David Henry Thoreau

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EVENTS OF 18TH STANZA

The 19th Stanza in the Life of Henry Thoreau FALL 1835 JULY 1835 AUGUST SEPTEMBER WINTER 1835/1836 OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER 1835 SPRING 1836 JANUARY 1836 FEBRUARY MARCH SUMMER 1836 APRIL MAY JUNE 1836

Following the death of Jesus Christ there was a period of readjustment that lasted for approximately one million years. –Kurt Vonnegut, THE SIRENS OF TITAN

1835

Alonzo Lewis drew and George W. Boynton engraved a 31 inch by 22 inch map of Boston, known as the 3 “Bewick Company’s Map.” A map known as “Annin’s Small Map,” 4 inches by 2 /4 inches including only the peninsular portion of the city, appeared in the BOSTON ALMANAC.

MAPS OF BOSTON

THE RHODE-ISLAND ALMANACK FOR 1835. By Isaac Bickerstaff. Providence, Rhode Island: Hugh H. Brown.

The Reverend Robert Spence Hardy’s 2d voyage from England to Ceylon.

Horace Hayman Wilson’s SELECT SPECIMENS OF THE THEATER OF THE HINDUS (2d edition; 2 volumes, London: Parbury, Allen & Co.). These volumes would be in the personal library of Henry Thoreau. SELECT SPECIMENS, I SELECT SPECIMENS, II

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The Reverend Timothy Flint made good on his 1833 commitment to contribute “Sketches of the Literature of the United States” to the London Athenaeum (there would be a total of 11 articles from the issue of July 4th to the issue of November 9th). He traveled in Cuba, in New England, and on the Great Lakes.

Sophia Amelia Peabody and her sister Mary Tyler Peabody (Mann) returned to Salem from Cuba. Her letters home would be collected and circulated among friends (but not published) by her mother Elizabeth Palmer Peabody under the title THE CUBA JOURNAL, 1833-1835.

Breveted Major James Duncan Graham of the US Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers issued A REPORT UPON THE MILITARY AND HYDROGRAPHICAL CHART OF THE EXTREMITY OF CAPE COD: INCLUDING THE TOWNSHIPS OF PROVINCETOWN AND TRURO, WITH THEIR SEACOAST AND SHIP HARBOR: PROJECTED FROM SURVEYS EXECUTED DURING PORTIONS OF THE YEARS 1833, 1834, AND 1835 (United States. Topographical Bureau; this included a map of Provincetown and Truro).

CAPE COD: This light-house, known to mariners as the Cape Cod or PEOPLE OF Highland Light, is one of our “primary sea-coast lights,” and is CAPE COD usually the first seen by those approaching the entrance of Massachusetts Bay from Europe. It is forty-three miles from Cape Ann Light, and forty-one from Boston Light. It stands about twenty rods from the edge of the bank, which is here formed of clay. I borrowed the plane and square, level and dividers, of a carpenter who was shingling a barn near by, and using one of those shingles made of a mast, contrived a rude sort of quadrant, with pins for sights and pivots, and got the angle of elevation of the Bank opposite the light-house, and with a couple of cod-lines the length of its slope, and so measured its height on the shingle. It rises one hundred and ten feet above its immediate base, or about one hundred and twenty-three feet above mean low water. Graham, who has carefully surveyed the extremity of the Cape, GRAHAM makes it one hundred and thirty feet. The mixed sand and clay lay at an angle of forty degrees with the horizon, where I measured it, but the clay is generally much steeper. No cow nor hen ever gets down it. Half a mile farther south the bank is fifteen or twenty-five feet higher, and that appeared to be the highest land in North Truro. Even this vast clay bank is fast wearing away. Small streams of water trickling down it at intervals of two or three rods, have left the intermediate clay in the form of steep Gothic roofs fifty feet high or more, the ridges as sharp and rugged-looking as rocks; and in one place the bank is curiously eaten out in the form of a large semicircular crater. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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It would appear that this was traced by Thoreau himself. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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James Rennie’s THE FACULTIES OF BIRDS (London: Charles Knight, 22, Ludgate Street). Henry Thoreau would copy from page 206 of this into his journal, and the extract would provide grist for A WEEK. THE FACULTIES OF BIRDS

A WEEK: But, above all, there is wanting genius. Our books of science, as they improve in accuracy, are in danger of losing the freshness and vigor and readiness to appreciate the real laws of Nature, which is a marked merit in the ofttimes false theories of the ancients. I am attracted by the slight pride and satisfaction, the emphatic and even exaggerated style in which some of the older naturalists speak of the operations of Nature, though they are better qualified to appreciate than to discriminate the facts. Their assertions are not without value when disproved. If they are not facts, they are suggestions for Nature herself to act upon. “The Greeks,” says Gesner, “had a common proverb () a sleeping hare, for a dissembler or counterfeit; because the hare sees when she sleeps; for this is an admirable and rare work of Nature, that all the residue of her bodily parts take their rest, but the eye standeth continually sentinel.”

CONRAD GESNER JAMES RENNIE

A map of Maine was published, which self-described as “A Plan of the Public Lands in the State of Maine Surveyed under Instructions from the Commissioners & Agents of the States of Massachusetts and Maine a part of which have been set off in severalty to each State, ... viz. Those to Mass.ts are designated by the letter C for Common.th Those to Maine by the letter M. Those that have been sold by Mass.ts and not conveyed have the name of the grantee placed thereon. Copied from the original surveys on a reduced scale & corrected by Geo. W. Coffin, Land Agent of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 1st August, 1835.” This map’s scale was 3.4 miles to the inch. 1835 MAP OF MAINE

Henry Thoreau would have a copy of this map in his personal library and would refer to it on pages 15, 91, 94, 152, 165, 230, 242, and 279 of THE MAINE WOODS.

A fire in New-York destroyed the equipment John James Audubon needed for his further travels, and so he began to push for the completion of his THE BIRDS OF AMERICA. Subscriptions weren’t coming in fast enough and Havell, as his firm proceeded, was always needing payment for work accomplished. To save money and time Audubon began to place multiple species on a page, in his effort to complete the project even on occasion pasting together separate images. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Edgar Allan Poe became Assistant Editor of the Southern Literary Messenger of Richmond, Virginia, but was fired for sarcasm and drunkenness.

Caleb Bellows sold the cotton mill founded by John Brown above Derby’s Bridge on the Assabet River in Concord to Calvin Carver Damon (hence “Damondale”). The new owner would raise the height of the milldam by 16 inches and install a larger water-wheel for more power, and by 1837 would quadruple the local production of cotton cloth.1

In Boston’s Quincy Market, tomatoes were for sale by the dozen.

Boston’s population was 78,603, of which 15,883 or 20% had been born in some other country. The easternmost of the three original peaks of Boston, Pemberton Hill which had once been known as Cotton Hill, was being leveled for convenience and for fill dirt used in construction in the region of Leverett Circle and in various areas in the West End.2

The map of Boston created in 1722 by John Bonner was reissued:

1. This dam, although breached at the right side in the flood of Spring 1968 when 7 inches of rain fell on eastern Massachusetts within a 3-day period, is still to be seen. 2. I don’t know where the black people of Boston moved to, when they were forced out of their district on the slope of Cotton Hill (but for sure they weren’t welcomed into gentrified neighborhoods). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“King Dick” or Richard Crafus remained active in downtown Boston as a teacher of pugilistics and manhood, under the name Richard Seaver, and despite his advancing age must have remained quite impressive.3 Crafus maintained his royal air long after repatriation. According to a chronicler of Boston’s underclass, Crafus, who still taught boxing, “was a well-known character ... about 1826-1835 [who] lived in one of the crowded tenements on Botolph Street and was the focus of all the colored population of that district.” Whites, at least, still knew him as “King Dick.” Dressed in a red vest and white shirt, crowned with “an old style police cap” and “swinging an Emmence cane,” long a symbol associated with black leadership, he assembled black Bostonians each Election Day as “Master of Ceremonies.” Crafus annually led the procession around Boston Common, and closed with a “patriotic speech.” Twenty years after organizing prison Number Four, King Dick retained authority among Bostonians of color, who acknowledged him more as a leader than as a tyrant.

(It would, of course, be interesting to someday turn up a Henry Thoreau reference to this well-known personality.)

For more information:

3. I have been unable to locate by Boolean search any Richard Crafus or Richard Seaver listed in contemporary directories of black Bostonians, and have been unable to locate any mention by Thoreau. This information comes from Bolster, W. Jeffrey, BLACK JACKS: AFRICAN AMERICAN SEAMEN IN THE AGE OF SAIL (Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1997, page 111). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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A coastal vessel, the Peor es Nada (Worse Than Nothing), stopped by San Nicolàs Island off the California coast, because a mountain man named Bill Williams needed a squaw. As an act of mercy the vessel transported to the mainland those native Americans who had survived the massacre of the 1820s (by the Inuit crew of a Russian whaling vessel). One mother, however, stayed behind, looking for a lost child. She would become known as the “Lone Woman” of San Nicolàs Island. Thus we can know that when a personage such as Richard Henry Dana, Jr., in his journal which became TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST, recording an incident of late in this year of 1835, informs us that

The second day after our arrival, a full-rigged brig came round the point from the northward, sailed leisurely through the bay, and stood off again for the south-east, in the direction of the large island of Catalina. The next day the Avon got under weigh, and stood in the same direction, bound for San Pedro. This might do for marines and Californians, but we knew the ropes too well. The brig was never again seen on the coast, and the Avon arrived at San Pedro in about a week, with a full cargo of Canton and American goods. This was one of the means of escaping the heavy duties the Mexicans lay upon all imports. A vessel comes on the coast, enters a moderate cargo at Monterey, which is the only custom-house, and commences trading. In a month or more, having sold a large part of her cargo, she stretches over to Catalina, or other of the large uninhabited islands which lie off the coast, in a trip from port to port, and supplies herself with choice goods from a vessel from Oahu, which has been lying off and on the islands, waiting for her. Two days after the sailing of the Avon, the Loriotte came in from the leeward, and without doubt had also a snatch at the brig’s cargo. what this temporary sailor means by “the large uninhabited islands which lie off the coast” is islands uninhabited by people worth taking into consideration, which is to say, white people in significant quantity. HERMITS

A news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology:

• Creation of a book, FOREIGN CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE LIBERTIES OF THE UNITED STATES (New- ELECTRIC York: Leavitt, Lord & Company), out of a series of articles which had been published in a weekly periodical, New-York Observer. The book is a Know-Nothing treatise against the political influence WALDEN of Catholicism in which the author announced the discovery of an internationalist Catholic conspiracy: “its plans are already in operation … we are attacked in a vulnerable quarter which HDT WHAT? INDEX

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cannot be defended by our ships, or forts, or our armies.” The publisher of the weekly periodical ANTI-CATHOLICISM

SURVEY OF AMERICAN ANTI-CATHOLICISM was the author’s brother. The author was the son of the Congregationalist minister of Boston, the Reverend Jedediah Morse, the divine who had in May 1798 warned of an internationalistic atheistic conspiracy he termed “the Illuminati.” This demagogue’s name was Samuel F.B. Morse, and you will remember him not only as the person who laid claims to unique insight which led to his detection of an internationalist Catholic conspiracy but also as the person who laid claims to the unique insights which led to the “invention” of the electric telegraph. (In the case of the electric telegraph, it is now clear that funding and organization and social anthropology were more important ingredients of such a success than any of his technological tinkering — for a whole lot of people had been developing these technological capabilities without possessing his good connections and without attaining the funding and legitimation that would get them anywhere.) The source of the present danger, Morse fils announced, was Jesuits operating out of a base within the Austrian government.4 And it was in this very year that Morse constructed the first working model of the telegraph upon the frame of an old picture from his painting studio: The Johannes Gutenberg age of print, then, perhaps stretches from roughly 1448 and the printing of the “Forty-Two Line Bible” to approximately 1835. — Docherty, Thomas. ON MODERN AUTHORITY: THE THEORY AND CONDITION OF WRITING INTO THE PRESENT DAY. NY: St. Martin’s P, 1987, page 284

4. During this year also there appeared a book, PLEA FOR THE WEST (Cincinnati: Truman & Smith; New-York: Leavitt, Lord & Company), alleging that the USA was presently the site for an immense life-or-death struggle, of Protestants vs. Catholics. “Whatever we [Protestants] do, it must be done quickly.…” One of the things we could do quickly would be to call a halt to the immigrant stream of people who were “inexperienced” in our way of life, unaccustomed to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness as it is enacted in these great and United States of America. The author of this paranoid masterpiece was the Reverend Lyman Beecher, the father of, among others, Harriet Beecher Stowe. (She didn’t get her divisiveness –her ability to create an enemy who must be utterly destroyed whereupon we will all be purified– from out of the blue sky, you know.) The most recent such piece of shit I have discovered is by the clown who wrote the book upon which the Bertolucci movie “The Last Emperor” was based. Take a look at the Japan-bashing in that book! He claims that before the 2d World War, the Sun Emperor was positioning a group of a dozen or so diplomatic conspirators in Switzerland to run the world. –Which is not to say that the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere wouldn’t have wanted to take over the world and run it for the benefit of all, it is merely to say that what keeps any one group of us who believe they could fruitfully take over the world and run it from taking over the world and running it is the existence of a whole bunch of other groups of us who believe they could fruitfully take over the world and run it, and is merely to say, also, that we’re damned lucky that that’s so. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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HISTORY OF THE PRESS

There is an argument that Morse got a lot of his plans for the electric telegraph in America from Harrison Gray Dyar of Concord. Dyar was an inventor, and had batteries, and he had the idea of sending electric impulses along a wire and he had the idea of spacing the sparks in such a way as to form an alphabetic code. Using glass apothecary phials as insulators, he strung a wire from tree to tree alongside the Red Bridge road (Hunt’s Bridge on the Lowell Road over the Concord River at Gleason E6) “all the way to Curtis’s.”5

5. And ain’t that just great, the brothers George William Curtis and James Burrill Curtis who helped Henry Thoreau raise the frame of his shanty on Walden Pond are not shown on the Concord map. Did they live in some adjoining town? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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He recorded the sparks on a ribbon of moistened litmus paper on a spool that revolved by clockwork. The nitric acid that was formed on the litmus paper by the action of the electricity left little red marks on the blue litmus paper. His experiment worked well enough that he got some cash backing and proposed to string a wire from New-York to Philadelphia. However, the New Jersey legislature called him “dangerous,” and refused permission for this larger experiment, and then one of his backers threatened to take him to court to get his money back. We know that Samuel F.B. Morse married the sister of Charles Walker, and we know that Charles Walker worked with Dyar on this scheme and retained many of Dyar’s sketches, so we may presume that Walker or his sister showed the sketches to Morse. We have also established that Morse knew a number of other people, besides Charles Walker, who had worked with Dyar. Is this not much too much of a coincidence? HISTORY OF TELEGRAPHY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Waldo Emerson’s “The Snow-Storm,” a blank-verse rendition of William Howitt’s vignette on January in his THE BOOK OF THE SEASONS, which had been published in 1831.

Toward the end of his short book NATURE, Emerson had referred to “a certain poet” who had sung to him “some traditions of man and nature” which might be “both history and prophecy.” That person was Bronson Alcott. Emerson followed this reference with a series of aphorisms, in quotation marks. According to the flattered Alcott, these aphorisms had been derived from his unpublished PSYCHE, which he had loaned to Emerson in manuscript:

Mr. Emerson adverts, indirectly, to my Psyche now in his hands, in the work.

The nature of Alcott’s writing was such that it could only be improved by such an extraction of its pith:

Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men and pleads with them to return to paradise.

Unfortunately, Emerson, in reviewing Alcott’s musings, gave some incredibly obtuse, wrongheaded advice. The only thing that made Alcott’s orphic thoughts at all tolerable to a reader was that, occasionally, the reader could pick out some concrete particular, that would give some hint, what the hey Alcott was talking about. Emerson advised Alcott, however, rigorously to prune away all such concrete particulars:

take the things out, leaving the rest.

Alcott responded to this wrongheadedness, as one might expect, by adding even more indigestible musing, even more flights of otiose fancy. It seems clear that the source of Emerson’s bad advice cannot have been simple maliciousness. He clearly was trying to assist Alcott, not destroy him. What, then, can account for this HDT WHAT? INDEX

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poor judgment? (That’s a rhetorical question but I’m not suggesting any answer.) THE ALCOTT FAMILY

At the age of five, Horace Rice Hosmer went off to elementary school in the vicinity of Derby’s Bridge. Elijah Wood, who farmed during the summers, taught school in winters and would be the Concord elementary school teacher of the young Horace.

Nehemiah Ball became a deacon of Concord’s First Parish Church. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Washington Irving paid $1,800.00 for a little farm in Tarrytown, New York where he would create the cottage Sunnyside, his “snuggery,” the cottage which would be featured in thousands of colorized Currier and Ives lithographs which would hang framed on the walls of thousands of American homes, as their representation of the American dream.

(Henry Thoreau, who had very carefully studied these things, would be well aware in the crafting of his own HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“Sweat Equity” account of a writerly retreat –WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS outside Concord– that his readers’ points of comparison with the shanty on Walden Pond would of necessity include famous author Irving’s quite nifty “snuggery” outside Tarrytown (not to mention his quite nifty perch in the Alhambra of Granada, Spain), famous author Scott’s famous and quite grandiose “New Money” Abbotsford in Scotland, and famous author Byron’s famous and quite ruined “Old Money” Newstead Abbey in England. In reading WALDEN now, we mustn’t lose sight of these historical points of comparison!)

Four Approaches to the Writer’s Estate

Approach “Old Money” “New Money” “Sweat Equity” “Just Enough Money” Writer Lord Byron Sir Walter Scott Henry Thoreau Virginia Wolff

Estate Newstead Abbey Abbotsford Walden Pond A Room of One’s Own

Results Bailout Insolvency Immortality Feminism HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE CRAYON MISCELLANY. BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH BOOK. NO. 2. CONTAINING ABBOTSFORD AND NEWSTEAD ABBEY (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard). THE CRAYON MISCELLANY

IN ABOUT THIS TIMEFRAME Thoreau WOULD TAKE NOTES ON Irving’s CRAYON MISCELLANY IN HIS “MISCELLANEOUS READING NOTES FOR 1836-1842” (NOW STORED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, CHARLOTTESVILLE). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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George Gordon, Lord Byron’s Newstead Abbey

Sir Walter Scott’s Abbotsford

The 1st of Irving’s trilogy on the prairies and the fur trade, A TOUR OF THE PRAIRIES.

CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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John Farmer (1789-1838)’s 159-page A LIST OF THE GRADUATES, AND THOSE WHO HAVE RECEIVED DEGREES, AT ALL OF THE NEW ENGLAND COLLEGES, FROM THEIR FOUNDATION ... FORMING A COMPLETE INDEX TO ALL THE TRIENNIAL CATALOGUES OF ALL THE COLLEGES IN NEW ENGLAND / BY JOHN FARMER ... was printed in Boston: by Perkins, Marvin, & Company.6

John Farmer (1798-1859)’s MAP OF THE TERRITORIES OF MICHIGAN AND OUISCONSIN / BY JOHN FARMER OF DETROIT. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Historical Society of Michigan, 1987 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: West Michigan Printing Inc.) Description: 1 map: col. ; 50 x 83 cm. Notes: Scale [ca. 1:1,830,000] (W 1010 — W 790/N 520 — N 390). Facsimile. Prime meridians: Greenwich and Washington. “Engraved by Rowdon Clark & Co., Albany, N.Y.” “Entered according to Act of Congress in the Clerks Office of the District Court of the 6. Disambiguation: This mapmaker John Farmer (1789-1838) who was in this year issuing a map of Michigan and “Ouisconsin” territories was an entirely different person from this genealogist John Farmer (1798-1859) who was in that same year issuing his compendium of Harvard graduates! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Southern District of New York by J.H. Colton & Co. on the 9th Novr. 1835.” Henry Thoreau would have in his personal library a copy of this map dated 1854. JOHN FARMER, 1854 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Bronson Alcott would have in his library a volume published in this year, THE PHENIX: A COLLECTION OF OLD AND RARE FRAGMENTS: VIZ. THE MORALS OF CONFUCIUS, THE CHINESE PHILOSOPHER; THE ORACLES OF ZOROASTER, THE FOUNDER OF THE RELIGION OF THE PERSIAN MAGI; SANCHONIATHOS’S HISTORY OF THE CREATION; THE VOYAGES OF HANNO ROUND THE COAST OF AFRICA, FIVE HUNDRED YEARS BEFORE CHRIST; KING HIEMPSAL’S HISTORY OF THE AFRICAN SETTLEMENTS, TRANSLATED FROM THE PUNIC BOOKS; AND THE CHOICE SAYINGS OF PUBLIUS SYRUS (New-York: Published by William Gowan, in Chatham Street). THE PHENIX: A COLLECTION

David Henry Thoreau may first have encountered the Chinese wisdom tradition as a college student through references in such compilations as this one, and a list of his reading while at Harvard does include “The Phenix,” identified as “a collection of old and rare fragments,” which included the Life of Confucius, The Morals of Confucius translated from the Chinese by R.F. Prospero Intorcetta and Father Couplet, and a note on the writings of Confucius, taken from Sir Henry Ellis Amherst’s Embassy to China. Waldo Emerson also accessed such a compilation. An English adaptation of part of the Intorcetta/Couplet “The Morals of Confucius” had been published in 1691, and this was the version Thoreau would have encountered in THE PHENIX. It is considered that Thoreau probably read in the Chinese wisdom literature at first in English rather than in French or Latin. Only later did he read the Confucian classics in translations one generation closer to the original, which is to say, in French and Latin versions rather than in English versions created out of these French and Latin versions. After he had considered Couplet, Collie, and Marshman in English, he would turn to Rémusat, Pauthier, and others.

The Reverend Robert Spence Hardy’s 2d voyage from England to Ceylon.

During this year and the following one, the 4-volume edition by Simon Wilkins of SIR THOMAS BROWNE’S WORKS, INCLUDING HIS LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE (London: W. Pickering).7

7. The life of Sir Thomas used in Volume I was that of Dr. Samuel Johnson. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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A WEEK: The world is a strange place for a playhouse to stand PEOPLE OF within it. Old Drayton thought that a man that lived here, and A WEEK would be a poet, for instance, should have in him certain “brave, translunary things,” and a “fine madness” should possess his brain. Certainly it were as well, that he might be up to the occasion. That is a superfluous wonder, which Dr. Johnson expresses at the assertion of Sir Thomas Browne that “his life has been a miracle of thirty years, which to relate, were not history but a piece of poetry, and would sound like a fable.” The wonder is, rather, that all men do not assert as much. That would be a rare praise, if it were true, which was addressed to Francis Beaumont, — “Spectators sate part in your tragedies.” Think what a mean and wretched place this world is; that half the time we have to light a lamp that we may see to live in it. This is half our life. Who would undertake the enterprise if it were all? And, pray, what more has day to offer? A lamp that burns more clear, a purer oil, say winter-strained, that so we may pursue our idleness with less obstruction. Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns.

MICHAEL DRAYTON DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON

SIR THOMAS BROWNE, I SIR THOMAS BROWNE, II SIR THOMAS BROWNE, III SIR THOMAS BROWNE, IV

(These volumes would be available to Henry Thoreau in Waldo Emerson’s library.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Sir Robert Peel appointed the Reverend Professor Henry Hart Milman as rector of St Margaret’s, Westminster, and canon of Westminster. Publication of the Reverend’s NALA AND DAMAYANTI AND OTHER POEMS. TRANSLATED FROM THE SANSKRIT INTO ENGLISH BY REV. HENRY HART MILMAN, WITH MYTHOLOGICAL AND CRITICAL NOTES (Oxford: D.A. Talboys). This volume would be in the personal library of Henry Thoreau, and he would bequeath it to Waldo Emerson. Unfortunately, however, Google Books has not scanned it. The closest electronic text we have is that of a much later, revised and corrected edition based upon the Milman translation, which is what is behind the following button: NALA AND DAMAYANTI

8. This dam, although breached at the right side in the flood of Spring 1968 when 7 inches of rain fell on eastern Massachusetts within a 3-day period, is still to be seen. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Benjamin Bussey, the proprietor of the Dedham Woolen Mills, willed the 135-acre grounds of his farm estate in West Roxbury, including his mansion “Woodland Hill,” to Harvard College to be used as an agricultural station. This bequest would for a time bear his name, as the “Bussey Institution.” ARNOLD ARBORETUM

At Harvard College, four of the undergraduates were from Concord families: in addition to David Henry Thoreau there were George Moore, son of Captain Abel Moore the sheriff who would become a minister, Hiram Barrett Dennis, son of the farmer Samuel Dennis who would become an editor, and Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, a son of Squire Samuel Hoar who would become a lawyer and politician. Undergraduates. — George Moore [of Concord], son of Captain Abel Moore; Hiram Barrett Dennis [of Concord], son of Samuel Dennis; Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, son of the Hon. Samuel Hoar [of Concord], members of Harvard University; Marshall Merriam [of Concord], and Gardner Davis [of Concord], son of Josiah Davis, of Yale College, and Josiah Dudley [of Concord], of Union College, New York.

Thomas Mayo Brewer graduated. He would continue into Harvard Medical School. He joined the Boston Society of Natural History.

At Harvard Divinity School, the following gentlemen completed their studies:

Cyrus Augustus Bartol (A.B. Ham. [Hamilton College?]) Asarelah Morse Bridge Charles Timothy Brooks Edgar Buckingham Christopher Pearse Cranch (A.B. Col. [Columbia College?]) Barzillai Frost Samuel Osgood John Parkman Harrison Gray Otis Phipps George Matthias Rice (A.B. Bowdoin College) James Thurston

Hosea Hildreth died (after being expelled by Congregationalists during the previous year from ministering over their First Parish Church of Gloucester, Massachusetts, he had been serving as minister for a Unitarian congregation in Westboro, Massachusetts).

Dr. Charles Follen was no longer to be the Professor of Germanic Literature at Harvard College, new funding having failed to appear perhaps on account of his often-proclaimed abolitionist sympathies but more likely because he had been such an outspoken opponent of the disciplinarian President of Harvard, Josiah Quincy, Sr. His widow and his friend Samuel May would be convinced he had been dropped for being indiscreetly vocal about antislavery, but the attitude taken by Harvard’s Dr. Reginald H. Phelps toward this has been that there is nothing whatever in the record which might substantiate such an accusation: outside funds for his professorship, which initially had been being supplied by his wife’s relatives, had run out with the Corporation simply neglecting to endow a more permanent professorship in German. Phelps points out that Follen might have elected to continue on at an instructor’s status and salary, a point which seems to have been neglected by those who hold that he had been dismissed. The maximum case that might be made for persecution on account of antislavery activities would be, not that he had been sluffed off, but that the powers that be in the academic HDT WHAT? INDEX

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world had failed to prefer him.

He had an alternative, because the friendship of the Reverend William Ellery Channing had drawn him into the Unitarian Church. In this year he was ordained as a minister and called to the pulpit of the 2d Congregational Society at East Lexington, Massachusetts (in 1839 he would build himself an octagonal church, that is now the Follen Church Society-Unitarian Universalist). Instead of continuing at Harvard, but on an instructor’s salary and with an instructor’s status, this energetic gentleman had simply opted for a different sort of career.

In this year efforts to break down the barriers –social, educational, and theological– between Unitarians and Restorationist Universalists ended, with the death of the Reverend Bernard Whitman. After this untimely death, although Adin Ballou would remain a Restorationist, he would take little part in apologetic and ecclesiastical affairs. Instead, already won to the temperance cause, he would devote his energies to social reform. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

In this year and the next, Professor Thomas Nuttall, having taken leave from Harvard College, would explore the flora of the California coast. Richard Henry Dana, Jr. would meet up with him out there.

BOTANIZING HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

For the years 1835-1837, Samuel Hoar of Concord would be a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Meanwhile, Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar was graduating from Harvard College and going on to study toward his 1839 LL.B. from Harvard’s School of Law and his eventual joining the law firm of Rufus Choate and Daniel Webster and his eventual becoming of the Attorney General of the United States of America. NEW “HARVARD MEN” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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This was the year during which the Reverend Henry C. Wright became an abolitionist. Going down a street in Boston “on an errand of kindness and mercy to the poor,” he made the mistake of going arm-in-arm with the woman whom he was accompanying. When he returned to his boarding-house, he was informed that he had sacrificed his standing in all respectable society. The woman in question had been — black!

Perhaps the most important incident occurred when he accompanied a Negro schoolteacher to visit the parents of her pupils. It was a wintry night, and he offered her his arm. At his boardinghouse he was teased for being seen arm-in-arm with a colored woman (and he reproached himself for feeling the sting of disapproval). A decade later he told an English friend that this incident caused his conversion to antislavery. Actually neither this nor any other single event effected his conversion, but he may well have remembered it with special intensity as summing up the entire process of withdrawal from the prejudices of the circle in which he lived. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

At Xinhai in Sichuan province in the interior of China, a well was dug for brine, and for the natural gas to boil this brine and transform it into edible salt, which reached the incredible depth of over one kilometer: 1,001 meters.9 At this time, in the West, the deepest wells were on the order of about 370 meters.

At the time at which, as Henry Thoreau would recount in the initial chapter of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, a crazed fellow of Concord was undertaking to dig down to China, the Chinese of Sichuan province were busily

9. When L.J.M. Imbert, a French missionary, had attempted to inform Western engineers of the deep drilling in Sichuan province in the 1820s, communicating detailed information in regard to the techniques employed, his letters had not been found credible in Europe. Attempts to duplicate Chinese cable drilling succeeded in reaching depths of only in the range of a hundred meters during the 1840s, because the Western engineers substituted local rope for the Chinese bamboo. Samuel A.M. Adshead, SALT AND CIVILIZATION, Macmillan, 1992; Hans Ulrich Vogel, “The Great Well of China,” Scientific American 268 (June 1993):116-121. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

digging up toward Concord:

WALDEN: The religion and civilization which are barbaric and PEOPLE OF heathenish build splendid temples; but what you might call WALDEN Christianity does not. Most of the stone a nation hammers goes towards its tomb only. It buries itself alive. As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. I might possibly invent some excuse for them and him, but I have no time for it. As for the religion and love of art of the builders, it is much the same all the world over, whether the building be an Egyptian temple or the United States Bank. It costs more than it comes to. The mainspring is vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and bread and butter. Mr. Balcom, a promising young architect, designs it on the back of his Vitruvius, with hard pencil and ruler, and the job is let out to Dobson & Sons, stonecutters. When the thirty centuries begin to look down on it, mankind begin to look up at it. As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made. Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and East, –to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them, –who were above such trifling.

MARCUS VITRUVIUS POLLIO DE ARCHITECTVRA LIBRI DECEM EGYPT

THOREAU AND CHINA

We may wonder whether at the top of this well in Xinhai, it might not have been possible for the Chinese, by listening carefully, to overhear Concordians informing their neighbors of their failings. Seriously, folks, we may wonder what literary use Henry might have made of the fact of the brine wells of Sichuan province, had news of their existence reached him. Certainly, he would have excised, from the ending of WALDEN, his embarrassingly conventional, Emersonish tropes presuming the stagnation of the Chinese!

Some 1687 work by a Jesuit missionary in China, Father Couplet, was recycled by William Gowan, a printer of New-York, as “The Morals of Confucius” in a volume entitled THE PHENIX: A COLLECTION OF OLD AND RARE FRAGMENTS, VIZ. THE MORALS OF CONFUCIUS, THE CHINESE PHILOSOPHER; THE ORACLES OF ZOROASTER, THE FOUNDER OF THE RELIGION OF THE PERSIAN MAGI; SANCHONIATHO’S HISTORY OF THE CREATION; THE VOYAGES OF HANNO ROUND THE COAST OF AFRICA, FIVE HUNDRED YEARS BEFORE CHRIST; KING HIEMPSAL’S HISTORY OF THE AFRICAN SETTLEMENTS, TRANSLATED FROM THE PUNIC BOOKS; AND THE 10 CHOICE SAYINGS OF PUBLIUS SYRUS. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

For Zoroaster’s Chaldean Oracles, refer to:

http://www.hermetic.com/texts/chaldean.html

10. According to Lyman V. Cady, this is one of the works which would be utilized by Henry Thoreau as a source for the quotes of Confucius in WALDEN. A copy is to be noted, in the inventory taken of Bronson Alcott’s library at the point of his death. This volume contains a “Life of Confucius,” an “Introductory Dissertation” on the System of Morals, a “The Morals of Confucius” that has been translated from Chinese by R.F. Incorcetta and Father Couplet, a note on the writings of Confucius from Sir Henry Ellis’s AMHERST’S EMBASSY TO CHINA, and “The Chinese Sacred Edicts. In Sixteen Maxims.”

LIGHT FROM CHINA HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

CHALDÆAN ORACLES HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

A WEEK: It is remarkable that Homer and a few Hebrews are the most Oriental names which modern Europe, whose literature has taken its rise PEOPLE OF since the decline of the Persian, has admitted into her list of A WEEK Worthies, and perhaps the worthiest of mankind, and the fathers of modern thinking, — for the contemplations of those Indian sages have influenced, and still influence, the intellectual development of mankind, — whose works even yet survive in wonderful completeness, are, for the most part, not recognized as ever having existed. If the lions had been the painters it would have been otherwise. In every one’s ÆSOP youthful dreams philosophy is still vaguely but inseparably, and with XENOPHANES singular truth, associated with the East, nor do after years discover its local habitation in the Western world. In comparison with the philosophers of the East, we may say that modern Europe has yet given birth to none. Beside the vast and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, even our Shakespeare seems sometimes youthfully green and practical merely. Some of these sublime sentences, as the Chaldaean oracles of Zoroaster, still surviving after a thousand revolutions and ZOROASTER translations, alone make us doubt if the poetic form and dress are not transitory, and not essential to the most effective and enduring expression of thought. Ex oriente lux may still be the motto of scholars, for the Western world has not yet derived from the East all the light which it is destined to receive thence. It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind. The New Testament is still, perhaps, too much on the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and comparison might help to liberalize the faith of men. This is a work which Time will surely edit, reserved to crown the labors of the printing-press. This would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which let the missionaries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth.

A WEEK: The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, PEOPLE OF for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time. The cunning mind travels further back than Zoroaster each A WEEK instant, and comes quite down to the present with its revelation. The utmost thrift and industry of thinking give no man any stock in life; his credit with the inner world is no better, his capital no larger. He must try his fortune again to-day as yesterday. All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed, but not that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say it. All the world is forward to prompt him who gets up to live without his creed in his pocket.

ZOROASTER PERSIUS HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

The firm of H.D. Robinson in New-York (No. 94 Chatham street) put out an anonymous volume titled THE MORAL SAYINGS OF CONFUCIUS, A CHINESE PHILOSOPHER, WHO LIVED ABOUT SIX HUNDRED YEARS BEFORE THE CHRISTIAN ERA; AND WHOSE MORAL PRECEPTS HAVE LEFT A LASTING IMPRESSION UPON THE 11 CHINESE NATION. The soldier comforted himself with this reflection. “A soldier has lost his buckler, but a soldier of our camp has found it; he will use it.” “It had been much better spoken,” replies Confucius, “if he had said, ‘A man has lost his buckler, but a man has found it.’” [The text reads as follows: “A soldier of the kingdom of Ci,” said they unto him, “lost his buckler; and having a long time sought after it in vain, he at last comforts himself upon the loss he had sustained, with this reflection: ‘A soldier has lost his buckler, but a soldier of our camp has found it; he will use it.’” “It had been much better spoken,” replies Confucius, “if he had said, ‘A man has lost his buckler, but a man will find it;’” thereby intimating that we ought to have an affection for all the men of the world.] We may note that Thoreau would refer to this soldier who lost his buckler at the end of the 8th chapter of WALDEN,

WALDEN: I was never molested by any person but those who represented the state. I had no lock nor bolt but for the desk which held my papers, not even a nail to put over my latch or windows. I never fastened my door night or day, though I was to be absent several days; not even when the next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet my house was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of soldiers. The tired rambler could rest and warm himself by my fire, the literary amuse himself with the few books on my table, or the curious, by opening my closet door, see what was left of my dinner, and what prospect I had of a supper. Yet, though many people of every class came this way to the pond, I suffered no serious inconvenience from these sources, and I never missed any thing but one small book, a volume of Homer, which perhaps was improperly gilded and this I trust a soldier of our camp has found by this time. I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.

and to the basin of King Tam in the 2nd chapter of WALDEN: We must not here forget a remarkable thing which Cemcu relates, touching a basin wherein King Tam used to bathe and wash himself. He says, that these excellent words were there engraved — “Wash thyself; renew thyself continually; renew thyself every day; renew thyself from day to day.”

11. “The Life and Morals of Confucius, a Chinese Philosopher ... being one of the Choicest pieces of Learning and Morality Remaining of that Nation” is merely a new edition, edited by Josephus Tela in 1818, of the originary French treatise of the ANALECTS in Latin that had been put out in 1691 in English as THE MORALS OF CONFUCIUS, A CHINESE PHILOSOPHER. Tela’s English translation had appeared in the January 1, 1818 issue of THE PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY: BEING A CURIOUS COLLECTION OF THE MOST RARE AND VALUABLE PRINTED WORKS AND MANUSCRIPTS, BOTH ANCIENT AND MODERN, WHICH TREAT SOLELY OF MORAL, METAPHYSICAL, THEOLOGICAL, HISTORICAL, AND PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRIES AFTER TRUTH. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

WALDEN: Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of king Tching-thang to this effect: “Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again.” I can understand that. Morning brings back the heroic ages.

THE GREAT BATHTUB HOAX

A Juvenile Library was established in the Dexter house in what is now Arlington — such a facility being in actuality the 1st of its kind in the nation.12

At this point there were available to town citizens at the Concord Social Library some 900 volumes. A Library Company was formed February 23, 1786. Whether there had previously been a library in town, and if any, how long it continued, and its number of volumes, is not known. A “Charitable Library Society” was formed May 25, 1795, depending chiefly on the voluntary donations of its members for support. Jonathan Fay, Esq., Jonas Minott, Esq., and the Rev. Ezra Ripley were successively presidents of this society. Its members united with others and composed the “Proprietors of the Concord Social Library,” and were incorporated in 1824. The presiding officers since have been the Rev. Ezra Ripley, the Hon. Samuel Hoar, the Hon. John Keyes, and the Hon. Abiel Heywood. The library, divided into 50 shares, contains about 900 volumes [1835] and constantly increases by the addition of new publications.13

12. In Concord, juvenile libraries had been established in each of the religious societies, as part of their Sunday-School effort, in 1827, but that presumably hadn’t even been in the same ballpark as this Dexter House Library for Juveniles of 1835. 13. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

Doctor John White Webster, who started as a lecturer at Harvard College for only $800 per year (merely twice as much as a skilled laborer could make) and had an earning potential of only $1,200 as a full professor of chemistry in the Medical College (merely three times as much as a skilled laborer could make), was forced to sell the grand home he had acquired on Concord Avenue in Cambridge, and relocate his wife and beauteous daughters to less expensive digs at 22 Garden Street, near the Washington Elm where founding father of our nation General George Washington had mustered his troops on Cambridge Common.

During Henry Thoreau’s early college years a well-to-do free black family in Boston purchased the pewdeed to a pew in the Park Street Church. To make sure these black parishioners understood how white Christians felt about them, the white Christians nailed shut the door to their pew, and then, capitulating to popular sentiment, the trustees of this house of worship revoked this deed. Hearing of these events, another Boston Protestant church inserted a clause on their pewdeed documentary form — that pews were transferable only to “respectable white persons.”

William Inman made a scruffy portrait of Nathaniel Hawthorne as of age 31, sporting a man-about-town mustache and a modified Van Dyke. (This one is quite a bit different from the painting Charles Osgood would make of him as a clean-shaven lady-killer in 1840 as of age 36.)

Hawthorne wrote several short stories and sketches, among them “The Minister’s Black Veil” and “The May- Pole of Merry Mount” which would appear in The Token for 1836, and “Young Goodman Brown,” which would wind up in the New-England Magazine.

Publication of Hawthorne’s SKETCHES FROM MEMORY, for instance his memories of visiting “Rochester”: The gray, but transparent evening, rather shaded than obscured the scene — leaving its stronger features visible, and even improved, by the medium through which I beheld them. The volume of water is not very great, nor the roar deep enough to be termed grand, though such praise might have been appropriate before the good people of Rochester had abstracted a part of the unprofitable sublimity of the cascade. The Genesee has contributed so bountifully to their canals and mill-dams, that it approaches the precipice with diminished pomp, and rushes over it in foamy streams of various width, leaving a broad face of the rock insulated and unwashed, between the two main HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

branches of the falling river. Still it was an impressive sight, to one who had not seen Niagara. I confess, however, that my chief interest arose from a legend, connected with these falls, which will become poetical in the lapse of years, and was already so to me, as I pictured the catastrophe out of dusk and solitude. It was from a platform, raised over the naked island of the cliff, in the middle of the cataract, that Sam Patch took his last leap, and alighted in the other world. Strange as it may appear — that any uncertainty should rest upon his fate, which was consummated in the sight of thousands — many will tell you that the illustrious Patch concealed himself in a cave under the falls, and has continued to enjoy posthumous renown, without foregoing the comforts of this present life. But the poor fellow prized the shout of the multitude too much not to have claimed it at the instant, had he survived. He will not be seen again, unless his ghost, in such a twilight as when I was there, should emerge from the foam, and vanish among the shadows that fall from cliff to cliff. How stern a moral may be drawn from the story of poor Sam Patch! Why do we call him a madman or a fool, when he has left his memory around the falls of the Genesee, more permanently than if the letters of his name had been hewn into the forehead of the precipice? Was the leaper of cataracts more mad or foolish than other men who throw away life, or misspend it in pursuit of empty fame, and seldom so triumphantly as he? That which he won is as invaluable as any, except the unsought glory, spreading, like the rich perfume of richer fruit, from virtuous and useful deeds. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

The Thoreau family in Concord would live in “Aunt’s House, to spring of 1837,” the house which is now the west part of Concord’s Colonial Inn, with Aunt Elizabeth Orrock Thoreau (Aunt Sarah Thoreau having died in 1829): David Henry was away most of the time, as a student at Harvard College. CYNTHIA DUNBAR THOREAU JOHN THOREAU, SR.

On the Isle of Jersey, a savings bank was opened. According to Marcel R. Garnier’s L’ANCÊTRE (THE 14 ANCESTOR), it was in about this year that John Guillet, originally from Jersey, moved from Québec to Ontario.

At this point a savings bank was founded in Concord. (Previously a local store had acted as a de-facto bank, taking in cash from customers and returning it with interest when requested. However, when one of the owners had died it had been discovered that careful records had not been kept. Funds from such “depositors” had been spent in the business and the remaining partner had found himself bankrupted in attempting to return the monies. Many who had entrusted their savings to this establishment had entirely lost their investment.)

14. In the Huguenot diaspora, the Guillet family was closely entangled with the Thoreau family. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

David Henry Thoreau began a 24-page blotting book which is now held by Clifton Waller Barrett. It bears on its first page its date, 1835, and a quotation from THE COMPLAINT: OR, NIGHT THOUGHTS by Edward Young:15

Retire; —the world shut out; —thy thoughts call home;— Imagination’s airy wing repress;— Lock up thy senses; —let no passion stir;— Wake all to reason; —let her reign alone;

Thoreau’s flute: We know by the inscription on the baroque instrument, of fruitwood with ivory trim with one or two metal keys at the end, in the display case in Concord Museum, that John Thoreau obtained this instrument in 1835. I presume this was John Thoreau, Sr. rather than John Thoreau, Jr.,

John in later years because the old Primo Flauto music book, in which Thoreau pressed and dried botanical specimens, had been his father’s: John Thoreau +1835+

15. This blotting book has become once of the four sources treated by Kenneth Walter Cameron in his TRANSCENDENTAL APPRENTICESHIP: NOTES ON YOUNG HENRY THOREAU’S READING: A CONTEXTURE WITH A RESEARCHER’S INDEX volume. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

Henry D. Thoreau +1845+

Nathan Pratt constructed the Powder Mill Dam which is near the footbridge across the Assabet River below the Maynard water treatment plant.16 The millraces of the dam would be closed at the end of the workweek to allow the mill pond to fill, and so from this date forward, over each Sabbath the Assabet would slow to a trickle. The buildings of the American Powder Mill itself were in a hollow on the east bank of the river at Acton. It is an urban legend that the hollow was dug out by the repeated accidental explosions at this site.

Doctor Walter Channing had the honor of delivering the annual address to the Boston Society of Natural History. He was made the secretary of the Massachusetts Temperance Society.

At the age of 17 Ellery Channing published his adolescent poetry in the Boston Mercantile Journal under the pen name “Hal Menge” — poems of the “my mother died / Before I clasped her” sort, necessarily pseudonymous, “sublimo-slipshod” nevertheless poems,17 19 of them in a single year — and we all wish to have such relations with the mercantile press.

16. The present dam is heavily modified. Six-foot granite blocks which date to the 1880’s were cemented over in 1921 when the dam was raised for recreational purposes, and 10X10 timbers were put on top of the concrete in 1923 for purposes of power generation. The site is now filthy and abandoned. 17. This term “sublimo-slipshod” is Thoreau’s. Compare Thomas Carlyle’s “cabalistico-sartorial.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

Dr. William Andrus Alcott’s “On Cleanliness,” in The Moral Reformer and Teacher on the Human Constitution admonished readers “that he who neglects his person and dress will be found lower in the scale of morals, other things being equal, than he who pays a due regard to cleanliness.”

Mr. Clean HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

The 4th edition, in Boston, of his ever-popular THE YOUNG MAN’S GUIDE: HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

Among the diseases caused by sexual licentiousness are the tuberculosis that was the scourge of the Thoreau family of Concord. This phthisis condition was caused by masturbation, onanism, self-abuse, which is a crime against God and against one’s own body. The punishment prescribed by God for this is consumption. Implicitly, nobody needs to feel sorry for the victim of such a malady, who personally had caused all this harm to himself or herself, caused it through a lack of proper private self-restraint and through a lack of respect for God and His law: LICENTIOUSNESS (pages 340-354): Phthisis, or consumption, is still more frequently produced by the cause we are considering, than any other disease I have mentioned. And we know well the history of this disease; that, though slow in its progress, the event is certain. In this climate, it is one of the most destructive scourges of our race. If the ordinary diseases slay their thousands, consumption slays its tens of thousands. Its approach is gradual, and often unsuspected; and the decline to the grave sometimes unattended by any considerable suffering. Is it not madness to expose oneself to its attacks for the shortlived gratifications of a moment? There is indeed a peculiar form of this disease which, in the case in question, is more commonly produced than any other. It is called, in the language of physicians, tabes dorsalis, or dorsal consumption; because it is supposed to arise from the dorsal portion of the spinal marrow. This disease sometimes, it is true, attacks young married people, especially when they go beyond the bounds which the Author of nature intended; and it is occasionally produced by other causes entirely different; causes, too, which it would be difficult, if not impossible to prevent. Generally, however, it is produced by solitary vice. ...A few well authenticated examples of persons who debased themselves by secret vice, will, I hope, satisfy those who doubt the evil of this practice.... When a young man, who is pursuing an unhappy course of solitary vice, threatened as we have seen by the severest penalties earth or heaven can impose, — begins to perceive a loss or irregularity of his appetite; acute pains in his stomach, especially during digestion, and constant vomitings; — HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

when to this is added a weakness of the lungs, often attended by a dry cough, hoarse weak voice, and hurried or difficult breathing after using considerable exertion, with a general relaxation of the nervous system; — when these appearances, or symptoms, as physicians call them, take place — let him beware! for punishment of a severer kind cannot be distant.... There is, then, but one course for the young. Let them do that which they know to be right, and avoid not only that which they are sure is wrong, but that also of which they have doubts. Let them do this, moreover, in the fear and love of God. In the language of a great statesman of the United States to his nephew, a little before his death, let me exhort you, to ‘Give up property, give up every thing — give up even life itself, rather than presume to do an immoral act.’ Let me remind you too, of the declaration of that Wisdom which is Infinite; — ‘HE THAT SINNETH AGAINST GOD, DESTROYETH HIS OWN SOUL.’

OTHER EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1835 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

JULY 1835

David Henry Thoreau’s 19th stanza began on his birthday, July 12th, Sunday, 1835. • To the people who were engaging in the antislavery struggle, the year 1835 would come to be known as “the mob year.” • Our scholar returned to 31 Hollis Hall at Harvard College for the 2d term of his Junior year of studies, then withdrew for three months, among other things in order to teach school briefly in Canton, Massachusetts while studying German with the Reverend Orestes Augustus Brownson, before beginning the 3d term of his Junior year by enrolling in courses in Greek, Latin, English, Italian, mathematics, and possibly chemistry. Unfortunately, due to illness, presumably tubercular, he would be forced to again withdraw, perhaps to be cared for at the family home in Concord. • Harvard student Richard Henry Dana, Jr. was on the California coast aboard the Alert, a hide ship out of Boston, keeping his eyes wide open as he completed his “two years before the mast.” Meanwhile Charles Darwin was keeping his eyes wide open as he sailed from island to island in the Pacific as the “Captain’s Companion” aboard the British surveying vessel HMS Beagle. • Thomas Carlyle was putting out episode after episode of a most peculiar writing entitled SARTOR RESARTUS. • Halley’s Comet returned to the night skies, on schedule. • Boston was no longer using its Common for the grazing of herds of cows. • Samuel Langhorn Clemens was born (he would change his name). • Edgar Allan Poe was a prominent American editor. • Frederick Douglass became fearful that his owner might sell him south. • Ellery Channing went for a hike in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. • Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church, went treasure hunting in Massachusetts (but failed to discover any treasure in the vicinity of Salem). • In Florida the US swamp race war continued apace, with village after village being exterminated. • Bronson Alcott and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody were conducting a School of Human Culture, in Boston’s Masonic Hall. • In Boston, P.T. Barnum placed on exhibit one of his slaves, Joyce Heth, falsely alleging that she was incredibly ancient, and falsely alleging that she had been the wet-nurse of founder of the nation George Washington (when this paralyzed, blind woman died he sold 50¢ admission tickets and engaged a surgeon to autopsy her corpse, in a barroom). • The Texians of northern Mejico (folks such as congressman Davy Crockett and knife fighter James Bowie) were staving off Mexican nationals who had attempted to deny them their God-given right to own black human beings — this included some nasty struggling to achieve liberty and justice for all that you will remember at a place they called “The Alamo.” • Harvard’s undergraduates continued to put out their monthly subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA, without participation by Thoreau. • Lemuel Shattuck published a new one-volume history of the town of Concord. • Waldo Emerson remarried with Lydia Jackson and purchased the 7-year-old “Coolidge Castle” house in Concord beside the Cambridge Turnpike. He lectured in the lyceums of Boston, Concord, Salem, and Cambridge and, after the famous orators Daniel Webster and Edward Everett had declined, was asked if he would please present the keynote address at Concord’s Bicentennial Celebration. He then read a lecture based almost entirely on Lemuel Shattuck’s newly published history of the town, and sent it off to a publisher. His brother Charles Chauncy Emerson died of tuberculosis, which foiled a plan for him to get married with Concord’s Elizabeth Hoar. Bronson Alcott visited the Emersons several times at their new home in Concord. Margaret Fuller also visited, but failed to make a favorable first impression. Waldo wrote the poem “The Snow Storm” HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

and completed the draft of his book NATURE (which he was intending to follow up with something titled SPIRIT).

BACKGROUND EVENTS OF 1835 BACKGROUND EVENTS OF 1836

“My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.” — Henry Thoreau

July: Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody’s diary of the School of Human Culture was published.18 BRONSON ALCOTT RECORD OF A SCHOOL

18. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. RECORD OF MR. ALCOTT’S SCHOOL, EXEMPLIFYING THE PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF MORAL CULTURE. Boston, New-York, Philadelphia: James Munroe and Company, 1835, 208 pages (2d edition 1836, Boston, New-York: Russell, Shattuck and Company, 198 pages; 3d edition 1874, Boston: Roberts Brothers) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July: The 11th issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:

HARVARDIANA • “A Word at Parting”; “Ad Amicum” by “W” • “My Friend and his Hat”; “A. Little, Hatter” by S P Q R” • “Philosophy of Natural History” by “Philo Theoreticus” • “The Crayon Miscellany” • “The Feast of Death” by “W” • “The Fruits of Experience” by “Senior”

July: Jones Very’s essay “The Practical Application in This Life, by Men as Social and Intellectual Beings, of the Certainty of a Future State” was awarded the $40.00 first prize in the Bowdoin competition for Juniors. Edwin Gittleman’s take on this is: “Had the Bowdoin Prize judges realized that behind the impressive rhetoric and sentiment of this essay lay autobiographical truths mixed with private fantasies, a form of Byronism adjusted to the outlooks of Coleridge and Henry Ware, and concealed promises of marvelous events to come interwoven with secret desires, they might well have hesitated.”19

19. We may wonder, that Edwin Gittleman supposes there to be a form of impressive rhetoric and sentiment which does not overlie autobiographical truths mixed with private fantasies, or conceal promises of marvelous events to come interwoven with secret desires. Provide examples, sir, provide us with examples if you please. We know of a distinction which may be made, between a type of author such as Hawthorne who seeks to pander to the private fantasies and secret desires of his or her loyal readership, and a type of author such as Thoreau who explicitly seeks not so to pander, but we do not know of a distinction between a type of author who possesses private fantasies and secret desires and does not succeed in excluding these from his or her authorship, and a type of author who lacks this personality or succeeds in excluding it from his or her writing. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Late Summer: The Reverend George Ripley wrote Thomas Carlyle anent the wondrous reception which his work SARTOR RESARTUS was receiving in New England, proclaiming it to be “a huge, mysterious, magnificent Symbol of the Time upon which we have fallen. It is the cry of the Heart & the Flesh for the living God.”20

SARTOR RESARTUS STUDY THIS STRANGENESS

20. During this early period of his career, Carlyle was popular in New England but not in the American South. It would only be the later Carlyle, author of CROMWELL and of FREDERICK THE GREAT, who would become immensely popular in our South — the white man crowd-pleaser-crowd-appeaser who was proclaiming “the natural propensity of men to grovel or to rule” (to have recourse to a sublimely descriptive phrase which would eventually be coined, by Van Wyck Brooks). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Lecture21

DATE PLACE TOPIC

July 13, Monday, 1835 Cambridge MA; Harvard College Greek Dialogue on “Decius and Cato” with Manlius S. Clarke August 30, Wednesday, 1837, Cambridge MA; Harvard College; “The Commercial Spirit of Modern Times, at about 10:30AM First Parish Meeting House Considered in Its Influence on the Moral Character of a Nation”

21. From Bradley P. Dean and Ronald Wesley Hoag’s THOREAU’S LECTURES BEFORE WALDEN: AN ANNOTATED CALENDAR. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Walter Harding reports that David Henry Thoreau, at the end of his sophomore year at Harvard College, was awarded $25 “exhibition money” for high grades and participated in a class honors exhibition on 13 July 1835 (Walter Roy Harding’s THE DAYS OF HENRY THOREAU: A BIOGRAPHY, page 36).

The programme for that exhibition “Order of Performances for Exhibition, Monday, July 13, 1835” lists 11 presentations involving a total of 16 students. The 3d event is described as follows: A Greek Dialogue. “Decius and Cato.” MANLIUS STIMSON CLARKE, Norton DAVID HENRY THOREAU, Concord

Manlius Stimson Clarke recited the part of Decius and Thoreau that of Cato. The manuscript from which these two young scholars read is in HARVARD COLLEGE’S EXHIBITION AND COMMENCEMENT PERFORMANCES 1834-1835, a folio of two leaves bound on July 13, 1835 at MH-UA 6834.37 and the authoritative Greek text with a speculative retranslation into English appears in THE WRITINGS OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU: TRANSLATIONS, ed. K.P. Van Anglen (1986), pages 145-47. Ethel Seybold has published on the English- language source of this translation into Greek by Thoreau, which was Joseph Addison’s CATO. A TRAGEDY, Act II, in “The Sources of Thoreau’s ‘Cato-Decius Dialogue’” (STUDIES IN THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE 1994, pages 245-50).

Marcus Porcius Cato (the Elder) 234-149 BCE CATO: A TRAGEDY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 18, Saturday: Penny Magazine:

http://www.history.rochester.edu/pennymag/211.htm

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. observed the departure of the Mexican ship Fazio from the port of San Diego, bound for San Blas and Mazatlan. He met the new master of the Alert and of the Pilgrim, Mr. Edward H. Faucon. According to the crew list he was 5 ft. 6 in. in height, had dark complexion and brown hair. This man would be Dana’s choice skipper. He would serve along the California coast until 1837, and would later wind up in the opium trade between India and China.

TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST: Wednesday, July 18th, brought us the brig Pilgrim from the windward. As she came in, we found that she was a good deal altered in her appearance. Her short top-gallant masts were up; her bowlines all unrove (except to the courses); the quarter boom-irons off her lower yards; her jack-cross-trees sent down; several blocks got rid of; running-rigging rove in new places; and numberless other changes of the same character. Then, too, there was a new voice giving orders, and a new face on the quarter-deck,- a short, dark complexioned man, in a green jacket and a high leather cap. These changes, of course, set the whole beach on the qui-vive, and we were all waiting for the boat to come ashore, that we might have things explained. At length, after the sails were furled and the anchor carried out the boat pulled ashore, and the news soon flew that the expected ship had arrived at Santa Barbara, and that Captain T--- had taken command of her, and her captain, Faucon, had taken the Pilgrim, and was the green- jacketed man on the quarterdeck. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Saturday, July 18th. This day, sailed the Mexican hermaphrodite brig, Fazio, for San Blas and Mazatlan. This was the brig which was driven ashore at San Pedro in a southeaster, and had been lying at San Diego to repair and take in her cargo. The owner of her had had a good deal of difficulty with the government about the duties, etc., and her sailing had been delayed for several weeks; but everything having been arranged, she got under weigh with a light breeze, and was floating out of the harbor, when two horsemen came dashing down to the beach, at full speed, and tried to find a boat to put off after her; but there being none on the beach, they offered a handful of silver to any Kanaka who would swim off and take a letter on board. One of the Kanakas, a fine, active, well-made young fellow, instantly threw off everything but his duck trowsers, and putting the letter into his hat, swam off, after the vessel. Fortunately, the wind was very light and the vessel was going slowly, so that, although she was nearly a mile off when he started, he gained on her rapidly. He went through the water leaving a wake like a small steamboat. I certainly never saw such swimming before. They saw him coming from the deck, but did not heave-to suspecting the nature of his errand; yet, the wind continuing light, he swam alongside and got on board, and delivered his letter. The captain read the letter, told the Kanaka there was no answer, and giving him a glass of brandy, left him to jump overboard and find the best of his way to the shore. The Kanaka swam in for the nearest point of land, and, in about an hour, made his appearance at the hide-house. He did not seem at all fatigued, had made three or four dollars, got a glass of brandy, and was in fine spirits. The brig kept on her course, and the government officers, who had come down to forbid her sailing, went back, each with something like a flea in his ear, having depended upon extorting a little more money from the owner. It was now nearly three months since the Alert arrived at Santa Barbara, and we began to expect her daily. About a half a mile behind the hide-house, was a high hill; and every afternoon, as soon as we had done our work, some one of us walked up to see if there were any sail in sight, coming down before the regular trades, which blow every afternoon. Each day, after the latter part of July, we went up the hill, and came back disappointed. I was anxious for her arrival, for I had been told by letter that the owners in Boston, at the request of my friends, had written to Captain T______to take me on board the Alert, in case she returned to the United States before the Pilgrim; and I, of course, wished to know whether the order had been received, and what was the destination of the ship. One year more or less might be of small consequence to others, but it was everything to me. It was now just a year since we sailed from Boston, and at the shortest, no vessel could expect to get away under eight or nine months, which would make our absence two years in all. This would be pretty long, but would not be fatal. It would not necessarily be decisive of my future life. But one year more would settle the matter. I should be a sailor for life; and although I had made up my mind to it before I had my letters from home, and was, as I thought, quite satisfied; yet, as soon as an opportunity was held out to me of returning, and the prospect of another kind of life was opened to me, my anxiety to return, and, at least, to have the chance of deciding upon my course for myself, was beyond measure. Beside that, I wished to be “equal to either fortune,” and to qualify myself for an officer’s berth, and a hide-house was no place to learn seamanship in. I had become experienced in hide-curing, and everything went on smoothly, and I had many opportunities of becoming acquainted with the people, and much leisure for reading and studying navigation; yet practical seamanship could only be got on board ship; therefore, I determined to ask to be taken on board the ship when she arrived. By the first of August, we finished curing all our hides, stored them away, cleaned out our vats, (in which latter work we spent two days, up to our knees in mud and the sediments of six months’ hide-curing, in a stench which would drive a donkey from his breakfast,) and got in readiness for the arrival of the ship, and had another leisure interval of three or four weeks; which I spent, as usual, in reading, writing, studying, making and mending my clothes, and getting my wardrobe in complete readiness, in case I should go on board the ship; and in fishing, ranging the woods with the dogs, and in occasional visits to the presidio and mission. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONCLUDED: A good deal of my time was spent in taking care of a little puppy, which I had selected from thirty-six, that were born within three days of one another, at our house. He was a fine, promising pup, with four white paws, and all the rest of his body of a dark brown. I built a little kennel for him, and kept him fastened there, away from the other dogs, feeding and disciplining him myself. In a few weeks, I got him in complete subjection, and he grew finely, was very much attached to me, and bid fair to be one of the leading dogs on the beach. I called him Bravo, and the only thing I regretted at the thought of leaving the beach, was parting with him.

July 22, Wednesday: The balloon of the master goldbeater and intrepid aeronaut Louis Lauriat rose from Providence (Moshasuck), Rhode Island and in one hour and 25 minutes transited to within 19 miles of Boston town.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th M 22nd 1835 (4th day) / We rode to Portsmouth to attend the Select Meeting - which was a time of some favour, & I was glad I was there it being the first I have attended Since we left Providence — We went to Uncle Stantons & spent the Afternoon - found him very poorly & the probability is that he is wearing out & cannot remain long with us - or cannot remain long on this side of the grave, tho’ he may outlive many who now seem in tolerable health — We know not who may be called first, when I reflect on the many that are young in life pass to their long homes & leave behind them, those that are far advanced in life - I often think, how uncertain all things are in this transitory World RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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AUGUST 1835

August: Henry Swasey McKean resigned as a Latin tutor at Harvard College, to begin the study of engineering under Loammi Baldwin II of Charlestown. (This might be exactly what Henry needed in order to finally make an entry into a real career after so many false starts — since he had from the very first been so very sharp at mathematics!) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August: Former Harvard College tutor and cause of the “Dunkin Revolution” Christopher Dunkin got married in Canada with Mary Dunkin, his step-father’s eldest daughter by his former marriage (she becoming, one supposes, Mary Dunkin Dunkin).

The 12th issue of Harvard’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:

HARVARDIANA • “Nothing so difficult as the Beginning except, perhaps, the End” by “Don Juan” • “Epigram; Written by an undergraduate, A.D. 1792” • “False Wit” by “Q” • “Latter-Day Thoughts.” • “Problem.” • “Rev. Mr. Burton’s Lecture before the American Institute, on the best Mode of fixing the Attention of the Young” by “X” • “Suggestions” • “The First Glimpse of Niagara” by “W” • “The Lost Comet” by “W” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August: Richard Henry Dana, Jr., at the port of San Diego, was getting bored with all the waiting.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Day after day, we went up the hill, but no ship was to be seen, and we began to form all sorts of conjectures as to her whereabouts; and the theme of every evening’s conversation at the different houses, and in our afternoon’s paseo upon the beach, was the ship– where she could be– had she been to San Francisco?– how many hides she would bring, etc., etc.

August: According to Leslie Perrin Wilson’s IN HISTORY’S EMBRACE: PAST AND PRESENT IN CONCORD,MASSACHUSETTS (Hollis NH: Hollis Publishing, 2007, page 2), “In 1835, in his treatment of the Concord Fight, historian Lemuel Shattuck succumbed to local partiality in his otherwise even-handed history of the town.”22 The first volume of the records of the town, containing its proceedings prior to 1696, about sixty years after its first settlement, is lost; and likewise the proceedings of the church prior to 1738, more than one hundred years after its organization. There is however in the clerk’s office an old volume, containing an imperfect record of several grants of land, and a few unconnected proceedings of the town; with an incomplete list of marriages, births, and deaths, prior to 1696.... A tradition has prevailed in Concord, that the early records of the town were burnt; and this is said to have taken place when part of the first settlers removed to Connecticut. If this were true, it could not apply to the town records from 1650 to 1696, nor to any part of the church records prior to 1739. This tradition is undoubtedly incorrect. The town records were destroyed in some other way, and, if burnt, it must have occurred subsequently to 1696. The loss of the church records was probably occasioned by the difficulty in the church detailed in the following History.... To the Hon. Abiel Heywood, town clerk of Concord, to the town clerks of the several surrounding towns, to the Secretary of the Commonwealth, to John Farmer, Esq. of Concord, N.H., and to various others, who have aided by the use of manuscripts, by the communication of facts, and by various services rendered him, the author feels under special obligations. L.S.

22. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835 (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Boston, August, 1835.

August: One of the things that Lemuel Shattuck wrote extensively about, in his new history of Concord volume A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD; MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS, FROM ITS EARLIEST SETTLEMENT TO 1832; AND OF THE ADJOINING TOWNS, BEDFORD, ACTON, LINCOLN, AND CARLISLE; CONTAINING VARIOUS NOTICES OF COUNTY AND STATE HISTORY NOT BEFORE PUBLISHED, was the personal trajectory of one of his town’s illustrious, Dr. John Cuming:

JOHN CUMING [of Concord], was born March 1, 1728. His father, Mr. Robert Cuming, was a distinguished Scotchman who emigrated to this country during the rebellion, about 1715, and, after residing a short time in Boston, removed to this town [Concord] about 1722, where he spent the remainder of his life in agricultural pursuits. John inherited a large part of his father’s estate. After acquiring a good academic education, and going through a regular course of medical studies, he embarked for Europe, where he completed his professional education, and afterwards returned to his native town. He received the honorary degree of Master of Arts at Harvard College in 1749. During the wars which prevailed in America from 1745 to 1763, he was several times called to take an active part. In one of these engagements he was wounded by a ball that lodged in his hip (where it remained till his death), captured by the Indians, and carried into Canada. The Indians at first treated him with severity; but after his remaining with them some time they became friendly, and by the influence of a French gentleman he obtained his liberty. He was out in 1758 and 1759, as Lieutenant-Colonel under Colonel Nichols, and was distinguished for the ability with which he discharged his duty. After the close of the war he acquired an extensive professional practice, in which he continued during life. He was early entrusted with important town affairs, and was often chosen Representative in the General HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Court. At ninety of the town-meetings, from 1763 to 1788, he presided as moderator. When the great work of the American revolution commenced, he was one of its firmest advocates. He was chairman of the committee of correspondence, inspection, and safety, almost every year during the war. He received the commission of justice of the peace from the crown, and was one of the first appointed by the Provincial Congress, and was president of the county Court of Sessions about twenty years. By his extensive professional business in this [Concord] and the neighboring towns, he acquired a considerable estate which enabled him to make liberal donations to this church and town, Harvard College, and other objects. To the poor he was remarkably benevolent. He regulated his whole life by the precepts of religion, of which he was an exemplary professor about forty-five years, and, it is said, never charged for professional services rendered on the Sabbath. He died suddenly, while on a visit in Chelmsford, July 3, 1788, aged 60. His benevolent and liberal disposition was manifest in the judicious disposition of his estate. Beside many other legacies, he bequeathed “for the use of the town of Concord three hundred pounds sterling, one moiety thereof to be equally distributed for the benefit of the private schools in the town of Concord, and to be especially under the direction of the selectmen for the time being; the other moiety thereof to be annually disposed of among the poor of said town, at the discretion of the minister and selectmen of the town of Concord for the time being, — the use of the above sum of money to be for the above purposes and for no other under any pretence whatever.” He also made it the residuary legatee of one quarter of his real estate undisposed of at the death of his wife. The whole amounted to £500 lawful money, or $1,666.66. He gave “to the church of Concord, fifty pounds sterling, to be laid out in silver vessels to furnish the communion table”; and also “twenty-five pounds sterling to be forever kept as a fund” to be disposed of by the minister and deacons for the benefit “of the poor communicants”; and also £20 to the Rev. Dr. Ripley. He bequeathed “to the University in Cambridge [Harvard College] three hundred pounds sterling, the income of the same to be appropriated for a professor of physic” and also made it a residuary legatee in the same manner as he did the town of Concord. READ SHATTUCK TEXT HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 9, Sunday: Henry Thoreau’s espousal of a “higher law,” a need to obey the dictates of one’s personal conscience even when this conflicted with the demands of statute law and of custom and precedent, can usefully be compared and contrasted with the attitude of the US Postmaster General, Amos Kendall, toward the South’s perceived need to purge abolitionist writings such as the Liberator from the US mail. On this date Kendall wrote to the postmaster of Charleston allowing that he could begin to search the mails for incoming materials like the Liberator, and burn any offending documents:23

We owe an obligation to the laws, but a higher one to the community in which we live and, if the former be perverted to destroy the latter, it is patriotism to disregard them.

Here is what Lewis Perry has had to say about this concept of the Higher Law, which, he pointed out, was “a phrase with important variations in meaning”: The phrase has been much favored by historians, but was not used frequently by nonresistant abolitionists. The higher law could refer simply to the obligations of Christian conscience which prevented compliance with an unjust civil statute (in which case it was a component of the divine government as understood by non- nonresistants). It could refer to the embodiment of universal, legal morality within the unwritten code of the land (as in [The Reverend Lysander] Spooner’s writings). It could also refer to a Christian standard of politics toward which saints were expected to drive their governments (whether this was a libertarian or authoritarian standard varied among political 23. This would be termed the “Post Office Lynch Law.” It was a volkish attitude worthy of the Third Reich. Thoreau, by espousing a higher law based not upon this putative “obligation to the community in which we live” but instead upon one’s personal relationship with God, was at least in part seeking to subvert such racist illegalism. Tongue in cheek, he turned the US Postmaster’s own argument quite against these racists and their all-white community. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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abolitionists). And in contemporary justification of John Brown it referred to a state of grace in which one man, by virtue of his faith in his ideas, became his own source of law, higher than any government. Nonresistants may be compared with Transcendentalists to clarify different implications of the higher law. With few exceptions, nonresistants believed that there was one grand source of law outside their sphere of understanding: God. Fear of affronting this authority dictated broad leeway of private judgment. It was clear that intermediate forms of coercion, government, and enslavement violated God’s law; the range of options left for private judgment was clearly restricted by God’s law. Transcendentalism, generally speaking, assumed correspondence between abstract verities and human impulses, and thus it trusted strictly individual, but nonetheless human, sources of law. Less attention was paid to God the lawmaker. A man had to obey his own nature. Lacking the security of fixed prohibitions, such as that violence and homicide are infractions of the divine law, the transcendentalist might be left in deeper difficulties than the nonresistant by the relativity of private judgment. He might feel unqualified admiration for John Brown as, in Emerson’s words, “a pure idealist, with no by-ends of his own,” as a man who “believed in his ideas to the extent that he existed to put them all into action; he said ‘he did not believe in moral suasion, he believed in putting the thing through.’” Bronson Alcott, the only one of those ordinarily called Transcendentalists who was also a Garrisonian nonresistant, provided one of the most striking examples of nonviolent action in the 1850s. When armed abolitionists were being repelled in their attempt to deliver a Negro fugitive from Boston’s court house, Alcott stepped forward and asked quietly, “Why are we not within?” His dignity was unruffled by a response of gunfire, but no one followed him. Though his action did not free anyone, Alcott furnished one of the rare examples of “practical Christianity” or active nonresistance. It is meaningful to say that he excelled other nonresistants on their own terms. We might conclude that, when the law of intuition was made identical with the Christian injunction of nonresistance, the result was proof against even such temptations as the plight of an imprisoned runaway. Alcott did not need to devise categories to exhort other men to violence. But no one else combined nonresistance and transcendentalism. And even Alcott, when he met John Brown, wrote ominously in his journal: “This is the man to do the Deed.” Most Transcendentalists spurned nonresistance. Brook Farm criticized Hopedale for presuming that divine laws, such as nonresistance, could be generalized in a creed. Orestes Brownson carried transcendentalism into a militant espousal of the interests of labor; in this cause he thought that armed resistance could be a Christian necessity. Although he wished that the world might comply with the principle of peace, he was shocked when nonresistants criticized Bunker Hill, “where Liberty and Slavery once met in the death-struggle.” Emerson praised the principle of nonresistance lavishly in his diaries, but these private judgments were part of an inner life, walled off from public action. [The Reverend] Adin Ballou could not HDT WHAT? INDEX

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admire Emerson for this reason. If some of his “transcendental abstractions” were put into practice, they might “regenerate the world. But the fatal hitch with such moralists is that neither they nor their admirers can sail out of the old ship of society as it is.” Emerson had told Ballou that his “utmost” would be to guide his own family above the plane of earthly strife. [The Reverend Theodore Parker] did not lay the same priority on private life; he was an active abolitionist. Clear on most subjects, he was ambiguous about nonresistance. Although he respected nonresistants, he stated that the doctrine “never went down with me” — and for a transcendentalist it was what went down with him that counted. He admitted that his private opinions had fluctuated considerably on nonresistance; the BIBLE was not altogether clear, but he was not in any case “inclined to settle such questions on the authority of Jesus.... I could not cast down my own nature and be faithless to my own soul.” He did not preach on the question, favorably or unfavorably, because his mind was not made up, because men needed no urging to fight, and because nonviolence was right in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. But in being faithful to his own ideas, of course, he was associated with the most violent quarters of antislavery; he was one of the “Secret Six” who conspired with John Brown. Thoreau deserves special attention since he is often called an anarchist and since his philosophy is sometimes compared to Garrisonianism. His views had little in common with nonresistance. Alcott’s program for the New England nonresistants was the distillation from their consciences of persuasive simple truths; these were the measures with which he sought to evangelize the coercive world. Thoreau, on the other hand, paid little attention to the existence of universal truths. He placed a somewhat mystical value on particular experiences; he doubted the possibility of universal reform with a Calvinistic vehemence. His few remarks on antislavery, including his praise of John Brown, reveal a violent potential in what often is considered a philosophy of principled nonviolence. Thoreau was generally critical of the reformers. In 1854, however, after Massachusetts had rendered a fugitive slave back to his owners, he spoke at a protest meeting in Framingham MA. Much of his time was spent in arguing the superiority of the countryside to the city and in attacking newspapers as bulwarks of slavery. He also used higher law to support arguments already familiar to antislavery — any perceiver of truth must judge the judges, law cannot make men free. But it was necessary for Thoreau to explain how he had gotten onto an antislavery platform in the first place: “I had never respected the government near to which I had lived, but I had foolishly thought I might manage to live here, minding my private affairs, and forget it.” How he was impressed that his life was passing, not through some neutral zone, but “wholly within hell.” Even this shock did not mean that he joined organized reform. But he was ready, four years later, to condemn it for failing to equal his admiration for the hero John Brown. “A man of rare common sense and directness of speech, as of action; a transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and principles,” was HDT WHAT? INDEX

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his conception of Brown. This soldier “had no need to invent anything but to tell the simple truth, and communicate his own resolution.” His martyrdom fed Thoreau’s hatred of the respectable, commercial world. But Thoreau was not opposed to any government except that which disturbed his peace of mind. He explicitly identified Brown with a government needing no suffrage to establish justice and resist tyranny and occupying a Christian beachhead. Thoreau brooded over the execution of John Brown and, a year later, he set his reflections down clearly. The martyr had been “the embodiment of principle,” and therefore it was irrelevant to pass judgment on his means: “The man who does not recognize in Brown’s words a wisdom and nobleness, and therefore an authority, superior to our laws, is a modern Democrat. This is the test by which to discover him. He is not wilfully but constitutionally blind on this side, and he is consistent with himself.” Harpers Ferry was a test of personal sanctification; sinners could be discriminated from saints according to the ways in which different persons responded to Brown. As Thoreau proceeded to ridicule the ambitions and even the physical appearance of his neighbors, he spoke in terms of original sin:

“It is not every man who can be a Christian, even in a very moderate sense, whatever education you give him. It is a matter of constitution and temperament, after all. He may have to be born again many times. I have known many a man who pretended to be a Christian, in whom it was ridiculous, for he had no genius for it. It is not every man who can be a free man, even.”

We may judge from this last sentence that not even in his veneration of Captain John Brown had Thoreau become an abolitionist. Brown became Thoreau’s personal Christ, a figure of unquestionable authority to liberate him from oppressive visions of authority. In the resulting scheme of law, Brown’s importance as a reformer was dismissed; he was simply a vengeful foe of the unregenerate. Thoreau was able to celebrate “Resistance to Civil Government” (this was the original title of his great 1849 essay on civil disobedience).

So intent was he on the signs of his private consciousness, however, that he scarcely spoke of sinless alternatives to civil HDT WHAT? INDEX

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government. It was enough to worship the heroism –the faith in ideas– of Captain John Brown. This brief look at the Transcendentalists gives perspective on the vacillations of the nonresistants in the 1850s. Nonresistants may not have measured up very well to their own original standards of pacifism, but they never ventured to proclaim any man a law unto himself. They also kept their minds on the goal of abolishing slavery more clearly than such a worshiper of John Brown as Thoreau. But transcendentalists and nonresistants shared the problem of how the validity of principles could be fixed between the sovereign individual and the sovereign God. The transcendentalists decided some men could embody principles and bring them to life. The nonresistant was left with the relativity of private judgment.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day Morning rose early & Seth Davis took me to the Lexington & returned home in plenty of time to have gone to Meeting, but feeling quite fatigued & unwell, was satisfied to stay at home but attended the Afternoon sitting, it was however to me a season of leanness tho’ Father was engaged in testimony & I have no doubt it was a time of favour & good feeling to some -but the body & mind are so connected that when one suffers the other is very likely to RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 10, Monday: At Niblo’s Garden in New-York Phineas Taylor Barnum started to exhibit blind and paralyzed black slave Joyce Heth under the pretense that it had been she who had nursed our illustrious founding father George Washington.

Dr. Reuben Crandall was arrested after Harry King, a Georgetown, Virginia man, called on him in his office while he was unpacking some crates and boxes of stuff. The young man sighted “a pamphlet on anti-slavery BOTANIZING lying on the table.” There were several such papers lying around, which the botanist had been using to press his plant specimens. He asked if he might have one to read, and “Dr. Crandall told him he might.” For this, Dr. Crandall would be held in the local lockup for almost nine months awaiting trial for his life for the treason of incitement to servile insurrection (the same statute, written by Thomas Jefferson, under which Captain John Brown would be tried and hanged) — and while living under these conditions he would acquire the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“consumption,” or pulmonary tuberculosis, that would destroy him.

Francis Scott Key, the District of Columbia’s DA, would attempt to persuade the judge to impose the death penalty upon Prudence Crandall’s younger brother.

Dr. Crandall had been charged with promulgating a false doctrine that the black American had equal rights with the white, with casting reflections on the chivalry of the south, and with intent to cause unrest among Negroes.24 It was suggested that he had himself authored publications urging immediate emancipation of slaves. Clearly this Un-American agitator deserved to be dead. A crowd of white Navy Yard workers therefore went to the Washington County Jail where he was being held, to agitate for his lynching, and along the way a HDT WHAT? INDEX

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free black tavernkeeper, Beverly Snow, made some sort of derogatory remark about their wives. The crowd began by thoroughly trashing Snow’s tavern, and then over two days and three nights of rioting, it smashed the windows of Negro churches, the Negro school, and various homes.

Drastic legislation would follow this “Snow Riot” in DC — legislation further restricting the rights of free Negroes to assemble.25

As part of the legal process, Dr. Crandall would be interrogated about his attitudes toward people of other races. There was a concern that he might share to some degree in the radical attitudes of his notorious elder sister Prudence. He assured his captors that “he would break up the school if he could, but his sister was a very obstinate girl.” He informed them that he had another sister, younger, who was sharing in his older sister’s attitudes, but that he had been hoping “that he could, in all events, get her away” from this bad influence.

24. THE TRIAL OF REUBEN CRANDALL, M.D., CHARGED WITH PUBLISHING AND CIRCULATING SEDITIOUS AND INCENDIARY PAPERS, &C. IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, WITH THE INTENT OF EXCITING SERVILE INSURRECTION . . . BY A MEMBER OF THE BAR. Washington DC, Printed for the Proprietors, 1836. (This 48-page pamphlet alleged that “The Trial of Crandall presents the first case of a man charged with endeavoring to excite insurrection among slaves and the free colored population that was ever brought before a judicial tribunal.”) 25. Provine, Dorothy Sproles. THE FREE NEGRO IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 1800-1860. Thesis Louisiana State University Department of History, 1959, 1963 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 15, Saturday: At a pro-slavery rally in Faneuil Hall, 1,500 prominent Bostonians signed the pledge to support all the constitutional protections of an American’s free right to own other human beings.

Meanwhile, out in Concord, using some of his ready funds from the Tucker estate, Waldo Emerson was paying cash for the 7-year-old “Coolidge Castle” between Revolutionary Ridge and Mill Brook, beside the Cambridge Turnpike near where it joins the Lexington Road in Concord. About $50000 worth ofremodeling and landscaping would turn out to be necessary.

I bought my house & two acres six rods of land of John T. Coolidge for 3500 dollars.

The name of the home would be changed by the Emersons to “Bush.” The location of this two-acre plot was not ideal for there was a lot of commerce by wagon and cart, and fast, dust-raising stagecoaches, on these roads, there was an elementary school across the road, and if the windows were open one could occasionally hear screams from the red brick poorhouse on the other side of the brook.26

August 20, Thursday:In Boston, Waldo Emerson was lecturing “On the Best Mode of Inspiring a Correct Taste in English Literature” before the American Institute of Instruction. (This would eventually be printed in EARLY LECTURES, Volume I, pages 209-216.)

26. Putt Meriam owned a narrow triangle of land opposite the Emerson home, and wanted to get a good sum of money from Emerson for this land. So he dragged a miserable shed along the road and placed it on this land, where it could be seen from the Emerson home. Under cover of darkness, a band of neighbors equipped with ladders and ropes would pull this spite shed down, but they would make so much noise in the process that Meriam would hear them and run out and manage to jerk a green jacket off one of them as they made their escape. Unfortunately, Meriam would be unable to determine from this green jacket who exactly it was who had pulled down his ugly spite shed. [RE-SITUATE THIS NOTE IF I CAN FIND OUT THE YEAR IN WHICH THIS OCCURRED] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 25, Tuesday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. recorded the arrival of the Alert, in its destination port of San Diego, out of Boston.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Tuesday, August 25th. This morning, the officer in charge of our house went off beyond the point a fishing, in a small canoe, with two Kanakas; and we were sitting quietly in our room at the hidehouse, when, just before noon, we heard a complete yell of “Sail ho!” breaking out from all parts of the beach, at once,– from the Kanakas’ oven to the Rosa’s house. In an instant, every one was out of his house; and there was a fine, tall ship, with royals and skysails set, bending over before the strong afternoon breeze, and coming round the point. Her yards were braced sharp up; every sail was set, and drew well; the Yankee ensign was flying from her mizen-peak; and having the tide in her favor, she came up like a race-horse. It was nearly six months since a new vessel had entered San Diego, and of course, every one was on the qui-vive. She certainly made a fine appearance. Her light sails were taken in, as she passed the low, sandy tongue of land, and clewing up her head sails, she rounded handsomely to, under her mizen topsail, and let go the anchor at about a cable’s length from the shore. In a few minutes, the topsail yards were manned, and all three of the topsails furled at once. From the fore top-gallant yard, the men slid down the stay to furl the jib, and from the mizen top-gallant yard, by the stay, into the maintop, and thence to the yard; and the men on the topsail yards came down the lifts to the yard-arms of the courses. The sails were furled with great care, the bunts triced up by jiggers, and the jibs stowed in cloth. The royal yards were then struck, tackles got upon the yard-arms and the stay, the long-boat hoisted out, a large anchor carried astern, and the ship moored. Then the captain’s gig was lowered away from the quarter, and a boat’s crew of fine lads, between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, pulled the captain ashore. The gig was a light whale-boat, handsomely painted, and fitted up with cushions, etc., in the stern sheets. We immediately attacked the boat’s crew, and got very thick with them in a few minutes. We had much to ask about Boston, their passage out, etc., and they were very curious to know about the life we were leading upon the beach. One of them offered to exchange with me; which was just what I wanted; and we had only to get the permission of the captain. After dinner, the crew began discharging their hides, and, as we had nothing to do at the hide-houses, we were ordered aboard to help them. I had now my first opportunity of seeing the ship which I hoped was to be my home for the next year. She looked as well on board as she did from without. Her decks were wide and roomy, (there being no poop, or house on deck, which disfigures the after part of most of our vessels,) flush, fore and aft, and as white as snow, which the crew told us was from constant use of holystones. There was no foolish gilding and gingerbread work, to take the eye of landsmen and passengers, but everything was “ship-shape and Bristol fashion.” There was no rust, no dirt, no rigging hanging slack, no fag ends of ropes and “Irish pendants” aloft, and the yards were squared “to a t” by lifts and braces. The mate was a fine, hearty, noisy fellow, with a voice like a lion, and always wide awake. He was “a man, every inch of him,” as the sailors said; and though “a bit of a horse,” and “a hard customer,” yet he was generally liked by the crew. There was also a second and third mate, a carpenter, sailmaker, steward, cook, etc., and twelve, including boys, before the mast. She had, on board, seven thousand hides, which she had collected at the windward, and also horns and tallow. All these we began discharging, from both gangways at once, into the two boats, the second mate having charge of the launch, and the third mate of the pinnace. For several days, we were employed in this way, until all the hides were taken out, when the crew began taking in ballast, and we returned to our old work, hide-curing. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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This is the house that jack bought. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 29, Saturday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. recorded the arrival of the brig Catalina in San Diego.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Saturday, Aug. 29th. Arrived, brig Catalina, from the windward. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 30, Sunday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. investigated the Alert and liked what he saw.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Sunday, 30th. This was the first Sunday that the crew had been in San Diego, and of course they were all for going up to see the town. The Indians came down early, with horses to let for the day, and all the crew, who could obtain liberty, went off to the Presidio and mission, and did not return until night. I had seen enough of San Diego, and went on board and spent the day with some of the crew, whom I found quietly at work in the forecastle, mending and washing their clothes, and reading and writing. They told me that the ship stopped at Callao in the passage out, and there lay three weeks. She had a passage of little over eighty days from Boston to Callao, which is one of the shortest on record. There, they left the Brandywine frigate, and other smaller American ships of war, and the English frigate Blonde, and a French seventy-four. From Callao they came directly to California, and had visited every port on the coast, including San Francisco. The forecastle in which they lived was large, tolerably well lighted by bulls-eyes, and, being kept perfectly clean, had quite a comfortable appearance; at least, it was far better than the little, black, dirty hole in which I had lived so many months on board the Pilgrim. By the regulations of the ship, the forecastle was cleaned out every morning, and the crew, being very neat, kept it clean by some regulations of their own, such as having a large spitbox always under the steps and between the bits, and obliging every man to hang up his wet clothes, etc. In addition to this, it was holystoned every Saturday morning. In the after part of the ship was a handsome cabin, a dining-room, and a trade-room, fitted out with shelves and furnished with all sorts of goods. Between these and the forecastle was the “betweendecks,” as high as the gun deck of a frigate; being six feet and a half, under the beams. These between-decks were holystoned regularly, and kept in the most perfect order; the carpenter’s bench and tools being in one part, the sailmaker’s in another, and boat-swain’s locker, with the spare rigging, in a third. A part of the crew slept here, in hammocks swung fore and aft from the beams, and triced up every morning. The sides of the between-decks were clapboarded, the knees and stanchions of iron, and the latter made to unship. The crew said she was as tight as a drum, and a fine sea boat, her only fault being, that of most fast ships,– that she was wet, forward. When she was going, as she sometimes would, eight or nine knots on a wind, there would not be a dry spot forward of the gangway. The men told great stories of her sailing, and had great confidence in her as a “lucky ship.” She was seven years old, and had always been in the Canton trade, and never had met with an accident of any consequence, and had never made a passage that was not shorter than the average. The third mate, a young man of about eighteen years of age, nephew of one of the owners, had been in the ship from a small boy, and “believed in the ship;” and the chief mate thought more of her than he would of a wife and family. The ship lay about a week longer in port, when, having discharged her cargo and taken in ballast, she prepared to get under weigh. I now made my application to the captain to go on board. He told me that I could go home in the ship when she sailed (which I knew before); and, finding that I wished to be on board while she was on the coast, said he had no objection, if I could find one of my own age to exchange with me, for the time. This, I easily accomplished, for they were glad to change the scene by a few months on shore, and, moreover, escape the winter and the southeasters; and I went on board the next day, with my chest and hammock, and found myself once more afloat. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 30, Sunday: Felix Mendelssohn arrived in Leipzig to take up directorship of the Gewandhaus Orchestra.

