Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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1 “ONE IF BY DAY AND TWO IF BY NIGHT …”

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

1.This is the manner in which President Ford recited the poem as he stood at Concord Bridge during the Bicentennial Celebration. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

a 1314

Dante Alighieri’s INFERNO: Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura ché la diritta via era smarrita.

which Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would render as:2 MIDWAY upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost. LA DIVINA COMMEDIA, I

2. You’ll do considerably better with Robert Pinsky’s THE INFERNO OF DANTE (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994). HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1451

It was possibly in about this year that the Iroquois tribes of the area that would become upstate New York were tugged out of their incessant internal struggles by the appearance of Deganawida (Two River Currents Flowing Together), a Huron who would become famous as the “Peacemaker.” This negotiator apparently was hindered, like Moses, by some sort of language or speech difficulty, but eventually won the support of Ayawentha (He Makes Rivers), an Onondaga who became a war chief among the Mohawk (and who would achieve a posthumous poetic fame as “Hiawatha”).3 The distinguished duo were somehow able to convince

the other Iroquois tribes that in order to achieve ascendancy over other redskins, they needed to bring their own incessant internal strugglings to an end. Since the legend has it that Deganawida produced a miracle of blotting out the sun, and since we know that a solar eclipse would have occurred in upstate New York in 1451 if it wasn’t too cloudy that day to be seen, this would be a possible year for the conciliation work that would bring peace and unprecedented prosperity, and political unity and unprecedented military power. At first, the Iroquois would function as two related alliances: the Seneca, Cayuga, and, to a lesser extent, the Onondaga would merge as the western Iroquois while the Mohawk and Oneida would merge as the eastern Iroquois.

3.The life of this politician has been cartoonized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s narrative poem of 1855, which is approximately as historical as the more recent Disney biography of Pocahontas. Longfellow and Disney were strangely alike: each, pretending to build bridges to understanding, built only walls. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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(Deganawida’s “Great Peace” would never be extended to anyone outside the Ongwi Honwi, superior people, of the Five Nations. From the outside, this “Great Peace” would more resemble a “Great War.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1570

It seems to have been at about this point that the famed League of Five Nations was founded (some will try to tell you that this had happened as far back as 900 CE). The government that was being constructed would have a 50-seat assembly of delegates from the nations. (Although it has been said that Hiawatha, just about the ultimate political animal, was one of the founders of the Five Nations Confederacy, the actual Iroquois seems to have lived some four or five generations earlier than this.)4

All water falls, in the Dakota tongue, are called Ha-ha, never Minnehaha [“as Longfellow has it,” Thoreau remarked here in brackets]. The “h” has a strong guttural sound. The word is applied because of the curling of the waters. The verb I-ha-ha primarily means to curl; secondarily to laugh because of the curling

4.The life of this politician has been cartoonized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s narrative poem of 1855, which is approximately as historical as the more recent Disney biography of Pocahontas. Longfellow and Disney were strangely alike: each, pretending to build bridges to understanding, built only walls. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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motion of the mouth in laughter.

“Authentic Minnesota Scene” postcard of the Minnehaha falls HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1638

October: John Josselyn, Gent. arrived at his brother Henry’s home in Scarborough,5 where he would abide for some 15 months. While walking in the woods he spied what he presumed to be a kind of fruit:

chanc’t to spye a fruit as I thought like a pine Apple, plated with scales. It was as big as the crown of a Woman’s hat.... (I) made bold to step unto it with an intent to have gathered it ... but no sooner had (I) touched it but hundreds of Wasps [burst out.]... At last I cleared myself of them, being stung only on the lip; and glad I was that I ’scaped so well.

His lip “swelled so extreamly” that by the time he had stumbled home “They hardly knew me but by my Garments.” When he had recovered, he would give further thought to the strange gray nest: “Of what matter it’s made no man knows, wax it is not, neither will it melt nor fry, but will take fire suddenly like Tender.” What he didn’t realize was that the nest was pulp paper made from wood fiber by the paper-making Hornet, and had he succeeded in mastering this technical process, he could have revolutionized the paper-making industry of his age, based as it was at the time on the iffy supply of cotton and linen rags, and transformed himself from a comfortable into an extremely rich man.6

Josselyn was bemused by the story of the “Mere-man” seen by one “Mr. Mitton” out in Casco-Bay ... “Who laying his hands on the side of the Canow had one of them chopt off with a hatchet, which was in all respects like the hand of a man, the Triton presently sunk, dying the water with his purple blood, and was not more seen.” One can almost see him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, scribbling away before the winking fishermen. “These with many other tales they told me” he admits, “The credit whereof I will neither impeach nor impune, but will satisfy myself with — ‘There are many strange things in the world than are to be seen between London and Maidenstone’.” SEA SERPENT SIGHTINGS

Jocelyn was the first to mention the famed sea-serpent of Nahant and of Egg Rock, in this year. He wrote that the serpent had been observed “quoiled up on a rock at Cape Ann.” (This apparition would be repeatedly seen in Gloucester Bay in August 1817, and occasionally also in Nahant Bay, by hundreds of observers. One skipper would allege soberly that it was “longer than the main-mast of a seventy-four.” Another would compare its length to the height of the steeple of the Gloucester meeting-house.)

5. His “Beloved Brother” was agent for the heirs of Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Captain John Mason, the proprietors of old Maine and New Hampshire and would rise to be the deputy governor of the province. The town is at the mouth of the Nonesuch River in what is now Maine. A suburb of Portland, it originated as “Black Point,” Thomas Cammock’s settlement, which combined in 1658 with Blue Point and with Stratton’s Islands to form a community modeling itself upon the Scarborough that is a resort on the North Sea coast of England. 6. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would make use of this incident in his THE NEW ENGLAND TRAGEDIES. In the verse play “John Endicott” the innkeeper Samuel Cole would be made to exclaim:

I feel like Master Josselyn when he found The hornets’ nest, and thought it some strange fruit, Until the seeds came out, and then he dropped it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1686

The Red-Horse Tavern was opened in Sudbury, on the main road west from Boston. This would become the locale of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Tales of a Wayside Inn.” Just take the 128 freeway to near Waltham, get off at the Route 20 exit heading West, drive something like ten miles past Weston and through Wayland and through South Sudbury, and start looking on the right. If you get to Marlborough, you’ve passed it. You can’t miss the place. Although it’s not the same building now, they’ve changed the name from Red- Horse Tavern to Wayside Inn in order to make certain that the tourists get the drift. Ask for a Harvey Wallbanger and mention that it was Hank Longfellow’s favorite libation.

(BEFORE) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1807

February 27, Friday: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine7 to a mother who was able to trace her ancestry to the John Alden who had been first off the Mayflower at Plymouth. His father was descended from the William Longfellow who had been born in Hampshire, England in 1651 –emigrating to Newbury MA where in 1676 he had married Anne Sewall– who had in 1690 drowned at Anticosti, an island in the estuary of the St. Lawrence River.

All his life he would be embarrassed at his family name, since it blatantly emphasized that in fact he was quite a shortfellow. (You’d suppose that, for a guy with the attitude he had about an altitude problem, for appearances they would have buried him in a casket with a few feet of headroom — rather than in a casket that, for a person of normal height, they’d obviously have needed a shoehorn and a chainsaw to fit him into!)

The federal Congress was, on this day, considering the possibility of their issuing a clarification of Section 8 of their “Act to prohibit the importation of Slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, from and after the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eight.” This section gave permission for the continued buying and selling of slaves inside the borders of this nation. Nothing would come of their attempt at a clarification of this section.

STATUTES AT LARGE, II. 426. For proceedings in Senate, see SENATE JOURNAL (reprint of 1821), 9th Congress, 1-2d session, IV. 11, 112, 123, 124, 132, 133, 150, 158, 164, 165, 167, 168; ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 9th Congress, 2d session, pages 16, 19, 23, 33, 36, 45, 47, 68, 69, 70, 71, 79, 87, 93. For proceedings in House, see HOUSE JOURNAL (reprint of 1826), 9th Congress, 2d session, V. 470, 482, 488, 490, 491, 496, 500, 504, 510, 513-6, 517, 540, 557, 575, 579, 581, 583-4, 585, 592, 594, 610, 613-4, 616, 623, 638, 640; 10th Congress, 1st session, VI. 27, 50; ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 9th Congress, 2d session, pages 167, 180, 200, 220, 231, 254, 264, 270.

7. Yes, that’s Portland MA not Portland ME — for in 1807 the city of Portland was still a part of Massachusetts. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Table of Altitudes

Yoda 2 ' 0 '' Lavinia Warren 2 ' 8 '' Tom Thumb, Jr. 3 ' 4 '' Lucy (Australopithecus Afarensis) 3 ' 8 '' Hervé Villechaize (“Fantasy Island”) 3 ' 11'' Charles Proteus Steinmetz 4 ' 0 '' Mary Moody Emerson per FBS (1) 4 ' 3 '' Alexander Pope 4 ' 6 '' Benjamin Lay 4 ' 7 '' Dr. Ruth Westheimer 4 ' 7 '' Gary Coleman (“Arnold Jackson”) 4 ' 8 '' Edith Piaf 4 ' 8 '' Queen Victoria with osteoporosis 4 ' 8 '' Linda Hunt 4 ' 9 '' Queen Victoria as adult 4 ' 10 '' Mother Teresa 4 ' 10 '' Margaret Mitchell 4 ' 10 '' length of newer military musket 4 ' 10'' Charlotte Brontë 4 ' 10-11'' Tammy Faye Bakker 4 ' 11'' Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut 4 ' 11'' jockey Willie Shoemaker 4 ' 11'' Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 4 ' 11'' Joan of Arc 4 ' 11'' Bonnie Parker of “Bonnie & Clyde” 4 ' 11'' Harriet Beecher Stowe 4 ' 11'' Laura Ingalls Wilder 4 ' 11'' a rather tall adult Pygmy male 4 ' 11'' Gloria Swanson 4 ' 11''1/2 Clara Barton 5 ' 0 '' Isambard Kingdom Brunel 5 ' 0 '' Andrew Carnegie 5 ' 0 '' Thomas de Quincey 5 ' 0 '' Stephen A. Douglas 5 ' 0 '' Danny DeVito 5 ' 0 '' HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Immanuel Kant 5 ' 0 '' William Wilberforce 5 ' 0 '' Dollie Parton 5 ' 0 '' Mae West 5 ' 0 '' Pia Zadora 5 ' 0 '' Deng Xiaoping 5 ' 0 '' Dred Scott 5 ' 0 '' (±) Captain William Bligh of HMS Bounty 5 ' 0 '' (±) Harriet Tubman 5 ' 0 '' (±) Mary Moody Emerson per FBS (2) 5 ' 0 '' (±) John Brown of Providence, Rhode Island 5 ' 0 '' (+) John Keats 5 ' 3/4 '' Debbie Reynolds (Carrie Fisher’s mother) 5 ' 1 '' Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) 5 ' 1 '' Bette Midler 5 ' 1 '' Dudley Moore 5 ' 2 '' Paul Simon (of Simon & Garfunkel) 5 ' 2 '' Honore de Balzac 5 ' 2 '' Sally Field 5 ' 2 '' Jemmy Button 5 ' 2 '' Margaret Mead 5 ' 2 '' R. Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller 5 ' 2 '' Yuri Gagarin the astronaut 5 ' 2 '' William Walker 5 ' 2 '' Horatio Alger, Jr. 5 ' 2 '' length of older military musket 5 ' 2 '' 1 the artist formerly known as Prince 5 ' 2 /2'' 1 typical female of Thoreau's period 5 ' 2 /2'' Francis of Assisi 5 ' 3 '' Vol ta i re 5 ' 3 '' Mohandas Gandhi 5 ' 3 '' Sammy Davis, Jr. 5 ' 3 '' Kahlil Gibran 5 ' 3 '' Friend Daniel Ricketson 5 ' 3 '' The Reverend Gilbert White 5 ' 3 '' Nikita Khrushchev 5 ' 3 '' Sammy Davis, Jr. 5 ' 3 '' Truman Capote 5 ' 3 '' HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Kim Jong Il (North Korea) 5 ' 3 '' Stephen A. “Little Giant” Douglas 5 ' 4 '' Francisco Franco 5 ' 4 '' President James Madison 5 ' 4 '' Iosef Vissarionovich Dzugashvili “Stalin” 5 ' 4 '' Alan Ladd 5 ' 4 '' Pablo Picasso 5 ' 4 '' Truman Capote 5 ' 4 '' Queen Elizabeth 5 ' 4 '' Ludwig van Beethoven 5 ' 4 '' Typical Homo Erectus 5 ' 4 '' 1 typical Neanderthal adult male 5 ' 4 /2'' 1 Alan Ladd 5 ' 4 /2'' comte de Buffon 5 ' 5 '' (-) Captain Nathaniel Gordon 5 ' 5 '' Charles Manson 5 ' 5 '' Audie Murphy 5 ' 5 '' Harry Houdini 5 ' 5 '' Hung Hsiu-ch'üan 5 ' 5 '' 1 Marilyn Monroe 5 ' 5 /2'' 1 T.E. Lawrence “of Arabia” 5 ' 5 /2'' average runaway male American slave 5 ' 5-6 '' Charles Dickens 5 ' 6? '' President Benjamin Harrison 5 ' 6 '' President Martin Van Buren 5 ' 6 '' James Smithson 5 ' 6 '' Louisa May Alcott 5 ' 6 '' 1 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 5 ' 6 /2'' 1 Napoleon Bonaparte 5 ' 6 /2'' Emily Brontë 5 ' 6-7 '' Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 5 ' ? '' average height, seaman of 1812 5 ' 6.85 '' Oliver Reed Smoot, Jr. 5 ' 7 '' minimum height, British soldier 5 ' 7 '' President John Adams 5 ' 7 '' President John Quincy Adams 5 ' 7 '' President William McKinley 5 ' 7 '' “Charley” Parkhurst (a female) 5 ' 7 '' HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Ulysses S. Grant 5 ' 7 '' Henry Thoreau 5 ' 7 '' 1 the average male of Thoreau's period 5 ' 7 /2 '' Edgar Allan Poe 5 ' 8 '' President Ulysses S. Grant 5 ' 8 '' President William H. Harrison 5 ' 8 '' President James Polk 5 ' 8 '' President Zachary Taylor 5 ' 8 '' average height, soldier of 1812 5 ' 8.35 '' 1 President Rutherford B. Hayes 5 ' 8 /2'' President Millard Fillmore 5 ' 9 '' President Harry S Truman 5 ' 9 '' 1 President Jimmy Carter 5 ' 9 /2'' 3 Herman Melville 5 ' 9 /4'' Calvin Coolidge 5 ' 10'' Andrew Johnson 5 ' 10'' Theodore Roosevelt 5 ' 10'' Thomas Paine 5 ' 10'' Franklin Pierce 5 ' 10'' Abby May Alcott 5 ' 10'' Reverend Henry C. Wright 5 ' 10'' 1 Nathaniel Hawthorne 5 ' 10 /2'' 1 Louis “Deerfoot” Bennett 5 ' 10 /2'' 1 Friend John Greenleaf Whittier 5 ' 10 /2'' 1 President Dwight D. Eisenhower 5 ' 10 /2'' Sojourner Truth 5 ' 11'' President Grover Cleveland 5 ' 11'' President Herbert Hoover 5 ' 11'' President Woodrow Wilson 5 ' 11'' President Jefferson Davis 5 ' 11'' 1 President Richard Milhous Nixon 5 ' 11 /2'' Robert Voorhis the hermit of Rhode Island < 6 ' Frederick Douglass 6 ' (-) Anthony Burns 6 ' 0 '' Waldo Emerson 6 ' 0 '' Joseph Smith, Jr. 6 ' 0 '' David Walker 6 ' 0 '' Sarah F. Wakefield 6 ' 0 '' HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Thomas Wentworth Higginson 6 ' 0 '' President James Buchanan 6 ' 0 '' President Gerald R. Ford 6 ' 0 '' President James Garfield 6 ' 0 '' President Warren Harding 6 ' 0 '' President John F. Kennedy 6 ' 0 '' President James Monroe 6 ' 0 '' President William H. Taft 6 ' 0 '' President John Tyler 6 ' 0 '' John Brown 6 ' 0 (+)'' President Andrew Jackson 6 ' 1'' Alfred Russel Wallace 6 ' 1'' President Ronald Reagan 6 ' 1'' 1 Venture Smith 6 ' 1 /2'' John Camel Heenan 6 ' 2 '' Crispus Attucks 6 ' 2 '' President Chester A. Arthur 6 ' 2 '' President George Bush, Senior 6 ' 2 '' President Franklin D. Roosevelt 6 ' 2 '' President George Washington 6 ' 2 '' HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Gabriel Prosser 6 ' 2 '' Dangerfield Newby 6 ' 2 '' Charles Augustus Lindbergh 6 ' 2 '' 1 President Bill Clinton 6 ' 2 /2'' 1 President Thomas Jefferson 6 ' 2 /2'' President Lyndon B. Johnson 6 ' 3 '' Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 6 ' 3 '' 1 Richard “King Dick” Seaver 6 ' 3 /4'' President Abraham Lincoln 6 ' 4 '' Marion Morrison (AKA John Wayne) 6 ' 4 '' Elisha Reynolds Potter, Senior 6 ' 4 '' Thomas Cholmondeley 6 ' 4 '' (?) Franklin Benjamin Sanborn 6 ' 5 '' Peter the Great of Russia 6 ' 7 '' Giovanni Battista Belzoni 6 ' 7 '' Thomas Jefferson (the statue) 7 ' 6'' Jefferson Davis (the statue) 7 ' 7'' 1 Martin Van Buren Bates 7 ' 11 /2'' M. Bihin, a Belgian exhibited in Boston in 1840 8 ' Anna Haining Swan 8 ' 1'' HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1808

George Stillman Hillard was born, who would be immortalized by the pen of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

THE SCARLET LETTER: Such were some of the people with whom I now found myself connected. I took it in good part, at the hands of Providence, that I was thrown into a position so little akin to my past habits; and set myself seriously to gather from it whatever profit was to be had. After my fellowship of toil and impracticable schemes with the dreamy brethren of Brook Farm; after living for three years within the subtle influence of an intellect like Emerson’s; after those wild, free days on the WALDO EMERSON Assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, beside our fire of fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing; after talking with Thoreau ELLERY CHANNING about pine-trees and Indian relics in his hermitage at Walden; after growing fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement of Hillard’s culture; after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment at Longfellow’s hearthstone – it was time, at length, that LONGFELLOW I should exercise other faculties of my nature, and nourish myself with food for which I had hitherto had little appetite. Even the old Inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had known Alcott. I looked upon it as an evidence, in some measure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lacking no essential part of a thorough organization, that, with such associates to remember, I could mingle at once with men of altogether different qualities, and never murmur at the change. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1810

At the age of three, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was already displaying his precocity at languages, and was being walked to and from school by a black servant.

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Henry Wadsworth Longfellow HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1820

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at age 13, had poetry published in the Portland Gazette. This is what the poet had looked like in 1815:

And now, this is what his newspaper publication clipping looked like, after it had had a chance to get nice and yellow:

The topic was a dustup of King Phillip’s War, and I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether this 13-year-old’s first published poem was any improvement over the traditional poem that had been recounting the event: Of worthy Captain LOVEWELL, I purpose now to sing, How valiantly he served his country and his King; He and his valiant soldiers did range the woods full wide, And hardships they endured to quell the Indian’s pride. ’Twas nigh unto Pigwacket, on the eighth day of May, They spied a rebel Indian soon after break of day; He on a bank was walking, upon a neck of land, HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Which leads into a pond as we’re made to understand. Our men resolved to have him, and travelled two miles round, Until they met the Indian, who boldly stood his ground; Then up speaks Captain LOVEWELL, “Take you good heed,” says he, “This rogue is to decoy us, I very plainly see. “The Indians lie in ambush, in some place nigh at hand, In order to surround us upon this neck of land; Therefore we’ll march in order, and each man leave his pack; That we may briskly fight them when they make their attack.” They came unto this Indian, who did them thus defy, As soon as they came nigh him, two guns he did let fly, Which wounded Captain LOVEWELL, and likewise one man more, But when this rogue was running, they laid him in his gore. Then having scalped the Indian, they went back to the spot, Where they had laid their packs down, but there they found them not, For the Indians having spied them, when they them down did lay, Did seize them for their plunder, and carry them away. These rebels lay in ambush, this very place hard by, So that an English soldier did one of them espy, And cried out, “Here’s an Indian”; with that they started out, As fiercely as old lions, and hideously did shout.

With that our valiant English all gave a loud huzza, To show the rebel Indians they feared them not a straw: So now the fight began, and as fiercely as could be, The Indians ran up to them, but soon were forced to flee. Then spake up Captain LOVEWELL, when first the fight began, “Fight on my valiant heroes! you see they fall like rain.” For as we are informed, the Indians were so thick, A man could scarcely fire a gun and not some of them hit. Then did the rebels try their best our soldiers to surround, But they could not accomplish it, because there was a pond, To which our men retreated and covered all the rear, The rogues were forced to flee them, although they skulked for fear. Two logs there were behind them that close together lay, Without being discovered, they could not get away; Therefore our valiant English they travelled in a row, And at a handsome distance as they were wont to go. ’Twas ten o’clock in the morning when first the fight begun, And fiercely did continue until the setting sun; Excepting that the Indians some hours before ’twas night, Drew off into the bushes and ceased a while to fight. But soon again returned, in fierce and furious mood, Shouting as in the morning, but yet not half so loud; For as we are informed, so thick and fast they fell, Scarce twenty of their number at night did get home well.

And that our valiant English till midnight there did stay, To see whether the rebels would have another fray; But they no more returning, they made off towards their home, And brought away their wounded as far as they could come. 0f all our valiant English there were but thirty-four, And of the rebel Indians there were about fourscore. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

And sixteen of our English did safely home return, The rest were killed and wounded, for which we all must mourn. Our worthy Captain LOVEWELL among them there did die, They killed Lieut. ROBBINS, and wounded good young FRYE, Who was our English Chaplain; he many Indians slew, And some of them he scalped when bullets round him flew. Young FULLAM too I’ll mention, because he fought so well, Endeavoring to save a man, a sacrifice he fell: But yet our valiant Englishmen in fight were ne’er dismayed, But still they kept their motion, and WYMAN’S Captain made, Who shot the old chief PAUGUS, which did the foe defeat, Then set his men in order, and brought off the retreat; And braving many dangers and hardships in the way, They safe arrived at Dunstable, the thirteenth day of May.

A WEEK: In the words of the old nursery tale, sung about a hundred PEOPLE OF years ago, — A WEEK “He and his valiant soldiers did range the woods full wide, And hardships they endured to quell the Indian’s pride.” In the shaggy pine forest of Pequawket they met the “rebel Indians,” and prevailed, after a bloody fight, and a remnant returned home to enjoy the fame of their victory. A township called Lovewell’s Town, but now, for some reason, or perhaps without reason, Pembroke, was granted them by the State. “Of all our valiant English, there were but thirty-four, And of the rebel Indians, there were about four-score; And sixteen of our English did safely home return, The rest were killed and wounded, for which we all must mourn. “Our worthy Capt. Lovewell among them there did die, They killed Lieut. Robbins, and wounded good young Frye, Who was our English Chaplin; he many Indians slew, And some of them he scalped while bullets round him flew.” Our brave forefathers have exterminated all the Indians, and their degenerate children no longer dwell in garrisoned houses nor hear any war-whoop in their path. It would be well, perchance, if many an “English Chaplin” in these days could exhibit as unquestionable trophies of his valor as did “good young Frye.” We have need to be as sturdy pioneers still as Miles Standish, or Church, or Lovewell. We are to follow on another trail, it is true, but one as convenient for ambushes. What if the Indians are exterminated, are not savages as grim prowling about the clearings to-day? — “And braving many dangers and hardships in the way, They safe arrived at Dunstable the thirteenth (?) day of May.” But they did not all “safe arrive in Dunstable the thirteenth,” or the fifteenth, or the thirtieth “day of May.”

METACOM HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1821

Nathaniel Hathorne left the home of his Manning relatives in Salem and journeyed to Bowdoin College, where Franklin Pierce was already in residence, and he would reside there into 1825 (one could hardly term him a student) and would luck into a lifelong alliance with some other undistinguished young men one of

whom would amount to something.8 No-one, not even Hawthorne, has ever represented that his college drinking companion Frank was the greatest president we’ve ever had, or that he possessed native strength of intellect, or native strength of character — as Hawthorne later was to represent an immensely popular

8. He also would become lifelong friends with Horatio Bridge and Jonathan Cilley. Of these college years he would write:

“I was an idle student, negligent of college rules and the Procrustean details of academic life, rather choosing to nurse my own fancies than to dig into Greek roots and be numbered among the learned Thebans.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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genocidal racist named Andy “Long Knife” Jackson:

the greatest man we ever had; and his native strength, as well of intellect as character, compelled every man to be his tool that came within his reach; and the cunninger the individual might be, it served only to make him the sharper tool.

Nevertheless, Hawthorne would later be willing to write a campaign biography for this drunkard, and lie about the man’s attitudes, and help him follow Andrew Jackson as President of the United States, merely because of this superficial personal connection and from a realistic expectation and hope that through the political reward system set up by Jackson and inherited by Pierce he, Hawthorne, would receive a personal and generous reward.

Statesman Chum and Pretty Boy

Also hovering in the background in those grand years at Bowdoin was a shorty student named Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who would go on to provide the stuff of legends. During these years of semi-idleness 9 and dissipation he would begin working at FANSHAWE, with its Bowdoin-like setting, and, perhaps, on some HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

of the series of stories that would be issued as SEVEN TALES OF MY NATIVE LAND.

Allmendinger, David F. PAUPERS AND SCHOLARS: THE TRANSFORMATION OF STUDENT LIFE IN NINETEENTH- CENTURY NEW ENGLAND. NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1975

“A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”

COLLEGES Allmendinger’s history is a refreshing look into the collegial history of New England. Instead of the usual focus on Harvard, Yale, and the other Ivy League schools as the central forces of university history, Allmendinger turns his glance upon smaller New England institutions like Williams, Bowdoin, and Amherst and upon the students who populated these schools. What he has unearthed is telling: since most of these “new,” smaller schools were broke, they attracted poorer students looking for educational bargains and academic schedules that allowed them time to work. Hawthorne knew of, and was one of these “new” students himself. In PASSAGES FROM THE AMERICAN NOTE-BOOKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, he saw these students at a commencement in the Berkshires of Williams College and wrote that “Country graduates, — rough, brown featured, schoolmaster-looking, half-bumpkin, half- scholarly figures, in black ill-cut broadcloth, — their manners quite spoilt by what little of the gentlemen there was in them” (quoted in Allemendinger 2). On the surface the admission and matriculation of these non-traditional students in “marginal” institutions may seem unimportant, but Allemendinger show that their effect on American university life was profound. Penniless sons of farmers and small businessmen affected the style and tone of college life. They imposed, Allmendinger observes, “their need for economy upon college arrangements for food and shelter,” forcing “Young gentlemen who sought refinement did so on their own.” They also introduced the frugality, independence, and, in general, the kind of self-reliant student experience that has become so deep a part of popular myth about college life today. These young men also contributed to the notion that a college experience should lead to a practical and rewarding middle class career. [Shawn Gillen, February 1992]

In 1820, at the age of sixteen, he became a student of Bowdoin College, at Brunswick, Maine. It was in the autumn of the next year, that the author of this memoir entered the class below him; but our college reminiscences, however interesting to the parties concerned, are not exactly the material for a biography. 9. The “Hartley College” of this narrative had been in fictive existence for 19 years as the aged narrator of this tale recollects upon his youthful matriculation, and in Hawthorne’s 1st year at Bowdoin College as of 1821, it had likewise been inexistence for 19 years, having opened its doors in 1802. It is possible that no such inscription as recorded in this narrative (“borrowed ... SCHOLAR”) has ever been placed upon the grave of Mather. In the Reverend Cotton Mather’s MAGNALIA CHRISTI AMERICANA; OR THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF NEW-ENGLAND the author recorded of his brother Nathanael that “He was as hard student, and quickly became a good scholar.” As republished in Hartford CT in 1820, there is at the front of the first volume an “Attestation” by the Reverend John Higginson in which it is stated that over the grave of Cotton’s brother Nathanael in Salem there had been written THE ASHES OF AN HARD STUDENT, A GOOD SCHOLAR, AND A GREAT CHRISTIAN. During the lifetime of Hawthorne, the inscription above Nathanael Cotton’s grave in Salem read as it now reads: “An Aged person that had seen but Nineteen Winters in the World.” If this is an unaccountable substitution of inscription, the switch would have needed to have been effected after the end of the 17th Century. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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He was then a youth, with the boy and man in him, vivacious, mirthful, slender, of a fair complexion, with light hair that had a curl in it: his bright and cheerful aspect made a kind of sunshine, both as regarded its radiance and its warmth; insomuch that no shyness of disposition, in his associates, could well resist its influence. We soon became acquainted, and were more especially drawn together as members of the same college society. There were two of these institutions, dividing the college between them, and typifying, respectively, and with singular accuracy of feature, the respectable conservative, and the progressive or democratic parties. Pierce’s native tendencies inevitably drew him to the latter. His chum was Zenas Caldwell, several years elder than himself, a member of the Methodist persuasion, a pure-minded, studious, devoutly religious character; endowed thus early in life with the authority of a grave and sagacious turn of mind. The friendship between Pierce and him appeared to be mutually strong, and was of itself a pledge of correct deportment in the former. His chief friend, I think, was a classmate named Little, a young man of most estimable qualities, and high intellectual promise; one of those fortunate characters whom an early death so canonizes in the remembrance of their companions, that the perfect fulfilment of a long life would scarcely give them a higher place. Jonathan Cilley, of my own class, —whose untimely fate is still mournfully remembered,— a person of very marked ability and great social influence, was another of Pierce’s friends. All these have long been dead. There are others, still alive, who would meet Franklin Pierce, at this day, with as warm a pressure of the hand, and the same confidence in his kindly feelings, as when they parted from him, nearly thirty years ago. Pierce’s class was small, but composed of individuals seriously intent on the duties and studies of their college life. They were not boys, but for the most part, well advanced towards maturity; and, having wrought out their own means of education, were little inclined to neglect the opportunities that had been won at so much cost. They knew the value of time, and had a sense of the responsibilities of their position. Their first scholar —the present Professor Stowe— has long since established his rank among the first scholars of the country. It could have been no easy task to hold successful rivalry with students so much in earnest as these were. During the earlier part of his college course, it may be doubted whether Pierce was distinguished for scholarship. But, for the last two years, be appeared to grow more intent on the business in hand, and, without losing any of his vivacious qualities as a companion, was evidently resolved to gain an honorable elevation in his class. His habits of attention, and obedience to college discipline, were of the strictest character; he rose progressively in scholarship, and took a highly creditable degree. The first civil office, I imagine, which Franklin Pierce ever held, was that of chairman of the standing committee of the Athenaean Society, of which, as above hinted, we were both HDT WHAT? INDEX

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members; and, having myself held a place on the committee, I can bear testimony to his having discharged not only his own share of the duties, but, that of his colleagues. I remember, likewise, that the only military service of my life was as a private soldier in a college company, of which Pierce was one of the officers. He entered into this latter business, or pastime, with an earnestness with which I could not pretend to compete, and at which, perhaps, he would now be inclined to smile. His slender and youthful figure rises before my mind’s eye, at this moment, with the air and step of a veteran of the school of Steuben; as well became the son of a revolutionary hero, who had probably drilled under the old baron’s orders. Indeed, at this time, and for some years afterwards, Pierce’s ambition seemed to be of a military cast. Until reflection had tempered his first predilections, and other varieties of success had rewarded his efforts, he would have preferred, I believe, the honors of the battle field to any laurels more peacefully won. And it was remarkable how, with all the invariable gentleness of his demeanor, he perfectly gave, nevertheless, the impression of a high and fearless spirit. His friends were as sure of his courage, while yet untried, as now, when it has been displayed so brilliantly in famous battles. At this early period of his life, he was distinguished by the same fascination of manner that has since proved so magical in winning him an unbounded personal popularity. It is wronging him, however, to call this peculiarity a mere effect of manner; its source lies deep in the kindliness of his nature, and in the liberal, generous, catholic sympathy, that embraces all who are worthy of it. Few men possess any thing like it; so irresistible as it is, so sure to draw forth an undoubting confidence, and so true to the promise which it gives. This frankness, this democracy of good feeling, has not been chilled by the society of politicians, nor polished down into mere courtesy, by his intercourse with the most refined men of the day. It belongs to him at this moment, and will never leave him. A little while ago, after his return from Mexico, he darted across the street to exchange a hearty gripe of the hand with a rough countryman upon his cart — a man who used to “live with his father,” as the general explained the matter to his companions. Other men assume this manner, more or less skilfully; but with Frank Pierce it is an innate characteristic; nor will it ever lose its charm unless his heart should grow narrower and colder — a misfortune not to be anticipated, even in the dangerous atmosphere of elevated rank, whither he seems destined to ascend. There is little else that it is worth while to relate, as regards his college course, unless it be, that, during one of his winter vacations, Pierce taught a country school. So many of the statesmen of New England have performed their first public service in the character of pedagogue, that it seems almost a necessary step on the ladder of advancement. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1822

A short young gentleman embarrassed about his name, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, entered Bowdoin

College as a sophomore at the age of 15, along with an undistinguished student named Hathorne (Nathaniel Hawthorne) and an undistinguished student named Franklin Pierce, who were in the process of forming a lifelong alliance. No-one, not even Hawthorne, has ever represented that this college drinking buddy was the greatest president we ever had, or that he possessed native strength of intellect or native strength of character — as Hawthorne later was to represent an immensely popular genocidal racist named Andrew “Long Knife” Jackson:

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

reward.

Statesman Chum and Pretty Boy

These lads would go on to provide the stuff of legends:

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1825

Seth Wells Cheney depicted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

In this year Longfellow was also depicted in a silhouette made with the other members of his college graduating class:

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Henry Wadsworth Longfellow HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 7, Wednesday: Nathaniel Hawthorne (Nathaniel Hathorne) graduated from Bowdoin College,

18th in a class of 35, after majoring in wine and cards at Ward’s Tavern. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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His record of four years of increasing punishments for spending his study time partying with his cronies in bars and gambling house contrasted markedly not only with the behavior of his classmate Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who entered and graduated in the same years but with whom he was not close, but also with his

own lifelong self-advertisements as a person afflicted with unbearable sensitivity and personal modesty. He moved from his college digs in Brunswick, Maine to 12 Herbert Street in Salem, Massachusetts to live with his mother and sisters while attempting, for a full decade, to establish himself as a writer.10 At this point, presumably, being at the age of 21, Hawthorne had achieved his full growth.

Longfellow, upon graduation, became professor of foreign language at Bowdoin College, with an agreement for him to travel a abroad and study languages (France, Spain, Italy, Germany).

On this same date of September 7th, in an alternate universe somewhat farther to the south, Frederick Douglass’s father and master Aaron Anthony was selling his Aunt Maryann and three of his cousins “down the river” to slave traders from Alabama. Freddy did not know as of that date, of course, since he was only seven years old and anyway was being held in slavery far away from these family members, but he would of course eventually learn of the events of this day.

10.“In this dismal and squalid chamber FAME was won,” he would pen in 1836, referring to his room “under the eaves” of the Manning home. Discouraged by initially poor reception, he would burn his manuscript of SEVEN TALES OF MY NATIVE LAND but around 1829 would plan another collection, PROVINCIAL TALES, and, in 1834, THE STORY TELLER. Portions of these second and third collections would see publication in periodicals as separate tales and sketches. Though his mother and sisters lived reclusively, often taking their meals apart, he was not as much a melancholic as he would later enjoy describing himself to have been, for we know that in addition to keeping a notebook record of his encounters, impressions, and literary ideas, he took trips from time to time by stagecoach and on foot into the New England countryside. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1826

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow sojourned in Europe to learn languages, staying until 1829.

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 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1828

Samuel Griswold Goodrich’s illustrated children’s book THE TALES OF PETER PARLEY ABOUT AMERICA had become a favorite of the American public, and so an expanded edition was prepared. A copperplate frontispiece of “Peter Parley Telling Stories” was added to supplement the illustrative woodcuts in the book. Cutting a new cookie from the successful mold, Goodrich self-published THE TALES OF PETER PARLEY ABOUT EUROPE, employing some of the same woodblocks that appeared in the AMERICA volume. Taking as his model a series of annuals which he had seen in London, he also put out the first of a 15-year series of gift books, THE TOKEN, A CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR’S GIFT FOR 1828.11

11. This series would publish some of the first works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. The historian George Bancroft, Collector of the Port of Boston, would also contribute articles. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1829

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow returned from learning languages in Europe to teach at Bowdoin College for the following six years.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Henry Wadsworth Longfellow HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1831

September 14, Wednesday: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow got married with Mary Storer Potter in Portland, Maine.

In England, the gardening writer John Claudius Loudon and the science fiction author Jane C. Webb were wed. He was 47 and she 23. The couple would honeymoon in the Lake District and in Scotland. They would have a daughter, Agnes. The new wife would learn to act as her husband’s secretary, copyist, researcher, and note taker, toward the preparation of the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GARDENING which would be published in 1834. Jane Webb Loudon would prepare INSTRUCTIONS IN GARDENING FOR LADIES, a nontechnical volume which would see nine editions and sell more than 20,000 copies.

Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont visited the prison in Charleston, Massachusetts.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 14th 9 M / Attended Meeting at the Institution which was silent but a pretty good meeting — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

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1832

In yet another manifestation of the American religiosity known as the worship of whiteness, the skeleton of a male in metal-plate armor was uncovered at the corner which is now 5th and Hartley in Fall River, Rhode Island. This discovery or uncovery would serve as the basis for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Skeleton in Armor,” in which the anonymous man would be made out to have been a “Viking.”12 It has been asserted that the skeleton actually was racially a native American skeleton — but we’ll never know because it would be entirely consumed in the great Fall River conflagration of 1843. In 1880 a study of the metal plates would make them out to be brass of comparatively late English manufacture. The brass plates that lay around this skeleton and excited this white-racist fantasy are reportedly still at the Peabody Museum of Harvard University. [“The Skeleton in Armor” is on the following screen]

12. In Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s journal for May 24, 1839 we find: “... my plan of a heroic poem on the Discovery of America by the Northmen, in which the Round Tower at Newport and the Skeleton in Armor have a part to play.” The poet got $25 for this poem, which would appear in the Knickerbocker on January 9, 1841. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Skeleton in Armor

“Speak! speak! thou fearful guest “Once as I told in glee “And as to catch the gale Who, with thy hollow breast Tales of the stormy sea, Round veered the flapping sail, Still in rude armor drest, Soft eyes did gaze on me, Death I was the helmsman’s hail, Comest to daunt me! Burning yet tender; Death without quarter! Wrapt not in Eastern balms, And as the white stars shine Mid-ships with iron keel Bat with thy fleshless palms On the dark Norway pine, Struck we her ribs of steel Stretched, as if asking alms, On that dark heart of mine Down her black hulk did reel Why dost thou haunt me?” Fell their soft splendor. Through the black water! Then, from those cavernous eyes “I wooed the blue-eyed maid, “As with his wings aslant, Pale flashes seemed to rise, Yielding, yet half afraid, Sails the fierce cormorant, As when the Northern skies And in the forest’s shade Seeking some rocky haunt Gleam in December; Our vows were plighted. With his prey laden, And, like the water’s flow Under its loosened vest So toward the open main, Under December’s snow, Fluttered her little breast Beating to sea again, Came a dull voice of woe Like birds within their nest Through the wild hurricane, From the heart’s chamber. By the hawk frighted. Bore I the maiden. “I was a Viking old! “Bright in her father’s hall “Three weeks we westward bore, My deeds, though manifold, Shields gleamed upon the wall, And when the storm was o’er, No Skald in song has told, Loud sang the minstrels all, Cloud-like we saw the shore No Saga taught thee! Chanting his glory; Stretching to leeward; Take heed, that in thy verse When of old Hildebrand There for my lady’s bower Thou dost the tale rehearse, I asked his daughter’s hand, Built I the lofty tower, Else dread a dead man’s curse; Mute did the minstrels stand Which, to this very hour, For this I sought thee. To hear my story. Stands looking seaward. “Far in the Northern Land, “While the brown ale he quaffed, “There lived we many years; By the wild Baltic’s strand, Loud then the champion laughed, Time dried the maiden’s tears I, with my childish hand, And as the wind-gusts waft She had forgot her fears, Tamed the gerfalcon; The sea-foam brightly, She was a mother. And, with my skates fast-bound, So the loud laugh of scorn, Death closed her mild blue eyes, Skimmed the half-frozen Sound, Out of those lips unshorn, Under that tower she lies; That the poor whimpering hound From the deep drinking-horn Ne’er shall the sun arise Trembled to walk on. Blew the foam lightly. On such another! “Oft to his frozen lair “She was a Prince’s child, “Still grew my bosom then. Tracked I the grisly bear, I but a Viking wild, Still as a stagnant fen! While from my path the hare And though she blushed and smiled, Hateful to me were men, Fled like a shadow; I was discarded! The sunlight hateful! Oft through the forest dark Should not the dove so white In the vast forest here, Followed the were-wolf’s bark, Follow the sea-mew’s flight, Clad in my warlike gear, Until the soaring lark Why did they leave that night Fell I upon my spear, Sang from the meadow. Her nest unguarded O, death was grateful! “But when I older grew, “Scarce had I put to sea, “Thus, seamed with many scars, Joining a corsair’s crew, Bearing the maid with me, Bursting these prison bars, O’er the dark sea I flew Fairest of all was she Up to its native stars With the marauders. Among the Norsemen! My soul ascended! Wild was the life we led; When on the white sea-strand, There from the flowing bowl Many the souls that sped, Waving his armed hand, Deep drinks the warrior’s soul, Many the hearts that bled, Saw we old Hildebrand, Skoal! to the Northland! skoal!” By our stern orders. With twenty horsemen. Thus the tale ended.

“Many a wassail-bout “Then launched they to the blast, Wore the long Winter out; Bent like a reed each mast, Often our midnight shout Yet we were gaining fast, Set the cocks crowing, When the wind failed us; As we the Berserk’s tale And with a sudden flaw Measured in cups of ale, Came round the gusty Skaw, Draining the oaken pail, So that our foe we saw Filled to o’erflowing. Laugh as he hailed us.

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1835

May 25, Monday: The Boston Daily Advertiser carried an announcement that Professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s OUTRE MER; A PILGRIMAGE BEYOND THE SEA was for sale in two volumes. Soon after this David Henry Thoreau would transcribe extensively, evidently from the copy purchased by the “Institute of 1770”.

This was Waldo Emerson’s 32d birthday.

November: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1st wife Mary Storer Potter Longfellow died in childbirth. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1836

October: Harvard College language instructor Pietro Bachi –a low-status “native informant” sort despite his being a master of numerous modern European languages, whose mind in the language classrooms was constantly available as a play-mate for the privileged college lads– donated a piece of black coral from the Mediterranean Sea to the Boston Society of Natural History.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow came home from his 2d extended privileged sojourn in Europe for the study of various modern European languages, to take over the position of George Ticknor as Smith Professor of French and Spanish Languages and Literatures at Harvard. He reflected upon his plight:

Perhaps the worst thing in a College Life is this having your mind constantly a play-mate for boys.

He rented one room of the Craigie House, the high-status historic old mansion at 105 Brattle Street in HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Cambridge. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Two-thirds of the Longfellow House is in Minnesota! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1837

A wealthy black merchant of Boston, John Craigie, sold his home in Cambridge, Craigie House, not to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow but to the Appleton family that would in 1843 be furnishing the poet with a bride, Fanny Appleton.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Henry Wadsworth Longfellow HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 6, Monday: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s TWICE-TOLD TALES (1st Series), a collection of eighteen of his stories that had previously appeared in periodicals, publication of which had been underwritten without his knowledge by his friend Horatio Bridge,13 received a laudatory review by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in the North American Review. The tradition that William Goffe headed the citizens of Hadley, Massachusetts in repelling an attack by Native Americans was used by Hawthorne in “The Gray Champion.”

REGICIDE Publication of “The Man of Adamant.”

Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, friend of Waldo Emerson and, later, publisher of The Dial, visited Nathaniel Hawthorne’s sister — whom she initially supposed to have been the one who had written TWICE-TOLD TALES.

May: Graduating senior Henry David Thoreau attended Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s initial lectures upon his being appointed to the Harvard College faculty.

00 13. Horatio Bridge had guaranteed to Hawthorne’s publisher the $250. this publisher needed to ensure TWICE-TOLD TALES against publishing loss. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1838

During this year in which Friend John Greenleaf Whittier was being re-elected to his seat in the Massachusetts legislature,

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was issuing his “A Psalm of Life / What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist” (the “Psalmist” in question of course being King David) which Friend John would describe as the “moral engine of an age of action,”

And things are not what they seem.

A PSALM OF LIFE ... Since Professor Charles Follen was no longer teaching German literature at Harvard College, Professor HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Longfellow began to lecture on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s FAUSTUS.

The Reverend Follen became the minister of a Unitarian congregation in New-York (now All Souls), but quickly lost that position due to conflicts with his parishioners over his radical anti-slavery views. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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A PSALM OF LIFE. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each to-morrow Find us farther than to-day. Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave. In the world’s broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife! Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act,--act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o’erhead! Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time;— Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 3, Thursday: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in his journal: I have been looking at the old Northern Sagas, and thinking of a series of ballads or a romantic poem on the deeds of the first bold viking who crossed to this western world, with storm- spirits and devil-machinery under water. New England ballads I have long thought of. This seems to be an introduction. I will dream more of this.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

Summer: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was spending the season at Newport on Aquidneck Island. He had formed connections there with George W. Greene and with Samuel Ward, a brother of Julia Ward (Howe) whom he had met in Europe, and had prepared for his visit by a perusal of John Callender’s 1739 work, AN HISTORICAL DISCOURSE, ON THE CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS OF THE COLONY OF RHODE ISLAND. When he visited 19- year-old Julia, most likely at the Ward family residence called “Buttonwood” or “Redwood Lodge,” she called him “Longo” — and he caught a bad cold by sleeping with the window wide open. The group visited the mysterious Old Stone Mill or Round Tower, and ventured intrepid speculations as to the ancientness of its origins.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Henry Wadsworth Longfellow HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1839

The 1st book of poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, VOICES OF THE NIGHT, with the 3d version of “A Psalm of Life” (it also contains “Hyperion”). HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Louis A. Godey’s Godey’s Lady’s Book had 25,000 subscribers (at its highest point, in 1860, the circulation

would rise to 150,000). Sarah Josepha Hale, as literary editor, was relying on original material, mostly by women, rather than following the American practice of plagiarizing from European authors. Although she had a nasty habit of stiffing unknown authors, paying them sometimes not at all, she did pay her more well-known contributors well. At one time or another, William Cullen Bryant, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow were all contributing to the magazine and being well rewarded for so doing. Edgar Allan Poe would supply several of the best-known of his tales, such as “The Mask of the Red Death,” as well as literary essays such as “Tale Writing — Nathaniel Hawthorne” and a series on the “New York Literati.” Even more than Graham’s Magazine, this girlie mag relied upon fashion plates and engravings. Godey was even known to refer to the article text as “the illustration of the plate” (in a later timeframe men would be insisting that they subscribed to Playboy only to read the articles, but that is neither here nor there). Godey declared these plates to be “service to the cause of civilization.” Initially one hand- colored plate was being included in every third issue, but soon there was a single hand-colored plate in each issue of the magazine (the origin of the centerfold?). By 1870 civilization had been served most exceedingly well, for a total of a thousand such services to the cause of civilization had at that point appeared in the magazine.

However, in this year, Poe, having moved to Philadelphia, was living on little but bread and molasses and writing “Ligeia” and other stories which appeared in the American Museum of Baltimore. He became co- editor of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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There would be 3, count ’em, 3 great hurricanes along the New England coast during this year of 1839.

Wow. Wow. Wow. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would be motivated to commit “The Wreck of the HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Hesperus” — see below.) ENSO Largest Scale Global Weather Oscillations 1833-1839 Southern South Pacific Indonesian Australian Indian Annual Nile flood Oscillation current reversal monsoon droughts monsoon 1833 very strong cold La Niña drought adequate deficient extremely poor 1834 absent cold La Niña adequate adequate adequate adequate 1835 moderate cold La Niña drought adequate adequate extremely poor 1836 moderate cold La Niña adequate adequate adequate 2d year, very low 1837 strong warm El Niño moderate + adequate drought deficient 3d year, extremely poor 1838 strong cold La Niña drought adequate deficient 4th year, quite weak 1839 strong cold La Niña adequate adequate adequate 5th year, very low The southern ocean / atmosphere “seesaw” links to periodic Indonesian east monsoon droughts, Australian droughts, deficient Indian summer monsoons, and deficient Ethiopian monsoon rainfall causing weak annual Nile floods. This data is presented from Tables 6.2-6.3 of Quinn, William H. “A study of Southern Oscillation-related climatic activity for AD 622-1900 incorporating Nile River flood data,” pages 119-49 in Diaz, Henry F. and Vera Markgraf, eds. EL NIÑO: HISTORICAL AND PALEOCLIMATIC ASPECTS OF THE SOUTHERN OSCILLATION. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.

Two vessels out of Gloucester would be lost this year. The schooner Transport capsized but its crew was saved, and the schooner Sevo was run down in the night by the steamer Huntress off Thacher’s Island, and sank almost immediately. Captain Peletiah Barker, Jr., of Portland, succeeded in climbing on board the steamer. Winthrop Sargent, a lad of twelve years, crawled out to the end of the bowsprit, and as the vessel was going down, grasped a splitting table which floated by, and by his cries attracted the attention of those on board the steamer, who rescued him with much difficulty. The steamer pursued her course, and the sails of the vessel drifting ashore near Brace’s Cove, it was thought all hands were lost. On the return trip of the steamer, young Sargent was brought home, and at two o’clock in the morning, was landed at Eastern Point, and, lad though he was, commenced his lonely journey of walking to town. He reached his father’s house at about four o’clock, and knowing that he slept in a bed-room on the lower floor, tapped on the window. His father immediately awoke and exclaimed, “Who is there?” “It’s your boy Winthrop,” was the reply. Mr. Sargent at first thought it must be the ghost of the lad, as he had given him up as drowned; but young Winthrop had no idea of being taken for a ghost, and soon gave evidence that he was alive and well, which caused great rejoicing in the family. Four men were lost in this vessel: •Richard Triton • Nathaniel Remby • Jonathan Osgood • James McDonald HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

The fishing vessel had been owned by Messrs. Ellery & Gaffney, valued at $1,300, and insured for $1,150.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “The Wreck of the Hesperus” It was the schooner Hesperus That sailed the wintry sea: And the skipper had taken his little daughter, To bear him company. Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds That open in the month of May. The skipper he stood beside the helm, His pipe was in his mouth, And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old sailor, Had sailed to the Spanish Main, “I pray thee, put into yonder port, For I fear a hurricane. “Last night, the moon had a golden ring, And tonight no moon we see!” HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, And a scornful laugh laughed he. Colder and louder blew the wind, A gale from the Northeast, The snow fell hissing in the brine, And the billows frothed like yeast. Down came the storm, and smote amail, The vessle in ins strength: She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed, Then leaped her cable's length. “Come hither! come hither! my litle daughter, And do not tremble so: For I can weather the roughest gale, That ever wind did blow.” He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to the mast. “O father! I hear the church-bells ring, O say, what may it be?” “Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!”- And he steered for the open sea. “O father! I hear the sound of guns, O say, what may it be?” “Some ship in distress, that cannot live In such an angry sea!” “O father! I see a gleaming light, O say, what may it be?” But the father answered never a word, A froxed corpse was he. Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, With his face turned to the skies, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow On his fixed and glassy eyes. Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That savéd she might be; And she though of Christ, who stilled the wave, On the Lake of Galilee. And fast through the midnight dark and drear Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Towards the reef of Norman's Woe. And ever the fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf, On the rocks and the hard sea-sand. The breakers were right beneath her bows, She drifted a weary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from her deck. She struck where the white and fleecy waves HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Looked soft as carded wool, But the cruel rocks, they gored her side Like the horns of an angry bull. Her rattling shouds, all sheathed in ice, With the masts went by the board; Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank, Ho! ho! the breakers roared! At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, A fisherman stood aghast, To see the form of a maiden fair Lashed close to a drifting mast. The salt sea was frozed on her breast, The salt tears in her eyes; And he say her hair, like the brown sea-weed, On the billows fall and rise. Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, In the midnight and the snow! Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman's Woe! HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1840

The wealthy young Frances Appleton, future wife of the celebrant of the humble laborer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, recorded her year’s reading. She had studied Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Reverend Jared Sparks, Sir Francis Bacon, and Frances Trollope. She had read essays by John Locke, the letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the letters of Abigail Adams, and three of the novels of Jane Austen. And she had begun Dante Alighieri’s DIVINE COMEDY after finishing Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s FAUST.

In fact the young lady was falling sadly behind in her reading, for this year would see:

• William Makepeace Thackeray’s PARIS SKETCH BOOK. • Thomas Hood’s UP THE RHINE, THE LOVES OF SALLY BROWN AND BEN THE CARPENTER, MISS KILMANSEGG AND HER PRECIOUS LEG (in the New Monthly Magazine). HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

In this year somebody must have been feeling extraordinarily generous, for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow received $15.00 for a thing about a village blacksmith working under a spreading chestnut tree.14

In this year, production and profits at the New Hampshire Iron Foundry in Franconia Notch, a few miles north of the “Old Man of the Mountains” rock formation, were at their peak, and the facility provided year-round employment for 50 men. In addition to ingots of pig iron, the facility was producing nails, horseshoes, kettles, axes, tools, and the highly regarded Franconia Stove. During the 16-26 weeks of autumn and winter that the blast furnace was in operation (the furnace produced better iron while the air was dry), the facility could ordinarily employ another 50 temporary workers at low wages: these were typically farm hands who needed work during the winter months, and were paid a minimal wage.

14. The tree was a horse chestnut, the European variety, and the famous chair now on display in the Craigie House in Cambridge is of course constructed of the wood of the American chestnut Castanea dentata. Never mind, fifteen bucks then is twelve hundred today, and who today is going to give you twelve hundred, either for a piece of dreck such as “The Village Blacksmith” or for a halfway decent poem such as the one that was read at the Inauguration?

By the way, although we don’t much think about this sort of thing nowadays, the chestnut blight having done its dirty work, but once upon a time chestnut trees were famous for being spreading, that is, for offering abundant shade. There was a famous chestnut tree on Mount Ætna in the 18th Century known as the Castagno di cento cavalli, so called from its having provided enough shade for an entire one hundred mounted cavaliers (evidently on a Sicilian day during which shade was an extraordinarily nice thing). HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

In this year Henry Wadsworth Longfellow advised a friend not the miss the lectures of Waldo Emerson:15 The difference between him and most other lecturers is this. From Emerson you go away and remember nothing save that you have been much delighted, you have had a pleasant dream in which angelic voices spoke. From most other lecturers you go away having been lamentably bored.

October: Nathaniel Hawthorne reported to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “I have broken my chain and escaped from the Custom-House.” This was earlier than would have been convenient for his boss, but it should be noted that the Democrats had been defeated in the previous year’s election, and that Hawthorne’s plum, obtained for him under the spoils system, would have been taken away from him within a short period of time.

William Whiting got married with Lydia Cushing Russell, daughter of the Honorable Thomas Russell of Plymouth (the couple would produce three children).

15. Elsewhere Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would comment that sometimes he came away from a Waldo Emerson lecture feeling “I had not the most remote idea ... what he was driving at in particular.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1841

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS.

The Village Blacksmith

Under a spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. His hair is crisp, and black, and long, His face is like the tan; His brow is wet with honest sweat, He earns whate’er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man. Week in, week out, from morn till night, You can hear his bellows blow; You can hear him swing his heavy sledge With measured beat and slow, Like a sexton ringing the village bell, When the evening sun is low.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

He goes on Sunday to the church, And sits among his boys; He hears the parson pray and preach, He hears his daughter’s voice, Singing in the village choir, And it makes his heart rejoice. It sounds to him like her mother’s voice, Singing in Paradise! He needs must think of her once more, How in the grave she lies; And with his hard, rough hand he wipes A tear out of his eyes. Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night’s repose. Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought! HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

January: George R. Graham merged The Casket and Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine into Graham’s Magazine. Edgar Allan Poe became the literary editor of the magazine. This was predicated on the promise that the job would involve mostly the writing of book notices and thus wouldn’t require more than a couple of hours a day of his valuable time. For this the poet was to receive $800 a year — which was comparable to a salary of perhaps $60,000 today and thus was nothing to sneeze at for part-time work. The new publication would retain the serial numbering of The Casket but would use the policy of Burton’s. Some of the writers in this 1st year would be James Russell Lowell, Poe, Lydia Howard Huntley

Sigourney, and Park Benjamin. The following year the principal contributors would include William Cullen Bryant, James Fenimore Cooper, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. During his editorship the poet would contribute several of his better tales and a few important literary essays. By June, however, he would be writing to a friend that he was disgusted by his situation, and in the following year he would resign, partly because of an argument with fellow editor Charles Peterson and partly because he would be feeling supplanted by Samuel Griswold Goodrich, the gent who would later replace him as literary editor. During this year Poe’s “A Chapter on Autobiography” would include a general denunciation of Emerson as a twaddler: Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson belongs to a class of gentlemen with whom we have no patience whatever — the mystic for mysticism’s sake. Quintilian mentions a pedant who taught obscurity, and who once said to a pupil “this is excellent, for I do not understand it myself.” How the good man would have chuckled over Mr. E.! His present role seems to be the out-Carlyling Carlyle. Lycophron Tenebrosus is a fool to him. THe best answer to his twaddle is cui bono?.... His love of the obscure does not prevent him, nevertheless, from the composition of occasional poems in which beauty is apparent by flashes.... His [handwritten signature] is bad, sprawling, illegible, and irregular — although sufficiently bold. This latter trait may be, and no doubt is, only a portion of his general affectation. A young boy named Alex McCaffery was living with the Emersons to help out with household chores. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1842

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s BALLADS. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Longfellow’s POEMS ON SLAVERY. Also, “The Rainy Day”:

As Amy spoke, a great tear dropped on the golden hair of the sleeping child in her arms; for her one well-beloved daughter was a frail little creature and the dread of losing her was the shadow over Amy’s sunshine. This cross was doing much for both father and mother, for one love and sorrow bound them closely together. Amy’s nature was growing sweeter, deeper, and more tender; Laurie was growing more serious, strong, and firm; and both were learning that beauty, youth, good fortune, even love itself, cannot keep care and pain, loss and sorrow, from the most blest; for — “Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark, and sad, and dreary.” “She is growing better, I am sure of it, my dear. Don’t despond, but hope and keep happy,” said Mrs. March, as tenderhearted Daisy stooped from her knee, to lay her rosy cheek against her little cousin’s pale one.

At this point the poet remarried and his new wife brought along in her dowry a little something for a rainy day, to wit, an historic mansion in Cambridge.16 THE RAINY DAY The day is cold, and dark, and dreary It rains, and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary. My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past, But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, And the days are dark and dreary. Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary.

16. Which you are welcome to visit. It is right across the street from the Friends Meeting in Cambridge, within walking distance of Harvard Square, and is being maintained as a National Historic Site. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

March 27, Easter Sunday: Professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow confided to Stephen Longfellow that in Cambridge he was beset by “suspicious individuals” and by “incendiaries.”

March 27, Sunday: Cliffs. Two little hawks [Osprey Pandion haliaetus] have just come out to play, like butterflies rising one above another in endless alternation far below me. They swoop from side to side in the broad basin of the tree-tops, with wider and wider surges, as if swung by an invisible pendulum. They stoop down on this side and scale up on that. Suddenly I look up and see a new bird, probably an eagle, quite above me, laboring with the wind not more than forty rods off. It was the largest bird of the falcon kind I ever saw. I was never so impressed by any flight. She sailed the air, and fell back from time to time like a ship on her beam ends, holding her talons up as if ready for the arrows. I never allowed before for the grotesque attitudes of our national bird. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

GOD IN CONCORD by Jane Langton © 1992 Penguin Books USA Inc. 1 See what a life the gods have given us, set round with pain and pleasure. It is too strange for sorrow; it is too strange for joy. Thoreau’s Journal March 27, 1842 Viking Penguin

In the forest of oak and white pine beyond the Pond View Trailer Park, a wood thrush began to sing. Nobody heard ISBN 0-670-84260-5 — PS3562.A515G58 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1843

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow remarried, and his bride Fanny Appleton brought as her dowry the mansion in

Cambridge in which Longfellow had been renting a room, the Craigie house once inhabited by General Washington. The newlyweds spent their honeymoon in Springfield MA and there inspected the rows of guns in Washington’s armory (which suggested to the poet the organ pipes of death). This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling, Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms; But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing Startles the villages with strange alarms. Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary, When the death-angel touches those swift keys What loud lament and dismal Miserere Will mingle with their awful symphonies I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus, The cries of agony, the endless groan, Which, through the ages that have gone before us, In long reverberations reach our own. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1844

April: Graham’s Magazine published Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem on “The Arsenal at Springfield.”

THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling, Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms; But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing Startles the villages with strange alarms. Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary, When the death-angel touches those swift keys What loud lament and dismal Miserere Will mingle with their awful symphonies I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus, The cries of agony, the endless groan, Which, through the ages that have gone before us, In long reverberations reach our own. On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer, Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman’s song, And loud, amid the universal clamor, O’er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong. I hear the Florentine, who from his palace Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din, And Aztec priests upon their teocallis Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent’s skin; The tumult of each sacked and burning village; HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns; The soldiers’ revels in the midst of pillage; The wail of famine in beleaguered towns; The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder, The rattling musketry, the clashing blade; And ever and anon, in tones of thunder, The diapason of the cannonade. Is it, O man, with such discordant noises, With such accursed instruments as these, Thou drownest Nature’s sweet and kindly voices, And jarrest the celestial harmonies? Were half the power, that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals or forts: The warrior’s name would be a name abhorred! And every nation, that should lift again Its hand against a brother, on its forehead Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain! Down the dark future, through long generations, The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease; And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations, I hear once more the voice of Christ say, "Peace!" Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals The blast of War’s great organ shakes the skies! But beautiful as songs of the immortals, The holy melodies of love arise.

Graham’s Magazine claimed to be the exclusive publisher of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, Paulding, and James Fenimore Cooper. A typical issue during this period would consist of three or four short stories, an essay on manners, a biographical sketch, a literary article, and a quantity of poetry. N. Parker Willis was considered one of the best essayists. The magazine’s critical reviews were uneven in quality, except for those by Samuel Griswold Goodrich and Edgar Allan Poe. At the end of the first year of publication, George R. Graham would claim a circulation of 25,000. A few months later he would claim 40,000. Graham’s American Monthly Magazine published original engravings by John Sartain (1808-1897) at a time when most periodicals borrowed and used old, worn-out plates. Graham’s paid its writers well in an era during which even famous writers received little, or nothing. In each issue there were two original mezzotints and a color fashion plate. The payment structure began at $4.00-$12.00 a page for prose and $10.00-$50.00 per poem, and name writers could negotiate more. Poe was getting only $4.00-$5.00 a page while N.P. Willis, a celebrated author (!), was receiving $11.00. The average article accepted would have been producing between $20.00 and $60.00 for its author. Poe, his wife Virginia, and his aunt, Mrs. Clemm, moved to New-York, where he could do contract writing and editing. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1845

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s THE BELFRY OF BRUGES AND OTHER POEMS. Margaret Fuller’s comment in the New-York Tribune was:

Mr. Longfellow has been accused [by Edgar Allan Poe] of plagiarism. We have been surprised that anyone should have been anxious to fasten special charges of this kind upon him, when we had supposed it so obvious that the greater part of his mental stores were derived from the work of others.

THE BELFRY OF BRUGES CARILLON In the ancient town of Bruges, In the quaint old Flemish city, As the evening shades descended, Low and loud and sweetly blended, Low at times and loud at times, And changing like a poet’s rhymes, HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Rang the beautiful wild chimes From the Belfry in the market Of the ancient town of Bruges. Then, with deep sonorous clangor Calmly answering their sweet anger, When the wrangling bells had ended, Slowly struck the clock eleven, And, from out the silent heaven, Silence on the town descended. Silence, silence everywhere, On the earth and in the air, Save that footsteps here and there Of some burgher home returning, By the street lamps faintly burning, For a moment woke the echoes Of the ancient town of Bruges. But amid my broken slumbers Still I heard those magic numbers, As they loud proclaimed the flight And stolen marches of the night; Till their chimes in sweet collision Mingled with each wandering vision, Mingled with the fortune-telling Gypsy-bands of dreams and fancies, Which amid the waste expanses Of the silent land of trances Have their solitary dwelling; All else seemed asleep in Bruges, In the quaint old Flemish city. And I thought how like these chimes Are the poet’s airy rhymes, All his rhymes and roundelays, His conceits, and songs, and ditties, From the belfry of his brain, Scattered downward, though in vain, On the roofs and stones of cities! For by night the drowsy ear Under its curtains cannot hear, And by day men go their ways, Hearing the music as they pass, But deeming it no more, alas! Than the hollow sound of brass. Yet perchance a sleepless wight, Lodging at some humble inn In the narrow lanes of life, When the dusk and hush of night Shut out the incessant din Of daylight and its toil and strife, May listen with a calm delight To the poet’s melodies, Till he hears, or dreams he hears, Intermingled with the song, Thoughts that he has cherished long; Hears amid the chime and singing The bells of his own village ringing, And wakes, and finds his slumberous eyes Wet with most delicious tears. Thus dreamed I, as by night I lay In Bruges, at the Fleur-de-Ble, Listening with a wild delight To the chimes that, through the night Bang their changes from the Belfry Of that quaint old Flemish city. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

THE BELFRY OF BRUGES In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown; Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o’er the town. As the summer morn was breaking, on that lofty tower I stood, And the world threw off the darkness, like the weeds of widowhood. Thick with towns and hamlets studded, and with streams and vapors gray, Like a shield embossed with silver, round and vast the landscape lay. At my feet the city slumbered. From its chimneys, here and there, Wreaths of snow-white smoke, ascending, vanished, ghost-like, into air. Not a sound rose from the city at that early morning hour, But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient tower. From their nests beneath the rafters sang the swallows wild and high; And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed more distant than the sky. Then most musical and solemn, bringing back the olden times, With their strange, unearthly changes rang the melancholy chimes, Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the nuns sing in the choir; And the great bell tolled among them, like the chanting of a friar. Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms filled my brain; They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again; All the Foresters of Flanders,--mighty Baldwin Bras de Fer, Lyderick du Bucq and Cressy Philip, Guy de Dampierre. I beheld the pageants splendid that adorned those days of old; Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the Fleece of Gold Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden argosies; Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal pomp and ease. I beheld proud Maximilian, kneeling humbly on the ground; I beheld the gentle Mary, hunting with her hawk and hound; And her lighted bridal-chamber, where a duke slept with the queen, And the armed guard around them, and the sword unsheathed between. I beheld the Flemish weavers, with Namur and Juliers bold, Marching homeward from the bloody battle of the Spurs of Gold; Saw the light at Minnewater, saw the White Hoods moving west, Saw great Artevelde victorious scale the Golden Dragon’s nest. And again the whiskered Spaniard all the land with terror smote; And again the wild alarum sounded from the tocsin’s throat; Till the bell of Ghent responded o’er lagoon and dike of sand, "I am Roland! I am Roland! there is victory in the land!" Then the sound of drums aroused me. The awakened city’s roar Chased the phantoms I had summoned back into their graves once more. Hours had passed away like minutes; and, before I was aware, Lo! the shadow of the belfry crossed the sun-illumined square. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1846

Pietro Bachi was dismissed from his teaching assignment at Harvard College on account of an ethanol problem. It is very likely that he would harbor a resentment against Professor Longfellow on account of this (on a following screen is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as depicted in this year in crayon and chalk on paper by Eastman Johnson). HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1847

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow negotiated, for his poem EVANGELINE, portraying the swamp as a place of refuge, from its publishers Ticknor and Fields, the best royalty arrangement ever obtained by an American book of poetry, and the book was unleashed upon an unsuspecting public. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

At the Boston Lying-In Hospital, Ellery Channing’s father, Doctor Walter Channing, began to experiment with the use of sulfurous ether as an anesthetic in obstetrics.

Fanny Appleton Longfellow was the 1st to experiment with use of this anesthetic to cope with the pain of childbirth.

I feel proud to be the pioneer to less suffering for poor weak womankind.

Her experimental baby would live only a year. Presumably this wasn’t due to the dangerous experimental childbirth technique which it had initially needed to survive, but also — one cannot help but note that today no-one would any longer consider the administration of ether to help mothers cope with the pain of childbirth just as no-one would any longer consider the administration of thalidomide to help mothers cope with the trauma of pregnancy.

October: In Cambridge, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published EVANGELINE and it was reviewed by Nathaniel Hawthorne. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1848

November 7, Tuesday: Presidential election day. The candidates were the Whig Zachary Taylor, the Democrat Lewis Cass, and the Free Soil Party candidate Martin Van Buren. Until this point the Whigs had been the expectable victors in Massachusetts elections. However, dramatic “Free-Soil” gains over the Whigs in this election marked the beginning of a long period of political instability. From this point until December 1853, when the tenuous aggregation of the Free-Soilers, Know-Nothings, temperance one-issue people, and Irish Catholics with the Democratic Party would begin to unravel, this uneasy coalition would have to hope for divisions within the Whig Party in order to achieve any victory at the Massachusetts polls.

This defeat marked the end of Martin Van Buren’s political career.

After the election of a Whig as president, Zachary Taylor, the friends of Nathaniel Hawthorne, such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and James Russell Lowell, took up a subscription for his support.

William J. Brown of Providence, Rhode Island would recollect a tactful speech he made (we will forgive him if what he would report later is perhaps more like the speech he could have made, would have made, should have made, than like the speech he actually did make, as such is a common failing among aged recollectors), as follows: PAGES 94-95: The Law and Order party broke up, the colored voters went over to the Whig party, the most of the Law and Order party being Whigs, still claiming our support. Their candidate for President was a slaveholder, Zachary Taylor. We did not like the idea of voting for a slaveholder, and called a meeting on South Main Street to see what we should do. I opposed the meeting being held in that part of the city, fearing it would prove injurious to my interest. I was in that part of the city working at shoe making, my custom was good, and I knew that if I attended that meeting and spoke in favor of the Whig candidate, I should lose their custom and perhaps get hurt. I could not speak in favor of the Democratic candidate for I was opposed to that party. I was obliged to attend the meeting in the third ward. I was at my wit’s ends to know what to do. I attended the meeting and found the place packed with people, and about one hundred and fifty people filled out to the hall door. The meeting was opened when I arrived, Mr. Thomas Howland presiding as chairman. I went in and took the farthest corner of the room. George C. Willis was called, and took his position in front of the stage; addressing the chairman, he remarked, that we were in a very curious position; we must be decided in favor of one party or the other, and his opinion was of the two evils, we must choose the least; and his choice was in favor of Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate. Several others spoke, and in harsh terms denounced the Democratic party. I was then called, and tried to decline, but the call came from every one, Brown, Brown. I was compelled to speak. I arose, addressed the president, and told the audience we were called together to settle a very grave HDT WHAT? INDEX

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question, which as citizens, it was our duty to decide which of the two parties we were to support. We were not to decide upon the man, but the party. If we were to decide on the candidate, it would be not to cast a vote for Taylor, for he is a slaveholder; and this I presume is the feeling of every colored voter, but we are identified with the Whig party, and it is the duty of every colored person to cast his vote for the Whig party, shutting his eyes against the candidate; as he is nothing more than a servant for the party; but I wish it understood that I am not opposed to either party as such; because I believe there are good and bad men in both parties. I have warm friends in the Democratic party, which I highly esteem, and who would take pleasure at any time in doing me a favor. Some of them are my best customers; but in speaking of the party, those men know well the duty demanded of them by their party, and would not neglect it for the sake of accommodating me. I blame no man for carrying out the principles of his party. He has a perfect right to do so, for this is a free country, and we all have a right alike to enjoy our own opinion; there being two parties we are stirred up to action. It makes lively times, and I hope the times will continue to be lively, and our meetings to increase in number, for the more we have, and the larger the attendance upon them, the more my business will increase, for the more shoes that are worn out in attending these meetings, the more custom I shall have. I sat down amid loud cheering. It was a bitter pill for us to vote for a man who was a slaveholder; but placing him in the light of a servant for the party, and we identified with that party, we managed to swallow it down whole. After voting to sustain Zachary Taylor as a candidate for the next Presidential election, we closed the meeting.

November 21, Tuesday: In Indianapolis the Indiana Hospital for the Insane began to admit crazed Hoosiers. The legislature had provided land for such a facility on January 13, 1845 and building funds on January 19, 1846. After March 3, 1927 this institution would be termed the Central State Hospital. In 1994 its inmates were moved to the nearby Larue D. Carter Memorial Hospital.17 PSYCHOLOGY

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from Salem, about Henry Thoreau: I will gladly come on Thursday. Thoreau is to be at my house, and I shall take the liberty to bring him with me, unless he has scruples about intruding on you. You would find him well worth knowing, he is a man of thought and originality, with a certain iron-pokerishness,—an uncompromising stiffness,—in his mental character, which is interesting, though it grows rather wearisome on close and frequent acquaintance.

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

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A tiny listing was in this morning’s edition of the Salem Gazette under the heading “Special Notices” at a stated cost of “six cents a line”: SALEM LYCEUM. The second Lecture of the Season, will be delivered TO-MORROW Evening, Nov. 22d, by Henry Thoreau, of Concord, Mass. JOSEPH B.F. OSGOOD, Rec. Sec’y. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Lecture18

DATE PLACE TOPIC

March 1848 (?) Lexington MA; Robbins Building (?) “Economy” (?) November 22, Wednesday, 1848, at 7:30PM Salem MA; Lyceum Hall “Student Life in New England, Its Economy” December 20, Wednesday, 1848, at 7:30PM Gloucester MA; Town Hall “Economy — Illustrated by the Life of a Student”

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

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Narrative of Event: On May 19, 1848, Henry Thoreau wrote a letter to his friend Horace Greeley, the editor of the widely read New-York Tribune (THE CORRESPONDENCE OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU, pages 223-25). In it he included a long paragraph on the economy of his life in the woods at Walden Pond, a paragraph that paraphrased portions of “Economy,” his first “Walden; or, Life in the Woods” lecture. Much impressed, Greeley printed the slightly revised passage in his newspaper, along with some of his own laudatory remarks, under the title “A Lesson for Young Poets.” [You will find Greeley’s 25 May 1848 article on the following screen.] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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We are continually receiving letters from young gentlemen who deem themselves born to enlighten the world in some way — to “strike the sounding lyre,” or from the Editorial tripod dispense wisdom and guidance to an instructed and admiring world. These generally want to know why they cannot be employed in our establishment, or find a publisher for their poems, or a chance in some shape to astonish mankind and earn a livelihood by letters. — To this large and increasing class, we wish to propound one question: “Suppose all who desire to live by Literature or Trade could find places, who would hoe the needful corn or dig the indispensible potatoes?” — But we purposed in beginning to ask their attention to the following extract from a private letter we have just received from a very different sort of literary youth — a thorough classical scholar, true poet (though he rarely or never wrote verses,) and never sought to make a livelihood by his writings, though there are not six men in America who can surpass them. We feel indeed honored by his friendship, and in the course of a private letter we have just received from him he casually says: “For the last five years, I have supported myself solely by the labor of my hands. I have not received one cent from any other source; and this has cost me so little time — say, a month in the Spring and another in the Autumn — doing the coarsest work of all kinds, that I have probably enjoyed more leisure for literary pursuits than any contemporary. For more than two years past, I have lived alone in the woods, in a good plastered and shingled house entirely of my own building, earning only what I wanted, and sticking to my proper work. The fact is, Man need not live by the sweat of his brow — unless he sweats easier than I do — he needs so little. For two years and two months, all my expenses have amounted to but 27 cents a week, and I have fared gloriously in all respects. If a man must have money — and he needs but the smallest amount — the true and independent way to earn it is by day-labor with his “Scholars are apt to think themselves privileged to complain as if their lot were a peculiarly hard one. How much have we heard about the attainment of knowledge under difficulties — of poets starving in garrets — of literary men depending on the patronage of the wealthy, and finally dying mad! It is time that men sang another song. — There is no reason why the scholar, who professes to be a little wiser than the mass of men, should not do his work in the ditch occasionally, and, by means of his superior wisdom, make much less suffice for him. A wise man will not be unfortunate. How otherwise would you know that he was not a fool?” — We trust our friend will pardon the liberty we have taken in printing the foregoing, since we are sure of effecting signal good thereby. We have no idea of making a hero of him. Our object is simply to shame the herd of pusillanimous creatures who whine out their laziness in bad verses, and execrate the stupidity of publishers and readers who will not buy these maudlin effusions at the paternal estimate of their value, and thus spare them the dire necessity of doing something useful for a living. It is only their paltriness that elevates our independent friend above the level of ordinary manhood, and whenever they shall rise to the level of true self- respect, his course will no longer be remarkable. “What!” says one of them, “do you mean that every one must hoe corn or swing the sledge — that no life is useful or honorable but one of rude manual toil.” — No, Sir; we say no such thing. — If any one is sought out, required, demanded, for some vocation specially intellectual, let him embrace it and live by it. But the general rule is that Labor — that labor which produces food and clothes and shelter — is every man’s duty and destiny, for which he should be fitted, in which he should be willing to do his part manfully. But let him study, and meditate, and cultivate his nobler faculties as he shall find opportunity; and when ever a career of intellectual exertion shall open before him, let him embrace it if he be inclined and qualified. But to coin his thoughts into some marketable semblance, disdain useful labor of the hands because he had a facility of writing, and go crying his mental wares in the market, seeking to exchange them for bread and clothes — this is most degrading and despicable. Shall not the world outgrow such shabbiness? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Greeley’s article attracted much national attention and comment (for discussion, see lecture 20 below). Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was living in Salem at the time, may have informed the managers of the local lyceum that Thoreau was the anonymous author of the paragraph in the Tribune and that the paragraph was part of a lecture Thoreau had written about his life in the Walden Woods. In any event, soon after the Tribune article appeared, the managers voted to invite Thoreau to deliver this lecture. The invitation, however, didn’t reach him until October, when Hawthorne himself, as the new corresponding secretary of the Salem Lyceum, sent the following letter on the twenty-first:19 The Managers of the Salem Lyceum, some time ago, voted that you should be requested to deliver a Lecture before that Institution, during the approaching season. I know not whether Mr Chever, the late corresponding Secretary, communicated the vote to you; at all events, no answer has been received, and, as Mr Chever’s succesor in office, I am instructed to repeat the invitation. Permit me to add my own earnest wishes that you will accept it — and also, laying aside my official dignity, to express my wife’s desire and my own that you will be our guest, if you do come. In case of your compliance, the Managers would be glad to know at what time it will best suit you to deliver the Lecture.

Hawthorne added in a postscript, “I live at No 14, Mall Street — where I shall be very happy to see you. The stated fee for Lectures is $20.” Very likely this was the first lecture Thoreau was actually paid to deliver.

After receiving Thoreau’s acceptance, Hawthorne wrote to him again on 20 November20 to request his almost immediate presence in Salem: I did not sooner write you, because there were pre-engagements for the two or three first lectures, so that I could not arrange matters to have you come during the present month. But, as it happens, the expected lectures have failed us; and we now depend on you to come this very next Wednesday. I shall announce you in the paper of tomorrow, so you must come. I regret that I could not give you longer notice. We shall expect you on Wednesday, at No 14 Mall. Street.

After his signature, Hawthorne added two more thoughts:21 If it is utterly impossible for you to come, pray write me a line so that I may get it Wednesday morning. But, by all means, come. This Secretaryship is an intolerable bore. I have travelled thirty miles, this wet day for no other business. Short notice notwithstanding, Thoreau answered Hawthorne’s call and, two days after the letter was penned, gave the second lecture in a course of twenty before the Salem Lyceum. Other lecturers that year included Daniel Webster, Louis Agassiz, Theodore Parker, Waldo Emerson, Charles Sumner, and Horace Mann, Sr. (THE MASSACHUSETTS LYCEUM DURING THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE, page 19).

The day after his lecture, Thoreau accompanied Hawthorne to Craigie House, the Cambridge home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, where they dined with Longfellow and Ellery Channing II.

19.CORRESPONDENCE, pages 230-31. 20.CORRESPONDENCE, page 233. 21.CORRESPONDENCE, pages 233-34. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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On 21 November Hawthorne had written to Longfellow about Thoreau, remarking, “You would find him well worth knowing: he is a man of thought and originality; with a certain iron-poker-ishness, and uncompromising stiffness in his mental character, which is interesting, though it grows wearisome on close and frequent acquaintance.”22 Longfellow, however, had likely already formed his own impression of Thoreau, for the two men had dined together at Emerson’s house only a week earlier (Walter Roy Harding’s THE DAYS OF HENRY THOREAU: A BIOGRAPHY, page 237).

Advertisements, Reviews, and Responses: On the last day of October and throughout the first half of November 1848, the Salem Register, Salem Observer, and Salem Tri-Weekly Gazette announced a partial list of “eminent lecturers” who would appear in the course. Among them were Webster, Agassiz, Horace Mann, Sr., Emerson, and “Henry S. Thoreau, of Concord, N.H.” (For the Wednesday evening lectures, the “whole number of tickets has been limited to six hundred and thirty,” the Register reported.) Although Hawthorne had told Thoreau he would advertise Thoreau’s appearance at the Salem Lyceum in the local newspapers beginning on 21 November, we have been unable to locate any advertisements in Salem newspapers for that or the following day.

The Salem Observer on 25 November 1848 carried the following review, praising Thoreau’s lecture, identifying him as the reclusive scholar of New-York Tribune fame, and remarking — not uncharitably —

22.Samuel Longfellow, THE LIFE OF HENRY WORDSWORTH LONGFELLOW, 2 volumes (Boston: Ticknor, 1886), 2:136. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau’s likeness to Emerson: Mr. Thoreau, of Concord, gave his auditors a lecture on Wednesday evening, sufficiently Emersonian to have come from the great philosopher himself. We were reminded of Emerson continually. In thought, style & delivery, the similarity was equally obvious. There was the same keen philosophy running through him, the same jutting forth of “brilliant edges of meaning” as Gilfillan has it. Even in tone of voice, Emerson was brought strikingly to the ear; and in personal appearance also, we fancied some little resemblance. The close likeness between the two would almost justify a charge of plagiarism, were it not that Mr. Thoreau’s lecture furnished ample proof of being a native product, by affording all the charm of an original. Rather than an imitation of Emerson, it was the unfolding of a like mind with his; as if the two men had grown in the same soil and under the same culture. The reader may remember having recently seen an article from the N. Y. Tribune describing the recluse life led by a scholar, who supported himself by manual labor, and on a regime which cost only twenty seven cents a week, making it necessary to labor but six weeks to provide sufficient of the necessaries of life to serve the balance of the year. Mr. Thoreau is the hero of that story — although he claims no heroism, considering himself simply as an economist. The subject of this lecture was Economy, illustrated by the experiment mentioned. — This was done in an admirable manner, in a strain of exquisite humor, with a strong under current of delicate satire against the follies of the times. Then there were interspersed observations, speculations, and suggestions upon dress, fashions, food, dwellings, furniture, &c.&c., sufficiently queer to keep the audience in almost constant mirth, and sufficiently wise and new to afford many good practical hints and precepts. The performance has created “quite a sensation” amongst the Lyceum goers. Another newspaper review of sorts was the summary of the then-concluding lecture season in the area by a correspondent to the Boston Daily Evening Traveller. Without specifying which of Thoreau’s Salem lectures was intended — he had given another there on 28 February 1849 — the correspondent on 16 March 1849 cited “a delectable compound of oddity, wit and transcendentalism, from Mr. Thoreau, of Concord,” among a few other worthy presentations.

Notably, on the day of Thoreau’s second Salem lecture that season, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, in a letter to HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Mrs. Mary Peabody Mann, praised his earlier November delivery as follows:23 This evening Mr. Thoreau is going to lecture and will stay with us. His lecture before was so enchanting; such a revelation of nature in all its exquisite details of wood-thrushes, squirrels, sunshine, mists and shadows, fresh, vernal odors, pine-tree ocean melodies, that my ear rang with music, and I seemed to have been wandering through copse and dingle! Mr. Thoreau has risen above all his arrogance of manner, and is as gentle, simple, ruddy, and meek as all geniuses should be; and now his great blue eyes fairly outshine and put into shade a nose which I once thought must make him uncomely forever. Description of Topic: During the twenty-one months that had elapsed since Thoreau’s delivery of “History of Myself” in mid- February 1847, he had carefully revised his earlier “Walden; or, Life in the Woods” manuscript. As J. Lyndon Shanley points out, “The effect and apparent intention of his work … was to tidy up and to increase the clarity and force of the first version, which he had written at the pond.”24 Shanley also notes that the second version of the manuscript is not much longer than the first (both versions contained the text of three lectures, although Thoreau never delivered a third lecture from the earlier manuscript) and that Thoreau’s handwriting in the 25 second version “is the most clearly formed in the whole manuscript” of WALDEN. But because Shanley sees the WALDEN manuscript almost solely as an evolving book, he failed to consider why the earlier (Shanley’s “version I”) and later (his versions II and III) manuscripts are about the same length and why Thoreau wrote the later of the two manuscripts more carefully. The reason is not that Thoreau was simply revising a book manuscript but that he was using the earlier version of the manuscript, version I, as the basis for preparing the reading drafts for a course of three lectures, versions II and III. Once written, he apparently planned to keep those reading drafts intact as lectures so that he could read from them while continuing to expand the larger “Walden; or, Life in the Woods” manuscript into a book. If that was indeed his plan, it was well-founded, for the first lecture in that course, his early “Economy” lecture, shares with his early “Life without Principle” lecture the honor of being his most frequently delivered lecture, each being delivered nine times.

The lecture Thoreau delivered in Salem on this date is much shorter than but nonetheless quite similar to the “Economy” chapter of WALDEN. A small amount of material in the lecture was subsequently omitted from the published chapter. For example, a close summary of a later delivery of this same lecture text published in the Portland Transcript of 31 March 1849 (see lecture 20 below) includes the paraphrase, “Here we walked 23.Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, MEMORIES OF HAWTHORNE (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1897), pages 92-93. 24.Shanley, THE MAKING OF WALDEN, page 28. 25.In THE MAKING OF WALDEN, page 28, Shanley makes what we regard as a misleading distinction between versions II and III of the WALDEN manuscript. After noting that Thoreau “revised [version II] and then wrote version III so close upon II that they almost seem one piece,” Shanley says, “It is certain, however, that there are two versions here and that Thoreau wrote III after II; not only are the ink and handwriting different, but also III contains revisions of parts of II” (p. 28). We submit that Thoreau wrote version II sequentially, from front to back, as three clear-text reading drafts for lecturing and that version III represents various types of revisions to those reading drafts. For instance, the first eight pages of version II are not extant, but the first five pages of version III are. Because the pin perforations in the center-left margins of the leaf containing version II, page 9, match exactly the pin perforations of the leaves containing version III, page 5, Thoreau clearly used both versions in a single text at one time, and we can surmise that he derived the text of version III, pages 1-5, from revising the text on the now non-extant pages 1-8 of version II. Generally speaking, Thoreau’s organic or incremental method of composition, by which we mean the way he added material to and suppressed material from his constantly evolving texts over time rather than simply rewrote his revised texts, renders misleading almost any description employing mechanical terms, such as “draft,” “stage,” or “version.” For descriptions and discussions of Thoreau’s method of composition, see William L. Howarth, THE LITERARY MANUSCRIPTS OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1974), pages xxix-xxx; Bradley P. Dean, “Reconstructions of Thoreau’s Early ‘Life without Principle’ Lectures,” STUDIES IN THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE 1987, pages 288-91; and Dean, “The Sound of a Flail: Reconstructions of Thoreau’s Early ‘Life without Principle’ Lectures,” M.A. thesis, Eastern Washington University, 1984, pages 99-118. Copies of Dean’s thesis are available at WaChenE; CtU; the Thoreau Textual Center, CU-SB; and the Thoreau Society Archives, MCo. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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cautiously about the earth, but in Typee trees grew to the height of 60 feet, and the natives easily ran up to their tops.”

