a morning ? Is there such a thing as day ? Could I see it from the mountains If I were as tall as they ? Has it feet like water-lilies ? Has it feathers like a bird ? Is it brought from famous countries Of which I have never heard ? Oh, some scholar ! Oh, some sailor ! Oh, some wise man from the skies ! Please to tell a little pilgrim Where the place called morning lies ! 1 From the poems of Emily Dickinson. Copyright, 1891, by Roberts Brothers. 622 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE CHARTLESS I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea ; Yet know I how the heather looks, And what a wave must be. I never spoke with God, Nor visited in heaven ; Yet certain am I of the spot As if the chart were given. THE ROBIN 1 The robin is the one That interrupts the morn With hurried, few, express reports When March is scarcely on. The robin is the one That overflows the noon With her cherubic quantity, An April but begun. The robin is the one That speechless from her nest Submits that home and certainty And sanctity are best. IN THE GARDEN! A bird came down the walk : He did not know I saw ; He bit an angle-worm in halves And ate the fellow, raw. 1 From the Poems of Emily Dickinson. Copyright, 1891, by Roberts Brothers. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 623 And then he drank a dew From a convenient grass, And then hopped sidewise to the wall To let a beetle pass. He glanced with rapid eyes That hurried all abroad, — They looked like frightened beads, I thought ; He stirred his velvet head Like one in danger ; cautious, I offered him a crumb. And he unrolled his feathers And rowed him softer home Than oars divide the ocean. Too silver for a seam, Or butterflies, off banks of noon. Leap, plashless, as they swim. AUTUMN 1 The morns are meeker than they were. The nuts are getting brown ; The berry's cheek is plumper. The rose is out of town. The maple wears a gayer scarf. The field a scarlet gown. Lest I should be old-fashioned, I '11 put a trinket on. 1 From the Poems of Emily Dickinson. Copyright, 1S90, by Roberts Brothers. 624 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE IF I CAN STOP ONE HEART FROM BREAKING ^ If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain ; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Into his nest again, I shall not live in vain. EUGENE FIELD [Born at St. Louis, Missouri, September 2, 1850; died at Chicago, November 4, 1895] WYNKEN, BLYNKEN, AND NOD Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night Sailed off in a wooden shoe, — Sailed on a river of crystal light Into a sea of dew. " Where are you going, and what do you wish ? " The old moon asked the three. " We have come to fish for the herring fish That live in this beautiful sea ; Nets of silver and gold have we," Said Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. The old moon laughed and sang a song, As they rocked in the wooden shoe ; And the wind that sped them all night long Ruffled the waves of dew ; The little stars were the herring-fish That lived in the beautiful sea. 1 From the Poems of Emily Dickinson. Copyright, 1890, by Roberts Brothers. I LATER NATIONAL PERIOD —MINOR WRITERS 625 " Now cast your nets wherever you wish, — Never af eared are we ! " So cried the stars to the fishermen three, Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. All night long their nets they threw To the stars in the twinkling foam, — Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe, Bringing the fishermen home : 'T was all so pretty a sail, it seemed As if it could not be ; And some folks thought 't was a dream they 'd dreamed Of sailing that beautiful sea ; But I shall name you the fishermen three : Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes, And Nod is a little head. And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies Is a wee one's trundle-bed ; So shut your eyes while Mother sings Of wonderful sights that be. And you shall see the beautiful things As you rock on the misty sea Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three, — Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. 