Friend Angelina Emily Grimké wrote to William Lloyd Garrison informing him that she had made a commitment to abolitionism.

Friend John Greenleaf Whittier and the Englishman George Thompson were egged and stoned in Concord, New Hampshire, on account of their having favored “the niggers” in a speech they had just made in Plymouth, New Hampshire:

“I maintained the testimony and resisted not — I gave place unto wrath.”27

One of the thrown stones injured Whittier’s leg. Afterward, the two stopped off at an inn where the landlord asked if they had heard of the ruckus. As they left, stepping into their chaise, Whittier introduced Thompson, then Thompson introduced Whittier, and they drove off with the innkeeper “standing, mouth wide open, gazing after us.” However, Whittier would comment repeatedly, elsewhere, that one cannot expect “that because men are reformers, they will therefore be better than other people.” [According to Russel B. Nye’s FETTERED FREEDOM: CIVIL LIBERTIES AND THE SLAVERY CONTROVERSY, 1830-1860 (Michigan: Michigan State UP, 1963, page 203), it was Whittier and Samuel May and they were stoned. Would this have been a separate occasion, in New-York earlier, or in Boston later?]

I was mobbed in Concord, N.H., in company with George Thompson, afterwards member of the British Parliament, and narrowly escaped from great danger. I kept Thompson, whose life was hunted for, concealed in our lonely farm-house for two weeks. I was in Boston during the great mob in Washington Street, soon after, and was threatened with personal violence.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 30 of 8M / Both Meetings were solid & very good ones to me, & after the Afternoon Meeting Attended the funeral of John H Barbers Child - in both Meetings & at the funeral Father had short testimonies & I thought at the funeral was particularly favoured. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

27. To the people who were engaging in the antislavery struggle, this year of 1835 would become known as “the mob year.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 31, Monday: Harrison Gray Otis lectured at another pro-slavery rally at Faneuil Hall in beautiful downtown Boston, condemning the abolitionists. The hall was packed with anti-abolitionist Bostonians. Meanwhile, a gallows was being erected in front of the home of the Garrisons. WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON

US Marines again went ashore to protect American interests in Callao and Lima, Peru during an attempted revolution. They would remain until December 7th. US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS

Felix Mendelssohn attended a rehearsal of the Gewandhaus orchestra for the 1st time since becoming its director. At this rehearsal someone introduced him to Robert Schumann.

Penny Magazine:

http://www.history.rochester.edu/pennymag/219.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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SEPTEMBER 1835

September: This month’s issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:28

HARVARDIANA

28. This “Confessions of a Poet” piece was by “S.T.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September: As William Whiting (Junior) began to attend the Harvard Law School, his replacement as preceptor in the Concord Academy would be Charles C. Shackford, who had just graduated there as the top scholar in the class and would go on to become a professor of Rhetoric at Cornell University. NEW “HARVARD MEN”

John Shepard Keyes, one of the pupils, would report: Mr. C.C. Shackford the first scholar in the class of 1835, succeeded in September of that year Mr Whiting, who began then the study of law Mr S was a very different man, as bright and keen, but without ambition, and bilious, moody, and very unequal in his instruction, at times thrilling and inspiriting and at others sour and cross and depressing Our training under the first teacher and the impulse carried the older scholars through the second year, but the newcomers of whom there were several didnt have that help and the school so far ran down that it closed with Mr Shuckfords twelve month. He was a strange compound, and rather an exciting mystery to the older girls, to whom he paid great deference, and soon became blindly in love first with my charmer and then when rejected, by her, with the next prettiest but most wayward of them all. How he fared in this pursuit was the theme of endless discussion of the older scholars and took much time from our studies to watch the traces of success or despair. Some of us thought them engaged definitely others that she refused, and it ended in smoke if there was ever more to it. And he has been married twice, and is a Professor at Cornell, and she a matron of a large family and high position in Concord, of course like a dutiful pupil and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the oldest boy in the school I was bound to follow such an example, and did my utmost to plague his life, and make him feel the jealousy from which I suffered, as much as he did. But alas how time cures all wounds.— J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

David Henry Thoreau was back at Harvard College for his Junior year as of the age of eighteen, living in 31 Hollis Hall. This month his assigned composition was on classroom discipline, “The comparative moral policy of severe and mild punishments.” The end of all punishment is the welfare of the state — the good of community at large — not the suffering of an individual. It matters not to the lawgiver what a man deserves, for to say nothing of the impossibility of settling this point, it would be absurd to pass laws against prodigality, want of charity, and many other faults of the same nature, as if man was to be frightened into a virtuous life, though these in a great measure constitute a vicious one. We leave this to a higher tribunal. So far only as public interest is concerned, is punishment justifiable — if we overstep this bound our own conduct becomes criminal. Let us observe in the first place the effects of severity. Does the rigor of the punishment increase the dread operating upon the mind to dissuade us from the act? It certainly does if it be unavoidable. But where death is a general punishment, though some advantage may seem to arise from the severity, yet this will invariably be more than counterbalanced by the uncertainty attending the execution of the law. We find that in England, for instance, where, in Blackstone’s day,29 160 offences were considered capital, between the years 1805 and 1817 of 655 who were indicted for stealing, 113 being capitally convicted, not one was executed; and yet no blame could attach to the conduct of the juries, the fault was in the law. Had death, on the other hand, been certain, the law could have existed but a very short time. Feelings of natural justice, together with public sentiment, would have concurred to abolish it altogether. In fact wherever those crimes which are made capital form a numerous class, and petty thefts and forgeries are raised to a level with murder, burglary, and the like, the law seems to defeat its own ends. The injured influenced, perhaps, by compassion, forbear to prosecute, and thus are numerous frauds allowed to escape with impunity, for want of a penalty proportionate to the offense. Juries too, actuated by the same motives, adopt the course pointed out by their feelings. As long as one crime is more heinous and more offensive than another, it is absolutely necessary that a corresponding distinction be made in punishing them. Otherwise, if the penalty be the same, men will come to regard the guilt as equal in each case. It is enough that the evil attending conviction exceed the expected advantage. This I say is sufficient, provided the consequences be certain, and the expected benefit be not obtained. For it is the hope of escaping punishment — a hope

29. Sir William Blackstone’s 1765-1769 COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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which never deserts the rogue as long as life itself remains, that renders him blind to the consequences, and enables him to look despair in the face. Take from him this hope, and you will find that certainty is more effectual than severity of punishment. No man will deliberately cut his own fingers. The vicious are often led on from one crime to another still more atrocious by the very fault of the law, the penalty being no greater, but the certainty of escaping detection being very much increased. In this case they act up to the old saying, that “one may as well be hung for stealing an old sheep as a lamb.” Some have asked, “cannot reward be substituted for punishment? Is hope a less powerful incentive to action than fear? When a political pharmacopoeia has the command of both ingredients, wherefore employ the bitter instead of the sweet?” This reasoning is absurd. Does a man deserve to be rewarded for refraining from murder? Is the greatest virtue merely negative, or does it rather consist in the performance of a thousand everyday duties, hidden from the eye of the world? Would it be good policy to make the most exalted virtue even, a subject of reward here? Nevertheless, I question whether a pardon has not a more salutary effect, on the minds of those not immediately affected by it, vicious as well as honest, than a public execution. It would seem then, that the welfare of society calls for a certain degree of severity; but this degree must bear some proportion to the offence. If this distinction be lost sight of, punishment becomes unjust as well as useless — we are not to act upon the principle that crime is to be prevented at any rate, cost what it may; this is obviously erroneous.

September 3, Thursday: David Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, for the 2d time, the 1st volume of Charles Rollin (1661-1741)’s THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIANS, CARTHAGINIANS, ASSYRIANS, BABYLONIANS, MEDES AND PERSIANS, MACEDONIANS, AND GRECIANS. INCLUDING A HISTORY OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES OF THE ANCIENTS. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH. THE 12TH EDITION, REVISED, CORRECTED, AND ILLUSTRATED WITH A SET OF MAPS NEWLY ENGRAVED (first printed 1730-1738; one of the first 17 English editions, possibly the one issued in London in 1813).

This time he also checked out the atlas to this set of volumes. Our guy would comment later of the catacombs full of preserved death, of our museums full of stuffed animals, and of such history textbooks stuffed full with irrelevant facts, that: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“I hate museums, there is nothing so weighs upon the spirits. They are catacombs of nature. They are preserved death. One green bud of Spring one willow catkin, one faint trill from some migrating sparrow, might set the world on its legs again. I know not whether I muse most at the bodies stuffed with cotton and sawdust — or those stuffed with bowels and fleshy fibre. The life that is in a single green weed is of more worth than all this death. They are very much like the written history of the world — and I read Rollin and Ferguson with the same feeling.” –JOURNAL; September 24, 1843 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau also checked out the 1st volume of the Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729-1812) translation of Homer’s HOMERI ILIAS CUM BREVI ANNOTATIONE CURANTE C.G. HEYNE. Lipsiae: in Libraria Weidmannia, 1804)

Thoreau also checked out volumes 1, 2, and 5 of the five volumes of THE CANTERBURY TALES OF CHAUCER; WITH AN ESSAY ON HIS LANGUAGE AND VERSIFICATION, AN INTRODUCTORY DISCOURSE, NOTES AND A 30 GLOSSARY BY THO. TYRWHITT, ESQ.... (London: W. Pickering, 1830). CANTERBURY TALES, I CANTERBURY TALES, II CANTERBURY TALES, V

“There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away” — Emily Dickinson

In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 9th M 3rd 1835 / Owing to the alteration of the time of 30. The record of the books Thoreau checked out from the Harvard Library during his Sophomore (1834-1835) and Junior (1835- 1836) school years is of particular interest to us, because Charging Book “D” of the “Institute of 1770” –the book which contained the record of Thoreau’s borrowings from that student club’s library– is missing. This record may yet turn up — but its present absence is a serious hole in Thoreau scholarship. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Holding the Meeting not being given out last first day, Vizt from 1 / 2 Past 10 to 11 OClock the gathering was scattered, as it is apt to be at every change which takes place. — it was However a pretty solid good Meeting - Several from other places were in attendance & Hannah Dennis spoke. —In the Afternoon I called on my Cousins Henry & Thos Gould at their respective Mills. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 5, Saturday: A blind and paralyzed black slave, Joyce Heth, was placed on exhibit in Boston’s Concert Hall by Phineas Taylor Barnum under the pretense that it had been she who had nursed our illustrious founding father George Washington.31

Penny Magazine:

http://www.history.rochester.edu/pennymag/220.htm

September 8, Tuesday: Commander George Back arrived in London and received a hero’s welcome. (Page 472) On my arrival in London, I had the honour of laying my chart and drawings before the Right Hon. Lord Glenelg, Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies, [...] I was soon after honoured with an audience by His Majesty; who was 31. It seemed to startle no one in Boston, that this person was the personal property of P.T. Barnum. Had his claim been truthful, Ms. Heth would have at this point been in the 162d year of her age. To demonstrate the truthfulness of his claim, he would on February 25, 1836 be submitting her corpse to the indignity of a public autopsy in the City Saloon of New-York, admission price 50¢. When at the conclusion of the autopsy the surgeon David L. Rogers would announce that in his estimation Ms. Heth hadn’t been more than 80 at death, Barnum would counter that the corpse wasn’t her, that she was still alive, that in fact at that moment she was on tour in Europe. Later, he would acknowledge that this had indeed been the deceased Ms. Heth, while asserting that subsequent to this autopsy he had provided the remains a decent burial (we of course must believe him, him being a white man and all that). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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condescending enough to manifest a gracious interest in the discoveries which it had been my good fortune to make, and to express his approbation of my humble efforts, first in the cause of humanity, and next in that of geographical and scientific research. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Richard Henry Dana, Jr. served his first day’s duty aboard the Alert. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Tuesday, Sept. 8th. This was my first day’s duty on board the ship; and though a sailor’s life is a sailor’s life wherever it may be, yet I found everything very different here from the customs of the brig Pilgrim. After all hands were called, at daybreak, three minutes and a half were allowed for every man to dress and come on deck, and if any were longer than that, they were sure to be overhauled by the mate, who was always on deck, and making himself heard all over the ship. The head-pump was then rigged, and the decks washed down by the second and third mates; the chief mate walking the quarter-deck and keeping a general supervision, but not deigning to touch a bucket or a brush. Inside and out, fore and aft, upper deck and between decks, steerage and forecastle, rail, bulwarks, and water-ways, were washed, scrubbed and scraped with brooms and canvas, and the decks were wet and sanded all over, and then holystoned. The holystone is a large, soft stone, smooth on the bottom, with long ropes attached to each end, by which the crew keep it sliding fore and aft, over the wet, sanded decks. Smaller hand-stones, which the sailors call “prayer- books,” are used to scrub in among the crevices and narrow places, where the large holystone will not go. An hour or two, we were kept at this work, when the head-pump was manned, and all the sand washed off the decks and sides. Then came swabs and squilgees; and after the decks were dry, each one went to his particular morning job. There were five boats belonging to the ship,– launch, pinnace, jolly-boat, larboard quarter-boat, and gig,– each of which had a coxswain, who had charge of it, and was answerable for the order and cleanness of it. The rest of the cleaning was divided among the crew; one having the brass and composition work about the capstan; another the bell, which was of brass, and kept as bright as a gilt button; a third, the harness-cask; another, the man-rope stanchions; others, the steps of the forecastle and hatchways, which were hauled up and holystoned. Each of these jobs must be finished before breakfast; and, in the meantime, the rest of the crew filled the scuttle-butt, and the cook scraped his kids (wooden tubs out of which the sailors eat) and polished the hoops, and placed them before the galley, to await inspection. When the decks were dry, the lord paramount made his appearance on the quarter-deck, and took a few turns, when eight bells were struck, and all hands went to breakfast. Half an hour was allowed for breakfast, when all hands were called again; the kids, pots, bread-bags, etc., stowed away; and, this morning, preparations were made for getting under weigh. We paid out on the chain by which we swung; hove in on the other; catted the anchor; and hove short on the first. This work was done in shorter time than was usual on board the brig; for though everything was more than twice as large and heavy, the cat-block being as much as a man could lift, and the chain as large as three of the Pilgrim’s, yet there was a plenty of room to move about in, more discipline and system, more men, and more good will. Every one seemed ambitious to do his best: officers and men knew their duty, and all went well. As soon as she was hove short, the mate, on the forecastle, gave the order to loose the sails, and, in an instant, every one sprung into the rigging, up the shrouds, and out on the yards, scrambling by one another;– the first up the best fellow,– cast off the yard- arm gaskets and bunt gaskets, and one man remained on each yard, holding the bunt jigger with a turn round the tye, all ready to let go, while the rest laid down to man the sheets and halyards. The mate then hailed the yards– “All ready forward?”– “All ready the cross-jack yards?” etc., etc., and “Aye, aye, sir!” being returned from each, the word was given to let go; and in the twinkling of an eye, the ship, which had shown nothing but her bare yards, was covered with her loose canvas, from the royal-mast-heads to the decks. Every one then laid down, except one man in each top, to overhaul the rigging, and the topsails were hoisted and sheeted home; all three yards going to the mast-head at once, the larboard watch hoisting the fore, the starboard watch the main, and five light hands, (of whom I was one,) picked from the two watches, the mizen. The yards were then trimmed, the anchor weighed, the cat-block hooked on, the fall stretched out, manned by “all hands and the cook,” and the anchor brought to the head with “cheerily men!” in full chorus. The ship being now under weigh, the light sails were set, one after another, and she was under full sail, before she had passed the sandy point. The fore royal, which fell to my lot, (being in the mate’s watch,) was more than twice as large as that of the Pilgrim, and, though I could handle the brig’s easily, I found my hands full, with this, especially as there were no jacks to the ship; everything being for neatness, and nothing left for Jack to hold on by, but his eyelids. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONCLUDED:

As soon as we were beyond the point, and all sail out, the order was given, “Go below the watch!” and the crew said that, ever since they had been on the coast, they had had “watch and watch,” while going from port to port; and, in fact, everything showed that, though strict discipline was kept, and the utmost was required of every man, in the way of his duty, yet, on the whole, there was very good usage on board. Each one knew that he must be a man, and show himself smart when at his duty, yet every one was satisfied with the usage; and a contented crew, agreeing with one another, and finding no fault, was a contrast indeed with the small, hard-used, dissatisfied, grumbling, desponding crew of the Pilgrim. It being the turn of our watch to go below, the men went to work, mending their clothes, and doing other little things for themselves; and I, having got my wardrobe in complete order at San Diego, had nothing to do but to read. I accordingly overhauled the chests of the crew, but found nothing that suited me exactly, until one of the men said he had a book which “told all about a great highwayman,” at the bottom of his chest, and producing it, I found, to my surprise and joy, that it was nothing else than Bulwer’s Paul Clifford. This, I seized immediately, and going to my hammock, lay there, swinging and reading, until the watch was out. The between-decks were clear, the hatchways open, and a cool breeze blowing through them, the ship under easy way, and everything comfortable. I had just got well into the story, when eight bells were struck, and we were all ordered to dinner. After dinner came our watch on deck for four hours, and, at four o’clock, I went below again. turned into my hammock, and read until the dog watch. As no lights were allowed after eight o’clock, there was no reading in the night watch. Having light winds and calms, we were three days on the passage, and each watch below, during the daytime, I spent in the same manner, until I had finished my book. I shall never forget the enjoyment I derived from it. To come across anything with the slightest claims to literary merit, was so unusual, that this was a perfect feast to me. The brilliancy of the book, the succession of capital hits, lively and characteristic sketches, kept me in a constant state of pleasing sensations. It was far too good for a sailor. I could not expect such fine times to last long. While on deck, the regular work of the ship went on. The sailmaker and carpenter worked between decks, and the crew had their work to do upon the rigging, drawing yarns, making spun-yarn, etc., as usual in merchantmen. The night watches were much more pleasant than on board the Pilgrim. There, there were so few in a watch, that, one being at the wheel, and another on the look-out, there was no one left to talk with; but here, we had seven in a watch, so that we had long yarns, in abundance. After two or three night watches, I became quite well acquainted with all the larboard watch. The sailmaker was the head man of the watch, and was generally considered most experienced seaman on board. He was a thoroughbred old man-of-war’s-man, had been to sea twenty-two years, in all kinds of vessels– men-of-war, privateers, slavers, and merchantmen;– everything except whalers, which a thorough sailor despises, and will always steer clear of, if he can. He had, of course, been in all parts of the world, and was remarkable for drawing a long bow. His yarns frequently stretched through a watch, and kept all hands awake. They were always amusing from their improbability, and, indeed, he never expected to be believed, but spun them merely for amusement; and as he had some humor and a good supply of man-of-war slang and sailor’s salt phrases, he always made fun. Next to him in age and experience, and, of course, in standing in the watch, was an English-man, named Harris, of whom I shall have more to say hereafter. Then, came two or three Americans, who had been the common run of European and South American voyages, and one who had been in a “spouter,” and, of course, had all the whaling stories to himself. Last of all, was a broad-backed, thick-headed boy from Cape Cod, who had been in mackerel schooners, and was making his first voyage in a square-rigged vessel. He was born in Hingham, and of course was called “Bucketmaker.” The other watch was composed of about the same number. A tall, fine-looking Frenchman, with coal-black whiskers and curly hair, a first-rate seaman, and named John, (one name is enough for a sailor,) was the head man of the watch. Then came two Americans (one of whom had been a dissipated young man of property and family, and was reduced to duck trowsers and monthly wages,) a German, an English lad, named Ben, who belonged on the mizen topsail yard with me, and was a good sailor for his years, and two Boston boys just from the public schools. The carpenter sometimes mustered in the starboard watch, and was an old sea-dog, a Swede by birth, and accounted the best helmsman in the ship. This was our ship’s company, beside cook and steward, who were blacks, three mates, and the captain. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

September 10, Thursday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. took up his new duty station, manning the weather cross- jack braces, and described the labor-intensive nature of configuring a ship to be driven by the power of the winds. (The large crews that were necessary, in order to man all duty-stations at once, and the intricate coordination which was requisite, and the extensive skills which could only be learned by on-the-job training, were what would in a few years make it economical to transition from free-fueled weightless wind power to costly- and heavy-fueled steam power.)

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: The second day out, the wind drew ahead, and we had to beat up the coast; so that, in tacking ship, I could see the regulations of the vessel. Instead of going wherever was most convenient, and running from place to place, wherever work was to be done, each man had his station. A regular tacking and wearing bill was made out. The chief mate commanded on the forecastle, and had charge of the head sails and the forward part of the ship. Two of the best men in the ship– the sailmaker from our watch, and John, the Frenchman, from the other, worked the forecastle. The third mate commanded in the waist, and, with the carpenter and one man, worked the main tack and bowlines; the cook, ex-officio, the fore sheet, and the steward the main. The second mate had charge of the after yards, and let go the lee fore and main braces. I was stationed at the weather cross-jack braces; three other light hands at the lee; one boy at the spanker- sheet and guy; a man and a boy at the main topsail, top-gallant, royal braces; and all the rest of the crew– men and boys– tailled on to the main brace. Every one here knew his station, must be there when all hands were called to put the ship about, and was answerable for every rope committed to him. Each man’s rope must be let go and hauled in at the order, properly made fast, and neatly coiled away when the ship was about. As soon as all hands are at their stations, the captain, who stands on the weather side of the quarter- deck, makes a sign to the man at the wheel to put it down, and calls out “Helm’s a lee’!” “Helm’s a lee’!” answers the mate on the forecastle, and the head sheets are let go. “Raise tacks and sheets!” says the captain; “tacks and sheets!” is passed forward, and the fore tack and main sheet are let go. The next thing is to haul taught for a swing. The weather cross-jack braces and the lee main braces are each belayed together upon two pins, and ready to be let go; and the opposite braces hauled taught. “Main topsail haul!” shouts the captain; the braces are let go; and if he has taken his time well, the yards swing round like a top; but if he is too late, or too soon, it is like drawing teeth. The after yards are then braced up and belayed, the main sheet hauled aft, the spanker eased over to leeward, and the men from the braces stand by the head yards. “Let go and haul!” says the captain; the second mate lets go the weather fore braces, and the men haul in to leeward. The mate, on the forecastle, looks out for the head yards. “Well, the fore topsail yard!” “Top-gallant yard’s well!” “Royal yard too much! Haul into windward! So! well that!” “Well all!” Then the starboard watch board the main tack, and the larboard watch lay forward and board the fore tack and haul down the jib sheet, clapping a tackle upon it, if it blows very fresh. The after yards are then trimmed, the captain generally looking out for them himself. “Well the cross-jack yard!” “Small pull the main top-gallant yard!” “Well that!” “Well the mizen top-gallant yard!” “Cross-jack yards all well!” “Well all aft!” “Haul taught to windward!” Everything being now trimmed and in order, each man coils up the rigging at his own station, and the order is given– “Go below the watch!” During the last twenty-four hours of the passage, we beat off and on the land, making a tack about once in four hours, so that I had a sufficient opportunity to observe the working of the ship; and certainly, it took no more men to brace about this ship’s lower yards, which were more than fifty feet square, than it did those of the Pilgrim, which were not much more than half the size; so much depends upon the manner in which the braces run, and the state of the blocks; and Captain Wilson, of the Ayacucho, who was afterwards a passenger with us, upon a trip to windward, said he had no doubt that our ship worked two men lighter than his brig.

Thursday In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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5th day 10th of 9 M / Our meeting was Silent, & After Meeting with two other committee men had an opportunity with Nathan Monro on account of his application, for Membership - He is now over 80 Years of Age & has been a dilligent attender of our Meetings for more than 50 Years both on first & on Week days - It is One Year ago this day that Aunt Nancy Carpenter departed this life since which time we have occupied her house & kept her family the same as she left it. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

September 11, Friday: In Northampton, Samuel Whitmarsh the wannabee silk manufacturer bought $7,500 more farmland, 90 acres including oil and grist mills and their water rights on the Mill River. Gotta spend money to make money.

Far away at sea, aboard the Alert, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. met up again with the Pilgrim.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Friday, Sept. 11th. This morning, at four o’clock, went below, San Pedro point being about two leagues ahead, and the ship going on under studding-sails. In about an hour we were waked up by the hauling of the chain about decks, and in a few minutes “All hands ahoy!” was called; and we were all at work, hauling in and making up the studding-sails, overhauling the chain forward, and getting the anchors ready. “The Pilgrim is there at anchor,” said some one, as we were running about decks; and taking a moment’s look over the rail, I saw my old friend, deeply laden, lying at anchor inside of the kelp. In coming to anchor, as well as in tacking, each one had his station and duty. The light sails were clewed up and furled, the courses hauled up and the jibs down; then came the topsails in the buntlines, and the anchor let go. As soon as she was well at anchor, all hands lay aloft to furl the topsails; and this, I soon found, was a great matter on board this ship; for every sailor knows that a vessel is judged of, a good deal, by the furl of her sails. The third mate, a sailmaker, and the larboard watch went upon the fore topsail yard; the second mate, carpenter, and the starboard watch upon the main; and myself and the English lad, and the two Boston boys, and the young Cape-Cod man, furled the mizen topsail. This sail belonged to us altogether, to reef and to furl, and not a man was allowed to come upon our yard. The mate took us under his special care, frequently making us furl the sail over, three or four times, until we got the bunt up to a perfect cone, and the whole sail without a wrinkle. As soon as each sail was hauled up and the bunt made, the jigger was bent on to the slack of the buntlines, and the bunt traced up, on deck. The mate then took his place between the knightheads to “twig” the fore, on the windlass to twig the main, and at the foot of the mainmast, for the mizen; and if anything was wrong,– too much bunt on one side, clews too taught or too slack, or any sail abaft the yard,– the whole must be dropped again. When all was right, the bunts were triced well up, the yard-arm gaskets passed, so as not to leave a wrinkle forward of the yard– short gaskets with turns close together. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

From the moment of letting go the anchor, when the captain ceases his care of things, the chief mate is the great man. With a voice like a young lion, he was hallooing and bawling, in all directions, making everything fly, and, at the same time, doing everything well. He was quite a contrast to the worthy, quiet, unobtrusive mate of the Pilgrim; not so estimable a man, perhaps, but a far better mate of a vessel; and the entire change in Captain T____’s conduct, since he took command of the ship, was owing, no doubt, in a great measure, to this fact. If the chief officer wants force, discipline slackens, everything gets out of joint, the captain interferes continually; that makes a difficulty between them, which encourages the crew, and the whole ends in a three-sided quarrel. But Mr. Brown (the mate of the Alert) wanted no help from anybody; took everything into his own hands; and was more likely to encroach upon the authority of the master, than to need any spurring. Captain T______gave his directions to the mate in private, and, except in coming to anchor, getting under weigh, tacking, reefing topsails, and other “all-hands-work,” seldom appeared in person. This is the proper state of things, and while this lasts, and there is a good understanding aft, everything will go on well. Having furled all the sails, the royal yards were next to be sent down. The English lad and myself sent down the main, which was larger than the Pilgrim’s main top-gallant yard; two more light hands, the fore; and one boy, the mizen. This order, we always kept while on the coast; sending them up and down every time we came in and went out of port. They were all tripped and lowered together, the main on the starboard side, and the fore and mizen, to port. No sooner was she all snug, than tackles were got up on the yards and stays, and the long-boat and pinnace hove out. The swinging booms were then guyed out, and the boats made fast by geswarps, and everything in harbor style. After breakfast, the hatches were taken off, and all got ready to receive hides from the Pilgrim. All day, boats were passing and repassing, until we had taken her hides from her, and left her in ballast trim. These hides made but little show in our hold, though they had loaded the Pilgrim down to the water’s edge. This changing of the hides settled the question of the destination of the two vessels, which had been one of some speculation to us. We were to remain in the leeward ports, while the Pilgrim was to sail, the next morning, for San Francisco. After we had knocked off work, and cleared up decks for the night, my friend S______came on board, and spent an hour with me in our berth between decks. The Pilgrim’s crew envied me my place on board the ship, and seemed to think that I had got a little to windward of them; especially in the matter of going home first. S______was determined to go home on the Alert, by begging or buying; if Captain T______would not let him come on other terms, he would purchase an exchange with some one of the crew. The prospect of another year after the Alert should sail, was rather “too much of the monkey.” About seven o’clock, the mate came down into the steerage, in fine trim for fun, roused the boys out of the berth, turned up the carpenter with his fiddle, sent the steward with lights to put in the between-decks, and set all hands to dancing. The between-decks were high enough to allow of jumping; and HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

being clear, and white, from holystoning, made a fine dancing- hall. Some of the Pilgrim’s crew were in the forecastle, and we all turned-to and had a regular sailor’s shuffle, till eight bells. The Cape-Cod boy could dance the true fisherman’s jig, barefooted, knocking with his heels, and slapping the decks with his bare feet, in time with the music. This was a favorite amusement of the mate’s, who always stood at the steerage door, looking on, and if the boys would not dance, he hazed them round with a rope’s end, much to the amusement of the men. A “pinnace”:

A “long-boat”: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 12, Saturday: It was the 2d centennial of the founding of the town of Concord and Waldo Emerson stood before its assembled citizenry in the old church to deliver the 2d Centennial Anniversary Address. The structure was packed so full that it was felt appropriate to place props under the galleries. Still “one of them settled alarmingly with the weight,” and when it “cracked ominously” some members of the audience made a rush to save themselves. Emerson, however, read for an hour and three-quarters: “A Historical Discourse, Delivered before the Citizens of Concord, 12th September 1835.” (See Rusk, Volume I, pages 451-453.) Good people, they sat still to hear about themselves. The paper told them how fine New Englanders were and what a grand institution the New England town meeting was:

It is the consequence of this institution that not a school-house, a public pew, a bridge, a pound, a milldam, hath been set up, or pulled down, or altered, or bought, or sold, without the whole population of this town having a voice in the affair. A general contentment is the result. And the people truly feel that they are lords of the soil. In every winding road, in every stone fence, in the smokes of the poor-house chimney, in the clock on the church, they read their own power, and consider, at leisure, the wisdom and error of their judgments.

Waldo, in his wisdom, specifically called for the compensated emancipation of all American slaves (no compensation whatever to the slaves for their stolen labor, of course, and no provisions whatever for their illness or old age), followed of course by a total black repatriation to the coast of Africa. He supposed this could be accomplished at the ridiculously low cost of one week’s wages, which is to say approximately $6, per white citizen worker: “It is said, it will cost a thousand millions of dollars to buy the slaves, — which sounds like a fabulous price. But if a price were named in good faith, — with the other elements of a practicable treaty in readiness, and with the convictions of mankind on this mischief once well awake and conspiring, I do not think that any amount that figures could tell, founded on an estimate, would be quite unmanageable. Every man in the world might give a week’s work to sweep this mountain of calamities out of the earth.”

As part of the oration, Emerson pointed out that after the Reverend “John Eliot’s praying Indians” had requested permission to establish a “praying village” near Concord, and had been granted such permission,

It is the misfortune of Concord to have permitted a disgraceful outrage upon the friendly Indians settled within its limits, in February, 1676, which ended in their forcible expulsion from the town.

That’s all. Nothing about racial mass murder, or the violation of the innocent woman and child. JOHN ELIOT

John Shepard Keyes liked this one heck of a lot — self-congratulation being right up his alley: At any rate I had never enjoyed so much in a day before and I keep the manuscript of Emersons oration to this day as my greatest literary treasure, and I mean never to part with it. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY O C R the 64 pages of: Waldo Emerson’s “A Historical Discourse, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Delivered before the Citizens of Concord, 12th September 1835” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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A quotation from page 36 of Dr. Edward Jarvis’s TRADITIONS AND REMINISCENCES OF CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS 1779-1878, in regard to the elaborate mechanics of this celebration, is to be found on the following screen: [next screen]

The dinner tent was in the field where now (1875) stands the dwelling of Judge Brooks. Mr. Shepherd, the excellent keeper of the hotel, was professionally ambitious and unwilling to set out a cheap dinner to which the multitude should come. He would get one that would be honorable to his hotel and to the town. The majority and the leading influences in the committee agreed with him and accepted his proposition to have a dinner at the cost of a $1.50 for each person. There was not then nor has there since been any doubt that Mr. Shepherd’s dinner was worth that sum or that as a matter of entertainment it was an honor to his skill and good taste and honorable dealing with customs. But although about 400 ate at this table and enjoyed the intellectual feast that followed, there was yet very many to whom it was an impossibility and these were kept away, who otherwise might have joined in the festivity and contributed by their presence to swell the gathering of Concord and her children and children’s children at their family homes.... They remembered and brought up the scene on the Common when Lafayette was entertained in 1825 and said that this, like that, was for the glorification of the rich and [that it was] framed [planned] with the necessary consequence of the mortification of the mass of the people. Means were taken and influences used to persuade people not to accept this hospitality as alluded to in the article opposite then printed in the Concord paper. [The article referred is a letter dated September 12, 1835, signed “The wife of a Middlesex farmer,” and describes the events of the centennial celebration: “I notice those who in independence might leisurely recline on a hair-cloth sofa with a volume of the ILIAD, or ride in a splendid carriage to variegate the scene; here were those, who in the humbler walks of life ply their needles or tend their dairies for a livelihood -- all, all seemed happy without any inequality or distinction.... Most of us have the means of educating our children, as well as those who count their thousands; let us do it, and ever impress on their minds that true greatness and superiority consists more in wisdom and merit than in splendid equipages and fine houses.”]... When the committee had finished their work and paid all the bills for expenses incurred under their direction, they found that they had exceeded the town’s appropriation by about one hundred dollars. At first view, seeing that all this town’s money had been expended in carrying out the purposes of the town, it would seem that this excess should be reported to the town and an additional appropriation asked for the payment. But the committee remembered the dissatisfaction that had been manifested by some and the undercurrent of censure that had been stirred by the leading malcontents and thought it more wise to ask no more grant of the town and avoid any opportunity of public complaint or unkind taunting at the gathering of the people. They therefore unanimously agreed to pay this deficiency out of their own private funds, each paying an equal proportion of the whole. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Meanwhile, on the opposite coast of the continent, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. was getting involved again in the port business of carrying hides, ferrying passengers, etc., in San Pedro harbor just as in San Diego harbor, the biggest difference between the two anchorages being that the ship was now farther offshore.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: The next morning, according to the orders of the agent, the Pilgrim set sail for the windward, to be gone three or four months. She got under weigh with very little fuss, and came so near us as to throw a letter on board, Captain Faucon standing at the tiller himself, and steering her as he would a mackerel smack. When Captain T______was in command of the Pilgrim, there was as much preparation and ceremony as there would be in getting a seventy-four under weigh. Captain Faucon was a sailor, every inch of him; he knew what a ship was, and was as much at home in one, as a cobbler in his stall. I wanted no better proof of this than the opinion of the ship’s crew, for they had been six months under his command, and knew what he was; and if sailors allow their captain to be a good seaman, you may be sure he is one, for that is a thing they are not always ready to say. After the Pilgrim left us, we lay three weeks at San Pedro, from the 11th of September until the 2nd of October, engaged in the usual port duties of landing cargo, taking off hides, etc., etc. These duties were much easier, and went on much more agreeably, than on board the Pilgrim. “The more, the merrier,” is the sailor’s maxim; and a boat’s crew of a dozen could take off all the hides brought down in a day, without much trouble, by division of labor; and on shore, as well as on board, a good will, and no discontent or grumbling, make everything go well. The officer, too, who usually went with us, the third mate, was a fine young fellow, and made no unnecessary trouble; so that we generally had quite a sociable time, and were glad to be relieved from the restraint of the ship. While here, I often thought of the miserable, gloomy weeks we had spent in this dull place, in the brig; discontent and hard usage on board, and four hands to do all the work on shore. Give me a big ship. There is more room, more hands, better outfit, better regulation, more life, and more company. Another thing was better arranged here: we had a regular gig’s crew. A light whale-boat, handsomely painted, and fitted out with stern seats, yoke, tiller-ropes, etc., hung on the starboard quarter, and was used as the gig. The youngest lad in the ship, a Boston boy about thirteen years old, was coxswain of this boat, and had the entire charge of her, to keep her clean, and have her in readiness to go and come at any hour. Four light hands, of about the same size and age, of whom I was one, formed the crew. Each had his oar and seat numbered, and we were obliged to be in our places, have our oars scraped white, our tholepins in, and the fenders over the side. The bow-man had charge of the boat-hook and painter, and the coxswain of the rudder, yoke, and stern-sheets. Our duty was to carry the captain and agent about, and passengers off and on; which last was no trifling duty, as the people on shore have no boats, and every purchaser, from the boy who buys his pair of shoes, to the trader who buys his casks and bales, were to be HDT WHAT? INDEX

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taken off and on, in our boat. Some days, when people were coming and going fast, we were in the boat, pulling off and on, all day long, with hardly time for our meals; making, as we lay nearly three miles from shore, from forty to fifty miles rowing in a day. Still, we thought it the best berth in the ship; for when the gig was employed, we had nothing to do with the cargo, except small bundles which the passengers carried with them, and no hides to carry, besides the opportunity of seeing everybody, making acquaintances, hearing the news, etc. Unless the captain or agent were in the boat, we had no officer with us, and often had fine times with the passengers, who were always willing to talk and joke with us. Frequently, too, we were obliged to wait several hours on shore; when we would haul the boat up on the beach, and leaving one to watch her, go up to the nearest house, or spend the time in strolling about the beach, picking up shells, or playing hopscotch, and other games, on the hard sand. The rest of the crew never left the ship, except for bringing heavy goods and taking off hides; and though we were always in the water, the surf hardly leaving us a dry thread from morning till night, yet we were young, and the climate was good, and we thought it much better than the quiet, hum-drum drag and pull on board ship. We made the acquaintance of nearly half of California; for, besides carrying everybody in our boat,– men, women, and children,– all the messages, letters, and light packages went by us, and being known by our dress, we found a ready reception everywhere. At San Pedro, we had none of this amusement, for, there being but one house in the place, we, of course, had but little company. All the variety that I had, was riding, once a week, to the nearest rancho, to order a bullock down for the ship. The brig Catalina came in from San Diego, and being bound up to windward, we both got under weigh at the same time, for a trial of speed up to Santa Barbara, a distance of about eighty miles. We hove up and got under sail about eleven o’clock at night, with a light land-breeze, which died away toward morning, leaving us becalmed only a few miles from our anchoring-place. The Catalina, being a small vessel, of less than half our size, put out sweeps and got a boat ahead, and pulled out to sea, during the night, so that she had the sea-breeze earlier and stronger than we did, and we had the mortification of seeing her standing up the coast, with a fine breeze, the sea all ruffled about her, while we were becalmed, in-shore. When the sea-breeze died away, she was nearly out of sight; and, toward the latter part of the afternoon, the regular north-west wind set in fresh, we braced sharp upon it, took a pull at every sheet, tack, and halyard, and stood after her, in fine style, our ship being very good upon a taughtened bowline. We had nearly five hours of fine sailing, beating up to windward, by long stretches in and off shore, and evidently gaining upon the Catalina at every tack. When this breeze left us, we were so near as to count the painted ports on her side. Fortunately, the wind died away when we were on our inward tack, and she on her outward, so we were in-shore, and caught the land-breeze first, which came off upon our quarter, about the middle of the first watch. All hands were turned-up, and we set all sail, to the skysails and the royal studding-sails; and with these, we glided quietly through the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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water, leaving the Catalina, which could not spread so much canvas as we, gradually astern, and, by daylight, were off St. Buenaventura, and our antagonist nearly out of sight. The sea- breeze, however, favored her again, while we were becalmed under the headland, and laboring slowly along, she was abreast of us by noon. Thus we continued, ahead, astern, and abreast of one another, alternately; now, far out at sea, and again, close in under the shore. On the third morning, we came into the great bay of Santa Barbara, two hours behind the brig, and thus lost the bet; though, if the race had been to the point, we should have beaten her by five or six hours. This, however, settled the relative sailing of the vessels, for it was admitted that although she, being small and light, could gain upon us in very light winds, yet whenever there was breeze enough to set us agoing, we walked away from her like hauling in a line; and in beating to windward, which is the best trial of a vessel, we had much the advantage of her.

Wilhelm Wieprecht, director of the Berlin Gardes du Corps-Musik, received a patent for a bass tuba.

In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 12th of 9th M 1835 / I dreamed a dream last night which I have often thought of thro’ the day. I was at the School in Providence where I saw a scene, which I shall not describe - It was among the classical Schollars & my mind was so wrought upon by it, that I fell to preaching to them with a powerful voice & with such regularity & connection as made me wonder at my self as when ever I have offered any thing among them my expressions have been few & under a degree of embarrassment - Well I have greatly desired & laboured much for the welfare of that Institution, but if things remain as they were when I was last there, & if they should prove as I saw them in my dream last night - it is Certainly time there was some change in its condition. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 14, Monday: Miguel Ricardo de Alava Esquivel replaced Jose Maria Queipo de Llano Ruiz de Saravia, conde de Toreno as Prime Minister of Spain.

At the estate of Count Thun-Hohenstein in Cieszyn, Silesia, Frédéric François Chopin said goodbye to his parents for the final time — after spending a month together in Karlsbad and Cieszyn his parents were returning to Poland.

The Waldo Emerson / Lydia Jackson nuptials took place in Plymouth, Massachusetts and waldo began to address his new bride as “Lidian” (also, as “Asia” and as “Queen of Sheba” and as “Queenie”) She would continue to know him as “Mr. Emerson.”

I was married to Lydia Jackson.

During their courtship he had assured her that he was eager to jump her bones: “I do sympathize with the homeliest pleasures and attractions by which our good foster mother Nature draws her children together.” So, this was the night on which the lady found out whether or not the gentleman had been telling the truth.

September 15, Tuesday: David Henry Thoreau was part of a committee of students sent to see Jones Very on behalf of the “Institute of 1770”, to request that he prepare and read a poem.

Messa di Gloria for solo voices, chorus and, orchestra by Giuseppe Verdi was performed for the initial time, in Busseto.

At Locust Grove plantation near Bayou Sara, Louisiana, Sarah Knox Taylor Davis died. Jefferson Davis was seriously ill.

The HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin reached the Galápagos Islands. It would stay for 34 days. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 16, Wednesday: The New-York Sun admitted that its moon stories were a hoax. (Richard Adams Locke would confess his authorship. Harriet Martineau would report, in her RETROSPECT OF WESTERN TRAVEL, that a missionary society of Springfield MA had resolved to send missionaries to convert and civilize these bat men of the moon.) ASTRONOMY

Records of the “Institute of 1770”: “Whether the banishment of Napoleon to St. Helena was justifiable?”

September 17, Thursday morning: HMS Beagle dropped anchor off Chatham Island, the easternmost of the Galápagos group, and Charles Darwin went ashore to attempt to make discoveries. BOTANIZING

That day David Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, the 2d volume of Abraham Tucker (1705- 1774)’s THE LIGHT OF NATURE PURSUED (1768-1778, 7 volumes, published in part under the pseudonym Edward Search). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 18, Friday: David Henry Thoreau’s Harvard College essay on assignment “Speak of the privileges and pleasures of a literary man.”

In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 18th of 9th M 1835 / Today Sister Mary returned to me the Letters which I wrote to my Lamented & dear Sister Ruth during my residence in Providence - I have read them all over, between 30 & 40 in Number - they revived some past occurrences which were much effaced from my memory - & renewd the feelings & rememberance of others, & were on the whole very interesting to me - I was glad they were preserved, as they contain an account of some things, which may be remembered to some advantage in a future day. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 21, Monday: Back from his honeymoon, the newlywed Waldo Emerson submitted to a publisher the ms of his recently prepared discourse upon his adopted town Concord’s most recent two centuries of history. (He had obtained the info he needed for this essay by borrowing the proof sheets of his neighbor’s new book about Concord history, Lemuel Shattuck’s A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;..., Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord: John Stacy. What did this discourse by the newbie resident contain that this longer-term local’s local-history monograph did not contain? — one is tempted to be succinct and restrict oneself to commenting that it contained the word “Waldo” combined with the word “Emerson.”)

September 28, Monday: “Stearns” (that would of course have been David Henry Thoreau’s classmate Charles Stearns Wheeler, not the Reverend George Luther Stearns) checked out, from Harvard Library, apparently for Thoreau, the 5th of the 9 volumes of Alexander Wilson’s AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY; OR, THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES: ILLUSTRATED WITH PLATES, ENGRAVED AND COLORED FROM ORIGINAL DRAWINGS TAKEN FROM NATURE. (Philadelphia: Bradford and Inskeep, 1808-1814).

(I wonder: does anyone has any idea why Wheeler would have checked out this 1st-edition Wilson volume for Thoreau, when the new Bonaparte edition had already been published? Had the Harvard Library perhaps not yet shelved its set of the Bonaparte edition?)

September 29, Tuesday: Records of the “Institute of 1770”: “Whether the emigration [sic] of foreigners into our country is evil or not? Decided in the negative — 9 to 6.

Grand duo concertant sur la romance de ‘Le Marin’ for violin and piano by Franz Liszt was performed for the initial time, in Geneva.

In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 29th of 9th M 1835 / This Morning Our Dear Sister Elizabeth R Nichols, her son in law Isaiah & her little daughter Elizabeth Jr left us by the Steam Boat expecting to be at the School committee in Providence today, expecting to leave for Salem tomorrow — I sent several letters by them to my friends HDT WHAT? INDEX

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at Providence. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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FALL 1835

Fall: At the age of 25, Margaret Fuller became seriously ill at the family farm in Groton, Massachusetts (she may have contracted her spinal curvature at this time).32

Fall: This was the beginning of Jones Very’s three-year period of crisis in the throes of “unbridled” sexual passion. His yearning “to do ill” was such as to persuade him that he ought to have a rule of conduct, that he not speak to women or even look at them. Beyond that, it was persuading him, intellectually, that he needed not to have a will of his own. This was his

change of heart, which tells us that all we have belongs to God and that we ought to have no will of our own.

32. I gather from the condition of the literature that one is not supposed to discuss Sir Percivall Pott’s disease, a spinal variant of tuberculosis, since this disease is an unfortunate one, and one is not supposed to notice that tuberculosis attacked both Thoreau and Fuller, since the connection between her form of tuberculosis damage and his form of tuberculosis damage was not established until the latter part of the century and since Thoreau is a totally famous dead white man whereas Fuller is not in the same ballpark being merely yet another famous dead white woman, and that one most certainly must not mention scoliosis of the spine, since this is a deformity and since it is so shameful to be deformed and since we have agreed that deformities are not only unspeakable but also invisible. We are left by generation after generation of literary scholars with an image in our minds of a grown woman merely sitting passively in her slip with her back against the mast and her arms around her knees, wondering that she could not even summon the courage to attempt to swim through breakers that had just drowned her able-bodied husband, and the able-bodied crewman who had tried to get ashore with her baby, and her baby: Did she have a death wish, these male literary scholars have again and again suggested? (Now just recently, a female literary biographer of Fuller has broken this code of silence, and announced once and for all that Margaret had suffered from scoliosis. Unfortunately, however, this female literary biographer has also gone beyond the available evidence and is now asserting without discussion that the form of scoliosis that had afflicted Margaret was congenital rather than being tuberculosis spondylitis — that this was a spinal condition Margaret had been born with.)

Sir Percivall Pott F.R.S. and Surgeon to St. Bartholomew’s Hoſpital had described this disease in 1779 in REMARKS ON THAT KIND OF PALſY OF THE LOWER LIMBS WHICH IS FREQUENTLY FOUND TO ACCOMPANY A CURVATURE OF THE SPINE, AND IS ſUPPOſED TO BE CAUſED BY IT... (London, 8vo, J. Johnfon, 84 pages) and in 1782 in FARTHER REMARKS UPON THE USELESS STATE OF THE LOWER LIMBS IN CONSEQUENCE OF A CURVATURE OF THE SPINE ... (London, thin 8vo, J. Johnſon). The disease he first there described, tuberculosis spondylitis, has been with us since at least the Egyptian royal mummies and in Thoreau’s era had been killing 3 out of each 10 children it attacked. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Fall: Harriet Martineau met with Waldo Emerson several times as he exercised himself in behalf of Thomas Carlyle.

SARTOR RESARTUS

Fall: The School of Human Culture of Bronson Alcott and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody opened for its 2d year. There were 40 pupils. They hired a drawing teacher, Francis Graeter, who drew this picture of the school:

Harriet Martineau visited the Temple School and observed the teaching. Richard Henry Dana, Sr. offered to teach English literature to the children. Everything seemed to be going very well. The Alcotts, counting upon an anticipated income of about $1,800.00 per school year before it was hatched, moved from their boarding house into a home at 26 Front Street, south of Boston Common, agreeing to a rent of $575.00 per year. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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OCTOBER 1835

October: This month’s issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:

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October: Regular as clockwork, the return of the comet which had been observed by the Reverends Increase Mather and Cotton Mather through Harvard College’s “3 foote and a halfe with a concave ey-glasse” reflecting telescope in 1682, the comet which is known as “Halley’s” to commoners and as “P/Halley” to others.

Halley has caught the attention of mankind so often because only it has long durations of visibility, and great brightness outside twilight and often at large elongations from the sun, and only brief interruptions of visibility by the sun’s glare, and occasional spectacular approaches to the earth For all this to be possible its natural adequate brightness is requisite but not sufficient (some of its comrades may have more of it); the real key is a combination, unique to it, of orbital features.

HARVARD OBSERVATORY It would be during this appearance of Halley’s Comet that it would first be hypothesized that the outgassing from comets must be shoving them around, perturbing their orbital motion, and also, Newton to the contrary notwithstanding, causing them to lose mass toward their eventual disintegration.33

This time, Maria Mitchell and her father recorded the movements of this periodic comet.

33. All the initial calculations of the magnitude and directionality of this phenomenon, however, would prove to have been way, way off. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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This is what Halley’s Comet looked like, the last time it passed us. We have records of the appearances of this comet on each and every one of its past 30 orbits, which is to say, we have spotty records of observations before that, in 1,404 BCE, 1,057 BCE, 466 BCE, 391 BCE, and 315 BCE, but then on the 240 BCE return the sightings record begins to be complete. The Babylonians recorded seeing it in 164 BCE and again in 87 BCE, and then it was recorded as being seen in 12 BCE, 66 CE, 141 CE, 218 CE, 295 CE, 374 CE, 451 CE, 530 CE, 607 CE, 684 CE, 760 CE (only by Chinese), 837 CE, 912 CE, 989 CE, 1066, 1145, 1222, 1301, 1378, 1456, 1531, 1607, 1682, 1758, 1835, 1910, and 1986 — and we are confidently awaiting sightings in 2061 and 2134 even though due to a close conjunction with the earth we are presently unable to calculate what orbit it will have by the date of that approach. Each time P/Halley orbits in out of the Kuiper HALLEY’S COMET belt beyond the planets Neptune and Pluto and whips EDMOND HALLEY around the sun, it has been throwing off about one 10,000ths of its mass into a streaming tail, which means that this comet which we know to have been visiting us for at the very least the past 3,000 years or so is only going to be visiting us for perhaps another half a million years or so!

Elizabeth Hallett Prichard viewed this comet as a child in Concord (she would view it again as an old woman). This magazine illustration would undoubtedly have been somewhat exaggerated: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 2, Friday: A Requiem mass for Vincenzo Bellini was held at Les Invalides. According to a report “Paer, Cherubini, Carafa, and Rossini each held one corner of the shroud.” The earthly remains of the musician were deposited in Pere-Lachaise Cemetery, between those of Andre Ernest Modeste Gretry and Francois- Adrien Boieldieu.

Margaret Fuller’s father Timothy Fuller died of the cholera, throwing much family responsibility onto her shoulders.

For the first two days, my grief, under this calamity, was such as I dare not speak of. But since my father’s head is laid in the dust, I feel an awful calm, and am becoming familiar with the thoughts of being an orphan. I have prayed to God that duty may now be the first object, and self set aside. May I have light and strength to do what is right, in the highest sense, for my mother, brothers, and sister.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 10M 2nd 1835 / This morning word came in from Portsmouth that Uncle Stanton was very low - my Wife & I went our immediately & found he had breathed his last sometime before we got there. We found our dear Aunt in much affliction but as composed as could be expected on the occasion We spent the remainder of the day there & staid all night. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

October 3, Saturday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day Morning to our comfort & support Benj Marshall arrived which took from us much weight & responsibility -Arrangement was made for the funeral which was agreed to be from our house tomorrow at 10 OClock & to be inter’d in friends ground according to his request both verbal & written - we came home in the afternoon to arrange for the funeral & in the evening the Corps was brought to Town & deposited in our South keeping room. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, and other dignitaries were approached, one by one, by the committee preparing for Concord’s bicentennial event, to provide oratory for the occasion, and had struck out in each and every case. Finally they decided they would need to settle for some oratory from a local citizen, and approached Waldo Emerson. In preparation for his delivery of the keynote address for Concord’s bicentennial, he borrowed proof sheets for the new local history book by Lemuel Shattuck. He also placed a notice of the publication of Shattuck’s book in the Yeoman’s Gazette.34

34. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;...

When the English settlements first commenced in New England, that part of its territory, which lies south of New Hampshire, was inhabited by five principal nations of Indians: the Pequots, who lived in Connecticut; the Narragansets, in Rhode Island; the Pawkunnawkuts, or Womponoags, east of the Narragansets and to the north as far as Charles River;1 the Massachusetts, north of Charles river and west of Massachusetts Bay; and the Pawtuckets, north of the Massachusetts. The boundaries and rights of these nations appear not to have been sufficiently definite to be now clearly known. They had within their jurisdiction many subordinate tribes, governed by sachems, or sagamores, subject, in some respects, to the principal sachem. At the commencement of the seventeenth century, they were able to bring into the field more than 18,000 warriors; but about the year 1612, they were visited with a pestilential disease, 1612 whose horrible ravages reduced their number to about 1800.2 Some of their villages were entirely depopulated. This great mortality was viewed by the first Pilgrims, as the accomplishment of one of the purposes of Divine Providence, by making room for the settlement of civilized man, and by preparing a peaceful asylum for the persecuted Christians of the old world. In what light soever the event may be viewed, it no doubt greatly facilitated the settlements, and rendered them less hazardous.

1621 1. I have supposed that the Indians living south of the Charles River did not belong to the Massachusetts tribe. Chickatabot, sachem of Neponset, and Obatinuat acknowledged submission to Massasoit in 1621, and were at enmity with Squaw Sachem. No instance within my knowledge is recorded of a petty sachem going to war with his own tribe. It is also worthy of remark, that these sachems and their descendants executed deeds of lands within Massasoit’s territories, but never in the Massachusetts territories As the country became settled by the English, and the jealousies between different tribes were forgotten, all the Indians living within the Massachusetts patent were rather erroneously classed among the Massachusetts Indians. Hence the statements of Winthrop, Daniel Gookin, and other historians. See Prince, ANNALS, 1621.

2. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COLLECTION, volume I.

PEQUOT WAMPANOAG MASSACHUSETT NARRAGANSETT

Shattuck, a resident in Concord from 1823 to 1834, noted that there had been a “third soldier buried and a house built over the spot” and that “one of the wounded died and was buried where Mr. Keyes’ house stands.”35 He evidently was referring to a house just to the northeast of the replacement Courthouse the town had erected in 1784, that in 1815 had been leased by John Shepard Keyes (the father, who worked at that HDT WHAT? INDEX

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courthouse).

H I S T O R Y

OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD ;

MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS,

FROM ITS EARLIEST SETTLEMENT TO 1832 ;

AND OF THE ADJOINING TOWNS, BEDFORD, ACTON, LINCOLN, AND CARLISLE ;

CONTAINING VARIOUS NOTICES OF COUNTY AND STATE HISTORY NOT BEFORE PUBLISHED.

——————————

BY LEMUEL SHATTUCK, MEMBER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

——————————

Nobler records of patriotism exist nowhere. — Nowhere can there be found higher proofs of a spirit that was ready to hazard all, to pledge all, to sacrifice all ia the cause of their country, than in the New England towns. WEBSTER. The local historian is sure of obtaining the gratitude of posterity if he perform his task with faithful diligence. — His work would have a great and increasing value within the narrow sphere of its subject, even if confined to that sphere ; but must be very imperfectly executed, if it does not contain some matter of illustration for the national annals, for the history of manners, for literature, philology, natural history, and various other departments of knowledge. QUARTERLY REVIEW.

B O S T O N : RUSSELL, ODIORNE, AND COMPANY.

CONCORD : JOHN STACY. 1835.

35. Of the three stricken soldiers of the 4th Regiment Light Infantry Company, Thomas Smith, Patrick Gray, and James Hall, two had died and were buried at the North Bridge itself, while the third was carried toward town before succumbing to his wounds. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 4, Sunday: Felix Mendelssohn conducted his first performance as director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, Leipzig. The program featured his own Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, and the Fourth Symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. mused upon wage slavery and upon the nature of the Sabbath as a day of rest, on arrival in the port of Santa Barbara, California.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Sunday, Oct. 4th. This was the day of our arrival; and somehow or other, our captain always managed not only to sail, but to come into port, on a Sunday. The main reason for sailing on the Sabbath is not, as many people suppose, because Sunday is thought a lucky day, but because it is a leisure day. During the six days, the crew are employed upon the cargo and other ship’s works, and the Sabbath, being their only day of rest, whatever additional work can be thrown into Sunday, is so much gain to the owners. This is the reason of our coasters, packets, etc., sailing on the Sabbath. They get six good days’ work out of the crew, and then throw all the labor of sailing into the Sabbath. Thus it was with us, nearly all the time we were on the coast, and many of our Sabbaths were lost entirely to us. The Catholics on shore have no trading and make no journeys on Sunday, but the American has no national religion, and likes to show his independence of priestcraft by doing as he chooses on the Lord’s day. Santa Barbara looked very much as it did when I left it five months before: the long sand beach, with the heavy rollers, breaking upon it in a continual roar, and the little town, imbedded on the plain, girt by its amphitheatre of mountains. Day after day, the sun shone clear and bright upon the wide bay and the red roofs of the houses; everything being as still as death, the people really hardly seeming to earn their sun-light. Daylight actually seemed thrown away upon them. We had a few visitors, and collected about a hundred hides, and every night, at sundown, the gig was sent ashore, to wait for the captain, who spent his evenings in the town. We always took our monkey-jackets with us, and flint and steel, and made a fire on the beach with the driftwood and the bushes we pulled from the neighboring thickets, and lay down by it, on the sand. Sometimes we would stray up to the town, if the captain was likely to stay late, and pass the time at some of the houses, in which we were almost always well received by the inhabitants. Sometimes earlier and sometimes later, the captain came down; when, after a good drenching in the surf, we went aboard, changed our clothes, and turned in for the night– yet not for all the night, for there was the anchor watch to stand. This leads me to speak of my watchmate for nine months– and, taking him all in all, the most remarkable man I have ever seen– Tom Harris. An hour, every night, while lying in port, Harris and myself had the deck to ourselves, and walking fore and aft, night after night, for months, I learned his whole character and history, and more about foreign nations, the habits of different people, and especially the secrets of sailors’ lives and hardships, and also of practical seamanship, (in which he was abundantly capable of instructing me,) than I could ever have learned elsewhere. But the most remarkable thing about him, was the power of his mind. His memory was perfect; seeming to form a regular chain, reaching from his earliest childhood up to the time I knew him, without one link wanting. His power of calculation, too, was remarkable. I called myself pretty quick at figures, and had been through a course of mathematical studies; but, working by my head, I was unable to keep within sight of this man, who had never been beyond his arithmetic: so rapid was his calculation. He carried in his head not only a log-book of the whole voyage, in which everything was complete and accurate, and from which no one ever thought of appealing, but also an accurate registry of all the cargo; knowing, precisely, where each thing was, and how many hides we took in at every port. One night, he made a rough calculation of the number of hides that could be stowed in the lower hold, between the fore and main masts, taking the depth of hold and breadth of beam, (for he always knew the dimension of every part of the ship, before he had been a month on board,) and the average area and thickness of a hide; he came surprisingly near the number, as it afterwards turned out. The mate frequently came to him to know the capacity of different parts of the vessel, so he could tell the sailmaker very nearly the amount of canvas he would want for each sail in the ship; for he knew the hoist of every mast, and spread of every sail, on the head and foot, in feet and inches. When we were at sea, he kept a running account, in his head, of the ship’s way– the number of knots and the courses; and if the courses did not vary much during HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the twenty-four hours, by taking the whole progress, and allowing so many eighths southing or northing, to so many easting or westing; he would make up his reckoning just before the captain took the sun at noon, and often came wonderfully near the mark. Calculation of all kinds was his delight. He had, in his chest, several volumes giving accounts of inventions in mechanics, which he read with great pleasure, and made himself master of. I doubt if he ever forgot anything that he read. The only thing in the way of poetry that he ever read was Falconer’s Shipwreck, which he was delighted with, and whole pages of which he could repeat. He knew the name of every sailor that had ever been his shipmate, and also, of every vessel, captain, and officer, and the principal dates of each voyage; and a sailor whom he afterwards fell in with, who had been in a ship with Harris nearly twelve years before, was very much surprised at having Harris tell him things about himself which he had entirely forgotten. His facts, whether dates or events, no one thought of disputing; and his opinions, few of the sailors dared to oppose; for, right or wrong, he always had the best of the argument with them. His reasoning powers were remarkable. I have had harder work maintaining an argument with him in a watch, even when I knew myself to be right, and he was only doubting, than I ever had before; not from his obstinacy, but from his acuteness. Give him only a little knowledge of his subject, and, certainly among all the young men of my acquaintance and standing at college, there was not one whom I had not rather meet, than this man. I never answered a question from him, or advanced an opinion to him, without thinking more than once. With an iron memory, he seemed to have your whole past conversation at command, and if you said a thing now which ill agreed with something said months before, he was sure to have you on the hip. In fact, I always felt, when with him, that I was with no common man. I had a positive respect for his powers of mind, and felt often that if half the pains had been spent upon his education which are thrown away, yearly, in our colleges, he would have been a man of great weight in society. Like most self-taught men, he over-estimated the value of an education; and this, I often told him, though I profited by it myself; for he always treated me with respect, and often unnecessarily gave way to me, from an over-estimate of my knowledge. For the intellectual capacities of all the rest of the crew, captain and all, he had the most sovereign contempt. He was a far better sailor, and probably a better navigator, than the captain, and had more brains than all the after part of the ship put together. The sailors said, “Tom’s got a head as long as the bowsprit,” and if any one got into an argument with him, they would call out– “Ah, Jack! you’d better drop that, as you would a hot potato, for Tom will turn you inside out before you know it.” I recollect his posing me once on the subject of the Corn Laws. I was called to stand my watch, and, coming on deck, found him there before me; and we began, as usual, to walk fore and aft, in the waist. He talked about the Corn Laws; asked me my opinion about them, which I gave him; and my reasons; my small stock of which I set forth to the best advantage, supposing his knowledge on the subject must be less than mine, if, indeed, he had any at all. When I had got through, he took the liberty of differing from me, and, to my surprise, brought arguments and facts connected with the subject which were new to me, to which I was entirely unable to reply. I confessed that I knew almost nothing of the subject, and expressed my surprise at the extent of his information. He said that, a number of years before, while at a boarding-house in Liverpool, he had fallen in with a pamphlet on the subject, and, as it contained calculations, had read it very carefully, and had ever since wished to find some one who could add to his stock of knowledge on the question. Although it was many years since he had seen the book, and it was a subject with which he had no previous acquaintance, yet he had the chain of reasoning, founded upon principles of political economy, perfect in his memory; and his facts, so far as I could judge, were correct; at least, he stated them with great precision. The principles of the steam engine, too, he was very familiar with, having been several months on board of a steamboat, and made himself master of its secrets. He knew every lunar star in both hemispheres, and was a perfect master of his quadrant and sextant. Such was the man, who, at forty, was still a dog before the mast, at twelve dollars a month. The reason of this was to be found in his whole past life, as I had it, at different times, from himself. He was an Englishman, by birth, a native of Ilfracomb, in Devonshire. His father was skipper of a small coaster, from Bristol, and dying, left him, when quite young, to the care of his mother, by whose exertions he received a common-school education, passing his winters at school and his summers in the coasting trade, until his seventeenth year, when he left home to go upon foreign voyages. Of his mother, he often spoke with the greatest respect, and said that she was a strong-minded woman, and had the best system of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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education he had ever known; a system which had made respectable men of his three brothers, and failed only in him, from his own indomitable obstinacy. One thing he often mentioned, in which he said his mother differed from all other mothers that he had ever seen disciplining their children; that was, that when he was out of humor and refused to eat, instead of putting his plate away, as most mothers would, and saying that his hunger would bring him to it, in time, she would stand over him and oblige him to eat it– every mouthful of it. It was no fault of hers that he was what I saw him; and so great was his sense of gratitude for her efforts, though unsuccessful, that he determined, at the close of the voyage, to embark for home with all the wages he should get, to spend with and for his mother, if perchance he should find her alive. After leaving home, he had spent nearly twenty years, sailing upon all sorts of voyages, generally out of the ports of New York and Boston. Twenty years of vice! Every sin that a sailor knows, he had gone to the bottom of. Several times he had been hauled up in the hospitals, and as often, the great strength of his constitution had brought him out again in health. Several times, too, from his known capacity, he had been promoted to the office of chief mate, and as often, his conduct when in port, especially his drunkenness, which neither fear nor ambition could induce him to abandon, put him back into the forecastle. One night, when giving me an account of his life, and lamenting the years of manhood he had thrown away, he said that there, in the forecastle, at the foot of the steps– a chest of old clothes– was the result of twenty-two years of hard labor and exposure– worked like a horse, and treated like a dog. As he grew older, he began to feel the necessity of some provision for his later years, and came gradually to the conviction that rum had been his worst enemy. One night, in Havana, a young shipmate of his was brought aboard drunk, with a dangerous gash in his head, and his money and new clothes stripped from him. Harris had seen and been in hundreds of such scenes as these, but in his then state of mind, it fixed his determination, and he resolved never to taste another drop of strong drink, of any kind. He signed no pledge, and made no vow, but relied on his own strength of purpose. The first thing with him was a reason, and then a resolution, and the thing was done. The date of his resolution he knew, of course, to the very hour. It was three years before I knew him, and during all that time, nothing stronger than cider or coffee had passed his lips. The sailors never thought of enticing Tom to take a glass, any more than they would of talking to the ship’s compass. He was now a temperate man for life, and capable of filling any berth in a ship, and many a high station there is on shore which is held by a meaner man. He understood the management of a ship upon scientific principles, and could give the reason for hauling every rope; and a long experience, added to careful observation at the time, and a perfect memory, gave him a knowledge of the expedients and resorts in times of hazard, which was remarkable, and for which I became much indebted to him, as he took the greatest pleasure in opening his stores of information to me, in return for what I was able to do for him. Stories of tyranny and hardship which had driven men to piracy;– of the incredible ignorance of masters and mates, and of horrid brutality to the sick, dead, and dying; as well as of the secret knavery and impositions practised upon seamen by connivance of the owners, landlords, and officers; all these he had, and I could not but believe them; for men who had known him for fifteen years had never taken him even in an exaggeration, and, as I have said, his statements were never disputed. I remember, among other things, his speaking of a captain whom I had known by report, who never handed a thing to a sailor, but put it on deck and kicked it to him; and of another, who was of the best connections in Boston, who absolutely murdered a lad from Boston that went out with him before the mast to Sumatra, by keeping him hard at work while ill of the coast fever, and obliging him to sleep in the close steerage. (The same captain has since died of the same fever on the same coast.) In fact, taking together all that I learned from him of seamanship, of the history of sailors’ lives, of practical wisdom, and of human nature under new circumstances,– a great history from which many are shut out,– I would not part with the hours I spent in the watch with that man for any given hours of my life passed in study and social intercourse. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 5, Monday: David Henry Thoreau again checked out, from Harvard Library, Gasparo Grimani’s A NEW AND IMPROVED GRAMMAR OF THE ITALIAN LANGUAGE, WITH COPIOUS EXERCISES, UNDER EVERY RULE AND OBSERVATION (which evidently would have been an 1820 update of his THE LADIES’ NEW ITALIAN GRAMMAR: FOR THE USE OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH SCHOLARS. LA NOUVELLE GRAMMAIRE ITALIENNE DES DAMES, À L’USAGE DES ECCOLIÈRES FRANÇOISES ET ANGLOISES, printed by W. Smith in London in 1788). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 6, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson received the second set of four offprints of SARTOR RESARTUS from the Boston Custom Shed, which Thomas Carlyle had dispatched to him in June, and set out quite as enthusiastically to disseminate these as he had the previous set of four.

SARTOR RESARTUS STUDY THIS STRANGENESS

One he would dispatch to the Reverend Convers Francis in Watertown. We can be pretty sure that Francis’s sister Lydia Maria Child perused that copy, for she was departing for a tour of England and asked Emerson for a letter of introduction to its author. Francis would pass this copy on to Theodore Parker, then a student at the Theological School in Cambridge, and Parker would then loan it to his “most intimate friend,” another student, William Silsbee.

Another copy Emerson would dispatch to the Reverend William Ellery Channing in Newport, Rhode Island. With the Reverend when that copy arrived was Harriet Martineau.

Meanwhile a long anonymous review (written by Alexander H. Everett and made possible by the copy that Emerson had made available to the editor during the late summer) was appearing in the North American Review.36

Sam Houston purchased a general’s uniform in New Orleans after being named Commander-in-Chief by the Nacogdoches “Committee of Vigilance.”

TEXAS

36. “Thomas Carlyle,” North American Review 41: 454-482 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 7, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson wrote Thomas Carlyle and mentioned his discourse upon Concord’s most recent two centuries of history as “my first adventure in print which I shall send you.”

Samuel Sebastian Wesley entered upon duties as organist at Exeter Cathedral.

Watson Brown was born at Franklin, Ohio.

(He would marry with Isabella M. Thompson during September 1856. His son by this marriage would live only to his 5th year but would nevertheless survive him, because when he would be sent out by his father John Brown to negotiate, he would be gunned down by the citizens of Harpers Ferry. He would manage to crawl back to the shelter of the engine house and live on, groaning, his head cradled in Edwin Coppoc’s lap, for a considerable period. He would expire on October 18, 1859. His widow would remarry with his brother Salmon Brown.)

October 8, Thursday: The HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin reached James Island of the Galápagos archipelago.

October 11, Sunday: The last installment of “On the Situation of Artist and Their Condition in Society” by Franz Liszt appeared in the Gazette musicale de Paris.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 11th of 10th M / Attended both Meetings - Father was engaged in testimony in both - It was a time of some favour & some mental trial & exercise on my part - The Meeting was well attended particularly in the Morning. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. sailed aboard the Alert from Santa Barbara anchorage to the bay of San Diego, California.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Sunday, Oct. 11th. Set sail this morning for the leeward; passed within sight of San Pedro, and, to our great joy, did not come to anchor, but kept directly on to San Diego, where we arrived and moored ship on. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 13, Tuesday: Records of the “Institute of 1770”: “Has the form of government of the U.S.A. a greater appearance of stability than any other?” Decided in the affirmative — 8 to 2.

(What do you suppose, would scholar David Henry’s vote have been among the 8 affirmative ones, or one of the 2 in the negative?)

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 13th of 10th M 1835 / The House in Marlborough Street Once owned by the Venerable Govr Wm Coddington is now taking down, its great Age & the State of its timbers being such that it was unfit to live in & past repair - this circumstance reconciled my feelings to the removal of an object familiar to my eyesight from early childhood it was built by Rowland Robinson who was the first Robinson who settled in Newport for Govr Coddington & was the first contract he made as builder on his removal from Boston. This information I had from his grandson Thomas Robinson some years previous to his death — The Timbers are very large & were doubtless the growth of the land not far from the House & the Chimneys tho’ of brick were evidently calculated for a very free use of fewel, being very wide & high. — While the rooms were yet Standing & the roof only removed I went into it & examined every part of it - & had I been a poet could have wrought up my mind to no very inconsiderable fancy - as it was I mentally saw the Yearly Meeting of Friends there Assembled - the weight & awe which covered the gathering & heard Geo. Fox preach in the demonstration of the Spirit & of Power - I walked thro’ the rooms & saw (mentally) the pious & deeply exercised company of friends entertained around the large fireplaces by the Govornor, & the table spread for refreshment - probably the Govr relating his exercises on board the Arbella & his trials as member of the General Court at Boston when Ann Hutchinson was tried before them or consulting with his friends relative to the welfare of his friends who then were grievously persecuted & the society in general - His funeral held in that House when the General Assembly adjourned to attend it, with the not improbable view of my Great great Grandfather Daniel Gould preaching at the time - That house was also probably the residence of His son Wm Coddington the Second of that Name & was also the residence of Nathaniel Coddington a former Secretary of State & was for many years the residence of Wm Coddington the old Town Clerk - In short for many very many years it was inhabited by those who were religious & Honourable in the World - but how indeed do all terestial things fail & that which was once in high account become low & even mean — for the last 20 or 30 Years, those who once were its dignified inmates have disappeared & it has been in habited by the lower order of society & it litteraly rotted down for want of seasonable repairs - I propose to obtain some of its venerable timbers to work into various little things such as boxes, Canes &c for the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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gratification of the Antiquarians & curious RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

October 15, Thursday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. reminisced with old buddies (a favorite passtime of his: we could utilize him as the type case of homosociality) from the days of the “hide crew” who lived ashore in San Diego.

During this period Halley’s Comet was appearing 60 degrees north of the sun. Because of its positioning this time, it would be visible all night every night crossing the northern sky. Its tail would grow to 30 degrees. SKY EVENT

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Thursday, Oct. 15th. Found here the Italian ship La Rosa, from the windward, which reported the brig Pilgrim at San Francisco, all well. Everything was as quiet here as usual. We discharged our hides, horns, and tallow, and were ready to sail again on the following Sunday. I went ashore to my old quarters, and found the gang at the hide-house going on in the even tenor of their way, and spent an hour or two, after dark, at the oven, taking a whiff with my old Kanaka friends, who really seemed glad to see me again, and saluted me as the Aikane of the Kanakas. I was grieved to find that my poor dog Bravo was dead. He had sickened and died suddenly, the very day after I sailed in the Alert.

October 16, Friday: After a stressful, emotional trip of two months to Karlsbad, Cieszyn, Dresden, Leipzig, and Heidelberg, where he saw his parents and former students as well, and met Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, and Clara Wieck, Frédéric François Chopin returned to Paris.

In the National Intelligencer: “‘We were told a few days since in Washington, that a gentleman of Paris had left, by his will, about ONE MILLION of Dollars, for the purpose of endowing a National University in that city. We learned also that the constituted authorities of the city had received official information of the fact, with a copy of the will. The Alexandria Gazette alludes to the rumor. Could not the National Intelligencer satisfy the public curiosity on the subject?’ —Fredricksburg Arena.

We have the pleasure to inform our friend of the Arena, that we believe his intelligence is substantially correct. We learn that information has been received by the Government, that such a bequest was made by some English gentleman of fortune, and that the sum of 200,000 pounds sterling will in all probability inure to this HDT WHAT? INDEX

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city for the erection and endowment of a University. The money, we understand, was bequeathed in the first instance to the only son of the testator, but in case of his death without heir, to go to the City of Washington for the purpose above stated. That contingency occurred, and the princely legacy accrues to the city. It is probable that the President will communicate the fact to Congress early in the next session. The LEGACY. — We understand that it would be more accurate to say, that the English legacy of £200,000 was bequeathed ‘to the United States, for the purpose of establishing a University at the seat of government for the promotion of arts and sciences.’ The money, we are informed, is in the hands of the Lord Chancellor of England, ready to be paid over conformably to the will, which fact he has communicated to our government, with a copy of the will.”

Thoreau’s Harvard College essay on the assignment “Popular Feeling &c.”

October 17, Saturday: Penny Magazine:

http://www.history.rochester.edu/pennymag/227.htm

Bronson Alcott came to visit Waldo Emerson at his new home “Bush” in Concord, staying through Sunday. THE ALCOTT FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Bronson Alcott, later, on the steps of his philosophy school in Concord HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 18, Sunday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert sailed north up the coast of California from the bay of San Diego.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Sunday was again, as usual, our sailing day, and we got under weigh with a stiff breeze, which reminded us that it was the latter part of the autumn, and time to expect south-easters once more. We beat up against a strong head wind, under reefed top-sails, as far as San Juan, where we came to anchor nearly three miles from the shore, with slip-ropes on our cables, in the old south-easter style of last winter. On the passage up, we had an old sea captain on board, who had married and settled in California, and had not been on salt water for more than fifteen years. He was astonished at the changes and improvements that had been made in ships, and still more at the manner in which we carried sail; for he was really a little frightened; and said that while we had top-gallant sails on, he should have been under reefed topsails. The working of the ship, and her progress to windward, seemed to delight him, for he said she went to windward as though she were kedging.

The Hochzeitskantate Cassia La sede empirea for four voices and piano by Otto Nicolai was performed for the initial time.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 18th of 10 m 1835 / Attended both Meetings & both were times of some favour — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

October 20, Tuesday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. repeated his earlier activities of sailing hides off the cliffs of Santa Barbara.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Tuesday, Oct. 20th. Having got everything ready, we set the agent ashore, who went up to the mission to hasten down the hides for the next morning. This night we had the strictest orders to look out for south- easters; and the long, low clouds seemed rather threatening. But the night passed over without any trouble, and early the next morning, we hove out the long-boat and pinnace, lowered away the quarter-boats, and went ashore to bring off our hides. Here we were again, in this romantic spot; a perpendicular hill, twice the height of the ship’s mast-head, with a single circuitous path to the top, and long sand beach at its base, with the swell of the whole Pacific breaking high upon it, and our hides ranged in piles on the overhanging summit. The captain sent me, who was the only one of the crew that had ever been there before, to the top, to count the hides and pitch them down. There I stood again, as six months before, throwing off the hides, and watching them, pitching and scaling, to the bottom, while the men, dwarfed by the distance, were walking to and fro on the beach, carrying the hides, as they picked them up, to the distant boats, upon the tops of their heads. Two or three boat-loads were sent off, until, at last, all were thrown down, and the boats nearly loaded again; when we were delayed by a dozen or twenty hides which had lodged in the recesses of the hill, and which we could not reach by any missiles, as the general line of the side was exactly perpendicular, and these places were caved in, and could not be seen or reached from the top. As hides are worth in Boston twelve and a half cents a pound, and the captain’s commission was two per cent, he determined not to give them up; and sent on board for a pair of top-gallant studding-sail halyards, and requested some one of the crew to go to the top, and come down by the halyards. The older sailors said the boys, who were light and active, ought to go, while the boys thought that strength and experience were necessary. Seeing the dilemma, and feeling myself to be near the medium of these requisites, I offered my services, and went up, with one man to tend the rope, and prepared for the descent. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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We found a stake fastened strongly into the ground, and apparently capable of holding my weight, to which we made one end of the halyards well fast, and taking the coil, threw it over the brink. The end, we saw, just reached to a landing-place, from which the descent to the beach was easy. Having nothing on but shirt, trowsers, and hat, the common sea-rig of warm weather, I had no stripping to do, and began my descent, by taking hold of the rope in each hand, and slipping down, sometimes with hands and feet round the rope, and sometimes breasting off with one hand and foot against the precipice, and holding on to the rope with the other. In this way I descended until I came to a place which shelved in, and in which the hides were lodged. Keeping hold of the rope with one hand, I scrambled in, and by the other hand and feet succeeded in dislodging all the hides, and continued on my way. Just below this place, the precipice projected again, and going over the projection, I could see nothing below me but the sea and the rocks upon which it broke, and a few gulls flying in mid-air. I got down in safety, pretty well covered with dirt; and for my pains was told, “What a d----d fool you were to risk your life for a half a dozen hides!” While we were carrying the hides to the boat, I perceived, what I had been too busy to observe before, that heavy black clouds were rolling up from seaward, a strong swell heaving in, and every sign of a south- easter. The captain hurried everything. The hides were pitched into the boats; and, with some difficulty, and by wading nearly up to our armpits, we got the boats through the surf, and began pulling aboard. Our gig’s crew towed the pinnace astern of the gig, and the launch was towed by six men in the jolly-boat. The ship was lying three miles off, pitching at her anchor, and the farther we pulled, the heavier grew the swell. Our boat stood nearly up and down several times; the pinnace parted her tow-line, and we expected every moment to see the launch swamped. We at length got alongside, our boats half full of water; and now came the greatest difficulty of all,– unloading the boats, in a heavy sea, which pitched them about so that it was almost impossible to stand in them; raising them sometimes even with the rail, and again dropping them below the bends. With great difficulty, we got all the hides aboard and stowed under hatches, the yard and stay tackles hooked on, and the launch and pinnace hoisted, checked, and griped. The quarter-boats were then hoisted up, and we began heaving in on the chain. Getting the anchor was no easy work in such a sea, but as we were not coming back to this port, the captain determined not to slip. The ship’s head pitched into the sea, and the water rushed through the hawse-holes, and the chain surged so as almost to unship the barrel of the windlass. “Hove short, sir!” said the mate. “Aye, aye! Weather-bit your chain and loose the topsails! Make sail on her, men– with a will!” A few moments served to loose the topsails, which were furled with reefs, to sheet them home, and hoist them up. “Bear a hand!” was the order of the day; and every one saw the necessity of it, for the gale was already upon us. The ship broke out her own anchor, which we catted and fished, after a fashion, and stood off from the lee-shore against a heavy head sea, under reefed topsails, fore-topmast staysail and spanker. The fore course was given to her, which helped her a little; but as she hardly held her own against the sea which was settling her leeward– “Board the main tack!” shouted the captain; when the tack was carried forward and taken to the windlass, and all hands called to the handspikes. The great sail bellied out horizontally as though it would lift up the main stay; the blocks rattled and flew about; but the force of machinery was too much for her. “Heave ho! Heave and pawl! Yo, heave, hearty, ho!” and, in time with the song, by the force of twenty strong arms, the windlass came slowly round, pawl after pawl, and the weather clew of the sail was brought down to the waterways. The starboard watch hauled aft the sheet, and the ship tore through the water like a mad horse, quivering and shaking at every joint, and dashing from its head the foam, which flew off at every blow, yards and yards to leeward. A half hour of such sailing served our turn, when the clews of the sail were hauled up, the sail furled, and the ship, eased of her press, went more quietly on her way. Soon after, the foresail was reefed, and we mizen-top men were sent up to take another reef in the mizen topsail. This was the first time I had taken a weather earing, and I felt not a little proud to sit, astride of the weather yard-arm, pass the earing, and sing out “Haul out to leeward!” From this time until we got to Boston, the mate never suffered any one but our own gang to go upon the mizen topsail yard, either for reefing or furling, and the young English lad and myself generally took the earings between us. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Having cleared the point and got well out to sea, we squared away the yards, made more sail, and stood on, nearly before the wind, for San Pedro. It blew strong, with some rain, nearly all night, but fell calm toward morning, and the gale having gone over, we came-to,–

The above was going on aboard the Alert in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of the North American continent. Meanwhile, off the coast of the South American continent in the Pacific Ocean, the HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin headed out toward the island of Tahiti. The survey of the Galapagos Archipelago being concluded, we steered towards Tahiti and commenced our long passage of 3200 miles. In the course of a few days we sailed out of the gloomy and clouded ocean-district which extends during the winter far from the coast of South America. We then enjoyed bright and clear weather, while running pleasantly along at the rate of 150 or 160 miles a day before the steady trade-wind. The temperature in this more central part of the Pacific is higher than near the American shore. The thermometer in the poop cabin, by night and day, ranged between 80 and 83 degs., which feels very pleasant; but with one degree or two higher, the heat becomes oppressive. We passed through the Low or Dangerous Archipelago, and saw several of those most curious rings of coral land, just rising above the water’s edge, which have been called Lagoon Islands. A long and brilliantly white beach is capped by a margin of green vegetation; and the strip, looking either way, rapidly narrows away in the distance, and sinks beneath the horizon From the mast-head a wide expanse of smooth water can be seen within the ring. These low hollow coral islands bear no proportion to the vast ocean out of which they abruptly rise; and it seems wonderful, that such weak invaders are not overwhelmed, by the all-powerful and never-tiring waves of that great sea, miscalled the Pacific. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 21, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson made a note in his journal about an initial visit to his home in Concord by Bronson Alcott:

Last Saturday night came hither Mr Alcott & spent the Sabbath with me. A wise man, simple, superior to display. & drops the best things as quietly as the least. Every man, he said, is a Revelation, & ought to write his Record. But few with the pen.

That night, just back in Boston from his visit to Emerson in Concord, Alcott would be visiting William Lloyd Garrison in the jail on Leverett Street. (What was Garrison doing in the Boston lockup? –Read on.)

Having met with brickbats in Concord, New Hampshire and garbage, raw eggs, and rocks in Lowell MA, and having been seriously injured by being hit in the face with a rock in Ohio, and having been denounced by President Andrew Jackson in a message to Congress, the English anti-slavery reformer George Thompson had been reduced to making his return plans in secret because of concern that pro-slavery activists would attempt to kidnap him (presumably to tar and feather him).37 He had fled Boston Harbor in a rowboat in order to board a British ship leaving for New Brunswick.

Back ashore, in what would come to be known as the “Gentlemen’s Riot” carried out by a downtown Boston group of swells associated with State Street and Milk Street which sometimes referred to itself as “the broadcloth mob,” what had been planned as a protest against a scheduled lecture by Thompson on behalf of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society transformed itself into a mob of several thousand persons which stormed the meeting while the women prayed for the protection of God. They came uncomfortably close to tarring and feathering the substitute speaker.38

STATE STREET, BOSTON

37. Safely back in England, George Thompson would be elected to Parliament. 38. This mob was witnessed by William Cooper Nell, who, being himself a person of color, of course was unable to interfere. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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This substitute, Garrison, was saved only by the intervention of Boston’s mayor, who –despite the fact that there was a mayoral election coming up in December– dealt personally with this proslavery mob.