With just a few exceptions, the manuscript pages Thoreau read from in Salem are now housed at CSmH (HM 924). Many of those pages refer to the “audience” or those who “hear” the “lecture,” whereas in the published version of those passages in WALDEN the corresponding references are to “readers” or those who “read” the “book.” Thoreau also made a few minor changes for this lecture, or possibly a later delivery of this lecture, to accommodate his audience. For instance, where he had originally written “I have travelled a good deal in Concord,” he interlined over “Concord” in pencil “my native town”; and elsewhere in the manuscript he changed “this town” (Concord) to “this city” (either Salem or a later venue). TIMELINE OF WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1849

March: Publication of Mary Henderson Eastman’s DAHCOTAH; OR, LIFE AND LEGENDS OF THE SIOUX AROUND FORT SNELLING, by J. Wiley of New-York, with four lithographs after her husband’s paintings and some interpretations of native sign systems. Henry Thoreau would make extracts from this book into his Indian Notebook #8 in about 1854 — and in 1861 would pay a visit to this Fort Snelling near Minnehaha Falls and “the confluence of the St. Peter’s and Mississippi Rivers, some miles below the Falls of St. Anthony” in the Minnesota Territory. DAHCOTAH

(This is the nativist treatise in which she invented the compound term Minnehaha, basing it on minne for water and ha-ha for falls in the Dakota language, and used this invented word as she appropriated Dakotah legends for the idle appreciation of her type of white people.

This is the book from which Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would learn, which would be featured in THE SONG OF “HIAWATHA”. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Incidentally, the “falls” in question, the Minnehaha Falls as opposed to the great first cataract of the Mississippi River at St. Anthony, Minnesota, was originally one with that great first cataract. Both the falls of the creek and the falls of the river are formed by the same rock formation, to wit, the nine meters of Plattesville limestone laid down during the Silurian epoch which underlie the campus of the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis in which is located a network of communication tunnels upon which the students rely to get between classrooms in the dead of winter, but the Mississippi portion, since it has of course been subjected to much more pounding, has separated itself because it moved upstream so much more rapidly. You will see many home foundations and retaining walls in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area that have been made of this gray sedimentary rock.

The author dedicated this volume to Henry Sibley, Esq. in the US House of Representatives, who had, she had noticed while in residence at Fort Snelling, been “ever prompt to assist and protect the Indian.” Colonel Henry Hastings Sibley, a few years later, would be leading the white troops as they put down Minnesota’s race war, and would be marching the surviving women and children of the Dakota nation, primarily from the farmlands of the Hazelwood Republic of Christian Indians at the reservation on the south bank of the Minnesota River – who had sheltered white neighbors and had welcomed the arrival of Sibley’s army of white men because this meant that their friends were safe– off to the Pike Island Aggregation Facility so they could be held, under the maiming grapeshot-loaded cannon of Fort Snelling, as hostages against the good behavior of any hostiles not HDT WHAT? INDEX

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yet in captivity.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Fort Snelling is situated seven miles below the Falls of St. Anthony, at the confluence of the Mississippi — and St. Peter’s rivers — built in 1819, and named after the gallant Colonel Snelling, of the army, by whom the work was erected. It is constructed of stone; is one of the strongest Indian forts in the United States; and being placed on a commanding bluff, has somewhat the appearance of an old German castle, or one of the strongholds on the Rhine. The then recent removal of the Winnebagoes was rendered troublesome by the interference of Wabashaw, the Sioux chief, whose village is on the Mississippi, 1800 miles from its mouth. The father of Wabashaw was a noted Indian; and during the past summer, the son has given some indications that he inherits the father’s talents and courage. When the Winnebagoes arrived at Wabashaw’s prairie, the chief induced them not to continue their journey of removal; offered them land to settle upon near him, and told them it was not really the wish of their Great Father, that they should remove. His bribes and eloquence induced the Winnebagoes to refuse to proceed; although there was a company of volunteer dragoons and infantry with them. This delay occasioning much expense and trouble, the government agents applied for assistance to the command at Fort Snelling. There was but one company there; and the commanding officer, with twenty men and some friendly Sioux, went down to assist the agent. There was an Indian council held on the occasion. The Sioux who went from Fort Snelling promised to speak in favor of the removal. During the council, however, not one of them said a word — for which they afterwards gave a satisfactory reason. Wabashaw; though a young man, had such influence over his band, that his orders invariably received implicit obedience. When the council commenced, Wabashaw had placed a young warrior behind each of the friendly Sioux who he knew would speak in favor of the removal, with orders to shoot down the first one who rose for that purpose. This stratagem may be considered a characteristic specimen of the temper and habits of the Sioux chiefs, whose tribe we bring before the reader in their most conspicuous ceremonies and habits. The Winnebagoes were finally removed, but not until Wabashaw was taken prisoner and carried to Fort Snelling. Wabashaw’s pike-bearer was a fine looking warrior, named “Many Lightnings.” The village of “Little Crow,” another able and influential Sioux chief, is situated twenty miles below the Falls of St. Anthony. He has four wives, all sisters, and the youngest of them almost a child. There are other villages of the tribe, below and above Fort Snelling. The scenery about Fort Snelling is rich in beauty. The falls of St. Anthony are familiar to travellers, and to readers of Indian sketches. Between the fort and these falls are the “Little Falls,” forty feet in height, on a stream that empties into the Mississippi. The Indians call them Mine-hah-hah, or “laughing waters.” In sight of Fort Snelling is a beautiful hill called HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Morgan’s Bluff; the Indians call it “God’s House.” They have a tradition that it is the residence of their god of the waters, whom they call Unk-ta-he. Nothing can be more lovely than the situation and appearance of this hill; it commands on every side a magnificent view, and during the summer it is carpeted with long grass and prairie flowers. But, to those who have lived the last few years at Fort Snelling, this hill presents another source of interest. On its top are buried three young children, who were models of health and beauty until the scarlet fever found its way into regions hitherto shielded from its approach. They lived but long enough on earth to secure them an entrance into heaven. Life, which ought to be a blessing to all, was to them one of untold value; for it was a short journey to a better land — a translation from the yet unfelt cares of earth to the bright and endless joys of heaven. Opposite the Fort is Pilot Knob, a high peak, used as a burial- place by the Indians; just below it is the village of Mendota, or the “Meeting of the Waters.” But to me, the greatest objects of interest and curiosity were the original owners of the country, whose teepees could be seen in every direction. One could soon know all that was to be known about Pilot Knob or St. Anthony’s falls; but one is puzzled completely to comprehend the character of an Indian man, woman, or child. At one moment, you see an Indian chief raise himself to his full height, and say that the ground on which he stands is his own; at the next, beg bread and pork from an enemy. An Indian woman will scornfully refuse to wash an article that might be needed by a white family — and the next moment, declare that she had not washed her face in fifteen years! An Indian child of three years old, will cling to its mother under the walls of the Fort, and then plunge into the Mississippi, and swim half way across, in hopes of finding an apple that has been thrown in. We may well feel much curiosity to look into the habits, manners, and motives of a race exhibiting such contradictions. There is a great deal said of Indian warriors — and justly too of the Sioux. They are, as a race, tall fine-looking men; and many of those who have not been degraded by association with the frontier class of white people, nor had their intellects destroyed by the white man’s fire-water, have minds of high order, and reason with a correctness that would put to the blush the powers of many an educated logician. Yet are these men called savages, and morally associated with the tomahawk and scalping knife. Few regard them as reasonable creatures, or as beings endowed by their creator with souls, that are here to be fitted for the responsibilities of the Indians hereafter. Good men are sending the Bible to all parts of the world. Sermons are preached in behalf of fellow-creatures who are perishing in regions known only to us in name. And here, within reach of comparatively the slightest exertion; here, not many miles from churches and schools, and all the moral influences abounding in Christian society; here, in a country endowed with every HDT WHAT? INDEX

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advantage that God can bestow, are perishing, body and soul, our own countrymen: perishing too from disease, starvation and intemperance, and all the evils incident to their unhappy condition. White men, Christian men, are driving them back; rooting out their very names from the face of the earth. Ah! these men can seek the country of the Sioux when money is to be gained: but how few care for the sufferings of the Dahcotahs! how few would give a piece of money, a prayer, or even a thought, towards their present and eternal good. Yet are they not altogether neglected. Doctor Williamson, one of the missionaries among the Sioux, lives near Fort Snelling. He is exerting himself to the utmost to promote the moral welfare of the unhappy people among whom he expects to pass his life. He has a school for the Indian children, and many of them read well. On the Sabbath, divine service is regularly held, and he has labored to promote the cause of temperance among the Sioux. Christian exertion is unhappily too much influenced by the apprehension that little can be done for the savage. How is it with the man on his fire-water mission to the Indian? Does he doubt? Does he fail? As a great motive to improve the moral character of the Indians, I present the condition of the women in their tribes. A degraded state of woman is universally characteristic of savage life, as her elevated influence in civilized society is the conspicuous standard of moral and social virtue. The peculiar sorrows of the Sioux woman commence at her birth. Even as a child she is despised, in comparison with the brother beside her, who is one day to be a great warrior. As a maiden, she is valued while the young man, who wants her for a wife, may have a doubt of his success. But when she is a wife, there is little sympathy for her condition. How soon do the oppressive storms and contentions of life root out all that is kind or gentle in her heart. She must bear the burdens of the family. Should her husband wish it, she must travel all day with a heavy weight on her back; and at night when they stop, her hands must prepare the food for her family before she retires to rest. Her work is never done. She makes the summer and the winter house. For the former she peels the bark from the trees in the spring; for the latter she sews the deer-skin together. She tans the skins of which coats, mocassins, and leggins are to be made for the family; she has to scrape it and prepare it while other cares are pressing upon her. When her child is born, she has no opportunities for rest or quiet. She must paddle the canoe for her husband — pain and feebleness must be forgotten. She is always hospitable. Visit her in her teepee, and she willingly gives you what you need, if in her power; and with alacrity does what she can to promote your comfort. In her looks there is little that is attractive. Time has not caused the wrinkles in her forehead, nor the furrows in her cheek. They are the traces of want, passion, sorrows and tears. Her bent form was once light and graceful. Labor and privations are not preservative of beauty. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Let it not be deemed impertinent if I venture to urge upon those who care for the wretched wherever their lot may be cast, the immense good that might be accomplished among these tribes by schools, which should open the minds of the young to the light of reason and Christianity. Even if the elder members are given up as hopeless, with the young there is always encouragement. Many a bright little creature among the Dahcotahs is as capable of receiving instruction as are the children of civilization. Why should they be neglected when the waters of benevolence are moving all around them? ... The day of the Dahcotah is far spent; to quote the language of a Chippeway chief, “The Indian’s glory is passing away.” They seem to be almost a God-forgotten race. Some few have given the missionary reason to hope that they have been made subjects of Christian faith — and the light, that has as yet broken in faint rays upon their darkness, may increase. He who takes account of the falling of a sparrow, will not altogether cast away so large a portion of his creatures. All Christian minds will wish success to the Indian missionary; and assuredly God will be true to his mercy, where man is found true to his duty. The first impression created by the Sioux was the common one — fear. In their looks they were so different from the Indians I had occasionally seen. There was nothing in their aspect to indicate the success of efforts made to civilize them. Their tall, unbending forms, their savage hauteur, the piercing black eye, the quiet indifference of manner, the slow, stealthy step — how different were they from the eastern Indians, whose associations with the white people seem to have deprived them of all native dignity of bearing and of character. The yells heard outside the high wall of the fort at first filled me with alarm; but I soon became accustomed to them, and to all other occasional Indian excitements, that served to vary the monotony of garrison life. Before I felt much interest in the Sioux, they seemed to have great regard for me. My husband, before his marriage, had been stationed at Fort Snelling and at Prairie du Chien. He was fond of hunting and roaming about the prairies; and left many friends among the Indians when he obeyed the order to return to an eastern station. On going back to the Indian country, he met with a warm welcome from his old acquaintances, who were eager to shake hands with “Eastman’s squaw.” The old men laid their bony hands upon the heads of my little boys, admired their light hair, said their skins were very white; and, although I could not then understand their language, they told me many things, accompanied with earnest gesticulation. They brought their wives and young children to see me. I had been told that Indian women gossiped and stole; that they were filthy and troublesome. Yet I could not despise them: they were wives and mothers — God had implanted the same feelings in their hearts as in mine. Some Indians visited us every day, and we frequently saw them at their villages. Captain E. spoke their language well; and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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without taking any pains to acquire it, I soon understood it so as to talk with them. ... How shall we reconcile this with the fact that Harper, or Harpstinah, was one of the Sioux women, who wore, as long as she could endure it, a necklace made of the hands and feet of Chippeway children? ... I noticed that Indians, like white people, instead of confessing and forsaking their sins, were apt to excuse themselves by telling how much worse their neighbors were. When told how wicked it was to have more than one wife, they defended themselves by declaring that the Winnebagoes had twice or thrice as many as the Sioux. The attempt to make one right of two wrongs seems to be instinctive. ... The Chippeways, with their chief, “Hole in the Day,” were down on a visit, and the prairie outside the fort was covered with Indians of both tribes. The Chippeways sat on the grass at a little distance, watching the Sioux as they danced, “to show how brave they were, and how they could eat the hearts of their enemies.” Most of the officers and ladies of the garrison were assembled on the hospital gallery to witness the dance. ... Our intercourse with the Sioux was greatly facilitated, and our influence over them much increased, by the success attending my husband’s efforts to paint their portraits. They thought it supernatural (wahkun) to be represented on canvas. Some were prejudiced against sitting, others’ esteemed it a great compliment to be asked, but all expected to be paid for it. And if anything were wanting to complete our opportunities for gaining all information that was of interest, we found it in the daguerreotype. Captain E., knowing they were about to celebrate a feast he wished to paint in group, took his apparatus out, and, when they least expected it, transferred the group to his plate. The awe, consternation, astonishment and admiration, surpassed description. “Ho! Eastman is all wahkun!” ... With the Rev. Mr. Pond and Dr. Williamson, both missionaries among the Sioux, I had many a pleasant interview and talk about the tribe. They kindly afforded me every assistance — and as they are perfectly acquainted with the language of the Sioux, and have studied their religion with the view to introduce the only true one, I could not have applied to more enlightened sources, or better authority. The day we left Fort Snelling, I received from Mr. Pond the particulars of the fate of the Sioux woman who was taken prisoner by the Chippeways, and who is represented in the legend called The Wife. Soon after her return to her husband, he was killed by the Chippeways; and the difficulty was settled by the Chippeways paying to the Sioux what was considered the value of the murdered man, in goods, such as calico, tobacco, &c.! After HDT WHAT? INDEX

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his death, the widow married a Sioux, named “Scarlet Face.” They lived harmoniously for a while — but soon difficulties arose, and Scarlet Face, in a fit of savage rage, beat her to death. A most unromantic conclusion to her eventful life. ... They are receding rapidly, and with feeble resistance, before the giant strides of civilization. The hunting grounds of a few savages will soon become the haunts of densely peopled, civilized settlements. We should be better reconciled to this manifest destiny of the aborigines, if the inroads of civilization were worthy of it; if the last years of these, in some respects, noble people, were lit up with the hope-inspiring rays of Christianity. We are not to judge the Heathen; yet universal evidence gives the melancholy fact, that the light of nature does not lead the soul to God: and without judging of their destiny, we are bound to enlighten their minds. We know the great Being of whom they are ignorant; and well will it be for them and for us, in a day that awaits us all, if yet, though late, sadly late — yet not too late, we so give countenance and aid to the missionary, that the light of revealed truth may cheer the remaining period of their national and individual, existence. Will it be said that I am regarding, with partial eye and sentimental romance, but one side of the Sioux character? Have they no faults, as a people and individually? They are savages — and that goes far to answer the question. Perhaps the best answer is, the women have faults enough, and the men twice as many as the women. But if to be a savage is to be cruel, vindictive, ferocious — dare we say that to be a civilized man necessarily implies freedom from these traits? Want of truth, and habitual dishonesty in little things, are prevalent traits among the Sioux. Most of them will take a kitchen spoon or fork, if they have a chance — and they think it fair thus to return the peculations of the whites. They probably have an idea of making up for the low price at which their lands have been valued, by maintaining a constant system of petty thefts — or perhaps they consider kitchen utensils as curiosities, just as the whites do their mocassins and necklaces of bear’s claws. Yes — it must be confessed, however unsentimental, they almost all steal. The men think it undignified for them to steal, so they send their wives thus unlawfully to procure what they want — and wo be to them if they are found out. The husband would shame and beat his wife for doing what he certainly would have beaten her for refusing to do. As regards the honesty of the men, I give you the opinion of the husband of Checkered Cloud, who was an excellent Indian. “Every Sioux;” said he, “will steal if he need, and there be a chance. The best Indian that ever lived, has stolen. I myself once stole some powder.” ... The names of the Sioux bands or villages, are as fanciful as those given to individuals. Near Fort Snelling, are the “Men- HDT WHAT? INDEX

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da-wahcan-tons,” or people of the spirit lakes; the “Wahk- patons,” or people of the leaves; the “Wahk-pa-coo-tahs,” or people that shoot at leaves, and other bands who have names of this kind. Among those chiefs who have been well-known around Fort Snelling, are, Wah-ba-shaw, The Leaf. Wah-ke-on-tun-kah, Big Thunder. Wah-coo-ta, Red Wing. Muzza Hotah, Gray Iron. Ma- pe-ah-we-chas-tah, The man in the Cloud. Tah-chun-coo-wash-ta, Good Road. Sha-ce-pee, The Sixth. Wah-soo-we-chasta-ne, Bad Hail. Ish-ta-hum-bah, Sleepy Eyes. ... The Sioux have ten names for their children, given according to the order of their birth. The oldest son is called Chaskè.... The oldest daughter is called Wenonah.... These names they retain until another is given by their relations or friends. ... The children among the Sioux are early accustomed to look with indifference upon the sufferings or death of a person they hate. A few years ago a battle was fought quite near Fort Snelling. The next day the Sioux children were playing foot-ball merrily with the head of a Chippeway. One boy, and a small boy too, had ornamented his head and ears with curls. He had taken the skin peeled off a Chippeway who was killed in the battle, wound it around a stick until it assumed the appearance of a curl, and tied them over his ears. Another child had a string around his neck with a finger hanging to it as an ornament. The infants, instead of being amused with toys or trinkets, are held up to see the scalp of an enemy, and they learn to hate a Chippeway as soon as to ask for food. ... “Good Road” is one of the Dahcotah chiefs — he is fifty years old and has two wives, but these two have given a deal of trouble; although the chief probably thinks it of no importance whether his two wives fight all the time or not, so that they obey his orders. For what would be a calamity in domestic life to us, is an every day affair among the Dahcotahs. Good Road’s village is situated on the banks of the St. Peter’s about seven miles from Fort Snelling. And like other Indian villages it abounds in variety more than anything else. In the teepee the farthest from us, right on the edge of the shore, there are three young men carousing. One is inclined to go to sleep, but the other two will not let him; their spirits are raised and excited by what has made him stupid. Who would suppose they were human beings? See their bloodshot eyes; hear their fiendish laugh and horrid yells; probably before the revel is closed, one of the friends will have buried his knife in the other’s heart. ... Good Road hates the Chippeways, but he fell in love with one of their descendants, and married her. She is a good wife, and the white people have given her the name of “Old Bets.” Last summer “Old Bets” narrowly escaped with her life. The Dahcotahs having nothing else to do, were amusing themselves by HDT WHAT? INDEX

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recalling all the Chippeways had ever done to injure them; and those who were too lazy to go out on a war party, happily recollected that there was Chippeway blood near them — no farther off than their chief’s wigwam; and eight or ten braves vowed they would make an end of “Old Bets.” But she heard of their threats, left the village for a time, and after the Dahcotahs had gotten over their mania for shedding blood, she returned, and right glad was Good Road to see her. For she has an open, good humored countenance; the very reverse of that of the first wife, whose vinegar aspect would frighten away an army of small children. After “Old Bets” returned, Good Road could not conceal his satisfaction. His wife’s trip had evidently improved her good looks, for the chief thought she was the handsomest squaw in the village. Her children were always taunting the sons of the first wife, and so it went on, until at last Good Road said he would stand it no longer; he told his oldest wife to go — that he would support her no longer. And for her children, he told them the prairies were large; there were deer and other game — in short, he disinherited them — cut them off with their last meal. For the discarded wife, life had now but one hope. The only star that shone in the blackness of her heaven, was the undefined prospect of seeing her rival’s blood flow. She would greatly have preferred taking her life herself; and as she left the wigwam of the chief, she grasped the handle of her knife — how quick her heart beat! it might be now or never. But there were too many around to protect Old Bets. The time would come — she would watch for her — she would tear her heart from her yet. The sons of the old hag did not leave the village; they would keep a watch on their father and his Chippeway wife. They would not easily yield their right to the chieftainship. While they hunted, and smoked, and played at cards, they were ever on the look-out for revenge. ... Wabashaw, (or The Leaf,) is the name of one of the Dahcotah Chiefs. His village is on the Mississippi river, 1,800 miles from its mouth. The teepees are pitched quite near the shore, and the many bluffs that rise behind them seem to be their perpetual guards. The present chief is about thirty-five years old — as yet he has done not much to give him a reputation above the Dahcotahs about him. But his father was a man whose life and character were such as to influence his people to a great degree. Wabashaw the elder, (for the son inherits his father’s name,) is said by the Dahcotahs to have been the first chief in their tribe. Many years ago the English claimed authority over the Dahcotahs, and an English traveller having been murdered by some Dahcotahs of the band of which Wabashaw was a warrior, the English claimed hostages to be given up until the murderer could be found. The affairs of the nation were settled then by men who, having HDT WHAT? INDEX

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more mind than the others, naturally influenced their inferiors. Their bravest men, their war chief too, no doubt exercised a control over the rest. Wabashaw was one of the hostages given up in consequence of the murder, and the Governor of Canada required that these Dahcotahs should leave the forests of the west, and remain for a time as prisoners in Canada. Little as is the regard for the feelings of the savage now, there was still less then. Wabashaw often spoke of the ill treatment he received on his journey. It was bad enough to be a prisoner, and to be leaving home; it was far worse to be struck, for the amusement of idle men and children — to have the war eagle’s feather rudely torn from his head to be trampled upon — to have the ornaments, even the pipes of the nation, taken away, and destroyed before his eyes. But such insults often occurred during their journey, and the prisoners were even fettered when at last they reached Quebec. Here for a long time they sighed to breathe the invigorating air of the prairies; to chase the buffalo; to celebrate the war dance. But when should they join again in the ceremonies of their tribe? When? Alas! they could not even ask their jailer when; or if they had, he would only have laughed at the strange dialect that he could not comprehend. But the Dahcotahs bore with patience their unmerited confinement, and Wabashaw excelled them all. His eye was not as bright as when he left home, and there was an unusual weakness in his limbs — but never should his enemies know that he suffered. And when those high in authority visited the prisoners, the haughty dignity of Wabashaw made them feel that the Dahcotah warrior was a man to be respected. But freedom came at last. The murderers were given up; and an interpreter in the prison told Wabashaw that he was no longer a prisoner; that he would soon again see the Father of many waters; and that more, he had been made by the English a chief, the first chief of the Dahcotahs. It was well nigh too late for Wabashaw. His limbs were thin, and his strength had failed for want of the fresh air of his native hills. Little did the prisoners care to look around as they retraced their steps. They knew they were going home. But when the waters of the Mississippi again shone before them, when the well-known bluffs met their eager gaze; when the bending river gave to view their native village, then, indeed, did the new-made chief cast around him the “quiet of a loving eye.” Then, too, did he realize what he had suffered. He strained his sight — for perhaps his wife might have wearied of waiting for him — perhaps she had gone to the Land of spirits, hoping to meet him there. His children too — the young warriors, who were wont to follow him and listen to his voice, would they welcome him home? As he approached the village a cloud had come between him and the sun. He could see many upon the shore, but who were they? The canoe swept over the waters, keeping time to the thoughts HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of those who were wanderers no longer. As they neared the shore, the cloud passed away and the brightness of the setting sun revealed the faces of their friends; their cries of joy rent the air — to the husband, the son, the brother, they spoke a welcome home! Wabashaw, by the command of the English Governor, was acknowledged by the Dahcotahs their first chief; and his influence was unbounded. Every band has a chief, and the honor descends from father to son; but there has never been one more honored and respected than Wabashaw. ... The valley of the Upper Mississippi presents many attractions to the reflecting mind, apart from the admiration excited by its natural beauty. It is at once an old country and a new — the home of a people who are rapidly passing away — and of a nation whose strength is ever advancing. The white man treads upon the footsteps of the Dahcotah — the war dance of the warrior gives place to the march of civilization — and the saw-mill is heard where but a few years ago were sung the deeds of the Dahcotah braves. Years ago, the Dahcotah hunted where the Mississippi takes its rise — the tribe claiming the country as far south as St. Louis. But difficulties with the neighboring tribes have diminished their numbers and driven them farther north and west; the white people have needed their lands, and their course is onward. How will it end? Will this powerful tribe cease to be a nation on the earth? Will their mysterious origin never be ascertained? And must their religion and superstitions, their customs and feasts pass away from memory as if they had never been? Who can look upon them without interest? hardly the philosopher — surely not the Christian. The image of God is defaced in the hearts of the savage. Cain-like does the child of the forest put forth his hand and stain it with a brother’s blood. But are there no deeds of darkness done in our own favored land? But the country of the Dahcotah, — let it be new to those who fly at the beckon of gain — who would speculate in the blood of their fellow-creatures, who for gold would, aye do, sell their own souls, — it is an old country to me. What say the boundless prairies? how many generations have roamed over them? when did the buffalo first yield to the arrow of the hunter? And look at the worn bases of the rocks that are washed by the Father of waters. Hear the Dahcotah maiden as she tells of the lover’s leap — and the warrior as he boasts of the victories of his forefathers over his enemies, long, long before the hated white man had intruded upon their lands, or taught them the fatal secret of intoxicating drink. The Dahcotahs feel their own weakness — they know they cannot contend with the power of the white man. Yet there are times when the passion and vehemence of the warriors in the neighborhood of Fort Snelling can hardly be brought to yield to the necessity of control; and were there a possibility of success, how soon would the pipe of peace be thrown aside, and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the yell and whoop of war be heard instead! And who would blame them? Has not the blood of our bravest and best been poured out like water for a small portion of a country — when the whole could never make up for the loss sustained by one desolate widow or fatherless child? The sky was without a cloud when the sun rose on the Mississippi. The morning mists passed slowly away as if they loved to linger round the hills. Pilot Knob rose above them, proud to be the burial place of her warrior children, while on the opposite side of the Mine Soto26 the frowning walls of Fort Snelling; told of the power of their enemies. Not a breath disturbed the repose of nature, till the voice of the song birds rose in harmony singing the praise of the Creator. But a few hours have passed away, and how changed the scene. Numbers of canoes are seen rapidly passing over the waters, and the angry savages that spring from them as hastily ascending the hill. From the gates of the fort, hundreds of Indians are seen collecting from every direction, and all approaching the house of the interpreter. We will follow them. Few have witnessed so wild a scene. The house of the interpreter employed by government is near the fort, and all around it were assembled the excited Indians. In front of the house is a piazza, and on it lay the body of a young Dahcotah; his black hair plaited, and falling over his swarthy face. The closed eye and compressed lips proclaimed the presence of death. Life had but recently yielded to the sway of the stern conqueror. A few hours ago Beloved Hail had eaten and drank on the very spot where his body now reposed. Bending over his head is his wife; tears fall like rain from her eyes; and as grief has again overcome her efforts at composure, see how she plunges her knife into her arm: and as the warm blood flows from the wound calls upon the husband of her youth! “My son! my son!” bursts from the lips of his aged mother, who weeps at his feet; while her bleeding limbs bear witness to the wounds which she had inflicted upon herself in the agony of her soul. Nor are these the only mourners. A crowd of friends are weeping round his body. But the mother has turned to the warriors as they press through the crowd; tears enough have been shed, it is time to think of revenge. “Look at your friend,” she says, “look how heavily lies the strong arm, and see, he is still, though his wife and aged mother call upon him. Who has done this? who has killed the brave warrior? bring me the murderer, that I may cut him on pieces.” It needed not to call upon the warriors who stood around. They were excited enough. Bad Hail stood near, his eyes bloodshot with rage, his lip quivering, and every trembling limb telling of the tempest within. Shah-co-pee, the orator of the Dahcotahs, and “The Nest,” their most famous hunter; the tall form of the aged chief “Man in the cloud” leaned against the railing, his sober countenance strangely contrasting with the fiend-like look 26. Mine Soto, or Whitish Water, the name that the Sioux give to the St. Peter’s River. The mud or clay in the water has a whitish look. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of his wife; Grey Iron and Little Hill, with brave after brave, all crying vengeance to the foe, death to the Chippeway! ... But yesterday the Dahcotahs and Chippeways, foes from time immemorial, feasted and danced together, for there was peace between them. They had promised to bury the hatchet; the Chippeways danced near the fort, and the Dahcotahs presented them with blankets and pipes, guns and powder, and all that the savage deems valuable. Afterwards, the Dahcotahs danced, and the generous Chippeways exceeded them in the number and value of their gifts. As evening approached, the bands mingled their amusements — together they contended in the foot-race, or, stretching themselves upon the grass, played at checkers. The Chippeways had paid their annual visit of friendship at Fort Snelling, and, having spent their time happily, they were about to return to their homes. Their wise men said they rejoiced that nothing had occurred to disturb the harmony of the two tribes. But their vicinity to the Fort prevented any outbreak; had there been no such restraint upon their actions, each would have sought the life of his deadly foe. “Hole in the Day” was the chief of the Chippeways. He owed his station to his own merit; his bravery and firmness had won the respect and admiration of the tribe when he was but a warrior, and they exalted him to the honor of being their chief. Deeds of blood marked his course, yet were his manners gentle and his voice low. There was a dignity and a courtesy about his every action that would have well befitted a courtier. He watched with interest the trials of strength between the young men of his own tribe and the Dahcotahs. When the latter celebrated one of their national feasts, when they ate the heart of the dog while it was warm with life, just torn from the animal, with what contempt did he gaze upon them! The amusements of the dog feast, or dance, have closed, and the Chippeway chief has signified to his warriors that they were to return home on the following day. He expressed a wish to see several of the chiefs of the Dahcotahs, and a meeting having been obtained, he thus addressed them — “Warriors! it has been the wish of our great father that we should be friends; blood enough has been shed on both sides. But even if we preferred to continue at war, we must do as our great father says. The Indian’s glory is passing away; they are as the setting sun; while the white man is as the sun rising in all his power. We are the falling leaves; the whites are the powerful horses that trample them under foot. We are about to return home, and it is well that nothing has happened to occasion strife between us. But I wish you to know that there are two young men among us who do not belong to my band. They are pillagers, belonging to another band, and they may be troublesome. I wish you to tell your young men of this, that they may be on their guard.” After smoking together, the chiefs separated. “Hole in the Day” having thus done all that he deemed proper, returned with his HDT WHAT? INDEX

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warriors to his teepee. Early in the morning the Chippeways encamped near St. Anthony’s falls; the women took upon themselves all the fatigue and labor of the journey, the men carrying only the implements of war and hunting. The Chippeway chief was the husband of three wives, who were sisters; and, strange to say, when an Indian fancies more than one wife, he is fortunate if he can obtain sisters, for they generally live in harmony, while wives who are not related are constantly quarreling; and the husband does not often interfere, even if words are changed to blows. In the mean time, the two pillagers were lurking about; now remaining a short time with the camp of the Chippeways, now absenting themselves for a day or two. But while the Chippeways were preparing to leave the Falls, the pillagers were in the neighborhood of Fort Snelling. They had accompanied Hole in the Day’s band, with the determination of killing an enemy. The ancient feud still rankled in their hearts; as yet they had had no opportunity of satisfying their thirst for blood; but on this morning they were concealed in the bushes, when Red Boy and Beloved Hail, two Dahcotahs, were passing on horseback. It was but a moment — and the deed was done. Both the Chippeways fired, and Beloved Hail fell. Red Boy was wounded, but not badly; he hurried in to tell the sad news, and the two Chippeways were soon out of the power of their enemies. They fled, it is supposed, to Missouri. The friends of the dead warrior immediately sought his body, and brought it to the house of the interpreter. There his friends came together; and as they entered one by one, on every side pressing, forward to see the still, calm, features of the young man; they threw on the body their blankets, and other presents, according to their custom of honoring the dead. Troops are kept at Fort Snelling, not only as a protection to the whites in the neighborhood, but to prevent, if possible, difficulties between the different bands of Indians; and as every year brings the Chippeways to Fort Snelling, either to transact business with the government or on a visit of pleasure, the Chippeways and Dahcotahs must be frequently thrown together. The commanding officer of the garrison notifies the two bands, on such occasions, that no hostilities will be permitted; so there is rarely an occurrence to disturb their peace. But now it is impossible to restrain the excited passions of the Dahcotahs. Capt. B——; who was then in command at Fort Snelling, sent word to the Chippeway chief of the murder that had been committed, and requested him to bring all his men in, as the murderer must be given up. But this did not satisfy the Dahcotahs; they longed to raise the tomahawk which they held in their hands. They refused to wait, but insisted upon following the Chippeways and revenging themselves; the arguments of the agent and other friends of the Dahcotahs were unavailing; nothing would satisfy them but blood, The eyes, even of the women, sparkled with delight, at the prospect of the scalps they would dance round; while the mother HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of Beloved Hail was heard to call for the scalp of the murderer of her son! Seeing the chiefs determined on war, Capt. B—— told them he would cease to endeavor to change their intentions; “but as soon” said he, “as you attack the Chippeways, will I send the soldiers to your villages; and who will protect your wives and children?” This had the desired effect, and the warriors, seeing the necessity of waiting for the arrival of the Chippeways, became more calm. Hole in the Day with his men came immediately to the Fort, where a conference was held at the gate. There were assembled about three hundred Dahcotahs and seventy Chippeways, with the officers of the garrison and the Indian agent. It was ascertained that the murder had been committed by the two pillagers, for none of the other Chippeway warriors had been absent from the camp. Hole in the Day, however, gave up two of his men, as hostages to be kept at Fort Snelling until the murderers should be given up. The Dahcotahs, being obliged for the time to defer the hope of revenge, returned to their village to bury their dead. ... Shah-co-pee (or Six) is one of the chiefs of the Dahcotahs; his village is about twenty-five miles from Fort Snelling. He belongs to the bands that are called Men-da-wa-can-ton, or People of the Spirit Lakes. No one who has lived at Fort Snelling can ever forget him, for at what house has he not called to shake hands and smoke; to say that he is a great chief, and that he is hungry and must eat before he starts for home? If the hint is not immediately acted upon, he adds that the sun is dying fast, and it is time for him to set out. Shah-co-pee is not so tall or fine looking as Bad Hail, nor has he the fine Roman features of old Man in the Cloud. His face is decidedly ugly; but there is an expression of intelligence about his quick black eye and fine forehead, that makes him friends, notwithstanding his many troublesome qualities. At present he is in mourning; his face is painted black. He never combs his hair, but wears a black silk handkerchief tied across his forehead. When he speaks he uses a great deal of gesture, suiting the action to the word. His hands, which are small and well formed, are black with dirt; he does not descend to the duties of the toilet. He is the orator of the Dahcotahs. No matter how trifling the occasion, he talks well; and assumes an air of importance that would become him if he were discoursing on matters of life and death. Some years ago, our government wished the Chippeways and Dahcotahs to conclude a treaty of peace among themselves. Frequently have these two bands made peace, but rarely kept it any length of time. On this occasion many promises were made on both sides; promises which would be broken by some inconsiderate HDT WHAT? INDEX

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young warrior before long, and then retaliation must follow. Shah-co-pee has great influence among the Dahcotahs, and he was to come to Fort Snelling to be present at the council of peace. Early in the morning he and about twenty warriors left their village on the banks of the St. Peters, for the Fort. When they were very near, so that their actions could be distinguished, they assembled in their canoes, drawing them close together, that they might hear the speech which their chief was about to make them. They raised the stars and stripes, and their own flag, which is a staff adorned with feathers from the war eagle; and the noon- day sun gave brilliancy to their gay dresses, and the feathers and ornaments that they wore. Shah-co-pee stood straight and firm in his canoe — and not the less proudly that the walls of the Fort towered above him. “My boys,” he said (for thus he always addressed his men), “the Dahcotahs are all braves; never has a coward been known among the People of the Spirit Lakes. Let the women and children fear their enemies, but we will face our foes, and always conquer. “We are going to talk with the white men; our great Father wishes us to be at peace with our enemies. We have long enough shed the blood of the Chippeways; we have danced round their scalps, and our children have kicked their heads about in the dust. What more do we want? When we are in council, listen to the words of the Interpreter as he tells us what our great Father says, and I will answer him for you; and when we have eaten and smoked the pipe of peace, we will return to our village.” The chief took his seat with all the importance of a public benefactor. He intended to have all the talking to himself, to arrange matters according to his own ideas; but he did it with the utmost condescension, and his warriors were satisfied. Besides being an orator, Shah-co-pee is a beggar, and one of a high order too, for he will neither take offence nor a refusal. Tell him one day that you will not give him pork and flour, and on the next he returns, nothing daunted, shaking hands, and asking for pork and flour. He always gains his point, for you are obliged to give in order to get rid of him. He will take up his quarters at the Interpreter’s, and come down upon you every day for a week just at meal time — and as he is always blessed with a ferocious appetite, it is much better to capitulate, come to terms by giving him what he wants, and let him go. And after he has once started, ten to one if he does not come back to say he wants to shoot and bring you some ducks; you must give him powder and shot to enable him to do so. That will probably be the last of it. ... It was a beautiful morning in June when we left Fort Snelling to go on a pleasure party up the St. Peters, in a steamboat, the first that had ever ascended that river. There were many drawbacks in the commencement, as there always are on such occasions. The morning was rather cool, thought some, and as they hesitated about going, of course their toilets were delayed HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to the last moment. And when all were fairly in the boat, wood was yet to be found. Then something was the matter with one of the wheels — and the mothers were almost sorry they had consented to come; while the children, frantic with joy, were in danger of being drowned every moment, by the energetic movements they made near the sides of the boat, by way of indicating their satisfaction at the state of things. In the cabin, extensive preparations were making in case the excursion brought on a good appetite. Everybody contributed loaf upon loaf of bread and cake; pies, coffee and sugar; cold meats of every description; with milk and cream in bottles. Now and then, one of these was broken or upset, by way of adding to the confusion, which was already intolerable. Champaigne and old Cogniac were brought by the young gentlemen, only for fear the ladies should be sea-sick; or, perhaps, in case the gentlemen should think it positively necessary to drink the ladies’ health. When we thought all was ready, there was still another delay. Shah-co-pee and two of his warriors were seen coming down the hill, the chief making an animated appeal to some one on board the boat; and as he reached the shore he gave us to understand that his business was concluded, and that he would like to go with us. But it was very evident that he considered his company a favor. The bright sun brought warmth, and we sat on the upper deck admiring the beautiful shores of the St. Peter’s. Not a creature was to be seen for some distance on the banks, and the birds as they flew over our heads seemed to be the fit and only inhabitants of such a region. When tired of admiring the scenery, there was enough to employ us. The table was to be set for dinner; the children had already found out which basket contained the cake, and they were casting admiring looks towards it. When we were all assembled to partake of some refreshments, it was delightful to find that there were not enough chairs for half the party. We borrowed each other’s knives and forks too, and etiquette, that petty tyrant of society, retired from the scene. Shah-co-pee found his way to the cabin, where he manifested strong symptoms of shaking hands over again; in order to keep him quiet, we gave him plenty to eat. How he seemed to enjoy a piece of cake that had accidentally dropped into the oyster- soup! and with equal gravity would he eat apple-pie and ham together. And then his cry of “wakun”27 when the cork flew from the champaigne bottle across the table! How happily the day passed — how few such days occur in the longest life! As Shah-co-pee’s village appeared in sight, the chief addressed Col. D——, who was at that time in command of Fort Snelling, asking him why we had come on such an excursion. “To escort you home” was the ready reply; “you are a great chief, 27. Mysterious. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and worthy of being honored, and we have chosen this as the best way of showing our respect and admiration of you.” The Dahcotah chief believed all; he never for a moment thought there was anything like jesting on the subject of his own high merits; his face beamed with delight on receiving such a compliment. The men and women of the village crowded on the shore as the boat landed, as well they might, for a steamboat was a new sight to them. The chief sprang from the boat, and swelling with pride and self admiration he took the most conspicuous station on a rock near the shore, among his people, and made them a speech. We could but admire his native eloquence. Here, with all that is wild in nature surrounding him, did the untaught orator address his people. His lips gave rapid utterance to thoughts which did honor to his feelings, when we consider who and what he was. He told them that the white people were their friends; that they wished them to give up murder and intemperance, and to live quietly and happily. They taught them to plant corn, and they were anxious to instruct their children. “When we are suffering,” said he, “during the cold weather, from sickness or want of food, they give us medicine and bread.” And finally he told them of the honor that had been paid him. “I went, as you know, to talk with the big Captain of the Fort, and he, knowing the bravery of the Dahcotahs, and that I was a great chief, has brought me home, as you see. Never has a Dahcotah warrior been thus honored!” Never indeed! But we took care not to undeceive him. It was a harmless error, and as no efforts on our part could have diminished his self importance, we listened with apparent, indeed with real admiration of his eloquent speech. The women brought ducks on board, and in exchange we gave them bread; and it was evening as we watched the last teepee of Shah-co-pee’s village fade away in the distance. But sorrow mingles with the remembrance of that bright day. One of those who contributed most to its pleasures is gone from us — one whom all esteemed and many loved, and justly, for never beat a kinder or a nobler heart. Shah-co-pee has looked rather grave lately. There is trouble in the wigwam. The old chief is the husband of three wives, and they and their children are always fighting. The first wife is old as the hills, wrinkled and haggard; the chief cares no more for her than he does for the stick of wood she is chopping. She quarrels with everybody but him, and this prevents her from being quite forgotten. The day of the second wife is past too, it is of no use for I her to plait her hair and put on her ornaments; for the old chief’s heart is wrapped up in his third wife. The girl did not love him, how could she? and he did not succeed in talking her into the match; but he induced the parents to HDT WHAT? INDEX

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sell her to him, and the young wife went weeping to the teepee of the chief. Hers was a sad fate. She hated her husband as much as he loved her. No presents could reconcile her to her situation. The two forsaken wives never ceased annoying her, and their children assisted them. The young wife had not the courage to resent their ill treatment, for the loss of her lover had broken her heart. But that lover did not seem to be in such despair as she was — he did not quit the village, or drown himself, or commit any act of desperation. He lounged and smoked as much as ever. On one occasion when Shah-co-pee was absent from the village the lovers met. They had to look well around them, for the two old wives were always on the look out for something to tell of the young one; but there was no one near. The wind whistled keenly round the bend of the river as the Dahcotah told the weeping girl to listen to him. When had she refused? How had she longed to hear the sound of his voice when wearied to death with the long boastings of the old chief. But how did her heart beat when Red Stone told her that he loved her still — that he had only been waiting an opportunity to induce her to leave her old husband, and go with him far away. She hesitated a little, but not long; and when Shah-co-pee returned to his teepee his young wife was gone — no one had seen her depart — no one knew where to seek for her. When the old man heard that Red Stone was gone too, his rage knew no bounds. He beat his two wives almost to death, and would have given his handsomest pipe-stem to have seen the faithless one again. His passion did not last long; it would have killed him if it had. His wives moaned all through the night, bruised and bleeding, for the fault of their rival; while the chief had recourse to the pipe, the never-failing refuge of the Dahcotah. “I thought,” said the chief, “that some calamity was going to happen to me” (for, being more composed, he began to talk to the other Indians who sat with him in his teepee, somewhat after the manner and in the spirit of Job’s friends). “I saw Unk-a-tahe, the great fish of the water, and it showed its horns; and we know that that is always a sign of trouble.” “Ho!” replied an old medicine man, “I remember when Unk-a-tahe got in under the falls” (of St. Anthony) “and broke up the ice. The large pieces of ice went swiftly down, and the water forced its way until it was frightful to see it. The trees near the shore were thrown down, and the small islands were left bare. Near Fort Snelling there was a house where a white man and his wife lived. The woman heard the noise, and, waking her husband, ran out; but as he did not follow her quick enough, the house was soon afloat and he was drowned.” There was an Indian camp near this house, for the body of Wenona, the sick girl who was carried over the Falls, was found here. It was placed on a scaffold on the shore, near where the Indians found her, and Checkered Cloud moved her teepee, to be near her HDT WHAT? INDEX

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daughter. Several other Dahcotah families were also near her. But what was their fright when they heard the ice breaking, and the waters roaring as they carried everything before them? The father of Wenona clung to his daughter’s scaffold, and no entreaties of his wife or others could induce him to leave. “Unk-a-tahe has done this,” cried the old man, “and I care not. He carried my sick daughter under the waters, and he may bury me there too.” And while the others fled from the power of Unk- a-tahe, the father and mother clung to the scaffold of their daughter. They were saved, and they lived by the body of Wenona until they buried her. “The power of Unk-a-tahe is great!” so spoke the medicine man, and Shah-co-pee almost forgot his loss in the fear and admiration of this monster of the deep, this terror of the Dahcotahs. He will do well to forget the young wife altogether; for she is far away, making mocassins for the man she loves. She rejoices at her escape from the old man, and his two wives; while he is always making speeches to his men, commencing by saying he is a great chief, and ending with the assertion that Red Stone should have respected his old age, and not have stolen from him the only wife he loved. Shah-co-pee came, a few days ago, with twenty other warriors, some of them chiefs, on a visit to the commanding officer of Fort Snelling. The Dahcotahs had heard that the Winnebagoes were about to be removed, and that they were to pass through their hunting grounds on their way to their future homes. They did not approve of this arrangement. Last summer the Dahcotahs took some scalps of the Winnebagoes, and it was decided at Washington that the Dahcotahs should pay four thousand dollars of their annuities as an atonement for the act. This caused much suffering among the Dahcotahs; fever was making great havoc among them, and to deprive them of their flour and other articles of food was only enfeebling their constitutions, and rendering them an easy prey for disease. The Dahcotahs thought this very hard at the time; they have not forgotten the circumstance, and they think that they ought to be consulted before their lands are made a thoroughfare by their enemies. They accordingly assembled, and, accompanied by the Indian agent and the interpreter, came to Fort Snelling to make their complaint. When they were all seated, (all on the floor but one, who looked most uncomfortable, mounted on a high chair), the agent introduced the subject, and it was discussed for a while; the Dahcotahs paying the most profound attention, although they could not understand a word of what was passing; and when there was a few moments’ silence, the chiefs rose each in his turn to protest against the Winnebagoes passing through their country. They all spoke sensibly and well; and when one finished, the others all intimated their approval by crying “Ho!” as a kind of chorus. After a while Shah-co-pee rose; his manner said “I am Sir Oracle.” He shook hands with the commanding officer, with HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the agent and interpreter, and then with some strangers who were visiting the fort. His attitude was perfectly erect as he addressed the officer. “We are the children of our great Father, the President of the United States; look upon us, for we are your children too. You are placed here to see that the Dahcotahs are protected, that their rights are not infringed upon.” While the Indians cried Ho! ho! with great emphasis, Shah-co- pee shook hands all round again, and then resumed his place and speech. “Once this country all belonged to the Dahcotahs. Where had the white man a place to call his own on our prairies? He could not even pass through our country without our permission! “Our great Father has signified to us that he wants our lands. We have sold some of them to him, and we are content to do so, but he has promised to protect us, to be a friend to us, to take care of us as a father does of his children. “When the white man wishes to visit us, we open the door of our country to him; we treat him with hospitality. He looks at our rocks, our river, our trees, and we do not disturb him. The Dahcotah and the white man are friends. “But the Winnebagoes are not our friends, we suffered for them not long ago; our children wanted food; our wives were sick; they could not plant corn or gather the Indian potato. Many of our nation died; their bodies are now resting on their scaffolds. The night birds clap their wings as the winds howl over them! “And we are told that our great Father will let the Winnebagoes make a path through our hunting grounds: they will subsist upon our game; every bird or animal they kill will be a loss to us. “The Dahcotah’s lands are not free to others. If our great Father wishes to make any use of our lands, he should pay us. We object to the Winnebagoes passing through our country; but if it is too late to prevent this, then we demand a thousand dollars for every village they shall pass.” Ho! cried the Indians again; and Shah-co-pee, after shaking hands once more, took his seat. I doubt if you will ever get the thousand dollars a village, Shah-co-pee; but I like the spirit that induces you to demand it. May you live long to make speeches and beg bread — the unrivalled orator and most notorious beggar of the Dahcotahs! ... It was in the summer of 183-, that a large party of Chippeways visited Fort Snelling. There was peace between them and the Sioux. Their time was passed in feasting and carousing; their canoes together flew over the waters of the Mississippi. The young Sioux warriors found strange beauty in the oval faces of the Chippeway girls; and the Chippeways discovered (what was actually the case) that the women of the Dahcotahs were far more graceful than those of their own nation. But as the time of the departure of the Chippeways approached, many a Chippeway maiden wept when she remembered how soon she HDT WHAT? INDEX

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would bid adieu to all her hopes of happiness. And Flying Shadow was saddest of them all. She would gladly have given up everything for her lover. What were home and friends to her who loved with all the devotion of a heart untrammeled by forms, fresh from the hand of nature? She listened to his flute in the still evening, as if her spirit would forsake her when she heard it no more. She would sit with him on the bluff which hung over the Mississippi, and envy the very waters which would remain near him, when she was far away. But her lover loved his nation even more than he did her; and though he would have died to have saved her from sorrow, yet he knew she could never be his wife. Even were he to marry her, her life would ever be in danger. A Chippeway could not long find a home among the Dahcotahs. The Track-maker bitterly regretted that they had ever met, when he saw her grief at the prospect of parting. “Let us go,” he said, “to the Falls, where I will tell you the story you asked me.” The Track-maker entered the canoe first, and the girl followed; and so pleasant was the task of paddling her lover over the quiet waters, that it seemed but a moment before they were in sight of the torrent. “It was there,” said the Sioux, “that Wenona and her child found their graves. Her husband, accompanied by some other Dahcotahs, had gone some distance above the falls to hunt. While there, he fell in love with a young girl whom he thought more beautiful than his wife. Wenona knew that she must no longer hope to be loved as she had been. “The Dahcotahs killed much game, and then broke up their camp and started for their homes. When they reached the falls, the women got ready to carry their canoes and baggage round. “But Wenona was going on a longer journey. She would not live when her husband loved her no more, and, putting her son in her canoe, she soon reached the island that divides the falls. “Then she put on all her ornaments, as if she were a bride; she dressed her boy too, as a Dahcotah warrior; she turned to look once more at her husband, who was helping his second wife to put the things she was to carry, on her back. “Soon her husband called to her; she did not answer him, but placed her child high up in the canoe, so that his father could see him, and getting in herself she paddled towards the rapids. “Her husband saw that Unk-tahe would destroy her, and he called to her to come ashore. But he might have called to the roaring waters as well, and they would have heeded him as soon as she. “Still he ran along the shore with his arms uplifted, entreating her to come ashore. “Wenona continued her course towards the rapids — her voice was heard above the waters as she sang her death song. Soon the mother and child were seen no more — the waters covered them. “But her spirit wanders near this place. An elk and fawn are often seen, and we know they are Wenona and her child.” “Do you love me as Wenona loved?” continued the Sioux, as he met the looks of the young girl bent upon him. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“I will not live when I see you no more,” she replied. “As the flowers die when the winter’s cold falls upon them, so will my spirit depart when I no longer listen to your voice. But when I go to the land of spirits I shall be happy. My spirit will return to earth; but it will be always near you.” Little didst thou dream that the fate of Wenona would be less sad than thine. She found the death she sought, in the waters whose bosom opened to receive her. But thou wilt bid adieu to earth in the midst of the battle — in the very presence of him, for whose love thou wouldst venture all. Thy spirit will flee trembling from the shrieks of the dying mother, the suffering child. Death will come to thee as a terror, not as a refuge. When the Chippeways broke up their camp near Fort Snelling, they divided into two parties, one party returning home by the Mississippi, the other by way of the St. Croix. They parted on the most friendly terms with the Sioux, giving presents, and receiving them in return. Some pillagers, who acknowledge no control, had accompanied the Chippeways. These pillagers are in fact highwaymen or privateers — having no laws, and acting from the impulses of their own fierce hearts. After the Chippeways had left, the pillagers concealed themselves in a path near Lake Calhoun. This lake is about seven miles from Fort Snelling. Before they had been concealed one hour, two Dahcotahs passed, father and son. The pillagers fired, and the father was killed instantly; but the son escaped, and made his way home in safety. The boy entered the village calling for his mother, to tell her the sad news; her cries of grief gave the alarm, and soon the death of the Sioux was known throughout the village. The news flew from village to village on the wings of the wind; Indian runners were seen in every direction, and in twenty-four hours there were three hundred warriors on foot in pursuit of the Chippeways. Every preparation was made for the death-strife. Not a Sioux warrior but vowed he would with his own arm avenge the death of his friend. The very tears of the wife were dried when the hope of vengeance cheered her heart. The Track-maker was famous as a warrior. Already did the aged Dahcotahs listen to his words; for he was both wise and brave. He was among the foremost to lead the Dahcotahs against the Chippeways; and though he longed to raise his tomahawk against his foes, his spirit sunk within him when he remembered the girl he loved. What will be her fate! Oh! that he had never seen her. But it was no time to think of her. Duty called upon him to avenge the death of his friend. Woe to the unsuspecting Chippeways! ignorant of the murder that had been committed, they were leisurely turning their steps homeward, while the pillagers made their escape with the scalp of the Dahcotah. The Sioux travelled one day and night before they came up with the Chippeways. Nothing could quench their thirst but blood. And HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the women and children must suffer first. The savage suffers a twofold death; before his own turn comes, his young children lie breathless around him, their mother all unconscious by their side. The Chippeways continued their journey, fearing nothing. They had camped between the falls of St. Anthony and Rum river; they were refreshed, and the men proceeded first, leaving their women and children to follow. They were all looking forward with pleasure to seeing their homes again. The women went leisurely along; the infant slept quietly — what should it fear close to its mother’s heart! The young children laughed as they hid themselves behind the forest trees, and then emerged suddenly to frighten the others. The Chippeway maidens rejoiced when they remembered that their rivals, the Dahcotah girls, would no longer seduce their lovers from their allegiance. Flying Shadow wept, there was nothing to make her happy, she would see the Track-maker no more, and she looked forward to death as the end of her cares. She concealed in her bosom the trinkets he had given her; every feature of his face was written on her heart — that heart that beat only for him, that so soon would cease to beat at all! But there was a fearful cry, that banished even him from her thoughts. The war-whoop burst suddenly upon the defenceless women. Hundreds of Dahcotah warriors rose up to blind the eyes of the terror-stricken mothers. Their children are scalped before their eyes; their infants are dashed against the rocks, which are not more insensible to their cries than their murderers. It is a battle of strength against weakness. Stern warrior, it needs not to strike the mother that blow! she dies in the death of her children.28 The maidens clasp their small hands — a vain appeal to the merciless wretches, who see neither beauty nor grace, when rage and revenge are in their hearts. It is blood they thirst for, and the young and innocent fall like grass before the mower. Flying Shadow sees her lover! he is advancing towards her! What does his countenance say? There is sadness in his face, and she hopes — aye, more than hopes — she knows he will save her. With all a woman’s trust she throws herself in his arms. “Save me! save me!” she cries; “do not let them slay me before your eyes; make me your prisoner!29 you said that you loved me, spare my life!” Who shall tell his agony? For a moment he thought he would make her his prisoner. Another moment’s reflection convinced him that that would be of no avail. He knew that she must die, but he could not take her life. 28. The Dahcotahs believe, or many of them believe, that each body has four souls. One wanders about the earth and requires food; a second watches over the body; the third hovers round its native village, while the fourth goes to the land of spirits. 29. When the Sioux are tired of killing, they sometimes take their victims prisoners, and, generally speaking, treat them with great kindness. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Her eyes were trustingly turned upon him; her soft hand grasped his arm. But the Sioux warriors were pressing upon them, he gave her one more look, he touched her with his spear,30 and he was gone. And Flying Shadow was dead. She felt not the blow that sent her reeling to the earth. Her lover had forsaken her in the hour of danger, and what could she feel after that? The scalp was torn from her head by one of those who had most admired her beauty; and her body was trampled upon by the very warriors who had so envied her lover. The shrieks of the dying women reached the ears of their husbands and brothers. Quickly did they retrace their steps, and when they reached the spot, they bravely stood their ground; but the Dahcotahs were too powerful for them, — terrible was the struggle! The Dahcotahs continued the slaughter, and the Chippeways were obliged at last to give way. One of the Chippeways seized his frightened child and placed him upon his back. His wife lay dead at his feet; with his child clinging to him, he fought his way through. Two of the Dahcotahs followed him, for he was flying fast; and they feared he would soon be out of their power. They thought, as they nearly came up to him, that he would loose his hold on his child; but the father’s heart was strong within him. He flies, and the Sioux are close upon his heels! He fires and kills one of them. The other Sioux follows: he has nothing to encumber him — he must be victor in such an unequal contest. But the love that was stronger than death nerved the father’s arm. He kept firing, and the Sioux retreated. The Chippeway and his young son reached their home in safety, there to mourn the loss of others whom they loved. The sun set upon a bloody field; the young and old lay piled together; the hearts that had welcomed the breaking of the day were all unconscious of its close. The Sioux were avenged; and the scalps that they brought home (nearly one hundred when the party joined them from the massacre at Saint Croix) bore witness to their triumph. The other party of Sioux followed the Chippeways who had gone by way of the St. Croix. While the Chippeways slept, the war- cry of the Sioux aroused them. And though they fought bravely, they suffered as did their friends, and the darkness of night added terror to the scene. The Dahcotahs returned with the scalps to their villages, and as they entered triumphantly, they were greeted with shouts of applause. The scalps were divided among the villages, and joyful preparations were made to celebrate the scalp-dance. The scalps were stretched upon hoops, and covered with vermilion, ornamented with feathers, ribbons and trinkets. On the women’s scalps were hung a comb, or a pair of scissors, and for months did the Dahcotah women dance around them. The men 30. When a Dahcotah touches an enemy with his spear, he is privileged to wear a feather of honor, as if he had taken a scalp. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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wore mourning for their enemies, as is the custom among the Dahcotahs. When the dancing was done, the scalps were buried with the deceased relatives of the Sioux who took them. And this is Indian, but what is Christian warfare? The wife of the hero lives to realize her wretchedness; the honors paid by his countrymen are a poor recompense for the loss of his love and protection. The life of the child too, is safe, but who will lead him in the paths of virtue, when his mother has gone down to the grave. Let us not hear of civilized warfare! It is all the work of the spirits of evil. God did not make man to slay his brother, and the savage alone can present an excuse. The Dahcotah dreams not that it is wrong to resent an injury to the death; but the Christian knows that God has said, Vengeance is mine! ... In the summer of 1844 a large party of half-breeds and Indians from Red river, — English subjects, — trespassed upon the hunting grounds of the Sioux. There were several hundred hunters, and many carts drawn by oxen for the purpose of carrying away the buffalo they had killed. One of this party had left his companions, and was riding alone at some distance from them. A Dahcotah knew that his nation would suffer from the destruction of their game — fresh in his memory, too, were the sufferings of the past winter. What wonder then that the arrow which was intended for the buffalo, should find its way to the heart of the trespasser! This act enraged the half-breeds; they could not find the Sioux who committed it — but a few days after they fell in with a party of others, who were also hunting, and killed seven of them. The rest escaped, and carried the news of the death of their braves to their village. One of the killed was a relative of Sullen Face. The sad news spread rapidly through the village, and nothing was heard but lamentation. The women cut long gashes on their arms, and as the blood flowed from the wound they would cry, Where is my husband? my son? my brother? Soon the cry of revenge is heard above that of lamentation. “It is not possible,” said Sullen Face, “that we can allow these English to starve us, and take the lives of our warriors. They have taken from us the food that would nourish our wives and children; and more, they have killed seven of our bravest men! we will have revenge — we will watch for them, and bring home their scalps, that our women may dance round them!” A war party was soon formed, and Sullen Face, at the head of more than fifty warriors, stationed himself in the vicinity of the road by which the half-breeds from Red river drive their cattle to Fort Snelling. Some days after, there was an unusual excitement in the Sioux village on Swan lake, about twenty miles northwest of Traverse des Sioux. A number of Indians were gazing at an object not very distant, and in order to discover what it was, the chief of the village, Sleepy Eyes, had sent one of his young men out, while HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the rest continued to regard it with looks of curiosity and awe. They observed that as the Sioux approached it, he slackened his pace, when suddenly he gave a loud cry and ran towards the village. He soon reached them, and pale with terror, exclaimed, “It is a spirit, it is white as the snow that covers our prairies in the winter. It looked at me and spoke not.” For a short time, his fears infected the others, but after a while several determined to go and bring a more satisfactory report to their chief. They returned with the body, as it seemed only, of a white man; worn to a skeleton, with his feet cut and bleeding, unable to speak from exhaustion; nothing but the beating of his heart told that he lived. The Indian women dressed his feet, and gave him food, wiped the blood from his limbs, and, after a consultation, they agreed to send word to the missionaries at Traverse des Sioux, that there was a white man sick and suffering with them. The missionaries came immediately; took the man to their home, and with kind nursing he was soon able to account for the miserable situation in which he had been found. “We left the state of Missouri,” said the man, whose name was Bennett, “for the purpose of carrying cattle to Fort Snelling. My companions’ names were Watson and Turner. We did not know the road, but supposed a map would guide us, with what information we could get on the way. We lost our way, however, and were eagerly looking for some person who could set us right. Early one morning some Sioux came up with us, and seemed inclined to join our party. One of them left hastily as if sent on a message; after a while a number of warriors, accompanied by the Indian who had left the first party, came towards us. Their leader had a dark countenance, and seemed to have great influence over them. We tried to make them understand that we had lost our way; we showed them the map, but they did not comprehend us. “After angrily addressing his men for a few moments, the leader shot Watson through the shoulder, and another sent an arrow through his body and killed him. They then struck Watson’s brother and wounded him. “In the mean time the other Indians had been killing our cattle; and some of the animals having run away, they made Watson, who was sadly bruised with the blows he had received from them, mount a horse and go with them to hunt the rest of the cattle. We never heard of him again. The Indians say he disappeared from among the bushes, and they could not find him; but the probability is that they killed him. Some seemed to wish to kill Turner and myself — but after a while they told us to go, giving us our horses and a little food. We determined to retrace our steps. It was the best thing we could do; but our horses gave out, and we were obliged to leave them and proceed on foot. “We were soon out of provisions, and having no means of killing game, our hearts began to fail us. Turner was unwell, and on arriving at a branch of Crow river, about one hundred miles northwest of Fort Snelling, he found himself unable to swim. I HDT WHAT? INDEX

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tried to carry him across on my back, but could not do it; he was drowned, and I barely succeeded in reaching the shore. After resting, I proceeded on my journey. When I came in sight of the Indian village, much as I needed food and rest, I dreaded to show myself, for fear of meeting Watson’s fate. I was spared the necessity of deciding. I fainted and fell to the ground. They found me, and proved kinder than I anticipated. “Why they should have molested us I know not. There is something in it that I do not understand.” But it is easily explained. Sullen Face supposed them to belong to the party that had killed his friends, and through this error he had shed innocent blood. ... THE MAIDEN’S ROCK; OR, WENONA’S LEAP. Lake Pepin is a widening of the Mississippi river. It is about twenty miles in length, and from one to two miles wide. The country along its banks is barren. The lake has little current, but is dangerous for steamboats in a high wind. It is not deep, and abounds in fish, particularly the sturgeon. On its shores the traveller gathers white and red agates, and sometimes specimens streaked with veins of gold color. The lover reads the motto from his mistress’ seal, not thinking that the beautiful stone which made the impression, was found on the banks of Lake Pepin. At the south end of the lake, the Chippeway river empties into the Mississippi. The Maiden’s rock is a high bluff, whose top seems to lean over towards the water. With this rock is associated one of the most interesting traditions of the Sioux. But the incident is well-known. Almost every one has read it a dozen times, and always differently told. Some represent the maiden as delivering an oration from the top of the rock, long enough for an address at a college celebration. It has been stated that she fell into the water, a circumstance which the relative situation of the rock and river would render impossible. Writers have pretended, too, that the heroine of the rock was a Winnebago. It is a mistake, the maiden was a Dahcotah. It was from the Dahcotahs that I obtained the incident, and they believe that it really occurred. They are offended if you suggest the possibility of its being a fiction. Indeed they fix a date to it, reckoning by the occurrences of great battles, or other events worthy of notice. But to the story — and I wish I could throw into it the feeling, and energy of the old medicine woman who related it. About one hundred and fifty years ago, the band of Dahcotahs to which Wenona belonged, lived near Fort Snelling. Their village was on the site now occupied by Good Road’s band. The whole band made preparations to go below Lake Pepin, after porcupines. These animals are of great value among the Dahcotahs; their flesh is considered excellent as an article of food, and the women stain their quills to ornament the dresses HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of the men, their mocassins, and many other articles in use among them. A young girl of this band had received repeated offers of marriage from a Dahcotah, whom she hated with the same degree of intensity that she loved his rival. She dared not marry the object of her choice, for she knew it would subject herself and him to the persecutions of her family. She declared she never would consent to be the wife of the man whom her parents had chosen for her, though he was young and brave, and, what is most valued by the friends of an Indian girl, he was said to be the best hunter of the tribe. “Marry him, my daughter,” said the mother, “your father is old; he cannot now hunt deer for you and me, and what shall we do for food? Chaskè will hunt the deer and buffalo, and we shall be comfortable and happy.” “Yes,” said her father, “your mother speaks well. Chaskè is a great warrior too. When your brother died, did he not kill his worst enemy and hang up his scalp at his grave?” But Wenona persevered in her refusal. “I do not love him, I will not marry him,” was her constant reply. But Chaskè, trusting to time and her parent’s influence, was not discouraged. He killed game and supplied the wants of the family. Besides, he had twice bought her, according to Indian custom. He had given her parents cloth and blankets, calico and guns. The girl entreated them not to receive them, but the lover refused to take them back, and, finally, they were taken into the wigwam. Just as the band was about leaving the village for the hunt, he came again with many presents; whatever would make the family comfortable on their journey, and a decided promise was then given that the maiden should become his wife. She knew it would be useless to contend, so she seemed to be willing to submit to her fate. After encamping for a time opposite the Maiden’s Rock to rest from their journey, the hunters determined to go further down the river. They had crossed over to the other side, and were seated nearly under the rock. Their women were in their canoes coming over, when suddenly a loud cry was heard from an old woman, the mother of Wenona. The canoe had nearly reached the shore, and the mother continued to shriek, gazing at the projecting rock. The Indians eagerly inquired of her what was the matter? “Do you not see my daughter?” she said; “she is standing close to the edge of the rock!” She was there indeed, loudly and wildly singing her dirge, an invocation to the Spirit of the Rock, calm and unconcerned in her dangerous position, while all was terror and excitement among her friends below her. The hunters, so soon as they perceived her, hastily ascended the bluff, while her parents called to her and entreated her to go back from the edge of the rock. “Come down to us, my child,” they cried; “do not destroy your life; you will kill us, we have HDT WHAT? INDEX

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no child but you.” Having finished her song, the maiden answered her parents. “You have forced me to leave you. I was always a good daughter, and never disobeyed you; and could I have married the man I love, I should have been happy, and would never have left you. But you have been cruel to me; you have turned my beloved from the wigwam; you would have forced me to marry a man I hated; I go to the house of spirits.” By this time the hunters had nearly reached her. She turned towards them for a moment with a smile of scorn, as if to intimate to them that their efforts were in vain. But when they were quite near, so that they held out their arms towards her in their eagerness to draw her from her dangerous station, she threw herself from the rock. The first blow she received from the side of the rock must have killed her, for she fell like a dead bird, amidst the shouts of the hunters above, and the shrieks of the women below. Her body was arrayed in her handsomest clothing, placed upon a scaffold, and afterwards buried. But the Dahcotahs say that her spirit does not watch over her earthly remains; for her spirit was offended when she brought trouble upon her aged mother and father. Such is the story told by the Dahcotahs; and why not apply to them for their own traditions? Neither is there any reason to doubt the actual occurrence of the incident. Not a season passes away but we hear of some Dahcotah girl who puts an end to her life in consequence of jealousy, or from the fear of being forced to marry some one she dislikes. A short time ago a very young girl hung herself, rather than become the wife of a man who was already the husband of one of her sisters. The parents told her they had promised her, and insisted upon her fulfilling the engagement. Even her sister did not object, nay, rather seemed anxious to forward the scheme, which would give her a rival from among her nearest relations. The young girl finally ran away, and the lover, leaving his wife, pursued the fugitive, and soon overtook her. He renewed his entreaties, and finding her still obstinate, he told her that she should become his wife, and that he would kill her if she made any more trouble. This last argument seemed to have the desired effect, for the girl expressed her willingness to return home. After they arrived, the man went to his wigwam to tell his wife of the return of her sister, and that everything was now in readiness for their marriage. But one hour after, the girl was missing; and when found, was hanging to a tree, forever free from the power of her tormentors. Her friends celebrated the ceremonies of death instead of marriage. It must be conceded that an Indian girl, when desperate with her love affairs, chooses a most unromantic way of ending her troubles. She almost invariably hangs herself; when there are HDT WHAT? INDEX

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so many beautiful lakes near her where she could die an easier death, and at the same time one that would tell better, than where she fastens an old leather strap about her neck, and dies literally by choking. But there is this to be taken into consideration. When she hangs herself near the village, she can manage affairs so that she can be cut down if she concludes to live a little longer; for this frequently occurs, and the suicide lives forty and sometimes sixty years after. But when Wenona took the resolution of ending her earthly sorrows, no doubt there were other passions beside love influencing her mind. Love was the most powerful. With him she loved, life would have been all happiness — without him, all misery. Such was the reasoning of her young heart. But she resented the importunity of the hunter whose pretensions her parents favored. How often she had told him she would die before she would become his wife; and he would smile, as if he had but little faith in the words of a woman. Now he should see that her hatred to him was not assumed; and she would die such a death that he might know that she feared neither him nor a death of agony. And while her parents mourned their unkindness, her lover would admire that firmness which made death more welcome than the triumph of his rival. And sacred is the spot where the devoted girl closed her earthly sorrows. Spirits are ever hovering near the scene. The laugh of the Dahcotah is checked when his canoe glides near the spot. He points to the bluff, and as the shades of evening are throwing dimness and a mystery around the beauty of the lake, and of the mountains, he fancies he can see the arms of the girl as she tosses them wildly in the air. Some have averred they heard her voice as she called to the spirits of the rock, and ever will the traveller, as he passes the bluff, admire the wondrous beauty of the picture, and remember the story of the lover’s leap. There is a tradition among the Dahcotahs which fixes a date to the incident, as well as to the death of the rival lovers of Wenona. They say that it occurred about the time stated, and that the band of Indians went and obtained the porcupines, and then they returned and settled on the St. Croix river. Shortly after the tragical death of Wenona, the band went again down the Mississippi, and they camped at what they call the medicine wood. Here a child died, and the body was laid on a scaffold. The father in the middle of the night went out to mourn for his child. While he leant against the scaffold weeping, he saw a man watching him. The stranger did not appear to be a Dahcotah, and the mourner was alarmed, and returned to the camp. In the morning he told the Indians of the circumstance, and they raised the camp and went into the pine country. The body of the child was carried along, and in he night the father went out again to lament its death. The same figure HDT WHAT? INDEX

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appeared to him, and again he returned, alarmed at the circumstance. In the morning the Indians moved their camp again, and at night the same occurrence took place. The Dahcotahs are slaves to superstition, and they now dreaded a serious evil. Their fears were not confirmed in the way they anticipated, for their foes came bodily, and when daylight appeared, one thousand Chippeway warriors appeared before them, and the shrill whistle and terrible whoop of war was heard in earnest. Dreadful were the shouts of the Chippeways, for the Dahcotahs were totally unprepared for them, and many were laid low at the first discharge of the rifles. The merciless Chippeways continued the work of death. The women and children fled to their canoes, but the Chippeways were too quick for them; and they only entered their canoes to meet as certain a fate as those who remained. The women had not their paddles with them, and there was an eddy in the current; as soon as the canoe was pushed from the shore, it would whirl round, and the delighted Chippeways caught the canoes, and pulled them ashore again, while others let fall upon their victims the uplifted tomahawk. When the Chippeways had killed until they were tired they took what they wanted from the Sioux camp, and started for home, taking one Dahcotah boy prisoner. The party had not travelled far, when a number of Dahcotahs attacked the Chippeways, but the latter succeeded in killing many of the Dahcotahs. One of the latter fled, and was in his canoe on the lake St. Croix, when the Chippeways suddenly came upon him. The little Dahcotah saw his only chance for liberty — he plunged in the water and made for the canoe of the Dahcotah. In a moment he had reached and entered it, and the two Dahcotahs were out of sight before the arrows of their enemies could reach them. A very few of that band escaped; one of them says that when they were first attacked by the Chippeways, he saw he had but one chance, so he dived down to the bottom of the river, and the Chippeways could not see him. He found the water at the bottom of the river very cold, and when he had gone some distance, he ventured where the water was warmer, which he knew was near the shore. He then came out of the water and made his escape. Even this latter trifling incident has been handed down from father to son, and is believed universally by the Dahcotahs. And according to their tradition, the lovers and family of Wenona perished in this battle. At all events, there is no one who can prove that their tradition or my translation may not be true. ... I was glad to leave the scene, and turn towards the house of the Rev. Mr. Pond, who lives near the spot where the feast was celebrated. Here, pursuing his duties and studies, does this excellent man improve every moment of his time to the advantage of the Sioux. Always ready to converse kindly with them in order HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to gain their confidence — giving medicine to the sick, and food to the hungry; doing all that lies in his power to administer to their temporal comfort, he labors to improve their condition as a people. How can it better be done than by introducing the Christian religion among them? This the missionaries are gradually doing; and did they receive proper assistance from government, and from religious societies, they would indeed go on their way rejoicing. Placed under the government of the United States, these helpless, unhappy beings are dependent upon us for the means of subsistence, in a measure, and how much more for the knowledge of the true God? Churches will soon rise where the odious feast and medicine dance are celebrated, but will the Indians worship there? When the foundations of these churches are laid, the bones of the original owners of the country will be thrown out — but where will be the souls of those who were thrust out of their country and their rights to make way for us? I have seen where literally two or three were met together — where in a distant country the few who celebrated the death of the Redeemer were assembled — where the beautiful service of our church was read, and the hearts that heard it responded to its animating truths. We rejoiced that the religion which was our comfort was not confined to places; here were no altars, nor marble tablets — but here in this humble house we knew God would meet and be with us. An Indian silently opened the church door and entered. As strange to him was the solemn decorum of this scene, as to us were the useless ceremonies we every day witnessed. He watched the countenance of the clergyman, but he knew not that he was preaching the doctrine of a universal religion. He saw the sacred book upon the desk, but he could not read the glorious doctrine of a world redeemed by a Saviour’s blood. He heard the voice of prayer, but how could his soul like ours rise as on eagle’s wings, and ascend to the throne of God! Who was he, this intruder? It may be a descendant of those who guarded the oracles of God, who for a time preserved them for us. No wonder he tired and turned away. Not his the fault that he did not join in the solemn service, but ours. If we disregard the temporal wants of the Dahcotah, can we shut our ears against their cry, that rises up day after day, and year after year, — Show us the path to happiness and God? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 5, Tuesday: James Knox Polk succumbed to the cholera.

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote Henry Wadsworth Longfellow expressing an intent to avenge himself for the manner in which he was being removed from his overlordship of the Salem Custom House. That he had obtained such a cushy posting through the nefarious processes of political patronage was just fine (because he was such a fine fellow that he deserved to have fine things happen to him), but it was unconscionable that he might lose such a cushy posting through the nefarious processes of political patronage (because he was such a fine fellow that he didn’t deserve to have such a thing happen to him). This just wasn’t right!

A CUSHY POLITICAL PLUM, THE REWARD FOR PARTY LOYALTY HOW UNFAIR THAT I SHOULD BE SO SUDDENLY DEPRIVED OF IT! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1850

Dr. Josiah Clark Nott and Ralph Hermon Major argued against the prevailing “miasma” theory in YELLOW FEVER CONTRASTED WITH BILIOUS FEVER: REASONS FOR BELIEVING IT A DISEASE SUI GENERIS – ITS MODE OF PROPAGATION – REMOTE CAUSE – PROBABLE INSECT OR ANIMALCULAR ORIGIN (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific).

Professor Samuel George Morton became President of the Academy of Natural Sciences.

George Robins Gliddon’s INDIGENOUS RACES OF THE EARTH (in conjunction with Dr. Josiah Clark Nott and others). Also, his ANCIENT EGYPT. THE SCIENCE OF 1850 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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George Robins Gliddon, the American vice-consul to Alexandria, Egypt in 1832, had organized a small shipment of mummies from a friend in Egypt.

In this year this collection if antique desiccated human corpses was placed on exhibit in Boston, and would be viewed by, among others, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the Reverend Professor Jared Sparks, Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Professor Louis Agassiz.

While at the AAAS meeting of scientists in Charleston arguing on behalf of the idea that the races of man were separately created, Professor Agassiz found he was much, much more welcome than the Hoars of Concord had been in 1844, when they had visited this port to protest the systematic imprisonment of innocent free northern

THE HOARS CONCORD’S “ROYAL FAMILY”

black sailors. The good people of Charleston knew a kindred white soul when they saw one. Agassiz was trustworthy, he was a friend, they knew what conclusions he would arrive at after seeing the evidence: he was invited to visit their plantations and to inspect their black slaves. He commissioned a series of daguerreotypes of type specimens, and then these shockingly invasive and unsettling photographs lay in a box at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology for many, many years, until they were rediscovered in 1977 — long after the Harvard institution had conveniently forgotten all about the rabid “scientific” racism of one of its illustrious father figures. EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

“Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline. We may therefore be sorely tempted to misuse that power in furthering a personal prejudice or social goal — why not provide that extra oomph by extending the umbrella of science over a personal preference in ethics or politics?” — Stephen Jay Gould BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUS NY: Norton, 1991, page 429

Coincidentally, this was the year in which the astronomer Maria Mitchell was installed as an honorary member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.31

Subsequent to the death of his 1st wife, Professor Agassiz remarried with the writer Elizabeth Cabot Cary of Boston, a promoter of education for females. During this year he prepared his volume LAKE SUPERIOR.

31. How could she, not only as a woman but also as an abolitionist, have been acceptable to these good ol’ white racist boys? –Did they maybe notice that she wore a skirt but neglect to notice that she was wearing nothing made of cotton cloth because such cotton cloth was a product of the slave system? No, that wasn’t what it was, what it was was that she was not becoming a member, but only an honorary member. On her printed certificate, signed by the scientist Asa Gray, the salutation “Sir” had needed to be struck through and above it penned the substitute “Madam,” which is not particularly problematic, but also, the word “fellow” had needed to be struck through — and what had been substituted for this was the invidious descriptor “honorary member.” — There’s a big difference between an honorable member and an honorary member, and the difference is that a woman is not a real human being because an honorary member is not a real member. The lady scientist has eyes and can see a comet and a tongue and can report a comet, but she lacks a penis and therefore cannot interfere with processes of reality formation. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

March 16, Saturday: An issue of Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal: CHAMBERS’ EDINBURGH JOURNAL ISSUE OF MARCH 16

Waldo Emerson delivered “The Superlative in Literature, Manners, and Races.”

According to page 79 of Larry J. Reynolds’s influence study EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS AND THE AMERICAN LITERARY RENAISSANCE (New Haven CT: Yale UP, 1988), there are distinct markings of sexist politics to be discerned within the novel published on this day by Ticknor and Fields, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, THE 32 SCARLET LETTER; OR,THE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF A DECAPITATED SURVEYOR:

theabsorbingcontemplationofthescarletletterthestoryentitled“THESCARLET LETTER”taleof“TheScarletLetter”thescarletletterandeventoucheditwithher fingerthewearerofthescarletlettertakethescarletletteroffthescarletletterthre waluridwearerofthescarletletterfingeronthescarletletterthescarletletterflam ingonherbreastthescarletletteronherbreastornamentthescarletletterwhichitwas herdoomtowearthescarletletterthescarletletterthescarletletteronHester’sbos omgazemightneveroncebefixeduponthescarletlettertouchedthescarletletterthe scarletletterthescarletletterendowedwithlifethescarletletterthewomanofthe scarletletterthelikenessofthescarletletterthescarletletterthewearerofthesca rletletterherchildandthescarletletterlinesofthescarletletterthatdecoratedthem aternalbosomthescarletletteronherbosomthescarletletteronherbreastherfingero nthescarletletterlookuponthescarletletterasthetokenthescarletletterThesca rletletterhadnotdoneitsofficeThescarletletterburnedonHesterPrynne’sbosom“Ih avelefttheetothescarletletter”Iwhomthescarletletterhasdisciplinedtotruthunder thetortureofthescarletletterasforthescarletletter“Mother”saidshe“whatdoesthe scarletlettermean?”investigationsaboutthescarletletterthescarletletterHema deastepnigheranddiscoveredthescarletletterthescarletletterthescarletletterT hescarletletterwasherpassportthescarletletterthescarletletteragainthescarl etletterbrought“Lookyourlastonthescarletletteranditswearer!”thescarletletter thescarletletterenvelopeditsfatedwearer“Thymotherisyonderwomanwiththesca rletletter”hadoftenheardofthescarletletterthescarletletterinthemarketplaceHe againextendedhishandtothewomanofthescarletletterLothescarletletterthesca rletletterthemiddaysunshineonthescarletletterwearerofthescarletletterThesto ryofthescarletlettergrewintoalegendrecluseofthescarletlettertheabsorbi

HEADCHOPPING HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Near the end of THE SCARLET LETTER, Hawthorne in a summary tells us about Hester’s eventual change of heart, about how she at last forsook radicalism and recognized that the woman who would lead the reform movements of the future and establish women’s rights must be less “stained with sin,” less “bowed down with shame” than she. This woman must be “lofty, pure, and beautiful, and wise, moreover, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy.” More than one reader has correctly surmised that this ending to the novel constitutes a veiled complement to Hawthorne’s little Dove, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, and a veiled criticism of Margaret Fuller — radical, advocate of women’s rights, and subject of gossip because of her child and questionable marriage. Hawthorne’s ambivalent feelings toward Fuller indeed informed this and other parts of the novel, and although a number of women have been discussed as models for Hester, including Anne Hutchinson, Ebe Hawthorne, and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Fuller seems to have served in this capacity most provokingly. As Francis E. Kearns has pointed out, a number of parallels exist between Fuller and Hester: both had the problem of facing a Puritan society encumbered by a child of questionable legitimacy; both were concerned with social reform and the role of woman in society; both functioned as counselor and comforter to women; and both had children entitled to use the armorial seals of a non-English noble family. A more important parallel, which Kearns does not mention, is that for Hawthorne both women were linked to the figures of Liberty and Eve, that is, to the ideas of revolution and temptation, which lie at the heart of the novel. For certain sure the benevolent Boston presence of George Stillman Hillard and the benign influence of Waldo

32. A claim of copyright has been made for THE SCARLET LETTER in 1962, for FANSHAWE and THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE in 1964, for THE HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES in 1965, and for THE MARBLE FAUN in 1968, by Ohio State UP. (We presume that those ostensibly appropriative and global copyright claims could actually have covered not more than whatever value was added to the works by that press at that time, such as their reformatting and pagination and suchlike.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Emerson, among other notables, had been immortalized in Hawthorne’s preamble “The Custom-House”:

THE SCARLET LETTER: Such were some of the people with whom I now found myself connected. I took it in good part, at the hands of Providence, that I was thrown into a position so little akin to my past habits; and set myself seriously to gather from it whatever profit was to be had. After my fellowship of toil and impracticable schemes with the dreamy brethren of Brook Farm; BROOK FARM after living for three years within the subtle influence of an intellect like Emerson’s; after those wild, free days on the WALDO EMERSON Assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, beside our fire of fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing; after talking with Thoreau ELLERY CHANNING about pine-trees and Indian relics in his hermitage at Walden; after growing fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement of Hillard’s culture; after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment at Longfellow’s hearthstone – it was time, at length, that LONGFELLOW I should exercise other faculties of my nature, and nourish myself with food for which I had hitherto had little appetite. BRONSON ALCOTT Even the old Inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had known Alcott. I looked upon it as an evidence, in some measure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lacking no essential part of a thorough organization, that, with such associates to remember, I could mingle at once with men of altogether different qualities, and never murmur at the change.

[INSERT COMMENTARY ABOUT DECAPITATION HERE]

This “psychological bondage” book offered its appreciative audience a heroine who learns, finally, after much anguish, that as a woman her best game plan is to accept the cards society has dealt her, suffer passively, endure numbly, and wait, wait and hope for a better day, and that anything else she might try always makes her lot less bearable. To be silent and no bother, and maintain sexual purity, that constitutes female courage. Had slaves formed a reading market in that era, the author could easily have authored a companion volume about a black man who learns, finally, after much anguish, that as a slave his best game plan is to accept the cards society has dealt him, suffer passively, endure numbly, and wait, wait and hope for a better day, and that anything else he might try always makes his lot less bearable. To be silent and no bother, and polish shoes, that constitutes slave courage. Then, of course, the author could have created a grand synthesis, in a tale of a female slave who learns, finally, that her role as female and her role as slave quite reinforce one another.... To use a 19th-Century phrase, “women and Negroes.” Do you get the idea I actively dislike this romance? No, I actively dislike the mentality of its author Hawthorne. The best thing I have seen on this subject was written HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

by Jean Fagan Yellin:

Where Hiram Powers had distanced an enchained white woman in space and called her a Greek Slave, Nathaniel Hawthorne distanced an enchained white woman in time and called her Hester Prynne.

Clearly, anyone who is bonded to (or in bondage to — it’s much the same, isn’t it?) such a person has a tough row to hoe (you note I cast this suggestion in the present tense — it’s still the case). In particular Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, who had witnessed slavery while living for an extended period in her youth on a sugar plantation in Cuba, had a tough attitudinal row to hoe, being married to such an author-tarian. Sophia could have hardly become an active abolitionist like her sisters Mary and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. Her solution? –Sophia went for denial, and refused to give credence to various unsettling reports such as that some slave women had to strip to the buff on the auction block (“which I am sure is an exaggeration for I have read of HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

these auctions often and even the worst facts are never so bad as absolute nudity”).

Then she also capable of ignoring the BOOK OF JOB in her BIBLE long enough to suppose that a good and HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

benevolent God providentially “makes up to every being the measure of happiness which he loses thro’ the instrumentality of others” — so that it really is of no consequence how we treat each other. And then she could attempt to “lose myself in other subjects of thought,” embracing a sophisticated version of the Emersonian trick of resignation. She makes herself sound like a Minnesotan!

Such were some of the people with whom I now found myself connected. I took it in good part, at the hands of Providence, that I was thrown into a position so little akin to my past habits; and set myself seriously to gather from it whatever profit was to be had. After my fellowship of toil and impracticable schemes with the dreamy brethren of Brook Farm; after living for three years within the subtle influence of an intellect like Waldo Emerson’s; after those wild, free days on the Assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, beside our fire of fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing; after talking with Henry Thoreau about pine-trees and Indian relics in his hermitage at Walden; after growing fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement of George Stillman Hillard’s culture; after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment at Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s hearthstone – it was time, at length, that I should exercise other faculties of my nature, and nourish myself with food for which I had hitherto had little appetite. Even the old Inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had known Bronson Alcott. I looked upon it as an evidence, in some measure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lacking no essential part of a thorough organization, that, with such associates to remember, I could mingle at once with men of altogether different qualities, and never murmur at the change. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

March: The benign influence of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, among other worthies, was publicized in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s preamble “The Custom-House” to his new THE SCARLET LETTER; OR,THE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF A DECAPITATED SURVEYOR:

THE SCARLET LETTER: Such were some of the people with whom I now found myself connected. I took it in good part, at the hands of Providence, that I was thrown into a position so little akin to my past habits; and set myself seriously to gather from it whatever profit was to be had. After my fellowship of toil and impracticable schemes with the dreamy brethren of Brook Farm; BROOK FARM after living for three years within the subtle influence of an intellect like Emerson’s; after those wild, free days on the WALDO EMERSON Assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, beside our fire of fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing; after talking with Thoreau ELLERY CHANNING about pine-trees and Indian relics in his hermitage at Walden; after growing fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement of Hillard’s culture; after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment at Longfellow’s hearthstone – it was time, at length, that LONGFELLOW I should exercise other faculties of my nature, and nourish myself with food for which I had hitherto had little appetite. BRONSON ALCOTT Even the old Inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had known Alcott. I looked upon it as an evidence, in some measure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lacking no essential part of a thorough organization, that, with such associates to remember, I could mingle at once with men of altogether different qualities, and never murmur at the change. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

April 20, Saturday: Daniel Chester French was born in Exeter, New Hampshire. Note that this infant would grow up to be America’s fave sculptor, and would live in Concord and over the years produce rendition after rendition of illustrious Concord residents such as Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and of various gents of the Hoar persuasion (Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, Sherman Hoar, George Frisbie Hoar), as well as of general literary lions such as James Elliot Cabot, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, and James Russell Lowell. –Why then would such a server of society’s legitimated ones never ever attempt even a rough study of Concord’s Henry Thoreau?

