Library of the best American literature Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers (part 4 of 6)
“Well, now, Uncle Remus, I didn’t go to do it. I won’t do so any more. Please, Uncle Remus, if you will tell me, I’ll run to the house, and bring you some tea-cakes.”
“Seein’ um’s better’n hearin’ tell un em,” replied the old man, the severity of his countenance relaxing somewhat; but the little boy darted out, and in a few minutes came running back with his pockets full and his hands full.
“I lay yo’ mammy’ll ’spishun dat de rats’ stummucks is widenin’ in dis naberhood w’en she come fer ter count up ’er cakes,” said Uncle Remus, with a chuckle.
“Lemme see. I mos’ dis’member wharbouts Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit wuz.”
“The rabbit rode the Fox to Miss Meadows’s and hitched him to the horse-rack,” said the little boy.
“Why co’se he did,” said Uncle Remus. “Co’se he did. Well, Brer Rabbit rid Brer Fox up, he did, en tied ’im to de rack, en den sot out in the peazzer wid de gals a smokin’ er his seegyar wid mo’ proudness dan w’at you mos’ ever see. Dey talk, en dey sing, en dey play on de peanner, de gals did, twel bimeby hit come time for Brer Rabbit fer to be gwine, en he tell um all good-by, en strut out to de hoss-rack same’s ef he was de king er der patter-rollers, en den he mount Brer Fox en ride off.
“Brer Fox ain’t sayin’ nuthin’ ’tall. He des rack off, he did, en keep his mouf shet, en Brer Rabbit know’d der wuz bizness cookin’ up fer him, en he feel monstous skittish. Brer Fox amble on twel he git in de long lane, outer sight er Miss Meadows’s house, en den he tu’n loose, he did. He rip en he r’ar, en he cuss en he swar; he snort en he cavort.”
“What was he doing that for. Uncle Remus?” the little boy inquired.
“He wuz tryin’ fer ter fling Brer Rabbit off’n his back, bless yo’ soul! But he des might ez well er rastle wid his own shadder. Every time he hump hisse’f Brer Rabbit slap de spurrers in ’im, en dar dey had it up en down. Brer Fox fa’rly to’ up de groun’, he did, en he jump so high en he jump so quick, dat he mighty nigh snatch his own tail off. Dey kep’ on gwine on dis way twel bimeby Brer Fox lay down en roll over, he did, en dis sorter unsettle Brer Rabbit, but by de time Brer Fox got en his footses agin, Brer Rabbit wuz gwine thoo de underbresh mo’ samer dan a race hoss. Brer Fox, he lit out atter ’im, he did, en he push Brer Rabbit so close, dat it wuz ’bout all he could do fer ter git in a holler tree. Hole too little fer Brer Fox fer to git in, en he hatter lay down en res’ en gadder his mine tergedder.
“While he wuz layin’ dar, Mr. Buzzard come floppin long, en seein’ Brer Fox stretch out on the groun’, he lit en view the premusses. Den Mr. Buzzard sorter shake his wing, en put his head on one side, en say to hisse’f like, sezee:
“‘Brer Fox dead, en I so sorry,’ sezee.
“‘No I ain’t dead, nudder,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee. ‘I got ole man Rabbit pent up in yer,’ sezee, ’en I’m gwineter git ’im dis time, ef it take twel Chris’mus,’ sezee.
“Den, atter some mo’ palaver, Brer Fox make a bargain dat Mr. Buzzard wuz ter watch de hole, en keep Brer Rabbit dar wiles Brer Fox went atter his axe. Den Brer Fox, he lope off, he did, en Mr. Buzzard, he tuck up his stan’ at de hole. Bimeby, w’en all get still, Brer Rabbit sorter scramble down close ter de hole, he did, en holler out:
“‘Brer Fox! Oh! Brer Fox!’
“Brer Fox done gone, en nobody say nuthin.’ Den Brer Rabbit squall out like he wuz mad:
“‘You needn’t talk less you wanter,’ sezee; ‘I knows youer dar, an I ain’t keerin’, sezee. ‘I dez wanter tell you dat I wish mighty bad Brer Tukkey Buzzard was here,’ sezee.
“Den Mr. Buzzard try to talk like Brer Fox:
“‘Wat you want wid Mr. Buzzard?’ sezee.
“‘Oh, nuthin’ in ’tickler, ’cep’ dere’s de fattes’ gray squir’l in yer dat ever I see,’ sezee, ‘en ef Brer Tukkey Buzzard was ’roun’ he’d be mighty glad fer ter git ’im,’ sezee.
“‘How Mr. Buzzard gwine ter git him?’ sez de Buzzard, sezee.
“‘Well, dar’s a little hole, roun’ on de udder side er de tree,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘en ef Brer Tukkey Buzzard was here so he could take up his stan’ dar’, sezee, ‘I’d drive dat squir’l out,’ sezee.
“‘Drive ’im out, den,’ sez Mr. Buzzard, sezee, ‘en I’ll see dat Brer Tukkey Buzzard gits’ ’im,’ sezee.
“Den Brer Rabbit kick up a racket, like he wer’ drivin’ sumpin’ out, en Mr. Buzzard he rush ’roun’ fer ter ketch de squir’l, en Brer Rabbit, he dash out, he did, en he des fly fer home.
“Well, Mr. Buzzard he feel mighty lonesome, he did, but he done prommust Brer ♦Fox dat he’d stay, en he termin’ fer ter sorter hang ’roun’ en jine in de joke. En he ain’t hatter wait long, nudder, kase bimeby yer come Brer Fox gallopin’ thoo de woods wid his axe on his shoulder.
♦ ‘Eox’ replaced with ‘Fox’
“‘How you speck Brer Rabbit gittin’ on, Brer Buzzard?’ sez Brer Fox, sezee.
“‘Oh, he in dar,’ sez Brer Buzzard, sezee. ‘He mighty still, dough. I speck he takin’ a nap,’ sezee.
“‘Den I’m des in time fer te wake ’im up,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee. En wid dat he fling off his coat, en spit in his han’s, en grab de axe. Den he draw back en come down on de tree――pow! En eve’y time he come down wid de axe――pow!――Mr. Buzzard, he step high, he did, en hollar out:
“‘Oh, he in dar, Brer Fox. He in dar, sho.’
“En eve’y time a chip ud fly off, Mr. Buzzard, he’d jump, en dodge, en hole his head sideways, he would, en holler:
“‘He in dar, Brer Fox. I done heerd ’im. He in dar, sho.’
“En Brer Fox, he lammed away at dat holler tree, he did, like a man mauling’ rails, twel bimeby atter he done got de tree most’ cut thoo, he stop fer ter ketch his bref, en he seed Mr. Buzzard laffin’ behind his back, he did, en right den en dar, widout gwine enny fudder, Brer Fox he smelt a rat. But Mr. Buzzard, he keep on holler’n:
“‘He in dar, Brer Fox. He in dar, sho. I done seed ’im.’
“Den Brer Fox, he make like he peepin’ up de holler, en he say, sezee:
“‘Run yer, Brer Buzzard, en look ef dis ain’t Brer Rabbit’s foot hanging down yer.’
“En Mr. Buzzard, he come steppin’ up, he did, same ez ef he were treddin’ on kurkle-burrs, en he stick his head in de hole; en no sooner did he done dat dan Brer Fox grab ’im. Mr. Buzzard flap his wings, en scramble roun’ right smartually, he did, but ’twan no use. Brer Fox had de ’vantage er de grip, he did, en he hilt ’im right down ter de groun’. Den Mr. Buzzard squall out, sezee:
“‘Lemme ’lone, Brer Fox. Tu’n me loose,’ sezee; ‘Brer Rabbit’ll git out. Youer gittin’ close at ’im,’ sezee, ‘en leb’m mo’ licks’ll fetch ’im,’ sezee.
“‘I’m nigher ter you, Brer Buzzard,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee, ‘dan I’ll be ter Brer Rabbit dis day,’ sezee. ‘Wat you fool me fer?’ sezee.
“‘Lemme ’lone, Brer Fox,’ sez Mr. Buzzard, sezee; ‘my ole ’oman waitin’ for me. Brer Rabbit in dar,’ sezee.
“‘Dar’s a bunch er his fur on dat black-be’y bush,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee, ‘en dat ain’t de way he come,’ sezee.
“Den Mr. Buzzard up’n tell Brer Fox how ’twuz, en he low’d, Mr. Buzzard did, dat Brer Rabbit wuz de low-downest w’atsizname w’at he ever run up wid. Den Brer Fox say, sezee:
“‘Dat’s needer here ner dar, Brer Buzzard,’ sezee. ‘I lef’ you yer fer ter watch dish yer hole en I lef’ Brer Rabbit in dar. I comes back en I fines you at de hole, en Brer Rabbit ain’t in dar,’ sezee. ‘I’m gwinter make you pay fer’t. I done bin tampered wid twel plum down ter de sap sucker’ll set on a log en sassy me. I’m gwinter fling you in a bresh-heap en burn you up,’ sezee.
“‘Ef you fling me on der fier, Brer Fox, I’ll fly ’way,’ sez Mr. Buzzard, sezee.
“‘Well, den, I’ll settle yo’ hash right now,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee, en wid dat he grab Mr. Buzzard by de tail, he did, en make fer ter dash ’im ’gin de groun’, but des ’bout dat time de tail fedders come out, en Mr. Buzzard sail off like wunner dese yer berloons, en ez he riz, he holler back:
“‘You gimme good start, Brer Fox,’ sezee, en Brer Fox sot dar en watch ’im fly outer sight.”
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Illustration: (‡ decoration)
ROBERT J. BURDETTE.
THE American people have a kindly feeling for the men who make them laugh, and in no other country does a humorist have a more appreciative public. The result has been, that in a country in which the average native has a clearly marked vein of humor, the genuine “funny man” is always sure of a hearty welcome. We have a long list of writers and lecturers who have gained a wide popularity through their mirth-provoking powers, and “Bob Burdette” holds an honorable place in this guild of “funny men.”
He was born in Greensborough, Pennsylvania, July 30, 1844, though he removed early in life to Peoria, Ill., where he received his education in the public schools.
He enlisted in the Civil War and served as a private from 1862 to the end of the war.
He began his journalistic career on the Peoria “Transcript,” and, after periods of editorial connection with other local newspapers, he became associate editor of the Burlington “Hawkeye,” Iowa. His humorous contributions to this journal were widely copied and they gave him a general reputation. His reputation as a writer had prepared the way for his success as a lecturer, and in 1877 he entered the lecture field, in which he has been eminently successful. He has lectured in nearly all the cities of the United States, and he never fails to amuse his listeners.
He is a lay preacher of the Baptist Church, and it is often a surprise to those who have heard only his humorous sayings to hear him speak with earnestness and serious persuasiveness of the deeper things of life, for he is a man of deep experiences and of pure ideals.
His most popular lectures have been those on “The Rise and Fall of the Mustache,” “Home,” and “The Pilgrimage of the Funny Man.” He has published in book-form, “The Rise and Fall of the Mustache and Other Hawkeyetems” (Burlington, 1877), “Hawkeyes” (1880), “Life of William Penn” (New York, 1882), a volume in the series of “Comic Biographies;” and “Innach Garden and other Comic Sketches” (1886).
He has been a frequent contributor to the Ladies’ Home Journal and other current literature, and he has recently written a convulsive description of “How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle,” which appeared in the Wheelmen.
He has for some years made his home at Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and he enjoys a large circle of friends.
* * * * *
THE MOVEMENT CURE FOR RHEUMATISM.¹
¹ Copyright, R. J. Burdette.
ONE day, not a great while ago, Mr. Middlerib read in his favorite paper a paragraph copied from the Præger Landwirthschaftliches Wochenblatt, a German paper, which is an accepted authority on such points, stating that the sting of a bee was a sure cure for rheumatism, and citing several remarkable instances in which ♦people had been perfectly cured by this abrupt remedy. Mr. Middlerib did not stop to reflect that a paper with such a name as that would be very apt to say anything; he only thought of the rheumatic twinges that grappled his knees once in a while, and made life a burden to him.
♦ ‘peo-’ replaced with ‘people’
He read the article several times, and pondered over it. He understood that the stinging must be done scientifically and thoroughly. The bee, as he understood the article, was to be gripped by the ears and set down upon the rheumatic joint, and held there until it stung itself stingless. He had some misgivings about the matter. He knew it would hurt. He hardly thought it could hurt any worse than the rheumatism, and it had been so many years since he was stung by a bee that he had almost forgotten what it felt like. He had, however, a general feeling that it would hurt some. But desperate diseases required desperate remedies, and Mr. Middlerib was willing to undergo any amount of suffering if it would cure his rheumatism.
He contracted with Master Middlerib for a limited supply of bees. There were bees and bees, humming and buzzing about in the summer air, but Mr. Middlerib did not know how to get them. He felt, however, that he could depend upon the instincts and methods of boyhood. He knew that if there was any way in heaven or earth whereby the shyest bee that ever lifted a 200-pound man off the clover, could be induced to enter a wide-mouthed glass bottle, his son knew that way.
For the small sum of one dime Master Middlerib agreed to procure several, to-wit: six bees, age not specified; but as Mr. Middlerib was left in uncertainty as to the race, it was made obligatory upon the contractor to have three of them honey, and three humble, or in the generally accepted vernacular, bumble bees. Mr. Middlerib did not tell his son what he wanted those bees for, and the boy went off on his mission, with his head so full of astonishment that it fairly whirled. Evening brings all home, and the last rays of the declining sun fell upon Master Middlerib with a short, wide-mouthed bottle comfortably populated with hot, ill-natured bees, and Mr. Middlerib and a dime. The dime and the bottle changed hands and the boy was happy.
Mr. Middlerib put the bottle in his coat pocket and went into the house, eyeing everybody he met very suspiciously, as though he had made up his mind to sting to death the first person that said “bee” to him. He confided his guilty secret to none of his family. He hid his bees in his bedroom, and as he looked at them just before putting them away, he half wished the experiment was safely over. He wished the imprisoned bees didn’t look so hot and cross. With exquisite care he submerged the bottle in a basin of water, and let a few drops in on the heated inmates, to cool them off.
At the tea-table he had a great fight. Miss Middlerib, in the artless simplicity of her romantic nature said: “I smell bees. How the odor brings up――――”
But her father glared at her, and said, with superfluous harshness and execrable grammar:
“Hush up! You don’t smell nothing.”
“Whereupon Mrs. Middlerib asked him if he had eaten anything that disagreed with him, and Miss Middlerib said: “Why, pa!” and Master Middlerib smiled as he wondered.
Bedtime came at last, and the night was warm and sultry. Under various false pretences, Mr. Middlerib strolled about the house until everybody else was in bed, and then he sought his room. He turned the night-lamp down until its feeble rays shone dimly as a death-light.
Mr. Middlerib disrobed slowly――very slowly. When at last he was ready to go lumbering into his peaceful couch, he heaved a profound sigh, so full of apprehension and grief that Mrs. Middlerib, who was awakened by it, said if it gave him so much pain to come to bed, perhaps he had better sit up all night. Mr. Middlerib checked another sigh, but said nothing and crept into bed. After lying still a few moments he reached out and got his bottle of bees.
It is not an easy thing to do, to pick one bee out of a bottle full, with his fingers, and not get into trouble. The first bee Mr. Middlerib got was a little brown honey-bee that wouldn’t weigh half an ounce if you picked him up by the ears, but if you lifted him by the hind leg as Mr. Middlerib did, would weigh as much as the last end of a bay mule. Mr. Middlerib could not repress a groan.
“What’s the matter with you?” sleepily asked his wife.
It was very hard for Mr. Middlerib to say; he only knew his temperature had risen to 86 all over, and to 197 on the end of his thumb. He reversed the bee and pressed the warlike terminus of it firmly against his rheumatic knee.
It didn’t hurt so badly as he thought it would.
It didn’t hurt at all!
Then Mr. Middlerib remembered that when the honey-bee stabs a human foe it generally leaves its harpoon in the wound, and the invalid knew then the only thing the bee had to sting with was doing its work at the end of his thumb.
He reached his arm out from under the sheet, and dropped this disabled atom of rheumatism liniment on the carpet. Then, after a second of blank wonder, he began to feel around for the bottle, and wished he knew what he had done with it.
In the meantime, strange things had been going on. When he caught hold of the first bee, Mr. Middlerib, for reasons, drew it out in such haste that for the time he forgot all about the bottle and its remedial contents, and left it lying uncorked in the bed. In the darkness there had been a quiet but general emigration from that bottle. The bees, their wings clogged with the water Mr. Middlerib had poured upon them to cool and tranquilize them, were crawling aimlessly about over the sheet. While Mr. Middlerib was feeling around for it, his ears were suddenly thrilled and his heart frozen by a wild, piercing scream from his wife.
“Murder!” she screamed, “murder! Oh, help me! Help! help!”
Mr. Middlerib sat bold upright in bed. His hair stood on end. The night was very warm, but he turned to ice in a minute.
“Where, oh, where,” he said, with pallid lips, as he felt all over the bed in frenzied haste――“where in the world are those infernal bees?”
And a large “bumble,” with a sting as pitiless as the finger of scorn, just then lighted between Mr. Middlerib’s shoulders, and went for his marrow, and said calmly: “Here is one of them.”
And Mrs. Middlerib felt ashamed of her feeble screams when Mr. Middlerib threw up both arms, and, with a howl that made the windows rattle, roared:
“Take him off! Oh, land of Scott, somebody take him off!”
And when a little honey-bee began tickling the sole of Mrs. Middlerib’s foot, she shrieked that the house was bewitched, and immediately went into spasms.
The household was aroused by this time. Miss Middlerib, and Master Middlerib and the servants were pouring into the room, adding to the general confusion, by howling at random and asking irrelevant questions, while they gazed at the figure of a man, a little on in years, pawing fiercely at the unattainable spot in the middle of his back, while he danced an unnatural, weird, wicked-looking jig by the dim religious light of the night lamp.
And while he danced and howled, and while they gazed and shouted, a navy-blue wasp, that Master Middlerib had put in the bottle for good measure and variety, and to keep the menagerie stirred up, had dried his legs and wings with a corner of the sheet, after a preliminary circle or two around the bed, to get up his motion and settle down to a working gait, fired himself across the room, and to his dying day Mr. Middlerib will always believe that one of the servants mistook him for a burglar, and shot him.
No one, not even Mr. Middlerib himself, could doubt that he was, at least for the time, most thoroughly cured of rheumatism. His own boy could not have carried himself more lightly or with greater agility. But the cure was not permanent, and Mr. Middlerib does not like to talk about it.
POPULAR WRITERS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
Illustration: POPULAR WRITERS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
EDWARD S. ELLIS MARTHA FINLEY • HORATIO ALGER JR. “OLIVER OPTIC” LOUISA M. ALCOTT • SARA JANE LIPPINCOTT
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LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.
AUTHOR OF “LITTLE WOMEN.”
THE famous author of “Little Women,” “Little Men,” and “Old-Fashioned Girls,” made her beginning, as have many who have done any good or acquired fame in the world, by depending on herself. In other words, she was the architect of her own fortune, and has left behind her works that will endure to gladden the hearts of millions of boys and girls. But she has done more. She has left behind her a record of a life within itself, a benediction and inspiration to every thoughtful girl who reads it.
While Miss Alcott always considered New England her home, she was actually born in Germantown, Philadelphia, November 29, 1832. Her father, Amos Bronson Alcott, after his marriage in New England, accepted a position as principal of a Germantown Academy, which he occupied from 1831 to 1834, and afterwards taught a children’s school at his own residence, but he was unsuccessful and he returned to Boston in 1835, when Louisa was two years old.
From this time forward, Mr. Alcott was a close friend and associate of the poet and philosopher Emerson, sharing with him his transcendental doctrines, and joining in the Brook-Farm experiment of ideal communism at Roxbury, Mass. The Brook-Farm experiment brought Mr. Alcott to utter financial ruin, and after its failure he removed to Concord, where he continued to live until his death. It was at this time that Louisa, although a mere child, formed a noble and unselfish purpose to retrieve the family fortune. When only fifteen years of age, she turned her thoughts to teaching, her first school being in a barn and attended by the children of Mr. Emerson and other neighbors. Almost at the same time she began to compose fairy stories, which were contributed to papers; but these early productions brought her little if any compensation, and she continued to devote herself to teaching, receiving her own education privately from her father. “When I was twenty-one years of age,” she wrote many years later to a friend, “I took my little earnings ($20) and a few clothes, and went out to seek my fortune, though I might have sat still and been supported by rich friends. All those hard years were teaching me what I afterwards put into books, and so I made my fortune out of my seeming misfortune.”
Two years after this brave start Miss Alcott’s earliest book, “Fairy Tales,” was published (1855). About the same time her work began to be accepted by the “Atlantic Monthly” and other magazines of reputation. During the winters of 1862 and ’63 she volunteered her services and went to Washington and served as a nurse in the government hospitals, and her experiences here were embodied in a series of graphic letters to her mother and sisters. These letters she revised and had printed in the “Boston Commonwealth” in the summer of 1863. They were afterwards issued in a volume entitled “Hospital Sketches and Camp-Fire Stories.” This was her second book, which, together with her magazine articles, opened the way to a splendid career as an author.
Being naturally fond of young people, Miss Alcott turned her attention from this time forward to writing for them. Her distinctive books for the young are entitled “Moods” (1864); “Morning Glories” (1867); “Little Women” (1868), which was her first decided success; “An Old-Fashioned Girl” (1869); “Little Men” (1871); “Work” (1873); “Eight Cousins” (1875), and its sequel, “Rose in Bloom” (1877), which perhaps ranks first among her books; “Under the Lilacs” (1878); “Jack and Jill” (1880), and “Lulu’s Library” (1885). Besides these she has put forth, at different times, several volumes of short stories, among which are “Cupid and Chow-Chow,” “Silver Pitchers” and “Aunt Joe’s Scrap-bag.”
From childhood Miss Alcott was under the tutelage of the Emersonian school, and was not less than her father an admirer of the “Seer of Concord.” “Those Concord days,” she writes, “were among the happiest of my life, for we had the charming playmates in the little Emersons, Channings, and Hawthornes, with their illustrious parents, to enjoy our pranks and join our excursions.”
In speaking of Emerson she also wrote to a young woman a few years before her death: “Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson have done much to help me see that one can shape life best by trying to build up a strong and noble character, through good books, wise people’s society, and by taking an interest in all reforms that help the world, ... believing always that a loving and just Father cares for us, sees our weakness, and is near to help if we call.” Continuing she asks: “Have you read Emerson? He is called a Pantheist, or believer in nature, instead of God. He was truly a Christian and saw God in nature, finding strength and comfort in the same sweet influence of the great Mother as well as the great Father of all. I, too, believe this, and when tired, sad or tempted, find my best comfort in the woods, the sky, the healing solitude that lets my poor, weary soul find the rest, the fresh hopes, the patience which only God can give us.”
The chief aim of Miss Alcott seemed to have been to make others happy. Many are the letters treasured up by young authors who often, but never in vain, sought her advice and kind assistance. To one young woman who asked her opinion on certain new books, in 1884, she wrote: “About books; yes, I’ve read ‘Mr. Isaacs’ and ‘Dr. Claudius,’¹ and like them both. The other, ‘To Leeward,’ is not so good; ‘Little Pilgrim’ was pretty, but why try to paint heaven? Let it alone and prepare for it, whatever it is, sure that God knows what we need and deserve. I will send you Emerson’s ‘Essays.’ Read those marked. I hope they will be as helpful to you as they have been to me and many others. They will bear study and I think are what you need to feed upon now.” The marked essays were those on “Compensation,” “Love,” “Friendship,” “Heroism,” and “Self-Reliance.”
¹ These are the books that made F. Marion Crawford famous.
Miss Alcott’s kindness for young people grew with her advancing years. Being a maiden lady without daughters of her own, she was looked up to and delighted in being considered as a foster-mother to aspiring girls all over the land. How many times she wrote similar sentences to this: “Write freely to me, dear girl, and if I can help you in any way be sure I will.” This was written to one she had never seen and only four years before her death, when she was far from well.
Miss Alcott died in Boston, March 6, 1888, at the age of fifty-six years, and just two days after her aged father, who was eighty-five years old, and who had depended on her many years, passed away. Though a great advocate of work for the health, she was, no doubt, a victim of overwork; for it is said she frequently devoted from twelve to fifteen hours a day to her literary labors, ... besides looking after her business affairs and caring personally for her old father, for many years an invalid. In addition to this, she educated some of her poor relatives, and still further took the place of a mother to little Lulu, the daughter of her sister, May, who died when the child was an infant.
* * * * *
HOW JO MADE FRIENDS.¹
(FROM “LITTLE WOMEN.”)
¹ Copyright, Roberts Bros.
“THAT boy is suffering for society and fun,” she said to herself. “His grandpa don’t know what’s good for him, and keeps him shut up all alone. He needs a lot of jolly boys to play with, or somebody young and lively. I’ve a great mind to go over and tell the old gentleman so.”
The idea amused Jo, who liked to do daring things, and was always scandalizing Meg by her queer performances. The plan of “going over” was not forgotten; and, when the snowy afternoon came, Jo resolved to try what could be done. She saw Mr. Laurence drive off, and then sailed out to dig her way down to the hedge, where she paused and took a survey. All quiet; curtains down to the lower windows; servants out of sight, and nothing human visible but a curly black head leaning on a thin hand, at the upper window.
“There he is,” thought Jo; “poor boy, all alone, and sick, this dismal day! It’s a shame! I’ll toss up a snowball, and make him look out, and then say a kind word to him.”
Up went a handful of soft snow, and the head turned at once, showing a face which lost its listless look in a minute, as the big eyes brightened, and the mouth began to smile. Jo nodded, and laughed, and flourished her broom, as she called out,――
“How do you do? Are you sick?”
Laurie opened the window and croaked out as hoarsely as a raven,――
“Better, thank you. I’ve had a horrid cold, and have been shut up a week.”
“I’m sorry. What do you amuse yourself with?”
“Nothing; it’s as dull as tombs up here.”
“Don’t you read?”
“Not much; they won’t let me.”
“Can’t somebody read to you?”
“Grandpa does, sometimes; but my books don’t interest him, and I hate to ask Brooke all the time.”
“Have some one come and see you, then.”
“There isn’t any one I’d like to see. Boys make such a row, and my head is weak.”
“Isn’t there some nice girl who’d read and amuse you? Girls are quiet, and like to play nurse.”
“Don’t know any.”
“You know me,” began Jo, then laughed and stopped.
“So I do! Will you come, please?” cried Laurie.
“I’m not quiet and nice; but I’ll come, if mother will let me. I’ll go ask her. Shut that window, like a good boy, and wait till I come....
