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THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
The St. Louis Movement
IN
Philosophy, Literature, Education, Psychology
with Chapters of
Autobiography
By
DENTON J. SNIDER
ST. LOUIS, MO.
SIGMA PUBLISHING CO.
210 PINE ST.
1920
CONTENTS.
Part First (Apprenticeship)
Chap. I — Dedication ; Beginnings 5
The Four Elements of St. Louis 15
The Fifth Element of St. Louis 24
The Alignment 31
My Romanic Time in St. Louis 38
From Romanic to Teutonic 48
The Great St. Louis Deed 52
The St. Louis Hero 60
The Standing Army of St. Louis 65
Chap. II — Illusion and Disillusion 70
The Great St. Louis Illusion 76
The Prophet of the Illusion 82
Some Effects 94
The Economic Illusion 102
The Eads Bridge 107
The Illusion's Antiseptic 116
The Great Disillusion 129
Chap. Ill— The German Era of St. Louis . . 138
The German Overture 140
Carl Schurz of St. Louis 150
Joseph Pulitzer of St. Louis 161
A Book Writer's Life Lines 174
The Book Twins Born 188
The Poetic Element 202
Life's Central Node 212
3
4 CONTENTS
PART SECOND.
Part Second (Renascence) 215
Chap. I — The Classical Renascence 233
The Classical Itinerary 238
The St. Louis Literary Classes 254
The Concord Philosophical School 262
After School 278
Back to St. Louis 289
Back to Concord 302
The Kindergarten Class 315
Psychology at Concord 320
Finale at St. Louis 338
Finale at Concord 350
Some Results 361
A Writer of Books 373
Chap. II — Renascence Evolved 393
The New Mythical Setting 410
The Double Transfer 418
The Literary Bibles 431
The Wanderer 443
Goethe and Dante 459
The Sigma Publishing Company 479
Social Chicago 486
Chicago Literary Schools 519
Backflow to St. Louis 575
The Epoch's Crossing 585
Chap. Ill— The Psychological Renascence. . . 590
Appendix • 599
$tart Jftrst
Apprenticeship
DEDICATORY
Fifty years and more have passed since the
phrase The St. Louis Movement began to be heard
in certain limited circles over the country, and occa-
sionally to be used in brief printed reports of the
Public Press. To most people it only meant some-
thing started in St. Louis for the fleeting moment,
a little bubble of the time soon to burst into lasting
oblivion. Undoubtedly those who initiated it had
a vague feeling that they might be doing a germinal
deed of permanent and ever-growing significance;
but that was just what the future alone could
prove.
Now it so happens that the present writer is the
sole survivor of that early group of men for whose
6 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
designation this special locution, The St. Louis
Movement, was first coined. And in one way or
other to him alone, in his solitary condition, this
same designation is not infrequently applied to-
day. One inference at least may be made : the name
still persists in living, and with it the thing, or
conception, doubtless hazy enough in most cases.
The subject keeps rising to the surface, asked
about, talked about, written about, thought about,
often very inaccurately and even mockingly; yet
the old idea somehow will not die and get itself well
buried for once and for all. Indeed it seems to
have a certain weird power of assuming new shapes,
of preserving itself through multiform stages of ev-
olution, in fine the uncanny gift of re-incarnation.
So that spirit, or ghost, or eidolon long ago risen
and named The St. Louis Movement, is still among
us and at work, even if under forms a good deal
changed from its pristine epiphany.
The scribe now addressing the reader has called
himself the present writer with a bit of counterfeit
modesty which he may as well henceforth lay aside,
and use unblushingly the first personal pronoun
without any mask, however transparent. So I shall
have the hardihood to say that I was on hand at the
primal genetic incident or historic occurrence, then
very minute, even if gravid with long life, which
can be set down as the first beginning or actual
efflorescence of the St. Louis Movement, whereof
the present book proposes to be some fragmentary
record.
DEDICATORY. 7
The foregoing event, which may be regarded as
the starting-point of the St. Louis Movement, was
the birth of the St. Louis Philosophical Society
which took place in January, 1866, after due pre-
liminaries. About a dozen gentlemen assembled in
a down-town law-office, according to agreement;
out of this number two men stepped forth as the
original founders and first members. One of them,
the real originator, was chosen President of the
Society — Henry C. Brockmeyer, then a practicing
lawyer in the city; the other the active organizer,
became its Secretary — William T. Harris, then
principal of one of the Public Schools. Each of
them spoke briefly his inaugural, emphasizing with
enthusiasm the prospects and purposes of the or-
ganization ; both failed not to flash some prophetic
lightning upon our unlit future.
These two men were not only the officers, but were
in essence the Society, and remained such. They
proved themselves the two philosophers of us all;
they might be called Philosophy incarnate; it was
their breath of life, but likewise their limit, as time
revealed. They turned out very different from each
other, not only in their lives but even in their philo-
sophic gift; and yet, as to persistence they were
quite alike, inasmuch as both clung to their favorite
discipline and its one master till the light of their
days went out. They both died, as it were, with
their favorite philosopher's favorite book clutched
in the still hand.
Moreover, from this time forward, I became more
g THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
deeply associated with these two strongly pro-
nounced personalities in my practical career as well
as in my spiritual evolution, than with any other
living men. From the natal hour of this Philosoph-
ical Society, they were my friends and fellow-work-
ers in the same general cause, which goes under the
name of the St. Louis Movement. Each of them
wrought in very different fields of external voca-
tion; Brockmeyer became Missouri's Lieutenant
Governor, and Harris rose to be the Nation's Educa-
tional Head; still, the enduring undercurrent of
both their natures remained Philosophy to the last,
and just the one Philosophy, indeed just the one
Book of Philosophy. A single remark I may add
here about myself : my life-stream persisted in cut-
ting a distinct channel for its flood, though it kept
inside the same St. Louis Movement.
With an affection, which hopes to be eternal, I
write the last sentence of this prefatory note to
dedicate the present history of our common labors
as a monument to the memory of my life-long
friends and associates:
Henry C. Brockmeyer
William T. Harris
CHAPTER FIRST
Beginnings at St. Louis
Thus the Philosophical Society was born into the
world, and proceeded to its work under its two
leaders, certainly minds of unusual gift in the line
of thought. The formal Society has long since van-
ished, having been soon taken up into the larger
and more lasting St. Louis Movement which became
not merely a doctrine for the few, but a pervasive
influence in the community, and had its followers
throughout the country. It must be remembered
that philosophy brought not revenue, but rather ex-
pense. Each of us had to make his living by some
special vocation, which gave him bread, but not the
bread of life. Two very different callings we had
to practice, the economic and the spiritual, and this
remained the discipline of a life-time.
Among the members seated in a little group about
the officers, I was seemingly the youngest, having
just passed a birth-day which tallied me twenty-
five years old, on the preceding ninth of January
of said year (1866). There is no doubt that strong
pulsations of Hope burst up expressed by the lead-
ers, or cowered down unexpressed in the hearts of
the rank and file, among whom I took my position
in the rear line, but always ready to step forward
when the hour struck.
9
10 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
Such, then, was the open, explicit starting-point
of the St. Louis Movement, though evidently it must
have had earlier premonitory throbbings. The two
officers of the Society before mentioned, Brockmeyer
and Harris, took hold of their work as men already
experienced. Indeed their first acquaintance dated
back to 1858. I had met them informally at a small
gathering in North St. Louis the preceding autumn
of 1865, when I first heard them plan the Society.
Still there had been no organization, probably no
very definite purpose beyond the mutual benefit of
conversation on favorite topics.
It may be mentioned here in advance that our
two leaders were students and indeed well-disci-
plined followers of the German philosopher Hegel,
and they naturally turned the rest of us in the same
direction, though the Society laid no claim in its
Constitution to the propagation of any single philo-
sophic system. Thus it was in principle an open
tournament for the best jouster. Moreover, Harris
was a zealous missionary by nature, as well as a
born teacher ; especially in those early years his zeal
was aflame for the one he deemed the philosophic
master. He had all of Hegel's Works in the orig-
inal, and he soon found out those of us who could
muster a little German, and he formed the design
of putting us into an inner group of pupils who
might become agitators and promulgators. The first
time I met him at his home in the fall of 1865, some
months before the organization of the Society, he
slipped into my hand one of Hegel's volumes and
BEGINNINGS AT ST. LOUIS. U
set me at once to work on a lesson. He would even
go around to our rooms and correct our transla-
tions. At that time only one volume of Hegel's
"Works had been done into English (Sibree's Trans-
lation of the Philosophy of History). Thus the
first experience of mine was that I had become a
pupil in a school for the study of Hegel. That was
just what I needed at the moment, so I eagerly fol-
lowed the hint of Providence.
The situation possibly for a year or so took this
shape : I, and perhaps half a dozen others, became
the free pupils of Harris as instructor, while Brock-
meyer remained more in the background as a kind
of overlord or higher scholarch. But in the fall of
1866, I, wishing to see and hear more of him, en-
tered his law office, professedly as a student of
jurisprudence, but really as a pupil of the Univer-
sity Brockmeyer in person, for he had become to me
a personal University whose curriculum I must take
at least for a year, before anything else in this
world was for me possible. Moreover I bought the
entire set of Hegel's eighteen volumes in the orig-
inal, and began making explorations in that philo-
sophic ocean on my own account and at my own
risk. Thus I began my mental circumnavigation, not
of the globe only, but of the Universe.
It soon became manifest that there was one book
of Hegel which uprose the lofty center round which
all the other works of the philosopher, all our stud-
ies, in fact all the thought of the All itself gathered
-—that was Hegel's so-called Larger Logic. This
12 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
was very different from Whately's text-book which
I had studied at College, indeed it went quite the
reverse of the whole line of treatises on Logic from
Aristotle down to the present. This Logic was de-
clared to be the movement of the pure essences of
the world, stripped from their outer illusory vest-
ure. Of course I rebounded from it at the start, but
I always returned to it as the one fortress of
thought to be assaulted and captured for dear life's
sake, wherein I was helped often by quick flashes of
Brockmeyer's lightning insight. This book has the
reputation of being the hardest book in the world,
the one least accessible to the ordinary human mind
even when academically trained. My wrestle with
it was long, intense, and not wholly victorious at
the close ; still after years of entanglement I pulled
through its magic web of abstractions and obstruc-
tions, and left them behind me, not lost but tran-
scended.
Now it so happened that an English translation
had been made of this book by Brockmeyer about
the year 1860, near the beginning of the Civil War.
The volume was handed around in writing, copied,
discussed, and to a greater or less extent appropri-
ated spiritually. The strange fact is that it was
not then printed, and still stays unborn in manu-
script after nearly sixty years of waiting. Thus
the creative book of the system was never put into
English type, and has remained quite inaccessible
to the English speaking student. This to my mind
has been the chief fatality in the propagation of
BEGINNINGS AT ST. LOUIS. 13
the work and its doctrines, for it always has had and
always will have its distinctive appeal to certain
minds and even to certain times.
Indeed one is inclined to think that this transla-
tion of Hegel's Logic has had a peculiar doom hang-
ing over it from the moment of its first written
line. I have watched it more than half a century,
now rising to the surface, then sinking out of sight
as if under some curse of the malevolent years.
Personally I never used it, never needed it, I had
the original and could read it more easily than
Brockmeyer's English, which on the whole was
very literal — so literal that I often had to turn
back to the German, in order to understand the
English. Here was supposed to be the first duty
of the Philosophical Society : to revise and pay for
publishing this central work; still we never seri-
ously started. Harris might have printed it in his
Journal, but for some reason or other which to this
day remains conjectural, he would not. I found
Brockmeyer re-translating the original on his re-
turn from the Indians in the early nineties. And
I saw him thumbing over the manuscript only a few
days before his death in 1906. It was his one Su-
preme Book, his Bible ; it meant to him more than
any other human production, and was probably the
source of his great spiritual transformation from
social hostility and inner discord and even anarch-
ism, to a reconciliation with his government and in-
deed with the World-Order, after his two maddened
flights from civilization.
X4 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
So our Philosophical Society, and after it the St.
Louis Movement, had its weird Book of Fate inter-
woven through it from the first yet never fully
realized at the last, in print or otherwise. And a
similar lot befell our President Brockmeyer him-
self, who to my mind represented Genius born but
never fully realized in print or otherwise. And
must not something of the kind be said of St. Louis
herself ? But that man and his sole volume, both of
unwon destiny, will often peer out of this narrative
for a moment, as the stream flows on toward the
outlet. Our Secretary, Harris, had also his life-
long wrestle with this same elusive, if not illusive,
Book of Fate, which caught and held him in its sub-
tle labyrinthine texture of finest-spun metaphysic.
Undoubtedly we all partook of the character of
our communal environment. My stay in St. Louis
caused me to share in its innermost life, and had
the effect of making me believe that in it lurked a
greater possibility than in any other city of the
West, if not of the whole United States. This huge
dreamy potentiality of civic grandeur we all be-
lieved to be quite on the point of pitching over into
a colossal reality. Just that was the strongest, most
pronounced trait of the town at this time : it clung
to an unquestioning faith in its own indefeasible
fortune. This was bound to come, and in a hurry ;
we did not even need to fight for our greatness, it
would be forced upon us. And we did not seriously
fight for it, but with calm* resignation awaited the
resistless downpour of riches, population, and life's
THE FOUR ELEMENTS OF ST. LOUIS. 15
other blessings from the fascinated Gods. Such
was the divine belief which became a kind of St.
Louis religion, and entered deeply into the char-
acter of the city, of the individual citizens, not spar-
ing the philosophers whose special claim was to
pierce to the Pure Essences underneath all lying
Appearances. Certainly I was not an exempt.
Hence when the prophet came voicing to our ears
what lay already in our hearts: Behold, St. Louis
the Future Great City of the World, we all accepted
it as a divinely sent Gospel, as very Truth denuded
of all her illusory drapery.
In my own case through this long deep partici-
pation in our city's most fateful experience, a bond
of the spirit was formed which all my absences, de-
feats, disillusions have not wholly shattered. Where-
of I hope to erect in the present book a little me-
morial.
The Four Elements op St. Louis
"Tell us without going further," I hear my
alert reader demanding, "what, who is this St.
Louis of yours ? Analyze her a little for us, that we
may catch some notion of the original stuff of which
she may be composed. As she too must have a soul,
which has become so deeply ingrown with yours,
can you not draw a slight sketch of her elemental
psychology ? ' '
Let it be said at once in reply that I asked a sim-
IQ THE ST. LOVIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
ilar question as I took my early surveys of the city,
which finally revealed to my prying vision several
heterogenous cleavages or layers in its folk, not
simply ethnical but pronouncedly cultural. Various
nations were indeed present and active, but more
fundamentally various cultures were present and
active. Of these I shall first give some reckoning,
as I understand them.
My studies of the city taken as a whole soon led
me to see in it four distinct strains, not so much
national or racial as spiritual, which have held their
way alongside of one another, touching on the
edges, intermingling at times, but often secretly or
openly colliding. To this inner fundamental
separation may be in part ascribed that lack of
communal unity and enterprise which has been so
many times noted by impartial and even friendly
observers. St. Louis has seemed cut not merely in
two but in four down to its very soul, which
deepest scission has been in part the ground-work
of its fate.
On a number of sides I began to come upon this
ultimate fact in the course of my experience. Still
I clung to the city and shared its hope. The St.
Louis Movement, being of a cultural character, thus
fell athwart other and older cultures already inocu-
lated and bearing fruit. I have often tried to think
that this on the whole was the city's advantage, per-
chance its opportunity. For these four diverse and
somewhat antagonistic streams of human spirit
were mutually limiting and to a degree mutually
THE FOUR ELEMENTS OF ST. LOUIS. 17
neutralizing, so that the field was open for any new
doctrine, which a single dominant belief or estab-
lished creed might persecute or undermine or even
openly suppress.
These four cultural elements which I found here
distinctly marked off when I arrived, and which
remained deeply graven on the communal character
for many years, and are still not wholly obliterated,
I shall set down as follows : the Roman-Catholics, the
New Englanders, the Southerners, the Germans.
It will be seen that the division is not strictly racial,
not national, not religious, though race and nation
and religion played in sometimes with no little in-
tensity. But the profounder and more influential
distinction I believe to have been cultural, being
based upon the deepest spiritual affiliations of the
very conglomerate population. Most of the new-
comers would easily fall into one of these four
classes. For instance I, rather a misfit everywhere,
was born in Ohio of Southern parentage, but was
educated at Oberlin College which was decidedly of
the old Puritanic type. Hence, amid these clashing
elements I felt myself at first more closely related
to New England, and even let people call me a
Yankee, when they were curious about my an-
tecedents. Still I felt a certain aloofness from and
ignorance of all these forms of St. Louis humanity,
yet with an intense desire to know them and even
to share in their consciousness.
I. The Roman Catholics I place at the head,
since they were the most numerous, diversified,
18 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
and pervasive element, and at the same time the
one with which I experienced my first contact, to
my great astonishment. For I did not know that
the Christian Brothers were a Catholic Order when
I engaged by letter from Cincinnati to teach in
their school, and they wrote me never a word about
religion. Association with them for over two years
in their daily work was a great new experience,
producing a decided expansion of my mental hori-
zon. Toward me, though not of their confession,
they were tolerant, honest, and appreciative, and I
tried to requite their goodness, certainly to my
moral betterment and intellectual illumination
through life. More intimately than ever before or
since I beheld the Catholic world-view at work in
the human soul, and some of the characteristic re-
sults thereof, perhaps not the deepest. Also I ex-
perienced with a thrill the Church's world-organi-
zation when some Superior of the Order, a monk
from Paris or possibly from Rome, came into my
Latin class and examined my pupils and myself
with friendly approval in broken English. Such
was my Catholic epoch, no negligible part of this
earthly apprenticeship of mine. It helped to uni-
versalize me.
The mother-church in St. Louis held under her
wings many different peoples with their different
tongues, histories, prejudices, antagonisms. The
old French families of the first settlers were still
in evidence, but seemed on the decline. The Irish
held ecclesiastical sway from the archbishop down
THE FOUR ELEMENTS OF ST. LOUIS. 19
the whole hierarchical line; their zeal and energy-
won and deserved the prize. G-erman Catholics
also were numerous, as well Slavic. All these
different and often recalcitrant ethnic elements
were fused together by the church in a common
faith and in a common education, so that they, in
all their diversities, national and otherwise, formed
a single cultural element in the city. Outside of
this bond, the religious primarily, they were often
inclined to fly asunder and showed cleavages, espe-
cially political. Thus Catholicism was busied with
its peculiar problems in St. Louis. As far as I re-
member, it never had a pronounced representative
in our Philosophical Society, though Dr. Harris
himself, in his later years, showed a tendency to
Catholize, as some of us thought, through his sympa-
thetic study of Aquinas and the Scholastics, as well
as on account of his self-surrendering love of the
poet Dante. And perhaps in his universality he
could not altogether omit that institution which
asserts in its very title the claim to be universal.
Here it may be added that two other members of
the St. Louis Movement manifested a Catholicizing
stage in their evolution, without, however, crossing
over and getting inside the Church's boundary.
II. The New England element I may place next
both for the sake of contrast and of similarity. It
was the least in numbers, yet the most homogeneous ;
its chief cleavage was probably a religious or rather
a theological one, for it had brought along to the
West its two sorts of theology, the trinitarian and
20 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
unitarian, with their accompanying congregations.
But its chief cultural power and influence lay in
the field of education ; to its enthusiasm as well as
to its ability must be largely ascribed the city's
system of Public Schools for the commonalty, as
well as "Washington University for the higher dis-
ciplines. The majority of the teachers were of the
New England mould, though not always of New
England birth. Indeed American popular educa-
tion had its unflagging propagation as well as its
origin, in the land of the Puritans.
The Public School was the main though not the
only seed-field of the St. Louis Movement. This
was doubtless owing to the influence of Superin-
tendent Harris, a born New Englander. Washing-
ton University, decidedly New Englandish, how-
ever, held aloof; only one of its Professors, George
H. Howison, ever became an active member, and he
quit us and the city after a few years' domicile.
III. The Southern element was well represented
in the city, and put its decided impress upon the
same, so that St. Louis might well in one sense be
called a Southern city. This element showed itself
in a pervasive social character, and still more in a
superior political ability. A strain of Southern
courtesy made itself pretty generally felt, not with-
out its streak of arrogance perhaps; but the crea-
tive greatness of the South before the War was its
gift of leadership, especially in politics — a gift
which has shown itself emphatically in the history
of St. Louis as well as of the United States. The
THE FOUR ELEMENTS OF ST. LOUIS. 21
leaders of all parties were for the most part South-
erners—of Union and Disunion, of Anti-slavery
and Pro-slavery, of the Future and of the Past.
Very significant is the fact that the greatest leader
the North ever had was a born Southerner — Abra-
ham Lincoln. So in this city we may cite the in-
stance of Francis P. Blair along with many others.
But in St. Louis the Southern element became
hopelessly divided and crippled by the Civil War.
Its leaders gradually failed to keep their political
hold on affairs. Indeed the South as a whole seems
to have lost in the Nation's strife its former pre-
eminent gift of statesmanship, which during the
conflict showed itself so strikingly inferior to its
soldiership. True political foresight would have
kept it out of the. war in the first place, and then
after the Union victories of Vicksburg and Gettys-
burg, would by a peace have saved its people from
untold loss, suffering, and humiliation. And since
the war what shall we say to Southern statesman-
ship?
IV. And now we come to speak of the strongest,
most emphatic element of all, the German, high in
the ascendent on account of its numbers, its aggres-
siveness, its general intelligence, and its unity of
spirit. Against the German solidarity, based upon
education and military training in the Fatherland,
and brought along in its very soul to America, the
other elements were weaker and internally divided.
When I reached the city in 1864, the great War
was drawing to a victorious close, and therewith in
22 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
proportion the Germans of St. Louis were rising in
authority and also in self-assertion. For it was
chiefly through their strength and initiative that
the first decisive blow for the Union had been
struck at Camp Jackson, with a victory which on
the whole never stopped its course for four years
till it had rolled down the Mississippi, then wheeled
eastward to Chattanooga, to Atlanta, to Savannah,
then surged northward through the Carolinas to-
ward the border of Virginia for the final struggle,
where it was halted by Grant (so he says in his
Memoirs). German regiments from St. Louis and
from Missouri had been in the thick of the fight all
the way, and soon were returning home with a jus-
tifiable good opinion of themselves and of their
services. Here, accordingly, the Teutonic spirit was
mounting upward in lofty self-confidence compared
to that of the other elements.
During the first two years after my arrival in
St. Louis, I stuck pretty closely to my Romanic ten-
dency which is to be hereafter described, and I re-
sisted any deflection into the swirling Teutonic life,
though I often brushed its edges and felt its urge on
all sides. But in 1866 with my entrance into the
philosophic group, and through my intensive study
of German Philosophy, and also on account of my
deeper contact with the new communal spirit, I
began to turn away from my Latin bent and to
Teutonize decidedly. Moreover in the same year
(1866) I quit the Christian Brothers' College, with
its Catholic environment, breathing more or less
the spirit of the Latin Church and its Latin culture,
THE FOUR ELEMENTS OF ST. LOUIS. 23
and I entered upon a discipline very different, that
of the University Brockmeyer, as I have elsewhere
called it, to celebrate its one tutor.
Such were the four cultural elements of St. Louis
as I found them existent on my arrival and at
work with more or less energy. In a way I was
sympathetic with them all. They represented the
tradition, religious, social, educational, descending
down the ages, and coming from abroad to our
city in which they were planted afresh, and throve
according to their inner vigor. I could not help
noting the gradual retreat, if not defeat of French
St. Louis some time before the battle of Sedan, with
which it seems to have shown a distant parallelism.
The old French Market was no longer French but
German. In the country, say at Florissant, it was
pointed out to me that the Teutonic farmer was
slowly getting possession of the Creole's land.
Though some of the wealthiest people of St. Louis
still bore French names, the mighty inrushing and
still rising popular tide was German.
Strangely, during these same years a similar up-
burst of the Teutonic Spirit was taking place on
the other side of the earth. I wonder if there might
be some connection aerial or subterranean, tele-
phonic or telepathic, between child St. Louis and
old Fatherland ! Then lay we here, on the banks
of the Mississippi, not all by ourselves, self-ab-
sorbed in our little local doings, but we were un-
conscious participators in a globe-encircling world-
movement, which revealed itself in our deeds and
24 THE ST. L0VI8 MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
possibly had begotten the same in some hidden
genetic kinship. The year in which I arrived at
St. Louis is the date of that peculiar modern start
of Prussia toward universal domination which was
halted only yesterday, and still lies in the throes of
some unfathomable finale. I remember that I felt
the first early throb of the awakening Fatherland
in the animated conversation of a large German
boarding-house on Market street, where I swal-
lowed the talk more eagerly and more easily than
the potato salad — a dish then wholly new to my
taste and to my imagination.
II
The Fifth Element op St. Louis
Alongside these four elements of St. Louis, all
of which represent the realm of prescription as
handed down from time immemorial, I am going to
place the fifth element, also cultural, though very
small in size and in voting power. But it was
fresh, native to the soil, sprung of the place and
the time. This new and renewing element was our
St. Louis Movement, which arose on the spot whence
it took its name, claiming to be original, autoch-
thonous, like only unto itself — unless it, as before
intimated, was the product of some influence far
deeper and larger than itself, of which it was itself
hardly aware.
There is no doubt that its members proposed to
break with tradition, which dominated the intellect
THE FIFTH ELEMENT OF ST. LOUIS. 25
of the city; they were inclined to challenge the
whole realm of prescription derived from Europe
and from our own older Atlantic States, Northern
and Southern. They did not say so, but they
seemed animated with the spirit of the Camp Jack-
son deed, which marked a new turning-point, even
if very local and minute, in the World's History.
A vast hope lay in the time, in the city, and par-
ticularly in the Philosophical Society, which pro-
posed to reconstruct the whole universe after some
model now dimly evolving in St. Louis, and cer-
tainly not altogether transmitted from the Past.
Perhaps the majority of us were by vocation pre-
scriptive teachers, but the traditional Higher Edu-
cation was to be rounded out, though not sup-
planted, by the New University. And some such
educative institution soon began to sprout up in
the community outside of the regular schools and
academic instruction. Let it be said, that this
free-born education now in the bud will not perish,
but will unfold to flower and fruit, keeping up its
life under various forms and appliances down to
the present day. For instance, just this month the
present writer is still maintaining his classes in the
so-called Communal University, which took its
primal genesis from the St. Louis Movement.
In like manner the traditional religion did not
satisfy. Few of us went to church, though there
was no open rupture with ecclesiastical organiza-
tion. Some of the members doubtless kept up their
old religious affiliations; but our officers, I know,
26 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
held aloof, yet without antagonism. Still the most
distinguished clergyman of St. Louis joined us
somewhat later, for the sake of religion, he said. He
was right in his statement. In fact, the St. Louis
Movement was in the deepest sense religious, not as
formal but as universal ; we sought to win a fresh
spiritual communion with the Divine Order and its
Orderer, and to create for the same a new unworn
expression. But to accomplish any such purpose
we had to throw aside the old carcass of tradition
(as Emerson calls it, perhaps too disparagingly)
and to begin over.
So we deemed ourselves going back to the original
underived fountain-head of young inspiration. And
we did break loose from the four transmitted cul-
tural elements of the city, as already narrated. But
what could we do in our emergency? Whom did
we grasp for as spiritual guide in the shoreless wel-
ter outside of all fixed landmarks of prescription?
None other than a philosopher handed down to us
from Europe, and the necessary product of Eu-
ropean conditions. That is, we took a foreign tra-
ditional philosophy to countervail the tradition
which had been already imported, planted, and
taken root here at home.
Such was the deep dualism of the St. Louis Move-
ment, the dualism which lay in its very birth. Many
years will be required before it can be freed of this
discordant scission, its prime original sin per-
chance, of which it is to work itself clear in a long
purgatorial discipline, whereof the record is just
THE FIFTH ELEMENT OF ST. LOUIS. 27
our present narrative. But it will triumph at last,
and that may be taken as the happy end of the
drama, at least from this point of vision.
Accordingly the St. Louis Movement had its
start from a philosophic motive, from a system of
thought already formulated and organized which
we were to master and to apply. Moreover it was
a system of idealism, one that put stress upon Idea
or Spirit as the primordial creative source of all
things. It was a great and necessary discipline
which trained us to see underneath the mighty
phenomenal occurrences of the passing hour, and
to probe to their original starting-point, to their
creative essence.
The time was calling loudly for First Principles.
The Civil War had just concluded, in which we all
had in some way participated, and we were still
overwhelmed, even dazed partially by the grand
historic appearance. What does it all mean? was
quite the universal question. Of course the answer
varied in a thousand shapes ; there was the political,
the religious, the social, the economic, even the
wholly selfish and sensual answer. Naturally our
set sought in philosophy the solution, that is, in
Hegel as taught by our leaders. A great world-
historical deed had been done with enormous labor
and outer panoramic pageantry. What lay in it for
us and for the future ? So we began to grope after
the everlasting verities, the eternal principles, the
pure Essences (reine Wesenheiten) as they are
called by our philosophic authority. These trail-
28 THE ST. L0VI8 MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
scendent energies of man and of the world were
said to be collected and ordered in one book —
Hegel's Logic. So the St. Louis Movement may be
called a child of the period, a peculiar infant in-
deed, but nevertheless a legitimate birth of the
time's spiritual struggle. And this infant seemed
to be sent by the time to a world-school for its dis-
cipline.