Well, one response might be that he had never encountered Henry Thoreau. But then he never had encountered the Reverend John Harvard, either, and a little detail like that did not prevent him from being the sculptor who would produce the “Three Lies” statue outside Harvard College’s administration building!33

On the previous day, the Boston Daily News reported, “the populations of these towns [Lexington and Concord had] turned out literally en masse, added to which the thousands from the cities of Boston and Lowell, swelled the multitude present to a very numerous gathering,” to commemorate a dustup between local militia units and the regular army which had occurred on April 19, 1774. OLD NORTH BRIDGE PATRIOTS’ DAY

33. Although the inscription on this 1884 statue lists the seated figure as the “founder” of Harvard College, actually he had not been. After his death and apparently without his instruction, his widow had made one of the early bequests. Although the inscription asserts that Harvard College was founded in 1638, actually it had been founded in 1636. Daniel Chester French was a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology class of 1871 and student French’s buddy Sherman Hoar, who actually served as the model for this statue, may likewise have been an MIT student. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1852

The Riverside Press (manufacturing division of Houghton-Mifflin) moved from Remington Street in Cambridge to the old Almshouse estate at Blackstone Street and the Charles River in Cambridgeport. It was a large employer and its establishment by Henry O. Houghton had coincided with the availability of the cheap labor of the famine Irish. In addition, Houghton visited Glasgow, London, and Paris to recruit skilled printers. Originally a Vermont farm boy, Houghton had learned the printing business at the Burlington Free Press and had attended the University of Vermont. Some of this press’s earliest publications would be The Atlantic Monthly, MERRIAM-WEBSTER’S UNABRIDGED DICTIONARY, and household editions of Charles Dickens. In the late 19th century, the Press’s great accomplishments would be the ten volumes of ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS by Francis James Child, and Edward Fitzgerald's “translation” of THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM, illustrated by Elihu Vedder. One of the most well-known artists associated with the Press would be Bruce Rogers, a typographical genius who preferred to use older, less commercial methods. In a small, bare studio Rogers would work side by side with an elderly, senior pressman, Dan Sullivan, whom he found indispensable. Together Rogers and Sullivan would produce, on a handpress, the Riverside Press Editions, truly extraordinary works. When Houghton Press would buy out Ticknor and Fields, it would acquire publishing rights to works by Samuel Clemens, Stephen Crane, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Dean Howells, Sarah Orne Jewett, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Friend John Greenleaf Whittier, and, of course, Henry Thoreau: HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

July: Until September, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would be renting Charles T. Hazard’s very spacious “Cliff House” (it no longer exists) at Newport on Aquidneck Island in Rhode Island and there played host to, among others, Julia Ward and his wife Frances’s brother Thomas Gold Appleton.34 Here we are, in the clover-fields on the cliff, at Hazard’s house; near the beach, with the glorious sea unrolling its changing billows before us. Here, in truth, the sea speaks Italian; at Nahant it speaks Norse. Went this morning into the Jewish burying-ground, with a polite old gentleman who keeps the key. It is a shady nook, at the corner of two dusty, frequented streets, with an iron fence and a granite gateway, ... Over one of the graves grows a weeping willow, - a grandchild of the willow over Napoleon’s grave in St. Helena. After the described visit to the Jewish Cemetery at the intersection of Kay Street, Touro Street, and Bellevue Avenue, opened in 1677, the oldest Jewish burial ground in the USA, he began a poem that would appear in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine for July 1854:

[on following screen]

34. Late June through Labor Day would become the “summer visiting season” for the rows of “cottages” along Belmont Avenue in Newport. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport

How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves, Close by the street of this fair seaport town, Silent beside the never-silent waves, At rest in all this moving up and down! The trees are white with dust, that o’er their sleep Wave their broad curtains in the southwind’s breath, While underneath these leafy tents they keep The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.

And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown, That pave with level flags their burial-place, Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down And broken by Moses at the mountain’s base. The very names recorded here are strange, Of foreign accent, and of different climes; Alvares and Rivera interchange With Abraham and Jacob of old times. “Blessed be God! for he created Death!” The mourner said, “and Death is rest and peace!” Then added, in the certainty of faith, “And giveth Life that nevermore shall cease.” Closed are the portals of their Synagogue, No Psalms of David now the silence break, No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue In the grand dialect the Prophets spake. Gone are the living, but the dead remain, And not neglected; for a hand unseen, Scattering its bounty, like a summer rain, Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green. How came they here? What burst of Christian hate, What persecution, merciless and blind, Drove o’er the sea -that desert desolate - These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind? They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure, Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire; Taught in the school of patience to endure The life of anguish and the death of fire. All their lives long, with the unleavened bread And bitter herbs of exile and its fears, The wasting famine of the heart they fed, And slaked its thirst with marah of their tears. Anathema maranatha! was the cry That rang from town to town, from street to street: At every gate the accursed Mordecai Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet. Pride and humiliation hand in hand Walked with them through the world where’er they went; Trampled and beaten were they as the sand, And yet unshaken as the continent. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

For in the background figures vague and vast Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime, And all the great traditions of the Past They saw reflected in the coming time. And thus forever with reverted look The mystic volume of the world they read, Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book, Till life became a Legend of the Dead. But ah! what once has been shall be no more! The groaning earth in travail and in pain Brings forth its races, but does not restore, And the dead nations never rise again. TOURO SYNAGOGUE HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1853

In this year and the next was published Fredrika Bremer’s HEMMEN I DEN NYA VELDEN (THE HOMES OF THE NEW WORLD), in which she described her 1849-1850 visits with Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

March 13, Sunday: Moncure Daniel Conway met Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.35

Henry Thoreau made an entry in his journal that he was later to copy into his early lecture “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT” It would be combined with an entry made in January 1851 to form the following:

[Paragraph 38] Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful; and he only is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the purest and highest pleasure, also afford his body a maintenance. But I foresee that if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birth-right for a mess of pottage.1 “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”2 The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry. All enterprises must be self-supporting in this sense—must pay for themselves. You must get your living by loving. But as it is said of the merchants that ninety-seven in a hundred fail3—so the life of men generally, tried by this standard, is a failure—and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied. To inherit property is not to be born but to be still-born rather. To be supported by the charity of friends or a government pension—provided you continue to breathe—is to go into the almshouse. On Sundays the poor debtor goes to church to take an account of stock and finds, of course, that his outgoes have been greater than his income.1124 In the Catholic church, especially, they go into chancery—make a clean confession—give up all—and think to start again. Thus men will lie on their backs talking about the fall of man and never make an effort to get up.

1.GENESIS 25:32-34 2.MARK 8:36 Bradley P. Dean has emended the manuscript copy-text from ‘What shall it profit &c’ by completing the sentence and adding the quotation marks. 3.Here Thoreau refers to his own book, WALDEN, pages 32-33. He uses the figure “ninety-nine in a hundred” in the journal source of this passage. J. Lyndon Shanley notes the same change in the WALDEN manuscripts (THE MAKING OF WALDEN [Chicago: U. of Chicago P., 1957], page 35).

35.You must realize, we’re dealing here with a natural aristocrat, and with a person possessing name recognition. Moncure, plus Daniel, plus Conway, equalled somebody. The boy might be virtually penniless and without apparent connections, but he was white and from Virginia, and the dispossessed son of a rich and highly regarded slaveholder. During this period he was also able to meet the Reverend William Henry Furness, Ephraim Peabody, the Reverend John G. Palfrey, Bronson Alcott, James Russell Lowell, and the Reverend Jared Sparks. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

June 14, Tuesday: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow threw a going-away party for Nathaniel Hawthorne, and both Waldo Emerson and James Russell Lowell attended.

June 14. ...This seems the true hour to be abroad sauntering far from home– Your thoughts being already turned toward home — your walk in once sense ended– You are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincy, open to great impressions — & you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye — which you would not see by a direct gaze before– Then the dews begin to descend in your mind & its atmosphere is strained of all impurities– And home is farther away than ever –here is home –the beauty of the world impresses you– There is a coolness in your mind as in a well– Life is too grand for supper.– The wood thrush [Wood Thrush Catharus mustelina] launches forth his evening strains from the midst of the pines. I admire the moderation of this master. There is nothing tumultuous in his song. He launches forth one strain with all his heart and life and soul, of pure and unmatchable melody, and then he pauses and gives the hearer and himself time to digest this, and then another, and another at suitable intervals. Men talk of the rich song of other birds – the thrasher, mocking-bird, nightingale. But I doubt, I doubt. They know not what they say! There is as great an interval between the thrasher and the wood thrush as between Thomson’s Seasons and Homer. The sweetness of the day crystallizes in this morning coolness.

in the middle of Gowing’s Swamp. Silently they stood gazing. Penguin Books USA Inc. “Better not all stand in one place,” whispered Mary, and they moved apart. The mossy surface billowed beneath their feet. It was not a place for talking. Slowly they walked around the green-gold garden among the dwarfed larches, the panicled andromeda, the swamp azalea and summersweet. Cotton grass lifted puffs of white on wiry stems. “Listen,” said Mary. They all looked up as a watery warbling began in the woods, a bell-like melody. A moment later it was Viking Penguin repeated in a higher register, the last notes rising out of hearing. They didn’t need to be told what it was. Homer looked at Mary. The singing stopped, then began again, a little nearer. . .

ISBN 0-670-84260-5 — PS3562.A515G58 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Famous Dead White Men (attending a famous dead party?): HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1854

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s POEMS:

January: Francis Sales, who on account of his health had been trying to resign from Harvard College for several years, and had been being cozied along from semester to semester by the administration, finally at the age of 84 became simply unable to continue. Professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who had been one of his students, visited this old warhorse in his home: Called to see Mr. Sales — good old man! He is dying. There he lay, emaciated and sharp, sometimes panting for breath. He clasped both my hands and said in a feeble voice — “Kiss me” HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

— and then — “Don’t forget me.” I took leave of him forever.

April 27, Thursday: Waldo Emerson had offered to read a paper in Moncure Daniel Conway’s room at Harvard Divinity School, and Conway had sent out invitations. The authorities had been perplexed for some time at this student’s closeness to the heretic of Concord, and when this latest thing came to their attention, they went into a panic of sorts. Conway would be challenged by Harvard’s Professor of Christian Morals with the possibility that this represented a “decline of Christian morals” in Divinity Hall. Two of the professors would visit student Conway in his room and give voice to their fears that there was being organized “a school within the school,” amounting to an “Emersonian cult.” But the meeting in question, on this date, had in fact gone off without incident, the group having moved because of its size to a public room and Emerson having merely read his paper on “Poetry” to an audience that included Professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and faculty spouse Fanny Appleton Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Professor Charles Eliot Norton, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, and Arthur Hugh Clough. We are left wondering why on earth all these authority figures were getting so exercised.36

Meanwhile, out at Walden Pond, Henry Thoreau was hypothesizing that the level of water in the pond ought to become very low again during the period 1866-1869 (amazingly, this anticipation would prove to have been accurate).

April 27. 7 A.M. –To Cliffs. ... The wood thrush [Hermit Thrush Catharus guttatus] afar, –so superior a strain to that of other birds. I was doubting if it would affect me as of yore, but it did measurably. I did not believe there could be such differences. This is the gospel according to the wood thrush. He makes a sabbath out of a week-day — I could go to hear him—could buy a pew in his church— Did he ever practice 36. It wasn’t the fact that Waldo Emerson talked about “arrested and progressive development” in this paper on poetry which had gotten the faculty all excited, even though later it would be proposed, by some folks who demonstrably knew nothing whatever of evolutionary theory, that Emerson had here been anticipating Charles Darwin’s theory. What Emerson had said was simply “The electric word pronounced by [Doctor] John Hunter [1728-1793] a hundred years ago, — arrested and progressive development — indicating the way upward from the invisible protoplasm to the highest organism, — gave the poetic key to natural science, — of which the theories of Geoffroy St. Hilaire, of Lorenz Oken [1779-1851], of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [1749-1832], of Louis Agassiz [1807-1873], and [Sir] Richard Owen [1804-1892] and [Doctor] Erasmus Darwin [1731-1802] in zoölogy and botany, are the fruits, — a hint whose power is not exhausted, showing unity and perfect order in physics.” –Which is not Darwinism, but the obsolete mental universe of hierarchy and superiority, of Naturphilosophie, the great ladder of being, all of which amounted to the wanna-believe bullshit that Charles Darwin would be struggling to supersede. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Literary Hermits Recreating Themselves in Their Chapel: Whi i H l E M l Al H h L ll A i L f ll HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

pulpit eloquence? He is right about the slavery question— ... Forbes says that the guides who crossed the alps with him lost the skin of their faces — (Ap from the reflections from the snow.) It is remarkable that the rise & fall of Walden though unsteady & whether periodical or merely occasional are not completed but after many years. I have observed one rise & part of 2 falls. It attains its maximum slowly & surely though unsteadily. It is remarkable that this fluctuation, whether periodical or not, requires many years for its accomplishment — and I expect that a dozen or 15 years hence it will again be as low as I have ever known it.

May: The family of the William Jackman who had become the author of a captivity-and-escape narrative sold their land claim near Madison, Wisconsin and traveled overland to Prairie Du Chein, where they boarded the War Eagle and traveled on the Mississippi River to Prescott, Wisconsin.

A formal “conversation” was staged in Waldo Emerson’s study, between 2 and 3 in the afternoon, with Bronson Alcott and Emerson as two of the conversants, the audience consisting of young Harvard men, primarily from the Harvard Divinity School. Among these was Edwin Morton of Plymouth. Emerson opened the event by stating with confidence that literature could be, in America, a young man’s occupation and bread- winner. There followed a consideration of various Harvard professors and tutors, such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, George Ticknor, Edward Everett, Jones Very, James Walker, etc. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

May 26, Friday: An annular solar eclipse (#7298) was visible (local weather conditions permitting) in a path from Washington state along the Canadian border and across New England and Nova Scotia:

ASTRONOMY In Boston, the solar eclipse was precluded by clouds and rain. However, in Roxbury, Caroline Barrett White got a view and was able to mark down the totality as occurring precisely at 5:40 PM. In Cambridge, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in his journal that “Yesterday a fugitive slave was arrested in Boston! To-day there is an eclipse of the sun. ‘Hung be the heavens in black!’”

At 5:30 AM Henry Thoreau visited the climbing ivy, and in the afternoon he went to Walden Pond. Presumably he caught no glimpse of the eclipse through the clouds. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Moncure Daniel Conway heard the Reverend Theodore Parker’s incendiary oration at Faneuil Hall:

There is a means, and there is an end; liberty is the end, and sometimes peace is not the means toward it.

Hey, that’s not bad, coming from a white man who believed his own Caucasian race to be uniquely humane, civilized, and progressive, never enslaved because able to conquer by use of the head as well as by use of the hand. (Yeah, that’s just about a quote unquote, for the Reverend Parker besides being a warmonger was also a racist.) Let’s have a war so that superior and inferior races can live together in harmony!

The lawyer Seth Webb, Jr. managed to persuade Judge Daniel Wells of Boston’s Court of Common Pleas to issue to Boston’s coroner, Charles Smith, a writ of personal replevin according to which US Marshal Watson Freeman was to surrender “the body of Anthony Burns.” Freeman, however, refused to comply with this writ. Meanwhile, there were maneuvers to raise $1,200 to purchase the escaped slave in order directly to manumit him.37 MANUMISSION

This Anthony Burns affair made Conway (among others) into an abolitionist, by forcing him to choose sides. As the industrialist Amos Lawrence of the Secret “Six” conspiracy commented,

We went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists.

37. It would have been at best problematic, for such a sale of Burns to the abolitionists for $1,200 to have gone through. Under Massachusetts law, the sale of a slave within the Commonwealth would have been a criminal offense committed by the seller and punishable by a fine of $1,000 plus ten years in prison. Even if Mr. Charles Francis Suttle were to carefully phrase the transaction as a manumission financed by others rather than as a financial transaction for gain, he very well knew that this would provide his enemies with a pretext for indefinite legal harassment — a pretext upon which in the utter absence of all good will they would be quite likely to act. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Bronson Alcott took the train from Boston for Worcester on a mission for the Boston Vigilance Committee. He was to attract the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who had organized the guerrilla action of 1851 which had failed to rescue Thomas Simms (Sims), to head the Vigilance Committee and to take action in regard to the kidnapping of Burns.38

June 5, Monday: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was reading the Finnish epic KALEVALA.

Henry Thoreau surveyed land that one of the Hoars had bought from James Heywood, near Factory Quarter near Stow Road and the land of William Brown. For many years the pond on this land was known as Hoar Pond. At 6 PM Thoreau went to the Cliffs.

June 5: I see at a distance a kingbird [Eastern Kingbird Tyrannus tyrannus] or blackbird pursuing a crow lower down the hill, like a satelite [sic] revolving about a black planet.

38. For the attempt at rescuing Anthony Burns, see the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s CHEERFUL YESTERDAYS (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1898). HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

June 22, Thursday: There was a political convention at Concord attended by George Frisbie Hoar, with the objective of fusing the Free Soilers and the more dissident members of the Whigs of Massachusetts into a new political party, to which few Whigs came.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow determined to utilize the trochaic dimeter measure of the Finnish epic KALEVALA for an epic poem of his own, on the American Indians. This would become THE SONG OF “HIAWATHA”. Begun at Nahant, continued in Newport, Rhode Island, the poem would be finished in Cambridge on March 21, 1855. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

August 10, Thursday: Friend Daniel Ricketson purchased a copy of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS:

Bought a book this morning named Walden, or Life in the Woods, by Henry D. Thoreau, who spent several years upon the shore of Walden Pond near Concord, Mass., living in a rough board house of his own building. Much of his experience in his out-of-door and secluded life I fully understand and appreciate.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow also purchased a copy.

Bronson Alcott completed a reading of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS. TIMELINE OF WALDEN

At 4:30 AM Henry Thoreau went to the Cliffs of Fair Haven Hill (Gleason 26/J7). In the afternoon Thoreau went to Conantum (Gleason J6) and thence to Clematis Brook (Gleason K7). He had a conversation with Eben J. Loomis.

The tinkling notes of goldfinches [American Goldfinch Carduleis tristis] and bobolinks which we hear nowadays are of one character and peculiar to the season. They are not voluminous flowers, but rather nuts of sound, –ripened seed of sound. It is the tinkling of ripened grain in Nature’s basket. It is like the sparkle on water, a sound produced by friction on the crisped air. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Review of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS on the 2d page of the Boston Atlas:

Reprinted in CRITICAL ESSAYS ON HENRY DAVID THOREAU'S WALDEN, ed. Joel Myerson (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1988), page 18.

WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS was reviewed under the heading “New Publications” on the front page of the Boston Daily Journal, column 6: HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

This is a remarkable book. The thread of the work is a narrative of the personal experience of the eccentric author as a hermit on the shores of Walden Pond. The body consists of his reflections on life and its pursuits. Mr. Thoreau carried out his ideas of “communism” by building with his own hands an humble hut, cultivating his own garden patch, earning with the sweat of his brow enough of coarse food to sustain life, and living independent of the world and of its circumstances. He continued this selfish existence for two years, and then returned to society, but why, he does not inform his readers. Whether satisfied that he had mistaken the “pleasures of solitude,” or whether the self-improvement which the world has charitably supposed was the object of his retirement had been accomplished, it is certain that he was relieved of none of his selfish opinions —that he left behind in the woods of Concord none of his misanthropy, and that he brought back habits of thought which, though profound, are erratic, and often border on the transcendental. The narrative of the two years hermit life of such a man can hardly fail to be attractive, and the study of the workings of a mind so constituted must possess a peculiar interest. But the attraction is without sympathy—the interest is devoid of admiration. The outre opinions of a mind like that of Mr. Thoreau, while they will attract attention as the eccentric outbursts of real genius, so far from finding a response in the bosom of the reader, will excite a smile, from their very extravagance, and we can easily imagine that if Mr. Thoreau would banish from his mind the idea that man is an oyster, he might become a passable philosopher. Mr. Thoreau has made an attractive book—more attractive than his “Week on the Concord and Merrimac[k].” But while many will be fascinated by its contents, few will be improved. As the pantheistic doctrines of the author marred the beauty of his former work, so does his selfish philosophy darkly tinge the pages of “Walden,” and the best that can be said of the work in its probable effects is, that while many will be charmed by the descriptive powers of the author, and will smile at his extravagant ideas, few will be influenced by his opinions. This is a negative virtue in a book which is likely to be widely circulated, and which might do much mischief if the author could establish a bond of sympathy with the reader. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Review of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS under the heading “New Publications” in the Salem Register, page 2 column 3.

This is a remarkable book, the production of one of the eccentric geniuses who seem to swarm in old Concord, either because they are to the manor born, as was the case with Thoreau, or because there is something sympathetic in the atmosphere which induces an immigration of oddities thither. The author affects to be a philosopher, and is a sort of compound of Diogenes and Timon, flavored with the simplicity of a hermit and a pure child of nature. There is nothing in literature, that we know of, exactly like his book. Mr. Thoreau is a graduate of Harvard College, in the class of 1837, where he was a diligent student. Subsequently, in one of his whimsical freaks, he built himself a hut in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, where he lived alone, and earned his living by the labor of his hands only, for the space of two years and two months, at the end of which time he became a sojourner in civilized life again. The book was written principally during this seclusion, and is, in some sort, a digested record of his life there, with sage reflections on the social condition and the ordinary aims of human ambition. It is a strikingly original, singular, and most interesting work. Several passages from the narrative portion have appeared in journals which were favored with sheets in advance. We avail ourselves of the following brief extract near the conclusion, which gives a little insight into his philosophy:— [Reprints “Conclusion,” pages 328.5-329.16.]

Review of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS in the Lowell Journal and Courier, page 2 column 3.

Ticknor & Fields, of Boston, have just sent us this handsome volume, by Henry D. Thoreau, author of “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.” Mr Thoreau, who lived nearly three years in the woods, has been called ‘the Concord Diogenes,’ as Ralph Waldo Emerson has been called the Concord Platonist or American Plato. This is one of the most singular, as well as one of the best of works. It is no romance, though most of it is of a narrative character. The press all over the country have given the most flattering notices of it; and without doubt it will command a very extensive sale. It surely deserves it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1855

When Osiris had been murdered, his consort Isis had wept and mourned and, clothed in mourning and with shorn hair, beating her breast, had gone in search of the chest that contained his body. Discovering it to be inside a huge wooden column in the palace of the king of Phoenicia, she gained admittance to the palace veiled and disguised as a servant. This Isis who obtained entrance to this palace with her head veiled is consequently represented in statuary and in poetry as a symbol of mystery. Thus we have in this poem by Tennyson, IV. 8:

For the drift of the Maker is dark, an Isis hid by the veil...

This is part of the background to Henry Thoreau’s use of the lifting of a corner of the veil from the Goddess of Truth unblemished by time:

WALDEN: With a little more deliberation in the choice of their PEOPLE OF pursuits, all men would perhaps become students and observers, WALDEN for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike. In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed. That time which we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future.

ISIS EGYPT HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

The 1st edition of Thomas Bulfinch’s THE AGE OF FABLE (what we now know as BULFINCH’S MYTHOLOGY),39 which sanitized, sterilized, and embalmed the pagan deities of Greece and Rome, the Celts, Scandinavia, and the Orient,40 the author dedicated to the academic poet Longfellow, who seemed to know so very much about the mythologies of the various cultures and about the various uses to which these said mythologies might be turned:

TO HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW THE POET ALIKE OF THE MANY AND OF THE FEW THIS ATTEMPT TO POPULARIZE MYTHOLOGY AND EXTEND THE ENJOYMENT OF ELEGANT LITERATURE IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED

39. Sometimes we see this referred to as THE AGE OF FABLE; OR, BEAUTIES OF MYTHOLOGY, published by S.W. Tilton & Co. in Boston and by C.T. Dillingham in New York in 1855, and sometimes we see it referred to as THE AGE OF FABLE; OR, STORIES OF GODS AND HEROS, published by Sanborn, Carter, & Bazin in Boston in 1855. What gives? Might there be two different books? 40. Thomas Bulfinch would also write about Arthurian and Welsh legends, in 1858 in his AGE OF CHIVALRY. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

In the section on the Druids in Bulfinch’s work, originally serialized in a Boston newspaper, Bulfinch commented on the poetry attributed to “Ossian” that “In the poems of Ossian we have, if not the actual productions of Druidical times, what may be considered faithful representations of the songs of the Bards.” Crude line drawings were used as illustrations in this work.

Professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Slave in the Dismal Swamp.”

A party of white surveyors working in the Great Cypress Swamp of the Everglades vandalized some of the Seminole crops, and Billy Bowlegs demanded compensation or an apology. When the native Americans would receive neither compensation nor apology for this crop loss, they would commence three years of sporadic raiding now known as the 3d Seminole War. That is, the 3d of our campaigns to flush “Seminole” native Americans out of refuges in the Everglades, and force them beyond the Mississippi River, was launched. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

At age 48, Professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was able to retire from needing to teach at Harvard College, and devote himself entirely to his writing — such as his preposterous SONG OF “HIAWATHA”.41

Named to succeed him as Smith Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures was none other than James

41. Thoreau would point out that this poem was defective in its grasp of its subject material and Emerson, when he received a copy, would respond to its author that when he read his poetry he felt that he was in “skilful hands, but first of all they were safe hands.” He commented on how “proper” the poem was. One of the commentators has presented Emerson’s subtext here as saying to Longfellow “Your poem is glib and insipid, but at least it is harmless — and I like you too well to say anything mean.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Russell Lowell — who went off to tour Europe again to brush up on foreign languages.

All water falls, in the Dakota tongue, are called Ha-ha, never Minnehaha [“as Longfellow has it,” Thoreau remarked here in brackets]. The “h” has a strong gutteral sound. The word is applied because of the curling of the waters. The verb I-ha-ha primarily means to curl; secondarily to laugh because of the curling motion of the mouth in laughter.

MINNEHAHA FALLS

Two-thirds of the Longfellow House HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

From this year, here is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s THE GOLDEN LEGEND: HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

January: James Russell Lowell offered a course of lectures at The Lowell Institute. The lectures proved so popular they

were repeated, and members of the Harvard College Board of Overseers were so overwhelmed by this popular triumph that they determined to sponsor him as the college’s replacement for Professor Longfellow. The deal they would seek to cut would be that first their selected inside-track guy would get to spend a year or two vacationing in Europe and boning up on his foreign languages and literatures, and then he would only be required to offer his students two lecture courses per year over and above such casual meetings in his study with small groups of advanced students as he chose to arrange. Of this arrangement, Henry Adams, class of 1858, would later report:

Lowell had brought back from Germany the only new and valuable part of its universities, the habit of allowing students to read with him privately in his study. Adams asked the privilege, and used it to read a little, and to talk a great deal, for the personal contact pleased and flattered him, as that of older men ought to flatter and please the young even when they altogether exaggerate its value. Lowell was a new element in the boy’s life.

March: THE SONG OF “HIAWATHA” was complete. In his notes to the poem, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow quoted from the coffee-table publication by Mrs. Mary Henderson Eastman, DAHCOTAH; OR, LIFE AND LEGENDS OF THE SIOUX AROUND FORT SNELLING.

Officially designated to succeed Professor Longfellow as Smith Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at Harvard College, James Russell Lowell went off to tour Europe again — to brush up on his foreign languages. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

June 4, Monday: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow began to look over the printer’s proof-sheets for THE SONG OF “HIAWATHA”. It would be published on November 10th. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

July 3, Tuesday-September 12: The Longfellows were renting “Periwinkle,” the home of Joshua Perry at #58 Perry Street in Newport, Rhode Island (the structure presently on that lot may or may not have been the one the Longfellows used). At the time Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was whacking away at the printer’s proof sheets of his THE SONG OF “HIAWATHA”: July 19th: In the revision I have now got to the parts I wrote last summer at Nahant; and I have to change and rewrite a good deal of it. But it is next to impossible to do anything here, with so many people in the house and no school for the children. July 26th: To-day is very hot. How can I work? If I shut the window blinds, darkness! If I open them — glare! Chamber-maids chattering about - children crying — and everything sticky except Postage stamps, which having stuck all together like a swarm of bees, refuse further duty. Such is the state of affairs this morning at ten o’clock, when having come to my room to work upon “Hiawatha,” ... August 20th: In great doubt about a canto of Hiawatha, — whether to retain or suppress it. It is odd how confused one’s mind becomes about such matters from long looking at the same subject. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

August 26, Sunday, 1855: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vacationing at Newport, Rhode Island, attended a repeat of the “striking sermon on ‘Skeptics’” that had been delivered in April in Washington DC by the Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway –whom Longfellow had already met as a student– in which Conway “said a good word for doubters and the much abused free-thinkers.” Conway promised that he would promptly review Longfellow’s new saga THE SONG OF “HIAWATHA” in the Washington National Intelligencer.

William Cooper Nell spent the evening at the home of the Putnams (this would not have been the Roxbury home of the Unitarian reverend George Putnam but the Salem home of hairdresser George Putnam and his wife Adelaide V. Putnam and their son Joseph H. Putnam). Charlotte L. Forten was also there and she would record that “We amused ourselves with making conundrums, reading and reciting poetry.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

November 10, Monday: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s THE SONG OF “HIAWATHA” was published.42

(Initially, this did not appear in comic book form.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Thomas Cholmondeley’s collection of 44 books of Hindu literature left Liverpool on a packet bound for Canada.

Henry Thoreau was written to by E.W. Gardiner on Nantucket Island.

Nantucket Nov 10 1855

Dear Sir On my return to the island yesterday I found your favor of the 2d inst= I regret your defeat in obtain[ing] the White pine seeds[.] [I] thank you for your good intentions & efforts. Last spring I [need] about 60 bushels of seeds from the North of France many of which have been planted. Our trees have grown finely this season. About a month or two ago some person set fire to the grass about two miles to the eastward of our great field of trees & a wind sprung up which soon carried the fire to [there] and about 100 acres were burnt over. The leaves were only scorched and new buds seem to be putting out, on many of the largest of them and we hope yet that all will not be lost. In riding down Cape Cod to Provincetown, a fortnight since, I observed that most of the fresh cones on the pitch pines

Page 2 had no appearance of opening, and were so small and compact that the thought struck me, whether they were not two years in maturing. I find that your friend and I hope I may say my friend, RW^ Emerson, is to lecture for us the com- 42. Thoreau would point out that this poem THE SONG OF “HIAWATHA” was defective in its grasp of its subject material and Emerson, when he received a copy, would respond to its author that when he read his poetry he felt that he was in “skilful hands, but first of all they were safe hands.” He commented on how “proper” the poem was. One of the commentators has presented Emerson’s subtext here as saying to Longfellow “Your poem is glib and insipid, but at least it is harmless, and I like you too well to say anything mean.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

ing week, but I do not notice your announcement yet for this season, but I hope we may have the pleasure of meeting you again & [of] hearing you also. Your title to walk in our forest, /which or to be/, or on our sands, will always be good, whether you are successful or not, in aiding us to build up the one to cover the nakedness of the other[ ] Very truly your friend E W Gardiner

Hen[r]y D Thoreau Esq Concord Mass HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

November 24, Saturday: The Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway’s review of THE SONG OF “HIAWATHA” appeared in the National Intelligencer. Conway had totally bought into the idea that what Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

was presenting was straightforwardly an “ancient Indian legend.” Carefully and uncritically unpacking all the white-man-in-warpaint crap that Longfellow had packed into his fantasy in a fashion that has only been matched in our own century by the likes of Joseph Campbell, Conway demanded to know “Who is Hiawatha but Siegfried of the Norsemen, Hercules of the Greeks, Moses of the Jews, Haroun Al Raschid of the Arabs?”43

Ooo-OO-ooo-OO-ooo-OO-oooooo-boo-booh as in Eee-Iii-Eee-Iii-Ooo!

We can only be grateful that they didn’t have videotape technology at that time — that these Campbell-soup

43. About this business of white-men-in-warpaint, the Reverend Conway alleged that Longfellow quoted to him from an Waldo Emerson letter:

I find this Indian poem very wholesome, sweet and wholesome as maize, very proper and pertinent for us to read, and showing a kind of manly sense of duty in the poet to write. But allegedly Emerson continued with the following racist and derogatory remark:

The dangers of the Indians are that they are really savage, have poor small sterile heads, no thoughts, and you must deal very roundly with them, and find them in [sic] brains; and I blamed your tenderness now and then, as I read, for accepting a legend or a song when they have too little to give. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

whiteguys of that era were still restricted to running their videotapes in their own heads.44

November 25, Sunday: During an attempted revolution in Montevideo, Uruguay, over the next few days the United States and European naval forces would be putting ashore there to protect American interests. US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS

Waldo Emerson commented in a letter to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in regard to his preposterous THE SONG OF HIAWATHA, that: The dangers of the Indians are, that they are really savage, have poor small sterile heads, — no thoughts, & you must deal very roundly with them, & find them in [did he mean “find in them”?] brains.

Poor Small Sterile Head Poor Small Sterile Moon Cannot Find Own Ass Cannot Find Own Orbit

Given Use Of Both Hands Given Use Of Both Hands

44. About this business of videotapeheads, Kurt Vonnegut made a funny in a speech he gave once upon a time in Irvine, California (like all his speeches, it was headlined as “How to Get a Job like Mine”). In this particular edition, Vonnegut opinioned that what the invention of writing amounted to –the Thoth thing– was the first attempt to invent TV, done in an era before technology was able to support it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

November 27, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau went on the Assabet River to Jacob B. Farmer’s and Farmer gave him the head of a gray rabbit which his boy had snared and showed him the preserved head skin and neck vertebra of a stillborn double-headed calf.

In the Washington DC National Intelligencer, Professor Thomas Conrad Porter of Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, signing himself “T.C.P.,” characterized Harvard College’s Professor of Literature Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as a plagiarist, in that he had in his new book-length poem THE SONG OF “HIAWATHA” allegedly about an American Indian leader, copied not only the trochaic dimeter measure but 45 also many of the episodes of the Finnish epic KALEVALA by Lönnrot.

Nov. 27. P.M. — By river to J. Farmer’s. He gave me the head of a gray rabbit which his boy had snared. This rabbit is white beneath, the whole length, reddish-brown on the sides, and the same spotted with black, above ; the hairs coarse and homely, yet the fur beneath thick and slate-colored as usual. Well defended from the cold. Sides I might say pale brick-color, the brown part. The fur under the feet dirty-yellowish, as if stained by what it trod upon. He makes no use of their skins or fur. The skin is very tender. The tail, short and curled up, is white on the inside like that of the deer described by Loskiel, q.v., Indian book. He showed me the preserved skin of the heads of a double-headed calf, still-born, also the adjoining portion of the spine, where two short spinal columns, two or three inches long, merged in one. Only one body and other organs. I told him I saw a mink. He said he would have given me $1.50 and perhaps something more for him. I hear that he gives $1.75, and sells them again at a profit. They are used to trim ladies’ coats with, among other things. 45. Professor Porter, a botanist, was himself the author of a poem, “Lines on a Head of Cabbage” (we rest assured that this could not have been a plagiarization of anybody else’s material): Let frog-devouring France & beef-fed Bull What gave the fierce Barbarian strength to wield Disdain thee, Cabbage, when their mouths are full, His ponderous weapon on the battle-field, And lazy Neapolitan discard When from the North his brawny right arm hurled Who maccaroni holds in high regard; A bolt of vengeance o’er the Roman world? Let Chinese gourmand think that dish the best Thy hidden power, O matchless Cabbage, thine, Which savors of the swallow’s gluey nest, Dweller upon the Danube and the Rhine. Or, brought from distant island-shores, prefer The relish of the costly beche-de-mer; Ye vain philosophers of titled worth, Let Abyssinian cut the quivering flesh Go to this lowly denizen of earth, From the live heifer and consume it fresh, And read a lesson from his furrowed leaves; While Alpine monk esteems the slimy snail Their words are truth; that volume ne’er deceives. Above the juice of broccoli or kale; Castles and monuments have passed away, Let Paddy whistle at the very thought Pillars and temples crumbled to decay, Of new paratees boiling in the pot, Leaving no trace behind them to proclaim And Yankee tell, with rapture in his eye, To after ages their possessors’ fame, The peerless virtues of the pumpkin pie – While on his brow unfaded yet appears But, as for me, sprung of Teutonic blood, The wrinkled wisdom of six thousand years. Give me the cabbage as the choicest food. I love thine honest countenance, old friend; O far-famed Sauer Kraut! compared with thee, My earliest mem’ries with thy history blend, All dainties rifled from the land and sea And Hallow Eve, free to the wile and plot Were heaps of trash, and viands on the boards Of boyish cunning, cannot be forgot; Of prodigal Lucullus, or the hoards The ringing shout, the merry laugh and cheer, Of which renowned Apicius could boast, Still and will ever linger in mine ear. Detestably insipid – and the host That followed Epicurus, at the best, May never he who slanders thy good name Mere common swine, unpampered and unblest. Have his recorded on the scroll of fame! May he ne’er taste thee, whose proud looks despise, Had but the Gods on high Olympus’ brow But Time increase thine honor as he flies! Caught thy rich odor wafted from below, Loathing as bitter their celestial bread, They all in haste to Germany had fled. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

A mink skin which he showed me was a darker brown than the one I saw last (lie says they changed suddenly to darker about a fortnight since); and the tail was nearly all black. He said that his grandfather, who could remember one hundred and twenty-five years before this, told him that they used to catch wolves in what is now Carter’s pasture by the North River (east of Dodge’s Brook) in this manner: They piled up logs, cob-house fashion, beginning with a large base, eight or ten feet square, and narrowing successively each tier, so as to make steps for the wolves to the top, say ten feet high. Then they put a dead sheep within. A wolf soon found it in the night, sat down outside and howled till he called his comrades to him, and then they ascended step by step and jumped down within; but when they had done they could not get out again. They always found one of the wolves dead, and supposed that he was punished for betraying the others into this trap. A man in Brighton, whom he fully believes, told him that he built a bower near a dead horse and placed himself within to shoot crows. One crow took his station as sentinel on the top of the tree, and thirty or forty alighted upon the horse. He fired and killed seven or eight, but the rest, instead of minding him, immediately flew to their sentinel and pecked him to pieces before his eyes. Also Mr. Joseph Clark told him that, as lie was going along the road, he cast a still. over the wall and hit some crows in a field, whereupon they flew directly at their sentinel on an apple tree and beat and buffeted him away to the woods as far as he could see. There is little now to be heard along the river but the sedge rustling on the brink. There is a little ice along most of the shore throughout the day. Farmer told me that some one told him he found a pickerel washed up in the river, choked by a bream which it had endeavored to swallow.

December 3, Monday: The town of Binghamton, New York was formed out of the town of Chenango.

Henry Thoreau met John Goodwin going out with his gun.

Harvard College Professor of Literature Henry Wadsworth Longfellow reacted to the accusations of plagiarism being made against him in the media by writing privately to his friend Charles Sumner that this was “truly one of the greatest literary outrages I ever heard of.... As to having ‘taken many of the most striking incidents of the Finnish Epic and transferred them to the American Indians’ — it is absurd.... I know the Kalevala very well, and that some of its legends resemble the Indian stories preserved by Schoolcraft is very true. But the idea of making me responsible for that is too ludicrous.” The professor wisely kept it a close secret that in fact he had been familiar with, and had freely copied at least the style of, this epic in the construction of his THE SONG OF “HIAWATHA”. (This strategy I think was the correct one. Had the professor entered the lists in self-defense his outrage could readily have been dismissed as selfserving. In such a situation, therefore, the cannier way to proceed is to allow one’s colleagues to spring forward in one’s defense — which is the way the poet did proceed. Further, since there’s nothing plagiaristic about hewing to an established style of poesy –the essence of this sort of poetry consisting in the creation of strings of words that hew to a style– there would have been no point to his making concessions on that score.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Winter: Lecture Season of ’55/56, at the Odeon Hall in Boston: James Russell Lowell’s series on the English poets was so popular that each lecture was being repeated, for those who had not managed to get inside the hall on the designated night, on the next afternoon. They were appearing verbatim in the newspaper. It was this series for The Lowell Institute which would win Lowell his appointment to succeed Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Harvard College:46

17th Season of The Lowell Institute Reverend Orville Dewey. Education of the Human Race 12 lectures Reverend W.H. Milburn. Early History and Settlement of the Mississippi Valley 12 lectures George William Curtis. Contemporaneous English Fiction 6 lectures Professor J.P. Cooke, Jr. Chemistry of the Non-metallic Elements 12 lectures Professor E. Vitalis Scharb. The Great Religious and Philosophical Poems of Modern Times 12 lectures HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

December 7, Friday: Henry Rowe Schoolcraft rose to the defense of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by writing to the Washington DC National Intelligencer that all the episodes of THE SONG OF “HIAWATHA” derived from Native American lore as it was understood by him, and that he had himself never so much as heard of this Finnish KALEVALA thing (if anyone ought to be accused of plagiarism in this regard, it would be Schoolcraft for the manner in which he here dissimulated in describing as his own without giving due credit native American materials collected in 1843 and supplied to him by another researcher, Joshua V.H. Clark).

46. This was the way Louis Agassiz also got onto the Harvard College faculty, for he had been brought to America to lecture for The Lowell Institute and had initially given over a hundred popular lectures. Yet, as the Lowell Institute’s historian later boasted:

Crude theories and plans for moral and political reforms are not to be found in the Lowell lectures. The selection of lectures and lecturers is made from a broad and comprehensive knowledge of the safe thought and intelligent study of the time.

Thus Louis Agassiz’s lifelong disdain for the development theory of Charles Darwin may not have been motivated solely by his racism, and by an awareness of how his “scientific” posturing could be utilized to bolster the institution of slavery and the financial interests of his slavemaster friends, but may also have been motivated by his desire to be lauded by and followed by the general public — for in fact no paid Lowell lecturer would have been allowed to advocate anything as leveling as the theory of Darwin. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1856

May 14, Wednesday: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote to Thomas Gold Appleton, his brother-in-law, in Paris (Appleton happens to have been the Boston wit who originated the famous comment “Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris”) that “We have formed a Dinner Club, once a month, at Parker’s. Agassiz, Motley, Emerson, Peirce, Lowell, Whipple, Sam Ward, Holmes, Dwight, Woodman, myself, and yourself. We sit from three o’clock till nine, generally, which proves it to be very pleasant.”47

May 14. Air full of golden robins. Their loud clear note betrays them as soon as they arrive. Yesterday and to-clay I see half a dozen tortoises on a rail, — their first appearance in numbers. Catbird amid shrub oaks. Female red-wing [Red-winged Blackbird Agelaius phoeniceus]. Flood tells me he saw cherry-birds am the 12th of April in Monroe’s garden.

May 18, Sunday-21, Wednesday: The Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway attended the Yearly Meeting of the Pennsylvania Progressive Friends in Chester County, Pennsylvania. What the gray people thought of the Reverend’s recent sermon in Washington DC in which he had precisely inverted the Sermon on the Mount’s injunction that we are to “Resist not evil,” I know not.

This Unitarian reverend then traveled onward, to dine with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and then reside overnight with Waldo Emerson. What the Sage of Concord thought of this Reverend’s recent inversion of the Sermon on the Mount’s “Resist not evil” injunction, I know not.

Wouldn’t this be nice to know? — the thought of it swarms like gnats about my gourd.

May 18: The swamp is all alive with warblers about the hoary expanding buds of oaks, maples, etc.; and amid the pine and spruce. They swarm like gnats now. They fill the air with their little tshree tshree sprayey notes.

Early June: The Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway had gone from the New England Anti-Slavery Convention in the Melodeon, to dine in Cambridge with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and stay overnight with Waldo Emerson in Concord:

Early in June I passed a day or two in Concord at Emerson’s house, and a meeting was held in the town hall, where a substantial sum was raised for my church. AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II

47. Longfellow overlooked to mention that Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, and Corne- lius Conway Felton would soon join. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

December 25, Christmas Day: Alabama became the first state to officially recognize the celebration of Christmas as a holiday.

Five days earlier, a family of father, mother, and four children had been sold to a slave trader in Richmond, Virginia, allegedly because the wife and mother, Mrs. Brown, had resisted the sexual advances of the family’s owner, Colonel John Franic. The husband and father, Robert Brown, having failed to persuade another white man in the Martinsburg area of what is now West Virginia to purchase the family, decided to attempt an escape. On this frigid night of one of the coldest American winters on record, carrying with him a likeness of his wife and a lock of her hair, with locks of hair from each of their 4 children, he swam a horse across the Potomac River and then rode about 40 miles before his horse gave out. He continued on foot, and it would take several days and nights of travel for him to reach Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he had friends who, he hoped, would be able to shelter him. He would adopt the alias Thomas Jones and on New Year’s Night would reach Philadelphia and the warmth of the home of a member of the Underground Railroad Vigilance Committee.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow commented: “We are in a transition state about Christmas here in New England. The old Puritan feeling prevents it from being a cheerful hearty holiday; though every year makes it more so.”

The Virginia Central Railroad had engaged a French engineer, Claudius Crozet, at $3,000 per annum, to design and then supervise the construction of 4 tunnels through the Blue Ridge. Much of the labor had been supplied by Irish immigrants. The pay scale began at 75 cents a day, but workers doing the most dangerous work were given $1.37 1/2. Slaves who labored were paid the same, but their wages were of course paid to their owners, and because they had economic value, they were not allowed anywhere near the black-powder blasting. Two of the slaves were killed when a runaway flatcar hurtled down Afton mountain toward a parked train engine in Waynesboro. Michael Curren, an Irishman who lost his hands in a black powder explosion, was denied any pay while under medical care. These laborers lived in virtual shantytowns and had in 1854 suffered an outbreak of cholera killing 28 on the Augusta side and seven on the Afton side. Some were from County Cork and were Catholic, while others, on the far side of the mountain, were from the north of Ireland and were Protestant — so there was the constant danger of an inter-Irish riot. Air was pumped into the tunnel by mules on a treadmill. Inside Afton mountain, the 1st of these 4 tunnels was completed on this day, when the Irish laborers digging from each end broke through the final few feet of rock with their chisels, sledgehammers, and black powder explosive charges. The two tunnels actually met within half an inch of being dead centered on each other! Train service on the new line would begin in April 1858 and would continue until a new, wider tunnel would open in 1944.

In the afternoon Thoreau walked to Lee’s Cliff: “A strong wind from the northwest is gathering the snow into picturesque drifts behind the walls.... Sanborn got some white spruce and some usnea for Christmas in the swamp. I thought the last would be the most interesting.... Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up.”

Dec. 25. P.M. — To Lee’s Cliff. A strong wind from the northwest is gathering the snow into picturesque drifts behind the walls. As usual they resemble shells more than anything, sometimes prows of vessels, also the folds of a white napkin or counterpane dropped over a bonneted head. There are no such picturesque snow-drifts as are formed behind loose and open stone walls. Already yesterday it had drifted so much, i.e. so much ground was bare, that there were as many carts as sleighs in the streets. Just beyond Hubbard’s Bridge, on Conant’s Brook Meadow, I am surprised to find a. tract of ice, some thirty by seven or eight rods, blown quite bare. It shows how unstable the snow is. Sanborn got some white spruce and some usnea for Christmas in the swamp. I thought the last would be the most interesting and weird. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

On the north sides of the walls we go over boots and get them full, then let ourselves down into the shellwork on the south side, so beyond the brows of hills. At Lee’s Cliff I pushed aside the snow with my foot and got some fresh green catnip for Min. CAT I see the numerous tracks there, too, of foxes, or else hares, that have been running about in the light snow. Called at the Conantum House. It grieves me to see these interesting relics, this and the house at the Baker Farm, going to complete ruin. Met William Wheeler’s shaggy gray terrier, or Indian dog, going home. He got out of the road into the field and DOG went round to avoid us. Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.

On this Christmas day Francis Ellingwood Abbot discussed poetry with Henry Thoreau, a person who was “somewhat known for his writings.”

We have the discussion per Harvard College sophomore Frank’s journal — although we really have no idea how much of this conversation represented sophomoronic elaboration as the sophomore was later writing it down: Here I am in the good town of Concord... At present I wish to record a conversation between Henry David Thoreau, Mr. Ricketson and myself. Mr. Ricketson: We went to Baker farm yesterday through all the snow, Mr. Abbot; perhaps you recollect the description of Baker farm in “Walden.” Mr. Abbot (greatly confused and overwhelmed with a sense of ignorance): I regret to say I have never met the book, although I have been desirous to see it. Mr. Ricketson: What! Never read “Walden”! Dear me, let me show you this passage: (quotes) “My way led through Pleasant Meadow, an adjunct to Baker Farm, that retreat of which a poet has since sung, beginning,—

Thy entry us a pleasant field. Which some mossy fruit trees yield Partly to a ruddy brook, By gliding musquash undertook And mercurial trout HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Dancing about

Mr. Abbot (mentally ejaculating): Heaven help us! Mr. Ricketson: These are fine lines, but our friend Channing rather disregards grammar –“undertook”– bad, very bad. Mr. Thoreau: The grammar is no objection, poets are not hampered like other men. It is not mere rhyme and grammar that make poetry; a machine might be made to turn out poetry of that kind very easily, but it would not be poetry. Mr. Ricketson: Why not? I think it would. Mr. Thoreau: What! Would it be poetry? Mr. Ricketson: Yes, poetry is like architecture, you have to build in certain ways, and makes not difference whether the machine does it intelligently, or the poet does it by following his metres and feet. Mr. Thoreau: But— Mr. Ricketson (interrupting): I see you do not like my argument— ha! ha! Mr. Abbot (aside): No wonder he doesn’t. Mr. Ricketson: —but I understand you, yes, I understand you. But grammar is necessary. Mr. Thoreau: Channing writes ideas, and disregards all such trammels. Poets must be original. Mr. Abbot (aside): Channing is original in his grammar, at least. Mr. Thoreau: They must not try old, hackneyed measures, they must leave the old jingle and invent their own rhythm. Mr. Abbot: Do you mean to say that every poet must invent new metres? Mr. Thoreau: Yes. Unless he does, we are reminded of some other verse, and the charm of originality is lost. Wordsworth in his “Laodamia,” and “Ode to Immortality,” and even Campbell, in his battle odes, adopt their peculiar measures, and thereby avoid the monotonous jingle of other poets. Mr. Abbot: Why, you value the casket at the expense of the jewel that it contains. Poetry does not depend on the length of the lines, nor the different intervals at which the rhymes occur; the essence of poetry is, that beautiful ideas should be beautifully expressed. Mr. Thoreau: You seem to consider rhythm arbitrarily. Mr. Abbot: Certainly, to a degree it is arbitrary. The poet can select his metre as he pleases: if his work is well done, it will seem to us best adapted to the measure in which it is written, whereas he might have used another, and still have been equally successful. I think Milton made a mistake in writing “Paradise Lost” wholly in the same stately style; a long poem needs variety, and Scott well understood this. Mr. Thoreau: I must still differ; a poet must be not only original in his idea but also his rhythm; otherwise he is only an imitator, and cannot lay claim to the name of a true poet. There is endless variety in rhythm; and there is no need that one poet should slavishly follow the track of another. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Mr. Ricketson (evidently bewildered in his understanding faculties): Well, I suppose that is the way you philosophers think; but you breathe higher air that our feeble lungs can endure. Mr. Abbot (aside, with great inward disgust, and dissent for the last remark): Fiddle-stick’s end! Mutual admiration! Thoreau, Thoreau! That man of facts and metaphysics! Stick to thy facts and metaphysics. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1857

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes helped Moses Dresser Phillips found The Atlantic Monthly. It was he who named it. Initially, he contributed “Breakfast-Table” essays. He wrote that the State House, atop Beacon Hill, was “the hub of the solar system.” That’s why, even today, just as New York is referred to as “the Big Apple,” Boston is referred to as “the Hub.”48 James Russell Lowell, just then assuming Longfellow’s position as professor of modern languages at Harvard, became the magazine’s first editor (for four years).

September: The Scientific American magazine announced a new technique for the protection of the lives and forms of the ladies: Many ladies have been burnt to death by their light gauze and 48. Actually, the doctor’s calculations were off by about twenty statute miles — it is not a high hill in Boston that is the hub of the solar system, but a deep pond in Concord that is the bellybutton of the universe. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

cambric dresses taking fire and blazing up before there was time to extinguish the flame. Actresses and danseuses are most liable to this, and the talented Clara Webster and others49 lost their lives this way. It ought, therefore, to be generally known that by steeping the dress, or material composing it, in a diluted solution of chloride of zinc, it will be rendered perfectly fire-proof.

December 29, Tuesday: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a descendant of the John Alden and Priscilla Mullens who were a couple of early hoots, created a poem in honor of his famous Mayflower ancestors and their putative proclivities that he would entitle “The Courtship of Miles Standish.” JOHN AND PRISCILLA

Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Abel Brooks, 3 acres 58 rods of woodlot near Mrs. Bigelow and Ebby Hubbard. Mr. Brooks lived on Sudbury Road on the south side between Stow and Devens Streets. Thoreau remarked that he found it easy to do this survey as Brooks had worn a path around it as he walked the bounds each day. The lot was on Walden Street near Brister’s Hill.

49. The death of Fanny Appleton Longfellow by fire would not occur until 1861. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1858

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow elaborated in his story-poem THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH upon the legend that Captain Miles Standish or Myles Standish had sent John Alden to petition Priscilla Mullens on his behalf, whereupon they married in 1621 or 1623 and lived happily ever after, eventually producing a total of eleven children. —“They” being Mr. and Mrs. John and Priscilla Mullens Alden, rather than Mr. and Mrs. Captain Miles or Myles and Priscilla Mullens Standish.

JOHN AND PRISCILLA

February 7, Sunday: Charlotte L. Forten wrote “Longfellow [Henry Wadsworth Longfellow] writes a little like Mr. Nell [William Cooper Nell]. I am full of the most joyful surprise.”

February 7, 1858: …Aunt Louisa Dunbar has talked with Mrs. Monroe, and I can correct or add to my account. She says that she was then only three or four years old, and that she went to school somewhere in Boston, with Aunt Elizabeth and one other child, to a woman named Turner, who kept a spinning-wheel a-going while she taught these three little children. She remembers that one sat on a lignum-vitæ mortar, turned bottom upward, another on a box, and the third on a stool; and then she repeated the story of Jennie Burns bringing her little daughter to the school, as before. … HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

August 23, Monday: Waldo Emerson wrote his poem “The Adirondacks” about his visit to the Adirondack Mountains

Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed, Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux, And greet unanimous the joyful change.

of upstate New York with the artist William James Stillman,50 Professor Louis Agassiz of Harvard College, HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

50. Here is a painting which Stillman produced in this year, “The Philosophers’ Camp in the Adirondacks,” now at the Concord Free Public Library, depicting these immortals at their target practice, with Emerson watching in the center of the frame: HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar of Concord, Samuel Gray Ward, John

Holmes (brother of Oliver Wendell Holmes), Professor Jeffries Wyman (Comparative Anatomy, Harvard College), and four Boston physicians (see painting), in which he had been so utterly alienated by Nature.51 After spending some time at Stillman’s hunting lodge, the group had taken a boat across Lake Champlain and had ridden in farm carts to Follansbee Lake in upstate New York, where they had camped out.

There is a range of questions which neither Thoreau scholars nor Emerson scholars seem to have considered: 1.) Had Thoreau been invited to participate in this well-organized camping trip? 2.) If he’d been invited to take part — why didn’t he? (The reason commonly given for his failure to participate in the Saturday Club, to wit cigar smoke in the hotel rooms, wouldn’t seem to apply in the great outdoors.) 3.) If he hadn’t been invited — why not? Had he, like Frederick Douglass, somehow been blackballed?

August 23, 1858. Emerson says that he and Agassiz and Company broke some dozens of ale bottles, one after another, with their bullets, in the Adirondack country, using them for marks! It sounds rather Cockneyish. He says that he shot a peetweet [Spotted Sandpiper Actitis macularia] for Agassiz, and this, I think he said, was the first game he ever bagged. He carried a double-barrelled gun – rifle and shotgun – which he bought for the purpose, which he says received much commendation – all parties thought it a very pretty piece. Think of Emerson shooting a peetweet (with shot) for Agassiz, and cracking an ale bottle (after emptying it) with his rifle at six rods! They cut several pounds of lead out of the tree. It is just what Mike Saunders, the merchant’s clerk, did when he was there. The writer needs the suggestion and correction that a correspondent or companion is. I sometimes remember something which I have told another as worth telling to myself, i. e. writing in my Journal. Channing, thinking of walks and life in the country, says, “You don’t want to discover anything new, but to discover something old,” i. e. be reminded that such things still are.

51. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once bailed out of a hunting trip with his sidekick Louis Agassiz upon being told that Waldo Emerson would be along and would be armed. “Somebody will be shot,” he declared. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

READ ALL ABOUT IT

In August, Stillman, their variously fit and attractive captain, led the Adirondack Club, not yet to their Lake Ampersand, the purchase of which was probably not quite completed, but to a lake easier of access from Bill Martin’s, on Lower Saranac, the end of the long wagon drive from Keeseville, New York. Stillman wrote: — The lake where our first encampment was made was known as Follansbee Pond, and it lies in a cul-de-sac of the chain of lakes and streams named after one of the first of the Jesuit explorers of the Northern States, Père Raquette. Being elected captain of the hunt, and chief guide of the Club, it depended on me also, as the oldest woodsman, to select the locality and superintend the construction of the camp, and the choice was determined by the facility of access, the abundance of game, and the fact that the lake was out of any route to regions beyond, giving the maximum of seclusion, as the etiquette of the woods prevented another party camping near us. Follansbee was then a rare and beautiful piece of untouched nature, divided from the highway, the Raquette, by a marsh of several miles of weary navigation, shut in by the hills on all sides but that by which we entered, the forest still unscarred, and the tall white pines standing in files along the lake shores and up over the ridges, not a scar of axe or fire being visible as we searched the shore for a fitting spot to make our vacation lodging-place. Many things are requisite for a good camping-ground, and our camp was one of the best I have ever seen, at the head of the lake, with beach, spring, and maple grove. Two of the hugest maples I ever saw gave us the shelter of their spreading branches and the supports to the camp walls. Here we placed our ridge-pole, laid our roof of bark of firs (stripped from trees far away in the forest, not to disfigure our dwelling-place with stripped and dying trees), cut an open path to the lakeside, and then left our house to the naiads and dryads, and hurried back forty miles to meet our guests. Tradition has long known it as the “Philosophers’ Camp,” though, like Troy, its site is unknown to all the subsequent generations of guides, and I doubt if in all the Adirondack country there is a man except my old guide, Steve Martin, who could point out the place where it stood.” However surely Oblivion was following in the wake of those Argonauts of the forest chain of lakes, the freshness HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of their joy still lingers in the verses of one. “Welcome!” the wood-god murmured through the leaves,- “Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known to me.” Evening drew on; stars peeped through maple boughs, Which o’er-hung, like a cloud, our camping-fire. Decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks, Lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor. “Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft In well-hung chambers, daintily bestowed, Lie here on hemlock boughs, like Sacs and Sioux, And greet unanimous the joyful change, Sleep on the fragrant brush as on down-beds. Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air That circled freshly in their forest-dress Made them to boys again.”

Stillman painted on the spot an admirable picture of the morning hours’ work or diversions, before the excursions by boat or on foot began, the sun filtering down between the foliage of the vast, columnar trunks of pine, maple, and hemlock. There are two groups; on one side, Agassiz and Dr. Jeffries Wyman dissecting a fish on a stump, with John Holmes, doubtless with humorous comment, and Dr. Estes Howe, as spectators; on the other, Lowell, Judge Hoar, Dr. Amos Binney, and Woodman trying their marksmanship with rifles, under the instruction of the tall Don Quixote-like Stillman; between the groups, interested, but apart, stands Waldo Emerson, pleased with the gifts of all. Prolonging the shooting party towards the edge of the picture two or three guides are gathered, silent critics.52 In recruiting this company the rifle had proved both attractive and repellent. Stillman’s skill whether as marksman or hunter was unusual, and he was an admirable instructor for amateurs. Of his experiences in recruiting the party he wrote: “I had done all I could to induce Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes to join the party, but the latter was too closely identified with the Hub in all its mental operations to care for unhumanized nature, and Longfellow was too strongly attached to the conditions of completely civilized life to enjoy roughing it in flannels and sleeping on fir boughs. The company of his great- brained friends was a temptation at times, I think; but he hated killing animals, had no interest in fishing, and was too settled in his habits to enjoy so great a change. Possibly he was decided in his refusal by Emerson’s purchase of a rifle. “Is it true that Emerson is going to take a gun.” he asked me. “Yes,” I replied. “Then I shall not go,” he said; “somebody will be shot.”53 Though Emerson was once paddled noiselessly by night into a remote bay, “jack hunting” (that is, with a torch and reflector in the bow of the skiff), and the guide pointed to the water’s edge, where a deer was gazing at the wondrous light, and whispered “Shoot,” Emerson could only see a “square mist,” and his rifle remains until now guiltless of blood of man or beast. 52. This picture was bought by Judge Hoar, and bequeathed by him to the Concord Public Library. 53. It would be a cheap shot to mention Dick Cheney in this context, so I won’t do it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Each man of the company had a special guide assigned to him by Stillman, but he asked and received the privilege of doing that service in full for Agassiz, rowing him in his own boat on the water journey, and almost daily on his collecting excursions. He wrote: — For I had the feeling which all had who came under the magic of his colossal individuality, — the myriad- minded one to whom nothing came amiss or unfamiliar, and who had a facet for every man he came in contact with. His inexhaustible bonhomie won even the guides to a personal fealty they showed no other of our band; his wide science gave us continual lectures on all the elements of nature — no plant, no insect, no quadruped hiding its secret from him. The lessons he taught us of the leaves of the pine, and of the vicissitudes of the Laurentine Range, in one of whose hollows we lay; the way he drew new facts from the lake, and knew them when he saw them, as though he had set his seal on them before they were known; the daily dissection of the fish, the deer, the mice (for which he had brought his traps), were studies in which we were his assistants and pupils. All this made being with him not only “a liberal education,” but perpetual sunshine and good fortune. When we went out, I at the oars and he at the dredge or insect-net, or examining the plants by the marsh-side, his spirit was a perpetual spring of science. When he and Wyman entered on the discussion of a scientific subject (and they always worked together), science seemed as easy as versification when Lowell was in the mood, and all sat around inhaling wisdom with the mountain air. Nothing could have been, to any man with the scientific bent, more intensely interesting than the academy of two of the greatest scientists of their day. Stillman’s high estimate of the wise, gentle, judicial, and modest Jeffries Wyman will be given in the sketch of him later. At our dinners, the semblance of which life will never offer me again, the gods sent their best accompaniments and influences — health, appetite, wit, and poetry, with good digestion. Our foaming ale we drank from hunters’ pans — Ale, and a sup of wine. Our steward gave Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread. All ate like abbots, and, if any missed Their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss With hunter’s appetite and peals of mirth. Lowell was the Magnus Apollo of the camp. His Castalian humour, his unceasing play of wit and erudition — poetry and the best of the poets always on tap at the table — all know them who knew him well, though not many as I did; but when he sat on one side of the table, and Judge Hoar (the most pyrotechnical wit I have HDT WHAT? INDEX

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ever known) and he were matching table-talk, with Emerson and Agassiz to sit as umpires and revive the vein as it menaced to flag, Holmes and Estes Howe not silent in the well-matched contest, the forest echoed with such laughter as no club ever knew, and the owls came in the trees overhead to wonder. These were symposia to which fortune has invited few men, and which no one invited could ever forget.... For Lowell I had a passionate personal attachment to which death and time have only given a twilight glory. Here Stillman’s narrative must be interrupted to put on record a story of Lowell, showing a quality in him that would hardly have been divined in the Cambridge poet. Emerson wrote it in his pocket notebook on the day after the daring venture. On the top of a large white pine in a bay was an osprey’s nest around which the ospreys were screaming, five or six. We thought there were young birds in it, and sent Preston to the top. This looked like an adventure. The tree might be a hundred and fifty feet high, at least; sixty feet clean straight stem, without a single branch, and, as Lowell and I measured it by the tape as high as we could reach, fourteen feet, six inches in girth. Preston took advantage of a hemlock close by it and climbed till he got on the branches, then went to the top of the pine and found the nest empty, though the great birds wheeled and screamed about him. He said he could climb the bare stem of the pine, “though it would be awful hard work.” When he came down, I asked him to go up it a little way, which he did, clinging to the corrugations of the bark. Afterwards Lowell watched long for a chance to shoot the osprey, but he soared magnificently, and would not alight.... Lowell, next morning, was missing at breakfast, and, when he came to camp, told me he had climbed Preston’s pine tree. To resume Stillman’s record: — To Emerson, as to most men who are receptive to Nature’s message, the forest was the overpowering fact. We climb the bank, And in the twilight of the forest noon Wield the first axe these echoes ever heard. The “twilight of the forest noon” is the most concentrated expression of the one dominant sentiment of a poetic mind on first entering this eternal silence and shadow.... We were much together. I rowed him into the innermost recesses of Follansbee Water, and would, at his request, sometimes land him in a solitary part of the lake-shore, and leave him to his emotions or studies. We have no post, and letters neither came nor went, and so, probably, none record the moment’s mood; but well I remember how he marvelled at the completeness of the circle of life in the forest. He examined the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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guides, and me as one of them, with the interest of a discoverer of a new race. Me he had known in another phase of existence — at the Club, in the multitude, one of the atoms of the social whole. To find me axe in hand, ready for the elementary functions of a savage life, — to fell the trees, to kill the deer, or catch the trout, and at need to cook them, — in this to him new phenomenon of a rounded and self-sufficient individuality, waiting for, and waited on, by no one, he received a conception of life which had the same attraction in its completeness and roundness that a larger and fully organized existence would have had. It was a form of independence which he had never realized before, and he paid it the respect of a new discovery.... What seems to me the truth is, that Emerson instinctively divided men into two classes, with one of which he formed personal attachments which, though tranquil and undemonstrative, as was his nature, were lasting; in the other he simply found his objects of study, problems to be solved and their solutions recorded. There was the least conceivable self- assertion in him; he was the best listener a genuine thinker, or one whom he thought to be such, ever had; and always seemed to prefer to listen rather than to talk, to observe and study rather than to discourse. So he did not say much before Nature; he took in her influences as the earth takes the rain. He was minutely interested in seeing how the old guides reversed the tendencies of civilization.... Looking back across the gulf which hides all the details of life, the eternal absence which forgets personal qualities, the calm, platonic serenity of Emerson stands out from all our company as a crystallization of impersonal and universal humanity; no vexation, no mishap, could disturb his philosophy, or rob him of its lesson. The magical quality of the forest is that of oblivion of all that is left in the busy world, of past trouble and coming care. The steeds that brought us in had no place behind for black Care. We lived, as Emerson says,— Lords of this realm, Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day Rounded by hours where each outdid the last In miracles of pomp, we must be proud, As if associates of the sylvan gods. We seemed the dwellers of the zodiac, So pure the Alpine element we breathed, So light, so lofty pictures came and went. Stillman, writing the above happy memories of a golden prime in HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the last years of the century, said: — A generation has gone by since that unique meet, and of those who were at it only John Holmes and I now survive. The voices of that merry assemblage of “wise and polite” vacation-keepers come to us from the land of dreams; the echoes they awakened in the wild wood give place to the tender and tearful evocation of poetic memory; they and their summering have passed into the traditions of the later camp-fires, where the guides tell of the “Philosophers’ Camp,” of the very location of which they have lost the knowledge. Hardly a trace of it now exists as we then knew it. The lumberer, the reckless sportsman with his camp-fires and his more reckless and careless guide, the axe and the fire, have left no large expanse of virgin forest in all the Adirondack region, and every year effaces the original aspect of it more completely. Emerson, on the spot, thus strove to picture Stillman’s heroic figure: — “Gallant artist, head and hand. Adopted of Tahawus grand, In the wild domesticated, Man and Mountain rightly mated, Like forest chief the forest ranged As one who had exchanged After old Indian mode Totem and bow and spear In sign of peace and brotherhood With his Indian peer. Easily chief, who held The key of each occasion In our designed plantation, Can hunt and fish and rule and row. And out-shoot each in his own bow, And paint and plan and execute Till each blossom became fruit; Earning richly for his share The governor’s chair, Bore the day’s duties in his head. And with living method sped. Firm, unperplexed, By no flaws of temper vexed, Inspiring trust. And only dictating because he must. And all he carried in his heart He could publish and define Orderly line by line On canvas by his art. I could wish So worthy Master worthier pupils had — The best were bad.”

One day, that August, a thrill of human communication shot under the Atlantic Ocean from continent to continent. By a strange chance the quick-travelling report of it reached the campers among the primeval woods while on a lake excursion. Emerson HDT WHAT? INDEX

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tells, in his forest notebook, how “Loud exulting cries From boat to boat, and in the echoes round. Greet the glad miracle. Thought’s new-found path Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways. Match God’s equator with a zone of art, And lift man’s public action to a height Worthy the enormous cloud of witnesses, When linked hemispheres attest the deed. A spasm throbbing through the pedestals Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill To be a brain, or serve the brain of man. The lightning has run masterless too long; He must to school and learn his verb and noun And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage.”54 This miracle had, indeed, been shown to be possible, yet almost immediately some mischance that befel the cable in the depths of the sea, interrupted its use for seven years. When this occurred, another of our poets, “The Professor,” sent forth the question on everybody’s lips as to who in the Provinces had received and transmitted the few words that emerged from the ocean at the western landing-place. He published the whole conversation, as follows: — DE SAUTY An Electro-Chemical Eclogue Professor: Tell me, O Provincial! speak, Ceruleo-Nasal! Lives there one De Sauty extant now among you, Whispering Boanerges, son of silent thunder, Holding talk with nations? Is there a De Sauty,55 ambulant on Tellus, Bifid-cleft like mortals, dormient in nightcap, Having sight, smell, hearing, food-receiving feature Three times daily patent? Breathes there such a being, Ceruleo-Nasal? Or is he a Mythus, — ancient word for “humbug,” Such as Livy told about the wolf that wet-nursed Romulus and Remus? Was he born of woman, this alleged De Sauty? Or a living product of galvanic action, Like the acarus bred in Crosse’s flint-solution? Speak, thou Cyano-Rhinal!

Blue-Nose: Many things thou askest, jackknife-bearing stranger, Much-conjecturing mortal, pork-and-treacle-waster! 54. In his poem “The Adirondacs” the reception of this wonderful news is told at greater length. 55. The first messages received through the submarine cable were sent by an electrical expert, a mysterious personage who signed himself De Sauty. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Pretermit thy whittling, wheel thine ear-flap toward me, Thou shalt hear them answered. When the charge galvanic tingled through the cable, At the polar focus of the wire electric Suddenly appeared a white-faced man among us; Called himself “De Sauty.” As the small opossum, held in pouch maternal, Grasps the nutrient organ whence the term mammalia, So the unknown stranger held the wire electric, Sucking in the current. When the current strengthened, bloomed the pale-faced stranger, — Took no drink nor victual, yet grew fat and rosy, — And from time to time, in sharp articulation. Said, “All right! De Sauty.” From the lonely station passed the utterance, spreading Through the pines and hemlocks to the groves of steeples. Till the land was filled with loud reverberations Oi! All Tight! De Sauty.” When the current slackened, drooped the mystic stranger, — Faded, faded, faded, as the stream grew weaker, — Wasted to a shadow, with a hartshorn odour Of disintegration. Drops of deliquescence glistened on his forehead. Whitened round his feet the dust of efflorescence. Till one Monday morning, when the flow suspended, There was no De Sauty. Nothing but a cloud of elements organic, C.O.H.N., Ferrum, Chlor., Flu., Sil., Potassa, Calc. Sod. Phosph. Mag. Sulphur, Mang.(?) Alumin.(?) Cuprum, (?) Such as man is made of. Born of stream galvanic, with it he had perished! There is no De Sauty now there is no current! Give us a new cable, then again we’ll hear him Cry, “All right! De Sauty.”

Emerson also wrote about this jolly camp adventure, without ever claiming to be in any sense a leader: A JOURNAL. DEDICATED TO MY FELLOW-TRAVELLERS IN AUGUST, 1858. Wise and polite, —and if I drew Their several portraits, you would own Chaucer had no such worthy crew, Nor Boccace in Decameron.

We crossed Champlain to Keeseville with our friends, Thence, in strong country carts, rode up the forks Of the Ausable stream, intent to reach The Adirondac lakes. At Martin’s Beach We chose our boats; each man a boat and guide,— Ten men, ten guides, our company all told. Next morn, we swept with oars the Saranac, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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With skies of benediction, to Round Lake, Where all the sacred mountains drew around us, Tahawus, Seaward, MacIntyre, Baldhead, And other Titans without muse or name. Pleased with these grand companions, we glide on, Instead of flowers, crowned with a wreath of hills, And made our distance wider, boat from boat, As each would hear the oracle alone. By the bright morn the gay flotilla slid Through files of flags that gleamed like bayonets, Through gold-moth-haunted beds of pickerel-flower, Through scented banks of lilies white and gold, Where the deer feeds at night, the teal by day, On through the Upper Saranac, and up Pere Raquette stream, to a small tortuous pass Winding through grassy shallows in and out, Two creeping miles of rushes, pads, and sponge, To Follansbee Water, and the Lake of Loons. Northward the length of Follansbee we rowed, Under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge Ponderous with beechen forest sloped the shore. A pause and council: then, where near the head On the east a bay makes inward to the land Between two rocky arms, we climb the bank, And in the twilight of the forest noon Wield the first axe these echoes ever heard. We cut young trees to make our poles and thwarts, Barked the white spruce to weatherfend the roof, Then struck a light, and kindled the camp-fire. The wood was sovran with centennial trees,— Oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and fir, Linden and spruce. In strict society Three conifers, white, pitch, and Norway pine, Five-leaved, three-leaved, and two-leaved, grew thereby. Our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth, The maple eight, beneath its shapely tower. “Welcome!” the wood god murmured through the leaves,— “Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known to me.” Evening drew on; stars peeped through maple-boughs, Which o’erhung, like a cloud, our camping fire. Decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks, Lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor. Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed, Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux, And greet unanimous the joyful change. So fast will Nature acclimate her sons, Though late returning to her pristine ways. Off soundings, seamen do not suffer cold; And, in the forest, delicate clerks, unbrowned, Sleep on the fragrant brush, as on down-beds. Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air That circled freshly in their forest dress Made them to boys again. Happier that they Slipped off their pack of duties, leagues behind, At the first mounting of the giant stairs. No placard on these rocks warned to the polls, No door-bell heralded a visitor, No courier waits, no letter came or went, Nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or sold; HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The frost might glitter, it would blight no crop, The falling rain will spoil no holiday. We were made freemen of the forest laws, All dressed, like Nature, fit for her own ends, Essaying nothing she cannot perform. In Adirondac lakes, At morn or noon, the guide rows bareheaded: Shoes, flannel shirt, and kersey trousers make His brief toilette: at night, or in the rain, He dons a surcoat which he doffs at morn: A paddle in the right hand, or an oar, And in the left, a gun, his needful arms. By turns we praised the stature of our guides, Their rival strength and suppleness, their skill To row, to swim, to shoot, to build a camp, To climb a lofty stem, clean without boughs Full fifty feet, and bring the eaglet down: Temper to face wolf, bear, or catamount, And wit to track or take him in his lair. Sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent, In winter, lumberers; in summer, guides; Their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired Three times ten thousand strokes, from morn to eve. Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen! No city airs or arts pass current here. Your rank is all reversed: let men of cloth Bow to the stalwart churls in overalls: They are the doctors of the wilderness, And we the low-prized laymen. In sooth, red flannel is a saucy test Which few can put on with impunity. What make you, master, fumbling at the oar? Will you catch crabs? Truth tries pretension here. The sallow knows the basket-maker’s thumb; The oar, the guide’s. Dare you accept the tasks He shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes, Tell the sun’s time, determine the true north, Or stumbling on through vast self-similar woods To thread by night the nearest way to camp? Ask you, how went the hours? All day we swept the lake, searched every cove, North from Camp Maple, south to Osprey Bay, Watching when the loud dogs should drive in deer, Or whipping its rough surface for a trout; Or bathers, diving from the rock at noon; Challenging Echo by our guns and cries; Or listening to the laughter of the loon; Or, in the evening twilight’s latest red, Beholding the procession of the pines; Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack, In the boat’s bows, a silent night-hunter Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds Of the red deer, to aim at a square mist. Hark to that muffled roar! a tree in the woods Is fallen: but hush! it has not scared the buck Who stands astonished at the meteor light, Then turns to bound away, —is it too late? Sometimes we tried our rifles at a mark, Six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five; Sometimes our wits at sally and retort, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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With laughter sudden as the crack of rifle; Or parties scaled the near acclivities Competing seekers of a rumoured lake, Whose unauthenticated waves we named Lake Probability, —our carbuncle, Long sought, not found. Two Doctors in the camp Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout’s brain, Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew, Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow, and moth; Insatiate skill in water or in air Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss; The while, one leaden pot of alcohol Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds. Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants, Orchis and gentian, fern, and long whip-scirpus, Rosy polygonum, lake-margin’s pride, Hypnum and hydnum, mushroom, sponge, and moss, Or harebell nodding in the gorge of falls. Above, the eagle flew, the osprey screamed, The raven croaked, owls hooted, the woodpecker Loud hammered, and the heron rose in the swamp. As water poured through the hollows of the hills To feed this wealth of lakes and rivulets, So Nature shed all beauty lavishly From her redundant horn. Lords of this realm, Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day Rounded by hours where each outdid the last In miracles of pomp, we must be proud, As if associates of the sylvan gods. We seemed the dwellers of the zodiac, So pure the Alpine element we breathed, So light, so lofty pictures came and went. We trode on air, contemned the distant town, Its timorous ways, big trifles, and we planned That we should build, hard-by, a spacious lodge, And how we should come hither with our sons, Hereafter, —willing they, and more adroit. Hard fare, hard bed, and comic misery,— The midge, the blue-fly, and the mosquito Painted our necks, hands, ankles, with red bands: But, on the second day, we heed them not, Nay, we saluted them Auxiliaries, Whom earlier we had chid with spiteful names. For who defends our leafy tabernacle From bold intrusion of the travelling crowd,— Who but the midge, mosquito, and the fly, Which past endurance sting the tender cit, But which we learn to scatter with a smudge, Or baffle by a veil, or slight by scorn? Our foaming ale we drunk from hunters’ pans, Ale, and a sup of wine. Our steward gave Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread; All ate like abbots, and, if any missed Their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss With hunters’ appetite and peals of mirth. And Stillman, our guides’ guide, and Commodore, Crusoe, Crusader, Pius Æneas, said aloud, “Chronic dyspepsia never came from eating HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Food indigestible”: —then murmured some, Others applauded him who spoke the truth. Nor doubt but visitings of graver thought Checked in these souls the turbulent heyday ’Mid all the hints and glories of the home. For who can tell what sudden privacies Were sought and found, amid the hue and cry Of scholars furloughed from their tasks, and let Into this Oreads’ fended Paradise, As chapels in the city’s thoroughfares, Whither gaunt Labour slips to wipe his brow, And meditate a moment on Heaven’s rest. Judge with what sweet surprises Nature spoke To each apart, lifting her lovely shows To spiritual lessons pointed home. And as through dreams in watches of the night, So through all creatures in their form and ways Some mystic hint accosts the vigilant, Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense Inviting to new knowledge, one with old. Hark to that petulant chirp! what ails the warbler? Mark his capricious ways to draw the eye. Now soar again. What wilt thou, restless bird, Seeking in that chaste blue a bluer light, Thirsting in that pure for a purer sky?

And presently the sky is changed; O world! What pictures and what harmonies are thine! The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene, So like the soul of me, what if’t were me? A melancholy better than all mirth. Comes the sweet sadness at the retrospect, Or at the foresight of obscurer years? Like yon slow-sailing cloudy promontory, Whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty Superior to all its gaudy skirts. And, that no day of life may lack romance, The spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding down A private beam into each several heart. Daily the bending skies solicit man, The seasons chariot him from this exile, The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing chair, The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along, Suns haste to set, that so remoter lights Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home. With a vermilion pencil mark the day When of our little fleet three cruising skiffs Entering Big Tupper, bound for the foaming Falls Of loud Bog River, suddenly confront Two of our mates returning with swift oars. One held a printed journal waving high Caught from a late-arriving traveller, Big with great news, and shouted the report For which the world had waited, now firm fact, Of the wire-cable laid beneath the sea, And landed on our coast, and pulsating With ductile fire. Loud, exulting cries From boat to boat, and to the echoes round, Greet the glad miracle. Thought’s new-found path Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways, Match God’s equator with a zone of art, And lift man’s public action to a height HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Worthy the enormous clouds of witnesses, When linked hemispheres attest his deed. We have few moments in the longest life Of such delight and wonder as there grew,— Nor yet unsuited to that solitude: A burst of joy, as if we told the fact To ears intelligent; as if gray rock And cedar grove and cliff and lake should know This feat of wit, this triumph of mankind; As if we men were talking in a vein Of sympathy so large, that ours was theirs, And a prime end of the most subtle element Were fairly reached at last. Wake, echoing caves! Bend nearer, faint day-moon! Yon thundertops, Let them hear well! ’t is theirs as much as ours. A spasm throbbing through the pedestals Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent, Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill To be a brain, or serve the brain of man. The lightning has run masterless too long; He must to school, and learn his verb and noun, And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage, Spelling with guided tongue man’s messages Shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea. And yet I marked, even in the manly joy Of our great-hearted Doctor in his boat, (Perchance I erred,) a shade of discontent; Or was it for mankind a generous shame, As of a luck not quite legitimate, Since fortune snatched from wit the lion’s part? Was it a college pique of town and gown, As one within whose memory it burned That not academicians, but some lout, Found ten years since the Californian gold? And now, again, a hungry company Of traders, led by corporate sons of trade, Perversely borrowing from the shop the tools Of science, not from the philosophers, Had won the brightest laurel of all time. ’Twas always thus, and will be; hand and head Are ever rivals: but, though this be swift, The other slow, —this the Prometheus, And that the Jove, —yet, howsoever hid, It was from Jove the other stole his fire, And, without Jove, the good had never been. It is not Iroquois or cannibals, But ever the free race with front sublime, And these instructed by their wisest too, Who do the feat, and lift humanity. Let not him mourn who best entitled was, Nay, mourn not one: let him exult, Yea, plant the tree that bears best apples, plant, And water it with wine, nor watch askance Whether thy sons or strangers eat the fruit: Enough that mankind eat, and are refreshed.

We flee away from cities, but we bring The best of cities with us, these learned classifiers, Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts. We praise the guide, we praise the forest life; But will we sacrifice our dear-bought lore Of books and arts and trained experiment, Or count the Sioux a match for Agassiz? HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

O no, not we! Witness the shout that shook Wild Tupper Lake; witness the mute all-hail The joyful traveller gives, when on the verge Of craggy Indian wilderness he hears From a log-cabin stream Beethoven’s notes On the piano, played with master’s hand. “Well done!” he cries; “the bear is kept at bay, The lynx, the rattlesnake, the flood, the fire; All the fierce enemies, ague, hunger, cold, This thin spruce roof, this clayed log-wall, This wild plantation will suffice to chase. Now speed the gay celerities of art, What in the desert was impossible Within four walls is possible again,— Culture and libraries, mysteries of skill, Traditioned fame of masters, eager strife Of keen competing youths, joined or alone To outdo each other, and extort applause. Mind wakes a new-born giant from her sleep. Twirl the old wheels? Time takes fresh start again On for a thousand years of genius more. The holidays were fruitful, but must end; One August evening had a cooler breath; Into each mind intruding duties crept; Under the cinders burned the fires of home; Nay, letters found us in our paradise; So in the gladness of the new event We struck our camp, and left the happy hills. The fortunate star that rose on us sank not; The prodigal sunshine rested on the land, The rivers gambolled onward to the sea, And Nature, the inscrutable and mute, Permitted on her infinite repose Almost a smile to steal to cheer her sons, As if one riddle of the Sphinx were guessed.

October: Upon the return of the Hawthornes from their summer in Florence, to Rome, they were visited by Cephas Thompson (the painter who had been commissioned to paint Hawthorne upon his entry to fame with the publication of THE SCARLET LETTER; OR,THE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF A DECAPITATED SURVEYOR in 1850) bearing some sort of scandalous story about the sculptress Maria Louisa Lander. Whatever the nature of this story, Hawthorne recorded only “What a pity!” in his diary. From a remark made by her cousin John Rogers, the story may have been to the effect that she had, before “respectable” viewers, immodestly “exposed herself ? ?

as a model.” At any rate, the community of American artists in Rome set up a “court of inquiry” to look into the substance of this story, a court of inquiry headed by William Wetmore Story. Lander refused to cooperate with this unofficial committee of her peers. The fact that the married Nathaniel Hawthorne, fully two decades her senior, had been visiting her repeatedly alone in her studio, and the fact that his marble bust displayed him with his shoulders and chest exposed, was definitely not lost on anyone in the Roman expat community. Nathaniel began to take steps to separate himself insofar as possible from such scandal. One of the tactics the family would utilize would be to suggest that the naked flesh of the bust, rather than being part of the original design, had been brought about by a certain “person of culture” who had demanded on his own authority that the workers make “certain alterations” during the carving of the marble. Then, when “Miss Lander & her sister” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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came to visit the Hawthornes in Roma, they “were not admitted” on their first visit –nor on their return on the subsequent day –nor on a 3d attempt. The Hawthorne family consented only to receive the letters which the Lander sisters had carried from America, such as a letter from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Hawthorne wrote them a letter telling them how pleased he was to be informed that “some (he hopes many) of Miss Louisa Lander’s friends are convinced of the purity of her life and character,” but in this letter he referred to himself and his family as “her former friends.” He urged her to “throw her life open to the world … at once” and declared that he “would most gladly be enabled again to think and speak as highly of her as he had done hitherto.” But in the meanwhile, they informed her, she might be “assured of Mr Hawthorne’s silence on this painful subject.” The sculptor, who never made any response to the rumors, soon left Italy, and she lived until the age of 97 in the city of Washington DC.

Sojourner Truth was speaking against slavery in Silver Lake, Indiana when a group of Democrats led by T.W. Strain made the tactical error of accusing her of being a man in drag.56 Ever the showman, she bared her breasts:

56. It must be borne in mind that just about any woman addressing a group in this era would have been suspect in such a manner, since raising one’s voice in public was exceedingly unusual and unprecedented, even non-feminine. Thus it came about that the preacher Harriet Livermore was suspected of being a man in drag, the antislavery lecturer Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was suspected of being a man in drag, and even the actress Rachel of the Comédie Française was suspected of being a man in drag. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Silver Lake, Kosciusko Co., Ind. October 4th, 1858 Editor of Northern Indianian Sir: SOJOURNER TRUTH, an elderly colored woman well known throughout the Eastern States, is now holding a series of Anti-Slavery meetings in Northern Indiana. Sojourner comes well recommended by Harriet Beecher Stowe and others, and was welcomed and received by the friends of the slave in this locality. Her progress in knowledge, truth, and righteousness is very remarkable, especially so, when we consider her former low position as a slave.… The Slave Democracy of Indiana, however, appear to be jealous and suspicious of every Anti- Slavery movement. A rumor was circulated that Sojourner was an impostor; that she was, indeed, a man disguised in woman’s clothing.… At her third appointed meeting in this vicinity, which was held in the meeting house of the United Brethren, a large number of Democrats and … pro-slavery persons were present, and at the close of the meeting Dr. T.W. Strain, the mouthpiece of the Slave Democracy, called upon the large congregation to “hold on,” stating that a doubt existed in the minds of many persons present respecting the sex of the speaker, and that it was his impression that a majority believed the speaker to be a man, and also proposed that Sojourner should show her breasts to some of the ladies present, so that by their testimony the doubt might solved. A large number of ladies were present, who were ashamed and indignant at the Doctor’s proposition. Dr. Strain further said (which was not believed by the friends of the Slave) that it was particularly for the speaker’s sake that he made this demand.… Confusion and uproar ensued. A gun or pistol was fired near the door. However, the tumult was soon suppressed by Sojourner rising in all the dignity of womanhood, and demanded why they suspected her “to be a man?” and was answered, “your voice is not the voice of a woman; it is the voice of a man.” Sojourner told them that her “breasts had suckled many a white babe; that some of those babes had grown up to man’s estate, and that they were far more manly that they (her persecutors) appeared to be.” In vindication of her truthfulness, she told them that she would show her breasts to the whole congregation; that it was not to her shame but to their shame, that she uncovered her breasts before them. Two young men, viz.: A. Badgely and J. Hamar voluntarily stepped forward to the examination. As Sojourner disrobed her bosom, she quietly asked them if they too “wished to suck.” As she presented her naked breast to the gaze of the audience, a Democrat cried out, “Why, it is a sow, for I see the teat.” … As “the agitation of thought is the beginning of wisdom,” we hope that Indiana will yet be redeemed. Respectfully, William Hayward

Two young men in the audience attempted to shield her from the crowd, but evidently were not entirely successful in this — for one of the Democrats instantly cried out “Why, it does look like an old sow’s teat!” HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Her biographer Mabee has commented, in regard to this, that: Carleton Mabee’s SOJOURNER TRUTH Truth was not forced to respond to the rude challenge as she did. She could have refused to respond at all. She could have responded only verbally, or she could have consented to show her breasts only privately, to a few women. Truth’s showing her breasts to the whole audience is startling. Despite her general inclination to choose modest dress, when the occasion seemed to her to demand it, she was able quickly, apparently without hesitation, to abandon modesty about dress, to say the least. She could express her anger dramatically, seemingly without inhibitions. Evidently her experience of slavery and poverty, her feminist outlook, and her biblically based contempt for the world, had readied her to flout the stereotype of what modest femininity meant, and to do it with poise. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1860

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman privately printed POEMS, which he mailed to various literary figures such as Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne under cover letter.

