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AMERICAN PROSE 
 
 HAWTHORNE: IRVING: LONGFELLOW 
 
 WHITTIER: HOLMES: LOWELL: 
 
 THOREAU: EMERSON 
 
 WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES 
 By HORACE E. SCUDDER. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 
 
 11 EAST SEVENTEENTH STREET, NEW TORK. 
 
 1883, 
 

 Copyright, 1851 and 1864, 
 Bj NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 Copyright, 1879, 
 By BOSE HAWTHORNE LATHROP. 
 
 Copyright, ISoT, 
 By HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Copyright, 1866, 
 By JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Copyright, 1872, 
 By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 Copyright, 1871, 
 By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 Copyright, 1854, 
 By HENRY D. TIIOREAU 
 
 Copyright, 1864, 
 By TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 
 
 Copyright, 1860 and 1870, 
 By RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 , , Copyright, 1880, 
 ' ;« Jy feLOUGHTON, OSGOOD & CO. 
 
 ii7/ rights reserved. 
 
 RXTERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE : 
 
 •TBBEOTTPED AND PRINTED BY 
 
 H, O. HOUGHTON- AND COMPANY. 
 
 ,3^ 
 
PEEFAOE. 
 
 TN making a selection of American Prose the 
 principle which controlled in American Poems 
 has been followed. The book does not profess to 
 be representative of the authors included, but com- 
 plete papers or stories have been taken of a length 
 permitting a fair display of some of the author's 
 characteristics. The object has been to set before 
 the reader some of the higher forms of prose art 
 as interpreted by American writers, and to culti- 
 vate a taste for the enduring elements of literature. 
 As before, an attempt has been made to lead the 
 student from the simpler to the more involved and 
 subtle forms, and throughout the book the litera- 
 ture of knowledge has been less regarded than the 
 literature of power. The best result will be reached 
 if those who use this volume are impelled to ask 
 for the fuller works of the authors whose acquaint- 
 Auce as writers of prose they may here make« 
 
 M141201 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 Li American Poems a brief biographical sketch 
 of each writer was given, and since a SiD^iilar plan 
 in this volume would have required some repeti- 
 tion, the editor has preferred to make the introduc- 
 tions more general in character, with a view to sug- 
 gesting points of critical inquiry in literature, for 
 such a volume as this offers a good opportunity for 
 directing young students toward a more thoughtful 
 attention in reading. ^ Prose, with its familiar forms 
 and its more intimate relations to other studies, is 
 often a better field for practice in criticism than 
 poetry, especially as the student has the advan- 
 tage of using it himself. The writing of poetry 
 frequently helps in a critical interpretation of 
 poetical forms, but to most such exercises have an 
 element of unreality, while prose, as the mother 
 tongue - of all, affords a material which is never 
 strange. It is worth while, therefore, to show the 
 young what fine qualities exist in that which all 
 men are using. 
 
 The more expanded character of prose makes 
 annotation less necessary than in poetry. Besides, 
 ihe interruption of an obscure reference is less 
 fatal to enjoyment than in poetry. The editor, 
 therefore, has given fewer notes than in American 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 Poems, and has purposely left work to be done by 
 the reader, the doing of which will add a zest to 
 his reading. This is most noticeable in the case 
 of Emerson's essay on Boohs. It would be an 
 admirable exercise for any young student to edit 
 this paper by making full references to the array 
 of points presented in it A similar exercise in 
 local historical study could be found in commenting 
 upon Hawthorne's sketch of Howe^s Masquerade. 
 
 Acknowledgment is made to Messrs. G. P. Put- 
 nam's Sons for their courtesy in permitting the use 
 of the selections from Irying's Sketch Booh. 
 
COJ^TENTS, 
 
 KTATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. faob 
 
 introduction 1 
 
 The Sxow-Image 8 
 
 The Great Stone Face . . . .32 
 Drowne's Wooden Iaiage ... 62 
 
 Howe's Masquerade 82 
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 introduction . . . . . . 104 
 
 Rip Van Winkle 110 
 
 Little Britain 140 
 
 EIENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 introduction 165 
 
 The Valley of the Loire . . . 171 
 
 Journey into Spain 183 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 introduction 195 
 
 Yankee Gypsies 198 
 
 The Boy Captives 220 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 introduction 232 
 
 The Gambrel-Roofed House . . . 237 
 
nil CONTENTS. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. rAOi 
 
 introduction 264 
 
 My Garden Acquaintance . . . 268 
 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 introduction 296 
 
 Sounds 302 
 
 Brute Neighbors 323 
 
 The Highland Light .... 838 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 introduction 366 
 
 Behavior , . 373 
 
 Books . . .... 387 
 
NATHANIEL HAWrHORNE. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IT was Hawthorne's wont to keep note-books, in 
 which he recorded his observations and reflec- 
 tions ; sometimes he spoke in them of himself, his 
 plans, and his prospects. He began the practice 
 early, and continued it through life, and after his 
 death selections from these note-books were pub- 
 lished in six volumes, under the titles : Passages 
 from the American Note- Books of Nathaniel Haw- 
 thorne, Passages from the English Note-Books of 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Passages from the French 
 and Italian Note- Books of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 In these books, and in prefaces which appear in 
 the front of the volumes containing his collected 
 stories, one finds many frank expressions of the 
 interest which Hawthorne took in his work, and 
 the author appeals very ingenuously to the reader, 
 speaking with an almost confidential closeness of 
 his stories and sketches. Then the Note- Books 
 contain the unwrought material of the books which 
 the writer put out in his lifetime. One finds there 
 the suggestions of stories, and frequently pages of 
 1 
 
2 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 observation and reflection, which were afterward 
 transferred, almost as they stood, into the author's 
 works. It is a very interesting labor to trace Haw- 
 thorne's stories and sketches back to these records 
 in his note-books, and to compare the finished work 
 with the rough material. It seems, also, as if each 
 reader was admitted into the privacy of the author's 
 mind. That is the first impression, but a closer 
 study reveals two facts very clearly. One is stated 
 by Hawthorne himself in his preface to The Snow- 
 Image and other Twice- Told Tales : '* I have been 
 especially careful [in my Introductions] to make 
 no disclosures respecting myself which the most 
 indifferent observer might not have been acquainted 
 with, and which I was not perfectly willing that 
 
 my worst enemy should know I have taken 
 
 facts which relate to myself [when telling stories] 
 because they chance to be nearest at hand, and 
 likewise are my own property. And, as for ego- 
 tism, a person who has been burrowing, to his 
 utmost ability, into the depths of our common nat- 
 ure for the purposes of psychological romance — 
 and who pursues his researches in that dusky region, 
 as he needs must, as well by the tact of sympathy 
 as by the light of observation — will smile at in- 
 curring such an imputation in virtue of a little 
 preliminary talk about his external habits, his abode, 
 his casual associates, and other matters entirely 
 upon the surface. These things hide the man 
 instead of displaying him. You must make quite 
 another kind of inquest, and look through the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 whole range of his fictitious characters, good and 
 evil, in order to detect any of his essential traits." 
 
 There has rarely been a writer of fiction, then, 
 whose personality has been so absolutely separate 
 from that of each character created by him, and at 
 the same time has so intimately penetrated the 
 whole body of his writing. Of no one of his char- 
 acters, male or female, is one ever tempted to say, 
 This is Hawthorne, except in the case of Miles Gov- 
 erdale in The Blithedale Romance, where the circum- 
 stances of the story tempt one into an identification ; 
 yet all of Hawthorne's work is stamped emphatically 
 with his mark. Hawthorne wrote it, is very simple 
 and easy to say of all but the merest trifle in his 
 collected works ; but the world has yet to learn who 
 Hawthorne was, and even if he had not forbidden 
 a biography of himself, it is scarcely likely that 
 any life could have disclosed more than he has 
 chosen himself to reveal. 
 
 The advantage of this is that it leaves the stu- 
 dent free to concentrate his attention upon the 
 writings rather than on the man. Hawthorne, in 
 the passage quoted above, speaks of himself as one 
 " who has been burrowing, to his utmost ability, 
 into the depths of our common nature for the pur- 
 poses of psychological romance," and this states, as 
 closely as so short a sentence can, the controlling 
 purpose and end of the author. The vitality of 
 Hawthorne's characters is derived but little from 
 any external description ; it resides in the truthful- 
 ness with which they respond to some permanent 
 
* NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 and controlling operation of the human soul. Look- 
 ing into his own heart, and always, when studying 
 others, in search of fundamental rather than occa- 
 sional motives, he proceeded to develop these mo- 
 tives in conduct and life. Hence he had a leaning 
 toward the allegory, where human figures are 
 merely masks for spiritual activities, and sometimes 
 he employed the simple allegory, as in TTie Celes- 
 tied Railroad. More often in his short stories he 
 has a spiritual truth to illustrate, and uses the sim- 
 plest, most direct means, taking no pains to conceal 
 his purpose, yet touching his characters quietly or 
 playfully with human sensibilities, and investing 
 them with just so much real life as answers the 
 purpose of the story. This is exquisitely done in 
 The Snow-Image. The consequence of this " bur- 
 rowing into the depths of our common nature " has 
 been to bring much of the darker and concealed 
 life into the movement of his stories. The fact of 
 evil is the terrible fact of life, and its workings in 
 the human soul had more interest for Hawthorne 
 than the obvious physical manifestations. Since 
 his observations are less of the men and women 
 whom everybody sees and recognizes than of the 
 souls which are hidden from most eyes, it is not 
 strange that his stories should often lay bare se- 
 crets of sin, and that a somewhat dusky light should 
 seem to be the atmosphere of much of his work. 
 Now and then, especially when dealing with child- 
 hood, a warm, sunny glow spreads over the pages 
 of his books ; but the reader must be prepared for 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 the most part to read stories which lie in the 
 shadow of life. 
 
 There was one class of subjects which had a 
 peculiar interest for Hawthorne, and in a measure 
 affected his work. He had a strong taste for New 
 England history, and he found in the scenes and 
 characters of that history favorable material for the 
 representation of spiritual conflict. He was him- 
 self the most New English of New Englanders, 
 and held an extraordinary sympathy with the very 
 soil of his section of the country. By this sympa- 
 thy, rather than by any painful research, he was 
 singularly acquainted with the historic life of New 
 England. His stories, based directly on historic 
 facts, are true to the spirit of the times in some- 
 thing more than an archaeological way. One is as- 
 tonished at the ease with which he seized upon 
 characteristic features, and reproduced them in a 
 word or phrase. Merely careful and diligent re- 
 search would never be adequate to give the life-like- 
 ness of the images in Howe's Masquerade. 
 
 There is, then, a second fact discovered by a 
 study of Hawthorne, that while one finds in the 
 Note-Books^ for example, the material out of which 
 stories and sketches seem to have been constructed, 
 aiul while the facts of New England history have 
 been used without exaggeration or distortion, the 
 I'esult in stories and romances is something far be- 
 yond a mere report of what has been seen and 
 ! fad . The charm of a vivifying imagination is the 
 riu'.vnini; charm of Hawthorne's stories, and ita 
 
6 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 
 
 medium is a graceful and often exquisitely apt dic- 
 tion. Hawthorne's sense of touch as a writer is 
 very fine. He knows when to be light, and when 
 to press heavily ; a very conspicuous quality is what 
 one is likely to term quaintness, — a gentle pleas- 
 antry which seems to spring from the author's atti- 
 tude toward his own work, as if he looked upon 
 that, too, as a part of the spiritual universe which 
 he was surveying. 
 
 Hawthorne spent much of his life silently, and 
 there are touching passages in his note-books re- 
 garding his sense of loneliness and his wish for rec- 
 ognition from the world. His early writings were 
 short stories, sketches, and biographies, scattered in 
 magazines and brought together into Twice- Told 
 lales, in two volumes, published, the first in 1837, 
 the second in 1842 ; Mosses from an Old Mafise, in 
 1846; TTie Snow-Image and other Twice- Told Tales, 
 in 1851. They had a limited circle of readers. 
 Some recognized his genius, but it was not until the 
 publication of TTie Scarlet Letter, in 1850, that Haw- 
 thorne's name was fairly before the world as a great 
 and original writer of romance. The House of the 
 Seven Gables followed in 1851. The Blithedale 
 Romance in 1852. He spent the years 1853-1860 
 in Europe, and the immediate result of his life there 
 is in Our Old Home : A Series of English Sketches, 
 published in 1863, and The Marble Faun, or the 
 Romance of Monte Beni, in 1864. For young 
 people he wrote Grandfathers Chair, a collection 
 9f stories from New England history, The Won' 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 der-Book and Tanglewood Tales, containing stories 
 out of classic mythology. There are a few other 
 scattered writings which have been collected into 
 volumes and published in the complete series of his 
 works. 
 
 Hawthorne was born July 4, 1804, and died 
 May 19, 1864. 
 
 The student of Hawthorne will find in G. P. 
 Lathrop's A Study of Hawthorne, and Henry James 
 Jr.'s Hawthorne, in the series English Men of Let- 
 ters, material which will assist him. Dr. Holmes 
 published, shortly after Hawthorne's death, a paper 
 of reminiscences which is included in Soundings 
 from the Atlantic ; and Longfellow welcomed Twice- 
 Told Tales with a glowing article in the North 
 American Review, xlviii. 59, which is reproduced in 
 his prose works. The reader will find it an agree 
 able task to discover what the poets, LongfelloWj 
 Lowell, Stedman, and others have said of this man 
 :>f genius. 
 
THE SNOW-IMAGE: 
 
 A CHILDISH MIRACLE. 
 
 One afternoon of a cold winter's day, when the 
 lun shone forth with chilly brightness, after a long 
 Btorm, two children asked leave of their mother to 
 run out and play in the new-fallen snow. The 
 elder child was a little girl, whom, because she was 
 of a tender and modest disposition, and was thought 
 to be very beautiful, her parents, and other people 
 who were familiar with her, used to call Violet. 
 But her brother was known by the style and title 
 of Peony, on account of the ruddiness of his broad 
 and round little phiz, which made everybody think 
 of sunshine and great scarlet flowers. The father 
 of these two children, a certain Mr. Lindsey, it is 
 important to say, was an excellent but exceedingly 
 matter-of-fact sort of man, a dealer in hardware, 
 and was sturdily accustomed to take what is called 
 the common-sense view of all matters that came 
 under his consideration. With a heart about as 
 tender as other people's, he had a head as hard and 
 impenetrable, and therefore, perhaps, as empty, as 
 one of the iron pots which it was a part of his busi- 
 
THE SNOW-IMAGE, 9 
 
 ness to sell. The mother's character, on the other 
 hand, had a strain of poetry in it, a trait of un- 
 worldly beauty, — a delicate and dewy flower, as 
 it were, that had survived out of her imaginative 
 youth, and still kept itself alive amid the dusty re- 
 alities of matrimony and motherhood. 
 
 So Violet and Peony, as I began with saying, 
 besought their mother to let them run and play in 
 the new snow ; for, though it had looked so dreary 
 and dismal, drifting downward out of the gray sky, 
 it had a very cheerful aspect now that the sun was 
 shining on it. The children dwelt in a city, and 
 had no wider play-place than a little garden before 
 the house, divided by a white fence from the street, 
 and with a pear-tree and two or three plum-trees 
 overshadowing it, and some rose-bushes just in front 
 of the parlor windows. The trees and shrubs, how- 
 ever, were now leafless, and their twigs were envel- 
 oped in the light snow, which thus made a kind of 
 wintry foliage, with here and there a pendent icicle 
 for the fruit. 
 
 " Yes, Violet, — yes, my little Peony," said their 
 kind mother ; *' you may go out and play in the 
 new snow." 
 
 Accordingly, the good lady bundled up her dar- 
 lings in woollen jackets and wadded sacks, and put 
 comforters round their necks, and a pair of striped 
 gaiters on each little pair of legs, and worsted mit- 
 tens on their hands, and gave them a kiss apiece, 
 by way of a spell to keep away Jack Frost. Forth 
 sallied the two children, with a hop-skip-and-jump 
 
10 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 
 
 that carried them at once into the very heart of a 
 huge snow-drift, whence Violet emerged like a snow- 
 bunting, while little Peony floundered out with his 
 round face in full bloom. Then what a merry time 
 had they ! To look at them, frolicking in the win- 
 try garden, you would have thought that the dark 
 and pitiless storm had been sent for no other pur- 
 pose but to provide a new plaything for Violet and 
 Peony ; and that they themselves had been created, 
 as the snow-birds were, to take delight only in the 
 tempest, and in the white mantle which it spread 
 over the earth. 
 
 At last, when they had frosted one another all 
 over with handfuls of snow, Violet, after laughing 
 heartily at little Peony's figure, was struck with a 
 iiew idea. 
 
 " You look exactly like a snow-image. Peony," 
 said she, " if your cheeks were not so red. And 
 that puts me in mind ! Let us make an image out 
 of snow, — an image of a little girl, — and it shall 
 be our sister, and shall run about and play with us 
 all winter long. Won't it be nice ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " cried Peony, as plainly as he could 
 speak, for he was but a little boy. " That will be 
 nice ! And mamma shall see it ! " 
 
 " Yes," answered Violet ; " mamma shall see the 
 new little girl. But she must not make her come 
 into the warm parlor ; for, you know, our little 
 enow-sister will not love the warmth." 
 
 And forthwith the children began this great busi- 
 oess of making a snow-image that should run about ; 
 
THE SNOW-IMAGE. 11 
 
 fvhile their mother, who was sitting at the window 
 and overheard some of their talk, could not help 
 smiling at the gravity with which they set about it. 
 They really seemed to imagine that there would be 
 no difficulty whatever in creating a live little girl 
 out of the snow. And to say the truth, if miracles 
 are ever to be wrought, it will be by putting our 
 hands to the work in precisely such a simple and 
 undoubting frame of mind as that in which Violet 
 and Peony now undertook to perform one, without 
 so much as knowing that it was a miracle. So 
 thought the mother ; and thought, likewise, that 
 the new snow, just fallen from heaven, would be 
 excellent material to make new beings of, if it were 
 not so very cold. She gazed at the children a mo- 
 ^jaent longer, delighting to watch their little figures, 
 — the girl, tall for her age, graceful and agile, and 
 so delicately colored that she looked like a cheerful 
 thought, more than a physical reality ; while Peony 
 expanded in breadth rather than height, and rolled 
 along on his short and sturdy legs as substantial as 
 an elephant, though not quite so big. Then the 
 mother resumed her work; what it was I forget, 
 but she was either trimming a silken bonnet for 
 Violet, or darning a pair of stockings for little 
 Peony's short legs. Again, however, and again, 
 and yet other agains, she could not help turning 
 her head to the window to see how the children got 
 on with their snow-image. 
 
 Indeed, it was an exceedingly pleasant sight, 
 those bright little souls at their tasks ! Moreover, 
 
12 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 
 
 it was really wonderful to observe how knowingly 
 and skilfully they managed the matter. Violet as- 
 sumed the chief direction, and told Peony what to 
 do, while, with her own delicate fingers, she shaped 
 out all the nicer parts of the snow-figure. It 
 seemed, in fact, not so much to be made by the 
 children, as to grow up under their hands, while 
 they were playing and prattling about it. Their 
 mother was quite surprised at this ; and the longer 
 she looked the more and more surprised she grew. 
 
 " What remarkable children mine are ! " thought 
 she, smiling with a mother's pride ; and, smiling at 
 herself, too, for being so proud of them. " What 
 other children could have made anything so like a 
 little girl's figure out of snow at the first trial ? 
 Well ; — but now I must finish Peony's new frock, 
 for his grandfather is coming to-morrow, and I want 
 the little fellow to look handsome." 
 
 So she took up the firock, and was soon as busily 
 at work again with her needle as the two children 
 with their snow-image. But still, as the needle 
 travelled hither and thither through the seams of 
 the dress, the mother made her toil light and happy 
 by listening to the airy voices of Violet and Peony. 
 They kept talking to one another all the time, their 
 tongues being quite as active as their feet and hands. 
 Except at intervals, she could not distinctly hear 
 what was said, but had merely a sweet impression 
 that they were in a most loving mood, and were 
 enjoying themselves highly, and that the business 
 9f making the snow-image went prosperously oa 
 
THE SNOW-IMAGE. 13 
 
 Now and then, however, when Violet and Peony 
 happened to raise their voices, the words were as 
 audible as if they had been spoken in the very par- 
 lor where the mother sat. Oh, how delightfully 
 those words echoed in her heart, even though they 
 meant nothing so very wise or wonderful, after 
 all! 
 
 But you must know a mother listens with her 
 heart much more than with her ears ; and thus she 
 is often delighted with the trills of celestial music, 
 when other people can hear nothing of the kind. 
 
 " Peony, Peony ! " cried Violet to her brother, 
 who had gone to another part of the garden, " bring 
 me some of that fresh snow. Peony, from the very 
 farthest corner, where we have not been trampling. 
 I want it to shape our little snow-sister's bosom 
 with. You know that part must be quite pure, 
 just as it came out of the sky ! " 
 
 " Here it is, Violet ! " answered Peony, in his 
 bluff tone, — but a very sweet tone, too, — as he 
 came floundering through the half-trodden drifts. 
 " Here is the snow for her little bosom. O Violet, 
 how beau-ti-ful she begins to look ! " 
 
 " Yes,'' said Violet, thoughtfully and quietly ; 
 " our snow-sister does look very lovely. I did not 
 quite know. Peony, that we could make such a 
 Bweet little girl as this." 
 
 The mother, as she listened, thought how fit and 
 delightful an incident it would be, if fairies, or, 
 still better, if angel-children were to come from 
 paradise and play invisibly with her own darlings. 
 
14 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 and help them to make their snow-image^ giving it 
 the features of celestial babyhood ! Violet and Pe- 
 ony would not be aware of their immortal play- 
 mates, — only they would see that the image grew 
 very beautiful while they worked at it, and would 
 think that they themselves had done it all. 
 
 " My little girl and boy deserve such playmates, 
 if mortal children ever did ! " said the mother to 
 herself; and then she smiled again at her own 
 motherly pride. 
 
 Nevertheless, the idea seized upon her imagina- 
 tion ; and, ever and anon, she took a glimpse out 
 of the window, half dreaming that she might see 
 the golden-haired children of paradise sporting with 
 her own golden-haired Violet and bright-cheeked 
 Peony. 
 
 Now, for a few moments, there was a liusy and 
 earnest, but indistinct, hum of the two children's 
 voices, as Violet and Peony wrought together with 
 one happy consent. Violet still seemed to be the 
 guiding spirit, while Peony acted rather as a la- 
 borer, and brought her the snow from far and near. 
 And yet the little urchin evidently had a proper 
 understanding of the matter, too ! 
 
 " Peony, Peony ! " cried Violet ; for her brother 
 was again at the other side of the garden. " Bring 
 me those light wreaths of snow that have rested on 
 the lower branches of the pear-tree. You can 
 vUamber on the snow-drift. Peony, and reach them 
 easily. I must have them to make some ringlets 
 for our snow-sister's head ! " 
 
THE SNOW-IMAGE, 15 
 
 "Here they are, Violet!" answered the little 
 boy. " Take care you do not break them. "Well 
 done ! Well done I How pretty ! " 
 
 " Does she not look sweetly ? " said Violet, with 
 a very satisfied tone ; " and now we must have some 
 little shining bits of ice, to make the brightness of 
 her eyes. She is not finished yet. Mamma will 
 see how very beautiful she is ; but papa will say, 
 * Tush ! nonsense ! — come in out of the cold ! ' '* 
 
 " Let us call mamma to look out," said Peony ; 
 and then he shouted lustily, '* Mamma ! mamma ! ! 
 mamma ! ! ! Look out, and see what a nice little 
 girl we are making ! " 
 
 The mother put down her work, for an instant, 
 and looked out of the window. But it so happened 
 that the sun — for this was one of the shortest days 
 of the whole year — had sunken so nearly to the 
 edge of the world that his setting shine came ob- 
 liquely into the lady's eyes. So she was dazzled, 
 you must understand, and could not very distinctly 
 observe what was in the garden. Still, however, 
 through all that bright, blinding dazzle of the sun 
 and the new snow she beheld a small white figure 
 in the garden that seemed to have a wonderful deal 
 of human likeness about it. And she saw Violet and 
 Peony, — indeed, she looked more at them than at 
 the image, — she saw the two children still at work ; 
 Peony bringing fresh snow, and Violet applying it to 
 the figure as scientifically as a sculptor adds clay to 
 his model. Indistinctly as she discerned the snow- 
 child, the mother thought to herself that never before 
 
16 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 was there a snow-figure so cunningly made, nor ever 
 such a dear little girl and boy to make it. 
 
 " They do everything better than other children," 
 said she, very complacently. ** No wonder they 
 make better snow-images ! " 
 
 She sat down again to the work, and made as 
 much haste with it as possible; because twilight 
 would soon come, and Peony's frock was not yet 
 finished, and grandfather was expected, by railroad, 
 pretty early in the morning. Faster and faster, 
 therefore, went her flying fingers. The children, 
 likewise, kept busily at work in the garden, and 
 still the mother listened, whenever she could catch 
 a word. She was amused to observe how their 
 little imaginations had got mixed up with what 
 they were doing, and were carried away by it. 
 They seemed positively to think that the snow-child 
 would run about and play with them. 
 
 " What a nice playmate she will be for us, all 
 winter long ! " said Violet. " I hope papa will not 
 be afraid of her giving us a cold ! Shan't you 
 love her dearly. Peony ? " 
 
 ^* Oh, yes ! " cried Peony. " And I will hug her, 
 und she shall sit down close by me, and drink some 
 of my warm milk ! " 
 
 *' Oh, no, Peony ! " answered Violet, with grave 
 wisdom. " That will not do at all. Warm milk 
 will not be wholesome for our little snow-sister. 
 Little snow-people, like her, eat nothing but icicles. 
 No, no Peony ; we must not give her anything 
 v^arm to drink ! " 
 
THE SNOW-IMAGE. 17 
 
 There was a minute or two of silence ; for Peony, 
 whose short legs were never weary, had gone on a 
 pilgrimage again to the other side of the garden. All 
 of a sudden Violet cried out, loudly and joyfully, — 
 
 " Look here. Peony ! Come quickly ! A light 
 has been shining on her cheek out of that rose- 
 colored cloud ! and the color does not go away ! 
 Is not that beautiful ! " 
 
 " Yes ; it is beau-ti-ful," answered Peony, pro- 
 nouncing the three syllables with deliberate accu- 
 racy. " Violet, only look at her hair ! It is all 
 like gold ! " 
 
 *' Oh, certainly," said Violet, with tranquillity, as 
 if it were very much a mattei* of course. " That 
 color, you know, comes from the golden clouds 
 that we see up there in the sky. She is almost 
 finished now. But her lips must be made very red, 
 — redder than her cheeks. Perhaps, Peony, it will 
 make them red if we both kiss them ! " 
 
 Accordingly, the mother heard two smart little 
 smacks, as if both her children were kissing the 
 snow-image on its frozen mouth. But, as this did 
 not seem to make the lips quite red enough, Violet 
 next proposed that the snow-child should be invited 
 to kiss Peony's scarlet cheek. 
 
 " Come, Mttle snow-sister, kiss me ! " cried Pe- 
 ony. 
 
 " There ! she has kissed you," added Violet, 
 ^ and now her lips are very red. And she blushed 
 * little, too ! " 
 
 ** Oh, what a cold kiss ! " cried Peony. 
 2 
 
18 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 
 
 Just then came a breeze of the pure west-wind, 
 sweeping through the garden and rattling the par- 
 lor windows. It sounded so wintry cold that the 
 mother was about to tap on the window-pane with 
 her thimbled finger, to summon the two children 
 in, when they both cried out to her with one voice. 
 The tone was not a tone of surprise, although thej 
 were evidently a good deal excited ; it appeared 
 rather as if they were very much rejoiced at some 
 event that had now happened, but which they had 
 been looking for, and had reckoned upon all along. 
 
 " Mamma ! mamma ! We have finished our little 
 snow-sister, and she is running about the garden 
 with us ! " 
 
 " What imaginative little beings my children 
 are ! " thought the mother, putting the last few 
 stitches into Peony's frock. " And it is strange, 
 too, that they make me almost as much a child as 
 they themselves are ! I can hardly help believing, 
 now, that the snow-image, has really come to life ! " 
 
 " Dear mamma ! " cried Violet, " pray look out 
 and see what a sweet playmate we have ! " 
 
 The mother, being thus entreated, could no longer 
 ielay to look forth from the window. The sun was 
 now gone out of the sky, leaving, however, a rich 
 inheritance of his brightness among those purple 
 and golden clouds which make the sunsets of win- 
 ter so magnificent. But there was not the slight- 
 est gleam or dazzle, either on the window or on 
 the snow ; so that the good lady could look all over 
 the garden, and see everything and everybody in 
 
THE SNOW-IMAGE. 19 
 
 t And what do you think she saw there ? Vio- 
 let and Peony, of course, her own two darling chil- 
 dren. Ah, but whom or what did she see besides ? 
 Why, if you will believe me, there was a small fig- 
 ure of a girl, dressed all in white, with rose-tinged 
 cheeks and ringlets of golden hue, playing about the 
 garden with the two children I A stranger though 
 she was, the child seemed to be on as familiar terms 
 with Violet and Peony, and they with her, as if all 
 the three had been playmates during the whole of 
 their little lives. The mother thought to herself 
 that it must certainly be the daughter of one of the 
 neighbors, and that, seeing Violet and Peony in the 
 garden, the child had run across the street to play 
 with them. So this kind lady went to the door, 
 mtending to invite the little runaway into her com- 
 fortable parlor; for, now that the sunshine was 
 withdrawn, the atmosphere out of doors was al- 
 ready growing very cold. 
 
 But, after opening the house-door, she stood an 
 instant on the threshold, hesitating whether she 
 ought to ask the child to come in, or whether she 
 should even speak to her. Indeed, she almost 
 doubted whether it were a real child, after all, or 
 only a light wreath of the new-fallen snow, blown 
 hither and thither about the garden by the intensely 
 iold west-wind. There was certainly something 
 vQTj singular in the aspect of the little stranger. 
 Among all the children of the neighborhood, the 
 lady could remember no such face, with its pure 
 white, and delicate rose-color, and the golden ring- 
 
20 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 lets tossing about the forehead and cheeks. And as 
 for her dress, which was entirely of white, and flut- 
 tering in the breeze, it was such as no reasonable 
 woman would put upon a little girl, when sending 
 her out to play, in the depth of winter. It made 
 this kind and careful mother shiver only to look at 
 those small feet, with nothing in the world on them 
 except a very thin pair of white slippers. Never- 
 theless, airily as she was clad, the child seemed to 
 feel not the slightest inconvenience from the cold, 
 but danced so lightly over the snow that the tips of 
 her toes left hardly a print in its surface ; while 
 Violet could but just keep pace with her, and Peo- 
 ny's short legs compelled him to lag behind. 
 
 Once, in the course of their play, the strange 
 child placed herself between Violet and Peony, and 
 taking a hand of each, skipped merrily forward, and 
 they along with her. Almost immediately, how- 
 ever, Peony pulled away his little fist, and began 
 to rub it as if the fingers were tingling with cold ; 
 while Violet also released herself, though with less 
 abruptness, gravely remarking that it was better 
 not to take hold of hands. The white-robed dam- 
 jel said not a word, but danced about, just as mer- 
 rily as before. If Violet and Peony did not choose 
 10 play with her she could make just as good a 
 olaymate of the brisk and cold west-wind, which 
 Kept blowing her all about the garden, and took 
 such liberties with her that they seemed to have 
 been friends for a long time. All this while the 
 mother stood on the threshold, wondering how a 
 
THE SNOW-IMAGE. 21 
 
 little girl could look so much like a flying snow- 
 drift, or how a snow-drift could look so very like a 
 little girl. 
 
 She called Violet, and whispered to her. 
 
 " Violet, my darling, what is this child's name ? " 
 asked she. " Does she live near us ? " 
 
 " Why, dearest mamma," answered Violet, laugh- 
 ing to think that her mother did not comprehend so 
 very plain an affiiir, " this is our little snow-sister, 
 whom we have just been making ! " 
 
 " Yes, dear mamma," cried Peony, running to his 
 mother, and looking up simply into her face. " This 
 is our snow-image ! Is it not a nice 'ittle child ? " 
 
 At this instant a flock of snow-birds came flit- 
 ting through the air. As was very natural, they 
 avoided Violet and Peony. But — and this looked 
 strange — they flew at once to the white-robed 
 child, fluttered eagerly about her head, alighted on 
 her shoulders, and seemed to claim her as an old ac- 
 quaintance. She, on her part, was evidently as 
 glad to see these little birds, old Winter's grand- 
 children, as they were to see her, and welcomed 
 Ihem by holding out both her hands. Hereupon, 
 they each and all tried to alight on her two palms 
 and ten small fingers and thumbs, crowding one an- 
 other off, with an immense fluttering of their tiny 
 wings. One dear little bird nestled tenderly in her 
 bosom ; another put its bill to her lips. They were 
 as joyous, all the while, and seemed as much in 
 their element as you may ha\e seen them wheo 
 •porting with a snow-storm. 
 
22 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 
 
 Violet and Peony stood laughing at this pretty 
 sight ; for they enjoyed the merry time which their 
 new playmate was having with these small-winged 
 visitants almost as much as if they themselves took 
 part in it. 
 
 "Violet," said her mother, greatly perplexed, 
 " tell me the truth, without any jest. Who is this 
 little girl?" 
 
 " My darling mamma," answered Violet, looking 
 seriously into her mother's face, and apparently 
 surprised that she should need any further expla- 
 nation, " I have told you truly who she is. It is 
 our little snow-image, which Peony and I have 
 been making. Peony will tell you so, as well as 
 I." 
 
 " Yes, mamma," asseverated Peony, with much 
 gravity in his crimson little phiz ; " this is 'ittle 
 snow-child. Is not she a nice one ? But, mamma, 
 her hand, is oh, so very cold ! " 
 
 While mamma still hesitated what to think and 
 what to do, the street-gate was thrown open, and 
 the father of Violet and Peony appeared, wrapped 
 in a pilot-cloth sack, with a fur cap drawn down 
 »>ver his ears, and the thickest of gloves upon his 
 hands. Mr. Lindsey was a middle-aged man, with 
 a weary and yet a happy look in his wind-flushed 
 iind frost-pinched face, as if he had been busy all 
 the day long, and was glad to get back to his quiet 
 home. His eyes brightened at the sight of his wife 
 and children, although he could not help uttering 
 a word or two of surprise at finding the whole 
 
THE SNOW-IMAGE. 23 
 
 family in the open air, on so bleak a day, and after 
 sunset too. He soon perceived the little white 
 stranger, sporting to and fro in the garden, like a 
 dancing snow-wreath, and the flock of snow-birds 
 fluttering about her head. 
 
 " Pray, what little girl may that be ? " inquired 
 this very sensible man. '' Surely her mother must 
 be crazy, to let her go out in such bitter weather 
 as it has been to-day, with only that flimsy white 
 gown and those thin slippers ! " 
 
 " My dear husband," said his wife, " I know no 
 more about the little thing than you do. Some 
 neighbor's child, I suppose. Our Violet and Peony," 
 she added, laughing at herself for repeating so ab- 
 surd a story, " insist that she is nothing but a snow- 
 image, which they have been busy about in the 
 garden almost all the afternoon." 
 
 As she said this, the mother glanced her eyes 
 toward the spot where the children's snow-image 
 had been made. What was her surprise, on per- 
 ceiving that there was not the slightest trace of so 
 much labor ! — no image at all ! — no piled-up heap 
 of snow ! — nothing whatever save the prints of 
 \ittle footsteps around a vacant space ! 
 
 " This is very strange ! " said she. 
 
 " What is strange, dear mother ? " asked Violet. 
 * Dear father, do not you see how it is ? This is 
 our snow-image, which Peony and I have made, 
 because we wanted another playmate. Did not 
 we, Peony ? " 
 
 " Yes, papa," said crimson Peony. " This be our 
 
24 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 'ittle snow-sister. Is she not beau-ti-fiil ? But she 
 gave me such a cold kiss ! " 
 
 " Poh, nonsense, children ! ** cried their good, hon- 
 est father, who, as we have already intimated, had 
 an exceedingly common-sensible way of looking at 
 matters. " Do not tell me of making live figures 
 out of snow. Come, wife ; this little stranger must 
 not stay out in the bleak air a moment longer. 
 We will bring her into the parlor ; and you shall 
 give her a supper of warm bread and milk, and 
 make her as comfortable as you can. Meanwhile, 
 I will inquire among the neighbors ; or, if neces- 
 sary, send the city crier about the streets, to give 
 notice of a lost child.** 
 
 So saying, this honest and very kind-hearted 
 man was going toward the little white damsel, 
 with the best intentions in the world. But Violet 
 and Peony, each seizing their father by the hand, 
 earnestly besought him not to make her come in. 
 
 " Dear father,'* cried Violet, putting herself be- 
 fore him, " it is true what I have been telling you ! 
 This is our little snow-girl, and she cannot live any 
 longer than while she breathes the cold west-wind. 
 Do not make her come into the hot room ! '* 
 
 " Yes, father,'* shouted Peony, stamping his little 
 oot, so mightily was he in earnest, " this be noth- 
 ing but our 'ittle snow-child ! She will not love 
 the hot fire ! ** 
 
 " Nonsense, children, nonsense, nonsense ! '* cried 
 the father, half vexed, half laughing at what he 
 considered their foolish obstinacy. " Run into tho 
 
THE SNOW-IMAGE, 25 
 
 house, this moment! It is too late to play any 
 longer now. I must take care of this little girl 
 immediately, or she will catch her death-a-cold ! " 
 
 " Husband ! dear husband ! " said his wife, in a 
 low voice, — for she had been looking narrowly at 
 the snow-child, and was more perplexed than ever, 
 — "there is something very singular in all this. 
 You will think me foolish, — but — but — may it 
 not be that some invisible angel has been attracted 
 by the simplicity and good-faith with which our 
 children set about their undertaking? May he 
 not have spent an hour of his immortality in play- 
 ing with those dear little souls ? and so the result 
 is what we call a miracle. No, no ! Do not laugh 
 at me ; I see what a foolish thought it is ! " 
 
 "My dear wife," replied the husband, laughing 
 heartily, " you are as much a child as Violet and 
 Peony." 
 
 And in one sense so she was ; for all through life 
 she had kept her heart full of childlike simplicity 
 and faith, which was as pure and clear as crystal ; 
 and, looking at all matters through this transparent 
 TQedium, she sometimes saw truths so profound that 
 other people laughed at them as nonsense and ab- 
 surdity. 
 
 But now kind Mr. Lindsey had entered the gar- 
 den, breaking away from his two children, who stilJ 
 sent their shrill voices after him, beseeching him to 
 let the snow-child stay and enjoy herself in the cold 
 west-wind. As he approached the snow-birds took 
 to flight. The little white damsel, also, fled back- 
 
26 NATHANIEL HAWTHOBNh, 
 
 ward, shaking her head, as if to say, " Pray do not 
 touch me!" and roguishly, as it appeared, leading 
 him through the deepest of the snow. Once, the 
 good man stumbled, and floundered down upon his 
 face, so that, gathering himself up again, with the 
 snow sticking to his rough pilot-cloth sack, he 
 looked as white and wintry as a snow-image of the 
 largest size. Some of the neighbors, meanwhile, 
 seeing him from their windows, wondered what 
 could possess poor Mr. Lindsey to be running about 
 -his garden in pursuit of a snow-drift, which the 
 west-wind was driving hither and thither ! At 
 length, after a vast deal of trouble, he chased the 
 little stranger into a corner, where she could not 
 possibly escape him. His wife had been looking on, 
 and, it being nearly twilight, was wonder-struck to 
 observe how the snow-child gleamed and sparkled, 
 and how she seemed to shed a glow all round about 
 her ; and when driven into the corner, she positively 
 glistened like a star ! It was a frosty kind of 
 brightness, too, like that of an icicle in the moon- 
 light- The wife thought it strange that good Mr. 
 Lindsey should see nothing remarkable in the snow- 
 child's appearance. 
 
 " Come, you odd little thing ! " cried the honest 
 man, seizing her by the hand, " I have caught you 
 at last, and will make you comfortable in spite of 
 yourself. We will put a nice, warm pair of worsted 
 stockings on your frozen little feet, and you shall 
 have a good thick shawl to wrap yourself in. Your 
 poor white nose, I am afraid, is actually frost-bitten. 
 Uut we will make it all right. Come alonff in." 
 
THE SNOW-IMAGE. 27 
 
 And so, with a most benevolent smile on his 
 sagacious visage, all purple as it was with the cold, 
 this very well-meaning gentleman took the snow- 
 child by the hand and led her towards the house. 
 She followed him, droopingly and reluctant ; for 
 all the glow and sparkle was gone out of her figure ; 
 and whereas just before she had resembled a bright, 
 trosty, star-gemmed evening, with a crimson gleam 
 on the cold horizon, she now looked as dull and 
 languid as a thaw. As kind Mr. Lindsey led her 
 up the steps of the door, Violet and Peony looked 
 into his face, — their eyes full of tears, which froze 
 before they could run down their cheeks, — and 
 again entreated him not to bring their snow-image 
 into the house. 
 
 " Not bring her in ! " exclaimed the kind-hearted 
 man. " Why, you are crazy, my little Violet ! — 
 quite crazy, my small Peony ! She is so cold, 
 already, that her hand has almost frozen mine, in 
 spite of my thick gloves. Would you have her 
 freeze to death ? " 
 
 His wife, as he came up the steps, had been tak- 
 ing another long, earnest, almost awe-stricken gaze 
 at the little white stranger. She hardly knew 
 whether it was a dream or no ; but she could not 
 help fancying that she saw the delicate print of 
 Violet's fingers on the child's neck. It looked 
 as if, while Violet was shaping out the image, she 
 had given it a gentle pat with her hand, and had 
 \ieglected to smooth the impression quite away. 
 
 " After all, husband," said the mother, recurring 
 
28 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 to her idea that the angels would be as much de- 
 lighted to play with Violet and Peony as she her- 
 self was, — " after all, she does look strangely like 
 a snow-image ! I do believe she is made out of 
 snow ! " 
 
 A puff of the west-wind blew against the snow- 
 child, and again she sparkled like a star. 
 
 " Snow ! " repeated good Mr. Lindsey, drawing 
 the reluctant guest over his hospitable threshold. 
 " No wonder she looks like snow. She is half 
 frozen, poor little thing ! But a good fire will put 
 everything to rights." 
 
 Without further talk, and always with the same 
 best intentions, this highly benevolent and common- 
 sensible individual led the little white damsel — 
 drooping, drooping, drooping, more and more — 
 out of the frosty air, and into his comfortable 
 parlor. A Heidenberg stove, filled to the brim 
 with intensely burning anthracite, was sending a 
 brjght gleam through the isinglass of its iron door, 
 and causing the vase of water on its top to fume 
 and ^bubble with excitement. A warm, sultry 
 smell was diffused throughout the room. A ther- 
 mometer on the wall farthest from the stove stood 
 at eighty degrees. The parlor was hung with red 
 curtains, and covered with a red carpet, and looked 
 just as warm as it felt. The difference betwixt the 
 atmosphere here and the cold, wintry twilight out 
 of doors, was like stepping at once from Nova 
 Zembla to the hottest part of India, or from the 
 North Pole into an oven. Oh, this was a fine place 
 for the little white stranger ! 
 
THE SNOW-IMAGE. 29 
 
 The common-sensible man placed the snow-child 
 on the hearth-rug, right in front of the hissing and 
 fuming stove. 
 
 " Now she will be comfortable ! " cried Mr. 
 Lindsey, rubbing his hands and looking about him 
 with the pleasantest smile you ever saw. " Make 
 yourself at home, my child." 
 
 Sad, sad and drooping, looked the little white 
 maiden, as she stood on the hearth-rug, with the 
 hot blast of the stove striking through her like a 
 pestilence. Once, she threw a glance wistfully to- 
 ward the windows, and caught a glimpse, through 
 its red curtains, of the snow-covered roofs, and the 
 stars glimmering frostily, and all the delicious in- 
 tensity of the cold night. The bleak wind rattled 
 the window-panes, as if it were summoning her to 
 come forth. But there stood the snow-child, droop- 
 ing, before the hot stove ! 
 
 But the common-sensible man saw nothing amiss. 
 
 " Come, wife," said he, "let her have a pair of 
 thick stockings and a woollen shawl or blanket 
 directly ; and tell Dora to give her some warm 
 supper as soon as the milk boils. You, Violet and 
 Peony, amuse your little friend. She is out of 
 spirits, you see, at finding herself in a strange place. 
 For my part, I will go around among the neigh- 
 bors, and find out where she belongs." 
 
 The mother, meanwhile, had gone in search of 
 the shawl and stockings ; for her own view of the 
 matter, however subtle and delicate, had given way, 
 as it always did, to the stubborn materialism of 
 
30 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 her husband. Without heeding the remonstrances 
 of his two children, who still kept murmuring that 
 their little snow-sister did not love the warmth, 
 good Mr. Lindsey took his departure, shutting the 
 parlor-door carefully behind him. Turning up the 
 collar of his sack over his ears, he emerged from 
 the house, and had barely reached the street-gate, 
 when he was recalled by the screams of Violet and 
 Peony, and the rapping of a thimbled finger against 
 the parlor window. 
 
 " Husband ! husband ! " cried his wife, showing 
 her horror-stricken face through the window-panes. 
 " There is no need of going for the child's parents ! " 
 
 " We told you so, father ! " screamed Violet and 
 Peony, as he reentered the parlor. "You would 
 bring her in ; and now our poor — dear — beau-ti- 
 ful little snow-sister is thawed ! " 
 
 And their own sweet little faces were already 
 dissolved in tears; so that their father, seeing 
 what strange things occasionally happen in this 
 every-day world, felt not a little anxious lest his 
 children might be going to thaw too ! In the ut- 
 most perplexity, he demanded an explanation of 
 his wife. She could only reply, that, being sum- 
 moned to the parlor by the cries of Violet and 
 and Peony, she found no trace of the little white 
 maiden, unless it were the remains of a heap of 
 snow, which, while she was gazing at it, melted 
 quite away upon the hearth-rug. 
 
 " And there you see all that is left of it ! " added 
 the, pointing to a pool of water in front of the 
 stove. 
 
THE SNOW-IMAGE, 31 
 
 " Yes, father," said Violet, lookiDg reproachfully 
 at him, through her tears, " there is all that is left 
 of our dear little snow-sister ! " 
 
 " Naughty father ! " cried Peony, stamping his 
 foot, and — I shudder to say — shaking his little 
 fist at the common-sensible man. " We told you 
 how it would be ! What for did you bring her in ? " 
 
 And the Heidenberg stove, through the isinglass 
 of its door, seemed to glare at good Mr. Lindsey, 
 like a red-eyed demon, triumphing in the mischief 
 which it had done ! 
 
 This, you will observe, was one of those rare 
 cases, which yet will occasionally happen, where 
 common-sense finds itself at fault. The remarka- 
 ble story of the snow-image, though to that saga- 
 cious class of people to whom . good Mr. Lindsey 
 belongs it may seem but a childish affair, is, never- 
 theless, capable of being moralized in various 
 methods, greatly for their edification. One of its 
 lessons, for instance, might be, that it behooves 
 men, and especially men of benevolence, to con- 
 sider well what they are about, and, before acting 
 on their philanthropic purposes, to be quite sure 
 that they comprehend the nature and all the re- 
 lations of the business in hand. What has been 
 established as an element of good to one being 
 may provQ absolute mischief to another ; even as 
 the warmth of the parlor was proper enough for 
 children of flesh and blood, like Violet and Peony, 
 - — though by no means very wholesome, even for 
 them, — but involved nothing short of annihilation 
 to the unfortunate snow-image. 
 
82 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 But, after all, there is no teaching anything to 
 wise men of good Mr. Lindsey's stamp. They 
 know everything, — oh, to be sure ! — everything 
 that has been, and everything that is, and every- 
 thing that, by any future possibility, can be. And, 
 should some phenomenon of nature or providence 
 transcend their system, they will not recognize it, 
 even if it come to pass under their very noses. 
 
 " Wife," said Mr. Lindsey, after a fit of silence, 
 " see what a quantity of snow the children have 
 brought in on their feet ! It has made quite a pud- 
 dle here before the stove. Pray tell Dora to bring 
 some towels and sop it up ! " 
 
 n. 
 
 THE GREAT STONE FACE. 
 
 One afternoon, when the sun was going down, a 
 mother and her little boy sat at the door of their 
 cottage, talking about the Great Stone Face. They 
 had but to lift their eyes, and there it was plainly 
 to be seen, though miles away, with the sunshine 
 brightening all its features. 
 
 And what was the Great Stone Face ? 
 
 Embosomed amongst a family of lofty mountains 
 there was a valley so spacious that it contained 
 many thousand inhabitants. Some of these good 
 people dwelt in log huts, with the black forest aL 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE. 33 
 
 around them, on the steep and difficult hillsides. 
 Others had their homes in comfortable farm-houses, 
 and cultivated the rich soil on the gentle slopes or 
 level surfaces of the valley. Others, again, were 
 congregated into populous villages, where some 
 wild, highland rivulet, tumbling down from its 
 birthplace in the upper mountain region, had been 
 caught and tamed by human cunning, and com- 
 pelled to turn the machinery of cotton-factories. 
 The inhabitants of this valley, in short, were nu- 
 merous, and of many modes of life. But all of 
 them, grown people and children, had a kind of 
 familiarity with the Great Stone Face, although 
 some possessed the gift of distinguishing this grand 
 natural phenomenon more perfectly than many of 
 their neighbors. 
 
 The Great Stone Face, then, was a work of Nat- 
 ure in her mood of majestic playfulness, formed on 
 the perpendicular side of a mountain by some im- 
 mense rocks, which had been thrown together in 
 such a position as, when viewed at a proper dis- 
 tance, precisely to resemble the features of the 
 human countenance. It seemed as if an enormous 
 giant, or a Titan, had sculptured his own likeness 
 on the precipice. There was the broad arch of the 
 forehead, a hundred feet in height ; the nose, with 
 'ts long bridge; and the vast lips, which, if they 
 could have spoken, would have rolled their thunder 
 accents from one end of the valley to the other. 
 True it is, that if the spectator approached too near 
 he lost the outline of the gigantic visage, and could 
 3 
 
34 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 discern only a heap of ponderous and gigantic rocks, 
 piled in chaotic ruin one upon another. Retracing 
 his steps, however, the wondrous features would 
 again be seen ; and the farther he withdrew from 
 them, the more like a human face, with all its orig- 
 inal divinity intact, did they appear ; until, as it 
 grew dim in the distance, with the clouds and glori- 
 fied vapor of the mountains clustering about it, the 
 Great Stone Face seemed positively to be alive. 
 
 It was a happy lot for children to grow up to 
 manhood or womanhood with the Great Stone Face 
 before their eyes, for all the features were noble, 
 and the expression was at once grand and sweet, 
 as if it were the glow of a vast, warm heart, that 
 embraced all mankind in its affections, and had 
 room for more. It was an education only to look 
 at it. According to the belief of many people, the 
 valley owed much of its fertility to this benign as- 
 pect that was continually beaming over it, illuminat- 
 ing the clouds, and infusing its tenderness into the 
 sunshine. 
 
 As we began with saying, a mother and her little 
 boy sat at their cottage-door, gazing at the Great 
 Stone Face, and talking about it. The child's 
 name was Ernest. 
 
 "Mother," said he, while the Titanic visage 
 smiled on him, " I wish that it could speak, for it 
 looks so very kindly that its voice must needs be 
 pleasant. If I were to see a man with such a face, 
 I should love him dearly." 
 
 " If an old prophecy should come to pass," an* 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE. 35 
 
 Bwered his mother, " we may see a man, some time 
 or other, with exactly such a face as that.'' 
 
 " What prophecy do you mean, dear mother ? " 
 eagerly inquired Ernest. " Pray tell me all about 
 it!" 
 
 So his mother told him a story that her own 
 mother had told to her, when she herself was 
 younger than little Ernest ; a story, not of things 
 that were past, but of what was yet to come ; a 
 story, nevertheless, so very old, that even the In- 
 dians, who formerly inhabited this valley, had heard 
 it from their forefathers, to whom, as they affirmed, 
 it had been murmured by the mountain streams, 
 and whispered by the wind among the tree-tops. 
 The purport was, that, at some future day, a child 
 should be born hereabouts, who was destined to 
 become the greatest and noblest personage of his 
 time, and whose countenance, in manhood, should 
 bear an exact resemblance to the G-reat Stone Face. 
 Not a few old-fashioned people, and young ones 
 likewise, in the ardor of their hopes, still cherished 
 an enduring faith in this old prophecy. But others, 
 who had seen more of the world, had watched and 
 waited till they were weary, and had beheld no 
 man with such a face, nor any man that proved to 
 be much greater or nobler than his neighbors, con- 
 cluded it to be nothing but an idle tale. At all 
 events, the great man of the prophecy had not yet 
 appeared. 
 
 " O mother, dear mother ! " cried Ernest, clap- 
 oing his hands above his head, " I do hope that I 
 shall live to see him ! " 
 
36 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 
 
 His mother was an affectionate and thoughtful 
 woman, and felt that it was wisest not to discourage 
 the generous hopes of her little boy. So she only 
 said to him, " Perhaps you may." 
 
 And Ernest never forgot the story that his 
 mother told him. It was always in his mind, when- 
 ever he looked upon the Great Stone Face. He 
 spent his childhood in the log cottage where he was 
 born, and was dutiful to his mother, and helpful to 
 her in many things, assisting her much with his 
 little hands, and more with his loving heart. In 
 this manner, from a happy yet often pensive child, 
 he grew up to be a mild, quiet, unobtrusive boy, 
 and sun-browned with labor in the fields, but with 
 more intelligence brightening his aspect than is 
 seen in many lads who have been taught at famous 
 schools. Yet Ernest had had no teacher, save only 
 that the Great Stone Face became one to him. 
 When the toil of the day was over, he would gaze 
 at it for hours, until he began to imagine that those 
 vast features recognized him, and gave him a smile 
 of kindness and encouragement, responsive to his 
 own look of veneration. We must not take upon 
 us to affirm that this was a mistake, although the 
 Face may have looked no more kindly at Ernest 
 than at all the world besides. But the secret was, 
 that the boy's tender and confiding simplicity dis- 
 cerned what other people could not see ; and thus 
 tlie love, which was meant for all, became his pecul 
 iar portion. 
 
 About this time, there went a rumor throughout 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE, 37 
 
 the valley, that the great man, foretold from ages 
 long ago, who was to bear a resemblance to the 
 Great Stone Face, had appeared at last. It seems 
 that, many years before, a young man had migrated 
 from the valley and settled at a distant seaport, 
 where, after getting together a little money, he had 
 set up as a shopkeeper. His name — but I could 
 never learn whether it was his real one, or a nick- 
 name that had grown out of his habits and success 
 in life — was Gathergold. Being shrewd and act- 
 ive, and endowed by Providence with that inscruta- 
 ble faculty which develops itself in what the world 
 calls luck, he became an exceedingly rich merchant, 
 and owner of a whole fleet of bulky-bottomed ships. 
 All the countries of the globe appeared to join 
 hands for the mere purpose of adding heap after 
 heap to the mountainous accumulation of this one 
 man's wealth. The cold regions of the north, al- 
 most within the gloom and shadow of the Arctic 
 Circle, sent him their tribute in the shape of furs ; 
 hot Africa sifted for him the golden sands of her 
 rivers, and gathered up the ivory tusks of her great 
 elephants out of the forests ; the East came bring- 
 ing him the rich shawls, and spices, and teas, and 
 the effulgence of diamonds, and the gleaming purity 
 of large pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand 
 with the earth, yielded up her mighty whales, that 
 Mr. Gathergold might sell their oil, and make a 
 profit on it. Be the original commodity what it 
 might, it was gold within his grasp. It might be 
 said of him, as of Midas in the fable, that whatever 
 
88 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 he touched with his finger immediately glistened, 
 and grew yellow, and was changed at once into 
 sterling metal, or, which suited him still better, into 
 piles of coin. And, when Mr. Gathergold had be- 
 come so very rich that it would have taken him a 
 hundred years only to count his wealth, he be- 
 thought himself of his native valley, and resolved 
 to go back thither, and end his days where he was 
 born. With this purpose in view, he sent a skilful 
 architect to build him such a palace as should be 
 fit for a man of his vast wealth to live in. 
 
 As I have said above, it had already been ru- 
 mored in the valley that Mr. Gathergold had turned 
 out to be the prophetic personage so long and 
 vainly looked for, and that his visage was the per- 
 fect and undeniable similitude of the Great Stone 
 Face. People were the more ready to believe that 
 this must needs be the fact, when they beheld the 
 splendid edifice that rose, as if by enchantment, on 
 the site of his father's old weather-beaten farm- 
 house. The exterior was of marble, so dazzlingly 
 white that it seemed as though the whole structure 
 might melt away in the sunshine, like those hum- 
 bler ones which Mr. Gathergold, in his young play- 
 days, before his fingers were gifted with the touch 
 of transmutation, had been accustomed to build of 
 snow. It had a richly ornamented portico, sup- 
 ported by tall pillars, beneath which was a lofty 
 door, studded with silver knobs, and made of a 
 kind of variegated wood that had been brought 
 from beyond the sea. The windows, from the floof 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE, 39 
 
 to the ceiling of each stately apartment, were com- 
 posed, respectively, of but one enormous pane of 
 glass, so transparently pure that it was said to be 
 a finer medium than even the vacant atmosphere. 
 Hardly anybody had been permitted to see the in- 
 terior of this palace ; but it was reported, and with 
 good semblance of truth, to be far more gorgeous 
 than the outside, insomuch that whatever was iron 
 or brass in other houses was silver or gold in this ; 
 and Mr. Gathergold's bedchamber, especially, made 
 such a glittering appearance that no ordinary man 
 would have been able to close his eyes there. But, 
 on the other hand, Mr. Gathergold was now so in- 
 ured to wealth, that perhaps he could not have 
 closed his eyes unless where the gleam of it was 
 certain to find its way beneath his eyelids. 
 
 In due time, the mansion was finished ; next came 
 the upholsterers, with magnificent furniture ; then 
 a whole troop of black and white servants, the har- 
 bingers of Mr. Gathergold, who, in his own majes- 
 tic person, was expected to arrive at sunset. Our 
 friend Ernest, meanwhile, had been deeply stirred 
 by the idea that the great man, the noble man, the 
 man of prophecy, after so many ages of delay, was 
 at length to be made manifest to his native valley. 
 He knew, boy as he was, that there were a thou- 
 sand ways in which Mr. Gathergold, with his vast 
 wealth, might transform himself into an angel of 
 beneficence, and assume a control over human af- 
 fairs as wide and benignant as the smile of the 
 Great Stone Face. Full of faith and hope, Ernest 
 
40 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 doubted not that what the people said was true, 
 and that now he was to behold the living likeness 
 of those wondrous features on the mountain-side. 
 While the boy was still gazing up the valley, and 
 fancying, as he always did, that the Great Stone 
 Face returned his gaze and looked kindly at him, 
 the rumbling of wheels was heard, approaching 
 swiftly along the winding road. 
 
 " Here he comes ! " cried a group of people who 
 were assembled to witness the arrival. " Here 
 comes the great Mr. Gathergold ! " 
 
 A carriage drawn by four horses dashed round 
 the turn of the road. Within it, thrust partly out 
 of the window, appeared the physiognomy of a lit- 
 tle old man, with a skin as yellow as if his own 
 Midas-hand had transmuted it. He had a low fore- 
 head, small, sharp eyes, puckered about with in- 
 numerable wrinkles, and very thin lips, which he 
 made still thinner by pressing them forcibly to- 
 gether. 
 
 " The very image of the Great Stone Face ! '* 
 shouted the people. " Sure enough, the old proph- 
 ecy is true ; and here we have the great man come, 
 at last ! " 
 
 And, what greatly perplexed Ernest, they seemed 
 actually to believe that here was the likeness which 
 they spoke of. By the roadside there chanced to 
 be an old beggar-woman and two little beggar- 
 children, stragglers from some far-off region, who, 
 as the carriage rolled onward, held out their hands 
 and lifted up their doleful voices, most piteouslj 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE, 41 
 
 beseeching charity. A yellow claw — the very 
 same that had clawed together so much wealth — 
 poked itself out of the coach- window, and dropped 
 some copper coins upon the ground ; so that, though 
 the great man's name seems to have been Gather- 
 gold, he might just as suitably have been nicknamed 
 Scattercopper. Still, nevertheless, with an earnest 
 shout, and evidently with as much good faith as 
 ever, the people bellowed, — 
 
 " He is the very image of the Great Stone 
 Face ! " 
 
 But Ernest turned sadly from the wrinkled 
 shrewdness of that sordid visage, and gazed up the 
 valley, where, amid a gathering mist, gilded by the 
 last sunbeams, he could still distinguish those glo- 
 rious features which had impressed themselves into 
 his soul. Their aspect cheered him. What did 
 the benign lips seem to say ? 
 
 " He will come ! Fear not, Ernest ; the man 
 will come ! " • 
 
 The years went on, and Ernest ceased to be a 
 boy. He had grown to be a young man now. He 
 attracted little notice from the other inhabitants of 
 the valley ; for they saw nothing remarkable in his 
 way of life, save that, when the labor of the day 
 was over, he still loved to go apart and gaze and 
 meditate upon the Great Stone Face. According 
 to their idea of the matter, it was a folly, indeed, 
 but pardonable, inasmuch as Ernest was industrious, 
 kind, and neighborly, and neglected no duty for 
 the sake of indulging this idle habit. They knew 
 
42 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 not that the Great Stone Face had become a teacher 
 to him, and that the sentiment which was expressed 
 in it would enlarge the young man's heart, and fill 
 it with wider and deeper sympathies than other 
 hearts. They knew not that thence would come a 
 better wisdom than could be learned from books, 
 and a better life than could be moulded on the de- 
 faced example of other human lives. Neither did 
 Ernest know that the thoughts and affections which 
 came to him so naturally, in the fields and at the 
 fireside, and wherever he communed with himself, 
 were of a higher tone than those which all men 
 shared with him. A simple soul, — simple as when 
 his mother first taught him the old prophecy, — he 
 beheld the marvellous features beaming adown the 
 valley, and still wondered that their human coun- 
 terpart was so long in making his appearance. 
 
 By this time poor Mr. Gathergold was dead and 
 buried ; and the oddest part of the matter was, that 
 his wealth, which was the body and spirit of his 
 existence, had disappeared before his death, leaving 
 nothing of him but a living skeleton, covered over 
 with a wrinkled, yellow skin. Since the melting 
 away of his gold, it had been very generally conceded 
 that there was no such striking resemblance, after 
 all, betwixt the ignoble features of the ruined mer- 
 chant and that majestic face upon the mountain- 
 'side. So the people ceased to honor him during 
 his lifetime, and quietly consigned him to forgetful- 
 ness after his decease. Once in a while, it is true, 
 his memory was brought up in connection with the 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE. 43 
 
 magnificent palace which he had built, and which 
 had long ago been turned into a hotel for the ac- 
 commodation of strangers, multitudes of whom came 
 every summer to visit that famous natural curiosity, 
 the Great Stone Face. Thus, Mr. Gathergold, be- 
 ing discredited and thrown into the shade, the man 
 of prophecy was yet to come. 
 
 It so happened that a native-born son of the val- 
 ley, many years before, had enlisted as a soldier, 
 and, after a great deal of hard fighting, had now be- 
 come an illustrious commander. Whatever he may 
 be called in history, he was known in camps and 
 on the battle-field under the nickname of Old Blood- 
 and-Thunder. This war-worn veteran, being now 
 infirm with age and wounds, and weary of the tur- 
 moil of a military life, and of the roll of the drum 
 and the clangor of the trumpet, that had so long 
 been ringing in his ears, had lately signified a pur- 
 pose of returning to his native valley, hoping to 
 find repose where he remembered to have left it. 
 The inhabitants, his old neighbors and their grown- 
 up children, were resolved to welcome the re- 
 nowned warrior with a salute of cannon and a pub- 
 lic dinner; and all the more enthusiastically, it 
 being affirmed that now, at last, the likeness oi 
 the Great Stone Face had actually appeared. An 
 Aide-de-camp of Old Blood-and-Thunder, travelling 
 through the valley, was said to have been struck 
 with the resemblance. Moreover the schoolmates 
 and earl^ acquaintances of the general were ready 
 to testify, on oath, that, to the best of their recol- 
 
44 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 lection, the aforesaid general had been exceedingly 
 like the majestic image, even when a boy, only that 
 the idea had never occurred to them at that period. 
 Great, therefore, was the excitement throughout 
 the valley ; and many people, who had never once 
 thought of glancing at the Great Stone Face for 
 years before, now spent their time in gazing at 
 it, for the sake of knowing exactly how General 
 Blood-and-Thunder looked. 
 
 On the day of the great festival, Ernest, with all 
 the other people of the valley, left their work, and 
 proceeded to the spot where the sylvan banquet 
 was prepared. As he approached, the loud voice 
 of the Rev. Dr. Battleblast was heard, beseeching 
 a blessing on the good things set before them, and 
 on the distinguished friend of peace in whose honor 
 they were assembled. The tables were arranged 
 in a cleared space of the woods, shut in by the sur- 
 rounding trees, except where a vista opened east- 
 ward, and afforded a distant view of the Great 
 Stone Face. Over the general's chair, which was 
 a relic from the home of Washington, there was an 
 arch of verdant boughs, with the laurel profusely 
 intermixed, and surmounted by his country's ban- 
 ner, beneath which he had won his victories. Our 
 friend Ernest raised himself on his tip-toes, in hopes 
 to get a glimpse of the celebrated guest ; but there 
 w^as a mighty crowd about the tables anxious to 
 hear the toasts and speeches, and to catch any word 
 that might fall from the general in reply; and a 
 volunteer company, doing duty as a guard, pricked 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE. 45 
 
 ruthlessly with their bayonets at any particularly 
 quiet person among the throng. So Ernest, being 
 of an unobtrusive character, was thrust quite into 
 the background, where he could see no more of Old 
 Blood-and-Thunder's physiognomy than if it had 
 been still blazing on the battle-field. To console 
 himself, he turned towards the Great Stone Face, 
 which, like a faithful and long-remembered friend, 
 looked back and smiled upon him through the vista 
 of the forest. Meantime, however, he could over- 
 hear the remarks of various individuals, who were 
 comparing the features of the hero with the face 
 on the distant mountain-side. 
 
 ** 'T is the same face, to a hair ! " cried one man, 
 cutting a caper for joy. 
 
 " Wonderfully like, that *s a fact ! " responded 
 another. 
 
 « Like ! why, I call it Old Blood-and-Thunder 
 himself, in a monstrous looking-glass ! " cried a 
 third. " And why not ? He 's the greatest man 
 ^f this or any other age, beyond a doubt." 
 
 And then all three of the speakers gave a great 
 shout, which communicated electricity to the crowd, 
 and called forth a roar from a thousand voices, that 
 fvent reverberating for miles amo,ng the mountains, 
 until you might have supposed that the Great Stone 
 Face had poured its thunder-breath into the cry. 
 All these comments, and this vast enthusiasm, 
 served the more to interest our friend ; nor did he 
 ihink of questioning that now, at length, the moun- 
 tain-visage had found its human counterpart. It is 
 
46 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 
 
 true, Ernest had imagined that this long-looked-for 
 personage would appear in the character of a man 
 of peace, uttering wisdom, and doing good, and 
 making people happy. But, taking an habitual 
 breadth of view, with all his simplicity, he contended 
 that Providence should choose its own method of 
 blessing mankind, and could conceive that this great 
 end might be effected even by a warrior and a 
 bloody sword, should inscrutable wisdom see fit to 
 order matters so. 
 
 " The general ! the general ! " was now the cry. 
 ** Hush ! silence ! Old Blood-and-Thunder 's going 
 to make a speech." 
 
 Even so ; for, the cloth being removed, the gen- 
 eral's health had been drunk amid shouts of ap- 
 plause, and he now stood upon his feet to thank the 
 company. Ernest saw him. There he was, over 
 the shoulders of the crowd, from the two glittering 
 epaulets and embroidered collar upward, beneath 
 the arch of green boughs with intertwined laurel, 
 and the banner drooping as if to shade his brow ! 
 And there, too, visible in the same glance, through 
 the vista of the forest, appeared the Great Stone 
 Face ! And was there, indeed, such a resemblance 
 as the crowd had testified ? Alas, Ernest could 
 not recognize it. He beheld a war-worn and 
 weather-beaten countenance, full of energy, and ex 
 pressive of an iron will ; but the gentle wisdom, the 
 deep, broad, tender sympathies, were altogether 
 wanting in Old Blood-and-Thunder's visage; and 
 even if the Great Stone Face had assumed his look 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE. 47 
 
 of stern command, the milder traits would still have 
 tempered it. 
 
 " This is not the man of prophecy," sighed Ernest 
 to himself; as he made his way out of the throng. 
 " And must the world wait longer yet ? " 
 
 The mists had congregated about the distant 
 mountain-side, and there were seen the grand and 
 awful features of the Great Stone Face, awful but 
 benignant, as if a mighty angel were sitting among 
 the hills and enrobing himself in a cloud-vesture of 
 gold and purple. As he looked, Ernest could hardly 
 believe but that a smile beamed over the whole 
 visage, with a radiance still brightening, although 
 without motion of the lips. It was probably the 
 effect of the western sunshine, melting through the 
 thinly diffused vapors that had swept between him 
 and the object that he gazed at. But — as it al- 
 ways did — the aspect of his marvellous friend 
 made Ernest as hopeful as if he had never hoped in 
 vain. 
 
 " Fear not, Ernest," said his heart, even as if the 
 Great Face were whispering him, — " fear not, 
 Ernest ; he will come." 
 
 More years sped swiftly and tranquilly away. 
 Ernest still dwelt in his native valley, and was now 
 a man of middle age. By imperceptible degrees, 
 he had become known among the people. Now, 
 as heretofore, he labored for his bread, and was the 
 same simple-hearted man that he had always been. 
 But he had thought and felt so much, he had given 
 ««o many of the best hours of his life to unworldly 
 
48 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 
 
 hopes for some great good to mankind, that it 
 seemed as though he had been talking with the 
 angels, and had imbibed a portion of their wisdom 
 unawares. It was visible in the calm and well-con- 
 sidered beneficence of his daily life, the quiet stream 
 of which had made a wide green margin all along 
 its course. Not a day passed by that the world 
 was not the better because this man, humble as he 
 was, had lived. He never stepped aside from his 
 own path, yet would always reach a blessing to his 
 neighbor. Almost involuntarily, too, he had be- 
 come a preacher. The pure and high simplicity of 
 his thought, which, as one of its manifestations, 
 took shape in the good deeds that dropped silently 
 from his hand, flowed also forth in speech. He ut- 
 tered truths that wrought upon and moulded the 
 lives of those who heard him. His auditors, it may 
 be, never suspected that Ernest, their own neighbor 
 and familiar friend, was more than an ordinary 
 man; least of all did Ernest himself suspect it; 
 but, inevitably as the murmur of a rivulet, came 
 thoughts out of his mouth that no other human 
 lips had spoken. 
 
