COLONIAL PERIOD
John Smith
The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles
From the Third Book, chapter 2
He demanding for their captain, they showed him Opechancanough, King of Pamunkey,
to whom he gave a round ivory double compass dial. Much they marveled at the playing
of the fly and needle, which they could see so plainly and yet not touch it because of the
glass that covered them. But when he demonstrated by that globe-like jewel the
roundness of the earth and skies, the sphere of the sun, moon, and stars, and how the sun
did chase the night round about the wor ld continually, the greatness of the land and sea,
the diversity of nations, variety of complexions, and how we were to them antipodes
and many other such like matters, they all stood as amazed with admiration.
Notwithstanding, within an hour after they tied him to a tree, and as many as
could stand about him prepared to shoot him, but the King holding up the compass in
his hand, they all laid down their bows and arrows in a triumphant manner led him to
Orapaks where he was after their manner kindly feasted and well used.
[…]
Not long after, early in a morning, a great fire was made in a long-house and a
mat spread on the one side as on the other; on the one they caused him to sit, and all the
guard went out of the house, and presently came skipping in a great grim fellow all
painted over with coal mingled with oil, and many snakes and weasels skins stuffed
with moss, and all their tails tied together so as they met on the crown of his head in a
tassel, and round about the tassel was as a coronet of feathers, the skins hanging round
about his head, back, and shoulders and in a manner covered his face, with hellish
voice, and a rattle in his hand. With most strange gestures and passions be began his
invocation and environed the fire with a circle of meal which done, three more such like
dev ils came rushing in with the like antic tricks, painted half black, half red, but all
their eyes were painted white and some red strokes like mustaches along their cheeks.
Round about him those fiends danced a pretty while, and then came in three more as
ugly as the rest, with red eyes and white strokes over their black faces. At last they all
sat down right against him, three of them on the one ha nd of the chief priest and three
on the other. Then all with their rattles began a song; which ended, the chief priest laid
down five wheat corns; then straining his arms and hands with such violence that he
sweat and his veins swelled, he began a short o ration; at the conclusion they all gave a
short groan and then laid down three grains more. After that, began their song again,
and then another oration, ever laying down so many corns as before till they had twice
encircled the fire; that done, they took a bunch of little sticks prepared for that purpose,
continuing still their devotion, and at the end of every song and oration they laid down a
stick betwixt the divisions of corn. Till night, neither he nor they did either eat or drink,
and then they fea sted merrily with the best provisions they could make. Three days they
used this ceremony; the meaning whereof, they told him, was to know if he intended
them well or no. The circle of meal signified their country, the circles of corn the
bounds of the se a, and the sticks his country. They imagined the world to be flat and
round, like a trencher, and they in the midst.
1
After this they brought him a bag of gunpowder, which they carefully preserved
till the next spring, to plant as they did their corn, because they would be acquainted
with the nature of that seed.
Opitchapam, the King’s brother, invited him to his house, where, with as many
platters of bread, fowl, and wild beasts as did environ him, he bid him welcome, but not
any of them would eat a bit with him but put up all the remainder in basket s.
[…]
At last they brought him to Werowocomoco, where was Powhatan, their
Emperor. Here more than two hundred of those grim courtiers stood wondering at him,
as [if] he had been a monster, till Powhatan and his train had put themselves in their
greatest braveries. Before a fire upon a seat like a bedstead, he sat covered with a great
robe made of raccoon skins and all the tails hanging by. On either hand did sit a young
wench of sixteen or eighteen years and along on each side [of] the house, two r ows of
men and behind them as many women, with all their heads and shoulders painted red,
many of their heads bedecked with the white down of birds, but every one with
something, and a great chain of white breads about their necks.
At his entrance before the King, all the people gave a great shout. The Queen of
Appomattoc was appointed to bring him water to wash his hands, and another brought
him a bunch of feathers, instead of a towel, to dry them; having feasted him after their
best barbarous manner they could, a long consultation was held, but the conclusion was,
two great stones were brought before Powhatan; then as many as could, laid hands on
him, dragged him to them, and there on laid his head and being ready with their clubs to
beat out his brains, Pocahontas, the King’s dearest daughter, when no entreaty could
prevail, got his head in her arms and laid her own upon his to save him from death,
whereat the Emperor was contented he should live to make him hatchets, and her bells,
beads, and copper, for they thought him as well of all occupations as themselves. For
the King himself will make his own robes, shoes, bows, arrows, pots; plant, hunt, or do
anything so well as the rest.
[…]
Two days after, Powhatan, having disguised himself in the most fearfulest
manner he could, caused Captain Smith to be brought forth to a great house in the
woods and there upon a mat by the fire to be left alone. Not long after, from behind a
mat that divided the house, was made the most dolefulest noise he ever heard; then
Powhatan more like a devil than a man, with some two hundred more as black as
himself, came unto him and told him now they were friends, and presently he should go
to Jamestown to send him two great guns and a grindstone for which he would give him
the country of Capahowasic and forever esteem him as his son Nantaquoud.
2
William Bradford
History of Plymouth Plantation
From the first Book, from ch. 4
The place they had thoughts on was some of those vast and unpeopled countries of
America, which are fruitful and fit for habitation, being devoid of all civil inhabitants,
where there are only savages and brutish men, which range up and down, little
otherwise then the wild beasts of the same. This proposition being made public and
coming to the scanning of all, it raised many variable opinions amongst men, and
caused many fears and doubts amongst themselves. Some, from their reasons and hopes
conceived, labored to stir up and encourage the rest to undertake and prosecute the
same; others, again, out of their fears, objected against it, and sought to divert from it,
alleging many things, and those neither unreasonable nor unprobable; as that it was a
great design and subject to many unconceivable perils and dangers; as, besides the
casualties of the seas (which none can be freed from) the length of the voyage was such,
as the weak bodies of women and other persons worn out with age and travail (as many
of them were) could never be able to endure. And yet if they should, the miseries of the
land which they should be exposed unto, would be too hard to be born; and likely, some
or all of them together, to consume and utterly to ruinate them. For there they should be
liable to famine, and nakedness, and the want, in a manner, of all things. The change of
air, diet, and drinking water, would infect their bodies with sore sickness, and grievous
diseases. And also those which should escape or overcome these difficulties, should yet
be in continual danger of the savage people, who are cruel, barbarous, and most
treacherous, being most furious in their rage, and merciless where they overcome; not
being content only to kill, and take away life, but delight to torment men in the most
bloody manner that may be; flaying some alive with the shells of fishes, cutting of the
members and joints of others by piecemeal and broiling on the coals, eat the collops of
their flesh in their sight whilst they live; with other cruelties horrible to be related. And
surely it could not be thought but the very hearing of these things could not but move
the very bowels of men to grate within them, and make the weak to quake and tremble.
[…]
It was answered, that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great
difficulties, and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courage. It was
granted the dangers were great, but not desperate; the difficulties were many, but not
invincible. For though there were many of them likely, yet they were not certain; it
might be sundry of the things feared might never befall; others by provident care and
the use of good means, might in a great measure be prevented; and all of them, through
the help of God, by fortitude and patience, might either be born, or overcome. True it
was, that such attempts were not to be made and undertaken without good ground and
reason; not rashly or lightly as many have done for curiosity or hope of gain, etc. But
their condition was not ordinary; their ends were good and honorable; their calling
lawful, and urgent; and therefore they might expect the blessing of God in their
proceeding. Yea, though they should lose their lives in this action, yet might they have
comfort in the same, and their endeavors would be honorable. […]
from ch. 9
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Being thus arrived in a good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon
their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the fast and
furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set
their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element. And no marvel if they were
thus joyful, seeing wise Seneca was so affected with sailing a few miles on the coast of
his own Italy, as he affirmed, that he had rather remain twenty years on his way by land
than pass by sea to any place in a short time, so tedious and dreadful was the same unto
him.
But here I cannot but stay and make a pause, and stand half amazed at this poor
people’s present condition; and so I think will the reader, too, when he well considers
the same. Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in their
preparation (as may be remembered by that which went before), they had now no
friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; no
houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor. It is recorded in Scripture as a
mercy to the Apostle and his shipwrecked company, that the barbarians showed them no
small kindness in refreshing them, but these savage barbarians, when they met with
them (as after will appear) were readier to fill their sides full of arrows than otherwise.
And for the season it was winter, and they know that the winters of that country know
them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel
to known places, much more to search an unknown coast. Besides, what could they see
but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men--and what
multitudes there might be of them they knew not. Neither could they, as it were, go up
to the top of Pisgah to view from this wilderness a more goodly country to feed their
hopes; for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to the heavens) they
could have little solace or content in respect of any outward objects. For summer being
done, all things stand upon them with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full
of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue. If they looked behind them,
there was the mighty ocean which they had passed and was now as a main bar and gulf
to separate them from all the civil parts of the world. If it be said they had a ship to
succor them, it is true; but what heard they daily from the master and company? But that
with speed they should look out a place (with their shallop) where they would be, at
some near distance; for the season was such that he would not stir from thence till a safe
harbor was discovered by them, where they would be, and he might go without danger;
and that victuals consumed space but he must and would keep sufficient for themselves
and their return. Yea, it was muttered by some that if they got not a place in time, they
would turn them and their goods ashore and leave them. Let it also be considered what
weak hopes of supply and succor they left behind them, that might bear up their minds
in this sad condition and trials they were under; and they could not but be very small. It
is true, indeed, the affections and love of their brethren at Leyden was cordial and entire
towards them, but they had little power to help them or themselves; and how the case
stood between them and the merchants at their coming away hath already been declared.
What could now sustain them but the Spirit of God and His grace? May not and
ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: “Our fathers were Englishmen which
came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried
unto the Lord, and He heard their voice and looked on their adversity,” etc. “Let them
therefore praise the Lord, because He is good: and his mercies endure forever. Yea, let
them which have been redeemed of the Lord, show how He hath delivered them from
the hand of the oppressor. When they wandered in the desert wilderness out of the way,
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and found no city to dwell in, both hungry and thirsty, their soul was overwhelmed in
them.” “Let them confess before the Lord His lovingkindness and His wonderful works
before the sons of men.”
from ch. 10
[…]
They set forth the 15 of November; and when they had marched about the space
of a mile by the seaside, they espied five or six persons with a dog coming towards
them, who were savages; but they fled from them and ran up into the woods, and the
English followed them, partly to see if they could speak with them, and partly to
discover if there might not be more of them lying in ambush. But the Indians seeing
themselves thus followed, they again forsook the woods and ran away on the sands as
hard as they could, so as they could not come near them but followed them by the track
of their feet sundry miles and saw that they had come the same way. So, night coming
on, they made their rendezvous and set out their sentinels, and rested in quiet that night;
and the next morning followed their track till they had headed a great creek and so left
the sands, and turned another way into the woods. But they still followed them by
guess, hoping to find their dwellings; but they soon lost both them and themselves,
falling into such thickets as were ready to tear their clothes and armor in pieces; but
were most distressed for want of drink. But at length they found water and refreshed
themselves, being the first New England water they drunk of, and was now in great
thirst as pleasant unto them as wine or beer had been in foretimes.
Afterwards, they directed their course to come to the other shore, for they knew
it was a neck of land they were to cross over, and so at length got to the seaside and
marched to this supposed river, and by the way found a pond of clear, fresh water, and
shortly after a good quantity of clear ground where the Indians had formerly set corn,
and some of their graves. And proceeding further they saw new stubble where corn had
been set the same year; also they found where lately a house had been, where some
planks and a great kettle was remaining, and heaps of sand newly paddled with their
hands. Which, they digging up, found in them divers fair Indian baskets filled with corn,
and some in ears, fair and good, of divers colors, which seemed to them a very goodly
sight (having never seen any such before). This was near the place of that supposed
river they came to seek, unto which they went and found it to open itself into two arms
with a high cliff of sand in the entrance but more like to be creeks of salt water than any
fresh, for aught they saw; and that there was good harborage for their shallop, leaving it
further to be discovered by their shallop, when she was ready. So, their time limited
them being expired, they returned to the ship lest they should be in fear of their safety;
and took with them part of the corn and buried up the rest. And so, like the men from
Eshcol, carried with them of the fruits of the land and showed their brethren; of which,
and their return, they were marvelously glad and their hearts encouraged.
After this, the shallop being got ready, they set out again for the better discovery
of this place, and the master of the ship desired to go himself. So there went some thirty
men but found it to be no harbor for ships but only for boats. There was also found two
of their houses covered with mats, and sundry of their implements in them, but the
people were run away and could not be seen. Also there was found more of their corn
and of their beans of various colors; the corn and beans they brought away, purposing to
5
give them full satisfaction when they should meet with any of them as, about some six
months afterward they did, to their good content.
And here is to be noted a special providence of God, and a great mercy to this
poor people, that here they got seed to plant them corn the next year, or else they might
have starved, for they had none nor any likelihood to get any till the season had been
past, as the sequel did manifest. Neither is it likely they had had this, if the first voyage
had not been made, for the ground was now all covered with snow and hard frozen; but
the Lord is never wanting unto His in their greatest needs; let His holy name have all the
praise. . . .
From the second book: The Mayflower Compact (1620)
I shall a little return back, and begin with a combination of made by them before
they came ashore; being the first foundation of their government in this place.
Occasioned partly by the discontented and mutinous speeches that some of the strangers
amongst them had let fall from them in the ship: That when they came ashore they
would use their own liberty, for none had power to command them, the patent they had
being for Virginia and not for New England, which belonged to another government,
with which the Virginia Company had nothing to do. And partly that such an act by
them done, this their condition considered, might be as firm as any patent and in some
respects more sure.
The form was as followeth:
IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN.
We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign
Lord King James, by the Grace of God of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King,
Defender of the faith, etc.
Having undertaken, for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith
and Honor of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the First Colony in the Northern
Parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God
and one of another, Covenant and Combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic,
for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by
virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts,
Constitutions and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and
convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due
submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names
at Cape Cod, the llth of November, in the year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King
James, of England, France and Ireland the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth.
Anno Domini 1620.
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John Winthrop
A Modell of Christian Charity (1630)
WRITTEN ON BOARD THE ARBELLA, ON THE ATLANTIC OCEAN.
By the Hon. John Winthrop Esqr. In his passage (with a great company of Religious people, of which
Christian tribes he was the Brave Leader and famous Governor;) from the Island of Great Brittaine to
New-England in the North America. Anno 1630.
CHRISTIAN CHARITIE.
A Modell hereof.
GOD ALMIGHTY in his most holy and wise providence, hath soe disposed of the
condition of’ mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poore, some high and
eminent in power and dignitie; others mean and in submission.
The Reason hereof.
1 Reas. First to hold conformity with the rest of his world, being delighted to
show forth the glory of his wisdom in the variety and difference of the creatures, and the
glory of his power in ordering all these differences for the preservation and good of the
whole; and the glory of his greatness, that as it is the glory of princes to have many
officers, soe this great king will haue many stewards, Counting himself more honoured
in dispensing his gifts to man by man, than if he did it by his owne immediate hands.
2 Reas. Secondly that he might haue the more occasion to manifest the work of
his Spirit: first upon the wicked in moderating and restraining them: soe that the riche
and mighty should not eate upp the poore nor the poore and dispised rise upp against
and shake off theire yoake. 2ly In the regenerate, in exerciseing his graces in them, as in
the grate ones, theire love, mercy, gentleness, temperance &c., in the poore and inferior
sorte, theire faithe, patience, obedience &c.
3 Reas. Thirdly, that every man might have need of others, and from hence they
might be all knitt more nearly together in the Bonds of brotherly affection. From hence
it appears plainly that noe man is made more honourable than another or more wealthy
&c., out of any particular and singular respect to himselfe, but for the glory of his
creator and the common good of the creature, man. […] All men being thus (by divine
providence) ranked into two sorts, riche and poore; under the first are comprehended all
such as are able to live comfortably by their own meanes duely improved; and all others
are poore according to the former distribution. There are two rules whereby we are to
walk one towards another: Justice and Mercy.
[…]
Thus stands the cause betweene God and us. We are entered into Covenant with
Him for this worke. Wee haue taken out a commission. The Lord hath given us leave to
drawe our own articles. Wee haue professed to enterprise these and those accounts, upon
these and those ends. Wee have hereupon besought Him of favour and blessing. Now if
the Lord shall please to heare us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath
hee ratified this covenant and sealed our Commission, and will expect a strict
performance of the articles contained in it; but if wee shall neglect the observation of
these articles which are the ends wee have propounded, and, dissembling with our God,
shall fall to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnall intentions, seeking
greate things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely breake out in wrathe
against us; be revenged of such a [sinful] people and make us knowe the price of the
breache of such a covenant.
Now the onely way to avoyde this shipwracke, and to provide for our posterity,
is to followe the counsell of Micah, to doe justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our
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God. For this end, wee must be knitt together, in this worke, as one man. Wee must
entertaine each other in brotherly affection. Wee must be willing to abridge ourselves of
our superfluities, for the supply of other’s necessities. Wee must uphold a familiar
commerce together in all meekeness, gentlenes, patience and liberality. Wee must
delight in eache other; make other’s conditions our oune; rejoice together, mourne
together, labour and suffer together, allwayes haueving before our eyes our commission
and community in the worke, as members of the same body. Soe shall wee keepe the
unitie of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell
among us, as his oune people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our wayes.
Soe that wee shall see much more of his wisdome, power, goodness and truthe, than
formerly wee haue been acquainted with. Wee shall finde that the God of Israell is
among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when hee
shall make us a prayse and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “the Lord
make it likely that of New England.” For wee must consider that wee shall be as a citty
upon a hill. The eies of all people are uppon us. Soe that if wee shall deale falsely with
our God in this worke wee haue undertaken, and soe cause him to withdrawe his present
help from us, wee shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. Wee shall
open the mouthes of enemies to speake evill of the wayes of God, and all professors for
God’s sake. Wee shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause
theire prayers to be turned into curses upon us till wee be consumed out of the good
land whither wee are a goeing.
I shall shutt upp this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithfull
servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israell, Deut. 30. Beloued there is now sett
before us life and good, Death and evill, in that wee are commanded this day to loue the
Lord our God, and to loue one another, to walke in his wayes and to keepe his
Commandements and his Ordinance and his lawes, and the articles of our Covenant
with him, that wee may liue and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may blesse us
in the land whither wee goe to possesse it. But if our heartes shall turne away, soe that
wee will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worshipp and serue other Gods, our
pleasure and proffitts, and serue them; it is propounded unto us this day, wee shall
surely perishe out of the good land whither wee passe over this vast sea to possesse it;
Therefore lett us choose life
that wee, and our seede
may liue, by obeyeing His
voyce and cleaveing to Him,
for Hee is our life and
our prosperity.
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Mary Rowlandson
from: Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
The sovereignty and goodness of GOD, together with the faithfulness of his promises displayed, being
a narrative of the captivity and restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, commended by her, to all that
desires to know the Lord’s doings to, and dealings with her. Especially to her dear children and
relations. The second Addition [sic] Corrected and amended. Written by her own hand for her private
use, and now made public at the earnest desire of some friends, and for the benefit of the afflicted.
Deut. 32.39. See now that I, even I am he, and there is no god with me, I kill and I make alive, I
wound and I heal, neither is there any can deliver out of my hand.
On the tenth of February 1675, came the Indians with great numbers upon
Lancaster: their first coming was about sunrising; hearing the noise of some guns, we
looked out; several houses were burning, and the smoke ascending to heaven. There
were five persons taken in one house; the father, and the mother and a sucking child,
they knocked on the head; the other two they took and carried away alive. There were
two others, who being out of their garrison upon some occasion were set upon; one was
knocked on the head, the other escaped; another there was who running along was shot
and wounded, and fell down; he begged of them his life, promising them money (as
they told me) but they would not hearken to him but knocked him in head, and stripped
him naked, and split open his bowels. Another, seeing many of the Indians about his
barn, ventured and went out, but was quickly shot down. There were three others
belonging to the same garrison who were killed; the Indians getting up upon the roof of
the barn, had advantage to shoot down upon them over their fortification. Thus these
murderous wretches went on, burning, and destroying before them.
At length they came and beset our own house, and quickly it was the dolefulest
day that ever mine eyes saw. The house stood upon the edge of a hill; some of the
Indians got behind the hill, others into the barn, and others behind anything that could
shelter them; from all which places they shot against the house, so that the bullets
seemed to fly like hail; and quickly they wounded one man among us, then another, and
then a third. About two hours (according to my observation, in that amazing time) they
had been about the house before they prevailed to fire it (which they did with flax and
hemp, which they brought out of the barn, and there being no defense about the house,
only two flankers at two opposite corners and one of them not finished); they fired it
once and one ventured out and quenched it, but they quickly fired it again, and that
took. Now is the dreadful hour come, that I have often heard of (in time of war, as it
was the case of others), but now mine eyes see it. Some in our house were fighting for
their lives, others wallowing in their blood, the house on fire over our heads, and the
bloody heathen ready to knock us on the head, if we stirred out. Now might we hear
mothers and children crying out for themselves, and one another, “Lord, what shall we
do?” Then I took my children (and one of my sisters’, hers) to go forth and leave the
house: but as soon as we came to the door and appeared, the Indians shot so thick that
the bullets rattled against the house, as if one had taken an handful of stones and threw
them, so that we were fain to give back. We had six stout dogs belonging to our
garrison, but none of them would stir, though another time, if any Indian had come to
the door, they were ready to fly upon him and tear him down. The Lord hereby would
make us the more acknowledge His hand, and to see that our help is always in Him.
But out we must go, the fire increasing, and coming along behind us, roaring, and the
Indians gaping before us with their guns, spears, and hatchets to devour us. No sooner
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were we out of the house, but my brother-in-law (being before wounded, in defending
the house, in or near the throat) fell down dead, whereat the Indians scornfully shouted,
and hallowed, and were presently upon him, stripping off his clothes, the bullets flying
thick, one went through my side, and the same (as would seem) through the bowels and
hand of my dear child in my arms. One of my elder sisters’ children, named William,
had then his leg broken, which the Indians perceiving, they knocked him on [his] head.
Thus were we butchered by those merciless heathen, standing amazed, with the blood
running down to our heels. My eldest sister being yet in the house, and seeing those
woeful sights, the infidels hauling mothers one way, and children another, and some
wallowing in their blood: and her elder son telling her that her son William was dead,
and myself was wounded, she said, “And Lord, let me die with them,” which was no
sooner said, but she was struck with a bullet, and fell down dead over the threshold. I
hope she is reaping the fruit of her good labors, being faithful to the service of God in
her place. In her younger years she lay under much trouble upon spiritual accounts, till
it pleased God to make that precious scripture take hold of her heart, “And he said unto
me, my Grace is sufficient for thee” (2 Corinthians 12.9). More than twenty years after,
I have heard her tell how sweet and comfortable that place was to her. But to return:
the Indians laid hold of us, pulling me one way, and the children another, and said,
“Come go along with us”; I told them they would kill me: they answered, if I were
willing to go along with them, they would not hurt me.
Oh the doleful sight that now was to behold at this house! “Come, behold the
works of the Lord, what desolations he has made in the earth.” Of thirty-seven persons
who were in this one house, none escaped either present death, or a bitter captivity, save
only one, who might say as he, “And I only am escaped alone to tell the News” (Job
1.15). There were twelve killed, some shot, some stabbed with their spears, some
knocked down with their hatchets. When we are in prosperity, Oh the little that we
think of such dreadful sights, and to see our dear friends, and relations lie bleeding out
their heart-blood upon the ground. There was one who was chopped into the head with
a hatchet, and stripped naked, and yet was crawling up and down. It is a solemn sight to
see so many Christians lying in their blood, some here, and some there, like a company
of sheep torn by wolves, all of them stripped naked by a company of hell-hounds,
roaring, singing, ranting, and insulting, as if they would have torn our very hearts out;
yet the Lord by His almighty power preserved a number of us from death, for there were
twenty-four of us taken alive and carried captive.
I had often before this said that if the Indians should come, I should choose
rather to be killed by them than taken alive, but when it came to the trial my mind
changed; their glittering weapons so daunted my spirit, that I chose rather to go along
with those (as I may say) ravenous beasts, than that moment to end my days; and that I
may the better declare what happened to me during that grievous captivity, I shall
particularly speak of the several removes we had up and down the wilderness.
[…]
The Eighteenth Remove
We took up our packs and along we went, but a wearisome day I had of it. As we
went along I saw an Englishman stripped naked, and lying dead upon the ground, but
knew not who it was. Then we came to another Indian town, where we stayed all night.
In this town there were four English children, captives; and one of them my own
sister’s. I went to see how she did, and she was well, considering her captive condition.
I would have tarried that night with her, but they that owned her would not suffer it.
10
Then I went into another wigwam, where they were boiling corn and beans, which was
a lovely sight to see, but I could not get a taste thereof. Then I went to another wigwam,
where there were two of the English children; the squaw was boiling horses feet; then
she cut me off a little piece, and gave one of the English children a piece also. Being
very hungry I had quickly eat up mine, but the child could not bite it, it was so tough
and sinewy, but lay sucking, gnawing, chewing and slabbering of it in the mouth and
hand. Then I took it of the child, and eat it myself, and savory it was to my taste. Then I
may say as Job 6.7, “The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful
meat.” Thus the Lord made that pleasant refreshing, which another time would have
been an abomination. Then I went home to my mistress’s wigwam; and they told me I
disgraced my master with begging, and if I did so any more, they would knock me in
the head. I told them, they had as good knock me in head as starve me to death.
11
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
from: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
(Enfield, Connecticut July 8, 1741)
--Their foot shall slide in due time.-Deuteronomy 32:35
In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked unbelieving
Israelites, who were God’s visible people, and who lived under the means of grace; but
who, notwithstanding all God’s wonderful works towards them, remained (as vers 28.)
void of counsel, having no understanding in them. Under all the cultivations of heaven,
they brought forth bitter and poisonous fruit; as in the two verses next preceding the
text. -- The expression I have chosen for my text, their foot shall slide in due time,
seems to imply the following things, relating to the punishment and destruction to
which these wicked Israelites were exposed.
1. That they were always exposed to destruction; as one that stands or walks in
slippery places is always exposed to fall. This is implied in the manner of their
destruction coming upon them, being represented by their foot sliding. The same
is expressed, Psalm 72:18. “Surely thou didst set them in slippery places; thou
castedst them down into destruction.”
2. It implies, that they were always exposed to sudden unexpected destruction. As
he that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall, he cannot foresee
one moment whether he shall stand or fall the next; and when he does fall, he
falls at once without warning: Which is also expressed in Psalm 73:18,19.
“Surely thou didst set them in slippery places; thou castedst them down into
destruction: How are they brought into desolation as in a moment!”
3. Another thing implied is, that they are liable to fall of themselves, without being
thrown down by the hand of another; as he that stands or walks on slippery
ground needs nothing but his own weight to throw him down.
4. That the reason why they are not fallen already and do not fall now is only that
God’s appointed time is not come. For it is said, that when that due time, or
appointed time comes, their foot shall slide. Then they shall be left to fall, as
they are inclined by their own weight. God will not hold them up in these
slippery places any longer, but will let them go; and then, at that very instant,
they shall fall into destruction; as he that stands on such slippery declining
ground, on the edge of a pit, he cannot stand alone, when he is let go he
immediately falls and is lost.
1. The observation from the words that I would now insist upon is this. -- “There is
nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere
pleasure of God.” -- By the mere pleasure of God, I mean his sovereign
pleasure, his arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation, hindered by no manner
of difficulty, any more than if nothing else but God’s mere will had in the least
degree, or in any respect whatsoever, any hand in the preservation of wicked
men one moment. […]
So that it is not because God is unmindful of their wickedness, and does not resent it,
that he does not let loose his hand and cut them off. God is not altogether such an one
as themselves, though they may imagine him to be so. The wrath of God burns
against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, the fire is made
ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and
12
glow. The glittering sword is whet, and held over them, and the pit hath opened its
mouth under them.
[…]
So that, thus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they
have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully
provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the
executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least
to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold
them up one moment; the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames
gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; the
fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out: and they have no interest in
any Mediator, there are no means within reach that can be any security to them. In short,
they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of; all that preserves them every moment is
the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted, unobliged forbearance of an incensed God.
Application
The use of this awful subject may be for awakening unconverted persons in this
congregation. This that you have heard is the case of every one of you that are out of
Christ. -- That world of misery, that take of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under
you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell’s
wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor any thing to take
hold of; there is nothing between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere
pleasure of God that holds you up.
You probably are not sensible of this; you find you are kept out of hell, but do not see
the hand of God in it; but look at other things, as the good state of your bodily
constitution, your care of your own life, and the means you use for your own
preservation. But indeed these things are nothing; if God should withdraw his hand,
they would avail no more to keep you from falling, than the thin air to hold up a person
that is suspended in it.
Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great
weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately
sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy
constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your
righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell,
than a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock. Were it not for the sovereign
pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a burden to it;
the creation groans with you; the creature is made subject to the bondage of your
corruption, not willingly; the sun does not willingly shine upon you to give you light to
serve sin and Satan; the earth does not willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts;
nor is it willingly a stage for your wickedness to be acted upon; the air does not
willingly serve you for breath to maintain the flame of life in your vitals, while you
spend your life in the service of God’s enemies. God’s creatures are good, and were
made for men to serve God with, and do not willingly subserve to any other purpose,
and groan when they are abused to purposes so directly contrary to their nature and end.
And the world would spew you out, were it not for the sovereign hand of him who hath
subjected it in hope. There are the black clouds of God’s wrath now hanging directly
over your heads, full of the dreadful storm, and big with thunder; and were it not for the
restraining hand of God, it would immediately burst forth upon you. The sovereign
pleasure of God, for the present, stays his rough wind; otherwise it would come with
13
fury, and your destruction would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like the
chaff on the summer threshing floor.
The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase
more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the
stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose. It is
true, that judgment against your evil works has not been executed hitherto; the floods of
God’s vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in the mean time is constantly
increasing, and you are every day treasuring up more wrath; the waters are constantly
rising, and waxing more and more mighty; and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of
God, that holds the waters back, that are unwilling to be stopped, and press hard to go
forward. If God should only withdraw his hand from the flood-gate, it would
immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God, would
rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power;
and if your strength were ten thousand times greater than it is, yea, ten thousand times
greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would be nothing to
withstand or endure it.
The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice
bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere
pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that
keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that
never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God
upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised
from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and
life, are in the hands of an angry God. […]
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some
loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath
towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast
into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten
thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is
in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince;
and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.
It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was
suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is
no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the
morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why
you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his
pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is
nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down
into hell.
[…]
And let every one that is yet out of Christ, and hanging over the pit of hell, whether they
be old men and women, or middle aged, or young people, or little children, now hearken
to the loud calls of God’s word and providence. This acceptable year of the Lord, a day
of such great favour to some, will doubtless be a day of as remarkable vengeance to
others. Men’s hearts harden, and their guilt increases apace at such a day as this, if they
neglect their souls; and never was there so great danger of such persons being given up
to hardness of heart and blindness of mind. God seems now to be hastily gathering in
his elect in all parts of the land; and probably the greater part of adult persons that ever
14
shall be saved, will be brought in now in a little time, and that it will be as it was on the
great out-pouring of the Spirit upon the Jews in the apostles’ days; the election will
obtain, and the rest will be blinded. If this should be the case with you, you will
eternally curse this day, and will curse the day that ever you was born, to see such a
season of the pouring out of God’s Spirit, and will wish that you had died and gone to
hell before you had seen it. Now undoubtedly it is, as it was in the days of John the
Baptist, the axe is in an extraordinary manner laid at the root of the trees, that every tree
which brings not forth good fruit, may be hewn down and cast into the fire.
Therefore, let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to
come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this
congregation. Let every one fly out of Sodom: “Haste and escape for your lives, look
not behind you, escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed.”
15
REVOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE
Benjamin Franklin
from: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
TWYFORD, at the Bishop of St. Asaph’s, 1771.
DEAR SON: I have ever had pleasure in obtaining any little anecdotes of my ancestors.
You may remember the inquiries I made among the remains of my relations when you
were with me in England, and the journey I undertook for that purpose. Imagining it
may be equally agreeable to you to know the circumstances of my life, many of which
you are yet unacquainted with, and expecting the enjoyment of a week’s uninterrupted
leisure in my present country retirement, I sit down to write them for you. To which I
have besides some other inducements. Having emerged from the poverty and obscurity
in which I was born and bred, to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in
the world, and having gone so far through life with a considerable share of felicity, the
conducing means I made use of, which with the blessing of God so well succeeded, my
posterity may like to know, as they may find some of them suitable to their own
situations, and therefore fit to be imitated.
That felicity, when I reflected on it, has induced me sometimes to say, that were it
offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from
its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct
some faults of the first. So I might, besides correcting the faults, change some sinister
accidents and events of it for others more favorable. But though this were denied, I
should still accept the offer. Since such a repetition is not to be expected, the next
thing most like living one’s life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and
to make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing.
Hereby, too, I shall indulge the inclination so natural in old men, to be talking of
themselves and their own past actions; and I shall indulge it without being tiresome to
others, who, through respect to age, might conceive themselves obliged to give me a
hearing, since this may be read or not as any one pleases. And, lastly (I may as well
confess it, since my denial of it will be believed by nobody), perhaps I shall a good deal
gratify my own vanity. Indeed, I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory
words,”Without vanity I may say,” &c., but some vain thing immediately followed.
Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I
give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of
good to the possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in
many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity
among the other comforts of life.
And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with all humility to acknowledge
that I owe the mentioned happiness of my past life to His kind providence, which lead
me to the means I used and gave them success. My belief of this induces me to hope,
though I must not presume, that the same goodness will still be exercised toward me, in
continuing that happiness, or enabling me to bear a fatal reverse, which I may
experience as others have done: the complexion of my future fortune being known to
Him only in whose power it is to bless to us even our afflictions.
16
[…]
Josiah, my father, married young, and carried his wife with three children into
New England, about 1682. The conventicles having been forbidden by law, and
frequently disturbed, induced some considerable men of his acquaintance to remove to
that country, and he was prevailed with to accompany them thither, where they expected
to enjoy their mode of religion with freedom. By the same wife he had four children
more born there, and by a second wife ten more, in all seventeen; of which I remember
thirteen sitting at one time at his table, who all grew up to be men and women, and
married; I was the youngest son, and the youngest child but two, and was born in
Boston, New England. My mother, the second wife, was Abiah Folger, daughter of Peter
Folger, one of the first settlers of New England, of whom honorable mention is made by
Cotton Mather in his church history of that country, entitled Magnalia Christi
Americana, as “a godly, learned Englishman,” if I remember the words rightly. I have
heard that he wrote sundry small occasional pieces, but only one of them was printed,
which I saw now many years since. It was written in 1675, in the home-spun verse of
that time and people, and addressed to those then concerned in the government there. It
was in favor of liberty of conscience, and in behalf of the Baptists, Quakers, and other
sectaries that had been under persecution, ascribing the Indian wars, and other distresses
that had befallen the country, to that persecution, as so many judgments of God to
punish so heinous an offense, and exhorting a repeal of those uncharitable laws.
[…]
My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the
grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of
his sons, to the service of the Church. My early readiness in learning to read (which
must have been very early, as I do not remember when I could not read), and the
opinion of all his friends, that I should certainly make a good scholar, encouraged him
in this purpose of his. My uncle Benjamin, too, approved of it, and proposed to give me
all his short-hand volumes of sermons, I suppose as a stock to set up with, if I would
learn his character. I continued, however, at the grammar-school not quite one year,
though in that time I had risen gradually from the middle of the class of that year to be
the head of it, and farther was removed into the next class above it, in order to go with
that into the third at the end of the year. But my father, in the meantime, from a view of
the expense of a college education, which having so large a family he could not well
afford, and the mean living many so educated were afterwards able to obtain -- reasons
that be gave to his friends in my hearing -- altered his first intention, took me from the
grammar-school, and sent me to a school for writing and arithmetic, kept by a then
famous man, Mr. George Brownell, very successful in his profession generally, and that
by mild, encouraging methods. Under him I acquired fair writing pretty soon, but I
failed in the arithmetic, and made no progress in it. At ten years old I was taken home to
assist my father in his business, which was that of a tallow-chandler and sope-boiler; a
business he was not bred to, but had assumed on his arrival in New England, and on
finding his dying trade would not maintain his family, being in little request.
Accordingly, I was employed in cutting wick for the candles, filling the dipping mold
and the molds for cast candles, attending the shop, going of errands, etc.
I disliked the trade, and had a strong inclination for the sea, but my father
declared against it; however, living near the water, I was much in and about it, learnt
early to swim well, and to manage boats; and when in a boat or canoe with other boys, I
was commonly allowed to govern, especially in any case of difficulty; and upon other
17
occasions I was generally a leader among the boys, and sometimes led them into
scrapes, of which I will mention one instance, as it shows an early projecting public
spirit, tho’ not then justly conducted.
There was a salt-marsh that bounded part of the mill-pond, on the edge of
which, at high water, we used to stand to fish for minnows. By much trampling, we had
made it a mere quagmire. My proposal was to build a wharff there fit for us to stand
upon, and I showed my comrades a large heap of stones, which were intended for a new
house near the marsh, and which would very well suit our purpose. Accordingly, in the
evening, when the workmen were gone, I assembled a number of my play-fellows, and
working with them diligently like so many emmets, sometimes two or three to a stone,
we brought them all away and built our little wharff. The next morning the workmen
were surprised at missing the stones, which were found in our wharff. Inquiry was made
after the removers; we were discovered and complained of; several of us were corrected
by our fathers; and though I pleaded the usefulness of the work, mine convinced me that
nothing was useful which was not honest.
I think you may like to know something of his person and character. He had an
excellent constitution of body, was of middle stature, but well set, and very strong; he
was ingenious, could draw prettily, was skilled a little in music, and had a clear
pleasing voice, so that when he played psalm tunes on his violin and sung withal, as
he sometimes did in an evening after the business of the day was over, it was
extremely agreeable to hear. He had a mechanical genius too, and, on occasion, was
very handy in the use of other tradesmen’s tools; but his great excellence lay in a
sound understanding and solid judgment in prudential matters, both in private and
publick affairs. In the latter, indeed, he was never employed, the numerous family he
had to educate and the straitness of his circumstances keeping him close to his trade;
but I remember well his being frequently visited by leading people, who consulted
him for his opinion in affairs of the town or of the church he belonged to, and
showed a good deal of respect for his judgment and advice: he was also much
consulted by private persons about their affairs when any difficulty occurred, and
frequently chosen an arbitrator between contending parties.
At his table he liked to have, as often as he could, some sensible friend or
neighbor to converse with, and always took care to start some ingenious or useful topic
for discourse, which might tend to improve the minds of his children. By this means he
turned our attention to what was good, just, and prudent in the conduct of life; and little
or no notice was ever taken of what related to the victuals on the table, whether it was
well or ill dressed, in or out of season, of good or bad flavor, preferable or inferior to
this or that other thing of the kind, so that I was bro’t up in such a perfect inattention to
those matters as to be quite indifferent what kind of food was set before me, and so
unobservant of it, that to this day if I am asked I can scarce tell a few hours after dinner
what I dined upon. This has been a convenience to me in travelling, where my
companions have been sometimes very unhappy for want of a suitable gratification of
their more delicate, because better instructed, tastes and appetites.
My mother had likewise an excellent constitution: she suckled all her ten
children. I never knew either my father or mother to have any sickness but that of which
they dy’d, he at 89, and she at 85 years of age. They lie buried together at Boston, where
I some years since placed a marble over their grave, with this inscription:
JOSIAH FRANKLIN,
and
18
ABIAH his Wife,
lie here interred.
They lived lovingly together in wedlock
fifty-five years.
Without an estate, or any gainful employment,
By constant labor and industry,
with God’s blessing,
They maintained a large family
comfortably,
and brought up thirteen children
and seven grandchildren
reputably.
From this instance, reader,
Be encouraged to diligence in thy calling,
And distrust not Providence.
He was a pious and prudent man;
She, a discreet and virtuous woman.
Their youngest son,
In filial regard to their memory,
Places this stone.
J.F. born 1655, died 1744, AEtat 89.
A.F. born 1667, died 1752, -- -- -95.
By my rambling digressions I perceive myself to be grown old. I us’d to write
more methodically. But one does not dress for private company as for a publick ball.
‘Tis perhaps only negligence.
To return: I continued thus employed in my father’s business for two years, that is,
till I was twelve years old; and my brother John, who was bred to that business,
having left my father, married, and set up for himself at Rhode Island, there was all
appearance that I was destined to supply his place, and become a tallow-chandler.
But my dislike to the trade continuing, my father was under apprehensions that if he
did not find one for me more agreeable, I should break away and get to sea, as his
son Josiah had done, to his great vexation. He therefore sometimes took me to walk
with him, and see joiners, bricklayers, turners, braziers, etc., at their work, that he
might observe my inclination, and endeavor to fix it on some trade or other on land.
It has ever since been a pleasure to me to see good workmen handle their tools; and it
has been useful to me, having learnt so much by it as to be able to do little jobs
myself in my house when a workman could not readily be got, and to construct little
machines for my experiments, while the intention of making the experiment was
fresh and warm in my mind. My father at last fixed upon the cutler’s trade, and my
uncle Benjamin’s son Samuel, who was bred to that business in London, being about
that time established in Boston, I was sent to be with him some time on liking. But
his expectations of a fee with me displeasing my father, I was taken home again.
From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my
hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the Pilgrim’s Progress, my first
collection was of John Bunyan’s works in separate little volumes. I afterward sold them
to enable me to buy R. Burton’s Historical Collections; they were small chapmen’s
books, and cheap, 40 or 50 in all. My father’s little library consisted chiefly of books in
polemic divinity, most of which I read, and have since often regretted that, at a time
19
when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper books had not fallen in my way
since it was now resolved I should not be a clergyman. Plutarch’s Lives there was in
which I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to great advantage. There was
also a book of De Foe’s, called an Essay on Projects, and another of Dr. Mather’s, called
Essays to do Good, which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on
some of the principal future events of my life.
This bookish inclination at length determined my father to make me a printer,
though he had already one son (James) of that profession. In 1717 my brother James
returned from England with a press and letters to set up his business in Boston. I
liked it much better than that of my father, but still had a hankering for the sea. To
prevent the apprehended effect of such an inclination, my father was impatient to
have me bound to my brother. I stood out some time, but at last was persuaded, and
signed the indentures when I was yet but twelve years old. I was to serve as an
apprentice till I was twenty-one years of age, only I was to be allowed journeyman’s
wages during the last year. In a little time I made great proficiency in the business,
and became a useful hand to my brother. I now had access to better books. An
acquaintance with the apprentices of booksellers enabled me sometimes to borrow a
small one, which I was careful to return soon and clean. Often I sat up in my room
reading the greatest part of the night, when the book was borrowed in the evening
and to be returned early in the morning, lest it should be missed or wanted.
[…]
There was another bookish lad in the town, John Collins by name, with whom I
was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed, and very fond we were of
argument, and very desirous of confuting one another, which disputatious turn, by the
way, is apt to become a very bad habit, making people often extremely disagreeable
in company by the contradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice; and thence,
besides souring and spoiling the conversation, is productive of disgusts and, perhaps
enmities where you may have occasion for friendship. I had caught it by reading my
father’s books of dispute about religion. Persons of good sense, I have since
observed, seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts
that have been bred at Edinborough.
[…].
About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. It was the third. I
had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much
delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it.
With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in
each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, try’d to
compleat the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as
it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I
compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected
them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using
them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making
verses; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different
length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me
under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that
variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and
turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose,
turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into
20
confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I
began to form the full sentences and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method
in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I
discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of
fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve
the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time
come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious. My time for
these exercises and for reading was at night, after work or before it began in the
morning, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the printing-house alone, evading as
much as I could the common attendance on public worship which my father used to
exact on me when I was under his care, and which indeed I still thought a duty, though I
could not, as it seemed to me, afford time to practise it.
When about 16 years of age I happened to meet with a book, written by one Tryon,
recommending a vegetable diet. I determined to go into it. My brother, being yet
unmarried, did not keep house, but boarded himself and his apprentices in another
family. My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently
chid for my singularity. I made myself acquainted with Tryon’s manner of preparing
some of his dishes, such as boiling potatoes or rice, making hasty pudding, and a few
others, and then proposed to my brother, that if he would give me, weekly, half the
money he paid for my board, I would board myself. He instantly agreed to it, and I
presently found that I could save half what he paid me. This was an additional fund
for buying books. But I had another advantage in it. My brother and the rest going
from the printing-house to their meals, I remained there alone, and, despatching
presently my light repast, which often was no more than a bisket or a slice of bread, a
handful of raisins or a tart from the pastry-cook’s, and a glass of water, had the rest
of the time till their return for study, in which I made the greater progress, from that
greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which usually attend temperance
in eating and drinking.
[…]
While I was intent on improving my language, I met with an English grammar
(I think it was Greenwood’s), at the end of which there were two little sketches of the
arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic
method; and soon after I procur’d Xenophon’s Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein
there are many instances of the same method. I was charm’d with it, adopted it, dropt
my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and
doubter. And being then, from reading Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter
in many points of our religious doctrine, I found this method safest for myself and very
embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore I took a delight in it, practis’d it
continually, and grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior
knowledge, into concessions, the consequences of which they did not foresee,
entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so
obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved. I continu’d this
method some few years, but gradually left it, retaining only the habit of expressing
myself in terms of modest diffidence; never using, when I advanced any thing that may
possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the air of
positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and
so; it appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such reasons; or ,I
imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken. This habit, I believe, has been of
21
great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions, and persuade
men into measures that I have been from time to time engag’d in promoting; and, as the
chief ends of conversation are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I
wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a
positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and
to defeat every one of those purposes for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or
receiving information or pleasure. For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical
manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid
attention. If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and
yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fix’d in your present opinions, modest,
sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the
possession of your error. And by such a manner, you can seldom hope to recommend
yourself in pleasing your hearers, or to persuade those whose concurrence you desire.
[…]
My brother had, in 1720 or 1721, begun to print a newspaper. It was the
second that appeared in America, and was called the New England Courant. The only
one before it was the Boston News-Letter. I remember his being dissuaded by some of
his friends from the undertaking, as not likely to succeed, one newspaper being, in their
judgment, enough for America. At this time (1771) there are not less than five-andtwenty. He went on, however, with the undertaking, and after having worked in
composing the types and printing off the sheets, I was employed to carry the papers
thro’ the streets to the customers.
He had some ingenious men among his friends, who amus’d themselves by
writing little pieces for this paper, which gain’d it credit and made it more in demand,
and these gentlemen often visited us. Hearing their conversations, and their accounts of
the approbation their papers were received with, I was excited to try my hand among
them; but, being still a boy, and suspecting that my brother would object to printing
anything of mine in his paper if he knew it to be mine, I contrived to disguise my hand,
and, writing an anonymous paper, I put it in at night under the door of the printinghouse. It was found in the morning, and communicated to his writing friends when they
call’d in as usual. They read it, commented on it in my hearing, and I had the exquisite
pleasure of finding it met with their approbation, and that, in their different guesses at
the author, none were named but men of some character among us for learning and
ingenuity. I suppose now that I was rather lucky in my judges, and that perhaps they
were not really so very good ones as I then esteem’d them.
Encourag’d, however, by this, I wrote and convey’d in the same way to the press
several more papers which were equally approv’d; and I kept my secret till my small
fund of sense for such performances was pretty well exhausted and then I discovered
it, when I began to be considered a little more by my brother’s acquaintance, and in a
manner that did not quite please him, as he thought, probably with reason, that it
tended to make me too vain. And, perhaps, this might be one occasion of the
differences that we began to have about this time. Though a brother, he considered
himself as my master, and me as his apprentice, and accordingly, expected the same
services from me as he would from another, while I thought he demean’d me too
much in some he requir’d of me, who from a brother expected more indulgence. […]
At length, a fresh difference arising between my brother and me, I took upon
me to assert my freedom, presuming that he would not venture to produce the new
indentures. It was not fair in me to take this advantage, and this I therefore reckon one
22
of the first errata of my life; but the unfairness of it weighed little with me, when under
the impressions of resentment for the blows his passion too often urged him to bestow
upon me, though he was otherwise not an ill-natur’d man: perhaps I was too saucy and
provoking.
When he found I would leave him, he took care to prevent my getting employment
in any other printing-house of the town, by going round and speaking to every
master, who accordingly refus’d to give me work. I then thought of going to New
York, as the nearest place where there was a printer; and I was rather inclin’d to leave
Boston when I reflected that I had already made myself a little obnoxious to the
governing party, and, from the arbitrary proceedings of the Assembly in my brother’s
case, it was likely I might, if I stay’d, soon bring myself into scrapes; and farther, that
my indiscrete disputations about religion began to make me pointed at with horror by
good people as an infidel or atheist. I determin’d on the point, but my father now
siding with my brother, I was sensible that, if I attempted to go openly, means would
be used to prevent me. My friend Collins, therefore, undertook to manage a little for
me. He agreed with the captain of a New York sloop for my passage, under the
notion of my being a young acquaintance of his, that had got a naughty girl with
child, whose friends would compel me to marry her, and therefore I could not appear
or come away publicly. So I sold some of my books to raise a little money, was taken
on board privately, and as we had a fair wind, in three days I found myself in New
York, near 300 miles from home, a boy of but 17, without the least recommendation
to, or knowledge of any person in the place, and with very little money in my pocket.
