THE SCOTT LIBRARY. SPECIMEN DAYS IN AMERICA. SPECIMEN DAYS IN AMERICA. BY WALT WHITMAN. iR~( REVISED BY THE AUTHOR, WITH FRESH PREFACE AND ADDITIONAL MOTE. THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD., LONDON AND NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE. E .\A7t Bancroft Library CONTENTS. , PAGE PREFACE : To the Reader in the British Islands . . ,11 A Happy Hour's Command . . . . . .13 Answer to an Insisting Friend . . . . . .15 Genealogy Van Velsor and Whitman The Old Whitman and Van Velsor Cemeteries . . . . . .16 The Maternal Homestead Two Old Family Interiors . . 19 Paumanok, and My Life on it as Child and Young Man . , 21 My First Reading Lafayette ...... 25 Printing Office Old Brooklyn . . . . .26 ^ Growth Health Work My Passion for Ferries . . 27 Broadway Sights ....... 29 Omnibus Jaunts and Drivers . . . . . .29 Plays and Operas too . . . . . . .31 Through Eight Years Sources of Character Results 1860 . 33 Opening of the Secession War National Uprising and Volunteering 34 Contemptuous Feeling Battle of Rull Run, July, 1861 . . 36 The Stupor Passes Something Else Begins . . . .40 Down at the Front After First Fredericksburg . . .41 Back to Washington . 43 * Fifty Hours Left Wounded on the Field . . . .45 $ Hospital Scenes and Persons . . . . . . 46 Patent -Office Hospital . . . . .... 48 The White Hou se by Moonlight An Army Hospital Ward . 49 A Connecticut Case Two Brooklyn Boys . -. , . 51 A Secesh Brave The Wounded from Chancellorsville , , 52 vi CONTENTS. PAGE A Night Battle over a Week Since , , . .54 Unnamed Kemains the Bravest Soldier Some Specimen Cases . 57 My Preparations for Visits . . . 61 Ambulance Processions Bad Wounds the Young . . 61 The Most Inspiriting of all War's Shows ,. . , . 62 Battle of Gettysburg A Cavalry Camp . . . .63 A New York Soldier . ' ' . s . . . . . 65 Home-Made Music , . . . ... 66 Abraham Lincoln . . . . , . 68 Heated Term Soldiers and Talks , . . .69 Death of a Wisconsin Officer * . t .. . ^ . 71 Hospitals Ensemble , . . . ' % . . . 73 A Silent Night Ramble / . . . . .75 Spiritual Characters among the Soldiers Cattle Droves about Washington '. ' . * . . . 75 Hospital Perplexity . . . ' . . .76 Down at the Front , , . , . . . 77 Paying the Bounties Rumors, Changes, &c Virginia . 78 Summer of 1864 . . . ,80 A New Army Organization fit for America Death of a Hero 81 Hospital Scenes Incidents . s ~ . .83 A Yankee Soldier Union Prisoners South . , .84 Deserters A Glimpse of War's Hell-Scenes . } .86 Gifts Money Discrimination Items from my Note Books . 89 A Case from Second Bull Run Army Surgeons Aid Deficiencies 91 The Blue Everywhere A Model Hospital , V r . . 92 Boys in the Army Burial of a Lady Nurse . . . 93 Female Nurses for Soldiers Southern Escapees . .' . 95 The Capitol by Gas-Light The Inauguration . i ,99 Attitude of Foreign Governments During the War > . 100 The Weather Does it Sympathize with These Times ? . .101 Inauguration Ball Scene at the Capitol . 103 A Yankee Antique . . . . * * .105 Wounds and Diseases Death of President Lincoln ' . - 106 Sherman's Army's Jubilation its Sudden Stoppage . . 107 No Good Portrait of Lincoln Releas'd Union Prisoners from South 108 CONTENTS. vli PAGE Death of a Pennsylvania Soldier ..... 110 The Armies Returning . ..... 113 The Grand Review Western Soldiers .... 114 A Soldier on Lincoln Two Brothers, one South, one North . 115 Some Sad Cases yet ..... 117 Calhoun's Real Monument Hospitals Closing . . . 118 Typical Soldiers 120 * * Con vulsiveness " Three Years Summ'd Up . . .121 The Million Dead, too, Summ'd up . . . .123 The Real War will never get in the Books . . . .125 An Interregnum Paragraph . . . . . 127 New Themes Enter'd Upon . . . . , .127 Entering a Long Farm-Lane... To the Spring and Brook... An Early Summer Reveille ....... 129 Birds Migrating at Midnight Bumble-Bees . . .131 Cedar-Apples . .... 135 Summer Sights and Indolences Sundown Perfume Quail- Notes the Hermit Thrush . . . . .135 A July Afternoon by the Pond . .... 137 Locusts and Katy-Dids The Lesson of a Tree . . .138 Autumn Side-Bits - 141 The Sky Days and Nights Happiness - 142 Colors A Contrast November 8, 76 - - 144 Crows and Crows A Winter-Day on the Sea-Beach - - 145 Sea-Shore Fancies - 147 In Memory of Thomas Paine - - - 148 A Two Hours' Ice-Sail - - 151 Spring Overtures Recreations One of the Human Kinks - 152 An Afternoon Scene The Gates Opening - 153 The Common Earth, the Soil Birds and Birds and Birds - 155 Full-Starr'd Nights - 156 Mulleins and Mulleins Distant Sounds - - - 158 A Sun-Bath Nakedness . - 159 The Oaks and I - - - 162 A Quintette 163 The First Frost Mems Three Young Men's Deaths - - 164 viii CONTENTS. PAGE February Days - - - 168 A Meadow Lark Sundown Lights V - - 170 Thoughts Under an Oak A Dream Clover and Hay Perfume An Unknown - 171 Bird Whistling Horse-Mint Three of Us - - 173 Death of William Cullen Bryant >-r v 175 Jaunt up the Hudson Happiness and Raspberries .,.- - 177 A Specimen Tramp Family . V- . 178 Manhattan from the Bay \ . . - 180 Human and Heroic New York - - .- > - r*^)1 - 181 Hours for the Soul - - 182 Straw-Color'd and other Psyches - - \ , - 187 A Night Remembrance Wild Flowers * .- . - 189 A Civility Too Long Neglected . . . .191 Delaware River Days and Nights... Scenes on Ferry and River Last Winter's Nights . . . , . . 191 The First Spring Day on Chestnut Street ..;",* .198 Up the Hudson to Ulster County . . 200 Days at J. B.'s Turf Fires Spring Songs . .201 Meeting a Hermit An Ulster County Waterfall Walter Dumont and his Medal . .... 203 Hudson River Sights . . . . . -264 Two City Areas Certain Hours ..... 206 Central Parks Walks and Talks . . .207 A Fine Afternoon, 4 to 6 . . . . .209 Departing of the Big Steamers Two Hours on the Minnesota . 210 Mature Summer Days and Nights . . . : . 213 Exposition Building New City Hall River-Trip . * . 213 Swallows on the River Began a Long Jaunt West In the Sleeper . 215 Missouri State . 217 Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas The Prairies (and an Undeliver'd Speech) . . - . . .218 On to Denver A Frontier Incident An Hour on Kenosha Summit . . . , ...... 219 An Egotistical ' ' Find " New Scenes New Joys . : . 221 CONTENTS. ix PAGE Steam-Power, Telegraphs, &c America's Back-Bone . . 222 The Parks Art Features . . . . . .224 Denver Impressions / > V . . . . 226 I Turn South and then East Again . . . . .228 Unfulfill'd Wants the Arkansas River A Silent Little Follower the Coreopsis . ..... 228 The Prairies and Great Plains in Poetry The Spanish Peaks Evening on the Plains ...... 230 America's Characteristic Landscape Earth's Most Important Stream 232 Prairie Analogies the Tree Question Mississippi Valley Literature ........ 234 An Interviewer's Item ...... 236 The Women of the West The Silent General . . . 237 President Hayes's Speeches . . . . . .239 St. Louis Memoranda Nights on the Mississippi . , . 240 Upon our Own Land Edgar Poe's Significance . . . 241 Beethoven's Septette . . . . * . .245 A Hint of Wild Nature Loafing in the Woods . . .245 A Contralto Voice Seeing Niagara to Advantage . . 247 Jaunting to Canada Sunday with the Insane . . .249 Reminiscence of Eliza Hicks Grand Native Growth . . 251 AZollverein between the U. S. and Canada The St. Lawrence Line 252 The Savage Saguenay Cape Eternity and Trinity . . 253 Chicoutimi, and Ha-ha Bay The Inhabitants Good Living . 255 Cedar-Plums Like Names ...... 256 Death of Thomas Carlyle . . . . . .259 Carlyle from American Points of View ..... 264 A Couple of Old Friends A Coleridge Bit . . . .275 A Week's Visit to Boston . . . . , .276 The Boston of To-Day My Tribute to Four Poets . . 278 Millet's Picture Last Items 280 Birds, and a Caution . . 282 Samples of my Common-Place Book . . . . .283 My Native Sand and Salt Once More 284 Hot Weather New York , . 287 x CONTENTS. PAGE " Ouster's Last Kally " . . . ... .288 Some Old Acquaintances Memories A Discovery of Old Age . 290 A Visit at the Last to R. W. Emerson . > . . .292 Other Concord Notations . . . - , . ' . ! : . 294 Boston Common More of Emerson . . . V . 295 An Ossianic Night Dearest Friends . .' . . .296 Only a New Perry Boat Death of Longfellow . . . 298 Starting Newspapers . . . . . *- .300 The Great Unrest of which We are a Part . . .303 By Emerson's Grave . . . V . ; ': . 304 At Present Writing Personal After Trying a Certain Book . 305 Final Confessions Literary Tests . . . ! r . . 307 Nature and Democracy Morality , .... . . 309 Additional Note , . 310 SPECIMEN DAYS IN AMERICA. PREFACE. TO THE READER IN THE BRITISH ISLANDS. IF you will only take the following pages, as you do some long and gossippy letter written for you by a relative or friend traveling through distant scenes and incidents, and jotting them down lazily and J~ informally, but ever veraciously (with occasional diversions of critical thought about somebody or something), it might remove all formal or literary impediments at once, and bring you and me close together in the spirit in which the jottings were col- f" lated to be read. You have had, and have, plenty ' of public events and facts and general statistics of America ; in the following book is a common indi- vidual New World private life, its birth and growth, its struggles for a living, its goings and comings and observations (or representative portions of them) amid the United States of America the last thirty PREFACE. or forty years, with their varied war and peace, their local coloring, the unavoidable egotism, and the lights and shades and sights and joys and pains and sympathies common to humanity. Further intro- ductory light may be found in the paragraph, " A Happy Hour's Command," and the bottom note belonging to it, at the beginning of the book. I have said in the text that if I were required to give good reason-for-being of " Specimen Days " I should be unable to do so. Let me fondly hope that it has at least the reason and excuse of such off-hand gossippy letter as just alluded to, portraying American life-sights and incidents as they actually occurred their presentation making additions as far as it goes, to the simple experience and association of your soul, from a comrade soul ; and that also, in the volume, as below any page of mine, anywhere, ever remains, for seen or unseen basis-phrase, GOOD-WILL BETWEEN THE COMMON PEOPLE OF ALL NATIONS. WALT WHITMAN. SPECIMEN DAYS IN AMERICA. A HAPPY HOUR'S COMMAND. Down in the Woods, July 2d, 1882. If I do it at all I must delay no longer. Incongruous and full of skips and jumps as is that huddle of diary-jottings, war- memoranda of 1862-'65, Nature-notes of 1877-'81, with Western and Canadian observations afterwards, all bundled up and tied by a big string, the resolution and indeed mandate comes to me this day, this hour, (and what a day ! what an hour just passing ! the luxury of riant grass and blowing breeze, with all the shows of sun and sky and perfect temperature, never before so filling me body and soul) to go home, untie the bundle, reel out diary- scraps and memoranda, just as they are, large or small, one after another, into print-pages,* and let the melange's * The earlier pages are nearly verbatim an off-hand letter of mine in January, 1882, to an insisting friend. Following, I give some gloomy experiences. The war of attempted secession has, of course, tieen the distinguishing event of my time. I commenced at the close of 1862, and continued steadily through '63, '64, and '65, to visit the sick and wounded of the army, both on the field and in the hospitals in and around Washington city. From the first I kept little note- books for impromptu jottings in pencil to refresh my memory of names and circumstances, and what was specially wanted, &c. In these I brief 'd cases, persons, sights, occurrences in camp, by the 14 SPECIMEN DA YS lackings and wants of connection take care of themselves. It will illustrate one phase of humanity anyhow ; how few of life's days and hours (and they not by relative value or bedside, and not seldom by the corpses of the dead. Some were scratch'd down from narratives I heard and itemized while watching, or waiting, or tending somebody amid those scenes. I have dozens of such little note-books left, forming a special history of those years, for myself alone, full of associations never to be possibly said or sung. I wish I could convey to the reader the associations that attach to these soil'd and creas'd livraisons, each composed of a sheet or two of paper, folded small to carry in the pocket, and fastened with a pin. I leave them just as I threw them by after the war, blotch'd here and there with more than one blood-stain, hurriedly written, sometimes at the clinique, not seldom amid the excitement of uncertainty, or defeat, or of action, or getting ready for it, or a march. Most of the pages are verbatim copies of those lurid and blood-smutch' d little note-books. Very different are most of the memoranda that follow. Some time after the war ended I had a paralytic stroke, which prostrated me for several years. In 1876 I began to get over the worst of it. From this date, portions of several seasons, especially summers, I spent at a secluded haunt down in Camden county, New Jersey Timber creek, quite a little river (it enters from the great Delaware, twelve miles away) with primitive solitudes, winding stream, recluse and woody banks, sweet-feeding springs, and all the charms that birds, grass, wild-flowers, rabbits and squirrels, old oaks, walnut trees, &c., can bring. Through these times, and on these spots, the diary from page 127 on ward was mostly written. The COLLECT afterward gathers up the odds and ends of whatever pieces* I can now lay hands on, written at various times past, and swoops all together like fish in a net. I suppose I publish and leave the whole gathering, first, from that eternal tendency to perpetuate and preserve which is behind all Nature, authors included ; second, to symbolize two or three specimen interiors, personal and other, out of the myriads of my time, the middle range of the Nineteenth century in the New World; a strange, unloosen' d, wondrous time. But the book is probably without any definite purpose that can be told in a statement. IN AMERICA. 