 When the people's minds had had a little time to 
 cool, they were ready enough to acknowledge their 
 mistake in imagining a similarity between General 
 Blood-and-Thunder's truculent physiognomy and 
 the benign visage on the mountain-side. But now, 
 again, there were reports and many paragraphs in 
 the newspapers, affirming that the likeness of the 
 Great Stone Face had appeared upon the broad 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE. 49 
 
 shoulders of a certain eminent statesman. He, like 
 Mr. Gathergold and Old Blood-and-Thuuder, was a 
 native of the valley, but had left it in his early days, 
 and taken up the trades of law and politics. Instead 
 of the rich man's wealth and the warrior's sword, 
 he had but a tongue, and it was mightier than both 
 together. So wonderfully eloquent was he, that 
 whatever he might choose to say, his auditors had 
 no choice but to believe him ; wrong looked like 
 right, and right like wrong ; for when it pleased 
 him he could make a kind of illuminated fog with 
 his mere breath, and obscure the natural daylight 
 with it. His tongue, indeed, was a magic instru- 
 ment ; sometimes it rumbled like the thunder ; 
 sometimes it warbled like the sweetest music. It 
 was the blast of war, — the song of peace ; and it 
 seemed to have a heart in it, when there was no 
 such matter. In good truth, he was a wondrous 
 man ; and when his tongue had acquired him all 
 other imaginable success, — when it had been heard 
 in halls of state, and in the courts of princes and 
 potentates, — after it had made him known all ove? 
 the world, even as a voice crying from shore tc 
 shore, — it finally persuaded his countrymen to 
 select him for the Presidency. Before this timSj 
 — indeed, as soon as he began to grow celebrated, 
 ^— his admirers had found out the resemblance be- 
 tween him and the Great Stone Face ; and so much 
 were they struck by it that throughout the country 
 this distinguished gentleman was known by the 
 Tiame of Old Stony Phiz. The phrase was con- 
 4 
 
50 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 
 
 sidered as giving a highly favorable aspect to his 
 political prospects ; for, as is likewise the case with 
 the Popedom, nobody ever becomes President with- 
 out taking a name other than his own. 
 
 While his friends were doing their best to make 
 him President, Old Stony Phiz, as he was called, 
 set out on a visit to the valley where he was born. 
 Of course, he had no other object than to shake 
 hands with his fellow-citizens, and neither thought 
 nor cared about any effect which his progress 
 through the country might have upon the election. 
 Magnificent preparations were made to receive the 
 illustrious statesman ; a cavalcade of horsemen set 
 forth to meet him at the boundary line of the State, 
 and all the people left their business and gathered 
 along the wayside to see him pass. Among these 
 was Ernest. Though more than once disappointed, 
 as we have seen, he had such a hopeful and confid- 
 ing nature, that he was always ready to believe in 
 whatever seemed beautiful and good. He kept his 
 heart continually open, and thus was sure to catch 
 the blessing from on high, when it should come. 
 So now again, as buoyantly as ever, he went forth 
 to behold the likeness of the Great Stone Face. 
 
 The cavalcade came prancing along the road, 
 with a great clattering of hoofs and a mighty cloud 
 of dust, which rose up so dense and high that the 
 visage of the mountain-side was completely hidden 
 *rom Ernest's eyes. All the great men of the 
 fleighborhood were there on horseback ; militia offi- 
 cers, in uniform ; the member of Congress ; the 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE. 51 
 
 BherifF of the county ; the editors of newspapers ; 
 and many a farmer, too, had mounted his patient 
 steed, with his Sunday coat upon his back. It 
 really was a very brilliant spectacle, especially as 
 there were numerous banners flaunting over the 
 cavalcade, on some of which were gorgeous portraits 
 of the illustrious statesman and the Great Stone 
 Face, smiling familiarly at one another, like two 
 brothers. If the pictures were to be trusted, the 
 mutual resemblance, it must be confessed, was mar- 
 vellous. We must not forget to mention that there 
 was a band of music, which made the echoes of the 
 mountains ring and reverberate with the loud tri- 
 umph of its strains ; so that airy and soul-thrilling 
 melodies broke out among all the heights and hol- 
 lows, as if every nook of his native valley had 
 found a voice to welcome the distinguished guest. 
 But the grandest effect was when the far-off moun- 
 tain precipice flung back the music ; for then the 
 Great Stone Face itself seemed to be swelling the 
 triumphant chorus, in acknowledgment that, at 
 length, the man of prophecy was come. 
 
 All this while the people were throwing up their 
 hats and shouting, with enthusiasm so contagious 
 that the heart of Ernest kindled up, and he likewise 
 threw up his hat, and shouted, as loudly as the 
 loudest, " Huzza for the great man ! Huzza for 
 Old Stony Phiz ! " But as yet he had not seen 
 him. 
 
 " Here he is, now ! " cried those who stood near 
 Ernest. « There ! There ! Look at Old Stony 
 
52 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 Phiz and then at the Old Man of the Mountain, and 
 see if they are not as like as two twin-brothers ! " 
 
 In the midst of all this gallant array, came an 
 open barouche, drawn by four white horses ; and in 
 the barouche, with his massive head uncovered, sat 
 the illustrious statesman, Old Stony Phiz himself. 
 
 *' Confess it," said one of Ernest's neighbors to 
 him, " the Great Stone Face has met its match at 
 last ! " 
 
 Now, it must be owned that, at his first glimpse 
 of the countenance which was bowing and smiling 
 from the barouche, Ernest did fancy that there wag 
 a resemblance between it and the old familiar face 
 upon the mountain-side. The brow, with its mas- 
 sive depth and loftiness, and all the other features, 
 indeed, were boldly and strongly hewn, as if in em- 
 ulation of a more than heroic, of a Titanic model. 
 But the sublimity and stateliness, the grand expres- 
 sion of a divine sympathy, that illuminated the 
 mountain visage, and etherealized its ponderous 
 granite substance into spirit, might here be sought 
 in vain. Something had been originally left out, or 
 had departed. And therefore the marvellously 
 gifted statesman had always a weary gloom in the 
 deep caverns of his eyes, as of a child that has out- 
 grown its playthings, or a man of mighty faculties 
 and little aims, whose life, with all its high per- 
 formances, was vague and empty, because no high 
 purpose had endowed it with reality. 
 
 Still Ernest's neighbor was thrusting his elbow 
 mto his side, and pressing him for an answer. 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE, 53 
 
 " Confess ! confess ! Is not he the very picture 
 of your Old Man of the Mountain ? " 
 
 " No ! " said Ernest, bluntly, ''• I see little or no 
 likeness.". 
 
 " Then so much the worse for the Great Stone 
 Face I " answered his neighbor ; and again he set 
 up a shout for Old Stony Phiz. 
 
 But Ernest turned away, melancholy, and almost 
 despondent ; for this was the saddest of his disap- 
 pointments, to behold a man who might have ful- 
 filled the prophecy, and had not willed to do so. 
 Meantime, the cavalcade, the banners, the music, 
 and the barouches swept past him, with the vocif- 
 erous crowd in the rear, leaving the dust to settle 
 down, and the Great "Stone Face to be revealed 
 again, with the grandeur that it had worn for un- 
 told centuries. 
 
 " Lo, here I am, Ernest ! " the benign lips seemed 
 to say. *' I have waited longer than thou, and am 
 not yet weary. Fear not ; the man will come." 
 
 The years hurried onward, treading in their haste 
 on one another's heels. And now they began to 
 bring white hairs, and scatter them over the head of 
 Ernest ; they made reverend wrinkles across his fore- 
 head, and furrows in his cheeks. He was an aged 
 man. But^not in vain had he grown old : more than 
 the white hairs on his head were the sage thoughts 
 in his mind ; his wrinkles and furrows were inscrip- 
 tions that Time had graved, and in which he had 
 written legends of wisdom that had been tested by 
 the tenor of a life. And Ernest had ceased to be 
 
54 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 obscure. Unsought for, undesired, had come the 
 fame which so many seek, and made him known in 
 the great world, beyond the limits of the valley in 
 which he had dwelt so quietly. College professors, 
 and even the active men of cities, came from far to 
 see and converse with Ernest ; for the report had 
 gone abroad that this simple husbandman had ideas 
 unlike those of other men, not gained from books, 
 but of a higher tone, — a tranquil and familiar maj- 
 esty, as if he had been talking with the angels as 
 his daily friends. Whether it were sage, statesman, 
 or philanthropist, Ernest received these visitors 
 with the gentle sincerity that had characterized him 
 from boyhood, and spoke freely with them of what- 
 ever came uppermost, or lay deepest in his heart or 
 their own. While they talked together his face 
 would kindle, unawares, and shine upon them, as 
 with a mild evening light. Pensive with the ful- 
 ness of such discourse, his guests took leave and 
 went their way ; and passing up the valley, paused 
 to look at the Great Stone Face, imagining that 
 they had seen its likeness in a human countenance, 
 but could not remember where. 
 
 While Ernest had been growing up and growing 
 old, a bountiful Providence had granted a new poet 
 to this earth. He, likewise, was a native of the 
 valley, but had spent the greater part of his life at 
 a distance from that romantic region, pouring out 
 his sweet music amid the bustle and din of cities. 
 Often, however, did the mountains which had been 
 familiar to him in his childhood lift their snowy 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE, 55 
 
 peaks into the clear atmosphere of his poetry. 
 Neither was the Great Stone Face forgotten, for 
 the poet had celebrated it in an ode which was 
 grand enough to have been uttered by its own ma- 
 jestic lips. This man of genius, we may say, had 
 come down from heaven with wonderful endow- 
 ments. If he sang of a mountain, the eyes of all 
 mankind beheld a mightier grandeur reposing on its 
 breast, or soaring to its summit, than had* before 
 been seen there. If his theme were a lovely lake, a 
 celestial smile had now been thrown over it, to 
 gleam forever on its surface. If it were the vast 
 old sea, even the deep immensity of its dread bosom 
 seemed to swell the higher, as if moved by the 
 emotions of the song. Thus the world assumed an- 
 other and a better aspect from the hour that the 
 poet blessed it with his happy eyes. The Creator 
 had bestowed him, as the last best touch to his own 
 handiwork. Creation was not finished till the poet 
 came to interpret, and so complete it. 
 
 The effect was no less high and beautiful when 
 his human brethren were the subject of his verse. 
 The man or woman, sordid with the common dust 
 of life, who crossed his daily path, and the little 
 child who played in it, were glorified if he beheld 
 them in his mood of poetic faith. He showed the 
 golden links of the great chain that intertwined 
 them with an angelic kindred ; he brought out the 
 hidden traits of a celestial birth that made them 
 worthy of such kin. Some, indeed, there were, 
 f^rho thought to show the soundness of their judg- 
 
56 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 ment by affirming that all the beauty and dignity 
 of the natural world existed only in the poet's 
 fancy. Let such men speak for themselves, who 
 undoubtedly appear to have been spawned forth 
 by Nature with a contemptuous bitterness ; she 
 having plastered them up out of her refuse stuff, 
 after all the swine were made. As respects all 
 things else, the poet's ideal was the truest truth. 
 
 The songs of this poet found their way to Ernest. 
 He read them after his customary toil, seated on 
 the bench before his cottage door, where for such 
 a length of time he had filled his repose with 
 thought, by gazing at the Great Stone Face. And 
 now as he read stanzas that caused the soul to 
 thrill within him, he lifted his eyes to the vast 
 countenance beaming on him so benignantly. 
 
 '' O majestic friend," he murmured, addressing 
 the Great Stone Face, " is not this man worthy to 
 resemble thee ? " 
 
 The Face seemed to smile, but answered not a 
 word. 
 
 Now it happened that the poet, though he dwelt 
 BO far away, had not only heard of Ernest, but 
 had meditated much upon his character, until he 
 deemed nothing so desirable as to meet this man, 
 whose untaught wisdom walked hand in hand with 
 the noble simplicity of his life. One summer 
 morning, therefore, he took passage by the rail- 
 road, and, in the decline of the afternoon, alighted 
 from the cars at no great distance from Ernest's 
 cottage. The great hotel, which had formerly 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE. 57 
 
 been the palace of Mr. Gathergold, was close at 
 hand, but the poet, with his carpet-bag on his arm, 
 inquired at once where Ernest dwelt, and was re- 
 solved to be accepted as his guest. 
 
 Approaching the door, he there found the good 
 old man, holding a volume in his hand, which al- 
 ternately he read, and then, with a finger between 
 the leaves, looked lovingly at the Great Stone 
 Face. 
 
 " Good evening," said the poet. " Can you give 
 a traveller a night's lodging? " 
 
 " Willingly," answered Ernest ; and then he 
 added, smiling, ^' Methinks I never saw the Great 
 Stone Face look so hospitably at a stranger." 
 
 The poet sat down on the bench beside him, 
 and he and Ernest talked together. Often had the 
 poet held intercourse with the wittiest and the 
 wisest, but never before with a man like Ernest, 
 whose thoughts and feelings gushed up with such 
 a natural freedom, and who made great truths so 
 familiar by his simple utterance of them. Angels, 
 as had been so often said, seemed to have wrought 
 with him at his labor in the fields ; angels seemed 
 to have sat with him by the fireside ; and, dwelling 
 with angels as friend with friends, he had imbibed 
 the sublimity of their ideas, and imbued it with the 
 sweet and lowly charm of household words. So 
 thought the poet. And Ernest, on the other hand, 
 was moved and agitated by the living images 
 which the poet flung out of his mind, and which 
 peopled all the air about the cottage door with 
 
58 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 shapes of beauty, both gay and pensive. The 
 sympathies of these two men instructed them with 
 a profounder sense than either could have attained 
 alone. Their minds accorded into one strain, and 
 made delightful music which neither of them could 
 have claimed as all his own, nor distinguished his 
 own share from the other's. They led one another, 
 as it were, into a high pavilion of their thoughts, 
 so remote, and hitherto so dim, that they had never 
 entered it before, and so beautiful that they desired 
 to be there always. 
 
 As Ernest listened to the poet, he imagined that 
 the Great Stone Face was bending forward to listen 
 too. He gazed earnestly into the poet's glowing 
 eyes. 
 
 " Who are you, my strangely gifted guest ? " he 
 said. 
 
 The poet laid his finger on the volume that Er- 
 nest had been reading. 
 
 " You have read these poems," said he. " You 
 know me, then, — for I wrote them." 
 
 Again, and still more earnestly than before, 
 Ernest examined the poet's features ; then turned 
 towards the Great Stone Face ; then back, with an 
 uncertain aspect, to his guest. But his countenance 
 fell ; he shook his head, and sighed. 
 
 " Wherefore are you sad ? " inquired the poet 
 
 " Because," replied Ernest, " all through life I 
 have awaited the fulfilment of a prophecy ; and, 
 when I read these poems, I hoped that it might be 
 fulfilled in you." 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE. 59 
 
 " You hoped," answered the poet, faintly smil- 
 ing, " to find in me the likeness of the Great Stone 
 Face. And you are disappointed, as formerly 
 with Mr. Gathergold, and Old Blood-and-Thunder, 
 and Old Stony Phiz. Yes, Ernest, it is my doom. 
 You must add my name to the illustrious three, 
 and record another failure of your hopes. For — 
 in shame and sadness do I speak it, Ernest — I am 
 not worthy to be typified by yonder benign and 
 majestic image." 
 
 " And why ? " asked Ernest. He pointed to the 
 volume. " Are not those thoughts divine ? " 
 
 " They have a strain of the Divinity," replied 
 the poet. " You can hear in them the far-off echo 
 of a heavenly song. But my life, dear Ernest, 
 has not corresponded with my thought. I have 
 had grand dreams, but they have been only dreams, 
 because I have lived — and that, too, by my own 
 choice — among poor and mean realities. Some- 
 times even — shall I dare to say it ? — I lack faith 
 in the grandeur, the beauty, and the goodness, 
 which my own works are said to have made more 
 evident in nature and in human life. Why, then, 
 pure seeker of the good and true, shouldst thou 
 hope to find me in yonder image of the divine ? " 
 
 The poet spoke sadly, and his eyes were dim 
 with tears. So, likewise, were those of Ernest. 
 
 At the hour of sunset, as had long been his fre- 
 quent custom, Ernest was to discourse to an as- 
 semblage of the neighboring inhabitants in the 
 open air. He and the poet, arm in arm, still talk 
 
60. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 ing together as they went along, proceeded to the 
 Bpot. It was a small nook among the hills, with 
 a gray precipice behind, the stern front of which 
 was relieved by the pleasant foliage of many creep- 
 ing plants, that made a tapestry for the naked 
 rock, by hanging their festoons from all its rugged 
 angles. At a small elevation above the ground, 
 set in a rich framework of verdure, there appeared 
 a niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure, 
 with freedom for such gestures as spontaneously 
 accompany earnest thought and genuine emotion. 
 Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended, and 
 threw a look of familiar kindness around upon his 
 audience. They stood, or sat, or reclined upon the 
 grass, as seemed good to each, with the departing 
 sunshine falling obliquely over them, and mingling 
 its subdued cheerfulness with the solemnity of a 
 grove of ancient trees, beneath and amid the boughs 
 of which the golden rays were constrained to pass. 
 In another direction was seen the Great Stone 
 Face, with the same cheer, combined with the 
 same solemnity, in its benignant aspect. 
 
 Ernest began to speak, giving to the people of 
 what was in his heart and mind. His words had 
 power, because they accorded with his thoughts; 
 and his thoughts had reality and depth, because 
 they harmonized with the life which he had always 
 lived. It was not mere breath that this preacher 
 uttered ; they were the words of life, because a life 
 of good deeds and holy love was melted into them. 
 Pearls, pure and rich, had been dissolved into this 
 
THE GREAT STONE FACE. 61 
 
 precious draught. The poet, as he listened, felt 
 that the being and character of Ernest were a no- 
 bler strain of poetry than he had ever written. 
 His eyes glistening with tears, he gazed reveren- 
 tially at the venerable man, and said within himself 
 that never was there an aspect so worthy of a 
 prophet and a sage as that mild, sweet, thoughtful 
 countenance, with the glory of white hair diffused 
 about it. At a distance, but distinctly to be seen, 
 high up in the golden light of the setting sun, ap- 
 peared the Great Stone Face, with hoary mists 
 around it, like the white hairs around the brow of 
 Ernest. Its look of grand beneficence seemed to 
 embrace the world. 
 
 At that moment, in sympathy with a thought 
 which he was about to utter, the face of Ernest as- 
 sumed a grandeur of expression, so imbued with 
 benevolence, that the poet,^ by an irresistible im- 
 pulse, threw his arms aloft, and shouted, — 
 
 " Behold ! Behold ! Ernest is himself the like- 
 ness of the Great Stone Face ! " 
 
 Then all the people looked, and saw that what 
 the deep-sighted poet said was true. The prophecy 
 was fulfilled. But Ernest, having finished what he 
 had to say, took the poet's arm, and walked slowly 
 
 1 That the poet should have been the one to discover the re 
 semblance accords with the conception of the poet himself in 
 this little apologue. Poetic insight is still separable from in- 
 tegrity of character, and it was quite possible for this poet to 
 see the ideal beauty in another, while conscious of his own de- 
 fect. The humility of Ernest, as the last word of the story, 
 completes the certainty of the likeness. 
 
62 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 
 
 homeward, still hoping that some wiser and better 
 man than himself would by and by appear, bearing 
 a resemblance to the Great Stone Face. 
 
 ni. 
 
 BROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE. 
 
 [In his preface to The Marble Faun Hawthorne 
 speaks of the difficulty of reproducing American 
 life in romance, but in the story of Browne's 
 Wooden Image he has within narrow limits achieved 
 a more difficult task, that of translating a Greek 
 myth into the Yankee vernacular, without impairing 
 the native flavor. In the course of the story he 
 laughingly refers to the myth of Pygmalion, the 
 statuary of Cyprus, who shunned the society of 
 women, but became so enamored of one of his own 
 beautiful creations that he besought Venus to give 
 her life. The same theme, with a wider and more 
 subtle application, reappears in this little story, and 
 it is interesting to see how Hawthorne has avoided 
 the merely grotesque, and by the sincerity of the 
 carver has given dignity to the illusion. The per- 
 sonages of the story appear in history. There w^as 
 a Drowne, who was a carver, and whose work, as 
 Hawthorne reminds us, was to be seen in Boston. 
 He is known as Deacon Shem Drowne, and died in 
 x774. From several allusions in the story, the 
 time may be made to be in King George II.'s reign 
 
BROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE, 63 
 
 lay about 1760. The poet, William Morris, has 
 told the story of Pygmalion and the Image in The 
 Earthly Paradise.'] 
 
 One sunshiny morning, in the good old times of 
 the town of Boston, a young carver in wood, well 
 known by the name of Drowne, stood contemplat- 
 ing a large oaken log, which it was his purpose to 
 convert into the figure-head of a vessel. And while 
 he discussed within his own mind what sort of shape 
 or similitude it were well to bestow upon this ex- 
 cellent piece of timber, there came into Browne's 
 workshop a certain Captain Hunnewell, owner and 
 commander of the good brig called the Cynosure, 
 which had just returned from her first voyage to 
 Fayal. 
 
 " Ah ! that will do, Drowne, that will do ! " cried 
 the jolly captaiu, tapping the log with his rattan. 
 " I bespeak this very piece of oak for the figure- 
 head of the Cynosure. She has shown herself the 
 sweetest craft that ever floated, and I mean to deco- 
 rate her prow with the handsomest image that the 
 skill of man can cut out of timber. And, Drowne, 
 you are the fellow to execute it." 
 
 " You give me more credit than I deserve. Cap- 
 tain Hunnewell," said the carver, modestly, yet as 
 one conscious of eminence in his art. " But, for 
 the sake of the good brig, I stand ready to do my 
 best. And which of these designs do you prefer? 
 Here," — pointing to a staring, half-length figure. 
 
64 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 in a white wig and scarlet coat, — " here is an ex- 
 cellent model, the likeness of our gracious king. 
 Here is the valiant Admiral Vernon.^ Or, if you 
 prefer a female figure, what say you to Britannia 
 with the trident ? " 
 
 ** All very fine, Drowne ; all very fine," an- 
 swered the mariner. " But as nothing like the 
 brig ever swam the ocean, so I am determined she 
 shall have such a figure-head as old Neptune never 
 saw in his life. And what is more, as there is a 
 secret in the matter, you must pledge your credit 
 not to betray it." 
 
 " Certainly," said Drowne, marvelling, however, 
 what possible mystery there could be in reference 
 to an affair so open, of necessity, to the inspection 
 of all the world as the figure-head of a vessel. 
 " You may depend, Captain, on my being as secret 
 as the nature of the case will permit." 
 
 Captain Hunnewell then took Drowne by the 
 button, and communicated his wishes in so low a 
 tone that it would be unmannerly to repeat what 
 was evidently intended for the carver's private ear. 
 We shall, therefore, take the opportunity to give 
 the reader a few desirable particulars about Drowne 
 himself. 
 
 1 Edward Vernon, 1684-1757, was a distinguished English 
 admiral. He saw a good deal of service in the West Indies, and 
 in 1739 took the town of Porto Bello ; and as the affair made 
 much noise and there was a brisk trade between Boston and the 
 West Indies, w^e may guess that Drowne found Admiral Vernon 
 9 popular model for tigure-heads. There was a tavern called 
 the Admiral Vernon on the lower corner of State Street and 
 Merchant's Row, Boston. 
 
BROWNE* S WOODEN IMAGE. 65 
 
 He was the first American who is known to have 
 attempted — in a vei*y humble line, it is true — 
 that art in which we can now reckon so many- 
 names already distinguished, or rising to distinc- 
 tion. From his earliest boyhood he had exhibited 
 a knack, — for it would be too proud a word to call 
 it genius, — a knack, therefore, for the imitation of 
 the human figure in whatever material came most 
 readily to hand. The snows of a New England 
 winter had often supplied him with a species of 
 marble as dazzlingly white, at least, as the Parian 
 or the Carrara, and if less durable, yet sufiiciently 
 so to correspond with any claims to permanent ex- 
 istence possessed by the boy's frozen statues. Yet 
 they won admiration from maturer judges than his 
 school-fellows, and were, indeed, remarkably clever, 
 though destitute of the native warmth that might 
 have made the snow melt beneath his hand. As he 
 advanced in life, the young man adopted pine and 
 oak as eligible materials for the display of his skill, 
 which now began to bring him a return of solid sil- 
 ver as well as the empty praise that had been an 
 apt reward enough for his productions of evanes- 
 cent snow. He became noted for carving orna- 
 mental pump-heads, and wooden urns for gate-posts, 
 and decorations, more grotesque than fanciful, for 
 mantel-pieces. No apothecary would have deemed 
 himself in the way of obtaining custom, without 
 setting up a gilded mortar, if not a head of Galen 
 •>r Hippocrates, from the skilful hand of Drowne. 
 
 But the great scope of his business lay in the 
 5 
 
66 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 manufacture of figure-heads for vessels. Whether 
 it were the monarch himself^ or some famous Brit- 
 ish admiral or general, or the governor of the prov- 
 ince, or perchance the favorite daughter of the ship- 
 owner, there the image stood above the prow, 
 decked out in gorgeous colors, magnificently gilded, 
 and staring the whole world out of countenance, as 
 if from an innate consciousness of its own supe- 
 riority. These specimens of native sculpture had 
 crossed the sea in all directions, and been not 
 ignobly noticed among the crowded shipping of the 
 Thames, and wherever else the hardy mariners of 
 New England had pushed their adventures. It must 
 be confessed that a family likeness pervaded these 
 respectable progeny of Browne's skill ; that the be- 
 nign countenance of the king resembled those of 
 his subjects, and that Miss Peggy Hobart, the mer- 
 chant's daughter, bore a remarkable similitude to 
 Britannia, Victory, and other ladies of the allegoric 
 sisterhood ; and, finally, that they all had a kind 
 of wooden aspect, which proved an intimate rela- 
 tionship with the un shaped blocks of timber in the 
 carver's workshop. But at least there was no in- 
 considerable skill of hand, nor a deficiency of any 
 attribute to render them really works of art, except 
 that deep quality, be it of soul or intellect, which 
 bestows life upon the lifeless and warmth upon the 
 cold, and which, had it been present, would have 
 made Drowne's wooden image instinct with spirit. 
 
 The captain of the Cynosure had now finished 
 his instructions. 
 
BROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE. 67 
 
 " And, Drowne," said he, impressively, " you 
 must lay aside all other business and set about this 
 forthwith. And as to the price, only do the job 
 in first-rate style, and you shall settle that point 
 yourself." 
 
 " Very well. Captain," answered the carver, who 
 looked grave and somewhat perplexed, yet had a 
 sort of smile upon his visage ; " depend upon it, I '11 
 do my utmost to satisfy you." 
 , From that moment the men of taste about Long 
 Wharf and the Town Dock who were wont to show 
 their love for the arts by frequent visits to Browne's 
 workshop, and admiration of his wooden images, 
 began to be sensible of a mystery in the carver's 
 conduct. Often he was absent in the daytime. 
 Sometimes, as might be judged by gleams of light 
 from the shop-windows, he was at work until a late 
 hour of the evening ; although neither knock nor 
 voice, on such occasions, could gain admittance for 
 a visitor, or elicit any word of response. Nothing 
 remarkable, however, was observed in the shop at 
 those hours when it was thrown open. A fine piece 
 Df timber, indeed, which Drowne was known to have 
 reserved for some work of especial dignity, was seen 
 to be gradually assuming shape. What shape it 
 was destined ultimately to take was a problem to 
 his friends and a point on which the carver himself 
 preserved a rigid silence. But day after day, though 
 Drowne was seldom noticed in the act of work- 
 ing upon it, this rude form began to be developed 
 until it became evident to all observers that a fe- 
 
68 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 male figure was growing into mimic life. At each 
 new visit they beheld a larger pile of wooden chips 
 and a nearer approximation to something beautiful. 
 It seemed as if the hamadryad of the oak had shel- 
 tered herself from the unimaginative world within 
 the heart of her native tree, and that it was only 
 necessary to remove the strange shapelessness that 
 had incrusted her, and reveal the grace and loveli- 
 ness of a divinity. Imperfect as the design, the at- 
 titude, the costume, and especially the face of the 
 image still remained, there was already an effect 
 that drew the eye from the wooden cleverness of 
 Drowne's earlier productions and fixed it upon the 
 tantalizing mystery of this new project. 
 
 Copley,^ the celebrated painter, then a young 
 man and a resident of Boston, came one day to 
 visit Drowne ; for he had recognized so much of 
 moderate ability in the carver as to induce him, in 
 the dearth of professional sympathy, to cultivate 
 his acquaintance. On entering the shop the art- 
 ist glanced at the inflexible image of king, com- 
 mander, dame, and allegory that stood around, on 
 the best of which might have been bestowed the 
 (luestionable praise that it looked as if a living man 
 had here been changed to wood, and that not only 
 •:he physical, but the intellectual and spiritual part, 
 \)artook of the stolid transformation. But in not a 
 t;ingle instance did it seem as if the wood were im- 
 l>ibing the ethereal essence of humanity. What a 
 wide distinction is here ! and how far would the 
 1 John Singleton Copley was born in Boston in 1737. 
 
BROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE. 69 
 
 ilightest portion of the latter merit have outvalued 
 the utmost degree of the former ! 
 
 " My friend Drowne," said Copley, smiling to 
 himself, but alluding to the mechanical and wooden 
 cleverness that so invariably distinguished the im- 
 ages, " you are really a remarkable person ! I have 
 seldom met with a man in your line of business 
 that could do so much ; for one other touch might 
 make this figure of General Wolfe, ^ for instance, 
 a breathing and intelligent human creature." 
 
 " You would have me think that you are prais- 
 ing me highly, Mr. Copley," answered Drowne, 
 turning his back upon Wolfe's image in apparent 
 disgust. " But there has come a light into my mind. 
 I know, what you know as well, that the one touch 
 which you speak of as deficient is the only one 
 that would be truly valuable, and that without it 
 these works of mine are no better than worthless 
 abortions. There is the same difference between 
 them and the works of an inspired artist as between 
 a sign-post daub and one of your best pictures." 
 
 " This is strange," cried Copley, looking him in 
 the face, which now, as the painter fancied, had a 
 singular depth of intelligence, though hitherto it 
 had not given him greatly the advantage over his 
 own family of wooden images. " What has come 
 ^ver you ? How is it that, possessing the idea which 
 you have now uttered, you should produce only 
 Buch works as these?" 
 
 1 General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec, was killed on the Plains 
 'it Abraham, September 13, 1759. 
 
70 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 The carver smiled, but made no reply. Copley 
 turned again to the images, conceiving that the 
 sense of deficiency which Drown e had just ex- 
 pressed, and which is so rare in a merely mechan- 
 ical character, must surely imply a genius, the to- 
 kens of which had heretofore been overlooked. 
 But no ; there was not a trace of it. He was about 
 to withdraw when his eyes chanced to fall upon a 
 half-developed figure which lay in a corner of the 
 workshop, surrounded by scattered chips of oak. 
 It arrested him at once. 
 
 " What is here ? Who has done this ? " he broke 
 out, after contemplating it in speechless astonish- 
 ment for an instant. " Here is the divine, the life- 
 giving touch. What inspired hand is beckoning 
 this wood to arise and live ? Whose work is this ? " 
 
 "No man's work," replied Drowne. "The fig- 
 ure lies within that block of oak, and it is my busi- 
 ness to find it." 
 
 " Drowne," said the true artist, grasping the 
 carver fervently by the hand, " you are a man of 
 genius ! " 
 
 As Copley departed, happening to glance back- 
 ward from the threshold, he beheld Drowne bend- 
 ing over the half-created shape, and stretching forth 
 his arms as if he would have embraced and drawn it 
 CO his heart ; while, had such a miracle been possible, 
 his countenance expressed passion enough to com- 
 municate warmth and sensibility to the lifeless oak. 
 
 " Strange enough ! " said the artist to himself. 
 *' Who would have looked for a modern Pygmalion 
 in the person of a Yankee mechanic 1 " 
 
BROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE, 71 
 
 As yet, the image was but vague in its outward 
 presentment; so that, as in the cloud-shapes around 
 the western sun, the observer rather felt, or was led 
 to imagine^ than really saw what was intended by it. 
 Day by day, however, the work assumed greater 
 precision, and settled its irregular and misty outline 
 into distincter grace and beauty. The general de* 
 sign was now obvious to the common eye. It was 
 a female figure, in what appeared to be a foreign 
 dress ; the gown being laced over the bosom, and 
 opening in front so as to disclose a skirt or petti- 
 coat, the folds and inequalities of which were ad- 
 mirably represented in the oaken substance. She 
 wore a hat of singular gracefulness, and abundantly 
 laden with flowers, such as never grew in the rude 
 soil of New England, but which, with all their fan- 
 ciful luxuriance, had a natural truth that it seemed 
 impossible for the most fertile imagination to have at- 
 tained without copying from real prototypes. There 
 were several little appendages to this dress, such as 
 a fan, a pair of earrings, a chain about the neck, 
 a watch in the bosom, and a ring upon the finger, 
 dl of which would have been deemed beneath the 
 dignity of sculpture. They were put on, how- 
 ever, with as much taste as a lovely woman might 
 have shown in her attire, and could therefore have 
 shocked none but a judgment spoiled by artistic 
 rules. 
 
 The face was still imperfect ; but gradually, by 
 a magic touch, intelligence and sensibility bright- 
 ened through the features, with all the effect of 
 
72 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 light gleaming forth from within the solid oak. 
 The face became alive. It was a beautiful, though 
 not precisely regular, and somewhat haughty as- 
 pect, but with a certain piquancy about the eyes 
 and mouth, which, of all expressions, would have 
 seemed the most impossible to throw over a wooden 
 countenance. And now, so far as carving went, 
 this wonderful production was complete. 
 
 " Drowne," said Copley, who had hardly missed 
 a single day in his visits to the carver's workshop, 
 " if this work were in marble it would make you 
 famous at once ; nay, I would almost affirm that it 
 would make an era in the art. It is as ideal as an 
 antique statue, and yet as real as any lovely wom- 
 an whom one meets at a fireside or in the street. 
 But I trust you do not mean to desecrate this ex- 
 quisite creature with paint, like those staring kings 
 and admirals yonder ? " 
 
 " Not paint her ! " exclaimed Captain Hunne- 
 well, who stood by ; " not paint the figure-head of 
 the Cynosure ! And what sort of a figure should I 
 cut in a foreign port with such an unpainted oaken 
 stick as this over my prow ! She must, and she 
 shall, be painted to the life, from the topmost 
 flower in her hat down to the silver spangles on 
 her slippers." 
 
 " Mr. Copley," said Drowne, quietly, " I know 
 nothing of marble statuary, and nothing of the 
 sculptor's rules of art ; but of this wooden image, 
 this work of my hands, this creature of my heart," 
 •— and here his voice faltered and choked in a very 
 
BROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE. 73 
 
 eingular maDner, — " of this — of her — I may say 
 that I know something. A wellspring of inward 
 wisdom gushed within me as I wrought upon the 
 oak with my whole strength, and soul, and faith. 
 Let others do what they may with marble, and 
 adopt what rules they choose. If I can produce 
 my desired effect by painted wood, those rules are 
 not for me, and I have a right to disregard them." 
 
 " The very spirit of genius," muttered Copley 
 to himself. " How otherwise should this carver feel 
 himself entitled to transcend all rules, and make 
 me ashamed of quoting them ? " 
 
 He looked earnestly at Drowne, and again saw 
 that expression of human love which, in a spiritual 
 sense, as the artist could not help imagining was the 
 secret of the life that had been breathed into this 
 block of wood. 
 
 The carver, still in the same secrecy that marked 
 all his operations upon this mysterious image, pro- 
 ceeded to paint the habiliments in their proper col- 
 ors, and the countenance with nature's red and 
 white. When all was finished he threw open his 
 workshop, and admitted the towns-people to behold 
 what he had done. Most persons, at their first en- 
 trance, felt impelled to remove their hats, and pay 
 such reverence as was due to the richly dressed and 
 beautiful young lady who seemed to stand in a cor- 
 ner of the room, with oaken chips and shavings 
 scattered at her feet. Then came a sensation of 
 fear ; as if, not being actually human, yet so like 
 humanity, she must therefore be something preter- 
 
74 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 Datural. There was, in truth, an indefinable air 
 and expression that might reasonably induce the 
 query. Who and from what sphere this daughter of 
 the oak should be? The strange, rich flowers of 
 Eden on her head ; the complexion, so much deeper 
 and more brilliant than those of our native beau- 
 ties ; the foreign, as it seemed, and fantastic garb, 
 yet not too fantastic to be worn decorously in the 
 street ; the delicately wrought embroidery of the 
 skirt ; the broad gold chain about her neck ; the cu- 
 rious ring upon her finger ; the fan, so exquisitely 
 sculptured in open-work, and painted to resemble 
 pearl and ebony ; where could Drowne, in his sober 
 walk of life, have beheld the vision here so match- 
 lessly embodied ! And then her face ! In the dark 
 eyes and around the voluptuous mouth there played 
 a look made up of pride, coquetry, and a gleam of 
 mirthfuluess, which impressed Copley with the idea 
 that the image was seoretly enjoying the perplexing 
 admiration of himself and other beholders. 
 
 " And will you," said he to the carver, *' permit 
 this -masterpiece to become the figure-head of a 
 vessel ? Give the honest captain yonder figure of 
 Britannia, — it will answer his purpose far better, 
 — and send this fairy queen to England, where, 
 for aught I know, it may bring you a thousand 
 pounds." 
 
 '* I have not wrought it for money," said 
 Drowne. 
 
 ** What sort of a fellow is this ! " thought Copley. 
 " A Yankee, and throw away the chance of making 
 
BROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE. 75 
 
 his fortune ! He has gone mad ; and thence has 
 come this gleam of genius." 
 
 There was still further proof of Browne's lunacy, 
 if credit were due to the rumor that he had been seen 
 kneeling at the feet of the oaken lady, and gazing 
 with a lover's passionate ardor into the face that 
 his own hands had created. The bigots of the day 
 hinted that it would be no matter of surprise if an 
 evil spirit were allowed to enter this beautiful form 
 and seduce the carver to destruction. 
 
 The fame of the image spread far and wide. The 
 inhabitants visited it so universally that after a few 
 days of exhibition there was hardly an old man or 
 a child who had not become minutely familiar with 
 its aspect. Even had the story of Drowne's wooden 
 image ended here, its celebrity might have been 
 prolonged for many years by the reminiscences of 
 those who looked upon it in their childhood, and 
 saw nothing else so beautiful in after life. But the 
 town was now astounded by an event the narrative 
 of which has formed itself into one of the most 
 singular legends that are yet to be met with in the 
 traditionary chimney-corners of the New England 
 metropolis, where old men and women sit dreaming 
 of the past, and wag their heads at the dreamers of 
 the present and the future. 
 
 One fine morning, just before the departure of 
 the Cynosure on her second voyage to Fayal, the 
 commander of that gallant vessel was seen to issue 
 from his residence in Hanover Street. He was sty- 
 lishly dressed in a blue broadcloth coat, with gold- 
 
76 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 lace at the seams aud button-holes, an embroidered 
 scarlet waistcoat, a triangular hat, with a loop and 
 broad binding of gold, and wore a silver-hilted 
 hanger at his side. But the good captain might 
 have been arrayed in the robes of a prince or the 
 rags of a beggar, without in either case attracting 
 notice, while obscured by such a companion as now 
 leaned on his arm. The people in the street 
 started, rubbed their eyes, and either leaped aside 
 from their path, or stood as if transfixed to wood or 
 marble in astonishment. 
 
 " Do you see it ? — do you see it ? '* cried one, 
 with tremulous eagerness. " It is the very same ! " 
 
 " The same ? " answered another, who had ar- 
 rived in town only the night before. " Who do 
 you mean ? I see only a sea-captain in his shore- 
 going clothes, and a young lady in a foreign habit, 
 with a bunch of beautiful flowers in her hat. On 
 my word, she is as fair and bright a damsel as my 
 eyes have looked on this many a day ! " 
 
 " Yes ; the same ! — the very same ! " repeated 
 the- other. " Drowne's wooden image has come to 
 life!" 
 
 Here was a miracle indeed ! Yet, illuminated by 
 the sunshine, or darkened by the alternate shade of 
 the houses, and with its garments fluttering lightly 
 in the morning breeze, there passed the image 
 along the street. It was exactly and minutely the 
 Bhape, the garb, and the face which the towns-peo- 
 ple had so recently thronged to see and admire 
 Not a rich flower upon her head, not a single leaf 
 
BROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE. 77 
 
 but had had its prototype in Browne's wooden 
 workmanship, although now their fragile grace had 
 become flexible, and was shaken by every footstep 
 that the wearer made. The broad gold chain upon 
 the neck was identical with the one represented on 
 the image, and glistened with the motion imparted 
 by the rise and fall of the bosom which it decorated. 
 A real diamond sparkled on her finger. In her 
 right hand she bore a pearl and ebony fan, which 
 she flourished with a fantastic and bewitching co- 
 quetry that was likewise expressed in all her move- 
 ments as well as in the style of her beauty and the 
 attire that so well harmonized with it. The face, 
 with its brilliant depth of complexion, had the same 
 piquancy of mirthful mischief that was fixed upon 
 the countenance of the image, but which was here 
 varied and continually shifting, yet always essen- 
 tially the same, like the sunny gleam upon a bub- 
 bling fountain. On the whole, there was something 
 so airy and yet so real in the figure, and withal so 
 perfectly did it represent Browne's image, that peo- 
 ple knew not whether to suppose the magic wood 
 ptherealized into a spirit or warmed and softened 
 into an actual woman. 
 
 " One thing is certain," muttered a Puritan of 
 the old stamp, "Browne has sold himself to the 
 Bevil ; and doubtless this gay Captain Hunnewell 
 is a party to the bargain." 
 
 " And I," said a young man who overheard him, 
 " would almost consent to be the third victim, for 
 the liberty of saluting those lovely lips." 
 
78 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 "And so would I," said Copley, the painter, 
 " for the privilege of taking her picture." 
 
 The image, or the apparition, whichever it might 
 be, still escorted by the bold captain, proceeded 
 from Hanover Street through some of the cross 
 lanes that make this portion of the town so intri- 
 cate, to Ann Street, thence into Dock Square, and 
 so downward to Browne's shop, which stood just on 
 the water's edge. The crowd still followed, gath- 
 ering volume as it rolled along. Never had a 
 modern miracle occurred in such broad daylight, 
 nor in the presence of such a multitude of wit- 
 nesses. The airy image, as if conscious that she 
 was the object of the murmurs and disturbance that 
 swelled behind her, appeared slightly vexed and 
 flustered, yet still in a manner consistent with the 
 light vivacity and sportive mischief that were writ- 
 ten in her countenance. She was observed to flutr 
 ter her fan with such vehement rapidity that the 
 elaborate delicacy of its workmanship gave way, 
 and it remained broken in her hand. 
 
 Arriving at Drowne's door, while the captain 
 threw it open, the marvellous apparition paused an 
 instant on the threshold, assuming the very attitude 
 of the image, and casting over the crowd that glance 
 of sunny coquetry which all remembered on the 
 face of the oaken lady. She and her cavalier then 
 disappeared. 
 
 " Ah ! " murmured the crowd, drawmg a deep 
 breath, as with one vast pair of lungs. 
 
 " The world looks darker now that she has van- 
 ished," said some of the young men. 
 
BROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE, 79 
 
 But the aged, whose recollections dated as far 
 back as witch times, shook their heads, and hinted 
 that our forefathers would have thought it a pious 
 deed to burn the daughter of the oak with fire. 
 
 ," If she be other than a bubble of the elements," 
 exclaimed Copley, " I must look upon her face 
 again." 
 
 He accordingly entered the shop ; and there, in 
 her usual corner, stood the image, gazing at him, as 
 it might seem, with the very same expression of 
 mirthful mischief that had been the farewell look of 
 the apparition when, but a moment before, she turned 
 her face towards the crowd. The carver stood be- 
 side his creation, mending the beautiful fan, which 
 by some accident was broken in her hand.-^ But 
 there was no longer any motion in the lifelike im- 
 age, nor any real woman in the workshop, nor even 
 the witchcraft of a sunny shadow, that might have 
 deluded people*s eyes as it flitted along the street. 
 Captain Hunnewell, too, had vanished. His hoarse, 
 sea-breezy tones, however, were audible on the other 
 side of a door that opened upon the water. 
 
 " Sit down in the stern sheets, my lady," said the 
 gallant captain. " Come, bear a hand, you lubbers, 
 and set us on board in the turning of a minute- 
 glass." 
 
 And then was heard the stroke of oars. 
 
 "Drowne," said Copley, with a smile of intelli- 
 gence, "you have been a truly fortunate man. 
 
 1 A slight touch to keep in sight the mysterioiis affinity of 
 lady and image. 
 
80 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 What painter or statuary ever had such a subject ! 
 No wonder that she inspired a genius into you, and 
 first created the artist who afterwards created her 
 image." 
 
 Drowne looked at him with a visage that bore 
 the traces of tears, but from which the light of im- 
 agination and sensibility, so recently illuminating 
 it, had departed. He was again the mechanical car- 
 ver that he had been known to be all his lifetime. 
 
 " I hardly understand what you mean, Mr. Cop- 
 ley," said he, putting his hand to his brow. " This 
 image ! Can it have been my work ? Well, I 
 have wrought it in a kind of dream ; and now that 
 I am broad awake I must set about finishing yon- 
 der figure of Admiral Vernon." 
 
 And forthwith he employed himself on the stolid 
 countenance of one of his wooden progeny, and 
 completed it in his own mechanical style, from which 
 he was never known afterwards to deviate. He 
 followed his business industriously for many years, 
 acquired a competence, and in the latter part of his 
 life attained to a dignified station in the church, be- 
 ing remembered in records and traditions as Deacon 
 Drowne, the carver. One of his productions, an 
 Indian chief, gilded all over, stood during the bet- 
 ter part of a century on the cupola of the Province 
 House, bedazzling the eyes of those who looked 
 upward, like an angel of the sun. Another work 
 of the good deacon's hand — a reduced likeness ot 
 his friend Captain Hunnewell, holding a telescope 
 itnd quadrant — may be seen to this day, at the cor- 
 
BROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE. 81 
 
 ner of Broad and State Streets, serving in the use- 
 ful capacity of sign to the shop of a nautical instru- 
 ment maker. We know not how to account for the 
 inferiority of this quaint old figure as compared 
 with the recorded excellence of the Oaken Lady, 
 unless on the supposition that in every human spirit 
 there is imagination, sensibility, creative power, 
 genius, which, according to circumstances, may 
 either be developed in this world, or shrouded in a 
 mask of dulness until another state of being. To 
 our friend Drowne there came a brief season of ex- 
 citement, kindled by love. It rendered him a genius 
 for that one occasion, but, quenched in disappoint- 
 ment, left him again the mechanical carver in wood, 
 without the power even of appreciating the work 
 that his own hands had wrought. Yet, who can 
 doubt that the very highest state to which a human 
 spirit can attain, in its loftiest aspirations, is its 
 truest and most natural state, and that Drowne was 
 more consistent with himself when he wrought the 
 admirable figure of the mysterious lady, than when 
 he perpetrated a whole progeny of blockheads ? 
 
 There was a rumor in Boston, about this period, 
 that a young Portuguese lady of rank, on some oc- 
 casion of political or domestic disquietude, had fled 
 from her home in Fayal and put herself under the 
 protection of Captain Hunnewell, on board of whose 
 vessel, and at whose residence, she was sheltered 
 until a change of affairs. This fair stranger must 
 have been the original of Drowne's Wooden Im- 
 age. 
 
 6 
 
B2 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 IV. 
 HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 
 
 [The second volume of Twice- Told Tales opens 
 with four Legends of the Province House, of which 
 Howe^s Masquerade is the first. The introductory 
 sketch of the Province House is included in it. The 
 story was first published in The United States Maga- 
 zine and Democratic Review, May, 1838, when the 
 Province House was in the state described in the 
 sketch. Nothing remains of it now but a portion of 
 the exterior walls, and it is almost completely 
 hemmed in by buildings. A history of the Prov- 
 ince House and of its occupants will be found in 
 Drake's Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of 
 Boston. It would be an excellent study to expand 
 the historic allusions contained in th6 procession 
 of governors. Hawthorne has characterized these 
 personages with great precision.] 
 
 One afternoon, last summer, while walking along 
 Washington Street, my eye was attracted by a sign- 
 board protruding over a narrow archway, nearly 
 opposite the Old South Church. The sign repre- 
 sented the front of a stately edifice, which was des- 
 ignated as the " Old Province House, kept by 
 Thomas Waite." I was glad to be thus reminded of 
 a purpose, long entertained, of visiting and ram 
 
HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 83 
 
 bling over the mansion of the old royal governors 
 of .Massachusetts ; and entering the arched pas- 
 sage, which penetrated through the middle of a 
 brick row of shops, a few steps transported me 
 from the busy heart of modern Boston into a small 
 and secluded court-yard. One side of this space 
 was occupied by the square front of the Province 
 House, three stories high, and surmounted by a cu- 
 pola, on the top of which a gilded Indian was dis- 
 cernible, with his bow bent and his arrow on the 
 string, as if aiming at the weathercock on the spire 
 of the Old South. The figure has kept this atti- 
 tude for seventy years or more, ever since good 
 Deacon Drowne, a cunning carver of wood, first 
 stationed him on his long sentinel's watch over the 
 city. 
 
 The Province House is constructed of brick, 
 which seems recently to have been overlaid with a 
 coat of light-colored paint. A flight of red free- 
 stone steps, fenced in by a balustrade of curiously 
 wrought iron, ascends from the court-yard to the 
 spacious porch, over which is a balcony, with an 
 iron balustrade of similar pattern and workmanship 
 to that beneath. These letters and figures — 16 
 P. S. 79 — are wrought into the iron-work of the 
 balcony, and probably express the date of the edi- 
 fice, with the initials of its founder's name.-^ A 
 wide door with double leaves admitted me into the 
 hall or entry, on the right of which is the entrance 
 to the bar-room. 
 
 1 Peter Sargeant, a Boston merchant, who came from London 
 ta 1667, and was concerned in the overthrow of Andres. 
 
84 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 It was in this apartment, I presume, that the 
 ancient governors held their levees, with vice-regal 
 pomp, surrounded by the military men, the council- 
 lors, the judges, and other officers of the crown, 
 while all the loyalty of the province thronged to do 
 them honor. But the room, in its present condi- 
 tion, cannot boast even of faded magnificence. 
 The panelled wainscot is covered with dingy paint, 
 and acquires a duskier hue from the deep shadow 
 into which the Province House is thrown by the 
 brick block that shuts it in from Washington 
 Street. A ray of sunshine never visits this apart- 
 ment any more than the glare of the festal torches 
 which have been extinguished from the era of the 
 Revolution. The most venerable and ornamental 
 object is a chimney-piece set round with Dutch 
 tiles of blue-figured china, representing scenes from 
 Scripture ; and, for aught I know, the lady of Pow- 
 nall or Bernard may have sat beside this fireplace, 
 and told her children the story of each blue tile. 
 A bar in modern style, well replenished with decan- 
 ters, bottles, cigar-boxes, and network bags of lem- 
 ons, and provided with a beer-pump and a soda- 
 fount, extends along one side of the room. At my 
 entrance, an elderly person was smacking his lips, 
 with a zest which satisfied me that the cellars of 
 the Province House still hold good liquor, though 
 doubtless of other vintages than were quaffed by the 
 old governors. After sipping a glass of port sanga- 
 ree, prepared by the skilful hands of Mr. Thomaa 
 Waite, I besought that worthy successor and rep 
 
HOWE*S MASQUERADE, 85 
 
 resentative of so many historic personages to con- 
 duct me over their time-honored mansion. 
 
 He readily complied ; but, to confess the truth, I 
 was forced to draw strenuously upon my imagina- 
 tion, in order to find aught that was interesting in 
 a house which, without its historic associations, 
 would have seemed merely such a tavern as is usu- 
 ally favored by the custom of decent city boarders 
 and old-fashioned country gentlemen. The cham- 
 bers, which were probably spacious in former times, 
 are now cut up by partitions, and subdivided into 
 little nooks, each affording scanty room for the 
 narrow bed and chair and dressing-table of a single 
 lodger. The great staircase, however, may be 
 termed, without much hyperbole, a feature of 
 grandeur and magnificence. It winds through the 
 midst of the house by flights of broad steps, each 
 flight terminating in a square landing-place, whence 
 the ascent is continued towards the cupola. A 
 carved balustrade, freshly painted in the lower 
 stories, but growing dingier as we ascend, borders 
 the staircase with its quaintly twisted and inter- 
 twined pillars, from top to bottom. Up these 
 stairs the military boots, or perchance the gouty 
 shoes, of many a governor have trodden, as the 
 wearers mounted to the cupola, which afforded 
 ihem so wide a view over their metropolis and the 
 surrounding country. The cupola is an octagon, 
 with several windows, and a door opening upon the 
 voof. From this station, as I pleased myself with 
 imagining, Gage may have beheld his disastrous 
 
86 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 victory on Bunker Hill (unless one of the tii- 
 tnountains intervened), and Howe have marked 
 the approaches of Washington's besieging army ; 
 although the buildings, since erected in the vicinity, 
 have shut out almost every object, save the steeple 
 of the Old South, which seems almost within arm's 
 length. Descending from the cupola, I paused in 
 the garret to observe the ponderous white-oak 
 framework, so much more massive than the frames 
 of modern houses, and thereby resembling an an- 
 tique skeleton. The brick walls, the materials of 
 which were imported from Holland, and the tim- 
 bers of the mansion, are still as sound as ever ; but 
 the floors and other interior parts being greatly de- 
 cayed, it is contemplated to gut the whole, and 
 build a new house within the ancient frame and 
 brick-work. Among other inconveniences of the 
 present edifice, mine host mentioned that any jar or 
 motion was apt to shake down the dust of ages out 
 of the ceiling of one chamber upon the floor of that 
 beneath it. 
 
 We stepped forth from the great front window 
 into the balcony, where, in old times, it was doubt 
 less the custom of the king's representative to show 
 himself to a loyal populace, requiting their huzzas 
 and tossed-up hats with stately bendings of his dig- 
 nified person. In those days, the front of the Prov- 
 ince House looked upon the street ; and the whole 
 site now occupied by the brick range of stores, as 
 well as the present court-yard, was laid out in 
 grass-plats, overshadowed by trees and bordered hj 
 
HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 87 
 
 A wrought-iron fence. Now, the old aristocratic 
 edifice hides its time-worn visage behind an upstart 
 modern building; at one of the back windows I 
 observed some pretty tailoresses, sewing, and chat- 
 ting, and laughing, with now and then a careless 
 glance towards the balcony. Descending thence, 
 we again entered the bar-room, where the elderly 
 gentleman above mentioned, the smack of whose 
 lips had spoken so favorably for Mr. Waite's good 
 liquor, was still lounging in his chair. He seemed 
 to be, if not a lodger, at least a familiar visitor of 
 the house, who might be supposed to have his reg- 
 ular score at the bar, his summer seat at the open 
 window, and his prescriptive corner at the winter's 
 fireside. Being of a sociable aspect, I ventured to 
 address him with a remark, calculated to draw 
 forth his historical reminiscences, if any such were 
 in his mind ; and it gratified me to discover, that, 
 between memory and tradition, the old gentleman 
 was really possessed of some very pleasant gossip 
 about the Province House. The portion of his 
 talk which chiefly interested me was the outline of 
 the following legend. He professed to have re- 
 ceived it at one or two removes from an eye-wit- 
 ness ; but this derivation, together with the lapse 
 of time, must have afforded opportimities for many 
 variatioiffe of the narrative ; so that, despairing of 
 literal and absolute truth, I have not scrupled to 
 make such further changes as seemed conducive to 
 the reader's profit and delight. 
 
88 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 At one of the entertainments given at the Prov- 
 ince House, during the latter part of the siege of 
 Boston, there passed a scene which has never yet 
 been satisfactorily explained. The officers of the 
 British army, and the loyal gentry of the province, 
 most of whom were collected within the beleaguered 
 town, had been invited to a masked ball ; for it was 
 the policy of Sir William Howe to hide the distress 
 and danger of the period, and the desperate as- 
 pect of the siege, under an ostentation of festivity. 
 The spectacle of this evening, if the oldest mem- 
 bers of the provincial court circle might be believed, 
 was the most gay and gorgeous affair that had oc- 
 curred in the annals of the government. The brill- 
 iantly lighted apartments were thronged with fig- 
 ures that seemed to have stepped from the dark 
 canvas of historic portraits, or to have flitted forth 
 from the magic pages of romance, or at least to 
 have flown hither from one of the London theatres, 
 without a change of garments. Steeled knights of 
 the Conquest, bearded statesmen of Queen Eliza- 
 beth,^ and high-rufiled ladies of her court, were min- 
 gled with characters of comedy, such as a party- 
 colored Merry Andrew, jingling his cap and bells; 
 a Falstaff, almost as provocative of laughter as his 
 prototype ; and a Don Quixote, with a bean-pole 
 for a lance and a potlid for a shield. # 
 
 But the broadest merriment was excited by a 
 group of figures ridiculously dressed in old regi- 
 mentals, which seemed to have been purchased at 
 % military rag-fair, or pilfered from some recepta- 
 
HOWE'S MASQUERADE, 89 
 
 cle of the cast-off clothes of both the French and 
 British armies. Portions of their attire had prob- 
 ably been worn at the siege of Louisburg, and the 
 coats of most recent cut might have been rent and 
 tattered by sword, ball, or bayonet, as long ago as 
 Wolfe's victory. One of these worthies — a tall, 
 lank figure, brandishing a rusty sword of immense 
 longitude — purported to be no less a personage 
 than General George Washington ; and the other 
 principal officers of the American army, such as 
 Gates, Lee, Putnam, Schuyler, Ward, and Heath, 
 were represented by similar scarecrows. An inter- 
 view in the mock-heroic style, between the rebel 
 warriors and the British commander-in-chief, was 
 received with immense applause, which came loud- 
 est of all from the loyalists of the colony. There 
 was one of the guests, however, who stood apart, 
 eying these antics sternly and scornfully, at once 
 with a frown and a bitter smile. 
 
 It was an old man, formerly of high station and 
 great repute in the province, and who had been a 
 very famous soldier in his day. Some surprise had 
 been expressed, that a person of Colonel Joliffe's 
 known whig principles, though now too old to take 
 an active part in the contest, should have remained 
 in Boston during the siege, and especially that he 
 should consent to show himself in the mansion of 
 Sir William Howe. But thither he had come, with 
 a fair granddaughter under his arm ; and there, 
 amid all the mirth and buffoonery, stood this stern 
 old figure, the best sustained character in the mas- 
 
90 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 querade, because so well representiDg the antique 
 spirit of his native land. The other guests affirmed 
 that Colonel Joliffe's black puritanical scowl threw 
 a shadow round about him ; although in spite of his 
 Bombre influence, their gayetj continued to blaze 
 higher, like (an ominous comparison) the flickering 
 brillancy of a lamp which has but a little while to 
 burn. Elevjen strokes, full half an hour ago, had 
 pealed from the clock of the Old South, when 
 a rumor was circulated among the company that 
 some new spectacle or pageant was about to be ex- 
 hibited, which should put a fitting close to the 
 splendid festivities of the night. 
 
 " What new jest has your Excellency in hand ? '* 
 asked the Rev. Mather Byles, whose Presbyterian 
 scruples had not kept him from the entertainment. 
 " Trust me, sir, I have already laughed more than 
 beseems my cloth, at your Homeric confabulation 
 with yonder ragamuffin general of the rebels. One 
 other such fit of merriment, and I must throw off 
 my clerical wig and band." 
 
 " Not so, good Dr. Byles," answered Sir William 
 Howe ; " if mirth were a crime, you had never 
 gained your doctorate in divinity. As to this new 
 foolery, I know no more about it than yourself ; 
 perhaps not so much. Honestly now. Doctor, have 
 you not stirred up the sober brains of some of your 
 countrymen to enact a scene in our masquerade ? " 
 
 " Perhaps," slyly remarked the granddaughter 
 of Colonel Joliffe, whose high spirit had been stung 
 by many taunts against New England, — " perhaps 
 
HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 91 
 
 •re are to have a mask of allegorical figures. Vic- 
 tory, with trophies from Lexington and Bunker 
 Hill, — Plenty, with her overflowing horn, to typ- 
 ify the present abundance in this good town, — 
 and Glory, with a wred-th for his Excellency's 
 brow." 
 
 Sir William Howe smiled at words which he 
 would have answered with one of his darkest 
 frowns, had they been uttered by lips that wore a 
 beard. He was spared the necessity of a retort, 
 by a singular interruption. A sound of music was 
 heard without the house, as if proceeding from a 
 full band of military instruments stationed in the 
 street, playing, not such a festal strain as was suited 
 to the occasion, but a slow funeral march. The 
 drums appeared to be muffled, and the trumpets 
 poured forth a wailing breath, which at once hushed 
 the merriment of the auditors, filling all with won- 
 der and some with apprehension. The idea oc- 
 curred to many, that either the fuperal procession of 
 Bome great personage had halted" in front of the 
 Province House, or that a corpse, in a velvet-cov- 
 ered and gorgeously decorated coffin, was about to 
 be borne from the portal. After listening a mo- 
 ment. Sir William Howe called, in a stern voice, 
 to the leader of the musicians, who had hitherto 
 enlivened the entertainment with gay and light- 
 some melodies. The man was drum-major to one 
 »f the British regiments. 
 
 " Dighton," demanded the general, " what means 
 this foolery ? Bid your band silence that dead 
 
92 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 march ; or, by mj word, they shall have sufficient 
 cause for theu- lugubrious strains ! Silence it, sir- 
 rah ! " 
 
 " Please your Honor," answered the drum-major, 
 whose rubicund visage had lost all its color, " the 
 r.mlt is none of mine. I and my band are all here 
 together ; and I question whether there be a man 
 of us that could play that march without book. I 
 never heard it but once before, and that was at the 
 funeral of his late Majesty, King George the Sec- 
 ond." 
 
 " Well, well ! " said Sir William Howe, recover- 
 ing his composure ; " it is the prelude to some mas- 
 querading antic. Let it pass." 
 
 A figure now presented itself, but, among the 
 many fantastic masks that were dispersed through 
 the apartments, none could tell precisely from 
 whence it came. It was a man in an old-fashioned 
 dress of black serge, and having the aspect of a 
 steward, or principal domestic in the household of 
 a nobleman, or great English landholder. This 
 figure advanced to the outer door of the mansion, 
 and throwing both its leaves wide open, withdrew 
 a little to one side and looked back towards the 
 grand staircase, as if expecting some person to de- 
 scend. At the same time, the music in the street 
 mounded a loud and doleful summons. The eyes of 
 Sir William Howe and his guests being directed to 
 the staircase, there appeared, on the uppermost 
 landing-place that was discernible from the bottom, 
 several personages descending towards the door. 
 
HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 93 
 
 The foremost was a man of stem visage, wearmg a 
 steeple-crowned hat and a skullcap beneath it ; a 
 dark cloak, and huge wrinkled boots that came half- 
 way up his legs. Under his arm was a rolled up 
 banner, which seemed to be the banner of England, 
 but strangely rent and torn ; he had a sword in his 
 right hand, and grasped a Bible in his left. The 
 next figure was of milder aspect, yet full of dig- 
 nity, wearing a broad ruff, over which descended 
 a beard, a gown of wrought velvet, and a doublet 
 and hose of black satin. He carried a roll of man- 
 uscript in his hand. Close behind these two came 
 a young man of very striking countenance and de- 
 meanor, with deep thought and contemplation on 
 his brow, and perhaps a flash of enthusiasm in his 
 eye. His garb, like that of his predecessors, was 
 of an antique fashion, and there was a stain of 
 blood upon his ruff. In the same group with these 
 were three or four others, all men of dignity and 
 evident command, and bearing themselves like per- 
 sonages who were accustomed to the gaze of the 
 multitude. It was the idea of the beholders, that 
 these figures went to join the mysterious funeral 
 that had halted in front of the Province House ; 
 yet that supposition seemed to be contradicted by 
 the air of triumph with which they waved their 
 hands, as they crossed the threshold and vanished 
 through the portal. 
 
 " In the Devil's name, what is this ? " muttered 
 Sir William Howe to a gentleman beside him ; " a 
 procession of the regicide judges of King Charles 
 the martyr ? " 
 
94 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 " These," said Colonel Joliffe, breaking silence 
 almost for the first time that evening, — " these, if 
 I interpret them aright, are the Puritan governors, 
 — the rulers of the old, original democracy of Mas- 
 sachusetts. Endicott, with the banner from which 
 he had torn the symbol of subjection^^ and Win- 
 tlirop, and Sir Henry Vane, and Dudley, Haynes, 
 Bellingham, and Leverett." 
 
 " Why had that young man a stain of blood upon 
 his ruff ? " asked Miss Joliffe. 
 
 " Because, in after years,*' answered her grand- 
 father, " he laid down the wisest head in England 
 upon the block, for the principles of liberty." 
 
 "Will not your Excellency order out the 
 guard?" whispered Lord Percy, who, with other 
 British officers, had now assembled round the gen- 
 eral. " There may be a plot under this mum- 
 mery." 
 
 " Tush ! we have nothing to fear," carelessly re- 
 plied Sir William Howe. " There can be no worse 
 treason in the matter than a jest, and that some- 
 what of the dullest. Even were it a sharp and 
 bitter one, our best policy would be to laugh it off. 
 See, here come more of these gentry." 
 
 Another group of characters had now partly de- 
 scended the staircase. The first was a venerable and 
 white-bearded patriarch, who cautiously felt his way 
 downward with a staff. Treading hastily behind 
 bim, and stretching forth his gauntleted hand as if 
 
 A See Hawthorne's own story of The Red Cross in Grand- 
 father's Chair. 
 
HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 95 
 
 fco grasp the old man's shoulder, came a tall, soldier- 
 like figure, equipped with a plumed cap of steel, a 
 bright breastplate, and a long sword, which rattled 
 against the stairs. Next was seen a stout man, 
 dressed in rich and courtly attire, but not of courtly 
 demeanor ; his gait had the swinging motion of a 
 seaman's walk; and chancing to stumble on the 
 staircase, he suddenly grew wrathful, and was 
 heard to mutter an oath. He was followed by a 
 noble-looking personage in a curled wig, such as 
 are represented in the portraits of Queen Anne's 
 time and earlier ; and the breast of his coat was dec- 
 orated with an embroidered star. While advancing 
 to the door, he bowed to the right hand and to the 
 left, in a very gracious and insinuating style ; but 
 as he crossed the threshold, unlike the early Puri- 
 tan governors, he seemed to wring his hands with 
 sorrow. 
 
 "Prithee, play the part of a chorus, good Dr. 
 Byles," said Sir William Howe. " What worthies 
 are these ? " 
 
 " If it please your Excellency, they lived some- 
 what before my day," answered the Doctor ; " but 
 doubtless our friend, the Colonel, has been hand in 
 glove with them." 
 
 " Their living faces I never looked upon," said 
 Colonel Joliife, gravely ; " although I have spoken 
 face to face with many rulers of this land, and 
 shall greet yet another with an old man's blessing, 
 ere I die. But we talk of these figures. I take 
 the venerable patriarch to be Bradstreet, the last 
 
96 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 
 
 of the Puritans, who was governor at ninety, or 
 thereabouts. The next is Sir Edjnund Andros, a 
 tyrant, as any New England school-boy will tell 
 you ; and therefore the people cast him down from 
 his high seat into a dungeon. Then comes Sir 
 William Phipps, shepherd, cooper, sea-captain, and 
 governor : may many of his countrymen rise as 
 high, from as low an origin ! Lastly, you saw the 
 gracious Earl of Bellamont, who ruled us under 
 King William." 
 
 ^' But what is the meaning of it all ? " asked 
 Lord Percy. 
 
 " Now, were I a rebel," said Miss Joliffe, half 
 aloud, " I might fancy that the ghosts of these an- 
 cient governors had been summoned to form the 
 funeral procession of royal authority in New Eng- 
 land." 
 
 Several other figures were now seen at the turn 
 of the staircase. The one in advance had a 
 thoughtful, anxious, and somewhat crafty expres- 
 sion of face ; and in spite of his loftiness of man- 
 ner, which was evidently the result both of an 
 ambitious spirit and of long continuance in high 
 stations, he seemed not incapable of cringing to a 
 greater than himself. A few steps behind came an 
 officer in a scarlet and embroidered uniform, cut in 
 ft fashion old enough to have been worn by the 
 Duke of Marlborough. His nose had a rubicund 
 tinge, which, together with the twinkle of his eye, 
 might have marked him as a lover of the wine-cup 
 and good-fellowship ; notwithstanding which tokens, 
 
HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 97 
 
 he appeared ill at ease, and often glanced around 
 him, as if apprehensive of some secret mischief. 
 Next came a portly gentleman, wearing a coat of 
 shaggy cloth, lined with silken velvet ; he had 
 sense, shrewdness, and humor in his face, and a folio 
 volume under his arm ; but his aspect was that of 
 a man vexed and tormented beyond all patience and 
 harassed almost to death. He went hastily down, 
 and was followed by a dignified person, dressed in 
 a purple velvet suit, with very rich embroidery ; 
 his demeanor would have possessed much stateli- 
 ness, only that a grievous fit of the gout compelled 
 him to hobble from stair to stair, with contortions 
 of face and body. When Dr. Byles beheld this 
 figure on the staircase, he shivered as with an 
 ague, but continued to watch him steadfastly, until 
 the gouty gentleman had reached the threshold, 
 made a gesture of anguish and despair, and van- 
 ished into the outer gloom, whither the funeral 
 music summoned him. 
 
 " Governor Belcher ! — my old patron ! — in his 
 very shape and dress ! " gasped Dr. Byles. " This 
 is an awful mockery ! " 
 
 "A tedious foolery, rather," said Sir William 
 Howe, with an air of indifference. " But who 
 were the three that preceded him ? " 
 
 " Governor Dudley, a cunning politician, — yet 
 his craft once brought him to a prison," replied 
 Colonel Joliffe ; " Governor Shute, formerly a col- 
 <»nel under Marlborough, and whom the people 
 frightened out of the province ; and learned Gov* 
 7 
 
98 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 emor Burnet, whom the Legislature tormented into 
 a mortal fever." 
 
 " Methinks they were miserable men, these 
 royal governors of Massachusetts," observed Miss 
 Joliffe. " Heavens, how dim the light grows ! " 
 
 It was certainly a fact that the large lamp which 
 illuminated the staircase now burned dim and dusk- 
 ily : so that several figures, which passed hastily 
 down the stairs and went forth from the porch, ap- 
 peared rather like shadows than persons of fleshly 
 substance. Sir William Howe and his guests stood 
 at the doors of the contiguous apartments, watch- 
 ing the progress of this singular pageant, with va- 
 rious emotions of anger, contempt, or half -acknowl- 
 edged fear, but still with an anxious curiosity. The 
 shapes, which now seemed hastening to join the 
 mysterious procession, were recognized rather by 
 striking peculiarities of dress, or broad character- 
 istics of manner, than by any perceptible resem- 
 blance of features to their prototypes. Their faces, 
 indeed, were invariably kept in deep shadow. But 
 Dr. Byles, and other gentlemen who had long been 
 familiar with the successive rulers of the province, 
 were heard to whisper the name of Shirley, of 
 Pownall, of Sir Francis Bernard, and of the well- 
 remembered Hutchinson ; thereby confessing that 
 the actors, whoever they might be, in this spectral 
 march of governors, had succeeded in putting on 
 some distant portraiture of the real personages. 
 As they vanished from the door, still did these 
 shadows toss their arms into the gloom of night, 
 
HOWE'S MASQUERADE, 99 
 
 jvith a dread expression of woe. Following the 
 mimic representative of Hutchinson came a mili- 
 tary figure, holding before his face the cocked hat 
 which he had taken from his powdered head ; but 
 his epaulets and other insignia of rank were those 
 of a general officer ; and something in his mien re- 
 minded the beholder of one who had recently been 
 master of the Province House, and chief of all the 
 land. 
 
 " The shape of Gage, as true as in a looking- 
 glass ! " exclaimed Lord Percy, turning pale. 
 
 " No, surely," cried Miss Joliffe, laughing hys- 
 terically ; " it could not be Gage, or Sir William 
 would have greeted his old comrade in arms ! 
 Perhaps he will not suffer the uext to pass un- 
 challenged." 
 