To the people who were engaging in the antislavery struggle, this year of 1835 would become known as “the mob year.” The riot against Garrison in Boston was far from the only one. The North was having what Grimsted refers to as a “riot conversation” with the South, in an attempt to reassure it that its institution of human enslavement would be tolerated, and that opposition to this institution would not be allowed to interfere with the flow of business. There was therefore also an assault on this day upon Henry B. Stanton in Newport, and an assault upon Samuel May in Montpelier. No great personal injury or property damage resulted, as that was not the point: PAGE 27 GRIMSTED: The day’s riotous work was the North’s final offering of works to prove the sincerity of its stream of words against abolition ... few in the South noted how little damage to property and none to people these careful mobs perpetrated.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould recorded in his journal: 4th day 21 of 10 M / We rode to Portsmouth to attend the Select Meeting - After which we went to Aunt Stantons & spent the Afternoon with her in sympathy with her lonely situation

At this annual meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society at the Anti-Slavery Hall, the women were trapped in rooms on the 3d floor as the mob roamed the corridors of the building. The mayor of Boston belatedly arrived with a group of policemen and got the women to disperse, but Garrison was in his office and was left alone in the building with the mob. When he crawled through the back window and jumped down into the street, someone saw him and the mob gave chase. He was cornered in a 2d-floor room above a carpenter’s shop into which he had dodged, whereupon there was a wrestling match to see whether he would be flung from the window, or into a tar kettle that had been prepared. The police jailed for the night for his own safety, in the jail on Leverett Street, and he inscribed on the wall there that his offense was “preaching the abominable and dangerous doctrine that all men have been created equal.” Here is a fuller account of the action: It was in the midst of such intense and widespread excitement that Boston called its meeting to abolish the Abolitionists. It was the month of August, and the heat of men’s passions was as great as the heat of the August sun. The moral atmosphere of the city was so charged with inflammable gases that the slightest spark would have sufficed to produce an explosion. The Abolitionists felt this and carried themselves the while with unusual circumspection. They deemed it prudent to publish an address to neutralize the falsehoods with which they were assailed by their enemies. The address drawn up by Garrison for the purpose was thought “too fiery for the present time,” by his more cautious followers and was rejected. The Liberator office had already been threatened in consequence of a fiery article by the editor, denouncing the use of Faneuil Hall for the approaching pro-slavery meeting. It seemed to the unawed and indignant champion of liberty that it were “better that the winds should scatter it in fragments over the whole earth — better that an earthquake should engulf it — than that it should be used for so unhallowed and detestable a purpose!” The anti- abolition feeling of the town had become so bitter and intense that Henry E. Benson, then clerk in the anti-slavery office, writing on the 19th of the month, believed that there were HDT WHAT? INDEX

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persons in Boston, who would assassinate George Thompson in broad daylight, and doubted whether Garrison or Samuel J. May would be safe in Faneuil Hall on the day of the meeting, and what seemed still more significant of the inflamed state of the public mind, was the confidence with which he predicted that a mob would follow the meeting. The wild-cat-like spirit was in the air — in the seething heart of the populace. The meeting was held August 21st, in the old cradle of liberty. To its call alone fifteen hundred names were appended. It was a Boston audience both as to character and numbers, an altogether imposing affair, over whom the mayor of the city presided and before whom two of the most consummate orators of the commonwealth fulmined against the Abolitionists. One of their hearers, a young attorney of twenty-four, who listened to Peleg Sprague and Harrison Gray Otis that day, described sixteen years afterward the latter and the effects produced by him on that audience. Our young attorney vividly recalled how “‘Abolitionist’ was linked with contempt, in the silver tones of Otis, and all the charms that a divine eloquence and most felicitous diction could throw around a bad cause were given it; the excited multitude seemed actually ready to leap up beneath the magic of his speech. It would be something, if one must die, to die by such a hand — a hand somewhat worthy and able to stifle anti-slavery, if it could be stifled. The orator was worthy of the gigantic task attempted; and thousands crowded before him, every one of their hearts melted by that eloquence, beneath which Massachusetts had bowed, not unworthily, for more than thirty years.” Here is a specimen of the sort of goading which the wild-cat-like spirit of the city got from the orators. It is taken from the speech of Peleg Sprague. The orator is paying his respects to George Thompson, “an avowed emissary” “a professed agitator,” who “comes here from the dark and corrupt institutions of Europe to enlighten us upon the rights of man and the moral duties of our own condition. Received by our hospitality, he stands here upon our soil, protected by our laws, and hurls firebrands, arrows, and death into the habitations of our neighbors and friends, and brothers; and when he shall have kindled a conflagration which is sweeping in desolation over our land, he has only to embark for his own country, and there look serenely back with indifference or exultation upon the widespread ruin by which our cities are wrapt in flames, and our garments rolled in blood.” The great meeting was soon a thing of the past but not so its effects. The echoes of Otis and Sprague did not cease at its close. They thrilled in the air, they thrilled long afterward in the blood of the people. When the multitude dispersed Mischief went out into the streets of the city with them. Wherever afterward they gathered Mischief made one in their midst. Mischief was let loose, Mischief was afoot in the town. The old town was no place for the foreign emissary, neither was it a safe place for the arch-agitator. On the day after the meeting, Garrison and his young wife accordingly retreated to her father’s home at Brooklyn, Conn., where the husband needed not to be jostling elbows with Mistress Mischief, and her pals. Garrison’s answer to the speeches of Otis and Sprague was in his sternest vein. He is sure after reading them that, “there is more guilt HDT WHAT? INDEX

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attaching to the people of the free States from the continuance of slavery, than those in the slave States.” At least he is ready to affirm upon the authority of Orator Sprague, “that New England is as really a slave-holding section of the republic as Georgia or South Carolina.” Sprague, he finds, “in amicable companionship and popular repute with thieves and adulterers; with slaveholders, slavedealers, and slave-destroyers; ... with the disturbers of the public peace; with the robbers of the public mail; with ruffians who insult, pollute, and lacerate helpless women; and with conspirators against the lives and liberties of New England citizens.” To Otis who was then nearly seventy years of age Garrison addressed his rebuke in tones of singular solemnity. It seemed to him that the aged statesman had transgressed against liberty “under circumstances of peculiar criminality.” “Yet at this solemn period,” the reprobation of the prophet ran, “you have not scrupled, nay, you have been ambitious, to lead and address an excited multitude, in vindication of all imaginable wickedness, embodied in one great system of crime and blood — to pander to the lusts and desires of the robbers of God and his poor — to consign over to the tender mercies of cruel taskmasters, multitudes of guiltless men, women, and children — and to denounce as an ‘unlawful and dangerous association’ a society whose only object is to bring this nation to repentance, through the truth as it is in Jesus.” These audacious and iconoclastic performances of the reformer were not exactly adapted to turn from him the wrath of the idol worshipers. They more likely added fuel to the hot anger burning in Boston against him. Three weeks passed after his departure from the city, and his friends did not deem it safe for him to return. Toward the end of the fourth week of his enforced absence, against which he was chafing not a little, an incident happened in Boston which warned him to let patience have its perfect work. It was on the night of September 17th that the dispositions of the city toward him found grim expression in a gallows erected in front of his house at 23 Brighton street. This ghastly reminder that the fellow-citizens of the editor of the Liberator continued to take a lively interest in him, “was made in real workmanship style, of maple joist five inches through, eight or nine feet high, for the accommodation of two persons.” Garrison and Thompson were the two persons for whom these brave accommodations were prepared. But as neither they nor their friends were in a mood to have trial made of them, the intended occupants consented to give Boston a wide berth, and to be somewhat particular that they did not turn in with her while the homicidal fit lasted. This editing his paper at long range, and this thought of life and safety Garrison did not at all relish. They grew more and more irksome to his fearless and earnest spirit. For his was a “pine-and-fagot” Abolitionism that knew not the fear of men or their wrath. But now he must needs have a care for the peace of mind of his young wife, who was, within a few months, to give birth to a child. And her anxiety for him was very great. Neither was the anxiety of devoted friends and followers to be lightly disregarded. All of which detained the leader in Brooklyn until the 25th of the month, when the danger signals seemed to have disappeared. Whereupon he set out immediately for his post in Boston to be at the head HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of his forces. He found the city in one of those strange pauses of popular excitement, which might signify the ebb of the tide or only the retreat of the billows. He was not inclined to let the anti-Abolition agitation subside so soon, before it had carried on its flood Abolition principles to wider fields and more abundant harvests in the republic. Anxious lest the cat- like temper of the populace was falling into indifference and apathy, he and his disciples took occasion to prod it into renewed wakefulness and activity. The instruments used for this purpose were anti-slavery meetings and the sharp goad of his Liberator editorials. The city was possessed with the demon of slavery, and its foaming at the mouth was the best of all signs that the Abolition exorcism was working effectively. So, in between the glittering teeth and the terrible paws was thrust the maddening goad, and up sprang the mighty beast horrible to behold. One of these meetings was the anniversary of the formation of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society which fell on October 14th. The ladies issued their notice, engaged a hall, and invited George Thompson to address them. Now the foreign emissary was particularly exasperating to Boston sensibility on the subject of slavery. He was the veritable red rag to the pro- slavery bull. The public announcement, therefore, that he was to speak in the city threw the public mind into violent agitation. The Gazette and the Courier augmented the excitement by the recklessness with which they denounced the proposed meeting, the former promising to Thompson a lynching, while the latter endeavored to involve his associates who were to the “manner born” in the popular outbreak, which was confidently predicted in case the “foreign vagrant” wagged his tongue at the time appointed. Notwithstanding the rage of press and people the meeting was postponed through no willingness on the part of the ladies, but because of the panic of the owners of the hall lest their property should be damaged or destroyed in case of a riot. The ladies, thereupon, appointed three o’clock in the afternoon of October 21st as the time, and the hall adjoining the Anti- Slavery Office, at 46 Washington street, as the place where they would hold their adjourned meeting. This time they made no mention of Mr. Thompson’s addressing them, merely announcing several addresses. In fact, an address from Mr. Thompson, in view of the squally outlook, was not deemed expedient. To provide against accidents and disasters, he left the city on the day before the meeting. But this his enemies did not know. They confidently expected that he was to be one of the speakers. An inflammatory handbill distributed on the streets at noon of the 21st seemed to leave no doubt of this circumstance in the pro- slavery portion of the city. The handbill referred to ran as follows: THOMPSON, THE ABOLITIONIST! That infamous foreign scoundrel, THOMPSON, will hold forth this afternoon at the Liberator office. No. 48 Washington street. The present is a fair opportunity for the friends of the Union to snake Thompson out! It will be a contest between the Abolitionists and the friends of the Union. A purse of $100 has been raised by a number of patriotic citizens to reward the individual who shall HDT WHAT? INDEX

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first lay violent hands on Thompson, so that he may be brought to the tar-kettle before dark. Friends of the Union, be vigilant! Boston, Wednesday, 12 o’clock. That Wednesday forenoon Garrison spent at the anti-slavery office, little dreaming of the peril which was to overtake him in that very spot in the afternoon. He went home to an early dinner, since his wife was a member of the society, and he himself was set down for an address. As he wended his way homeward, Mischief and her gang were afoot distributing the aforesaid handbills “in the insurance offices, the reading- rooms, all along State street, in the hotels, bar-rooms, etc.,” and scattering it “among mechanics at the North End, who were mightily taken with it.” Garrison returned about a half hour before the time appointed for the meeting. He found a small crowd of about a hundred individuals collected in front of the building where the hall was situated, and on ascending to the hall more of the same sort, mostly young men, choking the access to it. They were noisy, and Garrison pushed his way through them with difficulty. As he entered the place of meeting and took his seat among the ladies, twenty had already arrived, the gang of young rowdies recognized him and evinced this by the exclamation: “That’s Garrison!” The full significance of the crowd just without the hall did not seem to have occurred to the man whom they had identified. He did not know that they were the foam blown from the mouth of a great mob at the moment filling the streets in the neighborhood of the building where he sat with such serenity of spirit. His wife who had followed him from their home saw what Garrison did not see. The crowd of a hundred had swelled to thousands. It lay in a huge irregular cross, jammed in between the buildings on Washington street, the head lowering in front of the anti-slavery office, the foot reaching to the site where stood Joy building, now occupied by the Rogers, the right arm stretching along Court street to the Court House, and the left encircling the old State House, City Hall and Post- office then, in a gigantic embrace. All hope of urging her way through that dense mass was abandoned by Mrs. Garrison, and a friend, Mr. John E. Fuller, escorted her to his home, where she passed the night. Meantime the atmosphere upstairs at the hall began to betoken a fast approaching storm. The noises ominously increased on the landing just outside. The door of the hall was swung wide open and the entrance filled with rioters. Garrison, all unconscious of danger, walked over to these persons and remonstrated in his grave way with them in regard to the disturbance which they were producing, winding up with a characteristic bit of pleasantry: “Gentlemen,” said he, “perhaps you are not aware that this is a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, called and intended exclusively for ladies, and those only who have been invited to address them. Understanding this fact you will not be so rude and indecorous as to thrust your presence upon this meeting.” But he added, “If, gentlemen, any of you are ladies in disguise — why only apprise me of the fact, give me your names, and I will introduce you to the rest of your sex, and you can take seats among them accordingly.” The power of benignity over malignity lasted a few HDT WHAT? INDEX

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moments after this little speech, when the situation changed rapidly from bad to worse. “The tumult continually increased,” says an eye-witness, “with horrible execrations, howling, stamping, and finally shrieking with rage. They seemed not to dare to enter, notwithstanding their fury, but mounted on each other’s shoulders, so that a row of hostile heads appeared over the slight partition, of half the height of the wall which divides the society’s rooms from the landing place. We requested them to allow the door to be shut; but they could not decide as to whether the request should be granted, and the door was opened and shut with violence, till it hung useless from its hinges.” Garrison thinking that his absence might quiet these perturbed spirits and so enable the ladies to hold their meeting without further molestation volunteered at this juncture to the president of the society to retire from the hall unless she desired him to remain. She did not wish him to stay but urged him to go at once not only for the peace of the meeting but for his own safety. Garrison thereupon left the hall meaning at the time to leave the building as well, but egress by the way of the landing and the stairs, he directly perceived was impossible, and did what seemed the next best thing, entered the antislavery office, separated from the hall by a board partition. Charles C. Burleigh accompanied him within this retreat. The door between the hall and the office was securely locked, and Garrison with that marvelous serenity of mind, which was a part of him, busied himself immediately with writing to a friend an account of the scenes which were enacting in the next room. The tempest had begun in the streets also. The mob from its five thousand throats were howling “Thompson! Thompson!” The mayor of the city, Theodore Lyman, appeared upon the scene, and announced to the gentlemen of property and standing, who were thus exercising their vocal organs, that Mr. Thompson was not at the meeting, was not in the city. But the mayor was a modern Canute before the sea of human passion, which was rushing in over law and authority. He besought the rioters to disperse, but he might as well have besought the waves breaking on Nastasket Beach to disperse. Higher, higher rose the voices; fiercer, fiercer waxed the multitude; more and more frightful became the uproar. The long-pent-up excitement of the city and its hatred of Abolitionists had broken loose at last and the deluge had come. The mayor tossed upon the human inundation as a twig on a mountain stream, and with him for the nonce struggled helplessly the police power of the town also. Upstairs in the hall the society and its president are quite as powerless as the mayor and the police below. Miss Mary S. Parker, the president, is struggling with the customary opening exercises. She has called the meeting to order, read to the ladies some passages from the Bible, and has lifted up her voice in prayer to the All Wise and Merciful One “for direction and succor, and the forgiveness of enemies and revilers.” It is a wonderful scene, a marvelous example of Christian heroism, for in the midst of the hisses and threats and curses of the rioters, the prayer of the brave woman rose clear and untremulous. But now the rioters have thrown themselves against the partition between the landing-place and the hall. They are trying to break it down; now, they have partially succeeded. In another moment they have thrown HDT WHAT? INDEX

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themselves against the door of the office where Garrison is locked. The lower panel is dashed in. Through the opening they have caught sight of their object, Garrison, serenely writing at his desk. “There he is! That’s Garrison! Out with the scoundrel!” and other such words of recognition and execration, burst from one and another of the mob. The shattering of the partition, the noise of splitting and ripping boards, the sharp crash caused by the shivering of the office door, the loud and angry outcries of the rioters warn the serene occupant of the office that his position has become one of extreme peril. But he does not become excited. His composure does not forsake him. Instead of attempting to escape, he simply turns to his friend, Burleigh, with the words, “You may as well open the door, and let them come in and do their worst.” But fortunately, Burleigh was in no such extremely non-resistant mood. The advent of the mayor and the constables upon the scene at this point rescued Garrison from immediately falling into the hands of the mob, who were cleared out of the hall and from the stairway. Now the voice of the mayor was heard urging the ladies to go home as it was dangerous to remain; and now the voice of Maria Weston Chapman, replying: “If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere.” The ladies finally decided to retire, and their exit diverted, while the operation lasted, the attention of the huge, cat-like creature from their object in the anti-slavery office. When the passing of the ladies had ceased, the old fury of the mob against Garrison returned. “Out with him!” “Lynch him!” rose in wild uproar from thousands in the streets. But again the attention of the huge, cat-like creature was diverted from its object in the second story of the building before which it was lashing itself into frenzy. This time it was the anti-slavery sign which hung from the rooms of the society over the sidewalk. The mob had caught sight of it, and directly set up a yell for it. The sensation of utter helplessness in the presence of the multitude seemed at this juncture to return to the chief magistrate of the city. It was impossible to control the cataract-like passions of the rioters. He heard their awful roar for the sign. The din had risen to terrific proportions. The thought of what might happen next appalled him. The mob might begin to bombard the sign with brickbats, and from the sign pass to the building, and from the building to the constables, and then — but the mayor glanced not beyond, for he had determined to appease the fury of the mob by throwing down to it the hateful sign. A constable detached it, and hurled it down to the rioters in the street. But by the act the mayor had signified that the rule of law had collapsed, and the rule of the mob had really begun. When the rioters had wreaked their wrath upon the emblem of freedom, they were in the mood for more violence. The appetite for destruction, it was seen, had not been glutted; only whetted. Garrison’s situation was now extremely critical. He could no longer remain where he was, for the mob would invade the building and hunt him like hounds from cellar to garret. He must leave the building without delay. To escape from the front was out of the question. A way of escape must, therefore, be found in the rear. All of these considerations the mayor and Garrison’s friends urged upon him. The good man fell in with this counsel, and, with a faithful HDT WHAT? INDEX

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friend, proceeded to the rear of the building, where from a window he dropped to a shed, but in doing so was very nearly precipitated to the ground. After picking himself up he passed into a carpenter’s shop, meaning to let himself down into Wilson’s Lane, now Devonshire street, but the myriad-eyed mob, which was searching every portion of the building for their game, espied him at this point, and with that set up a great shout. The workmen came to the aid of the fugitive by closing the door of the carpenter’s shop in the face of his pursuers. The situation seemed desperate. Retreat from the front was cut off; escape from the rear anticipated and foiled. Garrison perceived the futility of any further attempts to elude the mob, and proposed in his calm way to deliver himself up to them. But his faithful Achates, John Reid Campbell, advised him that it was his duty to avoid the mob as long as it was possible to do so. Garrison thereupon made a final effort to get away. He retreated up stairs, where his friend and a lad got him into a corner of the room and tried to conceal his whereabouts by piling some boards in front of him. But, by that time, the rioters had entered the building, and within a few moments had broken into the room where Garrison was in hiding. They found Mr. Reid, and demanded of him where Garrison was. But Reid firmly refused to tell. They then led him to a window, and exhibited him to the mob in the Lane, advising them that it was not Garrison, but Garrison’s and Thompson’s friend, who knows where Garrison is, but refuses to tell. A shout of fierce exultation from below greeted this announcement. Almost immediately afterward, Garrison was discovered and dragged furiously to the window, with the intention of hurling him thence to the pavement. Some of the rioters were for doing this, while others were for milder measures. “Don’t let us kill him outright!” they begged. So his persecutors relented, coiled a rope around his body instead, and bade him descend to the street. The great man was never greater than at that moment. With extraordinary meekness and benignity he saluted his enemies in the street. From the window he bowed to the multitude who were thirsting for his destruction, requesting them to wait patiently, for he was coming to them. Then he stepped intrepidly down the ladder raised for the purpose, and into the seething sea of human passion. Garrison must now have been speedily torn to pieces had he not been quickly seized by two or three powerful men, who were determined to save him from falling into the hands of the mob. They were men of great muscular strength, but the muscular strength of two or three giants would have proven utterly unequal to the rescue, and this Mr. Garrison’s deliverers evidently appreciated. For while they employed their powerful arms, they also employed stratagem as well to effect their purpose. They shouted anon as they fought their way through the excited throng, “He is an American! He shan’t be hurt!” and other such words which divided the mind of the mob, arousing among some sympathy for the good man. By this means he was with difficulty got out of Wilson’s lane into State street, in the rear of the old State House. The champion was now on historic ground, ground consecrated by the blood of Crispus Attucks and his fellow-martyrs sixty-five years before. His hat was lost, much of his clothing was stripped from his body, he was without his customary glasses, and was HDT WHAT? INDEX

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therefore practically blind. He could hear the awful clamor, the mighty uproar of the mob, but he could not distinguish them one from another, friend from foe. Nevertheless he “walked with head erect, calm countenance flashing eyes like a martyr going to the stake, full of faith and manly hope” according to the testimony of an eye-witness. Garrison himself has thrown light on the state of his mind during the ordeal. “The promises of God,” he afterward remembered, sustained his soul, “so that it was not only divested of fear, but ready to sing aloud for joy.” The news now reached the ears of the mayor that Garrison was in the hands of the mob. Thereupon the feeble but kindly magistrate began to act afresh the role of the twig in the mountain stream. He and his constables struggled helplessly in the human current rushing and raging around City Hall, the head and seat of municipal law and authority. Without the aid of private citizens Garrison must inevitably have perished in the commotions which presently reached their climax in violence and terror. He was in the rear of City Hall when the mayor caught up to him and his would-be rescuers. The mayor perceived the extremity of the situation, and said to the Faneuil Hall giants who had hold of Garrison, “Take him into my office,” which was altogether more easily said than done. For the rioters have raised the cry “to the Frog Pond with him!” Which order will be carried out, that of the magistrate or that of the mob? These were horrible moments while the two hung trembling in the balance. But other private citizens coming to the assistance of the mayor struck the scales for the moment in his favor, and Garrison was finally hustled, and thrust by main force into the south door of the City Hall and carried up to the mayor’s room. But the mob had immediately effected an entrance into the building through the north door and filled the lower hall. The mayor now addressed the pack, strove manfully in his feeble way to prevail upon the human wolves to observe order, to sustain the law and the honor of the city, he even intimated to them that he was ready to lay down his life on the spot to maintain the law and preserve order. Then he got out on the ledge over the south door and spoke in a similar strain to the mob on the street. But alas! he knew not the secret for reversing the Circean spell by which gentlemen of property and standing in the community had been suddenly transformed into a wolfish rabble. The increasing tumult without soon warned the authorities that what advantage the mayor may have obtained in the contest with the mob was only temporary and that their position was momentarily becoming more perilous and less tenable. It was impossible to say to what extreme of violence a multitude so infuriated would not go to get their prey. It seemed to the now thoroughly alarmed mayor that the mob might in their frenzy attack the City Hall to effect their purpose. There was one building in the city, which the guardians of the law evidently agreed could resist the rage of the populace, and that building was the jail. To this last stronghold of Puritan civilization the authorities and the powers that were, fell back as a dernier resort to save Garrison’s life. But even in this utmost pitch and extremity, when law was trampled in the streets, when authority was a reed shaken in a storm, when anarchy had drowned order in the bosom of the town, the Anglo-Saxon passion for legal forms asserted HDT WHAT? INDEX

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itself. The good man, hunted for his life, must forsooth be got into the only refuge which promised him security from his pursuers by a regular judicial commitment as a disturber of the peace. Is there anything at once so pathetic and farcical in the Universal history of mobs? Pathetic and farcical to be sure, but it was also well meant, and therefore we will not stop to quarrel with men who were equal to the perpetration of a legal fiction so full of the comedy and tragedy of civilized society. But enough — the municipal wiseacres having put their heads together and evolved the brilliant plan of committing the prophet as a disturber of the peace, immediately set about its execution, which developed in the sequence into a bird of altogether another color. For a more perilous and desperate device to preserve Garrison’s life could not well have been hit upon. How was he ever to be got out of the building and through that sea of ferocious faces surging and foaming around it. First then by disguising his identity by sundry changes in his apparel. He obtained a pair of trousers from one kindly soul, another gave him a coat, a third lent him a stock, a fourth furnished him a cap. A hack was summoned and stationed at the south door, a posse of constables drew up and made an open way from the door to it. Another hack was placed in readiness at the north door. The hack at the south door was only a ruse to throw the mob off the scent of their prey, while he was got out of the north door and smuggled into the other hack. Up to this point, the plan worked well, but the instant after Garrison had been smuggled into the hack he was identified by the mob, and then ensued a scene which defies description; no writer however skillful, may hope to reproduce it. The rioters rushed madly upon the vehicle with the cry: “Cut the traces! Cut the reins!” They flung themselves upon the horses, hung upon the wheels, dashed open the doors, the driver the while belaboring their heads right and left with a powerful whip, which he also laid vigorously on the backs of his horses. For a moment it looked as if a catastrophe was unavoidable, but the next saw the startled horses plunging at break-neck speed with the hack up Court street and the mob pursuing it with yells of baffled rage. Then began a thrilling, a tremendous race for life and Leverett street jail. The vehicle flew along Court street to Bodoin square, but the rioters, with fell purpose flew hardly less swiftly in its track. Indeed the pursuit of the pack was so close that the hackman did not dare to drive directly to the jail but reached it by a detour through Cambridge and Blossom streets. Even then the mob pressed upon the heels of the horses as they drew up before the portals of the old prison, which shut not an instant too soon upon the editor of the Liberator, who was saved from a frightful fate to use a Biblical phrase but by the skin of his teeth. Here the reformer safe from the wrath of his foes, was locked in a cell; and here, during the evening, with no abatement of his customary cheerfulness and serenity of spirit, he received several of his anxious friends, Whittier among them, whom through the grated bars he playfully accosted thus: “You see my accommodations are so limited, that I cannot ask you to spend the night with me.” That night in his prison cell, and on his rude prison bed, he slept the sleep of the just man, sweet and long: “When peace within the bosom reigns, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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And conscience gives th’ approving voice; Though bound the human form in chains. Yet can the soul aloud rejoice. “’Tis true, my footsteps are confined — I cannot range beyond this cell — But what can circumscribe my mind, To chain the winds attempt as well!” The above stanzas he wrote the next morning on the walls of his cell. Besides this one he made two other inscriptions there, to stand as memorabilia of the black drama enacted in Boston on the afternoon of October 21, 1835. After being put through the solemn farce of an examination in a court, extemporized in the jail, Garrison was discharged from arrest as a disturber of the peace! But the authorities, dreading a repetition of the scenes of the day before, prayed him to leave the city for a few days, which he did, a deputy sheriff driving him to Canton, where he boarded the train from Boston to Providence, containing his wife, and together they went thence to her father’s at Brooklyn, Conn. The apprehensions of the authorities in respect of the danger of a fresh attack upon him were unquestionably well founded, inasmuch as diligent search was made for him in all of the outgoing stages and cars from the city that morning. In this wise did pro-slavery, patriotic Boston translate into works her sympathy for the South. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 22, Thursday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert began to lay in hides at the anchorage in San Pedro, California.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Thursday, Oct. 22d, at San Pedro, in the old south-easter berth, a league from shore, with a slip- rope on the cable, reefs in the topsails, and rope-yarns for gaskets. Here we lay ten days, with the usual boating, hide-carrying, rolling of cargo up the steep hill, walking barefooted over stones, and getting drenched in salt water.

Wilhelm III Friedrich Christian, Count von Aldenburg replaced Wilhelm II Gustav Friedrich as Baron of Knyphausen.

Samuel Colt of Hartford, Connecticut acquired French and British patents that protected his rights to the design of 5-shot rapid-firing percussion cap pistols using a ratchet to rotate its revolving cylinders (a year later, Colt would acquire similar United States protection and commence making his fortune in the small arms business):

The above is a most intriguing Daguerreotype! Normally the maneuver of producing the “revolver” self- protective device was to be masked by holding one’s hat in such manner as to conceal one’s pistol hand. However, for purposes of demonstrating the subtle maneuver to the camera — Mr. Colt has lowered his hat hand.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 22 of 10 M / Attended Meeting which was a good time in silence - excepting a few savory words from Father Rodman - The last was Preparative In which Benona Weaver requested Membership & two young couples laid their intentions of Marriage before the Meeting — After Meeting met with a committee of the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Moy [Monthly] Meeting on the Sale of Land - In the Afternoon Answered a letter recd yesterday from Joshua Lynch of Ohio RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

October 27, Tuesday: Records of the “Institute of 1770”: Lecture on “Astronomy.” Debated: “Should the people ever inflict punishment upon an individual without granting him a regular trial?” HARVARD COLLEGE

October 29, Thursday: Having already perused the 1st volume and the Atlas, David Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, the 3rd volume of Charles Rollin (1661-1741)’s THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIANS, CARTHAGINIANS, ASSYRIANS, BABYLONIANS, MEDES AND PERSIANS, MACEDONIANS, AND GRECIANS. INCLUDING A HISTORY OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES OF THE ANCIENTS. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH. THE 12TH EDITION, REVISED, CORRECTED, AND ILLUSTRATED WITH A SET OF MAPS NEWLY ENGRAVED (first printed 1730-1738; one of the first 17 English editions, possibly the one issued in London in 1813).

Our guy would comment later of the catacombs full of preserved death, of our museums full of stuffed animals, and of such history textbooks stuffed full with irrelevant facts, that: “I hate museums, there is nothing so weighs upon the spirits. They are catacombs of nature. They are preserved death. One green bud of Spring one willow catkin, one faint trill from some migrating sparrow, might set the world on its legs again. I know not whether I muse most at the bodies stuffed with cotton and sawdust — or those stuffed with bowels and fleshy fibre. The life that is in a single green weed is of more worth than all this death. They are very much like the written history of the world — and I read Rollin and Ferguson with the same feeling.” –JOURNAL; September 24, 1843

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 10th M 29th 1835 / Again we rode to Portsmouth to attend the Monthly Meeting the first was silent & in the last we had much buisness - two couples passed Meeting for Marriage - One HDT WHAT? INDEX

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man requested to be admitted to Membership - One was disowned & several other cases of importance was before us. —- We dined with Stephen Chase & then rode home. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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NOVEMBER 1835

November: This month’s issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:

HARVARDIANA

November 4, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson lectured at the Concord Lyceum on: Michael Angelo Buonaroti.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day after breakfast we rode to Somersett to attend the Select Qrtly Meeting — Dined at Daniel Braytons & lodged at Nathan HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Chases - RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 5, Thursday: Waldo Emerson began to present the “English Literature” series of lectures which would continue through January of the following year at the Masonic Temple in Boston, offering his “Introductory” lecture, on behalf of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Printed in EARLY LECTURES I 205-385. He would receive $200 for the series:

Boston’s Masonic Temple This building is situated in Tremont Street, on part of the land that was formerly Washington Gardens. The corner stone was laid October 11, 1830, with appropriate Masonic ceremonies, by the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. This Temple was dedicated May 30, 1832. It is sixty feet wide, and eighty and a half feet long, and fronts westwardly on Tremont Street. The walls are fifty-two feet high, of stone, covered with a slated roof, twenty-four feet high, containing sixteen windows to light the attic story. The gutters are of cast iron, and the water trunks are of copper. The basement is of fine hammered granite, twelve feet high, with a belt of the same. The towers at the corners next Tremont Street are sixteen feet square, surmounted with granite battlements, and pinnacles rising ninety- five feet from the ground. The door and window frames are of fine hammered granite, and the main walls, from the basement to the roof, are of Quincy granite, disposed in courses, in such a manner as to present a finished appearance to the eye. The blocks are triangular in shape, and there is probably no other such building in Massachusetts. From the street are two flights of winding stairs in the towers, sufficiently spacious to admit a free entrance to the five stories of the building. The first story is occupied for miscellaneous purposes; the second by the spacious salesrooms of Messrs. Chickering & Sons; and the third, fourth, and fifth stories for Masonic purposes. The different Lodges meet as follows:-- St. John’s Lodge, first Monday; St. Andrew’s, second Thursday; Massachusetts, third Monday; Columbian, first Thursday; Mount Lebanon, second Monday; Winslow Lewis Lodge, second Friday; Revere Lodge, first Tuesday; Germania Lodge, fourth Monday; St. Andrew’s Chapter, first Wednesday; St. Paul’s Chapter, third Tuesday; Boston Encampment, third Wednesday; De Molay Encampment, fourth Wednesday; Council Royal and Select Masters, third Thursday; Grand Lodge, second Wednesday in December, March, June, and September, 27th December, annually; Grand Chapter, Tuesday preceding second Wednesday of March, June, September, and December; Grand Encampment of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, annually; Grand Lodge of Perfection, fourth Tuesday; Board of Relief, first Tuesday in each month. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Richard Henry Dana, Jr. received a version of the latest world news from other vessels in the port of Santa Barbara, California.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Coming round St. Buenaventura, and nearing the anchorage, we saw two vessels in port, a large full-rigged, and a small hermaphrodite brig. The former, the crew said must be the Pilgrim; but I had been too long in the Pilgrim to be mistaken in her, and I was right in differing from them; for, upon nearer approach, her long, low shear, sharp bows, and raking masts, told quite another story. “Man-of war brig,” said some of them; “Baltimore clipper,” said others; the Ayacucho, thought I; and soon the broad folds of the beautiful banner of St. George,– white field with blood-red border and cross;– were displayed from her peak. A few minutes put it beyond a doubt, and we were lying by the side of the Ayacucho, which had sailed from San Diego about nine months before, while we were lying there in the Pilgrim. She had since been to Valparaiso, Callao, and the Sandwich Islands, and had just come upon the coast. Her boat came on board, bringing Captain Wilson; and in half an hour the news was all over the ship that there was a war between the United States and France. Exaggerated accounts reached the forecastle. Battles had been fought, a large French fleet was in the Pacific, etc., etc.; and one of the boat’s crew of the Ayacucho said that when they left Callao, a large French frigate and the American frigate Brandywine, which were lying there, were going outside to have a battle, and that the English frigate Blonde was to be umpire, and see fair play. Here was important news for us. Alone, on an unprotected coast, without an American man-of-war within some thousands of miles, and the prospect of a voyage home through the whole length of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans! A French prison seemed a much more probable place of destination than the good port of Boston. However, we were too salt to believe every yarn that comes into the forecastle, and waited to hear the truth of the matter from higher authority. By means of a supercargo’s clerk, I got the account of the matter, which was, that the governments had difficulty about the payment of a debt; that war had been threatened and prepared for, but not actually declared, although it was pretty generally anticipated. This was not quite so bad, yet was no small cause of anxiety. But we cared very little about the matter ourselves. “Happy go lucky” with Jack! We did not believe that a French prison would be much worse than “hide-droghing” on the coast of California; and no one who has not been on a long, dull voyage, shut up in one ship, can conceive of the effect of monotony upon one’s thoughts and wishes. The prospect of a change is like a green spot in a desert, and the remotest probability of great events and exciting scenes gives a feeling of delight, and sets life in motion, so as to give a pleasure, which any one not in the same state would be entirely unable to account for. In fact, a more jovial night we had not passed in the forecastle for months. Every one seemed in unaccountably high spirits. An undefined anticipation of radical changes, of new scenes, and great doings, seemed to have possessed every one, and the common drudgery of the vessel appeared contemptible. Here was a new vein opened; a grand theme of conversation, and a topic for all sorts of discussions. National feeling was wrought up. Jokes were cracked upon the only Frenchman in the ship, and comparisons made between “old horse” and “soup meagre,” etc., etc. We remained in uncertainty as to this war for more than two months, when an arrival from the Sandwich Islands brought us the news of an amicable arrangement of the difficulties. The other vessel which we found in port was the hermaphrodite brig Avon, from the Sandwich Islands. She was fitted up in handsome style; fired a gun and ran her ensign up and down at sunrise and sunset; had a band of four or five pieces of music on board, and appeared rather like a pleasure yacht than a trader; yet, in connection with the Loriotte, Clementine, Bolivar, Convoy, and other small vessels, belonging to sundry Americans at Oahu, she carried on a great trade– legal and illegal– in otter skins, silks, teas, specie, etc.

November 5, Thursday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day attended the Quarterly Meeting at large In the first HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Hannah Robinson preached a savory little testimony after which our fr John Meader took the weight of Service & it felt to me that Truth was over the Meeting to the comfort & enlargement of many minds — after which Dorcas Paine appeard in Supplication, but from the feebleness of her voice was not generally heard - but there were feelings of unity in her appearance — Directly after Meeting we got into our Chaise & rode on to Providence & reached our frd Moses Browns House before it was very dark. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Having already perused Volume 1, the Atlas, and Volume 3 of Charles Rollin (1661-1741)’s THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIANS, CARTHAGINIANS, ASSYRIANS, BABYLONIANS, MEDES AND PERSIANS, MACEDONIANS, AND GRECIANS. INCLUDING A HISTORY OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES OF THE ANCIENTS. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH. THE 12TH EDITION, REVISED, CORRECTED, AND ILLUSTRATED WITH A SET OF MAPS NEWLY ENGRAVED (first printed 1730-1738; one of the first 17 English editions, possibly the one issued in London in 1813), David Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th volumes of that set.

November 7, Saturday: According to BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS (Groton, 1894), Thomas S. Farnsworth of Groton & Harriet H. Lawton of Concord filed an intention to marry.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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7th day Attended the Meeting for Sufferings at the Meeting House in Providence Dined at Moses Browns & sett off immediately for home - but got no further than Bristol ferry & lodged at Pierces RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. observed and described typical smuggling activities along the coast of California.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: The second day after our arrival, a full-rigged brig came round the point from the northward, sailed leisurely through the bay, and stood off again for the south-east, in the direction of the large island of Catalina. The next day the Avon got under weigh, and stood in the same direction, bound for San Pedro. This might do for marines and Californians, but we knew the ropes too well. The brig was never again seen on the coast, and the Avon arrived at San Pedro in about a week, with a full cargo of Canton and American goods. This was one of the means of escaping the heavy duties the Mexicans lay upon all imports. A vessel comes on the coast, enters a moderate cargo at Monterey, which is the only custom-house, and commences trading. In a month or more, having sold a large part of her cargo, she stretches over to Catalina, or other of the large uninhabited islands which lie off the coast, in a trip from port to port, and supplies herself with choice goods from a vessel from Oahu, which has been lying off and on the islands, waiting for her. Two days after the sailing of the Avon, the Loriotte came in from the leeward, and without doubt had also a snatch at the brig’s cargo.

November 10, Tuesday: Records of the “Institute of 1770”:

Renouf read select passages from a review of A FEW WEEKS IN PARIS DURING THE RESIDENCE OF THE ALLIED SOVEREIGNS IN THAT METROPOLIS. Debated: “Ought gambling to be punished as a criminal offense?”

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. described a Quaker whaler, the Wilmington and Liverpool Packet out of the port of New Bedford, which he experienced while it was replenishing in Santa Barbara harbor.

It is interesting, to those of us who find this sort of thing interesting, that Quakers, despite the testimony of nonviolence, had no more difficulty with being whalers than they had had with the transportation of slaves during the triangular trade. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“The whaler was a kind of pirate-miner — an excavator of oceanic oil, stoking the furnace of the Industrial Revolution as much as any man digging coal out of the earth.” — Philip Hoare, THE WHALE: IN SEARCH OF THE GIANTS OF THE SEA (NY: HarperCollins, March 2010) MOBY-DICK, THE OIL SPILL HDT WHAT? INDEX

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AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Tuesday, Nov. 10th. Going ashore, as usual, in the gig, just before sundown, to bring off the captain, we found, upon taking in the captain and pulling off again, that our ship, which lay the farthest out, had run up her ensign. This meant “Sail ho!” of course, but as we were within the point we could see nothing. “Give way, boys! Give way! Lay out on your oars, and long stroke!” said the captain; and stretching to the whole length of our arms, bending back again, so that our backs touched the thwarts, we sent her through the water like a rocket. A few minutes of such pulling opened the islands, one after another, in range of the point, and gave us a view of the Canal, where was a ship, under top-gallant sails, standing in, with a light breeze, for the anchorage. Putting the boat’s head in the direction of the ship, the captain told us to lay out again; and we needed no spurring, for the prospect of boarding a new ship, perhaps from home, hearing the news and having something to tell of when we got back, was excitement enough for us, and we gave way with a will. Captain Nye, of the Loriotte, who had been an old whaleman, was in the stern-sheets, and fell mightily into the spirit of it. “Bend your backs and break your oars!” said he. “Lay me on, Captain Bunker!” “There she flukes!” and other exclamations, peculiar to whalemen. In the meantime, it fell flat calm, and being within a couple of miles of the ship, we expected to board her in a few moments, when a sudden breeze sprung up, dead ahead for the ship, and she braced up and stood off toward the islands, sharp on the larboard tack, making good way through the water. This, of course, brought us up, and we had only to “ease larboard oars; pull round starboard!” and go aboard the Alert, with something very like a flea in the ear. There was a light land-breeze all night, and the ship did not come to anchor until the next morning. As soon as her anchor was down, we went aboard, and found her to be the whaleship, Wilmington and Liverpool Packet, of New Bedford, last from the “off-shore ground,” with nineteen hundred barrels of oil. A “spouter” we knew her to be as soon as we saw her, by her cranes and boats, and by her stump top-gallant masts, and a certain slovenly look to the sails, rigging, spars and hull; and when we got on board, we found everything to correspond, — spouter fashion. She had a false deck, which was rough and oily, and cut up in every direction by the chimes of oil casks; her rigging was slack and turning white; no paint on the spars or blocks; clumsy seizings and straps without covers, and homeward-bound splices in every direction. Her crew, too, were not in much better order. Her captain was a slab-sided, shamble-legged Quaker, in a suit of brown, with a broad-brimmed hat, and sneaking about decks, like a sheep, with his head down; and the men looked more like fishermen and farmers than they did like sailors. Though it was by no means cold weather, (we having on only our red shirts and duck trowsers,) they all had on woollen trowsers– not blue and ship-shape– but of all colors– brown, drab, grey, aye, and green, with suspenders over their shoulders, and pockets to put their hands in. This, added to guernsey frocks, striped comforters about the neck, thick cowhide boots, woollen caps, and a strong, oily smell, and a decidedly green look, will complete the description. Eight or ten were on the fore-topsail yard, and as many more in the main, furling the topsails, while eight or ten were hanging about the forecastle, doing nothing. This was a strange sight for a vessel coming to anchor; so we went up to them, to see what was the matter. One of them, a stout, hearty-looking fellow, held out his leg and said he had the scurvy; another had cut his hand; and others had got nearly well, but said that there were plenty aloft to furl the sails, so they were sogering on the forecastle. There was only one “splicer” on board, a fine-looking old tar, who was in the bunt of the fore-topsail. He was probably the only sailor in the ship, before the mast. The mates, of course, and the boat- steerers, and also two or three of the crew, had been to sea before, but only whaling voyages; and the greater part of the crew were raw hands, just from the bush, as green as cabbages, and had not yet got the hay-seed out of their heads. The mizen topsail hung in the bunt-lines until everything was furled forward. Thus a crew of thirty men were half an hour in doing what would have been done in the Alert with eighteen hands to go aloft, in fifteen or twenty minutes. We found they had been at sea six or eight months, and had no news to tell us; so we left them, and promised to get liberty to come on board in the evening, for some curiosities, etc. Accordingly, as soon as we were knocked off in the evening and had got supper, we obtained leave, took a boat, and went aboard and spent an hour or two. They gave us pieces of whalebone, and the teeth and other parts of curious sea animals, and we exchanged books with them– a practice very common among ships in foreign ports, by which you get rid of the books you have read and re-read, and a supply of new ones in their stead, and Jack is not very nice as to their comparative value. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

November 12, Thursday: The Texas Provisional Government, on the motion of Merriwether Woodson Smith, named Sam Houston a Major General in the Texas Army.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 12th of 11th M 1835 / Today our dear friend Elizabeth Wing was at meeting with is & had very seasonable & acceptable Service. — She & Betsy Sandford dined with us. - RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

Waldo Emerson lectured in Boston. This was lecture #2 of the series “Permanent Traits of the English National Character.” Meanwhile Richard Henry Dana, Jr. was experiencing bad weather and adventurous rowing, in the Santa Barbara surfline.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Thursday, Nov. 12th. This day was quite cool in the early part, and there were black clouds about; but as it was often so in the morning, nothing was apprehended, and all the captains went ashore together, to spend the day. Towards noon, the clouds hung heavily over the mountains, coming half way down the hills that encircle the town of Santa Barbara, and a heavy swell rolled in from the south-east. The mate immediately ordered the gig’s crew away, and at the same time, we saw boats pulling ashore from the other vessels. Here was a grand chance for a rowing match, and every one did his best. We passed the boats of the Ayacucho and Loriotte, but could gain nothing upon, and indeed, hardly hold our own with, the long, six- oared boat of the whale-ship. They reached the breakers before us; but here we had the advantage of them, for, not being used to the surf, they were obliged to wait to see us beach our boat, just as, in the same place, nearly a year before, we, in the Pilgrim, were glad to be taught by a boat’s crew of Kanakas. We had hardly got the boats beached, and their heads out, before our old friend, Bill Jackson, the handsome English sailor, who steered the Loriotte’s boat, called out that the brig was adrift; and, sure enough, she was dragging her anchors, and drifting down into the bight of the bay. Without waiting for the captain, (for there was no one on board but the mate and steward,) he sprung into the boat, called the Kanakas together, and tried to put off. But the Kanakas, though capital water-dogs, were frightened by their vessel’s being adrift, and by the emergency of the case, and seemed to lose their faculties. Twice, their boat filled, and came broadside upon the beach. Jackson swore at them for a parcel of savages, and promised to flog every one of them. This made the matter no better; when we came forward, told the Kanakas to take their seats in the boat, and, going two on each side, walked out with her till it was up to our shoulders, and gave them a shove, when, giving way with their oars, they got her safely into the long, regular swell. In the mean time, boats had put off from our ships and the whaler, and coming all on board the brig together, they let go the other anchor, paid out chain, braced the yards to the wind, and brought the vessel up. In a few minutes, the captains came hurrying down, on the run; and there was no time to be lost, for the gale promised to be a severe one, and the surf was breaking upon the beach, three deep, higher and higher every instant. The Ayacucho’s boat, pulled by four Kanakas, put off first, and as they had no rudder or steering oar, would probably never have got off, had we not waded out with them, as far as the surf would permit. The next that made the attempt was the whale-boat, for we, being the most experienced “beach- combers,” needed no help, and staid till the last. Whalemen make the best boats’ crews in the world for a long pull, but this landing was new to them, and notwithstanding the examples they had had, they slued round and were hove up– boat, oars, and men– altogether, high and dry upon the sand. The second time, they filled, and had to turn their boat over, and set her off again. We could be of no help to them, for they were so many as to be in one another’s way, without the addition of our numbers. The third time, they got off, though not without shipping a sea which drenched them all, and half filled their boat, keeping them baling, until they reached their ship. We now got ready to go off, putting the boat’s head out; English Ben and I, who were the largest, standing on each side of the bows, to keep her “head on” to the sea, two more shipping and manning the two after oars, and the captain taking the steering oar. Two or three Spaniards, who stood upon the beach looking at us, wrapped their cloaks about them, shook their heads, and muttered “Caramba!” They had no taste for such doings; in fact, the hydrophobia is a national malady, and shows itself in their persons as well as their actions. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONCLUDED: Watching for a “smooth chance,” we determined to show the other boats the way it should be done; and, as soon as ours floated, ran out with her, keeping her head on, with all our strength, and the help of the captain’s oar, and the two after oarsmen giving way regularly and strongly, until our feet were off the ground, we tumbled into the bows, keeping perfectly still, from fear of hindering the others. For some time it was doubtful how it would go. The boat stood nearly up and down in the water, and the sea, rolling from under her, let her fall upon the water with a force which seemed almost to stave her bottom in. By quietly sliding two oars forward, along the thwarts, without impeding the rowers, we shipped two bow oars, and thus, by the help of four oars and the captain’s strong arm, we got safely off, though we shipped several seas, which left us half full of water. We pulled alongside of the Loriotte, put her skipper on board, and found her making preparations for slipping, and then pulled aboard our own ship. Here Mr. Brown, always “on hand,” had got everything ready, so that we had only to hook on the gig and hoist it up, when the order was given to loose the sails. While we were on the yards, we saw the Loriotte under weigh, and before our yards were mast-headed, the Ayacucho had spread her wings, and, with yards braced sharp up, was standing athwart our hawse. There is no prettier sight in the world than a full-rigged, clipper-built brig, sailing sharp on the wind. In a moment, our slip-rope was gone, the head-yards filled away, and we were off. Next came the whaler; and in a half an hour from the time when four vessels were lying quietly at anchor, without a rag out, or a sign of motion, the bay was deserted, and four white clouds were standing off to sea. Being sure of clearing the point, we stood off with our yards a little braced in, while the Ayacucho went off with a taught bowline, which brought her to windward of us. During all this day, and the greater part of the night, we had the usual south-easter entertainment, a gale of wind, variegated and finally topped off with a drenching rain of three or four hours. At daybreak, the clouds thinned off and rolled away, and the sun came up clear. The wind, instead of coming out from the northward, as is usual, blew steadily and freshly from the anchoring-ground. This was bad for us, for, being “flying light,” with little more than ballast trim, we were in no condition for showing off on a taught bowline, and had depended upon a fair wind, with which, by the help of our light sails and studding-sails, we meant to have been the first at the anchoring-ground; but the Ayacucho was a good league to windward of us, and was standing in, in fine style. The whaler, however, was as far to leeward of us, and the Loriotte was nearly out of sight, among the islands, up the Canal. By hauling every brace and bowline, and clapping watch-tackles upon all the sheets and halyards, we managed to hold our own, and drop the leeward vessels a little in every tack. When we reached the anchoring-ground, the Ayacucho had got her anchor, furled her sails, squared her yards, and was lying as quietly as if nothing had happened for the last twenty-four hours. We had our usual good luck in getting our anchor without letting go another, and were all snug, with our boats at the boom-ends, in half an hour. In about two hours more, the whaler came in, and made a clumsy piece of work in getting her anchor, being obliged to let go her best bower, and finally, to get out a kedge and a hawser. They were heave-ho-ing, stopping and unstopping, pawling, catting, and fishing, for three hours; and the sails hung from the yards all the afternoon, and were not furled until sundown. The Loriotte came in just after dark, and let go her anchor, making no attempt to pick up the other until the next day. This affair led to a great dispute as to the sailing of our ship and the Ayacucho. Bets were made between the captains, and the crews took it up in their own way; but as she was bound to leeward and we to windward, and merchant captains cannot deviate, a trial never took place; and perhaps it was well for us that it did not, for the Ayacucho had been eight years in the Pacific, in every part of it– Valparaiso, Sandwich Islands, Canton, California, and all, and was called the fastest merchantman that traded in the Pacific, unless it was the brig John Gilpin, and perhaps the ship Ann McKim of Baltimore. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

November 14, Saturday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert sailed from Santa Barbara, intending to arrive at the bay of Monterey, California. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Saturday, Nov. 14th. This day we got under weigh, with the agent and several Spaniards of note, as passengers, bound up to Monterey. We went ashore in the gig to bring them off with their baggage, and found them waiting on the beach, and a little afraid about going off, as the surf was running very high. This was nuts to us; for we liked to have a Spaniard wet with salt water; and then the agent was very much disliked by the crew, one and all; and we hoped, as there was no officer in the boat, to have a chance to duck them; for we knew that they were such “marines” that they would not know whether it was our fault or not. Accordingly, we kept the boat so far from shore as to oblige them to wet their feet in getting into her; and then waited for a good high comber, and letting the head slue a little round, sent the whole force of the sea into the stern-sheets, drenching them from head to feet. The Spaniards sprang out of the boat, swore, and shook themselves and protested against trying it again; and it was with the greatest difficulty that the agent could prevail upon them to make another attempt. The next time we took care, and went off easily enough, and pulled aboard. The crew came to the side to hoist in their baggage, and we gave them the wink, and they heartily enjoyed the half-drowned looks of the company. Everything being now ready, and the passengers aboard, we ran up the ensign and broad pennant, (for there was no man-of-war, and we were the largest vessel on the coast,) and the other vessels ran up their ensigns. Having hove short, cast off the gaskets, and made the bunt of each sail fast by the jigger, with a man on each yard; at the word, the whole canvas of the ship was loosed, and with the greatest rapidity possible, everything was sheeted home and hoisted up, the anchor tripped and catheaded, and the ship under headway. We were determined to show the “spouter” how things could be done in a smart ship, with a good crew, though not more than half their number. The royal yards were all crossed at once, and royals and skysails set, and, as we had the wind free, the booms were run out, and every one was aloft, active as cats, laying out on the yards and booms, reeving the studding-sail gear; and sail after sail the captain piled upon her, until she was covered with canvas, her sails looking like a great white cloud resting upon a black speck. Before we doubled the point, we were going at a dashing rate, and leaving the shipping far astern. We had a fine breeze to take us through the Canal, as they call this bay of forty miles long by ten wide. The breeze died away at night, and we were becalmed all day on Sunday, about half way between Santa Barbara and Point Conception. Sunday night we had a light, fair wind, which set us up again; and having a fine sea-breeze on the first part of Monday, we had the prospect of passing, without any trouble, Point Conception,– the Cape Horn of California, where it begins to blow the first of January, and blows all the year round. Toward the latter part of the afternoon, however, the regular northwest wind, as usual, set in, which brought in our studding-sails, and gave us the chance of beating round the Point, which we were now just abreast of, and which stretched off into the Pacific, high, rocky and barren, forming the central point of the coast for hundreds of miles north and south. A cap-full of wind will be a bag-full here, and before night our royals were furled, and the ship was laboring hard under her top-gallant sails. At eight bells our watch went below, leaving her with as much sail as she could stagger under, the water flying over the forecastle at every plunge. It was evidently blowing harder, but then there was not a cloud in the sky, and the sun had gone down bright. We had been below but a short time, before we had the usual premonitions of a coming gale: seas washing over the whole forward part of the vessel, and her bows beating against them with a force and sound like the driving of piles. The watch, too, seemed very busy trampling about decks, and singing out at the ropes. A sailor can always tell, by the sound, what sail is coming in, and, in a short time, we heard the top-gallant sails come in, one top-gallant sails come in, one after another, and then the flying jib. This seemed to ease her a good deal, and we were fast going off to the land of Nod, when– bang, bang, bang– on the scuttle, and “All hands, reef topsails, ahoy!” started us out of our berths; and, it not being very cold weather, we had nothing extra to put on, and were soon on deck. I shall never forget the fineness of the sight. It was a clear, and rather a chilly night; the stars were twinkling with an intense brightness, and as far as the eye could reach, there was not a cloud to be seen. The horizon met the sea in a defined line. A painter could not have painted so clear a sky. There was not a speck upon it. Yet it was blowing great guns from the north-west. When you can see a cloud to windward, you feel that there is a place for the wind to come from; but here it seemed to come from nowhere. No person could have told, from the heavens, by their eyesight alone, that it was not a summer’s night. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONTINUED: One reef after another, we took in the topsails, the sails, and before we could get them hoisted up, we heard a sound like a short, quick rattling of thunder, and the jib was blown to atoms out of the bolt-rope. We got the topsails set, and the fragments of the jib stowed away, and the fore-topmast staysail set in its place, when the great mainsail gaped open, and the sail ripped from head to foot. “Lay up on that main-yard and furl the sail, before it blows to tatters!” shouted the captain; and in a moment, we were up, gathering the remains of it upon the yard. We got it wrapped, round the yard, and passed gaskets over it as snugly as possible, and were just on deck again, when, with another loud rent, which was heard throughout the ship, the fore-topsail, which had been double-reefed, split in two, athwartships, just below the reef-band, from earing to earing. Here again it was down yard, haul out reef-tackles, and lay out upon the yard for reefing. By hauling the reef-tackles chock-a-block, we took the strain from the other earings, and passing the close-reef earing, and knotting the points carefully, we succeeded in setting the sail, close-reefed. We had but just got the rigging coiled up, and were waiting to hear “go below the watch!” when the main royal worked loose from the gaskets, and blew directly out to leeward, flapping, and shaking the mast like a wand. Here was a job for somebody. The royal must come in or be cut adrift, or the mast would be snapped short off. All the light hands in the starboard watch were sent up, one after another, but they could do nothing with it. At length, John, the tall Frenchman, the head of the starboard watch, (and a better sailor never stepped upon a deck,) sprang aloft, and, by the help of his long arms and legs, succeeded, after a hard struggle,– the sail blowing over the yard-arm to leeward, and the skysail blowing directly over his head’– in smothering it, and frapping it with long pieces of sinnet. He came very near being blown or shaken from the yard, several times, but he was a true sailor, every finger a fish-hook. Having made the sail snug, he prepared to send the yard down, which was a long and difficult job; for, frequently, he was obliged to stop and hold on with all his might, for several minutes, the ship pitching so as to make it impossible to do anything else at that height. The yard at length came down safe, and after it, the fore and mizen royal-yards were sent down. All hands were then sent aloft, and for an hour or two we were hard at work, making the booms well fast; unreeving the studding-sail and royal and skysail gear; getting rolling-ropes on the yards; setting up the weather breast-backstays; and making other preparations for a storm. It was a fine night for a gale; just cool and bracing enough for quick work, without being cold, and as bright as day. It was sport to have a gale in such weather as this. Yet it blew like a hurricane. The wind seemed to come with a spite, an edge to it, which threatened to scrape us off the yards. The mere force of the wind was greater than I had ever seen it before; but darkness, cold, and wet are the worst parts of a storm to a sailor. Having got on deck again, we looked round to see what time of night it was, and whose watch. In a few minutes the man at the wheel struck four bells, and we found that the other watch was out, and our own half out. Accordingly, the starboard watch went below, and left the ship to us for a couple of hours, yet with orders to stand by for a call. Hardly had they got below, before away went the fore-topmast staysail, blown to ribbons. This was a small sail, which we could manage in the watch, so that we were not obliged to call up the other watch. We laid out upon the bowsprit, where we were under water half the time, and took in the fragments of the sail, and as she must have some head sail on her, prepared to bend another staysail. We got the new one out, into the nettings; seized on the tack, sheets, and halyards, and the hanks; manned the halyards, cut adrift the trapping lines, and hoisted away; but before it was half way up the stay, it was blown all to pieces. When we belayed the halyards, there was nothing left but the bolt-rope. Now large eyes began to show themselves in the foresail, and knowing that it must soon go, the mate ordered us upon the yard to furl it. Being unwilling to call up the watch who had been on deck all night, he roused out the carpenter, sailmaker, cook, steward, and other idlers, and, with their help, we manned the foreyard, and after nearly half an hour’s struggle, mastered the sail, and got it well furled round the yard. The force of the wind had never been greater than at this moment. In going up the rigging, it seemed absolutely to pin us down to the shrouds; and on the yard, there was no such thing as turning a face to windward. Yet here was no driving sleet, and darkness, and wet, and cold, as off Cape Horn; and instead of a stiff oil-cloth suit, south-wester caps, and thick boots, we had on hats, round jackets, duck trowsers, light shoes, and everything light and easy. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONTINUED: All these things make a great difference to a sailor. When we got on deck, the man at the wheel struck eight bells, (four o’clock in the morning,) and “All starbowlines, ahoy!” brought the other watch up. But there was no going below for us. The gale was now at its height, “blowing like scissors and thumb-screws;” the captain was on deck; the ship, which was light, rolling and pitching as though she would shake the long sticks out of her; and the sail gaping open and splitting, in every direction. The mizen topsail, which was a comparatively new sail, and close-reefed, split, from head to foot, in the bunt; the fore-topsail went, in one rent, from clew to earing, and was blowing to tatters; one of the chain bobstays parted; the spritsail-yard sprung in the slings; the martingale had slued away off to leeward; and, owing to the long dry weather, the lee rigging hung in large bights, at every lurch. One of the main top-gallant shrouds had parted; and, to crown all, the galley had got adrift, and gone over to leeward, and the anchor on the lee bow had worked loose, and was thumping the side. Here was work enough for all hands for half a day. Our gang laid on the mizen topsail yard, and after more than half an hour’s hard work, furled the sail, though it bellied out over our heads, and again, by a slant of the wind blew in under the yard, with a fearful jerk, and almost threw us off from the foot-ropes. Double gaskets were passed round the yards, rolling tackles and other gear bowsed taught, and everything made as secure as could be. Coming down, we found the rest of the crew just coming down the fore rigging, having furled the tattered topsail, or, rather, swathed it round the yard, which looked like a broken limb, bandaged. There was no sail now on the ship but the spanker and the close-reefed main topsail, which still held good. But this was too much after sail; and order was given to furl the spanker. The brails were hauled up, and all the light hands in the starboard watch sent out on the gaff to pass the gaskets; but they could do nothing with it. The second mate swore at them for a parcel of “sogers,” and sent up a couple of the best men; but they could do no better, and the gaff was lowered down. All hands were now employed in setting up the lee rigging, fishing the spritsail-yard, lashing the galley, and getting tackles upon the martingale, to bowse it to windward. Being in the larboard watch, my duty was forward, to assist in setting up the martingale. Three of us were out on the martingale guys and back-ropes for more than half an hour, carrying out, hooking and unhooking the tackles, several times buried in the seas, until the mate ordered us in, from fear of our being washed off. The anchors were then to be taken up on the rail, which kept all hands on the forecastle for an hour, though every now and then the seas broke over it, washing the rigging off to leeward, filling the lee scuppers breast high, and washing chock aft to the taffrail. Having got everything secure again, we were promising ourselves some breakfast, for it was now nearly nine o’clock in the forenoon, when the main topsail showed evident signs of giving way. Some sail must be kept on the ship, and the captain ordered the fore and main spencer gaffs to be lowered down, and the two spencers (which were storm sails, bran new, small, and made of the strongest canvas) to be got up and bent; leaving the main topsail to blow away, with a blessing on it, if it would only last until we could set the spencers. These we bent on very carefully, with strong robands and seizings, and making tackles fast to the clews, bowsed them down to the water-ways. By this time the main topsail was among the things that have been, and we went aloft to stow away the remnant of the last sail of all those which were on the ship twenty- four hours before. The spencers were now the only whole sails on the ship, and, being strong and small, and near the deck, presenting but little surface to the wind above the rail, promised to hold out well. Hove-to under these, and eased by having no sail above the tops, the ship rose and fell, and drifted off to leeward like a line-of-battle ship. It was now eleven o’clock, and the watch was sent below to get breakfast, and at eight bells (noon), as everything was snug, although the gale had not in the least abated, the watch was set, and the other watch and idlers sent below. For three days and three nights, the gale continued with unabated fury, and with singular regularity. There was no lulls, and very little variation in its fierceness. Our ship, being light, rolled so as almost to send the fore yard-arm under water, and drifted off bodily, to leeward. All this time there was not a cloud to be seen in the sky, day or night;– no, not so large as a man’s hand. Every morning the sun rose cloudless from the sea, and set again at night, in the sea, in a flood of light. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONCLUDED: The stars, too, came out of the blue, one after another, night after night, unobscured, and twinkled as clear as on a still frosty night at home, until the day came upon them. All this time, the sea was rolling in immense surges, white with foam, as far as the eye could reach, on every side, for we were now leagues and leagues from shore. The between-decks being empty, several of us slept there in hammocks, which are the best things in the world to sleep in during a storm; it not being true of them, as it is of another kind of bed, “when the wind blows, the cradle will rock;” for it is the ship that rocks, while they always hang vertically from the beams. During these seventy-two hours we had nothing to do, but to turn in and out, four hours on deck, and four below, eat, sleep, and keep watch. The watches were only varied by taking the helm in turn, and now and then, by one of the sails, which were furled, blowing out of the gaskets, and getting adrift, which sent us up on the yards; and by getting tackles on different parts of the rigging, which were slack. Once, the wheel- rope parted, which might have been fatal to us, had not the chief mate sprung instantly with a relieving tackle to windward, and kept the tiller up, till a new one could be rove. On the morning of the twentieth, at daybreak, the gale had evidently done its worst, and had somewhat abated; so much so, that all hands were called to bend new sails, although it was still blowing as hard as two common gales. One at a time, and with great difficulty and labor, the old sails were unbent and sent down by the bunt-lines, and three new topsails, made for the homeward passage round Cape Horn, and which had never been bent, were got up from the sailroom, and under the care of the sailmaker, were fitted for bending, and sent up by the halyards into the tops, and, with stops and frapping lines, were bent to the yards, close-reefed, sheeted home, and hoisted. These were done one at a time, and with the greatest care and difficulty. Two spare courses were then got up and bent in the same manner and furled, and a storm-jib, with the bonnet off, bent and furled to the boom. It was twelve o’clock before we got through; and five hours of more exhausting labor I never experienced; and no one of that ship’s crew, I will venture to say, will ever desire again to unbend and bend five large sails, in the teeth of a tremendous north-wester. Towards night, a few clouds appeared in the horizon, and as the gale moderated, the usual appearance of driving clouds relieved the face of the sky. The fifth day after the commencement of the storm, we shook a reef out of each topsail, and set the reefed foresail, jib and spanker; but it was not until after eight days of reefed topsails that we had a whole sail on the ship; and then it was quite soon enough, for the captain was anxious to make up for leeway, the gale having blown us half the distance to the Sandwich Islands. Inch by inch, as fast as the gale would permit, we made sail on the ship, for the wind still continued ahead, and we had many days’ sailing to get back to the longitude we were in when the storm took us. For eight days more we beat to windward under a stiff top-gallant breeze, when the wind shifted and became variable. A light south-easter, to which we could carry a reefed topmast studding-sail, did wonders for our dead reckoning.

November 15, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 15th of 11th M / Yesterday our dear friend Thos Anthony came down the river from Wickford to be at Meeting with us - he came directly to our house & lodged & has attended both our Meetings today, which have indeed been watering & refreshing seasons - he dined at Henry Goulds & has gone to lodge at David Buffums. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

The HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin reached Tahiti. At daylight, Tahiti, an island which must for ever remain classical to the voyager in the South Sea, was in view. At a distance the appearance was not attractive. The luxuriant vegetation of the lower part could not yet be seen, and as the clouds rolled past, the wildest and most precipitous peaks showed themselves towards the centre of the island. As soon as we anchored in Matavai Bay, we were surrounded by canoes. This was our Sunday, but the Monday of Tahiti: if the case had been reversed, we should not have received a single visit; for the injunction not to launch a canoe on the sabbath is rigidly obeyed. After dinner we landed to enjoy all the delights produced by the first impressions of a new country, and that country the charming Tahiti. A crowd of men, women, and children, was collected on the memorable Point Venus, ready to receive us with laughing, merry faces. They marshalled us towards the house of Mr. Wilson, the missionary of the district, who met us on the road, and gave us a very friendly reception. After sitting a very short time in his house, we separated to walk about, but returned there in the evening. The land capable of cultivation, is scarcely in any part more than a fringe of low alluvial soil, accumulated round the base of the mountains, and protected from the waves of the sea by a coral reef, which encircles the entire line of coast. Within the reef there is an expanse of smooth water, like that of a lake, where the canoes of the natives can ply with safety and where ships anchor. The low land which comes down to the beach of coral-sand, is covered by the most beautiful productions of the intertropical regions. In the midst of bananas, orange, cocoa- nut, and bread-fruit trees, spots are cleared where yams, sweet potatoes, and sugar-cane, and pine-apples are cultivated. Even the brush-wood is an imported fruit-tree, namely, the guava, which from its abundance has become as noxious as a weed. In Brazil I have often admired the varied beauty of the bananas, palms, and orange-trees contrasted together; and here we also have the bread-fruit, conspicuous from its large, glossy, and deeply digitated leaf. It is admirable to behold groves of a tree, sending forth its branches with the vigour of an English oak, loaded with large and most nutritious fruit. However seldom the usefulness of an object can account for the pleasure of beholding it, in the case of these beautiful woods, the knowledge of their high productiveness no doubt enters largely into the feeling of admiration. The little winding paths, cool from the surrounding shade, led to the scattered houses; the owners of which everywhere gave us a cheerful and most hospitable reception. I was pleased with nothing so much as with the inhabitants. There is a mildness in the expression of their countenances which at once banishes the idea of a savage; and intelligence which shows that they are advancing in civilization. The common people, when working, keep the upper part of their bodies quite naked; and it is then that the Tahitians are seen to advantage. They are very tall, broad- shouldered, athletic, and well-proportioned. It has been remarked, that it requires little habit to make a HDT WHAT? INDEX

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dark skin more pleasing and natural to the eye of an European than his own colour. A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian, was like a plant bleached by the gardener's art compared with a fine dark green one growing vigorously in the open fields. Most of the men are tattooed, and the ornaments follow the curvature of the body so gracefully, that they have a very elegant effect. One common pattern, varying in its details, is somewhat like the crown of a palm-tree. It springs from the central line of the back, and gracefully curls round both sides. The simile may be a fanciful one, but I thought the body of a man thus ornamented was like the trunk of a, noble tree embraced by a delicate creeper. Many of the elder people had their feet covered with small figures, so placed as to resemble a sock. This fashion, however, is partly gone by, and has been succeeded by others. Here, although fashion is far from immutable, every one must abide by that prevailing in his youth. An old man has thus his age for ever stamped on his body, and he cannot assume the airs of a young dandy. The women are tattooed in the same manner as the men, and very commonly on their fingers. One unbecoming fashion is now almost universal: namely, shaving the hair from the upper part of the head, in a circular form, so as to leave only an outer ring. The missionaries have tried to persuade the people to change this habit; but it is the fashion, and that is a sufficient answer at Tahiti, as well as at Paris. I was much disappointed in the personal appearance of the women: they are far inferior in every respect to the men. The custom of wearing a white or scarlet flower in the back of the head, or through a small hole in each ear, is pretty. A crown of woven cocoa-nut leaves is also worn as a shade for the eyes. The women appear to be in greater want of some becoming costume even than the men. Nearly all the natives understand a little English -- that is, they know the names of common things; and by the aid of this, together with signs, a lame sort of conversation could be carried on. In returning in the evening to the boat, we stopped to witness a very pretty scene. Numbers of children were playing on the beach, and had lighted bonfires which illumined the placid sea and surrounding trees; others, in circles, were singing Tahitian verses. We seated ourselves on the sand, and joined their party. The songs were impromptu, and I believe related to our arrival: one little girl sang a line, which the rest took up in parts, forming a very pretty chorus. The whole scene made us unequivocally aware that we were seated on the shores of an island in the far-famed South Sea. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Henry Thoreau would comment on this in his essay “WALKING”:

“WALKING”: A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man — a denizen of the woods. “The pale white man!” I do not wonder that the African pitied him. Darwin the naturalist says “A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian was like a plant bleached by the gardener’s art compared with a fine, dark green one growing vigorously in the open fields.” Ben Jonson exclaims,— “How near to good is what is fair!” So I would say— How near to good is what is wild! Life consists with Wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest trees.

CHARLES DARWIN BEN JONSON VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE II LOVE FREED FROM IGNOR ...

November 17, Tuesday: Cesar Franck offered his 1st piano recital in Paris, at the Gymnase Musical. In spite of a vigorous advertising campaign by his father, no review would appear in the press.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 17 of 11 M / The weather being very calm the Wickford Boat did not get power till near night & Thos again Staid with us RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

At anchor off the South Pacific island of Tahiti, the HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin registered the fact that they had crossed over this planet’s Date Line and therefore needed to pay due homage to the calendar deity: This day is reckoned in the log-book as Tuesday the 17th, instead of Monday the 16th, owing to our, so far, successful chase of the sun. Before breakfast the ship was hemmed in by a flotilla of canoes; and when the natives were allowed to come on board, I suppose there could not have been less than two hundred. It was the opinion of every one that it would have been difficult to have picked out an equal number from any other nation, who would have given so little trouble. Everybody brought something for sale: shells were the main articles of trade. The Tahitians now fully understand the value of money, and prefer it to old HDT WHAT? INDEX

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clothes or other articles. The various coins, however, of English and Spanish denomination puzzle them, and they never seemed to think the small silver quite secure until changed into dollars. Some of the chiefs have accumulated considerable sums of money. One chief, not long since, offered 800 dollars (about 160 pounds sterling) for a small vessel; and frequently they purchase whale-boats and horses at the rate of from 50 to 100 dollars. After breakfast I went on shore, and ascended the nearest slope to a height of between two and three thousand feet. The outer mountains are smooth and conical, but steep; and the old volcanic rocks, of which they are formed, have been cut through by many profound ravines, diverging from the central broken parts of the island to the coast. Having crossed the narrow low girt of inhabited and fertile land, I followed a smooth steep ridge between two of the deep ravines. The vegetation was singular, consisting almost exclusively of small dwarf ferns, mingled higher up, with coarse grass; it was not very dissimilar from that on some of the Welsh hills, and this so close above the orchard of tropical plants on the coast was very surprising. At the highest point, which I reached, trees again appeared. Of the three zones of comparative luxuriance, the lower one owes its moisture, and therefore fertility, to its flatness; for, being scarcely raised above the level of the sea, the water from the higher land drains away slowly. The intermediate zone does not, like the upper one, reach into a damp and cloudy atmosphere, and therefore remains sterile. The woods in the upper zone are very pretty, tree-ferns replacing the cocoa-nuts on the coast. It must not, however, be supposed that these woods at all equal in splendour the forests of Brazil. The vast numbers of productions, which characterize a continent, cannot be expected to occur in an island. From the highest point which I attained, there was a good view of the distant island of Eimeo, dependent on the same sovereign with Tahiti. On the lofty and broken pinnacles, white massive clouds were piled up, which formed an island in the blue sky, as Eimeo itself did in the blue ocean. The island, with the exception of one small gateway, is completely encircled by a reef. At this distance, a narrow but well- defined brilliantly white line was alone visible, where the waves first encountered the wall of coral. The mountains rose abruptly out of the glassy expanse of the lagoon, included within this narrow white line, outside which the heaving waters of the ocean were dark- coloured. The view was striking: it may aptly be compared to a framed engraving, where the frame represents the breakers, the marginal paper the smooth lagoon, and the drawing the island itself. When in the evening I descended from the mountain, a man, whom I had pleased with a trifling gift, met me, bringing with him hot roasted bananas, a pine-apple, and cocoa-nuts. After walking under a burning sun, I do not know anything more delicious than the milk of a young cocoa-nut. Pine-apples are here so abundant that the people eat them in the same wasteful manner as we might turnips. They are of an excellent flavor -- perhaps even better than those cultivated in England; and this I believe is the highest compliment which can be paid to any fruit. Before going on board, Mr. Wilson interpreted for me to HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the Tahitian who had paid me so adroit an attention, that I wanted him and another man to accompany me on a short excursion into the mountains.

November 18, Wednesday: Jose Jorge Loureiro replaced Joao Carlos Gregorio Domingues Vicente Francisco de Saldanha Oliveira e Daun, marques e conde de Saldanha as prime minister of Portugal.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 18 of 11 M / The wind being favourable this Morng Our fr Thos Anthony left us & returned home - RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Charles Darwin went exploring on Tahiti: In the morning I came on shore early, bringing with me some provisions in a bag, and two blankets for myself and servant. These were lashed to each end of a long pole, which was alternately carried by my Tahitian companions on their shoulders. These men are accustomed thus to carry, for a whole day, as much as fifty pounds at each end of their poles. I told my guides to provide themselves with food and clothing; but they said that there was plenty of food in the mountains, and for clothing, that their skins were sufficient. Our line of march was the valley of Tiaauru, down which a river flows into the sea by Point Venus. This is one of the principal streams in the island, and its source lies at the base of the loftiest central pinnacles, which rise to a height of about 7000 feet. The whole island is so mountainous that the only way to penetrate into the interior is to follow up the valleys. Our road, at first, lay through woods which bordered each side of the river; and the glimpses of the lofty central peaks, seen as through an avenue, with here and there a waving cocoa-nut tree on one side, were extremely picturesque. The valley soon began to narrow, and the sides to grow lofty and more precipitous. After having walked between three and four hours, we found the width of the ravine scarcely exceeded that of the bed of the stream. On each hand the walls were nearly vertical, yet from the soft nature of the volcanic strata, trees and a rank vegetation sprung from every projecting ledge. These precipices must have been some thousand feet high; and the whole formed a mountain gorge far more magnificent than anything which I had ever before beheld. Until the midday sun stood vertically over the ravine, the air felt cool and damp, but now it became very sultry. Shaded by a ledge of rock, beneath a facade of columnar lava, we ate our dinner. My guides had already procured a dish of small fish and freshwater prawns. They carried with them a small net stretched on a hoop; and where the water was deep and in eddies, they dived, and like otters, with their eyes open followed the fish into holes and corners, and thus caught them. The Tahitians have the dexterity of amphibious animals in the water. An anecdote mentioned by Ellis shows how much they feel at home in this element. When a horse was landing for Pomarre in 1817, the slings broke, and it fell into the water; immediately the natives jumped overboard, and by their cries and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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vain efforts at assistance almost drowned it. As soon, however, as it reached the shore, the whole population took to flight, and tried to hide themselves from the man-carrying pig, as they christened the horse. A little higher up, the river divided itself into three little streams. The two northern ones were impracticable, owing to a succession of waterfalls which descended from the jagged summit of the highest mountain; the other to all appearance was equally inaccessible, but we managed to ascend it by a most extraordinary road. The sides of the valley were here nearly precipitous, but, as frequently happens with stratified rocks, small ledges projected, which were thickly covered by wild bananas, lilaceous plants, and other luxuriant productions of the tropics. The Tahitians, by climbing amongst these ledges, searching for fruit, had discovered a track by which the whole precipice could be scaled. The first ascent from the valley was very dangerous; for it was necessary to pass a steeply inclined face of naked rock, by the aid of ropes which we brought with us. How any person discovered that this formidable spot was the only point where the side of the mountain was practicable, I cannot imagine. We then cautiously walked along one of the ledges till we came to one of the three streams. This ledge formed a flat spot, above which a beautiful cascade, some hundred feet in height, poured down its waters, and beneath, another high cascade fell into the main stream in the valley below. From this cool and shady recess we made a circuit to avoid the overhanging waterfall. As before, we followed little projecting ledges, the danger being partly concealed by the thickness of the vegetation. In passing from one of the ledges to another, there was a vertical wall of rock. One of the Tahitians, a fine active man, placed the trunk of a tree against this, climbed up it, and then by the aid of crevices reached the summit. He fixed the ropes to a projecting point, and lowered them for our dog and luggage, and then we clambered up ourselves. Beneath the ledge on which the dead tree was placed, the precipice must have been five or six hundred feet deep; and if the abyss had not been partly concealed by the overhanging ferns and lilies my head would have turned giddy, and nothing should have induced me to have attempted it. We continued to ascend, sometimes along ledges, and sometimes along knife- edged ridges, having on each hand profound ravines. In the Cordillera I have seen mountains on a far grander scale, but for abruptness, nothing at all comparable with this. In the evening we reached a flat little spot on the banks of the same stream, which we had continued to follow, and which descends in a chain of waterfalls: here we bivouacked for the night. On each side of the ravine there were great beds of the mountain-banana, covered with ripe fruit. Many of these plants were from twenty to twenty- five feet high, and from three to four in circumference. By the aid of strips of bark for rope, the stems of bamboos for rafters, and the large leaf of the banana for a thatch, the Tahitians in a few minutes built us an excellent house; and with withered leaves made a soft bed. They then proceeded to make a fire, and cook our evening meal. A light was procured, by rubbing a blunt pointed stick in a groove made in another, as if with intention of deepening it, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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until by the friction the dust became ignited. A peculiarly white and very light wood (the Hibiscus tiliareus) is alone used for this purpose: it is the same which serves for poles to carry any burden, and for the floating out-riggers to their canoes. The fire was produced in a few seconds: but to a person who does not understand the art, it requires, as I found, the greatest exertion; but at last, to my great pride, I succeeded in igniting the dust. The Gaucho in the Pampas uses a different method: taking an elastic stick about eighteen inches long, he presses one end on his breast, and the other pointed end into a hole in a piece of wood, and then rapidly turns the curved part, like a carpenter's centre-bit. The Tahitians having made a small fire of sticks, placed a score of stones, of about the size of cricket-balls, on the burning wood. In about ten minutes the sticks were consumed, and the stones hot. They had previously folded up in small parcels of leaves, pieces of beef, fish, ripe and unripe bananas, and the tops of the wild arum. These green parcels were laid in a layer between two layers of the hot stones, and the whole then covered up with earth, so that no smoke or steam could escape. In about a quarter of an hour, the whole was most deliciously cooked. The choice green parcels were now laid on a cloth of banana leaves, and with a cocoa-nut shell we drank the cool water of the running stream; and thus we enjoyed our rustic meal. I could not look on the surrounding plants without admiration. On every side were forests of banana; the fruit of which, though serving for food in various ways, lay in heaps decaying on the ground. In front of us there was an extensive brake of wild sugar-cane; and the stream was shaded by the dark green knotted stem of the Ava, — so famous in former days for its powerful intoxicating effects. I chewed a piece, and found that it had an acrid and unpleasant taste, which would have induced any one at once to have pronounced it poisonous. Thanks to the missionaries, this plant now thrives only in these deep ravines, innocuous to every one. Close by I saw the wild arum, the roots of which, when well baked, are good to eat, and the young leaves better than spinach. There was the wild yam, and a liliaceous plant called Ti, which grows in abundance, and has a soft brown root, in shape and size like a huge log of wood: this served us for dessert, for it is as sweet as treacle, and with a pleasant taste. There were, moreover, several other wild fruits, and useful vegetables. The little stream, besides its cool water, produced eels, and cray-fish. I did indeed admire this scene, when I compared it with an uncultivated one in the temperate zones. I felt the force of the remark, that man, at least savage man, with his reasoning powers only partly developed, is the child of the tropics. As the evening drew to a close, I strolled beneath the gloomy shade of the bananas up the course of the stream. My walk was soon brought to a close, by coming to a waterfall between two and three hundred feet high; and again above this there was another. I mention all these waterfalls in this one brook, to give a general idea of the inclination of the land. In the little recess where the water fell, it did not appear that a breath of wind had ever blown. The thin edges of the great leaves of the banana, damp with spray, were unbroken, instead of being, as is HDT WHAT? INDEX

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so generally the case, split into a thousand shreds. From our position, almost suspended on the mountain side, there were glimpses into the depths of the neighbouring valleys; and the lofty points of the central mountains, towering up within sixty degrees of the zenith, hid half the evening sky. Thus seated, it was a sublime spectacle to watch the shades of night gradually obscuring the last and highest pinnacles. Before we laid ourselves down to sleep, the elder Tahitian fell on his knees, and with closed eyes repeated a long prayer in his native tongue. He prayed as a Christian should do, with fitting reverence, and without the fear of ridicule or any ostentation of piety. At our meals neither of the men would taste food, without saying beforehand a short grace. Those travellers who think that a Tahitian prays only when the eyes of the missionary are fixed on him, should have slept with us that night on the mountain-side. Before morning it rained very heavily; but the good thatch of banana-leaves kept us dry.

November 19, Thursday: Eliphalet Porter Capen died.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 19th of 11th M 1835 / Our Meeting today was a solid good one - Father had a short encouraging testimony. — In the Preparative Meeting which followed, Thos P Nichols appeared in it & requested to become a member of our Society.— I felt glad Thos had given up to request Membership - he has been examplary in the use of the plain language for some time, & a very dilligent attender of our religious Meetings both on First day & in the middle of the Week.— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Meanwhile, at the Masonic Temple in Boston, Waldo Emerson was delivering lecture Number 3 of the series “English Literature,” entitled “The Age of Fable.”

In the South Pacific, a Western ship ferried about 500 Mäori warriors from New Zealand’s North Island to the Chatham Islands, 500 miles to the east. The Moriori of the Chatham Islands were of the same stock as the Mäori, but had been living in isolation for some 15 generations. Having learned from sealers of the existence of the Chatham Islands and of the existence of their relatives the Moriori, the Mäori were going to make them be their slaves, and then, in short order, to exterminate them. This was their custom.

Meanwhile, on the island of Tahiti elsewhere in the South Pacific, Charles Darwin continued his explorations: At daylight my friends, after their morning prayer, prepared an excellent breakfast in the same manner as in the evening. They themselves certainly partook of it largely; indeed I never saw any men eat near so much. I suppose such enormously capacious stomachs must be the effect of a large part of their diet consisting of fruit and vegetables, which contain, in a given bulk, a comparatively small portion of nutriment. Unwittingly, I was the means of my companions breaking, as I afterwards learned, one of their own laws, and resolutions: I took with me a flask of spirits, which they could not refuse to partake of; but as often as they drank a little, they put their fingers HDT WHAT? INDEX

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before their mouths, and uttered the word “Missionary.” About two years ago, although the use of the ava was prevented, drunkenness from the introduction of spirits became very prevalent. The missionaries prevailed on a few good men, who saw that their country was rapidly going to ruin, to join with them in a Temperance Society. From good sense or shame, all the chiefs and the queen were at last persuaded to join. Immediately a law was passed, that no spirits should be allowed to be introduced into the island, and that he who sold and he who bought the forbidden article should be punished by a fine. With remarkable justice, a certain period was allowed for stock in hand to be sold, before the law came into effect. But when it did, a general search was made, in which even the houses of the missionaries were not exempted, and all the ava (as the natives call all ardent spirits) was poured on the ground. When one reflects on the effect of intemperance on the aborigines of the two Americas, I think it will be acknowledged that every well-wisher of Tahiti owes no common debt of gratitude to the missionaries. As long as the little island of St. Helena remained under the government of the East India Company, spirits, owing to the great injury they had produced, were not allowed to be imported; but wine was supplied from the Cape of Good Hope. It is rather a striking and not very gratifying fact, that in the same year that spirits were allowed to be sold in Helena, their use was banished from Tahiti by the free will of the people. After breakfast we proceeded on our Journey. As my object was merely to see a little of the interior scenery, we returned by another track, which descended into the main valley lower down. For some distance we wound, by a most intricate path, along the side of the mountain which formed the valley. In the less precipitous parts we passed through extensive groves of the wild banana. The Tahitians, with their naked, tattooed bodies, their heads ornamented with flowers, and seen in the dark shade of these groves, would have formed a fine picture of man inhabiting some primeval land. In our descent we followed the line of ridges; these were exceedingly narrow, and for considerable lengths steep as a ladder; but all clothed with vegetation. The extreme care necessary in poising each step rendered the walk fatiguing. I did not cease to wonder at these ravines and precipices: when viewing the country from one of the knife- edged ridges, the point of support was so small, that the effect was nearly the same as it must be from a balloon. In this descent we had occasion to use the ropes only once, at the point where we entered the main valley. We slept under the same ledge of rock where we had dined the day before: the night was fine, but from the depth and narrowness of the gorge, profoundly dark. Before actually seeing this country, I found it difficult to understand two facts mentioned by Ellis; namely, that after the murderous battles of former times, the survivors on the conquered side retired into the mountains, where a handful of men could resist a multitude. Certainly half a dozen men, at the spot where the Tahitian reared the old tree, could easily have repulsed thousands. Secondly, that after the introduction of Christianity, there were wild men who lived in the mountains, and whose retreats were unknown to the more civilized inhabitants. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 20, Friday: The New-York Vigilance Committee was organized. David Ruggles would be its secretary.