626 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE LITTLE BOY BLUE The little toy dog is covered with dust, But sturdy and stanch he stands ; And the little toy soldier is red with rust, And his musket moulds in his hands. Time was when the little toy dog was new. And the soldier was passing fair ; And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue Kissed them and put them there. "' Now, don't you go till I come," he said, " And don't you make any noise ! " So, toddling off to his trundle-bed, He dreamt of the pretty toys. And, as he was dreaming, an angel song Awakened our Little Boy Blue — Oh ! the years are many, the years are long. But the little toy friends are true ! Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand. Each in the same old place. Awaiting the touch of a little hand. The smile of a little face ; And they wonder, as waiting the long years through In the dust of that little chair. What has become of our Little Boy Blue, Since he kissed them and put them there. IN THE FIRELIGHT The fire upon the hearth is low, And there is stillness everywhere, And, like winged spirits, here and there The firelight shadows fluttering go. And as the shadows round me creep, A childish treble breaks the gloom. And softly from a further room Comes : "' Now I lay me down to sleep." LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 627 And, somehow, with that little prayer And that sweet treble in my ears, My thoughts go back to distant years, And linger with a dear one there ; And as I hear my child's amen, My mother's faith comes back to me, — Crouched at her side I seem to be, And mother holds my hands again. Oh for an hour in that dear place, Oh for the peace of that dear time, Oh for that childish trust sublime, Oh for a glimpse of mother's face ! Yet, as the shadows round me creep, I do not seem to be alone — Sweet magic of that treble tone And "Now I lay me down to sleep ! " JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY [Born at Greenfield, Indiana, 1854] WHEN SHE COMES HOMEi When she comes home again ! A thousand ways I fashion, to myself, the tenderness Of my glad welcome : I shall tremble — yes ; And touch her, as when first in the old days I touched her girlish hand, nor dared upraise Mine eyes, such was my faint heart's sweet distress. Then silence : and the perfume of her dress : The room will sway a little, and a haze Cloy eyesight — soulsight, even — for a space ; To know that I so ill deserve the place Her arms make for me ; and the sobbing note I stay with kisses, ere the tearful face Again is hidden in the old embrace. 1 From " Poems Here at Home "by James Whitcomb Riley. Copyright, 1893, The Bobbs- Merrill Company. 628 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE THE RAGGEDY MAN ^ O the Raggedy Man ! He works fer Pa ; An' he 's the goodest man ever you saw ! He comes to our house every day, An' waters the horses, an' feeds 'em hay ; An' he opens the shed — an' we all ist laugh When he drives out our little old wobble-ly calf ; An' nen — ef our hired girl says he can — He milks the cow fer 'Lizabuth Ann. — Ain't he a' awful good Raggedy Man ? Raggedy ! Raggedy ! Raggedy Man ! W'y, the Raggedy Man — he 's ist so good, He splits the kindlin' an' chops the wood ; An' nen he spades in our garden, too, An' does most things 'at boys can't do. — He clumbed clean up in our big tree An' shook a' apple down fer me — An' 'nother, too, fer 'Lizabuth Ann — An' 'nother, too, fer the Raggedy Man. — Ain't he a' awful kind Raggedy Man ? Raggedy ! Raggedy ! Raggedy Man ! An' the Raggedy Man, he knows most rhymes, An' tells 'em ef I be good, sometimes : Knows 'bout Giunts, an' Griffuns, an' Elves, An' the Squidgicum-Squees 'at swallers theirselves ! An' wite by the pump in our pasture-lot, He showed me the hole 'at the VVunks is got, 'At lives 'way deep in the ground, 'an can Turn into me, er 'Lizabuth Ann ! Ain't he a funny old Raggedy Man ? Raggedy ! Raggedy ! Raggedy Man ! 