Edward Everett Hale

PEOPLE ALMOST MENTIONED IN THE MAINE WOODS:

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Maine Woods: Rev. Edward Everett Hale HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

THE MAINE WOODS: Ktaadn, whose name is an Indian word signifying highest land, was first ascended by white men in 1804. It was visited by Professor J.W. Bailey of West Point in 1836; by Dr. Charles T. Jackson, the State Geologist, in 1837; and by two young men from Boston in 1845. All these have given accounts of their expeditions. Since I was there, two or three other parties have made the excursion, and told their stories. Besides these, very few, even among backwoodsmen and hunters, have ever climbed it, and it will be a long time before the tide of fashionable travel sets that way. The mountainous region of the State of Maine stretches from near the White Mountains, northeasterly one hundred and sixty miles, to the head of the Aroostook River, and is about sixty miles wide. The wild or unsettled portion is far more extensive. So that some hours only of travel in this direction will carry the curious to the verge of a primitive forest, more interesting, perhaps, on all accounts, than they would reach by going a thousand miles westward.

CHARLES TURNER, JR. JACOB WHITMAN BAILEY DR. CHARLES T. JACKSON EDWARD EVERETT HALE WILLIAM FRANCIS CHANNING HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

1822

Edward Everett Hale was born in Boston, the son of the editor and railroad manager Nathan Hale, and a descendant of the Captain Nathan Hale who had been hung by the Army during the Revolutionary War. (He was an older brother of Charles Hale.) (The father, Nathan Hale, was the editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser from 1814 to 1854 and the head of the Boston and Worcester Railroad.)

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Maine Woods: Rev. Edward Everett Hale HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

1831

The following is a snippet from Charles Haskell’s REMINISCENCES OF NEW YORK BY AN OCTOGENARIAN: In this year the first street railway in the world, the New York and Harlem, was incorporated with a capital of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Upon the notice of the commissioners to receive bids for shares of the stock, there was a furor among our citizens to obtain them, to be likened only to that of the “South Sea Bubble.”... The University of New York was incorporated in this year, the following officers being elected: James M. Matthews, D.D., Chancellor; Albert Gallatin, President of the Council; Morgan Lewis, Vice-President; John Delafield, Secretary; Samuel Ward, Treasurer.... The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad began operations in this year, exciting astonishment and fear by attaining a speed of twenty miles an hour. The river route hence to Peekskill, having for many years been run by Captain Vanderbilt, and the price of passage being such as the citizens of Putnam and Westchester counties, headed by Daniel Drew and James Smith, held to be exorbitant, a number of them associated in a company and built a steamer which forced Vanderbilt to reduce his fare to twelve and one-half cents. In 1832, however, Drew and Smith sold out to Vanderbilt without the knowledge or consent of their associates.... The population of the city in this year was ascertained to be 202,589. The T-rails of rolled iron designed by Robert Stevens and manufactured in England were delivered to America and experimented with on a right-of-way belonging to the Camden & Amboy Railroad. They would prove to be successful despite their high cost and despite the brittleness of the iron in use at that time. Although an inverted-U design was tried by the B&O, the T-rail was better and would soon come into general use.1 A steam-propelled passenger train was designed by placing the bodies of existing “Concord”2 stagecoaches over iron wheels:

Charles Hale was born, younger brother of Edward Everett Hale and son of the editor and railroad manager Nathan Hale and a descendant of the Captain Nathan Hale who had been hung by the Army during the Revolutionary War.

1. In the early years of railroading, the majority of maimings and deaths of crewmembers came from the fact that they were required to stand between two cars being rolled toward each other, and steer a link into a socket, and then drop a pin precisely into the hole, to join the cars into a train. An improved coupler would not be patented until 1873, and would not be in general use until about 1890. In the meanwhile there were coming to be more and more railroad types walking around minus fingers or minus hands. 2. That’s Concord as in Concord, New Hampshire, a large manufacturing town. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

1833

August: Dr. James Cowles Prichard pioneered “the term monomania, meaning madness affecting one train of thought … adopted in late times instead of melancholia.” (Herman Melville’s father-in-law, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, would utilize this concept “monomania” in a legal opinion in 1844, and Melville would deploy it in MARDI AND A VOYAGE THITHER in 1849, and then in MOBY-DICK; OR, THE WHALE in 1851 as the defining characteristic of the psychology of the maimed Captain Ahab.) As what in this year would have been considered to be a prime instance of such monomania, in this year there appeared Lydia Maria Child’s infamous APPEAL IN FAVOR OF THAT CLASS OF AMERICANS CALLED AFRICANS.