I may again remark that this pursuit of the
Eternal has turned out to have had something
eternal in it, at least up to date. The St. Louis
Movement retains still a quiet life of its own; it
never won an uproarious public existence; it had
always to be sought out in its own little nook by
those who would know of it and share in its gifts.
Just this week for instance (October, 1918,) I have
received a letter from an inquirer who wishes to
get information about "that original philosophic
Club" and its members, mentioning Brockmeyer,
Harris, "and yourself." Then he winds up with
this expression of opinion: "That is the most re-
markable movement known in this country." Not
everybody is likely to accede to this view, espe-
cially those who have been bred in the home of
New England Transcendentalism. But the inquiry,
with others of the same sort, may be taken as a
sign of a still living interest in the St. Louis Move-
ment after more than five decades.
It was, accordingly, one of the spiritual off-
shoots of the Civil War, and belonged, I have to
think, peculiarly to the West, of which during
THE FIFTH ELEMENT OF ST. LOUIS. 29
those years St. Louis was the central and most im-
portant, indeed the symptomatic city. For the
West did the great positive act of preserving the
Union, while the East, valiantly fighting for the
same cause, did hardly more than keep its own lime
of separation, "the Fatal Line" it has been called,
which at last could only mean division and seces-
sion. There was, accordingly, felt just in this city
the spur to discover and to utter the soul of the
Age's Great Deed, for it was peculiarly our own.
"Find me the philosophy of that," said the Spirit
of the Time to the philosophers now marshaling
just on the spot. We took the best help accessible
to us from the past, and made it our starting-
point. Soon, but not wholly at first, I began to
feel the full force of the injunction, and rallied to
the work, giving the early unconscious strokes to a
task which was not completed till almost half a
century later.
So the fifth element we sought to introduce into
the cultural life of St. Louis, and preached our
new evangel with no little unction and keen-edged
enthusiasm. We claimed to represent the original,
indigenous, self-determined soul of the city as dis-
tinct from the one brought hither from the outside.
We were in a revolt against the four imported ele-
ments, from the early French settlers to the last-
come German Forty-Eighters, whom our President
Brockmeyer, himself a German, branded as nega-
tive — hostile to all positive thought and its institu-
tions. He was a good hater, altogether too good;
30 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
still there is no doubt that the high-bred Latinists
(Lateiner) from the German University were in-
clined to scoff at our philosophic master and at our
Movement as something long since transcended over
yonder in the old country.
Let that be as it may; still the reader is not to
forget the secretly gnawing dualism which lurked
in the St. Louis Movement, and which will keep
driving it forward beyond itself till it reach a
higher reconciling synthesis in a new world-view.
This of course lies many years ahead, yet it has its
first life-pulse in the present situation. But as I
look back at the Movement now, it really lapsed
into tradition in assailing tradition ; it became pre-
scriptive just in its denial of prescription; it took
for granted what it never granted. I must have
felt somewhat of this deeper dissonance from the
start, for I never could quite bring myself to write
and publish anything on philosophy proper. I
deemed myself not yet a worthy initiate. Then I
was already beginning to grow a peculiar literary
conscience ; whenever I took my soul's pen in hand,
it was for my highest self-expression ; otherwise I
must wait, even if forever. Nevertheless I pursued
desperately philosophy as the one present remedy,
as the universal science; if its warring contradic-
tion cannot in some way be pacified, then the uni-
verse is battle and becomes Ragnorok.
Of course I was at first unconscious of this deep-
est undercurrent in our St. Louis Movement, and
only came to recognize it, not so much by thinking
THE ALIGNMENT. 31
it out, as by living it out in my daily activities for
decades, till the cycle of discipline might be fin-
ished. Meanwhile let it be held fast that this far-
down underworld's struggle of the spirit is what
gave strength and length of life to our St. Louis
Movement. Indeed that antimony of ours between
tradition and non-tradition may be deemed the
primal originative force or spring of all individual
culture, as well as of civilization itself.
Ill
The Alignment
A year or two since, on going to a little place to
give a little talk, I saw two gentlemen approaching
me with pleasant smiles ; and as they drew near,
one of them held out toward me a written leaf of
paper saying: "Here is something which I thought
you might like to see, your name is on it." At a
glance the manuscript proved to be a copy of the
records of the first Philosophical Society reaching
back to 1866, with the signature of the Secretary.
The gentleman went on : " That I keep as one of
my treasures. But can you not tell us a little
about these people here named, who met in your
society — what did they become? Tell me, who of
you made good?"
Some such question has been propounded to me
several times recently, indeed I have propounded it
to myself, and I shall try to write out my answer.
Perhaps this entire book bears in itself some re-
32 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
spouse. The fact is most of us were then undis-
tinguished and have sturdily remained so. And it
must be confessed that the St. Louis Movement
never produced a book which, by any reasonable
stretch of charity, might be called a literary suc-
cess. Therein it strikingly contrasts with the Trans-
cendental Movement, which owes its propagation
and its permanence largely to the excellence of its
Literature.
As far as I now remember, the Society led not so
much an active, practical life as a rather quiet,
theoretical existence; chiefly it was the public
means to show famous visitors certain formal at-
tentions ; for instance, when Mrs. Julia Ward Howe
came to town and read a paper on Philosophy, the
Society received her, listened to her lecture, and
even indulged in some criticisms, to which she re-
plied in veiled but sarcastic reproof of our philoso-
phic egotism. In like manner it heard Emerson
and invited Alcott, the famous Concord philoso-
phers, with whom our Secretary, Mr. Harris, kept
in friendly touch, for the sake of the future.
The real work of the St. Louis Movement was
done individually, or in little groups and classes.
I cannot now recollect that I ever read a paper
before the Philosophical Society. The spirit of the
Movement, as far as I shared it, I applied to Litera-
ture ; Judge "Woerner applied it to Jurisprudence,
and it colors his legal work on Probate Law;
Brockmeyer turned it into Legislation and Politics ;
Harris made best use of it in Education. The St.
THE ALIGNMENT. 33
Louis Movement, accordingly, took the character of
a subtle pervasive influence, rather than an organ-
ized propagandism. Its life pulsed in the small
coteries which met usually in parlors or private
rooms for the study of some special book or sub-
ject. In this fact lay its chief worth and its per-
sistence.
It is true that a certain grouping or arrangement
of persons and their philosophic doctrines took
place, as we gathered to discuss some theme or to
listen to some address, or even to read together
some book. The situation was something of this
kind:
I. The President or the Secretary, or both, were
the central figures, ardent exponents and disciples
of Hegel, and led the talk.
II. Then came the opposition, for usually in the
early times we had some straggling dissidents who
would object here and there. Of these I remember
enough to set down three.
(1) Thomas Davidson, who usually upheld
Aristotle as against Hegel, and even the Greek
world against the Christian. A lively and ingenious
Scotchman, who never seemed to me to have any
particular persistent conviction. At that time he
was certainly a jolly drifter and general free
fighter, with much effervescence of erudition.
(2) Adolf E. Kroeger, a Fichtean, and trans-
lator of several of Fichte's works and of other Ger-
man books ; also an upholder of Kant against Hegel
in many warm disputes. He belonged to the
34 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
earlier set. I saw a letter in which Longfellow
praised his English translations of early German
poetry.
(3) Louis F. Soldan, later Superintendent of
Schools, whose general attitude was neutral, be-
longing distinctly to no side or perhaps to all sides.
He was a student of Spinoza and Dante, and later
had literary classes in Faust.
III. Finally came what may be called the rank
and file, varying a good deal with the years and the
topics. Here I properly belonged. But we were
eager learners and questioners, being generally
sympathetic with the Hegelians, especially with the
two leaders, who had really something positive to
give, and produced the general atmosphere. Num-
bers of good people may be put here, such as Judge
Woerner, Judge Jones, Principal Childs ; the ladies,
though not regular members, were best represented
by Miss Mary Beedy and Miss Anna Brackett, both
of the Public Schools.
This was the situation in the earlier times. Later
came a group of excellent, but quite different peo-
ple, such as Prof. Cook, Dr. Holland, Miss Blow,
Miss Fruchte. And so the leaven kept working
through various layers for many years, till at last
the active spirit seamed to lapse into a state of
quiescence.
Such is a brief sketch of the first general align-
ment of the Philosophical Society, as I recall it
after some fifty years and more. All these first
members have passed on, though a few out of the
TEE ALIGNMENT. 35
later groups still survive, no longer in the buoyancy
of youth, yet active. I suppose that the interest
of such a seemingly fortuitous society is that it
unwittingly bears in its bosom something perma-
nent, some living seeds destined to grow in the
future and bear new fruit.
How long did the Movement last ? In one sense
it is going on still, as already indicated, though in
a number of ways much changed. But that first
impulse had its own life with rise, culmination and
decline. Different participators would naturally
chronologize the period differently, according to
their experience; but to my vision it ran about
twenty years (1865-1885), from my first electric
shock at touching the live wire in the house of W.
T. Harris one Sunday afternoon till I quit St.
Louis on my wanderings, not to return with the
spirit's renewal for quite another twenty years.
The two leaders, Brockmeyer and Harris, had left
the city some years before. The influence lingered
still in the Public Schools, but without any decided
official hold. Moreover the city itself seemed
changed in character; it passed into that peculiar
eclipse of hope and ambition, which lasted nearly a
generation. It lost its leadership in the "West — its
commercial, and still more emphatically its intel-
lectual leadership.
Now this obscuration of St. Louis is undeniable,
being fortified by fixed mathematics as well as by
floating opinion, and has become the most enig-
matic and hence the most interesting fact of its his-
36 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
tory. Like old Rome, St. Louis has had its period
of grandeur and decadence, but no Montesquieu or
Gibbon has arisen to set forth adequately its re-
cord. To be sure the stage is small, and its decline
did not involve the world. Still the atom has to-day
its special worth, and we are told to see in One,
even in the little one, the All.
This pensive theme, however, will naturally come
up later in the present narrative. But here I note
the fact that the St. Louis Movement, though a na-
tive growth, was chiefly cultivated and propagated
by men who were immigrants. I do not now recall
a single born St. Louisan in the set, though nearly
all of us were born Americans. Still the Move-
ment itself was not an immigrant, but indigenous ;
that is, as a Movement it originated on the soil of
St. Louis, and, it was so regarded by us, since it
was begotten of the city's unique spirit of that
time. "We claimed to be of the present just while we
were taking the past as guidance, and even as
creed.
(Still our deepest faith lay in the destiny of our
city, our basic belief was grounded in its coming
greatness. This belief was the original drive which
kept throbbing back of all our energy, whereby it
overflowed into the community, and created a kind
of University with its studies of Art, Literature,
Education, as well as of Philosophy. We sought to
be worthy denizens of what was already forecast
as the Future Great City of the World, and to con-
THE ALIGNMENT. 37
tribute our part toward the fulfilment of its pro-
phetic supremacy.
Thus I had fully entered upon what I may call
my distinctively philosophic epoch, which will be
my chief spiritual interest for years. But I had
an antecedent stage which I left behind, though it
remained with me in a sort of subliminal activity
through life. My strongest aspiration for the
mind's past treasures lay then in the field of Ro-
manic culture, which belonged to those peoples of
Southern Europe whose language and civilization
sprang from the old Roman world. Now this Ro-
manic spirit is held to be the antitype of the Ger-
manic spirit, which was pushing forward with such
volume and intensity in St. Louis, and which had
begun to take possession of my training. Some-
what of this pre-philosophic phase of my develop-
ment must not be left out in this self-construction
of mine, since I shall make use of its acquisitions at
intervals duringmy entire life. For instance, only
yesterday I began to take new and deeper sound-
ings in French Literature on account of the granitic
endurance and stability of the French character
revealed by the present war, inasmuch as I had
previously believed, and France herself had seemed
to believe, that she was frivolous and flighty and
even decadent.
405576
38 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
IV
My Romanic Time in St. Louis
The tendency or mental trend here called Ro-
manic (not Romantic, remember), I brought with
nne to the city, and I clung to it, as long as. it was
of prime worth to me, on account of certain local
opportunities. In particular, I wished to catch
some remaining shred of the French spirit of this
originally French town, with its survivals of
French speech and customs.
Accordingly under the above title I am going to
designate a brief cultural stage of my young-man-
hood, lasting only between two and three years, but
significant in my spirit's discipline, since this sub-
strate has continued to rise to the surface with
stress at various turns of my later life, and insist
upon some utterance. I allude to my cultivation
of the Romanic tongues and in a small way their
literatures, Spanish, French, Italian, all of them
daughters of the Latin, each with her own distinct
character, history, and beauty. They imparted to
me a phase of my own self-expression, and an-
swered a need of my spirit, which I had already
felt stirring at College, but without any oppor-
tunity of realization.
In the fall of 1863 while loitering at a second-
hand book store in Cincinnati, I became acquainted
with Ignaeio Montaldo, a native Spaniard, who was
teaching his mother-tongue to students in that city.
He invited me to join his best class in Spanish,
MY ROMANIC TIME IN ST. LOUIS. 39
which met at the home of a lady prominent in
literary circles. I accepted the invitation at once,
since it gratified a persistent longing within me.
The result was I bought a Spanish grammar and
dictionary on the spot, took a brief lesson for a
starter, then went home and studied the new sub-
ject till after midnight. I soon caught the drift
of the language, being so closely derived from the
Latin, and hence like its two sisters, French and
Italian, with both of whom I had a passing ac-
quaintance. To learn to read the printed words
was easy enough ; but to speak those words in con-
versation, I found much harder; then to under-
stand them when spoken was for me the most diffi-
cult task of all, for an ear-minder I never was
easily. Hence I hunted down friendly, talkative
Montaldo in all his haunts for practice, since Span-
ish had quite suddenly become for me an obsession.
Moreover I found the genial Spaniard very in-
teresting for another reason : his unique character.
He was a red-hot socialist, the first of the kind I
had ever known; in his fervent propagandism he
would lapse from his Spanish into French or even
into broken English, till I would gently recall him
to his native dialect, reminding him that I could
only take his doctrine in pure Castilian. He had
resided long in Paris where he had come under the
influence of M. Etienne Cabet, famous French
Utopian of that time, and had joined the latter's
communistic venture known as Icarie, which had
first brought him to America. But the ideal plan
40 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
had suffered shipwreck upon the hard reality over
in Iowa somewhere, and had left him stranded and
drifting and hungering, till he reached Cincinnati
where he could earn some bread through his knowl-
edge of the tongues. But he clung to the grand
eomimunistie scheme as stoutly as ever, the bitterest
rebuffs of experience only hardened his conviction,
and made him ready for a new headlong onset. In
other words I deemed that I saw before me again
the actual Don Quixote, the most modern edition
of the Spanish knight-errant, with the living com-
mentary on that masterpiece of Cervantes, which
I had merely read from the outside hitherto. Thus
my good teacher gave me his best lesson without
price and even without any design of giving it, for
he never could get away from himself.
"We became boon companions, I followed him
everywhere to hear his Quixotic adventures told in
lofty laughable Castilian, as well as to enjoy his
fantastic ideas, while I would note and then diver-
sify his idealism with some of my prose. It seemed
that I had quite become his Sancho Panza, the
faithful squire, yet mirroring counterpart. After
some days he surprised me with an invitation to his
modest home, where he whispered me he had a wife
and two fine children, girl and boy. That was in-
deed a new turn in the adventure, for I had sup-
posed him an irreclaimable, unmarriageable rover
in pursuit of an ideal world, somewhat like myself
at that time. It seems that in his community he
had found, loved and wedded an educated French
MY ROMANIC TIME IN ST. LOUIS. 41
woman, who had also emigrated with M. Cabet to
western wilds in search of the new social order.
She spoke only rapid musical French, which I un-
derstood but imperfectly, still she interpreted her
talk very fully with a runnnig comment of gesture,
intonation, and expressive grimaces. Evidently
she had been disillusioned by the remorseless fact,
having now to keep house for two children and
husband under no laughing conditions. Icarie she
had reason to remember ; her special theme was the
tyranny of the autocrat Cabet, which had wrecked
a glorious hope of social freedom, and had left her
and hers stranded on this unfree America.
Thus I took lessons in the Spanish tongue and
more deeply still in the Spanish character, not to
speak of the little dip into Latin socialism; all
these kinds of instruction have remained a per-
manent possession during life, though I have never
done much with my Quixotic acquisition. But after
some months of this Castilian revery, I was roused
by a fresh sharp thrust of the economic problem,
and, breaking from my friend and his dreams, I
took flight to St. Louis, where I soon lit on the solid
though thorny ground of making my own livelihood.
Replying from Cincinnati to a newspaper adver-
tisement, I received the appointment of instructor
in Greek and Latin at the St. Louis College of
Christian Brothers ; I was also given a class in Eng-
lish Literature. These branches were easy for me,
and familiar ; my lessons occupied three hours daily
for five days of the week. Thus I had ample time
42 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
for outside study, which enabled me to push on with
my Romanic tongues, Spanish, French, and Italian,
to which I added considerable practice in my Ger-
man, since I found myself rooming in a German
household, with an abundance of gossipy neighbors.
That was an opportunity which I dared not neg-
lect. Spanish began to fall by the way, for I could
find no Spaniard like my genial Montaldo ; I often
tested my Italian grammar at the fruit-stands kept
by Italians, paying for my instruction by the pur-
chase of a dime 's worth of apples or peanuts. These
people could understand me, but I could not under-
stand them, as quite all of them were Genovese and
spoke a horrible dialect. At last I found in a wine
shop a poor gray-curled Swiss Italian from Canton
Ticino, who was a man of some education, and who
gladly earned his frank for reading to me an hour
a day from an Italian novel which I had picked out
of the litter of an old book-stall.
In my mental history I deem this to have been my
epoch of supreme linguistic ambition, which, indeed
for a while wholly absorbed my life. If the reader
will take the trouble to count them up, he will find
that I was employed more or less directly with seven
different languages at the same time. In some re-
spects it was a useless scattering of energy, yet I
got from it a unique experience which served its
purpose. Quite unconsciously I was seeking my
own self-expression in all these tongues; I was lis-
tening to the voices of seven different folk-souls, the
best in the world's civilization, as they revealed
MY ROMANIC TIME IN ST. LOUIS. 43
themselves in speech. And I was under training to
find my own right utterance — a supreme object of
my life. This was my distinctive polyglottic stage,
lasting with fervor between two and three years,
yet with recurrences all my days, for I found I
could always resurrect these tongues with a little
labor, at least as far as I had acquired them.
Thus for a season I sought an expression of my-
self in no less than six foreign languages beside my
native English, and kept building in this fashion a
good-sized tower of Babel all inside my own brain.
But after a time I found this versatile linguistic
love of mine getting onore and more interested in
one of the languages without wholly neglecting the
others. The favorite became now the French. There
lingered still something of the old French spirit in
St. Louis, at least in those quarters where I ate and
lounged and chatted. I snuffed this peculiar atmos-
phere the first days of my arrival, and accordingly
I took board at a French hotel not far from the old
Cathedral, which then might be deemed the center
of St. Louis antique, and which still looks down at
you with its French inscription written across its
forehead. I found, however, that the people there
could all talk English, French having become a
mere by-play. Still the place remains to me ever
memorable, since here I first saw the unique physi-
ognomy of Brockmeyer, just fresh from the forest,
as he would fleet eagerly into the dining-room, and
then saunter out of it leisurely with the rest of us,
ever darting the sudden eye-shot of the backwoods'
44 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
hunter, rather than the though ted look of the much-
civilized philosopher.
But my appetite for French was not satisfied
there, though the eating was good. On inspecting
the wider neighborhood, I found three other French
boarding-houses, of which one in the same general
locality just fitted my plan, if not my palate. For
the proprietor and his wife with servants could
hardly say a word of English, and understood none ;
so I had to talk French or do without my dinner.
Moreover I discovered soon that in the evening the
place was the resort of a strange lot of French
characters, who gathered there to drink wine or ab-
sinthe, sip strong coffee, and play piquet, talking
meanwhile French politics with illimitable babble.
Most of them were fiery republicans, refugees, revo-
lutionists, socialists, anarchists, hot against State
and Church. I thought I saw there a living pres-
entation of Carlyle's French Revolution, in bloody
words and gesticulations, but not in bloody deeds.
I recollect, however, that the place contained one
hardy Clerical who by his opposition could set a
dozen tongues into a furious clatter, which once
ended in a brawl. A single Napoleonist had even
greater power of irritation, inasmuch as most of
these fellows had been forced to flee from the Em-
peror's police. Thus I was again taking a double
lesson: in the French tongue and in French life,
here manifesting one of its famous historic phases.
(Remember that Emperor Napoleon III was still
on his throne.)
MY ROMANIC TIME IN ST. LOUIS. 45
Naturally I took to reading French, especially
books about the French Revolution, of which I saw
a fragment enacted before me every night. There
lie now under my eyes on the table my annotations
to Lamartine's Les Girondins, which work I bought
in the original and read with many an excited re-
flection on our own Civil War, in which I had just
lived through a deeply sympathetic part theoret-
ically and practically. This reading of mine is
dated 1865, when the mighty upheavals and re-
surgences of French liberty had ended in the sod-
den despotism of the third Napoleon. Was our re-
public to suffer a like fate ? Some of that company
would say so in pretentious pessimistic prophecy,
whereupon I would splutter bits of bad French at
them, using them as targets for practicing both my
patriotism and my grammar.
I longed to see some representatives of the old
French settlers who with their descendants had been
on the ground just about a century if we date the
founding of St. Louis by Laclede in 1764. But not
a Creole, if such be the right name, ever showed
his face among ihe Church-defying revolutionaries
fortressed across the street from the Cathedral in
Combe 's boarding-house, which mad hostelry would
have appeared to him an Inferno full of devils.
Only once an innocent Canadian, and especially in-
nocent of English, strayed into the place, seeing on
the sign Pension Frangaise. I noticed him at once
and took him in charge, finding him a fresh angelic
arrival from the paradise of Quebec, but now fallen
46 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
into this real Dantesque Malebolge, through which
I too was traveling as a kind of onlooking Dante.
At some horrible blasphemy, I suppose, for the
word was not clear to me, but must have been well
understood by him, re-echoed as it was with the dia-
bolic grins and grimaces of the whole rabblement,
he ran out into the dark. I went after him, and
asked him where he was going. He said he did not
know. I begged him: "Come then with me, and
I shall take you to a French priest who lives over
yonder at the Cathedral," and after a short walk
I pointed toward the imposing structure with its
spire, and the clergy-house alongside. I offered to
cross the street with him, when the fellow suddenly
picked up his heels, and giving three leaps disap-
peared within the church door, whither of course I
did not try to pursue him. But as he slid inside,
he glowered around at me, with a look of having es-
caped from the demons.
Thus the time brought me a vivid personal ex-
perience of revolutionary France just here in St.
Louis, a living commentary upon her history past
and also future. "When some six or seven years
later, I read of the doings of the Paris Commune
after the Franco-Prussian War, I felt that I had
seen and heard them in prophecy already at that
French boarding-house. In fact, a few years later
during 1870 my interest returned with such inten-
sity that I sought my old quarters there, but the
spirit had fled. I found, however, a red-republican
French Club in the same locality, but it was tame,
MY ROMANIC TIME IN ST. LOUIS. 47
quite orderly, and all its words and deeds seemed
to spell France's humiliation. Still later in 1878
.when I was in Paris, I never could find there the
anarchic vigor of my old French boarding-house in
St. Louis, except once perhaps — that was at a the-
atrical representation of the famous anti-clerical
play, Moliere's Tartuffe, in the Latin Quarter,
when a rather jolly Pandemonium suddenly erupted
out of the huge audience, in which a woman (pos-
sibly Louise Michel herself) seemed the chief vol-
canic spouter, the whole becoming quiet again in a
few minutes.
So I now renew in aged image my young and
yare Romanic St. Louis of more than half a cen-
tury agone. Only yesterday the love of reminis-
cence enticed me to take another stroll before the
old Cathedral, and hearken to the call of its French
inscription which seems now to speak more deeply
out of its heart than ever before. Through the war
the Latin peoples, and especially the French, have
uprisen from a subsidence and supposed decline to
a new birth and grander eminence in the World's
History. They have done the supreme historic act,
having overmade themselves into the conqueror of
their conqueror. But does that old fiend of Terror,
whose passing shadow I once saw in Romanic St.
Louis, yet lurk in the French soul? Half-sup-
ressed voices fitfully fly hitherward over the ocean,
reporting that it is still alive and at work to-day
underneath Paris. Will it again break up to the
surface and have another spell of seismic upheaval
as twice before ?
48 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
From Romanic to Teutonic
So the old, deep dualism of Europe, starting long
before the Christian Era, and continued with more
or less virulence through all the intervening ages
till the present moment — the ever-grinding dualism
between Roma and Teutonia — has migrated to
America and especially has settled down in our St.
Louis, bringing that same world-historical conflict
along with itself, political, religious, cultural. I
seemed to fall right into the middle of this many-
centuried clash, being sensitive to the poignant
thrusts from both these mighty opposites of the
ages, with their everlasting alternation between rise
and fall, victory and defeat, Guilt and Nemesis.
Not fifty years ago Ronna, in her representative
Latin race, seemed to be drooping toward her last
sundown in France; but now in this New Year of
1919 military Teutonia appears to have marched
valiantly into her own bloody, perchance mortal
eclipse. Thus the oscillation has continued, begin-
ning historically, if not before at least with that
ancient invasion of France by the Teutones who
were overwhelmed and destroyed by the Roman
general Marius 102 years Before Christ. Then
with the centuries came the furious counterstroke,
the defeat and capture of Roma herself in person
by these Teutonic peoples. And that by no means
stopped the ever-recurring world-duel. So the san-
guinary see-saw between Europe's two halves has
FROM ROMANIC TO TEUTONIC. 49
been going on for 2000 years and more, the last gory
oscillation being ended to-day, if it really has
ended.
And the case would seem, if we may judge by the
past, that Europe of herself is unable to heal this
deepest rent of her own soul, as well as of her body,
without some foreign mediator, some reconciling
third world-people, who can medicine her ever re-
opening and fresh-bleeding wound with a new insti-
tutional order. Is America to furnish that remedial
folk, which may be able to redintegrate unhappy
Europe, torn into warring pieces, from her birth?
Our army of doctors, first military and now polit-
ical, have gone to the seat of trouble, and are still
engaged in their task of restoration at this moment.
Probably the patient is not curable at once, still the
beginning may be tried, with the whole world in
anxiety looking on at the bedside.
But our present interest is to note that this deep-
est dualism of Europe — it is not the only one but
the deepest — was transmitted to our "Western Con-
tienent, and has worked itself out into two Amer-
icas, very distinct if not opposite, Latin and Anglo-
Saxon, whose reconciliation still belongs to the fu-
ture. And particularly our city has shown in its
history this same original European cleavage which
I felt on my arrival here during the last year of the
Civil War. At first I sided culturally with the
Latin or Romanic trend, as already indicated, seiz-
ing the opportunity, here presented, of appropriat-
ing a little first-hand knowledge of one of History's
50 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
greatest achievements, namely, that unique Medi-
terranean civilization, mother of our higher spirit-
ual disciplines.
But I gradually developed out of this Romanic
stage, which after the Civil "War kept getting paler
and weaker both in me and in the community,
whereby the latter showed a strange parallelism to
what was going on over in Europe. When France,
that is, Louis Napoleon's France, was peremptorily
ordered to quit Mexico by Seward, the counter-
stroke was not unf elt in French St. Louis, as I could
hear in the loud conversation over cognac and
black coffee at M. Combe 's. The Teutonic spirit was
already overwhelming me both in my studies and in
my external relations. I was getting deeply ab-
sorbed in the philosophic movement, and especially
in the all-encompassing system of Hegel, now my
mind's grand objective. From the French cuisine
wreathed round with multitudinous causerie, I
changed to a large German boarding-house of
boundless babblement over Bier and Wurst. The
classic song of La Belle France seemed to be getting
drowned in the roar of Deutschland uber Alles. I
joined a German Social Club of young folks where
English was unheard, and I took part in music,
dance, games, festivals, not refusing the fluids as
a part of the new learning. The German theater I
cultivated, especially when Goethe and Schiller
were on the boards. One Sunday evening I dared
think it my duty instead of attending Church, to go
to see Faust — my first opportunity to witness the
FROM ROMANIC TO TEUTONIC. 51
masterpiece of Teutonic Literature. The house was
packed with the very folk, the applause uprose
uproarious, the general feeling swayed to and fro
triumphant, the whole play being interspersed with
shouts and German catchwords, most of which I
could not understand. But the loudest, most pro-
longed, most suggestive acclamation I did under-
stand, since it swelled forth at the burst of laugh-
ing hell-fire from the mouth of ironic Mephistoph-
eles as he ironicises the Church, scoffing out the pas-
sage:
Die Kirche hat einen guten Magen.