Charles Darwin continued his explorations on Tahiti: In the morning we started early, and reached Matavai at noon. On the road we met a large party of noble athletic men, going for wild bananas. I found that the ship, on account of the difficulty in watering, had moved to the harbour of Papawa, to which place I immediately walked. This is a very pretty spot. The cove is surrounded by reefs, and the water as smooth as in a lake. The cultivated ground, with its beautiful productions, interspersed with cottages, comes close down to the water’s edge. From the varying accounts which I had read before reaching these islands, I was very anxious to form, from my own observation, a judgment of their moral state, — although such judgment would necessarily be very imperfect. First impressions at all times very much depend on one’s previously acquired ideas. My notions were drawn from Ellis’s “Polynesian Researches” — an admirable and most interesting work, but naturally looking at everything under a favourable point of view, from Beechey’s Voyage; and from that of Kotzebue, which is strongly adverse to the whole missionary system. He who compares these three accounts will, I think, form a tolerably accurate conception of the present state of Tahiti. One of my impressions which I took from the two last authorities, was decidedly incorrect; viz., that the Tahitians had become a gloomy race, and lived in fear of the missionaries. Of the latter feeling I saw no trace, unless, indeed, fear and respect be confounded under one name. Instead of discontent being a common feeling, it would be difficult in Europe to pick out of a crowd half so many merry and happy faces. The prohibition of the flute and dancing is inveighed against as wrong and foolish; — the more than presbyterian manner of keeping the sabbath is looked at in a similar light. On these points I will not pretend to offer any opinion to men who have resided as many years as I was days on the island. On the whole, it appears to me that the morality and religion of the inhabitants are highly creditable. There are many who attack, even more acrimoniously than Kotzebue, both the missionaries, their system, and the effects produced by it. Such reasoners never compare the present state with that of the island only twenty years ago; nor even with that of Europe at this day; but they compare it with the high standard of Gospel perfection. They expect the missionaries to effect that which the Apostles themselves failed to do. Inasmuch as the condition of the people falls short of this high standard, blame is attached to the missionary, instead of credit for that which he has effected. They forget, or will not remember, that human sacrifices, and the power of an idolatrous priesthood — a system of profligacy unparalleled in any other part of the world — infanticide a consequence of that system — bloody wars, where the conquerors spared neither women nor children — that all these have been abolished; and that dishonesty, intemperance, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and licentiousness have been greatly reduced by the introduction of Christianity. In a voyager to forget these things is base ingratitude; for should he chance to be at the point of shipwreck on some unknown coast, he will most devoutly pray that the lesson of the missionary may have extended thus far. In point of morality, the virtue of the women, it has been often said, is most open to exception. But before they are blamed too severely, it will be well distinctly to call to mind the scenes described by Captain Cook and Mr. Banks, in which the grandmothers and mothers of the present race played a part. Those who are most severe, should consider how much of the morality of the women in Europe is owing to the system early impressed by mothers on their daughters, and how much in each individual case to the precepts of religion. But it is useless to argue against such reasoners; — I believe that, disappointed in not finding the field of licentiousness quite so open as formerly, they will not give credit to a morality which they do not wish to practise, or to a religion which they undervalue, if not despise.

November 22, Sunday: Le cinq Mai: chant sur la mort de l’Empereur Napoléon for bass, chorus, and orchestra by Hector Berlioz to words of de Beranger was performed for the initial time, at the Paris Conservatoire.

Charles Darwin recorded the condition of Tahiti in his journal: The harbour of Papiete, where the queen resides, may be considered as the capital of the island: it is also the seat of government, and the chief resort of shipping. Captain Fitz Roy took a party there this day to hear divine service, first in the Tahitian language, and afterwards in our own. Mr. Pritchard, the leading missionary in the island, performed the service. The chapel consisted of a large airy framework of wood; and it was filled to excess by tidy, clean people, of all ages and both sexes. I was rather disappointed in the apparent degree of attention; but I believe my expectations were raised too high. At all events the appearance was quite equal to that in a country church in England. The singing of the hymns was decidedly very pleasing, but the language from the pulpit, although fluently delivered, did not sound well: a constant repetition of words, like “tata ta, mata mai,” rendered it monotonous. After English service, a party returned on foot to Matavai. It was a pleasant walk, sometimes along the sea-beach and sometimes under the shade of the many beautiful trees.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 22 of 11 M / Both Meetings were silent with the exception of a Short offering by Father in the Morning - Both were seasons of some favour RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 24, Tuesday: In Parma, Italy, Nicolò Paganini had an audience with Grand Duchess Maria Louisa, widow of the Emperor Napoléon.

Records of the “Institute of 1770”: Lecture by Stone on “Witchcraft.” Debated: “Ought the military law to bind all classes?” Decided in the affirmative — 15 to 8.

In the south Pacific ocean, in the English chapel on the island of Papaiti, Captain Robert FitzRoy, accompanied by Mr. Darwin among others, had an audience with Pōmare IV, Queen of Tahiti: With all the officers who could be spared from the duty of the ship, Mr. Darwin and I repaired early to Papiete. Mr. Wilson, Mr. Henry, and Hitote, were of the party. Arrived at the hospitable abode of Mr. Pritchard, we waited until a messenger informed us of the queen’s arrival at the appointed place of meeting — the English chapel. From our position we had just seen the royal escort — a very inferior assemblage. It appeared that the chiefs and elderly people had walked to the chapel when our boats arrived, leaving only the younger branches of the community to accompany Pomare. The English chapel is a small, wooden structure, with a high, angular roof; it is about fifty feet in length and thirty feet wide; near the eastern end is a pulpit, and at each corner a small pew. The rest of the building is occupied by strong benches, extending nearly from side to side; latticed windows admit light and air; the roof is thatched in a partly Otaheitan manner; none of the woodwork is painted, neither is there any decoration. Entering the chapel with my companions, I turned towards the principal pews, expecting to see Pomare there; but no, she was sitting almost alone, at the other end of the building, looking very disconsolate. Natives sitting promiscuously on the benches saluted us as we entered: — order, or any kind of form, there was none. The only visible difference between Pomare and her subjects was her wearing a gay silk gown, tied however round the throat, though entirely loose elsewhere; being made and worn like a loose smock- frock, its uncouth appearance excited more notice from our eyes than the rich material. In her figure, her countenance, or her manner, there was nothing prepossessing, or at all calculated to command the respect of foreigners. I thought of Oberea,* and wished that it had been possible to retain a modified dress of the former kind. A light undergarment added to the dress of Oberea might have suited the climate, satisfied decency, and pleased the eye, even of a painter. Disposed at first to criticise rather ill-naturedly — how soon our feelings altered, as we remarked the superior appearance and indications of intellectual ability shown by the chieftains, and by very many of the natives of a lower class. Their manner, and animated though quiet tone of speaking, assisted the good sense and apparent honesty of the principal men in elevating our ideas of their talents, and of their wish to act correctly. Every reader of voyages knows that the chiefs of Otaheite are large, fine-looking men. Their manner is easy, respectful, and to a certain degree dignified; indeed on the whole surprisingly good. They speak with apparent ease, very much to the purpose in few words, and in the most orderly, regular way. Not one individual HDT WHAT? INDEX

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interrupted another; no one attempted to give his opinions, or introduce a new subject, without asking permission; yet did the matters under discussion affect them all in a very serious manner. Might not these half-enlightened Otaheitans set an example to numbers whose habits and education have been, or ought to have been, so superior? It had become customary to shake hands with the queen, as well as with the chiefs. This compliment we were expected to pay; but it seemed difficult to manage, since Pomare occupied a large share of the space between two benches nearest to the wall, and the next space was filled by natives. However, squeezing past her, one after another, shaking hands at the most awkward moment, we countermarched into vacant places on the benches next in front of her. The principal chiefs, Utaame, Taati, Hitote, and others, sat near the queen, whose advisers and speakers appeared to be Taati and her foster-father. It was left for me to break the silence and enter upon the business for which we had assembled. Desirous of explaining the motives of our visit, by means of an interpreter in whom the natives would place confidence, I told Mitchell the pilot to request that Queen Pomare would choose a person to act in that character. She named Mr. Pritchard. I remarked, that his sacred office ought to raise him above the unpleasant disputes in which he might become involved as interpreter. The missionaries had approached, and were living in Otaheite, with the sole object of doing good to their fellowmen, but I was sent in a very different capacity. As an officer in the service of my king, I was either to do good or harm, as I might be ordered; and it was necessary to distinguish between those who were, and ought to be always their friends, and men whose duty might be unfriendly, if events should unfortunately disappoint the hopes of those interested in the welfare of Otaheite. These expressions appeared to perplex the queen, and cause serious discussions among the chiefs. Before any reply was made, I continued: “But if Mr. Pritchard will undertake an office which may prove disagreeable, for the sake of giving your majesty satisfaction, by forwarding the business for which this assembly was convened, it will not become me to object; on the contrary, I shall esteem his able assistance as of the most material consequence.” The queen immediately replied, through the chieftain at her right hand, Taati, that she wished Mr. Pritchard to interpret. Removing to a position nearer the queen and chiefs (he had been sitting at a distance), Mr. Pritchard expressed his entire readiness to exert himself on any question which might affect the good understanding and harmony that hitherto had existed between the natives of Otaheite and the British; and he trusted that those persons present who understood both languages, (Messrs. Wilson, Bicknell, Henry, and others,) would assist and correct his interpretations as often as they thought it necessary. Commodore Mason’s letter to me, authorizing my proceedings, was then read —in English, by myself— and translated by Mr. Pritchard. Next was read an agreement or bond, by which Queen Pomare had engaged to pay 2,853 dollars, or an equivalent, on or before the 1st day of September 1835, as an indemnification for the capture and robbery of the Truro at the Low Islands. The queen was asked whether her promise had been fulfilled? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Taati answered, “Neither the money nor an equivalent has yet been given.” “Why is this?” I asked. “Has any unforeseen accident hindered your acting up to your intentions; or is it not to be paid?” Utaame and Hitote spoke to Taati, who replied, “We did not understand distinctly how and to whom payment was to be made. It is our intention to pay; and we now wish to remove all doubts, as to the manner of payment.” I observed, that a clear and explicit agreement had been entered into with Capt. Seymour; if a doubt had arisen it might have been removed by reference to the parties concerned, or to disinterested persons; but no reference of any kind had been made, and Mr. Bicknell, the person appointed to receive the money, or an equivalent, had applied to the queen, yet had not obtained an answer. I then reminded Pomare of the solemn nature of her agreement; of the loss which her character, and that of her chiefs, would sustain; and of the means England eventually might adopt to recover the property so nefariously taken away from British subjects. I said that I was on my way to England, where her conduct would become known; and if harsh measures should, in consequence, be adopted, she must herself expect to bear the blame. These words seemed to produce a serious effect. Much argumentative discussion occupied the more respectable natives as well as the chiefs; while the queen sat in silence. I must here remark, in explanation of the assuming or even harsh tone of my conduct towards Pomare, at this meeting, that there was too much reason for believing that she had abetted, if not in a great measure instigated, the piracy of the Paamuto people (or Low Islanders). For such conduct, however, her advisers were the most to blame. She was then very young; and during those years in which mischief occurred, must have been guided less by her own will than by the desires of her relations. I had been told that excuses would be made; and that unless something like harshness and threatening were employed, ill effects, instead of a beneficial result, would be caused by the meeting: for the natives, seeing that the case was not taken up in a serious manner, and that the captain of the ship of war did not insist, would trouble themselves no farther after she had sailed away; and would laugh at those by whom the property was to be received. The ‘Paamuto,’ or Low Islands, where the piracies have occurred, in which she and her relations were supposed to have been concerned, were, and are still considered (though nominally given up by her), as under her authority and particular influence. Her father was a good friend to all the natives of those islands; and the respect and esteem excited by his unusual conduct have continued to the present time, and shown themselves in attachment to his daughter. So much hostility has in general influenced the natives of different islands, that to be well treated by a powerful chief, into whose hands a gale of wind, or warfare throws them, is a rare occurrence. The Paamuto Isles are rich in pearl oysters. Pomare, or her relations, desired to monopolize the trade. Unjustifiable steps were taken, actuated, it is said, by her or by these relations; and hence this affair. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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They soon decided to pay the debt at once. Thirty-six tons of pearl oyster-shells, belonging to Pomare, and then lying at Papiete, were to form part of the equivalent; the remainder was to be collected among the queen’s friends. Taati left his place near her, went into the midst of the assembly, and harangued the people in a forcible though humorous manner, in order to stimulate them to subscribe for the queen. After he had done speaking, I requested Mr. Pritchard to state strongly that the innocent natives of Otaheite ought not to suffer for the misdeeds of the Low Islanders. The shells which had come from those ill-conducted people, might well be given as part of the payment; but the queen ought to procure the rest from them, and not from her innocent and deserving subjects. A document, expressing her intention to pay the remaining sum within a stated time, signed by herself and by two chiefs, with a certainty that the property would be obtained from the Low Islanders, would be more satisfactory than immediate payment, if effected by distressing her Otaheitan subjects, who were in no way to blame. Taati replied, “The honour of the queen is our honour. We will share her difficulties. Her friends prefer assisting her in clearing off this debt, to leaving her conduct exposed to censure. We have determined to unite in her cause, and endeavour to pay all before the departure of the man-of-war.” It was easy to see that the other principal chiefs had no doubt of the propriety of the demand; and that they thought the queen and her relations ought to bear the consequences of their own conduct. Taati, who is related to her, exerted himself far more than Utaame, Hitote, or any of the others. This part of the business was then settled by their agreeing to give the shells already collected, such sums of money as her friends should choose to contribute, and a document signed by two principal chiefs, expressing the sum already collected and paid; and their intention of forthwith collecting the remainder, and paying it before a stipulated time. Difficulties about the present, as compared with the former value of the shells, were quickly ended by arbitration; and their value estimated at fifty dollars per ton: the ready way in which this question about the value of the shells was settled, gave me a high idea of the natives’ wish to do right, rather than take advantage of a doubtful point of law. I next had to remark, that the queen had given up the murderers of the master and mate of the Truro in a merely nominal manner, and not in effect; and that she must expect to receive a communication upon that subject by the next man-of-war. She asked me — whether I really thought they would be required from her by the next man-of-war? I replied: “Those men were tried and condemned by the laws of Otaheite. Your majesty, as sovereign, exercised your right of pardoning them. I think that the British Government will respect your right as queen of these islands; and that his Britannic Majesty will not insist upon those men being punished, or again tried for the same offence; but the propriety of your own conduct in pardoning such notorious offenders, is a very different affair. It will not tend to diminish the effect of a report injurious to your character, which you are aware has been circulated.” After a pause, I said, “I was desired to enquire into the complaints of British subjects and demand redress where necessary. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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No complaints had been made to me; therefore I begged to congratulate her majesty on the regularity and good conduct which had prevailed; and thanked her, in the name of my countrymen, for the kindness with which they had been treated.” I then reminded Pomare of the deep interest generally felt for those highly deserving and devoted missionaries, whose exertions, hazardous and difficult as they had been, and still were, had raised the natives of Otaheite to their present enlightened and improved condition; and that every reason united to demand for them the steady co-operation of both her and her chiefs. Finding that they listened attentively to Mr. Pritchard’s interpretation, which I was told was as good as it appeared to me fluent and effective, I requested permission to say a few words more to the queen — to the effect that I had heard much of her associating chiefly with the young and inexperienced, almost to the exclusion of the older and trustworthy counsellors whom she had around her at this assembly. To be respected, either at home or abroad, it was indispensably necessary for her to avoid the society of inferior minds and dispositions; and to be very guarded in her own personal conduct. She ought to avoid taking advice from foreigners, whom she knew not, and whose station was not such as might be a guarantee for their upright dealings: and she ought to guard carefully against the specious appearances of adventurers whose intentions, or real character, it was not possible for her to discover readily. Such men could hardly fail to misinform her on most subjects; but especially on such as interested themselves; or about which they might entertain the prejudices and illiberal ideas which are so prevalent among ignorant or ill-disposed people. I tried to say these things kindly, as the advice of a friend: Pomare thanked me, acknowledged the truth of my remarks, and said she would bear them in mind. Turning to the chiefs, a few words passed, previous to Taati asking me, in her name, “Whether they were right in allowing a foreigner to enlist Otaheitans to serve him as soldiers; and in permitting them and other men to be trained, for warlike purposes, upon their island?”* My reply was, “If Otaheitan subjects, so trained, almost under the queen’s eye, act hostilely against the natives of any other island, will not those natives deem her culpable? To my limited view of the present case, it appears impolitic, and decidedly improper to do so.” After a few words with Utaame and Hitote, Taati rose and gave notice that no Otaheitan should enlist or be trained to serve as a soldier, in a foreign cause. By this decree de Thierry lost his enlisted troops, except a few New Zealanders, and whaling seamen. One of the seven judges, an intelligent, and, for an Otaheitan, a very well educated man, named ‘Mare,’ asked to speak to me. “You mentioned, in the third place,” said Mare, “that you were desired to enquire into the complaints of British subjects, and demand redress, if necessary. You have stated that no complaint has been made, and you have given us credit for our conduct: allow me now to complain of the behaviour of one of your countrymen, for which we have failed in obtaining redress.” Here Mare detailed the following case of the ‘Venilia,’ and said that no reply to their letter to the British government, had yet been received. Mare then added, in a temperate though feeling manner, “does it not appear hard to require our queen to pay so large a sum as 2,853 dollars HDT WHAT? INDEX

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out of her small income; while that which is due to her, 390 dollars, a mere trifle to Great Britain, has not obtained even an acknowledgment from the British government?” I ventured to assure Mare that some oversight, or mistake, must have occurred, and promised to try to procure an answer for them, which, I felt assured, would be satisfactory. The letter on the subject of the Venilia, very literally translated, is as follows: it is, for many reasons, a curious document. “Our friend, the king of Britain, and all persons in office in your government, may you all be saved by the true God! “The following is the petition of Pomare, of the governors, and of the chiefs of Tahiti. “A whale-ship belonging to London, has been at Tahiti: ‘Venilia’ is the name of the ship, ‘Miner’ is the name of the captain. This ship has disturbed the peace of the government of Queen Pomare the first. We consider this ship a disturber of the peace, because the captain has turned on shore thirteen of his men, against the will of the governor of this place, and other persons in office. The governor of this district made known the law clearly. The captain of the ship objected to the law, and said that he would not regard the law. We then became more resolute: the governor said to the chiefs, ‘Friends, chiefs of the land, we must have a meeting.’ The chiefs assembled on the twenty-second day of December 1831. The governor ordered a man to go for the captain of the ship. When he had arrived on shore, the governor appointed a man to be speaker for him. The speaker said to the captain of the ship, ‘Friend, here are your men, take them, and put them on board of your ship; it is not agreeable to us that they should remain upon our land.’ The captain said, ‘I will not by any means receive them again: no, not on any account whatever!’ The governor again told his speaker to say, ‘Take your men, and put them on board your ship, we shall enforce our laws.’ The captain strongly objected to this, saying, ‘I will not, on any account, again receive these bad men, these mutineers.’ We then said, ‘It is by no means agreeable to us for these men to live on shore: if they are disturbers of the peace on board the ship, they will disturb the peace on shore.’ Captain Hill, who has long been a captain belonging to Britain, spoke to the captain of the ship: this is what he said to him: ‘It is not at all agreeable to the laws of Britain that you should discharge, or in any manner turn away your men in a foreign land.’ This is another thing Captain Hill said, ‘you should write a document, stating clearly the crime for which these men have been turned on shore; that the governor and chiefs may know how to act towards them, and that they may render you any assistance.’ But this was not agreeable to the captain; he would not write a document. The governor then said to the captain, ‘If you will not take your men on board again, give us the money, as expressed in the law.’ The captain said, ‘I will not give the money, neither will I again take the men: no, not on any terms whatever; and if you attempt to put them HDT WHAT? INDEX

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on board the ship, I will resist, even unto death.’ The governor then said, ‘We shall continue to be firm; if you will not give the money, according to the law, we shall put your men on board the ship, and should you die, your death will be deserved.’ When the captain perceived that we were determined to enforce the law, he said, ‘It is agreed; I will give you the money, three hundred and ninety dollars.’ “On the 24th of December the governor sent a person for the money. The captain of the ship said, ‘He had no money.’ We then held a meeting: the governor’s speaker said to the captain, ‘Pay the money according to the agreement of the 22d day of this month.’ The captain said, ‘I have no money.’ The governor told him, ‘If you will not pay the money we will put your men on board the ship.’ “One Lawler said, ‘Friends, is it agreeable to you that I should assist him? I will pay the money to you, three hundred and ninety dollars! I will give property into your hands: this is the kind of property; such as may remain a long time by the sea-side and not be perishable. In five months, should not the money be paid, this property shall become your own.’ “Mr. Pritchard said that this was the custom among foreigners. We agreed to the proposal. “On the 26th of December we went to Lawler’s house to look at the property, and see if it was suitable for the sum of money; and also to make some writings about this property. While there, Lawler made known to us something new, which was, that we should sign our names to a paper, written by the captain, for him to show his owners. We did not agree to this proposal, because we did not know the crime for which these men were turned on shore. We saw clearly that these two persons were deceiving us, and that they would not pay the money; also that the captain would not again take his men; but we did not attempt to put his men on board the ship, because another English whaler had come to anchor. We told the captain that we should write a letter to the British government, that they might order this business to be investigated, and might afford us their assistance. “This is the substance of what we have to say:— We entreat you, the British Government, to help us in our troubles. Punish this Captain Miner, and command the owners of the Venilia to pay us three hundred and ninety dollars for thirteen of their men having been left on our land; and also to send the wages of a native man who was employed to supply the whole crew with bread-fruit while at anchor here. Let them send a good musket for this man, because the captain has not given him a good musket according to the agreement at the beginning. Captain Miner also gave much trouble to the pilot. He took his ship out himself: the pilot went after the ship to get his money, and also the money for Pomare, for anchorage. He would not give the pilot his share. After some time he gave the pilot some cloth for his share. “In asking this, we believe that our wish will be complied with. We have agreed to the wish of the British government in receiving the Pitcairn’s people, and in giving them land. We wish to live in peace, and behave well to the British flag, which we consider our real friend, and special HDT WHAT? INDEX

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protection. We also wish that you would put in office a man like Captain Hill, and send him to Tahiti, as a representative of the king of Great Britain, that he may assist us. If this should not be agreeable to you, we pray you to give authority to the reverend George Pritchard, the missionary at this station. “This is the conclusion of what we have to say. Peace be with you. May you be in a flourishing condition, and may the reign of the beloved king of Britain be long! Written at Tahiti on the sixth day of January, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-two. “On behalf of POMARE, the queen. “Signed by APAAPA, chief secretary. ARUPAEA, district governor. TEPAU, district governor. TEHORO, one of the seven supreme judges. MARE, a district judge, (since raised to be a supreme judge).”

“Addition:— “This man, Lawler, is an Irishman: he has been living at Tahiti about three months: he came from the Sandwich Islands. Of his previous conduct we can say nothing. We much wish that a British ship of war would come frequently to Tahiti to take to their own lands these bad foreigners that trouble us. It is useless for us to depend upon the consul at the Sandwich Islands. We have long known that we can obtain no assistance from him. “We wish to do our duty towards you Britons. You are powerful and rich — but we are like weak children. “On behalf of POMARE, the queen. APAAPA, chief secretary.” “Paofai (close to Papiete), Tahiti, 7th January 1832." This interesting letter needs no apology for its insertion at full length. Besides explaining Mare’s application, it helps to give an idea of the state of Otaheite; and it appeals to our better feelings in a persuasive manner. That the electric agent (whether fire or fluid) goes upward from the earth to the atmosphere, as well as in the contrary direction, showing that a mutual action takes place between air and land, many facts might be brought to prove: I will only mention two. “On October 25th we had a very remarkable storm: the sky was all in flames. I employed part of the night in observing it, and had the pleasure of seeing three ascending thunderbolts! They rose from the sea like an arrow; two of them in a perpendicular direction, and the third at an angle of about 75 degrees.”—(De Lamanon, in the Voyage of La Pérouse, vol. iii. pp. 431-2). While H.M. corvette Hind, was lying at anchor off Zante, in 1823, in twelve fathoms water, an electric shock came in through her hawse, along the chain-cable, by which she was riding. Two men, who were sitting on the cable, before the bitts, were knocked down —felt the effects of the shock about half an hour —but were not seriously hurt. A noise like that HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of a gun startled every one on board; yet there was neither smell, nor smoke, nor any other visible effect. The sky was heavily clouded over; small rain was falling; and there was distant thunder occasionally, but no visible lightning. The cable was hanging slack, almost ‘up and down.’ I witnessed this myself. The queen’s secretary next asked to speak, and said that a law had been established in the island, prohibiting the keeping, as well as the use or importation of any kind of spirits. In consequence of that law, the persons appointed to carry it into effect had desired to destroy the contents of various casks and bottles of spirits; but the foreigners who owned the spirits objected, denying the right to interfere with private property. The Otaheitan authorities did not persist, as they were told that the first man- of-war which might arrive would certainly take vengeance upon them if they meddled with private property. He wished to ask whether the Otaheitans ought to have persisted in enforcing their own laws; and what I should have done, had the law been enforced with a British subject, and had he made application to me. My answer was, “Had the Otaheitans enforced their law, I could in no way have objected. In England a contraband article is seized by the proper officers, and is not treated as private property while forbidden by the law.” Much satisfaction was evidently caused by this declaration: also, at a former part of the discussions, when a remonstrance was made against Otaheitans paying the Truro debt, the greater part of the assembly seemed to be much pleased. A respectable old man then stood up, and expressed his gratification at finding that another of King William’s men-of-war had been sent — not to frighten them, or to force them to do as they were told, without considering or inquiring into their own opinions or inclinations, but to make useful enquiries. They feared the noisy guns which those ships carried, and had often expected to see their island taken from them, and themselves driven off, or obliged in their old age to learn new ways of living. I said, “Rest assured that the ships of Great Britain never will molest Otaheitans so long as they conduct themselves towards British subjects as they wish to be treated by Britons. Great Britain has an extent of territory, far greater than is sufficient for her wishes. Conquest is not her object. Those ships, armed and full of men, which from time to time visit your island, are but a very few out of a great many which are employed in visiting all parts of the world to which British commerce has extended. Their object is to protect and defend the subjects of Great Britain, and also take care that their conduct is proper — not to do harm to, or in any way molest those who treat the British as they themselves would wish to be treated in return.” I was much struck by the sensation which these opinions caused amongst the elderly and the more respectable part of the assemblage. They seemed surprised, and so truly gratified, that I conclude their ideas of the intentions of foreigners towards them must have been very vague or entirely erroneous. The business for which we had assembled being over, I requested Mr. Pritchard to remind the queen, that I had a long voyage to perform; and ought to depart from her territories directly she HDT WHAT? INDEX

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confided to me the promised document, relating to the affair of the Truro; and I then asked the queen and principal chiefs to honour our little vessel by a visit on the following evening, to see a few fireworks: to which they willingly consented: some trifling conversation then passed; and the meeting ended. Much more was said, during the time, than I have here detailed: my companions were as much astonished as myself at witnessing such order, so much sensible reasoning, and so good a delivery of their ideas! I shall long remember that meeting at Otaheite, and consider it one of the most interesting sights I ever witnessed. To me it was a beautiful miniature view of a nation emerging from heathen ignorance, and modestly setting forth their claims to be considered civilized and Christian. We afterwards dined with Mr. Pritchard, his family, and the two chiefs, Utaame and Taati. The behaviour of these worthies was extremely good; and it was very gratifying to hear so much said in their favour by those whose long residence on the island had enabled them to form a correct judgment. What we heard and saw showed us that mutual feelings of esteem existed between those respectable and influential old chieftains and the missionary families. It was quite dark when we left Papiete to return, by many miles among coral reefs, to the Beagle; but our cat-eyed pilot undertook to guide our three boats safely through intricate passages among the reefs, between which I could hardly find my way in broad daylight, even after having passed them several times. The distance to the ship was about four miles; and the night so dark, that the boats were obliged almost to touch each other to ensure safety; yet they arrived on board unhurt, contrary to my expectation; for my eyes could not detect any reason for altering our course every few minutes, neither could those of any other person, except the pilot, James Mitchell. Had he made a mistake of even a few yards, among so many intricate windings, our boats must have suffered (because the coral rocks are very sharp and soon split a plank), though in such smooth and shallow water, a wrong turning could have caused inconvenience only to ourselves, for there was little or no danger of more than a wetting. The observations at Matavai being completed, I was enabled to leave the place, and invited Hitote and Mr. Henry (who had returned with us) to pay another visit to Papiete in the Beagle, and meet the royal party. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 26, Thursday: Waldo Emerson lectured in Boston. This was lecture Number 4 of the series: Chaucer. THE LIST OF LECTURES

Texians captured a pack train bringing forage for General Martín Perfecto de Cos’s cavalry.

REMEMBERING THE ALAMO Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 26th of 11th M / Our first Meeting was a very good one Father had a good pertinent & well seasoned testimony - then Hannah Dennis & then Elizabeth Wing & at the close Hannah Dennis kneeled in supplication — In the last (Moy [Monthly] Meeting)— Moses F Rogers recd his Answer to proceed in Marriage with Elizabeth Mitchell & Amos Earle was also liberated to proceed in the same way with Catherine Mitchell - Elizabeth Wing was liberated to pay a religious visit in Sandwich Quarterly Meeting - And a committee was apptd to Visit Thos R Nichols in consequence of his request to be recd a Member of Society - other buisness refered RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

November 27, Friday: David Henry Thoreau’s Harvard College essay on assignment “The ways in which a man’s style may be said to offend against simplicity.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 28, Saturday: Robert Schumann visited Clara Wieck at the Wieck house in Leipzig before she departed on a concert tour. At the end of the evening, as she was showing him out, they kissed for the 1st time. “I thought I was on the point of fainting ... everything went black in front of my eyes; I could barely hold the lamp that was supposed to light your way, — I thought I was dreaming.”

There was a birthday party at Temple School, for the schoolmaster Bronson Alcott. The children presented him with a crown of laurel and a copy of John Milton’s PARADISE LOST. Alcott reminisced about his early years and about his struggles. The fact that their teacher was musing on his likeness to Jesus of Nazareth had not been lost upon the children, and when Alcott asked one of them

Who is the most perfect emblem of Christ?

the child responded, and was recorded as responding by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

I think you are a little like Jesus Christ.

(Probably with the benefit of hindsight she came later to greatly regret that she had elected to make a public record of this particular childish response.)

November 30, Monday: Samuel Langhorn Clemens was born in the town of Florida, near Hannibal, Missouri.

David Henry Thoreau passed the final examination in French at Harvard College.

WINTER 1835/1836

Winter: Walter Savage Landor spent this season at Clifton and would then return to Joseph Ablett at Llanbedr. Ablett would persuade him to write LITERARY HOURS, which would be published during the following year.

Winter: Karl Friedrich Schimper suggested, in Munich, that there must have been global times of obliteration (“Verödungszeiten”), with a cold climate and frozen water.

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Lecture Season: The 7th season of lectures offered by the Salem Lyceum:

James Flint of Salem Poem, Change Sylvester Graham Capabilities of the human frame in respect to the duration of life W.B.O. Peabody Hebrew Commonwealth Samuel M. Worcester of Salem James Otis and Patrick Henry B.B. Thatcher Boston Tea Party O.W.B. Peabody British Poetry during the latter part of the last century Leonard Withington Dangers of Republicanism George Putnam Water Jeremiah Smith Washington John Appleton Sir Humphrey Davy William H. Simmons Education Charles Chauncy Emerson Socrates Abel L. Peirson of Salem St. Peter’s Cathedral George S. Hillard Living too fast Jonathan F. Worcester of Salem China A.M. Quimby Electricity Ralph Waldo Emerson of Concord Martin Luther William Silsbee of Salem Study of the Beautiful B.B. Thatcher Philosophy of Self-Education Henry R. Cleveland Pompeii Charles G. Page of Salem Heat Charles T. Brooks of Salem Character HDT WHAT? INDEX

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DECEMBER 1835

December: This month’s issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:

HARVARDIANA

December 4, Friday: Samuel Butler was born.

Colonel Benjamin R. Milam rallied the Texians for an assault on General Martín Perfecto de Cos’s garrison in San Antonio de Béxar.

REMEMBERING THE ALAMO Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert arrived at the Golden Gate. AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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It was in the winter of 1835-1836 that the ship Alert, in the prosecution of her voyage for hides on the remote and almost unknown coast of California, floated into the vast solitude of the Bay of San Francisco. All around us was the stillness of nature.... Over a region far beyond our sight there were no other human habitations, except that an enterprising Yankee, years in advance of his time, had put up, on the rising ground above the landing, a shanty of rough boards, where he carried on a very small retail trade between the hide ships and the Indians.

Friday, December 4th, after a passage of twenty days, we arrived at the mouth of the bay of San Francisco. Our place of destination had been Monterey, but as we were to the northward of it when the wind hauled a- head, we made a fair wind for San Francisco. This large bay, which lies in latitude 37 58’, was discovered by Sir Francis Drake, and by him represented to be (as indeed it is) a magnificent bay, containing several good harbors, great depth of water, and surrounded by a fertile and finely wooded country. About thirty miles from the mouth of the bay, and on the south-east side, is a high point, upon which the presidio is built. Behind this, is the harbor in which trading vessels anchor, and near it, the mission of San Francisco, and a newly begun settlement, mostly of Yankee Californians, called Yerba Buena, which promises well. Here, at anchor, and the only vessel, was a brig under Russian colors, from Asitka, in Russian America, which had come down to winter, and to take in a supply of tallow and grain, great quantities of which latter article are raised in the missions at the head of the bay. The second day after our arrival, we went on board the brig, it being Sunday, as a matter of curiosity; and there was enough there to gratify it. Though no larger than the Pilgrim, she had five or six officers, and a crew of between twenty and thirty; and such a stupid and greasy- looking set, I certainly never saw before. Although it was quite comfortable weather, and we had nothing on but straw hats, shirts, and duck trowsers, and were barefooted, they had, every man of them, doublesoled boots, coming up to the knees, and well greased; thick woolen trowsers, frocks, waistcoats, pea-jackets, woolen caps, and everything in true Nova Zembla rig; and in the warmest days they made no change. The clothing of one of these men would weigh nearly as much as that of half our crew. They had brutish faces, looked like the antipodes of sailors, and apparently dealt in nothing but grease. They lived upon grease; eat it, drank it, slept in the midst of it, and their clothes were covered with it. To a Russian, grease is the greatest luxury. They looked with greedy eyes upon the tallow-bags as they were taken into the vessel, and, no doubt, would have eaten one up whole, had not the officer kept watch over it. The grease seemed actually coming through their pores, and out in their hair, and on their faces. It seems as if it were this saturation which makes them stand cold and rain so well. If they were to go into a warm climate, they would all die of the scurvy. The vessel was no better than the crew. Everything was in the oldest and most inconvenient fashion possible; running trusses on the yards, and large hawser cables, coiled all over the decks, and served and parcelled in all directions. The topmasts, top-gallant masts and studding-sail booms were nearly black for want of scraping, and the decks would have turned the stomach of a man-of-war’s-man. The galley was down in the forecastle; and there the crew lived, in the midst of the steam and grease of the cooking, in a place as hot as an oven, and as dirty as a pigsty. Five minutes in the forecastle was enough for us, and we were glad to get into the open air. We made some trade with them, buying Indian curiosities, of which they had a great number; such as bead-work, feathers of birds, fur moccasins, etc. I purchased a large robe, made of the skins of some animals, dried and sewed nicely together, and covered all over on the outside with thick downy feathers, taken from the breasts of various birds, and arranged with their different colors, so as to make a brilliant show. A few days after our arrival, the rainy season set in, and, for three weeks, it rained almost every hour, without cessation. This was bad for our trade, for the collecting of hides is managed differently in this port from what it is in any other on the coast. The mission of San Francisco near the anchorage, has no trade at all, but those of San Jose, Santa Clara, and others, situated on large creeks or rivers which run into the bay, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and distant between fifteen and forty miles from the anchorage, do a greater business in hides than any in California. Large boats, manned by Indians, and capable of carrying nearly a thousand hides apiece, are attached to the missions, and sent down to the vessels with hides, to bring away goods in return. Some of the crews of the vessels are obliged to go and come in the boats, to look out for the hides and goods. These are favorite expeditions with the sailors, in fine weather; but now to be gone three or four days, in open boats, in constant rain, without any shelter, and with cold food, was hard service. Two of our men went up to Santa Clara in one of these boats, and were gone three days, during all which time they had a constant rain, and did not sleep a wink, but passed three long nights, walking fore and aft the boat, in the open air. When they got on board, they were completely exhausted, and took a watch below of twelve hours. All the hides, too, that came down in the boats, were soaked with water, and unfit to put below, so that we were obliged to trice them up to dry, in the intervals of sunshine or wind, upon all parts of the vessel. We got up tricing-lines from the jib-boom-end to each arm of the fore yard, and thence to the main and cross-jack yard- arms. Between the tops, too, and the mast-heads, from the fore to the main swifters, and thence to the mizen rigging, and in all directions athwartships, tricing-lines were run, and strung with hides. The head stays and guys, and the spritsail-yard, were lined, and, having still more, we got out the swinging booms, and strung them and the forward and after guys, with hides. The rail, fore and aft, the windlass, capstan, the sides of the ship, and every vacant place on deck, were covered with wet hides, on the least sign of an interval for drying. Our ship was nothing but a mass of hides, from the cat-harpins to the water’s edge, and from the jib- boom-end to the taffrail. One cold, rainy evening, about eight o’clock, I received orders to get ready to start for San Jose at four the next morning, in one of these Indian boats, with four days’ provisions. I got my oil-cloth clothes, south- wester, and thick boots all ready, and turned into my hammock early, determined to get some sleep in advance, as the boat was to be alongside before daybreak. I slept on till all hands were called in the morning; for, fortunately for me, the Indians, intentionally, or from mistaking their orders, had gone off alone in the night, and were far out of sight. Thus I escaped three or four days of very uncomfortable service. Four of our men, a few days afterwards, went up in one of the quarter-boats to Santa Clara, to carry the agent, and remained out all night in a drenching rain, in the small boat, where there was not room for them to turn round; the agent having gone up to the mission and left the men to their fate, making no provision for their accommodation, and not even sending them anything to eat. After this, they had to pull thirty miles, and when they got on board, were so stiff that they could not come up the gangway ladder. This filled up the measure of the agent’s unpopularity, and never after this could he get anything done by any of the crew; and many a delay and vexation, and many a good ducking in the surf, did he get to pay up old scores, or “square the yards with the bloody quill-driver.” Having collected nearly all the hides that were to be procured, we began our preparations for taking in a supply of wood and water, for both of which, San Francisco is the best place on the coast. A small island, situated about two leagues from the anchorage, called by us “Wood Island,” and by the Spaniards “Isle de Los Angelos,” was covered with trees to the water’s edge; and to this, two of our crew, who were Kennebec men, and could handle an axe like a plaything, were sent every morning to cut wood, with two boys to pile it up for them. In about a week, they had cut enough to last us a year, and the third mate, with myself and three others, were sent over in a large, schooner-rigged, open launch, which we had hired of the mission, to take in the wood, and bring it to the ship. We left the ship about noon, but, owing to a strong head wind, and a tide, which here runs four or five knots, did not get into the harbor, formed by two points of the island, where the boats lie, until sundown. No sooner had we come-to, than a strong south-easter, which had been threatening us all day, set in, with heavy rain and a chilly atmosphere. We were in rather a bad situation: an open boat, a heavy rain, and a long night; for in winter, in this latitude, it was dark nearly fifteen hours. Taking a small skiff which we had brought with us, we went ashore, but found no shelter, for everything was open to the rain, and collecting a little wood, which we found by lifting up the leaves and brush, and a few muscles, we put aboard again, and made the best preparations in our power for passing the night. We unbent the mainsail, and formed an awning with it over the after part of the boat, made a bed of wet logs of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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wood, and, with our jackets on, lay down, about six o’clock, to sleep. Finding the rain running down upon us, and our jackets getting wet through, and the rough, knotty-logs, rather indifferent couches, we turned out; and taking an iron pan which we brought with us, we wiped it out dry, put some stones around it, cut the wet bark from some sticks, and striking a light, made a small fire in the pan. Keeping some sticks near, to dry, and covering the whole over with a roof of boards, we kept up a small fire, by which we cooked our muscles, and eat them, rather for an occupation than from hunger. Still, it was not ten o’clock, and the night was long before us, when one of the party produced an old pack of Spanish cards from his monkey-jacket pocket, which we hailed as a great windfall; and keeping a dim, flickering light by our fagots, we played game after game, one or two o’clock, when, becoming really tired, we went to our logs again, one sitting up at a time, in turn, to keep watch over the fire. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 5, Saturday: Some 400 more Mäori warriors were transported by a Western ship from the North Island of New Zealand to the Chatham Islands. Visiting the main settlements of the couple of thousand Moriori on these small, cold islands, the Mäori announced that henceforth the people there would be their slaves, and that resistance was futile. It was their custom.

The Battle of Béxar began to rage as Texians began to fight their way into town — on the 10th Cos would surrender his army, which would then be paroled.

REMEMBERING THE ALAMO Richard Henry Dana, Jr. described his activities in the bay of San Francisco.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Toward morning, the rain ceased, and the air became sensibly colder, so that we found sleep impossible, and sat up, watching for daybreak. No sooner was it light than we went ashore, and began our preparations for loading our vessel. We were not mistaken in the coldness of the weather, for a white frost was on the ground, a thing we had never seen before in California, and one or two little puddles of fresh water were skimmed over with a thin coat of ice. In this state of the weather and before sunrise, in the grey of the morning, we had to wade off, nearly up to our hips in water, to load the skiff with the wood by armsfull. The third mate remained on board the launch, two more men staid in the skiff, to load and manage it, and all the water-work, as usual, fell upon the two youngest of us; and there we were, with frost on the ground, wading forward and back, from the beach to the boat, with armsfull of wood, barefooted, and our trowsers rolled up. When the skiff went off with her load, we could only keep our feet from freezing by racing up and down the beach on the hard sand, as fast as we could go. We were all day at this work, and towards sundown, having loaded the vessel as deep as she would bear, we hove up our anchor, and made sail, beating out the bay. No sooner had we got into the large bay, than we found a strong tide setting us out to seaward, a thick fog which prevented our seeing the ship, and a breeze too light to set us against the tide; for we were as deep as a sand-barge. By the utmost exertions, we saved ourselves from being carried out to sea, and were glad to reach the leewardmost point of the island, where we came-to, and prepared to pass another night, more uncomfortable than the first, for we were loaded up to the gunwale, and had only a choice among logs and sticks for a resting-place. The next morning, we made sail at slack water, with a fair wind, and got on board by eleven o’clock, when all hands were turned-to, to unload and stow away the wood, which took till night. Having now taken in all our wood, the next morning a waterparty was ordered off with all the casks. From this we escaped, having had a pretty good siege with the wooding. The water-party were gone three days, during which time they narrowly escaped being carried out to sea, and passed one day on an island, where one of them shot a deer, great numbers of which overrun the islands and hills of San Francisco Bay. While not off, on these wood and water parties, or up the rivers to the missions, we had very easy times on HDT WHAT? INDEX

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board the ship. We were moored, stem and stern, within a cable’s length of the shore, safe from south- easters, and with very little boating to do; and as it rained nearly all the time, awnings were put over the hatchways, and all hands sent down between decks, where we were at work, day after day, picking oakum, until we got enough to caulk the ship all over, and to last the whole voyage. Then we made a whole suit of gaskets for the voyage home, a pair of wheel-ropes from strips of green hide, great quantities of spun-yarn, and everything else that could be made between decks. It being now mid-winter and in high latitude, the nights were very long, so that we were not turned-to until seven in the morning, and were obliged to knock off at five in the evening, when we got supper; which gave us nearly three hours before eight bells, at which time the watch was set. As we had now been about a year on the coast, it was time to think of the voyage home; and knowing that the last two or three months of our stay would be very busy ones, and that we should never have so good an opportunity to work for ourselves as the present, we all employed our evenings in making clothes for the passage home, and more especially for Cape Horn. As soon as supper was over and the kids cleared away, and each one had taken his smoke, we seated ourselves on our chests round the lamp, which swung from a beam, and each one went to work in his own way, some making hats, others trowsers, others jackets, etc., etc.; and no one was idle. The boys who could not sew well enough to make their own clothes, laid up grass into sinnet for the men, who sewed for them in return. Several of us clubbed together and bought a large piece of twilled cotton, which we made into trowsers and jackets, and giving them several coats of linseed oil, laid them by for Cape Horn. I also sewed and covered a tarpaulin hat, thick and strong enough to sit down upon, and made myself a complete suit of flannel under-clothing, for bad weather. Those who had no south-wester caps, made them, and several of the crew made themselves tarpaulin jackets and trowsers, lined on the inside with flannel. Industry was the order of the day, and every one did something for himself; for we knew that as the season advanced, and we went further south, we should have no evenings to work in. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 6, Sunday: David Henry Thoreau finished the second term of his junior year and withdrew briefly from Harvard College in Cambridge in order to teach school in Canton, Massachusetts while residing with the Unitarian Reverend Orestes Augustus Brownson, with whom he was to study German. (He would be out of college for some three months but the only time we can account for is the six weeks he spent with the Reverend Brownson.) THOREAU RESIDENCES Some have attempted to allege that Thoreau’s encounter with the Reverend Orestes Augustus Brownson during his college years “transformed” David Henry Thoreau — that when he returned from the minister’s house in Canton, and the study of the German language, to his Cambridge dorm room, he was an entirely different young man. In evaluating that account of it, we can take into consideration that in Thoreau’s personal library was a copy of the Reverend’s first book, NEW VIEWS... (undoubtedly a gift of the Reverend — but we have no indication whatever that Thoreau ever so much as glanced at it), and that in the Reverend’s personal library was a copy of Thoreau’s A WEEK... (inscribed as a gift from its author — but we know for sure that the Reverend did not ever bother to read it all the way through).

I am unable to come across any evidence whatever, that the writings or the example of the Reverend Brownson ever had the slightest impact on Thoreau’s ideas or upon Thoreau’s life. The most I have been able to infer is that Thoreau benefitted slightly, academically, from being able to have conversations in the German language.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 6 of 12 M / Both meetings were solid quiet seasons Father had short service. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

December 8, Tuesday: Records of the “Institute of 1770”: Debated: “Ought Government to suppress infidel writings.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 10, Thursday: Waldo Emerson lectured in Boston. This was lecture Number 5 of the series, the 1st of two on “Shakspear.”

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

December 12, Saturday: Between this day and Saturday the 19th, David Henry Thoreau would mail off to Harvard College materials that would be valued at 29 points, raising his accumulated points toward graduation to 10,290.

Nicolò Paganini led an orchestra concert in Parma for the birthday of Grand Duchess Maria Louisa (widow of the Emperor Napoléon).

The Mexican garrison under General Martín Perfecto de Cos at San Antonio de Béxar, having surrendered to the besieging Texians, was paroled.

REMEMBERING THE ALAMO HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 16, Wednesday: US Representative John Fairfield of Maine petitioned in Congress for an end to human enslavement in the District of Columbia.

The Anti-Masonic Party met at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and nominated William Henry Harrison for President of the United States of America, with New York’s Francis Granger for Vice President.

Fromental Halevy’s opera comique L’eclair to words of Saint-Georges and de Planard was performed for the initial time, at the Theatre de la Bourse, Paris. The critics were pleased. In the orchestra was Jacques Offenbach, a young cellist.

On the previous day a surge of Arctic air had sent thermometers below -20 degrees in the north. Toward the south of New England at about dawn on this day temperatures had begun to plunge, and then in the evening the temperature in Boston, where a “northwester” had been blowing all day, fell from -1 degree to -10 degrees. During the hours of daylight in Providence, Rhode Island temperatures dropped from -4 degrees to -12 degrees while temperatures in Nantucket dropped from +5 degrees to -6 degrees. A fire broke out in the financial district area of Pearl Street near Wall and William Streets in lower Manhattan Island in New-York in the vicinity of Hanover Square, and all the fire hydrants being frozen, 350 buildings were consumed.

December 17, Thursday: Waldo Emerson lectured in Boston. This was lecture Number 6 of the series, the 2d of two on “Shakspear.”

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

December 18, Friday: Five months after they had taken up residence together in Geneva the 1st child of Franz Liszt and Marie d’Agoult was born — a daughter they named Blandine Rachel.

Records of the “Institute of 1770”: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Ware lectured on the “Witches.” WITCHES

December 19, Saturday: The HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin approached New Zealand.

December 24, Thursday: Waldo Emerson lectured in Boston. This was lecture Number 7 of the series, on Lord Bacon.

An opinion issued by the Committee on Finance was to the effect that the annuity promised to Gioachino Rossini by King Charles X and withheld by the new regime could now be afforded by the French government. The Ministry of Finance decided to drop its case against Rossini, and disburse the annuity retroactive to July 1st, 1830 — on the basis of this decision the composer was now set for life.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 24th of 12 M / At meeting Father had a Short testimony to bear, & it was a good solid Meeting In the Preparative there was no buisness excepting a request for a Certificate & the representatives to appoint RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

December 25, Friday: Charles Darwin celebrated Christmas in Pahia, New Zealand.

Grand Duchess Maria Louisa (widow of the Emperor Napoléon) granted Nicolò Paganini complete control of court music in the Duchy of Parma.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. described a sailors’ Christmas in California waters.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR:39 Friday, December 25th. This day was Christmas; and as it rained all day long, and there were no hides to take in, and nothing especial to do, the captain gave us a holiday, (the first we had had since leaving Boston,) and plum duff for dinner. The Russian brig, following the Old Style, had celebrated their Christmas eleven days before; when they had a grand blow-out and (as our men said) drank, in the forecastle, a barrel of gin, ate up a bag of tallow, and made a soup of the skin.

39. Since Dana was on one side of the international dateline and Darwin on the other, and since I don’t really understand these things (in New Zealand waters, wouldn’t this still have been Thursday?), my chronology here may be a day off one way or t’other. –But, never mind. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 27, Sunday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert sailed out of the Golden Gate and turned south toward the bay of Monterey.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Sunday, December 27th. We had now finished all our business at this port, and it being Sunday, we unmoored ship and got under weigh, firing a salute to the Russian brig, and another to the Presidio, which were both answered. The commandant of the Presidio, Don Gaudaloupe Villego, a young man, and the most popular, among the Americans and English, of any man in California, was on board when we got under weigh. He spoke English very well, and was suspected of being favorably inclined to foreigners. We sailed down this magnificent bay with a light wind, the tide, which was running out, carrying us at the rate of four or five knots. It was a fine day; the first of entire sunshine we had had for more than a month. We passed directly under the high cliff on which the Presidio is built, and stood into the middle of the bay, from whence we could see small bays, making up into the interior, on every side; large and beautifully- wooded islands; and the mouths of several small rivers. If California ever becomes a prosperous country, this bay will be the centre of its prosperity. The abundance of wood and water, the extreme fertility of its shores, the excellence of its climate, which is as near to being perfect as any in the world, and its facilities for navigation, affording the best anchoring-grounds in the whole western coast of America, all fit it for a place of great importance; and, indeed, it has attracted much attention, for the settlement of “Yerba Buena,” where we lay at anchor, made chiefly by Americans and English, and which bids fair to become the most important trading place on the coast, at this time began to supply traders, Russian ships, and whalers, with their stores of wheat and frijoles. The tide leaving us, we came to anchor near the mouth of the bay, under a high and beautifully sloping hill, upon which herds of hundreds and hundreds of red deer, and the stag, with his high branching antlers, were bounding about, looking at us for a moment, and then starting off, affrighted at the noises which we made for the purpose of seeing the variety of their beautiful attitudes and motions. At midnight, the tide having turned, we hove up our anchor and stood out of the bay, with a fine starry heaven above us,– the first we had seen for weeks and weeks.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 27th of 12 M / Tho’ our Meetings were solid & quiet, it did not seem to me that life rose as I have sometimes felt it — Father had short testimonies in both. — Aunt Stanton remains deranged & in a very trying State to herslf & others - Rote this eveng to Benj Fry. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 28, Monday: For yet another episode in yet another of America’s race wars, at one point in the Florida Territory on this day –Fort King– Osceola was killing General Wiley Thompson, an Indian agent, and six others. At another point, a column of fresh troops on its way to the relief of besieged Fort King was being intercepted and 107 of its 110 members were being killed:

Black Native Warriors? Where Had That Come From? December 1835 The destruction of sugar plantations along the St. Johns River south of St. Augustine, Florida

December 18, 1835 The battle of Black Point, west of the town of Micanopy in the Florida Territory

December 28, 1835 Massacre of Major Francis Dade’s troops heading for Fort King

December 31, 1835 The 1st battle on the Withlacoochee River of Florida (Clinch’s Battle)

February-March 1836 The siege of Camp Izard

October 12, 1836 The 2d battle on the Withlacoochee River of Florida (Call’s Battle)

November 21, 1836 An action in the Wahoo Swamp on the Withlacoochee River

January 27, 1837 The battle of Hatcheelustee Creek at the head of the Kissimmee River

December 25, 1837 The battle of Lake Okeechobee

January 15, 1838 An action at Jupiter Inlet, on the east coast of Florida

January 24, 1838 The battle of Lockahatchee

SEMINOLES WHITE ON RED, RED ON WHITE SWAMP

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert sailed into the bay of Monterey.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR:

Before the light northerly winds, which blow here with the regularity of trades, we worked slowly along, and made Point Ano Neuvo, the northerly point of the Bay of Monterey, on Monday afternoon. We spoke, going in, the brig Diana, of the Sandwich Islands, from the North-west Coast, last from Asitka. She was off the point at the same time with us, but did not get in to the anchoring-ground until an hour or two after us. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 29, Tuesday: At New Echota, President Andrew Jackson, completing a removal treaty with persons representing one group of the Cherokee, declared that the white people were going to consider this treaty as binding upon the entire Cherokee nation.

In return for $5,000,000 and a promise of land in Oklahoma, all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi River would be considered to have been forfeited.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert came to anchor in the bay of Monterey. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR:

It was ten o’clock on Tuesday morning when we came to anchor. The town looked just as it did when I saw it last, which was eleven months before, in the brig Pilgrim. The pretty lawn on which it stands, as green as sun and rain could make it; the pine wood on the south; the small river on the north side; the houses, with their white plastered sides and red-tiled roofs, dotted about on the green; the low, white presidio, with its soiled, flying, and the discordant din of drums and trumpets for the noon parade; all brought up the scene we had witnessed here with so much pleasure nearly a year before, when coming from a long voyage, and our unprepossessing reception at Santa Barbara. It seemed almost like coming to a home. The only other vessel in port was the Russian government bark, from Asitka, mounting eight guns, (four of which we found to be Quakers,) and having on board the ex-governor, who was going in her to Mazatlan, and thence overland to Vera Cruz. He offered to take letters, and deliver them to the American consul at Vera Cruz, whence they could be easily forwarded to the United States. We accordingly made up a packet of letters, almost every one writing, and dating them “January 1st, 1836.” The governor was true to his promise, and they all reached Boston before the middle of March; the shortest communication ever yet made across the country. The brig Pilgrim had been lying in Monterey through the latter part of November, according to orders, waiting for us. Day after day, Captain Faucon went up to the hill to look out for us, and at last, gave us up, thinking we must have gone down in the gale which we experienced off Point Conception, and which had blown with great fury over the whole coast, driving ashore several vessels in the snuggest ports. An English brig, which had put into San Francisco, lost both her anchors; the Rosa was driven upon a mud bank in San Diego; and the Pilgrim, with great difficulty, rode out the gale in Monterey, with three anchors ahead. She sailed early in December for San Diego and intermedios. The brig Pilgrim had been lying in Monterey through the latter part of November, according to orders, waiting for us. Day after day, Captain Faucon went up to the hill to look out for us, and at last, gave us up, thinking we must have gone down in the gale which we experienced off Point Conception, and which had blown with great fury over the whole coast, driving ashore several vessels in the snuggest ports. An English brig, which had put into San Francisco, lost both her anchors; the Rosa was driven upon a mud bank in San Diego; and the Pilgrim, with great difficulty, rode out the gale in Monterey, with three anchors ahead. She sailed early in December for San Diego and intermedios. As we were to be here over Sunday, and Monterey was the best place to go ashore on the whole coast, and we had had no liberty-day for nearly three months, every one was for going ashore.

December 30, Wednesday: The HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin sailed from New Zealand toward Sydney, Australia.

At Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, the original version of Maria Stuarda, a tragedia lirica by Gaetano Donizetti to words of Bardari after Schiller, was performed for the initial time. Maria Felicita Malibran performed as lead soprano despite being noticeably ill.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: —th day 30th of 12th M / This day I complete my 54th Year While I am sensible that my glass in running out - that Youthfulness has departed, & that my whole man begins to exhibit a decaying & venerable aspect - I am favour’d with a concern to so live, as that Age may be honourable & peaceful, & as I have often expressed to others “Grow old with a good grace” — How much have I had to be thankful for, & tho’ portions of bitterness HDT WHAT? INDEX

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have been my lot, yet in truth I have had much, which calls forth the tribute of thanksgiving & praise - Never in the abundance, but as yet, always enough to satisfy present necessary wants. — My heart is often fraught with gratitude for the many favours I have recd & Oh that I may ever feel so & ascribe - not unto me, not unto me, but to thy goodness & mercy, O Lord, are all my blessings RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

December 31, Thursday: According to the Caledonian Mercury of Edinburgh, Scotland, the public tranquility had been completely restored at a port on the coast of Spain –the shops being open, there being music in the streets, a new governor having been installed– the result was a state of general confidence. The British troops had generally departed but, as a precaution, because it is better to be safe than to be sorry, had left behind “seventy artillerymen and two subalterns, under Captain [John] Thoreau, with a 24-pound howitzer, and two long 32-pounders.” –Just in case a whiff of the ol’ grapeshot might still upon occasion be what would be recommended. This is what warriors are for, to create peace! Congratulations, Sir! –Christmas has come and gone and the British army has brought the gift of peace to the entire Iberian peninsula but now you can’t go home. Not yet.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 12th M 1835 / Rose early this Morng & got into the Stage & rode to Portsmouth to attend the Moy [Monthly] Meeting - The first was a good solid Meeting - a sound lively & pertinent from Mary Hicks -In the last it seemed to me the buisness was all resulted in Wisdom - After meeting went with Francis Carr to Shadrach Chases & dined - not having been to Shadracks in some years a renewal of intimacy & good feeling was very pleasant — after dinner rode home with Francis he being alone in a Chaise True it is that times & seasons are not at our command -yesterday I was very desirous to feel the arising of life in my heart it being my birth day but was unable to get at it & today I have been favourd & am thankful for it Here closes the Year & this day commences another of my Life— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Waldo Emerson lectured in Boston. This was lecture Number 8 of the series, on Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, Herbert, and Sir Henry Wotton.

On this day there was yet another episode in yet another of America’s race wars:

Black Native Warriors? Where Had That Come From? December 1835 The destruction of sugar plantations along the St. Johns River south of St. Augustine, Florida

December 18, 1835 The battle of Black Point, west of the town of Micanopy in the Florida Territory

December 28, 1835 Massacre of Major Francis Dade’s troops heading for Fort King

December 31, 1835 The 1st battle on the Withlacoochee River of Florida (Clinch’s Battle)

February-March 1836 The siege of Camp Izard

October 12, 1836 The 2d battle on the Withlacoochee River of Florida (Call’s Battle)

November 21, 1836 An action in the Wahoo Swamp on the Withlacoochee River

January 27, 1837 The battle of Hatcheelustee Creek at the head of the Kissimmee River

December 25, 1837 The battle of Lake Okeechobee

January 15, 1838 An action at Jupiter Inlet, on the east coast of Florida

January 24, 1838 The battle of Lockahatchee

SEMINOLES WHITE ON RED, RED ON WHITE SWAMP

OTHER EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1835 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January February March Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 29 30 31 April May June Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 3 4 1 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 26 27 28 29 30 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 28 29 30 31 July August September Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 3 4 1 1 2 3 4 5 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 26 27 28 29 30 31 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 27 28 29 30 30 31 October November December Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 29 30 27 28 29 30 31 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1836

Henry Thoreau copied snippets from various poems by John Dryden such as “Palamon and Arcite” into his college “Index Rerum.” PALAMON AND ARCITE

Some of this material would find its way into CAPE COD: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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CAPE COD: When I approached this house the next summer, over the PEOPLE OF desolate hills between it and the shore, which are worthy to have been the birthplace of Ossian, I saw the wizard in the midst of CAPE COD a cornfield on the hillside, but, as usual, he loomed so strangely, that I mistook him for a scarecrow. This was the merriest old man that we had ever seen, and one of the best preserved. His style of conversation was coarse and plain enough to have suited Rabelais. He would have made a good Panurge. Or rather he was a sober Silenus, and we were the boys Chromis SILENUS and Mnasilus, who listened to his story. CHROMIS “Not by Hæmonian hills the Thracian bard, MNASILUS Nor awful Phœbus was on Pindus heard With deeper silence or with more regard.” There was a strange mingling of past and present in his conversation, for he had lived under King George, and might have remembered when Napoleon and the moderns generally were born. He said that one day, when the troubles between the Colonies and the mother country first broke out, as he, a boy of fourteen, was pitching hay out of a cart, one Doane, an old Tory, who was talking with his father, a good Whig, said to him, “Why, Uncle Bill, you might as well undertake to pitch that pond into the ocean with a pitchfork, as for the Colonies to undertake to gain their independence.” He remembered well General Washington, and how he rode his horse along the streets of Boston, and he stood up to show us how he looked. “He was a r–a–ther large and portly-looking man, a manly and resolute-looking officer, with a pretty good leg as he sat on his horse.” –“There, I’ll tell you, this was the way with Washington.” Then he jumped up again, and bowed gracefully to right and left, making show as if he were waving his hat. Said he, “That was Washington.” He told us many anecdotes of the Revolution, and was much pleased when we told him that we had read the same in history, and that his account agreed with the written. “O,” he said, “I know, I know! I was a young fellow of sixteen, with my ears wide open; and a fellow of that age, you know, is pretty wide awake, and likes to know everything that’s going on. O, I know!”

OSSIAN JOHN DRYDEN KING GEORGE NAPOLEON Other Dryden materials such as “A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire” would find their way into “Homer Ossian Chaucer,” “Aulus Persius Flaccus,” and A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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A WEEK: What a contrast between the stern and desolate poetry of PEOPLE OF Ossian, and that of Chaucer, and even of Shakespeare and Milton, much A WEEK more of Dryden, and Pope, and Gray. Our summer of English poetry like the Greek and Latin before it, seems well advanced toward its fall, and laden with the fruit and foliage of the season, with bright autumnal tints, but soon the winter will scatter its myriad clustering and shading leaves, and leave only a few desolate and fibrous boughs to sustain the snow and rime, and creak in the blasts of ages. We cannot escape the impression that the Muse has stooped a little in her flight, when we come to the literature of civilized eras. Now first we hear of various ages and styles of poetry; it is pastoral, and lyric, and narrative, and didactic; but the poetry of runic monuments is of one style, and for every age. The bard has in a great measure lost the dignity and sacredness of his office. Formerly he was called a seer, but now it is thought that one man sees as much as another. He has no longer the bardic rage, and only conceives the deed, which he formerly stood ready to perform. Hosts of warriors earnest for battle could not mistake nor dispense with the ancient bard. His lays were heard in the pauses of the fight. There was no danger of his being overlooked by his contemporaries. But now the hero and the bard are of different professions. When we come to the pleasant English verse, the storms have all cleared away and it will never thunder and lighten more. The poet has come within doors, and exchanged the forest and crag for the fireside, the hut of the Gael, and Stonehenge with its circles of stones, for the house of the Englishman. No hero stands at the door prepared to break forth into song or heroic action, but a homely Englishman, who cultivates the art of poetry. We see the comfortable fireside, and hear the crackling fagots in all the verse.

OSSIAN JOHN DRYDEN

Albert Lawrence Bull, brother of Ephraim Wales Bull, would for this year be the occupant of the house in Concord that would become the Alcott family’s “Hillside” and then the Hawthornes’ “The Wayside.” OLD HOUSES

Frederic Hudson, age 17, during this year went from school in Concord to New-York where he would obtain employment initially at his brother Edward’s news-gathering agency, Hudson’s News Room. There he would come to the attention of James Gordon Bennett, who in 1835 had begun publishing the New-York Herald. Bennett at the time employed only one person other than himself, and would hire Hudson as his paper’s 3rd employee, to work as a reporter.

A new edition of THE WORKS OF WILLIAM PALEY... was prepared in Philadelphia by the firm of J.J. Woodward. This was the edition that would be on the bookshelf of Henry Thoreau, and would evidently be the edition he would consult for his reading of the A VIEW OF THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. WM. PALEY’S WORKS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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A 2d edition of Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody’s diary of the School of Human Culture.40 RECORD OF A SCHOOL

Bronson Alcott’s PREFACE AND KEY TO THE EMBLEMS OF CAROVÉ’S STORY WITHOUT AN END, TRANSLATED BY SARAH AUSTIN (Boston: Joseph H. Francis, 123 pages).

Having been appointed as the state geologist, Charles T. Jackson began a 3-year geological-survey tour of Maine, with James Thatcher Hodge (1816-1871) as his assistant and Louis Neptune as their guide. Three annual reports would be published: DR. JACKSON’S 1ST RPT. DR. JACKSON’S 2D RPT. DR. JACKSON’S 3D RPT.

Two of these reports would be in the personal library of Henry Thoreau, and would be referred to passim in THE MAINE WOODS. TIMELINE OF THE MAINE WOODS

Nehemiah Ball was appointed to the office of Concord Town Clerk.

Tilly Merrick of Concord died at the age of 81 or 82.

TILLY MERRICK, son of Tilly Merrick, was born January 29, 1752, graduated [at Harvard College] in 1773, and now [1835] resides in Concord, the oldest native living graduate.41

40. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. RECORD OF MR. ALCOTT’S SCHOOL, EXEMPLIFYING THE PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF MORAL CULTURE. Boston, New-York, Philadelphia: James Munroe and Company, 1835, 208 pages (2d edition 1836, Boston, New-York: Russell, Shattuck and Company, 198 pages; 3d edition 1874, Boston: Roberts Brothers)

41. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At the end of the journal entries for this year, Waldo Emerson listed his recent readings in Oriental materials: 42 “Code of Menu; Confucius, apud Marshman ; Arabian Nights.” While perusing Marshman’s CONFUCIUS, he had copied many sentences ascribed to Confucius into his journals. One of these sentences, “How can a man remain concealed,” would appear in his 1st volume of essays.

CHINA

John Francis Davis (1795-1890)’s THE CHINESE: A GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE EMPIRE OF CHINA AND ITS INHABITANTS was issued in London by the firm of C. Knight for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge of Great Britain. (Sir John would become governor of Hong Kong in 1844.) Eventually this treatise would be consulted by Waldo Emerson. CHINA

The Aberdeen Phrenological Society was established. George Combe’s LECTURES ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY: DELIVERED BEFORE THE “EDINBURGH PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY,” AND REPORTED FOR THE “EDINBURGH CHRONICLE.” (Boston: Marsh, Capen & Lyon; New-York: Daniel Appleton & Co.). The student David Henry Thoreau would check out this new book from the collection of the Institute of 1770 at Harvard College on 42. Joshua J. Marshman’s CONFUCIUS may be the same book as the reference to the SHEKING BOOK OF ODES. EMERSON AND CHINA HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 8th. MORAL PHILOSOPHY

According to a claim made by Waldo Emerson to Thomas Carlyle, Emerson realized $350 in lecture fees during this year. That would have been for the period a good fulltime wage for a skilled working man with a family to support.

A collection was published in New-York, titled THE PHENIX [sic]: A COLLECTION OF OLD AND RARE FRAGMENTS, which included a number of entries labeled “Morals of Confucius.” It would appear that Thoreau extrapolated from this material, from page 83, something which he prepared for THE DIAL: A MAGAZINE FOR LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY, AND RELIGION as “A soldier of the kingdom of Ci lost his buckler; and having sought after it a long time in vain, he comforted himself with this reflection: ‘A soldier has lost his buckler, but a soldier in our camp will find it; he will use it.’” Then later, apparently, Thoreau would reprocess this HDT WHAT? INDEX

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material again, into his “The Village” chapter:

WALDEN: I was never molested by any person but those who PEOPLE OF represented the state. I had no lock nor bolt but for the desk WALDEN which held my papers, not even a nail to put over my latch or windows. I never fastened my door night or day, though I was to be absent several days; not even when the next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet my house was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of soldiers. The tired rambler could rest and warm himself by my fire, the literary amuse himself with the few books on my table, or the curious, by opening my closet door, see what was left of my dinner, and what prospect I had of a supper. Yet, though many people of every class came this way to the pond, I suffered no serious inconvenience from these sources, and I never missed any thing but one small book, a volume of Homer, which perhaps was improperly gilded and this I trust a soldier of our camp has found by this time. I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough. The Pope’s Homers would soon get properly distributed.– “Nec bella fuerunt, Faginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes.” “Nor wars did men molest, When only beechen bowls were in request.” “You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.”

ALEXANDER POPE ALBIUS TIBULLUS ALEK THERIEN LYGDAMUS CONFUCIUS MENCIUS HOMER

Harriet Martineau and her famous ear trumpet visited Concord as she completed her multi-year tour of the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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United States and prepared to sail for England.

WALDEN: As with our colleges, as with a hundred “modern PEOPLE OF improvements”; there is an illusion about them; there is not WALDEN always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

ADELAIDE HARRIET MARTINEAU HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Politics were a little strange. Protestant rioters who had torched the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown in the summer of 1834 were tried in Concord, and despite the most overwhelming evidence, were acquitted.43 ANTI-CATHOLICISM

In this year the Reverend William Nevins was producing his THOUGHTS ON POPERY. The most infamous of the many Know-Nothing propaganda works created during this year, however, would be Maria Monk’s AWFUL DISCLOSURES OF THE HÔTEL DIEU NUNNERY OF MONTRÉAL, which we suspect was ghostwritten by Theodore Dwight, Jr., a nephew of the Reverend Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College, and a great-grandson of the Reverend Jonathan Edwards. It seemed that Catholic nuns were under orders to “obey the priests in all things,” and that their illegitimate babies were being baptized and then stifled in the cradle so that their souls would ascend innocent at once to Heaven. This book created a sensation despite the testimony of the Protestant mother of this girl, that her daughter, never having been in a convent, had not escaped from one, but had simply been paid by a Protestant minister to sign her name to an utterly fictitious story. According to Maria’s mom, since she had rammed a pencil into her skull as a child, she should perhaps be excused for this fantasy. (This “pornography for the Puritan” would sell more than 300,000 copies. In 1849 Maria, having been detained on charges of having picked the johns’ pockets in a brothel, would die in prison.) SURVEY OF AMERICAN ANTI-CATHOLICISM

43. In order to understand how rioters who had committed an anti-Catholic arson could be acquitted in the Middlesex County courts, it is necessary to understand a great deal about the political ferment and the group hatreds of the time, and I can’t get into this here. For now just receive it as a surd — something to marvel at and wonder about. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Sir David Brewster FRS’s LETTERS ON NATURAL MAGIC. ADDRESSED TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. (New York: Harper & bros.). A copy of this would be purchased by the Concord Town Library and would be read by Henry Thoreau, who in about 1857 would make notes on it in his Fact Book.

BREWSTER’S MAGIC

By this point the Reverend Hersey B. Goodwin had died and Dr. Edward Jarvis and Lemuel Shattuck had left Concord. The attempt made by these three educators to put the educational principles of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi into practice at the Town School was a thing of the past. The School Committee had fallen into the hands of conservatives who seemed much more interested in their own local internecine political struggles than in the welfare of the students. The cream of the college crop was being skimmed by the private Concord Academy, leaving in the public system the children of the poor, the dullards, and the discipline problems. Too bad. Phineas Allen, the Preceptor at the Concord Academy, who had alienated the Academy Committee through his anti-Masonic activities, ran for Town Clerk, and was elected. In order to understand how such a change of power in the little town of Concord could be related to the torching of the Ursuline Convent near Boston, and in order to understand how rioters who had committed an anti-religious arson could be acquitted in the Middlesex County courts, it is necessary to understand something of the anti-Masonic fervor which was HDT WHAT? INDEX

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sweeping the nation. Here is the story, in brief: William Morgan, a Mason, had become disaffected in a struggle internal to the fraternity and had published, in defiance of his oath of secrecy, the rites of the order. He had then, in Canandaigua NY, mysteriously disappeared, and it was rumored that the Masons had ordered that he be executed. John Quincy Adams, former president of the US, lost his head and published an attack on this fraternal organization. Then, while visiting Boston, Adams had happened to meet Squire Samuel Hoar of Concord, and had asked for his opinion. Old Sam had given it to him straight between the headlights:

It seems to me, Mr. Adams, there is but one thing in the world sillier than Masonry. That is Antimasonry.

But in Concord, a 3d-degree Mason and the owner of the Gazette, Hermon Atwill, resigned from the fraternity and republished the secrets published by the defector William Morgan. Concord became as bitterly divided as the nation. The sheriff of Middlesex County, Abel Moore, collected and consolidated all the outstanding bills that could be charged against the Gazette, and presented them for immediate payment in cash in an attempt to drive the paper out of existence. The Concord Bank, newly founded, called for payment of its note. John Keyes attempted to foreclose the mortgage. Atwill was no longer the owner of the Gazette, which became the Whig paper, and so he funded the Freeman in order to continue his Antimasonic crusade. With the harmlessness of the Masonic conspiracy and the ridiculousness of the Antimasonic evil-mongering becoming more and more obvious to everyone, Francis Richard Gourgas soon took over this undercapitalized gazette and turned it into a Democratic newspaper.

At the Concord Town Meeting, the citizens were so bitterly divided that it took them four ballots before they could even agree on a presiding officer. In the election of public officials, all the old Masonic affiliates were unseated and replaced with new Antimasonic officials. On the first ballot for the main position, Clerk of the Town of Concord Phineas Allen, representing the Antimasons, tied with Dr. Abiel Heywood, who had been clerk for 38 years and was sympathetic with Masonry. On the second ballot, Allen was elected by a margin of seven votes. The electorate was then persuaded to give Dr. Heywood a vote of thanks for 38 years of uninterrupted service to the town.

EDUCATION.— Many of the original inhabitants of Concord were well educated in their native country; and, “to the end that learning be not buried in the graves of the forefathers,” schools were provided at an early period for the instruction of their children. In 1647, towns of 50 families were required to have a common school, and of 100 families, a grammar school. Concord had the latter before 1680. An order was sent to this town, requiring “a list of the names of those young persons within the bounds of the town, and adjacent farms, who live from under family government, who do not serve their parents or masters, as children, apprentices, hired servants, or journeymen ought to do, and usually did in our native country”; agreeably to a law, that “all children and youth, under family government, be taught to read perfectly the English tongue, have knowledge in the capital laws, and be taught some orthodox catechism and that they be brought up to some honest employment.” On the back of this order is this return: “I have made dillygent inquiry according to this warrant and find no defects to return. Simon Davis, Constable. March 31, 1680.” During the 30 years subsequent to this period, which I [Lemuel Shattuck] have denominated the dark age in Massachusetts, few towns escaped a fine for neglecting the wholesome laws for the promotion of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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education. Though it does not appear that Concord was fined, a committee was appointed in 1692, to petition the General Court, “to ease us in the law relating to the grammar school-master,” or to procure one “with prudence for the benefit of learning, and saving the town from fine.” From that time, however, this school was constantly maintained. For several years subsequent to 1700, no appropriations were made to any other school. In 1701, grammar scholars paid 4d. and reading scholars 2d. per week towards its support; and from that time to 1712, from £20 to £30 were annually raised. In 1715, it was kept one quarter, in different parts of the town, for £40. The next year £50 were raised for schools; £35 for the centre, and £5 for each of the other three divisions. In 1722, Timothy Minott agreed to keep the school, for ten years, at £45 per year. In 1732, £50 were raised for the centre and £30 for the “out-schools”; and each schoolmaster was obliged to teach the scholars to read, write, and cipher, — all to be free. In 1740, £40 for the centre, and £80 for the others. These grants were in the currency of the times. In 1754, £40 lawful money were granted, £25 of which were for the centre. Teachers in the out-schools usually received 1s. per day for their services. The grammar-school was substituted for all others in 1767, and kept 12 weeks in the centre, and 6 weeks each, in 6 other parts, or “school societies” of the town. There were then 6 schoolhouses, 2 of which were in the present [1835] limits of Carlisle, and the others near where Nos. 1, 2, 4, and 6, now [1835] stand. This system of a moving school, as it was termed, was not, however, continued many years. In 1774 the school money was first divided in proportion to the polls and estates. The districts were regulated, in 1781, nearly as they now [1835] are. The town raised £120, in 1784, for the support of schools, and voted, that “one sixteenth part of the money the several societies in the out-parts of the town pay towards this sum, should be taken and added to the pay of the middle society for the support of the grammar-school; and the out-parts to have the remainder to be spent in schools only.” This method of dividing the school-money was continued till 1817, when the town voted, that it should be distributed to each district, including the centre, according to its proportion of the town taxes. The appropriations for schools from 1781 to 1783, was £100; from 1784 to 1792, £125; 1793, £145; 1794 and 1795, £200; 1796 to 1801, £250; 1802 to 1806, $1,000; 1807 to 1810, $1,300; 1811, $1,600; 1812 to 1816, $1,300; 1817 and since, $1,400. There are 7 districts, among which the money, including the Cuming’s donation, has been divided, at different periods, as follows. The last column contains the new division as permanently fixed in 1831. The town then determined the amount that should be paid annually to each district, in the following proportions. The whole school-money being divided into 100 parts, district, No. 1, is to have 52½ of those parts, or $761.25 out of $1,550; 5 district, No. 2, 7 /8 parts; district, No. 3, 8¼ parts; district, 5 No. 4, 8 /8 parts; district, No. 5, 8¼ parts; district, No. 6, 1 1 7 /8 parts; district No. 7, 7 /8 parts; and to individuals who HDT WHAT? INDEX

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pay their money in Lincoln and Acton, ½ a part.

District. Old Names. 1801. 1811. 1821. 1830. 1832.

No. 1. Central $382.92 $791.48 $646.15 $789.18 $761.25

No. 2. East 95.28 155.45 160.26 109.69 110.56¼

No. 3. Corner 68.49 135.48 142.48 117.00 119.62-½

No. 4. Darby 70.53 130.69 123.10 138.23 125.06¼

No. 5. Barrett 107.29 163.51 145.89 125.11 119.62¼

No. 6. Groton Road 64.63 105.41 93.55 79.16 103.31¼

No. 7. Buttrick 67.64 126.68 114.16 84.77 103.31¼

Individuals 22.22 41.30 24.41 6.86 7.25

$884.00 1,650.00 1,450.00 1,450.00 1,450.00

At the erection of new school-houses in 1799, the first school committee was chosen, consisting of the Rev. Ezra Ripley, Abiel Heywood, Esq., Deacon John White, Dr. Joseph Hunt, and Deacon George Minott. On their recommendation, the town adopted a uniform system of school regulations, which are distinguished for enlightened views of education, and which, by being generally followed since, under some modification, have rendered our schools among our greatest blessings. The amount paid for private schools, including the Academy, was estimated, in 1830, at $600, making the annual expenditure for education $2,050. Few towns provide more ample means for acquiring a cheap and competent education. I [Lemuel Shattuck] have subjoined the names of the teachers of the grammar-school since the Revolution, — the year usually beginning in September.

1785 Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year

1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year

1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year

1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months

1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months

1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year

1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year

1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year

1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years

1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years

1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year

1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year

1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year

1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year

1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year

1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown

The Concord Academy was established, in 1822, by several gentlemen, who were desirous of providing means for educating their own children and others more thoroughly than they could be at the grammar-school (attended, as it usually is, by a large number of scholars) or by sending them abroad. A neat, commodious building was erected, in a pleasant part of the town, by the proprietors, consisting of the Hon. Samuel Hoar, the Hon. Abiel Heywood, and Mr. Josiah Davis, who own a quarter each, and the Hon. Nathan Brooks and Colonel William Whiting, who own an eighth each. Their intention has always been to make the school equal to any other similar one. It was opened in September, 1823, under the instruction of Mr. George Folsom, who kept it two years. He was succeeded by Mr. Josiah Barnes and Mr. Richard Hildreth, each one year. Mr. Phineas Allen, son of Mr. Phineas Allen of Medfield, who was born October 15, 1801, and graduated at Harvard College in 1825, has been the preceptor since September 1827.44 I [the young John Shepard Keyes] had played truant every afternoon that previous winter spending the school hours at the foundry or the shops or the stables with no rebuke from the teacher, report to my parents or effect on my lessons. The nervous irritable Phineas had been worsted in a regular fight with Isaac Fiske a big boy from Weston whom he attempted to ferule, and who took away the ruler and broke it over the teachers head, ruining the gold spectacles, and the little discipline there had been in the school with a single blow. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Nathaniel Hawthorne was already making notes, during this period, of what he was reading in the newspapers about the “bosom serpent” phenomenon — which is to say, about various people who were deluding themselves that they had swallowed a snake, or that a snake had crawled down their throat as they slept, or something or other about what being wrong with them fancifully was that somehow a snake had gotten inside of them.

44. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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New-York’s new 6-story “Astor House” luxury hotel, designed by the Isaiah Rogers who had designed Boston’s Tremont House in 1828-1829, opened its 300 guest rooms with hall access to a communal water closet, and its 17 upper-floor rooms with integral private water closets, to its clientele. The problem of raising a water supply to the upper stories of a hotel, so that there could not only be the miracle of indoor plumbing but the even greater miracle of upstairs plumbing, was resolved by positioning a tank on the roof and pumping water up to it with a steam engine. Thus:

WALDEN: I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready PEOPLE OF enough to fasten myself like a blood-sucker for the time to any WALDEN full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the barroom, if my business called me thither. I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up. It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another. Many of our houses, both public and private, with their almost innumerable apartments, their huge halls and their cellars for the storage of wines and other munitions of peace, appear to me extravagantly large for their inhabitants. They are so vast and magnificent that the latter seem to be only vermin which infest them. I am surprised when the herald blows his summons before some Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House, to see come creeping out over the piazza for all inhabitants a ridiculous mouse, which soon again slinks into some hole in the pavement.

HERMIT HORACE

Daniel Gookin’s 1677 account of King Phillip’s War, AN HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE DOINGS AND SUFFERINGS OF THE CHRISTIAN INDIANS IN NEW ENGLAND IN THE YEARS 1675, 1676, 1677. IMPARTIALLY DRAWN BY ONE WELL ACQUAINTED WITH THAT AFFAIR, AND PRESENTED UNTO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE CORPORATION RESIDING IN LONDON, APPOINTED BY THE KING’S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY FOR PROMOTING THE GOSPEL AMONG THE INDIANS IN AMERICA, was rescued from archival obscurity and 45 published for the 1st time ever, becoming part of the MASSACHUSETTS STATE ARCHIVES.

45. Actually, Gookin wrote two works on the native tribes: not only this THE DOINGS AND SUFFERINGS OF THE CHRISTIAN INDIANS completed in 1677 and published in 1836, but also HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF THE INDIANS IN NEW ENGLAND (completed in 1674 and published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1792). — He wrote in addition a HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND, but only portions of that third work have survived. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE

DANIEL GOOKIN, 1677, 1836 ARCHAEOLOGIA AMERICANA

We know Thoreau was aware of this report because of material he copied into his Indian Notebook #1, #2, and #3 and because of comments he would make in A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS and in WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS: “I have known many of them run between four score and an hundred miles in a summer’s day, and back within two days. They do also practice running of races and commonly in the summer they delight to go with out shoes, although they have them hanging at their backs.” “Their houses, or wigwams, are built with small poles fixed in the ground, bent and fastened together with barks of trees oval ... on the top. The best sort of their houses are covered very neatly, tight, and warm, with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies at such seasons when the sap is up; and made into great flakes with pressures of weighty timber, when they are green; and so becoming dry, they will retain a form suitable for the use they prepare them for. The meaner sort of wigwams are covered with mats, they make of a kind of bulrush, which are also indifferent tight and warm, but not so good as the former. These houses they make of several sizes, according to their activity & ability; some twenty, some forty feet long and thirty feet broad. Some I have seen of sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet broad. In the smaller sort they make a fire in the center of the house; and have a lower hole on the top of the house, to let out the smoke. They keep the door shut, by a mat falling thereon, as people go in and out. This they do to fire- vent air coming in, which will cause much smoke in every(?) [this is Thoreau’s question-mark] windy weather. If the smoke beat down at the lower hole, they hang a little mat in the way of a screen, on the top of the house, which they can with a ... turn to the windward side, which prevents the smoke. In the greater houses they make two, thee, or four fires at a distance one from another, for the better accommodation of the people belonging to it. I have often lodged in their wigwams, and have found them as warm as the best English houses.” “Their food is generally boiled maise, or Indian corn, mixed with kidney-beans, or sometimes without. Also they frequently boil in their pottage fish and flesh of all sorts, either new taken or dried, as shads, eels, alewives or a kind of herring etc.” “Also they boil in this ... all sorts of flesh they take in hunting: as venison, beaver, bear’s flesh, moose, others, rackoons, many kind that they take in hunting.” “Their drink was formerly no other but water.” “... but now they generally get kettles of brass, copper, or HDT WHAT? INDEX

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iron, these they find more lasting than those made of clay, which were subject to be broken; and the clay or earth they were made of was very scarce and dear.” “Some of their baskets are made of rushes; some of brush; others of maise husks; others of a kind of silk grass; others of a kind of wild hemp; and some of barks of trees.” “Clothing was made of the skins of deer, moose, beaver, otters, rackoons, foxes etc.” “’Wompampague,’ says Gookin ‘is made artificially, of a part of the Welk’s shell, the black is of double the value of the white. It is made principally, by the Narragansetts Block Islands (Block-Islanders) and Long Island Indians, upon the sandy flats & shores of those coasts the welk shells are found.’” “Their weapons ... were bows and arrows, clubs, and tomahawks, made of wood like a pole axe, with a sharpened stone fastened therein; and for defence, they had targets made of barks of trees.” “Our Ind. understand the lang. of the Canada Ind. And also of the Great Lake Ind. i.e. Massawomicks.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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A WEEK: We passed Wicasuck Island, which contains seventy acres or PEOPLE OF more, on our right, between Chelmsford and Tyngsborough. This was a favorite residence of the Indians. According to the History of A WEEK Dunstable, “About 1663, the eldest son of Passaconaway [Chief of the Penacooks] was thrown into jail for a debt of 45, due to John Tinker, by one of his tribe, and which he had promised verbally should be paid. To relieve him from his imprisonment, his brother Wannalancet and others, who owned Wicasuck Island, sold it and paid the debt.” It was, however, restored to the Indians by the General Court in 1665. After the departure of the Indians in 1683, it was granted to Jonathan Tyng in payment for his services to the colony, in maintaining a garrison at his house. Tyng’s house stood not far from Wicasuck Falls. Daniel GOOKIN Gookin, who, in his Epistle Dedicatory to Robert Boyle, apologizes for presenting his “matter clothed in a wilderness dress,” says that on the breaking out of Philip’s war in 1675, there were taken up by the Christian Indians and the English in Marlborough, and sent to Cambridge, seven “Indians belonging to Narragansett, Long Island, and Pequod, who had all been at work about seven weeks with one Mr. Jonathan Tyng, of Dunstable, upon Merrimack River; and, hearing of the war, they reckoned with their master, and getting their wages, conveyed themselves away without his privity, and, being afraid, marched secretly through the woods, designing to go to their own country.” However, they were released soon after. Such were the hired men in those days. Tyng was the first permanent settler of Dunstable, which then embraced what is now Tyngsborough and many other towns. In the winter of 1675, in Philip’s war, every other settler left the town, but “he,” says the historian of Dunstable, “fortified his house; and, although ‘obliged to send to Boston for his food,’ sat himself down in the midst of his savage enemies, alone, in the wilderness, to defend his home. Deeming his position an important one for the defence of the frontiers, in February, 1676, he petitioned the Colony for aid,” humbly showing, as his petition runs, that, as he lived “in the uppermost house on Merrimac river, lying open to ye enemy, yet being so seated that it is, as it were, a watch-house to the neighboring towns,” he could render important service to his country if only he had some assistance, “there being,” he said, “never an inhabitant left in the town but myself.” Wherefore he requests that their “Honors would be pleased to order him three or four men to help garrison his said house,” which they did. But methinks that such a garrison would be weakened by the addition of a man. “Make bandog thy scout watch to bark at a thief, Make courage for life, to be capitain chief; Make trap-door thy bulwark, make bell to begin, Make gunstone and arrow show who is within.” Thus he earned the title of first permanent settler. In 1694 a law was passed “that every settler who deserted a town for fear of the Indians should forfeit all his rights therein.” But now, at any rate, as I have frequently observed, a man may desert the fertile frontier territories of truth and justice, which are the State’s best lands, for fear of far more insignificant foes, without forfeiting any of his civil rights therein. Nay, townships are granted to deserters, and the General Court, as I am sometimes inclined to regard it, is but a deserters’ camp itself.