1 From " Rhymes of Childhood " by James Whitcomb Riley. Copyright, 1900, The Bobbs-Merrill Company. LATER NATIONAL PERIOD — MINOR WRITERS 629 The Raggedy Man — one time, when he Wuz makin' a httle bow'-n'-orry fer me, Says, "' When you 're big Hke your Pa is Air you go' to keep a fine store Hke his — An' be a rich merchunt — an' wear fine clothes? — Er what air you go' to be, goodness knows ? " An' nen he laughed at 'Lizabuth Ann, An' I says, " 'M go' to be a nice Raggedy Man ! " Raggedy ! Raggedy ! Raggedy Man ! THE DAYS GONE BY 1 Oh, the days gone by ! Oh, the days gone by ! The apples in the orchard, and the pathway through the rye ; The chirrup of the robin, and the whistle of the quail As he piped across the meadows sweet as any nightingale ; When the bloom was on the clover, and the blue was in the sky. And my happy heart brimmed over, in the days gone by. In the days gone by, when my naked feet were tripped. By the honeysuckle's tangles, where the water lilies dipped. And the ripple of the river lipped the moss along the brink, Where the placid-eyed and lazy-footed cattle came to drink. And the tilting snipe stood fearless of the truant's wayward cry, And the splashing of the swimmer, in the days gone by. Oh, the days gone by ! Oh, the days gone by ! The music of the laughing lip, the lustre of the eye ; The childish faith in fairies, and Aladdin's magic ring, The simple, soul-reposing, glad belief in everything. When life was like a story, holding neither sob nor sigh, In the olden, golden glory of the days gone by. 1 From " Rhymes of Childhood " by James Whitcomb Riley. Copyright, 1900, The Bobbs-Merrill Company. INDEX OF AUTHORS Adams, Samuel, ii8 Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 602 Barlow, Joel, 147 Beverley, Robert, 74 Bradford, William, 8 Bradstreet, Anne, 33 Brown, Charles Brockden, 167 Bryant, William Cullen, 239 Byrd, William, 79 Cooper, James Fenimore, 225 Cotton, John, 25 Dickinson, Emily, 621 Drake, Joseph Rodman, 177 Dwight, Timothy, 141 Edwards, Jonathan, 83 Eliot, John, 44 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 316 Evans, Nathaniel, 112 Field, Eugene, 624 Franklin, Benjamin, 92 Freneau, Philip, 135 Godfrey, Thomas, no Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 182 Hamilton, Alexander, 129 Harte, Francis Bret, 601 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 352 Hayne, Paul Hamilton, 598 Henry, Patrick, 120 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 480 Irving, Washington, 186 Jefferson, Thomas, 125 Johnson, Edward, 39 Lanier, Sidney, 5S4 Lincoln, Abraham, 291 Mather, Cotton, 59 Miller, Joaquin, 618 Motley, John Lothrop, 301 Otis, James, 119 Paine, Thomas, 130 Parkman, Francis, 312 Poe, Edgar Allan, 254 Prescott, William Hickling, 294 Riley, James Whitcomb, 627 Roulandson, Mary, 56 Sewall, Samuel, 66 Sill, Edward Rowland, 617 Smith, John, i Taylor, Bayard, 591 Thoreau, Henry, 507 Timrod, Henry, 594 Trumbull, John, 141 Tucker, St. George, 152 Tyler, Royall, 159 Ward, Nathaniel, 28 Warner, Charles Dudley, 603 Washington, George, 123 Webster, Daniel, 276 Whitman, Walt, 573 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 435 Wigglesworth, Michael, 47 Winthrop, John, 18 Woolman, John, 115 631 INDEX OF TITLES Abraham Lincoln, 551 Additional Alphabet Verses, 91 Aladdin, 520 Almanacs, The, 92 America, 593 American Flag, The, 180 Amyntor, 1 1 1 Anecdote of Dr. Franklin, An, 127 Annabel Lee, 258 April, 322 Aspects