The actor who spoke the lines did his infernal
best, for he became the Devil then and there in
speech and in look. And that audience after him
seemed to undergo a similar diabolic transforma-
tion, which lasted some minutes. Thus I caught a
glimpse of one phase of Teutonia's soul that night,
which has never quit me, but which has come back
to me more vividly than ever during these past
four years, along with their prodigious problems
interrogating me: Is Germany then Mephistoph-
eles? Has the greatest German poet, embodying
the greatest German legend, simply drawn the por-
trait of his own people in their final catastrophe?
For we may well recall now the tragic end of Meph-
istopheles, making the poet's Faust a Teutonic
world-tragedy.
But let us return to our retrospect. In my zeal
I quit the center of the city and went to live in the
52 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST. .
residence quarter where I might experience Ger-
man domestic life, which had such a beautiful and
naive expression of itself in poetry and music. The
outcome could not be avoided: I wound up this
part of my Germanization by a German marriage
and started on a new phase of my career.
Thus I made the complete transition from the
Romanic to the Teutonic in my life's discipline.
And I must not fail to add that this transition was
not merely mine, but the city's, the time's, aye the
world's even; for was not all civilization German-
izing quite down to the fate-year of 1914 ? And all
education from the little Kindergarden up to the
great University — was it not largely based upon
German pedagogy ? So I look back and behold my
wee self pre-enacting as a St. Louis atom a stage
of the World's History.
VI
The Great St. Louis Deed
During these years a larger hope took hold of
St. Louis, a greater civic pride, a more colossal ur-
ban egotism than she has ever known since. Can
we trace this consciousness of her own importance
to its source? She seems to have felt at this time
a world-historical destiny, and claimed a lofty na-
tional if not a supra-national mission. Had she
really done anything which might serve as a ground
or even as a pretext for this far-reaching aspira-
tion? So we ask now in retrospect with some in-
THE GREAT ST. L0UI8 DEED. 53
sistent importunity. Such a deed of hers can be
pointed out and studied which was not merely a
local or temporary incident, but an exploit of uni-
versal significance.
I am aware that I shall call up strong protest and
perhaps ridicule at the meaning which I give to the
affair of Camp Jackson. But as I view the matter,
it was a great pivotal event whose purport time has
not only confirmed, but has continued to deepen.
To-day I think to note our microscopic Camp Jack-
son enlarged over the sea into Europe which is fight-
ing its hitherto separative tendency toward some
kind of federated Union.
A little less than three years after the taking of
Camp Jackson, I sprang out of a railroad train
which had brought me from Cincinnati, and push-
ing to the banks of the Mississippi near-by, I caught
my first view of St. Louis as she lay wrapped in
her flowing sable headdress of smoke. Not very at-
tractive in outer look did she appear to me from
that distance; still even then she, like the veiled
Egyptian image at Sais, was secretly propounding
to me the problem of my earthly existence, which I
am working at still to-day under her cloudy coif
after more than half a century.
As I crossed the river on the ferry-boat, and first
trudged the wharf toward the streets, I asked my-
self : "What is the event, which most deeply and
persistently lurks in your memory concerning this
spot of earth? Is there any significant deed here
54 THE ST. L0VI8 MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
done in the past, whose presence haunts and colors
all your eager sight-seeing ? ' '
My answer was, "Yes, this for me is the city of
Camp Jackson."
In order that I may impart to my reader as viv-
idly as I can the reason for this peculiar mental
state of mine, let me put briefly together the chief
national events of that time :
(1) The Union had been broken to pieces under
Buchanan by the secession of the Southern tier of
Slave States.
(2) Lincoln, the new President, had affirmed as
the essential point of his Inaugural (March 4th,
1861) the Primacy of the Union.
(3) South Carolina had maintained not only in
word but also in deed the Primacy of the Single
State by the capture of Fort Sumter (April 14th).
(4) Lincoln had answered her with his resolve in
his call for 75,000 volunteers, to put down the re-
bellion (April 15th).
(5) Camp Jackson, taken (May 10th, 1861) in
less than a month after the fall of Sumter, was the
Great Deed, the earliest victorious response of the
Nation affirming by its action the Primacy of the
Union, and thus sealing Lincoln's first call with its
first real achievement.
All these steps of the resistless onstriding crisis
of the time I had followed with the intense inner
reaction of a young fellow of twenty at College. On
the whole the stream of events dashed madly to-
ward disunion in spite of the attempts to stay its
THE GREAT ST. LOUIS DEED. 55
furious energy. Soul-crushing had been my dis-
may, and that of the North generally at the spec-
tacle of the huge falling edifice of our country. But
when I woke one fine May morning and in my Ohio
home read the newspaper head-lines about the cap-
ture of Camp Jackson at St. Louis, I felt that the
first decisive counterstroke had been given to the
advance of the rebellion. In a slave State, in the
South 's largest city, by the act of its own people
secession had been arrested and whelmed back in
a stunning defeat. I felt this already in my little
town to be the overture to the Union's victory, and
it swept away the cloud of despair which had hung
over the North since the fall of Fort Sumter. And
that has remained the place of Camp Jackson in
the movement of the whole Civil War — the primal
'counterstroke of successful resistance to the hith-
erto quite unimpeded sweep of the South 's triumph.
And the saving act took place at the center of the
Great Valley and of its River, as it were in the
heart of the Nation, which was now really tapped
to its core, henceforth to gush out lavishly in de-
fense of its existence.
Thus I first trod the streets of St. Louis with no
little reminiscence and patriotic elation, probably
not so very far from Laclede's first cabin built
here about one hundred years before my arrival.
But that atomic event, though pregnant with a
great future, I hardly knew and could not then
think much about. St. Louis at the moment was
still in the poignant pulsations of the conflict,
56 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
though it was no longer the immediate prize of
combat. The fact is this city had made more and
greater history during the earlier stages of the
"War than any other city of the country, not except-
ing Washington. Really St. Louis was more impor-
tant then than it has ever been since. It had for a
while more than a local, more than a national, yea
a world-historical eminence. That first testful fight
for Federal Union not merely of the American
States but (as we just now are beginning to see) of
the World took place on this spot, a typical deed
hereafter to be repeated thousandfold in our his-
tory, and it has hardly yet begun repeating itself
around the globe. The Great River too was to be
freed as well as its Valley, which crowning feat'
was accomplished by gunboats constructed and sent
from this point. Such was then our sovereign lead
in the West, perchance in the Nation ; will it spur'
us to renewed activity to keep our inning, or para-
lyze us with the great illusion of our irreversible'
supremacy? In this success lurks the danger in-
herent in all victory.
Utterly contradictory and long-continued has
been the disputation concerning Camp Jackson.
Opinions about it locked horns at the time, and
have remained locked up to date. A few years ago,
its semi-centennial took place, and the whole sub-,
ject was thrashed over in the newspapers with
pretty much the same diversity of judgment as in.
its beginning. The deed can be shown to be both
legal and illegal on both sides, according as the law!
THE GREAT ST. LOUIS DEED. 57
of the Union or the law of the Single-State is
deemed paramount. In fact that problem was just
what the law could not solve, so that some power or
energy seems intervening above the fighting dual-
ism of the two legalities. What is that higher
Power? Or the argument often drops the legal as-
pect, and dwells on the policy or the expediency of
the deed. But again each side shows with equal
force that its part in the Camp Jackson affair was
very expedient, but very inexpedient was the other
side's part. Thus some greater might seems to be
using both the expedient and the inexpedient for
its own purpose. Can I in any manner see or get
hold of that supernal energy which sways above all
contradictions; especially the one called up by
Camp Jackson? For here are seen grappling a
right which is illegal and a wrong which is legal —
which side can the honest but perplexed path-seek-
ing citizen take?
Apart from the disunionists, I found the union-
ists still deeply divided about the justification of
Camp Jackson. The thing puzzled me. I needed
but to blow off the ashes with a word, when I could
not only see but feel the first fires of the contro-
versy still glowing hot in the hearts of the two op-
posing sides, after three years of cooling off. I lis-
tened to both parties with eagerness, yea with sym-
pathy, and finally came to the conclusion that the
supreme upper purpose of Camp Jackson was just
this division into the two different sorts of union-
ists, the conditional and the unconditional (so they
58 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
were often named at the time), as the grand pre-
liminary discipline not only for saving but for re-
generating the Union.
I had been before this experience boisterously
but one-sidedly interested in the deed of Camp
Jackson at a distance, as if it trumpeted the first
preluding note of triumph over the Nation's disso-
lution. But the discords of the two clashing parts
which lurked in the victory, I now heard on the
spot of their origin, and their historic collision
rose seething murkily within me. "Where, how can
I get the light? This was one of the spiritual
troubles that drove me later to interrogate more
profoundly that hitherto enigmatic oracle called
Philosophy.
But if Camp Jackson was to me a kind of un-
sung Iliad with heroic deed, I soon came to ask,
Who was the hero f I had not far to look, in fact
he rose in evidence everywhere, the visible presence
in each part or phase of the one great action. And
whatever salient turn I might look at, there stood
the one heroic individual, the spirit's sovereign
permeating and directing each particle of the total
event.
Here it is worth while to contrast the deeds of
Port Sumter and Camp Jackson, less than a month
apart at the beginning of the Civil War, and prefig-
uring its two tendencies. The Fort is assaulted
and taken by the Secessionists; thus they succeed
so far in disrupting the Union, and the United
States troops withdraw to the North. A foreshow
THE GREAT ST. LOUIS DEED. 59
is this of what takes place in the East during the
whole war. Northern troops on Southern soil get
whipped, but they in turn overcome the South if it
invades the North.
Now behold the West. Here the Union seizes
the offensive on the moment, and practically keeps
it from the very start to the finish. This start is
Camp Jackson, which is the first really positive re-
sponse to the President's call, hence the import of
it and the thrill. The "West saw its ideal and its
hope at stake in both deeds, being enormously de-
pressed by Fort Sumter but proportionately up-
lifted by Camp Jackson, which was our true initia-
tive, the War's prophetic challenge.
The greatest man in the nation then was Francis
Preston Blair, if not in the world ; he stood and di-
rected for some days a world-historical act ; Univer-
sal History pivoted for a moment on St. Louis and
on him. He possessed the supernal power at that
moment; his will coincided with the World-Spirit's
will — and thus he became its historic executor, its
Hero. Will he ever be able to repeat that one su-
premacy? If so, he is the coming man of the Na-
tion's supreme crisis. Or is he only a single-deed
Great Man, mighty for the once, and then declining
toward sunset? Let us scan him more closely to
read his lesson.
60 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
VII
The St. Louis Hero
Quite a little spell after the Camp Jackson event,
say some nine or ten years, which permitted us the
calm to survey it not merely in its political but
also in its literary aspect, I remember discussing
with my friend Judge Woerner this problem:
Which is the best artistic vehicle for expressing the
deed of Camp Jackson, the Novel or the Epic? Sev-
eral hours we kept turning the matter over while he
interjected many vivid personal recollections from
his experience, for he was under arms that day on
the Union side, if I recall his statement aright.
Moreover he was a born novel-reader, which I was
not ; hence he seized and described the whole action
from the novelistic point of view. I, however, fresh
from the study of Homer, and taking my choice
probably in accord with some natural tendency,
preferred the form of the Epic, with its sway of the
Upper Powers in one shape or other, as the most
adequate literary expression of the Great Deed,
and capable of being made superior to any purely
historic record of the same. So I reeled him off a
little rhapsody of the St. Louis Iliad as I called it,
with its central hero Achilles not sulking, but di-
vinely acting under the guidance of Pallas Athena
in person.
The excellent Judge shot back at me his decision :
' ' That may do for old Troy and the Homeric age in
which you live too intently ; but it will not answer
THE ST. LOUIS HERO. 61
for St. Louis and our piesent time, whose art-form
I tell you, is the Novel and not your antiquated
Epic. Better quit your poetizing any how, it is left
behind in our new world." So my friend was in-
clined to challenge not only my opinion but my
right of poetic utterance, and he was not alone in
his view. Whereupon I replied: "My God-sent
office calls for my true self-expression in whatever
form of it the spirit imposes upon my tongue ; you
may not like it, nor anybody else ; still I must and
shall fulfil my soul's prime vocation."
So much for an old personal problem pertaining
to the limits of my writing-gift, a problem still pro-
voked afresh and still unriddled. With this very
modern episode ended, let us turn back to our St.
Louis Iliad, and consider its hero at his highest
moment.
As I look yonder at him through all the inter-
vening decades, Blair appears before me now as a
great heroic personality standing at a supreme
turning-point of the World's History, and direct-
ing its coming destiny. What was the ultimate
stake of his preternational activity, doubtless un-
conscious to himself ? Just here in St. Louis at that
moment the problem had come up in all its far-
reaching intensity : Shall this city, this State, this
Valley, and therewith this Nation advance to a new
and stronger and freer Federal Union or lapse back-
ward into the separated and everrasping States of
Europe, which have still this problem to settle in
the future? (They are trying with many sour
62 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST
faces and painful contortions to settle it just now).
Or was the soldier Lyon the foremost man of des-
tiny? It seems to me that anybody who carefully
reads the fate-burdened events of those overflowing
hours will soon see that the military man was
merely the smiting weapon in the hands of Blair,
who really first forged it and then directed it to the
supreme end.
So I can vision Francis Preston Blair on this
spot seizing hold of the rudder of the World's His-
tory and giving to the same a quick significant
whirl at a grand turn in the stream of time. That
was his sudden call and inspiration, more visible
at the present moment than ever before. I do not
claim that I beheld his lofty historic position then,
as I walked up Olive street to the site of Camp
Jackson, but I did feel the original demonic power
of the man in that occurrence, the cosmical energy,
if you wish to call it such, which took possession
of him and made him perform things which appear
to ordinary life superhuman, and which to the eye
of the old Greek poet are the deeds of the Hero in-
spired by the Olympian Gods. Hence to me Camp
Jackson has unfolded in time an epical character,
modern though it be.
But I have to add that Blair owned this peculiar
power but the once, and then for a short time ; he
lost the gift largely if not entirely in later days ; he
was chosen just the one time by the Spirit of the
Age to execute its supernal behest. After the one
grand culminant effort, his career droops, though
THE ST. LOUIS HERO. 63
not uneventful. As the greatest man at that time
in St. Louis, as a kind of epical hero in a supreme
national deed, I followed him and listened to his
spoken word, though he was, when I heard him, in
comparative eclipse.
Blair was the man who saw distinctly, and acted
upon the insight, that the fight between the two sec-
tional antagonisms must be made ; he had thus read
the decree of the time, or if you will, the behest of
the World-Spirit. "Give us always the man who
can do that," is the cry of every crisis. Blair had
been preparing the instrumentality for some years.
In a slave state he organized an emancipation party
— the natives and the foreigners, the latter being
Germans chiefly — first as political clubs, the so-
called Wide- A wakes, throughout the city. But the
other side began to do likewise and rallied their
Minute Men, for the open original secessionists in-
tended disunion, and the secret ones too.
But Blair knew his advantages ; his people were
largely trained soldiers of Europe and supplied
with officers; he realized that we had a standing
army in our midst, ready to be mobilized on notice.
These men he immediately offered to Lincoln in
response to the President's first call, and they were
at once mustered in by Lyon. But after Camp
Jackson he somehow could not control his own
forces, could no longer direct the power which he
had evoked. Accordingly he brought Fremont,
who would utilize this same power, and who, having
got it, kept it away from Blair, and then lost it in
64 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
his turn. Thus Fremont failed utterly, and so it
came that the Germans were without any adequate
American leader. Then they practically took pos-
session of the City and the State in their own right.
So the matter stood when I arrived in 1864.
Blair was a friend of Brockmeyer, to whom he
did a great service in rescuing the latter from the
clutches of arbitrary military power, which had
thrust him in jail. But a great disservice it was,
in my opinion, when Blair persuaded him to enter
Missouri politics. That was the philosopher's aber-
ration from the path of his true destiny as I fore-
cast him; his genius at its best was not political.
Thus Blair, though never a member, had an indi-
rect influence upon the St. Louis Movement, indeed
he fated it, and Brockmeyer with it, though far
from purposing any such result.
I have stated above that Blair trained and used
Lyon as his deft military instrument, quite indis-
pensable ; but the general must have soldiers disci-
plined, enthusiastic, ready to leap to the battle-line
at the word of command. Now the curious fact
springs up that Blair in a time of peace had found
a standing army already drilled and officered,
though scattered, which he brought together and
organized, putting it under the authority of Lyon
along with himself. This far-reaching, little recog-
nized, but prolific fact must be set forth, not in its
historic fullness, but so far as it had a bearing upon
our St. Louis Movement and the members thereof,
not omitting of course my little autobiographic self.
THE STANDING ARMY OF ST. LOUIS. 65
VIII
The Standing Army of St. Louis
The significance of this Camp Jackson army along
with its deed and its hero cannot be left out of the
St. Louis Movement, which never could have arisen
unless through such an antecedent condition. And
St. Louis certainly would have become a different
city without this deeply determining experience.
And Missouri probably would have followed Vir-
ginia and met a similar fate, had it not been for
Blair and his Germans, who at once enforced by
means of Camp Jackson the unconditional line be-
tween Union and Disunion. The conflict could not
be compromised any longer, even here in the birth-
state of the old Compromise of 1820. Sterling Price,
Virginia-born, best represents the conditional com-
promising Unionist who must be now fully union-
ized or disunionized, or, as we can see and say to-
day, must be Americanized or Europeanized, for
the hour has struck. Blair, also of Virginia de-
scent by way of Kentucky, is Price's antitype and
the right destroyer of his idea. Thus here in Mis-
souri, Mother Virginia out of the creative depths
of her dual nature has brought forth two sets of
desperately conflicting sons and their antagonistic
principles in the Nation represented by Abraham
Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, both also of Southern
descent through Kentucky.
Let us now look at the other element, unknown
to Virginia — the German — but the prime physical
QQ THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
condition of victory, Thor's hammer swung on high
in triumph. There was a time when St. Louis
might well be called a German city — a period of
some dozen or fifteen years, as I reckon its dura-
tion. Germany seemed to have migrated hither in
person, and to have settled down in St. Louis and
the surrounding country on both sides of the Mis-
sissippi. Thousands upon thousands they came
flocking not only with their laborious bodies, but
with their whole intellectual outfit, from the man
trained at the university down to the common-
schooled peasant. It was the second great migra-
tion of Teutonia to the United States, the first be-
ing that earlier hegira chiefly to Pennsylvania,
which took place in the English colonial times. The
start of this second vast swarming of the Teutonic
folk over the ocean has been dated in 1818 by na-
tive historians; the European political troubles
gave to it increased momentum in the early Thir-
ties, and especially in 1848. Thus a little German
world arose here in the "West with St. Louis at its
heart.
But the point which I wish now to emphasize
once more in this connection is that nearly all these
Germans were trained soldiers of the old Father-
land, and could at once step from the plow into the
disciplined order of battle. And what is more
strange, they had here their own officers already
schooled in the best military institutes of Europe.
That is, without knowing it the city had in its
midst a standing army ready for immediate service.
THE STANDING ARMY OF ST. LOUIS. 67
An instance reported to me by the son of one of
these German officers will illustrate. ' ' My father, ' '
says this son, "was an educated military engineer
in Germany, but fled to America, since he had par-
ticipated in the revolution of 1848. He was build-
ing a large structure in North St. Louis under a
contract with a hundred men or more in charge,
when on an April day of 1861 appeared before him
his old friend and fellow-officer, Franz Sigel, then
only a little school-teacher in the city, who said to
him 'Come, we must enlist.' 'What do you mean?'
Sigel replied, 'Lincoln has called for troops, we
must take up our old profession. ' ' But what am I
to do with this building and these men?' 'Your
house will not at present be needed; but who are
these workmen?' 'Germans — laborers, artisans,
foremen.' 'Soldiers, I see,' said Sigel ; 'bring them
along.' So at once a German-drilled army sprang
into ranks with its complete organization, and the
next day was getting in line for duty. ' '
Now Blair had already seen this hidden weapon,
and was utilizing it for his purpose. He had begun
to employ it in 1858, when he was elected Republi-
can representative, the only one from a Slave State,
chiefly through German votes. But in 1860 he had
organized the before-mentioned Lincoln Wide-
Awakes into semi-military companies as political
clubs, upon which he still kept his hand after the
election. For Blair had already foreseen the ap-
proaching Civil War, and knew that it could not
longer be shirked or compromised away. Upon
68 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
this conviction he acted, and so he kept getting his
standing-army in order, waiting for the fateful min-
ute to strike. Such was his timely foresight, which
spurred him to his military preparation, and made
him the doer of the time's Great Deed.
One might think, many did think, that the mili-
tary leader of the coming War had appeared in this
Camp Jackson exploit. No, that was Blair's one
supreme exploit, as already said; from that mo-
ment began his star's obscuration. Though he was
still active, the Genius of the Time refused to stamp
his work with its sovereign seal. And after him no
great general receives at once the baptism of vic-
tory ; all who are tried do not stand the test. But
when years have passed, two leaders rise winning
the crown of triumph — Grant and Sherman, both
of whom were present in St. Louis as citizens and
spectators on Camp Jackson day. One queries why
were not they in the midst of this opening fight?
Both have given reasons in their Memoirs; rather
hipshot appears each excuse to me. The fact seems
to be that they were still terribly in doubt, both
had Southern connections, though both were born
in the North. Let me dare supply their new inner
resolution as they meditatively turned homeward
from the scene: "Yes, Camp Jackson here under
my eyes has stirred my blood as Fort Sumter off
yonder never did. I must go and enlist as soon as
I can find my place." Within a few months both
of them, having gotten out of St. Louis, were made
Colonels in the Union Army, one of volunteers, the
THE STANDING ARMY OF ST. LOUIS. (59
other of regulars. After the same manner Camp
Jackson compelled thousands to resolve for one side
or the other.
So much for the great Americans of our city at
this time. There is no doubt, however, that St.
Louis during those years took a deeper and longer
dip into the German folk-soul, than any other city
in the United States, or any perhaps outside of
Germany itself. There was a general tendency to
fall into Teutonic life, to adopt its arts, customs,
and ways of thinking. To be sure there were those
who held aloof, especially after the Civil War. But
I with the majority received baptism in this Ger-
man ocean, which then overflowed our city, leaving
an ever memorable impress upon it and me and
especially upon our St. Louis Movement.
CHAPTER SECOND
Illusion and Disillusion
Strangely parallel with these same years rises
what I shall call the Great Illusion of St. Louis,
which runs its course till the counterstroke of Dis-
illusion falls upon us with a stunning blastment of
hope. Thus we went through an historical experi-
ence of the deepest import, giving us a discipline
which is world-wide at this moment. Have not the
nations of the Earth just been witnessing the great
Teutonic Illusion of universal domination through
war, followed now by what promises to be a much
greater and longer Disillusion ? St. Louis dreaming
itself the world's coming metropolis to be won in
peace, experienced a somewhat similar dispensation,
passing from the Illusion of her sovereignty in
wealth, power and population to complete Disillu-
sion through the pitiless antagonism of the fact.
In the preceding Chapter I nave sought to give
some notion of the time's doings at St. Louis, espe-
cially as connected with the St. Louis Movement
and with myself, this little atom of autobiography.
Remarkable energy, a unique cultural outburst,
unbounded aspiration of individuals along with
grandiose civic ambition were felt throbbing up-
wards throughout the community. At least such
was my ever-bubbling hope responsive, as I remem-
70
ILLUSION AND DISILLUSION. 71
ber well, to that of the city. And now we are to
catch the deeper undertone of these occurrences,
the ironic play in them raid trough them which
weaves in its illusory web the whole population,
the common folk as well as the philosophers. We
are lured to believe, by the magic of our own im-
aginations, a persistent phantasmal lie — the lie of
material glory and supremacy. The time for us
becomes one huge mendacity to which St. Louis
surrenders herself soul and body till she quite he-
comes that which she believes, when, undeceived
by a sudden blow of fate, she ente/s upon a long
purgatorial penance. Such is my construction of
the cardinal epoch in our city's history, through
which I myself passed, and of which I was a part
— not a large yet an organic constituent.
Can I now reeonstrue the phenomenon, as I look
back at it with sharpened interest (by the events
of to-day), and with revivified memory? The irony
of all existence was lurking in us, building our fan-
tastic Babylon. Our faith in what we were going
to get divinely gratis had no bounds, its rainbow
treachery was enticing us blindly on to be present
at the approaching triumph of the Future Great
City of the World — which designation of us be-
came axiomatic in every mouth on every street cor-
ner. But the Gods intended something very dif-
ferent for us, in fulfilment of their own ends— we
being necessarily but a part of their total cosmos-
drama. Me personally the time was driving to
master all appearance, which had indeed over-
72 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
wrought and possessed my world-view just by-
dangling before me its false hopes, whose Illusion
I was to pierce and undo by that system of thought
whose purpose aimed to reach true being just
through the self-negation of the lie. This was the
chief merit of Hegel, and herein our Philosophical
Society had its call from the time.
The grand problem of the World's Illusion was
then strongly exemplified in St. Louis, and in me,
and apparently in everybody else about us. It was
a situation well known and characterized by the
Great Books of all ages, the Bibles of the Race.
Old Homer has shown it very strikingly in the lying
dream of the Greek Leader Agamemnon, sent from
above by the supreme Olympian God Zeus upon the
mortal below, who "on that very day thought to
take the city of Priam." So St, Louis and all its
people dreamed of capturing the American Troy
of untold riches and numbers; we kept for years,
like fatuous Agamemnon, "musing on things that
never were to be." And the bitter exclamation of
the poet when he stresses the divine irony would
apply to us: "Fool! who little knew what Zeus
designed ! ' '
A personal memento I may be permitted to add
at this point. In 1880 while the Illusion was still
upon us, I was teaching classes in the Iliad, and
unfolded to my little St. Louis constitutency the
foregoing view of Agamemnon's lying dream, with
illustrations from life and history. But I did not
then know that we there, all of us, teacher and
ILLUSION AND DISILLUSION. 73
pupils, as well as the entire community, were like-
wise the victims of an Illusion similar to that of
the Greek Leader, over whose comedy we were in-
clined to have some genteel merriment. But really
we were laughing at ourselves, and did not know it,
though our Disillusion was already on its way and
would soon arrive, in fact did arrive later during
that same year. In the words of the old poet we
too were "fools who little knew what Zeus de-
signed," all of us being unconsciously then and
there a living contemporary illustration of Hom-
er's picture limned some 2500 years ago. And
thus we are still realizing our old poet-prophet,
wherein is found his best commentary.
So much for the antique Greek Bible, with a
modern application to modern St. Louis, though
the book be not of the usually accepted biblical
canon. But there is the other Scripture, the au-
thorized, which also grapples with the same prob-
lem. For it is Hebrew St. Paul who declares:
"God shall send them strong delusion that they
should believe a lie" — a theology not so very un-
like that of Greek Agamemnon's lying dream sent
of Zeus. The apostle states also the purpose of
this divine missive: "That they all might be
damned who believed not," this unbelief or wrong
belief being the sin which calls forth the penalty.
Thus we, even in our literary classes, were led
to grapple with the testful problem of human Illu-
sion, as manifested not only in individuals but also
in cities and nations. It had become the prime
74 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
psychologic fact of the St. Louis soul-world, and I
believe that we were sympathetically drawn by our
communal instinct to these deeper studies of Litera-
ture, whose secret push must have lain in the time.
Hence it belongs to the history of our St. Louis
Movement that it give some account of this peculiar
phenomenon, which affected us all, and helped to
give tendency and even character to our future
achievement.
Yet I must not fail to mention the fact that in
the very might of our Illusion lurked the back-
stroke of its unreality, of its falsity. A lie can
hardly help giving some dim intimation of itself,
even in the innocent soul who may believe it. So I
now construe that uncanny feeling which gripped
us all at the mere mention of the name of Chicago,
which had already become not only our rival, but
our secret antipathy, nay, our ever-increasing ter-
ror. Somehow our people forefelt it the coming
spell-breaker, the remorseless smasher of our Great
Illusion, and we tingled with a spasm of jealousy
which doubtless varied much with individuals. Of
our own set, Brockmeyer could on small provoca-
tion fall into profane if not obscene anti-Chicago
paroxysms. Harris did not care much, for I doubt
if he ever intended to stay in our St. Louis; he
planned from the beginning to return to his ideal
Yankeeland, which was more like and of Chicago
than St. Louis. As for myself I was pretty badly
poisoned at first, but I grew better when I began
fully to recognize the will of the Gods. This
ILLUSION AND DISILLUSION. 75
recognition advanced very slowly at the start, and
with frequent backslidings, till Illusion was wiped
out in my brain by the one grand stroke of Dis-
illusion. Complete restoration from interurban an-
tipathy took place later through my long residence
in Chicago, though I never got over my early at-
tachment for even illusive St. Louis; I have re-
mained ingrown with its Movement, and am now
devoting a good shred of my senescence to writing
its story.