From this year into 1872, The Atlantic Monthly would be from issue to issue publishing passages from Hawthorne’s NOTE-BOOKS, and scenes from the DOLLIVER ROMANCE, SEPTIMUS FELTON, etc.

Evidently, at some point between this year with the Hawthornes returning from England to their Wayside property in Concord and 1862 when Thoreau died, Hawthorne had difficulties with a manuscript he was working on. His working title started out as “The Ancestral Footprint” but then became “Etherege” and then “Grimshawe,” while the scene of the action became a gloomy burial ground in Salem. Thoreau passed along to him a story about a previous resident of his Wayside who had determined to live forever. Hawthorne resituated his work-in-progress from Salem to Concord and took from his story “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” the idea of a magic elixir. His hero Septimius he made out to be a halfbreed native American seminary student undergoing a crisis of faith. Septimius kills a British soldier and discovers, on his body, a formula for eternal life. Hawthorne would never be able to get anywhere with this tale, and it would remain unpublished. One wonders, did Thoreau get this stuff about a previous resident of the Wayside who had determined to live forever out of his imagination — or might there be some person, with a name and a date, to whom Thoreau had been making reference?

June 15, Friday: According to urban legend, this was the day of the founding of the 1st town in the Idaho Territory, Franklin. The settlers were 13 families of Mormons who were presuming themselves to be within the territory of a Greater Utah, who named their place “Franklin” in honor of one of the current dozen leaders of their Church, Apostle Franklin D. Richards. Actually, Lemhi, Idaho, site of Fort Lemhi, had been the 1st Mormon settlement in the Idaho Territory and had been in existence since 1855, while Lewiston (named overtly in memory of early passer-by Merriwether Lewis but covertly in honor of the Maine town of Lewiston, origin of one of the settlers), was also already in existence and would become the state capital. In actuality nothing in particular of record happened in this tiny settlement during this day (Brigham Young had visited on June 10th, in between wives, to consecrate Preston Thomas as Bishop over the community, which had been arriving in wagon trains during that spring). So, why do we now have this urban legend, sponsored on the internet, that on this day the 1st town in the Idaho Territory was created, and named Franklin? –Because on March 7, 1911 the Idaho Legislature would belatedly set June 15th apart as “Pioneer Day” and said Legislature would HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

belatedly decree this to constitute its explanation. –And who are you to say nay to your elected representatives who have determined it to be in the public interest to pin this tale on this Franklin donkey, may I enquire?

Anyway, present-day Franklin, although close, is not exactly on the site of this 1860 Franklin.

Joseph Emerson Worcester having issued his A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, George P. Marsh

compared this with the latest dictionary issued by the Webster empire, for the New-York WORLD, finding Noah Webster to be by contrast “unscholarly and unsound.” Worcester eventually would come to have the support of Thomas Carlyle, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Horace Mann, Sr., Daniel Webster, and The Atlantic Monthly.

December 18, Tuesday: Amendments Proposed in Congress by Senator John J. Crittenden. READ THE FULL TEXT

A poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow appeared in the Boston Transcript: Paul Revere’s Ride. Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five: Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, “If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church tower as a signal light,— One, if by land, and two, if by sea: And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm For the country folk to be up and to arm,” Then he said, “Good night!” and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somerset, British man-of-war; A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon like a prison bar, And a huge black hulk, that was magnified By its own reflection in the tide. Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street, Wanders and watches with eager ears, Till in the silence around him he hears The muster of men at the barrack door, The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, And the measured tread of the grenadiers, Marching down to their boats on the shore. Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church, By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry-chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the sombre rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade,— By the trembling ladder, steep and tall To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the town, And the moonlight flowing over all. Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead, In their night-encampment on the hill, Wrapped in silence so deep and still That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread, The watchful night-wind, as it went Creeping along from tent to tent And seeming to whisper, “All is well!” A moment only he feels the spell Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread Of the lonely belfry and the dead: For suddenly all his thoughts are bent On a shadowy something far away, Where the river widens to meet the bay,— A line of black that bends and floats On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats. Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. Now he patted his horse’s side, Now gazed at the landscape far and near, Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, And turned and tightened his saddle-girth; But mostly he watched with eager search The belfry-tower of the Old North Church, As it rose above the graves on the hill, Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

A second lamp in the belfry burns! A hurry of hoofs in a village street, A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet: That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light, The fate of a nation was riding that night; And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, [these six lines had been omitted by error] Kindled the land into flame with its heat. He has left the village and mounted the steep, And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep, Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides; And under the alders, that skirt its edge, Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge, Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides. It was twelve by the village clock When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. He heard the crowing of the cock, And the barking of the farmer’s dog, And felt the damp of the river fog, That rises after the sun goes down. It was one by the village clock, When he galloped into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody work they would look upon. It was two by the village clock, When he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock, And the twitter of birds among the trees, And felt the breath of the morning breeze Blowing over the meadows brown. And one was safe and asleep in his bed Who at the bridge would be first to fall, Who that day would be lying dead, Pierced by a British musket-ball. You know the rest. In the books you have read, How the British Regulars fired and fled,— How the farmers gave them ball for ball, From behind each fence and farm-yard wall, Chasing the red-coats down the lane, Then crossing the fields to emerge again Under the trees at the turn of the road, And only pausing to fire and load. So through the night rode Paul Revere; And so through the night went his cry of alarm To every Middlesex village and farm,— A cry of defiance and not of fear, A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo forevermore! For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, Through all our history, to the last, In the hour of darkness and peril and need, The people will waken and listen to hear The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed, And the midnight message of Paul Revere. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1861

January: This month’s issue of the The Atlantic Monthly. A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride,” adding the six lines which had been omitted in error in the Boston Transcript:

PAUL REVERE’S RIDE. Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five: Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, “If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church tower as a signal light,— One, if by land, and two, if by sea: And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm For the country folk to be up and to arm,” Then he said, “Good night!” and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somerset, British man-of-war; A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon like a prison bar, And a huge black hulk, that was magnified By its own reflection in the tide. Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street, Wanders and watches with eager ears, Till in the silence around him he hears The muster of men at the barrack door, The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, And the measured tread of the grenadiers, Marching down to their boats on the shore. Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church, By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry-chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the sombre rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade,— By the trembling ladder, steep and tall To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the town, And the moonlight flowing over all. Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead, In their night-encampment on the hill, Wrapped in silence so deep and still That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread, The watchful night-wind, as it went Creeping along from tent to tent And seeming to whisper, “All is well!” A moment only he feels the spell Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread Of the lonely belfry and the dead: HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

For suddenly all his thoughts are bent On a shadowy something far away, Where the river widens to meet the bay,— A line of black that bends and floats On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats. Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. Now he patted his horse’s side, Now gazed at the landscape far and near, Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, And turned and tightened his saddle-girth; But mostly he watched with eager search The belfry-tower of the Old North Church, As it rose above the graves on the hill, Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight A second lamp in the belfry burns! A hurry of hoofs in a village street, A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet: That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light, The fate of a nation was riding that night; And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, [six lines omitted by error in the newspaper] Kindled the land into flame with its heat. He has left the village and mounted the steep, And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep, Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides; And under the alders, that skirt its edge, Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge, Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides. It was twelve by the village clock When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. He heard the crowing of the cock, And the barking of the farmer’s dog, And felt the damp of the river fog, That rises after the sun goes down. It was one by the village clock, When he galloped into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody work they would look upon. It was two by the village clock, When he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock, And the twitter of birds among the trees, And felt the breath of the morning breeze Blowing over the meadows brown. And one was safe and asleep in his bed Who at the bridge would be first to fall, Who that day would be lying dead, HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Pierced by a British musket-ball. You know the rest. In the books you have read, How the British Regulars fired and fled,— How the farmers gave them ball for ball, From behind each fence and farm-yard wall, Chasing the red-coats down the lane, Then crossing the fields to emerge again Under the trees at the turn of the road, And only pausing to fire and load. So through the night rode Paul Revere; And so through the night went his cry of alarm To every Middlesex village and farm,— A cry of defiance and not of fear, A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo forevermore! For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, Through all our history, to the last, In the hour of darkness and peril and need, The people will waken and listen to hear The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed, And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

WASHINGTON CITY. Washington is the paradise of paradoxes,--a city of magnificent distances, but of still more magnificent discrepancies. Anything may be affirmed of it, everything denied. What it seems to be it is not; and although it is getting to be what it never was, it must always remain what it now is. It might be called a city, if it were not alternately populous and uninhabited; and it would be a wide-spread village, if it were not a collection of hospitals for decayed or callow politicians. It is the hybernating-place of fashion, of intelligence, of vice,--a resort without the attractions of waters either mineral or salt, where there is no bathing and no springs, but drinking in abundance and gambling in any quantity. Defenceless, as regards walls, redoubts, moats, or other fortifications, it is nevertheless the Sevastopol of the Republic, against which the allied army of Contractors and Claim-Agents incessantly lay siege. It is a great, little, splendid, mean, extravagant, poverty-stricken barrack for soldiers of fortune and votaries of folly. Scattered helter-skelter over an immense surface, cut up into scalene triangles, the oddity of its plan makes Washington a succession of surprises which never fail to vex and astonish the stranger, be he ever so highly endowed as to the phrenological bump of locality. Depending upon the hap-hazard start the ignoramus may chance to make, any particular house or street is either nearer at hand or farther off than the ordinary human mind finds it agreeable to believe. The first duty of the new- comer is to teach his nether extremities to avoid instinctively the hypothenuse of the street-triangulation, and the last lesson the resident fails to learn is which of the shortcuts from point to point is the least lengthy. Beyond a doubt, the corners of the streets were constructed upon a cold and brutal calculation HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

of the greatest possible amount of oral sin which disappointed haste and irritated anxiety are capable of committing; nor is any relief to the tendency to profanity thus engendered afforded by the inexcusable nomenclature of the streets and avenues,--a nomenclature in which the resources of the alphabet, the arithmetic, the names of all the States of the Union, and the Presidents as well, are exhausted with the most unsystematic profligacy. A man not gifted with supernatural acuteness, in striving to get from Brown’s Hotel to the General Post-Office, turns a corner and suddenly finds himself nowhere, simply because he is everywhere,--being at the instant upon three separate streets and two distinct avenues. And, as a further consequence of the scalene arrangement of things, it happens that the stranger in Washington, however civic his birth and education may have been, is always unconsciously performing those military evolutions styled marching to the right or left oblique,--acquiring thereby, it is said, that obliquity of the moral vision--which sooner or later afflicts every human being who inhabits this strange, lop-sided city-village. So queer, indeed, is Washington City in every aspect, that one newly impressed by its incongruities is compelled to regard Swift’s description of Lilliputia and Sydney Smith’s account of Australia as poor attempts at fun. For, leaving out of view the pigmies of the former place, whose like we know is never found in Congress, what is there in that Australian bird with the voice of a jackass to excite the feeblest interest in the mind of a man who has listened to the debates on Kansas? or what marvel is an amphibian with the bill of a duck to him who has gazed aghast at the intricate anatomy of the bill of English? It is true that the ignorant Antipodes, with a total disregard of all theories of projectiles, throw their boomerangs behind their backs in order to kill an animal that stands or runs before their faces, or skim them along the ground when they would destroy an object flying overhead. And these feats seem curious. But an accomplished “Constitutional Adviser” can perform feats far more surprising with a few lumps of coal or a number of ships-knees, which are but boomerangs of a larger growth. Another has invented the deadliest of political missiles, (in their recoil,) shaped like mules and dismantled forts, while a third has demolished the Treasury with a simple miscalculation. Still more astonishing are the performances of an eminent functionary who encourages polygamy by intimidation, purchases redress for national insult by intercepting his armies and fleets with an apology in the mouth of a Commissioner, and elevates the Republic in the eyes of mankind by conquering at Ostend even less than he has lost at the Executive Mansion. In truth, the list of Washington anomalies is so extensive and so various, that no writer with a proper regard for his own reputation or his readers’ credulity would dare enumerate them one by one. Without material injury to the common understanding, a few may be mentioned; but respect for public opinion would HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

urge that the enormous whole be summed up in the comparatively safe and respectful assertion, that the one only absolutely certain thing in Washington is the absence of everything that is at all permanent. The following are some of the more obnoxious astonishments of the place. Traversing a rocky prairie inflated with hacks, you arrive late in the afternoon at a curbed boundary, too fatigued in body and too suffocated with dust to resent the insult to your common- sense implied in the announcement that you have merely crossed what is called an Avenue. Recovered from your fatigue, you ascend the steps of a marble palace, and enter but to find it garrisoned by shabby regiments armed with quills and steel pens. The cells they inhabit are gloomy as dungeons, but furnished like parlors. Their business is to keep everybody’s accounts but their own. They are of all ages, but of a uniformly dejected aspect. Do not underrate their value. Mr. Bulwer has said, that, in the hands of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword. Suffer yourself to be astonished at their numbers, but permit yourself to withdraw from their vicinity without questioning too closely their present utility or future destination. No personal affront to the public or the nineteenth century is intended by the superfluity of their numbers or the inadequacy of their capacities. Their rapid increase is attributable not to any incestuous breeding in-and-in among themselves, but to a violent seduction of the President and the Heads of Department by importunate Congressmen; and you may rest assured that this criminal multiplication fills nobody with half so much righteous indignation and virtuous sorrow as the clerks themselves. Emerging from the palace of quill-drivers, a new surprise awaits you. The palace is surmounted by what appear to be gigantic masts and booms, economically, but strongly rigged, and without any sails. In the distance, you see other palaces rigged in the same manner. The effect of this spectacle is painful in the extreme. Standing dry-shod as the Israelites were while crossing the Red Sea, you nevertheless seem to be in the midst of a small fleet of unaccountable sloops of the Saurian period. You question whether these are not the fabulous “Ships of State” so often mentioned in the elegant oratory of your country. You observe that these ships are anchored in an ocean of pavement, and your no longer trustworthy eyes search vainly for their helms. The nearest approach to a rudder is a chimney or an unfinished pillar; the closest resemblance to a pilot is a hod-carrying workman clambering up a gangway. Dismissing the nautical hypothesis, your next effort to relieve your perplexity results in the conjecture that the prodigious masts and booms may be nothing more than curious gibbets, the cross-pieces to which, conforming rigidly to the Washington rule of contrariety, are fastened to the bottom instead of the top of the upright. Your theory is, that the destinies of the nation are to be hanged on these monstrous gibbets, and you wonder whether the laws of gravitation will be complaisant enough to turn upside down for the accommodation of the hangman, whoever he may be. It is not HDT WHAT? INDEX

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without pain that you are forced at last to the commonplace belief that these remarkable mountings of the Public Buildings are neither masts nor booms, but simply derricks,--mechanical contrivances for the lifting of very heavy weights. It is some consolation, however, to be told that the weakness of these derricks has never been proved by the endeavor to elevate by means of them the moral character of the inhabitants of Washington. Content yourself, after a reasonable delay for natural wonderment, to leave the strange scene. This shipping- like aspect of the incomplete Departments is only a nice architectural tribute to the fact that the population of Washington is a floating population. This you will not be long in finding out. The oldest inhabitants are here to-day and gone tomorrow, as punctually, if not as poetically, as the Arabs of Mr. Longfellow. A few remain,--parasitic growths, clinging tenaciously to the old haunts. Like tartar on the teeth, they are proof against the hardest rubs of the tooth-brush of Fortune. As with the people, so with the houses. Though they retain their positions, seldom abandoning the ground on which they were originally built, they change almost hourly their appearance and their uses,--insomuch that the very solids of the city seem fluid, and even the stables are mutable,--the horse-house of last week being an office for the sale of patents, or periodicals, or lottery-tickets, this week, with every probability of becoming an oyster-cellar, a billiard-saloon, a cigar-store, a barber’s shop, a bar-room, or a faro-bank, next week. And here is another astonishment. You will observe that the palatial museums for the temporary preservation of fossil or fungous penmen join walls, virtually, with habitations whose architecture would reflect no credit on the most curious hamlet in tide-water Virginia. To your amazement, you learn that all these houses, thousands in number, are boarding-houses. Of course, where everybody is a stranger, nobody keeps house. It would be pardonable to suppose, that, out of so many boarding- houses, some would be in reality what they are in name. Nothing can be farther from the fact. These houses contain apartments more or less cheerless and badly furnished, according to the price (always exorbitant, however small it may be) demanded for them, and are devoted exclusively to the storage of empty bottles and demijohns, to large boxes of vegetable- and flower- seeds, to great piles of books, speeches, and documents not yet directed to people who will never read them, and to an abominable odor of boiling cabbages. This odor steals in from a number of pitch-dark tunnels and shafts, misnamed passages and staircases, in which there are more books, documents, and speeches, other boxes of seeds, and a still stronger odor of cabbages. The piles of books are traps set here for the benefit of the setters of broken legs and the patchers of skinless shins, and the noisome odors are propagated for the advantage of gentlemen who treat diseases of the larynx and lungs. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

It would appear, then, that the so-called boarding-houses are, in point of fact, private gift-book stores, or rather, commission-houses for the receiving and forwarding of a profusion of undesirable documents and vegetations. You may view them also in the light of establishments for the manufacture and distribution of domestic perfumery, payment for which is never exacted at the moment of its involuntary purchase, but is left to be collected by a doctor,--who calls upon you during the winter, levies on you with a lancet, and distrains upon your viscera with a compound cathartic pill. It is claimed, that, in addition to the victims who pay egregious rents for boarding-house beds in order that they may have a place to store their documents and demi-johns, there are other permanent occupants of these houses. As, for example, Irish chambermaids, who subtract a few moments from the morning half- hour given to drinking the remnants of your whiskey, and devote them to cleaning up your room. Also a very strange being, peculiar to Washington boarding-houses, who is never visible at any time, and is only heard stumbling up-stairs about four o’clock in the morning. Also beldames of incalculable antiquity,--a regular allowance of one to each boarding-house,- -who flit noiselessly and unceasingly about the passages and up and down the stairways, admonishing you of their presence by a ghostly sniffle, which always frightens you, and prevents you from running into them and knocking them down. For these people, it is believed, a table is set in the houses where the boarders proper flatter their acquaintances that they sleep. It must be so, for the entire male population is constantly eating in the oyster-cellars. Indeed, if ocular evidence may be relied on, the best energies of the metropolis are given to the incessant consumption of “half a dozen raw,” or “four fried and a glass of ale.” The bar-rooms and eating-houses are always full or in the act of becoming full. By a fatality so unerring that it has ceased to be wonderful, it happens that you can never enter a Washington restaurant and find it partially empty, without being instantly followed by a dozen or two of bipeds as hungry and thirsty as yourself, who crowd up to the bar and destroy half the comfort you derive from your lunch or your toddy. But, although, everybody is forever eating oysters and drinking ale in myriads of subterranean holes and corners, nobody fails to eat at other places more surprising and original than any you have yet seen. In all other cities, people eat at home or at a hotel or an eating-house; in Washington they eat at bank. But they do not eat money,--at least, not in the form of bullion, or specie, or notes. These Washington banks, unlike those of London, Paris, and New York, are open mainly at night and all night long, are situated invariably in the second story, guarded as jealously as any seraglio, and admit nobody but strangers,- -that is to say, everybody in Washington. This is singular. Still more singular is the fact, that the best food, served in the most exquisite manner, and (with sometimes a slight HDT WHAT? INDEX

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variation) the choicest wines and cigars, may be had at these banks free of cost, except to those who choose voluntarily to remunerate the banker by purchasing a commodity as costly and almost as worthless as the articles sold at ladies’ fairs,--upon which principle, indeed, the Washington banks are conducted. The commodity alluded to is in the form of small discs of ivory, called “chips” or “cheeks” or “shad” or “skad,” and the price varies from twenty-five cents to a hundred dollars per “skad.” It is expected that every person who opens an account at bank by eating a supper there shall buy a number of “shad,” but not with the view of taking them home to show to his wife and children. Yet it is not an uncommon thing for persons of a stingy and ungrateful disposition to spend most of their time in these benevolent institutions without ever spending so much as a dollar for “shad,” but eating, drinking, and smoking, and particularly drinking, to the best of their ability. This reprehensible practice is known familiarly in Washington as “bucking ag’inst the sideboard,” and is thought by some to be the safest mode of doing business at bank. The presiding officer is never called President. He is called “Dealer,”--perhaps from the circumstance of his dealing in ivory,--and is not looked up to and worshipped as the influential man of banking-houses is generally. On. the contrary, he is for the most part condemned by his best customers, whose heart’s desire and prayer are to break his bank and ruin him utterly. Seeing the multitude of boarding-houses, oyster-cellars, and ivory-banks, you may suppose there are no hotels in Washington. You are mistaken. There are plenty of hotels, many of them got up on the scale of magnificent distances that prevails everywhere, and somewhat on the maritime plan of the Departments. Outwardly, they look like colossal docks, erected for the benefit of hacks, large fleets of which you will always find moored under their lee, safe from the monsoon that prevails on the open sea of the Avenue. Inwardly, they are labyrinths, through whose gloomy mazes it is impossible to thread your way without the assistance of an Ariadne’s clue in the shape of an Irishman panting under a trunk. So obscure and involved are the hotel-interiors, that it would be madness for a stranger to venture in search of his room without the guidance of some one far more familiar with the devious course of the narrow clearings through the forest of apartments than the landlord himself. Now and then a reckless and adventurous proprietor undertakes to make a day’s journey alone through his establishment. He is never heard of afterwards,--or, if found, is discovered in a remote angle or loft, in a state of insensibility from bewilderment and starvation. If it were not for an occasional negro, who, instigated by charitable motives or love of money, slouches about from room to room with an empty coal-scuttle as an excuse for his intrusions, a gentleman stopping at a Washington hotel would be doomed to certain death. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

In fact, the lives of all the guests hang upon a thread, or rather, a wire; for, if the bell should fail to answer, there would be no earthly chance of getting into daylight again. It is but reasonable to suppose that the wires to many rooms have been broken in times past, and it is well known in Washington that these rooms are now tenanted by skeletons of hapless travellers whose relatives and friends never doubted that they had been kidnapped or had gone down in the Arctic. The differential calculus by which all Washington is computed obtains at the hotels as elsewhere, with this peculiarity,--that the differences are infinitely great, instead of infinitely small. While the fronts are very fine, showy, and youthful as the Lecompton Constitution, the rears are coarse, common, and old as the Missouri Compromise. The furniture in the rooms that look upon Pennsylvania Avenue is as fresh as the dogma of Squatter Sovereignty; that in all other rooms dates back to the Ordinance of ’87. Some of the apartments exhibit a glaring splendor; the rest show beds, bureaus, and washstands which hard and long usage has polished to a sort of newness. Specimens of ancient pottery found on these washstands are now in the British Museum, and are reckoned among the finest of Layard’s collections at Nineveh. The dining rooms are admirable examples of magnificent distance. The room is long, the tables are long, the kitchen is a long way off, and the waiters a long time going and coming. The meals are long,--so long that there is literally no end to them; they are eternal. It is customary to mark certain points in the endless route of appetite with mile-stones named breakfast, dinner, and supper; but these points have no more positive existence than the imaginary lines and angles of the geometrician. Breakfast runs entirely through dinner into supper, and dinner ends with coffee, the beginning of breakfast. Estimating the duration of dinner by the speed of an ordinary railroad-train, it is twenty miles from soup to fish, and fifty from turkey to nuts. But distance, however magnificent, does not lend enchantment to a meal. The wonder is that the knives and forks are not made to correspond in length with the repasts,--in which case the latter would be pitchforks, and the former John-Brown pikes. The people of Washington are as various, mixed, dissimilar, and contrasted as the edifices they inhabit. Within the like area, which is by no means a small one, the same number of dignitaries can be found nowhere else on the face of the globe,--nor so many characters of doubtful reputation. If the beggars of Dublin, the cripples of Constantinople, and the lepers of Damascus should assemble in Baden-Baden during a Congress of Kings, then Baden- Baden would resemble Washington. Presidents, Senators, Honorables, Judges, Generals, Commodores, Governors, and the Ex’s of all these, congregate here as thick as pick-pockets at a horse-race or women at a wedding in church. Add Ambassadors, Plenipotentiaries, Lords, Counts, Barons, Chevaliers, the great and small fry of the Legations, Captains, Lieutenants, Claim- HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Agents, Negroes, Perpetual-Motion-Men, Fire-Eaters, Irishmen, Plug-Uglies, Hoosiers, Gamblers, Californians, Mexicans, Japanese, Indians, and Organ-Grinders, together with females to match all varieties of males, and you have vague notion of the people of Washington. It is an axiom in physics, that a part cannot be greater than the whole; and it will be recollected, that, after Epistemon had his head sewed on, he related a tough story about the occupations of the mighty dead, and swore, that, in the course of his wanderings among the damned, he found Cicero kindling fires, Hannibal selling egg-shells, and Julius Caesar cleaning stoves. The story holds good in regard to the mighty personages in Washington, but the axiom does not. Men whose fame fills the land, when they are at home or spouting about the country, sink into insignificance when they get to Washington. The sun is but a small potato in the midst of the countless systems of the sidereal heavens. In like manner, the majestic orbs of the political firmament undergo a cruel lessening of diameter as they approach the Federal City. The greatest of men ceases to be great in the presence of hundreds of his peers, and the multitude of the illustrious dwindle into individual littleness by reason of their superabundance. And when it comes to occupations, it will hardly be denied that the stranger who beholds a Senator “coppering on the ace,” or a Congressman standing in a bar-room with a lump of mouldy cheese in one hand and a glass of “pony whiskey” in the other, or a Judge of the Supreme Court wriggling an ugly woman through the ridiculous movements of the polka in a hotel-parlor, must experience sensations quite as confounding as any Epistemon felt in Kingdom Come. In spite of numberless receptions, levees, balls, hops, parties, dinners, and other reunions, there is, properly speaking, no society in Washington. Circles are said to exist, but, like that in the vortex of the whirlpool, they are incessantly changing. Divisions purely arbitrary may be made in any community. Hence the circles of Washington society may be represented sciagraphically in the following diagram. [Illustration] The Circle of the Mudsill includes Negroes, Clerks, Irish Laborers, Patent and other Agents, Hackmen, Faro-Dealers, Washerwomen, and Newspaper-Correspondents. In the Hotel Circle, the Newest Strangers, Harpists, Members of Congress, Concertina- Men, Provincial Judges, Card-Writers, College-Students, Unprotected Females, “Star” and “States” Boys, Stool-Pigeons, Contractors, Sellers of Toothpicks, and Beau Hickman, are found. The Circle of the White House embraces the President, the Cabinet, the Chiefs of Bureaus, the Embassies, Corcoran and Riggs, formerly Mr. Forney, and until recently George Sanders and Isaiah Rynders. The little innermost circle is intended to represent a select body of residents, intense exclusives, who HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

keep aloof from the other circles and hold them all in equal contempt. This circle is known only by report; in all probability it is a myth. It is worthy of remark that the circles of the White House and the Hotels rise higher and sink lower than that of the Mudsill, but whether this is a fact or a mere necessity of the diagram is not known. Society, such as it is, in the metropolis, is indulgent to itself. It intermeddles not, asks no impertinent questions, and transacts its little affairs in perfect peace and quietude. Vigilant as the Inquisition in matters political, it is deaf and blind, but not dumb, as to all others. It dresses as it pleases, drinks as much as it chooses, eats indiscriminately, sleeps promiscuously, gets up at all hours of the day, and does as little work as possible. Its only trouble is that “incomparable grief” to which Panurge was subject, and “which at that time they called lack of money.” In truth, the normal condition of Washington society is, to use a vernacular term, “busted.” It is not an isolated complaint. Everybody is “busted.” No matter what may be the state of a man’s funds when he gets to Washington, no matter how long he stays or how soon he leaves, to this “busted” complexion must he come at last. He is in Rome; he must take the consequences. Shall he insult the whole city with his solvency? Certainly not. He abandons his purse and his conscience to the madness of the hour, and, in generous emulation of the prevailing recklessness and immorality, dismisses every scruple and squanders his last cent. Then, and not till then, does he feel himself truly a Washington-man, able to look anybody in the face with the serene pride of an equal, and without the mortification of being accused or even suspected of having in all the earth a dollar that he can call his own. Where morals are loose, piety is seldom in excess. But there are a half-dozen of churches in Washington, besides preaching every Sunday in the House of Representatives. The relative size and cost of the churches, as compared with the Public Buildings, indicates the true object of worship in Washington. Strange to say, the theatre is smaller than the churches. Clerical and dramatic entertainments cannot compete with the superior attractions of the daily rows in Congress and the nightly orgies at the faro-banks. Heaven is regarded as another Chihuahua or Sonora, occupied at present by unfriendly Camanches, but destined to be annexed some day. In the mean time, a very important election is to come off in Connecticut or Pennsylvania. That must be attended to immediately. Such is piety in Washington. The list of the unique prodigies of Washington is without limit. But marvels heaped together cease to be marvellous, and of all places in the world a museum is the most tiresome. So, amid the whirl and roar of winter-life in Washington, when one has no time to read, write, or think, and scarcely time to eat, drink, and sleep, when the days fly by like hours, and the brain reels under the excitement of the protracted debauch, life becomes an HDT WHAT? INDEX

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intolerable bore. Yet the place has an intense fascination for those who suffer most acutely from the _tedium vitae_ to which every one is more or less a prey; and men and women who have lived in Washington are seldom contented elsewhere. The moths return to the flaming candle until they are consumed. In conclusion, it must be admitted that Washington is the Elysium of oddities, the Limbo of absurdities, an imbroglio of ludicrous anomalies. Planned on a scale of surpassing grandeur, its architectural execution is almost contemptible. Blessed with the name of the purest of men, it has the reputation of Sodom. The seat of the law-making power, it is the centre of violence and disorder which disturb the peace and harmony of the whole Republic,--the chosen resort for duelling, clandestine marriages, and the most stupendous thefts. It is a city without commerce and without manufactures; or rather, its commerce is illicit, and its manufacturers are newspaper-correspondents, who weave tissues of fiction out of the warp of rumor and the web of prevarication. The site of the United States Treasury, it is the home of everything but affluence. Its public buildings are splendid, its private dwellings generally squalid. The houses are low, the rents high; the streets are broad, the crossings narrow; the hacks are black, the horses white; the squares are triangles, except that of the Capitol, which is oval; and the water is so soft that it is hard to drink it, even with the admixture of alcohol. It has a Monument that will never be finished, a Capitol that is to have a dome, a Scientific Institute which does nothing but report the rise and fall of the thermometer, and two pieces of Equestrian Statuary which it would be a waste of time to criticize. It boasts a streamlet dignified with the name of the river Tiber, and this streamlet is of the size and much the appearance of a vein in a dirty man’s arm. It has a canal, but the canal is a mud-puddle during one half the day and an empty ditch during the other. In spite of the labors of the Smithsonian Institute, it has no particular weather. It has the climates of all parts of the habitable globe. It rains, hails, snows, blows, freezes, and melts in Washington, all in the space of twenty-four hours. After a fortnight of steady rain, the sun shines out, and in half an hour the streets are filled with clouds of dust. Property in Washington is exceedingly sensitive, the people alarmingly callous. The men are fine-looking, the women homely. The latter have plain faces, but magnificent busts and graceful figures. The former have an imposing presence and an empty pocket, a great name and a small conscience. Notwithstanding all these impediments and disadvantages, Washington is progressing rapidly. It is fast becoming a large city, but it must always remain a deserted village in the summer. Its destiny is that of the Union. It will be the greatest capital the world ever saw, or it will be “a parched place in the wilderness, a salt land and not inhabited,” and “every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and wag his head.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

MIDSUMMER AND MAY. [Concluded.] Spring at last stole placidly into summer, and Marguerite, who was always shivering in the house, kept the company in a whirl of out-door festivals. “We have not lived so, Roger,” said Mrs. McLean, “since the summer when you went away. We all follow the caprice of this child as a ship follows the little compass-needle.” And she made room for the child beside her in the carriage; for Mr. Raleigh was about driving them into town,--an exercise which had its particular charm for Marguerite, not only for the glimpse it afforded of the gay, bustling inland-city-life, but for opportunities of securing the reins and of occasioning panics. Lately, however, she had resigned the latter pleasure, and sat with quiet propriety by Mrs. McLean. Frequently, also, she took long drives alone or with one of the children, holding the reins listlessly, and ranging the highway unobservantly for miles around. Mrs. Purcell declared the girl was homesick; Mrs. Heath doubted if the climate agreed with her: she neither denied nor affirmed their propositions. Mr. Heath came and went from the city where her father was, without receiving any other notice than she would have bestowed on a peaceful walking-stick; his attentions to her during his visits were unequivocal; she accepted them as nonchalantly as from a waiter at table. On the occasion of his last stay, there had been a somewhat noticeable change in his demeanor: he wore a trifle of quite novel assurance; his supreme bearing was not mitigated by the restless sparkle of his eye; and in addressing her his compliments, he spoke as one having authority. Mrs. Laudersdale, so long and so entirely accustomed to the reception of homage that it cost her no more reflection than an imperial princess bestows on the taxes that produce her tiara, turned slowly from the apparent apathy thus induced on her modes of thought, passivity lost in a gulf of anxious speculation, while she watched the theatre of events with a glow, like wine in lamplight, that burned behind her dusky eyes till they had the steady penetration of some wild creature’s. She may have wondered if Mr. Raleigh’s former feeling were yet alive; she may have wondered if Marguerite had found the spell that once she found, herself; she may have been kept in thrall by ignorance if he had ever read that old confessing note of hers: whatever she thought or hoped or dreaded, she said nothing, and did nothing. Of all those who concerned themselves in the affair of Marguerite’s health and spirits, Mr. Raleigh was the only one who might have solved their mystery. Perhaps the thought of wooing the child whose mother he had once loved was sufficiently HDT WHAT? INDEX

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repugnant to him to overcome the tenderness which every one was forced to feel for so beautiful a creation. I have not said that Marguerite was this, before, because, until brought into contrast with her mother, her extreme loveliness was too little positive to be felt; now it was the evanescent shimmer of pearl to the deep perpetual fire of the carbuncle. Softened, as she became, from her versatile cheeriness, she moved round like a moonbeam, and frequently had a bewildered grace, as if she knew not what to make of herself. Mr. Raleigh, from the moment in which he perceived that she no longer sought his company, retreated into his own apartments, and was less seen by the others than ever. Returning from the drive on the morning of Mrs. McLean’s last recorded remark, Mr. Raleigh, who had remained to give the horses in charge to a servant, was about to pass, when the _tableau_ within the drawing-room caught his attention and altered his course. He entered, and flung his gloves down on a table, and threw himself on the floor beside Marguerite and the children. She appeared to be revisited by a ray of her old sunshine, and had unrolled a giant parcel of candied sweets, which their mother would have sacrificed on the shrine of jalap and senna, the purchase of a surreptitious moment, and was now dispensing the brilliant comestibles with much ill-subdued glee. One mouth, that had bitten off the head of a checkerberry chanticleer, was convulsed with the acidulous tickling of sweetened laughter, till the biter was bit and a metamorphosis into the animal of attack seemed imminent; at the hands of another a warrior in barley-sugar was experiencing the vernacular for defeat with reproving haste and gravity; and there was yet another little omnivorous creature that put out both hands for indiscriminate snatching, and made a spectacle of himself in a general plaster of gum-arabic-drop and brandy- smash. “Contraband?” said Mr. Raleigh. “And sweet as stolen fruit,” said Marguerite. “Ursule makes the richest comfits, but not so innumerable as these. Mamma and I owe our sweet-tooth and honey-lip to bits of her concoction.” “Mrs. Purcell,” asked Mr. Raleigh, as that lady entered, “is this little banquet no seduction to you?” “What are you doing?” she replied. “Drinking honey-dew from acorns.” “Laudersdale as ever!” ejaculated she, looking over his shoulder. “I thought you had ‘no sympathy with’”---- “But I ‘like to see other folks take’"---- “Their sweets, in this case. No, thank you,” she continued, after this little rehearsal of the past. “What are you poisoning all this brood for?” “Mrs. Laudersdale eats sweetmeats; they don’t poison her,” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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remonstrated Katy. “Mrs. Laudersdale, my dear, is exceptional.” Katy opened her eyes, as if she had been told that the object of her adoration was Japanese. “It is the last grain that completes the transformation, as your story-books have told; and one day you will see her stand, a statue of sugar, and melt away in the sun. To be sure, the whole air will be sweetened, but there will be no Mrs. Laudersdale.” “For shame, Mrs. Purcell!” cried Marguerite. “You’re not sweet- tempered, or you’d like sweet dainties yourself. Here are nuts swathed in syrup; you’ll have none of them? Here are health and slumber and idle dreams in a chocolate-drop. Not a chocolate? Here are dates; if you wouldn’t choose the things in themselves, truly you would for their associations? See, when you take up one, what a picture follows it: the plum that has swung at the top of a palm and crowded into itself the glow of those fierce noon-suns; it has been tossed by the sirocco, it has been steeped in reeking dew; there was always stretched above it the blue intense tent of a heaven full of light,--always below and around, long level reaches of hot shining sand; the phantoms of waning desert moons have hovered over it, swarthy Arab chiefs have encamped under it; it has threaded the narrow streets of Damascus--that city the most beautiful--on the backs of gaunt gray dromedaries; it has crossed the seas,--and all for you, if you take it, this product of desert freedom, torrid winds, and fervid suns!” “I might swallow the date,” said Mrs. Purcell, “but Africa would choke me.” Mr. Raleigh had remained silent for some time, watching Marguerite as she talked. It seemed to him that his youth was returning; he forgot his resolves, his desires, and became aware of nothing in the world but her voice. Just before she concluded, she grew conscious of his gaze, and almost at once ceased speaking; her eyes fell a moment to meet it, and then she would have flashed them aside, but that it was impossible; lucid lakes of light, they met his own; she was forced to continue it, to return it, to forget all, as he was forgetting, in that long look. “What is this?” said Mrs. Purcell, stooping to pick up a trifle on the matting. “_C’est à moi!_” cried Marguerite, springing up suddenly, and spilling all the fragments of the feast, to the evident satisfaction of the lately neglected guests. “Yours?” said Mrs. Purcell with coolness, still retaining it. “Why do you think in French?” “Because I choose!” said Marguerite, angrily. “I mean--How do you know that I do?” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“Your exclamation, when highly excited or contemptuously indifferent, is always in that tongue.” “Which am I now?” “Really, you should know best. Here is your bawble”; and Mrs. Purcell tossed it lightly into her hands, and went out. It was a sheath of old morocco. The motion loosened the clasp, and the contents, an ivory oval and a cushion of faded silk, fell to the floor. Mr. Raleigh bent and regathered them; there was nothing for Marguerite but to allow that he should do so. The oval had reversed in falling, so that he did not see it; but, glancing at her before returning it, he found her face and neck dyed deeper than the rose. Still reversed, he was about to relinquish it, when Mrs. McLean passed, and, hearing the scampering of little feet as they fled with booty, she also entered. “Seeing you reminds me, Roger,” said she. “What do you suppose has become of that little miniature I told you of? I was showing it to Marguerite the other night, and have not seen it since. I must have mislaid it, and it was particularly valuable, for it was some nameless thing that Mrs. Heath found among her mother’s trinkets, and I begged it of her, it was such a perfect likeness of you. Can you have seen it?” “Yes, I have it,” he replied. “And haven’t I as good a right to it as any?” He extended his arm for the case which Marguerite held, and so touching her hand, the touch was more lingering than it needed to be; but he avoided looking at her, or he would have seen that the late color had fled till the face was whiter than marble. “Your old propensities,” said Mrs. McLean. “You always will be a boy. By the way, what do you think of Mary Purcell’s engagement? I thought she would always be a girl.” “Ah! McLean was speaking of it to me. Why were they not engaged before?” “Because she was not an heiress.” Mr. Raleigh raised his eyebrows significantly. “He could not afford to marry any but an heiress,” explained Mrs. McLean. Mr. Raleigh fastened the case and restored it silently. “You think that absurd? You would not marry an heiress?” Mr. Raleigh did not at once reply. “You would not, then, propose to an heiress?” “No.” As this monosyllable fell from his lips, Marguerite’s motion placed her beyond hearing. She took a few swift steps, but paused and leaned against the wall of the gable for support, and, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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placing her hand upon the sun-beat bricks, she felt a warmth in them which there seemed to be neither in herself nor in the wide summer-air. Mrs. Purcell came along, opening her parasol. “I am going to the orchard,” said she; “cherries are ripe. Hear the robins and the bells! Do you want to come?” “No,” said Marguerite. “There are bees in the orchard, too,--the very bees, for aught I know, that Mr. Raleigh used to watch thirteen years ago, or their great-grand-bees,--they stand in the same place.” “You knew Mr. Raleigh thirteen years ago?” she asked, glancing up curiously. “Yes.” “Well?” “Very well.” “How much is very well?” “He proposed to me. Smother your anger; he didn’t care for me; some one told him that I cared for him.” “Did you?” “This is what the Inquisition calls applying the question?” asked Mrs. Purcell. “Nonsense, dear child! he was quite in love with somebody else.” “And that was----?” “He supposed your mother to be a widow. Well, if you won’t come, I shall go alone and read my ‘L’Allegro’ under the boughs, with breezes blowing between the lines. I can show you some little field-mice like unfledged birds, and a nest that protrudes now and then glittering eyes and cleft fangs.” Marguerite was silent; the latter commodity was _de trop_. Mrs. Purcell adjusted her parasol and passed on. Here, then, was the whole affair. Marguerite pressed her hands to her forehead, as if fearful some of the swarming thoughts should escape; then she hastened up the slope behind the house, and entered and hid herself in the woods. Mr. Raleigh had loved her mother. Of course, then, there was not a shadow of doubt that her mother had loved him. Horrible thought! and she shook like an aspen, beneath it. For a time it seemed that she loathed him,--that she despised the woman who had given him regard. The present moment was a point of dreadful isolation; there was no past to remember, no future to expect; she herself was alone and forsaken, the whole world dark, and heaven blank. But that could not be forever. As she sat with her face buried in her hands, old words, old looks, flashed on her recollection; she comprehended what long years of silent suffering the one might have endured, what barren yearning the other; she saw how her HDT WHAT? INDEX

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mother’s haughty calm might be the crust on a lava-sea; she felt what desolation must have filled Roger Raleigh’s heart, when he found that she whom he had loved no longer lived, that he had cherished a lifeless ideal,--for Marguerite knew from his own lips that he had not met the same woman whom he had left. She started up, wondering what had led her upon this train of thought, why she had pursued it, and what reason she had for the pain it gave her. A step rustled among the distant last-year’s leaves; there in the shadowy wood, where she did not dream of concealing her thoughts, where it seemed that all Nature shared her confidence, this step was like a finger laid on the hidden sore. She paused, a glow rushed over her frame, and her face grew hot with the convicting flush. Consternation, bitter condemnation, shame, impetuous resolve, swept over her in one torrent, and she saw that she had a secret which every one might touch, and, touching, cause to sting. She hurried onward through the wood, unconscious how rapidly or how far her heedless course extended. She sprang across gaps at which she would another time have shuddered; she clambered over fallen trees, penetrated thickets of tangled brier, and followed up the shrunken beds of streams, till suddenly the wood grew thin again, and she emerged upon an open space,--a long lawn, where the grass grew rank and tall as in deserted graveyards, and on which the afternoon sunshine lay with most dreary, desolate emphasis. Marguerite had scarcely comprehended herself before; now, as she looked out on the utter loneliness of the place, all joyousness, all content, seemed wiped from the world. She leaned against a tree where the building rose before her, old and forsaken, washed by rains, beaten by winds. A blind slung open, loose on a broken hinge; the emptiness of the house looked through it like a spirit. The woodbine seemed the only living thing about it,--the woodbine that had swung its clusters, heavy as grapes of Eshcol, along one wall, and, falling from support, had rioted upon the ground in masses of close-netted luxuriance. Standing and surveying the silent scene of former gayety, a figure came down the slope, crushing the grass with lingering tread, checked himself, and, half-reversed, surveyed it with her. Her first impulse was to approach, her next to retreat; by a resolution of forces she remained where she was. Mr. Raleigh’s position prevented her from seeing the expression of his face; from his attitude seldom was anything to be divined. He turned with a motion of the arm, as if he swung off a burden, and met her eye. He laughed, and drew near. “I am tempted to return to that suspicion of mine when I first met you, Miss Marguerite,” said he. “You take shape from solitude and empty air as easily as a Dryad steps from her tree.” “There are no Dryads now,” said Marguerite, sententiously. “Then you confess to being a myth?” “I confess to being tired, Mr. Raleigh.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Mr. Raleigh’s manner changed, at her petulance and fatigue, to the old air of protection, and he gave her his hand. It was pleasant to be the object of his care, to be with him as at first, to renew their former relation. She acquiesced, and walked beside him. “You have had some weary travel,” he said, “and probably not more than half of it in the path.” And she feared he would glance at the rents in her frock, forgetting that they were not sufficiently infrequent facts to be noticeable. “He treats me like a child,” she thought. “He expects me to tear my dress! He forgets, that, while thirteen years were making a statue of her, they were making a woman of me!” And she snatched away her hand. “I have the boat below,” he said, without paying attention to the movement. “You took the longest way round, which, you have heard, is the shortest way home. You have never been on the lake with me.” And he was about to assist her in. She stepped back, hesitating. “No, no,” he said. “It is very well to think of walking back, but it must end in thinking. You have no impetus now to send you over another half-dozen miles of wood-faring, no pique to sting, Io.” And before she could remonstrate, she was lifted in, the oars had flashed twice, and there was deep water between herself and shore. She was in reality too much fatigued to be vexed, and she sat silently watching the spaces through which they glanced, and listening to the rhythmic dip of the oars. The soft afternoon air, with its melancholy sweetness and tinge of softer hue, hung round them; the water, brown and warm, was dimpled with the flight of myriad insects; they wound among the islands, a path one of them knew of old. From the shelving rocks a wild convolvulus drooped its twisted bells across them, a sweet-brier snatched at her hair in passing, a sudden elder-tree shot out its creamy panicles above, they ripped up drowsy beds of folded lily-blooms. Mr. Raleigh, suddenly lifting one oar, gave the boat a sharp curve and sent it out on the open expanse; it seemed to him that he had no right thus to live two lives in one. Still he wished to linger, and with now and then a lazy movement they slipped along. He leaned one arm on the upright oar, like a river-god, and from the store of boat-songs in his remembrance sang now and then a strain. Marguerite sat opposite and rested along the side, content for the moment to glide on as they were, without a reference to the past in her thought, without a dream of the future. Peach-bloom fell on the air, warmed all objects into mellow tint, and reddened deep into sunset. Tinkling cow-bells, where the kine wound out from pasture, stole faintly over the lake, reflected dyes suffused it and spread around them sheets HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of splendid color, outlines grew ever dimmer on the distant shores, a purple tone absorbed all brilliance, the shadows fell, and, bright with angry lustre, the planet Mars hung in the south and struck a spear, redder than rubies, down the placid mirror. The dew gathered and lay sparkling on the thwarts as they touched the garden-steps, and they mounted and traversed together the alleys of odorous dark. They entered at Mr. Raleigh’s door and stepped thence into the main hall, where they could see the broad light from the drawing-room windows streaming over the lawn beyond. Mrs. Laudersdale came down the hall to meet them. “My dear Rite,” she said, “I have been alarmed, and have sent the servants out for you. You left home in the morning, and you have not dined. Your father and Mr. Heath have arrived. Tea is just over, and we are waiting for you to dress and go into town; it is Mrs. Manton’s evening, you recollect.” “Must I go, mamma?” asked Marguerite, after this statement of facts. “Then I must have tea first. Mr. Raleigh, I remember my wasted sweetmeats of the morning with a pang. How long ago that seems!” In a moment her face told her regret for the allusion, and she hastened into the dining-room. Mr. Raleigh and Marguerite had a merry tea, and Mrs. Purcell came and poured it out for them. “Quite like the days when we went gypsying,” said she, when near its conclusion. “We have just come from the Bawn, Miss Marguerite and I,” he replied. “You have? I never go near it. Did it break your heart?” Mr. Raleigh laughed. “Is Mr. Raleigh’s heart such a delicate organ?” asked Marguerite. “Once, you might have been answered negatively; now, it must be like the French banner, _percé, troué, criblé,”-- “Pray, add the remainder of your quotation,” said he,--”_sans peur et sans reproche_.” “So that a trifle would reduce it to flinders,” said Mrs. Purcell, without minding his interruption. “Would you give it such a character, Miss Rite?” questioned Mr. Raleigh lightly. “I? I don’t see that you have any heart at all, Sir.” “I swallow my tea and my mortification.” “Do you remember your first repast at the Bawn?” asked Mrs. Purcell. “Why not?” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“And the jelly like molten rubies that I made? It keeps well.” And she moved a glittering dish toward him. “All things of that summer keep well,” he replied. “Except yourself, Mr. Raleigh. The Indian jugglers are practising upon us, I suspect. You are no more like the same person who played sparkling comedy and sang passionate tragedy than this bamboo stick is like that willow wand.” “I wish I could retort, Miss Helen,” he replied. “I beg your pardon!” She was silent, and her eye fell and rested on the sheeny damask beneath. He glanced at her keenly an instant, then handed her his cup, saying,-- “May I trouble you?” She looked up again, a smile breaking over the face wanner than youth, but which the hour’s gayety had flushed to a forgetfulness of intervening years, extended her left hand for the cup, still gazing and smiling. Various resolves had flitted through Marguerite’s mind since her entrance. One, that she would yet make Mr. Raleigh feel her power, yielded to shame and self-contempt, and she despised herself for a woman won unwooed. But she was not sure that she was won. Perhaps, after all, she did not care particularly for Mr. Raleigh. He was much older than she; he was quite grave, sometimes satirical; she knew nothing about him; she was slightly afraid of him. On the whole, if she consulted her taste, she would have preferred a younger hero; she would rather be the Fornarina for a Raffaello; she had fancied her name sweetening the songs of Giraud Riquier, the last of the Troubadours; and she did not believe Beatrice Portinari to be so excellent among women, so different from other girls, that her name should have soared so far aloft with that escutcheon of the golden wing on a field azure. “But they say that there cannot be two epic periods in a nation’s literature,” thought Marguerite hurriedly; “so that a man who might have been Homer once will be nothing but a gentleman now.” And at this point, having decided that Mr. Raleigh was fully worth unlimited love, she added to her resolves a desire for content with whatever amount of friendly affection he chose to bestow upon her. And all this, while sifting the sugar over her raspberries. Nevertheless, she felt, in the midst of her heroic content, a strange jealousy at hearing the two thus discuss days in which she had no share, and she watched them furtively, with a sharp, hateful suspicion dawning in her mind. Now, as Mrs. Purcell’s eyes met Mr. Raleigh’s, and her hand was still extended for the cup, Marguerite fastened her glance on its glittering ring, and said abruptly,-- “Mrs. Purcell, have you a husband?” Mrs. Purcell started and withdrew her hand, as if it had received a blow, just as Mr. Raleigh relinquished the cup, so that between HDT WHAT? INDEX

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them the bits of pictured porcelain fell and splintered over the equipage. “Naughty child!” said Mrs. Purcell. “See now what you’ve done!” “What have I to do with it?” “Then you haven’t any bad news for me? Has any one heard from the Colonel? Is he ill?” “Pshaw!” said Marguerite, rising and throwing down her napkin. She went to the window and looked out. “It is time you were gone, little lady,” said Mr. Raleigh. She approached Mrs. Purcell and passed her hand down her hair. “What pretty soft hair you have!” said she. “These braids are like carved gold-stone. May I dress it with sweet-brier to- night? I brought home a spray.” “Rite!” said Mrs. Laudersdale sweetly, at the door; and Rite obeyed the summons. In a half-hour she came slowly down the stairs, untwisting a long string of her mother’s abandoned pearls, great pear-shaped things full of the pale lustre of gibbous moons. She wore a dress of white samarcand, with a lavish ornament like threads and purfiles of gold upon the bodice, and Ursule followed with a cloak. As she entered the drawing-room, the great bunches of white azalea, which her mother had brought from the swamps, caught her eye; she threw down the pearls, and broke off rapid dusters of the queenly flowers, touching the backward-curling hyacinthine petals, and caressingly passing her finger down the pale purple shadow of the snowy folds. Directly afterward she hung them in her breezy hair, from which, by natural tenure, they were not likely to fall, bound them over her shoulders and in her waist. “See! I stand like Summer,” she said, “wrapped in perfume; it is intoxicating.” Just then two hands touched her, and her father bent his face over her. She flung her arms round him, careless of their fragile array, kissed him on both cheeks, laughed, and kissed him again. She did not speak, for he disliked French, and English sometimes failed her. “Here is Mr. Heath,” her father said. She partly turned, touched that gentleman’s hand with the ends of her fingers, and nodded. Her father whispered a brief sentence in her ear. “_Jamais, Monsieur, jamais!_” she exclaimed; then, with a quick gesture of deprecation, moved again toward him; but Mr. Laudersdale had coldly passed to make his compliments to Mrs. Heath. “You are not in toilet?” said Marguerite, following him, but HDT WHAT? INDEX

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speaking with Mr. Raleigh. “No,--Mrs. Purcell has been playing for me a little thing I always liked,--that sweet, tuneful afternoon chiding of the Miller and the Torrent.” She glanced at Mrs. Purcell, saw that her dress remained unaltered, and commenced pulling out the azaleas from her own. “I do not want to go,” she murmured. “I need not! Mamma and Mrs. McLean have already gone in the other carriage.” “Come, Marguerite,” said Mr. Laudersdale, approaching her, as Mr. Heath and his mother disappeared. “I am not going,” she replied, quickly. “Not going? I beg your pardon, my dear, but you are!” and he took her hand. She half endeavored to withdraw it, threw a backward glance over her shoulder at the remaining pair, and, led by her father, went out. Marguerite did her best to forget the vexation, was very affable with her father, and took no notice of any of Mr. Heath’s prolonged remarks. The drive was at best a tiresome one, and she was already half-asleep when the carriage stopped. The noise and light, and the little vanities of the dressing-room, awakened her, and she descended prepared for conquest. But, after a few moments, it all became weariness, the air was close, the flowers faded, the music piercing. The toilets did not attract nor the faces interest her. She danced along absent and spiritless, when her eye, raised dreamily, fell on an object among the curtains and lay fascinated there. It was certainly Mr. Raleigh: but so little likely did that seem, that she again circled the room, with her eyes bent upon that point, expecting it to vanish. He must have come in the saddle, unless a coach had returned for him and Mrs. Purcell,--yes, there was Mrs. Purcell,--and she wore that sweet-brier fresh-blossoming in the light. With what ease she moved!--it must always have been the same grace;--how brilliant she was! There,--she was going to dance with Mr. Raleigh. No? Where, then? Into the music-room! The music-room lay beyond an anteroom of flowers and prints, and was closed against the murmur of the parlors by great glass doors. Marguerite, from her position, could see Mr. Raleigh seated at the piano, and Mrs. Purcell standing by his side; now she turned a leaf, now she stooped, and their hands touched upon the keys. Marguerite slipped alone through the dancers, and drew nearer. There were others in the music-room, but they were at a distance from the piano. She entered the anteroom and sat shadowed among the great fragrant shrubs. A group already stood there, eating ices and gayly gossiping. Mr. Laudersdale and Mr. Manton sauntered in, their heads together, and muttering occult matters of business, whose tally was kept with forefinger on palm. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“Where is Raleigh?” asked Mr. Manton, looking up. “He can tell us.” “At his old occupation,” answered a gentleman from beside Mrs. Laudersdale, “flirting with forbidden fruit.” “An alliterative amusement,” said Mrs. Laudersdale. “You did not know the original Raleigh?” continued the gentleman. “But he always took pleasure in female society; yet, singularly enough, though fastidious in choice, it was only upon the married ladies that he bestowed his platonisms. I observe the old Adam still clings to him.” “He probably found more liberty with them,” remarked Mrs. Laudersdale, when no one else replied. “Without doubt he took it.” “I mean, that, where attentions are known to intend nothing, one is not obliged to measure them, or to calculate upon effects.” “Of the latter no one can accuse Mr. Raleigh!” said Mr. Laudersdale, hotly, forgetting himself for once. Mrs. Laudersdale lifted her large eyes and laid them on her husband’s face. “Excuse me! excuse me!” said the gentleman, with natural misconception. “I was not aware that he was a friend of yours.” And taking a lady on his arm, he withdrew. “Nor is he!” said Mr. Laudersdale, in lowest tones, replying to his wife’s gaze, and for the first time intimating his feeling. “Never, never, can I repair the ruin he has made me!” Mrs. Laudersdale rose and stretched out her arm, blindly. “The room is quite dark,” she murmured; “the flowers must soil the air. Will you take me up-stairs?” Meanwhile, the unconscious object of their remark was turning over a pile of pages with one hand, while the other trifled along the gleaming keys. “Here it is,” said he, drawing one from the others, and arranging it before him,--a _gondel-lied_. There stole from his fingers the soft, slow sound of lapsing waters, the rocking on the tide, the long sway of some idle weed. Here a jet of tune was flung out from a distant bark, here a high octave flashed like a passing torch through night-shadows, and lofty arching darkness told in clustering chords. Now the boat fled through melancholy narrow ways of pillared pomp and stately beauty, now floated off on the wide lagoons alone with the stars and sea. Into this broke the passion of the gliding lovers, deep and strong, giving a soul to the whole, and fading away again, behind its wild beating,--with the silence of lapping ripple and dipping oar. Mrs. Purcell, standing beside the player, laid a careless arm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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across the instrument, and bent her face above him like a flower languid with the sun’s rays. Suddenly the former smile suffused it, and, as the gondel-lied fell into a slow floating accompaniment, she sang with a swift, impetuous grace, and in a sweet, yet thrilling voice, the Moth Song. The shrill music and murmur from the parlors burst all at once in muffled volume upon the melody, and, turning, they both saw Marguerite standing in the doorway, like an angry wraith, and flitting back again. Mrs. Purcell laughed, but took up the thread of her song again where it was broken, and carried it through to the end. Then Mr. Raleigh tossed the gondel-lied aside, and rising, they continued their stroll. "You have more than your share of the good things of life, Raleigh,” said Mr. McLean, as the person addressed poured out wine for Mrs. Purcell. “Two affairs on hand at once? You drink deep. Light and sparkling,--thin and tart,--isn’t it Solomon who forbids mixed drink?" "I was never the worse for claret,” replied Mr. Raleigh, bearing away the glittering glass. The party from the Lake had not arrived at an early hour, and it was quite late when Mr. Raleigh made his way through ranks of tireless dancers, toward Marguerite. She had been dancing with a spirit that would have resembled joyousness but for its reckless _abandon_. She seemed to him then like a flame, as full of wilful sinuous caprice. At the first he scarcely liked it, but directly the artistic side of his nature recognized the extreme grace and beauty that flowed through every curve of movement. Standing now, the corn-silk hair slightly disordered and still blown about by the fan of some one near her, her eyes sparkling like stars in the dewdrops of wild wood-violets, warm, yet weary, and a flush deepening her cheek with color, while the flowers hung dead around her, she held a glass of wine and watched the bead swim to the brim. Mr. Raleigh approached unaware, and startled her as he spoke. "It is _au gré du vent_, indeed,” he said,--"just the white fluttering butterfly,--and now that the wings are clasped above this crimson blossom, I have a chance of capture.” And smiling, he gently withdrew the splendid draught. "_Buvez, Monsieur_,” she said; “_c’est le vin de la vie!_" "Do you know how near daylight it is?” he replied. “Mrs. Laudersdale fainted in the heat, and your father took her home long ago. The Heaths went also; and the carriage has just returned for the only ones of us that are left, you and me." "Is it ready now?" "Yes." "So am I." And in a few moments she sat opposite him in the coach, on their way home. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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"It wouldn’t be possible for me to sit on the box and drive?” she asked. "I should like it, in this wild starlight, these flying clouds, this breath of dawn." Meeting no response, she sank into silence. No emotion can keep one awake forever, and, after all her late fatigue, the roll of the easy vehicle upon the springs soon soothed her into a dreamy state. Through the efforts at wakefulness, she watched the gleams that fell within from the carriage-lamps, the strange shadows on the roadside, the boughs tossing to the wind and flickering all their leaves in the speeding light; she watched, also, Mr. Raleigh’s face, on which, in the fitful flashes, she detected a look of utter weariness. "_Monsieur_,” she exclaimed, “_il faut que je vous gêne!_" "Immensely,” said Mr. Raleigh with a smile; “but, fortunately, for no great time." "We shall be soon at home? Then I must have slept." "Very like. What did you dream?" "Oh, one must not tell dreams before breakfast, or they come to pass, you know." "No,--I am uninitiated in dream-craft. Mr. Heath"---- "_Monsieur_,” she cried, with sudden heat, “_il me semble que je comprends les Laocoons! J’en suis de même!_" As she spoke, she fell, struck forward by a sudden shock, the coach was rocking like a boat, and plunging down unknown gulfs. Mr. Raleigh seized her, broke through the door, and sprang out. "_Qu’avez vous?_” she exclaimed. "The old willow is fallen in the wind,” he replied. "_Quel dommage_ that we did not see it fall!" "It has killed one of the horses, I fear,” he continued, measuring, as formerly, her terror by her levity. “Capua! is all right? Are you safe?" "Yah, massa!” responded a voice from the depths, as Capua floundered with the remaining horse in the thicket at the lake- edge below. “Yah, massa,--nuffin harm Ol’ Cap in water; spec he born to die in galluses; had nuff chance to be in glory, ef ’twasn’t. I’s done beat wid dis yer pony, anyhow, Mass’r Raleigh. Seems, ef he was a ’sect to fly in de face of all creation an’ pay no ’tention to his centre o’ gravity, he might walk up dis yer hill!" Mr. Raleigh left Marguerite a moment, to relieve Capua’s perplexity. Through the remaining darkness, the sparkle of stars, and wild fling of shadows in the wind, she could but dimly discern the struggling figures, and the great creature trampling and snorting below. She remembered strange tales out of the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“Arabian Nights,” “Bellerophon and the Chimaera,” “St. George and the Dragon"; she waited, half-expectant, to see the great talon-stretched wings flap up against the slow edge of dawn, where Orion lay, a pallid monster, watching the planet that flashed like some great gem low in a crystalline west, and she stepped nearer, with a kind of eager and martial spirit, to do battle in turn. "Stand aside, Una!” cried Mr. Raleigh, who had worked in a determined characteristic silence, and the horse’s head, sharp ear, and starting eye were brought to sight, and then his heaving bulk. "All right, massa!” cried Capua, after a moment’s survey, as he patted the trembling flanks. “Pretty tough ex’cise dat! Spect Massam Clean be mighty high,--his best cretur done about killed wid dat tree;--feared he show dis nigger a stick worf two o’ dat!" "We had like to have finished our dance on nothing,” said Mr. Raleigh now, looking back on the splintered wheels and panels. “Will you mount? I can secure you from falling." "Oh, no,--I can walk; it is only a little way." "Reach home like Cinderella? If you had but one glass slipper, that might be; but in satin ones it is impossible.” And she found herself seated aloft before quite aware what had happened. Pacing along, they talked lightly, with the gayety natural upon excitement,--Capua once in a while adding a cogent word. As they opened the door, Mr. Raleigh paused a moment. "I am glad,” he said, “that my last day with you has been crowned by such adventures. I leave the Lake at noon." She hung, listening, with a backward swerve of figure, and regarding him in the dim light of the swinging hall-lamp, for the moment half-petrified. Suddenly she turned and seized his hand in hers,--then threw it off. "_Cher ami_,” she murmured hastily, in a piercing whisper, like some articulate sigh, “_si tu m’aimes, dis moi!_" The door closed in the draught, the drawing-room door opened, and Mr. Laudersdale stepped out, having been awaiting their return. Mr. Raleigh caught the flash of Marguerite’s eye and the crimson of her cheek, as she sprang forward up the stairs and out of sight. The family did not breakfast together the next day, as politeness chooses to call the first hour after a ball, and Mr. Raleigh was making some arrangements preliminary to his departure, in his own apartments, at about the hour of noon. The rooms which he had formerly occupied Mrs. McLean had always kept closed, in a possibility of his return, and he had found himself installed in them upon his arrival. The library was today rather a melancholy room: the great book-cases did not enliven it; the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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grand-piano, with its old dark polish, seemed like a coffin, the sarcophagus of unrisen music; the oak panelling had absorbed a richer hue with the years than once it wore; the portrait of his mother seemed farther withdrawn from sight and air; Antinoüs took a tawnier tint in his long reverie. The Summer, past her height, sent a sad beam, the signal of decay, through the half- open shutters, and it lay wearily on the man who sat by the long table, and made more sombre yet the faded carpet and cumbrous chair. There was a tap on the door. Mr. Raleigh rose and opened it, and invited Mr. Laudersdale in. The latter gentleman complied, took the chair resigned by the other, but after a few words became quiet. Mr. Raleigh made one or two attempts at conversation, then, seeing silence to be his visitor’s whim, suffered him to indulge it, and himself continued his writing. Indeed, the peculiar relations existing between these men made much conversation difficult. Mr. Laudersdale sat with his eyes upon the floor for several minutes, and his countenance wrapped in thought. Rising, with his hands behind him, he walked up and down the long room, still without speaking. "Can I be of service to you, Sir?” asked the other, after observing him. "Yes, Mr. Raleigh, I am led to think you can,"--still pacing up and down, and vouchsafing no further information. At last, the monotonous movement ended, Mr. Laudersdale stood at the window, intercepting the sunshine, and examined some memoranda. "Yes, Mr. Raleigh,” he resumed, with all his courtly manner, upon close of the examination, “I am in hopes that you may assist me in a singular dilemma." "I shall be very glad to do so." "Thank you. This is the affair. About a year ago, being unable to make my usual visit to my daughter and her grandmother, I sent there in my place our head clerk, young Heath, to effect the few transactions, and also to take a month’s recreation,-- for we were all overworked and exhausted by the crisis. The first thing he proceeded to do was to fall in love with my daughter. Of course he did not mention this occurrence to me, on his return. When my daughter arrived at New York, I was again detained, myself, and sent her to this place under his care. He lingered rather longer than he should have done, knowing the state of things; but I suspected nothing, for the idea of a clerk’s marriage with the heiress of the great Martinique estate never entered my mind; moreover, I have regarded her as a child; and I sent him back with various commissions at several times,- -once on business with McLean, once to obtain my wife’s signature to some sacrifice of property, and so on. I really beg your pardon, Mr. Raleigh; it is painful to another, I am aware, to be thrust upon family confidences"---- HDT WHAT? INDEX

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"Pray, Sir, proceed,” said Mr. Raleigh, wheeling his chair about. "But since you are in a manner connected with the affair, yourself"---- "You must be aware, Mr. Laudersdale, that my chief desire is the opportunity you afford me." "I believe so. I am happy to afford it. On the occasion of Mr. Heath’s last visit to this place, Marguerite drew attention to a coin whose history you heard, and the other half of which Mrs. Purcell wore. Mr. Heath obtained the fragment he possessed through my wife’s aunt, Susanne Le Blanc; Mrs. Purcell obtained hers through her grandmother, Susan White. Of course, these good people were not slow to put the coin and the names together; Mr. Heath, moreover, had heard portions of the history of Susanne Le Blanc, when in Martinique. "On resuming his duties in the counting-house, after this little incident, one day, at the close of business-hours, he demanded from me the remnants of this history with which he might be unacquainted. When I paused, he took up the story and finished it with ease, and--and poetical justice, I may say, Mr. Raleigh. Susanne was the sister of Mrs. Laudersdale’s father, though far younger than he. She met a young American gentleman, and they became interested in each other. Her brother designed her for a different fate,--the governor of the island, indeed, was her suitor,--and forbade their intercourse. There were rumors of a private marriage; her apartments were searched for any record, note, or proof, unsuccessfully. If there were such, they had been left in the gentleman’s hands for better concealment. It being supposed that they continued to meet, M. Le Blanc prevailed upon the governor to arrest the lover on some trifling pretence and send him out of the island. Shortly afterward, as he once confessed to his wife, he caused a circumstantial account of the death and funeral obsequies of each to reach the other. Immediately he urged the governor’s suit again, and when she continued to resist, he fixed the wedding-day, himself, and ordered the _trousseau_. Upon this, one evening, she buried the box of trinkets at the foot of the oleanders, and disappeared the next, and no trace of her was found. "When I reached this point, young Heath turned to me with that impudently nonchalant drawl of his, saying,-- "’And her property, Sir?’ "’That,’ I replied innocently, ‘which comprised half the estate, and which she would have received, on attaining the requisite age, was inherited by her brother, upon her suicide.’ "’Apparent suicide, you mean,’ said he; and thereupon took up the story, as I have said, matched date to date and person to person, and informed me that exactly a fortnight from the day of Mademoiselle Susanne Le Blanc’s disappearance, a young lady took rooms at a hotel in a Southern city, and advertised for a HDT WHAT? INDEX

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situation as governess, under the name of Susan White. She gave no references, spoke English imperfectly, and had difficulty in obtaining one; finally, however, she was successful, and after a few years married into the family of her employer, and became the mother of Mrs. Heath. The likeness of Mrs. Purcell, the grandchild of Susan White, to Susanne Le Blanc, was so extraordinary, a number of years ago, that, when Ursule, my daughter’s nurse, first saw her, she fainted with terror. My wife, you are aware, was born long after these events. This governess never communicated to her husband any more specific circumstance of her youth than that she had lived in the West Indies, and had left her family because they had resolved to marry her,--as she might have done, had she not died shortly after her daughter’s birth. Among her few valuables were found this half-coin of Heath’s, and a miniature, which his mother recently gave your cousin, but which, on account of its new interest, she has demanded again; for it is probably that of the ancient lover, and bearing, as it does, a very striking resemblance to yourself, you have pronounced it to be undoubtedly that of your uncle, Reuben Raleigh, and wondered how it came into the possession of Mrs. Heath’s mother. Now, as you may be aware, Reuben Raleigh was the name of Susanne Le Blanc’s lover." "No,--I was not aware." Mr. Laudersdale’s countenance, which had been animated in narration, suddenly fell. "I was in hopes,” he resumed,--"I thought,--my relation of these occurrences may have been very confused; but it is as plain as daylight to me, that Susanne Le Blanc and Susan White are one, and that the property of the first is due to the heirs of the last." "Without doubt, Sir." "The same is plain, to the Heaths. I am sure that Marguerite will accept our decision in the matter,--sure that no daughter of mine would retain a fraudulent penny; for retain it she could, since there is not sufficient proof in any court, if we chose to contest; but it will beggar her." "How, Sir? Beggar her to divide her property?" "It is a singular division. The interest due on Susanne’s moiety swells it enormously. Add to this, that, after M. Le Blanc’s death, Madame Le Blanc, a much younger person, did not so well understand the management of affairs, the property depreciated, and many losses were encountered, and it happens that the sum due Mrs. Heath covers the whole amount that Marguerite possesses." "Now, then, Sir?” exclaimed Mr. Raleigh, interrogatively. "Now, then, Mrs. Heath requests my daughter’s hand for her son, and offers to set off to him, at once, such sum as would HDT WHAT? INDEX

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constitute his half of her new property upon her decease, and allow him to enter our house as special partner." "Ah!" "This does not look so unreasonable. Last night he proposed formally to Marguerite, who is still ignorant of these affairs, and she refused him. I have urged her differently,--I can do no more than urge,--and she remains obdurate. To accumulate misfortunes, we escaped 1857 by a miracle. We have barely recovered; and now various disasters striking us,--the loss of the Osprey the first and chief of them,--we are to-day on the verge of bankruptcy. Nothing but the entrance of this fortune can save us from ruin." "Unfortunate!” said Mr. Raleigh,--"most unfortunate! And can I serve you at this point?" "Not at all, Sir,” said Mr. Laudersdale, with sudden erectness. “No,--I have but one hope. It has seemed to me barely possible that your uncle may have communicated to you events of his early life,--that you may have heard, that there may have been papers telling of the real fate of Susanne Le Blanc." "None that I know of,” said Mr. Raleigh, after a pause. “My uncle was a very reserved person. I often imagined that his youth had not been without its passages, something to account for his unvarying depression. In one letter, indeed, I asked him for such a narration. He promised to give it to me shortly,--the next mail, perhaps. The next mail I received nothing; and after that he made no allusion to the request." "Indeed? Indeed? I should say,--pardon me, Mr. Raleigh,--that your portion of the next mail met with some accident. Your servants could not explain it?" "There is Capua, who was major-domo. We can inquire,” said Mr. Raleigh, with a smile, rising and ringing for that functionary. On Capua’s appearance, the question was asked, if he had ever secretly detained letter or paper of any kind. "Lors, massa! I alwes knew ’twould come to dis!” he replied. “No, massa, neber!” shaking his head with repeated emphasis. "I thought you might have met with some accident, Capua,” said his master. "Axerden be ----, beg massa’s parden; but such s’picions poison any family’s peace, and make a feller done forgit hisself." "Very well,” said Mr. Raleigh, who was made to believe by this vehemence in what at first had seemed a mere fantasy. “Only remember, that, if you could assure me that any papers had been destroyed, the assurance would be of value." "’Deed, Mass Roger? Dat alters de case,” said Capua, grinning. “Dere’s been a good many papers ’stroyed in dis yer house firs’ an’ last." HDT WHAT? INDEX

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"Which in particular?" "Don’ rekerlek, massa, it’s so long ago." "But make an effort." "Well, Massa Raleigh,--’pears to me I _do_ remember suthin’,-- I do b’lieve--yes, dis’s jist how ’twas. Spect I might as well make a crean breast ob it. I’s alwes had it hangin’ roun’ my conscious; do’no’ but I’s done grad to git rid ob it. Alwes spected massa ’d be ’xcusin’ Cap o’ turnin’ tief." "That is the last accusation I should make against you, Capua." "But dar I stan’s convicted." "Out with it, Capua!” said Mr. Laudersdale, laughing. "Lord! Massa Lausdel! how you do scare a chile! Didn’ know mass’r was dar. See, Mass Roger, dis’s jist how ’twas. Spec you mind dat time when all dese yer folks lib’d acrost de lake dat summer, an’ massa was possessed to ’most lib dar too? Well, one day, massa mind Ol’ Cap’s runnin’ acrost in de rain an’ in great state ob excitement to tell him his house done burnt up?" "Yes. What then?" "Dat day, massa, de letters had come from Massa Reuben out in Indy, an’ massa’s pipe kinder ’tracted Cap’s ’tention, an’ so he jist set down in massa’s chair an’ took a smoke. Bimeby Cap thought,--’Ef massa come an’ ketch him!’--an’ put down de pipe an’ went to work, and bimeby I smelt mighty queer smell, massa, ’bout de house, made him tink Ol’ Nick was come hissef for Ol’ Cap, an’ I come back into dis yer room an’ Massa Reuben’s letters from Indy was jist most done burnt up, he cotched ’em in dese yer ol’ brack han’s, Mass Roger, an’ jist whipt ’em up in dat high croset." And having arrived at this confusion in his personal pronouns, Capua mounted nimbly on pieces of furniture, thrust his pocket- knife through a crack of the wainscot, opened the door of a small unseen closet, and, after groping about and inserting his head as Van Amburgh did in the lion’s mouth, scrambled down again with his hand full of charred and blackened papers, talking glibly all the while. "Ef massa’d jist listen to reason,” he said, “’stead o’ flyin’ into one ob his tantrums, I might sprain de matter. You see, I knew Mass Roger’d feel so oncomforble and remorseful to find his ol’ uncle’s letters done ’stroyed, an ’twas all by axerden, an’ couldn’ help it noways, massa, an’ been done sorry eber since, an’ wished dar warn’t no letters dis side de Atlantic nor torrer, ebery day I woke." After which plea, Capua awaited his sentence. "That will do,--it’s over now, old boy,” said Mr. Raleigh, with his usual smile. "Now, massa, you a’n’t gwine"---- HDT WHAT? INDEX

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"No, Capua, I’m going to do nothing but look at the papers." "But massa’s"---- "You need not be troubled,--I said, I was not." "But, massa,--s’pose I deserve a thrashing?" "There’s no danger of your getting it, you blameless Ethiop!" Upon which pacific assurance, Capua departed. The two gentlemen now proceeded to the examination of these fragments. Of the letters nothing whatever was to be made. From one of them dropped a little yellow folded paper that fell apart in its creases. Put together, it formed a sufficiently legible document, and they read the undoubted marriage-certificate of Susanne Le Blanc and Reuben Raleigh. "I am sorry,” said Mr. Laudersdale, after a moment. “I am sorry, instead of a fortune, to give them a bar-sinister." "Your daughter is ignorant?--your wife?" "Entirely. Will you allow me to invite them in here? They should see this paper." "You do not anticipate any unpleasant effect?" "Not the slightest Marguerite has no notion of want or of pride. Her first and only thought will be--_sa cousine Hélène_.” And Mr. Laudersdale went out. Some light feet were to be heard pattering down the stairs, a mingling of voices, then Mr. Laudersdale passed on, and Marguerite tapped, entered, and closed the door. "My father has told me something I but half understand,” said she, with her hand on the door. “Unless I marry Mr. Heath, I lose my wealth? What does that signify? Would all the mines of Peru tempt me?" Mr. Raleigh remained leaning against the corner of the bookcase. She advanced and stood at the foot of the table, nearly opposite him. Her lips were glowing as if the fire of her excitement were fanned by every breath; her eyes, half hidden by the veiling lids, seemed to throw a light out beneath them and down her cheek. She wore a mantle of swan’s down closely wrapped round her, for she had complained ceaselessly of the chilly summer. "Mr. Raleigh,” she said, “I am poorer than you are, now. I am no longer an heiress." At this moment, the door opened again and Mrs. Laudersdale entered. At a step she stood in the one sunbeam; at another, the shutters blew together, and the room was left in semi-darkness, with her figure gleaming through it, outlined and starred in tremulous evanescent light. For an instant both Marguerite and Mr. Raleigh seemed to be half awe-struck by the radiant creature shining out of the dark; but directly, Marguerite sprang back and stripped away the torrid nasturtium-vine which her mother HDT WHAT? INDEX

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had perhaps been winding in her hair when her husband spoke with her, and whose other end, long and laden with fragrant flame, still hung in her hand and along her dress. Laughing, Marguerite in turn wound it about herself, and the flowers, so lately plucked from the bath of hot air, where they had lain steeping in sun, flashed through the air a second, and then played all their faint spirit-like luminosity about their new wearer. She seemed sphered in beauty, like the Soul of Morning in some painter’s fantasy, with all great stars blossoming out in floral life about her, colorless, yet brilliant in shape and light. It was too much; Mr. Raleigh opened the window and let in the daylight again, and a fresh air that lent the place a gayer life. As he did so, Mr. Laudersdale entered, and with him Mr. Heath and his mother. Mr. Laudersdale briefly recapitulated the facts, and added,-- "Communicating my doubts to Mr. Raleigh, he has kindly furnished me with the marriage-certificate of his uncle and Mademoiselle Le Blanc. And as Mr. Reuben Raleigh was living within thirteen years, you perceive that your claims are invalidated." There was a brief silence while the paper was inspected. "I am still of opinion that my grandmother’s second marriage was legal,” replied Mr. Heath; “yet I should be loath to drag up her name and subject ourselves to a possibility of disgrace. So, though the estate is ours, we can do without it!" Meanwhile, Marguerite had approached her father, and was patching together the important scraps. "What has this to do with it?” said she. “You admitted before this discovery--did you not?--that the property was no longer mine. These people are Aunt Susanne’s heirs still, if not legally, yet justly. I will not retain a _sous_ of it! My father shall instruct my lawyer, Mrs. Heath, to make all necessary transfers to yourself. Let us wish you good-morning!” And she opened the door for them to pass. "Marguerite! are you mad?” asked her father, as the door closed. "No, father,--but honest,--which is the same thing,” she responded, still standing near it. "True,” he said, in a low tone like a groan. “But we are ruined." "Ruined? Oh, no! You are well and strong. So am I. I can work. I shall get much embroidery to do, for I can do it perfectly; the nuns taught me. I have a thousand resources. And there is something my mother can do; it is her great secret; she has played at it summer after summer. She has moulded leaves and flowers and twined them round beautiful faces in clay, long enough; now she shall carve them in stone, and you will be rich again!" Mrs. Laudersdale sat in a low chair while Marguerite spoke, the nasturtium-vine dinging round her feet like a gorgeous snake, her hands lying listlessly in her lap, and her attitude that of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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some queen who has lost her crown, and is totally bewildered by this strange conduct on the part of circumstances. All the strength and energy that had been the deceits of manner were utterly fallen away, and it was plain, that, whatever the endowment was which Marguerite had mentioned, she could only play at it. She was but a woman, sheer woman, with the woman’s one capability, and the exercise of that denied her. Mr. Laudersdale remained with his eyes fixed on her, and lost, it seemed, to the presence of others. "The disgrace is bitter,” he murmured. “I have kept my name so proudly and so long! But that is little. It is for you I fear. I have stood in your sunshine and shadowed your life, dear!--At least,” he continued, after a pause, “I can place you beyond the reach of suffering. I must finish my lonely way." Mrs. Laudersdale looked up slowly and met his earnest glance. "Must I leave you?” she exclaimed, with a wild terror in her tone. “Do you mean that I shall go away? Oh, you need not care for me,--you need never love me,--you may always be cold,--but I must serve you, live with you, die with you!” And she sprang forward with outstretched arms. He caught her before her foot became entangled in the long folds of her skirt, drew her to himself, and held her. What he murmured was inaudible to the others; but a tint redder than roses are swam to her cheek, and a smile broke over her face like a reflection in rippling water. She held his arm tightly in her hand, and erect and proud, as it were with a new life, bent toward Roger Raleigh. "You see!” said she. “My husband loves me. And I,--it seems at this moment that I have never loved any other than him!" There came a quick step along the matting, the handle of the door turned in Marguerite’s resisting grasp, and Mrs. Purcell’s light muslins swept through. Mr. Raleigh advanced to meet her,- -a singular light upon his face, a strange accent of happiness in his voice. "Since you seem to be a part of the affair,” she said in a low tone, while her lip quivered with anger and scorn, “concerning which I have this moment been informed, pray, take to Mr. Lauderdale my brother’s request to enter the house of Day, Knight, and Company, from this day." "Has he made such a request?” asked Mr. Raleigh. "He shall make it!” she murmured swiftly, and was gone. That night a telegram flashed over the wires, and thenceforth, on the great financial tide, the ship Day, Knight, and Company lowered its peak to none. The day crept through until evening, deepening into genuine heat, and Marguerite sat waiting for Mr. Raleigh to come and bid her farewell. It seemed that his plans were altered, or possibly HDT WHAT? INDEX

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he was gone, and at sunset she went out alone. The cardinals that here and there showed their red caps above the bank, the wild roses that still lined the way, the grapes that blossomed and reddened and ripened year after year ungathered, did not once lift her eyes. She sat down, at last, on an old fallen trunk cushioned with moss, half of it forever wet in the brook that babbled to the lake, and waited for the day to quench itself in coolness and darkness. "Ah!” said Mr. Raleigh, leaping from the other side of the brook to the mossy trunk, “is it you? I have been seeking you, and what sprite sends you to me?" "I thought you were going away,” she said, abruptly. "That is a broken paving-stone,” he answered, seating himself beside her, and throwing his hat on the grass. "You asked me, yesterday, if I confessed to being a myth,” she said, after a time. “If I should go back to Martinique, I should become one in your remembrance,--should I not? You would think of me just as you would have thought of the Dryad yesterday, if she had stepped from the tree and stepped back again?" "Are you going to Martinique?” he asked, with a total change of face and manner. "I don’t know. I am tired of this; and I cannot live on an ice- field. I had such life at the South! It is ’as if a rose should shut and be a bud again.’ I need my native weather, heat and sea." "How can you go to Martinique?" "Oh, I forgot!" Mr. Raleigh did not reply, and they both sat listening to the faint night-side noises of the world. "You are very quiet,” he said at last, ceasing to fling waifs upon the stream. "And you could be very gay, I believe." "Yes. I am full of exuberant spirits. Do you know what day it is?" "It is my birthday." "It is _my_ birthday!" "How strange! The Jews would tell you that this sweet first of August was the birthday of the world. “’’Tis like the birthday of the world, When earth was born in bloom,’"-- she sang, but paused before her voice should become hoarse in tears. "Do you know what you promised me on my birthday? I am going to claim it." HDT WHAT? INDEX

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"The present. You shall have a cast which I had made from one of my mother’s fancies or bas-reliefs,--she only does the front of anything,--a group of fleurs-de-lis whose outlines make a child’s face, my face." "It is more than any likeness in stone or pencil that I shall ask of you." "What then?" "You cannot imagine?" "_Monsieur_” she whispered, turning toward him, and blushing in the twilight, “_est ce que c’est moi?_" There came out the low west-wind singing to itself through the leaves, the drone of a late-carousing honey-bee, the lapping of the water on the shore, the song of the wood-thrush replete with the sweetness of its half-melody; and ever and anon the pensive cry of the whippoorwill fluted across the deepening silence that summoned all these murmurs into hearing. A rustle like the breeze in the birches passed, and Mrs. Purcell retarded her rapid step to survey the woods-people who rose out of the shade and now went on together with her. It seemed as if the loons and whippoorwills grew wild with sorrow that night, and after a while Mrs. Purcell ceased her lively soliloquy, and as they walked they listened. Suddenly Mr. Raleigh turned. Mrs. Purcell was not beside him. They had been walking on the brook-edge; the path was full of gaps and cuts. With a fierce shudder and misgiving, he hurriedly retraced his steps, and searched and called; then, with the same haste, rejoining Marguerite, gained the house, for lanterns and assistance. Mrs. Purcell sat at the drawing-room window. "_Comment?_” cried Marguerite, breathlessly. "Oh, I had no idea of walking in fog up to my chin,” said Mrs. Purcell; “so I took the short cut." "You give me credit for the tragic element,” she continued, under her breath, as Mr. Raleigh quietly passed her. “That is old style. To be sure, I might as well die there as in the swamps of Florida. Purcell is ordered to Florida. Of course, I am ordered too!” And she whirled him the letter which she held. Other letters had been received with the evening-mail, and one that made Mr. Raleigh’s return in September imperative occasioned some discussion in the House of Laudersdale. The result that that gentleman secured one more than he had intended in the spring; and if you ever watch the shipping-list, the arrival of the Spray-Plough at Calcutta, with Mr. and Mrs. Raleigh among the passengers, will be seen by you as soon as me. Later in the evening of this same eventful day, as Mr. Raleigh and Marguerite sat together in the moonlight that flooded the great window, Mrs. Laudersdale passed them and went down the garden to the lake. She wore some white garment, as in her youth, and there was a dreamy sweetness in her eye and an unspoken joy HDT WHAT? INDEX

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about her lips. Mr. Raleigh could not help thinking it was a singular happiness, this that opened before her; it seemed to be like a fruit plucked from the stem and left to mature in the sunshine by itself, late and lingering, never sound at heart. She floated on, with the light in her dusky eyes and the seldom rose on her cheek,--floated on from moonbeam to moonbeam,--and the lovers brought back their glances and gave them to each other. For one, life opened a labyrinth of warmth and light and joy; for the other, youth was passed, destiny not to be appeased: if his affection enriched her, the best he could do was to bestow it; in his love there would yet be silent reservations. "Mr. Raleigh,” said Marguerite, “did you ever love my mother?" "Once I thought I did." "And now?" "Whereas I was blind, now I see." "Listen! Mrs. Purcell is singing in the drawing-room." “Through lonely summers, where the roses blow Unsought, and shed their tangled sweets, I sit and hark, or in the starry dark, Or when the night-rain on the hill-side beats. “Alone! But when the eternal summers flow And refluent drown in song all moan, Thy soul shall waste for its delight, and haste Through heaven. And I shall be no more alone!" "What a voice she sings with to-night!” said Marguerite. “It is stripped of all its ornamental disguises,--so slender, yet piercing!" "A needle can pain like a sword-blade. There goes the moon in clouds. Hark! What was that? A cry?” And he started to his feet. "No,” she said,--"it is only the wild music of the lake, the voices of shadows calling to shadows." "There it is again, but fainter; the wind carries it the other way." "It is a desolating wind." "And the light on the land is like that of eclipse!" He stooped and raised her and folded her in his arms. "I have a strange, terrible sense of calamity, _Mignonné!_” he said. “Let it strike, so it spare you!" "Nothing can harm us,” she replied, clinging to him. “Even death cannot come between us!" "Marguerite!” said Mr. Laudersdale, entering, “where is your mother?" "She went down to the lake, Sir." "She cannot possibly have gone out upon it!" "Oh, she frequently does; and so do we all." HDT WHAT? INDEX

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"But this high wind has risen since. The flaws"----And he went out hastily. There flashed on Mr. Raleigh’s mental sight a vision of the moonlit lake, one instant. A boat, upon its side, bending its white sail down the depths; a lifted arm wound in the fatal rope; a woman’s form, hanging by that arm, sustained in the dark transparent tide of death; the wild wind blowing over, the moonlight glazing all. For that instant he remained still as stone; the next, he strode away, and dashed down to the lake- shore. It seemed as if his vision yet continued. They had already put out in boats; he was too late. He waited in ghastly suspense till they rowed home with their slow freight. And then his arm supported the head with its long, uncoiling, heavy hair, and lifted the limbs, round which the drapery flowed like a pall on sculpture, till another man took the burden from him and went up to the house with his dead. * * * * * When Mr. Raleigh entered the house again, it was at break of dawn. Some one opened the library-door and beckoned him in. Marguerite sprang into his arms. "What if she had died?” said Mrs. Purcell, with her swift satiric breath, and folding a web of muslin over her arm. “See! I had got out the shroud. As it is, we drink _skål_ and say grace at breakfast. The funeral baked-meats shall coldly furnish forth the marriage-feast. You men are all alike. _Le Roi est mort? Vive la Reine!_" * * * * *

PAUL REVERE’S RIDE. Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five: Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend,--"If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,-- One if by land, and two if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country-folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said good-night, and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somersett, British man-of-war: A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon, like a prison-bar, And a huge, black hulk, that was magnified By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street Wanders and watches with eager ears, Till in the silence around him he hears The muster of men at the barrack-door, The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, And the measured tread of the grenadiers Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed to the tower of the church, Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry-chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the sombre rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade,-- Up the light ladder, slender and tall, To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the town, And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In their night-encampment on the hill, Wrapped in silence so deep and still, That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread, The watchful night-wind, as it went Creeping along from tent to tent, And seeming to whisper, "All is well!" A moment only he feels the spell Of the place and the hour, the secret dread Of the lonely belfry and the dead; For suddenly all his thoughts are bent On a shadowy something far away, Where the river widens to meet the bay,-- A line of black, that bends and floats On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride, On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere Now he patted his horse's side, Now gazed on the landscape far and near, Then impetuous stamped the earth, And turned and tightened his saddle-girth; But mostly he watched with eager search The belfry-tower of the old North Church, As it rose above the graves on the hill, Lonely, and spectral, and sombre, and still.