of the Pines, 598 At Magnolia Cemetery, 597 Attack by Indians, 56 Author to her Book, The, 38 Autobiography, The (Extracts), Benja- min Franklin, 1 00 Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, The, 490 Autumn, 623 Bacon's Death, 51 Bacon's Epitaph, made by his Man, 52 Ballad of Nathan Hale, The, 156 Ballad of Trees and the Master, A, 586 Barefoot Boy, The, 442 Battle of the Kegs, The, 153 Battle of Trenton, 158 Bedouin Song, 591 Bells, The, 260 Birds of Killingworth, The, 380 Boys, The, 482 Bunker Hill Address, The (Extracts), 276 By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame, 574 By the Pacific Ocean, 619 Camping Out, 603 Capture of Pocahontas, The, 5 Chambered Nautilus, The, 488 Chartless, 622 Chief Events during the years 1749 to 1753. "5 Chief Justice in Search of a Wife, A, 69 Christmas Day in Boston, 67 Christmas Pastimes (1622), 14 Coliseum, The, 267 Colonial Wedding, A, 68 Columbia, 146 Columbus, 619 Columbus addresses King Ferdinand, 135 Columbus in Chains, 136 Come up from the Fields, Father, 577 Compact of the Pilgrims, The, 1 1 Concord Hymn, The, 316 Conqueror Worm, The, 268 Conquest of Mexico, The (Extracts), 294 Contrast, The, A Comedy in Five Acts, 159 Converting a Tory, 141 Conviviality in the Colonies, 81 Courtin', The, 525 Crossing the Plains, 618 Darest Thou Now, O Soul, 579 Day of Doom, The, 47 Days Gone By, The, 629 Days of my Youth, 152 Deacon's Masterpiece, The, or the Wonderful " One-Hoss Shay," 484 Death of the Flowers, The, 243 Death of Lincoln, The, 248 Death's Epitaph, 137 Defence of Persecution, A, 25 Dentistry in Primitive Days, 81 Discipline at Harvard, 66 Dutiful Child's Promises, The, 90 Each and All, 320 Early Trials of the Pilgrim Fathers (1620), 12 Election in the Colonial Times, An, 18 Enchanter, The, 324 Endymion, 376 Eternal Goodness, The, 449 Evangeline, 394 Exploring Cape Cod, 15 Extracts from Edwards's Diary, 83 633 634 READINGS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE Fable, 323 Family Discipline, 68 Famine, The, 430 Farewell Sermon, A (Extracts), Jona- than Eihvards, 85 Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother, The, 436 Fay's Sentence, The, 177 First Snow-Fall, The, 519 Fool's Prayer, The, 617 Footsteps of Angels, 368 Foppery of Titles, The, 132 For the Restoration of my Dear Hus- band from a Burning Ague, June, 1661, 38 Forbearance, 323 Franklin's Early Interest in Books, 100 Gettysburg Speech, The, 291 Good-bye, 319 Good Children Must, 91 Governor Wouter Van Twiller, 186 Gray Champion, The, 352 Grizzly, 601 Hasty Pudding, The, 147 Haunted Palace, The, 259 Her Experiences in Captivity, I\Iaiy Rotolajidson, 56 Hiawatha's Childhood, 423 Humble-bee, The, 317 Humming-bird, The, 621 Hush'd be the Camps To-day, 576 Hymn to the Night, 370 Ichabod, 438 I Hear America Singing, 573 If I Can Stop One Heart from Break- ing, 624 In the Firelight, 626 In the Garden, 622 In Praise of Anne Bradstreet, 33 In School-days, 447 Inaugural Address, as President of the United States, March 4, iSoi (Ex- tracts), Jhonuis Jefferson, 125 Indian Burying-ground, The, 138 Indian Courtesies, 17 Indians in New England, 44 Infant's Grace before and after Meat, The, 91 Inhabitants of Virginia, 74 Interior of the Alhambra, 219 Israfel, 265 Items from Winthrop's History cover- ing Period from 1631-1648, 19 Jesuits in North America in the Seven- teenth Century, The, 312 King Robert of Sicily, 388 Landing of the Pilgrims, The, 16 Last Leaf, The, 481 Last of the Mohicans, The, 225 Laus Deo ! 