The common epithet applied by our good people
here was "bad town ;" even our saintly newspapers
would cry out in horror, "wicked Chicago!" A
searching test of our hearts was offered by the
great Chicago fire of 1870. Of course we with
some public display sent money for the homeless
and provisions for the hungry, and even resolutions
of sympathy for the unfortunate city — all of which
was of right appearance ; but privately everywhere
could be heard without unhappy tears the pious
scriptural ejaculation: "Again the fire of heaven
has fallen upon Sodom and Gomorrah ; may it com-
plete its divinely appointed work ! ' '
Still such was not to be Chicago's fate, as we all
see now. On the other hand, St. Louis in this way
was proclaiming her own unconscious Illusion of
supremacy to be under supernal protection, which,
if need be, would help her out by arson. Let us
now give a little study to that Illusion which deeply
insinuated itself into the St. Louis Movement as
well as into every wee urban molecule, not except-
ing me.
76 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
The Great St. Louis Illusion
St. Louis has a soul of her own, and has had from
the time when I began to get acquainted with her
— a unique civic Psyche, amenable only to the laws
of Psychology. Toward me she stands in the rela-
tion of a Person who has gone through many
changes since I have known her, that is, during
more than fifty years. Her life is associated with
mine in a greater or less intimacy, and has often
determined it to a new turn of its labyrinthine
errantry.
Hence the biography of Dame St. Louis will in-
terweave itself into the present account at numer-
ous points, and some picture or presentment of her
character, at least as I construe it from my own
considerable experience, will rise out of the fre-
quent pencillings along these pages. Justly do we
call our theme the St. Louis Movement, for this
could not have taken place anywhere else in Amer-
ica, perhaps not anywhere on the globe, save in that
peculiar communal conglomerate named St. Louis.
Moreover even here the foregoing event could not
have happened except at a given time, at the right
psychological moment, into which the Fates of Life
plunged me, without my knowing why or my having
ever found out — which news of my original self I
may expect when I step across.
So much by way of preface to a cardinal state-
ment : this city-soul, as I may call it, was getting to
THE GREAT ST. LOUIS ILLUSION. 77
have one all-dominating psychical trait when I first
breathed of its atmosphere, which trait I soon
caught, and then it caught me. I quickly found the
one faith universal, that St. Louis could not help
becoming the largest, richest, most influential city
in the land, with all the gain and glory and domin-
ion resulting from such pre-eminence. In religion,
politics, and love its multiracial polyglottic people
might differ, but in one creed they were united, or
rather fused to a kind of fanaticism: the doctrine
of the future supremacy of St. Louis.
Of course I soon found myself a convert, and a
very zealous one, if not quite purblind, and ready
to do battle for my new conviction. Still further,
I became warmly attached to the community un-
der whose banner I had enlisted as a fighter, and
with whose changes of fortune I rose and fell in
my deepest heart-throbs. To this time and its test-
ful experience I attribute my life-long underlying
predilection for St. Louis in spite of many hurtful
counter-strokes. If she slapped me out of her pres-
ence, I would in the course of years sneak back at
least for a look. Take this example : after many an
angry separation, here I am once more in her lap
writing the present book on the St. Louis Move-
ment, which writ I believe, after all the deductions
which I with my frankest pen intend to make, man-
ifold and searching, will be found to her credit.
Looking backward through the long trial of the
years we can see that such a prediction or antici-
pation of her all-overtopping pre-eminence has
78 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
never been fulfilled, that it was in fact a huge mi-
rage floating before the vision of a great population
across the empty desert of the future. So the inter-
esting question in folk-psychology pushes up with
no little importunity in the mind : What pre-dis-
posed the St. Louis soul to such a phantasm ? Even
more vehement is the interrogation with me at
least: What were the effects of this prolonged
communal self-deception upon the city itself and
especially upon the St. Louis Movement? For we
all lay under that spell of enchantment for years,
veritably a kind of civic megalomania, from which
the levelest heads were not exempt — not even the
solidest mind in the city, and the greatest mechan-
ical genius of the country, if not of the world — I
mean the river-spanning bridge-builder James B.
Eads. On the opposite side of the mental scale we
philosophers, supposed to be addicted to topsy-
turvy idealism by nature and by training, and oth-
erwise deemed not well-balanced of brain, took up
with the glorious phantasmagory of our town's
coming greatness, and philosophized it into a vast
city ruled by philosophers, somewhat after the
model of that ancient Neo-Platonic polity called
Platonopolis. Our President Brockmeyer, whose
easy-soaring imagination with a little goading
could outstrip his philosophy, gave us many a far-
flashing display of his fancy's fireworks, which we
tyros believed to be the very truth of the new reve-
lation, our modern Apocalypse of St. Louis. If a
doubter from some Eastern State or from Chicago
THE GREAT ST. LOUIS ILLUSION. 79
should wag his tongue or even shake his head in
question, there would at once burst up a violent
eruption which would not only blaze white-hot but
smell sulphurous with wrathful energy.
Such was to me the grand psychical phenomenon
of St. Louis, pervasive, all-coercing, allowing no
interrogation of its validity, certainly not when at
its highest overflow. I remember my own discus-
sions of the subject with skeptical outsiders ; noth-
ing could make me flare up internally sooner than
the scoffing word of the belittler or even the quiet
argument of the opposer. I shared completely, I
may say devoutly, in this faith of the city's own
soul as it went on dreaming of its multifarious
grandeurs never to be realized.
Hence with some emphasis I jot down here in my
life 's narrative The Great St. Louis Illusion, which
spell-bound me and the city, as I remember the mat-
ter, in a sort of dream-world for a goodly number
of years. To be sure on all other affairs we were
sane enough, but on the one topic we would fly off
into a lying dream. How many years did it last?
As I recall the time and its craze of caprices, the
Illusion began to show itself shortly after the close
of the Civil War, and must have maintained its
tyranny for some twelve or fifteen years. Un-
doubtedly it started to wane after its first full efful-
gence, but the spell was not completely broken till
the census of 1880 smote the somnolescent city with
the awakening thunder-words: population of St.
Louis 350,000 ; of Chicago, 503,000.
80 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
I can still see the old lady jump up from her
sleep at the bodeful figures, and challenge the cor-
rectness of the Washington enumeration, with no
little wrath, though with an undershiver of anxiety.
Not so easily would she renounce her long sweet
Illusion; so she resolved to take her own census.
The best mathematician of her University was
called upon to oversee accurately the arithmetic of
the thing, and to insert all the omitted names, of
which a number had been dug up in the slums and
elsewhere. The result, however, was a practical
confirmation of the first dream-destroying figures.
Then followed a corresponding overflow of Disillu-
sion and of general dismay, at first running toward
despair. The outside world and Chicago especially
failed not to enjoy what they regarded as the de-
noument of a great civic comedy, funning and be-
mocking the disenchantment of the badly fooled
victim at the end of the play.
As for me, the original charm had been shaken
by my absence from its direct influence when I took
my trip abroad in 1877. In fact, I had already
started unconsciously to question the Illusion be-
fore my departure, and felt quite willing to leave
it behind for awhile. By 1880 I had indeed re-
turned to St. Louis, but had won meantime a great
new experience which had brought its inner and
outer changes. I was now sufficiently aloof to be a
spectator as well as a participant when the city-
soul with no little tossing of itself had to undergo
its grand Disillusion. I sympathized, but I laughed
THE GREAT ST. LOUIS ILLUSION. 81
too at the rather sudden dissipation of that dream-
life of the past which had been also mine own.
In its humiliated mood the town began to look
backward and to trace the source of deception.
Those tell-tale figures of the census showed that it
had been outstripped for years in the grand race
for the urban primacy of the West. The confes-
sion had to be made : Yes, already in 1870 our
rival Chicago must have surpassed us in popula-
tion, though the census of that year had made St.
Louis the larger by some 15,000. But can it be
possible ? Where is this thing going to end ? The
newspapers start quickly on the scent with a pro-
digious outcry all over the country: a national
fraud has been committed ; the Great St. Louis Illu-
sion has had the power somehow to transform the
United States Census Bureau into the image of
itself, turning the same to the Great Illusion of a
Census, the whole of which begins to look insub-
stantial. But in 1880 the trick is uncovered, and
there follows a long penitential era with heart's
sorrow and confession, and with an access of de-
spairful lethargy. One estimate now before me
places these illusory inhabitants of St. Louis in
1870 at not less than 100,000, a ghostly multitude
who were duly counted for our city but had never
lived here or anywhere else. Such we may deem
the supreme tricksy act of the Great St. Louis Illu-
sion: it threatens to transform the nation, if not
the whole world into a phantasm like unto itself.
But mark the fateful consequence! Thus the city
82 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
is lured to believe its own lie, manufactured by
itself and imposed upon itself, and the Great Illu-
sion wins ten years more of life, till the next Census.
Dare we here try to conceive for a moment what
might otherwise have happened, in the interest of
eternal verity? If our community had only ac-
cepted the truth of itself, whose oracle was not
hard to find just across the River, and if it had set
its house in order and had lived according to its own
reality it might have been a different St. Louis
with its city-soul still here in full energy at the
center of a continent. But can the leopard change
his spots ? So in a kind of defiant megalomania our
urban folk is destined to gorge itself a decade
longer upon the very vanity of existence, upon its
own self-made Illusion.
II
The Prophet of the Illusion
As usual, this peculiar public consciousness had
its most prominent individual representative and
expositor, who was not only a fervent believer but
a genuine apostle, offering himself a living sacrifice
to the cause. He was the embodiment of that St.
Louis Epoch, and made himself the voice of the
whole community's highest faith and aspiration. I
can still see him hobbling, puffing, indoctrinating
whomsoever he could get to listen, while mopping
the ever gushing perspiration from his brow with
a soppy bandanna which had already gone through
THE PROPHET OF THE ILLUSION. 83
many a similar campaign. I shall have to confess
that I, looking back through the long avenue of the
years, behold him now rising up before me as the
typical urban character of that time, its truest rep-
resentative even in his distortions, physical and
mental. After no little contemplation of his career,
of his writings, and of his intellectual outfit, he has
grown upon me more and more as the best visible
incarnation of the St. Louis city-soul during this
era of the Great Illusion.
Hence I am going to celebrate him to the extent
of my talent in a brief biography, for which I find
the printed materials to be very scanty, though I
have made some search for them in the place where
they ought to be found. During these years he
was the most prominent and best-known figure on
the streets of St. Louis, though I deem it now my
ill-luck that I formed no intimate personal ac-
quaintance with the man and did not get to know
him and see him directly in his work. For I do not
deny that this my present review of his life with its
adversities has roused in me a deep, strong fellow-
feeling; in his career I can trace not a few lines
similar to mine ; his fate I gaze upon with sympa-
thy and catch a strange reflection of mine own,
though there were between us considerable differ-
ences. To take an example of the latter, his writ
had an infinite publicity compared to anything I
ever sent forth. He vanished first from our street-
corners and then from the world some thirty years
ago; his unique personality has passed into the
84 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
tomb of forgetfulness, and his books seem also
marching rapidly thitherward. But I have not yet
told his name. Old citizens, rubbing the dust off
their memories, may still recall, probably with a
titter of contempt, the form and fame of Logan
Uriah Reavis.
I designated him the prophet of the Great St.
Louis Illusion, because he had one presaging
thought in his life, in his books, and even in his
looks; this thought he formulated in the locution:
St. Louis the Future Great City of the World.
That was his preaching and writing text, the main
title of his various works, his soul's inmost faith,
uttered with the fervor and conviction of old
prophecy. Alas ! after his unwearied self-imposed
apostolate of some fifteen years, he had to live
through the pitiless disenchantment of the census
of 1880, which seems to have struck him dumb (as
it did many another St. Louisan), for his prophetic
vocation became silent under that awful stroke,
though he is said in secret to have still clung to his
old faith.
Reavis was born 1831 in the Sangamon Bottom,
not far from the famous Lincoln localities of Illi-
nois. For a time he was a newspaper man at little
Beardstown, but in 1866 he pushed on to great St.
Louis, with his prophetic Illusion now in posses-
sion of him, or let it be called an obsession. He
started his gospel in 1867 with a pamphlet entitled
The New Republic, which is already attuned to
grandiose prediction. But in 1869 he published
THE PROPHET OF THE ILLUSION. 85
his Removal of the Capital, which he forecast was
to be transferred from Washington to St. Louis.
This book, in which he advocated the removal of
the seat of the National Government, was composed
in the topmost effervescence of the Great Illusion,
and met with no small response in the city, but with
jeers and cat-calls from all along the Atlantic
Coast, and of course from Chicago. Still the work
won for Reavis his Herculean title throughout the
nation as the colossal Capital-mover, and he be-
came one of our chief celebrities.
Let it here be noted by way of connection with
our present work, that Reavis with his prophetic
idea appeared among us quite co-eval with the
birth of the Philosophical Society already re-
counted. Only a few months apart in the same
year of 1866 came the two rather noiseless, but
ominous arrivals. Were they in some secret way
related — both being perchance the offspring of the
same hidden demonic Power now at work in the
city-soul of St. Louis? Reavis was not a member
of the philosophic set, I never saw him at any of
our meetings, though I have heard that he did once
attend a lecture by Harris on the Immortality of
the Soul, which I read afterwards, and for me it
was just the abstrusest prelection I ever tried to
fathom on that abstruse subject. I wonder what
Reavis got out of it. From his writings I infer
that he had no irrepressible hankering after Phi-
losophy, especially after that of Hegel.
Skeptically to-day we are inclined to query : Did
86 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
the solid business-heads of our town really support
this fantastic scheme of the Capital's removal? A
committee of leading citizens headed by James B.
Eads, our practical master-mind, gave their un-
stinted approval in writing. The County Court
voted a handsome appropriation for the free distri-
bution of his pamphlet of 1870, which was printed
both in English and German. Reavis claims that
150,000 copies of his various books passed into cir-
culation. There is little doubt that he voiced the
city's illusive mania at that time better than any
other man. Edition after edition was called for;
he says that he printed no less than five different
pamphlets on the one all-absorbing text between
1867 and 1870. That whole text was written, as he
declares "to show the glory and greatness of St.
Louis, and of the Mississippi basin ' ' ; here was des-
tined to be not merely the national but "the conti-
nental Capital," "the great city of the Future/'
verily the center of the world's wealth and power
and population.
The chief argument of Reavis stressed the geo-
graphical locality, round which were clustered the
abounding resources of the Great Valley, and these
he paraded with much statistical lore. Figures too
shared in the Great Illusion, and proved again
that the deft magician of numbers can turn even
sour mathematics to sweetest dreams. The main
appeal of Reavis was to the material side of man,
with its resistless oncoming in triumph. He guaged
his time and his audience correctly.
THE PROPHET OF THE ILLUSION. 87
He tells pathetically of his advent: "a stranger
without friends and without means." Privation
he had endured: "I have walked these streets in
poverty and hunger." Ridicule too he has had to
face, but he has been sustained by his inner faith :
"I have the promise from of old that my works
shall live after me." Possibly Harris' lecture on
immortality gave him this deathless comfort. Here-
in we see the enthusiastic prophet who believes in
his call. But thus he shows himself as the Very in-
carnation of his own Great Illusion.
Still to the St. Louis people, whose deepest aspi-
ration he embodied and indeed voiced, Reavis was
on the whole a comic character. His Falstaffian ap-
pearance was already a challenge to mirth for the
street ragmuffins. His long scraggy red beard, and
the furrowed canals in his face never failed to
catch and treasure their due proportion of St. Louis
soot. He had a great predilection for himself when
unkempt and unwashed, not unlike Dame St. Louis
herself. Then step-mother Nature had left him
somewhat hunchbacked and hipshot, for which he
was surely not to blame, though he became thereby
a walking laugh. But chiefly whenever he dared
take a step there would protrude out from behind an
enormous haunch on which, the ribald scoffers of
Chicago and New York said, he proposed to heave
the Capitol from its foundations at Washington
and trundle it away to the West, swimming with it
across the Mississippi. St. Louis too laughed at
him, but therein laughed at itself as beholding the
gg THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
living body of its own Great Illusion in its visible
deformity. So the old Athenian demos took its
pleasure in jeering at its own grotesque image held
up before itself by that prince of time's mimics, the
comedian Aristophanes.
Now let it be understood that I was present at
this comedy of the Great Illusion, and was one of
the loudest laughers at its unconscious buffoonery
and at my own latent folly; but my merriment,
while shaking my sides, never shook my faith.
When I now glance back at myself, I see me and
the whole town as unwittingly comic as honest
Reavis himself, who was more apostolic and disin-
terested than any of us. Still we were all pursu-
ing an end absurd, nugatory, self-annulling, hence
the right theme of a Cervantean world-comedy, of
which the Don Quixote was the enthusiastic but fan-
tastical idealist L. U. Reavis.
As for me, I was drinking down to intoxication
the great experience of Illusion and its significance
in human lfie. The foe I was sent to conquer had
completely conquered me, but I did not know it,
and great was my happiness. Personally I was
stimulated to the most strenuous stretch of my
gift, and won my highest and most enduring values
in pursuit of a golden bubble soon to burst into
nothingness. It was a lesson which I never after-
wards forgot — a divinely planned course given me
in the world's school by the supreme pedagogue
trouncing into me the knowledge of what is illusory
and ephemeral, and driving me to find the Eternal
WHENCE. 89
in the Passing and the Past. Unto that end I be-
came a writer of books, starting to do then what I
am doing just now.
Even at this late moment in reminiscence I 3n-
joy the high-hearted hope of that time, and would
gladly recover a little pinch of it for present use.
Fortune we dreamed pursuing us like a passionate
wooer, the Future's full cornucopia was already
pouring into our lap, verily St. Louis had a cinch
on civilization, and could not help it if she would.
In this mood we listened to our prophet with the
laugh of faith, and drank down his books, slaking
with delight our thirst at his ever-welling fountain
of bombastic printer's ink. Really we were help-
ing to make our own comedy, and we played our-
selves a comic part even in our merriment over our
unconsciously humorous spokesman, our grand
hierophant of Illusion.
Ill
Whence
The spectator of life's drama, now myself peer-
ing down at mine own drama through the long gal-
lery of the revealing years, cannot help wondering
and interrogating: What could be the source, the
antecedent development of the Great Illusion in the
folk-soul of our dear St. Louis ? For it must have
been begotten, born, and reared on this spot, among
these people — they furnished the inner pre-concep-
90 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
tion or spiritual potentiality, which was fed to its
outer huge reality by the environing world.
When I first came into contact with the city's
living peculiar self, I marked its exceeding belief
in its own good-luck. The communal heart wor-
shiped at the shrine of the old Roman goddess For-
tuna with a deeper sincerity, aye sanctity, than at
the altar of any other divinity, heathen or chris-
tian. Undoubtedly the formal religion of the va-
rious creeds was duly attended to as it ought to
be ; but the informal religion, having no church or
priest (except Reavis), the deeper well-head of all
speech and action was its world-overarching faith
in its own triumphant destiny. And it believed
that it did not need seriously to bestir itself; the
boon would rain from the skies, the pure gift of the
Gods to their chosen people. But the confession has
to be made that to-day quite the opposite character-
istic dominates the city — a deep perilous unfaith
in itself, which may be heard in the ever-repeated
question : "What is the matter with St. Louis ? So
every citizen now turns doctor and is diagnosing the
grand communal malady, which somehow refuses
to be medicined to pristine health and hope.
This problem, not merely a civic but also a psy-
chologic one, must be laid over at present, and we
shall return to our first inquiry. There is no doubt
that time's lottery once threw many precious gifts
into the lap of St. Louis without any special effort
of her own. She grew up the spoilt child of geo-
graphic locality. The sudden increase in her trad«
WHENCE. 91
and population, and her central importance be-
tween 1850 and 1860, the natural overflow of the
surging Western migration, caused her to outstrip
her only rival in the Great Valley, Cincinnati. The
Kansas struggle which rose to be the chief national
occupation in the later fifties, made St. Louis the
cynosure of the whole country, located as she was
between East and "West, centered in the heart of the
land, and halving by her site the Great River in the
middle. This fortunate geographical position
smote every imagination, but by its very excellence
became probably for St. Louis a fateful asset. Still
more emphatically, at the beginning of the Civil
War she made herself the central city of the Union,
having done the first great positive deed against
Secession, and having furnished the first real mili-
tary hero of the coming crisis, as already recounted.
The city lay between North and South, and seemed
the destined spot on which the Nation's reconcilia-
tion was to take place, the Union 's best uniter phys-
ically and spiritually.
Surely Fortune has been blindly partial to St.
Louis during these years; but will the shifty
Goddess continue her smiles, being notoriously
fickle and even of treacherous Godhood ? Then the
problem comes: Has she pampered her favorite
child, hamstringing activity by her over-indul-
gence, so that the town gets to thinking that For-
tune will always take care of it without its co-oper-
ation ? As I remember the urban psychology about
1870, in which I profoundly shared, St. Louis was
92 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
inclined to think that its greatness could not be
halted by anything short of the universal cata-
clysm, that it had a hold on civilization itself, which
Providence would not, or could not break. I do
not say that such a view was openly proclaimed,
but I can affirm that I have never since seen so
much self-satisfaction at the approach of the ever-
cloudy, ever-tetering future, never been deluged in
such a Niagara of optimism, civic and individual.
Life became one long intoxication, as we banqueted
on the wine of the Great Illusion.
To be sure, there were ominous signs in the hori-
zon plain enough to any eye except that of down-
right fatuity. Chicago had been already selected
by our jealousy as our menacing challenger, very
boastful but also very deedful. Still in those first
years St. Louis was as contemptuous of Chicago as
Chicago now is contemptuous of St. Louis. But al-
ready in 1870 the great line of migration had de-
flected to and through Chicago away from St.
Louis. The vast North-West was filling up with
Chicago's dependencies, while brigandage held
sway in helpless Missouri, and drove the mover's
wagon beyond the State's boundaries, far into the
farther West. The railroad, the new bearer of civ-
ilization, showed a decided preference for the more
Northern city, evidently for good reasons. But
mark this fact: you could already hear every im-
partial observer emphasize the difference in the
spirit of the two places. The census of 1870 showed
a slightly greater population in St. Louis, but ac-
WHENCE. 93
cording to other tests she was lagging. Still as
already indicated, she had the magic power of turn-
ing the Census itself into a stupendous deception,
into the very picture of her own Great Illusion.
The curse of that fraud was that it took a decade
longer to break the spell of her enchantment.
It has been my experience to watch many indi-
vidual illusions rise, nourish, and break to nought
in myself and in other persons. Crowds, too, I have
seen driven devilward under the goad of some sud-
den phantasm, and more than once I have gone
along. But three Great Illusions in which large
communities, in fact whole peoples have been the
victims, are deeply carved on the memorial tablets
of this stubborn brain of mine. The case of St.
Louis was the smallest in extent and in importance
generally, but for me altogether the most impres-
sive and immediately influential. But the second
Great Illusion of my time I lived through with
heart and head and will, deeply engaged in combat-
ing its challenge : this was the long and desperate
Illusion of the Southern people when they sought
and fought the Civil War. I only speak the word
of some of the best Southerners who, once partici-
pating in that conflict, with perfect honesty, at
present call it an Illusion. But it has passed on,
and I and you are now witnessing the third Great
Illusion of my life's period, the greatest Illusion of
all History, veritably earth-defying in its minatory
rage. This is the Teutonic Illusion of world-domi-
nation territorially and spiritually, which I am old
94 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
enough to have seen rise, grow to a globe-girdling
magnitude during half a century, and then burst to
fragments but yesterday — November, 1918. This
Teutonic Illusion is deeply connected, I hold, with
a kindred strand in the make-up of St. Louis,
whereof something later.
Hence just now comes to me and to you the soul-
burdening interrogation: What is the function of
Illusion not merely in my individual history and
yours, but in the "World's History? Can we catch
it, and put it under law and thus control it so that
it will not the next time wipe out our personal ca-
reer and possibly the whole Earth's hope? To-day
the Great Illusion is not an isolated phenomenon of
individual, of city, of State, of Nation, it seems to
be involving in its spell the whole globe, and pos-
sibly the Cosmos, which is so subtly finding its ap-
peal these days.
IV
Some Effects
Causes are dimmer, remoter, and hence more
doubtful ; while the effects we may often see in our
presence, in ourselves, plain and fairly describable.
The prime psychical result of the Great Illusion
was Hope, limitless, and enormously stimulating;
I was filled with the love and power of work, and
saw the shut future open in a mirage of triumph.
Given my mental germ, the Illusion drove me to
pierce to the center of all this vast environment of
SOME EFFECTS. 95
occurrences and appearances; beneath them I
would penetrate to the Pure Essences and by their
aid organize, that is, re-create the Universe, at least
for my own self-expression.
It so came about that I in this searchful condition
obtained a book whose supreme object was to im-
part me just the thing I wanted. My guardian
spirit, I may suppose, caused to be put into my hand
at the opportune moment Hegel's Logic, which
showed me all creation stripped bare of its superflu-
ous clothing; the naked prototypal Thought, as it
were, before Space and Time, putting on its spatial
and temporal vestments ; the original genetic Demi-
urge in his primordial act of world-creating. Thus
I, while whelmed overhead into the Great Illusion
of my environment, was secretly seeking to pene-
trate to its universal generative source, so as to
know it and perchance to master it at its birth-
point. The two threads persisted in running along
together through my present life : I acted the Illu-
sion or in it, but I thought, or was trying to think,
the Reality. I could not have done this alone, I
would have given up the quest, unless I had been
upheld and fed by the St. Louis Movement, now
buoyed by its first blooming Hope.
So I believe this city gave birth to the Philosoph-
ical Society as a kind of twin counterpart or neces-
sary antithesis to its Great Illusion. As already
stated, the two appeared at about the same time,
seemingly the products of the same peculiar ulti-
mate energy. Nature is at her last turn sanative of
I
96 THE ST. L0VI8 MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
her own disease ; to her maddest fever she has the
tendency to beget the antidote; if I may speak in
my own self-communing lingo, often bitterly neg-
ative she keeps meanwhile more deeply negating her
own negative. Thus for me at least Philosophy
had sprouted forth as secretly remedial of the gen-
eral Illusion, in which I too was living like every-
body else, even the philosophers.
I may note some instances of the mighty drive of
these years which probably manifested itself most
strongly in Harris, who now entered upon his high-
est creative period, say betwen 1865 and 1880. He
founded in 1866 the Journal of Speculative Philos-
ophy, as the vehicle of the St. Louis Movement. In
the same year he became Superintendent of the
Public Schools, and by his annual reports as well
as by his addresses he made an epoch in education,
not only locally but throughout the Nation. Thus
he wrought with equal power on both theoretical
and practical lines. Moreover he roused and kept
active the community's interest in his work, which
embraced the entire St. Louis Movement, including
not only Philosophy, but also Literature and Art.
He had private classes in Hegel and Kant, and also
in Goethe and Dante. He interpreted the Sistine
Madonna as well as the Venus of Milo. He poured
forth a copious stream of articles, lectures, trans-
lations. His correspondence was extensive in vari-
ous directions. In all this activity he was spurred
by the great civic Hope, to which he responded by
an equal ambition, till he too after many years saw
SOME EFFECTS. 97
through the Great Illusion, and fled back to his na-
tive New England rocks.
With Harris I was closely associated all this time,
and had my first and only personal experience of
the colossal working-power resident in one mere
man. I estimate that he had at his disposal three
times the labor-fund that I owned, and he was able
to summon it all in an emergency. Physically I
seemed a weakling beside him ; a dumb-bell which I
could hardly lift, he could thrust out straight from
his chest. I heard a palmist, who was testing his
hand, once say to him: "You ought to enter the
prize-ring; I would wager that with a month's
training you could knock out Mike McCoole," an
eminent Irish pugilist of those days. Still he then
kept his pale cadaverous look, though he afterwards
grew corpulent, and a thin reddish layer of hair
covered his entire scalp, which soon became bare ex-
cept a short white fringe curtaining monk-like his
neck.
It is my opinion, however, that this unremitting
and extravagant outlay of power during these fif-
teen years had practically exhausted his creative
reserve ; he had spent his originality, when perhaps
he ought to have been at his meridian. It seemed
to me that after leaving St. Louis in 1880, he always
repeated what he had gained at St. Louis, of course
with new turns and applications. He never recov-
ered his St. Louis creativity either in pedagogy or
philosophy, though he spoke and wrote not a lit-
tle, and his literary style became less technical, or
98 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
at least less bristling with Hegelian categories.
Hence Harris had essentially delivered his message
between his thirtieth and forty-fifth years, which
stretch of time covers the duration of the Great St.