15 proportion, but by chance) are ever noted. Probably another point too, how we give long preparations for some object, planning and delving and fashioning, and then, when the actual hour for doing arrives, find ourselves still quite unprepared, and tumble the thing together, letting hurry and crudeness tell the story better than fine work. At any rate I obey my happy hour's command, which seems curiously imperative. May-be, if I don't do anything else, I shall send out the most wayward, spontaneous, fragmentary book ever printed. ANSWER TO AN INSISTING FRIEND. You ask for items, details of my early life of genealogy and parentage, particularly of the women of my ancestry, and of its far back Netherlands stock on the maternal side of the region where I was born and raised, and my father and mother before me, and theirs before them with a word about Brooklyn and New York cities, the times I lived there as lad and young man. You say you want to get at these details mainly as the go-befores and embryons of " Leaves of Grass." Very good ; you shall have at least some specimens of them all. I have often thought of the meaning of such things that one can only encompass and complete matters of that kind by exploring behind, perhaps very far behind, themselves directly, and so into their genesis, antecedents, and cumulative stages. Then as luck would have it, I lately whiled away the tedium of a week's half-sickness and confinement, by collating these very items for another (yet unfulfill'd, probably abandon'd,) purpose; and if you will be satisfied with them, authentic in date-occurrence and fact simply, and told my own way, garrulous-like, here they are. I shall not hesitate to make i6 SPECIMEN DA YS extracts, for I catch at any thing to save labor ; but those will be the best versions of what I want to convey. GENEALOGY VAN VELSOR AND WHITMAN. The later years of the last century found the Van Velsor family, my mother's side, living on their own farm at Cold Spring, Long Island, New York State, near the eastern edge of Queens county, about a mile from the harbor.* My father's side probably the fifth generation from the first English arrivals in New England were at the same time farmers on their own land (and a fine domain it was, 500 acres, all good soil, gently sloping east and south, about one-tenth woods, plenty of grand old trees,) two or three miles off, at West Hills, Suffolk county. The Whit- man name in the Eastern States, and so branching West and South, starts undoubtedly from one John Whitman, born 1602, in Old England, where he grew up, married, and his eldest son was born in 1629. He came over in the "True Love" in 1640 to America, and lived in Weymouth, Mass., which place became the mother-hive of the New- Englanders of the name: he died in 1692. His brother, Rev. Zechariah Whitman, also came over in the "True Love," either at that time or soon after, and lived at Milford, Conn. A son of this Zechariah, named Joseph, migrated to Huntington, Long Island, and permanently settled there. Savage's "Genealogical Dictionary" (vol. iv, p. 524) gets the Whitman family establish'd at Huntington, per this Joseph, before 1664. It is quite certain that from that * Long Island was settled first on the west end by the Dutch, from Holland, then on the east end by the English the dividing line of the two nationalities being a little west of Huntington, where my father's folks lived, and where I was born. IN AMERICA. 17 beginning, and from Joseph, the West Hill Whitmans, and all others in Suffolk county, have since radiated, myself among the number. John and Zechariah both went to Eng- land and back again divers times ; they had large families, and several of their children were born in the old country. We hear of the father of John and Zechariah, Abijah Whitman, who goes over into the 1500's, but we know little about him, except that he also was for some time in America. .y These old pedigree reminiscences come up to me vividly from a visit I made not long since (in my 63d year) to West Hills, and to the burial grounds of my ancestry, both sides. I extract from notes of that visit, written there and then : THE OLD WHITMAN AND VAN VELSOR CEMETERIES. July 29, 1881. After more than forty years' absence, (except a brief visit, to take my father there once more, two years before he died,) went down Long Island on a week's jaunt to the place where I was born, thirty miles from New York city. Rode around the old familiar spots, viewing and pondering and dwelling long upon them, everything coming back to me. Went to the old Whitman homestead on the upland and took a view eastward, in- clining south, over the broad and beautiful farm lands of my grandfather (1780,) and my father. There was the new house (1810,) the big oak a hundred and fifty or two hun- dred years old ; there the well, the sloping kitchen-garden, and a little way off even the well-kept remains of the dwelling of my great-grandfather (1750-'60) still standing, with its mighty timbers and low ceilings. Near by, a stately grove of tall, vigorous black walnuts, beautiful, Apollo-like, the sons or grandsons, no doubt, of black-walnuts 273 1 8 SPECIMEN DA YS during or before 1776. On the other side of the road spread the famous apple orchard, over twenty acres, the trees planted by hands long mouldering in the grave (my uncle Jesse's,) but quite many of them evidently capable of throwing out their annual blossoms and fruit yet. I now write these lines seated on an old grave (doubtless of a century since at least) on the burial hill of the Whit- mans of many generations. Fifty and more graves are quite plainly traceable, and as many more decay'd out of all form depressed mounds, crumbled and broken stones, cover'd with moss the gray and sterile hill, the clumps of chestnuts outside, the silence, just varied by the soughing wind. There is always the deepest eloquence of sermon or poem in any of these ancient graveyards of which Long Island has so many ; so what must this one have been to me ? My whole family history, with its succession of links, from the first settlement down to date, told here three centuries concentrate on this sterile acre. The next day, July 30, I devoted to the maternal locality, and if possible was still more penetrated and impress'd. I write this paragraph on the burial hill of the Van Velsors, near Cold Spring, the most significant de- pository of the dead that could be imagined, without the slightest help from art, but far ahead of it, soil sterile, a mostly bare plateau-flat of half an acre, the top of a hill, brush and well grown trees and dense woods bordering all around, very primitive, secluded, no visitors, no road (you cannot drive here, you have to bring the dead on foot, and follow on foot.) Two or three-score graves quite plain ; as many more almost rubb'd out. My grandfather Cornelius and my grandmother Amy (Naomi) and numerous rela- tives nearer or remoter, on my mother's side, lie buried here. The scene as I stood or sat, the delicate and wild IN AMERICA. 19 odor of the woods, a slightly drizzling rain, the emotional atmosphere of the place, and the inferr'd reminiscences, were fitting accompaniments. THE MATERNAL HOMESTEAD. I went down from this ancient grave place eighty or ninety rods to the site of the Van Velsor homestead, where my mother was born (1795,) and where every spot had been familiar to me as a child and youth (1825-'40.) Then stood there a long, rambling, dark-gray, shingle-sided house, with sheds, pens, a great barn, and much open road-space. Now of all those not a vestige left ; all had been pull'd down, erased, and the plough and harrow pass'd over foundations, road-spaces, and everything, for many summers ; fenced in at present, and grain and clover growing like any other fine fields. Only a big hole from the cellar, with some little heaps of broken stone, green with grass and weeds, identified the place. Even the copious old brook and spring seem'd to have mostly dwindled away. The whole scene, with what it arous'd, memories of my young days there half a century ago, the vast kitchen and ample fire- place and the sitting-room adjoining, the plain furniture, the meals, the house full of merry people, my grandmother Amy's sweet old face in its Quaker cap, my grandfather "the Major," jovial, red, stout, with sonorous voice and characteristic physiognomy, with the actual sights them- selves, made the most pronounc'd half-day's experience of my whole jaunt. For there with all those wooded, hilly, healthy surround- ings, my dearest mother, Louisa Van Velsor, grew up (her mother, Amy Williams, of the Friends' or Quakers' denomination the Williams family, seven sisters and one 20 SPECIMEN DA YS brother the father and brother sailors, both of whom met their deaths at sea.) The Van Velsor people were noted for fine horses, which the men bred and train'd from blooded stock. My mother, as a young woman, was a daily and daring rider. As to the head of the family himself, the old race of the Netherlands, so deeply grafted on Manhattan island and in Kings and Queens counties, never yielded a more mark'd and full Americanized specimen than Major Cornelius Yan Yelsor. TWO OLD FAMILY INTERIORS. Of the domestic and inside life of the middle of Long Island, at and just before that time, here are two samples : " The Whitmans, at the beginning of the present century, lived in a long story-and-a-half farm-house, hugely timber'd, which is still stand- ing. A great smoke-canopied kitchen, with vast hearth and chimney, form'd one end of the house. The existence of slavery in New York at that time, and the possession by the family of some twelve or fifteen slaves, house and field servants, gave things quite a patriarchal look. The very young darkies could be seen, a swarm of them, toward sun- down, in this kitchen, squatted in a circle on the floor, eating their supper of Indian pudding and milk. In the house, and in food and furniture, all was rude, but substantial. No carpets or stoves were known, and no coffee, and tea or sugar only for the women. Rousing wood fires gave both warmth and light on winter nights. Pork, poultry, beef, and all the ordinary vegetables and grains were plentiful. Cider was the men's common drink, and used at meals. The clothes were mainly homespun. Journeys were made by both men and women on horseback. Both sexes labor'd with their own hands the men on the farm the women in the house and around it. Books were scarce. The annual copy of the almanac was a treat, and was pored over through the long winter evenings. I must not forget to mention that both these families were near enough to the sea to behold it from the high places, and to hear in still hours the roar of the surf ; the latter, after a storm, giving a peculiar sound at night. Then all hands, male and female, went down frequently on beach and bathing parties, and IN AMERICA. 