“Oh! that does me lots of good; tell on, please,” he said, taking his face out of the sofa-cushion, red and shining with merriment.
Much elevated with her success, Jo did “tell on,” all about their plays and plans, their hopes and fears for father, and the most interesting events of the little world in which the sisters lived. Then they got to talking about books; and to Jo’s delight she found that Laurie loved them as well as she did, and had read even more than herself.
“If you like them so much, come down and see ours. Grandpa is out, so you needn’t be afraid,” said Laurie, getting up.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” returned Jo, with a toss of the head.
“I don’t believe you are!” exclaimed the boy, looking at her with much admiration, though he privately thought she would have good reason to be a trifle afraid of the old gentleman, if she met him in some of his moods.
The atmosphere of the whole house being summer-like, Laurie led the way from room to room, letting Jo stop to examine whatever struck her fancy; and so at last they came to the library, where she clapped her hands, and pranced, as she always did when specially delighted. It was lined with books, and there were pictures and statues, and distracting little cabinets full of coins and curiosities, and Sleep-Hollow chairs, and queer tables, and bronzes; and, best of all, a great, open fireplace, with quaint tiles all round it.
“What richness!” sighed Jo, sinking into the depths of a velvet chair, and gazing about her with an air of intense satisfaction. “Theodore Laurence, you ought to be the happiest boy in the world,” she added impressively.
“A fellow can’t live on books,” said Laurie, shaking his head, as he perched on a table opposite.
Before he could say any more, a bell rang, and Jo flew up, exclaiming with alarm, “Mercy me! it’s your grandpa!”
“Well, what if it is? You are not afraid of anything, you know,” returned the boy, looking wicked.
“I think I am a little bit afraid of him, but I don’t know why I should be. Marmee said I might come, and I don’t think you are any the worse for it,” said Jo, composing herself, though she kept her eyes on the door.
“I’m a great deal better for it, and ever so much obliged. I’m afraid you are very tired talking to me; it was so pleasant, I couldn’t bear to stop,” said Laurie gratefully.
“The doctor to see you, sir,” and the maid beckoned as she spoke.
“Would you mind if I left you for a minute? I suppose I must see him,” said Laurie.
“Don’t mind me. I’m as happy as a cricket here,” answered Jo.
Laurie went away, and his guest amused herself in her own way. She was standing before a fine portrait of the old gentleman, when the door opened again, and, without turning, she said decidedly, “I’m sure now that I shouldn’t be afraid of him, for he’s got kind eyes, though his mouth is grim, and he looks as if he had a tremendous will of his own. He isn’t as handsome as my grandfather, but I like him.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said a gruff voice behind her; and there, to her great dismay, stood old Mr. Laurence.
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WILLIAM TAYLOR ADAMS.
THE WELL-BELOVED WRITER FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.
PROBABLY no literary man in America has ministered to the pleasure of a greater number of our young people than William Taylor Adams, who is a native of Massachusetts and was born in Medway in 1822. He has devoted his life to young people; for more than twenty years as a teacher in the public schools of Boston, for many years a member of the school board of Dorchester, and since 1850 as a writer of stories. In his earlier life, he was the editor of a periodical known as “The Student and Schoolmate.” In 1881 he began the publication of “Our Little Ones,” and later “Oliver Optic’s Magazine for Boys and Girls.” His first book was published in 1853; it was entitled “Hatchie, the Guardian Slave,” and had a large sale. It was followed by a collection of stories called “In Doors and Out,” and in 1862 was completed “The Riverdale Series” of six volumes of stories for boys. Some of his other books are “The Boat Club;” “Woodville;” “Young America Abroad;” “Starry Flag;” “Onward and Upward;” “Yacht Club;” and “Great Western.” In all he has written at least a thousand stories for newspapers, and published about a hundred volumes. Among these are two novels for older readers: “The Way of the World” and “Living Too Fast.”
Mr. Adams’ style is both pleasing and simple. His stories are frequently based upon scenes of history and their influence is always for good.
* * * * *
THE SLOOP THAT WENT TO THE BOTTOM.¹
(FROM “SNUG HARBOR,” 1883.)
¹ Copyright, Lee & Shepard.
“STARBOARD your helm! hard a-starboard!” shouted Dory Dornwood, as he put the helm of the “Goldwing” to port in order to avoid a collision with a steam launch which lay dead ahead of the schooner.
“Keep off! you will sink me!” cried a young man in a sloop-boat, which lay exactly in the course of the steam launch. “That’s just what I mean to do, if you don’t come about,” yelled a man at the wheel of the steamer. “Why didn’t you stop when I called to you?”
“Keep off, or you will be into me!” screamed the skipper of the sloop, whose tones and manner indicated that he was very much terrified at the situation.
And he had reason enough to be alarmed. It was plain, from his management of his boat, that he was but an indifferent boatman; and probably he did not know what to do in the emergency. Dory had noticed the sloop coming up the lake with the steam launch astern of her. The latter had run ahead of the sloop, and had come about, it now appeared, for the purpose of intercepting her.
When the skipper of the sloop realized the intention of the helmsman of the steamer, he put his helm to port; but he was too late. The sharp bow of the launch struck the frail craft amidships, and cut through her as though she had been made of cardboard.
The sloop filled instantly, and, a moment later, the young man in her was struggling on the surface of the water. The boat was heavily ballasted, and she went down like a lump of lead. It was soon clear to Dory that the skipper could not swim, for he screamed as though the end of all things had come.
Very likely it would have been the end of all things to him, if Dory had not come about with the “Goldwing,” and stood over the place where the young man was vainly beating the water with his feet and hands. With no great difficulty the skipper of the “Goldwing,” who was an aquatic bird of the first water, pulled in the victim of the catastrophe, in spite of the apparent efforts of the sufferer to prevent him from doing so.
“You had a narrow squeak that time,” said Dory Dornwood, as soon as he thought the victim of the disaster was in condition to do a little talking. “It is lucky you didn’t get tangled up in the rigging of your boat. She went to the bottom like a pound of carpet-tacks; and she would have carried you down in a hurry if you hadn’t let go in short metre.”
“I think I am remarkably fortunate in being among the living at this moment,” replied the stranger, looking out over the stern of the “Goldwing.” “That was the most atrocious thing a fellow ever did.”
“What was?” inquired Dory, who was not quite sure what the victim meant by the remark, or whether he alluded to him or to the man in the steam launch.
“Why, running into me like that,” protested the passenger, with no little indignation in his tones.
“I suppose you came up from Burlington?” said Dory, suggestively, as though he considered an explanation on the part of the stranger to be in order at the present time.
“I have just come from Burlington,” answered the victim, who appeared to be disposed to say nothing more. “Do you suppose I can get that boat again?”
“I should say that the chance of getting her again was not first-rate. She went down where the water is about two hundred and fifty feet deep; and it won’t be an easy thing to get hold of her,” replied Dory. “If you had let him run into you between Diamond Island and Porter’s Bay, where the water is not more than fifty or sixty feet deep, you could have raised her without much difficulty. I don’t believe you will ever see her again.”
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SARAH JANE LIPPINCOTT.
FAVORITE WRITER FOR LITTLE CHILDREN.
ONE of the earliest papers devoted especially to young children was “The Little Pilgrim,” edited for a number of years under the name of “Grace Greenwood,” by Mrs. Lippincott. It had a very wide popularity, and its little stories, poems, and page of puzzles brought pleasure into very many home circles. Mrs. Lippincott is the daughter of Doctor Thaddeus Clarke. She was born in Pompey, New York, in September, 1823, and lived during most of her childhood in Rochester. In 1842 she removed with her father to New Brighton, Pennsylvania, and in 1853 she was married to Leander K. Lippincott, of Philadelphia. She had early begun to write verses, and, in 1844, contributed some prose articles to “The New York Mirror,” adopting the name “Grace Greenwood,” which she has since made famous. Besides her work upon “The Little Pilgrim,” she has contributed for many years to “The Hearth and Home,” “The Atlantic Monthly,” “Harper’s Magazine,” “The New York Independent,” “Times,” and “Tribune,” to several California journals, and to at least two English periodicals. She was one of the first women to become a newspaper correspondent, and her letters from Washington inaugurated a new feature in journalism. She has published a number of books: “Greenwood Leaves;” “History of My Pets;” “Poems;” “Recollections of My Childhood;” “Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in Europe;” “Merrie England;” “Stories from Many Lands;” “Victoria, Queen of England,” and others.
Mrs. Lippincott has lived abroad a great deal, and has been made welcome in the best literary circles in England and on the continent. During the war she devoted herself to the cause of the soldiers, read and lectured to them in camps and hospitals, and won the appreciation of President Lincoln, who used to speak of her as “Grace Greenwood, the Patriot.” Although devoted to her home in Washington, she has spent much time in New York City, and has lived a life whose activity and service to the public are almost unequalled among literary women.
* * * * *
THE BABY IN THE BATH-TUB.¹
(FROM “RECORDS OF FIVE YEARS,” 1867.)
¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
“ANNIE! Sophie! come up quick, and see baby in her bath-tub!” cries a charming little maiden, running down the wide stairway of an old country house, and half-way up the long hall, all in a fluttering cloud of pink lawn, her soft dimpled cheeks tinged with the same lovely morning hue. In an instant there is a stir and a gush of light laughter in the drawing-room, and presently, with a movement a little more majestic and elder-sisterly, Annie and Sophie float noiselessly through the hall and up the soft-carpeted ascent, as though borne on their respective clouds of blue and white drapery, and take their way to the nursery, where a novel entertainment awaits them. It is the first morning of the eldest married sister’s first visit home, with her first baby; and the first baby, having slept late after its journey, is about to take its first bath in the old house.
“Well, I declare, if here isn’t mother, forgetting her dairy, and Cousin Nellie, too, who must have left poor Ned all to himself in the garden, lonely and disconsolate, and I am torn from my books, and Sophie from her flowers, and all for the sake of seeing a nine-month-old baby kicking about in a bath-tub! What simpletons we are!”
Thus Miss Annie, the proude layde of the family; handsome, haughty, with perilous proclivities toward grand socialistic theories, transcendentalism, and general strong-mindedness; pledged by many a saucy vow to a life of single dignity and freedom, given to studies artistic, æsthetic, philosophic and ethical; a student of Plato, an absorber of Emerson, an exalter of her sex, a contemner of its natural enemies.
“Simpletons, are we?” cries pretty Elinor Lee, aunt of the baby on the other side, and “Cousin Nellie” by love’s courtesy, now kneeling close by the bath-tub, and receiving on her sunny braids a liberal baptism from the pure, plashing hands of babyhood,――“simpletons, indeed! Did I not once see thee, O Pallas-Athene, standing rapt before a copy of the ‘Crouching Venus?’ and this is a sight a thousand times more beautiful; for here we have color, action, radiant life, and such grace as the divinest sculptors of Greece were never able to entrance in marble. Just look at these white, dimpled shoulders, every dimple holding a tiny, sparkling drop,――these rosy, plashing feet and hands,――this laughing, roguish face,――these eyes, bright and blue and deep as lakes of fairy-land,――these ears, like dainty sea-shells,――these locks of gold, dripping diamonds,――and tell me what cherub of Titian, what Cupid of Greuze, was ever half so lovely. I say, too, that Raphael himself would have jumped at the chance of painting Louise, as she sits there, towel in hand, in all the serene pride and chastened dignity of young maternity,――of painting her as Madonna.”
“Why, Cousin Nellie is getting poetical for once, over a baby in a bath-tub!”
“Well, Sophie, isn’t it a subject to inspire real poets, to call out and yet humble the genius of painters and sculptors? Isn’t it an object for the reverence of ‘a glorious human creature,’――such a pure and perfect form of physical life, such a starry little soul, fresh from the hands of God? If your Plato teaches otherwise, Cousin Annie, I’m glad I’ve no acquaintance with that distinguished heathen gentleman; if your Carlyle, with his ‘soul above buttons’ and babies, would growl, and your Emerson smile icily at the sight, away with them!”
“Why, Nellie, you goose, Carlyle is ‘a man and a brother,’ in spite of his ‘Latter-day Pamphlets,’ and no ogre. I believe he is very well disposed toward babies in general; while Emerson is as tender as he is great. Have you forgotten his ‘Threnody,’ in which the sob of a mortal’s sorrow rises and swells into an immortal’s pean? I see that baby is very lovely; I think that Louise may well be proud of her. It’s a pity that she must grow up into conventionalities and all that,――perhaps become some man’s plaything, or slave.”
“O don’t, sister!――‘sufficient for the day is the worriment thereof.’ But I think you and Nellie are mistaken about the pride. I am conscious of no such feeling in regard to my little Florence, but only of joy, gratitude, infinite tenderness, and solicitude.”
Thus the young mother,――for the first time speaking, but not turning her eyes from the bath-tub.
“Ah, coz, it won’t go! Young mothers are the proudest of living creatures. The sweetest and saintliest among you have a sort of subdued exultation, a meek assumption, an adorable insolence, toward the whole unmarried and childless world. I have never seen anything like it elsewhere.”
“I have, in a bantam Biddy, parading her first brood in the hen-yard, or a youthful duck, leading her first little downy flock to the water.”
“Ha, blasphemer! are you there?” cries Miss Nellie, with a bright smile, and a brighter blush. Blasphemer’s other name is a tolerably good one,――Edward Norton,――though he is oftenest called “Our Ned.” He is the sole male representative of a wealthy old New England family,――the pride and darling of four pretty sisters, “the only son of his mother, and she a widow,” who adores him,――“a likely youth, just twenty-one,” handsome, brilliant, and standing six feet high in his stockings. Yet, in spite of all these unfavorable circumstances, he is a very good sort of a fellow. He is just home from the model college of the Commonwealth, where he learned to smoke, and, I blush to say, has a cigar in hand at this moment, just as he has been summoned from the garden by his pet sister, Kate, half-wild with delight and excitement. With him comes a brother, according to the law, and after the spirit,――a young, slender, fair-haired man, but with an indescribable something of paternal importance about him. He is the other proprietor of baby, and steps forward with a laugh and a “Heh, my little water-nymph, my Iris!” and by the bath-tub kneeling, catches a moist kiss from smiling baby lips, and a sudden wilting shower on shirt-front and collar, from moister baby hands.
Young collegian pauses on the threshold, essaying to look lofty and sarcastic, for a moment. Then his eye rests on Nellie Lee’s blushing face, on the red, smiling lips, the braids of gold, sprinkled with shining drops,――meets those sweet, shy eyes, and a sudden, mysterious feeling, soft and vague and tender, floods his gay young heart. He looks at baby again. “’Tis a pretty sight, upon my word! Let me throw away my cigar before I come nearer; it is incense too profane for such pure rites. Now give me a peep at Dian-the less! How the little witch revels in the water! A small Undine. Jolly, isn’t it, baby? Why, Louise, I did not know that Floy was so lovely, such a perfect little creature. How fair she is? Why, her flesh, where it is not rosy, is of the pure, translucent whiteness of a water-lily.”
No response to this tribute, for baby has been in the water more than long enough, and must be taken out, willy, nilly. Decidedly nilly it proves; baby proceeds to demonstrate that she is not altogether cherubic, by kicking and screaming lustily, and striking out frantically with her little, dripping hands. But Madonna wraps her in soft linen, rolls her and pats her, till she grows good and merry again, and laughs through her pretty tears.
But the brief storm has been enough to clear the nursery of all save grandmamma and Auntie Kate, who draw nearer to witness the process of drying and dressing. Tenderly the mother rubs the dainty, soft skin, till every dimple gives up its last hidden droplet; then, with many a kiss, and smile, and coo, she robes the little form in fairy-like garments of cambric, lace, flannel, soft as a moth’s wing, and delicate embroidery. The small, restless feet are caught, and encased in comical little hose, and shod with Titania’s own slippers. Then the light golden locks are brushed and twined into tendril-like curls, and lo! the beautiful labor of love is finished. Baby is bathed and dressed for the day.
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HORATIO ALGER.
AS a writer of books at once entertaining and at the same time of a healthy and earnest character a parent cannot recommend to his boys a more wholesome author than Horatio Alger, Jr. Mr. Alger always writes with a careful regard to truth and to the right principles. His heroes captivate the imagination, but they do not inflame it, and they are generally worthy examples for the emulation of boys. At the same time he is in no sense a preacher. His books have the true juvenile flavor and charm, and, like the sugar pills of the homœopathist, carry the good medicine of morality, bravery, industry, enterprise, honor――everything that goes to make up the true manly and noble character, so subtly woven into the thread of his interesting narrative that the writer without detecting its presence receives the wholesome benefit.
Mr. Alger became famous in the publication of that undying book, “Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York.” It was his first book for young people, and its success was so great that he immediately devoted himself to writing for young people, which he has since continued. It was a new field for a writer when Mr. Alger began, and his treatment of it at once caught the fancy of the boys. “Ragged Dick” first appeared in 1868, and since then it has been selling steadily until now it is estimated that over two hundred thousand copies of the series have passed into circulation. Mr. Alger possesses in an eminent degree that sympathy with boys which a writer must have to meet with success. He is able to enter into their plans, hopes, and aspirations. He knows how to look upon life as they do. He writes straight at them as one from their ranks and not down upon them as a towering fatherly adviser. A boy’s heart naturally opens to a writer who understands him and makes a companion of him. This, we believe, accounts for the enormous sale of the books of this writer. We are told that about three-quarters of a million copies of his books have been sold and that all the large circulating libraries in the country have several complete sets of them, of which but few volumes are found on the shelves at one time.
Horatio Alger, Jr., was born in Revere, Massachusetts, January 13, 1834. He graduated at Harvard University in 1852, after which he spent several years in teaching and newspaper work. In 1864 he was ordained as a Unitarian minister and served a Massachusetts church for two years. It was in 1866 that he took up his residence in New York and became deeply interested in the street boys and exerted what influence he could to the bettering of their condition. His experience in this work furnished him with the information out of which grew many of his later writings.
To enumerate the various volumes published by this author would be tedious. They have generally been issued in series. Several volumes complete one subject or theme. His first published book was “Bertha’s Christmas Vision” (1855). Succeeding this came “Nothing to Do,” a tilt at our best society, in verse (1857); “Frank’s Campaign; or, What a Boy Can Do” (1864); “Helen Ford,” a novel, and also a volume of poems (1866). The “Ragged Dick” series began in 1868, and comprises six volumes. Succeeding this came “Tattered Tom,” first and second series, comprising eight volumes. The entire fourteen volumes above referred to are devoted to New York street life of boys. “Ragged Dick” has served as a model for many a poor boy struggling upward, while the influence of Phil the fiddler in the “Tattered Tom” series is credited with having had much to do in the abolishment of the padrone system. The “Campaign Series” comprised three volumes; the “Luck and Pluck Series” eight; the “Brave and Bold” four; the “Pacific Series” four; the “Atlantic Series” four; “Way to Success” four; the “New World” three; the “Victory Series” three. All of these were published prior to 1896. Since the beginning of 1896 have appeared “Frank Hunter’s Peril,” “The Young Salesman” and other later works, all of which have met with the usual cordial reception accorded by the boys and girls to the books of this favorite author. It is perhaps but just to say, now that Oliver Optic is gone, that Mr. Alger has attained distinction as the most popular writer of books for boys in America, and perhaps no other writer for the young has ever stimulated and encouraged earnest boys in their efforts to rise in the world or so strengthened their will to persevere in well-doing, and at the same time written stories so real that every one, young and old, delights to read them. He not only writes interesting and even thrilling stories, but what is of very great importance, they are always clean and healthy.
* * * * *
HOW DICK BEGAN THE DAY.¹
(FROM “RAGGED DICK; OR, STREET LIFE IN NEW YORK.”)
¹ Copyright, Porter & Coates.
“WAKE up, there, youngster,” said a rough voice.
Ragged Dick opened his eyes slowly and stared stupidly in the face of the speaker, but did not offer to get up.
“Wake up, you young vagabond!” said the man a little impatiently; “I suppose you’d lay there all day if I hadn’t called you.”
“What time is it?” asked Dick.
“Seven o’clock.”
“Seven o’clock! I oughter’ve been up an hour ago. I know what ’twas made me so precious sleepy. I went to the Old Bowery last night and didn’t turn in till past twelve.”
“You went to the Old Bowery? Where’d you get your money?” asked the man, who was a porter in the employ of a firm doing business on Spruce Street.
“Made it on shines, in course. My guardian don’t allow me no money for theatres, so I have to earn it.”
“Some boys get it easier than that,” said the porter, significantly.
“You don’t catch me stealing, if that’s what you mean,” said Dick.
“Don’t you ever steal, then?”
“No, and I wouldn’t. Lots of boys does it, but I wouldn’t.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear you say that. I believe there’s some good in you, Dick, after all.”
“Oh, I’m a rough customer,” said Dick. “But I wouldn’t steal. It’s mean.”
“I’m glad you think so, Dick,” and the rough voice sounded gentler than at first. “Have you got any money to buy your breakfast?”
“No; but I’ll soon have some.”
While this conversation had been going on Dick had got up. His bed-chamber had been a wooden box, half full of straw, on which the young bootblack had reposed his weary limbs and slept as soundly as if it had been a bed of down. He dumped down into the straw without taking the trouble of undressing. Getting up, too, was an equally short process. He jumped out of the box, shook himself, picked out one or two straws that had found their way into rents in his clothes, and, drawing a well-worn cap over his uncombed locks, he was all ready for the business of the day.
Dick’s appearance, as he stood beside the box, was rather peculiar. His pants were torn in several places, and had apparently belonged in the first instance to a boy two sizes larger than himself. He wore a vest, all the buttons of which were gone except two, out of which peeped a shirt which looked as if it had been worn a month. To complete his costume he wore a coat too long for him, dating back, if one might judge from its general appearance, to a remote antiquity.
Washing the hands and face is usually considered proper in commencing the day; but Dick was above such refinement. He had no particular dislike to dirt, and did not think it necessary to remove several dark streaks on his face and hands. But in spite of his dirt and rags there was something about Dick that was attractive. It was easy to see that if he had been clean and well-dressed he would have been decidedly good-looking. Some of his companions were sly, and their faces inspired distrust; but Dick had a straightforward manner that made him a favorite.
Dick’s business hours had commenced. He had no office to open. His little blacking-box was ready for use, and he looked sharply in the faces of all who passed, addressing each with, “Shine your boots, sir?”
“How much?” asked a gentleman on his way to his office.
“Ten cents,” said Dick, dropping his box, and sinking upon his knees on the sidewalk, flourishing his brush with the air of one skilled in his profession.
“Ten cents! Isn’t that a little steep?”
“Well, you know ’taint all clear profit,” said Dick, who had already set to work. “There’s the blacking costs something, and I have to get a new brush pretty often.”
“And you have a large rent, too,” said the gentleman, quizzically, with a glance at a large hole in Dick’s coat.
“Yes, sir,” said Dick, always ready for a joke; “I have to pay such a big rent for my manshun up on Fifth Avenue that I can’t afford to take less than ten cents a shine. I’ll give you a bully shine, sir.”
“Be quick about it then, for I am in a hurry. So your house is on Fifth Avenue, is it?”
“It isn’t anywhere else,” said Dick, and Dick spoke the truth there.
“What tailor do you patronize?” asked the gentleman, surveying Dick’s attire.
“Would you like to go to the same one?” asked Dick, shrewdly.
“Well, no; it strikes me that he didn’t give you a very good fit.”
“This coat once belonged to General Washington,” said Dick, comically. “He wore it all through the Revolution, and it got tore some, ’cause he fit so hard. When he died he told his widder to give it to some smart young fellow that hadn’t got none of his own: so she gave it to me. But if you’d like it, sir, to remember General Washington by, I’ll let you have it reasonable.”
“Thank you, but I wouldn’t like to deprive you of it. And did your pants come from General Washington, too?”
“No, they was a gift from Lewis Napoleon. Lewis had outgrown ’em and sent ’em to me; he’s bigger than me, and that’s why they don’t fit.
“It seems you have distinguished friends. Now, my lad, I suppose you would like your money.”
“I shouldn’t have any objection,” said Dick.
* * * * *
And now, having fairly introduced Ragged Dick to my young readers, I must refer them to the next chapter for his further adventures.
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EDWARD S. ELLIS.
WRITER OF POPULAR BOOKS FOR BOYS.
EDWARD S. ELLIS is one of the most successful of the large group of men and women who have made it their principal business to provide delightful books for our young people.
Mr. Ellis is a native of northern Ohio, born in 1840, but has lived most of his life in New Jersey. At the age of seventeen, he began his successful career as a teacher and was attached for some years to the State Normal School of New Jersey, and was Trustee and Superintendent of the schools in the city of Trenton. He received the degree of A. M. from Princeton University on account of the high character of his historical text-books; but he is most widely known as a writer of books for boys. Of these, he has written about thirty and continues to issue two new ones each year, all of which are republished in London. His contributions to children’s papers are so highly esteemed that the “Little Folks’ Magazine,” of London, pays him double the rates given to any other contributor. Mr. Ellis’s School Histories have been widely used as text-books and he has also written two books on Arithmetic. He is now preparing “The Standard History of the United States.”
Besides those already mentioned, the titles of which would make too long a list to be inserted here, he has written a great many miscellaneous books.
Mr. Ellis abounds in good nature and is a delightful companion, and finds in his home at Englewood, New Jersey, all that is necessary to the enjoyment of life.
* * * * *
THE SIGNAL FIRE.¹
(FROM “STORM MOUNTAIN.”)
¹ Copyright, Porter & Coates.
TALBOT FROST paused on the crest of Storm Mountain and looked across the lonely Oakland Valley spread out before him.
He had traveled a clean hundred miles through the forest, swimming rapid streams, dodging Indians and Tories, and ever on the alert for his enemies, who were equally vigilant in their search for him.
He eluded them all, however, for Frost, grim and grizzled, was a veteran backwoodsman who had been a border scout for a score of years or more, and he knew all the tricks of the cunning Iroquois, whose ambition was to destroy every white person that could be reached with rifle, knife, or tomahawk.
Frost had been engaged on many duties for the leading American officers, but he was sure that to-day was the most important of all; for be it known that he carried, hidden in the heel of his shoe, a message in cipher from General George Washington himself.
Frost had been promised one hundred dollars in gold by the immortal leader of the American armies, if he would place the piece of cipher writing in the hands of Colonel Nick Hawley, before the evening of the tenth day of August, 1777.
To-day was the tenth, the afternoon was only half gone, and Fort Defiance, with its small garrison under the command of Hawley, was only a mile distant in Oakland Valley. The vale spread away for many leagues to the right and left, and was a couple of miles wide at the point where the small border settlement was planted, with its stockade fort and its dozen families clustered near.