452 Learn These Four Lines by Heart, 91 Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The, 190 Letter to his Wife upon being made Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Geo7\i^e Washington, 124 Letters of John Winthrop and his Third Wife, Margaret, 23 Liberty Tree, 134 Light of Stars, The, 367 Little Boy Blue, 626 Little While I Fain Would Linger Yet, A, 599 Longmg, 521 Love-Letter to her Husband, A, Anne Bradstreet, 36 Lovewell's Fight : A Popular Ballad, 53 Maidenhood, 377 Marco Bozzaris, 183 Marshes of Glynn, The, 586 Masque of the Red Death, The, 269 May Sun Sheds an Amber Light, The, 253 Mourt's Relation, 15 My Love, 515 My Playmate, 456 My Triumph, 454 Noiseless, Patient Spider, A, 576 North Carolina Farming, 79 Notes on the Witchcraft Trials, 67 O Captain! My Captain! 574 O Fairest of the Rural Maids, 244 Ode to my Ingenious Friend, Mr. Thomas Godfrey, 114 Ode recited at the Harvard Commemo- ration, July 21, 1865, 539 Of the First Preparation of the Mer- chant Adventurers in the Massachu- setts, 39 Of the First Promotion of Learning in New England, and the Extraordinary Providences that the Lord was pleased to send for furthering the same, 40 Of the I'^our Ages of Man, 35 Old Ironsides, 480 INDEX OF TITLES 635 On American Independence (Extract), 118 On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake, 182 On the Expediency of Adopting the Federal Constitution (Extracts), 129 On the Separation of Britain and Amer- ica, 130 On the Writs of Assistance (Extract), 119 Origin of Witchcraft in New England, The, 59 Out of the Morning, 621 Pan in Wall Street, 614 Pastimes in Virginia, 76 Pictures of Columbus, The, 135 Pilgrims leave Leyden, The (1620), 8 Planting of the Apple-Tree, The, 251 Pocahontas Story, The, 3 Poem on the Reverend Thomas Hooker, 27 Proem to the First Edition of his Col- lected Works,y6i//« GreenleafH7iiitier, 435 Prologue, The, 33 Prologue. The Contrast, 160 Psalm of Life, A, 366 Raggedy Man, The, 628 Rainy Day, The, 376 Raven, The, 254 Reflections on Slavery, 68 Resolutions formed in Early Life (Ex- tracts), 83 Rhodora, The, 316 Rill from the Town-Pump, A, 360 Rise of the Dutch Republic, The, 301 Robert of Lincoln, 248 Robin, The, 622 Runaway Slaves in Hiding, 80 Sarah Pierrepont, afterward his Wife, 84 Scandal among the Converts, 44 Second Quest, The, 179 Seeking his Fortune, 104 Self-reliance, 328 Serenade from "The Spanish Student," 379 Servants and Slaves in Virginia, 78 She Came and Went, 517 Sight in Camp in the Day-break Grey and Dim, A, 575 Skeleton in Armor, The, 371 Skipper Ireson's Ride, 439 Sleep, 380 Snow-bound, 458 Snow-storm, The, 321 Solitude, 507 Some of the Evidence given at the Witch Trials, 61 Song of the Camp, The, 592 Song of the Chattahoochee, 584 Song of Marion's Men, 245 Sonnet, 522 Speech in Congress on his being made Commander-in-Chief, June 16, 1775. George IVashingtoti., 123 Speech in the Convention of Delegates, March 28, 1775 (Extracts), Patrick Henry, 120 Spring,' 595 Storm in the Distance, A, 600 Sun-Day Hymn, A, 489 Telling the Bees, 445 Thanatopsis, 239 To the Dandelion, 517 To the Fringed Gentian, 242 To Helen, 264 To a Honey Bee, 140 To the Man-of-War-Bird, 577 To May, 112 To One in Paradise, 264 To a Waterfowl, 241 Tribute to France, A, 128 Verses, 90 Vision of Sir Launfal, The, 528 Voiceless, The, 490 Voluntaries, 327 Way to Wealth, The, 93 What Mr. Robinson Thinks, 523 When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd, 580 When She Comes Home, 627 When the Sultan Goes to Ispahan, 602 Wieland's Defence, 167 Wild Honeysuckle, The, 139 Wish, The, 1 10 Women's Fashions, 28 Woodnotes (Selections), 324 Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, 624 Yellow Violet, The, 247 Youthful Exuberance on the flower," 15 May- ANNOUNCEMENTS TWO NOTABLE HISTORIES OF LITERATURE By William J. Long, Ph.D. (Heidelberg) Dr. Long's " English Literature " and "American Literature " are among the most scholarly and readable manuals of literary history avail- able for class use. They are companion volumes, written in the same spirit and organized on the same plan, aiming, first of all, to teach a genuine appreciation and real enjoyment of literature. Their