[…]
I have been the more particular in this description of my journey, and shall be so
of my first entry into that city, that you may in your mind compare such unlikely
beginnings with the figure I have since made there. I was in my working dress, my best
cloaths being to come round by sea. I was dirty from my journey; my pockets were
stuff’d out with shirts and stockings, and I knew no soul nor where to look for lodging. I
was fatigued with travelling, rowing, and want of rest, I was very hungry; and my whole
stock of cash consisted of a Dutch dollar, and about a shilling in copper. The latter I
gave the people of the boat for my passage, who at first refus’d it, on account of my
rowing; but I insisted on their taking it. A man being sometimes more generous when he
has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps thro’ fear of being thought to
have but little.
Then I walked up the street, gazing about till near the market-house I met a boy
with bread. I had made many a meal on bread, and, inquiring where he got it, I went
immediately to the baker’s he directed me to, in Second-street, and ask’d for bisket,
intending such as we had in Boston; but they, it seems, were not made in
Philadelphia. Then I asked for a three-penny loaf, and was told they had none such.
So not considering or knowing the difference of money, and the greater cheapness
nor the names of his bread, I made him give me three-penny worth of any sort. He
gave me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls. I was surpriz’d at the quantity, but took
it, and, having no room in my pockets, walk’d off with a roll under each arm, and
eating the other. Thus I went up Market-street as far as Fourth-street, passing by the
door of Mr. Read, my future wife’s father; when she, standing at the door, saw me,
and thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appearance. Then
I turned and went down Chestnut-street and part of Walnut-street, eating my roll all
the way, and, corning round, found myself again at Market-street wharf, near the boat
23
I came in, to which I went for a draught of the river water; and, being filled with one
of my rolls, gave the other two to a woman and her child that came down the river in
the boat with us, and were waiting to go farther.
[…]
Before I enter upon my public appearance in business, it may be well to let
you know the then state of my mind with regard to my principles and morals, that you
may see how far those influenc’d the future events of my life. My parents had early
given me religious impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the
Dissenting way. But I was scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by turns of several
points, as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of
Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be
the substance of sermons preached at Boyle’s Lectures. It happened that they wrought
an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the
Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the
refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist. […] I grew convinc’d that truth,
sincerity and integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance
to the felicity of life; and I form’d written resolutions, which still remain in my journal
book, to practice them ever while I lived. Revelation had indeed no weight with me, as
such; but I entertain’d an opinion that, though certain actions might not be bad because
they were forbidden by it, or good because it commanded them, yet probably these
actions might be forbidden because they were bad for us, or commanded because they
were beneficial to us, in their own natures, all the circumstances of things considered.
And this persuasion, with the kind hand of Providence, or some guardian angel, or
accidental favorable circumstances and situations, or all together, preserved me, thro’
this dangerous time of youth, and the hazardous situations I was sometimes in among
strangers, remote from the eye and advice of my father, without any willful gross
immorality or injustice, that might have been expected from my want of religion. I say
willful, because the instances I have mentioned had something of necessity in them,
from my youth, inexperience, and the knavery of others. I had therefore a tolerable
character to begin the world with; I valued it properly, and determin’d to preserve it.
[…]
But this affair having turned my thoughts to marriage, I look’d round me and
made overtures of acquaintance in other places; but soon found that, the business of a
printer being generally thought a poor one, I was not to expect money with a wife,
unless with such a one as I should not otherwise think agreeable. In the mean time, that
hard-to-be-governed passion of youth hurried me frequently into intrigues with low
women that fell in my way, which were attended with some expense and great
inconvenience, besides a continual risque to my health by a distemper which of all
things I dreaded, though by great good luck I escaped it. A friendly correspondence as
neighbors and old acquaintances had continued between me and Mrs. Read’s family,
who all had a regard for me from the time of my first lodging in their house. I was often
invited there and consulted in their affairs, wherein I sometimes was of service. I piti’d
poor Miss Read’s unfortunate situation, who was generally dejected, seldom cheerful,
and avoided company. I considered my giddiness and inconstancy when in London as in
a great degree the cause of her unhappiness, tho’ the mother was good enough to think
the fault more her own than mine, as she had prevented our marrying before I went
thither, and persuaded the other match in my absence. Our mutual affection was revived,
24
but there were now great objections to our union. The match was indeed looked upon as
invalid, a preceding wife being said to be living in England; but this could not easily be
prov’d, because of the distance; and, tho’ there was a report of his death, it was not
certain. Then, tho’ it should be true, he had left many debts, which his successor might
be call’d upon to pay. We ventured, however, over all these difficulties, and I took her to
wife, September 1st, 1730. None of the inconveniences happened that we had
apprehended, she proved a good and faithful helpmate, assisted me much by attending
the shop; we throve together, and have ever mutually endeavored to make each other
happy. Thus I corrected that great erratum as well as I could.
[…]
Continuation of the Account of my Life, begun at Passy, near Paris, 1784.
It is some time since I receiv’d the above letters, but I have been too busy till
now to think of complying with the request they contain. It might, too, be much better
done if I were at home among my papers, which would aid my memory, and help to
ascertain dates; but my return being uncertain and having just now a little leisure, I will
endeavor to recollect and write what I can; if I live to get home, it may there be
corrected and improv’d.
[…]
It was about this time I conceiv’d the bold and arduous project of arriving at
moral perfection. I wish’d to live without committing any fault at any time; I would
conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. As I
knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not
always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more
difficulty than I bad imagined. While my care was employ’d in guarding against one
fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention;
inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded, at length, that the mere
speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not
sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good
ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform
rectitude of conduct. For this purpose I therefore contrived the following method.
In the various enumerations of the moral virtues I had met with in my reading,
I found the catalogue more or less numerous, as different writers included more or
fewer ideas under the same name. Temperance, for example, was by some confined to
eating and drinking, while by others it was extended to mean the moderating every other
pleasure, appetite, inclination, or passion, bodily or mental, even to our avarice and
ambition. I propos’d to myself, for the sake of clearness, to use rather more names, with
fewer ideas annex’d to each, than a few names with more ideas; and I included under
thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occurr’d to me as necessary or desirable,
and annexed to each a short precept, which fully express’d the extent I gave to its
meaning.
These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:
1. TEMPERANCE.
Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. SILENCE.
Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
25
3. ORDER.
Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. RESOLUTION.
Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. FRUGALITY.
Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6. INDUSTRY.
Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. SINCERITY.
Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. JUSTICE.
Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. MODERATION.
Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. CLEANLINESS.
Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
11. TRANQUILLITY.
Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. CHASTITY.
Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury
of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
13. HUMILITY.
Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judg’d it
would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it
on one of them at a time; and, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to
another, and so on, till I should have gone thro’ the thirteen; and, as the previous
acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain others, I arrang’d them
with that view, as they stand above. Temperance first, as it tends to procure that
coolness and clearness of head, which is so necessary where constant vigilance was to
be kept up, and guard maintained against the unremitting attraction of ancient habits,
and the force of perpetual temptations. This being acquir’d and establish’d, Silence
would be more easy; and my desire being to gain knowledge at the same time that I
improv’d in virtue, and considering that in conversation it was obtain’d rather by the use
of the ears than of the tongue, and therefore wishing to break a habit I was getting into
of prattling, punning, and joking, which only made me acceptable to trifling company, I
gave Silence the second place. This and the next, Order, I expected would allow me
more time for attending to my project and my studies. Resolution, once become
habitual, would keep me firm in my endeavors to obtain all the subsequent virtues;
Frugality and Industry freeing me from my remaining debt, and producing affluence
and independence, would make more easy the practice of Sincerity and Justice, etc., etc.
Conceiving then, that, agreeably to the advice of Pythagoras in his Golden Verses, daily
examination would be necessary, I contrived the following method for conducting that
examination.
I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues. I rul’d each page
with red ink, so as to have seven columns, one for each day of the week, marking each
column with a letter for the day. I cross’d these columns with thirteen red lines, marking
the beginning of each line with the first letter of one of the virtues, on which line, and in
26
its proper column, I might mark, by a little black spot, every fault I found upon
examination to have been committed respecting that virtue upon that day.
Form of the pages.
I determined to give a week’s strict attention to each of the virtues successively. Thus,
in the first week, my great guard was to avoid every the least offence against
Temperance, leaving the other virtues to their ordinary chance, only marking every
evening the faults of the day. Thus, if in the first week I could keep my first line,
marked T, clear of spots, I suppos’d the habit of that virtue so much strengthen’d and its
opposite weaken’d, that I might venture extending my attention to include the next, and
for the following week keep both lines clear of spots. Proceeding thus to the last, I could
go thro’ a course compleat in thirteen weeks, and four courses in a year. And like him
who, having a garden to weed, does not attempt to eradicate all the bad herbs at once,
which would exceed his reach and his strength, but works on one of the beds at a time,
and, having accomplish’d the first, proceeds to a second, so I should have, I hoped, the
encouraging pleasure of seeing on my pages the progress I made in virtue, by clearing
successively my lines of their spots, till in the end, by a number of courses, I should he
happy in viewing a clean book, after a thirteen weeks’ daily examination.
[…]
It will be remark’d that, tho’ my scheme was not wholly without religion, there
was in it no mark of any of the distingishing tenets of any particular sect. I had
purposely avoided them; for, being fully persuaded of the utility and excellency of my
method, and that it might be serviceable to people in all religions, and intending some
time or other to publish it, I would not have any thing in it that should prejudice any
27
one, of any sect, against it. I purposed writing a little comment on each virtue, in which
I would have shown the advantages of possessing it, and the mischiefs attending its
opposite vice; and I should have called my book THE ART OF VIRTUE, because it
would have shown the means and manner of obtaining virtue, which would have
distinguished it from the mere exhortation to be good, that does not instruct and indicate
the means, but is like the apostle’s man of verbal charity, who only without showing to
the naked and hungry how or where they might get clothes or victuals, exhorted them to
be fed and clothed. -- James ii. 15, 16.
But it so happened that my intention of writing and publishing this comment
was never fulfilled. I did, indeed, from time to time, put down short hints of the
sentiments, reasonings, etc., to be made use of in it, some of which I have still by me;
but the necessary close attention to private business in the earlier part of thy life, and
public business since, have occasioned my postponing it; for, it being connected in my
mind with a great and extensive project, that required the whole man to execute, and
which an unforeseen succession of employs prevented my attending to, it has hitherto
remain’d unfinish’d.
In this piece it was my design to explain and enforce this doctrine, that vicious
actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but forbidden because they are
hurtful, the nature of man alone considered; that it was, therefore, every one’s interest to
be virtuous who wish’d to be happy even in this world; and I should, from this
circumstance (there being always in the world a number of rich merchants, nobility,
states, and princes, who have need of honest instruments for the management of their
affairs, and such being so rare), have endeavored to convince young persons that no
qualities were so likely to make a poor man’s fortune as those of probity and integrity.
My list of virtues contain’d at first but twelve; but a Quaker friend having
kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my pride show’d itself
frequently in conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when
discussing any point, but was overbearing, and rather insolent, of which he convinc’d
me by mentioning several instances; I determined endeavouring to cure myself, if I
could, of this vice or folly among the rest, and I added Humility to my list) giving an
extensive meaning to the word.
I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue, but I had
a good deal with regard to the appearance of it. I made it a rule to forbear all direct
contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even
forbid myself, agreeably to the old laws of our Junto, the use of every word or
expression in the language that imported a fix’d opinion, such as certainly, undoubtedly,
etc., and I adopted, instead of them, I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine a thing to be
so or so; or it so appears to me at present. When another asserted something that I
thought an error, I deny’d myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of
showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by
observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the
present case there appear’d or seem’d to me some difference, etc. I soon found the
advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engag’d in went on more
pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos’d my opinions procur’d them a readier
reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the
wrong, and I more easily prevail’d with others to give up their mistakes and join with
me when I happened to be in the right.
28
And this mode, which I at first put on with some violence to natural
inclination, became at length so easy, and so habitual to me, that perhaps for these fifty
years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical expression escape me. And to this habit
(after my character of integrity) I think it principally owing that I had early so much
weight with my fellow-citizens when I proposed new institutions, or alterations in the
old, and so much influence in public councils when I became a member; for I was but a
bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly
correct in language, and yet I generally carried my points.
In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as
pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one
pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will
see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had compleatly
overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.
[Thus far written at Passy, 1741.]
29
Thomas Jefferson
Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776)
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve
the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among
the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and
of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires
that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of
government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established
should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience
hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to
right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a
long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a
design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw
off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been
the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains
them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of
Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object
the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be
submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the
public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing
importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and,
when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of
people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the
legislature, a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual uncomfortable, and
distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing
them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly
firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be
elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the
people at large for their exercise; the state remaining, in the mean time, exposed to all
the dangers of invasions from without and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose
obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to
30
encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of
lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for
establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices,
and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to
harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of
our legislatures.
He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil
power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our
Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of
pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;
For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which
they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;
For imposing taxes on us without our consent;
For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;
For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses;
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province,
establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to
render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule
into these colonies;
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering
fundamentally the forms of our governments;
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with
power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and
waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed
the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the
works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty
and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the
head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear
arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or
to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrection among us, and has endeavored to bring on
the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of
warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble
terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince,
whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be
the ruler of a free people.
31
Nor have we been wanting in our attentions to our British brethren. We have warned
them, from time to time, of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable
jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration
and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity; and
we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these
usurpations which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.
They too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must,
therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them
as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General
Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of
our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies
solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be,
FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the
British crown and that all political connection between them and the state of Great
Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states,
they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish
commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.
And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred
honor.
[Signed by] JOHN HANCOCK [President]
[the signatures of the representatives of the thirteen states follow]
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EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE
Charles Brockden Brown
from: Edgar Huntly: Or, Memoirs of a Sleep-walker
TO THE PUBLIC.
The flattering reception that has been given, by the public, to Arthur Mervyn,
has prompted the writer to solicit a continuance of the same favour, and to offer to the
world a new performance.
America has opened new views to the naturalist and politician, but has seldome
furnished themes to the moral painter. That new springs of action, and new motives to
curiosity should operate; that the field of investigation, opened to us by our own
country, should differ essentially from those which exist in Europe, may be readily
conceived. The sources of amusement to the fancy and instruction to the heart, that are
peculiar to ourselves, are equally numerous and inexhaustible. It is the purpose of this
work to profit by some of these sources; to exhibit a series of adventures, growing out of
the condition of our country, and connected with one of the most common and most
wonderful diseases or affections of the human frame .
One merit the writer may at least claim; that of calling forth the passions and
engaging the sympathy of the reader, by means hitherto unemployed by preceding
authors. Peurile superstition and exploded manners; Gothic castles and chimeras, are
the materials usually employed for this end. The incidents of Indian hostility, and the
perils of the western wilderness, are far more suitable; and, for a native of America to
overlook these, would admit of no apology. These, therefore, are, in part, the ingredients
of this tale, and these he has been ambitious of depicting in vivid and faithful colours.
The success of his efforts must be estimated by the liberal and candid reader.
33
Washington Irving
Rip Van Winkle. A Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker.
from: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
By Woden, God of Saxons,
From whence comes Wensday, that is Wodensday,
Truth is a thing that ever I will keep
Unto thylke day in which I creep into
My sepulchre-CARTWRIGHT.
[The following Tale was found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old
gentleman of New York, who was very curious in the Dutch History of the province and the manners of
the descendants from its primitive settlers. His historical researches, however, did not lie so much among
books as among men; for the former are lamentably scanty on his favorite topics; whereas he found the
old burghers, and still more, their wives, rich in that legendary lore, so invaluable to true history.
Whenever, therefore, he happened upon a genuine Dutch family, snugly shut up in its low-roofed farmhouse, under a spreading sycamore, he looked upon it as a little clasped volume of black-letter, and
studied it with the zeal of a bookworm.
The result of all these researches was a history of the province, during the reign of the Dutch
governors, which he published some years since. There have been various opinions as to the literary
character of his work, and, to tell the truth, it is not a whit better than it should be. Its chief merit is its
scrupulous accuracy, which indeed was a little questioned on its first appearance, but has since been
completely established; and it is now admitted into all historical collections, as a book of unquestionable
authority.
The old gentleman died shortly after the publication of his work; and now that he is dead and
gone, it cannot do much harm to his memory to say that his time might have been much better employed
in weightier labors. He, however, was apt to ride his hobby his own way; and though it did now and then
kick up the dust a little in the eyes of his neighbors, and grieve the spirit of some friends, for whom he felt
the truest deference and affection, yet his errors and follies are remembered “more in sorrow than in
anger,” and it begins to be suspected, that he never intended to injure or offend. But however his memory
may be appreciated by critics, it is still held dear among many folks, whose good opinion is well worth
having; particularly by certain biscuit-bakers, who have gone so far as to imprint his likeness on their
new-year cakes, and have thus given him a chance for immortality, almost equal to the being stamped on
a Waterloo medal, or a Queen Anne’s farthing.]
WHOEVER has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill mountains.
They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to
the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding
country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the
day produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains; and they
are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the
weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold
outlines on the clear evening sky; but sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is
cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last
rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory.
At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have descried the light
smoke curling up from a Village, whose shingle roofs gleam among the trees, just where
the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a
little village of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists, in
the early times of the province, just about the beginning of the government of the good
Peter Stuyvesant (may he rest in peace!), and there were some of the houses of the
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original settlers standing within a few years, built of small yellow bricks, brought from
Holland, having latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weathercocks.
In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to tell the precise
truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten), there lived, many years since, while the
country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow, of the name
of Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in
the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Fort
Christina. He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I
have observed that he was a simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind
neighbor, and an obedient henpecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might
be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those
men are apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of
shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery
furnace of domestic tribulation, and a curtain-lecture is worth all the sermons in the
world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may,
therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing, and if so, Rip Van
Winkle was thrice blessed.
Certain it is, that he was a great favorite among all the good wives of the village,
who, as usual with the amiable sex, took his part in all family squabbles, and never
failed, whenever they talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the
blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too, would shout with joy
whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them
to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and
Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a troop of
them hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on
him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighborhood.
The great error in Rip’s composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of
profitable labor. It could not be for want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit
on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar’s lance, and fish all day without
a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry
a fowling-piece on his shoulder, for hours together, trudging through woods and
swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would
never refuse to assist a neighbor even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man in all
country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building stone fences; the women of the
village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as
their less obliging husbands would not do for them. In a word, Rip was ready to attend
to anybody’s business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in
order, he found it impossible.
In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; it was the most
pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country; everything about it went wrong, in
spite of him. His fences were continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go
astray, or get among the cabbages; weeds were sure to grow quicker in his fields than
anywhere else; the rain always made a point of setting in just as he had some out-door
work to do; so that though his patrimonial estate had dwindled away under his
management, acre by acre, until there was little more left than a mere patch of Indian
corn and potatoes, yet it was the worst-conditioned farm in the neighborhood.
His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody. His
son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness, promised to inherit the habits, with the
35
old clothes, of his father. He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother’s
heels, equipped in a pair of his father’s cast-off galligaskins, which he had much ado to
hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does her train in bad weather.
Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled
dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got
with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound.
If left to himself, he would have whistled life away, in perfect contentment; but his wife
kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he
was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going,
and every thing he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip
had but one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had
grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said
nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh volley from his wife, so that he was
fain to draw off his forces, and take to the outside of the house—the only side which, in
truth, belongs to a henpecked husband.
Rip’s sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was as much henpecked as
his master; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them as companions in idleness, and even
looked upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause of his master’s going so often astray.
True it is, in all points of spirit befitting in honorable dog, he was as courageous an
animal as ever scoured the woods--but what courage can withstand the evil-doing and
all-besetting terrors of a woman’s tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house, his crest
fell, his tail drooped to the ground, or curled between his legs, he sneaked about with a
gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least
flourish of a broomstick or ladle, he would fly to the door with yelping precipitation.
Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled
on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that
grows keener with constant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when
driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers,
and other idle personages of the village, which held its sessions on a bench before a
small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of his Majesty George the Third. Here they
used to sit in the shade through a long, lazy summer’s day, talking listlessly over village
gossip, or telling endless, sleepy stories about nothing. But it would have been worth
any statesman’s money to have heard the profound discussions which sometimes took
place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing
traveller. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick
Van Bummel, the school-master, a dapper learned little man, who was not to be daunted
by the most gigantic word in the dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate upon
public events some months after they had taken place.
The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by Nicholas Vedder, a
patriarch of the village, and landlord of the inn, at the door of which he took his seat
from morning till night, just moving sufficiently to avoid the sun, and keep in the shade
of a large tree; so that the neighbors could tell the hour by his movements as accurately
as by a sun-dial. It is true, he was rarely heard to speak, but smoked his pipe incessantly.
His adherents, however (for every great man has his adherents), perfectly understood
him, and knew how to gather his opinions. When any thing that was read or related
displeased him, he was observed to smoke his pipe vehemently, and to send forth,
frequent, and angry puffs; but when pleased, he would inhale the smoke slowly and
tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid clouds, and sometimes, taking the pipe from
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his mouth, and letting the fragrant vapor curl about his nose, would gravely nod his
head in token of perfect approbation.
From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length routed by his termagant
wife, who would suddenly break in upon the tranquillity of the assemblage, and call the
members all to nought; nor was that august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred
from the daring tongue of this terrible virago, who charged him outright with
encouraging her husband in habits of idleness.
Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative, to
escape from the labor of the farm and the clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand,
and stroll away into the woods. Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a
tree, and share the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a
fellow-sufferer in persecution. “Poor Wolf,” he would say, “thy mistress leads thee a
dog’s life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt never want a friend to
stand by thee!” Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfully in his master’s face, and if dogs
can feel pity, I verily believe he reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart.
In a long ramble of the kind, on a fine autumnal day, Rip had unconsciously
scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill mountains. He was after his
favorite sport of squirrel-shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with
the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a
green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a precipice.
From an opening between the trees, he could overlook all the lower country for many a
mile of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him,
moving on its silent but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail
of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom and at last losing itself in
the blue highlands.
On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and
shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely
lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this
scene; evening was gradually advancing; the mountains began to throw their long blue
shadows over the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the
village; and he heaved a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of
Dame Van Winkle.
As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance hallooing: “Rip
Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!” He looked around, but could see nothing but a crow
winging its solitary flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived
him, and turned again to descend, when he heard the same cry ring through the still
evening air, “Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!”--at the same time Wolf bristled up his
back, and giving a low growl, skulked to his master’s side, looking fearfully down into
the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him; he looked anxiously in
the same direction, and perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and
bending under the weight of something he carried on his back. He was surprised to see
any human being in this lonely and unfrequented place, but supposing it to be some one
of the neighborhood in need of his assistance, he hastened down to yield it.
On nearer approach, he was still more surprised at the singularity of the
stranger’s appearance. He was a short, square-built old fellow, with thick bushy hair,
and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the antique Dutch fashion--a cloth jerkin strapped
round the waist--several pairs of breeches, the outer one of ample volume, decorated
with rows of buttons down the sides, and bunches at the knees. He bore on his shoulders
37
a stout keg, that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist
him with the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of this new acquaintance, Rip
complied with his usual alacrity; and mutually relieving each other, they clambered up a
narrow gully, apparently the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended, Rip every
now and then heard long rolling peals, like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a
deep ravine, or rather cleft between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path
conducted. He paused for an instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those
transient thunder-showers which often take place in the mountain heights, he proceeded.
Passing through the ravine, they came to a hollow, like a small amphitheatre,
surrounded by perpendicular precipices, over the brinks of which impending trees shot
their branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the azure sky, and the bright
evening cloud. During the whole time Rip and his companion had labored on in silence;
for though the former marvelled greatly what could be the object of carrying a keg of
liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was something strange and incomprehensible
about the unknown, that inspired awe, and checked familiarity.
On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder presented themselves. On a
level spot in the centre was a company of odd-looking personages playing at ninepins.
They were dressed in quaint outlandish fashion; some wore short doublets, others
jerkins, with long knives in their belts, and most of them had enormous breeches, of
similar style with that of the guide’s. Their visages, too, were peculiar; one had a large
head, broad face, and small piggish eyes; the face of another seemed to consist entirely
of nose, and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat, set off with a little red cock’s
tail. They all had beards, of various shapes and colors. There was one who seemed to be
the commander. He was a stout old gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance; he
wore a laced doublet, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red
stockings, and high-heeled shoes, with roses in them. The whole group reminded Rip of
the figures in an old Flemish painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Schaick, the village
parson, and which had been brought over from Holland at the time of the settlement.
What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though these folks were evidently
amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence,
and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing
interrupted the stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they
were rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder.
As Rip and his companion approached them, they suddenly desisted from their
play, and stared at him with such a fixed statue-like gaze, and such strange uncouth,
lack-lustre countenances, that his heart turned within him, and his knees smote together.
His companion now emptied the contents of the keg into large flagons, and made signs
to him to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trembling; they quaffed the
liquor in profound silence, and then returned to their game.
By degrees, Rip’s awe and apprehension subsided. He even ventured, when no
eye was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage which he found had much of the flavor of
excellent Hollands. He was naturally a thirsty soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the
draught. One taste provoked another; and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often,
that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head
gradually declined, and he fell into a deep sleep.
On waking, he found himself on the green knoll whence he had first seen the old
man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes--it was a bright sunny morning. The birds were
hopping and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft, and
38
breasting the pure mountain breeze. “Surely,” thought Rip, “I have not slept here all
night.” He recalled the occurrences before he fell asleep. The strange man with the keg
of liquor--the mountain ravine--the wild retreat among the rocks--the woe-begone party
at ninepins--the flagon--”Oh! that flagon! that wicked flagon!” thought Rip--”what
excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle?”
He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean well-oiled fowling-piece,
he found an old firelock lying by him, the barrel encrusted with rust, the lock falling off,
and the stock worm-eaten. He now suspected that the grave roysterers of the mountains
had put a trick upon him, and, having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his gun.
Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge.
He whistled after him and shouted his name, but all in vain; the echoes repeated his
whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen.
He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening’s gambol, and if he met
with any of the party, to demand his dog and gun. As he rose to walk, he found himself
stiff in the joints, and wanting in his usual activity. “These mountain beds do not agree
with me,” thought Rip, “and if this frolic, should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism,
I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle.” With some difficulty he got down
into the glen: he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended the
preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down
it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however,
made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch,
sassafras, and witch-hazel; and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grape
vines that twisted their coils and tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network
in his path.
At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs to the
amphitheatre; but no traces of such opening remained. The rocks presented a high
impenetrable wall, over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam,
and fell into a broad deep basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest.
Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog;
he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in the air
about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation,
seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man’s perplexities. What was to be done?
The morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He
grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to
starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the rusty firelock, and, with
a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his steps homeward.
As he approached the village, he met a number of people, but none whom he
new, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted with every
one in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which
he was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever
they cast eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of this
gesture, induced Rip, involuntarily, to do, the same, when, to his astonishment, he found
his beard had grown a foot long!
He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of strange children ran at
his heels, hooting after him, and pointing at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of
which he recognized for an old acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very
village was altered: it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which
he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared.
39
Strange names were over the doors--strange faces at the windows--everything was
strange. His mind now misgave him; he began to doubt whether both he and the world
around him were not bewitched. Surely this was his native village, which he had left but
a day before. There stood the Kaatskill mountains--there ran the silver Hudson at a
distance--there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always been--Rip was sorely
perplexed--”That flagon last night,” thought he, “has addled my poor head sadly!”
It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his own house, which he
approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame
Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay--the roof had fallen in, the windows
shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A half-starved dog, that looked like Wolf, was
skulking about it. Rip called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and
passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed.--”My very dog,” sighed poor Rip,” has
forgotten me!”
He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle had always kept
in neat order. It was empty, forlorn, and apparently abandoned. This desolateness
overcame all his connubial fears--he called loudly for his wife and children—the lonely
chambers rang for a moment with his voice, and then all again was silence.
He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the village inn--but it too
was gone. A large rickety wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping
windows, some of them broken, and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the
door was painted, “The Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle.” Instead of the great tree
that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked
pole, with something on the top that looked like a red nightcap, and from it was
fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes--all this was
strange and incomprehensible. He recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of
King George, under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe, but even this was
singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword
was held in the hand instead of a sceptre, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and
underneath was painted in large characters, “GENERAL WASHINGTON.”
There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip
recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy,
bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy
tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double
chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco-smoke, instead of idle speeches; or
Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In
place of these, a lean, bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of handbills, was
haranguing, vehemently about rights of citizens-elections--members of Congress-liberty--Bunker’s hill--heroes of seventy-six-and other words, which were a perfect
Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.
The appearance of Rip, with his long, grizzled beard, his rusty fowling-piece, his
uncouth dress, and the army of women and children at his heels, soon attracted the
attention of the tavern politicians. They crowded round him, eying him from head to
foot, with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and, drawing him partly aside,
inquired, “on which side he voted?” Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but
busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear,
“whether he was Federal or Democrat.” Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the
question; when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made
his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he
40
passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo, the other resting
on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul,
demanded in an austere tone, “What brought him to the election with a gun on his
shoulder, and a mob at his heels; and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village?”
“Alas! gentlemen,” cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, “I am a poor, quiet man, a
native of the place, and a loyal subject of the King, God bless him!
Here a general shout burst from the bystanders-”a tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee!
hustle him! away with him!” It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in
the cocked hat restored order; and having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow,
demanded again of the unknown culprit, what he came there for, and whom he was
seeking. The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came
there in search of some of his neighbors, who used to keep about the tavern.
“Well--who are they?--name them.”
Rip bethought himself a moment, and inquired, Where’s Nicholas Vedder?
There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a thin, piping
voice, “Nicholas Vedder? why, be is dead and gone these eighteen years! There was a
wooden tombstone in the churchyard that used to tell all about him, but that’s rotten and
gone too.”
“Where’s Brom Dutcher?”
“Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war; some say he was killed
at the storming of Stony-Point--others say he was drowned in a squall at the foot of
Antony’s Nose. I don’t know --he never came back again.”
“Where’s Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?”
“He went off to the wars, too; was a great militia general, and is now in
Congress.”
Rip’s heart died away, at hearing of these sad changes in his home and friends,
and finding himself thus alone in the world. Every answer puzzled him too, by treating
of such enormous lapses of time, and of matters which he could not understand: war-Congress-Stony-Point;--he had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in
despair, “Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?”
“Oh, Rip Van Winkle!” exclaimed two or three. “Oh, to be sure! that’s Rip Van
Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree.”
Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself as he went up the
mountain; apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now
completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or
another man. In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded
who he was, and what was his name?
“God knows!” exclaimed he at his wit’s end; “I’m not myself--I’m somebody
else--that’s me yonder-no--that’s somebody else, got into my shoes--I was myself last
night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they’ve changed my gun, and everything’s
changed, and I’m changed, and I can’t tell what’s my name, or who I am!”
The by-standers began now to look at each other, nod, wink significantly, and
tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper, also, about securing the
gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief; at the very suggestion of which,
the self-important man with the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this
critical moment a fresh, comely woman pressed through the throng to get a peep at the
gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks,
began to cry. “Hush, Rip,” cried she, “hush, you little fool; the old man won’t hurt you.”
41
The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train
of recollections in his mind.
“What is your name, my good woman?” asked he.
“Judith Cardenier.”
“And your father’s name?”
“Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it’s twenty years since he
went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since,--his dog came
home without him; but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians,
nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl.”
Rip had but one more question to ask; but he put it with a faltering voice:
“Where’s your mother?”
Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of
passion at a New-England pedler.
There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest man could
contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his arms. “I am your
father!” cried he--”Young Rip Van Winkle once-old Rip Van Winkle now--Does nobody
know poor Rip Van Winkle!”
All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out from among the crowd, put
her hand to her brow, and peering under it in his face for a moment exclaimed, “sure
enough! it is Rip Van Winkle--it is himself. Welcome home again, old neighbor. Why,
where have you been these twenty long years?”
Rip’s story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him but as one
night. The neighbors stared when they heard it; some were seen to wink at each other,
and put their tongues in their cheeks; and the self-important man in the cocked hat, who,
when the alarm was over, had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his
mouth, and shook his head--upon which there was a general shaking of the head
throughout the assemblage.
It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk, who
was seen slowly advancing up the road. He was a descendant of the historian of that
name, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the province. Peter was the most
ancient inhabitant of the village, and well versed in all the wonderful events and
traditions of the neighborhood. He recollected Rip at once, and corroborated his story in
the most satisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down
from his ancestor, the historian, that the Kaatskill mountains had always been haunted
by strange beings. That it was affirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first
discoverer of the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years, with
his crew of the Half-moon; being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of his
enterprise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river and the great city called by his name.
That his father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses playing at ninepins in the
hollow of the mountain; and that he himself had heard, one summer afternoon, the
sound of their balls, like distant peals of thunder.
To make a long story short, the company broke up, and returned to the more
important concerns of the election. Rip’s daughter took him home to live with her; she
had a snug, well-furnished house, and a stout cheery farmer for a husband, whom Rip
recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his back. As to Rip’s son and
heir, who was the ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was employed to
work on the farm; but evinced an hereditary disposition to attend to any thing else but
his business.
42
Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he soon found many of his former
cronies, though all rather the worse for the wear and tear of time; and preferred making
friends among the rising generation, with whom be soon grew into great favor.
Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man
can be idle with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench, at the inn door, and
was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village, and a chronicle of the old times
“before the war.” It was some time before he could get into the regular track of gossip,
or could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his
torpor. How that there had been a revolutionary war--that the country had thrown off the
yoke of old England--and that, instead of being a subject to his Majesty George the
Third, he was now a free citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician; the
changes of states and empires made but little impression on him; but there was one
species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was--petticoat
government. Happily, that was at an end; he had got his neck out of the yoke of
matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny
of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was mentioned, however, he shook his head,
shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes; which might pass either for an expression
of resignation to his fate, or joy at his deliverance.
He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr. Doolittle’s hotel. He
was observed, at first, to vary on some points every time he told it, which was,
doubtless, owing to his having so recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to
the tale I have related, and not a man, woman, or child in the neighborhood, but knew it
by heart. Some always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and insisted that Rip had
been out of his head, and that this was one point on which he always remained flighty.
The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full credit. Even to this
day, they never hear a thunder-storm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but
they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of ninepins; and it is a
common wish of all henpecked husbands in the neighborhood, when life hangs heavy
on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle’s flagon.
NOTE.
The foregoing tale, one would suspect, had been suggested to Mr.Knickerbocker by a little
German superstition about the Emperor Frederick der Rothbart and the Kypphauser mountain; the
subjoined note, however, which had appended to the tale, shows that it is an absolute fact, narrated with
his usual fidelity.
“The story of Rip Van Winkle may seem incredible to many, but nevertheless I give it my full
belief, for I know the vicinity of our old Dutch settlements to have been very subject to marvellous events
and appearances. Indeed, I have heard many stranger stories than this, in the villages along the Hudson;
all of which were too well authenticated to admit of a doubt. I have even talked with Rip Van Winkle
myself, who, when last I saw him, was a very venerable old man, and so perfectly rational and consistent
on every other point, that I think no conscientious person could refuse to take this into the bargain; nay, I
have seen a certificate on the subject taken before a country justice, and signed with cross, in the justice’s
own handwriting. The story, therefore, is beyond the possibility of doubt.
“D. K.”
POSTSCRIPT.
The following are travelling notes from a memorandum-book of Mr.Knickerbocker:
The Kaatsberg or Catskill mountains have always been a region full of fable. The Indians
considered them the abode of spirits, who influenced the weather, spreading sunshine or clouds over the
landscape, and sending good or bad hunting seasons. They were ruled by an old squaw spirit, said to be
their mother. She dwelt on the highest peak of the Catskills, and had charge of the doors of day and night
to open and shut them at the proper hour. She hung up the new moons in the skies, and cut up the old ones
into stars. In times of drought, if properly propitiated, she would spin light summer clouds out of cobwebs
43
and morning dew, and send them off from the crest of the mountain, flake after flake, like flakes of carded
cotton, to float in the air; until, dissolved by the heat of the sun, they would fall in gentle showers, causing
the grass to spring, the fruits to ripen, and the corn to grow an inch an hour. If displeased, however, she
would brew up clouds black as ink, sitting in the midst of them like a bottle-bellied spider in the midst of
its web; and when these clouds broke, woe betide the valleys!
In old times, say the Indian traditions, there was a kind of Manitou or Spirit, who kept about the
wildest recesses of the Catskill mountains, and took a mischievous pleasure in wreaking all kind of
evils and vexations upon the red men. Sometimes he would assume the form of a bear, a panther, or a
deer, lead the bewildered hunter a weary chase through tangled forests and among ragged rocks, and
then spring off with a loud ho! ho! leaving him aghast on the brink of a beetling precipice or raging
torrent.
The favorite abode of this Manitou is still shown. It is a rock or cliff on the loneliest port of the
mountains, and, from the flowering vines which clamber about it, and the wild flowers which abound in
its neighborhood, is known by the name of the Garden Rock. Near the foot of it is a small lake, the haunt
of the solitary bittern, with water-snakes basking in the sun on the leaves of the pond-lilies which lie on
the surface. This place was held in great awe by the Indians, insomuch that the boldest hunter would not
pursue his game within its precincts. Once upon a time, however, a hunter who had lost his way
penetrated to the Garden Rock, where he beheld a number of gourds placed in the crotches of trees. One
of these he seized and made off with it, but in the hurry of his retreat he let it fall among the rocks, when a
great stream gushed forth, which washed him away and swept him down precipices, where he was dished
to pieces, and the stream made its way to the Hudson, and continues to flow to the present day, being the
identical stream known by the name of the Kaaterskill.
44
James Fenimore Cooper
From: The Last of the Mohicans
CHAPTER 21
“If you find a man there, he shall die a flea’s death.”
--Merry Wives of Windsor.
The party had landed on the border of a region that is, even to this day, less known to
the inhabitants of the States than the deserts of Arabia, or the steppes of Tartary. It was
the sterile and rugged district which separates the tributaries of Champlain from those of
the Hudson, the Mohawk, and the St. Lawrence. Since the period of our tale the active
spirit of the country has surrounded it with a belt of rich and thriving settlements,
though none but the hunter or the savage is ever known even now to penetrate its wild
recesses.
As Hawkeye and the Mohicans had, however, often traversed the mountains and valleys
of this vast wilderness, they did not hesitate to plunge into its depth, with the freedom of
men accustomed to its privations and difficulties. For many hours the travelers toiled on
their laborious way, guided by a star, or following the direction of some water-course,
until the scout called a halt, and holding a short consultation with the Indians, they
lighted their fire, and made the usual preparations to pass the remainder of the night
where they then were.
Imitating the example, and emulating the confidence of their more experienced
associates, Munro and Duncan slept without fear, if not without uneasiness. The dews
were suffered to exhale, and the sun had dispersed the mists, and was shedding a strong
and clear light in the forest, when the travelers resumed their journey.
After proceeding a few miles, the progress of Hawkeye, who led the advance, became
more deliberate and watchful. He often stopped to examine the trees; nor did he cross a
rivulet without attentively considering the quantity, the velocity, and the color of its
waters. Distrusting his own judgment, his appeals to the opinion of Chingachgook were
frequent and earnest. During one of these conferences Heyward observed that Uncas
stood a patient and silent, though, as he imagined,
an interested listener. He was strongly tempted to address the young chief, and demand
his opinion of their progress; but the calm and dignified demeanor of the native induced
him to believe, that, like himself, the other was wholly dependent on the sagacity and
intelligence of the seniors of the party. At last the scout spoke in English, and at once
explained the embarrassment of their situation.
“When I found that the home path of the Hurons run north,” he said, “it did not need the
judgment of many long years to tell that they would follow the valleys, and keep atween
the waters of the Hudson and the Horican, until they might strike the springs of the
Canada streams, which would lead them into the heart of the country of the Frenchers.
Yet here are we, within a short range of the Scaroons, and not a sign of a trail have we
crossed! Human natur’ is weak, and it is possible we may
not have taken the proper scent.”
45
“Heaven protect us from such an error!” exclaimed Duncan. “Let us retrace our steps,
and examine as we go, with keener eyes. Has Uncas no counsel to offer in such a
strait?”
The young Mohican cast a glance at his father, but, maintaining his quiet and reserved
mien, he continued silent. Chingachgook had caught the look, and motioning with his
hand, he bade him speak. The moment this permission was accorded, the countenance
of Uncas changed from its
grave composure to a gleam of intelligence and joy. Bounding forward like a deer, he
sprang up the side of a little acclivity, a few rods in advance, and stood, exultingly, over
a spot of fresh earth, that looked as though it had been recently upturned by the passage
of some heavy animal. The eyes of the whole party followed the unexpected movement,
and read their success in the air of triumph that the youth assumed.
“‘Tis the trail!” exclaimed the scout, advancing to the spot; “the lad is quick of sight and
keen of wit for his years.”
“‘Tis extraordinary that he should have withheld his knowledge so long,” muttered
Duncan, at his elbow.
“It would have been more wonderful had he spoken without a bidding. No, no; your
young white, who gathers his learning from books and can measure what he knows by
the page, may conceit that his knowledge, like his legs, outruns that of his fathers’, but,
where experience is the master, the scholar is made to know the value of years, and
respects them accordingly.”
“See!” said Uncas, pointing north and south, at the evident marks of the broad trail on
either side of him, “the dark-hair has gone toward the forest.”
“Hound never ran on a more beautiful scent,” responded the scout, dashing forward, at
once, on the indicated route; “we are favored, greatly favored, and can follow with high
noses. Ay, here are both your waddling beasts: this Huron travels like a white general.
The fellow is stricken with a judgment, and is mad! Look sharp for wheels, Sagamore,”
he continued, looking back, and laughing in his newly awakened satisfaction; “we shall
soon have the fool journeying in a coach, and that with three of the best pair of eyes on
the borders in his rear.”
The spirits of the scout, and the astonishing success of the chase, in which a circuitous
distance of more than forty miles had been passed, did not fail to impart a portion of
hope to the whole party. Their advance was rapid; and made with as much confidence as
a traveler would proceed along a wide highway. If a rock, or a rivulet, or a bit of earth
harder than common, severed the links of the clew they followed, the true eye of the
scout recovered them at a distance, and seldom rendered
the delay of a single moment necessary. Their progress was much facilitated by the
certainty that Magua had found it necessary to journey through the valleys; a
circumstance which rendered the general direction of the route sure. Nor had the Huron
entirely neglected the arts uniformly practised by the natives when retiring in front of an
46
enemy. False trails and sudden turnings were frequent, wherever a brook or the
formation of the ground rendered them feasible; but his pursuers
were rarely deceived, and never failed to detect their error, before they had lost either
time or distance on the deceptive track.
By the middle of the afternoon they had passed the Scaroons, and were following the
route of the declining sun. After descending an eminence to a low bottom, through
which a swift stream glided, they suddenly came to a place where the party of Le
Renard had made a halt. Extinguished brands were lying around a spring, the offals of a
deer were scattered about the place, and the trees bore evident marks of having been
browsed by the horses. At a little distance, Heyward discovered, and
contemplated with tender emotion, the small bower under which he was fain to believe
that Cora and Alice had reposed. But while the earth was trodden, and the footsteps of
both men and beasts were so plainly visible around the place, the trail appeared to have
suddenly ended.
It was easy to follow the tracks of the Narragansetts, but they seemed only to have
wandered without guides, or any other object than the pursuit of food. At length Uncas,
who, with his father, had endeavored to trace the route of the horses, came upon a sign
of their presence that was quite recent. Before following the clew, he communicated his
success to his companions; and while the latter were consulting on the circumstance, the
youth reappeared, leading the two fillies, with their saddles broken, and the housings
soiled, as though they had been permitted to run at will for several days.
“What should this prove?” said Duncan, turning pale, and glancing his eyes around him,
as if he feared the brush and leaves were about to give up some horrid secret.
“That our march is come to a quick end, and that we are in an enemy’s country,”
returned the scout. “Had the knave been pressed, and the gentle ones wanted horses to
keep up with the party, he might have taken their scalps; but without an enemy at his
heels, and with such rugged beasts as these, he would not hurt a hair of their heads. I
know your thoughts, and shame be it to our color that you have reason for them; but he
who thinks that even a Mingo would ill-treat a woman, unless it be to tomahawk her,
knows nothing of Indian natur’, or the laws of the woods. No, no; I have heard that the
French Indians had come into these hills to hunt the moose, and we are getting within
scent of their camp. Why should they not? The morning and evening guns of Ty may be
heard any day among these mountains; for the Frenchers are running a new line atween
the provinces of the king and the Canadas. It is true that the horses are here, but the
Hurons are gone; let us, then, hunt for the
path by which they parted.”
Hawkeye and the Mohicans now applied themselves to their task in good earnest. A
circle of a few hundred feet in circumference was drawn, and each of the party took a
segment for his portion. The examination, however, resulted in no discovery. The
impressions of footsteps were numerous, but they all appeared like those of men who
had wandered about the spot, without any design to quit it. Again the scout and his
companions made the circuit of the halting place, each slowly following
the other, until they assembled in the center once more, no wiser than when they started.
47
“Such cunning is not without its deviltry,” exclaimed Hawkeye, when he met the
disappointed looks of his assistants.
“We must get down to it, Sagamore, beginning at the spring, and going over the ground
by inches. The Huron shall never brag in his tribe that he has a foot which leaves no
print.”
Setting the example himself, the scout engaged in the scrutiny with renewed zeal. Not a
leaf was left unturned. The sticks were removed, and the stones lifted; for Indian
cunning was known frequently to adopt these objects as covers, laboring with the
utmost patience and industry, to conceal each footstep as they proceeded. Still no
discovery was made. At length Uncas, whose activity had enabled him to achieve his
portion of the task the soonest, raked the earth across the turbid little rill which ran from
the spring, and diverted its course into another channel. So soon as its narrow bed below
the dam was dry, he stooped over it with keen and curious eyes. A cry of exultation
immediately announced the success of the young warrior. The whole party crowded to
the spot where Uncas pointed out the impression of a moccasin in the moist alluvion.
“This lad will be an honor to his people,” said Hawkeye, regarding the trail with as
much admiration as a naturalist would expend on the tusk of a mammoth or the rib of a
mastodon; “ay, and a thorn in the sides of the Hurons. Yet that is not the footstep of an
Indian! the weight is too
much on the heel, and the toes are squared, as though one of the French dancers had
been in, pigeon-winging his tribe! Run back, Uncas, and bring me the size of the
singer’s foot. You will find a beautiful print of it just opposite yon rock, agin the
hillside.”
While the youth was engaged in this commission, the scout and Chingachgook were
attentively considering the impressions. The measurements agreed, and the former
unhesitatingly pronounced that the footstep was that of David, who had once more been
made to exchange his shoes for moccasins.
“I can now read the whole of it, as plainly as if I had seen the arts of Le Subtil,” he
added; “the singer being a man whose gifts lay chiefly in his throat and feet, was made
to go first, and the others have trod in his steps, imitating their formation.”
“But,” cried Duncan, “I see no signs of--”
“The gentle ones,” interrupted the scout; “the varlet has found a way to carry them, until
he supposed he had thrown any followers off the scent. My life on it, we see their pretty
little feet again, before many rods go by.”
The whole party now proceeded, following the course of the rill, keeping anxious eyes
on the regular impressions. The water soon flowed into its bed again, but watching the
ground on either side, the foresters pursued their way content with knowing that the trail
lay beneath. More than
48
half a mile was passed, before the rill rippled close around the base of an extensive and
dry rock. Here they paused to make sure that the Hurons had not quitted the water.
It was fortunate they did so. For the quick and active Uncas soon found the impression
of a foot on a bunch of moss, where it would seem an Indian had inadvertently trodden.
Pursuing the direction given by this discovery, he entered the neighboring thicket, and
struck the trail, as fresh and obvious as it had been before they reached the spring.
Another shout announced the good fortune of the youth to his companions, and at once
terminated the search.
“Ay, it has been planned with Indian judgment,” said the scout, when the party was
assembled around the place, “and would have blinded white eyes.”
“Shall we proceed?” demanded Heyward.
“Softly, softly, we know our path; but it is good to examine the formation of things. This
is my schooling, major; and if one neglects the book, there is little chance of learning
from the open land of Providence. All is plain but one thing, which is the manner that
the knave contrived to get the gentle ones along the blind trail. Even a Huron would be
too proud to let their tender feet touch the water.”
“Will this assist in explaining the difficulty?” said Heyward, pointing toward the
fragments of a sort of handbarrow, that had been rudely constructed of boughs, and
bound together with withes, and which now seemed carelessly cast aside as useless.
“‘Tis explained!” cried the delighted Hawkeye. “If them varlets have passed a minute,
they have spent hours in striving to fabricate a lying end to their trail! Well, I’ve known
them to waste a day in the same manner to as little purpose. Here we have three pair of
moccasins, and two of little feet. It is amazing that any mortal beings can journey on
limbs so small! Pass me the thong of buckskin, Uncas, and let me take the length of this
foot. By the Lord, it is no longer than a child’s and yet the maidens are tall and comely.
That Providence is partial in its gifts, for its own wise reasons, the best and most
contented of us must allow.”
“The tender limbs of my daughters are unequal to these hardships,” said Munro, looking
at the light footsteps of his children, with a parent’s love; “we shall find their fainting
forms in this desert.”
“Of that there is little cause of fear,” returned the scout, slowly shaking his head; “this is
a firm and straight, though a light step, and not over long. See, the heel has hardly
touched the ground; and there the dark-hair has made a little jump, from root to root.
No, no; my knowledge for it, neither of them was nigh fainting, hereaway. Now, the
singer was beginning to be footsore and leg-weary, as is plain by his trail. There, you
see, he slipped; here he has traveled wide and tottered; and there again it looks as
though he journeyed on snowshoes. Ay, ay, a man who uses his throat altogether, can
hardly give his legs a proper training.”