 " Of that be assured, young lady," answered Sir 
 William Howe, fixing his eyes, with a very marked 
 expression, upon the immovable visage of her grand- 
 father. " I have long enough delayed to pay the 
 ceremonies of a host to these departing guests. The 
 next that takes his leave shall receive due cour- 
 tesy." 
 
 A wild and dreary burst of music came through 
 the open door. It seemed as if the procession, 
 which had been gradually filling up its ranks, were 
 now about to move, and this loud peal of the 
 wailing trumpets, and roll of the muffled drums, 
 wer« a call to some loiterer to make haste. Many 
 eyes, by an irresistible impulse, were turned upon 
 Sir William Howe, as if it were he whom the 
 
100 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 dreary music summoned to the funeral of departed 
 power. 
 
 " See ! — here comes the last ! " whispered Miss 
 Joliffe, pointing her tremulous finger to the stair- 
 case. 
 
 A figure had come into view as if descending the 
 stairs ; although so dusky was the region whence 
 it emerged, some of the spectators fancied that they 
 had seen this human shape suddenly moulding it- 
 self amid the gloom. Downward the figure came, 
 with a stately and martial tread j and reaching the 
 lowest stair was observed to be a tall man, booted 
 and wrapped in a military cloak, which was drawn 
 up around the face so as to meet the flapped brim 
 of a laced hat. The features, therefore, were com- 
 pletely hidden. But the British officers deemed 
 that they had seen that military cloak before, and 
 even recognized the frayed embroidery on the col- 
 lar, as well as the gilded scabbard of a sword 
 which protruded from the folds of the cloak, and 
 glittered in a vivid gleam of light. Apart from 
 these trifling particulars, there were characteristics 
 of gait and bearing which impelled the wondering 
 guests to glance from the shrouded figure to Sir 
 William Howe, as if to satisfy themselves that their 
 liost had not suddenly vanished from the midst of 
 them. 
 
 With a dark flush of wrath upon his brow, they 
 saw the general draw his sword and advance to 
 meet the figure in the cloak before the latter had 
 stepped one pace upon the floor. 
 
HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 101 
 
 "Villain, unmuffle yourself!" cried he. "You 
 pass no farther ! " 
 
 The figure, without blenching a hair's-breadth 
 from the sword which was pointed at his breast, 
 made a solemn pause and lowered the cape of the 
 cloak from about his face, yet not sufficiently for 
 the spectators to catch a glimpse of it. But Sir 
 William Howe had evidently seen enough. The 
 sternness of his countenance gave place to a look of 
 wild amazement, if not horror, while he recoiled 
 several steps from the figure, and let fall his sword 
 upon the floor. The martial shape again drew the 
 cloak about his features and passed on ; but reach- 
 ing the threshold, with his back towards the spec- 
 tators, he was seen to stamp his foot and shake his 
 clinched hands in the air. It was afterwards af- 
 firmed that Sir William Howe had repeated that 
 self-same gesture of rage and sorrow, when, for the 
 last time, and as the last royal governor, he passed 
 through the portal of the Province House. 
 
 " Hark ! — the procession moves," said Miss Jo- 
 liffe. 
 
 The music was dying away along the street, and 
 its dismal strains were mingled with the knell of 
 midnight from the steeple of the Old South, and 
 with the roar of artillery, which announced that the 
 beleaguering army of Washington had intrenched 
 itself upon a nearer height than before. As the 
 deep boom of the cannon smote upon his ear, Colo- 
 nel Joliffe raised himself fo the full height of his 
 aged form, and smiled sternly on the British gen- 
 eraL 
 
102 NATHANIEL HA WTHORNE. 
 
 " Would your Excellency inquire further into 
 the mystery of the pageant ? " said he. 
 
 " Take care of your gray head ! " cried Sir Wil- 
 liam Howe, fiercely, though with a quivering lip. 
 " It has stood too long on a traitor's shoulders ! " 
 
 " You must make haste to chop it off, then," 
 calmly replied the Colonel ; "for a few hours 
 longer, and not all the power of Sir William Howe, 
 nor of his master, shall cause one of these gray 
 hairs to fall. The empire of Britain, in this an- 
 cient province, is at its last gasp to-night ; almost 
 while I speak it is a dead corpse ; and methinks 
 the shadows of the old governors are fit mourners 
 as its funeral ! " 
 
 With these words Colonel Joliffe threw on his 
 cloak, and drawing his granddaughter's arm within 
 his own, retired from the last festival that a British 
 ruler ever held in the old province of Massachusetts 
 Bay. It was supposed that the Colonel and the 
 young lady possessed some secret intelligence in 
 regard to the mysterious pageant of that night. 
 However this might be, such knowledge has never 
 become general. The actors in the scene have van- 
 ished into deeper obscurity than even that wild In- 
 dian band who scattered the cargoes of the tea- 
 ships on the waves, and gained a place in history, yet 
 left no names. But superstition, among other leg- 
 ends of this mansion, repeats the wondrous tale, that 
 on the anniversary night of Britain's discomfiture, 
 the ghosts of the ancient governors, of Massachu- 
 setts still glide through the portal of the Province 
 
HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 103 
 
 House. And, last of all, comes a figure shrouded 
 in a military cloak, tossing his clinched hands into 
 the air, and stamping his iron-shod boots upon the 
 broad freestone steps with a semblance of feverish 
 despair, but without the sound of a foot-tramp. 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IRVTNG may be named as the first author in the 
 United States whose writings made a place for 
 themselves in general literature. Franklin, in- 
 deed, had preceded him with his autobiography, 
 but Franklin belongs rather to the colonial period. 
 It was under the influences of that time that his 
 mind and taste were formed, and there was a 
 marked difference between the Boston and Phila- 
 delphia of Franklin's youth and the New York of 
 Irving's time. Politics, commerce, and the rise of 
 industries were rapidly changing social relations 
 and manners, while the country was still dependent 
 on England for its higher literature. It had hardly 
 begun to find materials for literature in its own past 
 or in its aspects of nature, yet there was a very pos- 
 itive element in life which resented foreign inter- 
 ference. There were thus two currents crossing 
 each other ; the common life which was narrowly 
 American and the cultivated taste which was Eng- 
 lish, or imitative of England. Irving's first ventures, 
 .n company with his brothers and Paulding, were 
 
INTRODUCTION, 105 
 
 in the attempt to represent New York in literature 
 upon the model of contemporary or recent presen- 
 tations of London. " The town " in the minds of 
 these young writers was that portion of New York 
 society which might be construed into a miniature 
 reflection of London wit and amusement. His asso- 
 ciates never advanced beyond this stage, but with 
 Washington Irving the sketches which he wrote 
 under the signature of Jonathan Old Style and in the 
 medley of Salmagundi were only the first experi- 
 ments of a mind capable of larger things. After 
 1\nq or six years of trifling with his pen, he wrote 
 and published, in 1809,^ History of New York, hy 
 Diedrich Knickerbocker, which he began in company 
 with his brother Peter as a mere jeu d 'esprit, but 
 turned into a more determined work of humor, as 
 the capabilities of the subject disclosed themselves. 
 Grave historians had paid little attention to the 
 record of New York under the Dutch ; Irving, who 
 saw the humorous contrast between the traditional 
 Dutch society of his day and the pushing new de- 
 mocracy, seized upon the early history and made 
 it the occasion for a good-natured burlesque. He 
 shocked the old families about him, but he amused 
 everybody else, and the book going to England, 
 made his name at once known to those who had 
 the making there of literary reputations. 
 
 Irving himself was born of a Scottish father and 
 ^^nglish mother, who had come to this country only 
 twenty years before. He was but little removed, 
 therefore, from the traditions of Great Britain, and 
 
106 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 his brothers and he carried on a trading business 
 with the old country. His own tastes were not 
 mercantile, and he was only silent partner in the 
 house ; he wrote occasionally and was for a time 
 the editor of a magazine, but his pleasure was 
 chiefly in travel, good literature, and good society. 
 It was while he was in England, in 1818, that the 
 house in which he was a partner failed, and he was 
 thrown on his own resources. Necessity gave the 
 slight spur which was wanting to his inclination, 
 and he began with deliberation the career of an 
 author. He had found himself at home in Eng- 
 land. His family origin and his taste for the best 
 literature had made him English in his sympathies 
 and tastes, and his residence and travels there, the 
 society which he entered and the friends he made, 
 confirmed him in English habits. Nevertheless he 
 was sturdily American in his principles, he was 
 strongly attached to New York and his American 
 friends, and was always a looker-on in England. 
 ffis foreign birth and education gave him signifi- 
 cant advantages as an observer of English life, and 
 he at once began the writing of those papers, sto- 
 ries, and sketches which appeared in the separate 
 numbers of The Sketch Book, in Bracehridge Hall, 
 and in Tales of a Traveller, They were chiefly 
 drawn from material accumulated abroad, but an 
 occasional American subject was taken. Irving in- 
 stinctively felt that by the circumstances of the 
 time and the bent of his genius he could pursue his 
 calling more saftly abroad than at home. He re* 
 
INTRODUCTION. 107 
 
 mained in Europe seventeen years, sending home 
 his books for publication, and securing also the 
 profitable results of publication in London. Dur- 
 ing that time, besides the books above named, he 
 wrote the History of the Life and Voyages of Chris- 
 topher Columbus, the Voyages and Discoveries of the 
 Companions of Columbus, A Chronicle of the Con^ 
 quest of Granada, and The Alhaml/ra, The Span- 
 ish material was obtained while residing in Spain, 
 whither he went at the suggestion of the American 
 minister to make translations of documents relating 
 to the voyages of Columbus which had recently 
 been collected. Irving's training and tastes led 
 him rather into the construction of popular narra- 
 tive than into the work of a scientific historian, and, 
 with his strong American affections, he was quick 
 to see the interest and value which lay in the his- 
 •^^ory of Spain as connected with America. He was 
 eminently a raconteur, very skilful and graceful in 
 the shaping of old material ; his humor played 
 freely over the surface of his writing, and, with lit- 
 tle power to create characters or plots, he had an 
 unfailing perception of the literary capabilities of 
 scenes and persons which came under his observa- 
 tion. 
 
 He came back to America in 1832 with an es- 
 tablished reputation, and was welcomed enthusias- 
 tically by his friends and countrymen. He trav- 
 elled into the new parts of America, and spent ten 
 years at home, industriously working at the mate- 
 rial which had accumulated in his hanjds when 
 
108 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 abroad, and been increased during his travels in 
 the West. In this period he published Legends of 
 the Conquest of Spain ; The Crayon Miscellany^ in- 
 cluding his Tour on the Prairies, Ahhotsford and 
 Newstead Abbey ; Astoria ; a number of papers in 
 the Knickerbocker Magazine, afterwards published 
 under the title of WolferVs Roost ; and edited the 
 Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U, S. A., in the 
 Rocky Mountains and the Far West, 
 
 In 1842 he went back to Spain as American 
 minister, holding the office for four years, when he 
 returned to America, established himself at his 
 home, Sunnyside on the banks of the Hudson, and 
 remained there until his death in 1859. The fruits 
 of this final period were Mahomet and his Success- 
 ors, which, with a volume of posthumous publication, 
 Spanish Papers and other Miscellanies, completed 
 the series of Spanish and Moorish subjects which 
 form a distinct part of his writings; Oliver Gold- 
 smith, a Biography ; and finally a Life of Washing- 
 ton, which occupied the closing years of his life, — 
 years which were not free from physical suffering. 
 In this book Irving embodied his strong admiration 
 for the subject, whose name he bore and whose 
 blessing he had received as a child ; he employed, 
 too, a pen which had been trained by its labors on 
 the Spanish material, and, like that series, the work 
 is marked by good taste, artistic sense of proportion, 
 faithfulness, and candor rather than by the severer 
 work of the historian. It is a popular and fair life 
 of Washington, and account of the war for inde» 
 pendence. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 109 
 
 Irving's personal and literary history is recorded 
 in The Life and Letters of Washington Irving by 
 his nephew, Pierre M. Irving. His death was the 
 occasion of many affectionate and graceful eulogies 
 and addresses, a number of which were gathered 
 into Irvingiana : a Memorial of Washington Irving, 
 
 Rip Van Winkle and Little Britain are both from 
 The Sketch Booh 
 
RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 A. POSTHUMOUS WRITING OF DIEDRICH KNICKER. 
 BOOKER. 
 
 [DiEDRiCH Knickerbocker was a humorous 
 invention of Irving's, and his name was familiar to 
 the public as the author of A History of New Torh, 
 The History was published in 1809, but it was ten 
 years more before the first number of The Sketch 
 Booh of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., was published. 
 This number, which contained Rip Van Winkle, 
 was, like succeeding numbers, written by Irving in 
 England and sent home to America for publication. 
 He laid the scene of the story in the Kaatskills, 
 but he drew upon his imagination and the reports 
 of others for the scenery, not visiting the spot until 
 1833. The story is not absolutely new; the fairy 
 tale of The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood has the 
 same theme ; so has the story of Epimenides of 
 Crete, who lived in the sixth or seventh century 
 before Christ. He was said to have fallen asleep 
 in a cave when a boy, and to have awaked at the 
 end of fifty-seven years, his soul, meanwhile, having 
 been growing in stature. There is the legend also 
 of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, Christian mar- 
 
BIP VAN WINKLE, 111 
 
 fcyrs who were walled into a cave to which they had 
 fled for refuge, and there were miraculously pre- 
 served for two centuries. Among the stories in 
 which the Harz Mountains of Germany are so pro- 
 lific is one of Peter Klaus, a goatherd who was 
 accosted one day by a young man who silently 
 beckoned him to follow, and led him to a secluded 
 spot, where he found twelve knights playing, voice- 
 less, at skittles. He saw a can of wine which 
 was very fragrant, and, drinking of it, was thrown 
 into a deep sleep, from which he did not wake for 
 twenty years. The story gives incidents of his 
 awaking and of the changes which he found in the 
 village to which he returned. This story, which 
 was published with others in 1800, may very likely 
 have been the immediate suggestion to Irving, 
 who has taken nearly the same framework. The 
 humorous additions which he has made, and the 
 grace with which he has invested the tale, have 
 caused his story to supplant earlier ones in the pop- 
 ular mind, so that Rip Yan Winkle has passed into 
 familiar speech, and allusions to him are clearly 
 understood by thousands who have never read Irv- 
 ing's story. The recent dramatizing of the story, 
 though following the outline only, has done much 
 to fix the conception of the character. The story 
 appeals very directly to a common sentiment of 
 curiosity as to the future, which is not far removed 
 from what some have regarded as an instinct of 
 the human mind pointing to personal immortality. 
 The name Yan Winkle was happily chosen by Irv- 
 
112 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 ing, but not invented by him. The printer of the 
 Sketch Booh, for one, bore the name. The name of 
 Knickerbocker, also, is among Dutch names, but 
 Irving's use of it has made it representative. In 
 The Author's Apology, which he prefixed to a new 
 edition of the History of New York, he says : "I 
 find its very name become a ' household word,* 
 and used to give the home stamp to everything rec- 
 ommended for popular acceptation, such as Knick- 
 erbocker societies; Knickerbocker insurance com- 
 panies ; Knickerbocker steamboats ; Knickerbocker 
 omnibuses ; Knickerbocker bread and Knicker- 
 bocker ice; and .... New Yorkers of Dutch 
 descent priding themselves upon being ' genuine 
 Knickerbockers.' "] 
 
 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. Cartweight.^ 
 
 Thel 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 his- 
 torical 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 gen- 
 uine Dutch family, snugly shut up in its low-roofed farmhouse, 
 under a spreading sycamore, he looked upon it as a little clasped 
 
 1 William Cartwright, 1611-1643, was a friend and disciple ol 
 Ben Jonson. 
 
RIP VAN WINKLE. 113 
 
 volume of black-letter, and studied it with the zeal of a book- 
 worm. 
 
 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 ap- 
 pearance, but has since been completely established; and it is 
 now admitted into all historical collections, as a book of unques- 
 tionable 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 i to say that his time might have been much bet- 
 ter 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 affec- 
 tion ; yet his errors and follies are remembered " more in sorrow 
 than in anger," and it begins to be suspected that he never in- 
 tended to injure or offend. But however his memory may be 
 appreciated by critics, it is still held dear by many folk, whose 
 good opinion is 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 inmior- 
 
 1 The History of New York had given offence to many old 
 New Yorkers because of its saucy treatment of names which were 
 held in veneration as those of founders of families, and its gen- 
 eral burlesque of Dutch character. Among the critics was a 
 warm friend of Irving, Gulian C. Yerplanck, who in a dis- 
 course before the New York Historical Society plainly said: "It 
 is painful to see a mind as admirable for its exquisite perception 
 of the beautiful, as it is for its quick sense of the ridiculous, 
 wasting the richness of its fancy on an ungrateful theme, and its 
 exuberant humor in a coarse caricature." Irving took the cen- 
 sure good-naturedly, and as he read Verplanck's words just as 
 he was finishing the story of Rip Van Winkle he gave them 
 this playful notice in the introduction. 
 
 3 An oblong seed-cake, still made in New York at New Tear*! 
 limo and of Dutch ongin. 
 8 
 
114 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 laKty, almost equal to the being stamped on a Waterloo Medal, 
 »r a Queen Anne's Farthing. i 
 
 Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson 
 must remember the Kaatskill Mountains. They 
 are a dismembered branch of the great Appalach- 
 ian 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 voy- 
 ager may have descried the light smoke curling up 
 from a village, whose shingle-roofs gleam among 
 
 1 There was a popular story that only three farthings were 
 struck in Queen Anne's reign ; that two were in public keeping, 
 and that the third was no one knew where, but that its lucky 
 tinder would be able to hold it at an enormous price. As a mat- 
 ter of fact there were eight coinings of farthings in the reign of 
 Queen Anne, and numismatists do not set a high value on the 
 piece. 
 
 2 A light touch ta help the reader into a proper spirit for re» 
 leiving the tale. 
 
BIP VAN WINKLE, 115 
 
 the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland 
 melt away into the fresh green of the nearer land- 
 scape. It is a little village of great antiquity, hav- 
 ing been founded by some of the Dutch colonists in 
 the early time of the province, just about the be- 
 ginning of the government of the good Peter Stuy- 
 vesant,^ (niay he rest in peace !) and there were 
 some of the houses of the original settlers standing 
 within a few years, built of small yellow bricks 
 brought from Holland, having latticed windows and 
 gable fronts, surmounted with weather-cocks. 
 
 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 descend- 
 ant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly 
 in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuy vesant, 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, more- 
 
 1 Stuj^esant was governor of New Netherlands from 1647 to 
 1664. He plays an important part in KnickerbocJcer's History 
 of New York, as he did in actual life. Until quite recently a 
 pear tree was shown on the Bowery, said to have been planted 
 by him. 
 
 2 The Van Winkles appear in the illustrious catalogue of he- 
 roes who accompanied Stuyvesant to Fort Christina, and were 
 
 " Brimful of wrath and cabbage." 
 See History of New York, book VI. chap. viii. 
 
116 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 over, a kind neighbor, and an obedient ben-pecked 
 husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might 
 be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him 
 Buch universal popularity ; for those men are most 
 apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who 
 are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their 
 tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malle- 
 able 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-sufferiwg. A termagant wife may, therefore, 
 in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing ; 
 and if so, Eip 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, clamber- 
 ing on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on 
 liim with impunity ; and not a dog would bark at 
 !iim throughout the neighborhood. 
 
 The great error in Kip's composition was an in- 
 superable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor 
 
RIP VAN WINKLE. 117 
 
 It could not be from the want of assiduity or per- 
 severance ; 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 to- 
 gether, 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 fore- 
 most man at 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, and would go wrong, in spite of him. 
 His fences were continually falling to pieces ; his 
 cow would either go astray or get among the cab- 
 bages; 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 outdoor 
 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 
 v\ orst conditioned farm in the neighborhood. 
 
118 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 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 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 
 Jife 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 everything 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 shoul- 
 ders, 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 hen- 
 pecked husband. 
 
 Rip's sole domestic adherent was his dog Wol^ 
 
mP VAN WINKLE. 119 
 
 Jirho was as much hen-pecked as his master ; for 
 Dame Van Winkle regarded them as companions 
 in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an 
 evil eje, as the cause of his master's going so often 
 astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting 
 an honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal 
 as ever scoured the woods — but what courage can 
 withstand the ever-during 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 flour- 
 ish 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 con- 
 stant 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; 
 ind 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 that sometimes took place. 
 
120 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 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 Yan Bummel, the school-master, a dap- 
 per 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 con- 
 trolled by Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of the vil- 
 lage, and landlord of the inn, at the door of which 
 he took his seat from morning till night, just mov- 
 ing 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 anything that was read or re- 
 lated displeased him, he was observed to smoke his 
 pipe vehemently, and to send forth short, frequent, 
 and angry puffs; but when pleased, he would in- 
 hale the smoke slowly and tranquilly, and emit it 
 in light and placid clouds ; and sometimes, taking 
 the pipe from 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 vrife, who would 
 suddenly break in upon the tranquillity of the as- 
 
RIP VAN WINKLE, 121 
 
 semblage and call the members all to naught ; nor 
 was that august personage, Nicholas Vedder him- 
 self, 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 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 WoK, 
 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 reechoed with the 
 «*eports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw 
 himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, cov- 
 ered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow 
 •)f 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 
 
122 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 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 
 itseK in the blue highlands. 
 
 On the other side he looked down into a deep 
 mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bot- 
 tom 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 moun- 
 tains began to throw their long blue shadows over 
 the valleys ; he saw that it would be dark long be- 
 fore 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 round, 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 even- 
 ing 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 bend- 
 ing under the weight of something he carried on his 
 oack. He was surprised to see any human being 
 
RIP VAN WINKLE. 123 
 
 in this lonely and unfrequented place ; but suppos- 
 ing 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 
 antiquB Dutch fashion — a cloth jerkin strapped 
 round the waist — several pair 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 shoulder 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 com- 
 plied with his usual alacrity ; and mutually reliev- 
 ing one another, they clambered up a narrow gully, 
 apparently the diy 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 -con- 
 ducted. He paused for a moment, but supposing it 
 to be the muttering of one of those transient thun- 
 der-showers which often take place in mountain 
 heights, he proceeded. Passing through the ra- 
 vine, they came to a hollow, like a small amphi- 
 theatre, surrounded by perpendicular precipices, 
 over the brinks of which impending trees shot their 
 branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the 
 uzure sky and the bright evening cloud. During 
 
124 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 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 famil- 
 iarity. 
 
 On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of 
 wonder presented themselves. On a level spot in 
 the centre was a company of odd-looking person- 
 ages playing at nine-pins. They were dressed in a 
 quaint outlandish fashion ; some wore short doub 
 lets, 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 beard, 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 com- 
 mander. He was a stout old gentleman, with a 
 weather-beaten countenance ; he wore a laced doub- 
 let, 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 Shaick, the village parson, 
 which had been brought over fi-om Holland at the 
 time of the settlement. 
 
 What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that 
 
RIP VAN WINKLE. 125 
 
 fchough these folks were evidently amusing them- 
 Belves, 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 fixed, statue-like gaze, and such 
 strange, uncouth, lack-lustre countenances, that his 
 heart turned within him, and his knees smote to- 
 gether. 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 
 lie fell into a deep sleep. 
 
 On waking, he found himself on the green knoll 
 whence he had fii'st seen the old man of the glen. 
 He rubbed his eyes — it wa,^ a bright, simny mom- 
 
126 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 ing. The birds were hopping and twittering among 
 the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft, and 
 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 a keg of liquor — the moun- 
 tain ravine — the wild retreat among the rocks — 
 the woe-begone party at nine-pins — the flagon — 
 " Oh ! that flagon ! that wicked flagon ! " thought 
 Rip — " what excuse shall I make to Dame Van 
 Wmkle ? " 
 
 He looked round for his gun, but in place of the 
 clean, well-oiled fowling-piece, he found an old fire- 
 lock lying by him, the barrel incrusted with rust, 
 the lock falling off, and the stock worm-eaten. He 
 now suspected that the grave roisters of the moun- 
 tain 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 want- 
 ing 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 rheuma- 
 tism, I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van 
 
RIP VAN WINKLE. 127 
 
 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, how- 
 ever, made shift to scramble up its sides, working 
 his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, 
 and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or en- 
 tangled by the wild grapevmes that twisted theii* 
 coils or 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 air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny pre- 
 cipice ; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed 
 to look down and scoff at the poor man's perplex- 
 ities. 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 
 
128 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 of trouble and anxiety, turned his steps home- 
 ward. 
 
 As he approached the village he met a number 
 of people, but none whom he knew, which some- 
 what 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 their eyes upon him, invariably stroked 
 their chins. The constant recurrence of this gest- 
 ure 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. 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 the day before. There stood the Kaatskill 
 Mountains — there ran the silver Hudson at a dis- 
 tance — there was every hill and dale precisely aa 
 
RIP VAN WINKLE, 129 
 
 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 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 again all 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 Jona- 
 than Doolittle." Instead of the great ti;ee that used 
 lo 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 night-cap, and 
 9 
 
130 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singu- 
 lar 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 un- 
 derneath 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, in- 
 stead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tran- 
 quillity. 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 Yan Bummel, the school-mas- 
 ter, doling forth the contents of an ancient news- 
 paper. In place of these, a lean, bilious-looking 
 fellow, with his pockets full of handbills, was ha- 
 ranguing vehemently about rights of citizens — 
 elections — members of congress — liberty — Bunk- 
 er'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 an army of women and children at his heels, 
 
RIP VAN WINKLE. 131 
 
 soon attracted the attention of the tavern-politi- 
 cians. They crowded round him, eying him from 
 head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bus- 
 tled up to him, and, drawing him partly aside, in- 
 quired " 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 com- 
 prehend the question; when a knowing, self-im- 
 portant 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 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 seek- 
 ing ? The poor man humbly assured him that he 
 
132 WASHINGTON IRVING, 
 
 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, he 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." 
 
 1 On the Hudson. The place is famous for the daring assault 
 made by Mad Anthony Wayne, July 15, 1779. 
 
 2 A few miles above Stony Point is the promontory of An- 
 tony's Nose. If we are to believe Diedrich Knickerbocker, it 
 was named after Antony Van Corlear, Stuyvesant's trumpeter. 
 " It must be known, then, that the nose of Antony the Trum- 
 peter was of a very lusty size, strutting boldly from his counte- 
 nance like a mountain of Golconda Now thus it hap- 
 pened, that bright and'early in the morning the good Antony, 
 having washed his burly visage, was leaning over the quarter 
 railing of the galley, contemplating it in the glassy wave be- 
 low. Just at this moment the illustrious sun, breaking in all 
 Ills splendor from behind a high blufF of the highlands, did dart 
 one of his most potent beams full upon the refulgent nose of the 
 sounder of brass — the reflection of which shot straightway 
 down, hissing hot, into the water and killed a mighty sfurgeoi: 
 
RIP VAN WINKLE, 133 
 
 « Where 's Van Bummel, the school-master ? " 
 
 " He went off to the wars too, was a great mili- 
 tia general, and is now in Congress." 
 
 Rip's heart died away at hearing of these sad 
 changes in his home and friends, and finding him- 
 self thus alone in the world. Every answer puz- 
 zled him too, by treating of such enormous lapses 
 of time, and of matters which he could not under- 
 stand : 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 an- 
 other 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 
 
 that was sporting beside the vessel ! . . . . When this aston- 
 ishing miracle came to be made known to Peter Stuy\'esant he 
 . . . marvelled exceedingly ; and as a monument thereof, 
 he gave the name of Antony'' s Nose to a stout promontory in the 
 neighborhood, and it has continued to be called Antony's Nose 
 *ver since that time." History of New York, book VI. chap. i. 
 
134 WASHINGTON IRVING, 
 
 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 bystanders 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 in 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." 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 Gardenier." 
 
 " And your father's name? " 
 
 " Ah, poor man. Rip Yan 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 question- more to ask ; and he 
 put it with a faltering voice : — 
 
 " Where 's your mother ? " 
 
RIP VAN WINKLE. 13o 
 
 " Oh, she too had died but a short time since ; 
 she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New 
 England peddler." 
 
 There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this in- 
 telligence. 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 Yan Winkle once — old Rip Van 
 Wmkle now ! Does nobody know poor Rip Yan 
 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 mo- 
 ment, exclaimed, " Sure enough ! it is Rip Yan 
 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 re- 
 turned 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 as- 
 semblage. 
 
 It was determined, however, to take the opinion 
 
 of old Peter Yanderdonk, who was seen slowly 
 
 advancing up the road. He was a descendant of 
 
 the historian of that name,^ who wrote one of the 
 
 1 Adrian Yanderdonk. 
 
136 WASHINGTON IRVING, 
 
 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 discov- 
 erer 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 nine-pins in a hollow 
 of the mountain ; and that he himseK 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-fm-nished 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 anything els© 
 but his business. 
 
RIP VAN WINKLE, 137 
 
 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 he 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 im- 
 punity, 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 of 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, with- 
 out 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 ex- 
 pression of resignation to his fate, or joy at hia 
 deliverance. 
 
138 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 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 re- 
 cently 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 Kip had been out of his head, and 
 that this was one point on which he always re- 
 mained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, how- 
 ever, 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 nine-pins ; and it is a common wish of all hen- 
 pecked 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. Ejiickerbocker by a little Grerman superstition about the 
 Emperor Frederick der Hothbart, ^ and the Kypphaiiser moun- 
 tain; the subjoined note, however, which he 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, 
 
 1 Frederick I. of Germany, 1121-1190, called Barbarossa der Rothbart 
 ^Redbeard, or Rufus), was fabled not to have died but to have gone into 
 % long sleep, and that he would awake when Germany should need him 
 Hm Bame legend was told by the Danes of their Ilolger 
 
RIP VAN WINKLE. 139 
 
 3ut nevertheless I give it my full belief, for I know the vicinity 
 Df our old Dutch settlements to have been very subject to mar- 
 vellous 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 a 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 smnmer clouds out of cobwebs and morning 
 dew, and send them off from the crest of the mountain, flake 
 %fter flake, like flakes of carded cotton, to float in the air ; until, 
 tlissolved by the heat of the sun, they would fall in gentle show- 
 ers, causing the grass to spring, the fruits to ripen, and the com 
 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 
 Catekill Mountains, and took a mischievous pleasure in wreaking 
 all kinds of evils and vexations upon the red men. Sometimes 
 ^e would assume the form of a bear, a panther, or a deer, lead 
 
140 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 the bewildered hunter a weary chase throught angled forests and 
 among ragged rocks ; and tlien spring off with a loud ho ! ho I 
 leaving him aghast on the brink of a beetling precipice or rag- 
 ing torrent. 
 
 The favorite abode of this Manitou is still shown. It is a great 
 rock or cliff on the loneliest part 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 as mall 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 dashed to 
 pieces, and the stream made its way to the Hudson, and contin- 
 ues to flow to the present day ; being the identical stream known 
 by the name of the Kaaters-kill. 
 
 11. 
 
 LITTLE BRITAIN. 
 
 What I write is most true .... I have a whole booke of cases 
 ,ying by me which if I should sette foorth, some grave auntients 
 within the hearing of Bow bell) would be out of charity with me. 
 
 Nashe. 
 
 In the centre of the great city of London lies a 
 ^mall neighborhood, consisting of a cluster of nar- 
 row streets and courts, of very venerable and de- 
 bilitated houses, which goes by the name of Littlb 
 
LITTLE BRITAIN, 141 
 
 Britain. Christ Church School/ and St. Bar- 
 tholomew's Hospital ^ bound it on the west ; Smith- 
 field ^ and Long Lane on the north ; Aldersgate 
 Street, like an arm of the sea, divides it from the 
 eastern part of the city ; whilst the yawning gulf of 
 BuU-and-Mouth Street separates it from Butcher 
 Lane, and the regions of Newgate. Over this little 
 territory, thus bounded and designated, the great 
 dome of St. Paul's, swelling above the intervening 
 houses of Paternoster Row, Amen Corner, and Ave 
 Maria Lane, looks down with an air of motherly 
 protection. 
 
 This quarter derives its appellation from having 
 been, in ancient times, the residence of the Dukes 
 of Brittany. As London increased, however, rank 
 and fashion rolled off to the west, and trade, creep- 
 ing on at their heels, took possession of their de- 
 serted abodes. For some time Little Britain be- 
 came the great mart of learning, and was peopled 
 by the busy and prolific race of booksellers ; these 
 also gradually deserted it, and, emigrating beyond 
 the great strait of Newgate Street, settled down in 
 Paternoster Row and St. Paul's Churchyard, where 
 
 1 More accurately Christ's Hospital, popularly known as The 
 Blue Coat School, an old and famous school originally intended 
 as a home for foundlings and fatherless children. Charles Lamb 
 in Essays of Elia has eome charming papers. Recollections of 
 Christ's Hospital and Chrisfs Hospital Five and Thirty Years 
 Ago. 
 
 2 The earliest institution of the kind in London, founded in 
 1102. 
 
 * Famous as the scene of Wat Tyler's death, and of martyr- 
 doms for religion under Henry VIH., Mary, and Elizabeth. 
 
142 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 they continue to increase and multiply even at the 
 present day. 
 
 But though thus falling into decline, Little Brit- 
 ain still bears traces of its former splendor. There 
 are several houses ready to tumble down, the 
 fronts of which are magnificently enriched with old 
 oaken carvings of hideous faces, unknown birds, 
 beasts, and fishes : and fruits and flowers which it 
 would perplex a naturalist to classify. There are 
 also, in Aldersgate Street, certain remains of what 
 were once spacious and lordly family mansions, but 
 which have in latter days been subdivided into sev- 
 eral tenements. Here may often be found the 
 family of a petty tradesman, with its trumpery fur- 
 niture, burrowing among the relics of antiquated 
 finery, in great, rambling, time-stained apartments, 
 with fretted ceilings, gilded cornices, and enormous 
 marble fireplaces. The lanes and courts also con- 
 tain many smaller houses, not on so grand a scale, 
 but, like your small ancient gentry, sturdily main- 
 taining their claims to equal antiquity. These 
 have -their gable ends to the street ; great bow-win- 
 dows, with diamond panes set in lead, grotesque 
 carvings, and low arched door-ways.^ 
 
 In this most venerable and sheltered little nest 
 have I passed several quiet years of existence,^ com- 
 
 i It is evident that the author of this interesting communica- 
 tion has included, in his general title of Little Britain, many of 
 those little lanes and courts that belong immediately to Cloth 
 Fair. — Irving'' 8 Note. 
 
 2 It must be remembered that it is Geoffrey Crayon who ii 
 writing, and not Washington Irving. 
 
LITTLE BRITAIN. 148 
 
 fortably lodged in the second floor of one of the 
 smallest but oldest edifices. My sitting-room is an 
 old wainscoted chamber, with small panels, and set 
 off with a miscellaneous array of furniture. I have 
 a particular respect for three or four high-backed 
 claw-footed chairs, covered with tarnished brocade, 
 which bear the marks of having seen better days, 
 and have doubtless figured in some of the old pal- 
 aces of Little Britain. They seem to me to keep 
 together, and to look down with sovereign con- 
 tempt upon their leathern-bottomed neighbors : as 
 I have seen decayed gentry carry a high head 
 among the plebeian society with which they were 
 reduced to associate. The whole front of my sit- 
 ting-room is taken up with a bow-window, on the 
 panes of which are recorded the names of previ- 
 ous occupants for many generations, mingled with 
 scraps of very indifferent gentlemanlike poetry, 
 written in characters which I can scarcely deci- 
 pher, and which extol the charms of many a beauty 
 of Little Britain, who has long, long since bloomed, 
 faded, and passed away. As I am an idle person- 
 age, with no apparent occupation, and pay my bill 
 regularly every week, I am looked upon as the 
 only independent gentleman of the neighborhood ; 
 and, being curious to learn the internal state of a 
 community so apparently shut up within itself, I 
 have managed to work my way into all the con- 
 cerns and secrets of the place. 
 
 Little Britain may truly be called the heart's 
 •ore of the city ; the stronghold of true John Bull- 
 
144 WASHINGTON IRVING, 
 
 ism. It is a fragment of London as it was in its 
 better days, with its antiquated folks and fashions. 
 Here flourish in great preservation many of the 
 holiday games and customs of yore. The inhab- 
 itants most religiously eat pancakes on Shrove 
 Tuesday, hot^cross-buns on Good Friday, and roast 
 goose at Michaelmas ; they send love-letters on Val* 
 entine's Day, burn the pope on the fifth of Novem- 
 ber,^ and kiss all the girls under the mistletoe at 
 Christmas. Roast beef and plum-pudding are also 
 held in superstitious veneration, and port and sherry 
 maintain their grounds as the only true English 
 wines ; all others being considered vile, outlandish 
 beverages. 
 
 Little Britain has its long catalogue of city won 
 ders, which its inhabitants consider the wonders 
 of the world ; such as the great bell of St. Paul's, 
 which sours all the beer when it tolls ; the figures 
 that strike the hours at St. Dunstan's clock ; the 
 Monument ; ^ the lions in the Tower ; and the 
 wooden giants^ in Guildhall. They still believe in 
 dreams and fortune-telling, and an old woman that 
 lives in Bull-and-Mouth Street makes a tolerable 
 subsistence by detecting stolen goods, and promis- 
 ing the girls good husbands. They are apt to be 
 rendered uncomfortable by comets and eclipses ; 
 
 1 The anniversary of the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot 
 Pope's Day, as it was called, was observed in New England un 
 til near the end of the last century. 
 
 2 To commemorate the Great Fire of London, September 
 i666. 
 
 ' Known as Gog and Magog. 
 
LITTLE BRITAIN. 145 
 
 and if a dog howls dolefully at night, it is looked 
 upon as a sure sign of a death in the place. There 
 are even many ghost stories current, particularly 
 concerning the old mansion-houses ; in several of 
 which it is said strange sights are sometimes seen. 
 Lords and ladies, the former in full bottomed wigs, 
 hanging sleeves, and swords, the latter in lappets, 
 stays, hoops, and brocade, have been seen walking 
 up and down the great waste chambers, on moon- 
 light nights ; and are supposed to be the shades of 
 the ancient proprietors in their court-dresses. 
 
 Li I tie Britain has likewise its sages and great 
 men. One of the most important of the former is 
 a tall, dry old gentleman, of the name of Skryme, 
 who keeps a small apothecary's shop. He has a 
 cadaverous countenance, full of cavities and projec- 
 tions ; with a brown circle round each eye, like a 
 pair of horned spectacles. He is much thought of 
 by the old women, who consider him as a kind of 
 conjuror, because he has two or three stuffed alli- 
 gators hanging up in his shop, and several snakes 
 m bottles. He is a great reader of almanacs and 
 newspapers, and is much given to pore over alarm- 
 ing accounts of plots, conspiracies, fires, earth- 
 quakes, and volcanic eruptions ; which last phe- 
 nomena he considers as signs of the times. He has 
 always some dismal tale of the kind to deal out to 
 his customers, with their doses ; and thus at the 
 same time puts both soul and body into an uproar. 
 He is a great believer in omens and predictions ; 
 10 
 
146 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 and has the prophecies of Robert Nixon ^ and 
 Mother Shipton ^ by heart. No man can make so 
 much out of an eclipse, or even an unusually dark 
 day; and he shook the tail of the last comet over 
 the heads of his customers and disciples until they 
 were nearly frightened out of their wits. He has 
 lately got hold of a popular legend or prophecy, 
 on which he has been unusually eloquent. There 
 has been a saying current among the ancient sibyls, 
 who treasure up these things, that when the grass- 
 hopper on the top of the Exchange shook hands 
 with the dragon on the top of Bow Church steeple, 
 fearful events would take place. This strange con- 
 junction, it seems, has as strangely come to pass. 
 The same architect has been engaged lately on the 
 repairs of the cupola of the Exchange, and the 
 steeple of Bow Church ; and, fearful to relate, the 
 dragon and the grasshopper actually lie, cheek by 
 jole, in the yard of his workshop. 
 
 " Others," as Mr. Skryme is accustomed to say, 
 " may go star-gazing, and look for conjunctions in 
 the heavens, but here is a conjunction on the earth, 
 near at home, and under our own eyes, which sur- 
 passes all the signs and calculations of astrologers." 
 Since these portentous weathercocks have thus laid 
 
 1 Known as the Cheshire Idiot, a contemporary of Mother 
 Shipton, and reckoned a poet. See Memoirs of Extraordinary 
 Popular Delusions, by Charles Mackay, vol. i. pp. 196-201. 
 
 2 A woman said to have been living in Yorkshire in the time 
 of Henry VII., and to have had prophetic power. Many of her 
 prophecies, in rhyme, are in the mouths of half-educated peoplt 
 in England to-day, and their fulfilment looked for. 
 
LITTLE BRITAIN. 147 
 
 fcheir heads together, wonderful events had already 
 occurred. The good old kmg,^ notwithstanding 
 that he had lived eightj-two years, had all at once 
 given up the ghost ; another king had mounted the 
 throne ; a royal duke had died suddenly ^ — an- 
 other, in France, had been murdered ; ^ there had 
 been radical meetings in all parts of the kingdom ; 
 the bloody scenes at Manchester ; * the great plot 
 in Cato Street;^ — and, above all, the queen had 
 returned to England ! ^ All these sinister events 
 
 1 George III., who died January 29, 1820, and was succeeded 
 by George IV. 
 
 2 The Duke of Kent, who died in 1820. 
 
 8 The Duke of Berri, second in succession to the crown, who 
 was assassinated in 1820. 
 
 4 There had been a period of great suffering in England and a 
 chronic discontent at the existing order of things, when in Au- 
 gust, 1819, an immense meeting, in opposition to the govern- 
 ment, was held at Manchester. Troops were on the ground, and 
 in a sudden panic the magistrates ordered a charge which had a 
 frightful result. 
 
 5 The Cato Street Conspiracy was a plot to murder all the 
 ministers of the crown at a cabinet dinner to be held February 
 23, 1820, to fire the barracks, and make an assault upon the Bank 
 of England and the Tower. It was the scheme of a few desper- 
 ate men in the time of gi'eat popular discontent with the govern- 
 ment. 
 
 6 Caroline, queen of King George IV. She had gone to the 
 Continent in 1814, ariven there by the persecution of her hus- 
 band then Prince Regent. She returned in 1820 to vindicate 
 her rights, and all England was divided into two parties upon 
 
 he question of her innocency. A bill was introduced into Parlia- 
 \nent for her deposition as queen and her divorce from the king, 
 but finally failed. Her acquittal was followed by immense pop- 
 ular rejoicings, but her own imprudence partly cooled the public 
 sympathy, and her death, in August, 1826, shortly after the 
 king's 
 aster. 
 
148 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 are recounted by Mr. Skryme, with a mysterious 
 look, and a dismal shake of the head ; and being 
 taken with his drugs, and associated in the minds 
 of his auditors with stuffed sea-monsters, bottled 
 serpents, and his own visage, which is a title-page 
 of tribulation, they have spread great gloom through 
 the minds of the people of Little Britain. They 
 shake their heads whenever they go by Bow Church, 
 and observe, that they never expected any good to 
 come of taking down that steeple, which in old 
 times told nothing but glad tidings, as the history 
 of Whittington and his Cat bears witness. 
 
 The rival oracle of Little Britain is a substantial 
 cheesemonger, who lives in a fragment of one of 
 the old family mansions, and is as magnificently 
 lodged as a round-bellied mite in the midst of one 
 of his own Cheshires. Indeed, he is a man of no 
 little standing and importance ; and his renown ex- 
 tends through Huggin Lane, and Lad Lane, and 
 even unto Aldermanbury. His opinion is very 
 much taken in affairs of state, having read the Sun- 
 day papers for the last half century, together with 
 the " Gentleman's Magazine," Rapin's " History of 
 England," and the " Naval Chronicle." His head 
 is stored with invaluable maxims which have borne ^ 
 the test of time and use for centuries. It is his 
 firm opinion that " it is a moral impossible," so long 
 as England is true to herself, that anything can 
 shake her : and he has much to say on the subject 
 of the national debt ; which, somehow or other, he 
 proves to be a great national bulwark and blessing* 
 
LITTLE BRITAIN. 149 
 
 He passed the greater part of his life in the pur- 
 lieus of Little Britain, until of late years, when, 
 having become rich, and grown into the dignity of 
 a Sunday cane, he begins to take his pleasure and 
 see the world. He has therefore made several ex- 
 cursions to Hampstead, Highgate, and other neigh- 
 boring towns, where he has passed whole afternoons 
 in looking back upon the metropolis through a 
 telescope, and endeavoring to descry the steeple of 
 St. Bartholomew's. Not a stage-coachman of Bull- 
 and-Mouth Street but touches his hat as he passes ; 
 and he is considered quite a patron at the coach- 
 office of the Goose and Gridiron, St. Paul's Church- 
 yard. His family have been very urgent for him 
 to make an expedition to Margate, but he has great 
 doubts of those new gimcracks, the steamboats, and 
 ndeed thinks himself too advanced in life to under- 
 ^ke sea-voyages. 
 
 Little Britain has occasionally its factions and 
 divisions, and party spirit ran very high at one time 
 in consequence of two rival " Burial Societies '* 
 being set up in the place. One held its meeting 
 it the Swan and Horse Shoe,^ and was patronized 
 
 1 It is just possible that this may have been The Swan and 
 Harp. " The Mitre was a celebrated music-house in London 
 House Yard at the northwest end of St. Paul's. When it ceased 
 to be a music-house the succeeding landlord, to ridicule its for- 
 mer destiny, chose for his sign a goose stroking the bars of a 
 gridiron with his foot (The Goose and Gridiron) in ridicule of 
 the Swan and Harp, a common sign for the early music-houses. 
 Such an origin does the Tatler give ; but it may also be a ver- 
 nacular reading of the coat of arms of the Company of Musi- 
 cians, suspended probably at the door of the Mitre when it was a 
 
150 WASHINGTON IRVING 
 
 by the cheesemonger ; the other at the Cock and 
 Crown, under the auspices of the apothecary ; it is 
 needless to say that the latter was the most flourish- 
 ing. I have passed an evening or two at each, and 
 have acquired much valuable information, as to the 
 best mode of being buried, the comparative merits 
 of churchyards, together with divers hints on the 
 subject of patent-iron coffins. I have heard the 
 question discussed in all its bearings as to the le- 
 gality of prohibiting the latter on account of thejr 
 durability. The feuds occasioned by these societies 
 have happily died of late ; but they were for a long 
 time prevailing themes of controversy, the people 
 of Little Britain being extremely solicitous of fu- 
 nereal honors and of lying comfortably in their 
 graves. 
 
 Besides these two funeral societies there is a third 
 of quite a different cast, which tends to throw the 
 sunshine of good-humor over the whole neighbor- 
 hood. It meets once a week at a little old-fashioned 
 house, kept by a jolly publican of the name of 
 Wagstaff, and bearing for insignia a resplendent 
 half-moon, with a most seductive bunch of grapes. 
 The old edifice is covered with inscriptions to catch 
 the eye of the thirsty wayfarer, such as " Truman, 
 Hanbury, and Co.'s Entire," " Wine, Rum, and 
 
 music-house. These arms are, a swan with his wings expanded, 
 !nthin a double tressure, counter, flory, argent. This double 
 treesure might have suggested a gridiron to unsophisticated pass- 
 »r8-by." — The History of Signboards^ by Jacob Larwood aud 
 Tohn Camden Hotten, pp. 445, 446. 
 
LITTLE BRITAIN. 151 
 
 Brandy Vaults," " Old Tom, Rum and Compounds, 
 etc." This indeed has been a temple of Bacchus 
 and Momus from time immemorial. It has always 
 been in the family of the WagstafPs, so that its 
 history is tolerably preserved by the present land- 
 lord. It was much frequented by the gallants and 
 cavalieros of the reign of Elizabeth, and was looked 
 into now and then by the wits of Charles the 
 Second's day. But what Wagstaff principally 
 prides himself upon is, that Henry the Eighth, in 
 one of his nocturnal rambles, broke the head of one 
 of his ancestors with his famous walking-staff. This, 
 however, is considered as a rather dubious and vain- 
 glorious boast of the landlord. 
 
 The club which now holds its weekly sessions 
 here goes by the name of " The Eoaring Lads of 
 Little Britain." They abound in old catches, glees, 
 and choice stories, that are traditional in the place, 
 and not to be met with in any other part of the 
 metropolis. There is a madcap undertaker who 
 is inimitable at a merry song ; but the life of the 
 club, and indeed the prime wit of Little Britain, is 
 bully Wagstaff himself. His ancestors were all 
 wags before him, and he has inherited with the inn 
 a large stock of songs and jokes, which go with it 
 from generation to generation as heirlooms. He 
 is a dapper little fellow, with bandy legs and pot 
 belly, a red face, with a moist, merry eye, and a 
 little shock of gray hair behind. At the opening 
 of every club night he is called in to sing his 
 ^ Confession of Faith," which is the famous old 
 
152 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 drinking trowl from " Gammer Gurton's Needle." ^ 
 He sings it, to be sure, with many variations, as he 
 received it from his father's lips ; for it has been a 
 standing favorite -at the Half-Moon and Bunch of 
 Grapes ever since it was written : nay, he affirms 
 that his predecessors have often had the honor of 
 singing it before the nobility and gentry at Christ- 
 mas mummeries, when Little Britain was in all its 
 glory.^ 
 
 1 Gammer Gurton's Needle is the name of a dramatic piece 
 bv John Still, afterward Bishop of Bath and Wells, said to be 
 the second English comedy in point of time. It was written 
 about the time of Shakespeare's birth, and turns on the rustic 
 adventures of Gammer Gurton who lost her needle, — a very 
 precious piece of property in those days, — and found it finally 
 in the breeches of her man Hodge, where she had left it when at 
 her work. 
 
 2 As mine host of the Half-Moon's Confession of Faith may 
 not be familiar to the majority of readers, and as it is a specimen 
 of the current songs of Little Britain, I subjoin it in its original 
 orthography. I would observe, that the whole club always join 
 in the chorus with a fearful thumping on the table and clattering 
 3f pewter pots. W. I. 
 
 " I camiot eate but lytle meate, 
 My stomacke is not good, 
 But sure I thinke that I can drinke 
 
 With him that weares a hood. 
 Though I go bare, take ye no care, 
 
 I nothing am a colde, 
 I BtufE my Bkyn so full within, 
 Of joly good ale and olde. 
 Chorus. Backe and syde go bare, go bare, 
 Booth f oote and hand go colde, 
 But belly, God send thee good ale ynoughe 
 Whether it be new or olde. 
 
 ** I have no rost, but a nut brawne toste, 
 And a crab laid in the fyre ; 
 A little breade shall do me steade, 
 Much breade I not desyre. 
 
LITTLE BRITAIN. 153 
 
 It would do one's heart good to hear, on a club 
 night, the shouts of merriment, the snatches of song, 
 and now and then the choral bursts of half a dozen 
 discordant voices, which issue from this jovial man- 
 sion. At such times the street is lined with listen- 
 ers, who enjoy a delight equal to that of gazing 
 into a confectioner's window, or snuffing up the 
 steams of a cookshop. 
 
 There are two annual events which produce 
 great stir and sensation in Little Britain; these 
 are St. Bartholomew's Fair,^ and the Lord Mayor's 
 
 No frost nor snow, nor winde, I trowe, 
 
 Can hurte mee, if I wolde, 
 I am so wrapt and throwly lapt 
 Of joly good ale and olde. 
 Chorus. Backe and syde go bare, go bare, etc. 
 
 " And Tyb my wife, that, as her lyfe, 
 Loveth well good ale to seeke, 
 Full oft drynkes shee, tyll ye may see, 
 
 The teares run downe her cheeke. 
 Then doth she trowle to me the bowle, 
 
 Even as a mault-worme sholde. 
 And sayth, sweete harte, I took my parte 
 Of this joly good ale and olde. 
 Chorus. Backe and syde go bare, go bare, etc. 
 
 " Now let them drynke, tyll they nod and wink* 
 Even as goode fellowes sholde doe. 
 They shall not mysse to have the blisse. 
 
 Good ale doth bring men to ; ■ 
 And all poore soules that have scowred bowles 
 
 Or have them lustily trolde, 
 God save the lyves of them and their wives, 
 Whether they be yonge or olde. 
 Chorus. Backe and syde go bare, go bare," etc. 
 
 1 A famous annual fair, so called because it was kept at Bar- 
 tholomew Tide (St. Bartholomew's Day is August 24th), and 
 held within the precinct of St, Bartholomew in Smithfield. It 
 
154 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 Day. During the time of the fair, which is held in 
 the adjoining regions of Smithfield, there is nothing 
 going on but gossiping and gadding about. The 
 late quiet streets of Little Britain are overrun with 
 an irruption of strange figures and faces ; every 
 tavern is a scene of rout and revel. The fiddle 
 and the song are heard from the tap -room, morning, 
 noon, and night ; and at each window may be seen 
 some group of boon companions, with half-shut 
 eyes, hats on one side, pipe in mouth, and tankard 
 in hand, fondling, and prosing, and singing maudlin 
 songs over their liquor. Even the sober decorum 
 of private families, which I must say is rigidly kept 
 up at other times among my neighbors, is no proof 
 against this Saturnalia. There is no such thing as 
 keeping maid-servants within doors. Their brains 
 are absolutely set madding with Punch and the 
 Puppet Show ; the Flying Horses ; Signior Polito ; ^ 
 the Fire-Eater ; the celebrated Mr. Paap ; and the 
 Irish Giant. The children, too, lavish all their holi- 
 day money in toys and gilt gingerbread, and fill the 
 house" with the Lilliputian din of drums, trumpets, 
 and penny whistles. 
 
 But the Lord Mayor's Day ^ is the great anni- 
 
 was for several centuries the great Cloth Fair of England. It 
 became afterward a kind of Carnival, and finally degenerating 
 into a public nuisance, died out of public notice. 
 
 1 The showman of a menagerie of that day. 
 
 2 On the 9th of November each year the mayor of London goes 
 up to Westminster to be sworn into office. The pageant was 
 ©nee a striking and brilliant one, when it was significant of the 
 political importance of the city of London. It is still kept up 
 out is a mere mockery of its old splendor. 
 
LITTLE BRITAIN. 155 
 
 versary. The Lord Mayor is looked up to by the 
 inhabitants of Little Britain as the greatest poten- 
 tate upon earth ; his gilt coach with six horses as 
 the summit of human splendor ; and his procession, 
 with all the Sheriffs and Aldermen in his train, as 
 the grandest of earthly pageants. How they exult 
 in the idea that the King himself dare not enter 
 the city without first knocking at the gate of 
 Temple Bar, and asking permission of the Lord 
 Mayor : for if he did, heaven and earth ! there is 
 no knowing what might be the consequence. The 
 man in armor who rides before the Lord Mayor, 
 and is the city champion, has orders to cut down 
 everybody that offends against the dignity of the 
 city ; and then there is the little man with a velvet 
 porringer on his head, who sits at the window of 
 the state-coach, and holds the city sword, as long 
 as a pike-staff — Odd's blood ! If he once drawa 
 that sword, Majesty itself is not safe I 
 
 ^nder the protection of this mighty potentate, 
 therefore, the good people of Little Britain sleep in 
 peace. Temple Bar is an effectual barrier against 
 all interior foes ; and as to foreign invasion, the 
 Lord Mayor has but to throw himself into the 
 Tower, call in the train-bands, and put the standing 
 army of Beef-eaters ^ under arms, and he may bid 
 defiance to the world ! 
 
 1 The yeomen of the Royal Guard who are attached to the serv- 
 ice of the Tower are populaAy called Beef-eaters^ a corraption, 
 we are told, of buffetiers, that is, personal attendants of the sov- 
 ereign, who on high festivals were ranged near the royal side- 
 board or bufet. 
 
156 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 Thus wrapped up in its own concerns, its own 
 habits, and its own opinions. Little Britain has long 
 flourished as a sound heart to this great fungous 
 metropolis. I have pleased myself with consider- 
 ing it as a chosen spot, where the principles of 
 sturdy John BuUism were garnered up, like seed 
 corn, to renew the national character, when it had 
 run to waste and degeneracy. I have rejoiced also 
 in the general spirit of harmony that prevailed 
 throughout it; for though there might now and 
 then be a few clashes of opinion between the ad- 
 herents of the cheesemonger and the apothecary, 
 and an occasional feud between the burial societies, 
 yet these were but transient clouds, and soon 
 passed away. The neighbors met with good -will, 
 parted with a shake of the hand, and never abused 
 each other except behind their backs. 
 
 I could give rare descriptions of snug junketing 
 parties at which I have been present ; where we 
 played at All-Fours, Pope-Joan, Tom-come-tickle- 
 me, and other choice old games ; and where we 
 sometimes had a good old English country dance 
 to the tune of Sir Roger de Coverley.^ Once a 
 year, also, the neighbors would gather together, and 
 go on a gipsy party to Epping Forest.^ It would 
 
 ' In the time of Richard I. there was a Sir Roger of Calverley, 
 after whom a tune was named which was long the air of a coun- 
 try dance, which by custom was invariably made the conclusion 
 of balls. The name underwent the slight change into the form 
 which it held in Addison's time, and he and Steele at Swift's sug- 
 gestion used it as the name of the knight whose character ana 
 fortune constitute the most charming portion of The Spectator. 
 
 2 A famous royal preserve, sixteen miles from London. 
 
LITTLE BRITAIN. 157 
 
 have done any man's heart good to see the merri- 
 ment that took place here as we banqueted on the 
 grass under the trees. How we made the woods 
 ring with bursts of laughter at the songs of little 
 Wagstaff and the merry undertaker ! After din- 
 ner, too, the young folks would play at blind-man's- 
 buff and hide and-seek ; and it was amusing to see 
 them tangled among the briers, and to hear a fine 
 romping girl now and then squeak from among the 
 bushes. The elder folks would gather round the 
 cheesemonger and the apothecary, to hear them 
 talk politics ; for they generally brought out a 
 newspaper in their pockets, to pass away time in 
 the country. They would now and then, to be 
 sure, get a little warm in argument ; but their dis- 
 putes were always adjusted by reference to a 
 worthy old umbrella-maker, in a double chin, who, 
 never exactly comprehending the subject, managed 
 somehow or other to decide in favor of both par- 
 ties. 
 
 All empires, however, says some philosopher or 
 historian, are doomed to changes and revolutions. 
 Luxury and innovation creep in ; factions arise ; 
 and families now and then spring up, whose ambi- 
 tion and intrigues throw the whole system into con- 
 fusion. Thus in latter days has the tranquillity of 
 Little Britain been grievously disturbed, and its 
 golden simplicity of manners threatened with total 
 subversion by the aspiring family of a retired 
 butcher. 
 
 The family of the Lambs had long been among 
 
158 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 the most thriving and popular in the neighborhood ; 
 the Miss Lambs were the belles of Little Britain, 
 and everybody was pleased when Old Lamb had 
 made money enough to shut up shop, and put his 
 name on a brass plate on his door. In an evil 
 hour, however, one of the Miss Lambs had the 
 honor of being a lady in attendance on the Lady 
 Mayoress, at her grand annual ball, on which occa- 
 sion she wore three towering ostrich feathers on her 
 head. The family never got over it ; they were 
 immediately smitten with a passion for high life ; 
 set up a one-horse carriage, put a bit of gold lace 
 round the errand boy's hat, and have been the talk 
 and detestation of the whole neighborhood ever 
 since. They could no longer be induced to play 
 at Pope- Joan or blind-man's-buff ; they could en- 
 dure no dances but quadrilles, which nobody had 
 ever heard of in Little Britain ; and they took to 
 reading novels, talking bad French, and playing 
 upon the piano. Their brother, too, who had been 
 articled to an attorney, set up for a dandy and a 
 critic, characters hitherto unknown in these parts ; 
 and he confounded the worthy folks exceedingly by 
 talking about Kean,^ the opera, and the " Edinburgh 
 Review." 
 
 What was still worse, the Lambs gave a grand 
 ball, to which they neglected to invite any of their 
 old neighbors ; but they had a great deal of genteel 
 company from Theobald's Road, Red-Liou Square, 
 
 1 Edmund Kean, a celebrated English tragedian, who died in 
 1833. 
 
LITTLE BRITAIN. 159 
 
 and other parts towards the west. There were 
 several beaux of their brother's acquaintance from 
 Gray's Inn Lane and Hatton Garden ; and not less 
 than three Aldermen's ladies with their daughters. 
 This was not to be forgotten or forgiven. All Lit- 
 tle Britain was in an uproar with the smacking of 
 whips, the lashing of miserable horses, and the 
 rattling and the jingling of hackney coaches. The 
 gossips of the neighborhood might be seen popping 
 theii* nightcaps out at every window, watching the 
 crazy vehicles rumble by ; and there was a knot 
 of virulent old cronies, that kept a lookout from 
 a house just opposite the retired butcher's, and 
 scanned and criticised every one that knocked at 
 the door. 
 
 This dance was a cause of almost open war, and 
 the whole neighborhood declared they would have 
 nothing more to say to the Lambs. It is true that 
 Mrs. Lamb, when she had no engagements with 
 her quality acquaintance, would give little humdrum 
 tea-junketings to some of her old cronies, " quite," 
 as she would say, " in a friendly way ; " and it is 
 equally true that her invitations were always ac- 
 cepted, in spite of all previous vows to the contrary. 
 Nay, the good ladies would sit and be delighted 
 with the music of the Miss Lambs, who would con- 
 descend to strum an Irish melody for them on the 
 piano ; and they would listen with wonderful inter- 
 est to Mrs. Lamb's anecdotes of Alderman Plun- 
 ket's family, of Portsokenward, and the Miss Tim- 
 berlakes, the rich heiresses of Crutched-Friars ; but 
 
160 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 then they relieved their consciences, and averted 
 the reproaches of their confederates, by canvassing 
 at the next gossiping convocation everything that 
 had passed, and pulling the Lambs and their rout 
 all to pieces. 
 
 The only one of the family that could not be 
 made fashionable was the retired butcher himself. 
 Honest Lamb, in spite of the meekness of his name, 
 was a rough, hearty old fellow, with the voice of a 
 lion, a head of black hair like a shoe-brush, and a 
 broad face mottled like his own beef. It was in 
 vain that the daughters always spoke of him as 
 " the old gentleman," addressed him as " papa," in 
 tones of infinite softness, and endeavored to coax 
 him into a dressing-gown and slippers, and other 
 gentlemanly habits. Do what they might, there 
 was no keeping down the butcher. His sturdy nat- 
 ure would break through all their gloziDgs. He 
 had a hearty vulgar good-humor that was irrepres- 
 sible. His very jokes made his sensitive daughters 
 shudder ; and he persisted in wearing his blue cot- 
 ton coat of a morning, dining at two o'clock, and 
 having a " bit of sausage with his tea." 
 
 He was doomed, however, to share the unpopu- 
 larity of his family. He found his old comrades 
 gradually growing cold and civil to him ; no longer 
 laughing at his jokes ; and now and then throwing 
 out a fling at " some people," and a hint about 
 "quality binding." This both nettled and per- 
 plexed the honest butcher ; and his wife and daugh- 
 ters, with the consummate policy of the shrewder 
 
LITTLE BRITAIN. 161 
 
 Bex, taking advantage of the circumstance, at length 
 prevailed upon him to give up his afternoon's pipe 
 and tankard at Wagstaff's ; to sit after dinner by 
 himself, and take his pint of port — a liquor he de- 
 tested — and to nod in his chair in solitary and dis- 
 mal gentility. 
 
 The Miss Lambs might now be seen flaunting 
 along the streets in French bonnets, with unknown 
 beaux; and talking and laughing so loud that it 
 distressed the nerves of every good lady within 
 hearing. They even went so far as to attempt pat- 
 ronage, and actually induced a French dancing- 
 master to set up in the neighborhood ; but the woi> 
 thy folks of Little Britain took fire at it, and did so 
 persecute the poor Gaul that he was fain to pack 
 up fiddle and dancing-pumps, and decamp with such 
 precipitation that he absolutely forgot to pay for 
 his lodgings. 
 
 I had flattered myself, at first, with the idea that 
 all this fiery indignation on the part of the com- 
 munity was merely the overfiowing of their zeal 
 for good old English manners, and their horror of 
 innovation ; and I applauded the silent contempt 
 they were so vociferous in expressing, for upstart 
 pride, French fashions, and the Miss Lambs. But 
 I grieve to say that I soon perceived the infection 
 had taken hold ; and that my neighbors, after con- 
 demning, were beginning to follow their example. 
 I overheard my landlady importuning her husband 
 to let their daughters have one quarter at French 
 and music, and that they might take a few lessons 
 11 
 
162 WASHINGTON IRVING, 
 
 in quadrille. I even saw, in the course of a few 
 Sundays, no less than five French bonnets, pre- 
 cisely like those of the Miss Lambs, parading about 
 Little Britain. 
 
 I still had my hopes that all this folly would 
 gradually die away ; that the Lambs might move 
 out of the neighborhood ; might die, or might run 
 away with attorneys' apprentices ; and that quiet 
 and simplicity might be again restored to the com- 
 munity. But unluckily a rival power arose. An 
 opulent oilman died, and left a widow with a large 
 jointure and a family of buxom daughters. The 
 young ladies had long been repining in secret at 
 the parsimony of a prudent father, which kept 
 down all their elegant aspirings. Their ambition, 
 being now no longer restrained, broke out into a 
 blaze, and they openly took the field against the 
 family of the butcher. It is true that the Lambs, 
 having had the first start, had naturally an advan- 
 tage of them in the fashionable career. They could 
 speak a little bad French, play the piano, dance 
 quadrilles, and had formed high acquaintances ; but 
 the Trotters were not to be distanced. When the 
 Lambs appeared with two feathers in their hats, 
 the Miss Trotters mounted four, and of twice as 
 fine colors. If the Lambs gave a dance, the Trot- 
 ters were sure not to be behindhand : and though 
 they might not boast of as good company, yet they 
 had double the number, and were twice as merry. 
 
 The whole community has at length divided it- 
 self into fashionable factions, under the banners of 
 
LITTLE BRITAIN, 163 
 
 tnese two families. The old games of Pope-Joan 
 and Tom-come-tickle-me are entirely discarded ; 
 there is no such thing as getting up an honest coun- 
 try dance ; and on my attempting to kiss a young 
 lady under the mistletoe last Christmas, I was in- 
 dignantly repulsed ; the Miss Lambs having pro- 
 nounced it '* shocking vulgar." Bitter rivalry has 
 also broken out as to the most fashionable part of 
 Little Britain ; the Lambs standing up for the dig- 
 nity of Cross-Keys Square, and the Trotters for the 
 vicinity of St. Bartholomew's. 
 
 Thus is this little territory torn by factions and 
 internal dissensions, like the great empire whose 
 name it bears ; and what will be the result would 
 puzzle the apothecary himself, with all his talent 
 at prognostics, to determine ; though I apprehend 
 that it will terminate in the total downfall of genu- 
 ine John Bullism. 
 
 The immediate effects are extremely unpleasant 
 to me. Being a single man, and, as I observed be- 
 fore, rather an idle good-for-nothing personage, I 
 have been considered the only gentleman by pro- 
 fession in the place. I stand therefore in high 
 favor with both parties, and have to hear all their 
 cabinet councils and mutual backbi tings. As I am 
 too civil not to agree with the ladies on all occa- 
 sions, I have committed myself most horribly with 
 both parties, by abusing their opponents. I might 
 manage to reconcile this to my conscience, which 
 b a truly accommodating one, but I cannot to my 
 apprehension — if the Lambs and Trotters ever 
 
164 WASHINGTON IRVING, 
 
 come to a reconciliation, and compare notes, I am 
 ruined ! 
 
 I have determined, therefore, to beat a retreat 
 in time, and am actually looking out for some other 
 nest in this great city, where old English manners 
 are still kept up ; where French is neither eaten, 
 drunk, danced, nor spoken ; and where there are 
 no fashionable families of retired tradesmen. This 
 found, I will, like a veteran rat, hasten away be- 
 fore I have an old house about my ears ; bid a long, 
 though a sorrowful, adieu to my present abode, and 
 leave the rival factions of the Lambs and the Trot- 
 ters to divide the distracted empire of Little 
 Bbitaix. 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 WITH a single exception the prose writings of 
 Longfellow all belong to that period of his 
 life which was connected with his early travels in 
 Europe and the beginning of his professional career 
 as a teacher of modern literature. In 1833 he pub- 
 lished a translation of a paper on Ancient French 
 Romances by Paulin Paris, and an Essay on the 
 Moral and Devotional Poetry of Spain. A little 
 later appeared Outre-Mer. Between the publica- 
 tion of Outre-Mer and Hyperion, which appeared 
 in 1839, he contributed those papers to periodicals 
 which are included in the third volume of his col- 
 lected prose works under the title of Drift- Wood, 
 papers on Frithiofs Saga, Hawthorne's Twice- Told 
 Tales, The Great Metropolis, Anglo-Saxon Litera- 
 ture, and Paris in the Seventeenth Century, A 
 period of six years includes these writings, and it 
 was not until it closed that he began the publication 
 of original verse, his poetic work before this hav- 
 ing been in the form of translation from the French 
 ^nd Spanish. His prose writings thus precede, in 
 
166 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 time, his poetry, and they are intimately connected 
 with his personal experience and observation as a 
 traveller and student. He came back from Europe 
 freighted with memories of the Old World, and at 
 once began pouring from a full cup the generous 
 wine of foreign vineyards. Within the shelter of 
 academic life, and under the impulse of a catholic 
 zeal for literature, he eagerly offered the treasures 
 of art, legend, and history, which had been made 
 his own by the appropriating power of an apprecia- 
 tive taste, and he inclosed most of his work within 
 forms of literary art which served to give continu- 
 ity without involution. Thus Outre-Mer is a record 
 of travel, continuous in its geographical outline, 
 but separated from ordinary itineraries by noting 
 less the personal accidents of the traveller than the 
 poetic and romantic scenes which, whether in the 
 present or the past, marked the journey and trans- 
 formed it into the pilgrimage of a devotee to art. 
 In Hyperion a more deliberate romance is intended, 
 but the lights and shades of the story are height- 
 ened or deepened by the passages of travel and 
 study, which form the background from which the 
 human figures are relieved. It is interesting to ob- 
 serve how, as the writer was more withdrawn from 
 'he actual Europe of his eyes, he used the Europe 
 of his memory and imagination to wait upon the 
 movements of a profounder study, the adventures 
 of a human soul. These two books and the occa- 
 sional critical papers, are characterized by a strong 
 consciousness of literary art. Life seems alway? 
 
INTRODUCTION. 167 
 
 to suggest a book or a picture, and nature is always 
 viewed in its immediate relation to form and color. 
 There is a singular discovery of the Old World, 
 and while. European writers, like Chateaubriand for 
 example, were turning to America for new and un- 
 worn images, Longfellow, reflecting the awaking 
 desire for the enduring forms of art which his 
 countrymen were showing, eagerly disclosed the 
 treasures to which the owners seemed almost in- 
 different. It is difficult to measure the influence 
 which his broad, catholic taste and his refined 
 choice of subjects have had upon American culture 
 through the medium of these works, and that large 
 body of his poetry which draws an inspiration from 
 foreign life. In one of his prose works he makes 
 a character say, in answer to a demand for a na- 
 tional literature : — 
 
 " Nationality is a good thing to a certain extent, 
 but universality is better. All that is best in the 
 great poets of all countries is not what is national 
 in them, but what is universal. Their roots are in 
 their native soil ; but their branches wave in the 
 unpatriotic air, that speaks the same language unto 
 all men, and their leaves shine with the illimitable 
 light that pervades all lands. Let us throw all the 
 windows open ; let us admit the light and air on 
 all sides ; that we may look toward the four cor- 
 ners of the heavens, and not always in the same 
 direction." ^ It is this universality of interest 
 i^hich rendered the poet so open to the best which 
 
 ^ Kavanayh, xx. 
 