21 the men on practical expeditions for cutting salt hay, and for clamming and fishing." John Burroughs s NOTES. " The ancestors of Walt Whitman, on both the paternal and maternal sides, kept a good table, sustain'd the hospitalities, decorums, and an excellent social reputation in the county, and they were often of mark'd individuality. If space permitted, I should consider some of the men worthy special description ; and still more some of the women. His great-grandmother on the paternal side, for instance, was a large swarthy woman, who lived to a very old age. She smoked tobacco, rode on horseback like a man, managed the most vicious horse, and, becoming a widow in later life, went forth every day over her farm- lands, frequently in the saddle, directing the labor of her slaves, with language in which, on exciting occasions, oaths were not spared. The two immediate grandmothers were, in the best sense, superior women. The maternal one (Amy Williams before marriage) was a Friend, or Quakeress, of sweet, sensible character, housewifely proclivities, and deeply intuitive and spiritual. The other, (Hannah Brush,) was an equally noble, perhaps stronger character, lived to be very old, had quite a family of sons, was a natural lady, was in early life a school- mistress, and had great solidity of mind. W. W. himself makes much of the women of his ancestry." The same. Out from these arrieres of persons and scenes, I was born May 31, 1819. And now to dwell awhile on the locality itself as the successive growth-stages of my infancy, childhood, youth, and manhood were all pass'd on Long Island, which I sometimes feel as if I had incorporated. I roam'd, as boy and man, and have lived in nearly all parts, from Brooklyn to Montauk point. PAUMANOK, AND MY LIFE ON IT AS A CHILD AND YOUNG MAN. Worth fully and particularly investigating, indeed, this Paumanok (to give the spot its aboriginal name,*) stretching * " Paumanok (or Paumanake, or Paumanack, the Indian name of Long Island,) over a hundred miles long ; shaped like a fish plenty 2 2 SPECIMEN DA YS east through Kings, Queens and Suffolk counties, 120 miles altogether on the north Long Island sound, a beautiful, varied and picturesque series of inlets, "necks" and sea- like expansions, for a hundred miles to Orient point. On the ocean side the great south bay dotted with countless hummocks, mostly small, some quite large, occasionally long bars of sand out two hundred rods to a mile-and-a-half from the shore. While now and then, as at Rockaway and far east along the Hamptons, the beach makes right on the island, the sea dashing up without intervention. Several light-houses on the shores east ; a long history of wrecks tragedies, some even of late years. As a youngster, I was in the atmosphere and traditions of many of these wrecks of one or two almost an observer. Off Hempstead beach for example, was the loss of the ship "Mexico" in 1840, (alluded to in "the Sleepers" in L. of G.) And at Hampton, some years later, the destruction of the brig " Elizabeth," a fearful affair, in one of the worst winter gales, where Margaret Fuller went down, with her husband and child. Inside the outer bars or beach this south bay is every- where comparatively shallow ; of cold winters all thick ice on the surface. As a boy I often went forth with a chum or two, on those frozen fields, with hand-sled, axe and eel-spear, after messes of eels. We would cut holes in the of sea shore, sandy, stormy, uninviting, the horizon boundless, the air too strong for invalids, the bays a wonderful resort for aquatic birds, the south-side meadows cover'd with salt hay, the soil of the island generally tough, but good for the locust-tree, the apple orchard, and the blackberry, and with numberless springs of the sweetest water in the world. Years ago, among the bay-men a strong, wild race, now extinct, or rather entirely changed a native of Long Island was called a Paumanackcr, or Creole- Paumanackcr. " John Burroughs. TN AMERICA. 23 ice, sometimes striking quite an eel-bonanza, and tilling our baskets with great, fat, sweet, white-meated fellows. The scenes, the ice, drawing the hand-sled, cutting holes, spear- ing the eels, &c., were of course just such fun as is dearest to boyhood. The shores of this bay, winter and summer, and my doings there in early life, are woven all through L. of G. One sport I was very fond of was to go on a bay- party in summer to gather sea-gull's eggs. (The gulls lay two or three eggs, more than half the size of hen's eggs, right on the sand, and leave the sun's heat to hatch them.) The eastern end of Long Island, the Peconic bay region, I knew quite well too saiFd more than once round Shelter island, and down to Montauk spent many an hour on Turtle hill by the old light-house, on the extreme point, looking out over the ceaseless roll of the Atlantic. I used to like to go down there and fraternize with the blue- fishers, or the annual squads of sea-bass takers. Sometimes, along Montauk peninsula, (it is some 15 miles long, and good grazing,) met the strange, unkempt, half -barbarous herdsmen, at that time living there entirely aloof from society or civilization, in charge, on those rich pasturages, of vast droves of horses, kine or sheep, own'd by farmers of the eastern towns. Sometimes, too, the few remaining Indians, or half-breeds, at that period left on Montauk peninsula, but now I believe altogether extinct. More in the middle of the island were the spreading Herapstead plains, then (1830-'40) quite prairie-like, open, uninhabited, rather sterile, cover'd with kill-calf and huckleberry bushes, yet plenty of fair pasture for the cattle, mostly milch-cows, who fed there by hundreds, even thou- sands, and at evening, (the plains too were own'd by the towns, and this was the use of them in common,) might be 24 SPECIMEN DA YS seen taking their way home, branching off regularly in the right places. I have often been out on the edges of these plains toward sundown, and can yet recall in fancy the interminable cow-processions, and hear the music of the tin or copper bells clanking far or near, and breathe the cool of the sweet and slightly aromatic evening air, and note the sunset. Through the same region of the island, but further east, extended wide central tracts of pine and scrub-oak, (char- coal was largely made here,) monotonous and sterile. But many a good day or half-day did I have, wandering through those solitary cross-roads, inhaling the peculiar and wild aroma. Here, and all along the island and its shores, I spent intervals many years, all seasons, sometimes riding, sometimes boating, but generally afoot, (I was always then a good walker,) absorbing fields, shores, marine incidents, characters, the bay-men, farmers, pilots always had a plentiful acquaintance with the latter, and with fishermen went every summer on sailing trips always liked the bare sea-beach, south side, and have some of my happiest hours on it to this day. As I write, the whole experience comes back to me after the lapse of forty and more years the soothing rustle of the waves, and the saline smell boyhood's times, the clam- digging, barefoot, and with trowsers roll'd up hauling down the creek the perfume of the sedge-meadows the hay-boat, and the chowder and fishing excursions ; or, of later years, little voyages down and out New York bay, in the pilot boats. Those same later years, also, while living in Brooklyn, (1836-'oO,) I went regularly every week in the mild seasons down to Coney island, at that time a long, bare unfrequented shore, which I had all to myself, and where I loved, after bathing, to race up and down the hard IN AMERICA. 25 sand, and declaim Homer or Shakspere to the surf and sea-gulls by the hour. But I am getting ahead too rapidly, and must keep more in my traces. MY FIRST READING. LAFAYETTE. From 1824 to '28 our family lived in Brooklyn in Front, Cranberry and Johnson streets. In the latter my father built a nice house for a home, and afterwards another in Tillary street. We occupied them, one after the other, but they were mortgaged, and we lost them. I yet remember Lafayette's visit.* Most of these years I went to the public schools. It must have been about 1829 or '30 that I went with my father and mother to hear Elias Hicks preach in a ball-room on Brooklyn heights. At about the same time employ 'd as a boy in an office, lawyers', father and two sons, Clarke's, Fulton street, near Orange. I had a nice desk and window-nook to myself ; Edward C. kindly help'd me at my handwriting and composition, and, (the signal event of my life up to that time,) subscribed for me to a big circulating library. For a time I now revel'd in * "On the visit of General Lafayette to this country, in 1824, he came over to Brooklyn in state, and rode through the city. The children of the schools turn'd out to join in the welcome. An edifice for a free public library for youths was just then commencing, and Lafayette consented to stop on his way and lay the corner-stone. Numerous children arriving on the ground, where a huge irregular excavation for the building was already dug, surrounded with heaps of rough stone, several gentlemen assisted in lifting the children to safe or convenient spots to see the ceremony. Among the rest, Lafayette, also helping the children, took up the five-year-old Walt Whitman, and pressing the child a moment to his breast, and giving him a kiss, handed him down to a safe spot in the excavation." John Burroughs. 26 SPECIMEN DA YS romance-reading of all kinds; first, the " Arabian Nights," all the volumes, an amazing treat. Then, with sorties in very many other directions, took in Walter Scott's novels, one after another, and his poetry, (and continue to enjoy novels and poetry to this day.) PRINTING OFFICE. OLD BROOKLYN. After about two years went to work in a weekly news- paper and printing office, to learn the trade. The paper was the " Long Island Patriot," owned by S. E. Clements, who was also postmaster. An old printer in the office, William Hartshorne, a revolutionary character, who had seen Washington, was a special friend of mine, and I had many a talk with him about long past times. The apprentices, including myself, boarded with his grand- daughter. I used occasionally to go out riding with the boss, who was very kind to us boys ; Sundays he took us all to a great old rough, fortress-looking stone church, on Joralemon street, near where the Brooklyn city hall now is (at that time broad fields and country roads everywhere around.*) Afterward I work'd on the "Long Island Star,'' Alden Spooner's paper. My father all these years pursuing his trade as carpenter and builder, with varying fortune. There was a growing family of children eight of us my * Of the Brooklyn of that time (1830-40) hardly anything remains, except the lines of the old streets. The population was then between ten and twelve thousand. For a mile Fulton street was lined with magnificent elm trees. The character of the place was thoroughly rural. As a sample of comparative values, it may be mention'd that twenty-five acres of what is now the most costly part of the city, bounded by Flatbush and Fulton avenues, were then bought by Mr. Parmentier, a French emigrt, for $4000. Who remembers the old places as they were I Who remembers the old citizens of that time ? IN AMERICA. 27 brother Jesse the oldest, myself the second, my dear sisters Mary and Hannah Louisa, my brothers Andrew, George, Thomas Jefferson, and then my youngest brother, Edward, born 1835, and always badly crippled, as I am myself of late years. GROWTH HEALTH WORK. I developed (1833-4-5) into a healthy, strong youth (grew too fast, though, was nearly as big as a man at 15 or 16.) Our family at this period moved back to the country, my dear mother very ill for a long time, but recover'd. All these years I was down Long Island more or less every summer, now east, now west, sometimes months at a stretch. At 16, 17, and so on, was fond of debating societies, and had an active membership with them, off and on, in Brooklyn and one or two country towns on the island. A most omnivorous novel-reader, these and later years, devoured everything I could get. Fond of the theatre, also, in New York, went whenever I could sometimes witnessing fine performances. 1836-7, work'd as compositor in printing offices in New York city. Then, when little more than eighteen, and for a while afterwards, went to teaching country schools down in Queens and Suffolk counties, Long Island, and " boarded round." (This latter I consider one of my best Among the former were Smith & Wood's, Coe Downing's, and other public houses at the ferry, the old Ferry itself, Love lane, the Heights as then, the Wallabout with the wooden bridge, and the road out beyond Fulton street to the old toll-gate. Among the latter were the majestic and genial General Jeremiah Johnson, with others, Gabriel Furman, Rev. E. M. Johnson, Mr. Pierrepont, Mr. Joralemon, Samuel Willoughby, Jonathan Trotter, George Hall, Cyrus P. Smith, N. B. Morse, John Dikeman, Adrian Hegeinan, William Udall, and old Mr. Duflon, with his military garden. 28 SPECIMEN DA YS experiences and deepest lessons in human nature behind the scenes, and in the masses.) In '39, '40, I started and publish'd a weekly paper in my native town, Huntington. Then returning to New York city and Brooklyn, work'd on as printer and writer, mostly prose, but an occasional shy at " poetry." MY PASSION FOR FERRIES. Living in Brooklyn or New York city from this time forward, my life, then, and still more the following years, was curiously identified with Fulton ferry, already becom- ing the greatest of its sort in the world for general importance, volume, variety, rapidity, and picturesqueness. Almost daily, later, ('50 to '60,) I cross'd on the boats, often up in the pilot-houses where I could get a full sweep, absorbing shows, accompaniments, surroundings. What oceanic currents, eddies, underneath the great tides of humanity also, with ever-shifting movements. Indeed, I have always had a passion for ferries ; to me they afford inimitable, streaming, never-failing, living poems. The river and bay scenery, all about New York island, any time of a fine day the hurrying, splashing sea- tides the changing panorama of steamers, all sizes, often a string of big ones outward bound to distant ports the myriads of white-sail'd schooners, sloops, skiffs, and the marvellously beautiful yachts the majestic sound boats as they rounded the Battery and came along towards 5, afternoon, eastward bound the prospect off towards Staten island, or down the Narrows, or the other way up the Hudson what refresh- ment of spirit such sights and experiences gave me years ago (and many a time since.) My old pilot friends, the Bal- sirs, Johnny Cole, Ira Smith, William White, and my young ferry friend, Tom Gere how well I remember them all. IN AMERICA. 