PHILIP HDT WHAT? INDEX

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WALDEN: A comfortable house for a rude and hardy race, that lived PEOPLE OF mostly out of doors, was once made here almost entirely of such WALDEN materials as Nature furnished ready to their hands. Gookin, who was superintendent of the Indians subject to the Massachusetts Colony, writing in 1674, says, “The best of their houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies at those seasons when the sap is up, and made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they are green.... The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but not so good as the former.... Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet broad.... I have often lodged in their wigwams, and found them as warm as the best English houses.” He adds, that they were commonly carpeted and lined within with well-wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished with various utensils. The Indians had advanced so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat suspended over the hole in the roof and moved by a string. Such a lodge was in the first instance constructed in a day or two at most, and taken down and put up in a few hours; and every family owned one, or its apartment in one.

DANIEL GOOKIN

PEOPLE OF A WEEK Publication in Providence, Rhode Island of a description of the various components of the New England Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. READ ALL ABOUT IT

The “Act to provide for the education of children at public expense within the City and County of Philadelphia” that had in 1834 provided schoolhouses, teachers, and supervision of a free public school system was at this point amended to form the basis for a system of free, tax-supported general education throughout Pennsylvania. QUAKER EDUCATION

Publication of the 2d edition of George Savage White’s 1836 volume MEMOIR OF SAMUEL SLATER, THE FATHER OF AMERICAN MANUFACTURES; CONNECTED WITH A HISTORY OF THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE COTTON MANUFACTURE IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA; WITH REMARKS ON THE MORAL INFLUENCE OF MANUFACTORIES IN THE UNITED STATES (we know that Thoreau would peruse an extensive review of this). SAMUEL SLATER HDT WHAT? INDEX

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A WEEK: According to the Gazetteer, the descent of Amoskeag Falls, which are the most considerable in the Merrimack, is fifty-four feet in half a mile. We locked ourselves through here with much ado, surmounting the successive watery steps of this river’s staircase in the midst of a crowd of villagers, jumping into the canal to their amusement, to save our boat from upsetting, and consuming much river- water in our service. Amoskeag, or Namaskeak, is said to mean “great fishing-place.” It was hereabouts that the Sachem Wannalancet resided. GOOKIN Tradition says that his tribe, when at war with the Mohawks, concealed their provisions in the cavities of the rocks in the upper part of these falls. The Indians, who hid their provisions in these holes, and affirmed “that God had cut them out for that purpose,” understood their origin and use better than the Royal Society, who in their Transactions, in the last century, speaking of these very holes, declare that “they seem plainly to be artificial.” Similar “pot-holes” may be seen at the Stone Flume on this river, on the Ottaway, at Bellows’ Falls on the Connecticut, and in the limestone rock at Shelburne Falls on Deerfield River in Massachusetts, and more or less generally about all falls. Perhaps the most remarkable curiosity of this kind in New England is the well-known Basin on the Pemigewasset, one of the head-waters of this river, twenty by thirty feet in extent and proportionably deep, with a smooth and rounded brim, and filled with a cold, pellucid, and greenish water. At Amoskeag the river is divided into many separate torrents and trickling rills by the rocks, and its volume is so much reduced by the drain of the canals that it does not fill its bed. There are many pot-holes here on a rocky island which the river washes over in high freshets. As at Shelburne Falls, where I first observed them, they are from one foot to four or five in diameter, and as many in depth, perfectly round and regular, with smooth and gracefully curved brims, like goblets. Their origin is apparent to the most careless observer. A stone which the current has washed down, meeting with obstacles, revolves as on a pivot where it lies, gradually sinking in the course of centuries deeper and deeper into the rock, and in new freshets receiving the aid of fresh stones, which are drawn into this trap and doomed to revolve there for an indefinite period, doing Sisyphus-like penance for stony sins, until they either wear out, or wear through the bottom of their prison, or else are released by some revolution of nature. There lie the stones of various sizes, from a pebble to a foot or two in diameter, some of which have rested from their labor only since the spring, and some higher up which have lain still and dry for ages, —we noticed some here at least sixteen feet above the present level of the water,— while others are still revolving, and enjoy no respite at any season. In one instance, at Shelburne Falls, they have worn quite through the rock, so that a portion of the river leaks through in anticipation of the fall. Some of these pot-holes at Amoskeag, in a very hard brown-stone, had an oblong, cylindrical stone of the same material loosely fitting them. One, as much as fifteen feet deep and seven or eight in diameter, which was worn quite through to the water, had a huge rock of the same material, smooth but of irregular form, lodged in it. Everywhere there were the rudiments or the wrecks of a dimple in the rock; the rocky shells of whirlpools. As if by force of example and sympathy after so many lessons, the rocks, the hardest material, had been endeavoring to whirl or flow into the forms of the most fluid. The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Events transpired in England which would, in the next year, eventuate in one of the most serious financial panics ever experienced in the United States of America, an economic downturn that would persist until the Year of Our Lord 1842, greatly overdetermining46 Thoreau’s prospects upon graduation from college: The villain –the agent most responsible for the Panic of 1837– was the British government. In 1836 British officials raised interest rates to stem the outward flow of species, something they had not done in the previous few years. This led to an increase in interest rates on both sides of the Atlantic and, in combination with a fall in the price of the major American export crop, cotton, changed bank-noteholders’ views on the security of their assets. The bank panic, then, was largely the result of forces outside the control of Andrew Jackson or anyone else in the federal government. It is true that a stronger banking system might have resisted the shock better, but it is hard to see how Jackson’s veto of the Second Bank or his economic measures in 1836 weakened the system significantly. The plain fact is that a small open economy has little control over its own monetary system. Specie served as both bank reserves and international money, and the US financial system was the helpless victim of rapid shifts in the demand for species at home and abroad.

46. The concept of overdetermination is an anachronism here, as it would not enter our scientific vocabulary until the 1890s. It would be 1st introduced, by Sigmund Freud, as “überdeterminiert” and “überbestimmt.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At Harvard College the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, John Farrar, resigned his chair for reasons of health. Mrs. Eliza Ware Rotch Farrar would be beside her invalid husband both in Cambridge and abroad until his finally succumbing to this ailment, in 1853.

From a partial index of college reading made in about this year, we learn that at one point or another Harvard College undergraduate David Henry Thoreau had accessed Vicar John William Cunningham’s A WORLD WITHOUT SOULS (Boston: Manning & Loring, 1810). A WORLD WITHOUT SOULS

In about this year Thoreau cited his reading of Antoine Court de Gébelin, in “Miscellaneous Extracts.”

Mrs. Eliza Ware Rotch Farrar’s manual of advice for aspiring young ladies of the middle class, THE YOUNG LADY’S FRIEND (this would be being reprinted both in America and in England as late as 1880). Women, it seems, have a “peculiar calling,” and it is one the proper fulfilment of which required a great deal of cautious HDT WHAT? INDEX

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common sense.

Sit not with another in a place that is too narrow; read not out of the same book; let your eagerness to see anything induce you to place your head close to another person’s. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In this year a volume of Harvard College records was published. As you might imagine, they had to do it up in Latin: HARVARD RECORDS

A group of undergraduates had begun to publish a magazine of their own writings in September 1835 and would continue this practice until June 1838. The undergraduate David Greene Haskins would publish several articles anonymously during his Junior and Senior years, but David Henry Thoreau would take no part in such activity.47 At this point the group reissued the accumulating materials as a 2d book volume:48 HARVARDIANA, VOL. II

Harvard French and Spanish instructor Francis Sales in this year put out a revised, emended, improved, and enlarged 7th American edition of Augutin Louis Josse (1763-1841)’s A GRAMMAR OF THE SPANISH LANGUAGE, WITH PRACTICAL EXERCISES (1827; Boston: Munroe and Francis, 128 Washington-Street, corner of Water-Street. 1836, 7th American Edition; Boston: Munroe and Francis, etc. 1842, 10th American Edition: Boston: James Munroe and Company). This 1836 edition would be found in Henry Thoreau’s personal library and is now, with a front free endpaper bearing the notation “D H. Thoreau,” in the special collections of the Concord Free Public Library (having been donated by Sophia E. Thoreau in 1874). GRAMMAR OF SPANISH

Since William Whiting had graduated from Harvard College with the degree of Bachelor of Arts with the Class of 1833, in this year in the normal course of events he would receive in addition the customary degree of Master of Arts.

The publication of volumes V and VI of the Reverend Professor Jared Sparks of Harvard’s THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY. LIBRARY OF AM. BIOG. V LIBRARY OF AM. BIOG. VI

These volumes encompassed four contributions:

•LIFE OF JOHN ELIOT by the Reverend Convers Francis. LIFE OF JOHN ELIOT

•LIFE OF WILLIAM PINKNEY by Henry Wheaton LIFE OF WILLIAM PINKNEY

47. In later life the Reverend Haskins, a relative of Waldo Emerson on his mother’s side, would denigrate his classmate Thoreau for having neglected to contribute to this undergraduate literary effort. He would aver that Thoreau had neither been a good scholar nor a convivial classmate — in addition, he would cast Thoreau as a mere imitator of his cousin the Sage of Concord. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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•LIFE OF WILLIAM ELLERY by Edward T. Channing LIFE OF WILLIAM ELLERY

•LIFE OF COTTON MATHER by William B.O. Peabody LIFE OF COTTON MATHER

48. There would be three such volumes, labeled Volume I, Volume II, and Volume IV. There does not seem to have been a Volume III published in this book form (apparently it was produced only in monthly magazine form) and no electronic text as yet exists, for the Volume I that had been published. The initial editorial group for his magazine consisted of Charles Hayward, Samuel Tenney Hildreth, Charles Stearns Wheeler, and perhaps for a time Horatio Hale, and their editorial office was a small room on what has become Holyoke Street. Thoreau had volumes II and IV in his personal library, and would give them to F.H. Bigelow. The illustration used on the cover of the magazine represented University Hall: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In about this year David Henry Thoreau studied Edward George Earle Bulwer’s ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH, published in 1833.

ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH BULWER-LYTTON, VOL. II Bulwer and his wife Rosina Doyle Wheeler Bulwer had in the course of their 9 years of marriage had many HDT WHAT? INDEX

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violent quarrels, and at this point they legally separated. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Beagle brought Charles Darwin back to London after a mind-bending circumnavigation of the globe (his journal of this voyage would become Henry Thoreau’s favorite travel reading). THE SCIENCE OF 1836

In Switzerland, Louis Agassiz began to study the movements and effects of glaciers. Several writers had already expressed themselves as of the opinion that these solid rivers must once had been much more extensive than at present, and must have been what produced the various boulders that could now be observed erratically scattered across the surface of the region. Some of these boulders were present even up toward the summit of the Jura Mountains, and how did they get there if they had not been carried there by the movements of glaciers? Agassiz constructed a hut out on the ice of the Aar Glacier, terming this the “Hôtel des Neuchâtelois,” and from this hut he and his associates began to trace the structure and movements of the ice.

In Massachusetts, Dr. Augustus Addison Gould became a corresponding member of the Connecticut Natural History Society. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

There are two general categories of future worship: secular and religious, this-worldly and other-worldly. For an example of the secular, this-worldly future worship, in this year was republished, for an English audience, John Adolphus Etzler’s THE PARADISE WITHIN THE REACH OF ALL MEN, WITHOUT LABOR, BY POWERS OF NATURE AND MACHINERY, originally printed in the USA in 1833. (This deed was done by followers of the reformer Robert Dale Owen.) FUTURE-WORSHIP PARADISE WITHIN REACH

For an example of the other kind of future worship, the religious, other-worldly kind, in this year was published the Reverend William Miller’s EVIDENCE FROM SCRIPTURE AND HISTORY OF THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST ABOUT THE YEAR A.D. 1843. By this point, nine prominent Baptist preachers had converted to Miller’s “Adventist” theology. MILLENNIALISM

Here is some of the imagery that the Millerites would find compelling, in the explanation of their endtimes preoccupation (please don’t ask me to explain it):

(I don’t have any examples of the diagrams of the wondrous machines that Etzler was inventing, to offer by way of comparison with the above — but never mind, as we know that none of them worked.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Henry David Thoreau was not very specific about what he thought to be so wrong-headed about both the this- worldly, and the other-worldly, varieties of future worship. His comments were pretty much limited to expressing the considerable degree to which this sort of thing failed to interest him:

“I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up.” — Henry Thoreau, “LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE”

This year would be the start of what are referred to in the trade as “Emerson’s most productive working years,” until 1849. His agenda in NATURE would be to see words as signs of natural facts, and these natural facts in turn as the symbols for equivalent facts within the realm of spirit, in such a manner that animate and inanimate Nature becomes a transparent window into this obscurer realm. [T]he universe becomes transparent, and the light of higher laws than its own shines through it.

This agenda would become the most influential new, secularized version of the Puritan attitude toward Nature as a sign system of correspondences in which one could read the Will of God.

The East Lexington community that attended the Unitarian Church had proved to be unable to pay their minister, the Reverend Charles Follen, sufficiently to support his family. Accordingly, he sought other employment, while the needs of that pulpit would be supplied, until he returned in 1838, by the Reverend Waldo Emerson. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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David Henry Thoreau was already back at Harvard College, in 32 Hollis Hall, when at the annual town meeting of Concord, Waldo was elected “hogreeve.” The following explanation of the custom is from a piece titled “An Old-Time March Meeting” in the Atlantic Monthly for March 1902, and was by the Quaker author Rowland Robinson:49

It was a common custom … in the first half of this century, to permit all kinds of stock to run at large in the highways, which made it necessary to appoint several poundkeepers and as many haywards, or hog- howards, as they were commonly called, whose duty was to keep road-ranging swine within the limits of the highways. Six poundkeepers were now elected, and their barnyards constituted pounds. There was a merry custom, of ancient usage, of electing the most recently married widower to the office of hayward, and it then chanced that Parson Nehemiah Doty, the worthy pastor of the Congregationalists, had been but a fortnight married to his second wife. So an irreverent member of his own flock nominated him for hayward. The nomination was warmly seconded, and he was almost unanimously elected, even the deacons responding very faintly when the negative vote was called; for the parson was a man of caustic humor, and each of its many victims realized that this was a rare opportunity for retaliation. Laughter and applause subsided to decorous silence when the venerable man arose to acknowledge the doubtful honor which had been conferred upon him; and he spoke in the solemn and measured tones that marked the delivery of his sermons, but the clerical austerity of his face was lightened a little by a twinkle of his cold gray eyes:— Mr. Moderator and fellow townsmen, in the more than a score of years that I have labored among you, I have endeavored faithfully to perform, so far as in me lay, the duties of a shepherd: to keep within the fold the sheep which were committed to my care, to watch vigilantly that none strayed from it, and to be the humble means of leading some into its shelter. Thus while you were my sheep I have acted as your shepherd, but since you are no longer sheep I will endeavor to perform as faithfully the office of your hayward.

Waldo was also made the chair of the school committee of Concord — and he resigned from this as well. (Many years later, this sequence in regard to the chairmanship of the school committee would repeat itself exactly. If it weren’t Emerson, a sterling fellow, a boon to any town, you might have said that this wasn’t the conduct of a citizen possessing public spirit.)

49. Robinson was speaking primarily of Vermont, and in Massachusetts this office of the hayward or hog-warden of a town was referred to as “the hogreeve.” The custom of the March Town Meeting assigning this duty to a widower who had recently remarried was the same in Massachusetts as in Vermont, as Waldo Emerson, having remarried in 1835, found out at his first March town meeting. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Professor Cornelius Conway Felton prepared an edition of HOMER, using the illustrations prepared by John Flaxman (1755-1826).

According to Professor Walter Roy Harding’s THE DAYS OF HENRY THOREAU (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966):

“A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”

Chapter 3 (1833-1837) -David Henry Thoreau enters Harvard College (president Josiah Quincy), having barely squeezed by his entrance exams and rooming with Charles S. Wheeler Thoreau’s Harvard curriculum: Greek (8 terms under Felton and Dunkin)-composition, grammar, “Greek Antiquities,” Xenophon, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Sophocles, Euripides, Homer. Latin Grammar (8 terms under Beck and McKean)-composition, “Latin Antiquities,” Livy, Horace, Cicero, Seneca, Juvenal. Mathematics (7 terms under Pierce and [Joseph] Lovering) English (8 terms under ET Channing, Giles, W&G Simmons)-grammar, rhetoric, logic, forensics, criticism, elocution, declamations, themes. Mental Philosophy (under Giles) William Paley, Stewart. Natural Philosophy (under [Joseph] Lovering)-astronomy. Intellectual Philosophy (under Bowen) Locke, Say, Story. Theology (2 terms under H Ware)-Paley, Charles Butler, New Testament. Modern Languages (voluntary) Italian (5 terms under Bachi) French (4 terms under Surault) German (4 terms under Bokum) Spanish (2 terms under [Francis] Sales) Attended voluntary lectures on German and Northern literature (Longfellow), mineralogy (Webster), anatomy (Warren), natural history (Harris). Thoreau was an above average student who made mixed impressions upon his classmates. In the spring of ‘36 Thoreau withdrew due to illness -later taught for a brief period in Canton under the Rev. Orestes A. Brownson, a leading New England intellectual who Harding suggests profoundly influenced Thoreau. (Robert L. Lace, January-March 1986) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

On a following screen is a list of textbooks that were to be used at Harvard for the school year 1833/1834, together with their list prices at the Brown, Shattuck, and Company bookstore, “Booksellers to the University.”

January February March Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 28 29 27 28 29 30 31 31 April May June Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 29 30 31 26 27 28 29 30 July August September Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 28 29 30 31 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 October November December Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 27 28 29 30 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 30 31

OTHER EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1836 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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JANUARY 1836

January: This month’s issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:

HARVARDIANA HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January: Nathaniel Hawthorne was able to move out of his “dismal and squalid chamber” under the eaves of the Manning Home in Salem in which his “FAME was won,” because he had been appointed editor, at a yearly salary of $500.00, of Samuel Griswold Goodrich’s American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, his first regular employment. He moved into Boston. His job as editor turned out to be the filling of pages by making inventive abstracts from old articles in forgotten magazines borrowed from the library, “writing a history or biography before dinner.” He would include his “The Duston Family” as his own peculiar version of the captivity narrative of Hannah Emerson Duston in his hackwork for THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE OF USEFUL AND ENTERTAINING KNOWLEDGE. However, the promised salary would not seem to be forthcoming, for Goodrich seemed to be better at concocting such schemes, and schemes for a two-volume PETER PARLEY’S UNIVERSAL HISTORY ON THE BASIS OF GEOGRAPHY, than at keeping his promises.

Here is a sample of young Hawthorne’s efforts: Philosophers have always been puzzled to contrive such a definition of man, as should completely distinguish him from every other animal. We are not aware that, among the many attempts of this sort, he has ever been described as an animal that gets on horseback. Yet this is one of the most peculiar characteristics of the human race.

January: Waldo Emerson began to repeat the “English Literature” series of lectures, in Salem, in Cambridge, and in Lowell, which schedule of lectures would carry him into March, and began what would become the introduction to his booklet of 95 pages, NATURE. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

January: Thomas Carlyle’s struggle of a decade with his SARTOR RESARTUS: THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF HERR TEUFELSDRÖCKH (a treatise on the need for new forms to replace the worn-out and patched ones of conventional religious expression, loosely disguised as a study of the “philosophy of clothing”) would soon come to its completion with his manuscript’s adequate publication in the form of a book, She took to writing sensation stories, for in those dark ages, even all- perfect America read rubbish. She told no one, but concocted a ‘thrilling tale,’ and boldly carried it herself to Mr. Dashwood, editor of the WEEKLY VOLCANO. She had never read SARTOR RESARTUS, but she had a womanly instinct that clothes possess an influence more powerful over many than the worth of character or the magic of manners. So she dressed herself in her best, and trying to persuade herself that she was neither excited nor nervous, bravely climbed two pairs of dark and dirty stairs to find herself in a disorderly room, a cloud of cigar smoke, and the presence of three gentlemen, sitting with their heels rather higher than their hats, which articles of dress none of them took the trouble to remove on her appearance. Somewhat daunted by this reception, Jo hesitated on the threshold, murmuring in much embarrassment,—

“Excuse me, I was looking for the WEEKLY VOLCANO office. I wished to see Mr. Dashwood.”

SARTOR RESARTUS

for the American edition, which had been initiated by LeBaron Russell, was in press in Boston. At this point Russell asked Waldo Emerson to write up a short preface, which he would complete in March. While Emerson was preparing the preface, the compositors at Metcalf, Torrey, and Ballou Company in Cambridge would be typesetting on the basis of the offprint which had been supplied to Emerson by Carlyle. The press operations were being overseen by Charles Stearns Wheeler, who was working part time for the printers. STUDY THIS STRANGENESS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January-February: “At Brownson’s while teaching,” David Henry Thoreau lived in the Reverend Orestes Augustus Brownson’s home in Canton, Massachusetts and studied German with this man, who was at the time a Unitarian, while teaching school between college terms. Thoreau had 70 students. It was in this period that Brownson’s socio-religious vision of a new order was being promulgated in his NEW VIEWS OF CHRISTIANITY, 50 SOCIETY, AND THE CHURCH. This book, of which we would find a copy in Thoreau’s personal library, envisioned a “Church of the Future” which would transcend the overly spiritual or sacramental concerns of Catholicism, the material or earthly emphasis of Protestantism, and the weaknesses of New England Puritanism and Unitarianism. It was the title of this publication which would cause the expression “new views” to become a synonym for Transcendentalism.51 According to Brownson, Christ’s mission, the mission of the God-Man, was to reconcile earth and heaven, spirit and matter. At Christ’s second coming He would be “truly incarnated in universal humanity” and this would confirm the unity and progress of humankind. Although the time was not yet ripe, Brownson offered that practical steps could be taken toward this in the present era. BROWNSON’S NEW VIEWS

50. Orestes Augustus Brownson. NEW VIEWS OF CHRISTIANITY, SOCIETY, AND THE CHURCH. Boston MA: C.C. Little and J. Brown, 1836 (there is a copy in Thoreau’s personal library, evidently presented to him by the author; reprinted as pages 114-23 of THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS: AN ANTHOLOGY. Miller, Perry, ed. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1950) BROWNSON’S NEW VIEWS “A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”

Brownson advances a social and religious vision which includes all of humanity in “UNION.” All philosophical approaches to religion, he suggests, are reducible to three: “materialism,” “spiritualism,” and an emerging view which reconciles these partial ones. “Materialism” espouses the superiority of Reason and leads inevitably to material progress, what he terms “industry.” Their materialistic philosophy, however, admits no truth unless it is “empirically” verified, a bias hostile to religion. The “Protestant” religion which flourished in Europe and America developed as a reaction against the excessive “spiritualism” of the Catholic church, yet many Protestant sects—esp. the Calvinists—”reject human nature and declare it unworthy of confidence,” and in so doing impugn our ability to “distinguish truth from falsehood.” The Unitarians have swept away such fears in the name of human potential. Unitarians must go further, however. What is needed in 1836, Brownson insists, is a synthesis of these antagonistic philosophies, as a means to usher in a world of mutual understanding and peace. Brownson is nothing if not optimistic: “Men are beginning to understand one another, and their mutual understanding will beget sympathy, and mutual sympathy will bind them together and to God.” (Johan Christopherson, January 24, 1992) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau would write later that these weeks of intellectual companionship with Brownson in Canton during the winter break, January and February, while he had been ostensibly studying German and teaching 70 students, had represented for him:

an era in my life — the morning of a new Lebenstag.

51. Thoreau would cunningly hide this transcendental idiom “new views” in plain sight as part of the 1st sentence of his “Winter Animals” chapter:

WALDEN: When the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new and shorter routes to many points, but new views from their surfaces of the familiar landscape around them. When I crossed Flint’s Pond, after it was covered with new snow, though I had often paddled about and skated over it, it was so unexpectedly wide and so strange that I could think of nothing but Baffin’s Bay. The Lincoln hills rose up around me at the extremity of a snowy plain, in which I did not remember to have stood before; and the fishermen, at an indeterminable distance over the ice, moving slowly about with their wolfish dogs, passed for sealers or Esquimaux, or in misty weather loomed like fabulous creatures, and I did not know whether they were giants or pygmies. I took this course when I went to lecture in Lincoln in the evening, travelling in no road and passing no house between my own hut and lecture room. In Goose Pond, which lay in my way, a colony of muskrats dwelt, and raised their cabins high above the ice, though none could be seen abroad when I crossed it. Walden, being like the rest usually bare of snow, or with only shallow and interrupted drifts on it, was my yard, where I could walk freely when the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level elsewhere and the villagers were confined to their streets. There, far from the village street, and except at very long intervals, from the jingle of sleigh- bells, I slid and skated, as in a vast moose-yard well trodden, over- hung by oak woods and solemn pines bent down with snow or bristling with icicles.

GOOSE POND LINCOLN HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In my own opinion far too much has been made of this remark. In my own opinion, by the use of this German term Lebenstag Thoreau was limiting the “new era” to be merely a new language era. Demonstrably, the Reverend Brownson’s encounter with the young Thoreau left no spiritual skidmarks whatever upon the minister’s soul. He would go on to become the Christian equivalent of the Ayatollah Khomeini, seeking to create a theocracy in which the ruler in absentia would be our Lord Jesus Christ in precisely the same manner in which the Ayatollah sought to create a theocracy in which the ruler in absentia would be the prophet Mohammed. Also, there is an absence of evidence that young Thoreau’s encounter with the Reverend Brownson left any spiritual skidmarks upon Thoreau’s soul. Nevertheless, later on, a college classmate of Thoreau’s, Amos Perry, would fulminate, futilely and entirely without meaningful specifics, about the impact which this exposure to the Reverend Brownson must have had upon the college boy Thoreau: Thoreau’s figure seems to me as distinct as if I had seen him yesterday. He was during more than two years a diligent student, bright and cheerful. I consulted him more than once about the translations of some of Horace’s odes. In his junior year, he went out to Canton to teach school. There he fell into the company of Orestes A. Brownson, then a Transcendentalist. He came back a transformed man. He was no longer interested in the college course of study. The world did not move as he would have it. While walking to Mount Auburn with me one afternoon, he gave vent to his spleen. He picked up a spear of grass, saying: “Here is something worth studying; I would give more to understand the growth of this grass than all the Greek and Latin roots in HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

creation.” The sight of a squirrel running on the wall at that moment delighted him. “That,” said he, “is worth studying.” The change that he had undergone was thus evinced. At an earlier period he was interested in all our studies. Many people today are deeply interested in his writings. My own interest in them has never been so great as that of some of my friends. The fault is probably my own.

January 3, Sunday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the crew of the Alert went on liberty in Monterey.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: On Sunday morning, as soon as the decks were washed, and we had got breakfast, those who had obtained liberty began to clean themselves, as it is called, to go ashore. A bucket of fresh water apiece, a cake of soap, a large coarse towel, and we went to work scrubbing one another, on the forecastle. Having gone through this, the next thing was to get into the head,– one on each side– with a bucket apiece, and duck one another, by drawing up water and heaving over each other, while we were stripped to a pair of trowsers. Then came the rigging-up. The usual outfit of pumps, white stockings, loose white duck trowsers, blue jackets, clean checked shirts, black kerchiefs, hats well varnished, with a fathom of black ribbon over the left eye, a silk handkerchief flying from the outside jacket pocket, and four or five dollars tied up in the back of the neckerchief, and we were “all right.” One of the quarter-boats pulled us ashore, and we steamed up to the town. I tried to find the church, in order to see the worship, but was told that there was no service, except a mass early in the morning; so we went about the town, visiting the Americans and English, and the natives whom we had know when we were here before. Toward noon we procured horses, and rode out to the Carmel mission, which is about a league from the town, where from the town, where we got something in the way of a dinner– beef, eggs, frijoles, tortillas, and some middling wine– from the mayordomo, who, of course, refused to make any charge, as it was the Lord’s gift, yet received our present, as a gratuity, with a low bow, a touch of the hat, and “Dios se lo pague!” After this repast, we had a fine run, scouring the whole country on our fleet horses, and came into town soon after sundown. Here we found our companions who had refused to go to ride with us, thinking that a sailor has no more business with a horse than a fish has with a balloon. They were moored, stem and stern, in a grog-shop, making a great noise, with a crowd of Indians and hungry half-breeds about them, and with a fair prospect of being stripped and dirked, or left to pass the night in the calabozo. With a great deal of trouble, we managed to get them down to the boats, though not without many angry looks and interferences from the Spaniards, who had marked them out for their prey. The Diana’s crews– a set of worthless outcasts, who had been picked up at the islands from the refuse of whale-ships,– were all as drunk as beasts, and had a set-to, on the beach, with their captain, who was in no better state than themselves. They swore they would not go aboard, and went back to the town, were stripped and beaten, and lodged in the calabozo, until the next day, when the captain bought them out. Our forecastle, as usual after a liberty-day, was a scene of tumult all night long, from the drunken ones. They had just got to sleep toward morning, when they were turned up with the rest, and kept at work all day in the water, carrying hides, their heads aching so that they could hardly stand. This is sailor’s pleasure.

In Kassel, Louis Spohr got married with Marianne Pfeiffer, sister of his late friend Carl Pfeiffer (this was his 2d marriage, her 1st — she was 28).

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 3rd of 1st M / Our meeting this morning was a precious one to me — in the Afternoon not so lively, but solid & quiet - So far the Year has begun well with me & I feel thankful & can in sincerity & humility say Oh Lord preserve me to the end, with HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONCLUDED: Nothing worthy of remark happened while we were here, except a little boxing-match on board our own ship, which gave us something to talk about. A broad-backed, big-headed Cape Cod boy, about sixteen years old, had been playing the bully, for the whole voyage, over a slender, delicate-looking boy, from one of the Boston schools, and over whom he had much the advantage, in strength, age, and experience in the ship’s duty, for this was the first time the Boston boy had been on salt water. The latter, however, had “picked up his crumbs,” was learning his duty, and getting strength and confidence daily; and began to assert his rights against his oppressor. Still, the other was his master, and, by his superior strength, always tackled with him and threw him down. One afternoon, before we were turned-to, these boys got into a violent squabble in the between-decks, when George (the Boston boy) said he would fight Nat, if he could have fair play. The chief mate heard the noise, dove down the hatchway, hauled them both up on deck, and told them to shake hands and have no more trouble for the voyage, or else they should fight till one gave in for beaten. Finding neither willing to make an offer for reconciliation, he called all hands up, (for the captain was ashore, and he could do as he chose aboard,) ranged the crew in the waist, marked a line on the deck, brought the two boys up to it, making them “toe the mark;” then made the bight of a rope fast to a belaying pin, and stretched it across the deck, bringing it just above their waists. “No striking below the rope!” And there they stood, one on each side of it, face to face, and went at it like two game-cocks. The Cape Cod boy, Nat, put in his double- fisters, starting the blood, and bringing the black and blue spots all over the face and arms of the other, whom we expected to see give in every moment: but the more he was hurt, the better he fought. Time after time he was knocked nearly down, but up he came again and faced the mark, as bold as a lion, again to take the heavy blows, which sounded so as to make one’s heart turn with pity for him. At length he came up to the mark for the last time, his shirt torn from his body, his face covered with blood and bruises, and his eyes flashing fire, and swore he would stand there until one or the other was killed, and set-to like a young fury. “Hurrah in the bow!” said the men, cheering him on. “Well crowed!” “Never say die, while there’s a shot in the locker!” Nat tried to close with him, knowing his advantage, but the mate stopped that, saying there should be fair play, and no fingering. Nat then came up to the mark, but looked white about the mouth, and his blows were not given with half the spirit of his first. He was evidently cowed. He had always been his master, and had nothing to gain, and everything to lose; while the other fought for honor and freedom, under a sense of wrong. It would not do. It was soon over. Nat gave in; not so much beaten, as cowed and mortified; and never afterwards tried to act the bully on board. We took George forward, washed him in the deck-tub, complimented his pluck, and from this time he became somebody on board, having fought himself into notice. Mr. Brown’s plan had a good effect, for there was no more quarrelling among the boys for the rest of the voyage.

out thy Grace afforded we are indeed miserable creatiures My Wife watched last night with Aunt Stanton - She is in a wretched State of Mind & but little hopes remain of her being any better.— HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 6, Wednesday: The following advertisement appeared in the Richmond Whig:(As strange as this item $100 REWARD — Will be given for the apprehension of my negro Edmund Kenney. He has straight hair, and complexion so nearly WHITE, that it is believed a stranger would suppose there was no African blood in him. He was with my boy Dick a short time since in Norfolk, and offered him for sale, and was apprehended, but escaped under pretence of being aWHITE MAN. ANDERSON BOWLES. RACE SLAVERY may appear, I haven’t made it up! A slave had tried to offer his master’s son –who obviously was a white infant or youth– for sale on the local slave-market. When detected in this piece of chicanery, this slave’s appearance was so like that of a free white man that he yet managed to make his escape, and he was at large in the white population even though his master Anderson Bowles referred to him as “my negro.” –This sort of factoid ought to forever clear us of any too close binding in our minds between American slavery and American issues of race. The past is a foreign country and very strange things happened there.)

The Reverend Andrew Bigelow preached the annual election-day sermon before his honor Samuel T. Armstrong, Lieutenant Governor, the Honorable Council, and the Legislature of Massachusetts, on the topic “God’s Charge Unto Israel.” Due to the length of the materials that the Reverend had prepared, he was allowed to discourse orally on only a portion (in printed form, of course, the materials would be whole and intact). GOD’S CHARGE UNTO ISRAEL

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert sailed from Monterey toward Santa Barbara, California.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Wednesday, January 6th. Set sail from Monterey, with a number of Spaniards as passengers, and shaped our course for Santa Barbara. The Diana went out of the bay in company with us, but parted from us off Point Pinos, being bound to the Sandwich Islands. We had a smacking breeze for several hours, and went along at a great rate, until night, when it died away, as usual, and the land-breeze set in, which brought us upon a taught bowline. Among our passengers was a young man who was the best representation of a decayed gentleman I had ever seen. He reminded me much of some of the characters in Gil Blas. He was of the aristocracy of the country, his family being of pure Spanish blood, and once of great importance in Mexico. His father had been governor of the province, and having amassed a large property, settled at San Diego, where he built a large house with a court-yard in front, kept a great retinue of Indians, and set up for the grandee of that part of the country. His son was sent to Mexico, where he received the best education, and went into the first society of the capital. Misfortune, extravagance, and the want of funds, or any manner of getting interest on money, soon eat the estate up, and Don Juan Bandini returned from Mexico accomplished, poor, and proud, and without any office or occupation, to lead the life of most young men of the better families– dissolute and extravagant when the means are at hand; ambitious at heart, and impotent in act; often pinched for bread; keeping up an appearance of style, when their poverty is known to each half- naked Indian boy in the street, and they stand in dread of every small trader and shopkeeper in the place. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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He had a slight and elegant figure, moved gracefully, danced and waltzed beautifully, spoke the best of Castilian, with a pleasant and refined voice and accent, and had, throughout, the bearing of a man of high birth and figure. Yet here he was, with his passage given him, (as I afterwards learned,) for he had not the means of paying for it, and living upon the charity of our agent. He was polite to every one, spoke to the sailors, and gave four reals– I dare say the last he had in his pocket-to the steward, who waited upon him. I could not but feel a pity for him, especially when I saw him by the side of his fellow-passenger and townsman, a fat, coarse, vulgar, pretending fellow of a Yankee trader, who had made money in San Diego, and was eating out the very vitals of the Bandinis, fattening upon their extravagance, grinding them in their poverty; having mortgages on their lands, forestalling their cattle, and already making an inroad upon their jewels, which were their last hope. Don Juan had with him a retainer, who was as much like many of the characters in Gil Blas as his master. He called himself a private secretary, though there was no writing for him to do, and he lived in the steerage with the carpenter and sailmaker. He was certainly a character; could read and write extremely well; spoke good Spanish; had been all over Spanish America, and lived in every possible situation, and served in every conceivable capacity, though generally in that of confidential servant to some man of figure. I cultivated this man’s acquaintance, and during the five weeks that he was with us,– for he remained on board until we arrived at San Diego,– I gained a greater knowledge of the state of political parties in Mexico, and the habits and affairs of the different classes of society, than I could have learned from almost any one else. He took great pains in correcting my Spanish, and supplying me with colloquial phrases, and common terms and exclamations in speaking. He lent me a file of late newspapers from the city of Mexico, which were full of triumphal receptions of Santa Ana, who had just returned from Tampico after a victory, and with the preparations for his expedition against the Texans. “Viva Santa Ana!” was the by-word everywhere, and it had even reached California, though there were still many here, among whom was Don Juan Bandini, who were opposed to his government, and intriguing to bring in Bustamente. Santa Ana, they said, was for breaking down the missions; or, as they termed it– “Santa Ana no quiere religion.” Yet I had no doubt that the office of administrador of San Diego would reconcile Don Juan to any dynasty, and any state of the church. In these papers, too, I found scraps of American and English news; but which were so unconnected, and I was so ignorant of everything preceding them for eighteen months past, that they only awakened a curiosity which they could not satisfy. One article spoke of Taney as Justicia Mayor de los Estados Unidos, (what had become of Marshall? was he dead, or banished?) and another made known, by news received from Vera Cruz, that “El Vizconde Melbourne” had returned to the office of “primer ministro,” in place of Sir Roberto Peel. (Sir Robert Peel had been minister, then? and where were Earl Grey and the Duke of Wellington?) Here were the outlines of a grand parliamentary overturn, the filling up of which I could imagine at my leisure.

January 7, Thursday: Waldo Emerson lectured in Boston. This was lecture Number 9 of the series: Ethical Writers.

Rochester, New York’s Daily Democrat carried its 1st display advertisement.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 7th of 1st M 1836 / Our Meeting was small but favourd - Father was engaged in a short & very appropriate testimony on the subject of Watchfulness. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 9, Saturday: “Biographical: Rev. James Freeman, D.D.,” Christian Register and Boston Observer.

William Gooding was hired by the canal commission as Chief Engineer on the Illinois and Michigan Canal.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert were rounding Point Conception when they encountered the brig Convoy from the Hawaiian Islands, engaged in otter poaching. It is interesting that at this early point the author pays not attention to depletion of the otter population due to this uncontrollable poaching –to the ecological devastation of the California coastline– but instead is totally preoccupied with the niceties of the evasion of Mexican taxation.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: The second morning after leaving Monterey, we were off Point Conception. It was a bright, sunny day, and the wind, though strong, was fair; and everything was in striking contrast with our experience in the same place two months before, when we were drifting off from a northwester under a fore and main spencer. “Sail ho!” cried a man who was rigging out a top-gallant studdingsail boom.– “Where away?”– “Weather beam, sir!” and in a few minutes a full-rigged brig was seen standing out from under Point Conception. The studding-sail halyards were let go, and the yards boom-ended, the after yards braced aback, and we waited her coming down. She rounded to, backed her main topsail, and showed her decks full of men, four guns on a side, hammock nettings, and everything man-of-war fashion, except that there was no boatswain’s whistle, and no uniforms on the quarter-deck. A short, square-built man, in a rough grey jacket, with a speaking-trumpet in hand, stood in the weather hammock nettings. “Ship ahoy!”– “Hallo!”– “What ship is that, pray?”– “Alert.”– “Where are you from, pray?” etc., etc. She proved to be the brig Convoy, from the Sandwich Islands, engaged in otter hunting, among the islands which lie along the coast. Her armament was from her being an illegal trader. The otter are very numerous among these islands, and being of great value, the government require a heavy sum for a license to hunt them, and lay a high duty upon every one shot or carried out of the country. This vessel had no license, and paid no duty, besides being engaged in smuggling goods on board other vessels trading on the coast, and belonging to the same owners in Oahu. Our captain told him to look out for the Mexicans, but he said they had not an armed vessel of his size in the whole Pacific. This was without doubt the same vessel that showed herself off Santa Barbara a few months before. These vessels frequently remain on the coast for years, without making port, except at the islands for wood and water, and an occasional visit to Oahu for a new outfit.

January 10, Sunday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert arrived at anchorage off Santa Barbara, California.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Sunday, January 10th. Arrived at Santa Barbara, and on the following Wednesday, slipped our cable and went to sea, on account of a south-easter. Returned to our anchorage the next day. We were the only vessel in the port. The Pilgrim had passed through the Canal and hove-to off the town, nearly six weeks before, on her passage down from Monterey, and was now at the leeward. She heard here of our safe arrival at San Francisco. Great preparations were making on shore for the marriage of our agent, who was to marry Donna Anneta de G______de N______y C______, youngest daughter of Don Antonio N______, the grandee of the place, and the head of the first family in California. Our steward was ashore three days, making pastry and cake, and some of the best of our stores were sent off with him.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 10th of 1st M / Both meetings were small being a great Storm of Wind & rain, but were good meetings to me. — in the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Afternoon Ann Weaver was all the Woman that attended. - RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

January 12, Tuesday: The HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin reached Sydney, Australia.

After six performances of Maria Stuarda by Gaetano Donizetti, the Austrian governor of Lombardy got around to banning the work because it included profanity and abominations.

January 14, Thursday: Waldo Emerson lectured in Boston. This was the tenth and last of the “English Literature” series: Modern Aspects of Letters.

After forbidding his daughter Clara to have any contact with Robert Schumann, Friedrich Wieck carried her off to Dresden in an attempt to get her to forget about the guy.

General Sam Houston addressed his troops at Goliad and ordered Colonel Jim Bowie to return to San Antonio and blow up the Alamo.

REMEMBERING THE ALAMO TEXAS

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 14th of 1 M 1836 / My cousin Anne Gould Died this Morning about 3 OC in the 67th Year of her Age She had been sick of a Stopage in the bowels for about 5 or 6 days & suffer’d much for the time I learn she was very quiet in her mind patient & resigned. — She was the Daughter of my Fathers first cousin Thos Gould late of Middletown & till within some years ago lived on the paternal Estate but of latter years lived in Newport & kept house in the house owned by her brother in law Henry Gould - with her Sister Mary. — Our Meeting today was solid & quiet & Father Rodman bore a short good testimony. — Spent Most of the Afternoon at cousin Henrys. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

In the US Senate, Daniel Webster spoke in regard to Mr. Benton’s resolutions for appropriating the surplus revenue to the purpose of national defense: It is not my purpose, Mr. President, to make any remark on the state of our affairs with France. The time for that discussion HDT WHAT? INDEX

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has not come, and I wait. We are in daily expectation of a communication from the President, which will give us light; and we are authorized to expect a recommendation by him of such measures as he thinks it may be necessary and proper for Congress to adopt. I do not anticipate him. In this most important and delicate business, it is the proper duty of the executive to go forward, and I, for one, do not intend either to be drawn or driven into the lead. When official information shall be before us, and when measures shall be recommended upon the proper responsibility, I shall endeavor to form the best judgment I can, and shall act according to its dictates. I rise, now, for another purpose. This resolution has drawn on a debate upon the general conduct of the Senate during the last session of Congress, and especially in regard to the proposed grant of the three millions to the President on the last night of the session. My main object is to tell the story of this transaction, and to exhibit the conduct of the Senate fairly to the public view. I owe this duty to the Senate. I owe it to the committee with which I am connected; and although whatever is personal to an individual is generally of too little importance to be made the subject of much remark, I hope I may be permitted to say a few words in defence of my own reputation, in reference to a matter which has been greatly misrepresented. This vote for the three millions was proposed by the House of Representatives as an amendment to the fortification bill; and the loss of that bill, three millions and all, is the charge which has been made upon the Senate, sounded over all the land, and now again renewed. I propose to give the true history of this bill, its origin, its progress, and its loss. Before attempting that, however, let me remark, for it is worthy to be remarked and remembered, that the business brought before the Senate last session, important and various as it was, and both public and private, was all gone through with most uncommon despatch and promptitude. No session has witnessed a more complete clearing off and finishing of the subjects before us. The communications from the other house, whether bills or whatever else, were especially attended to in a proper season, and with that ready respect which is due from one house to the other. I recollect nothing of any importance which came to us from the House of Representatives, which was neglected, overlooked, or disregarded by the Senate. On the other hand, it was the misfortune of the Senate, and, as I think, the misfortune of the country, that, owing to the state of business in the House of Representatives towards the close of the session, several measures which had been matured in the Senate, and passed into bills, did not receive attention, so as to be either agreed to or rejected, in the other branch of the legislature. They fell, of course, by the termination of the session. Among these measures may be mentioned the following, viz.:— THE POST-OFFICE REFORM BILL, which passed the Senate unanimously, and of the necessity for which the whole country is certainly now most abundantly satisfied; THE CUSTOM-HOUSE REGULATIONS BILL, which also passed nearly unanimously, after a very laborious preparation HDT WHAT? INDEX

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by the Committee on Commerce, and a full discussion in the Senate; THE JUDICIARY BILL, passed here by a majority of thirty- one to five, and which has again already passed the Senate at this session with only a single dissenting vote; THE BILL INDEMNIFYING CLAIMANTS FOR FRENCH SPOLIATIONS BEFORE 1800; THE BILL REGULATING THE DEPOSIT OF THE PUBLIC MONEY IN THE DEPOSIT BANKS; THE BILL RESPECTING THE TENURE OF CERTAIN OFFICES, AND THE POWER OF REMOVAL FROM OFFICE; which has now again been passed to be engrossed, in the Senate, by a decided majority. All these important measures, matured and passed in the Senate in the course of the session, and many others of less importance, were sent to the House of Representatives, and we never heard any thing more from them. They there found their graves. It is worthy of being remarked, also, that the attendance of members of the Senate was remarkably full, particularly toward the end of the session. On the last day, every Senator was in his place till very near the hour of adjournment, as the journal will show. We had no breaking up for want of a quorum; no delay, no calls of the Senate; nothing which was made necessary by the negligence or inattention of the members of this body. On the vote of the three millions of dollars, which was taken at about eight o’clock in the evening, forty-eight votes were given, every member of the Senate being in his place and answering to his name. This is an instance of punctuality, diligence, and labor, continued to the very end of an arduous session, wholly without example or parallel. The Senate, then, Sir, must stand, in the judgment of every man, fully acquitted of all remissness, all negligence, all inattention, amidst the fatigue and exhaustion of the closing hours of Congress. Nothing passed unheeded, nothing was overlooked, nothing forgotten, and nothing slighted. And now, Sir, I would proceed immediately to give the history of the fortification bill, if it were not necessary, as introductory to that history, and as showing the circumstances under which the Senate was called on to transact the public business, first to refer to another bill which was before us, and to the proceedings which were had upon it. It is well known, Sir, that the annual appropriation bills always originate in the House of Representatives. This is so much a matter of course, that no one ever looks to see such a bill first brought forward in the Senate. It is also well known, Sir, that it has been usual, heretofore, to make the annual appropriations for the Military Academy at West Point in the general bill which provides for the pay and support of the army. But last year the army bill did not contain any appropriation whatever for the support of West Point. I took notice of this singular omission when the bill was before the Senate, but presumed, and indeed understood, that the House would send us a separate bill for the Military Academy. The army bill, therefore, passed; but no bill for the Academy at West Point HDT WHAT? INDEX

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appeared. We waited for it from day to day, and from week to week, but waited in vain. At length, the time for sending bills from one house to the other, according to the joint rules of the two houses, expired, and no bill had made its appearance for the support of the Military Academy. These joint rules, as is well known, are sometimes suspended on the application of one house to the other, in favor of particular bills, whose progress has been unexpectedly delayed, but which the public interest requires to be passed. But the House of Representatives sent us no request to suspend the rules in favor of a bill for the support of the Military Academy, nor made any other proposition to save the institution from immediate dissolution. Notwithstanding all the talk about a war, and the necessity of a vote for the three millions, the Military Academy, an institution cherished so long, and at so much expense, was on the very point of being entirely broken up. Now it so happened, Sir, that at this time there was another appropriation bill which had come from the House of Representatives, and was before the Committee on Finance here. This bill was entitled “An Act making appropriations for the civil and diplomatic expenses of the government for the year 1835.” In this state of things, several members of the House of Representatives applied to the committee, and besought us to save the Military Academy by annexing the necessary appropriations for its support to the bill for civil and diplomatic service. We spoke to them, in reply, of the unfitness, the irregularity, the incongruity, of this forced union of such dissimilar subjects; but they told us it was a case of absolute necessity, and that, without resorting to this mode, the appropriation could not get through. We acquiesced, Sir, in these suggestions. We went out of our way. We agreed to do an extraordinary and an irregular thing, in order to save the public business from miscarriage. By direction of the committee, I moved the Senate to add an appropriation for the Military Academy to the bill for defraying civil and diplomatic expenses. The bill was so amended; and in this form the appropriation was finally made. But this was not all. This bill for the civil and diplomatic service, being thus amended by tacking the Military Academy to it, was sent back by us to the House of Representatives, where its length of tail was to be still much further increased. That house had before it several subjects for provision, and for appropriation, upon which it had not passed any bill before the time for passing bills to be sent to the Senate had elapsed. I was anxious that these things should, in some way, be provided for; and when the diplomatic bill came back, drawing the Military Academy after it, it was thought prudent to attach to it several of these other provisions. There were propositions to pave the streets in the city of Washington, to repair the Capitol, and various other things, which it was necessary to provide for; and they, therefore, were put into the same bill, by way of amendment to an amendment; that is to say, Mr. President, we had been prevailed on to amend their bill for defraying the salary of our ministers abroad, by adding an appropriation for the Military Academy, and they proposed to HDT WHAT? INDEX

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amend this our amendment by adding matter as germane to it as it was itself to the original bill. There was also the President’s gardener. His salary was unprovided for; and there was no way of remedying this important omission, but by giving him place in the diplomatic service bill, among chargés d’affaires, envoys extraordinary, and ministers plenipotentiary. In and among these ranks, therefore, he was formally introduced by the amendment of the House, and there he now stands, as you will readily see by turning to the law. Sir, I have not the pleasure to know this useful person; but should I see him, some morning, overlooking the workmen in the lawns, walks, copses, and parterres which adorn the grounds around the President’s residence, considering the company into which we have introduced him, I should expect to see, at least, a small diplomatic button on his working jacket. When these amendments came from the House, and were read at our table, though they caused a smile, they were yet adopted, and the law passed, almost with the rapidity of a comet, and with something like the same length of tail. Now, Sir, not one of these irregularities or incongruities, no part of this jumbling together of distinct and different subjects, was in the slightest degree occasioned by any thing done, or omitted to be done, on the part of the Senate. Their proceedings were all regular; their decision was prompt, their despatch of the public business correct and reasonable. There was nothing of disorganization, nothing of procrastination, nothing evincive of a temper to embarrass or obstruct the public business. If the history which I have now truly given shows that one thing was amended by another, which had no sort of connection with it; that unusual expedients were resorted to; and that the laws, instead of arrangement and symmetry, exhibit anomaly, confusion, and the most grotesque associations, it is nevertheless true, that no part of all this was made necessary by us. We deviated from the accustomed modes of legislation only when we were supplicated to do so, in order to supply bald and glaring deficiencies in measures which were before us. But now, Mr. President, let me come to the fortification bill, the lost bill, which not only now, but on a graver occasion, has been lamented like the lost Pleiad. This bill, Sir, came from the House of Representatives to the Senate in the usual way, and was referred to the Committee on Finance. Its appropriations were not large. Indeed, they appeared to the committee to be quite too small. It struck a majority of the committee at once, that there were several fortifications on the coast, either not provided for at all, or not adequately provided for, by this bill. The whole amount of its appropriations was four hundred or four hundred and thirty thousand dollars. It contained no grant of three millions, and if the Senate had passed it the very day it came from the House, not only would there have been no appropriation of the three millions, but, Sir, none of these other sums which the Senate did insert in the bill. Others besides ourselves saw the deficiencies of this bill. We had communications with and from the departments, and we inserted in the bill every thing which any department recommended to us. We took care to be sure that nothing else was coming. And we then reported the bill to the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Senate with our proposed amendments. Among these amendments, there was a sum of $75,000 for Castle Island in Boston harbor, $100,000 for defences in Maryland, and so forth. These amendments were agreed to by the Senate, and one or two others added, on the motion of members; and the bill, as thus amended, was returned to the House. And now, Sir, it becomes important to ask, When was this bill, thus amended, returned to the House of Representatives? Was it unduly detained here, so that the House was obliged afterwards to act upon it suddenly? This question is material to be asked, and material to be answered, too, and the journal does satisfactorily answer it; for it appears by the journal that the bill was returned to the House of Representatives on Tuesday, the 24th of February, one whole week before the close of the session. And from Tuesday, the 24th of February, to Tuesday, the 3d day of March, we heard not one word from this bill. Tuesday, the 3d day of March, was, of course, the last day of the session. We assembled here at ten or eleven o’clock in the morning of that day, and sat until three in the afternoon, and still we were not informed whether the House had finally passed the bill. As it was an important matter, and belonged to that part of the public business which usually receives particular attention from the Committee on Finance, I bore the subject in my mind, and felt some solicitude about it, seeing that the session was drawing so near to a close. I took it for granted, however, as I had not heard any thing to the contrary, that the amendments of the Senate would not be objected to, and that, when a convenient time should arrive for taking up the bill in the House, it would be passed at once into a law, and we should hear no more about it. Not the slightest intimation was given, either that the executive wished for any larger appropriation, or that it was intended in the House to insert such larger appropriation. Not a syllable escaped from anybody, and came to our knowledge, that any further alteration whatever was intended in the bill. At three o’clock in the afternoon of the 3d of March, the Senate took its recess, as is usual in that period of the session, until five o’clock. At five o’clock we again assembled, and proceeded with the business of the Senate until eight o’clock in the evening; and at eight o’clock in the evening, and not before, the clerk of the House appeared at our door, and announced that the House of Representatives had disagreed to one of the Senate’s amendments, agreed to others; and to two of those amendments, namely, the fourth and fifth, it had agreed, with an amendment of its own. Now, Sir, these fourth and fifth amendments of ours were, one, a vote of $75,000 for Castle Island in Boston harbor, and the other, a vote of $100,000 for certain defences in Maryland. And what, Sir, was the addition which the House of Representatives proposed to make, by way of “amendment” to a vote of $75,000 for repairing the works in Boston harbor? Here, Sir, it is:— “And be it further enacted, That the sum of three millions of dollars be, and the same is hereby, appropriated, out of any money in the treasury not otherwise appropriated, to be expended, in whole or in HDT WHAT? INDEX

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part, under the direction of the President of the United States, for the military and naval service, including fortifications and ordnance, and the increase of the navy: Provided, such expenditures shall be rendered necessary for the defence of the country prior to the next meeting of Congress.” This proposition, Sir, was thus unexpectedly and suddenly put to us, at eight o’clock in the evening of the last day of the session. Unusual, unprecedented, extraordinary, as it obviously is, on the face of it, the manner of presenting it was still more extraordinary. The President had asked for no such grant of money; no department had recommended it; no estimate had suggested it; no reason whatever was given for it. No emergency had happened, and nothing new had occurred; every thing known to the administration, at that hour, respecting our foreign relations, had certainly been known to it for days and weeks. With what propriety, then, could the Senate be called on to sanction a proceeding so entirely irregular and anomalous? Sir, I recollect the occurrences of the moment very well, and I remember the impression which this vote of the House seemed to make all round the Senate. We had just come out of executive session; the doors were but just opened; and I hardly remember that there was a single spectator in the hall or the galleries. I had been at the clerk’s table, and had not reached my seat, when the message was read. All the Senators were in the chamber. I heard the message, certainly with great surprise and astonishment; and I immediately moved the Senate to disagree to this vote of the House. My relation to the subject, in consequence of my connection with the Committee on Finance, made it my duty to propose some course, and I had not a moment’s doubt or hesitation what that course ought to be. I took upon myself, then, Sir, the responsibility of moving that the Senate should disagree to this vote, and I now acknowledge that responsibility. It might be presumptuous to say that I took a leading part, but I certainly took an early part, a decided part, and an earnest part, in rejecting this broad grant of three millions of dollars, without limitation of purpose or specification of object, called for by no recommendation, founded on no estimate, made necessary by no state of things which was known to us. Certainly, Sir, I took a part in its rejection; and I stand here, in my place in the Senate, to-day, ready to defend the part so taken by me; or, rather, Sir, I disclaim all defence, and all occasion of defence, and I assert it as meritorious to have been among those who arrested, at the earliest moment, this extraordinary departure from all settled usage, and, as I think, from plain constitutional injunction,— this indefinite voting of a vast sum of money to mere executive discretion, without limit assigned, without object specified, without reason given, and without the least control. Sir, I am told, that, in opposing this grant, I spoke with warmth, and I suppose I may have done so. If I did, it was a warmth springing from as honest a conviction of duty as ever influenced a public man. It was spontaneous, unaffected, sincere. There had been among us, Sir, no consultation, no concert. There could have been none. Between the reading of the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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message and my motion to disagree, there was not time enough for any two members of the Senate to exchange five words on the subject. The proposition was sudden and perfectly unexpected. I resisted it, as irregular, as dangerous in itself, and dangerous in its precedent; as wholly unnecessary, and as violating the plain intention, if not the express words, of the Constitution. Before the Senate, then, I avowed, and before the country I now avow, my part in this opposition. Whatsoever is to fall on those who sanctioned it, of that let me have my full share. The Senate, Sir, rejected this grant by a vote of TWENTY-NINE against nineteen. Those twenty-nine names are on the journal; and whensoever the EXPUNGING process may commence, or how far soever it may be carried, I pray it, in mercy, not to erase mine from that record. I beseech it, in its sparing goodness, to leave me that proof of attachment to duty and to principle. It may draw around it, over it, or through it, black lines, or red lines, or any lines; it may mark it in any way which either the most prostrate and fantastical spirit of man-worship, or the most ingenious and elaborate study of self-degradation, may devise, if only it will leave it so that those who inherit my blood, or who may hereafter care for my reputation, shall be able to behold it where it now stands. The House, Sir, insisted on this amendment. The Senate adhered to its disagreement; the House asked a conference, to which request the Senate immediately acceded. The committee of conference met, and in a very short time came to an agreement. They agreed to recommend to their respective houses, as a substitute for the vote proposed by the House, the following:— “As an additional appropriation for arming the fortifications of the United States, three hundred thousand dollars.” “As an additional appropriation for the repairs and equipment of ships of war of the United States, five hundred thousand dollars.” I immediately reported this agreement of the committee of conference to the Senate; but, inasmuch as the bill was in the House of Representatives, the Senate could not act further on the matter until the House should first have considered the report of the committee, decided thereon, and sent us the bill. I did not myself take any note of the particular hour of this part of the transaction. The honorable member from Virginia [Mr. Leigh] says he looked at his watch at the time, and he knows that I had come from the conference, and was in my seat, at a quarter past eleven. I have no reason to think that he is under any mistake on this particular. He says it so happened that he had occasion to take notice of the hour, and well remembers it. It could not well have been later than this, as any one will be satisfied who will look at our journals, public and executive, and see what a mass of business was despatched after I came from the committee, and before the adjournment of the Senate. Having made the report, Sir, I had no doubt that both houses would concur in the result of the conference, and looked every moment for the officer of the House bringing the bill. He did not come, however, and I pretty soon learned that there was doubt whether the committee on the part of the House would report to the House the agreement of the conferees. At first, I did not at all credit this; but was confirmed by one communication after another, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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until I was obliged to think it true. Seeing that the bill was thus in danger of being lost, and intending at any rate that no blame should justly attach to the Senate, I immediately moved the following resolution:— “Resolved, That a message be sent to the honorable the House of Representatives, respectfully to remind the House of the report of the committee of conference appointed on the disagreeing votes of the two houses on the amendment of the House to the amendment of the Senate to the bill respecting the fortifications of the United States.” You recollect this resolution, Sir, having, as I well remember, taken some part on the occasion. [Mr. King, of Alabama, was in the chair.] This resolution was promptly passed; the secretary carried it to the House, and delivered it. What was done in the House on the receipt of this message now appears from the printed journal. I have no wish to comment on the proceedings there recorded; all may read them, and each be able to form his own opinion. Suffice it to say, that the House of Representatives, having then possession of the bill, chose to retain that possession, and never acted on the report of the committee of conference. The bill, therefore, was lost. It was lost in the House of Representatives. It died there, and there its remains are to be found. No opportunity was given to the members of the House to decide whether they would agree to the report of the committee or not. From a quarter past eleven, when the report was agreed to, until two or three o’clock in the morning, the House remained in session. If at any time there was not a quorum of members present, the attendance of a quorum, we are to presume, might have been commanded, as there was undoubtedly a great majority of members still in the city. But, Sir, there is one other transaction of the evening which I now feel bound to state, because I think it quite important on several accounts, that it should be known. A nomination was pending before the Senate for a judge of the Supreme Court. In the course of the sitting, that nomination was called up, and, on motion, was indefinitely postponed. In other words, it was rejected; for an indefinite postponement is a rejection. The office, of course, remained vacant, and the nomination of another person to fill it became necessary. The President of the United States was then in the Capitol, as is usual on the evening of the last day of the session, in the chamber assigned to him, and with the heads of departments around him. When nominations are rejected under these circumstances, it has been usual for the President immediately to transmit a new nomination to the Senate; otherwise the office must remain vacant till the next session, as the vacancy in such case has not happened in the recess of Congress. The vote of the Senate, indefinitely postponing this nomination, was carried to the President’s room by the secretary of the Senate. The President told the secretary that it was more than an hour past twelve o’clock, and that he could receive no further communications from the Senate, and immediately after, as I have understood, left the Capitol. The secretary brought back the paper containing the certified copy of the vote of the Senate, and indorsed thereon the substance of the President’s answer, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and also added, that, according to his own watch, it was quarter past one o’clock. There are two views, Sir, in which this occurrence may well deserve to be noticed. One is as to the connection which it may perhaps have had with the loss of the fortification bill; the other is as to its general importance, as introducing a new rule, or a new practice, respecting the intercourse between the President and the two houses of Congress on the last day of the session. On the first point, I shall only observe that the fact of the President’s having declined to receive this communication from the Senate, and of his having left the Capitol, was immediately known in the House of Representatives. It was quite obvious, that, if he could not receive a communication from the Senate, neither could he receive a bill from the House of Representatives for his signature. It was equally obvious, that, if, under these circumstances, the House of Representatives should agree to the report of the committee of conference, so that the bill should pass, it must, nevertheless, fail to become a law for want of the President’s signature; and that, in that case, the blame of losing the bill, on whomsoever else it might fall, could not be laid upon the Senate. On the more general point, I must say, Sir, that this decision of the President, not to hold communication with the houses of Congress after twelve o’clock at night, on the 3d of March, is quite new. No such objection has ever been made before by any President. No one of them has ever declined communicating with either house at any time during the continuance of its session on that day. All Presidents heretofore have left with the houses themselves to fix their hour of adjournment, and to bring their session for the day to a close, whenever they saw fit. It is notorious, in point of fact, that nothing is more common than for both houses to sit later than twelve o’clock, for the purpose of completing measures which are in the last stages of their progress. Amendments are proposed and agreed to, bills passed, enrolled bills signed by the presiding officers, and other important legislative acts performed, often at two or three o’clock in the morning. All this is very well known to gentlemen who have been for any considerable time members of Congress. And all Presidents have signed bills, and have also made nominations to the Senate, without objection as to time, whenever bills have been presented for signature, or whenever it became necessary to make nominations to the Senate, at any time during the session of the respective houses on that day. And all this, Sir, I suppose to be perfectly right, correct, and legal. There is no clause of the Constitution, nor is there any law, which declares that the term of office of members of the House of Representatives shall expire at twelve o’clock at night on the 3d of March. They are to hold for two years, but the precise hour for the commencement of that term of two years is nowhere fixed by constitutional or legal provision. It has been established by usage and by inference, and very properly established, that, since the first Congress commenced its existence on the first Wednesday in March, 1789, which happened to be the fourth day of the month, therefore the 4th of March is the day of the commencement of each successive term; but no HDT WHAT? INDEX

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hour is fixed by law or practice. The true rule is, as I think, most undoubtedly, that the session held on the last day constitutes the last day for all legislative and legal purposes. While the session begun on that day continues, the day itself continues, according to the established practice both of legislative and judicial bodies. This could not well be otherwise. If the precise moment of actual time were to settle such a matter, it would be material to ask, Who shall settle the time? Shall it be done by public authority, or shall every man observe the tick of his own watch? If absolute time is to furnish a precise rule, the excess of a minute, it is obvious, would be as fatal as the excess of an hour. Sir, no bodies, judicial or legislative, have ever been so hypercritical, so astute to no purpose, so much more nice than wise, as to govern themselves by any such ideas. The session for the day, at whatever hour it commences, or at whatever hour it breaks up, is the legislative day. Every thing has reference to the commencement of that diurnal session. For instance, this is the 14th day of January; we assembled here to-day at twelve o’clock; our journal is dated January 14th, and if we should remain here until five o’clock to-morrow morning (and the Senate has sometimes sat so late), our proceedings would still bear date of the 14th of January; they would be so stated upon the journal, and the journal is a record, and is a conclusive record, so far as respects the proceedings of the body. It is so in judicial proceedings. If a man were on trial for his life, at a late hour on the last day allowed by law for the holding of the court, and the jury should acquit him, but happened to remain so long in deliberation that they did not bring in their verdict till after twelve o’clock, is it all to be held for naught, and the man to be tried over again? Are all verdicts, judgments, and orders of courts null and void, if made after midnight on the day which the law prescribes as the last day? It would be easy to show by authority, if authority could be wanted for a thing the reason of which is so clear, that the day lasts while the daily session lasts. When the court or the legislative body adjourns for that day, the day is over, and not before. I am told, indeed, Sir, that it is true that, on this same 3d day of March last, not only were other things transacted, but that the bill for the repair of the Cumberland Road, an important and much litigated measure, actually received the signature of our presiding officer after twelve o’clock, was then sent to the President, and signed by him. I do not affirm this, because I took no notice of the time, or do not remember it if I did; but I have heard the matter so stated. I see no reason, Sir, for the introduction of this new practice; no principle on which it can be justified, no necessity for it, no propriety in it. As yet, it has been applied only to the President’s intercourse with the Senate. Certainly it is equally applicable to his intercourse with both houses in legislative matters; and if it is to prevail hereafter, it is of much importance that it should be known. The President of the United States, Sir, has alluded to this loss of the fortification bill in his message at the opening of the session, and he has alluded, also, in the same message, to HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the rejection of the vote of the three millions. On the first point, that is, the loss of the whole bill, and the causes of that loss, this is his language: “Much loss and inconvenience have been experienced in consequence of the failure of the bill containing the ordinary appropriations for fortifications, which passed one branch of the national legislature at the last session, but was lost in the other.” If the President intended to say that the bill, having originated in the House of Representatives, passed the Senate, and was yet afterwards lost in the House of Representatives, he was entirely correct. But he has been wholly misinformed, if he intended to state that the bill, having passed the House, was lost in the Senate. As I have already stated, the bill was lost in the House of Representatives. It drew its last breath there. That House never let go its hold on it after the report of the committee of conference. But it held it, it retained it, and of course it died in its possession when the House adjourned. It is to be regretted that the President should have been misinformed in a matter of this kind, when the slightest reference to the journals of the two houses would have exhibited the correct history of the transaction. I recur again, Mr. President, to the proposed grant of the three millions, for the purpose of stating somewhat more distinctly the true grounds of objection to that grant. These grounds of objection were two; the first was, that no such appropriation had been recommended by the President, or any of the departments. And what made this ground the stronger was, that the proposed grant was defended, so far as it was defended at all, upon an alleged necessity, growing out of our foreign relations. The foreign relations of the country are intrusted by the Constitution to the lead and management of the executive government. The President not only is supposed to be, but usually is, much better informed on these interesting subjects than the houses of Congress. If there be danger of a rupture with a foreign state, he sees it soonest. All our ministers and agents abroad are but so many eyes, and ears, and organs to communicate to him whatsoever occurs in foreign places, and to keep him well advised of all which may concern the interests of the United States. There is an especial propriety, therefore, that, in this branch of the public service, Congress should always be able to avail itself of the distinct opinions and recommendations of the President. The two houses, and especially the House of Representatives, are the natural guardians of the people’s money. They are to keep it sacred, and to use it discreetly. They are not at liberty to spend it where it is not needed, nor to offer it for any purpose till a reasonable occasion for the expenditure be shown. Now, in this case, I repeat again, the President had sent us no recommendation for any such appropriation; no department had recommended it; no estimate had contained it; in the whole history of the session, from the morning of the first day, down to eight o’clock in the evening of the last day, not one syllable had been said to us, not one hint suggested, showing that the President deemed any such measure either necessary or proper. I state this strongly, Sir, but I state it truly. I state the matter as it is; and I wish to draw the attention of the Senate and of the country HDT WHAT? INDEX

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strongly to this part of the case. I say again, therefore, that, when this vote for the three millions was proposed to the Senate, there was nothing before us showing that the President recommended any such appropriation. You very well know, Sir, that this objection was stated as soon as the message from the House was read. We all well remember that this was the very point put forth by the honorable member from Tennessee [Mr. White], as being, if I may say so, the but-end of his argument in opposition to the vote. He said, very significantly, and very forcibly, “It is not asked for by those who best know what the public service requires; how, then, are we to presume that it is needed?” This question, Sir, was not answered then; it never has been answered since, it never can be answered satisfactorily. But let me here again, Sir, recur to the message of the President. Speaking of the loss of the bill, he uses these words: “This failure was the more regretted, not only because it necessarily interrupted and delayed the progress of a system of national defence projected immediately after the last war, and since steadily pursued, but also because it contained a contingent appropriation, inserted in accordance with the views of the executive, in aid of this important object, and other branches of the national defence, some portions of which might have been most usefully applied during the past season.” Taking these words of the message, Sir, and connecting them with the fact that the President had made no recommendation to Congress of any such appropriation, it strikes me that they furnish matter for very grave reflection. The President says that this proposed appropriation was “in accordance with the views of the executive”; that it was “in aid of an important object”; and that “some portions of it might have been most usefully applied during the past season.” And now, Sir, I ask, if this be so, why was not this appropriation recommended to Congress by the President? I ask this question in the name of the Constitution of the United States; I stand on its own clear authority in asking it; and I invite all those who remember its injunctions, and who mean to respect them, to consider well how the question is to be answered. Sir, the Constitution is not yet an entire dead letter. There is yet some form of observance of its requirements; and even while any degree of formal respect is paid to it, I must be permitted to continue the question, Why was not this appropriation recommended? It was in accordance with the President’s views; it was for an important object; it might have been usefully expended. The President being of opinion, therefore, that the appropriation was necessary and proper, how is it that it was not recommended to Congress? For, Sir, we all know the plain and direct words in which the very first duty of the President is imposed by the Constitution. Here they are:— “He shall, from time to time, give to the Congress information of the state of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” After enumerating the powers of the President, this is the first, the very first duty which the Constitution gravely enjoins upon him. And now, Sir, in no language of taunt or HDT WHAT? INDEX

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reproach, in no language of party attack, in terms of no asperity or exaggeration, but called upon by the necessity of defending my own vote upon the subject, as a public man, as a member of Congress here in my place, and as a citizen who feels as warm an attachment to the Constitution of the country as any other can, I demand of any who may choose to give it an answer to this question: WHY WAS NOT THIS MEASURE, WHICH THE PRESIDENT DECLARES THAT HE THOUGHT NECESSARY AND EXPEDIENT, RECOMMENDED TO CONGRESS? And why am I, and why are other members of Congress, whose path of duty the Constitution says shall be enlightened by the President’s opinions and communications, to be charged with want of patriotism and want of fidelity to the country, because we refused an appropriation which the President, though it was in accordance with his views, and though he believed it important, would not, and did not, recommend to us? When these questions are answered to the satisfaction of intelligent and impartial men, then, and not till then, let reproach, let censure, let suspicion of any kind, rest on the twenty-nine names which stand opposed to this appropriation. How, Sir, were we to know that this appropriation “was in accordance with the views of the executive”? He had not so told us, formally or informally. He had not only not recommended it to Congress, or either house of Congress, but nobody on this floor had undertaken to speak in his behalf. No man got up to say, “The President desires it; he thinks it necessary, expedient, and proper.” But, Sir, if any gentleman had risen to say this, it would not have answered the requisition of the Constitution. Not at all. It is not by a hint, an intimation, the suggestion of a friend, that the executive duty in this respect is to be fulfilled. By no means. The President is to make a recommendation,—a public recommendation, an official recommendation, a responsible recommendation, not to one house, but to both houses; it is to be a recommendation to Congress. If, on receiving such recommendation, Congress fail to pay it proper respect, the fault is theirs. If, deeming the measure necessary and expedient, the President fails to recommend it, the fault is his, clearly, distinctly, and exclusively his. This, Sir, is the Constitution of the United States, or else I do not understand the Constitution of the United States. Does not every man see how entirely unconstitutional it is that the President should communicate his opinions or wishes to Congress, on such grave and important subjects, otherwise than by a direct and responsible recommendation, a public and open recommendation, equally addressed and equally known to all whose duty calls upon them to act on the subject? What would be the state of things, if he might communicate his wishes or opinions privately to members of one house, and make no such communication to the other? Would not the two houses be necessarily put in immediate collision? Would they stand on equal footing? Would they have equal information? What could ensue from such a manner of conducting the public business, but quarrel, confusion, and conflict? A member rises in the House of Representatives, and moves a very large appropriation of money for military purposes. If he says he does it upon executive recommendation, where is his voucher? The President is not like the British king, whose ministers and secretaries are in the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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House of Commons, and who are authorized, in certain cases, to express the opinions and wishes of their sovereign. We have no king’s servants; at least, we have none known to the Constitution. Congress can know the opinions of the President only as he officially communicates them. It would be a curious inquiry in either house, when a large appropriation is moved, if it were necessary to ask whether the mover represented the President, spoke his sentiments, or, in other words, whether what he proposed were “in accordance with the views of the executive.” How could that be judged of? By the party he belongs to? Party is not quite strongly enough marked for that. By the airs he gives himself? Many might assume airs, if thereby they could give themselves such importance as to be esteemed authentic expositors of the executive will. Or is this will to be circulated in whispers; made known to the meetings of party men; intimated through the press; or communicated in any other form, which still leaves the executive completely irresponsible; so that, while executive purposes or wishes pervade the ranks of party friends, influence their conduct, and unite their efforts, the open, direct, and constitutional responsibility is wholly avoided? Sir, this is not the Constitution of the United States, nor can it be consistent with any constitution which professes to maintain separate departments in the government. Here, then, Sir, is abundant ground, in my judgment, for the vote of the Senate, and here I might rest it. But there is also another ground. The Constitution declares that no money shall be drawn from the treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law. What is meant by “appropriations”? Does not this language mean that particular sums shall be assigned by law to particular objects? How far this pointing out and fixing the particular objects shall be carried, is a question that cannot be settled by any precise rule. But “specific appropriation,” that is to say, the designation of every object for which money is voted, as far as such designation is practicable, has been thought to be a most important republican principle. In times past, popular parties have claimed great merit from professing to carry this doctrine much farther, and to adhere to it much more strictly, than their adversaries. Mr. Jefferson, especially, was a great advocate for it, and held it to be indispensable to a safe and economical administration and disbursement of the public revenues. But what have the friends and admirers of Mr. Jefferson to say to this appropriation? Where do they find, in this proposed grant of three millions, a constitutional designation of object, and a particular and specific application of money? Have they forgotten, all forgotten, and wholly abandoned even all pretence for specific appropriation? If not, how could they sanction such a vote as this? Let me recall its terms. They are, that “the sum of three millions of dollars be, and the same is hereby, appropriated, out of any money in the treasury not otherwise appropriated, to be expended, in whole or in part, under the direction of the President of the United States, for the military and naval service, including fortifications and ordnance, and the increase of the navy; provided such expenditures shall be rendered necessary for the defence of the country prior to the next meeting of Congress.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In the first place it is to be observed, that whether the money shall be used at all, or not, is made to depend on the discretion of the President. This is sufficiently liberal. It carries confidence far enough. But if there had been no other objections, if the objects of the appropriation had been sufficiently described, so that the President, if he expended the money at all, must expend it for purposes authorized by the legislature, and nothing had been left to his discretion but the question whether an emergency had arisen in which the authority ought to be exercised, I might not have felt bound to reject the vote. There are some precedents which might favor such a contingent provision, though the practice is dangerous, and ought not to be followed except in cases of clear necessity. But the insurmountable objection to the proposed grant was, that it specified no objects. It was as general as language could make it. It embraced every expenditure that could be called either military or naval. It was to include “fortifications, ordnance, and the increase of the navy,” but it was not confined to these. It embraced the whole general subject of military service. Under the authority of such a law, the President might repair ships, build ships, buy ships, enlist seamen, and do any thing and every thing else touching the naval service, without restraint or control. He might repair such fortifications as he saw fit, and neglect the rest; arm such as he saw fit, and neglect the arming of others; or build new fortifications wherever he chose. But these unlimited powers over the fortifications and the navy constitute by no means the most dangerous part of the proposed authority; because, under that authority, his power to raise and employ land forces would be equally absolute and uncontrolled. He might levy troops, embody a new army, call out the militia in numbers to suit his own discretion, and employ them as he saw fit. Now, Sir, does our legislation, under the Constitution, furnish any precedent for all this? We make appropriations for the army, and we understand what we are doing, because it is “the army,” that is to say, the army established by law. We make appropriations for the navy; they, too, are for “the navy,” as provided for and established by law. We make appropriations for fortifications, but we say what fortifications, and we assign to each its intended amount of the whole sum. This is the usual course of Congress on such subjects; and why should it be departed from? Are we ready to say that the power of fixing the places for new fortifications, and the sum allotted to each; the power of ordering new ships to be built, and fixing the number of such new ships; the power of laying out money to raise men for the army; in short, every power, great or small, respecting the military and naval service, shall be vested in the President, without specification of object or purpose, to the entire exclusion of the exercise of all judgment on the part of Congress? For one, I am not prepared. The honorable member from Ohio, near me, has said, that if the enemy had been on our shores he would not have agreed to this vote. And I say, if the proposition were now before us, and the guns of the enemy were pointed against the walls of the Capitol, I would not agree to it. The people of this country have an interest, a property, an HDT WHAT? INDEX

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inheritance, in this INSTRUMENT, against the value of which forty capitols do not weigh the twentieth part of one poor scruple. There can never be any necessity for such proceedings, but a feigned and false necessity; a mere idle and hollow pretence of necessity; least of all can it be said that any such necessity actually existed on the 3d of March. There was no enemy on our shores; there were no guns pointed against the Capitol; we were in no war, nor was there a reasonable probability that we should have war, unless we made it ourselves. But whatever was the state of our foreign relations, is it not preposterous to say, that it was necessary for Congress to adopt this measure, and yet not necessary for the President to recommend it? Why should we thus run in advance of all our own duties, and leave the President completely shielded from his just responsibility? Why should there be nothing but trust and confidence on our side, and nothing but discretion and power on his? Sir, if there be any philosophy in history, if human blood still runs in human veins, if man still conforms to the identity of his nature, the institutions which secure constitutional liberty can never stand long against this excessive personal confidence, against this devotion to men, in utter disregard both of principle and experience, which seem to me to be strongly characteristic of our times. This vote came to us, Sir, from the popular branch of the legislature; and that such a vote should come from such a branch of the legislature was amongst the circumstances which excited in me the greatest surprise and the deepest concern. Certainly, Sir, certainly I was not, on that account, the more inclined to concur. It was no argument with me, that others seemed to be rushing, with such heedless, headlong trust, such impetuosity of confidence, into the arms of executive power. I held back the more strongly, and would hold back the longer. I see, or I think I see,—it is either a true vision of the future, revealed by the history of the past, or, if it be an illusion, it is an illusion which appears to me in all the brightness and sunlight of broad noon,—that it is in this career of personal confidence, along this beaten track of man-worship, marked at every stage by the fragments of other free governments, that our own system is making progress to its close. A personal popularity, honorably earned at first by military achievements, and sustained now by party, by patronage, and by enthusiasm which looks for no ill, because it means no ill itself, seems to render men willing to gratify power, even before its demands are made, and to surfeit executive discretion, even in anticipation of its own appetite. If, Sir, on the 3d of March last, it had been the purpose of both houses of Congress to create a military dictator, what formula had been better suited to their purpose than this vote of the House? It is true, we might have given more money, if we had had it to give. We might have emptied the treasury; but as to the form of the gift, we could not have bettered it. Rome had no better models. When we give our money for any military purpose whatever, what remains to be done? If we leave it with one man to decide, not only whether the military means of the country shall be used at all, but how they shall be used, and to what extent they shall be employed, what remains either for Congress HDT WHAT? INDEX

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or the people but to sit still and see how this dictatorial power will be exercised? On the 3d of March, Sir, I had not forgotten, it was impossible that I should have forgotten, the recommendation in the message at the opening of that session, that power should be vested in the President to issue letters of marque and reprisal against France, at his discretion, in the recess of Congress. Happily, this power was not granted; but suppose it had been, what would then have been the true condition of this government? Why, Sir, this condition is very shortly described. The whole war power would have been in the hands of the President; for no man can doubt a moment that reprisals would bring on immediate war; and the treasury, to the amount of this vote, in addition to all ordinary appropriations, would have been at his absolute disposal also. And all this in a time of peace. I beseech all true lovers of constitutional liberty to contemplate this state of things, and tell me whether such be a truly republican administration of this government. Whether particular consequences had ensued or not, is such an accumulation of power in the hands of the executive according to the spirit of our system? Is it either wise or safe? Has it any warrant in the practice of former times? Or are gentlemen ready to establish the practice, as an example for the benefit of those who are to come after us? But, Sir, if the power to make reprisals, and this money from the treasury, had both been granted, is there not great reason to believe that we should have been now actually at war? I think there is great reason to believe this. It will be said, I know, that if we had armed the President with this power of war, and supplied him with this grant of money, France would have taken it for such a proof of spirit on our part, that she would have paid the indemnity without further delay. This is the old story, and the old plea. It is the excuse of every one who desires more power than the Constitution or the laws give him, that if he had more power he could do more good. Power is always claimed for the good of the people; and dictators are always made, when made at all, for the good of the people. For my part, Sir, I was content, and am content, to show France that we are prepared to maintain our just rights against her by the exertion of our power, when need be, according to the forms of our own Constitution; that, if we make war, we will make it constitutionally; and that we will trust all our interests, both in peace and war, to what the intelligence and the strength of the country may do for them, without breaking down or endangering the fabric of our free institutions. Mr. President, it is the misfortune of the Senate to have differed with the executive on many great questions during the last four or five years. I have regretted this state of things deeply, both on personal and on public accounts; but it has been unavoidable. It is no pleasant employment, it is no holiday business, to maintain opposition against power and against majorities, and to contend for stern and sturdy principle, against personal popularity, against a rushing and overwhelming confidence, that, by wave upon wave and cataract after cataract, seems to be bearing away and destroying whatsoever would withstand it. How much longer we may be able to support this opposition in any degree, or whether we can possibly hold out HDT WHAT? INDEX

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till the public intelligence and the public patriotism shall be awakened to a due sense of the public danger, it is not for me to foretell. I shall not despair to the last, if, in the mean time, we are true to our own principles. If there be a steadfast adherence to these principles, both here and elsewhere, if, one and all, they continue the rule of our conduct in the Senate, and the rallying-point of those who think with us and support us out of the Senate, I am content to hope on and to struggle on. While it remains a contest for the preservation of the Constitution, for the security of public liberty, for the ascendency of principles over men, I am willing to bear my part of it. If we can maintain the Constitution, if we can preserve this security for liberty, if we can thus give to true principle its just superiority over party, over persons, over names, our labors will be richly rewarded. If we fail in all this, they are already among the living who will write the history of this government, from its commencement to its close.

January 16, Saturday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

What can be more clownish than this foolish charging of Miss Martineau with ingratitude for differing in opinion from her Southern friends? I take the law of hospitality to be this:— I confer on the friend whom I visit the highest compliment, in giving him my time. He gives me shelter and bread. Does he therewith buy my suffrage to his opinions henceforward? No more than by giving him my time, I have bought his. We stand just where we did before. The fact is, before we met he was bound to “speak the truth (of me) in love “; and he is bound to the same now. On Truth.—The story of Captain Ross’s company is good example of the policy of honesty. “What do the guns speak?” asked the Esquimaux, when they saw the English levelling them. The English replied that they told what Esquimaux stole files and iron. “Where shall I find seals and musk oxen?” said the Esquimaux. The English ventured to point where, and the hunter was lucky. Presently the Esquimaux boy was killed by an accident, and the tribe ascribed it to English magic and had almost exterminated the English crew. Then the saying of George Fox’s father: “Truly I see that if a man will but stand by the truth it will carry him out.” Then the sublimity of keeping one’s word across years and years.