168 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 older life and literature could afford, and he frankly 
 reflected it in his writings. " As the blood of all 
 nations," he continues, " is mingling with our own, 
 so will their thoughts and feelings finally mingle in 
 our literature. We shall draw from the Germans 
 tenderness ; from the Spaniards passion ; from the 
 French vivacity, to mingle more and more with our 
 English solid sense. And this will give us univer- 
 sality so much to be desired." 
 
 Ten years elapsed after the publication of Hy- 
 perion before another, and his latest, prose work 
 appeared. During that period many of his well 
 known shorter poems had been issued and followed 
 by The Spanish Student and Evangeline, Two 
 years after the publication of this his best known 
 work, appeared Kavanagh, a Tale^ in 1849. It is 
 a prose idyll, the scene laid in a New England, pre- 
 sumably Maine, village, and the story gently reflect- 
 ing the life of a few typical characters. The style 
 is simpler than in his previous prose, and the posi- 
 tive presence of the old world life has given place 
 to a faint odor of the same which pervades the at- 
 mosphere of the book. The stormy passions of 
 life are merely hinted at in the story, while the 
 more pensive graces and romantic aspirations are 
 made to form the tints of the picture. The plot 
 IS only sketched, for it is in the sentiment of the 
 characters that the author, and consequently the 
 reader, has his real interest. The student of lit- 
 erature sees some traces in it of the influence of 
 Jean Paul Richter. It is less studied and less con- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 169 
 
 Bcious, but its material is quite as distinctly pure 
 sentiment. 
 
 With Kavanagh prose was left behind, and in- 
 deed after this the poet trod with firmer step in verse, 
 and with a more marked individuality. That is to 
 say, and the lesson is a valuable one to students, 
 so far he had been forming his work upon models 
 already created and had been advancing as a stu- 
 dent in literature while yet using creative power. 
 The long apprenticeship which he had been serving 
 to great masters was drawing to a close, and he 
 was to stand forth more distinctly as himself a 
 master. There are few examples in literature, 
 none certainly in our own, so instructive of the 
 power which comes from admiration of great work, 
 and an imitation which is not servile but fresh, en- 
 thusiastic, and with constant reference to new crea- 
 tion. The consummate mastery of poetic form 
 which displays itself in the sonnets, especially in 
 Mr. Longfellow's latest work, may be traced back 
 step by step to the patient, untiring study of the 
 earlier days. With equal truth it may be said that 
 the final exclusion of prose from his composition was 
 the result of the gradual perfection of higher forms 
 of art and the withdrawal of his attention from the 
 mere rescript of material to the creation of self- 
 contained art. The attentive reader will discover 
 how closely Kavanagh borders upon the poetic in 
 form, for it is careless of the details which give 
 richness to prose romance, and careful only of the 
 
170 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 essential facts in which poetry and prose alike are 
 concerned. 
 
 The form of Hyperion and Kavanagh renders it 
 inexpedient to select detached scenes from them. 
 The two chapters which f oUow are both from Ovirs' 
 Mer. 
 
I. 
 
 THE VALLEY OF THE LOIRE. 
 
 Je ne con^jois qu'une mani^re de voyager plus agr^ble que d'aller & 
 eheval ; c'est d'aller k pied. On part k son moment, on s'arrgte 4 saro- 
 lont^, on fait tant et si peu d'exercise qu'on veut. 
 
 Quand on ne veut qu'arriver, on pent courir en chaise de poste ; main 
 quand on veut voyager, il faut aller a pied. 
 
 BonssEAU. 
 
 In the beautiful month of October, I made a foot 
 excursion along the banks of the Loire, from Or- 
 leans to Tours. This luxuriant region is justly 
 called the garden of France. From Orleans to 
 Blois the whole valley of the Loire is one contin- 
 ued vineyard. The bright green foliage of the 
 vine spreads, like the undulations of the sea, over 
 all the landscape, with here and there a silver flash 
 of the river, a sequestered hamlet, or the towers of 
 an old chateau, to enliven and variegate the scene. 
 
 The vintage had already commenced. The peas- 
 antry were busy in the fields, — the song that 
 cheered their labor was on the breeze, and the 
 heavy wagon tottered by laden with the clusters 
 of the vine. Everything around me wore that 
 happy look which makes the heart glad. In the 
 morning I arose with the lark ; and at night I slept 
 where sunset overtook me. The healthy exercise 
 gf foot-travelling, the pure, bracing air of autumn, 
 
172 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW, 
 
 and the cheerful aspect of the whole landscape 
 about me gave fresh elasticity to a mind not over- 
 burdened with care, and made me forget not only 
 the fatigue of walking, but also the consciousness 
 of being alone. 
 
 My first day's journey brought me at evening to 
 a village, whose name I have forgotten, situated 
 about eight leagues from Orleans. It is a small, 
 obscure hamlet, not mentioned in the guide-book, 
 and stands upon the precipitous banks of a deep 
 ravine, through which a noisy brook leaps down to 
 turn the ponderous wheel of a thatch-roofed mill. 
 The village inn stands upon the highway ; but the 
 village itself is not visible to the traveller as he 
 passes. It is completely hidden in the lap of a 
 wooded valley, and so embowered in trees that not 
 a roof nor a chimney peeps out to betray its hiding- 
 place. It is like the nest of a ground-swallow, which 
 the passing footstep almost treads upon, and yet it 
 is not seen. I passed by without suspecting that a 
 village was near ; and the little inn had a look so 
 uninviting that I did not even enter it. 
 
 After proceeding a mile or two farther I per- 
 ceived, upon my left, a village spire rising over the 
 vineyards. Towards this I directed my footsteps ; 
 but it seemed to recede as I advanced, and at last 
 quite disappeared. It was evidently many miles 
 distant ; and as the path I followed descended from 
 the highway, it had gradually sunk beneath a swell 
 of the vine-clad landscape. I now found myself in 
 the midst of an extensive vineyard. It was just 
 
THE VALLEY OF THE LOIRE. 173 
 
 sunset ; and the last golden rays lingered on the 
 rich and mellow scenery around me. The peas- 
 antry were still busy at their task ; and the occas- 
 ional bark of a dog, and the distant sound of an 
 evening bell, gave fresh romance to the scene. The 
 reality of many a daydream of childhood, of many 
 a poetic revery of youth, was before me. I stood 
 at sunset amid the luxuriant vineyards of France ! 
 
 The first person I met was a poor old woman, a 
 little bowed down with age, gathering grapes into 
 a large basket. She was dressed like the poorest 
 class of peasantry, and pursued her solitary task 
 alone, heedless of the cheerful gossip and the merry 
 laugh which came from a band of more youthful 
 vintagers at a short distance from her. She was so 
 intently engaged in her work, that she did not per- 
 ceive my approach until I bade her good evening. 
 On hearing my voice, she looked up from her labor, 
 and returned the salutation ; and, on ray asking her 
 if there were a tavern or a farm-house in the neigh- 
 borhood where I could pass the night, she showed 
 me the pathway through the vineyard that led to 
 the village, and then added, with a look of curios- 
 ity, — 
 
 " You must be a stranger, sir, in these parts." 
 
 " Yes ; mf home is very far from here." 
 
 "How far?" 
 
 " More than a thousand leagues." 
 
 The old woman looked incredulous. 
 
 " I came from a distant land beyond the sea." 
 
 « More than a thousand leagues ! " at length re- 
 
174 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 peated she ; " and why have you come so far from 
 home ? " 
 
 " To travel, — to see how you live in this coun- 
 try." 
 
 " Have you no relations in your own ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I have both brothers and sisters, a father 
 and " — 
 
 " And a mother ? " 
 
 " Thank Heaven, I have/' 
 
 " And did you leave her ? " 
 
 Here the old woman gave me a piercing look of 
 reproof; shook her head mournfully, and, with a 
 deep sigh, as if some painful recollections had been 
 awakened in her bosom, turned again to her sol- 
 itary task. I felt rebuked ; for there is something 
 almost prophetic in the admonitions of the old. 
 The eye of age looks meekly into my heart ! the 
 voice of age echoes mournfully through it! the 
 hoary head and palsied hand of age plead irresist- 
 ibly for its sympathies ! I venerate old age ; and 
 I love not the man who can look without emotion 
 upon the sunset of life, when the dusk of evening 
 begins to gather over the watery eye, and the shad- 
 ows of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the 
 understanding ! 
 
 I pursued the pathway which led towards the 
 \illage, and the next person I encountered was an 
 old man, stretched lazily beneath the vines upon a 
 little strip of turf, at a point where four paths met, 
 forming a cross way in the vineyard. He was clad 
 in a coarse garb of gray, with a pair of long gai- 
 
THE VALLEY OF THE LOIRE, 175 
 
 fcers or spatterdashes. Beside him lay a blue doth 
 cap, a staff, and an old weather-beaten knapsack. 
 I saw at once that he was a foot-traveller like my- 
 self, and therefore, without more ado, entered into 
 conversation with him. From his language,' and 
 the peculiar manner in which he now and then 
 wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand, as if 
 in search of the mustache which was no longer 
 there, I judged that he had been a soldier. In this 
 opinion I was not mistaken. He had served under 
 Napoleon, and had folio-wed the imperial eagle 
 across the Alps, and the Pyrenees, and the burning 
 sands of Egypt. Like every vieille moustache, he 
 spake with enthusiasm of the Little Corporal, and 
 cursed the English, the Germans, the Spanish, and 
 every other race on earth, except the Great Nation, 
 — his own. 
 
 " I like," said he, " after a long day's march, to 
 lie down in this way upon the grass, and enjoy the 
 cool of the evening. It reminds me of the bivouacs 
 of other days, and of old friends who are now up 
 there." 
 
 Here he pointed with his finger to the sky. 
 
 *' They have reached the last etape before me, in 
 the long march. But I shall go soon. We shall 
 all meet again at the last roll-call. Sacre nom 
 de ! There 's a tear ! " 
 
 He wiped it away with his sleeve. 
 
 Here our colloquy was interrupted by the ap- 
 proach of a group of vintagers, who were returning 
 hameward from their labor. To this party I joined 
 
176 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 myself, and invited the old soldier to do the same ; 
 but he shook his head. 
 
 " I thank you ; my pathway lies in a different 
 direction." 
 
 " But there is no other village near, and the sun 
 has already set." 
 
 " No matter, I am used to sleeping on the ground. 
 Good night." 
 
 I left the old man to his meditations, and walked 
 on in company with the vintagers. Following a well- 
 trodden pathway through the vineyards, we soon 
 descended the valley's slope, and I suddenly found 
 myself in the bosom of one of those little hamlets 
 from which the laborer rises to his toil as the sky- 
 lark to his song. My companions wished me a 
 good night, as each entered his own thatch-roofed 
 cottage, and a little girl led me out to the very inn 
 which an hour or two before I had disdained to 
 enter. 
 
 When I awoke in the morning a brilliant autum- 
 nal sun was shining in at my window. The merry 
 song of birds mingled sweetly with the sound of 
 rustling leaves and the gurgle of the brook. The 
 vintagers were going forth to their toil ; the wine- 
 press was busy in the shade, and the clatter of the 
 mill kept time to the miller's song. I loitered 
 about the village with a feeling of calm delight. I 
 was unwilling to leave the seclusion of this seques- 
 tered hamlet ; but at length, with reluctant step, I 
 took the cross-road through the vineyard, and in a 
 moment the little village had sunk again, as if by 
 enchantment, into the bosom of the earth. 
 
THE VALLEY OF THE LOIRE, 177 
 
 I breakfasted at the town of Mer ; and, leaving 
 the high-road to Blois on the right, passed down to 
 the banks of the Loire, through a long, broad 
 avenue of poplars and sycamores. I crossed the 
 river in a boat, and in the after part of the day I 
 found myself before the high and massive walls of 
 the chateau of Chambord. This chateau is one of 
 the finest specimens of the ancient Gothic castle to 
 be found in Europe. The little river Cosson fills 
 its deep and ample moat, and above it the huge 
 towers and heavy battlements rise in stern and sol- 
 emn grandeur, moss-grown with age, and blackened 
 by the storms of three centuries. Within, all is 
 mournful and deserted. The grass has overgrown 
 the pavement of the courtyard, and the rude sculpt- 
 ure upon the walls is broken and defaced. From 
 the courtyard I entered the central tower, and, as- 
 cending the principal staircase, went out upon the 
 battlements. I seemed to have stepped back into 
 the precincts of the feudal ages ; and, as I passed 
 along through echoing corridors, and vast, deserted 
 halls, stripped of their furniture, and mouldering 
 silently away, the distant past came back upon me ; 
 and the times when the clang of arms, and the 
 tramp of mail-clad men, and the sounds of music 
 and revelry and wassail echoed along those high- 
 vaulted and solitary chambers ! 
 
 My third day's journey brought me to the an- 
 cient city of Blois, the chief town of the depart- 
 ment of Loire-et-Cher. This city is celebrated for 
 the purity with which even the lower classes of its 
 12 
 
178 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, 
 
 inhabitants speak their native tongue. It rises 
 precipitously from the northern bank of the Loire ; 
 and many of its streets are so steep as to be almost 
 impassable for carriages. On the brow of the hill, 
 overlooking the roofs of the city, and commanding 
 a fine view of the Loire and its noble bridge, and 
 the surrounding country, sprinkled with cottages 
 and chateaux, runs an ample terrace, planted with 
 trees, and laid out as a public walk. The view 
 from this terrace is one of the most beautiful in 
 France. But what most strikes the eye of the 
 traveler at Blois is an old, though still unfinished, 
 castle. Its huge parapets of hewn stone stand 
 upon either side of the street ; but they have walled 
 up the wide gateway, from which the colossal 
 drawbridge was to have sprung high in air, con- 
 necting together the main towers of the building, 
 and the two hills upon whose slope its foundations 
 stand. The aspect of this vast pile is gloomy and 
 desolate. It seems as if the strong hand of the 
 builder had been arrested in the midst of his task 
 by the stronger hand of death ; and the unfinished 
 fabric stands a lasting monument both of the power 
 and weakness of man, — of his vast desires, his 
 sanguine hopes, his ambitious purposes, — and of 
 the unlooked-for conclusion, where all these desires, 
 and hopes, and purposes are so often arrested. 
 There is also at Blois another ancient chateau, to 
 which some historic interest is attached, as being 
 the scene of the massacre of the Duke of Guise.^ 
 Blois was the place of meeting of the States General in 1588. 
 
THE VALLEY OF THE LOIRE 179 
 
 On the following day, I left Blois for Amboise ; 
 and, after walking several leagues along the dusty 
 highway, crossed the river in a boat to the little 
 village of Moines, which lies amid luxuriant vine- 
 yards upon the southern bank of the Loire. From 
 Moines to Amboise the road is truly delightful. 
 The rich lowland scenery, by the margin of the 
 river, is verdant even in October ; and occasionally 
 the landscape is diversified with the picturesque 
 cottages of the vintagers, cut in the rock along the 
 roadside, and overhung by the thick foliage of the 
 vines above them. 
 
 At Amboise I took a cross-road, which led me to 
 ihe romantic borders of the Cher and the chateau 
 of Chenonceau. This beautiful chateau, as well as 
 that of Chambord, was built by the gay and mu- 
 nificent Francis the First. One is a specimen of 
 strong and massive architecture, — a dwelling for 
 a warrior ; but the other is of a lighter and more 
 graceful construction, and was destined for those 
 soft languishments of passion with which the fas- 
 cinating Diane de Poitiers had filled the bosom of 
 that voluptuous monarch. 
 
 The chateau of Chenonceau is built upon arches 
 across the river Cher, whose waters are made to 
 supply the deep moat at each extremity. There is 
 a spacious courtyard in front, from which a draw- 
 bridge conducts to the outer hall of the castle. 
 
 and it was on December 23d of that year that Henry III. caused 
 the murder of the Duke of Guise, an event which grew out of the 
 violence of the religious wars of France. 
 
180 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 There the armor of Francis the First still hanga 
 upon the wall, — his shield, and helm, and lance, 
 — as if the chivalrous prince had just exchanged 
 them for the silken robes of the drawing-room. 
 From this hall a door opens into a long gallery, 
 extending the whole length of the building, across 
 the Cher. The walls of the gallery are hung with 
 the faded portraits of the long line of the descend- 
 ants of Hugh Capet ; and the windows, looking up 
 and down the stream, command a fine reach of 
 pleasant river scenery. This is said to be the only 
 chateau in France in which the ancient furniture 
 of its original age is preserved. In one part of the 
 building you are shown the bed-chamber of Diane 
 de Poitiers, with its antique chairs covered with 
 faded damask and embroidery, her bed, and a por 
 trait of the royal favorite hanging over the mantel- 
 piece. In another you see the apartment of the 
 infamous Catherine de' Medici ; a venerable arm- 
 chair and an autograph letter of Henry the Fourth; 
 and in an old laboratory, among broken crucibles, 
 and neckless retorts, and drums, and trumpets, and 
 skins of wild beasts, and other ancient lumber, of 
 various kinds, are to be seen the bed-posts of 
 Francis the First ! Doubtless the naked walls and 
 the vast solitary chambers of an old and desolate 
 chateau inspire a feeling of greater solemnity aud 
 awe ; but when the antique furniture of the olden 
 time remains, — the faded tapestry on the walls, 
 and the arm-chair by the fireside, — the effect upon 
 the mind is more magical and delightful. The old 
 
THE VALLEY OF THE LOIRE. 181 
 
 inhabitants of the place, long gathered to their 
 fathers, though living still in history, seem to have 
 left their halls for the chase or the tournament*; 
 and as the heavy door swings upon its reluctant 
 hinge, one almost expects to see the gallant princes 
 and courtly dames enter those halls again, and 
 sweep in stately procession along the silent corri- 
 dois. 
 
 Rapt in such fancies as these, and gazing on the 
 beauties of this noble edifice, and the soft scenery 
 around it, I lingered, unwilling to depart, till the 
 rays of the setting sun, streaming through the dusty 
 windows, admonished me that the day was drawing 
 rapidly to a close. I sallied forth from the south- 
 ern gate of the chateau, and, crossing the broken 
 drawbridge, pursued a pathway along the bank of 
 the river, still gazing back upon those towering 
 walls, now bathed in the rich glow of sunset, till a 
 turn in the road and a clump of woodland at length 
 shut them out from my sight. 
 
 A short time after candle-lighting I reached the 
 little tavern of the Boule d'Or, a few leagues from 
 Tours, where I passed the night. The following 
 morning was lowering and sad. A veil of mist 
 hung over the landscape, and ever and anon a 
 heavy shower burst from the overburdened clouds, 
 that were driven by before a high and piercing 
 wind. This unpropitious state of the weather de- 
 fined me until noon, when a cabriolet for Tours 
 drove up; and taking a seat within it, I left the 
 hostess of the Boule d'Or in the middle of a long 
 
182 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW, 
 
 story about a rich countess, who always alighted 
 there when she passed that way. We drove lei- 
 surely along through a beautiful country, till at 
 length we came to the brow of a steep hill, which 
 commands a fine view of the city of Tours and its 
 delightful environs. But the scene was shrouded 
 by the heavy drifting mist, through which I could 
 trace but indistinctly the graceful sweep of the 
 Loire, and the spires and roofs of the city far be- 
 low me. 
 
 The city of Tours and the delicious plain in 
 which it lies have been too often described by other 
 travellers to render a new description, from so list- 
 less a pen as mine, either necessary or desirable. 
 After a sojourn of two cloudy and melancholy days, 
 I set out on my return to Paris, by the way of 
 Vendome and Chartres. I stopped a few hours at 
 the former place, to examine the ruins of a chateau 
 built by Jeanne d'Albret, mother of Henry the 
 Fourth. It stands upon the summit of a high and 
 precipitous hill, and almost overhangs the town be- 
 neath. The French Revolution has completed the 
 ruin that time had already begun ; and nothing now 
 remains but a broken and crumbling bastion, and 
 here and there a solitary tower dropping slowly to 
 decay. In one of these is the grave of Jeanne 
 d'Albret. A marble entablature in the wall above 
 contains the inscription, which is nearly effaced, 
 though enough still remains to tell the curious trav- 
 eller that there lies buried the mother of the " Bon 
 Henri." To this is added a prayer that the repose 
 of the dead may be respected. 
 
THE JOURNEY INTO SPAIN 183 
 
 Here ended my foot excursion. The object oi 
 my journey was accomplished ; and, delighted with 
 this short ramble through the valley of the Loire, 
 I took my seat in the diligence for Paris, and on 
 the following day was again swallowed up in the 
 crowds of the metropolis, like a dr.op in the bosom 
 of the sea. 
 
 11. 
 THE JOURNEY INTO SPAIN. 
 
 A Piflsue de I'yver que le joly temps de primav6re commence, et 
 ^u'oii voit arbres verdoyer, fleure espanouir, et qu'on oit les oisillons 
 chanter en toute joie et doulceur, tant que les yerts bocages reten- 
 tissent de leurs sons et que coeurs tristes pensifs y dolens s'en esjouia- 
 sent, s'^meuyent k delaisser deuil et toute tristesse, et se parforcent k 
 Taloir mieux. 
 
 La Plaisante Histoieb db Guerin de Monqlave. 
 
 Soft-breathing Spring! how many pleasant 
 thoughts, how many delightful recollections, does 
 thy name awaken in the mind of a traveller ! 
 Whether he has followed thee by the banks of the 
 Loire or the Guadalquivir, or traced thy footsteps 
 slowly climbing the sunny slope of Alp or Apen- 
 nine, the thought of thee shall summon up sweet 
 visions of the 'past, and thy golden sunshine and 
 Boft vapory atmosphere become a portion of his 
 day-dreams and of him. Sweet images of thee, 
 and scenes that have oft inspired the poet's song, 
 shall mingle in his recollections of the past. The 
 
184 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 shooting of the tender leaf, — the sweetness and 
 elasticity of the air, — the blue sky, — the fleet- 
 drifting cloud, — and the flocks of wild fowl wheel- 
 ing in long-drawn phalanx through the air, and 
 screaming from their dizzy height, — all these shall 
 paiss like a dream before his imagination, 
 
 " And gently o'er his memory come at times 
 A glimpse of joys that had their birth in thee, 
 Like a brief strain of some forgotten tune." 
 
 It was at the opening of this delightful season of 
 the year that I passed through the South of France, 
 and took the road of St. Jean de Luz for the Span- 
 ish frontier. I left Bordeaux amid all the noise 
 and gayety of the last scene of Carnival. The 
 streets and public walks of the city were full of 
 merry groups in masks, — at every corner crowds 
 were listening to the discordant music of the 
 wandering ballad-singer ; and grotesque figures, 
 mounted on high stilts, and dressed in the garb of 
 the peasants of the Landes of Gascony, were stalk- 
 ing up and down like so many long-legged cranes ; 
 others were amusing themselves with the tricks 
 and grimaces of little monkeys, disguised like little 
 men, bowing to the ladies, and figuring away in red 
 coats and ruffles ; and here and there a band of 
 chimney-sweeps were staring in stupid wonder at 
 the miracles of a showman's box. In a word, all 
 was so full of mirth and merrimake, that even beg- 
 gary seemed to have forgotten that it was wretched, 
 and gloried in the ragged masquerade of one poor 
 holiday. 
 
THE JOURNEY INTO SPAIN. 185 
 
 To this scene of noise and gayety succeeded the 
 silence and solitude of the Landes of Gascony. 
 The road from Bordeaux to Bayonne winds along 
 through immense pine forests and sandy plains, 
 spotted here and there with a dingy little hovel, 
 and the silence is interrupted only by the dismal 
 hollow roar of the wind among the melancholy and 
 majestic pines. Occasionally, however, the way is 
 enlivened by a market-town or a straggling village ; 
 and I still recollect the feelings of delight which I 
 experienced, when, just after sunset, we passed 
 through the romantic town of Eoquefort, built upon 
 the sides of the green valley of the Douze, which 
 has scooped out a verdant hollow for it to nestle in, 
 amid those barren tracts of sand. 
 
 On leaving Bayonne the scene assumes a char- 
 acter of greater beauty and sublimity. To the vast 
 forests of the Landes of Gascony succeeds a scene 
 of picturesque beauty, delightful to the traveller's 
 eye. Before him rise the snowy Pyrenees, — a 
 long line of undulating hills, — 
 
 ^ " Bounded afar by peak aspiring bold, 
 
 Like giant capped with helm of burnished gold." 
 
 To the left, as far as the eye can reach, stretch the 
 delicious valleys of the Nive and A dour ; and to 
 the right the sea flashes along the pebbly margin 
 of its silver beach, forming a thousand little bays 
 and inlets, or comes tumbling in among the cliffs 
 of a rock-bound coast, and beats against its massive 
 barriers with a distant, hollow, continual roar. 
 Should these pages meet the eye of any solitary 
 
186 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW, 
 
 traveller who is journeying into Spain by the road 
 I here speak of, 1 would advise him to travel from 
 Bayonne to St. Jean de Luz on horseback. At the 
 gate of Bayonne he will find a steed ready capari- 
 soned for him, with a dark-eyed Basque girl for his 
 companion and guide, who is to sit beside him upon 
 the same horse. This style of travelling is, I be- 
 lieve, peculiar to the Basque provinces ; at all 
 events, I have seen it nowhere else. The saddle 
 is constructed with a large frame-work extending 
 on each side, and covered with cushions ; and the 
 traveller and liis guide, being placed on the opposite 
 extremities, serve as a balance to each other. We 
 overtook many travellers mounted in this way, and 
 I could not help thinking it a mode of travelling 
 far preferable to being cooped up in a diligence. 
 The Bascpie girls are generally beautiful ; and there 
 was one of these merry guides we met upon the 
 road to Bidart whose image haunts me still. She 
 had large and expressive black eyes, teeth like 
 pearls, a rich and sunburnt complexion, and hair 
 of a glossy blackness, parted on the forehead, and 
 falling down behind in a large braid, so long as 
 almost to touch the ground with the little ribbon 
 that confined it at the end. She wore the common 
 dress of the peasantry of the South of France, and 
 a large gypsy straw hat was thrown back over her 
 shoulder, and tied by a ribbon about her neck. 
 There was hardly a dusty traveller in the coach 
 who did not envy her companion the seat he occu? 
 pied beside her. 
 
THE JOURNEY INTO SPAIN. 187 
 
 Just at nightfall we entered the town of St. Jean 
 ae Luz, and dashed down its narrow streets at full 
 gallop. The little madcap postilion cracked his 
 knotted whip incessantly, and the sound echoed 
 back from the high dingy walls like the report of 
 a pistol. The coach-wheels nearly touched the 
 houses on each side of us ; the idlers in the street 
 jumped right and left to save themselves ; window- 
 shutters flew open in all directions ; a thousand 
 heads popped out from cellar and upper story ; 
 " Sacr-r-re matin ! " shouted the postilion, — and 
 we rattled on like an earthquake. 
 
 St. Jean de Luz is a smoky little fishing town, 
 situated on the low grounds at the mouth of the 
 Nivelle, and a bridge connects it with the faubourg 
 of Sibourne, which stands on the opposite bank of 
 the river. I had no time, however, to note the 
 peculiarities of the place, for I was whirled out of 
 it with the same speed and confusion with which I 
 had been whirled in, and I can only recollect the 
 sweep of the road across the Nivelle, — the church 
 of Sibourne by the water's edge, — the narrow 
 streets, — the smoky-looking houses with red win- 
 dow-shutters, and " a very ancient and fish-like 
 smell." 
 
 I passed by moonlight the Jittle river Bidasoa, 
 which forms the boundary between France and 
 Spain ; and when the morning broke, found myself 
 far up among the mountains of San Salvador, the 
 most westerly links of the great Pyrenean chain. 
 The mountains around me were neither rufif^ed noi 
 
188 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 precipitous, but they rose one above another in a 
 long, majestic swell, and the trace of the plough- 
 share was occasionally visible to their summits. 
 They seemed entirely destitute of trees ; and as 
 the season of vegetation had not yet commenced, 
 their huge outlines lay black, and barren, and deso- 
 late against the sky. But it was a glorious morn- 
 ing, and the sun rose up into a cloudless heaven, 
 and poured a flood of gorgeous splendor over the 
 mountain landscape, as if proud of the realm he 
 shone upon. The scene was enlivened by the 
 dashing of a swollen mountain-brook, whose course 
 we followed for miles down the valley, as it leaped 
 onward to its journey's end, now breaking into a 
 white cascade, and now foaming and chafing be- 
 neath a rustic bridge. Now and then we drove 
 through a dilapidated town, with a group of idlers 
 at every corner, wrapped in tattered brown cloaks, 
 and smoking their little paper cigars in the sun ; 
 then would succeed a desolate tract of country, 
 cheered only by the tinkle of a mule-bell, or the 
 song of a muleteer ; then we would meet a solitary 
 traveller mounted on horseback, and wrapped in 
 the ample folds of his cloak, with a gun hanging 
 a I the pommel of his saddle. Occasionally, too, 
 among the bleak, inhospitable hills, we passed a 
 rude little chapel, with a cluster of ruined cottages 
 around it ; and whenever our carriage stopped at 
 the relay, or loitered slowly up the hillside, a crowd 
 of children would gather around us, with little im- 
 ages and crucifixes for sale, curiously ornamented 
 with ribbons and bits of tawdry finery. 
 
THE JOURNEY INTO SPAIN. i59 
 
 A day's journey from the frontier brought us to 
 Vitoria, where the diligence stopped for the night. 
 I spent the scanty remnant of daylight in rambling 
 about the streets of the city, with no other guide 
 than the whim of the moment. Now I plunged 
 down a dark and narrow alley, now emerged into 
 a wide street or a spacious market-place, and now 
 aroused the drowsy echoes of a church or cloister 
 with the sound of my intruding footsteps. But de- 
 scriptions of churches and public squares are dull 
 and tedious matters for those readers who are in 
 search of amusement, and not of instruction ; and 
 if any one has accompanied me thus far on my 
 fatiguing journey towards the Spanish capital, I 
 will readily excuse him from the toil of an evening 
 ramble through the streets of Vitoria. 
 
 On the following morning we left the town, long 
 before daybreak, and during our forenoon's journey 
 the postilion drew up at an inn, on the southern 
 slope of the Sierra de San Lorenzo, in the province 
 of Old Castile. The house was an old, dilapidated 
 tenement, built of rough stone, and coarsely plas- 
 tered upon the outside. The tiled roof had long 
 been the sport of wind and rain, the motley coat of 
 plaster was broken and time-worn, and the whole 
 building sadly out of repair ; though the fanciful 
 mouldings under the eaves, and the curiously 
 carved wood-work that supported the little balcony 
 over th« principal entrance, spoke of better days 
 gone by. The whole building reminded me of a 
 dilapidated Spanish Don, down at the heel and out 
 
190 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Bt elbows; but with here and there a remnant of 
 former magnificence peeping through the loopholes 
 of his tattered cloak. 
 
 A wide gateway ushered the traveller into the 
 interior of the building, and conducted him to a 
 low -roofed apartment, paved with round stones, 
 and serving both as a courtyard and a stable. It 
 seemed to be a neutral ground for man and beast, 
 — a little republic, where horse and rider had com- 
 mon privileges, and mule and muleteer lay cheek 
 by jowl. In one corner a poor jackass was pa- 
 tiently devouring a bundle of musty straw, — in 
 another, its master lay sound asleep, with his sad- 
 dle-cloth for a pillow ; here a group of muleteers 
 were quarrelling over a pack of dirty cards, — and 
 there the village barber, with a self-important air, 
 stood laving the Alcalde's chin from the helmet of 
 Mambrino. On the wall, a little taper glimmered 
 feebly before an image of St. Anthony; directly 
 opposite these a leathern wine-bottle hung by the 
 neck from a pair of ox-horns ; and the pavement 
 below was covered with a curious medley of boxes, 
 and bags, and cloaks, and pack-saddles, and sacks 
 of grain, and skins of wine, and all kinds of lum- 
 ber. 
 
 A small door upon the right led us into the inn- 
 kitchen. It was a room about ten feet square, and 
 literally all chimney ; for the hearth was in the 
 centre of the floor, and the walls sloped upward in 
 the form of a long, narrow pyramid, with an open- 
 ing at the top for the escape of the smoke. Quite 
 
THE JOURNEY INTO SPAIN. 191 
 
 round this little room ran a row of benches, upon 
 which sat one or two grave personages smoking 
 paper cigars. Upon the hearth blazed a handfulof 
 fagots, whose bright flame danced merrily among a 
 motley congregation of pots and kettles, and a long 
 wreath of smoke wound lazily up through the huge 
 tunnel of the roof above. The walls were black 
 with soot, and ornamented with sundry legs of 
 bacon and festoons of sausages ; and as there were 
 no windows in this dingy abode, the only light 
 which cheered the darkness within, came flickering 
 from the fire upon the hearth, and the smoky sun- 
 beams that peeped down the long-necked chimney. 
 I had not been long seated by the fire, when the 
 tinkling of mule-bells, the clatter of hoofs, and the 
 hoarse voice of a muleteer in the outer apartment, 
 announced the arrival of new guests. A few mo- 
 ments afterward the kitchen-door opened, and a 
 person entered, whose appearance strongly arrested 
 my attention. It was a tall, athletic figure, with 
 the majestic carriage of a grandee, and a dark, sun- 
 ourn^ countenance, that indicated an age of about 
 fifty years. His dress was singular, and such as I 
 had not before seen. He wore a round hat with 
 wide, flapping brim, from beneath which his long, 
 black hair hung in curls upon his shoulders ; a 
 leather jerkin, with cloth sleeves, descended to his 
 hips ; around his waist was closely buckled a leather 
 belt, with a car touch-box on one side ; a pair of 
 loose trousers of black serge hung in ample folds to 
 the knees, around which they were closely gathered 
 
192 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 by embroidered garters of blue silk; and black 
 broadcloth leggins, buttoned close to the calves, 
 and strapped over a pair of brown leather shoes, 
 completed the singular dress of the stranger. He 
 doffed his hat as he entered, and, saluting the com- 
 pany with a " Dios guarde a Ustedes, cahalleros " 
 (God guard you. Gentlemen), took a seat by the 
 fire, and entered into conversation with those around 
 him. 
 
 As my curiosity was not a little excited by the 
 peculiar dress of this person, I inquired of a travel- 
 ling companion, who sat at my elbow, who and 
 what this new-comer was. From him I learned 
 that he was a muleteer of the Maragateria, — a 
 name given to a cluster of small towns which lie in 
 the mountainous country between Astorga and Vil- 
 lafranca, in the western corner of the kingdom of 
 Leon. 
 
 " Nearly every province in Spain," said he, " has 
 its peculiar costume, as you will see, when you 
 have advanced farther into our country. For in- 
 stance, the Catalonians wear crimson caps, hanging 
 down upon the shoulder like a sack ; wide panta- 
 loons of green velvet, long enough in the waistband 
 to cover the whole breast ; and a little strip of a 
 jacket, made of the same material, and so short as 
 to bring the pocket directly under the armpit. The 
 Valencians, on the contrary, go almost naked: a 
 linen shirt, white linen trousers, reaching no lower 
 ihan the knees, and a pair of coarse leather sandals 
 complete their simple garb ; it is only in mid- win te/ 
 
THE JOURNEY INTO SPAIN, 193 
 
 that they indulge in the luxury of a jacket. The 
 most beautiful and expensive costume, however, is 
 that of Andalusia ; it consists of a velvet jacket, 
 faced with rich and various-colored embroidery, and 
 covered with tassels and silken cord ; a waistcoat 
 of some gay color ; a silken handkerchief round 
 the neck, and a crimson sash round the waist ; 
 breeches that button down each side ; gaiters and 
 shoes of white leather ; and a handkerchief of 
 bright-colored silk wound about the head like a 
 turban, and surmounted by a velvet cap or a little 
 round hat, with a wide band, and an abundance of 
 silken loops and tassels. The Old Castilians are 
 more grave in their attire : they wear a leather 
 breastplate instead of a ja-cket, breeches and leg- 
 gins, and a montera cap. This fellow is a Ma- 
 ragato ; and in the villages of the Maragateria the 
 costume varies a little from the rest of Leon and 
 Castile.'* 
 
 " If he is indeed a Maragato," said T, jestingly, 
 '* who knows but he may be a descendant of the 
 muleteer who behaved so naughtily at Cacabelos, 
 as related in the second chapter of the veracious 
 history of Gil Bias de Santillana ? " 
 
 " I Quien sabe f " ^ was the reply. " Notwith- 
 standing the pride which even the meanest Castiliau 
 feels in counting over a long line of good-for-noth- 
 mg ancestors, the science of genealogy has become 
 of late a very intricate study in Spain." 
 
 1 In Spanish use an inverted interrogation mark also pre- 
 cedes a question. 
 
 la 
 
194 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Here our conversation was cut short by the May- 
 oral of the diligence, who came to tell us that mules 
 were waiting ; and before many hours had elapsed 
 we were scrambling through the square of the an- 
 cient city of Burgos. On the morrow we crossed 
 the river Duero and the Guadarrama Mountains, 
 and early in the afternoon entered the " Heroica 
 Villa," of Madrid, by the Puerta de Fuencarral- 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE circumstances attending the production of 
 most of Whittier's prose writings have not 
 been favorable to sustained composition. Much of 
 his work has been in the form of contributions to 
 journals which he has edited, and the two volumes 
 which now constitute his collected prose writings 
 have been gathered from these occasional papers, 
 the only extended work being in Leaves from Mar- 
 garet Smith's Journal, an imitative work, suggested, 
 no doubt, by the successful Lady Willoughhifs Diary. 
 In that work he has given a picture of the New 
 England of the last quarter of the seventeenth cent- 
 ury, when a heroic life had become somewhat hard- 
 ened by prosperity and authority into intolerance, 
 and the superstitious alloy of religious life had 
 become prominent by the decline of a living faith. 
 Himself of Quaker descent and belief, he has touched 
 kindly but firmly the changing life of the day which 
 culminated in the witchcraft delusion and displayed 
 itself in the persecution of the Quakers. Yet the 
 best life of the day, whether Puritan or Quaker, is 
 reproduced in the book, and the changing elements 
 
196 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIEK 
 
 of a transition period are all clearly presented. The 
 studied and imitative form of the book prevents it 
 from enjoying a wide popularity, but the genuine- 
 ness of the spirit, and the graceful style in which 
 the Puritan maiden's diary is preserved render it 
 one of the best mediums for approaching a difficult 
 period of New England history. The reader will 
 find it interesting to compare with it the historical 
 record of Robert Pike, presented in The New Puri- 
 tan,^ a sketch of the character by James S. Pike. 
 
 The subjects which are prominent in Whittier's 
 verse appear also in his prose. The superstitions of 
 New England were treated of by him in a small vol- 
 ume which has not been kept in print, The Super- 
 naturalism of New England ; the heroic lives of men 
 and women content to be true to duty and God, and 
 gaining their distinction often by their patience under 
 suffering, are reproduced in a series of papers enti- 
 tled Old Portraits and Modern Sketches ; the homely 
 beauty of a life of toil is recorded in the papers 
 which make up the little volume, The Stranger in 
 Lowell^ which was published in 1845 and has since 
 been merged, in part, in the second volume of his 
 prose works, which bears the general title of Liter- 
 ary Recreations and Miscellanies. He was engaged 
 at this time in the conduct of a paper in Lowell, and 
 the life about him suggested occasional essays upon 
 
 1 The New Puritan. New England two hundred years ago. 
 Some account of the life of Robert Pike, the Puritan who defended 
 the Quakers, resisted clerical domination, and opposed the witch* 
 "Jraft persecution. By James S. Pike. New York, Harper and 
 Brothers, 1879. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 197 
 
 topics free from political feeling. Two of the pa- 
 pers then published are here given, and they serve 
 ill part to illustrate his interest in life and history, 
 for an unfailing attribute of his writing, whether in 
 prose or verse, has been his sympathy with homely 
 forms of life about him ; and the interest which he 
 lias shown in that part of history which deals with 
 the relations of the Indian to the white man may be 
 referred in part to his traditional Quaker principle, 
 in part to his instinctive championship of the weak 
 and wronged. In his prefatory note to Literary Rec- 
 reations and Miscellanies he speaks lightly of his 
 work, which, as there given, was rather a relief from 
 severer tasks than itself serious and deliberate, but 
 the spirit which pervades all his writings, whether 
 in prose or in verse, is the same, and the recreations 
 of a man of serious and simple purpose rarely fail 
 to disclose his character and temper. The absence 
 of mere moods in Whittier's writings is a singular 
 testimony to the elevation of his common thought, 
 and the simplicity of his aims in literature appears 
 quite as significantly in his desultory prose as in his 
 more deliberate poetry. At no time does the reader 
 seem to pass out of the presence of an earnest man 
 into that of a professional litterateur ; the careless- 
 ness of literary fame which Whittier has shown 
 may be referred to the sincerity of his devotion to 
 that which literature effects, and he has written 
 and sung out of a heart very much in earnest to 
 offer some help, or out of the pleasure of his work. 
 The careful student of his writings will always value 
 most the integrity of his life. 
 
YANKEE GYPSIES. 
 
 " Here 's to budgets, packs, and wallets ; 
 Here 's to all the wandering train." 
 
 Bursts .1 
 
 I CONFESS it, I am keeuly sensitive to " skyey 
 influences." ^ I profess no indifference to the move- 
 ments of that capricious old gentleman known as 
 the clerk of the weather. I cannot conceal my in- 
 terest in the behavior of that patriarchal bird whose 
 wooden similitude gyrates on the church spire. 
 Winter proper is well enough. Let the thermom- 
 eter go to zero if it will ; so much the better, if 
 thereby the very winds are frozen and unable to 
 flap their stiff wings. Sounds of bells in the keen 
 air, clear, musical, heart-inspiring; quick tripping of 
 fair moccasined feet on glittering ice pavements; 
 bright eyes glancing above the uplifted muff like a 
 Bultana's behind the folds of her yashmak ; ^ school- 
 boys coasting down street like mad Greenlanders ; 
 
 1 From the closing air in The Jolly Beggars, a cantata. 
 
 2 "A breath thou art 
 Servile to aL the skyey influences, 
 
 That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st, 
 Hourly afflict." 
 
 Shakspere: Measure for Measure^ act III. scene 1. 
 • " She turns and turns again, and carefully glances around 
 
YANKEE GYPSIES. 199 
 
 the cold brilliance of oblique sunbeams flashing 
 back from wide surfaces of glittering snow, or blaz- 
 ing upon ice jewelry of tree and roof. There is 
 nothing in all this to complain of. A storm of 
 summer has its redeeming sublimities, — its slow, 
 upheaving mountains of cloud glooming in the west- 
 ern horizon like new-created volcanoes, veined with 
 Hre, shattered by exploding thunders. Even the 
 wild gales of the equinox have their varieties, — 
 sounds of wind-shaken woods and waters, creak and 
 clatter of sign and casement, hurricane puffs, and 
 down-rushing rain-spouts. But this dull, dark au- 
 tumn day of thaw and rain, when the very clouds 
 seem too spiritless and languid to storm outright 
 or take themselves out of the way of fair weather; 
 wet beneath and above, reminding one of that ray- 
 less atmosphere of Dante's Third Circle, where the 
 infernal Priessnitz ^ administers his hydropathic tor- 
 ment, — 
 
 " A heavy, cursed, and relentless drench, — 
 The land it soaks is putrid ; " 
 
 or rather, as everything animate and inanimate, is 
 
 her on all sides, to see that she is safe from the eyes of Mussul- 
 mans, and then suddenly withdrawing the yashmak she shines 
 upon your heart and soul with all the pomp and might of her 
 beauty." Kinglake's i5^o<Ae», chap. iii. In a note to Yashmak 
 Kiuglake explains that it is not a mere semi-transparent veil, 
 but thoroughly conceals all the features except the eyes : it is 
 withdrawn by being pulled down. 
 
 1 Vincenz Priessnitz was the originator of the water-cure. 
 A.ft€r experimenting upon himself and his neighbors he took up 
 Jhe profession of hydropathy and established baths at his native 
 ^Uce, Grafenberg in Silesia, in 1829. He died in 1851. 
 
200 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 seething in warm mist, suggesting the idea that 
 Nature, grown old and rheumatic, is trying the 
 efficacy of a Thomsonian steam-box^ on a grand 
 scale ; no sounds save the heavy plash of muddy 
 feet on the pavements ; the monotonous, melan- 
 choly drip from trees and roofs ; the distressful 
 gurgling of water-ducts, swallowing the dirty amal- 
 gam of the gutters ; a dim, leaden-colored horizon 
 of only a few yards in diameter, shutting down 
 about one, beyond which nothing is visible save in 
 Mnt line or dark projection ; the ghost of a church 
 spire or the eidolon of a chimney-pot. He who 
 can extract pleasurable emotions from the alembic 
 of such a day has a trick of alchemy with which I 
 am wholly unacquainted. 
 
 Hark ! a rap at my door. Welcome anybody 
 just now. One gains nothing by attempting to 
 shut out the sprites of the weather. They come 
 in at the keyhole ; they peer through the drip- 
 ping panes ; they insinuate themselves through the 
 crevices of the casement, or plump down chimney 
 astride of the rain-drops. 
 
 I rise and throw open the door. A tall, sham- 
 bling, loose-jointed figure ; a pinched, shrewd face, 
 sun-brown and wind-dried ; small, quick-winking 
 black eyes. There he stands, the water dripping 
 from his pulpy hat and ragged elbows. 
 
 1 Dr. Samuel Thomson, a New Hampshire physician, ad* 
 vocated the use of the steam bath as a restorer of the systen: 
 «rhen diseased. He died in 1843 and left behind an autobi* 
 ography {Life and Medical Discoveries) which contains a record 
 of the persecutions he underwent. 
 
YANKEE GYPSIES. 201 
 
 I speak to him ; but he returns no answer. With 
 a dumb show of misery, quite touching, he hands 
 me a soiled piece of parchment, whereon I read 
 what purports to be a melancholy account of ship- 
 wreck and disaster, to the particular detriment, loss, 
 and damnification of one Pietro Frugoni, who is, in 
 consequence, sorely in want of the alms of all char- 
 itable Christian persons, and who is, in short, the 
 bearer of this veracious document, duly certified 
 and indorsed by an Italian consul in one of our 
 Atlantic cities, of a high-sounding, but to Yankee 
 organs unpronounceable, name. 
 
 Hefe commences a struggle. Every man, the 
 Mahometans tell us, has two attendant angels, — 
 the good one on his right shoulder, the bad on his 
 left. " Give," says Benevolence, as with some 
 difficulty I fish up a small coin from the depths of 
 my pocket. " Not a cent," says selfish Prudence ; 
 and I drop it from my fingers. *' Think," says the 
 good angel, " of the poor stranger in a strange land, 
 just escaped from the terrors of the sea-storm, in 
 which his little property has perished, thrown half- 
 naked and helpless on our shores, ignorant of our 
 language, and unable to find employment suited to 
 his capacity." " A vile impostor ! " replies the 
 left-hand sentinel. " His paper, purchased from 
 one of those ready-writers in New York who man- 
 ufacture beggar-credentials at the low price of one 
 dollar per copy, with earthquakes, fires, or ship- 
 iv^recks, to suit customers." 
 
 Amidst this confusion of tongues I take another 
 
202 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 survey of my visitant. Ha ! a light davrns upon 
 me. That shrewd, old face, with its sharp, winkiug 
 eyes, is no stranger to me. Pietro Frugoni, I have 
 seen thee before. Si^ stgnor, that face of thine has 
 looked at me over a dirty white neckcloth, with the 
 corners of that cunning mouth drawn downwards, 
 and those small eyes turned up in sanctimonious 
 gravity, while thou wast offering to a crowd of half- 
 grown boys an extemporaneous exhortation in the 
 capacity of a travelling preacher. Have I not seen 
 it peering out from under a blanket, as that of a 
 poor Penobscot Indian, who bad lost the use of his 
 hands while trapping on the Madawaska? Is it 
 not the face of the forlorn father of six small chil- 
 dren, whom the " marcury doctors" had " pisened '* 
 and crippled ? Did it not belong to that down-East 
 unfortunate who had been out to the " Genesee 
 country " ^ and got the " fevern-nager," and whose 
 hand shook so pitifully when held out to receive 
 my poor gift? The same, under all disguises, — 
 Stephen Leathers, of Barrington, — him, and none 
 other! Let me conjure him into his own like- 
 ness : — 
 
 " Well, Stephen, what news from old Barring- 
 fcon ? " 
 
 1 The Genesee Country is the name by which the western 
 part of New York, bordering on Lakes Ontario and Erie, was 
 known, when, at the close of the last and beginning of this 
 eentury, it was to people on the Atlantic coast the Great West. 
 In 1792 communication was opened by a road with the Penn- 
 sylvania settlements, but the early settlers were almost all from 
 New England. 
 
YANKEE GYPSIES. 203 
 
 ^* Oh, well, I thought I knew ye," he answers, not 
 the least disconcerted. " How do you do? and 
 how 's your folks ? All well, I hope. I took this 
 'ere paper, you see, to help a poor furriner, who 
 could n't make himself understood any more than 
 a wild goose. I thought I'd just start him for'ard 
 a little. It seemed a marcy to do it." 
 
 Well and shiftily answered, thou ragged Proteus. 
 One cannot be angry with such a fellow. I will 
 just inquire into the present state of his Gospel 
 mission and about the condition of his tribe on the 
 Penobscot ; and it may be not amiss to congratu- 
 late him on the success of the steam-doctors in 
 sweating the *^ pisen " of the regular faculty out of 
 him. But he evidently has no wish to enter into 
 idle conversation. Intent upon his benevolent er- 
 rand he is already clattering down stairs. Invol- 
 untarily I glance out of the window just in season 
 to catch a single glimpse of him ere he is swal- 
 lowed up in the mist. 
 
 He has gone; and, knave as he is, I can hardly 
 help exclaiming, " Luck go with him ! " He has 
 broken in upon the sombre train of my thoughts 
 and called up before me pleasant and grateful recol- 
 lections. The old farm-house nestling in its valley ; 
 hills stretching off to the south and green meadows 
 to the east ; the small stream which came noisily 
 down its ravine, washing the old garden-wall and 
 Boftly lapping on fallen stones and mossy roots of 
 beeches and hemlocks ; the tall sentinel poplars at 
 bhe gateway ; the oak-forest, sweeping unbroken tc 
 
204 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 the northern horizon ; the grass-grown carriage-path, 
 with its rude and crazy bridge, — the dear old land- 
 scape of the boyhood lies outstretched before me 
 like a daguerreotype from that picture within which 
 I have borne with me in all my wanderings. I am 
 a boy again, once more conscious of the feeling, 
 half terror, half exultation, with which I used to an- 
 nounce the approach of this very vagabond and his 
 '•-kindred after the flesh." 
 
 The advent of wandering beggars, or " old strag- 
 glers," as we were wont to call them, was an event 
 of no ordinary interest in the generally monotonous 
 quietude of our farm-life. Many of them were well 
 known ; they had their periodical revolutions and 
 transits ; we would calculate them like eclipses or 
 new moons. Some were sturdy knaves, fat and 
 saucy ; and, whenever they ascertained that the 
 " men folks " were absent, would order provisions 
 and cider like men who expected to pay for them, 
 seating themselves at the hearth or table with the 
 air of- Falstaff, — " Shall I not take mine ease in 
 mine own inn ? " Others, poor, pale, patient, like 
 Sterne's monk,-^ came creeping up to the door, hat 
 in hand, standing there in their gray wretchedness 
 with a look of heartbreak and forlornness which 
 was never without its effect on our juvenile sensi- 
 bilities. At times, however, we experienced a slight 
 revulsion of feeling when even these humblest chil- 
 dren of sorrow somewhat petulantly rejected our 
 
 1 Whom he met at Calais, as described in his Sentimenta 
 Jowmey, 
 
YANKEE GYPSIES. 205 
 
 proffered bread and cheese, and demanded instead 
 a glass of cider. Whatever the temperance society 
 might in such cases have done, it was not in our 
 hearts to refuse the poor creatures a draught of 
 their favorite beverage ; an(} was n*t it a satisfaction 
 to see their sad, melancholy faces light up as we 
 handed them the full pitcher, and, on receiving it 
 back empty from their brown, wrinkled hands, to 
 hear them, half breathless from their long, delicious 
 draught, thanking us for the favor, as " dear, good 
 children " ! Not unfrequently these wandering, tests 
 of our benevolence made their appearance in inter- 
 esting groups of man, woman, and child, pictu- 
 resque in their squalidness, and manifesting a 
 maudlin affection which would have done honor 
 to the revellers at Poosie-Nansie's, immortal in the 
 cantata of Burns.-^ I remember some who were 
 evidently the victims of monomania, — haunted 
 and hunted by some dark thought, — possessed by 
 a fixed idea. One, a black-eyed, wild-haired woman, 
 with a whole tragedy of sin, shame, and suffering 
 written in her countenance, used often to visit us, 
 warm herself by our winter fire, and supply herself 
 with a stock of cakes and cold meat ; but was never 
 
 1 The cantata is The Jolly Beggars, from which the motto, 
 heading this sketch was taken. Poosie-Nansie was the keeper 
 of a tavern in Mauchline, which was the favorite resort of the 
 lame sailors, maimed soldiers, travelling ballad-singers, and all 
 «uch loose companions as hang about the skirts of society. The 
 cantata has for its theme the rivalry q$. a "pigmy scraper with 
 his fiddle " and a strolling tinker for a beggar woman : hence 
 Uie maudlin affection* 
 
206 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 
 
 known to answer a question or to ask one. She 
 never smiled ; the cold, stony look of her eye never 
 changed ; a silent, impassive face, frozen rigid by 
 some great wrong or sin. We used to look with 
 awe upon the '* still woman," and think of the de- 
 moniac of Scripture who had a *' dumb spirit." 
 
 One — I think I see him now, grim, gaunt, and 
 ghastly, working his slow way up to our door — 
 used to gather herbs by the wayside and call him- 
 self doctor. He was bearded like a he-goat, and 
 used . to counterfeit lameness ; yet, when he sup- 
 posed himself alone, would travel on lustily, as if 
 walking for a wager. At length, as if in punish- 
 ment of his deceit, he met with an accident in his 
 rambles and became lame in earnest, hobbling ever 
 after with difficulty on his gnarled crutches. An- 
 other used to go stooping, like Bunyan's pilgrim, 
 under a pack made of an old bed-sacking, stuffed 
 out into most plethoric dimensions, tottering on a 
 pair of small, meagre legs, and peering out with 
 his wild, hairy face from under his burden like a 
 big-bodied spider. That " man with the pack " 
 always inspired me with awe and reverence. Huge, 
 almost sublime, in its tense rotundity, the father of 
 all packs, never laid aside and never opened, what 
 might there not be within it ? With what flesh- 
 creeping curiosity I used to walk round about it at 
 a safe distance, half expecting to see its striped 
 covering stirred by the motions of a mysterious life, 
 or that some evil monster would leap out of it, like 
 robbers from Ali Baba's jars or armed men from 
 the Trojan horse 1 
 
YANKEE GYPSIES. 207 
 
 There was another class of peripatetic philoso- 
 phers — half pedler, half mendicant — who were 
 in the habit of visiting us. One, we recollect, a 
 lame, unshaven, sinister-eyed, unwholesome fellow, 
 with his basket of old newspapers and pamphlets, 
 and his tattered blue umbrella, serving rather as a 
 walking-staff than as a protection from the rain. 
 He told us on one occasion, in answer to our in- 
 quiring into the cause of his lameness, that when a 
 young man he was employed on the farm of the 
 chief magistrate of a neighboring State ; where, as 
 his ill luck would have it, the governor's handsome 
 daughter fell in love with him. He was caught one 
 day in the young lady's room by her father ; where- 
 upon the irascible old gentleman pitched him un- 
 ceremoniously out of the window, laming him foi 
 life, on a brick pavement below, like Vulcan on 
 the rocks of Lemnos.^ As for the lady, he assured 
 us " she took on di-eadfully about it." " Did she 
 die ? " we inquired, anxiously. There was a cun- 
 ning twinkle in the old rogue's eye as he responded, 
 " Well, no, she did n't. She got married." 
 -Twice a year, usually in the spring and autumn, 
 we were honored with a call from Jonathan Plum- 
 mer, maker of verses, pedler and poet, physician 
 and parson, — a Yankee troubadour, — first and 
 last minstrel of the valley of the Merrimac, encir- 
 cled, to my wondering young eyes, with the very 
 nimbus of immortality. He brought with him pins, 
 
 1 It was upon the Isle of Leranos that Vulcan was flung by 
 Jupiter, according to the myth, for attempting to aid his mothei 
 Juno. 
 
208 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 needles, tape, and cotton- thread for my mother 
 jack-knives, razors, and soap for my father; and 
 verses of his own composing, coarsely printed and 
 illustrated with rude wood-cuts, for the delectation 
 of the younger branches of the family. No love- 
 sick youth could drown himself, no deserted maiden 
 bewail the moon, no rogue mount the gallows, with- 
 out fitting memorial in Plummer's verses. Earth- 
 quakes, fires, fevers, and shipwrecks he regarded as 
 personal favors from Providence, furnishing the 
 raw material of song and ballad. Welcome to us 
 in our country seclusion, as Autolycus to the clown 
 in " Winter's Tale," ^ we listened with infinite sat- 
 isfaction to his reading of his own verses, or to his 
 ready improvisation upon some domestic incident 
 or topic suggested by his auditors. When once 
 fairly over the difficulties at the outset of a new 
 subject his rhymes flowed freely, " as if he had 
 eaten ballads, and all men's ears grew to his tunes." 
 His productions answered, as nearly as I can re- 
 member, to Shakspere's description of a proper 
 ballad, — " doleful matter merrily set down, or a 
 very pleasant theme sung lamentabl3^" He was 
 scrupulously conscientious, devout, inclined to theo- 
 logical disquisitions, and withal mighty in Scripture. 
 He was thoroughly independent; flattered nobody, 
 cared for nobody, trusted nobody. When invited 
 
 1 "He could never come better," says the clown in Shak- 
 gpere's The Winter's Tale, when Autolycus, the pedler, is an- 
 nounced ; "he shall come in. I love a ballad but even toe 
 well, if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasani 
 thing indeed and sung lamentably." Act lY. scene 4. 
 
YANKEE GYPSIES. 209 
 
 to sit down at our dinner-table he invariably took 
 the precaution to place his basket of valuables be- 
 tween his legs for safe keeping. " Never mind thy 
 basket, Jonathan," said my father ; " we shan't steal 
 thy verses." " I 'm not sure of that," returned the 
 suspicious guest. " It is written, ' Trust ye not in 
 any brother.' " 
 
 Thou, too, Parson B., — with thy pale stu- 
 dent's brow and rubicund nose, with thy rusty and 
 tattered black coat overswept by white, flowing 
 locks, with thy professional white neckcloth scru- 
 pulously preserved when even a shirt to thy back 
 was problematical, — art by no means to be over- 
 looked in the muster-roll of vagrant gentlemen 
 possessing the entree of our farm-house. Well do 
 we remember with what grave and dignified cour- 
 tesy he used to step over its threshold, saluting its 
 inmates with the same air of gracious condescension 
 and patronage with which in better days he had 
 delighted the hearts of his parishioners. Poor old 
 man ! He had once been the admired and almost 
 worshipped minister of the largest church in the 
 town where he afterwards found support in the 
 winter season, as a pauper. He had early fallen* 
 into intemperate habits ; and at the age of three- 
 score and ten, when I remember him, he was only 
 sober when he lacked the means of being other- 
 wise. Drunk or sober, however, he never alto- 
 gether forgot the proprieties of his profession ; he 
 was always grave, decorous, and gentlemanly ; he 
 beld fast the form of sound words, and the weak 
 U 
 
210 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHITTIER 
 
 ness of the flesh abated nothiDg of the rigor of his 
 stringent theology. He had been a favorite pupil 
 of the learned and astute Emmons,^ and was to the 
 last a sturdy defender of the peculiar dogmas of his 
 school. The last time we saw him he was holding 
 a meeting in our district school-house, with a vaga- 
 bond pedler for deacon and travelling companion. 
 The tie which united the ill-assorted couple was 
 doubtless the same which endeared Tam O'Shan- 
 ter to the souter : ^ — 
 
 " They had been fou for weeks thegither." 
 
 He took for his text the first seven verses of the 
 concluding chapter of Ecclesiastes, furnishing in 
 himself its fitting illustration. The evil days had 
 come ; the keepers of the house trembled ; the 
 windows of life were darkened. A few months 
 later the silver cord was loosened, the golden bowl 
 was broken, and between the poor old man and 
 ihe temptations which beset him fell the thick cur- 
 tains of the grave. 
 
 One day we had a call from a "pawky auld 
 carle " * of a wandering Scotchman. To him I owe 
 
 1 Nathaniel Emmons was a New England theologian of marked 
 character and power, who for seventy years was connected with 
 a church in that part of Wrentham, Mass., now called Franklin. 
 He exercised considerable influence over the religious thought 
 of New England, and is still read by theologians. He died in 
 1840, in his ninety-sixth year. 
 
 2 Souter (or cobbler) Johnny, in Burns's poetic tale of Tain. 
 O"* Shunter ^ had been fou' or full of drink with Tam for weeks 
 together. 
 
 8 From the first line of The Gaberlunzie Man, attributed u 
 King James V. of Scotland, — 
 
 " The pawl^ auld carle came o'er ihe lee." 
 
YANKEE GYPSIES, 211 
 
 my first introduction to the songs of Burns. After 
 eating his bread and cheese and drinking his mug 
 of cider he gave us Bonny Doon, Highland Mary, 
 and Auld Lang Syne. He had a rich, full voice, 
 and entered heartily into the spirit of his lyrics. I 
 have since listened to the same melodies from the 
 lips of Dempster ^ (than whom the Scottish bard 
 has had no sweeter or truer interpreter), but the 
 skilful performance of the artist lacked the novel 
 charm of the gaberlunzie's singing in the old farrn- 
 house kitchen. Another wanderer made us ac- 
 quainted with the humorous old ballad of " Our 
 gude man cam hame at e'en." He applied for 
 supper and lodging, and the next morning was set 
 at work splitting stones in the pasture. While 
 thus engaged the village doctor came riding along 
 the highway on his fine, spirited horse, and stopped 
 to talk with my father. The fellow eyed the an- 
 imal attentively, as if familiar with all his good 
 points, and hummed over a stanza of the old 
 poem : — 
 
 ^* Our gude man cam hame at e'en, 
 And hame cam he ; 
 And there he saw a saddle horse 
 Where nae horse should be. 
 
 The onginal like Whittier's was a sly old fellow, as an Eng- 
 lish phrase would translate the Scottish. The Gaberlunzie Man 
 is given in Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry and in Child's 
 English and Scottish Ballads, viii 98. 
 
 1 William R. Dempster, a Scottish vocalist who had recently 
 Bung in America, and whose music to Burns's song " A man 's a 
 vtan for a that " was very popular. 
 
212 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 * How cam this horse here? 
 
 How can it be ? 
 How cam this horse here 
 Without the leave of me ? * 
 
 * A horse ? ' quo she. 
 *Ay, a horse,' quo he. 
 
 * Ye auld fool, ye blind fool, — 
 
 And blinder might ye be, — 
 *T is naething but a milking cow 
 My mamma sent to me.* 
 
 * A milch cow? ' quo he. 
 
 * Ay, a milch cow,' quo she. 
 
 * Weei, far hae I ridden. 
 
 And muckle hae I seen ; 
 But milking cows wi' saddles on 
 Saw I never uane.' " ^ 
 
 That very night the rascal decamped, taking 
 with him the doctor's horse, and was never after 
 heard of. 
 
 Often, in the gray of the morning, we used to see 
 one or more " gaberlunzie men," pack on shoulder 
 and staff in hand, emerging from the barn or other 
 outbuildings where they had passed the night I 
 was once sent to the barn to fodder the cattle late 
 in the evening, and, climbing into the mow to pitch 
 down hay for that purpose, I was startled by the 
 sudden apparition of a man rising up before me, 
 just discernible in the dim moonlight streaming 
 through the seams of the boards. I made a rapid 
 retreat down the ladder ; and was only reassured 
 by hearing the object of my terror calling after me, 
 und recognizing his voice as that of a harmless old 
 
 ^ The whole of this song may be found in Herd's AncienI 
 and Modem Scottish Songs^ ii. 172. 
 
YANKEE GYPSIES. 213 
 
 pilgrim whom I had known before. Our farm- 
 house was situated in a lonely valley, half sur- 
 rounded with woods, with no neighbors in sight. 
 One dark, cloudy night, when our parents chanced 
 to be absent, we were sitting with our aged grand- 
 mother in the fading light of the kitchen fire, work- 
 ing ourselves into a very satisfactory state of ex- 
 citement and terror by recounting to each other all 
 the dismal stories we could remember of ghosts, 
 witches, haunted houses, and robbers, when we were 
 suddenly startled by a loud rap at the door. A 
 stripling of fourteen, I was very naturally regarded 
 as the head of the household ; so, with many mis- 
 givings, I advanced to the door, which I slowly 
 opened, holding the candle tremulously above my 
 head and peering out into the darkness. The fee- 
 ble glimmer played upon the apparition of a gigan- 
 tic horseman, mounted on a steed of a size worthy 
 of such a rider — colossal, motionless, like images 
 cut out of the solid night. The strange visitant 
 gruffly saluted me ; and, after making several inef- 
 fectual efforts to urge his horse in at the door, dis- 
 mounted and followed me into the room, evidently 
 enjoying the terror which his huge presence excited. 
 Announcing himself as the great Indian doctor, 
 he drew himself up before the fire, stretched his 
 arms, clinched his fists, struck his broad chest, and 
 invited our attention to what he called his " mortal 
 frame." He demanded in succession all kinds of 
 intoxicating liquors ; and on being assured that we 
 had none to give him, he grew angry, threatened 
 
214 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 to swallow my younger brother alive, and, seizing 
 me by the hair of my head as the angel did the 
 prophet at Babylon,^ led me about from room to 
 room. After an ineffectual search, in the course 
 of which he mistook a jug of oil for one of brandy, 
 and, contrary to my explanations and remonstrances, 
 insisted upon swallowing a portion of its contents, 
 he released me, fell to crying and sobbing, and 
 confessed that he was so drunk already that his 
 horse was ashamed of him. After bemoaning and 
 pitying himself to his satisfaction he wiped his 
 eyes, and sat down by the side of my grandmother, 
 giving her to understand that he was very much 
 pleased with her appearance ; adding, that if agree- 
 able to her, he should like the privilege of paying 
 his addresses to her. While vainly endeavoring to 
 make the excellent old lady comprehend his very 
 flattering proposition, he was interrupted by the 
 return of my father, who, at once understanding 
 the matter, turned him out of doors without cere- 
 mony. 
 
 On one occasion, a few years ago, on my return 
 from the field at evening, I was told that a for- 
 eigner had asked for lodgings during the night, but 
 that, influenced by his dark, repulsive appearance, 
 my mother had very reluctantly refused his re- 
 quest. I found her by no means satisfied with 
 her decision. " What if a son of mine was in a 
 strange land ? " she inquired, self-reproachfully 
 Greatly to her relief, I volunteered to go in pursuit 
 1 See Ezekiel viii. 3. 
 
YANKEE GYPSIES. 215 
 
 of the wanderer, and, taking a cross-path over the 
 fields, soon overtook him. He had just been re- 
 jected at the house of our nearest neighbor, and 
 was standing in a state of dubious perplexity in the 
 street. His looks quite justified my mother's sus- 
 picions. He was an olive-complexioned, black- 
 bearded Italian, with an eye like a live coal, such a 
 face as perchance looks out on the traveller in the 
 passes of the Abruzzi,^ — one of those bandit 
 visages which Salvator* has painted. With some 
 difficulty I gave him to understand my errand, when 
 he overwhelmed me with thanks, and joyfully fol- 
 lowed nie back. He took his seat with us at the 
 supper-table ; and, when we were all gathered 
 around the hearth that cold autumnal evening, he 
 told us, partly by words and partly by gestures, 
 the story of his life and misfortunes, amused us 
 with descriptions of the grape-gatherings and fes- 
 tivals of his sunny clime, edified my mother with a 
 recipe for making bread of chestnuts; and in the 
 morning, when, after breakfast, his dark sullen 
 face lighted up and his fierce eye moistened with 
 grateful emotion as in his own silvery Tuscan ac- 
 cent he poured out his thanks, we marvelled at the 
 fears which had so nearly closed our door against 
 him ; and, as he departed, we all felt that he had left 
 Tith us the blessing of the poor. 
 
 1 Provinces into which the old kingdom of Naples was di- 
 vided. 
 
 2 Salvator Rosa was a Neay)olitan by birth, and was said to 
 have been himself a bandit in his youth ; his landscapes often 
 coQCain figures drawn from the wild life of the region. 
 
216 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIEK 
 
 Tt was not often that, as in the above instance, 
 my mother's prudence got the better of her charity. 
 The regular " old stragglers " regarded her as an 
 unfailing friend ; and the sight of her plain cap was 
 to them an assurance of forthcoming creature-com- 
 forts. There was indeed a tribe of lazy strollers, 
 having their place of rendezvous in the town of 
 Barrington, New Hampshire, whose low vices had 
 placed them beyond even the pale of her benevo- 
 lence. They were not unconscious of their evil 
 reputation ; and experience had taught them the 
 necessity of concealing, under well-contrived dis- 
 guises, their true character. They came to us in 
 all shapes and with all appearances save the true 
 one, with most miserable stories of mishap and 
 sickness and all '* the ills which flesh is heir to." 
 It was particularly vexatious to discover, when too 
 late, that our sympathies and charities had been 
 expended upon such graceless vagabonds as the 
 " Barrington beggars." An old withered hag, 
 known by the appellation of Hopping Pat, — the 
 wise woman of her tribe, — was in the habit of 
 risiting us, with her hopeful grandson, who had 
 *'a gift for preaching" as well as for many other 
 things not exactly compatible with holy orders. 
 He sometimes brought with him a tame crow, a 
 Bhrewd, knavish-looking bird, who, when in the hu- 
 mor for it, could talk like Barnaby Rudge's raven. 
 He used to say he could " do nothin' at exhortin' 
 without a white handkercher on his neck and money 
 in his pocket," — a fact going far to confirm the 
 
YANKEE G YPSIES. 217 
 
 opinions of the Bishop of Exeter and the Puseyites 
 generally, that there can be no priest without tithes 
 and surplice. 
 
 These people have for several generations lived 
 distinct from the great mass of the community, 
 like the gypsies of Europe, whom in many respects 
 they closely resemble. They have the same set- 
 tled aversion to labor and the same disposition to 
 avail themselves of the fruits of the industry of 
 others. They love a wild, out-of-door life, sing 
 songs, tell fortunes, and have an instinctive hatred 
 of " missionaries and cold water." It has been 
 said — I know not upon what grounds — that their 
 ancestors were indeed a veritable importation of 
 English gypsyhood ; but if so, they have undoubt- 
 edly lost a good deal of the picturesque charm of 
 its unhoused and free condition. I very much fear 
 that my friend Mary Russell Mitford, — sweetest 
 of England's rural painters, — who has a poet's 
 v^ye for the fine points in ^ypsy character, would 
 scarcely allow their claims to fraternity with her 
 own vagrant friends, whose camp-fires welcomed 
 her to her new home at Swallowfield.'^ 
 
 *' The proper study of mankind is man ; " and, 
 according to my view, no phase of our common 
 hunaanity is altogether unworthy of investigation. 
 A^cting upon this belief two or three summers ago, 
 when making, in company with my sister, a little 
 excursion into the hill-country of New Hampshire, 
 I turned my horse's head towards Barrington for 
 1 See in Miss Mitford's Our Village. 
 