29 BROADWAY SIGHTS. Besides Fulton ferry, off and on for years, I knew and frequented Broadway that noted avenue of New York's crowded and mixed humanity, and of so many notables- Here I saw, during those times, Andrew Jackson, Webster, Clay, Seward, Martin Yan Buren, filibuster Walker, Kossuth, Fitz Greene Halleck, Bryant, the Prince of Wales, Charles Dickens, the first Japanese ambassadors, and lots of other celebrities of the time. Always something novel or inspiriting ; yet mostly to me the hurrying and vast amplitude of those never-ending human currents. I remember seeing James Fenimore Cooper in a court-room in Chambers street, back of the city hall, where he was carrying on a law case (I think it was a charge of libel he had brought against some one.) I also remember seeing Edgar A. Poe, and having a short interview with him, (it must have been in 1845 or 5 6,) in his office, second story of a corner building, (Duane or Pearl street.) He was editor and owner or part owner of " the Broadway Journal." The visit was about a piece of mine he had published. Poe was very cordial, in a quiet way, appear' d well in person, dress, &c. I have a distinct and pleasing remembrance of his looks, voice, manner and matter ; very kindly and human, but subdued, perhaps a little jaded. The years 1846, '47, and there along, see me still in New York city, working as writer and printer, having my usual good health, and a good time generally. OMNIBUS JAUNTS AND DRIVERS. One phase of those days must by no means go unrecorded namely, the Broadway omnibuses, with their drivers. The vehicles still (I write this paragraph in 1881) give a portion of the character of Broadway- the Fifth avenue, 30 SPECIMEN DA YS Madison avenue, and Twenty-third street lines yet running. But the flush days of the old Broadway stages, character- istic and copious, are over. The Yellow-birds, the Red-birds, the original Broadway, the Fourth avenue, the Knicker- bocker, and a dozen others of twenty or thirty years ago, are all gone. And the men specially identified with them, and giving vitality and meaning to them the drivers a strange, natural, quick-eyed and wondrous race (not only Rabelais and Cervantes would have gloated upon them, but Homer and Shakspere would) how well I remember them, and must here give a word about them. How many hours, forenoons and afternoons how many exhilarating night-times I have had perhaps June or July, in cooler air riding the whole length of Broadway, listening to some yarn, (and the most vivid yarns ever spun, and the rarest mimicry) or perhaps I declaiming some stormy passage from Julius Caesar or Richard, (you could roar as loudly as you chose in that heavy, dense, uninterrupted street-bass.) Yes, I knew all the drivers then, Broadway Jack, Dress maker, Balky Bill, George Storms, Old Elephant, his brother Young Elephant (who came afterward,) Tippy, Pop Rice, Big Frank, Yellow Joe, Pete Callahan, Patsy Dee, and dozens more ; for there were hundreds. They had immense qualities, largely animal eating, drinking, women great personal pride, in their way perhaps a few slouches here and there, but I should have trusted the general run of them, in their simple good-will and honor, under all circumstances. Not only for comradeship, and sometimes affection great studies I found them also. (I suppose the critics will laugh heartily, but the influence of those Broadway omnibus jaunts and drivers and declamations and escapades undoubtedly enter'd into the gestation of " Leaves of Grass. ") IN AMERICA. 31 PLAYS AND OPERAS TOO. And certain actors and singers, had a good deal to do with the business. All through these years, off and on, I frequented the old Park, the Bowery, Broadway and Chatham-square theatres, and the Italian operas at Cham- bers-street, Astor-place or the Battery many seasons was on the free list, writing for papers even as quite a youth. The old Park theatre what names, reminiscences, the words bring back ! Placide, Clarke, Mrs. Vernon, Fisher, Clara F., Mrs. Wood, Mrs. Seguin, Ellen Tree, Hackett, the younger Kean, Macready, Mrs. Richardson, Rice singers, tragedians, comedians. What perfect acting ! Henry Placide in " Napoleon's Old Guard " or " Grand- father Whitehead," or "the Provoked Husband" of Gibber, with Fanny Kemble as Lady Townley or Sheridan Knowles in his own " Virginius " or inimitable Power in " Born to Good Luck." These, and many more, the years of youth and onward. Fanny Kemble name to conjure up great mimic scenes withal perhaps the greatest. I remember well her rendering of Bianca in " Fazio/' and Marianna in " the Wife." Nothing finer did ever stage exhibit the veterans of all nations said so, and my boyish heart and head felt it in every minute cell. The lady was just matured, strong, better than merely beautiful, born from the footlights, had had three years' practice in London and through the British towns, and then she came to give America that young maturity and roseate power in all their noon, or rather forenoon, flush. It was my good luck to see her nearly every night she play'd at the old Park certainly in all her principal characters. I heard, these years, well render'd, all the Italian and other operas in vogue, " Sonnambula," "the Puritans," 32 SPECIMEN DA YS "Der Freischutz," "Huguenots," < l Fille d'Regiment," "Faust," "Etoile clu Nord," "Poliuto," and others. Verdi's "Ernani," " Rigoletto," and " Trovatore," with Domiizetti's "Lucia" or " Favorita " or " Lucrezia," and Auber's " Massaniello," or Rossini's "William Tell" and " Gazza Ladra," were among my special enjoyments. I heard Alboni every time she sang in New York and vicinity also Grisi, the tenor Mario, and the baritone Badiali, the finest in the world. This musical passion follow'd my theatrical one. As boy or young man I had seen, (reading them carefully the day beforehand,) quite all Shakspere's acting dramas, play'd wonderfully well. Even yet I cannot conceive anything finer than old Booth in " Richard Third," or " Lear," (I don't know which was best,) or lago, (or Pescara, or Sir Giles Overreach, to go outside of Shakspere) or Tom Hamblin in " Macbeth " or old Clarke, either as the ghost in " Hamlet," or as Prospero in the " Tempest," with Mrs. Austin as Ariel, and Peter Etchings as Caliban. Then other dramas, and fine players in them, Forrest as Metamora or Damon or Brutus John R. Scott as Tom Cringle or Rolla or Charlotte Cushman's Lady Gay Spanker in " London Assurance." Then of some years later, at Castle Garden, Battery, I yet recall the splendid seasons of the Havana musical troupe under Maretzek the fine band, the cool sea-breezes, the unsurpass'd vocalism Steffanone, Bosio, Truffi, Marini in "Marino Faliero," "Don Pasquale," or " Favorita." No better playing or singing ever in New York. It was here too I afterward heard Jenny Lind. (The Battery its past associations what tales those old trees and walks and sea-walls could tell !) IN AMERICA. 33 THROUGH EIGHT YEARS. In 1848, '49, I was occupied as editor of the "daily Eagle " newspaper, in Brooklyn. The latter year went off on a leisurely journey and working expedition (my brother Jeff with me) through all the middle States, and down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Lived awhile in New Orleans, and work'd there on the editorial staff of " daily Crescent " newspaper. After a time plodded back northward, up the Mississippi, and around to, and by way of the great lakes, Michigan, Huron, and Erie, to Niagara falls and lower Canada, finally returning through central New York and down the Hudson ; traveling altogether probably 50CO miles this trip, to and fro. '51, '53, occupied in house- building in Brooklyn. (For a little of the first part of that time in printing a daily and weekly paper, " the Freeman.") '55, lost my dear father this year by death. Commenced putting " Leaves of Grass " to press for good, at the job printing office of my friends, the brothers Rome, in Brooklyn, after many MS. doings and undoings (I had great trouble in leaving out the stock " poetical " touches, but succeeded at last.) I am now (1856-7) passing through my 37th year. SOURCES OF CHARACTER RESULTS 1860. To sum up the foregoing from the outset (and, of course, far, far more unrecorded,) I estimate three leading sources and formative stamps to my own character, now solidified for good or bad, and its subsequent literary and other out-growth the maternal nativity-stock brought hither from far-away Netherlands, for one, (doubtless the best) the subterranean tenacity and central bony structure (obstinacy, wilfulness) which I get from my paternal 274 34 SPECIMEN DA YS English elements, for another and the combination of my Long Island birth-spot, sea-shores, childhood's scenes, absorptions, with teeming Brooklyn and New York with, I suppose, my experiences afterward in the secession outbreak, for the third. For, in 1862, startled by news that my brother George, an officer in the 51st New York volunteers, had been seriously wounded (first Fredericksburg battle, December 13th,) I hurriedly went down to the field of war in Virginia. But I must go back a little. OPENING OF THE SECESSION WAR. News of the attack on fort Sumter and the flag at Charles- ton harbor, S. 0., was receiv'd in New York city late at night (13th April, 1861,) and was immediately sent out in extras of the newspapers. I had been to the opera in Fourteenth street that night, and after the performance was walking down Broadway toward twelve o'clock, on my way to Brooklyn, when I heard in the distance the loud cries of the newsboys, who came presently tearing and yelling up the street, rushing from side to side even more furiously than usual. I bought an extra and cross'd to the Metropolitan hotel (Niblo's) where the great lamps were still brightly blazing, and, with a crowd of others, who gather'd impromptu, read the news, which was evidently authentic. For the benefit of some who had no papers, one of us read the telegram aloud, while all listen'd silently and attentively. No remark was made by any of the crowd, which had increas'd to thirty or forty, but all stood a minute or two, I remember, before they dispersed. I can almost see them there now, under the lamps at midnight again. IN AMERICA. 35 NATIONAL UPRISING AND VOLUNTEERING. I have said somewhere that the three Presidentiads preceding 1861 show'd how the weakness and wickedness of rulers are just as eligible here in America under republican, as in Europe under dynastic influences. But what can I say of that prompt and splendid wrestling with secession slavery, the arch-enemy personified, the instant he unmistakably show'd his face 1 The volcanic upheaval of the nation, after that firing on the flag at Charleston, proved for certain something which had been previously in great doubt, and at once substantially settled the question of disunion. In my judgment it will remain as the grandest and most encouraging spectacle yet vouchsafed in any age, old or new, to political progress and democracy. It was not for what came to the surface merely though that was important but what it indicated below, which was of eternal importance. Down in the abysms of New World humanity there had form'd and harden'd a primal hard-pan of national Union will, determin'd and in the majority, refusing to be tamper'd with or argued against, confronting all emergencies, and capable at any time of bursting all surface bonds, and breaking out like an earthquake. It is, indeed, the best lesson of the century, or of America, and it is a mighty privilege to have been part of it. (Two great spectacles, immortal proofs of democracy, uriequalPd in all the history of the past, are furnish'd by the secession war one at the beginning, the other at its close. Those are, the general, voluntary, arm'd upheaval, and the peaceful and harmonious disband- ing of the armies in the summer of 1865.) 36 SPECIMEN DA YS CONTEMPTUOUS FEELING. Even after the bombardment of Sumter, however, the gravity of the revolt, and the power and will of the slave States for a strong and continued military resistance to national authority, were not at all realized at the North, except by a few. Nine-tenths of the people of the free States look'd upon the rebellion, as started in South Carolina, from a feeling one-half of contempt, and the other half composed of anger and incredulity. It was not thought it would be join'd in by Virginia, North Carolina, or Georgia. A great and cautious national official predicted that it would blow over " in sixty days," and folks generally believ'd the prediction. I remember talking about it on a Fulton ferry-boat with the Brooklyn mayor, who said he only " hoped the Southern fire-eaters would commit some overt act of resistance, as they would then be at once so effectually squelch'd, we would never hear of secession again but he was afraid they never would have the pluck to really do anything." I remember, too, that a couple of companies of the Thirteenth Brooklyn, who rendezvou'd at the city armory, and started thence as thirty days' men, were all provided with pieces of rope, conspicuously tied to their musket-barrels, with which to bring back each man a prisoner from the audacious South, to be led in a noose, on our men's early and triumphant return ! BATTLE OF BULL RUN, JULY, 1861. All this sort of feeling was destin'd to be arrested and revers'd by a terrible shock the battle of first Bull Run certainly, as we now know it, one of the most singular fights on record. (All battles, and their results, are far more matters of accident than is generally thought ; but IN AMERICA. 