49
From such undeniable testimony did the practised woodsman arrive at the truth, with
nearly as much certainty and precision as if he had been a witness of all those events
which his ingenuity so easily elucidated. Cheered by these assurances, and satisfied by a
reasoning that was so obvious, while it was so simple, the party resumed its course,
after making a short halt, to take a hurried repast.
When the meal was ended, the scout cast a glance upward at the setting sun, and pushed
forward with a rapidity which compelled Heyward and the still vigorous Munro to exert
all their muscles to equal. Their route now lay along the bottom which has already been
mentioned. As the Hurons had made no further efforts to conceal their footsteps, the
progress of the pursuers was no longer delayed by uncertainty. Before an hour had
elapsed, however, the speed of Hawkeye sensibly abated, and his head, instead of
maintaining its former direct and forward look, began to turn
suspiciously from side to side, as if he were conscious of approaching danger. He soon
stopped again, and waited for the whole party to come up.
“I scent the Hurons,” he said, speaking to the Mohicans; “yonder is open sky, through
the treetops, and we are getting too nigh their encampment. Sagamore, you will take the
hillside, to the right; Uncas will bend along the brook to the left, while I will try the
trail. If anything should happen, the call will be three croaks of a crow. I saw one of the
birds fanning himself in the air, just beyond the dead oak--another sign that we are
approaching an encampment.”
The Indians departed their several ways without reply, while Hawkeye cautiously
proceeded with the two gentlemen. Heyward soon pressed to the side of their guide,
eager to catch an early glimpse of those enemies he had pursued with so much toil and
anxiety. His companion told him to steal to the edge of the wood, which, as usual, was
fringed with a thicket, and wait his coming, for he wished to examine certain suspicious
signs a little on one side. Duncan obeyed, and soon found
himself in a situation to command a view which he found as extraordinary as it was
novel.
The trees of many acres had been felled, and the glow of a mild summer’s evening had
fallen on the clearing, in beautiful contrast to the gray light of the forest. A short
distance from the place where Duncan stood, the stream had seemingly expanded into a
little lake, covering most of the low land, from mountain to mountain. The water fell out
of this wide basin, in a cataract so regular and gentle, that it appeared rather to be the
work of human hands than fashioned by nature. A hundred earthen dwellings stood on
the margin of the lake, and even in its waters, as though the latter had overflowed its
usual banks. Their rounded roofs, admirably molded for defense against the weather,
denoted more of industry and foresight than the natives were wont to bestow on their
regular habitations, much less on those they occupied for the temporary purposes of
hunting and war. In short, the whole village or town, whichever it might be termed,
possessed more of method and neatness of execution, than the white men had been
accustomed to believe belonged, ordinarily, to the Indian habits. It appeared, however,
to be deserted.
50
AMERICAN ROMANTICISM
AND THE “AMERICAN RENAISSANCE”
Edgar Allan Poe
The Tell-Tale Heart
TRUE! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why
WILL you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not
dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven
and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How then am I mad? Hearken! and observe
how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived,
it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the
old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no
desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a
vulture -- a pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me my blood ran
cold, and so by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old
man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever.
Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you
should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded -- with what
caution -- with what foresight, with what dissimulation, I went to work! I was never
kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night
about midnight I turned the latch of his door and opened it oh, so gently! And then,
when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern all closed,
closed so that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have
laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly, very, very slowly, so that
I might not disturb the old man’s sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head
within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a
madman have been so wise as this? And then when my head was well in the room I
undid the lantern cautiously -- oh, so cautiously -- cautiously (for the hinges creaked), I
undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for
seven long nights, every night just at midnight, but I found the eye always closed, and
so it was impossible to do the work, for it was not the old man who vexed me but his
Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber and
spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he
had passed the night. So you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed,
to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.
Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A
watch’s minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I
felt the extent of my own powers, of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings
of triumph. To think that there I was opening the door little by little, and he not even to
dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea, and perhaps he heard
me, for he moved on the bed suddenly as if startled. Now you may think that I drew
back -- but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness (for the shutters
were close fastened through fear of robbers), and so I knew that he could not see the
opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.
I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped
upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in the bed, crying out, “Who’s there?”
51
I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and
in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed, listening;
just as I have done night after night hearkening to the death watches in the wall.
Presently, I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It
was not a groan of pain or of grief -- oh, no! It was the low stifled sound that arises from
the bottom of the soul when over- charged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a
night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom,
deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I
knew what the old man felt, and pitied him although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he
had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise when he had turned in the bed. His
fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them
causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself, “It is nothing but the wind in
the chimney, it is only a mouse crossing the floor,” or, “It is merely a cricket which has
made a single chirp.” Yes he has been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions;
but he had found all in vain. ALL IN VAIN, because Death in approaching him had
stalked with his black shadow before him and enveloped the victim. And it was the
mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel, although he
neither saw nor heard, to feel the presence of my head within the room.
When I had waited a long time very patiently without hearing him lie down, I
resolved to open a little -- a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it -- you
cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily -- until at length a single dim ray like the
thread of the spider shot out from the crevice and fell upon the vulture eye.
It was open, wide, wide open, and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with
perfect distinctness -- all a dull blue with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very
marrow in my bones, but I could see nothing else of the old man’s face or person, for I
had directed the ray as if by instinct precisely upon the damned spot.
And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but overacuteness of the senses? now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such
as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well too. It was the
beating of the old man’s heart. It increased my fury as the beating of a drum stimulates
the soldier into courage.
But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern
motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eye. Meantime the
hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder,
every instant. The old man’s terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder
every moment! -- do you mark me well? I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And
now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange
a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I
refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must
burst.
And now a new anxiety seized me -- the sound would be heard by a neighbour!
The old man’s hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into
the room. He shrieked once -- once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and
pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But for
many minutes the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it
would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I
removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my
52
hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was
stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.
If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise
precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked
hastily, but in silence.
I took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all
between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly so cunningly, that no
human eye -- not even his -- could have detected anything wrong. There was nothing to
wash out -- no stain of any kind -- no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that.
When I had made an end of these labours, it was four o’clock -- still dark as
midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went
down to open it with a light heart, -- for what had I now to fear? There entered three
men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek
had been heard by a neighbour during the night; suspicion of foul play had been
aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had
been deputed to search the premises.
I smiled, -- for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I
said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I
took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search -- search well. I led them, at
length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the
enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to
rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph,
placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.
The officers were satisfied. My MANNER had convinced them. I was singularly
at ease. They sat and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere
long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a
ringing in my ears; but still they sat, and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct:
I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definitiveness
-- until, at length, I found that the noise was NOT within my ears.
No doubt I now grew VERY pale; but I talked more fluently, and with a
heightened voice. Yet the sound increased -- and what could I do? It was A LOW,
DULL, QUICK SOUND -- MUCH SUCH A SOUND AS A WATCH MAKES WHEN
ENVELOPED IN COTTON. I gasped for breath, and yet the officers heard it not. I
talked more quickly, more vehemently but the noise steadily increased. I arose and
argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily
increased. Why WOULD they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy
strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men, but the noise steadily
increased. O God! what COULD I do? I foamed -- I raved -- I swore! I swung the chair
upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all
and continually increased. It grew louder -- louder -- louder! And still the men chatted
pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! -- no, no? They
heard! -- they suspected! -- they KNEW! -- they were making a mockery of my horror!
-- this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was
more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt
that I must scream or die! -- and now -- again -- hark! louder! louder! louder!
LOUDER! -“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! -- tear up the
planks! -- here, here! -- it is the beating of his hideous heart!”
53
The Fall of the House of Usher
Son cœur est un luth suspendu;
Sitôt qu’on le touche il résonne.
De Béranger.
DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when
the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on
horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as
the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I
know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable
gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of
that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives
even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene
before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—
upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—
and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I
can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the
reveller upon opium—the bitter lapse into every-day life—the hideous dropping off of
the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed
dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of
the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the
contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple
with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back
upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of
very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis
of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected,
that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the
picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful
impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a
black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but
with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodelled and inverted
images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like
windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of
some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in
boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had
lately reached me in a distant part of the country—a letter from him—which, in its
wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave
evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness—of a mental
disorder which oppressed him—and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best and
indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my
society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much
more, was said—it was the apparent heart that went with his request—which allowed
me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a
very singular summons.
Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little
of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware,
54
however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar
sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of
exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive
charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to
the orthodox and easily recognizable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the
very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put
forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the
direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation,
so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect
keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and
while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of
centuries, might have exercised upon the other—it was this deficiency, perhaps, of
collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the
patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the
original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the “House of
Usher”—an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who
used it, both the family and the family mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment—that of
looking down within the tarn—had been to deepen the first singular impression. There
can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition—for
why should I not so term it?—served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I
have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And
it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house
itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy—a fancy so
ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which
oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the
whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their
immediate vicinity—an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but
which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn—a
pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more
narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an
excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread
the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was
apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and
there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts,
and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that
reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long years
in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond
this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability.
Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible
fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the
wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant in
waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy
step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my
progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I
know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While
55
the objects around me—while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the
walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which
rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been
accustomed from my infancy—while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was
all this—I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images
were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician of the family. His
countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He
accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and
ushered me into the presence of his master.
The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were
long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be
altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way
through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent
objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the
chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the
walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books
and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I
felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable
gloom hung over and pervaded all.
Upon my entrance, Usher rose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full
length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought,
of an overdone cordiality—of the constrained effort of the ennuyé man of the world. A
glance, however, at his countenance convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down;
and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity,
half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had
Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of
the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of
his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye
large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but
of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth
of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of
prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and
tenuity;—these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple,
made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere
exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they
were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now
ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things
startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded,
and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not,
even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence—an
inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles
to overcome an habitual trepidancy—an excessive nervous agitation. For something of
this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of
certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical
conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His
voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed
utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision—that abrupt, weighty,
56
unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation—that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly
modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the
irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me,
and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He entered, at some length, into what he
conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family
evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy—a mere nervous affection, he
immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a host
of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered
me; although, perhaps, the terms and the general manner of the narration had their
weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food
was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all
flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but
peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with
horror.
To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. “I shall perish,”
said he, “I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be
lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at
the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this
intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its
absolute effect—in terror. In this unnerved, in this pitiable, condition I feel that the
period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some
struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR.”
I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints,
another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain
superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for
many years, he had never ventured forth—in regard to an influence whose
supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated—an
influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family
mansion had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit—an effect
which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all
looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom
which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin
—to the severe and long-continued illness—indeed to the evidently approaching
dissolution—of a tenderly beloved sister, his sole companion for long years, his last and
only relative on earth. “Her decease,” he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget,
“would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the
Ushers.” While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly
through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence,
disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread; and
yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed
me as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her,
my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother; but he had
buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary
wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate
tears.
57
The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A
settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient
affections of a partially cataleptical character were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she
had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself
finally to bed; but on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at the house, she
succumbed (as her brother told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the
prostrating power of the destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her
person would thus probably be the last I should obtain—that the lady, at least while
living, would be seen by me no more.
For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself;
and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavors to alleviate the melancholy of
my friend. We painted and read together, or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild
improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy
admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I
perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an
inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical
universe in one unceasing radiation of gloom.
I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus spent
alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in any attempt to convey
an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved
me, or led me the way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous
lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among other
things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the
wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate
fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vagueness at which I shuddered
the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not why—from these paintings (vivid
as their images now are before me) I would in vain endeavor to educe more than a small
portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words. By the utter
simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever
mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at least, in the
circumstances then surrounding me, there arose out of the pure abstractions which the
hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no
shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too
concrete reveries of Fuseli.
One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so rigidly of
the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A small
picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with
low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points
of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding
depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast
extent, and no torch or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of
intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate
splendor.
I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered
all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed
instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon
the guitar which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of the
performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for.
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They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild
fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal
improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to
which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest
artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I
was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it as he gave it, because, in the under or
mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full
consciousness on the part of Usher of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne.
The verses, which were entitled “The Haunted Palace,” ran very nearly, if not
accurately, thus:—
I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace—
Radiant palace—reared its head.
In the monarch Thought’s dominion—
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This—all this—was in the olden
Time long ago);
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.
III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute’s well-tunèd law;
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
IV.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
V.
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But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
VI.
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh—but smile no more.
I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad, led us into a train of
thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher’s which I mention not so
much on account of its novelty (for other men* have thought thus), as on account of the
pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of
the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed
a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of
inorganization. I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his
persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the
gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience had been
here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones—in the order of
their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and of
the decayed trees which stood around—above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of
this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its evidence—the
evidence of the sentience—was to be seen, he said, (and I here started as he spoke), in
the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and
the walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent yet importunate and
terrible influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and which
made him what I now saw him—what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I
will make none.
Our books—the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the
mental existence of the invalid—were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this
character of phantasm. We pored together over such works as the “Ververt et
Chartreuse” of Gresset; the “Belphegor” of Machiavelli; the “Heaven and Hell” of
Swedenborg; the “Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm” by Holberg; the
“Chiromancy” of Robert Flud, of Jean D’Indaginé, and of De la Chambre; the “Journey
into the Blue Distance” of Tieck; and the “City of the Sun” of Campanella. One favorite
volume was a small octavo edition of the “Directorium Inquisitorium,” by the
Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the
old African Satyrs and Œgipans, over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His
chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious
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book in quarto Gothic—the manual of a forgotten church—the Vigiliæ Mortuorum
Secundum Chorum Ecclesiæ Maguntinæ.
I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable
influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having informed me abruptly
that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for
a fortnight (previously to its final interment), in one of the numerous vaults within the
main walls of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular
proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother had been led
to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration of the unusual character of the malady
of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men,
and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will not
deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon
the staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I
regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means an unnatural, precaution.
At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for the
temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its
rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our
torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for
investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light;
lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my
own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for the
worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or
some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior
of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper.
The door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its immense weight
caused an unusually sharp, grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.
Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of horror,
we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face
of the tenant. A striking similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my
attention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words
from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies
of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them. Our glances,
however, rested not long upon the dead—for we could not regard her unawed. The
disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in
all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the
bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so
terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having secured the door of
iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper
portion of the house.
And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came
over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary manner had
vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten. He roamed from
chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his
countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue—but the luminousness of his
eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more;
and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance.
There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring
with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage.
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At times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of
madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the
profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his
condition terrified—that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain
degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.
It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth
day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the donjon, that I experienced the full
power of such feelings. Sleep came not near my couch—while the hours waned and
waned away. I struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I
endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering
influence of the gloomy furniture of the room—of the dark and tattered draperies,
which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro
upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts
were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length,
there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with
a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within
the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened—I know not why, except that an
instinctive spirit prompted me—to certain low and indefinite sounds which came,
through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by
an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes
with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavored to
arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to
and fro through the apartment.
I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an adjoining
staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognized it as that of Usher. In an instant
afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His
countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan—but, moreover, there was a species of
mad hilarity in his eyes—an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor. His air
appalled me—but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured,
and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.
“And you have not seen it?” he said abruptly, after having stared about him for
some moments in silence—”you have not then seen it?—but, stay! you shall.” Thus
speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and
threw it freely open to the storm.
The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet. It was,
indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror
and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there
were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding
density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the house) did
not prevent our perceiving the life-like velocity with which they flew careering from all
points against each other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their
exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this—yet we had no glimpse of the
moon or stars, nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the under surfaces
of the huge masses of agitated vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately
around us, were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly
visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.
“You must not—you shall not behold this!” said I, shuddering, to Usher, as I led
him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat. “These appearances, which
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bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena not uncommon—or it may be that they
have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement;—the
air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favorite romances. I will
read, and you shall listen:—and so we will pass away this terrible night together.”
The antique volume which I had taken up was the “Mad Trist” of Sir Launcelot
Canning; but I had called it a favorite of Usher’s more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in
truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had
interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book
immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now
agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental disorder is full of
similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I
have judged, indeed, by the wild overstrained air of vivacity with which he hearkened,
or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have congratulated
myself upon the success of my design.
I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred, the hero of
the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission into the dwelling of the hermit,
proceeds to make good an entrance by force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of
the narrative run thus:
“And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now mighty
withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken, waited no
longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful
turn, but, feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest,
uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of the
door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked, and
ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood
alarumed and reverberated throughout the forest.”
At the termination of this sentence I started and, for a moment, paused; for it
appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me)—
it appeared to me that, from some very remote portion of the mansion, there came,
indistinctly to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the
echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which
Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone
which had arrested my attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements,
and the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself,
had nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the story:
“But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore
enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in the stead
thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate
in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a
shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten—
Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;
Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win.
And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon, which
fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and
withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to close his ears with his hands against the
dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never before heard.”
Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement—for
there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance, I did actually hear (although
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from what direction it proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently
distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound—the exact
counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon’s unnatural shriek
as described by the romancer.
Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and most
extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and
extreme terror were predominant, I still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid
exciting, by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no
means certain that he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange
alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his demeanor. From a position
fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit with his face to
the door of the chamber; and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I
saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped
upon his breast—yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of
the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at variance
with this idea—for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform
sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot,
which thus proceeded:
“And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon,
bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the enchantment
which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of the way before him, and
approached valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to where the shield was
upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet
upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound.”
No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than—as if a shield of brass had
indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver—I became aware of a
distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled, reverberation.
Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement of
Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly
before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as
I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person;
a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and
gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at
length drank in the hideous import of his words.
“Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long—long—long—many
minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it—yet I dared not—oh, pity me,
miserable wretch that I am!—I dared not—I dared not speak! We have put her living in
the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first
feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them—many, many days ago—yet I
dared not—I dared not speak! And now—to-night—Ethelred—ha! ha!—the breaking of
the hermit’s door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!—say,
rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her
struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh! whither shall I fly? Will she not
be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her
footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart?
Madman!”—here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in
the effort he were giving up his soul—”Madman! I tell you that she now stands without
the door!”
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As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the
potency of a spell, the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed threw slowly
back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing
gust—but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of
the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of
some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she
remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold—then, with a low
moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and
now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he
had anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still
abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot
along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have
issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that
of the full, setting, and blood-red moon which now shone vividly through that once
barely-discernible fissure of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of
the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly
widened—there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind—the entire orb of the satellite
burst at once upon my sight—my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder
—there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters—and
the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the
“House of Usher.”
* Watson, Dr. Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of Landaff.—See
“Chemical Essays,” vol. v.
65
Ralph Waldo Emerson
from: Nature
Introduction
Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes
biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature
face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation
to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of
tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed
for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us
by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope
among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its
faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields.
There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws
and worship.
Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must
trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order
of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man’s
condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life,
before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms and
tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition, that shines
so peacefully around us. Let us inquire, to what end is nature?
All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature. We have theories of
races and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote approach to an idea of creation. We are
now so far from the road to truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and
speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most
abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own
evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. Now many are thought not only
unexplained but inexplicable; as language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex.
Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul.
Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy
distinguishes as the NOT ME, that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own
body, must be ranked under this name, NATURE. In enumerating the values of nature
and casting up their sum, I shall use the word in both senses; — in its common and in its
philosophical import. In inquiries so general as our present one, the inaccuracy is not
material; no confusion of thought will occur. Nature, in the common sense, refers to
essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the
mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But
his operations taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and
washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do
not vary the result.
Ch. I: Nature
To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from
society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a
man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly
worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the
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atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies,
the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If
the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and
adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which
had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the
universe with their admonishing smile.
The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are
inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open
to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man
extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never
became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the
wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.
When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in
the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is
this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet.
The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some
twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland
beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which
no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best
part of these men’s farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title. To speak truly,
few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a
very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the
eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward
senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even
into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his
daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of
real sorrows. Nature says, — he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he
shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season
yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a
different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a
setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a
cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight,
under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good
fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the
woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever
of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of
God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not
how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and
faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity,
(leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my
head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism
vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the
Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the
nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances,
— master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and
immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in
streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the
horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.
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The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an
occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged.
They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and
old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher
thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or
doing right.
Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature,
but in man, or in a harmony of both. It is necessary to use these pleasures with great
temperance. For, nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which
yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread
with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring
under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then, there is a kind of
contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky
is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.
[…]
Ch.IV: Language
Language is a third use which Nature subserves to man. Nature is the vehicle,
and threefold degree.
1. Words are signs of natural facts.
2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts.
3. Nature is the symbol of spirit.
1. Words are signs of natural facts. The use of natural history is to give us aid in
supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and
changes of the inward creation. Every word which is used to express a moral or
intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material
appearance. Right means straight; wrong means twisted. Spirit primarily means wind;
transgression, the crossing of a line; supercilious, the raising of the eyebrow. We say the
heart to express emotion, the head to denote thought; and thought and emotion are
words borrowed from sensible things, and now appropriated to spiritual nature. Most of
the process by which this transformation is made, is hidden from us in the remote time
when language was framed; but the same tendency may be daily observed in children.
Children and savages use only nouns or names of things, which they convert into verbs,
and apply to analogous mental acts.
2. But this origin of all words that convey a spiritual import, — so conspicuous a
fact in the history of language, — is our least debt to nature. It is not words only that are
emblematic; it is things which are emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of some
spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and
that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its
picture. An enraged man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a
learned man is a torch. A lamb is innocence; a snake is subtle spite; flowers express to
us the delicate affections. Light and darkness are our familiar expression for knowledge
and ignorance; and heat for love. Visible distance behind and before us, is respectively
our image of memory and hope.
Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the flux of
all things? Throw a stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate themselves are
the beautiful type of all influence. Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind
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his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love,
Freedom, arise and shine. This universal soul, he calls Reason: it is not mine, or thine,
or his, but we are its; we are its property and men. And the blue sky in which the private
earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm, and full of everlasting orbs, is the type of
Reason. That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered in relation to
nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man in all ages
and countries, embodies it in his language, as the FATHER.
It is easily seen that there is nothing lucky or capricious in these analogies, but
that they are constant, and pervade nature. These are not the dreams of a few poets, here
and there, but man is an analogist, and studies relations in all objects. He is placed in the
centre of beings, and a ray of relation passes from every other being to him. And neither
can man be understood without these objects, nor these objects without man. All the
facts in natural history taken by themselves, have no value, but are barren, like a single
sex. But marry it to human history, and it is full of life. Whole Floras, all Linnaeus’ and
Buffon’s volumes, are dry catalogues of facts; but the most trivial of these facts, the
habit of a plant, the organs, or work, or noise of an insect, applied to the illustration of a
fact in intellectual philosophy, or, in any way associated to human nature, affects us in
the most lively and agreeable manner. The seed of a plant, — to what affecting
analogies in the nature of man, is that little fruit made use of, in all discourse, up to the
voice of Paul, who calls the human corpse a seed, — “It is sown a natural body; it is
raised a spiritual body.” The motion of the earth round its axis, and round the sun,
makes the day, and the year. These are certain amounts of brute light and heat. But is
there no intent of an analogy between man’s life and the seasons? And do the seasons
gain no grandeur or pathos from that analogy? The instincts of the ant are very
unimportant, considered as the ant’s; but the moment a ray of relation is seen to extend
from it to man, and the little drudge is seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty
heart, then all its habits, even that said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps,
become sublime.
Because of this radical correspondence between visible things and human
thoughts, savages, who have only what is necessary, converse in figures. As we go back
in history, language becomes more picturesque, until its infancy, when it is all poetry; or
all spiritual facts are represented by natural symbols. The same symbols are found to
make the original elements of all languages. It has moreover been observed, that the
idioms of all languages approach each other in passages of the greatest eloquence and
power. And as this is the first language, so is it the last. This immediate dependence of
language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of
somewhat in human life, never loses its power to affect us. It is this which gives that
piquancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or back-woodsman, which all
men relish.
A man’s power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it,
depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth, and his desire
to communicate it without loss. The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of
language. When simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the
prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of riches, of pleasure, of power, and of
praise, — and duplicity and falsehood take place of simplicity and truth, the power over
nature as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created,
and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is
employed, when there is no bullion in the vaults. In due time, the fraud is manifest, and
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words lose all power to stimulate the understanding or the affections. Hundreds of
writers may be found in every long-civilized nation, who for a short time believe, and
make others believe, that they see and utter truths, who do not of themselves clothe one
thought in its natural garment, but who feed unconsciously on the language created by
the primary writers of the country, those, namely, who hold primarily on nature.
But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things;
so that picturesque language is at once a commanding certificate that he who employs it,
is a man in alliance with truth and God. The moment our discourse rises above the
ground line of familiar facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted by thought, it
clothes itself in images. A man conversing in earnest, if he watch his intellectual
processes, will find that a material image, more or less luminous, arises in his mind,
cotemporaneous with every thought, which furnishes the vestment of the thought.
Hence, good writing and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories. This imagery is
spontaneous. It is the blending of experience with the present action of the mind. It is
proper creation. It is the working of the Original Cause through the instruments he has
already made.
These facts may suggest the advantage which the country-life possesses for a
powerful mind, over the artificial and curtailed life of cities. We know more from nature
than we can at will communicate. Its light flows into the mind evermore, and we forget
its presence. The poet, the orator, bred in the woods, whose senses have been nourished
by their fair and appeasing changes, year after year, without design and without heed, —
shall not lose their lesson altogether, in the roar of cities or the broil of politics. Long
hereafter, amidst agitation and terror in national councils, — in the hour of revolution,
— these solemn images shall reappear in their morning lustre, as fit symbols and words
of the thoughts which the passing events shall awaken. At the call of a noble sentiment,
again the woods wave, the pines murmur, the river rolls and shines, and the cattle low
upon the mountains, as he saw and heard them in his infancy. And with these forms, the
spells of persuasion, the keys of power are put into his hands.
3. We are thus assisted by natural objects in the expression of particular
meanings. But how great a language to convey such pepper-corn informations! Did it
need such noble races of creatures, this profusion of forms, this host of orbs in heaven,
to furnish man with the dictionary and grammar of his municipal speech? Whilst we use
this grand cipher to expedite the affairs of our pot and kettle, we feel that we have not
yet put it to its use, neither are able. We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano
to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would
say, we cannot avoid the question, whether the characters are not significant of
themselves. Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no significance but what we
consciously give them, when we employ them as emblems of our thoughts? The world
is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor
of the human mind. The laws of moral nature answer to those of matter as face to face
in a glass. “The visible world and the relation of its parts, is the dial plate of the
invisible.” The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus, “the whole is
greater than its part;” “reaction is equal to action;” “the smallest weight may be made to
lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time;” and many the like
propositions, which have an ethical as well as physical sense. These propositions have a
much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when
confined to technical use. […]
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This relation between the mind and matter is not fancied by some poet, but
stands in the will of God, and so is free to be known by all men. It appears to men, or it
does not appear. […] “Every scripture is to be interpreted by the same spirit which gave
it forth,” — is the fundamental law of criticism. A life in harmony with nature, the love
of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text. By degrees we may
come to know the primitive sense of the permanent objects of nature, so that the world
shall be to us an open book, and every form significant of its hidden life and final cause.
A new interest surprises us, whilst, under the view now suggested, we
contemplate the fearful extent and multitude of objects; since “every object rightly seen,
unlocks a new faculty of the soul.” That which was unconscious truth, becomes, when
interpreted and defined in an object, a part of the domain of knowledge, — a new
weapon in the magazine of power.
From: Self-Reliance (Essays First Series)
[…] To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your
private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it
shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and
our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar
as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and
Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what
they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes
across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages.
Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius
we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated
majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us
to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most
when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say
with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we
shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. […]
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine
providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of
events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius
of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their
heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now
men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors
and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides,
redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and
the Dark.
[…] The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as
much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human
nature. A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent,
irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries
and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad,
interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences,
about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does
not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon
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as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the
sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account.
There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus
avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected,
unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable. He would
utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but necessary,
would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear.
These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible
as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of
every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members
agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty
and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its
aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather
immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be
goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to
yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. […] A man is to carry himself in
the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am
ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and
dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more
than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. […]
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule,
equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction
between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those
who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to
live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great
man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence
of solitude. […]
The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for
our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our
orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.
But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this
corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that
public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule
of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory,
but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new
day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout
motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God
with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and
flee.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen
and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.
He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think
now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again,
though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be
misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was
misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and
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Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be
misunderstood.
[…] Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history, our imagination plays
us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private
John and Edward in a small house and common day’s work; but the things of life are the
same to both; the sum total of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred, and
Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As
great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed their public and renowned
steps. When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from
the actions of kings to those of gentlemen. […]
Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I
am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the
blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to
better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to
them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a
leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the
leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments
alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with
reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on
tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature
in the present, above time. […]
from: The Poet (Essays, Second Series)
[..] The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign,
and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the
beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the
creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is
emperor in his own right. Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism, which
assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such
as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural
sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those
whose province is action, but who quit it to imitate the sayers. But Homer’s words are
as costly and admirable to Homer, as Agamemnon’s victories are to Agamemnon. The
poet does not wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and think primarily, so he
writes primarily what will and must be spoken, reckoning the others, though primaries
also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants; as sitters or models in the studio of
a painter, or as assistants who bring building materials to an architect.
For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely
organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those
primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or
a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of
more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts,
though imperfect, become the songs of the nations. For nature is as truly beautiful as it
is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear, as it must be done, or be
known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy. Words are
also actions, and actions are a kind of words.
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The sign and credentials of the poet are, that he announces that which no man
foretold. He is the true and only doctor; he knows and tells; he is the only teller of news,
for he was present and privy to the appearance which he describes. He is a beholder of
ideas, and an utterer of the necessary and causal. For we do not speak now of men of
poetical talents, or of industry and skill in metre, but of the true poet. […] For it is not
metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem, — a thought so passionate
and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own,
and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought and the form are equal in the order of
time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form. The poet has a new
thought: he has a whole new experience to unfold; he will tell us how it was with him,
and all men will be the richer in his fortune. For, the experience of each new age
requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet. […] Every
one has some interest in the advent of the poet, and no one knows how much it may
concern him. We know that the secret of the world is profound, but who or what shall be
our interpreter, we know not. A mountain ramble, a new style of face, a new person,
may put the key into our hands. Of course, the value of genius to us is in the veracity of
its report. Talent may frolic and juggle; genius realizes and adds. Mankind, in good
earnest, have availed so far in understanding themselves and their work, that the
foremost watchman on the peak announces his news. It is the truest word ever spoken,
and the phrase will be the fittest, most musical, and the unerring voice of the world for
that time. […]
Beyond this universality of the symbolic language, we are apprised of the
divineness of this superior use of things, whereby the world is a temple, whose walls are
covered with emblems, pictures, and commandments of the Deity, in this, that there is
no fact in nature which does not carry the whole sense of nature; and the distinctions
which we make in events, and in affairs, of low and high, honest and base, disappear
when nature is used as a symbol. Thought makes every thing fit for use. The vocabulary
of an omniscient man would embrace words and images excluded from polite
conversation. What would be base, or even obscene, to the obscene, becomes illustrious,
spoken in a new connexion of thought. […] We are far from having exhausted the
significance of the few symbols we use. We can come to use them yet with a terrible
simplicity. It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.
Every new relation is a new word. Also, we use defects and deformities to a sacred
purpose, so expressing our sense that the evils of the world are such only to the evil eye.
[…]
By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer, or Language-maker, naming
things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to
every one its own name and not another’s, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights
in detachment or boundary. The poets made all the words, and therefore language is the
archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses. For, though the
origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and
obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker
and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant
picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite
masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images, or tropes, which
now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin. But the
poet names the thing because he sees it, or comes one step nearer to it than any other.
This expression, or naming, is not art, but a second nature, grown out of the first, as a
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leaf out of a tree. What we call nature, is a certain self-regulated motion, or change; and
nature does all things by her own hands, and does not leave another to baptise her, but
baptises herself; and this through the metamorphosis again. […]
If the imagination intoxicates the poet, it is not inactive in other men. The
metamorphosis excites in the beholder an emotion of joy. The use of symbols has a
certain power of emancipation and exhilaration for all men. We seem to be touched by a
wand, which makes us dance and run about happily, like children. We are like persons
who come out of a cave or cellar into the open air. This is the effect on us of tropes,
fables, oracles, and all poetic forms. Poets are thus liberating gods. Men have really got
a new sense, and found within their world, another world, or nest of worlds; for, the
metamorphosis once seen, we divine that it does not stop. […]
The poets are thus liberating gods. The ancient British bards had for the title of
their order, “Those who are free throughout the world.” They are free, and they make
free. An imaginative book renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us
through its tropes, than afterward, when we arrive at the precise sense of the author. I
think nothing is of any value in books, excepting the transcendental and extraordinary.
If a man is inflamed and carried away by his thought, to that degree that he forgets the
authors and the public, and heeds only this one dream, which holds him like an insanity,
let me read his paper, and you may have all the arguments and histories and criticism.
[…]
There is good reason why we should prize this liberation. The fate of the poor
shepherd, who, blinded and lost in the snow-storm, perishes in a drift within a few feet
of his cottage door, is an emblem of the state of man. On the brink of the waters of life
and truth, we are miserably dying. The inaccessibleness of every thought but that we are
in, is wonderful. What if you come near to it, — you are as remote, when you are
nearest, as when you are farthest. Every thought is also a prison; every heaven is also a
prison. Therefore we love the poet, the inventor, who in any form, whether in an ode, or
in an action, or in looks and behavior, has yielded us a new thought. He unlocks our
chains, and admits us to a new scene.
This emancipation is dear to all men, and the power to impart it, as it must come
from greater depth and scope of thought, is a measure of intellect. Therefore all books
of the imagination endure, all which ascend to that truth, that the writer sees nature
beneath him, and uses it as his exponent. Every verse or sentence, possessing this virtue,
will take care of its own immortality. The religions of the world are the ejaculations of a
few imaginative men.
But the quality of the imagination is to flow, and not to freeze. The poet did not
stop at the color, or the form, but read their meaning; neither may he rest in this
meaning, but he makes the same objects exponents of his new thought. Here is the
difference betwixt the poet and the mystic, that the last nails a symbol to one sense,
which was a true sense for a moment, but soon becomes old and false. For all symbols
are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses
are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead. […]
I look in vain for the poet whom I describe. […] We have yet had no genius in
America, with tyrannous eye, which knew the value of our incomparable materials, and
saw, in the barbarism and materialism of the times, another carnival of the same gods
whose picture he so much admires in Homer; then in the middle age; then in Calvinism.
Banks and tariffs, the newspaper and caucus, methodism and unitarianism, are flat and
dull to dull people, but rest on the same foundations of wonder as the town of Troy, and
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the temple of Delphos, and are as swiftly passing away. Our logrolling, our stumps and
their politics, our fisheries, our Negroes, and Indians, our boasts, and our repudiations,
the wrath of rogues, and the pusillanimity of honest men, the northern trade, the
southern planting, the western clearing, Oregon, and Texas, are yet unsung. Yet America
is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait
long for metres. […]
O poet! a new nobility is conferred in groves and pastures, and not in castles, or by
the sword-blade, any longer. The conditions are hard, but equal. Thou shalt leave the
world, and know the muse only. Thou shalt not know any longer the times, customs,
graces, politics, or opinions of men, but shalt take all from the muse. For the time of
towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours
are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy.
God wills also that thou abdicate a manifold and duplex life, and that thou be content
that others speak for thee. Others shall be thy gentlemen, and shall represent all
courtesy and worldly life for thee; others shall do the great and resounding actions
also. Thou shalt lie close hid with nature, and canst not be afforded to the Capitol or
the Exchange. The world is full of renunciations and apprenticeships, and this is
thine: thou must pass for a fool and a churl for a long season. This is the screen and
sheath in which Pan has protected his well-beloved flower, and thou shalt be known
only to thine own, and they shall console thee with tenderest love. And thou shalt not
be able to rehearse the names of thy friends in thy verse, for an old shame before the
holy ideal. And this is the reward: that the ideal shall be real to thee, and the
impressions of the actual world shall fall like summer rain, copious, but not
troublesome, to thy invulnerable essence. Thou shalt have the whole land for thy
park and manor, the sea for thy bath and navigation, without tax and without envy;
the woods and the rivers thou shalt own; and thou shalt possess that wherein others
are only tenants and boarders. Thou true land-lord! sea-lord! air-lord! Wherever
snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight,
wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, wherever are forms
with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is
danger, and awe, and love, there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and
though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition
inopportune or ignoble.
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Henry David Thoreau
From: Walden
Economy
When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in
the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore
of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my
hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in
civilized life again.
I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very
particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life,
which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent,
but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I
got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been
curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some,
who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask
those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to
answer some of these questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is
omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We
commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I
should not talk so much about myself if there were any body else whom I knew as well.
Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.
Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere
account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some
such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived
sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more
particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept
such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the
coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.
I would fain say something, not so much concerning the Chinese and
Sandwich Islanders as you who read these pages, who are said to live in New England;
something about your condition, especially your outward condition or circumstances in
this world, in this town, what it is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is,
whether it cannot be improved as well as not. I have travelled a good deal in Concord;
and every where, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me
to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. What I have heard of Bramins
sitting exposed to four fires and looking in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended,
with their heads downward, over flames; or looking at the heavens over their shoulders
“until it becomes impossible for them to resume their natural position, while from the
twist of the neck nothing but liquids can pass into the stomach;” or dwelling, chained
for life, at the foot of a tree; or measuring with their bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth
of vast empires; or standing on one leg on the tops of pillars, -- even these forms of
conscious penance are hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which I
daily witness. The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those
which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I
could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. They
have no friend Iolas to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra’s head, but as soon as
one head is crushed, two spring up.
77
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited
farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than
got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that
they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who
made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is
condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as
soon as they are born? They have got to live a man’s life, pushing all these things before
them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met well
nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing
before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one
hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot! The portionless, who
struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to
subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.
But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed
into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are
employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will
corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when
they get to the end of it, if not before. It is said that Deucalion and Pyrrha created men
by throwing stones over their heads behind them: -Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,
Et documenta damus quâ simus origine nati.
Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way, -“From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care,
Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are.”
So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing the stones over
their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell.
Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance
and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of
life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are
too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for
a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his
labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be any thing but a machine.
How can he remember well his ignorance -- which his growth requires -- who has so
often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and
recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our nature,
like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do
not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.
Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it
were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are
unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and
shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to
spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what
mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by
experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt,
a very ancient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, another’s brass, for some of
their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other’s brass;
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always promising to pay, promising to pay, to-morrow, and dying to-day, insolvent;
seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison
offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility, or
dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your
neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his
groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick
day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering,
or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.
I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend
to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so
many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hard to have a
southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the
slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a divinity in man! Look at the teamster on the highway,
wending to market by day or night; does any divinity stir within him? His highest duty
to fodder and water his horses! What is his destiny to him compared with the shipping
interests? Does not he drive for Squire Make-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal, is he?
See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal
nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his
own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.
What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his
fate. Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and imagination,
-- what Wilberforce is there to bring that about? Think, also, of the ladies of the land
weaving toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too green an interest in their
fates! As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is
confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and
have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but
unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements
of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic
of wisdom not to do desperate things.
When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of
man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had
deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other.
Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember
that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking
or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What every body echoes or in
silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of
opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their
fields. What old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can. Old deeds for
old people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance,
to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot,
and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as
the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it
has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has
learned any thing of absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important
advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have
been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may
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be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less
young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to
hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have
told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me any thing, to the purpose. Here is life, an
experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried
it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my
Mentors said nothing about.
[…]
***
Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble and anxiety which I
have referred to is about, and how much it is necessary that we be troubled, or, at least,
careful. It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the
midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life
and what methods have been taken to obtain them; or even to look over the old daybooks of the merchants, to see what it was that men most commonly bought at the
stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries. For the improvements
of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence; as our
skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.
[…]
The very simplicity and nakedness of man’s life in the primitive ages imply
this advantage at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. When he was
refreshed with food and sleep he contemplated his journey again. He dwelt, as it were,
in a tent in this world, and was either threading the valleys, or crossing the plains, or
climbing the mountain tops. But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. The man
who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he
who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a
night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted
Christianity merely as an improved method of agriculture. We have built for this world
a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the
expression of man’s struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art
is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten. […]
Though we are not so degenerate but that we might possibly live in a cave or a
wigwam or wear skins to-day, it certainly is better to accept the advantages, though so
dearly bought, which the invention and industry of mankind offer. In such a
neighborhood as this, boards and shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper and more easily
obtained than suitable caves, or whole logs, or bark in sufficient quantities, or even
well-temperedclay or flat stones. I speak understandingly on this subject, for I have
made myself acquainted with it both theoretically and practically. With a little more wit
we might use these materials so as to become richer than the richest now are, and make
our civilization a blessing. The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.
But to make haste to my own experiment.
Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods
by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down
some tall arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber. It is difficult to begin
without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your
fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released
his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I
received it. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, through
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which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and
hickories were springing up. The ice in the pond was not yet dissolved, though there
were some open spaces, and it was all dark colored and saturated with water. There
were some slight flurries of snow during the days that I worked there; but for the most
part when I came out on to the railroad, on my way home, its yellow sand heap
stretched away gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun,
and I heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to commence another year
with us. They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man’s discontent was
thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself. One
day, when my axe had come off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it
with a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond hole in order to swell the
wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently
without inconvenience, as long as I staid there, or more than a quarter of an hour;
perhaps because he had not yet fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me that
for a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they
should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity
rise to a higher and more ethereal life. I had previously seen the snakes in frosty
mornings in my path with portions of their bodies still numb and inflexible, waiting for
the sun to thaw them. On the 1st of April it rained and melted the ice, and in the early
part of the day, which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose groping about over the pond
and cackling as if lost, or like the spirit of the fog.
So I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber, and also studs and
rafters, all with my narrow axe, not having many communicable or scholar-like
thoughts, singing to myself, -Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings, -The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows.
I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on two sides
only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving the rest of the bark on, so
that they were just as straight and much stronger than sawed ones. Each stick was
carefully mortised or tenoned by its stump, for I had borrowed other tools by this time.
My days in the woods were not very long ones; yet I usually carried my dinner of bread
and butter, and read the newspaper in which it was wrapped, at noon, sitting amid the
green pine boughs which I had cut off, and to my bread was imparted some of their
fragrance, for my hands were covered with a thick coat of pitch. Before I had done I
was more the friend than the foe of the pine tree, though I had cut down some of them,
having become better acquainted with it. Sometimes a rambler in the wood was
attracted by the sound of my axe, and we chatted pleasantly over the chips which I had
made.
By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my work, but rather made the
most of it, my house was framed and ready for the raising. I had already bought the
shanty of James Collins, an Irishman who worked on the Fitchburg Railroad, for boards.
[…] I took down this dwelling the same morning, drawing the nails, and removed it to
the pond side by small cartloads, spreading the boards on the grass there to bleach and
warp back again in the sun. One early thrush gave me a note or two as I drove along the
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woodland path. I was informed treacherously by a young Patrick that neighbor Seeley,
an Irishman, in the intervals of the carting, transferred the still tolerable, straight, and
drivable nails, staples, and spikes to his pocket, and then stood when I came back to
pass the time of day, and look freshly up, unconcerned, with spring thoughts, at the
devastation; there being a dearth of work, as he said. He was there to represent
spectatordom, and help make this seemingly insignificant event one with the removal of
the gods of Troy.
I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south, where a woodchuck
had formerly dug his burrow, down through sumach and blackberry roots, and the
lowest stain of vegetation, six feet square by seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoes
would not freeze in any winter. The sides were left shelving, and not stoned; but the sun
having never shone on them, the sand still keeps its place. It was but two hours’ work. I
took particular pleasure in this breaking of ground, for in almost all latitudes men dig
into the earth for an equable temperature. Under the most splendid house in the city is
still to be found the cellar where they store their roots as of old, and long after the
superstructure has disappeared posterity remark its dent in the earth. The house is still
but a sort of porch at the entrance of a burrow.
At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of my
acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for neighborliness than from any
necessity, I set up the frame of my house. No man was ever more honored in the
character of his raisers than I. They are destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of loftier
structures one day. I began to occupy my house on the 4th of July, as soon as it was
boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it
was perfectly impervious to rain; but before boarding I laid the foundation of a chimney
at one end, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms. I built
the chimney after my hoeing in the fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth,
doing my cooking in the mean while out of doors on the ground, early in the morning:
which mode I still think is in some respects more convenient and agreeable than the
usual one. When it stormed before my bread was baked, I fixed a few boards over the
fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that way.
In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps
of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much
entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose as the Iliad.
It would be worth the while to build still more deliberately than I did,
considering, for instance, what foundation a door, a window, a cellar, a garret, have in
the nature of man, and perchance never raising any superstructure until we found a
better reason for it than our temporal necessities even. There is some of the same fitness
in a man’s building his own house that there is in a bird’s building its own nest. Who
knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food
for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be
universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we
do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have
built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever
resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does architecture amount to
in the experience of the mass of men? I never in all my walks came across a man
engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house. We belong to the
community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the
preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division of labor to end? and
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what object does it finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not
therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself. […]
Before winter I built a chimney, and shingled the sides of my house, which
were already impervious to rain, with imperfect and sappy shingles made of the first
slice of the log, whose edges I was obliged to straighten with a plane.
I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen long,
and eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a large window on each side, two trap
doors, one door at the end, and a brick fireplace opposite. The exact cost of my house,
paying the usual price for such materials as I used, but not counting the work, all of
which was done by myself, was as follows; and I give the details because very few are
able to tell exactly what their houses cost, and fewer still, if any, the separate cost of the
various materials which compose them: -Boards, . . . . . . . . . . . . . $8 03 1/2, mostly shanty boards.
Refuse shingles for roof and sides, . . 4 00
laths, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 25
Two second-hand windows with glass, . . 2 43
One thousand old rick, . . . . . . . . 4 00
Two casks of lime, . . . . . . . . . . 2 40 That was high.
Hair, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 31 More than I needed.
Mantle-tree iron, . . . . . . . . . . . 0 15
Nails, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 90
Hinges and screws, . . . . . . . . . . 0 14
Latch, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 10
Chalk, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 01
Transportation, . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 40 I carried a good
________ part on my back
In all, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $28 12 1/2
These are all the materials excepting the timber stones and sand, which I
claimed by squatter’s right. I have also a small wood-shed adjoining, made chiefly of
the stuff which was left after building the house.
[…]
It should not be by their architecture, but why not even by their power of
abstract thought, that nations should seek to commemorate themselves? How much
more admirable the Bhagvat-Geeta than all the ruins of the East! Towers and temples
are the luxury of princes. A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of
any prince. Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, nor is its material silver, or gold, or
marble, except to a trifling extent. To what end, pray, is so much stone hammered? In
Arcadia, when I was there, I did not see any hammering stone. Nations are possessed
with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of
hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their
manners? One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high
as the moon. I love better to see stones in place. The grandeur of Thebes was a vulgar
grandeur. More sensible is a rod of stone wall that bounds an honest man’s field than a
hundred-gated Thebes that has wandered farther from the true end of life. The religion
and civilization which are barbaric and heathenish build splendid temples; but what you
might call Christianity does not. Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its
tomb only. It buries itself alive. As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in
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them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend
their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been
wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. I
might possibly invent some excuse for them and him, but I have no time for it. As for
the religion and love of art of the builders, it is much the same all the world over,
whether the building be an Egyptian temple or the United States Bank. It costs more
than it comes to. The mainspring is vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and bread and
butter. […] Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East, -- to
know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not
build them, -- who were above such trifling. But to proceed with my statistics.
By surveying, carpentry, and day-labor of various other kinds in the village in
the mean while, for I have as many trades as fingers, I had earned $13 34. The expense
of food for eight months, namely, from July 4th to March 1st, the time when these
estimates were made, though I lived there more than two years, -- not counting potatoes,
a little green corn, and some peas, which I had raised, nor considering the value of what
was on hand at the last date, was
Rice, . . . . . $1 73 1\2
Molasses, . . . 1 73 Cheapest form of the saccharine.
Rye meal, . . . 1 04 3\4
Indian meal, . 0 99 3\4 Cheaper than rye.
Pork, . . . . . 0 22
All experiments which failed.
Flour, . . . . 0 88 )- Costs more than Indian meal, both money and trouble.
Sugar, . . . . 0 80
Lard, . . . . . 0 65
Dried apple, . 0 22
Sweet potatoes, 0 10
One pumpkin, . 0 6
One watermelon, 0 2
Salt, . . . . . 0 3
Yes, I did eat $8 74, all told; but I should not thus unblushingly publish my
guilt, if I did not know that most of my readers were equally guilty with myself, and that
their deeds would look no better in print. The next year I sometimes caught a mess of
fish for my dinner, and once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which ravaged
my bean-field, -- effect his transmigration, as a Tartar would say, -- and devour him,
partly for experiment’s sake; but though it afforded me a momentary enjoyment,
notwithstanding a musky flavor, I saw that the longest use would not make that a good
practice, however it might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressed by the village
butcher.