order and arrangement make them particularly well fitted for the classroom, while their vigorous, picturesque style, their sympathetic appreciation of lit- erary values, and their keen, critical judgments mark them as themselves a distinct contribution to our literature. ENGLISH LITERATURE 8vo, cloth, 582 pages, illustrated, $1.35. This book offers a direct, simple, interesting account of the great periods of English literature. It gives an interesting biography of every significant literary man in his own natural and social environment, followed by a study of his best works and a clear, concise summary or criticism of his place and influence in literature. Summaries of the period, selections for reading, bibliographies, a list of suggestive questions, and a chronological table of important historical and literary events of the period are included at the end of each chapter. The book is unusual in the number and quality of its illustrations. The frontispiece is a lithograph in eleven colors, from a direct copy of an early manu- script of the " Canterbury Tales " in the British Museum. AMERICAN LITERATURE Svo, cloth, xxi + 481 pages, illustrated, $1.35. In distinction from other textbooks in the subject, Long's "American Litera- ture " is emphatically a national history, recognizing no geographical or political boundaries but treating all writers as the product and interpretation of the national ideals of their age. The material is organized in five chapters : The Colonial Period, The Period of the Revolution, The First National Period (1S00-1S40), The Second National Period (1840-1876), Some Tendencies in our Recent Literature. The chapters parallel Long's " English Literature " in arrangement and in method of treatment. The book contains over eighty pictures, many of them portraits not generally familiar. The frontispiece is an unusually fine reproduction from the etching by Charles F. W. Mielatz, " Poe's Cottage at Fordham." 38J4 GINN AND COMPANY Publishers ENGLISH POETRY (1170-1892) Selected by JOHN MATTHEWS MANLY, Professor and Head of the Depart- ment of English in The University of Chicago 4to, cloth, xxviii + 580 pages, ^1.50 "V TO other single volume equal in range and price to Manly's "English -'■ ^ Poetry" has yet been placed before the teaching public. Professor Manly has brought together not merely as many poems as a teacher could expect his class to read in a course on English literature, but prac- tically all from which any teacher choosing those most in harmony with his own taste and best suited to the special needs of his students would wish to select. The book includes some fifty thousand lines of poetry, ranging in date from the beginning of the Middle-English period to the death of Tennyson. Two principles have determined the choice of the poems, — their intrinsic worth and beauty, and their special significance in the history of English literature. The selections are unencumbered by notes, and historical and critical information has largely been omitted Explanatory footnotes make clear the extracts from Middle or Early Modern English. ENGLISH PROSE (1137-1890) By JOHN MATTHEWS MANLY, Professor and Head of the Department of English in The University of Chicago 4to, cloth, xix + 544 pages, $i.SO 'T^HIS book is a companion volume to Manly's " English Poetry," and, ■^ like it, is intended primarily for use in a general survey of English literature. It contains so much material, however, that it will be found well adapted also for use in many special courses. The aim in both of these books has been to afford the teacher an opportunity to make his own selection for class use. Long selections (usually whole pieces) showing sustained power and control of organic structure have been chosen in preference to short bits of writing, however brilliant. 38 GINN AND COMPANY Publishers