37 this was throughout a casualty, a chance. Each side supposed it had won, till the last moment. One had, in point of fact, just the same right to be routed as the other. By a fiction, or series of fictions, the national forces at the last moment exploded in a panic and fled from the field.) The defeated troops commenced pouring into Washington over the Long Bridge at daylight on Monday, 22d day drizzling all through with rain. The Saturday and Sunday of the battle (20th, 21st,) had been parch'd and hot to an extreme the dust, the grime and smoke, in layers, sweated in, follow'd by other layers again sweated in, absorb'd by those excited sou)s their clothes all saturated with the clay-powder filling the air stirr'd up everywhere on the dry roads and trodden fields by the regiments, swarming wagons, artillery, within ten yards of the front of the house, I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, &c., a full load for a one-horse cart. Several dead bodies lie near, each cover'd with its brown woolen blanket. In the door-yard, towards the river, are fresh graves, mostly of officers, their names on pieces of barrel-staves or broken boards, stuck in the dirt. (Most of these bodies were subsequently taken up and transported north to their friends.) The large mansion is quite crowded upstairs and down, everything impromptu, no system, all bad enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done ; all the wounds pretty bad, some fright- ful, the men in their old clothes, unclean and bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel soldiers and officers, pris- oners. One, a Mississippian, a captain, hit badly in leg, I talk'd with some time ; he ask'd me for papers, which I gave him. (I saw him three months afterward in Wash- ington, with his leg amputated, doing well.) I went through the rooms, downstairs and up. Some of the men were dying. I had nothing to give at that visit, but wrote a few letters to folks home, mothers, &c. Also talk'd to three or four, who seem'd most susceptible to it, and needing it. AFTER FIRST FREDERICKSBURG. December 23 to 31. The results of the late battle are exhibited everywhere about here in thousands of cases, (hundreds die every day,) in the camp, brigade, and division hospitals. These are merely tents, and sometimes IN AMERICA. 43 very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, lucky if their blankets are spread on layers of pine or hemlock twigs, or small leaves. No cots ; seldom even a mattress. It is pretty cold. The ground is frozen hard, and there is occasional snow. I go around from one case to another. I do not see that I do much good to these wounded and dying; but I cannot leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds on to me convulsively, and I do what I can for him ; at any rate, stop with him and sit near him for hours, if he wishes it. Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours through the camps, talking with the men, &c. Sometimes at night among the groups around the fires, in their she- bang enclosures of bushes. These are curious shows, full of characters and groups. I soon get acquainted anywhere in camp, with officers or men, and am always well used. Sometimes I go down on picket with the regiments I know best. As to rations, the army here at present seems to be tolerably well supplied, and the men have enough, such as it is, mainly salt pork and hard tack. Most of the regi- ments lodge in the flimsy little shelter-tents. A few have built themselves huts of logs and mud, with fire-places. BACK TO WASHINGTON. January, '63. Left camp at Falmouth, with some wounded, a few days since, and came here by Aquia creek railroad, and so on government steamer up the Potomac. Many wounded were with us on the cars and boat. The cars were just common platform ones. The railroad journey of ten or twelve miles was made mostly before sunrise. The soldiers guarding the road came out from their tents or shebangs of bushes with rumpled hair and half-awake look. 44 SPECIMEN DA YS Those on duty were walking their posts, some on banks over us, others down far below the level of the track. I saw large cavalry camps off the road. At Aquia creek landing were numbers of wounded going north. While I waited some three hours, I went around among them. Several wanted word sent home" to parents, brothers, wives, &c., which I did for them, (by mail the next day from Washington.) On the boat I had my hands full. One poor fellow died going up. I am now remaining in and around Washington, daily visiting the hospitals. Am much in Patent-office, Eighth street, H street, Armory -square, and others. Am now able to do a little good, having money, (as almoner of others home,) and getting experience. To-day, Sunday afternoon and till nine in the evening, visited Campbell hospital ; attended specially to one case in ward 1, very sick with pleurisy and typhoid fever, young man, farmer's son, D. F. Russell, company E, 60th New York, downhearted and feeble ; a long time before he would take any interest ; wrote a letter home to his mother, in Malone, Franklin county, N. Y., at his request ; gave him some fruit and one or two other gifts ; envelop'd and directed his letter, &c. Then went thoroughly through ward 6, observed every case in the ward, without, I think, missing one ; gave perhaps from twenty to thirty persons, each one some little gift, such as oranges, apples, sweet crackers, figs, &c. Thursday, Jan. 21. Devoted the main part of the day to Armory-square hospital; went pretty thoroughly through wards F, G, H, and I ; some fifty cases in each ward. In ward F supplied the men throughout with writing paper and stamp'd envelope each ; distributed in small portions, to proper subjects, a large jar of first-rate preserv'd berries, which had been donated to me by a lady her own cooking. IN AMERICA. 45 Found several cases I thought good subjects for small suras of money, which I furnish'd. (The wounded men often come up broke, and it helps their spirits to have even the small sum I give them.) My paper and envelopes all gone, but distributed a good lot of amusing reading matter ; also, as I thought judicious, tobacco, oranges, apples, &c. Inter- esting cases in ward I; Charles Miller, bed 19, company D, 53d Pennsylvania, is only sixteen years of age, very bright, courageous boy, left leg amputated below the knee ; next bed to him, another young lad very sick ; gave each appropriate gifts. In the bed above also, amputation of the left leg ; gave him a little jar of raspberries ; bed 1, this ward, gave a small sum ; also to a soldier on crutches, sit- ting on his bed near... (I am more and more surprised at the very great proportion of youngsters from fifteen to twenty-one in the army. I afterwards found a still greater proportion among the southerners.) Evening, same day, went to see D. F. R., before alluded to ; found him remarkably changed for the better ; up and dress'd quite a triumph; he afterwards got well, and went back to his regiment. Distributed in the wards a quantity of note-paper, and forty or fifty stamp'd envelopes, of which I had recruited my stock, and the men were much in need. FIFTY HOURS LEFT WOUNDED ON THE FIELD. Here is a case of a soldier I found among the crowded cots in the Patent-office. He likes to have some one to talk to, and we will listen to him. He got badly hit in his leg and side at Fredericksburgh that eventful Saturday, 13th of December. He lay the succeeding two days and nights helpless on the field, between the city and those grim terraces of batteries ; his company and regiment had 46 SPECIMEN DA YS been eompell'd to leave him to his fate. To make matters worse, it happen'd he lay with his head slightly down hill, and could not help himself. At the end of some fifty hours he was brought off, with other wounded, under a flag of truce. I ask him how the rebels treated him as he lay during those two days and nights within reach of them whether they came to him whether they abused him 1 He answers that several of the rebels, soldiers and others, came to him at one time and another. A couple of them, who were together, spoke roughly and sarcastically, but nothing worse. One middle-aged man, however, who seem'd to be moving around the field, among the dead and wounded, for benevolent purposes, came to him in a way he will never forget ; treated our soldier kindly, bound up his wounds, cheer'd him, gave him a couple of biscuits and a drink of whiskey and water ; asked him if he could eat some beef. This good secesh, however, did not change our soldier's position, for it might have caused the blood to burst from the wounds, clotted and stagnated. Our soldier is from Pennsylvania ; has had a pretty severe time ; the wounds proved to be bad ones. But he retains a good heart, and is at present on the gain. (It is not uncommon for the men to remain on the field this way, one, two, or even four or five days.) HOSPITAL SCENES AND PERSONS. Letter Writing. When eligible, I encourage the men to write, and myself, when called upon, write all sorts of letters for them, (including love letters, very tender ones.) Almost as I reel off these memoranda, I write for a new patient to his wife. M. de F., of the 17th Connecticut, company H, has just come up (February 17th) from Wind- mill point, and is received in ward H, Armory-square. He IN AMERICA. 47 is an intelligent looking man, has a foreign accent, black- eyed and hair'd, a Hebraic appearance. Wants a tele- graphic message sent to his wife, New Canaan, Conn. I agree to send the message but to make things sure I also sit down and write the wife a letter, and despatch it to the post-office immediately, as he fears she will come on, and he does not wish her to, as he will surely get well. Saturday, January 30th. Afternoon, visited Campbell hospital. Scene of cleaning up the ward, and giving the men all clean clothes through the ward (6) the patients dressing or being dress'd the naked upper half of the bodies the good-humor and fun the shirts, drawers, sheets of beds, &c., and the general fixing up for Sunday. Gave J. L. 50 cents. Wednesday, February 4th. Visited Armory-square hospital, went pretty thoroughly through wards E and D. Supplied paper and envelopes to all who wish'd as usual, found plenty of men who needed those articles. Wrote letters. Saw and talk'd with two or three members of the Brooklyn 14th regt. A poor fellow in ward D, with a fearful wound in a fearful condition, was having some loose splinters of bone taken from the neighborhood of the wound. The operation was long, and one of great pain yet, after it was well commenced, the soldier bore it in silence. He sat up, propp'd was much wasted had lain a long time quiet in one position (not for days only but weeks,) a bloodless, brown-skinn'd face, with eyes full of determination belong'd to a New York regiment. There was an unusual cluster of surgeons, medical cadets, nurses ; etc., around his bed I thought the whole thing was done with tenderness, and done well. In one case, the wife sat by the side of her husband, his sickness typhoid fever, pretty bad. In another, by the side of her son, a mother 4$ SPECIMEN DA YS she told me she had seven children, and this was the youngest. (A fine, kind, healthy, gentle mother, good- looking, not very old, with a cap on her head, and dress'd like home what a charm it gave to the whole ward.) I liked the woman nurse in ward E I noticed how she sat a long time by a poor fellow who just had, that morning, in addition to his other sickness, bad hemorrhage she gently assisted him, reliev'd him of the blood, holding a cloth to his mouth, as he coughed it up he was so weak he could only just turn his head over on the pillow. One young New York man, with a bright, handsome face, had been lying several months from a most disagree- able wound, receiv'd at Bull Run. A bullet had shot him right through the bladder, hitting him front, low in the belly, and coming out back. He had suffer'd much the water came out of the wound, by slow but steady quantities, for many weeks so that he lay almost constantly in a sort of puddle and there were other disagreeable circumstances. He was of good heart, however. At present comparatively comfortable, had a bad throat, was delighted with a stick of horehound candy I gave him, with one or two other trifles. PATENT-OFFICE HOSPITAL. February 23. I must not let the great hospital at the Patent-office pass away without some mention. A few weeks ago the vast area of the second story of that noblest of Washington buildings was crowded close with rows of sick, badly wounded and dying soldiers. They were placed in three very large apartments. I went there many times. It was a strange, solemn, and, with all its features of suffering and death, a sort of fascinating sight. I go sometimes at night to soothe and relieve particular cases. IN AMERICA. 