[…] These statistics, however accidental and therefore uninstructive they may
appear, as they have a certain completeness, have a certain value also. Nothing was
given me of which I have not rendered some account. It appears from the above
estimate, that my food alone cost me in money about twenty-seven cents a week. It was,
for nearly two years after this, rye and Indian meal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very
little salt pork, molasses, and salt, and my drink water. It was fit that I should live on
rice, mainly, who loved so well the philosophy of India. To meet the objections of some
inveterate cavillers, I may as well state, that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had
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done, and I trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the detriment
of my domestic arrangements. But the dining out, being, as I have stated, a constant
element, does not in the least affect a comparative statement like this.
I learned from my two years’ experience that it would cost incredibly little
trouble to obtain one’s necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man may use as
simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength. I have made a
satisfactory dinner, satisfactory on several accounts, simply off a dish of purslane
(Portulaca oleracea) which I gathered in my cornfield, boiled and salted. I give the
Latin on account of the savoriness of the trivial name. And pray what more can a
reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of
ears of green sweet-corn boiled, with the addition of salt? Even the little variety which I
used was a yielding to the demands of appetite, and not of health. Yet men have come to
such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of
luxuries; and I know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his life because he took
to drinking water only.
[…]
For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labor of my
hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the
expenses of living. The whole of my winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free
and clear for study. I have thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses
were in proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my income, for I was obliged to dress
and train, not to say think and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into the bargain.
As I did not teach for the good of my fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a
failure. I have tried trade; but I found that it would take ten years to get under way in
that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil. I was actually afraid
that I might by that time be doing what is called a good business. When formerly I was
looking about to see what I could do for a living, some sad experience in conforming to
the wishes of friends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often and
seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I could do, and its small profits might
suffice, -- for my greatest skill has been to want but little, -- so little capital it required,
so little distraction from my wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While my
acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I contemplated this
occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills all summer to pick the berries which
came in my way, and thereafter carelessly dispose of them; so, to keep the flocks of
Admetus. I also dreamed that I might gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens to such
villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods, even to the city, by hay-cart loads. But I
have since learned that trade curses every thing it handles; and though you trade in
messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches to the business.
[…]
Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints. Our
hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring him forever. One
would say that even the prophets and redeemers had rather consoled the fears than
confirmed the hopes of man. There is nowhere recorded a simple and irrepressible
satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable praise of God. All health and success
does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear; all disease and failure
helps to make me sad and does me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me
or I with it. If, then, we would indeed restore mankind by truly Indian, botanic,
magnetic, or natural means, let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel
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the clouds which hang over our own brows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do
not stay to be an overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the
world.
Where I Lived and What I Lived for.
[…]
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity,
and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.
I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and
bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did.
They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of king Tching-thang to this
effect: “Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again.” I
can understand that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by the
faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my
apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could
be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer’s requiem; itself an Iliad and
Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was something
cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and
fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is
the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some
part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be
expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our
Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own
newly-acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of
celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air -- to a higher life
than we fell asleep from; and thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove itself to be good,
no less than the light. That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier,
more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is
pursuing a descending and darkening way. After a partial cessation of his sensuous life,
the soul of man, or its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries
again what noble life it can make. All memorable events, I should say, transpire in
morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say, “All intelligences awake
with the morning.” Poetry and art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of
men, date from such an hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of
Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought
keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks
say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn
in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an
account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor
calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness they would have performed
something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million
is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a
poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was
quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids,
but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest
sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to
elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular
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picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more
glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look,
which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of
his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry
information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the
essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I
came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living
is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted
to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to
put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a
corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the
whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were
sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next
excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether
it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end
of man here to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago
changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout
upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable
wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to
count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump
the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and
not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your
accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are
the clouds and storms and quick-sands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for,
that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his
port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds.
Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of
a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German
Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even
a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all
its so called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all external and superficial,
is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and
tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of
calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure
for it as for them is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life
and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation
have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an
hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons
or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote
days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who
will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season?
But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride
on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie
the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on
them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are
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sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over;
so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be
ridden upon. And when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a
supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the
cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception. I am glad to know
that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in
their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to
be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they
take a thousand stitches to-day to save nine to-morrow. As for work, we haven’t any of
any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus’ dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads
still. If I should only give a few pulls at the parish bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without
setting the bell, there is hardly a man on his farm in the outskirts of Concord,
notwithstanding that press of engagements which was his excuse so many times this
morning, nor a boy, nor a woman, I might almost say, but would forsake all and follow
that sound, not mainly to save property from the flames, but, if we will confess the
truth, much more to see it burn, since burn it must, and we, be it known, did not set it on
fire, -- or to see it put out, and have a hand in it, if that is done as handsomely; yes, even
if it were the parish church itself. Hardly a man takes a half hour’s nap after dinner, but
when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, “What’s the news?” as if the rest of
mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every half hour,
doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed.
After a night’s sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. “Pray tell me any
thing new that has happened to a man any where on this globe,” -- and he reads it over
his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito
River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of
this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.
For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are
very few important communications made through it. To speak critically, I never
received more than one or two letters in my life -- I wrote this some years ago -- that
were worth the postage. The penny-post is, commonly, an institution through which you
seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so often safely offered in jest.
And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one
man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel
wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or
one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, -- we never need read of
another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a
myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip,
and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy
after this gossip. There was such a rush, as I hear, the other day at one of the offices to
learn the foreign news by the last arrival, that several large squares of plate glass
belonging to the establishment were broken by the pressure, -- news which I seriously
think a ready wit might write a twelvemonth or twelve years beforehand with sufficient
accuracy. As for Spain, for instance, if you know how to throw in Don Carlos and the
Infanta, and Don Pedro and Seville and Granada, from time to time in the right
proportions, -- they may have changed the names a little since I saw the papers, -- and
serve up a bull-fight when other entertainments fail, it will be true to the letter, and give
us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of things in Spain as the most succinct and
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lucid reports under this head in the newspapers: and as for England, almost the last
significant scrap of news from that quarter was the revolution of 1649; and if you have
learned the history of her crops for an average year, you never need attend to that thing
again, unless your speculations are of a merely pecuniary character. If one may judge
who rarely looks into the newspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts, a
French revolution not excepted. […]
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track
by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast,
or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go,
let the bells ring and the children cry, -- determined to make a day of it. Why should we
knock under and go with the stream? […] If you stand right fronting and face to face to
a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel
its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily
conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really
dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive,
let us go about our business.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the
sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity
remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I
cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been
regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it
discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy
with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties
concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some
creatures use their snout and fore-paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way
through these hills.
I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining rod and thin
rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine.
Conclusion
[…] It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in
Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some
“Symmes’ Hole” by which to get at the inside at last. England and France, Spain and
Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast, all front on this private sea; but no bark from
them has ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt the direct way to
India. If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations,
if you would travel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the
Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher,
and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. Only the defeated and
deserters go to the wars, cowards that run away and enlist. Start now on that farthest
western way, which does not pause at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor conduct toward
a worn-out China or Japan, but leads on direct a tangent to this sphere, summer and
winter, day and night, sun down, moon down, and at last earth down too. […]
I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me
that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is
remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten
track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my
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door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite
distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it
open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the
paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the
world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin
passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could
best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in
the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will
meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will
pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish
themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his
favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of
beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less
complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should
be. Now put the foundations under them. […]
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard
names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder
will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have
some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is
reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode;
the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may
live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town’s poor
seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. May be they are simply
great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being
supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting
themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty
like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether
clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell
your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society. If I
were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just
as large to me while I had my thoughts about me. The philosopher said: “From an army
of three divisions one can take away its general, and put it in disorder; from the man the
most abject and vulgar one cannot take away his thought.” Do not seek so anxiously to
be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all
dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty
and meanness gather around us, “and lo! creation widens to our view.” We are often
reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of Croesus, our aims must still be
the same, and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if you are restricted in your
range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but
confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with
the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone
where it is sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a
lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.
Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
[…]
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There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate
incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the
most enlightened countries. There are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are only
the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and
mean. We think that we can change our clothes only. It is said that the British Empire is
very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not
believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire
like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind. Who knows what sort of seventeenyear locust will next come out of the ground? The government of the world I live in was
not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.
The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man
has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year,
which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see
far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed, before science began to record
its freshets. Every one has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England,
of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree
wood, which had stood in a farmer’s kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and
afterward in Massachusetts, -- from an egg deposited in the living tree many years
earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard
gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not
feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing of this? Who
knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many
concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the
alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the
semblance of its well-seasoned tomb, -- heard perchance gnawing out now for years by
the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board, -- may unexpectedly
come forth from amidst society’s most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its
perfect summer life at last!
I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the character
of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts
out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is
more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
“The Minister’s Black Veil”
Another clergyman in New England, Mr. Joseph Moody, of York, Maine, who died
about eighty years since, made himself remarkable by the same eccentricity that is here
related of the Reverend Mr. Hooper. In his case, however, the symbol had a different
import. In early life he had accidentally killed a beloved friend, and from that day till
the hour of his own death, he hid his face from men.
The sexton stood in the porch of Milford meeting-house, pulling busily at the
bell-rope. The old people of the village came stooping along the street. Children, with
bright faces, tripped merrily beside their parents, or mimicked a graver gait, in the
conscious dignity of their Sunday clothes. Spruce bachelors looked sidelong at the
pretty maidens, and fancied that the Sabbath sunshine made them prettier than on week
days. When the throng had mostly streamed into the porch, the sexton began to toll the
bell, keeping his eye on the Reverend Mr. Hooper’s door. The first glimpse of the
clergyman’s figure was the signal for the bell to cease its summons.
“But what has good Parson Hooper got upon his face?” cried the sexton in
astonishment.
All within hearing immediately turned about, and beheld the semblance of Mr.
Hooper, pacing slowly his meditative way towards the meetinghouse. With one accord
they started, expressing more wonder than if some strange minister were coming to dust
the cushions of Mr. Hooper’s pulpit.
“Are you sure it is our parson?” inquired Goodman Gray of the sexton.
“Of a certainty it is good Mr. Hooper,” replied the sexton. “He was to have
exchanged pulpits with Parson Shute, of Westbury; but Parson Shute sent to excuse
himself yesterday, being to preach a funeral sermon.”
The cause of so much amazement may appear sufficiently slight. Mr. Hooper, a
gentlemanly person, of about thirty, though still a bachelor, was dressed with due
clerical neatness, as if a careful wife had starched his band, and brushed the weekly dust
from his Sunday’s garb. There was but one thing remarkable in his appearance. Swathed
about his forehead, and hanging down over his face, so low as to be shaken by his
breath, Mr. Hooper had on a black veil. On a nearer view it seemed to consist of two
folds of crape, which entirely concealed his features, except the mouth and chin, but
probably did not intercept his sight, further than to give a darkened aspect to all living
and inanimate things. With this gloomy shade before him, good Mr. Hooper walked
onward, at a slow and quiet pace, stooping somewhat, and looking on the ground, as is
customary with abstracted men, yet nodding kindly to those of his parishioners who still
waited on the meeting-house steps. But so wonder-struck were they that his greeting
hardly met with a return.
“I can’t really feel as if good Mr. Hooper’s face was behind that piece of crape,”
said the sexton.
“I don’t like it,” muttered an old woman, as she hobbled into the meeting-house.
“He has changed himself into something awful, only by hiding his face.”
“Our parson has gone mad!” cried Goodman Gray, following him across the
threshold.
A rumor of some unaccountable phenomenon had preceded Mr. Hooper into the
meeting-house, and set all the congregation astir. Few could refrain from twisting their
heads towards the door; many stood upright, and turned directly about; while several
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little boys clambered upon the seats, and came down again with a terrible racket. There
was a general bustle, a rustling of the women’s gowns and shuffling of the men’s feet,
greatly at variance with that hushed repose which should attend the entrance of the
minister. But Mr. Hooper appeared not to notice the perturbation of his people. He
entered with an almost noiseless step, bent his head mildly to the pews on each side, and
bowed as he passed his oldest parishioner, a white-haired great grandsire, who occupied
an arm-chair in the centre of the aisle. It was strange to observe how slowly this
venerable man became conscious of something singular in the appearance of his pastor.
He seemed not fully to partake of the prevailing wonder, till Mr. Hooper had ascended
the stairs, and showed himself in the pulpit, face to face with his congregation, except
for the black veil. That mysterious emblem was never once withdrawn. It shook with his
measured breath, as he gave out the psalm; it threw its obscurity between him and the
holy page, as he read the Scriptures; and while he prayed, the veil lay heavily on his
uplifted countenance. Did he seek to hide it from the dread Being whom he was
addressing?
Such was the effect of this simple piece of crape, that more than one woman of
delicate nerves was forced to leave the meeting-house. Yet perhaps the pale-faced
congregation was almost as fearful a sight to the minister, as his black veil to them.
Mr. Hooper had the reputation of a good preacher, but not an energetic one: he
strove to win his people heavenward by mild, persuasive influences, rather than to drive
them thither by the thunders of the Word. The sermon which he now delivered was
marked by the same characteristics of style and manner as the general series of his
pulpit oratory. But there was something, either in the sentiment of the discourse itself, or
in the imagination of the auditors, which made it greatly the most powerful effort that
they had ever heard from their pastor’s lips. It was tinged, rather more darkly than usual,
with the gentle gloom of Mr. Hooper’s temperament. The subject had reference to secret
sin, and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest, and would fain
conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect
them. A subtle power was breathed into his words. Each member of the congregation,
the most innocent girl, and the man of hardened breast, felt as if the preacher had crept
upon them, behind his awful veil, and discovered their hoarded iniquity of deed or
thought. Many spread their clasped hands on their bosoms. There was nothing terrible in
what Mr. Hooper said, at least, no violence; and yet, with every tremor of his
melancholy voice, the hearers quaked. An unsought pathos came hand in hand with awe.
So sensible were the audience of some unwonted attribute in their minister, that they
longed for a breath of wind to blow aside the veil, almost believing that a stranger’s
visage would be discovered, though the form, gesture, and voice were those of Mr.
Hooper.
At the close of the services, the people hurried out with indecorous confusion,
eager to communicate their pent-up amazement, and conscious of lighter spirits the
moment they lost sight of the black veil. Some gathered in little circles, huddled closely
together, with their mouths all whispering in the centre; some went homeward alone,
wrapt in silent meditation; some talked loudly, and profaned the Sabbath day with
ostentatious laughter. A few shook their sagacious heads, intimating that they could
penetrate the mystery; while one or two affirmed that there was no mystery at all, but
only that Mr. Hooper’s eyes were so weakened by the midnight lamp, as to require a
shade. After a brief interval, forth came good Mr. Hooper also, in the rear of his flock.
Turning his veiled face from one group to another, he paid due reverence to the hoary
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heads, saluted the middle aged with kind dignity as their friend and spiritual guide,
greeted the young with mingled authority and love, and laid his hands on the little
children’s heads to bless them. Such was always his custom on the Sabbath day. Strange
and bewildered looks repaid him for his courtesy. None, as on former occasions, aspired
to the honor of walking by their pastor’s side. Old Squire Saunders, doubtless by an
accidental lapse of memory, neglected to invite Mr. Hooper to his table, where the good
clergyman had been wont to bless the food, almost every Sunday since his settlement.
He returned, therefore, to the parsonage, and, at the moment of closing the door, was
observed to look back upon the people, all of whom had their eyes fixed upon the
minister. A sad smile gleamed faintly from beneath the black veil, and flickered about
his mouth, glimmering as he disappeared.
“How strange,” said a lady, “that a simple black veil, such as any woman might
wear on her bonnet, should become such a terrible thing on Mr. Hooper’s face!”
“Something must surely be amiss with Mr. Hooper’s intellects,” observed her
husband, the physician of the village. “But the strangest part of the affair is the effect of
this vagary, even on a sober-minded man like myself. The black veil, though it covers
only our pastor’s face, throws its influence over his whole person, and makes him
ghostlike from head to foot. Do you not feel it so?”
“Truly do I,” replied the lady; “and I would not be alone with him for the world.
I wonder he is not afraid to be alone with himself!”
“Men sometimes are so,” said her husband.
The afternoon service was attended with similar circumstances. At its
conclusion, the bell tolled for the funeral of a young lady. The relatives and friends were
assembled in the house, and the more distant acquaintances stood about the door,
speaking of the good qualities of the deceased, when their talk was interrupted by the
appearance of Mr. Hooper, still covered with his black veil. It was now an appropriate
emblem. The clergyman stepped into the room where the corpse was laid, and bent over
the coffin, to take a last farewell of his deceased parishioner. As he stooped, the veil
hung straight down from his forehead, so that, if her eyelids had not been closed
forever, the dead maiden might have seen his face. Could Mr. Hooper be fearful of her
glance, that he so hastily caught back the black veil? A person who watched the
interview between the dead and living, scrupled not to affirm, that, at the instant when
the clergyman’s features were disclosed, the corpse had slightly shuddered, rustling the
shroud and muslin cap, though the countenance retained the composure of death. A
superstitious old woman was the only witness of this prodigy. From the coffin Mr.
Hooper passed into the chamber of the mourners, and thence to the head of the staircase,
to make the funeral prayer. It was a tender and heart-dissolving prayer, full of sorrow,
yet so imbued with celestial hopes, that the music of a heavenly harp, swept by the
fingers of the dead, seemed faintly to be heard among the saddest accents of the
minister. The people trembled, though they but darkly understood him when he prayed
that they, and himself, and all of mortal race, might be ready, as he trusted this young
maiden had been, for the dreadful hour that should snatch the veil from their faces. The
bearers went heavily forth, and the mourners followed, saddening all the street, with the
dead before them, and Mr. Hooper in his black veil behind.
“Why do you look back?” said one in the procession to his partner.
“I had a fancy,” replied she, “that the minister and the maiden’s spirit were
walking hand in hand.”
“And so had I, at the same moment,” said the other.
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That night, the handsomest couple in Milford village were to be joined in
wedlock. Though reckoned a melancholy man, Mr. Hooper had a placid cheerfulness for
such occasions, which often excited a sympathetic smile where livelier merriment
would have been thrown away. There was no quality of his disposition which made him
more beloved than this. The company at the wedding awaited his arrival with
impatience, trusting that the strange awe, which had gathered over him throughout the
day, would now be dispelled. But such was not the result. When Mr. Hooper came, the
first thing that their eyes rested on was the same horrible black veil, which had added
deeper gloom to the funeral, and could portend nothing but evil to the wedding. Such
was its immediate effect on the guests that a cloud seemed to have rolled duskily from
beneath the black crape, and dimmed the light of the candles. The bridal pair stood up
before the minister. But the bride’s cold fingers quivered in the tremulous hand of the
bridegroom, and her deathlike paleness caused a whisper that the maiden who had been
buried a few hours before was come from her grave to be married. If ever another
wedding were so dismal, it was that famous one where they tolled the wedding knell.
After performing the ceremony, Mr. Hooper raised a glass of wine to his lips, wishing
happiness to the newmarried couple in a strain of mild pleasantry that ought to have
brightened the features of the guests, like a cheerful gleam from the hearth. At that
instant, catching a glimpse of his figure in the looking-glass, the black veil involved his
own spirit in the horror with which it overwhelmed all others. His frame shuddered, his
lips grew white, he spilt the untasted wine upon the carpet, and rushed forth into the
darkness. For the Earth, too, had on her Black Veil.
The next day, the whole village of Milford talked of little else than Parson
Hooper’s black veil. That, and the mystery concealed behind it, supplied a topic for
discussion between acquaintances meeting in the street, and good women gossiping at
their open windows. It was the first item of news that the tavern-keeper told to his
guests. The children babbled of it on their way to school. One imitative little imp
covered his face with an old black handkerchief, thereby so affrighting his playmates
that the panic seized himself, and he well-nigh lost his wits by his own waggery.
It was remarkable that all of the busybodies and impertinent people in the parish,
not one ventured to put the plain question to Mr. Hooper, wherefore he did this thing.
Hitherto, whenever there appeared the slightest call for such interference, he had never
lacked advisers, nor shown himself averse to be guided by their judgment. If he erred at
all, it was by so painful a degree of self-distrust, that even the mildest censure would
lead him to consider an indifferent action as a crime. Yet, though so well acquainted
with this amiable weakness, no individual among his parishioners chose to make the
black veil a subject of friendly remonstrance. There was a feeling of dread, neither
plainly confessed nor carefully concealed, which caused each to shift the responsibility
upon another, till at length it was found expedient to send a deputation of the church, in
order to deal with Mr. Hooper about the mystery, before it should grow into a scandal.
Never did an embassy so ill discharge its duties. The minister received then with
friendly courtesy, but became silent, after they were seated, leaving to his visitors the
whole burden of introducing their important business. The topic, it might be supposed,
was obvious enough. There was the black veil swathed round Mr. Hooper’s forehead,
and concealing every feature above his placid mouth, on which, at times, they could
perceive the glimmering of a melancholy smile. But that piece of crape, to their
imagination, seemed to hang down before his heart, the symbol of a fearful secret
between him and them. Were the veil but cast aside, they might speak freely of it, but
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not till then. Thus they sat a considerable time, speechless, confused, and shrinking
uneasily from Mr. Hooper’s eye, which they felt to be fixed upon them with an invisible
glance. Finally, the deputies returned abashed to their constituents, pronouncing the
matter too weighty to be handled, except by a council of the churches, if, indeed, it
might not require a general synod.
But there was one person in the village unappalled by the awe with which the
black veil had impressed all beside herself. When the deputies returned without an
explanation, or even venturing to demand one, she, with the calm energy of her
character, determined to chase away the strange cloud that appeared to be settling round
Mr. Hooper, every moment more darkly than before. As his plighted wife, it should be
her privilege to know what the black veil concealed. At the minister’s first visit,
therefore, she entered upon the subject with a direct simplicity, which made the task
easier both for him and her. After he had seated himself, she fixed her eyes steadfastly
upon the veil, but could discern nothing of the dreadful gloom that had so overawed the
multitude: it was but a double fold of crape, hanging down from his forehead to his
mouth, and slightly stirring with his breath.
“No,” said she aloud, and smiling, “there is nothing terrible in this piece of
crape, except that it hides a face which I am always glad to look upon. Come, good sir,
let the sun shine from behind the cloud. First lay aside your black veil: then tell me why
you put it on.”
Mr. Hooper’s smile glimmered faintly.
“There is an hour to come,” said he, “when all of us shall cast aside our veils.
Take it not amiss, beloved friend, if I wear this piece of crape till then.”
“Your words are a mystery, too,” returned the young lady. “Take away the veil
from them, at least.”
“Elizabeth, I will,” said he, “so far as my vow may suffer me. Know, then, this
veil is a type and a symbol, and I am bound to wear it ever, both in light and darkness,
in solitude and before the gaze of multitudes, and as with strangers, so with my familiar
friends. No mortal eye will see it withdrawn. This dismal shade must separate me from
the world: even you, Elizabeth, can never come behind it!”
“What grievous affliction hath befallen you,” she earnestly inquired, “that you
should thus darken your eyes forever?”
“If it be a sign of mourning,” replied Mr. Hooper, “I, perhaps, like most other
mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a black veil.”
“But what if the world will not believe that it is the type of an innocent sorrow?”
urged Elizabeth. “Beloved and respected as you are, there may be whispers that you
hide your face under the consciousness of secret sin. For the sake of your holy office, do
away this scandal!”
The color rose into her cheeks as she intimated the nature of the rumors that
were already abroad in the village. But Mr. Hooper’s mildness did not forsake him. He
even smiled again—that same sad smile, which always appeared like a faint glimmering
of light, proceeding from the obscurity beneath the veil.
“If I hide my face for sorrow, there is cause enough,” he merely replied; “and if I
cover it for secret sin, what mortal might not do the same?”
And with this gentle, but unconquerable obstinacy did he resist all her entreaties.
At length Elizabeth sat silent. For a few moments she appeared lost in thought,
considering, probably, what new methods might be tried to withdraw her lover from so
dark a fantasy, which, if it had no other meaning, was perhaps a symptom of mental
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disease. Though of a firmer character than his own, the tears rolled down her cheeks.
But, in an instant, as it were, a new feeling took the place of sorrow: her eyes were fixed
insensibly on the black veil, when, like a sudden twilight in the air, its terrors fell around
her. She arose, and stood trembling before him.
“And do you feel it then, at last?” said he mournfully.
She made no reply, but covered her eyes with her hand, and turned to leave the
room. He rushed forward and caught her arm.
“Have patience with me, Elizabeth!” cried he, passionately. “Do not desert me,
though this veil must be between us here on earth. Be mine, and hereafter there shall be
no veil over my face, no darkness between our souls! It is but a mortal veil—it is not for
eternity! O! you know not how lonely I am, and how frightened, to be alone behind my
black veil. Do not leave me in this miserable obscurity forever!”
“Lift the veil but once, and look me in the face,” said she.
“Never! It cannot be!” replied Mr. Hooper.
“Then farewell!” said Elizabeth.
She withdrew her arm from his grasp, and slowly departed, pausing at the door,
to give one long shuddering gaze, that seemed almost to penetrate the mystery of the
black veil. But, even amid his grief, Mr. Hooper smiled to think that only a material
emblem had separated him from happiness, though the horrors, which it shadowed
forth, must be drawn darkly between the fondest of lovers.
From that time no attempts were made to remove Mr. Hooper’s black veil, or, by
a direct appeal, to discover the secret which it was supposed to hide. By persons who
claimed a superiority to popular prejudice, it was reckoned merely an eccentric whim,
such as often mingles with the sober actions of men otherwise rational, and tinges them
all with its own semblance of insanity. But with the multitude, good Mr. Hooper was
irreparbly a bugbear. He could not walk the street with any peace of mind, so conscious
was he that the gentle and timid would turn aside to avoid him, and that others would
make it a point of hardihood to throw themselves in his way. The impertinence of the
latter class compelled him to give up his customary walk at sunset to the burial ground;
for when he leaned pensively over the gate, there would always be faces behind the
gravestones, peeping at his black veil. A fable went the rounds that the stare of the dead
people drove him thence. It grieved him, to the very depth of his kind heart, to observe
how the children fled from his approach, breaking up their merriest sports, while his
melancholy figure was yet afar off. Their instinctive dread caused him to feel more
strongly than aught else, that a preternatural horror was interwoven with the threads of
the black crape. In truth, his own antipathy to the veil was known to be so great, that he
never willingly passed before a mirror, nor stooped to drink at a still fountain, lest, in its
peaceful bosom, he should be affrighted by himself. This was what gave plausibility to
the whispers, that Mr. Hooper’s conscience tortured him for some great crime too
horrible to be entirely concealed, or otherwise than so obscurely intimated. Thus, from
beneath the black veil, there rolled a cloud into the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or
sorrow, which enveloped the poor minister, so that love or sympathy could never reach
him. It was said that ghost and fiend consorted with him there. With self-shudderings
and outward terrors, he walked continually in its shadow, groping darkly within his own
soul, or gazing through a medium that saddened the whole world. Even the lawless
wind, it was believed, respected his dreadful secret, and never blew aside the veil. But
still good Mr. Hooper sadly smiled at the pale visages of the worldly throng as he
passed by.
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Among all its bad influences, the black veil had the one desirable effect, of
making its wearer a very efficient clergyman. By the aid of his mysterious emblem—for
there was no other apparent cause—he became a man of awful power over souls that
were in agony for sin. His converts always regarded him with a dread peculiar to
themselves, affirming, though but figuratively, that, before he brought them to celestial
light, they had been with him behind the black veil. Its gloom, indeed, enabled him to
sympathize with all dark affections. Dying sinners cried aloud for Mr. Hooper, and
would not yield their breath till he appeared; though ever, as he stooped to whisper
consolation, they shuddered at the veiled face so near their own. Such were the terrors
of the black veil, even when Death had bared his visage! Strangers came long distances
to attend service at his church, with the mere idle purpose of gazing at his figure,
because it was forbidden them to behold his face. But many were made to quake ere
they departed! Once, during Governor Belcher’s administration, Mr. Hooper was
appointed to preach the election sermon. Covered with his black veil, he stood before
the chief magistrate, the council, and the representatives, and wrought so deep an
impression, that the legislative measures of that year were characterized by all the
gloom and piety of our earliest ancestral sway.
In this manner Mr. Hooper spent a long life, irreproachable in outward act, yet
shrouded in dismal suspicions; kind and loving, though unloved, and dimly feared; a
man apart from men, shunned in their health and joy, but ever summoned to their aid in
mortal anguish. As years wore on, shedding their snows above his sable veil, he
acquired a name throughout the New England churches, and they called him Father
Hooper. Nearly all his parishioners, who were of mature age when he was settled, had
been borne away by many a funeral: he had one congregation in the church, and a more
crowded one in the churchyard; and having wrought so late into the evening, and done
his work so well, it was now good Father Hooper’s turn to rest.
Several persons were visible by the shaded candlelight, in the death chamber of
the old clergyman. Natural connections he had none. But there was the decorously
grave, though unmoved physician, seeking only to mitigate the last pangs of the patient
whom he could not save. There were the deacons, and other eminently pious members
of his church. There, also, was the Reverend Mr. Clark, of Westbury, a young and
zealous divine, who had ridden in haste to pray by the bedside of the expiring minister.
There was the nurse, no hired handmaiden of death, but one whose calm affection had
endured thus long in secrecy, in solitude, amid the chill of age, and would not perish,
even at the dying hour. Who, but Elizabeth! And there lay the hoary head of good Father
Hooper upon the death pillow, with the black veil still swathed about his brow, and
reaching down over his face, so that each more difficult gasp of his faint breath caused
it to stir. All through life that piece of crape had hung between him and the world: it had
separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman’s love, and kept him in that
saddest of all prisons, his own heart; and still it lay upon his face, as if to deepen the
gloom of his darksome chamber, and shade him from the sunshine of eternity.
For some time previous, his mind had been confused, wavering doubtfully
between the past and the present, and hovering forward, as it were, at intervals, into the
indistinctness of the world to come. There had been feverish turns, which tossed him
from side to side, and wore away what little strength he had. But in his most convulsive
struggles, and in the wildest vagaries of his intellect, when no other thought retained its
sober influence, he still showed an awful solicitude lest the black veil should slip aside.
Even if his bewildered soul could have forgotten, there was a faithful woman at this
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pillow, who, with averted eyes, would have covered that aged face, which she had last
beheld in the comeliness of manhood. At length the death-stricken old man lay quietly
in the torpor of mental and bodily exhaustion, with an imperceptible pulse, and breath
that grew fainter and fainter, except when a long, deep, and irregular inspiration seemed
to prelude the flight of his spirit.
The minister of Westbury approached the bedside.
“Venerable Father Hooper,” said he, “the moment of your release is at hand. Are
you ready for the lifting of the veil that shuts in time from eternity?”
Father Hooper at first replied merely by a feeble motion of his head; then,
apprehensive, perhaps, that his meaning might be doubted, he exerted himself to speak.
“Yea,” said he, in faint accents, “my soul hath a patient weariness until that veil
be lifted.”
“And is it fitting,” resumed the Reverend Mr. Clark, “that a man so given to
prayer, of such a blameless example, holy in deed and thought, so far as mortal
judgment may pronounce; is it fitting that a father in the church should leave a shadow
on his memory, that may seem to blacken a life so pure? I pray you, my venerable
brother, let not this thing be! Suffer us to be gladdened by your triumphant aspect as you
go to your reward. Before the veil of eternity be lifted, let me cast aside this black veil
from your face!”
And thus speaking, the Reverend Mr. Clark bent forward to reveal the mystery
of so many years. But, exerting a sudden energy, that made all the beholders stand
aghast, Father Hooper snatched both his hands from beneath the bedclothes, and pressed
them strongly on the black veil, resolute to struggle, if the minister of Westbury would
contend with a dying man.
“Never!” cried the veiled clergyman. “On earth, never!”
“Dark old man!” exclaimed the affrighted minister, “with what horrible crime
upon your soul are you now passing to the judgment?”
Father Hooper’s breath heaved; it rattled in his throat; but, with a mighty effort,
grasping forward with his hands, he caught hold of life, and held it back till he should
speak. He even raised himself in bed; and there he sat, shivering with the arms of death
around him, while the black veil hung down, awful, at that last moment, in the gathered
terrors of a lifetime. And yet the faint, sad smile, so often there, now seemed to glimmer
from its obscurity, and linger on Father Hooper’s lips.
“Why do you tremble at me alone?” cried he, turning his veiled face round the
circle of pale spectators. “Tremble also at each other! Have men avoided me, and
women shown no pity, and children screamed and fled, only for my black veil? What,
but the mystery which it obscurely typifies, has made this piece of crape so awful?
When the friend shows his inmost heart to his friend; the lover to his best beloved;
when man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasuring up
the secret of his sin; then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which I have
lived, and die! I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil!”
While his auditors shrank from one another, in mutual affright, Father Hooper
fell back upon his pillow, a veiled corpse, with a faint smile lingering on the lips. Still
veiled, they laid him in his coffin, and a veiled corpse they bore him to the grave. The
grass of many years has sprung up and withered on that grave, the burial stone is mossgrown, and good Mr. Hooper’s face is dust; but awful is still the thought that it
mouldered beneath the Black Veil!
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Herman Melville
“Bartleby the Scrivener. A Story of Wall-Street”
I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has
brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and
somewhat singular set of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been
written:—I mean the law-copyists or scriveners. I have known very many of them,
professionally and privately, and if I pleased, could relate divers histories, at which
good-natured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep. But I waive
the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who
was a scrivener of the strangest I ever saw or heard of. While of other law-copyists I
might write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done. I believe that
no materials exist for a full and satisfactory biography of this man. It is an irreparable
loss to literature. Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable,
except from the original sources, and in his case those are very small. What my own
astonished eyes saw of Bartleby, that is all I know of him, except, indeed, one vague
report which will appear in the sequel.
Ere introducing the scrivener, as he first appeared to me, it is fit I make some
mention of myself, my employees, my business, my chambers, and general
surroundings; because some such description is indispensable to an adequate
understanding of the chief character about to be presented.
Imprimis: I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a
profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a
profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing
of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious
lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but in
the cool tranquility of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men’s bonds and
mortgages and title-deeds. All who know me, consider me an eminently safe man. The
late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in
pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I do not speak it in
vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the
late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and
orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add, that I was not
insensible to the late John Jacob Astor’s good opinion.
Some time prior to the period at which this little history begins, my avocations
had been largely increased. The good old office, now extinct in the State of New York,
of a Master in Chancery, had been conferred upon me. It was not a very arduous office,
but very pleasantly remunerative. I seldom lose my temper; much more seldom indulge
in dangerous indignation at wrongs and outrages; but I must be permitted to be rash here
and declare, that I consider the sudden and violent abrogation of the office of Master in
Chancery, by the new Constitution, as a—premature act; inasmuch as I had counted
upon a life-lease of the profits, whereas I only received those of a few short years. But
this is by the way.
My chambers were up stairs at No.—Wall-street. At one end they looked upon
the white wall of the interior of a spacious sky-light shaft, penetrating the building from
top to bottom. This view might have been considered rather tame than otherwise,
deficient in what landscape painters call “life.” But if so, the view from the other end of
my chambers offered, at least, a contrast, if nothing more. In that direction my windows
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commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting
shade; which wall required no spy-glass to bring out its lurking beauties, but for the
benefit of all near-sighted spectators, was pushed up to within ten feet of my window
panes. Owing to the great height of the surrounding buildings, and my chambers being
on the second floor, the interval between this wall and mine not a little resembled a huge
square cistern.
At the period just preceding the advent of Bartleby, I had two persons as copyists
in my employment, and a promising lad as an office-boy. First, Turkey; second,
Nippers; third, Ginger Nut. These may seem names, the like of which are not usually
found in the Directory. In truth they were nicknames, mutually conferred upon each
other by my three clerks, and were deemed expressive of their respective persons or
characters. Turkey was a short, pursy Englishman of about my own age, that is,
somewhere not far from sixty. In the morning, one might say, his face was of a fine
florid hue, but after twelve o’clock, meridian—his dinner hour—it blazed like a grate
full of Christmas coals; and continued blazing—but, as it were, with a gradual wane—
till 6 o’clock, P.M. or thereabouts, after which I saw no more of the proprietor of the
face, which gaining its meridian with the sun, seemed to set with it, to rise, culminate,
and decline the following day, with the like regularity and undiminished glory. There are
many singular coincidences I have known in the course of my life, not the least among
which was the fact, that exactly when Turkey displayed his fullest beams from his red
and radiant countenance, just then, too, at that critical moment, began the daily period
when I considered his business capacities as seriously disturbed for the remainder of the
twenty-four hours. Not that he was absolutely idle, or averse to business then; far from
it. The difficulty was, he was apt to be altogether too energetic. There was a strange,
inflamed, flurried, flighty recklessness of activity about him. He would be incautious in
dipping his pen into his inkstand. All his blots upon my documents, were dropped there
after twelve o’clock, meridian. Indeed, not only would he be reckless and sadly given to
making blots in the afternoon, but some days he went further, and was rather noisy. At
such times, too, his face flamed with augmented blazonry, as if cannel coal had been
heaped on anthracite. He made an unpleasant racket with his chair; spilled his sand-box;
in mending his pens, impatiently split them all to pieces, and threw them on the floor in
a sudden passion; stood up and leaned over his table, boxing his papers about in a most
indecorous manner, very sad to behold in an elderly man like him. Nevertheless, as he
was in many ways a most valuable person to me, and all the time before twelve o’clock,
meridian, was the quickest, steadiest creature too, accomplishing a great deal of work in
a style not easy to be matched—for these reasons, I was willing to overlook his
eccentricities, though indeed, occasionally, I remonstrated with him. I did this very
gently, however, because, though the civilest, nay, the blandest and most reverential of
men in the morning, yet in the afternoon he was disposed, upon provocation, to be
slightly rash with his tongue, in fact, insolent. Now, valuing his morning services as I
did, and resolved not to lose them; yet, at the same time made uncomfortable by his
inflamed ways after twelve o’clock; and being a man of peace, unwilling by my
admonitions to call forth unseemly retorts from him; I took upon me, one Saturday noon
(he was always worse on Saturdays), to hint to him, very kindly, that perhaps now that
he was growing old, it might be well to abridge his labors; in short, he need not come to
my chambers after twelve o’clock, but, dinner over, had best go home to his lodgings
and rest himself till teatime. But no; he insisted upon his afternoon devotions. His
countenance became intolerably fervid, as he oratorically assured me—gesticulating
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with a long ruler at the other end of the room—that if his services in the morning were
useful, how indispensable, then, in the afternoon?
“With submission, sir,” said Turkey on his occasion, “I consider myself your
right-hand man. In the morning I but marshal and deploy my columns; but in the
afternoon I put myself at their head, and gallantly charge the foe, thus!”—and he made a
violent thrust with the ruler.
“But the blots, Turkey,” intimated I.
“True,—but, with submission, sir, behold these hairs! I am getting old. Surely,
sir, a blot or two of a warm afternoon is not to be severely urged against gray hairs. Old
age—even if it blot the page—is honorable. With submission, sir, we both are getting
old.”
This appeal to my fellow-feeling was hardly to be resisted. At all events, I saw
that go he would not. So I made up my mind to let him stay, resolving, nevertheless, to
see to it, that during the afternoon he had to do with my less important papers.
Nippers, the second on my list, was a whiskered, sallow, and, upon the whole,
rather piratical-looking young man of about five and twenty. I always deemed him the
victim of two evil powers—ambition and indigestion. The ambition was evinced by a
certain impatience of the duties of a mere copyist, an unwarrantable usurpation of
strictly professional affairs, such as the original drawing up of legal documents. The
indigestion seemed betokened in an occasional nervous testiness and grinning
irritability, causing the teeth to audibly grind together over mistakes committed in
copying; unnecessary maledictions, hissed, rather than spoken, in the heat of business;
and especially by a continual discontent with the height of the table where he worked.
Though of a very ingenious mechanical turn, Nippers could never get this table to suit
him. He put chips under it, blocks of various sorts, bits of pasteboard, and at last went
so far as to attempt an exquisite adjustment by final pieces of folded blotting paper. But
no invention would answer. If, for the sake of easing his back, he brought the table lid at
a sharp angle well up towards his chin, and wrote there like a man using the steep roof
of a Dutch house for his desk:—then he declared that it stopped the circulation in his
arms. If now he lowered the table to his waistbands, and stooped over it in writing, then
there was a sore aching in his back. In short, the truth of the matter was, Nippers knew
not what he wanted. Or, if he wanted any thing, it was to be rid of a scrivener’s table
altogether. Among the manifestations of his diseased ambition was a fondness he had
for receiving visits from certain ambiguous-looking fellows in seedy coats, whom he
called his clients. Indeed I was aware that not only was he, at times, considerable of a
ward-politician, but he occasionally did a little business at the Justices’ courts, and was
not unknown on the steps of the Tombs. I have good reason to believe, however, that
one individual who called upon him at my chambers, and who, with a grand air, he
insisted was his client, was no other than a dun, and the alleged title-deed, a bill. But
with all his failings, and the annoyances he caused me, Nippers, like his compatriot
Turkey, was a very useful man to me; wrote a neat, swift hand; and, when he chose, was
not deficient in a gentlemanly sort of deportment. Added to this, he always dressed in a
gentlemanly sort of way; and so, incidentally, reflected credit upon my chambers.
Whereas with respect to Turkey, I had much ado to keep him from being a reproach to
me. His clothes were apt to look oily and smell of eating-houses. He wore his
pantaloons very loose and baggy in summer. His coats were execrable; his hat not to be
handled. But while the hat was a thing of indifference to me, inasmuch as his natural
civility and deference, as a dependent Englishman, always led him to doff it the moment
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he entered the room, yet his coat was another matter. Concerning his coats, I reasoned
with him; but with no effect. The truth was, I suppose, that a man of so small an income,
could not afford to sport such a lustrous face and a lustrous coat at one and the same
time. As Nippers once observed, Turkey’s money went chiefly for red ink. One winter
day I presented Turkey with a highly-respectable looking coat of my own, a padded
gray coat, of a most comfortable warmth, and which buttoned straight up from the knee
to the neck. I thought Turkey would appreciate the favor, and abate his rashness and
obstreperousness of afternoons. But no. I verily believe that buttoning himself up in so
downy and blanket-like a coat had a pernicious effect upon him; upon the same
principle that too much oats are bad for horses. In fact, precisely as a rash, restive horse
is said to feel his oats, so Turkey felt his coat. It made him insolent. He was a man
whom prosperity harmed.
Though concerning the self-indulgent habits of Turkey I had my own private
surmises, yet touching Nippers I was well persuaded that whatever might be his faults in
other respects, he was, at least, a temperate young man. But indeed, nature herself
seemed to have been his vintner, and at his birth charged him so thoroughly with an
irritable, brandy-like disposition, that all subsequent potations were needless. When I
consider how, amid the stillness of my chambers, Nippers would sometimes impatiently
rise from his seat, and stooping over his table, spread his arms wide apart, seize the
whole desk, and move it, and jerk it, with a grim, grinding motion on the floor, as if the
table were a perverse voluntary agent, intent on thwarting and vexing him; I plainly
perceive that for Nippers, brandy and water were altogether superfluous.
It was fortunate for me that, owing to its peculiar cause—indigestion—the
irritability and consequent nervousness of Nippers, were mainly observable in the
morning, while in the afternoon he was comparatively mild. So that Turkey’s paroxysms
only coming on about twelve o’clock, I never had to do with their eccentricities at one
time. Their fits relieved each other like guards. When Nippers’ was on, Turkey’s was
off; and vice versa. This was a good natural arrangement under the circumstances.
Ginger Nut, the third on my list, was a lad some twelve years old. His father was
a carman, ambitious of seeing his son on the bench instead of a cart, before he died. So
he sent him to my office as student at law, errand boy, and cleaner and sweeper, at the
rate of one dollar a week. He had a little desk to himself, but he did not use it much.
Upon inspection, the drawer exhibited a great array of the shells of various sorts of nuts.
Indeed, to this quick-witted youth the whole noble science of the law was contained in a
nut-shell. Not the least among the employments of Ginger Nut, as well as one which he
discharged with the most alacrity, was his duty as cake and apple purveyor for Turkey
and Nippers. Copying law papers being a proverbially dry, husky sort of business, my
two scriveners were fain to moisten their mouths very often with Spitzenbergs to be had
at the numerous stalls nigh the Custom House and Post Office. Also, they sent Ginger
Nut very frequently for that peculiar cake—small, flat, round, and very spicy—after
which he had been named by them. Of a cold morning when business was but dull,
Turkey would gobble up scores of these cakes, as if they were mere wafers—indeed
they sell them at the rate of six or eight for a penny—the scrape of his pen blending
with the crunching of the crisp particles in his mouth. Of all the fiery afternoon blunders
and flurried rashnesses of Turkey, was his once moistening a ginger-cake between his
lips, and clapping it on to a mortgage for a seal. I came within an ace of dismissing him
then. But he mollified me by making an oriental bow, and saying—”With submission,
sir, it was generous of me to find you in stationery on my own account.”
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Now my original business—that of a conveyancer and title hunter, and drawerup of recondite documents of all sorts—was considerably increased by receiving the
master’s office. There was now great work for scriveners. Not only must I push the
clerks already with me, but I must have additional help. In answer to my advertisement,
a motionless young man one morning, stood upon my office threshold, the door being
open, for it was summer. I can see that figure now—pallidly neat, pitiably respectable,
incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby.
After a few words touching his qualifications, I engaged him, glad to have
among my corps of copyists a man of so singularly sedate an aspect, which I thought
might operate beneficially upon the flighty temper of Turkey, and the fiery one of
Nippers.
I should have stated before that ground glass folding-doors divided my premises
into two parts, one of which was occupied by my scriveners, the other by myself.
According to my humor I threw open these doors, or closed them. I resolved to assign
Bartleby a corner by the folding-doors, but on my side of them, so as to have this quiet
man within easy call, in case any trifling thing was to be done. I placed his desk close
up to a small side-window in that part of the room, a window which originally had
afforded a lateral view of certain grimy back-yards and bricks, but which, owing to
subsequent erections, commanded at present no view at all, though it gave some light.
Within three feet of the panes was a wall, and the light came down from far above,
between two lofty buildings, as from a very small opening in a dome. Still further to a
satisfactory arrangement, I procured a high green folding screen, which might entirely
isolate Bartleby from my sight, though not remove him from my voice. And thus, in a
manner, privacy and society were conjoined.
At first Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. As if long famishing
for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. There was no
pause for digestion. He ran a day and night line, copying by sun-light and by candlelight. I should have been quite delighted with his application, had he been cheerfully
industrious. But he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically.
It is, of course, an indispensable part of a scrivener’s business to verify the
accuracy of his copy, word by word. Where there are two or more scriveners in an
office, they assist each other in this examination, one reading from the copy, the other
holding the original. It is a very dull, wearisome, and lethargic affair. I can readily
imagine that to some sanguine temperaments it would be altogether intolerable. For
example, I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet Byron would have contentedly sat
down with Bartleby to examine a law document of, say five hundred pages, closely
written in a crimpy hand.
Now and then, in the haste of business, it had been my habit to assist in
comparing some brief document myself, calling Turkey or Nippers for this purpose.
One object I had in placing Bartleby so handy to me behind the screen, was to avail
myself of his services on such trivial occasions. It was on the third day, I think, of his
being with me, and before any necessity had arisen for having his own writing
examined, that, being much hurried to complete a small affair I had in hand, I abruptly
called to Bartleby. In my haste and natural expectancy of instant compliance, I sat with
my head bent over the original on my desk, and my right hand sideways, and somewhat
nervously extended with the copy, so that immediately upon emerging from his retreat,
Bartleby might snatch it and proceed to business without the least delay.
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In this very attitude did I sit when I called to him, rapidly stating what it was I
wanted him to do—namely, to examine a small paper with me. Imagine my surprise,
nay, my consternation, when without moving from his privacy, Bartleby in a singularly
mild, firm voice, replied, “I would prefer not to.”
I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties. Immediately it
occurred to me that my ears had deceived me, or Bartleby had entirely misunderstood
my meaning. I repeated my request in the clearest tone I could assume. But in quite as
clear a one came the previous reply, “I would prefer not to.”
“Prefer not to,” echoed I, rising in high excitement, and crossing the room with a
stride. “What do you mean? Are you moon-struck? I want you to help me compare this
sheet here—take it,” and I thrust it towards him.
“I would prefer not to,” said he.
I looked at him steadfastly. His face was leanly composed; his gray eye dimly
calm. Not a wrinkle of agitation rippled him. Had there been the least uneasiness, anger,
impatience or impertinence in his manner; in other words, had there been any thing
ordinarily human about him, doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the
premises. But as it was, I should have as soon thought of turning my pale plaster-ofparis bust of Cicero out of doors. I stood gazing at him awhile, as he went on with his
own writing, and then reseated myself at my desk. This is very strange, thought I. What
had one best do? But my business hurried me. I concluded to forget the matter for the
present, reserving it for my future leisure. So calling Nippers from the other room, the
paper was speedily examined.
A few days after this, Bartleby concluded four lengthy documents, being
quadruplicates of a week’s testimony taken before me in my High Court of Chancery. It
became necessary to examine them. It was an important suit, and great accuracy was
imperative. Having all things arranged I called Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut from
the next room, meaning to place the four copies in the hands of my four clerks, while I
should read from the original. Accordingly Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut had taken
their seats in a row, each with his document in hand, when I called to Bartleby to join
this interesting group.
“Bartleby! quick, I am waiting.”
I heard a slow scrape of his chair legs on the uncarpeted floor, and soon he
appeared standing at the entrance of his hermitage.
“What is wanted?” said he mildly.
“The copies, the copies,” said I hurriedly. “We are going to examine them.
There”—and I held towards him the fourth quadruplicate.
“I would prefer not to,” he said, and gently disappeared behind the screen.