218 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 the purpose of seeing these semi-civilized strollers 
 in their own home, and returning, once for all, their 
 numerous visits. Taking leave of our hospitable 
 cousins in old Lee with about as much solemnity as 
 we may suppose Major Laing ^ parted with his 
 friends when he set out in search of desert-girdled 
 Timbuctoo, we drove several miles over a rough 
 road, passed the DeviFs Den unmolested, crossed a 
 fretful little streamlet noisily working its way into 
 a valley, where it turned a lonely, half-ruinous mill, 
 and climbing a steep hill beyond, saw before us a 
 wide, sandy level, skirted on the west and north by 
 low, scraggy hills, and dotted here and there with 
 dwarf pitch-pines. In the centre of this desolate 
 region were some twenty or thirty small dwellings, 
 grouped together as irregularly as a Hottentot 
 kraal. Unfenced, unguarded, open to all comers 
 and goers, stood that city of the beggars, — no wall 
 or paling between the ragged cabins to remind one 
 of the jealous distinctions of property. The great 
 idea of its founders seemed visible in its unappro- 
 priated freedom. Was not the whole round world 
 their own ? and should they haggle about bounda- 
 ries and title-deeds? For them, on distant plains, 
 
 1 Alexander Gordon Laing was a major in the British army 
 who served on the west coast of Africa and made journeys 
 into the interior in the attempt to establish commercial relations 
 with the natives, and especially to discover the sources of the 
 Niger. He was treacherously murdered in 1826 by the guard 
 that was attending him on his return from Timbuctoo to the 
 coast. His travels excited great interest in their day in Eng^ 
 land and America. 
 
YANKEE GYPSIES. 219 
 
 ripened golden harvests ; for them, in far-off work- 
 shops, busy hands were toiling ; for them, if they 
 had but the grace to note it, the broad earth put on 
 her garniture of beauty, and over them hung the 
 silent mystery of heaven and its stars. That com- 
 fortable philosophy which modern transcendentalism 
 has but dimly shadowed forth, — that poetic agra- 
 rian ism, which gives all to each and each to all, — 
 is the real life of this city of unwork. To each of 
 its dingy dwellers might be not unaptly applied the 
 language of one who, I trust, will pardon me for 
 quoting her beautiful poem in this connection : — 
 
 ** Other hands may grasp the field and forest, 
 Proud proprietors in pomp may shine, 
 
 Thou art wealthier, — all the world is thine." i 
 
 But look ! the clouds are breaking. " Fair 
 weather cometh out of the north." The wind has 
 blown away the mists ; on the gilded spire of John 
 Street glimmers a beam of sunshine ; and there is 
 the sky again, hard, blue, and cold in its eternal 
 purity, not a whit the worse for the storm. In the 
 beautiful present the past is no longer needed. 
 Reverently and gratefully let its volume be laid 
 aside ; and when again the shadows of the outward 
 world fall upon the spirit may I not lack a good 
 angel to remind me of its solace, even if he comes 
 in the shape of a Barrington beggar. 
 
 1 From a poem, Why Thus Longing f by Mrs. Harriet Wins- 
 low Sewall, preserved in Whittier's Songs of Three Centuries. 
 
220 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 n. 
 
 THE BOY CAPTIVES. 
 
 AN INCIDENT OF THE INDIAN WAR OF 1695. 
 
 The township of Haverhill, even as late as the 
 close of the seventeenth century, was a frontier 
 f^ettlement, occupying an advanced position in the 
 great wilderness, which, unbroken by the clearing 
 of a white man, extended from the Merrimac River 
 to the French villages on the St. Francois. A 
 tract of twelve miles on the river and three or four 
 northwardly was occupied by scattered settlers, 
 while in the centre of the town a compact village 
 had grown up. In the immediate vicinity there 
 were but few Indians, and these generally peaceful 
 and inoffensive. On the breaking out of the Nar- 
 ragansett War,-^ the inhabitants had erected fortifi- 
 cations, and taken other measures for defence ; but, 
 with the possible exception of one man who was 
 found slain in the woods in 1676, none of the in- 
 habitants were molested ; and it was not until about 
 the year 1689 that the safety of the settlement was 
 seriously threatened. Three persons were killed 
 ill that year. In 1690 six garrisons were estab- 
 lished in different parts of the town, with a small 
 
 1 The "Narragansett War " was a name applied to that part 
 of King Philip's War which resulted from the defection of the 
 powerful tribe of Narragansetts, formerly allies of the Englistk 
 to the standard of the Indian chief. 
 
THE BOY CAPTIVES. 221 
 
 company of soldiers attached to each. Two of these 
 houses are still standing. They were built of brick, 
 two stories high, with a single outside door, so small 
 and narrow that but one person could enter at a 
 time ; the windows few, and only about two and a 
 half feet long by eighteen inches wide, with thick 
 diamond glass secured with lead, and crossed inside 
 with bars of iron. The basement had but two 
 rooms, and the chamber was entered by a ladder 
 instead of stairs ; so that the inmates, if driven 
 thither, could cut off communication with the rooms 
 below. Many private houses were strengthened 
 and fortified. We remember one familiar to our 
 boyhood, — a venerable old building of wood, with 
 brick between the weather-boards and ceiling, with 
 a massive balustrade over the door, constructed of 
 oak timber and plank, with holes through the lat- 
 ter for firing upon assailants. The door opened 
 upon a stone-paved hall, or entry, leading into the 
 huge single room of the basement, which was lighted 
 by two small windows, the ceiling black with the 
 smoke of a century and a half ; a huge fireplace, 
 calculated for eight-feet wood, occupying one entire 
 side ; while, overhead, suspended from the timbers, 
 or on shelves fastened to them, were household 
 stores, farming utensils, fishing-rods, guns, bunches 
 of herbs gathered perhaps a century ago, strings of 
 dried apples and pumpkins, links of mottled sau- 
 sages, spareribs, and flitches of bacon ; the fire-light 
 ?f an evening dimly revealing the checked woollen 
 coverlet of the bed in one far-off corner, while in 
 another — 
 
222 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 "The pewter plates on the dresser 
 Caught and reflected the flame as shields of armies the sun- 
 shine.*' ^ 
 
 Tradition has preserved many incidents of life 
 in the garrisons. In times of unusual peril the 
 settlers generally resorted at night to the fortified 
 houses, taking thither their flocks and herds and 
 such household valuables as were most likely to 
 strike the fancy or minister to the comfort or van- 
 ity of the heathen marauders. False alarms were 
 frequent. The smoke of a distant fire, the bark of 
 a dog in the deep woods, a stump or bush, taking 
 in the uncertain light of stars and moon the ap- 
 pearance of a man, were sufiicient to spread alarm 
 through the entire settlement and to cause the 
 armed men of the garrison to pass whole nights in 
 sleepless watching. It is said that at Haselton's 
 garrison-house the sentinel on duty saw, as he 
 thought, an Indian inside of the paling which sur- 
 rounded the building, and apparently seeking to 
 gain an entrance. He promptly raised his musket 
 and fired at the intruder, alarming thereby the 
 entire garrison. The women and children left their 
 beds, and the men seized their guns and com- 
 menced firing on the suspicious object ; but it 
 seemed to bear a charmed life, and remained un- 
 harmed. As the morning dawned, however, the 
 mystery was solved by the discovery of a black 
 quilted petticoat hanging on the clothes'-line, com- 
 pletely riddled with balls. 
 
 I Longfellow's Evangeline, vr. 205, 206. 
 
THE BOY CAPTIVES. 223 
 
 As a matter of course, under circumstances of 
 perpetual alarm and frequent peril, the duty of 
 cultivating their fields, and gathering their harvests, 
 and working at their mechanical avocations, was 
 dangerous and difficult to the settlers. One in- 
 stance will serve as an illustration. At the garri- 
 son-house of Thomas Dustin, the husband of the 
 far-famed Mary Dustin (who, while a captive of 
 the Indians, and maddened by the murder of her 
 infant child, killed and scalped, with the assistance 
 of a young boy, the entire band of her captors, ten 
 in number), the business of brick-making was car- 
 ried on. The pits where the clay was found were 
 only a few rods from the house ; yet no man vent- 
 ured to bring the clay to the yard within the in- 
 closure, without the attendance of a file of soldiers. 
 An anecdote relating to this garrison has been 
 handed down to the present time. Among its in- 
 mates were two young cousins, Joseph and Mary 
 Whittaker ; the latter a merry, handsome girl, re- 
 lieving the tedium of garrison-duty with her light- 
 hearted mirthf ulness and — 
 
 " Making a sunshine in that shady place." ^ 
 
 Joseph, in the intervals of his labors in the 
 double capacity of brick-maker and man-at-arms, 
 was assiduous in his attentions to his fair cousin, 
 
 1 " Her angel's face 
 As the great eye of heaven sh/ned bright, 
 And made a sunshine in the shadie place ; 
 Did never mortal eye behold such heavenly grace." 
 
 Spenser: The Faery QueenCf bk. I. canto ill. st. 4. 
 
^24 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 who was not inclined to encourage him. Growing 
 desperate, he threatened one evening to throw him- 
 self into the garrison well. His threat only called 
 forth the laughter of his mistress ; and, bidding her 
 farewell, he proceeded to put it in execution. On 
 reaching the well he stumbled over a log ; where- 
 upon, animated by a happy idea, he dropped the 
 wood into the water instead of himself, and, hiding 
 behind the curb, awaited the. result. Mary, who 
 had been listening at the door, and who had not 
 believed her lover capable of so rash an act, heard 
 the sudden plunge of the wooden Joseph. She ran 
 to the well, and, leaning over the curb and peering 
 down the dark opening, cried out, in tones of an- 
 guish and remorse, " O Joseph, if you 're in the 
 land of the living, I '11 have you ! " "I '11 take ye 
 at your word," answered Joseph, springing up from 
 his hiding-place and avenging himself for her coy- 
 ness and coldness by a hearty embrace. 
 
 Our own paternal ancestor, owing to religious 
 scruples in the matter of taking arms even for de- 
 fence of life and property, refused to leave his un- 
 defended house and enter the garrison. The Indi- 
 ans frequently came to his house ; and the family 
 more than once in the night heard them whispering 
 under the windows, and saw them put their copper 
 faces to the glass to take a view of the apartments. 
 Strange as it may seem, they never offered any in- 
 jury or. insult to the inmates. 
 
 In 1695 the township was many times molested 
 ly Indians, and several persons were killed and 
 
THE BOY CAPTIVES, 225 
 
 ^^rounded. Early in the fall a small party made 
 their appearance in the northerly part of the town, 
 where, finding two boys at work in an open field, 
 they managed to surprise and capture them, and, 
 without committing further violence, retreated 
 through the woods to their homes on the shore of 
 Lake Winnipiseogee. Isaac Bradley, aged fifteen, 
 was a small but active and vigorous boy ; his com- 
 panion in captivity, Joseph Whittaker, was only 
 eleven, yet quite as large in size, and heavier in his 
 movements. After a hard and painful journey they 
 arrived at the lake, and were placed in an Indian 
 family, consisting of a man and squaw and two or 
 three children. Here they soon acquired a suffi- 
 cient knowledge of the Indian tongue to enable 
 them to learn from the conversation carried on in 
 their presence that it was designed to take them to 
 Canada in the spring. This discovery was a pain- 
 ful one. Canada, the land of Papist priests and 
 bloody Indians, was the especial terror of the New 
 England settlers, and the anathema maranatha^ of 
 Puritan pulpits. Thither the Indians usually hur- 
 ried their captives, where they compelled them to 
 work in their villages or sold them to the French 
 planters. Escape from thence through a deep 
 wilderness, and across lakes, and mountains, and 
 
 1 Anathema maranatha occurs at the close of St. Paul's first 
 fspistle to the Corinthians, and in the English version is made to 
 appear as a composite phrase. It has so passed into common 
 use, maranatha being taken as intensifying the curse contained 
 in anathema. The words are properly to be divided, maranatha 
 signifying "The Lord cometh." 
 16 
 
226 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 almost impassable rivers, without food or guide, 
 was regarded as an impossibility. The poor boys, 
 terrified by the prospect of being carried still far- 
 ther from their home and friends, began to dream 
 of escaping from their masters before they started 
 for Canada. It was now winter ; it would have 
 been little short of madness to have chosen for 
 flight that season of bitter cold and deep snows. 
 Owing to exposure and want of proper food and 
 clothing, Isaac, the eldest of the boys, was seized 
 with a violent fever, from which he slowly recovered 
 in the course of the winter. His Indian mistress 
 was as kind to him as her circumstances permitted, 
 — procuring medicinal herbs and roots for her pa- 
 tient, and tenderly watching over him in the long 
 winter nights. Spring came at length ; the snows 
 melted ; and the ice was broken up on the lake. 
 The Indians began to make preparations for jour- 
 neying to Canada ; and Isaac, who had during his 
 sickness devised a plan of escape, saw that the time 
 of putting it in execution had come. On the even- 
 ing before he was to make the attempt he for the 
 first time informed his younger companion of his 
 design, and told him, if he intended to accompany 
 him, he must be awake at the time appointed. The 
 boys lay down as usual in the wigwam in the midst 
 of the family. Joseph soon fell asleep ; but Isaac, 
 fully sensible of the danger and difficulty of the 
 enterprise before him, lay awake, watchful for his 
 opportunity. About midnight he rose, cautiously 
 stepping over the sleeping forms of the family, an<? 
 
THE BOY CAPTIVES. 227 
 
 securing, as he went, his Indian master's flint, steel, 
 and tinder, and a small quantity of dry moose-meat 
 and corn-bread. He then carefully awakened his 
 companion, who, starting up, forgetful of the cause 
 of his disturbance, asked aloud, " What do you 
 want ? " The savages began to stir ; and Isaac, 
 trembling with fear of detection, lay down again 
 and pretended to be asleep. After waiting a while 
 he again rose, satisfied, from the heavy breathing 
 of the Indians, that they were all sleeping; and 
 fearing to awaken Joseph a second time, lest he 
 should again hazard all by his thoughtlessness, he 
 crept softly out" of the wigwam. He had proceeded 
 but a few rods when he heard footsteps behind him ; 
 and, supposing himself pursued, he hurried into the 
 woods, casting a glance backward. What was his 
 joy to see his young companion running after him ! 
 They hastened on in a southerly direction as nearly 
 as they could determine, hoping to reach their dis- 
 tant home. When daylight appeared they found a 
 large hollow log, into which they crept for conceal- 
 ment, wisely jndging that they would be hotly pur- 
 sued by their Indian captors. 
 
 Their sagacity was by no means at fault. The 
 Indians, missing their prisoners in the morning, 
 started off in pursuit with their dogs. As the 
 /oung boys lay in the log they could hear the 
 whistle of the Indians and the barking of dogs 
 upon their track. It was a trying moment ; and 
 even the stout heart of the elder boy sank within 
 him as the dogs came up to the log and set up a 
 
228 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 loud bark of discovery. But his presence of mind 
 saved him. He spoke in a low tone to the dogs, 
 who, recognizing his familiar voice, wagged their 
 tails with delight, and ceased barking. He then 
 threw to them the morsel of moose-meat he had 
 taken from the wigwam. While the dogs were 
 thus diverted, the Indians made their appearance. 
 The boys heard the light, stealthy sound of their 
 moccasins on the leaves. They passed close to 
 the log; and the dogs, having devoured their 
 moose-meat, trotted after their masters. Through 
 a crevice in the log the boys looked after them, 
 and saw them disappear in the thick woods. They 
 remained in their covert until night, when they 
 started again on their long journey, taking a new 
 route to avoid the Indians. At daybreak they 
 again concealed themselves, but travelled the next 
 night and day without resting. By this time they 
 had consumed all the bread which they had taken, 
 and weye fainting from hunger and weariness. 
 Just at the close of the third day they were provi- 
 dentially enabled to kill a pigeon and a small tor- 
 toise, a part of which they ate raw, not daring to 
 make a fire, which might attract the watchful eyes 
 of savages. On the sixth day they struck upon an 
 old Indian path, and, following it until night, came 
 suddenly upon a camp of the enemy. Deep in the 
 heart of the forest, under the shelter of a ridge 
 of land heavily timbered, a great fire of logs and 
 brushwood was burning ; and around it the In- 
 dians sat, eating their moose-meat and smoking their 
 pipes. 
 
THE BOY CAPTIVES. 229 
 
 The poor fugitives, starving, weary, and chilled 
 by the cold spring blasts, gazed down upon the 
 ample fire, and the savory meats which the squaws 
 were cooking by it, but felt no temptation to pur- 
 chase warmth and food by surrendering themselves 
 to captivity. Death in the forest seemed prefer- 
 able. They turned and fled back upon their track, 
 expecting every moment to hear the yells of pur- 
 suers. The morning found them seated on the 
 bank of a small stream, their feet torn and bleed- 
 ing, and their bodies emaciated. The elder, as a 
 last effort, made search for roots, and fortunately 
 discovered a few ground-nuts {glycine apios), which 
 served to refresh in some degree himself and his 
 still weaker companion. As they stood together 
 by the stream, hesitating and almost despairing, it 
 occurred to Isaac that the rivulet might lead to a 
 larger stream of water, and that to the sea and the 
 white settlements near it ; and he resolved to fol- 
 low it. They again began their painful march ; the 
 day passed, and the night once more overtook them. 
 When the eighth morning dawned, the younger of 
 the boys found himself unable to rise from his bed 
 of leaves. Isaac endeavored to encourage him, dug 
 roots, and procured water for him ; but the poor 
 lad was utterly exhausted. He had no longer heart 
 or hope. The elder boy laid him on leaves and 
 dry grass at the foot of a tree, and with a heavy 
 Aeart bade him farewell. Alone he slowly and 
 painfully proceeded down the stream, now greatly 
 increased in size by tributary rivulets. On the top 
 
230 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 of a hill he climbed with difficulty into a tree, and 
 saw in the distance what seemed to be a clearing 
 and a newly-raised frame building. Hopeful and 
 rejoicing, he turned back to his young companion, 
 told him what he had seen, and, after chafing his 
 limbs awhile, got him upon his feet. Sometimes 
 supporting him, and at others carrying him on his 
 back, the heroic boy staggered towards the clear- 
 ing. On reaching it he found it deserted, and was 
 obliged to continue his journey. Towards night 
 signs of civilization began to appear, — the heavy, 
 continuous roar of water was heard; and, pres- 
 ently emerging from the forest, he saw a great 
 river dashing in white foam down precipitous rocks, 
 and on its bank the gray walls of a huge stone 
 building, with flankers, palisades, and moat, over 
 which the British flag was flying. This was the 
 famous Saco Fort, built by Governor Phips,^ two 
 years before, just below the falls of the Saco River. 
 The soldiers of the garrison gave the poor fellows 
 a kindly welcome. Joseph, who was scarcely alive, 
 lay for a long time sick in the fort ; but Isaac soon 
 regained his strength, and set out for his home in 
 Haverhill, which he had the good fortune to arrive 
 at in safety. 
 
 Amidst the stirring excitements of the present 
 day, when every thrill of the electric wire conveys 
 
 1 An interesting account of Sir William Phips will be found 
 in Parkman's Frontenac and New France under Louis XI V 
 Hawthorne also tells his romantic story in Fanshawe and Othet 
 pieces. 
 
THE BOY CAPTIVES. 231 
 
 a new subject for thought or action to a generation 
 as eager as the aiicieiit Athenians for some new 
 thing, sipaple legends of the past like that which 
 we have transcribed have undoubtedly lost in a 
 great degree their interest. The lore of the fire- 
 side is becoming obsolete, and with the octogena- 
 rian few who still linger among us, will perish the 
 unwritten history of border life in New England. 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IN the early years of Dr. Holmes's career his 
 literai-y reputation rested on verse which seemed 
 the playful pastime of a professional man. To 
 students in medicine indeed, he was known as a 
 keen writer, and his published papers upon pro- 
 fessional topics showed how valuable was his lit- 
 erary skill in presenting subjects of a scientific 
 nature. To the general public, however, his prose 
 was known chiefly through the medium of the pop- 
 ular lecture, and the impression was easily created 
 that he was a witty and humorous writer with a 
 turn for satire. It was not until he delivered the 
 as yet unpublished lectures on the English Poets of 
 the Nineteenth Century before the Lowell Institute 
 in Boston, in 1852, that the wider range of his 
 thought and the penetration of his poetic insight 
 were recognized. Five or six years later a better 
 occasion came, and in the first number of The Atlan- 
 tic Monthly was begun a series of prose writings, 
 which under various names gave a new and impor- 
 tant place in literature to the author. The first of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 233 
 
 the series was The Autocrat of the Breakfast- Table ^ 
 the last, The Poet at ike Breakfast- Table ^ and -in 
 this the writer distinctly says what the observant 
 reader of the series will be pretty sure to discover 
 for himself : " I have unburdened myself in this 
 book, and in some other pages, of what I was born 
 to say. Many things that I have said in my riper 
 days have been aching in my soul since I was a 
 mere child. I say aching, because they conflicted 
 with many of my inherited beliefs, or rather tradi- 
 tions. I did not know then that two strains of 
 blood were striving in me for the mastery — two ! 
 twenty, perhaps — twenty thousand, for aught I 
 know — but represented to me by two — paternal 
 and maternal. But I do know this : I have struck 
 a good many chords, first and last, in the conscious- 
 ness of other people. I confess to a tender feeling 
 for my little brood of thoughts. When they have 
 been welcomed and praised, it has pleased me ; and 
 if at any time they have been rudely handled and 
 despitefully treated, it has cost me a little worry. 
 I don't despise reputation, and I should like to be 
 remembered as having said something worth lasting 
 well enough to last." 
 
 This passage briefly presents three very notice- 
 able characteristics of Dr. Holmes's prose as con- 
 tained in the series of Atlantic papers and stories. 
 They give the mature thought of the writer, held 
 back through many years for want of an adequate 
 occasion, and ripened in his mind during this en- 
 forced silence ; they illustrate the effect upon hip 
 
234 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 thought of his professional studies, which predis- 
 posed him to treat of the natural history of man, 
 and to import into his analysis of the invisible or- 
 ganism of life the terms and methods employed in 
 the science of the visible anatomy and physiology ; 
 and finally they are warm with a sympathy for men 
 and women, and singularly felicitous in their ex- 
 pression of many of the indistinct and half-under- 
 stood experiences of life. For their form it may 
 be said that the impression produced upon the 
 reader of the Autocrat series which was finally 
 gathered into a volume, is of a growth rather than 
 of a premeditated artistic completeness. The first 
 suggestion is found in the two papers under the 
 title of The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table^ pub- 
 lished in The New England Magazine for Novem- 
 ber, 1831, and January, 1832. These were written 
 by Dr. Holmes shortly after his graduation from 
 college and before he entered on his medical studies. 
 They consist of brief, epigrammatic observations 
 upon various topics, the desultory talk of a persoD 
 engrossing conversation at a table. The form i> 
 monologue with scarcely more than a hint at in 
 terruptions, and no attempt at characterizing the 
 speaker or his listeners. Twenty-five years later, 
 when The Atlantic Monthly was founded, the author 
 remembering the fancy resumed it, and under the 
 same title began a series of papers which at once 
 had great favor and grew, possibly, beyond the 
 writer's original intention. Twenty-five years had 
 not dulled the wit and gayety of the exuberant 
 
INTRODUCTION, 235 
 
 young author ; rather, they had ripened the early 
 fruit and imparted a richness of flavor which greatly 
 increased the value. The maturity was seen not 
 only in the wider reach and deeper tone of the talk, 
 but in the humanizing of the scheme. Out of the 
 talk at the breakfast-table one began to distinguish 
 characters and faces in the persons about the board, 
 and before the Autocrat was completed, there had 
 appeared a series of portraits, vivid and full of in- 
 terest. Two characters meanwhile were hinted at 
 by the author rather than described or very palpa- 
 bly introduced, the Professor and the Poet. It is 
 not difficult to see that these are thin disguises for 
 the author himself, who, in the versatility of his 
 nature, appeals to the reader now as a brilliant 
 philosopher, now as a man of science, now as a seer 
 and poet. TTie Professor at the Breakfast- Tahle 
 followed, and there was a still stronger dramatic 
 power disclosed ; some of ihe former characters 
 remained and others of even more positive individ- 
 uality were added ; a romance was inwoven and 
 something like a plot sketched, so that while the 
 talk still went on and eddied about graver subjects 
 than before, the book which grew out of the papers 
 had more distinctly the form of a series of sketches 
 from life. It was followed by two novels, Elsie 
 Venner and The Guardian Angel. The talks at 
 the breakfast-table had often gravitated toward 
 the deep themes of destiny and human freedom ; 
 the novels wrought the same subjects in dramatic 
 form, and action interpreted the thought, while still 
 
236 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 there flowed on the wonderful, apparently inex- 
 haustible stream of wit, tenderness, passion, and 
 human sympathy. Once more, fourteen years after 
 the appearance of the first of the series, came The 
 Poet at the Breakfast- Table, A new group of char- 
 acters, with slight reminders of former ones, occu- 
 pied the pages, again talk and romance blended, 
 and playfulness, satire, . sentiment, wise reflection, 
 and sturdy indignation followed in quick succes- 
 sion. 
 
 The Breakfast-Table series forms a group, in- 
 dependent of the intercalated novels, and, with its 
 frequent poems, may be taken as an artistic whole. 
 It is* hardly too much to say that it makes a new 
 contribution to the forms of literary art. The elas- 
 ticity of the scheme rendered possible a comprehen- 
 siveness of material ; the exuberance of the author's 
 fancy and the fullness of his thought gave a richness 
 to the fabric ; the poeiic sense of fitness kept the 
 whole within just bounds. Moreover, the person- 
 ality of the author was vividly present in all parts. 
 There are few examples of literature in the first 
 person so successful as this. 
 
 It is from The Poet at the Breakfast- Table that 
 the following episode is taken. 
 
THE GAMBREL-ROOFED HOUSE. 237 
 
 THE GAMBREL^-ROOFED HOUSE AND 
 ITS OUTLOOK. 
 
 A PANORAMA, WITH SIDE-SHOWS. 
 
 My birthplace, the home of my childhood and 
 earlier and later boyhood, has within a few mpnths 
 passed out of the ownership of my family into the 
 hands of that venerable Alma Mater who seems 
 to have renewed her youtb, and has certainly re- 
 painted her dormitories. In truth, when I last 
 revisited that familiar scene and looked upon the 
 flammantia mcenia ^ of the old halls, " Massachu- 
 setts " with the dummy clock-dial,^ " Harvard " with 
 the garrulous belfry,* little " Holden " ^ with the 
 
 1 "Know old Cambridge? Hope you do. — 
 Born there ? Don't say so ! I was too. 
 (Bom in a house with a gambrel-roof, — 
 Standing still, if you must have proof. — 
 * Gambrel ? — Gambrel ? ' — Let me beg 
 You '11 look at a horse's hinder leg, — 
 First great angle above the hoof, — 
 That's the gambrel; hence gambrel-roof.)" 
 Parson TurelVs Legacy in The Autocrat of the Breakfast' 
 7 %ble. 
 
 2 Flame-red walls. 
 
 3 Early views of Massachusetts show the clock in apparent 
 avtivity. 
 
 4 Harvard Hall holds in its belfry tower the college bell. 
 
 5 Holden Chapel was built in 1744, and on the pediment front- 
 dig the Common may be seen the arms of the Holden family of 
 England, with w^hose gift the chapel was built. It has long been 
 levoted to other uses. 
 
238 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 
 
 sculptured unpunishable cherubs over its portal, 
 and the rest of my early brick-and-mortar acquaint- 
 ances,^ I could not help saying to myself that I had 
 lived to see the peaceable establishment of the Red 
 Republic of Letters. 
 
 Many of the things I shall put down I have no 
 doubt told before in a fragmentary way, how many 
 I cannot be quite sure, as I do not very often read 
 my own prose works. But when a man dies a 
 great deal is said of him which has often been said 
 in other forms, and now this dear old house is dead 
 to me in one sense, and I want to gather up my 
 recollections and wind a string of narrative round 
 them, tying them up like a nosegay for the last 
 tribute : the same blossoms in it I have often laid 
 on its threshold while it was still living for me. 
 
 We Americans are all cuckoos, — we make our 
 homes in the nests of other birds. I have read 
 somewhere that the lineal descendants of the man 
 who carted off the body of William Rufus, with 
 Walter Tyrrel's arrow sticking in it, have driven a 
 cart (not absolutely the same one, I suppose) in the 
 New Forest from that day to this. I don't quite 
 understand Mr. Ruskin's saying (if he said it) that 
 he could n't get along in a country where there 
 were no castles, but I do think we lose a great deal 
 in living where there are so few permanent homes. 
 You will see how much I parted with which was 
 
 1 •* There, in red brick, which softening time defies, 
 Stand square and stiff the Muses' factories." 
 
 . An Indian Summer Reverie^ by J. R. Lowell 
 
THE GAMBEEL-ROOFED HOUSE. 239 
 
 not reckoned in the price paid for the old home- 
 stead. 
 
 I shall say many things which an uncharitable 
 reader might find fault with as personal. I should 
 not dare to call myself a poet if I did not ; for if 
 there is anything that gives one a title to that 
 name, it is that his inner nature is naked and is not 
 ashamed. But there are many such things I shall 
 put in words, not because they are personal, but 
 because they are human, and are born of just such 
 experiences as those who hear or read what I say 
 are like to have had in greater or less measure. I 
 find myself so much like other people that I often 
 wonder at the coincidence. It was only the other 
 day that I sent out a copy of verses ^ about my 
 great-grandmother's picture, and I was surprised to 
 find how many other people had portraits of their 
 great-grandmothers or other progenitors, about 
 which they felt as I did about mine, and for whom 
 I had spoken, thinking I was speaking for myself 
 only. And so I am not afraid to talk very freely 
 with you, my precious reader or listener. You too, 
 Beloved, were born somewhere and remember your 
 birthplace or your early home ; for you some house 
 is haunted by recollections ; to some roof you have 
 bid farewell. Your hand is upon mine, then, as T 
 ^ide my pen. Your heart frames the responses 
 \o the litany of my remembrance. For myself it 
 8 a tribute of affection I am rendering, and I 
 should put it on record for my own satisfaction, 
 were there none to read or to listen. 
 
 1 See Dorothy Q., a Family Portrait. 
 
240 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 I hope you will not say that I have built a pil 
 lared portico of introduction to a humble structure 
 of narrative. For when you look at the old gam- 
 brel-roofed house, you will see an unpretending 
 mansion, such as very possibly you were born in 
 yourself, or at any rate such a place of residence 
 as your minister or some of your well-to-do country 
 cousins find good enough, but not at all too grand 
 for them. We have stately old Colonial palaces ^ 
 in our ancient village, now a city, and a thriving 
 one, — square-fronted edifices that stand back from 
 the vulgar highway, with folded arms, as it were ; 
 social fortresses of the time when the twilight lustre 
 of the throne reached as far as our half-cleared 
 settlement, with a glacis before them in the shape 
 of a long broad gravel-walk, so that in King 
 George's time they looked as formidable to any 
 but the silk-stocking gentry as Gibraltar or Ehren- 
 breitsteiu to a visitor without the password. We 
 forget all this in the kindly welcome they give us 
 to-day; for some of them are still standing and 
 doubly famous, as we all know. But the gambrel- 
 roofed house, though stately enough for college 
 dignitaries and scholarly clergymen, was not one 
 of those old tory, Episcopal-church-goer's strong- 
 holds. One of its doors opens directly upon the 
 green, always called the Common ; the other, facing 
 
 1 Sucli as what was known as the Bishop's Palace, the houses 
 on Brattle Street occupied in Colonial days by Brattle, the Yas- 
 sals, Oliver, Ruggles, Lee, Sewall, and others. Most of the 
 occupants were tories and Church of England men, and the prin- 
 cipal line of mansions went by the name of Church Row. 
 
THE GAMBREL-ROOFED HOUSE, 241 
 
 the south, a few steps from it, over a paved foot- 
 walk, OD the other side of which is the miniature 
 front yard, bordered with lilacs and syringas. The 
 honest mansion makes no pretensions. Accessi- 
 ble, companionable, holding* its hand out to all, 
 comfortable, respectable, and even in its way digni- 
 fied, but not imposing, not a house for his Majesty's 
 Counsellor, or the Right Reverend successor of 
 Him who had not where to lay his head, for some- 
 thing like a hundred and fifty years it has stood in 
 its lot, and seen the generations of men come and 
 go like the leaves of the forest. I passed some 
 pleasant hours, a few years since, in the Registry 
 of Deeds and the Town Records, looking up the 
 history of the old house. How those dear friends 
 of mine, the antiquarians, for whose grave councils 
 I compose my features on the too rare Thursdays ^ 
 when I am at liberty to meet them, in whose hu- 
 man herbarium the leaves and blossoms of past 
 generations are so carefully spread out and pressed 
 and laid away, would listen to an expansion of the 
 following brief details into an Historical Memoir ! 
 
 The estate was the third lot of the eighth 
 ** Squadron " (whatever that might be), and in the 
 year 1707 was allotted in the distribution of undi- 
 vided lands to " Mr. ffox," the Reverend Jabez 
 Fox, of Woburn, it may be supposed, as it passed 
 from his heirs to the first Jonathan Hastings ; from 
 him to his son, the long-remembered College Stew- 
 ard; ivom him in the year 1792 to the Reverend 
 * The day of meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society . 
 16 
 
242 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 Eliphalet Pearson, Professor of Hebrew and other 
 Oriental languages in Harvard College, whose 
 large personality swam into my ken when I was 
 looking forward to my teens ; from him to the pro- 
 genitors of my unborn self. 
 
 I wonder if there are any such beings nowadays 
 as the great Eliphalet, with his large features and 
 conversational hasso profundo^ seemed to me.^ His 
 very name had something elephantine about it, and 
 it seemed to me that the house shook from cellar 
 to garret at his foot-fall. Some have pretended 
 that he had Olympian aspirations, and wanted to 
 sit in the seat of Jove and bear the academic thun- 
 derbolt and the aegis inscribed Christo et Ecclesice, 
 It is a common weakness enough to wish to find 
 one's self in an empty saddle ; Cotton Mather was 
 miserable all his days, I am afraid, after that entry 
 in his Diary : " This Day Dr. Sewall was chosen 
 President, for his Piety, ^^ 
 
 There is no doubt that the men of the older gen- 
 eration look bigger and more formidable to the boys 
 whose eyes are turned up at their venerable counte- 
 nances than the race which succeeds them, to the 
 same boys grown older. Everything is twice as 
 large, measured on a three-year-old's three-foot 
 scale as on a thirty-year-old's six-foot scale ; but 
 age magnifies and aggravates persons out of due 
 proportion. Old people are a kind of monsters to 
 little folks ; mild manifestations of the terrible, it 
 
 1 See Dr. Holmes's reference to the grmt Eliphalet^ in hii 
 poem, The School-Boy y w. 256-262. 
 
TBE GAMBREL-ROOFED HOUSE. 243 
 
 may be, but still, with their white locks and ridged 
 and grooved features, which those horrid little eyes 
 exhaust of their details, like so many microscopes, 
 not exactly what human beings ought to be. The 
 middle-aged and young men have left comparatively 
 faint impressions in my memory, but how grandly 
 the procession of the old clergymen who filled our 
 pulpit from time to time, and passed the day under 
 our roof, marches before my closed eyes ! At their 
 head the most venerable David Osgood, the majes- 
 tic minister of Medford, with massive front and 
 shaggy overshadowing eyebrows ; following in the 
 train, mild-eyed John Foster of Brighton, with the 
 lambent aurora of a smile about his pleasant mouth, 
 which not even the " Sabbath " could subdue to the 
 true Levitical aspect; and bulky Charles Steams 
 of Lincoln, author of " The Ladies' Philosophy of 
 Love. A Poem. 1797." (how I stared at him ! 
 he was the first living person ever pointed out to 
 me as a poet) ; and Thaddeus Mason Harris ^ of 
 Dorchester (the same who, a poor youth, trudging 
 along, staff in hand, being then in a stress of sore 
 need, found all at once that somewhat was adher- 
 ing to the end of his stick, which somewhat proved 
 
 1 "I remember in my boyhood the little quaint old man, bent 
 almost incredibly, but still wearirtg a hale aspect, who used to 
 haunt the alcoves of the old library in Harvard Hall. It was 
 rumored among us that he had once been appointed private sec- 
 retary to Washington, but had resigned from illness ; and it was 
 Vnown that he was arranging and indexing for Mr. Sparks the 
 one hundred and thirty-two manuscript vohmies of Washing- 
 ton's correspondence." T. W. Higginson: Memoir of Thad' 
 i4us William Harris (son of T. M. H.). 
 
244 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 
 
 to be a gold ring of price, bearing the words, " God 
 speed thee, Friend ! "), already in decadence as I 
 remember him, with head slanting forward and 
 downward as if looking for a place to rest in after 
 his learned labors ; and that other Thaddeus,^ the 
 old man of West Cambridge, who outwatched the 
 rest so long after they had gone to sleep in their 
 own churchyards, that it almost seemed as if he 
 meant to sit up until the morning of the resurrec- 
 tion; and, bringing up the rear, attenuated but 
 vivacious little Jonathan Homer of Newton, who 
 was, to look upon, a kind of expurgated, reduced, 
 and Americanized copy of Voltaire, but very unlike 
 him in wickedness or wit. The good-humored 
 junior member of our family always loved to make 
 him happy by setting him chirruping about Miles 
 Coverdale's Version, and the Bishop's Bible, and 
 how he wrote to his friend Sir Isaac (Coffin) about 
 something or other, and how Sir Isaac wrote back 
 that he was very much pleased with the contents 
 of his letter, and so on about Sir Isaac, ad lihitum, 
 — for the admiral was his old friend, and he was 
 proud of him. The kindly little old gentleman was 
 a collector of Bibles, and made himself believe he 
 thought he should publish a learned Commentary 
 some day or other ; but his friends looked for it 
 only in the Greek Calends, — say on the 31st of 
 April, when that should come round, if you would 
 modernize the phrase. I recall also one or two 
 exceptional and infrequent visitors with perfect 
 1 Rev. Thaddeus Fiske, who died in 1855 at the age of 93. 
 
THE GAMBREL-ROOFED HOUSE. 245 
 
 distinctness : cheerful Elijah Kellogg, a lively mis- 
 sionarj from the region of the Quoddy Indians, 
 with much hopeful talk about Sock Bason and his 
 tribe ; also poor old Poor-house-Parson Isaac Smith, 
 his head going like a China mandarin, as he dis- 
 cussed the possibilities of the escape of that distin- 
 guished captive whom he spoke of under the name, 
 if I can reproduce, phonetically its vibrating nasali- 
 ties, of " General Mmbongaparty," — a name sug- 
 gestive to my young imagination of a dangerous, 
 loose-jointed skeleton, threatening us all like the 
 armed figure of Death in my little New England 
 Primer. 
 
 T have mentioned only the names of those whose 
 images come up pleasantly before me, and I do not 
 mean to say anything which any descendant might 
 not read smilingly. But there were some of the 
 black-coated gentry whose aspect was not so agree- 
 able to me. It is very curious to me to look back 
 on my early likes and dislikes, and see how as a 
 child I was attracted or repelled by such and such 
 ministers, a good deal, as I found out long after- 
 wards, according to their theological beliefs. On 
 the whole, I think the old-fashioned New England 
 divine softening down into Arminianism was about 
 as agreeable as any of them. And here I may re- 
 mark, that a mellowing rigorist is always a much 
 pleasanter object to contemplate than a tightening 
 liberal, as a cold day warming up to 32° Fahrenheit 
 \s much more agreeable than a warm one chilling 
 4own to the same temperature. The least pleas- 
 
246 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 
 
 \\\g change is that kind of mental hemiplegia which 
 now and then attacks the rational side of a nian 
 at about the same period of life when one side of 
 the body is liable to be palsied, and in fact is, very 
 probably, the same thing as palsy, in another form. 
 The worst of it is that the subjects of it never seem 
 to suspect that they are intellectual invalids, stam- 
 merers and cripples at best, but are all the time 
 hitting out at their old friends with the well arm, 
 and calling them hard names out of their twisted 
 mouths. 
 
 It was a real delight to have one of those good, 
 hearty, happy, benignant old clergymen pass the 
 Sunday with us, and I can remember some whose 
 advent made the day feel almost like " Thanksgiv- 
 ing." But now and then would come along a cler- 
 ical visitor with a sad face and a wailing voice, 
 which sounded exactly as if somebody must be ly- 
 ing dead up-stairs, who took no interest in us chil- 
 dren, except a painful one, as being in a bad way 
 with our cheery looks, and did more to unchris- 
 tianize us with his woebegone ways than all his ser- 
 mons were like to accomplish in the other direction. 
 I remember one in particular, who twitted me so 
 with my blessings as a Christian child, and whined 
 BO to me about the naked black children who, like 
 the " Little Vulgar Boy," " had n't got no supper 
 and had n't got no ma," and had n't got no Cate- 
 chism, (how I wished for the moment I was a little 
 black boy !) that he did more in that one day to 
 make me a heathen than he had ever done in a 
 
THE GAMBREL-ROOFED HOUSE. 247 
 
 month to make a Christian out of an infant Hot- 
 tentot. What a debt we owe to our friends of the 
 left centre, the Brooklyn and the Park Street and 
 the Summer Street ministers ; good, wholesome, 
 sound-bodied, sane-minded, cheerful-spirited men, 
 who have taken the place of those wailing 'poitri- 
 naires with the bandanna handkerchiefs round their 
 meagre throats and a funeral service in their forlorn 
 physiognomies ! I might have been a minister my- 
 self, for aught I know, if this clergyman had not 
 looked and talked so like an undertaker. 
 
 All this belongs to one of the side-shows, to 
 which I promised those who would take tickets to 
 the main exhibition should have entrance gratis. If 
 I were writing a poem you would expect, as a mat- 
 ter of course, that there would be a digression now 
 and then. 
 
 To come back to the old house and its former 
 tenant, the Professor of Hebrew and other Oriental 
 languages. Fifteen years he lived with his family 
 under its roof. I never found the slightest trace of 
 him until a few years ago, when I cleaned and 
 brightened with pious hands the brass lock of " the 
 study," which had for many years been covered with 
 a thick coat of paint. On that I found scratched, 
 as with a nail or fork, the following inscription : — 
 
 E PE 
 
 Only that and nothing more, but the story told 
 itself. Master Edward Pearson, then about as high 
 
248 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 as the lock, was disposed to immortalize himself in 
 monumental brass, and had got so far towards it, 
 when a sudden interruption, probably a smart box 
 on the ear, cheated him of his lame, except so far 
 as this poor record may rescue it. Dead long ago. 
 I remember him well, a grown man, as a visitor at 
 a later period ; and, for some reason, I recall him 
 in the attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes, standing 
 full before a generous wood-fire, not facing it, but 
 quite the contrary, a perfect picture of the content 
 afforded by a blazing hearth contemplated from that 
 point of view, and, as the heat stole through his 
 person and kindled his emphatic features, seeming 
 to me a pattern of manly beauty. What a statue 
 gallery of posturing friends we all have in our 
 memory ! The old Professor himself sometimes 
 visited the house after it had changed hands. Of 
 course, my recollections are not to be wholly trusted, 
 but I always think I see his likeness in a profile 
 face to be found among the illustrations of Rees's 
 Cyclopaedia. (See Plates, Vol. lY., Plate 2, Paint- 
 ing, Diversities of the Human Face, Fig. 4.) 
 
 And now let us return to our chief picture. In 
 the days of my earliest remembrance, a row of tall 
 Lombardy ipoplars mounted guard on the western 
 side of the old mansion. Whether, like the cypress, 
 these trees suggest the idea of the funeral torch or 
 the monumental spire, whether their tremulous 
 leaves make us afraid by sympathy with their nerv- 
 ous thrills, whether the faint balsamic smell of their 
 leaves and their closely swathed limbs have in them 
 
THE GAMBREL-ROOFED HOUSE. 249 
 
 vague hints of dead Pharaohs stiffened in their cere- 
 ments, I will not guess ; but they always seemed to 
 me to give an air of sepulchral sadness to the house 
 before which they stood sentries. Not so with the 
 row of elms which you may see leading up towards 
 the western entrance. I think the patriarch of 
 them all went over in the great gale of 1815 ; I 
 know I used to shake the youngest of them with 
 my hands, stout as it is now, with a trunk that 
 would defy the bully of Crotona, or the strong man 
 whose liaison with the Lady Delilah proved so dis- 
 astrous. 
 
 The College plain would be nothing without its 
 elms. As the long hair of a woman is a glory to 
 her, so are these green tresses that bank them- 
 selves against the sky in thick clustered masses, the 
 ornament and the pride of the classic green. You 
 know the " Washington elm," or if you do not, you 
 had better rekindle your patriotism by reading the 
 inscription, which tells you that under its shadow 
 the great leader first drew his sword at the head of 
 dn American army. In a line with that you may 
 see two others : the coral fan, as I always called it 
 from its resemblance in form to that beautiful ma- 
 rine growth, and a third a little farther along. I 
 have heard it said that all three were planted at the 
 same time, and that the difference of their growth 
 is due to the slope of the ground, — the Washing- 
 ton elm being lower than either of the others. 
 There is a row of elms just in front of the old 
 noose on the south. When T was a child the one 
 
250 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 at the southwest corner was struck by lightning, 
 and one of its limbs and a long ribbon of bark torn 
 away. The tree never fully recovered its sym- 
 metry and vigor, and forty years and more after- 
 wards a second thunderbolt crashed upon it and set 
 its heart on fire, like those of the lost souls in the 
 Hall of Eblis. Heaven had twice blasted it, and 
 the axe finished what the lightning had begun. 
 
 The soil of the University town is divided into 
 patches of sandy and of clayey ground. The Com- 
 mon and the College green, near which the old 
 house stands, are on one of the sandy patches. 
 Four curses are the local inheritance : droughts, 
 dust, mud, and canker-worms. I cannot but think 
 that all the characters of a region help to modify 
 the children born in it. I am fond of making apol- 
 ogies for human nature, and I think I could find an 
 excuse for myself if I, too, were dry and barren and 
 muddy-witted and " cantankerous," — disposed to 
 get my back up, like those other natives of the soil. 
 
 I know this, that the way Mother Earth treats a 
 boy shapes out a kind of natural theology for him. 
 I fell into Manichean ways of thinking from the 
 teaching of my garden experiences. Like other 
 boys in the country, I had my patch of ground, to 
 which, in the spring-time, I intrusted the seeds fur- 
 nished me, with a confident trust in their resurrec- 
 tion and glorification in the better world of sum- 
 mer. But I soon found that my lines had fallen in 
 a place where a vegetable growth had to run the 
 gauntlet of as many foes and trials as a Christian 
 
THE GAMBREL-ROOFED HOUSE, 251 
 
 pilgrim. Flowers would not blow ; daffodils per- 
 ished like criminals in their condemned caps, with- 
 out their petals ever seeing daylight ; roses were 
 disfigured with monstrous protrusions through their 
 very centres, — something that looked like a second 
 bud pushing through the middle of the corolla ; 
 lettuces and cabbages would not head ; radishes 
 knotted themselves until they looked like centena- 
 rians' fingers ; and on every stem, on every leaf, 
 and both sides of it, and at the root of everything 
 that grew, was a professional specialist in the shape 
 of grub, caterpillar, aphis, or other expert, whose 
 business it was to devour that particular part, and 
 help murder the whole attempt at vegetation. Such 
 experiences must influence a child born to them. 
 A sandy soil, where nothing flourishes but weeds 
 and evil beasts of small dimensions, must breed 
 different qualities in its human offspring from one 
 of those fat and fertile spots which the wit whom T 
 have once before quoted described so happily ^ that, 
 if I quoted the passage, its brilliancy w^ould spoil 
 one of my pages, as a diamond breastpin sometimes 
 kills the social effect of the wearer, who might have 
 passed for a gentleman without it. Your arid patch 
 of earth should seem to be the natural birthplace 
 of the leaner virtues and the feebler vices, — of 
 temperance and the domestic proprieties on the one 
 hand, with a tendency to light weights in groceries 
 
 1 Possibly in reference to Douglas Jerrold's mot of a certain 
 fertile district: *' Tickle it with a hoe and it will laugh with a 
 harrest." 
 
252 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 and provisions, and to clandestine abstraction from 
 the person on the other, as opposed to the free hos- 
 pitality, the broadly planned burglaries, and the 
 largely conceived homicides of our rich Western 
 alluvial regions. Yet Nature is never wholly un- 
 kiDd. Economical as she was in my unparadised 
 Eden, hard as it was to make some of my floral 
 houris unveil, still the damask roses sweetened the 
 June breezes, the bladed and plumed flower-de-luces 
 unfolded their close-wrapped cones, and larkspurs 
 and lupins, lady's delights, — plebeian manifesta- 
 tions of the pansy, — self-sowing marigolds, holly- 
 hocks, the forest flowers of two seasons, and the 
 perennial lilacs and syringas, — all whispered to 
 the winds blowing over them that some caressing 
 presence was around me. 
 
 Beyond the garden was " the field," a vast do- 
 main of four acres or thereabout, by the measure- 
 ment of after years, bordered to the north by a 
 fathomless chasm, — the ditch the base-ball players 
 of the present era jump over ; on the east by un- 
 explored territory; on the south by a barren in- 
 closure, where the red sorrel proclaimed liberty 
 and equality under its drapeau rouge^ and succeeded 
 in establishing a vegetable commune where all were 
 alike, poor, mean, sour, and uninteresting ; and on 
 the west by the Common, not then disgraced by 
 jealous inclosures, which make it look like a cattle- 
 market. Beyond, as I looked round, were the 
 Colleges, the meeting-house, the little square mar- 
 ket-house, long vanished ; the burial-ground where 
 
THE GAMBRELrROOFED HOUSE. 253 
 
 th(i dead Presidents stretched their weary boues un- 
 der epitaphs stretched out at as full length as their 
 subjects ; the pretty church where the gouty tories 
 used to kneel on their hassocks ; the district school- 
 house, and hard by it Ma'am Hancock's cottage, 
 never so called in those days, but rather " ten- 
 footer ; " then houses scattered near and far, open 
 spaces, the shadowy elms, round hilltops in the 
 distance, and over all the great bowl of the sky. 
 Mind you, this was the world, as I first knew it ; 
 terra veterihis cognita, as Mr. Arrowsmith would 
 have called it, if he had mapped the universe of 
 my infancy. 
 
 But I am forgetting the old house again in the 
 landscape. The worst of a modern stylish mansion 
 is, that it has no place for ghosts. 1 watched one 
 building not long since. It had no proper garret, 
 to begin with, only a sealed interval between the 
 roof and attics, where a spirit could not be accom- 
 modated, unless it were flattened out like Ravel, 
 Brother, after the mill-stone had fallen on him. 
 There was not a nook or a corner in the whole 
 house fit to lodge any respectable ghost, for every 
 part was as open to observation as a literary man's 
 character and condition, his figure and estate, his 
 coat and his countenance, are to his (or her) Bohe- 
 mian Majesty on a tour of inspection through his 
 (or her) subjects' keyholes. 
 
 Now the old house had wainscots, behind which 
 the mice were always scampering and squeaking 
 «nd rattling down the plaster, and enacting family 
 
254 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 
 
 scenes and parlor theatricals. It had a cellar where 
 the cold slug clung to the walls, and the misan- 
 thropic spider withdrew from the garish day ; where 
 the green mould loved to grow, and the long, white 
 potato-shoots went feeling along the floor, if haply 
 they might find the daylight; it had great brick 
 pillars, always in a cold sweat with holding up the 
 burden they had been aching under day and night 
 for a century and more; it had sepulchral arches 
 closed by rough doors that hung on hinges rotten 
 with rust, behind which doors, if there was not a 
 heap of bones connected with a mysterious disap- 
 pearance of long ago, there well might have been, 
 for it was just the place to look for them. It had 
 a garret, very nearly such a one as it seems to me 
 one of us has described in one of his books ; but 
 let us look at this one as I can reproduce it from 
 memory. It has a flooring of laths with ridges of 
 mortar squeezed up between them, which if you 
 tread on you will go to — the Lord have mercy on 
 you ! where will you go to ? — the same being 
 crossed by narrow bridges of boards, on which you 
 may put your feet, but with fear and trembling. 
 Above you and around you are beams and joists, 
 on some of which you may see, when the light is 
 let in, the marks of the conchoidal clippings of the 
 broad-axe, showing the rude way in which the tim- 
 ber was shaped as it came, full of sap, from the 
 neighboring forest. It is a realm of darkness and 
 thick dust, and shroud-like cobwebs and dead things 
 they wrap in their gray folds. For a garret is 
 
THE GAMBREL-ROOFED HOUSE. 255 
 
 like a sea-shore, where wrecks are thrown up and 
 slowly go to pieces. There is the cradle which the 
 old man you just remember was rocked in ; there 
 is the ruin of the bedstead he died on ; that ugly 
 slanting contrivance used to be put under his pil- 
 low in the days when his breath came hard ; there 
 is his old chair with both arms gone, symbol of the 
 desolate time when he had nothing earthly left to 
 lean on ; there is the large wooden reel which the 
 blear-eyed old deacon sent the minister's lady, who 
 thanked him graciously, and twirled it smilingly, 
 and in fitting season bowed it out decently to the 
 limbo of troublesome conveniences. And there 
 are old leather portmanteaus, like stranded por- 
 poises, their mouths gaping in gaunt hunger for 
 the food with which they used to be gorged to 
 bulging repletion ; and old brass andirons, waiting 
 until time shall revenge them on their paltry sub- 
 stitutes, and they shall have their own again, and 
 bring with them the fore-stick and the back- log of 
 ancient days ; and the empty churn, with its idle 
 dasher, which the Nancys and Phoebes, who have 
 left their comfortable places to the Bridgets and 
 Norahs, used to handle to good purpose ; and the 
 brown, shaky old spinning-wheel, which was run- 
 ning, it may be, in the days when they were hang- 
 ing the Salem witches. 
 
 Under the dark and haunted garret were attic 
 chambers which themselves had histories. On a pane 
 in the northeastern chamber may be read these 
 names; " John Tracy," " Robert Roberts," " Thomas 
 
256 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 
 
 Prince ; " " Stultus " another hand had added. 
 When I found these names a few years ago (wrong 
 side up, for the window had been reversed), I looked 
 at once in the Triennial to find them, for the epithet 
 showed that they were probably students. I found 
 them, all under the years 1771 and 1773. Does it 
 please their thin ghosts thus to be dragged to the 
 light of day ? Has " Stultus " forgiven the indignity 
 of being thus characterized? 
 
 The southeast chamber was the Library Hospital. 
 Every scliolar should have a book infirmary attached 
 to his library. There should find a peaceable refuge 
 the many books, invalids from their birth, which 
 are sent " with the best regards of the Author ; " 
 the respected, but unpresentable cripples which have 
 lost a cover ; the odd volumes of honored sets which 
 go mourning all their days for their lost brother ; 
 the school-books which have been so often the sub- 
 jects of assault and battery, that they look as if the 
 police court must know them by heart ; these, and 
 still more the pictured story-books, beginning with 
 Mother Goose (which a dear old friend of mine^ has 
 just been amusing his philosophic leisure with turn- 
 ing most ingeniously and happily into the tongues 
 of Virgil and Homer), will be precious mementos 
 by and by, when children and grandchildren come 
 along. What would I not give for that dear little 
 paper-bound quarto, in large and most legible type, 
 
 1 XfivtaBtM, [Chenodia], or the Classical Mother Goose. Argutoi 
 inter strepere anser olores. [By Dr. Jacob Bigelow.] Cam* 
 bridge: Printed (not Published), University Press, 1871. 
 
THE GAMBEEL-ROOFED HOUSE, 257 
 
 on certain pages of which the tender hand that was 
 the shield of my infancy had crossed out with deep 
 black marks something awful, probably about Bears, 
 such as once tare two-and-forty of us little folks for 
 making faces, and the very name of which made us 
 hide our heads under the bed-clothes. 
 
 I made strange acquaintances in that book in- 
 firmary up in the southeast attic. The " Negro 
 Plot*' at New York helped to implant a feeling in 
 me which it took Mr. Garrison a good many years 
 to root out. '' Thinks I to Myself,'' an old novel, 
 which has been attributed to a famous statesman,^ 
 introduced me to a world of fiction which was not 
 represented on the shelves of the library proper, 
 unless perhaps by '* Coelebs in Search of a Wife," 
 or allegories of the bitter tonic class, as the young 
 doctor that sits on the other side of the table would 
 probably call them. I always, from an early age, 
 had a keen eye for a story with a moral sticking 
 out of it, and gave it a wide berth, though in my 
 later years I have myself written a couple of " med- 
 icated novels," as one of my dearest and pleasantest 
 old friends wickedly called them, when somebody 
 asked her if she had read the last of my printed 
 performances. I forgave the satire for the charm- 
 ing esprit of the epithet. Besides the works I have 
 mentioned, there was an old, old Latin alchemy 
 book, with the manuscript annotations of some 
 ancient Rosicrucian, in the pages of which I had a 
 
 1 George Canning. The actual author of the novel was an 
 English clergyman, Rev. Edward Nares. 
 17 
 
258 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 
 
 vague notion that I might find the mighty secret of 
 the Lapis Philosophorumy otherwise called Chaos, 
 tlie Dragon, the Green Lion, the Quinta Essentia^ 
 the Soap of Sages, the Vinegar of Philosophers, 
 the Dew of Heavenly Grace, the Egg, the Old Man, 
 the Sun, the Moon, and by all manner of odd aliases, 
 as I am assured by the plethoric little book before 
 me, in parchment covers browned like a meerschaum 
 with the smoke of furnaces and the thumbing of 
 dead gold -seekers, and the fingering of bony-handed 
 book-misers, and the long intervals of dusty slum- 
 ber on the shelves of the houquiniste ; for next 
 year it will be three centuries old, and it had already 
 seen nine generations of men when I caught its eye 
 (AlchemicB Doctrind) and recognized it at pistol-shot 
 distance as a prize, among the breviaries and Heures 
 and trumpery volumes of the old open-air dealer 
 who exposed his treasures under the shadow of St. 
 Sulpice. I have never lost my taste for alchemy 
 since I first got hold of the Palladium Spagyricum 
 of Peter John Faber, and sought — in vain, it is 
 v^rue — through its pages for a clear, intelligible, 
 and practical statement of how I could turn my 
 Acad sinkers and the weights of the tall kitchen 
 clock into good yellow gold, specific gravity 19.2, 
 and exchangeable for whatever I then wanted, and 
 for many more things than I was then aware of. 
 One of the greatest pleasures of childhood is found 
 in the mysteries which it hides from the scepticism 
 of the elders, and works up into small mythologies 
 of its own, I have seen all this played over again 
 
THE OAMBREL-ROOFED HOUSE. 259 
 
 in adult life, — the same delightful bewilderment of 
 semi-emotional belief in listening to the gaseous 
 promises of this or that fantastic system, that I 
 found in the pleasing mirages conjured up for me 
 by the ragged old volume I used to pore over in 
 the southeast attic-chamber. 
 
 The rooms of the second story, the chambers of 
 birth and death, are sacred to silent memories. 
 
 Let us go down to the ground-floor. I should 
 have begun with this, but that the historical reminis- 
 cences of the old house have been recently told in 
 a most interesting memoir by a distinguished student 
 of our local history.^ I retain my doubts about those 
 " dents" on the floor of the right-hand room, " the 
 study " of successive occupants, said to have been 
 made by the butts of the Continental militia's fire- 
 locks, but this was the cause the story told me in 
 childhood laid them to. That military consultations 
 were held in that room when the house was General 
 Ward's headquarters, that the Provincial generals 
 and colonels and other men of war there planned 
 the movement which ended in the fortifying of 
 Bunker's Hill, that Warren slept in the house the 
 night before the battle, that President Langdon 
 went forth from the western door and prayed for 
 God*s blessing on the men just setting forth on their 
 bloody expedition, — all these things have been 
 told , and perhaps none of them need be doubted. 
 
 J ut now for fifty years and more that room has 
 
 1 tee Old Cambridge and NeWy by Thomas C. Amory. Boft* 
 ior 1871. 
 
260 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 
 
 been a meeting-ground for the platoons and compa- 
 nies which range themselves at the scholar's word of 
 command. Pleasant it is to think that the retreat- 
 ing host of books is to give place to a still larger 
 army of volumes, which have seen service under 
 the eye of a great commander. For here the noble 
 collection of him so freshly remembered as our sil- 
 ver-tongued orator, our erudite scholar, our honored 
 College President, our accomplished statesman, our 
 courtly ambassador, are to be reverently gathered 
 by the heir of his name, himself not unworthy to be 
 surrounded by that august assembly of the wise of 
 all ages and of various lands and languages.^ 
 
 Could such a many-chambered edifice have stood 
 a century and a half and not have had its passages 
 of romance to bequeath their lingering legends to 
 the after-time ? There are other names on some 
 of the small window-panes, which must have had 
 young flesh-and-blood owners, and there is one of 
 early date which elderly persons have whispered 
 was borne by a fair woman, whose graces made the 
 \iouse beautiful in the eyes of the youth of that time. 
 One especially — you will find the name of Fortes- 
 nue Vernon, of the class of 1780, in the Triennial 
 Catalogue — was a favored visitor to the old man- 
 sion ; but he went over seas, I think they told me, 
 and died still young, and the name of the maiden 
 which is scratched on the window-pane was never 
 changed. I am telling the story honestly, as T re 
 member it, but I may have colored it unconsciously 
 
 1 William Everett, at that time one of the College Faculty. 
 
THE GAMBREL-ROOFED HOUSE. 2G1 
 
 and the legendary pane may be broken before this 
 for aught I know. At least, I have named no names 
 except the beautiful one of the supposed hero of the 
 romantic story. 
 
 It was a great happiness to have been born in an 
 old house haunted by such recollections, with harm- 
 less ghosts walking its corridors, with fields of wav- 
 ing grass and trees and singing birds, and that vast 
 territory of fdur or five acres around it to give a 
 child the sense that he was born to a noble princi- 
 pality. It has been a great pleasure to retain a 
 certain hold upon it for so many years ; and since 
 *n the natural course of things it must at length pass 
 into other hands, it is a gratification to see the old 
 place making itself tidy for a new tenant, like some 
 venerable dame who is getting ready to entertain a 
 neighbor of condition. Not long since a new cap 
 of shingles adorned this ancient mother among the 
 village — now city — mansions. She has dressed 
 herself in brighter colors than she has hitherto worn, 
 so they tell me, within the last few days. She has 
 modernized her aspects in several ways; she has 
 rubbed bright the glasses through which she looks at 
 ihe Common and the Colleges ; and as the sunsets 
 shine upon her through the flickering leaves or the 
 wiry spray of the elms I remember from my child- 
 hood, they will glorify her into the aspect she wore 
 when President Holyoke, father of our long since 
 dead centenarian,^ looked upon her youthful comeli- 
 ness. 
 
 1 Dr. Edward Augustus Holyoke, who died in 1829, aged 101 
 years. 
 
262 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 The quiet corner formed by this and the neigh- 
 boring residences has changed less than any place 
 I can remember. Our kindly, polite, shrewd, and 
 humorous old neighbor, who in former days has 
 served the town as constable and auctioneer,^ and 
 who bids fair to become the oldest inhabitant of the 
 city, was there when I was born, and is living there 
 to-day. By and by the stony foot of the great Uni- 
 versity will plant itself on this whole territory, and 
 the private recollections which clung so tenaciously 
 and fondly to the place and its habitations will have 
 died with those who cherished them. 
 
 Shall they ever live again in the memory of those 
 who loved them here below ? What is this life with- 
 out the poor accidents which made it our own, and 
 by which we identify ourselves ? Ah me ! I might 
 like to be a winged chorister, but still it seems to 
 me I should hardly be quite happy if I could not 
 recall at will the Old House with the Long Entry, 
 and the White Chamber (where I wrote the first 
 verses^ that made me known, with a pencil stans 
 yede in uno, pretty nearly), and the Little Parlor, 
 and the Study, and the old books in uniforms as 
 varied as those of the Ancient and Honorable Ar- 
 tillery Company used to be, if my memory serves 
 ne right, and the front yard with the stars of Beth- 
 lehem growing, flowerless, among the grass, and the 
 dear faces to be seen no more there or anywheie on 
 this earthly place of farewells. 
 
 1 Royall Morse. 
 
 3 Were not these Old Irofuideit 
 
THE GAMBREL-ROOFED HOUSE, 263 
 
 I have told my story. I do not know what spe- 
 cial gifts have been granted or denied me ; but this I 
 know, that I am like so many others of my fellow- 
 creatures, that when I smile, I feel as if they must ; 
 when I cry, I think their eyes fill ; and it always 
 seen.s to me that when I am most truly myself I 
 come nearest to them and am surest of being list- 
 ened to by the brothers and sisters of the larger 
 family into which I was born so long ago. I have 
 often feared they might be tired of me and what I 
 tell them. But then, perhaps, would come a letter 
 from some quiet body in some out-of-the-way place, 
 which showed me that I had said something which 
 another had often felt but never said, or told the 
 secret of another's heart in unburdening my own. 
 Such evidences that one is in the highway of human 
 experience and feeling lighten the footsteps won- 
 derfully. So it is that one is encouraged to go on 
 writing as long as the world has anything that m- 
 terests him, for he never knows how many of his 
 fellow-beings he may please or profit, and in how 
 many places his name will be spoken as that of a 
 friend.-^ 
 
 1 A pleasant paper of reminiscences of Cambridge will be 
 found in Lowell's Fireside Travels, entitled Cambridge Thirty 
 Years Ago. See also Dr. Holmes's Cinders from the Ashes, and 
 a short paper on The Old Court-House, by his brother, John 
 Uolmes, in The Cambridge of 1776; and T. C. Amory's Old 
 Cambridge and New, already referred to. 
 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 IT has sometimes seemed to the casual observer 
 that Lowell has had a divided interest in his 
 literary life, passing from poetry to prose, and back 
 to poetry, as if he found it difficult to determine 
 in which direction his power lay. But a closer 
 student will remark how very large a proportion 
 of LowelFs prose is the record of his studies in 
 poetry. His first venture in literature was poetic, 
 when he published, not long after graduation from 
 college, the volume of poems, A Yearns Life ; but the 
 opening words of the dedication of that book hint 
 at studies which had been begun long before, and 
 have been carried on with unflagging zeal ever 
 since. Three years later he published Conversa- 
 tions on Some of the Old Poets, a book now out of 
 print ; and any one reading the titles of the papers 
 which comprise the four volumes of his prose writ- 
 ings will readily see how much literature, and 
 especially poetic literature, has occupied his at- 
 tention. Shakspere, Dryden, Lessing, Rousseau, 
 Dante, Spenser, Wordsworth, Milton, Keats, Car- 
 
INTRODUCTION, 265 
 
 lyle, Percival, Thoreau, Swinburne, Chaucer, Emer- 
 son, Pope, — these are the principal subjects of his 
 prose, and the range of topics indicates the catho- 
 licity of his taste. 
 
 It is more correct, therefore, to regard Lowell as 
 primarily a poet, who has published also the results 
 of a scholarship which has busied itself chiefly about 
 poetry. The comments of a poet Upon other poets 
 are always of interest, and the first question usually 
 asked of a young poet is : What master has he fol- 
 lowed ? The answer is generally to be found in the 
 verse itself which betrays the influence of other and 
 older poets. It is not too much to say that while 
 here and there one may trace special influences in" 
 Lowell's poetry, — as, for example, of Keats, — the 
 more noticeable influence is in the converging force 
 of the great features of historic poetry, so that there 
 is no echo of any one poet or conscious imitation 
 of a poetic school ; but poetry as interpreted by 
 the masters of song, in consenting form and spirit, 
 reappears in Jjis verse. 
 
 It must not be inferred from this that the source 
 of Lowell's poetic inspiration is wholly or in great 
 part literary. It is only to say that as a poet he 
 has also been a profound student of poetry; the 
 great impulses under which poets have been stirred 
 have moved him also. These impulses are nature, 
 humanity, and literature ; we have noticed briefly 
 his studies in literature ; there the immediate result 
 is less distinguishable in his poetry than in his prose, 
 ^he great hulk of which, as noted, is composed of 
 
266 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 critical observations on poetry. For his studies in 
 nature we must look most directly to his verse. 
 There will be found the evidence of his keen de- 
 light, his quick ear and eye, his fine apprehension; 
 and as poetry offers the most ready outlet for en- 
 thusiasm in the phenomena of nature, so Lowell 
 the poet has sung of nature rather than written of 
 her. But one may find a small section of his essays 
 devoted to this field, and the paper which we have 
 taken, My Garden Acquaintance, belongs in the 
 group. It is included in his volume, My Study 
 Windows, a fanciful title which intimates how di- 
 vided the poet's attention is between his books and 
 nature ; how ready he is to let the fresh air into his 
 library, and how, when observing the world from 
 within the house, he has carried in his mind the 
 thoughts of other lovers of nature. In this group 
 also belongs a part of the contents of Fireside 
 Travels. 
 
 It was said of the great landscape painter of mod- 
 ern days, by his disciple and interpreter, that in all 
 his pictures he introduced the human figure not for 
 the sake of color, or to hint at proportions, but be- 
 cause to him nature was empty without the thought 
 of humanity. This third great inspiration has been 
 the most prominent in Lowell's poetry, and it has 
 been the cause of an important part of his prose 
 writings. It is not always to be distinguished from 
 the bookish influences which we have noted, for 
 in studying poetry he has been alive to the person- 
 ality of the poets ; but it finds its strongest expres* 
 
INTRODUCTION. 267 
 
 Bion in a few papers devoted to history and politics, 
 Buch as his papers on Witchcraft, New England 
 Two Centuries Ago, A Great PuUic Character, 
 Abraham Lincoln, and certain political essays pub- 
 lished in magazines, but not collected in his prose 
 works. 
 
 Throughout his prose works run the same char- 
 acteristics to be noted in his poetry ; but the form 
 of prose is necessarily more favorable to the ex- 
 hibition of powers of analysis and of a discursive 
 faculty which leads one to illustrate his subject by 
 frequent reference to matters of history or art. 
 The play upon words also belongs rather to prose 
 than to poetry, and in general we may say that the 
 rambles of a writer are freer and more natural 
 within the unconstrained limits of prose. Thus 
 the associative power of LowelFs mind, that gift 
 which, abundantly fed by reading, enables him to 
 suggest indefinitely new combinations of thought, 
 is most delightfully displayed in his prose. The 
 quickness with which he seizes upon the natural 
 suggestions of his subject and the deftness with 
 which he weaves them into the changing web of 
 his fabric constitute a surprise and delight to the 
 reader, and beneath all the subtlety of thought and 
 richness of fancy there is a substance of common 
 gense and sound judgment which commend them- 
 selves to our latest thought upon his work. 
 
 My Garden Acquaintance was first published in 
 the Atlantic Almanac for 1869. 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 One of the most delightful books in my father's 
 library was White's Natural History of Selborue. 
 For me it has rather gained in charm with years. 
 I used to read it without knowing the secret of the 
 pleasure I found in it, but as I grow older I begin 
 to detect some of the simple expedients of this nat- 
 ural magic. Open the book where you will, it 
 takes you out of doors. In our broiling July 
 weather one can walk out with this genially garru- 
 lous Fellow of Oriel and find refreshment instead 
 of fatigue. You have no trouble in keeping abreast 
 of him as he ambles along on his hobby-horse, now 
 pointing to a pretty view, now stopping to watch 
 the motions of a bird or an insect, or to bag a speci- 
 men for the Honorable Daines Barrington or Mr. 
 Pennant. In simplicity of taste and natural refine- 
 ment he reminds one of Walton ; in tenderness 
 toward what he would have called the brute crea- 
 tion, of Cowper. I do not know whether his de- 
 scriptions of scenery are good or not, but they have 
 made me familiar with his neighborhood. Since I 
 first read him, I have walked over some of his fa- 
 vorite haunts, but I still see them through his eyes 
 rather than by any recollection of actual and per- 
 lonal vision. The book has also the delightfulnesa 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 269 
 
 of absolute leisure. Mr. White seems never to 
 have had any harder work to do than to study the 
 habits of his feathered fellow-townsfolk, or to watch 
 the ripening of his peaches on the wall. His vol- 
 umes are the journal of Adam in Paradise, 
 
 " Annihilating all that 's made 
 To a green thought in a green shade." 
 