49 Two of the immense apartments are filFd with high and ponderous glass cases, crowded with models in miniature of every kind of utensil, machine or invention, it ever enter'd into the mind of man to conceive ; and with curiosities and foreign presents. Between these cases are lateral openings, perhaps eight feet wide and quite deep, and in these were placed the sick, besides a great long double row of them up and down through the middle of the hall. Many of them were very bad cases, wounds and amputations. Then there was a gallery running above the hall in which there were beds also. It was, indeed, a curious scene, especially at night when lit up. The glass cases, the beds, the forms lying there, the gallery above, and the marble pavement under foot the suffering, and the fortitude to bear it in various degrees occasionally, from some, the groan that could not be repress'd sometimes a poor fellow dying, with emaciated face and glassy eye, the nurse by his side, the doctor also there, but no friend, no relative such were the sights but lately in the Patent-office. (The wounded have since been removed from there, and it is now vacant again.) THE WHITE HOUSE BY MOONLIGHT. February 24tfA. A spell of fine soft weather. I wander about a good deal, sometimes at night under the moon. To-night took a long look at the President's house. The white portico the palace-like, tall, round columns, spotless as snow the walls also the tender and soft moonlight, flooding the pale marble, and making peculiar faint languishing shades, not shadows everywhere a soft trans- parent hazy, thin, blue moon-lace, hanging in the air the brilliant and extra-plentiful clusters of gas, on and around the facade, columns, portico, &c. everything so white, so 275 50 SPECIMEN DA YS marbly pure and dazzling, yet soft the White House of future poems, and of dreams and dramas, there in the soft and copious moon the gorgeous front, in the trees, under the lustrous flooding moon, full of reality, full of illusion the forms of the trees, leafless, silent, in trunk and myriad- angles of branches, under the stars and sky the White House of the land, and of beauty and night sentries at the gates, and by the portico, silent, pacing there in blue overcoats stopping you not at all, but eyeing you with sharp eyes, whichever way you move. AN ARMY HOSPITAL WARD. Let me specialize a visit I made to the collection of barrack-like one-story edifices, Campbell hospital, out on the flats, at the end of the then horse railway route, on Seventh street. There is a long building appropriated to each ward. Let us go into ward 6. It contains to-day, I should judge, eighty or a hundred patients, half sick, half wounded. The edifice is nothing but boards, well white- wash'd inside, and the usual slender-framed iron bedsteads, narrow and plain. You walk down the central passage, with a row on either side, their feet towards you, and their heads to the wall. There are fires in large stoves, and the prevailing white of the walls is relieved by some ornaments, stars, circles, &c., made of evergreens. The view of the whole edifice and occupants can be taken at once, for there is no partition. You may hear groans or other sounds of unendurable suffering from two or three of the cots, but in the main there is quiet almost a painful absence of demonstration ; but the pallid face, the dulPd eye, and the moisture on the lip, are demonstration enough. Most of these sick or hurt are evidently young fellows from the IN AMERICA. 51 country, farmers' sons, and such like. Look at the fine large frames, the bright and broad countenances, and the many yet lingering proofs of strong constitution and physique. Look at the patient and mute manner of our American wounded as they lie in such a sad collection ; representatives from all New England, and from New York, and New Jersey, and Pennsylvania indeed from all the States and all the cities largely from the west. Most of them are entirely without friends or acquaintances here no familiar face, and hardly a word of judicious sympathy or cheer, through their sometimes long and tedious sickness, or the pangs of aggravated wounds. A CONNECTICUT CASE. This young man in bed 25 is H. D. B., of the 27th Connecticut, company B. His folks live at Northford, near New Haven. Though not more than twenty-one, or thereabouts, he has knocked much around the world, on sea and land, and has seen some fighting on both. When I first saw him he was very sick, with no appetite. He declined offers of money said he did not need anything. As I was quite anxious to do something, he confess'd that he had a hankering for a good home-made rice pudding thought he could relish it better than anything. At this time his stomach was very weak. (The doctor, whom I consulted, said nourishment would do him more good than anything ; but things in the hospital, though better than usual, revolted him.) I soon procured B. his rice-pudding. A Washington lady, (Mrs. O'O.), hearing his wish, made the pudding herself, and I took it up to him the next day. He subsequently told me he lived upon it for three or four days. This B. is a good sample of the American eastern 52 SPECIMEN DA YS young man the typical Yankee. I took a fancy to him, and gave him a nice pipe, for a keepsake. He received afterwards a box of things from home, and nothing would do but I must take dinner with him, which I did, and a very good one it was. TWO BROOKLYN BOYS. Here in this same ward are two young men from Brooklyn, members of the 51st New York. I had known both the two as young lads at home, so they seem near to me. One of them, J. L., lies there with an amputated arm, the stump healing pretty well. (I saw him lying on the ground at Fredericksburgh last December, all bloody, just after the arm was taken off. He was very phlegmatic about it, munching away at a cracker in the remaining hand made no fuss.) He will recover, and thinks and talks yet of meeting the Johnny Rebs. A SECESH BRAVE. The grand soldiers are not comprised in those of one side, any more than the other. Here is a sample of an unknown southerner, a lad of seventeen. At the War department, a few days ago, I witness'd a presentation of captured flags to the Secretary. Among others a soldier named Gant, of the 104th Ohio volunteers, presented a rebel battle-flag, which one of the officers stated to me was borne to the mouth of our cannon and planted there by a boy but seventeen years of age, who actually endeavored to stop the muzzle of the gun with fence-rails. He was kill'd in the effort, and the flag-staff was sever'd by a shot from one of our men. IN AMERICA. 53 / - ' " THE WOUNDED FROM CHANCELLORSVILLE. May, '63. As I write this, the wounded have begun to arrive from Hooker's command from bloody Chancel- lorsville. I was down among the first arrivals. The men in charge told me the bad cases were yet to come. If that is so I pity them, for these are bad enough. You ought to see the scene of the wounded arriving at the landing here at the foot of Sixth street, at night. Two boat loads came about half -past seven last night. A little after eight it rain'd a long and violent shower. The pale, helpless soldiers had been debark'd, and lay around on the wharf and neighborhood anywhere. The rain was, probably, grate- ful to them ; at any rate they were exposed to it. The few torches light up the spectacle. All around on the wharf, on the ground, out on side places the men are lying on blankets, old quilts, &c., with bloody rags bound round heads, arms, and legs. The attendants are few, and at night few outsiders also only a few hard-work'd trans- portation men and drivers. (The wounded are getting to be common, and people grow callous.) The men, whatever their condition, lie there, and patiently wait till their turn comes to be taken up. Near by, the ambulances are now arriving in clusters, and one after another is call'd to back up and take its load. Extreme cases are sent off on stretchers. The men generally make little or no ado, whatever their sufferings. A few groans that cannot be suppress'd, and occasionally a scream of pain as they lift a man into the ambulance. To-day, as I write, hundreds more are expected, and to-morrow and the next day more, and so on for many days. Quite often they arrive at the rate of 1000 a day. 54 SPECIMEN DA YS A NIGHT BATTLE, OVER A WEEK SINCE. May 12. There was part of the late battle at Chancel- lorsville, (second Fredericksburgh,) a little over a week ago, Saturday, Saturday night and Sunday, under Gen. Joe Hooker, I would like to give just a glimpse of (a mo- ment's look in a terrible storm at sea of which a few suggestions are enough, and full details impossible.) The fighting had been very hot during the day, and after an intermission the latter part, was resumed at night, and kept up with furious energy till 3 o'clock in the morning. That afternoon (Saturday) an attack sudden and strong by Stonewall Jackson had gain'd a great advantage to the southern army, and broken our lines, entering us like a wedge, and leaving things in that position at dark. But Hooker at 11 at night made a desperate push, drove the secesh forces back, restored his original. lines, and resumed his plans. This night scrimmage was very exciting, and afforded countless strange and fearful pictures. The fight- ing had been general both at Chancellorsville and northeast at Fredericksburgh. (We hear of some poor fighting, epi- sodes, skedaddling on our part. I think not of it. I think of the fierce bravery, the general rule.) One corps, the 6th, Sedgewiek's, fights four dashing and bloody battles in thirty-six hours, retreating in great jeopardy, losing largely but maintaining itself, fighting with the sternest despera- tion under all circumstances, getting over the Rappahan- nock only by the skin of its teeth, yet getting over. It lost many, many brave men, yet it took vengeance, ample vengeance. But it was the tug of Saturday evening, and through the night and Sunday morning, I wanted to make a special note of. It was largely in the woods, and quite a general engagement. The night was very pleasant, at times the IN AMERICA. 55 moon shining out full and clear, all Nature so calm in itself, the early summer grass so rich, and foliage of the trees yet there the battle raging, and many good fellows lying helpless, with new accessions to them, and every minute amid the rattle of muskets and crash of cannon, (for there was an artillery contest too, the red life-blood oozing out from heads or trunks or limbs upon that green and dew-cool grass. Patches of the woods take fire, and several of the wounded, unable to move, are consumed quite large spaces are swept over, burning the dead also some of the men have their hair and beards singed some, burns on their faces and hands others holes burnt in their clothing. The flames of fire from the cannon, the quick flaring flames and smoke, and the immense roar the musketry so general, the light nearly bright enough for each side to see the other the crashing, tramping of men the yelling close quarters we hear the secesh yells our men cheer loudly back, especially if Hooker is in sight hand to hand conflicts, each side stands up to it, brave, determin'd as demons, they often charge upon us a thousand deeds are done worth to write newer greater poems on and still the woods on fire still many are not only scorch'd too many, unable to move, are burn'd to death. Then the camps of the wounded O heavens, what scene is this ? is this indeed humanity these butchers shambles 1 There are several of them. There they lie, in the largest, in an open space in the woods, from 200 to 300 poor fellows the groans and screams the odor of blood, mixed with the fresh scent of the night, the grass, the trees that slaughter-house ! O well is it their mothers, their sisters cannot see them cannot conceive, and never conceived, these things. One man is shot by a shell, both in the arm and 56 SPECIMEN DA YS leg both are amputated there lie the rejected members. Some have their legs blown off some bullets through the breast some indescribably horrid wounds in the face or head, all mutilated, sickening, torn, gouged out some in the abdomen some mere boys many rebels, badly hurt they take their regular turns with the rest, just the same as any the surgeons use them just the same. Such is the camp of the wounded such a fragment, a reflection afar off of the bloody scene while over all the clear, large moon comes out at times softly, quietly shining. Amid the woods, that scene of flitting souls amid the crack and crash and yelling sounds the impalpable perfume of the woods and yet the pungent, stifling smoke the radiance of the moon, looking from heaven at intervals so placid the sky so heavenly the clear-obscure up there, those buoyant upper oceans a few large placid stars beyond, coming silently and languidly out, and then disappearing the melancholy, draperied night above, around. And there, upon the roads, the fields, and in those woods, that contest, never one more desperate in any age or land both parties now in force masses no fancy battle, no semi-play, but fierce and savage demons fighting there courage and scorn of death the rule, exceptions almost none. What history, I say, can ever give for who can know the mad, determin'd tussle of the armies, in all their separate large and little squads as this each steep'd from crown to toe in desperate, mortal purports 1 Who know the conflict, hand-to-hand the many conflicts in the dark, those shadowy-tangled, flashing moonbeam'd woods the writhing groups and squads the cries, the din, the cracking guns and pistols the distant cannon the cheers and calls and threats and awful music of the oaths the indescribable mix the officers' orders, persuasions, encouragements IN AMERICA. 