For a few moments I was turned into a pillar of salt, standing at the head of my
seated column of clerks. Recovering myself, I advanced towards the screen, and
demanded the reason for such extraordinary conduct.
“Why do you refuse?”
“I would prefer not to.”
With any other man I should have flown outright into a dreadful passion,
scorned all further words, and thrust him ignominiously from my presence. But there
was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but in a wonderful
manner touched and disconcerted me. I began to reason with him.
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“These are your own copies we are about to examine. It is labor saving to you,
because one examination will answer for your four papers. It is common usage. Every
copyist is bound to help examine his copy. Is it not so? Will you not speak? Answer!”
“I prefer not to,” he replied in a flute-like tone. It seemed to me that while I had
been addressing him, he carefully revolved every statement that I made; fully
comprehended the meaning; could not gainsay the irresistible conclusions; but, at the
same time, some paramount consideration prevailed with him to reply as he did.
“You are decided, then, not to comply with my request—a request made
according to common usage and common sense?”
He briefly gave me to understand that on that point my judgment was sound.
Yes: his decision was irreversible.
It is not seldom the case that when a man is browbeaten in some unprecedented
and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in his own plainest faith. He
begins, as it were, vaguely to surmise that, wonderful as it may be, all the justice and all
the reason is on the other side. Accordingly, if any disinterested persons are present, he
turns to them for some reinforcement for his own faltering mind.
“Turkey,” said I, “what do you think of this? Am I not right?”
“With submission, sir,” said Turkey, with his blandest tone, “I think that you
are.”
“Nippers,” said I, “what do you think of it?”
“I think I should kick him out of the office.”
(The reader of nice perceptions will here perceive that, it being morning,
Turkey’s answer is couched in polite and tranquil terms, but Nippers replies in illtempered ones. Or, to repeat a previous sentence, Nippers’ ugly mood was on duty and
Turkey’s off.)
“Ginger Nut,” said I, willing to enlist the smallest suffrage in my behalf, “what
do you think of it?”
“I think, sir, he’s a little luny,” replied Ginger Nut with a grin.
“You hear what they say,” said I, turning towards the screen, “come forth and do
your duty.”
But he vouchsafed no reply. I pondered a moment in sore perplexity. But once
more business hurried me. I determined again to postpone the consideration of this
dilemma to my future leisure. With a little trouble we made out to examine the papers
without Bartleby, though at every page or two, Turkey deferentially dropped his opinion
that this proceeding was quite out of the common; while Nippers, twitching in his chair
with a dyspeptic nervousness, ground out between his set teeth occasional hissing
maledictions against the stubborn oaf behind the screen. And for his (Nippers’) part, this
was the first and the last time he would do another man’s business without pay.
Meanwhile Bartleby sat in his hermitage, oblivious to every thing but his own
peculiar business there.
Some days passed, the scrivener being employed upon another lengthy work.
His late remarkable conduct led me to regard his ways narrowly. I observed that he
never went to dinner; indeed that he never went any where. As yet I had never of my
personal knowledge known him to be outside of my office. He was a perpetual sentry in
the corner. At about eleven o’clock though, in the morning, I noticed that Ginger Nut
would advance toward the opening in Bartleby’s screen, as if silently beckoned thither
by a gesture invisible to me where I sat. The boy would then leave the office jingling a
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few pence, and reappear with a handful of ginger-nuts which he delivered in the
hermitage, receiving two of the cakes for his trouble.
He lives, then, on ginger-nuts, thought I; never eats a dinner, properly speaking;
he must be a vegetarian then; but no; he never eats even vegetables, he eats nothing but
ginger-nuts. My mind then ran on in reveries concerning the probable effects upon the
human constitution of living entirely on ginger-nuts. Ginger-nuts are so called because
they contain ginger as one of their peculiar constituents, and the final flavoring one.
Now what was ginger? A hot, spicy thing. Was Bartleby hot and spicy? Not at all.
Ginger, then, had no effect upon Bartleby. Probably he preferred it should have none.
Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance. If the individual
so resisted be of a not inhumane temper, and the resisting one perfectly harmless in his
passivity; then, in the better moods of the former, he will endeavor charitably to
construe to his imagination what proves impossible to be solved by his judgment. Even
so, for the most part, I regarded Bartleby and his ways. Poor fellow! thought I, he means
no mischief; it is plain he intends no insolence; his aspect sufficiently evinces that his
eccentricities are involuntary. He is useful to me. I can get along with him. If I turn him
away, the chances are he will fall in with some less indulgent employer, and then he will
be rudely treated, and perhaps driven forth miserably to starve. Yes. Here I can cheaply
purchase a delicious self-approval. To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his strange
willfulness, will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually
prove a sweet morsel for my conscience. But this mood was not invariable with me. The
passiveness of Bartleby sometimes irritated me. I felt strangely goaded on to encounter
him in new opposition, to elicit some angry spark from him answerable to my own. But
indeed I might as well have essayed to strike fire with my knuckles against a bit of
Windsor soap. But one afternoon the evil impulse in me mastered me, and the following
little scene ensued:
“Bartleby,” said I, “when those papers are all copied, I will compare them with
you.”
“I would prefer not to.”
“How? Surely you do not mean to persist in that mulish vagary?”
No answer.
I threw open the folding-doors near by, and turning upon Turkey and Nippers,
exclaimed in an excited manner—
“He says, a second time, he won’t examine his papers. What do you think of it,
Turkey?”
It was afternoon, be it remembered. Turkey sat glowing like a brass boiler, his
bald head steaming, his hands reeling among his blotted papers.
“Think of it?” roared Turkey; “I think I’ll just step behind his screen, and black
his eyes for him!”
So saying, Turkey rose to his feet and threw his arms into a pugilistic position.
He was hurrying away to make good his promise, when I detained him, alarmed at the
effect of incautiously rousing Turkey’s combativeness after dinner.
“Sit down, Turkey,” said I, “and hear what Nippers has to say. What do you
think of it, Nippers? Would I not be justified in immediately dismissing Bartleby?”
“Excuse me, that is for you to decide, sir. I think his conduct quite unusual, and
indeed unjust, as regards Turkey and myself. But it may only be a passing whim.”
“Ah,” exclaimed I, “you have strangely changed your mind then—you speak
very gently of him now.”
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“All beer,” cried Turkey; “gentleness is effects of beer—Nippers and I dined
together to-day. You see how gentle I am, sir. Shall I go and black his eyes?”
“You refer to Bartleby, I suppose. No, not to-day, Turkey,” I replied; “pray, put
up your fists.”
I closed the doors, and again advanced towards Bartleby. I felt additional
incentives tempting me to my fate. I burned to be rebelled against again. I remembered
that Bartleby never left the office.
“Bartleby,” said I, “Ginger Nut is away; just step round to the Post Office, won’t
you? (it was but a three minute walk,) and see if there is any thing for me.”
“I would prefer not to.”
“You will not?”
“I prefer not.”
I staggered to my desk, and sat there in a deep study. My blind inveteracy
returned. Was there any other thing in which I could procure myself to be ignominiously
repulsed by this lean, penniless wight?—my hired clerk? What added thing is there,
perfectly reasonable, that he will be sure to refuse to do?
“Bartleby!”
No answer.
“Bartleby,” in a louder tone.
No answer.
“Bartleby,” I roared.
Like a very ghost, agreeably to the laws of magical invocation, at the third
summons, he appeared at the entrance of his hermitage.
“Go to the next room, and tell Nippers to come to me.”
“I prefer not to,” he respectfully and slowly said, and mildly disappeared.
“Very good, Bartleby,” said I, in a quiet sort of serenely severe self-possessed
tone, intimating the unalterable purpose of some terrible retribution very close at hand.
At the moment I half intended something of the kind. But upon the whole, as it was
drawing towards my dinner-hour, I thought it best to put on my hat and walk home for
the day, suffering much from perplexity and distress of mind.
Shall I acknowledge it? The conclusion of this whole business was, that it soon
became a fixed fact of my chambers, that a pale young scrivener, by the name of
Bartleby, had a desk there; that he copied for me at the usual rate of four cents a folio
(one hundred words); but he was permanently exempt from examining the work done
by him, that duty being transferred to Turkey and Nippers, one of compliment doubtless
to their superior acuteness; moreover, said Bartleby was never on any account to be
dispatched on the most trivial errand of any sort; and that even if entreated to take upon
him such a matter, it was generally understood that he would prefer not to—in other
words, that he would refuse pointblank.
As days passed on, I became considerably reconciled to Bartleby. His steadiness,
his freedom from all dissipation, his incessant industry (except when he chose to throw
himself into a standing revery behind his screen), his great stillness, his unalterableness
of demeanor under all circumstances, made him a valuable acquisition. One prime thing
was this,—he was always there;—first in the morning, continually through the day, and
the last at night. I had a singular confidence in his honesty. I felt my most precious
papers perfectly safe in his hands. Sometimes to be sure I could not, for the very soul of
me, avoid falling into sudden spasmodic passions with him. For it was exceeding
difficult to bear in mind all the time those strange peculiarities, privileges, and unheard
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of exemptions, forming the tacit stipulations on Bartleby’s part under which he
remained in my office. Now and then, in the eagerness of dispatching pressing business,
I would inadvertently summon Bartleby, in a short, rapid tone, to put his finger, say, on
the incipient tie of a bit of red tape with which I was about compressing some papers.
Of course, from behind the screen the usual answer, “I prefer not to,” was sure to come;
and then, how could a human creature with the common infirmities of our nature,
refrain from bitterly exclaiming upon such perverseness—such unreasonableness.
However, every added repulse of this sort which I received only tended to lessen the
probability of my repeating the inadvertence.
Here it must be said, that according to the custom of most legal gentlemen
occupying chambers in densely-populated law buildings, there were several keys to my
door. One was kept by a woman residing in the attic, which person weekly scrubbed and
daily swept and dusted my apartments. Another was kept by Turkey for convenience
sake. The third I sometimes carried in my own pocket. The fourth I knew not who had.
Now, one Sunday morning I happened to go to Trinity Church, to hear a
celebrated preacher, and finding myself rather early on the ground, I thought I would
walk around to my chambers for a while. Luckily I had my key with me; but upon
applying it to the lock, I found it resisted by something inserted from the inside. Quite
surprised, I called out; when to my consternation a key was turned from within; and
thrusting his lean visage at me, and holding the door ajar, the apparition of Bartleby
appeared, in his shirt sleeves, and otherwise in a strangely tattered dishabille, saying
quietly that he was sorry, but he was deeply engaged just then, and—preferred not
admitting me at present. In a brief word or two, he moreover added, that perhaps I had
better walk round the block two or three times, and by that time he would probably have
concluded his affairs.
Now, the utterly unsurmised appearance of Bartleby, tenanting my law-chambers
of a Sunday morning, with his cadaverously gentlemanly nonchalance, yet withal firm
and self-possessed, had such a strange effect upon me, that incontinently I slunk away
from my own door, and did as desired. But not without sundry twinges of impotent
rebellion against the mild effrontery of this unaccountable scrivener. Indeed, it was his
wonderful mildness chiefly, which not only disarmed me, but unmanned me, as it were.
For I consider that one, for the time, is a sort of unmanned when he tranquilly permits
his hired clerk to dictate to him, and order him away from his own premises.
Furthermore, I was full of uneasiness as to what Bartleby could possibly be doing in my
office in his shirt sleeves, and in an otherwise dismantled condition of a Sunday
morning. Was any thing amiss going on? Nay, that was out of the question. It was not to
be thought of for a moment that Bartleby was an immoral person. But what could he be
doing there?—copying? Nay again, whatever might be his eccentricities, Bartleby was
an eminently decorous person. He would be the last man to sit down to his desk in any
state approaching to nudity. Besides, it was Sunday; and there was something about
Bartleby that forbade the supposition that he would by any secular occupation violate
the proprieties of the day.
Nevertheless, my mind was not pacified; and full of a restless curiosity, at last I
returned to the door. Without hindrance I inserted my key, opened it, and entered.
Bartleby was not to be seen. I looked round anxiously, peeped behind his screen; but it
was very plain that he was gone. Upon more closely examining the place, I surmised
that for an indefinite period Bartleby must have ate, dressed, and slept in my office, and
that too without plate, mirror, or bed. The cushioned seat of a rickety old sofa in one
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corner bore the faint impress of a lean, reclining form. Rolled away under his desk, I
found a blanket; under the empty grate, a blacking box and brush; on a chair, a tin basin,
with soap and a ragged towel; in a newspaper a few crumbs of ginger-nuts and a morsel
of cheese. Yes, thought I, it is evident enough that Bartleby has been making his home
here, keeping bachelor’s hall all by himself. Immediately then the thought came
sweeping across me, What miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed!
His poverty is great; but his solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall-street
is deserted as Petra; and every night of every day it is an emptiness. This building too,
which of week-days hums with industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy,
and all through Sunday is forlorn. And here Bartleby makes his home; sole spectator of
a solitude which he has seen all populous—a sort of innocent and transformed Marius
brooding among the ruins of Carthage!
For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy
seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not-unpleasing sadness. The
bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal
melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam. I remembered the bright silks
and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swan-like sailing down the
Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and thought to
myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides
aloof, so we deem that misery there is none. These sad fancyings—chimeras, doubtless,
of a sick and silly brain—led on to other and more special thoughts, concerning the
eccentricities of Bartleby. Presentiments of strange discoveries hovered round me. The
scrivener’s pale form appeared to me laid out, among uncaring strangers, in its shivering
winding sheet.
Suddenly I was attracted by Bartleby’s closed desk, the key in open sight left in
the lock.
I mean no mischief, seek the gratification of no heartless curiosity, thought I;
besides, the desk is mine, and its contents too, so I will make bold to look within. Every
thing was methodically arranged, the papers smoothly placed. The pigeon holes were
deep, and removing the files of documents, I groped into their recesses. Presently I felt
something there, and dragged it out. It was an old bandanna handkerchief, heavy and
knotted. I opened it, and saw it was a savings’ bank.
I now recalled all the quiet mysteries which I had noted in the man. I
remembered that he never spoke but to answer; that though at intervals he had
considerable time to himself, yet I had never seen him reading—no, not even a
newspaper; that for long periods he would stand looking out, at his pale window behind
the screen, upon the dead brick wall; I was quite sure he never visited any refectory or
eating house; while his pale face clearly indicated that he never drank beer like Turkey,
or tea and coffee even, like other men; that he never went any where in particular that I
could learn; never went out for a walk, unless indeed that was the case at present; that
he had declined telling who he was, or whence he came, or whether he had any relatives
in the world; that though so thin and pale, he never complained of ill health. And more
than all, I remembered a certain unconscious air of pallid—how shall I call it?—of
pallid haughtiness, say, or rather an austere reserve about him, which had positively
awed me into my tame compliance with his eccentricities, when I had feared to ask him
to do the slightest incidental thing for me, even though I might know, from his longcontinued motionlessness, that behind his screen he must be standing in one of those
dead-wall reveries of his.
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Revolving all these things, and coupling them with the recently discovered fact
that he made my office his constant abiding place and home, and not forgetful of his
morbid moodiness; revolving all these things, a prudential feeling began to steal over
me. My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in
proportion as the forlornness of Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination, did that
same melancholy merge into fear, that pity into repulsion. So true it is, and so terrible
too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections;
but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert
that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather
proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a
sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity
cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul rid of it. What I saw that
morning persuaded me that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable
disorder. I might give alms to his body; but his body did not pain him; it was his soul
that suffered, and his soul I could not reach.
I did not accomplish the purpose of going to Trinity Church that morning.
Somehow, the things I had seen disqualified me for the time from church-going. I
walked homeward, thinking what I would do with Bartleby. Finally, I resolved upon
this;—I would put certain calm questions to him the next morning, touching his history,
etc., and if he declined to answer them openly and unreservedly (and I supposed he
would prefer not), then to give him a twenty dollar bill over and above whatever I might
owe him, and tell him his services were no longer required; but that if in any other way I
could assist him, I would be happy to do so, especially if he desired to return to his
native place, wherever that might be, I would willingly help to defray the expenses.
Moreover, if, after reaching home, he found himself at any time in want of aid, a letter
from him would be sure of a reply.
The next morning came.
“Bartleby,” said I, gently calling to him behind his screen.
No reply.
“Bartleby,” said I, in a still gentler tone, “come here; I am not going to ask you
to do any thing you would prefer not to do—I simply wish to speak to you.”
Upon this he noiselessly slid into view.
“Will you tell me, Bartleby, where you were born?”
“I would prefer not to.”
“Will you tell me any thing about yourself?”
“I would prefer not to.”
“But what reasonable objection can you have to speak to me? I feel friendly
towards you.”
He did not look at me while I spoke, but kept his glance fixed upon my bust of
Cicero, which as I then sat, was directly behind me, some six inches above my head.
“What is your answer, Bartleby?” said I, after waiting a considerable time for a
reply, during which his countenance remained immovable, only there was the faintest
conceivable tremor of the white attenuated mouth.
“At present I prefer to give no answer,” he said, and retired into his hermitage.
It was rather weak in me I confess, but his manner on this occasion nettled me.
Not only did there seem to lurk in it a certain calm disdain, but his perverseness seemed
ungrateful, considering the undeniable good usage and indulgence he had received from
me.
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Again I sat ruminating what I should do. Mortified as I was at his behavior, and
resolved as I had been to dismiss him when I entered my offices, nevertheless I
strangely felt something superstitious knocking at my heart, and forbidding me to carry
out my purpose, and denouncing me for a villain if I dared to breathe one bitter word
against this forlornest of mankind. At last, familiarly drawing my chair behind his
screen, I sat down and said: “Bartleby, never mind then about revealing your history;
but let me entreat you, as a friend, to comply as far as may be with the usages of this
office. Say now you will help to examine papers to-morrow or next day: in short, say
now that in a day or two you will begin to be a little reasonable:—say so, Bartleby.”
“At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,” was his mildly
cadaverous reply.
Just then the folding-doors opened, and Nippers approached. He seemed
suffering from an unusually bad night’s rest, induced by severer indigestion then
common. He overheard those final words of Bartleby.
“Prefer not, eh?” gritted Nippers—”I’d prefer him, if I were you, sir,” addressing
me—”I’d prefer him; I’d give him preferences, the stubborn mule! What is it, sir, pray,
that he prefers not to do now?”
Bartleby moved not a limb.
“Mr. Nippers,” said I, “I’d prefer that you would withdraw for the present.”
Somehow, of late I had got into the way of involuntarily using this word “prefer”
upon all sorts of not exactly suitable occasions. And I trembled to think that my contact
with the scrivener had already and seriously affected me in a mental way. And what
further and deeper aberration might it not yet produce? This apprehension had not been
without efficacy in determining me to summary means.
As Nippers, looking very sour and sulky, was departing, Turkey blandly and
deferentially approached.
“With submission, sir,” said he, “yesterday I was thinking about Bartleby here,
and I think that if he would but prefer to take a quart of good ale every day, it would do
much towards mending him, and enabling him to assist in examining his papers.”
“So you have got the word too,” said I, slightly excited.
“With submission, what word, sir,” asked Turkey, respectfully crowding himself
into the contracted space behind the screen, and by so doing, making me jostle the
scrivener. “What word, sir?”
“I would prefer to be left alone here,” said Bartleby, as if offended at being
mobbed in his privacy.
“That’s the word, Turkey,” said I—”that’s it.”
“Oh, prefer? oh yes—queer word. I never use it myself. But, sir, as I was saying,
if he would but prefer—”
“Turkey,” interrupted I, “you will please withdraw.”
“Oh certainly, sir, if you prefer that I should.”
As he opened the folding-door to retire, Nippers at his desk caught a glimpse of
me, and asked whether I would prefer to have a certain paper copied on blue paper or
white. He did not in the least roguishly accent the word prefer. It was plain that it
involuntarily rolled form his tongue. I thought to myself, surely I must get rid of a
demented man, who already has in some degree turned the tongues, if not the heads of
myself and clerks. But I thought it prudent not to break the dismission at once.
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The next day I noticed that Bartleby did nothing but stand at his window in his
dead-wall revery. Upon asking him why he did not write, he said that he had decided
upon doing no more writing.
“Why, how now? what next?” exclaimed I, “do no more writing?”
“No more.”
“And what is the reason?”
“Do you not see the reason for yourself,” he indifferently replied.
I looked steadfastly at him, and perceived that his eyes looked dull and glazed.
Instantly it occurred to me, that his unexampled diligence in copying by his dim
window for the first few weeks of his stay with me might have temporarily impaired his
vision.
I was touched. I said something in condolence with him. I hinted that of course
he did wisely in abstaining from writing for a while; and urged him to embrace that
opportunity of taking wholesome exercise in the open air. This, however, he did not do.
A few days after this, my other clerks being absent, and being in a great hurry to
dispatch certain letters by the mail, I thought that, having nothing else earthly to do,
Bartleby would surely be less inflexible than usual, and carry these letters to the postoffice. But he blankly declined. So, much to my inconvenience, I went myself.
Still added days went by. Whether Bartleby’s eyes improved or not, I could not
say. To all appearance, I thought they did. But when I asked him if they did, he
vouchsafed no answer. At all events, he would do no copying. At last, in reply to my
urgings, he informed me that he had permanently given up copying.
“What!” exclaimed I; “suppose your eyes should get entirely well—better than
ever before—would you not copy then?”
“I have given up copying,” he answered, and slid aside.
He remained as ever, a fixture in my chamber. Nay—if that were possible—he
became still more of a fixture than before. What was to be done? He would do nothing
in the office: why should he stay there? In plain fact, he had now become a millstone to
me, not only useless as a necklace, but afflictive to bear. Yet I was sorry for him. I speak
less than truth when I say that, on his own account, he occasioned me uneasiness. If he
would but have named a single relative or friend, I would instantly have written, and
urged their taking the poor fellow away to some convenient retreat. But he seemed
alone, absolutely alone in the universe. A bit of wreck in the mid Atlantic. At length,
necessities connected with my business tyrannized over all other considerations.
Decently as I could, I told Bartleby that in six days’ time he must unconditionally leave
the office. I warned him to take measures, in the interval, for procuring some other
abode. I offered to assist him in this endeavor, if he himself would but take the first step
towards a removal. “And when you finally quit me, Bartleby,” added I, “I shall see that
you go not away entirely unprovided. Six days from this hour, remember.”
At the expiration of that period, I peeped behind the screen, and lo! Bartleby was
there.
I buttoned up my coat, balanced myself; advanced slowly towards him, touched
his shoulder, and said, “The time has come; you must quit this place; I am sorry for you;
here is money; but you must go.”
“I would prefer not,” he replied, with his back still towards me.
“You must.”
He remained silent.
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Now I had an unbounded confidence in this man’s common honesty. He had
frequently restored to me sixpences and shillings carelessly dropped upon the floor, for I
am apt to be very reckless in such shirt-button affairs. The proceeding then which
followed will not be deemed extraordinary.
“Bartleby,” said I, “I owe you twelve dollars on account; here are thirty-two; the
odd twenty are yours.—Will you take it?” and I handed the bills towards him.
But he made no motion.
“I will leave them here then,” putting them under a weight on the table. Then
taking my hat and cane and going to the door I tranquilly turned and added—”After you
have removed your things from these offices, Bartleby, you will of course lock the door
—since every one is now gone for the day but you—and if you please, slip your key
underneath the mat, so that I may have it in the morning. I shall not see you again; so
good-bye to you. If hereafter in your new place of abode I can be of any service to you,
do not fail to advise me by letter. Good-bye, Bartleby, and fare you well.”
But he answered not a word; like the last column of some ruined temple, he
remained standing mute and solitary in the middle of the otherwise deserted room.
As I walked home in a pensive mood, my vanity got the better of my pity. I
could not but highly plume myself on my masterly management in getting rid of
Bartleby. Masterly I call it, and such it must appear to any dispassionate thinker. The
beauty of my procedure seemed to consist in its perfect quietness. There was no vulgar
bullying, no bravado of any sort, no choleric hectoring, and striding to and fro across
the apartment, jerking out vehement commands for Bartleby to bundle himself off with
his beggarly traps. Nothing of the kind. Without loudly bidding Bartleby depart—as an
inferior genius might have done—I assumed the ground that depart he must; and upon
that assumption built all I had to say. The more I thought over my procedure, the more I
was charmed with it. Nevertheless, next morning, upon awakening, I had my doubts,—I
had somehow slept off the fumes of vanity. One of the coolest and wisest hours a man
has, is just after he awakes in the morning. My procedure seemed as sagacious as ever.
—but only in theory. How it would prove in practice—there was the rub. It was truly a
beautiful thought to have assumed Bartleby’s departure; but, after all, that assumption
was simply my own, and none of Bartleby’s. The great point was, not whether I had
assumed that he would quit me, but whether he would prefer so to do. He was more a
man of preferences than assumptions.
After breakfast, I walked down town, arguing the probabilities pro and con. One
moment I thought it would prove a miserable failure, and Bartleby would be found all
alive at my office as usual; the next moment it seemed certain that I should see his chair
empty. And so I kept veering about. At the corner of Broadway and Canal-street, I saw
quite an excited group of people standing in earnest conversation.
“I’ll take odds he doesn’t,” said a voice as I passed.
“Doesn’t go?—done!” said I, “put up your money.”
I was instinctively putting my hand in my pocket to produce my own, when I
remembered that this was an election day. The words I had overheard bore no reference
to Bartleby, but to the success or non-success of some candidate for the mayoralty. In
my intent frame of mind, I had, as it were, imagined that all Broadway shared in my
excitement, and were debating the same question with me. I passed on, very thankful
that the uproar of the street screened my momentary absent-mindedness.
As I had intended, I was earlier than usual at my office door. I stood listening for
a moment. All was still. He must be gone. I tried the knob. The door was locked. Yes,
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my procedure had worked to a charm; he indeed must be vanished. Yet a certain
melancholy mixed with this: I was almost sorry for my brilliant success. I was fumbling
under the door mat for the key, which Bartleby was to have left there for me, when
accidentally my knee knocked against a panel, producing a summoning sound, and in
response a voice came to me from within—”Not yet; I am occupied.”
It was Bartleby.
I was thunderstruck. For an instant I stood like the man who, pipe in mouth, was
killed one cloudless afternoon long ago in Virginia, by a summer lightning; at his own
warm open window he was killed, and remained leaning out there upon the dreamy
afternoon, till some one touched him, when he fell.
“Not gone!” I murmured at last. But again obeying that wondrous ascendancy
which the inscrutable scrivener had over me, and from which ascendancy, for all my
chafling, I could not completely escape, I slowly went down stairs and out into the
street, and while walking round the block, considered what I should next do in this
unheard-of perplexity. Turn the man out by an actual thrusting I could not; to drive him
away by calling him hard names would not do; calling in the police was an unpleasant
idea; and yet, permit him to enjoy his cadaverous triumph over me,—this too I could not
think of. What was to be done? or, if nothing could be done, was there any thing further
that I could assume in the matter? Yes, as before I had prospectively assumed that
Bartleby would depart, so now I might retrospectively assume that departed he was. In
the legitimate carrying out of this assumption, I might enter my office in a great hurry,
and pretending not to see Bartleby at all, walk straight against him as if he were air.
Such a proceeding would in a singular degree have the appearance of a home-thrust. It
was hardly possible that Bartleby could withstand such an application of the doctrine of
assumptions. But upon second thoughts the success of the plan seemed rather dubious. I
resolved to argue the matter over with him again.
“Bartleby,” said I, entering the office, with a quietly severe expression, “I am
seriously displeased. I am pained, Bartleby. I had thought better of you. I had imagined
you of such a gentlemanly organization, that in any delicate dilemma a slight hint would
suffice—in short, an assumption. But it appears I am deceived. Why,” I added,
unaffectedly starting, “you have not even touched that money yet,” pointing to it, just
where I had left it the evening previous.
He answered nothing.
“Will you, or will you not, quit me?” I now demanded in a sudden passion,
advancing close to him.
“I would prefer not to quit you,” he replied, gently emphasizing the not.
“What earthly right have you to stay here? Do you pay any rent? Do you pay my
taxes? Or is this property yours?”
He answered nothing.
“Are you ready to go on and write now? Are your eyes recovered? Could you
copy a small paper for me this morning? or help examine a few lines? or step round to
the post-office? In a word, will you do any thing at all, to give a coloring to your refusal
to depart the premises?”
He silently retired into his hermitage.
I was now in such a state of nervous resentment that I thought it but prudent to
check myself at present from further demonstrations. Bartleby and I were alone. I
remembered the tragedy of the unfortunate Adams and the still more unfortunate Colt in
the solitary office of the latter; and how poor Colt, being dreadfully incensed by Adams,
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and imprudently permitting himself to get wildly excited, was at unawares hurried into
his fatal act—an act which certainly no man could possibly deplore more than the actor
himself. Often it had occurred to me in my ponderings upon the subject, that had that
altercation taken place in the public street, or at a private residence, it would not have
terminated as it did. It was the circumstance of being alone in a solitary office, up stairs,
of a building entirely unhallowed by humanizing domestic associations—an uncarpeted
office, doubtless, of a dusty, haggard sort of appearance;—this it must have been, which
greatly helped to enhance the irritable desperation of the hapless Colt.
But when this old Adam of resentment rose in me and tempted me concerning
Bartleby, I grappled him and threw him. How? Why, simply by recalling the divine
injunction: “A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another.” Yes, this it
was that saved me. Aside from higher considerations, charity often operates as a vastly
wise and prudent principle—a great safeguard to its possessor. Men have committed
murder for jealousy’s sake, and anger’s sake, and hatred’s sake, and selfishness’ sake,
and spiritual pride’s sake; but no man that ever I heard of, ever committed a diabolical
murder for sweet charity’s sake. Mere self-interest, then, if no better motive can be
enlisted, should, especially with high-tempered men, prompt all beings to charity and
philanthropy. At any rate, upon the occasion in question, I strove to drown my
exasperated feelings towards the scrivener by benevolently construing his conduct. Poor
fellow, poor fellow! thought I, he don’t mean any thing; and besides, he has seen hard
times, and ought to be indulged.
I endeavored also immediately to occupy myself, and at the same time to
comfort my despondency. I tried to fancy that in the course of the morning, at such time
as might prove agreeable to him, Bartleby, of his own free accord, would emerge from
his hermitage, and take up some decided line of march in the direction of the door. But
no. Half-past twelve o’clock came; Turkey began to glow in the face, overturn his
inkstand, and become generally obstreperous; Nippers abated down into quietude and
courtesy; Ginger Nut munched his noon apple; and Bartleby remained standing at his
window in one of his profoundest dead-wall reveries. Will it be credited? Ought I to
acknowledge it? That afternoon I left the office without saying one further word to him.
Some days now passed, during which, at leisure intervals I looked a little into
“Edwards on the Will,” and “Priestly on Necessity.” Under the circumstances, those
books induced a salutary feeling. Gradually I slid into the persuasion that these troubles
of mine touching the scrivener, had been all predestinated from eternity, and Bartleby
was billeted upon me for some mysterious purpose of an all-wise Providence, which it
was not for a mere mortal like me to fathom. Yes, Bartleby, stay there behind your
screen, thought I; I shall persecute you no more; you are harmless and noiseless as any
of these old chairs; in short, I never feel so private as when I know you are here. At least
I see it, I feel it; I penetrate to the predestinated purpose of my life. I am content. Others
may have loftier parts to enact; but my mission in this world, Bartleby, is to furnish you
with office-room for such period as you may see fit to remain.
I believe that this wise and blessed frame of mind would have continued with
me, had it not been for the unsolicited and uncharitable remarks obtruded upon me by
my professional friends who visited the rooms. But thus it often is, that the constant
friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.
Though to be sure, when I reflected upon it, it was not strange that people entering my
office should be struck by the peculiar aspect of the unaccountable Bartleby, and so be
tempted to throw out some sinister observations concerning him. Sometimes an attorney
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having business with me, and calling at my office and finding no one but the scrivener
there, would undertake to obtain some sort of precise information from him touching
my whereabouts; but without heeding his idle talk, Bartleby would remain standing
immovable in the middle of the room. So after contemplating him in that position for a
time, the attorney would depart, no wiser than he came.
Also, when a Reference was going on, and the room full of lawyers and
witnesses and business was driving fast; some deeply occupied legal gentleman present,
seeing Bartleby wholly unemployed, would request him to run round to his (the legal
gentleman’s) office and fetch some papers for him. Thereupon, Bartleby would
tranquilly decline, and yet remain idle as before. Then the lawyer would give a great
stare, and turn to me. And what could I say? At last I was made aware that all through
the circle of my professional acquaintance, a whisper of wonder was running round,
having reference to the strange creature I kept at my office. This worried me very much.
And as the idea came upon me of his possibly turning out a long-lived man, and keep
occupying my chambers, and denying my authority; and perplexing my visitors; and
scandalizing my professional reputation; and casting a general gloom over the premises;
keeping soul and body together to the last upon his savings (for doubtless he spent but
half a dime a day), and in the end perhaps outlive me, and claim possession of my office
by right of his perpetual occupancy: as all these dark anticipations crowded upon me
more and more, and my friends continually intruded their relentless remarks upon the
apparition in my room; a great change was wrought in me. I resolved to gather all my
faculties together, and for ever rid me of this intolerable incubus.
Ere revolving any complicated project, however, adapted to this end, I first
simply suggested to Bartleby the propriety of his permanent departure. In a calm and
serious tone, I commended the idea to his careful and mature consideration. But having
taken three days to meditate upon it, he apprised me that his original determination
remained the same; in short, that he still preferred to abide with me.
What shall I do? I now said to myself, buttoning up my coat to the last button.
What shall I do? what ought I to do? what does conscience say I should do with this
man, or rather ghost. Rid myself of him, I must; go, he shall. But how? You will not
thrust him, the poor, pale, passive mortal,—you will not thrust such a helpless creature
out of your door? you will not dishonor yourself by such cruelty? No, I will not, I
cannot do that. Rather would I let him live and die here, and then mason up his remains
in the wall. What then will you do? For all your coaxing, he will not budge. Bribes he
leaves under your own paperweight on your table; in short, it is quite plain that he
prefers to cling to you.
Then something severe, something unusual must be done. What! surely you will
not have him collared by a constable, and commit his innocent pallor to the common
jail? And upon what ground could you procure such a thing to be done?—a vagrant, is
he? What! he a vagrant, a wanderer, who refuses to budge? It is because he will not be a
vagrant, then, that you seek to count him as a vagrant. That is too absurd. No visible
means of support: there I have him. Wrong again: for indubitably he does support
himself, and that is the only unanswerable proof that any man can show of his
possessing the means so to do. No more then. Since he will not quit me, I must quit him.
I will change my offices; I will move elsewhere; and give him fair notice, that if I find
him on my new premises I will then proceed against him as a common trespasser.
Acting accordingly, next day I thus addressed him: “I find these chambers too
far from the City Hall; the air is unwholesome. In a word, I propose to remove my
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offices next week, and shall no longer require your services. I tell you this now, in order
that you may seek another place.”
He made no reply, and nothing more was said.
On the appointed day I engaged carts and men, proceeded to my chambers, and
having but little furniture, every thing was removed in a few hours. Throughout, the
scrivener remained standing behind the screen, which I directed to be removed the last
thing. It was withdrawn; and being folded up like a huge folio, left him the motionless
occupant of a naked room. I stood in the entry watching him a moment, while
something from within me upbraided me.
I re-entered, with my hand in my pocket—and—and my heart in my mouth.
“Good-bye, Bartleby; I am going—good-bye, and God some way bless you; and
take that,” slipping something in his hand. But it dropped upon the floor, and then,—
strange to say—I tore myself from him whom I had so longed to be rid of.
Established in my new quarters, for a day or two I kept the door locked, and
started at every footfall in the passages. When I returned to my rooms after any little
absence, I would pause at the threshold for an instant, and attentively listen, ere
applying my key. But these fears were needless. Bartleby never came nigh me.
I thought all was going well, when a perturbed looking stranger visited me,
inquiring whether I was the person who had recently occupied rooms at No.—Wallstreet.
Full of forebodings, I replied that I was.
“Then sir,” said the stranger, who proved a lawyer, “you are responsible for the
man you left there. He refuses to do any copying; he refuses to do any thing; he says he
prefers not to; and he refuses to quit the premises.”
“I am very sorry, sir,” said I, with assumed tranquility, but an inward tremor,
“but, really, the man you allude to is nothing to me—he is no relation or apprentice of
mine, that you should hold me responsible for him.”
“In mercy’s name, who is he?”
“I certainly cannot inform you. I know nothing about him. Formerly I employed
him as a copyist; but he has done nothing for me now for some time past.”
“I shall settle him then,—good morning, sir.”
Several days passed, and I heard nothing more; and though I often felt a
charitable prompting to call at the place and see poor Bartleby, yet a certain
squeamishness of I know not what withheld me.
All is over with him, by this time, thought I at last, when through another week
no further intelligence reached me. But coming to my room the day after, I found
several persons waiting at my door in a high state of nervous excitement.
“That’s the man—here he comes,” cried the foremost one, whom I recognized as
the lawyer who had previously called upon me alone.
“You must take him away, sir, at once,” cried a portly person among them,
advancing upon me, and whom I knew to be the landlord of No.—Wall-street. “These
gentlemen, my tenants, cannot stand it any longer; Mr. B—” pointing to the lawyer,
“has turned him out of his room, and he now persists in haunting the building generally,
sitting upon the banisters of the stairs by day, and sleeping in the entry by night. Every
body is concerned; clients are leaving the offices; some fears are entertained of a mob;
something you must do, and that without delay.”
Aghast at this torrent, I fell back before it, and would fain have locked myself in
my new quarters. In vain I persisted that Bartleby was nothing to me—no more than to
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any one else. In vain:—I was the last person known to have any thing to do with him,
and they held me to the terrible account. Fearful then of being exposed in the papers (as
one person present obscurely threatened) I considered the matter, and at length said, that
if the lawyer would give me a confidential interview with the scrivener, in his (the
lawyer’s) own room, I would that afternoon strive my best to rid them of the nuisance
they complained of.
Going up stairs to my old haunt, there was Bartleby silently sitting upon the
banister at the landing.
“What are you doing here, Bartleby?” said I.
“Sitting upon the banister,” he mildly replied.
I motioned him into the lawyer’s room, who then left us.
“Bartleby,” said I, “are you aware that you are the cause of great tribulation to
me, by persisting in occupying the entry after being dismissed from the office?”
No answer.
“Now one of two things must take place. Either you must do something, or
something must be done to you. Now what sort of business would you like to engage
in? Would you like to re-engage in copying for some one?”
“No; I would prefer not to make any change.”
“Would you like a clerkship in a dry-goods store?”
“There is too much confinement about that. No, I would not like a clerkship; but
I am not particular.”
“Too much confinement,” I cried, “why you keep yourself confined all the
time!”
“I would prefer not to take a clerkship,” he rejoined, as if to settle that little item
at once.
“How would a bar-tender’s business suit you? There is no trying of the eyesight
in that.”
“I would not like it at all; though, as I said before, I am not particular.”
His unwonted wordiness inspirited me. I returned to the charge.
“Well then, would you like to travel through the country collecting bills for the
merchants? That would improve your health.”
“No, I would prefer to be doing something else.”
“How then would going as a companion to Europe, to entertain some young
gentleman with your conversation,—how would that suit you?”
“Not at all. It does not strike me that there is any thing definite about that. I like
to be stationary. But I am not particular.”
“Stationary you shall be then,” I cried, now losing all patience, and for the first
time in all my exasperating connection with him fairly flying into a passion. “If you do
not go away from these premises before night, I shall feel bound—indeed I am bound—
to—to—to quit the premises myself!” I rather absurdly concluded, knowing not with
what possible threat to try to frighten his immobility into compliance. Despairing of all
further efforts, I was precipitately leaving him, when a final thought occurred to me—
one which had not been wholly unindulged before.
“Bartleby,” said I, in the kindest tone I could assume under such exciting
circumstances, “will you go home with me now—not to my office, but my dwelling—
and remain there till we can conclude upon some convenient arrangement for you at our
leisure? Come, let us start now, right away.”
“No: at present I would prefer not to make any change at all.”
119
I answered nothing; but effectually dodging every one by the suddenness and
rapidity of my flight, rushed from the building, ran up Wall-street towards Broadway,
and jumping into the first omnibus was soon removed from pursuit. As soon as
tranquility returned I distinctly perceived that I had now done all that I possibly could,
both in respect to the demands of the landlord and his tenants, and with regard to my
own desire and sense of duty, to benefit Bartleby, and shield him from rude persecution.
I now strove to be entirely care-free and quiescent; and my conscience justified me in
the attempt; though indeed it was not so successful as I could have wished. So fearful
was I of being again hunted out by the incensed landlord and his exasperated tenants,
that, surrendering my business to Nippers, for a few days I drove about the upper part of
the town and through the suburbs, in my rockaway; crossed over to Jersey City and
Hoboken, and paid fugitive visits to Manhattanville and Astoria. In fact I almost lived in
my rockaway for the time.
When again I entered my office, lo, a note from the landlord lay upon the desk. I
opened it with trembling hands. It informed me that the writer had sent to the police,
and had Bartleby removed to the Tombs as a vagrant. Moreover, since I knew more
about him than any one else, he wished me to appear at that place, and make a suitable
statement of the facts. These tidings had a conflicting effect upon me. At first I was
indignant; but at last almost approved. The landlord’s energetic, summary disposition
had led him to adopt a procedure which I do not think I would have decided upon
myself; and yet as a last resort, under such peculiar circumstances, it seemed the only
plan.
As I afterwards learned, the poor scrivener, when told that he must be conducted
to the Tombs, offered not the slightest obstacle, but in his pale unmoving way, silently
acquiesced.
Some of the compassionate and curious bystanders joined the party; and headed
by one of the constables arm in arm with Bartleby, the silent procession filed its way
through all the noise, and heat, and joy of the roaring thoroughfares at noon.
The same day I received the note I went to the Tombs, or to speak more properly,
the Halls of Justice. Seeking the right officer, I stated the purpose of my call, and was
informed that the individual I described was indeed within. I then assured the
functionary that Bartleby was a perfectly honest man, and greatly to be compassionated,
however unaccountably eccentric. I narrated all I knew, and closed by suggesting the
idea of letting him remain in as indulgent confinement as possible till something less
harsh might be done—though indeed I hardly knew what. At all events, if nothing else
could be decided upon, the alms-house must receive him. I then begged to have an
interview.
Being under no disgraceful charge, and quite serene and harmless in all his
ways, they had permitted him freely to wander about the prison, and especially in the
inclosed grass-platted yard thereof. And so I found him there, standing all alone in the
quietest of the yards, his face towards a high wall, while all around, from the narrow
slits of the jail windows, I thought I saw peering out upon him the eyes of murderers
and thieves.
“Bartleby!”
“I know you,” he said, without looking round,—”and I want nothing to say to
you.”
“It was not I that brought you here, Bartleby,” said I, keenly pained at his
implied suspicion. “And to you, this should not be so vile a place. Nothing reproachful
120
attaches to you by being here. And see, it is not so sad a place as one might think. Look,
there is the sky, and here is the grass.”
“I know where I am,” he replied, but would say nothing more, and so I left him.
As I entered the corridor again, a broad meat-like man, in an apron, accosted me,
and jerking his thumb over his shoulder said—”Is that your friend?”
“Yes.”
“Does he want to starve? If he does, let him live on the prison fare, that’s all.”
“Who are you?” asked I, not knowing what to make of such an unofficially
speaking person in such a place.
“I am the grub-man. Such gentlemen as have friends here, hire me to provide
them with something good to eat.”
“Is this so?” said I, turning to the turnkey.
He said it was.
“Well then,” said I, slipping some silver into the grub-man’s hands (for so they
called him). “I want you to give particular attention to my friend there; let him have the
best dinner you can get. And you must be as polite to him as possible.”
“Introduce me, will you?” said the grub-man, looking at me with an expression
which seem to say he was all impatience for an opportunity to give a specimen of his
breeding.
Thinking it would prove of benefit to the scrivener, I acquiesced; and asking the
grub-man his name, went up with him to Bartleby.
“Bartleby, this is Mr. Cutlets; you will find him very useful to you.”
“Your sarvant, sir, your sarvant,” said the grub-man, making a low salutation
behind his apron. “Hope you find it pleasant here, sir;—spacious grounds—cool
apartments, sir—hope you’ll stay with us some time—try to make it agreeable. May
Mrs. Cutlets and I have the pleasure of your company to dinner, sir, in Mrs. Cutlets’
private room?”
“I prefer not to dine to-day,” said Bartleby, turning away. “It would disagree with
me; I am unused to dinners.” So saying he slowly moved to the other side of the
inclosure, and took up a position fronting the dead-wall.
“How’s this?” said the grub-man, addressing me with a stare of astonishment.
“He’s odd, aint he?”
“I think he is a little deranged,” said I, sadly.
“Deranged? deranged is it? Well now, upon my word, I thought that friend of
yourn was a gentleman forger; they are always pale and genteel-like, them forgers. I
can’t pity’em—can’t help it, sir. Did you know Monroe Edwards?” he added touchingly,
and paused. Then, laying his hand pityingly on my shoulder, sighed, “he died of
consumption at Sing-Sing. So you weren’t acquainted with Monroe?”
“No, I was never socially acquainted with any forgers. But I cannot stop longer.
Look to my friend yonder. You will not lose by it. I will see you again.”
Some few days after this, I again obtained admission to the Tombs, and went
through the corridors in quest of Bartleby; but without finding him.
“I saw him coming from his cell not long ago,” said a turnkey, “may be he’s
gone to loiter in the yards.”
So I went in that direction.
“Are you looking for the silent man?” said another turnkey passing me. “Yonder
he lies—sleeping in the yard there. ‘Tis not twenty minutes since I saw him lie down.”
121
The yard was entirely quiet. It was not accessible to the common prisoners. The
surrounding walls, of amazing thickness, kept off all sounds behind them. The Egyptian
character of the masonry weighed upon me with its gloom. But a soft imprisoned turf
grew under foot. The heart of the eternal pyramids, it seemed, wherein, by some strange
magic, through the clefts, grass-seed, dropped by birds, had sprung.
Strangely huddled at the base of the wall, his knees drawn up, and lying on his
side, his head touching the cold stones, I saw the wasted Bartleby. But nothing stirred. I
paused; then went close up to him; stooped over, and saw that his dim eyes were open;
otherwise he seemed profoundly sleeping. Something prompted me to touch him. I felt
his hand, when a tingling shiver ran up my arm and down my spine to my feet.
The round face of the grub-man peered upon me now. “His dinner is ready.
Won’t he dine to-day, either? Or does he live without dining?”
“Lives without dining,” said I, and closed his eyes.
“Eh!—He’s asleep, aint he?”
“With kings and counselors,” murmured I.
********
There would seem little need for proceeding further in this history. Imagination
will readily supply the meager recital of poor Bartleby’s interment. But ere parting with
the reader, let me say, that if this little narrative has sufficiently interested him, to
awaken curiosity as to who Bartleby was, and what manner of life he led prior to the
present narrator’s making his acquaintance, I can only reply, that in such curiosity I
fully share, but am wholly unable to gratify it. Yet here I hardly know whether I should
divulge one little item of rumor, which came to my ear a few months after the
scrivener’s decease. Upon what basis it rested, I could never ascertain; and hence, how
true it is I cannot now tell. But inasmuch as this vague report has not been without
certain strange suggestive interest to me, however sad, it may prove the same with some
others; and so I will briefly mention it. The report was this: that Bartleby had been a
subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office at Washington, from which he had been
suddenly removed by a change in the administration. When I think over this rumor, I
cannot adequately express the emotions which seize me. Dead letters! does it not sound
like dead men? Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid
hopelessness, can any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that of continually
handling these dead letters, and assorting them for the flames? For by the cart-load they
are annually burned. Sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring:—
the finger it was meant for, perhaps, moulders in the grave; a bank-note sent in swiftest
charity:—he whom it would relieve, nor eats nor hungers any more; pardon for those
who died despairing; hope for those who died unhoping; good tidings for those who
died stifled by unrelieved calamities. On errands of life, these letters speed to death.
Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!
122
Emily Dickinson
from: The Complete Poems, edited by Thomas H. Johnson
J67
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory
As he defeated -- dying -On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
J214
I taste a liquor never brewed -From Tankards scooped in Pearl -Not all the Vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an Alcohol!
Inebriate of Air -- am I -And Debauchee of Dew -Reeling -- thro endless summer days -From inns of Molten Blue -When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove’s door -When Butterflies -- renounce their “drams” -I shall but drink the more!
Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats -And Saints -- to windows run -To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the -- Sun –
J249
123
Wild Nights -- Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile -- the Winds -To a Heart in port -Done with the Compass -Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden -Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor -- Tonight -In Thee!
J313
I should have been too glad, I see -Too lifted -- for the scant degree
Of Life’s penurious Round -My little Circuit would have shamed
This new Circumference -- have blamed -The homelier time behind.
I should have been too saved -- I see -Too rescued -- Fear too dim to me
That I could spell the Prayer
I knew so perfect -- yesterday -That Scalding One -- Sabachthani -Recited fluent -- here -Earth would have been too much -- I see -And Heaven -- not enough for me -I should have had the Joy
Without the Fear -- to justify -The Palm -- without the Calvary -So Savior -- Crucify -Defeat -- whets Victory -- they say -The Reefs -- in old Gethsemane -Endear the Coast -- beyond!
‘Tis Beggars -- Banquets -- can define --
124
‘Tis Parching -- vitalizes Wine -“Faith” bleats -- to understand!
J324
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church -I keep it, staying at Home -With a Bobolink for a Chorister -And an Orchard, for a Dome -Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice -I just wear my Wings -And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton -- sings.
God preaches, a noted Clergyman -And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last -I’m going, all along.
J342
It will be Summer -- eventually.