And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height, A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight A second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in a village-street, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet: That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light, The fate of a nation was riding that night; And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

It was twelve by the village-clock, When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. He heard the crowing of the cock, And the barking of the farmer's dog, And felt the damp of the river-fog, That rises when the sun goes down.

It was one by the village-clock, When he rode into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village-clock, When he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock, And the twitter of birds among the trees, And felt the breath of the morning-breeze Blowing over the meadows brown. And one was safe and asleep in his bed Who at the bridge would be first to fall, Who that day would be lying dead, Pierced by a British musket-ball. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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You know the rest. In the books you have read How the British regulars fired and fled,-- How the farmers gave them ball for ball, From behind each fence and farmyard-wall, Chasing the red-coats down the lane, Then crossing the fields to emerge again Under the trees at the turn of the road, And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere; And so through the night went his cry of alarm To every Middlesex village and farm,-- A cry of defiance, and not of fear,-- A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo forevermore! For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, Through all our history, to the last, In the hour of darkness and peril and need, The people will waken and listen to hear The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed, And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.

A NIGHT UNDER GROUND. My dear Laura Matilda, have you ever worked your way under ground, like the ghost Hamlet, Senior? On the contrary, you confess, but a dim idea of that peculiar mode of progression abides in the well-ordered mansion of your mind? Well, I do not wonder at it; you are civilized beyond the common herd; your mamma, careful of her own comfort and the beauty of her child, guards both. Your sunny summer-times go by in the shade of sylvan groves, or amid the whirl of Saratoga or Newport ball-rooms. I accept your ignorance; it is a pretty blossom in your maiden chaplet. For myself, I blush for my own familiarity with rough scenes chanced upon in wayward wanderings. Let me tell you of a path among the “untrodden ways.” Transport yourself with me. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Fancy a low, level, drowsy point of land, stretching out into the unbroken emerald green of Lake Superior, at the point where a narrow, yellowish river offers its tribute. The King of Lakes is exclusive; he disdains to blend his brilliant waters with those of the muddy river; a wavy line, distinctly and clearly defined, but seeming as if drawn by a trembling hand, undulates at their junction,--no democratic, union-seeking boundary, but the arbitrary line of division that separates the Sultan from the slave, the peer from the peasant. Along this shore are scattered various buildings that seem to nod in the indolent sunshine of the bright, clear, quiet air of midsummer. One of these, differing from the rest in its more modern construction, is a spacious hotel that holds itself proudly erect, and from its summit the gay flag of my country floats flauntingly. We must pass this by, and go down a plank-covered walk to reach the sandy-golden beach where the green waves dash with silent dignity, in these long calms of July. Before the hotel the river flows also sleepily; but both shores are vocal with ladies’ laughter and the singing of young girls, the lively chatter of a party of pleasure-tourists. The fine steamer that brought us to this point has gone, “Sailing out into the west, Out into the west, as the sun went down"; but no “weeping and wringing of hands” was there; we knew it must “come back to the town,"--that we are merely transient waifs cast upon this quiet beach, flitting birds of passage who have alighted in the porticos of the “Bigelow House,” Ontonagon, Michigan. A long, low flat-boat, without visible sails, steam-pipes, or oars,--a narrow river-craft, with a box-like cabin at one end, the whole rude in its _ensemble_, and uncivilized in its details,--is the object that meets the gaze of those who would curiously inspect the means by which the adventurous novelty- seeking portion of our party are to be conveyed up this Ontonagon river to the great copper-mines that form the inestimable wealth of that region. For the metallic attraction has proved magnetic to the fancies of a few. A mine is a mystery; and mysteries, to the female mind, are delights. What is the boat to us but a means? If it seem prosaic, what care we? Have we escaped the French fashions of _à-la-mode_ watering-places, to be fastidious amid wigwams and unpeopled shores? We all know what it is to embark for a day’s travel, but we do not all understand the charm of being stowed away like freight in a boat such as the one here faintly sketched; how seats are improvised; how umbrellas are converted into stationary screens, and awnings grow out of inspiration; how baskets are hidden carefully among carpet-bags, and camp-stools, and water-jugs, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and stowed-in-shavings ice; how the long-suffering, patient ladies shelter themselves in the tiny, stifling cabin, while those of the merry, complexion-careless sort lounge in the daylight’s glare, and one couple, fond of seclusion and sentiment, discover a good place for both, at the rudder-end. There is an oar or two on board, it appears, as we push off in the early dawn; and these are employed for a mile or so at the mouth of the river; then the current begins to quicken in a narrower bed, and a group of sinewy men betake themselves to their poles, lazily at first, until---- But you do not know exactly what these implements are? They are heavy, wooden, sharp-pointed poles, ten or twelve feet long. On either side of the boat runs a “walk,” arranged as if a ladder were laid horizontally; but in reality the bars or rungs are firmly fastened to the walk, to be used as rests for the feet. Here the men, five on a side, march like a chain-gang, backward and forward; placing one end of the pole in the bed of the stream, resting the other in the hollow of the shoulder near the arm-pit, and bracing themselves by their feet against these bars, they pry the boat along. Progression by such means is unavoidably slow; but no steamboat- race on our Western rivers, blind and reckless, boiler-defying and life-despising, ever produced more excitement than this same poling. Wait till the current runs rapidly, fretting and seething in its angry haste, when for a moment’s delay the boat must lose ground; when the poles are plunged into the rocky bed like harpoons into the back of an escaping whale; when the athletic forms of the men are bent forward until each prostrates himself in the exertion of his full powers; when not a false step--each step a run--can be hazarded; when that monotonous unanimity of labor is at its height, in which each boatman becomes possessed as if by a devil of strife; when their faces lose every gentle semblance of humanity, and become distorted to a simple expression of stubborn brute force; when the muscles of their arms are knitted, rope-like, and every nerve stretched to its utmost;--wait till you have seen all this, and you will confess that a woman’s lazy life can know no harder toil than that of the mind’s sympathetic coexertion,--that is, if she be excitable or impressible. The stream is tortuous, erratic, shallow, and narrow. Sometimes, as we glide, always noiselessly, beneath the overhanging foliage and tangled vines along shore, what myriads of gayly winged insects--brilliant dragon-flies, mammoth gnats, preposterous mosquitoes--swarm about our heads, disturbed from their gambols by the laughter and songs aboard our moving craft! Only one halt in our journey, and that to dine. Just above this point we pass the swiftest rapids on the route, where the river widens, and each side of the bank is beautiful in its wooded HDT WHAT? INDEX

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picturesqueness, while the waters rush, in foaming, surging, tumbling confusion, over the rugged rocks, or dart between them like a merry band of water-sprites chasing each other in gleesome frolic. It seems a desecration of these rapids thus to subdue and triumph over them. They are as if placed there by Nature as a sportive check to man’s further intrusion; and as the waters come hurrying down, led, as it were, by some Undine jealous for her realm, their murmurings seem to say, in playful, yet earnest remonstrance,--"Let our gambols divert you; we will hasten to you; but approach no nearer! Permit us to guard the sanctuary of our hidden sources, our beloved and holy solitudes!" But vain appeal! Our men pole frantically onward, and so the day passes. By mid-afternoon their labors cease, and we come to anchor at the bank, having achieved seventeen miles in nine hours! Let those of us to whom lightning-express-trains have been slow grumble hereafter at their fifty miles an hour! A country-wagon receives most of the ladies; the majority of their attendant cavaliers walk; of two horses, the side-saddled one has about one hundred pounds avoirdupois for his share, and, in spite of the lack of habit and equestrian “pomp and circumstance” generally, I cannot term it the most unpleasant three miles I ever travelled. The road is a wild, rugged ascent up a well-wooded hill-side. There is a tonic vigor in the atmosphere, which communicates itself irresistibly to one’s mental state; the gladdened lungs inhale it eagerly, as a luxury. When one walks in this air, one seems to gain wings; to ride is to float at will. Presently, at the top, a low village comes in sight; yelping curs start from wayside cabins; coarse, dull-featured women gape at half-opened doors or sit idly on rude steps; and the men we chance to meet wear that cadaverous pallor inseparable from the mere idea of a miner. We do not regret that the pert dogs have imparted speed to our horses’ heels;--a swift, exhilarating gallop brings us in sight of a large, comfortable house, perched like a bird-box in the hills; then others are discerned; and in a few more bounds, we are at the gate. Here, where all visitors to the Minnesota Mines are received and entertained, we prove _avant-couriers_ of the slowly advancing wagon-load,--"the largest party of ladies ever met there,” they tell us, as we forewarn our hosts of the band so boldly invading their copper- bound country. Very soon we are rambling over the hills,--those of Nature’s rearing, and others formed by the accumulation of refuse brought up from the mine. We discover and secure some fine specimens of the metal; sundry of the knowing ones, after mysterious interviews with rascally-looking miners, appear with curious bits of pure silver ore mingled with crystals of quartz and tinted with tiny specks of copper. These, being the most valuable curiosities of the region, are usually secreted by the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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miners for the purpose of private speculation. We feel a reverence for this ground, so teeming with metallic wealth,--and yet a certain timorousness, as we remember that we walk on a crust, that beneath us are great caves and subterranean galleries. This outer shell, this surface-knowledge of what lies below, does not content me. I have also a brave friend who shares my feeling. We agree, that, despite the interest of this crust, to know of the fruit beneath and not taste it is worse than aggravating; we grow reckless in our thirst for the forbidden knowledge. We have entertained a little plot in our headstrong minds all the way, which we have hardly dared to name before. It is surely not feminine to look longingly on those ladders made for the descent of hardy miners only; visitors beneath the surface are rare; only gentlemen interested in seeing for themselves the richness of these vaunted mines have essayed the tour; even many of these failing to penetrate farther than the first level, and bravely owning their faint-heartedness. In spite of this, we feel our way cautiously. A descent is to be made this night, when the Captain of the Mine goes his nightly round of inspection; a gentleman, the head and front of our expedition, whom we shall call the “Colonel,” proposes to accompany him. Why may we not form an harmonious quartette? We have nerve; has it not been tested throughout the somewhat arduous journey of the preceding weeks? We have presence of mind; we are passable _gymnastes_. In fact, viewing _Mon Amie_ and me from our own point of view, than ourselves never did there exist two mortals more manifestly fashioned straight from the hand of Nature, and educated by previous physical culture and mental discipline for the performance of a feat at once perilous and daring, one unknown to the members of “our set,” and which might have been thought impracticable by all who had known us only in the gas-light glare of Society, and the circumspection of crinoline’s confining circle. Does it matter by what cunning wiles of pretty pleading and downright demonstrations of the project’s reasonableness we succeeded (for we did succeed) in being allowed to take our fates in our own hands or trust them to our own sure-footedness? I think not. “For when a woman will, she will, you may depend on’t." But you should have seen the robing! We are to start at ten, P.M. Previously we betake ourselves to our chambers, and, entertaining a vague notion that Fashion’s expanse may prove inconvenient, we are looping up our trailing robes in fantastic folds, when a tap at the door. _Voila!_ a servant with two full suits of new, but coarse, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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miners’ clothes,--with a modest intimation from our companions of their advisability,--in fact, their absolute necessity. We pause aghast! Ah! the renewed shouts of laughter from those merry, but more timorous damsels, who, from their secure surroundings,--those becoming barriers adopted at the dictate of Parisian caprice and retained with feminine pertinacity,-- had poked fun at our forlorn limpness! This climax of costume is startling, but the laughter rouses our courage. We stand on the brink of our Rubicon. Shall trousers deter us from the passage? Shall a coat be synonymous with cowardice? No,--we rise superior to the occasion; we pant to be free; we in-breathe the spirit of liberty, as we don our blouses. We loop our long tresses under such head-coverings as would drive any artist hatter to despair; to us they prove a weighty argument against hats in general, as we feel their heavy rims press on our tender brain-roofs. However, when the saucy eyes of _Mon Amie_ look out sparkling from under her begrimed helmet, the effect is not bad; on the contrary, the masquerade is piquant. No need to mention the ribbons that we knot under our wide, square collars for becomingness, our coquetry “under difficulties,” nor the gauntleted gloves wherewith we protect our hands, nor the daintiness of the little boots that peep from the loose trousers, which have something Turkish in their cut. _Mon Amie_, with her rosy blushes, reminds me of a jocund miller’s boy;--as for myself, well, I do not think the Bloomer dress so very bad, after all! A torch-bearing band have stationed themselves at the doors to bid us god-speed,--to make merry at our droll masquerade,--to quiz our odd head-gear,--to criticize us from head to foot, in short,--but between all, to offer words of caution. Then we go out into the starlit, but not over-bright night,--such a one as is friendly to lovers and to thieves, friendly to religion and to thought, the beloved of sentimentalists, and the adored of this particular group of adventurous miners. In Indian file, lantern-led, we traverse the narrow, beaten path that leads to one of the openings of the mine. These are covered by a rough- plank house,--too much like a shed to merit that pretentious term, which implies something fit to live in; in the centre of this shelter is an open space, perhaps a yard square, and similar in appearance to a trap-door in a roof. Here we wait a few moments, while the Captain of the Mine and the Agent of the Mining Company,--who has joined our party at the last moment, to afford us the undivided services of the Captain as guide,-- are engaged in some mysterious process of moulding; an odor, not attar of rose, nor yet Frangipanni, salutes our nostrils; then our companions approach. Both the Colonel and the Agent are “lit up,"--in fact, all-luminous with the radiance of tallow “dips"; one of these, stuck in a lump of soft clay, adheres to the front of each hat, and in their hands they have others. We also are to wear a starry flame on our brows; and, not content with this, are invested with several short unlighted candles, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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which are to dangle gracefully by their wicks from a buttonhole of our becoming blouses. Thus our costume is complete; and I doubt if Buckingham sported the diamond tags of Anne of Austria with more satisfaction than do we our novel and odorous decoration: we dub ourselves the Light Guard on the instant. In the delay before starting, we observe several miners descend through the black and most suggestive trap-door, each bearing a tin can in his mouth, as a good dog carries a basket at the bidding of his master. The flame of the candle, bright in the density of the pit’s darkness, as its bearer descends step by step with the rapidity which custom has made easy, becomes in a few seconds like the tiniest glow-worm: one can follow the spark only; the man disappears within the moment. I cannot describe, nor, indeed, convey the least idea of this peculiar effect. We feel our hearts tremble at the thought that whither that light has gone we must follow. For the first time I realize that we are about to go _into_ the earth,--that we shall presently crawl like insects, burrow like underground vermin, beneath the surface, man’s proper place. But such thoughts are not for long indulgence. "Now let us descend!” says the Colonel. Grasping the round of the ladder where it rose slightly above the floor, the Captain, our guide, with that air of assurance which practice bestows, swings himself from sight. To him succeeds the Colonel. Next comes my own turn. This is not the first time my feet have tried ladder-bars; in the country-spent vacations of my school-days, how many times have I alertly scaled the highest leading to granaries, to barn-lofts, to bird- houses, to all quasi-inaccessible places, whither my daring ignorance--reckless, because unconscious of danger--had tempted me! But mounting a clean, strong, wide ladder, in the full flood of day, light below, above, around, promising you security by its very fulness of effulgence, is a far different thing from groping your way, step by step, down a slimy, muddy frame which hangs in a straight line from the very start. I shake off a first tremor, draw a full breath, and with fortitude follow my leader carefully. As I look above, after fairly getting committed, I can behold _Mon Amie’s_ feet, whose arched in-steps cling round each bar with a pretty dependence that is in the highest degree appealing. Above her I hear the deep voice of the Agent. And so the quintette, in grim harmony of enterprise, go down, down, down, like so many human buckets, into a bottomless well. Alas, and alas! our own arms, with their as yet untried muscles, must be our only windlass to bring us to the surface again! Down, down, down, deeper, deeper, deeper! Will this first ladder never end? Ah, at last! At the foot, on either side, stand the Captain and the Colonel, like sentries. We have reached a shelf of rock, and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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we may rest. Here we perch ourselves, like sea-birds on a precipice that overlooks the sea. By the light of our flickering candles we behold each other’s faces, and we can talk together. We are but two hundred feet under ground. A desolate stillness reigns here; no sound reaches us, either of labor or the steps of passing workmen. A cold stream of water trickles from a cleft rock behind us; we bathe our foreheads in it, and betake ourselves to the ladder again. From our next resting-place we proceed through a gallery, an exhausted vein, kept open as a passage from one shaft to another. As we turn a corner, we seem to plunge into a rocky cavern; our feet tread on roughly imbedded rocks; the sides of the cave jut out in refuse boulders,--harsh, dark-colored, ashen; overhead are beams of hard wood, bracing and strengthening the excavation. We traverse this gallery hastily. Now that we are here, we are conscious of excitement. _Mon Amie_ manifests hers by her steady, deliberate tones, a sort of exaltation foreign to her usually vibrating voice, her tremulous cadences; she seems borne along, despite and above herself. For my own part, as my lungs inflate themselves with this pure, dry, bracing air, exquisitely redolent of health, and testifying at once to a total exemption from noxious exhalations or mephitic vapors, I grow _tête-montée_, rattle-brained; my laugh echoes through these stony chambers, wild snatches of song hover on my lips, odd conceits flit through my brain, I joke, I dash forward with haste; my excitement endows me with a superfeminine self- possession. But now we hear an ominous rattle, a clanking of chains, a rumbling as of distant thunder; we are approaching a shaft. The shafts in this mine are not sunk perpendicularly, but are slightly inclined: the huge buckets, lowered and raised by means of powerful machinery, are but ancient caldrons, counterparts of those in which the weird witches in “Macbeth” might have brewed their unholy decoctions, or such as the dreadful giants that formed the nightmare of my childhood might have used in preparing those Brobdignagian repasts among the ingredients of which a plump child held the same rank as a crab in ours. The sounds grow nearer; presently our guide disappears; then I behold the Colonel, in whose steps I follow, faithful as his shadow, crouch sidewise: we must pass behind this inclined plane, which rests on roughly hewn rocks, that protrude till it appears impossible that any living thing, except a lizard, can find a passage. I am sure we must shrink from the original rotundity with which Nature blessed us. I feel as the frog in the fable might have felt, if, after successfully inflating himself to the much-envied dimensions of the ox, he had suddenly found himself reduced to his proper proportions. Edging sidewise, accommodating the inequalities of the damp surfaces to the undulations of our forms, deafened, crazed by the roar of the caldrons that dash madly from side to side, we fairly HDT WHAT? INDEX

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_ooze_ through. More ladders! This time they are not hung quite perpendicularly, are shorter, and some lean, a little, which affords rest; others have one side higher than the other: to these my already aching palms cling with desperation. So have I seen insects adhere, through sheer force of fear, to a shaken stem, or a perilous branch beaten by a storm-wind. The voices of my companions come to me from above, though I cannot see the soles of _Mon Amie’s_ friendly feet, which at first preserved an amiable companionship with my own hands; but, looking far upward, I behold a tiny, star-like spark. When I was a child, I used to think that fire-flies were the crowns of the fairies, which shone despite their wearers’ invisibility: this idea was recalled to me. Hark! booming from unthought-of depths, a roar rolls up in majestic waves of echoing thunder. At this resonant burst, I tremble,--I think a prayer. "They are blasting below us,” cries the Colonel, _de profundis_. Then up rushes a volume of thick, white smoke, and we are enveloped as in shrouds. I have no more fear,--but the odor, ah! that sulphureous, sickening, deathly odor! Faintness seizes me,- -the ladder swims before my eyes,--I am paralyzed,--Death has me, I think! But the very excess of the danger has in it something of reviving power. I remember, that, just as I left my room,--whose quiet safety never before appeared so heavenly,--prompted by some instinctive impulse, I had placed a small vial of ammonia in the breast-pocket of my coat. I have wellnigh swooned with ecstasy, as I have inhaled the overcoming odors of some rare bouquet, love-bestowed and prized beyond gems; my senses have reeled in the intoxication of those wondrous extracts whose Oriental, tangible richness of fragrance holds me in a spell almost mystical in its enthralment; but I dare aver that no blossom’s breath, no pungent perfume distilled by the erudite inspiration of Science, ever possessed a tithe of the delicious agony of that whiff of unromantic ammonia, which, powerful as the touch of magic, and thrilling as the kiss of love, snatched me back to life, arrested my tottering senses, as they blindly staggered on the very brink of certain death. When we reach the next level, and our faces are revealed to each other, with one voice they exclaim, “How frightfully pale you are!” But I say nothing. In fact, their familiar features, wearing no longer their daylight semblance, present an aspect at once grim and grotesque, and more like the spirits of my friends than their incorporated substances. Traversing the wild, rude corridors, we find that the path grows more perilous, the way more intricate; we have words of warning from our protectors, who often look back anxiously. They have HDT WHAT? INDEX

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begun to realize what they have done in yielding to a woman’s odd caprice. In this level we are shown the spots from which famous masses of copper have been removed, and are granted useful, but fleeting statistics of weight; we are also so fortunate as to discover some chips of the wonderful block, raised in ’54, I think, which weighed five hundred tons. Then we chance upon chasms, which, seen so dimly, though dreadful enough in reality, are made a thousand times more so by the terrors of imagination; we creep along the brinks of these, scarcely daring to look down; above, the heavy boulders lie heaped in frightful confusion. When we have crawled past these death-traps and stand in safety once more, we throw down bits of stone, and seconds elapse before we hear the dull _thump_ with which each signals its arrival in the depths. Along the edges of some of these gloomy pits we cannot pick our way; therefore a plank is thrown across, and, trusting to so slender a bridge, we pass, one by one. A single false step were enough to dash one to atoms,--so to be transformed to a bruised and mangled mass, to perform one’s own sepulture, and lie in a grander grave than will ever be hollowed by mortal hands to hide our useless bodies. The deeper one penetrates into these mines, the wilder, more dangerous the paths. It is as though the upper regions were kept in “company” order, but lower down we meet with the every-day roughnesses of veritable miners’-life; we follow their hazardous, but familiar steps; we behold all the hardships these toiling, burrowing workers undergo, that the hidden coffers of Earth may yield their tribute of treasure to Man, its self- appointed, arrogant master. Occasionally we meet a passing miner. Grasping his ponderous tools, he flits by like a phantom; even in the momentary glance, we can perceive how livid his sunless labor has left him; he is blanched as a ghoul, and moves as noiselessly, with feather- light step. Each with a motion salutes the Captain; but they do not heed the little group of strangers who have braved so many dangers to behold the wonders which to them are as commonplace as the forge to a blacksmith, or to a carpenter his work-bench. Still farther below us we hear the clink and clatter of real work. Down we plunge,--another ladder, “long drawn out.” Some of its rounds are wanting; others are loose and worn to a mere splinter. Warned by the voice below me, I proceed with a trembling caution, tenfold more exciting to the strained nerves than the wildest bound on a mettled racer, the fiercest rush that ever tingled through every fibre of the rider’s frame. The water has saturated the banks by which our crazy ladder hangs, and every round is damp and slimy with clayey mud. Alas, for my poor pretty gantlets! _Mon Amie_ has thrown away hers, as useless. Finally the ladder ceases abruptly. My feet in vain seek a resting-place. There is none. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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A voice says,--that kindly, earnest voice, the symbol of protective care, and our smoother of all difficulties,--"We have swung ourselves down by a chain that hangs from the side of the last round. We are too far below to reach or assist you. Take the chain firmly; it is the only route, and we cannot return!" _Que faire?_ Behold a pleasant predicament for two city-bred ladies, not “to the manner born,” of swinging themselves from the end of a ladder by means of a rusty iron chain, from which they would alight--where? Surely, we know not. I am very sure I could not reproduce in description, and probably not by practice, the inevitable monkey-contortions, the unimaginable animal agility, by which I transfer my weight to the clumsy links of this almost invisible chain. The size of the staple from which it hangs dissipates all fears in respect to its strength. Hand over hand, my feet sliding on the slippery bank, remembering sailors in the shrouds, and taking time to pity them, at last I reach friendly hands, and stand breathless on another level. How the soft, white, dimpled palms of _Mon Amie_ testify to the hardship of this episode, as she bathes them in the cooling water! But, because one’s hands are tender, cannot one’s nerves be strong, one’s will indomitable? Again on the tramp. The cavernous passages are sublime in height, the chasms fearful in their yawning gulfs. We pick our way daintily, at intervals pausing to listen to the distant reverberations of exploding blasts. The atmosphere here, as above, is fairly heavenly in its purity and invigorating freshness; it girds us with singular strength, and clothes us as in a garment of enchanted armor that defies all soul-sinking. Creeping behind another shaft, we reach still another chasm, above which piles of dark rocks lie heaped in such confusion as might result from a great convulsion. There is a narrow path along its edge, and here the stones are small; but, as we look up, the mighty masses frown down upon us with threatening grandeur. Along this path, treading lightly, as if gifted with wings, the Captain passes; then the Agent (for we had slightly altered our order of march); _Mon Amie_ follows. She is halfway past the danger, when an ominous pause,--we are ordered to stop. Down into the chasm rolls a stone, displaced by an unlucky step of our pioneer. One stone is nothing,--but more follow that had been supported by this: small ones at first,--but the larger rocks threaten a slide. If they are not arrested in their course, she is lost! What a moment that is! I dare not breathe. _Mon Amie_ stands statue-like, awaiting the death which she believes is upon her. Not many words are spoken. I think I feel all that her one glance conveys. But the brave men beyond her, with instant unanimous action bracing themselves against the sliding rocks, oppose HDT WHAT? INDEX

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their feeble force to the down-sweeping agents of destruction; a moment more, and they would have been too late. With the step of a frightened antelope _Mon Amie_ trembles past them. I see her safe, and hasten on. “Step lightly!” says a voice full of suspense and fear, despite its calmness. Step, indeed! As if I rest on those treacherous stones! My feet brush them no more than the wing of a butterfly grazes the roses among which it flutters. Step, forsooth! If ever the angels concerned themselves for this atom in Creation’s myriads, they hover round me now, they bear me up, they teach me how to fly! Deprived now of their human props, how the angry fragments leap and tumble and chase one another through the echoing abyss below! These reverberations seem freighted with elfin voices that jeer the insensate rocks for their baffled scheme of mischief. But they chanted a far different chorus, and the darkness saw another sight, when, a few moons later, they dashed themselves down in irresistible array, and bore with them in their desperate plunge the lifeless bodies of two passing miners, in whose hearts, it may be, dwelt at the moment only happy thoughts of the homes ’neath the blue skies to which they were hurrying, the dear familiar sunlit Paradise that would succeed the endless night of their _Inferno_ of toil. “But men must work, and women must weep; And the sooner ’tis over, the sooner to sleep!" Well, we take up our march again presently, and, led by a monotonous hammering, proceed toward the sound. Some of the miners are at work here, clearing a mass of ore from the stubborn rock. Their strokes fall as regularly as those of machinery, and the grim men who wield the ponderous hammers accompany each blow with a peculiar loud indrawing of the breath, like the pant of a blacksmith at his anvil. So strong is this resemblance, that we burst forth all together in the strains of the “Anvil Chorus"; and the accompaniment is beaten with tenfold more regularity and effect than on the stage, in the glare of the footlights, by “Il Trovatore’s” gypsy-comrades. I doubt if Verdi’s music was ever so rendered before, amid such surroundings. The compliment may be the higher, coming from so low a region. Beyond this group are a few miners resting from toil. One of these, as he stands leaning his folded arms on a jutting rock, upon which he has placed his candle, elicits our spontaneous admiration. His beauty is Apollo-like,--every chiselled feature perfect in its classic regularity; his eyes sad, slumberous, and yet deep and glowing, are quite enough for any susceptible maiden’s heart; about a broad expanse of forehead cluster thick masses of dark brown hair; his shirt, open at the throat, reveals glimpses of ivory; altogether he is statuesque and beautiful. Even his hands, strongly knit as they are, have not been rendered coarse by labor; they bear the same pallid hue as his face, and he looks like some nobly-born prisoner. “What untoward fate cast HDT WHAT? INDEX

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him there?” I often ask myself. He exists in my memory as a veritable Prince Charming, held captive in those gloomy caves of enchantment that yielded up to me their unreal realities in that nightmarish experience. I never fancy him on upper earth living coarsely, even, it may be, talking ungrammatically, defying Horne Tooke and outraging Murray, among beings of a lower order of humanity; but he rises like a statue, standing silent and apart. Some one throws away a nearly burnt-out candle at this spot. It falls but a few inches from a can of gunpowder, which is not too securely closed. As I utter a quick word of warning to the careless one, a miner starts. “Good Heaven!” I hear him exclaim, as we disappear,--"that was a woman!" When we reach the next shaft, the Captain deposits himself in the descending bucket, and, irregularly tossing from side to side, goes down to overlook some work, and leave fresh orders with the miners. We await his return before again betaking ourselves to the ladders. On the next level, we behold scores of men in busy action. I can think only of ants in an ant-hill: some are laden with ore; others bearing the refuse rocks and earth, the _débris_ of the mine, to the shafts; others, again, are preparing blasts,--we do not tarry long with these; others with picks work steadily at the tough ore. In some places, the copper freshly broken glitters like gold, and the specks on the rocks, or in the earth- covered mass, as our candle-light awakens their sparkles, gleam like the spangles on a dancer’s robe or stars in a midnight sky. All the while we hear the dreadful rattle of the down-sinking caldrons, or the heavy labor of the freighted ones, as they ascend from level to level. Suddenly our path conducts us past a seated bevy of miners taking their “crib,” as it is termed, from the food-can, which stands at hand,--a small fire blazing in the midst of them. Weary and sore, we seat ourselves near them, while our hardier companions talk with the respectful group. They work eight hours at a time, they tell us,--ascending at the expiration of that period to betake themselves to their homes, which are mostly in the little village where the yelping curs also reside. They enjoy unusual health, and pity the upper-world of surface-laborers, whom they regard with a kind of contempt. Accidents are not frequent, considering the perils of their occupation. The miners here are generally Cornish-men, with some Germans. I sit silent, thinking of my Prince Charming, with many vague conjectures. At first, these men have paused in their repast in presence of the strangers; but now, with rude courtesy, noticing our weariness, they offer a portion to us. Faint and famishing, we by no means disdain it. I wonder what Mrs. Grundy would say, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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could her Argus-eyes penetrate to the spot, where we,--bound to “die of roses in aromatic pain,"--in miners’-garb, masculine and muddy, sit on stones with earthy delvers, more than six hundred feet under ground,--where the foot of woman has never trod before, nor the voice of woman echoed,--and sip, with the relish of intense thirst, steaming black tea from an old tin cup! _Eh, bien!_ for all that, let me do it justice. Never was black tea less herb-like; never draught of sillery, quaffed from goblet of rare Bohemian glass, more delicious! And so, with thank-yous that were not only from the lip, we toil on some distance yet, to the shaft by which we are to ascend,--one quite remote from that by which we began our trip. Halting at the foot of the ladder, we pour forth the “Star- spangled Banner” with the full strength of lungs inflated by patriotism, until the stirring staves ring and resound through those dim caves. The miners, who hold the superstition, that to whisper bodes ill-luck, must have imagined we were exorcising evil spirits with an incantation. Then begins our weary way upward. We sing “Excelsior” in our hearts, and forget our aching limbs, for the most laborious portion of the night’s toil is before us. The almost perpendicular ladder is just beside the powerful pump, which, worked by a steam-engine, exhausts the water from the mine, and its busy piston, in monotonous measure, keeps time to our climbing. Two rests during the entire distance, which we travel in brave silence. Indeed, we cannot speak,--the oppressive strain upon the chest is so great. Step after step, hand over hand, up we go. At last, warmer air greets us, lights flicker from above; the trap-door is reached; we are on the surface again; we are out of the depths,--and our hearts whisper a _Te Deum_ of thanksgiving. I think well of the establishment of a chapel, such as exists at the entrance to the Valenciana mine in Mexico, where each miner spends half an hour, going to or returning from his labors. Such a union of work and worship seems a proper adjunct to the profit and the peril. There is a faint glimmer of coming dawn far away in the east, as we go forth into the midsummer-night, and we catch the distant notes of chanticleer, as he sounds his shrill _réveille_ to the day. As my confused brain seeks repose, and my weary limbs sink into the softness of the never-so-welcome bed, my thoughts fly to distant ones, to whom I would whisper,--as I do to you who have so patiently burrowed with me,--"Only love me for the dangers I have passed!" But it is in vain that you long for a similar experience, my dear Laura Matilda. Being the first, we are also the last women to whom these subterranean passages will yield their mysteries, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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their windings, and their wonders. Against all of my own sex the Pandemonian depths of the Minnesota Mines are henceforth as obstinately barred as ever were the golden gates of the Mohammedan Paradise.

A LONELY HOUSE. “Some weighty crime that Heaven could not pardon, A secret curse, on that old building hung, And its deserted garden." HOOD’S _Haunted House_. One autumn evening, not very long ago, I was driving out with my uncle. I had been spending several weeks at his house, and in that time had driven with him very often, so that I supposed myself familiar with nearly all the roads that stretched away from the pleasant village where he resided; but on this occasion he proposed taking me in an entirely new direction, over a tract of country I had never before seen. For a mile or two after we left home, we bowled rapidly along on a well-travelled turnpike; then a sudden turn to the right brought us, with slackened speed, into a quiet country-road. Passing through the fields that bordered the highway, we came into a wild, romantic region of hill and dale that fully deserved all that my uncle had said in its praise. Giving ourselves up to the sweet influences of the scene, we trotted our horses slowly, past dusky bits of forest that made the air fragrant with the damp smell of the woods, and by occasional shining pools adorned with floating pond-lilies, and shaded with thick, low bushes of witch-hazel. The sunlight had that orange glow that comes only on autumn evenings, the long, slant rays striking across the yellow fields and lighting up the dark evergreens which dotted the landscape with a tawny illumination, like dull flames. The locusts hummed drowsily, as if they were almost asleep, and the frogs in the ponds sent out an occasional muffled croak. Altogether, it was deliciously calm and deserted; we did not meet a human being or a habitation for miles, as we wound along the secluded path, now up and now down, but on the whole gradually ascending, till we reached the summit of a hill larger and steeper than the rest. Here there stood a lonely house. Pausing to allow our horses a moment’s rest, my eye was caught by its deserted and dilapidated appearance. It had evidently been uninhabited for years. The fence had gone to decay, the gate lay rotting on the ground, and a forlorn sleigh, looking strangely out of place in contrast with the summer-flowers that had over-grown it, was drawn up before the entrance. The grass had obliterated every trace of the path that once led to the decayed steps, bushes had grown up thickly around the lower story of the house, and tangled vines, creeping in through the broken panes of the windows, hung in festoons from the moss- HDT WHAT? INDEX

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covered sills. The door had dropped from its hinges, and on one side of the front the boards had fallen off, so that I could see quite into the interior, where I noticed, with surprise, some furniture yet remained, though in great confusion, a broken chair and an overturned table being the most prominent objects. Outside, the same disorder was manifest in the great farm-wagon, left standing where it had last been used, and the neglected out-buildings fast going to decay. About the whole place there was an aspect of peculiar gloom, and the house itself stood on this bleak hill looking out over the lonesome landscape with a sort of tragic melancholy in its black and weather-beaten front. Now such a sight as this is very rare in our busy New England, where everything is turned to advantage, and where the thrifty owner of a tenement too old for habitation is sure to tear it down and convert the materials of which it is built to some other use. My curiosity was, therefore, at once excited regarding this place, and I turned to my uncle with an inquiry as to its history. "It is a very sad one,” he answered,--"so sad that it gives a terrible dreariness to this solitary spot." "Then I am sure you will tell me the causes which led to its desertion. You know how much I like a story." My uncle complied with the request, and, as we wended our way home through the deepening twilight, related a series of strange facts, which, at the time, took a powerful hold on my imagination, and which I have since endeavored to group into a continuous narrative. * * * * * This house, now so forlorn, was once a neat and happy home. It was built by a young farmer named James Blount, who went into it with his young wife when he brought her home from the distant State where he had married her. For several years they seemed very prosperous and happy; then a heavy affliction came. The healthy young farmer was thrown from his horse, and carried to his home only to linger a few terrible hours and expire in great agony. Thus early in its history was the doomed house overshadowed with the gloom of sudden and violent death. Every one was heartily sorry for the widow with her two little boys, and the people of the country-side did all that they could to cheer her loneliness and lighten her grief. But, as I have said, she was a stranger among them, and she seems to have been naturally of a reserved disposition, preferring solitude in her affliction; for she so repelled their attentions, that, one by one, even her husband’s friends deserted her. Then, too, her house was three miles from the nearest neighbor, and this was necessarily a barrier to frequent social intercourse. She very rarely went into the village, even to church, and thus people came to know very little of her manner of life; it was only guessed at by those few acquaintance who, at rare intervals, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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made their way to the Blount farm-house. Among them it was remarked, that the widow, still quite young, was unnaturally stern and cold, and that her two sons, who were growing up in this sad isolation, were strangely like their mother, not only in appearance, but in manners. Their names were James and John. There was but little over a year between them, and they were so much alike that most persons found a difficulty in distinguishing one from the other. Both had fierce, black eyes, short, crisp, black hair, and swarthy skins,--quite unlike our freckled-face Yankee boys,--so that the older villagers declared, with a sigh, that there was not a trace of the good- hearted father about them; they wholly resembled their strange mother. The boys themselves did nothing to lessen this disagreeable impression; they were unusually grave and reserved for their years, taking no interest in the sports of other children; and after a time, it became painfully evident to those who watched them that they had no fondness for each other; on the contrary, that affection which would naturally have sprung from their nearness in age and their constant companionship seemed to be entirely wanting, and its place usurped by an absolute dislike. When this was first discovered, it was supposed to account for the widow’s aversion to society. This idea, being once started, made those idle busybodies there are in every village eager to discover if the suspicion were correct. Through the men hired to work on the farm, it was ascertained that the poor mother, with all her sternness and her iron law, had difficulty in keeping peace between the boys. Twenty times a day they would fall into angry dispute about some trifle; and so violent were these altercations, that it was said that she durst not for a moment have them both out of her sight, lest one should inflict some deadly injury upon the other. That this was no ill-founded fear was evinced by a quarrel that took place between them, when John was perhaps eleven, and James twelve years old. It was witnessed by a village lad named Isaac Welles. He was an alert, active person, who liked to earn a penny or two on his own account, out of work-hours. With this notable intention, he arose soon after dawn of a pleasant summer-morning, for the purpose of picking blackberries. Now he knew that they were very plentiful in a field near the Blount farmhouse, and, thinking such small theft no robbery, he made his way thither with all speed, and was soon filling his basket with the dew-sprinkled fruit. Early as it was, however, he soon discovered that there was some one up before him. He heard a sound of talking in low, caressing tones, and, glancing in the direction whence it came, he saw John Blount sitting under a tree near by, and playing with a little black squirrel, which appeared to be quite tame. Not caring to be discovered and warned off, Isaac went on with his work quietly, taking care to keep where he could see without being seen. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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John was not long left alone in his innocent amusement, for in a few moments James Blount came running down from the house towards him. As he approached, John’s face darkened; he caught up the squirrel, and made an endeavor to hide it under his jacket. "No, you don’t!” said James, as he came up, breathless. “I see you have got him, plain enough; he sha’n’t get away this time,- -so you might as well give him to me." "No, I won’t!” replied John, sullenly. "You won’t?" "No!” said John, more fiercely, and then burst out, passionately,--"I don’t see why you want to tease me about it; he a’n’t your pet; I have found him and tamed him; he knows me and loves me, and he don’t care for you; besides, you only want him to torment him. No! you sha’n’t have him!" "Sha’n’t I? we’ll see!” And James made a step forward. John drew back several paces, at the same time trying to soothe the squirrel, which was becoming impatient of its confinement. His face quivered with excitement, as he went on, passionately,- - "I know what you want him for: you want him to hurt some way. You wrung my black kitten’s neck, and now you want to kill my squirrel. You are a bad, wicked boy, and I hate you!" With the last words he started to run; but he had not gone far when his foot struck a stone, and he fell. At this, the squirrel, terrified, jumped from his arms; but James was close by, and before it could escape, he had caught it. John was up in an instant, and James, seeing that he could not avoid him, gave the poor little creature’s neck a sudden twist and flung it gasping at his brother’s feet, exclaiming,-- "There, now, you may have it!" For one moment John stood still, white with rage and grief; then he uttered a sort of choking howl, and sprang at James,-- "You cruel coward!" The words were accompanied with a half-articulate curse, as he struck at him, blindly, fiercely, and they closed in what seemed a deadly struggle. John, being the younger, had a slight disadvantage in size and weight, but wrath gave him more than his usual strength; while James fought desperately, as if for life. After a few moments they rolled on the ground together. It was a fearful sight, those two brothers, boys though they were, fighting in that mad way. Their faces, so much alike that they seemed almost reflections of each other, were crimson with anger; their eyes shot fire; their breath came in sobbing pants; and very soon blood was drawn on both. After a brief contest, John, with a tremendous effort, threw James under him. With one HDT WHAT? INDEX

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hand he pinioned his arms, while the other was at his throat, where it closed with a deadly gripe. James made one last effort to save himself; with a violent wrench he succeeded in fixing his teeth in his brother’s arm, but he failed in making him relax his hold, though they met in the firm flesh. John’s brow grew darker, but he only tightened his clasp closer and closer, muttering,-- "So help me, God! I will kill you!" His words were near being verified; already the fallen boy’s mouth had unclosed, the red of his face turned to livid purple, and his eyes stared wildly, when Mrs. Blount, pale, with disordered attire, as if she had but just risen and dressed hastily, ran, screaming, down the hill. Seizing John around the waist, she dragged him back, and flung him to the ground, exclaiming,-- "Oh, my sons! my sons! are you not brothers? Will you never be at peace?" At this moment, Isaac arrived, breathless with running, at the spot. When she saw him, the widow ceased speaking, and made no further allusion to the quarrel while he remained. However, she gladly accepted his offered assistance in lifting James, who lay gasping, and wellnigh dead. As they turned towards the house, John rose, sullenly, and wrapping a handkerchief round his wounded arm, which was bleeding profusely, he glanced scowlingly at his brother. "He will get over this,” he muttered, with an oath; “but, sooner or later, I swear I will kill him!" Without noticing his mother’s appealing look, he walked back to the tree where the dead pet lay. The half-strangled boy was carried to his bed, and a few simple remedies restored him to consciousness. As soon as possible, Mrs. Blount dismissed Isaac, declining his offers of going for a doctor, with cold thanks. As he went back to resume his interrupted blackberrying, he saw John sitting at the foot of the tree. He had dug a hole in which to bury the poor squirrel; it lay on his knee, a stream of dark gore oozing through its tiny white teeth. John was vainly endeavoring to wipe this with the handkerchief already stained with his own blood, while his hot tears fell fast and heavy. As John had said, James recovered from the choking, and the only apparent results of the fight were that both boys were scarred for life. John bore on his right wrist the impression of his brother’s teeth; and James’s throat was disfigured by two deep, black marks, on each side, which were quite visible till his beard concealed them. Yet, I doubt not, that desperate struggle, in that dawning summer-day, laid the foundation of the inextinguishable hatred that blasted those men’s lives and was to be quenched only in death. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Several years passed after this, in which very little was known of what passed at the lonely house. The boys were old enough to perform most of the work of the farm, so that they no longer hired laborers except at harvest. Mrs. Blount had herself given her sons all the instruction they had ever received, and, being a woman of attainments beyond those usual in her station, she seemed quite competent to the task. Nothing more was heard of their quarrels; they were always coldly civil to each other, when in the presence of others, and were regarded by their companions with respect, though, I imagine, never with any cordial liking. So they grew up to be grave, taciturn men, still retaining the same strong resemblance of face and figure, though time had somewhat altered the features, by fixing a different expression on each, giving to John a fierce resolution, and to James a lurking distrustfulness of look. These years made less change in Mrs. Blount than in her sons; she was the same active, black-eyed woman, only that her sternness and reserve seemed to increase with her age, and a few silver threads appeared in her raven hair. I have said that it was three miles from the Blount place to the nearest house. This was at the toll-gate, which was kept by a man named Curtis. He was a person of progressive tastes, supposed to have aristocratic inclinations. As he was a well- to-do man, these were evinced in a Brussels carpet and a piano- forte which figured in his small parlor, and by his sending his only child, a daughter, to a city boarding-school. She returned, as might have been expected, with ideas and desires far beyond the hill-side cottage where she was condemned to vegetate. Now she was very pretty, with dancing blue eyes and a profusion of golden curls; she had, too, a most winning manner, hard for any one to resist; and these personal attractions, added to style of dress that had never been seen or imagined among the simple country-folk, rendered her a most important person, so that no “tea-fight” or merry-making was complete without Nelly Curtis. However, it might have been long enough before the recluse young Blounts would have encountered the gay little belle, had it not been that they were of necessity obliged to pass through the toll-gate, and sometimes forced to stop there. From some of her friends Nelly heard what a secluded life the two brothers led, and how especially averse they seemed to female society, and, with the appetite for conquest of a true flirt, she at once determined on adding them to the list of her victims. It was not long before she had an opportunity for beginning her wiles. One fine spring morning, John Blount started on horseback to go to the village. The sun shone very brightly, the hedge-rows blushed with early blossoms, and the birds sang a song of rejoicing. It was one of those clear, soft days when one feels new life and vigor at the thought of the coming summer. Arrived at the toll-gate, John was surprised at seeing no one there to open it; he waited a moment, somewhat impatiently, and then called out,-- HDT WHAT? INDEX

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"Holloa!" At this, as if startled at his voice, there appeared in the cottage door-way a slender, rosy-cheeked maiden, who looked blooming and graceful enough to be the incarnation of the fresh and beautiful May. "Excuse me,” she said, with a little curtsy; “I did not see you come up." This, as Nelly informed the friend to whom she related the adventure, was a fib,--for Mr. Curtis was away, and she had been watching all the morning, in hopes one of the Blounts would pass; but she considered it a justifiable stratagem, as likely to secure his attention. Meantime John was gazing spellbound at this apparition, which appeared to him charming beyond anything he had ever imagined. He was so far carried away, that he was quite speechless and wholly oblivious of the toll, until she came up to the side of the horse and held out her hand. Then he colored, and, with awkward apology, gave her the change. "Thank you, Sir." Nelly smiled sweetly, and was just about to undo the latch of the gate, when John anticipated her by springing from his horse, and laying his powerful brown hand over her small white one, saying,-- "You can’t do anything with this great, heavy gate. Stand aside, and let me open it." Of course the offer was kindly accepted, and Nelly fairly overwhelmed him with her thanks, being herself somewhat touched by the unusual civility. John appeared quite overcome with confusion, and, remounting his horse, he rode off with a gruff “Good day.” However, I fancy, that pleasant voice, and the accidental touch of that little hand, made an impression that never was effaced. Having thus enslaved John, it was not long before a similar opportunity occurred for captivating James; though it would seem from Nelly’s confessions to her confidante that this was not so easily accomplished with him as with his brother. The first time she opened the gate for him, he paid but little more heed to her than he would have to her father, and she never considered her conquest complete until one day when Mr. Curtis availed himself of a vacant seat in James’s wagon to get Nelly taken into the village: that ride, she fancied, insured the wished-for result. Whether this was a correct supposition or not, certain it is that not many weeks elapsed before both the Blounts were completely fascinated by the gay coquette. For some time the passion of each brother remained a secret to the other. Accident revealed it. One soft summer-evening, John rode down to the village for HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

letters. As he passed through the toll-gate, he succeeded in making an appointment with Nelly for a walk on his return. He came back an hour later, and soon after sunset the two strolled down a shady path into the woods. It was moonlight, and Nelly was doubtless very charming in the mysterious radiance,-- certainly her companion thought so,--for, when their walk was over, he induced her to sit with him on a fallen log that lay just within the shade of the trees, instead of returning to the house. They had been chatting there perhaps half an hour, when they were interrupted by the girl the Curtises kept to do “chores." "Please, Miss Nelly, there’s a gentleman wants to see you." "Very well, tell him I will be there in a moment." When the girl was gone, Nelly suddenly exclaimed, rather regretfully,-- "How stupid of me, not to ask who it was!" John’s answer is not reported, only that he succeeded in lengthening the “moment” into a quarter of an hour, and then half an hour; and it might, perhaps, have lasted the whole evening, had they not, in the midst of a most interesting conversation, been startled by a rustling in the bushes behind them. "There is some one watching us!” cried John, excitedly, and half rising. "Nonsense!” said Nelly; “it is only a cat. Sit down again." This invitation was not to be declined. John sat down again, though still a little restless and uneasy. For some moments all was still. John had concluded that Nelly’s suggestion was a correct one, and they had begun to chat quite unconcernedly, when they were again interrupted. This time the sound was that of an approaching footstep, and for an instant a dark shadow fell across the moonlit path in front of them. Nelly was now fairly frightened, she uttered a faint shriek, and clung to John for protection. Doubtless this was a very pleasant appeal to the young farmer, but just now wrath mastered every other feeling. He was ever easily angered, and, to be sure, the thought that they were watched was by no means agreeable. So, with a quick caress, he loosened her clasp and started to his feet, exclaiming,-- "Don’t be frightened, dear! I’ll punish the rascal!" He made a dash in the direction whence the sound had come. In the shade of the trees stood the intruder quite still, making no attempt to avoid the furious onset. Mad with rage, John seized him by the collar, and, striking him repeatedly, and muttering curses, dragged him towards the bench where Nelly sat trembling. A few staggering steps, and they were on the path, with the pure, peaceful light of the moon falling full on the stranger’s face. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

"Good God!” cried John, loosening his hold,--"it is my brother!" James drew himself up, tossing back his disordered hair, and for a moment the two men regarded each other with stern, fixed looks, as if they were preparing for another encounter. By this time, Nelly, who was completely terrified, had begun to weep convulsively, and her sobs broke the ominous silence, as she gasped,-- "Oh, John, please don’t strike him again!" At these words, John started, as if stung, and, looking at her with indignant sadness, said,-- "There, you needn’t cry, Nelly! I won’t hurt him; I will leave him to you safely." Then, overcome by the rush of recollection, he burst out, passionately,-- "Oh, James! James! you have rendered my life miserable by your treacheries, and now you have robbed me of her! This is no place to settle our quarrels; but I have sworn it once, and I swear it again now, some day I will be revenged!" He would not stop to hear Nelly’s entreating voice; but, full of the one dreadful thought, that all her anxieties had been for another, while he was indifferent to her, he mounted his horse, without one backward look, and galloped fast away. I can fancy there was a wild whirl of emotion in his passionate heart: deadly hatred, jealousy, and crossed love are enough to drive any man mad. Meantime, James apologized to Nelly for his intrusion, on the ground, that, becoming tired of waiting, and hearing she had gone out for a wait, he had started to meet them, but was about to turn back, fearing to interrupt them, when John’s rudeness compelled him to appear. The excuse was accepted; and James soon occupied the seat recently vacated by poor John. So well did he avail himself of the circumstances, that he succeeded in convincing Nelly that his brother was a very ill-tempered person, whom it would be well for her to avoid. On this, with the true instinct of a flirt, she endeavored to persuade him that she had never really cared for John’s attentions. James was but too willing to be convinced of this; and he parted from her, feeling satisfied that his suit would be successful. Knowing well that his life was scarcely safe, if he were for a moment alone with John, after that night, James constantly exercised such caution as prevented the possibility of an encounter. He was determined as soon as possible to leave that neighborhood, always provided that Nelly would go with him. For some time he considered this as certain. John carefully avoided her, and no new suitor appeared. I fear that pretty Nelly was a thorough coquette; for, having nearly broken one brother’s heart, she very soon tired of the other, for whom she had never really cared a straw. These two HDT WHAT? INDEX

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men being the last to fall into her toils, she began to sigh wearily over her too easily captured victims, when her fickle fancy was caught by game more worthy so expert a sportsman. It happened that at this time there came to the village a gentleman from New York, named Brooke, a bachelor of known wealth. He was perhaps forty years old, and had run through a course of reckless dissipation which had rendered him thoroughly tired of city ways and city women. On the very first Sunday after his arrival, as he stood idly lounging at the church-door, his eye was caught by Nelly’s fresh, rosy face. He followed her into church, and spent the time of service in staring her out of countenance. It will be readily imagined that she was not slow to follow up this first impression; and but few days elapsed before their acquaintance had ripened into intimacy. Of course, his unceasing attentions could not fail of attracting notice and exciting remark; and it was not long before they came to the ears of the Blounts. John received the news with sullen indifference. It mattered little to him whom she liked now. James, however, refused to believe that there could be anything in it, regarding it as a mere passing caprice. In this view most of the village-people coincided; they considered it absurd to suppose that there could be anything serious in Mr. Brooke’s devotion. Time would probably have proved the correctness of this supposition, had it not been, fortunately for Nelly, that she had a father with more steadiness of mind than her giddy brain was capable of. Mr. Curtis succeeded in turning the rapid attachment to such advantage, that in three weeks from the time of their first meeting they were not only engaged, but actually married. It had been Nelly’s intention, with the vanity of a true woman, to postpone the wedding a month longer, and then to have it on such a scale as would excite the admiration and envy of all her companions; but Mr. Curtis was too shrewd for this. He durst not put this rapid love to the test of waiting; and he so worked upon his daughter’s fears, that she consented to a more hasty union. Mr. Brooke, too, showed some aversion to any public demonstration. Perhaps he was conscious that his friends would think he was doing a foolish thing, and he was therefore desirous of having it over before they had time to remonstrate. So, on a fine bright Sunday, early in September, the drowsy congregation, who were dozing away the afternoon-service, were aroused by the publication of the banns of marriage between Henry Brooke and Nelly Curtis. It occasioned great whispering and tittering. But no one suspected that the wedding was near at hand; and there were very few lingerers after the service was over, when Kelly came in at the side-door with her father, was joined by Mr. Brooke, and actually married then and there. The Blount brothers never went to church, but they almost always came into the village of a Sunday afternoon, and on this memorable day they were there as usual, but not together. John HDT WHAT? INDEX

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was earnestly discussing a new breed of cattle with a neighboring farmer, wholly oblivious of the false Nelly. James was standing with a group of young men on the village-green, when Isaac Welles, the whilom blackberry-boy, rushed up, breathless, to say that he had been detained in the church and had actually seen Nelly and Mr. Brooke married. In the first eager questions that followed this announcement, no one noticed James, until they were astonished to see him fall heavily to the ground. He had fainted. They had not mentioned the publication of the banns to him, and he was wholly unprepared for this utter annihilation of all his hopes. Welles sprang to his side, and they raised him quickly. He was a strong man, and before they could bring any restoratives he had recovered. "It is nothing,” he said, with a sickly smile. “I think it must have been a sunstroke. It is confoundedly hot." This lame explanation was accepted, and James refused to go into any of the neighbors’ houses, though he consented to seat himself, for a few moments, on a rustic bench in the shade of the trees. Half an hour later, John, having finished his chat, strolled to the green and approached the group. He looked surprised when he caught sight of his brother, who of late had so carefully avoided him. His astonishment increased when James rose, and, advancing a step, said,-- "John, Nelly Curtis is married to that Brooke!" An angry flush rose to John’s brow, and his black eyes flashed ominously, as he answered, in a hoarse, low voice,-- "So much the better, for now she will never be your wife." "Neither mine nor yours,” said James, maliciously;--then, after a moment, he added, “She was a worthless thing, and we are well rid of her." At this, a tornado of passion seemed to seize John. He sprang forward, crying,-- "She was not worthless, and I will kill the first man who dares to say so." There was an interval of dead silence; the brothers regarded each other for a moment, then James shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, and turned away. John glanced around him defiantly on the astonished crowd, and, seeing no one there likely to dispute with him, he seemed to have formed a sudden resolution, for he walked off rapidly after his brother. Isaac Welles had stood by, no unobservant witness of this scene. He noted something in those two men’s eyes that recalled the fierce quarrel of the two boys; and as soon as it was possible for him to get away, he went off after the Blounts, determined, if possible, to prevent mischief. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Meantime John had not met his brother; but, seeing James’s horse was gone, he mounted his own and rode away towards home, determining to catch James before he could reach there. However, he did not overtake him. James was too cunning to ride directly to the farm-house, and John’s headlong speed availed only to bring him there in time to find his mother alone and dangerously ill. In a moment all other thoughts were laid aside. The pent-up affection of John’s heart had centred itself on his only parent. She had always been cold and stern with her sons, yet they loved her with a tender devotion which reclaimed natures that might otherwise have been wholly bad. With all the tenderness of a woman, John assisted his mother to her bed, and, not daring to leave her, awaited eagerly the coming of the only other person who could summon aid,--his brother James. At last he came,--riding slowly, with bowed head, up the lonely road. John went out to meet him. James looked up angry and astonished, and immediately threw himself into a position of defence. John shook his head. "James,” he said, “I cannot settle our quarrel now. Mother is very ill,--perhaps dying." James started forward. "Where is she? What is the matter?” he cried, eagerly. "I do not know,” answered John. “I will go for the doctor, now that you are come. I durst not leave her before. But, James, stop one moment. As long as she lives, you are safe,--I will not hurt you by word or act; but when she is gone,--beware!" James did not answer, except by a nod, and John, turning, saw Isaac Welles standing at the gate. He had overheard the conversation and felt that there was no danger of a quarrel, and he now came eagerly forward with offers of assistance. They were gratefully accepted; for even the taciturnity of the brothers seemed to give way before the pressing fear that beset them. There is ever great good-will and kindness in the scattered community of a village, and, despite the unpopularity of the Blounts, neighbors and friends soon came to them, ready and willing to aid them by every means in their power. Mrs. Blount’s illness proved to be quite as alarming as John had feared. The physician, from the first, held out very little hope of her recovery. The strong, healthy woman was stricken, as if in a moment; it was the first real illness she had ever had, and it made fearful progress. Yet her naturally iron constitution resisted desperately, so that, to the astonishment of all who saw her sufferings, she lingered on, week after week, with wonderful tenacity of life. The summer faded into autumn, and autumn died into winter, and still she lived, failing slowly, each day losing strength, growing weaker and weaker, until it HDT WHAT? INDEX

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seemed as if she existed only by the force of will. Of course it had long ago been found necessary to have some other dependence than the kindness of neighbors, and a stout Irish girl had been hired for the kitchen, while Mrs. Clark, a good, responsible woman, occupied the post of nurse. From these persons, and from Isaac Welles, the rest of the story is collected. During all these months of her illness, the two brothers had been unfailing in their devotion to their poor suffering mother. Night and day they never tired, watching by her bedside for hours, and seeming scarcely to sleep. Of course they were much together, but no words of harshness ever passed their lips. When out of Mrs. Blount’s presence, they spoke to each other as little as possible; in her presence, there was a studied civility that might have deceived any one but a mother. Even she was puzzled. She would lie and watch them with burning, eager eyes, striving to discover if it was a heartfelt reconciliation or only a hollow truce. It was the strong feeling she had that only her life kept them apart, which gave her power to defy death. Perhaps on this very account his stroke was all the more sudden at last. It was a dark, lowering afternoon in December when the summons came. Mrs. Blount had been lying in a half-doze for more than an hour. Her sons had taken advantage of this sleep to attend to some necessary duties. The nurse sat beside the fire, watching the flames flicker on the dark walls, and idly wondering if the leaden-hued sky portended a snow-storm. Her musings were broken by the voice of the invalid, very faint, but quite distinct,-- "Nurse! nurse! Call my sons. I am dying!" Mrs. Clark ran to the bed. "Quick! quick!” cried Mrs. Blount. “Do not stop for me. You cannot help me now. Call my sons before it is too late!" Her tone and action were so imperative that they enforced obedience, and the nurse ran down-stairs with all speed. She found no one but the hired girl in the kitchen, who said, in answer to her hurried inquiries, that both brothers were out, gone to bring in the cattle before the storm. Mrs. Clark sent her in all haste to recall them, and then returned to the sick- room. As she entered, the dying woman looked up quickly, her face clouded with disappointment when she saw that she was alone. The nurse said all in her power to assure her that her sons would soon be there, but she could not allay the strange excitement into which their absence seemed to have thrown her. "My strength is failing,” she said, sadly; “every moment is precious; if I die without that promise which they could not refuse to a dying mother’s prayer, God knows what will become of them!" Mrs. Clark urged the necessity of quiet, but the sufferer paid HDT WHAT? INDEX

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no heed to the caution. She talked on, wildly, and sometimes incoherently, about the hopes she built upon the reconciliation her death-bed would effect,--showing, in these few moments of unnatural loquacity, how deeply she had felt the animosity between her sons, and how great had been the effort to conquer it. This excitement could not continue long; her voice soon grew weaker, and at last she ceased speaking, appearing to sink into a stupor of exhaustion. An instant after, the door opened and John ran eagerly to the couch, closely followed by James. Already the poor widow’s eyes were closed; the livid hue that is so fatally significant overspread her face; her breath came in quick gasps. "Mother! mother!” cried John, flinging himself on his knees beside her, and seizing the thin, hard hand. At that sound, she opened her eyes, but it was too late; she no longer had the power of utterance. She glanced from one brother to the other with a piteous, entreating look; her mouth moved convulsively; in the effort to speak, she sat upright for an instant, ghastly and rigid, and then fell heavily back. All was over; her life of labor was changed for eternal rest; and the two men, whom only her power had restrained, stood with the last barrier between them removed, avowed and deadly enemies. Yet, for all that, they were sincere mourners for the sole parent they had ever known, though it seemed, that, jealous even in their grief, neither cared to have the other see how much he suffered; for, after the first few moments, when the heart refuses to be satisfied of the certainty which it knows only too well, they turned away, and each sought his own room. Afterwards, when all was prepared and the room decently arranged, they returned, and alternately through the long night kept their vigil beside the corpse. It is strange, that, in those quiet hours of communion with the loved dead, no thought of relenting towards each other ever suggested itself. The snow that had been hanging all day in the dark clouds above them towards evening began to fall. Stilly and continually the tiny flakes came down, hiding all the ruggedness of earth under a spotless mantle, even as the white shroud covered the toil- worn frame of the released sufferer. In the morning the news spread rapidly, and neighbors came to the afflicted house. But the brothers seemed to resent their offers of assistance as an intrusion, refusing to allow any other watchers, themselves continuing night and day to watch beside the corpse; and that awful vigil, instead of softening their hearts, seemed to harden them into a more deadly hatred. The third afternoon, when all the country-side was ghastly in its winding-sheet of snow, and the clouds hung heavy as a pall over the stricken earth, the little funeral held its way from the lonely farm-house to the village-churchyard. As a last HDT WHAT? INDEX

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tribute of respect to their mother, the two brothers drove side by side in the same sleigh. Those who saw them said that it was a sight not to be forgotten,--those two black figures, with their stern, pale faces, so much alike, yet so unsympathizing, sitting motionless, not even leaning on each other in that moment of grief. So they were together, yet apart, during the ceremony that consigned the wife to the grave where five-and- twenty years before they had laid the husband. So they were together, yet apart, when they turned their horse’s head towards their home and rode away silently into the sombre twilight. The last person who saw them that night was Mrs. Clark. The brothers had insisted that both she and the Irish girl should leave early in the day,--replying to all offers of putting the house in order, that they preferred to be alone. But on her way home after the funeral, Mrs. Clark passed the house in a friend’s sleigh and stopped a moment for her bundle, which in the hurry of the morning had been forgotten. To her surprise, as she approached the door, she saw that there were no lights visible in any of the windows, although it was already very dark. Thinking the brothers were in the back part of the house, she pushed open the door, which yielded to her touch, and was just about to make her way towards the kitchen, when she heard a sound in the parlor, and then these words, quite distinctly:-- "Are you ready, James?" "Yes,--only one word. It is a long account we have to settle, and it must be final." "It shall be. Mine is a heavy score. Years ago I swore to wipe it out, and now the time has come." Mrs. Clark’s knock interrupted them. There was an angry exclamation, and the door was opened. To her intense surprise, no light came from within. She could not understand how they could settle their accounts in the darkness; but they gave her no time for reflection; an angry voice, in answer to her inquiries, bade her go on to the kitchen, and she hastened off. There she found a single candle burning dimly; by its light she picked up her bundle, and, leaving the door open to see her way, returned to the front of the house. Though not a nervous woman, she felt an undefined fear at the mysterious darkness and silence; and as she passed the brothers standing in the doorway, she was struck with fresh terror at the livid pallor of those two stern faces that looked out from the black shadow. When she was going out, she heard the door of the parlor bolted within, and she rejoined her friends, right glad to be away from the sad house. So those two men were left alone, locked into the dark room together, in the horrible companionship of their inextinguishable hatred and their own bad hearts. It will forever remain unknown what passed between them through the long hours of that awful night, when the wind howled madly around the lightless house, and the clouds gathered blacker and thicker, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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shrouding it in impenetrable gloom. Three days passed before any living creature approached the spot,--three days of cold unparalleled in the annals of that country,--cold so severe that it compelled even the hardy farmers to keep as much as possible by the fireside. On the fourth day, Isaac Welles began to think they had been quite long enough alone, and he started with a friend to visit the Blount brothers. Arrived at the farm-house, they saw the sleigh standing before the door, but no sign of any one stirring. The shutters of the windows were closed, and no smoke came out of the chimney. They knocked at the door. No answer. Surprised at the silence, they at length tried to open it. It was not locked, but some heavy substance barred the way. With difficulty they forced it open wide enough to go in. To this day those men shudder and turn pale, as they recall the awful scene that awaited them within that house, which was, in fact, a tomb. The obstacle which opposed their entrance was the dead body of John Blount. He lay stretched on the floor,--his face mutilated by cuts and disfigured with gore, his clothes disordered and bloody, and one hand nearly severed from the arm by a deep gash at the wrist; yet it was evident that none of these wounds were mortal. After that terrible conflict, he had probably crawled to the door and fallen there, faint with loss of blood; the silent, cruel cold had completed the work of death. Following the blood-track, the two men entered the parlor, with suspended breath and hearts that almost ceased to beat. There they found the dead body of James Blount,--his clothes half torn off, in the violence of the strife that could end only in murder. A long, deep cut on the throat had terminated that awful struggle, though many other less dangerous wounds showed how desperate it had been. He lay just as he fell,--his features still contracted with a look of defiance and hatred, and in his right hand still clasped a long, sharp knife. He had succumbed in that mortal conflict, which quenched a lifelong quarrel, and was to prove fatal alike to victor and vanquished. Thus the vow of John Blount was fulfilled,--the pent-up hatred of years satisfied in his brother’s murder. The room was in the wildest disorder,--chairs thrown down and broken, tables overturned, and the carpet torn. In one corner they found a second long, sharp knife. It had been at least a fair fight. They laid the two ghastly corpses side by side: they had been chained together all their lives; they were chained together in death. The two fratricides are buried in one grave. This terrible tragedy blighted the spot where it took place. No one would ever inhabit that house again. The furniture was removed, except from the one room which to this day remains unchanged, and the building left to fall to decay. The HDT WHAT? INDEX

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superstitious affirm, that, in the long winter nights, oaths and groans steal out, muffled, on the rising wind, from the dark shadows of the Lonely House. * * * * * BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. In the interior of the island of Borneo there has been found a certain race of wild creatures, of which kindred varieties have been discovered in the Philippine Islands, in Terra del Fuego, and in Southern Africa. They walk usually almost erect upon two legs, and in that attitude measure about four feet in height; they are dark, wrinkled, and hairy; they construct no habitations, form no families, scarcely associate together, sleep in trees or in caves, feed on snakes and vermin, on ants and ants’ eggs, on mice, and on each other; they cannot be tamed, nor forced to any labor; and they are hunted and shot among the trees, like the great gorillas, of which they are a stunted copy. When they are captured alive, one finds, with surprise, that their uncouth jabbering sounds like articulate language; they turn up a human face to gaze upon their captor; the females show instincts of modesty; and, in fine, these wretched beings are Men. Men, “created in God’s image,” born immortal and capable of progress, and so differing from Socrates and Shakspeare only in degree. It is but a sliding scale from this melancholy debasement up to the most regal condition of humanity. A traceable line of affinity unites these outcast children with the renowned historic races of the world: the Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Ethiopian, the Jew,--the beautiful Greek, the strong Roman, the keen Arab, the passionate Italian, the stately Spaniard, the sad Portuguese, the brilliant Frenchman, the frank Northman, the wise German, the firm Englishman, and that last- born heir of Time, the American, inventor of many new things, but himself, by his temperament, the greatest novelty of all,- -the American, with his cold, clear eye, his skin made of ice, and his veins filled with lava. Who shall define what makes the essential difference between those lowest and these loftiest types? Not color; for the most degraded races seem never to be the blackest, and the builders of the Pyramids were far darker than the dwellers in the Aleutian Islands. Not unmixed purity of blood; since the Circassians, the purest type of the supreme Caucasian race, have given nothing to history but the courage of their men and the degradation of their women. Not religion; for enlightened nations have arisen under each great historic faith, while even Christianity has its Abyssinia and Arkansas. Not climate; for each quarter of the globe has witnessed both extremes. We can only say that there is an inexplicable step in progress, which we call civilization; it is the development of mankind into a sufficient maturity of strength to keep the peace and organize institutions; it is the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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arrival of literature and art; it is the lion and the lamb beginning to lie down together, without having, as some one has said, the lamb inside of the lion. There are innumerable aspects of this great transformation; but there is one, in special, which has been continually ignored or evaded. In the midst of our civilization, there is a latent distrust of civilization. We are never weary of proclaiming the enormous gain it has brought to manners, to morals, and to intellect; but there is a wide-spread impression that the benefit is purchased by a corresponding physical decay. This alarm has had its best statement from Emerson. “Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other.... What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New-Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and the undivided twentieth part of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that his aboriginal strength the white man has lost. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad-axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch; and the same blow shall send the white man to his grave." Were this true, the fact would be fatal. Man is a progressive being, only on condition that he begin at the beginning. He can afford to wait centuries for a brain, but he cannot subsist a second without a body. If civilization sacrifice the physical thus hopelessly to the mental, and barbarism merely sacrifice the mental to the physical, then barbarism is unquestionably the better thing, so far as it goes, because it provides the essential preliminary conditions, and so can afford to wait. Barbarism is a one-story log-hut, a poor thing, but better than nothing; while such a civilization would be simply a second story, with a first story too weak to sustain it, a magnificent sky-parlor, with all heaven in view from the upper windows, but with the whole family coming down in a crash presently, through a fatal neglect of the basement. In such a view, an American Indian or a Kaffir warrior may be a wholesome object, good for something already, and for much more when he gets a brain built on. But when one sees a bookworm in his library, an anxious merchant-prince in his counting-room, tottering feebly about, his thin underpinning scarcely able to support what he has already crammed into that heavy brain of his, and he still piling in more,--one feels disposed to cry out, “Unsafe passing here! Stand from under!" Sydney Smith, in his “Moral Philosophy,” has also put strongly this case of physiological despair. “Nothing can be plainer than that a life of society is unfavorable to all the animal powers of men.... A Choctaw could run from here to Oxford without stopping. I go in the mail-coach; and the time the savage has employed in learning to run so fast I have employed in learning something useful. It would not only be useless in me to run like HDT WHAT? INDEX

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a Choctaw, but foolish and disgraceful.” But one may well suppose, that, if the jovial divine had kept himself in training for this disgraceful lost art of running, his diary might not have recorded the habit of lying two hours in bed in the morning, “dawdling and doubting,” as he says, or the fact of his having “passed the whole day in an unpleasant state of body, produced by laziness"; and he might not have been compelled to invent for himself that amazing rheumatic armor,--a pair of tin boots, a tin collar, a tin helmet, and a tin shoulder-of-mutton over each of his natural shoulders, all duly filled with boiling water, and worn in patience by the sedentary Sydney. It is also to be remembered that this statement was made in 1805, when England and Germany were both waking up to a revival of physical training,--if we may trust Sir John Sinclair in the one case, and Salzmann in the other,--such as America is experiencing now. Many years afterwards, Sydney Smith wrote to his brother, that “a working senator should lead the life of an athlete.” But supposing the fact still true, that an average red man can run, and an average white man cannot,--who does not see that it is the debility, not the feat, which is discreditable? Setting aside the substantial advantages of strength and activity, there is a melancholy loss of self-respect in buying cultivation for the brain by resigning the proper vigor of the body. Let men say what they please, they all demand a life which shall be whole and sound throughout, and there is a drawback upon all gifts that are paid for in infirmities. There is no thorough satisfaction in art or intellect, if we yet feel ashamed before the Indian because we cannot run, and before the South-Sea Islander because we cannot swim. Give us a total culture, and a success without any discount of shame. After all, one feels a certain justice in Warburton’s story of the Guinea trader, in Spence’s Anecdotes. Mr. Pope was with Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, when his nephew, a Guinea trader, came in. “Nephew,” said Sir Godfrey, “you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world.” “I don’t know how great you may be,” said the Guinea-man, “but I don’t like your looks; I have often bought a man, much better than both of you together, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas." Fortunately for the hopes of man, the alarm is unfounded. The advance of accurate knowledge dispels it. Civilization is cultivation, whole cultivation; and even in its present imperfect state, it not only permits physical training, but promotes it. The traditional glory of the savage body is yielding before medical statistics: it is becoming evident that the average barbarian, observed from the cradle to the grave, does not know enough and is not rich enough to keep his body in its highest condition, but, on the contrary, is small and sickly and short-lived and weak, compared with the man of civilization. The great athletes of the world have been civilized; the long- lived men have been civilized; the powerful armies have been civilized; and the average of life, health, size, and strength HDT WHAT? INDEX

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is highest to-day among those races where knowledge and wealth and comfort are most widely spread. And yet, by the common lamentation, one would suppose that all civilization is a slow suicide of the race, and that refinement and culture are to leave man at last in a condition like that of the little cherubs on old tomb-stones, all head and wings. It must be owned that the delusion has all the superstitions of history in its favor, and only the facts against it. If we may trust tradition, the race has undoubtedly been tapering down from century to century since the Creation, so that the original Adam must have been more than twice the size of the Webster statue. However far back we go, admiring memory looks farther. Homer and Virgil never let their hero throw a stone without reminding us that modern heroes only live in glass houses, to have stones thrown at them. Lucretius and Juvenal chant the same lament. Xenophon, mourning the march of luxury among the Persians, says that modern effeminacy has reached such a pitch, that men have even devised coverings for their fingers, called gloves. Herodotus narrates, that, when Cambyses sent ambassadors to the Macrobians, they asked what the Persians had to eat and how long they commonly lived. He was told that they sometimes attained the age of eighty, and that they ate a mass of crushed grain, which they termed bread. On this, they said that it was no wonder, if the Persians died young, when they partook of such rubbish, and that probably they would not survive even so long, but for the wine they drank; while the Macrobians lived on flesh and milk, and survived one hundred and twenty years. But, unfortunately, there were no Life Insurance Companies among the Macrobians, and therefore nothing to bring down this formidable average to a reliable schedule,--such as accurately informs every modern man how long he may live honestly, without defrauding either his relict or his insurers. We know, moreover, precisely what Dr. Windship can lift, at any given date, and what the rest of us cannot; but Homer and Virgil never weighed the stones which their heroes threw, nor even the words in which they described the process. It is a matter of certainty that all great exploits are severely tested by Fairbanks’s scales and stop-watches. It is wonderful how many persons, in the remoter districts, assure the newspaper-editors of their ability to lift twelve hundred pounds; and many a young oarsman can prove to you that he has pulled his mile faster than Ward or Clark, if you will only let him give his own guess at time and distance. It is easy, therefore, to trace the origin of these exaggerations. Those old navigators, for instance, who saw so many fine things which were not to be seen, how should they help peopling the barbarous realms with races of giants? Job Hartop, who three times observed a merman rise above water to his waist, near the Bermudas,--Harris, who endured such terrific cold in the Antarctics, that once, perilously blowing his nose with his fingers, it flew into the fire and was seen no more,--Knyvett, who, in the same regions, pulled off his frozen stockings, and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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his toes with them, but had them replaced by the ship’s surgeon,- -of course these men saw giants, and it is only a matter for gratitude that they vouchsafed us dwarfs also, to keep up some remains of self-respect in us. In Magellan’s Straits, for instance, they saw, on one side, from three to four thousand pigmies with mouths from ear to ear; while on the other shore they saw giants whose footsteps were four times as large as an Englishman’s,--which was a strong expression, considering that the Englishman’s footstep had already reached round the globe. The only way to test these earlier observations is by later ones. For instance, in the year 1772, a Dutchman named Roggewein discovered Easter Island. His expedition had cost the government a good deal, and he had to bring home his money’s worth of discoveries. Accordingly, his islanders were all giants,--twice as tall, he said, as the tallest of the Europeans; “they measured, one with another, the height of twelve feet; so that we could easily,--who will not wonder at it?--without stooping, have passed between the legs of these sons of Goliath. According to their height, so is their thickness.” Moreover, he “puts down nothing but the real truth, and upon the nicest inspection,” and, to exhibit this caution, warns us that it would be wrong to rate the women of those regions as high as the men, they being, as he pityingly owns, “commonly not above ten or eleven feet.” Sweet young creatures they must have appeared, belle and steeple in one. And it was certainly a great disappointment to Captain Cook, when, on visiting the same Island, fifty years later, he could not find man or woman more than six feet tall. Thus ended the tale of this Flying Dutchman. Thus lamentably have the inhabitants of Patagonia been also dwindling, though, there, if anywhere, still lies the Cape of Bad Hope for the apostles of human degeneracy. Pigafetta originally estimated them at twelve feet. In the time of Commodore Byron, they had already grown downward; yet he said of them that they were “enormous goblins,” seven feet high, every one of them. One of his officers, however, writing an independent narrative, seemed to think this a needless concession; he admits, indeed, that the women were not, perhaps, more than seven feet, or seven and a half, or, it might be, eight, “but the men were, for the most part, about nine feet high, and very often more.” Lieutenant Cumming, he said, being but six feet two, appeared a mere pigmy among them. But it seems, that, in after-times, on some one’s questioning this diminutive lieutenant as to the actual size of these enormous goblins, the veteran frankly confessed, that, “had it been anywhere else but in Patagonia, he should have called them good sturdy savages and thought no more on’t." But, these facts apart, there are certain general truths which look ominous for the reputation of the _physique_ of savage tribes. First, they cannot keep the race alive, they are always tending HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to decay. When first encountered by civilization, they usually tell stories of their own decline in numbers, and after that the downward movement is accelerated. They are poor, ignorant, improvident, oppressed by others’ violence, or exhausted by their own; war kills them, infanticide and abortion cut them off before they reach the age of war, pestilences sweep them away, whole tribes perish by famine and smallpox. Under the stern climate of the Esquimaux and the soft skies of Tahiti, the same decline is seen. Parkman estimates that in 1763 the whole number of Indians east of the Mississippi was but ten thousand, and they were already mourning their own decay. Travellers seldom visit a savage country without remarking on the scarcity of aged people and of young children. Lewis and Clarke, Mackenzie, Alexander Henry, observed this among Indian tribes never before visited by white men; Dr. Kane remarked it among the Esquimaux, D’Azara among the Indians of South America, and many travellers in the South-Sea Islands and even in Africa, though the black man apparently takes more readily to civilization than any other race, and then develops a terrible vitality, as American politicians find to their cost. Meanwhile, the hardships which thus decimate the tribe toughen the survivors, and sometimes give them an apparent advantage over civilized men. The savages whom one encounters are necessarily the picked men of the race, and the observer takes no census of the multitudes who have perished in the process. Civilization keeps alive, in every generation, multitudes who would otherwise die prematurely. These millions of invalids do not owe to civilization their diseases, but their lives. It is painful that your sick friend should live on Cherry Pectoral; but if he had been born in barbarism, he would neither have had it to drink nor survived to drink it. And again, it is now satisfactorily demonstrated that these picked survivors of savage life are commonly suffering under the same diseases with their civilized compeers, and show less vital power to resist them. In barbarous nations every foreigner is taken for a physician, and the first demand is for medicines; if not the right medicines, then the wrong ones; if no medicines are at hand, the written prescription, administered internally, is sometimes found a desirable restorative. The earliest missionaries to the South-Sea Islands found ulcers and dropsy and hump-backs there before them. The English Bishop of New Zealand, landing on a lone islet where no ship had ever touched, found the whole population prostrate with influenza. Lewis and Clarke, the first explorers of the Rocky Mountains, found Indian warriors ill with fever and dysentery, rheumatism and paralysis, and Indian women in hysterics. “The tooth-ache,” said Roger Williams of the New England tribes, “is the only paine which will force their stoute hearts to cry"; even the Indian women, he says, never cry as he has heard “some of their men in this paine"; but Lewis and Clarke found whole tribes who had abolished this source of tears in the civilized manner, by HDT WHAT? INDEX

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having no teeth left. We complain of our weak eyes as a result of civilized habits, and Tennyson, in “Locksley Hall,” wishes his children bred in some savage land, “not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books.” But savage life seems more injurious to the organs of vision than even the type of a cheap edition; for the most vigorous barbarians--on the prairies, in Southern archipelagos, on African deserts--suffer more from different forms of ophthalmia than from any other disease; without knowing the alphabet, they have worse eyes than if they were professors, and have not even the melancholy consolation of spectacles. Again, the savage cannot, as a general rule, endure transplantation,--he cannot thrive in the country of the civilized man; whereas the latter, with time for training, can equal or excel him in strength and endurance on his own ground. As it is known that the human race generally can endure a greater variety of climate than the hardiest of the lower animals, so it is with the man of civilization, when compared with the barbarian. Kane, when he had once learned how to live in the Esquimaux country, lived better than the Esquimaux themselves; and he says expressly, that “their powers of resistance are no greater than those of well-trained voyagers from other lands.” Richardson, Parkyns, Johnstone, give it as their opinion, that the European, once acclimated, bears the heat of the African deserts better than the native negro. “These Christians are devils,” say the Arabs; “they can endure both cold and heat.” What are the Bedouins to the Zouaves, who unquestionably would be as formidable in Lapland as in Algiers? Nay, in the very climates where the natives are fading away, the civilized foreigner multiplies: thus, the strong New-Zealanders do not average two children to a family, while the households of the English colonists are larger than at home,--which is saying a good deal. Most formidable of all is the absence of all recuperative power in the savage who rejects civilization. No effort of will improves his condition; he sees his race dying out, and he can only drink and forget it. But the civilized man has an immense capacity for self-restoration; he can make mistakes and correct them again, sin and repent, sink and rise. Instinct can only prevent; science can cure in one generation, and prevent in the next. It is known that some twenty years ago a thrill of horror shot through all Anglo-Saxondom at the reported physical condition of the operatives in English mines and factories. It is not so generally known, that, by a recent statement of the medical inspector of factories, there is declared to have been a most astounding renovation of female health in such establishments throughout all England since that time,--the simple result of sanitary laws. What science has done science can do. Everybody knows which symptom of American physical decay is habitually quoted, as most alarming; one seldom sees a dentist who does not despair of the republic. Yet this calamity HDT WHAT? INDEX

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is nothing new; the elder branch of our race has been through that epidemic, and outlived it. In the robust days of Queen Bess, the teeth of the court ladies were habitually so black and decayed, that foreigners used constantly to ask if Englishwomen ate nothing but sugar. Hentzner, who visited the country in 1697, speaks of the same calamity as common among the English of all classes. Two centuries and a half have removed the stigma,--improved physical habits have put fresh pearls between the lips of all England now; and there seems no reason why we Americans may not yet be healthy, in spite of our teeth. Thus much for general considerations; let us come now to more specific tests, beginning with the comparison of size. The armor of the knights of the Middle Ages is too small for their modern descendants: Hamilton Smith records that two Englishmen of average dimensions found no suit large enough to fit them in the great collection of Sir Samuel Meyrick. The Oriental sabre will not admit the English hand, nor the bracelet of the Kaffir warrior the English arm. The swords found in Roman tumuli have handles inconveniently small; and the great mediaeval two-handed sword is now supposed to have been used only for one or two blows at the first onset, and then exchanged for a smaller one. The statements given by Homer, Aristotle, and Vitruvius represent six feet as a high standard for full-grown men; and the irrefutable evidence of the ancient doorways, bedsteads, and tombs proves the average size of the race to have certainly not diminished in modern days. The gigantic bones have all turned out to be animal remains; even the skeleton twenty-five feet high and ten feet broad, which one _savant_ wrote a book called “Gigantosteologia” to prove human, and another, a counter- argument, called “Gigantomachia,” to prove animal,--neither of the philosophers taking the trouble to draw a single fragment of the fossil. The enormous savage races have turned out, as has been shown, to be travellers’ tales,--even the Patagonians being brought down to an average of five feet ten inches, and being, moreover, only a part of a race, the Abipones, of which the other families are smaller. Indeed, we can all learn by our own experience how irresistible is the tendency of the imagination to attribute vast proportions to all hardy and warlike tribes. Most persons fancy the Scottish Highlanders, for instance, to have been a race of giants; yet Charles Edward was said to be taller than any man in his Highland army, and his height was but five feet nine. We have the same impression in regard to our own Aborigines. Yet, when first, upon the prairies of Nebraska, I came in sight of a tribe of genuine, unadulterated Indians, with no possession on earth but a bow and arrow and a bear-skin,-- bare-skin in a double sense, I might add,--my instinctive exclamation was, “What race of dwarfs is this?” They were the descendants of the glorious Pawnees of Cooper, the heroes of every boy’s imagination; yet, excepting the three chiefs, who were noble-looking men of six feet in height, the tallest of the tribe could not have measured five feet six inches. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The most careful investigations give the same results in respect to physical strength. Early travellers among our Indians, as Hearne and Mackenzie, and early missionaries to the South-Sea Islands, as Ellis, report athletic contests in which the natives could not equal the better-fed, better-clothed, better-trained Europeans. When the French _savans_, Péron, Regnier, Ransonnet, carried their dynamometers to the islands of the Indian Ocean, they found with surprise that an average English sailor was forty-two per cent, stronger, and an average Frenchman thirty per cent, stronger, than the strongest island tribe they visited. Even in comparing different European races, it is undeniable that bodily strength goes with the highest civilization. It is recorded in Robert Stephenson’s Life, that, when the English “navvies” were employed upon the Paris and Boulogne Railway, they used spades and barrows just twice the size of those employed by their Continental rivals, and were regularly paid double. Quetelet’s experiments with the dynamometer on university students showed the same results: first ranked the Englishman, then the Frenchman, then the Belgian, then the Russian, then the Southern European: for those races of Southern Europe which once ruled the Eastern and the Western worlds by physical and mental power have lost in strength as they have paused in civilization, and the easy victories of our armies in Mexico show us the result. It is impossible to deny that the observations on this subject are yet very imperfect; and the only thing to be claimed is, that they all point one way. So far as absolute statistical tables go, the above-named French observations have till recently stood almost alone, and have been the main reliance. The just criticism has, however, been made, that the subjects of these experiments were the inhabitants of New Holland and Van Diemen’s Land, by no means the strongest instances on the side of barbarism. It is, therefore, fortunate that the French tables have now been superseded by some more important comparisons, accurately made by A.S. Thomson, M.D., Surgeon of the Fifty- Eighth Regiment of the British Army, and printed in the seventeenth volume of the Journal of the London Statistical Society. The observations were made in New Zealand,--Dr. Thomson being stationed there with his regiment, and being charged with the duty of vaccinating all natives employed by the government. The islanders thus used for experiment were to some extent picked men, as none but able-bodied persons would have been selected for employ, and as they were, moreover, (he states,) accustomed to lifting burdens, and better-fed than the majority of their countrymen. The New Zealand race, as a whole, is certainly a very favorable type of barbarism, having but just emerged from an utterly savage condition, having been cannibals within one generation, and being the very identical people among whom were recorded those wonderful cures of flesh-wounds to which Emerson has referred. Cook and all other navigators have praised their HDT WHAT? INDEX

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robust physical aspect, and they undoubtedly, with the Fijians and the Tongans, stand at the head of all island races. They are admitted to surpass our American Indians, as well as the Kaffirs and the Joloffs, probably the finest African races; and a careful comparison between New-Zealanders and Anglo-Saxons will, therefore, approach as near to an _experimentum crucis_ as any single set of observations can. The following tables have been carefully prepared from those of Dr. Thomson, with the addition of some scanty facts from other sources,--scanty, because, as Quetelet indignantly observes, less pains have as yet been taken to measure accurately the physical powers of man than those of any machine he has constructed or any animal he has tamed. TABLE. HEIGHT. _Number measured. Average._ New- Zealanders...... 147 5 feet 6-3/4 inches. Students at Edinburgh...... 800 5 “ 7-1/10 “ Class of 1860. Cambridge (Mass.). 106 5 “ 7-3/5 “ Students at Cambridge (Eng.)..... 80 5 “ 8-3/5 “ WEIGHT. New-Zealanders...... 146 140 pounds. Soldiers 58th Regiment...... 1778 142 “ Class of 1860. Cambridge (Mass.). 106 142-1/2 “ Students at Cambridge (Eng.)..... 80 143 “ Men weighed at Boston (U.S.) Mechanics’ Fair, 1860 ...... 4369 146-3/4 “ Englishmen (Dr. Thomson)...... 2648 148 “ Cambridge, Eng. (a newspaper statement) ...... ---- 151 “ Revolutionary officers at West Point, August 10th, 1778, given in “Milledulcia,” p. 273.. 11 226 “ AREA OF CHEST. New-Zealanders...... 151 35.36 inches. Soldiers 58th Regiment...... 628 36.71 “ STRENGTH IN LIFTING. New-Zealanders...... 31 367 pounds. Students fit Edinburgh, aged 25.. ---- 416 “ Soldiers 58th Regiment...... 33 422 “ NOTE. The range of strength among the New-Zealanders was from 250 pounds to 420 pounds; among the soldiers, from 350 pounds to 504 pounds. But it is the test of longevity which exhibits the greatest triumph for civilization, because here the life-insurance tables furnish ample, though comparatively recent statistics. Of course, in legendary ages all lives were of enormous length; and the Hindoos in their sacred books attribute to their progenitors a career of forty million years or thereabouts,--what may safely be termed a ripe old age; for if a man were still unripe after celebrating his forty-millionth birthday, he might as well give it up. But from the beginning of accurate statistics we know that the duration of life in any nation is a fair index of its progress in civilization, Quetelet gives statistics, more or less reliable, from every nation of Northern Europe, showing a gain of ten to twenty-five per cent, during the last century. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Where the tables are most carefully prepared, the result is least equivocal. Thus, in Geneva, where accurate registers have been kept for three hundred years, it seems that from 1560 to 1600 the average lifetime of the citizens was twenty-one years and two months; in the next century, twenty-five years and nine months; in the century following, thirty-two years and nine months; and in the year 1833, forty years and five months: thus nearly doubling the average age of man in Geneva, within those three centuries of social progress. In France, it is estimated, that, in spite of revolutions and Napoleons, human life has been gaining at the rate of two months a year for nearly a century. By a manuscript of the fourteenth century, moreover, it is shown that the rate of mortality in Paris was then one in sixteen,-- one person dying annually to every sixteen of the inhabitants. It is now one in thirty-two,--a gain of a hundred per cent, in five hundred years. In England the progress has been far more rapid. The rate of mortality in 1690 was one in thirty-three; in 1780 it was one in forty; and it stands now at one in sixty,- -the healthiest condition in Europe,--while in half-barbarous Russia the rate of mortality is one in twenty-seven. It would be easy to multiply these statistics to any extent; but they all point one way, and no medical statistician now pretends to oppose the dictum of Hufeland, that “a certain degree of culture is physically necessary for man, and promotes duration of life." The simple result is, that the civilized man is physically superior to the barbarian. There is now no evidence that there exists in any part of the world a savage race who, taken as a whole, surpass or even equal the Anglo-Saxon type in average physical condition; as there is also none among whom the President elect of the United States and the Commander-in-chief of his armies would not be regarded as remarkably tall men, and Dr. Windship a remarkably strong one. “It is now well known,” says Prichard, “that all savage races have less muscular power than civilized men.” Johnstone in Northern Africa, and Cumming in Southern Africa, could find no one to equal them in strength of arm. At the Sandwich Islands, Ellis records, that, “when a boat manned by English seamen and a canoe with natives left the shore together, the canoe would uniformly leave the boat behind, but they would soon relax, while the seamen, pulling steadily on, would pass them, but, if the voyage took three hours, would invariably reach the destination first.” Certain races may have been regularly trained by position and necessity in certain particular arts,--as Sandwich-Islanders in swimming, and our Indians in running,--and may naturally surpass the average skill of those who are comparatively out of practice in that speciality; yet it is remarkable that their greatest feats even in these ways never seem to surpass those achieved by picked specimens of civilization. The best Indian runners could only equal Lewis and Clarke’s men, and they have been repeatedly beaten in prize-races within the last few years; while the most remarkable aquatic feat on record is probably that of Mr. Atkins of Liverpool, who recently dived to a depth of two hundred and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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thirty feet, reappearing above water in one minute and eleven seconds. In the wilderness and on the prairies, we find a general impression that cultivation and refinement must weaken the race. Not at all; they simply domesticate it. Domestication is not weakness. A strong hand does not become less muscular under a kid glove; and a man who is a hero in a red shirt will also be a hero in a white one. Civilization, imperfect as it is, has already procured for us better food, better air, and better behavior; it gives us physical training on system; and its mental training, by refining the nervous organization, makes the same quantity of muscular power go much farther. The young English ensigns and lieutenants who at Waterloo (in the words of Wellington) “rushed to meet death, as if it were a game of cricket,” were the fruit of civilization. They were representatives, indeed, of the aristocracy of their nation; and here, where the aim of all institutions is to make the whole nation an aristocracy, we must plan to secure the same splendid physical superiority on a grander scale. It is in our power, by using even very moderately for this purpose our magnificent machinery of common schools, to give to the physical side of civilization an advantage which it has possessed nowhere else, not even in England or Germany. It is not yet time to suggest detailed plans on this subject, since the public mind is not yet fully awake even to the demand. When the time comes, the necessary provisions can be made easily,--at least, as regards boys; for the physical training of girls is a far more difficult problem The organization is more delicate and complicated, the embarrassments greater, the observations less carefully made, the successes fewer, the failures far more disastrous. Any intelligent and robust man may undertake the physical training of fifty boys, however delicate their organization, with a reasonable hope of rearing nearly all of them, by easy and obvious methods, into a vigorous maturity; but what wise man or woman can expect anything like the same proportion of success, at present, with fifty American girls? This is the most momentous health-problem with which we have to deal,-- to secure the proper physical advantages of civilization for American women. Without this there can be no lasting progress. The Sandwich Island proverb says,-- “If strong be the frame of the mother, Her son shall make laws for the people." But in this country, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that every man grows to maturity surrounded by a circle of invalid female relatives, that he later finds himself the husband of an invalid wife and the parent of invalid daughters, and that he comes at last to regard invalidism, as Michelet coolly declares, the normal condition of that sex,--as if the Almighty did not know how to create a woman. This, of course, spreads a gloom over life. When I look at the morning throng of schoolgirls in HDT WHAT? INDEX

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summer, hurrying through every street, with fresh, young faces, and vesture of lilies, duly curled and straw-hatted and booted, and turned off as patterns of perfection by proud mammas,--it is not sad to me to think that all this young beauty must one day fade and die, for there are spheres of life beyond this earth, I know, and the soul is good to endure through more than one;--the sadness is in the unnatural nearness of the decay, to foresee the living death of disease that is waiting close at hand for so many, to know how terrible a proportion of those fair children are walking unconsciously into a weary, wretched, powerless, joyless, useless maturity. Among the myriad triumphs of advancing civilization, there seems but one formidable danger, and that is here. It cannot be doubted, however, that the peril will pass by, with advancing knowledge. In proportion to our national recklessness of danger is the promptness with which remedial measures are adopted, when they at last become indispensable. In the mean time, we must look for proofs of the physical resources of woman into foreign and even into savage lands. When an American mother tells me with pride, as occasionally happens, that her daughter can walk two miles and back without great fatigue, the very boast seems a tragedy; but when one reads that Oberea, queen of the Sandwich Islands, lifted Captain Wallis over a marsh as easily as if he had been a little child, there is a slight sense of consolation. Brunhilde, in the “Nibelungen,” binds her offending lover with her girdle and slings him up to the wall. Cymburga, wife of Duke Ernest of Lithuania, could crack nuts between her fingers, and drive nails into a wall with her thumb;--whether she ever got her husband under it is not recorded. Let me preserve from oblivion the renown of my Lady Butterfield, who, about the year 1700, at Wanstead, in Essex, (England,) thus advertised:--"This is to give notice to my honored masters and ladies and loving friends, that my Lady Butterfield gives a challenge to ride a horse, or leap a horse, or run afoot, or _hollo_, with any woman in England seven years younger, but not a day older, because I won’t undervalue myself, being now 74 years of age.” Nor should be left unrecorded the high-born Scottish damsel whose tradition still remains at the Castle of Huntingtower, in Scotland, where two adjacent pinnacles still mark the Maiden’s Leap. She sprang from battlement to battlement, a distance of nine feet and four inches, and eloped with her lover. Were a young lady to go through one of our villages in a series of leaps like that, and were she to require her lovers to follow in her footsteps, it is to be feared that she would die single. Yet the transplanted race which has in two centuries stepped from Delft Haven to San Francisco has no reason to be ashamed of its physical achievements, the more especially as it has found time on the way for one feat of labor and endurance which may be matched without fear against any historic deed. When civilization took possession of this continent, it found one HDT WHAT? INDEX

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vast coating of almost unbroken forest overspreading it from shore to prairie. To make room for civilization, that forest must go. What were Indians, however deadly,--what starvation, however imminent,--what pestilence, however lurking,--to a solid obstacle like this? No mere courage could cope with it, no mere subtlety, no mere skill, no Yankee ingenuity, no labor- saving machine with head for hands; but only firm, unwearying, bodily muscle to every stroke. Tree by tree, in two centuries, that forest has been felled. What were the Pyramids to that? There does not exist in history an athletic feat so astonishing. But there yet lingers upon this continent a forest of moral evil more formidable, a barrier denser and darker, a Dismal Swamp of inhumanity, a barbarism upon the soil, before which civilization has thus far been compelled to pause,--happy, if it could even check its spread. Checked at last, there comes from it a cry as if the light of day had turned to darkness,--when the truth simply is, that darkness is being mastered and surrounded by the light of day. Is it a good thing to “extend the area of freedom” by pillaging some feeble Mexico? and does the phrase become a bad one only when it means the peaceful progress of constitutional liberty within our own borders? The phrases which oppression teaches become the watchwords of freedom at last, and the triumph of Civilization over Barbarism is the only Manifest Destiny of America.