“Thar’s a good three hours of sunlight left,” muttered the veteran, squinting one eye toward the sultry August sky, “and I orter tramp to the fort and back agin in half that time. I’ll be thar purty quick, if none of the varmints trip me up, but afore leavin’ this crest, I’d like to cotch the signal fire of young Roslyn from over yender.”
General Washington considered the message to Colonel Hawley so important that he had sent it in duplicate; that is to say, two messengers concealed the cipher about their persons and set out by widely different routes to Fort Defiance, in Oakland Valley.
Since the distance was about the same, and it was not expected that there would be much variation in speed, it was believed that, barring accidents, the two would arrive in sight of their destination within a short time of each other.
The other messenger was Elmer Roslyn, a youth of seventeen, a native of Oakland, absent with his father in the Continental Army, those two being the only members of their family who escaped an Indian massacre that had burst upon the lovely settlement some months before.
It was agreed that whoever first reached the mountain crest should signal to the other by means of a small fire――large enough merely to send up a slight vapor that would show against the blue sky beyond.
The keen eyes of Talbot Frost roved along the rugged mountain-ridge a couple of miles distant, in search of the tell-tale signal. They followed the craggy crest a long distance to the north and south of the point where Roslyn had promised to appear, but the clear summer air was unsustained by the least semblance of smoke or vapor. The day itself was of unusual brilliancy, not the least speck of a cloud being visible in the tinted sky.
“That Elmer Roslyn is a powerful pert young chap,” said the border scout to himself. “I don’t think I ever seed his ekal, and he can fight in battles jes’ like his father, Captain Mart, that I’ve heerd Gineral Washington say was one of the best officers he’s got; but thar’s no sense in his puttin’ himself agin an old campaignor like me. I don’t s’pose he’s within twenty mile of Oakland yit, and he won’t have a chance to kindle that ere signal fire afore to-morrer. So I’ll start mine, and in case he should accidentally reach the mountain-top over yender afore sundown, why he’ll see what a foolish younker he was to butt agin me.”
Talbot Frost knew that despite the perils through which he had forced his way to this spot, the greatest danger, in all probability, lay in the brief space separating him from Fort Defiance in the middle of the valley.
It was necessary, therefore, to use great care lest the signal fire should attract the attention of unfriendly eyes.
“I’ll start a small one,” he said, beginning to gather some dry twigs, “just enough for Elmer to obsarve by sarchin’――by the great Gineral Washington!”
To explain this exclamation of the old scout, I must tell you that before applying the flint and tinder to the crumpled leaves, Talbot Frost glanced across the opposite mountain-crest, two miles away.
As he did so he detected a fine, wavy column of smoke climbing from the rocks and trees. It was so faint that it was not likely to attract notice, unless a suspicious eye happened to look toward that part of the sky.
“By gracious! It’s him!” he exclaimed, closing his mouth and resuming command of himself. “That ere young Roslyn is pearter than I thought; if he keeps on at this rate by the time he reaches my years he’ll be the ekal of me――almost. Wall, I’ll have to answer him; when we meet I’ll explanify that I give him up, and didn’t think it was wuth while to start a blaze.”
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MARTHA FINLEY.
THE GIRLS’ FRIEND.
MARTHA FINLEY, author of the “Elsie Books,” etc., amounting in all to about one hundred volumes, was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, April 26, 1828, in the house of her grandfather, Major Samuel Finley, of the Virginia Cavalry, in the War of the Revolution, and a personal friend of Washington, who, while President, appointed him “Collector of Public Monies” for the Northwestern Territory of which Ohio was then a part. In the war of 1812–14 Major Finley marched to Detroit to the assistance of General Hull, at the head of a regiment of Ohio volunteers in which his eldest son, James Brown Finley, then a lad of eighteen, was a lieutenant. On Hull’s disgraceful surrender those troops were paroled and returned to their homes in Ohio. James Finley afterwards became a physician and married his mother’s niece, Maria Theresa Brown. Martha was their sixth child. In the spring of 1836 Dr. Finley left Ohio for South Bend, Indiana, where he resided until his death in 1851.
Something more than a year later Martha joined a widowed sister in New York city and resided there with her for about eighteen months. It was then and there she began her literary career by writing a newspaper story and a little Sunday-school book. But she was broken down in health and half blind from astigmatism; so bad a case that the oculist who years afterward measured her eyes for glasses, told her she would have been excusable had she said she could not do anything at all. But she loved books and would manage to read and write in spite of the difficulty of so doing; and a great difficulty it was, for in the midst of a long sentence the letters would seem to be thrown into confusion, and it was necessary to look away from the book or close her eyes for an instant before they would resume their proper positions.
But orphaned and dependent upon her own exertions, she struggled on, teaching and writing, living sometimes in Philadelphia with a stepmother who was kind enough to give her a home, sometimes in Phœnixville, Pa., where she taught a little select school. It was there she began the Elsie Series which have proved her most successful venture in literature. The twenty-second volume, published in 1897, is entitled Elsie at Home. The author has again and again proposed to end the series, thinking it long enough, but public and publishers have insisted upon another and yet another volume. The books have sold so well that they have made her a lovely home in Elkton, Maryland, whither she removed in 1876 and still resides, and to yield her a comfortable income.
But her works are not all juveniles. “Wanted a Pedigree,” and most of the other works in the Finley Series are for adults, and though not so very popular as the Elsie Books, still have steady sales though nearly all have been on the market for more than twenty years.
* * * * *
ELSIE’S DISAPPOINTMENT.¹
(FROM “ELSIE DINSMORE.”)
¹ Copyright, 1893, Dodd, Mead & Co.
THE school-room at Roselands was a very pleasant apartment. Within sat Miss Day with her pupils, six in number.
“Young ladies and gentlemen,” said she, looking at her watch, “I shall leave you to your studies for an hour; at the end of which time I shall return to hear your recitations, when those who have attended properly to their duties will be permitted to ride out with me to visit the fair.”
“Oh! that will be jolly!” exclaimed Arthur, a bright-eyed, mischief-loving boy of ten.
“Hush!” said Miss Day sternly; “let me hear no more such exclamations; and remember that you will not go unless your lessons are thoroughly learned. Louise and Lora,” addressing two young girls of the respective ages of twelve and fourteen, “that French exercise must be perfect, and your English lessons as well. Elsie,” to a little girl of eight, sitting alone at a desk near one of the windows, and bending over a slate with an appearance of great industry, “every figure of that example must be correct, your geography lesson recited perfectly, and a page in your copy-book written without a blot.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the child meekly, raising a pair of large soft eyes of the darkest hazel for an instant to her teacher’s face, and then dropping them again upon her slate.
“And see that none of you leave the room until I return,” continued the governess. “Walter, if you miss one word of that spelling, you will have to stay at home and learn it over.”
“Unless mamma interferes, as she will be pretty sure to do,” muttered Arthur, as the door closed on Miss Day, and her retreating footsteps were heard passing down the hall.
For about ten minutes after her departure, all was quiet in the school-room, each seemingly completely absorbed in study. But at the end of that time Arthur sprang up, and, flinging his book across the room, exclaimed, “There! I know my lesson; and if I didn’t, I shouldn’t study another bit for old Day, or Night either.”
“Do be quiet, Arthur,” said his sister Louise; “I can’t study in such a racket.”
Arthur stole on tiptoe across the room, and coming up behind Elsie, tickled the back of her neck with a feather.
She started, saying in a pleading tone, “Please, Arthur, don’t.”
“It pleases me to do,” he said, repeating the experiment.
Elsie changed her position, saying in the same gentle, persuasive tone, “O Arthur! please let me alone, or I never shall be able to do this example.”
“What! all this time on one example! you ought to be ashamed. Why, I could have done it half a dozen times over.”
“I have been over and over it,” replied the little girl in a tone of despondency, “and still there are two figures that will not come right.”
“How do you know they are not right, little puss?” shaking her curls as he spoke.
“Oh! please, Arthur, don’t pull my hair. I have the answer――that’s the way I know.”
“Well, then, why don’t you just set the figures down. I would.”
“Oh! no, indeed; that would not be honest.”
“Pooh! nonsense! nobody would be the wiser, nor the poorer.”
“No, but it would be just like telling a lie. But I can never get it right while you are bothering me so,” said Elsie, laying her slate aside in despair. Then, taking out her geography, she began studying most diligently. But Arthur continued his persecutions――tickling her, pulling her hair, twitching the book out of her hand, and talking almost incessantly, making remarks, and asking questions; till at last Elsie said, as if just ready to cry, “Indeed, Arthur, if you don’t let me alone, I shall never be able to get my lessons.”
“Go away, then; take your book out on the veranda, and learn your lessons there,” said Louise. “I’ll call you when Miss Day comes.”
“Oh! no, Louise, I cannot do that, because it would be disobedience,” replied Elsie, taking out her writing materials.
Arthur stood over her criticising every letter she made, and finally jogged her elbow in such a way as to cause her to drop all the ink in her pen upon the paper, making quite a large blot.
“Oh!” cried the little girl, bursting into tears, “now I shall lose my ride, for Miss Day will not let me go; and I was so anxious to see all those beautiful flowers.”
Arthur, who was really not very vicious, felt some compunction when he saw the mischief he had done. “Never mind, Elsie,” said he, “I can fix it yet. Just let me tear out this page, and you can begin again on the next, and I’ll not bother you. I’ll make these two figures come right, too,” he added, taking up her slate.
“Thank you, Arthur,” said the little girl, smiling through her tears; “you are very kind, but it would not be honest to do either, and I had rather stay at home than be deceitful.”
“Very well, miss,” said he, tossing his head, and walking away, “since you won’t let me help you, it is all your own fault if you have to stay at home.”
Elsie finished her page, and, excepting the unfortunate blot, it all looked very neat indeed, showing plainly that it had been written with great care. She then took up her slate and patiently went over and over every figure of the troublesome example, trying to discover where her mistake had been. But much time had been lost through Arthur’s teasing, and her mind was so disturbed by the accident to her writing that she tried in vain to fix it upon the business in hand; and before the two troublesome figures had been made right, the hour was past and Miss Day returned.
“Oh!” thought Elsie, “if she will only hear the others first;” but it was a vain hope. Miss Day had no sooner seated herself at her desk than she called, “Elsie, come here and say that lesson; and bring your copy-book and slate, that I may examine your work.”
Elsie tremblingly obeyed.
The lesson, though a difficult one, was very tolerably recited; for Elsie, knowing Arthur’s propensity for teasing, had studied it in her own room before school hours. But Miss Day handed back the books with a frown, saying, “I told you the recitation must be perfect, and it was not. There are two incorrect figures in this example,” said she, laying down the slate, after glancing over its contents. Then taking up the copy-book, she exclaimed, “Careless, disobedient child! did I not caution you to be careful not to blot your book? There will be no ride for you this morning. You have failed in everything. Go to your seat. Make that example right, and do the next; learn your geography lesson over, and write another page in your copy-book; and mind, if there is a blot on it, you will get no dinner.”
Weeping and sobbing, Elsie took up her books and obeyed.
During this scene Arthur stood at his desk pretending to study, but glancing every now and then at Elsie, with a conscience evidently ill at ease. She cast an imploring glance at him, as she returned to her seat; but he turned away his head, muttering, “It’s all her own fault, for she wouldn’t let me help her.”
As he looked up again, he caught his sister Lora’s eyes fixed on him with an expression of scorn and contempt. He colored violently, and dropped his upon his book.
“Miss Day,” said Lora, indignantly, “I see Arthur does not mean to speak, and as I cannot bear to see such injustice, I must tell you that it is all his fault that Elsie has failed in her lessons; for she tried her very best, but he teased her incessantly, and also jogged her elbow and made her spill the ink on her book; and to her credit she was too honorable to tear out the leaf from her copy-book, or to let him make her example right; both which he very generously proposed doing after causing all the mischief.”
“Is this so, Arthur?” asked Miss Day, angrily.
The boy hung his head, but made no reply.
“Very well, then,” said Miss Day, “you too must stay at home.”
“Surely,” said Lora, in surprise, “you will not keep Elsie, since I have shown you that she was not to blame.”
“Miss Lora,” replied her teacher, haughtily, “I wish you to understand that I am not to be dictated to by my pupils.”
Lora bit her lip, but said nothing, and Miss Day went on hearing the lessons without further remark.
In the meantime the little Elsie sat at her desk, striving to conquer the feelings of anger and indignation that were swelling in her breast; for Elsie, though she possessed much of “the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit,” was not yet perfect, and often had a fierce contest with her naturally quick temper. Yet it was seldom, very seldom that word or tone or look betrayed the existence of such feelings; and it was a common remark in the family that Elsie had no spirit.
The recitations were scarcely finished when the door opened and a lady entered dressed for a ride.
“Not through yet, Miss Day?” she asked.
“Yes, madam, we are just done,” replied the teacher, closing the French grammar and handing it to Louise.
“Well, I hope your pupils have all done their duty this morning, and are ready to accompany us to the fair,” said Mrs. Dinsmore. “But what is the matter with Elsie?”
“She has failed in all her exercises, and therefore has been told that she must remain at home,” replied Miss Day with heightened color and in a tone of anger; “and as Miss Lora tells me that Master Arthur was partly the cause, I have forbidden him also to accompany us.”
“Excuse me, Miss Day, for correcting you,” said Lora, a little indignantly; “but I did not say partly, for I am sure it was entirely his fault.”
“Hush, hush, Lora,” said her mother, a little impatiently; “how can you be sure of any such thing; Miss Day, I must beg of you to excuse Arthur this once, for I have quite set my heart on taking him along. He is fond of mischief, I know, but he is only a child, and you must not be too hard upon him.”
“Very well, madam,” replied the governess stiffly, “you have of course the best right to control your own children.”
Mrs. Dinsmore turned to leave the room.
“Mamma,” asked Lora, “is not Elsie to be allowed to go too?”
“Elsie is not my child, and I have nothing to say about it. Miss Day, who knows all the circumstances, is much better able than I to judge whether or no she is deserving of punishment,” replied Mrs. Dinsmore, sailing out of the room.
“You will let her go, Miss Day?” said Lora, inquiringly.
“Miss Lora,” replied Miss Day, angrily, “I have already told you I was not to be dictated to. I have said Elsie must remain at home, and I shall not break my word.”
“Such injustice!” muttered Lora, turning away.
Miss Day hastily quitted the room, followed by Louise and Lora, and Elsie was left alone.
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MARY MAPES DODGE.
EDITOR OF “ST. NICHOLAS” MAGAZINE.
IT would be difficult to name a writer of later years who has done more to delight the children with bright and chatty sunny-day stories than this estimable woman. While her mind has all the maturity, power, good judgment and strength of our best writers, her heart seems never to have grown out of the happy realm of childhood. It is for them that she thinks, and it is for them that she writes her charming stories when she is in her happiest moods. Not that she cannot write for grown up people, for she has given them several books――very good ones too. She edited “Hearth and Home” at one time, and many a mother remembers her good advice in bright and cheerful editorials, on the art of home-making, and on the care and training of children. She is also a humorous writer of considerable ability. “Miss Maloney on the Chinese Question” is one of her most amusing sketches. Mary Mapes was born in New York city, in 1838. Prof. James Mapes, the scientist, was her father. She married Mr. William Dodge, a lawyer, who lived only a few years, and it was after his death that she began to write for the “Hearth and Home” to which Donald G. Mitchell (Ik Marvel) and Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe were at that time, also, contributors.
In 1864 Mrs. Dodge’s first volume entitled, “Irving Stories,” for children, appeared. It met with great success, and in 1865 she issued her second volume, “Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates,” a charming story for boys and girls. The scene was laid in Holland. The book was so popular that it was translated into French, German, Dutch, Russian and other languages and became a little classic. She wrote a number of other books, among which are “A Few Friends, and How They Amused Themselves” (1869); “Rhymes and Jingles” (1874); “Theophilus and Others;” “Along the Way,” a volume of poems, and “Donald and Dorothy.”
In 1873 the “St. Nicholas” Magazine for young folks was commenced and Mrs. Dodge was made its editor, which position she still retains in 1897, and its popularity and brightness have given her a permanent place in the hearts of the boys and girls for the last quarter century.
Mrs. Dodge has long been a leader in the literary and artistic circles in New York, where she has a pleasant home. She had two fine boys of her own and it is said her first stories were written for their amusement. One of her sons died in 1881. The other, a successful inventor and manufacturer, lives in Philadelphia.
* * * * *
TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING.¹
(FROM “DONALD AND DOROTHY.”)
¹ Copyright, Mary Mapes Dodge.
JUST as Donald and Dorothy were about to end the outdoor visit to the Danbys, described in our last chapter, Coachman Jack was seen in a neighboring field, trying to catch Mr. Reed’s spirited mare, “Lady,” that had been let out to have a run. He had already approached her without difficulty and slipped a bridle over her head, but she had started away from him, and he, feeling that she had been allowed playtime enough, was now bent on recapturing her.
Instantly a dozen Danby eyes were watching them with intense interest. Then Donald and Ben, not being able to resist the impulse, scampered over to join in the race, closely followed by Dan and Fandy. Gregory, too, would have gone, but Charity called him back.
It was a superb sight to see the spirited animal, one moment standing motionless at a safe distance from Jack, and the next, leaping about the field, mane and tail flying, and every action telling of a defiant enjoyment of freedom. Soon, two grazing horses in the same field caught her spirit; even Don’s pony, at first looking soberly over a hedge in the adjoining lot, began frisking and capering about on his own account, dashing past an opening in the hedge as though it were as solid a barrier as the rest. Nor were Jack and the boys less frisky. Coaxing and shouting had failed, and now it was an open chase, in which, for a time, the mare certainly had the advantage. But what animal is proof against its appetite? Clever little Fandy had rushed to Mr. Reed’s barn, and brought back in his hat a light lunch of oats for the mare, which he at once bore into her presence, shaking it temptingly, at the same time slowly backing away from her. The little midget and his hatful succeeded, where big man and boys had failed. The mare came cautiously up and was about to put her nose into the cap, when Jack’s stealthy and sudden effort to seize the bridle made her start sidewise away from him. But here Donald leaped forward at the other side, and caught her before she had time to escape again.
Jack was too proud of Don’s quickness to appear surprised; so, disregarding the hilarious shout of the Danby boys, he took the bridle from the young master with an off-hand air, and led the now gentle animal quietly towards the stable.
But Dorothy was there before him. Out of breath after her brisk run, she was panting and tugging at a dusty side-saddle hanging in the harness-room, when Jack and the mare drew near.
“Oh, Jack!” she cried, “help me to get this down! I mean to have some fun. I’m going to ride that mare back to the field!”
“Not you, Miss Dorry!” exclaimed Jack. “Take your own pony, an’ your own saddle, an’ it’s a go; but this ’ere mare’d be on her beam ends with you in no time.”
“Oh, no, she wouldn’t, Jack! She knows me perfectly. Don’t you, Lady? Oh, do, Jack! That’s a good Jack. Please let me! Don’s there, you know.”
Dorry said this as if Don were a regiment. By this time, the side-saddle, yielding to her vigorous efforts, had clattered down from its peg, with a peculiar buckle-and-leathery noise of its own.
“Won’t you, Jack? Ah, won’t you?”
“No, miss, I won’t!” said Jack, resolutely.
“Why, Jack, I’ve been on her before. Don’t you know? There isn’t a horse on the place that could throw me. Uncle said so. Don’t you remember?”
“So he did!” said Jack, his eyes sparkling proudly.
“The Capt’n said them very words. An’,” glancing weakly at the mare, “she’s standin’ now like a skiff in a calm. Not a breath in her sails――”
“Oh, do――do, Jack!” coaxed Dorry, seizing her advantage, “quick! They’re all in the lot yet. Here, put it on her!”
“I’m an old fool,” muttered Jack to himself, as, hindered by Dorry’s busy touches, he proceeded to saddle the subdued animal; “but I can’t never refuse her nothin’――that’s where it is. Easy now, miss!” as Dorry, climbing up on the feed-box in laughing excitement, begged him to hurry and let her mount. “Easy now. There! You’re on, high and dry. Here” (tugging at the girth), “let me tauten up a bit! Steady now! Don’t try no capers with her, Miss Dorry, and come back in a minute. Get up, Lady!――get up!”
The mare left the stable so slowly and unwillingly, that Jack slapped her flank gently as she moved off. Jog jog went Lady out through the wide stable doorway, across the yard into the open field. Dorry, hastily arranging her skirts and settling herself comfortably upon the grand but dingy saddle (it had been Aunt Kate’s in the days gone by), laughed to herself, thinking how astonished they all must be to see her riding Lady back to them. For a moment she playfully pretended to be unconscious of their gaze. Then she looked up.
Poor Dorry! Not a boy, not even Donald, had remained in the field! He and the little Danbys were listening to one of Ben’s stories of adventure. Even the two horses and Don’s pony were quietly nosing the dry grass in search of green tufts.
“I don’t care,” she murmured gayly, overcoming her disappointment. “I mean to have a ride, any way. Get up, Lady!”
Lady did get up. She shook her head, pricked up her ears, and started off at a beautiful canter across the fields.
“How lovely!” thought Dorry, especially pleased at that moment to see several figures coming toward her from the Danby yard; “it’s just like flying!”
Whether Lady missed her master’s firm grip upon the rein, or whether she guessed her rider’s thought, and was inspired by the sudden shouts and hurrahs of the approaching boys, can never be known. Certain it is that by the next moment Dorry, on Lady’s back, was flying in earnest,――flying at great speed round and round the field, but with never an idea of falling off. Her first feeling was that her uncle and Jack wouldn’t be pleased if they knew the exact character of the ride. Next came a sense of triumph, because she felt that Don and the rest were seeing it all, and then a wild consciousness that her hat was off, her hair streaming to the wind, and that she was keeping her seat for dear life.
Lady’s canter had become a run, and the run soon grew into a series of leaps. Still Dorry kept her seat. Young as she was, she was a fearless rider, and at first, as we have seen, rather enjoyed the prospect of a tussle with Lady. But as the speed increased, Dorry found herself growing deaf, dumb and blind in the breathless race. Still, if she could only hold on, all would be well; she certainly could not consent to be conquered before “those boys.”
Lady seemed to go twenty feet in the air at every leap. There was no merry shouting now. The little boys stood pale and breathless. Ben, trying to hold Don back, was wondering what was to be done, and Charity was wringing her hands.
“Oh, oh! She’ll be thrown!” cried the girls.
“Not a bit of it!” insisted Donald. “I’ve seen Dot on a horse before.” But his looks betrayed his anxiety. “See! the mare’s trying to throw her now! But she can’t do it――she can’t do it! Dot understands herself, I tell you,――Whoa-o!――Let me go!” and, breaking from Ben, he tore across the field, through the opening in the hedge, and was on his pony’s back in a twinkling. How he did it, he never knew. He had heard Dorry scream, and somehow that scream made him and his pony one. Together, they flew over the field; with a steady, calm purpose, they cut across Lady’s course, and soon were at her side. Donald’s “Hold on, Dot!” was followed by his quick plunge toward the mare. It seemed that she certainly would ride over him, but he never faltered. Grasping his pony’s mane with one hand, he clutched Lady’s bridle with the other. The mare plunged, but the boy’s grip was as firm as iron. Though almost dragged from his seat, he held on, and the more she struggled, the harder he tugged,――the pony bearing itself nobly, and quivering in eager ♦sympathy with Donald’s every movement. Jack and Ben were now tearing across the field, bent on rescue; but they were not needed. Don was master of the situation. The mare, her frolic over, had yielded with superb grace, almost as if with a bow, and the pony was rubbing its nose against her steaming side.
♦ ‘smypathy’ replaced with ‘sympathy’
“Good for you, Dot!” was Donald’s first word. “You held on magnificently.”
Dorothy stroked Lady’s hot neck, and for a moment could not trust herself to look up. But when Jack half-pulled, half-lifted her from the saddle, and she felt the firm earth beneath her, she tottered and would have fallen, had not Donald, frightened at her white face, sprung to the ground just in time to support her.
“Shiver my timbers!” growled Jack, “if ever I let youngsters have their way again!” But his eyes shone with a strange mixture of self-reproach and satisfaction as he looked at Dorry.
NOTED JOURNALISTS AND MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTORS
Illustration: NOTED AMERICAN JOURNALISTS AND MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTORS.
HORACE GREELEY • MURAT HALSTEAD • ALBERT SHAW LYMAN ABBOTT • CHAS. A. DANA • HENRY W. WATTERSON WHITELAW REID • JULIAN HAWTHORNE • RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
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HORACE GREELEY.
THE FOUNDER OF MODERN JOURNALISM.
THE men of whom we love to read are those who stand for some great principle, whose lives and deeds exemplify its power. When we think of patriotism, the figure of Washington rises before us, as the man whose life, above all others, was controlled by pure love of country. Practical wisdom, shrewdness, and thrift are embodied in Benjamin Franklin. Astor and Girard represent the power of accumulation; Stewart, Carnegie, and Pullman, the power of organization; and so, when we consider the power of the press, the image which comes up before our mental view is that of Horace Greeley. In almost every personal quality there have been men who far surpassed him,――men who were greater as politicians, as organizers, as statesmen, as speakers, as writers,――but in the one respect of influencing public opinion through the press, of “making his mind the mind of other men,” no man in America has ever wielded such power as the great editor and founder of the New York “Tribune.”
Horace Greeley was one of the poor country boys who have afterward become the bone and sinew of the Republic. He was born in Amherst, New Hampshire, in 1811. His father, Zaccheus Greeley, was a struggling farmer. He moved to Vermont in 1821, and a few years later to the western part of Pennsylvania. Horace was a precocious child; and his mother, Mary Woodburn, who was of Scotch-Irish stock, used to recite to him ballads and stories, so that he really acquired a taste for literature before the age at which many children conquer the alphabet.
In his fifteenth year Horace felt that he could endure farming no longer, and at last procured from his father a reluctant consent that he should definitely seek employment as a printer. He found the longed-for opportunity at East Poultney, Vermont, in the office of the “Northern Spectator.”
In 1830, before Horace’s apprenticeship ended, the “Spectator” collapsed, and he was again set adrift. His father had removed to Western Pennsylvania, and the boy turned his face in that direction. After working for a few months on different country papers, he resolved to try his fortune in New York, and went to that city in August, 1831.
After two years of labor as a printer, so arduous that during much of the time it extended to fourteen hours a day, Mr. Greeley commenced his first editorial work upon a weekly paper called the “New Yorker” of which he was part owner and which lasted until March, 1841, when it went under, with a credit on its books of $10,000 due to Mr. Greeley for editing the paper, all of which was sunk with the wreck.
In the famous campaign of 1840, when Harrison was “sung and shouted into the presidential chair,” Greeley started a small weekly called the “Log Cabin.” He threw all his spirit and energy into it; he made it lively, crisp, and cheap. It attained an almost unheard-of success, reaching editions of eighty and ninety thousand. It was continued for several months after the triumphant election of Harrison, and then merged into the New York “Tribune,” which Greeley started at this time, the first issue appearing April 10, 1841.