57 the devils fully rous'd in human hearts the strong shout, Charge, men, charge the flash of the naked sword, and rolling flame and smoke 1 And still the broken, clear and clouded heaven and still again the moonlight pouring silvery soft its radiant patches over all. Who paint the scene, the sudden partial panic of the afternoon, at dusk ? Who paint the irrepressible advance of the second division of the Third corps, under Hooker himself, suddenly order'd up those rapid-filing phantoms through the woods ? Who show what moves there in the shadows, fluid and firm to save, (and it did save,) the army's name, perhaps the nation 1 as there the veterans hold the field. (Brave Berry falls not yet but death has mark'd him soon he falls.) UNNAMED REMAINS THE BRAVEST SOLDIER. Of scenes like these, I say, who writes whoe'er can write the story ? Of many a score aye, thousands, north and south, of unwrit heroes, unknown heroisms, incredible, impromptu, first-class desperations who tells 1 No history ever no poem sings, no music sounds, those bravest men of all those deeds. No formal general's report, nor book in the library, nor column in the paper, embalms the bravest, north or south, east or west. Unnamed, unknown, remain, and still remain, the bravest soldiers. Our manliest our boys our hardy darlings; no picture gives them. Likely, the typic one of them (standing, no doubt, for hundreds, thousands,) crawls aside to some bush-clump, or ferny tuft, on receiving his death-shot there sheltering a little while, soaking roots, grass and soil, with red blood the battle advances, retreats, flits from the scene, sweeps by and there, haply with pain and suffering (yet less, far less, than is supposed,) the last lethargy winds like a 53 SPECIMEN DA YS serpent round him the eyes glaze in death none recks perhaps the burial-squads, in truce, a week afterwards, search not the secluded spot and there, at last, the Bravest Soldier crumbles in mother earth, unburied and unknown. SOME SPECIMEN CASES. June 18^. In one of the hospitals I find Thomas Haley, company M, 4th New York cavalry a regular Irish boy, a fine specimen of youthful physical manliness shot through the lungs inevitably dying came over to this country from Ireland to enlist has not a single friend or acquaintance here is sleeping soundly at this moment, (but it is the sleep of death) has a bullet-hole straight through the lung. I saw Tom when first brought here, three days since, and didn't suppose he could live twelve hours (yet he looks well enough in the face to a casual observer.) He lies there with his frame exposed above the waist, all naked, for coolness, a fine built man, the tan not yet bleach'd from his cheeks and neck. It is useless to talk to him, as with his sad hurt, and the stimulants they give him, and the utter strangeness of every object, face, furniture, &c., the poor fellow, even when awake, is like some frighten'd, shy animal. Much of the time he sleeps, or half sleeps. (Sometimes I thought he knew more than he show'd.) I often come and sit by him in perfect silence ; he will breathe for ten minutes as softly and evenly as a young babe asleep. Poor youth, so handsome, athletic, with profuse beautiful shining hair. One time as I sat looking at him while he lay asleep, he suddenly, without the least start, awaken'd, open'd his eyes, gave me a long steady look, turning his face very slightly to gaze easier one long, clear, silent look a slight sigh then IN AMERICA. 59 turn'd back and went into his doze again. Little he knew, poor death-stricken boy, the heart of the stranger that hover'd near. W. H. K, Co. F., %d N. J. His disease is pneumonia. He lay sick at the wretched hospital below Aquia creek, for seven or eight days before brought here. He was detail'd from his regiment to go there and help as nurse, but was soon taken down himself. Is an elderly, sallow- faced, rather gaunt, gray-hair'd man, a widower, with children. He expressed a great desire for good, strong green tea. An excellent lady, Mrs. W., of Washington, soon sent him a package ; also a small sum of money. The doctor said give him the tea at pleasure ; it lay on the table by his side, and he used it every day. He slept a great deal; could not talk much, as he grew deaf. Occupied bed 1 5, ward I, Armory. (The same lady above, Mrs. W., sent the men a large package of tobacco.) J. G. lies in bed 52, ward I; is of company B, 7th Pennsylvania. I gave him a small sum of money, some tobacco, and envelopes. To a man adjoining also gave twenty-five cents ; he flush'd in the face when I ofFer'd it refused at first, but as I found he had not a cent, and was very fond of having the daily papers to read, I prest it on him. He was evidently very grateful, but said little. J. T. L., of company F., 9th New Hampshire, lies in bed 37, ward I. Is very fond of tobacco. I furnish him some ; also with a little money. Has gangrene of the feet ; a pretty bad case ; will surely have to lose three toes. Is a regular specimen of an old-fashion'd, rude, hearty, New England countryman, impressing me with his likeness to that celebrated singed cat, who was better than she look'd. Bed 3, ward E, Armory, has a great hankering for 60 SPECIMEN DA YS pickles, something pungent. After consulting the doctor, I gave him a small bottle of horse-radish ; also some apples ; also a book. Some of the nurses are excellent. The woman-nurse in this ward I like very much. (Mrs. Wright a year afterwards I found her in Mansion house hospital, Alexandria she is a perfect nurse.) In one bed a young man, Marcus Small, company K, 7th Maine sick with dysentery and typhoid fever pretty critical case I talk with him often he thinks he will die looks like it indeed. I write a letter for him home to East Liver more, Maine I let him talk to me a little, but not much, advise him to keep very quiet do most of the talking myself stay quite a while with him, as he holds on to my hand talk to him in a cheering, but slow, low and measured manner talk about his furlough, and going home as soon as he is able to travel. Thomas Lindly, 1st Pennsylvania cavalry, shot very badly through the foot poor young man, he suffers horribly, has to be constantly dosed with morphine, his face ashy and glazed, bright young eyes I give him a large handsome apple, lay it in sight, tell him to have it roasted in the morning, as he generally feels easier then, and can eat a little breakfast. I write two letters for him. Opposite, an old Quaker lady is sitting by the side of her son, Amer Moore, 2d U. S. artillery shot in the head two weeks since, very low, quite rational from hips down paralyzed he will surely die. I speak a very few words to him every day and evening he answers pleasantly wants nothing (he told me soon after he came about his home affairs, his mother had been an invalid, and he fear'd to let her know his condition.) He died soon after she came. IN AMERICA. 6 1 MY PREPARATIONS FOR VISITS. In my visits to the hospitals I found it was in the simple matter of personal presence, and emanating ordinary cheer and magnetism, that I succeeded and help'd more than by medical nursing, or delicacies, or gifts of money, or any- thing else. During the war I possess'd the perfection of physical health. My habit, -when practicable, was to prepare for starting out on one of those daily or nightly tours of from a couple to four or five hours, by fortifying myself with previous rest, the bath, clean clothes, a good meal, and as cheerful an appearance as possible. AMBULANCE PROCESSIONS. June 25, Sundown. As I sit writing this paragraph I see a train of about thirty huge four-horse wagons, used as ambulances, fill'd with wounded, passing up Fourteenth street, on their way, probably, to Columbian, Carver, and mount Pleasant hospitals. This is the way the men come in now, seldom in small numbers, but almost always in these long, sad processions. Through the past winter, while our army lay opposite Fredericksburgh, the like strings of ambulances were of frequent occurrence along Seventh street, passing slowly up from the steamboat wharf, with loads from Aquia creek. BAD WOUNDS THE YOUNG. The soldiers are nearly all young men, and far more American than is generally supposed I should say nine-tenths are native-born. Among the arrivals from Chancellorsville I find a large proportion of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois men. As usual, there are all sorts of wounds. Some of the men fearfully burnt from the explosions of 6 2 SPECIMEN DA YS artillery caissons. One ward has a long row of officers, some with ugly hurts. Yesterday was perhaps worse than usual. Amputations are going on the attendants are dressing wounds. As you pass by, you must be on your guard where you look. I saw the other day a gentleman, a visitor apparently from curiosity, in one of the wards, stop and turn a moment to look at an awful wound they were probing. He turn'd pale, and in a moment more he had fainted away and fallen on the floor. THE MOST INSPIRITING OF ALL WAR'S SHOWS. June 29. Just before sundown this evening a very large cavalry force went by a fine sight. The men evidently had seen service. First came a mounted band of sixteen bugles, drums and cymbals, playing wild martial tunes made my heart jump. Then the principal officers, then company after company, with their officers at their heads, making of course the main part of the cavalcade ; then a long train of men with led horses, lots of mounted negroes with special horses and a long string of baggage-wagons, each drawn by four horses and then a motley rear guard. It was a pronouncedly warlike and gay show ; the sabres clank'd, the men look'd young and healthy and strong ; the electric tramping of so many horses on the hard road, and the gallant bearing, fine seat, and bright faced appearance of a thousand and more handsome young American men, were so good to see. An hour later another troop went by, smaller in numbers, perhaps three hundred men. They too look'd like serviceable men, campaigners used to field and fight. July 3. This forenoon, for more than an hour, again long strings of cavalry, several regiments, very fine men IN AMERICA. 63 and horses, four or five abreast. I saw them in Fourteenth street, coming in town from north. Several hundred extra horses, some of the mares with colts, trotting along. (Appear'd to be a number of prisoners too.) How inspirit- ing always the cavalry regiments. Our men are generally well mounted, feel good, are young, gay on the saddle, their blankets in a roll behind them, their sabres clanking at their sides. This noise and movement and the tramp of many horses' hoofs has a curious effect upon one. The bugles play presently you hear them afar off, deaden'd, mix'd with other noises. Then just as they had all pass'd, a string of ambulances commenc'd from the other way, moving up Fourteenth street north, slowly wending along, bearing a large lot of wounded to the hospitals. BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. July th. The weather to-day, upon the whole, is very fine, warm, but from a smart rain last night, fresh enough, and no dust, which is a great relief for this city. I saw the parade about noon, Pennsylvania avenue, from Fifteenth street down toward the capitol. There were three regiments of infantry, (I suppose the ones doing patrol duty here,) two or three societies of Odd Fellows, a lot of children in barouches, and a squad of policemen. (A useless imposi- tion upon the soldiers they have work enough on their backs without piling the like of this.) As I went down the Avenue, saw a big flaring placard on the bulletin board of a newspaper office, announcing " Glorious Victory for the Union Army ! " Meade had fought Lee at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, yesterday and day before, and repuls'd him most signally, taken 3,000 prisoners, tfec. (I afterwards saw Meade's despatch, very modest, and a sort of order of 64 SPECIMEN DA YS the day from the President himself, quite religious, giving thanks to the Supreme, and calling on the people to do the same.) I walk'd on to Armory hospital took along with me several bottles of blackberry and cherry syrup, good and strong, but innocent. Went through several of the wards, announced to the soldiers the news from Meade, and gave them all a good drink of the syrups with ice water, quite refreshing prepar'd it all myself, and serv'd it around. Meanwhile the Washington bells are ringing their sundown peals for Fourth of July, and the usual fusilades of boys' pistols, crackers, and guns. A CAVALRY CAMP. I am writing this, nearly sundown, watching a cavalry company (acting Signal service,) just come in through a shower, making their night's camp ready on some broad, vacant ground, a sort of hill, in full view opposite my window. There are the men in their yellow-striped jackets. All are dismounted ; the freed horses stand with drooping heads and wet sides ; they are to be led off presently in groups, to water. The little wall-tents and shelter tents spring up quickly. I see the fires already blazing, and pots and kettles over them. Some among the men are driving in tent-poles, wielding their axes with strong, slow blows. I see great huddles of horses, bundles of hay, groups of men (some with unbuckled sabres yet on their sides,) a few officers, piles of wood, the flames of the fires, saddles^ harness, &c. The smoke streams upward, additional men arrive and dismount some drive in stakes, and tie their horses to them ; some go with buckets for water, some are chopping wood, and so on. July 6th. A steady rain, dark and thick and warm. A IN AMERICA. 