317 B.C., Attica had seven hundred and twenty square miles with a population of five hundred and twenty-seven thousand souls, and nearly four fifths of that number were slaves. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 17, Sunday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. participated in a small way in a society wedding in Santa Barbara.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR:

On the day appointed for the wedding, we took the captain ashore in the gig, and had orders to come for him at night, with leave to go up to the house and see the fandango. Returning on board, we found preparations making for a salute. Our guns were loaded and run out, men appointed to each, cartridges served out, matches lighted, and all the flags ready to be run up. I took my place at the starboard after gun, and we all waited for the signal from on shore. At ten o’clock the bride went up with her sister to the confessional, dressed in deep black. Nearly an hour intervened, when the great doors of the mission church opened, the bells rang out a loud, discordant peal, the private signal for us was run up by the captain ashore, the bride, dressed in complete white, came out of the church with the bridegroom, followed by a long procession. Just as she stepped from the church door, a small white cloud issued from the bows of our ship, which was full in sight, the loud report echoed among the surrounding hills and over the bay, and instantly the ship was dressed in flags and pennants from stem to stern. Twenty-three guns followed in regular succession, with an interval of fifteen seconds between each when the cloud cleared away, and the ship lay dressed in her colors, all day. At sun-down, another salute of the same number of guns was fired, and all the flags run down. This we thought was pretty well– a gun every fifteen seconds– for a merchantman with only four guns and a dozen or twenty men. After supper, the gig’s crew were called, and we rowed ashore, dressed in our uniform, beached the boat, and went up to the fandango. The bride’s father’s house was the principal one in the place, with a large court in front, upon which a tent was built, capable of containing several hundred people. As we drew near, we heard the accustomed sound of violins and guitars, and saw a great motion of the people within. Going in, we found nearly all the people of the town– men, women, and children– collected and crowded together, leaving barely room for the dancers; for on these occasions no invitations are given, but every one is expected to come, though there is always a private entertainment within the house for particular friends. The old women sat down in rows, clapping their hands to the music, and applauding the young ones. The music was lively, and among the tunes, we recognized several of our popular airs, which we, without doubt, have taken from the Spanish. In the dancing, I was much disappointed. The women stood upright, with their hands down by their sides, their eyes fixed upon the ground before them, and slided about without any perceptible means of motion; for their feet were invisible, the hem of their dresses forming a perfect circle about them, reaching to the ground. They looked as grave as though they were going through some religious ceremony, their faces as little excited as their limbs; and on the whole, instead of the spirited, fascinating Spanish dances which I had expected, I found the Californian fandango, on the part of the women at least, a lifeless affair. The men did better. They danced with grace and spirit, moving in circles round their nearly stationary partners, and showing their figures to great advantage. A great deal was said about our friend Don Juan Bandini, and when he did appear, which was toward the close of the evening, he certainly gave us the most graceful dancing that I had ever seen. He was dressed in white pantaloons neatly made, a short jacket of dark silk, gaily figured, white stockings and thin morocco slippers upon his very small feet. His slight and graceful figure was well calculated for dancing, and he moved about with the grace and daintiness of a young fawn. An occasional touch of the toe to the ground, seemed all that was necessary to give him a long interval of motion in the air. At the same time he was not fantastic or flourishing, but appeared to be rather repressing a strong tendency to motion. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONCLUDED:

He was loudly applauded, and danced frequently toward the close of the evening. After the supper, the waltzing began, which was confined to a very few of the “gente de razon,” and was considered a high accomplishment, and a mark of aristocracy. Here, too, Don Juan figured greatly, waltzing with the sister of the bride, (Donna Angustia, a handsome woman and a general favorite,) in a variety of beautiful, but, to me, offensive figures, which lasted as much as half an hour, no one else taking the floor. They were repeatedly and loudly applauded, the old men and women jumping out of their seats in admiration, and the young people waving their hats and handkerchiefs. Indeed among people of the character of these Mexicans, the waltz seemed to me to have found its right place. The great amusement of the evenings,– which I suppose was owing to its being carnival– was the breaking of eggs filled with cologne, or other essences, upon the heads of the company. One end of the egg is broken and the inside taken out, then it is partly filled with cologne, and the whole sealed up. The women bring a great number of these secretly about them, and the amusement is to break one upon the head of a gentleman when his back is turned. He is bound in gallantry to find out the lady and return the compliment, though it must not be done if the person sees you. A tall, stately Don, with immense grey whiskers, and a look of great importance, was standing before me, when I felt a light hand on my shoulder, and turning round, saw Donna Angustia, (whom we all knew, as she had been up to Monterey, and down again, in the Alert,) with her finger upon her lip, motioning me gently aside. I stepped back a little, when she went up behind the Don, and with one hand knocked off his huge sombrero, and at the same instant, with the other, broke the egg upon his head, and springing behind me, was out of sight in a moment. The Don turned slowly round, the cologne, running down his face, and over his clothes and a loud laugh breaking out from every quarter. He looked round in vain, for some time, until the direction of so many laughing eyes showed him the fair offender. She was his niece, and a great favorite with him, so old Don Domingo had to join in the laugh. A great many such tricks were played, and many a war of sharp manoeuvering was carried on between couples of the younger people, and at every successful exploit a general laugh was raised. Another singular custom I was for some time at a loss about. A pretty young girl was dancing, named, after what would appear to us the sacrilegious custom of the country– Espiritu Santo, when a young man went behind her and placed his hat directly upon her head, letting it fall down over her eyes, and sprang back among the crowd. She danced for some time with the hat on, when she threw it off, which called forth a general shout; and the young man was obliged to go out upon the floor and pick it up. Some of the ladies, upon whose heads hats had been placed, threw them off at once, and a few kept them on throughout the dance, and took them off at the end, and held them out in their hands, when the owner stepped out, bowed, and took it from them. I soon began to suspect the meaning of the thing, and was afterwards told that it was a compliment, and an offer to become the lady’s gallant for the rest of the evening, and to wait upon her home. If the hat was thrown off, the offer was refused, and the gentleman was obliged to pick up his hat amid a general laugh. Much amusement was caused sometimes by gentlemen putting hats on the ladies’ heads, without permitting them to see whom it was done by. This obliged them to throw them off, or keep them on at a venture, and when they came to discover the owner, the laugh was often turned upon them. The captain sent for us about ten o’clock, and we went aboard in high spirits, having enjoyed the new scene much, and were of great importance among the crew, from having so much to tell, and from the prospect of going every night until it was over; for these fandangos generally last three days. The next day, two of us were sent up to the town, and took care to come back by way of Capitan Noriego’s and take a look into the booth. The musicians were still there, upon their platform, scraping and twanging away, and a few people, apparently of the lower classes, were dancing. The dancing is kept up, at intervals, throughout the day, but the crowd, the spirit, and the elite, come in at night. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 17th of 1 M / Our friend John Wilbur came over from Narragansett Yesterday Afternoon & lodged at our house - he was a very acceptable guest & attended both our Meetings today - his testimonies were truly pertinent & acceptable, being sound in doctrine & well seasoned With that life & spirit, without which the most sound & orthodox Sermons are no more than Sounding brass or tinkling symbols - he took tea & lodged at Henry Goulds. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

January 18, Monday: Waldo Emerson probably delivered a lecture on this date in Salem, the first of a series at their lyceum, for the Salem Mechanics’ Institute. Although dates are available for only five lectures, the payments records in Emerson’s ms account books and on the books of the town Lyceum, which total up to $146, suggest that actually eight or ten lectures were delivered.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. reported the Alert dealing with the weather off Santa Barbara, California.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR:

The next night, which was the last, we went ashore in the same manner, until we got almost tired of the monotonous twang of the instruments, the drawling sounds which the women kept up, as an accompaniment, and the slapping of the hands in time with the music, in place of castanets. We found ourselves as great objects of attention as any persons or anything at the place. Our sailor dresses– and we took great pains to have them neat and shipshape– were much admired, and we were invited, from every quarter, to give them an American sailor’s dance; but after the ridiculous figure some of our countrymen cut, in dancing after the Spaniards, we thought it best to leave it to their imaginations. Our agent, with a tight, black, swallow-tailed coat, just imported from Boston, a high stiff cravat, looking as if he had been pinned and skewered, with only his feet and hands left free, took the floor just after Bandini; and we thought they had had enough of Yankee grace. The last night they kept it up in great style, and were getting into a high-go, when the captain called us off to go aboard, for, it being south-easter season, he was afraid to remain on shore long; and it was well he did not, for that very night, we slipped our cables, as a crowner to our fun ashore, and stood off before a south-easter, which lasted twelve hours, and returned to our anchorage the next day.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 18 of 1 M / Our friend Jn Wilbur left us today & returned homewards to Hopkinton where he lives - it was a Snow Storm when hie went over the ferrys, but otherwise a favourable time, the Wind not being high. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 21, Thursday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

The Spartan is respectable and strong who speaks what must be spoken; but these gay Athenians that go up and down the world making all talk a Recitation, talking for display, disgust.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 21st of 1 M 1831 / Preparative Meeting In the first Father had a short testimony & in the last there was no buisness but the Queries & a report of the School Committee was read In the Afternoon took a walk on the Hill & went round across the fields & visited cousin Henry Gould at his Mill. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 22, Friday: In Philadelphia, the cornerstone of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane was laid. The building would cost $265,000 and transfer of the patients of the Pine Street Hospital (founded 1751) would begin on January 1, 1841.52 PSYCHOLOGY

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I think profanity to be as real a violation of nature as any other crime. I have as sensible intimations from within of any profanation as I should have if I stole. Upham [Charles Wentworth Upham, Emerson’s classmate and friend, a distinguished citizen of Salem, and author of a work on SALEM WITCHCRAFT, and other books] thinks it fatal to the happiness of a young man to set out with ultra-conservative notions in this country. He must settle it in his mind that the human race have got possession, and, though they will make many blunders and do some great wrongs, yet on the whole will consult the interest of the whole. Let not the mouse of my good meaning, Lady, Be snapped up in the trap of your suspicion, To lose the tail there, either of her truth, Or swallowed by the cat of misconstruction. BEN JONSON, Tale of a Tub, Act iv, Scene 4.

Wherein Minerva had been vanquished Had she by it her sacred looms advanced And thro’ thy subject woven her graphick thread. GEORGE CHAPMAN, ON SEJANUS.

52. Street, W.R. A CHRONOLOGY OF NOTEWORTHY EVENTS IN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 1994 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Swedenborg said, “Man, in proportion as he is more nearly conjoined to the Lord, in the same proportion appeareth to himself more distinctly to be his own, and perceiveth more evidently that he is the Lord’s....” [Here follow several quotations from Swedenborg’s Apocalypse Revealed, some of them now in Representative Men.] The scholar works with invisible tools to invisible ends, so passes for an idler, or worse, brain-sick, defenceless to idle carpenters, masons, and merchants, that, having done nothing most laboriously all day, pounce on him fresh for spoil at night. Character founded on natural gifts as specific and as rare as military genius; the power to stand beside his thoughts, or to hold off his thoughts at arm’s length and give them perspective; to form it piu nell’ uno; he studies the art of solitude; he is gravelled in every discourse with common people; he shows thought to be infinite which you had thought exhausted. There is a real object in nature to which the grocer turns, the intellectual man praestantia norat Plurima, mentis opes amplas sub pectore servans, Omnia vestigans sapientum docta reperta. EMPEDOCLES, ON PYTHAGORAS, Cudworth, vol. ii. So Bacon’s globe of crystal and globe of matter. The thinker, like Glauber, keeps what others throw away. He is aware of God’s way of hiding things, i.e., in light; also he knows all by one. Set men upon thinking, and you have been to them a god. All history is poetry; the globe of facts whereon they trample is bullion to the scientific eye. Meanest life a thread of empyrean light. Scholar converts for them the dishonored facts which they know, into trees of life; their daily routine into a garden of God, by suggesting the principle which classifies the facts. We build the sepulchres of our fathers: can we never behold the universe as new, and feel that we have a stake as much as our predecessors? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 24, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Cudworth is an armory for a poet to furnish himself withal. He should look at every writer in that light and read no poor book. Why should the poet bereave himself of the sweetest as well as grandest thoughts by yielding deference to the miserly, indigent unbelief of this age, and leaving God and moral nature out of his catalogue of beings? I know my soul is immortal if it were only by the sublime emotion I taste in reading these lines of Swedenborg: “The organical body with which the soul clothes itself is here compared to a garment, because a garment invests the body, and the soul also puts off the body and casts it away as old clothes (exuviae), when it emigrates by means of death from the natural world into its own spiritual world.” Influx, p. 26.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 24th of 1 M 1836 / On 6th day last I recd letters & pamphlets from my Friend Thos Thompson which on various accounts were highly interesting & his account of the comfortable progress of our Friend Anna W Thorn among them. — Our Meetings today were well attended & comfortable - Father was exercised in both In the evening our interesting young Cousin called & set some time with us. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Last week in January: During the last week in January Halley’s Comet rose away from the sun and past the earth and arrived at about the orbit of Mars. Suddenly there was a magnificent outburst and the comet began sending out an expanding halo. With its tail no longer visible even by telescope, this halo was dramatic, and could be watched as within about three weeks it would expand to at least a million miles in diameter. Sir John Herschel would write of the expanding halo as resembling “a transparent gauze or alabaster vase illuminated from within.” (It has been suggested that such a surge as this comet exhibited in 1836 may also have happened in 607 CE, 1066 CE, and 1145 CE, due to some volatile spot on the body of the comet that was becoming turned toward the sun at this precise point between 63 and 77 days after perihelion.) SKY EVENT HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 27, Wednesday: Documentation of the international slave trade, per W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: [Reports from the Committee of Claims on cases of captured Africans.] –HOUSE REPORTS, 24 Cong. 1 sess. I. Nos. 223, 268, and III. No. 574. No. 268 is reprinted in HOUSE REPORTS, 25 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 4.

Waldo Emerson lectured at the Concord Lyceum on: “The Character and Genius of Edmund Burke.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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FEBRUARY 1836

February: This month’s issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:

HARVARDIANA HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February: Waldo Emerson to his journal:53

“Nothing is complete until it is enacted. A fact is spirit having completed its mission, attained its end, fully revealed itself.” Alcott Manuscripts. “Her dreams are so vivid and impressive that they are taken for realities of sense, and she refers to them afterwards as facts in her experience. So strong is her faith in them, that no reasoning, not even the faith she places in the assurance of her parents, makes her relinquish the conviction. “Thus unconsciously, even to us perchance, doth our waking and sleeping life coalesce and lose their separate forms in one predominating sentiment or idea, and take a common unity in the spirit from whence they sprung into life and shaping.” ALCOTT.

February: Edgar Allan Poe continued his attack on Theodore Sedgwick Fay’s NORMAN LESLIE: A TALE OF THE PRESENT TIMES, which amounted, he insisted, to “the most inestimable piece of balderdash with which the common sense of the good people of America were ever so openly or so villainously insulted.” This would bring on endless discussion, and endless published commentary, and as we Americans well know — all publicity is good publicity.

At Harvard College, Henry Thoreau would be perusing this notorious novel:

NORMAN LESLIE, VOL. I

the blistered author NORMAN LESLIE, VOL. II

53. Bronson Alcott probably was writing of one of his little daughters. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February: The astronomical instruments of the St. Helena Observatory were dismantled and packed off to Canada (the island’s Time Office would of course retain some of the timepieces).

When the tailors of New-York went on strike. Some 30,000 protestors assembled and called for a new political party. Since a stitch in time saves nine, the National Guard was called out and the strikers were denied the right to organize.

Early this year, perhaps in about this period, Jones Very was concluding that there was only one way in which evil could enter this universe of God’s, and that was through human deliberation. For to allow oneself to be tempted is the same as to allow oneself to sin. What would be requisite, therefore, would be to establish a state of artlessness and immediacy which precluded all “taking thought,” all deliberation. Since he needed to “converse with Heaven,” he determined that upon his graduation he would attempt this feat of spontaneity at Harvard Divinity School.54

We cannot predict our actions as if we were machines. If we are growing in virtue we shall not say what we should do in any particular case but say if the case comes I will do something then which I do not know now. The spirit will tell us in that hour.

HARVARD COLLEGE

February 2, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson probably lectured on this day in Cambridge.

The Alert, bearing Richard Henry Dana, Jr., arrived at San Pedro anchorage along the coastline of California.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Here we found the Ayacucho and the Pilgrim, which last we had not seen since the 11th of September,– nearly five months; and I really felt something like an affection for the old brig which had been my first home, and in which I had spent nearly a year, and got the first rough and tumble of a sea life. She, too, was associated, in my mind with Boston, the wharf from which we sailed, anchorage in the stream, leave-taking, and all such matters, which were now to me like small links connecting me with another world, which I had once been in, and which, please God, I might yet see again. I went on board the first night, after supper; found the old cook in the galley, playing upon the fife which I had given him, as a parting present; had a hearty shake of the hand from him; and dove down into the forecastle, where were my old shipmates, the same as ever, glad to see me; for they had nearly given us up as lost, especially when they did not find us in Santa Barbara. They had been at San Diego last, had been lying at San Pedro nearly a month, and had received three thousand hides from the pueblo. These were taken from her the next day, which filled us up, and we both got under weigh on the 4th, she bound up to San Francisco again, and we to San Diego, where we arrived on the 6th. We were always glad to see San Diego; it being the depot, and a snug little place, and seeming quite like home, especially to me, who had spent a summer there. There was no vessel in port, the Rosa having sailed for Valparaiso and Cadiz, and the Catalina for Callao, nearly a month before. We discharged our hides, and in four days were ready to sail again for the windward; and, to our great joy– for the last time! Over thirty thousand hides had been already collected, cured, and stowed away in the house, which, together with what we should collect, and the Pilgrim would bring down from San Francisco, would make out her cargo. The thought that we were actually going up for the last time, and that the next time we went round San Diego 54. Which, one might suppose, would be an expertise similar to that of the ventriloquist who could speak while his dummy was drinking a glass of water. Or something like that, but never mind. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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point it would be “homeward bound,” brought things so near a close, that we felt as though we were just there, though it must still be the greater part of a year before we could see Boston. I spent one evening, as had been my custom, at the oven with the Sandwich Islanders; but it was far from being the usual noisy, laughing time. It has been said, that the greatest curse to each of the South Sea islands, was the first man who discovered it; and every one who knows anything of the history of our commerce in those parts, knows how much truth there is in this; and that the white men, with their vices, have brought in diseases before unknown to the islanders, and which are now sweeping off the native population of the Sandwich Islands, at the rate of one fortieth of the entire population annually. They seem to be a doomed people. The curse of a people calling themselves Christian, seems to follow them everywhere; and even here, in this obscure place, lay two young islanders, whom I had left strong, active young men, in the vigor of health, wasting away under a disease, which they would never have known but for their intercourse with Christianized Mexico and people from Christian America. One of them was not so ill; and was moving about, smoking his pipe, and talking, and trying to keep up his spirits; but the other, who was my friend, and Aikane– Hope, was the most dreadful object I had ever seen in my life: his eyes sunken and dead, his cheeks fallen in against his teeth, his hands looking like claws; a dreadful cough, which seemed to rack his whole shattered system, a hollow whispering voice, and an entire inability to move himself. There he lay, upon a mat, on the ground, which was the only floor of the oven, with no medicine, no comforts, and no one to care for, or help him, but a few Kanakas, who were willing enough, but could do nothing. The sight of him made me sick, and faint. Poor fellow! During the four months that I lived upon the beach, we were continually together, both in work, and in our excursions in the woods, and upon the water. I really felt a strong affection for him, and preferred him to any of my own countrymen there; and I believe there was nothing which he would not have done for me. When I came into the oven he looked at me, held out his hand, and said, in a low voice, but with a delightful smile, “Aloha, Aikane! Aloha nui!” I comforted him as well as I could, and promised to ask the captain to help him from the medicine-chest, and told him I had no doubt the captain would do what he could for him, as he had worked in our employ for several years, both on shore and aboard our vessels on the coast. I went aboard and turned into my hammock, but I could not sleep. Thinking, from my education, that I must have some knowledge of medicine, the Kanakas had insisted upon my examining him carefully; and it was not a sight to be forgotten. One of our crew, an old man-of-war’s man, of twenty years’ standing, who had seen sin and suffering in every shape, and whom I afterwards took to see Hope, said it was dreadfully worse than anything he had ever seen, or even dreamed of. He was horror-struck, as his countenance showed; yet he had been among the worst cases in our naval hospitals. I could not get the thought of the poor fellow out of my head all night; his horrible suffering, and his apparently inevitable, horrible end. The next day I told the captain of Hope’s state, and asked him if he would be so kind as to go and see him. “What? a d-----d Kanaka?” “Yes, sir,” said I; “but he has worked four years for our vessels, and has been in the employ of our owners, both on shore and aboard.” “Oh! he be d-----d!” said the captain, and walked off. This same man died afterwards of a fever on the deadly coast of Sumatra; and God grant he had better care taken of him in his sufferings, than he ever gave to any one else! Finding nothing was to be got from the captain, I consulted an old shipmate, who had much experience in these matters, and got from him a recipe, which he always kept by him. With this I went to the mate, and told him the case. Mr. Brown had been entrusted with the general care of the medicine-chest, and although a driving fellow, and a taught hand in a watch, he had good feelings, and was always inclined to be kind to the sick. He said that Hope was not strictly one of the crew, but as he was in our employ when taken sick, he should have the medicines; and he got them and gave them to me, with leave to go ashore at night. Nothing could exceed the delight of the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Kanakas, when I came bringing the medicines. All their terms of affection and gratitude were spent upon me, and in a sense wasted, (for I could not understand half of them,) yet they made all known by their manner. Poor Hope was so much revived at the bare thought of anything’s being done for him, that he was already stronger and better. I knew he must die as he was, and he could but die under the medicines, and any chance was worth running. An oven, exposed to every wind and change of weather, is no place to take calomel; but nothing else would do, and strong remedies must be used, or he was gone. The applications, internal and external, were powerful, and I gave him strict directions to keep warm and sheltered, telling him it was his only chance for life. Twice, after this, I visited him, having only time to run up, while waiting in the boat. He promised to take his medicines regularly until we returned, and insisted upon it that he was doing better.

February 6, Saturday: The HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin reached Diemen’s Land, also known as Tasmania, Australia.

The publication of John Field’s Nocturnes nos.14-16 was advertised in BIBLIOGRAPHIE DE FRANCE.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day Morning I went to Town & after attending to some buisness their - took the Stage & came by the way of Slades ferry to Fall river where I dined at Wilders public House & from thence home, by the way of the Stone Bridge - finding our family & concerns, all well. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 8, Monday: Former Congressman David Crockett arrived in San Antonio de Béxar with a dozen volunteers.

REMEMBERING THE ALAMO Captain George Back was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

“The sinner is the savage who hews down the whole tree in order to come at the fruit.” Piickler-Muskau [Count von Piickler- Muskau, later Prince, a soldier, scholar, traveller, and prolific writer (1785-1871). His TOUR IN ENGLAND was translated by Mrs. Sarah Austin in 1832.] describes the English dandy. His highest triumph is to appear with the most wooden manners as little polished as will suffice to avoid castigation; nay, to contrive even his civilities so that they may appear as near as may be to affronts. Instead of a noble, high-bred ease —to have the courage to offend against every restraint of decorum: to invert the relation in which our sex stands to women so that they appear the attacking and he the passive or defensive party,” etc. Women have less accurate measure of time than men. There is a clock in Adam: none in Eve. The philosopher, the priest, hesitates to receive money for his instructions,—the author for his works. Instead of this scruple, let them make filthy lucre beautiful by its just expenditure. It becomes the young American to learn the geography of his country in these days as much as it did our fathers to know the streets of their town; for steam and rails convert roads into streets and regions into neighborhoods. Steam realizes the story of IEolus’s bag. It carries the thirty-two winds in the boiler. Sentences of Confucius (From Marshman’s Confucius) “Have no friend unlike yourself.” “Chee says, Grieve not that men know not you; grieve that you are ignorant of men.” “How can a man remain concealed? How can a man remain concealed?” “Chee entered the great temple. Frequently inquiring about things, one said, ‘Who says that the son of the Chou man understands propriety? In the great temple he is constantly asking questions.’ Chee heard and replied, ‘This is propriety.’” “Koong Chee is a man who, through his earnestness in seeking knowledge, forgets his food, and in his joy for having found it, loses all sense of his toil; who, thus occupied, is unconscious that he has almost arrived at old age.” “Chee was in the Chhi country for three months hearing Sun’s music, and knew not the taste of his meat. He said, ‘had no idea of music arriving at this degree of perfection.’”

February 9, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson probably lectured again on this day in Cambridge. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 10, Wednesday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. made comments on lives of desperation as they were playing themselves out in the California scene. (He might as well have been describing today’s crowd.)

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: We got under weigh on the 10th, bound up to San Pedro, and had three days of calm and head winds, making but little progress. On the fourth, we took a stiff south-easter, which obliged us to reef our topsails. While on the yard, we saw a sail on the weather bow, and in about half an hour, passed the Ayacucho, under doublereefed topsails, beating down to San Diego. Arrived at San Pedro on the fourth day, and came-to in the old place, a league from shore, with no other vessel in port, and the prospect of three weeks, or more, of dull life, rolling goods up a slippery hill, carrying hides on our heads over sharp stones, and, perhaps, slipping for a south-easter. There was but one man in the only house here, and him I shall always remember as a good specimen of a California ranger. He had been a tailor in Philadelphia, and getting intemperate and in debt, he joined a trapping party and went to the Columbia river, and thence down to Monterey, where he spent everything, left his party, and came to the Pueblo de los Angelos, to work at his trade. Here he went dead to leeward among the pulperias, gambling rooms, etc., and came down to San Pedro, to be moral by being out of temptation. He had been in the house several weeks, working hard at his trade, upon orders which he had brought with him, and talked much of his resolution, and opened his heart to us about his past life. After we had been here some time, he started off one morning, in fine spirits, well dressed, to carry the clothes which he had been making to the pueblo, and saying he would bring back his money and some fresh orders the next day. The next day came, and a week passed, and nearly a fortnight, when, one day, going ashore, we saw a tall man, who looked like our friend the tailor, getting out of the back of an Indian’s cart, which had just come down from the pueblo. He stood for the house, but we bore up after him; when finding that we were overhauling him, he hove-to and spoke us. Such a sight I never saw before. Barefooted, with an old pair of trowsers tied round his waist by a piece of green hide, a soiled cotton shirt, and a torn Indian hat; “cleaned out,” to the last real, and completely “used up.” He confessed the whole matter; acknowledged that he was on his back; and now he had a prospect of a fit of the horrors for a week, and of being worse than useless for months. This is a specimen of the life of half of the Americans and English who are adrift over the whole of California. One of the same stamp was Russell, who was master of the hide-house at San Diego, while I was there, and afterwards turned away for his misconduct. He spent his own money and nearly all the stores among the half-bloods upon the beach, and being turned away, went up to the Presidio, where he lived the life of a desperate “loafer,” until some rascally deed sent him off “between two days,” with men on horseback, dogs, and Indians in full cry after him, among the hills. One night, he burst into our room at the hide-house, breathless, pale as a ghost, covered with mud, and torn by thorns and briers, nearly naked, and begged for a crust of bread, saying he had neither eaten nor slept for three days. Here was the great Mr. Russell, who a month before was “Don Tomas,” Capitan de la playa,” “Maestro de la casa,” etc., etc., begging food and shelter of Kanakas and sailors. He staid with us till he gave himself up, and was dragged off to the calabozo. Another, and a more amusing specimen, was one whom we saw at San Francisco. He had been a lad on board the ship California, in one of her first voyages, and ran away and commenced Ranchero, gambling, stealing horses, etc. He worked along up to San Francisco, and was living on a rancho near there, while we were in port. One morning, when we went ashore in the boat, we found him at the landing-place, dressed in California style,– a wide hat, faded velveteen trowsers, and a blanket cloak thrown over his shoulders– and wishing to go off in the boat, saying he was going to pasear with our captain a little. We had many doubts of the reception he would meet with; but he seemed to think himself company for any one. We took him aboard, landed him at the gangway, and went about our work, keeping an eye upon the quarter-deck, where the captain was walking. The lad went up to him with the most complete assurance, and raising his hat, wished him a good afternoon. Captain T______turned round, looked at him from head to foot, and saying coolly, “Hallo! who the h--- are you?” kept on his walk. This was a rebuff not to be mistaken, and the joke passed about among the crew by winks and signs, at different parts of the ship. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONCLUDED: Finding himself disappointed at headquarters, he edged along forward to the mate, who was overseeing some work on the forecastle, and tried to begin a yarn; but it would not do. The mate had seen the reception he had met with aft, and would have no cast-off company. The second mate was aloft, and the third mate and myself were painting the quarter-boat, which hung by the davits, so he betook himself to us; but we looked at one another, and the officer was too busy to say a word. From us, he went to one and another of the crew, but the joke had got before him, and he found everybody busy and silent. Looking over the rail a few moments afterward, we saw him at the galley-door talking to the cook. This was a great comedown, from the highest seat in the synagogue to a seat in the galley with the black cook. At night too, when supper was called, he stood in the waist for some time, hoping to be asked down with the officers, but they went below, one after another, and left him. His next chance was with the carpenter and sail-maker, and he lounged round the after hatchway until the last had gone down. We had now had fun enough out of him, and taking pity on him, offered him a pot of tea, and a cut at the kid, with the rest, in the forecastle. He was hungry, and it was growing dark, and he began to see that there was no use in playing the caballero any longer, and came down into the forecastle, put into the “grub” in sailor’s style, threw off all his airs, and enjoyed the joke as much as any one; for a man must take a joke among sailors. He gave us the whole account of his adventures in the country,– roguery and all– and was very entertaining. He was a smart, unprincipled fellow, was at the bottom of most of the rascally doings of the country, and gave us a great deal of interesting information in the ways of the world we were in.

February 13, Saturday: Due to dangerous north-easterly winds, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert sailed out and hove to in a far safer berth alee of Catalina Island.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Saturday, Feb. 13th. Were called up at midnight to slip for a violent north-easter, for this rascally hole of San Pedro is unsafe in every wind but a south-wester, which is seldom known to blow more than once in a half century. We went off with a flowing sheet, and hove-to under the lee of Catalina island, where we lay three days, and then returned to our anchorage. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 17, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson lectured in Salem. This was lecture Number 2 of the series: he would receive $25.

The HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin left Tasmania.

February 23, Tuesday: General Antonio López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón’s 3,000 Mexican troops of the Centralist forces surrounded 182 Texian rebels in the Alamo mission at San Antonio de Bexar and the famed “Siege of the Alamo” began.

Maria Sarah Williams of New Haven, Connecticut wrote to Augustus Street: ... In my letter to Sis, I gave her an account of the wretched condition of some Negroes who occupied a pen in the yard attached to the house. They were all shipped today on board a schooner for Charleston to be sold. Wretched as they were appearing in the yard, as I saw them from my window I realized their misery still more as I saw them on their way to the vessel. I should think more than half had scarcely clothing enough to cover them; not one of them had a shoe and but two any thing upon their heads and I was told they had barely enough to eat to keep them from starving.... How little does the situation of these poor wretches compact with the statements of Mr. Hammond of South Carolina in his speech on the subject of abolition in the district of Columbia. He says that the slaves at the south are better fed, better provided for, better clad and more happy and contented than any other laboring class in the universe. It is all a lie. SLAVERY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Richard Henry Dana, Jr. noted the arrival of the California, fresh from Boston.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Tuesday, Feb. 23d. This afternoon, a signal was made from the shore, and we went off in the gig, and found the agent’s clerk, who had been up to the pueblo, waiting at the landing-place, with a package under his arm, covered with brown paper, and tied carefully with twine. No sooner had we shoved off than he told us there was good news from Santa Barbara. “What’s that?” said one of the crew; “has the bloody agent slipped off the hooks? Has the old bundle of bones got him at last?”– “No; better than that. The California has arrived.” Letters, papers, news, and, perhaps,– friends, on board! Our hearts were all up in our mouths, and we pulled away like good fellows; for the precious packet could not be opened except by the captain. As we pulled under the stern, the clerk held up the package, and called out to the mate, who was leaning over the taffrail, that the California had arrived. “Hurrah!” said the mate, so as to be heard fore and aft; “California come, and news from Boston!” Instantly there was a confusion on board which no one could account for who has not been in the same situation. All discipline seemed for a moment relaxed. “What’s that, Mr. Brown?” said the cook, putting his head out of the galley– “California come?” “Aye, aye! you angel of darkness, and there’s a letter for you from Bullknop ’treet, number two-two- five– green door and brass knocker!” The packet was sent down into the cabin, and every one waited to hear of the result. As nothing came up, the officers began to feel that they were acting rather a child’s part, and turned the crew to again and the same strict discipline was restored, which prohibits speech between man and man, while at work on deck; so that, when the steward came forward with letters for the crew, each man took his letters, carried them below to his chest, and came up again immediately; and not a letter was read until we had cleared up decks for the night. An overstrained sense of manliness is the characteristic of seafaring men, or, rather, of life on board ship. This often gives an appearance of want of feeling, and even of cruelty. From this, if a man comes within an ace of breaking his neck and escapes, it is made a joke of; and no notice must be taken of a bruise or cut; and any expression of pity, or any show of attention, would look sisterly, and unbecoming a man who has to face the rough and tumble of such a life. From this, too, the sick are neglected at sea, and whatever may be ashore, a sick man finds little sympathy or attention, forward or aft. A man, too, can have nothing peculiar or sacred on board ship; for all the nicer feelings they take pride in disregarding, both in themselves and others. A thin-skinned man could not live an hour on ship-board. One would be torn raw unless he had the hide of an ox. A moment of natural feeling for home and friends, and then the frigid routine of sea-life returned. Jokes were made upon those who showed any interest in the expected news, and everything near and dear was made common stock for rude jokes and unfeeling coarseness, to which no exception could be taken by any one. Supper, too, must be eaten before the letters were read; and when, at last, they were brought out, they all got round any one who had a letter, and expected to have it read aloud, and have it all in common. If any one went by himself to read, it was– “Fair play, there; and no skulking!” I took mine and went into the sailmaker’s berth, where I could read it without interruption. It was dated August, just a year from the time I had sailed from home; and every one was well, and no great change had taken place. Thus, for one year, my mind was set at ease yet it was already six months from the date of the letter, and what another year would bring to pass, who could tell? Every one away from home thinks that some great thing must have happened, while to those at home there seems to be a continued monotony and lack of incident. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONCLUDED: As much as my feelings were taken up by my own intelligence from home, I could not but be amused by a scene in the steerage. The carpenter had been married just before leaving Boston, and during the voyage had talked much about his wife, and had to bear and forbear, as every man, known to be married, must, aboard ship; yet the certainty of hearing from his wife by the first ship, seemed to keep up his spirits. The California came, the packet was brought on board; no one was in higher spirits than he; but when the letters came forward, there was none for him. The captain looked again, but there was no mistake. Poor “Chips,” could eat no supper. He was completely down in the mouth. “Sails” (the sailmaker) tried to comfort him, and told him he was a bloody fool to give up his grub for any woman’s daughter, and reminded him that he had told him a dozen times that he’d never see or hear from his wife again. “Ah!” said “Chips,” “you don’t know what it is to have a wife, and” — “Don’t I?” said Sails; and then came, for the hundredth time, the story of his coming ashore at New York, from the Constellation frigate, after a cruise of four years round the Horn,– being paid off with over five hundred dollars,– marrying, and taking a couple of rooms in a four-story houses– furnishing the rooms, (with a particular account of the furniture, including a dozen flag-bottomed chairs, which he always dilated upon, whenever the subject of furniture was alluded to,)– going off to sea again, leaving his wife half-pay, like a fool,– coming home and finding her “off, like Bob’s horse, with nobody to pay the reckoning;” furniture gone,– flag-bottomed chairs and all;– and with it, his “long togs,” the half-pay, his beaver hat, white linen shirts, and everything else. His wife he never saw, or heard of, from that day to this, and never wished to. Then followed a sweeping assertion, not much to the credit of the sex, if true, though he has Pope to back him. “Come, Chips, cheer up like a man, and take some hot man, and take some hot grub! Don’t be made a fool of by anything in petticoats! As for your wife, you’ll never see her again; she was ‘up keeleg and off’ before you were outside of Cape Cod. You hove your money away like a fool; but every man must learn once, just as I did; so you’d better square the yards with her, and make the best of it.” This was the best consolation “Sails” had to offer, but it did not seem to be just the thing the carpenter wanted; for, during several days, he was very much dejected, and bore with difficulty the jokes of the sailors, and with still more difficulty their attempts at advice and consolation, of most of which the sailmaker’s was a good specimen. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 24, Wednesday: In Boston, Winslow Homer was born.

It was the end of an era. The East India Company was no more. The Company flag was lowered and replaced by the Standard of Great Britain, and Brigadier-General Charles Dallas of the East India Company, who had continued as acting governor of the island after its takeover by the Crown on April 22, 1834, was out of a job. Major-General George Middlemore took office in the name of King William IV as the initial Crown governor of St. Helena (Middlemore would be “long remembered for his bad manners and his discourtesy,” and for his unenviable task of making savage spending cuts and sacking former Company servants).

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

February 25, Thursday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert sailed for Santa Barbara, California.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Thursday, Feb. 25th. Set sail for Santa Barbara, where we arrived on Sunday, the 28th.

Samuel Colt received a US patent for a “revolver,” eventually to be colloquially referred to as a “sixshooter” (although some of them were capable only of five shots).

By arrangement of Phineas Taylor Barnum (her owner), the body of Joyce Heth, the elderly slave woman he been exhibiting under a pretense that she had been our illustrious founding father George Washington’s wet- nurse was subjected to public autopsy. The autopsy was performed by a surgeon hired for the occasion, Dr. David L. Rogers, in the presence of 1,500 spectators who had paid 50¢ admission each, in New-York’s City Saloon (drinks not on the house). When this hired surgeon proclaimed that Barnum’s age claim for this woman had been fraudulent, that she was nowhere near 161 years old at the time of her death, the hoaxer proclaimed that the body autopsied had not been that of Joyce Heth, that in fact she was still alive and well on tour in Europe.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 25 of 2nd M / With my young friend Thomas Nichols rode to Portsmouth & attended Monthly Meeting - It was a most Violent windy day, clouds & very uncomfortable riding being very cold & a part of the way muddy & heavy traveling — The First Meeting was silent & small & not a time of much life to me. — In the last we had but little buisness & the Meeting HDT WHAT? INDEX

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We are idealists whenever we prefer an idea to a sensation, as when we make personal sacrifices for the sake of freedom or religion... As character is more to us, our fellow men cease to exist to us in space and time, and we hold them by real ties. The idealist regards matter scientifically; the sensualist exclusively. The physical sciences are only well studied when they are explored for ideas. The moment the law is attained, i.e., the Idea, the memory disburthens herself of her centuries of observation. The book is always dear which has made us for moments idealists. That which can dissipate this block of earth into shining ether is genius. I have no hatred to the round earth and its gray mountains. I see well enough the sand-hill opposite my window. I see with as much pleasure as another a field of corn or a rich pasture, whilst I dispute their absolute being. Their phenomenal being I no more dispute than I do my own. I do not dispute, but point out the just way of viewing them. Religion makes us idealists. Any strong passion does. The best, the happiest moments of life are these delicious awakenings of the higher powers and the reverential withdrawing of nature before its god. It is remarkable that the greater the material apparatus, the more the material disappears, as in Alps and Niagara, in St. Peter’s and Naples. We are all aiming to be idealists, and covet the society of those who make us so, as the sweet singer, the orator, the ideal painter. What nimbleness and buoyancy the conversation of the spiritualist produces in us. We tread on air; the world begins to dislimn. For the education of the Understanding the earth and world serve.... Nature, from an immoveable god, on which, as reptiles, we creep, and to which we must conform our being, becomes an instrument, and serves us with all her kingdoms: then becomes a spectacle. To the rude it seems as if matter had absolute existence, existed from an intrinsic necessity. The first effect of thought is to make us sensible that spirit exists from an intrinsic necessity, that matter has a merely phenomenal or accidental being, being created from spirit, or being the manifestation of spirit. The moment our higher faculties are called into activity we are domesticated, and our awkwardness or torpor or discomfort gives place to natural and agreeable movements. The first lesson of Religion is, The things that are seen are temporal; the unseen, eternal. It is easy to solve the problem of individual existence. Why Milton, Shakspear, or Canova should be, there is reason enough. But why the million should exist, drunk with the opium of Time and Custom, does not appear. If their existence is phenomenal, they serve so valuable a purpose to the education of Milton, that, grant us the Ideal theory, and the universe is solved. Otherwise, the moment a man discovers that he has aims which his faculties cannot answer, the world becomes a riddle. Yet Piety restores him to Health. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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was not detained long. — We went with Henry & Thomas Gould to Josiah Chases & dined & got home before sunset. — I have of late felt my mind engaged to write our friend Robert Comfort of Wheatland State of NYork who attended our last Yearly Meeting, he was a true & honest friend & one with whom I felt much unity & Sympathy I have also in the course of the Week written to my friends Thos Evans of Philada. - It is a time of great streight in society, & it becomes necessary for those who can to commune together. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 28, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:

Cold, bright Sunday morn, white with deep snow. Charles thinks if a superior being should look into families, he would find natural relations existing, and man a worthy being, but if he followed them into shops, senates, churches, and societies, they would appear wholly artificial and worthless. Society seems noxious. I believe that against these baleful influences Nature is the antidote. The man comes out of the wrangle of the shop and office, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. He not only quits the cabal, but he finds himself. But how few men see the sky and the woods! Good talk to-day with Charles of motives that may be addressed by a wise man to a wise man. First, Self-improvement; and secondly, it were equipollent could he announce that elsewhere companions, or a companion, were being nourished and disciplined whose virtues and talents might tax all the pupil’s faculties in honorable and sweet emulation. Charles thinks it a motive also to leave the world richer by some such bequest as the Iliad or Paradise Lost, a splendid munificence which must give the man an affection to the race he had benefitted wherever he goes. Another is the power that virtue and wisdom acquire. The man takes up the world into his proper being. The two-oared boat may be swamped in a squall. The vessels of Rothschild every wind blows to port. He insures himself. The Revival that comes next must be preached to man’s moral nature, and from a height of principle that subordinates all persons. It must forget historical Christianity and preach God who is, not God who was. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Eripitur persona, manet res. It must preach the Eternity of God as a practical doctrine. God manifest in the flesh of every man is a perfect rule of social life. Justify yourself to an infinite Being in the ostler and dandy and stranger, and you shall never repent. The same view might hinder me from signing a pledge. There is such an immense background to my nature that I must treat my fellow as Empire treats Empire, and God, God. My whole being is to be my pledge and declaration, and not a signature of ink. That life alone is beautiful which is conformed to an Idea. Let us not live from hand to mouth now, that we may not ever. I would not have a man dainty in his conduct. Let him not be afraid of being besmirched by being advertised in the newspapers, or by going into Athenaeums and town meetings, or by making speeches in public. Let his chapel of private thoughts be so holy that it shall perfume and separate him unto the Lord, though he lay in a kennel. Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.

This passing Hour is an edifice Which the Omnipotent cannot rebuild.

Goethe writes to his friend, September 22, 1787, from Rome, “It is really cheering that these four pretty volumes, the result of half a life, should seek me out in Rome. I can truly say, there is no word therein which has not been lived, felt, enjoyed, suffered, thought, and they speak to me now all the livelier.” The vessel that carried him from Palermo to Naples was in danger, and the ship’s company roared at the master. “The master was silent, and seemed ever to think only of the chance of saving the ship; but for me, to whom from youth anarchy was more dreadful than death itself, it was impossible longer to be silent.” “For the narrowed mind, whatever he attempts is still a trade; for the higher an art; and the highest, in doing one thing, does all: or, to speak less paradoxically, in the one thing which he does rightly, he sees the likeness of all which is done rightly.” (Volume xxi, p. 51.)....

Waldo lectured in Salem. This was the 3rd lecture of the series.

Hymne an den Unendlichen D.232 for vocal quartet and piano by Franz Schubert to words of Schiller was performed for the initial time, in the Vienna Redoutensaal.

The Alert arrived in Santa Barbara and Richard Henry Dana, Jr. had a chance to catch up on Boston news and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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also news of the graduation of some of his Harvard College classmates.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: We just missed of seeing the California, for she had sailed three days before, bound to Monterey, to enter her cargo and procure her license, and thence to San Francisco, etc. Captain Arthur left files of Boston papers for Captain T______, which, after they had been read and talked over in the cabin, I procured from my friend the third mate. One file was of all the Boston Transcripts for the month of August, 1835, and the rest were about a dozen Daily Advertisers and Couriers, of different dates. After all, there is nothing in a strange land like a newspaper from home. Even a letter, in many respects, is nothing, in comparison with it. It carries you back to the spot, better than anything else. It is almost equal to clairvoyance. The names of the streets, with the things advertised, are almost as good as seeing the signs; and while reading “Boy lost!” one can almost hear the bell and well-known voice of “Old Wilson,” crying the boy as “strayed, stolen, or mislaid!” Then there was the Commencement at Cambridge, and the full account of the exercises at the graduating of my own class. A list of all those familiar names, (beginning as usual with Abbot, and ending with W.,) which, as I read them over, one by one, brought up their faces and characters as I had known them in the various scenes of college life. Then I imagined them upon the stage, speaking their orations, dissertations, colloquies, etc., with the gestures and tones of each, and tried to fancy the manner in which each would handle his subject,

* * * * *, handsome, showy, and superficial; * * * *, with his strong head, clear brain, cool self-possession; * * *, modest, sensitive, and underrated; * * * * *, the mouth-piece of the debating clubs, noisy, vaporous, and democratic;

and so following. Then I could see them receiving their A.Bs. from the dignified, feudal-looking President, with his “auctoritate mihi commissa,” and walking off the stage with their diplomas in their hands; while upon the very same day, their classmate was walking up and down California beach with a hide upon his head. Every watch below, for a week, I pored over these papers, until I was sure there could be nothing in them that had escaped my attention, and was ashamed to keep them any longer. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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MARCH 1836

March: This month’s issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:

HARVARDIANA HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March: At some point this month Waldo Emerson delivered the 4th lecture of his current series in Salem, but we don’t know the exact date (perhaps it was on the 1st of the month). Waldo’s brother Charles Chauncy Emerson, coming home to Concord from Boston, was obliged to ride on top of the stagecoach and caught a bad cold. He would go down to Staten Island and stay with his brother Judge William Emerson while seeking some relief from “this lake of fire I am bearing about in my breast,” and would collapse and die of tuberculosis after a walk on May 9th.

The engagement of his brother Charles, who resided with Mr. and Mrs. Emerson, to Miss Elizabeth Sherman Hoar of Concord, had had much to do with their decision to purchase a home there. They had added new rooms to the house they purchased, expecting that he would soon bring his bride to live with them (the plan was for them to be wed during the month of September after an engagement of three years). Madam Ruth Haskins Emerson would then have had the joy of having two grown sons under the same roof with her, along with their wives, and potentially their children as well. But this was not to be. Of Charles his grieving brother would write: — And here I am at home again. My brother, my friend, my ornament, my joy and pride has fallen by the wayside, — or rather has risen out of this dust.... Beautiful without any parallel in my experience of young men was his life; happiest his death. Miserable is my own prospect from whom my friend is taken.... I read now his pages, I remember all his words and motives without any pang, so healthy and humane a life it was, and not like Edward’s, a tragedy of poverty and sickness tearing genius.... I have felt in him the inestimable advantage, when God allows it, of finding a brother and a friend in one.

This grieving brother would write to his other brother William: — Concord, May 15, 1836. ... At the church this morning, before the prayers, notes of the families were read [desiring the prayers of the congregation] and one from Dr. Ripley, and one, “many young people, friends of the deceased, join in the same request.” As it was unusual it was pleasing. Mr. Goodwin preached in the morning from the text, “Who knoweth the time of his death?” and made affectionate and sympathetic remembrance of Charles. Grandfather, [Dr. Ripley] in the afternoon, called him by name in his own rugged style of Indian eloquence. “This event seems to me,” he said, “loud and piercing, like thunder and lightning. While many aged and burdensome are spared, this beloved youth is cut down in the morning.”

This grieving brother would write about Charles at the end of the chapter “Discipline” of NATURE. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 2, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson lectured in Salem. This was lecture Number 5 of the series, presumably about Martin Luther. He would receive $25. THE LIST OF LECTURES

At San Antonio, in the northern province of Mejico, Tejas, General Antonio López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón and the Mexican army had staged a siege that finally, at some cost, had overwhelmed the 179 defenders of the Alamo fortification. Among those trapped there and eliminated, in what would eventually become known as “The Battle for Texas Independence” (see below), had been Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and Colonel Travis. General Santa Ana would later be defeated at San Jacinto in a battle against troops led by Sidney Sherman and Sam Houston, and the new Republic of Texas would be able to assert a claim to all the land between the Rio Grande and Nueces rivers. On this day a constituent assembly named David Burnet as president and Lorenzo de Zavala as vice-president and this northern province declared independence from Mejico. READ THE FULL TEXT

General Houston celebrated his 43rd birthday as the republic declared its independence from Mexico. These were free white men, Texians with Kentucky squirrel rifles, and they could hold slaves if they wanted to — and no little brown greaser was going to come around and tell them they shouldn’t. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 5, Saturday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:55

A man should stand among his fellow men as one coal lies in the fire it has kindled, radiating heat, but lost in the general flame. Task work is good for idlers, and man is an idler. Its greatest disadvantage is that when you accept mechanical measures instead of spiritual ones, you are prone to fill up the chasms of your prophecy with prose. The moment we enter into the higher thoughts, fame is no more affecting to the ear than the faint tinkle of the passing sleigh bell. Gradation: that is one of the lessons which human life is appointed to learn....

Nature has that congruity that all its parts make a similar impression on one mind; of the beautiful on the poet; of the lucrative on the merchant; etc. In the talk this afternoon I was instructed that every man has certain questions which always he proposes to the Eternal, and that his life and fortune, his ascetic, are so moulded as to constitute the answers, if only he will read his consciousness aright. I ask one question with eagerness; my friend, another. I have no curiosity respecting historical Christianity; respecting persons and miracles: I take the phenomenon as I find it, and let it have its effect on me, careless whether it is a poem or a chronicle. Charles would know whether it covers the dimensions of what is in man; whether the Cross is an idea in the divine mind? I am the practical Idealist in the view mentioned above. The comfort is great of looking out of the straw and rags of our fortune steadfastly to the First Cause, and saying, Whilst I hold my faith, I have the virtue that can turn these cobwebs into majesty, whilst I remain a watcher for what thought, what Revelation, Thou canst yet impart.... All cultivation tends steadily to degrade nature into an organ, a spectacle, an expedient. Man’s enchanted dust. Strange is it to me how man is holden on a curb-rein and hindered from knowing, and drop by drop or shade by shade thoughts trickle and loiter upon him, and no reason under heaven can he give, or get a glimpse of why he should not grow wiser faster, moving about in worlds not realized. All things work together for good unto them that love God. No man is the Idealist’s enemy. He accepts all. Last week I went to Salem. At the Lafayette Hotel where I lodged, every five or ten minutes the barkeepers came into the sitting-room to arrange their hair and collars at the looking-glass. So many joys has the kind God provided for us dear creatures.

Giuseppe Verdi was appointed maestro di musica in Busseto.

Sam Houston left the Texas Constitutional Convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos on his way to San Antonio.

55. At “Man’s enchanted dust,” Emerson adds in a footnote that “Charles thinks that Homer is the first Poet, Shakspear the second, and that the third will be greatest of all, the reflective.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Richard Henry Dana, Jr. received news that from that point forward, his ship the Alert would be generally coasting south in preparation for eventually sailing back home around the Horn to Boston harbor.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Saturday, March 5th. This was an important day in our almanac, for it was on this day that we were first assured that our voyage was really drawing to a close. The captain gave orders to have the ship ready for getting under weigh; and observed that there was a good breeze to take us down to San Pedro. Then we were not going up to windward. Thus much was certain, and was soon known, fore and aft; and when we went in the gig to take him off, he shook hands with the people on the beach, and said that he never expected to see Santa Barbara again. This settled the matter, and sent a thrill of pleasure through the heart of every one in the boat. We pulled off with a will, saying to ourselves (I can speak for myself at least)– “Good-by, Santa Barbara!– This is the last pull here– No more duckings in your breakers, and slipping from your cursed south-easters!” The news was soon known aboard, and put life into everything when we were getting under weigh. Each one was taking his last look at the mission, the town, the breakers on the beach, and swearing that no money would make him ship to see them again; and when all hands tallied on to the cat- fall, the chorus of “Time for us to go!” was raised for the first time, and joined in, with full swing, by everybody. One would have thought we were on our voyage home, so near did it seem to us, though there were yet three months for us on the coast. We left here the young Englishman, George Marsh, of whom I have before spoken, who was wrecked upon the Pelew Islands. He left us to take the berth of second mate on board the Ayacucho, which was lying in port. He was well qualified for this, and his education would enable him to rise to any situation on board ship. I felt really sorry to part from him. There was something about him which excited my curiosity; for I could not, for a moment, doubt that he was well born, and, in early life, well bred. There was the latent gentleman about him, and the sense of honor, and no little of the pride, of a young man of good family. The situation was offered him only a few hours before we sailed; and though he must give up returning to America, yet I have no doubt that the change from a dog’s berth to an officer’s, was too agreeable to his feelings to be declined. We pulled him on board the Ayacucho, and when he left the boat he gave each of its crew a piece of money, except myself, and shook hands with me, nodding his head, as much as to say,– “We understand one another.” and sprang on board. Had I known, an hour sooner, that he was to leave us, I would have made an effort to get from him the true history of his early life. He knew that I had no faith in the story which he told the crew, and perhaps, in the moment of parting from me, probably forever, he would have given me the true account. Whether I shall ever meet him again, or whether his manuscript narrative of his adventures in the Pelew Islands, which would be creditable to him and interesting to the world, will ever see the light, I cannot tell. His is one of those cases which are more numerous than those suppose, who have never lived anywhere but in their own homes, and never walked but in one line from their cradles to their graves. We must come down from our heights, and leave our straight paths, for the byways and low places of life, if we would learn truths by strong contrasts; and in hovels, in forecastles, and among our own outcasts in foreign lands, see what has been wrought upon our fellow-creatures by accident, hardship, or vice. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 6, Sunday: In a predawn assault after an 11-day battle the garrison at the Alamo –an unfinished old Franciscan mission complex outside the pueblo of San Antonio in the “Texas” district of Mexico that had not been in use as a mission for a good deal of time and had been recycled as a fort of sorts– was eliminated by a Mexican army of 4,000 under General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.56 Davy Crockett, William Travis, Colonel James Bowie, and 143 other United States citizens and their slaves, led by William Travis, had through some inexplicable obtuseness stuck around to get killed.

James Bowie

Davy Crockett

A teacher on Long Island, Walt Whitman, himself not among the fallen, nevertheless found the Eastern

56. By this point the old mission of the Franciscans in the Mejican province of Tejas, the mission which had been founded under the name San Antonio de Valero, was being generally characterized as “the Alamo.” It had picked up this nickname because of a Spanish cavalry unit that had been using it as a headquarters, that having been the designation for this cavalry unit. (“Remember La Mission San Antonio de Valero!!” — well, it wouldn’t have worked very well as an Anglo-Saxon battle chant, would it?) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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newspaper reports of this defeat to be of considerable interest (SONG OF MYSELF, 34):

REMEMBERING THE ALAMO ...I tell not the fall of Alamo, Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo, The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo,... HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1 At that time the fee for teaching an older child was usually about a shilling or 12 /2 cents and teaching, for a male teacher, usually brought in an income of about $200.00 per year.57 Whitman was supplementing this teaching income by writing for various New-York papers: “Specimen Days”

MY PASSION FOR FERRIES Living in Brooklyn or New York city from this time forward, my life, then, and still more the following years, was curiously identified with Fulton ferry, already becoming the greatest of its sort in the world for general importance, volume, variety, rapidity, and picturesqueness. Almost daily, [Page 701] later, (’50 to ’60,) I cross’d on the boats, often up in the pilot-houses where I could get a full sweep, absorbing shows, accompaniments, surroundings. What oceanic currents, eddies, underneath — the great tides of humanity also, with ever-shifting movements. Indeed, I have always had a passion for ferries; to me they afford inimitable, streaming, never-failing, living poems. The river and bay scenery, all about New York island, any time of a fine day — the hurrying, splashing sea-tides — the changing panorama of steamers, all sizes, often a string of big ones outward bound to distant ports — the myriads of white-sail’d schooners, sloops, skiffs, and the marvelously beautiful yachts — the majestic sound boats as they rounded the Battery and came along towards 5, afternoon, eastward bound — the prospect off towards Staten island, or down the Narrows, or the other way up the Hudson — what refreshment of spirit such sights and experiences gave me years ago (and many a time since.) My old pilot friends, the Balsirs, Johnny Cole, Ira Smith, William White, and my young ferry friend, Tom Gere — how well I remember them all.

57. To read a story of a teacher/student sex scandal which may or may not have had Walt Whitman as its principal, see Reynolds, David, WALT WHITMAN’S AMERICA (Knopf):

That I could forget the mockers and insults! That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the bludgeons and hammers! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 6th of 3M 1836 / Our meeting this morning was indeed a very solid good one — tho’ mostly in Silence - it Seemed to me there was scarcely an Idle or irreverend mind present - Father had a short testimony to bear - soon after which the Meeting closed. — Good meeting again in the Afternoon & Father had a little to say — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 7, Monday: Address of the Honorable S.F. Austin at Louisville, Kentucky. READ THE FULL TEXT

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. arrived in San Pedro. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 9, Wednesday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr.’s Alert arrived at San Pedro for the final time.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Two days brought us to San Pedro. and two days more (to our no small joy) gave us our last view of that place, which was universally called the hell of California, and seemed designed, in every way, for the wear and tear of sailors. Not even the last view could bring out one feeling of regret. No thanks, thought I, as we left the sandy shores in the distance, for the hours I have walked over your stones, barefooted, with hides on my head;– for the burdens I have carried up your steep, muddy hill;– for the duckings in your surf; and for the long days and longer nights passed on your desolate hill, watching piles of hides, hearing the sharp bark of your eternal coati, and the dismal hooting of your owls. As I bade good-by to each successive place, I felt as though one link after another were struck from the chain of my servitude. Having kept close in shore, for the land-breeze, we passed the mission of San Juan Capestrano the same night, and saw distinctly, by the bright moonlight, the hill which I had gone down by a pair of halyards in search of a few paltry hides. “Forsan et haec olim,” thought I, and took my last look of that place too. And on the next morning we were under the high point of San Diego. The flood tide took us swiftly in, and we came-to, opposite our hide-house, and prepared to get everything in trim for a long stay. This was our last port. Here we were to discharge everything from the ship, clean her out, smoke her, take in our hides, wood, water, etc., and set sail for Boston. While all this was doing, we were to be still in one place, and the port was a safe one, and there was no fear of south-easters. Accordingly, having picked out a good berth, in the stream, with a good smooth beach opposite, for a landing” Place and within two cables’ length of our hide-house, we moored ship, unbent all the sails, sent down the top-gallant yards and all the studding-sail booms, and housed the top-gallant masts. The boats were then hove out, and all the sails, spare spars, the stores, the rigging not rove, and, in fact, everything which was not in daily use, sent ashore, and stowed away in the house. Then went all our hides and horns, and we left hardly anything in the ship but her ballast, and this we made preparation to heave out, the next day. At night, after we had knocked off, and were sitting round in the forecastle, smoking and talking and taking sailor’s pleasure, we congratulated ourselves upon being in that situation in which we had wished ourselves every time we had come into San Diego. “If we were only here for the last time,” we had often said, “with our top-gallant masts housed and our sails unbent!”– and now we had our wish. Six weeks, or two months, of the hardest work we had yet seen, was before us, and then– “Good-by to California!” We turned-in early, knowing that we might expect an early call; and sure enough, before the stars had quite faded, “All hands ahoy!” and we were turned-to, heaving out ballast. A regulation of the port forbids any ballast to be thrown overboard; accordingly, our long-boat was lined inside with rough boards and brought alongside the gangway, but where one tub-full went into the boat, twenty went overboard. This is done by every vessel, for the ballast can make but little difference in the channel, and it saves more than a week of labor, which would be spent in loading the boats, rowing them to the point, and unloading them. When any people from the Presidio were on board, the boat was hauled up and ballast thrown in; but when the coast was clear, she was dropped astern again, and the ballast fell overboard. This is one of those petty frauds which every vessel practises in ports of inferior foreign nations, and which are lost sight of, among the countless deeds of greater weight which are hardly less common. Fortunately a sailor, not being a free agent in work aboard ship, is not accountable; yet the fact of being constantly employed, without thought, in such things, begets an indifference to the rights of others. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Second week of March: During fumigation of the Alert, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. read aloud from Scott’s WOODSTOCK (1829) for the amusement of the sailors.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Friday, and a part of Saturday, we were engaged in this work, until we had thrown out all but what we wanted under our cargo on the passage home; when, as the next day was Sunday, and a good day for smoking ship, we cleared everything out of the cabin and forecastle, made a slow fire of charcoal, birch bark, brimstone, and other matters, on the ballast in the bottom of the hold, calked up the hatches and every open seam, and pasted over the cracks of the windows, and the slides of the scuttles, and companionway. Wherever smoke was seen coming out, we calked and pasted, and, so far as we could, made the ship smoke tight. The captain and officers slept under the awning which was spread over the quarter-deck; and we stowed ourselves away under an old studding-sail, which we drew over one side of the forecastle. The next day, from fear that something might happen, orders were given for no one to leave the ship, and, as the decks were lumbered up with everything, we could not wash them down, so we had nothing to do, all day long. Unfortunately, our books were where we could not get at them, and we were turning about for something to do, when one man recollected a book he had left in the galley. He went after it, and it proved to be Woodstock. This was a great windfall, and as all could not read it at once, I, being the scholar of the company, was appointed reader. I got a knot of six or eight about me, and no one could have had a more attentive audience. Some laughed at the “scholars,” and went over the other side of the forecastle, to work, and spin their yarns; but I carried the day, and had the cream of the crew for my hearers. Many of the reflections, and the political parts, I omitted, but all the narrative they were delighted with; especially the descriptions of the Puritans, and the sermons and harangues of the Round-head soldiers. The gallantry of Charles, Dr. Radcliffe’s plots, the knavery of “trusty Tompkins,”– in fact, every part seemed to chain their attention. Many things which, while I was reading, I had a misgiving about, thinking them above their capacity, I was surprised to find them enter into completely. I read nearly all day, until sundown; when, as soon as supper was over, as I had nearly finished, they got a light from the galley; and by skipping what was less interesting, I carried them through to the marriage of Everard, and the restoration of Charles the Second, before eight o’clock. The next morning, we took the battens from the hatches, and opened the ship. A few stifled rats were found; and what bugs, cockroaches, fleas, and other vermin, there might have been on board, must have unrove their life- lines before the hatches were opened. The ship being now ready, we covered the bottom of the hold over, fore and aft, with dried brush for dunnage, and having levelled everything away, we were ready to take in our cargo. All the hides that had been collected since the California left the coast, (a little more than two years,) amounting to about forty thousand, were cured, dried, and stowed away in the house, waiting for our good ship to take them to Boston. Now began the operation of taking in our cargo, which kept us hard at work, from the grey of the morning till star-light, for six weeks, with the exception of Sundays, and of just time to swallow our meals. To carry the work on quicker, a division of labor was made. Two men threw the hides down from the piles in the house, two more picked them up and put them on a long horizontal pole, raised a few feet from the ground, where they were beaten, by two more, with flails, somewhat like those used in threshing wheat. When beaten, they were taken from this pole by two more, and placed upon a platform of boards; and ten or a dozen men, with their trowsers rolled up, were constantly going, back and forth, from the platform to the boat, which was kept off where she would just float, with the hides upon their heads. The throwing the hides upon the pole was the most difficult work, and required a sleight of hand which was only to be got by long practice. As I was known for a hide-curer, this post was assigned to me, and I continued at it for six or eight days, tossing, in that time, from eight to ten thousand hides, until my wrists became so lame that I gave in; and was transferred to the gang that was employed in filling the boats, where I remained for the rest of the time. As we were obliged to carry the hides on our heads from fear of their getting wet, we each had a piece of sheepskin sewed into the inside of our hats, with the wool next to our heads, and thus were able to bear the weight, day after day, which would otherwise have soon worn off our hair, and borne hard upon our skulls. Upon the whole, ours was the best berth; for though the water was nipping cold, early in the morning and late at night, and being so continually wet was rather an exposure, yet we got rid of the constant dust and dirt from the beating of the hides, and being all of us young and hearty, did not mind the exposure. The older men of the crew, whom it would have been dangerous to have kept in the water, remained on board with the mate, to stow the hides away, as fast as they were brought off by the boats. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONTINUED:

We continued at work in this manner until the lower hold was filled to within four feet of the beams, when all hands were called aboard to commence steeving. As this is a peculiar operation, it will require a minute description. Before stowing the hides, as I have said, the ballast is levelled off, just above the keelson, and then loose dunnage placed upon it, on which the hides rest. The greatest care is used in stowing, to make the ship hold as many hides as possible. It is no mean art, and a man skilled in it is an important character in California. Many a dispute have I heard raging high between professed “beach-combers,” as to whether the hides should be stowed “shingling,” or back-to-back, and flipper-to-flipper;” upon which point there was an entire and bitter division of sentiment among the savans. We adopted each method at different periods of the stowing, and parties ran high in the forecastle, some siding with “old Bill” in favor of the former, and others scouting him, and relying upon “English Bob” of the Ayacucho, who had been eight years in California, and was willing to risk his life and limb for the latter method. At length a compromise was effected, and a middle course, of shifting the ends and backs at every lay, was adopted, which worked well, and which, though they held it inferior to their own, each party granted was better than that of the other. Having filled the ship up, in this way, to within four feet of her beams, the process of steeving commenced, by which an hundred hides are got into a place where one could not be forced by hand, and which presses the hides to the utmost, sometimes starting the beams of the ship, resembling in its effects the jack-screws which are used in stowing cotton. Each morning we went ashore, and beat and brought off as many hides as we could steeve in the course of the day, and, after breakfast, went down into the hold, where we remained at work until night. The whole length of the hold, from stem to stern, was floored off level, and we began with raising a pile in the after part, hard against the bulkhead of the run, and filling it up to the beams, crowding in as many as we could by hand and pushing in with oars; when a large “book” was made of from twenty-five to fifty hides, doubled at the backs, and put into one another, like the leaves of a book. An opening was then made between two hides in the pile, and the back of the outside hide of the book inserted. Two long, heavy spars, called steeves, made of the strongest wood, and sharpened off like a wedge at one end, were placed with their wedge ends into the inside of the hide which was the centre of the book, and to the other end of each, straps were fitted, into which large tackles were hooked, composed each of two huge purchase blocks, one hooked to the strap on the end of the steeve, and the other into a dog, fastened into one of the beams, as far aft as it could be got. When this was arranged, and the ways greased upon which the book was to slide, the falls of the tackles were stretched forward, and all hands tallied on, and bowsed away until the book was well entered; when these tackles were nippered, straps and toggles clapped upon the falls, and two more luff tackles hooked on, with dogs, in the same manner; and thus, by luff upon luff, the power was multiplied, until into a pile in which one hide more could not be crowded by hand, an hundred or an hundred and fifty were often driven in by this complication of purchases. When the last luff was hooked on, all hands were called to the rope– cook, steward, and all– and ranging ourselves at the falls, one behind the other, sitting down on the hides, with our heads just even with the beams, we set taught upon the tackles, and striking up a song, and all lying back at the chorus, we bowsed the tackles home, and drove the large books chock in out of sight. The sailor’s songs for capstans and falls are of a peculiar kind, having a chorus at the end of each line. The burden is usually sung, by one alone, and, at the chorus, all hands join in,– and the louder the noise, the better. With us, the chorus seemed almost to raise the decks of the ship, and might be heard at a great distance, ashore. A song is as necessary to sailors as the drum and fife to a soldier. They can’t pull in time, or pull with a will, without it. Many a time, when a thing goes heavy, with one fellow yo-ho-ing, a lively song, like “Heave, to the girls!” “Nancy oh!” “Jack Crosstree,” etc., has put life and strength into every arm. We often found a great difference in the effect of the different songs in driving in the hides. Two or three songs would be tried, one after the other, with no effect;– not an inch could be got upon the tackles– when a new song, struck up, seemed to hit the humor of the moment, and drove the tackles “two blocks” at once. “Heave round hearty!” “Heave round hearty!” “Captain gone ashore!” and the like, might do for common pulls, but in an emergency, when we wanted a heavy, “raise-the-dead” pull, which should start the beams of the ship, there was nothing like “Time for us to go!” “Round the corner,” or “Hurrah! hurrah! my hearty bullies!” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONCLUDED: This was the most lively part of our work. A little boating and beach work in the morning; then twenty or thirty men down in a close hold, where we were obliged to sit down and slide about, passing hides, and rowsing about the great steeves, tackles, and dogs, singing out at the falls, and seeing the ship filling up every day. The work was as hard as it could well be. There was not a moment’s cessation from Monday morning till Saturday night, when we were generally beaten out, and glad to have a full night’s rest, a wash and shift of clothes, and a quiet Sunday. During all this times,– which would have startled Dr. Graham– we lived upon almost nothing but fresh beef; fried beefsteaks, three times a day,– morning, noon, and night. At morning and night we had a quart of tea to each man; and an allowance of about a pound of hard bread a day; but our chief article of food was the beef. A mess, consisting of six men, had a large wooden kid piled up with beefsteaks, cut thick, and fried in fat, with the grease poured over them. Round this we sat, attacking it with our jack-knives and teeth, and with the appetite of young lions, and sent back an empty kid to the galley. This was done three times a day. How many pounds each man ate in a day, I will not attempt to compute. A whole bullock (we ate liver and all) lasted us but four days. Such devouring of flesh, I will venture to say, was seldom known before. What one man ate in a day, over a hearty man’s allowance, would make a Russian’s heart leap into his mouth. Indeed, during all the time we were upon the coast, our principal food was fresh beef, and every man had perfect health; but this was a time of especial devouring; and what we should have done without meat, I cannot tell. Once or twice, when our bullocks failed and we were obliged to make a meal upon dry bread and water, it seemed like feeding upon shavings. Light and dry, feeling unsatisfied, and, at the same time, full, we were glad to see four quarters of a bullock, just killed, swinging from the fore-top. Whatever theories may be started by sedentary men, certainly no men could have gone through more hard work and exposure for sixteen months in more perfect health, and without ailings and failings, than our ship’s crew, let them have lived upon Hygela’s own baking and dressing.

March 14, Monday: The HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin left Australia.

Sam Houston continued his retreat (known now as the “Runaway Scrape”), moving eastward in a zig-zagging pattern (until April 20th). TEXAS

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 14th of 3rd M / This day 24 Years ago our only living son John was born. — I cannot pass over the event without noting it in commemoration of the Mercy & goodness of God which have followed us ever since - for tho’ we have had to partake of some bitter cups, known to few but ourselves, - yet surely Mercy & Goodness have followed us & we have partaken of many good things - both in regard to his presence often Mercifully vouchsafed & interposed for our help & support, & also in our getting along in the affairs of this world - for tho’ abounding in this respect was never Known by us yet we have been so favourd as to have sufficient for our needs & some to spare. John has so far done well, lived respectably & I hope has known a growth in religion & we believe is blessed with a good wife — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 16, Wednesday: Andrew S. Hallidie, who would eventually would be inventing the cable car, was born. (At the moment of course this must have been the further thing from his mind.)

The two men who had set fire to Mr. Hammond’s Irish tenement in South Street Place, resulting in deaths by burning, Simeon L. Crockett and Stephen Russel, were hanged in the Boston jailyard.

March 20, Sunday: David Henry Thoreau was back at Harvard College for the 3d term of his Junior year, enrolling in courses in Greek, Latin, English, Italian, mathematics, and possibly chemistry. (Thoreau would be enrolled in the study of Italian for a total of four terms, in the study of French for four terms, in the study of German for four terms, and in the study of Spanish for two terms under Francis Sales.) The Italian studies would, as always, be under the instructor Pietro Bachi. This term would continue for Thoreau only until about May 28th, when he would be obliged by illness to suspend his college studies. THOREAU RESIDENCES NEW “HARVARD MEN” HARVARD 1836 REPORT

The University of Leipzig conferred an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree on Felix Mendelssohn.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st 20th of 3 M / Our Meetings were both silent & very solid quiet opportunities - for which I was thankful Aunt Stanton fell this Afternoon & hurt her hip very badly, but it does not seem as if any bone is broken or out RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

March 22, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson lectured at the lyceum in Cambridge. He would receive $30.

March 31, Thursday: The initial monthly installment of Charles Dickens’s 1st novel appeared: THE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF THE PICKWICK CLUB.

(This was going to extend to 20 monthly magazine issues.)

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 31 of 3 M / Our Moy [Monthly] Meeting this day held in HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Town was a good Meeting Hannah Dennis, I thought was favourd in testimony —After Meeting heard my dear friend Moses Brown was very Sick RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

In his Harvard College book report on William Howitt’s THE BOOK OF THE SEASONS; OR, THE CALENDAR OF NATURE, David Henry Thoreau attempted to commit New England weather banter:

...see how familiarly that North-western plays with the coat-flaps of the traveller, or sends him over stone walls and rail fences to fish his beaver out of a pond-hole. This is indeed melancholy. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau reviewed Howitt’s effort by opinioning that this was a “book calculated to do all that books can do to excite a spirit of attachment to nature.” THE BOOK OF THE SEASONS

In consideration of all the folks who have considered Thoreau to have been an early nature writer, albeit not a good one (not one who could stick to his topic but one who persisted in interlarding his nature descriptions with distractive side attempts to set up a new religion), would it be possible to characterize WALDEN thusly, as a “book calculated to do all that books can do to excite a spirit of attachment to nature”? No. Larry Buell’s sustained analysis in THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMAGINATION to the contrary notwithstanding, no.

Our budding author also referred humorously but quite pointlessly to Captain John Cleves Symmes’s HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THEORY OF CONCENTRIC SPHERES:

The Greenlander, dwelling on the very brink of Symmes’ WALDEN hole, exposed to the rigorous cold of the northern latitudes, with the bear’s flesh and train oil to solace him, an inhabitant of snow and ice not of earth, SYMMES HOLE crawls into a snow-bank, and yet his heart is not so frozen but that he feels at home.

Thoreau cited Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Nightingale” in mockery of Howitt’s association of the month of November with the affect of melancholy. Coleridge’s poem went “‘Most musical, most melancholy’ bird! / A melancholy bird? Oh! Idle thought! / In Nature there is nothing melancholy.” Thoreau’s citation of this was

“There is nothing melancholy in Nature.” If there is, where is it?... To the eye of the dyspeptic, to be sure, all is stamped with melancholy. Let him walk out into the fields....

Also, in this essay, Thoreau disparaged those “who are destitute of pure and elevated principle, whose sordid views extend no further than the profitable, who cannot contemplate the meandering brook, without, in HDT WHAT? INDEX

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imagination, polluting its waters with a mill-wheel.” He did this, however, by alleging that such white folks were “less enviable” than

The poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him the wind.

Here he was referring, of course, to Alexander Pope’s ESSAY ON MAN and its “Lo” figure who “hears him in the wind.” One wishes this youth had possessed the wit, even at that time in his college studies, to refrain from such phrases as “less enviable” which give the appearance of being complicit with the general mythos of the dominant cultures of America, that a native American is rather a poor sort of American.

We may console ourselves, however, by noting that although Thoreau’s word choice was inappropriate, indeed quite as inelegant as his having inadvertently omitted a word from the doggerel he quoted, nevertheless the mistake reveals no particular ill will and endorses no social policy of extermination of the inferior. It might prove useful for you to contrast this with a remark Waldo Emerson’s would make a few years later in his journal, on September 10, 1840 , in which the same Popish term “poor Indian” would be mobilized merely to conclude that for us officiously to take the positive steps that would be necessary to exterminate these human-seeming nonhumans (“simular”) before their time would be a moral error — in that it would have an unfortunate moral impact on ourselves. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

WALDEN: Yet we should oftener[Walden look quote over on followingthe tafferel screen] of our craft, like curious PEOPLE OF passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors picking oakum. The other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our voyaging is only WALDEN great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to Southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that is not the game he would be after. How long, pray, would a man hunt giraffes if he could? Snipes and woodcocks also may afford rare sort; but I trust it would be nobler game to shoot one’s self.– “Direct your eye sight inward, and you’ll find A thousand regions in your mind HABINGTON Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be Expert in home-cosmography.” What does Africa, –what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes, –with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road. It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some “Symmes’ Hole” by which to get at the inside at last. England and France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast, all front on this private sea; but no bark from them has ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt the direct way to India. If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go to the wars, cowards that run away and enlist. Start now on that farthest western way, which does not pause at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor conduct toward a worn-out China or Japan, but leads on direct a tangent to this sphere, summer and winter, day and night, sun down, moon down, and at last earth down too.

LEWIS AND CLARK HENRY GRINNELL SYMMES HOLE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 31, 1836 [Review of William Howitt’s THE BOOK OF THE SEASONS; OR, THE CALENDAR OF NATURE, first published in 1951 by Professor Wendell Glick in the Huntington Library Quarterly. The “Advertisement” of the first edition (London, 1831) is dated Dec. 15, 1830. Besides the first, Harvard owns the following: (4th edition) London, 1836; (5th edition) Lon- don, 1837; (6th edition) London, 1839; (6th edition) London, 1840 (From the 6th London edition) Phila., 1842; (6th edition) London, 1856; (7th edition) London, 1846. Many others, doubtless, were in circulation. Thoreau’s review, composed six months before the publication of Emerson’s NATURE, probably introduced him to his lifelong quest for the objects and appearances peculiar to each month of the year. See Emerson’s JOURNALS, III, 460-461 (Mar. 28, 1835.) See also Emerson the Essayist, I, 411, for a note on NATURE, 12.3.] [Copy in Concord Social Library before 1836.]

THE BOOK OF THE SEASONS; OR THE CALENDAR OF NATURE, by William Howitt

1st edition, London, 1831. A rather popular work, this book went through three editions before 1850. We have here a book calculated to do all that books can do to excite a spirit of attachment to Nature—one expressly (Ibid., pp. Vi-vii. I have not attempted adapted to the climate and customs of England, but none the less acceptable to the lovers of natural scenery of whatever to call attention to Thoreau’s errors in clime or nation—neither too scientific, nor too much abounding in technical term and phrases to be comprehended by transcription or to other than his most the general reader, nor yet of too miscellaneous and catch-penny a stamp for the would-be literate or blue stockings. egregious slips in grammatical us- “My plan has been” says the author, “to furnish an original article on the general appearances of Nature in each month, age.) drawing entirely from my own regular observation through many seasons; and finally, to superadd a great variety of facts from the best sources, as well as such as occurred to myself after the principle [sic] article was written. To these See line 9. Howitt reads “regular ob- a complete table of the Migrations of Birds; a copious list of Garden Plants which come into flower in the month; a servations.” Botanical Calendar and an Entomological catalogue; a notice of Rural occupations, and finally, one of Angling, are added.” T. abbreviated his quotations. Com- pare, for example, Howitt, ed. Princ., vii: “...a Botanical Calendar, including a select number of the most beautiful or interesting British plants, and an Entomological Catalogue of about three hundred of the most common or remarkable insects; a notice of Rural Occupations, and, finally, one of An- gling, are added.”

There are certain pure and substantial pleasures, pleasures springing from a never failing source, which are absolutely “Mill-wheel.” Cf. His theme, “Advan- denied those who are destitute of pure and elevated principle, whose sordid views extend no further than the profitable, tages and Disadvantages of Foreign who cannot contemplate the meandering brook without, in imagination, polluting its waters with a mill-wheel8 Influence on American Literature” (April, before 6, 1836: “True, there are some amongst us who can contemplate the babbling brook without (in imagination) polluting its waters with a mill-wheel; but even they are prone to sing of skylarks....”

Far less enviable in my eyes, is their condition, than that of

“The poor Indian, whose untutor’d mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him [in] the wind.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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No one, perhaps, possesses materials for happiness in such abundance, or has the sources of contentment and pure enjoyment so com- [Pope, Essay on Man, I, 99-100.] pletely under his thumb, as the lover of Nature. Her devotee is never alone; the solitary vale is as the crowded city, even there may he “hold sweet converse” with nature; even, did I say? Here is she most garrulous, most communicative; this her home—her country- seat, where she resides all the year round. This love is universal, it is emphatically natural. The inhabitant of the desert talks of home— prized home—he leaves home and he returns home; to him there is nothing like home and her homely comforts. The desert, in his [See Milton, Paradise Lost, IX, 909, eyes, is blooming as the rose. The Greenlander, dwelling on the very brink of Symmes’ hole exposed to the rigorous cold of the northern latitudes, with the bear’s flesh and train oil to solace him, an inhabitant of snow and ice not of earth, crawls into a snow-bank, and and Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen yet his heart is not so frozen but that he feels at home. The tanned and dusky African realizes the delights of “de dear native land” in of Verona, I, iii,31.] dancing a jog on (not under) the equator. We find that no region is so barren or so desolate as not to afford some human being a home. But Nature’s home is everywhere, and in whatever clime, her devotee is at home with her. The attachment to his country which is manifested by the mariner, as he looses [sic] sight of “the blue hue of his native land,” (as Irving has beautifully expressed it,) and which is at no time more strongly felt than when, on some distant strand his thoughts revert to the well-known steeple, the most conspicuous object in a country village, the slowly winding stream which flows at the foot of the hill where he netted in Autumn and coasted in Winter, the cart path that leads down to the great meadows where the grapes were as thick as blackberries and cranberries [Isaiah 35:1.] were to be had for the picking, this attachment, I say, this love of natural scenery, (for they are equivalent—which explains the truth of the observation, that no one is more fond of home than the traveller,) is so interwoven with the best feelings of our nature that it [Symes’ Hole is mentioned in the last would seem obscure to suppose it associated with meaner and baser sentiments, or vice in any shape. The great and good of every chapter of Walden. For commentary age and nation have felt its influence. Poetry, from Chaucer’s to the present time has teemed with it. The lost of his sight did not shut on Capt. John Cleves Symmes and out Nature from the view of Milton; the rich store-house of his mind was a source of serene and elevated pleasure in his hours of his belief that the earth was hollow darkness—the inmost recesses of the Garden of Eden were as plainly visible to him as the light of day could have made them. “Be- and open at the poles (Theory of Con- tween the poet and nature,” says Schlegel, “no less than between the poet and man, there is a sympathy of feeling. Not only in the centric Spheres, 1826) see Joseph song of the Nightingale, or in the melodies to which all men listen, but even in the roar of the stream, and the rushing of the forest, Jones, Index to Walden, Austin, the poet thinks that he hears a kindred voice of sorrow or of gladness; as if spirits and feelings like our own were calling to use from [1955], p. 49] afar, or seeking to sympathize and communicate with us from the utmost nearness to which their natures will allow them to approach us. It is for the purpose of listening to these tones, and of holding mysterious converse with the soul of nature, that every great poetry is a lover of solitude.”9 So much for Germany; with how much more truth would these remarks apply to America; “America,” in the words of Unidentified. The language resembles the Novelist, “with her beautiful and stupendous scenes of nature; her immense lakes; her broad and sweeping rivers; that of passages in Lydia Maria (Fran- her clime melting into all the variety of the globe; her cataracts shaking the earth; her mountains kissing the heavens; cis) Child’s The Rebels; or, Boston be- her solitudes and forests, yet hushed in primeval silence.” fore the Revolution (see esp. The “Preface”) and in Irving’s “The Au- thor’s Account of Himself” at the beginning of The Sketch Book.

January is derived from the Latin, Janus, door-keeper of heaven, and God of peace. Under this head is described a great Cf. Whittier’s “Snow-Bound: A Winter storm which will serve as a specimen of the author’s style, “Frost-keen biting frost is in the ground and in the air, a Idyl” and Emerson’s “The Snow- bitter scythe-edged, perforating wind from the north; or what is worse, the north-east, sweeps the descending snow Storm.” This much of Howitt the New along, whirling it from the open fields, and driving it against whatever opposes its course. People who are obliged to Englander could fully appreciate. be passing to and fro muffle up their faces, and bow their heads to the blast. There is no loitering, no street-gossiping, no stopping to make recognition of each other; they shuffle along the most wintery objects of the scene, bearing on their fronts the tokens of the storm. Against every house, rock or bank the snow-drift accumulates. It curls over the tops of walls and hedges in fantastic wildness, forming often the most perfect curves, resembling the scrolls of Ionic 10Ibid., pp. 4-5. capitals, and showing beneath romantic caves and canopies.”10

February is so called from the Roman custom of burning expiatory sacrifices, Februalia. “Nothing can perhaps illus- trate so livingly our idea of a spirit,” says Howitt, “as a mighty wind—present in its amazing power and sublimity, yet seen only in its effects. We are whirled along with its careening torrent with irresistable [sic] power.”11 Who can stand 11Ibid., p.42. on the verge of the forest, at the approach of nightfall, on the eve of a tempest, and hear it as it comes rushing and roaring in its mad career, without being influenced by overwhelming ideas of majesty, grandeur, and the awful power of the elements.

March, the first month in antiquity, was named so after Mars the god of War, because he was the father of their first prince. All Nature is now reviving; the earth throws off her snowy mantle and puts on the garb of spring; the squirrel comes forth from his subterranean abode to snuff the fresh air, and commences his sprightly gambols along the walls and hedges, or skip from tree to tree, seemingly in mere sport. The air is still too chilly for the feathered race, though the shrill and doleful note of the jay is heard in the orchards.

April is so called from the Latin, Aprilis, which is derived from Aperire, to open. The allusion is obvious. “April show- T. had recently completed Dugald ers/Bring forth May flowers,” is one of the old sayings which possess no intrinsic merit of their own, but derive all Stewart’s ELEMENTS OF THE PHILOSO- their interest from the association of ideas, as Stewart would say. PHY OF THE HUMAN MIND—required for the first term of the Junior year. Chap. V. deals with the association of ideas. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May is so called from the Goddess Maia. This is, perhaps, the pleasantest month of the 12. The Botanist may now com- Howitt’s discussion of May is literary mence his rambles without much fear of suffocating heat or intense cold. Now also commences the harvest of death, and concerns the month of marriages. and woe be unto the unlucky squirrel[,] bob lincoln, or black bird that [ventures?] to approach the haunts of man, or T. substitutes a memorable picture of sit within the range of an old French-piece or horse-pistol! Every stripling that can shoulder a musket, or can hold up New England boyhood in Concord vil- one end while the other rests on a rail, or can muster courage to touch off a wooden cannon without shutting his eyes lage. Compare the opening pages of is up and stirring betimes. And then what a rattling of ramrods! What a demand for wadding paper with which to stuff “Higher Laws” in Walden. the pockets of the ragged troop that one may see assembled around the instrument of death, ready to counsel and assist, nay, even to take charge of the weapon itself should the absence of its present proprietor make it necessary. And now [Continued from p. 144.] See Outre- if some stray sparrow should have the imprudence to perch upon a neighboring post, tree, or rock, or if a bob-lincoln Mer, II, 245-247: “...amid these holding in utter contempt the marksmanship of the musket-bearer, should approach within gunshot, then what a scat- scenes and musings—amid all the teration takes place; some are seen to ensconce themselves behind a tree, others fall flat upon the ground, while some novelties of the old world, and the favored 2 or 3 boldly accompany their leader to the work of death. The barrel is slowly raised, the now diminished quick succession of images...there group satisfy themselves that the right angle of elevation is attained, and then the hero of the day, with the rest to back were always fond regrets and long- him pulls the trigger. Tick, goes the lock, and now succeeds a hissing noise which proves the success of the experiment, ings after the land of my birth, lurking showing that the powder is subjected to the process of ignition; endued with the patience of Job our hero abides the in the secret corners of my heart. result. The passerby will not probably have proceeded many rods before he is startled by the report, which reverberat- When I stood by the seashore, and lis- ing through the surrounding forest produces a startling effect upon myriads of the smaller birds and quadrupeds, and, tened to the melancholy and familiar perhaps disturbs, for a moment, the calm, unruffled serenity of the victim. Then for the hurry, bustle, and confusion of roar of its waves, it seemed but a step the motley crew who are hastening to be in at the death. The victim is finally transmitted to the hands of the executioner from the threshold of a foreign land to as completely base and destitute of feathers, as the callow young who are piping anything but melody in the deserted the fireside of home; and when I nest. watched the out-bound sail, fading over the water’s edge, and losing itself in the blue mists of the sea, my heart

June, probably from Juno, in honor of whom a festival was held at the beginning of this month. “June,” says Howitt, “is the very carnival of Nature, and she is prodigal of her luxuries. It is luxury to walk abroad indulging every sense with sweetness, loveliness, and harmony. It is luxury to stand beneath the forest side, when all is still and basking at noon; and to see the landscape suddenly darken, the black and tumultuous clouds assemble as at a signal; to hear the awful thunder crash upon the listening air; and then to mark the glorious bow rise on the lurid rear of the tempest, the sun laugh jocundly abroad, and Every bathed leaf and blossom fair Pour out its soul to the delicious air.