The new enterprise soon became successful. It was helped at the start by a bitter attack from the “Sun,” then in the hands of Moses Y. Beach. The defense and rejoinders were equally pungent and amusing. Mr. Greeley always throve best upon opposition. His spicy retorts, and especially his partisan enthusiasm, forced the attention of the public, and the subscription-list of the “Tribune” soon rose from hundreds to thousands; by the third week in May it had 10,000 names on its books.
One thing in particular gave the “Tribune” eminence; that was Greeley’s policy of employing as contributors the best writers of the time. To name all the able men and women who thus won fame for both themselves and the “Tribune,” would make a list too long to print; but among them may be mentioned Bayard Taylor, whose “Views Afoot” first appeared in the form of letters to the “Tribune;” Margaret Fuller, whose articles gave her a wide reputation; George Ripley, Moncure D. Conway, Sydney Howard Gay, and George W. Smalley; and for years Thomas Hughes, the popular author of “Tom Brown at Oxford,” sent frequent and able letters from London. The result of this liberal policy was to make the “Tribune” indispensable to people of intelligence, even though utterly opposed to its political views.
In 1848 Mr. Greeley was elected to Congress, but his strength was as a journalist, not as a legislator. At the close of his brief term he retired from Congress, and during the stormy decade preceding the Civil War he made the “Tribune” a mighty power. He warmly espoused the cause of freedom, and denounced the Fugitive Slave Law, the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and the endless aggressions of the slave power with a vigor and pertinacity which made him one of the best-hated men in America. His course was not always consistent; and he often brought upon his head the wrath of friends as well as enemies. Moreover, in the conduct of a great daily paper much must be left to the judgment of subordinates; and all their mistakes were, of course, laid to the charge of their chief. Many of the old readers of the “Tribune” supposed that every line in the paper was actually written by Horace Greeley. He rarely took the trouble to justify or explain; and, therefore, while in one sense one of the best-known men in the country, he was one of the most misunderstood. Mr. Greeley had no time or thought for personal explanations; he was bent upon saving the country,――individuals could take care of themselves.
During the war Mr. Greeley’s course was somewhat erratic and unstable, but he kept a hold upon a large class of readers who believed in him, to whom he was a mental and moral lawgiver, who refused to believe any evil of him; and, if some visitor to the city――for a large proportion of “Tribune” readers were country, and particularly Western, people――on coming back, reported that in an interview with Mr. Greeley the editor had indulged in unlimited profanity, the unlucky individual was incontinently discredited and voted a calumniator.
In the years following the war, Greeley’s pen was more busy than ever. Beside his editorial writing in the “Tribune,” he prepared the second volume of his war history, “The American Conflict,” and his delightful autobiography, “Recollections of a Busy Life.” He was always intensely interested in the growth of the West, where he had made a memorable tour in 1859, extending to Salt Lake City; and now he unceasingly advocated western emigration. His terse advice, “Go West, young man, and grow up with the country,” became a sort of national watchword, and many thousands of Eastern people resolved to turn their faces toward the empire of the West.
In 1872 a curious political combination was made. Probably such a surprise was never sprung upon the country as the nomination of Horace Greeley for the Presidency, by a convention of “Liberal Republicans” and bolting Democrats. That he should be defeated at the polls was inevitable. He worked hard through the canvass, traveling and addressing meetings; body and mind suffered from the fatigue and excitement. To add to his troubles, Mrs. Greeley, who had been out of health for a considerable time, died at this period; his health gave way; he became unable to sleep; and sleeplessness was followed by inflammation of the brain, which soon ended his life.
Horace Greeley sleeps in Greenwood Cemetery, Long Island, on a hill overlooking the beautiful bay of New York, and within sight of the great city where his busy life was spent.
* * * * *
A DEBTOR’S SLAVERY.
(FROM “RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.”)
THE New Yorker was issued under my supervision, its editorials written, its selections made for the most part by me, for seven years and a half from March 22, 1834. Though not calculated to enlist partisanship, or excite enthusiasm, it was at length extensively liked and read. It began with scarcely a dozen subscribers; these steadily increased to 9,000; and it might under better business management (perhaps I should add, at a more favorable time), have proved profitable and permanent. That it did not was mainly owing to these circumstances: 1. It was not extensively advertised at the start, and at least annually thereafter, as it should have been. 2. It was never really published, though it had half-a-dozen nominal publishers in succession. 3. It was sent to subscribers on credit, and a large share of them never paid for it, and never will, while the cost of collecting from others ate up the proceeds. 4. The machinery of railroads, expresses, news companies, news offices, etc., whereby literary periodicals are now mainly disseminated, did not then exist. I believe that just such a paper issued to-day, properly published and advertised, would obtain a circulation of 100,000 in less time than was required to give the New Yorker scarcely a tithe of that aggregate, and would make money for its owners, instead of nearly starving them, as mine did. I was worth at least $1,500 when it was started; I worked hard and lived frugally throughout its existence; it subsisted for the first two years on the profits of our job-work; when I, deeming it established, dissolved with my partner, he taking the jobbing business and I the New Yorker, which held its own pretty fairly thenceforth till the commercial revulsion of 1837 swept over the land, whelming it and me in the general ruin.
I had married in 1836, deeming myself worth $5,000, and the master of a business which would thenceforth yield me for my labor at least $1,000 per annum; but, instead of that, or of any income at all, I found myself obliged throughout 1837 to confront a net loss of about $100 per week――my income averaging $100, and my inevitable expenses $200. It was in vain that I appealed to delinquents to pay up; many of them migrated; some died; others were so considerate as to order the paper stopped, but very few of these paid; and I struggled on against a steadily rising tide of adversity that might have appalled a stouter heart. Often did I call on this or that friend with intent to solicit a small loan to meet some demand that could no longer be postponed nor evaded, and, after wasting a precious hour, leave him, utterly unable to broach the loathsome topic. I have borrowed $500 of a broker late on Saturday, and paid him $5 for the use of it till Monday morning, when I somehow contrived to return it. Most gladly would I have terminated the struggle by a surrender; but, if I had failed to pay my notes continually falling due, I must have paid money for my weekly supply of paper――so that would have availed nothing. To have stopped my journal (for I could not give it away) would have left me in debt, beside my notes for paper, from fifty cents to two dollars each, to at least three thousand subscribers who had paid in advance; and that is the worst kind of bankruptcy. If anyone would have taken my business and debts off my hands, upon my giving him my note for $2,000, I would have jumped at the chance, and tried to work out the debt by setting type, if nothing better offered. If it be suggested that my whole indebtedness was at no time more than $5,000 to $7,000, I have only to say that even $1, 000 of debt is ruin to him who keenly feels his obligation to fulfil every engagement yet is utterly without the means of so doing, and who finds himself dragged each week a little deeper into hopeless insolvency. To be hungry, ragged, and penniless is not pleasant; but this is nothing to the horrors of bankruptcy. All the wealth of the Rothschilds would be a poor recompense for a five years’ struggle with the consciousness that you had taken the money or property of trusting friends――promising to return or pay for it when required――and had betrayed this confidence through insolvency.
I dwell on this point, for I would deter others from entering that place of torment. Half the young men in the country, with many old enough to know better, would “go into business”――that is, into debt――to-morrow, if they could. Most poor men are so ignorant as to envy the merchant or manufacturer whose life is an incessant struggle with pecuniary difficulties, who is driven to constant “shinning,” and who, from month to month, barely evades that insolvency which sooner or later overtakes most men in business; so that it has been computed that but one in twenty of them achieve a pecuniary success. For my own part――and I speak from sad experience――I would rather be a convict in a State prison, a slave in a rice swamp, than to pass through life under the harrow of debt.
Let no young man misjudge himself unfortunate, or truly poor, so long as he has the full use of his limbs and faculties, and is substantially free from debt. Hunger, cold, rags, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable; but debt is infinitely worse than them all. And, if it had pleased God to spare either or all of my sons to be the support and solace of my declining years, the lesson which I should have most earnestly sought to impress upon them is――“Never run into debt! Avoid pecuniary obligation as you would pestilence or famine. If you have but fifty cents, and can get no more for a week, buy a peck of corn, parch it, and live on it, rather than owe any man a dollar!” Of course I know that some men must do business that involves risks, and must often give notes and other obligations, and I do not consider him really in debt who can lay his hands directly on the means of paying, at some little sacrifice, all that he owes; I speak of real debt――which involves risk or sacrifice on the one side, obligation and dependence on the other――and I say, from all such, let every youth humbly pray God to preserve him evermore.
* * * * *
THE PRESS.
LONG slumbered the world in the darkness of error, And ignorance brooded o’er earth like a pall; To the sceptre and crown men abased them in terror, Though galling the bondage, and bitter the thrall; When a voice, like the earthquake’s, revealed the dishonor―― A flash, like the lightning’s, unsealed every eye, And o’er hill-top and glen floated liberty’s banner, While round it men gathered to conquer or die!
’Twas the voice of the Press, on the startled ear breaking, In giant-born prowess, like Pallas of old; ’Twas the flash of intelligence, gloriously waking A glow on the cheek of the noble and bold; And tyranny’s minions, o’erawed and affrighted, Sought a lasting retreat from its powerful control, And the chains which bound nations in ages benighted, Were cast to the haunts of the bat and the mole.
Then hail to the Press! chosen guardian of Freedom! Strong sword-arm of justice! bright sunbeam of truth; We pledge to her cause (and she has but to need them), The strength of our manhood, the fire of our youth; Should despots e’er dare to impede her free soaring, Or bigot to fetter her flight with his chain, We pledge that the earth shall close o’er our deploring, Or view her in gladness and freedom again.
But no!――to the day-dawn of knowledge and glory, A far brighter noontide-refulgence succeeds, And our art shall embalm, through all ages, in story, Her champion who triumphs――her martyr who bleeds, And proudly her sons shall recall their devotion, While millions shall listen to honor and bless, Till there bursts a response from the heart’s strong emotion, And the earth echoes deep with “Long Life to the Press!”
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CHARLES A. DANA.
THE FAMOUS EDITOR OF THE “SUN.”
THE man who with Greeley made the New York “Tribune” one of the greatest powers in the land, and who, from 1868 to 1897, was the chief and managing editor of the New York “Sun,” is certainly entitled to rank among our foremost men. Charles A. Dana lived a remarkable life, a life of strenuous effort and of continuous and notable achievement. He was born at Hinsdale, New Hampshire, in 1819, but his early life was passed at the village of Gaines, in Western New York, in Buffalo, and at Guildhall, Vermont. One of his earliest recollections was of being tied to a post with his mother’s garter because he had run away and gotten himself very muddy, thus displaying, at three years old, the restless spirit of enterprise which did much to make him the man he was. When he was eleven years old he returned to Buffalo to be a clerk in his uncle’s dry goods store. He was very successful as a salesman, and remained in the establishment until the failure of the business, in 1837, when he determined to prepare himself for college. He said that he found the elements of Latin very hard and disagreeable work, and he had the greatest difficulty in remembering the paradigms. Two winter terms at a country school, in his early boyhood, and two years at Harvard completed Mr. Dana’s systematic education, as too close application affected his eyesight, and he was obliged to withdraw from college at the end of his sophomore year. He had cultivated such a taste for languages, however, that no year since passed which he did not devote in part to serious study, and he became master of most spoken languages except the Slavonic and Oriental, and he began, at the age of seventy-five, the study of Russian. Harvard College afterward conferred upon him the degree which he was prevented from earning in the regular way, and is proud to count him among her most honored sons.
After leaving college Mr. Dana joined that remarkable body of men and women who conducted the Brook Farm experiment. He distinguished himself as one of the very few practical men among that band of philosophers, and gained, while at Brook Farm, a little experience in the newspaper business in conducting a publication known as “The Harbinger,” which was the organ of the association.
In 1844 his eyes had sufficiently recovered to enable him to do regular work, and he obtained employment under Elizur Wright, better known as an insurance actuary than as an editor, but who then conducted “The Chronotype,” an orthodox newspaper, which was a great favorite with the Congregational ministers of New England. Mr. Wright used to enjoy telling how “Dana always had a weakness for giving people with fixed convictions something new to think about,” and how he illustrated this weakness during the absence of his chief by writing strong editorials against the doctrine of a bill. This piece of enterprise involved the editor-in-chief in the labor of writing a personal letter to each of his ministerial subscribers, and to many others explaining how the paper “had been left in charge of a young man without mellow journalistic experience.” Mr. Dana’s compensation was five dollars per week, and at this amount it remained until 1847, when he joined the staff of the New York “Tribune” at ten dollars, a figure which was gradually increased to fifty dollars, which was the highest salary he ever received on the “Tribune.” Many delightful stories are told of the intercourse of Dana and Greeley. The part they took in politics, the fight against slavery, the organization of the Republican Party, Mr. Dana’s loyal support of Greeley’s aspirations for political preferment, all these are a part of the political history of our country. Just before joining the “Tribune” staff Mr. Dana was married to Miss Eunice MacDaniel, of New York. Of his delight in family life no testimony can be stronger than his own words written during a brief interval of leisure: “I have been busy with my children, drawing them about in old Bradley’s one-horse wagon, rowing and sailing with them on the bay and sound, gathering shells on the shore with them, picking cherries, lounging on the grass with the whole tribe about me. There’s no delight like that in a pack of young children of your own.... A house without a baby is inhuman.”
During these busy years Mr. Dana, together with Mr. Ripley, edited “The American Cyclopedia,” a work which is a monument of his care and learning and patient labor; and he also prepared and published a “Household Book of Poetry,” one of the very best collections of its kind, and one which has found its way into a very large number of American homes and contributed in no small measure to further the cause of good literature. In 1862 there came about a radical difference between Mr. Greeley and Mr. Dana as to the proper policy of the “Tribune” in regard to the war. The result was Mr. Dana’s withdrawal from the paper. He was immediately asked by Mr. Stanton to audit a large number of disputed claims in the quartermaster’s office at Cairo. This led to his appointment as Assistant Secretary of War, which position he held until the end of the Rebellion. About one-third of his time during this period was spent with the armies at the front. In this way he served as the confidential agent of the administration, and was once styled by Mr. Lincoln “the eyes of the Government at the front.” His reports were remarkable for their unconventional form, their brevity, and the completeness and accuracy with which they placed Stanton and Lincoln in possession of the exact facts. “Miles of customary military reports,” says a recent writer, “were worth less to Lincoln than half a dozen of Dana’s vivid sentences.”
After the close of the war Mr. Dana spent one year in Chicago as editor of “The Republican.” He had been deceived about the financial basis of the enterprise, and was in no way responsible for its failure. Returning to New York, he organized the company which purchased the old “Sun” property, and started the paper on a long career of success and of influence. He was probably the most independent man who ever managed a great newspaper. He possessed the power of working without that conscious effort which characterizes the activity of most men, and which seems to be the source of so many early break-downs. He was not easily disturbed. At the “Sun” office, they like to tell a doubtful story of the old days when the work of the paper was conducted in four small rooms. The city editor came hurriedly in exclaiming, “Mr. Dana, there’s a man out there with a cocked revolver. He is very much excited. He insists on seeing the editor-in-chief.” “Is he very much excited?” said Mr. Dana, hardly looking up from his work, “if you think it worth the space, ask Amos Cummings if he will kindly see the gentleman and write him up.” A noted sensational clergyman once volunteered to write, under an assumed name, for the “Sun.” He foolishly tried to adapt himself to what he imagined was the irresponsible tone of a Sunday paper, and there can be no doubt that Mr. Dana enjoyed writing in blue pencil across the back of his first article, “This is too wicked.”
During the winter the great editor occupied his house on Madison Avenue and Sixtieth Street, but his summer house was on a little island, two or three miles from Glen Cove, which his wide knowledge of trees and fruits and flowers enabled him to make a singularly delightful spot. In the summer of 1897, when Mr. Dana was approaching his eightieth year, and still continued to manage his great newspaper, surrounded by a corps of trained and efficient men, he was attacked with a serious illness, and passed away on the afternoon of October 17th. It is doubted whether any other man has left his mark more deeply on the nineteenth century than has the famous editor of the “Sun.”
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ROSCOE CONKLING.
(THE NEW YORK “SUN,” APRIL 18, 1888.)
THE most picturesque, striking, and original figure of American politics disappears in the death of Roscoe Conkling. Alike powerful and graceful in person, he towered above the masses of men in the elasticity of his talents and the peculiarities and resources of his mental constitution as much as he did in form and bearing. Yet his career cannot be called a great success, and he was not a great man.
But he was an object of great love and admiration to an extraordinary circle of friends, including not alone those who shared his opinions, but many who were utterly opposed to them. He was by nature a zealous partisan, and it was his inclination to doubt the good sense and the disinterestedness of those who were on the other side; but, nevertheless, the strongest instinct of his nature was friendship, and his attachments stood the test of every trial except such as trenched upon his own personality. This he guarded with the swift jealousy of most intense selfhood, and no one could in any way impinge upon it and remain his friend. Then, his resentments were more lasting and more unchangeable than his friendships. This, in our judgment, was the great weakness of the man. Who can say that in his innermost heart Conkling did not deplore it? At any rate, the candid observer who sums up his history must deplore it for him. “And the recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever.”
For a long period Mr. Conkling was a great political power in New York and in the country. This was during the culmination of General Grant. Originally Conkling was not friendly to Grant, and when the latter appointed his first Cabinet, the Senator’s condemnation was unreserved and stinging. This attitude was maintained during nearly the whole of Grant’s first year in the Presidency. At that time Senator Fenton stood near the President and dispensed the political bounty of the Administration. This Conkling could not endure, and when Congress met in December, 1869, he was full of war. But it soon got abroad that Fenton was a candidate for the Presidency. This settled the difficulty and brought the rival Senator into intimate relations with the President. This position he ever afterwards maintained, and it formed the most successful and to him the most satisfactory portion of his life. When Grant was finally defeated at Chicago in 1880, and all hopes of his restoration to the White House was obliterated, the Senator soon abandoned the field of his renown, and went back to the disappointments and struggles of private life.
As we have said, friendship was the greatest positive force in Mr. Conkling’s character, and there never was any hesitation or any meanness in his bestowal of it. In this respect he was the most democratic of men. He was just as warmly devoted to persons holding low places in the social scale as to the great and powerful, and he was just as scrupulous in his observation of all the duties of a friend toward the one kind of people as toward the other. There was nothing snobbish about him. He would go as far and exert himself as greatly to serve a poor man who was his friend as to serve one who was rich and mighty. This disposition he carried into politics. He had very little esteem for office-giving as a political method; but if a friend of his wanted a place, he would get it for him if he could. But no important politician in New York ever had fewer men appointed on the ground that they were his friends or supporters. His intense and lofty pride could not thus debase itself.
It is esteemed a high thing that with all the powers he wielded and the opportunities opened to him under a President the least scrupulous ever known in our history as regards jobbery and corruption, Mr. Conkling never pocketed a copper of indecent and dishonorable gain in the course of his public life. It is a high thing, indeed, and his bitterest enemies cannot diminish the lustre of the fact. The practice of public robbery was universal. Thievery was rampant everywhere in the precincts of the Administration. The Secretary of the Navy plundered millions. The Secretary of War sold public places and put the swag in his pocket. The Secretary of the Interior was forced by universal indignation to resign his ill-used office. The private secretaries of the President dealt in whiskey and defrauded the revenue. The vast gambling scheme of Black Friday had its fulcrum within the portals of the White House, and counted the President’s own family among its conspirators. It was a period of shameless, ineffable, unblushing villainy pervading the highest circles of public power. And while all Republican statesmen, leaders, and journalists knew it, condoned it, defended it even, the best they could, Mr. Conkling was the special spokesman, advocate, and orator of the Administration which was the creator of a situation so unprecedented and revolting. But while he thus lived and moved in the midst of corruption, he was not touched by it himself. The protector of brigands and scoundrels before the tribunal of public opinion, he had no personal part in their crimes and no share in their spoils. As the poet went through hell without a smutch upon his garments, so the proud Senator, bent chiefly upon the endurance of the Republican party, came out of that epoch of public dishonesty as honest and as stainless as he entered it.
In the records of the higher statesmanship it can be said that there is very much to the credit of Mr. Conkling’s account. As a parliamentary champion he had perhaps no superior; but others appear to have originated and perfected the measures to which in either House of Congress he gave the support of potent logic, fertile illustration, aggressive repartee, and scathing sarcasm. We do not recall a single one of the great and momentous acts of Congress which were passed in his time, of which he can certainly be pronounced the author. Yet his activity was prodigious, and it was a strange freak of his complicated character to bring before the House or Senate, through others, propositions which he thought essential. His hand could often be recognized in motions and resolutions offered on all sides of the chamber, and often by members with whom he was not known to be familiar.
The courage of Mr. Conkling, moral as well as personal, was of a heroic strain. After his mind was made up, he feared no odds, and he asked no favor. He dared to stand out against his own party, and he, a Republican, had the nerve to confront and defy the utmost power of a Republican administration. There was something magnanimous, too, in the way he bore misfortune. After the death of a distinguished man, with whom he had been very intimate, it was ascertained that his estate instead of being wealthy, was bankrupt. Mr. Conkling was an endorser of his notes for a large sum of money, and saying calmly, “He would have done as much for me,” he set himself to the laborious task of earning the means to pay off the debt. He paid it in no long time, and we don’t believe that any man ever heard him murmur at the necessity.
In social life Mr. Conkling endeared himself to his intimates, not only by the qualities which we have endeavored to describe and indicate, but by the richness of his conversation, and the wit and humor――sometimes rather ponderous――with which it was seasoned, and by the stores of knowledge which he revealed. His reading had been extensive, especially in English literature, and his memory was surprisingly tenacious. Many of the most impressive passages of oratory and of literature he could repeat by heart. He was fond of social discussion on all sorts of questions, and liked no one the less who courteously disagreed with him.
As a lawyer, we suppose that his great ability was in cross-examination and with juries. The exigencies and the discussive usage of political life prevented that arduous, persevering application to pure law which is necessary to make a great jurist; but his intellectual powers were so vigorous and so accurate that he made up the deficiency of training and habit and no one can doubt that, if he had given himself to the law alone, he would have gained a position of the very highest distinction. As it was, the most eminent counsel always knew that he had a formidable antagonist when Mr. Conkling was against him; and every court listened to his arguments, not merely with respect, but with instruction.
We shall be told, of course, that the supreme fault of this extraordinary mind was in perfection of judgment; and when we consider how largely his actions were controlled by pride and passion, and especially by resentment, we must admit that the criticism is not wholly without foundation. There was also in his manner that which might justify the belief that often he was posing for effect, like an actor on the stage; and we shall not dispute that so at times it may have been. But there are so few men who are entirely free from imperfection, and so many who inherit from their ancestors characteristics which ought to be disapproved, that we may well overlook them when they are combined with noble and admirable gifts. And after all has been said, even those whom he opposed most strenuously, and scorned or resisted most unrelentingly, may remember that we are all human, while they let fall a tear and breathe a prayer to heaven as the bier of Roscoe Conkling passes on its way to the grave.
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LYMAN ABBOTT.
PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, EDITOR OF “THE OUTLOOK.”
WIDE sympathies and broad Christian charity are potent factors in the uplifting of men, and there have been many in America who have exhibited these characteristics, but few possess them to a greater degree than the present pastor of the Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, Lyman Abbott. He comes of good New England stock, and was born December 18, 1835, at Roxbury, Massachusetts. He is the third son of Jacob Abbott, so dear to the children of the past generation, as the author of those books which were the delight of the childhood of many still living――the “Rollo Books,” the “Jonas Books,” and the “Lucy Books.” The plain, practical, broad common sense in Jacob Abbott, which dictated the composition of these attractive realistic stories, has been inherited in large measure by his son. Lyman Abbott was graduated from the University of the City of New York, in 1853, then studied law and was admitted to the bar. He soon found that the ministry had greater attraction for him than the law, and after studying theology with his uncle, John S. C. Abbott, so well-known as the author of the “Life of Napoleon Bonaparte,” he was ordained in 1860, a minister of the Congregational Church. He went the same year to take charge of a congregation at Terre Haute, Indiana. After five years’ work he became discouraged, for there seemed to be little or no fruit from his labors. He came to the conclusion that, after all, he had mistaken his calling, and so in 1865 he accepted the position of Secretary to the American Freedman’s Commission, an office which took him to New York. Returning to Terre Haute on a visit, he saw that his previous labors had not been in vain, but had brought forth abundant fruit in the lives of former members of his congregation. It was perhaps this fact that induced him to re-enter the ministry, and for three years to be the pastor of the New England Church in New York. He did not, however, lay aside the literary work he had taken up while connected with the Freedman’s Association. He conducted the “Literary Record” in “Harper’s Monthly,” and became editor of “The Illustrated Christian Weekly” in 1871. Resigning his connection with other papers he became joint editor with Henry Ward Beecher of the “Christian Union” in 1876, and its chief editor in 1881. After some years the name of the paper was changed to “The Outlook,” as indicating more nearly the character of the journal. In October, 1887, after the death of Henry Ward Beecher, he was chosen temporary Pastor of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, and later he was invited to remain permanently at the head of that large congregation. He has written much, and has published a number of volumes, nearly all upon religious subjects, but his influence has been chiefly exerted through the pulpit, and especially through the columns of the “Christian Union” and “The Outlook,” one of the most ably conducted weeklies in the country. Popular in its presentation, trenchant in its comments upon contemporary men and events, clear and unmistakable in its position, few papers have a more decided influence upon their readers. Its tone is high, and its view of what is going on in the world is wide and comprehensive. All subjects are treated fearlessly and independently, and truth, purity, and earnestness in religion and politics are insisted upon. Not the least interesting columns of the paper are those devoted to “Notes and Queries,” where, in a few well-chosen words, the difficulties of correspondents are answered, and at the same time valuable lessons are enforced. Lyman Abbott is one of the leaders of liberal Christian thought, is sympathetic with every movement for the advancement of mankind, a strong believer in practical Christianity, and a hater of all kinds of cant.
As a speaker differing widely from his great predecessor in the Plymouth pulpit, Lyman Abbott’s success is due to the clearness with which he presents his subject, to his earnestness, and to his practical way of putting things.
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THE JESUITS.¹
(FROM “DICTIONARY OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE.”)
¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.