 It is positive rest only to look into that garden of 
 
 his. It is vastly better than to 
 
 " See great Diocletian walk 
 In the Salonian garden's noble shade," 
 
 for thither ambassadors intrude to bring with them 
 the noises of Rome, while here the world has no 
 entrance. No rumor of the revolt of the American 
 Colonies seems to have reached him. ^' The natural 
 term of an hog's life " has more interest for him 
 than that of an empire. Burgoyne may surrender 
 and welcome ; of what consequence is that compared 
 with the fact that we can explain the odd tumbling 
 of rooks in the air by their turning over " to scratch 
 themselves with one claw " ? All the couriers in 
 P^urope spurring rowel-deep make no stir in Mr. 
 White's little^ Chartreuse; but the arrival of the 
 house-martin a day earlier or later than last year 
 is a piece of news worth sending express to all his 
 correspondents. 
 
 Another secret charm of this book is its inadver- 
 tent humor, so much the more delicious because 
 unsuspected by the author. How pleasant is his 
 
 1 La Grande Chartreuse was the original Carthusian monas- 
 ery in France, where the most austere privacy was maintained. 
 
270 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 innocent vanity in adding to the list of the British, 
 and still more of the Selbornian, /awwa / I believe 
 he would gladly have consented to be eaten by a 
 tiger or a crocodile, if by that means the occasional 
 presence within the parish limits of either of these 
 anthropophagous brutes could have been established. 
 He brags of no fine society, but is plainly a little 
 elated by " having considerable acquaintance with 
 a tame brown owl." Most of us have known our 
 share of owls, but few can boast of intimacy with a 
 feathered one. The great events of Mr. White's 
 life, too, have that disproportionate importance 
 which is always humorous. To think of his hands 
 having actually been thought worthy (as neither 
 Willoughby's nor Ray's were) to hold a stilted 
 plover, the Charadrius himantopus, with no back 
 toe, and therefore " liable, in speculation, to per- 
 petual vacillations"! I wonder, by the way, if 
 metaphysicians have no hind toes. In 1770 he 
 makes the acquaintance in Sussex of " an old family 
 tortoise," which had then been domesticated for 
 thirty years. It is clear that he fell in love with it 
 at first sight. "We have no means of tracing the 
 growth of his passion ; but in 1780 we find him 
 eloping with its object in a post-chaise. " The 
 rattle and hurry of the journey so perfectly roused 
 it that, when I turned it out in a border, it walked 
 twice down to the bottom of my garden." It reads 
 like a Court Journal : " Yesterday morning H. R. 
 H. the Princess Alice took an airing of half an 
 koar on th^ terrace of Windsor Castle." This tor 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE, 271 
 
 toise might have been a member of the Eoyal So- 
 ciety, if he could have condescended to so ignoble 
 an ambition. It had but just been discovered that 
 a surface inclined at a certain angle with the plane 
 of the horizon took more of the sun's rays. The 
 tortoise had always known this (though he unosten- 
 tatiously made no parade of it), and used accord- 
 ingly to tilt himself up against the garden-wall in 
 the autumn. He seems to have been more of a 
 philosopher than even Mr. White himself, caring 
 for nothing but to get under a cabbage-leaf when 
 it rained, or the sun was too hot, and to bury him- 
 self alive before frost, — a four-footed Diogenes, 
 who carried his tub on his back. 
 
 There are moods in which this kind of history is 
 infinitely refreshing. These creatures whom we 
 affect to look down upon as the drudges of instinct 
 are members of a commonwealth whose constitution 
 rests on immovable bases. Never any need of re- 
 construction there ! TTiey never dream of settling 
 it by vote that eight hours are equal to ten, or that 
 one creature is as clever as another and no more. 
 They do not use their poor wits in regulating God's 
 clocks, nor think they cannot go astray so long as 
 they carry their guide-board about with them, — a 
 delusion we often practise upon ourselves with our 
 high and mighty reason, that admirable finger-post 
 which points every way and always right. It is 
 good for us now and then to converse with a world 
 like Mr. White's, where Man is the least important 
 gf animals. But one who, like me, has always lived 
 
272 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 in the country and always on the same spot, is 
 drawn to his book by other occult sympathies. Do 
 we not share his indignation at that stupid Martin 
 who had graduated his thermometer no lower than 
 4° above zero of Fahrenheit, so that in the coldest 
 weather ever known the mercury basely absconded 
 into the bulb, and left us to see the victory slip 
 through our fingers just as they were closing upon 
 it ? No man, I suspect, ever lived long in the 
 country without being bitten by these meteorologi- 
 cal ambitions. He likes to be hotter and colder, 
 to have been more deeply snowed up, to have more 
 trees and larger blow down than his neighbors. 
 With us descendants of the Puritans especially, 
 these weather-competitions supply the abnegated 
 excitement of the race-course. Men learn to value 
 thermometers of the true imaginative temperament, 
 capable of prodigious elations and corresponding 
 dejections. The other day (5th July) I marked 98° 
 in the shade, my high water mark, higher by one 
 degree than I had ever seen it before. I happened 
 to meet a neighbor ; as we mopped our brows at 
 each other, he told me that he had just cleared 100°, 
 and I went home a beaten man. I had not felt the 
 heat before, save as a beautiful exaggeration of 
 sunshine ; but now it oppressed me with the prosaic 
 vulgarity of an oven. What had been poetic in- 
 tensity became all at once rhetorical hyperbole. I 
 might suspect his thermometer (as indeed I did, 
 for we Harvard men are apt to think ill of any 
 graduation but our own) ; but it was a poor conso 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 273 
 
 lation. The fact remained that his herald Mercury, 
 Btanding a-tiptoe, could look down on mine. I 
 seem to glimpse something of this familiar weak- 
 ness in Mr. White. He, too, has shared in these 
 mercurial triumphs and defeats. Nor do I doubt 
 that he had a true country-gentleman's interest in 
 the weather-cock ; that his first question on coming 
 down of a morning was, like Barabas's, 
 
 " Into what quarter peers my halcyon's bill? '' 
 
 It is an innocent and healthful employment of 
 the mind, distracting one from too continual study 
 of himself, and leading him to dwell rather upon 
 the indigestions of the elements than his own. 
 " Did the wind back round, or go about with the 
 sun ? " is a rational question that bears not remotely 
 on the making of hay and the prosperity of crops. 
 I have little doubt that the regulated observation 
 of the vane in many different places, and the in- 
 terchange of results by telegraph, would put the 
 weather, as it were, in our power, by betraying its 
 ambushes before it is ready to give the assault. At 
 first sight, nothing seems more drolly trivial than 
 the lives of those whose single achievement is to re- 
 cord the wind and the temperature three times a day. 
 Yet such men are doubtless sent into the world for 
 this special end, and perhaps there is no kind of ac- 
 curate observation, whatever its object, that has not 
 *ts final use and value for some one or other. It is 
 even to be hoped that the speculations of our news- 
 paper editors and their myriad correspondents upon 
 
274 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, 
 
 the signs of the political atmosphere may also fill 
 their appointed place in a well-regulated universe, if 
 it be only that of supplying so many more jack-o'- 
 lanterns to the future historian. Nay, the observa- 
 tions on finance of an M. C. whose sole knowledge 
 of the subject has been derived from a life-long 
 success in getting a living out of the public without 
 paying any equivalent therefor, will perhaps be of 
 interest hereafter to some explorer of our cloaca 
 maxima^ whenever it is cleansed. 
 
 For many years I have been in the habit of not- 
 ing down some of the leading events of my embow- 
 ered solitude, such as the coming of certain birds 
 and the like, — a kind of memoires pour servir, 
 after the fashion of White, rather than properly di- 
 gested natural history. I thought it not impossible 
 that a few simple stories of my winged acquaint- 
 ances might be found entertaining by persons of 
 kindred taste. 
 
 There is a common notion that animals are better 
 meteorologists than men, and I have little doubt that 
 in immediate weather-wisdom they have the advan- 
 tage of our sophisticated senses (though I suspect 
 a sailor or shepherd would be their match), but I 
 have seen nothing that leads me to believe their 
 minds capable of erecting the horoscope of a whole 
 season, and letting us know beforehand whether 
 the winter will be severe or the summer rainless. 
 I more than suspect that the clerk of the weather 
 himself does not always know very long in advance 
 whether he is to draw an oider for hot or cold, dry 
 
• MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 275 
 
 or moist, and the musquash is scarce likely to be 
 wiser. I have noted but two days' difference in the 
 coming of the song-sparrow between a very early 
 and a very backward spring. This very year 1 
 saw the linnets at work thatching, just before a 
 snow-storm which covered the ground several inches 
 deep for a number of days. They struck work and 
 ieft us for a while, no doubt in search of food. 
 Birds frequently perish from sudden changes in our 
 whimsical spring weather of which they had no 
 foreboding. More than thirty years ago, a cherry- 
 tree, then in full bloom, near my window, was cov- 
 ered with hnmming-birds benumbed by a fall of 
 mingled rain and snow, which probably killed many 
 of them. It should seem that their coming was 
 dated by the height of the sun, which betrays them 
 into unthrifty matrimony ; 
 
 ** So priketh hem Nature in hir corages ; '* i 
 
 but their going is another matter. The chimney- 
 swallows leave us early, for example, apparently so 
 soon as their latest fledglings are firm enough of 
 wing to attempt the long rowing-match that is be- 
 fore them. On the other hand, the wild-geese prob- 
 ably do not leave the North till they are frozen 
 out, for I have heard their bugles sounding south- 
 ward so late as the middle of December. What 
 may be called local migrations are doubtless dictated 
 by the chances of food. I have once been visited 
 by large flights of cross-bills ; and whenever the 
 
 1 Chaucer's Canterbury Tales^ Prologue^ v. 11. 
 
276 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 snow lies long and deep on the ground, a flock of 
 cedar-birds comes in midwinter to eat the berries 
 on my hawthorns. I have never been quite able 
 to fathom the local, or rather geographical partial- 
 ities of birds. Never before this summer (1870) 
 have the king-birds, handsomest of flycatchers, built 
 in my orchard ; though I always know where to 
 find them within half a mile. The rose-breasted 
 grosbeak has been a familiar bird in Brookline 
 (three miles away), yet I never saw one here till 
 last July, when I found a female busy among my 
 raspberries and surprisingly bold. I hope she was 
 'prospecting with a view to settlement in our garden. 
 She seemed, on the whole, to think well of my 
 fruit, and I would gladly plant another bed if it 
 would help to win over so delightful a neighbor. 
 
 The return of the robin is commonly announced 
 by the newspapers, like that of eminent or noto- 
 rious people to a watering-place, as the first au- 
 thentic notification of spring. And such his ap- 
 pearance in the orchard and garden undoubtedly is. 
 But, in spite of his name of migratory thrush, he 
 stays with us all winter, and I have seen him when 
 the thermometer marked 15 degrees below zero of 
 Fahrenheit, armed impregnably within,^ like Emer- 
 son's Titmouse, and as cheerful as he. The robin 
 has a bad reputation among people who do not 
 value themselves less for being fond of cherriea 
 
 1 "For well the soul, if stout within, 
 Can arm impregnably the skin." 
 
 The Titmuuse^ vv. 75, 76. 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE, 277 
 
 There is, I admit, a spice of vulgarity in him, and 
 his song is rather of the Bloomfield sort, too largely 
 ballasted with prose. His ethics are of the Poor 
 Richard school, and the main chance which calls 
 forth all his energy is altogether of the belly. He 
 never has those fine intervals of lunacy into which 
 his cousins, the catbird and the mavis, are apt to 
 fall. But for a' that and twice as muckle 's a' that, 
 T would not exchange him for all the cherries that 
 ever came out of Asia Minor. With whatever 
 faults, he has not wholly forfeited that superiority 
 which belongs to the children of nature. He has 
 a finer taste in fruit than could be distilled from 
 many successive committees of the Horticultural So- 
 ciety, and he eats with a relishing gulp not inferior 
 to Dr. Johnson's. He feels and freely exercises his 
 right of eminent domain. His is the earliest mess 
 of green peas ; his all the mulberries I had fancied 
 mine. But if he get also the lion's share of the 
 raspberries, he is a great planter, and sows those 
 wild ones in the woods that solace the pedestrian, 
 and give a momentary calm even to the jaded vic- 
 tims of the White Hills. He keeps a strict eye 
 over one's fruit, and knows to a shade of purple 
 when your grapes have cooked long enough in the 
 Bun. During the severe drought a few years ago 
 the robins wholly vanished from my garden. I 
 neither saw nor heard one for three weeks. Mean- 
 while a small foreign grape-vine, rather shy of 
 uearing, seemed to find the dusty air congenial, 
 and, dreaming perhaps of its sweet Argos across 
 
278 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 the sea, decked itself with a score or so of fail 
 bunches. I watched them from day to day till 
 they should have secreted sugar enough from the 
 sunbeams, and at last made up my mind that I 
 would celebrate my vintage the next morning. But 
 the robins, too, had somehow kept note of them. 
 They must have sent out spies, as did the Jews 
 into the promised land, before I was stirring. 
 When I went with my basket at least a dozen of 
 these winged vintagers bustled out from among the 
 leaves, and alighting on the nearest trees inter- 
 changed some shrill remarks about me of a de- 
 rogatory nature. They had fairly sacked the vine. 
 Not Wellington's veterans made cleaner work of a 
 Spanish town ; not Federals or Confederates were 
 ever more impartial in the confiscation of neutral 
 chickens. I was keeping my grapes a secret to 
 surprise the fair Fidele with, but the robins made 
 them a profounder secret to her than I had meant. 
 The tattered remnant of a single bunch was all my 
 harvest-hbme. How paltry it looked at the bottom 
 of my basket, — as if a humming-bird had laid her 
 egg in an eagle's nest ! I could not help laughing ; 
 and the robins seemed to join heartily in the mer- 
 riment. There was a native grape-vine close by, 
 blue with its less refined abundance, but my cun- 
 ning thieves preferred the foreign flavor. Could I 
 tax them with want of taste ? 
 
 The robins are not good solo singers, but their 
 chorus, as, like primitive fire-worshippers, they hail 
 the return of light and warmth to the world, is 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE, 279 
 
 anrivalled. There are a hundred singing like one. 
 They are noisy enough then, and sing, as poets 
 should, with no afterthought. But when they come 
 after cherries to the tree near my window, they muffle 
 their voices, and their faint pip, pip, pop 1 sounds 
 far away at the bottom of the garden, where they 
 know I shall not suspect them of robbing the great 
 black-walnut of its bitter-rinded store.-^ They are 
 feathered Pecksniffs, to be sure, but then how 
 brightly their breasts, that look rather shabby in the 
 sunlight, shine in a rainy day against the dark green 
 of the fringe-tree ! After they have pinched and 
 shaken all the life of an earthworm, as Italian cooks 
 pound all the spirit out of a steak, and then gulped 
 him, they stand up in honest self-confidence, expand 
 their red waistcoats with the virtuous air of a lobby 
 member, and outface you with an eye that calmly 
 challenges inquiry. "Do /look like a bird that 
 knows the flavor of raw vermin ? I throw myself 
 upon a jury of my peers. Ask any robin if he ever 
 ate anything less ascetic than the frugal berry of 
 the juniper, and he will answer that his vow for- 
 bids him." Can such an open bosom cover such 
 depravity ? Alas, yes ! I have no doubt his breast 
 was redder at that very moment with the blood 
 of my raspberries. On the whole, he is a doubtful 
 friend in the garden. He makes his dessert of aU 
 kinds of berries, and is not averse from early pears. 
 
 1 The screech-owl, whose cry, despite his iU name, is one of 
 the sweetest sounds in nature, softens his voice in the same way 
 with the most beguiling mockery of distance. J. R. L. 
 
280 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 But when we remember how omnivorous he is, 
 eating his own weight in an incredibly short time, 
 and that Nature seems exhaustless in her invention 
 of new insects hostile to vegetation, perhaps we 
 may reckon that he does more good than harm. 
 For my own part, I would rather have his cheer- 
 fulness and kind neighborhood than many berries. 
 
 For his cousin, the catbird, I have a still warmer 
 regard. Always a good singer, he sometimes nearly 
 equals the brown thrush, and has the merit of keep- 
 ing up his music later in the evening than any bird 
 of my familiar acquaintance. Ever since I can re- 
 member, a pair of them have built in a gigantic 
 syringa, near our front door, and I have known the 
 male to sing almost uninterruptedly during the even- 
 ings of early summer till twilight duskened into 
 dark. They differ greatly in vocal talent, but all 
 have a delightful way of crooning over, and, as it 
 were, rehearsing their song in an undertone, which 
 makes their nearness always unobtrusive. Though 
 there is the most trustworthy witness to the imita- 
 tive propensity of this bird, I have only once, dur- 
 ing an intimacy of more than forty years, heard 
 him indulge it. In that case, the imitation was by 
 no means so close as to deceive, but a free reproduc- 
 tion of the notes of some other birds, especially of 
 the oriole, as a kind of variation in his own song. 
 The catbird is as shy as the robin is vulgarly famil- 
 -ar. Only when his nest or his fledglings are ap- 
 proached does he become noisy and almost aggres- 
 sive. I have known him to station his young in a 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE, " 281 
 
 thick cornel-bush on the edge of the raspberry-bed, 
 after the fruit began to ripen, and feed them there 
 for a week or more. In such cases he shows none 
 of that conscious guilt which makes the robin con- 
 temptible. On the contrary, he will maintain his 
 post in the thicket, and sharply scold the intruder 
 who ventures to steal his berries. After all, his claim 
 is only for tithes, while the robin will bag your en- 
 tire corp if he get a chance. 
 
 Dr. Watts's statement that " birds in their little 
 nests agree," like too many others intended to form 
 the infant mind, is very far from being true. On 
 the contrary, the most peaceful relation of the dif- 
 ferent species to each other is that of armed neutral- 
 ity. They are very jealous of neighbors. A few 
 years ago I was much interested in the housebuild- 
 ing of a pair of summer yellow-birds. They had 
 chosen a very pretty site near the top of a tall 
 white lilac, within easy eye-shot of a chamber win- 
 dow. A very pleasant thing it was to see their 
 little home growing with mutual help, to watch their 
 industrious skill interrupted only by little flirts and 
 snatches of endearment, frugally cut short by the 
 common-sense of the tiny housewife. They had 
 brought their work nearly to an end, and had 
 already begun to line it with fern-down, the gather- 
 ing of which demanded more distant journeys and 
 longer absences. But, alas ! the syringa, immemo- 
 rial manor of the catbirds, was not more than 
 twenty feet away, and these " giddy neighbors " 
 had, as it appeared, been all along j'^alonsly watch* 
 
282 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 f ul, though silent, witnesses of what thej deemed aii 
 intrusion of squatters. No sooner were the pretty 
 mates fairly gone for a new load of lining, tnan 
 
 *' To their unguarded nest these weasel Scots 
 Came stealing." ^ 
 
 Silently they flew back and forth, each giving a 
 vengeful dab at the nest in passing. They did not 
 fall-to and deliberately destroy it, for they might 
 have been caught at their mischief. As it was, 
 whenever the yellow-birds came back, their ene- 
 mies were hidden in their own sight-proof bush. 
 Several times their unconscious victims repaired 
 damages, but at length, after counsel taken together, 
 they gave it up. Perhaps, like other unlettered 
 folk, they came to the conclusion that the Devil 
 was in it, and yielded to the invisible persecution 
 of witchcraft. 
 
 The robins, by constant attacks and annoyances, 
 have succeeded in driving off the blue-jays who used 
 to build in our pines, their gay colors and quaint, 
 noisy ways making them welcome and amusing 
 neighbors. I once had the chance of doing a kind- 
 ness to a household of them, which they received 
 with very friendly condescension. I had had my 
 eye for some time upon a nest, and was puzzled by 
 a constant fluttering of what seemed full-grown 
 wings in it whenever I drew nigh. At last I climbed 
 the tree, in spite of angry protests from the olc 
 birds against my intrusion. The mystery had k« 
 *'eiy simple solution. In building the nest, a long 
 
 i Siiak^I)ere : King Henry V.^ act i. scene 2. 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE, 283 
 
 piece of packthread had been somewhat loosely 
 woven in. Three of the young had contrived to 
 entangle themselves in it, and had become full- 
 grown without being able to launch themselves 
 upon the air. One was unharmed ; another had so 
 tightly twisted the cord about its shank that one 
 foot was curled up and seemed paralyzed ; the 
 third, in its struggles to escape, had sawn through 
 tlie flesh of the thigh and so much harmed itself 
 that I thought it humane to put an end to its 
 misery. When I took out my knife to cut their 
 hempen bonds, the heads of the family seemed to 
 divine my friendly intent. Suddenly ceasing their 
 cries and threats, they perched quietly within reach 
 of ray hand, and watched me in my work of manu- 
 mission. This, owing to the fluttering terror of the 
 prisoners, was an affair of some delicacy ; but ere- 
 long I was rewarded by seeing one of them fly 
 away to a neighboring tree, while the cripple, mak- 
 ing a parachute of his wings, came lightly to the 
 ground, and hopped off as well as he could with one 
 \eg, obsequiously waited on by his elders. A week 
 later I had the satisfaction of meeting him in the 
 pine walk, in good spirits, and already so far re- 
 covered as to be able to balance himself with the 
 .ame foot. I have do doubt that in his old age he 
 accounted for his lameness by some handsome story 
 T>f a wound received at the famous Battle of the 
 Pines, when our tribe, overcome by numbers, was 
 driven from its ancient camping-ground. Of late 
 years the jays have visited us only at intervals \ 
 
284 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 and in winter their bright plumage, set off by the 
 snow, and their cheerful cry, are especially welcome. 
 They would have furnished ^sop with a fable, for 
 the feathered crest in which they seem to take so 
 much satisfaction is often their fatal snare. Coun- 
 try boys make a hole with their finger in the snow- 
 crust just large enough to admit the jay's head, 
 and, hollowing it out somewhat beneath, bait it with 
 a few kernels of corn. The crest slips easily into 
 the trap, but refuses to be pulled out again, and he 
 who came to feast remains a prey. 
 
 Twice have the crow-blackbirds attempted a set- 
 tlement in my pines, and twice have the robins, who 
 claim a right of preemption, so successfully played 
 the part of border-ruffians as to drive them away, — 
 to my great regret, for they are the best substitute 
 we have for rooks. At Shady Hill ^ (now, alas ! 
 empty of its so long-loved household) they build by 
 hundreds, and nothing can be more cheery than their 
 creaking clatter (like a convention of old-fashioned 
 tavern-signs) as they gather at evening to debate in 
 mass meeting their windy politics, or to gossip at 
 their tent-doors over the events of the day. Their 
 port is grave, and their stalk across the turf as 
 martial as that of a second-rate ghost in Hamlet. 
 They never meddled with my corn, so far as I could 
 discover. 
 
 For a few years I had crows, but their nests are 
 in irresistible bait for boys, and their settlement 
 
 1 The home of the Nortons, in Cambridge, who were at the 
 'ime of this paper in Europe. 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 285 
 
 was broken up. They grew so wonted as to throw 
 off a great part of their shyness, and to tolerate my 
 near approach. One very hot day I stood for some 
 time withiu twenty feet of a mother and three 
 children, who sat on an elm bough over my head 
 gasping in the sultry air, and holding their whigs 
 half-spread for coolness. All birds during the pair- 
 ing season become more or less sentimental, and 
 murniui" soft nothings in a tone very unlike the 
 grinding-organ repetition and loudness of their ha- 
 bitual song. The crow is very comical as a lover, and 
 to hear him trying to soften his croak to the proper 
 Saint Preux ^ standard, has something the effect of a 
 Mississippi boatman quoting Tennyson. Yet there 
 are few things to my ear more melodious than his 
 caw of a clear winter morning as it drops to you 
 filtered through ^ve hundred fathoms of crisp blue 
 air. The hostility of all smaller birds makes the 
 moral character of the crow, for all his deaconlike 
 demeanor and garb, somewhat questionable. He 
 could never sally forth without insult. The golden 
 robins, especially, would chase him as far as I could 
 ibllow with my eye, making him duck clumsily to 
 avoid their importunate bills. I do not believe, 
 however, that he robbed any nests hereabouts, for 
 the refuse of the gas-works, which, in our free-and- 
 easy community, is allowed to poison the river, 
 supplied him with dead alewives in abundance. I 
 used to watch him making his periodical visits to 
 the salt-marshes and coming back with a fish in his 
 1 See Eousseau's La Nouvtlie Heloise. 
 
286 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 beak to his young savages, who, no doubt, like it in 
 that condition which makes it savory to the Kana- 
 kas and other corvine races of men. 
 
 Orioles are in great plenty with me. I have seen 
 seven males flashing about the garden at once. A 
 merry crew of them swing their hammocks from the 
 pendulous boughs. During one of these later years, 
 when the canker-worms stripped our elms as bare as 
 winter, these birds went to the trouble of rebuilding 
 their unroofed nests, and chose for the purpose trees 
 which are safe from those swarming vandals, such as 
 the ash and the button-wood. One year a pair (dis- 
 turbed, I suppose, elsewhere) built a second nest in 
 an elm within a few yards of the house. My friend, 
 Edward E. Hale, told me once that the oiiole re- 
 jected from his web all strands of brilliant color, 
 and I thought it a striking example of that instinct 
 of concealment noticeable in many birds, though it 
 should seem in this instance that the nest was am[)ly 
 protected by its position from all marauders but owls 
 and squirrels. Last year, however, I had the full- 
 est proof that Mr. Hale was mistaken. A pair of 
 orioles built on the lowest trailer of a weeping elm, 
 which hung within ten feet of our drawing-room 
 window, and so low that I could reach it from the 
 ground. The nest was wholly woven and felted 
 with ravellings of woollen carpet in which scarlet 
 predominated. Would the same thing have hap- 
 pened in the woods ? Or did the nearness of a hu- 
 man dwelling perhaps, give the birds a greater feel- 
 ing of security ? They are very bold, by the way, in 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 287 
 
 quest of cordage, and I have often watched them 
 stripping the fibrous bark from a honeysuckle grow- 
 ing over the very door. But, indeed, all my birds 
 look upon me as if I were a mere tenant at will, 
 and they were landlords. With shame I confess it, 
 I have been bullied even by a humming-bird. This 
 spring, as I was cleansing a pear-tree of its lichens, 
 one of these little zigzagging blurs came purring to- 
 ward me, couching his long bill like a lance, his 
 throat sparkling with angry fire, to warn me off from 
 a Missouri-currant whose honey he was sipping. 
 And many a time he has driven me out of a fiower- 
 bed. This summer, by the way, a pair of these 
 winged emeralds fastened their mossy acorn-cup 
 upon a bough of the same elm which the orioles had 
 enlivened the year before. We watched all their 
 proceedings from the window through an opera- 
 glass, and saw their two nestlings grow from black 
 needles with a tuft of down at the lower end, till 
 they whirled away on their first short experimental 
 flights. They became strong of wing in a surpris- 
 ingly short time, and I never saw them or the male 
 bird after, though the female was regular as usual 
 in her visits to our petunias and verbenas. I do not 
 think it ground enough for a generalization, but in 
 the many times when I watched the old birds feeding 
 their young, the mother always alighted, while the 
 father as uniformly remained upon the wing. 
 
 The bobolinks are generally chance visitors, 
 tinkling through the garden in blossoming-time, but 
 this year, owing to the long rains early in the sea- 
 
288 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 son, their favorite meadows were flooded, and they 
 were driven to the upland. So I had a pair of them 
 domiciled in my grass field. The male used to perch 
 in an apple-tree, then in full bloom, and, while I 
 stood perfectly still close by, he would circle away, 
 quivering round the entire field of five acres, with 
 no break in his song, and settle down again among 
 thj blossoms, to be hurried away almost immediately 
 by a new rapture of music. He had the volubility 
 of an Italian charlatan at a fair, and, like him, ap- 
 peared to be proclaiming the merits of some quack 
 r e medy . Opode Idoc-opodeldoc-try- Doctor- Lincoln' s- 
 opodeldoc 1 he seemed to repeat over and over again, 
 with a rapidity that would have distanced the deft- 
 est-tongued Figaro that ever rattled. I remember 
 Count Gurowski saying once, with that easy supe- 
 riority of knowledge about this country which is the 
 monopoly of foreigners, that we had no singing- 
 birds ! Well, well, Mr. Hepworth Dixon ^ has found 
 the typical America in Oneida and Salt Lake City. 
 Of course, an intelligent European is the best judge 
 of these matters. The truth is there are more 
 singing-birds in Europe because there are fewer 
 forests. These songsters love the neighborhood of 
 man because hawks and owls are rarer, while their 
 own food is more abundant. Most people seem to 
 think, the more trees, the more birds. Even Chat- 
 eaubriand, who first tried the primitive-forest-cure, 
 and whose description of the wilderness in its imag- 
 jaative efiects is unmatched, fancies the " people of 
 I In his book of travels, Ntw America. 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 289 
 
 tbe air singing their hymns to him." So far as my 
 own observation goes, the farther one penetrates 
 the sombre solitudes of the woods, the more seldom 
 does he hear the voice of any singing-bird. In spite 
 of Chateaubriand's minuteness of detail, in spite of 
 that marvellous reverberation of the decrepit tree 
 failing of its own weight, which he was the first to 
 notice, I cannot help doubting whether he made his 
 way very deep into the wilderness. At any rate, 
 in a letter to Fontanes, written in 1804, he speaks 
 of mes chevaux paissant a quelque distance. To be 
 sure Chateaubriand was apt to mount the high horse, 
 and this may have been but an afterthought of the 
 grand seigneur, but certainly one would not make 
 much headway on horseback toward the druid fast- 
 nesses of the primaeval pine. 
 
 The bobolinks build in considerable numbers in 
 a meadow within a quarter of a mile of us. A 
 houseless lane passes through the midst of their 
 camp, and in clear westerly weather, at the right 
 season, one may hear a score of them singing at 
 once. When they are breeding, if I chance to pass, 
 one of the male birds always accompanies me like 
 a constable, flitting from post to post of the rail- 
 fence, with a short note of reproof continually re- 
 peated, till I am fairly out of the neighborhood. 
 Then he will swing away into the air and run down 
 the wind, gurgling music without stint over the 
 unheeding tussocks of meadow-grass and dark 
 clumps of bulrushes that mark his domain. 
 
 We have no bird whose souix will match the 
 
290 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 nightingale's in compass, none whose note is so 
 rich as that of the European blackbird ; but for 
 mere rapture I have never heard the bobolink's 
 rival. But his opera-season is a short one. The 
 ground and tree sparrows are our most constant 
 performers. It is now late in August, and one of 
 the latter sings every day and all day long in the 
 garden. Till within a fortnight, a pair of indigo- 
 birds would keep up their lively duo for an hour 
 together. While I write, I hear an oriole gay as 
 in June, and the plaintive may-be of the goldfinch 
 tells me he is stealing my lettuce-seeds. I know 
 not what the experience of others may have been, 
 but the only bird I have ever heard sing in the 
 night has been the chip-bird. I should say he sang 
 about as often during the darkness as cocks crow. 
 One can hardly help fancying that he sings in his 
 dreams. 
 
 " Father of light, what sunnie seed, 
 What glance of day hast thou confined 
 Into this bird ? To all the breed 
 This busie ray thou hast assigned ; 
 Their magnetism works all night, 
 And dreams of Paradise and light." 
 
 On second thought, I remember to have heard the 
 cuckoo strike the hours nearly all night with the 
 regularity of a Swiss clock. 
 
 The dead limbs of our elms, which I spare to 
 that end, bring us the flicker every summer, and 
 almost daily I hear his wild scream and laugh close 
 at hand, himself invisible. He is a shy bird, but a 
 %w days ago I had the satisfaction of studying him 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 291 
 
 through the blinds as he sat on a tree within a few 
 feet of me. Seen so near and at rest, he makes 
 good his claim to the title of pigeon-woodpecker. 
 Lumberers have a notion that he is harmful to 
 timber, digging little holes through the bark to en- 
 courage the settlement of insects. The regular 
 rings of such perforations which one may see in 
 almost any apple- orchard seem to give some proba- 
 bility to this theory. Almost every season a soli- 
 tary quail visits us, and, unseen among the currant- 
 bushes, calls Bob White, Bob White, as if he were 
 playing at hide-and-seek with that imaginary being. 
 A rarer visitant is the turtle-dove, whose pleasant 
 coo (something like the muffled crow of a cock 
 from a coop covered with snow) I have sometimes 
 heard, and whom I once had the good luck to see 
 close by me in the mulberry- tree. The wild-pigeon, 
 once numerous, I have not seen for many years.^ 
 Of savage birds, a hen-hawk now and then quarters 
 himself upon us for a few days, sitting sluggish in 
 a tree after a surfeit of poultry. One of them once 
 offered me a near shot from my study-window one 
 drizzly day for several hours. But it was Sunday, 
 and I gave him the benefit of its gracious truce of 
 God. 
 
 Certain birds have disappeared from our neigh- 
 borhood within my memory. 1 remember when 
 the whippoorwill could be heard in Sweet Auburn. 
 The night-hawk, once common, is now rare. The 
 brown thrush has moved farther up country. For 
 
 1 They made their appearance again this summer (1870). — 
 J.K.L. 
 
292 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, 
 
 years I have not seen or heard any of the larger 
 owls, whose hooting was one of my boyish terrors. 
 The cliff-swallow, strange emigrant, that eastward 
 takes his way, has come and gone again in my time. 
 The bank-swallows, wellnigh innumerable during 
 my boyhood, no longer frequent the crumbly cliff 
 of the gravel-pit by the river. The barn -swallows, 
 which once swarmed in our barn, flashing through 
 the dusty sun-streaks of the mow^ have been gone 
 these many years. My father would lead me out 
 to see them gather on the roof, and take counsel 
 before their yearly migration, as Mr. White used 
 to see them at Selborne. Eheu fugaces ! Thank 
 fortune, the swift still glues his nest, and rolls his 
 distant thunders night and day in the wide-throated 
 chimneys, still sprinkles the evening air with his 
 merry twittering. The populous heronry in Fresh 
 Pond meadows has wellnigh broken up, but still a 
 pair or two haunt the old home, as the gypsies of 
 Ellangowan their ruined huts, and every eveniug 
 fly over us riverwards, clearing their throats with a 
 hoarse hawk as they go, and, in cloudy weather, 
 scarce higher than the tops of the chimneys. Some 
 times I have known one to alight in one of our 
 trees, though for what purpose I never could divine. 
 Kingfishers have sometimes puzzled me in the same 
 way, perched at high noon in a pine, spriuging their 
 watchman's rattle when they flitted away from my 
 curiosity, and seeming to shove their top-heavy 
 heads along as a man does a wheelbarrow. 
 
 Some birds have left us, I suppose, because the 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE, 293 
 
 country is growing less wild. I once found a sum- 
 mer duck's nest within a quarter of a mile of our 
 house, but such a trouvaille would be impossible 
 now as Kidd's treasure. And yet the mere taming 
 of the neighborhood does not quite satisfy me as an 
 explanation. Twenty years ago, on my way to 
 bathe in the river, I saw every day a brace of wood- 
 cock, on the miry edge of a spring within a few rods 
 of a house, and constantly visited by thirsty cows. 
 There was no growth of any kind to conceal them, 
 and yet these ordinarily shy birds were almost as 
 indifferent to my passing as common poultry would 
 have been. Since bird-nesting has become scien- 
 tific, and dignified itself as oology, that, no doubt, 
 is partly to blame for some of our losses. But 
 some old friends are constant. Wilson's thrush 
 comes every year to remind me of that most poetic 
 of ornithologists. He flits before me through the 
 pine-walk like the very genius of solitude. A pair 
 of pewees have built immemorially on a jutting 
 brick in the arched entrance to the ice-house. Al- 
 ways on the same brick, and never more than a 
 single pair, though two broods of five each are 
 raised there every summer. How do they settle 
 their claim to the homestead ? By what right of 
 primogeniture ? Once the children of a man em- 
 ployed about the place oologized the nest, and the 
 pewees left us for a year or two. I felt towards 
 those boys as the messmates of the Ancient Mari- 
 ner did towards him after he had shot the albatross.^ 
 ^ In Coleridge's poem of that name. 
 
294 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, 
 
 But the pewees came back at last, and one of them 
 is now on his wonted perch, so near my window 
 that I can hear the click of his bill as he snaps a fly 
 on the wing with the unerring precision a stately 
 Trasteverina shows in the capture of her smaller 
 deer. The pewee is the first bird to pipe up in the 
 morning ; and, during the early summer he pre- 
 ludes his matutinal ejaculation of pewee with a slen- 
 der whistle, unheard at any other time. He sad- 
 dens with the season, and, as summer declines, he 
 changes his note to eheu, pewee! as if in lamen- 
 tation. Had he been an Italian bird, Ovid would 
 have had a plaintive tale to tell about him. He is 
 so familiar as often to pursue a fly through the open 
 window into my library. 
 
 There is something inexpressibly dear to me in 
 these old friendships of a lifetime. There is scarce 
 a tree of mine but has had, at some time or other, 
 a happy homestead among its boughs, to which I 
 
 cannot say, 
 
 " Many light hearts and wings, 
 Which now be dead, lodged in thy living bowers/' 
 
 My walk under the pines would lose half its sum- 
 mer charm were I to miss that shy anchorite, the 
 Wilson's thrush, nor hear in haying-time the metal- 
 lic ring of his song, that justifies his rustic name of 
 scythe-whet. I protect my game as jealously as an 
 English squire. If anybody had oologized a certain 
 cuckoo's nest I know of (I have a pair in my gar- 
 den every year), it would have left me a sore place 
 in my mind for weeks. I love to bring these abo- 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE, 295 
 
 rigines back to the mansuetude they showed to the 
 early voyagers, and before (forgive the involuntary 
 pun) they had grown accustomed to man and knew 
 his savage ways. And they repay your kindness 
 with a sweet familiarity too delicate ever to breed 
 contempt. I have made a Penn-treaty with them, 
 preferring that to the Puritan way with the na-* 
 tives, which converted them to a little Hebraism 
 and a great deal of Medford rum. If they will not 
 come near enough to me (as most of them will), I 
 bring them close with an opera-glass, — a much 
 better weapon than a gun. I would not, if I could, 
 convert them from their pretty pagan ways. The 
 only one I sometimes have savage doubts about is 
 the red squirrel. I think he oologizes. I know he 
 eats cherries (we counted five of them at one time 
 in a single tree, the stones pattering down like the 
 sparse hail that preludes a storm), and that he 
 gnaws off the small end of pears to get at the seeds. 
 He steals the corn from under the noses of my 
 poultry. But what would you have ? He will 
 come down upon the limb of the tree I am lying 
 under till he is within a yard of me. He and his 
 mate will scurry up and down the great black- 
 walnut for my diversion, chattering like monkeys. 
 Can I sign his death-warrant who has tolerated me 
 about his grounds so long ? Not I. Let them 
 steal, and welcome. I am sure I should, had I had 
 the same bringing up and the same temptation. 
 As for the birds, I do not believe there is one of 
 them but does more good than harm ; and of how 
 cnany featherless bipeds can this be said ? 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ^pHERE died at Concord, Massachusetts, in the 
 -■- year 1862, a man of forty-five who, if one were 
 to take his word for it, need never have gone out 
 of the little village of Concord to see all that was 
 worth seeing in the world. Lowell, in his My Gar- 
 den Acquaintance, reminds the reader of Gilbert 
 White, who, in his Natural History of Selborne^ gave 
 minute details of a lively world found within the 
 borders of a little English parish. Alphonse Karr, 
 a French writer, has written a book which contracts 
 the limit still further in A Journey round my Gar- 
 den, but neither of these writers so completely iso- 
 lated themselves from the outside world as did 
 Thoreau, who had a collegiate education at Har- 
 vard, made short journeys to Cape Cod, Maine, and 
 Canada, acted for a little while as tutor in a family 
 on Staten Island, but spent the best part of his life 
 as a looker-on in Concord, and during two years of 
 the time lived a hermit on the shores of Walden 
 Pond. He made his living, as the phrase goes, by 
 the occupation of a land surveyor, but he followed 
 
INTRODUCTION. 297 
 
 the profession only when it suited his convenience. 
 He did not marry ; he never went to church ; he 
 never voted ; he refused to pay taxes ; he sought no 
 society ; he declined companions when they were 
 in his way, and when he had anything to say in 
 puhlic, went about from door to door and invited 
 people to come to a hall to hear him deliver his 
 word. 
 
 That he had something to say to the world at 
 large is pretty evident from the books which he has 
 left, and it is intimated that the unpublished records 
 of his observation and reflection are more extensive. 
 Thus far his published writings are contained in 
 seven volumes. The first in appearance was A 
 Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers. It was 
 published in 1849 and built upon the adventures of 
 himself and brother ten years before, when, in a 
 boat of their own construction, they had made their 
 way from Concord down the Concord River to the 
 Merrimac, up that to its source, and back to the 
 starting point. It will readily be seen that such an 
 excursion would not yield a bookful of observation, 
 and though Thoreau notes in it many trivial inci- 
 dents, a great part of the contents is in the reflec- 
 tions which he makes from day to day. He comes 
 to the little river with its sparse border of popula- 
 tion and meagre history, and insists upon measur- 
 ing antiquity and fame by it. All of his reading he 
 tests by the measure of this stream, and undertakes 
 to show that the terms, big and little, are very much 
 paisapplied, aft4 th^t here on this miniature scale one 
 
208 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 may read all that is worth knowing in life. His 
 voyage is treated with the gravity which one might 
 use in recording a journey to find the sources of the 
 Nile. 
 
 Between the date of the journey and the publica- 
 tion of the book, Thoreau was engaged upon an 
 experiment still more illustrative of his creed of in- 
 dividuality. In 1845 he built a hut in the woods 
 by Walden Pond, and for two years lived a self- 
 contained life there. It was not altogether a lonely 
 life. He was within easy walking distance of Cou- 
 cord village, and the novelty of his housekf.epiiig 
 attracted many visitors, while his friends who valued 
 his conversation sought him out in his hermitage. 
 Besides and beyond this Thoreau had a genius for 
 intercourse with humbler compauious. There have 
 been few instances in history of such perfect under- 
 standing as existed between him and the lower or- 
 ders of creation. It has been said of him : " Every 
 fact which occurs in the bed [of the Concord River], 
 on the banks, or in the air over it ; the fishes, and 
 their spawning and nests, their manners, their food ; 
 the shad-flies which fill the air on a certain evening 
 once a year, and which are snapped at by the fishes 
 BO ravenously that many of these die of repletion ; 
 the conical heaps of small stones on the river- 
 shallows, one of which heaps will sometime overfill 
 a cart, — these heaps the huge nests of small fishes; 
 the birds which frequent the stream, heron, duck, 
 sheldrake, loon, osprey ; the snake, muski-at, otter, 
 Woodchuck, and fox on the banks ; the turtle, frog, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 299 
 
 hyla, and cricket which made the banks vocal, — 
 were all known to him, and, as it were, townsmen 
 and fellow-creatures His power of observa- 
 tion seemed to indicate additional senses. He saw 
 as with a microscope, heard as with ear-trumpet, 
 and his memory was a photographic register of all 
 he saw and heard His intimacy with ani- 
 mals suggested what Thomas Fuller records of 
 Butler the apiologist, that * either he had told the 
 bees things or the bees had told him ; ' snakes coiled 
 round his leg ; the fishes swam into his hand, and 
 he took them out of the water ; he pulled the wood- 
 chuck out of its hole by the tail, and took the foxes 
 under his protection from the hunters." ^ 
 
 Walden, published in 1854, is the record of 
 Thoreau's life in the woods, and inasmuch as that 
 life was not exhausted in the bare provision against 
 bodily wants, nor in the observation even of what 
 lay under the eye and ear, but was busied about 
 the questions which perplex all who would give an 
 account of themselves, the record mingles common 
 fact and personal experience, the world without 
 and the world within. Thoreau records what he 
 sees and hears in the woods, but these sights and 
 sounds are the texts for sermons upon human life. 
 He undertook to get at the elementary conditions 
 of living, and to strip himself as far as he could of 
 all that was unnecessary. In doing this he discov- 
 ered many curious and ingenious things, and the 
 unique method which he took was pretty sure to 
 1 £inerson'6 Biographical Sketch. 
 
300 HENRY DAVID THOREAU, 
 
 give him glimpses of life not seen by others. But 
 the method had its disadvantages and chiefly this, 
 that it was against the common order of things, 
 and therefore the results reached could not be re- 
 lied upon as sound and v^holesome. 
 
 The great value of Walden, and indeed of all 
 Thoreau's books, is not in the philosophy, which is 
 often shrewd and often strained and arbitrary, but 
 in the disclosure made of the common facts of the 
 world about one. He used to say ; " I think noth- 
 ing is to be hoped from you, if this bit of mould 
 under your feet is not sweeter to you to eat than 
 any other in this world, or in any world ; " and the 
 whole drift of his writing is toward the develop- 
 ment of the individual in the place where he hap- 
 pens to be. Thoreau's protesting attitude, and the 
 stout resistance which he made to all influences 
 about him except the common ones of nature, betray 
 themselves in the style of his writing. He has a 
 way, almost insolent, of throwing out his thoughts, 
 and growling forth his objections to the conventions 
 of life, which renders his wi'iting often crabbed and 
 inartistic. There is a rudeness which seems some- 
 times affected, and a carelessness which is contempt- 
 uous. Yet often his indifference to style is a rugged 
 insistence on the strongest thought, and in his effort 
 to express himself unreservedly he reaches a force 
 and energy which are refreshing. 
 
 These two were the only writings of Thoreau 
 published in his lifetime. He printed contributions 
 *o tlie magazines from time to time, and out of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 301 
 
 these and his manuscripts have been gathered five 
 other volumes, Excursions in Field and Forest, 
 The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, Letters to Various 
 Persons^ A Yankee in Canada. To Excursions 
 was prefixed a biographical sketch bj R. W. Emer- 
 son, which gives one a very vivid portrait of this 
 unique man. Gape Cod is the record of a walk 
 taken the length of the Cape, and that, with Walden, 
 are likely to remain as the most finished and agree- 
 able books by the writer. All of his writings, how- 
 ever, will be searched for the evidence which they 
 give of a mind singular for its independence, its 
 resolute confronting of the problems of life, its in- 
 sight into nature, its isolation, and its wayward- 
 ness. 
 
 The first two papers which follow are from Walr 
 den^ the third from Cape Cod, 
 
SOUNDS. 
 
 I DID not read books the first summer ; I hoed 
 beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There 
 were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the 
 bloom of the present moment to any work, whether 
 of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my 
 life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having 
 taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny door- 
 way from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst 
 the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed 
 solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around 
 or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the 
 sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of 
 some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I 
 was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those 
 seasons like corn in the night, and they were far 
 better than any work of the hands would have 
 been. They were not time subtracted from my 
 life, but so much over and above my usual allow- 
 ance. I realized what the Orientals mean by con- 
 templation and the forsaking of works. For the 
 most part I minded not how the hours went. The 
 day advanced as if to light some work of mine ; rt 
 was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing 
 
SOUNDS. 303 
 
 memorable is accomplished. lostead of singing 
 like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good 
 fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on 
 the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle 
 or suppressed warble which he might hear out of 
 my nest. My days were not days of the week, 
 bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor weie 
 they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking 
 of a clock ; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of 
 whom it is said that " for yesterday, to-day, and to- 
 morrow they have only one word, and they express 
 the variety of meaning by pointing backward for 
 yesterday, forward for to-morrow, and overhead 
 for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to 
 my fellow-townsmen, no doubt ; but if the birds 
 and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should 
 not have been found wanting. A man must find 
 his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural 
 day "is very calm, and will hardly reprove his in- 
 dolence. 
 
 I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life 
 over those who were obliged to look abroad for 
 amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life 
 itself was become my amusement and never ceased 
 to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and 
 without an end. If we were always indeed getting 
 our living, and regulating our lives according to 
 the last and best mode we had learned, we should 
 never be troubled with ennui. Follow your genius 
 closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a 
 fresh prospect every hour. Housework was a pleas- 
 
804 HENRY DAVID TEOREAU. 
 
 ant pastime. When my floor was dirty, I rose 
 early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on 
 the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, 
 dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand 
 from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed 
 it clean and white ; and by the time the villagers had 
 broken their fast, the morning sun had dried my 
 house sufficiently to allow me to move in again, and 
 my meditations were almost uninterrupted. It was 
 pleasant to see my whole household effects out on 
 the grass, making a little pile like a gypsy's pack, 
 and my three-legged table, from which I did not 
 remove the books and pen and ink, standing amid 
 the pines and hickories. They seemed glad to get 
 out themselves, and as if unwilling to be brought 
 in. I was sometimes tempted to stretch an awning 
 over them and take my seat there. It was worth 
 the while to see the sun shine on these things, and 
 hear the free wind blow on them ; so much more 
 interesting most familiar objects look out of doors 
 than in the house. A bird sits on the next bough, 
 life-everlasting grows under the table, and black- 
 berry vines run round its legs ; pine cones, chestnut 
 burs, and strawberry leaves are strewn about. It 
 looked as if this was the way these forms came to 
 be transferred to our furniture, to tables, chairs, 
 and bedsteads, — because they once stood in the 
 midst of them. 
 
 My house was on the side of a hill, immediately 
 on the edge of the larger wood, in the midst of a 
 f oung forest of pitch pines and hickories, and half a 
 
SOUNDS. 305 
 
 dozen rods from the pond, to which a narrow foot- 
 path led down the hill. In my front yard grew the 
 strawberry, blackberry, and life-everlasting, johns- 
 wort and goldenrod, shrub-oaks and sand-cherry, 
 blueberry and groundnut. Near the end of May, 
 the sand-cherry (cerasus pumila) adorned the sides 
 of the path with its delicate flowers arranged in 
 umbels cylindrically about its short stems, which 
 last, in the fall, weighed down with good-sized and 
 handsome cherries, fell over in wreaths like rays 
 on every side. I tasted them out of compliment 
 to Nature, though they were scarcely palatable. 
 The sumach (rhiis glabra) grew luxuriantly about 
 the house, pushing up through the embankment 
 which I had made, and growing five or six feet the 
 first season. Its broad, pinnate, tropical leaf was 
 pleasant though strange to look on. The large 
 buds, suddenly pushing out late in the spring from 
 dry sticks which had seemed to be dead, developed 
 themselves as by magic into graceful green and 
 tender boughs, an inch in diameter ; and sometimes, 
 as I sat at my window, so heedlessly did they grow 
 and tax their weak joints, I heard a fresh and 
 tender bough suddenly fall like a fan to the ground, 
 when there was not a breath of air stirring, broken 
 off by its own weight. In August, the large masses 
 of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted 
 many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright, 
 velvety, crimson hue, and by their weight again 
 bent down and broke the tender limbs. 
 
806 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 As I sit at my window this summer afternoon, 
 hawks are circling about my clearing ; the tantivy 
 of wild pigeons, flying by twos arid threes athwart 
 my view, or perching restless on the white pine 
 boughs behind my house, gives a voice to the air ; 
 a fishhawk dimples the glassy surface of the pond 
 and brings up a fish ; a mink steals out of the marsii 
 before my door and seizes a frog by the shore ; the 
 sedge is bending under the weight of the reed- 
 birds flitting hither and thither ; and for the last 
 half hour I have heard the rattle of railroad cars, 
 now dying away and then reviving like the beat of 
 a partridge, conveying travellers from Boston to 
 the country. For I did not live so out of the world 
 as that boy, who, as I hear, was put out to a farmer 
 in the east part of the town, but ere long ran away 
 and came home again, quite down at the heel and 
 homesick. He had never seen such a dull and 
 out-of-the-way place ; the folks were all gone off ; 
 why, you could n't even hear the whistle ! I doubt 
 if there is such a place in Massachusetts now : — 
 
 " In truth, our village has become a butt 
 For one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o'er 
 Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is — Concord." 
 
 The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about 
 a hundred rods south of where I dwell. I usually 
 go to the village along its causeway, and am, as it 
 were, related to society by this link. The men on 
 the freight trains, who go over the whole length of 
 the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they 
 pass me so often, and apparently they take me for 
 
SOUNDS. 307 
 
 an employee ; and so I am. I too would fain be a 
 track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth. 
 
 The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my 
 woods summer and winter, sounding like the scream 
 of a hawk sailing over some farmer's yard, inform- 
 ing me that many restless city merchants are arriv- 
 ing within the circle of the town, or adventurous 
 country traders from the other side. As they come 
 under one horizon, they shout their warning to get 
 off the track to the other, heard sometimes through 
 the circles of two towns. Here come your groce- 
 ries, country ; your rations, countrymen ! Nor is 
 there any man so independent on his farm that he 
 can say them nay. And here 's your pay for them ! 
 screams the countryman's whistle ; timber like 
 long battering rams going twenty miles an hour 
 against the city's walls, and chairs enough to seat 
 all the weary and heavy laden that dwell within 
 them. With such huge and lumbering civility the 
 country hands a chair to the city. All the Indian 
 huckleberry hills are stripped, all the cranberry 
 meadows are raked into the city. Up comes the 
 cotton, down goes the woven cloth ; up comes the 
 dlk, down goes the woollen ; up come the books, 
 but down goes the wit that writes them. 
 
 When I meet the engine with its train of cars 
 moving off with planetary motion, — or, rather, 
 like a comet, for the beholder knows not if with 
 ihat velocity and with that direction it will ever 
 revisit this system, since its orbit does not look like 
 % returning curve, ^ — with its steam cloud like a 
 
308 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 banner streaming behind in golden and silver 
 wreaths, like many a downy cloud which I have 
 seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its masses to 
 the light, — as if this travelling demigod, this cloud- 
 compeller, would ere long take the sunset sky for 
 the livery of his train ; when I hear the iron horse 
 make the hills echo with his snort like thunder, 
 shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire 
 and smoke from his nostrils (what kind of winged 
 horse or fiery dragon they will put into the new My- 
 thology I don't know), it seems as if the earth had 
 got a race now worthy to inhabit it. If all were 
 as it seems, and men made the elements their serv- 
 ants for noble ends ! If the cloud that hangs over 
 the engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds, or 
 as beneficent as that which floats over the farmer's 
 fields, then the elements and Nature herself would 
 cheerfully accompany men on their errands and be 
 their escort. 
 
 I watch the passage of the morning cars with 
 the same feeling that I do the rising of the sun, 
 which is hardly more regular. Their train of 
 clouds stretching far behind and rising higher and 
 higher, going to heaven while the cars are going to 
 Boston, conceals the sun for a minute and casts my 
 distant field into the shade, a celestial train beside 
 which the petty train of cars which hugs the earth 
 is but the barb of the spear. The stabler of the 
 iron horse was up early this winter morning by the 
 light of the stars amid the mountains, to fodder and 
 harness his steed. Fire, too, was awakened thui 
 
SOUNDS. 309 
 
 early to put the vital heat in him and get him off. 
 If the enterprise were as innocent as it is early ! 
 If the snow lies deep, they strap on his snow-shoes, 
 and with the giant plough jDJough a furrow from 
 the mountains to the seaboard, in which the cars, 
 like a following drill-barrow, sprinkle all the rest- 
 less men and floating merchandise in the country 
 for seed. All day the fire-steed flies over the coun- 
 try, stopping only that his master may rest, and I 
 am awakened by his tramp and defiant snort at 
 midnight, when in some remote glen in the woods 
 he fronts the elements incased in ice and snow ; 
 and he will reach his stall only with the morning 
 star, to start once more on his travels without rest 
 or slumber. Or perchance, at evening, I hear him 
 in his stable blowing off the superfluous energy of 
 the day, that he may calm his nerves and cool his 
 liver and brain for a few hours of iron slumber. 
 If the enterprise were as heroic and commanding 
 as it is protracted and unwearied ! 
 
 Far through unfrequented woods on the confines 
 of towns, where once only the hunter penetrated 
 by day, in the darkest night dart these bright sa- 
 loons without the knowledge of their inhabitants ; 
 this moment stopping at some brilliant station- 
 house in town or city, where a social crowd is gath- 
 ered, the next in the Dismal Swamp, scaring the 
 owl and fox. The startings and arrivals of the 
 cars are now the epochs in the village day. They 
 go and come with such regularity and precision, 
 and their whistle can be heard so far, that the farm- 
 
810 HENRY DAVID THOREAV. 
 
 ers set their clocks by them, and thus one well- 
 conducted institution regulates a whole country. 
 Have not men improved somewhat in punctuality 
 since the railroad was invented ? Do they not 
 talk and think faster in the depot than they did in 
 the stage-office ? There is something electrifying 
 in the atmosphere of the former place. I have 
 been astonished at the miracles it has wrought ; 
 that some of my neighbors, who, I should have 
 prophesied, once for all, would never get to Boston 
 by so prompt a conveyance, are on hand when the 
 bell rings. To do things *' railroad fashion " is now 
 the by- word ; and it is worth the while to be warned 
 so often and so sincerely by any power to get off 
 its track. There is no stopping to read the riot 
 act, no firing over the heads of the mob, in this 
 case. We have constructed a fate, an Atropos,^ 
 that never turns aside. (Let that be the name of 
 your engine.) Men are advertised that at a certain 
 hour and minute these bolts will be shot toward 
 particular points of the compass; yet it interferes 
 with no man's business, and the children go to 
 school on the other track. We live the steadier 
 for it. We are all educated thus to be sons of 
 Tell. The air is full of invisible bolts. Every 
 path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on 
 } our own track, then. 
 
 1 In the classic mythology there were three Fates who pre- 
 sided over the life and death of mankind: Clotho, that spun the 
 thread of birth, Lachesis, that measured it, and Atropos, the 
 iiiliexible Fate that cut it off. 
 
SOUNDS. 811 
 
 What recommends commerce to me is its enter- 
 prise and bravery. It does not clasp its hands and 
 pray to Jupiter. I see these men every day go 
 about their business with more or less courage and 
 content, doing more even than they suspect, and 
 perchance better employed than they could have 
 consciously devised. I am less affected by their 
 heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front 
 line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheer- 
 ful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plough 
 for their winter quarters ; who have not merely the 
 three-o'-clock in the morning courage, which Bona- 
 parte thought was the rarest, but whose courage 
 does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only 
 when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron 
 steed are frozen. On this morning of the Great 
 Snow, perchance, which is still raging and chilling 
 men's blood, I hear the muffled tone of their engine 
 bell from out the fog bank of their chilled breath, 
 which announces that the cars are coming, without 
 long delay, notwithstanding the veto of a New 
 England northeast snow-storm, and I behold the 
 oloughmen covered with snow and rime, their heads 
 peering above the mould-board which is turning 
 down other than daisies and the nests of field-mice, 
 like bowlders of the Sierra Nevada, that occupy an 
 outside place in the universe. 
 
 Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, 
 ilert, adventurous, and unwearied. It is very natu- 
 ral in its methods withal, far more so than many 
 fantastic enterprises and sentimental experiments, 
 
312 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 and hence its singular success. I am refreshed and 
 expanded when the freight train rattles past me, 
 and I smell the stores which go dispensing their 
 odors all the way from Long Wharf to Lake Cham- 
 plain, reminding me of foreign parts, of coral reefs, 
 and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the ex- 
 tent of the globe. I feel more like a citizen of the 
 world at the ^ght of the palm-leaf which will cover 
 so many flaxen New England heads the next sum- 
 mer, the Manilla hemp and cocoa-nut husks, the 
 old junk, gunny bags, scrap iron, and rusty nails. 
 This car-load of torn sails is more legible and inter- 
 esting now than if they should be wrought into 
 paper and printed books. Who can write so graphi- 
 cally the history of the storms they have weathered 
 as these rents have done ? They are proof-sheets 
 which need no correction. Here goes lumber from 
 the Maine woods, which did not go out to sea in 
 the last freshet, risen four dollars on the thousand 
 because, of what did go out or was split up ; pine, 
 spruce, cedar, — first, second, third and fourth quali- 
 ties, so lately all of one quality, to wave over the 
 bear, and moose, and caribou. Next rolls Thorcas- 
 ton lime, a prime lot, which will get far among the 
 hills before it gets slacked. These rags in bales, of 
 all hues ^,nd qualities, the lowest condition to which 
 cotton and linen descend, the final result of dress, 
 — of patterns which are now no longer cried up, 
 unless it be in Milwaukee, as those splendid arti- 
 cles, English, French, or American prints, ging- 
 hams, muslins, etc., gathered from all quarters both 
 
SOUNDS. 313 
 
 of fashion and poverty, going to become paper of 
 one color or a few shades only, on which forsooth 
 will be written tales of real life, high and low, and 
 founded on fact ! This closed car smells of salt 
 lish, the strong New England and commercial scent, 
 rttninding me of the Grand Banks and the fisheriei^. 
 Wiio has not seen a salt fish, thoroughly cured for 
 this world, so that nothing can spoil it, and putting 
 the perseverance of the saints to the blush? with 
 which you may sweep or pave the streets, and split 
 your kindlings, and the teamster shelter himself 
 and his lading against sun, wind, and rain behind it, 
 — and the trader, as a Concord trader once did, 
 hang it up by his door for a sign when he com- 
 mences business, until at last his oldest customer 
 cannot tell surely whether it be animal, vegetable, 
 or mineral, and yet it shall be as pure as a snow- 
 flake, and if it be put into a pot and boiled, will 
 come out an excellent dun fish for a Saturday's 
 dinner. Next Spanish hides, with the tails still 
 preserving their twist and the angle of elevation 
 they had when the oxen that wore them were ca- 
 reering over the pampas of the Spanish main, — a 
 type of all obstinacy, and evincing how almost hope- 
 'ess and incurable are all constitutional vices. I 
 confess, that practically speaking, when I have 
 learned a man's real disposition, I have no hopes of 
 changing it for the better or worse in this state of 
 existence. As the Orientals say, '* A cur's tail may 
 \>e warmed, and pressed, and bound round with liga- 
 tures, and after a twelve years' labor bestowed upon 
 
314 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 it, still it will retain its natural form." The only 
 
 effectual cure for such inveteracies as these tails 
 
 exhibit is to make glue of them, which I believe is 
 
 what is usually done with them, and then they will 
 
 stay put and stick. Here is a hogshead of molasses 
 
 oj- of brandy directed to John Smith, Cuttingsville, 
 
 Vermont, some trader among the Green Mountains, 
 
 who imports for the farmers near his clearing, and 
 
 now perchance stands over his bulk-head and thinks 
 
 of the last arrivals on the coast, how they may 
 
 affect the price for him, telling his customers this 
 
 moment, as he has told them twenty times before 
 
 this morning, that he expects some by the next 
 
 train of prime quality. It is advertised in the 
 
 " Cuttingsville Times." 
 
 While these things go up other things come 
 
 down. Warned by the whizzing sound, I look up 
 
 from my book and see some tall pine, hewn on far 
 
 northern hills, which has winged its way over the 
 
 Green Mountains and the Connecticut, shot like an 
 
 arrow through the township within ten minutes, and 
 
 scarce another eye beholds it ; going 
 
 " To be the mast 
 Of some great ammiral." i 
 
 And hark ! here comes the cattle train bearing the 
 
 cattle of a thousand hills, sheepcots, stables, and 
 
 cow-yards in the air, drovers with their sticks, and 
 
 shepherd boys in the midst of their flocks, all but 
 
 the mountain pastures, whirled along like leaves 
 
 blown from the mountains by the September gales. 
 
 1 Milton : Paradise Lost, i. 293, 294. 
 
SOUNDS. 315 
 
 The air is filled with the bleating of calves and 
 sheep, and the hustling of oxen, as if a pastoral 
 valley were going by. When the old bell-wether 
 at the head rattles his bell, the mountains do indeed 
 skip like rams and the little hills like lambs. A 
 ear-load of drovers, too, in the midst, on a level 
 with their droves now, their vocation gone, but still 
 clinging to their useless sticks as their badge of 
 office. But their dogs, where are they ? It is a 
 stampede to them ; they are quite thrown out ; 
 they have lost the scent. Methiuks 1 hear them 
 barking behind the Peterboro' Hills, or panting up 
 the western slope of the Green Mountains. They 
 will not be in at the death. Their vocation, too, is 
 gone. Their fidelity and sagacity are below par 
 now. They will slink back to their kennels in dis- 
 grace, or perchance run wild and strike a league 
 with the wolf and the fox. So is your pastoral 
 life whirled past and away. But the bell rings, 
 and I must get otF the track and let the cars go 
 by;- 
 
 What 's the railroad to me? 
 
 I never go to see 
 
 Where it ends. 
 
 It fills a few hollows, 
 
 And makes banks for the swallows, 
 
 It sets the sand a-blowing, 
 
 And the blackberries a-growing, 
 
 bat I cross it like a cart-path in the woods. 1 will 
 not have my eyes put out and my ears spoiled by 
 •ts smoke and steam and hissing. 
 
316 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 Now that the cars are gone by and all the rest- 
 less world with them, and the fishes in the pond no 
 longer feel their rumbling, I am more alone than 
 u\ er. For the rest of the long afterhoon, perhaps, 
 my meditations are interrupted only by the faint 
 i-attle of a carriage or team along the distant high- 
 way. 
 
 Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the 
 Lincoln, Acton, Bedford, or Concord bell, when the 
 wind was favorable, a faint, sweet, and, as it were, 
 liutural melody, worth importing into the wilder- 
 ness. At a sufficient distance over the woods this 
 sound acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the 
 pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a 
 harp which it swept. All sound heard at the great- 
 est possible distance produces one and the same 
 effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the 
 intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of 
 earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it 
 imparts -to it. There came to me in this case a 
 melody which the air had strained, and which had 
 conversed with every leaf and needle of the wood, 
 that portion of the sound which the elements had 
 t iken up and modulated and echoed from vale to 
 Nale. The echo is, to some extent, an original 
 bound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It 
 is not merely a repetition of what was worth re- 
 peating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood ; 
 the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood- 
 nymph. 
 
 At evening, the distant lowing of some cow in 
 
SOUNDS, 317 
 
 the horizon beyond the woods sounded sweet and 
 melodious, and at first I would mistake it for the 
 voices of certain minstrels by whom I was some- 
 times serenaded, who might be straying over hill 
 and dale ; but soon I was not unpleasantly disap- 
 pointed when it was prolonged into the cheap and 
 natural music of the cow. I do not mean to be 
 satirical, but to express my appreciation of those 
 youths' singing, when I state that I perceived 
 clearly that it was akin to the music of the cow, 
 and they were at length one articulation of Nature. 
 Eegularly at half-past seven, in one part of the 
 summer, after the evening train had gone by, the 
 whippoorwills chanted their vespers for half an 
 hour, sitting on a stump by my door, or upon the 
 ridge-pole of the house. They would begin to sing 
 almost with as much precision as a clock, within five 
 minutes of a particular time, referred to the setting 
 of the sun, every evening. I had a rare opportunity 
 to become acquainted with their habits. Sometimes 
 I heard four or five at once in different parts of the 
 wood, by accident one a bar behind another, and so 
 near me that I distinguished not only the cluck after 
 each note, but often that singular buzzing sound 
 like a fly in a spider's web, only proportionally 
 louder. Sometimes one would circle round and 
 round me in the woods a few feet distant as if teth- 
 ered by a string, when probably I was near its 
 ^ggs. They sang at intervals throughout the night, 
 and were again as musical as ever just before and 
 tboat dawn. 
 
318 HENRY DAVID THOREAtT. 
 
 When other birds are still, the screech owls take 
 up the strain, like mourning women their ancient 
 u-lu-lu.^ Their dismal scream is truly Ben Jon- 
 sonian.^ Wise midnight hags ! It is no honest and 
 blunt tu-whit tu-who of the poets, but, without jest- 
 ing, a most solemn graveyard ditty, the mutual con 
 solations of suicide lovers remembering the pangs 
 and the delights of supernal love in the infernal 
 groves. Yet I love to hear their wailing, their 
 doleful responses, trilled along the woodside ; re- 
 minding me sometimes of music and singing-birds ; 
 as if it were the dark and tearful side of music, the 
 regrets and sighs that would fain be sung. They 
 are the spirits, the low spirits and melancholy fore- 
 bodings, of fallen souls that once in human shape 
 night-walked the earth and did the deeds of dark- 
 ness, now expiating their sins with their wailing 
 hymns or threnodies in the scenery of their trans- 
 gressions. They give me a new sense of the vari- 
 ety and capacity of that nature which is our com- 
 mon dwelling. Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been hor- 
 r-r-r-n! sighs one on this side of the pond, and 
 circles with the restlessness of despair to some new 
 perch on the gray oaks. Then — that I never had 
 been hor-r-r-r-n ! echoes another on the farther side 
 with tremulous sincerity, and — hor-r-r-r-n ! comes 
 faintly from far in the Lincoln woods. 
 
 1 The simple form of mourning, an elemental succession of 
 Bounds, which both in Greek and Latin gave rise to nouns and 
 ferbs descriptive of mourning. 
 
 S Ai in The Masque of Queent, 
 
SOUNDS. 319 
 
 T was also serenaded by a hootiDg owl. Near at 
 hand you could fancy it the most melancholy sound 
 in Nature, as if she meant by this to stereotype and 
 make permanent in her choir the dying moans of a 
 human being, — some poor weak relic of mortality 
 who has left hope behind, and howls like an animal, 
 yet with human sobs, on entering the dark valley, 
 made more awful by a certain gurgling melodious- 
 ness, — I find myself beginning with the letters gl 
 when I try to imitate it, — expressive of a mind 
 which has reached the gelatinous mildewy stage in 
 the mortification of all healthy and courageous 
 thought. It reminded me of ghouls and idiots and 
 insane bowlings. But now one answers from far 
 woods in a strain made really melodious by dis- 
 tance, — JIoo Jioo Jioo, hoorer hoo ; and indeed for 
 the most pslrt it suggested only pleasing associa- 
 tions, whether heard by day or night, summer or 
 winter. 
 
 I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the 
 idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound 
 admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods 
 which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and un- 
 developed nature which men have not recognized. 
 They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied 
 thoughts which all have. All day the sun has 
 shone on the surface of some savage swamp, where 
 the single spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, 
 and small hawks circulate above, and the chicadee 
 asps amid the evergreens, and the partridge and 
 rabbit skulk beneath ; but now a more dismal and 
 
820 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures 
 awakes to express the meaning of Nature there. 
 
 Late in the evening I heard the distant rumbling 
 of wagons over bridges, — a sound heard farther 
 than almost any other at night, — the baying of dogs, 
 and sometimes again the lowing of some disconso- 
 late cow in a distant barn-yard. In the mean while 
 all the shore rang with the trump of bullfrogs, the 
 sturdy spirits of ancient wine-bibbers and wassailers, 
 still unrepentant, trying to sing a catch in their 
 Stygian lake, — if the Walden nymphs will pardon 
 the comparison, for though there are almost no 
 weeds, there are frogs there, — who would fain keep 
 up the hilarious rules of their old festal tables, 
 though their voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly 
 grave, mocking at mirth, and the wine has lost its 
 flavor, and become only liquor to distend their 
 paunches, and sweet intoxication never comes to 
 drown the memory of the past, but mere saturation 
 and wat^rloggedness and distention. The most 
 aldermanic, with his chin upon a heart-leaf, which 
 serves for a napkin to his drooling chaps, under 
 this northern shore quaffs a deep draught of the 
 once scorned water, and passes round the cup with 
 the ejaculation tr-r-r-oonh^ tr-r-r-oonk^ tr-r-r-oonk! 
 and straightway comes over the water from some 
 distant cove the same password repeated, where the 
 \iext in seniority and girth has gulped down to his 
 mark ; and when this observance has made the cir- 
 cuit of the shores, then ejaculates the master of 
 teremonies, with satisfaction, tr-r-r-oonk! and each 
 
SOUNDS. 321 
 
 in his tu^n repeats the same down to the least dis- 
 tended, leakiest, and flabbiest paunched, that there 
 be no mistake ; and then the bowl goes round again 
 and again, until the sun disperses the mornhig mist, 
 and only the patriarch is not under the pond, but 
 vainly bellowing troonk from time to time, and paus- 
 ing for a reply. 
 