WHO WAS CASPAR HAUSER? Recent publications have again attracted our attention to a subject which about thirty years ago was the cause of great excitement and innumerable speculations. The very extraordinary advent, life, and death of Caspar Hauser, the novelty and singularity of all his thoughts and actions, and his charming innocence and amiability, interested at the time all Europe in his behalf. Thrown upon the world in a state of utter helplessness, he was adopted by one of the cities of Germany, and became not only a universal pet, but a sight which people flocked from all parts to see. It became a perfect fever, raging throughout Germany, and extending also to other countries. The papers teemed with accounts and conjectures. Innumerable essays and even books were written, almost every one advancing a different theory for the solution of the mystery. But his death was still more the occasion for their appearance, and for some time thereafter they literally swarmed from the press. Every one who had in any way come in contact with him, and a great many who knew him by reputation only, thought themselves called upon to give their views, so that in a little while the subject acquired almost a literature of its own. But this excitement gradually disappeared, and with it most of the literature which it had called forth. There are a few names, however, which occur frequently in connection with that of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Caspar Hauser, to whose opinions we shall subsequently call attention. They are Feuerbach, Daumer, Merker, Stanhope, Binder, Meier, and Fuhrmann.[A] Of these, Binder was his earliest protector; Feuerbach conducted the legal investigations to which Caspar’s mysterious appearance gave rise; Daumer was for a long time his teacher and host; Stanhope adopted him; Meier afterwards filled Daumer’s place; and Fuhrmann was the clergyman who attended his death-bed. Merker, though never thrown very closely in contact with Caspar, was a Prussian Counsellor of Police, and as such his opinion may perhaps have more than ordinary weight with some. Most of them published their various opinions during Caspar’s life or soon after his death, and the subject was then allowed to sink to its proper level and attract no further attention. Within a few years, however, it has again been brought into prominent light by some new publications. One of these is an essay written by Feuerbach and published in his works edited by his son, in which he endeavors to prove that Caspar Hauser was the son of the Grand Duchess Stephanie of Baden; another is a book by Daumer, which he devotes entirely to the explosion of all theories that have ever been advanced; and a third, by Dr. Eschricht, contends that Caspar was at first an idiot and afterwards an impostor. Before considering these different theories, let us recall the principal incidents of his life. These have, indeed, been placed within the reach of the English reader by the Earl of Stanhope’s book and by a translation of Feuerbach’s “Kaspar Hauser. Beispiel eines Verbrechens am Seelenleben des Menschen,"[B] published in Boston in 1832; but, as the former has, we believe, obtained little circulation in this country, and the latter is now probably out of print, a short account of the life of this singular being may not be deemed amiss. [Footnote A: Daumer, in his _Disclosures concerning Caspar Hauser_, refers to a great many more than these; but it is impossible to follow his example in so limited a space.] [Footnote B: _Caspar Hauser. An Example of a Crime against the Life, of Man’s Soul_.] On the 26th of May, 1828, a citizen of Nuremberg, while loitering in front of his house in the outskirts of the town, saw, tottering towards him, a lad of sixteen or seventeen years, coarsely and poorly clad. He held in his hand a letter, which he presented to the citizen; but to all questions as to who he was, whence he came, and what he wanted, he replied only in an unintelligible jargon. The letter was addressed to the captain of a cavalry company then stationed at Nuremberg, to whom he was taken. It stated substantially, that a boy had been left at the writer’s door on the 7th of October, 1812, that the writer was a poor laborer with a large family, but that he had nevertheless adopted the boy, and had reared him in such strict seclusion from the world that not even his existence was known. The letter said further, that, so far from being able to answer, the lad could not even comprehend any questions put to him. It therefore HDT WHAT? INDEX

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discouraged all attempts to obtain any information in that way, and ended with the advice, that, according to his desire, he should be made a dragoon, as his father had been before him. Inclosed in this letter was a note, professedly by the mother, and pretending to have been left with him, when, as an infant, Caspar Hauser was first cast upon the world, but, in reality, as it was afterwards proved, written by the same person. This note gave the date of his birth, pleaded the poverty of the mother as an excuse for thus abandoning her child, and contained the same request as to his joining a cavalry regiment when he should arrive at the age of seventeen. The first impression produced by Caspar’s appearance and behavior was, that he was some idiot or lunatic escaped from confinement; it remained only to be shown whence he had escaped. In the mean time he was placed under the protection of the police, who removed him to their guard-room. There he showed no consciousness of what was going on around him; his look was a dull, brutish stare; nor did he give any indication of intelligence, until pen and paper were placed in his hand, when he wrote clearly and repeatedly, “Kaspar Hauser.” Since then he has been known by that name. When it became evident that the first conjectures concerning him were wrong, strenuous efforts were made by the police to sound the mystery, but without the slightest success. He himself could give no clue; for he neither understood what others said nor could make himself understood. With the exception of some six words, the sounds Caspar uttered were entirely meaningless. He recognized none of the places where he had been, no trace could be obtained of him elsewhere, and the most vigilant search brought nothing to light. The surprise which his first appearance produced increased as he became better known. It then became more and more evident that he was neither an idiot nor a lunatic; at the same time his manners were so peculiar, and his ignorance of civilized life and his dislike for its customs so great, that all sorts of conjectures were resorted to in order to explain the mystery. It was ascertained that he must have been incarcerated in some dungeon, entirely shut out from the light of the sun, which gave him great pain. The structure of his body, the tenderness of his feet, and the great difficulty and suffering which he experienced in walking, indicated beyond a doubt that he had been kept in a sitting posture, with his legs stretched straight out before him. His sustenance had been bread and water; for he not only evinced great repugnance to any other food, but the smallest quantity affected his constitution in the most violent manner. It was also evident that he had never come in contact with human beings, beyond what was necessary for supplying his immediate wants, and, strange to say, teaching him to write. That these inferences were well-founded was proved by the subsequent disclosures of Caspar himself, after he had acquired HDT WHAT? INDEX

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a sufficient command of language. The account he then gave was as follows. "He neither knows who he is nor where his home is. It was only at Nuremberg that he came into the world. Here he first learned, that, besides himself and ‘the man with whom he had always been,’ there existed other men and other creatures. As long as he can recollect, he had always lived in a hole, (a small, low apartment, which he sometimes calls a cage,) where he had always sat upon the ground, with bare feet, and clothed only with a shirt and a pair of breeches. In his apartment, he never heard a sound, whether produced by a man, by an animal, or by anything else. He never saw the heavens, nor did there ever appear a brightening (daylight) such as at Nuremberg, he never perceived any difference between day and night, and much less did he ever get a sight of the beautiful lights in the heavens. Whenever he awoke from sleep, he found a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water by him. Sometimes his water had a bad taste; whenever this was the case, he could no longer keep his eyes open, but was compelled to fall asleep; and when he afterwards awoke, he found that he had a clean shirt on, and that his nails had been cut.[C] [Footnote C: When he resided with Professor Daumer, a drop of opium in a glass of water was administered to him. After swallowing a mouthful, he exclaimed, “That water is nasty; it tastes exactly like the water I was sometimes obliged to drink in my cage."] "He never saw the face of the man who brought him his meat and drink. In his hole he had two wooden horses and several ribbons. With these horses he had always amused himself as long as he was awake; and his only occupation was, to make them run by his side, and to arrange the ribbons about them in different positions. Thus one day had passed the same as another; but he had never felt the want of anything, had never been sick, and--once only excepted--had never felt the sensation of pain. Upon the whole, he had been much happier there than in the world, where he was obliged to suffer so much. How long he had continued to live in this situation he knew not; for he had had no knowledge of time. He knew not when or how he came there. Nor had he any recollection of ever having been in a different situation, or in any other than in that place. The man with whom he had always been never did him any harm. Yet one day, shortly before he was taken away, when he had been running his horse too hard, and had made too much noise, the man came and struck him upon his arm with a stick, or with a piece of wood; this caused the wound which he brought with him to Nuremberg. "Pretty nearly about the same time, the man once came into his prison, placed a small table over his feet, and spread something white upon it, which he now knows to have been paper; he then came behind him, so as not to be seen by him, took hold of his hand, and moved it backwards and forwards on the paper, with a thing (a lead pencil) which he had stuck between his fingers. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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He (Hauser) was then ignorant of what it was; but he was mightily pleased, when he saw the black figures which began to appear upon the white paper. When he felt that his hand was free, and the man was gone from him, he was so much pleased with this new discovery, that he could never grow tired of drawing these figures repeatedly upon the paper. This occupation almost made him neglect his horses, although he did not know what those characters signified. The man repeated his visits in the same manner several times. "Another time the man came, lifted him from the place where he lay, placed him on his feet, and endeavored to teach him to stand. This he repeated at several different times. The manner in which he effected this was the following: he seized him firmly around the breast, from behind, placed his feet behind Caspar’s feet, and lifted these, as in stepping forward. "Finally, the man appeared once again, placed Caspar’s hands over his shoulders, tied them fast, and thus carried him on his back out of the prison. He was carried up (or down) a hill. He knows not how he felt; all became night, and he was laid upon his back."--By the expression, “all became night,” he meant that he fainted away. The little which Caspar was able to relate in regard to his journey is not of any particular interest, and we omit it here. This is all that is known with any certainty of the early life of this unfortunate being. The conjectures to which it has given rise will be considered later. Let us first finish his history. As was to be expected, Caspar Hauser’s faculties developed very gradually. His mind was in a torpor, and, placed suddenly amid, to him, most exciting scenes, it was long before he could understand the simplest phenomena of Nature. The unfolding of his mind was exactly like that of a child. Feuerbach, in his book on Caspar Hauser, gives the main features of this gradual development. We can only pick out a few. It is remarkable that in the same proportion as he advanced in knowledge and acquaintance with civilized life, the intensity of all his faculties diminished. It was so with his memory. He was at first able to exhibit most surprising feats. As an experiment, thirty, forty, and, on one occasion, forty-five names of persons were mentioned to him, which he afterwards repeated with all their titles,--to him, of course, entirely meaningless. So, too, with his power of sight. At first, he was able to see in the dark perfectly well, and much better than in the light of the sun, which was very painful to him. He very frequently amused himself at others groping in the dark, when he experienced not the slightest difficulty. On one occasion, in the evening, he read the name on a door-plate at the distance of one hundred and eighty paces. This keenness of vision did not, however, retain its entire vigor, but decreased as he became more accustomed to the sun. For some time after he made his appearance he had no idea of perspective, but would clutch HDT WHAT? INDEX

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like a child at objects far off. Nor had he any conception of the beauties of Nature, which he afterwards explained by saying that it then appeared to him like a mass of colors jumbled together. Nothing was beautiful, unless it was red, except a starry heaven,--and the emotion which he felt, on first beholding this, was truly touching. Until then, he had invariably spoken of “the man with whom he had always been” with feelings of affection; he longed to return to him, and looked upon all his studies as merely a temporary thing; some day he would go back and show the man how much he had learned. But when he first looked upon the heavens, his tone became entirely changed, and he denounced the man severely for never having shown him such beautiful things. All his senses were thus at first wonderfully keen. It was so with his hearing and smell. The latter was the source of most of his sufferings; for, being so exceedingly sensitive, even the most scentless things made him sick. He liked but one smell, that of bread, which had been his only food for seventeen years. It was a long time, indeed, before he could take any other food at all, and he only became accustomed to it very gradually. The effect produced upon Caspar Hauser by contact with or proximity to animals was also very curious. He was able to detect their presence under singularly unfavorable circumstances. Metals, too, had a very powerful effect upon him, and possessed for him a strong magnetic power. But it is impossible to give all the details, however interesting; for them we must refer to Feuerbach. His mind, as has been already said, was at first sunk in almost impenetrable darkness. He knew of but two divisions of earthly things,--man and beast, “_bua_” and “_ross_.” The former was a word of his own. The latter, which is the German for _horse_, included everything not human, whether animate or inanimate. Between these he for a long time saw no difference. He could not understand why pictures and statues did not move, and he regarded his toy-horses as living things. To inanimate things impelled by foreign forces he ascribed volition. Religion he, of course, had none. He possessed naturally a very amiable character, and his thoughts and conduct were as pure as though guided by the soundest system of morality. But he knew nothing of a God, and one of the greatest difficulties Daumer had to encounter was instructing him on this point. His untutored mind could not master the doctrines of theology, and he was constantly puzzled by questions which he himself suggested, and which his instructor often found it impossible to answer satisfactorily. Physically he was very weak. The shortest walk would fatigue him. At first he could scarcely shuffle along at all, on account of the tenderness of his feet, and because his body had always been kept in one position. He so far overcame this, however, as to be able to walk a little, though always with an effort. But HDT WHAT? INDEX

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on horseback he never became tired. From the first time that he mounted a horse, he showed a love for the exercise, and a power of endurance utterly at variance with all other exhibitions of his strength; and he very soon acquired a degree of skill which made him an object of envy to all the cavalry-officers stationed in the neighborhood. So inconsistent and incomprehensible was everything about Caspar Hauser! In October, 1829, while residing in the family of Professor Daumer, an attempt was made upon his life, which was only so far successful as to give a very violent shock to his delicate constitution. The perpetrator of the crime was never discovered. Caspar was afterwards adopted by the Earl of Stanhope, and by him removed to Anspach. Feuerbach gives a very interesting description of him, as he appeared at this time. "In understanding a man, in knowledge a little child, and in many things more ignorant than a child, the whole of his language and demeanor shows often a strangely contrasted mingling of manly and childish behavior. With a serious countenance and in a tone of great importance, he often utters things which, coming from any other person of the same age, would be called stupid or silly, but which, coming from him, always force upon us a sad, compassionate smile. It is particularly farcical to hear him speak of the future plans of his life,--of the manner in which, after having learned a great deal and earned money, he intends to settle himself with his wife, whom he considers as an indispensable part of domestic furniture." "Mild and gentle, without vicious inclinations, and without passions and strong emotions, his quiet mind resembles the smooth mirror of a lake in the stillness of a moonlight night. Incapable of hurting an animal, compassionate even to the worm, which he is afraid to tread upon, timid even to cowardice, he will nevertheless act regardless of consequences, and even without forbearance, according to his own convictions, whenever it becomes necessary to defend or to execute purposes which he has once perceived and acknowledged to be right. If he feels himself annoyed in any manner, he will long bear it patiently, and will try to get out of the way of the person who is thus troublesome to him, or will endeavor to effect a change in his conduct by mild expostulations; but, finally, if he cannot help himself in any other manner, as soon as an opportunity of doing so offers, he will very quietly slip off the bonds that confine him,--yet without bearing the least malice against him who may have injured him. He is obedient, obliging, and yielding; but the man who accuses him wrongfully, or asserts to be true what he believes to be untrue, need not expect, that, from mere complaisance, or from other considerations, he will submit to injustice or to falsehood; he will always modestly, but firmly, insist upon his right; or perhaps, if the other seems inclined obstinately to maintain his ground against him, he will silently leave him." HDT WHAT? INDEX

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But the fate which had been pursuing this unfortunate being, and without which the tragedy of his life would have been incomplete, overtook him at last. On the 15th of December, 1833, he was induced by some unknown person to meet him in a retired spot in the city of Anspach, under the pretence that he should then have the secret of his parentage revealed to him. The real object was his murder, and this time it was successful. Caspar was stabbed to the heart. He still had sufficient strength left to walk about a thousand paces; and, indeed, the wound was outwardly so insignificant, that it was at first believed to be a mere scratch. This strengthened an opinion which was then gradually gaining ground, that Caspar was an impostor; for it was firmly believed by some that he had inflicted this wound upon himself, as well as the one received in 1829, in order to quicken the somewhat languishing interest taken in him. Nor did they give up this opinion when the wound was found to be fatal. They then boldly asserted that he had wounded himself more severely than he had intended. And not content with simply maintaining this absurd opinion, they taunted him with it on his death-bed, so that he was not even allowed to die in peace. Nothing was wanting to fill his bitter cup. How terrible must have been the mental torture to wring from so resigned a soul the exclamation, “O God! O God! to die thus with contumely and disgrace!” The German is still more expressive,--_"Ach, Gott! ach, Gott! so abkratzen müssen mit Schimpf und Schande!"_ Such was the life of Caspar Hauser. For nearly seventeen years the inmate of a dreary prison, shut out from the light, without a single companion in his misery, drugged when it was necessary to change his linen, with no food but bread,--for seventeen years did he thus exist, --his mind a perfect blank. Suddenly cast upon the world, amid strange beings whom he could not understand and by whom he was not understood, he long knew scarcely a sensation save that of pain. And when at last he did become accustomed to civilized life, and the darkness which enshrouded him disappeared before the rays of light that found entrance into his intellect, it was only to awake to a knowledge of the utter misery of his position. He then saw himself a helpless orphan, the inferior of all with whom he came in contact, and a dependant upon the charity of others for his support. He awoke to find that he had lost seventeen years of this beautiful life, seventeen years which he never could recall,--that he never could take his stand amongst men as their equal, but would always be regarded as an unhappy being meriting their pity,--much like that felt for the pains of some suffering brute. Nor was this all. During the few years that were granted him in our world, persecuted by some unknown person, against whom he was helpless,--knowing that his life was aimed at by some one, but unable to protect himself, and at last falling a victim to the threatened blow,--and, worst of all, charged on his death-bed with being an impostor,--such was the life of Caspar Hauser! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Among the different opinions which have existed in regard to his origin, the most noticeable are those advanced by Stanhope and Merker, and by Daumer, Eschricht, and Feuerbach. The Earl of Stanhope’s connection with Caspar Hauser was a rather peculiar one. He made his appearance in Nuremberg at the time the first attempt was made upon Caspar’s life, but took no particular notice of him, and left without having shown any interest in him. On a second visit, about seven months later, he suddenly became passionately attached to Caspar, showed most unusual marks of fondness for him, and finally adopted him. He then removed him to Anspach, and remained his protector until his death in December, 1833. The day after his burial, Stanhope appeared in Anspach, and took particular pains to proclaim then, and subsequently at a judicial investigation in Munich, and in several tracts, his belief that Caspar was an impostor. This had already been maintained by Merker, the Prussian Counsellor of Police. The theory which Stanhope now advanced was, that Caspar was a journeyman tailor or glover, from some small village on the Austrian side of the river Salzach. The reasons which he assigns for his belief in the imposture are all derived from Caspar’s supposed want of integrity and veracity. They impeach the character of Caspar living, and not of Caspar dead. Why, then, did Stanhope wait for his death before he proclaimed the imposture? Why did he remain his protector, and thus make himself a party to the fraud? His conduct is not easily explained. On the other hand, there is little ground for Daumer’s conclusions. These are given at length in his “Disclosures concerning Caspar Hauser,” published in 1859, a book called forth by attacks made upon him by Eschricht. Considering Stanhope’s conduct, and his endeavor after Caspar’s death to induce Daumer to support his views as to the imposture, and, upon his indignant refusal, making him twice the object of a personal attack, Daumer thinks that there is reason to believe Stanhope personally interested. He thinks that Caspar was the legitimate heir to some great English estate and title, that he was removed in order to make way for some one else, and that his murder was intrusted to some person who had not the courage or the wickedness to perpetrate it, but removed him first to Hungary and afterwards to Germany, and supported him in the manner indicated, hoping that he would not long survive. When, however, he grew up, his support became irksome and he was cast upon the world. There he attracted so much attention, that the instigator of the crime, dreading a disclosure, sought his life again. When this proved unsuccessful, he was removed to Anspach; Feuerbach, who had shown the greatest determination to sound the mystery, was removed from the world, and at last the tragedy was made complete in Caspar’s own death. All this points to Stanhope. And yet Daumer has not taken the trouble to inquire whether it agrees with the family history. It is possible that he may be right; but his story carries with it so much the air of improbability, that we cannot give it credit without further proof. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In the seventh volume of Hitzig’s “Annals of Criminal Jurisprudence,” there is a communication from Lieutenant von Pirch, disclosing Caspar’s acquaintance with certain Hungarian words. A little while before this announcement was made, a story had gone the rounds of the papers of Germany, that a governess residing in Pesth had fainted away, when the account of Caspar Hauser’s appearance was related to her. All this naturally attracted attention to Hungary as the probable place of his birth; and it is for these reasons, that Feuerbach, Daumer, and others, suppose that he spent some part of his childhood in that country. After his death, Stanhope sent Lieutenant Hickel to Hungary to investigate the matter, but no traces were discovered,--a proof, as Stanhope has it, that these conclusions were groundless, and, according to Daumer, another proof of Stanhope’s complicity. He believes that the very superficial search made by the order of Stanhope was intended to lull suspicion and prevent a more strict search being made. To return to the opinion advanced by Merker, and subsequently adopted by Stanhope,--the thing is simply impossible. In the first place, it would have been impossible for an impostor to elude discovery. To trace him would have been the easiest thing in the world. With a vigilant police, in a thickly settled country, how could a man leave his place of abode, and travel, were it for ever so short a distance, without being known? But this is the least consideration. Caspar’s whole life, his intellect, his body, the feats which he accomplished, when submitted to the most searching tests, were a refutation of the charge. But when it is added that he wounded himself in order to do away with suspicion, the accusation becomes so absurd as scarcely to merit refutation. It is answered by the fact, that it was proved, from the nature of the wounds, in both cases, that self-infliction was impossible. Nor is it conceivable that any one should have been able so long to deceive people who were constantly with him and always on the alert. And it is remarkable that they who saw most of Caspar, and knew him best, were most firmly convinced of his integrity,--whilst his traducers were, almost without an exception, men who had never known him intimately. Feuerbach, Daumer, Binder, Meier, Fuhrmann, and many others, maintain his honesty in the strongest terms. On the other hand, it is said, that it is equally impossible for a person to have been kept in any community in the manner in which it is asserted that he was kept; discovery was inevitable. But it must be remembered that this instance does not stand alone. If search were made, many cases of the same kind might be collected. It is by no means so rare an occurrence for persons to be kept secluded in such a manner as to conceal their existence from the world. Daumer mentions two similar cases which happened about the same time. The very year that Caspar Hauser appeared, the son of a lawyer, named Fleischmann, just deceased, was discovered in a retired chamber of the house. He was thirty-eight years old, and had been confined there since HDT WHAT? INDEX

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his twelfth year. The other case, also mentioned by Feuerbach, was still more distressing. Dr. Horn saw, in the infirmary at Salzburg, a girl, twenty-two years of age, who had been brought up in a pig-sty. One of her legs was quite crooked, from her having sat with them crossed; she grunted like a hog; and her actions were “brutishly unseemly in human dress.” Daumer also relates a third case, which was made the subject of a romantic story published in a Nuremberg paper, but which, he says, lacks confirmation. It was the discovery, in a secret place, of the grown-up son of a clergyman by his housekeeper. Whether this be true or not, both Feuerbach and Daumer believe that many similar instances do exist, which never come to light. It is not impossible, therefore, that Caspar Hauser was confined in a cellar to which none but his keeper sought entrance. Who would suspect the existence of a human being, taught to be perfectly submissive and quiet and to have no wants, in such a place, when even the existence of the subterranean, prison itself was probably unknown? The cases mentioned above were certainly more singular in this respect. But Eschricht’s opinion is the most peculiar of all. In his “Unverstand mid schlechte Erziehung,” he maintains that Caspar was an idiot until he was brought to Nuremberg, that his mind was then strengthened and developed, and that he was then transformed from an idiot into an impostor. This is still more impossible than Stanhope’s theory; for in this case Daumer, Feuerbach, Hiltel the jailer, Binder the mayor, and indeed all Caspar’s earliest friends, instead of being victims of an imposture, are made partakers in the fraud. No one acquainted with the irreproachable character of these men could entertain the idea for a minute; and when we remember that it was not one, but many, who must have been parties to it, it becomes doubly impossible. We come now to consider the opinion of Feuerbach; and we shall do it the more carefully, because in it, we feel confident, lies the true solution of the question. He was at the time President of the Court of Appeal of the Circle of Rezat. He had risen to this honorable position gradually, and it was the reward of his distinguished merit alone. His works on criminal jurisprudence, and the penal code which he drew up for the kingdom of Bavaria, and which was adopted by other states, had placed him in the first rank of criminal lawyers. It was he who conducted the first judicial investigations concerning Caspar Hauser. He was, therefore, intimately acquainted with all the circumstances of the case, and had ample opportunity to form a deliberate opinion. How the idea originated, that Caspar Hauser belonged to the House of Baden, it is difficult to say. Feuerbach never published it to the world. In his book on Caspar Hauser he makes no mention of it; but in 1832 he addressed a paper to Queen Caroline of Bavaria, headed, “Who might Caspar Hauser be?” in which he endeavors to show that he was the son of the Grand- Duchess Stephanie. This paper was, we believe, first published HDT WHAT? INDEX

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in 1852, in his “Life and Works,” by his son.[D] The first part of it treats of Caspar’s rank and position in general, and he comes to the following conclusions. Caspar was a legitimate child. Had he been illegitimate, less dangerous and far easier means would have been resorted to for concealing his existence and suppressing a knowledge of his parentage. And here we may add, that the supposition has never prevailed that he was the offspring of a criminal connection, and that these means were taken for suppressing the mother’s disgrace. A note which Caspar brought with him, when he appeared at Nuremberg, indicated that such was the case, but it was so evidently a piece of deception that it never obtained much credit. The second conclusion at which Feuerbach arrives is, that people were implicated who had command of great and unusual means,--means which could prompt an attempt at murder in a crowded city and in the open day, and which could over-bribe all rewards offered for a disclosure. Third, Caspar was a person on whose life or death great interests depended, else there would not have been such care to conceal his existence. Interest, and not revenge or hate, was the motive. He must have been a person of high rank. To prove this, Feuerbach refers to dreams of Caspar’s. On one occasion, particularly, he dreamt that he was conducted through a large castle, the appearance of which he imagined that he recognized, and afterwards minutely described. This Feuerbach thinks was only the awakening of past recollections. It would be interesting to know whether any palace corresponding to the description given exists. In the absence of such knowledge, this point of Feuerbach’s argument appears a rather weak one. From the above propositions he concludes that Caspar was the legitimate child of princely parents, who was removed in order to open the succession to others, in whose way he stood. [Footnote D: ANSELM RITTER VON FEUERBACH’S _Leben und Wirken, aus seinen ausgedruckten Briefen, Tagebüchern, Vorträgen und Denkschriften, veröffentlicht von seinem Sohne_, LUDWIG FEUERBACH. Leipzig, 1852.] The second division of the paper relates to the imprisonment, and here he takes a ground entirely opposed to the opinions of others. He believes that he was thus kept as a protection against some greater evil. His wants were supplied, he was well taken care of, and his keeper is therefore to be looked upon as his protector. Daumer sees in the keeper nothing but a hired murderer, whose courage or whose wickedness failed him. It is certainly difficult to imagine a kind friend immuring one in a dark subterranean vault, feeding one on bread, excluding light, fellowship, amusement, thoughts,--never saying a word, but studiously allowing one’s mind to become a dreary waste. It is a friendship to which most of us would prefer death. We are therefore inclined to think that Daumer is here in the right. But whatever the nature of his imprisonment, the principal argument does not lose its force. In the third place, Feuerbach speaks of the family to which HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Caspar must have belonged. Just about the time of Caspar’s birth, the eldest son of the Grand-Duchess of Baden died an infant. His death was followed in a few years by that of his only brother, leaving several sisters, who could not inherit the duchy. By these deaths the old House of the Zähringer became extinct, and the offspring of a morganatic marriage became the heirs to the throne. It was, therefore, for their interest that the other branch should die out. In addition to this, the mother of the new house was a woman of unbounded ambition and determined character, and had a bitter hatred for the Grand-Duchess. Without laying too much stress, then, upon the nearness in date of the elder child’s death and Caspar’s birth, as given in the letter, there is reason to suppose that they were the same person. There was every feeling of interest to prompt the deed, there was the opportunity of sickness to accomplish it in, and there was an unscrupulous woman to take advantage of it. Is it, then, impossible that she, having command of the house-hold, should have been able to substitute a dead for the living child? Accept the proposition, and the mystery is solved; reject it, and we are still groping in the dark. Nevertheless, there are circumstances which, even then, are incapable of explanation; but it is the most satisfactory theory, and certainly has less objections than the others. Feuerbach came to this conclusion early; for his paper addressed to Queen Caroline of Bavaria was written in 1832, the year before Caspar’s death. Delicacy forbade the open discussion of the question; but, even at the time, this theory found many supporters. Some even went so far as to say that Feuerbach’s sudden death the same year was owing to the indefatigable zeal with which he was ferreting out the mystery. Of all the different explanations, then, which have been given, that of Feuerbach seems to be the most satisfactory. At the same time, like the rest, it is founded on conjecture. Its truth may never be proved. They whose interest it was to suppress the matter thirty years ago, and who resorted to such extreme measures in doing so, no doubt took ample precaution that every trace should be erased. It is barely possible that some confession or the discovery of some paper may cast light upon the subject; but the length of time which has elapsed renders it exceedingly improbable, and the mystery of Caspar Hauser, like the mysteries of the Iron Mask and Junius, will always remain a fruitful source of conjecture only. It may not be uninteresting to close this sketch with the consideration of a point of law raised by Feuerbach in connection with the subject. It will be recollected that he calls his book “Caspar Hauser. An Example of a Crime against the Life of Man’s Soul.” The crime committed against Caspar Hauser was, according to the Bavarian code, twofold. There was the crime of _illegal imprisonment_, and the crime of _exposure_. And here Feuerbach advances the doctrine, that it was not only the actual confinement which amounted to illegal imprisonment, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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but that “we must incontestably, and, indeed, principally, regard as such the cruel withholding from him of the most ordinary gifts which Nature with a liberal hand extends even to the most indigent,--the depriving him of all the means of mental development and culture,--the unnatural detention of a human soul in a state of irrational animality.” “An attempt,” he says, “by artificial contrivances, to seclude a man from Nature and from all intercourse with rational beings, to change the course of his human destiny, and to withdraw from him all the nourishment afforded by those spiritual substances which Nature has appointed for food to the human mind, that it may grow and flourish, and be instructed and developed and formed,--such an attempt must, even quite independently of its actual consequences, be considered as, in itself, a highly criminal invasion of man’s most sacred and most peculiar property,--of the freedom and the destiny of his soul. ...Inasmuch as the whole earlier part of his life was thus taken from him, he may be said to have been the subject of a partial soul-murder.” This crime, if recognized, would, according to Feuerbach, far outweigh the mere crime of illegal imprisonment, and the latter would be merged in it. Tittmann, in his “Hand-Book of Penal Law,” also speaks of crimes against the intellect, and particularly mentions the separation of a person from all human society, if practised upon a child before it has learned to speak and until the intellect Las become sealed up, as well as the intentional rearing of a person to ignorance, as reducible to this head. This was written before Caspar’s case had occurred. He says, also, that they are similar to cases of homicide; because the latter are punished for destroying the rational being, and not the physical man. Murder and the destruction of the intellect are, therefore, equally punishable. The one merits the punishment of death as well as the other. Nor are we to take the possibility of a cure into consideration, any more than we do the possibility of extinguishing a fire. But where the law does not prescribe the punishment of death irrespectively of the possibility of recovery, the punishment would rarely exceed ten years in the House of Correction. We must understand Tittmann’s remarks, however, to refer entirely to the law of Saxony,--that being the government under which he lived, and the only one in whose criminal code this crime is recognized. Feuerbach wished to have this murder of the soul inserted in the criminal code of Bavaria as a punishable crime; but he was unsuccessful, and the whole doctrine has subsequently been condemned. Mittermaier, in a note to his edition of Feuerbach’s “Text-Book of German Criminal Law,” denies that there is any foundation for the distinction taken by him and Tittmann. He says, that, in the first place, it has not such an actual existence as is capable of proof; and, secondly, all crimes under it can easily be reached by some other law. The last objection does not, however, seem to be a very serious one. If, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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as Feuerbach says, the crime against the soul is more heinous than that against the body, it certainly deserves the first attention, even if the one is not merged in the other. The crime being greater, the punishment would be greater; and the demands of justice would no more be satisfied by the milder punishment than if a murderer were prosecuted as a nuisance. The fact, therefore, that the crime is reducible to some different head, is not an objection. We meet with the most serious difficulty when we consider the possibility of proof. Taking it for granted that the crime does exist in the abstract, the only question is, whether it is of such a nature that it would be expedient for government to take cognizance of it. The soul being in its nature so far beyond the reach of man, and the difficulty of ever proving the effect of human actions upon it, would seem to indicate that it were better to allow a few exceptional cases to pass unnoticed than to involve the criminal courts in endless and fruitless inquiry. Upon the ground of expediency only should the crime go unnoticed, and not because it can be reached in some other way. For proof that it does exist, we can point to nothing more convincing than the life of Caspar Hauser itself. No one can doubt that his soul was the victim of a crime, for which the perpetrator, untouched by human laws, stands accused before the throne of God. * * * * * PAMPENEA. AN IDYL. Lying by the summer sea, I had a dream of Italy. Chalky cliffs and miles of sand, Ragged reefs and salty caves, And the sparkling emerald waves Faded; and I seemed to stand, Myself a languid Florentine, In the heart of that fair land. And in a garden cool and green, Boccaccio’s own enchanted place, I met Pampenea face to face,-- A maid so lovely that to see Her smile is to know Italy. Her hair was like a coronet Upon her Grecian forehead set, Where one gem glistened sunnily, Like Venice, when first seen at sea. I saw within her violet eyes The starlight of Italian skies, And on her brow and breast and hand The olive of her native land. And knowing how, in other times, Her lips were ripe with Tuscan rhymes Of love and wine and dance, I spread My mantle by an almond-tree: “And here, beneath the rose,” I said, “I’ll hear thy Tuscan melody!" I heard a tale that was not told In those ten dreamy days of old, When Heaven, for some divine offence, Smote Florence with the pestilence, And in that garden’s odorous shade The dames of the Decameron, With each a happy lover, strayed, To laugh and sing, at sorest need, To lie in the lilies, in the sun, With glint of plume and golden brede. And while she whispered in my ear, The pleasant Arno murmured HDT WHAT? INDEX

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near, The dewy, slim chameleons run Through twenty colors in the sun, The breezes broke the fountain’s glass, And woke Aeolian melodies, And shook from out the scented trees The bleachèd lemon-blossoms on the grass. The tale? I have forgot the tale!-- A Lady all for love forlorn; A Rosebud, and a Nightingale That bruised his bosom on a thorn; A pot of rubies buried deep; A glen, a corpse, a child asleep; A Monk, that was no monk at all, I’ the moonlight by a castle-wall;-- Kaleidoscopic hints, to be Worked up in farce or tragedy. Now while the sweet-eyed Tuscan wove The gilded thread of her romance, (Which I have lost by grievous chance,) The one dear woman that I love, Beside me in our seaside nook, Closed a white finger in her book, Half-vexed that she should read, and weep For Petrarch, to a man asleep. And scorning me, so tame and cold, She rose, and wandered down the shore, Her wine-dark drapery, fold in fold, Imprisoned by an ivory hand; And on a ridge of granite, half in sand, She stood, and looked at Appledore. And waking, I beheld her there Sea-dreaming in the moted air, A Siren sweet and debonair, With wristlets woven of colored weeds, And oblong lucent amber beads Of sea-kelp shining in her hair. And as I mused on dreams, and how The something in us never sleeps, But laughs or sings or moans or weeps, She turned,--and on her breast and brow I saw the tint that seemed not won From kisses of New England sun; I saw on brow and breast and hand The olive of a sunnier land! She turned,--and lo! within her eyes The starlight of Italian skies! Most dreams are dark, beyond the range Of reason; oft we cannot tell If they be born of heaven or hell; But to my soul it seems not strange, That, lying by the summer sea, With that dark woman watching me, I slept, and dreamed of Italy!

THE PROFESSOR’S STORY. CHAPTER XXV. THE PERILOUS HOUR. Up to this time Dick Venner had not decided on the particular mode and the precise period of relieving himself from the unwarrantable interference which threatened to defeat his plans. The luxury of feeling that he had his man in his power was its own reward. One who watches in the dark, outside, while his enemy, in utter unconsciousness, is illuminating his apartment and himself so that every movement of his head and every button on his coat can be seen and counted, especially if he holds a loaded rifle in his hand, experiences a peculiar kind of pleasure, which he naturally hates to bring to its climax by testing his skill as a marksman upon the object of his attention. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Besides, Dick had two sides in his nature, almost as distinct as we sometimes observe in those persons who are the subjects of the condition known as _double consciousness_. On his New England side he was cunning and calculating, always cautious, measuring his distance before he risked his stroke, as nicely as if he were throwing his lasso. But he was liable to intercurrent fits of jealousy and rage, such as the light-hued races are hardly capable of conceiving,--blinding paroxysms of passion, which for the time overmastered him, and which, if they found no ready outlet, transformed themselves into the more dangerous forces that worked through the instrumentality of his cool craftiness. He had failed as yet in getting any positive evidence that there was any relation between Elsie and the schoolmaster other than such as might exist unsuspected and unblamed between a teacher and his pupil. A book, or a note, even, did not prove the existence of any sentiment. At one time he would be devoured by suspicions, at another he would try to laugh himself out of them. And in the mean while he followed Elsie’s tastes as closely as he could, determined to make some impression upon her,--to become a habit, a convenience, a necessity,--whatever might aid him in the attainment of the one end which was now the aim of his life. It was to humor one of her tastes already known to the reader, that he said to her one morning,--"Come, Elsie, take your castanets, and let us have a dance." He had struck the right vein in the girl’s fancy, for she was in the mood for this exercise, and very willingly led the way into one of the more empty apartments. What there was in this particular kind of dance which excited her it might not be easy to guess; but those who looked in with the old Doctor, on a former occasion, and saw her, will remember that she was strangely carried away by it, and became almost fearful in the vehemence of her passion. The sound of the castanets seemed to make her alive all over. Dick knew well enough what the exhibition would be, and was almost afraid of her at these moments; for it was like the dancing mania of Eastern devotees, more than the ordinary light amusement of joyous youth,--a convulsion of the body and the mind, rather than a series of voluntary modulated motions. Elsie rattled out the triple measure of a saraband. Her eyes began to glitter more brilliantly, and her shape to undulate in freer curves. Presently she noticed that Dick’s look was fixed upon her necklace. His face betrayed his curiosity; he was intent on solving the question, why she always wore something about her neck. The chain of mosaics she had on at that moment displaced itself at every step, and he was peering with malignant, searching eagerness to see if an unsunned ring of fairer hue than the rest of the surface, or any less easily explained peculiarity, were hidden by her ornaments. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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She stopped suddenly, caught the chain of mosaics and settled it hastily in its place, flung down her castanets, drew herself back, and stood looking at him, with her head a little on one side, and her eyes narrowing in the way he had known so long and well. "What is the matter, Cousin Elsie? What do you stop for?” he said. Elsie did not answer, but kept her eyes on him, full of malicious light. The jealousy which lay covered up under his surface-- thoughts took this opportunity to break out. "You wouldn’t act so, if you were dancing with Mr. Langdon,-- would you, Elsie?” he asked. It was with some effort that he looked steadily at her to see the effect of his question. Elsie _colored_,--not much, but still perceptibly. Dick could not remember that he had ever seen her show this mark of emotion before, in all his experience of her fitful changes of mood. It had a singular depth of significance, therefore, for him; he knew how hardly her color came. Blushing means nothing, in some persons; in others, it betrays a profound inward agitation,--a perturbation of the feelings far more trying than the passions which with many easily moved persons break forth in tears. All who have observed much are aware that some men, who have seen a good deal of life in its less chastened aspects and are anything but modest, will blush often and easily, while there are delicate and sensitive women who can turn pale, or go into fits, if necessary, but are very rarely seen to betray their feelings in their cheeks, even when their expression shows that their inmost soul is blushing scarlet. Presently she answered, abruptly and scornfully,-- "Mr. Langdon is a gentleman, and would not vex me as you do." "A gentleman!” Dick answered, with the most insulting accent,- -"a gentleman! Come, Elsie, you’ve got the Dudley blood in your veins, and it doesn’t do for you to call this poor, sneaking schoolmaster a gentleman!" He stopped short. Elsie’s bosom was heaving, the faint flush on her cheek was becoming a vivid glow. Whether it were shame or wrath, he saw that he had reached some deep-lying centre of emotion. There was no longer any doubt in his mind. With another girl these signs of confusion might mean little or nothing; with her they were decisive and final. Elsie Venner loved Bernard Langdon. The sudden conviction, absolute, overwhelming, which rushed upon him, had wellnigh led to an explosion of wrath, and perhaps some terrible scene which might have fulfilled some of Old Sophy’s predictions. This, however, would never do. Dick’s face whitened with his thoughts, but he kept still until he could speak calmly. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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"I’ve nothing against the young fellow,” he said; “only I don’t think there’s anything quite good enough to keep the company of people that have the Dudley blood in them. You a’n’t as proud as I am. I can’t quite make up my mind to call a schoolmaster a gentleman, though this one may be well enough. I’ve nothing against him, at any rate." Elsie made no answer, but glided out of the room and slid away to her own apartment. She bolted the door and drew her curtains close. Then she threw herself on the floor, and fell into a dull, slow ache of passion, without tears, without words, almost without thoughts. So she remained, perhaps, for a half-hour, at the end of which time it seemed that her passion had become a sullen purpose. She arose, and, looking cautiously round, went to the hearth, which was ornamented with curious old Dutch tiles, with pictures of Scripture subjects. One of these represented the lifting of the brazen serpent. She took a hair- pin from one of her braids, and, insinuating its points under the edge of the tile, raised it from its place. A small leaden box lay under the tile, which she opened, and, taking from it a little white powder, which she folded in a scrap of paper, replaced the box and the tile over it. Whether Dick had by any means got a knowledge of this proceeding, or whether he only suspected some unmentionable design on her part, there is no sufficient means of determining. At any rate, when they met, an hour or two after these occurrences, he could not help noticing how easily she seemed to have got over her excitement. She was very pleasant with him,--too pleasant, Dick thought. It was not Elsie’s way to come out of a fit of anger so easily as that. She had contrived some way of letting off her spite; that was certain. Dick was pretty cunning, as Old Sophy had said, and, whether or not he had any means of knowing Elsie’s private intentions, watched her closely, and was on his guard against accidents. For the first time, he took certain precautions with reference to his diet, such as were quite alien to his common habits. On coming to the dinner-table, that day, he complained of headache, took but little food, and refused the cup of coffee which Elsie offered him, saying that it did not agree with him when he had these attacks. Here was a new complication. Obviously enough, he could not live in this way, suspecting everything but plain bread and water, and hardly feeling safe in meddling with them. Not only had this school-keeping wretch come between him and the scheme by which he was to secure his future fortune, but his image had so infected his cousin’s mind that she was ready to try on him some of those tricks which, as he had heard hinted in the village, she had once before put in practice upon a person who had become odious to her. Something must be done, and at once, to meet the double necessities of this case. Every day, while the young girl was HDT WHAT? INDEX

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in these relations with the young man, was only making matters worse. They could exchange words and looks, they could arrange private interviews, they would be stooping together over the same book, her hair touching his cheek, her breath mingling with his, all the magnetic attractions drawing them together with strange, invisible effluences. As her passion for the schoolmaster increased, her dislike to him, her cousin, would grow with it, and all his dangers would be multiplied. It was a fearful point he had reached. He was tempted at one moment to give up all his plans and to disappear suddenly from the place, leaving with the schoolmaster, who had come between him and his object, an anonymous token of his personal sentiments which would be remembered a good while in the history of the town of Rockland. This was but a momentary thought; the great Dudley property could not be given up in that way. Something must happen at once to break up all this order of things. He could think of but one Providential event adequate to the emergency,--an event foreshadowed by various recent circumstances, but hitherto floating in his mind only as a possibility. Its occurrence would at once change the course of Elsie’s feelings, providing her with something to think of besides mischief, and remove the accursed obstacle which was thwarting all his own projects. Every possible motive, then,-- his interest, his jealousy, his longing for revenge, and now his fears for his own safety,--urged him to regard the happening of a certain casualty as a matter of simple necessity. This was the self-destruction of Mr. Bernard Langdon. Such an event, though it might be surprising to many people, would not be incredible, nor without many parallel cases. He was poor, a miserable fag, under the control of that mean wretch up there at the school, who looked as if he had sour buttermilk in his veins instead of blood. He was in love with a girl above his station, rich, and of old family, but strange in all her ways, and it was conceivable that he should become suddenly jealous of her. Or she might have frightened him with some display of her peculiarities which had filled him with a sudden repugnance in the place of love. Any of these things were credible, and would make a probable story enough,--so thought Dick over to himself with the New-England half of his mind. Unfortunately, men will not always take themselves out of the way when, so far as their neighbors are concerned, it would be altogether the most appropriate and graceful and acceptable service they could render. There was at this particular moment no special reason for believing that the schoolmaster meditated any violence to his own person. On the contrary, there was good evidence that he was taking some care of himself. He was looking well and in good spirits, and in the habit of amusing himself and exercising, as if to keep up his standard of health, especially of taking certain evening-walks, before referred to, at an hour when most of the Rockland people had “retired,” or, in vulgar language, “gone to bed." HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Dick Venner settled it, however, in his own mind, that Mr. Bernard Langdon must lay violent hands upon himself. He even went so far as to determine the precise hour, and the method in which the “rash act,” as it would undoubtedly be called in the next issue of “The Rockland Weekly Universe,” should be committed. Time,--_this evening._ Method,--asphyxia, by suspension. It was, unquestionably, taking a great liberty with a man to decide that he should become _felo de se_ without his own consent. Such, however, was the decision of Mr. Richard Venner with regard to Mr. Bernard Langdon. If everything went right, then, there would be a coroner’s inquest to-morrow upon what remained of that gentleman, found suspended to the branch of a tree somewhere within a mile of the Apollinean Institute. The “Weekly Universe” would have a startling paragraph announcing a “SAD EVENT!!!” which had “thrown the town into an intense state of excitement. Mr. Barnard Langden, a well known teacher at the Apollinean Institute, was found, etc., etc. The vital spark was extinct. The motive to the rash act can only be conjectured, but is supposed to be disappointed affection. The name of an accomplished young lady of _the highest respectability_ and great beauty is mentioned in connection with this melancholy occurrence." Dick Venner was at the tea-table that evening, as usual.--No, he would take green tea, if she pleased,--the same as her father drank. It would suit his headache better.--Nothing,--he was much obliged to her. He would help himself,--which he did in a little different way from common, naturally enough, on account of his headache. He noticed that Elsie seemed a little nervous while she was rinsing some of the teacups before their removal. "There’s something going on in that witch’s head;” he said to himself. “I know her,--she’d be savage now, if she hadn’t got some trick in hand. Let’s see how she looks to-morrow!" Dick announced that he should go to bed early that evening, on account of this confounded headache which had been troubling him so much. In fact, he went up early, and locked his door after him, with as much noise as he could make. He then changed some part of his dress, so that it should be dark throughout, slipped off his boots, drew the lasso out from the bottom of the contents of his trunk, and, carrying that and his boots in his hand, opened his door softly, locked it after him, and stole down the back-stairs, so as to get out of the house unnoticed. He went straight to the stable and saddled the mustang. He took a rope from the stable with him, mounted his horse, and set forth in the direction of the Institute. Mr. Bernard, as we have seen, had not been very profoundly impressed by the old Doctor’s cautions,--enough, however, to follow out some of his hints which were not troublesome to attend to. He laughed at the idea of carrying a loaded pistol about with him; but still it seemed only fair, as the old Doctor HDT WHAT? INDEX

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thought so much of the matter, to humor him about it. As for not going about when and where he liked, for fear he might have some lurking enemy, that was a thing not to be listened to nor thought of. There was nothing to be ashamed of or troubled about in any of his relations with the school-girls. Elsie, no doubt, showed a kind of attraction towards him, as did perhaps some others; but he had been perfectly discreet, and no father or brother or lover had any just cause of quarrel with him. To be sure, that dark young man at the Dudley mansion-house looked as if he were his enemy, when he had met him; but certainly there was nothing in their relations to each other, or in his own to Elsie, that would be like to stir such malice in his mind as would lead him to play any of his wild Southern tricks at his, Mr. Bernard’s, expense. Yet he had a vague feeling that this young man was dangerous, and he had been given to understand that one of the risks he ran was from that quarter. On this particular evening, he had a strange, unusual sense of some impending peril. His recent interview with the Doctor, certain remarks that had been dropped in his hearing, but above all an unaccountable impression upon his spirits, all combined to fill his mind with a foreboding conviction that he was very near some overshadowing danger. It was as the chill of the ice- mountain towards which the ship is steering under full sail. He felt a strong impulse to see Helen Darley and talk with her. She was in the common parlour, and, fortunately, alone. "Helen,” he said,--for they were almost like brother and sister now,--"I have been thinking what you would do, if I should have to leave the school at short notice, or be taken away suddenly by any accident." "Do?” she said, her cheek growing paler than its natural delicate hue,--"why, I do not know how I could possibly consent to live here, if you left us. Since you came, my life has been almost easy; before, it was getting intolerable. You must not talk about going, my dear friend; you have spoiled me for my place. Who is there here that I can have any true society with, but you? You would not leave us for another school, would you?" "No, no, my dear Helen,” Mr. Bernard said; “if it depends on myself, I shall stay out my full time, and enjoy your company and friendship. But everything is uncertain in this world; I have been thinking that I might be wanted elsewhere, and called when I did not think of it;--it was a fancy, perhaps,--but I can’t keep it out of my mind this evening. If any of my fancies should come true, Helen, there are two or three messages I want to leave with you. I have marked a book or two with a cross in pencil on the fly-leaf;--these are for you. There is a little hymn-book I should like to have you give to Elsie from me;--it may be a kind of comfort to the poor girl." Helen’s eyes glistened as she interrupted him,-- "What do you mean? You must not talk so, Mr. Langdon. Why, you never looked better in your life. Tell me now, you are not in HDT WHAT? INDEX

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earnest, are you, but only trying a little sentiment on me?" Mr. Bernard smiled, but rather sadly. "About half in earnest,” he said. “I have had some fancies in my head,--superstitions, I suppose,--at any rate, it does no harm to tell you what I should like to have done, if anything should happen,--very likely nothing ever will. Send the rest of the books home, if you please, and write a letter to my mother. And, Helen, you will find one small volume in my desk enveloped and directed, you will see to whom;--give this with your own hands; it is a keepsake." The tears gathered in her eyes; she could not speak at first. Presently,-- "Why, Bernard, my dear friend, my brother, it cannot be that you are in danger? Tell me what it is, and, if I can share it with you, or counsel you in any way, it will only be paying back the great debt I owe you. No, no,--it can’t be true,--you are tired and worried, and your spirits have got depressed. I know what that is;--I was sure, one winter, that I should die before spring; but I lived to see the dandelions and buttercups go to seed. Come, tell me it was nothing but your imagination." She felt a tear upon her cheek, but would not turn her face away from him; it was the tear of a sister. "I am really in earnest, Helen,” he said. “I don’t know that there is the least reason in the world for these fancies. If they all go off and nothing comes of them, you may laugh at me, if you like. But if there should be any occasion, remember my requests. You don’t believe in presentiments, do you?" "Oh, don’t ask me, I beg you,” Helen answered. “I have had a good many frights for every one real misfortune I have suffered. Sometimes I have thought I was warned beforehand of coming trouble, just as many people are of changes in the weather, by some unaccountable feeling,--but not often, and I don’t like to talk about such things. I wouldn’t think about these fancies of yours. I don’t believe you have exercised enough;--don’t you think it’s confinement in the school has made you nervous?" "Perhaps it has; but it happens that I have thought more of exercise lately, and have taken walks late in the evening, besides playing my old gymnastic tricks every day." They talked on many subjects, but through all he said Helen perceived a pervading tone of sadness, and an expression as of a dreamy foreboding of unknown evil. They parted at the usual hour, and went to their several rooms. The sadness of Mr. Bernard had sunk into the heart of Helen, and she mingled many tears with her prayers that evening, earnestly entreating that he might be comforted in his days of trial and protected in his hour of danger. Mr. Bernard stayed in his room a short time before setting out for his evening walk. His eye fell upon the Bible his mother had HDT WHAT? INDEX

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given him when he left home, and he opened it in the New Testament at a venture. It happened that the first words he read were these,--"_Lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping_.” In the state of mind in which he was at the moment, the text startled him. It was like a supernatural warning. He was not going to expose himself to any particular danger this evening; a walk in a quiet village was as free from risk as Helen Darley or his own mother could ask; yet he had an unaccountable feeling of apprehension, without any definite object. At this moment he remembered the old Doctor’s counsel, which he had sometimes neglected, and, blushing at the feeling which led him to do it, he took the pistol his suspicious old friend had forced upon him, which he had put away loaded, and, thrusting it into his pocket, set out upon his walk. The moon was shining at intervals, for the night was partially clouded. There seemed to be nobody stirring, though his attention was unusually awake, and he could hear the whirr of the bats overhead, and the pulsating croak of the frogs in the distant pools and marshes. Presently he detected the sound of hoofs at some distance, and, looking forward, saw a horseman coming in his direction. The moon was under a cloud at the moment, and he could only observe that the horse and his rider looked like a single dark object, and that they were moving along at an easy pace. Mr. Bernard was really ashamed of himself, when he found his hand on the butt of his pistol. When the horseman was within a hundred and fifty yards of him, the moon shone out suddenly and revealed each of them to the other. The rider paused for a moment, as if carefully surveying the pedestrian, then suddenly put his horse to the full gallop, and dashed towards him, rising at the same instant in his stirrups and swinging something round his head,--what, Mr. Bernard could not make out. It was a strange manoeuvre,--so strange and threatening in aspect that the young man forgot his nervousness in an instant, cocked his pistol, and waited to see what mischief all this meant. He did not wait long. As the rider came rushing towards him, he made a rapid motion and something leaped five-and-twenty feet through the air, in Mr. Bernard’s direction. In an instant he felt a ring, as of a rope or thong, settle upon his shoulders. There was no time to think,--he would be lost in another second. He raised his pistol and fired,--not at the rider, but at the horse. His aim was true; the mustang gave one bound and fell lifeless, shot through the head. The lasso was fastened to his saddle, and his last bound threw Mr. Bernard violently to the earth, where he lay motionless, as if stunned. In the mean time, Dick Venner, who had been dashed down with his horse, was trying to extricate himself,--one of his legs being held fast under the animal, the long spur on his boot having caught in the saddle-cloth. He found, however, that he could do nothing with his right arm, his shoulder having been in some way injured in his fall. But his Southern blood was up, and, as he saw Mr. Bernard move as if he were coming to his senses, he HDT WHAT? INDEX

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struggled violently to free himself. "I’ll have the dog, yet,” he said,--"only let me get at him with the knife!" He had just succeeded in extricating his imprisoned leg, and was ready to spring to his feet, when he was caught firmly by the throat, and, looking up, saw a clumsy barbed weapon, commonly known as a hay-fork, within an inch of his breast. "Hold on there! What ’n thunder ’r’ y’ abaout, y’ darned Portagee?” said a voice, with a decided nasal tone in it, but sharp and resolute. Dick looked from the weapon to the person who held it, and saw a sturdy, plain man standing over him, with his teeth clinched, and his aspect that of one all ready for mischief. "Lay still, naow!” said Abel Stebbins, the Doctor’s man; “’f y’ don’t, I’ll stick ye, ’z sure ’z y’ ’r’ alive! I been aäfter ye f’r a week, ’n’ I got y’ naow! I knowed I’d ketch ye at some darned trick or ’nother ’fore I’d done ’ith ye!" Dick lay perfectly still, feeling that he was crippled and helpless, thinking all the time with the Yankee half of his mind what to do about it. He saw Mr. Bernard lift his head and look around him. He would get his senses again in a few minutes, very probably, and then he, Mr. Richard Venner, would be done for. "Let me up! let me up!” he cried, in a low, hurried voice,-- "I’ll give you a hundred dollars in gold to let me go. The man a’n’t hurt,--don’t you see him stirring? He’ll come to himself in two minutes. Let me up! I’ll give you a hundred and fifty dollars in gold, now, here on the spot,--and the watch out of my pocket; take it yourself, with your own hands!" "I’ll see y’ darned fust! Ketch me lett’n’ go!” was Abel’s emphatic answer. “Yeou lay still, ’n’ wait t’ll that man comes tew." He kept the hay-fork ready for action at the slightest sign of resistance. Mr. Bernard, in the mean time, had been getting, first his senses, and then some Jew of his scattered wits, a little together. "What is it?"--he said. “Who ’a hurt? What’s happened?" "Come along here ’z quick ’z y’ ken,” Abel answered, “’n’ haälp me fix this fellah. Y’ been hurt, y’rself, ’n’ the’ ’s murder come pooty nigh happenin’." Mr. Bernard heard the answer, but presently stared about and asked again, _"Who’s hurt? What’s happened?"_ "Y’ ’r’ hurt, y’rself, I tell ye,” said Abel; “’n’ the’’s been a murder, pooty nigh." Mr. Bernard felt something about his neck, and, putting his HDT WHAT? INDEX

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hands up, found the loop of the lasso, which he loosened, but did not think to slip over his head, in the confusion of his perceptions and thoughts. It was a wonder that it had not choked him, but he had fallen forward so as to slacken it. By this time he was getting some notion of what he was about, and presently began looking round for his pistol, which had fallen. He found it lying near him, cocked it mechanically, and walked, somewhat unsteadily, towards the two men, who were keeping their position as still as if they were performing in a _tableau._ "Quick, naow!” said Abel, who had heard the click of cocking the pistol, and saw that he held it in his hand, as he came towards him. “Gi’ me that pistil, and yeon fetch that ’ere rope layin’ there. I’ll have this here fellah fixed ’n less ’n two minutes." Mr. Bernard did as Abel said,--stupidly and mechanically, for he was but half right as yet. Abel pointed the pistol at Dick’s head. "Naow hold up y’r hands, yeou fellah,” he said, “’n’ keep ’em up, while this man puts the rope raound y’r wrists." Dick felt himself helpless, and, rather than have his disabled arm roughly dealt with, held up his hands. Mr. Bernard did as Abel said; he was in a purely passive state, and obeyed orders like a child. Abel then secured the rope in a most thorough and satisfactory complication of twists and knots. "Naow get up, will ye?” he said; and the unfortunate Dick rose to his feet. _"Who’s hurt? What’s happened?"_ asked poor Mr. Bernard again, his memory having been completely jarred out of him for the time. "Come, look here naow, yeou, don’ stan’ aäskin’ questions over ’n’ over;--’t beats all I ha’n’t I tol’ y’ a dozen times?” As Abel spoke, he turned and looked at Mr. Bernard. “Hullo! What ’n thunder’s that’ere raoun’ y’r neck? Ketched ye ’ith a slippernoose, hey? Wal, if that a’n’t the craowner! Hol’ on a minute, Cap’n, ’n’ I’ll show ye what that ’ere halter’s good for." Abel slipped the noose over Mr. Bernard’s head, and put it round the neck of the miserable Dick Venner, who made no sign of resistance,--whether on account of the pain he was in, or from mere helplessness, or because he was waiting for some unguarded moment to escape,--since resistance seemed of no use. "I’m go’n’ to kerry y’ home,” said Abel; “th’ ol’ Doctor, he’s got a gre’t cur’osity t’ see ye. Jes’ step along naow,--off that way, will ye?--’n I’ll hol’ on t’ th’ bridle, f’ fear y’ sh’d run away." He took hold of the leather thong, but found that it was fastened at the other end to the saddle. This was too much for Abel. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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"Wal, naow, yeou _be_ a pooty chap to hev raound! A fellah’s neck in a slippernoose at one eend of a halter, ’n’ a boss on th’ full spring at t’other eend!" He looked at him from head to foot as a naturalist inspects a new specimen. His clothes had suffered in his fall, especially on the leg which had been caught under the horse. "Hullo! look o’ there, naow! What’s that ’ere stickin’ aout o’ y’r boot?" It was nothing but the handle of an ugly knife, which Abel instantly relieved him of. The party now took up the line of march for old Doctor Kittredge’s house, Abel carrying the pistol and knife, and Mr. Bernard walking in silence, still half-stunned, holding the hay- fork, which Abel had thrust into his hand. It was all a dream to him as yet. He remembered the horseman riding at him, and his firing the pistol; but whether he was alive, and these walls around him belonged to the village of Rockland, or whether he had passed the dark river, and was in a suburb of the New Jerusalem, he could not as yet have told. They were in the street where the Doctor’s house was situated. "I guess I’ll fire off one o’ these here berrils,” said Abel. He fired. Presently there was a noise of opening windows, and the nocturnal headdresses of Rockland flowered out of them like so many developments of the Night-blooming Cereus. White cotton caps and red bandanna handkerchiefs were the prevailing forms of efflorescence. The main point was that the village was waked up. The old Doctor always waked easily, from long habit, and was the first among those who looked out to see what had happened. "Why, Abel!” he called out, “what have you got there? and what’s all this noise about?" "We’ve ketched the Portagee!” Abel answered, as laconically as the hero of Lake Erie in his famous dispatch. “Go in there, you fellah!" The prisoner was marched into the house, and the Doctor, who had bewitched his clothes upon him in a way that would have been miraculous in anybody but a physician, was down in presentable form as soon as if it had been a child in a fit that he was sent for. "Richard Venner!” the Doctor exclaimed. “What is the meaning of all this? Mr. Langdon, has anything happened to you?" Mr. Bernard put his hand to his head. "My mind is confused,” he said. “I’ve had a fall.--Oh, yes!-- wait a minute and it will all come back to me." "Sit down, sit down,” the Doctor said. “Abel will tell me about HDT WHAT? INDEX

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it. Slight concussion of the brain. Can’t remember very well for an hour or two,--will come right by to-morrow." "Been stunded,” Abel said. “He can’t tell nothin’." Abel then proceeded to give a Napoleonic bulletin of the recent combat of cavalry and infantry and its results,--none slain, one captured. The Doctor looked at the prisoner through his spectacles. "What’s the matter with your shoulder, Venner?" Dick answered sullenly, that he didn’t know,--fell on it when his horse came down. The Doctor examined it as carefully as he could through his clothes. "Out of joint. Untie his hands, Abel." By this time a small alarm had spread among the neighbors, and there was a circle around Dick, who glared about on the assembled honest people like a hawk with a broken wing. When the Doctor said, “Untie his hands,” the circle widened perceptibly. "Isn’t it a leetle rash to give him the use of his hands? I see there’s females and children standin’ near." This was the remark of our old friend, Deacon Soper, who retired from the front row, as he spoke, behind a respectable-looking, but somewhat hastily dressed person of the defenceless sex, the female help of a neighboring household, accompanied by a boy, whose unsmoothed shock of hair looked like a last-year’s crow’s- nest. But Abel untied his hands, in spite of the Deacon’s considerate remonstrance. "Now,” said the Doctor, “the first thing is to put the joint back." "Stop,” said Deacon Soper,--"stop a minute. Don’t you think it will be safer--for the women-folks--jest to wait till mornin’, afore you put that j’int into the socket?" Colonel Sprowle, who had been called by a special messenger, spoke up at this moment. "Let the women-folks and the deacons go home, if they’re scared, and put the fellah’s j’int in as quick as you like. I’ll resk him, j’int in or out." "I want one of you to go straight down to Dudley Venner’s with a message,” the Doctor said. “I will have the young man’s shoulder in quick enough." "Don’t send that message!” said Dick, in a hoarse voice;--"do what you like with my arm, but don’t send that message! Let me go,--I can walk, and I’ll be off from this place. There’s nobody hurt but I. Damn the shoulder!--let me go! You shall never hear of me again!" HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Mr. Bernard came forward. "My friends,” he said, “_I_ am not injured,--seriously, at least. Nobody need complain against this man, if I don’t. The Doctor will treat him like a human being, at any rate; and then, if he will go, let him. There are too many witnesses against him here for him to want to stay." The Doctor, in the mean time, without saying a word to all this, had got a towel round the shoulder and chest and another round the arm, and had the bone replaced in a very few moments. "Abel, put Cassia into the new chaise,” he said, quietly. “My friends and neighbors, leave this young man to me." "Colonel Sprowle, you’re a justice of the peace,” said Deacon Soper, “and you know what the law says in cases like this. I a’n’t so clear that it won’t have to come afore the Grand Jury, whether we will or no." "I guess we’ll set that j’int to-morrow mornin’,” said Colonel Sprowle,--which made a laugh at the Deacon’s expense, and virtually settled the question. "Now trust this young man in my care,” said the old Doctor, “and go home and finish your naps. I knew him when he was a boy, and, I’ll answer for it, he won’t trouble you any more. The Dudley blood makes folks proud, I can tell you, whatever else they are." The good people so respected and believed in the Doctor that they left the prisoner with him. Presently, Cassia, the fast Morgan mare, came up to the front- door, with the wheels of the new, light chaise flashing behind her in the moonlight. The Doctor drove Dick forty miles at a stretch that night, out of the limits of the State. "Do you want money?” he said, before he left him. Dick told him the secret of his golden belt. "Where shall I send your trunk after you from your uncle’s?" Dick gave him a direction to a seaport town to which he himself was going, to take passage for a port in South America. "Good-bye, Richard,” said the Doctor. “Try to learn something from to-night’s lesson." The Southern impulses in Dick’s wild blood overcame him, and he kissed the old Doctor on both cheeks, crying as only the children of the sun can cry, after the first hours in the dewy morning of life. So Dick Venner disappears from this story. An hour after dawn, Cassia pointed her fine ears homeward, and struck into her square, honest trot, as if she had not been doing anything more than her duty during her four hours’ stretch of the last night. Abel was not in the habit of questioning the Doctor’s decisions. "It’s all right,” he said to Mr. Bernard. “The fellah’s Squire Venner’s relation, anyhaow. Don’t you want to wait here, jest a HDT WHAT? INDEX

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little while, till I come back? The’ ’s a consid’able nice saddle ’n’ bridle on a dead hoss that’s layin’ daown there in the road, ’n’ I guess the’ a’n’t no use in lettin’ on ’em spile,--so I’ll jest step aout ’n’ fetch ’em along. I kind o’ calc’late ’t won’t pay to take the cretur’s shoes ’n’ hide off to-night,--’n’ the’ won’t be much iron on that hoss’s huffs an haour after daylight, I’ll bate ye a quarter." "I’ll walk along with you,” said Mr. Bernard;--"I feel as if I could get along well enough now." So they set off together. There was a little crowd round the dead mustang already, principally consisting of neighbors who had adjourned from the Doctor’s house to see the scene of the late adventure. In addition to these, however, the assembly was honored by the presence of Mr. Principal Silas Peckham, who had been called from his slumbers by a message that Master Langdon was shot through the head by a highway-robber, but had learned a true version of the story by this time. His voice was at that moment heard above the rest,--sharp, but thin, like bad cider- vinegar. "I take charge of that property, I say. Master Langdon ’s actin’ under my orders, and I claim that hoss and all that’s on him. Hiram! jest slip off that saddle and bridle, and carry ’em up to the Institoot, and bring down a pair of pinchers and a file,- -and--stop--fetch a pair of shears, too; there’s hoss-hair enough in that mane and tail to stuff a bolster with." "You let that hoss alone!” spoke up Colonel Sprowle. “When a fellah goes out huntin’ and shoots a squirrel, do you think he’s go’n’ to let another fellah pick him up and kerry him off? Not if he’s got a double-berril gun, and t’other berril ha’n’t been fired off yet! I should like to see the mahn that’ll take off that seddle ’n’ bridle, excep’ the one th’t hez a fair right to the whole concern!" Hiram was from one of the lean streaks in New Hampshire, and, not being overfed in Mr. Silas Peckham’s kitchen, was somewhat wanting in stamina, as well as in stomach, for so doubtful an enterprise as undertaking to carry out his employer’s orders in the face of the Colonel’s defiance. Just then Mr. Bernard and Abel came up together. "Here they be,” said the Colonel. “Stan’ beck, gentlemen!" Mr. Bernard, who was pale and still a little confused, but gradually becoming more like himself, stood and looked in silence for a moment. All his thoughts seemed to be clearing themselves in this interval. He took in the whole series of incidents: his own frightful risk; the strange, instinctive, nay, Providential impulse which had led him so suddenly to do the one only thing which could possibly have saved him; the sudden appearance of the Doctor’s man, but for which he might yet have been lost; and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the discomfiture and capture of his dangerous enemy. It was all past now, and a feeling of pity rose in Mr. Bernard’s heart. "He loved that horse, no doubt,” he said,--"and no wonder. A beautiful, wild-looking creature! Take off those things that are on him, Abel, and have them carried to Mr. Dudley Venner’s. If he does not want them, you may keep them yourself, for all that I have to say. One thing more. I hope nobody will lift his hand against this noble creature to mutilate him in any way. After you have taken off the saddle and bridle, Abel, bury him just as he is. Under that old beech-tree will be a good place. You’ll see to it,--won’t you, Abel?" Abel nodded assent, and Mr. Bernard returned to the Institute, threw himself in his clothes on the bed, and slept like one who is heavy with wine. Following Mr. Bernard’s wishes, Abel at once took off the high- peaked saddle and the richly ornamented bridle from the mustang. Then, with the aid of two of three others, he removed him to the place indicated. Spades and shovels were soon procured, and before the moon had set, the wild horse of the Pampas was at rest under the turf at the wayside, in the far village among the hills of New England. * * * * * THE TEST. _Musa loquitur._ I hung my verses in the wind; Time and tide their faults may find. All were winnowed through and through; Five lines lasted sound and true; Five were smelted in a pot Than the South more fierce and hot. These the Siroc could not melt, Fire their fiercer flaming felt, And their meaning was more white Than July’s meridian light. Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor Time unmake what poets know. Have you eyes to find the five Which five thousand could survive?