JESUITS is the popular name of a Society more properly entitled “The Society of Jesus”――of all the Religious Orders of the Roman Catholic Church the most important. The Society of Jesus was founded in 1554 by Ignatius Loyola. He was a Spanish cavalier; was wounded in battle; was by his wounds, which impaired the use of one of his legs, deprived of his military ambition, and during his long confinement found employment and relief in reading a Life of Christ, and Lives of the Saints. This enkindled a new ambition for a life of religious glory and religious conquest. He threw himself, with all the ardor of his old devotion, into his new life; carried his military spirit of austerity and self-devotion into his religious career; exchanged his rich dress for a beggar’s rags; lived upon alms; practiced austerities which weakened his iron frame, but not his military spirit; and thus he prepared his mind for those diseased fancies which characterized this period of his ♦extraordinary career.
♦ ‘extraordinay’ replaced with ‘extraordinary’
He possessed none of the intellectual requirements which seemed necessary for the new leadership which he proposed to himself. The age despised learning, and left it to the priests; and this Spanish cavalier, at the age of thirty-three, could do little more than read and write. He commenced at once, with enthusiasm, the acquisition of those elements of knowledge which are ordinarily acquired long before that age. He entered the lowest class of the College of Barcelona, where he was persecuted and derided by the rich ecclesiastics, to whose luxury his self-denial was a perpetual reproach. He fled at last from their machinations to Paris, where he continued his studies under more favorable auspices. Prominent among his associates here was Francis Xavier, a brilliant scholar, who at first shrunk from the ill-educated soldier; yet gradually learned to admire his intense enthusiasm, and then to yield allegiance to it and its possessor. Several other Spaniards were drawn around the ascetic. At length, in 1534, Loyola, and five associates, in a subterranean chapel in Paris, pledged themselves to a religious life, and with solemn rites made sacred their mutual pledges to each other and to God.
Loyola introduced into the new order of which he was the founder, the principle of absolute obedience which he had acquired in his military career. The name given to its chief was the military title of “General.” The organization was not perfected, so as to receive the sanction of the Pope, until 1541. Its motto was Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam――“To the greater Glory of God.” Its vows embraced not only the obligations of Chastity, Poverty, and Obedience, but also a pledge on the part of every member to go as missionary to any country which the Pope might designate. Loyola was himself the first General of the new Order. Its Constitution, due to him, is practically that of an Absolute Monarchy. The General is elected by a General Congregation, selected for the purpose by the whole body of professed members in the various Provinces. He holds his office for life. A Council of Assistants aid him, but he is not bound by their vote. He may not alter the Constitution of the Society; and he is subject to deposition in certain contingencies; but no instance of the deposition of a General has ever occurred. Practically his will is absolute law, from which there is no appeal.
The Jesuits are not distinguished by any particular dress or peculiar practices. They are permitted to mingle with the world, and to conform to its habits, if necessary for the attainment of their ends. Their widest influence has been exhibited in political circles, where, as laymen, they have attained the highest political positions without exciting any suspicion of their connection with the Society of Jesus; and in education they have been employed as teachers, in which position they have exercised an incalculable influence over the Church.... It should be added that the enemies of the Order allege that, in addition to the public and avowed Constitution of the Society, there is a secret code, called Monita Secreta――“Secret Instructions”――which is reserved exclusively for the private guidance of the more advanced members. But as this Secret Code is disavowed by the Society――and since its authority is at least doubtful――it is not necessary to describe it here in detail.
* * * * *
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN.¹
(FROM “OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS.”)
¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.
THE story of Sodom and Gomorrah epitomizes the Gospel. Every act in the great, the awful drama of life is here foreshadowed. The analogy is so perfect that we might almost be tempted to believe that the story is a prophetic allegory, did not nature itself witness its historic truthfulness. The fertile plain contained, imbedded in its own soil, the elements of its own destruction. There is reason to believe that this is true of this world on which we live. A few years ago an unusually brilliant star was observed in a certain quarter of the heavens. At first it was thought to be a newly discovered sun; more careful examination resulted in a different hypothesis. Its evanescent character indicated combustion. Its brilliancy was marked for a few hours――a few nights at most――then it faded, and was gone. Astronomers believe that it was a burning world. Our own earth is a globe of living fire. Only a thin crust intervenes between us and this fearful interior. Ever and anon, in the rumbling earthquake, or the sublime volcano, it gives us warning of its presence. These are themselves gospel messengers. They say if we would but hear them――“Prepare to meet thy God.” The intimations of science confirm those of Revelation: “The heavens and the earth ... are kept in store, reserved unto the fire against the Day of Judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” What was true of Sodom and Gomorrah――what was true of the earth we live on――is true of the human soul. It contains within itself the instruments of its own punishment. There is a fearful significance in the words of the Apostle: “After thy hardness and impenitent heart treasureth up to thyself wrath against the day of wrath.” Men gather, with their own hands, the fuel to feed the flame that is not quenched; they nurture in their own bosoms the worm that dieth not. In habits formed never to be broken; in words spoken, incapable of recall; in deeds committed, never to be forgotten; in a life wasted and cast away that can never be made to bloom again, man prepares for himself his own deserved and inevitable chastisement. “Son, remember!”――to the soul who has spent its all in riotous living, there can be no more awful condemnation.
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HENRY WATTERSON.
EDITOR OF THE LOUISVILLE “COURIER-JOURNAL.”
FEW men connected with modern journalism have wider influence than Henry Watterson. He was born in Washington, D. C., in 1850, and because of defective eyesight, was educated chiefly by a private tutor. Entering journalism, at first in Washington and later in Tennessee, he made his reputation as editor of the “Republican Banner,” in Nashville. He served in the Confederate Army in various capacities, being a staff officer at one time and Chief of Scouts in General Joseph E. Johnston’s army in 1864. After the war he returned to Nashville, but soon removed to Louisville, Kentucky, where he succeeded George D. Prentice as editor of the “Journal.” In the following year he succeeded in uniting with the “Journal,” the “Courier” and the “Times,” thus founding the “Courier-Journal,” of which he has since been editor, and which, under his management, has come to be one of the foremost papers of the country.
Mr. Watterson has taken a prominent part in politics, having been a member of every Presidential convention beginning with 1876. He was a personal friend and a resolute follower of Samuel J. Tilden. He has often appeared as a public speaker, particularly in political campaigns, and his judgment has had great weight in the councils of the Democratic party. Mr. Watterson is a pronounced “free-trader,” but has had no sympathy with the political movements under the leadership of Grover Cleveland.
He has been a frequent contributor to periodicals and has edited one or two books, notably that entitled “Oddities of Southern Life and Character.” The sustained vigor of his mind, the force of his personality and the wide-spread admiration for his abilities, make Mr. Watterson one of the leading men, not only of his party, but of the country.
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THE NEW SOUTH.
(FROM “SPEECH AT THE NATIONAL BANKERS’ CONVENTION, LOUISVILLE, KY., OCTOBER 11, 1883.”)
IT was not, however, to hear of banks and bankers and banking that you did me the honor to call me before you. I am told that to-day you are considering that problem which has so disturbed the politicians――the South――and that you wish me to talk to you about the South. The South! The South! It is no problem at all. I thank God that at last we can say with truth, it is simply a geographic expression. The whole story of the South may be summoned up in a sentence: She was rich, and she lost her riches; she was poor and in bondage; she was set free, and she had to go to work; she went to work, and she is richer than ever before. You can see it was a groundhog case. The soil was here, the climate was here, but along with them was a curse, the curse of slavery. God passed the rod across the land and smote the people. Then, in His goodness and mercy, He waved the wand of enchantment, and lo, like a flower, His blessing burst forth! Indeed, may the South say, as in the experience of men it is rare for any to say with perfect sincerity:
“Sweet are the uses of adversity.”
The South never knew what independence meant until she was taught by subjection to subdue herself. She lived from hand to mouth. We had our debts and our niggers. Under the old system we paid our debts and walloped our niggers. Under the new we pay our niggers and wallop our debts. We have no longer any slaves, but we have no longer any debts, and can exclaim with the old darkey at the camp-meeting, who, whenever he got happy, went about shouting, “Bless the Lord! I’m gettin’ fatter an’ fatter!”
The truth is, that behind the great ruffle the South wore to its shirt, there lay concealed a superb manhood. That this manhood was perverted, there is no doubt. That it wasted its energies upon trifles, is beyond dispute. That it took a pride in cultivating what it called “the vices of a gentleman,” I am afraid must be admitted. But, at heart, it was sound; from that heart flowed honest Anglo-Saxon blood; and, when it had to lay aside its “store-clothes” and put on its homespun, it was equal to the emergency. And the women of the South took their place by the side of the men of the South, and, with spinning-wheel and ploughshare, together they made a stand against the wolf at the door. That was fifteen years ago, and to-day there is not a reward offered in a single Southern State for wolf-skins. The fact is, the very wolves have got ashamed of themselves and gone to work.
I beg you to believe that, in saying this, my purpose is neither to amuse nor mislead you. Although my words may seem to carry with them an unbusiness-like levity, I assure you that my design is wholly business-like. You can see for yourselves what the South has done; what the South can do. If all this has been achieved without credit, and without your powerful aid――and I am now addressing myself to the North and East, which have feared to come South with their money――what might not be achieved if the vast aggregations of capital in the fiscal centres should add this land of wine, milk and honey to their fields of investment, and give us the same chief rates which are enjoyed by nearer, but not safer, borrowers? The future of the South is not a whit less assured than the future of the West. Why should money which is freely loaned to Iowa and Illinois be refused to Alabama and Mississippi? I perfectly understand that business is business, and that capital is as unsectional as unsentimental. I am speaking from neither spirit. You have money to loan. We have a great country to develop.
We need the money. You can make a profit off the development. When I say that we need money, I do not mean the sort of money once demanded by an old Georgia farmer, who, in the early days, came up to Milledgeville to see General Robert Toombs, at the time a director of the State Bank. “Robert,” says he, “the folks down our way air in need of more money.” The profane Robert replied: “Well, how in ―――― are they going to get it?” “Why,” says the farmer, “can’t you stomp it?” “Suppose we do stomp it, how are we going to redeem it?” “Exactly, Robert, exactly. That was just what I was coming to. You see the folks down our way air agin redemption.” We want good money, honest money, hard money, money that will redeem itself.
We have given hostages to fortune and our works are before you. I know that the capital is proverbially timid. But what are you afraid of? Is it our cotton that alarms you, or our corn, or our sugar? Perhaps it is our coal and iron. Without you, in truth, many of these products must make slow progress, whilst others will continue to lie hid in the bowels of the earth. With you the South will bloom as a garden and sparkle as a gold-mine; for, whether you tickle her fertile plains with a straw or apply a more violent titillation to her fat mountain-sides, she is ready to laugh a harvest of untold riches.
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MURAT HALSTEAD.
JOURNALIST AND POLITICIAN.
THE editor of “The Cincinnati Commercial Gazette” may be ranked as one of the greatest living journalists. He has directed the policy first of “The Commercial” and then of “The Commercial Gazette” for a space of forty years, and has wielded an influence over the people of the vast region in which his paper circulates, and, indeed, upon the whole nation, hardly second to that of any other single man. Sometimes mistaken, but always honest, fearless and persistent, his work as a journalist may be cited as a model of excellence, and he may well be described as typical of the highest form of American manhood. He is now sixty-seven years of age, but he bears his years with such buoyancy and retains so fully his powers of mind and body that he distinguished himself in 1896 by going as special correspondent to the scene of the rebellion in Cuba, writing from that island, not only a daily letter to “The New York Journal” on the military and political situation, but also a series of daily articles in “The Standard-Union,” describing the manners and customs of Havana, and relating incidents of life in the tropics in a delightfully characteristic manner.
Mr. Halstead is a native of Butler County, Ohio, a locality which has produced its full share of the notable men of our time. As the inhabitants of the neighborhood were of Welsh extraction, with no one of Irish descent among them, the name, “Paddy’s Run,” borne by their Post Office, was a cause of great offence to them. A strong party, however, among whom was Mr. Halstead, made consistent opposition to every effort to change the name, but, though the struggle was long, the whimsical title which referred to an almost forgotten incident in General Wayne’s expedition had finally to be abandoned, and the fastidious inhabitants now have their mail addressed to “Shandon.” The Halstead family came from North Carolina at the time when so many of her noble sons bore practical testimony to their belief in free institutions by refusing to remain longer in a slave state, and making, in many cases, the greatest sacrifices in order to live on free soil in the Northwest Territory.
Murat Halstead grew up on a farm and made his way through the Farmer’s College, at College Hill, Ohio, as so many men of his class have done, by alternating college work with teaching a district school. He went immediately from college into newspaper life, contributing a great variety of articles to the Cincinnati papers, and in 1853 joined the staff of “The Commercial.” He soon became part owner and controlling editor. The success of his paper has been continuous from that time, and the fact is due in greatest measure to the foresight, energy and skill of Mr. Halstead. He became prominent in a national sense during the presidential campaign of 1856, and he was probably the only man who was present at all the national conventions of 1860, and one of the very few who foresaw the terrible conflict which was to follow. He had seen the hanging of John Brown, and reported it in vigorous fashion for his paper, and he was the Washington correspondent of “The Commercial” during the trying sessions of Congress which followed. He served as correspondent at the front during a part of the war, and “The Commercial” was no small factor in the national councils during that stormy time. His independence of mind is shown in his frequent criticism of the policy of the government. On one occasion he wrote a long letter to Secretary Stanton censuring in the strongest terms the measures which had been taken and outlining those which, in his opinion, would result in success. The document was afterwards filed away in the archives of the war department, bearing an inscription characteristic of the grim humor of the great war secretary: “How to Conduct the War――Halstead, M.”
He went to Europe in 1870 with the purpose of joining the French armies, but not succeeding, managed to attach himself to those of the Germans. The experiences thus obtained not only furnished the basis of his newspaper correspondence at the time, but supplied the material for a number of delightfully instructive magazine articles. He has since visited Europe on several occasions, and in 1874 formed one of a distinguished company which made a journey to Iceland and took part in the celebration of the thousandth anniversary of its settlement. In 1872 Mr. Halstead again demonstrated his independence by breaking loose from the regular organization of the Republican party and taking part in the bolt which resulted in the nomination of Greeley for the Presidency. He was not long, however, in getting back into the ranks, but his unwillingness to submit to party discipline and his persistence in criticising men and measures when he considered that they were opposed to the public interest, has probably been the means of preventing him from election on at least one occasion to the United States Senate. When he was nominated by President Harrison to be Minister to Germany, it was undoubtedly the same cause which insured his rejection in the Senate.
For many years the “Cincinnati Gazette” and the “Commercial” had continued an energetic rivalry. Their political attitude was very much the same, and there was everything to gain and little to lose by the consolidation of the two papers which occurred early in the eighties, with Mr. Halstead as editor-in-chief, and Mr. Richard Smith, of the “Gazette,” as business Manager. Since 1884 Mr. Halstead has made his headquarters in Washington or New York; his editorial contributions going by telegraph to his paper and for several years past he has been editor of the Brooklyn “Standard Union,” and has contributed very largely to other papers, his signed articles upon the money question in “The New York Herald” being notable examples of his ability as a writer and of his grasp of the great questions of the time. The amount of work turned off by such a writer is prodigious. He says that he has undoubtedly written and published an average of more than a million words a year for forty years. If put in book form this would make in the aggregate some five hundred volumes of good size.
Mr. Halstead was married in 1857 to Miss Mary Banks. They have four grown sons, all engaged in journalism; three younger ones, and three daughters. Their family life has been all that such life should be, and the present generation of the Halsteads bears every promise of maintaining the high standard of honest thought and persistent effort set by the florid faced man, whose large figure and massive head――hair and beard long since snow white――seem likely to be conspicuous in many presidential conventions yet to come, as they have been in almost every one for nearly half a century.
* * * * *
TO THE YOUNG MAN AT THE DOOR.
(FROM ADDRESS ON “THE MAXIMS, MARKETS, AND MISSIONS OF THE PRESS,” DELIVERED BEFORE THE WISCONSIN PRESS ASSOCIATION, 1889.)
WE need to guard against ways of exclusiveness――against the assumption that for some mysterious reason the press has rights that the people have not; that there are privileges of the press in which the masses and classes do not participate. The claim of privilege is a serious error. One either gains or loses rights in a profession. We have the same authority to speak as editors that we have as citizens. If we use a longer “pole to knock the persimmons,” it is because we have a larger constituency for our conversational ability; that doesn’t affect rights. It simply increases responsibility. One can say of a meritorious man or enterprise, or of a rascally schemer or scheme, as an editor the same that he could as a citizen, a tax-payer, a lawyer, minister, farmer, or blacksmith. It conduces to the better understanding of our business to know that we are like other folks, and not set apart, baptized, anointed, or otherwise sanctified, for an appointed and exclusive and unique service.
It is in our line of occupation to buy white paper, impress ink upon it in such form as may be expressive of the news and our views, and agreeable to our friends or disagreeable to our foes, and sell the sheet when the paper becomes, by the inking thereof, that peculiar manufactured product, a newspaper, for a margin of profit. We are as gifted and good as anybody, so far as our natural rights are concerned, and are better or worse according to our behavior. It is our position to stand on the common ground with the people, and publish the news, and tell the truth about it as well as we can; and we shall, through influences certain in their operation, find the places wherein we belong. No one can escape the logic of his labor.
Communications from young gentlemen in, or fresh from college, or active in other shops, who propose to go into journalism or newspaperdom, and want to know how to do it, are a common experience, for there is a popular fascination about our employment. There is nothing one could know――neither faculty to perform nor ability to endure――perfection of recollection, thoroughness in history, capacity to apply the lessons of philosophy, comprehension of the law, or cultivated intuition of the Gospel――that would not be of servicegoing into newspaperdom. But it is beyond me to prescribe a course of study. It is easier, when you have the knack, to do than to tell.
When the young man comes to say that he would be willing to undertake to run a newspaper――and we know that young man as soon as we see his anxious face at the door――and we sympathize with him, for we may remember to have been at the door instead of the desk, and willing to undertake the task of the gentleman who sat at the desk and asked what was wanted――when, perhaps, the youth at the door had in his pocket an essay on the “Mound Builders” that he believed was the news of the day――and we don’t like to speak unkindly to the young man. But there are so many of him. He is so numerous that he is monotonous, and it is not always fair to utter the commonplaces of encouragement. It is well to ask the young man, who is willing to come in and do things, what he has done (and often he hasn’t done anything but have his being). What is it that he knows how to do better than anyone else can do it? If there be anything, the question settles itself, for one who knows how to do right well something that is to do, has a trade. The world is under his feet, and its hardness is firm footing. We must ask what the young man wants to do? and he comes back with the awful vagueness that he is willing to do anything; and that always means nothing at all. It is the intensity of the current of electricity that makes the carbon incandescent and illuminating. The vital flame is the mystery that is immortal in the soul and in the universe.
Who can tell the young man how to grasp the magic clew of the globe that spins with us? There is no turnpike or railroad that leads into journalism. There are vacancies for didactic amateurs. Nobody is wanted. And yet we are always looking out for somebody, and once in awhile he comes. He does not ask for a place, but takes that which is his. Do not say to the young man there are no possibilities. There certainly are more than ever before. Young man, if you want to get into journalism, break in. Don’t ask how. It is the finding of it out that will educate you to do the essential thing. The young man must enter the newspaper office by main strength and awkwardness, and make a place for himself.
The machines upon which we impress the sheets we produce for the market――and we all know how costly they are in their infinite variety of improvements, for the earnings of the editor are swept away by the incessant, insatiable requirements of the pressmaker――this facile mechanism is not more changeable than the press itself, in its larger sense――and the one thing needful, first and last, is man. With all the changes, the intelligence of the printer and the personal force of the editor are indispensable.
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WHITELAW REID.
EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK “TRIBUNE.”
THERE is an old adage which declares “fortune favors the brave.” This seems to be eminently true in the case of Whitelaw Reid, than whose life few in American literature are more inspiring to the ambitious but poor youth struggling upward for recognition among his fellow-men; for it was by dint of hard work, heroic energy and unflagging perseverance that he has worked himself from the ranks of obscurity to one of the most prominent and honorable positions in modern journalism.
Whitelaw Reid was born near Xenia, Ohio, October 27, 1837. The principle of industry was early inculcated in his life; and, besides doing his share in the work of the family, he found so much time for study that he graduated from the Miami University before he was twenty years of age and was actively engaged in journalism and politics before his majority,――making speeches in the Fremont campaign on the Republican side,――and was made editor of the “Xenian News” when only twenty-one years of age. When the Civil War began, he had attained such a reputation as a newspaper writer that the “Cincinnati Gazette” sent him to the field as its special correspondent. He made his headquarters at Washington, and his letters concerned not only the war, but dwelt as well on the current politics. These attracted attention by their thorough information and pungent style. He made excursions to the army wherever there was prospect of active operation, was aide-de-camp to General Rosecrans and was present at the battles of Shiloh and Gettysburg. In 1863, he was elected Librarian of the House of Representatives at Washington, in which capacity he served until 1866. After the war, he engaged for one year in a cotton plantation in Louisiana and embodied the result of his observations in his first book entitled “After the War” (1867).
One of the most important of all the State histories of the Civil War is Mr. Reid’s “Ohio in the War,” which was issued in two volumes in 1868. It contained elaborate biographies of the chief Ohio participants of the army and a complete history of that State from 1861 to 1865. This work so attracted Horace Greeley, of the New York “Tribune,” that he employed Mr. Reid as an editorial writer upon his paper, and the latter removed to New York City in 1868, and after Mr. Greeley’s death, in 1872, ♦succeeded as editor-in-chief and principal owner of the “Tribune.” “Schools of Journalism” appeared in 1871, and “Scholars in Politics” in 1873.
♦ ‘succeded’ replaced with ‘succeeded’
The Legislature of New York in 1878 manifested the popular esteem in which Mr. Reid was held by electing him to be a regent of the State University for life. He was also offered by President Hayes the post of Minister to Germany and a similar appointment by President Garfield, both of which he declined, preferring rather to devote his attention to his paper, which was one of the leading organs of the Republican Party in the United States. In 1879, Mr. Reid published a volume entitled “Some Newspaper Tendencies,” and in 1881 appeared his book, “Town Hall Suggestions.” During President Harrison’s administration, though he had already twice declined a foreign portfolio, he accepted, in 1889, the United States mission to France. At the Republican Convention which met at Chicago in 1892, he was nominated for Vice-President of the United States and ran on the ticket with President Harrison.
Mr. Reid has a magnificent home in the vicinity of New York, where he delights with his charming family, consisting of a wife and several children, to entertain his friends. He has traveled extensively in foreign countries and many of the celebrities of Europe have enjoyed the hospitality of his palatial home. In 1897, Whitelaw Reid was appointed a special envoy to represent the United States at the celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee. His wife attended him on this mission, and, in company with the United States Ambassador, Colonel John Hay, they were the recipients of many honors, among which was an invitation to Mr. and Mrs. Reid to visit the Queen on the afternoon of July 6, when they dined with Her Majesty, and, at her special request, slept that night in Windsor Castle. It may be of interest to state in this connection that, though Mr. Reid was the United States’ special envoy, he and his secretaries are said to have paid their own expenses. This statement, if it be true, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Reid is a very wealthy man, evinces a liberality in the service of the government which should not pass unnoticed.
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“PICTURES OF A LOUISIANA PLANTATION.”¹
(FROM “SOME SOUTHERN REMINISCENCES.”)
¹ Copyright, Wm. F. Gill & Co.
I SPENT a year or two, after the close of the war in the Southern States, mostly on Louisiana and Alabama cotton-plantations; and I shall try to revive some recollections of that experience.
It was one of those perfect days which Louisianians get in February, instead of waiting, like poor Massachusetts Yankees, till June for them, when I crossed from Natchez to take possession of two or three river plantations on which I dreamed of making my fortune in a year. The road led directly down the levee. On the right rolled the Mississippi, still far below its banks, and giving no sign of the flood that a few months later was to drown our hopes. To the left stretched westward for a mile the unbroken expanse of cotton land, bounded by the dark fringe of cypress and the swamp. Through a drove of scrawny cattle and broken-down mules, pasturing on the rich Bermuda grass along the levee, under the lazy care of the one-armed “stock-minder,” I made my way at last down a grassy lane to the broad-porched, many-windowed cottage propped up four or five feet from the damp soil by pillars of cypress, which the agent had called the “mansion.” It looked out pleasantly from the foliage of a grove of China and pecan trees, and was flanked, on the one hand by a beautifully cultivated vegetable garden, several acres in extent, and on the other by the “quarters,”――a double row of cabins, each with two rooms and a projecting roof, covering an earthen-floored porch. A street, overgrown with grass and weeds, ran from the “mansion” down between the rows of cabins, and stopped at the plantation blacksmith and carpenter shop. Behind each cabin was a little garden, jealously fenced off from all the rest with the roughest of cypress pickets, and its gate guarded by an enormous padlock. “Niggers never trust one another about their gardens or hen-houses,” explained the overseer, who was making me acquainted with my new home.
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Illustration: A COTTON FIELD IN LOUISIANA.
I rode out first, that perfect day, among the gang of a hundred and fifty negroes, who, on these plantations, were for the year to compromise between their respect and their newborn spirit of independence by calling me Mistah instead of Massa, there were no forebodings. Two “plough-gangs” and two “hoe-gangs” were slowly measuring their length along the two-mile front. Among each rode its own negro driver, sometimes lounging in his saddle with one leg lodged on the pommel, sometimes shouting sharp, abrupt orders to the delinquents. In each plough-gang were fifteen scrawny mules, with corn-husk collars, gunny-bags, and bedcord plough-lines. The Calhoun ploughs (the favorite implement through all that region, then, and doubtless still, retaining the name given it long before war was dreamed of) were rather lazily managed by the picked hands of the plantation. Among them were several women, who proved among the best laborers of the gang. A quarter of a mile ahead a picturesque sight presented itself. A great crowd of women and children, with a few aged or weakly men among them, were scattered along the old cotton-rows, chopping down weeds, gathering together the trash that covered the land, and firing little heaps of it, while through the clouds of smoke came an incessant chatter of the girls, and an occasional snatch of a camp-meeting hymn from the elders. “Gib me some backey, please,” was the first salutation I received. They were dressed in a stout blue cottonade, the skirts drawn up to the knees, and reefed in a loose bunch at the waists; brogans of incredible sizes covered their feet, and there was a little waste of money on the useless decency of stockings, but gay bandannas were wound in profuse splendor around their heads.