 I am not sure that I ever heard the sound of 
 cock-crowing from my clearing, and I thought that 
 it might be worth the while to keep a cockerel for 
 his music merely, as a singing-bird. The note of 
 this once wild Indian pheasant is certainly the most 
 remarkable of any bird's, and if they could be nat- 
 uralized without being domesticated, it would soon 
 become the most famous sound in our woods, sur- 
 passing the clangor of the goose and the hooting of 
 the owl ; and then imagine the cackling of the hens 
 to fill the pauses when their lords' clarions rested ! 
 No wonder that man added this bird to his tame 
 stock, — to say nothing of the eggs and drumsticks. 
 To walk in a winter morning in a wood where 
 these birds abounded, their native woods, and hear 
 the wild cockerels crow on the trees, clear and shrill 
 for miles over the resounding earth, drowning the 
 feeble notes of other birds, — think of it ! It would 
 put nations on the alert. Who would not be early 
 to rise, and rise earlier and earlier every successive 
 day of his life, till he became unspeakably healthy, 
 nrealthy, and wise ? This foreign bird's note is cel- 
 ebrated by the poets of all countries along with the 
 notes of their native songsters. All climates agree 
 21 
 
522 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 with brave Chanticleer. He is more indigenous 
 even than the natives. His health is ever good, 
 his lungs are sound, his spirits never flag. Even 
 the sailor on the Atlantic and Pacific is awakened 
 by his voice ; but its shrill sound never roused my 
 slumbers. I kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, nor 
 hens, so that you would have said there was a de- 
 ficiency of domestic sounds ; neither the churn, nor 
 the spinning wheel, nor even the singing of the ket- 
 tle, nor the hissing of the um, nor children crying, 
 to comfort one. An old-fashioned man would have 
 lost his senses or died of ennui before this. Not 
 even rats in the wall, for they were starved out, or 
 rather were never baited in, — only squirrels on 
 the roof and under the floor, a whippoorwill on the 
 ridgepole, a blue-jay screaming beneath the window, 
 a hare or woodchuck under the house, a screech-owl 
 or a cat-owl behind it, a flock of wild geese or a 
 laughing loon on the pond, and a fox to bark in the 
 night. Not even a lark or an oriole, those mild 
 plantation birds, ever visited my clearing. No 
 cockerels to crow nor hens to cackle in the yard. 
 No yard ! but unfenced Nature reaching up to your 
 very sills. A young forest growing up under your 
 windows, and wild sumachs and blackberry vines 
 breaking through into your cellar ; sturdy pitch- 
 pines rubbing and creaking against the shingles for 
 want of room, their roots reaching quite under the 
 house. Instead of a scuttle or a blind blown off* in 
 the gale, — a pine-tree snapped off or torn up by 
 the roots behind your house for fuel. Instead o\ 
 
BRUTE NEIGHBORS, 328 
 
 Qo path to the front-yard gate in the Great Snow, 
 — no gate, — no front yard, — and no path to the 
 civilized world ! 
 
 11. 
 BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 
 
 Why do precisely these objects which we behold 
 make a world ? Why has man just these species 
 of animals for his neighbors ; as if nothing but a 
 mouse could have filled this crevice? I suspect 
 that Pilpay & Co.^ have put animals to their best 
 use, for' they are all beasts of burden, in a sense, 
 made to carry some portion of our thoughts. 
 
 The mice which haunted my house were not the 
 common ones, which are said to have been intro- 
 duced into the country, but a wild native kind not 
 found in the village. I sent one to a distinguished 
 naturalist, and it interested him much. When I 
 was building, one of these had its nest underneath 
 the house, and before I had laid the second floor, 
 and swept out the shavings, would come out regu- 
 larly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my 
 feet. It probably had never seen a man before ; 
 and it soon became quite familiar, and would run 
 over my shoes and up my clothes. It could readily 
 ascend the sides of the room by short impulses, like 
 
 1 That is, the fable- writers, cf whom Pilpay, a Brahmin 
 enjoys in the East the distinction which has been given to i£sop 
 \n the West 
 
324 HENRY DAVID THOREAU, 
 
 a squirrel, wliich it resembled in its motions. At 
 length, as I leaned with my elbow on the bench one 
 day, it ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve, 
 and round and round the paper which held my 
 dinner, while I kept the latter close, and dodged 
 and played at bo-peep with it ; and when at last 
 I held still a piece of cheese between my thumb 
 and finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my 
 hand, and afterward cleaned its face and paws, like 
 a fly, and walked away. 
 
 A phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for 
 protection in a pine which grew against the house. 
 In June the partridge {Tetrao umhellus)^ which is 
 so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, from 
 the woods in the rear to the front of my house, 
 clucking and calling to them like a hen, and in all 
 her behavior proving herself the hen of the woods. 
 The young suddenly disperse on your approach, at 
 a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind had 
 swept them away, and they so exactly resemble the 
 dried leaves and twigs that many a traveller has 
 placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard 
 the whir of the old bird as she flew off, and her anx- 
 ious calls and mewing, or seen her trail her wings 
 to attract his attention, without suspecting their 
 neighborhood. The parent will sometimes roll and 
 spin round before you in such a dishabille, that you 
 cannot, for a few moments, detect what kind of 
 creature it is. The young squat still and flat, often 
 running their heads under a leaf, and mind only 
 their mother's directions given from a distance, noi 
 
BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 325 
 
 will your approach make them run again and be- 
 tray themselves. You may even tread on them, or 
 have your eyes on them for a minute, without dis- 
 covering them. I have held them in my open hand 
 at such a time, and still their only care, obedient to 
 their mother and their instinct, was to squat there 
 without fear or trembling. So perfect is this in- 
 stinct, that once, when I had laid them on the 
 leaves again, and one accidentally fell on its side, it 
 was found with the rest in exactly the same posi- 
 tion ten minutes afterward. They are not callow 
 like the young of most birds, but more perfectly 
 developed and precocious even than chickens. The 
 remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their 
 open and serene eyes is very memorable. All in- 
 telligence seems reflected in them. They suggest 
 not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom 
 clarified by experience. Such an eye was not born 
 when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it re- 
 flects. The woods do not yield another such a 
 gem. The traveller does not often look into such 
 a limpid well. The ignorant or reckless sportsman 
 often shoots the parent at such a time, and leaves 
 these innocents to fall a prey to some prowling 
 beast or bird, or gradually mingle with the decaying 
 leaves which they so much resemble. It is said 
 that when hatched by a hen they will directly dis- 
 perse on some alarm, and so are lost, for they never 
 hear the mother's call which gathers them again. 
 These were my hens and chickens. 
 It is remarkable how many creatures live wild 
 
326 HENRY DAVID THOREAU, 
 
 and free, though secret, in the woods, and still sua 
 tain themselves in the neighborhood of towns, sus- 
 pected by hunters only. How retired the otter 
 manages to live here ! He grows to be four feet 
 long, as big as a small boy, perhaps without any 
 human being getting a glimpse of him. I formerly 
 saw the raccoon in the woods behind where my 
 house is built, and probably still heard their whin- 
 nering at night. Commonly I rested an hour or 
 two in the shade at noon, after planting, and ate 
 my lunch, and read a little by a spring which was 
 the source of a swamp and of a brook, oozing from 
 under Brister's Hill, half a mile from my field. 
 The approach to this was through a succession of 
 descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch- 
 pines, into a larger wood about the swamp. There, 
 in a very secluded and shaded spot, under a spread- 
 ing white-pine, there was yet a clean, firm sward to 
 sit on. I had dug out the spring and made a well 
 of clear gray water, where I could dip up a paiKul 
 without roiling it, and thither I went for this pur- 
 pose almost every day in midsummer, when the 
 pond was warmest. Thither, too, the wood-cock 
 led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, flying 
 but a foot above them down the bank, while they 
 ran in a troop beneath ; but at last, spying me, she 
 would leave her young and circle round and round 
 ne, nearer and nearer till within four or five feet, 
 pretending broken wings aad legs, to attract my 
 attention, and get off her young, who would already 
 have taken up their march, with faint wiry peep, 
 
BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 327 
 
 single file through the swamp, as she directed. Or 
 I heard the peep of the young when I could not see 
 the parent bird. There, too, the turtle-doves sat 
 over the spring, or fluttered from bough to bough 
 of the soft white-pines over my head ; or the red 
 squirrel, coursing down the nearest bough, was par- 
 ticularly familiar and inquisitive. You only need 
 sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the 
 woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit them- 
 selves to you by turns. 
 
 I was witness to events of a less peaceful char- 
 acter. One day when I went out to my wood-pile, 
 or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large 
 ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly 
 half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending 
 with one another. Having once got hold, they 
 never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled 
 on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was 
 surprised to find that the chips were covered with 
 such combatants, that it was not a duellum^ but a 
 bellum^ a war between two races of ants, the red 
 always pitted against the black, and frequently 
 two red ones to one black. The legions of these 
 Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my 
 wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with 
 the dead and dying, both red and black. It was 
 the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the 
 only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was 
 raging ; internecine war ; the red republicans on 
 the one hand, and the black imperialists on the 
 other. On every side they were engaged in deadly 
 
328 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, 
 and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. I 
 watched a couple that were fast locked in each 
 other's embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the 
 chips, now at noon-day prepared to fight till the 
 sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red 
 champion had fastened himself like a vise to his 
 adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on 
 that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at 
 one of his feelers near the root, having already 
 caused the other to go by the board ; while the 
 stronger black one dashed him from side to side, 
 and, as I saw on looking nearer, had already di- 
 vested him of several of his members. They fought 
 with more pertinacity than bull-dogs. Neither 
 manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was 
 evident that their battle-cry was Conquer or die. 
 In the mean while there came along a single red 
 ant on the hillside of this valley, evidently full of 
 excitement, who either had dispatched his foe, or 
 had not yet taken part in the battle ; probably the 
 latter, for he had lost none of his limbs ; whose 
 mother had charged him to return with his shield 
 or upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, 
 who had nourished his wrath apart, and had now 
 come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus.^ He saw 
 this unequal combat from afar, — for the blacks 
 
 1 In Homer's Iliad, Achilles, in a sullen wrath against Aga- 
 memnon, remains in his tent and refuses to engage in battle, 
 until Patroclus, his friend whom he armed, has been killed by 
 Hector, when he goes out to avenge the death on the Trojan 
 ehkf. 
 
BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 329 
 
 were nearly twice the size of the red, — he drew 
 near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard 
 within half an inch of the combatants ; then, watch- 
 ing his opportunity, he sprang upon the black war- 
 rior, and commenced his operations near the root 
 of his right fore-leg, leaving the foe to select among 
 his own members ; and so there were three united 
 for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been in- 
 vented which put all other locks and cements to 
 shame. I should not have wondered by this time 
 to find that they had their respective musical bands 
 stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their 
 national airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer 
 the dying combatants. I was myself excited some- 
 what even as if they had been men. The more 
 you think of it, the less the difference. And cer- 
 tainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord 
 history, at least, if in the history of America, that 
 will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether 
 for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriot- 
 ism and heroism displayed. For numbers and for 
 carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord 
 - Fight ! Two killed on the patriots' side, and Lu- 
 ther Blanchard wounded ! Why here every ant 
 was a Buttrick, — " Fire ! for God's sake fire ! " — 
 and thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hos- 
 mer. There was not one hireling there. I have 
 no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as 
 much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three- 
 penny tax on their tea ; and the results of this bat- 
 tle will be as important and memorable to those 
 
330 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker 
 Hill, at least. 
 
 I took up the chip on which the three I have 
 particularly described were struggling, carried it 
 into my house, and placed it under a tumbler on 
 my window-sill, in order to see the issue. Holding 
 a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw 
 that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the 
 near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed his re- 
 maining feeler, his own breast was all torn away, 
 exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of 
 the black warrior, whose breast-plate was appar- 
 ently too thick for him to pierce ; and the dark 
 carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone with ferocity 
 such as war only could excite. They struggled 
 half an hour longer under the tumbler, and when 
 T looked again the black soldier had severed the 
 heads of his foes from their bodies, and the still 
 living heads were hanging on either side of him 
 like ghastly trophies at his saddle-bow, still appar- 
 ently as firmly fastened as ever, and he was en- 
 deavoring with feeble struggles, being without feel- 
 ers and with only the remnant of a leg, and I know 
 not how many other wounds, to divest himself of 
 them ; which at length, after half an hour more, 
 he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he went 
 off over the window-sill in that crippled state. 
 Whether he finally survived that combat, and spent 
 the remainder of his days in some Hotel des Inva- 
 lides,^ I do not know ; but I thought that his in- 
 ^ The Hotel des Invalides in Paris was founded in 1670, bjf 
 
BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 381 
 
 3u8try would not be worth much thereafter. I 
 never learned which party was victorious, nor the 
 cause of the war ; but I felt for the rest of that day 
 as if I had had my feelings excited and harrowed 
 by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, 
 of a human battle before my door. 
 
 Kirby and Spence ^ tell us that the battles of 
 ants have long been celebrated and the date of them 
 recorded, though they say that Huber is the only 
 modern author who appears to have witnessed them. 
 " JEneas Sylvius,** say they, " after giving a very 
 circumstantial account of one contested with great 
 obstinacy by a great and small species on the trunk 
 of a pear-tree," adds that " ' This action was fought 
 in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the 
 presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent law- 
 yer, who related the whole history of the battle 
 with the greatest fidelity.' A similar engagement 
 between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus 
 Magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, 
 are said to have buried the bodies of their own sol- 
 diers, but left those of their giant enemies a prey to 
 the birds. This event happened previous to the 
 expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from 
 Sweden." The battle which I witnessed took place 
 in the Presidency of Polk, five years before the 
 passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill. 
 
 Louis XIV., as a home for disabled and infirm soldiers, and in 
 a crypt under the church connected with it is the tomb of Na- 
 poleon. 
 1 In their Introduction to Entomology. 
 
»S2 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 Many a village Bose, fit only to course a mud- 
 turtle in a victualling cellar, sported his heavy quar- 
 ters in the woods, without the knowledge of his 
 master, and ineffectually smelled at old fox bur- 
 rows and woodchucks' holes ; led perchance by 
 some slight cur which nimbly threaded the wood, 
 and might still inspire a natural terror in its deni- 
 zens ; — now far behind his guide, barking like a 
 canine bull toward some small squirrel which had 
 treed itself for scrutiny, then, cantering off, bending 
 the bushes with his weight, imagining that he is on 
 the track of some stray member of the jerbilla 
 family. Once I was surprised to see a cat walking 
 along the stony shore of the pond, for they rarely 
 wander so far from home. The surprise was mut- 
 ual. Nevertheless the most domestic cat, which 
 has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at 
 home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy be- 
 havior, proves herself more native there than the 
 regular inhabitants. Once, when berrying, I met 
 with a cat with young kittens in the woods, quite 
 wild, and they all, like their mother, had their 
 backs up and were fiercely spitting at me. A few 
 years before I lived in the woods there was what 
 was called a " winged cat " in one of the farm- 
 houses in Lincoln nearest the pond, Mr. Gillian 
 Baker's. When I called to see her in June, 1842, 
 «he was gone a-hunting in the woods, as was her 
 wont (I am not sure whether it was a male or 
 female, and so use the more common pronoun), but 
 her mistress told me that she came into the neigh- 
 
BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 333 
 
 borhood a little more than a year before, in April, 
 and was finally taken into their house ; that she was 
 of a dark brownish-gray color, with a white spot 
 on her throat, and white feet, and had a large bushy 
 tail like a fox ; that in the winter the fur grew thick 
 and flatted out along her sides, forming strips ten 
 or twelve inches long by two and a half wide, and 
 under her chin like a muff, the upper side loose, the 
 under matted like felt, and in the spring these ap- 
 pendages dropped off. They gave me a pair of her 
 " wings," which I keep still. There is no appear- 
 ance of a membrane about them. Some thought it 
 was part flyiug-squirrel or some other wild animal, 
 which is not impossible, for, according to natura- 
 lists, prolific hybrids have been produced by the 
 union of the marten and domestic cat. This would 
 have been the right kind of cat for me to keep, if I 
 had kept any ; for why should not a poet's cat be 
 winged as well as his horse? 
 
 In the fall the loon ( Colymbus glacialis) came, as 
 usual, to moult and bathe in the pond, making the 
 woods ring with his wild laughter before I had 
 risen. At rumor of his arrival all the Mill-dam 
 sportsmen are on the alert, in gigs and on foot, two 
 by two and three by three, with patent rifles and 
 conical balls and spyglasses. They come rustling 
 through the woods like autumn leaves, at least ten 
 men to one loon. Some station themselves on this 
 side of the pond, some on that, for the poor bird 
 cannot be omnipresent ; if he dive here he must 
 eome up there. But now the kind October wind 
 
334 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 rises, rustling the leaves and rippling the surface 
 of the water, so that no loon can be heard or seen, 
 though his foes sweep the pond with spy-glasses, 
 and make the woods resound with their discharges. 
 The waves generously rise and dash angrily, taking 
 sides with all waterfowl, and our sportsmen must 
 beat a retreat to town and shop and unfinished jobs. 
 But they were too often successful. When I went 
 to get a pail of water early in the morning I fre- 
 quently saw this stately bird sailing out of my cove 
 within a few rods. If I endeavored to overtake 
 him in a boat, in order to see how lie would ma- 
 noeuvre, he would dive and be completely lost, so 
 that I did not discover him again, sometimes, till 
 the latter part of the day. But I was more than a 
 match for him on the surface. He commonly went 
 off in a rain. 
 
 As I was paddling along the north shore one 
 very calm October afternoon, for such days espe- 
 cially they settle on to the lakes, like the milkweed 
 down, having looked in vain over the pond for a 
 loon, suddenly one, sailing out from the shore to- 
 ward the middle a few rods in front of me, set up 
 his wild laugh and betrayed himself. I pursued 
 with a paddle and he dived, but when he came up 
 I was nearer than before. He dived again, but I 
 miscalculated the direction he would take, and we 
 were fifty rods apart when he came to the surface 
 this time, for I had helped to widen the interval ; 
 and again he laughed long and loud, and with more 
 reason than before. He manoeuvred so cunningly 
 
BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 385 
 
 that I could not get within half a dozen rods of him, 
 Each time, when he came to the surface, turning 
 his head this way and that, he coolly surveyed the 
 water and the land, and apparently chose his course 
 80 that he might come up where there was the 
 widest expanse of water and at the greatest distance 
 from the boat. It was surprising how quickly he 
 made up his mind and put his resolve into execu- 
 tion. He led me at once to the widest part of the 
 pond, and could not be driven from it. While he 
 was thinking one thing in his brain, I was en- 
 deavoring to divine his thought in mine. It was a 
 pretty game, played on the smooth surface of the 
 pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your ad- 
 versary's checker disappears beneath the board, and 
 the problem is to place yours nearest to where his 
 will appear again. Sometimes he would come up 
 unexpectedly on the opposite side of me, having 
 apparently passed directly under the boat. So long- 
 winded was he and so unweariable, that vvhen he 
 had swum farthest he would immediately plunge 
 again, nevertheless ; and then no wit could divine 
 where in the deep pond, beneath the smooth sur- 
 face, he might be speeding his way like a fish, for 
 he had time and ability to visit the bottom of the 
 pond in its deepest part. It is said that loons have 
 been caught in the New York lakes eighty feet be- 
 neath the surface, with hooks set for trout, — though 
 Walden is deeper than that. How surprised must 
 the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor from an- 
 other sphere speeding his way amid their schools ! 
 
d>M HENRY DAVID THOREAU, 
 
 Yet lie appeared to know his course as surely undei 
 water as on the surface, and swam much faster there. 
 Once or twice T saw a ripple where he approached 
 the surface, just put his head out to reconnoitre, 
 and instantly dived again. I found that it was as 
 well for me to rest on my oars and wait his reap- 
 pearing as to endeavor to calculate where he would 
 rise ; for again aud again, when I was straining my 
 eyes over the surface one way, I would suddenly be 
 startled by his unearthly laugh behind me. But 
 why, after displaying so much cunning, did he in- 
 variably betray himself the moment he came up by 
 that loud laugh ? Did not his white breast enough 
 betray him ? He was indeed a silly loon, I thought. 
 I could commonly hear the plash of the water when 
 he came up, and so also detected him. But after 
 an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as will- 
 ingly and swam yet farther than at first. It was 
 surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with un- 
 ruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing 
 all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His 
 usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet some- 
 what like that of a waterfowl ; but occasionally, 
 when he had balked me most successfully aud come 
 up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly 
 howl, probably more like that of a wolf than any 
 bird ; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground 
 ^d deliberately howls. This was his looning, — 
 perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard here, 
 making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded 
 that he laughed in derision of my eflforts, confident 
 
BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 337 
 
 of his own resources. Though the sky was by this 
 time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I could 
 see where he broke the surface when I did not hear 
 him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and 
 the smoothness of the water were all against him. 
 At length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered 
 one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the 
 god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came 
 a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and 
 filled the whole air with misty rain, and I was im- 
 pressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, 
 and his god was angry with me ; and so I left him 
 disappearing far away on the tumultuous surface. 
 
 For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cun- 
 ningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the 
 pond, far from the sportsman ; tricks which they 
 will have less need to practise in Louisiana bayous. 
 When compelled to rise they would sometimes cir- 
 cle round and round and over the pond at a consid- 
 erable height, from which they could easily see to 
 other ponds and the river, like black motes in the 
 sky ; and, when I thought they had gone off thither 
 long since, they would settle down by a slanting 
 flight of a quarter of a mile on to a distant part which 
 was left free ; but what beside safety they got by 
 sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, un- 
 less they love its water for the same reason that 
 I do. 
 
 22 
 
338 HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 m. 
 
 THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 
 
 This light-house, known to mariners as the 
 Cape Cod or Highland Light, is one of our " pri- 
 mary sea-coast lights," and is usually the first seen 
 by those approaching the entrance of Massachusetts 
 Bay from Europe. It is forty-three miles from 
 Cape Ann Light, and forty-one from Boston Light. 
 It stands about twenty rods from the edge of the 
 bank, which is here formed of clay. 1 borrowed 
 the plane and square, level and dividers, of a car- 
 penter who was shingling a barn near by, and using 
 one of those shingles made of a mast, contrived a 
 rude sort of quadrant, with pins for sights and 
 pivots, and got the angle of elevation of the Bank 
 opposite the light-house, and with a couple of cod- 
 lines the length of its slope, and so measured its 
 height on the shingle. It rises one hundred and 
 ten feet above its immediate base, or about one 
 hundred and twenty-three feet above mean low 
 water. Graham, who has carefully surveyed the 
 extremity of the Cape, makes it one hundred and 
 thirty feet. The mixed sand and clay lay at an 
 angle of forty degrees with the horizon, where 1 
 measured it, but the clay is generally much steeper. 
 No cow nor hen ever gets down it. Half a mile far 
 ther south the bank is fifteen or twenty-five feet 
 higher, and that appeared to be the highest land in 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 339 
 
 North Truro. Even this vast clay bank is fast 
 wearing away. Small streams of water trickling 
 down it at intervals of two or three rods have left 
 the intermediate clay in the form of steep Gothic 
 roofs fifty feet high or more, the ridges as sharp and 
 rugged-looking as rocks ; and in one place the bank 
 is curiously eaten out in the form of a large semi- 
 circular crater. 
 
 According to the light-house keeper, the Cape is 
 wasting here on both sides, though most on the 
 eastern. In some places it had lost many rods 
 within the last year, and, erelong, the light-house 
 must be moved. We calculated, from his data, how 
 soon the Cape would be quite worn away at this 
 point, " for," said he, " I can remember sixty years 
 back." We were even more surprised at this last 
 announcement — that is, at the slow waste of life 
 and energy in our informant, for we had taken him 
 to be not more than forty — than at the rapid wast- 
 ing of the Cape, and we thought that he stood a 
 fair chance to outlive the former. 
 
 Between this October and June of the next year, 
 I found that the bank had lost about forty feet in 
 one place, opposite the light-house, and it was 
 cracked more than forty feet farther from the edge 
 at the last date, the shore being strewn with the 
 recent rubbish. But I judged that generally it was 
 not wearing away here at the rate of more than six 
 %et annually. Any conclusions drawn from the 
 observations of a few years or one generation only 
 %re likely to prove false, and the Cape may balk 
 
340 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 expectation by its durability. In some places even 
 a wrecker's foot-path down the bank lasts several 
 years. One old inhabitant told us that when the 
 light-house was built, in 1798, it was calculated 
 that it would stand forty-five years, allowing the 
 bank to waste one length of fence each year, " but," 
 said he, " there it is " (or rather another near the 
 same site, about twenty rods from the edge of the 
 bank). 
 
 The sea is not gaining on the Cape everywhere, 
 for one man told me of a vessel wrecked long ago 
 on the north of Provincetown whose " hones " (this 
 was his word) are still visible many rods within the 
 present line of the beach, half buried in sand. Per- 
 chance they lie alongside the timbers of a whale. 
 The general statement of the inhabitants is, that 
 the Cape is wasting on both sides, but extending 
 itself on particular points on the south and west, 
 as at Chatham and Monomoy Beaches, and at Bill- 
 ingsgate,- Long, and Race Points. James Freeman 
 stated in his day that above three miles had been 
 added to Monomoy Beach during the previous fifty 
 years, and it is said to be still extending as fast as 
 ever. A writer in the " Massachusetts Magazine," 
 in the last century, tells us that " when the English 
 first settled upon the Cape, there was au island off 
 Chatham, at three leagues' distance, called Webbs' 
 Island, containing twenty acres, covered with red- 
 cedar or savin. The inhabitants of Nantucket used 
 to carry wood from it ; " but he adds that in his 
 day a large rock alone marked the spot, and the 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 341 
 
 water was six fathoms deep there. The entrance to 
 Nauset Harbor, which was once in Eastham, has 
 now travelled south into Orleans. The islands in 
 Wellfleet Harbor once formed a continuous beach, 
 though now small vessels pass between them. And 
 so of many other parts of this coast. 
 
 Perhaps what the Ocean takes from one part of 
 the Cape it gives to another, — robs Peter to pay 
 Paul. On the eastern side the sea appears to be 
 everywhere encroaching on the land. Not only 
 the land is undermined, and its ruins carried off by 
 currents, but the sand is blown from the beach di- 
 rectly up the steep bank where it is one hundred 
 and fifty feet high, and covers the original surface 
 there many feet deep. If you sit on the edge you 
 will have ocular demonstration of this by soon get- 
 ting your eyes full. Thus the bank preserves its 
 height as fast as it is worn away. This sand is 
 steadily travelling westward at a rapid rate, " more 
 than a hundred yards,*' says one writer, within the 
 memory of inhabitants now living ; so that in some 
 places peat-meadows are buried deep under the 
 sand, and the peat is. cut through it ; and in one 
 place a large peat-meadow has made its appearance 
 on the shore in the bank covered many feet deep, 
 and peat has been cut there. This accounts for 
 that great pebble of peat which we saw in the surf. 
 The old oysterman had told us that many years 
 ago he lost a " crittur " by her being mired in a 
 swamp near the Atlantic side east of his house, and 
 twenty years ago he lost the swamp itself entirely, 
 
342 HENRY DAVID THOREAU, 
 
 but has since seen signs of it appearing on the 
 beach. He also said that he had seen cedar stumps 
 " as big as cart-wheels " (!) on the bottom of the 
 Bay, three miles off Billingsgate Point, when lean- 
 ing over the side of his boat in pleasant weather, 
 and that that was dry land not long ago. Another 
 told us that a log canoe known to have been buried 
 many years before on the Bay side at East Harbor 
 in Truro, where the Cape is extremely narrow, 
 appeared at length on the Atlantic side, the Cape 
 having rolled over it, and an old woman said, — 
 " Now, you see, it is true what I told you, that the 
 Cape is moving." 
 
 The bars along the coast shift with every storm, 
 and in many places there is occasionally none at all. 
 We ourselves observed the effect of a single storm 
 with a high tide in the night, in July, 1855. It 
 moved the sand on the beach opposite the light- 
 house to the depth of six feet and three rods in 
 width as far as we could see north and south, and 
 carried it bodily off no one knows exactly where, 
 laying bare in one place a large rock five feet high 
 which was invisible before, and narrowing the beach 
 to that extent. There is usually, as I have said, no 
 bathing on the back side of the Cape, on account of 
 the undertow, but when we were there last, the sea 
 had, three months before, cast up a bar near this 
 light-house, two miles long and ten rods wide, over 
 ^hich the tide did not flow, leaving a narrow cove, 
 vhen a quarter of a mile long, between it and the 
 shore, which afforded excellent bathing. This cove* 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 343 
 
 had from time to time been closed up as the bar 
 travelled northward, in one instance imprisoning 
 four or ^YQ hundred whiting and cod, which died 
 there, and the water as often tamed fresh and 
 finally gave place to sand. This bar, the inhabit- 
 ants assured us, might be wholly removed, and the 
 water six feet deep there in two or three days. 
 
 The light-house keeper said that when the wind 
 blowed strong on to the shore, the waves ate fast 
 into the bank, but when it blowed off they took no 
 sand away ; for in the former case the wind heaped 
 up the surface of the water next to the beach, and 
 to preserve its equilibrium a strong undertow im- 
 mediately set back again into the sea which carried 
 with it the sand and whatever else was in the way, 
 and left the beach hard to walk on ; but in the lat- 
 ter case the undertow set on, and carried the sand 
 with it, so that it was particularly difficult for ship- 
 wrecked men to get to land when the wind blowed 
 on to the shore, but easier when it blowed off. 
 This undertow, meeting the next surface wave on 
 the bar which itself has made, forms part of the 
 dam over which the latter breaks, as over an up- 
 right wall. The sea thus plays with the land, hold- 
 ing a sand-bar in its mouth a while before it swal- 
 lows it, as a cat plays with a mouse ; but the fatal 
 gripe is sure to come at last. The sea sends its 
 rapacious east wind to rob the land, but before the 
 former has got far with its prey, the land sends its 
 honest west wind to recover some of its own. But, 
 according to Lieutenant Davis, the forms, extent. 
 
344 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 and distribution of sand-bars and banks are prin- 
 cipally determined, not by winds and waves, but by 
 tides. 
 
 Our host said that you would be surprised if you 
 were on the beach when the wind blew a hurricane 
 directly on to it, to see that none of the drift-wood 
 came ashore, but all was carried directly northward 
 and parallel with the shore as fast as a man can 
 walk, by the inshore current, which sets strongly 
 in that direction at flood tide. The strongest swim- 
 mers also are carried along with it, and never gain 
 an inch toward the beach. Even a large rock has 
 been moved half a mile northward along the beach. 
 He assured us that the sea was never still on the 
 back side of the Cape, but ran commonly as high as 
 your head, so that a great part of the time you 
 could not launch a boat there, and even in the 
 calmest weather the waves run six or eight feet up 
 the beach, though then you could get off on a plank. 
 Champlain and Pourtincourt could not land here in 
 1606, on account of the swell (la houlle), yet the 
 savages came off" to them in a canoe. In the Sieur 
 de la Borde's " Relation des Caraibes," my edition 
 of which was published at Amsterdam in 1711, at 
 page 530 he says : — 
 
 " Couroumon a Caraibe, also a star [^. e, a god], 
 makes the great lames a la mer, and overturns ca- 
 noes. Lames a la mer are the long vagues which 
 ire not broken {e7itrecoupees), and such as one sees 
 come to land all in one piece, from one end of a 
 beach to another, so that, however little wind there 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT, 345 
 
 may be, a shallop or a canoe could hardly land 
 (ahorder terre) without turning over, or being filled 
 v^ith water." 
 
 But on the Bay side the water even at its edge 
 is often as smooth and still as in a pond. Com- 
 monly there are no boats used along this beach. 
 There was a boat belonging to the Highland Light 
 which the next keeper after he had been there a 
 year had not launched, though he said that there 
 was good fishing just off the shore. Generally the 
 Life Boats cannot be used when needed. When 
 the waves run very high it is impossible to get a 
 boat off, however skilfully you steer it, for it will 
 often be completely covered by the curving edge of 
 the approaching breaker as by an arch, and so 
 filled with water, or it will be lifted up by its bows, 
 turned directly over backwards and all the contents 
 spilled out. A spar thirty feet long is served in 
 the same way. 
 
 I heard of a party who went off fishing back of 
 Wellfleet some years ago, in two boats, in calm 
 weather, who, when they had laden their boats with 
 fish, and approached the land again, found such a 
 swell breaking on it, though there was no wind, 
 that they were afraid to enter it. At first they 
 thought to pull for Provincetown, but night was 
 coming on, and that was many miles distant. Their 
 case seemed a desperate one. As often as they 
 approached the shore and saw the terrible breakers 
 that intervened, they were deterred. In short, they 
 irere thoroughly frightened. Finally, having thrown 
 
546 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 their fish overboard, those in one boat chose a favor- 
 able opportunity, and succeeded, by skill and good 
 luck, in reaching the laud, but they were unwilling 
 to take the responsibility of telling the others when 
 to come in, and as the other helmsman was inex- 
 perienced, their boat was swamped at once, yet all 
 managed to save themselves. 
 
 Much smaller waves soon make a boat " nail- 
 sick," as the phrase is. The keeper said that after 
 a long and strong blow there would be three large 
 waves, each successively larger than the last, and 
 then no large ones for some time, and that, wheji 
 they wished to land in a boat, they came in on the 
 last and largest wave. Sir Thomas Browne (as 
 quoted in Brand's Popular Antiquities, p. 372), on 
 the subject of the tenth wave being "greater or 
 more dangerous than any other," after quoting 
 Ovid,— 
 
 " Qui venit hie fluctus, fluctus supereminet omnes 
 Posterior nono est, undecimo que prior," — 
 
 says, " Which, notwithstanding, is evidently false ; 
 nor can it be made out either by observation either 
 upon the shore or the ocean, as we have with dili- 
 gence explored in both. And surely in vain we 
 expect regularity in the waves of the sea, or in the 
 particular motions thereof, as we may in its general 
 reciprocations, whose causes are constant, and effects 
 therefore correspondent ; whereas its fluctuations 
 are but motions subservient, which winds, storms, 
 dhores, shelves, and every interjacency, irregu- 
 lates." 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT, 347 
 
 We read that the Clay Pounds were so called 
 ^ because vessels have had the misfortune to be 
 pounded against it in gales of wind," which we re- 
 gard as a doubtful derivation. There are small 
 ponds here, upheld by the clay, which were for- 
 merly called the Clay Pits. Perhaps this, or Clay 
 Ponds, is the origin of the name. Water is found 
 in the clay quite near the surface ; but we heard of 
 one man who had sunk a well in the sand close by, 
 " till he could see stars at noonday,'' without find- 
 ing any. Over this bare Highland the wind has 
 full sweep. Even in July it blows the wings over 
 the heads of the young turkeys, which do not know 
 enough to head against it; and in gales the doors 
 and windows are blown in, and you must hold on 
 to the light-house to prevent being blown into the 
 Atlantic. They who merely keep out on the beach 
 in a storm in the winter are sometimes rewarded 
 by the Humane Society. If you would feel the 
 full force of a tempest, take up your residence on 
 the top of Mount Washington, or at the Highland 
 Light, in Truro. 
 
 It was said in 1794 that more vessels were cast 
 away on the east shore of Truro than anywhere in 
 Barnstable County. Notwithstanding that this 
 light-house has since been erected, after almost 
 every storm we read of one or more vessels wrecked 
 here, and sometimes more than a dozen wrecks are 
 visible from this point at one time. The inhabit- 
 ants hear the crash of vessels going to pieces as 
 they sit round their hearths, and they commonly 
 
348 HENRY DAVID THOREAU, 
 
 date from some memorable shipwreck. If the his- 
 tory of this beach could be written from beginning 
 to end, it would be a thrilling page in the history 
 of commerce. 
 
 Truro was settled in the year 1700 as Dangerfield. 
 This was a very appropriate name, for I afterward 
 read on a monument in the graveyard, near Pamet 
 River, the following inscription : — 
 
 Sacred 
 
 to the memory of 
 
 67 citizens of Truro, 
 
 who were lost in seven 
 
 vessels, which 
 
 foundered at sea in 
 
 the memorable gale 
 
 of Oct. 3d, 1841. 
 
 Their names and ages by families were recorded on 
 different sides of the stone. They are said to have 
 been lost on George's Bank, and I was told that 
 only one vessel drifted ashore on the back side of 
 the Cape, with the boys locked into the cabin and 
 drowned. It is said that the homes of all were 
 " within a circuit of two miles." Twenty-eight in- 
 habitants of Dennis were lost in the same gale ; 
 \iad I read that ** in one day, immediately after this 
 ^rorm, nearly or quite one hundred bodies were 
 taken up and buried on Cape Cod." The Truro 
 Insurance Company failed for want of skippers to 
 take charge of its vessels. But the surviving in- 
 habitants went a fishing again the next year as 
 usual. I found that it would not do to speak of 
 shipwrecks there, for almost every family has lost 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 349 
 
 some of its members at sea. " Who lives in that 
 house ? " I inquired. " Three widows," was the reply. 
 The stranger and the inhabitant view the shore with 
 very different eyes. The former may have come to 
 see and admire the ocean in a storm ; but the lat- 
 ter looks on it as the scene where his nearest rel- 
 atives were wrecked. When I remarked to an 
 old wrecker partially blind, who was sitting on the 
 edge of the bank smoking a pipe, which he had just 
 lit with a match of dried beach-grass, that 1 sup- 
 posed he liked to hear the sound of the surf, he 
 answered : " No, I do not like to hear the sound 
 of the surf." He had lost at least one son in " the 
 memorable gale," and could tell many a tale of the 
 shipwrecks which he had witnessed there. 
 
 In the year 1717 a noted pirate named Bellamy 
 was led on to the bar off Wellfleet by the captain 
 of a snow which he had taken, to whom he had of- 
 fered his vessel again if he would pilot him into 
 Provincetown Harbor. Tradition says that the lat- 
 ter threw over a burning tar barrel in the night, 
 which drifted ashore, and the pirates followed it. A 
 storm coming on, their whole fleet was wrecked, 
 and more than a hundred dead bodies lay along the 
 shore. Six who escaped shipwreck were executed. 
 "At times, to this day" (1793), says the historian 
 of Wellfleet,^ " there are King William and Queen 
 Mary's coppers picked up, and pieces of silver 
 called cob-money. The violence of the seas moves 
 the sands on the outer bar, so that at times the iron 
 1 Levi Whitman, in Mass. Hist. Soc, Coll Ist series, vol. iii. 
 
350 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 caboose of the ship [that is, Bellamy's] at low ebbs 
 has been seen." Another tells us that, " For many 
 years after this shipwreck, a man of a very singular 
 and frightful aspect used every spring and autumn to 
 be seen travelling on the Cape, who was supposed 
 to have been one of Bellamy's crew. The pre- 
 sumption is that he went to some place where 
 money had been secreted by the pirates, to get such 
 a supply as his exigencies required. When he died, 
 many pieces of gold were found in a girdle which 
 he constantly wore." 
 
 As T was walking on the beach here in my last 
 visit, looking for shells and pebbles, just after that 
 storm which T have mentioned as moving the sand 
 to a great depth, not knowing but I might find some 
 cob-money, I did actually pick up a French crown 
 piece, worth about a dollar and six cents, near high 
 water mark, on the still moist sand, just under the 
 abrupt, caving base of the bank. It was a dark 
 slate color, and looked like a flat pebble, but still 
 bore a very distinct and handsome head of Louis 
 XV., and the usual legend on the reverse, Sit 
 Nomen Domini Benedictum (Blessed be the Name 
 of the Lord), a pleasing sentiment to read in the 
 sands of the sea-shore, whatever it might be stamped 
 on, and I also made out the date, 1741. Of course, 
 I thought at first that it was that same old button 
 which I have found so many times, but my knife 
 «oon showed the silver. Afterwards, rambling on 
 the bars at low tide, I cheated my companion by 
 holding up round shells {ScutellcB) between my 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 351 
 
 lingers, whereupon he quickly stripped and came oiT 
 to me. 
 
 In the Revolution, a British ship of war called 
 the Somerset was wrecked near the Clay Pounds, 
 and all on board, some hundreds in number, were 
 taken prisoners. My informant said that he had 
 never seen any mention of this in the histories, but 
 that at any rate he knew of a silver watch, which 
 one of those prisoners by accident left there, which 
 was still going to tell the story. But this event is 
 noticed by some writers. 
 
 The next summer I saw a sloop from Chatham 
 dragging for anchors and chains just off this shore. 
 She had lier boats out at the work while she 
 shuffled about on various tacks, and, when any- 
 thing was found, drew up to hoist it on board. It 
 is a singular employment, at which men are regu- 
 larly hired and paid for their industry, to hunt to- 
 day in pleasant weather for anchors which have 
 been lost, — the sunken faith and hope of mariners, 
 to which they trusted in vain ; now, perchance, it 
 is the rusty one of some old pirate's ship or Nor- 
 man fisherman, whose cable parted here two hun- 
 dred years ago ; and now the best bower anchor of 
 a Canton or a California ship, which has gone 
 about her business. If the roadsteads of the 
 spiritual ocean could be thus dragged, what rusty 
 flukes of hope deceived and parted chain-cables of 
 faith might again be windlassed aboard ! enough to 
 sink the finder's craft, or stock new navies to the 
 end of time. The bottom of the sea is strewn with 
 
852 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 anchors, some deeper and some shallower, and al- 
 ternately covered and uncovered by the sand, per- 
 chance with a small length of iron cable still at- 
 tached, — to which where is the other end ? So 
 many unconcluded tales to be continued another 
 time. So, if' we had diving-bells adapted to the 
 spiritual deeps, we should see anchors with their 
 cables attached, as thick as eels in vinegar, all 
 wriggling vainly toward their holding-ground. 
 But that is not treasure for us which another man 
 has lost ; rather it is for us to seek what no other 
 man has found or can find, — not be Chatham men 
 dragging for anchors. 
 
 The annals of this voracious beach ! who could 
 write them, unless it were a shipwrecked sailor ? 
 How many who have seen it have seen it only in 
 the midst of danger and distress, the last strip of 
 earth which their mortal eyes beheld. Think of 
 the amount of suffering which a single strand has 
 witnessed. The ancients would have represented it 
 as a sea-monster with open jaws, more terrible than 
 Scylla and Charybdis. An inhabitant of Truro 
 told me that about a fortnight after the St. John 
 was wrecked at Cohasset he found two bodies on 
 the shore at the Clay Pounds. They were those 
 of a man, and a corpulent woman. The man had 
 thick boots on, though his head was off, but "it 
 was alongside." It took the finder some weeks to 
 get over the sight. Perhaps they were man and 
 wife, and whom God had joined the ocean currents 
 had not put asunder. Yet by what slight accidents 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 353 
 
 at first may they have been associated in their 
 drifting. Some of the bodies of those passengers 
 were picked up far out at sea, boxed up and sunk ; 
 some brought ashore and buried. There are more 
 consequences to a shipwreck than the underwriters 
 notice. The Gulf Stream may return some to 
 their native shores, or drop them in some out-of- 
 . the-way cave of Ocean, where time and the ele 
 ments will write new riddles with their bones. — 
 But to return to land again. 
 
 In this bank, above the clay, I counted in the 
 summer two hundred holes of the bank swallow 
 within a space six rods long, and there were at 
 least one thousand old birds within three times 
 that distance, twittering over the surf. I had never 
 associated them in my thoughts with the beach be- 
 fore. One little boy who had been a-birds-nest- 
 ing had got eighty swallows' eggs for his share ! 
 Tell it not to the Humane Society. There were 
 many young birds on the clay beneath, which 
 had tumbled out and died. Also there were many 
 crow - blackbirds hopping about in the dry fields, 
 and the upland plover were breeding close by the 
 light-house. The keeper had once cut off one's 
 wing while mowing, as she sat on her eggs there. 
 This is also a favorite resort for gunners in the 
 fall to shoot the golden plover. As around the 
 shores of a pond are seen deviFs-needles, butter- 
 flies, etc., so here, to my surprise, I saw at the 
 »ame season great devil s-needles of a size propoi- 
 tionably larger, or nearly as big as my finger, in 
 
354 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 cessantly coasting up and down the edge of the 
 bank, and butterflies also were hovering over it, 
 and I never savr so many dorr -bugs and beetles 
 of various kinds as strewed the beach. They had 
 apparently flown over the bank in the night, and 
 could not get up again, and some had perhaps 
 fallen into the sea and were washed ashore. They 
 may have been in part attracted by the light-house 
 lamps. 
 
 The Clay Pounds are a more fertile tract than 
 usual. We saw some fine patches of roots and 
 corn here. As generally on the Cape, the plants 
 had little stalk or leaf, but ran remarkably to seed. 
 The corn was hardly more than half as high as in 
 the interior, yet the ears were large and full, and 
 one farmer told us that he could raise forty bushels 
 on an acre without manure, and sixty with it. The 
 heads of the rye also were remarkably large. The 
 shadbush (Amelanchier), beach plums, and blue- 
 berries ( Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum)^ like the np- 
 ple-trees and oaks, were very dwarfish, spreading 
 over the sand, but at the same time very fruitful. 
 The blueberry was but an inch or two high, and its 
 fruit often rested on the ground, so that you did 
 not suspect the presence of the bushes, even on 
 those bare hills, until you were treading on them. 
 I thought that this fertility must be owing mainly 
 to the abundance of moisture in the atmosphere, 
 for I observed that what little grass there was was 
 remarkably laden with dew in the morning, and in 
 •ummer dense imprisoning fogs frequently last tiL 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT, 355 
 
 midday, turning one's beard into a wet napkin 
 about his throat, and the oldest inhabitant may lose 
 his way within a stone's throw of his house or be 
 obliged to follow the beach for a guide. The 
 brick house attached to the light-house was exceed- 
 ingly damp at that season, and writing-paper lost 
 all its stiffness in it. It was impossible to dry 
 your towel after bathing, or to press flowers with- 
 out their mildewing. The air was so moist that 
 we rarely wished to drink, though we could at all 
 times taste the salt on our lips. Salt was rarely 
 used at table, and our host told us that his cattle 
 invariably refused it when it was oiTered them, 
 they got so much with their grass and at every 
 breath, but he said that a sick horse or one just 
 from the country would sometimes take a hearty 
 draught of salt water, and seemed to like it and be 
 the better for it. 
 
 It was surprising to see how much water was con- 
 tained in the terminal bud of the sea-side golden 
 rod, standing in the sand early in July, and also 
 how turnips, beets, carrots, etc., flourished even in 
 pure sand. A man travelling by the shore near 
 there not long before us noticed something green 
 ^•rowing in the pure sand of the beach, just at high 
 water mark, and on approaching found it to be a bed 
 of beets flourishing vigorously, probably from seed 
 washed out of the Franklin. Also beets and tur- 
 nips came up in the sea- weed used for manure in 
 many parts of the Cape. This suggests how vari- 
 ous plants may have been dispersed over the world 
 
356 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 to distant islands and continents. Vessels, with 
 seeds in their cargoes, destined for particular ports, 
 where perhaps they were not needed, have been 
 cast away on desolate islands, and though their 
 crews perished, some of their seeds have been pre- 
 served. Out of many kinds a few would find a soil 
 and climate adapted to them, — become naturalized 
 and perhaps drive out the native plants at last, and 
 80 fit the land for the habitation of .man. It is an 
 ill wind that blows nobody any good, and for the 
 time lamentable shipwrecks may thus contribute a 
 new vegetable to a continent's stock, and prove on 
 the whole a lasting blessing to its inhabitants. Or 
 winds and currents might effect the same without 
 the intervention of man. What are the various 
 succulent plants which grow on the beach but such 
 beds of beets and turnips, sprung originally from 
 seeds which perhaps were cast on the waters for 
 this end,, though we do not know the Franklin which 
 they came out of? In ancient times some Mr. 
 Bell (?) was sailing this way in his ark with seeds 
 of rocket, saltwort, sandwort, beach-grass, samphire, 
 bayberry, poverty-grass, etc., all nicely labelled with 
 directions, intending to establish a nursery some- 
 where ; and did not a nursery get established, 
 ihough he thought that he had failed ? 
 
 About the light-house I observed in the summer 
 the pretty Polygala polygama, spreading ray-wise 
 flat on the ground, white pasture thistles ( Cirsium 
 pumilum), and amid the shrubbery the Smilax 
 glauca, which is commonly said not to grow so far 
 
TEE HIGHLAND LIGHT, 357 
 
 Dorth; near the edge of the banks about half a 
 mile southward, the broom crowberry (JEmpetrum 
 Conradii), for which Plymouth is the ouly locality 
 in Massachusetts usually named, forms pretty green 
 mounds four or five feet in diameter by one foot 
 high, — soft springy beds for the wayfarer. I saw 
 it afterward in Provincetown, but prettiest of all 
 the scarlet pimpernel, or poor-man's weather-glass 
 (Anagallis arvensis), greets you in fair weather on 
 almost every square yard of sand. From Yar- 
 mouth, I have received the Ghrysopsis falcata 
 (golden aster), and Vacdnium stamineum (deer- 
 berry or squaw huckleberry), with fruit not edible, 
 sometimes as large as a cranberry (Sept. 7). 
 
 The Highland Light-house,^ where we were stay- 
 ing, is a substantial-looking building of brick, painted 
 white, and surmounted by an iron cap. Attached 
 to it is the dwelling of the keeper, one story high, 
 also of brick, and built by government. As we 
 were going to spend the night in a light-house, we 
 wished to make the most of so novel an experience, 
 and therefore told our host that we would like to 
 accompany him when he went to light up. At 
 rather early candle-light he lighted a small Japan 
 lamp, allowing it to smoke rather more than we 
 like on ordinary occasions, and told us to follow 
 him. He led the way first through his bedroom, 
 which was placed nearest to the light-house, and 
 then through a long, narrow, covered passage-way, 
 
 1 The light-honse has since been rebuiJt, and shows a FrePMl 
 Ught H. D. T. 
 
858 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 between whitewashed walls like a prisou entry, into 
 the lower part of the light- house, where many great 
 butts of oil were arranged around ; thence we as- 
 cended by a winding and open iron stairway, with a 
 steadily increasing scent of oil and lamp -smoke, to a 
 trap-door in an iron floor, and through this into the 
 lantern. It was a neat building, with everything 
 in apple-pie order, and no danger of anything rust- 
 ing there for want of oil. The light consisted of 
 fifteen argand lamps, placed within smooth con- 
 cave reflectors twenty-one inches in diameter, and 
 arranged in two horizontal circles one above the 
 other, facing every way excepting directly down the 
 Cape. These were surrounded, at a distance of two 
 or three feet, by large plate-glass windows, which 
 defied the storms, with iron sashes, on which rested 
 the iron cap. All the iron work except the floor 
 was painted white. And thus the light^house was 
 completed. We walked slowly round in that nar- 
 row space as the keeper lighted each lamp in suc- 
 cession, conversing with him at the same moment 
 that many a sailor on the deep witnessed the light- 
 ing of the Highland Light. His duty was to fill 
 and trim and light his lamps, and keep bright the 
 reflectors. He filled them every morning, and 
 trimmed them commonly once in the course of the 
 night. He complained of the (juality of the oil 
 which was furnished. This house consumes about 
 eight hundred gallons in a year, which cost not far 
 from one dollar a gallon ; but perhaps a few lives 
 •vould be saved if better oil were provided. Another 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 359 
 
 light-house keeper said that the same proportion of 
 wioter-s trained oil was sent to the soutbermost 
 liglit-house in the Union as to the most northern. 
 Formerly, when this light-house had windows with 
 small and thin panes, a severe storm would some- 
 times break the glass, and then they were obliged 
 to put up a wooden shutter in haste to save their 
 lights and reflectors, — and sometimes in tempests, 
 when the mariner stood most in need of their guid- 
 ance, they had thus nearly converted the light-house 
 into a dark lantern, which emitted only a few feeble 
 rays, and those commonly on the land or lee side. 
 He spoke of the anxiety and sense of responsibility 
 which he felt in cold and stormy nights in the win- 
 ter ; when he knew that many a poor fellow was 
 depending on him, and his lamps burned dimly, the 
 oil being chilled. Sometimes he was obliged to 
 warm the oil in a kettle hi his house at midnight, 
 and fill his lamps over again, — for he could not 
 have a fire in the light-house, it produced such a 
 sweat on the windows. His successor told me that 
 he could not keep too hot a fire in such a case. All 
 this because the oil was poor. A government light- 
 ing the mariners on its wintry coast with summer- 
 strained oil, to save expense ! That were surelv a 
 lummer-strained mercy. 
 
 This keeper's successor, who kindly entertained 
 me the next year, stated that one extremely cold 
 night, when this and all the neighboring lights were 
 burning summer oil, but he had been provident 
 enough to reserve a little winter oil against emer- 
 
360 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 gencies, he was waked up with anxiety, and found 
 that his oil was congealed, and his lights almost ex- 
 tinguished , and when, after many hours' exertion, 
 he had succeeded in replenishing his reservoirs with 
 winter oil at the wick end, and with difficulty had 
 made them burn, he looked out and found that the 
 other lights in the neighborhood, which were usually 
 visible to him, had gone out, and he heard after- 
 ward that the Pamet River and Billingsgate Lights 
 also had been extinguished. 
 
 Our host said that the frost, too, on the windows 
 caused him much trouble, and in sultry summer 
 nights the moths covered them and dimmed his 
 lights ; sometimes even small birds flew against the 
 thick plate glass, and were found on the ground 
 beneath in the morning with their necks broken. 
 In the spring of 1855 he found nineteen small yel- 
 lowbirds, perhaps goldfinches or myrtle-birds thus 
 lying dead around the light-house ; and sometimes 
 in the fall he had seen where a golden plover had 
 struck the glass in the night, and left the down and 
 the fatty part of its breast on it. 
 
 Thus he struggled, by every method, to keep his 
 light shining before men. Surely the light-house 
 keeper has a responsible, if an easy, office. When 
 his lamp goes out, he goes out ; or, at most, only 
 one such accident is pardoned. 
 
 I thought it a pity that some poor student did 
 not live there, to profit by all that light, since he 
 would not rob the mariner. *' Well," he said, " I 
 4o sometimes come up here and read the newspaper 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 361 
 
 ^hen they are noisy down below." Think of fif- 
 teen argand lamps to read the newspaper by I 
 Government oil ! — light, enough, perchance, to 
 read the Constitution by ! I thought that he should 
 read nothing less than his Bible by that light. I 
 had a classmate ^ who fitted for college by the lamps 
 of a light-house, which was more light, we think, 
 than the University afforded. 
 
 When we had come down and walked a dozen 
 rods from the light-house, we found that we could 
 not get the full strength of its light on the narrow 
 strip of land between it and the shore, being too 
 low for the focus, and we saw only so many feeble 
 and rayless stars ; but at forty rods inland we could 
 see to read, though we were still indebted to only 
 one lamp. Each reflector sent forth a separate 
 " fan " of light, — one shone on the windmill, and 
 one in the hollow, while the intervening spaces 
 were in shadow. This light is said to be visible 
 twenty nautical miles and more, from an observer 
 fifteen feet about the level of the sea. We could 
 see the revolving light at Race Point, the end of 
 the Cape, about nine miles distant, and also the 
 light on Long Point at the entrance of Province- 
 town Harbor, and one of the distant Plymouth Har- 
 bor Lights, across the Bay, nearly in a range with 
 the last, like a star in the horizon. The keeper 
 thought that the other Plymouth Light was con- 
 cealed by being exactly in a range with the Long 
 
 i C. G. Thomas, who lately died m Cambridge, where he 
 vras commonly called Light-house Thomas. 
 
362 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 Point Light. He told us that the mariner was 
 sometimes led astray by a mackerel fisher's lantern, 
 who was afraid of being run down in the night, or 
 even by a cottager's light, mistaking them for some 
 well-known light on the coast, and, when he dis- 
 covered his mistake, was wont to curse the prudent 
 fisher or the wakeful cottager without reason. 
 
 Though it was once declared that Providence 
 placed this mass of clay here on purpose to erect a 
 light-house on, the keeper said that the light-house 
 should have been erected half a mile farther south, 
 where the coast begins to bend, and where the light 
 could be seen at the same time with the Nauset 
 Lights, and distinguished from them. They now 
 talk of building one there. It happens that the 
 present one is the more useless now, so near the 
 extremity of the Cape, because other light-houses 
 have since been erected there. 
 
 Among the many regulations of the Light-house 
 Board, hanging against the wall here, many of them 
 excellent, perhaps, if there were a regiment sta- 
 tioned here to attend to them, there is one requir- 
 ing the keeper to keep an account of the number 
 of vessels which pass his light during the day. 
 But there are a hundred vessels in sight at once, 
 steering in all directions, many on the very verge 
 of the horizon, and he must have more eyes than 
 Argus, and be a good deal farther-sighted, to tell 
 which are passing his light. It is an employment 
 in some respects best suited to the habits of the 
 gulls which coast up and down here, and circle over 
 the sea. 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 363 
 
 I was told by the next keeper, that on the 8th of 
 June following, a particularly clear and beautiful 
 morning, he rose about half an hour before sunrise, 
 and having a little time to spare, for his custom 
 was to e?:tinguish his lights at sunrise, walked down 
 toward the shore to see what he might find. When 
 he got to the edge of the bank he looked up, and, 
 to his astonishment, saw the sun rising, and already 
 part way above the horizon. Thinking that his 
 clock was wrong, he made haste back, and though 
 it was still too early by the clock, extinguished his 
 lamps, and when he had got through and come 
 down, he looked out the window, and, to his still 
 greater astonishment, saw the sun just where it was 
 before, two thirds above the horizon. He showed 
 me where its rays fell on the wall across the room. 
 He proceeded to make a fire, and when he had done 
 there was the sun still at the same height. Where- 
 upon, not trusting to his own eyes any longer, he 
 called up his wife to look at it, and she saw it also. 
 There were vessels in sight on the ocean, and their 
 crews, too, he said, must have seen it, for its rays 
 fell on them. It remained at that height for about 
 fifteen minutes by the clock, and then rose as usual 
 and nothing else extraordinary happened during 
 that day. Though accustomed to the coast, he had 
 never witnessed nor heard of such a phenomenon 
 before. I suggested that there might have been a 
 cloud in the horizon invisible to him, which rose 
 with the sun, and his clock was only as accurate as 
 uhe average; or perhaps, as he denied the possi- 
 
564 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 blity of this, it was such a looming of the sun as is 
 said to occur at Lake Superior and elsewhere. Sir 
 John Franklin, for instance, says in his Narrative, 
 that when he was on the shore of the Polar Sea, 
 the horizontal refraction varied so much one morn- 
 ing that " the upper limb of the sun twice appeared 
 at the horizon before it finally rose." 
 
 He certainly must be a sun of Aurora to whom 
 the sun looms, when there are so many millions to 
 whom it glooms rather, or who never see it till an 
 hour after it has risen. But it behooves us old 
 stagers to keep our lamps trimmed and burning to 
 the last, and not trust to the sun's looming. 
 
 This keeper remarked that the centre of the flame 
 should be exactly opposite the centre of the reflect- 
 ors, and that accordingly, if he was not careful to 
 turn down his wicks in the morning, the sun falling 
 on the reflectors on the south side of the building 
 would set fire to them, like a burning-glass, in the 
 coldest day, and he would look up at noon and see 
 them all lighted ! When your lamp is ready to give 
 light, it is readiest to receive it, and the sun will 
 light it. His successor said that he had never 
 known them to blaze in such a case, but merely to 
 smoke. 
 
 I saw that this was a place of wonders. In a sea 
 turn or shallow fog while I was there the next sum- 
 mer, it being clear overhead, the edge of the bank 
 twenty rods distant appeared like a mountain past- 
 ure in the horizon. T was completely deceived by 
 it^ and I could then understand why mariners some- 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 365 
 
 times ran ashore in such cases, especially in the 
 night, supposing it to be far away, though they 
 could see the land. Once since this, being in a 
 large oyster boat two or three hundred miles from 
 here, in a dark night, when there was a thin veil of 
 mist on land and water, we came so near to run- 
 ning on to the land before our skipper was aware of 
 it, that the first warning was my hearing the sound 
 of the surf under my elbow. I could almost have 
 jumped ashore, and we were obliged to go about 
 very suddenly to prevent striking. The distant 
 light for which we were steering, supposing it a 
 light-house five or six miles off, came through the 
 cracks of a fisherman's bunk not more than six rods 
 distant. 
 
 The keeper entertained us handsomely in his soli- 
 tary little ocean-house. He was a man of singular 
 patience and intelligence, who, when our queries 
 struck him, rung as clear as a bell in response. 
 The light-house lamps a few feet distant shone full 
 into my chamber, and made it as bright as day, 
 so I knew exactly how the Highland Light bore all 
 that night, and I was in no danger of being wrecked. 
 Unlike the last, this was as still as a summer night. 
 I thought as I lay there, half awake and half asleep, 
 looking upward through the window at the liglits 
 above my head, how many sleepless eyes from far 
 out on the Ocean stream — mariners of all nations 
 spinning their yarns through the various watches 
 of the night — were directed toward my couch. 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IN point of quantity Emerson's prose much ex- 
 ceeds his poetry. That has been gathered into 
 two small volumes and further sifted by the author 
 into one ; the prose has been more frequently pub- 
 lished, and at this date (1880) is comprised in three 
 duodecimo volumes. Its form is either the oration 
 or the essay, with one exception. English Traits 
 records the observations of the writer after two 
 journeys to England, and, while it may loosely be 
 classed among essays, has certain distinctive feat- 
 ures which separate it from the essays of the same 
 writer; there is in it narrative, reminiscence, and 
 description which make it more properly the note- 
 book of a philosophic traveller. 
 
 Under the term oration may be included all 
 those writiugs of Emerson which were originally de- 
 livered as lectures, addresses, orations before liter- 
 ary and learned societies. During much of his lit- 
 erary life he has used the platform as his first and 
 chief mode of communicating what he has had to 
 Bay, and the speeches there made have frequentlj 
 
INTRODUCTION. 367 
 
 afterward been published in book form. It may be 
 said of his essays as well as of his deliberate orations 
 that the writer has never been wholly unmindful 
 of an audience ; he has always been conscious that 
 he was not merely delivering his mind but speak- 
 ing directly to men. One is aware of a certain 
 pointedness of speech which turns the writer into 
 a speaker and the printed words into a sounding 
 voice. Especially where one has heard Emerson 
 does his impressive manner disclose itself in every 
 sentence that one reads. In the orations, however, 
 this directness of speech is most apparent, and their 
 form is cast for it. The end of the speech is kept 
 more positively before the speaker ; there is also 
 more distinct eloquence, that raising of the voice, 
 by which the volume of an utterance is increased 
 and a note of thought is prolonged. The form of 
 the oration requires, moreover, a somewhat brisker 
 manner and crisper sentences, for the speaker knows 
 that the hearer has no leisure to pursue his way by 
 winding clauses. 
 
 Yet the spirit of the essay, the other great divi- 
 sion of Emerson's writing, more distinctly enters 
 into the oration. It is true that in whatever he 
 writes Emerson feels his audience, but it is an 
 audience of thinking men, and he is not unwilling 
 to give his best thought and to surender himself in 
 his work to the leadings of his own thought. Come 
 with me, he seems to say to reader or listener, we 
 will follow courageously in this' theme whitherso- 
 9ver Thought leads us ; and thus in essay or ora- 
 
868 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 tion he seems less desirous of proving a proposition 
 or stating roundly something which he has discov- 
 ered than of entering upon a subject and letting his 
 mind work freely upon it, gathering suggestions by 
 the way and asking for its association with other 
 subjects. Hence to one unaccustomed to the work- 
 ing of Emerson's mind, a first reading of his writings 
 seems to disclose only a series of lightly connected 
 epigrams or searching questions and answers. The 
 very titles of the essays seem mere suggestions and 
 the end of an essay brings with it no conclusion. 
 In the essay proper he allows himself more free- 
 dom than in the oration, and his sentences do not 
 converge so distinctly toward some demonstrable 
 point. The discursive character of his thought is 
 best fitted to the essay form, where it is not nec- 
 essary to make provision beforehand for every idea 
 which is to be entertained, and where the perfec- 
 tion oif form is in the graceful freedom from for- 
 malism. The oration may be described as one great 
 sentence ; the essay as an unrestricted succession of 
 little sentences. 
 
 The single, apparently detached, thoughts impress 
 one with a sense of the author's insight ; their very 
 abruptness often lends a positiveness and authority 
 to the statements and convictions, and a ready list- 
 ener finds himself accepting them almost without 
 consideration, so captivating are they in their bril- 
 liant light. Yet something more than a ready list- 
 ener is needed, if Emerson's writings are to be best 
 used. They call for thought in the reader; they 
 
INTRODUCTION. 369 
 
 demand that one should stop and ask questions, 
 should translate what one has read into one's own 
 ordinary speech, and iuquire again if it is true. 
 They are excellent tonics for the mind, but taken 
 heedlessly they are dangerous. The danger is in 
 the careless use, for carelessness makes half truths 
 of what has been said frankly and fearlessly to the 
 open mind. No one should read Emerson who is 
 not willing to have his own weakness disclosed to 
 him, and who is not prepared also to test what he 
 finds by a standard which is above both writer 
 and reader. 
 
 As one reads steadily he is likely to note certain 
 mental characteristics in the writer which mark all 
 his work. One or two of these characteristics have 
 already been mentioned ; a more important and 
 pervading one is his loyalty to idealism, and his be- 
 lief in the power of the soul to work out a noble 
 place for itself. In his oration on Literary Ethics 
 he says of the scholar: " He must be a solitary, la- 
 borious, modest, and charitable soul. He must em- 
 brace solitude as a bride. He must have his glees 
 and his glooms alone. His own estimate must be 
 measure enough, his own praise reward enough for 
 him. And why must the student be solitary and 
 silent ? That he may become acquainted with his 
 thoughts. If he pines in a lonely place, hankering 
 for the crowd, for display, he is not in the lonely 
 place ; his heart is in the market ; he does not see, 
 he does not hear, he does not think. But go cher- 
 sh your soul ; expel companions ; set your habits to 
 24 
 
370 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 a life of solitude ; then will the faculties rise fair 
 and full within, like forest trees and field flowers ; 
 you will have results, which, when you meet your 
 fellow-men, you can communicate, and they will 
 gladly receive. Do not go into solitude only that 
 you may presently come into public. Such solitude 
 denies itself, is public and stale. The public can 
 get public experience, but they wish the scholar to 
 replace to them those private, sincere, divine expe- 
 riences of which they have been defrauded by 
 dwelling in the street. It is the noble, manlike, just 
 thought which is the superiority demanded of you, 
 and not crowds, but solitude, confers this elevation. 
 Not insulation of place, but independence of spirit 
 is essential, and it is only as the garden, the cottage, 
 the forest, and the rock are a sort of mechanical 
 aids 'to this that they are of value. Think alone 
 
 and all places are friendly and sacred Fatal 
 
 to the man of letters, fatal to man, is the lust of 
 display, the seeming that unmakes our being. A 
 mistake of the main end to which they labor is in- 
 cident to literary men, who, dealing with the organ 
 of language, — the subtlest, strongest, and longest- 
 lived of man's creation, and only fitly used as the 
 weapon of thought and of justice, — learn to enjoy 
 the pride of playing with this splendid engine, but 
 rob it of its almightiness by failing to work with it. 
 Extricating themselves from the tasks of the world, 
 the world revenges itself by exposing, at every 
 turn, the folly of these incomplete, pedantic, use- 
 less, ghastly creatures. The scholar will feel that 
 
INTRODUCTION. 371 
 
 the richest romance, — the noblest fiction that was 
 ever woven, — the heart and soul of beauty, — lies 
 inclosed in human life. Itself of surpassing value, 
 it is also the richest material for his creations. 
 How shall he know its secrets of tenderness, of ter- 
 ror, of will, and of fate ? How can he catch and 
 keep the strain of upper music that peals from it ? 
 Its laws are concealed under the details of daily ac- 
 tion. All action is an experiment upon them. He 
 must bear his share of the common load. He must 
 work with men in houses, and not with their names 
 in books. His needs, appetites, talents, affections, 
 accomplishments are keys that open to him the 
 beautiful museum of human life. Why should he 
 read it as an Arabian tale, and not know in his own 
 beating bosom its sweet and smart? Out of love 
 and hatred ; out of earnings and borrowings, and 
 lendings and losses ; out of sickness and pain ; out 
 of wooing and worshipping ; out of travelling, and 
 voting, and watching, and caring ; out of disgrace 
 and contempt ; comes our tuition in the serene and 
 beautiful laws. Let him not slur his lesson ; let 
 him learn it by heart. Let him endeavor, exactly, 
 bravely, and cheerfully, to solve the problem of 
 that life which is set before him. And this, by 
 punctual action, and not by promises or dreams. 
 Believing, as in God, in the presence and favor of 
 the grandest influences, let him deserve that favor, 
 and learn how to receive and use it, by fidelity, also, 
 
 to the lower observances The man of genius 
 
 should occupy the whole space between God or 
 
872 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 pure mind and the multitude of uneducated men. 
 He must draw from the infinite Reason, on one 
 side ; and he must penetrate into the heart and 
 sense of the crowd, on the other. From one, he 
 must draw his strength ; to the other he must owe 
 his aim. The one yokes him to the real, the other 
 to the apparent. At one pole is Reason, at the 
 other Common Sense. If he be defective at either 
 extreme of the scale, his philosophy will seem low 
 and utilitarian ; or it will appear too vague and in- 
 definite for the uses of life." 
 
 In some such terms as these one may define 
 Emerson's own attitude toward his work. The 
 openness of his mind to new thought, his loyalty to 
 high ideals, his eager advocacy of the real, and his 
 insight into the nature of things have separated him 
 and made his words often unintelligible, but the se- 
 renity of his life and the courage of his speech have 
 endeared him to men, even when they have thought 
 liim fatally oblivious to some aspects of human life. 
 The essay on Behavior is taken from The Conduct 
 of Life ; that on Books from Society and Solitude, 
 
BEHAVIOR. 
 
 Okaob, Beauty, and Caprice 
 
 Build this golden portal ; 
 
 Qraceful women, chosen men, 
 
 Dazzle every mortal : 
 
 Their sweet and lofty countenance 
 
 His enchanting food ; 
 
 He need not go to them, their forms 
 
 Beset his solitude. 
 
 He Iboketh seldom in their face, 
 
 His eyes explore the ground, 
 
 The green grass is a looking-glass 
 
 Whereon their traits are found. 
 
 Little he says to them. 
 
 So dances his heart in his breast, 
 
 Their tranquil mien bereaveth him 
 
 Of wit, of words, of rest. 
 
 Too weak to win, too fond to shun 
 
 The tyrants of his doom. 
 
 The much-deceired Endymion 
 
 Slips behind a tomb. 
 
 The soul which animates Nature is not less sig- 
 nificantly published in the figui'e, movement, and 
 gesture of animated bodies, than in its last vehicle 
 of articulate speech. This silent and subtile lan- 
 guage is Manners ; not what, but how. Life ex- 
 presses. A statue has no tongue, and needs none. 
 Good tableaux do not need declamation. Nature 
 tells every secret once. Yes, but in man she tells 
 
874 RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 
 
 it all the time, by form, attitude, gesture, mien, 
 face, and parts of the face, and by the whole action 
 of the machine. The visible carriage or action of 
 the individual, as resulting from his organization 
 and his will combined, we call manners. What 
 are they but thought entering the hands and feet, 
 controlling the movements of the body, the speech 
 and behavior ? 
 