Louis Illusion, under whose stress, or in whose
shadow he seems to have achieved his best. After
he quit his position of Superintendent, I often
heard him complain of a feeling of lethargy which
paralyzed his once so easy and buoyant energy ; he
attributed it to " a dumb ague, ' ' which he had con-
tracted in the malaria of St. Louis. But I think it
was simply the reaction from his long overtaxed
mind and body. His way of working would have
killed me in a year, if not sooner. If he was to de-
liver a lecture, he would keep deferring it till the
evening before it was due, when he tasked himself
to sit up all night to write it out, staying awake and
nerved tensely to composition by copious draughts
of tea. For the same amount of literary work, I
would require two weeks at least, slowly putting it
together out of pages written at a dozen or more
sittings of two or three hours each. So it came that
usually in his productions there was a gradual let-
ting-down in the last half till the close — just the
reverse of what ought to be. Hence too a frequent
unevenness in his work, owing to haste and lack of
due revision.
I speak of these matters because I am often asked
why Harris has left so little that can be read or
even found to-day. He pumped out his thought in
great lumps not well digested, really in the first un-
SOME EFFECTS. 99
finished stage of composition ; then he would throw
them aside or often print them without subjecting
them to a second or even a third redaction, which
they often sorely needed for clarifying and for or-
ganizing their disjointed fragments. I often begged
him, when at Concord he seemed to have leisure, to
take in hand his multitudinous and far-scattered
productions — articles, essays, lectures, reports of
all sorts — squeeze out of them all the too frequent
repetitions and superfluities, mend the style in many
a dark and even torn spot, and then after such
careful revisions print one or even two volumes of
his Miscellanies. "Yes, yes," he would answer, "I
am going to do that this very winter when I am
buried in the deep snow here at Concord"; but he
never did it, seemingly could not do it. Why?
That is a question not to be answered till the finish.
But the result is, we must be satisfied with the long
list of his writings printed by the United States
Bureau of Education; if we wish for anything of
his, we have to dig it out of the vast cemetery of
dead periodicals, entombing forty years of his best
literary activity. And even that list, I observe, is
not complete.
Harris made himself the voice of the St. Louis
Movement, through his Journal of Speculative Phi-
losophy, and many essays, addresses, articles, all
of them doubly reinforced by his winning person-
ality. But it must be confessed by his friends, that
voice of his never rose to the possession of a dis-
tinctive literary quality, never won a permanent
100 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
place through beautiful or original utterance. The
Trenscendental Movement still lives in the writ of
Emerson, who took exceeding care to give perma-
nent form to his central compositions, the Essays.
Harris went to Concord with the purpose of becom-
ing Emerson's successor, so at least I have always
construed his act; but after ten years' endeavor he
fell back into his old pedagogy, lapsed into the
National Bureau of Education and almost quit phi-
losophy. Another perplexing omission of his, as I
look back at him and try to catch his spiritual vi-
gnette, is his neglect, indeed his refusal to publish
in his Journal, when he had space and means, the
original source and first inspiration of the St. Louis
Philosophical Society, namely Brockmeyer's trans-
lation of Hegel's Logic, the Book of Fate, destined
to stay unborn in the unprinted underworld during
the whole life of the St. Louis Movement up to
date. Thus Harris, though philosopher, was deeply
and essentially the journalist, not the organizer;
his spiritual unit was the magazine article, not the
organic book, which is or ought to be something
generically other than a mere collection of period-
ical writings.
But what about our President, the primal Titanic
demiurge of our Movement, Brockmeyer? At first
he intended to write out in books his world-making
Promethean thoughts and experiences ; but he grad-
ually became neglectful of his first-born child, that
fated Logic, and turned away from philosophy to
politics, in which he had already begun to dabble
SOME EFFECTS. 101
while living in his "Warren County cabin. More-
over it was on this political side that the Great Illu-
son entered him, and for a long stay. In 1870 he
was elected State Senator, which naturally made
him dream of being United States Senator. This
ambition required him to win not merely St. Louis
but all Missouri, and the deed by which he was to
capture the first place of statesmanship was the
making of a new Constitution for the State. The
old Drake Constitution was unpopular from the
start, even with its own party ; indeed there was a
question if it had ever been honestly adopted. Dur-
ing several years I found him always thinking and
reading on Political Philosophy, and ready to dis-
cuss its problems, especially in regard to the Mis-
souri situation, which still labored under its war
burdens. He won his first point: Brockmeyer
more than any other one man may be called the
father of the present Missouri Constitution, though
it too is now showing signs of age. Then came for
him a new promotion: he was elected Lieutenant
Governor of the State, a rather neutral office, but
it gave him the opportunity to be often chief Execu-
tive, owing to the ill health of the aged Governor,
Phelps. As much as any other man, perhaps more
than any other man of his party, he had helped to
induct the Democratic Party into power, by admit-
ting to suffrage the disfranchised Confederates.
Now he was ready to take the next step : the na-
tional Senatorship. But it was grasped by a re-
turned Confederate, and Brockmeyer, deeply dis-
102 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
illusioned, quit political life, and fled from civiliza-
tion back to the Redmen of the forest, where he
stayed long and formed a little philosophical Soci-
ety. Once at Muscogee in the Indian Territory I
heard him explaining the deeper philosophy of
deer-stalking in a pow-wow with some Creek In-
dians. They all seemed to hail him as one of them-
selves: "Big Indian, good Indian." And he looked
it — the massive grimace, the coppery tint, the wild
eye of him.
Here we may ponder the significant episode that
both these men, our leaders, took flight from the
city and from us about the same time (1880), the
one turning eastward, the other westward. Each
of them in his way felt the stroke of the Great Dis-
illusion, and gave his own characteristic response.
Our Philosophical Society never elected other offi-
cers ; indeed it had not met for years, as far as I
now recollect. But the St. Louis Movement con-
tinued to live, and to make for itself new channels
of activity. Not long before this time I ran off to
Europe, but had returned, and began a fresh epoch
of my own distinctive work. But this belongs to a
later chapter.
V
The Economic Illusion
Naturally Mammon played his diabolic part in
the Great St. Louis Illusion; visions of untold
wealth rose and danced seductively before the
minds of the whole population; the entire Earth's
THE ECONOMIC ILLUSION. 103
treasures, especially material prosperity had been
decreed her by the Gods, and she could not alter
such a supernal decree if she would. In particular
her Real Estate was to become the most valuable
speck of dirt on this terrene globe. Prophetic
Reavis had proved the fact in his multitudinous
processions of figures, which like George "Washing-
ton could not tell a lie.
Accordingly in the year 1868-9 I, being only a
poor schoolmaster with a growing family on my
conscience, resolved to have my share of this com-
ing distribution of wealth, which the city was cer-
tain would be showered like rain out of the skies
above, and which everybody, the wholesale mer-
chant as well as the hod-carrier, knew would soon
begin to descend. I had been looking about and
listening a good deal, and I found the judgment of
experts nearly unanimous that any land investment
anywhere in St. Louis city or county could not miss
the approaching windfall, as it lay right in the
path of the irresistible cyclone of prophetic pros-
perity. Accordingly I purchased a considerable
piece of unimproved property in what was then a
suburb, near the old Pair Grounds. The tract lay
on and near Grand Avenue, the great future thor-
oughfare of the world's metropolis. Alongside of
it was soon to be erected what at that time was de-
clared to be the finest architectural monument of
the city, namely a lofty Corinthian column set in
the middle of the road and known as the water-
tower, since it also served the utilitarian purpose of
104 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
being aqueduct for the people. Thus I indulged in
a promising vision of myself as a rich man — which
promise is not yet fulfilled.
Another detail of the situation I may add as it
belongs to the Illusion. In the center of the tract,
surrounded by high ground fit for building pur-
poses lay a large deep mud-hole which was always
covered with a supply of water since it had an
ever-flowing spring in the bottom, so that it bred
some little minnows and furnished a small crop of
ice in winter. I often stood on the banks of that
little lake with its wavelets rippling in the wind,
and dreamed of the palaces which would rise over
its depths when filled up with the city 's ashes, brick-
bats, tincans, and other rubbish — and I would live
in one of those palaces, collecting the rents of the
other tenants. All this magnificence would be
then in the very heart of the Capital of the Nation,
perchance of the World.
But there was delay year after year in the ar-
rival of this urban greatness ; the mudhole persisted
in staying just what it was, a mudhole, with its
sluggish waters merely laughing in my face, if I
filliped into it a solitary pebble. What shall I do
with it? Once as I paddled around its sedgy mar-
gent, there struck me for the moment a desperate
idea : I would build a hut on these banks, and, like
Thoreau at Walden Pond, I would quit the Great
Illusion with its civilization, and go a-fishing, mar-
rying perchance philosophy to pisciculture.
Of course such a scheme vanished as soon as I
THE ECONOMIC ILLUSION. 105
turned my face the other way, and saw the same
Great Illusion still wrapping the spires and chim-
neys and all the city in its grandly magnifying mi-
rage of future splendors. The venture might have
been worse, for if I never gained, I never lost. I
had some cash to start with, sufficient to meet the
first payment. Then I saved with desperate clutch
from my spare earnings till at last after some
seven years all the obligations were liquidated, and
I was again a free man, free from debt, after a
septennial servitude far worse than that of old
Jacob, who at least won his Rachel. But I had got-
ten on my hands an elephant, white they call it, but
mine was blue, which was destined to stay with me
quite forty years, in spite of many wrenching
struggles to get rid of it without its leaving me a
beggar in my old-age.
Such was my great economic Illusion, the direct
offspring of the universal Illusion of the time, with
which I had become twinned in blood-kinship. But
that was my first and last venture in the treacher-
ous quicksands of Real Estate. Land itself be-
came for me the most unstable footing on this globe
through the Great Illusion. It was Brockmeyer
who sold me this property, but I never blamed him,
for I knew that he was under the same illusive
spell, as well as myself, and everybody else in town
for that matter. So I took my own discipline, for
it was a trouncing of the Gods not only upon my
back, but also upon that of Dame St. Louis for our
sins — truly a purgatorial discipline unto our per-
fection.
106 THE ST. L0VI8 MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
I had indeed won my freedom from the galling
economic slavery of debt, after so many years in
the galleys — for debt was my hell, not war. Still
I was not yet fully liberated; I continued to own
the blue elephant stuck fast in the mudhole, but I
could not dispose of him at any price, and I had to
furnish him food in the shape of taxes. Once I
thought I had sold him, but the buyer went crazy
and was put into a madhouse, and the huge animal
grew more voracious than ever of cash nutriment
in the form of special levies for roads, sewers, pav-
ing, and fraud (the latter being in one case the
largest item).
I tell of this economic Illusion, for its conse-
quences bore decisively upon me at many an impor-
tant turn during some four decades of the most
active part of my life. Being within the limits of
the Great Future City, that soggy piece of Real
Estate lay on my economies heavy, helpless, piti-
less, refusing to give back any value in money or
even in hope, so that I had to adjust all my mind's
fruits, as well as my board and lodging to its reme-
diless poverty. Then it always kept threatening
me with some fresh taxation, till I would wish it to
sink down still deeper in its mire, to very Hades.
At last it became to my sight and to my soul a
kind of Dead Sea which I never liked to visit, since
it would bring on me a spell of melancholy till I ran
home out of its dismal swampy view. After my
almost life-long schooling in disappointment, I was
allowed one day by the Powers to graduate with
THE EAD8 BRIDGE. 107
cheque in hand. The behavior of that Real Estate
seemed to be typical of the city, which also was un-
able to recover in later years from its Great Illu-
sion, but weltered in a sort of sunken lethargic
mudhole for many a year.
Thus my land speculation in the city of Illusion
found a strange yoke fellow in my philosophic spec-
ulation ; indeed the latter was for me something far
more solid and more remunerative than St. Louis
Real Estate. Harris had in an inspired moment
named his periodical the Journal of Speculative
Philosophy, a daring venture which, however, had
its subtle adaptation to the time and the environ-
ment, since a number of the philosophers were in-
clined to speculate both financially and philosoph-
ically, in materiality as well as in immateriality.
Brockmeyer was again our heroic protagonist in
both directions, our limit-transcending speculator
in the soil and also in the spirit. Houses, lots,
mines he seized and owned, as well as ideas, pure
essences, and the Absolute itself.
VI
The Eads Bridge
By way of counterpart to the Great Illusion of
St. Louis during this time, I wish to emphasize the
one Great Reality which came into existence just
alongside or rather inside the city's phantasmal
spell at its uttermost. This Reality, quite the
greatest ever enacted at St. Louis in my opinion
108 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
except Camp Jackson, was the Eads Bridge, rightly
named after its builder, or rather its creator. For
me it was the solidest, purest, truest fact of the
time, to which fact I clung almost as if it were an
anchor in an ocean of froth on which I somehow
was floating. When I saw those caissons, piers,
arches rise up from old turbid Mississippi, not only
from his bed but from the rocks many feet below
his mud, saw them take shape and span the angry
flood, I said to myself: There! behold now God's
Thought creating the world, even embodied in one
little man ; see your gossamer abstractions turning
concrete and practical; and just watch your He-
gel 's Logic with its intricate fine-spun web of Pure
Essences realizing itself in yonder structure with
all its turns, nodes, iron rods and braces. So I went
to school to the Eads Bridge the whole time of its
erection, some seven years, from 1867 till 1874.
During these same years I was teacher of various
branches, including Philosophy, in the St. Louis
High School. Let me add that I did not attend the
Eads Bridge to learn engineering, or mathematics,
or the nature of materials, though such sciences of
course made their necessary contribution to the
great work. I sought to penetrate it as an expres-
sion of the time and of myself uttered by a mas-
ter mind, by a supreme artificer who could catch
the Genius of the Age and turn it into a bridge.
Let me speak after my own extravagance which no-
body need imitate : James B. Eads communed with
the Great Creator of the Universe, persuaded Him
THE EADS BRIDGE. 109
to drop down to St. Louis, and step across the
River, then to make that one great divine step
eternal in stone and iron, symbol and help of mil-
lions of little human steps like mine over the
stream.
Now I came to understand why the old Romans,
of whom I as a College Freshman, had read in
Livy, made their bridge-builder (Pontifex) a di-
vine person or High Priest communing with the
Supreme God Jupiter for a structure to cross over
even little Tiber. And their chief one in this busi-
ness was called the Supreme Pontiff (Pontifex
maximus). This office with its name descended
into the Christian Church, whose highest function-
ary, as God's own vicegerent and bridge-maker
from Earth to Heaven for men, bore the title of
Supreme Pontiff, who is still held in veneration by
many peoples, great and small, on our globe. So
for me Engineer Eads has become the Supreme
Pontiff of the Mississippi Valley, having bridged
its huge dividing stream, and having furnished the
creative germ or model of thousands of other
bridges still to be born.
Every Sunday worshipful, week after week, and
sometimes oftener, I would saunter down to the
Bridge and contemplate it in a sort of adoration
and with a soul-renewing wonder and sympathy.
Everywhere else in the city I could hear and see
only the Great Illusion, which the Bridge with its
fresh, hope-inspiring outlook on the future might
in its way seem to confirm, if not propagate. In
HO THE 8T - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
fact, the whole town was building that structure,
and took the same up into its life. Chicago ridi-
culed the work and denied its feasibility; a rival
engineer tried to supplant it with his own scheme ;
financiers questioned its ability to pay and steam-
boatmen were made to think it destructive of their
craft and future interests on the river. Still the
master builder pushed ahead through all obstacles,
and completed the most monumental arch of
triumph in the land, whereby he revealed the
greatest mechanical genius of his time, verily the
modern Archimedes.
James B. Eads was born at Lawrenceburg, In-
diana, in 1820, on the banks of an affluent of the
Mississippi, with which he stood in some deep in-
tuitive intimacy, as his great deeds were in one
way or other connected with the Great River, show-
ing an insight into and a mastery over the very
soul of the Father of "Waters. Eads as a boy had
strayed to St. Louis in 1833, and began at the bot-
tom, starting as an apple-peddler; he rose to be
steamboat clerk, and then became steamboat-
builder in 1842, self-taught in mechanics, not a
learned mathematician himself, but the controller
of mathematicians and engineers, through his com-
manding creative power. The war found him en-
gaged in removing obstructions from the Missis-
sippi, and gave to him his first supreme task; this
was to relieve the Great River of the naval obstruc-
tion sprung of the Southern rebellion, which he
accomplished with prime success through his gun-
THE EADS BRIDGE. m
boats. Thus he first applied to navigation the
famous dictum of Lincoln : our Mississippi shall not
remain half-slave, half-free.
After the war, he proceeded to overcome the sec-
ond and greater separation — that caused by the
stream itself in its own Great Valley, cutting a line
of division through the same quite from Canada to
the Gulf, and making the long rift between East
and West, now to be surmounted. The result was
the Bridge already mentioned, in whose construc-
tion the communal spirit of St. Louis took part,
winning what may be called a pontifical conscious-
ness, perchance like that of hoary Rome of the eld-
est kings. At any rate Captain Eads held some
original kinship with the spirit of the stream; it
would appear that the Pontiff knew the mighty
River-God personally in his deepest ultimate char-
acter as well as in all his petty caprices and sinu-
osities, his little eddies as well as his vast over-
flows.
Thus Eads built us the chief reality of that other-
wise phantasmal epoch, though he too shared in the
city's dream of future transcendency, inasmuch as
his name stands highest on the list of sponsors pub-
lished by prophetic Reavis to float the latter 's
dream-book. Perhaps Eads also needed the Great
Illusion to spur him on to his deed. I was not one
of his personal intimates, though I often saw him,
and once talked with him somewhat; he had lofty
imagination, his best expression, however, was not
by word but by grand construction. He made
112 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
speeches clad with imagery, but more deeply
poetic was always his grandiose conception, and
then his monumental execution. Through his
works he rose up before me as a kind of demiurge
or world-builder; yet his look, his manner, his
voice, even his dress seemed to me that of a sleek
unctuous minister, with countenance reverent and
reverend, seamed with drooping lines of humility.
I wondered at his sacerdotal face, whether or not it
sprang from his calling; perhaps it resulted from
his being High Priest of the River God, a veritable
Supreme Pontiff elected by Nature herself.
One more duty after building the Bridge he had
to perform for the Mississippi: the removal of the
obstruction at its mouth which was silted up by the
deposits of mud. This work is known as his sys-
tem of Jetties. Thus he completes the liberation of
the Great River, devoting to it the three supreme
actions of his life, each of which may be deemed a
step in the process of freeing it of its physical un-
freedoms. So he may well be pedestaled one of our
Liberators.
After this fashion I went to school to the Eads
Bridge, starting my course of instruction at the
age of twenty-six, and continuing it with no little
assiduity for seven years. I saw the huge body
grow from member to member like a living thing
before my eyes, and from this experience I date
my deeper interest in construction, which has re-
mained a permanent factor active through all my
work. I was no practical builder, indeed the im-
THE EADS BRIDGE. 113
mediate manipulation and carpentry of building
never attracted me specially, and I never indulged
in it for pastime, as I have seen many people do.
For instance, Harris was a busy tinkerer around
the house, and had a knack in making ingenious
contrivances for his own amusement and that of
his friends. He invented a new kind of skiff or
row-boat to plow the Concord River, the most
unique craft probably ever seen on that stream.
It was made up of water-tight sections, which
could be taken apart and brought home. An ever-
menacing thing, shaky at the joints which often
seemed on the point of breaking loose and letting
the members sail off by themselves, it wibble-wob-
bled about as if preparing to duck us under, but
never did. ' ' Can you swim ? ' ' asked Harris when
I first jumped into the boat with him for a ride;
the question presaged me that he had his doubts. I
assured him that it would be only fun for me to
make the shore, and then after a little swim to dry
myself in the hot summer-sun. "Pull out, I want
to see you in your new role of navigation," so I
cheered him on. The passing Concordites, paddling
their old-fashioned traditional shells, laughed at
us with a sneer of this sort, as I understood it:
"Those St. Louis philosophers are trying to Hegel-
ize our dear old Musketaquid. "
Returning to my education imparted by the
Eads Bridge, I have reason to trace to it several of
my lasting tendencies. It impressed upon me not
only its own outer structure, but also the inner one
114 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
everywhere and in all things, especially in my own
mind-world. It was a mighty lesson in universal
architechtonic, which I began to apply to all my
knowledge. In a play of Shakespeare, which sub-
ject I was then teaching at the High School, I could
not rest till I had found the principle and drawn
the outline of its construction. Indeed I then
dreamed of re-building all of Shakespeare's works
into one vast dramatic palace, which, however, lay
beyond any visible representation on the stage.
Moreover the Bridge became to me a kind of sing-
ing poem, day by day, as it rose melodious over
the waters. It was not merely a calculated mathe-
matic mechanism, but it had a spontaneous, crea-
tive, quite incalculable music in its erection, as if
it were something original at the first gush of
genius. I feigned me to hear its symphony, as well
as that of Beethoven, both being at last one har-
mony along with Shakespeare's.
The community also receives a unique spiritual
training, whenever it beholds a noble structure, be
it Cathedral, Capitol, Temple, or also the sky-
scraper, unfolding and uprearing in its midst.
"What a perennial school of the people is the
presence of such an edifice as the Parthenon,
looked up at continually from below by that most
impressionable Athenian folk-soul? Still today we
race across a Hemisphere to see it for a little while.
The Medieval Gothic Cathedral was itself an ever-
living priest lifting his look heavenward in prayer,
whom all were to see and to hearken and to wor-
THE EADS BRIDGE. H5
ship with. When I beheld in the distance the
Dome of St. Peter's at Rome, I felt I saw the Pope
seated on his throne, and calling his world-flock
under his shelter there for an universal orison. My
real education in architecture began when I com-
muned with the Eads Bridge during its entire con-
struction, and continued when I could look upon
the great original edifices of Europe, whose spirit
I found and could still trace in the little Kinder-
garten with its little building-blocks for little chil-
dren. Still I never did build or could build with
my hands, but only with my mind; architecture
was psychological with me from the beginning, and
remained so till I had ejected it out of my mind into
a book.
And now I am to pass to that other far deeper
and greater, and really more massive construction
not merely of some outer sense-edifice, but of the
Spirit's inner structure itself — mine own as well as
Nature's, and our Creator's also. The central and
all-absorbing study during these years was Hegel's
System of Thought, in its genesis as well as in its
manifold applications and embodiments : which of
itself was a vast construction truly more spacious
than any Egyptian Luxor and Carnac, being the
universal philosopher's architectomic of the Uni-
verse.
Still I would not forget that the Eads Bridge be-
came to me a real physical Logic as counterpart and
visible confirmation of the ideal metaphysical Logic
of Hegel. Or I may call this Bridge a little echo or
116 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
prototype of the original Logos or Creative "Word
in the Beginning, whose science, unfolded and or-
ganized, is or ought to be just the aforesaid Logic
or Doctrine of the Logos, wherein is often supposed
to lie the remedial religion of this our illusory mun-
dane existence.
VII.
The Illusion's Antiseptic
Philosophy was the spiritual antidote, or to use
our modern more specific term, antiseptic, discov-
ered and prescribed by old Greece for the World's
Illusion. The form of this prescription varied
much according to the time and the doctor ; still it
always sought to lead the errant mind from the de-
ceptive mazes of the outside show of things to the
truth lurking in all appearances. The Greek
philosopher had before him the grand dualism be-
tween Illusion and Reality, or between the
Ephemeral and the Eternal. There is little doubt
that Philosophy meant more to those antique times
than it ever has since, for with cultivated people it
had to take the place of religion, especially in the
later years of the Greco-Roman period, when the
old heathen faiths had lapsed.
Philosophy, however, did not die with classical
antiquity ; there were still minds born who needed
it, and to whom it alone could give healing and
hope. So the philosophic line has continued from
oldest Thales to modernest Bergson, always seeking
to medicate the same trouble, which belongs to man-
THE ILLUSION'S ANTISEPTIC. H7
kind indeed, but which has hitherto been specially-
prevalent in Europe and its civilization. So it
comes that Philosophy is distinctively and crea-
tively European, hardly Oriental, in spite of nu-
merous Oriental Philosophies of which we read in
many a book. The Orient is fundamentally and
genetically religious ; hence its original contribution
to the world's spiritual treasure has taken the form
of religion. The question rises here: Is our
America, this third continent, also to have its grand
continental discipline of the Spirit, like Europe
and the Orient ? I may whisper now a thought of
mine, which will be developed later, that our Ameri-
can science universal is not Philosophy, whose ulti-
mate viewpoint we have already transcended prac-
tically, if not yet theoretically. Some of our Ameri-
can Universities and their Professors have tried
and still are trying to philosophize originally, but
how pale seem their efforts! At best we hear in
their theories some faint echoes of Europe and its
supreme world-discipline.
Still Philosophy has won its educative place in
the grand human training-school, and is going to
remain as the true corrective, or as we have labeled
it above, the antiseptic of the World's Illusion,
preparatory to the complete positive recovery of the
mind's wholeness. Such at least was its place in
my own education.
Thus our Philosophical Society had its origin and
function in the existent circumstances. For it so
happened that we, in the midst of the St. Louis
118 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
form of the World's Illusion, took to the study of
Philosophy by a kind of instinct, by a feeling of
our deepest spiritual need ; we grasped for this dis-
cipline as remedial of the time and specially of the
city's malady, with which we also were deeply in-
fected, for we in some way by means of it were
made to "believe a lie," if I dare employ the
Scripture's pitiless tongue of truth.
The philosopher whom we chose as guide, or
rather, who was chosen for us by Brockmeyer, the
only capable chooser among us all, was the German
Hegel, really the last entire philosopher of the
Great Entirety, inasmuch as the philosophers since
Hegel are but piecemeals in comparison with his
wholeness. "We cannot except even Herbert Spen-
cer, in spite of his pile of books, for his system
leaves many wide and deep gaps in the philosophic
Universe ; indeed does he not abandon the Universe
itself as unphilosophical ? Spencer, accordingly,
we could not follow as spiritual leader; really he
hardly believes in spirit, certainly not all the time.
The first essay of his own I ever heard Harris read
was a refutation of the philosophy of Herbert
Spencer, whose works were then in the process of
publication and discussion over the country. Thus
it may be said that Spencer gave the primal im-
pact which pushed into print the St. Louis Journal
of Speculative Philosophy by way of opposition.
So I began my long desperate grapple with Hegel
whose eighteen volumes in the original I ordered
from their old homeland (two or three unimportant
THE ILLUSION'S ANTISEPTIC. 119
volumes, being out of print, I never succeeded in
getting, but Harris owned them, having combed
the antiquarian bookstores of all Germany to catch
them). I confess that I alone could not have done
the work; I would not have persisted in it unless
aided by our associated group who were wrestling
with the same task. Particularly I had to be re-
inforced and underpropped by Brockmeyer's
philosophical genius, equal to that of Hegel and
more poetical; but he lacked Hegel's industry and
organizing power, which Brockmeyer's wild and
wayward but very inspiring effervescences
spurned. And so it comes that he has left little or
nothing finished and ordered for the future reader.
Hence the final complete self-realization of his mas-
ter he did not, perhaps could not, attain.
Thus I had my distinctive, I may say, my ex-
clusive Hegelian era, when my whole intellectual
effort was concentrated upon acquiring the philos-
ophy of the master and working it over into my
own mentality, and even into my own vocabulary.
This absorbing study lasted some five or six years
(1865-1871) when I not only thought Hegel, but
lived Hegel, was Hegel. All that I had ever known
or done I Hegelized with a sort of desperation. Un-
doubtedly I was obliged to look after other things
in the meantime, among them to make a living for
my family. Then Philosophy required me to be
nerved up to my top stretch, else she would not
impart any gift worthy of herself. Hence it was
necessary to sift my unworn hours from the wear
120 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
and tear of practical life and to win, as far as pos-
sible, their creative treasures. Desire of knowledge
I felt undoubtedly, still that was an old feeling;
but why just this new form of knowledge here and
now ? Let us turn back a leaf or two of life.
At College I had studied Mental Philosophy
(good theological Havens gave name to the text-
book) in the usual routine which made this subject
a sort of curiosity or metaphysical gimcrack. Its
superficiality I dimly saw through, and resolved to
take a deeper dip, and so I procured Sir William
Hamilton's big books on Logic and Metaphysics,
which, recently published, were then deemed the
sovereign word of philosophic speculation. Their
learning, their ingenuity, and their infallible dog-
matism captivated me, even lulled me to a sense of
their finality. But on a day I cited them to Brock-
meyer, who with one lightning flash of his consum-
ing dialectic (as he called it) shriveled for me
Hamilton to a cinder, and started me to building my
own world over again. Then too I caught in the
flash a bare glimpse of that subtle sport of the
Negative of which we all were captives held fast
in our city's Great Illusion, Brockmeyer included.
I may here add, however, that since then slow-
burning Time has taken many years to do to Ham-
ilton what Brockmeyer did in a minute.
Hence I kept clutching at Hegel for dear life.
Can I impart to my readers a brief outline of my
task? In the first place, I explored in detail those
eighteen volumes which showed Hegel creating the
THE ILLUSION'S ANTISEPTIC. 121
Universe and projecting it into his categories of
thought. Secondly, there was one work of these
volumes, which was the originative center of all the
rest — that was the Logic or generating Organon
not only of Hegel, but of all philosophies, as well
as of all sciences. Hence this Logic has been called
God Himself thinking the Universe in the pure
forms of thought, or the science of the Divine
Logos. Thirdly, I had to re-think the philosopher
building his system from its innermost creative
center to its outermost created circumference — the
mightiest mental architectomic ever yet conceived
and executed by a human brain.