(The author’s “madness affecting one train of thought” was immediately recognized, and in an attempt at a cure her library privileges at the Boston Athenæum were summarily revoked.) The Reverend William Ellery Channing walked down to Child’s cottage from his home on Beacon Hill, a mile and a half, to discuss the book with her for all of three hours, but not because he agreed with her — the Reverend Channing considered Child misguided and a zealot. Child later commented that she had “suffered many a shivering ague-fit in attempting to melt, or batter away the glaciers of his prejudices.” The window of HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

William Davis Ticknor’s Old Corner Bookstore was smashed because this APPEAL was on display. Having

overheard his parents discussing APPEAL (and perhaps having heard of that smashed window at the Old Corner Bookstore, which had been smashed by someone leaning against or being shoved against it), the 11-year-old Edward Everett Hale considered heaving a stone at it through the shop window. This is the book that a manager of the American Bible Society refused to read for fear it would make him an abolitionist, and in fact it would be what the 22-year-old Wendell Phillips would be reading just as he was abandoning the practice of law in order to devote his life to abolitionism. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

Here is the cover of a modern edition of that offending treatise:

Outspoken in her condemnation of slavery, Mrs. Child pointed out its contradiction with Christian teachings, and described the moral and physical degradation it brought upon slaves and owners alike — not omitting to mention the issue of miscegenation, and not excepting the North from its share of responsibility for the system. “I am fully aware of the unpopularity of the task I have undertaken,” she wrote in the Introduction, “but though I expect ridicule and censure, it is not in my nature to fear them.” As a direct result of this, she would lose her editorial post with The Juvenile Miscellany (if you are so impolite and inconsiderate that you mention that we routinely molest our black servants, we certainly cannot allow you to have contact with our children). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

1839

Edward Sherman Hoar matriculated at Harvard College.

Francis Lemuel Capen, Edward Everett Hale, and William Francis Channing graduated from Harvard. Channing would go on to study medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (although his practice as a physician would never extend beyond the administration of quack applications of electricity to the heads and feet of sufferers). NEW “HARVARD MEN”

After leaving Harvard, Ellery Channing had spent almost five years living in the home of his father Dr. Walter Channing, withdrawing books from the Boston Athenæum and presumably educating himself in this manner — but otherwise not doing much of anything. In this year he determined that he was going to make something of himself, as a farmer on the frontier! (Meanwhile, in this year, Abraham Lincoln was beginning to travel through nine counties in central and eastern Illinois, as a lawyer on the 8th Judicial Circuit.)

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Maine Woods: Rev. Edward Everett Hale HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

1845

May 30, Friday: An article Dr. William Francis Channing placed in the Boston Daily Advertiser, his Harvard chum Edward Everett Hale’s dad’s gazette, described in general terms how he was intending to reduce fire losses by providing building occupants with an instant way to contact its fire stations — a fire alarm system, one based upon the new telegraph wire. HISTORY OF TELEGRAPHY

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

July 30, Wednesday: Edward Everett Hale and Dr. William Francis Channing climbed Mount Katahdin (Henry Thoreau would make mention of that earlier expedition at the beginning of THE MAINE WOODS). TIMELINE OF THE MAINE WOODS

CHARLES TURNER, JR. JACOB WHITMAN BAILEY DR. CHARLES T. JACKSON EDWARD EVERETT HALE WILLIAM FRANCIS CHANNING

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Maine Woods: Rev. Edward Everett Hale HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

August 15, Friday: Frederick Douglass lectured at the Lyceum Hall of Lynn, Massachusetts. HALE CLIMBS KATAHDIN

Edward Everett Hale provided an account of his and Dr. William Francis Channing’s recent college-chums clamber up Mount Katahdin to his dad’s gazette in Boston, the Daily Advertiser (Henry Thoreau would make mention of that earlier expedition at the beginning of THE MAINE WOODS). TIMELINE OF THE MAINE WOODS

CHARLES TURNER, JR. JACOB WHITMAN BAILEY DR. CHARLES T. JACKSON EDWARD EVERETT HALE WILLIAM FRANCIS CHANNING

August 15th The sounds heard at this hour 8 1/2 are the distant rumbling of wagons over bridges –a sound farthest heard of any human at night –the baying of dogs –the lowing of cattle in distant yards What if we were to obey these fine dictates these divine suggestions which are addressed to the mind & not to the body –which are certainly true –not to eat meat –not to buy or sell or barter &c &c &c? I will not plant beans another summer but sincerity –truth –simplicity –faith –trust –innocence –and see if they will not grow in this soil with such manure as I have, and sustain me. When a man meets a man –it should not be some uncertain appearance and falsehood –but the personification of great qualities. Here comes truth perchance personified along the road– Let me see how Truth behaves– I have not seen enough of her– He shall utter no foreign word –no doubtful sentence –and I shall not make haste to part with him. I would not forget that I deal with infinite and divine qualities in my fellow. All men indeed are divine in their core of light but that is indistinct and distant to me, like the stars of the least magnitude –or the galaxy itself – but my kindred planets show their round disks and even their attendant moons to my eye. Even the tired laborers I meet on the road, I really meet as travelling Gods, but it is as yet and must be for a long season, without speech. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

1846

The Reverend Edward Everett Hale would be the Unitarian minister of the Church of the Unity in Worcester until 1856 (at which point he would become minister of the South Congregational Church in Boston).

The Reverend Henry Whitney Bellows began to edit The Christian Inquirer, a Unitarian weekly paper (he would also edit, for a time, The Christian Examiner).