RECOLLECTIONS OF KEATS. _BY AN OLD SCHOOL-FELLOW._ In the village of Enfield, in Middlesex, ten miles on the north road from London, was my father, John Clarke’s school. The house had been built by a West India merchant, in the latter end of the seventeenth or beginning of the eighteenth century. It was of the better character of the domestic architecture of that period,--the whole front being of the purest red brick, wrought, by means of moulds, into rich designs of flowers and pomegranates, with heads of cherubim over two niches in the centre of the building. The elegance of the design and the perfect finish of the structure were such as to secure its HDT WHAT? INDEX

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protection, when a branch railway was brought from the Ware and Cambridge line to Enfield. The old school-house was converted into the station-house, and the railway company had the good taste to leave intact one of the few remaining specimens of the graceful English domestic architecture of long-gone days. Any of my readers who may happen to have a file of the London “Illustrated News,” may find in No. 360, March 3, 1849, a not prodigiously enchanting wood-cut of the edifice. Here it was that John Keats all but commenced and did complete his school-education. He was born on the 29th of October, 1795; and I think he was one of the little fellows who had not wholly emerged from the child’s costume upon being placed under my father’s care. It will be readily conceived difficult to recall from the “dark backward and abysm” of nearly sixty years the general acts of perhaps the youngest individual in a corporation of between seventy and eighty youngsters; and very little more of Keats’s child-life can I remember than that he had a brisk, winning face, and was a favorite with all, particularly with my mother. His maternal grandfather, Jennings, was proprietor of a large livery-stable, called “The Swan and Hoop,” on the pavement in Moorfields, opposite the entrance into Finsbury Circus. He had two sons at my father’s school. The elder was an officer in Duncan’s ship in the fight off Camperdown. After the battle, the Dutch Admiral, De Winter, pointing to young Jennings, told Duncan that he had fired several shots at that young man, and always missed his mark;--no credit to his steadiness of aim; for Jennings, like his own admiral, was considerably above the ordinary dimensions of stature. Keats’s father was the principal servant at the Swan and Hoop Stables,--a man of so remarkably fine a common-sense and native respectability, that I perfectly remember the warm terms in which his demeanor used to be canvassed by my parents after he had been to visit his boys. He was short of stature and well- knit in person, (John resembling him both in make and feature,) with brown hair and dark hazel eyes. He was killed by a fall from his horse, in returning from a visit to the school. John’s two brothers, George, older, and Thomas, younger than himself, were like the mother,--who was tall, of good figure, with large, oval face, sombre features, and grave in behavior. The last of the family was a sister,--Fanny, I think, much younger than all,--of whom I remember my mother once speaking with much fondness, for her pretty, simple manners, while she was walking in the garden with her brothers. She married Mr. Llanos, a Spanish refugee, the author of “Don Estéban,” and “Sandoval, the Free-Mason.” He was a man of liberal principles, attractive manners, and more than ordinary accomplishments.--This is the amount of my knowledge and recollection of the family. In the early part of his school-life, John gave no extraordinary indications of intellectual character; but it was remembered of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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him afterwards, that there was ever present a determined and steady spirit in all his undertakings; and, although of a strong and impulsive will, I never knew it misdirected in his required pursuit of study. He was a most orderly scholar. The future ramifications of that noble genius were then closely shut in the seed, and greedily drinking in the moisture which made it afterwards burst forth so kindly into luxuriance and beauty. My father was in the habit, at each half-year’s vacation, of bestowing prizes upon those pupils who had performed the greatest quantity of voluntary extra work; and such was Keats’s indefatigable energy for the last two or three successive half- years of his remaining at school, that, upon each occasion, he took the first prize by a considerable distance. He was at work before the first school-hour began, and that was at seven o’clock; almost all the intervening times of recreation were so devoted; and during the afternoon-holidays, when all were at play, I have seen him in the school,--almost the only one,--at his Latin or French translation; and so unconscious and regardless was he of the consequences of this close and persevering application, that he never would have taken the necessary exercise, had he not been sometimes driven out by one of us for the purpose. I have said that he was a favorite with all. Not the less beloved was he for having a highly pugnacious spirit, which, when roused, was one of the most picturesque exhibitions--off the stage--I ever saw. One of the transports of that marvellous actor, Edmund Kean--whom, by the way, he idolized--was its nearest resemblance; and the two were not very dissimilar in face and figure. I remember, upon one occasion, when an usher, on account of some impertinent behavior, had boxed his brother Tom’s ears, John rushed up, put himself in the received posture of offence, and, I believe, struck the usher,--who could have put him into his pocket. His passions at times were almost ungovernable; his brother George, being considerably the taller and stronger, used frequently to hold him down by main force, when he was in “one of his moods” and was endeavoring to beat him. It was all, however, a wisp-of-straw conflagration; for he had an intensely tender affection for his brothers, and proved it upon the most trying occasions. He was not merely the “favorite of all,” like a pet prize-fighter, for his terrier courage; but his high-mindedness, his utter unconsciousness of a mean motive, his placability, his generosity, wrought so general a feeling in his behalf, that I never heard a word of disapproval from any one who had known him, superior or equal. The latter part of the time--perhaps eighteen months--that he remained at school, he occupied the hours during meals in reading. Thus his _whole_ time was engrossed. He had a tolerably retentive memory, and the quantity that he read was surprising. He must in those last months have exhausted the school--library, which consisted principally of abridgments of all the voyages and travels of any note; Mayor’s Collection; also his Universal HDT WHAT? INDEX

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History; Robertson’s Histories of Scotland, America, and Charles the Fifth; all Miss Edgeworth’s productions; together with many other works, equally well calculated for youth, not necessary to be enumerated. The books, however, that were his constantly recurrent sources of attraction were Tooke’s “Pantheon,” Lemprière’s “Classical Dictionary,” which he appeared to _learn_, and Spence’s “Polymetis.” This was the store whence he acquired his perfect intimacy with the Greek mythology; here was he “suckled In that creed outworn”; for his amount of classical attainment extended no farther than the “Aeneid”; with which epic, indeed, he was so fascinated, that before leaving school he had _voluntarily_ translated in writing a considerable portion. And yet I remember that at that early age,--mayhap under fourteen,--notwithstanding and through all its incidental attractiveness, he hazarded the opinion to me that there was feebleness in the structure of the work. He must have gone through all the better publications in the school-library, for he asked me to lend him some of my own books; and I think I now see him at supper, (we had all our meals in the school-room,) sitting back on the form, and holding the folio volume of Burnet’s “History of his own Time” between himself and the table, eating his meal from beyond it. This work, and Leigh Hunt’s “Examiner” newspaper,--which my father took in, and I used to lend to Keats,--I make no doubt laid the foundation of his love of civil and religious liberty. He once told me, smiling, that one of his guardians, being informed what books I had lent him to read, declared, that, if he had fifty children, he would not send one of them to my father’s school. When he left us,--I think at fourteen years of age,--he was apprenticed to Mr. Thomas Hammond, a medical man, residing in Church Street, Edmonton, and exactly two miles from Enfield. This arrangement appeared to give him satisfaction; and I fear that it was the most placid period of his painful life; for now, with the exception of the duty he had to perform in the surgery, and which was by no means an onerous one, his whole leisure hours were employed in indulging his passion for reading and translating. It was during his apprenticeship that he finished the latter portion of the “Aeneid.” The distance between our residences being so short, I encouraged his inclination to come over, when he could be spared; and in consequence, I saw him about five or six times a month, commonly on Wednesdays and Saturdays, those afternoons being my own most leisure times. He rarely came empty-handed; either he had a book to read, or brought one with him to be exchanged. When the weather permitted, we always sat in an arbor at the end of a spacious garden, and, in Boswellian phrase, “we had good talk.” I cannot at this time remember what was the spark that fired the train of his poetical tendencies,--I do not remember what was the first signalized poetry he read; but he must have given me unmistakable tokens of his bent of taste; otherwise, at that early stage of his career, I never could have read to him the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“Epithalamion” of Spenser; and this I perfectly remember having done, and in that (to me) hallowed old arbor, the scene of many bland and graceful associations,--all the substances having passed away. He was at that time, I should suppose, fifteen or sixteen years old; and at that period of life he certainly appreciated the general beauty of the composition, and felt the more passionate passages; for his features and exclamations were ecstatic. How often have I in after-times heard him quote these lines:-- “Behold, whiles she before the altar stands, Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks, And blesses her with his two happy hands, How the red roses flush up in her cheeks! And the pure snow, with goodly vermil stain, Like crimson dyed in grain, That even the angels, which continually About the sacred altar do remain, Forget their service, and about her fly, _Oft peeping in her face, that seems more fair, The more they on it stare;_ But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground, Are governèd with goodly modesty, That suffers not one look to glance awry, Which may let in a little thought unsound.” That night he took away with him the first volume of the “Faery Queen,” and went through it, as I told his biographer, Mr. Monckton Milnes, “as a young horse would through a spring meadow,--ramping!” Like a true poet, too,--a poet “born, not manufactured,”--a poet in grain,--he especially singled out the epithets, for that felicity and power in which Spenser is so eminent. He hoisted himself up, and looked burly and dominant, as he said,--”What an image that is,--_’Sea-shouldering whales’!_” It was a treat to see as well as hear him read a pathetic passage. Once, when reading the “Cymbeline” aloud’, I saw his eyes fill with tears, and for some moments he was unable to proceed, when he came to the departure of Posthumus, and Imogen’s saying she would have watched him “till the diminution Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle; Nay, followed him till he had _melted from The smallness of a gnat to air_; and then Have _turned mine eye and wept_.” I cannot quite reconcile the time of our separating at this stage of his career,--which of us first went to London; but it was upon an occasion when I was walking thither, and, I think, to see Leigh Hunt, who had just fulfilled his penalty of confinement in Horsemonger-Lane Prison for the trivial libel upon the Prince Regent, that Keats, who was coming over to Enfield, met me, and, turning, accompanied me back part of the way to Edmonton. At the last field-gate, when taking leave, he gave me the sonnet entitled, “Written on the Day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left Prison.” Unless I am utterly mistaken, this was the first proof I had received of his having committed himself in verse; and how clearly can I recall the conscious look with which HDT WHAT? INDEX

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he hesitatingly offered it! There are some momentary glances of beloved friends that fade only with life. I am not in a position to contradict the statement of his biographer, that “the lines in imitation of Spenser, “’Now Morning from her orient charger came, And her first footsteps touched a verdant hill,’ etc., “are the earliest known verses of his composition”; from the subject being the inspiration of his first love--and such a love!--in poetry, it is most probable; but certainly his first published poem was the sonnet commencing, ‘O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell’; and that will be found in the “Examiner,” some time, as I conjecture, in 1816,--for I have not the paper to refer to, and, indeed, at this distance, both of time and removal from the means of verification, I would not be dogmatical. When we both had come to London,--he to enter as a student of St. Thomas’s Hospital,--he was not long in discovering that my abode was with my brother-in-law, in Little Warner Street, Clerkenwell; and just at that time I was installed housekeeper, and was solitary. He, therefore, would come and revive his loved gossip, till, as the author of the “Urn Burial” says, “we were acting our antipodes,--the huntsmen were up in America, and they already were past their first sleep in Persia.” At this time he lived in his first lodging upon coming to London, near to St. Thomas’s Hospital. I find his address in a letter which must have preceded my appointing him to come and lighten my darkness in Clerkenwell. At the close of the letter, he says,--”Although the Borough is a beastly place in dirt, turnings, and windings, yet No. 8, Dean Street, is not difficult to find; and if you would run the gauntlet over London Bridge, take the first turning to the left, and then the first to the right, and, moreover, knock at my door, which is nearly opposite a meeting, you would do me a charity, which, as St. Paul saith, is the father of all the virtues. At all events, let me hear from you soon: I say, at all events, not excepting the gout in your fingers.” I have little doubt that this letter (which has no other date than the day of the week, and no post-mark) preceded our first symposium; and a memorable night it was in my life’s career. A copy, and a beautiful one, of the folio edition of Chapman’s Homer had been lent me. It was the property of Mr. Alsager, the gentleman who for years had contributed no small share of celebrity to the great reputation of the “Times” newspaper, by the masterly manner in which he conducted the money-market department of that journal. At the time when I was first introduced to Mr. Alsager, he was living opposite Horsemonger- Lane Prison; and upon Mr. Leigh Hunt’s being sentenced for the libel, his first day’s dinner was sent over by Mr. Alsager. He was a man of the most studiously correct demeanor, with a highly cultivated taste and judgment in the fine arts and music. He HDT WHAT? INDEX

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succeeded Hazlitt, (which was no insignificant honor,) and for some time contributed the critiques upon the theatres, but ended by being the reporter of the state of the money-market. He had long been accustomed to have the first trial at his own house of the best-reputed new foreign instrumental music, which he used to import from Germany. Well, then, we were put in possession of the Homer of Chapman, and to work we went, turning to some of the “famousest” passages, as we had scrappily known them in Pope’s version. There was, for instance, that perfect scene of the conversation on Troy wall of the old Senators with Helen, who is pointing out to them the several Greek captains, with that wonderfully vivid portrait of an orator, in Ulysses, in the Third Book, beginning at the 237th line,-- “But when the prudent Ithacus did to his counsels rise”; the helmet and shield of Diomed, in the opening of the Fifth Book; the prodigious description of Neptune’s passage in his chariot to the Achive ships, in the opening of the Thirteenth Book,-- “The woods, and all the great hills near, trembled beneath the weight Of his immortal moving feet.” The last was the whole of the shipwreck of Ulysses in the Fifth Book of the “Odyssey.” I think his expression of delight, during the reading of those dozen lines, was never surpassed:-- “Then forth he came, his both knees faltering, both His strong hands hanging down, and all with froth His cheeks and nostrils flowing, voice and breath Spent to all use, and down he sunk to death. _The sea had soaked his heart through_; all his veins His toils had racked t’ a laboring woman’s pains. Dead weary was he.” On an after-occasion I showed him the couplet of Pope’s upon the same passage:-- “From mouth and nose the briny torrent ran, _And lost in lassitude, lay all the man._” Chapman supplied us with many an after-feast; but it was in the teeming wonderment of this, his first introduction, that, when I came down to breakfast the next morning, I found upon my table a letter with no other inclosure than his famous sonnet, “On first looking into Chapman’s Homer.” We had parted, as I have already said, at day-spring; yet he contrived that I should receive the poem, from a distance of nearly two miles, before 10, A.M. In the published copy of this sonnet he made an alteration in the seventh line:-- “Yet did I never breathe its pure serene.” The original, which he sent me, had the phrase, “Yet could I never tell what men could mean”; HDT WHAT? INDEX

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which he said was bald, and too simply wondering. No one could more earnestly chastise his thoughts than Keats. His favorite among Chapman’s Hymns of Homer was the one to Pan, and which he himself rivalled in the “Endymion.” In one of our conversations about this period, I alluded to his position at St. Thomas’s Hospital,--coasting and reconnoitring, as it were, that I might discover how he got on, and, with the total absorption that had evidently taken place of every other mood of his mind than that of imaginative composition, what was his bias for the future, and what his feeling with regard to the profession that had been _chosen for him_,--a circumstance I did not know at that time. He made no secret, however, that he could not sympathize with the science of anatomy, as a main pursuit in life; for one of the expressions that he used, in describing his unfitness for its mastery, was perfectly characteristic. He said, in illustration of his argument,--”The other day, for instance, during the lecture, there came a sunbeam into the room, and with it a whole troop of creatures floating in the ray; and I was off with them to Oberon and Fairy-land.” And yet, with all this self-styled unfitness for the pursuit, I was afterwards informed, that at his subsequent examination he displayed an amount of acquirement which surprised his fellow- students, who had scarcely any other association with him than that of a cheerful, crochety rhymester. It was about this period, that, going to call upon Mr. Leigh Hunt, who then occupied a pretty little cottage in the “Vale of Health,” on Hampstead Heath, I took with me two or three of the poems I had received from Keats. I did expect that Hunt would speak encouragingly, and indeed approvingly, of the compositions,--written, too, by a youth under age; but my partial spirit was not prepared for the unhesitating and prompt admiration which broke forth before he had read twenty lines of the first poem. Mr. Horace Smith happened to be there, on the occasion, and was not less demonstrative in his praise of their merits. The piece which he read out, I remember, was the sonnet,- - “How many bards gild the lapses of time!” marking with particular emphasis and approbation the last six lines:-- “So the unnumbered sounds that evening store,-- The songs of birds, the whispering of the leaves, The voice of waters, the great bell that heaves With solemn sound, and thousand others more, _That distance of recognizance bereaves_,-- Make pleasing music, and not wild uproar.” Smith repeated, with applause, the line in Italics, saying, “What a well-condensed expression!” After making numerous and eager inquiries about him, personally, and with reference to any peculiarities of mind and manner, the visit ended in my being requested to bring him over to the Vale of Health. That was a red-letter day in the young poet’s life,--and one which will HDT WHAT? INDEX

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never fade with me, as long as memory lasts. The character and expression of Keats’s features would unfailingly arrest even the casual passenger in the street; and now they were wrought to a tone of animation that I could not but watch with intense interest, knowing what was in store for him from the bland encouragement, and Spartan deference in attention, with fascinating conversational eloquence, that he was to receive and encounter. When we reached the Heath, I have present the rising and accelerated step, with the gradual subsidence of all talk, as we drew towards the cottage. The interview, which stretched into three “morning calls,” was the prelude to many after-scenes and saunterings about Caen Wood and its neighborhood; for Keats was suddenly made a familiar of the household, and was always welcomed. It was in the library at Hunt’s cottage, where an extemporary bed had been made up for him on the sofa, that he composed the framework and many lines of the poem on “Sleep and Poetry,”-- the last sixty or seventy being an inventory of the art- garniture of the room. The sonnet, “Keen, fitful gusts are whispering here and there,” he gave me the day after one of our visits, and very shortly after his installation at the cottage. “Give me a golden pen, and let me lean,” was another, upon being compelled to leave “at an early hour.” But the occasion that recurs to me with the liveliest interest was the evening when, some observations having been made upon the character, habits, and pleasant associations of that reverenced denizen of the hearth, the cheerful little fireside grasshopper, Hunt proposed to Keats the challenge of writing, then, there, and to time, a sonnet “On the Grasshopper and the Cricket.” No one was present but myself, and they accordingly set to. I, absent with a book at the end of the sofa, could not avoid furtive glances, every now and then, at the emulants. I cannot say how long the trial lasted; I was not proposed umpire, and had no stop-watch for the occasion: the time, however, was short, for such a performance; and Keats won, as to time. But the event of the after-scrutiny was one of many such occurrences which have riveted the memory of Leigh Hunt in my affectionate regard and admiration, for unaffected generosity and perfectly unpretentious encouragement: his sincere look of pleasure at the first line,-- “The poetry of earth is never dead”; “Such a prosperous opening!” he said; and when he came to the tenth and eleventh lines,-- “On a lone winter evening, _when the frost Has wrought a silence_”; “Ah! that’s perfect! bravo, Keats!”--and then he went on in a dilation upon, the dumbness of all Nature during the season’s HDT WHAT? INDEX

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suspension and torpidity. With all the kind and gratifying things that were said to him, Keats protested to me, as we were afterwards walking home, that he preferred Hunt’s treatment of the subject to his own. He had left the neighborhood of the Borough, and was now living with his brothers in apartments on the second floor of a house in the Poultry, over the passage leading to the Queen’s Head Tavern, and opposite one of the City Companies’ Halls,--the Ironmongers’, if I mistake not. I have the associating reminiscence of many happy hours spent in this lodging. Here was determined upon, in great part written, and sent forth to the world, the first little, but vigorous, offspring of his brain:-- POEMS BY JOHN KEATS. “What more felicity can fell to creature Than to enjoy delight with liberty?” Fate of the Butterfly,--SPENSER LONDON: PRINTED FOR C. AND J. OLLIER, 3, WELBECK STREET, CAVENDISH SQUARE. 1817. Here, on the evening that the last proof-sheet was brought from the printer, and, as his biographer has recorded, upon being informed, if he purposed having a Dedication to the book, that it must be sent forthwith, he went to a side-table, and, in the midst of mixed conversation (for there were several friends in the room,) he brought to Charles Ollier, the publisher, the Dedication-Sonnet to Leigh Hunt. If the original manuscript of that poem--a legitimate sonnet, with every restriction of rhyme and metre--could now be produced, and the time--recorded in which it was written, it would be pronounced an extraordinary performance; added to which, the non-alteration of a single word in the poem (a circumstance noted at the time) claims for it, I should suppose, a merit without a parallel. “The poem which commences the volume,” says Mr. Monckton Milnes, “was suggested to Keats by a delightful summer’s day, as he stood beside the gate that loads from the battery on Hampstead Heath into a field by Caen Wood”; and the lovely passage beginning, “Linger awhile upon some bending planks,” and which contains the description of the “swarms of minnows that show their little heads,” Keats told me was the recollection of our having frequently loitered over the rail of a foot-bridge that spanned a little brook in the last field upon entering Edmonton. He himself thought the picture was correct, and liked it; and I do not know who could improve it. Another example of his promptly suggestive imagination, and uncommon facility in giving it utterance, occurred one day upon his returning home and finding me asleep upon the sofa, with my volume of Chaucer open at the “Flower and the Leaf.” After expressing his admiration of the poem, which he had been HDT WHAT? INDEX

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reading, he gave me the fine testimony of that opinion, in pointing to the sonnet he had written at the close of it, which was an extempore effusion, and it has not the alteration of a single word. It lies before me now, signed, “J.K., Feb., 1817." If my memory does not betray me, this charming out-door fancy- scene was Keats’s first introduction to Chaucer. Certain I am that the “Troilus and Cresseide” was an after-acquaintance; and clearly do I remember his approbation of the favorite passages that I had marked. I desired him to retrace the poem, and with his pen confirm and denote those which were congenial with his own feeling and judgment. These two circumstances, connected with the literary career of this cherished object of his friend’s esteem and love, have stamped a priceless value upon that friend’s miniature 18mo copy of Chaucer. The little first volume of Keats’s Muse was launched amid the cheers and fond anticipations of all his circle. Every one of us expected that it would create a sensation in the literary world; and we calculated upon, at least, a succession of reprints. Alas! it might have emerged in Timbuctoo with stronger chance of fame and favor. It never passed to a second edition; the first was but a small one, and that was never sold off. The whole community, as if by compact, determined to know nothing about it. The word had been passed that its author was a Radical; and in those blessed days of “Bible-Crown-and-Constitution” supremacy, he might with better chance of success have been a robber,--there were many prosperous public ones,--if he had also been an Anti-Jacobin. Keats had made no demonstration of political opinion; but he had dedicated his book to Leigh Hunt, a Radical news-writer, and a dubbed partisan of the French ruler, because he did not call him the “Corsican monster,” and other disgusting names. Verily, “the former times were _not_ better than these.” Men can now write the word “Liberty” without being chalked on the back and hounded out. Poor Keats! he little anticipated, and as little deserved, the cowardly and scoundrel treatment that was in store for him upon the publication of his second composition, the “Endymion.” It was in the interval of the two productions that he had moved from the Poultry, and had taken a lodging in Well Walk, Hampstead,--in the first or second house, on the right hand, going up to the Heath. I have an impression that he had been some weeks absent at the sea-side before settling in this domicile; for the “Endymion” had been begun, and he had made considerable advances in his plan. He came to me one Sunday, and I walked with him, spending the whole day in Well Walk. His constant and enviable friend Severn, I remember, was present on the occasion, by the circumstance of our exchanging looks upon Keats’s reading to us portions of his new work that had pleased himself. One of these, I think, was the “Hymn to Pan”; and another, I am sure, was the “Bower of Adonis,” because his own expression of face will never pass from me (if I were a Reynolds or a Gainsborough, I could now stamp it forever) as he read the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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description of the latter, with the descent and ascent of the ear of Venus. The “Hymn to Pan” occurs early in the First Book:-- “O thou, whose mighty palace-roof doth hang From jagged trunks,” etc. And the “Bower of Adonis,” in the Second Book, commences,-- “After a thousand mazes overgone.” Keats was indebted for his introduction to Mr. Severn to his school-fellow Edward Holmes, who also had been one of the child- scholars at Enfield; for he came to us in the frock-dress. They were sworn companions at school, and remained friends through life. Mr. Holmes ought to have been an educated musician from his first childhood; for the passion was in him. I used to amuse myself with the piano-forte after supper, when all had gone to bed. Upon some sudden occasion, leaving the parlor, I heard a scuffle on the stairs, and discovered that my young gentleman had left his bed to hear the music. At other times, during the day, and in the intervals of school-hours, he would stand under the window, listening. He at length intrusted to me his heart’s secret, that he should like to learn music. So I taught him his notes; and he soon knew and could do as much as his tutor. Upon leaving Enfield, he was apprenticed to the elder Seeley, a bookseller in Fleet Street; but, hating his occupation, left it, I believe, before he was of age. He had not lost sight of me; and I introduced him to Mr. Vincent Novello, who had made himself a friend to me, and who not merely, with rare profusion of bounty, gave Holmes instruction, but received him into his house, and made him one of his family. With them he resided some years. I was also the fortunate means of recommending him to the chief proprietor of the “Atlas” newspaper; and to that journal, during a long period, he contributed a series of essays and critiques upon the science and practice of music, which raised the journal into a reference and an authority in the art. He wrote for the proprietors of the “Atlas” that elegant little book of dilettante criticism, “A Ramble among the Musicians in Germany.” He latterly contributed to the “Musical Times” a whole series of masterly essays and analyses upon the Masses of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. But the work upon which his reputation will rest was a “Life of Mozart,” which was purchased by Chapman and Hall. I have said that Holmes used to listen on the stairs. In after- years, when Keats was reading to me his “Eve of St. Agnes,” (and what a happy day was that! I had come up to see him from Ramsgate, where I then lived,) at the passage where Porphyro in Madeleine’s chamber is fearfully listening to the hubbub of the icing and the music in the hall below, and the verse says,-- “The boisterous midnight festive clarion, The kettle-drum and far-heard clarionet, Affray his ears, though but in dying tone: _The hall-door shuts again, and all the noise is gone_,”-- “That line,” said he, “came into my head when I remembered how HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I used to listen, in bed, to your music at school.” Interesting would be a record of the germs and first causes of all the greatest poets’ conceptions! The elder Brunei’s first hint for his “shield,” in constructing the tunnel under the Thames, was taken from watching the labor of a sea-insect, which, having a projecting hood, could bore into the ship’s timber, unmolested by the waves. I fancy it was about this time that Keats gave that signal example of his courage and stamina, in the recorded instance of his pugilistic contest with a butcher-boy. He told me--and in his characteristic manner--of their “passage of _arms_.” The brute, he said, was tormenting a kitten, and he interfered, when a threat offered was enough for his mettle, and they set to. He thought he, should be beaten; for the fellow was the taller and stronger; but, like an authentic pugilist, my young poet found that he had planted a blow which “told” upon his antagonist. In every succeeding round, therefore, (for they fought nearly an hour,) he never failed of returning to the weak point; and the contest ended in the hulk being led or carried home. In all my knowledge of my fellow-beings, I never knew one who so thoroughly combined the sweetness with the power of gentleness and the irresistible sway of anger as Keats. His indignation would have made the boldest grave; and those who have seen him under the influence of tyranny, injustice, and meanness of soul will never forget the expression of his features,--”the form of his visage was changed.” He had a strong sense of humor; yet, so to speak, he was not, in the strict sense of the term, a humorist. His comic fancy lurked in the outermost and most unlooked-for images of association,--which, indeed, maybe said to be the components of humor; nevertheless, I think they did not extend beyond the _quaint_, in fulfilment and success. But his perception of humor, with the power of transmitting it by imitation, was both vivid and irresistibly amusing. He once described to me his having gone to see a bear-baiting,--the animal, the property of a Mr. Tom Oliver. The performance not having began, Keats was near to and watched a young aspirant, who had brought a younger under his wing to witness the solemnity, and whom he oppressively patronized, instructing him in the names and qualities of all the magnates present. Now and then, in his zeal to manifest and impart his knowledge, he would forget himself, and stray beyond the prescribed bounds, into the ring,--to the lashing resentment of its comptroller, Mr. William Soames; who, after some hints of a practical nature, to “keep back,” began laying about him with indiscriminate and unmitigable vivacity,- -the Peripatetic signifying to his pupil,--”My eyes! Bill Soames giv’ me sich a licker!”--evidently grateful, and considering himself complimented, upon being included in the general dispensation. Keats’s entertainment with this minor scene of low life has often recurred to me. But his subsequent description of the baiting, with his position, of his legs and arms bent and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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shortened, till he looked like Bruin on his hind-legs, dabbing his fore-paws hither and thither, as the dogs snapped at him, and now and then acting the gasp of one that had been suddenly caught and hugged, his own capacious mouth adding force to the personation, was a memorable display. I am never reminded of this amusing relation, but it is associated with that forcible picture in Shakspeare, (and what subject can we not associate with him?) in the “Henry VI”:-- “as a bear encompassed round with dogs, Who having _pinched_ a few and _made them cry_, The rest stand all aloof and bark at him.” Keats also attended a prize-fight between two of the most skilful and enduring “light-weights,”--Randal and Turner. It was, I believe, at that remarkable wager, when, the men being so equally matched and accomplished, they had been sparring for three-quarters of an hour before a blow had been struck. In describing the rapidity of Randal’s blows while the other was falling, Keats tapped his fingers on the window-pane. I make no apology for recording these events in his life; they are characteristics of the natural man,--and prove, moreover, that the indulgence in such exhibitions did not for one moment blunt the gentler emotions of his heart, or vulgarize his inborn love of all that was beautiful and true. His own line was the axiom of his moral existence, his political creed:--”A thing of beauty is a joy forever”; and I can fancy no coarser consociation able to win him from this faith. Had he been born in squalor, he would have emerged a gentleman. Keats was not an easily swayable man; in differing with those he loved, his firmness kept equal pace with the sweetness of his persuasion; but with the rough and the unlovable he kept no terms,--within the conventional precincts, I mean, of social order. From Well Walk he moved to another quarter of the Heath,-- Wentworth Place the name, if I recollect. Here he became a sharing inmate with Mr. Charles Armitage Brown, a gentleman who had been a Russia merchant, and had retired to a literary leisure upon an independence. I do not know how they became acquainted; but Keats never had a more zealous, a firmer, or more practical friend and adviser than Brown. His robust eagerness and zeal, with a headstrong determination of will, led him into an undue prejudice against the brother, George, respecting some money- transactions with John, which, however, the former redeemed to the perfect satisfaction of all the friends of the family. After the death of Keats, Armitage Brown went to reside in Florence, where he remained some few years; then he settled at Plymouth, and there brought out a work entitled, “Shakespeare’s Autobiographical Poems. Being his Sonnets clearly developed; with his Character, drawn chiefly from his Works.” It cannot be said that in this work the author has clearly educed his theory; but, in the face of his failure upon that main point, the book is interesting, for the heart-whole zeal and homage with which HDT WHAT? INDEX

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he has gone into his subject. Brown was no half-measure man; “whatsoever his hand found to do, he did it with his might.” His last stage-scene in life was passed in New Zealand, whither he emigrated with his son, having purchased some land,--or, as his own letter stated, having been thoroughly defrauded in the transaction. Brown accompanied Keats in his tour in the Hebrides, a worthy event in the poet’s career, seeing that it led to the production of that magnificent sonnet to “Ailsa Rock.” As a passing observation, and to show how the minutest circumstance did not escape him, he told me, that, when he first came upon the view of Loch Lomond, the sun was setting; the lake was in shade, and of a deep blue; and at the farther end was “_a slash across it_, of deep orange.” The description of the traceried window in the “Eve of St. Agnes” gives proof of the intensity of his feeling for color. It was during his abode in Wentworth Place that the savage and vulgar attacks upon the “Endymion” appeared in the “Quarterly Review,” and in “Blackwood’s Magazine.” There was, indeed, ruffian, low-lived work,--especially in the latter publication, which had reached a pitch of blackguardism, (it used to be called “Blackguard’s Magazine,”) with _personal abuse_,--ABUSE,--the only word,--that would damage the sale of any review at this day. The very reverse of its present management. There would not now be the _inclination_ for such rascal bush-fighting; and even then, or indeed at any period of the Magazine’s career, the stalwart and noble mind of John Wilson would never have made itself editorially responsible for such trash. As to him of the “Quarterly,” a thimble would have been “a mansion, a court,” for his whole soul. The style of the articles directed against the Radical writers, and those especially whom the party had nicknamed the “Cockney school” of poetry, may be conceived by its provoking the following observation from Hazlitt to me:-- ”To pay those fellows, Sir, _in their own coin_, the way would be, to begin with Walter Scott, and _have at his clump-foot_.” “Verily, the former times were not better than these.” To say that these disgusting misrepresentations did not affect the consciousness and self-respect of Keats would be to underrate the sensitiveness of his nature. He felt the insult, but more the injustice of the treatment he had received; he told me so, as we lay awake one night, when I slept in his brother’s bed. They had injured him in the most wanton manner; but if they, or my Lord Byron, ever for one moment supposed that he was crushed or even cowed in spirit by the treatment he had received, never were they more deluded. “Snuffed out by an article,” indeed! He had infinitely more magnanimity, in its fullest sense, than that very spoiled, self-willed, and mean-souled man,--and I have authority for the last term. To say nothing of personal and private transactions, pages 204-207 in the first volume of Mr. Monckton Milnes’s life of our poet will be full authority for my estimate of his Lordship. “Johnny Keats” had, indeed, “a little body with a mighty heart,” and he showed it HDT WHAT? INDEX

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in the best way: not by fighting the ruffians,--though he could have done that,--but by the resolve that he would produce brain- work which not one of their party could approach; and he did. In the year 1820 appeared the “Lamia,” “Isabella,” “Eve of St. Agnes,” and “Hyperion,” etc. But, alas! the insidious disease which carried him off had made its approach, and he was going to, or had already departed for, Italy, attended by his constant and self-sacrificing friend, Severn. Keats’s mother died of consumption; and he nursed his younger brother in the same disease, to the last,--and, by so doing, in all probability, hastened his own summons. Upon the publication of the last volume of poems, Charles Lamb wrote one of his own finely appreciative and cordial critiques in the “Morning Chronicle.” This was sent to me in the country, where I had for some time resided. I had not heard of the dangerous state of Keats’s health,--only that he and Severn were going to Italy; it was, therefore, an unprepared shock which brought me the news that he had died in Rome. Mr. Monckton Milnes has related the anecdote of Keats’s introduction to Wordsworth, with the latter’s appreciation of the “Hymn to Pan,” which its author had been desired to repeat, and the Rydal Mount poet’s snow-capped comment upon it,--”Uhm! a pretty piece of Paganism!” Mr. Milnes, with his genial and placable nature, has made an amiable defence for the apparent coldness of Wordsworth’s appreciation,--”That it was probably intended for some slight rebuke to his youthful compeer, whom he saw absorbed in an order of ideas that to him appeared merely sensuous, and would have desired that the bright traits of Greek mythology should be sobered down by a graver faith.” Keats, like Shakspeare, and every other true poet, put his whole soul into what he imagined, portrayed, or embodied; and hence he appeared the young Greek, “suckled in that creed outworn.” The wonder is, that Mr. Wordsworth forgot to quote himself. From Keats’s description of his Mentor’s manner, as well as behavior, that evening, I cannot but believe it to have been one of the usual ebullitions of the egoism, not to say of the uneasiness, known to those who were accustomed to hear the great moral philosopher discourse upon his own productions and descant upon those of a contemporary. During this same visit, he was dilating upon some question in poetry, when, upon Keats’s insinuating a confirmatory suggestion to his argument, Mrs. Wordsworth put her hand upon his arm, saying,--”Mr. Wordsworth is never interrupted.” Again, during the same interview, some one had said that the next Waverley novel was to be “Rob Roy”; when Mr. Wordsworth took down his volume of Ballads, and read to the company “Rob Roy’s Grave,”--then, returning it to the shelf, observed, “I do not know what more Mr. Scott can have to say upon the subject.” When Leigh Hunt had his first interview with Wordsworth, the latter lectured to him--finely, indeed--upon his own writings; and repeated the entire sonnet, “Great men have been among us,”-- HDT WHAT? INDEX

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which Hunt said he did “in a grand and earnest tone.” Some one in a company quoting the passage from “Henry V.,”-- “So work the honey-bees,” and each “picking out his pet plum” from that perfect piece of natural history, Wordsworth objected to the line, “The singing masons building roofs of gold,” because, he said, of the unpleasant repetition of the “_ing_” in it! Where were his ears and judgment on that occasion? But I have more than once heard it said that Wordsworth had not a genuine love of Shakspeare,--that, when he could, he always accompanied a “_pro_” with his “_con_,” and, Atticus-like, would “just hint a fault and hesitate dislike.” Truly, indeed, we are all of “a mingled yarn, good and ill together.” I can scarcely conceive of anything more unjust than the account which that ill-ordered being, Haydon, left behind him in his “Diary,” respecting the idolized object of his former intimacy, John Keats. At his own eager request, after reading the manuscript specimens I had left with Leigh Hunt, I had introduced their author to him; and for some time subsequently I had frequent opportunities of seeing them together, and can testify to the laudations that Haydon trowelled on to the young poet. Before I left London, however, it had been said that things and opinions had changed,--and, in short, that Haydon had abjured all acquaintance with, and had even ignored, such a person as the author of the sonnet to him, and those “On the Elgin Marbles.” I say nothing of the grounds of their separation; but, knowing the two men, and knowing, I believe, to the core, the humane principle of the poet, I have such faith in his steadfastness of friendship, that I am sure he would never have left behind him an unfavorable _truth_, while nothing could have induced him to utter a _calumny_ of one who had received pledges of his former regard and esteem. Haydon’s detraction was the more odious because its object could not contradict the charge, and because it supplied his old critical antagonists (if any remained) with an authority for their charge against him of Cockney ostentation and display. The most mean-spirited and trumpery twaddle in the paragraph was, that Keats was so far gone in sensual excitement as to put Cayenne pepper upon his tongue, when taking his claret! Poor fellow! he never purchased a bottle of claret, within my knowledge of him; and, from such observation as could not escape me, I am bound to assert that his domestic expenses never could have occasioned him a regret or a self-reproof. When Shelley left England for Italy, Keats told me that he had received from him an invitation to become his guest,--and, in short, to make one of his household. It was upon the purest principle that Keats declined the noble proffer; for he entertained an exalted opinion of Shelley’s genius, in itself an inducement; he also knew of his deeds of bounty; and lastly, from their frequent intercourse, he had full faith in the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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sincerity of his proposal; for a more crystalline heart than Shelley’s never beat in human bosom. He was incapable of an untruth or of a deceit in any ill form. Keats told me, that, in declining the invitation, his sole motive was the consciousness, which would be ever prevalent with him, of his not being, in its utter extent, a free agent,--even within such a circle as Shelley’s,--himself, nevertheless, the most unrestricted of beings. Mr. Trelawney, a familiar of the family, has confirmed the unwavering testimony to Shelley’s bounty of nature, where he says, “Shelley was a being absolutely without selfishness.” The poorest cottagers knew and benefited by the thoroughly _practical_ and unselfish character of his Christianity, during his residence at Marlow, when he would visit them, and, having gone through a course of study in medicine, in order that he might assist them with his advice, would commonly administer the tonic which such systems usually require,--a good basin of broth, or pea-soup. And I believe I am infringing on no private domestic delicacy, when I repeat, that he has been known, upon a sudden and immediate emergency, to purloin (“_convey_ the wise it call”) a portion of the warmest of Mrs. Shelley’s wardrobe, to protect some poor starving sister. One of the richer residents of Marlow told me that “_they all_ considered him a madman.” I wish he had bitten the whole squad. “No settled senses of the world can match The ‘wisdom’ of that madness.” Shelley’s figure was a little above the middle height, slender, and of delicate construction, which appeared the rather from a lounging or waving manner in his gait, as though his frame was compounded merely of muscle and tendon, and that the power of walking was an achievement with him, and not a natural habit. Yet I should suppose that he was not a valetudinarian, although that has been said of him, on account of his spare and vegetable diet: for I have the remembrance of his scampering and bounding over the gorse-bushes on Hampstead Heath, late one night,--now close upon us, and now shouting from the height, like a wild school-boy. He was both an active and an enduring walker,--feats which do not accompany an ailing and feeble constitution. His face was round, flat, pale, with small features; mouth beautifully shaped; hair, bright-brown and wavy; and such a pair of eyes as are rarely seen in the human or any other head,-- intensely blue, with a gentle and lambent expression, yet wonderfully alert and engrossing: nothing appeared to escape his knowledge. Whatever peculiarity there might have been in Shelley’s religious faith, I have the best authority for believing that it was confined to the early period of his life. The _practical_ result of its course of _action_, I am sure, had its source from the “Sermon on the Mount.” There is not one clause in that divine code which his conduct towards his fellow-mortals did not confirm, and substantiate him to be a follower of Christ. Yet, when the news arrived in London of the death of Shelley and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Captain Williams by drowning, the “Courier” newspaper--an evening journal of that day--capped the intelligence with the following remark:--”He will now know whether there is a hell or not!”--I believe that there are still one or two public fanatics who would _think_ that surmise, but not one would dare to utter it in his journal. So much for the progress of liberality, and the power of opinion. At page 100 of the “Life of Keats,” Vol. I., Mr. Monckton Milnes has quoted a literary portrait of him, which he received from a lady who used to see him at Hazlitt’s lectures at the Surrey Institution. The building was on the south or right-hand side, and close to Blackfriars’ Bridge. I believe that the whole of Hazlitt’s lectures, on the British Poets, the Writers of the Time of Elizabeth, and the Comic Writers, were delivered in that Institution, during the years 1817 and 1818; shortly after which time the establishment appears to have been broken up. The lady’s remark upon the character and expression of Keats’s features is both happy and true. She says,--”His countenance lives in my mind as one of singular beauty and brightness; it had an expression _as if he had been looking on some glorious sight_.” That’s excellent.--”His mouth was full, and less intellectual than his other features.” True again. But when our artist pronounces that “his eyes were large and _blue_” and that “his hair was _auburn_,” I am naturally reminded of the fable of the “Chameleon”:--”They’re _brown_, Ma’am,--_brown_, I assure you!” The fact is, the lady was enchanted--and I cannot wonder at it--with the whole character of that beaming face; and “blue” and “auburn” being the favorite tints of the human front divine, in the lords of the creation, the poet’s eyes consequently became “blue,” and his hair “auburn.” Colors, however, vary with the prejudice or partiality of the spectator; and, moreover, people do not agree even upon the most palpable prismatic tint. A writing-master whom we had at Enfield was an artist of more than ordinary merit; but he had one dominant defect: he could not distinguish between true blue and true green. So that, upon one occasion, when he was exhibiting to us a landscape he had just completed, I hazarded the critical question, why he painted his trees so _blue_? “Blue!” he replied,--”what do you call green?”--Reader, alter in your copy of Monckton Milnes’s “Life of Keats,” Vol. I., page 103, “eyes” _light hazel_, “hair” _lightish-brown and wavy_. The most perfect, and withal the favorite portrait of him, was the one by Severn, published in Leigh Hunt’s “Lord Byron and his Contemporaries,” and which I remember the artist’s sketching in a few minutes, one evening, when several of Keats’s friends were at his apartments in the Poultry. The portrait prefixed to the “Life,” also by Severn, is a most excellent one-look-and- expression likeness,--an every-day, and of “the earth, earthy” one;--and the last, which the same artist painted, and which is now in the possession of Mr. John Hunter, of Craig Crook, Edinburgh, may be an equally felicitous rendering of one look HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and manner; but I do not intimately recognize it. There is another, and a _curiously unconscious_ likeness of him, in the charming Dulwich Gallery of Pictures. It is in the portrait of Wouvermans, by Rembrandt. It is just so much of a resemblance as to remind the friends of the poet,--though not such a one as the immortal Dutchman would have made, had the poet been his sitter. It has a plaintive and melancholy expression, which, I rejoice to say, I do not associate with him. There is one of his attitudes, during familiar conversation, which, at times, (with the whole earnest manner and sweet expression of the man) presents itself to me, as though I had seen him only last week. The attitude I speak of was that of cherishing one leg over the knee of the other, smoothing the instep with the palm of his hand. In this action I mostly associate him in an eager parley with Leigh Hunt, in his little cottage in the “Vale of Health.” This position, if I mistake not, is in the last portrait of him at Craig Crook; if not, it is in a reminiscent one, painted after his death. His stature could have been very little more than five feet; but he was, withal, compactly made and--well-proportioned; and before the hereditary disorder which carried him off began to show itself, he was active, athletic, and enduringly strong,-- as the fight with the butcher gave full attestation. The critical world,--by which term I mean the censorious portion of it; for many have no other idea of criticism than, that of censure and objection,--the critical world have so gloated over the feebler, or, if they will, the defective side of Keats’s genius, and his friends, his gloryingly partial friends, have so amply justified him, that I feel inclined to add no more to the category of opinions than to say, that the only fault in his poetry I could discover was a redundancy of imagery,--that exuberance, by-the-by, being a quality of the greatest promise, seeing that it is the constant accompaniment of a young and teeming genius. But his steady friend, Leigh Hunt, has rendered the amplest and truest record of his mental accomplishment in the Preface to the “Foliage,” quoted at page 150 of the first volume of the “Life of Keats”; and his biographer has so zealously, and, I would say, so amiably, summed up his character and intellectual qualities, that I can add no more than my assent. Keats’s whole course of life, to the very last act of it, was one routine of unselfishness and of consideration for others’ feelings. The approaches of death having come on, he said to his untiring nurse--friend,--”Severn,--I,--lift me up,--I am dying:--_I shall die easy; don’t be frightened;_--be firm, and thank God it has come.” There are constant indications through the memoirs, and in the letters of Keats, of his profound reverence for Shakspeare. His own intensity of thought and expression visibly strengthened with the study of his idol; and he knew but little of him till HDT WHAT? INDEX

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he himself had become an author. A marginal note by him in a folio copy of the Plays is an example of the complete absorption his mind had undergone during the process of his matriculation;- -and, through life, however long with any of us, we are all in progress of matriculation, as we study the “myriad-minded’s” system of philosophy. The note that Keats made was this;--”The genius of Shakspeare was an _innate universality;_ wherefore he laid the achievements of human intellect prostrate beneath his indolent and kingly gaze: _he could do easily men’s utmost;_ his plan of tasks to come was not of this world. If what he proposed to do hereafter would not in the idea answer the aim, how tremendous must have been his conception of ultimates!”

THE EUROPEAN CRISIS. It is not long since we listened to an interesting discussion of this question:--Which was the more important year to Europe,- -1859 or 1860? The question is one that may be commended to the attention of those ingenuous young gentlemen, in debating- societies assembled, who have not yet settled whether Brutus, Cassius, & Co. were right in assassinating “the mighty Julius,” or whether Mary Stuart was a martyred saint or a martyred sinner, or whether the cold chop to which Cromwell treated Charles I. on a memorable winter-day was either a just or a politic mode of touching for the king’s evil. It would have the merit of novelty,--and Americans are as fond of new things in their day of power as ever were the Athenians in the day of their decline. A yet rarer merit it would have, in the fact that a great deal could justly be said on both sides of the question. An umpire would probably decide in favor of 1859,--because, he might say, had the events of that year been different, those of 1860 must have undergone a complete change. The romantic conquest of Sicily by Garibaldi, and his successes in Naples, whereby a junior branch of the Bourbon family has been sent to “enjoy” that exile which has so long been the lot of the senior branch,--and the destruction of the _Papalini_ by the Italian army of Victor Emanuel II., which asserted the superiority of the children of the soil over the bands of foreign ruffians assembled by De Merode and Lamoricière for the oppression of the Peninsula in the name of the venerable head of the Church of Rome,--these are events even more striking than those by which the iron sceptre of Austria was cut through in the earlier year, because they have been accomplished by Italian genius and courage, the few foreigners in the army of Garibaldi not counting for much in the contest. They prove the regeneration of Italy. But it is evident that nothing of the kind could have been done in 1860, if 1859 had been as quiet a year for Italy as its immediate predecessor. Before the leaders and the soldiers of Italy could obtain the indispensable place whereon to stand, it was imperatively necessary that the power of Austria should be broken down, through the defeat and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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consequent demoralization of her army. For a period of forty- four years, Austria had had her own way in the Peninsula. From the fall of Napoleon’s Italian dominion, in 1814, to the day when the third Napoleon’s army entered Sardinia, there was, virtually, no other rule in Italy but that which Austria approved. The events of 1848, which at one time promised to remove “the barbarians,” had for their conclusion the re- establishment of her ascendency in greater force than ever; and the last ten years of that ascendency will always be remembered as the period when its tyrannical character was most fully developed. The hoary proconsul of the Lorraines, Radetzky, if not personally cruel, was determined to do for his masters what Castilian lieutenants had done for the Austro-Burgundian monarchs of Spain and her dependencies, the fairest portions of Italy being among those dependencies, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,--to destroy the public spirit of Italy. Could he have completed a century of life, or had there been no European nation ready to prevent the success of the Germanic policy under which Italy was to wither to provincial worthlessness, he might have been successful. But Austria lost her best man, the only one of her soldiers who had shown himself capable of upholding her Italian position, when he had reached to more than ninety years; and it pleased Providence to raise up a friend to Italy in a quarter to which most men had ceased to look for anything good. Well has it been said, that “it is not the best tools that shape out the best ends; if so, Martin Luther would not have been selected as the master-spirit of the Reformation.” Napoleon III. may deserve all that is said against him by men of the extreme right and by men of the extreme left,--by Catholics and infidels,--by _Whites_, and _Reds_, and _Blues_,--but it cannot be denied that he gave to the Italians that assistance without which they never could have obtained even partial deliverance from the Austrian yoke, and which they could have procured from no other potentate or power. Bankrupt though she was, Austria’s force was so superior to anything that Italy could present in the shape of an army, that Sardinia must have been conquered, if she had contended alone with her enemy; and a war between Austria and Sardinia was inevitable, and would probably have broken out long before 1859, had the former country been assured of the neutrality of France. There has been a great inkshed, and a large expenditure of oratory, on the question of the origin of the Italian war of 1859; and, as usual, much nonsense has been written and said of and concerning the ambition of France and the encroachments of Sardinia. But that war was brought about neither by French ambition nor by Sardinian desire for territorial aggrandizement. That it occurred in 1859 was undoubtedly owing to the action of France, which country merely chose its own time to drub its old foe; but the point at issue was, whether Austrian or Sardinian ideas should predominate in the government of Italy. Austria’s HDT WHAT? INDEX

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purpose never could be accomplished so long as a constitutional polity existed in the best, because the best governed and the best organized, of all the Italian States; and Sardinia’s purpose never could be accomplished so long as Austria was in a condition to dictate to the Italians the manner in which they should be ruled. A war between the two nations was, as we have said, inevitable. The only point about which there could be any dispute was, whether Sardinia would have to fight the battle of Italy unaided, or be backed by some power beyond the mountains. It shows how much men respect a military monarchy, how deferential they are to the sword, that even those persons who assumed that France must espouse the Sardinian cause were far from feeling confident that Austria would be overmatched by an alliance of the two most liberal of the Catholic nations of Europe. That monarchy is the type of force to all minds; and though she has seldom won any splendid successes in the field over the armies of enlightened nations, and has been repeatedly beaten by Prussia and France, men cling to old ideas, and give her great advantages at the beginning of every war in which she engages. The common opinion, in the spring of 1859, was, that Austria would crush Sardinia before the French could reach the field in force, and that her soldiers, flushed by successes over the Italians, would hurl their new foes out of the country, or leave them in its soil. As before, Italy was to be the grave of the French,--only that their grave was to be dug at the very beginning of the war, instead of being made, as in other days, at its close. But it was otherwise ordered. The Austrians lost the advantage which certainly was theirs at the opening of the contest, and, that lost, disaster after disaster befell their arms, until the “crowning mercy” of Solferino freed Italy from their rule, if it did not entirely banish them from her land. That Solferino was not so great a victory to the Allies as it was claimed to be at the time, that it resembled less Austerlitz than Wagram, may be admitted, and yet its importance remain unquestioned; for its decision gained for Italy the only thing that it was necessary she should have in order to work out her own salvation. Henceforth, she was not to tremble at the mere touch of the hilt of the sword worn by the Viceroy at Milan, but was to have the chance, at least, of ordering her own destinies. If not thoroughly free, she was no longer utterly enslaved. The peace of Villafranca surprised every one, from the Czar on the Neva to the gold-gatherers on the Sacramento. Strange as had been the doings--the world called them tricks--of Napoleon III., no man was prepared for that; and even now, though seventeen eventful months have rolled away since the first shock of it was experienced, the summer-day it was received seems more like one of those days we see in dreams than like a day of real life. Doubt, laughter, astonishment, and disgust followed each other through the minds of millions of men. If curses could kill, the man who had escaped the bombs of Orsini and the bullets of the Austrians would certainly have died in the month that followed HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the interview he had flogged his imperial brother into granting him. In America,--where we are always doing so much (on paper) for the cause of freedom, and for the deliverance of “oppressed nationalities” of the proper degrees and shades of whiteness, in the firm conviction that the free man is the better customer,- -in America the reaction of opinion was overwhelming; and there were but few persons in the United States who would not have shouted over news that Henri Cinq was in Paris, and that the French Empire had a third time made way for the Kingdom of France. Time has not altogether removed the impression then created; for, if it has not justified the belief that the French Emperor had abandoned the Italian cause, it has convinced the world that he lost a noble opportunity to effect the destruction of Austria. There may be--most probably there are--facts yet unknown to the public, knowledge of which would partially justify the conduct of the victor toward the vanquished, in 1859; but, if we judge from what we know, which is all that any monarch can demand of the formers of opinion, Napoleon III. was guilty of a monstrous political and military blunder when he forced a truce upon Francis Joseph. There is no evidence that any European power was about to interfere in behalf of Austria. Prussia, it is true, had taken a stern attitude, and showed a disposition to place herself at the head of those German States which were for beginning a march upon Paris at once, though M. le Maréchal Duc de Malakoff was ready with two hundred thousand men to receive them, and Paris itself was not the feeble place it had been in 1814 and 1815. It is altogether likely that Prussia was, as is usual with her at every European crisis, shamming. She had no interest in the maintenance of Austria’s territorial integrity, and it was rather late in the day to assume that Berlin was affected by the mortifications of Vienna. Could the hearts of kings and the counsels of cabinets be known with that literal exactness which is so desirable in politics, and yet so unattainable, we should probably find that Prussia’s apparent readiness to lead Germany was owing to her determination that German armies should be led nowhere to the assistance of Austria. England had just changed her Ministry, the Derby Cabinet giving way to Lord Palmerston’s, which was recognized on all sides as a great gain to the cause of Italian independence; and Lord John Russell had written one of those crusty notes to the Prussian government for which he is so famous, and which was hardly less Italian in its sentiments than that in which, written in October last, he upheld the course of Garibaldi and Victor Emanuel. Russia had evinced no disposition to interfere in behalf of Austria, and perhaps the news of Magenta and Solferino was as agreeable to the dwellers in St. Petersburg and Moscow as it was to the citizens of New York and Boston. She was, indeed, believed to be backing France. Politically, so far as we can judge, there was no cause or occasion for the throwing up of the cards by the French, after Solferino. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Nor were the military reasons for the cessation of warlike operations of a nature to convince men of their irresistible weightiness. A great deal was said about the strength of “the Quadrilateral,” and of the impregnability of the position which it formed,--as if there ever had existed a military position which could not be carried or turned, or out of which its defenders could not be bought, or forced, or starved! The strength of the Quadrilateral was as well known to the Emperor in January as it was in July, and he must have counted its powers of resistance before he resolved upon war. Victory he had organized, like Carnot; and victory in Lombardy was sure to take his army to the Mincio. Verona and Venetia were to be the complement of Milan. Then there was the story that he frightened the Kaiser into giving his consent to the truce by proving to him that the fortresses upon which he relied were not in good defensible condition, his commissaries having placed the funds in their pockets that should have been devoted to the purchase of stores,--a story that wears a very probable air, in view of the discovery subsequently made of the malversations of some of the highest persons at Vienna, and which had much to do with the suicide of the Minister of Finance. It is known, too, that the force which Napoleon III. had assembled in the Adriatic was very strong, and could have been so used as to have promoted an Hungarian insurrection in a sense not at all pleasant to the Austrians, to have attacked Dalmatia and Istria, and to have aided in the deliverance of Venice. That force was largely naval in its character, and the French navy was burning to distinguish itself in a war that had been so productive of glory to the sister-service: it would have had a Magenta and a Palestro of its own, won where the Dorias and the Pisani had struggled for fame and their countries’ ascendency. Instead of the Quadrilateral being a bar to the French, it would have been a trap to the Austrians, who would have been taken there after the manner in which Napoleon I. took their predecessors at Ulm. After the war was over, it came out that Verona was not even half armed. If Napoleon III. was bent upon carrying that imitation of his uncle, of which he is so fond, to the extent of granting a magnanimous peace to a crushed foe, he may be said to have caricatured that which he sought to imitate. The first Napoleon’s magnanimity after Austerlitz has been attributed to the craft of the beaten party,--he allowing the Russians to escape when they had extricated themselves from the false position in which their master’s folly had caused them to be placed. But the third Napoleon did allow the Austrians to avoid the consequences of their defeat, and so disappointed Italy and the world. He _was_ magnanimous, and most astonishing to the minds of men was his magnanimity. Most people called it stupidity, and strange stories were told of his nervous system having been shattered by the sights and sounds of those slaughter-fields which he had planned and fought and won! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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We live rapidly in this age, when nations are breaking up all around us, when unions are dissolving, when dynasties disappear before the light like ghosts at cock-crowing, and when emperors and kings rely upon universal suffrage, once so terrible a bugbear in their eyes, for the titles to their crowns. Opinion is rapidly formed, and is as rapidly dismissed. We may be as much astonished now at the peace of Villafranca as we were on the day when first it was announced, and while looking upon it only as a piece of diplomacy intended to put an end to a contest costly in blood and gold; but we cannot say, as it was common then to say, that the war which it closed has decided nothing. That war established the freedom and nationality of Italy, and the peace so much condemned was the means of demonstrating to the world the existence of an _Italian People_. How far the French Emperor was self-deceived, and to what extent he believed in the practicability of the arrangements made at Villafranca and Zurich, are inscrutable mysteries. _Que sais-je_? might be the form of his own answer, were any one entitled to question him concerning his own opinion on his own acts of 1859. But of the effects of his attack on Austria there can be no doubt. That Lorraines and Bourbons have ceased to reign in Italy,--that the Kingdom of Victor Emanuel has increased from six millions of people to twenty-four millions,--that the same constitutional monarch who ruled at Turin is now acknowledged in Milan, in Ancona, in Florence, in Naples, and in Palermo, being King of Lombards, and Tuscans, and Romans, and Neapolitans, and Sicilians,--and that the Austrians are no longer the rulers of the Peninsula,--these things are all due to the conduct of the French Emperor. Had the peace of Europe not been broken by France, the Austrian power in Italy would have been unbroken at this moment, and Naples have been still under the dominion of that mad tyrant whose supreme delight it was to offend the moral sense of the world, and who found even in the remonstrances of his brother-despots occasion for increasing the weight of the chains of his victims, and of adding to the intensity and the exquisiteness of their tortures. These solid advantages to Italy, this freedom of hers from domestic despotism and foreign control, are the fruits of French intervention; and they could have been obtained in no other way. There was no nation but France to which Italy could look for aid, and to France she did not look in vain. Of the motives of her ally it would be idle to speak, as there is no occasion to go beyond consequences; and those consequences are just as good as if the French Emperor were as pure-minded and unselfish as the most perfect of those paladins of romance who went about redressing one class of wrongs by the creation of another. What Italy desired, what alone she needed, was freedom from foreign intervention; and that she got through the interposition of French armies, and that she could have got from no other human source. This single fact is an all-sufficient answer to the myriads of sneers that were called forth by the failure of Napoleon III. to redeem his pledge to make Italy free from the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Alps to the Adriatic. What other potentate did anything for that country in 1859, or has done anything for it since that memorable year? Neither prince nor people, leaving Napoleon III. and the French aside, has so much as lifted a hand to promote the regeneration of Italy. America has enough to do in the way of attending to domestic slavery, without concerning herself about the freedom of foreigners; and she has given the Italians her- -sympathies, which are of as much real worth to her as would be a treatise on the Resolutions of ’98 to a man who should happen to tumble into the Niagara, with the Falls close upon him. England would have had Italy submit to that Austrian rule which had been established over her by English influence in 1814, when even the perverse, pig-headed Francis II. could see sound objections to it; and all because want of submission on her part would disturb the equilibrium of Europe, and might tend to the aggrandizement of France,--two things which she by no means desired to see happen. Russia, like America, gave Italy her sympathies; but she had a better excuse than we had for being prudent, as her monarch was engaged in planning at least the freedom of the serfs. If the Russians desired the overthrow of the Austrians, it was not because they loved the Italians, but from hatred of their oppressors; and that hatred had its origin in the refusal of Austria to join Russia when she was so hard pressed by France and England, Turkey and Piedmont. Prussia, us we have seen, sided with Austria; and though it is impossible to believe in her sincerity, her moral power, so far as it went, was adverse to the Italian cause. The other European nations were of no account, having no will of their own, and being influenced only by the action of the members of the Pentarchy. Save France, Italy had no friend possessed of the disposition and the ability to afford her that assistance without which she must soon have become in name, as she was fast becoming in fact, a mere collection of Austrian provinces. We dwell upon those well-known facts because an opinion seems to prevail that no nation or government shall interfere for the protection of the weak against the strong, unless it shall be able to show that it is perfect itself, and that its intentions are of the most unselfish nature. Peoples are to be delivered from oppression only as the Israelites were delivered, by the direct and immediate interposition of Heaven in human affairs; and the delivering agent must be as high-minded and generous as Moses, who was allowed merely to gaze upon the Promised Land. Men who thus reason about human action, and the motives of actors on the great stage of life, must have read history to very little purpose, and have observed the making of history round about them to no purpose at all. The instruments of Providence are seldom perfect men, and the broad light in which they live brings out their faults in full force. Napoleon III. is not above the average morality of his time; and if he had been so, probably he never would have become Emperor of the French. But in this respect differs he much from those men who have wrought great things for the world, and whom the world is content to reverence? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Robert Bruce, who saved Scotland from the misery that befell Ireland; Henry IV., who renewed the life of France; Maurice of Saxony, who prevented the Reformation from proving a stupendous failure; and William III., without whose aid the Constitutionalists of England must have gone down before the Stuarts: not one of these men was perfect; and yet what losses the world would have experienced, if they had never lived, or had failed in their great labors! It has been claimed for Gustavus Adolphus that he was the only pure conqueror that ever lived; but his purity may safely be placed to the account of the balls of Lützen: he was not left unto temptation. We should extend to Napoleon III. the same charity that we extend to men who have long been historical characters, and judge him by his actions and their results, and not criticise him by the canons of faction. Italy was delivered by the war of 1859, and that war was terminated by the peace of Villafranca. For the moment, it seemed as if there were to be a restoration of the petty princes who had fled from Tuscany and Parma and Modena, and that an Italian Confederation had been resolved upon, in which the noxious influences of Austria and Naples and Papal Rome should stifle the pure principles upheld by Sardinia. A few months sufficed to show that these evils existed in apprehension only. The Italians, by the withdrawal of the French, were thrown upon their own resources, and by their conduct they dissipated the belief that they were unequal to the emergency. Had the war been continued, had Venetia been conquered, and had the last of the Austrians been driven beyond the Isonzo, Italy would have been the prize of French valor and genius; for all this must have been done on the instant, and before the Italians, less the Sardinians, could have taken an effective part in the war. The most devoted believer in the patriotism and bravery of the Italians must perforce admit that they had little to do with the war of 1859. Leaving the Sardinians aside, the Italian element in that contest was scarcely appreciable. This we say without meaning any reflection on the Italians. There were many good reasons why they should remain quiet. In common with the rest of the world, even France herself, the war took them by surprise, Austria bringing it on weeks, if not months, before Napoleon III. had meant it to begin. They, too, had seen their country so often abused by those who had conquered there, that they had some excuse for waiting the progress of events. The most industrious and studied efforts had been made to convince them that the object of the ruler of France was the realization of another Napoleonic idea, namely, the restoration of that Kingdom of Italy which perished in 1814; and though the rule of Napoleon I. was the best that Italy had known for three hundred years, it was hardly worth while to enter upon a doubtful fight for its restoration. Hence the majority of the people of Italy were not so active as they might have been; and their coolness is said to have had much effect on the mind of the victor, who must have thought that the people he had come to deliver were taking things HDT WHAT? INDEX

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very easily, and who could not have felt much flattered, when assured, in the politest terms, that those people believed him to be a selfish liar. His work, therefore, was but partially performed. Instead of halting on the shores of the historical Adriatic, his armies drew up on the banks of the classic Mincius. Trance had done her part; let Italy do the rest, if it were to be done. Thus abdicating his original purpose, and probably feeling much as William III. felt when the English were so slow in joining him that he talked of returning to his ships, Napoleon III. gave up his power to dictate the future of Italy. He had no right, thereafter, to say that the Bourbons should continue to govern in the Two Sicilies, that the Dukes should be restored to their Duchies, and that Venetia should be guarantied to Austria. He felt this, as the terms of the treaties that were made very clearly show; for he was careful to abstain from pledging himself to anything of a definite character. If he had perfected his original work, and been possessed of the power to effect a new settlement of Italy, he would, we presume, have stipulated for the continuance of the Bourbon power in the southern portion of the Peninsula and in Sicily; while the much talked-of purpose of creating an Italian Kingdom or Duchy for Prince Napoleon would probably have been carried out, and that gentleman have been established on the Arno. To the Sardinian monarchy would have been assigned the spoils taken from Austria,--Venice and Lombardy. The change in his political plans was the consequence of the change in his military plan,--though either change may be pronounced the cause or the effect, according to the point from which the observer views the entire series of transactions. Thus the peace of 1859 may be considered to have been a benefit to Italy, just as the war it terminated had been. The war freed her from Austrian dominion; the peace, from its character, and from the circumstances under which it was made, left her people at liberty to act as they pleased in the fair field that had been won for their exertions by the skill and courage of the French and Sardinian armies. The destinies of Italy being placed in her own hands, the Italians were as prompt as politic considerations would allow them to be in promoting the unification of their country. Central Italy soon became a part of the constitutional monarchy which had grown up under the shadow of the Alps. This could not have happened, if Napoleon III. had chosen to veto the proceedings of the Italians, which had virtually nullified one of his purposes. That he consented to this large addition to the power of Sardinia on the condition of receiving Savoy and Nice is by no means unlikely; and we do not think that Victor Emanuel was either unwise or wanting in patriotism in parting with those countries for the benefit of Italy. Taking advantage of the troubles in Sicily, Garibaldi led a small expedition to that island, which there landed, and began those operations which had their appropriate termination, in five months, in the addition of all the territories of the wretched Francis II., except Gaëta, to the dominions of the Sardinian King. The importance HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of Garibaldi’s undertaking it is quite impossible to overrate; but of what account could it have been, if the Austrians had stood to Italy in the same position that they held at the opening of 1859? Of none at all. Garibaldi is preeminently a man of sense, and he would never have thought of moving against Francis II., if Francis Joseph had been at liberty to assist that scandalous caricature of kings. Or, if he had been tempted to enter upon the project, he would have been “snuffed out” as easily as was Murat, when, in 1815, he sought to recover the Neapolitan throne. If Austrian ships had not prevented him from landing in Sicily, Austrian troops would have destroyed him in that island. Nay, it is but reasonable to believe that Bomba’s navy and army would have been amply sufficient to do their master’s work. That his men were not wanting in courage and conduct has been proved by their deeds since the tyrant left his capital, on the Volturno and around Capua and at Gaëta. It was not want of bravery that led to their failure in Sicily, but the belief that their employer’s system had failed, and that he and they were given up to the vengeance of Italy, supposing the Italians to be strong enough to do justice on them. They took courage when European circumstances led them to conclude that Austria would be advised, at the Warsaw Conference, to use her forces for the restoration of the old order of things in Italy, and receive the support of Russia and Prussia. To deserve such aid from the North, the Neapolitan army struggled hard, but in vain. The Absolutist cause was lost in Naples when the sovereigns met in the Polish capital; and though, forty years earlier, this would have been held an additional reason for the entrance of the barbarians into Italy, the successes of the patriots must have had their proper weight with the Prince Regent of Prussia and the Czar, who are understood to have been as deaf as adders to the charming of their young brother from Vienna. What was resolved upon at Warsaw the world has no positive means of knowing, and but little reliance is to be placed upon the rumors that have been so abundant; but, as Austria has not moved against the Italians, and as the instructions to her new commander-in-chief in Venetia (Von Benedek) are reported to be strong on the point of non- intervention, we are at liberty to infer that she accepts all that has been done as accomplished facts, and means to stand upon the defensive, in the hope of gaining moral support by her moderation in being outwardly content with less than half the spoil which was given to her at the expense of Italy, when Europe was “settled,” for the time, four-and-forty years ago. The action of the Sardinian government, in sending its soldiers against the legal banditti whom Lamoricière had sought to drill into the semblance of an army, which was a direct attack on the Pope, and the subsequent employment of those soldiers, and of the Sardinian fleet, against the forces of Francis II., were model pieces of statesmanship, and worthy of the great man whose name and fame have become indissolubly associated with the redemption of Italy. The decision thus to act could not have HDT WHAT? INDEX

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been taken without the consent of Napoleon III. having first been had and obtained; and there is probably much truth in the story, that, when Lamoricière had the coolness to threaten his conquerors with the vengeance of the Emperor, they told him, half-laughingly, that, they had planned the campaign with that illustrious personage at Chambéry, which must have convinced him that the cause of the Keys had nothing to expect from France beyond the sort of police aid which General Goyon was affording to it in the name of his master. Lamoricière also expected help from Austria, and professed to be able to number the few days at the expiration of which the white-coats would be at Alessandria, which would have been a diversion in his favor, that, had it been made, must have saved him from the mortification of surrendering to men whom he affected to despise, but who brought him and his army under the yoke. The faith of the commander of the rabble of the Faith in Austrian assistance was a Viennese inspiration, and was meant to induce him to resist to the last. Nor was it altogether false; for the Kaiser and Count Rechberg appear to have believed that they could induce the governments of Russia and Prussia to support them in a crusade in behalf of Rome and Naples, which was to rely upon Lutherans and supporters of the Eastern Church for the salvation of the Western Church and its worst members. The first interview between Rechberg and Gortschakoff, if we can believe a despatch from Warsaw, led quickly to a quarrel, which must have taken place not long after their chiefs, the Kaiser and the Czar, had been locked in each other’s arms at the railway- station. It is but just to the Austrians to state, that they probably had received from St. Petersburg some promises of assistance, which Alexander found himself unable to redeem, so determined was Russian opinion in its expression of aversion to Austria when its organs began to suspect that the old game was to be renewed, and that Alexander contemplated doing in 1861 what Nicholas had done in 1849,--to step between Francis Joseph and humiliation, perhaps destruction. If it be true that the Czar has ordered all Russians to leave Italy, that piece of pitiful spite would show how he hates the Italian cause, and also that it is not in his power seriously to retard its progress at present. Instead of ordering Russians from Italy, he would send them to that country in great masses, could he have his way in directing the foreign policy of his empire. The entire success of Victor Emanuel and Garibaldi has brought Italian matters to a crisis. Carrying out the policy of Cavour, the King and the Soldier have all but completed the unification of their country, at the very time when the United States are threatened with disunion. The Kingdom of Italy exists at this time, virtually, if not in terms, and contains about twenty-four million people. It comprises the original territories of Victor Emanuel, _minus_ Savoy and Nice, the Two Sicilies, Lombardy, almost the whole of the Papal States, and Tuscany, Parma, and Modena. If we except the fragment of his old possessions yet held by the Pope, and the Austrian hold on Venetia, all Italy HDT WHAT? INDEX

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now acknowledges the rule of Victor Emanuel, who is to meet an _Italian_ Parliament in January, 1861. No political change of our century has been more remarkable than this, whether we look to its extent, or have regard to the agencies by which it has been brought about. Two years ago, there was more reason to believe that the King of Sardinia would be an exile than that the Bourbon King of Naples would be on his travels. No man would have dared to prophesy that the former would be reigning over seven-eighths of the Italians, while the latter should be reduced to one town, garrisoned by foreign mercenaries. That these changes should be wrought by universal suffrage, had it been predicted, would have been thought too much to be related as a dream. Yet it is the voice of the Italian People, speaking under a suffrage-system apparently more liberal than ever has been known in America, which has accomplished all that has been done since the summer of 1859 in the Peninsula and in Sicily. It was because Napoleon III. would not place himself in opposition to the opinion of the people of Central Italy, that the petty monarchs of that country were not restored to their thrones, and that they became subjects of Victor Emanuel; and the voting in Sicily and Naples has confirmed the decision of arms, and made it imperative on the reactionists to attack the people, should their policy lead them to seek a reversal of the decrees of 1860. The new monarch of the Italians expressly bases his title to reign on the will of the people, expressed through the exercise of the least restricted mode of voting that ever has been known among men; and the people of Southern Italy never could have had the opportunity to vote their crown to him, if Garibaldi had not first freed them from the savage tyranny of Francis II.; and Garibaldi himself could not have acted for their deliverance, if Italy had not previously been delivered from the Austrians by France. Thus we have the French Emperor, designated as a _parvenu_ both in England and America, and owing his power to his name,--the democrat Garibaldi, whose power is from his deeds, and whose income is not equal to that of an Irish laborer in the United States,--the rich and noble Cavour, whose weekly revenues would suffice to purchase the fee-simple of Garibaldi’s island-farm,--the King of Sardinia, representing a race that was renowned before the Normans reigned in England,- -and the masses of the Italian people,--all acting together for the redemption of a country which needs only justice to enable it to assume, as near as modern circumstances will permit, its old importance in the world’s scale. That there should have been such a concurrence of foreign friendship, democratic patriotism, royal sagacity, aristocratic talent, and popular good sense, for Italy’s benefit, must help to strengthen the belief that the Italians are indeed about to become a new _Power_ in Europe, and in the world, and that their country is no more to be rated as a mere “geographical expression.” The Italian crisis is a European crisis; for matters have now reached a pass in which the foreigner must have something to say of Italy’s future: and it will be well for the general peace, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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if he shall use only the words of justice, in giving his decision; for his right to speak at all in the premises is derived only from an act of usurpation, long acquiescence in which has clothed it with a certain show of legality. In all that the Italians have thus far done, since the conclusion of the with Austria, they have not necessarily been brought into conflict with any foreign nation, though they may have terribly offended those legitimate sovereigns who have been accustomed either to give law to Europe or to see public opinion defer considerably to their will. Not a single acquisition thus far made by Victor Emmanuel can be said to have proceeded from any act at which Europe could complain with justice. Lombardy was given to him by his ally of France, whose prize it was, and who had an undid dispose of it in a most righteous manner. That Central Italy was acquired by him was due partly to the cowardice of the old rulers thereof, and partly to intelligence, activity, and patriotism of its people. No foreign rights, conventional or otherwise, were assailed or disregarded, when it passed under the Sardinian sceptre. When go much of the Pope’s temporal possessions were taken from him by the people themselves, who had become weary of the worst system of misgovernment known to the west of Bokhara, no doubt many pious Catholics were shocked; but, if they knew anything of the history of the Papal temporal rule and power, they could not complain at what was done, on the score of illegality; and the deeds of Cialdini and Fanti and Persano were performed against foreigners who had intruded themselves into Italy, and who were employed to uphold the political supremacy of a few persons at Rome, while they had no more connection with the religion of the ancient Church than they had with that of Thibet. The King of the Two Sicilies, by his tyranny, and by his persistence in the offensive course of his house, had become an outlaw, as it were, and every _Italian_ at least was fairly authorized to attack him; and in doing so he could not be said to assail European order, nor could any European power send assistance to a monarch who had refused to listen even to the remonstrances of Austria against his cruelties. The stanchest of English conservatives, while they said they must regard Garibaldi as a freebooter, did not hesitate to express the warmest wishes for the freebooter’s success. When the Sardinians marched to Garibaldi’s aid, they did so in the interest of order, which has been promptly restored to Southern Italy through their energetic course. Thus far, that which has been done in Italy has been of a local character; but nothing more can be done, in the way of completing the independence and unity of Italy, without bringing the patriots into conflict with Austria. That power still is supreme in Venetia, which is one of the best portions of Italy, and which can be held by no foreign sovereign without endangering the whole Peninsula. Were there no other reason for seeking to redeem Venetia from Austrian oppression, the safety of the rest of Italy would demand that that redemption should be accomplished. Venetia, as she now is, is a place of arms for the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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chief, we may say the only, foreign enemy that the Italian Kingdom has or can have; and that enemy has a deep and a peculiar interest in seeking occasion to bring about the new kingdom’s destruction. If Austria should succeed in conciliating the Hungarians,--which she might do, if she were to act justly toward them,--and a change of government were to take place in France,--and changes in the French government have occurred so often since 1789 as not to be improbable now,--she would, through possession of Venetia, be enabled to commence a new Italian war with the chances of success greatly in her favor. The Italians, therefore, are compelled to round and complete their work, in getting possession of Venetia, by that desire for safety and for self-preservation which actuates all men and all communities. A nobler feeling, too, moves them. They feel the obligation that exists to extend to the Venetians that freedom which is now enjoyed by all Italians except the Venetians and a small portion of the Pope’s subjects. They would be recreant to the dictates of duty, and disregardful of those of honor, were they to leave Venetia in the hands of Austria. What their feelings on this momentous subject are may be gathered from Garibaldi’s address to his companions-in-arms, when, having completed his immediate work, he withdrew from active service for the time, in November last. His words point as directly to an attack on Venetia as his landing in Sicily indicated his intention to overthrow Francis II.; and that attack, according to the Patriot Soldier, is to be made under the lead of the Patriot King, Victor Emanuel. A million of Italians are called for, that it may be successfully made; and that number ought to be raised, if so vast a host shall be found necessary to perfect the independence of Italy. After what we have seen done by the Italians, we should not distrust their power to do even more, if no delay should be permitted, and full advantage be taken of the spirit of enthusiastic patriotism which now animates them. That Garibaldi means no delay is proved by his naming next March as the date for the renewal of the mighty crusade in the course of which already such miracles have been wrought. That Italy, as she stands to-day, would be found more than the equal of Austria, no doubt can be felt by any one who is acquainted with the condition of the two powers. Italy would enter upon a contest with Austria under circumstances of peculiar advantage. She would have so decided a naval superiority, that the Austrian flag would disappear from the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, and she would be able to operate powerfully from the sea against Venice. It is a military axiom, that, wherever there is a sea-side, there is a weak side; and Venetia presents this to an assailing force in quite a striking manner. Command of the Adriatic and the neighboring waters would enable the Italians to threaten many points of the Austrian territory, which would require to be watched by large collections of soldiers; and aid could be sent to the Hungarians, should they rise, by the way of Fiume. Italy could raise a larger army to attack Venetia than Austria could employ HDT WHAT? INDEX

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for its defence, with Hungary on the eve of revolution, Bohemia discontented, Croatia not the loyal land it was in ’48, and even the Tyrol no longer a model of subserviency to the Imperial House. The Italians are at any time the equals of the Austrians as soldiers, and at this time their minds are in an exalted state, under the dominion of which they would be found superior to any men who could be brought against them, if well led; and among the Imperial commanders there is no man, unless Von Benedek be an exception, who is to be named with the generals who have led the way in the work we have seen done since last spring. In a military sense, and in a moral sense, Italy is the superior of the beaten, bankrupt monarchy of Austria, and capable of wresting Venetia from the intrusive race, which holds it as much in defiance of common sense as of common right. But would Italy be permitted to settle her quarrel with her old oppressor without foreign intervention? We fear that she would not. Venetia is held by Austria in virtue of the Vienna settlement of Europe, in the first place, and then under the treaty that followed the war of 1859. Some English statesmen would appear to be of opinion that Venetia must remain among the possessions of Austria, without reference to the interests of Italy, the party most concerned in the business. In his first note to Sir James Hudson, British Minister at Turin, which note was to be read to Count Cavour, Lord John Russell, Foreign Secretary, writes more like an Austrian than an Englishman, going even to the astounding length of declaring that a war to defend her right to Venetia would be on Austria’s part a patriotic war,--such a war, we presume the Honorable Secretary of State must have meant, as Wallace waged against Edward I., or that which the first William of Orange carried on against Philip II.! Lord Palmerston seems inclined to indorse his colleague’s views: for he referred directly to this very note in terms of approbation, in the speech which he made at the dinner of the “Worshipful Company of Salters,” on the 14th of November. It is true, that, in a later note from Lord John Russell to Sir James Hudson, extreme ground in favor of what had been done in Naples by the Sardinians is taken, and sustained with eminent ability; and in the speech of Lord Palmerston referred to, the object of the first note was said to be the prevention of a rash course that “might have blighted all the best hopes of Italian freedom.” We do not for a moment suppose that the English people would ever allow their government to do anything to help Austria to maintain possession of Venetia; but the relations between Austria and England are of old date, and an opinion prevails in the latter country that the former should be kept strong, in order that she may be preserved as a counterpoise, on the one side to Russia, and on the other to France. England has a difficult part to play, and her course, or rather that of her government, sometimes makes considerable demand on the charitable construction of the world; but her people are sound, and for a long series of years their weight has been felt on the right side of European contests. The Italian HDT WHAT? INDEX

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cause is popular with all classes of Englishmen, and their country will never do anything to the prejudice of that cause. But it may refuse aid at a time when such aid shall be much needed, and when even France may stand aloof, and refrain from finishing the business which she commenced. There is said to be an opinion growing up in France that Italy may be made too strong for the good of her friend and ally. A new nation of twenty-seven million souls--which would be Italy’s strength, should Rome and Venetia be gained for her--might become a potent enemy even to one of its chief creators; and the taking of Savoy and Nice has caused ill-feeling between the two countries, in which Garibaldi heartily shares. Napoleon III. might be depended upon, himself, to support Italy hereafter against any foreign enemy, but it is by no means clear that France would support him in such a course; and he must defer to the opinion of his subjects to a considerable extent, despotic though his power is supposed to be. It is opinion, in the last resort, that governs every where,--under an absolute monarchy quite as determinedly as under a liberal polity like ours or England’s. There is a large party in France, composed of the most incongruous materials, which has the profoundest interest in misrepresenting the policy of the Imperial government, and which is full of men of culture and intellect,--men whose labors, half-performed though they are, must have considerable effect on the French mind. The first Napoleon had the ground honeycombed under him by his enemies, who could not be suppressed, nor their labors be made to cease, even by his stern system of repression. It may be so with the present Emperor, who knows that one false step might upset his dynasty as utterly as it was twice over-thrown by the armies of combined Europe. What was then done by the lions and the eagles might now be done by the moles. The worms that gnawed through the Dutch dykes did Holland more damage than she experienced from the armies of Louis XIV. Let the French mind become possessed with the idea that the Emperor is helping Italy at the expense of France, and we may see a third Restoration in that country, or even a third Republic. The elder Bourbons were driven out because they were as a monument in Paris to Leipzig and Vittoria and Waterloo, erected by the victors on those fatal fields. The Orléans dynasty broke down because it had become an article in the belief of most Frenchmen that it was disgracing France by the corruption of its domestic policy and the subserviency of its foreign policy. Napoleon III. could no more sustain himself against the belief that he was using France for the benefit of Italy than the King of the French could sustain himself against the conviction that he was abusing the country he ruled over for the advancement of his family. He has already offended the Catholic clergy by what he has done for Italy, which they regard as having been done against their Church; and as they helped to make him, so they may be able to unmake him. To satisfy grumblers, he took Savoy and Nice. For some time past, rumor has been busy in attributing to him the design of demanding the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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island of Sardinia. If he should ask for Sardinia, and receive it, might he not ask also for Sicily, the country of which he offered to become King in 1848, and did not receive one vote, an incident that may still weigh upon the imperial heart, no man ever forgetting a contemptuous slight? If he should make these demands, or either of them, would the other European Powers permit the Italians to comply with them? These are questions not to be answered hurriedly, but they closely concern the Italian question, a solution of which must soon be had, for the world’s peace. The third act of the drama approaches, and 1861 may be a more important year to Italy than was either 1859 or 1860. The successful antagonist of Austria she can be; but could she, without foreign aid, withstand an alliance that should be formed against her in the name of order, while her former ally should remain quiet and refuse to take any part in the war? Austria, it has been intimated, might be induced to sell Venetia to Italy, and this is possible, though such a settlement of the question in dispute would be an extraordinary confession of weakness on the part of the aristocratical military monarchy of the Lorraines, and a proceeding of which it would be more ashamed than it would be even of a generous action. * * * * * A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR AGED AND DECAYED PUNSTERS. Having just returned from a visit to this admirable Institution in company with a friend who is one of the Directors, we propose giving a short account of what we saw and heard. The great success of the Asylum for Idiots and Feeble-minded Youth, several of the scholars from which have reached considerable distinction, one of them being connected with a leading Daily Paper in this city, and others having served in the State and National Legislatures, was the motive which led to the foundation of this excellent Charity. Our late distinguished townsman, Noah Dow, Esquire, as is welt known, bequeathed a large portion of his fortune to this establishment,--”being thereto moved,” as his will expressed it, “by the desire of _N. Dowing_ some publick Institution for the benefit of Mankind.” Being consulted as to the Rules of the Institution and the selection of a Superintendent, he replied, that “all Boards must construct their own Platforms of operation. Let them select _anyhow_ and he should be pleased.” N.E. Howe, Esq., was chosen in compliance with this delicate suggestion. The Charter provides for the support of “One hundred aged and decayed Gentlemen-Punsters.” On inquiry if there was no provision for _females_, my friend called my attention to this remarkable psychological fact, namely:-- THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FEMALE PUNSTER. This remark struck me forcibly, and on reflection I found that _I never knew nor heard of one_, though I have once or twice HDT WHAT? INDEX

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heard a woman make _a single detached_ pun, as I have known a hen to crow. On arriving at the south gate of the Asylum grounds, I was about to ring, but my friend held my arm and begged me to rap with my stick, which I did. An old man with a very comical face presently opened the gate and put out his head. “So you prefer _Cane_ to _A bell_, do you?” he said,--and began chuckling and coughing at a great rate. My friend winked at me. “You’re here still, Old Joe, I see,” he said to the old man. “Yes, yes,--and it’s very odd, considering how often I’ve _bolted_, nights.” He then threw open the double gates for us to ride through. “Now,” said the old man, as he pulled the gates after us, “you’ve had a long journey.” “Why, how is that, Old Joe?” said my friend. “Don’t you see?” he answered; “there’s the _East hinges_ on one side of the gate, and there’s the West hinges_ on t’other side,- -haw! haw! haw!” We had no sooner got into the yard than a feeble little gentleman, with a remarkably bright eye, came up to us, looking very seriously, as if something had happened. “The town has entered a complaint against the Asylum as a gambling establishment,” he said to my friend, the Director. “What do you mean?” said my friend. “Why, they complain that there’s a _lot o’ rye_ on the premises,” he answered, pointing to a field of that grain,--and hobbled away, his shoulders shaking with laughter, as he went. On entering the main building, we saw the Rules and Regulations for the Asylum conspicuously posted up. I made a few extracts which may be interesting. Sect. I. OF VERBAL EXERCISES. 5. Each Inmate shall be permitted to make Puns freely from eight in the morning until ten at night, except during Service in the Chapel and Grace before Meals. 6. At ten o’clock the gas will be turned off, and no further Puns, Conundrums, or other play on words, will be allowed to be uttered, or to be uttered aloud. 9. Inmates who have lost their faculties and cannot any longer make Puns shall be permitted to repeat such as may be selected for them by the Chaplain out of the work of Mr. _Joseph Miller_. 10. Violent and unmanageable Punsters, who interrupt others when engaged in conversation, with Puns or attempts at the same, shall be deprived of their _Joseph Millers_, and, if necessary, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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placed in solitary confinement. Sect. III. OF DEPORTMENT AT MEALS. 4. No Inmate shall make any Pun, or attempt at the same, until the Blessing has been asked and the company are decently seated. 7. Certain Puns having been placed on the _Index Expurgatorius_ of the Institution, no Inmate shall be allowed to utter them, on pain of being debarred the perusal of _Punch_ and _Vanity Fair_, and, if repeated, deprived of his _Joseph Miller_. Among these are the following:-- Allusions to _Attic salt_, when asked to pass the salt-cellar. Remarks on the Inmates being _mustered_, etc., etc. Associating baked beans with the _bene_factors of the Institution. Saying that beef-eating is _befitting_, etc., etc. The following are also prohibited, excepting to such Inmates as may have lost their faculties and cannot any longer make Puns of their own:-- “----your own _hair_ or a wig”; “it will be _long enough_, “etc., etc.; “little of its age,” etc., etc.;--also, playing upon the following words: _hos_pital; _mayor_; _pun_; _pitied_; _bread_; _sauce_, etc., etc., etc. See INDEX EXPURGATORIUS, _printed for use of Inmates_. The subjoined Conundrum is not allowed:--Why is Hasty Pudding like the Prince? Because it comes attended by its _sweet_;--nor this variation to it, _to wit_: Because the _’lasses runs after it_. The Superintendent, who went round with us, had been a noted punster in his time, and well known in the business-world, but lost his customers by making too free with their names,--as in the famous story he set afloat in ’29 of _four Jerries_ attaching to the names of a noted Judge, an eminent Lawyer, the Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions, and the well-known Landlord at Springfield. One of the _four Jerries_, he added, was of gigantic magnitude. The play on words was brought out by an accidental remark of Solomons, the well-known Banker. “_Capital punishment!_” the Jew was overheard saying, with reference to the guilty parties. He was understood as saying, _A capital pun is meant_, which led to an investigation and the relief of the greatly excited public mind. The Superintendent showed some of his old tendencies, as he went round with us. “Do you know”--he broke out all at once--”why they don’t take steppes in Tartary for establishing Insane Hospitals?” We both confessed ignorance. “Because there are _nomad_ people to be found there,” he said, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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with a dignified smile. He proceeded to introduce us to different Inmates. The first was a middle-aged, scholarly man, who was seated at a table with a Webster’s Dictionary and a sheet of paper before him. “Well, what luck to-day, Mr. Mowzer?” said the Superintendent. “Three or four only,” said Mr. Mowzer. “Will you hear ’em now,- -now I’m here?” We all nodded. “Don’t you see Webster _ers_ in the words cent_er_ and theat_er_? “If he spells leather _lether_, and feather _fether_, isn’t there danger that he’ll give us a _bad spell of weather_? “Besides, Webster is a resurrectionist; he does not allow _u_ to rest quietly in the _mould_. “And again, because Mr. Worcester inserts an illustration in his text, is that any reason why Mr. Webster’s publishers should hitch one on in their appendix? It’s what I call a _Conntect-a- cut_ trick. “Why is his way of spelling like the floor of an oven? Because it is _under bread_. “Mowzer!” said the Superintendent,--”that word is on the Index!” “I forgot,” said Mr. Mowzer;--”please don’t deprive me of _Vanity Fair_, this one time, Sir. “These are all, this morning. Good day, Gentlemen. Then to the Superintendent,--Add you, Sir!” The next Inmate was a semi-idiotic-looking old man. He had a heap of block-letters before him, and, as we came up, he pointed, without saying a word, to the arrangements he had made with them on the table. They were evidently anagrams, and had the merit of transposing the letters of the words employed without addition or subtraction. Here are a few of them:-- TIMES. SMITE! POST. STOP! TRIBUNE. TRUE NIB. WORLD. DR. OWL. ADVERTISER. (RES VERI DAT. (IS TRUE. READ! ALLOPATHY. ALL O’ TH’ PAY. HOMEOPATHY. O, THE--! O! O, MY! PAH! The mention of several new York papers led to two or three questions. Thus: Whether the Editor of the Tribune was _H.G. really?_ If the complexion of his politics were not accounted for by his being an _eager_ person himself? Whether Wendell _Fillips_ were not a reduced copy of John _Knocks?_ Whether a New York _Feuilletoniste_ is not the same thing as a _Fellow down East?_ At this time a plausible-looking, bald-headed man joined us, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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evidently waiting to take a part in the conversation. “Good morning, Mr. Riggles,” said the Superintendent. “Anything fresh this morning? Any Conundrum?” “I haven’t looked at the cattle,” he answered, dryly. “Cattle? Why cattle?” “Why, to see if there’s any _corn under ’em!_” he said; and immediately asked, “Why is Douglas like the earth?” We tried, but couldn’t guess. “Because he was _flattened out at the polls!_” said Mr. Riggles. “A famous politician, formerly,” said the Superintendent. “His grandfather was a _seize-Hessian-ist_ in the Revolutionary War. By the way, I hear the _freeze-oil_ doctrines don’t go down at New Bedford.” The next Inmate looked as if be might have been a sailor formerly. “Ask him what his calling was,” said the Superintendent. “Followed the sea,” he replied to the question put by one of us. “Went as mate in a fishing-schooner.” “Why did you give it up?” “Because I didn’t like working for _two mast-ers_,” he replied. Presently we came upon a group of elderly persons, gathered about a venerable gentleman with flowing locks, who was propounding questions to a row of Inmates. “Can any Inmate give me a motto for M. Berger?” he said. Nobody responded for two or three minutes. At last one old man, whom I at once recognized as a Graduate of our University, (Anno 1800,) held up his hand. “Rem a _cue_ tetigit.” “Go to the head of the Class, Josselyn,” said the venerable Patriarch. The successful Inmate did as he was told, but in a very rough way, pushing against two or three of the Class. “How is this?” said the Patriarch. “You told me to go up _jostlin’,_” he replied. The old gentlemen who had been shoved about enjoyed the Pun too much to be angry. Presently the Patriarch asked again,-- “Why was M. Berger authorized to go to the dances given to the Prince?” The Class had to give up this, and he answered it himself:-- “Because every one of his carroms was a _tick-it_ to the _ball_.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“Who collects the money to defray the expenses of the last campaign in Italy?” asked the Patriarch. Here again the Class failed. “The war-cloud’s rolling _Dun_,” he answered. “And what is mulled wine made with?” Three or four voices exclaimed at once,---- “_Sizzle-y_ Madeira!” Here a servant entered, and said, “Luncheon-time.” The old gentlemen, who have excellent appetites, dispersed at once, one of them politely asking us if we would not stop and have a bit of bread and a little mite of cheese. “There is one thing I have forgotten to show you,” said the Superintendent,--”the cell for the confinement of violent and unmanageable Punsters.” We were very curious to see it, particularly with reference to the alleged absence of every object upon which a play of words could possibly be made. The Superintendent led us up some dark stairs to a corridor, then along a narrow passage, then down a broad flight of steps into another passage-way, and opened a large door which looked out on the main entrance. “We have not seen the cell for the confinement of ’violent and unmanageable’ Punsters,” we both exclaimed. “This is the _sell!_” he exclaimed, pointing to the outside prospect. My friend, the Director, looked me in the face so good-naturedly that I had to laugh. “We like to humor the Inmates,” he said. “It has a bad effect, we find, on their health and spirits to disappoint them of their little pleasantries. Some of the jests to which we have listened are not new to me, though I dare say you may not have heard them often before. The same thing happens in general society,--with this additional disadvantage, that there is no punishment provided for ’violent and unmanageable’ Punsters, as in our Institution.” We made our bow to the Superintendent and walked to the place where our carriage was waiting for us. On our way, an exceedingly decrepit old man moved slowly towards us, with a perfectly blank look on his face, but still appearing as if he wished to speak. “Look!” said the Director,--”that is our Centenarian.” The ancient man crawled towards us, cocked one eye, with which he seemed to sec a little, up at us, and said,-- “Sarvant, young Gentlemen. Why is a--a--a--like a--a--a--? Give it up? Because it’s a--a--a--a--.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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He smiled a pleasant smile, as if it were all plain enough. “One hundred and seven last Christmas,” said the Director. “He lost his answers about the age of ninety-eight. Of late years he puts his whole Conundrums in blank,--but they please him just as well.” We took our departure, much gratified and instructed by our visit, hoping to have some future opportunity of inspecting the Records of this excellent Charity and making extracts for the benefit of our Readers. * * * * * THE QUESTION OF THE HOUR. Dean Swift, in a letter to Lord Bolingbroke, says that he does not “remember to have ever heard or seen one great genius who had long success in the ministry; and recollecting a great many in my memory and acquaintance, those who had the smoothest time were, at best, men of middling degree in understanding.” However true this may be in the main,--and it undoubtedly is true that in ordinary times the speculative and innovating temper of an original mind is less safe than the patience of routine and persistence in precedent of a common-place one,--there are critical occasions to which intellect of the highest quality, character of the finest fibre, and a judgment that is inspired rather than confused by new and dangerous combinations of circumstances, are alone equal. Tactics and an acquaintance with the highest military authorities were adequate enough till they were confronted with General Bonaparte and the new order of things. If a great man struggling with the storms of fate be the sublimest spectacle, a mediocre man in the same position is surely the most pitiful. Deserted by his presence of mind, which, indeed, had never been anything but an absence of danger,--baffled by the inapplicability of his habitual principles of conduct, (if that may be called a principle, which, like the act of walking, is merely an unconscious application of the laws of gravity,) --helpless, irresolute, incapable of conceiving the flower Safety in the nettle Danger, much more of plucking it thence,--surely here, if anywhere, is an object of compassion. When such a one is a despot who has wrought his own destruction by obstinacy in a traditional evil policy, like Francis II. of Naples, our commiseration is outweighed by satisfaction that the ruin of the man is the safety of the state. But when the victim is a so-called statesman, who has malversated the highest trusts for selfish ends, who has abused constitutional forms to the destruction of the spirit that gave them life and validity, who could see nothing nobler in the tenure of high office than the means it seemed to offer of prolonging it, who knows no art to conjure the spirit of anarchy he has evoked but the shifts and evasions of a second- rate attorney, and who has contrived to involve his country in the confusion of principle and vacillation of judgment which HDT WHAT? INDEX