 There is always a best way of doing everything, 
 if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy 
 ways of doing things ; each once a stroke of genius 
 or of love, — now repeated and hardened into usage. 
 They form at last a rich varnish, with which the 
 routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. 
 If they are superficial, so are the dewdrops which 
 give such a depth to the morning meadows. Man- 
 ners are very communicable ; men catch them from 
 1 each other. Consuelo, in the romance,^ boasts of 
 the lessons she had given the nobles in manners, on 
 the stage ; and, in real life, Talma ^ taught Napo- 
 leon the arts of behavior. Genius invents fine 
 manners, which the baron and the baroness copy 
 very fast, and, by the advantage of a palace, better 
 the instruction. They stereotype the lesson they 
 have learned into a mode. 
 
 The power of manners is incessant, — an element 
 as unconcealable as fire. The nobility cannot in 
 any country be disguised, and no more in a repub- 
 lic or a democracy than in a kingdom. No man 
 
 1 Of the same name, by George Sand, 
 s A celebrated actor. 
 
BEHAVIOR. 375 
 
 can resist their influence. There are certain man- 
 ners which are learned in good society, of that 
 force, that, if a person have them, he or she must 
 be considered, and is everywhere welcome, though 
 without beauty, or wealth, or genius. Give a boy 
 address and accomplishments, and you give him the 
 mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes. 
 He has not the trouble of earning or owning them ; 
 they solicit him to enter and possess. We send 
 girls of a timid, retreating disposition to the board- 
 ing-school, to the riding-school, to the ball-room, or 
 wheresoever they can come into acquaintance and 
 nearness of leading persons of their own sex ; where 
 they might learn address, and see it near at hand. 
 The power of a woman of fashion to lead, and also 
 to daunt and repel, derives from their belief that 
 she knows resources and behaviors not known to 
 them ; but when these have mastered her secret, 
 they learn to confront her, and recover their self- 
 possession. 
 
 Every day bears witness to their gentle rule. 
 People who would obtrude, now do not obtrude. 
 The mediocre circle learns to demand that which 
 belongs to a high state of nature or of culture. 
 Your manners are always under examination, and 
 by committees little suspected, — a police in cit- 
 izens* clothes, — but are awarding or denying you 
 very high prizes when you least think of it. 
 
 We talk much of utilities, but 't is our manners 
 that associate us. In hours of business, we go to 
 him who knows, or has, or does this or that which we 
 
376 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 want, and we do not let our taste or feeling stand 
 in the way. But this activity over, we return to 
 the indolent state, and wish for those we can be at 
 ease with ; those who will go where we go, whose 
 manners do not offend us, whose social tone chimes 
 with ours. When we reflect on their persuasive 
 and cheering force ; how they recommend, prepare, 
 and draw people together ; how, in all clubs, man- 
 ners make the members ; how manners make the 
 fortune of the ambitious youth ; that, for the most 
 part, his manners marry him, and, for the most 
 part, he marries manners ; when we think what 
 keys they are, and to what secrets ; what high 
 lessons and inspiring tokens of character they con- 
 vey ; and what divination is required in us, for the 
 reading of this fine telegraph, we see what range 
 the subject has, and what relations to convenience, 
 power, and beauty. 
 
 Their first service is very low, — when they are 
 the minor morals : but 't is the beginning of civility, 
 — to make us, I mean, endurable to each other. 
 We prize them for their rough-plastic, abstergent 
 force ; to get people out of the quadruped state ; to 
 get them washed, clothed, and set up on end ; to 
 slough their animal husks and habits ; compel them 
 to be clean ; overawe their spite and meanness, 
 teach them to stifle the base, and choose the gener- 
 ous expression, and make them know how much 
 happier the generous behaviors are. 
 
 Bad behavior the laws cannot reach. Society is 
 infested with rude, cynical, restless, and frivoloua 
 
BEHAVIOR. 377 
 
 persons who prey upon the rest, and whom a public 
 opinion concentrated into good manners — forms 
 accepted by the sense of all — can reach : the con- 
 tradictors and railers at public and private tables, 
 who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a 
 dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the 
 honors of the house by barking him out of sight : 
 — I have seen men who neigh like a horse when 
 you contradict them, or say something which they 
 do not understand : — then the overbold, who make 
 their own invitation to your hearth ; the persever- 
 ing talker, who gives you his society in large, satu- 
 rating doses ; the pitiers of themselves, — a perilous 
 class ; the frivolous Asmodeus, who relies on you 
 to find him in ropes of sand to twist ; the mono- 
 tones ; in short, every stripe of absurdity ; — these 
 are social inflictions which the magistrate cannot 
 cure or defend you from, and which must be in- 
 trusted to the restraining force of custom, and prov- 
 erbs, and familiar rules of behavior impressed on 
 young people in their school-days. 
 
 In the hotels on the banks of the Mississipi, they 
 print, or used to print, among the rules of the 
 house, that "no gentleman can be permitted to 
 come to the public table without his coat " ; and in 
 the same country, in the pews of the churches, little 
 placards plead with the worshipper against the fury 
 of expectoration. Charles Dickens self-sacrificingly 
 undertook the reformation of our American man- 
 ners in unspeakable particulars. I think the lesson 
 was not quite lost ; that it held bad manners up, so 
 
878 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 that the churls could see the deformity. Unhappily, 
 the book had its own deformities. It ought not to 
 need to print in a reading-room a caution to stran- 
 gers not to speak loud ; nor to persons who look 
 over fine engravings, that they should be handled 
 like cobwebs and butterflies' wings ; nor to persons 
 who look at marble statues, that they shall not 
 smite them with canes. But, even in the perfect 
 civilization of this city, such cautions are not quite 
 needless in the Athenaeum and City Library. 
 
 Manners are factitious, and grow out of circum- 
 stance as well as out of character. If you look at 
 the pictures of patricians and of peasants, of differ- 
 ent periods and countries, you will see how well 
 they match the same classes in our towns. The 
 modern aristocrat not only is well drawn in Titian'a 
 Venetian doges, and in Roman coins and statues 
 but also in the pictures which Commodore Perr^ 
 brought home of dignitaries in Japan. Broad lands 
 and great interests not only arrive to such heads as 
 can manage them, but form manners of power. A 
 keen eye, too, will see nice gradations of rank, or 
 see in the manners the degree of homage the party 
 is wont to receive. A prince who is accustomed 
 every day to be courted and deferred to by the 
 highest grandees, acquires a corresponding expec- 
 tation, and a becoming mode of receiving and re- 
 plying to this homage. 
 
 There are always exceptional people and modes. 
 English grandees affect to be farmers. Claverhouse 
 is a fop, and, under the finish of dress, and levity of 
 
BEHAVIOR. 379 
 
 behavior, hides the terror of his war. But nature 
 and Destiny are honest, and never fail to leave their 
 mark, to hang out a sign for each and for every 
 quality. It is much to conquer one's face, and per- 
 haps the ambitious youth thinks he has got the 
 whole secret when he has learned that disengaged 
 manners are commanding. Don't be deceived by a 
 facile exterior. Tender men sometimes have strong 
 wills. We had, in Massachusetts, an old statesman, 
 who had sat all his life in courts and in chairs of 
 state, without overcoming an extreme irritability 
 of face, voice, and bearing ; when he spoke, his 
 voice would not serve him ; it cracked, it broke, it 
 wheezed, it piped ; little cared he ; he knew that 
 it had got to pipe, or wheeze, or screech his argu- 
 ment and his indignation. When he sat down, 
 after speaking, he seemed in a sort of fit, and held 
 on to his chair with both hands ; but underneath 
 all this irritability was a puissant will, firm, and 
 advancing, and a memory in which lay in order 
 and method like geologic strata every fact of his 
 history, and under the control of his will. 
 
 Manners are partly factitious, but, mainly, there 
 must be capacity for culture in the blood. Else all 
 culture is vain. The obstinate prejudice in favor of 
 blood, which lies at the base of the feudal and mon- 
 archical fabrics of the Old World, has some reason 
 in common experience. Every man — mathema- 
 tician, artist, soldier, or merchant — looks with con- 
 fidence for some traits and talents in his own child, 
 which he would not dare to presume in the child of (/ 
 
B80 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 a stranger. The Orientalists are very orthodox on 
 this point. "Take a thorn-bush," said the emir 
 Abdel-Kader, " and sprinkle it for a whole year 
 with water ; it will yield nothing but thorns. Take 
 a date-tree, leave it without culture, and it will al- 
 ways produce dates. Nobility is the date-tree, and 
 the Arab populace is a bush of thorns." 
 / A naain fact in the history of manners is the won- 
 ' derful expressiveness of the human body. If it 
 were made of glass, or of air, and the thoughts were 
 written on steel tablets within, it could not pub- 
 ? lish more truly its meaning than now. Wise men 
 
 (read very sharply all your private history in your 
 look and gait and behavior. The whole economy 
 of nature is bent on expression. The tell-tale body 
 is all tongues. Men are like Geneva watches with" 
 j crystal faces which expose the whole movement. 
 They carry the liquor of life flowing up and down 
 in these beautiful bottles, and announcing to the 
 curious how it is with them. The face and eyes 
 reveal what the spirit is doing, how old it is, what 
 aims it has. The eyes indicate the antiquity of 
 the soul, or, through how many forms it has already 
 ascended. It almost violates the proprieties, if we 
 say above the breath here, what the confessing eyes 
 do not hesitate to utter to every street passenger. 
 
 Man cannot fix his eye on the sun, and so far 
 fceems imperfect. In Siberia, a late traveller found 
 men who could see the satellites of Jupiter with their 
 anarmed eye. In some respects the animals excel 
 08. The birds have a longer sight, beside the ad- 
 
BEHAVIOR. 881 
 
 vantage by their wings of a higher observatory. A 
 cow can bid her calf, by secret signal, probably of 
 the eye, to run away, or to lie down and hide itself. 
 The jockeys say of certain horses, that " they look 
 over the whole ground." The outdoor life, and 
 hunting, and labor, give equal vigor to the human 
 eye. A farmer looks out at you as strong as the 
 horse ; his eye-beam is like the stroke of a staff. An 
 eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or 
 can insult like hissing or kicking ; or, in its altered 
 mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart 
 dance with joy. 
 
 The eye obeys exactly the action of the mind. 
 When a thought strikes us, the eyes fix, and remain 
 gazing at a distance ; in enumerating the names of 
 persons or of coimtries, as France, Germany, Spain, 
 Turkey, the eyes wink at each new name. There 
 is no nicety of learning sought by the mind which 
 the eyes do not vie in acquiring. "An artist," 
 said Michel Angelo, " must have his measuring 
 tools not in the hand, but in the eye " ; and there 
 is no end to the catalogue of its performances, 
 whether in indolent vision (that of health and 
 beauty), or in strained vision (that of art and labor). 
 
 Eyes are bold as lions, — roving, running, leap- 
 ing, here and there, far and near. They speak all 
 languages. They wait for no introduction ; they are 
 no Englishmen ; ask no leave of age or rank ; they 
 respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning 
 nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come 
 again, and go through and through you, in a mo- 
 
582 RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 
 
 meiit of time. What inundation of life and thought 
 is discharged from one soul into another, through 
 them ! The glance is natural magic. The myste- 
 rious communication established across a house be- 
 tween two entire strangers, moves all the springs 
 of wonder. The communication by the glance is 
 in the greatest part not subject to the control of 
 the will. It is the bodily symbol of identity of nat- 
 ure. We look into the eyes to know if this other 
 form is another self, and the eyes will not lie, but 
 make a faithful confession what inhabitant is there. 
 The revelations are sometimes terrific. The con- 
 fession of a low, usurping devil is there made, and 
 the observer shall seem to feel the stirring of owls, 
 and bats, and horned hoofs, where he looked for in- 
 nocence and simplicity. 'T is remarkable, too, that 
 the spirit that appears at the windows of the house 
 does at once invest himself in a new form of his 
 own, to the mind of the beholder. 
 
 The eyes of men converse as much as their 
 
 tongues, with the advantage, that the ocular dialect 
 
 needs no dictionary, but is understood all the world 
 
 over. When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue 
 
 another, a practised man relies on the language of 
 
 , the first. If the man is off his centre, the eyes 
 
 I show it. You can read in the eyes of your com- 
 
 \ panion, whether your argument hits him, though 
 
 Vhis tongue will not confess it. There is a look by 
 
 which a man shows he is going to say a good thing, 
 
 and a look when he has said it. Vain and fogrotten 
 
 we all the fine offers and offices of hospitality, i/ 
 
BEHAVIOR, 383 
 
 tbere is no holiday in the eye. How many furtive 
 inclinations avowed by the eye, though dissembled 
 by the lips ! One comes away from a company, 
 in which, it may easily happen, he has said nothing, 
 and no important remark has been addressed to 
 him, and yet, if in sympathy with the society, he 
 shall not have a sense of this fact, such a stream of 
 life has been flowing into him, and out from him, 
 through the eyes. There are eyes, to be sure, that 
 give no more admission into the man than blue- 
 berries. Others are liquid and deep, — wells that 
 a man might fall into ; — others are aggressive and 
 devouring, seem to call out the police, take all too 
 much notice, and require crowded Broadways, and 
 the security of millions, to protect individuals against 
 them. The military eye I meet, now darkly spark- 
 ling under clerical, now under rustic, brows. 'T is 
 the city of Lacedaemon ; 't is a stack of bayonets. 
 There are asking eyes, asserting eyes, prowling 
 eyes ; and eyes full of fate, — some of good, and 
 Bome of sinister, omen. The alleged power to charm 
 down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power be- 
 hind the eye. It must be a victory achieved in the 
 will, before it can be signified in the eye. 'T is 
 very certain that each man carries in his eye the 
 exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of 
 men, and we are always learning to read it. A 
 complete man should need no auxiliaries to his per- 
 sonal presence. Whoever looked on him would 
 consent to his will, being certified that his aims 
 were generous and universal. The reason why 
 
884 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at 
 the bottom of our eye. 
 
 ' If the organ of sight is such a vehicle of power, 
 the other features have their own. A man finds 
 room in the few square inches of the face for the 
 traits of all his ancestors ; for the expression of 
 all his history, and his wants. The sculptor, and 
 Winckelmann, and Lavater, will tell you how sig- 
 nificant a featui-e is the nose ; how its form expresses 
 strength or weakness of will and good or bad tem- 
 per. The nose of Julius Caesar, of Dante, and of 
 Pitt suggest " the terrors of the beak." What re- 
 finement, and what limitations, the teeth betray ! 
 " Beware you don't laugh," said the wise mother, 
 " for then you show all your faults." 
 
 Balzac left in manuscript a chapter, which he 
 called " TJieorie de la demarche.'' in which he says : 
 " The look, the voice, the respiration, and the at- 
 titude or walk are identical. But, as it has not 
 been given to man, the power to stand guard, at 
 once, over these four different simultaneous expres- 
 sions of his thought, watch that one which speaks 
 out the truth, and you will know the whole man." 
 
 Palaces interest us mainly in the exhibition of 
 manners, which in the idle and expensive society 
 
 I dwelling in them are raised to a high art. The 
 maxim of courts is that manner is power. A calm 
 and resolute bearing, a polished speech, and em- 
 bellishment of trifles, and the art of hiding all un- 
 comfortable feeling, are essential to the courtier, 
 and Saint Simon, and Cardinal •de Retz, and Roe» 
 
BEHAVIOR. 385 
 
 derer, and an encyclopaedia of " M^moires," will in- 
 struct you, if you wish, in those potent secrets. 
 Thus, it is a point of pride with kings to remember 
 faces and names. It is reported of one prince, that 
 his head had the air of leaning downwards, in order 
 not to humble the crowd. There are people who 
 come in ever like a child with a piece of good news. 
 It was said of the late Lord Holland, that he always 
 came down to breakfast with the air of a man who 
 had just met with some signal good fortune. In 
 " Notre Dame " the grandee took his place on the 
 dais, with the look of one who is thinking of some- 
 thing else. But we must not peep and eavesdrop 
 at palace-doors. 
 
 Fine manners need the support .of fine manners 
 in others. A scholar may be a well-bred man, or 
 he may not. The enthusiast is introduced to pol- 
 ished scholars in society, and is chilled and silenced 
 by finding himself not in their element. They all 
 have somewhat which he has not, and, it seems, 
 ought to have. But if he finds the scholar apart 
 from his companions, it is then the enthusiast's 
 turn, and the scholar has no defence, but must deal 
 on his terms. Now they must fight the battle out 
 on their private strength. What is the talent of 
 'hat character so common, — the successful man of 
 the world, — in all marts, senates, and drawing- 
 vooms ? Manners : manners of power ; sense to 
 see his advantage, and manners up to it. See him 
 ?Lpproach his man. He knjDws that troops behave 
 Its they are handled at first ; — that is his cheap 
 25 
 
880 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 secret ; just what happens to every two persons who 
 meet on any affair, one instantly perceives that he 
 has the key of the situation, that his will compre- 
 hends the other's will, as the cat does the mouse ; 
 and he has only to use courtesy, and furnish good- 
 natured reasons to his victim to cover up the chain, 
 lest he be shamed into resistance. 
 
 The theatre in which this science of manners has 
 a formal importance is not with us a court, but 
 dress-circles, wherein, after the close of the day's 
 business, men and women meet at leisure, for mut- 
 ual entertainment, in ornamented drawing-rooms. 
 Of course, it has every variety of attraction and 
 merit ; but, to earnest persons, to youths or maidens 
 who have great objects at heart, we cannot extol it 
 highly. A well-dressed, talkative company, where 
 each is bent to amuse the other, — yet the high- 
 born Turk who came hither fancied that every 
 woman seemed to be suffering for a chair ; that all 
 talkers were brained and exhausted by the de- 
 oxygenated air ; it spoiled the best persons : it put 
 all on stilts. Yet here are the secret biographies 
 written and read. The aspect of that man is re- 
 pulsive ; I do not wish to deal with him. The 
 other is irritable, shy, and on his guard. The youth 
 looks humble and manly : I choose him. Look on 
 this woman. There is not beauty, nor brilliant say- 
 ings, nor distinguished power to serve you ; but all 
 see her gladly ; her whole air and impression are 
 healthful. Here come the sentimentalists, and the 
 invalids. Here is Elise, who caught cold in coming 
 
BEHAVIOR, 387 
 
 into the world, and has always increased it since. 
 Here are creep-mouse manners ; and thievish man- 
 ners. '' Look at Northcote," said Fuseli ; " he 
 looks like a rat that has seen a cat." In the shal- 
 low company, easily excited, easily tired, here is 
 the columnar Bernard : the Alleghanies do not ex- 
 press more repose than his behavior. Here are the 
 sweet, following eyes of Cecile : it seemed always 
 that she demanded the heart. Nothing can be more 
 excellent in kind than the Corinthian grace of Ger- 
 trude's manners, and yet Blanche, who has no man- 
 ners, has better manners than she ; for the move- 
 ments of Blanche are the sallies of a spirit which 
 is sufficient for the moment, and she can afford to 
 express every thought by instant action. 
 
 Manners have been somewhat cynically defined 
 to be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a 
 distance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who do 
 not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her at- 
 tentions. Society is very swift in its instincts, and, 
 if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers at you ; 
 or quietly drops you. The first weapon enrages the 
 party attacked ; the second is still more effective, 
 but is not to be resisted, as the date of the transac- 
 tion is not easily found. People grow up and grow 
 old under this infliction, and never suspect the truth, 
 ascribing the solitude which acts on them very in- 
 juriously to any cause but the right one. 
 
 The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Ne- 
 cessity is the law of all who are not self-possessed. 
 Those who are not self-possessed obtrude and pain 
 
388 RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 
 
 us. Some men appear to feel that they belong to a 
 Pariah caste. They fear to offend, they bend and 
 apologize, and walk through life with a timid step. 
 
 As we sometimes dream that we are in a well- 
 dressed company without any coat, so Godfrey acts 
 ever as if he suffered from some mortifying circum- 
 stance. The hero should find himself at home, wher- 
 ever he is ; should impart comfort by his own secu- 
 rity and good-nature to all beholders. The hero is 
 suffered to be himself. A person of strong mind 
 comes to perceive that for him an immunity is se- 
 cured so long as he renders to society that service 
 which is native and proper to him, — an immunity 
 from all the observances, yea, and duties, which so- 
 ciety so tyrannically imposes on the rank and file of 
 its members. " Euripides," says Aspasia, " has not 
 the fine manners of Sophocles : but," she adds, 
 good-humoredly, " the movers and masters of our 
 souls have surely a right to throw out their limbs 
 as carelessly as they please on the world that be- 
 longs to them, and before the creatures they have 
 iiiiiraated." ^ 
 
 Manners require time, as nothing is more vulgar 
 than haste. Friendship should be surrounded with 
 ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into cor- 
 ners. Friendship requires more time than poor 
 l)usy men can usually command. Here comes to me 
 Roland, with a delicacy of sentiment leading andin- 
 IV rapping him like a divme cloud or holy ghost. 
 'T is a great destitution to both that this should not 
 1 Landor, Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
BEHAVIOR. 389 
 
 be entertained with large leisures, but contrariwise 
 should be balked by importunate affairs. 
 
 But through this lustrous varnish, the reality is 
 ever shining. 'Tis hard to keep the what from 
 breaking through this pretty painting of the how* 
 The core will come to the surface. Strong will and 
 keen perception overpower old manners, and create 
 new ; and the thought of the present moment has 
 a greater value than all the past. In persons of 
 character we do not remark manners, because of 
 their instantaneousness. We are surprised by the 
 thing done, out of all power to watch the way of 
 it. Yet nothing is more charming than to recog- 
 nize the great style which runs through the action 
 of such. People masquerade before us in their fort- 
 unes, titles, offices, and connections, as academic or 
 civil presidents, or senators, or professors, or great 
 lawyers, and impose on the frivolous, and a good 
 deal on each other, by these fames. At least, it is 
 a point of prudent good manners to treat these rep- 
 utations tenderly, as if they were merited. But the 
 sad realist knows these fellows at a glance, and 
 they know him ; as when in Paris the chief of the 
 police enters a ball-room, so many diamonded pre- 
 tenders shrink and make themselves as inconspicu- 
 ous as they can, or give him a supplicating look as 
 they pass. " I had received," said a sibyl, — "I 
 had received at birth the fatal gift of penetration " ; 
 und these Cassandras are always born. 
 
 Manners impress as they indicate real power. 
 k man who is sure of his point carries a broad and 
 
390 RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 
 
 contented expression, which everybody reads. And 
 you cannot rightly train one to an air and manner, 
 except by making him the kind of man of whom 
 that manner is the natural expression. Nature for- 
 ever puts a premium on reality. What is done for 
 effect is seen to be done for effect ; what is done 
 for love is felt to be done for love. A man inspires 
 affection and honor, because he was not lying in 
 wait for these. The things of a man for which we 
 visit him, were done in the dark and the cold. A 
 little integrity is better than any career. So deep 
 are the sources of this surface-action, that even the 
 size of your companion seems to vary with his 
 freedom of thought. Not only is he larger, when 
 at ease, and his thoughts generous, but everything 
 around him becomes variable with expression. No 
 carpenter's rulfe, no rod and chain, will measure 
 the dimensions of any house or house-lot: go into 
 the house : if the proprietor is constrained and de- 
 ferring, 't is of no importance how large his house, 
 how beautiful his grounds, — you quickly come to 
 the end of all ; but if the man is self-possessed, 
 happy, and at home, his house is deep-founded, in- 
 definitely large and interesting, the roof and dome 
 buoyant as the sky. Under the humblest roof, the 
 commonest person in plain clothes sits there mas- 
 sive, cheerful, yet formidable like the Egyptian 
 colossi. 
 
 Neither Aristotle, nor Leibnitz, nor Junius, nor 
 Champollion has set down the grammar-rules of 
 ^i this dialect, older than Sanscrit ; but they who 
 
BEHAVIOR. 391 
 
 cannot yet read English, can read this. Men take 
 each other's measure, when they meet for the first 
 time, — and every time they meet. How do they 
 get this rapid knowledge, even before they speak, 
 of each other's power and dispositions ? One would 
 say that the persuasion of their speech is not in 
 what they say, — or, that men do not convince by 
 their argument, — but by their personality, by who 
 they are, and what they said and did heretofore. 
 A man already strong is listened to, and everything 
 he says is applauded. Another opposes him with 
 sound argument, but the argument is scouted, until 
 by and by it gets into the mind of some weighty 
 person ; then it begins to tell on the community. 
 
 Self-reliance is the basis of behavior, as it is the 
 guaranty that the powers are not squandered in too 
 much demonstration. In this country, where school 
 education is universal, we have a superficial culture, 
 and a profusion of reading and writing and expres- 
 sion. We parade our nobilities in poems and ora- 
 tions, instead of working them up into happiness. 
 There is a whisper out of the ages to him who can 
 understand it, — " Whatever is known to thyself 
 alone has always very great value." There is some 
 reason to believe that, when a man does not write 
 his poetry, it escapes by other vents through him, 
 instead of the one vent of writing; clings to his 
 form and manners, whilst poets have often nothing 
 poetical about them except their verses. Jacobi 
 Baid, that " when a man has fully expressed his 
 Jiought, he has somewhat less possession of it.'* 
 
392 RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 
 
 Oue would saj, the rule is, — What a man is ir- 
 resistibly urged to say, helps him and us. In ex- 
 plaining his thought to others, he explains it to 
 himself: but when he opens it for show, it corrupts 
 bim. 
 
 Society is the stage on which manners are shown ; 
 novels are their literature. Novels are the journal 
 or record of manners ; and the new importance of 
 these books derives from the fact that the novelist 
 begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part 
 of life more worthily. The novels used to be all 
 alike, and had a quite vulgar tone. The novels 
 used to lead us on to a foolish interest in the fort- 
 unes of the boy and girl they described. The boy 
 was to be raised from a humble to a high position. 
 He was in want of a wife and a castle, and the ob- 
 ject of the story was to supply him with one or 
 both. We watched sympathetically, step by step, 
 his climbing, until, at last, the point is gained, the 
 wedding-day is fixed, and we follow the gala proces- 
 sion home to the bannered portal, when the doors 
 are slammed in our face, and the poor reader is left 
 outside in the cold, not enriched by so much as an 
 idea, or a virtuous impulse. 
 
 But the victories of character are instant, and vic- 
 tories for all. Its greatness enlarges all. We are 
 fortified by every heroic anecdote. The novels are 
 as useful as Bibles, if they teach you the secret, 
 that the best of life is conversation, and the greatest 
 Buccess is confidence, or perfect understanding be- 
 tween sincere people. 'T is a French definition of 
 
BEHAVIOR 393 
 
 friendship, rien que s'entendre^ good understanding. 
 The highest compact we can make with our fellow 
 is, — " Let there be truth between us two for ever- 
 more." That is the charm in all good novels, as it 
 is the charm in all good histories, that the heroes 
 mutually understand, from the first, and deal loyally 
 and with a profound trust in each other. It is sub- 
 lime to feel and say of another, I need nevei* meet, 
 or speak, or write to him : we need not reinforce 
 ourselves, or send tokens of remembrance : I rely 
 on him as on myself : if he did thus, or thus, I know ' 
 it was right. 
 
 In all the superior people I have met, I notice 
 directness, truth spoken more truly, as if everything 
 of obstruction, of malformation, had been trained 
 away. What have they to conceal? What have 
 they to exhibit ? Between simple and noble per- 
 sons there is always a quick intelligence : they rec- 
 ognize at sight, and meet on a better ground than 
 the talents and skills they may chance to possess, 
 namely, on sincerity and uprightness. For, it is 
 not what talents or genius a man has, but how he 
 is to his talents, that constitutes friendship and char- 
 acter. The man that stands by himself, the uni- 
 verse stands by him also. It is related of the monk 
 Basle, that, being excommunicated by the Pope, he 
 was, at his death, sent in charge of an angel to 
 find a fit place of suffering in hell ; but, such was 
 the eloquence and good-humor of the monk, that 
 wherever he went he was received gladly, and civ- 
 illy treated, even by the most unciyil angels : and. 
 
3D4 RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 
 
 when he came to discourse with them, instead of 
 contradicting or forcing him, they took his part, and 
 adopted his manners : and even good angels came 
 from far, to see him, and take up their abode with 
 him. The angel that was sent to find a place of 
 torment for him attempted to remove him to a 
 worse pit, but with no better success ; for such was 
 the contented spirit of the monk, that he found 
 something, to praise in every place and company, 
 though in hell, and made a kind of heaven of it. 
 At last the escorting angel returned with his pris- 
 oner to them that sent him, saying that no phlege- 
 thon could be found that would burn him ; for that 
 in whatever condition, Basle remained incorrigibly 
 Basle. The legend says, his sentence was remitted, 
 and he was allowed to go into heaven, and was 
 canonized as a saint. 
 
 There is a stroke of magnanimity in the corre- 
 spondence of Bonaparte with his brother Joseph, 
 when the latter was King of Spain, and complained 
 that he missed in Napoleon's letters the affection- 
 ate tone which had marked their childish corre- 
 spondence. *'I am sorry," replies Napoleon, "you 
 think you shall find your brother again only in the 
 Elysian Fields. It is natural, that at forty, he 
 should not feel towards you as he did at twelve. 
 But his feelings towards you have greater truth and 
 strength. His friendship has the features of his 
 mind." 
 
 How much we forgive in those who yield us the 
 /are spectacle of heroic manners ! We will pardon 
 
BEHAVIOR. 395 
 
 them the want of books, of arts, and even of the 
 gentler virtues. How tenaciously we remember 
 them ! Here is a lesson which I brought along 
 with me in boyhood from the Latin School, and 
 which ranks with the best of Roman anecdotes. 
 Marcus Scaurus was accused by Quintus Varius 
 Hispanus, that he had excited the allies to take 
 arms against the Republic. But he, full of firm- 
 ness and gravity, defended himself in this manner : 
 ** Quintus Varius Hispanus alleges that Marcus 
 Scaurus, President of the Senate, excited the allies 
 to arms : Marcus Scaurus, President of the Senate, 
 denies it. There is no witness. Which do you 
 believe, Romans ? " *' Utri creditis, Quirites ? " 
 When he had said these words, he was absolved by 
 the assembly of the people. 
 
 I have seen manners that make a similar impres- 
 sion with personal beauty ; that give the like ex- 
 hilaration, and refine us like that ; and, in memor- 
 able experiences, they are suddenly better than 
 beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly. But 
 they must be marked by fine perception, the ac- 
 quaintance with real beauty. They must always 
 show self-control : you shall not be facile, apolo- 
 getic, or leaky, but king over your word ; and every 
 gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. 
 Then they must be inspired by the good heart. 
 There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or 
 behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain 
 around us. 'T is good to give a stranger a meal, or 
 a night's lodging. 'T is better to be hospitable to 
 
§96 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 Ills good meaning and thought, and give courage to 
 u companion. We must be as courteous to a man 
 us we are to a picture, which we are willing to give 
 the advantage of a good light. Special precepts are 
 not to be thought of : the talent of well-doing con- 
 tains them all. Every hour will show a duty as 
 paramount as that of my whim just now ; and yet I 
 will write it, — that there is one topic peremptorily 
 forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, 
 namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, 
 or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or 
 sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech 
 you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not 
 pollute the morning, to which all the housemates 
 bring serene and pleasant thoughts, by corruption 
 and groans. Come out of the azure. Love the 
 day. Do not leave the sky out of your landscape. 
 The oldest and the most deserving person should 
 come very modestly into any newly awaked com- 
 pany, respecting the divine communications, out of 
 which all must be presumed to have newly come. 
 An old man, who added an elevating culture to a 
 1 arge experience of life, said to me : " When you 
 come into the room, I think I will study how to 
 make humanity beautiful to you." 
 
 As respects the delicate question of culture, I do 
 not think that any other than negative rules can be 
 laid down. For positive rules, for suggestion. 
 Nature alone inspires it. Who dare assume to 
 guide a youth, a maid, to perfect manners? — the 
 golden mean is so delicate, difficult, — say frankly 
 
BOOKS 397 
 
 unattainable. What finest hands would not be 
 clumsy to sketch the genial precepts of the young 
 girl's demeanor? The chances seem infinite against 
 success : and yet success is continually attained. 
 There must not be secondariness, and 't is a thou- 
 sand to one that her air and manner will at once 
 betray that she is not primary, but that there is 
 some other one or many of her class, to whom she 
 liabitually postpones herself. But Nature lifts her 
 easily, and without knowing it, over these impos- 
 sibilities, and we are continually surprised with 
 graces and felicities not only unteachable, but un- 
 describable. 
 
 n. 
 
 BOOKS. 
 
 It is easy to accuse books, and bad ones are eas- 
 ily found ; and the best are but records, and not 
 the things recorded ; and certainly chere is dilettan- 
 teism enough, and books that are merely neutral 
 and do nothing for us. In Plato's " Gorgias," Soc- 
 rates says : " The shipmaster walks in a modest 
 garb near the sea, after bringing his passengers 
 from ^gina or from Pontus, not thinking he has 
 done anything extraordinary, and certainly know- 
 ing that his passengers are the same, and in no re- 
 spect better than when he took them on board." 
 So it is with books, for the most part ; they work 
 
^98 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 no redemption in us. The bookseller might cev* 
 tainly know that his customers are in no respect 
 better for the purchase and consumption of his 
 wares. The volume is dear at a dollar, and, after 
 reading to weariness the lettered backs, we leave 
 the shop with a sigh, and learn, as I did, without 
 surprise, of a surly bank director, that in bank 
 parlors they estimate all stocks of this kind as rub- 
 bish. 
 
 But it is not less true that there are books which 
 are of that importance in a man's private experi- 
 ence, as to verify for him the fables of Cornelius 
 Agrippa, of Michael Scott, or of the old Orpheus 
 of Thrace, — books which take rank in our life 
 with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, 
 so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so au- 
 thoritative, — books which are the work and the 
 proof of faculties so comprehensive, so nearly equal 
 to the world which they paint, that, though one 
 shuts them with meaner ones, he feels his exclusion 
 from them to accuse his way of living. 
 
 Considei what you have in the smallest chosen 
 library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men 
 that could be picked out of all countries, in a thou- 
 sand years, have set in best order the results of 
 their learning and wisdom. The men themselves 
 were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of in- 
 terruption, fenced by etiquette ; but the thought 
 which they did not uncover to their bosom friend 
 is here written out in transparent words to us, the 
 strangers of another age. 
 
BOOKS. 399 
 
 We owe to books those general benefits which 
 come from high intellectual action. Thus, I think, 
 we often owe to them the perception of immortal- 
 ity. They impart sympathetic activity to the moral 
 power. Go with mean people, and you think life 
 is mean. Then read Plutarch, and the world is 
 a proud place, peopled with men of positive quality, 
 with heroes and demigods standing around us, who 
 will not let us sleep. Then, they address the im- 
 agination : only poetry inspires poetry. They be- 
 come the organic culture of the time. College 
 education is the reading of certain books which the 
 common-sense of all scholars agrees will represent 
 the science already accumulated. If you know that, 
 — for instance in geometry, if you have read Euclid 
 and Laplace, — your opinion has some value ; if 
 you do not know these, you are not entitled to 
 give any opinion on the subject. Whenever any 
 sceptic or bigot claims to be heard on the questions 
 of intellect and morals, we ask if he is familiar 
 with the books of Plato, where all his pert objec- 
 tions have once for all been disposed of. If not, 
 he has no right to our time. Let him go and find 
 himseK answered there. 
 
 Meantime the colleges, whilst they provide us 
 with libraries, furnish no professor of books ; and, I 
 think, no chair is so much wanted. In a library we 
 are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, 
 but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these 
 paper and leathern boxes ; and, though they know 
 us, and have been waiting two, ten, or twenty cent- 
 
400 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 ones for us, — some of them, — and are eager to 
 give us a sign, and unbosom themselves, it is the 
 law of their limbo that they must not speak until 
 spoken to ; and as the enchanter has dressed them, 
 like battalions of infantry, in coat and jacket of one 
 cut, by the thousand and ten thousand, your chance 
 of hitting on the right one is to be computed by the 
 arithmetical rule of Permutation and Combination, 
 — not a choice out of three caskets, but out of half 
 a million caskets all alike. But it happens in our 
 experience, that in this lottery there are at least 
 fifty or a hundred blanks to a prize. It seems, 
 then, as if some charitable soul, after losing a great 
 deal of time among the false books, and alighting 
 upon a few true ones which made him happy and 
 wise, would do a right act in naming those which 
 have been bridges or ships to carry him safely over 
 dark morasses and barren oceans, into the heart of 
 sacred cities, into palaces and temples. This would 
 be best done by those great masters of books who 
 from time to time appear, — the Fabricii, the Sel- 
 dens, Magliabecchis, Scaligers, Mirandolas, Bayles, 
 Johnsons, whose eyes sweep the whole horizon of 
 learning. But private readers, reading purely for 
 love of the book, would serve us by leaving each 
 the shortest note of what he found. 
 
 There are books ; and it is practicable to read 
 them, because they are so few. We look over with 
 a sigh the monumental libraries of Paris, of the 
 V^atican, and the British Museum. In 1858, the 
 number of printed books in the Imperial Library' 
 
BOOKS. 401 
 
 at Paris was estimated at eight hundred thousand 
 volumes ; with an annual increase of twelve thou- 
 sand volumes ; so that the number of printed books 
 extant to-day may easily exceed a million. It is 
 easy to count the number of pages which a diligent 
 man can ^ead in a day, and the number of years 
 which human life in favorable circumstances allows 
 to reading ; and to demonstrate that, though he 
 should read from dawn till dark, for sixty years, he 
 must die in the first alcoves. But nothing can be 
 more deceptive than this arithmetic, where none 
 but a natural method is really pertinent. I visit oc- 
 casionally the Cambridge Library, and I can seldom 
 go there without renewing the conviction that the 
 best of it all is already within the four walls of my 
 study at home. The inspection of the catalogue 
 brings me continually back to the few standard 
 writers who are on every private shelf; and to 
 these it can afford only the most slight and casual 
 additions. The crowds and centuries of books are 
 only commentary and elucidation, echoes and weak- 
 eners of these few great voices of Time. 
 
 The best rule of reading will be d, method from 
 nature, and not a mechanical one of hours and 
 pages. It holds each student to a pursuit of his 
 native aim, instead of a desultory miscellany. Let 
 him read what is proper to him, and not waste his 
 memory on a crowd of mediocrities. As whole na- 
 tions have derived their culture from a single book, 
 — as the Bible has been the literature as well as 
 the religion of large portions of Europe, — as 
 
402 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 Hafiz was the eminent genius of the Persians, Con- 
 fucius of the Chinese, Cervantes of the Spaniards ; 
 so, perhaps, the human mind would be a gainer, 
 if all the secondary writers were lost, — say, in 
 England, all but Shakspere, Milton and Bacon, — 
 through the profounder study so drawn to those 
 wonderful minds. With this pilot of his own gen- 
 ius, let the student read one, or let him read many, 
 he will read advantageously. Dr. Johnson said : 
 " Whilst you stand deliberating which book your 
 son shall read first, another boy has read both ; read 
 anything five hours a day, and you will soon be 
 learned." 
 
 Nature is much our friend in this matter. Nat- 
 ure is always clarifying her water and her wine. 
 No filtration can be so perfect. She does the same 
 thing by books as by her gases and plants. There 
 IS always a selection in writers, and then a selection 
 from the selection. In the first place, all books 
 that get fairly into the vital air of the world wei-e 
 written by the successful class, by the affirming and 
 advancing class, who utter what tens of thousands 
 feel though they cannot say. There has already 
 been a scrutiny and choice for many hundreds of 
 young pens, before the pamphlet or political chap- 
 ter which you read in a fugitive journal comes to 
 your eye. All these are young adventurers, who 
 produce their performance to the wise ear of Time, 
 who sits and weighs, and, ten years hence, out of a 
 million of pages reprints one. Again it is judged, 
 it is winnowed by all the winds of opinion, and 
 
BOOKS. 403 
 
 I^Lat terrific selection has not passed on it before 
 \t can be reprinted after twenty years, — and re- 
 printed after a century ! — it is as if Minos and 
 Rhadamanthus had indorsed the writing. 'Tis 
 therefore an economy of time to read old and famed 
 books. Nothing can be preserved which is not 
 gOQd ; and I know beforehand that Pindar, Martial, 
 Terence, Galen, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Erasmus, 
 More, will be superior to the average intellect. In 
 contemporaries, it is not so easy to distinguish be- 
 twixt notoriety and fame. 
 
 Be sure, then, to read no mean books. Shun 
 the spawn of the press or the gossip of the hour. 
 Do not read what you shall learn, without asking, 
 in the street and the train. Dr. Johnson said " he 
 always went into stately shops " ; and good travel- 
 lers stop at the best hotels ; for, though they cost 
 more, they do not cost much more, and there is the 
 good company and the best information. In like 
 manner, the scholar knows that the famed books 
 contain, first and last, the best thoughts and facts. 
 Now and then, by rarest luck, in some foolish Grub 
 Street is the gem we want. But in the best cir- 
 cles is the best information. If you should trans- 
 fer the amount of your reading day by day from 
 the newspaper to the standard authors — But who 
 dare speak of such a thing? 
 
 The three practical rules, then, which I have to 
 offer, are, — 1. Never read any book that is not a 
 year old. 2. Never read any but famed books. 3. 
 Never read any but what you like ; or, in Shaks- 
 pere*8 phrase, 
 
404 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 "No profit goes where is no pleasure ta'en : 
 In brief, sir, study what you most affect.'* 
 
 Montaigne says, " Books are a languid pleas- 
 are " ; but I find certain books vital and spermatic, 
 not leaving the reader what he was : he shuts the 
 book a richer man. I would never willingly read 
 any others than such. And I will venture, attthe 
 risk of inditing a list of old primers and grammars, 
 to count the few books which a superficial reader 
 must thankfully use. 
 
 Of the old Greek books, I think there are five 
 which we cannot spare : 1. Homer, who, in spite 
 of Pope and all the learned uproar of centuries, has 
 really the true fire, and is good for simple minds, 
 is the true and adequate germ of Greece, and oc- 
 cupies that place as history, which nothing can sup- 
 ply. It holds through all literature, that our best 
 history is still poetry. It is so in Hebrew, in San- 
 scrit, and in Greek. English history is best known 
 through Shakspere ; how much through Merlin, 
 Robin Hood, and the Scottish ballads ! — the Ger- 
 man, through the Nibelungenlied ; — the Spanish, 
 through the Cid. Of Homer, George Chapman's 
 is the heroic translation, though the most literal 
 prose version is the best of all. 2. Herodotus, 
 whose history contains inestimable anecdotes, which 
 brought it with the learned into a sort of dises- 
 teem ; but in these days, when it is found that what 
 is most memorable of history is a few anecdotes, 
 and that we need not be alarmed though we should 
 find it not dull, it is regaining credit. 3. ^schy 
 
BOOKS. 405 
 
 lus, the grandest of the three tragedians, who has 
 given us under a thin veil the first plantation of 
 Europe. The " Prometheus " is a poem of the 
 like dignity and scope as the Book of Job, or the 
 Norse Edda. 4. Of Plato I hesitate to speak, lest 
 there should be no end. You find in him that 
 which you have already found in Homer, now rip- 
 ened to thought, — the poet converted to a philoso- 
 pher, with loftier strains of musical wisdom than 
 Homer reached ; as if Homer were the youth, and 
 Plato the finished man ; yet with no less security 
 of bold and perfect song, when he cares to use it, 
 and with some harp-strings fetched from a higher 
 heaven. He contains the future, as he came out 
 of the past. In Plato, you explore modern Europe 
 in its causes and seed, — all that in thought, which 
 the history of Europe embodies or has yet to em- 
 body. The well-informed man finds himself antic- 
 ipated. Plato is up with him too. Nothing has 
 escaped him. Every new crop in the fertile harvest 
 of reform, every fresh suggestion of modern human- 
 ity, is there. If the student wish to see both sides, 
 and justice done to the man of the world, pitiless 
 exposure of pedants, and the supremacy of "".'uth 
 and the religious sentiment, he shall be contented 
 also. Why should not young men be educated on 
 this book ? It would suffice for the tuition of the 
 race, — to test their understanding, and to express 
 their reason. Here is that which is so attractive 
 to all men, — the literature of aristocracy, shall I 
 call it ? — the picture of the best persons, senti- 
 
406 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 merits, and manners, by the first master, in the best 
 times, — portraits of Pericles, Alcibiades, Crito, 
 Prodicus, Protagoras, Anaxagoras, and Socrates, 
 with the lovely background of the Athenian and 
 suburban landscape. Or who can overestimate the 
 images with which Plato has enriched the minds of 
 men, and which pass like bullion in the currency 
 of all nations ? Read the " Phaedo," the " Protag- 
 oras," the " Phaedrus," the " Timaeus," the " Eepub- 
 lic," and the '' Apology of Socrates." 5. Plutarch 
 cannot be spared from the smallest library ; first, 
 because he is so readable, which is much ; then, 
 that he is medicinal and invigorating. The lives 
 of Cimon, Lycurgus, Alexander, Demosthenes, 
 Phocion, Marcellus, and the rest, are what history 
 has of best. But this book has taken care of it- 
 self, and the opinion of the world is expressed in 
 the innumerable cheap editions, which make it as 
 accessible as a newspaper. But Plutarch's " Mor- 
 als " is less known, and seldom reprinted.-^ Yet 
 such a reader as I am writing to can as ill spare it 
 as the " Lives." He will read in it the essays " On 
 the Daemon of Socrates," " On Isis and Osiris," 
 " On Progress in Virtue," " On Garrulity," " On 
 Love," and thank anew the art of printing, and the 
 cheerful domain of ancient thinking. Plutarch 
 charms by the facility of his associations ; so that 
 it signifies little where you open his book, you find 
 
 1 Since the first publication of this essay the book has been 
 issued under the editorship of Professor Goodwin of Harvard, 
 and with an introduction by Mr. Emerson. 
 
BOOKS. 407 
 
 yourself at the Olympian tables. His memory is 
 like the Isthmian Games, where all that was excel- 
 lent in Greece was assembled, and you are stimu- 
 lated and recruited by lyric verses, by philosophic 
 sentiments, by the forms and behavior of heroes, 
 by the worship of the gods, and by the passing of 
 fillets, parsley and laurel wreaths, chariots, armor, 
 sacred cups, and utensils of sacrifice. An inesti- 
 mable trilogy of ancient social pictures are the three 
 *' Banquets " respectively of Plato, Xenophon, and 
 Plutarch. Plutarch's has the least approach to 
 historical accuracy ; but the meeting of the Seven 
 Wise Masters is a charming portraiture of ancient 
 manners and discourse, and is as clear as the voice 
 of a fife, and entertaining as a French novel. Xen- 
 ophon's delineation of Athenian manners is an ac- 
 cessory to Plato, and supplies traits of Socrates ; 
 whilst Plato*s has merits of every kind, — being a 
 repertory of the wisdom of the ancients on the sub- 
 ject of love, — a picture of a feast of wits, not less 
 descriptive than Aristophanes, — and, lastly, con- 
 taining that ironical eulogy of Socrates which is the 
 source from which all the portraits of that philoso- 
 pher current in Europe have been drawn. 
 
 Of course a certain outline should be obtained of 
 Greek history, in which the important moments 
 and persons can be rightly set down ; but the short- 
 est is the best, and if one lacks stomach for Mr. 
 Grote's voluminous annals, the old slight and pop- 
 alar summary of Goldsmith or of Gillies will serve. 
 The valuable part is the age of Pericles and the 
 
408 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 next generation. And here we must read the 
 " Clouds " of Aristophanes, and what more of that 
 master we gain appetite for, to learn our way in the 
 streets of Athens, and to know the tyranny of Aris- 
 tophanes, requiring more genius and sometimes not 
 less cruelty than belonged to the official command- 
 ers. Aristophanes is now very accessible, with 
 much valuable commentary, through the labors of 
 Mitchell and Cartwright. An excellent popular 
 book is J. A. St. John's " Ancient Greece " ; 
 the " Life and Letters " of Niebuhr, even more 
 than his Lectures, furnish leading views ; and 
 Winckelmann, a Greek born out of due time, has 
 become essential to an intimate knowledge of the 
 Attic genius. The secret of the recent histories in 
 German and in English is the discovery, owed first 
 to Wolff, and later to Boeckh, that the sincere 
 Greek history of that period must be drawn from 
 Demosthenes, especially from the business orations, 
 and from the comic poets. 
 
 If we come down a little by natural steps from 
 the master to the disciples, we have, six or seven 
 centuries later, the Platonists, — who also cannot 
 be skipped, — Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, Syne- 
 sius, Jamblichus. Of Jamblichus the Emperor Ju- 
 lian said, " that he was posterior to Plato in time, 
 not in genius." Of Plotinus, we have eulogies by 
 Porphyry and Longinus, and the favor of the Em- 
 peror Gallienus, — indicating the respect he inspired 
 among his contemporaries. If any one who had 
 read with interest the " Isis and Osiris " of Plutarch 
 
BOOKS. 409 
 
 should then read a chapter called " Providence," by 
 Synesius, translated into English by Thomas Tay- 
 lor, he will find it one of the majestic remains of 
 literature, and, like one walking in the noblest of 
 temples, will conceive new gratitude to his fellow- 
 men, and a new estimate of their nobility. The im- 
 aginative scholar will find few stimulants to his brain 
 like these writers. He has entered the Elysian 
 Fields ; and the grand and pleasing figures of gods 
 and demons and demoniacal men, of the "azonic" 
 and the " aquatic gods," demons with fulgid eyes 
 and all the rest of the Platonic rhetoric, exalted a 
 little under the African sun, sail before his eyes. 
 The acolyte has mounted the tripod over the cave 
 at Delphi ; his heart dances, his sight is quickened. 
 These guides speak of the gods with such depth and 
 with such pictorial details, as if they had been bod- 
 ily present at the Olympian feasts. The reader of 
 these books makes new acquaintance with his own 
 mind ; new regions of thought are opened. Jam- 
 blichus's " Life of Pythagoras " works more directly 
 on the will than others ; since Pythagoras was em- 
 inently a practical person, the founder of a school 
 of ascetics and socialists, a planter of colonies, and 
 uo wise a man of abstract studies alone. 
 
 The respectable and sometimes excellent trans- 
 lations of Bohn's Library have done for literature 
 what railroads have done for internal intercourse. 
 I do not hesitate to read all the books I have 
 named, and all good books, in translations. What 
 is really best in any book is translatable, — any 
 
 ^ 
 
no RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 real insight or broad human sentiment. Nay, I ob- 
 serve that, in our Bible, and other books of lofty 
 moral tone, it seems easy and inevitable to render 
 the rhythm and music of the original into phrases of 
 equal melody. The Italians have a fling at trans- 
 lators, — ^ traditori traduttori ; but I thank them. 
 I rarely read any Latin, Greek, German, Italian, 
 sometimes not a French book in the original, which 
 I can procure in a good version. I like to be be- 
 holden to the great metropolitan English speech, 
 the sea which receives tributaries from every region 
 under heaven. I should as soon think of swim- 
 ming across Charles Kiver when I wish to go to 
 Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, 
 when I have them rendered for me in my mother- 
 tongue. 
 
 For history there is great choice of ways to bring 
 the student through early Rome. If he can read 
 Livy, he has a good book ; but one of the short 
 English compends, some Goldsmith or Ferguson, 
 should be used, that will place in the cycle the 
 bright stars of Plutarch. The poet Horace is the 
 eye of the Augustan age ; Tacitus, the wisest of 
 historians ; and Martial will give him Roman man- 
 ners, — and some very bad ones, — in the early 
 days of the Empire : but Martial must be read, if 
 read at all, in his own tongue. These will bring 
 him to Gibbon, who will take him in charge, and 
 convey him with abundant entertainment down — 
 with notice of all remarkable objects on the way 
 •—through fourteen hundred years of time. lie 
 
BOOKS. 411 
 
 cannot spare Gibbon, with his vast reading, — with 
 Buch wit and continuity of mind, that, though never 
 profound, his book is one of the conveniences of 
 civilization, like the new railroad from ocean to 
 ocean, — and, I think, will be sure to send the 
 reader to his " Memoirs of Himself," and the " Ex- 
 tracts from my Journal," and " Abstracts of my 
 Readings," which will spur the laziest scholar to 
 emulation of his prodigious performance. 
 
 Now having our idler safe down as far as the 
 fall of Constantinople in 1453, he is in very good 
 courses : for here are trusty hands waiting for him. 
 The cardinal facts of European history are soon 
 learned. There is Dante's poem, to open the Ital- 
 ian Republics of the Middle Age ; Dante's " Vita 
 Nuova," to explain Dante and Beatrice ; and Boc- 
 caccio's " Life of Dante," — a great man to describe 
 a greater. To help us, perhaps a volume or two 
 of M. Sismondi's " Italian Republics " wOl be as 
 good as the entire sixteen. When we come to 
 Michel Angelo, his Sonnets and Letters must be 
 read, with his Life by Vasari, or, in our day, by 
 Herman Grimm. For the Church, and the Feudal 
 Institution, Mr. Hallam's " Middle Ages " will fur- 
 nish, if superficial, yet readable and conceivable 
 outlines. 
 
 The " Life of the Emperor Charles V.," by the 
 useful Robertson, is still the key of the following 
 age. Ximenes, Columbus, Loyola, Luther, Eras- 
 mus, Melanchthon, Francis I., Henry VIII. , Eliz- 
 abeth, and Henry IV. of France, are his contem- 
 
412- RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 poraries. It is a time of seeds and expansions, 
 whereof our recent civilization is the fruit. 
 
 If now the relations of England to European af- 
 fairs bring him to British ground, he is arrived at 
 the very moment when modern history takes new 
 proportions. He can look back for the legends and 
 mythology to the "Younger Edda " and the " Heims- 
 kringla " of Snorro Sturleson, to Mallet's " North- 
 ern Antiquities," to Ellis's " Metrical Romances," 
 to Asser's " Life of Alfred " and Venerable Bede, 
 and to the researches of Sharon Turner and Pal- 
 grave. Hume wUl serve him for an intelligent 
 guide, and in the Elizabethan era he is at the rich- 
 est period of the English mind, with the chief men 
 of action and of thought which that nation has pro- 
 duced, and with a pregnant future before him. 
 Here he has Shakspere, Spenser, Sidney, Ra- 
 leigh, Bacon, Chapman, Jonson, Ford, Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, Herbert, Donne, Herrick; and Mil- 
 ton, Marvell, and Dryden, not long after. 
 
 In reading history, he is to prefer the history of 
 individuals. He will not repent the time he gives 
 to Bacon, — not if he read the " Advancement of 
 Learning," the " Essays," the " Novum Organum," 
 the "History of Henry VIL," and then all the 
 " Letters " (especially those to the Earl of Devon- 
 shire, explaining the Essex business), and all but 
 his " Apophthegms." 
 
 The task is aided by the strong mutual light 
 ^hich these men shed on each other. . Thus, the 
 works of Ben Jonson are a sort of hoop to bind 
 
BOOKS. 413 
 
 ftll these fine persons together, and to the land to 
 which they belong. He has written ^e^ses to or 
 on all his notable contemporaries ; and what with 
 so many occasional poems, and the portrait sketches 
 in his " Discoveries," and the gossiping record of 
 his opinions in his conversations with Drummond 
 of Hawthornden, he has really illustrated the Eng- 
 land of his time, if not to the same extent, yet 
 much in the same way, as Walter Scott has cele- 
 brated the persons and places of Scotland. Wal- 
 ton, Chapman, Herrick, and Sir Henry Wotton 
 write also to the times. 
 
 Among the best books are certain Autobiogra'- 
 pMes : as St. Augustine's Confessions ; Benvenuto 
 Cellini's Life; Montaigne's Essays; Lord Herbert 
 of Cherbury's Memoirs ; Memoirs of the Cardinal 
 de Retz ; Rousseau's Confessions ; Linnaeus's Diary ; 
 Gibbon's, Hume's, Franklin's, Burns's, Alfieri's, 
 Goethe's, and Haydon's Autobiographies. 
 
 Another class of books closely allied to these, 
 and of like interest, are those which may be called 
 Table- Talks : of which the best are Saadi's Gulistan ; 
 Luther's Table-Talk ; Aubrey's Lives ; Spence's 
 Anecdotes ; Selden's Table-Talk ; Boswell's Life 
 of Johnson ; Eckermann's Conversations with Goe- 
 the; Coleridge's Table-Talk; and Hazlitt's Life of 
 Northcote. 
 
 There is a class whose value I should designate 
 as Favorites: such as Froissart's Chronicles ; South- 
 ey's Chronicle of the Cid ; Cervantes ; Sully's Me- 
 moirs ; Rabelais ; Montaigne ; Izaak Walton ; Ev 
 
il4 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 elyn ; Sir Thomas Browne ; Aubrey ; Sterne ; Hor- 
 ace Walpole : Lord Clarendon ; Doctor Johnson ; 
 Burke, shedding floods of light on his times ; Lamb ; 
 Landor ; and De Quincy ; — a list, of course, that 
 may be easily swelled, as dependent on individual 
 caprice. Many men are as tender and irritable as 
 lovers in reference to these predilections. Indeed, 
 a man's library is a sort of harem, and I observe 
 that tender readers have a great pudency in show- 
 ing their books to a stranger. 
 
 The annals of bibliography afford many exam- 
 ples of the delirious extent to which book-fancying 
 can go, when the legitimate delight in a book is 
 transferred to a rare edition or to a manuscript. 
 This mania reached its height about the begin- 
 ning of the present century. For an autograph of 
 Shakspere one hundred and fifty-five guineas were 
 given. In May, 1812, the library of the Duke of 
 Roxburgh was sold. The sale lasted forty-two days, 
 — we abridge the story from Dibdin, — and among 
 the many curiosities was a copy of Boccaccio pub- 
 lished by Valdarfer, at Venice, in 1471 ; the only 
 perfect copy of this edition. Among the distin- 
 guished company which attended the sale were the 
 Dujie of Devonshire, Earl Spencer, and the Duke 
 of Marlborough, then Marquis of Blanford. The 
 bid stood at ^yq hundred guineas. " A thousand 
 guineas," said Earl Spencer : " And ten," added 
 the Marquis. You might hear a pin drop. All 
 eyes were bent on the bidders. Now they talked 
 apart, now ate a biscuit, now made a bet, but with 
 
BOOKS. 415 
 
 out the least thought of yielding one to the other. 
 But to pass over some details, — the contest pro- 
 ceeded until the Marquis said, "Two thousand 
 pounds." The Earl Spencer bethought him like 
 a prudent general of useless bloodshed and waste of 
 powder, and had paused a quarter of a minute, 
 when Lord Al thorp with long steps came to his 
 side, as if to bring his father a fresh lance to renew 
 the fight. Father and son whispered together, and 
 Earl Spencer exclaimed, " Two thousand two hun- 
 dred and fifty pounds ! " An electric shock went 
 through the assembly. " And ten," quietly added 
 the marquis. There ended the strife. Ere Evans 
 let the hammer fall, he paused ; the ivory instru- 
 ment swept the air: the spectators stood dumb, 
 when the hammer fell. The stroke of its fall 
 sounded on the farthest shores of Italy. The tap 
 of that hammer was heard in the libraries of Rome, 
 Milan, and Venice. Boccaccio stirred in his sleep 
 of fi.Ye hundred years, and M. Van Praet groped in 
 vain among the royal alcoves in Paris, to detect a 
 copy of the famed Valdarfer Boccaccio. 
 
 Another class I distinguish by the term Vocabu- 
 laries, Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy " is a 
 book of great learning. To read it is like read- 
 ing in a dictionary. 'T is an inventory to remind 
 us how many classes and species of facts exist, and 
 in observing into what strange and multiplex by- 
 ways learning has strayed, to infer our opulence. 
 Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There 
 is no cant in it, no excess of explanation, and it is 
 
416 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 full of suggestion — the raw material of possible 
 poems and histories. Nothing is wanting but a lit- 
 tle shuffling, sorting, ligature, and cartilage. Out of 
 a hundred examples, Cornelius Agrippa " On the 
 Vanity of Arts and Sciences " is a specimen of that 
 scribatiousness which grew to be the habit of the 
 gluttonous readers of his time. Like the modern 
 Germans, they read a literature while other mortals 
 read a few books. They read voraciously, and 
 must disburden themselves ; so they take any gen- 
 eral topic, as, Melancholy, or Praise of Science, 
 or Praise of Folly, and write and quote without 
 method or end. Now and then out of that afflu- 
 ence of their learning comes a fine sentence from 
 Theophrastus, or Seneca, or Boethius, but no high 
 method, no inspiring efflux. But one cannot afford 
 to read for a few sentences ; they are good only as 
 strings of suggestive words. 
 
 There is another class, more needful to the pres- 
 ent age, because the currents of custom run now in 
 another direction, and leave us dry on this side, 
 — I mean the Imaginative. A right metaphysics 
 should do justice to the coordinate powers of Im- 
 agination, Insight, Understanding, and Will. Po- 
 etry, with its aids of Mythology and Romance, must 
 be well allowed for an imaginative creature. Men 
 are ever lapsing into a beggarly habit, wherein 
 everything that is not ciphering, that is, which does 
 not serve the tyrannical animal, is hustled out of 
 Bight. Our orators and writers are of the same 
 poverty, and, in this rag-fair, neither the Imagina- 
 
BOOKS. 417 
 
 tion, the great awakening power, nor the Morals, 
 creative of genius and of men, are addressed. But 
 though orator and poet be of this hunger party, the 
 capacities remain. We must have symbols. The 
 child asks you for a story, and is thankful for the 
 poorest. It is not poor to him, but radiant with 
 meaning. The man asks for a novel, — that is, 
 asks leave for a few hours to be a poet, and to paint 
 things as they ought to be. The youth asks for a 
 poem. The very dunces wish to go to the the- 
 atre. What private heavens can we not open, by 
 yielding to all the suggestion of rich music ! We 
 must have idolatries, mythologies, — some swing 
 and verge for the creative power lying coiled and 
 cramped here, driving ardent natures to insanity 
 and crime if it do not find vent. Without the 
 great arts which speak to the sense of beauty, a 
 man seems to me a poor, naked, shivering creature. 
 These are his becoming draperies, which warm and 
 adorn him. Whilst the prudential and economical 
 tone of society starves the imagination, affronted 
 Nature gets such indemnity as she may. The novel 
 is that allowance and frolic the imagination finds. 
 Everything else pins it down, and men flee for re- 
 dress to Byron, Scott, Disraeli, Dumas, Sand, Bal- 
 zac, Dickens, Thackeray, and Reade. Their ed- 
 ucation is neglected ; but the circulating library and 
 the theatre, as well as the trout-fishing, the Notch 
 Mountains, the Adirondack country, the tour to 
 Mont Blanc, to the White Hills, and the Ghauts, 
 make such amends as they can. 
 27 
 
418 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 The imagination infuses a certain volatility and 
 intoxication. It has a flute which . sets the atoms 
 of our frame in a dance, like planets ; and, once 
 80 liberated, the whole man reeling drunk to the 
 music, they never quite subside to their old stony 
 state. But what is the imagination? Only an 
 arm or weapon of the interior energy ; only the 
 precursor of the reason. And books that treat the 
 old pedantries of the world, our times, places, pro- 
 fessions, customs, opinions, histories, with a certain 
 freedom, and distribute things, not after the usages 
 of America and Europe, but after the laws of right 
 reason, and with as daring a freedom as we use in 
 dreams, put us on our feet again, and enable us to 
 form an original judgment of our duties, and suggest 
 new thoughts for to-morrow. 
 
 " Lucrezia Floriani," " Le P^ch^ de M. An- 
 . 3ine," " Jeanne," and " Consuelo," of George 
 iand, are great steps from the novel of one termi- 
 nation, which we all read twenty years ago. Yet 
 how far off from life and manners and motives the 
 novel still is ! Life lies about us dumb ; the day, 
 as we know it, has not yet found a tongue. These 
 stories are to the plots of real life what the figures 
 in "La Belle Assembl^e," which represent the 
 fashion of the month, are to portraits. But the 
 novel will find the way to our interiors one day, 
 and will not always be the novel of costume merely. 
 I do not think it inoperative now. So much novel- 
 reading cannot leave the young men and maidens 
 antouched ; and doubtless it gives some ideal dig 
 
BOOKS. 419 
 
 nity to the day. The young study noble behavior ; 
 and as the player in " Consuelo " insists that he 
 and his colleagues on the boards have taught 
 princes the fine etiquette and strokes of grace and 
 dignity which they practise with so much effect in 
 their villas and among their dependents, so I often 
 see traces of the Scotch or the French novel in the 
 courtesy and brilliancy of young midshipmen, col- 
 legians, and clerks. Indeed, when one observes 
 how ill and ugly people make their loves and quar- 
 rels, 't is pity they should not read novels a little 
 more, to import the fine generosities, and the clear, 
 firm conduct, which are as becoming in the unions 
 and separations which love effects under shingle 
 roofs as in palaces and among illustrious person- 
 
 In novels the most serious questions are begin- 
 ning to be discussed. What made the popularity 
 of "Jane Eyre," but that a central question was 
 answered in some sort? The question there an- 
 swered in regard to a vicious marriage will always 
 be treated according to the habit of the party. A 
 person of commanding individualism will answer it 
 as Rochester does, — as Cleopatra, as Milton, as 
 George Sand do, — magnifying the exception into 
 a rule, dwarfing the world into an exception. A 
 person of less courage, that is, of less constitution, 
 will answer as the heroine does, — giving way to 
 fate, to conventionalism, to the actual state and do- 
 ings of men and women. 
 
 For the most part, our novel-reading is a pas* 
 
420 RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 
 
 Bion for results. We admire parks, and high-born 
 beauties, and the homage of drawing-rooms, and 
 parliaments. They make us sceptical, by giving 
 prominence to wealth and social position. 
 
 I remember when some peering eyes of boys dis- 
 covered that the oranges hanging on the boughs of 
 an orange-tree in a gay piazza were tied to the twigs 
 by thread. I fear *t is so with the novelist's pros- 
 perities. Nature has a magic by which she fits the 
 man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of 
 his character. But the novelist plucks this event 
 here, and that fortune there, and ties them rashly 
 to his figures, to tickle the fancy of his readers with 
 a cloying success, or scare them with shocks of 
 tragedy. And so, on the whole, 't is a juggle. We 
 are cheated into laughter or wonder by feats which 
 only oddly combine acts that we do every day. 
 There is no new element, no power, no furtherance. 
 'Tis only confectionery, not the raising of new 
 corn. Great is the poverty of their inventions. 
 She was beautiful, and he fell in love. Money, and 
 killing, and the Wandering Jew, and persuading the 
 lover that his mistress is betrothed to another, — 
 these are the mainsprings : new names, but no new 
 qualities in the men and women. Hence the vain 
 endeavor to keep any bit of this fairy gold, which 
 has rolled like a brook through our hands. A thou- 
 sand thoughts awoke ; great rainbows seemed to 
 span the sky, — a morning among the mountains ; 
 — but we close the book, and not a ray remains in 
 the memory of evening*^ But this passion for ro- 
 
BOOKS. 421 
 
 mance, and this disappointment, show how much we 
 need real elevations and pure poetry : that which 
 shall show us, in morning and night, in stars and 
 mountains, and in all the plight and circumstance of 
 men, the analogous of our own thoughts, and a like 
 impression made by a just book and by the face of 
 Nature. 
 
 If our times are sterile in genius, we must cheer 
 us with books of rich and believing men who had 
 atmosphere and amplitude about them. Every 
 good fable, every mythology, every biography from 
 a religious age, every passage of love, and even 
 philosophy and science, when they proceed from an 
 intellectual integrity, and are not detached and 
 critical, have the imaginative element. The Greek 
 fables, the Persian history (Firdusi), the " Younger 
 Edda " of the Scandinavians, the " Chronicle of the 
 Cid," the poem of Dante, the Sonnets of Michel 
 Angelo, the English drama of Shakspere, Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher, and Ford, and even the prose 
 of Bacon and Milton, — in our time, the Ode of 
 Wordsworth, and the poems and the prose of 
 Goethe, have this enlargement, and inspire hope 
 and generous attempts. 
 
 There is no room left, — and yet I might as well 
 not have begun as to leave out a class of books 
 which are the best : I mean the Bibles of the world, 
 or the sacred books of each nation, which express 
 for each the supreme result of their experience. 
 Ailer the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, which 
 constitute the sacred books of Christendom, these 
 
422 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 are the Desatir of the Persians, and the Zoroas- 
 trian Oracles ; the Vedas and Laws of Menu ; 
 the Upanishads, the Vishnu Purana, the Bhagvat 
 Geeta, of the Hindoos ; the books of the Bud- 
 dhists ; the " Chinese Classic," of four books, con- 
 taining the wisdom of Confucius and Mencius. 
 Also such other books as have acquired a semi-ca- 
 nonical authority in the world, as expressing the 
 highest sentiment and hope of nations. Such are 
 the '' Hermes Trismegistus," pretending to be 
 Egyptian remains ; the '^ Sentences " of Epictetus ; 
 of Marcus Antoninus ; the " Vishnu Sarma " of the 
 Hindoos ; the " Gulistan " of Saadi ; the " Imita- 
 tion of Christ," of Thomas k Kempis; and the 
 " Thoughts " of Pascal. 
 
 All these books are the majestic expressions of 
 the universal conscience, and are more to our daily 
 purpose than this year's almanac or this day's news- 
 paper. But they are for the closet, and to be read 
 on the bended knee. Their communications are 
 not to be given or taken with the lips and the end 
 of the tongue, but out of the glow of the cheek, and 
 with the throbbing heart. Friendship should give 
 and take, solitude and time brood and ripen, heroes 
 absorb and enact them. They are not to be held 
 by letters printed on a page, but are living charac- 
 ters translatable into every tongue and form of life. 
 I read them on lichens and bark ; I watch them on 
 waves on the beach ; they fly in birds, they creep 
 in worms ; I detect them in laughter and blushes 
 and eye-sparkles of men and women. These are 
 
BOOKS. 423 
 
 Scriptures which the missionary might well carry- 
 over prairie, desert, and ocean, to Siberia, Japan, 
 Timbuctoo. Yet he will find that the spirit which 
 is in them journeys faster than he, and greets him 
 on his arrival, — was there already long before him. 
 The missionary must be carried by it, and find it 
 there, or he goes in vain. Is there any geography 
 in these things ? We call them Asiatic, we call 
 them primeval ; but perhaps that is only optical ; 
 for Nature is always equal to herself, and there are 
 as good eyes and ears now in the planet as ever 
 were. Only these ejaculations of the soul are ut- 
 tered one or a few at a time, at long intervals, and 
 it takes millenniums to make a Bible. 
 
 These are a few of the books which the old and 
 the later times have yielded us, which will reward 
 the time spent on them. In comparing the number 
 of good books with the shortness of life, many 
 might well be read by proxy, if we had good prox- 
 ies ; and it would be well for sincere young men to 
 borrow a hint from the French Institute and the 
 British Association, and, as they divide the whole 
 body into sections, each of which sits upon and re- 
 ports of certain matters confided to it, so let each 
 scholar associate himself to such persons as he can 
 rely on, in a literary club, in which each shall un- 
 dertake a single work or series for which he is qual- 
 fied. For example, how attractive is the whole 
 literature of the " Roman de la Rose," the " Fab- 
 liaux," and the gaie science of the French Trouba- 
 dours! Yet who in Boston has time for that? 
 
424 RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 
 
 But one of our company shall undertake it, shall 
 study and master it, and shall report on it, as un- 
 der oath ; shall give us the sincere result, as it lies 
 in his mind, adding nothing, keeping nothing back. 
 Another member, meantime, shall as honestly 
 search, sift, and as truly report, on British mythol- 
 ogy, the Round Table, the histories of Brut, Mer- 
 lin, and Welsh poetry; a third on the Saxon 
 Chronicles, Robert of Gloucester, and William of 
 Malmesbury ; a fourth, on Mysteries, Early Drama, 
 " Gesta Romanorum," Collier, and Dyce, and the 
 Camden Society. Each shall give us his grains of 
 gold, after the washing ; and every other shall then 
 decide whether this is a book indispensable to him 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
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