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Maine Woods: Rev. Edward Everett Hale HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

1855

The Reverend Edward Everett Hale had his Daguerreotype made.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Maine Woods: Rev. Edward Everett Hale HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

1856

The Reverend Edward Everett Hale would be minister of the South Congregational (Unitarian) Church of Boston until his death in 1909.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Maine Woods: Rev. Edward Everett Hale HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

1857

December 11, Friday: The Reverend Edward Everett Hale wrote to the Chairman and Secretary of the Citizen’s Ward Meeting of Boston’s ward #40, to decline a nomination to its School Committee.

Henry Thoreau was being written to by Friend Daniel Ricketson in New Bedford. Written before my late visit by the date shews. —

The Shanty, Friday Evening Dec. 11, 1857.

Dear Thoreau, I expect to go to Boston next week, Thursday 17th with my daughters Anna & Emma to attend the Anti-Slavery Bazaar. They will probably return home the next day & I proceed to Malden for a day or two. After which I may proceed to Concord if I have your permission & if you will be at home, for without you Concord would be quite poor & deserted, like to

Page 2 the place some poet, perhaps Walter Scott describes “When thro’ the desert walks the lapwing flies And tires their echoes with unceasing cries.” ——— Channing says I can take his room in the garret of his house, but I think I should take to the tavern. Were you at Walden I should probably storm your castle & make good an entrance, and perhaps, as an act of generous heroism allow you quarters while I remained. But in sober truth I should like to see you and sit or lie down in your room & hear you growl once more thou brave old Norseman — thou Thor, thunder-god-man I long to see your long beard, HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

Page 3 which for a short man is rather a stretch of imagination or under- standing — C. says it is terrible to behold — but improves you mightily. How grandly your philosophy sits now in these trying times. I lent my Walden to a broken merchant lately as the best panacea I could afford him for his troubles. You should now come out & call together the lost sheep of Israel, thou cool headed pastor, no Corydon forsooth but a genuine Judean — fulminate from the banks of Concord upon the banks of Discord & once more set ajog a pure

Page 4 curren(t)cy whose peaceful-tide may wash us clean once more again. Io Pean! Is “Father Alcott” in your city? I should count much on seeing him too — a man who is All-cot should not be without a home at least in him chosen land. Dont be provoked at my nonsense for anything better would be like “carrying coals to Newcastle.” I would sit at feet of Gamaliel. So farewell for the present, with kind remembrances to your family I remain faithfully Your friend P. S. D. Ricketson If I can’t come, please inform me. — HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

1861

The Unitarian Reverend Henry Whitney Bellows planned the United States Sanitary Commission, the major source of spiritual and physical aid for wounded Union soldiers during and after the American Civil War. He would become the Commission’s only president.

A new edition of the Reverend William Rounseville Alger’s THE POETRY OF THE ORIENT, OR METRICAL SPECIMENS OF THE THOUGHT, SENTIMENT, AND FANCY OF THE EAST, PREFACED BY AN ELABORATE DISSERTATION (originally published in Boston in 1856). –Also, his A CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE, with a bibliography by Ezra Abbot comprising some 5,000 titles. –Also, his THE GENIUS OF SOLITUDE; OR THE LONELINESS OF HUMAN LIFE.

Since his shortness (he was 5 foot 2) and poor eyesight were keeping him from being accepted into the military, in this year or the following one the Reverend Horatio Alger, Jr. would accept a position as the Unitarian pastor of the 1st Parish Church in Brewster. The ordination sermon would be delivered by the Reverend Edward Everett Hale. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

1863

December: The Reverend Edward Everett Hale’s novella THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

1893

March: The Reverend Edward Everett Hale’s “My College Days,” The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 71, pages 361-2: I have spoken of Bachi, the teacher of Italian, a gentleman who died without leaving any literary work to be preserved on catalogues, and who will not, therefore, get into any history of the men of letters of his time. There was said to be some mystery attending him, or we boys thought so; very likely there was really none. But what we knew was that here was a charming, well-educated gentleman, who was willing to be our friend, and who made us at ease and at home in the resources of Italian literature.

The recitation-room, barrack though it was in all external fixtures, as at that time every recitation-room in Cambridge was, excepting the one which I have described, was, like that, a place of meeting of intelligent young men, who had one leader whose subject was given him for an hour. That subject was the Italian language and Italian literature. Before the college course was over, Longfellow read, nominally as lectures, the whole of Dante with us, and we were well prepared for this by what we had read with Bachi. So that Bachi is another of the names which I hold in respect and honor since college days. PIETRO BACHI HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

1901

The Reverend Edward Everett Hale reprocessed his account of an 1845 clamber up Mount Katahdin with college chum William Francis Channing, for the pages of Appalachia magazine. I WAS YOUNG AND HALE. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

1903

The Reverend Edward Everett Hale would be Chaplain of the US Senate until his death in 1909. “Do you pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?” No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

1909

June 10, Thursday: Edward Everett Hale died.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

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

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Maine Woods: Rev. Edward Everett Hale HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

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

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS REVEREND EDWARD EVERETT HALE

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.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.