I have already alluded to this Logic as the heart
of our philosophical enterprise, and on the other
hand as our unique Book of Fate seemingly hang-
ing over us from then till now, ever unrealized.
What all this means cannot be explained here, but
is thrown out as a kind of keynote often to be
struck hereafter, till the whole tune be composed to
its finale. At present, however, I may tell some-
what of my early grapple with the brain-confound-
ing labyrinthine book. It flung me right at the
start into the most abstract swirl of human thought :
Being, Nothing, Becoming. These conceptions
would run into one another, then out of one an-
other, then make a ring around together, like a
vast Hegelian vortex in which I was dizzily whirled,
till I feared me I would never get out of that spirit-
ual maelstrom. I would flee from my narrow rotat-
ing room into the steady open air, still my mind
122 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
could not escape from the whizzing wheel of Ixion,
on which I seemed pinioned, and which kept
careening around through its ever-repeating vor-
tical triplicity : to be, not to be, to become. Hamlet
stands fixed from start to finish in the dualism of
his famous soliloquy : to be or not to be. That was
his question, he declares, but it was only a part of
mine, for I had also to become, and so my cyclonic
brainstorm continued revolving through innumer-
able triads, largest and least, from the Universe
down to the microscopic cell.
The fact came out, in this unique experience,
that I was really becoming, being born over in the
painful process of spiritual parturition. I would
wander astray through the streets for miles, seek-
ing to walk off that logical vertigo, till sleep might
put it to rest; but even in dreamland my brain's
Flying Dutchman would start to whirl around,
driving ahead under less control than when awake.
So I would resolve to have nothing more to do with
that infernal Logic, it was a devil 's dance anyhow,
a juggle to steal my time, or perchance to rob me
of reason. I threw the book aside, hid it from my
sight, would never open it again to let out its
demonic brood ; I even thought of burning it, fling-
ing it into its own torturing Hades. But the next
Sunday afternoon I would speed to the philos-
ophers* Academe located then in Salisbury street,
and listen to their discussions and translations of
the master ; again I noticed the all-coercive univer-
sal training which our two leaders manifested
THE ILLUSION'S ANTISEPTIC. 123
through the influence of that one writ, although
each preserved his own individuality in their com-
mon doctrine. Harris was more formal and peda-
gogical ; Brockmeyer never failed to break over de-
fined limits, and to revel in some startling ebullience
of thought and fancy. He could make all the fet-
tered nomenclature of Hegel's Philosophy dance
freely in its heaviest chains — an astounding feat of
mental prestidigitation in seeming, and still at the
same time most real. How did he do it? Logic.
Again I would hurry home and take from its hid-
ing the same fatal book ; again the brain-swirl would
begin but less tyrannic. So I kept on battling for
weeks, months, years; finally came a certain mas-
tery, or at least disentanglement from that vortical
labyrinth of ever-spinning and interlacing triplets
of categories ; that is, I could now spin them better
than they could spin me. Thus I had become, and my
microcosm could at once start to handle the macro-
cosm, having won the tools and learnt the trade.
Then from the central genetic book I would pass
to its children, that is, to its elaborations in Hegel's
other works, such as Aesthetic, History, State, to-
gether with Nature and her sciences. But of these
prolonged but easier studies, though of great in-
fluence upon my future career, I need now give
no account. It was a time of pure acquisition; I
appropriated tradition in its universal form, the
philosophical; I was still repeating, not creating,
though possibly getting ready for the latter. But
I had solved inwardly the Illusion, even if out-
124 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
wardly I remained caught in its toils ; theoretically
I had found the time 's antiseptic, while practically
I was still its victim, till there, fell on us all the
awakening blow of Disillusion.
Having told my own experience with this central
book of our St. Louis Movement, I may here give a
brief indication how it has affected some typical
intellects, which in one way or other have come
under my observation. Premising the mental out-
fit, Hegel's Logic works upon people even
philosophically minded, in quite opposite ways,
from utter disgust and rejection to a devoted loyal
acceptance. All these various attitudes I have wit-
nessed and heard, and to some extent shared.
1. Thomas Davidson, the Scotch wandering
scholar, when he strayed into St. Louis about 1867,
and began to take part in our Movement, soon fell
upon this fore-fronting book, had his tussle with it,
and got badly thrown. I saw him begin it, and
watched his reactions. The result was a kind of
fury against it, a fixed mania at hearing even the
name of Hegel, over which he could easily fall into
a convulsion of damnation. Something of this
rancour he imparted to his soul's special comrade,
Professor William James. The psychology of his
case I construe thus: Davidson was a born con-
tradiction; if he could not contradict he was not
only unhappy, but a zero, which he would not al-
low himself to be. Now one of Hegel's emphatic
points is the mediation of all contradiction; or let
us call it contradiction's own inner self -undoing —
THE ILLUSION'S ANTISEPTIC. 125
a theorem which simply undid Davidson himself at
the very bottom. This he felt, though he probably
never reasoned the matter out. Hence Hegel he
deemed the devil, the arch destroyer of himself and
specially of his kind of intelligence. Still David-
son obtained his chief philosophic training through
the St. Louis Movement during his eight years'
stay ; it was his second University, altogether more
universal for him than his first Scotch University'
of Aberdeen.
2. Emerson also had his strong objections to
Hegel, for distinctively Emersonian reasons. Espe-
cially the Logic he looked upon with a kind of hor-
ror, as a hideous array of skeletons of once living
thought, a kind of death's dance of osseous cate-
gories in which he could hear the dry bones un-
cannily rattle. He shrank from such an osteology
of the spirit. The splendid literary stylist, for
such he is, wished his philosophy always to be cov-
ered over with beautifully tinted metaphorical
flesh, like an Emersonian essay for instance. In
some such manner I heard him express his cour-
teous disapprobation which he has also frequently
set down in writ. . He probably obtained his knowl-
edge from Sterling's Secret of Hegel, which work
he had read with some care at the first stirring of
the St. Louis Movement, in which he had become
interested through Harris, who told me the fore-
going fact. Then I conceive he felt another repul-
sion; for the close organic texture of Hegel's writ-
ings was not Emerson's, even if he longed for some
126 THE 8T - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
system in his work, as we see by his recently pub-
lished Journals. It was a later day when Emerson
must have been exposed to a good deal of chaffing
about Hegel at the Concord School of Philosophy,
especially when the St. Louis Hegelians, headed by
Harris, were there in the philosophic saddle, and
failed not to ride with some exuberance, and per-
chance at times with a look of triumph.
3. Professor William James, whom I listened to
at Concord, has printed his somewhat vehement re-
jection of Hegel's Philosophy which, he declares,
"mingles mountain loads of corruption with its
scanty merits." And so forth very often. What
is the trouble with Professor James? Without go-
ing into his long list of exceptions, we may find his
mental attitude condensed in the following pass-
age: "The sense of a universal mirage, of a
ghostly unreality steals over us, which is the very
moonlit atmosphere of Hegelism itself." (See
essay On some Hegelisms reprinted in his Will to
Believe). This doubtless expresses the psychologi-
cal condition of James after trying, or being tried
by, Hegel's Logic. And it is one of the stages,
genuine, I know by experience, through which the
student passes toward the mastery of Hegel. But
it is a stage to be transcended, which James never
did, possibly he could not. Thus the book for him,
instead of piercing and dissipating the given world
of Illusions, creates a new one and really a worse
one, made up of a procession of ghostly unrealities,
which he cannot get rid of except by flight. So the
THE ILLUSION'S ANTISEPTIC. 127
Professor, in unconscious self-criticism, proclaims
that he did not, and possibly could not, work
through the second or apparitional stage of the
grand Hegelian world-discipline.
4. The Hegelians proper, agreeing about the
philosophical mastery of all mundane Illusions, and
stressing the eternal verities of thought against the
fleeting appearances of sense, differed not a little
among themselves. Our two leaders construed
Hegel diversely, in accord with their spiritual needs
and their distinctive mentalities. Harris clung nat-
urally to the fixed insight, or the separate aperqu
(as he was fond of calling it), while Brockmeyer's
native force was the swift ever-flashing dialectic
(as he designated it after Hegel and the Greeks).
Still to both these friends the master's Logic was
the one book of the Universe, their real Bible, to
which they always came back for recovery after
any divagation.
I can truly say that this book never became to
me what it was to them — the book of Life and
Death, of Time and Eternity. Still I had to work
through it with them and by their help, and then
to work out of it, quite by myself, into another
world-view. But without my knowing it, that
Logic, backed up by the St. Louis Movement and
its philosophizing, was my rescue from the
mightiest negative force of the age, since it demol-
ished for me Kant's Critique of Pure Reason,
which was deeply fermenting in the philosophic
spirit of the time, and undermining its belief in all
128 THE ST. L0VI8 MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
intelligence. Germany, however, went back to
Kant, denying that man has or can know truth, and
she practically realized the Kantian negation in
the recent war, with what destructive consequences
to herself and to the world we have barely begun
to glimpse.
Such was my five years' siege of the most in-
expugnable fortress of writing that ever arose from
the mind of man, challenging the best human brain
to daring mental escalade. Veritably it is a world
book of Philosophy, the most difficult book of the
most difficult science ; it may well be designated as
one of the great Philosophical Bibles of the Race,
the last one so far, and the final summation of them
all, several other great ones being strown down the
ages like the Literary Bibles hereafter to be con-
sidered. I have already called it our Book of Fate,
particularly in relation to our Philosophical So-
ciety and our two leaders, whom it fates, and who
in turn fate it for us, as the outcome of our
philosophical drama must show, when this gets
played to the end.
But at last I felt that I had fought myself free
of it by intense persistent struggle, and that it lay
behind me a conquered, or anyhow a transcended
domain, from which I was destined to push my way
to a new cultural province in my life's journey.
Whereof later. At present I may repeat that
Hegel had emancipated me philosophically from
my inner world of Illusion, but not from the outer,
upon which the blow now suddenly descends.
THE GREAT DISILLUSION. 129
VIII.
The Great Disillusion
Already attention has been called to the par-
ticular stroke of time and of fortune whereby St.
Louis was quite suddenly whisked out of her long
deep Illusion into a longer and deeper Disillusion.
That morning when the first report of the census
of 1880 fell from the newspaper skies down into
the city, there rose and rolled through it a huge
wave or rather a seismic convulsion of dismay, a
tidal deluge of mortal disappointment overpower-
ing us somewhence from the dismal chaos of the
Beyond. It spared nobody, not even those who
knew of its coming, or those who like myself did
not know, but had forefelt something of the sort in
the dice-throw of the time. It was a panic which
seizes the disciplined soldier, and carries him away
in its flood, as well as the raw militiaman. A gloom
then settled down into our very souls as if we were
listening to the crack of doom. Some or perhaps
many people here never felt this pulverizing ex-
perience of the mighty hammer-stroke of Disillu-
sion, but the city did, and she shows today the last-
ing impress or scarification from it upon the urban
character. Indeed the stronger statement may be
made, that St. Louis still carries not only the
cicatrice, but the running wound from that fate-
ful blow of Disillusion, with fresh regurgitations
after the hoped-for healing of years nearly two-
130 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
score. For is she not calling out in a kind of self-
trituration this very morn: What is the matter
with me, O Doctor ?
The city was in love with its Illusions, which it
kept dancing before itself with a hypnotized
fatuity; or more sternly may run the indictment
that it was infatuated with its own lies, which it
persisted in telling to itself, or in encouraging
others, like the prophet Reavis, by applause and
money, to repeat for its delectation. Can one help
thinking again of that scriptural example which
warns of when there is sent from above upon men,
communities, nations, "a strong delusion," so that
they are "made to believe a lie," just their own
lie, whereupon follows divine judgment. And
there was no Savonarola or even Peter Cartright to
thunder to us the Lord's warning.
But turning aside from biblical interpretation,
which is not my field, I hope to become more mod-
ern and explicit, by confessing myself to four fas-
cinating shapes of Illusion, which I delighted to
hug; or, if you prefer the undraped word, four
lies common to myself and my fellow-citizens, fab-
ricated by ourselves but religiously believed, and
even propagated with a kind of fanatical zeal —
four instances of our fatuous self-mendacity.
1. Always must be first set down our Illusion of
unbounded wealth, of commercial supremacy, of a
vast population. Material prosperity was held up
as the grand goal of the city's life and ambition.
The kingdom of Heaven here became a world-em-
THE GREAT DISILLUSION. 131
pire of Dollardom, often declared to be the great
American ideal (but I do not believe it, par-
ticularly now after the recent war). The news-
papers, as was natural, put stress upon the imme-
diate, sensuous, worldly St. Louis, advertising all
its wonderful saleabilities. Meanwhile the prophet
Reavis, who wrote books or at least pamphlets,
piled up its statistical advantages in columns of
figures which he had the alchemy to transmute into
solid gold right before our believing eyes. And
the yellow Mississippi, bearing dissolved mud-
mountains in its shaggy breast, seemed with its
whole mass of yellowness to turn auriferous the
moment it touched the St. Louis wharf, and to re-
new the old story of the shining sands of river
Pactolus. Of course these falsehoods never could
be realized, but it required heavy-fisted Disillusion
to smite them into truth, that is, into what they
actually were out of the appearance.
2. The second piece of jugglery, fabricated for
us indeed, but accepted by us in all faith, was the
fraudulent census of 1870. Who got it up ? Prac-
tically we demanded it, prayed for it, and it was
furnished by the devil, for just that is his business.
But in any view of the case, this fraud was the
direct act of making us believe our own lie. "Well,
who made us do that? Look again into the old
Book of Books and ponder its view of the problem.
So much, however, may be now said : the Great
Disillusion, as a possible remedial medicine, was
put off a decade, and our prophet could keep on re-
132 THE 8T - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
cording grandiose predictions to the faithful under
the shelter of a colossal deception, promulgated and
vouched for as true by the United States Govern-
ment. As late as 1876 Reavis issued his largest
book, gilt-edged, morocco-bound, as a worthy me-
morial of the Centenary of our national independ-
ence, with title-page still wafting to us his old
prophetic mirage : St. Louis, the Future Great City
of the World. And he cited just that lying census
as part of his proof.
3. In company with all St. Louis, I was made
to believe the fiery falsehood, truly infernal, which
seemed to be proclaimed to us from above by the
great Chicago conflagration of 1871. On a royal
October afternoon of that year I was descending
the High School steps with a mind toward home,
when Principal Morgan approached me holding a
newspaper in his hand and pointing to some mas-
sive head-lines themselves aflame : ' ' Chicago burn-
ing up." Morgan, who with the peculiar strabis-
mic twist of his eyes, and the nasal snarl in his
voice, re-inforced by the vitriolic burn in his words,
could take-on the leer and the sneer of Mephis-
topheles, when he had the right provocation,
showed me somewhat startingly one phase of our
reception of the rival's grand fatality. I hurried
down town for further information, and passed be-
fore a newspaper office where hundreds were read-
ing the bulletins. The crowd was not boisterous,
but wore the silent smile of self-gratulation ; I
thought it felt a secret awe at the providential
THE ORE AT DISILLUSION. 133
catastrophe, yet not without an exultant hope.
Reavis was there, streaming, puffing, limping
through the mass, and slapping his sloppy ban-
danna against the little Artesian wells which kept
bubbling up along his front and running down his
cheeks in the quite vain attempt to wash his face
of St. Louis soot. In fact, Reavis always had to
me a sooty appearance, not that of old Nick, for he
was fanatical honesty itself, but he looked as if in
his love he had appropriated the very garb of his
darling, the coal-smoky head-dress of his dearest
Future Great City of the World. I did not hear
him speak one word, though he was often chal-
lenged ; he was too kind-hearted to exult openly in
the misfortune even of his enemy; still when the
other man would crack a hideous joke over Chi-
cago's new business triumph as a crematory, he
could not help wheezing out one of his huge-
chested guffaws which would wind up in a pro-
longed laughing cough unique of its kind and per-
chance symbolical. Still he was the central figure
of the crowd, whose eyes would wander after him,
though with a comic smile ; but I in body followed
him, as the prophet of the time, till at last I heard
drop from his lips one brief passage : "I told you
so; the Lord is on the side of St. Louis."
So I had listened to both the scoffer and the
prophet upon the burning text of the moment. As
I sauntered meditatively away, I said to myself:
"Now I must consult the final and greatest oracle,
the philosopher himself, since his response to life's
134 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
enigma has always in it for me more sunrise than
that of any other human luminary. ' '
Accordingly in the evening I went to Brock-
meyer's unpretentious dwelling, which, nestled in
a somewhat obscure street, was for many years my
shining Delphic temple of Apollo more light-giving
than any other edifice to which I ever pilgrimed. I
found the philosopher at home ; we took our seats
on the small verandah of the second story looking
to the North-East, when I interrogated him per-
haps somewhat oracularly: "Do you see that de-
vouring illumination over yonder behind the river's
bluff, some three hundred miles distant along the
lakeside ? Tell me, what does it signify to us, and
to itself, and to the future?"
The philosopher never looked up but lit his aged
pipe, took his seat upon his easy tripod, and
wrapped himself and me, who did not smoke, in the
dreamy philosophic clouds of nicotine, out of which
issued the paternally toned voice: "My son, it is
the most striking practical instance of our oft-dis-
cussed, little-understood, self-undoing Dialectic.
Chicago was the completely negative city of our
West and indeed of our time, and now she has car-
ried out her principle of negation to its final uni-
versal consequence; she has simply negated her-
self. ' ' The tobacco clouds reacted certainly on my
brain, and probably on my vocal chords, and made
me hiccough out in spite of myself a kind of oppo-
sition : "Yes, I see, I see ; but then the negation of
the negative usually brings forth a positive result
THE GREAT DISILLUSION. 135
stronger than ever. Even in Mathematics the minus
of minus gives plus ; and there may be a big plus
under all this minusing of the minus in yonder con-
flagration ' '. But the St. Louis philosopher replied,
radiating some heat, with a scorching streak in his
tongue against what he deemed in me a sort of
treason: "By no means, not at all; the positive
result of that negative is bound to arrive, as you
say, but not over there in the same place again, but
here, here in our St. Louis." "I believe it," I
cried; "yes, so it must be." Therewith he passed
to a subject which was getting to cuddle next to his
heart, namely, the making of a new Constitution for
the State of Missouri ; which deed if by him highly
performed, might land him in the Senate of the
United States. He did not whisper me any ambi-
tion of the kind, and I then did not divine it, but
somehow the future always persists in being
secretly pregnant.
Thus we clung loyally, aye pathetically to our
city's Great Illusion, even after the fraud of 1870,
which our Philosophy, if it had been equal to its
opportunity, ought to have detected or at least sus-
pected, for which suspicion there appeared many
bodeful signs hanging out of the horizon every-
where around us. Indeed the newspapers flagged
them forth from all directions in the distance. But
the Great Illusion had the power of making the
philosophers pervert and even deny their own Phi-
losophy, as seen in the above instance; practically
we too were spell-bound by the lie, even while we
136 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
held to the truth of our doctrine. The charm of
self-mendacity required the quick gigantic sledge-
stroke of the Great Disillusion to knock us out of
our lying dream into the possibility of living awake
in the world once again.
4. Already has been recounted the diz2ying false-
hood of Fortuna, the Goddess whom we came to be-
lieve in more than any other divinity, heathen or
christian. Our irresistible Good-luck, whatever be
our folly or neglect, rose to be the prime article of
our faith. How such a creed saps human energy
needs no illustration, not even that of St. Louis.
And how utterly faithless to her most faithful wor-
shipers Fortuna turns at a caprice, has been cele-
brated by historians and poets old and new ; we all
recollect what ugly irrepeatable nicknames our
Shakespeare has heaped upon her, satirizing her
female fickleness and infidelity. To this belief was
joined the cognate one, which maintained the fate-
like fascination of our city's personality. At least
I heard it spoken to others as well as to myself :
You cannot quit us ; if you go away, you will have
to come back ; our spell is upon you. ' ' Flies buzz
where the honey is," said one beautiful St. Louis
lady to me, with a conscious smile not only of her
city's but also of her own magic power. The pre-
diction turned out true in one case only, that was
my own; the other philosophic fugitives never re-
sumed their former residence.
Some years later, when I too had been compelled
to take flight to Chicago, and was at work there, the
THE GREAT DISILLUSION. 137
attitude of St. Louis toward the Great Fire had
not been forgotten or even forgiven. More than
sometimes I was challenged to the purgation with a
spice of humorous resentment. Once especially a
zealous member of one of my classes, a prominent
lady, recalled with deeper flushes of wrath growing
aflame how she, returning from Europe at that
time, was insulted on shipboard by a group of noisy
St. Louisians celebrating the glorious extinction of
Chicago. Somehow thus my answer used to run:
"The census of 1880 has amply avenged you,
Chicagoans, without your punishing me. You can
afford to be merciful ; you have more than magni-
fied into solid reality the ancient legend of the
Arabian Phoenix, which rose from its ashes once
in five hundred years, whereas you in five have
accomplished a much grander palingenesis from the
mightiest urban conflagration that ever took place
on our earthball, with the possible exception of
fiddling Nero's back in old Rome. Look at mc, now
a miserable fugitive from our St. Louis fire slowly
but surely edacious of all vanity, out of whose
ashes I can see at present no sign of resurrection to
former glory. Yes, the Phoenix has become a Chi-
cago bird, perched alongside the American eagle."
CHAPTER THIRD
The German Era op St. Louis
Several times in the course of the preceding nar-
rative it has been intimated that St. Louis had its
pronounced period of Germanization, when it be-
came in many of its most decisive characteristics a
German city. On the whole this time parallels the
Great Illusion, which we have just considered, and
the two occurrences are connected together in a far
deeper sense than in their mere synchronism, which
might be almost if not altogether an accident.
It has already been noticed that the Philosophi-
cal Society drew its main doctrine out of the work
of a German master, and had a German founder.
From this point of view it was a manifestation of
the place and the time; nowhere else and nowhen
else could it have had quite the same significance.
And the St. Louis Movement, regarded in its full
sweep from then till now, has its distinctive Teu-
tonic epoch of discipline and achievement, which
it passed through and beyond, but which has re-
mained ingrown with its character and work.
Personally I flung myself into this fresh outpour
of the German spirit in St. Louis, and took it all up
into my thought and action to the extent of my
ability. The greatest products of Teutonic genius
were the almost exclusive objects of my study dur-
138
THE GERMAN ERA OF ST. L0VI8. 139
ing these years. In our modern world Germany
has won and has held three grand spiritual su-
premacies, the poetical, the musical, and the philo-
sophical. Goethe, Beethoven, Hegel were the sov-
ereign creative souls whose works I sought to know,
to live, and also to impart. Let it always be under-
stood that I was not alone in this tendency, for it
was shared and propelled by our circle and to a
large degree by the community. My opinoin is that
just during this German Era St. Louis gained and
maintained the cultural primacy of the West, and
showed a higher intellectual aspiration than ever
since. This was at least the case within my hori-
zon, which of course had its limits. St. Louis for
me possessed a soul with its definite character and
psychology, which I am going to construe as dis-
tinctly as I can, through all its stages of develop-
ment, as far as they have come into my experience.
It may be further observed that this German Era
culminated in its Great Men, pre-eminent German-
Americans we may doubly hyphenate them without
offense, who were born in the old Fatherland, but
migrated to America and came to their supreme
bloom in St. Louis, the Germanized city, during
these years. No similar strong towering individ-
ualities of German origin has our city produced
since; indeed such a phenomenon could occur but
the one time at the favoring conjuncture. These
Great Men of Teutonic blood, I saw rise here, flour-
ish in their season, and then quit the city. Their
time was paralleled by our St. Louis Movement,
140 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
which along with them sprang, as I probe it, from
the same far-down underlying cause.
In fact, this German Era of our city, though it
may appear single and accidental on the surface,
was not merely the outcropping of local conditions,
but was a manifestation of a far larger energy; it
belonged to a great world-drama of Illusion and
Disillusion which has just completed its last act.
"When I read the works of General Bernhardi and
other German militarists blazoning their concep-
tion of Germany's universal domination, I am led
to couple them with Beavis exploiting his grand il-
lusive dream of St. Louis the Future Great City of
the "World. Of course this conjunction I could not
have made till today when History is recording the
deed and the destiny of Germany overseas, where
the era of the mightiest Illusion and Disillusion of
civilized time has just now spent itself with ap-
palling energy, carnage and suffering. So much
we all have to say, however we may apportion the
blame, or take sides.
The German Overture
I have already indicated that when I reached St.
Louis in 1864, I came upon the German possession
of the city — political and to a degree economic pos-
session it could be designated. In fact, the Camp
Jackson surrender from this angle of survey might
be called a German victory, and the prize was the
THE GERMAN OVERTURE. 141
city's control, material and spiritual. The con-
querors were not only soldiers but voters, and could
select their own leaders, even those of highest rank,
who at the start had been Americans. Already a
rupture between the two nationalities had taken
place; Blair, the hero of Camp Jackson, had been
completely discredited ; Lyon had fallen at the bat-
tle of Wilson's Creek; Fremont had been removed
as both incompetent and insubordinate. The cleft
between the Union men of native birth and of for-
eign origin was already gaping wide and deep
when I took my first glance down into it on my
arrival, and pondered upon it with a throb of
anxiety. To be sure, some American leaders still
tarried with the German or radical side, like Mayor
Thomas and Representative Blow ; and on the other
hand some Germans began to protest against too
much Germany, from which they had once fled, and
which they did not wish to see reproduced so fully
on free American soil. Of the latter the intellectual
head was doubtless Colonel Brockmeyer. Still the
German party was the stronger, and kept increas-
ing in strength and aggressiveness.
At the close of the war the German soldiers came
home with a right exalted sense of their part in the
great national victory, as well as of their political
power in their own locality. Many civil offices were
naturally and easily taken by former military offi-
cers as the just reward of their patriotic and peril-
ous services. Soon the city council could muster
only two or three American or Irish names ; a Ber-
142 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
lin House of Delegates or the Reichstag could
hardly be more Teutonically labeled. The Consti-
tution-makers of the State in 1864-5 chose a Ger-
man as their President, giving an uncanny shock to
the older autochthonous lawyers chiefly of South-
ern extraction. The German language was intro-
duced into the Public Schools, and a bilingual citi-
zenship was stoutly advocated with a possible out-
look upon compulsion, which, however, did not
reach fruition. For a while the political and so-
cial prizes were busily gathered at home; but the
Capitol at Washington was bound to be captured in
time, which triumph dawned in its highest glory
when Schurz was chosen United States Senator,
and Finkelnburg national Representative. Such
was the topmost height and overflow of the German
movement or rather renascence on the soil of Mis-
souri. Moreover it rose up a unique phenomenon
in the nation, if not in the world. I may say, an
early view of it in the distance was what first
started me for St. Louis.
This upburst and domination of Germanism in
an American city had its budding, bloom, and de-
cline like other sublunary happenings. I followed
it not from the outside but from the inside; I not
only studied it as an object, but felt it and appro-
priated it till it became a part of myself. And
there were many natives here like me — many who
experienced it as the uplift of a new strange spirit
not elsewhere to be found, as the revelation of the
peculiar racial consciousness of old Teutonia well-
THE GERMAN OVERTURE. 143
ing forth just now on the banks of the Mississippi,
after having swam like fabled Arethusa underneath
ocean and continent from the other side of the
earth. A great opportunity sprang forth for me,
furnished by the time and flung down before me
simply to be picked up : so I then saw it and still
see it. If I had traveled to Germany and studied
there in a University for years, I could never have
seen and become the Teutonic folk-soul, such as I
now saw and became.
The duration of this German Era of St. Louis, as
I observed, felt, and shared it, can be put at about
twelve or fifteen years, without exacting too sharp
time-limits, which may well be deemed somewhat
elastic according to varying viewpoint. This dis-
tinctively racial energy at its dominance may be
bounded as lying between the Camp Jackson deed
(1861) and the retirement of Schurz from the
United States Senate (1875). To be sure, there
was a before and an after to this Era, a germinal
preparation there and a transition into a new
phasis here. But dropping these remoter outlooks,
let us concentrate upon the one fact just set forth.
That which now we seek to emphasize is that the
St. Louis Movement corresponds with the greater
European Teutonic Movement, paralleling the same
in time, in energy, and to a degree in character.
Let us compare. In 1864 Prussia started the dis-
tinctively modern sweep of Germany toward unity
by the conquest of Schleswig-Holstein. In 1866 fol-
lowed the overwhelming defeat of Austria with the
144 THE 8T - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
formation of the first German Confederacy. In
1870 came the Franco-Prussian War winding up in
the forcible annexation of Alsace-Lorraine and the
renewal of the German Empire. In the short space
of six years, or even four, the work was done with
a sudden cataract of elemental strength which
shook the Earth. I recollect how we sensed sympa-
thetically the quake in St. Louis, and watched the
rapid gigantic upspring of ancient Teutonia, who,
it was felt by her sons far off in this little corner,
was revealing herself here by a rise to power and
greatness somewhat similar to that which we saw
in the Eastern Hemisphere, even if much smaller.