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have left him without a party and without a friend,--for such a man we have no feeling but contemptuous reprobation. Pan-urge in danger of shipwreck is but a faint type of Mr. Buchanan in face of the present crisis; and that poor fellow’s craven abjuration of his “_former_ friend,” Friar John, is magnanimity itself, compared with his almost-ex-Excellency’s treatment of the Free States in his last Message to Congress. There are times when mediocrity is a dangerous quality, and a man may drown himself as effectually in milk-and-water as in Malmsey. The question, whether we are a Government or an Indian Council, we do not propose to discuss here; whether there be a right of secession tempered by a right of coercion, like a despotism by assassination, and whether it be expedient to put the latter in practice, we shall not consider: for it is not always the part of wisdom to attempt a settlement of what the progress of events will soon settle for us. Mr. Buchanan seems to have no opinion, or, if he has one, it is a halting between two, a bat-like cross of sparrow and mouse that gives timidity its choice between flight and skulking. Nothing shocks our sense of the fitness of things more than a fine occasion to which the man is wanting. Fate gets her hook ready, but the eye is not there to clinch with it, and so all goes at loose ends. Mr. Buchanan had one more chance offered him of showing himself a common-place man, and he has done it full justice. Even if they could have done nothing for the country, a few manly sentences might have made a pleasing exception in his political history, and rescued for him the fag-end of a reputation. Mr. Buchanan, by his training in a system of politics without a parallel for intrigue, personality, and partisanship, would have unfitted himself for taking a statesmanlike view of anything, even if he had ever been capable of it. His nature has been subdued to what it worked in. We could not have expected from him a Message around which the spirit, the intelligence, and the character of the country would have rallied. But he might have saved himself from the evil fame of being the first of our Presidents who could never forget himself into a feeling of the dignity of the place he occupied. He has always seemed to consider the Presidency as a retaining-fee paid him by the slavery-propagandists, and his Message to the present Congress looks like the last juiceless squeeze of the orange which the South is tossing contemptuously away. Mr. Buchanan admits as real the assumed wrongs of the South Carolina revolutionists, and even, if we understand him, allows that they are great enough to justify revolution. But he advises the secessionists to pause and try what can be done by negotiation. He sees in the internal history of the country only a series of injuries inflicted by the Free upon the Slave States; yet he affirms, that, so far as Federal legislation is concerned, the rights of the South have never been assailed, except in the single instance of the Missouri Compromise, which gave to Slavery the unqualified possession of territory which HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the Free States might till then have disputed. Yet that bargain, a losing one as it was on the part of the Free States, having been annulled, can hardly be reckoned a present grievance. South Carolina had quite as long a list of intolerable oppressions to resent in 1832 as now, and not one of them, as a ground of complaint, could be compared with the refusal to pay the French- Spoliation claims of Massachusetts. The secession movement then, as now, had its origin in the ambition of disappointed politicians. If its present leaders are more numerous, none of them are so able as Mr. Calhoun; and if it has now any other object than it had then, it is to win by intimidation advantages that shall more than compensate for its loss in the elections. In 1832, General Jackson bluntly called the South Carolina doctrines treason, and the country sustained him. That they are not characterized in the same way now does not prove any difference in the thing, but only in the times and the men. They are none the less treason because James Buchanan is less than Andrew Jackson, but they are all the more dangerous. It has been the misfortune of the United States that the conduct of their public affairs has passed more and more exclusively into the hands of men who have looked on politics as a game to be played rather than as a trust to be administered, and whose capital, whether of personal consideration or of livelihood, has been staked on a turn of the cards. A general skepticism has thus been induced, exceedingly dangerous in times like these. The fatal doctrine of rotation in office has transferred the loyalty of the numberless servants of the Government, and of those dependent on or influenced by them, from the nation to a party. For thousands of families every change in the National Administration is as disastrous as revolution, and the Government has thus lost that influence which the idea of permanence and stability would exercise in a crisis like the present. At the present moment, the whole body of office-holders at the South is changed from a conservative to a disturbing element by a sense of the insecurity of their tenure. Their allegiance having always been to the party in power at Washington, and not to the Government of the Nation, they find it easy to transfer it to the dominant faction at home. The subservience on the question of Slavery, which has hitherto characterized both the great parties of the country, has strengthened the hands of the extremists at the South, and has enabled them to get the control of public opinion there by fostering false notions of Southern superiority and Northern want of principle. We have done so much to make them believe in their importance to us, and given them so little occasion even to suspect our importance to them, that we have taught them to regard themselves as the natural rulers of the country, and to look upon the Union as a favor granted to our weakness, whose withdrawal would be our ruin. Accordingly, they have grown more and more exacting, till at length the hack politicians of the Free States have become so imbued with the notion of yielding, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and so incapable of believing in any principle of action higher than temporary expedients to carry an election, or any object nobler than the mere possession of office for its own sake, that Mr. Buchanan gravely proposes that the Republican party should pacify South Carolina by surrendering the very creed that called it into existence and holds it together, the only fruit of its victory that made victory worth having. Worse than this, when the Free States by overwhelming majorities have just expressed their conviction, that slavery, as he creature of local law, can claim no legitimate extension beyond the limits of that law, he asks their consent to denationalize freedom and to nationalize slavery by an amendment of the Federal Constitution, that shall make the local law of the Slave States paramount throughout the Union. Mr. Buchanan would stay the yellow fever by abolishing the quarantine hospital and planting a good virulent case or two in every village in the land. We do not underestimate the gravity of the present crisis, and we agree that nothing should be done to exasperate it; but if the people of the Free States have been taught anything by the repeated lessons of bitter experience, it has been that submission is not the seed of conciliation, but of contempt and encroachment. The wolf never goes for mutton to the mastiff. It is quite time that it should be understood that freedom is also an institution deserving some attention in a Model Republic, that a decline in stocks is more tolerable and more transient than one in public spirit, and that material prosperity was never known to abide long in a country that had lost its political morality. The fault of the Free States in the eyes of the South is not one that can be atoned for by any yielding of special points here and there. Their offence is that they are free, and that their habits and prepossessions are those of Freedom. Their crime is the census of 1860. Their increase in numbers, wealth, and power is a standing aggression. It would not be enough to please the Southern States that we should stop asking them to abolish slavery,--what they demand of us is nothing less than that we should abolish the spirit of the age. Our very thoughts are a menace. It is not the North, but the South, that forever agitates the question of Slavery. The seeming prosperity of the cotton-growing States is based on a great mistake and a great wrong; and it is no wonder that they are irritable and scent accusation in the very air. It is the stars in their courses that fight against their system, and there are those who propose to make everything comfortable by Act of Congress. It is almost incredible to what a pitch of absurdity the Slave- holding party have been brought by the weak habit of concession which has been the vice of the Free States. Senator Green of Missouri, whose own State is rapidly gravitating toward free institutions, gravely proposes an armed police along the whole Slave frontier for the arrest of fugitives. Already the main employment of our navy is in striving to keep Africans out, and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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now the whole army is to mount guard to keep them in. This is but a trifle to the demands that will be made upon us, if we yield now under the threats of a mob,--for men acting under passion or terror, or both, are a mob, no matter what their numbers and intelligence. A dissolution of the Union would be a terrible thing, but not so terrible as an acquiescence in the theory that Property is the only interest that binds men together in society, and that its protection is the highest object of human government. Nothing could well be more solemn than the thought of a disruption of our great and prosperous Republic. Even if peaceful, the derangement consequent upon it would cause incalculable suffering and disaster. Already the mere threat of it, assisted by the efforts of interested persons, has caused a commercial panic. But would it be wisdom in the Free States to put themselves at the mercy of such a panic whenever the whim took South Carolina to be discontented? That would be the inevitable result of a craven spirit now. Let the Republican party be mild and forbearing,--for the opportunity to be so is the best reward of victory, and taunts and recriminations belong to boys; but, above all, let them be manly. The moral taint of once submitting to be bullied is a scrofula that will never out of the character. We do not believe that the danger is so great as it appears. Rumor is like one of those multiplying-mirrors that make a mob of shadows out of one real object. The interests of three-fifths of the Slave-holding States are diametrically opposed to secession; so are those of five-sixths of the people of the seceding States, if they did but know it. The difficulties in the way of organizing a new form of government are great, almost insuperable; the expenses enormous. As the public burdens grow heavier, the lesson of resistance and rebellion will find its aptest scholars in the non-slave-owning majority who will be paying taxes for the support of the very institution that has made and keeps them poor. Men are not long in arriving at just notions of the value of what they pay for, especially when it is for other people. Taxes are a price that people are slowest to pay for a cat in a bag. If matters are allowed to take their own course for a little longer, the inevitable reaction is sure to set in. The Hartford Convention gave more uneasiness to the Government and the country than the present movement in the South, but the result of it was the ruin of the Federal Party, and not of the Federal Union. Even if the secessionists could accomplish their schemes, who would be the losers? Not the Free States, certainly, with their variety of resources and industry. The laws of trade cannot be changed, and the same causes which have built up their agriculture, commerce, and manufactures will not cease to be operative. The real wealth and strength of states, other things being equal, depends upon homogeneousness of population and variety of occupation, with a common interest and common habits HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of thought. The cotton-growing States, with their single staple, are at the mercy of chance. India, Australia, nay, Africa herself, may cut the thread of their prosperity. Their population consists of two hostile races, and their bone and muscle, instead of being the partners, are the unwilling tools of their capital and intellect. The logical consequence of this political theory is despotism, which the necessity of coercing the subject race will make a military one. Already South Carolina is discussing a standing army. If history is not a lying gossip, the result of the system of labor will be Jamaica, and that of the system of polity, Mexico. Instead of a stable government, they will have a whirligig of _pronunciamientos_, or stability will be purchased at a cost that will make it intolerable. They have succeeded in establishing among themselves a fatal unanimity on the question of Slavery,--fatal because it makes the office of spy and informer honorable, makes the caprice of a mob the arbiter of thought, speech, and action, and debases public opinion to a muddy mixture of fear and prejudice. In peace, the majority of their population will be always looked on as conspirators; in war, they would become rebels. It is time that the South should learn, if they do not begin to suspect it already, that the difficulty of the Slavery question is slavery itself,--nothing more, nothing less. It is time that the North should learn that it has nothing left to compromise but the rest of its self-respect. Nothing will satisfy the extremists at the South short of a reduction of the Free States to a mere police for the protection of an institution whose danger increases at an equal pace with its wealth. It was the deliberate intention of Mr. Calhoun that the compact should be broken the moment the absolute control of Government passed out of the hands of the slaveholding clique. He was willing to wait till we had stolen Texas and paid a hundred millions for Cuba; but if the game seemed to be up, then secede at once. In a hasty moment, he started his revolution, when there was a stronger man than he to confront him. South Carolina was to all appearance as united then as now. But a few months brought a reaction, and no one was more relieved than Mr. Calhoun that matters stopped where they did. Whether the stirrers of the present excitement, which finds vacillation in the Executive and connivance In the Cabinet, will be wise enough to let it go out in the same way, remains to be seen; but the greatest danger of disunion, would spring from a want of self-possession and spirit in the Free States.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES. _Collection of Rare and Original Documents and Relations concerning the Discovery and Conquest of America, chiefly from the Spanish Archives_. Published in the Original, with HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Translations, Illustrative Notes, Maps, and Biographical Sketches. By K.G. SQUIER, M.A., F.S.A., etc., etc. New York: Charles B. Norton. 1860. No. I. Carta dirigida al Key de Espana, por el Licenciado Dr. Don DIEGO GARCIA DE PALACIO, Oydor de la Real Audiencia de Guatemala, Ano 1576. Being a Description of the Ancient Provinces of Guazacapan, Izalco, Cuscatlan, and Chiquimula, in the Audiencia of Guatemala: with an Account of the Languages, Customs, and Religion of their Aboriginal Inhabitants, and a Description of the Ruins of Copan. Square 8vo. pp. 132. This tract is the first number of a series of Rare and Original Documents, relating to the first settlement of America by the Spaniards, which Mr. Squier proposes to edit and publish. The undertaking is one of interest to all students of American history, and deserves a generous encouragement from them. Its success must depend not on the usual machinery of bookselling so much as on the ready support of individuals. Mr. Squier’s proposed collection resembles in its scope the well-known “Recueil des Documents et Memoires Originaux” of M. Ternaux-Compans. Familiar, by long residence and longer study, as few men are or ever have been, with those portions of our continent of which the Spaniards first took possession, acquainted with their antiquities and former condition, and a curious investigator of their present state and prospects, Mr. Squier is peculiarly fitted to select and edit--with judgment such documents of historical interest as his unrivalled opportunities have enabled him to collect. The Letter of Palacio is now for the first time published in the original, although it was largely used by Herrera in his “Historia General.” “To me,” says Mr. Squier, “the relation has a special interest. I have been over a great part of the ground that was traversed by its author, and I am deeply impressed with the accuracy of his descriptions.... His memoir will always stand as one of the best illustrations of an interesting country, as it was at the period immediately succeeding the Conquest.” It appears, that, under an order from the Crown, Palacio was deputed to visit a number of the Provinces of Guatemala, and to report upon them, especially in respect to the condition of their native inhabitants. The memoir now published relates chiefly to the territory comprised in the present Republic of San Salvador. It shows Palacio to have been an intelligent observer, and a kindly, well-disposed man,--not free from the superstitions of his time and race, but less credulous than many of his contemporaries. His report is full of matter of value to the historical inquirer, and of entertainment for the general reader. His stories of the manners of the people, and his accounts of the animals of the district are brief, but characteristic. But the most interesting part of his narrative is that which relates to the wonderful ruins of Copan. It is a remarkable fact, stated by Mr. Squier in his Prefatory Note, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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that these ruins do not appear to have been noticed by any of the chroniclers of the country down to the time of Fuentes, who wrote in 1689, more than one hundred years after Palacio. It was not, indeed, until 1841, when Stephens published his account of them, that an accurate description was given to the world of these most interesting and most puzzling remains of a forgotten people and an unknown antiquity. Even in Palacio’s time, only vague traditions existed regarding them. His account has a permanent value from being the earliest known, and as proving that within fifty years after the Spanish Conquest they presented very nearly the same appearance as at present. Mr. Squier has enriched Talacio’s Letter with numerous and important notes. He claims a lenient judgment of his translation, which is printed side by side with the original, on account of the obscurities of the manuscript, and the uncertainty as to the meaning of some of the writer’s expressions. But, allowing for these difficulties, we regret that Mr. Squier did not bestow a little more pains on this part of his work. He has fallen into some slight errors, which might easily have been corrected, and he has, as we think, lost something of the spirit of the original by too free a version. The book is one which in typographic beauty would meet the demands of the most exacting bibliographer. We regret the more that the pages are disfigured with misprints, many of which are left uncorrected in the long list of _Errata_, while others occur in the very list itself. 1. _Le Panlatinisme, Confédération Gallo-Latine et Celto- Gauloise, Contre-Testament de Pierre le Grand et Contre- Panslavisme_. Paris: Passard, Libraire-Éditeur. 1860. 8vo. pp. 260. 2. _Testament de Pierre le Grand, ou Plan de Domination Européenne laissé par lui à ses Descendants et Successeurs au Trône de la Russie_. Édition suivie de Notes et de Pièces Justificatives. Paris: Passard. 1860. 8vo. We seem to be living in an age of pamphleteers. More than ever, both in France and Germany, are pamphlets the order of the day. In Paris alone, the year 1860 has given birth to hundreds of these writings of circumstance,--political squibs, visionary remodellings of European states,--vying with each other for ephemeral celebrity. They fill the windows of the book-shops, and are spread by scores along the stands in the numerous galleries which the Parisian population throngs of evenings. Those issued in the early part of the year have gradually descended from the rank of new publications, and may be found on every quay, spread out, for a few _centimes_, side by side with old weather-beaten books, odd volumes, refuse of libraries, which book-lovers daily finger through in the hope of finding some pearl, some rarity, in the worthless mass. Thus we have seen the interminable Rhine question discussed in its every possible phase,--still more that of Italy. Between HDT WHAT? INDEX

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come the Druses, the Orient, the Turks. Then Italy again, Garibaldi, Naples, the Pope. To state in general terms the tendency of these rockets of literature, or to arrive at the spirit which seems to pervade them, is not quite so easy as it would seem. They are written by authors of all party-colors, within certain impassable limits prescribed by the parental restrictions of Government. Still it seems to be the old story of soothing; and many a conclusion-- as where England is smoothed down by a few flatteries and told that her most natural ally is France, or where Germany is heartily assured that she has nothing to fear, that all the changes proposed are for the good of the Teutonic race--reminds us very strongly of that widely known verse in child- literature,-- “Will you walk into my parlor,” etc. We have before us, however, a work which, from its size and from the labor bestowed upon it, deserves to be ranked above the various productions that have scarcely called forth more than a passing notice in the daily press. The pamphlet named at the head of this article, and which is but a complement to the volume, is one of the numerous reconstructions and rearrangements of European limits made in the quiet of the study. Were it this alone, it would deserve but little attention. It is more. The author bases his theories upon other than political reasons, having labored hard to establish many debatable points of Ethnography in the interesting notes appended to the work, and which form by far the most remarkable part of it. So we have the question of Races discussed at full length. There is certainly some philological legerdemain, as may be seen from some of the convenient conclusions of the author concerning the Celts and the Gauls. He is full of such paragraphs as this in his argumentation:-- “It has seemed to us proved, that the names, Volces, Volsks, Bolgs, Belgs, Belgians, Welsh, Welchs, Waels, Wuelchs or Walchs, Walls, Walloons, Valais, Valois, Vlaks, Wallachians, Galatians, Galtachs, Galls, Gaels or Caels, Gaelic, Galot, Gallegos, Gaul, and even Ola, Olatz, and Vallus, were but one and the same word under different forms.” The point to be established at all hazards is, that the French, Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Belgians, and even the English and Greeks, form but one great family, of one hundred and fifteen million individuals,--the Gallo-Roman. This Neo-Latin world the author would wish combined in one grand confederation, like the States of America. Hence his use of the term _Panlatinism_, in opposition to the so much debated one of _Panslavism_. The merit of the work under consideration is, that, though decidedly French in all its views, it condenses in a few paragraphs the present mooted question of race. The idea of Panslavism, or the uniting of eighty millions of Sclavonians under one banner, was, in its origin, republican and federal, whatever it may have HDT WHAT? INDEX

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become since. Few words have acquired more diametrically opposite meanings, according as they were uttered by radical or conservative. Hence the confusion, hence the many strange phrases to be met with in the periodical press. The author of the present work has sought to throw some light on this important point. Leaving aside his prophetic fears of future shocks with American or Asiatic powers as visionary, we can say for the work that it presents in a clear light the question of races as referring to European politics. The notes are good, and no research seems to have been spared by the writer to establish the position he maintains. 1. _Ancient Danish Ballads._ Translated from the Originals, by R.C. ALEXANDER PRIOR, M.D. London: Williams & Norgate. Leipzig: R. Hartmann. 1860, 3 vols. pp. lx., 400, 468, 500. 2. _Edinburgh Papers._ By ROBERT CHAMBERS, F.R.S.E., etc., etc. _The Romantic Scottish Ballads, their Epoch and Authorship._ W. & R. Chambers: London and Edinburgh. 1859. pp. 40. 3. _The Romantic Scottish Ballads, and the Lady Wardlaw Heresy._ By NORVAL CLYNE. Aberdeen: A. Brown & Co. 1859. pp. 49. The expectations raised by the title of Dr. Prior’s volumes are in a great measure disappointed by their contents. The book is of value only because it gives for the first time, in English, the substance of a large number of Danish ballads, and points out the relations between them and similar productions in other languages. Of the spirit and life of these remarkable poems a person hitherto unfamiliar with them would find but scanty indication in Dr. Prior’s versions. He has merely done them into English in a somewhat mechanical way, and one scarcely gets a better notion of the more imaginative ones in his bald reproductions than of the “Iliad” from the analysis of that poem in the “Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum.” It seems to require almost as peculiar powers to translate an old ballad as to write a new one. Dr. Prior complains of Jamieson, that his versions from the Danish are done in a broad Scotch dialect, almost as unintelligible to ordinary readers as the language of which they profess to give the meaning. But if any one compare Jamieson’s rendering of “The Buried Mother” with Dr. Prior’s, (Prior, vol. i. p. 368,) he will, we think, see cause to regret that Jamieson did not do what Dr. Prior has attempted, and that he has not left us a greater number of translations equally good. Jamieson’s fault was not so much his broad Scotch as his over- fondness for archaisms, sometimes of mere spelling, which give rise to a needless obscurity. We think that he was theoretically right; but he should not have pushed his theory to the extent of puzzling the reader, where his aim was to give only that air of strangeness which allures the fancy. As respects ballads dealing with the supernatural, Jamieson’s notion of the duty of a translator was certainly the true one. There is something almost ludicrous in a ghost talking the ordinary conversational HDT WHAT? INDEX

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language of every-day life, which might, to be sure, serve very well for some of Jung Stilling’s spirits in bottle-green hunting-coats with brass buttons, but hardly for the majesty of buried Denmark. Dr. Prior may claim that his renderings are more literal; but it is the vice of literal translation, that the phrases of one language, if exactly reproduced in another, while they may have the same sense, convey a wholly different impression to the imagination. It is to such cases that the Italian proverb, _Tradutiore traditore_, applies. Dryden, citing approvingly Denham’s verses to Fanshawe, “They but preserve his ashes, thou his flame, True to his sense, but truer to his fame,” says, with his usual pithiness, “Too faithfully is indeed pedantically.” In Dr. Prior’s version of the “The Buried Mother” we find a case precisely in point. The Stepmother says to the poor Orphans,-- “In blind-house shall ye lie all night.” Jamieson gives it,-- “Says, ’Ye sall ligg i’ the mirk all night.’" Now, the object in all translations of ballad-poetry being to reproduce simple and downright phrases with equal simplicity and force, to give us the same effects and not the same words, we vastly prefer Jamieson’s verse to Dr. Prior’s, in spite of the affectation of _ligg_ for _lie_. If _blind-house_ be the equivalent for _dark_ in the original, Dr. Prior should have told us so in a note, giving us the stronger (because simpler) English word in the text. He might as well write _hand-shoe_ for _glove_, in a translation from the German. Elsewhere Jamieson errs in preferring _groff_ to _great_, and the more that _groff_ means more properly _coarse_ than _large_. The following couplet is also from Dr. Prior’s translation of this ballad:-- “They cried one evening till the sound Their mother heard beneath the ground.” Jamieson has it,-- “’Twas lang i’ the night, and the bairnies grat [cried], Their mither she under the mools [mould] heard that.” Again, Dr. Prior gives us,-- “Her eldest daughter then she sped To fetch Child Dyring out of bed”; instead of Jamieson’s-- “Till her eldest dochter syne [then] said she, ’Ye bid Child Dyring come here to me.’" And, still worse,-- “Out from their chest she stretch’d her bones And rent her HDT WHAT? INDEX

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way through earth and stones”; where Jamieson is not only more literal, but more forcible,-- “Wi’ her banes sae stark a bowt she gae Hath riven both wall and marble gray.” The original is better than either,-- “She upward heaved her mighty bones And rived both wall and gray marble-stones.” Jamieson had the true instinct of a translator, though his own verses defy the stanchest reader; and, reasoning by analogy, Dr. Prior’s translations are so bad that he ought to be capable of very good original poetry. However, with all its defects, Dr. Prior’s book is of value for the information it gives. Under the dead ribs of his translations the reader familiar with old ballads can create a life for himself, and can form some conception of the spirit and strength of the originals. Mr. Chambers’s pamphlet is one that we should hardly have expected from the editor of the best collection of ballads in the language before that of Professor Child. Directly in the teeth of all probability, he attributes the bulk of the _romantic_ Scottish ballads to Lady Wardlaw, who wrote “Hardyknute.” This is one of those theories (like that of Lord Bacon being the author of Shakspeare’s plays) which cannot be argued, but which every one familiar with the subject challenges peremptorily. Without going very deeply into the matter, Mr. Norval Clyne has put in a clever plea in arrest of judgment. The truth is, that, in the present state of our knowledge, “Hardyknute” could not pass muster as an antique better than “Vortigern,” or the poems of “Master Rowley”; and the notion that Lady Wardlaw could have written “Sir Patrick Spens” will not hold water better than a sieve, when we consider how hopelessly inferior are the imitations of old ballads written by Scott, with fifty times her familiarity with the originals, and a man of genius besides. * * * * * _Miss Gilbert’s Career_. An American Story. By J.G. HOLLAND. New York: Charles Scribner. There is scarcely a more hazardous experiment for any novelist than “a novel with a purpose.” If the moral does not run away with the story, it is in most cases only because the author’s lucky star has made the moral too feeble, in spite of his efforts, to do that or anything else,--in other words, because his book has fortunately defeated its own object. That any clever girl will be kept from the perilous paths of authorship by the warnings, however strongly inculcated, of any novel whatever, we are not prepared to assert: we venture to say no one will be deterred by the history of Miss Fanny Gilbert. If a woman’s happiness is to be found in love, and not in fame, the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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question nevertheless recurs,--What is she to do before the love comes? Our author only shows that his heroine’s restless unhappiness was owing to her having to wait for her heart to be awakened: to prove what he desires to prove, he should demonstrate that it was owing to her having adopted authorship during the time of her waiting. During that time, Miss Fanny Gilbert wrote novels, and was unhappy: would she have been happy, if, in the interval, she had chronicled small beer? And even admitting that her authorship caused her unhappiness, we can scarcely believe Dr. Holland prepared to say, after having allowed his heroine a real talent, as one condition of the problem, that she ought to have concealed that talent in the decorous napkin of silence. What the moral loses the story gains. Our author has lost nothing of that genuine love of Nature, of that quick perception of the comic element in men and things, of that delightful freshness and liveliness, which threw such a charm about the former writings of Timothy Titcomb. No story can be pronounced a failure which has vivacity and interest; and the volume before us adds to vivacity and interest vigorous sketches of character and scenery, droll conversation and incidents, a frequent and kindly humor, and, underlying all, a true, earnest purpose, which claims not only approval for the author, but respect for the man. Dr. Holland describes admirably whatever he has himself seen. Unfortunately, he has not seen his hero or his heroine. About Arthur Blague there is nothing real or distinctive. There is a life and reality in many scenes of his experience; but the central figure of the group stands conventional and inanimate,- -the ordinary walking gentleman of the stage,--the stereo-typed hero of the novel,--hero only by virtue of his finally marrying the heroine. The one merit of the delineation--that it is a portrait of a delicate Christian gentleman--is sadly marred by the vulgar smartness of Arthur’s repartees with the scampish New-Yorker. A victory in such a contest was by no means necessary to vindicate the hero’s superiority; and if he so far forgot himself as to engage at all in the degrading warfare, a defeat would have been more creditable. His retorts are undeniably smart; but “smartness” is the attribute of a “fellow,” not of a “gentleman.” Miss Fanny Gilbert is a warm-hearted, high-spirited girl, clever and ambitious, and disposed at first to look contemptuously on poor Arthur, whose humble labors appear in most dingy and sordid colors, when contrasted with the fair Fanny’s gorgeous dreams. She is not a very fascinating nor a very real heroine; but she is better than most of our heroines, and some of her experiences are very pleasantly told. Arthur’s miserly employer is very good, and his shrewd friend Cheek is capitally drawn. It was a peculiarly happy thought to make Cheek into a railroad-conductor, and finally into a HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“gentlemanly and efficient” superintendent. Nothing else would have suited his character half so well. The business-like religionists, Moustache and Breastpin, are not so good as the author meant to have them. The young bookseller is very well done, and Dr. Gilbert very natural and lifelike. The story of the Doctor’s awakened interest in his daughter’s success, and of his journey to New York, is very well told. We like especially the lesson which the triumphant authoress, in the full glory of her fame, receives, on finding that her father sets a higher value on his son’s least achievement than on his daughter’s highest success,--that, however a woman may deserve a man’s place, the world will never award it to her. It would have been more effective, however, if Dr. Holland had not been quite so anxious that no one should fail to perceive the moral,--if he had had a little more confidence in his readers. But we can give unqualified praise to the scene between Miss Gilbert and the little crippled boy, which is one of the most beautiful and touching pictures ever yet presented. It is a real satisfaction to find a book which one may venture to criticize fearlessly, knowing that it will bear the test,-- especially at present, when one needs be as chary of trying any book fairly as Don Quixote was of proving his unlucky helmet. And an additional satisfaction is caused by the fact, that the book, not only in origin, but in essence, is American from cover to cover.

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July 9, Tuesday: It was a hot day at Craigie House in Cambridge and the Longfellows had been postponing their departure to their summer cottage at Nahant on the North Shore.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s second wife Fanny had opened the windows to catch the breeze and was sitting in a summer dress, using a candle and hot sealing wax to seal locks of her daughters’ hair into remembrance packets. Her dress caught fire. The husband burned his face and hands while rolling her in a carpet to put out the flames. Although Fanny Appleton Longfellow’s face was untouched, she sustained very serious burns to the skin of her body. TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The poet would attempt to hide his burns beneath a long beard:

July 10, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau and Horace Mann, Jr., age 17, returned home from the Minnesota trip in time for Edward Waldo Emerson’s birthday party. Their fare on the Fitchburg RR from Boston to Concord for the last leg of their long trip was $1.10. The trip cost Thoreau the entire $150.00 he had taken with him but he was not in any better condition than before:

“I have been sick so long that I have almost forgotten what it is to be well.”

There are indications that Mann had gone on this adventure among other reasons also for his health, and a few years later he also would die — of tuberculosis.

Since Waldo Emerson was giving a commencement address “Celebration of Intellect” in Ballou Hall at Tufts College in Medford, at a distance of 14 map miles on the Concord Turnpike, it seems possible that he was able to return by a 2-to-3-hour carriage ride and be present for his son’s birthday party in Concord:

When you say the times, the persons are prosaic; where is the feudal, or the Saracenic, or the Egyptian architecture? where the romantic manners? where the Romish or the Calvinistic religion, which made a kind of poetry in the air for Milton, or Byron, or Belzoni? but to us it is barren as a dry goods shop; — you expose your atheism. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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However, Thoreau filled in for Waldo by offering Eddie a memorable piece of fatherly reassurance:

On my birthday, in the early summer, just before I went to take my examination for Harvard, my father and mother invited Thoreau and Channing, both, but especially Thoreau, friends from my babyhood, to dine with us. When we left the table and were passing into the parlour, Thoreau asked me to come with him to our East door — our more homelike door, facing the orchard. It was an act of affectionate courtesy, for he had divined my suppressed state of mind and remembered that first crisis in his own life, and the wrench that it seemed in advance, as a gate leading out into an untried world. With serious face, but with a very quiet, friendly tone of voice, he reassured me, told me that I should be really close to home; very likely should pass my life in Concord. It was a great relief.

The likely story, and the official story, is that Fanny Appleton Longfellow, as the result of the skin burns she had sustained on her body the previous day (her face was unmarked), went into a coma and died. In any event, for the rest of his life Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would need to wear a full beard in order to conceal the facial scars he sustained as he rolled her in the carpet. And he would write his wife a memorial poem titled

“Cross of Snow,” remembering that her white soul had been as pure as snow and equating being hurt with being martyred: “soul more white never through martyrdom of fire was led to its repose.” I must confess, however, that there seems to me to be a more likely story. Of course no-one will ever know for sure, but I feel it to be plausible that Fanny was taking an elixir because of the heat, that summer day in sweltering Cambridge, and that when her dress caught fire she was in no condition to do anything but sit and stare at the pretty flames, and that after she realized how seriously burned she was she went right back to the bottle of elixir and took HDT WHAT? INDEX

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what turned out to be an overdose. We must bear in mind that in those days there was a discreet and friendly dope pusher in every neighborhood, and his name was “chemist” and his place of business was “apothecary shop” and his main stock in trade was opium — and this tradesman kept no records and told none of the neighbors what decent people needed to do in order to get the most out of their day. Like so many things –like everything sexual– it wasn’t a problem and yet just wasn’t talked about.

The grieving husband/poet would write her, evidently on the anniversary date July 10, 1879, a memorial poem titled “Cross of Snow,” remembering not that before his second wife had gotten herself burned all black, she had been a white lady, but rather that her white soul had been as pure as snow: “soul more white never through martyrdom of fire was led to its repose.” Note that in such a frame of reference just about any sort of extreme pain (incurable cancer for instance) can get you termed not a mere sufferer but a martyr, and you don’t even need to display extreme fortitude — if your husband be a poet.57

THE CROSS OF SNOW In the long, sleepless watches of the night, A gentle face –the face of one long dead– Looks at me from the wall, where round its head The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light. Here in this room she died; and soul more white Never through martyrdom of fire was led To its repose; nor can in books be read The legend of a life more benedight. There is a mountain in the distant West That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines Displays a cross of snow upon its side. Such is the cross I wear upon my breast These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

BIRDS OF PASSAGE FLIGHT THE FOURTH CHARLES SUMNER

Garlands upon his grave, And flowers upon his hearse, And to the tender heart and brave The tribute of this verse. His was the troubled life, The conflict and the pain, The grief, the bitterness of strife, The honor without stain. Like Winkelried, he took Into his manly breast The sheaf of hostile spears, and broke A path for the oppressed. Then from the fatal field 57.But, as we understand, if not, unfortunately, not. Incidentally, if you go on a guided tour of the mansion, which is a National Historical Landmark, please don’t ask the guide about the fire. She won’t say anything about it in front of the tourists and you shouldn’t either. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Upon a nation’s heart Borne like a warrior on his shield!— So should the brave depart. Death takes us by surprise, And stays our hurrying feet; The great design unfinished lies, Our lives are incomplete. But in the dark unknown Perfect their circles seem, Even as a bridge’s arch of stone Is rounded in the stream. Alike are life and death, When life in death survives, And the uninterrupted breath Inspires a thousand lives. Were a star quenched on high, For ages would its light, Still travelling downward from the sky, Shine on our mortal sight. So when a great man dies, For years beyond our ken, The light he leaves behind him lies Upon the paths of men. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1862

June 29, Tuesday: There was fighting at Savage’s Station. Waldo Emerson repeated his funeral oration on Henry David Thoreau for the benefit of the Reverend Theodore Parker’s “Fraternity” in Boston.

After Thoreau’s death, Louisa May Alcott wrote a poem “Thoreau’s Flute” for The Atlantic Monthly. According to Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson she wrote the poem while she was nursing in the military hospital in Washington DC where she had received the news of Henry Thoreau’s death:

We sighing said, “Our Pan is dead— His pipe hangs mute beside the river, Around it friendly moonbeams quiver, But music’s airy voice is fled. Spring comes to us in guise forlorn, The blue-bird chants a requiem, The willow-blossom waits for him, The genius of the wood is gone” Then from the flute, untouched by hands, There came a low, harmonious breath: For such as he there is no death. His life the eternal life commands. Above men’s aims his nature rose. The wisdom of a just content Make one small spot a continent, And turned to poetry life’s prose Haunting the hills, the stream, the wild, Swallow and aster, lake and pine To him seemed human or divine, Fit mates for this large-hearted child. Such homage nature ne’er forgets; And yearly on the coverlid ’Neath which her darling lieth hid Will write his name in violets. To him no vain regrets belong Whose soul, that finer instrument, Gave to the world no poor lament, But wood-notes ever sweet and strong. Oh lonely friend, He still will be A potent presence, though unseen, Steadfast, sagacious and serene. Seek not for him: he is with Thee.

At that time the magazine was withholding the names of contributors, and Louisa was informed by her father Bronson Alcott that one day while he was visiting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the poet had picked up the The Atlantic Monthly and had read aloud a few lines from her poem, and had asked her father whether he had read “Emerson’s fine poem on Thoreau’s Flute?” THE ALCOTT FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Whittier-Holmes-Emerson-Motley-Alcott-Hawthorne-Lowell-Agassiz-Longfellow HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In “Chiefly about War Matters,” edited and expurgated by Ticknor & Fields, Nathaniel Hawthorne revealed that he had been utterly at odds with Emerson’s and Thoreau’s attitude toward John Brown while Brown was awaiting execution in 1859.

I shall not pretend to be an admirer of old John Brown, any farther than sympathy with Whittier’s excellent ballad about him may go; nor did I expect ever to shrink so unutterably from any apophthegm of a sage, whose happy lips have uttered a hundred gold sentences, as from that saying (perhaps falsely attributed to so honored a source), that the death of this blood-stained HANGING fanatic has “made the Gallows as venerable as the Cross!” Nobody was ever more justly hanged. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Plan of Fort Ridgely as it was in 1862 during the race war HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1863

January 1, Thursday: The Reverend William Rounseville Alger delivered the annual election sermon before the Massachusetts Legislature.

Major General John B. Magruder, who had become the Confederate commander of military forces in Texas on November 29, 1862, gave the recapture of Galveston top priority. At 3AM four Confederate gunboats appeared, coming down the bay toward Galveston. Soon afterward, the Rebels commenced a land attack. The Union forces in Galveston were three companies of the 42d Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment under the command of Colonel Isaac S. Burrell. The Confederates captured or killed all of them except for the regiment’s adjutant. They also took the Harriet Lane, by boarding her, and two barks and a schooner. Commander W.B. Renshaw’s flagship, the USS Westfield, ran aground when trying to help the Harriet Lane and, at 10AM, she was blown up to prevent her capture. Galveston was in Confederate hands again although the Union blockade would limit commerce in and out of the harbor. Soon afterward, the Rebels would be commencing a land attack upon the port city.

Congress had enacted in 1861 that all slaves employed against the Union were to be considered free, and in 1862 that all slaves of men who supported the Confederacy were to be considered free. At this point President Abraham Lincoln, who had been dragging his feet, more or less got on board this onrushing train. Having made a preliminary proclamation on September 22, 1862 that emancipation from slavery would become effective, at the turn of the year, in those states which had not renounced their rebelliousness, at this point he made good on his threat by issuing a proclamation of emancipation that had been drafted by a bunch of Washington lawyers. READ THE FULL TEXT

A devout man, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Portland Chase read the BIBLE daily and sought comfort in God for the loss of so many of his wives and so many of his children. When Chase had called to the President’s attention that there was no mention of the Deity in the draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln had allowed as a new last line “And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of all mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.” SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

At the clock tick which began this year he, as a martial law measure, offered to “emancipate” all those slaves he did not have the power physically to touch, without offering anything at all to any slave whom he did have the power physically to touch. It was a neat trick, especially since we have no reason to suspect that he would have been willing to touch any black person whom he did have the power physically to touch. Although to all appearances he grandly was declaring to be free all slaves residing in territories in rebellion against the federal government, his “Emancipation Proclamation,” so called, would turn out to be actually only a temporary martial-law proclamation, which in accordance with the deliberate intention of its careful drafters would free precious few. (I don’t know that a head count has ever been conducted, and here suggest that such a count would prove to be alarming if not nauseating.) The proclamation explicitly stated that it did not apply at all to any of the slaves in border states fighting on the Union side; nor would it be of any applicability to slaves in southern areas already under Union control; nor would it be of any use to any other slaves, since, naturally, the states in rebellion would take no action on Lincoln’s order.58 To avail themselves of this opportunity, slaves would have to vote with their feet. At great risk they would need to make their way across the battle lines into HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the Northern-controlled territories, where they would need to volunteer for war labor and get their names registered in the emancipation program. Pacifists and noneffectives need not apply.

Abraham Lincoln had been quite reluctant to see affairs come even to such a straited pass as this. A believer in white supremacy, he never viewed the war in any other manner than in terms of preserving the Union and his own control as President over the entirety of it. The simple fact was that, as pressure for abolition mounted in Congress and the country, as a practical politician similar to President Richard Milhouse Nixon (who would espouse and finance the Head Start program because of its political popularity although he believed the money was being wasted on children who, because they were black, would be incapable of profiting from the attention and the expenditure), Lincoln was willing to cave in and make himself more responsive. Thus it had come about that:

58. The hypocrisy of this was being well commented on in French newspapers at that time. For a review of this French commentary on the American white hypocrisy, refer to Blackburn, George M. FRENCH NEWSPAPER OPINION ON THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. Contributions in American History No. 171. Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1997. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW y A PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS on the 22nd day of September, A.D. 1862, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

That on the 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. That the executive will on the 1st day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State or the people thereof shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such States shall have participated shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States.

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-In-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for supressing [sic??] said rebellion, do, on this 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the first day above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof, respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States the following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Palquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebone, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Morthhampton [sic??], Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued. And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all case when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The federal government’s temporary instrument of war allowed that, while human slavery would continue to be tolerated everywhere within its sphere of influence, it would no longer tolerate this practice in any area not within said sphere of influence.

Nevertheless, before a black audience in Tremont Temple in Boston, this governmental declaration was read aloud and Frederick Douglass led in the singing of the hymn “Blow ye the trumpet, blow!” William Cooper Nell, President of the sponsoring Union Progressive Association, addressed the group. For this occasion Waldo Emerson composed “Boston Hymn,” a poem in which he neatly cut the Gordian Knot of compensation:

Pay ransom to the owner And fill the bag to the brim. Who is the owner? The slave is the owner, And ever was. Pay him.

We may imagine that on this occasion hands were shaken all around, with no distinction of color. Imagine then, if you will, the author of this Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln, during one of his many electoral campaigns, reaching down from the stump and grasping the hand of a black man. Do you fancy that this ever happened?

The word “emancipation,” after all, comes to us from the Latin manus, meaning “hand,” and capio, meaning “take.” When a Roman purchased something, it was considered that the act of purchasing was not complete, either conventionally or legally, until he had grasped it with his hand. If he was purchasing land, he picked up a handful of soil and thereby took title. If he was purchasing a slave, he took hold of the slave and thereby took title.

The power of this paterfamilias over his son was, in fact, the same as the power of this man over his slave – HDT WHAT? INDEX

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he could execute either one– but there was a legal ceremony by which, when his son became of age, his son could be set free to form his own familias. In that ceremony the father took the son by the hand, as if he were taking possession of a slave, but then dropped his son’s hand. After he had done this three times in succession, his son was emancipio. Emancipation, therefore, had a lot to do with shaking hands. Except during the US Civil War.

I am leading up to saying that Abraham Lincoln “emancipated” all those slaves he did not have the power physically to touch, but did not emancipate any slave he did have the power physically to touch. It was a neat trick. Here, in this painting, we can see how it was done:

The Emancipation Proclamation was an offer to place names on a list, which persons, should they fulfil the preconditions, would, at the end of the period of hostilities, be granted papers of manumission by the Federal Government. This was a very formal matter. It required prior registration. Whose names were actually so registered? Who actually received such papers of manumission? There should be such a list somewhere, if anyone did initiate or complete this process and if anyone did actually get freedom through this vehicle. Where is that list? How long is it? Does it exist? No, my friend, you’ve been conned. After a long and bloody civil war which was fought over whether we were going to be one nation state or two rather than over racial issues, we got ourselves out of this holiday from the Commandments in part by a carefully worded temporary martial law measure denominated the Emancipation Proclamation, which had been created by a team of white Washington DC lawyers. Under the terms of that martial law measure, which lapsed as soon as martial law lapsed, if a Southern slave could make it across the battle lines intact, and then perform labor for the Northern armies, and if that Southern slave could arrange to have his or her name recorded as part of the indicated program, as one of its beneficiaries, then, and only then, could he or she hope that at the successful conclusion HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of the war he or she would receive freebie manumission papers from the federal government. Read the fine print, and weep. I don’t know how few people managed to avail themselves of this very restricted opportunity, but I do know it must have been very few, and I suspect in fact that it was zero. Perhaps one reason why we don’t have a list of the names of people who obtained freedom in this way is embarrassment, at how short or null such a list would prove to be. We don’t want to know about such things. I have come across one such actual named military emancipation from this period. This emancipation did not, however, relate in any way to the Emancipation Proclamation. It related, instead, to a military Board of Claims for Enlisted Slaves which was instituted under General Order No. 329 of the War Department during 1863. Here is the original certification of manumission document, from this Office of the Board of Claims, and it seems to be based on military service that had been rendered by the slave Isaac Gorden as a member of H Company, 30th Regiment. of the U.S. Colored Troops. It includes an order to reimburse the owner of this soldier Isaac Gordon, a man named N. Hammond Esgless. The document reads as follows: “OFFICE OF

BOARD OF CLAIMS for slaves enlisted in U.S. Service, No. 19 South Street, Baltimore, Maryland. I HEREBY CERTIFY, That Philip Pettibone of [blank] county, State of Maryland, has filed with the Board of Claims for Enlisted Slaves, instituted under General Order No. 329, War Department, 1863, - a valid Deed of Manumission and Release of service of Isaac Gorden a man of African decent, of Anne Arundel county, Md., enlisted on the 10th day of March, 1864, in the 30th Regiment U.S. Colored Troops, Co. H, as per Muster-rolls and descriptive list of said Regiment, filed at this office, appears. Witness my hand and seal this 21st. day of November, eighteen hundred and sixty four [signed] John S. Sears, Clerk to Board of Claims.” There is an impress seal that says: Board of Claims for Enlisted Slaves No. 19 South St. Baltimore, Md. At the bottom of the document the following appears: “$100.00 Annapolis Md. Nov. 29, 1864. The Treasurer of the State of Maryland, Pay to N. Hammond Esgless, or Order, the sum of One Hundred Dollars, being the sum appropriated for my slave Isaac Gorden, of Anne arundel County, Md. enlisted as described in the above HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Certificate, under Acts of the General Assembly of Maryland, chapter 15, 246 and 373, of 1864. [signed] Philip Pettibone Test, [signature illegible]” There are two Revenue stamps, a 5-cent and 2-cent, attached to the document and they are dated “Nov 29.” The document has two folds. There is writing on the back of the document which appears to be for filing purposes.

After the Emancipation Proclamation, however, Headman Seattle (See-Ahth of the Susquamish) of the Susquamish, the same “Chief Seattle” who is famous for an environmentalist speech in the manner in which we all should be famous for our environmental speeches, that is, famous for an environmental speech which in fact wasn’t made (his actual speech seems to have been about the deep spiritual differences between peoples of widely differing cultures), did free his eight Native American slaves.

In this year, the Union army would begin to enlist black soldiers, to serve of course under white officers, of course at a lower rate of pay than white soldiers. Notice this unit’s drummer, who was paid at a lower rate still, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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paid less for being not only black but also, indeed, only a little boy. A quite emancipated little boy.

The lithograph which pictured this little drummer was based on a daguerreotype made indoors, next door to HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“Roadside”, the country home of Friends James and Lucretia Mott near Philadelphia.

This was a military training camp, on which people were preparing for the task of killing other people, and it was named “Camp William Penn,” after a Quaker pacifist who was being alleged to have given up the wearing HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of the sword of nobility, whose favorite punch line went:

It is not our ends that justify our means.

The image is a fraud. In the original, there is no flag waving bravely in the background. There is no tent. There is no greenery. There is no little drummer boy flanking to the right. Looking carefully at the fraud, we can see that the countenances of the black men have been sketched on, exaggerating their negroid features in such manner as to emphasize, that the important thing which we are to grasp about these Union soldiers, is their ethnicity.

Here is a real photograph of Camp William Penn. As you can clearly see, a waving flag looks quite a bit HDT WHAT? INDEX

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different in a real photograph of the period!

The irony of this seems rather heavy. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, as his contribution to the recruitment campaign for the war (what if they gave a war and nobody came?), the immortal patriotic doggerel HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“one if by day, and two if by night.”59

Frederick Douglass traveled through the cities of the North, recruiting black men to serve the Union Army. His son Lewis, age 22, and his son Charles Remond, age 19, were among the first to enlist. But the Union armies were routinely returning runaways to their owners. General McClellan ordered that slave rebellions were to be put down “with an iron hand.” But there were so many runaways. Finally, in Virginia, a Union general who believed in slavery, Benjamin Butler, began to declare them “contraband of war” and put them to work. Although Abraham Lincoln had twice disciplined Union generals who had freed slaves, putting slaves to work was something the President could accept, and the result was the Confiscation Act.

Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson described a celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation at Camp Saxton on one of the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina, that had been occupied by Northern black

59. Well, at least that was the way Gerald Ford’s teleprompter had it, when he gave the keynote address at the Concord Bicentennial Celebration of April 19, 1975 at the Old North Bridge. And perhaps no poet has been parodied more: it’s all because, while he was at Bowdoin College in 1822 with author-to-be Nathaniel Hawthorne (still Hathorne) and president-to-be Franklin Pierce, he was accustomed to play whist without a helmet.

[Acting on a news story about ex-Presidents selling their autographs, I have sent a copy of this page to ex-President Gerald Rudolph Ford, along with a $1.00 bill and a reminder that in the era in question a dollar bill was worth almost precisely what a C-note is worth today, and asked if he could in good humor initial below:

X ______]

Longfellow’s thing about “one if by land, and two if by sea” was of course inaccurate in that the Atlantic Ocean didn’t ever get involved. The militia’s concern was whether the regular troops stabled in Boston were going to march down the Neck and through Roxbury, or first row themselves across the Charles River so they could march through Cambridge. In quoting Longfellow before the Concordians on April 19, 1975 as having said “one if by day, and two if by night,” Former President Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr., seems to me to have been saying something very Thoreauvian to these people, he was almost saying:

Look, this history stuff you have been passing off is drivel, and besides, you aren’t at all like your ancestors. For one thing your ancestors didn’t worship themselves, the way you worship yourselves through your ancestors. For another thing, it’s way past time you people got busy and did something for others, rather than wanting other people to come around and make your bacon for you. Would you look at this dump, you’re turning Concord into a damned tourist trap! By creatively “misquoting” this poem, I’m going to show you how little it, and you, are worth in the great scheme of things. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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troops and were being protected by the ships of the US Navy.

The services began at half past eleven o’clock, with a prayer.... Then the President’s Proclamation was read.... Then the colors were presented.... Then followed an incident so touching, so utterly unexpected and startling, that I can scarcely believe it on recalling, though it gave the keynote to the whole day. The very moment the speaker had ceased, and just as I took and waved the flag, which now for the first time meant anything to these poor people, there suddenly arose, close beside the platform, a strong male voice (but rather cracked and elderly), into which two women’s voices instantly blended, singing as if by an impulse that could no more be repressed than the morning note of the song-sparrow. —

My Country, ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing!

After the ceremony the white officers visited a nearby plantation and viewed the instruments of torture still lying in the local slave-jail. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In Beaufort, South Carolina, the Reverend Dr. William Henry Brisbane, the Union officer in charge of auctioning off the lands and structures of the former slave plantations of the district, read the Emancipation Proclamation aloud to thousands of freedmen.

General John Pope sent General Henry Hastings Sibley and General Alfred Sully onto the Dakota reservation in Minnesota, to hunt down the remaining tribespeople and get them off their land so it could be divided into HDT WHAT? INDEX

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farm acreage for white people.

(Early in this year, Stephen Grover Cleveland, a future president, was 26 years of age and it was time to serve his country — so he hired a man to serve in his stead. He was just as much a draft dodger, in his era, as William J. Clinton and George W. Bush, in our own era!) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1864

A careful engraving of the noted authors of the day was prepared, to vend to the general public for $10 a pop. Ten dollars would be roughly the value then of two weeks labor for a working man. We notice of course the necessary presence in Washington Irving’s famous Knickerbocker library at “Sunnyside” of Waldo Emerson, transcendently hopeful of all good things, and indifferently content with his Carlylean reputation as the most original thinker in America, and the necessary absence of Henry Thoreau:

“They have assembled for a morning’s conversation in the little Knickerbocker library at Sunnyside, a place dear to the recollection of all who have visited that classic spot. Irving sits in an easy, unaffected attitude, in his big arm chair, at once the honored host and genial companion of the distinguished party which surrounds him. William H. Prescott, evidently the last speaker in the group, bends towards him his handsome intellectual face, in an earnest and inquiring manner, and behind him stands Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, thoughtfully attentive for the momentarily expected response form the presiding spirit of the occasion. At the left hand of Irving sits James Fenimore Cooper, complacently conscious of his own brilliant fame, yet cordially recognizant of the still higher eminence of his great contemporary. The front line of this portion of the group HDT WHAT? INDEX

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includes, also, the strong decisive profile of George Bancroft, in the attentive attitude of an expectant listener.

Thus, we have, as the prominent interest of the picture, the admirable and life-like portraits of our great representative writers in History, Philosophy, Romance, and Poetry, naturally and characteristically disposed. The fine conception of the artist is now happily completed, and the picture enlivened by the introduction of other of the hospitable Knickerbocker’s friends and intimates, scarcely less distinguished in the literary world than those thus especially honored. William Cullen Bryant stands near the window, pensively meditating on HDT WHAT? INDEX

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those melancholy days that annually cast their shade of sadness over nature’s varying face, and opposite him is seen Nathaniel Hawthorne, already wandering in imagination through those mysterious chambers in the House with the Seven Gables, through whose dusty windows was destined to stream the clear sunshine of his prolific fancy. Frederick Goddard Tuckerman is charging his memory with the characteristic points of the celebrities before him, and Nathaniel Parker Willis is treasuring a “jotting-down” and a piquant item for his “Seeings and Hearings.” Worthy of mention. In short, each particular star of this brilliant galaxy, shines with its own peculiar light and magnitude, and appropriately fills its allotted place in this most charming and suggestive picture. Mr. Darley, to whose ever skilful pencil the country is indebted for both its design and execution, has but given us another evidence that whatever he undertakes to do he will do well. To secure accuracy, Mr. Darley availed himself of the services of the eminent photographer Brady. The picture has been reproduced in oil by Mr. Schuessele, with great fidelity to the original, making a beautiful and effective painting four feet by six, preserving in a remarkable degree the strength of handling and perfection of resemblance, which characterize the original drawing. It will be recollected that this fine drawing was made by Mr. Darley with the view of its being presented to the public in the form of an engraving.”

January: Three cantos of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s translation of the PARADISO (the third and final part of Dante Alighieri’s COMMEDIA) appeared in The Atlantic Monthly.60

May 24, Tuesday: People were continuing to kill each other at North Anna / Jericho Mill / Hanover Junction. In addition, on this day, people were killing each other at Wilson’s Wharf / Fort Pocahontas. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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60. There have been over the years a very great many attempts to accomplish this: 1782 Charles Rogers’s INFERNO only (blank verse) 1785-1802 Reverend Henry Boyd’s DIVINE COMEDY (rhymed six-line stanzas) 1805-1806 Reverend Henry Francis Cary’s INFERNO only (blank verse) 1812 Reverend Henry Francis Cary’s DIVINE COMEDY (blank verse) 1807 N. Howard’s INFERNO only 1833-1840 I.C. Wright’s DIVINE COMEDY 1836 Odoardo Volpi’s ten cantos of INFERNO in the original Terza Rima of Dante’s Italian 1842 C. Hindley’s INFERNO only (in prose) 1843 Reverend John Dayman’s INFERNO only 1849 Dr. John Aitken Carlyle’s INFERNO only (in prose) 1850 Patrick Bannerman’s DIVINE COMEDY 1851-1854 C.B. Cayley’s DIVINE COMEDY 1852 E. O’Donnell’s DIVINE COMEDY (in prose) 1854 T. Brooksbank’s INFERNO only 1854 Frederick Pollock’s DIVINE COMEDY 1846 James Henry Leigh Hunt’s STORIES FROM THE ITALIAN POETS, portions of DIVINE COMEDY 1859 J.W. Thomas’s DIVINE COMEDY in the original Terza Rima of Dante’s Italian 1859 Bruce Whyte’s INFERNO only 1862 “Hugh Bent” (nom de plume)’s INFERNO only 1862 W.P. Wilkie’s INFERNO only 1862/1863 Mrs. Ramsay’s DIVINE COMEDY 1865 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 17 cantos of INFERNO 1865 James Ford’s DIVINE COMEDY in the original Terza Rima of Dante’s Italian 1865 Reverend John Dayman’s DIVINE COMEDY in the original Terza Rima of Dante’s Italian 1865 William Michael Rossetti’s INFERNO only 1865/1866 Reverend H.F. Cary’s INFERNO only, illustrated by G. Doré 1867 Dr. John Aitken Carlyle’s INFERNO only (in prose) (2d edition) 1867 Thomas William Parsons’s first canticle of INFERNO only 1867 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s DIVINE COMEDY 1867 Reverend Henry F. Cary’s DIVINE COMEDY 1867/1868 D. Johnston’s DIVINE COMEDY 1871 Miss Rossetti’s SHADOW OF DANTE, portions of DIVINE COMEDY 1871 Ernest Ridsdale Ellaby’s ten cantos of INFERNO in the original Terza Rima of Dante’s Italian 1876 J.W. Parsons’s nine cantos of PURGATORIO 1877 Mrs. Oliphant’s FOREIGN CLASSICS FOR ENGLISH READERS, portions of DIVINE COMEDY 1892 Reverend Henry Francis Cary’s INFERNO with illustrations by Gustave Doré 1899 Thomas Okey (PURGATORIO), Dr. John Aitken Carlyle (INFERNO), and Philip H. Wicksteed (PARADISO) DIVINE COMEDY 1980 C.H. Sisson’s DIVINE COMEDY 1994 Robert Pinsky’s THE INFERNO OF DANTE (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

In Concord on this day, however, people were burying each other. Waldo Emerson recorded in his journal that:

Yesterday, May 23, we buried Hawthorne in Sleepy Hollow, in a pomp of HAWTHORNE sunshine and verdure, and gentle winds. James Freeman Clarke read the service in the church and at the grave. Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Agassiz, Hoar, Dwight, Whipple, Norton, Alcott, Hillard, Fields, Judge LONGFELLOW Thomas, and I attended the hearse as pallbearers. Franklin Pierce was J.R. LOWELL with the family. The church was copiously decorated with white flowers DR. O.W. HOLMES delicately arranged. The corpse was unwillingly shown, — only a few PROF. AGASSIZ moments to this company of his friends. But it was noble and serene in its aspect, — nothing amiss, — a calm and powerful head. A large company JUDGE E.R. HOAR filled the church and the grounds of the cemetery. All was so bright and J.S. DWIGHT quiet that pain or mourning was hardly suggested, and Holmes said to me C.K. WHIPPLE that it looked like a happy meeting. C.E. NORTON Clarke in the church said that Hawthorne had done more justice than any other to the shades of life, shown a sympathy with the crime in our BRONSON ALCOTT nature, and, like Jesus, was the friend of sinners. HILLARD I thought there was a tragic element in the event, that might be more FIELDS fully rendered, — in the painful solitude of the man, which, I suppose, JUDGE THOMAS could not longer be endured, and he died of it. I have found in his death a surprise and a disappointment. I thought him a greater man than any of his works betray, that there was still a great deal of work in him, and that he might one day show a purer power. Moreover, I have felt sure of him in his neighbourhood, and in his necessities of sympathy and intelligence, — that I could well wait his time, — his unwillingness and caprice, — and might one day conquer a friendship. It would have been a happiness, doubtless to both of us, to have come into habits of unreserved intercourse. It was easy to talk with him, — there were no barriers, — only, he said so little, that I talked too much, and stopped only because, as he gave no indications, I feared to exceed. He showed no egotism or self-assertion, rather a humility, and, at one time, a fear that he had written himself out. One day, when I found him on top of his hill, in the woods, he paced back the path to his house, and said, “This path is the only remembrance of me that will remain.” Now it appears that I waited too long. Lately he had removed himself the more by the indignation his perverse politics and unfortunate friendship for that paltry Franklin Pierce awakened, though it rather moved pity for Hawthorne, and the assured belief that he would outlive FRANKLIN PIERCE it, and come right at last. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

“The Wayside” would be occupied by the widowed Mrs. Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, with her two daughters Una Hawthorne and Rose Hawthorne and her son Julian Hawthorne, until, while again living in Europe, in October 1868 they would vend the place to George and Abby Gray. OLD HOUSES

HAWTHORNE MAY 23, 1864 How beautiful it was, that one bright day In the long week of rain! Though all its splendor could not chase away HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

The omnipresent pain. The lovely town was white with apple-blooms, And the great elms o’erhead Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms Shot through with golden thread. Across the meadows, by the gray old manse, The historic river flowed: I was as one who wanders in a trance, Unconscious of his road. The faces of familiar friends seemed strange; Their voices I could hear, And yet the words they uttered seemed to change Their meaning to my ear. For the one face I looked for was not there, The one low voice was mute; Only an unseen presence filled the air, And baffled my pursuit. Now I look back, and meadow, manse, and stream Dimly my thought defines; I only see — a dream within a dream — The hill-top hearsed with pines. I only hear above his place of rest Their tender undertone, The infinite longings of a troubled breast, The voice so like his own. There in seclusion and remote from men The wizard hand lies cold, Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen, And left the tale half told. Ah! who shall lift that wand of magic power, And the lost clew regain? The unfinished window in Aladdin’s tower Unfinished must remain! HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1866

Thomas Hicks painted his “Authors of the United States” as a name-dropping set piece to show off various of the portraits of prominent personages he had painted at his studio in New-York. We have no idea as to the present whereabouts of the original of this, but an engraving of it was made by A.H. Ritchie. We note that the statues on the upper balcony are of course of founding literary giants Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, William Shakespeare, and Dante Alighieri. Henry Thoreau is of course as always not noticeably absent, since he would not emerge into his present renown until well into the 20th Century. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

The personages depicted are 1=Washington Irving 2=William Cullen Bryant 3=James Fenimore Cooper 4=Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 5=Miss Sedgwick 6=Mrs. Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney 7=Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth 8=Mitchell 9=Nathaniel Parker Willis 10=Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 11=Kennedy 12=Mrs. Mowatt Ritchie 13=Alice Carey 14=Prentice 15=G.W. Kendall 16=Morris 17=Edgar Allan Poe 18=Frederick Goddard Tuckerman 19=Nathaniel Hawthorne 20=Simms 21=P. Pendelton Cooke 22=Hoffman 23=William H.Prescott 24=George Bancroft 25=Parke Godwin 26=John Lothrop Motley 27=Reverend Henry Ward Beecher 28=George William Curtis 29=Ralph Waldo Emerson 30=Richard Henry Dana, Jr. 31=Margaret Fuller, marchesa d’Ossoli 32=Reverend William Ellery Channing 33=Harriet Beecher Stowe 34=Mrs. Kirkland 35=Friend John Greenleaf Whittier 36=James Russell Lowell 37=Boker 38=Bayard Taylor 39=Saxe 40=Stoddard 41=Mrs. Amelia Welby 42=Gallagher 43=Cozzens 44=Halleck. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1867

THE DIVINE COMEDY OF Dante Alighieri / translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston: Ticknor and Fields; Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin and Company; Authorized edition Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 186761

Boston: J.R. Osgood, 1869-1871, [Volume 1, 1871] Boston: Fields, Osgood, 1870 Boston: James R. Osgood & Company, 1875 Boston and NY: Houghton, Mifflin and company 1882 Boston and NY: Houghton, Mifflin and company, [1886] With an introd. by Henry Morley. London: G. Routledge, 1886 Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin and Co., [1888, c1867] HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

61. There have been over the years a very great many attempts to accomplish this: 1782 Charles Rogers’s INFERNO only (blank verse) 1785-1802 Reverend Henry Boyd’s DIVINE COMEDY (rhymed six-line stanzas) 1805-1806 Reverend Henry Francis Cary’s INFERNO only (blank verse) 1812 Reverend Henry Francis Cary’s DIVINE COMEDY (blank verse) 1807 N. Howard’s INFERNO only 1833-1840 I.C. Wright’s DIVINE COMEDY 1836 Odoardo Volpi’s ten cantos of INFERNO in the original Terza Rima of Dante’s Italian 1842 C. Hindley’s INFERNO only (in prose) 1843 Reverend John Dayman’s INFERNO only 1849 Dr. John Aitken Carlyle’s INFERNO only (in prose) 1850 Patrick Bannerman’s DIVINE COMEDY 1851-1854 C.B. Cayley’s DIVINE COMEDY 1852 E. O’Donnell’s DIVINE COMEDY (in prose) 1854 T. Brooksbank’s INFERNO only 1854 Frederick Pollock’s DIVINE COMEDY 1846 James Henry Leigh Hunt’s STORIES FROM THE ITALIAN POETS, portions of DIVINE COMEDY 1859 J.W. Thomas’s DIVINE COMEDY in the original Terza Rima of Dante’s Italian 1859 Bruce Whyte’s INFERNO only 1862 “Hugh Bent” (nom de plume)’s INFERNO only 1862 W.P. Wilkie’s INFERNO only 1862/1863 Mrs. Ramsay’s DIVINE COMEDY 1865 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 17 cantos of INFERNO 1865 James Ford’s DIVINE COMEDY in the original Terza Rima of Dante’s Italian 1865 Reverend John Dayman’s DIVINE COMEDY in the original Terza Rima of Dante’s Italian 1865 William Michael Rossetti’s INFERNO only 1865/1866 Reverend H.F. Cary’s INFERNO only, illustrated by G. Doré 1867 Dr. John Aitken Carlyle’s INFERNO only (in prose) (2d edition) 1867 Thomas William Parsons’s first canticle of INFERNO only 1867 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s DIVINE COMEDY 1867 Reverend Henry F. Cary’s DIVINE COMEDY 1867/1868 D. Johnston’s DIVINE COMEDY 1871 Miss Rossetti’s SHADOW OF DANTE, portions of DIVINE COMEDY 1871 Ernest Ridsdale Ellaby’s ten cantos of INFERNO in the original Terza Rima of Dante’s Italian 1876 J.W. Parsons’s nine cantos of PURGATORIO 1877 Mrs. Oliphant’s FOREIGN CLASSICS FOR ENGLISH READERS, portions of DIVINE COMEDY 1892 Reverend Henry Francis Cary’s INFERNO with illustrations by Gustave Doré 1899 Thomas Okey (PURGATORIO), Dr. John Aitken Carlyle (INFERNO), and Philip H. Wicksteed (PARADISO) DIVINE COMEDY 1980 C.H. Sisson’s DIVINE COMEDY 1994 Robert Pinsky’s THE INFERNO OF DANTE (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1868

While Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was visiting England, Queen Victoria invited him to take tea with her, and she noticed while he was walking down a corridor in her palace that her servants seemed to be acutely aware of just who this American was. Later on that night she would confide to her diary that she had made inquiries and had discovered “that many of his poems are familiar to them.” Judging by the length of his grave, which is most remarkably truncated, the poet was by no means a tall man — so he and the diminutive queen may have made a rather engaging couple as they strolled down that corridor:

A Truncated Table of Altitudes

Queen Victoria, prior to osteoporosis 4 '10 '' 1 typical female of Thoreau’s period 5 ' 2 /2'' 1 typical Neanderthal adult male 5 ' 4 /2'' Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 5 ' ? '' Henry Thoreau 5 ' 7 '' 1 the average male of Thoreau’s period 5 ' 7 /2 ''

Does anyone know exactly how short a fellow Longfellow was?

During this year William Gladstone, leader of the Liberals in the House of Commons, became Prime Minister. Gladstone’s government had plans for a series of reforms including the extension of the franchise, elections by secret ballot and a reduction in the power of the House of Lords. The Queen disagreed totally with such policies as these but lacked the influence to stop Prime Minister Gladstone’s coalition from passing either the 1867 Reform Act or the 1872 Secret Ballot Act.

Josiah Gilbert Holland’s KATRINA: HER LIFE AND MINE, IN A POEM, which would outsell all other American poems with the single exception of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s HIAWATHA (sales exceeded 99,000 copies), bringing the author means that, as a child in a factory, he would hardly have been able to imagine. He traveled in Europe and met Russel Smith, with whom on a memorable occasion, on a bridge in Geneva, he would scheme to start a magazine. KATRINA: HER LIFE AND MINE

(We really ought to conduct a determined investigation, and discover what was the last year in which anyone managed to read this once-upon-a-time-next-best-selling KATRINA poem.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

December 31, Thursday: James David Forbes died at Clifton.

Because of rulings by the Board of Directors, the Reverend Horatio Wood felt he had no alternative but to submit his resignation as Minister-at-Large in Lowell, Massachusetts (he would not find it a simple matter, during his 60s, to obtain other employment).

When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and American painter George Healy visited Franz Liszt at the monastery of Santa Francesca Romana, he showed them around and then played for them, on a grand piano that had been sent to him by Frank Chickering of Boston. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1877

While Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was marking time on his main project, a humongous bronze statue to be placed on Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor, he teamed up with H.H. Richardson to do four bas-relief friezes for the four sides of the Florentine tower over the Brattle Square Church, at the corner of Commonwealth Avenue and Clarendon Street in Boston.62 The topics of the four friezes were scoped out as Baptism, Communion, Marriage, and Death. The statues at the corners of these friezes are now referred to by Bostonians as “The Beanblowers,” but were intended to represent a quite different conceit, to wit, Angels of Judgment blowing golden trumpets. The heads of the figures on the bas-relief friezes themselves were modeled on canonized Boston mofos, such as for instance: Waldo Emerson Edward Everett William Lloyd Garrison Nathaniel Hawthorne Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Wendell Phillips Charles Sumner

To the best of my understanding, our Henry Thoreau ain’t up there. Why ain’t he up there? –Why should he be, since his life was incomplete, and a failure? Per an article to be published in the following year in a religious organ,63

[T]he incompleteness and failure of [Thoreau’s] life cannot be concealed by all the verbiage and praise of his biographers.

62. This edifice is now run by Baptists. 63. Catholic World 1878, page 296, article by Father Isaac Hecker. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

No, as far as these people were concerned –even this “Father Thomas” who had known him personally– Henry was dead and buried and he could damn well stay dead and buried:

(“A Bird’s-Eye View of Boston” from the north as of this year, drawn by John Bachmann with color lithography by Louis Prang, should be available as a 22” x 27 1/2” reproduction in color on text weight paper in a heavy mailing tube, from Historic Urban Plans, Inc., Box 276, Ithaca NY 14851 (607 272-MAPS), for roughly $21.50 inclusive of postage.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1877

December 17, Monday: Just about every living American author of note (for instance Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow — even a new writer who had only two names, Mark Twain) was in attendance at Friend John Greenleaf Whittier’s 70th birthday party.

A good time was had by all. Not.

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/onstage/whittier.html HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1879

The chestnut tree in Cambridge, Massachusetts under which Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s village smithy had stood was felled for a widening of Brattle Street. A chair made from the wood, paid for by the pennies of schoolchildren, was presented to the poet on his 72nd birthday. (Subsequent analysis of this chair indicated the tree had really been a horse chestnut, native to Europe — not at all closely related to the American chestnut most readers of the poem would have imagined.)

PLANTS

The Village Blacksmith

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

And children coming home from school Look in at the open door; They love to see the flaming forge, And hear the bellows roar, And watch the burning sparks that fly Like chaff from a threshing-floor. He goes on Sunday to the church, And sits among his boys; He hears the parson pray and preach, He hears his daughter’s voice, Singing in the village choir, And it makes his heart rejoice. It sounds to him like her mother’s voice, Singing in Paradise! He needs must think of her once more, How in the grave she lies; And with his hard, rough hand he wipes A tear out of his eyes. Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night’s repose. Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought!

February 1, Saturday: The Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson remarried, to Mary P. Thacher, niece by marriage of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Higginson would spend the last three decades of his life in Cambridge while summering in Dublin, New Hampshire. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1881

April 16, Saturday: A report from Walt Whitman: “Specimen Days”

MY TRIBUTE TO FOUR POETS A short but pleasant visit to Longfellow. I am not one of the calling kind, but as the author of “Evangeline” kindly took the trouble to come and see me three years ago in Camden, where I was ill, I felt not only the impulse of my own pleasure on that occasion, but a duty. He was the only particular eminence I called on in Boston, and I shall not soon forget his lit-up face and glowing warmth and courtesy, in the modes of what is called the old school.

And now just here I feel the impulse to interpolate something about the mighty four who stamp this first American century with its birth-marks of poetic literature. In a late magazine one of my reviewers, who ought to know better, speaks of my “attitude of contempt and scorn and intolerance” toward the leading poets — of my “deriding” them, and preaching their “uselessness.” If anybody cares to know what I think — and have long thought and avow’d — about them, I am entirely willing to propound. I can’t imagine any better luck befalling these States for a poetical beginning and initiation than has come from Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, and Whittier. Emerson, to me, stands unmistakably at the head, but for the others I am at a loss where to give any precedence. Each illustrious, each rounded, each distinctive. Emerson for his sweet, vital-tasting melody, rhym’d philosophy, and poems as amber-clear as the honey of the wild bee he loves to sing. Longfellow for rich color, graceful forms and incidents — all that makes life beautiful and love refined — competing with the singers of Europe on their own ground, and, with one exception, better and finer work than that of any of them. Bryant pulsing the first interior verse-throbs of a mighty world — bard of the river and the wood, ever conveying a taste of open air, with scents as from hayfields, grapes, birch-borders — always lurkingly fond of threnodies — [Page 903] beginning and ending his long career with chants of death, with here and there through all, poems, or passages of poems, touching the highest universal truths, enthusiasms, duties — morals as grim and eternal, if not as stormy and fateful, as anything in Eschylus. While in Whittier, with his special themes — (his outcropping love of heroism and war, for all his Quakerdom, his verses at times like the measur’d step of Cromwell’s old veterans) — in Whittier lives the zeal, the moral energy, that founded New England — the splendid rectitude and ardor of Luther, Milton, George Fox — I must not, dare not, say the wilfulness and narrowness — though doubtless the world needs now, and always will need, almost above all, just such narrowness and wilfulness. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1882

George William Curtis placed an article in Harper’s Magazine about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (This would be republished in 1895 as part of Curtis’s LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS.)

In this year he received the honorary degree of LL.D. from Harvard University. NEW “HARVARD MEN” HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW March 24, Friday: In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died at the age of 75.

Herr Professor Dr. Robert Koch read his paper “Uber Tuberculose” to the Berlin Physiological Society announcing his conviction that a bacillus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, one that became visible on microscope slides that had been properly stained with an alkaline stain, was the sole agency of the disease that had been known since antiquity as phthisis, or consumption or tuberculosis. ASSLEY

DIE ACTIOLOGIE DER TUBERKULOSE: “If the number of victims which a disease claims is the measure of its significance, then all diseases particularly the most dreaded infectious disease such as bubonic plague, Asiatic cholera, etc. must rank far behind tuberculosis. Statistics teach that 1/7 of all human beings die of tuberculosis, and that, if one considers any of the productive middle-aged groups, tuberculosis carries away 1/3 and often more of these ... when the conviction that tuberculosis is an exquisite infectious disease has become finally established among physicians, the question of an adequate campaign versus tuberculosis will certainly come under discussion and it will develop by itself.”

Various people had various reactions to this new and novel information — some intelligent, some rather stupid. Here, for instance, is the reaction of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Your remedy does not treat the real seat of evil. It continually removes the traces of the enemy, but is still leaves him deep in the invaded country.

During the 1880s, in the United States, hundreds of people would be moving to the dry, sunny climate of Arizona with the expectation that this might ameliorate their tuberculosis. What has been commonly forgotten, however, is that before Arizona was opened up for safe white settlement, while it was still dangerous frontier territory, these sufferers had been migrating to Indiana, and then to Minnesota, and then to such places as Costa Mesa and Riverside in Southern California. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

April 3, Monday: A report from Walt Whitman, back in Camden, New Jersey: “Specimen Days”

I have just return’d from an old forest haunt, where I love to go occasionally away from parlors, pavements, and the newspapers and magazines — and where, of a clear forenoon, deep in the shade of pines and cedars and a tangle of old laurel-trees and vines, the news of Longfellow’s death first reach’d me. For want of anything better, let me lightly twine a sprig of the sweet ground-ivy trailing so plentifully through the dead leaves at my feet, with reflections of that half hour alone, there in the silence, and lay it as my contribution on the dead bard’s grave. Longfellow in his voluminous works seems to me not only to be eminent in the style and forms of poetical expression that mark the present age, (an idiosyncrasy, almost a sickness, of verbal melody,) but to bring what is always dearest as poetry to the general human heart and taste, and probably must be so in the nature of things. He is certainly the sort of bard and counteractant most needed for our materialistic, self-assertive, [Page 918] money-worshipping, Anglo-Saxon races, and especially for the present age in America — an age tyrannically regulated with reference to the manufacturer, the merchant, the financier, the politician and the day workman — for whom and among whom he comes as the poet of melody, courtesy, deference — poet of the mellow twilight of the past in Italy, Germany, Spain, and in Northern Europe — poet of all sympathetic gentleness — and universal poet of women and young people. I should have to think long if I were ask’d to name the man who has done more, and in more valuable directions, for America. I doubt if there ever was before such a fine intuitive judge and selecter of poems. His translations of many German and Scandinavian pieces are said to be better than the vernaculars. He does not urge or lash. His influence is like good drink or air. He is not tepid either, but always vital, with flavor, motion, grace. He strikes a splendid average, and does not sing exceptional passions, or humanity’s jagged escapades. He is not revolutionary, brings nothing offensive or new, does not deal hard blows. On the contrary, his songs soothe and heal, or if they excite, it is a healthy and agreeable excitement. His very anger is gentle, is at second hand, (as in the “Quadroon Girl” and the “Witnesses.”) There is no undue element of pensiveness in Longfellow’s strains. Even in the early translation, the Manrique, the movement is as of strong and steady wind or tide, holding up and buoying. Death is not avoided through his many themes, but there is something almost winning in his original verses and renderings on that dread subject — as, closing “the Happiest Land” dispute, And then the landlord’s daughter Up to heaven rais’d her hand, And said, “Ye may no more contend, There lies the happiest land.”

To the ungracious complaint-charge of his want of racy nativity and special originality, I shall only say that America and the world may well be reverently thankful — can never be thankful enough — for any such singing-bird vouchsafed out of the centuries, without asking that the notes be different [Page 919] from those of other songsters; adding what I have heard Longfellow himself say, that ere the New World can be worthily original, and announce herself and her own heroes, she must be well saturated with the originality of others, and respectfully consider the heroes that lived before Agamemnon. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

“Specimen Days”

THE GREAT UNREST OF WHICH WE ARE PART My thoughts went floating on vast and mystic currents as I sat to-day in solitude and half-shade by the creek — returning mainly to two principal centres. One of my cherish’d themes for a never-achiev’d poem has been the two impetuses of man and the universe — in the latter, creation’s incessant unrest,1 exfoliation, (Darwin’s evolution, I suppose.) Indeed, what is Nature but change, in all its visible, and still more its invisible processes? Or what is humanity in its faith, love, heroism, poetry, even morals, but emotion?

1.“Fifty thousand years ago the constellation of the Great Bear or Dipper was a starry cross; a hundred thousand years hence the imaginary Dipper will be upside down, and the stars which form the bowl and handle will have changed places. The misty nebulae are moving, and besides are whirling around in great spirals, some one way, some another. Every molecule of matter in the whole universe is swinging to and fro; every particle of ether which fills space is in jelly-like vibration. Light is one kind of motion, heat another, electricity another, magnetism another, sound another. Every human sense is the result of motion; every perception, every thought is but motion of the molecules of the brain translated by that incomprehensible thing we call mind. The processes of growth, of existence, of decay, whether in worlds, or in the minutest organisms, are but motion.”

April 20, Thursday: Upon waking up from a mid-day nap on the sofa in his study, Waldo Emerson was somewhat bewildered and had unusual difficulty with his words.

His face was flushed, he was hoarse, and he was having difficulty remembering past events, and objects in the study. Dr. Emerson read “Paul Revere’s Ride” to him and explained who Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had been, and Emerson commented that he

“wished he had known before that he could write such good things.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1900

Thomas Jefferson had hoped to eliminate religion from his proposed public university by removing theology from the curriculum. However, as evangelical Protestantism came in the early 19th Century to dominate Virginia’s culture, he had been forced to compromise and his University of Virginia had begun to provide nonsectarian religious instruction (under the rubric “Moral Philosophy”). Jefferson’s compromise had then been reenacted at all the other institutions of higher education in the state, so that even denominational colleges had been able to adhere to one or another such “nonsectarian” pretense while offering an essentially religious education. By the end of the 19th Century separation of church and state in Virginia’s public school system had become compatible with a generalized evangelical Protestantism — complete with all its Bible-thumping, all its obligatory-lecture “praying,” all its singing of tendentiously worded “hymns,” and all its dissing of any other religious understanding. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

When asked to nominate the “Americans most deserving representation” for inclusion in a hall of fame that was being planned in Massachusetts, the Honorable George Frisbie Hoar needed to exclude his world-class heros William Ewart Gladstone, John Milton, the Marquis de Lafayette, General Simon Bolivar, Giuseppe Mazzini, Lajos Kossuth, and Miss Florence Nightingale because they were not Americans (well, in addition to being disqualified as a mere Brit, Miss Florence was not even male and not even yet deceased), and he excused Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne because to be great a man must possess “more than the quality of a great artist,” and he banished Benjamin Franklin to the outer darkness for having been “without idealism, without lofty principle, and, on one side of his character, gross and immoral,” and, finally, aware that he could not get away with submitting his own name because he wasn’t dead yet (and besides that it would have been utterly immodest), he submitted the following dozen dead white American malenesses: HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

• President George Washington (the most “noble” on the list, representing “the prime meridian of pure, exalted, human character”) • President Thomas Jefferson (the most “influential” on the list, because of his alleged authorship of the Declaration of Independence, a document endorsed by the Honorable George Frisbie Hoar’s grandfather Roger Sherman) • President Abraham Lincoln • The Reverend Jonathan Edwards • President John Adams • Sam Adams • Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton • Senator Daniel Webster • Chief Justice John Marshall • Senator Charles Sumner • Waldo Emerson •Friend John Greenleaf Whittier HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Daniel Chester French did an equestrian statue of George Washington, for Paris.

(This isn’t it — bronze horses are so easily mistaken for one another.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Oh, all right. How can I keep it from you?

The general had of course ridden various horses at various times. At least two of his mounts had been killed in combat. “Old Nelson,” “Roger Leo,” “Ellen Edenberg,” and “Blueskin” were among the survivors. We seem to have lost track of which of these the sculptor was here attempting to render immortal in bronze — perhaps he was merely immortalizing the spirit of horseness. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1902

Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s biographies of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Friend John Greenleaf Whittier. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1914

Daniel Chester French did a couple of busts of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1929

While assisting Heinrich Hoffmann, the Third Reich’s official photographer, in his shop at No. 50 Schellingstrasse in Berlin, Germany, Eva Braun, 17 years old, first met Adolf Hitler.

During the late 1920s, although perhaps not in this particular year, Henry Ford, an American excessively fond of good ol’ boy Adolf, purchased the three-story gambrel-roofed home occupying the grounds once occupied by the Red Horse Tavern, the wayside inn, along the track between Boston and Marlborough, which had once been visited and described by Longfellow. He named this creation the “Wayside Inn” in order to capitalize on the famouski poem “Tales of a Wayside Inn.” Tell ’em Hank sent ya, and ask for one for the road. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1974

June: A cache of Dr. Samuel Arthur Jones’s incoming correspondence was discovered in Urbana. Illinois. In this trove were “letters by Henry Thoreau, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and others; ... and there were scores of letters about Thoreau by those who had known the poet- naturalist and by several collectors and scholars.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1975

April 19, Saturday: On the occasion of the bicentennial of the slaughter of militiamen by army troops in Lexington, some 30,000 patriots assembled on the green to observe a modest re-enactment.

Since “pont” means bridge, we may punningly refer to this as “pontification.”

With the help of the Soviet Union, India was launching its first satellite. In Concord on this day, the controlling sentiment was fear of Communist influence.64 A member of the NRA (National Rifle Association) courageously stood behind a podium upon which was mounted a target with a big blue bull’s-eye, at the Old North Bridge in Concord, and attempted to recite some grand old words in honor of our nation’s grand old history of people killing each other with guns, while some men stood around in period costume behind him, carrying antique single-shot guns, unloaded, and some other men, with their business suit jackets covering very modern multiple-shot guns, locked and loaded, stood around intently staring at various members of the crowd of assembled citizenry:

President Gerald Ford may have been just a tad nervous. He quoted, from a piece of doggerel that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had written as his contribution to the recruitment campaign for the war that was being given in 1863,65 the immortal patriotic drivel “one if by day, and two if by night.”66

Also in attendance at that commemorative scene, Concord version, was Hurricane Bob out of Orange County, California, our congressman who was then currently striving toward the Republican presidential nomination (he characterized President William Jefferson Clinton as “draft-dodging, pot-smoking, philandering” — a

64. It is a famous date, for a certain type of person with a certain type of personality. For other April 19 celebrations of renown, consider Patriots’ Day 1993 at the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco TX, Patriots’ Day 1995 at the federal building in Oklahoma City OK, and Patriots’ Day 2013 at the marathon race in Boston MA. 65. What if they gave a war and nobody came? 66. And perhaps no poet has been parodied more: it’s all because, while he was at Bowdoin College in 1822 with author-to-be Nathaniel Hawthorne (still Hathorne) and president-to-be Franklin Pierce, he was accustomed to play whist without a helmet. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

fairly accurate if incendiary characterization). PATRIOTS’ DAY

Bob Dornan and his wife Sallie were standing by the rude bridge that arched the flood on this 200th anniversary, where the embattled farmers had stood and fired the shot heard round the world, and Bob was eating an orange while Sallie was carrying the family umbrella, when they spotted a protester carrying the flag of North Vietnam. The hand with which Bob punched this unholy flag-bearer happened to be the hand with which he was holding the orange (let’s hear it for Orange County). Well, sir, the Dornans lived up to their heritage, for that mocking flag wound up in the mud underfoot in small shreds. Sallie found out that a family umbrella came in handy, too, as a club. In their race toward the White House, Bob would wear a wristwatch which bore a cartoon face of President Bill Clinton and a digital number which declined from day to day — the number 566 as of May 1, 1995, representing the number of remaining days in the Clinton one-term presidency. The number on Sallie’s matching watch, however, was 642, which represented the number of days until she planned to take possession of the living spaces in the White House. Well, what goes around comes HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

around, doesn’t it? What goes around keeps coming around and around and around...

I recently wrote to Former President Ford at his and Betty’s home in Southern California, that I had seen a photo of him and four other living ex-Presidents, striding along. The news story had been that they were getting in touch with the American Way, and had begun to sell their autographs. Therefore, I sent him a printout page from the textbase, about that day in Concord, and a very brief explanation of hypertext, and I also sent along a dollar bill –which, I did not neglect to point out, in Thoreau’s day had been worth as much as a C-note today– and asked if he would please show his good humor by initialing my printout page on the dotted line where it said “Nihil Obstat.” Just in case he didn’t know, I mentioned that “Nihil Obstat” meant “no problem” in Latin, and out of courtesy I included a SASE. And what did I receive back? Here it is:

Nihil Obstat X ______] HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1993

A fund was begun to pay for the cleaning of the seated statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at the intersection of Congress Street in Portland, Maine. The author is depicted as in his dotage, gazing upon the scene of his childhood.67

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

67. You may have noticed that in the statuary business, chairs are to the shorter poets as stallions are to the shorter generals. As yet I haven’t been able to find out — can anyone tell us how short Longfellow was? HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

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 2014. 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

Prepared: July 14, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

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

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

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.