65 train of six-mule wagons has just pass'd bearing pontoons, great square-end flat-boats, and the heavy planking for over- laying them. We hear that the Potomac above here is flooded, and are wondering whether Lee will be able to get back across again, or whether Meade will indeed break him to pieces. The cavalry camp on the hill is a ceaseless field of observation for me. This forenoon there stand the horses, tether'd together, dripping, steaming, chewing their hay. The men emerge from their tents, dripping also. The fires are half quench'd. July lO^A. Still the camp opposite perhaps fifty or sixty tents. Some of the men are cleaning their sabres (pleasant to-day,) some brushing boots, some laying off, reading, writing some cooking, some sleeping. On long temporary cross-sticks back of the tents are cavalry accou- trements blankets and overcoats are hung out to air there are the squads of horses tether'd, feeding, continually stamping and whisking their tails to keep off flies. I sit long in my third story window and look at the scene a hundred little things going on peculiar objects connected with the camp that could not be described, any one of them justly, without much minute drawing and coloring in words. A NEW YORK SOLDIER. This afternoon, July 22d, I have spent a long time with Oscar F. Wilber, company G, 154th New York, low with chronic diarrhoea, and a bad wound also. He asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testament. I complied, and ask'd him what I should read. He said, " Make your own choice." I open'd at the close of one of the first books of the evangelists, and read the chapters describing the 276 66 SPECIMEN DA YS latter hours of Christ, and the scenes at the crucifixion. The poor, wasted young man ask'd me to read the following chapter also, how Christ rose again. I read very slowly, for Oscar was feeble. It pleased him very much, yet the tears were in his eyes. He ask'd me if I enjoy 'd religion. I said, " Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you mean, and yet, may-be, it is the same thing." He said, "It is my chief reliance." He talk'd of death, and said he did not fear it. I said, " Why, Oscar, don't you think you will get well ? " He said, I may, but it is not probable." He spoke calmly of his condition. The wound was very bad, it discharg'd much. Then the diarrhoaa had prostrated him, and I felt that he was even then the same as dying. He behaved very manly and affectionate. The kiss I gave him as I was about leaving he returned fourfold. He gave me his mother's address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilber, Alleghany post-office, Cattaraugus county, N. Y. I had several such interviews with him. He died a few days after the one just described. HOME-MADE MUSIC. August 8th. To-night, as I was trying to keep cool, sitting by a wounded soldier in Armory-square, I was attracted by some pleasant singing in an adjoining ward. As my soldier was asleep, I left him, and entering the ward where the music was, I walk'd half-way down and took a seat by the cot of a young Brooklyn friend, S. R, badly wounded in the hand at Chancellorsville, and who has suffered much, but at that moment in the evening was wide awake and comparatively easy. He had turn'd over on his left side to get a better view of the singers, but the mosquito-curtains of the adjoining cots obstructed the sight. IN AMERICA. 67 I stept round and loop'd them all up, so that he had a clear show, and then sat down again by him, and look'd and listen'd. The principal singer was a young lady-nurse of one of the wards, accompanying on a melodeon, and join'd by the lady-nurses of other wards. They sat there, making a charming group, with their handsome, healthy faces, and standing up a little behind them were some ten or fifteen of the convalescent soldiers, young men, nurses, &c., with books in their hands, singing. Of course it was not such a performance as the great soloists at the New York opera house take a hand in, yet I am not sure but I received as much pleasure under the circumstances, sitting there, as I have had from the best Italian compositions, express'd by world-famous performers. The men lying up and down the hospital, in their cots, (some badly wounded some never to rise thence,) the cots themselves, with their drapery of white curtains, and the shadows down the lower and upper parts of the ward ; then the silence of the men, and the attitudes they took the whole was a sight to look around upon again and again. And there sweetly rose those voices np to the high, whitewash'd wooden roof, and pleasantly the roof sent it all back again. They sang very well, mostly quaint old songs and declamatory hymns, to fitting tunes. Here, for instance : My days are swiftly gliding by, and I a pilgrim stranger, Would not detain them as they fly, those hours of toil and danger ; For we stand on Jordan's strand, our friends are passing over, And just before, the shining shore we may almost discover. We'll gird our loins my brethren dear, our distant home discerning, Our absent Lord has left us word, let every lamp be burning, For we stand on Jordan's strand, our friends are passing over, And just before, the shining shore we may almost discover. 68 SPECIMEN DA YS ABRAHAM LINCOLN. August I2th. I see the President almost every day, as I happen to live where he passes to or from his lodgings out of town. He never sleeps at the White House during the hot season, but has quarters at a healthy location some three miles north of the city, the Soldiers' home, a United States military establishment. I saw him this morning about 8J coming in to business, riding on Vermont avenue, near L street. He always has a company of twenty-five or thirty cavalry, with sabres drawn and held upright over their shoulders. They say this guard was against his personal wish, but he let his counselors have their way. The party makes no great show in uniform or horses. Mr. Lincoln on the saddle generally rides a good-sized, easy-going gray horse, is dress'd in plain black, somewhat rusty and dusty, wears a black stiff hat, and looks about as ordinary in attire, &c., as the commonest man. A lieutenant, with yellow straps, rides at his left, and following behind, two by two, come the cavalry men, in their yellow-striped jackets. They are generally going at a slow trot, as that is the pace set them by the one they wait upon. The sabres and accoutrements clank, and the entirely unornamental cortege as it trots towards Lafayette square arouses no sensation, only some curious stranger stops and gazes. I see very plainly ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S dark brown face, with the deep- cut lines, the eyes, always to me with a deep latent sadness in the expression. We have got so that we exchange bows, and very cordial ones. Sometimes the President goes and comes in an open barouche. The cavalry always accompany him, with drawn sabres. Often I notice as he goes out evenings and sometimes in the morning, when he returns early he turns off and halts at the large and handsome IN AMERICA. 69 residence of the Secretary of War, on K street, and holds conference there. If in his barouche, I can see from my window he does not alight, but sits in his vehicle, and Mr. Stanton comes out to attend him. Sometimes one of his sons, a boy of ten or twelve, accompanies him, riding at his right on a pony. Earlier in the summer I occasionally saw the President and his wife, toward the latter part of the afternoon, out in a barouche, on a pleasure ride through the city. Mrs. Lincoln was dress'd in complete black, with a long crape veil. The equipage is of the plainest kind, only two horses, and they nothing extra. They pass'd me once very close, and I saw the President in the face fully, as they were moving slowly, and his look, though abstracted, happen'd to be directed steadily in my eye. He bow'd and smiled, but far beneath his smile I noticed well the expres- sion I have alluded to. None of the artists or pictures has caught the deep, though subtle and indirect expression of this man's face. There is something else there. One of the great portrait painters of two or three centuries ago is needed. HEATED TERM. There has lately been much suffering here from heat ; we have had it upon us now eleven days. I go around with an umbrella and a fan. I saw two cases of sun-stroke yester- day, one in Pennsylvania avenue, and another in Seventh street. The City railroad company loses some horses every day. Yet Washington is having a livelier August, and is probably putting in a more energetic and satisfactory sum- mer, than ever before during its existence. There is prob- ably more human electricity, more population to make it, more business, more light-heartedness, than ever before. The armies that swiftly circumambiated from Fredericks- 70 SPECIMEN DA YS burgh march'd, struggled, fought, had out their mighty clinch and hurl at Gettysburg!! wheeFd, circumambiated again, returned to their ways, touching us not, either at their going or coming. And Washington feels that she has pass'd the worst; perhaps feels that she is henceforth mistress. So here she sits with her surrounding hills spotted with guns, and is conscious of a character and identity different from what it was five or six short weeks ago, and very considerably pleasanter and prouder. SOLDIERS AND TALKS. Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers, you meet everywhere about the city, often superb-looking men, though invalids dress'd in worn uniforms, and carrying canes or crutches. I often have talks with them, occasionally quite long and interest- ing. One, for instance, will have been all through the peninsula under McClellan narrates to me the fights, the marches, the strange, quick changes of that eventful campaign, and gives glimpses of many things untold in any official reports or books or journals. These, indeed, are the things that are genuine and precious. The man was there, has been out two years, has been through a dozen fights, the superfluous flesh of talking is long work'd off him, and he gives me little but the hard meat and sinew. I find it refreshing, these hardy, bright, intuitive, American young men, (experienced soldiers with all their youth.) The vocal play and significance moves one more than books. Then there hangs something majestic about a man who has borne his part in battles, especially if he is very quiet regarding it when you desire him to unbosom. I am continually lost at the absence of blowing and blowers among these old- young American militaires. I have found some man or IN AMERICA. 71 other who has been in every battle since the war began, and have talk'd with them about each one in every part of the United States, and many of the engagements on the rivers and harbors too. I find men here from every State in the Union, without exception. (There are more South- erners, especially border State men, in the Union army than is generally supposed.*) I now doubt whether one can get a fair idea of what this war practically is, or what genuine America is, and her character, without some such experience as this I am having. DEATH OF A WISCONSIN OFFICER. Another characteristic scene of that dark and bloody 1863, from notes of my visit to Armory-square hospital, one hot but pleasant summer day. In ward H we approach the cot of a young lieutenant of one of the Wisconsin regiments. Tread the bare board floor lightly here, for the pain and panting of death are in this cot. I saw the lieutenant when he was first brought here from Chancellors- ville, and have been with him occasionally from day to day and night to night. He had been getting along pretty well till night before last, when a sudden hemorrhage that could * MR. GARFIELD (In the House of Representatives, April 15, 79.) "Do gentlemen know that (leaving out all the border States) there were fifty regiments and seven companies of white men in our army fighting for the Union from the States that went into rebellion? Do they know that from the single State of Kentucky more Union soldiers fought under our flag than Napoleon took into the battle of Waterloo ? more than Wellington took with all the allied armies against Napoleon? Do they remember that 186,000 color' d men fought under our flag against the rebellion and for the Union, and that of that number 90,000 were from the States which went into rebellion ? " 7 2 SPECIMEN DA VS not be stopt came upon him, and to-day it still continues at intervals. Notice that water-pail by the side of the bed, with a quantity of blood and bloody pieces of muslin, nearly full ; that tells the story. The poor young man is struggling painfully for breath, his great dark eyes with a glaze already upon them, and the choking faint but audible in his throat. An attendant sits by him, and will not leave him till the last ; yet little or nothing can be done. He will die here in an hour or two, without the presence of kith or kin. Meantime the ordinary chat and business of the ward a little way off goes on indifferently. Some of the inmates are laughing and joking, others are playing checkers or cards, others are reading,