The moment the sun disappeared every hoe was shouldered. Some took up army-blouses or stout men’s overcoats, and drew them on; others gathered fragments of bark to kindle their evening fires, and balanced them nicely on their heads. In a moment the whole noisy crowd was filing across the plantation towards the quarters, joining the plough-gang, pleading for rides on the mules, or flirting with the drivers, and looking as much like a troop flocking to a circus or rustic fair as a party of weary farm-laborers. At the house the drivers soon reported their grievances. “Dem women done been squabblin ’mong dei’ selves dis a’ternoon, so I’s hardly git any wuck at all out of ’em.” “Fanny and Milly done got sick to-day; an’ Sally heerd dat her husban’s mustered out ob de army, an’ she gone up to Natchez to fine him.” “Dem sucklers ain’t jus’ wuf nuffin at all. ’Bout eight o’clock dey goes off to de quarters of deir babies, an’ I don’ nebber see nuffin mo’ ob ’em till ’bout elebben. Den de same way in de a’ternoon, till I’s sick ob de hull lot. De moody (Bermuda grass) mighty tough ’long heah, an’ I could’nt make dem women put in deir hoes to suit me nohow.” Presently men and women trooped up for the ticket representing their day’s work. The women were soon busy preparing their supper of mess pork and early vegetables; while the plough-gang gathered about the overseer. “He’d done promise dem a drink o’ wiskey, if dey’d finish dat cut, and dey’d done it.” The whiskey was soon forthcoming, well watered with a trifle of Cayenne pepper to conceal the lack of spirit, and a little tobacco soaked in it to preserve the color. The most drank it down at a gulp from the glass into which, for one after another, the overseer poured “de lowance.” A few, as their turns came, passed up tin cups and went off with their treasure, chuckling about “de splendid toddy we’s hab to-night.” Then came a little trade with the overseer at “the store.” Some wanted a pound or two of sugar; others, a paper of needles or a bar of soap; many of the young men, “two bits’ wuf” of candy or a brass ring. In an hour trade was over, and the quarters were as silent as a churchyard. But, next morning, at four o’clock, I was aroused by the shrill “driber’s horn.” Two hours later it was blown again, and, looking from my window just as the first rays of light came level across the field, I saw the women filing out, with their hoes, and the ploughmen leisurely sauntering down to the stables, each with corn-husk collar and bedcord plough-lines in his hands. The passion for whiskey among the negroes seemed universal. I never saw a man, woman or child, reckless young scapegrace or sanctimonious old preacher, among them, who would refuse it; and the most had no hesitancy in begging it whenever they could. Many of them spent half their earnings buying whiskey. That sold on any of the plantations I ever visited or heard of was always watered down at least one-fourth. Perhaps it was owing to this fact, though it seemed rather an evidence of unexpected powers of self-restraint, that so few were to be seen intoxicated.
During the two or three years in which I spent most of my time among them, seeing scores and sometimes hundreds in a day, I do not remember seeing more than one man absolutely drunk. He had bought a quart of whiskey, one Saturday night, at a low liquor shop in Natchez. Next morning early he attacked it, and in about an hour the whiskey and he were used up together. Hearing an unusual noise in the quarters, I walked down that way and found the plough-driver and the overseer both trying to quiet Horace. He was unable to stand alone, but he contrived to do a vast deal of shouting. As I approached, the driver said, “Horace, don’t make so much noise; don’t you see Mr. R.?” He looked around as if surprised at learning it.
“Boss, is dat you?”
“Yes.”
“Boss, I’s drunk; boss, I’s ’shamed o’ myself! but I’s drunk! I ’sarve good w’ipping. Boss,――boss, s-s-slap me in de face, boss.”
I was not much disposed to administer the “slapping;” but Horace kept repeating, with a drunken man’s persistency, “Slap me in de face, boss; please, boss.” Finally I did give him a ringing cuff on the ear. Horace jerked off his cap, and ducked down his head with great respect, saying, “T’ank you, boss.” Then, grinning his maudlin smile, he threw open his arms as if to embrace me, and exclaimed, “Now kiss me, boss!” Next morning Horace was at work with the rest, and though he bought many quarts of whiskey afterwards, I never saw him drunk again.
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ALBERT SHAW.
EDITOR OF THE “REVIEW OF REVIEWS.”
IT seems, sometimes, that the influence of the editor has departed, and that notwithstanding the survival of a few men like Halstead and Reid, who helped to make the papers which moulded public opinion thirty years ago, the newspaper fills no such place as it did in the day of their prime, but a different place, not a lower or a less important one. Among the men who through the medium of the press are doing most to promote the spread of intelligence, and particularly to further the cause of good government and to elevate the civic life of our country, Albert Shaw fills a prominent place.
Dr. Shaw is a young man of Western birth, tall and slender in figure, with a keen eye, a quick and rather nervous manner, and features expressing in an unusual degree intelligence, energy, and character. Born in Ohio, the central West, Dr. Shaw represents a catholicity of feeling and knowledge which very few Americans possess. He knows the whole country. He is not distinctly an Eastern man, a Western man, or a man of the Pacific slope: he is a man of America. He knows the characteristics of each section, its strength and its weakness. With New England blood in his veins, but with the energizing influences of the West about his boyhood, Dr. Shaw graduated at Iowa College, the oldest institution of its class west of the Mississippi. During his college life the future journalist and writer devoted a great deal of time to the study of literature and of literary style, disclosing very early two qualities which are pre-eminently characteristic of him to-day, lucidity and directness. After graduation Dr. Shaw began his professional life as editor of “The Grinnell Herald,” a position which enabled him to master all the mechanical and routine work of journalism.
His aims were not the aims of the ordinary journalist. He saw with unusual clearness the possibilities of his profession, and he saw also that he needed a wider educational basis. His interest in social and political topics was the interest of a man of philosophic mind, eager to learn the principles and not simply to record the varying aspects from day to day. In order the better to secure the equipment of which he felt the need, he entered the Johns Hopkins University and took a post-graduate course. It was during his residence in Baltimore that he met Professor Bryce, who recognized his rare ability and intelligence, and who used his unusually large knowledge of social and political conditions in the country. While carrying on his special studies at the Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Shaw joined the editorial staff of the Minneapolis daily “Tribune.” After receiving the degree of Ph.D. in 1884, he removed permanently to Minneapolis, and took his place at the head of the staff of the “Tribune.” His work almost at once attracted attention. Its breadth, its thoroughness, its candor, and its ability were of a kind which made themselves recognized on the instant. Four years later Dr. Shaw spent a year and a half studying social and political conditions in Europe, traveling extensively and devoting much time to the examination of the condition of municipalities. It was this study which has borne fruit in the two volumes on Municipal Government which have come from the press of the Century Company, and which have given Dr. Shaw the first rank as an authority on these matters. When the “Review of Reviews” was established in this country in 1891, Dr. Shaw became its editor, and his success in the management of this very important periodical has justified the earlier expectations entertained by his friends, for he has given the “Review of Reviews” a commanding position. He is one of the very few journalists in this country who treat their work from the professional standpoint, who are thoroughly equipped for it, and who regard themselves as standing in a responsible relation to a great and intelligent public. Dr. Shaw’s presentation of news is pre-eminently full, candid, and unpartisan; his discussion of principles is broad-minded, rational, and persuasive. He is entirely free from the short-sighted partisanship of the great majority of newspaper editors, and he appreciates to the full the power of intelligent, judicial statement. His opinions, for this reason, carry great weight, and it is not too much to say that he has not his superior in the field of American journalism.
* * * * *
RECENT DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEST.
LET us imagine a man from the East who has visited the Northwestern States and Territories at some time between the years 1870 and 1875, and who retains a strong impression of what he saw, but who has not been west of Chicago since that time, until, in the World’s Fair year he determines upon a new exploration of Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wisconsin. However well informed he had tried to keep himself through written descriptions and statistical records of Western progress, he would see what nothing but the evidence of his own eyes could have made him believe to be possible. Iowa in 1870 was already producing a large crop of cereals, and was inhabited by a thriving, though very new, farming population. But the aspect of the country was bare and uninviting, except in the vicinity of the older communities on the Mississippi River. As one advanced across the State the farmhouses were very small, and looked like isolated dry-goods boxes; there were few well-built barns or farm buildings; and the struggling young cottonwood and soft-maple saplings planted in close groves about the tiny houses were so slight an obstruction to the sweep of vision across the open prairie that they only seemed to emphasize the monotonous stretches of fertile, but uninteresting plain. Now the landscape is wholly transformed. A railroad ride in June through the best parts of Iowa reminds one of a ride through some of the pleasantest farming districts of England. The primitive “claim shanties” of thirty years ago have given place to commodious farm-houses flanked by great barns and hay-ricks, and the well-appointed structures of a prosperous agriculture. In the rich, deep meadows herds of fine-blooded cattle are grazing. What was once a blank, dreary landscape is now garden-like and inviting. The poor little saplings of the earlier days, which seemed to be apologizing to the robust corn-stalks in the neighboring fields, have grown on that deep soil into great, spreading trees. One can easily imagine, as he looks off in every direction and notes a wooded horizon, that he is――as in Ohio, Indiana, or Kentucky――in a farming region which has been cleared out of primeval forests. There are many towns I might mention which twenty-five years ago, with their new, wooden shanties scattered over the bare face of the prairie, seemed the hottest place on earth as the summer sun beat upon their unshaded streets and roofs, and seemed the coldest places on earth when the fierce blizzards of winter swept unchecked across the prairie expanses. To-day the density of shade in those towns is deemed of positive detriment to health, and for several years past there has been a systematic thinning out and trimming up of the great, clustering elms. Trees of from six to ten feet in girth are found everywhere by the hundreds of thousands. Each farm-house is sheltered from winter winds by its own dense groves. Many of the farmers are able from the surplus growth of wood upon their estates to provide themselves with a large and regular supply of fuel. If I have dwelt at some length upon this picture of the transformation of the bleak, grain-producing Iowa prairies of thirty years ago into the dairy and live-stock farms of to-day, with their fragrant meadows and ample groves, it is because the picture is one which reveals so much as to the nature and meaning of Northwestern progress.
The tendency to rely upon united public action is illustrated in the growth of Northwestern educational systems. The universities of these commonwealths are State universities. Professional education is under the State auspices and control. The normal schools and the agricultural schools belong to the State. The public high school provides intermediate instruction. The common district school, supported jointly by local taxation and State subvention, gives elementary education to the children of all classes. As the towns grow the tendency to graft manual and technical courses upon the ordinary public school curriculum is unmistakably strong. The Northwest, more than any other part of the country, is disposed to make every kind of education a public function.
Radicalism has flourished in the homogeneous agricultural society of the Northwest. In the anti-monopoly conflict there seemed to have survived some of the intensity of feeling that characterized the anti-slavery movement; and a tinge of this fanatical quality has always been apparent in the Western and Northwestern monetary heresies. But it is in the temperance movement that this sweep of radical impulse has been most irresistible. It was natural that the movement should become political and take the form of an agitation for prohibition. The history of prohibition in Iowa, Kansas and the Dakotas, and of temperance legislation in Minnesota and Nebraska, reveals――even better perhaps than the history of the anti-monopoly movement――the radicalism, homogeneity, and powerful socializing tendencies of the Northwestern people. Between these different agitations there has been in reality no slight degree of relationship; at least their origin is to be traced to the same general condition of society.
The extent to which a modern community resorts to State action depends in no small measure upon the accumulation of private resources. Public or organized initiative will be relatively strongest where the impulse to progress is positive but the ability of individuals is small. There are few rich men in the Northwest. Iowa, great as is the Hawkeye State, has no large city and no large fortunes. Of Kansas the same thing may be said. The Dakotas have no rich men and no cities. Minnesota has Minneapolis and St. Paul, and Nebraska has Omaha; but otherwise these two States are farming communities, without large cities or concentrated private capital. Accordingly the recourse to public action is comparatively easy. South Dakota farmers desire to guard against drought by opening artesian wells for irrigation. They resort to State legislation and the sale of county bonds. North Dakota wheat growers are unfortunate in the failure of crops. They secure seed-wheat, through State action and their county governments. A similarity of condition fosters associated action, and facilitates the progress of popular movements.
In such a society the spirit of action is intense. If there are few philosophers, there is remarkable diffusion of popular knowledge and elementary education. The dry atmosphere and the cold winters are nerve-stimulants, and life seems to have a higher tension and velocity than in other parts of the country.
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JULIAN HAWTHORNE.
THE POPULAR NOVELIST AND CONTRIBUTOR.
JULIAN HAWTHORNE has inherited much of his father’s literary ability. His recent celebrity has been largely due to his success in portraying to the readers of popular magazines facts of world-wide interest like the famine in India, but to the special power of vivid statement which belongs to the newspaper reporter, he joins the imaginative power which enables him to recognize the materials of romance and the gift of clear and graceful expression. He is the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and was born in Boston in 1846. He traveled abroad with his parents, returning and entering Harvard in 1863. His college life seems to have been devoted more to athletics than to serious learning. He took up the study of civil engineering and went to Dresden to carry it on, but the Franco-Prussian war breaking out while he was visiting at home, he found employment as an engineer under General George B. McClellan in the department of docks in New York. He began soon after to write stories and sketches for the magazines, and losing his position in 1872, he determined to devote himself to literature. He now went abroad, living for several years, first in England and then in Dresden, and again in England, where he remained until 1881, and then after a short stay in Ireland, returned to New York. A number of his stories were published while he was abroad. Of these the most important were “Bressant” and “Idolatry.” For two years he was connected with the London “Spectator,” and he contributed to the “Contemporary Review” a series of sketches called “Saxon Studies,” which were afterwards published in book form. The novel “Garth” followed and collections of stories and novelettes entitled “The Laughing Mill;” “Archibald Malmaison;” “Ellice Quentin;” “Prince Saroni’s Wife;” and the “Yellow Cap” fairy stories. These were all published abroad, but a part of them were afterward reprinted in America. Later he published “Sebastian Strome;” “Fortune’s Fool,” and in 1884 “Dust” and “Noble Blood.” On his return to America he edited his father’s posthumous romance “Dr. Grimshaw’s Secret,” and prepared the biography of his father and mother. Since that time he has contributed a large number of stories and sketches to magazines. His most recent work has been an expedition to India to write for American periodicals an account of the famine in that country. One of our extracts is taken from this account and will very adequately illustrate his power of telling things so that his readers can see them with his eyes. Mr. ♦Hawthorne’s activity does not abate and his friends and admirers expect from him even better work than he has yet done.
♦ “Hawthrone’s” replaced with “Hawthorne’s”
* * * * *
THE WAYSIDE AND THE WAR.¹
(FROM “NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AND HIS WIFE.”)
¹ Copyright, Ticknor & Co.
IT was a hot day towards the close of June, 1860, when Hawthorne alighted from a train at Concord station, and drove up in the railway wagon to the Wayside. The fields looked brown, the trees were dusty, and the sun white and brilliant. At certain seasons in Concord the heat stagnates and simmers, until it seems as if nothing but a grasshopper could live. The water in the river is so warm that to bathe in it is merely to exchange one kind of heat for another. The very shadow of the trees is torrid; and I have known the thermometer to touch 112° in the shade. No breeze stirs throughout the long sultry day; and the feverish nights bring mosquitoes, but no relief. To come from the salt freshness of the Atlantic into this living oven is a startling change, especially when one has his memory full of cool, green England. Such was America’s first greeting to Hawthorne, on his return from a seven years’ absence; it was to this that he had looked forward so lovingly and so long. As he passed one little wooden house after another, with their white clap boards and their green blinds, perhaps he found his thoughts not quite so cloudless as the sky. It is dangerous to have a home; too much is required of it.
The Wayside, however, was not white, it was painted a dingy buff color. The larches and Norway pines, several hundred of which had been sent out from England, were planted along the paths, and were for the most part doing well. The well-remembered hillside, with its rude terraces, shadowed by apple-trees, and its summit green with pines, rose behind the house; and in front, on the other side of the highway, extended a broad meadow of seven acres, bounded by a brook, above which hung drooping willows. It was, upon the whole, as pleasant a place as any in the village, and much might be done to enhance its beauty. It had been occupied, during our absence, by a brother of Mrs. Hawthorne; and the house itself was in excellent order, and looked just the same as in our last memory of it. A good many alterations have been made since then; another story was added to the western wing, the tower was built up behind, and two other rooms were put on in the rear. These changes, together with some modifications about the place, such as opening up of paths, the cutting down of some trees, and the planting of others, were among the last things that engaged Hawthorne’s attention in this life.
* * * * *
FIRST MONTHS IN ENGLAND.¹
FROM “NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AND HIS WIFE.”
¹ Copyright, Ticknor & Co.
WE are told, truly enough, that goodness does not always command good fortune in this world, that just hopes are often deferred until it is too late to enjoy their realization, that fame and honor only discover a man after he has ceased to value them; and a large and respectable portion of modern fiction is occupied in impressing these sober lessons upon us. It is pleasant, nevertheless, to believe that sometimes fate condescends not to be so unmitigable, and that a cloudy and gusty morning does occasionally brighten into a sunny and genial afternoon. Too long a course of apparently perverse and unreasonable accidents bewilders the mind, and the few and fleeting gleams of compensation seem a mockery. One source of the perennial charm of Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield” is, I think, that in it the dividing line between the good and the bad fortune is so distinctly drawn. Just when a man has done his utmost, and all seems lost, Providence steps in, brings aid from the most unexpected quarter, and kindles everything into brighter and ever brighter prosperity. The action and reaction are positive and complete, and we arise refreshed and comforted from the experience.
It was somewhat thus with Hawthorne, though the picture of his career is to be painted in a lower and more delicate tone than that of Goldsmith’s brilliant little canvas. Up to the time of publication of “The Scarlet Letter,” his external circumstances had certainly been growing more and more unpromising; though, on the other hand, his inner domestic life had been full of the most vital and tender satisfactions. But the date of his first popular success in literature also marks the commencement of a worldly prosperity which, though never by any means splendid (as we shall presently see), at any rate sufficed to allay the immediate anxiety about to-morrow’s bread-and-butter, from which he had not hitherto been free. The three American novels were written and published in rapid succession, and were reprinted in England, the first two being pirated; but for the last, “The Blithedale Romance,” two hundred pounds were obtained from Messrs. Chapman and Hall for advance sheets. There is every reason to believe that during the ensuing years other romances would have been written; and perhaps they would have been as good as, or better than, those that went before. But it is vain to speculate as to what might have been. What actually happened was that Hawthorne was appointed United States Consul to Liverpool, and for six years to come his literary exercises were confined to his consular despatches and to six or eight volumes of his English, French and Italian Journals. It was a long abstinence; possibly it was a beneficent one. The production of such books as “The Scarlet Letter” and “The House of Seven Gables” cannot go on indefinitely; though they seem to be easily written when they are written, they represent a great deal of the writer’s spiritual existence. At all events, it is better to write too little than too much.
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THE HORRORS OF THE PLAGUE IN INDIA.
(FROM THE “COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE.”)
I MET the local inspectors at the railway station leading a horse which they had kindly provided for me. We made a tour of half a dozen villages, alighting to investigate anything that appeared suspicious. The first and largest of the villages rambles along on either side of a street scarcely wider than an ordinary footpath. The houses were mud huts, whitewashed, or built of a kind of rubble, with the roofs of loose tiles common in India. Cocoa palms were numerous all over the region, and there were solid groves of them outside the settlements, coming down to the water’s edge. The inhabitants for the most part professed the Roman Catholic faith; crosses stood at every meeting of the ways, and priests in black gowns with wide-brimmed black hats stole past us occasionally. Of native inhabitants, however, we saw very few; those who were not in the graveyards had locked up their houses and fled the town. All the houses in which death or sickness had occurred had been already visited by the inspectors, emptied of their contents and disinfected. Those which were still occupied were kept under strict supervision. One which had been occupied the day before was now found to be shut. The inspectors called up a native and questioned him. From his replies it appeared that there had been symptoms of the disease. We dismounted and made an examination. Every door and window was fastened, but by forcing open a blind we were able to see the interior. It was empty of life and of most of the movable furniture; but the floor of dried mud was strewn with the dead carcasses of rats. Undoubtedly the plague had been here. The house was marked for destruction, and we proceeded.
* * * * *
Low, flat ledges of rock extended into the sea. A group of creatures in loin-cloths and red turbans were squatting or moving about between two or three heaps of burning timber. These were made of stout logs piled across one another to a height of about four feet. Half-way in the pile was placed a human body; it was not entirely covered by the wood, but a leg projected here, an arm there. The flames blazed up fiercely, their flickering red tongues contrasting with the pale blue of the calm sea beyond. The smoke arose thick and unctuous, and, fortunately, was carried seaward. One of the pyres had burnt down to white ashes, and nothing recognizable as human remained. The people whose bodies were here burned had died in the segregation huts the night before.
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RICHARD HARDING DAVIS.
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS has shown a marvelous skill in seeing the world, in travel, and of describing it as he sees it. He is not a profound student of the mystery of the human mind, but he possesses in high degree and in rare quality an instinct of selection, a clear sense of an artistic situation in a group of more or less ordinary circumstances and a gift in interesting description. He is, in short, a very clever newspaper reporter who has transferred his field of service from the region of the actual to the realm of the imaginary. His reputation, however, is about equally divided between his works of description and travel and his stories of a more imaginative order, though in both classes of writings, he is above everything else a describer of what he has seen.
He was born in Philadelphia in 1864, the son of L. Clark Davis, an editor of reputation, and Rebecca Harding Davis, the author of many good stories, so that the child had a literary inheritance and an hereditary bent for letters. He studied for three years in Lehigh University and one year in Johns Hopkins, after which he began his interesting career as a journalist, serving successively “The Record,” “Press,” and “Telegraph” of Philadelphia. On his return from a European trip, he became connected with the New York “Evening Sun,” for which he wrote the famous series of “Van Bibber Sketches.”
The story, however, which gave him his first real fame was “Gallegher,” the scene of which is laid in Philadelphia, though, as is true of all his stories, locality plays but little part in his tales, modes of life and not scenery being the main feature.
He describes the happy-go-lucky life of the young club man, adventures in saloons, and scenes among burglars with remarkable realism, for as reporter he lived for a time among the “reprobates,” in disguise, to make a careful study of their manner of life. Again when he describes “The West from a Car Window,” he is giving scenes which he saw and types of life which he closely observed. His books always have the distinctive mark of spirit; they are full of life and activity, everything moves on and something “happens.” This is as true of his books of travel as of his stories. He has traveled extensively, and he has given descriptions of most of his journeys.
Beside “The West from a Car Window” he has written, with the same reportorial skill and fidelity to observed facts, a book of descriptions of life and manners in the East, with scenes and incidents at Gibraltar and Tangiers, in Cairo, Athens and Constantinople.
He has also produced a book of travels in England, which touches rather the surface of English life than the deeper traits of character which Emerson has so faithfully described. Davis writes as reporter of what is easily observed, while the other writes as philosopher. His latest collection of stories which shows his storytelling faculties at their best is called “The Exiles and Other Stories.” His most recent service as a journalist was as correspondent of “The London Times,” with the Greek forces during their recent humiliating conflict with the Turks. The selection given below will illustrate his vigorous style and the vivid character of his descriptions.
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THE GREEK DEFENCE OF VELESTINO.
(FROM THE “LONDON TIMES.”)
THERE is a round hill to the north of the town, standing quite alone. It has a perfectly flat top, and its proportions are exactly those of a giant bucket set upside down. We found the upper end of this bucket crowded with six mountain guns [there was one other correspondent with Mr. Davis at the time], and the battery was protesting violently. When it had uttered its protest the guns would throw themselves into the air, and would turn a complete somersault, as though with delight at the mischief they had done, or would whirl themselves upon one wheel while the other spun rapidly in the air. Lieutenant Ambroise Frantzis was in command of the battery. It was he who had repulsed a Turkish cavalry charge of a few days before with this same battery, and he was as polite and calm and pleased with his excitable little guns as though they weighed a hundred tons each, and could send a shell nine miles instead of a scant three thousand yards.
“From this hill there was nothing to be seen of the Turks but puffs of smoke in the plain, so we slid down its steep side and clambered up the ridges in front of us, where long rows of infantry were outlined against the sky.... A bare-headed peasant boy, in dirty white petticoats, who seemed to consider the engagement in the light of an entertainment, came dancing down the hill to show us the foot-paths that led up the different ridges. He was one of the villagers who had not run away or who was not farther up the valley, taking pot-shots at the hated Turks from behind rocks. He talked and laughed as he ran ahead of us, with many gestures, and imitated mockingly the sound of the bullets, and warned us with grave solicitude to be careful, as though he was in no possible danger himself. I saw him a great many times during the day, guiding company after company through the gulleys, and showing them how to advance protected by the slope of the hills――a self-constituted scout――and with much the manner of a landed proprietor escorting visitors over his estate. And whenever a shell struck near him, he would run and retrieve the pieces, and lay them triumphantly at the feet of the officers, like a little fox-terrier that has scampered after a stick and brought it to his master’s feet.
“The men in the first trench――which was the only one which gave us a clear view of the Turkish forces――received us with cheerful nods and scraped out a place beside them, and covered the moist earth with their blankets. They exhibited a sort of childish pride and satisfaction at being under fire; and so far from showing the nervousness and shattered morale which had been prophesied for them after the rout at Larissa, they appeared on the contrary more than content. As the day wore on, they became even languidly bored with it all, and some sang in a low crooning tone, and others, in spite of the incessant rush of the shells, dozed in the full glare of the sun, and still others lay humped and crouched against the earthworks when the projectiles tore up the earth on the hill behind us. But when the order came to fire, they would scramble to their knees with alacrity, and many of them would continue firing on their own account, long after the whistle had sounded to cease firing. Some of the officers walked up and down, and directed the men in the trenches at their feet with the air of judges or time-keepers at an athletic meeting, who were observing a tug-of-war. Others exposed themselves in what looked like a spirit of braggadocio, for they moved with a swagger and called upon the men to notice how brave they were. Other officers rose only when it was necessary to observe some fresh movement upon the part of the enemy, and they did this without the least haste and simply as a part of their work, and regarded the bullets that instantly beset them as little as if they were so many flies.
“A Turkish soldier dragging a mule loaded with ammunition had appeared a quarter of a mile below us, and at sight of him the soldiers at once recognized that there was something tangible, something that could show some sign if they hit it. The white smoke they had aimed at before had floated away, but at the sight of this individual soldier the entire line ceased firing at the enemy’s trenches, and opened on the unhappy Turk and his mule, and as the dust spurted up at points nearer and nearer to where he stood, their excitement increased in proportion, until, when he gave the mule a kick and ran for his life, there was a triumphant shout all along the line, as though they had repulsed a regiment. That one man and his load of ammunition had for a few minutes represented to them the entire Turkish army.