Ladies -- with parasols -Sauntering Gentlemen -- with Canes -And little Girls -- with Dolls -Will tint the pallid landscape -As ‘twere a bright Bouquet -Thro’ drifted deep, in Parian -The Village lies -- today -The Lilacs -- bending many a year -Will sway with purple load -The Bees -- will not despise the tune -Their Forefathers -- have hummed -The Wild Rose -- redden in the Bog -The Aster -- on the Hill
Her everlasting fashion -- set -And Covenant Gentians -- frill --
125
Till Summer folds her miracle -As Women -- do -- their Gown -Of Priests -- adjust the Symbols -When Sacrament -- is done -J441
This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me -The simple News that Nature told -With tender Majesty
Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see -For love of Her -- Sweet -- countrymen -Judge tenderly -- of Me
J657
I dwell in Possibility -A fairer House than Prose -More numerous of Windows -Superior -- for Doors -Of Chambers as the Cedars -Impregnable of Eye -And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky -Of Visitors -- the fairest -For Occupation -- This -The spreading wide of narrow Hands
To gather Paradise -J728
Let Us play Yesterday -I -- the Girl at school -You -- and Eternity -- the
Untold Tale -Easing my famine
At my Lexicon --
126
Logarithm -- had I -- for Drink -‘Twas a dry Wine -Somewhat different -- must be -Dreams tint the Sleep -Cunning Reds of Morning
Make the Blind -- leap -Still at the Egg-life -Chafing the Shell -When you troubled the Ellipse -And the Bird fell -Manacles be dim -- they say -To the new Free -Liberty -- Commoner -Never could -- to me -‘Twas my last gratitude
When I slept -- at night -‘Twas the first Miracle
Let in -- with Light -Can the Lark resume the Shell -Easier -- for the Sky -Wouldn’t Bonds hurt more
Than Yesterday?
Wouldn’t Dungeons sorer frate
On the Man -- free -Just long enough to taste -Then -- doomed new -God of the Manacle
As of the Free -Take not my Liberty
Away from Me –
J1452
Your thoughts don’t have words every day
They come a single time
127
Like signal esoteric sips
Of the communion Wine
Which while you taste so native seems
So easy so to be
You cannot comprehend its price
Nor its infrequency
J 1461
“Heavenly Father” – take to thee
The supreme iniquity
Fashioned by thy candid Hand
In a moment contraband –
Though to trust us – seem to us
More respectful – “We are Dust” –
We apologize to thee
For thine own Duplicity –
128
Walt Whitman
from: Leaves of Grass (1855 Edition)
AMERICA does not repel the past or what it has produced under its forms or
amid other politics or the idea of castes or the old religions . . . . accepts the lesson with
calmness . . . is not so impatient as has been supposed that the slough still sticks to
opinions and manners and literature while the life which served its requirements has
passed into the new life of the new forms . . . perceives that the corpse is slowly borne
from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house . . . perceives that it waits a little while
in the door . . . that it was fittest for its days . . . that its action has descended to the
stalwart and wellshaped heir who approaches . . . and that he shall be fittest for his
days.
The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest
poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the
history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their
ampler largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that
corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here is not merely a nation
but a teeming nation of nations. Here is action untied from strings necessarily blind to
particulars and details magnificently moving in vast masses. Here is the hospitality
which forever indicates heroes . . . . Here are the roughs and beards and space and
ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves. Here the performance disdaining the
trivial unapproached in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings and the
push of its perspective spreads with crampless and flowing breadth and showers its
prolific and splendid extravagance. One sees it must indeed own the riches of the
summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from the ground or
the orchards drop apples or the bays contain fish or men beget children upon women.
Other states indicate themselves in their deputies . . . . but the genius of the United
States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or
authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors . . .
but always most in the common people. […]
The American poets are to enclose old and new for America is the race of races.
Of them a bard is to be commensurate with a people. To him the other continents arrive
as contributions . . . he gives them reception for their sake and his own sake. His spirit
responds to his country’s spirit . . . . he incarnates its geography and natural life and
rivers and lakes. Mississippi with annual freshets and changing chutes, Missouri and
Columbia and Ohio and Saint Lawrence with the falls and beautiful masculine Hudson,
do not embouchure where they spend themselves more than they embouchure into him.
The blue breadth over the inland sea of Virginia and Maryland and the sea off
Massachusetts and Maine and over Manhattan bay and over Champlain and Erie and
over Ontario and Huron and Michigan and Superior, and over the Texan and Mexican
and Floridian and Cuban seas and over the seas off California and Oregon, is not tallied
by the blue breadth of the waters below more than the breadth of above and below is
tallied by him. When the long Atlantic coast stretches longer and the Pacific coast
stretches longer he easily stretches with them north or south. He spans between them
also from east to west and reflects what is between them. On him rise solid growths that
offset the growths of pine and cedar and hemlock and liveoak and locust and chestnut
and cypress and hickory and limetree and cottonwood and tuliptree and cactus and
wildvine and tamarind and persimmon . . . . and tangles as tangled as any canebrake or
129
swamp . . . . and forests coated with transparent ice and icicles hanging from the boughs
and crackling in the wind . . . . and sides and peaks of mountains . . . . and pasturage
sweet and free as savannah or upland or prairie . . . . with flights and songs and screams
that answer those of the wildpigeon and highhold and orchard-oriole and coot and surfduck and redshouldered-hawk and fish-hawk and white-ibis and indian-hen and cat-owl
and water-pheasant and qua-bird and pied-sheldrake and blackbird and mockingbird and
buzzard and condor and night-heron and eagle. To him the hereditary countenance
descends both mother’s and father’s. To him enter the essences of the real things and
past and present events---of the enormous diversity of temperature and agriculture and
mines---the tribes of red aborigines---the weatherbeaten vessels entering new ports or
making landings on rocky coast ---the first settlements north or south---the rapid stature
and muscle---the haughty defiance of ‘76, and the war and peace and formation of the
constitution . . . . the union always surrounded by blatherers and always calm and
impregnable---the perpetual coming of immigrants---the wharf hem’d cities and
superior marine---the unsurveyed interior---the loghouses and clearings and wild
animals and hunters and trappers . . . . the free commerce---the fisheries and whaling
and gold-digging ---the endless gestation of new states---the convening of Congress
every December, the members duly coming up from all climates and the uttermost
parts . . . . the noble character of the young mechanics and of all free American
workmen and workwomen . . . . the general ardor and friendliness and enterprise---the
perfect equality of the female with the male . . . . the large amativeness--- the fluid
movement of the population---the factories and mercantile life and laborsaving
machinery---the Yankee swap---the New-York firemen and the target excursion---the
southern plantation life--- the character of the northeast and of the northwest and
southwest---slavery and the tremulous spreading of hands to protect it, and the stern
opposition to it which shall never cease till it ceases or the speaking of tongues and the
moving of lips cease. For such the expression of the American poet is to be transcendant
and new. It is to be indirect and not direct or descriptive or epic. Its quality goes through
these to much more. Let the age and wars of other nations be chanted and their eras and
characters be illustrated and that finish the verse. Not so the great psalm of the republic.
Here the theme is creative and has vista. Here comes one among the wellbeloved
stonecutters and plans with decision and science and sees the solid and beautiful forms
of the future where there are now no solid forms.
[…]
The known universe has one complete lover and that is the greatest poet. He
consumes an eternal passion and is indifferent which chance happens and which
possible contingency of fortune or misfortune and persuades daily and hourly his
delicious pay. What balks or breaks others is fuel for his burning progress to contact and
amorous joy. Other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing to his
proportions. All expected from heaven or from the highest he is rapport with in the sight
of the daybreak or a scene of the winter woods or the presence of children playing or
with his arm round the neck of a man or woman. His love above all love has leisure and
expanse . . . . he leaves room ahead of himself. He is no irresolute or suspicious
lover . . . he is sure . . . he scorns intervals. His experience and the showers and thrills
are not for nothing. Nothing can jar him . . . . suffering and darkness cannot---death and
fear cannot. To him complaint and jealousy and envy are corpses buried and rotten in
the earth . . . . he saw them buried. The sea is not surer of the shore or the shore of the
sea than he is of the fruition of his love and of all perfection and beauty.
130
The fruition of beauty is no chance of hit or miss . . . it is inevitable as life . . . . it is
exact and plumb as gravitation. From the eyesight proceeds another eyesight and from
the hearing proceeds another hearing and from the voice proceeds another voice
eternally curious of the harmony of things with man. […] Without effort and without
exposing in the least how it is done the greatest poet brings the spirit of any or all events
and passions and scenes and persons some more and some less to bear on your
individual character as you hear or read. To do this well is to compete with the laws that
pursue and follow time. What is the purpose must surely be there and the clue of it must
be there . . . . and the faintest indication is the indication of the best and then becomes
the clearest indication. Past and present and future are not disjoined but joined. The
greatest poet forms the consistence of what is to be from what has been and is. He drags
the dead out of their coffins and stands them again on their feet . . . . he says to the past,
Rise and walk before me that I may realize you. He learns the lesson . . . . he places
himself where the future becomes present. The greatest poet does not only dazzle his
rays over character and scenes and passions . . . he finally ascends and finishes all . . . he
exhibits the pinnacles that no man can tell what they are for or what is beyond . . . . he
glows a moment on the extremest verge. He is most wonderful in his last half-hidden
smile or frown . . . by that flash of the moment of parting the one that sees it shall be
encouraged or terrified afterward for many years. The greatest poet does not moralize or
make applications of morals . . . he knows the soul. The soul has that measureless pride
which consists in never acknowledging any lessons but its own. But it has sympathy as
measureless as its pride and the one balances the other and neither can stretch too far
while it stretches in company with the other. The inmost secrets of art sleep with the
twain. The greatest poet has lain close betwixt both and they are vital in his style and
thoughts.
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is
simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity . . . . nothing can make up for excess or for
the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths
and give all subjects their articulations are powers neither common nor very uncommon.
But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insousiance of the movements of
animals and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by
the roadside is the flawless triumph of art. If you have looked on him who has achieved
it you have looked on one of the masters of the artists of all nations and times. You shall
not contemplate the flight of the graygull over the bay or the mettlesome action of the
blood horse or the tall leaning of sunflowers on their stalk or the appearance of the sun
journeying through heaven or the appearance of the moon afterward with any more
satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. The greatest poet has less a marked style
and is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution, and is
the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I will not be meddlesome, I will not
have in my writing any elegance or effect or originality to hang in the way between me
and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains.
What I tell I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate or
sooth I will have purposes as health or heat or snow has and be as regardless of
observation. What I experience or portray shall go from my composition without a shred
of my composition. You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with me.
[…] The messages of great poets to each man and woman are, Come to us on
equal terms, Only then can you understand us, We are no better than you, What we
enclose you enclose, What we enjoy you may enjoy. Did you suppose there could be
131
only one Supreme? We affirm there can be unnumbered Supremes, and that one does
not countervail another any more than one eyesight countervails another . . and that men
can be good or grand only of the consciousness of their supremacy within them. […]
The American bards shall be marked for generosity and affection and for
encouraging competitors . . They shall be kosmos . . without monopoly or secresy . .
glad to pass any thing to any one . . hungry for equals night and day. They shall not be
careful of riches and privilege . . . . they shall be riches and privilege . . . . they shall
perceive who the most affluent man is. The most affluent man is he that confronts all the
shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself. The American bard
shall delineate no class of persons nor one or two out of the strata of interests nor love
most nor truth most nor the soul most nor the body most . . .. and not be for the eastern
states more than the western or the northern states more than the southern.
[…]
The great master has nothing to do with miracles. He sees health for himself in
being one of the mass . . . . he sees the hiatus in singular eminence. To the perfect shape
comes common ground. To be under the general law is great for that is to correspond
with it. The master knows that he is unspeakably great and that all are unspeakably great
. . . . that nothing for instance is greater than to conceive children and bring them up
well . . . that to be is just as great as to perceive or tell.
In the make of the great masters the idea of political liberty is indispensible. Liberty
takes the adherence of heroes wherever men and women exist . . . . but never takes any
adherence or welcome from the rest more than from poets. They are the voice and
exposition of liberty. They out of ages are worthy the grand idea . . . . to them it is
confided and they must sustain it. Nothing has precedence of it and nothing can warp or
degrade it. The attitude of great poets is to cheer up slaves and horrify despots. The turn
of their necks, the sound of their feet, the motions of their wrists, are full of hazard to
the one and hope to the other. Come nigh them awhile and though they neither speak or
advise you shall learn the faithful American lesson. […]
Only the soul is of itself . . . . all else has reference to what ensues. All that a
person does or thinks is of consequence. Not a move can a man or woman make that
affects him or her in a day or a month or any part of the direct lifetime or the hour of
death but the same affects him or her onward afterward through the indirect lifetime.
The indirect is always as great and real as the direct. The spirit receives from the body
just as much as it gives to the body. Not one name of word or deed . . not of venereal
sores or discolorations . . not the privacy of the onanist . . not of the putrid veins of
gluttons or rumdrinkers . . . not peculation or cunning or betrayal or murder . . no
serpentine poison of those that seduce women . . not the foolish yielding of women . .
not prostitution . . not of any depravity of young men . . not of the attainment of gain by
discreditable means . . not any nastiness of appetite . . not any harshness of officer to
men or judges to prisoners or fathers to sons or sons to fathers or of husbands to wives
or bosses to their boys . . not of greedy looks or malignant wishes . . . nor any of the
wiles practised by people upon themselves . . . ever is or ever can be stamped on the
programme but it is duly realized and returned, and that returned in further
performances . . . and they returned again. […]
The direct trial of him who would be the greates poet is today. If he does not flood
himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic tides . . . . . and if he does not
attract his own land body and soul to himself and hang on its neck with incomparable
love and plunge his semitic muscle into its merits and demerits . . . and if he be not
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himself the age transfigured . . . . and if to him is not opened the eternity which gives
similitude to all periods and locations and processes and animate and inanimate forms,
and which is the bond of time, and rises up from its inconceivable vagueness and
infiniteness in the swimming shape of today, and is held by the ductile anchors of life,
and makes the present spot the passage from what was to what shall be, and commits
itself to the representation of this wave of an hour and this one of the sixty beautiful
children of the wave---let him merge in the general run and wait his development. . . . . .
. . Still the final test of poems or any character or work remains. The prescient poet
projects himself centuries ahead and judges performer or performance after the changes
of time. Does it live through them? Does it still hold on untired? Will the same style and
the direction of genius to similar points be satisfactory now? Has no new discovery in
science or arrival at superior planes of thought and judgment and behaviour fixed him
or his so that either can be looked down upon? Have the marches of tens and hundreds
and thousands of years made willing detours to the right hand and the left hand for his
sake? Is he beloved long and long after he is buried? Does the young man think often of
him? and the young woman think often of him? and do the middleaged and the old think
of him?
A great poem is for ages and ages in common and for all degrees and complexions and
all departments and sects and for a woman as much as a man and a man as much as a
woman. A great poem is no finish to a man or woman but rather a beginning.
[…] America prepares with composure and goodwill for the visitors that have
sent word. It is not intellect that is to be their warrant and welcome. The talented, the
artist, the ingenious, the editor, the statesman, the erudite . . they are not
unappreciated . . they fall in their place and do their work. The soul of the nation also
does its work. No disguise can pass on it . . no disguise can conceal from it. It rejects
none, it permits all. Only toward as good as itself and toward the like of itself will it
advance half-way. An individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which
make a superb nation. The soul of the largest and wealthiest and proudest nation may
well go half-way to meet that of its poets. The signs are effectual. There is no fear of
mistake. If the one is true the other is true. The proof of a poet is that his country
absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.
..
I CELEBRATE myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease . . . . observing a spear of summer grass.
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes . . . . the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume . . . . it has no taste of the distillation . . . . it is
odorless,
It is for my mouth forever . . . . I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
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The smoke of my own breath,
Echos, ripples, and buzzed whispers . . . . loveroot, silkthread, crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration . . . . the beating of my heart . . . . the passing of blood
and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and darkcolored searocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belched words of my voice . . . . words loosed to the eddies of
the wind,
A few light kisses . . . . a few embraces . . . . a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hillsides,
The feeling of health . . . . the full-noon trill . . . . the song of me rising from bed
and meeting the sun
Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have you reckoned the earth much?
Have you practiced so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun . . . . there are millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand . . . . nor look through the
eyes of the dead . . . . nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.
I have heard what the talkers were talking . . . . the talk of the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance . . . . Always substance and increase,
Always a knit of identity . . . . always distinction . . . . always a breed of life.
To elaborate is no avail . . . . Learned and unlearned feel that it is so.
Sure as the most certain sure . . . . plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in
the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.
Clear and sweet is my soul . . . . and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.
Lack one lacks both . . . . and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
Showing the best and dividing it from the worst, age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent,
and go bathe and admire myself.
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest.
I am satisfied . . . . I see, dance, laugh, sing;
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As God comes a loving bedfellow and sleeps at my side all night and close on the
peep of the day,
And leaves for me baskets covered with white towels bulging the house with their
plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the contents of one, and exactly the contents of two, and which is ahead?
Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet . . . . . the effect upon me of my early life . . . . of the ward and city I
live in . . . . of the nation,
The latest news . . . . discoveries, inventions, societies . . . . authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, business, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks -- or of myself . . . . or ill-doing . . . . or loss or lack
of money . . . . or depressions or exaltations,
They come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looks with its sidecurved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game, and watching and wondering at it.
Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and
contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments . . . . I witness and wait.
I believe in you my soul . . . . the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.
Loafe with me on the grass . . . . loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want . . . . not custom or lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer morning;
You settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my barestript
heart,
And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet.
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and joy and knowledge that pass all
the art and argument of the earth;
And I know that the hand of God is the elderhand of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my
own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers . . . . and the women my sisters
and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love;
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the wormfence, and heaped stones, and elder and mullen and
pokeweed.
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A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? . . . . I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark,
and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child . . . . the produced babe of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the
same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and from offspring taken soon
out of their mothers’ laps,
And here you are the mothers’ laps.
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their
laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at
the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.
All goes onward and outward . . . . and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.
I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new- washed babe . . . . and am not
contained between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good,
The earth good, and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.
am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as
myself;
They do not know how immortal, but I know.
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Every kind for itself and its own . . . . for me mine male and female,
For me all that have been boys and that love women,
For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,
For me the sweetheart and the old maid . . . . for me mothers and the mothers of
mothers,
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
For me children and the begetters of children.
Who need be afraid of the merge?
Undrape . . . . you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless . . . . and can never be shaken away.
The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand.
The youngster and the redfaced girl turn aside up the bushy hill,
I peeringly view them from the top.
The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom.
It is so . . . . I witnessed the corpse . . . . there the pistol had fallen.
The blab of the pave . . . . the tires of carts and sluff of bootsoles and talk of the
promenaders,
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the clank of the shod
horses on the granite floor,
The carnival of sleighs, the clinking and shouted jokes and pelts of snowballs;
The hurrahs for popular favorites . . . . the fury of roused mobs,
The flap of the curtained litter -- the sick man inside, borne to the hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
The excited crowd -- the policeman with his star quickly working his passage to the
centre of the crowd;
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,
The souls moving along . . . . are they invisible while the least atom of the stones is
visible?
What groans of overfed or half-starved who fall on the flags sunstruck or in fits,
What exclamations of women taken suddenly, who hurry home and give birth to
babes,
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here . . . . what howls restrained
by decorum,
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances, rejections with
convex lips,
I mind them or the resonance of them . . . . I come again and again.
The big doors of the country-barn stand open and ready,
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon,
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,
The armfuls are packed to the sagging mow:
I am there . . . . I help . . . . I came stretched atop of the load,
I felt its soft jolts . . . . one leg reclined on the other,
I jump from the crossbeams, and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels, and tangle my hair full of wisps.
Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,
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In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
Kindling a fire and broiling the freshkilled game,
Soundly falling asleep on the gathered leaves, my dog and gun by my side.
The Yankee clipper is under her three skysails . . . . she cuts the sparkle and scud,
My eyes settle the land . . . . I bend at her prow or shout joyously from the deck.
The boatmen and clamdiggers arose early and stopped for me,
I tucked my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time,
You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.
I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far-west . . . . the bride was
a red girl,
Her father and his friends sat near by crosslegged and dumbly smoking . . . . they
had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their
shoulders;
On a bank lounged the trapper . . . . he was dressed mostly in skins . . . . his luxuriant
beard and curls protected his neck,
One hand rested on his rifle . . . . the other hand held firmly the wrist of the red girl,
She had long eyelashes . . . . her head was bare . . . . her coarse straight locks
descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reached to her feet.
The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsey and weak,
And went where he sat on a log, and led him in and assured him,
And brought water and filled a tub for his sweated body and bruised feet,
And gave him a room that entered from my own, and gave him some coarse clean
clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and passed north,
I had him sit next me at table . . . . my firelock leaned in the corner.
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men, and all so friendly,
Twenty-eight years of womanly life, and all so lonesome.
She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.
Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.
Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.
Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty- ninth bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.
The beards of the young men glistened with wet, it ran from their long hair,
Little streams passed all over their bodies.
An unseen hand also passed over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.
The young men float on their backs, their white bellies swell to the sun .. . . they do
not ask who seizes fast to them,
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They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.
The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall in the
market,
I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and breakdown.
Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,
Each has his main-sledge . . . . they are all out . . . . there is a great heat in the fire.
From the cinder-strewed threshold I follow their movements,
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms,
Overhand the hammers roll -- overhand so slow -- overhand so sure,
They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.
The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses . . . . the block swags underneath
on its tied-over chain,
The negro that drives the huge dray of the stoneyard . . . . steady and tall he stands
poised on one leg on the stringpiece,
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over his hipband,
His glance is calm and commanding . . . . he tosses the slouch of his hat away from
his forehead,
The sun falls on his crispy hair and moustache . . . . falls on the black of his polish’d
and perfect limbs.
I behold the picturesque giant and love him . . . . and I do not stop there,
I go with the team also.
In me the caresser of life wherever moving . . . . backward as well as forward slueing,
To niches aside and junior bending.
Oxen that rattle the yoke or halt in the shade, what is that you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.
My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and daylong ramble,
They rise together, they slowly circle around.
. . . . I believe in those winged purposes,
And acknowledge the red yellow and white playing within me,
And consider the green and violet and the tufted crown intentional;
And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else,
And the mockingbird in the swamp never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to
me,
And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.
The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,
Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation;
The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen closer,
I find its purpose and place up there toward the November sky.
The sharphoofed moose of the north, the cat on the housesill, the chickadee, the
prairie-dog,
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,
The brood of the turkeyhen, and she with her halfspread wings,
I see in them and myself the same old law.
The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,
They scorn the best I can do to relate them.
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I am enamoured of growing outdoors,
Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,
Of the builders and steerers of ships, of the wielders of axes and mauls,of the drivers
of horses,
I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.
What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest is Me,
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,
Not asking the sky to come down to my goodwill,
Scattering it freely forever.
The pure contralto sings in the organloft,
The carpenter dresses his plank . . . . the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild
ascending lisp,
The married and unmarried children ride home to their thanksgiving dinner,
The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,
The mate stands braced in the whaleboat, lance and harpoon are ready,
The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar,
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,
The farmer stops by the bars of a Sunday and looks at the oats and rye,
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirmed case,
He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother’s bedroom;
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
He turns his quid of tobacco, his eyes get blurred with the manuscript;
The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist’s table,
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the stand . . . . the drunkard nods by the barroom stove,
The machinist rolls up his sleeves . . . . the policeman travels his beat . . . . the gatekeeper marks who pass,
The young fellow drives the express-wagon . . . . I love him though I do not know
him;
The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young . . . . some lean on their rifles,
some sit on logs,
Out from the crowd steps the marksman and takes his position and levels his piece;
The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee,
The woollypates hoe in the sugarfield, the overseer views them from his saddle;
The bugle calls in the ballroom, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers
bow to each other;
The youth lies awake in the cedar-roofed garret and harks to the musical rain,
The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,
The reformer ascends the platform, he spouts with his mouth and nose,
The company returns from its excursion, the darkey brings up the rear and bears the
well-riddled target,
The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemmed cloth is offering moccasins and beadbags for
sale,
The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with halfshut eyes bent sideways,
The deckhands make fast the steamboat, the plank is thrown for the shoregoing
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passengers,
The young sister holds out the skein, the elder sister winds it off in a ball and stops
now and then for the knots,
The one-year wife is recovering and happy, a week ago she bore her first child,
The cleanhaired Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or in the factory or
mill,
The nine months’ gone is in the parturition chamber, her faintness and pains are advancing;
The pavingman leans on his twohanded rammer -- the reporter’s lead flies swiftly
over the notebook -- the signpainter is lettering with red and gold,
The canal-boy trots on the towpath -- the bookkeeper counts at his desk -- the
shoemaker waxes his thread,
The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers
follow him,
The child is baptised -- the convert is making the first professions,
The regatta is spread on the bay . . . . how the white sails sparkle!
The drover watches his drove, he sings out to them that would stray,
The pedlar sweats with his pack on his back -- the purchaser higgles about the odd
cent,
The camera and plate are prepared, the lady must sit for her daguerreotype,
The bride unrumples her white dress, the minutehand of the clock moves slowly,
The opium eater reclines with rigid head and just-opened lips,
The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck,
The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other,
(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you,)
The President holds a cabinet council, he is surrounded by the great secretaries,
On the piazza walk five friendly matrons with twined arms;
The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold,
The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle,
The fare-collector goes through the train -- he gives notice by the jingling of loose
change,
The floormen are laying the floor -- the tinners are tinning the roof -- the masons
are calling for mortar,
In single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the laborers;
Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gathered . . . . it is the
Fourth of July . . . . what salutes of cannon and small arms!
Seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs and the mower mows and the
wintergrain falls in the ground;
Off on the lakes the pikefisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface,
The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with his axe,
The flatboatmen make fast toward dusk near the cottonwood or pekantrees,
The coon-seekers go now through the regions of the Red river, or through those
drained by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas,
The torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahoochee or Altamahaw;
Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great grandsons around them,
In walls of adobe, in canvass tents, rest hunters and trappers after their day’s sport.
The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
The living sleep for their time . . . . the dead sleep for their time,
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The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife;
And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
And such as it is to be of these more or less I am.
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine,
One of the great nation, the nation of many nations -- the smallest the same and the
largest the same,
A southerner soon as a northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable,
A Yankee bound my own way . . . . ready for trade . . . . my joints the limberest
joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,
A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deerskin leggings,
A boatman over the lakes or bays or along coasts . . . . a Hoosier, a Badger, a
Buckeye,
A Louisianian or Georgian, a poke-easy from sandhills and pines,
At home on Canadian snowshoes or up in the bush, or with fishermen off Newfoundland,
At home in the fleet of iceboats, sailing with the rest and tacking,
At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine or the Texan ranch,
Comrade of Californians . . . . comrade of free northwesterners, loving their big
proportions,
Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen -- comrade of all who shake hands and welcome
to drink and meat;
A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfulest,
A novice beginning experient of myriads of seasons,
Of every hue and trade and rank, of every caste and religion,
Not merely of the New World but of Africa Europe or Asia . . . . a wandering
savage,
A farmer, mechanic, or artist . . . . a gentleman, sailor, lover or quaker,
A prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician or priest.
I resist anything better than my own diversity,
And breathe the air and leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.
The moth and the fisheggs are in their place,
The suns I see and the suns I cannot see are in their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.
These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with
me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing or next to nothing,
If they do not enclose everything they are next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This is the common air that bathes the globe.
This is the breath of laws and songs and behaviour,
This is the the tasteless water of souls . . . . this is the true sustenance,
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It is for the illiterate . . . . it is for the judges of the supreme court . . . . it is for the
federal capitol and the state capitols,
It is for the admirable communes of literary men and composers and singers and
lecturers and engineers and savans,
It is for the endless races of working people and farmers and seamen.
This is the trill of a thousand clear cornets and scream of the octave flute and strike
of triangles.
I play not a march for victors only . . . . I play great marches for conquered and
slain persons.
Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
I also say it is good to fall . . . . battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are
won.
I sound triumphal drums for the dead . . . . I fling through my embouchures the
loudest and gayest music to them,
Vivas to those who have failed, and to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea,
and those themselves who sank in the sea,
And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes, and the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known.
This is the meal pleasantly set . . . . this is the meat and drink for natural hunger,
It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous . . . . I make appointments with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The keptwoman and sponger and thief are hereby invited . . . . the heavy-lipped slave
is invited . . . . the venerealee is invited,
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.
This is the press of a bashful hand . . . . this is the float and odor of hair,
This is the touch of my lips to yours . . . . this is the murmur of yearning,
This is the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face,
This is the thoughtful merge of myself and the outlet again.
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well I have . . . . for the April rain has, and the mica on the side of a rock has.
Do you take it I would astonish?
Does the daylight astonish? or the early redstart twittering through the woods?
Do I astonish more than they?
This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody but I will tell you.
Who goes there! hankering, gross, mystical, nude?
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?
What is a man anyhow? What am I? and what are you?
All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
Else it were time lost listening to me.
I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth,
That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the end but threadbare crape
and tears.
Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids . . . . conformity goes to
the fourth-removed,
I cock my hat as I please indoors or out.
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Shall I pray? Shall I venerate and be ceremonious?
I have pried through the strata and analyzed to a hair,
And counselled with doctors and calculated close and found no sweeter fat than
sticks to my own bones.
In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less,
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.
And I know I am solid and sound,
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.
And I know I am deathless,
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter’s compass,
I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.
I know I am august,
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
I see that the elementary laws never apologize,
I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by after all.
I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.
My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite,
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time.
I am the poet of the body,
And I am the poet of the soul.
The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself . . . . the latter I translate into a new
tongue.
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
I chant a new chant of dilation or pride,
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
I show that size is only developement.
Have you outstript the rest? Are you the President?
It is a trifle . . . . they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on.
I am he that walks with the tender and growing night;
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.
Press close barebosomed night! Press close magnetic nourishing night!
Night of south winds! Night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night! Mad naked summer night!
Smile O voluptuous coolbreathed earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
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Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbowed earth! Rich apple-blossomed earth!
Smile, for your lover comes!
Prodigal! you have given me love! . . . . therefore I to you give love!
O unspeakable passionate love!
Thruster holding me tight and that I hold tight!
We hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride hurt each other.
You sea! I resign myself to you also . . . . I guess what you mean,
I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers,
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me;
We must have a turn together . . . . I undress . . . . hurry me out of sight of the land,
Cushion me soft . . . . rock me in billowy drowse,
Dash me with amorous wet . . . . I can repay you.
Sea of stretched ground-swells!
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths!
Sea of the brine of life! Sea of unshovelled and always-ready graves!
Howler and scooper of storms! Capricious and dainty sea!
I am integral with you . . . . I too am of one phase and of all phases.
Partaker of influx and efflux . . . . extoler of hate and conciliation,
Extoler of amies and those that sleep in each others’ arms.
I am he attesting sympathy;
Shall I make my list of things in the house and skip the house that supports them?
I am the poet of commonsense and of the demonstrable and of immortality;
And am not the poet of goodness only . . . . I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also.
Washes and razors for foofoos . . . . for me freckles and a bristling beard.
What blurt is it about virtue and about vice?
Evil propels me, and reform of evil propels me . . . . I stand indifferent,
My gait is no faultfinder’s or rejecter’s gait,
I moisten the roots of all that has grown.
Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy?
Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be worked over and rectified?
I step up to say that what we do is right and what we affirm is right . . . . and some
is only the ore of right,
Witnesses of us . . . . one side a balance and the antipodal side a balance,
Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine,
Thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse and early start.
This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,
There is no better than it and now.
What behaved well in the past or behaves well today is not such a wonder,
The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel.
Endless unfolding of words of ages!
And mine a word of the modern . . . . a word en masse.
A word of the faith that never balks,
One time as good as another time . . . . here or henceforward it is all the same to
me.
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A word of reality . . . . materialism first and last imbueing.
Hurrah for positive science! Long live exact demonstration!
Fetch stonecrop and mix it with cedar and branches of lilac;
This is the lexicographer or chemist . . . . this made a grammar of the old
cartouches,
These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas,
This is the geologist, and this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician.
Gentlemen I receive you, and attach and clasp hands with you,
The facts are useful and real . . . . they are not my dwelling . . . . I enter by them to
an area of the dwelling.
I am less the reminder of property or qualities, and more the reminder of life,
And go on the square for my own sake and for others’ sakes,
And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully
equipped,
And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that plot and conspire.
Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos,
Disorderly fleshy and sensual . . . . eating drinking and breeding,
No sentimentalist . . . . no stander above men and women or apart from them . . . . no
more modest than immodest.
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
Whoever degrades another degrades me . . . . and whatever is done or said returns
at last to me,
And whatever I do or say I also return.
Through me the afflatus surging and surging . . . . through me the current and index.
I speak the password primeval . . . . I give the sign of democracy;
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the
same terms.
Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of slaves,
Voices of prostitutes and of deformed persons,
Voices of the diseased and despairing, and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars -- and of wombs, and of the fatherstuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the trivial and flat and foolish and despised,
Of fog in the air and beetles rolling balls of dung.
Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts . . . . voices veiled, and I remove the veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigured.
I do not press my finger across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing hearing and feeling are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
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Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from;
The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer,
This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds.
If I worship any particular thing it shall be some of the spread of my body;
Translucent mould of me it shall be you,
Shaded ledges and rests, firm masculine coulter, it shall be you,
Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you,
You my rich blood, your milky stream pale strippings of my life;
Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you,
My brain it shall be your occult convolutions,
Root of washed sweet-flag, timorous pond-snipe, nest of guarded duplicate eggs, it
shall be you,
Mixed tussled hay of head and beard and brawn it shall be you,
Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you;
Sun so generous it shall be you,
Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you,
You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you,
Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you,
Broad muscular fields, branches of liveoak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it
shall be you,
Hands I have taken, face I have kissed, mortal I have ever touched, it shall be you.
I dote on myself . . . . there is that lot of me, and all so luscious,
Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy.
I cannot tell how my ankles bend . . . . nor whence the cause of my faintest wish,
Nor the cause of the friendship I emit . . . . nor the cause of the friendship I take
again.
To walk up my stoop is unaccountable . . . . I pause to consider if it really be,
That I eat and drink is spectacle enough for the great authors and schools,
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
To behold the daybreak!
The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows,
The air tastes good to my palate.
Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols, silently rising, freshly exuding,
Scooting obliquely high and low.
Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs,
Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.
The earth by the sky staid with . . . . the daily close of their junction,
The heaved challenge from the east that moment over my head,
The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!
Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sunrise would kill me,
If I could not now and always send sunrise out of me.
We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun,
We found our own my soul in the calm and cool of the daybreak.
My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.
Speech is the twin of my vision . . . . it is unequal to measure itself.
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It provokes me forever,
It says sarcastically, Walt, you understand enough . . . . why don’t you let it out
then?
Come now I will not be tantalized . . . . you conceive too much of articulation.
Do you not know how the buds beneath are folded?
Waiting in gloom protected by frost,
The dirt receding before my prophetical screams,
I underlying causes to balance them at last,
My knowledge my live parts . . . . it keeping tally with the meaning of things,
Happiness . . . . which whoever hears me let him or her set out in search of this
day.
My final merit I refuse you . . . . I refuse putting from me the best I am.
Encompass worlds but never try to encompass me,
I crowd your noisiest talk by looking toward you.
Writing and talk do not prove me,
I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face,
With the hush of my lips I confound the topmost skeptic.
I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen,
And accrue what I hear into myself . . . . and let sounds contribute toward me.
I hear the bravuras of birds . . . . the bustle of growing wheat . . . . gossip of flames
. . . . clack of sticks cooking my meals.
I hear the sound of the human voice . . . . a sound I love,
I hear all sounds as they are tuned to their uses . . . . sounds of the city and sounds
out of the city . . . . sounds of the day and night;
Talkative young ones to those that like them . . . . the recitative of fish-pedlars and
fruit-pedlars . . . . the loud laugh of workpeople at their meals,
The angry base of disjointed friendship . . . . the faint tones of the sick,
The judge with hands tight to the desk, his shaky lips pronouncing a death-sentence,
The heave’e’yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves . . . . the refrain of the
anchor-lifters;
The ring of alarm-bells . . . . the cry of fire . . . . the whirr of swift-streaking engines
and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and colored lights,
The steam-whistle . . . . the solid roll of the train of approaching cars;
The slow-march played at night at the head of the association,
They go to guard some corpse . . . . the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.
I hear the violincello or man’s heart’s complaint,
And hear the keyed cornet or else the echo of sunset.
I hear the chorus . . . . it is a grand-opera . . . . this indeed is music!
A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me,
The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full.
I hear the trained soprano . . . . she convulses me like the climax of my love-grip;
The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,
It wrenches unnamable ardors from my breast,
It throbs me to gulps of the farthest down horror,
It sails me . . . . I dab with bare feet . . . . they are licked by the indolent waves,
I am exposed . . . . cut by bitter and poisoned hail,
Steeped amid honeyed morphine . . . . my windpipe squeezed in the fakes of death,
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Let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,
And that we call Being.
To be in any form, what is that?
If nothing lay more developed the quahaug and its callous shell were enough.
Mine is no callous shell,
I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,
They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.
I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,
To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can stand.
Is this then a touch? . . . . quivering me to a new identity,
Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,
My flesh and blood playing out lightning, to strike what is hardly different from
myself,
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,
Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,
Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,
Depriving me of my best as for a purpose,
Unbuttoning my clothes and holding me by the bare waist,
Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture fields,
Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,
They bribed to swap off with touch, and go and graze at the edges of me,
No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger,
Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them awhile,
Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.
The sentries desert every other part of me,
They have left me helpless to a red marauder,
They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me.
I am given up by traitors;
I talk wildly . . . . I have lost my wits . . . . I and nobody else am the greatest
traitor,
I went myself first to the headland . . . . my own hands carried me there.
You villain touch! what are you doing? . . . . my breath is tight in its throat;
Unclench your floodgates! you are too much for me.
Blind loving wrestling touch! Sheathed hooded sharptoothed touch!
Did it make you ache so leaving me?
Parting tracked by arriving . . . . perpetual payment of the perpetual loan,
Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.
Sprouts take and accumulate . . . . stand by the curb prolific and vital,
Landscapes projected masculine full-sized and golden.
All truths wait in all things,
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,
The insignificant is as big to me as any,
What is less or more than a touch?
Logic and sermons never convince,
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
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Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so,
Only what nobody denies is so.
A minute and a drop of me settle my brain;
I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps,
And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman,
And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific,
And until every one shall delight us, and we them.
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d’ouvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels,
And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the farmer’s girl boiling her
iron tea-kettle and baking shortcake.
I find I incorporate gneiss and coal and long-threaded moss and fruits and grains and
esculent roots,
And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over,
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
And call any thing close again when I desire it.
In vain the speeding or shyness,
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach,
In vain the mastadon retreats beneath its own powdered bones,
In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes,
In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low,
In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
In vain the razorbilled auk sails far north to Labrador,
I follow quickly . . . . I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.
I think I could turn and live awhile with the animals . . . . they are so placid and selfcontained,
I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied . . . . not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.
So they show their relations to me and I accept them;
They bring me tokens of myself . . . . they evince them plainly in their possession.
I do not know where they got those tokens,
I must have passed that way untold times ago and negligently dropt them,
Myself moving forward then and now and forever,
Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
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Infinite and omnigenous and the like of these among them;
Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers,
Picking out here one that shall be my amie,
Choosing to go with him on brotherly terms.
A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses,
Head high in the forehead and wide between the ears,
Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,
Eyes well apart and full of sparkling wickedness . . . . ears finely cut and flexibly
moving.
His nostrils dilate . . . . my heels embrace him . . . . his well built limbs tremble with
pleasure . . . . we speed around and return.
I but use you a moment and then I resign you stallion . . . . and do not need your
paces, and outgallop them,
And myself as I stand or sit pass faster than you.
Swift wind! Space! My Soul! Now I know it is true what I guessed at;
What I guessed when I loafed on the grass,
What I guessed while I lay alone in my bed . . . . and again as I walked the beach
under the paling stars of the morning.
My ties and ballasts leave me . . . . I travel . . . . I sail . . . . my elbows rest in the
sea-gaps,
I skirt the sierras . . . . my palms cover continents,
I am afoot with my vision.
By the city’s quadrangular houses . . . . in log-huts, or camping with lumbermen,
Along the ruts of the turnpike . . . . along the dry gulch and rivulet bed,
Hoeing my onion-patch, and rows of carrots and parsnips . . . . crossing savannas . . .
trailing in forests,
Prospecting . . . . gold-digging . . . . girdling the trees of a new purchase,
Scorched ankle-deep by the hot sand . . . . hauling my boat down the shallow river;
Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead . . . . where the buck turns
furiously at the hunter,
Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock . . . . where the otter is
feeding on fish,
Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,
Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey . . . . where the beaver pats
the mud with his paddle-tail;
Over the growing sugar . . . . over the cottonplant . . . . over the rice in its low
moist field;
Over the sharp-peaked farmhouse with its scalloped scum and slender shoots from
the gutters;
Over the western persimmon . . . . over the longleaved corn and the delicate blueflowered flax;
Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and a buzzer there with the rest,
Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze;
Scaling mountains . . . . pulling myself cautiously up . . . . holding on by low scragged limbs,
Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush;
Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheatlot,
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Where the bat flies in the July eve . . . . where the great goldbug drops through the
dark;
Where the flails keep time on the barn floor,
Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow,
Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous shuddering of their
hides,
Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, and andirons straddle the hearth-slab,
and cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters;
Where triphammers crash . . . . where the press is whirling its cylinders;
Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes out of its ribs;
Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft . . . . floating in it myself and looking composedly down;
Where the life-car is drawn on the slipnoose . . . . where the heat hatches palegreen eggs in the dented sand,
Where the she-whale swims with her calves and never forsakes them,
Where the steamship trails hindways its long pennant of smoke,
Where the ground-shark’s fin cuts like a black chip out of the water,
Where the half-burned brig is riding on unknown currents,
Where shells grow to her slimy deck, and the dead are corrupting below;
Where the striped and starred flag is borne at the head of the regiments;
Approaching Manhattan, up by the long-stretching island,
Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance;
Upon a door-step . . . . upon the horse-block of hard wood outside,
Upon the race-course, or enjoying pic-nics or jigs or a good game of base-ball,
At he-festivals with blackguard jibes and ironical license and bull-dances and
drinking and laughter,
At the cider-mill, tasting the sweet of the brown sqush . . . . sucking the juice
through a straw,
At apple-pealings, wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find,
At musters and beach-parties and friendly bees and huskings and house-raisings;
Where the mockingbird sounds his delicious gurgles, and cackles and screams and
weeps,
Where the hay-rick stands in the barnyard, and the dry-stalks are scattered, and the
brood cow waits in the hovel,
Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, and the stud to the mare, and the
cock is treading the hen,
Where the heifers browse, and the geese nip their food with short jerks;
Where the sundown shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie,
Where the herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and
near;
Where the hummingbird shimmers . . . . where the neck of the longlived swan is
curving and winding;
Where the laughing-gull scoots by the slappy shore and laughs her near-human
laugh;
Where beehives range on a gray bench in the garden half-hid by the high weeds;
Where the band-necked partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads
out;
Where burial coaches enter the arched gates of a cemetery;
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Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees;
Where the yellow-crowned heron comes to the edge of the marsh at night and feeds
upon small crabs;
Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon;
Where the katydid works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over the well;
Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves,
Through the salt-lick or orange glade . . . . or under conical firs;
Through the gymnasium . . . . through the curtained saloon . . . . through the office
or public hall;
Pleased with the native and pleased with the foreign . . . . pleased with the new
and old,
Pleased with women, the homely as well as the handsome,
Pleased with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously,
Pleased with the primitive tunes of the choir of the whitewashed church,
Pleased with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher, or any preacher
. . . . looking seriously at the camp-meeting;
Looking in at the shop-windows in Broadway the whole forenoon . . . . pressing the
flesh of my nose to the thick plate-glass,
Wandering the same afternoon with my face turned up to the clouds;
My right and left arms round the sides of two friends and I in the middle;
Coming home with the bearded and dark-cheeked bush-boy . . . . riding behind him
at the drape of the day;
Far from the settlements studying the print of animals’ feet, or the moccasin print;
By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient,
By the coffined corpse when all is still, examining with a candle;
Voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure;
Hurrying with the modern crowd, as eager and fickle as any,
Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him;
Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long while,
Walking the old hills of Judea with the beautiful gentle god by my side;
Speeding through space . . . . speeding through heaven and the stars,
Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring and the diameter of eighty
thousand miles,
Speeding with tailed meteors . . . . throwing fire-balls like the rest,
Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly;
Storming enjoying planning loving cautioning,
Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing,
I tread day and night such roads.
I visit the orchards of God and look at the spheric product,
And look at quintillions ripened, and look at quintillions green.
I fly the flight of the fluid and swallowing soul,
My course runs below the soundings of plummets.
I help myself to material and immaterial,
No guard can shut me off, no law can prevent me.
I anchor my ship for a little while only,
My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me.
I go hunting polar furs and the seal . . . . leaping chasms with a pike-pointed staff
. . . . clinging to topples of brittle and blue.
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I ascend to the foretruck . . . . I take my place late at night in the crow’s nest . . . .
we sail through the arctic sea . . . . it is plenty light enough,
Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty,
The enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them . . . . the scenery is plain in
all directions,
The white-topped mountains point up in the distance . . . . I fling out my fancies
toward them;
We are about approaching some great battlefield in which we are soon to be
engaged,
We pass the colossal outposts of the encampments . . . . we pass with still feet and
caution;
Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruined city . . . . the blocks and
fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the globe.
I am a free companion . . . . I bivouac by invading watchfires.
I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself,
And tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.
My voice is the wife’s voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs,
They fetch my man’s body up dripping and drowned.
I understand the large hearts of heroes,
The courage of present times and all times;
How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship, and
death chasing it up and down the storm,
How he knuckled tight and gave not back one inch, and was faithful of days and
faithful of nights,
And chalked in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, We will not desert you;
How he saved the drifting company at last,
How the lank loose-gowned women looked when boated from the side of their
prepared graves,
How the silent old-faced infants, and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipped unshaved
men;
All this I swallow and it tastes good . . . . I like it well, and it becomes mine,
I am the man . . . . I suffered . . . . I was there.
The disdain and calmness of martyrs,
The mother condemned for a witch and burnt with dry wood, and her children
gazing on;
The hounded slave that flags in the race and leans by the fence, blowing and
covered with sweat,
The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck,
The murderous buckshot and the bullets,
All these I feel or am.
I am the hounded slave . . . . I wince at the bite of the dogs,
Hell and despair are upon me . . . . crack and again crack the marksmen,
I clutch the rails of the fence . . . . my gore dribs thinned with the ooze of my skin,
I fall on the weeds and stones,
The riders spur their unwilling horses and haul close,
They taunt my dizzy ears . . . . they beat me violently over the head with their
whip-stocks.
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Agonies are one of my changes of garments;
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels . . . . I myself become the wounded
person,
My hurt turns livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.
I am the mashed fireman with breastbone broken . . . . tumbling walls buried me in
their debris,
Heat and smoke I inspired . . . . I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades,
I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels;
They have cleared the beams away . . . . they tenderly lift me forth.
I lie in the night air in my red shirt . . . . the pervading hush is for my sake,
Painless after all I lie, exhausted but not so unhappy,
White and beautiful are the faces around me . . . . the heads are bared of their firecaps,
The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.
Distant and dead resuscitate,
They show as the dial or move as the hands of me . . . . and I am the clock myself.
I am an old artillerist, and tell of some fort’s bombardment
. . . . and am there again.
Again the reveille of drummers . . . . again the attacking cannon and mortars and
howitzers,
Again the attacked send their cannon responsive.
I take part . . . . I see and hear the whole,
The cries and curses and roar . . . . the plaudits for well aimed shots,
The ambulanza slowly passing and trailing its red drip,
Workmen searching after damages and to make indispensible repairs,
The fall of grenades through the rent roof . . . . the fan-shaped explosion,
The whizz of limbs heads stone wood and iron high in the air.
Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general . . . . he furiously waves with his
hand,
He gasps through the clot . . . . Mind not me . . . . mind . . . . the entrenchments.
I tell not the fall of Alamo . . . . not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,
The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo.
Hear now the tale of a jetblack sunrise,
Hear of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve young men.
Retreating they had formed in a hollow square with their baggage for breastworks,
Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemy’s nine times their number was the
price they took in advance,
Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone,
They treated for an honorable capitulation, received writing and seal, gave up their
arms, and marched back prisoners of war.
They were the glory of the race of rangers,
Matchless with a horse, a rifle, a song, a supper or a courtship,
Large,turbulent, brave, handsome, generous, proud and affectionate,
Bearded, sunburnt, dressed in the free costume of hunters,
Not a single one over thirty years of age.
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The second Sunday morning they were brought out in squads and massacred . . . . it
was beautiful early summer,
The work commenced about five o’clock and was over by eight.
None obeyed the command to kneel,
Some made a mad and helpless rush . . . . some stood stark and straight,
A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart . . . . the living and dead lay together,
The maimed and mangled dug in the dirt . . . . the new-comers saw them there;
Some half-killed attempted to crawl away,
These were dispatched with bayonets or battered with the blunts of muskets;
A youth not seventeen years old seized his assassin till two more came to release
him,
The three were all torn, and covered with the boy’s blood.
At eleven o’clock began the burning of the bodies;
And that is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men,
And that was a jetblack sunrise.
Did you read in the seabooks of the oldfashioned frigate-fight?
Did you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars?
Our foe was no skulk in his ship, I tell you,
His was the English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and
never will be;
Along the lowered eve he came, horribly raking us.