Still further may the analogy be carried. St. Louis
just during these same dozen years was passing
through her Great Illusion, that strange psychical
malady of imagined future grandeur, the civic
megalomania of her history, when Reavis was her
real spokesman, even if frequently ridiculed and
disowned. This was the time, then, in which the
Teuton held sway in St. Louis, not by external con-
quest, but by honest superiority of voting strength
at least here in the city, even if disfranchisement
was more fully resorted to elsewhere in the State.
The whole community was borne along in the flood-
tide of German spirit. The majority of the inhab-
itants was composed of Germans, German-Ameri-
cans and Germanizers, of which last class I was a
right specimen. Many native flowers of German
life could be seen and plucked in the suburban
beer-gardens which enwreathed the whole city
THE GERMAN OVERTURE. 145
round about in a blooming circle. As to public
manners and amusements the people turned Ger-
man ; I joined a German club in which English was
tabooed and in some cases unknown. The beer-
house was then in its glory as a popular resort,
especially Tony Niederwieser's Valhalla, and
George Wolbreeht's Tivoli. In the latter Gam-
brinus effloresced or rather effervesced with the
highest overflow of his divine frothiness, melodious-
ly attuned to the notes of the largest and best or-
chestra in town. What a music-drinking folk, one
had to exclaim, for the rather bitter liquid would
not go down unless mingled with sweet sounds.
Here I saw the real Teutonic people in its heart's
attunement to life's ills and joys. There was a tri-
umphant swing in the crowd, a consciousness that
it was on the time's top just here in St. Louis as
well as on the other side of the globe. Very different
is the present urban feeling, as I construe it, rather
that of being the under dog. At any rate we now
hear nothing of the Future Great City of the
World.
Was there some deep undercurrent of connection
between German St. Louis and the old or rather
the new Fatherland in Europe ? I now believe that
there was a spiritual transformation going on dur-
ing these years, an inner change common to both.
Through its massive display of victorious energy,
the German spirit all over the world began to deem
its blood-kin the superior race, which was destined
to rule other peoples, to possess the wealth and even
146 THE 8T - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
to mold the mind of the rest of mankind after its
pattern. Such was the Great German Illusion which
then arose in Europe and is just now (end of 1918)
breaking to pieces in one vast cataclysm of Disillu-
sion. It was natural that we here in St. Louis
should get some echo of the mighty world-historical
upburst of our racial congeners across the ocean.
Every year hundreds, yea thousands of the more
educated and wealthy class of Germans went over
to the re-born Fatherland, and drank of the new
spirit at head-waters, bringing copious potations to
be dispensed on this side. Every such traveler was
a sort of missionary of the new Teutonic gospel, and
formed a link in a vast chain of unconscious propo-
gandism. I wished to start as a pilgrim to the Ger-
man Holy Land across the seas in spite of my nearly
empty treasury, but I got caught and held in an-
other kind of web ; then I consoled myself : What
is the use of going over yonder to find Teutonia,
when you see her naked soul before your eyes just
here in St. Louis every day on the streets ? You may
well doubt if you will be able to observe her in her
old covered home so completely at first hand, as
you can right now, while she hovers about our cen-
tral Court House in hundredfold forms of self-
revelation.
Another chief vehicle of Inter-Teutonism at that
time was the surprising circulation of German Lit-
erature here in the West, both periodical and per-
manent. No less than three considerable German
book-stores, well-stocked and doing good business,
THE GERMAN OVERTURE. 147
were in the city at the close of the War, not to
speak of many lesser shops ever ready to send
orders to Leipzig and Berlin for old and new vol-
umes. All these places were manned with a trained
German book-seller, known over the entire globe as
the unparalleled of his kind, and as the main pillar
of the vast German book-trade, being found in
Asiatic Tiflis and African Timbuctoo as well as in
our Western cowboy town of Hardscrabble. But
alas ! in St. Louis now, after fifty years, when it has
perhaps four times as many inhabitants for readers,
I wander in melancholy reminiscence amid his old
haunts and find him not ; only one pale ancient sur-
vivor off to one side I may trace, and he discloses
me his business to be more English than German.
Nor is that all. No sooner had I taken my first
sleep in St. Louis, than I, as insatiable book fiend,
crawled out of bed and swallowed a bite, then drew
or was drawn to the English-speaking book-stores,
of which I found three good ones, independent and
self -sufficing, all of them prominently located on the
main thoroughfares. Of these three not even a
ghost is left to hint of previous existence. To such
a vanished non-entity has red-blooded Literature
been here reduced by envious old Time wreaking
for some guilt his intellectual vengeance on St.
Louis, whose supreme literary utterance is now re-
duced to our newspaper, confessedly the ephemeral
record of the Ephemeral.
The once unique and powerful individuality of
the city had then the charm to attract many men of
148 THE 8T - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
talent who saw here their future in glowing even if
in illusive magnitude. Afterward our town became
noted for putting to flight its ablest and most emin-
ent characters under the maddening strokes of the
Great Disillusion. But at the time I speak of, when
we were propelled by the demonic energy of the
Great Illusion, the city seemingly turned to a vast
magnet which compelled to its bosom all the floating
genius of the land, in every stage of reason and un-
reason, moneyed and much oftener moneyless. So
each little piece of human ambition came flying as
it were through the air to the center of attraction,
where it might drink its fill of the strange power
which seemed here bubbling up from the very cob-
ble-stones of the wharf. This living stream of
choice spirits has by no means quit us wholly, still
its mass has turned away, we all know whither and
for what reason.
Predominantly this was the German Era of
mighty effervescence quite belting the globe. The
result was Teutonic St. Louis drew unto itself by its
own native energy during this epoch, besides many
lesser luminaries, the two most gifted and distin-
guished German-speaking men that ever landed in
the United States, as time has shown. Both of them,
laying their foundation in our city, were destined
to build for themselves wonderful life-structures
which may be said to have overarched our whole
country. Pulitzer in heavy-soled army brogans trod
our paving stones first in 1866, the birth-date of
the Philosophical Society; Schurz came to us a
THE GERMAN OVERTURE. I49
year later — both of them in the upswell of the
Great Illusion, and doubtless borne by it skyward
to loftiest outlook on futurity, whose highest favors
they afterwards clutched.
I am aware that my selection of one of these men
will be sharply challenged, especially by many good
Germans of St. Louis, who differ among themselves
about their greatest American representatives. I
may say, however, that I, though living in the same
city, was wholly detached from both these persons,
owing them nothing, no special love or hate, but
only a right human appreciation. For years I
watched them both with interest, but at arm's
length, in their local as well as in their national
careers, to which each of them rose under the fierce
search-light of political fame. Neither of them was
directly connected with the St. Louis Movement,
though they and it were offshoots of the same Teu-
tonic Igdrasil or earth-tree which was then sending
forth so many vigorous sprouts over land and sea
around the globe. To me each of them had an edu-
cative value, which I believe is significant still to-
day. They are our greatest foreign-born, not only
as German but as European ; and each of them de-
veloped a strain in American life seemingly impos-
sible to a native.
Accordingly of the German Era of St. Louis, and
I may add, of myself also, I select these two emi-
nent personages as the most distinctive and best-
known representatives. I was here when they came
and when they left, thus my presence at least
150 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
spanned their St. Louis careers, of which I knew
the public acts, and I heard privately some of the
secret ones in my unobserved corner of observa-
tion.
II
Carl Schurz of St. Louis
Can we strike the keynote of his character at the
start, even if it rises and falls through many start-
ling variations ? Let it now be said that Schurz was
more critical than constructive; a much greater
moralist than institutionalist. In his booklet on
Lincoln, often called his masterpiece, he reveals
himself even more fully than his hero ; he sees and
stresses Lincoln's moral and emotional nobility, but
has little insight into the institutional achievement
of the Union's Savior. From what has been al-
ready said, such a preacher, however eloquent and
personally worthy, could have had not much Gos-
pel for the St. Louis Movement. About Philosophy
Schurz seems to have known little and cared less;
I find in his Reminiscences only a few shots of
derision at this great world-discipline. And I re-
member one contemptuous broadside against Hegel,
probably second-hand. Still he, as a German could
hardly help imbibing somewhat of the philosophic
spirit of his land and time ; wherein he appears to
me to have appropriated more of the Kantian de-
struction than of the Hegelian reconstruction. I
can recall no career that becomes so completely the
CARL SCHURZ OF ST. LOUIS. 151
incarnation of Kant's Categorical Imperative with
its triumph ever bringing on its complementary de-
feat. In fact Schurz's whole life might be con-
densed into this everlasting jolt between his own
self's opposites.
Still let it be emphasized that just such a man
with just such limits drawn tyrannically upon him
along with his unique oratorical gift, was the tonic
then most needed in American political life. I first
heard Schurz in 1858 while I was an undergraduate
of Oberlin College, where I was going to school
openly to the ancient classics, but far more deeply
to my own times, in which Conscience and the Con-
stitution or the Moral and the Institutional had
gripped each other by the throat. Both principles
were fighting inside me, a boy of seventeen, as well
as outside me, in the whole country ; and both sides,
the country and myself, were getting ready to ap-
peal the dispute to the last tribunal, which renders
its decision through fire-arms. Schurz then made
a more vivid appeal to me than ever afterwards ; I
heard him often a dozen years later in St. Louis,
but there had been a change, possibly in him, cer-
tainly in me. He was still under thirty when he
delivered that first speech at Oberlin, and his Eng-
lish language was hardly five years old, for he had
come to America in 1852 at the age of twenty-three,
whereupon he naively jots down in his Reminis-
cences : ' ' My first task was to learn English. ' ' He
had found the most congenial field of his life in the
seething anti-slavery agitation of which little Ober-
152 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
iin was rather the most violent maelstrom in that
time's turbulent ocean. I read his speeches in
translation with responsive thrills, and obtained his
German ones, whose meaning I tried at the time to
dig out by aid of grammar and dictionary. Espe-
cially his critique of Squatter Sovereignty ecstasied
the boy-politician, who never could get to be so
political again in all his life.
It was therefore an interesting fact for me when
Schurz came floating into St. Louis some three years
after my arrival, probably in response to the same
strong undercurrent of the time which was draw-
ing both the little and big fishes to the one whirling
center of population, now lashed to the height of
strenuosity by the Great Illusion. Undoubtedly
the German element of the city had prepared the
way for him, inasmuch as he at once became a chief
editor of the Westliche Post, then probably the
most influential German newspaper of the country,
since it voiced the largest purely German con-
stituency in America, which also had its own life
and goal. This step however was only preparatory
to the greater ambition, namely the Missouri Sen-
atorship, which was foreseen to lie in the hands of
the Germans, could they but find the proper man.
After the Civil "War Schurz seemed to be drifting,
and was ready to hear and follow his people's call
to St. Louis.
He was elected Senator by the Missouri Legisla-
ture in 1869, and his sexennial term was the high-
est fulfilment of himself as well as of the German
CARL SCHVRZ OF ST. LOUIS. 153
Era of St. Louis. He was then forty years old, at
his best physically and intellectually. He never
quite got rid of a German accent in his English
speech, though he improved much; at Oberlin I
recollect he would still Teutonize strongly certain
words like poobleek, almost to an indistinguishable
sound-jumble. The prize he won of being the na-
tional spokesman of his German folk, especially in
the field of newspaperdom and stump-speaking, for
he hardly rose into the higher region of Literature.
His English ran correct and fluent enough, though
not fully idiomatic and easily limpid except when
he broke into denunciation. In the use of negative
speech such as satire, irony, sarcastic retort, he
could tap the original well-head of English; but
when it came to the more subtle figures of poetry,
he could not command them from their first gush-
ing sources. Even when he employed them, which
was not often, they were something second-hand,
though elevated and appropriate. So it comes that
his eloquence has no enduring literary note.
Still I am inclined to think that the most wonder-
ful and lasting part of his career was Schurz the
orator. "We must recollect that he learned his Eng-
lish after he was fully grown, and that he ranked
with the best American campaign speakers in their
own tongue, and at the same time he was supreme
in his native German. And he always gave a gen-
uine moral uplift, not very congenial with prac-
tical politics, even if in his own career he turned
now and then a surprising political somersault. For
154 THE 8T - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
with all his moralism he could round a sharp corner
at a pinch. But nobody ever justly thought him
corrupt or only a time-server, even when he
served time a little. Still his unique feat and ever
memorable was the linguistic, though keen peda-
gogues might think they could detect in his word-
gift that his English was not his mother-lisp, and
that they could hear the German accent not only
on his tongue but in his style. Something of
the kind about himself he implies once at least in
his Reminiscences.
Even before the War educators propounded the
question to Schurz: How did you acquire your
mastery of oratorical English? His answer went
the rounds : chiefly from the study and appropria-
tion of the Letters of Junius. I remember hearing
that statement at College, and bought at once the
book, reading it with diligence and committing the
thunderous invectives to memory. Now I hold it
deeply characteristic of Schurz that he chose as his
stylistic model the damnatory Junius, not the con-
ciliatory Burke nor the institutional "Webster, the
two greatest English-speaking orators, both of whom
had the gift to elevate their temporary political ut-
terance into lasting literature. Junius is indeed
the English classic of invective and malediction,
with which Schurz had but too much psychical
affinity. Junius only intensified in Schurz a men-
tal quality of which nature had already given him
more than enough. He was an innate fault-finder ;
he confesses to a natural love of contention (so we
CARL SCHURZ OF ST. LOUIS. 155
may translate his somewhat veiled Latin phrase
about himself, gaudium certaminnis) . In Missouri
his was the hand that shivered into fragments his
own party which had elected him Senator, and so
completely did it droop asunder that it could not
pull itself together again for a generation, with
force enough to win a victory in the State. He was
right in opposing disfranchisement, which ought
never to have been enacted, certainly not in the
way it was. Missouri had shown herself overwhelm-
ingly loyal to the Union from the start without dis-
franchisement, which thus could have no true mean-
ing outside of hate and corruption.
Accordingly Schurz, the German interloper as
he was often called, soon fell out with the old lead-
ers who had sustained the battle of emancipation
and of the Union, such men as Governor Brown,
General Blair the hero of Camp Jackson, and espe-
cially his fellow-senator Charles D. Drake. "Well
might the returned Confederates erect to Schurz a
monument, for through him chiefly they, a decided
minority, won what they never could win on the
battlefield, the political control of the State, and
kept it for decades. To be sure he cut his own
throat in the process, a feat which he succeeded in
performing more than once; and he witnessed his
own triumphant self-negation when he was suc-
ceeded in 1875 by Cockerill, a former Confederate
General.
Still I hold that Schurz was the greatest Sen-
ator Missouri has had in this her nearly finished
156 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
century of Statehood, with the exception of Ben-
ton. He performed the very highest service of the
time to the country, courageous and almost single-
handed, in his criticism of President Grant and the
militaristic party, assailing corruption, nepotism,
and all sorts of insolent extravagance. Schurz 's
term coincided with the Reconstruction period, in
some respects a deeper menace than the Civil War
itself. I know that I was more discouraged at the
political outlook then than ever in Lincoln r s day.
The voice of Schurz seemed almost the only hope,
even if it was chiefly critical and negative, hardly
constructive and positive. But has bold incisive
surgical laceration was just what was needed for
the time's cancer. Our native Sumner, his chief
Senatorial yoke-fellow, though vitriolic in his de-
nunciation of abuses, was not equal to the crisis,
since he was fatally wrong in his attitude toward
the Southern problem. Thus to my view for a
while Senator Schurz towered up the greatest Pub-
lic Man in the United States. Blair, once our
heroic figure of St. Louis, then seated in the Na-
tional Senate beside Schurz, appeared diminuitive
in comparison, though he too was hostile to the Ad-
ministration 's misdeeds.
Schurz felt the ephemerality of his newspaperism
and of his stumpification ; hence he wished to write
a work of permanent worth. He favored the field
of History, and chose one of its American phases.
But the book could not get itself done, since the
immediate conflict of the moment had too great
CARL SCHURZ OF ST. LOUIS. 157
charm for him and catered to his innate delight in
controversy — a temperament not well fitted for
sedate impartial History. Then Schurz was in-
tensely a man of the present, not of the past. His
work on Sumner also refused to finish itself, prob-
ably for a good reason. He did complete a life of
Henry Clay, for which he received a good deal of
praise and some money ; but I do not like to think
of Schurz writing such a book for pay or fame ; he
never lived the life of Clay, never believed in Clay's
main doctrines, and hence could not exalt his own
work into an expression of his deepest selfhood.
Perhaps, however, just his love of opposition, his
professed gaudium certaminis made him write such
a book.
Dare I now look back and try to choose for
Schurz his grandest theme for an immortal work?
It is evident from his Reminiscences that he longed
to leave behind himself some lasting contribution
to American Letters. My selection for him might
be titled: "Six Years' View in the Senate of the
United States," recalling Benton's famous and en-
during book. The subject would be in essence : the
dangers produced by the military mind when put
in charge of our or any civil government. Such
was the underlying thought of Schurz 's entire Sen-
atorial term; he poured into its utterance all his
powers of argument and invective ; he reached
therein his own highest point not merely of elo-
quence but of self-realization. He lived his theme
with all his might, and I believe the best part of
158 THE ST. LOVIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
the nation, not excluding his political opponents,
lived it with him. On his seventieth birthday
(1899) when he was toasted with so many flatteries
let him resolve to himself : ' ' My immortal task is
yet to be done; in my coming seventies I shall pass
in review what I did in my Senatorial forties, soft-
ening the personal asperities, but preserving the
original energy of conviction."
But he did not, perhaps could not, do it. His
theme was essentially militarism as our national
problem. We have the same word and thing today
with an enormous widening of significance, verily
earth-embracing. Indeed it threatens just now to
rise with increased might in the United States. You
and I would be reading Schurz at present, if he
had written such a work, and it could have been
made a world-book, for all times and for all lands.
Truly his conflict with Grant (whom we all honor
and admire for his great military services) has be-
come universal — the right theme for a great writ.
Doubtless, Schurz had his petty personal griev-
ances against the President, who took away his
Senatorial patronage and otherwise stung him to
resentment; still he had the sense to keep to him-
self his private chagrins, but stabbed all the more
savagely the public abuses of the Administration,
whereby the people received the benefit.
No, he did not write it — the work of all his
works, and so he falls rearward of Benton, to whom,
however, he stands next. He stops short even in his
CARL SCHURZ OF ST. LOUTS. 159
Reminiscences with Grant's political appearance,
after three big volumes of interesting, but often in-
significant details, so that his book shows us again
a kind of Hamlet un-Hamleted. He gives his ex-
cuse, but it accuses him the more. That greatest
deed of his he should have seized and recorded first
of all, then he might celebrate his youth's valorous
adventures with Kinkel, in all the delight of old-
age's reminiscence. I have to ask : why did the vet-
eran Schurz, still active on the battle-line, show
the white feather at the ghost of Grant, when he
had once bearded so courageously the living reality
right in the Presidential chair? Several answers
possible, but let them pass.
Still I like to recall Schurz riding on his highest
wave of influence, making himself for a while the
personal pivot of his whole adopted country. This
concentrated itself to one deed in the Liberal-Re-
publican Convention at Cincinnati in 1872; as a
born alien he could not become President, but he
could make Presidents. Hence the scoffers dubbed
him our American "Warwick, the King-maker of old
English History, kept famous by the stage of
Shakespeare. But Schurz, the fault-finding mor-
alist, could not control the political forces which he
had set to storming; his own convention became a
wild runaway even with him holding in hand its
reins, and tumbled him over headforemost into nom-
inations which utterly disgusted him, but which he
had to stomach as his own bitter medicine. Later
he continued to show some signs of the President-
160 THE 8T - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
maker, but he never again had the same pre-emi-
nen in that field.
Sehurz was often the lofty stimulating moralist,
but he could drop back into the platitudinous mor-
alizer, especially when hard pushed for a stop-gap
to fill out some vacancy in his oratory. From this
side of him came his sympathy with New England,
mental and even physical, for to me Sehurz looked
more like a Yankee than a typical German, being
meager-fleshed, thin-faced, with a glance of Puri-
tanic severity almost cutting from behind those
blue-eyed spectacles of his. He was always fea-
tured to me with an overcast of critical melancholy,
which never failed to throw down into my face a
glance of condemnation from his tall rather skele-
toned stature. This feeling may have been my own
reaction of a bad conscience. Certainly Sehurz
never appeared to me the burly Teuton, still less
the jolly Rhinelander given over to infinite gusta-
tion and imbibition, though Sehurz was from the
Rhine, and could brighten up in praise of its Johan-
nisberger and its other appetitive delicacies.
Thus the German Era of St. Louis attracted and
evolved to his highest self-realization our greatest
German fellow-citizen. But the other Teutonic
genius of our city, my special friend, could never
extricate himself from his own handicaps, and so re-
mained unrealized in the best of him till his evan-
ishment. Brockmeyer and Sehurz knew each other
and even brushed against each other at the afore-
said Cincinnati Convention, but they were mutually
JOSEPH PULITZER OF ST. LOUIS. \Q\
repellent in their deepest. So I try to compare
them: Brockmeyer's ultimate command was the
enacted Law of associated Man, Schurz's ultimate
command was the categorical Imperative of the
moral Man. Brockmeyer ignored or rather defied
too much the moral element of his own spirit, while
Schurz was weak in the institutional element of
human progress — another reason why he could not
have written a great history.
But already has been darting before my imagina-
tion another representative of the German Era of
St. Louis. Let him appear.
Ill
Joseph Pulitzer op St. Louis
As I set my pencil on paper to jot down my
views under this caption, I can hear protests
against them from friends and foes of Pulitizer,
for he had a sufficiency of both. My first proposi-
tion about him will rouse a bitter denial and prob-
ably some profanity, though my words may not be
worth a curse when I say : Pulitzer was the great-
est master of Journalism that has yet arisen in
these United States. He saw its meaning and real-
ized its power and place in American life more
fully than any other man of his guild; indeed if
America has produced the greatest newspapers in
the world, as is sometimes declared, Joseph Pulitzer
must be acclaimed the world's greatest journalist.
162 THE ST - LOms MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
His, then, is a world-historical position, and de-
mands our best consideration in its own right.
Still I would have no call to mention him here,
if he had not been in his way connected with the
St. Louis Movement and with its chief sponsors,
and indirectly with myself, though for him person-
ally I never won any intimacy. Moreover he was
a familiar figure on our streets during many years,
in fact during the whole period of the Great Illu-
sion, in which he deeply shared, blowing gaudy
journalistic bubbles of the Future Great City of
the "World. His spectacled look and his aggressive
swing, along with his unique olfactory develop-
ment would single him out among hundreds as a
striking individual phenomenon. Reavis alone
might rival him in power of producing personal
publicity through his very appearance, both also
being originally newspaper reporters, as well as
Nature's own self-reporters.
Pulitzer, it may be averred, was professionally
born in St. Louis, serving here his earliest appren-
ticeship, and rising gradually to mastership, which
he bore with him to New York. Thus he too along
with many others fled from the Great Disillusion,
when he had found it out, to try for a new reality
under other skies. And it must be confessed that
he more fully realized himself than any other St.
Louis man within my horizon, except possibly the
great bridge-builder Eads, who was rightly the
Supreme Pontiff of our river city.
JOSEPH PULITZER OF ST. LOUIS. 163
I first roundly observed Pulitzer in 1868, and had
a brief dialogue with him, when he came as smooth-
faced reporter to the old Central High School,
where I was a teacher. It was commencement time
for us, and he wished to drum up an item for the
German Westliche Post. He stepped into my class-
room unheralded, which was his right, as the door
stood open and the public was invited. One of the
girl-pupils was inclined to giggle, as she saw that
tall somewhat grotesque figure with large goggle
eyes staring through big-rimmed spectacles at us
rather quizzically ; then he whipped out his note-
book, clutched his pencil, and somewhat brokenly
asked me, who had taken my seat beside him:
"What study is this?" "Mental Philosophy," I
answered. ' ' Philosophy, eh ! " Then began a sur-
prising drama of his features playing on his face's
stage for a moment his whole reactive subjectivity.
Serio-comic was the interlude as I gazed at it, for
it had as its most prominent and most versatile
actor a huge demonic nose gifted with a language
all its own, yet smitingly universal. He gave a
strange Mephistophelean scowl, and grunted out in
contempt, I thought: "What good can you get
from that?" "Some knowledge of the human
mind, we hope to have gained," I replied; "come,
examine us, and perhaps you will be kind enough
to show us a sample of your own mind." From
wide-open eyes through huge glasses he flung a
stare which made us all wince a little. Then he put
up his note-book, and started for the door. I fol-
164 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
lowed, saying : ' ' Glad to know you. ' ' His curious
reply was : "I know you already. ' '
What did he mean? I certainly was both small
and obscure in the city, and could have had no pub-
lic standing. So I am led to theorize now, looking
backwards: Pulitzer was already making himself
acquainted with every little current in town and
with those who took part in it; even the private
conduct of the citizen was to be brought under his
inspection. He was getting ready for his new Jour-
nalism, which is to know, and if occasion arise, is to
expose the inner life, yea the under life, and espe-
cially the double life of each public man, however
minute, even that of the ordinary schoolmaster: in
which function his newspaper gave me the shock of
my life by its exposure of our High School Prin-
cipal though I knew not a little before.
I have ranked Pulitzer as German, though he was
born in Hungary of a Jewish father and a Chris-
tian mother, according to his biographer. What
was the earliest speech lisped by the child — Hunga-
rian, German, or possibly Iddish ? Not told, as far
as I know, but his native dialect was probably Ger-
man, which was also the language in which he re-
ceived his youthful education. In St. Louis he
started as a German reporter; and during his last
hours, as narrated by his biographer, Mr. Ireland,
he called for a reading in German, which seems to
have been his final as well as first native utterance.
In the main he hired his English written for him;
his newspaper's opinion and policy he ruled auto-
JOSEPH PULITZER OF ST. LOUIS. 165
cratically, but its expression he bought in the mar-
ket; in fact he selected and purchased the literary-
style he wanted ; then he ordered to be put into it
what content he chose. To such a servitude Jour-
nalism is reducing Literature as the once indepen-
dent self-expression of the human soul. Herein,
however, Pultizer showed himself the coming man
of Great Newspaperdom in its triumphant evolu-
tion ; its task is to subject to its own autocracy in-
dependent Literature, of which, I may here auto-
biographically interject, I have persisted an irre-
ducible atom, defiant of the time's behest, and hence
wholly negligible. Still even thuswise I have dared
live my own life.
But we have not come to that time yet in his ca-
reer, he is still the young reporter barely of age.
Note him as he marches out of my room ; his stride is
strikingly aggressive, he knows just what he is go-
ing for and how to get it with some hurry. In every
motion he pushes out as a man of prime initiative,
giving a kind of ideal knock-down to any obstacle.
His stay was brief and his information rather
short ; but like a good reporter, he can make up the
rest of the article. Probably he needed only that
one word Philosophy as a kind of cocoon for infi-
nite repertorial spinning.
One of Pulitzer's attractions for me was his re-
semblance, both physical and spiritual to our Brock-
meyer of the Philosophical Society. The same sort
of body, lithe but heavy-muscled and strong-boned ;
166 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
both loomed large but lissom at least in their
younger days, yet with this emphatic difference:
Pulitzer seemed always on the spring, ready to
pounce, while Brockmeyer would settle back at
ease in his chair, cock up his heels, and keep wab-
bling his pipe around in his mouth from corner to
corner in a perpetual lazy smoke. But their most
striking visible similarity lay in their weird mobile
physiognomy, with its dramatic play ranging from
uncouth grotesquery to perfervid tragedy. And
right at the heart of their features throbbed and
lifted and sported the towering organ of Cyrano de
Bergerac.
But their deeper kinship I deemed to lie in that
secret elemental power often called Demonic, but
also Angelic or even Satanic, namely the downflow
of upper energy which takes hold of the man for
a while and makes him greater than himself as
mere individual man. Both possessed, I believe
this unique gift of genius, each in his own way.
But just here rose up a great difference : Brock-
meyer never trained his genius to do its work but
let it run wild, and to waste, and hence he has left
little or no sign of his gift ; Pulitzer, however, har-
nessed his genius in the first place to his pie-cart,
and tasked it to the topmost so that he left behind
himself a vast fortune as well as a great work done ;
thus he realized himself at his highest. So here
again in comparison, Brockmeyer stands forth as
the Great Unrealized — a colossal potentiality, a
kind of Illusion somewhat like his own dear city of
JOSEPH PULITZER OF ST. LOUIS. 167
St. Louis; while Pulitzer is by contrast the self-
achieved soul, the man made actual.