“As the Turks suddenly appeared below us, clambering out of a long gully, it was as though they had sprung from the earth. On the moment the smiling landscape changed like a scene at a theatre, and hundreds of men rose from what had apparently been deserted hilltops, and stood outlined in ♦silhouette against the sunset, waves of smoke ran from crest to crest, spitting flashes of red flame, and men’s voices shrieked and shouted, and the Turkish shells raced each other so fiercely that they beat out the air until it groaned. It had come up so suddenly that it was like two dogs springing at each other’s throats, and, in a greater degree, it had something of the sound of two wild animals struggling for life. Volley answered volley as though with personal hate――one crashing in upon the roll of the other, or beating it out of recognition with the bursting roar of heavy cannon; and to those who could do nothing but lie face downwards and listen to it, it seemed as though they had been caught in a burning building, and that the walls and roof were falling in on them. I do not know how long it lasted――probably not more than five minutes, although it seemed much longer than that――but finally the death-grip seemed to relax, the volleys came brokenly, like a man panting for breath, the bullets ceased to sound with the hiss of escaping steam, and rustled aimlessly by, and from hilltop to hilltop the officers’ whistles sounded as though a sportsman were calling off his dogs. The Turks had been driven back, and for the fourth day the Greeks had held Velestino successfully against them.”
♦ ‘silhoutte’ replaced with ‘silhouette’
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GREAT ORATORS AND POPULAR LECTURERS
Illustration: GREAT AMERICAN ORATORS AND POPULAR LECTURERS.
PATRICK HENRY • HENRY CLAY • DANIEL WEBSTER HENRY WARD BEECHER • JOHN B. GOUGH • HENRY W. GRADY CHAUNCY M. DEPEW • WENDELL PHILLIPS • EDWARD EVERETT
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PATRICK HENRY.
THE GREATEST ORATOR OF COLONIAL TIMES.
I HEARD the splendid display of Mr. Henry’s talents as a popular orator,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, “they were great indeed, such as I have never heard from any other man. He appeared to me to speak as Homer wrote.”
Few men in the history of the world have possessed in a degree equal to that of Patrick Henry, the power to move men’s minds and to influence their actions, but it was not until he was twenty-seven years old that his oratorical powers became known. He was a native Virginian of distinguished parentage and good education. He married very young, and tried farming and merchandising before he decided to become a lawyer, when he came at once into a large practice. He was engaged in 1763 to defend the Colony against the suit of a minister of the Established Church, brought to recover his salary which had been fixed at sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco. A failure of the crop had made the tobacco exceedingly valuable, and the Colonial Legislature had passed a law requiring the ministers to take money payment at the rate of two pence per pound. This act had not been approved by the King, and in his speech on this occasion, Mr. Henry boldly proclaimed the principles which afterward led to the Declaration of Independence, declaring that “the King by disallowing acts of a salutary nature, from being the father of his people, degenerates into a tyrant and forfeits all rights to his subjects’ obedience.” From that day the fame of Patrick Henry, as a popular orator, spread throughout the Colonies. His famous speech, two years later, in the House of Burgesses, resulted in the passing of resolutions defining the rights of the Colonies and pronouncing the “Stamp Act” unconstitutional. The public mind was so inflamed that open resistance was everywhere made and the enforcement of the tax became impossible. Mr. Henry was now the leader of his Colony. He was concerned in all the principal movements during the trying times until 1774, when he was foremost in the movement which resulted in the calling of the Continental Congress. Being a delegate to the Congress, he opened its deliberations by a speech in which he declared: “I am not a Virginian, but an American,” and this broad patriotism characterized his speech and actions throughout his life. On the outbreak of the war, he was made Commander of the forces raised in Virginia; but when these troops became a part of the Continental Army, his lack of military experience prevented his continuance in so high a command and he retired to civil life.
He became the first Governor of Virginia and was re-elected several times. Among his distinguished services was the sending out of the expedition which conquered the territory northwest of the Ohio, which territory now embraces the great States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. He early saw the defects in the Articles of Confederation and favored the formation of a stronger government. He thought the plan of the Constitution gave too much power to the general government; but his objections were largely removed by the first eleven amendments and he gave a hearty support to the administration of President Washington. When the Alien and Sedition Laws were meeting with great opposition and there was danger of an attempt on the part of Virginia to resist their further execution, he strongly opposed such action, and, although he did not approve of the laws, and urged the use of every possible means to effect their repeal, he secured his election to the Legislature for the purpose of advocating submission to the authority of the general government. Before he had taken his seat, his life came to a close.
Mr. Henry was a devoted Christian and lived a life consistent with that high profession. His services to the cause of civil liberty can hardly be overstated. His powers have been testified to by many men of great culture and ability, and John Randolph, of Roanoke, declared that he was the greatest orator that ever lived and spoke of him as “Shakespeare and Garrick combined.”
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RESISTANCE TO BRITISH AGGRESSION.
Delivered before the Virginia Convention, March 23, 1775, in support of resolutions he had introduced, providing that the colony should immediately be put in a state of defence against British aggression. Of the effect of this speech, Mr. Wirt says, that, when Henry took his seat, at its close, “No murmur of applause was heard. The effect was too deep. After the trance of a moment, several members started from their seats. The cry to arms! seemed to quiver on every lip, and gleam from every eye. They became impatient of speech. Their souls were on fire for action.”
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 our 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 reception of our petition comports with those 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 to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be 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 ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that, for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon 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 already been exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive 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 interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the Ministry and Parliament. 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 object 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!
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THE WAR INEVITABLE, MARCH, 1775.
(Continuation of the foregoing.)
THEY tell us, sir, that we are weak,――unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.
Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!
It is in 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 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!
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HENRY CLAY.
“THE GREAT PACIFICATOR.”
IT is impossible within the necessary limits of this article to give anything like a satisfactory account of the life and services of the “Great Pacificator.” For nearly fifty years he took a prominent part in the discussion of every public question. In a time whose dangers and difficulties were so great that the most far-seeing statesmen almost despaired of the future of our country, it was to Henry Clay that all eyes were turned, and it was to him that we owe the postponement of the great conflict of 1861 almost for a generation.
Clay was a native of Hanover County, Virginia; born in 1777. His father dying when he was four years old, the future statesman lived a life of great hardship, toil and poverty. He had almost no education, and at fourteen he was placed in a drug store in Richmond, where he served for a year as errand boy. His mother having remarried, her husband obtained for Henry a clerkship in the office of the Court of Chancery. While here he studied law, and, believing that his chances of success would be better in the West, he followed his mother and stepfather to Kentucky, and opened an office in Lexington. His success was immediate, and he was soon possessed of a lucrative practice and of a position of great influence.
In 1799 Clay married Miss Lucretia Hart, the daughter of a gentleman of prominent standing in the State. His prosperity rapidly increased, and he was soon able to purchase “Ashland,” an estate of some six hundred acres near Lexington, which afterwards became famous as the home of Henry Clay. In 1806 Mr. Clay was elected to fill a vacancy in the Senate of the United States. Returning to Kentucky, he became a member of the Kentucky Legislature, where he took a leading part. Again, in 1809, he was sent to the United States Senate, but it may be said that his public life properly began in 1811 as a member of the House of Representatives. He was immediately elected Speaker, and so distinguished himself in that office that it is sometimes said that he was the best presiding officer that any deliberative body in America has ever known, even down to the present time. It was to him more than to any other individual that we owe the War of 1812, and when President Madison, discouraged at the failures of the National armies in the first year of that war, was about to appoint Clay commander-in-chief of the land forces, he was persuaded not to do so because he could not be spared from the House of Representatives. In 1814 Mr. Clay was one of the commissioners to arrange the terms of peace with England. Returning from Europe, he remained Speaker of the House of Representatives until 1825, when he became Secretary of State under John Quincy Adams. During this time the great conflict over slavery began. The introduction of the cotton-gin had made slavery profitable, and the sentiment of the South, which at the time of the Revolutionary War had apparently favored the gradual doing away with that system, now insisted upon its extension; but while Southern sentiment had progressed in this way, the feelings of the North had grown in the opposite direction, and the increasing importance of the North and its approaching predominance in the government, made Southern politicians anxious about the future of their peculiar institution. The conflict broke forth in 1818, when Missouri asked to be admitted to the Union. “It was,” said Thomas Jefferson, describing the suddenness with which the danger appeared, “like the ringing of a fire-bell in the night.” It was the most dangerous crisis which had yet occurred in the history of the government. It was to the genius of Henry Clay that the ship of State was successfully steered out of these waters. The famous “Missouri Compromise” admitting one free State――Maine――and one slave State――Missouri――at the same time and enacting that no other slave State should be formed north of latitude thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, which was the southern boundary line of Missouri, seemed likely to solve the difficult question, and certainly postponed the conflict.
The disappointment of Henry Clay’s life was his failure to be elected President. He was a candidate in 1824, but with little hope of success, and when his party, in 1840, found conditions favorable for the election of their candidate, the popularity of General Jackson had convinced the party managers that success demanded a military hero as a candidate, and accordingly General Harrison took the place which belonged by right to Clay. When he was again nominated, 1844, the slavery question had again assumed so dangerous a form that it prevented his election. He was a slave-holder, and so could not receive the votes of the Liberty Party; he was opposed to the extension of slavery, and, therefore, not satisfactory to the South. Although the situation was evident to the party managers, a large majority of the people expected Clay to be elected, and when the news of his defeat came the public sorrow was greater than has ever been manifested for such a cause.
Returning to the Senate, Mr. Clay completed his public services by accomplishing the famous “Compromise of 1850,” which is believed to have postponed for ten years the Civil War. He was now an old man, but his labors for the preservation of the Union were untiring. On the morning when he began the great speech of that session, he was so weak that he had to be assisted to climb the steps of the Capitol. He was aware that the exertion would probably shorten his life; but under the fear that if he did not complete the speech at that time he would never be able to resume it, he determined to continue. He spoke for two days with the force, pathos and the grandeur possible only to the greatest orators. The underlying thought of his speech was the unity of the nation and the paramount allegiance owed by her citizens, not to a single State; but to the country. Although he lived two years longer, he never recovered from the effort.
Probably no man was ever more fondly loved, probably no man was so nearly worshipped. An Englishwoman, traveling in America, in 1844, wrote that three-quarters of all the boys born in that year must have been named Henry Clay. “Whatever Clay’s weakness of character and errors in statesmanship may have been,” says Carl Schurz, “almost everything he said or did was illumined by a grand conception of the destinies of his country, a glowing national spirit, a lofty patriotism.” It was a just judgment which he pronounced upon himself when he wrote, “If anyone desires to know the leading and paramount object of my public life, the preservation of the Union will furnish him the key.”
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DEFENCE OF JEFFERSON, 1813.
NEXT to the notice which the opposition has found itself called upon to bestow upon the French emperor, a distinguished citizen of Virginia, formerly President of the United States, has never for a moment failed to receive their kindest and most respectful attention. An honorable gentleman from Massachusetts, of whom I am sorry to say, it becomes necessary for me, in the course of my remarks, to take some notice, has alluded to him in a remarkable manner. Neither his retirement from public office, his eminent services, nor his advanced age, can exempt this patriot from the coarse assaults of party malevolence. No, sir! In 1801, he snatched from the rude hand of usurpation the violated Constitution of his country,――and that is his crime. He preserved that instrument, in form, and substance, and spirit, a precious inheritance for generations to come, and for this he can never be forgiven. How vain and impotent is party rage, directed against such a man! He is not more elevated by his lofty residence, upon the summit of his own favorite mountain, than he is lifted, by the serenity of his mind and the consciousness of a well-spent life, above the malignant passions and bitter feelings of the day. No! his own beloved Monticello is not less moved by the storms that beat against its sides, than is this illustrious man, by the howlings of the whole British pack, let loose from the Essex kennel. When the gentleman to whom I have been compelled to allude shall have mingled his dust with that of his abused ancestors,――when he shall have been consigned to oblivion, or, if he lives at all, shall live only in the treasonable annals of a certain junto,――the name of Jefferson will be hailed with gratitude, his memory honored and cherished as the second founder of the liberties of the people, and the period of his administration will be looked back to as one of the happiest and brightest epochs in American history!
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REPLY TO JOHN RANDOLPH.
(FROM SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 1834.)
SIR, I am growing old. I have had some little measure of experience in public life, and the result of that experience has brought me to this conclusion, that when business, of whatever nature, is to be transacted in a deliberate assembly, or in private life, courtesy, forbearance, and moderation, are best calculated to bring it to a successful conclusion. Sir, my age admonishes me to abstain from involving myself in personal difficulties; would to God that I could say, I am also restrained by higher motives. I certainly never sought any collision with the gentleman from Virginia. My situation at this time is peculiar, if it be nothing else, and might, I should think, dissuade, at least, a generous heart from any wish to draw me into circumstances of personal altercation. I have experienced this magnanimity from some quarters of the House. But I regret that from others it appears to have no such consideration.
The gentleman from Virginia was pleased to say that in one point, at least, he coincided with me――in an humble estimate of my grammatical and philological acquirements. I know my deficiencies. I was born to no proud patrimonial estate; from my father I inherited only infancy, ignorance, and indigence. I feel my defects; but, so far as my situation in early life is concerned, I may, without presumption, say they are more my misfortune than my fault. But, however, I regret my want of ability to furnish to the gentleman a better specimen of powers of verbal criticism, I will venture to say, it is not greater than the disappointment of this committee as to the strength of his argument. It is not a few abstractions engrossed on parchment, that make free governments. No, sir; the law of liberty must be inscribed on the heart of the citizen: THE WORD, if I must use the expression without irreverence, MUST BECOME FLESH. You must have a whole people trained, disciplined, bred,――yea, and born,――as our fathers were, to institutions like ours.
Before the Colonies existed, the Petition of Rights, that Magna Charta of a more enlightened age, had been presented, in 1628, by Lord Coke and his immortal compeers. Our founders brought it with them, and we have not gone one step beyond them. They brought these maxims of civil liberty, not in their libraries, but in their souls; not as philosophical prattle, not as barren generalities, but as rules of conduct; as a symbol of public duty and private right, to be adhered to with religious fidelity; and the very first pilgrim that set his foot upon the rock of Plymouth stepped forth a LIVING CONSTITUTION, armed at all points to defend and to perpetuate the liberty to which he had devoted his whole being.
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ON RECOGNIZING THE INDEPENDENCE OF GREECE, 1824.
ARE we so low, so base, so despicable, that we may not express our horror, articulate our detestation, of the most brutal and atrocious war that ever stained the earth, or shocked high Heaven, with the ferocious deeds of a brutal soldiery, set on by the clergy and followers of a fanatical and inimical religion, rioting in excess of blood and butchery, at the mere details of which the heart sickens; if the great mass of Christendom can look coolly and calmly on, while all this is perpetuated on a Christian people, in their own vicinity, in their very presence, let us, at least, show that, in this distant extremity, there is still some sensibility and sympathy for Christian wrongs and sufferings; that there are still feelings which can kindle into indignation at the oppression of a people endeared to us by every ancient recollection, and every modern tie.
But, sir, it is not first and chiefly for Greece that I wish to see this measure adopted. It will give them but little aid,――that aid purely of a moral kind. It is, indeed, soothing and solacing, in distress, to hear the accents of a friendly voice. We know this as a People. But, sir, it is principally and mainly for America herself, for the credit and character of our common country, that I hope to see this resolution pass; it is for our own unsullied name that I feel.
What appearance, sir, on the page of history, would a record like this make:――“In the month of January in the year of our Lord and Saviour 1824, while all European Christendom beheld with cold, unfeeling apathy the unexampled wrongs and inexpressible misery of Christian Greece, a proposition was made in the Congress of the United States,――almost the sole, the last, the greatest repository of human hope and of human freedom, the representatives of a nation capable of bringing into the field a million of bayonets,――while the freemen of that nation were spontaneously expressing its deep-toned feeling, its fervent prayer for Grecian success; while the whole Continent was rising, by one simultaneous motion, solemnly and anxiously supplicating and invoking the aid of Heaven to spare Greece, and to invigorate her arms; while temples and senate-houses will be resounding with one burst of generous sympathy;――in the year of our Lord and Saviour,――that Saviour alike of Christian Greece and of us, a proposition was offered in the American Congress to send a messenger to Greece, to inquire into her state and condition, with an expression of our good wishes and our sympathies;――and it was rejected!”
Go home, if you dare,――go home, if you can,――to your constituents, and tell them that you voted it down! Meet, if you dare, the appalling countenances of those who sent you here, and tell them that you shrank from the declaration of your own sentiments; that, you cannot tell how, but that some unknown dread, some indescribable apprehension, some indefinable danger, affrighted you; that the spectres of scimitars and crowns, and crescents, gleamed before you, and alarmed you; and that you suppressed all the noble feelings prompted by religion, by liberty, by national independence, and by humanity! I cannot bring myself to believe that such will be the feeling of a majority of this House.
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DANIEL WEBSTER.
THE DEFENDER OF NATIONAL UNION.
AMONG the men who may properly be called the makers of the nation, Daniel Webster holds a foremost place. If Washington was “the father of his country,” and Lincoln its “saviour,” it may also be said that it was Webster, more than any other one man, who laid down the principles upon which it was made possible for the nation to endure; for it was he who maintained that the Federal Constitution created not a league, but a nation, thus enunciating far in advance the theories which were wrought into our constitutional law at the expense of a long and bloody Civil War.
The life of Daniel Webster extended from 1782 until 1852. His father was one of the brave men who fought at Lexington, and Daniel was the youngest of ten children who were compelled very early in life to share in the labor of supporting the family on a rocky New Hampshire farm. Working in his father’s sawmill, he used the time while the saw was going through the log in devouring a book. His abilities were very remarkable and the fame of “Webster’s boy” was known far and wide. His memory was very extraordinary. In a competition between the boys of his school in committing to memory verses in the Bible, the teacher heard him repeat some sixty or seventy which he had committed between Saturday and Monday and was then obliged to give up as Webster declared that there were several chapters more that he had learned. By means of great sacrifice on the part of the entire family, Daniel was sent to Phillips Exeter Academy, and, by teaching school in vacations, made his way through Dartmouth College. He took up the study of law and was admitted to practice in 1805.
There was something in Mr. Webster’s appearance and bearing which must have been very majestic. He seemed to everyone to be a giant; but as his proportions were not those of an unusually large man, his majestic appearance must have been due to something within which shone out through his piercing eyes and spoke in his finely cut and noble features. It is said that he never punished his children, but, when they did wrong, he would send for them and silently look at them, and the sorrow or the anger of the look was reproach enough.
Webster was a lawyer, an orator and a statesman. As a lawyer, his most famous arguments are those in the “Dartmouth College Case,” the “White Murder Case” and the “Steamboat Case,” as they are called. A part of his speech in the “Murder Case” is still printed in the school readers. The “Dartmouth College Case” is very famous. It was a suit whose success would have destroyed the college, and, after trial in the State Courts, it was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, before which Mr. Webster made his argument. The interest was very great and the details of the trial are among the most interesting in the history of our jurisprudence. The eloquence with which Mr. Webster described the usefulness of the institution, his love for it, and the consequences which the precedent sought to be established would involve, all contributed to make this one of the greatest oratorical efforts of which we have any record.
“Sir,” said he, “you may destroy this little institution; it is weak; it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out, but, if you do so, you must carry through your work! You must extinguish, one after another, all those great lights of science which, for more than a century, have thrown their radiance over our land.
“It is, sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet, there are those who love it――――”
Here the feelings which he had thus far succeeded in keeping down broke forth. His lips quivered; his firm cheeks trembled with emotion; his eyes were filled with tears; his voice choked, and he seemed struggling to the utmost simply to gain that mastery over himself which might save him from an unmanly burst of feeling.
The court room, during these two or three minutes, presented an extraordinary spectacle. Chief Justice Marshall, with his tall, gaunt figure bent over as if to catch the slightest whisper, the deep furrows of his cheeks expanded with emotion, and eyes suffused with tears; Mr. Justice Washington at his side, with his small and emaciated frame, and countenance like marble, leaning forward with an eager, troubled look; and the remainder of the court, at the two extremities, pressing, as it were, toward a single point, while the audience below were wrapping themselves round in closer folds beneath the bench to catch each look, and every movement of the speaker’s face. If the painter could give us the scene on canvas――those forms and countenances, and Daniel Webster as he then stood in the midst――it would be one of the most touching pictures in the history of eloquence.
As an orator, Mr. Webster’s most famous speeches are the “Plymouth Rock Address” in 1820, on the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims, the “Bunker Hill Monument Address,” and his speech in the Senate in reply to Hayne in 1830, and on “Clay’s Compromise Bill of 1850.”
Upon Mr. Harrison’s inauguration in 1841, Mr. Webster became Secretary of State, which office he held until 1843. During this time, he negotiated the famous treaty with Lord Ashburton which settled a long-standing dispute with England over the boundary of Maine. He supported Clay for the presidency in 1804 and opposed the annexation of Texas. In the debate on the “Compromise of 1850,” Mr. Webster advocated the acceptance of the provisions for extending slavery into the territory purchased from Mexico, and for the “Fugitive Slave Law,” and in so doing gave great offense to his supporters in the North. In 1850, he was appointed Secretary of State, which office he held until his death.
Illustration: DANIEL WEBSTER’S HOME, MARSHFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS.
He took great interest in the operations of his farm at Marshfield, near Plymouth, Massachusetts, and delightful stories are told of the pleasure he took in his cattle――how he might be seen breaking ears of corn to feed to his oxen on the right and left declaring that he would rather be there than in the Senate, and adding with a smile, “I think it better company.” It was here, in 1852, that he was thrown from his carriage and received severe injuries from which he did not recover. In his last words, he manifested a desire to be conscious of the approach of death and his last words were, “I still live.” In the vast concourse which gathered at his funeral was a plain farmer who was heard to say, as he turned from the grave, “Daniel Webster, without you the world will seem lonely.”
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SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS, JANUARY, 1830.
An extract from a speech by Mr. Webster, in reply to Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina, in the Senate of the United States, January, 1830. This was probably the most remarkable speech ever made in the American Congress. His peroration, comprised in the last paragraph, under the succeeding heading, “Union and Liberty,” for patriotic eloquence has not a counterpart, perhaps, in all history. The speech is the more remarkable for the fact that Mr. Webster had but a single night in which to make preparation.
THE eulogium pronounced on the character of the State of South Carolina, by the honorable gentleman, for her Revolutionary and other merits, meets my hearty concurrence. I shall not acknowledge that the honorable member goes before me in regard for whatever of distinguished talent or distinguished character South Carolina has produced. I claim part of the honor, I partake in the pride of her great names. I claim them for countrymen, one and all. The Laurenses, the Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumpters, the Marions,――Americans all,――whose fame is no more to be hemmed in by State lines, than their talents and patriotism were capable of being circumscribed within the same narrow limits. In their day and generation, they served and honored the country, and the whole country; and their renown is of the treasures of the whole country. Him whose honored name the gentleman himself bears,――does he suppose me less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for his sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light in Massachusetts, instead of South Carolina? Sir, does he suppose it is in his power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in my bosom? No, sir; increased gratification and delight, rather.
Sir, I thank God, that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is said to be able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit, which would drag angels down. When I shall be found, sir, in my place here, in the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit, because it happened to spring up beyond the little limits of my own State or neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or, if I see an uncommon endowment of heaven,――if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue in any son of the South,――and if, moved by local prejudice, or gangrened by State jealousy, I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!
Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me indulge in refreshing remembrance of the past; let me remind you that, in early times, no States cherished greater harmony, both of principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to God that harmony might again return! Shoulder to shoulder they went through the Revolution, hand in hand they stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling, if it exist,――alienation and distrust,――are the growth, unnatural to such soils, of false principles since sown. They are weeds, the seeds of which that same great arm never scattered.
Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts;――she needs none. There she is,――behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history,――the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill,――and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, fallen in the great struggle for Independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New England to Georgia,――and there they will lie forever. And, sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood, and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it,――if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it,――if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraints, shall succeed to separate it from that Union by which alone its existence is made sure,――it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm, with whatever vigor it may still retain, over the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin!
* * * * *
LIBERTY AND UNION, 1830.
(Continuation of the foregoing.)
I PROFESS, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues, in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread further and further, they have not outrun its protection, or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, personal happiness.
I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed.
While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the Sun in Heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States severed, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous Ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing, for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as――What is all this worth?――nor those other words of delusion and folly――Liberty first and Union afterwards,――but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, Liberty and Union, now and ♦forever, one and inseparable!
♦ ‘forver’ replaced with ‘forever’
* * * * *
THE ELOQUENCE OF ACTION.
WHEN public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech, further than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it,――they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country hang on the decision of the hour. Then, words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then, patriotism is eloquent; then, self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward, to his object,――this, this is eloquence; or, rather, it is something greater and higher than all eloquence,――it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action.
* * * * *
THE TWENTY-SECOND OF FEBRUARY.
(SUITED TO WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION.)
GENTLEMEN, a most auspicious omen salutes and cheers us this day. This day is the anniversary of the birth of Washington. Washington’s birthday is celebrated from one end of this land to the other. The whole atmosphere of the country is this day redolent of his principles,――the hills, the rocks, the groves, the vales, and the rivers shout their praises and resound with his fame. All the good, whether learned or unlearned, high or low, rich or poor, feel this day that there is one treasure common to them all; and that is the fame of Washington. They all recount his deeds, ponder over his principles and teachings, and resolve to be more and more guided by them in the future.
To the old and the young, to all born in this land, and to all whose preferences have led them to make it the home of their adoption, Washington is an exhilarating theme. Americans are proud of his character; all exiles from foreign shores are eager to participate in admiration of him; and it is true that he is, this day, here, everywhere, all over the world, more an object of regard than on any former day since his birth.
Gentlemen, by his example, and under the guidance of his precepts, will we and our children uphold the Constitution? Under his military leadership, our fathers conquered their ancient enemies; and, under the outspread banner of the political and constitutional principles, will we conquer now? To that standard we shall adhere, and uphold it, through evil report and good report. We will sustain it, and meet death itself, if it come; we will ever encounter and defeat error, by day and by night, in light or in darkness――thick darkness――if it come, till
“Danger’s troubled night is o’er, And the star of peace return.”
* * * * *
AMERICA’S GIFTS TO EUROPE.
AMERICA has furnished to Europe proof of the fact that popular institutions, founded on equality and the principle of representation, are capable of maintaining governments, able to secure the rights of person, property, and reputation. America has proved that it is practicable to elevate the mass of mankind――that portion which in Europe is called the laboring or lower class――to raise them to self-respect, to make them competent to act a part in the great right and great duty of self-government; and she has proved that this may be done by education and the diffusion of knowledge. She holds out an example, a thousand times more encouraging than ever was presented before, to those nine-tenths of the human race who are born without hereditary fortune or hereditary rank.
America has furnished to the world the character of Washington; and if our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone would have entitled them to the respect of mankind. Washington! “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” Washington is all our own! The enthusiastic veneration and regard in which the people of the United States hold him, prove them to be worthy of such a country, while his reputation abroad reflects the highest honor on his country.
I would cheerfully put the question to-day to the intelligence of Europe and the world, “What character of the century, upon the whole, stands out, in the relief of history, most pure, most respectable, most sublime?” and I doubt not that, by a suffrage approaching to unanimity, the answer would be, Washington!