We closed with him . . . . the yards entangled . . . . the cannon touched,
My captain lashed fast with his own hands.
We had received some eighteen-pound shots under the water,
On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around
and blowing up overhead.
Ten o’clock at night, and the full moon shining and the leaks on the gain,and five feet
of water reported,
The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold to give them a
chance for themselves.
The transit to and from the magazine was now stopped by the sentinels,
They saw so many strange faces they did not know whom to trust.
Our frigate was afire . . . . the other asked if we demanded quarters? if our colors
were struck and the fighting done?
I laughed content when I heard the voice of my little captain,
We have not struck, he composedly cried, We have just begun our part of the
fighting.
Only three guns were in use,
One was directed by the captain himself against the enemy’s mainmast,
Two well-served with grape and canister silenced his musketry and cleared his decks.
The tops alone seconded the fire of this little battery, especially the maintop,
They all held out bravely during the whole of the action.
Not a moment’s cease,
The leaks gained fast on the pumps . . . . the fire eat toward the powder-magazine,
One of the pumps was shot away . . . . it was generally thought we were sinking.
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Serene stood the little captain,
He was not hurried . . . . his voice was neither high nor low,
His eyes gave more light to us than our battle-lanterns.
Toward twelve at night, there in the beams of the moon they surrendered to us.
Stretched and still lay the midnight,
Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness,
Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking . . . . preparations to pass to the one we had
conquered,
The captain on the quarter deck coldly giving his orders through a countenance
white as a sheet,
Near by the corpse of the child that served in the cabin,
The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curled whiskers,
The flames spite of all that could be done flickering aloft and below,
The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty,
Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves . . . . dabs of flesh upon the
masts and spars,
The cut of cordage and dangle of rigging . . . . the slight shock of the soothe of
waves,
Black and impassive guns, and litter of powder-parcels, and the strong scent,
Delicate sniffs of the seabreeze . . . . smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore . . .
death-messages given in charge to survivors,
The hiss of the surgeon’s knife and the gnawing teeth of his saw,
The wheeze, the cluck, the swash of falling blood . . . . the short wild scream, the
long dull tapering groan,
These so . . . . these irretrievable.
O Christ! My fit is mastering me!
What the rebel said gaily adjusting his throat to the rope-noose,
What the savage at the stump, his eye-sockets empty, his mouth spirting whoops
and defiance,
What stills the traveler come to the vault at Mount Vernon,
What sobers the Brooklyn boy as he looks down the shores of the Wallabout and
remembers the prison ships,
What burnt the gums of the redcoat at Saratoga when he surrendered his brigades,
These become mine and me every one, and they are but little,
I become as much more as I like.
I become any presence or truth of humanity here,
And see myself in prison shaped like another man,
And feel the dull unintermitted pain.
For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,
It is I let out in the morning and barred at night.
Not a mutineer walks handcuffed to the jail, but I am handcuffed to him and walk
by his side,
I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with sweat on my twitching
lips.
Not a youngster is taken for larceny, but I go up too and am tried and sentenced.
Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp, but I also lie at the last gasp,
My face is ash-colored, my sinews gnarl . . . . away from me people retreat.
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Askers embody themselves in me, and I am embodied in them,
I project my hat and sit shamefaced and beg.
I rise extatic through all, and sweep with the true gravitation,
The whirling and whirling is elemental within me.
Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back!
Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head and slumbers and dreams and gaping,
I discover myself on a verge of the usual mistake.
That I could forget the mockers and insults!
That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the bludgeons and hammers!
That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning!
I remember . . . . I resume the overstaid fraction,
The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it . . . . or to any
graves,
The corpses rise . . . . the gashes heal . . . . the fastenings roll away.
I troop forth replenished with supreme power, one of an average unending
procession,
We walk the roads of Ohio and Massachusetts and Virginia and Wisconsin and
New York and New Orleans and Texas and Montreal and San Francisco and
Charleston and Savannah and Mexico,
Inland and by the seacoast and boundary lines . . . . and we pass the boundary lines.
Our swift ordinances are on their way over the whole earth,
The blossoms we wear in our hats are the growth of two thousand years.
Eleves I salute you,
I see the approach of your numberless gangs . . . . I see you understand yourselves
and me,
And know that they who have eyes are divine, and the blind and lame are equally
divine,
And that my steps drag behind yours yet go before them,
And are aware how I am with you no more than I am with everybody.
The friendly and flowing savage . . . . Who is he?
Is he waiting for civilization or past it and mastering it?
Is he some southwesterner raised outdoors? Is he Canadian?
Is he from the Mississippi country? or from Iowa, Oregon or California? or from
the mountains? or prairie life or bush-life? or from the sea?
Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him,
They desire he should like them and touch them and speak to them and stay with
them.
Behaviour lawless as snow-flakes . . . . words simple as grass . . . .uncombed head
and laughter and naivete;
Slowstepping feet and the common features, and the common modes and emanations,
They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers,
They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath . . . . they fly out of the glance
of his eyes.
Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask . . . . lie over,
You light surfaces only . . . . I force the surfaces and the depths also.
Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,
Say old topknot! what do you want?
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Man or woman! I might tell how I like you, but cannot,
And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,
And might tell the pinings I have . . . . the pulse of my nights and days.
Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity,
What I give I give out of myself.
You there, impotent, loose in the knees, open your scarfed chops till I blow grit
within you,
Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,
I am not to be denied . . . . I compel . . . . I have stores plenty and to spare,
And any thing I have I bestow.
I do not ask who you are . . . . that is not important to me,
You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.
To a drudge of the cottonfields or emptier of privies I lean . . . . on his right cheek
I put the family kiss,
And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.
On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes,
This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.
To any one dying . . . . thither I speed and twist the knob of the door,
Turn the bedclothes toward the foot of the bed,
Let the physician and the priest go home.
I seize the descending man . . . . I raise him with resistless will.
O despairer, here is my neck,
By God! you shall not go down! Hang your whole weight upon me.
I dilate you with tremendous breath . . . . I buoy you up;
Every room of the house do I fill with an armed force . . . . lovers of me, bafflers
of graves:
Sleep! I and they keep guard all night;
Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you,
I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself,
And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you is so.
I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs,
And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.
I heard what was said of the universe,
Heard it and heard of several thousand years;
It is middling well as far as it goes . . . . but is that all?
Magnifying and applying come I,
Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,
The most they offer for mankind and eternity less than a spirt of my own seminal
wet,
Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah and laying them away,
Lithographing Kronos and Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,
Buying drafts of Osiris and Isis and Belus and Brahma and Adonai,
In my portfolio placing Manito loose, and Allah on a leaf, and the crucifix engraved,
With Odin, and the hideous-faced Mexitli, and all idols and images,
Honestly taking them all for what they are worth, and not a cent more,
Admitting they were alive and did the work of their day,
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Admitting they bore mites as for unfledged birds who have now to rise and fly and
sing for themselves,
Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself . . . . bestowing them
freely on each man and woman I see,
Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house,
Putting higher claims for him there with his rolled-up sleeves, driving the mallet and
chisel;
Not objecting to special revelations . . . . considering a curl of smoke or a hair on
the back of my hand as curious as any revelation;
Those ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes more to me than the gods of
the antique wars,
Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction,
Their brawny limbs passing safe over charred laths . . . . their white foreheads whole
and unhurt out of the flames;
By the mechanic’s wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every person
born;
Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts
bagged out at their waists;
The snag-toothed hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come,
Selling all he possesses and traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother and sit
by him while he is tried for forgery:
What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and not filling
the square rod then;
The bull and the bug never worshipped half enough,
Dung and dirt more admirable than was dreamed,
The supernatural of no account . . . . myself waiting my time to be one of the
supremes,
The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as
prodigious,
Guessing when I am it will not tickle me much to receive puffs out of pulpit or
print;
By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator!
Putting myself here and now to the ambushed womb of the shadows!
. . . . A call in the midst of the crowd,
My own voice, orotund sweeping and final.
Come my children,
Come my boys and girls, and my women and household and intimates,
Now the performer launches his nerve . . . . he has passed his prelude on the reeds
within.
Easily written loosefingered chords! I feel the thrum of their climax and close.
My head evolves on my neck,
Music rolls, but not from the organ . . . . folks are around me, but they are no
household of mine.
Ever the hard and unsunk ground,
Ever the eaters and drinkers . . . . ever the upward and downward sun . . . . ever the
air and the ceaseless tides,
Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing and wicked and real,
Ever the old inexplicable query . . . . ever that thorned thumb -- that breath of itches
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and thirsts,
Ever the vexer’s hoot! hoot! till we find where the sly one hides and bring him forth;
Ever love . . . . ever the sobbing liquid of life,
Ever the bandage under the chin . . . . ever the tressels of death.
Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking,
To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning,
Tickets buying or taking or selling, but in to the feast never once going;
Many sweating and ploughing and thrashing, and then the chaff for payment receiving,
A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming.
This is the city . . . . and I am one of the citizens;
Whatever interests the rest interests me . . . . politics, churches,newspapers,
schools,
Benevolent societies, improvements, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories, markets,
Stocks and stores and real estate and personal estate.
They who piddle and patter here in collars and tailed coats . . . . I am aware who
they are . . . . and that they are not worms or fleas,
I acknowledge the duplicates of myself under all the scrape-lipped and pipe-legged
concealments.
The weakest and shallowest is deathless with me,
What I do and say the same waits for them,
Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them.
I know perfectly well my own egotism,
And know my omniverous words, and cannot say any less,
And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.
My words are words of a questioning, and to indicate reality;
This printed and bound book . . . . but the printer and the printing-office boy?
The marriage estate and settlement . . . . but the body and mind of the bridegroom?
also those of the bride?
The panorama of the sea . . . . but the sea itself?
The well-taken photographs . . . . but your wife or friend close and solid in your
arms?
The fleet of ships of the line and all the modern improvements . . . . but the craft
and pluck of the admiral?
The dishes and fare and furniture . . . . but the host and hostess, and the look out of
their eyes?
The sky up there . . . . yet here or next door or across the way?
The saints and sages in history . . . . but you yourself?
Sermons and creeds and theology . . . . but the human brain, and what is called
reason, and what is called love, and what is called life?
I do not despise you priests;
My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths,
Enclosing all worship ancient and modern, and all between ancient and modern,
Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years,
Waiting responses from oracles . . . . honoring the gods . . . . saluting the sun,
Making a fetish of the first rock or stump . . . . powowing with sticks in the circle of
obis,
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Helping the lama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols,
Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession . . . . rapt and austere in the
woods, a gymnosophist,
Drinking mead from the skull-cup . . . . to shasta and vedas admirant . . . . minding
the koran,
Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and knife -- beating the
serpent-skin drum;
Accepting the gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing assuredly that he
is divine,
To the mass kneeling -- to the puritan’s prayer rising -- sitting patiently in a pew,
Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis -- waiting dead-like till my spirit arouses me;
Looking forth on pavement and land, and outside of pavement and land,
Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits.
One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang,
I turn and talk like a man leaving charges before a journey.
Down-hearted doubters, dull and excluded,
Frivolous sullen moping angry affected disheartened atheistical,
I know every one of you, and know the unspoken interrogatories,
By experience I know them.
How the flukes splash!
How they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts of blood!
Be at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers,
I take my place among you as much as among any;
The past is the push of you and me and all precisely the same,
And the night is for you and me and all,
And what is yet untried and afterward is for you and me and all.
I do not know what is untried and afterward,
But I know it is sure and alive, and sufficient.
Each who passes is considered, and each who stops is considered, and not a single
one can it fail.
It cannot fail the young man who died and was buried,
Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side,
Nor the little child that peeped in at the door and then drew back and was never
seen again,
Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with bitterness worse
than gall,
Nor him in the poorhouse tubercled by rum and the bad disorder,
Nor the numberless slaughtered and wrecked . . . . nor the brutish koboo, called the
ordure of humanity,
Nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in,
Nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth,
Nor any thing in the myriads of spheres, nor one of the myriads of myriads that inhabit them,
Nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known.
It is time to explain myself . . . . let us stand up.
What is known I strip away . . . . I launch all men and women forward with me into
the unknown.
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The clock indicates the moment . . . . but what does eternity indicate?
Eternity lies in bottomless reservoirs . . . . its buckets are rising forever and ever,
They pour and they pour and they exhale away.
We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers;
There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.
Births have brought us richness and variety,
And other births will bring us richness and variety.
I do not call one greater and one smaller,
That which fills its period and place is equal to any.
Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you my brother or my sister?
I am sorry for you . . . . they are not murderous or jealous upon me;
All has been gentle with me . . . . . . I keep no account with lamentation;
What have I to do with lamentation?
I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an encloser of things to be.
My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,
On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps,
All below duly traveled -- and still I mount and mount.
Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,
Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, the vapor from the nostrils of death,
I know I was even there . . . . I waited unseen and always,
And slept while God carried me through the lethargic mist,
And took my time . . . . and took no hurt from the foetid carbon.
Long I was hugged close . . . . long and long.
Immense have been the preparations for me,
Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen;
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,
My embryo has never been torpid . . . . nothing could overlay it;
For it the nebula cohered to an orb . . . . the long slow strata piled to rest it on
. . . . vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care.
All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me,
Now I stand on this spot with my soul.
Span of youth! Ever-pushed elasticity! Manhood balanced and florid and full!
My lovers suffocate me!
Crowding my lips, and thick in the pores of my skin,
Jostling me through streets and public halls . . . . coming naked to me at night,
Crying by day Ahoy from the rocks of the river . . . . swinging and chirping over my
head,
Calling my name from flowerbeds or vines or tangled underbrush,
Or while I swim in the bath . . . . or drink from the pump at the corner . . . . or the
curtain is down at the opera . . . . or I glimpse at a woman’s face in the
railroad car;
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Lighting on every moment of my life,
Bussing my body with soft and balsamic busses,
Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine.
Old age superbly rising! Ineffable grace of dying days!
Every condition promulges not only itself . . . . it promulges what grows after and out
of itself,
And the dark hush promulges as much as any.
I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of the farther
systems.
Wider and wider they spread, expanding and always expanding,
Outward and outward and forever outward.
My sun has his sun, and round him obediently wheels,
He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage;
If I and you and the worlds and all beneath or upon their surfaces, and all the
palpable life, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not
avail in the long run,
We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
And as surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther.
A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not hazard the span,
or make it impatient,
They are but parts . . . . any thing is but a part.
See ever so far . . . . there is limitless space outside of that,
Count ever so much . . . . there is limitless time around that.
Our rendezvous is fitly appointed . . . . God will be there and wait till we come.
I know I have the best of time and space -- and that I was never measured, and
never will be measured.
I tramp a perpetual journey,
My signs are a rain-proof coat and good shoes and a staff cut from the woods;
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, nor church nor philosophy;
I lead no man to a dinner-table or library or exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooks you round the waist,
My right hand points to landscapes of continents, and a plain public road.
Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.
It is not far . . . . it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know,
Perhaps it is every where on water and on land.
Shoulder your duds, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth;
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.
If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip,
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me;
For after we start we never lie by again.
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This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded heaven,
And I said to my spirit, When we become the enfolders of those orbs and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we be filled and satisfied then?
And my spirit said No, we level that lift to pass and continue beyond.
You are also asking me questions, and I hear you;
I answer that I cannot answer . . . . you must find out for yourself.
Sit awhile wayfarer,
Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink,
But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes I will certainly kiss you
with my goodbye kiss and open the gate for your egress hence.
Long enough have you dreamed contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life
Long have you timidly waded, holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, and rise again and nod to me and shout, and
laughingly dash with your hair.
I am the teacher of athletes,
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own,
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
The boy I love, the same becomes a man not through derived power but in his own
right,
Wicked, rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear,
Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak,
Unrequited love or a slight cutting him worse than a wound cuts,
First rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bull’s eye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song or play
on the banjo,
Preferring scars and faces pitted with smallpox over all latherers and those that
keep out of the sun.
I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me?
I follow you whoever you are from the present hour;
My words itch at your ears till you understand them.
I do not say these things for a dollar, or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat;
It is you talking just as much as myself . . . . I act as the tongue of you,
It was tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.
I swear I will never mention love or death inside a house,
And I swear I never will translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately
stays with me in the open air.
If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore,
The nearest gnat is an explanation and a drop or the motion of waves a key,
The maul the oar and the handsaw second my words.
No shuttered room or school can commune with me,
But roughs and little children better than they.
The young mechanic is closest to me . . . . he knows me pretty well,
The woodman that takes his axe and jug with him shall take me with him all day,
The farmboy ploughing in the field feels good at the sound of my voice,
In vessels that sail my words must sail . . . . I go with fishermen and seamen, and
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love them,
My face rubs to the hunter’s face when he lies down alone in his blanket,
The driver thinking of me does not mind the jolt of his wagon,
The young mother and old mother shall comprehend me,
The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment and forget where they are,
They and all would resume what I have told them.
I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s-self is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral, dressed in
his shroud,
And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth,
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all
times,
And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a
hero,
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe,
And any man or woman shall stand cool and supercilious before a million universes.
And I call to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.
I hear and behold God in every object, yet I understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass;
I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God’s name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.
And as to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality . . . . it is idle to try to alarm
me.
To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes,
I see the elderhand pressing receiving supporting,
I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors . . . . and mark the outlet, and
mark the relief and escape.
And as to you corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me,
I smell the white roses sweetscented and growing,
I reach to the leafy lips . . . . I reach to the polished breasts of melons.
And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,
No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.
I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven,
O suns . . . . O grass of graves . . . . O perpetual transfers and promotions . . . . if
you do not say anything how can I say anything?
Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest,
Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight,
Toss, sparkles of day and dusk . . . . toss on the black stems that decay in the muck,
Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs.
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I ascend from the moon . . . . I ascend from the night,
And perceive of the ghastly glitter the sunbeams reflected,
And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small.
There is that in me . . . . I do not know what it is . . . . but I know it is in me.
Wrenched and sweaty . . . . calm and cool then my body becomes;
I sleep . . . . I sleep long.
I do not know it . . . . it is without name . . . . it is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary or utterance or symbol.
Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.
Perhaps I might tell more . . . . Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.
Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death . . . . it is form and union and plan . . . . it is eternal life . . . .
it is happiness.
The past and present wilt . . . . I have filled them and emptied them,
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listener up there! Here you . . . . what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
Talk honestly, for no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then . . . . I contradict myself;
I am large . . . . I contain multitudes.
I concentrate toward them that are nigh . . . . I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day’s work and will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? Will you prove already too late?
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me . . . . he complains of my gab and my
loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed . . . . I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadowed wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air . . . . I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop some where waiting for you
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Frederick Douglass
from: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
I
I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in
Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen
any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of
their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my
knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a
slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time,
harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time. A want of information concerning
my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children
could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I
was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all such
inquiries on the part
of a slave improper and impertinent, and evidence of a restless spirit. The nearest
estimate I can give makes me now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age.
I come to this, from hearing my master say, some time during 1835, I was about
seventeen years old.
My mother was named Harriet Bailey. She was the daughter of Isaac and
Betsey Bailey, both colored, and quite dark. My mother was of a darker complexion
than either my grandmother or grandfather.
My father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever heard
speak of my parentage.The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father;
but of the correctness of this opinion, I know nothing; the means of knowing was
withheld from me. My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant -- before I
knew her as my mother. It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I
ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the
child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some
farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman,
too old for field labor. For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to
hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and
destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result.
I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in
my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night. She was hired
by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve miles from my home. She made her journeys
to see me in the night, travelling the whole distance on foot, after the performance of her
day’s work. She was a field hand, and a whipping is the penalty of not being in the field
at sunrise, unless a slave has special permission from his or her master to the contrary -a permission which they seldom get, and one that gives to him that gives it the proud
name of being a kind master. I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of
day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep,
but long before I waked she was gone. Very little communication ever took place
between us. Death soon ended what little we could have while she lived, and with it her
hardships and suffering. She died when I was about seven years old, on one of my
master’s farms, near Lee’s Mill. I was not allowed to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial. She was gone long before
I knew any thing about it. Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her
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soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her death with
much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger.
Called thus suddenly away, she left me without the slightest intimation of who
my father was. The whisper that my master was my father, may or may not be true; and,
true or false, it is of but little consequence to my purpose whilst the fact remains, in all
its glaring odiousness, that slaveholders have ordained, and by law established, that the
children of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers; and this
is done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and make a gratification of their
wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the
slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relation of master and
father.
I know of such cases; and it is worthy of remark that such slaves invariably
suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend with, than others. They are, in the
first place, a constant offence to their mistress. She is ever disposed to find fault with
them; they can seldom do any thing to please her; she is never better pleased than when
she sees them under the lash, especially when she suspects her husband of showing to
his mulatto children favors which he withholds from his black slaves. The master is
frequently compelled to sell this class of his slaves, out of deference to the feelings of
his white wife; and, cruel as the deed may strike any one to be, for a man to sell his own
children to human flesh-mongers, it is often the dictate of humanity for him to do so;
for, unless he does this, he must not only whip them himself, but must stand by and see
one white son
tie up his brother, of but few shades darker comlexion than himself, and ply the gory
lash to his
naked back; and if he lisp one word of disapproval, it is set down to his parental
partiality, and only
makes a bad matter worse, both for himself and the slave whom he would protect and
defend.
Every year brings with it multitudes of this class of slaves. It was doubtless in
consequence of a knowledge of this fact, that one great statesman of the south predicted
the downfall of slavery by the inevitable laws of population. Whether this prophecy is
ever fulfilled or not, it is nevertheless plain that a very different-looking class of people
are springing up at the south, and are now held in slavery, from those originally brought
to this country from Africa; and
if their increase do no other good, it will do away the force of the argument, that God
cursed Ham, and therefore American slavery is right. If the lineal descendants of Ham
are alone to be scripturally enslaved, it is certain that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural; for
thousands are
ushered into the world, annually, who, like myself, owe their existence to white fathers,
and those fathers most frequently their own masters.
I have had two masters. My first master’s name was Anthony. I do not
remember his first name. He was generally called Captain Anthony -- a title which, I
presume, he acquired by sailing a craft on the Chesapeake Bay. He was not considered a
rich slaveholder. He owned two or three farms, and about thirty slaves. His farms and
slaves were under the care of an overseer. The overseer’s name was Plummer. Mr.
Plummer was a miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster. He
always went armed with a cowskin and a heavy cudgel. I have known him to cut and
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slash the women’s heads so horribly, that even master would be enraged at his cruelty,
and would threaten to whip him if he did not mind himself. Master, however, was not a
humane slaveholder. It required extraordinary barbarity on the part of an overseer to
affect him. He was a cruel man, hardened by a long life of slave-holding. He would at
times seem to take great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most
heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and
whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood. No words, no tears,
no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody
purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran
fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her
to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the
blood-clotted cowskin. I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible
exhibition. I was quite a child, but I well remember it. I never shall forget it whilst I
remember any thing. It was the first of a long series of such outrages, of which I was
doomed to be a witness and a participant. It struck me with awful force. It was the
blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to
pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit to paper the feelings with
which I beheld it.
This occurrence took place very soon after I went to live with my old master,
and under the following circumstances. Aunt Hester went out one night, -- where or for
what I do not know, -- and happened to be absent when my master desired her presence.
He had ordered her not to go out evenings, and warned her that she must never let him
catch her in company with a young man, who was paying attention to her belonging to
Colonel Lloyd. The young man’s name was Ned Roberts, generally called Lloyd’s Ned.
Why master was so careful of her, may be safely left to conjecture. She was a woman of
noble form, and of graceful proportions, having very few equals, and fewer superiors, in
personal appearance, among the colored or white women of our neighborhood.
Aunt Hester had not only disobeyed his orders in going out, but had been
found in company with Lloyd’s Ned; which circumstance, I found, from what he said
while whipping her, was the chief offence. Had he been a man of pure morals himself,
he might have been thought interested in protecting the innocence of my aunt; but those
who knew him will not suspect him of any such virtue. Before he commenced whipping
Aunt Hester, he took her into the kitchen, and stripped her from neck to waist, leaving
her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely naked. He then told her to cross her hands,
calling her at the same time a d -- -d b -- -h. After crossing her hands, he tied them with
a strong rope, and led her to a stool under a large hook in the joist, put in for the
purpose. He made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook. She now stood
fair or his infernal purpose. Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she
stood upon the ends of her toes. He then said to her, “Now, you d -- -d b -- -h, I’ll learn
you how to disobey my orders!” and after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay
on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from
her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor. I was so terrified and horrorstricken at the sight, that I hid myself in a closet, and dared not venture out till long after
the bloody transaction was over. I expected it would be my turn next. It was all new to
me. I had never seen any thing like it before. I had always lived with my grandmother
on the outskirts of the plantation, where she was put to raise the children of the younger
women. I had therefore been, until now, out of the way of the bloody scenes that often
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occurred on the plantation.
VII
I lived in Master Hugh’s family about seven years. During this time, I
succeeded in learning to read and write. In accomplishing this, I was compelled to resort
to various stratagems. I had no regular teacher. My mistress, who had kindly
commenced to instruct me, had, in compliance with the advice and direction of her
husband, not only ceased to instruct, but had set her face against my being instructed by
any one else. It is due, however, to my mistress to say of her, that she did not adopt this
course of treatment immediately. She at first lacked the depravity indispensable to
shutting me up in mental darkness. It was at least necessary for her to have some
training in the exercise of irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating
me as though I were
a brute.
My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tender-hearted woman; and in the
simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with her, to treat me as
she supposed one human being ought to treat another. In entering upon the duties of a
slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive that I sustained to her the relation of a mere
chattel, and that for her to treat me as a human being was not only wrong, but
dangerously so. Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there,
she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for
which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and
comfort for every mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to
divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became
stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness. The first
step in her downward course was in her ceasing to instruct me. She now commenced to
practise her husband’s precepts. She finally became even more violent in her opposition than her husband himself. She was not
satisfied with simply doing as well as he had commanded; she seemed anxious to do
better. Nothing seemed to make her more angry than to see me with a newspaper. She
seemed to think that here lay the danger. I have had her rush at me with a face made all
up of fury, and snatch from me a newspaper, in a manner that fully revealed her
apprehension. She was an apt woman; and a little experience soon demonstrated, to her
satisfaction, that education and slavery were incompatible with each other.
From this time I was most narrowly watched. If I was in a separate room any
considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a book, and was at
once called to give an account of myself. All this, however, was too late. The first step
had been taken. Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the INCH, and no
precaution could prevent me from taking the ELL.
The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was
that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street. As many of
these as I could, I converted into teachers. With their kindly aid, obtained at different
times and in different places, I finally succeeded in learning to read. When I was sent of
errands, I always took my book with me, and by going one part of my errand quickly, I
found time to get a lesson before my return. I used also to carry bread with me, enough
of which was always in the house, and to which I was always welcome; for I was much
better off in this regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood. This
bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that
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more valuable bread of knowledge. I am strongly tempted to give the names of two or
three of those little boys, as a testimonial of the gratitude and affection I bear them; but
prudence forbids; -- not that it would injure me, but it might embarrass them; for it is
almost an unpardonable offence to teach slaves to read in this Christian country. It is
enough to say of the dear little fellows, that they lived on Philpot Street, very near
Durgin and Bailey’s ship-yard. I used to talk this matter of slavery over with them. I
would sometimes say to them, I wished I could be as free as they would be when they
got to be men. “You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, BUT I AM A SLAVE
FOR LIFE! Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?” These words used to
trouble them; they would express for me the liveliest sympathy, and console me with the
hope that something would occur by which I might be free.
I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being A SLAVE FOR
LIFE began to bear heavily upon my heart. Just about this time, I got hold of a book
entitled “The Columbian Orator.” Every opportunity I got, I used to read this book.
Among much of other interesting matter, I found in it a dialogue between a master and
his slave. The slave was represented as having run away from his master three times.
The dialogue represented the conversation which took place between them, when the
slave was retaken the third time. In this dialogue, the whole argument in behalf of
slavery was brought forward by the master, all of which was disposed of by the slave.
The slave was made to say some very smart as well as impressive things in reply to his
master -things which had the desired though unexpected effect; for the conversation resulted in
the voluntary emancipation of the slave on the part of the master.
In the same book, I met with one of Sheridan’s mighty speeches on and in
behalf of Catholic emancipation. These were choice documents to me. I read them over
and over again with unabated interest. They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my
own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of
utterance. The moral which I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the
conscience of even a slaveholder. What I got from Sheridan was a bold denunciation of
slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights. The reading of these documents
enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain
slavery; but while they relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on another even more
painful than the one of which I was relieved. The more I read, the more I was led to
abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of
successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our
homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest
as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that
very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to
read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I
writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than
a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It
opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments
of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a
beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter
what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that
tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object
within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused
my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear
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no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever
present to torment
me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard
nothing without
hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in
every calm,
breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.
I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead;
and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed myself,
or done something for which I should have been killed. While in this state of mind, I
was eager to hear any one speak of slavery. I was a ready listener. Every little while, I
could hear something about the abolitionists. It was some time before I found what the
word meant. It was always used in such connections as to make it an interesting word to
me. If a slave ran away and succeeded in getting clear, or if a slave killed his master, set
fire to a barn, or did any thing very wrong in the mind of a slaveholder, it was spoken of
as the fruit of ABOLITION. Hearing the word in this connection very often, I set about
learning what it meant. The dictionary afforded me little or no help. I found it was “the
act of abolishing;” but then I did not know what was to be abolished. Here I was
perplexed. I did not dare to ask any one about its meaning, for I was satisfied that it was
something they wanted me to know very little about. After a patient waiting, I got one
of our city papers, containing an account of the
number of petitions from the north, praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of
Columbia, and of the slave trade between the States. From this time I understood the
words ABOLITION and ABOLITIONIST, and always drew near when that word was
spoken, expecting to hear something of importance to myself and fellow-slaves. The
light broke in upon me by degrees. I went one day down on the wharf of Mr. Waters;
and seeing two Irishmen unloading a scow of stone, I went, unasked, and helped them.
When we had finished, one of them came to me and asked me if I were a slave. I told
him I was. He asked, “Are ye a slave for life?” I told him that I was. The good Irishman
seemed to be deeply affected by the statement. He said to the other that it was a pity so
fine a little fellow as myself should be a slave for life. He said it was a shame to hold
me. They both advised me to run away to the north; that I should find friends there, and
that I should be free. I pretended not to be interested in what they said, and treated them
as if I did not understand them; for I feared they might be treacherous. White men have
been known to encourage slaves to escape, and then, to get the reward, catch them and
return them to their masters. I was afraid that these seemingly good men might use me
so; but I nevertheless remembered their advice, and from that time I resolved to run
away. I looked forward to a time at which it would be safe for me to escape. I was too
young to think of doing so immediately; besides, I wished to learn how to write, as I
might have occasion to write my own pass. I consoled myself with the hope that I
should one day find a good chance. Meanwhile, I would learn to write.
The idea as to how I might learn to write was suggested to me by being in Durgin
and Bailey’s ship-yard, and frequently seeing the ship carpenters, after hewing, and
getting a piece of timber ready for use, write on the timber the name of that part of
the ship for which it was intended. When a piece of timber was intended for the
larboard side, it would be marked thus -- “L.” When a piece was for the starboard
side, it would be marked thus -- “S.” A piece for the larboard side forward, would be
marked thus -- “L. F.” When a piece was for starboard side forward, it would be
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marked thus -- “S. F.” For larboard aft, it would be marked thus -- “L. A.” For
starboard aft, it would be marked thus -- “S. A.” I soon learned the names of these
letters, and for what they were intended when placed upon a piece of timber in the
ship-yard. I immediately commenced copying them, and in a short time was able to
make the four letters named. After that, when I met with any boy who I knew could
write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word would be, “I don’t
believe you. Let me see you try it.” I would then make the letters which I had been so
fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat that. In this way I got a good many lessons
in writing, which it is quite possible I should never have gotten in any other way.
During this time, my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and pavement; my
pen and ink was a lump of chalk. With these, I learned mainly how to write. I then
commenced and continued copying the Italics in Webster’s Spelling Book, until I
could make them all without looking on the book. By this time,
my little Master Thomas had gone to school, and learned how to write, and had
written over a number of copy-books. These had been brought home, and shown to
some of our near neighbors, and then laid aside. My mistress used to go to class
meeting at the Wilk Street meetinghouse every Monday afternoon, and leave me to
take care of the house. When left thus, I used to spend the time in writing in the
spaces left in Master Thomas’s copy-book, copying what he had written. I continued
to do this until I could write a hand very similar to that of Master Thomas. Thus,
after a long, tedious effort for years, I finally succeeded in learning how to write.
XI
I now come to that part of my life during which I planned, and finally
succeeded in making, my escape from slavery. But before narrating any of the peculiar
circumstances, I deem it proper to make known my intention not to state all the facts
connected with the transaction. My reasons for pursuing this course may be understood
from the following: First, were I to give a minute statement of all the facts, it is not only
possible, but quite probable, that others would thereby be involved in the most
embarrassing difficulties. Secondly, such a statement would
most undoubtedly induce greater vigilance on the part of slaveholders than has existed
heretofore
among them; which would, of course, be the means of guarding a door whereby some
dear brother bondman might escape his galling chains. I deeply regret the necessity that
impels me to suppress any thing of importance connected with my experience in
slavery. It would afford me great pleasure indeed, as well as materially add to the
interest of my narrative, were I at liberty to gratify a curiosity, which I know exists in
the minds of many, by an accurate statement of all the facts pertaining to my most
fortunate escape. But I must deprive myself of this pleasure, and the curious of the
gratification which such a statement would afford. I would allow myself to suffer under
the greatest imputations which evil-minded men might suggest, rather than exculpate
myself, and thereby run the hazard of closing the slightest avenue by which a brother
slave might clear himself of the chains and fetters of slavery.
I have never approved of the very public manner in which some of our western
friends have conducted what they call the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, but which I
think, by their open declarations, has been made most emphatically the
UPPERGROUND RAILROAD. I honor those good men and women for their noble
daring, and applaud them for willingly subjecting themselves to bloody persecution, by
openly avowing their participation in the escape of slaves. I, however, can
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see very little good resulting from such a course, either to themselves or the slaves
escaping; while,
upon the other hand, I see and feel assured that those open declarations are a positive
evil to the
slaves remaining, who are seeking to escape. They do nothing towards enlightening the
slave, whilst they do much towards enlightening the master. They stimulate him to
greater watchfulness, and enhance his power to capture his slave. We owe something to
the slave south of the line as well as to those north of it; and in aiding the latter on their
way to freedom, we should be careful to do nothing which would be likely to hinder the
former from escaping from slavery. I would keep the merciless slaveholder profoundly
ignorant of the means of flight adopted by the slave. I would leave him to imagine
himself surrounded by myriads of invisible tormentors, ever ready to snatch from his
infernal grasp his trembling prey. Let him be left to feel his way in the dark; let darkness
commensurate with his crime hover over him; and let him feel that at every step he
takes, in pursuit of the flying bondman, he is running the frightful risk of having his hot
brains dashed out by an invisible agency. Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold
the light by which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother. But enough of this. I
will now proceed to the statement of those facts, connected with my escape, for which I
am alone responsible, and for which no one can be made to suffer but myself.
[…]
Things went on without very smoothly indeed, but within there was trouble. It is
impossible for me to describe my feelings as the time of my contemplated start drew
near. I had a number of warm-hearted friends in Baltimore, -- friends that I loved almost
as I did my life, -- and the thought of being separated from them forever was painful
beyond expression. It is my opinion that thousands would escape from slavery, who
now remain, but for the strong cords of affection that bind them to their friends. The
thought of leaving my friends was decidedly the most painful thought with which I had
to contend. The love of them was my tender point, and shook my decision more than all
things else. Besides the pain of separation, the dread and apprehension of a failure
exceeded what I had experienced at my first attempt. The appalling defeat I then
sustained returned to torment me. I felt assured that, if I failed in this attempt, my case
would be a hopeless one -- it would seal my fate as a slave forever. I could not hope to
get off with any thing less than the severest punishment, and being placed beyond the
means of escape. It required no very vivid imagination to depict the most frightful
scenes through which I should have to pass, in case I failed. The wretchedness of
slavery, and the blessedness of freedom, were perpetually before me. It was life and
death with me. But I remained firm, and, according to my resolution, on the third day of
September, 1838, I left my chains, and succeeded in reaching New York without the
slightest
interruption of any kind. How I did so, -- what means I adopted, -- what direction I
travelled, and by what mode of conveyance, -- I must leave unexplained, for the reasons
before mentioned.
I have been frequently asked how I felt when I found myself in a free State. I
have never been able to answer the question with any satisfaction to myself. It was a
moment of the highest excitement I ever experienced. I suppose I felt as one may
imagine the unarmed mariner to feel when he is rescued by a friendly man-of-war from
the pursuit of a pirate. In writing to a dear friend, immediately after my arrival at New
York, I said I felt like one who had escaped a den of hungry lions. This state of mind,
175
however, very soon subsided; and I was again seized with a feeling of great insecurity
and loneliness. I was yet liable to be taken back, and subjected to all the tortures of
slavery. This in itself was enough to damp the ardor of my enthusiasm. But the
loneliness overcame me. There I was in the midst of thousands, and yet a perfect
stranger; without home and without friends, in the midst of thousands of my own
brethren -- children of a common Father, and yet I dared not to unfold to any one of
them my sad condition. I was afraid to speak to any one for fear of speaking to the
wrong one, and thereby falling into the hands of money-loving kidnappers, whose
business it was to lie in wait for the panting fugitive, as the ferocious beasts of the forest
lie in wait for their prey. The motto which I adopted when I started from slavery was
this -- “Trust no man!” I saw in every white man an enemy, and in almost every colored
man cause for distrust. It was a most painful situation; and, to understand it, one must
needs experience it, or imagine himself in similar circumstances. Let him be a fugitive
slave in a strange land -- a land given up to be the huntingground for slaveholders -- whose inhabitants are legalized kidnappers -- where he is
every moment subjected to the terrible liability of being seized upon by his fellowmen,
as the hideous crocodile seizes upon his prey! -- I say, let him place himself in my
situation -- without home or friends -- without money or credit -- wanting shelter, and
no one to give it -- wanting bread, and no money to buy it, -- and at the same time let
him feel that he is pursued by merciless men-hunters, and in total darkness as to what
to do, where to go, or where to stay, -- perfectly helpless both as to the means of defence
and means of escape, -- in the midst of plenty, yet suffering the terrible gnawings of
hunger, -- in the midst of houses, yet having no home, -- among fellow-men, yet feeling
as if in the midst of wild beasts, whose greediness to swallow up the trembling and halffamished fugitive is only equalled by that with which the monsters of the deep swallow
up the helpless fish upon which
they subsist, -- I say, let him be placed in this most trying situation, -- the situation in
which I was placed, -- then, and not till then, will he fully appreciate the hardships of,
and know how to sympathize with, the toil-worn and whip-scarred fugitive slave.
[…]
In about four months after I went to New Bedford, there came a young man to
me, and inquired if I did not wish to take the “Liberator.” I told him I did; but, just
having made my escape from slavery, I remarked that I was unable to pay for it then. I,
however, finally became a subscriber to it. The paper came, and I read it from week to
week with such feelings as it would be quite idle for me to attempt to describe. The
paper became my meat and my drink. My soul was set all on fire. Its sympathy for my
brethren in bonds -- its scathing denunciations of slaveholders -- its faithful exposures
of slavery -- and its powerful attacks upon the upholders of the institution -- sent a thrill
of joy through my soul, such as I had never felt before!
I had not long been a reader of the “Liberator,” before I got a pretty correct idea of
the principles, measures and spirit of the anti-slavery reform. I took right hold of the
cause. I could do but little; but what I could, I did with a joyful heart, and never felt
happier than when in an anti-slavery meeting. I seldom had much to say at the
meetings, because what I wanted to say was said so much better by others. But, while
attending an anti-slavery convention at Nantucket, on the 11th of August, 1841, I felt
strongly moved to speak, and was at the same time much urged to do so by Mr.
William C. Coffin, a gentleman who had heard me speak in the colored people’s
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meeting at New Bedford. It was a severe cross, and I took it up reluctantly. The truth
was, I felt myself a slave,
* I am told that colored persons can now get employment at calking in New Bedford -- a result of antislavery effort.
and the idea of speaking to white people weighed me down. I spoke but a few moments,
when I felt a degree of freedom, and said what I desired with considerable ease. From
that time until now, I have been engaged in pleading the cause of my brethren -- with
what success, and with
what devotion, I leave those acquainted with my labors to decide.
[…]
Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book may do something toward throwing
light on the American slave system, and hastening the glad day of deliverance to the
millions of my brethren in bonds -- faithfully relying upon the power of truth, love, and
justice, for success in my humble efforts -- and solemnly pledging my self anew to the
sacred cause, -- I subscribe myself,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
LYNN, MASS., APRIL 28, 1845.
177
REALISM AND EARLY MODERNISM
Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Chapter XXXI
WE dasn’t stop again at any town for days and days; kept right along down the river. We
was down south in the warm weather now, and a mighty long ways from home. We
begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on them, hanging down from the limbs like
long, gray beards. It was the first I ever see it growing, and it made the woods look
solemn and dismal. So now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they begun
to work the villages again.
First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn’t make enough for them both to
get drunk on. Then in another village they started a dancing-school; but they didn’t
know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does; so the first prance they made the
general public jumped in and pranced them out of town. Another time they tried to go at
yellocution; but they didn’t yellocute long till the audience got up and give them a solid
good cussing, and made them skip out. They tackled missionarying, and mesmerizing,
and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of everything; but they couldn’t seem to
have no luck. So at last they got just about dead broke, and laid around the raft as she
floated along, thinking and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the half a day at a
time, and dreadful blue and desperate.
And at last they took a change and begun to lay their heads together in the wigwam and
talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time. Jim and me got uneasy. We didn’t
like the look of it. We judged they was studying up some kind of worse deviltry than
ever. We turned it over and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to
break into somebody’s house or store, or was going into the counterfeit-money business,
or something. So then we was pretty scared, and made up an agreement that we
wouldn’t have nothing in the world to do with such actions, and if we ever got the least
show we would give them the cold shake and clear out and leave them behind. Well,
early one morning we hid the raft in a good, safe place about two mile below a little bit
of a shabby village named Pikesville, and the king he went ashore and told us all to stay
hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if anybody had got any wind of
the Royal Nonesuch there yet. (“House to rob, you MEAN,” says I to myself; “and
when you get through robbing it you’ll come back here and wonder what has become of
me and Jim and the raft--and you’ll have to take it out in wondering.”) And he said if he
warn’t back by midday the duke and me would know it was all right, and we was to
come along.
So we stayed where we was. The duke he fretted and sweated around, and was in a
mighty sour way. He scolded us for everything, and we couldn’t seem to do nothing
right; he found fault with every little thing. Something was a-brewing, sure. I was good
and glad when midday come and no king; we could have a change, anyway--and maybe
a chance for THE chance on top of it. So me and the duke went up to the village, and
hunted around there for the king, and by and by we found him in the back room of a
little low doggery, very tight, and a lot of loafers bullyragging him for sport, and he acussing and a-threatening with all his might, and so tight he couldn’t walk, and couldn’t
do nothing to them. The duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool, and the king begun
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to sass back, and the minute they was fairly at it I lit out and shook the reefs out of my
hind legs, and spun down the river road like a deer, for I see our chance; and I made up
my mind that it would be a long day before they ever see me and Jim again. I got down
there all out of breath but loaded up with joy, and sung out:
“Set her loose, Jim! we’re all right now!”
But there warn’t no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam. Jim was gone! I set
up a shout--and then another--and then another one; and run this way and that in the
woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn’t no use--old Jim was gone. Then I set
down and cried; I couldn’t help it. But I couldn’t set still long. Pretty soon I went out on
the road, trying to think what I better do, and I run across a boy walking, and asked him
if he’d seen a strange nigger dressed so and so, and he says:
“Yes.”
“Whereabouts?” says I.
“Down to Silas Phelps’ place, two mile below here. He’s a runaway nigger, and they’ve
got him. Was you looking for him?”
“You bet I ain’t! I run across him in the woods about an hour or two ago, and he said if I
hollered he’d cut my livers out--and told me to lay down and stay where I was; and I
done it. Been there ever since; afeard to come out.”
“Well,” he says, “you needn’t be afeard no more, becuz they’ve got him. He run off f’m
down South, som’ers.”
“It’s a good job they got him.”
“Well, I RECKON! There’s two hunderd dollars reward on him. It’s like picking up
money out’n the road.”
“Yes, it is--and I could a had it if I’d been big enough; I see him FIRST. Who nailed
him?”
“It was an old fellow--a stranger--and he sold out his chance in him for forty dollars,
becuz he’s got to go up the river and can’t wait. Think o’ that, now! You bet I’D wait, if
it was seven year.”
“That’s me, every time,” says I. “But maybe his chance ain’t worth no more than that, if
he’ll sell it so cheap. Maybe there’s something ain’t straight about it.”
“But it IS, though--straight as a string. I see the handbill myself. It tells all about him, to
a dot--paints him like a picture, and tells the plantation he’s frum, below NewrLEANS.
No-sirree-BOB, they ain’t no trouble ‘bout THAT speculation, you bet you. Say, gimme
a chaw tobacker, won’t ye?”
I didn’t have none, so he left. I went to the raft, and set down in the wigwam to think.
But I couldn’t come to nothing. I thought till I wore my head sore, but I couldn’t see no
way out of the trouble. After all this long journey, and after all we’d done for them
scoundrels, here it was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because
they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again
all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.
Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home
where his family was, as long as he’d GOT to be a slave, and so I’d better write a letter
to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that
notion for two things: she’d be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for
leaving her, and so she’d sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn’t,
everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they’d make Jim feel it all the
time, and so he’d feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of ME! It would get all
around that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see
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anybody from that town again I’d be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame.
That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don’t want to take no
consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide, it ain’t no disgrace. That was my fix
exactly. The more I studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and
the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me
all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and
letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in
heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman’s nigger that hadn’t ever done me no
harm, and now was showing me there’s One that’s always on the lookout, and ain’t agoing to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most
dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up
somehow for myself by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn’t so much to
blame; but something inside of me kept saying, “There was the Sunday-school, you
could a gone to it; and if you’d a done it they’d a learnt you there that people that acts as
I’d been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire.”
It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to
quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words
wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor
from ME, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my
heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I
was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one
of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY I would do the right thing and the clean
thing, and go and write to that nigger’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in
me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie--I found that out.
So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn’t know what to do. At last I had an
idea; and I says, I’ll go and write the letter--and then see if I can pray. Why, it was
astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all
gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and
wrote:
Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr.
Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.
HUCK FINN.
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and
I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and
set there thinking--thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come
to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip
down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time,
sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a- floating along, talking and singing
and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against
him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ‘stead of
calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back
out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud
was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do
everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck
the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so
grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one
he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.
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It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a- trembling, because I’d
got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of
holding my breath, and then says to myself:
“All right, then, I’ll GO to hell”--and tore it up.
It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and
never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and
said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and
the other warn’t. And for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again;
and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in,
and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.
Then I set to thinking over how to get at it, and turned over some considerable many
ways in my mind; and at last fixed up a plan that suited me. So then I took the bearings
of a woody island that was down the river a piece, and as soon as it was fairly dark I
crept out with my raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned in. I slept the
night through, and got up before it was light, and had my breakfast, and put on my store
clothes, and tied up some others and one thing or another in a bundle, and took the
canoe and cleared for shore. I landed below where I judged was Phelps’s place, and hid
my bundle in the woods, and then filled up the canoe with water, and loaded rocks into
her and sunk her where I could find her again when I wanted her, about a quarter of a
mile below a little steam sawmill that was on the bank.
Then I struck up the road, and when I passed the mill I see a sign on it, “Phelps’s
Sawmill,” and when I come to the farm-houses, two or three hundred yards further
along, I kept my eyes peeled, but didn’t see nobody around, though it was good daylight
now. But I didn’t mind, because I didn’t want to see nobody just yet--I only wanted to
get the lay of the land. According to my plan, I was going to turn up there from the
village, not from below. So I just took a look, and shoved along, straight for town. Well,
the very first man I see when I got there was the duke. He was sticking up a bill for the
Royal Nonesuch--three-night performance--like that other time. They had the cheek,
them frauds! I was right on him before I could shirk. He looked astonished, and says:
“Hel-LO! Where’d YOU come from?” Then he says, kind of glad and eager, “Where’s
the raft?--got her in a good place?”
I says:
“Why, that’s just what I was going to ask your grace.”
Then he didn’t look so joyful, and says:
“What was your idea for asking ME?” he says.
“Well,” I says, “when I see the king in that doggery yesterday I says to myself, we can’t
get him home for hours, till he’s soberer; so I went a- loafing around town to put in the
time and wait. A man up and offered me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river
and back to fetch a sheep, and so I went along; but when we was dragging him to the
boat, and the man left me a-holt of the rope and went behind him to shove him along, he
was too strong for me and jerked loose and run, and we after him. We didn’t have no
dog, and so we had to chase him all over the country till we tired him out. We never got
him till dark; then we fetched him over, and I started down for the raft. When I got there
and see it was gone, I says to myself, ‘They’ve got into trouble and had to leave; and
they’ve took my nigger, which is the only nigger I’ve got in the world, and now I’m in a
strange country, and ain’t got no property no more, nor nothing, and no way to make my
living;’ so I set down and cried. I slept in the woods all night. But what DID become of
the raft, then?--and Jim--poor Jim!”
181
“Blamed if I know--that is, what’s become of the raft. That old fool had made a trade
and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the doggery the loafers had matched
half-dollars with him and got every cent but what he’d spent for whisky; and when I got
him home late last night and found the raft gone, we said, ‘That little rascal has stole our
raft and shook us, and run off down the river.’”