It is luxury to plunge into the cool river; and, if we are tempted to turn angles, it must be now. To steal away into a quiet valley, by a winding stream, buried, completely buried, in fresh grass; the foam-like flower of the meadow sweet, the crimson loose-strife, and the large blue geranium nodding beside us; the dragon fly, the ephemera, and the king- fisher glancing to and fro; the trees above casting their flickering shadows on the stream; and one of our 10,000 volumes of delightful literature in our pockets—then indeed might one be a most patient angler though taking not a single fin.”12 12Outre-Mer, II, pp. 176-7. Should read: “176-178.”

July, from J. Caesar. “Now is the general season of hay-making. There is a sound of tinkling teams and waggons rolling along lanes and fields the whole country over, ay, even at midnight, till at length, the fragrant ricks rise in the farm- yard, and the pale, smooth shaven fields are left in solitary beauty.” 13 13Outre-Mer, II, pp. xxv. Should read: “224-225.”

Honest old Isaak Walton has done much in his quaint style, to impart an interest to quiet haunts and streams—to cool T. here summarizes Howitt’s p. Xxv. and shady banks, which if they are ever interesting are peculiarly so this month. Nature has spread her flowering carpet over the earth, and a thousand ripening berries invite the wanderer to prolong his walks. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August, from Augustus. The grand feature of this month is Corn Harvest. Berries of almost every description are now perfectly ripe; the sports-man may be seen, drenched with the morning dew,--rambling about the fields, or reconnoi- tering the hedges, in search of game; the orchards assume a rosy tint, which is a sign that the season for commencing depredations has already set in. A walk in any direction is delightful, but a quiet cart-path leading through the woods to some sylvan dell, some well known spot, a “Sleepy Hollow” for instance, is preferable. Sept. It is the height of enjoyment, reclined at length upon the turf, in the shade of a noble tree, to give reins to the imagination—to hearken to the audible silence that prevails around the hum of 10000 insects with which the air is filled—the materials, it would seem of which the atmosphere is composed. It is at such times that man realizes that he is indeed the Lord of Creation. What can be more majestic than a stately oak presiding with parental care over the surrounding fields, with arms out- stretched, as it were, to protect the traveller! What an idea of independence it suggests! There it stands and there it has stood for ages; generation after generation has passed away, and still we talk of the oak; from year to year the birds have build their nests and carolled in its branches, and the squirrel frisked from bough to bough; The tired Indian, perchance, in times gone by, has sough shelter and refreshment in its shade. To use the words of a novelist, for novelists Concord had its “Sleepy Hollow.” The sometimes speak the truth, “The fruit of an insignificant seed, you were planted by accident, and grew in neglect; and phrase also suggests Irving’s “The now you appear flinging abroad your branches to heaven, striking your roots deep into the hearth, bending and groan- Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip ing sometimes beneath the storm, but never yielding to its fury; and towering above the surrounding woods, till the Van Winkle.” remote revolutions of time and nature shall lay your lofty honors in the dust.” Oct. Nothing can be more pleasing to the eye than the appearance of the woods at this season. Green is allowed by most occulists [sic] to be the color which the eye may dwell upon with the least injury, as it is certainly that to which it is most accustomed. The trees have now thrown off their green costume and assumed a variegated dress of orange, red, brown, and yellow, a yellowish brown predominating. The waving surface of the forest, as from some height the eye runs over the sea of colors, invites the beholder to come down and stalk sat large over the undulating, but seemingly compact plane, to explore each nook and cranny, the haunts of hawks and ravens.

Nov. There is nothing melancholy in Nature.” If there is, where is it? It is in the op’ning bud of Spring—youthful boy- Probably T’s paraphrase of ant [sic] Spring, in the blooming flower of Summer, or the yellow harvest of Autumn? To the eye of the dyspeptic, to Coleridge’s famous line in “The Night- be sure, all is stamped with melancholy. Let him walk out into the fields—take no exercise, but get as much as he can— ingale:” let him look at the butterfly pursuing its zigzag course from flower to flower, and from field to field, and then talk of ‘Most musical, most melancholy’ bird! Dyspepsia: why it would puzzle the Blue Devils to follow suite. Do you think they would feel at home by the side of A melancholy bird? Oh! Idle thought! its gaudy opinions? Oh no! They would ‘vanish into thin air.” But some, in a doleful tone, will remind you of the fall In Nature there is nothing melancholy. of the leaf. Every tree sends forth its thousands—away they go, flying hither and thither, up and down, in search of a resting place. Howitt begins his discussion of No- Behold dame Partlet sailing up the avenue with feathers all erect, urged by rude Boreas to an unwonted pace; or see vember with two pages on melancholy how familiarly that North-western plays with the coat-flaps of the traveller, or sends him over stone walls and rail fenc- Ossian, whose harp is a “harp of sor- es to fish his beaver out of a pond-hole. This is indeed melancholy. The following are the words of one possessed of row.” “It breathes perpetually of mel- what he calls the golden abundance and profuse beauty of this magnificent globe, one who is ready to resign the true ancholy tenderness.” (369) “...we are riches of this world to the uncivilised savage, and the poverty-stricken peasant. now surrounded by precisely the melancholy images in which he delight. We are in a month of darkness, storms, and mists.” (370). T. Laughs at the concept. As a Transcendental- ist, he holds to Quantum sumus sci- mus. To the alert and happy person— to the God-directed—November can be a month of glee. T. Indulges in delightful irony at Howitt’s expense.

“Those luscious ever-green valleys, those luxuriant hills, those rich slopes, clothed with the most gorgeous fruits and “Those luscious ever-green valleys...” the tenderest and deepest verdure, and more than all, those gentle and transparent skies, seem beneficiently designed Source? for man in his more uncivilized state, or for the poor.” The so-called rich may enjoy all the honors that titled rank can confer, they may revel in luxury and disipation [sic], and count their wealth by thousands and tens of thousands,--but if they reject or are denied those gifts which Nature alone can bestow,--they are poor indeed. Is it poverty to breath [sic] the free air of heaven, to satisfy the cravings of hunger with the simple fruits of the soil, to quench the natural thirst from the running water of the brook, or to seek refreshment for the wearied limbs on the lap of our common moth- “thousands and tens of thousands....” er Earth? Is it wealth to monopolise the confined air of a pleasure carriage, to wage continual war with Nature, to pore For this allusion, see 1 Samuel 18:7ff. over the hues of a few home-sick and stinted [sic?] exotics to gratify the least intellectual of the 5 senses? Does it con- T. Used it again in his theme, “Advan- sist in the profession of one half this sunny little farm the Earth without enjoying a foot, or in the putting in jeopardy tages and Disadvantages of Foreign the health and spirits by swallowing the earliest green cucumber? Influence on American Literature,” April, [before 6], 1835: “The Press is daily sending forth its thousands and tens of thousands; for the publisher says ‘t is profitable.”

December. Nature is left in undisturbed possession of the country, while man resorts to his burrow the city.

March 31st 1836 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1836, MARCH 31+ [HM945] [The following is appended to T’s review of William Howitt and was possibly written shortly thereafter. His source might have been: Francis Parkman, “Salem Witchcraft,” Christian Examiner, XI (n.s., VI) (1831-1832) pp. 240-259 (a review of Charles W. Upham’s Lectures on Witchcraft. Parkman quotes from Cotton Mather’s diary: “July 1, 1724. This day being our insipid, ill-contrived anniversary, which we call the commencement, I chose to spend it at home in supplications, partly on the behalf of the College, that it may not be foolishly thrown away, but that God may bestow such a President upon it as may prove a rich blessing unto it and unto all our churches.” Mather has some where observed, “July 1, 1724. This day being our insipid, ill-contrived anniversary, which we call the commencement HDT WHAT? INDEX

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SPRING 1836

Spring: All the cows that used to graze on Boston Common being gone, the Boston government would have the area enclosed within 5,932 feet of iron railing. (How is this like the gesture of locking the barn door after the horse is gone?) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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APRIL 1836

April: David Henry Thoreau’s Harvard College essay on assignment “Advantages and disadvantages of foreign influence on American literature.”

April: Jones Very completed a long essay on epic poetry which he dedicated to David Henry Thoreau’s friend Samuel Tenney Hildreth, his Harvard College class’s designated poet.

New York’s Auburn & Rochester Railroad was chartered, to link Canandaigua and Geneva to Rochester.

April: “The Author of Record of a School” reviewed, on pages 629-648 of The Western Messenger I, a Calvinist tome entitled THE WAY FOR A CHILD TO BE SAVED. In reviewing this treatise on childhood and sin, Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody set forth at some length her own attitudes toward the nature of childhood, and her methods for leading a child toward God. She would use some of the paragraphs in the 2d edition of RECORD OF A SCHOOL, while other sections resemble the materials in Bronson Alcott’s JOURNALS.

April: The 1st full edition of Thomas Carlyle’s SARTOR RESARTUS: THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF HERR 00 TEUFELSDRÖKH was finally for sale, for $1. the copy, in Boston. “Regular book publication of SARTOR did not take place until 1836, when Emerson arranged for publication in Boston and wrote an enthusiastic preface.”

SARTOR RESARTUS STUDY THIS STRANGENESS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April: Edgar Allan Poe quoted at length from David Brewster’s 1832 LETTERS ON NATURAL MAGIC about the spectre of the Brocken, in his essay “Maelzel’s Chess-Player.”

April: According to Rusk, Volume II, page 3, on some day probably in this month Waldo Emerson lectured in Billerica, Massachusetts, but we can guess only approximately when this would have happened. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April/May: A double issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:

HARVARDIANA HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 1, Friday: William Lloyd Garrison, who at the start of the year had begun a personal journal in a leather- bound booklet, on this date abandoned the effort after but few entries. Self-knowledge was simply not his cup of tea:

Garrison never wrote in a quest for self-knowledge, but in an effort to persuade others of what he already knew.

Charles Darwin, aboard the HMS Beagle, reached the Cocos Islands.

April 3, Easter Sunday morning: Frederick Douglass was thrown into jail in Easton, the county seat, in Maryland, charged with complicity in a plan to escape from the labor gang of William Freeland.58 Douglass had used his laboriously acquired knowledge of language to compose passes or “protections” for himself an a number of other field laborers. Here Douglass later reconstructs the substance of what he had written in these “protections,” despite the fact that upon the failure of the escape plan all copies of the “protections” had been destroyed by the slaves:

“This is to certify that I, the undersigned, have given the bearer, my servant, full liberty to go to Baltimore, and spend the Easter holidays. Written with mine own hand, &c., 1835. “WILLIAM HAMILTON, “Near St. Michael’s, in Talbot county, Maryland.”

Quite possibly, one of the members of the group plotting this escape has informed on the others.

At the climax of the dedication of the temple of the Mormons in Kirtland, Ohio on this Easter Sunday, people were channeling not only Christ Jesus, but also Moses, and Elijah.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th M 3rd (1st day) 1836 / Meetings both silent & solid —While I fully believe a sound & living Gospel Ministry is a great blessing to a Meeting I am also as fully in the belief that is is not absolutely necessary to Make a good Meeting, for I have no doubt that many at our Meetings today were sensibly edifyed in Silent Waiting - While I was sensible that my own spirit could not impart much religious weight I was confirmed it was a season of refreshement to others. — After Meeting in the Afternoon with Brother Isaac attended the funeral of Patience Lina a woman of colour who was the daughter 58. Later, in his autobiography, Douglass would play on words in the Thoreauvian style:

Frederick Douglass’s NARRATIVE

But, by this time, I began to want to live upon free land as well as with Freeland; and I was no longer content, therefore, to live with him or any other slaveholder. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of old Betty Dyre who with her Mother, who was known in the family as Mother Moll were the family Servants of my Great Grandfather Samuel Clarke of Connanicut, & we felt it due to Patience to pay her so much respectful rememberance as to attend her funeral — I well remember (from my childhood to the day of her death & attended her funeral) Betty Dyre & her Husband James Dyre — I have heard my Mother say James was the favorite servant of Sam Dyre & that when James & Betty were married - Grandfather Clarke made a wedding for them at his House & Saml Dyre attended it & them [then] Saml Dyre made another at his house which Grandfather Clarke came over to Saml Dyres & attended also - this was an uncommon occurrence in those days. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

April 7, Thursday: Death of William Godwin in London. The body would be interred next to Mary Wollstonecraft in the burial ground of Old St. Pancras Church (in 1851 both would be moved to Bournemouth Churchyard to be placed next to Mary Shelley).

Here is a fragment that by chance has been preserved, evidently of a Harvard College essay by David Henry Thoreau on Sir Henry Vane although we do not have a record of Professor Channing having made this one of his assignments. The fragmentary essay is now at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California. At least a third of a page is missing at its center. At its end this fragment bears the marking “Concord, April 7th 1836.” The “Clarendon” reference in the text would be to Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon’s 1717 HISTORY OF THE REBELLION AND CIVIL WARS IN ENGLAND: BEGUN IN THE YEAR 1641: ... The fact that he was no party man, the leader of no sect, but equally to be feared by the foes of freedom and religion every where, explains the circumstance of his being passed over, with little if any notice, by the historians of the day. The age in which he lived was not worthy of him, his contemporaries knew not how to appreciate his talents or his motives to action, the principles which he advanced, the great truths which he foretold were soon to shake the civilized world to its very center, and before which the bulwarks of tyranny and oppression were to crumble away, were to them absolutely unintelligible, unmeaning nonsense — opposed to that “clearness of ratiocination” which even Clarendon allowed him to possess in conversation. It was peculiarly the duty of America to brush away the dust of ages that had collected around his name — to clear off the cobwebs that prejudices and calumny had spun ... of argument in defence of liberty religious and political, were the captives that adorned his triumph — assembled multitudes formed the procession — the talent, wealth, and nobility of the kingdom were collected around his chariot, to wonder and admire. Thus fell Vane, “Than whom”, in the words of a kindred spirit, “a better senator ne’er held “The helm of Rome, when gowns, not arms, repelled” “The fierce Epirot, and the African bold,” “Whether to settle peace, or to unfold” “The drift of hollow states hard to be spelled.” On whose “firm hand Religion leans” “In peace, and reckons” –him– “her eldest son”. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Equally the terror of evil-doers, and the praise of those who did well wherever and whoever they might be.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 7th of 4th M 1836 / Our Meeting was silent - but some of the few who met I trust were sensible & knew the Source from whence worship was performed - It was but a low time with me. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

April 12, Tuesday: Despite his serious injuries from being mauled by a Bengal tiger, John Adams got married with Cylena (“Selma” or “Cylie” or “Selena”) Drury (January 1, 1816-February 19, 1866) in Spencer, Massachusetts.59 For a period of about 15 years he would be working in the shoemaking business in the vicinity of Boston. The marriage would produce a daughter Arathusea Elizabeth Adams (1843-November 8, 1875) and a son Seymour Adams (December 25, 1845-July 23, 1865). Eventually there would be financial difficulty, occasioned by the loss by fire in St. Louis of a consignment of Adams’s shoes and boots.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 12th of 4th M / This Morning I recd a letter from my fr Joshua Lynch of Ohio - It mentioned his prospect of attending our approaching Y Meeting & that of NYork — In the evening Stephen A Chase called & set the evening with us — he has been to his Father James Robinsons & is on his way home to Salem in the Morning Steam Boat - Thos P Nichols also called in a little while in the evening. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

59. I bet you didn’t know Henry Thoreau lived within a few miles of Grizzly Adams!

I bet you didn’t know that Grizzly was exactly the same age, to the day, as Helen Thoreau! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 14, Thursday: The brothers Friend William Henry Harvey and Friend Joseph Harvey embarked in Cape Town, South Africa for the journey back to the British Isles.

New-York’s Atlas Marine Insurance Company, capitalized at $350,000, was incorporated as a stock company.

David Henry Thoreau’s Harvard College essay on assignment “Literary Digressions.” Under this date in Thoreau’s literary notebook there is a detached fragment which appears to be the conclusion to a forensic which might have been titled something like “Do Digressions or Examples Destroy the Unity of a Literary Work?” This detached fragment, which Thoreau indicates that he wrote while in Concord town, evidently on vacation, rather than while in Cambridge town, reads as follows:

author may chance, here and there, to throw out, upon the characters and actions of his personages, and which are regarded by the majority of his readers as interrupting to the course of the narative [sic], and are generally passed over with little if any notice, for wherein, I would ask, do these differ from the admonitions and exhortations of the express moral teacher? Perhaps his interests in the work, like an accompanying sweet, may induce the reader to swallow the bitter potion. Physiologists, however, would say, “let the draught be swallowed voluntarily, if you would expect it to produce its full effect!” With regard to the “exemplification” business, it reminds me of the fable of the lion and the painter; — if lions had been painters it would have been otherwise. Examples may be divided into good and bad.

In exegesis of this fragment’s “reminds me of the fable of the lion and the painter; — if lions had been painters it would have been otherwise,” we may refer to the fables of Æsop60:

60. Do not assume that you know the Æsop fables. Most editions are highly selective, and your experience may well be with a very partial and tendentious subset of the fables. For the Greek text, consult Ben Perry’s AESOPICA (which can be ordered from amazon.com, shipped in 4-6 weeks), and for an English translation, consult Ben Perry’s Loeb edition of BABRIUS AND PHAEDRUS (shipped within 2-3 days from amazon.com). This Loeb volume contains in addition English translations of 143 Greek verse fables by Babrius, 126 Latin verse fables by Phaedrus, 328 Greek fables not extant in Babrius, and 128 Latin fables not extant in Phaedrus (including some medieval materials) for a total of 725 fables. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Page 41 of the Ernest Rhys edition:61 Once upon a time a Man and a Lion were journeying together, and came at length to high words which was the braver and stronger creature of the two. As the dispute waxed warmer they happened to pass by, on the road-side, a statue of a man strangling a lion. “See there,” said the Man; “what more undeniable proof can you have of our superiority than that?” “That,” said the Lion, “is your version of the story; let us be the sculptors, and for one lion under the feet of a man, you shall have twenty men under the paw of a lion.” Men are but sorry witnesses in their own cause.

Steve Mailleaux’s version: A Man and a Lion traveled together through the forest. They soon began to boast of their respective superiority

61. London, 1936. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to each other in strength and prowess. As they were disputing, they passed a statue carved in stone, which represented “a Lion strangled by a Man.” The traveler pointed to it and said: “See there! How strong we are, and how we prevail over even the king of beasts.” The Lion replied: “This statue was made by one of you men. If we Lions knew how to erect statues, you would see the Man placed under the paw of the Lion.” One story is good, till another is told.

[There is, however, an interesting cross-pollination here between the fables of Æsop and the philosophical fragments of the Presocratic Eleatic Xenophanes. For three of his sentences as incidentally preserved for our eyes in the seven books of the MISCELLANIES (STROMATEIS) of St. Clement of Alexandria (but not elsewhere) read as follows: #14: But mortals deem that the gods are begotten as they are, and have clothes like theirs, and voice and form. (5.109) #15: Yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds. (5.110) #16: The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair. (7.22)] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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CAPE COD: It is remarkable that there is not in English any PEOPLE OF adequate or correct account of the French exploration of what is CAPE COD now the coast of New England, between 1604 and 1608, though it is conceded that they then made the first permanent European settlement on the continent of North America north of St. ÆSOP Augustine. If the lions had been the painters it would have been XENOPHANES otherwise. This omission is probably to be accounted for partly by the fact that the early edition of Champlain’s “Voyages” had CHAMPLAIN not been consulted for this purpose. This contains by far the most particular, and, I think, the most interesting chapter of what we may call the Ante-Pilgrim history of New England, extending to one hundred and sixty pages quarto; but appears to be unknown WEBSTER equally to the historian and the orator on Plymouth Rock. Bancroft BANCROFT does not mention Champlain at all among the authorities for De Monts’ expedition, nor does he say that he ever visited the coast of New England. Though he bore the title of pilot to De Monts, he was, in another sense, the leading spirit, as well as the historian of the expedition. Holmes, Hildreth, and Barry, and BARRY apparently all our historians who mention Champlain, refer to the edition of 1632, in which all the separate charts of our harbors, &c., and about one half the narrative, are omitted; for the author explored so many lands afterward that he could afford to forget a part of what he had done. Hildreth, speaking of De Monts’s HILDRETH expedition, says that “he looked into the Penobscot [in 1605], which Pring had discovered two years before,” saying nothing PRING about Champlain’s extensive exploration of it for De Monts in 1604 (Holmes says 1608, and refers to Purchas); also that he followed HOLMES in the track of Pring along the coast “to Cape Cod, which he PURCHAS called Malabarre.” (Haliburton had made the same statement before HALIBURTON him in 1829. He called it Cap Blanc, and Malle Barre (the Bad Bar) was the name given to a harbor on the east side of the Cape.) Pring says nothing about a river there. Belknap says that Weymouth BELKNAP discovered it in 1605. Sir F. Gorges says, in his narration (Maine WEYMOUTH Hist. Coll., Vol. II. p. 19), 1658, that Pring in 1606 “made a GORGES perfect discovery of all the rivers and harbors.” This is the most I can find. Bancroft makes Champlain to have discovered more western rivers in Maine, not naming the Penobscot; he, however, must have been the discoverer of distances on this river (see Belknap, p. 147). Pring was absent from England only about six months, and sailed by this part of Cape Cod (Malebarre) because it yielded no sassafras, while the French, who probably had not heard of Pring, were patiently for years exploring the coast in search of a place of settlement, sounding and surveying its harbors. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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A WEEK: It is remarkable that Homer and a few Hebrews are the most PEOPLE OF Oriental names which modern Europe, whose literature has taken its rise since the decline of the Persian, has admitted into her list of A WEEK Worthies, and perhaps the worthiest of mankind, and the fathers of modern thinking, — for the contemplations of those Indian sages have influenced, and still influence, the intellectual development of mankind, — whose works even yet survive in wonderful completeness, are, for the most part, not recognized as ever having existed. If the lions ÆSOP had been the painters it would have been otherwise. In every one’s youthful dreams philosophy is still vaguely but inseparably, and with XENOPHANES singular truth, associated with the East, nor do after years discover its local habitation in the Western world. In comparison with the philosophers of the East, we may say that modern Europe has yet given birth to none. Beside the vast and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, even our Shakespeare seems sometimes youthfully green and practical merely. Some of these sublime sentences, as the Chaldaean oracles of Zoroaster, still surviving after a thousand revolutions and ZOROASTER translations, alone make us doubt if the poetic form and dress are not transitory, and not essential to the most effective and enduring expression of thought. Ex oriente lux may still be the motto of scholars, for the Western world has not yet derived from the East all the light which it is destined to receive thence. It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind. The New Testament is still, perhaps, too much on the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and comparison might help to liberalize the faith of men. This is a work which Time will surely edit, reserved to crown the labors of the printing-press. This would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which let the missionaries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 14th of 4th M / Our Meeting was small & silent, but a good solid & favour’d season to me for which I feel thankful — Father Rodman was out & the first time he has been at Meeting since he was taken unwell. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Mid-April: Frederick Douglass was fearful that he would be “sold south,” but Thomas Auld, his owner, returned him to Baltimore and put him to work as a slave apprentice in the ship calking trade and promised this 18-year-old that if he behaved himself in the meanwhile, and learned a trade, he would be handed manumission papers in 1843, at age 25.62

A ship manifest of black Americans being “sold south”

62. “Yes, I know I’ve been holding you in slavery, but I solemnly pledge that I’ll start behaving decently toward you, beginning exactly seven years from now. You can take my word for it, since I’m a white man.” Or words to that effect. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 15, Friday: The Canadian assembly had been deeply disappointed by the new Lieutenant Governor Sir Francis Bond Head’s feckless inability to hold a cabinet together for more than six weeks or so. With only two dissenting votes, the Reformers and Conservatives had united to demand an explanation of the situation. They then acquired the astonishing news that at the tail end of his service as Lieutenant Governor, Sir John Colborne had endowed 57 Anglican rectories! On this date the committee of inquiry gave its report to the House, denouncing Head as a deceitful despot whose conduct in Canada had dishonored the British monarch whom he had been supposed to represent. The assembly then voted to stop payment out of the tax moneys, depriving the government of some £7,000 intended for the paychecks of officials. The new Lieutenant Governor then dug his hole even deeper, by putting on hold all money bills passed during the session, and by proroguing the legislature.

The New York State legislature passed an act calling for a geological survey of the state, to be divided among four surveying teams.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. visited the crew of the Pilgrim, and the Kanakas on the San Diego shore.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Friday, April 15th. Arrived, brig Pilgrim, from the windward. It was a sad sight for her crew to see us getting ready to go off the coast, while they, who had been longer on the coast than the Alert, were condemned to another year’s hard service. I spent an evening on board, and found them making the best of the matter, and determined to rough it out as they might; but my friend S______was determined to go home in the ship, if money or interest could bring it to pass. After considerable negotiating and working, he succeeded in persuading my English friend, Tom Harris,– my companion in the anchor watch– for thirty dollars, some clothes, and an intimation from Captain Faucon that he met should want a second mate before the voyage was up, to take his place in the brig as soon as she was ready to go up to windward. The first opportunity I could get to speak to Captain Faucon, I asked him to step up to the oven and look at Hope, whom he knew well, having had him on board his vessel. He went to see him, but said that he had so little medicine, and expected to be so long on the coast, that he could do nothing for him, but that Captain Arthur would take care of him when he came down in the California, which would be in a week or more. I had been to see Hope the first night after we got into San Diego this last time, and had frequently since spent the early part of a night in the oven. I hardly expected, when I left him to go to windward, to find him alive upon my return. He was certainly as low as he could well be when I left him, and what would be the effect of the medicines that I gave him. I hardly then dared to conjecture. Yet I knew that he must die without them. I was not a little rejoiced, therefore, and relieved, upon our return, to see him decidedly better. The medicines were strong, and took hold and gave a check to the disorder which was destroying him; and, more than that, they had begun the work of exterminating it. I shall never forget the gratitude that he expressed. All the Kanakas attributed his escape solely to my knowledge, and would not be persuaded that I had not all the secrets of the physical system open to me and under my control. My medicines, however, were gone, and no more could be got from the ship, so that his life was left to hang upon the arrival of the California.

April 18, Monday: Waldo Emerson began delivering a private course in Salem: six lectures on “English Biography and Literature” (his net would be $149). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 20, Wednesday: A Canadian company was incorporated to build a suspension bridge over the Niagara River.

Waldo Emerson lectured in Salem. This was the 2d lecture of the series. THE LIST OF LECTURES BIOGRAPHY

April 24, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 24th of 4 M / Our Meetings were solid good seasons — Fathers communications in each I thought were seasonable & pertinent - Ann Hopkins was at meeting in the Afternoon, & in the eveng I visited her at Henry Goulds where she is spending a few days. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS Richard Henry Dana, Jr. went aboard the California.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Sunday, April, 24th. We had now been nearly seven weeks in San Diego, and had taken in the greater part of our cargo, and were looking out, every day, for the arrival of the California, which had our agent on board; when, this afternoon, some Kanakas, who had been over the hill for rabbits and to fight rattlesnakes, came running down the path, singing out, singing out, “Kail ho!” with all their might. Mr. H., our third mate, was ashore, and asking them particularly about the size of the sail, etc., and learning that it was “Moku– Nui Moku,” hailed our ship, and said that the California was on the other side of the point. Instantly, all hands were turned up, the bow guns run out and loaded, the ensign and broad pennant set, the yards squared by lifts and braces, and everything got ready to make a good appearance. The instant she showed her nose round the point, we began our salute. She came in under top-gallant sails, clawed up and furled her sails in good order, and came-to, within good swinging distance of us. It being Sunday, and nothing to do, all hands were on the forecastle, criticising the new-comer. She was a good, substantial ship, not quite so long as the Alert, and wall-sided and kettle-bottomed, after the latest fashion of south-shore cotton and sugar wagons; strong, too, and tight, and a good average sailor, but with no pretensions to beauty, and nothing in the style of a “crack ship.” Upon the whole, we were perfectly satisfied that the Alert might hold up her head with a ship twice as smart as she. At night, some of us got a boat and went on board, and found a large, roomy forecastle, (for she was squarer forward than the Alert,) and a crew of a dozen or fifteen men and boys, sitting around on their chests, smoking and talking, and ready to give a welcome to any of our ship’s company. It was just seven months since they left Boston, which seemed but yesterday to us. Accordingly, we had much to ask, for though we had seen the newspapers that she brought, yet these were the very men who had been in Boston and seen everything with their own eyes. One of the green-hands was a Boston boy, from one of the public schools, and, of course, knew many things which we wished to ask about, and on inquiring the names of our two Boston boys, found that they had been schoolmates of his. Our men had hundreds of questions to ask about Ann street, the boarding-houses, the ships in port, the rate of wages, and other matters. Among her crew were two English man-of-war’s-men, so that, of course, we soon had music. They sang in the true sailor’s style, and the rest of the crew, which was a remarkably musical one, joined in the choruses. They had many of the latest sailor songs, which had not yet got about among our merchantmen, and which HDT WHAT? INDEX

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they were very choice of. They began soon after we came on board, and kept it up until after two bells, when the second mate came forward and called “the Alerts away!” Battle-songs, drinking-songs, boat-songs, love-songs, and everything else, they seemed to have a complete assortment of, and I was glad to find that “All in the Downs,” “Poor Tom Bowline,” “The Bay of Biscay,” “List, ye Landsmen!” and all those classical songs of the sea, still held their places. In addition to these, they had picked up at the theatres and other places a few songs of a little more genteel cast, which they were very proud of; and I shall never forget hearing an old salt, who had broken his voice by hard drinking on shore, and bellowing from the mast-head in a hundred north-westers, with all manner of ungovernable trills and quavers– in the high notes, breaking into a rough falsetto– and in the low ones, growling along like the dying away of the boatswain’s “all hands ahoy!” down the hatch-way, singing, “Oh, no, we never mention him.” “Perhaps, like me, he struggles with Each feeling of regret; But if he’s loved as I have loved, He never can forget!” The last line, being the conclusion, he roared out at the top of his voice, breaking each word up into half a dozen syllables. This was very popular, and Jack was called upon every night to give them his “sentimental song.” No one called for it more loudly than I, for the complete absurdity of the execution, and the sailors’ perfect satisfaction in it, were ludicrous beyond measure. The next day, the California commenced unloading her cargo; and her boats’ crews, in coming and going, sang their boat-songs, keeping time with their oars. This they did all day long for several days, until their hides were all discharged, when a gang of them were sent on board the Alert, to help us steeve our hides.

This was a windfall for us, for they had a set of new songs for the capstan and fall, and ours had got nearly worn out by six weeks’ constant use. I have no doubt that this timely reinforcement of songs hastened our work several days. Our cargo was now nearly all taken in; and my old friend, the Pilgrim, having completed her discharge, unmoored, to set sail the next morning on another long trip to windward. I was just thinking of her hard lot, and congratulating myself upon my escape from her, when I received a summons into the cabin. I went aft, and there found, seated round the cabin table, my own captain, Captain Faucon of the Pilgrim, and Mr. R______, the agent. Captain T______turned to me and asked abruptly — “D______, do you want to go home in the ship?” “Certainly, sir,” said I; “I expect to go home in the ship.” “Then,” said he, “you must get some one to go in your place on board the Pilgrim.” I was so completely “taken aback” by this sudden intimation, that for a moment I could make no reply. I knew that it would be hopeless to attempt to prevail upon any of the ship’s crew to take twelve months more upon the California in the brig. I knew, too, that Captain T______had received orders to bring me home in the Alert, and he had told me, when I was at the hide-house, that I was to go home in her; and even if this had not been so, it was cruel to give me no notice of the step they were going to take, until a few hours before the brig would sail. As soon as I had got my wits about me, I put on a bold front, and told him plainly that I had a letter in my chest informing me that he had been written to, by the owners in Boston, to bring me home in the ship, and moreover, that he had told me that I was to go in the ship. To have this told him, and to be opposed in such a manner, was more than my lord paramount had been used to. He turned fiercely upon me, and tried to look me down, and face me out of my statement; but finding that that wouldn’t do, and that I was entering upon my defence in such a way as would show to the other two that he was in the wrong,– he changed his ground, and pointed to the shipping papers of the Pilgrim, from which my name had never been erased, and said that there was my name,– that I belonged to her,– that he had an absolute discretionary power;– and, in short, that I must be on board the Pilgrim by the next morning with my chest and hammock, or have some one ready to go in my place, and that he would not hear another HDT WHAT? INDEX

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word from me. No court or star chamber could proceed more summarily with a poor devil, than this trio was about to do with me; condemning me to a punishment worse than a Botany Bay exile, and to a fate which would alter the whole current of my future life; for two years more in California would have made me a sailor for the rest of my days. I felt all this, and saw the necessity of being determined. I repeated what I had said, and insisted upon my right to return in the ship. I “raised my arm, and tauld my crack, Before them a’.” But it would have all availed me nothing, had I been “some poor body,” before this absolute, domineering tribunal. But they saw that I would not go, unless “vi et armis,” and they knew that I had friends and interest enough at home to make them suffer for any injustice they might do me. It was probably this that turned the matter; for the captain changed his tone entirely, and asked me if, in case any one went in my place, I would give him the same sum that S______gave Harris to exchange with him. I told him that if any one was sent on board the brig, I should pity him, and be willing to help him to that, or almost any amount; but would not speak of it as an exchange. “Very well,” said he. “Go forward about your business, and send English Ben here to me!” I went forward with a light heart, but feeling as angry, and as much contempt as I could well contain between my teeth. English Ben was sent aft, and in a few moments came forward, looking as though he had received his sentence to be hung. The captain had told him to get his things ready to go on board the brig the next morning; and that I would give him thirty dollars and a suit of clothes. The hands had “knocked off” for dinner, and were standing about the forecastle, when Ben came forward and told his story. I could see plainly that it made a great excitement, and that, unless I explained the matter to them, the feeling would be turned against me. Ben was a poor English boy, a stranger in Boston, and without friends or money; and being an active, willing lad, and a good sailor for his years, was a general favorite. “Oh, yes!” said the crew, “the captain has let you off, because you are a gentleman’s son, and have got friends, and know the owners; and taken Ben, because he is poor, and has got nobody to say a word for him!” I knew that this was too true to be answered, but I excused myself from any blame, and told them that I had a right to go home, at all events. This pacified them a little, but Jack had got a notion that a poor lad was to be imposed upon, and did not distinguish very clearly; and though I knew that I was in no fault, and, in fact, had barely escaped the grossest injustice, yet I felt that my berth was getting to be a disagreeable one. The notion that I was not “one of them,” which, by a participation in all their labor and hardships, and having no favor shown me, had been laid asleep, was beginning to revive. But far stronger than any feeling for myself, was the pity I felt for the poor lad. He had depended upon going home in the ship; and from Boston, was going immediately to Liverpool, to see his friends. Beside this, having begun the voyage with very few clothes, he had taken up the greater part of his wages in the slop-chest, and it was every day a losing concern to him; and, like all the rest of the crew, he had a hearty hatred of California, and the prospect of eighteen months or two years more of hide-droghing seemed completely to break down his spirit. I had determined not to go myself, happen what would, and I knew that the captain would not dare to attempt to force me. I knew, too, that the two captains had agreed together to get some one, and that unless I could prevail upon somebody to go voluntarily, there would be no help for Ben. From this consideration, though I had said that I would have nothing to do with an exchange, I did my best to get some one to go voluntarily. I offered to give an order upon the owners in Boston for six months’ wages, and also all the clothes, books, and other matters, which I should not want upon the voyage home. When this offer was published in the ship, and the case of poor Ben was set forth in strong colors, several, who would not have dreamed of going themselves, were busy in talking it up to others, who, they thought, might be tempted to accept it; and, at length, one fellow, a harum-scarum lad, whom we called Harry Bluff, and who did not care what country or ship he was in, if he had clothes enough and money enough– partly from pity for Ben, and partly from the thought he should have “cruising money” for the rest of his stay,– came forward, and offered to go and “sling his hammock in the bloody hooker.” Lest his purpose should cool, I signed an order for the sum upon the owners in Boston, gave him all the clothes I could spare, and sent him aft to the captain, to let him know HDT WHAT? INDEX

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what had been done. The skipper accepted the exchange, and was, doubtless, glad to have it pass off so easily. At the same time he cashed the order, which was endorsed to him,63 and the next morning, the lad went aboard the brig, apparently in good spirits, having shaken hands with each of us and wished us a pleasant passage home, jingling the money in his pockets, and calling out, “Never say die, while there’s a shot in the locker.” The same boat carried off Harris, my old watchmate, who had previously made an exchange with my friend S______. I was sorry to part with Harris. Nearly two hundred hours (as we had calculated it) had we walked the ship’s deck together, at anchor watch, when all hands were below, and talked over and over every subject which came within the ken of either of us. He gave me a strong gripe with his hand; and I told him, if he came to Boston again, not to fail to find me out, and let me see an old watchmate. The same boat brought on board S______, my friend, who had begun the voyage with me from Boston, and, like me, was going back to his family and to the society which we had been born and brought up in. We congratulated one another upon finding what we had long talked over and wished for, thus brought about; and none on board the ship were more glad than ourselves to see the old brig standing round the point, under full sail. As she passed abreast of us, we all collected in the waist, and gave her three loud, hearty cheers, waving our hats in the air. Her crew sprang into the rigging and chains, answered us with three as loud, to which we, after the nautical custom, gave one in return. I took my last look of their familiar faces as they got over the rail, and saw the old black cook put his head out of the galley, and wave his cap over his head. The crew flew aloft to loose the top-gallant sails and royals; the two captains waved their hands to one another; and, in ten minutes, we saw the last inch of her white canvas, as she rounded the point. Relieved as I was to see her well off, (and I felt like one who had just sprung from an iron trap which was closing upon him) I had yet a feeling of regret at taking the last look at the old craft in which I had spent a year, and the first year, of my sailor’s life– which had been my first home in the new world into which I had entered– and with which I had associated so many things,– my first leaving home, my first crossing the equator, Cape Horn, Juan Fernandez, death at sea, and other things, serious and common. Yet, with all this, and the feeling I had for my old shipmates, condemned to another term of California life, the thought that we were done with it, and that one week more would see us on our way to Boston, was a cure for everything.

April 28, Thursday: David Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, John Hoole’s translation of Pietro “Metastasio” Trapassi (1698-1782)’s DRAMAS AND OTHER POEMS; OF THE ABBÈ PIETRO METASTASIO (London: Printed for Otridge and Son, 3 volumes, 1800).64

63.When the crew were paid off in Boston, the owners answered the order, but generously refused to deduct the amount from the pay-roll, saying that the exchange was made under compulsion. They also allowed S______his exchange money. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau also checked out Thomas Hobbes’s THE ILIADS AND ODYSSES OF HOMER / TRANSLATED OUT OF GREEK INTO ENGLISH BY THO. HOBBES OF MALMSBURY, WITH A LARGE PREF. CONCERNING THE VERTUES OF AN HEROICK POEM, WRITTEN BY THE TRANSLATOR.

“There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away” — Emily Dickinson

64. Since he had already, in 1834, checked out the 1st volume of this edition, we may presume that this time he was checking out all three volumes. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau also checked out LES NATCHEZ, the 6th volume of François Auguste René, vicomte de Chateaubriand’s just issued ŒUVRES COMPLÈTES:

LES NATCHEZ

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 28th of 4 M / Took the Carryall & took My wife & Mary Williams to Moy [Monthly] Meeting - Hannah Dennis preached in the first Meeting - & tho’ I thought she was favoured, yet it seemed to me as a rather dull & obstructed season — in the last Meeting we transacted the buisness pretty well —- We went to Benjamin Motts after Meeting & dined in his South room, in which G Fox once preached RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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le vicomte (1768-1848) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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MAY 1836

THE 1ST TUESDAY IN MAY WAS THE ANNUAL “MUSTER DAY,” ON WHICH ALL THE ABLEBODIED WHITE MEN OF A TOWN WERE SUPPOSEDLY REQUIRED TO FALL INTO FORMATION, WITH THEIR PERSONAL FIREARMS, TO UNDERGO THEIR ANNUAL DAY OF MILITARY TRAINING AND MILITIA INDOCTRINATION. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 2, Monday: Waldo Emerson lectured in Salem. This was the 3d lecture of the series. THE LIST OF LECTURES BIOGRAPHY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 3, Tuesday: David Henry Thoreau turned in his Harvard College essay on the assigned topic “SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND WORKS OF SIR W. SCOTT by Allan Cunningham, FAMILIAR ANECDOTES OF SIR W. SCOTT BY JAMES HOGG, AND WITH A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF THE SHEPHERD by S. Dewitt [Simeon De Witt] Bloodgood.”

SOME ACCOUNT OF ... FAMILIAR ANECDOTES At the Exhibition Program that took place on this day, Jones Very presented a new version of his Bowdoin Prize Essay of July 1835, “The Practical Application in This Life, by Men as Social and Intellectual Beings, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of the Certainty of a Future State,” which he had for this occasion retitled simply “The Heroic Character.” Our Literature is uncommonly rich in Biography. No sooner has a passing meteor, whose brilliance and length of train arrests the attention of the gaping multitudes of this nether world, sunk below the horizon, than the literary astronomers of the day set about tracing its orbit, and soon crowd a ponderous tome with the phenomena it presented. This is all very well as far as it goes, but, for my part, I am not satisfied with being acquainted with a man’s actions merely. I want to be introduced to the man himself. “Biography,” says Fuseli, “however useful to man, or dear to art, is the unequivocal homage of inferiority offered to the majesty of genius.” This is not the character of the works before us; we here behold Scott in the capacity of a friend, and patron, free from all restraint. Divested of all the mystery in which genius is usually enveloped, he appears for the moment to have put on mortality, he is no longer the “Author of Waverly” the eighth wonder of the world. While we imagine him snugly ensconced in his antique armchair, poring over the pages of a huge black-letter folio containing the marvellous deeds of some Sir Tristram or Sir Guy who figured in border warfare, or performing a pilgrimage a la Terre Sante, we find him, perchance, “leistering kippers in Tweed”, or seated on the river’s bank, while Rob Fletcher is gone after another fiery peat, singing Hogg’s ballad of “Gilman’s-cleuch”. The account of the Life and Works of Scott is written in a frank and impartial style, though the author appears to be a little vain of his intimacy with Sir Walter. The same may be said of Hogg. The former winds up with these words, “No other genius ever exercised over the world so wide a rule: no one, perhaps ever united so many great — almost godlike qualities, and employed them so generously for the benefit of the living. It is not to us alone that he has spoken: his voice will delight thousands of generations unborn, and charm his country while wood grows and water runs.” The Ettrick Shepherd was the second son of Robert Hogg and Margaret Laidlaw, and was born on the 25th of Jan’y, 1772, the anniversary of Burns’ birth, who was born 1759. When 6 years of age he attended for a short time a neighboring school, and learned to read the Proverbs of Solomon and the Shorter Catechism, but at the age of 7 went to service as a cowherd, receiving for half a year’s service, “a ewe lamb and a pair of shoes.” It was in his 18th year that he first saw the “Life and Adventures of Sir W. Wallace”, and Ramsay’s “Gentle Shepherd”. It was in 1796 that he first felt the inspiration of the Muse; he now for the first time had access to a valuable library, and his genius shone forth so conspicuously, that he was known as “Jamie the Poeter.” He could compose, but he could not write “and he wept to think, however fancy and inspiration might impart their influence, he could not ‘catch their shadows as they passed’.” The song commencing, “My name it is Donald McDonald,” written at the time England was threatened with invasion by Napoleon, was the first he published. The following is a list of his works. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Queen’s Wake. Pilgrims of the Sun. The Hunting of Badlewe. Mador of the Moor. Poetic Mirror. Dramatic Tales. Brownie of Bodsbeck. Winter Evening Tales Sacred Melodies. Border Garland. Jacobite Relics of Scotland The Spy. Queen Hynde. The Three Perils of Man. The Three do. of Women. Confessions of a Sinner. The Shepherd’s Calendar. A Selection of Songs. The Queer Book. The Royal Jubilee. The Mountain Bard. The Forest Minstrel. The Altrive Tales. Now living, 1834.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 3 of 5 M / This Afternoon we found a ready conveyance to Greenwich direct in a Packet Cousins Henry & Thomas Gould, Thos Nichols & my wife & self went on board & in about two hours & three Quarters we arrived safely & pleasantly in Greenwich Our friend Thos Howland met us in the Street & took my wife our to his house & Henry & I walked on & got there before tea time - the two Thomas’s stoping at Dr Eldredges.

May 4, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson lectured in Salem. This was the 4th lecture of the series. THE LIST OF LECTURES BIOGRAPHY

In the Chiesa Collegiata di San Bartolomeo of Busseto, Giuseppe Verdi got married with Margherita Barezzi, daughter of Antonio Barezzi, a grocer and Verdi’s patron.

When Felix Mendelssohn arrived in Frankfurt on his way to Dusseldorf to direct the Niederrheinisches Musikfest he was introduced to several people among whom was a young chorus member, Cecile Jeanrenaud, daughter of a Protestant minister (she would eventually become his wife).

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day we came in to attend the select Meeting - Dined at Susan Prouds - & I went to the Meeting for Sufferings in the Afternoon after which T Howland again took my wife to his House & I again walked out to it — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 5, Thursday: Having already checked out the 6th volume of François-Auguste-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand’s just issued ŒUVRES COMPLÈTES, David Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, the 7th volume of this set.

CHATEAUBRIAND, 7

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day Attended Meetings which were large & generally satisfactory - John Wilbur & Mary Card in testimony & Anna Macomber in supplication — After the last Meeting we dined at Abigail Prouds & Lodged & took tea at Dr Eldredges — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand (1768-1848)

May 6, Friday: Waldo Emerson lectured in Salem. This was the 5th lecture of the series. THE LIST OF LECTURES BIOGRAPHY

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day spent the forenoon in walking about Greenwich in waiting for the Packet which got off about 1 OC & we arrived at home in about 4 hours altho the wind was entirely a head. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The New York State Legislature authorized construction of the Genesee Valley Canal.

The Alert, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. crewman, completed its cargo of California hides.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Friday, May 6th, completed the taking of our cargo, and was a memorable day in our calendar. The time when we were to take in our last hide, we had looked forward to, for sixteen months, as the first bright spot. When the last hide was stowed away, and the hatches calked down, the tarpaulins battened on to them, the longboat hoisted in and secured, and the decks swept down for the night,– the chief mate sprang upon the top of the long-boat, called all hands into the waist, and giving us a signal by swinging his cap over his head,– we gave three long, loud cheers, which came from the bottom of our hearts, and made the hills and valleys ring again. In a moment, we heard three, in answer, from the California’s crew, who had seen us taking in our long-boat, and– “the cry they heard– its meaning knew.” The last week, we had been occupied in taking in a supply of wood and water for the passage home, and bringing on board the spare spars, sails, etc. I was sent off with a party of Indians to fill the water-casks, at a spring, about three miles from the shipping, and near the town, and was absent three days, living at the town, and spending the daytime in filling the casks and transporting them on ox-carts to the landing-place, whence they were taken on board by the crew with boats. This being all done with, we gave one day to bending our sails; and at night, every sail, from the courses to the skysails, was bent, and every studding-sail ready for setting. Before our sailing, an unsuccessful attempt was made by one of the crew of the California to effect an exchange with one of our number. It was a lad, between fifteen and sixteen years of age, who went by the name of the “reefer,” having been a midshipman in East India Company’s ship. His singular character and story had excited our interest ever since the ship came into the port. He was a delicate, slender little fellow, with a beautiful pearly complexion, regular features, forehead as white as marble, black haired, curling beautifully, rounded, tapering, delicate fingers, small feet, soft voice, gentle manners, and, in fact, every sign of having been well born and bred. At the same time there was something in his expression which showed a slight deficiency of intellect. How great the deficiency was, or what it resulted from; whether he was born so; whether it was the result of disease or accident; or whether, as some said, it was brought on by his distress of mind, during the voyage, I cannot say. From his own account of himself, and from many circumstances which were known in connection with his story, he must have been the son of a man of wealth. His mother was an Italian woman. He was probably a natural son, for in scarcely any other way could the incidents of his early life be accounted for. He said that his parents did not live together, and he seemed to have been ill treated by his father. Though he had been delicately brought up, and indulged in every way, (and he had then with him trinkets which had been given him at home,) yet his education had been sadly neglected; and when only twelve years old, he was sent as midshipman in the Company’s service. His own story was, that he afterwards ran away from home, upon a difficulty which he had with his father. and went to Liverpool, whence he sailed in the ship Rialto, Captain Holmes, for Boston. Captain Holmes endeavored to get him a passage back, but there being no vessel to sail for some time, the boy left him, and went to board at a common sailor’s boarding-house, in Ann street, where he supported himself for a few weeks by selling some of his valuables. At length, according to his own account, being desirous of returning home, he went to a shipping-office, where the shipping articles of the California were open. Upon asking where the ship was going, he was told by the shipping-master that she was bound to California. Not knowing where that was, he told him that he wanted to go to Europe, and asked if California was in Europe. The shippingmaster answered him in a way which the boy did not understand, and advised him to ship. The boy signed the articles, received his advance, laid out a little of it in clothes, and spent the rest, and was ready to go on board, when, upon the morning of sailing, he heard that the ship was bound upon the North-west Coast, on a two or three years’ voyage, and was not going to Europe. Frightened at this prospect, he slipped away when the crew was going aboard, wandered up into another part of the town, and spent all the forenoon in straying about the common, and the neighboring streets. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONCLUDED:

Having no money, and all his clothes and other things being in the chest, on board, and being a stranger, he became tired and hungry, and ventured down toward the shipping, to see if the vessel had sailed. He was just turning the corner of a street, when the shippingmaster, who had been in search of him, popped upon him, seized him, and carried him on board. He cried and struggled, and said he did not wish to go in the ship, but the topsails were at the mast-head, the fasts just ready to be cast off, and everything in the hurry and confusion of departure, so that he was hardly noticed; and the few who did inquire about the matter were told that it was merely a boy who had spent his advance and tried to run away. Had the owners of the vessel known anything of the matter, they would have interfered at once; but they either knew nothing of it, or heard, like the rest, that it was only an unruly boy who was sick of his bargain. As soon as the boy found himself actually at sea, and upon a voyage of two or three years in length, his spirits failed him; he refused to work, and became so miserable, that Captain Arthur took him into the cabin, where he assisted the steward, and occasionally pulled and hauled about decks. He was in this capacity when we saw him; and though it was much better for him than the life in the forecastle, and the hard work, watching, and exposure, which his delicate frame could not have borne, yet, to be joined with a black fellow in waiting upon a man whom he probably looked upon as but little, in point of education and manners, above one of his father’s servants, was almost too much for his spirit to bear. Had he entered upon his situation of his own free will, he could have endured it; but to have been deceived, and, in addition to that, forced into it, was intolerable. He made every effort to go home in our ship, but his captain refused to part with him except in the way of exchange, and that he could not effect. If this account of the whole matter, which we had from the boy, and which was confirmed by all the crew, be correct, I cannot understand why Captain Arthur should have refused to let him go, especially being a captain who had the name, not only with that crew, but with all whom he had ever commanded, of an unusually kind-hearted man. The truth is, the unlimited power which merchant captains have, upon long voyages on strange coasts, takes away a sense of responsibility, and too often, even in men otherwise well-disposed, substitutes a disregard for the rights and feelings of others. The lad was sent on shore to join the gang at the hide-house; from whence, I was afterwards rejoiced to hear, he effected his escape, and went down to Callao in a small Spanish schooner; and from Callao, he probably returned to England. Soon after the arrival of the California, I spoke to Captain Arthur about Hope; and as he had known him on the voyage before, and was very fond of him, he immediately went to see him, gave him proper medicines, and, under such care, he began rapidly to recover. The Saturday night before our sailing, I spent an hour in the oven, and took leave of my Kanaka friends; and, really, this was the only thing connected with leaving California which was in any way unpleasant. I felt an interest and affection for many of these simple, true-hearted men, such as I never felt before but for a near relation. Hope shook me by the hand, said he should soon be well again, and ready to work for me when I came upon the coast, next voyage, as officer of the ship; and told me not to forget, when I became captain, how to be kind to the sick. Old “Mr. Bingham” and “King Mannini” went down to the boat with me, shook me heartily by the hand, wished us a good voyage, and went back to the oven, chanting one of their deep monotonous songs, the burden of which I gathered to be about us and our voyage.

May 7, Saturday: Waldo Emerson lectured in Salem. This was the 6th and final lecture of the series. THE LIST OF LECTURES BIOGRAPHY

May 8, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 8 of 5 M 1836 / Attended meetings & I must say they were seasons of much dryness to me but I have no doubt the fault was my own Father had short Service in both. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert sailed out of San Diego harbor, headed south. Aboard the vessel was Professor Thomas Nuttall of Harvard College, returning to Boston from his botanical expedition to the California coast: This passenger ... was no one else than a gentleman whom I had known in my better days; and the last person I should have expected to have seen on the coast of California– Professor N______, of Cambridge [Thomas Nuttall]. I had left him quietly seated in the chair of Botany and Ornithology, in Harvard University; and the next I saw of him, was strolling about San Diego beach, in a sailor’s pea-jacket, with a wide straw hat, and barefooted, with his trowsers rolled up to his knees, picking up stones and shells. He had travelled overland to the North-west Coast, and come down in a small vessel to Monterey. There he learned that there was a ship at the leeward, about to sail for Boston; and, taking passage in the Pilgrim, which was then at Monterey, he came slowly down, visiting the intermediate ports, and examining the trees, plants, earths, birds, etc., and joined us at San Diego shortly before we sailed. The second mate of the Pilgrim told me that they had an old gentleman on board who knew me, and came from the college that I had been in. He could not recollect his name, but said he was a “sort of an oldish man,” with white hair, and spent all his time in the bush, and along the beach, picking up flowers and shells, and such truck, and had a dozen boxes and barrels, full of them. I thought over everybody who would be likely to be there, but could fix upon no one; when, the next day, just as we were about to shove off from the beach, he came down to the boat, in the rig I have described, with his shoes in his hand, and his pockets full of specimens. I knew him at once, though I should not have been more surprised to have seen the Old South steeple shoot up from the hide-house. He probably had no less difficulty in recognizing me. As we left home about the same time, we had nothing to tell one another; and, owing to our different situations on board, I saw but little of him on the passage home. Sometimes, when I was at the wheel of a calm night, and the steering required no attention, and the officer of the watch was forward, he would come aft and hold a short yarn with me; but this was against the rules of the ship, as is, in fact, all intercourse between passengers and the crew.… The Pilgrim’s crew christened Mr. N. “Old Curious,” from his zeal for curiosities, and some of them said that he was crazy, and that his friends let him go about and amuse himself in this way. Why else a rich man (sailors call every man rich who does not work with his hands, and wears a long coat and cravat) should leave a Christian country, and come to such a place as California, to pick up shells and stones, they could not understand. One of them, however, an old salt, who had seen something more of the world ashore, set all to rights, as he thoughts– “Oh, ’vast there!– You don’t know anything about them craft. I’ve seen them colleges, and know the ropes. They keep all such things for curiosities, and study ’em, and have men a’ purpose to go and get ’em. This old chap knows what he’s about. He a’n’t the child you take him for. He’ll carry all these things to the college, and if they are better than any that they have had before, he’ll be head of the college. Then, by-and-by, somebody else will go after some more, and if they beat him, he’ll have to go again, or else give up his berth. That’s the way they do it. This old covey knows the ropes. He has worked a traverse over ’em, and come ’way out here, where nobody’s ever been afore, and where they’ll never think of coming.” This explanation satisfied Jack; and as it raised Mr. N.’s credit for capacity, and was near enough to the truth for common purposes, I did not disturb it.

The Alert, for its homeward journey, was carrying in addition to the hides and its passenger a small quantity of gold dust which had been brought down to the ports from the interior by various persons, something not at all unusual which at that time was attracting little attention.65 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Sunday, May 8th. This promised to be our last day in California. Our forty thousand hides, thirty thousand horns, besides several barrels of otter and beaver skins, were all stowed below, and the hatches calked down. All our spare spars were taken on board and lashed; our water-casks secured; and our live stock, consisting of four bullocks, a dozen sheep, a dozen or more pigs, and three or four dozen of poultry, were all stowed away in their different quarters: the bullocks in the long-boat, the sheep in a pen on the fore-hatch, and the pigs in a sty under the bows of the long-boat, and the poultry in their proper coop; and the jolly-boat was full of hay for the sheep and bullocks. Our unusually large cargo, together with the stores for a five months’ voyage, brought the ship channels down into the water. In addition to this, she had been steeved so thoroughly, and was so bound by the compression of her cargo, forced into her by so powerful machinery, that she was like a man in a straight-jacket, and would be but a dull sailer, until she had worked herself loose. The California had finished discharging her cargo, and was to get under weigh at the same time with us. Having washed down decks and got our breakfast, the two vessels lay side by side, in complete readiness for sea, our ensigns hanging from the peaks, and our tall spars reflected from the glassy surface of the river, which, since sunrise, had been unbroken by a ripple. At length, a few whiffs came across the water, and, by eleven o’clock, the regular north-west wind set steadily in. There was no need of calling all hands, for we had all been hanging about the forecastle the whole forenoon, and were ready for a start upon the first sign of a breeze. All eyes were aft upon the captain, who was walking the deck, with, every now and then, a look to windward. He made a sign to the mate, who came forward, took his station, deliberately between the knight-heads, cast a glance aloft, and called out, “All hands, lay aloft and loose the sails!” We were half in the rigging before the order came, and never since we left Boston were the gaskets off the yards, and the rigging overhauled, in a shorter time. “All ready forward, sir!”– “All ready the main!”– “Cross-jack yards all ready, sir!”– “Lay down, all hands but one on each yard!” The yard-arm and bunt gaskets were cast off; and each sail hung by the jigger, with one man standing by the tie to let it go. At the same moment that we sprang aloft, a dozen hands sprang into the rigging of the California, and in an instant were all over her yards; and her sails, too, were ready to be dropped at the word. In the mean time our bow gun had been loaded and run out, and its discharge was to be the signal for dropping sails. A cloud of smoke came out of our bows; the echoes of the gun rattled our farewell among the hills of California; and the two ships were covered, from head to foot, with their white canvas. For a few minutes, all was uproar and apparent confusion: men flying about like monkeys in the rigging; ropes and blocks flying; orders given and answered, and the confused noises of men singing out at the ropes. The top-sails came to the mast-heads with “Cheerily, men!” and, in a few minutes, every sail was set; for the wind was light. The head sails were backed, the windlass came round “slip– slap” to the cry of the sailors;– “Hove short, sir,” said the mate;– “Up with him!”– “Aye, aye, sir.”– A few hearty and long heaves, and the anchor showed its head. “Hook cat!”– The fall was stretched along the decks; all hands laid hold;– “Hurrah, for the last time,” said the mate; and the anchor came to the cat-head to the tune of “Time for us to go,” with a loud chorus. Everything was done quick, as though it were for the last time. The head yards were filled away, and our ship began to move through the water on her homeward-bound course. The California had got under weigh at the same moment; and we sailed down the narrow bay abreast and were just off the mouth, and finding ourselves gradually shooting ahead of her, were on the point of giving her three parting cheers, when, suddenly, we found ourselves stopped short, and the California ranging fast ahead of us. A bar stretches across the mouth of the harbor, with water enough to float common vessels, but, being low in the water, and having kept well to leeward, as we were bound to the southward, we had stuck fast, while the California, being light, had floated over.

65.Not until 1841 would the first notable gold discovery be made in California, in San Feliciano Canyon near the Mission San Fernando. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

May 9, Saturday: The HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin sailed from Port Louis, Mauritius.

Waldo Emerson’s greatly beloved brother and close friend and adviser, Charles Chauncy Emerson, died in New-York of tuberculosis (Waldo would mention this in his journal on the 16th):

Charles died at New York Monday afternoon, 9 May.... He rode out on Monday afternoon with Mother, promised himself to begin his journey with me on my arrival, the next day; on reaching home, he stepped out of the carriage alone, walked up the steps & into the house without assistance, sat down on the stairs, fainted, & never recovered.

WALDO’S RELATIVES

May 15, Sunday: Francisco Xavier Isturiz y Montero replaced Juan Alvarez Mendizabal as prime minister of Spain.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. was 1,300 miles south of where he had been a week before.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONTINUED: We kept all sail on, in the hope of forcing over, but failing in this, we hove aback, and lay waiting for the tide, which was on the flood, to take us back into the channel. This was somewhat of a damper to us, and the captain looked not a little mortified and vexed. “This is the same place where the Rosa got ashore,” observed the redheaded second mate, most mal-a-propos. A malediction on the Rosa, and him too, was all the answer he got, and he slunk off to leeward. In a few minutes, the force of the wind and the rising of the tide backed us into the stream, and we were on our way to our old anchoring-place, the tide setting swiftly up, and the ship barely manageable, in the light breeze. We came-to, in our old berth, opposite the hide-house, whose inmates were not a little surprised to see us return. We felt as though we were tied to California; and some of the crew swore that they never should get clear of the bloody coast. In about half an hour, which was near high water, the order was given to man the windlass, and again the anchor was catted; but not a word was said about the last time. The California had come back on finding that we had returned, and was hove-to, waiting for us, off the point. This time we passed the bar safely, and were soon up with the California, who filled away, and kept us company. She seemed desirous of a trial of speed, and our captain accepted the challenge, although we were loaded down to the bolts of our chain plates, as deep as a sand-barge, and bound so taught with our cargo that we were no more fit for a race than a man in fetters;– while our antagonist was in her best trim. Being clear of the point, the breeze became stiff, and the royal masts bent under our sails, but we would not take them in until we saw three boys spring aloft into the rigging of the California; when they were all furled at once, but with orders to stay aloft at the top-gallant mastheads, and loose them again at the word. It was my duty to furl the fore royal; and while standing by to loose it again, I had a fine view of the scene. From where I stood, the two vessels seemed nothing but spars and sails, while their narrow decks, far below, slanting over by the force of the wind aloft, appeared hardly capable of supporting the great fabrics raised upon them. The California was to windward of us, and had every advantage; yet, while the breeze was stiff, we held our own. As soon as it began to slacken, she ranged a little ahead, and the order was given to loose the royals. In an instant the gaskets were off and the bunt dropped. “Sheet home the fore royal!– Weather sheet’s home!”– “Hoist away, sir!” is bawled from aloft. “Overhaul your clew-lines!” shouts the mate. “Aye, aye, sir, all clear!”– “Taught leech! belay! Well the lee brace; haul taught to windward”– and the royals are set. These brought us up again; but the wind continuing light, the California set hers, and it was soon evident that she was walking away from us. Our captain then hailed, and said that he should keep off to his course; adding– “She isn’t the Alert now. If I had her in your trim, she would have been out of sight by this time.” This was good-naturedly answered from the California, and she braced sharp up, and stood close upon the wind up the coast; while we squared away our yards, and stood before the wind to the south-southwest. The California’s crew manned her weather rigging, waved their hats in the air, and gave up three hearty cheers, which we answered as heartily, and the customary single cheer came back to us from over the water. She stood on her way, doomed to eighteen months’ or two years’ hard service upon that hated coast, while we were making our way to our home, to which every hour and every mile was bringing us nearer. As soon as we parted company with the California, all hands were sent aloft to set the studding-sails. Booms were rigged out, tacks and halyards rove, sail after sail packed upon her, until every available inch of canvas was spread, that we might not lose a breath of the fair wind. We could now see how much she was cramped and deadened by her cargo; for with a good breeze on her quarter, and every stitch of canvas spread, we could not get more than six knots out of her. She had no more life in her than if she were water-logged. The log was hove several times; but she was doing her best. We had hardly patience with her, but the older sailors said– “Stand by! you’ll see her work herself loose in a week or two, and then she’ll walk up to Cape Horn like a race-horse.” When all sail had been set, and the decks cleared up, the California was a speck in the horizon, and the coast lay like a low cloud along the north-east. At sunset they were both out of sight, and we were once more upon the ocean where sky and water meet. At eight o’clock all hands were called aft, and the watches set for the voyage. Some changes were made; but I was glad to find myself still in the larboard watch. Our crew was somewhat diminished; for a man and a boy had gone in the Pilgrim; another was second mate of the Ayacucho; and a third, the oldest man of the crew, had broken down under the hard work and constant exposure on the coast, and, having had a stroke of the palsy, was left behind at the hide-house under the charge of Captain Arthur. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THOREAU’S 19TH STANZA THOREAU’S 19TH YEAR

THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONCLUDED: The poor fellow wished very much to come home in the ship; and he ought to have been brought home in her. But a live dog is better than a dead lion, and a sick sailor belongs to nobody’s mess; so he was sent ashore with the rest of the lumber, which was only in the way. By these diminutions, we were shorthanded for a voyage round Cape Horn in the dead of winter. Besides S______and myself, there were only five in the forecastle; who, together with four boys in the steerage, the sailmaker, carpenter, etc., composed the whole crew. In addition to this, we were only three or four days out, when the sailmaker, who was the oldest and best seaman on board, was taken with the palsy, and was useless for the rest of the voyage. The constant wading in the water, in all weathers, to take off hides, together with the other labors, is too much for old men, and for any who have not good constitutions. Beside these two men of ours, the second officer of the California and the carpenter of the Pilgrim broke down under the work, and the latter died at Santa Barbara. The young man, too, who came out with us from Boston in the Pilgrim, had to be taken from his berth before the mast and made clerk, on account of a fit of rheumatism which attacked him soon after he came upon the coast. By the loss of the sailmaker, our watch was reduced to five, of whom two were boys, who never steered but in fine weather, so that the other two and myself had to stand at the wheel four hours apiece out of every twenty-four; and the other watch had only four helmsmen. “Never mind– we’re homeward bound!” was the answer to everything; and we should not have minded this, were it not for the thought that we should be off Cape Horn in the very dead of winter. It was now the first part of May; and two months would bring us off the cape in July, which is the worst month in the year there; when the sun rises at nine and sets at three, giving eighteen hours night, and there is snow and rain, gales and high seas, in abundance. The prospect of meeting this in a ship half manned, and loaded so deep that every heavy sea must wash her fore and aft, was by no means pleasant. The Alert, in her passage out, doubled the Cape in the month of February, which is midsummer; and we came round in the Pilgrim in the latter part of October, which we thought was bad enough. There was only one of our crew who had been off there in the winter, and that was in a whaleship, much lighter and higher than our ship; yet he said they had man- killing weather for twenty days without intermission, and their decks were swept twice, and they were all glad enough to see the last of it. The Brandywine frigate, also, in her passage round, had sixty days off the Cape, and lost several boats by the heavy sea. All this was for our comfort; yet pass it we must; and all hands agreed to make the best of it. During our watches below we overhauled our clothes, and made and mended everything for bad weather. Each of us had made for himself a suit of oil-cloth or tarpaulin, and these we got out, and gave thorough coatings of oil or tar, and hung upon the stays to dry. Our stout boots, too, we covered over with a thick mixture of melted grease and tar, and hung out to dry. Thus we took advantage of the warm sun and fine weather of the Pacific to prepare for its other face. In the forenoon watches below, our forecastle looked like the workshop of what a sailor is– a Jack at all trades. Thick stockings and drawers were darned and patched; mittens dragged from the bottom of the chest and mended; comforters made for the neck and ears; old flannel shirts cut up to line monkey jackets; southwesters lined with flannel, and a pot of paint smuggled forward to give them a coat on the outside; and everything turned to hand; so that, although two years had left us but a scanty wardrobe, yet the economy and invention which necessity teaches a sailor, soon put each of us in pretty good trim for bad weather, even before we had seen the last of the fine. Even the cobbler’s art was not out of place. Several old shoes were very decently repaired, and with waxed ends, an awl, and the top of an old boot, I made me quite a respectable sheath for my knife. There was one difficulty, however, which nothing that we could do would remedy; and that was the leaking of the forecastle, which made it very uncomfortable in bad weather, rendered half of the berths tenantless. The tightest ships, in long voyage, from the constant strain which is upon the bowsprit, will leak, more or less, round the heel of the bowsprit, and the bitts, which come down into the forecastle; but, in addition to this, we this, we had an unaccountable leak on the starboard bow, near the cat-head, which drove us from the forward berths on that side, and, indeed, when she was on the starboard tack, from all the forward berths. One of the after berths, too, leaked in very bad weather; so that in a ship which was in other respects as tight as a bottle, and brought her cargo to Boston perfectly dry, we had, after every effort made to prevent it, in the way of caulking and leading, a forecastle with only three dry berths for seven of us. However, as there is never but one watch below at a time, by ‘turning in and out,’ we did pretty well. And there being, in our watch, but three of us who lived forward, we generally had a dry berth apiece in bad weather.1 All this, however, was but anticipation. We were still in fine weather in the North Pacific, running down the north-east trades, which we took on the second day after leaving San Diego.

1. On removing the cat-head, after the ship arrived at Boston, it was found that there were two holes under it which had been bored for the purpose o driving treenails, and which, accidentally, had not been plugged up when the cat-head was placed over them. This was sufficient to account for the l and for our not having been able to discover and stop it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Sunday, May 15th, one week out, we were in latitude 14 56N., long. 116 14W., having gone, by reckoning, over thirteen hundred miles in seven days. In fact, ever since leaving San Diego, we had had a fair wind, and as much as we wanted of it. For seven days, our lower and topmast studding-sails were set all the time, and our royals and top-gallant studding-sails, whenever she could stagger under them. Indeed, the captain had shown, from the moment we got to sea, that he was to have no boy’s play, but that the ship had got to carry all she could, and that he was going to make up, by “cracking on” to her, what she wanted in lightness. In this way, we frequently made three degrees of latitude, besides something in longitude, in the course of twenty-four hours.– Our days were spent in the usual ship’s work. The rigging which had become slack from being long in port was to be set up; breast backstays got up; studding-sail booms rigged upon the main yard; and the royal studding-sails got ready for the light trades; ring-tail set; and new rigging fitted and sails got ready for Cape Horn. For, with a ship’s gear, as well as a sailor’s wardrobe, fine weather must be improved to get ready for the bad to come. Our forenoon watch below, as I have said, was given to our own work, and our night watches were spent in the usual manner:– a trick at the wheel, a look-out on the forecastle, a nap on a coil of rigging under the lee of the rail; a yarn round the windlass-end; or, as was generally my way, a solitary walk fore and aft, in the weather waist, between the windlass-end and the main tack. Every wave that she threw aside brought us nearer home, and every day’s observation at noon showed a progress which, if it continued, would in less than five months, take us into Boston Bay. This is the pleasure of life at sea,– fine weather, day after day, without interruption,– fair wind, and a plenty of it,– and homeward bound. Every one was in good humor; things went right; and all was done with a will. At the dog watch, all hands came on deck, and stood round the weather side of the forecastle, or sat upon the windlass, and sung sea songs, and those ballads of pirates and highwaymen, which sailors delight in. Home, too, and what we should do when we got there, and when and how we should arrive, was no infrequent topic. Every night, after the kids and pots were put away, and we had lighted our pipes and cigars at the galley, and gathered about the windlass, the first question was,– “Well, Tom, what was the latitude to-day?” “Why fourteen, north, and she has been going seven knots ever since.” “Well, this will bring us up to the fine in five days.” “Yes, but these trades won’t last twenty-four hours longer,” says an old salt, pointing with the sharp of his hand to leeward,– “I know that by the look of the clouds.” Then came all manner of calculations and conjectures as to the continuance of the wind, the weather under the line, the south-east trades, etc., and rough guesses as to the time the ship would be up with the Horn; and some, more venturous, gave her so many days to Boston light, and offered to bet that she would not exceed it. “You’d better wait till you get round Cape Horn,” says an old croaker. “Yes,” says another, “you may see Boston, but you’ve got to ‘smell hell’ before that good day.” Rumors also of what had been said in the cabin, as usual, found their way forward. The steward had heard the captain say something about the straits of Magellan, and the man at the wheel fancied he had heard him tell the “passenger” that, if he found the wind ahead and the weather very bad off the Cape, he should stick her off for New Holland, and come home round the Cape of Good Hope. This passenger– the first and only one we had had, except to go from port to port, on the coast, was no one else than a gentleman whom I had known in my better days; and the last person I should have expected to have seen on the coast of California– Professor N______, of Cambridge. I had left him quietly seated in the chair of Botany and Ornithology, in Harvard University; and the next I saw of him, was strolling about San Diego beach, in a sailor’s pea-jacket, with a wide straw hat, and barefooted, with his trowsers rolled up to his knees, picking up stones and shells. He had travelled overland to the North-west Coast, and come down in a small vessel to Monterey. There he learned that there was a ship at the leeward, about to sail for Boston; and, taking passage in the Pilgrim, which was then at Monterey, he came slowly down, visiting the intermediate ports, and examining HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the trees, plants, earths, birds, etc., and joined us at San Diego shortly before we sailed. The second mate of the Pilgrim told me that they had an old gentleman on board who knew me, and came from the college that I had been in. He could not recollect his name, but said he was a “sort of an oldish man,” with white hair, and spent all his time in the bush, and along the beach, picking up flowers and shells, and such truck, and had a dozen boxes and barrels, full of them. I thought over everybody who would be likely to be there, but could fix upon no one; when, the next day, just as we were about to shove off from the beach, he came down to the boat, in the rig I have described, with his shoes in his hand, and his pockets full of specimens. I knew him at once, though I should not have been more surprised to have seen the Old South steeple shoot up from the hide-house. He probably had no less difficulty in recognizing me. As we left home about the same time, we had nothing to tell one another; and, owing to our different situations on board, I saw but little of him on the passage home. Sometimes, when I was at the wheel of a calm night, and the steering required no attention, and the officer of the watch was forward, he would come aft and hold a short yarn with me; but this was against the rules of the ship, as is, in fact, all intercourse between passengers and the crew. I was often amused to see the sailors puzzled to know what to make of him, and to hear their conjectures about him and his business. They were as much puzzled as our old sailmaker was with the captain’s instruments in the cabin. He said there were three:– the chro-nometer, the chre-nometer, and the the-nometer. (Chronometer, barometer, and thermometer.) The Pilgrim’s crew christened Mr. N. “Old Curious,” from his zeal for curiosities, and some of them said that he was crazy, and that his friends let him go about and amuse himself in this way. Why else a rich man (sailors call every man rich who does not work with his hands, and wears a long coat and cravat) should leave a Christian country, and come to such a place as California, to pick up shells and stones, they could not understand. One of them, however, an old salt, who had seen something more of the world ashore, set all to rights, as he thoughts– “Oh, ’vast there!– You don’t know anything about them craft. I’ve seen them colleges, and know the ropes. They keep all such things for curiosities, and study ’em, and have men a’ purpose to go and get ’em. This old chap knows what he’s about. He a’n’t the child you take him for. He’ll carry all these things to the college, and if they are better than any that they have had before, he’ll be head of the college. Then, by-and-by, somebody else will go after some more, and if they beat him, he’ll have to go again, or else give up his berth. That’s the way they do it. This old covey knows the ropes. He has worked a traverse over ’em, and come ’way out here, where nobody’s ever been afore, and where they’ll never think of coming.” This explanation satisfied Jack; and as it raised Mr. N.’s credit for capacity, and was near enough to the truth for common purposes, I did not disturb it. With the exception of Mr. N., we had no one on board but the regular ship’s company, and the live stock. Upon this, we had made a considerable inroad. We killed one of the bullocks every four days, so that they did not last us up to the line. We, or, rather, they, then began upon the sheep and the poultry, for these never come into Jack’s mess.66 The pigs were left for the latter part of the voyage, for they are sailors, and can stand all weathers. We had an old sow on board, the mother of a numerous progeny, who had been twice round the Cape of Good Hope, and once round Cape Horn. The last time going round, was very nearly her death. We heard her squealing and moaning one dark night, after it had been snowing and hailing for several hours, and getting into the sty, we found her nearly frozen to death. We got some straw, an old sail, and other things, and wrapped her up in a corner of the sty, where she staid until we got into fine weather again. There is a singular piece of rhyme, traditional among sailors, which they say over such pieces of beef. I do not know that it ever appeared in print before. When seated round the kid, if a particularly bad piece is found, one of them takes it up, and addressing it, repeats these lines:

“Old horser old horse! what brought you here?” —“From Sacarap to Portland pier 66.The customs as to the allowance of “grub” are very nearly the same in all American merchantmen. Whenever a pig is killed, the sailors have one mess from it. The rest goes to the cabin. The smaller live stock, poultry, etc., they never taste. And, indeed, they do not complain of this, for it would take a great deal to supply them with a good meal, and without the accompaniments, (which could hardly be furnished to them,) it would not be much better than salt beef. But even as to the salt beef, they are scarcely dealt fairly with; for whenever a barrel is opened, before any of the beef is put into the harness-cask, the steward comes up, and picks it all over, and takes out the best pieces, (those that have any fat in them) for the cabin. This was done in both the vessels I was in, and the men said that it was usual in other vessels. Indeed, it is made no secret, but some of the crew are usually called to help in assorting and putting away the pieces. By this arrangement the hard, dry pieces, which the sailors call “old horse,” come to their share. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I’ve carted stone this many a year: Till, killed by blows and sore abuse, They salted down for sailors’ use. The sailors they do me despise: They turn me over and damn my eyes; Cut off my meat, and pick my bones, And pitch the rest to Davy Jones.” There is a story current among seamen, that a beef-dealer was convicted, at Boston, of having sold old horse for ship’s stores, instead of beef, and had been sentenced to be confined in jail, until he should eat the whole of it; and that he is now lying in Boston jail. I have heard this story often, on board other vessels beside those of our own nation. It is very generally believed, and is always highly commended, as a fair instance of retaliatory justice. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 17, Tuesday: Joseph Norman Lockyer, who would discover the presence of helium in the sun, was born.

According to the Caledonian Mercury of Edinburgh, Scotland for May 30, Monday, 1836, the General Order issued on the 17th by General Evans of the British legion in Spain, the Military Order “Second Class of St Ferdinand,” a decoration in recognition of services rendered,67 was issued among others to “P. Thoreau, artillery.” CAPTAIN JOHN THOREAU

One is of course reminded of the recycling by Henry Thoreau of a poetic remainder (by Charles Wolfe) from England’s painful Peninsular campaign:

67. The 1st class of this medal was lowest, the 3d class highest, and this officer was being awarded the intermediate grade. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“RESISTANCE TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT”: After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? — in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well- disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder- monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts — a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments, though it may be “Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O’er the grave where our hero we buried.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. A wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be “clay,” and “stop a hole to keep the wind away,” but leave that office to his dust at least:— “I am too high-born to be propertied, To be a secondary at control, Or useful serving-man and instrument To any sovereign state throughout the world.”

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 17th of 5 M 1836 / This day I purchased a little Book which among other things contained the life of Our friend & my old acquaintance Thomas Watson of Bolton Massachusetts this little sketch of his life & some of his letters has indeed been a brook by the way - & refreshed my heart — all the circumstances it contains I have heard from his own Mouth, escepting the Annecdote of his going to Abel Noughtons house to warn him in the night — he used before I was married, for several years, to dine with me at my fathers house at least once in the course of the Yearly Meeting, & was always very communicative & interesting -he was rather tall, at least not far from the common height - his cloaths coarse & generally of a Sheeps grey colour & his whole appearance much of the rustic, quick spoken with considerable motion with his hands while speaking - his countenance hard & flushed, yet with all when favourd & under the right influence Divine grace Shone over all - he often said his natural disposition was rough & hard, & it required a constant Watch, to keep Nature in subjection - his religious commuications, of which I have heard but few want not in Mans Wisdom - but the wisdom attended them & were often very reaching to individuals. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 18, Wednesday: The report of the Pinckney Committee to the US House of Representatives, including the first gag resolution. The US Congress passed an amendment to the Naval Appropriations Bill authorizing the President to “send out a surveying and exploring expedition to the Pacific Ocean and the South Seas,” and a total of $300,000 was appropriated for the expedition. The amendment passed the Senate by a vote of 26 to 3 while in the House there was considerable opposition but the final vote was 79 to 65. The primary purpose of the expedition was to aid commerce and navigation, but it was also supposed “to extend the bounds of science and to promote knowledge.” CHARLES WILKES

(Because the name of the expedition, United States South Seas Exploring Expedition, would soon be shortened to “Ex. Ex.,” the ship that would be sent out, the Vincennes, would also be referred to informally as the “Ex. Ex.”.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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WALDEN: I have always endeavored to acquire strict business PEOPLE OF habits; they are indispensable to every man. If your trade is with WALDEN the Celestial Empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough. You will export such articles as the country affords, purely native products, much ice and pine timber and a little granite, always in native bottoms. These will be good ventures. To oversee all the details yourself in person; to be at once pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter; to buy and sell and keep the accounts; to read every letter received, and write or read every letter sent; to superintend the discharge of imports night and day; to be upon many parts of the coast almost at the same time; –often the richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore;– to be your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the horizon, speaking all passing vessels bound coastwise; to keep up a steady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a distant and exorbitant market; to keep yourself informed of the state of the markets, prospects of war and peace every where, and anticipate the tendencies of trade and civilization, –taking advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions, using new passages and all improvements in navigation;– charts to be studied, the position of reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever, the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of some calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have reached a friendly pier, –there is the untold fate of La Perouse;– universal science to be kept pace with, studying the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great adventurers and merchants, from Hanno and the Phoenicians down to our day; in fine, account of stock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand. It is a labor to task the faculties of a man, – such problems of profit and loss, of interest, of tare and tret, and gauging of all kinds in it, as demand a universal knowledge.

JEAN-FRANÇOIS DE GALOUP

WALDEN: What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring PEOPLE OF Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in WALDEN the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road.

CHARLES WILKES HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert had reached the doldrums of the Equator.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Wednesday, May 18th. Lat. 9 54N., long. 113 17W., The north-east trades had now left us, and we had the usual variable winds, which prevail near the line, together with some rain. So long as we were in these latitudes, we had but little rest in our watch on deck at night, for, as the winds were light and variable, and we could not lose a breath, we were all the watch bracing the yards, and taking in and making sail, and “humbugging” with our flying kites. A little puff of wind on the larboard quarter, and then– “larboard fore braces!” and studding-booms were rigged out, studding-sails set alow and aloft, the yards trimmed, and jibs and spanker in; when it would come as calm as a duck-pond, and the man at the wheel stand with the palm of his hand up, feeling for the wind. “Keep her off a little!” “All aback forward, sir!” cries a man from the forecastle. Down go the braces again; in come the studding-sails, all in a mess, which half an hour won’t set right; yards braced sharp up; and she’s on the starboard tack, close hauled. The studding-sails must now be cleared away, and set up in the tops, and on the booms. By the time this is done, and you are looking out for a soft plank for a nap,– “Lay aft here, and square in the head yards!” and the studding-sails are all set again on the starboard side. So it goes until it is eight bells,– call the watch,– heave the log,– relieve the wheel, and go below the larboard watch. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 22, Sunday: At the Niederrheinisches Musikfest in Dusseldorf, Felix Mendelssohn conducted his own St. Paul, an oratorio to words of Schubring after the Bible for the initial time (this and other performances at the festival would assure Mendelssohn’s international stature).

Sam Houston landed in New Orleans, where he was met by a band and huzzahing crowds. I bring you tidings of great cheer — Texians are revolting!

The laying, in Concord, of the corner-stone for a Trinitarian Congregationalist Church.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert were approaching the equator. After an equatorial rain squall, everyone was able to take a freshwater bath.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Sunday, May 22d. Lat. 5 14N., long. 166 45W. We were now a fortnight out, and within five degrees of the line, to which two days of good breeze would take us; but we had, for the most part, what sailors call “an Irishman’s hurricane,– right up and down.” This day it rained nearly all day, and being Sunday, and nothing to do, we stopped up the scuppers and filled the decks with rain water, and bringing all our clothes on deck, had a grand wash, fore and aft. When this was through, we stripped to our drawers, and taking pieces of soap and strips of canvas for towels, we turned-to and soaped, washed, and scrubbed one another down, to get off, as we said, the California dust; for the common wash in salt water, which is all Jack can get, being on an allowance of fresh, had little efficacy, and was more for taste than utility. The captain was below all the afternoon, and we had something nearer to a Saturnalia than anything we had yet seen; for the mate came into the scuppers, with a couple of boys to scrub him, and got into a battle with them in heaving water. By unplugging the holes, we let the soapsuds off the decks, and in a short time had a new supply of rain water, in which we had a grand rinsing. It was surprising to see how much soap and fresh water did for the complexions of many of us; how much of what we supposed to be tan and sea-blacking, we got rid of. The next day, the sun rising clear, the ship was covered, fore and aft, with clothes of all sorts, hanging out to dry.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 22nd of 5 M 1836 / Father in both meetings today had short but I thought lively & well adapted testimonies to bear - but they were not very rich seasons to me. — After tea I went to the head of the Long Wharf when the Steam Boat came down from Providence - there were many persons there but I did not know the cause of it till I got there - It seems the Company of soldiers on Fort Walcot were to embark to go to Georgia to Fight the Indians - after the boat had taken in her passengers at the Long Wharf she went over to the fort wharf where the poor fellows were arraneged in Martial order & we saw them March down on board the boat to go off to be Shot at It was an affecting scene to see them leave a pleasant Island & healthy situation where their little gardens were made & their articles of Vegitables already come up & in good progress -to see them with heavy & very sorrowful & dismayed feelings leave all this, for an unhealthy climate, which of itself is almost certain death to a Northern constitution, & above all to be shot at & Killed or to Kill the Indians in their way It was a very affecting scene & reminded me of a scene I once saw in Providence of a Man who was going to the Gallows - HDT WHAT? INDEX

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It seemed nearly as awful when I saw these poor objects March down from the Barracks & go on board the boat - but over all & above all, when we reflect on the utter inconsistency & repugnance it is to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. How truly Awful. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

May 25, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson’s 33d birthday.

Representative John Quincy Adams was gagged from being able to introduce his petition for the end of the practice of human enslavement in the United States of America. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 25th of 5th M 1836 / This evening Joseph Gifford of Dartmouth & Edmond Chase of Fall River called to see us, they have come to wait on our friends Mary Card & Anna Macomber to attend our Moy [Monthly] Meeting tomorrow - after spending a pleasant time with us - I walked with them to Henry Goulds where they lodge & where the women Friends are. — I sat there till 9 OClock very pleasantly & then came home. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 28, Saturday: David Henry Thoreau needed to drop out of Harvard College on account of an illness, presumably tubercular, and would presumably have been being cared for at the family home in Concord.68 THOREAU RESIDENCES

In Upper Canada, Lieutenant Governor Sir Francis Bond Head dissolved the parliament and ordered that writs be issued for the election of a new legislature (and indeed, his side would win and the Reformists would lose in that new election).

Down with Reform!