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EDWARD EVERETT.
THE GREAT CLASSIC ORATOR OF NEW ENGLAND.
GEORGE S. HILLARD, himself an orator of no slight renown, has spoken with much critical insight and appreciation of the mental characteristic and oratorical style of Edward Everett, the great classic orator of Massachusetts: “The great charm of Mr. Everett’s orations consists not so much in any single and strongly developed intellectual trait as in that symmetry and finish which, on every page, give token to the richly endowed and thorough scholar. The natural movements of his mind are full of grace; and the most indifferent sentence which falls from his pen has that simple elegance which it is as difficult to define as it is easy to perceive. His style, with matchless flexibility, rises and falls with his subject and is alternately easy, vivid, elevated, ornamented, picturesque, ♦adapting itself to the dominant mood of the mind, as an instrument responds to the touch of a master’s hand. His knowledge is so extensive and the field of his allusion so wide, that the most familiar views, in passing through his hands, gather such a halo of luminous illustrations that their likeness seems transformed, and we entertain doubts of their identity.”
♦ ‘adpating’ replaced with ‘adapting’
He was born in Dorchester, Mass., April 11, 1794, and was graduated from Harvard College with the highest honors in 1811. He entered the ministry, and at the age of nineteen he was installed as pastor of the Unitarian Church in Brattle Square, Boston, and only six years later he preached a sermon in the Hall of Representatives at Washington, which made a marvelous impression on all who heard it, and won him great fame for eloquence.
He was chosen at the age of twenty to fill the Chair of Greek Literature at Harvard College, and he spent four years abroad to qualify himself for this position, and Victor Cousin said of him at this period that he was one of the best Grecians he ever knew.
In 1820, crowded with honors and distinguished in many fields, he became editor of the “North American Review;” during the four years of his editorship he contributed fifty articles to this magazine.
He sat in Congress as Representative from Massachusetts from 1824 to 1834. In 1835, and for three years following, he was Governor of Massachusetts, and in the election following he was defeated by one vote.
While traveling abroad he received the appointment as Minister to England, and during this period of sojourn he received from Oxford the degree of D.C.L., and from Cambridge and Dublin that of LL.D.
For three years, from 1846 to 1849, he was President of Harvard College, and in 1852 he succeeded Daniel Webster as Secretary of State, becoming in the year following a member of the United States Senate, which position he filled with great dignity, and rendered his country honorable service. It was largely through his efforts that the money was raised to purchase Mount Vernon. For this purpose the great orator delivered one hundred and twenty-two times his oration on “Washington,” from which more than $58,000 was realized, and he secured $10,000 from a series of articles in the New York “Ledger.”
His lecture on the “Early Days of Franklin,” and other lectures for charitable purposes, brought in no less than $90,000.
His orations have been collected and published, and form one of the most remarkable collections of graceful and eloquent addresses ever produced in this country. They are as follows: “Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions” (Boston, 1836); “Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions from 1826 to 1850” (2 Vols., Boston, 1850); “Orations and Speeches” (Boston, 1859). He is also the author of two stirring poems, “Alaric the Visigoth” and “Santa Croce.”
Despite the fact that he and Daniel Webster were often on opposite sides of great questions and issues, and frequently crossed swords in the debate of the giants, they were life-long friends, and Mr. Webster wrote to him three months before the death of the former in the following touching words: “We now and then see stretching across the heavens a clear, blue, cerulean sky, with no cloud or mist or haze. And such appears to me our acquaintance from the time when I heard you for a week recite your lessons in the little schoolhouse in Short Street to the date hereof” [July 21, 1852].
In 1860, much against his will, Mr. Everett became the candidate for the Vice-Presidency on the ticket of the Constitutional-Union Party, which polled thirty-nine electoral votes.
He died at his home in Boston, January 15, 1865.
* * * * *
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF PEACE.
While we act, sir, upon the maxim, “In peace prepare for war,” let us also remember that the best preparation for war is peace. This swells your numbers; this augments your means; this knits the sinews of your strength; this covers you all over with a panoply of might. And, then, if war must come in a just cause, no foreign state――no, sir, not all combined――can send forth an adversary that you need fear to encounter.
But, sir, give us these twenty-five years of peace. I do believe, sir, that this coming quarter of a century is to be the most important in our whole history. I do beseech you to let us have these twenty-five years, at least, of peace. Let these fertile wastes be filled up with swarming millions; let this tide of emigration from Europe go on; let the steamer, the canal, the railway, and especially let this great Pacific railway, subdue these mighty distances, and bring this vast extension into a span.
Let us pay back the ingots of California gold with bars of Atlantic iron; let agriculture clothe our vast wastes with waving plenty; let the industrial and mechanic arts erect their peaceful fortresses at the waterfalls; and then, sir, in the train of this growing population, let the printing office, the lecture-room, the village schoolhouse, and the village church, be scattered over the country. And in these twenty-five years we shall exhibit a spectacle of national prosperity such as the world has never seen on so large a scale, and yet within the reach of a sober, practical contemplation.
* * * * *
THE FATHER OF THE REPUBLIC.
TO be cold and breathless, to feel not and speak not――this is not the end of existence to the men who have breathed their spirits into the institutions of their country, who have stamped their characters on the pillars of the age, who have poured their heart’s blood into the channels of the public prosperity.
Tell me, ye who tread the sods of yon sacred height, is Warren dead? Can you not still see him――not pale and prostrate, the blood of his gallant heart pouring out of his ghastly wound, but moving resplendent over the field of honor, with the rose of heaven upon his cheek and the fire of liberty in his eye?
Tell me, ye who make your pious pilgrimage to the shades of Vernon, is Washington indeed shut up in that cold and narrow house? That which made these men, and men like these, cannot die.
The hand that traced the charter of independence is, indeed, motionless; the eloquent lips that sustained it are hushed; but the lofty spirits that conceived, resolved and maintained it, and which alone, to such men, make it life to live――these cannot expire.
* * * * *
THE LAND OF OUR FOREFATHERS.
FOR myself, I can truly say that, after my native land, I feel a tenderness and a reverence for that of my fathers. The pride I take in my own country makes me respect that from which we are sprung. The sound of my native language beyond the sea is a music to my ears beyond the richest strains of Tuscan softness or Castilian majesty.
I am not――I need not say I am not――the panegyrist of England. I am not dazzled by her riches nor awed by her power. The sceptre, the mitre and the coronet, stars, garters and ribbons, seem to me poor things for great men to contend for.
But England is the cradle and the refuge of free principles, though often persecuted; the school of religious liberty, the more precious for the struggles through which it has passed; she holds the tombs of those who have reflected honor on all who speak the English tongue; she is the birthplace of our fathers, the home of the Pilgrims; it is these which I love and venerate in England.
I should feel ashamed of an enthusiasm for Italy and Greece did I not also feel it for a land like this. In an American it would seem to me degenerate and ungrateful to hang with passion upon the traces of Homer and Virgil, and follow without emotion the nearer and plainer footsteps of Shakespeare and Milton. I should think him cold in love for his native land who felt no melting in his heart for that other native country which holds the ashes of his forefathers.
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WENDELL PHILLIPS.
THE DEMOSTHENES OF AMERICA.
NO MORE majestic figure in the anti-slavery struggle for thirty years――1835 to 1865――appeared on the American rostrum than the “silvery tongued orator,” Wendell Phillips.
In 1830, William Lloyd Garrison wrote in the “Liberator,”――a journal founded primarily by the abolitionists for the sole purpose of freeing the slaves――“I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest; I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard.” But the abolitionists remained many years a small and despised faction, and, with all of Garrison’s determination, might never have amounted to anything had he not enlisted in his cause such men and masters as Wendell Phillips on the platform, Henry Ward Beecher in the pulpit, Charles Sumner in the United States Senate, and Harriet Beecher Stowe among novelists. It was a great day of promise when such educated talent caught the spirit of Garrison’s zeal.
In 1835, an angry pro-slavery mob dragged William Lloyd Garrison through the streets of Boston. A young man of twenty-four witnessed this cruel treatment and determined to abandon the practice of law and devote his life to the same cause. That man was Wendell Phillips. He first came into prominence by his impassioned address in Faneuil Hall, Boston, in 1837, at an indignation meeting called to condemn the killing of Lovejoy, at Alton, Illinois, while defending his anti-slavery newspaper office against a pro-slavery mob. The direct and impassioned eloquence of the orator on this occasion was the key-note to the forward movement toward the liberation of the black man. It was the bugle-blast which cheered the pioneers in the movement, and awoke the slumbering spirits in sympathy with it, but whose timid hopes had not dared to dream of its possible ultimate success.
As Demosthenes aroused and fired the Athenians, so Phillips’ appeals carried like an avalanche everything before them. The only way to prevent his influence was to prevent his speaking, and accordingly when he went to New York in 1847, there was such a prejudice against the abolitionists, and such a predominant pro-slavery sentiment, that he could not procure a hall in either of these cities in which to speak. Finally, Henry Ward Beecher, who had recently become pastor of Plymouth Church, prevailed upon his congregation to allow Phillips to address the people from their pulpit.
From this memorable occasion Beecher, himself, it is said, became a flaming torch, second only to Phillips in his efforts in the same cause, while Plymouth Congregation seconded him with all its mighty influence, a further account of which may be found under the treatment of Henry Ward Beecher in this volume.
Wendell Phillips was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 29th day of November, 1811, and died there February 2, 1884. His parents were prominent in Boston society, his father at one time being Mayor of the city. Phillips was educated at Harvard College, graduating in 1831, after which he studied law at Cambridge and was admitted to the bar in 1833; but his gift as an orator, in which he is regarded as second only to Daniel Webster, and his overmastering zeal in the abolitionist movement, required so much of his time that he did little practice before the court. He was a most fascinating platform speaker outside of politics, and was in constant demand as a lecturer. His most celebrated addresses were “Toussaint l’Ouverture” and “The Lost Arts,” the former being used as an argument of the native ability, intelligence, and possibility of progress on the part of the negro under proper opportunities.
The eloquence of Phillips was impassioned and direct, but his manner was so pleasingly polished as not to give personal offence to his most antagonistic hearers, while his English was singularly pure and simple, and his delivery was characterized by a nervous sympathy that was peculiarly magnetic.
Like most other great orators, Wendell Phillips has left behind him in literature only his public speeches and letters. One volume of these was published in Boston in 1862, another (largely a revision of the first, with additions to the same) in 1869.
* * * * *
POLITICAL AGITATION.
ALL hail, Public Opinion! To be sure, it is a dangerous thing under which to live. It rules to-day in the desire to obey all kinds of laws, and takes your life. It rules again in the love of liberty, and rescues Shadrach from Boston Court House. It rules to-morrow in the manhood of him who loads the musket to shoot down――God be praised!――the man-hunter Gorsuch. It rules in Syracuse, and the slave escapes to Canada. It is our interest to educate this people in humanity, and in deep reverence for the rights of the lowest and humblest individual that makes up our numbers. Each man here, in fact, holds his property and his life dependent on the constant presence of an agitation like this of anti-slavery. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day, or it is rotten. The living sap of to-day outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand intrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.
All clouds, it is said, have sunshine behind them, and all evils have some good result; so slavery, by the necessity of its abolition, has saved the freedom of the white race from being melted in the luxury or buried beneath the gold of its own success. Never look, therefore, for an age when the people can be quiet and safe. At such times Despotism, like a shrouding mist, steals over the mirror of Freedom. The Dutch, a thousand years ago, built against the ocean their bulwarks of willow and mud. Do they trust to that? No. Each year the patient, industrious peasant gives so much time from the cultivation of his soil and the care of his children to stop the breaks and replace the willow which insects have eaten, that he may keep the land his fathers rescued from the water, and bid defiance to the waves that roar above his head, as if demanding back the broad fields man has stolen from their realm.
* * * * *
TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE.
[Toussaint L’Ouverture, who has been pronounced one of the greatest statesmen and generals of the nineteenth century, saved his master and family by hurrying them on board a vessel at the insurrection of the negroes of Hayti. He then joined the negro army, and soon found himself at their head. Napoleon sent a fleet with French veterans, with orders to bring him to France at all hazards. But all the skill of the French soldiers could not subdue the negro army; and they finally made a treaty, placing Toussaint L’Ouverture governor of the island. The negroes no sooner disbanded their army, than a squad of soldiers seized Toussaint by night, and taking him on board a vessel, hurried him to France. There he was placed in a dungeon, and finally starved to death.]
IF I were to tell you the story of Napoleon, I should take it from the lips of French men, who find no language rich enough to paint the great captain of the nineteenth century. Were I to tell you the story of Washington, I should take it from your hearts,――you, who think no marble white enough on which to carve the name of the Father of his country. But I am to tell you the story of a negro, Toussaint L’Ouverture, who has left hardly one written line. I am to glean it from the reluctant testimony of his enemies, men who despised him because he was a negro and a slave, hated him because he had beaten them in battle.
Cromwell manufactured his own army. Napoleon, at the age of twenty-seven, was placed at the head of the best troops Europe ever saw. Cromwell never saw an army till he was forty; this man never saw a soldier till he was fifty. Cromwell manufactured his own army――out of what? Englishmen,――the best blood in Europe. Out of the middle class of Englishmen,――the best blood of the island. And with it he conquered what? Englishmen,――their equals. This man manufactured his army out of what? Out of what you call the despicable race of negroes, debased, demoralized by two hundred years of slavery, one hundred thousand of them imported into the island within four years, unable to speak a dialect intelligible even to each other. Yet out of this mixed, and, as you say, despicable mass he forged a thunderbolt and hurled it at what? At the proudest blood in Europe, the Spaniard, and sent him home conquered; at the most warlike blood in Europe, the French, and put them under his feet; at the pluckiest blood in Europe, the English, and they skulked home to Jamaica. Now, if Cromwell was a general, at least this man was a soldier.
Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your race, go back with me to the commencement of the century, and select what statesman you please. Let him be either American or European; let him have a brain the result of six generations of culture; let him have the ripest training of university routine; let him add to it the better education of practical life; crown his temples with the silver locks of seventy years, and show me the man of Saxon lineage for whom his most sanguine admirer will wreathe a laurel, rich as embittered foes have placed on the brow of this negro,――rare military skill, profound knowledge of human nature, content to blot out all party distinctions, and trust a state to the blood of its sons,――anticipating Sir Robert Peel fifty years, and taking his station by the side of Roger Williams, before any Englishman or American had won the right; and yet this is the record which the history of rival States makes up for this inspired black of St. Domingo.
Some doubt the courage of the negro. Go to Hayti, and stand on those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers France ever had, and ask them what they think of the negro’s sword.
I would call him Napoleon, but Napoleon made his way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea of blood. This man never broke his word. I would call him Cromwell, but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the state he founded went down with him into his grave. I would call him Washington, but the great Virginian held slaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit the slave-trade in the humblest village of his dominions.
You think me a fanatic, for you read history, not with your eyes but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of history will put Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civilization, then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the soldier, the stateman, the martyr, TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE.
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HENRY WARD BEECHER.
THE GREATEST PULPIT ORATOR OF AMERICA.
IT may be safely said that as a pulpit and platform orator, Beecher has had no superior. Nothing is studied or artificial about his delivery. Naturalness, frankness, cordiality, fearlessness, clearness, and depth of thought, expressed in the simplicity and beauty of diction, and enlivened by a rich vein of pungent humor, were marked characteristics of his speech.
Those familiar with the public career of this great orator and reformer can scarcely conceive of him at four years of age sitting in the Widow Kilbourn’s school occupied in saying his A B C’s twice a day, and putting in the intervals between recitations in hemming towels and aprons; yet such is the story told of Henry Ward Beecher’s first school-days.
His father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, was a Congregational minister, a profound thinker and scholar, stationed at Litchfield, Connecticut, where, on the then large salary of eight hundred dollars per year, he and his wife and ten children lived. Henry Ward was born on the 24th of June, 1813――the eighth child in the family.
Beecher tells many interesting stories of his childhood. Among others are his accounts of the Sabbath-day struggles with the Catechism. He declared it was a day of terror. Once on referring to it in his Plymouth pulpit he said: “I think that to force childhood to associate religion with such dry morsels is to violate the spirit not only of the New Testament, but of common sense as well. I know one thing, that if I am lax and latitudinarian, the Sunday Catechism is to blame for part of it. The dinners I have lost because I could not go through ‘sanctification,’ and ‘justification,’ and ‘adoption,’ and all such questions, lie heavily on my memory. One Sunday afternoon with my Aunt Esther did me more good than forty Sunday mornings in church with my father. He thundered over my head. She sweetly instructed me down in my heart. The promise that she would read Joseph’s history to me on Sunday was enough to draw a silver thread through the entire week.”
Dr. Beecher received a call to preach in Boston in 1825, and removed his family there. The ships, the sea, and the stories Beecher here saw and read of Lord Nelson and other naval heroes, and of Captain Cook’s marvelous voyages and discoveries in new countries, determined him to make a sailor of himself. He was at this time a shy boy with a thick tongue and very indistinct speech. His father, while secretly opposing his project to go to sea, apparently encouraged it by suggesting that he go to Amherst College, where he would learn mathematics and navigation, preparing himself to be a commander instead of a “common Jack Tar.” Henry Ward readily consented to this.
At Amherst he studied elocution, and became not only an easy reader and talker, but showed promise of distinction. This opened a new world to him. The spirit of oratory found lodgment in his soul and he forgot his old longing for the sea. Shortly after this, during a religious revival in the college, Beecher determined to be a Christian, and, as a biographer says of him, “Made a joyful consecration of himself to the Lord. It was no doleful giving up to live a life of gloom and sadness. He believed that a Christian life ought to be of all lives the most joyful, and if he could not be a joyful Christian, he should not be one at all.” These convictions followed him through life. Mrs. Stowe, his sister, wrote of him: “He was never found sitting in solemnized meditations in the depth of pine trees like the owl.”
Dr. Beecher was elected President of Lane Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1832, and removed to that city, whither Henry Ward followed him after graduation at Amherst in 1836, and took his theological course under his father and Prof. Stowe (who afterwards married his sister, Harriet Beecher, the author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”). After completing his theological course he entered upon his first pastorate at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, at a salary of three hundred dollars per annum, where, he said: “I did all the work of both sexton and pastor; in fact, everything except come to hear myself preach――that much the congregation had to do.”
One of his first steps after securing this position was to go back to Massachusetts and marry Miss ―――― Bullard, his boyhood’s sweetheart, to whom he had been engaged for many years. The young couple started bravely in two rooms over a stable as their first home, and it is doubtful if any young prince and princess have been more truly happy than were these poor but true lovers in their humble nest in the stable loft. Mrs. Beecher’s “Recollections of Henry Ward Beecher,” written just before her death in 1897, furnishes a most delightful description of these early days of privation and poverty, chills and ague, but withal of such cheerfulness we almost envy them. Space forbids that we dwell upon Beecher’s private life, interesting and inspiring as it was. From Lawrenceburg he went to Indianapolis, where he preached for eight years with great success and growing fame, until August 24, 1847, when he was installed as pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, New York.
From this point Beecher becomes a national figure, and until the day of his death――a period of forty years――he was ever prominent in the public eye. There was a time when the escutcheon of his moral character was sullied by scandal,――but it was only scandal――which he met boldly, his church standing by him, and before the most scrutinizing investigation he remained steadfast, and in time the world exonerated him――while his accuser fled to Paris, where he spent his life in exile. Few people in the world now believe Beecher was guilty of the charges Theodore Tilton brought against him.
Beecher early espoused the cause of the abolition of slavery and of temperance. He considered both these doctrines a part of the gospel of Christ, and preached them boldly from his pulpit. Thus Plymouth Church rose grandly to the need of the age. Wendell Phillips, who in 1847 could find no audience room in New York or Brooklyn, was cordially invited to Beecher’s church, and “from the day that Phillips made his great anti-slavery speech from that pulpit until the Emancipation Proclamation――nearly twenty years later――the Plymouth preacher became a flaming advocate for liberty of speech and action on the question of the national evil. If there was anything on earth to which he was sensitive up to the day of his death, it was any form of denial to liberty either in politics, religion, or literature.” With pen and voice he ceased not to labor until the shackles fell from the black man’s hands.
A number of slaves were sold from Plymouth pulpit, purchased by public contributions and given their liberty, Mr. Beecher himself acting as auctioneer. The dramatic scenes on such occasions have been vividly recounted in Mrs. Beecher’s “Recollections,” and some of Mr. Beecher’s auction speeches have been preserved.
When Fort Sumter’s guns announced the beginning of war, Beecher sent back the echo from Plymouth pulpit in no uncertain sounds. His church organized and equipped a regiment which he was pleased to call “My own boys.” Mr. Beecher was in such constant demand as a public speaker that early in 1862 his voice failed and his health gave way, and he went to Europe and traveled in France and Switzerland. On invitation, after regaining his health, he went to England, where he delivered speeches――though England was in sympathy with the South――at Manchester, Glasgow, London and Edinburgh. The opposition which he met in these efforts would have completely overcome a man of less rugged physique, or discouraged one of less imperious will. But Beecher――confident in his own mind that he was right and his soul afire with patriotism――faced, spoke to, and quieted the most vicious and howling mobs into which he went often at personal peril. He describes his experiences as being “like driving a team of runaway horses and making love to a lady at the same time.”
After the war was over, Beecher preached as earnestly for forgiveness and reconciliation toward the South as he had preached to abolish slavery and retain the Southern States in the Union. His actions throughout had been purely patriotic and from no hatred of the people whose institution of slavery he fought. These principles made him unpopular for a time at the North and even in his own church. But he was ever the champion of the right, and did much toward the restoration of harmony between the sections. He delivered the oration at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865, when the flag of the Union was again raised over Fort Sumter, and in 1879 made a tour of the Southern States, delivering lectures on popular topics, one of which was entitled “The Reign of the Common People.”
Henry Ward Beecher died March 8, 1887. He retired on the evening of March 3d apparently in usual health and fell into a sleep from which he never awoke, but merged into an unconscious condition in which he lingered until the morning of March 8th, when it is said as “a ray of sunlight flashed full and strong into the room and fell upon the face of the sufferer, who was surrounded by his family, calmly and without a struggle the regular breathing ceased and the great preacher was gone.” The eloquent tongue was silent forever.
The remains of Beecher were viewed by thousands, and many came who could not see the bier for the crowds that thronged the house and streets. It is doubtful if any private citizen’s funeral was ever so largely attended. One of his admirers in writing of the occasion said: “He loved the multitude, and the multitude came to his funeral; he loved the flowers, and ten thousand buds breathed their fragrance and clad his resting-place in beauty; he loved music, and the voice of the organ rose, and the anthems which had delighted him again rolled their harmonies to the rafters; he loved the sunshine, and it streamed through the windows and was a halo around him.”
Within the beauty of this halo we would leave the memory of this great man, hung as a portrait in a frame of gold from which his benign and cheerful face shall continue to look down upon succeeding generations. And as we read his encouraging “Lectures to Young Men;” his broad and profound sermons from “Plymouth Pulpit;” his inspiring “Patriotic Addresses;” his editorials in the “Christian Union;” his “Yale Lectures on Preaching;” his “Star Papers;” his “Evolution and Religion;” his novel “Norwood,” or his “Life of Jesus Christ: Earlier Scenes,” on which he was engaged when he died (which are his chief contributions to literature), we will often look up at the picture and exclaim, “Oh! that those lips might speak again!”
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PUBLIC DISHONESTY.
A CORRUPT public sentiment produces dishonesty. A public sentiment in which dishonesty is not disgraceful; in which bad men are respectable, are trusted, are honored, are exalted, is a curse to the young. The fever of speculation, the universal derangement of business, the growing laxness of morals is, to an alarming extent, introducing such a state of things.
If the shocking stupidity of the public mind to atrocious dishonesties is not aroused; if good men do not bestir themselves to drag the young from this foul sorcery; if the relaxed bands of honesty are not tightened, and conscience tutored to a severer morality, our night is at hand――our midnight not far off. Woe to that guilty people who sit down upon broken laws, and wealth saved by injustice! Woe to a generation fed by the bread of fraud, whose children’s inheritance shall be a perpetual memento of their father’s unrighteousness; to whom dishonesty shall be made pleasant by association with the revered memories of father, brother and friend!
But when a whole people, united by a common disregard of justice, conspire to defraud public creditors, and States vie with States in an infamous repudiation of just debts, by open or sinister methods; and nations exert their sovereignty to protect and dignify the knavery of the commonwealth, then the confusion of domestic affairs has bred a fiend before whose flight honor fades away, and under whose feet the sanctity of truth and the religion of solemn compacts are stamped down and ground into the dirt. Need we ask the cause of growing dishonesty among the young, the increasing untrustworthiness of all agents, when States are seen clothed with the panoply of dishonesty, and nations put on fraud for their garments?
Absconding agents, swindling schemes, and defalcations, occurring in such melancholy abundance, have at length ceased to be wonders, and rank with the common accidents of fire and flood. The budget of each week is incomplete without its mob and runaway cashier――its duel and defaulter, and as waves which roll to the shore are lost in those which follow on, so the villainies of each week obliterate the record of the last.
Men of notorious immorality, whose dishonesty is flagrant, whose private habits would disgrace the ditch, are powerful and popular. I have seen a man stained with every sin, except those which required courage; into whose head I do not think a pure thought has entered for forty years; in whose heart an honorable feeling would droop for very loneliness; in evil, he was ripe and rotten; hoary and depraved in deed, in word, in his present life and in all his past; evil when by himself, and viler among men; corrupting to the young; to domestic fidelity, recreant; to common honor, a traitor; to honesty, an outlaw; to religion, a hypocrite――base in all that is worthy of man and accomplished in whatever is disgraceful, and yet this wretch could go where he would――enter good men’s dwellings and purloin their votes. Men would curse him, yet obey him; hate him, and assist him; warn their sons against him, and lead them to the polls for him. A public sentiment which produces ♦ignominious knaves cannot breed honest men.
♦ ‘ignominous’ replaced with ‘ignominious’
We have not yet emerged from a period in which debts were insecure; the debtor legally protected against the rights of the creditor; taxes laid, not by the requirements of justice, but for political effect, and lowered to a dishonest inefficiency, and when thus diminished, not collected; the citizens resisting their own officers; officers resigning at the bidding of the electors; the laws of property paralyzed; bankrupt laws built up, and stay-laws unconstitutionally enacted, upon which the courts look with aversion, yet fear to deny them lest the wildness of popular opinion should roll back disdainfully upon the bench to despoil its dignity and prostrate its power. General suffering has made us tolerant of general dishonesty, and the gloom of our commercial disaster threatens to become the pall of our morals.
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EULOGY ON GENERAL GRANT.