“I wouldn’t shake my NIGGER, would I?--the only nigger I had in the world, and the
only property.”
“We never thought of that. Fact is, I reckon we’d come to consider him OUR nigger;
yes, we did consider him so--goodness knows we had trouble enough for him. So when
we see the raft was gone and we flat broke, there warn’t anything for it but to try the
Royal Nonesuch another shake. And I’ve pegged along ever since, dry as a powderhorn. Where’s that ten cents? Give it here.”
I had considerable money, so I give him ten cents, but begged him to spend it for
something to eat, and give me some, because it was all the money I had, and I hadn’t
had nothing to eat since yesterday. He never said nothing. The next minute he whirls on
me and says:
“Do you reckon that nigger would blow on us? We’d skin him if he done that!”
“How can he blow? Hain’t he run off?”
“No! That old fool sold him, and never divided with me, and the money’s gone.”
“SOLD him?” I says, and begun to cry; “why, he was MY nigger, and that was my
money. Where is he?--I want my nigger.”
“Well, you can’t GET your nigger, that’s all--so dry up your blubbering. Looky here--do
you think YOU’D venture to blow on us? Blamed if I think I’d trust you. Why, if you
WAS to blow on us--”
He stopped, but I never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes before. I went on awhimpering, and says:
“I don’t want to blow on nobody; and I ain’t got no time to blow, nohow. I got to turn
out and find my nigger.”
He looked kinder bothered, and stood there with his bills fluttering on his arm, thinking,
and wrinkling up his forehead. At last he says:
“I’ll tell you something. We got to be here three days. If you’ll promise you won’t blow,
and won’t let the nigger blow, I’ll tell you where to find him.”
So I promised, and he says:
“A farmer by the name of Silas Ph--” and then he stopped. You see, he started to tell me
the truth; but when he stopped that way, and begun to study and think again, I reckoned
he was changing his mind. And so he was. He wouldn’t trust me; he wanted to make
sure of having me out of the way the whole three days. So pretty soon he says:
“The man that bought him is named Abram Foster--Abram G. Foster--and he lives forty
mile back here in the country, on the road to Lafayette.”
“All right,” I says, “I can walk it in three days. And I’ll start this very afternoon.”
“No you wont, you’ll start NOW; and don’t you lose any time about it, neither, nor do
any gabbling by the way. Just keep a tight tongue in your head and move right along,
and then you won’t get into trouble with US, d’ye hear?”
That was the order I wanted, and that was the one I played for. I wanted to be left free to
work my plans.
“So clear out,” he says; “and you can tell Mr. Foster whatever you want to. Maybe you
can get him to believe that Jim IS your nigger--some idiots don’t require documents-leastways I’ve heard there’s such down South here. And when you tell him the handbill
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and the reward’s bogus, maybe he’ll believe you when you explain to him what the idea
was for getting ‘em out. Go ‘long now, and tell him anything you want to; but mind you
don’t work your jaw any BETWEEN here and there.”
So I left, and struck for the back country. I didn’t look around, but I kinder felt like he
was watching me. But I knowed I could tire him out at that. I went straight out in the
country as much as a mile before I stopped; then I doubled back through the woods
towards Phelps’. I reckoned I better start in on my plan straight off without fooling
around, because I wanted to stop Jim’s mouth till these fellows could get away. I didn’t
want no trouble with their kind. I’d seen all I wanted to of them, and wanted to get
entirely shut of them.
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Henry James
The Real Thing
CHAPTER I
When the porter’s wife (she used to answer the house-bell), announced “A gentleman-with a lady, sir,” I had, as I often had in those days, for the wish was father to the
thought, an immediate vision of sitters. Sitters my visitors in this case proved to be; but
not in the sense I should have preferred. However, there was nothing at first to indicate
that they might not have come for a portrait. The gentleman, a man of fifty, very high
and very straight, with a moustache slightly grizzled and a dark grey walking-coat
admirably fitted, both of which I noted professionally--I don’t mean as a barber or yet as
a tailor--would have struck me as a celebrity if celebrities often were striking. It was a
truth of which I had for some time been conscious that a figure with a good deal of
frontage was, as one might say, almost never a public institution. A glance at the lady
helped to remind me of this paradoxical law: she also looked too distinguished to be a
“personality.” Moreover one would scarcely come across two variations together.
Neither of the pair spoke immediately--they only prolonged the preliminary gaze
which suggested that each wished to give the other a chance. They were visibly shy;
they stood there letting me take them in--which, as I afterwards perceived, was the most
practical thing they could have done. In this way their embarrassment served their
cause. I had seen people painfully reluctant to mention that they desired anything so
gross as to be represented on canvas; but the scruples of my new friends appeared
almost insurmountable. Yet the gentleman might have said “I should like a portrait of
my wife,” and the lady might have said “I should like a portrait of my husband.”
Perhaps they were not husband and wife--this naturally would make the matter more
delicate. Perhaps they wished to be done together--in which case they ought to have
brought a third person to break the news.
“We come from Mr. Rivet,” the lady said at last, with a dim smile which had the
effect of a moist sponge passed over a “sunk” piece of painting, as well as of a vague
allusion to vanished beauty. She was as tall and straight, in her degree, as her
companion, and with ten years less to carry. She looked as sad as a woman could look
whose face was not charged with expression; that is her tinted oval mask showed
friction as an exposed surface shows it. The hand of time had played over her freely, but
only to simplify. She was slim and stiff, and so well-dressed, in dark blue cloth, with
lappets and pockets and buttons, that it was clear she employed the same tailor as her
husband. The couple had an indefinable air of prosperous thrift--they evidently got a
good deal of luxury for their money. If I was to be one of their luxuries it would behove
me to consider my terms.
“Ah, Claude Rivet recommended me?” I inquired; and I added that it was very
kind of him, though I could reflect that, as he only painted landscape, this was not a
sacrifice.
The lady looked very hard at the gentleman, and the gentleman looked round the
room. Then staring at the floor a moment and stroking his moustache, he rested his
pleasant eyes on me with the remark:
“He said you were the right one.”
“I try to be, when people want to sit.”
“Yes, we should like to,” said the lady anxiously.
“Do you mean together?”
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My visitors exchanged a glance. “If you could do anything with ME, I suppose it
would be double,” the gentleman stammered.
“Oh yes, there’s naturally a higher charge for two figures than for one.”
“We should like to make it pay,” the husband confessed.
“That’s very good of you,” I returned, appreciating so unwonted a sympathy--for
I supposed he meant pay the artist.
A sense of strangeness seemed to dawn on the lady. “We mean for the
illustrations--Mr Rivet said you might put one in.”
“Put one in--an illustration?” I was equally confused.
“Sketch her off, you know,” said the gentleman, colouring.
It was only then that I understood the service Claude Rivet had rendered me; he
had told them that I worked in black and white, for magazines, for story-books, for
sketches of contemporary life, and consequently had frequent employment for models.
These things were true, but it was not less true (I may confess it now--whether because
the aspiration was to lead to everything or to nothing I leave the reader to guess), that I
couldn’t get the honours, to say nothing of the emoluments, of a great painter of
portraits out of my head. My “illustrations” were my pot-boilers; I looked to a different
branch of art (far and away the most interesting it had always seemed to me), to
perpetuate my fame. There was no shame in looking to it also to make my fortune; but
that fortune was by so much further from being made from the moment my visitors
wished to be “done” for nothing. I was disappointed; for in the pictorial sense I had
immediately SEEN them. I had seized their type--I had already settled what I would do
with it. Something that wouldn’t absolutely have pleased them, I afterwards reflected.
“Ah, you’re--you’re--a--?” I began, as soon as I had mastered my surprise. I
couldn’t bring out the dingy word “models”; it seemed to fit the case so little.
“We haven’t had much practice,” said the lady.
“We’ve got to DO something, and we’ve thought that an artist in your line might
perhaps make something of us,” her husband threw off. He further mentioned that they
didn’t know many artists and that they had gone first, on the off-chance (he painted
views of course, but sometimes put in figures--perhaps I remembered), to Mr. Rivet,
whom they had met a few years before at a place in Norfolk where he was sketching.
“We used to sketch a little ourselves,” the lady hinted.
“It’s very awkward, but we absolutely MUST do something,” her husband went
on.
“Of course, we’re not so VERY young,” she admitted, with a wan smile.
With the remark that I might as well know something more about them, the
husband had handed me a card extracted from a neat new pocket- book (their
appurtenances were all of the freshest) and inscribed with the words “Major Monarch.”
Impressive as these words were they didn’t carry my knowledge much further; but my
visitor presently added: “I’ve left the army, and we’ve had the misfortune to lose our
money. In fact our means are dreadfully small.”
“It’s an awful bore,” said Mrs. Monarch.
They evidently wished to be discreet--to take care not to swagger because they
were gentlefolks. I perceived they would have been willing to recognise this as
something of a drawback, at the same time that I guessed at an underlying sense--their
consolation in adversity--that they HAD their points. They certainly had; but these
advantages struck me as preponderantly social; such for instance as would help to make
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a drawing-room look well. However, a drawing-room was always, or ought to be, a
picture.
In consequence of his wife’s allusion to their age Major Monarch observed:
“Naturally, it’s more for the figure that we thought of going in. We can still hold
ourselves up.” On the instant I saw that the figure was indeed their strong point. His
“naturally” didn’t sound vain, but it lighted up the question. “SHE has got the best,” he
continued, nodding at his wife, with a pleasant after- dinner absence of circumlocution.
I could only reply, as if we were in fact sitting over our wine, that this didn’t prevent his
own from being very good; which led him in turn to rejoin: “We thought that if you ever
have to do people like us, we might be something like it. SHE, particularly--for a lady in
a book, you know.”
I was so amused by them that, to get more of it, I did my best to take their point
of view; and though it was an embarrassment to find myself appraising physically, as if
they were animals on hire or useful blacks, a pair whom I should have expected to meet
only in one of the relations in which criticism is tacit, I looked at Mrs. Monarch
judicially enough to be able to exclaim, after a moment, with conviction: “Oh yes, a
lady in a book!” She was singularly like a bad illustration.
“We’ll stand up, if you like,” said the Major; and he raised himself before me
with a really grand air.
I could take his measure at a glance--he was six feet two and a perfect
gentleman. It would have paid any club in process of formation and in want of a stamp
to engage him at a salary to stand in the principal window. What struck me immediately
was that in coming to me they had rather missed their vocation; they could surely have
been turned to better account for advertising purposes. I couldn’t of course see the thing
in detail, but I could see them make someone’s fortune--I don’t mean their own. There
was something in them for a waistcoat-maker, an hotel-keeper or a soap-vendor. I could
imagine “We always use it” pinned on their bosoms with the greatest effect; I had a
vision of the promptitude with which they would launch a table d’hote.
Mrs. Monarch sat still, not from pride but from shyness, and presently her
husband said to her: “Get up my dear and show how smart you are.” She obeyed, but
she had no need to get up to show it. She walked to the end of the studio, and then she
came back blushing, with her fluttered eyes on her husband. I was reminded of an
incident I had accidentally had a glimpse of in Paris--being with a friend there, a
dramatist about to produce a play--when an actress came to him to ask to be intrusted
with a part. She went through her paces before him, walked up and down as Mrs.
Monarch was doing. Mrs. Monarch did it quite as well, but I abstained from applauding.
It was very odd to see such people apply for such poor pay. She looked as if she had ten
thousand a year. Her husband had used the word that described her: she was, in the
London current jargon, essentially and typically “smart.” Her figure was, in the same
order of ideas, conspicuously and irreproachably “good.” For a woman of her age her
waist was surprisingly small; her elbow moreover had the orthodox crook. She held her
head at the conventional angle; but why did she come to ME? She ought to have tried
on jackets at a big shop. I feared my visitors were not only destitute, but “artistic”-which would be a great complication. When she sat down again I thanked her, observing
that what a draughtsman most valued in his model was the faculty of keeping quiet.
“Oh, SHE can keep quiet,” said Major Monarch. Then he added, jocosely: “I’ve
always kept her quiet.”
“I’m not a nasty fidget, am I?” Mrs. Monarch appealed to her husband.
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He addressed his answer to me. “Perhaps it isn’t out of place to mention-because we ought to be quite business-like, oughtn’t we?-- that when I married her she
was known as the Beautiful Statue.”
“Oh dear!” said Mrs. Monarch, ruefully.
“Of course I should want a certain amount of expression,” I rejoined.
“Of COURSE!” they both exclaimed.
“And then I suppose you know that you’ll get awfully tired.”
“Oh, we NEVER get tired!” they eagerly cried.
“Have you had any kind of practice?”
They hesitated--they looked at each other. “We’ve been photographed,
IMMENSELY,” said Mrs. Monarch.
“She means the fellows have asked us,” added the Major.
“I see--because you’re so good-looking.”
“I don’t know what they thought, but they were always after us.”
“We always got our photographs for nothing,” smiled Mrs. Monarch.
“We might have brought some, my dear,” her husband remarked.
“I’m not sure we have any left. We’ve given quantities away,” she explained to
me.
“With our autographs and that sort of thing,” said the Major.
“Are they to be got in the shops?” I inquired, as a harmless pleasantry.
“Oh, yes; hers--they used to be.”
“Not now,” said Mrs. Monarch, with her eyes on the floor.
CHAPTER II
I could fancy the “sort of thing” they put on the presentation-copies of their
photographs, and I was sure they wrote a beautiful hand. It was odd how quickly I was
sure of everything that concerned them. If they were now so poor as to have to earn
shillings and pence, they never had had much of a margin. Their good looks had been
their capital, and they had good-humouredly made the most of the career that this
resource marked out for them. It was in their faces, the blankness, the deep intellectual
repose of the twenty years of country-house visiting which had given them pleasant
intonations. I could see the sunny drawing-rooms, sprinkled with periodicals she didn’t
read, in which Mrs. Monarch had continuously sat; I could see the wet shrubberies in
which she had walked, equipped to admiration for either exercise. I could see the rich
covers the Major had helped to shoot and the wonderful garments in which, late at
night, he repaired to the smoking-room to talk about them. I could imagine their
leggings and waterproofs, their knowing tweeds and rugs, their rolls of sticks and cases
of tackle and neat umbrellas; and I could evoke the exact appearance of their servants
and the compact variety of their luggage on the platforms of country stations.
They gave small tips, but they were liked; they didn’t do anything themselves,
but they were welcome. They looked so well everywhere; they gratified the general
relish for stature, complexion and “form.” They knew it without fatuity or vulgarity, and
they respected themselves in consequence. They were not superficial; they were
thorough and kept themselves up--it had been their line. People with such a taste for
activity had to have some line. I could feel how, even in a dull house, they could have
been counted upon for cheerfulness. At present something had happened--it didn’t
matter what, their little income had grown less, it had grown least--and they had to do
something for pocket-money. Their friends liked them, but didn’t like to support them.
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There was something about them that represented credit--their clothes, their manners,
their type; but if credit is a large empty pocket in which an occasional chink
reverberates, the chink at least must be audible. What they wanted of me was to help to
make it so. Fortunately they had no children--I soon divined that. They would also
perhaps wish our relations to be kept secret: this was why it was “for the figure”--the
reproduction of the face would betray them.
I liked them--they were so simple; and I had no objection to them if they would
suit. But, somehow, with all their perfections I didn’t easily believe in them. After all
they were amateurs, and the ruling passion of my life was the detestation of the amateur.
Combined with this was another perversity--an innate preference for the represented
subject over the real one: the defect of the real one was so apt to be a lack of
representation. I liked things that appeared; then one was sure. Whether they WERE or
not was a subordinate and almost always a profitless question. There were other
considerations, the first of which was that I already had two or three people in use,
notably a young person with big feet, in alpaca, from Kilburn, who for a couple of years
had come to me regularly for my illustrations and with whom I was still--perhaps
ignobly--satisfied. I frankly explained to my visitors how the case stood; but they had
taken more precautions than I supposed. They had reasoned out their opportunity, for
Claude Rivet had told them of the projected edition de luxe of one of the writers of our
day--the rarest of the novelists--who, long neglected by the multitudinous vulgar and
dearly prized by the attentive (need I mention Philip Vincent?) had had the happy
fortune of seeing, late in life, the dawn and then the full light of a higher criticism--an
estimate in which, on the part of the public, there was something really of expiation.
The edition in question, planned by a publisher of taste, was practically an act of high
reparation; the wood-cuts with which it was to be enriched were the homage of English
art to one of the most independent representatives of English letters. Major and Mrs.
Monarch confessed to me that they had hoped I might be able to work THEM into my
share of the enterprise. They knew I was to do the first of the books, “Rutland Ramsay,”
but I had to make clear to them that my participation in the rest of the affair--this first
book was to be a test--was to depend on the satisfaction I should give. If this should be
limited my employers would drop me without a scruple. It was therefore a crisis for me,
and naturally I was making special preparations, looking about for new people, if they
should be necessary, and securing the best types. I admitted however that I should like
to settle down to two or three good models who would do for everything.
“Should we have often to--a--put on special clothes?” Mrs. Monarch timidly
demanded.
“Dear, yes--that’s half the business.”
“And should we be expected to supply our own costumes?”
“Oh, no; I’ve got a lot of things. A painter’s models put on--or put off--anything
he likes.”
“And do you mean--a--the same?”
“The same?”
Mrs. Monarch looked at her husband again.
“Oh, she was just wondering,” he explained, “if the costumes are in GENERAL
use.” I had to confess that they were, and I mentioned further that some of them (I had a
lot of genuine, greasy last- century things), had served their time, a hundred years ago,
on living, world-stained men and women. “We’ll put on anything that fits,” said the
Major.
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“Oh, I arrange that--they fit in the pictures.”
“I’m afraid I should do better for the modern books. I would come as you like,”
said Mrs. Monarch.
“She has got a lot of clothes at home: they might do for contemporary life,” her
husband continued.
“Oh, I can fancy scenes in which you’d be quite natural.” And indeed I could see
the slipshod rearrangements of stale properties--the stories I tried to produce pictures for
without the exasperation of reading them--whose sandy tracts the good lady might help
to people. But I had to return to the fact that for this sort of work--the daily mechanical
grind--I was already equipped; the people I was working with were fully adequate.
“We only thought we might be more like SOME characters,” said Mrs. Monarch
mildly, getting up.
Her husband also rose; he stood looking at me with a dim wistfulness that was
touching in so fine a man. “Wouldn’t it be rather a pull sometimes to have--a--to
have--?” He hung fire; he wanted me to help him by phrasing what he meant. But I
couldn’t--I didn’t know. So he brought it out, awkwardly: “The REAL thing; a
gentleman, you know, or a lady.” I was quite ready to give a general assent--I admitted
that there was a great deal in that. This encouraged Major Monarch to say, following up
his appeal with an unacted gulp: “It’s awfully hard--we’ve tried everything.” The gulp
was communicative; it proved too much for his wife. Before I knew it Mrs. Monarch
had dropped again upon a divan and burst into tears. Her husband sat down beside her,
holding one of her hands; whereupon she quickly dried her eyes with the other, while I
felt embarrassed as she looked up at me. “There isn’t a confounded job I haven’t applied
for--waited for-- prayed for. You can fancy we’d be pretty bad first. Secretaryships and
that sort of thing? You might as well ask for a peerage. I’d be ANYTHING--I’m strong;
a messenger or a coalheaver. I’d put on a gold-laced cap and open carriage-doors in
front of the haberdasher’s; I’d hang about a station, to carry portmanteaus; I’d be a
postman. But they won’t LOOK at you; there are thousands, as good as yourself,
already on the ground. GENTLEMEN, poor beggars, who have drunk their wine, who
have kept their hunters!”
I was as reassuring as I knew how to be, and my visitors were presently on their
feet again while, for the experiment, we agreed on an hour. We were discussing it when
the door opened and Miss Churm came in with a wet umbrella. Miss Churm had to take
the omnibus to Maida Vale and then walk half-a-mile. She looked a trifle blowsy and
slightly splashed. I scarcely ever saw her come in without thinking afresh how odd it
was that, being so little in herself, she should yet be so much in others. She was a
meagre little Miss Churm, but she was an ample heroine of romance. She was only a
freckled cockney, but she could represent everything, from a fine lady to a shepherdess;
she had the faculty, as she might have had a fine voice or long hair.
She couldn’t spell, and she loved beer, but she had two or three “points,” and
practice, and a knack, and mother-wit, and a kind of whimsical sensibility, and a love of
the theatre, and seven sisters, and not an ounce of respect, especially for the H. The first
thing my visitors saw was that her umbrella was wet, and in their spotless perfection
they visibly winced at it. The rain had come on since their arrival.
“I’m all in a soak; there WAS a mess of people in the ‘bus. I wish you lived near
a stytion,” said Miss Churm. I requested her to get ready as quickly as possible, and she
passed into the room in which she always changed her dress. But before going out she
asked me what she was to get into this time.
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“It’s the Russian princess, don’t you know?” I answered; “the one with the
‘golden eyes,’ in black velvet, for the long thing in the Cheapside.”
“Golden eyes? I SAY!” cried Miss Churm, while my companions watched her
with intensity as she withdrew. She always arranged herself, when she was late, before I
could turn round; and I kept my visitors a little, on purpose, so that they might get an
idea, from seeing her, what would be expected of themselves. I mentioned that she was
quite my notion of an excellent model--she was really very clever.
“Do you think she looks like a Russian princess?” Major Monarch asked, with
lurking alarm.
“When I make her, yes.”
“Oh, if you have to MAKE her--!” he reasoned, acutely.
“That’s the most you can ask. There are so many that are not makeable.”
“Well now, HERE’S a lady”--and with a persuasive smile he passed his arm into
his wife’s--”who’s already made!”
“Oh, I’m not a Russian princess,” Mrs. Monarch protested, a little coldly. I could
see that she had known some and didn’t like them. There, immediately, was a
complication of a kind that I never had to fear with Miss Churm.
This young lady came back in black velvet--the gown was rather rusty and very
low on her lean shoulders--and with a Japanese fan in her red hands. I reminded her that
in the scene I was doing she had to look over someone’s head. “I forget whose it is; but
it doesn’t matter. Just look over a head.”
“I’d rather look over a stove,” said Miss Churm; and she took her station near
the fire. She fell into position, settled herself into a tall attitude, gave a certain backward
inclination to her head and a certain forward droop to her fan, and looked, at least to my
prejudiced sense, distinguished and charming, foreign and dangerous. We left her
looking so, while I went down-stairs with Major and Mrs. Monarch.
“I think I could come about as near it as that,” said Mrs. Monarch.
“Oh, you think she’s shabby, but you must allow for the alchemy of art.”
However, they went off with an evident increase of comfort, founded on their
demonstrable advantage in being the real thing. I could fancy them shuddering over
Miss Churm. She was very droll about them when I went back, for I told her what they
wanted.
“Well, if SHE can sit I’ll tyke to bookkeeping,” said my model.
“She’s very lady-like,” I replied, as an innocent form of aggravation.
“So much the worse for YOU. That means she can’t turn round.”
“She’ll do for the fashionable novels.”
“Oh yes, she’ll DO for them!” my model humorously declared. “Ain’t they had
enough without her?” I had often sociably denounced them to Miss Churm.
CHAPTER III
It was for the elucidation of a mystery in one of these works that I first tried Mrs.
Monarch. Her husband came with her, to be useful if necessary--it was sufficiently clear
that as a general thing he would prefer to come with her. At first I wondered if this were
for “propriety’s” sake--if he were going to be jealous and meddling. The idea was too
tiresome, and if it had been confirmed it would speedily have brought our acquaintance
to a close. But I soon saw there was nothing in it and that if he accompanied Mrs.
Monarch it was (in addition to the chance of being wanted), simply because he had
nothing else to do. When she was away from him his occupation was gone--she never
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HAD been away from him. I judged, rightly, that in their awkward situation their close
union was their main comfort and that this union had no weak spot. It was a real
marriage, an encouragement to the hesitating, a nut for pessimists to crack. Their
address was humble (I remember afterwards thinking it had been the only thing about
them that was really professional), and I could fancy the lamentable lodgings in which
the Major would have been left alone. He could bear them with his wife--he couldn’t
bear them without her.
He had too much tact to try and make himself agreeable when he couldn’t be
useful; so he simply sat and waited, when I was too absorbed in my work to talk. But I
liked to make him talk--it made my work, when it didn’t interrupt it, less sordid, less
special. To listen to him was to combine the excitement of going out with the economy
of staying at home. There was only one hindrance: that I seemed not to know any of the
people he and his wife had known. I think he wondered extremely, during the term of
our intercourse, whom the deuce I DID know. He hadn’t a stray sixpence of an idea to
fumble for; so we didn’t spin it very fine--we confined ourselves to questions of leather
and even of liquor (saddlers and breeches-makers and how to get good claret cheap),
and matters like “good trains” and the habits of small game. His lore on these last
subjects was astonishing, he managed to interweave the station-master with the
ornithologist. When he couldn’t talk about greater things he could talk cheerfully about
smaller, and since I couldn’t accompany him into reminiscences of the fashionable
world he could lower the conversation without a visible effort to my level.
So earnest a desire to please was touching in a man who could so easily have
knocked one down. He looked after the fire and had an opinion on the draught of the
stove, without my asking him, and I could see that he thought many of my arrangements
not half clever enough. I remember telling him that if I were only rich I would offer him
a salary to come and teach me how to live. Sometimes he gave a random sigh, of which
the essence was: “Give me even such a bare old barrack as THIS, and I’d do something
with it!” When I wanted to use him he came alone; which was an illustration of the
superior courage of women. His wife could bear her solitary second floor, and she was
in general more discreet; showing by various small reserves that she was alive to the
propriety of keeping our relations markedly professional--not letting them slide into
sociability. She wished it to remain clear that she and the Major were employed, not
cultivated, and if she approved of me as a superior, who could be kept in his place, she
never thought me quite good enough for an equal.
She sat with great intensity, giving the whole of her mind to it, and was capable
of remaining for an hour almost as motionless as if she were before a photographer’s
lens. I could see she had been photographed often, but somehow the very habit that
made her good for that purpose unfitted her for mine. At first I was extremely pleased
with her lady-like air, and it was a satisfaction, on coming to follow her lines, to see
how good they were and how far they could lead the pencil. But after a few times I
began to find her too insurmountably stiff; do what I would with it my drawing looked
like a photograph or a copy of a photograph. Her figure had no variety of expression-she herself had no sense of variety. You may say that this was my business, was only a
question of placing her. I placed her in every conceivable position, but she managed to
obliterate their differences. She was always a lady certainly, and into the bargain was
always the same lady. She was the real thing, but always the same thing. There were
moments when I was oppressed by the serenity of her confidence that she WAS the real
thing. All her dealings with me and all her husband’s were an implication that this was
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lucky for ME. Meanwhile I found myself trying to invent types that approached her
own, instead of making her own transform itself-- in the clever way that was not
impossible, for instance, to poor Miss Churm. Arrange as I would and take the
precautions I would, she always, in my pictures, came out too tall--landing me in the
dilemma of having represented a fascinating woman as seven feet high, which, out of
respect perhaps to my own very much scantier inches, was far from my idea of such a
personage.
The case was worse with the Major--nothing I could do would keep HIM down,
so that he became useful only for the representation of brawny giants. I adored variety
and range, I cherished human accidents, the illustrative note; I wanted to characterise
closely, and the thing in the world I most hated was the danger of being ridden by a
type. I had quarrelled with some of my friends about it--I had parted company with
them for maintaining that one HAD to be, and that if the type was beautiful (witness
Raphael and Leonardo), the servitude was only a gain. I was neither Leonardo nor
Raphael; I might only be a presumptuous young modern searcher, but I held that
everything was to be sacrificed sooner than character. When they averred that the
haunting type in question could easily BE character, I retorted, perhaps superficially:
“Whose?” It couldn’t be everybody’s--it might end in being nobody’s.
After I had drawn Mrs. Monarch a dozen times I perceived more clearly than
before that the value of such a model as Miss Churm resided precisely in the fact that
she had no positive stamp, combined of course with the other fact that what she did
have was a curious and inexplicable talent for imitation. Her usual appearance was like
a curtain which she could draw up at request for a capital performance. This
performance was simply suggestive; but it was a word to the wise--it was vivid and
pretty. Sometimes, even, I thought it, though she was plain herself, too insipidly pretty; I
made it a reproach to her that the figures drawn from her were monotonously (betement,
as we used to say) graceful. Nothing made her more angry: it was so much her pride to
feel that she could sit for characters that had nothing in common with each other. She
would accuse me at such moments of taking away her “reputytion.”
It suffered a certain shrinkage, this queer quantity, from the repeated visits of my
new friends. Miss Churm was greatly in demand, never in want of employment, so I had
no scruple in putting her off occasionally, to try them more at my ease. It was certainly
amusing at first to do the real thing--it was amusing to do Major Monarch’s trousers.
They WERE the real thing, even if he did come out colossal. It was amusing to do his
wife’s back hair (it was so mathematically neat,) and the particular “smart” tension of
her tight stays. She lent herself especially to positions in which the face was somewhat
averted or blurred; she abounded in lady-like back views and profils perdus. When she
stood erect she took naturally one of the attitudes in which court-painters represent
queens and princesses; so that I found myself wondering whether, to draw out this
accomplishment, I couldn’t get the editor of the Cheapside to publish a really royal
romance, “A Tale of Buckingham Palace.” Sometimes, however, the real thing and the
make-believe came into contact; by which I mean that Miss Churm, keeping an
appointment or coming to make one on days when I had much work in hand,
encountered her invidious rivals. The encounter was not on their part, for they noticed
her no more than if she had been the housemaid; not from intentional loftiness, but
simply because, as yet, professionally, they didn’t know how to fraternise, as I could
guess that they would have liked--or at least that the Major would. They couldn’t talk
about the omnibus--they always walked; and they didn’t know what else to try--she
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wasn’t interested in good trains or cheap claret. Besides, they must have felt--in the air-that she was amused at them, secretly derisive of their ever knowing how. She was not a
person to conceal her scepticism if she had had a chance to show it. On the other hand
Mrs. Monarch didn’t think her tidy; for why else did she take pains to say to me (it was
going out of the way, for Mrs. Monarch), that she didn’t like dirty women?
One day when my young lady happened to be present with my other sitters (she
even dropped in, when it was convenient, for a chat), I asked her to be so good as to
lend a hand in getting tea--a service with which she was familiar and which was one of
a class that, living as I did in a small way, with slender domestic resources, I often
appealed to my models to render. They liked to lay hands on my property, to break the
sitting, and sometimes the china--I made them feel Bohemian. The next time I saw Miss
Churm after this incident she surprised me greatly by making a scene about it--she
accused me of having wished to humiliate her. She had not resented the outrage at the
time, but had seemed obliging and amused, enjoying the comedy of asking Mrs.
Monarch, who sat vague and silent, whether she would have cream and sugar, and
putting an exaggerated simper into the question. She had tried intonations--as if she too
wished to pass for the real thing; till I was afraid my other visitors would take offence.
Oh, THEY were determined not to do this; and their touching patience was the
measure of their great need. They would sit by the hour, uncomplaining, till I was ready
to use them; they would come back on the chance of being wanted and would walk
away cheerfully if they were not. I used to go to the door with them to see in what
magnificent order they retreated. I tried to find other employment for them--I introduced
them to several artists. But they didn’t “take,” for reasons I could appreciate, and I
became conscious, rather anxiously, that after such disappointments they fell back upon
me with a heavier weight. They did me the honour to think that it was I who was most
THEIR form. They were not picturesque enough for the painters, and in those days there
were not so many serious workers in black and white. Besides, they had an eye to the
great job I had mentioned to them--they had secretly set their hearts on supplying the
right essence for my pictorial vindication of our fine novelist. They knew that for this
undertaking I should want no costume-effects, none of the frippery of past ages--that it
was a case in which everything would be contemporary and satirical and, presumably,
genteel. If I could work them into it their future would be assured, for the labour would
of course be long and the occupation steady.
One day Mrs. Monarch came without her husband--she explained his absence by
his having had to go to the City. While she sat there in her usual anxious stiffness there
came, at the door, a knock which I immediately recognised as the subdued appeal of a
model out of work. It was followed by the entrance of a young man whom I easily
perceived to be a foreigner and who proved in fact an Italian acquainted with no English
word but my name, which he uttered in a way that made it seem to include all others. I
had not then visited his country, nor was I proficient in his tongue; but as he was not so
meanly constituted--what Italian is?--as to depend only on that member for expression
he conveyed to me, in familiar but graceful mimicry, that he was in search of exactly the
employment in which the lady before me was engaged. I was not struck with him at
first, and while I continued to draw I emitted rough sounds of discouragement and
dismissal. He stood his ground, however, not importunately, but with a dumb, dog-like
fidelity in his eyes which amounted to innocent impudence--the manner of a devoted
servant (he might have been in the house for years), unjustly suspected. Suddenly I saw
that this very attitude and expression made a picture, whereupon I told him to sit down
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and wait till I should be free. There was another picture in the way he obeyed me, and I
observed as I worked that there were others still in the way he looked wonderingly, with
his head thrown back, about the high studio. He might have been crossing himself in St.
Peter’s. Before I finished I said to myself: “The fellow’s a bankrupt orange-monger, but
he’s a treasure.”
When Mrs. Monarch withdrew he passed across the room like a flash to open the
door for her, standing there with the rapt, pure gaze of the young Dante spellbound by
the young Beatrice. As I never insisted, in such situations, on the blankness of the
British domestic, I reflected that he had the making of a servant (and I needed one, but
couldn’t pay him to be only that), as well as of a model; in short I made up my mind to
adopt my bright adventurer if he would agree to officiate in the double capacity. He
jumped at my offer, and in the event my rashness (for I had known nothing about him),
was not brought home to me. He proved a sympathetic though a desultory ministrant,
and had in a wonderful degree the sentiment de la pose. It was uncultivated, instinctive;
a part of the happy instinct which had guided him to my door and helped him to spell
out my name on the card nailed to it. He had had no other introduction to me than a
guess, from the shape of my high north window, seen outside, that my place was a
studio and that as a studio it would contain an artist. He had wandered to England in
search of fortune, like other itinerants, and had embarked, with a partner and a small
green handcart, on the sale of penny ices. The ices had melted away and the partner had
dissolved in their train. My young man wore tight yellow trousers with reddish stripes
and his name was Oronte. He was sallow but fair, and when I put him into some old
clothes of my own he looked like an Englishman. He was as good as Miss Churm, who
could look, when required, like an Italian.
CHAPTER IV
I thought Mrs. Monarch’s face slightly convulsed when, on her coming back with her
husband, she found Oronte installed. It was strange to have to recognise in a scrap of a
lazzarone a competitor to her magnificent Major. It was she who scented danger first,
for the Major was anecdotically unconscious. But Oronte gave us tea, with a hundred
eager confusions (he had never seen such a queer process), and I think she thought
better of me for having at last an “establishment.” They saw a couple of drawings that I
had made of the establishment, and Mrs. Monarch hinted that it never would have struck
her that he had sat for them. “Now the drawings you make from US, they look exactly
like us,” she reminded me, smiling in triumph; and I recognised that this was indeed just
their defect. When I drew the Monarchs I couldn’t, somehow, get away from them--get
into the character I wanted to represent; and I had not the least desire my model should
be discoverable in my picture. Miss Churm never was, and Mrs. Monarch thought I hid
her, very properly, because she was vulgar; whereas if she was lost it was only as the
dead who go to heaven are lost--in the gain of an angel the more.
By this time I had got a certain start with “Rutland Ramsay,” the first novel in
the great projected series; that is I had produced a dozen drawings, several with the help
of the Major and his wife, and I had sent them in for approval. My understanding with
the publishers, as I have already hinted, had been that I was to be left to do my work, in
this particular case, as I liked, with the whole book committed to me; but my connection
with the rest of the series was only contingent. There were moments when, frankly, it
WAS a comfort to have the real thing under one’s hand; for there were characters in
“Rutland Ramsay” that were very much like it. There were people presumably as
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straight as the Major and women of as good a fashion as Mrs. Monarch. There was a
great deal of country-house life--treated, it is true, in a fine, fanciful, ironical,
generalised way--and there was a considerable implication of knickerbockers and kilts.
There were certain things I had to settle at the outset; such things for instance as the
exact appearance of the hero, the particular bloom of the heroine. The author of course
gave me a lead, but there was a margin for interpretation. I took the Monarchs into my
confidence, I told them frankly what I was about, I mentioned my embarrassments and
alternatives. “Oh, take HIM!” Mrs. Monarch murmured sweetly, looking at her
husband; and “What could you want better than my wife?” the Major inquired, with the
comfortable candour that now prevailed between us.
I was not obliged to answer these remarks--I was only obliged to place my
sitters. I was not easy in mind, and I postponed, a little timidly perhaps, the solution of
the question. The book was a large canvas, the other figures were numerous, and I
worked off at first some of the episodes in which the hero and the heroine were not
concerned. When once I had set THEM up I should have to stick to them--I couldn’t
make my young man seven feet high in one place and five feet nine in another. I
inclined on the whole to the latter measurement, though the Major more than once
reminded me that HE looked about as young as anyone. It was indeed quite possible to
arrange him, for the figure, so that it would have been difficult to detect his age. After
the spontaneous Oronte had been with me a month, and after I had given him to
understand several different times that his native exuberance would presently constitute
an insurmountable barrier to our further intercourse, I waked to a sense of his heroic
capacity. He was only five feet seven, but the remaining inches were latent. I tried him
almost secretly at first, for I was really rather afraid of the judgment my other models
would pass on such a choice. If they regarded Miss Churm as little better than a snare,
what would they think of the representation by a person so little the real thing as an
Italian street-vendor of a protagonist formed by a public school?
If I went a little in fear of them it was not because they bullied me, because they
had got an oppressive foothold, but because in their really pathetic decorum and
mysteriously permanent newness they counted on me so intensely. I was therefore very
glad when Jack Hawley came home: he was always of such good counsel. He painted
badly himself, but there was no one like him for putting his finger on the place. He had
been absent from England for a year; he had been somewhere--I don’t remember
where--to get a fresh eye. I was in a good deal of dread of any such organ, but we were
old friends; he had been away for months and a sense of emptiness was creeping into
my life. I hadn’t dodged a missile for a year.
He came back with a fresh eye, but with the same old black velvet blouse, and
the first evening he spent in my studio we smoked cigarettes till the small hours. He had
done no work himself, he had only got the eye; so the field was clear for the production
of my little things. He wanted to see what I had done for the Cheapside, but he was
disappointed in the exhibition. That at least seemed the meaning of two or three
comprehensive groans which, as he lounged on my big divan, on a folded leg, looking
at my latest drawings, issued from his lips with the smoke of the cigarette.
“What’s the matter with you?” I asked.
“What’s the matter with YOU?”
“Nothing save that I’m mystified.”
“You are indeed. You’re quite off the hinge. What’s the meaning of this new
fad?” And he tossed me, with visible irreverence, a drawing in which I happened to
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have depicted both my majestic models. I asked if he didn’t think it good, and he replied
that it struck him as execrable, given the sort of thing I had always represented myself
to him as wishing to arrive at; but I let that pass, I was so anxious to see exactly what he
meant. The two figures in the picture looked colossal, but I supposed this was NOT
what he meant, inasmuch as, for aught he knew to the contrary, I might have been trying
for that. I maintained that I was working exactly in the same way as when he last had
done me the honour to commend me. “Well, there’s a big hole somewhere,” he
answered; “wait a bit and I’ll discover it.” I depended upon him to do so: where else
was the fresh eye? But he produced at last nothing more luminous than “I don’t know--I
don’t like your types.” This was lame, for a critic who had never consented to discuss
with me anything but the question of execution, the direction of strokes and the mystery
of values.
“In the drawings you’ve been looking at I think my types are very handsome.”
“Oh, they won’t do!”
“I’ve had a couple of new models.”
“I see you have. THEY won’t do.”
“Are you very sure of that?”
“Absolutely--they’re stupid.”
“You mean _I_ am--for I ought to get round that.”
“You CAN’T--with such people. Who are they?”
I told him, as far as was necessary, and he declared, heartlessly: “Ce sont des
gens qu’il faut mettre a la porte.”
“You’ve never seen them; they’re awfully good,” I compassionately objected.
“Not seen them? Why, all this recent work of yours drops to pieces with them.
It’s all I want to see of them.”
“No one else has said anything against it--the Cheapside people are pleased.”
“Everyone else is an ass, and the Cheapside people the biggest asses of all.
Come, don’t pretend, at this time of day, to have pretty illusions about the public,
especially about publishers and editors. It’s not for SUCH animals you work--it’s for
those who know, coloro che sanno; so keep straight for ME if you can’t keep straight for
yourself. There’s a certain sort of thing you tried for from the first--and a very good
thing it is. But this twaddle isn’t IN it.” When I talked with Hawley later about “Rutland
Ramsay” and its possible successors he declared that I must get back into my boat again
or I would go to the bottom. His voice in short was the voice of warning.
I noted the warning, but I didn’t turn my friends out of doors. They bored me a
good deal; but the very fact that they bored me admonished me not to sacrifice them--if
there was anything to be done with them- -simply to irritation. As I look back at this
phase they seem to me to have pervaded my life not a little. I have a vision of them as
most of the time in my studio, seated, against the wall, on an old velvet bench to be out
of the way, and looking like a pair of patient courtiers in a royal ante-chamber. I am
convinced that during the coldest weeks of the winter they held their ground because it
saved them fire. Their newness was losing its gloss, and it was impossible not to feel
that they were objects of charity. Whenever Miss Churm arrived they went away, and
after I was fairly launched in “Rutland Ramsay” Miss Churm arrived pretty often. They
managed to express to me tacitly that they supposed I wanted her for the low life of the
book, and I let them suppose it, since they had attempted to study the work--it was lying
about the studio--without discovering that it dealt only with the highest circles. They
had dipped into the most brilliant of our novelists without deciphering many passages. I
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still took an hour from them, now and again, in spite of Jack Hawley’s warning: it
would be time enough to dismiss them, if dismissal should be necessary, when the
rigour of the season was over. Hawley had made their acquaintance--he had met them at
my fireside--and thought them a ridiculous pair. Learning that he was a painter they
tried to approach him, to show him too that they were the real thing; but he looked at
them, across the big room, as if they were miles away: they were a compendium of
everything that he most objected to in the social system of his country. Such people as
that, all convention and patent-leather, with ejaculations that stopped conversation, had
no business in a studio. A studio was a place to learn to see, and how could you see
through a pair of feather beds?
The main inconvenience I suffered at their hands was that, at first, I was shy of
letting them discover how my artful little servant had begun to sit to me for “Rutland
Ramsay.” They knew that I had been odd enough (they were prepared by this time to
allow oddity to artists,) to pick a foreign vagabond out of the streets, when I might have
had a person with whiskers and credentials; but it was some time before they learned
how high I rated his accomplishments. They found him in an attitude more than once,
but they never doubted I was doing him as an organ-grinder. There were several things
they never guessed, and one of them was that for a striking scene in the novel, in which
a footman briefly figured, it occurred to me to make use of Major Monarch as the
menial. I kept putting this off, I didn’t like to ask him to don the livery--besides the
difficulty of finding a livery to fit him. At last, one day late in the winter, when I was at
work on the despised Oronte (he caught one’s idea in an instant), and was in the glow of
feeling that I was going very straight, they came in, the Major and his wife, with their
society laugh about nothing (there was less and less to laugh at), like country-callers-they always reminded me of that--who have walked across the park after church and are
presently persuaded to stay to luncheon. Luncheon was over, but they could stay to tea-I knew they wanted it. The fit was on me, however, and I couldn’t let my ardour cool
and my work wait, with the fading daylight, while my model prepared it. So I asked
Mrs. Monarch if she would mind laying it out--a request which, for an instant, brought
all the blood to her face. Her eyes were on her husband’s for a second, and some mute
telegraphy passed between them. Their folly was over the next instant; his cheerful
shrewdness put an end to it. So far from pitying their wounded pride, I must add, I was
moved to give it as complete a lesson as I could. They bustled about together and got
out the cups and saucers and made the kettle boil. I know they felt as if they were
waiting on my servant, and when the tea was prepared I said: “He’ll have a cup, please-he’s tired.” Mrs. Monarch brought him one where he stood, and he took it from her as if
he had been a gentleman at a party, squeezing a crush-hat with an elbow.
Then it came over me that she had made a great effort for me--made it with a
kind of nobleness--and that I owed her a compensation. Each time I saw her after this I
wondered what the compensation could be. I couldn’t go on doing the wrong thing to
oblige them. Oh, it WAS the wrong thing, the stamp of the work for which they sat-Hawley was not the only person to say it now. I sent in a large number of the drawings I
had made for “Rutland Ramsay,” and I received a warning that was more to the point
than Hawley’s. The artistic adviser of the house for which I was working was of opinion
that many of my illustrations were not what had been looked for. Most of these
illustrations were the subjects in which the Monarchs had figured. Without going into
the question of what HAD been looked for, I saw at this rate I shouldn’t get the other
books to do. I hurled myself in despair upon Miss Churm, I put her through all her
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paces. I not only adopted Oronte publicly as my hero, but one morning when the Major
looked in to see if I didn’t require him to finish a figure for the Cheapside, for which he
had begun to sit the week before, I told him that I had changed my mind--I would do the
drawing from my man. At this my visitor turned pale and stood looking at me. “Is HE
your idea of an English gentleman?” he asked.
I was disappointed, I was nervous, I wanted to get on with my work; so I replied
with irritation: “Oh, my dear Major--I can’t be ruined for YOU!”
He stood another moment; then, without a word, he quitted the studio. I drew a
long breath when he was gone, for I said to myself that I shouldn’t see him again. I had
not told him definitely that I was in danger of having my work rejected, but I was vexed
at his not having felt the catastrophe in the air, read with me the moral of our fruitless
collaboration, the lesson that, in the deceptive atmosphere of art, even the highest
respectability may fail of being plastic.
I didn’t owe my friends money, but I did see them again. They re- appeared
together, three days later, and under the circumstances there was something tragic in the
fact. It was a proof to me that they could find nothing else in life to do. They had
threshed the matter out in a dismal conference--they had digested the bad news that they
were not in for the series. If they were not useful to me even for the Cheapside their
function seemed difficult to determine, and I could only judge at first that they had
come, forgivingly, decorously, to take a last leave. This made me rejoice in secret that I
had little leisure for a scene; for I had placed both my other models in position together
and I was pegging away at a drawing from which I hoped to derive glory. It had been
suggested by the passage in which Rutland Ramsay, drawing up a chair to Artemisia’s
piano- stool, says extraordinary things to her while she ostensibly fingers out a difficult
piece of music. I had done Miss Churm at the piano before--it was an attitude in which
she knew how to take on an absolutely poetic grace. I wished the two figures to
“compose” together, intensely, and my little Italian had entered perfectly into my
conception. The pair were vividly before me, the piano had been pulled out; it was a
charming picture of blended youth and murmured love, which I had only to catch and
keep. My visitors stood and looked at it, and I was friendly to them over my shoulder.
They made no response, but I was used to silent company and went on with my
work, only a little disconcerted (even though exhilarated by the sense that THIS was at
least the ideal thing), at not having got rid of them after all. Presently I heard Mrs.
Monarch’s sweet voice beside, or rather above me: “I wish her hair was a little better
done.” I looked up and she was staring with a strange fixedness at Miss Churm, whose
back was turned to her. “Do you mind my just touching it?” she went on--a question
which made me spring up for an instant, as with the instinctive fear that she might do
the young lady a harm. But she quieted me with a glance I shall never forget-- I confess
I should like to have been able to paint THAT--and went for a moment to my model.
She spoke to her softly, laying a hand upon her shoulder and bending over her; and as
the girl, understanding, gratefully assented, she disposed her rough curls, with a few
quick passes, in such a way as to make Miss Churm’s head twice as charming. It was
one of the most heroic personal services I have ever seen rendered. Then Mrs. Monarch
turned away with a low sigh and, looking about her as if for something to do, stooped to
the floor with a noble humility and picked up a dirty rag that had dropped out of my
paint-box.
The Major meanwhile had also been looking for something to do and, wandering
to the other end of the studio, saw before him my breakfast things, neglected,
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unremoved. “I say, can’t I be useful HERE?” he called out to me with an irrepressible
quaver. I assented with a laugh that I fear was awkward and for the next ten minutes,
while I worked, I heard the light clatter of china and the tinkle of spoons and glass. Mrs.
Monarch assisted her husband--they washed up my crockery, they put it away. They
wandered off into my little scullery, and I afterwards found that they had cleaned my
knives and that my slender stock of plate had an unprecedented surface. When it came
over me, the latent eloquence of what they were doing, I confess that my drawing was
blurred for a moment--the picture swam. They had accepted their failure, but they
couldn’t accept their fate. They had bowed their heads in bewilderment to the perverse
and cruel law in virtue of which the real thing could be so much less precious than the
unreal; but they didn’t want to starve. If my servants were my models, my models might
be my servants. They would reverse the parts--the others would sit for the ladies and
gentlemen, and THEY would do the work. They would still be in the studio--it was an
intense dumb appeal to me not to turn them out. “Take us on,” they wanted to
say--”we’ll do ANYTHING.”
When all this hung before me the afflatus vanished--my pencil dropped from my
hand. My sitting was spoiled and I got rid of my sitters, who were also evidently rather
mystified and awestruck. Then, alone with the Major and his wife, I had a most
uncomfortable moment, He put their prayer into a single sentence: “I say, you know-just let US do for you, can’t you?” I couldn’t--it was dreadful to see them emptying my
slops; but I pretended I could, to oblige them, for about a week. Then I gave them a sum
of money to go away; and I never saw them again. I obtained the remaining books, but
my friend Hawley repeats that Major and Mrs. Monarch did me a permanent harm, got
me into a second-rate trick. If it be true I am content to have paid the price--for the
memory.
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