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert crossed the equator and caught the winds down the western coast of South America toward Cape Horn.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: As we approached the line, the wind became more easterly, and the weather clearer, and in twenty days from San Diego,– Saturday, May 28th, at about three P.M., with a fine breeze from the east-southeast, we crossed the equator. In twenty-four hours, after crossing the line, which was very unusual, we took the regular south-east trades. These winds come a little from the eastward of south-east, and, with us, they blew directly from the east-southeast, which was fortunate for us, for our course was south-by-west, and we could thus go one point free. The yards were braced so that every sail drew, from the spanker to the flying-jib; and the upper yards being squared in a little, the fore and main top-gallant studding-sails were set, and just drew handsomely. For twelve days this breeze blew steadily, not varying a point, and just so fresh that we could carry our royals; and, during the whole time, we hardly started a brace. Such progress did we make, that at the end of seven days from the time we took the breeze, on —

May 30, Monday: Augustus Goddard Peabody, one of Henry Thoreau’s Cambridge classmates, wrote to him at home in Concord. Cambridge May 30, 1836. Dear Thoreau, After nine days of constant rain, we have some prospect of pleasant weather. I cannot describe my feelings of joy, rapture, and astonishment, but you may have some idea of the effect produced on me, from 68. While recuperating over the summer he would go “to New York with Father, peddling” wholesale for the family pencil business, not returning to his education until the fall term. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the fact that to this circumstance alone, you owe the present letter. I have somewhere seen an essay, to prove that a man’s temper depends greatly on the weather; I will not however give the arguments brought forward to prove this important fact for two reasons. Firstly because it appears to me self evident; and secondly because I do’nt intend to write a theme, but a letter. Strange that any person in his sober senses, should put two such sentences as the above in a letter, but howesomedever, “what’s done cant be helped”. Everything goes on here as regular as clock work, and it is as dull as one of Dr Ware’s sermons, (a very forcible comparison that, you must allow). The Davy Club got into a little trouble the week before last, from the following momentous circumstance. Hen. Williams gave a lecture on Pyrotechny, and illustrated it with a parcel of fire works he had prepared in the vacation. The report spread through college, that there was to be a “display of fire works,” and on the night of their meeting, the Davy room was crowded, and those unfortunate youths who could not get in, stood in the yard round the windows. As you may imagine, there was some slight noise on the occasion. In fact the noise was so slight, that Bowen heard it at his room in Holworthy. This worthy, boldly determined to march forth and disperse the “rioters.” Accordingly in the midst of a grand display of rockets, et ce- tera, he step’t into the room, and having gazed round him in silent astonishment for the space of two minutes, and hearing various cries of, — Intrusion — Throw him over — Saw his leg off — Pull his wool &c &c he made two or three dignified motions with his hand to gain attention, and then kindly advised us to “retire to our respective rooms.” Strange to say he found no one inclined to follow this good advice, and he accordingly thought fit to withdraw. There is (as perhaps you know) a law against keeping powder in the college buildings. The effect of “Tutor Bowens” intrusion was evident on the next Monday night, when Williams and Bigelow were invited to call and see President Quincy, and owing to the tough reasoning of Bowen, who boldly asserted that “powder was powder”, they were each presented with a public admonition. We had a miniature volcanoe at Websters lecture the other morning, and the odours therefrom, surpassed all ever produced by Araby the blest. Imagine to yourself, all the windows and shutters of the above named lecture room closed, and then if possible stretch your fancy a little farther, and conceive the delightful scent produced by the burning of nearly a bushel of Sulphur, Phospuretted Hydrogen, and other still more pleasant ingredients. As soon as the burning commenced there was a general rush to the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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door, and a crowd collected there, running out every half minute to get a breath of fresh air, and then coming in to see the volcanoe. “No noise nor nothing.” Bigelow and Dr Bacon manufactured some “laughing gas,” and ad- ministered it on the Delta. It was much better than that made by Webster. Jack Weise took some as usual. King, Freshman, took a bag, and produced surprising effects, merely by running into all the unhappy individuals he met, who seemed by no means desirous of his company. Wheeler, Joe Allen, and Hildreth, each received a dose. Wheeler proceeded to dance for the amusement of the company, Joe signal- ized himself by jumping over the Delta fence, and Sam raved about Milton Shakespeare Byron &c. Sam took two doses. It produced great effect on him. He seemed to be as happy as a mortal could desire, talked with Shakespeare, Milton & co, and seemed to be quite at home with them. It was amusing to trace the connexion of his ideas, and on the whole he afforded greater entertainment than any other person there, it affected him however very strongly, and he did not get over it till he was led off the Delta and carried into Wheelers room; he was well enough however next day. This letter containeth a strange mixture. All possible allowance must be made for want of time, not being accustomed to letter writing &c &c. Hope you are all well, at home. Yours truly A.G. Peabody. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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JUNE 1836

June: Samuel Griswold Goodrich, the publisher who had hired Nathaniel Hawthorne, went bankrupt and paid its author only $20.00 of his promised $500.00 salary. Therefore when he and his sister Elizabeth edited PETER PARLEY’S UNIVERSAL HISTORY, ON THE BASIS OF GEOGRAPHY, they did the work this time for $100.00 cash in hand. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June: This month’s issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:

HARVARDIANA

June 1, Wednesday: Charles Darwin returned to Capetown.

At the Teatro Nuovo of Naples, Gaetano Donizetti’s melodramma giocoso Il campanello di notte to words of the composer after Brunswick, Troin, and Lherie was performed for the initial time to a good reception.

June 5, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 5 of 6 M / This morning our friend Sam Rhodes arrived HDT WHAT? INDEX

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in the Steam Boat & came to our house while we were eating breakfast he is from Pennsylvania near Philad. & is a Minister with a good certificate from the Meeting he belongs — he attended our Morning Meeting & had acceptable service — In the Afternoon he attended a Meeting appointed at Portsmouth, & expects to attend as many Meetings as he can before YMeeting. —Our Afternoon meeting was solid, & father had a short good testimony. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. noted that the Alert had made 1,200 miles in seven days. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Sunday, June 5th, we were in lat. 19 29S., and long. 118 01W., having made twelve hundred miles in seven days, very nearly upon a taught bowline. Our good ship was getting to be herself again, had increased her rate of sailing more than one-third since leaving San Diego. The crew ceased complaining of her, and the officers hove the log every two hours with evident satisfaction. This was glorious sailing. A steady breeze; the light trade-wind clouds over our heads; the incomparable temperature of the Pacific,– neither hot nor cold; a clear sun every day, and clear moon and stars each night; and new constellations rising in the south, and the familiar ones sinking in the north, as we went on our course,– “stemming nightly toward the pole.” Already we had sunk the north star and the Great Bear in the northern horizon, and all hands looked out sharp to the southward for the Magellan Clouds, which, each succeeding night, we expected to make. “The next time we see the north star,” said one, “we shall be standing to the northward, the other side of the Horn.” This was true enough, and no doubt it would be a welcome sight; for sailors say that in coming home from round Cape Horn, and the Cape of Good Hope, the north star is the first land you make. These trades were the same that, in the passage out in the Pilgrim, lasted nearly all the way from Juan Fernandez to the line; blowing steadily on our starboard quarter for three weeks, without our starting a brace, or even brailing down the skysails. Though we had now the same wind, and were in the same latitude with the Pilgrim on her passage out, yet we were nearly twelve hundred miles to the westward of her course; for the captain, depending upon the strong south-west winds which prevail in high southern latitudes during the winter months, took the full advantage of the trades, and stood well to the westward, so far that we passed within about two hundred miles of Ducie’s Island. It was this weather and sailing that brought to my mind a little incident that occurred on board the Pilgrim, while we were in the same latitude. We were going along at a great rate, dead before the wind, with studding-sails out on both sides, alow and aloft, on a dark night, just after midnight, and everything was as still as the grave, except the washing of the water by the vessel’s side; for, being before the wind, with a smooth sea, the little brig, covered with canvas, was doing great business, with very little noise. The other watch was below, and all our watch, except myself and the man at the wheel, were asleep under the lee of the boat. The second mate, who came out before the mast, and was always very thick with me, had been holding a yarn with me, and just gone aft to his place on the quarter-deck, and I had resumed my usual walk to and from the windlass-end, when, suddenly, we heard a loud scream coming from ahead, apparently directly from under the bows. The darkness, and complete stillness of the night, and the solitude of the ocean, gave to the sound a dreadful and almost supernatural effect. I stood perfectly still, and my heart beat quick. The sound woke up the rest of the watch, who stood looking at one another. “What, in the name of God, is that?” said the second mate, coming slowly forward. The first thought I had was, that it might be a boat, with the crew of some wrecked vessel, or perhaps the boat of some whaleship, out over night, and we had run them down in the darkness. Another scream, but less loud than the first. This started us, and we ran forward, and looked over the bows, and over the sides, to leeward, but nothing was to be seen or heard. What was to be done. Call the captain, and heave the ship aback? Just at this moment, in crossing the forecastle, one of the men saw a light below, and looking down the scuttle, saw the watch all out of their berths, and afoul of one poor fellow, dragging him out of his berth, and shaking him, to wake him out of a nightmare. They had been waked out of their sleep, and as much alarmed at the scream as we were, and were hesitating whether to come on deck, when the second sound, coming directly from one of the berths, revealed the cause of the alarm. The fellow got a good shaking for the trouble he had given. We made a joke of the matter and we could well laugh, for our minds were not a little relieved by its ridiculous termination. We were now close upon the southern tropical line, and, with so fine a breeze, were daily leaving the sun behind us, and drawing nearer to Cape Horn, for which it behoved us to make every preparation. Our rigging was all examined and overhauled, and mended, or replaced with new, where it was necessary: new and strong bobstays fitted in the place of the chain ones, which were worn out; the spritsail yard and martingale guys and back-ropes set well taught; bran new fore and main braces rove; top-gallant sheets, and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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wheel-ropes, made of green hide, laid up in the form of rope, were stretched and fitted; and new top-sail clewlines, etc., rove; new fore-topmast back-stays fitted; and other preparations made, in good season, that the ropes might have time to stretch and become limber before we got into cold weather.

June 12, Sunday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert experienced a week of intermittent winds.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Sunday, June 12th. Lat. 26 04S., 116 31W. We had now lost the regular trades, and had the winds variable, principally from the westward, and kept on, in a southerly course, sailing very nearly upon a meridian, and at the end of the week,

Hearing reports that the Texas government was in chaos, Sam Houston began a difficult journey back.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 12 of 6 M 1836 / Our Morning Meeting was a season of remarkable solemnity & favour - Father Rodman opened the service in a short lively testimony & was followed in a powerful living gospel communication by Saml Bettle, Supplication by Hannah Evans - after a time of very solid waiting Saml was engaged in another Supplication after which the Meeting closed. In the Afternoon the Meeting was very large & the weight of the Service lay on Isaac Thorn his testimony was powerful & prevalent & considering the great concourse present the Meeting was as quiet as I ever knew it in the Afternoon. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

June 14, Tuesday: On this day or the following one, Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

Power is one great lesson which Nature teaches Man. The secret that he can not only reduce under his will, that is, conform to his character, particular events but classes of events & so harmonize all the outward occurrences with the states of mind, that must he learn. Worship, must he learn.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 14th of 6 M 1836 / Select Meeting met at 8 OClock this Morning - Our friend John Warren returned the certificates he recd two years ago to visit Friends in England & Ireland & produced very lively & satisfactory - The queries & Answers were read & the subjects before treated in a weighty manner. — The Meeting at large in the Afternoon was also a season of favour - In the eveng a committee met at our house which has been the case each evening, including first Day which has made hard service for us. — I find my time is so much occupied that I must neglect a daily entry of events & must defer to the close of the Meeting any HDT WHAT? INDEX

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further attempts at writing in my diary & then insert a general clause according to my rememberance & feeling of what occured. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

June 17, Thursday: The balloon of the intrepid master goldbeater Louis Lauriat again graced the skies above his home municipality of Boston.

June 19, Sunday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert began to enter the waters off Cape Horn.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Sunday, June 19th, were in lat. 34 15S., and long. 116 38W. There now began to be a decided change in the appearance of things. The days became shorter and shorter; the sun running lower in its course each day, and giving less and less heat; and the nights so cold as to prevent our sleeping on deck; the Magellan Clouds in sight, of a clear night; the skies looking cold and angry; and, at times, a long, heavy, ugly sea, setting in from the southward, told us what we were coming to. Still, however, we had a fine, strong breeze, and kept on our way, under as much sail as our ship would bear. Toward the middle of the week, the wind hauled to the southward, which brought us upon a taught bowline, made the ship meet, nearly head on, the heavy swell which rolled from that direction; and there was something not at all encouraging in the manner in which she met it. Being so deep and heavy, she wanted the buoyancy which should have carried her over the seas, and she dropped heavily into them, the water washing over the decks; and every now and then, when an unusually large sea met her fairly upon the bows, she struck it with a sound as dead and heavy as that with which a sledge-hammer falls upon the pile, and took the whole of it in upon the forecastle, and rising, carried it aft in the scuppers, washing the rigging off the pins, and carrying along with it everything which was loose on deck. She had been acting in this way all of our forenoon watch below; as we could tell by the washing of the water over our heads, and the heavy breaking of the seas against her bows, (with a sound as though she were striking against a rock,) only the thickness of the plank from our heads, as we lay in our berths, which are directly against the bows. At eight bells, the watch was called, and we came on deck, one hand going aft to take the wheel, and another and another going to the galley to get the grub for dinner. I stood on the forecastle, looking at the seas, which were rolling high, as far as the eye could reach, their tops white with foam, and the body of them of a deep indigo blue, reflecting the bright rays of the sun. Our ship rose slowly over a few of the largest of them, until one immense fellow came rolling on, threatening to cover her, and which I was sailor enough to know, by “the feeling of her” under my feet, she would not rise over. I sprang upon the knight-heads, and seizing hold of the fore-stay with my hands, drew myself upon it. My feet were just off the stanchion, when she struck fairly into the middle of the sea, and it washed her fore and aft, burying her in the water. As soon as she rose out of it, I looked aft, and everything forward of the main-mast, except the long-boat, which was griped and doublelashed down to the ring-bolts, was swept off clear. The galley, the pig-sty, the hen-coop, and a large sheep-pen which had been built upon the forehatch, were all gone, in the twinkling of an eye– leaving the deck as clean as a chin new-reaped– and not a stick left, to show where they had stood. In the scuppers lay the galley, bottom up, and a few boards floating about, the wreck of the sheep-pen– and half a dozen miserable sheep floating among them, wet through, and not a little frightened at the sudden change that had come upon them. As soon as the sea had washed by, all hands sprung out of the forecastle to see what had become of the ship and in a few moments the cook and old Bill crawled out from under the galley, where they had been lying in the water, nearly smothered, with the galley over them. Fortunately, it rested against the bulwarks, or it would have broken some of their bones. When the water ran off, we picked the sheep up, and put them in the long-boat, got the long-boat, got the galley back in its place, and set things a little to rights; but, had not our ship had uncommonly high bulwarks and rail, everything must have been washed overboard, not excepting Old Bill and the cook. Bill had been standing at the galley-door, with the kid of beef in his hand for the forecastle mess, when, away he went, kid, beef, and all. He held on to the kid till HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the last, like a good fellow, but the beef was gone, and when the water had run off, we saw it lying high and dry, like a rock at low tide– nothing could hurt that. We took the loss of our beef very easily, consoling ourselves with the recollection that the cabin had more to lose than we; and chuckled not a little at seeing the remains of the chicken-pie and pan-cakes floating in the scuppers. “This will never do!” was what some said, and every one felt. Here we were, not yet within a thousand miles of the latitude of Cape Horn, and our decks swept by a sea not one half so high as we must expect to find there. Some blamed the captain for loading his ship so deep, when he knew what he must expect; while others said that the wind was always southwest, off the Cape, in the winter; and that, running before it, we should not mind the seas so much. When we got down into the forecastle, Old Bill, who was somewhat of a croaker,– having met with a great many accidents at sea– said that if that was the way she was going to act, we might as well make our wills, and balance the books at once, and put on a clean shirt. “’Vast there, you bloody old owl! You’re always hanging out blue lights! You’re frightened by the ducking you got in the scuppers, and can’t take a joke! What’s the use in being always on the look-out for Davy Jones?” “Stand by!” says another, “and we’ll get an afternoon watch below, by this scrape;” but in this they were disappointed, for at two bells, all hands were called and set to work, getting lashings upon everything on deck; and the captain talked of sending down the long top-gallant masts; but, as the sea went down toward night, and the wind hauled abeam we left them standing, and set the studding-sails.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 19th of 6th M 1836 / Our fr Joshua Lynch & his companion Joel Woolman staid last night at David Buffums, being engaged in looking for a horse to go the journey they have in propect. — They returned to Meeting with us in the forenoon & went to an appt Meeting at Portsmouth at 4 OC this Afternoon intending to go from thence to Edw Wings in Tiverton & stay tonight - Joshua had a good testimony with us in the Morning & in the Afternoon Meeting Father Rodman was concerned in lively testimony RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

June 20, Monday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. helped rig the Alert for her supreme trial.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: The next day, all hands were turned-to upon unbending the old sails, and getting up the new ones; for a ship, unlike people on shore, puts on her best suit in bad weather. The old sails were sent down, and three new topsails, and new fore and main courses, jib, and fore-topmast staysail, which were made on the coast, and never had been used, were bent, with a complete set of new earings, robands and reef-points; and reef- tackles were rove to the courses, and spilling-lines to the top-sails. These, with new braces and clew-lines, fore and aft, gave us a good suit of running rigging. The wind continued westerly, and the weather and sea less rough since the day on which we shipped the heavy sea, and we were making great progress under studding-sails, with our light sails all set, keeping a little to the eastward of south; for the captain, depending upon westerly winds off the Cape, had kept so far to the westward, that though we were within about five hundred miles of the latitude of Cape Horn, we were nearly seventeen hundred miles to the westward of it. Through the rest of the week, we continued on with a fair wind, gradually, as we got more to the southward, keeping a more easterly course, and bringing the wind on our larboard quarter, until — HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 22, Wednesday: Jones Very joined Salem’s Unitarians of the “North Society,” at their New Stone Church.

June 22, Wednesday: Bronson Alcott again visited Waldo Emerson: “Mr Alcott has been here with his Olympian dreams. He is a world-builder.”

June 24, Friday: Waldo Emerson completed his draft of NATURE, which he recognized to be hardly enough to offer as a decent book.

My design is to follow it by and by with another essay, “Spirit”; and the two shall make a decent volume.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 24th of 6th M / This eveng between 9 & 10 OC Died Redwood Hazard. Aged 75 Years & 6 Days — he had been for many years partially deranged & taken care of by Society at the house of David Buffum in Middletown - he was mostly pleasant & was always remarkable for his retentive memory & careful attendance of Meetings when of ability to attend— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

June 26, Sunday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert were within 1,800 miles of Cape Horn.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Sunday, June 26th, when, having a fine, clear day, the captain got a lunar observation, as well as his meridian altitude, which made us in lat. 47 50S., long. 113 49W.; Cape Horn bearing, according to my calculation, E. S. E. 1/2 E., and distant eighteen hundred miles.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 26th of 6th M 1836 / The remains of Redwood Hazard was brought into Town, & buried after Meeting - Father Rodman was engaged in testimony as were Hannah Dennis & Anna D Wing - the latter also appeared in supplication - it appeared to me the Meeting was preserved, & a good degree of solemnity was spread over it. — In the Afternoon Anna was again concerned to preach —Father also said a few word.— In the evening I met Hannah & Anna at Fathers. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

June 27, Monday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. helped configure the Alert’s sails for the Horn.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Monday, June 27th. During the first part of this day, the wind continued fair, and, as we were going before it, it did not feel very cold, so that we kept at work on deck, in our common clothes and round jackets. Our watch had an afternoon watch below, for the first time since leaving San Diego, and having inquired of the third mate what the latitude was at noon, and made our usual guesses as to the time she would need, to be up with the Horn, we turned in, for a nap. We were sleeping away “at the rates of knots,” when three knocks on the scuttle, and “All hands ahoy!” started us from our berths. What could be the matter? It did not appear to be blowing hard, and looking up through the scuttle, we could see that it was a clear day, overhead; yet the watch were taking in sail. We thought there must be a sail in sight, and that we were about to heave-to and speak her; and were just congratulating ourselves upon it– for we had seen neither sail nor land since we had left port– when we heard the mate’s voice on deck, (he turned-in “all standing,” and was always on deck the moment he was called,) singing out to the men who were taking in the studding-sails, and asking where his watch were. We did not wait for a second call, but tumbled up the ladder; and there, on the starboard bow, was a bank of mist, covering sea and sky, and driving directly for us. I had seen the same before, in my passage round in the Pilgrim, and knew what it meant, and that there was no time to be lost. We had nothing on but thin clothes, yet there was not a moment to spare, and at it we went. The boys of the other watch were in the tops, taking in the topgallant studding-sails, and the lower and topmast studding-sails were and down by the run. It was nothing but “haul down and clew up,” until we got all the studding-sails in, and the royals, flying-jib, and mizen top-gallant sail furled, and the ship kept off a little, to take the squall. The fore and main top-gallant sails were still on her, for the “old man” did not mean to be frightened in broad daylight, and was determined to carry sail till the last minute. We all stood waiting for its coming, when the first blast showed us that it was not be trifled with. Rain, sleet, snow, and wind, enough to take our breath from us, and make the toughest turn his back to windward! The ship lay nearly over on her beam-ends; the spars and rigging snapped and cracked; and her top-gallant masts bent like whip- sticks. “Clew up the fore and main top-gallant sails!” shouted the captain, and all hands sprang to the clewlines. The decks were standing nearly at an angle of forty-five degrees, and the ship going like a mad steed through the water, the whole forward part of her in a smother of foam. The halyards were let go and the yard clewed down, and the sheets started, and in a few minutes the sails smothered and kept in by clewlines and buntlines.– “Furl ’em, sir?” asked the mate.– “Let go the topsail halyards, fore and aft!” shouted the captain, in answer, at the top of his voice. Down came the topsail yards, the reef-tackles were manned and hauled out, and we climbed up to windward, and sprang into the weather rigging. The violence of the wind, and the hail and sleet, driving nearly horizontally across the ocean, seemed actually to pin us down to the rigging. It was hard work making head against them. One after another, we got out upon the yards. And here we had work to do; for our new sails, which had hardly been bent long enough to get the starch out of them, were as stiff as boards, and the new earings and reef-points, stiffened with the sleet, knotted like pieces of iron wire. Having only our round jackets and straw hats on, we were soon wet through, and it was every moment growing colder. Our hands were soon stiffened and numbed, which, added to the stiffness of everything else, kept us a good while on the yard. After we had got the sail hauled upon the yard, we had to wait a long time for the weather earing to be passed; but there was no fault to be found, for French John was at the earing, and a better sailor never laid out on a yard; so we leaned over the yard, and beat our hands upon the sail to keep them from freezing. At length the word came– “Haul out to leeward,”– and we seized the reef-points and hauled the band taught for the lee earing. “Taught band– Knot away,” and we got the first reef fast, and were just going to lay down, when– “Two reefs– two reefs!” shouted the mate, and we had a second reef to take, in the same way. When this was fast, we laid down on deck, manned the halyards to leeward, nearly up to our knees in water, set the topsail, and then laid aloft on the main topsail yard, and reefed that sail in the same manner; for, as I have before stated, we were a good deal reduced in numbers, and, to make it worse, the carpenter, only two days before, cut his leg with an axe, so that he could not go aloft. This weakened us so that we could not well manage more than one topsail at a time, in such weather as this, and, of course, our labor was doubled. From the main topsail yard, we went upon the main yard, and took a reef in the mainsail. No sooner had we got on deck, than– “Lay aloft there, mizen-top-men, and close-reef the mizen topsail!” This called me; and being nearest to the rigging, I got first aloft, and out to the weather earing. English Ben was on the yard just HDT WHAT? INDEX

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after me, and took the lee earing, and the rest of our gang were soon on the yard, and began to fist the sail, when the mate considerately sent up the cook and steward, to help us. I could now account for the long time it took to pass the other earings, for, to do my best, with a strong hand to help me at the dog’s ear, I could not get it passed until I heard them beginning everything to complain in the bunt. One reef after another we took in, until the sail was close-reefed, when we went down and hoisted away at the halyards. In the mean time, the jib had been furled and the staysail set, and the ship, under her reduced sail, had got more upright and was under management; but the two top-gallant sails were still hanging in the buntlines, and slatting and jerking as though they would take the masts out of her. We gave a look aloft, and knew that our work was not done yet; and, sure enough, no sooner did the mate see that we were on deck, than– “Lay aloft there, four of you, and furl the top-gallant sails!” This called me again, and two of us went aloft, up the fore rigging, and two more up the main, upon the top-gallant yards. The shrouds were now iced over, the sleet having formed a crust or cake round all the standing rigging, and on the weather side of the masts and yards. When we got upon the yard, my hands were so numb that I could not have cast off the knot of the gasket to have saved my life. We both lay over the yard for a few seconds, beating our hands upon the sail, until we started the blood into our fingers’ ends, and at the next moment our hands were in a burning heat. My companion on the yard was a lad, who came out in the ship a weak, puny boy, from one of the Boston schools;– “no larger than a spritsail sheet knot,” nor “heavier than a paper of lampblack,” and “not strong enough to haul a shad off a gridiron,” but who was now “as long as a spare topmast, strong enough to knock down an ox, and hearty enough to eat him.” We fisted the sail together, and after six or eight minutes of hard hauling and pulling and beating down the sail, which was as stiff as sheet iron, we managed to get it furled; and snugly furled it must be, for we knew the mate well enough to be certain that if it got adrift again, we should be called up from our watch below, at any hour of the night, to furl it. I had been on the look-out for a moment to jump below and clap on a thick jacket and south-wester; but when we got on deck we found that eight bells had been struck, and the other watch gone below, so that there were two hours of dog watch for us, and a plenty of work to do. It had now set in for a steady gale from the south-west; but we were not yet far enough to the southward to make a fair wind of it, for we must give Terra del Fuego a wide berth. The decks were covered with snow, and there was a constant driving of sleet. In fact, Cape Horn had set in with good earnest. In the midst of all this, and before it became dark, we had all the studding-sails to make up and stow away, and then to lay aloft and rig in all the booms, fore and aft, and coil away the tacks, sheets, and halyards. This was pretty tough work for four or five hands, in the face of a gale which almost took us off the yards, and with ropes so stiff with ice that it was almost impossible to bend them. I was nearly half an hour out on the end of the fore yard, trying to coil away and stop down the topmast studding-sail tack and lower halyards. It was after dark when we got through, and we were not a little pleased to hear four bells struck, which sent us below for two hours, and gave us each a pot of hot tea with our cold beef and bread, and, what was better yet, a suit of thick, dry clothing, fitted for the weather, in place of our thin clothes, which were wet through and now frozen stiff. This sudden turn, for which we were so little prepared, was as unacceptable to me as to any of the rest; for I had been troubled for several days with a slight tooth-ache, and this cold weather, and wetting and freezing, were not the best things in the world for it. I soon found that it was getting strong hold, and running over all parts of my face; and before the watch was out I went aft to the mate, who had charge of the medicine-chest, to get something for it. But the chest showed like the end of a long voyage, for there was nothing that would answer but a few drops of laudanum, which must be saved for any emergency; so I had only to bear the pain as well as I could. When we went on deck at eight bells, it had stopped snowing, and there were a few stars out, but the clouds were still black, and it was blowing a steady gale. Just before midnight, I went aloft and sent down the mizen royal yard, and had the good luck to do it to the satisfaction of the mate, who said it was done “out of hand and ship-shape.” The next four hours below were but little relief to me, for I lay awake in my berth, the whole time, from the pain in my face, and heard every bell strike, and, at four o’clock, turned out with the watch, feeling little spirit for the hard duties of the day. Bad weather and hard work at sea can be borne up against very well, if one only has spirit and health; but there is nothing brings a man down, at such a time, like bodily pain and want of sleep. There was, however, too much to do to allow time to think; for the gale HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of yesterday, and the heavy seas we met with a few days before, while we had yet ten degrees more southing to make, had convinced the captain that we had something before us which was not to be trifled with, and orders were given to send down the long topgallant masts. The top-gallant and royal yards were accordingly struck, the flying jib-boom rigged in, and the top-gallant masts sent down on deck, and all lashed together by the side of the long-boat. The rigging was then sent down and coiled away below, and everything was made snug aloft. There was not a sailor in the ship who was not rejoiced to see these sticks come down; for, so long as the yards were aloft, on the least sign of a lull, the top-gallant sails were loosed, and then we had to furl them again in a snow-squall, and shin up and down single ropes caked with ice, and send royal yards down in the teeth of a gale coming right from the south pole. It was an interesting sight, too, to see our noble ship, dismantled of all her top-hamper of long tapering masts and yards, and boom pointed with spear-head, which ornamented her in port; and all that canvas, which a few days before had covered her like a cloud, from the truck to the water’s edge, spreading far out beyond her hull on either side, now gone; and she, stripped, like a wrestler for the fight. It corresponded, too, with the desolate character of her situation;– alone, as she was, battling with storms, wind, and ice, at this extremity of the globe, and in almost constant night. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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SUMMER 1836

Summer: Ellery Channing made a solitary trip into the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

He went by stage to North Conway and walked up the Saco Valley toward Crawford Notch, riding part way in a farm wagon with Abel Crawford, whose family had given the Notch its name. Channing then took a stage to Ethan Crawford’s and Bethlehem, and the Lafayette House near the Great Stone Face. He passed through Franconia Notch on his way back to Massachusetts.

Karl Friedrich Schimper spent the summer near Bex in the Swiss Alps with his former university friend Louis Agassiz and Jean de Charpentier. Schimper, De Charpentier and possibly Ignaz Venetz convinced Agassiz that HDT WHAT? INDEX

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there had been a period of glaciation. THE SCIENCE OF 1836 OUR MOST RECENT GLACIATION

Late Summer: In late summer, Lydia Maria Child’s PHILOTHEA: A ROMANCE, set in ancient Greece, ostensibly described the marriage of a character Philothea who is said to be the daughter of Anaxagoras.69

P HILOTHEA (In actuality, the book was about Child’s understanding of Transcendentalism, the unofficial religion of her brother the Reverend Convers Francis of Watertown, Massachusetts — to whom the book was indeed dedicated. David Henry Thoreau thought enough of this effort to make two pages of extracts in his college notebook.)

69. Kenneth Walter Cameron’s PHILOTHEA, OR PLATO AGAINST EPICURUS: A NOVEL OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT IN NEW ENGLAND (Hartford, Connecticut, 1975). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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JULY 1836

July/August: A double issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:

HARVARDIANA

July: Founding father of the Mormons Joseph Smith went back east to search for buried treasure in the vicinity of Salem, Massachusetts (without finding anything).

July: At the age of 26 Margaret Fuller visited the Emersons in Concord and failed to make a favorable first impression:

Her extreme plainness, –a trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids, –the nasal tone of her voice, –all repelled, and I said to myself, we shall never get far. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July: At Harvard College, Jones Very won a 2d, unprecedented Bowdoin Prize of $50.00, for his essay “What Reasons Are There For Not Expecting Another Great Epic Poem?” Also, he was appointed Tutor in Greek. This employment, presumably, was part of an arrangement being made to allow him to follow the Divinity School course of studies to begin that fall.

July 1, Friday: Henry James Hungerford, having died without children, the US Congress finally saw its way clear to accept the money Hungerford’s uncle James Smithson, who had died on June 27, 1829, had left in his will, over the protests of various types that the congress lacked the authority to do so and that it would be beneath our dignity to do so. –Money will be money, and the feeding trough known as the “Smithsonian Institution” was on its way.

Water was let into the first stretch of the Erie and Wabash Canal.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert began to enter the latitude of Cape Horn.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Friday, July 1st. We were now nearly up to the latitude of Cape Horn, and having over forty degrees of easting to make, we squared away the yards before a strong westerly gale, shook a reef out of the fore-topsail, and stood on our way, east-by- south, with the prospect of being up with the Cape in a week or ten days. As for myself, I had had no sleep for forty-eight hours; and the want of rest, together with constant wet and cold, had increased the swelling, so that my face was nearly as large HDT WHAT? INDEX

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as two, and I found it impossible to get my mouth open wide enough to eat. In this state, the steward applied to the captain for some rice to boil for me, but he only got only got a– “No! d--- you! Tell him to eat salt junk and hard bread, like the rest of them.” For this, of course, I was much obliged to him, and in truth it was just what I expected. However, I did not starve, for the mate, who was a man as well as a sailor, and had always been a good friend to me, smuggled a pan of rice into the galley, and told the cook to boil it for me, and not let the “old man” see it. Had it been fine weather, or in port, I should have gone below and lain by until my face got well; but in such weather as this, and short-handed as we were, it was not for me to desert my post; so I kept on deck, and stood my watch and did my duty as well as I could. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 2, Saturday: Fromental Halevy was elected to the French Institute.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert entered the region of drifting ice.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Saturday, July 2nd. This day the sun rose fair, but it ran too low in the heavens to give any heat, or thaw out our sails and rigging; yet the sight of it was pleasant; and we had a steady “reef topsail breeze” from the westward. The atmosphere, which had previously been clear and cold, for the last few hours grew damp, and had a disagreeable, wet chilliness in it; and the man who came from the wheel said he heard the captain tell “the passenger” that the thermometer had fallen several degrees since morning, which he could not account for in any other way than by supposing that there must be ice near us; though such a thing had never been heard of in this latitude, at this season of the year. At twelve o’clock we went below, and had just got through dinner, when the cook put his head down the scuttle and told us to come on deck and see the finest sight that we had ever seen. “Where away, cook?” asked the first man who was up. “On the larboard bow.” And there lay, floating in the ocean, several miles off, an immense, irregular mass, its top and points covered with snow, and its center of a deep indigo color. This was an iceberg, and of the largest size, as one of our men said who had been in the Northern ocean. As far as the eye could reach, the sea in every direction was of a deep blue color, the waves running high and fresh, and sparkling in the light, and in the midst lay this immense mountain-island, its cavities and valleys thrown into deep shade, and its points and pinnacles glittering in the sun. All hands were soon on deck, looking at it, and admiring in various ways its beauty and grandeur. But no description can give any idea of the strangeness, splendor, and, really, the sublimity, of the sight. Its great size;– for it must have been from two to three miles in circumference, and several hundred feet in height;– its slow motion, as its base rose and sank in the water, and its high points nodded against the clouds; the dashing of the waves upon it, which, breaking high with foam, lined its base with a white crust; and the thundering sound of the cracking of the mass, and the breaking and tumbling down of huge pieces; together with its nearness and approach, which added a slight element of fear,– all combined to give to it the character of true sublimity. The main body of the mass was, as I have said, of an indigo color, its base crusted with frozen foam; and as it grew thin and transparent toward the edges and top, its color shaded off from a deep blue to the whiteness of snow. It seemed to be drifting slowly toward the north, so that we kept away and avoided it. It was in sight all the afternoon; and when we got to leeward of it, the wind died away, so that we lay-to quite near it for a greater part of the night. Unfortunately, there was no moon, but it was a clear night, and we could plainly mark the long, regular heaving of the stupendous mass, as its edges moved slowly against the stars. Several times in our watch loud cracks were heard, which sounded as though they must have run through the whole length of the iceberg, and several pieces fell down with a thundering crash, plunging heavily into the sea.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 2nd of 7th M 1836 / It seems as if I have constantly something to be thankful for, & the language of my heart has often of late been “What shall I render to the Lord for all his blessings.” What I am now alluding to particiularly is that I have acted as Town Teasurer for the last Year & today the Audit has been to our house & made a satisfactory settlement of my accounts with the Town - which places me at ease on account of them & I find all the Money in my hands that appears due to the Town by the settlement of the Books RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 3, Sunday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert sailed on through drifting, shifting archipelago of islands of ice.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Toward morning, a strong breeze sprang up, and we filled away, and left it astern, and at daylight it was out of sight. The next day, which was Sunday, July 3d, the breeze continued strong, the air exceedingly chilly, and the thermometer low. In the course of the day we saw several icebergs, of different sizes, but none so near as the one which we saw the day before. Some of them, as well as we could judge, at the distance at which we were, must have been as large as that, if not larger. At noon we were in latitude 55 12’ south, and supposed longitude 89 5’ west. Toward night the wind hauled to the southward, and headed us off our course a little, and blew a tremendous gale; but this we did not mind, as there was no rain nor snow, and we were already under close sail. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 3rd of 7 M / In our morning Meeting Father Rodman was engaged in testimony^supplication — & also in testimony in the Afternoon much to satisfaction RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Our national birthday, Monday the 4th of July: Completion of the 1st session of the 24th federal Congress. The practice of human enslavement was still very legal in the United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave.70 CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY

Construction began on the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal.

William Johnson of Natchez, a free black man who was himself a slavemaster (!) as well as being a barber and a successful businessman, kept a diary of short entries, hardly missing a day between 1836 and 1851. This diary has seen publication as William Johnson’s NATCHEZ, THE ANTE-BELLUM DIARY OF A FREE NEGRO, ed. William Ransom Hogan and Edwin Adams Davis (1951, 1979, and a Louisiana State UP paperback in 1993). Here is one of a series of Johnson’s 4th-of-July entries: “Big marching about town. The Huzars turned Out for the first time in the streets on parade — the Fencibles and the Mechanicks also — Big Dinner at Mr West

70. This was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 32d birthday. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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tavern ....”

(Notice that although white men of this period generally feared social contamination by inferior blacks, even an intimate touching, as by a barber, could be permissible, as depicted here in a Virginia barbershop — so long as the relationship was one clearly marked as an intransitive one, between a superior or customer and an inferior or servant.)

The balloon of the intrepid master goldbeater Louis Lauriat was gracing the skies above Lowell MA. On this same date (although, among the ice islands at the other end of the world, he was imagining it to be a Monday), Richard Henry Dana, Jr., among the ice islands at the other end of the world, was imagining what Independence day was like in Boston. (next screens). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Monday, July 4th. This was “independence day” in Boston. What firing of guns, and ringing of bells, and rejoicings of all sorts, in every part of our country! The ladies (who have not gone down to Nahant, for a breath of cool air, and sight of the ocean) walking the streets with parasols over their heads, and the dandies in their white pantaloons and silk stockings! What quantities of ice-cream have been eaten, and what quantities of ice brought into the city from a distance, and sold out by the lump and the pound! The smallest of the islands which we saw to-day would have made the fortune of poor Jack, if he had had it in Boston; and I dare say he would have had no objection to being there with it. This, to be sure, was no place to keep the fourth of July. To keep ourselves warm, and the ship out of the ice, was as much as we could do. Yet no one forgot the day; and many were the wishes, and conjectures, and comparisons, both serious and ludicrous, which were made among all hands. The sun shone bright as long as it was up, only that a scud of black clouds was ever and anon driving across it. At noon we were in lat. 54 27S. and long. 85 5W., having made a good deal of easting, but having lost in our latitude by the heading of the wind. Between daylight and dark– that is, between nine o’clock and three– we saw thirty-four ice islands, of various sizes; some no bigger than the hull of our vessel, and others apparently nearly as large as the one that we first saw; though, as we went on, the islands became smaller and more numerous; and, at sundown of this day, a man at the mast-head saw large fields of floating ice called “field- ice” at the south-east. This kind of ice is much more dangerous than the large islands, for those can be seen at a distance, and kept away from; but the field-ice, floating in great quantities, and covering the ocean for miles and miles, in pieces of every size-large, flat, and broken cakes, with here and there an island rising twenty and thirty feet, and as large as the ship’s hull;– this, it is very difficult to sheer clear of. A constant look-out was necessary; for any of these pieces, coming with the heave of the sea, were large enough to have knocked a hole in the ship, and that would have been the end of us; for no boat (even if we could have got one out) could have lived in such a sea; and no man could have lived in a boat in such weather. To make our condition still worse, the wind came out due east, just after sundown, and it blew a gale dead ahead, with hail and sleet, and a thick fog, so that we could not see half the length of the ship. Our chief reliance, the prevailing westerly gales, was thus cut off; and here we were, nearly seven hundred miles to the westward of the Cape, with a gale dead from the eastward, and the weather so thick that we could not see the ice with which we were surrounded, until it was directly under our bows. At four, P.M. (it was then quite dark) all hands were called, and sent aloft in a violent squall of hall and rain, to take in sail. We had now all got on our “Cape Horn rig”– thick boots, south-westers coming down over our neck and ears, thick trowsers and jackets, and some with oil-cloth suits over all. Mittens, too, we wore on deck, but it would not do to go aloft with them on, for it was impossible to work with them, and, being wet and stiff, they might let a man slip overboard, for all the hold be could get upon a rope; so, we were obliged to work with bare hands, which, as well as our faces, were often cut with the hail-stones, which fell thick and large. Our ship was now all cased with ice,– hull, spars, and standing rigging;– and the running rigging so stiff that we could hardly bend it so as to delay it, or, still worse, take a knot with it; and the sails nearly as stiff as sheet iron. One at a time, (for it was a long piece of work and required many hands,) we furled the courses, mizen topsail, and fore-topmast staysail, and close-reefed the fore and main topsails, and hove the ship to under the fore, with the main hauled up by the clewlines and buntlines, and ready to be sheeted home, if we found it necessary to make sail to get to windward of an ice island. A regular look-out was then set, and kept by each watch in turn, until the morning. It was a tedious and anxious night. It blew hard the whole time, and there was an almost constant driving of either rain, hall, or snow. In addition to this, it was “as thick as muck,” and the ice was all about us. The captain was on deck nearly the whole night, and kept the cook in the galley, with a roaring fire, to make coffee for him, which he took every few hours, and once or twice gave a little to his officers; but not a drop of anything was there for the crew. The captain, who sleeps all the daytime, and comes and goes at night as he chooses, can have his brandy and water in the cabin, and his hot coffee at the galley; while Jack, who has to stand through everything, and work in wet and cold, can have nothing to wet his lips or warm his stomach. This was a “temperance ship,” and, like too many such ships, the temperance was all in the forecastle. The sailor, who only takes his one glass as it is dealt out to him, is in danger of being drunk; while the captain, who has all under his hand, and can drink as much as he chooses, and upon whose self-possession and cool judgment the lives of all depend, may be trusted with any amount, to drink at his will. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONCLUDED: Sailors will never be convinced that rum is a dangerous thing, by taking it away from them, and giving it to the officers; nor that, that temperance is their friend, which takes from them what they have always had, and gives them nothing in the place of it. By seeing it allowed to their officers, they will not be convinced that it is taken from them for their good; and by receiving nothing in its place, they will not believe that it is done in kindness. On the contrary, many of them look upon the change as a new instrument of tyranny. Not that they prefer rum. I never knew a sailor, in my life, who would not prefer a pot of hot coffee or chocolate, in a cold night, to all the rum afloat. They all say that rum only warms them for a time; yet, if they can get nothing better, they will miss what they have lost. The momentary warmth and glow from drinking it; the break and change which is made in a long, dreary watch by the mere calling all hands aft and serving of it out; and the simply having some event to look forward to, and to talk about; give it an importance and a use which no one can appreciate who has not stood his watch before the mast. On my passage round Cape Horn before, the vessel that I was in was not under temperance articles, and grog was served out every middle and morning watch, and after every reefing of topsails; and though I had never drank rum before, and never intend to again, I took my allowance then at the capstan, as the rest did, merely for the momentary warmth it gave the system, and the change in our feelings and aspect of our duties on the watch. At the same time, as I have stated, there was not a man on board who would not have pitched the rum to the dogs, (I have heard them say so, a dozen times) for a pot of coffee or chocolate; or even for our common beverage– “water bewitched, and tea begrudged,” as it was.1 The temperance reform is the best thing that ever was undertaken for the sailor; but when the grog is taken from him, he ought to have something in its place. As it is now, in most vessels, it is a mere saving to the owners; and this accounts for the sudden increase of temperance ships, which surprised even the best friends of the cause. If every merchant, when he struck grog from the list of the expenses of his ship, had been obliged to substitute as much coffee, or chocolate, as would give each man a pot-full when he came off the topsail yard, on a stormy night;– I fear Jack might have gone to ruin on the old road.2 But this is not doubling Cape Horn. Eight hours of the night, our watch was on deck, and during the whole of that time we kept a bright look-out: one man on each bow, another in the bunt of the fore yard, the third mate on the scuttle, one on each quarter, and a man always standing by the wheel. The chief mate was everywhere, and commanded the ship when the captain was below. When a large piece of ice was seen in our way, or drifting near us, the word was passed along, and the ship’s head turned one way and another; and sometimes the yards squared or braced up. There was little else to do than to look out; and we had the sharpest eyes in the ship on the forecastle. The only variety was the monotonous voice of the look-out forward– “Another island!”– “Ice ahead!” “Ice on the lee bow!”– “Hard up the helm!”– “Keep her off a little!”– “Stead-y!” In the meantime, the wet and cold had brought my face into such a state that I could neither eat nor sleep; and though I stood it out all night, yet, when it became light, I was in such a state, that all hands told me I must go below, and lie-by for a day or two, or I should be laid up for a long time, and perhaps have the lock- jaw. When the watch was changed I went into the steerage, and took off my hat and comforter, and showed my face to the mate, who told me to go below at once, and stay in my berth until the swelling went down, and gave the cook orders to make a poultice for me, and said he would speak to the captain.

1. The proportions of the ingredients of the tea that was made for us (and ours, as I have before stated, was a favorable specimen of American merchantmen) were, a pint of tea, and a pint and a half of molasses, to about three gallons of water. These are all boiled down together in the “coppers,” and before serving it out, the mess is stirred up with a stick, so as to give each man his fair share of sweetening and tea-leaves. The tea for the cabin is, of course, made in the usual way, in a tea-pot, and drank with sugar. 2. I do not wish these remarks, so far as they relate to the saving of expense in the outfit, to be applied to the owners of our ship, for she was supplied with an abundance of stores, of the best kind that are given to seamen; though the dispensing of them is necessarily left to the captain. Indeed, so high was the reputation of “the employ” among men and officers, for the character and outfit of their vessels, and for their liberality in conducting their voyages, that when it was known that they had a ship fitting out for a long voyage, and that hands were to be shipped at a certain time,– a half hour before the time, as one of the crew told me, numbers of sailors were steering down the wharf, hopping over the barrels, like flocks of sheep. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 5, Tuesday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 5 of 7 M / This Morning I went on board the Steam Boat & got to Providence in season to attend the Meeting of the Sub- committee & Spent the day at the School House Lodged at my dear fr Moses Browns RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

David Henry Thoreau wrote from Concord to Henry Vose, a classmate at Harvard College and fellow Concordian who would eventually sit on the Superior Court of Massachusetts. Concord, July 5.th 1836. Dear Vose. You will probably recognise in the following dialogue a part which you yourself acted. Act 1st. Scene 1st. T. Come, Vose, let’s hear from a fellow now and then. V. We–––ll, I certainly will, but you must write first. T. No, confound you, I shall have my hands full, and moreover shall have nothing to say, while you will have bonfires, gunpowder plots, and deviltry enough to back you. V. Well, I’ll write first, and in the course of our correspondence we can settle a certain other matter. Now ’tis to this “certain other matter” alone that you are indebted for this epistle. The length and breadth, the height and depth, the sum & substance, of what I have to say, is this. Your humble servant will endeavor to enter the Senior Class of Harvard University next term, and if you intend taking a room in College, and it should be consistent with your pleasure, will joyfully sign himself your lawful and proper “Chum”. Should the case be otherwise, you will oblige him much if you will request that sage doughface of a Wheeler to secure me one of the following rooms. Agreeably to his polite offer. H. 23 St. do H. 27 St. do St 28 H. do Look well to the order. I shall expect to hear from you forthwith. I leave it to you to obtain a room, should it be necessary. Yrs Matter-of-factly D H Thoreau HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Until Friday, aboard the Alert, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. would be sick in his hammock.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: I went below and turned-in, covering myself over with blankets and jackets, and lay in my berth nearly twenty-four hours, half asleep and half awake, stupid, from the dull pain. I heard the watch called, and the men going up and down, and sometimes a noise on deck, and a cry of “ice,” but I gave little attention to anything. At the end of twenty-four hours the pain went down, and I had a long sleep, which brought me back to my proper state; yet my face was so swollen and tender, that I was obliged to keep to my berth for two or three days longer. During the two days I had been below, the weather was much the same that it had been, head winds, and snow and rain; or, if the wind came fair, too foggy, and the ice too thick, to run. At the end of the third day the ice was very thick; a complete fog-bank covered the ship. It blew a tremendous gale from the eastward, with sleet and snow, and there was every promise of a dangerous and fatiguing night. At dark, the captain called all hands aft, and told them that not a man was to leave the deck that night; that the ship was in the greatest danger; any cake of ice might knock a hole in her, or she might run on an island and go to pieces. No one could tell whether she would be a ship the next morning. The look-outs were then set, and every man was put in his station. When I heard what was the state of things, I began to put on my clothes to stand it out with the rest of them, when the mate came below, and looking at my face, ordered me back to my berth, saying that if we went down, we should all go down together, but if I went on deck I might lay myself up for life. This was the first word I had heard from aft; for the captain had done nothing, nor inquired how I was, since I went below. In obedience to the mate’s orders, I went back to my berth; but a more miserable night I never wish to spend. I never felt the curse of sickness so keenly in my life. If I could only have been on deck with the rest, where something was to be done, and seen, and heard; where there were fellow-beings for companions in duty and danger– but to be cooped up alone in a black hole, in equal danger, but without the power to do, was the hardest trial. Several times, in the course of the night, I got up, determined to go on deck; but the silence which showed that there was nothing doing, and the knowledge that I might make myself seriously ill, for nothing, kept me back. It was not easy to sleep, lying, as I did, with my head directly against the bows, which might be dashed in by an island of ice, brought down by the very next sea that struck her. This was the only time I had been ill since I left Boston, and it was the worst time it could have happened. I felt almost willing to bear the plagues of Egypt for the rest of the voyage, if I could but be well and strong for that one night. Yet it was a dreadful night for those on deck. A watch of eighteen hours, with wet, and cold, and constant anxiety, nearly wore them out; and when they came below at nine o’clock for breakfast, they almost dropped asleep on their chests, and some of them were so stiff that they could with difficulty sit down. Not a drop of anything had been given them during the whole time, (though the captain, as on the night that I was on deck, had his coffee every four hours,) except that the mate stole a potful of coffee for two men to drink behind the galley, while he kept a look-out for the captain. Every man had his station, and was not allowed to leave it; and nothing happened to break the monotony of the night, except once setting the main topsails to run clear of a large island to leeward, which they were drifting fast upon. Some of the boys got so sleepy and stupefied, that they actually fell asleep at their posts; and the young third mate, whose station was the exposed one of standing on the fore scuttle, was so stiff, when he was relieved, that he could not bend his knees to get down. By a constant look-out, and a quick shifting of the helm, as the islands and pieces came in sight, the ship went clear of everything but a few small pieces, though daylight showed the ocean covered for miles. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 8, Friday: The HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin reached the island of St. Helena. They would remain at anchor for six days and he would examine 746 plant species, 52 of them indigenous (copies of ANATURALIST’S VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD, presented to the Governor in commemoration of his visit, are preserved at the Castle). He was unable to sight the wire-bird plover Charadrius sanctaehelenae, official bird of the island. He found the terrain to be reminiscent of Wales and commented on the abject poverty of the working people and emancipated slaves there, who were able to afford only rice with a small bit of salt meat.

(It is to be noticed that Darwin makes no mention of meeting Jonathan the giant tortoise on this island in the Atlantic, or any giant tortoises similar to the ones he would be studying later while on his extended visit to the Galápagos group of islands in the Pacific. However, it seems to me to be very likely that had these giant lawn ornaments been present during the period of Bonaparte, they would have still been present during the time of Darwin, and it seems to me to be very likely that Darwin, who resided near the Bonaparte tomb and paid visits to Longwood, would have observed them and described them and commented upon them! –The conclusion I draw is an easy one: they hadn’t yet been brought there.)

July 9, Saturday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. characterized the crew of the Alert as being dangerously close to mutiny.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: At daybreak it fell a dead calm, and with the sun, the fog cleared a little, and a breeze sprung up from the westward, which soon grew into a gale. We had now a fair wind, daylight, and comparatively clear weather; yet, to the surprise of every one, the ship continued hove-to. Why does not he run? What is the captain about? was asked by every one; and from questions, it soon grew into complaints and murmurings. When the daylight was so short, it was too bad to lose it, and a fair wind, too, which every one had been praying for. As hour followed hour, and the captain showed no sign of making sail, the crew became impatient, and there was a good deal of talking and consultation together, on the forecastle. They had been beaten out with the exposure and hardship, and impatient to get out of it, and this unaccountable delay was more than they could bear in quietness, in their excited and restless state. Some said that the captain was frightened,– completely cowed, by the dangers and difficulties that surrounded us, and was afraid to make sail; while others said that in his anxiety and suspense he had made a free use of brandy and opium, and was unfit for his duty. The carpenter, who was an intelligent man, and a thorough seaman, and had great influence with the crew, came down into the forecastle, and tried to induce the crew to go aft and ask the captain why he did not run, or request him, in the name of all hands, to make sail. This appeared to be a very reasonable request, and the crew agreed that if he did not make sail before noon, they would go aft. Noon came, and no sail was made. A consultation was held again, and it was proposed to take the ship from the captain and give the command of her to the mate, who had been heard to say that, if he could have his way, the ship would have been half the distance to the Cape before nights,– ice or no ice. And so irritated and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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impatient had the crew become, that even this proposition, which was open mutiny, punishable with state prison, was entertained, and the carpenter went to his berth, leaving it tacitly understood that something serious would be done, if things remained as they were many hours longer. When the carpenter left, we talked it all over, and I gave my advice strongly against it. Another of the men, too, who had known something of the kind attempted in another ship by a crew who were dissatisfied with their captain, and which was followed with serious consequences, was opposed to it. S______, who soon came down, joined us, and we determined to have nothing to do with it. By these means, they were soon induced to give it up, for the present, though they said they would not lie where they were much longer without knowing the reason. The affair remained in this state until four o’clock, when an order came forward for all hands to come aft upon the quarter-deck. In about ten minutes they came forward again, and the whole affair had been blown. The carpenter, very prematurely, and without any authority from the crew, had sounded the mate as to whether he would take command of the ship, and intimated an intention to displace the captain; and the mate, as in duty bound, had told the whole to the captain, who immediately sent for all hands aft. Instead of violent measures, or, at least, an outbreak of quarter-deck bravado, threats, and abuse, which they had every reason to expect, a sense of common danger and common suffering seemed to have tamed his spirit, and begotten something like a humane fellow feeling; for he received the crew in a manner quiet, and even almost kind. He told them what he had heard, and said that he did not believe that they would try to do any such thing as was intimated; that they had always been good men,– obedient, and knew their duty, and he had no fault to find with them; and asked them what they had to complain of– said that no one could say that he was slow to carry sail, (which was true enough;) and that, as soon as he thought it was safe and proper, he should make sail. He added a few words about their duty in their present situation, and sent them forward, saying that he should take no further notice of the matter; but, at the same time, told the carpenter to recollect whose power he was in, and that if he heard another word from him he would have cause to remember him to the day of his death. This language of the captain had a very good effect upon the crew, and they returned quietly to their duty. For two days more the wind blew from the southward and eastward; or in the short intervals when it was fair, the ice was too thick to run; yet the weather was not so dreadfully bad, and the crew had watch and watch. I still remained in my berth, fast recovering, yet still not well enough to go safely on deck. And I should have been perfectly useless; for, from having eaten nothing for nearly a week, except a little rice, which I forced into my mouth the last day or two, I was as weak as an infant. To be sick in a forecastle is miserable indeed. It is the worst part of a dog’s life; especially in bad weather. The forecastle, shut up tight to keep out the water and cold air;– the watch either on deck, or asleep in their berths;– no one to speak to;– the pale light of the single lamp, swinging to and fro from the beam, so dim that one can scarcely see, much less read by it;– the water dropping from the beams and carlines, and running down the sides; and the forecastle so wet, and dark, and cheerless, and so lumbered up with chests and wet clothes, that sitting up is worse than lying in the berth! These are some of the evils. Fortunately, I needed no help from any one, and no medicine; and if I had needed help, I don’t know where I should have found it. Sailors are willing enough, but it is true, as is often said– No one ships for nurse on board a vessel. Our merchant ships are always under-manned, and if one man is lost by sickness, they cannot spare another to take care of him. A sailor is always presumed to be well, and if he’s sick, he’s a poor dog. One has to stand his wheel, and another his lookout, and the sooner he gets on deck again, the better. Accordingly, as soon as I could possibly go back to my duty, I put on my thick clothes and boots and south- wester, and made my appearance on deck. Though I had been but a few days below, yet everything looked strangely enough. The ship was cased in ice,– decks, sides, masts, yards, and rigging. Two close-reefed topsails were all the sail she had on, and every sail and rope was frozen so stiff in its place, that it seemed as though it would be impossible to start anything. Reduced, too, to her top-masts, she had altogether a most forlorn and crippled appearance. The sun had come up brightly; the snow was swept off the decks, and ashes thrown upon them, so that we could walk, for they had been as slippery as glass. It was, course, too cold to carry on any ship’s work, and we had only to walk the deck and keep ourselves warm. The wind was still ahead, and the whole ocean, to the eastward, covered with islands and field-ice. At four bells the order was HDT WHAT? INDEX

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given to square away the yards; and the man who came from the helm said that the captain had kept her off to N.N.E. What could this mean? Some said that he was going to put into Valparaiso, and winter, and others that he was going to run out of the ice and cross the Pacific, and go home round the Cape of Good Hope. Soon, however, it leaked out, and we found that we were running for the straits of Magellan. The news soon spread through the ship, and all tongues were at work, talking about it. No one on board had been through the straits but I had in my chest an account of the passage of the ship A.J. Donelson, of New York, through those straits, a few years before. The account was given by the captain, and the representation was as favorable as possible. It was soon read by every one on board, and various opinions pronounced. The determination of our captain had at least this good effect; it gave every one something to think and talk about, made a break in our life, and diverted our minds from the monotonous dreariness of the prospect before us. Having made a fair wind of it, we were going off at a good rate, and leaving the thickest of the ice behind us. This, at least, was something. Having been long enough below to get my hands well warmed and softened, the first handling of the ropes was rather tough; but a few days hardened them, and as soon as I got my mouth open wide enough to take in a piece of salt beef and hard bread, I was all right again.

July 10, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 10th of 7th M 1836 / Father was engaged in testimony forenoon & Afternoon - the Morning Meeting was attended as usual tho’ I thought both were rather thinner than at some times - yet there were several present who were new commers & have not in times past been in the practice of attending our Meetings — But for my own part both Meetings were to me seasons of but little access to divine favour & rather dry & hard Seasons. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

The Alert and Richard Henry Dana, Jr. made an initial run at the Cape.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Sunday, July 10th. Lat. 54 10’, long. 79 07’. This was our position at noon. The sun was out bright; the ice was all left behind, and things had quite a cheering appearance. We brought our wet pea-jackets and trowsers on deck, and hung them up in the rigging, that the breeze and the few hours of sun might dry them a little; and, by the permission of the cook, the galley was nearly filled with stockings and mittens, hung round to be dried. Boots, too, were brought up; and having got a little tar and slush from below, we gave them a thick coat. After dinner, all hands were turned-to, to get the anchors over the bows, bend on the chains, etc. fishtackle was got up, fish-davit rigged out, and after two or three hours of hard and cold work, both the anchors were ready for instant use, a couple of kedges got up, a hawser coiled away upon the forehatch, and the deep-sea-lead-line overhauled and got ready. Our spirits returned with having something to do; and when the tackle was manned to bowse the anchor home, notwithstanding the desolation of the scene, we struck up “Cheerily ho!” in full chorus. This pleased the mate, who rubbed his hands and cried out– “That’s right, my boys; never say die! That sounds like the old crew!” and the captain came up, on hearing the song, and said to the passenger, within hearing of the man at the wheel,– “That sounds like a lively crew. They’ll have their song so long as there’re enough left for a chorus!” This preparation of the cable and anchors was for the passage of the straits; for, being very crooked, and with a variety of currents, it is necessary to come frequently to anchor. This was not, by any means, a pleasant prospect, for, of all the work that a sailor is called upon to do in cold weather, there is none so bad as working the ground-tackle. The heavy chain cables to be hauled and pulled about the decks with bare hands; wet hawsers, slip-ropes, and buoyropes to be hauled aboard, dripping in water, which is running up your sleeves, and freezing; clearing hawse under the bows; getting under weigh and coming-to, at all hours HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of the night and day, and a constant look-out for rocks and sands and turns of tides;– these are some of the disagreeables of such a navigation to a common sailor. Fair or foul, he wants to have nothing to do with the ground, tackle between port and port. One of our hands, too, had unluckily fallen upon a half of an old newspaper which contained an account of the passage, through the straits, of a Boston brig, called, I think, the Peruvian, in which she lost every cable and anchor she had, got aground twice, and arrived at Valparaiso in distress. This was set off against the account of the A.J. Donelson, and led us to look forward with less confidence to the passage, especially as no one on board had ever been through, and the captain had no very perfect charts. However, we were spared any further experience on the point; for the next day, when we must have been near the Cape of Pillars, which is the south-west point of the mouth of the straits, a gale set in from the eastward, with a heavy fog, so that we could not see half of the ship’s length ahead. This, of course, put an end to the project, for the present; for a thick fog and a gale blowing dead ahead are not the most favorable circumstances for the passage of difficult and dangerous straits. This weather, too, seemed likely to last for some time, and we could not think of beating about the mouth of the straits for a week or two, waiting for a favorable opportunity; so we braced up on the larboard tack, put the ship’s head due south, and struck her off for Cape Horn again. Our watches below were no more varied than the watch on deck. All washing, sewing, and reading was given up; and we did nothing but eat, sleep, and stand our watch, leading what might be called a Cape Horn life. The forecastle was too uncomfortable to sit up in; and whenever we were below, we were in our berths. To prevent the rain, and the sea-water which broke over the bows, from washing down, we were obliged to keep the scuttle closed, so that the forecastle was nearly air-tight. In this little, wet, leaky hole, we were all quartered, in an atmosphere so bad that our lamp, which swung in the middle from the beams, sometimes actually burned blue, with a large circle of foul air about it. Still I was never in better health than after three weeks of this life. I gained a great deal of flesh, and we all ate like horses. At every watch, when we came below, before turning-in, the bread barge and beef kid were overhauled. Each man drank his quart of hot tea night and morning; and glad enough we were to get it, for no nectar and ambrosia were sweeter to the lazy immortals, than was a pot of hot tea, a hard biscuit, and a slice of cold salt beef, to us after a watch on deck. To be sure, we were mere animals and had this life lasted a year instead of a month we should have been little better than the ropes in the ship. Not a razor, nor a brush, nor a drop of water, except the rain and the spray, had come near us all the time; for we were on an allowance of fresh water; and who would strip and wash himself in salt water on deck, in the snow and ice, with the thermometer at zero? After about eight days of constant easterly gales, the wind hauled occasionally a little to the southward, and blew hard, which, as we were well to the southward, allowed us to brace in a little and stand on, under all the sail we could carry. These turns lasted but a short while, and sooner or later it set again from the old quarter; yet each time we made something, and were gradually edging along to the eastward. One night, after one of these shifts of the wind, and when all hands had been up a great part of the time, our watch was left on deck, with the mainsail hanging in the buntlines, ready to be set if necessary. It came on to blow worse and worse, with hail and snow beating like so many furies upon the ship, it being as dark and thick as night could make it. The mainsail was blowing and slatting with a noise like thunder, when the captain came on deck, and ordered it to be furled. The mate was about to call all hands, when the captain stopped him, and said that the men would be beaten out if they were called up so often; that as our watch must stay on deck, it might as well be doing that as anything else. Accordingly, we went upon the yard; and never shall I forget that piece of work. Our watch had been so reduced by sickness, and by some having been left in California, that, with one man at the wheel, we had only the third mate and three beside myself to go aloft; so that at most, we could only attempt to furl one yard-arm at a time. We manned the weather yard-arm, and set to work to make a furl of it. Our lower masts being short, and our yards very square, the sail had a head of nearly fifty feet, and a short leach, made still shorter by the deep reef which was in it, which brought the clew away out on the quarters of the yard, and made a bunt nearly as square as the mizen royal-yard. Beside this difficulty, the yard over which we lay was cased with ice, the gaskets and rope of the foot and leach of the sail as stiff and hard as a piece of suctionhose, and the sail itself about as pliable as though it had been made of sheets of sheathing copper. It blew a perfect hurricane, with alternate blasts of snow, hail, and rain. We had to fist the sail with bare hands. No one could trust himself to mittens, for if he slipped, he was a HDT WHAT? INDEX

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gone man. All the boats were hoisted in on deck, and there was nothing to be lowered for him. We had need of every finger God had given us. Several times we got the sail upon the yard, but it blew away again before we could secure it. It required men to lie over the yard to pass each turn of the gaskets, and when they were passed, it was almost impossible to knot them so that they would hold. Frequently we were obliged to leave off altogether and take to beating our hands upon the sail, to keep them from freezing. After some time,– which seemed forever,– we got the weather side stowed after a fashion, and went over to leeward for another trial. This was still worse, for the body of the sail had been blown over to leeward, and as the yard was a- cock-bill by the lying over of the vessel, we had to light it all up to windward. When the yard-arms were furled, the bunt was all adrift again, which made more work for us. We got all secure at last, but we had been nearly an hour and a half upon the yard, and it seemed an age. It just struck five bells when we went up, and eight were struck soon after we came down. This may seem slow work, but considering the state of everything, and that we had only five men to a sail with just half as many square yards of canvas in it as the mainsail of the Independence, sixty-gun ship, which musters seven hundred men at her quarters, it is not wonderful that we were no quicker about it. We were glad enough to get on deck, and still more, to go below. The oldest sailor in the watch said, as he went down,– “I shall never forget that main yard;– it beats all my going a fishing. Fun is fun, but furling one yard-arm of a course, at a time, off Cape Horn, is no better than man-killing.” Few words were spoken between the watches as they shifted, the wheel was relieved, the mate took his place on the quarter-deck, the look-outs in the bows; and each man had his narrow space to walk fore and aft in, or, rather, to swing himself forward and back in, from one belaying pin to another,– for the decks were too slippery with ice and water to allow of much walking. To make a walk, which is absolutely necessary to pass away the time, one of us hit upon the expedient of sanding the deck; and afterwards, whenever the rain was not so violent as to wash it off, the weatherside of the quarterdeck and a part of the waist and forecastle were sprinkled with the sand which we had on board for holystoning; and thus we made a good promenade, where we walked fore and aft, two and two, hour after hour, in our long, dull, and comfortless watches. The bells seemed to be an hour or two apart, instead of half an hour, and an age to elapse before the welcome sound of eight bells. The sole object was to make the time pass on. Any chance was sought for, which would break the monotony of the time; and even the two hours’ trick at the wheel, which came round to each of us, in turn, once in every other watch, was looked upon as a relief. Even the never-failing resource of long yarns, which eke out many a watch, seemed to have failed us now; for we had been so long together that we had heard each other’s stories told over and over again, till we had them by heart; each one knew the whole history of each of the others, and we were fairly and literally talked out. Singing and joking, we were in no humor for, and, in fact, any sound of mirth or laughter would have struck strangely upon our ears, and would not have been tolerated, any more than whistling, or a wind instrument. The last resort, that of speculating upon the future, seemed now to fail us, for our discouraging situation, and the danger we were really in, (as we expected every day to find ourselves drifted back among the ice) “clapped a stopper” upon all that. From saying– “when we get home”– we began insensibly to alter it to– “if we get home”– and at last the subject was dropped by a tacit consent. In this state of things, a new light was struck out, and a new field opened, by a change in the watch. One of our watch was laid up for two or three days by a bad hand, (for in cold weather the least cut or bruise ripens into a sore,) and his place was supplied by the carpenter. This was a windfall, and there was quite a contest, who should have the carpenter to walk with him. As “Chips” was a man of some little education, and he and I had had a good deal of intercourse with each other, he fell in with me in my walk. He was a Fin, but spoke English very well, and gave me long accounts of his country;– the customs, the trade, the towns, what little he knew of the government, (I found he was no friend of Russia), his voyages, his first arrival in America, his marriage and courtship;– he had married a countrywoman of his, a dress-maker, whom he met with in Boston. I had very little to tell him of my quiet, sedentary life at home; and, in spite of our best efforts, which had protracted these yarns through five or six watches, we fairly talked one another out, and I turned him over to another man in the watch, and put myself upon my own resources. I commenced a deliberate system of time-killing, which united some profit with a cheering up of the heavy hours. As soon as I came on deck, and took my place and regular walk, I began with repeating over to myself HDT WHAT? INDEX

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a string of matters which I had in my memory, in regular order. First, the multiplication table and the tables of weights and measures; then the states of the union, with their capitals; the counties of England, with their shire towns; the kings of England in their order; and a large part of the peerage, which I committed from an almanac that we had on board; and then the Kanaka numerals. This carried me through my facts, and, being repeated deliberately, with long intervals, often eked out the two first bells. Then came the ten commandments; the thirty-ninth chapter of Job, and a few other passages from Scripture. The next in the order, that I never varied from, came Cowper’s Castaway, which was a great favorite with me; the solemn measure and gloomy character of which, as well as the incident that it was founded upon, made it well suited to a lonely watch at sea. Then his lines to Mary, his address to the jackdaw, and a short extract from Table Talk; (I abounded in Cowper, for I happened to have a volume of his poems in my chest;) “Ille et nefasto” from Horace, and Goethe’s Erl King. After I had got through these, I allowed myself a more general range among everything that I could remember, both in prose and verse. In this way, with an occasional break by relieving the wheel, heaving the log, and going to the scuttle-butt for a drink of water, the longest watch was passed away; and I was so regular in my silent recitations, that if there was no interruption by ship’s duty, I could tell very nearly the number of bells by my progress. Besides the pleasure of seeing a ship and human beings in so desolate a place, it was important for us to speak a vessel, to learn whether there was ice to the eastward, and to ascertain the longitude; for we had no chronometer, and had been drifting about so long that we had nearly lost our reckoning, and opportunities for lunar observations are not frequent or sure in such a place as Cape Horn. For these various reasons, the excitement in our little community was running high, and conjectures were made, and everything thought of for which the captain would hail, when the man aloft sung out– “Another sail, large on the weather bow!” This was a little odd, but so much the better, and did not shake our faith in their being sails. At length the man in the top hailed, and said he believed it was land, after all. “Land in your eye!” said the mate, who was looking through a telescope; “they are ice islands, if I can see a hole through a ladder;” and a few moments showed the mate to be right and all our expectations fled; and instead of what we most wished to see, we had what we most dreaded, and what we hoped we had seen the last of. We soon, however, left these astern, having passed within about two miles of them; and at sundown the horizon was clear in all directions. Having a fine wind, we were soon up with and passed the latitude of the Cape, and having stood far enough to the southward to give it a wide berth, we began to stand to the eastward, with a good prospect of being round and steering to the northward on the other side, in a very few days. But ill luck seemed to have lighted upon us. Not four hours had we been standing on in this course, before it fell dead calm; and in half an hour it clouded up; a few straggling blasts, with spits of snow and sleet, came from the eastward; and in an hour more, we lay hove-to under a close-reefed main topsail, drifting bodily off to leeward before the fiercest storm that we had yet felt, blowing dead ahead, from the eastward. It seemed as though the genius of the place had been roused at finding that we had nearly slipped through his fingers, and had come down upon us with tenfold fury. The sailors said that every blast, as it shook the shrouds, and whistled through the rigging, said to the old ship, “No, you don’t!”– “No, you don’t!” For eight days we lay drifting about in this manner. Sometimes,– generally towards noons,– it fell calm; once or twice a round copper ball showed itself for a few moments in the place where the sun ought to have been; and a puff or two came from the westward, giving some hope that a fair wind had come at last. During the first two days, we made sail for these puffs, shaking the reefs out of the topsails and boarding the tacks of the courses; but finding that it only made work for us when the gale set in again, it was soon given up, and we lay-to under our close-reefs. We had less snow and hail than when we were farther to the westward, but we had an abundance of what is worse to a sailor in cold weather– drenching rain. Snow is blinding, and very bad when coming upon a coast, but, for genuine discomfort, give me rain with freezing weather. A snow-storm is exciting, and it does not wet through the clothes (which is important to a sailor); but a constant rain there is no escaping from. It wets to the skin, and makes all protection vain. We had long ago run through all our dry clothes, and as sailors have no other way of drying them than by the sun, we had nothing to do but to put on those which were the least wet. At the end of each watch, when we came below, we took off our clothes and wrung them out; two taking hold of a pair of trowsers,– one at each end,– and jackets in the same way. Stockings, mittens, and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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all, were wrung out also and then hung up to drain and chafe dry against the bulk-heads. Then, feeling of all our clothes, we picked out those which were the least wet, and put them on, so as to be ready for a call, and turned-in, covered ourselves up with blankets, and slept until three knocks on the scuttle and the dismal sound of “All starbowlines ahoy! Eight bells, there below! Do you hear the news?” drawled out from on deck, and the sulky answer of “Aye, aye!” from below, sent us up again. On deck, all was as dark as a pocket, and either a dead calm, with the rain pouring steadily down, or, more generally, a violent gale dead ahead, with rain pelting horizontally, and occasional variations of hail and sleet;– decks afloat with water swashing from side to side, and constantly wet feet; for boots could not be wrung out like drawers, and no composition could stand the constant soaking. In fact, wet and cold feet are inevitable in such weather, and are not the least of those little items which go to make up the grand total of the discomforts of a winter passage round the Cape. In our first attempt to double the Cape, when we came up to the latitude of it, we were nearly seventeen hundred miles to the westward, but, in running for the straits of Magellan, we stood so far to the eastward, that we made our second attempt at a distance of not more than four or five hundred miles; and we had great hopes, by this means, to run clear of the ice; thinking that the easterly gales, which had prevailed for a long time, would have driven it to the westward. With the wind about two points free, the yards braced in a little, and two close-reefed topsails and a reefed foresail on the ship, we made great way toward the southward and, almost every watch, when we came on deck, the air seemed to grow colder, and the sea to run higher. Still, we saw no ice, and had great hopes of going clear of it altogether, when, one afternoon, about three o’clock, while we were taking a siesta during our watch below, “All hands!” was called in a loud and fearful voice. “Tumble up here, men!– tumble up!– don’t stop for your clothes– before we’re upon it!” We sprang out of our berths and hurried upon deck. The loud, sharp voice of the captain was heard giving orders, as though for life or death, and we ran aft to the braces, not waiting to look ahead, for not a moment was to be lost. The helm was hard up, the after yards shaking, and the ship in the act of wearing. Slowly, with stiff ropes and iced rigging, we swung the yards round, everything coming hard, and with a creaking and rending sound, like pulling up a plank which had been frozen into the ice. The ship wore round fairly, the yards were steadied, and we stood off on the other tack, leaving behind us, directly under our larboard quarter, a large ice island, peering out of the mist, and reaching high above our tops, while astern; and on either side of the island, large tracts of field-ice were dimly seen, heaving and rolling in the sea. We were now safe, and standing to the northward; but, in a few minutes more, had it not been for the sharp look- out of the watch, we should have been fairly upon the ice, and left our ship’s old bones adrift in the Southern ocean. After standing to the northward a few hours, we wore ship, and the wind having hauled, we stood to the southward and eastward. All night long, a bright lookout was kept from every part of the deck; and whenever ice was seen on the one bow or the other, the helm was shifted and the yards braced, and by quick working of the ship she was kept clear. The accustomed cry of “Ice ahead!”– “Ice on the lee bow!”– “Another island!” in the same tones, and with the same orders following them, seemed to bring us directly back to our old position of the week before. During our watch on deck, which was from twelve to four, the wind came out ahead, with a pelting storm of hail and sleet, and we lay hove-to, under a close-reefed main topsail, the whole watch. During the next watch it fell calm, with a drenching rain, until daybreak, when the wind came out to the westward, and the weather cleared up, and showed us the whole ocean, in the course which we should have steered, had it not been for the head wind and calm, completely blocked up with ice. Here then our progress was stopped, and we wore ship, and once more stood to the northward and eastward; not for the straits of Magellan, but to make another attempt to double the Cape, still farther to the eastward; for the captain was determined to get round if perseverance could do it; and the third time, he said, never failed. With a fair wind we soon ran clear of the field-ice, and by noon had only the stray islands floating far and near upon the ocean. The sun was out bright, the sea of a deep blue, fringed with the white foam of the waves which ran high before a strong southwester; our solitary ship tore on through the water, as though glad to be out of her confinement; and the ice islands lay scattered upon the ocean here and there, of various sizes and shapes, reflecting the bright rays of the sun, and drifting slowly northward before the gale. It was a contrast to much that we had lately seen, and a spectacle not only of beauty, but of life; for it required but HDT WHAT? 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little fancy to imagine these islands to be animate masses which had broken loose from the “thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice,” and were working their way, by wind and current, some alone, and some in fleets, to milder climes. No pencil has ever yet given anything like the true effect of an iceberg. In a picture, they are huge, uncouth masses, stuck in the sea, while their chief beauty and grandeur,– their slow, stately motion; the whirling of the snow about their summits, and the fearful groaning and cracking of their parts,– the picture cannot give. This is the large iceberg; while the small and distant islands, floating on the smooth sea, in the light of a clear day, look like little floating fairy isles of sapphire. From a north-east course we gradually hauled to the eastward, and after sailing about two hundred miles, which brought us as near to the western coast of Terra del Fuego as was safe, and having lost sight of the ice altogether,– for the third time we put the ship’s head to the southward, to try the passage of the Cape. The weather continued clear and cold, with a strong gale from the westward, and we were fast getting up with the latitude of the Cape, with a prospect of soon being round. One fine afternoon, a man who had gone into the fore-top to shift the rolling tackles, sung out, at the top of his voice, and with evident glees– “Sail ho!” Neither land nor sail had we seen since leaving San Diego; and any one who has traversed the length of a whole ocean alone, can imagine what an excitement such an announcement produced on board. “Sail ho!” shouted the cook, jumping out of his galley; “Sail ho!” shouted a man, throwing back the slide of the scuttle, to the watch below, who were soon out of their berths and on deck; and “Sail ho!” shouted the captain down the companion-way to the passenger in the cabin. After about eight days of constant easterly gales, the wind hauled occasionally a little to the southward, and blew hard, which, as we were well to the southward, allowed us to brace in a little and stand on, under all the sail we could carry. These turns lasted but a short while, and sooner or later it set again from the old quarter; yet each time we made something, and were gradually edging along to the eastward. One night, after one of these shifts of the wind, and when all hands had been up a great part of the time, our watch was left on deck, with the mainsail hanging in the buntlines, ready to be set if necessary. It came on to blow worse and worse, with hail and snow beating like so many furies upon the ship, it being as dark and thick as night could make it. The mainsail was blowing and slatting with a noise like thunder, when the captain came on deck, and ordered it to be furled. The mate was about to call all hands, when the captain stopped him, and said that the men would be beaten out if they were called up so often; that as our watch must stay on deck, it might as well be doing that as anything else. Accordingly, we went upon the yard; and never shall I forget that piece of work. Our watch had been so reduced by sickness, and by some having been left in California, that, with one man at the wheel, we had only the third mate and three beside myself to go aloft; so that at most, we could only attempt to furl one yard-arm at a time. We manned the weather yard-arm, and set to work to make a furl of it. Our lower masts being short, and our yards very square, the sail had a head of nearly fifty feet, and a short leach, made still shorter by the deep reef which was in it, which brought the clew away out on the quarters of the yard, and made a bunt nearly as square as the mizen royal-yard. Beside this difficulty, the yard over which we lay was cased with ice, the gaskets and rope of the foot and leach of the sail as stiff and hard as a piece of suctionhose, and the sail itself about as pliable as though it had been made of sheets of sheathing copper. It blew a perfect hurricane, with alternate blasts of snow, hail, and rain. We had to fist the sail with bare hands. No one could trust himself to mittens, for if he slipped, he was a gone man. All the boats were hoisted in on deck, and there was nothing to be lowered for him. We had need of every finger God had given us. Several times we got the sail upon the yard, but it blew away again before we could secure it. It required men to lie over the yard to pass each turn of the gaskets, and when they were passed, it was almost impossible to knot them so that they would hold. Frequently we were obliged to leave off altogether and take to beating our hands upon the sail, to keep them from freezing. After some time,– which seemed forever,– we got the weather side stowed after a fashion, and went over to leeward for another trial. This was still worse, for the body of the sail had been blown over to leeward, and as the yard was a- cock-bill by the lying over of the vessel, we had to light it all up to windward. When the yard-arms were furled, the bunt was all adrift again, which made more work for us. We got all secure at last, but we had been nearly an hour and a half upon the yard, and it seemed an age. It just struck five bells when we went up, and eight were struck soon after we came down. This may seem slow work, but considering the state of everything, and that we had only five men to a sail with just half as many square yards of canvas in it as the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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mainsail of the Independence, sixty-gun ship, which musters seven hundred men at her quarters, it is not wonderful that we were no quicker about it. We were glad enough to get on deck, and still more, to go below. The oldest sailor in the watch said, as he went down,– “I shall never forget that main yard;– it beats all my going a fishing. Fun is fun, but furling one yard-arm of a course, at a time, off Cape Horn, is no better than man-killing.” During the greater part of the next two days, the wind was pretty steady from the southward. We had evidently made great progress, and had good hope of being soon up with the Cape, if we were not there already. We could put but little confidence in our reckoning, as there had been no opportunities for an observation, and we had drifted too much to allow of our dead reckoning being anywhere near the mark. If it would clear off enough to give a chance for an observation, or if we could make land, we should know where we were; and upon these, and the chances of falling in with a sail from the eastward, we depended almost entirely.

July 12, Tuesday: Charles Darwin was exploring the island of St. Helena: My guide was an elderly man, who had been a goatherd when a boy, & knew every step amongst the rocks. He was of a race many times mixed, & although with a dusky skin, he had not the disagreeable expression of a Mulatto: he was a very civil, quiet old man, & this appears the character of the greater part of the lower class. — It was strange to my ears to hear a man nearly white, & respectably dressed, talking with indifference of the times when he was a slave. — With my companion, who carried our dinners & a horn of water, which latter is quite necessary, as all in the lower valleys is saline, I every day took long walks. Beyond the limits of the elevated & central green circle, the wild valleys are quite desolate & untenanted. Here to the geologist, there are scenes of interest, which shew the successive changes & complicated violence, which have in past times happened. According to my views, St Helena has existed as an Isd from a very remote period, but that originally like most Volcanic Isds it has been raised in mass from beneath the waters. St Helena, situated so remote from any continent, in the midst of a great ocean & possessing an unique Flora, this little world, within itself excites our curiosity. — Birds & insects, as might be expected, are very few in number, indeed I believe all the birds have been introduced within late years. — Partridges & pheasant are tolerably abundant; the Isd is far too English not to be subject to strict game laws. I was told of a more unjust sacrifice to such ordinances, than I ever heard of even in England: the poor people formerly used to burn a plant which grows on the coast rocks, & export soda; — a peremptory order came out to prohibit this practice, giving as a reason, that the Partridges would have no where to build!

David Henry Thoreau’s 20th stanza began on his birthday, July 12th, Tuesday, 1836. • The Alert rounded Cape Horn and passed the Falkland Islands as Richard Henry Dana, Jr. concluded his “two years before the mast” excellent adventure — returning to Harvard College as a senior “BMOC” (alongside classmate David Henry Thoreau). In this year in which David Henry was changing his name to Henry David, he was studying Italian under instructor Pietro Bachi, German, English, natural philosophy, intellectual philosophy, rhetoric, and criticism. Graduating senior Thoreau attended Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s initial lectures upon his being appointed to the Harvard College faculty. The institution was holding its bicentennial celebration (Emerson attended). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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• In a continuation of the previous year’s anti-Catholic and anti-Masonic political furor, Concord postmaster John Keyes was thrown out of office because he was a Mason (and therefore –per one of the Know-Nothing controlling fantasies of the time– a man whose loyalties were to a secret cabal rather than to the American nation). Charles B. Davis became the postmaster, and would serve intermittently as postmaster for Concord from that point forward, whenever the Democrats were in power. • While Thoreau was at the family home on the Concord Square for the summer he went on a voyage in his boat Red Jacket, embarking from the bridge on the Lowell Road (he would spend the following summer with Charles Stearns Wheeler in a hut on the shore of Flint’s Pond). Meanwhile, Margaret Fuller, “a very accomplished & very intelligent person,” was a house guest of the Emersons (Bronson Alcott would also be a house guest this year). Emerson’s NATURE was printed and Jones Very, who was graduating with distinction from Harvard College and preparing to enter the Harvard Divinity School, purchased a copy at the Boston bookshop and proceeded to make heavy markup. referred to his dead father and his very lively mother as “blighted flowers” and mused upon the display in their lives of “some covenant broken with the Lord” — as the heritage of this union, he would need to atone in order to get out of the clutches of “some secret undefined power” which was tempting him toward “2 Vices.” Margaret Fuller reported hearing “conversation” about Emerson’s book “that amuses me.” The Reverend Orestes Brownson reviewed it for a Boston gazette. Carlyle’s SARTOR RESARTUS was simultaneously for sale at the Boston bookshop. • The Thoreaus of Concord relocated from the Concord Square to the site of the present Concord Free Public Library building, residing there in the Parkman house. • The Concord school board had as its chair the Reverend Barzillai Frost, as its secretary Nehemiah Ball (who in this year won election as Town Clerk), and as its third member Sherman Barrett. Money for the school was being raised by a town tax, supplemented by small donations and by some state aid. The head of the prudential committee of the Centre District was the owner of the local grocery store, Charles B. Davis (who in this year would become Concord’s postmaster), and it would be he who would hire as the new teacher replacing Eliezer J. Marsh a recent local college graduate, Henry David Thoreau. Hiring a recent local Harvard College grad has been pretty much the tradition since 1700. Davis would agree to pay Thoreau $500 a year, which, although it would render him by far the highest paid of the more than sixteen teachers employed in the system, was $100 less than had been paid in the previous year to Marsh. • Charles Darwin was keeping his eyes wide open as the British surveying vessel HMS Beagle arrived at St. Helena and Ascension Island, and then headed toward home port. • In Texas, John James Audubon shot a number of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. On his final full day in office, United States President Andrew Jackson recognized the independence of the Republic of Texas. • In Boston, in the 2d year of Alcott’s Temple School, an experiment was made in what was, actually, the first sex education ever offered in America. Fuller moved from there to a new job, teaching at the Greene Street School in Providence, Rhode Island (Waldo Emerson gave the dedication address there). Classroom conversations were being recorded by Elizabeth Peabody and would be disastrously published. The Crawford House on Scollay Square installed the first passenger elevator in the USA, and the foundation of the US Hotel was laid. • Nathaniel Hawthorne visited the Peabody sisters Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia in Salem, meeting his future wife. He edited Peter Parley’s UNIVERSAL HISTORY. • The formation of “Hedge’s Club.” • William Miller was forecasting the imminent end of the world. • More than 5,000 Irish disembarked in Boston. In the United States, an economic depression began that would last several years. As a result, thousands of Americans would go bankrupt, and thousands more would be reduced to starvation. The depression would force the closing of nearly all textile mills in New England, and more than 500 banks before the end of the year. This was due HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to the failure of an insurance scheme that was being used during the process known as the “clearing” of temporary financial chits (these are now known as “checks”), a chit-clearing process which had been begun by the Suffolk Bank in Boston in 1819 and which had spread from there so that by this point it constituted a banking-industry convention. Herman Melville’s brother’s business, which was Herman’s source of employment, went bankrupt. • “Wallie” Emerson was born — “Last night at 11 o’clock, a son was born to me.” • John Greenleaf Whittier began his extensive Massachusetts political career. • The Southmayd family, former residents in the Thoreau boardinghouse in Concord, was enduring much suffering and tribulation in the region that would become Texas.

BACKGROUND EVENTS OF 1836 BACKGROUND EVENTS OF 1837

“My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.” — Henry Thoreau

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2015. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Prepared: July 25, 2015 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

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