Did these two men, kinned deeply in a common
genius, ever find each other, and recognize their
joint affinity of spirit ? The fact is, the first appre-
ciation of Pulitzer I ever heard was thundered from
the lips of Brockmeyer, who on a time suddenly
erupted in one of his Vesuvian outbursts. "That
young fellow cinches the future: they think be-
cause he trundles about with himself a big cob-nose,
a whopper jaw, and bull-frog eyes that he has no
sense ; but I tell you, he possesses greater dialectical
ability than all of them put together — I know it for
I have felt it; mark me, he is now engaged in the
making of a greater man than editor Danzer, or
editor Pretorius, or even Schurz." So fulmined
once Brockmeyer in vivid ejaculation, meanwhile
rising to his feet and emphasizing with a gesture
that unusual locution dialectical ability, laden by
him with a still more unusual meaning. Evidently
this was his wording of Pulitzer's peculiar nascent
gift, which he had detected, doubtless by his own
cognate endowment. To understand the foregoing
we must remember that Pulitzer never could win
the respect of those high-toned German editors who
made fun of him while exploiting his talent, till he
set up for himself in an English newspaper. Nay,
English-speaking St. Louis never would accept
Pulitzer, though it bought his journal. For that
matter, it never accepted Brockmeyer, nor me, nor
the St. Louis Movement, and still the world moves,
168 THE ST. L0VI8 MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
and St. Louis — let the reader finish the sentence
with a hopeful benediction.
On the other hand, I happened once to catch a
whiff of Pulitzer's laudatory exuberance over
Brockmeyer's work in the Missouri Constitutional
Convention of 1875. I was walking with Judge
Woerner on a hot day ; we turned in to take a cool
sip of philosophic Germany's beverage at Tony
Faust's, when Pulitzer came up to us somewhenee
out of the beer-fragrance of that worshipful temple
of Gambrinus, and he began quite an oration be-
fore us, whom he knew to be sworn friends of
Brockmeyer. Of course the speech was intended
for Woerner, who was a great man and a first citi-
zen, but I got the benefit, too. I recognized at once
a number of Brockmeyer's political thoughts as well
as some of his thunderous words and drastic illus-
trations. And the profanity was not wholly omit-
ted. But just behold! Brockmeyer's look and
stature ! his grimaces and Rabelaisian grotesquery,
followed by serious long-faced statements of pro-
found constitutional principles! Then his smiling
urbanity toward everybody, and especially a chiv-
alrous courtesy for the Southern members of the
Convention. In short, Pulitzer became Brockmeyer
then and there, and rehearsed the whole lesson
which he had gotten from the Convention, for of it
he too was a member. He, like me, though in a
wholly different department of lore, had gone to
school to Brockmeyer and had learned somewhat,
even down to (or rather up to) his peculiar scream-
JOSEPH PULITZER OF ST. LOUIS. 169
like vociferation, when becoming a little eruptive.
That was at least my view on hearing his discourse,
though he might not have thought so himself.
Thus Pulitzer, in spite of himself, took up into
his composition a strain of the St. Louis Movement,
of whose training he was probably unconscious. But
that secret subtle demiurge Brockmeyer laid his
spell upon the young receptive genius — there being
some twenty years of life-experience between their
ages. Pulitzer quit his own political party and
finally joined that of Brockmeyer, where he stayed
for the rest of his life. I heard Brockmeyer claim
(I know nothing of the matter myself) that through
his influence Pulitzer was appointed Police Com-
missioner, by which office the latter won power,
knowledge, and money, wherewith he could start his
independent newspaper career.
Pulitzer, however, never showed any turn, as far
as I am aware, for Brockmeyer 's other supreme en-
dowment: Philosophy, which was the passion of
Harris and of the rest of us. The immediate sense-
world of politics and city-life was his chosen ele-
ment, being the prime material for journalism, in
which he must have already felt his great career
throbbing towards fulfilment. In 1883 he quit St.
Louis for New York, after a stay of some seven-
teen years. He chafed against his journalistic lim-
its on this ever-narrowing spot, and longed to get
away from his past, so as to start over again.
Can we delve to the ground of his unsurpassed
achievement, genuine I hold, and so far still endur-
170 THE 8T - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
ing ? He picked up at once that orphaned bankrupt
sheet, The New York World, and tossed it to the
front of all newspaperdom, keeping the lead as long
as he lived, even when blind. How did he do it?
Barring the advertisements which are but an echo
of its circulation, Pulitzer's World represented and
exposed in the most glaring form the inherent dual-
isim which exists at its deepest in New York City,
and in the Democratic Party, but is found also in
American life everywhere. The editorial page fa-
vored all good things, attacked corruption of every
sort, and preached the ethics of public and private
conduct with an unction which smelt of sanctity —
and I believe the man was honest. But now look on
the other page, the repertorial — there is a drop
from Heaven to Hell. All devildom is there set
forth in huge black head-lines, propped on columns
of lurid details in smaller type — murders, rapes,
lynchings, frauds, seductions — Pandemonium broke
loose in print and served up for breakfast. So the
World dualized humanity to the very bottom in
every issue, compounding Dante's Inferno and
Paradiso in one all-embracing dose, giving each
half of Human Nature and of God's Universe its
due representation in a single budget every day.
Thus Pulitzer reflected in his dual newspaper the
Creation's own dualism into good and evil, and
therein hit off an image of the dual personality of
the folk and its democracy. "Horribly ugly pic-
ture, and two-faced ' ' says the folk looking at itself,
' ' but on the whole it is true ; yes, it is I myself and
JOSEPH PULITZER OF ST. LOUIS. 171
none other, and I '11 buy it. " So we witness a Klon-
dike stream of gold pouring suddenly into the hith-
erto empty treasury of a dying newspaper. Most
wonderful feat of hoary magic alchemy turned to
literal present fact ! The magician seized that lit-
tle old moribund World and recreated it out of two
new living Worlds, namely the Overworld and the
Underworld of Human Existence. He clapped the
halves of life together into a new visible work of
art, and made them appear one vast bi-lateral or-
ganism, full of young energy. Call it the earth's
new-born monster if you will, perchance it is the
old Egyptian Sphinx, half man half animal, pro-
pounding still its riddle, rejuvenated as the mod-
ern Newspaper, half human half bestial. Is that to
be our last huge Literary Megatherium, which is
actually now swallowing all other Literary Forms
of prose and poetry, as being inadequate, worn-out,
and indeed quite exanimate? Let the question
stand, for it comes up again and again in the course
of this petty narrative of ours, as well as in Uni-
versal History.
On account of such newspaper duality, or if you
please, duplicity, many people and not a few of his
fellow-guildsmen have maintained that Pulitzer
was unprincipled, Machiavellian, in fine a down-
right hypocrite. I do not construe him thus; he
was honest, bitterly honest just in his dualism, and
because of its depth and mightiness in his soul. He
carried it out in his deed to the last consequence,
and he could not have done that without its being
172 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
his deepest character and conviction. In fact Pul-
itzer was himself the journalistic dualism incarnate
and he possessed the genius to fling it out of him-
self into his World, whose very name turns double
in meaning through his presence. His internal life
ran two-fold probably (for we have not his auto-
biography) ; his outer life also seems cut in two-,
the first part was his long St. Louis apprentice-
ship, the formative experience sprung of the Great
Illusion, which he at last pricked and fled from;
the second part was his New York time, that of
realization, lasting more than a quarter of a cen-
tury.
Pulitzer himself thought that his repertorial
page, the bestial body of his Sphinx, needed de-
fence, or at least some explanation. Biographer
Ireland broaches the topic repeatedly, giving opin-
ions from headquarters. He also intimates that
Pulitzer at times entertained the idea of writing
his autobiography, possibly incited by the example
of Schurz. That would have been, if open-heart-
edly confessed, a very significant American docu-
ment. But Pulitzer had his secrets and kept them,
nay he could fabricate and play off his mystifica-
tions when he needed them. Would he throw open
to daylight his hidden St. Louis career? But Pul-
itzer really did not care to write an eternal book,
as did Schurz. He felt, I think, rather a contempt
for Literature as such ; he had bought too much of
it for his own ephemeral ends to esteem highly or
to believe profoundly in the eternal record of the
JOSEPH PULITZER OF ST. LOVIS. 173
Eternal. Writ could only be a purchasable jour-
nalistic means with him, not an end for its own
sake in human self-expression. So there is no auto-
biography of his, at least up to date.
Again St. Louis lost in him a great man, who
had the insight and the power to seize and to ex-
ploit more fully than ever before the possibilities
of the mighty social weapon, the Newspaper. In-
deed his success called up in many minds the an-
xious query : Is this possible monster, now nobly
named by itself the Freedom of the Press, to be
subject to no law except its own impersonal un-
conscienced conscience, or perchance except the
weak statute of libel, which Pulitzer openly boasted
he had the means of turning against the person
who might invoke it against him in a court of jus-
tice? Are the great Pulitzers of Journalism to re-
main autocratic and irresponsible, while all man-
kind is subjecting Emperors, Kings, Presidents,
Governors, and Mayors to the rule of a self-deter-
mined institutional order? The problem is rising.
But after such troubled premonitions, we always
come back to appreciate the marvelous achievement,
despite Fate's furious envy, of the man with his
dual personality realized so colossally in a deed.
And quite at his greatest he wrought during twen-
ty-four years of blindness ! Is he then our modern
sightless Milton or Homer, the new sort of blind
maker or poet of the new Iliad? Pulitzer must
have known how to select the human instruments
for his definite ends better than any other seeing
174 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
newspaper Napoleon. And still after his death, his
constructive power runs on in his work with a
sort of perpetuity. That which is most ephemeral
on this earth (the newspaper) he makes eternal
just in its ephemerality. Has he not kept his soul
immortal and active even after his physical evan-
ishment? It looks as if he has created a new and
lasting body for his departed spirit, as we may
call it tentatively as yet. But as for me, after all
his drawbacks, I like best to contemplate his best,
which is to my mind that he keeps on proving
through time the immortality of his own soul.
And finally I have to repeat to myself that here
is a man who has realized himself more completely
than any other striver within my speaking or read-
ing knowledge, in spite of Nature's most heinous
handicaps, with one possible supreme exception.
Let my reader guess, Who 1 Only let him not take
himself as this exception, nor myself.
IV
A Book Writer's Life Lines
The German Era of St. Louis graved upon me
certain life-lines, which have continued to run
through my whole career down to the present. I
then found out with some distinctness what I was
to do in this earthly sojourn of mine, and how I
was to do it, and I made the beginning. Still more
decisively I discovered what I was not to do, and
marked with clearness the limits of what I had to
A BOOK WRITER'S LIFE LINES. 175
escape, if I was ever to get anything done. This
negative task, that of avoiding dissipation of energy-
was for me one of the hardest, as I loved exceed-
ingly to wander at mind's random through the
Elysian Fields of omniscience, and to spread me
out over them to a vanishing thinness. Nature's
indolence found in the periodicalism of the time the
supreme temptation to a dissolved, that is, disso-
lute mental existence. What strength I had, hardly
more than that of a half-man, I kept me under
strict training to concentrate and to organize. After
many lapses and relapses I would gather up the
pieces of myself, and penitently start again to
build life's tabernacle.
Can I give some vague notion concerning this
German Era of St. Louis which took part in my
very self-hood and its coming evolution ? I sought
to know and to feel the beat of the old Fatherland's
folk-soul which I then deemed quite the Earth-
soul, everywhere around me, to share its thoughts,
its amusements, its speech, even its prejudices. But
all this effort was hardly for its own sake, even if I
wildly enjoyed the novel experience; I was more
or less conscious of another and higher end: I
sought to know and to commune with the Genius
of the Age which had at its best embodied itself in
a trinity of great Teutonic souls — the philosopher
Hegel, the poet Goethe, the musician Beethoven.
There was the time's consensus that the nineteenth
Century, yea all the Centuries at least since Shakes-
peare, had found their highest cultural expression
176 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
in the works of these three Germans, and my pre-
sent call was to make mine this sovereign discipline
of the period. So I became a student in the Uni-
versity of Civilization, highest of all Universities.
In other words I was now to get acquainted with
the World-Spirit, the supernal Power over History,
in its three latest grandest incarnations manifest-
ing and voicing its message to us earth-dwellers
here below. So during these years I especially
studied Hegel, Goethe, Beethoven, separately and
together, all of them being at last one mighty co-
temporaneous utterance of the Age's Genius, who
then spoke German. Thus the German Era of St.
Louis gave me my flood-tidal opportunity, furnish-
ing incentive and harmonious environment, as well
as the native speech of the soul universal of the Cen-
tury. How otherwise just now !
Then let it be confessed that I was whirled along
on top of the surge, and I jubilated to the height
of my mood, echoing the new hope, which especially
attuned itself to music. My house became a little
center of melodies instrumental and vocal, in which
I took practical part, and I reached the point of
playing a flute in the city orchestra — an experience
which inducted me into the sound-painted temple
of the Tone-God, where I could hear all the finest
concordances of the Earth. From this harmonious
time a musical accompaniment has kept singing un-
derneath all my unmusical days, often breaking up
to the surface in some form of poetic expression.
The Marsellaise refused to hymn me any longer,
A BOOK WRITER'S LIFE LINES. 177
while heavy-throated the Wacht am Rhein rose in
exultant sound-waves over the city.
Still I had now and then a pulsation of doubt. I
recollect that I questioned especially the annexa-
tion of Alsace-Lorraine, the fatuous act of the
Franco-Prussian War (1870). I had read enough
of history to feel the nemesis of such a deed, in
whose sweep nationality, seeking to assert itself,
was really contradicting itself, to its own self-un-
doing. Such an old claim, if carried out univer-
sally, would tear Europe to pieces. In a company
of friendly Germans I once expressed this view,
when they turned on me with angry reproaches,
and almost mobbed me. The time's Illusion in
them I did not then perceive, though it gave me a
smart tweak of the nose in secret irony.
Through my devotion to these three spiritual
sovereigns of the age and their similars, my work
broke into two life-lines ; in other words I had two
vocations, the first of which nourished my body,
the second my spirit. That is, I earned my bread
by my professional business, school-teaching; but
my labor of self-development and self-expression
had to be its own reward. Thus two vocational
strands arose and intertwined themselves through
all my years, the remunerative and the unremuner-
ative; my highest work brought no pay, only ex-
pense ; indeed I became unwilling and unable to
sell my best self for a price. It is true that I tried
to make these higher studies react favorably upon
the daily routine of the humble instructor ; in fact,
178 THE ST - L0UIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
my theory was and still is that the deadly me-
chanics of the school-room can only thus be raised
into living reality; that the teacher, to be at his
best, must have his own private universal dis-
cipline perpetually overflowing into the particular
official task of the day. So there was developed in
my life what I may call my Super-vocation distinct
from yet inter-wound with my vocation proper,
which also had its distinctive training.
I was not yet a writer of books except in a very
small tentative way. But already some such goal
of my endeavor seemed to be looming up dimly in
the distance. More or less consciously I began to
throw off all encumbrances to such a pursuit. Ex-
perience was first to give me her lesson as to what
might favor or hinder ; then I was to act if I had
the will power. During these years I was brought
face to face with several questions of future des-
tiny, to which I had to give decisive practical an-
swers. I had to make choice of my life-lines, going
this way, shunning that; in other words the time
had come upon me when I was to select not only
my vocation but my Super-vocation, as I now bap-
tize it, the most difficult move in life, often never
taken and often never even known.
1. One of my first renunciations was that of
professional promotion. All of us teachers were
supposed to be in line of advancement whose high-
est goal was the official headship of the whole school
system. One day a bolt of lightning fell at my feet
in the shape of an offer to be Assistant Superin-
A BOOK WRITER'S LIFE LINES. 179
tendant, a position next to the highest. I did not
try to pick it up, but declined the for me dangerous
task; I knew it would be the end of my Super-
vocation which had become already my upper, and
perchance my saving life-line. I was close enough
to Superintendent Harris to see and partly to share
the vexations of his high position ; perhaps I may
have caused him one or two myself. Administra-
tion, in return for its pile of gold, would demand
the sacrifice of my creative power; and I was de-
termined not to commit that sin of simony against
my Holy Ghost.
So I resolved to forego all administrative work,
and I have pushed that resolution ahead of me
through half a century. But in such a purpose I
had to relinquish the prizes of the world, which are
all, or nearly all, given to the administrator — the
glittering prizes of money, fame, power. I de-
serve no pitying commiseration, since I made my
choice consciously, and have persevered in it with
eyes open. For along with the glories I escaped
the horrors of Administration, to pursue and to
realize by peaceful development my Super-vocation
in the company of Chum Poverty who has always
kindly, though sparingly allotted me food, raiment
and shelter.
2. An unimportant paragraph I may here de-
vote to a brief interlude of this time, during which
I saw somewhat — not much — of that peculiar time-
killing bauble known as general and even genteel
society. A few prominent college men came to-
180 THE ST. LOUTS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
gether and formed an organization which was bap-
tized under the name of the University Club. I
happened to be present at the first meeting, and we
all pledged our best assistance to the enterprise,
which was successful in bringing together a con-
siderable number of the educated people of the
city, lawyers, doctors, ministers, teachers, business
men. Thomas Allen, an eminent and wealthy citi-
zen, head of the Iron Mountain Railroad, we chose
as our first President, who plumped into our lucky
treasury a thousand dollars for a start. Social en-
tertainments were frequent, lecture courses were
given, receptions for distinguished visitors were
held, eating and drinking were not neglected.
During two years or so I was an active club-mem-
ber, for the first and last time in my life. I saw a
good deal of certain high-placed urban characters,
and heard them speak out in conversation as well
as in oration. On the whole it was a new kind of
humanity in my experience, and I drew much en-
joyment, and I think profit, from the intercourse.
Our two chief philosophers, Brockmeyer and Har-
ris, were not members, still there was a little sprink-
ling of us in the Club, and a subtle streak of Hegel-
ism would occasionally flash out to the bewilder-
ment of the Philistines, who were the large ma-
jority. I even started little talks off in a cosy cor-
ner on Shakespeare, with whose excellence I was
at that time overflowing verbally if not mentally.
I begged Harris to join us — Brockmeyer was im-
possible^ — and we would start a hot campaign, for
A BOOK WRITER'S LIFE LINES. 181
which I thought there was a unique opportunity-
But he would not, giving some poor open excuses,
and hiding his real decisive reasons as he often did.
His heart he never wore upon his sleeve for daws
(like me) to peck at.
At last in 1874, the blow of fate smote me with
a great domestic loss, which simply snuffed out all
pleasure in pleasure, and wilted to sorrow life's
ambitions. I gradually withdrew from the Univer-
sity Club and never re-joined. Twice afterwards,
once in New York and once in Chicago, I took a
little nip of Club-life, but soon flung away the
cup as alien to my work and to my character. So
I lost my gift of comradery — I could never have
had much ; but for this little while at the Univer-
sity 'Club I was fairly sociable, never again. This
must be accounted one of life's drawbacks, from
which, however, I gathered, as I believe, a consid-
erable blessing for my Super-vocation.
3. Every teacher thinks of changing his voca-
tion, or at least he used to think so in my time. The
prizes were on the whole smaller than in other pro-
fessions; the social prestige was the least. Hence
teaching was accepted as a kind of half-way house
on the road to something higher. In my early peda-
gogical environment, the better half of the more
ambitious young men were studying law for the
future. We had a class in Blackstone made up of
teachers. Since then the professional spirit of the
teaching masses has doubtless improved; but the
182 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
chance of escape, when once in the mill, has be-
come less.
I was one of those who began to teach school till
I could move out of such an intermediate condition
into the legal profession. The temptation still
hung over me when I entered the High School.
Judge Woerner, then a practising attorney, of his
own friendly accord once offered me a starter's
position in his office with a small salary. At home
the household queen urged me boldly to accept, and
offered herself as a living or rather starving sacri-
fice to a diminished income, already small enough.
Then beside her lay a babe in the cradle, whose
smile became my very enigmatic oracle. For many a
month I stood at the crossroads staring at the two
sign-boards which pointed in such different direc-
tions, and I tarried will-lessly interrogating the
Future. At last the Future suddenly turned and
interrogated me sternly : ' ' Are you willing to give
up your Super-vocation, which now runs along
peacefully with, yet above your vocation?" No,
was the answer, and that upper life-line of mine
has sped on its way unswerving till now, while I
have remained militant pedagogue in the battle
against the fates of physical existence.
4. Another phenomenon peculiar to this time
was the large number of magazines which sprang
up mushroom-like, throughout the city. How many,
I cannot tell ; but in my immediate vicinage I may
count four with which the St. Louis Movement had
some connection. The ground for this frantic but
A BOOK WRITER'S LIFE LINES. 183
evanescent growth of periodicalism, as I look back
at it, lay in the intoxicating draught of the Great
Illusion, whereof we all were guzzling to the last
drop. I reveled in the drunken dream, and so did
everybody else in town, that ours was to be the
Future Great City of the World, and hence there
must arise just here the Future Great Magazine of
the World. Thus took place a kind of rush to be
first in the new field, like the flood of eager settlers
racing to pre-empt some vacant rich territory. An-
other Illusion by the way.
Perhaps the best sample of this fresh outbreak
of illusory St. Louis was The Inland Magazine,
edited by Charlotte Smith, though people gener-
ally supposed that Reavis and his Idea were the
secret mainspring of the enterprise. Certainly he
wrote for it, and now we had an organ of the Gos-
pel according to St. Louis (the American Saint
not the French), which was to be propagated over
the earth from its right center through the words
of the prophet himself. Moreover Reavis was be-
ginning to look to a new field of activity, for he
says in one of his final prefaces, "this pamphlet is
to be the last which I shall prepare and publish
upon the material interest of the country and St.
Louis. ' ' What can he mean ? Is he getting a first
stroke or glimpse of the coming Disillusion? He
gives us a glimmer of his fresh task, "wherein the
great problems of the world are to be solved and
man's highest life on earth is to be attained." Is
Reavis then going to turn philosopher, and join
184 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
the St. Louis Movement ? He never did, as far as
I know, even if he once asked Harris to lecture for
him on immortality. His object is now, as he says,
"moral and intellectual development," seemingly
quite distinct from his former glorification of "ma-
terial St. Louis," for which he had coined a sort
of universal cognomen "The Future Great" — this
short cut becoming for a while our city's abbrevia-
tion at home and abroad. At any rate The Inland
had a perceptible tincture of Reavisism, and so did
our newspapers as well as ourselves. Still it con-
tained something else, whereof I can recall one
rememberable instance : this magazine first showed
me to myself poetically in St. Louis type, having
printed in its columns my youthful drama Clar-
ence, which Reavis had heard of and asked for
through Harris. Thus it started my little cataract
of printer's ink, which even in book-quenching St.
Louis, has continued its downpour into this year,
and into this book.
Of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, found-
ed by Harris during this same Era, I have already
spoken. I contributed first to it some translations
from the German, and then my early Shakespeare
articles. At the start it had the unique character
of being the only magazine of the kind published
in the English language. I desired to help Harris
in his daring enterprise, and so I kept on writing
and printing my Shakespearian essays till a book
had evolved, and pathetically begged me for pub-
lication. I took pity on its distressed fragmentary
A BOOK WRITER'S LIFE LINES. 185
condition and yielded. The Journal was continued
for many years and won a name. Harris clung to
it through life, or nearly so, and it must be deemed
his means or form of self-expression. It remains
his monumental work; he spent a good deal of the
best energy of his best days upon its exacting re-
quirements. I could never be reconciled to giving
my creative moments for such a result; thus our
life-lines ran different. As this Journal was more
or less interwoven with the St. Louis Movement to
its last number, it will be mentioned repeatedly in
our narrative. I may call this, together with his
other philosophical work, the Super-vocation of
Harris, kept up at a great unpaid and unpayable
outlay of money and mind, alongside of his bread-
winning vocation, which, however, it deeply in-
fluenced.
A school periodical called The American Journal
of Education, edited by Major Merwin, was an-
other journalistic offshoot of this Era, which had
its link of connection with the St. Louis Movement
through Harris and other local educators and writ-
ers. I do not remember furnishing to it any direct
contribution, though it reviewed sympathetically
a number of my productions.
But the magazine with which I stood in most in-
timate personal relation, and out of which I drew
a hot living experience of periodicalism was The
Western, which, starting as pedagogical, rose to be
mainly literary. On the whole it had a very shift-
ing and at times shiftless history through its many
18$ THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
tetering ups and downs. My chief part I have not
forgotten: I took a pledge to furnish an article
for every number, and at the same time to pay
five or possibly ten dollars into the magazine's ever-
gaping treasury for my own article. An ambitious
literary lady once asked me how much I received
for my contribution, and she intimated that she
had something of the sort for sale, if she could
get a better price for it here than in the East. My
rejoinder must have run somehow thus: "We
writers here in St. Louis are far ahead of all others
known to the World 's History in ability, for we are
not only able to write articles, but also to pay a
good price for them when written. Such are the
terms, if you wish to join our guild." She de-
clined becoming a member, with the modest state-
ment: "I own no such ability as that."
During this stage of The Western (for it had
several other stages), lasting possibly a year, we
the contributors, also courteously called stockhold-
ers, were likewise the editors in a kind of common
parley, which settled the affairs of the publication.
Thus I came to experience somewhat of the nature
of Magazinism and its rewards, which I slowly
made up my mind to forego in this life. There
certainly was need of unity in the conduct of the
business, and finally I was chosen editor. I de-
clined the honor with becoming modesty, I thought,
when an attempt was made to foist the office upon
me anyhow. But I stamped No with decision, and
the editorship went elsewhere, and at the same time
A BOOK WRITER'S LIFE LINES. 187
my direct connection not only with the Western,
but also with the vast and ever-growing magazine-
world closed for good. I never afterwards took
part in periodical literature, though I have occa-
sionally sent articles and a little cash in response to
the editorial cry of pain such as I used to hear in
the sanctum of The Western: "More copy, more
money. ' '
Thus during this German Era and through its
peculiar opportunities I developed my two most
strongly marked and permanent life-lines — the up-
per and the lower, the ideal and the real, the
moneyless and the moneyed, and so on through a
long string of dualisms. The name for the first I
have already minted as my Super-vocation, self-re-
warding, self-contained, self-sufficing, whose chief
function was to bring me into some closer contact
or clearer vision of my supernal acquaintance, who
to my mind bears the lofty title of World-Spirit.
And I may add that this for me exalted com-
munion began, during the present Era, to insist
upon some kind of utterance in my native speech.
What I had gained I was driven to express for my-
self, and then to give away to others. Thus a
secret impulse started in me toward becoming a
Writer of Books, the goal and the fulfilment of my
Super-vocation.
188 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
The Book Twins Born
Two conceptions started about the same time in
the early seventies, and began to push into ink
through scattered penstrokes, which then would
cohere and form articles, whose collection and ar-
rangement finally made two volumes, twinned in
origin yet quite different in character. So I recall
their synchronous birth to memory. Their names
have quite a disparate sound — the one being titled
The American State, and the other Shakespeare.
What can they have in common? They sprang
from the same brain on the same general birthday,
doubtless from the same general cause. I had writ-
ten a good deal before this, but at random; these
present writings, however, were products of the St.
Louis Movement now working in me and through
me for a new self-expression.
The deepest and most distinctive thing in them,
as I now review their purport, was my persistent
effort to grasp the World-Spirit, which I may
designate also as one form of divine manifestation
to the human mind, or even of God Himself.
Philosophically I had wrestled with the pure Idea
of it for years, all the way from Plato down to
Hegel, but the time had come for me to see it in
the living present, of which I was a small but active
part every day, and to unfold it as the ultimate
vital factor in our American political system. Still
THE BOOK TWINS BORN. 189
further, at the same psychological moment, as I
may construe it, was born the imperative push to
trace this elusive but super-eminent World-Spirit,
the presiding Genius of History, in Great Litera-
ture, especially in Greatest Shakespeare, who must
have the highest if he be the highest.
1. The American State. .This was originally a
series of essays written about 1871-2, when the na-
tional excitement over the so-called Reconstruction
of the Southern States which had been in rebellion,
was at its topmost. For me personally it was a
time of intense mental upheaval, inasmuch as I had
to reverse my life-long attachment to a political
party whose guidance I had followed in peace and
in war. Could I make the bitter change to which
more and more my conviction was driving me? I
had hitherto accepted without much serious chal-
lenge the policies of the Republican organization,
whose principles and professions I had inherited
from my father, re-inforced by my College associa-
tions, and by the Civil War. It is true that after
the death of Lincoln I was deeply dissatisfied with
the party's leadership, still I waited in hope. But
as the second nomination of President Grant drew
near, I fell into open revolt, in spite of old affec-
tions and comraderies. Thus I was brought to
break with my political tradition along with my
other traditions. I think this gave me the hardest
wrench of them all. For I had been a Union sol-
dier, and an enthusiastic supporter of Lincoln, and
I had already taken a very sympathetic even if boy-
190 THE 8T - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
ish part in the Fremont campaign of 1856, and also
in the Oberlin battle of 1858.
Now what was it that caused such a furious com-
motion within me? I think I can best sum it up
after the language of today in the word militarism.
The military spirit at the head of our civil affairs
was disregarding, if not jeopardizing the freedom
of our government. I am not of those who believe
that General Grant purposed the overthrow of our
institutions, but he had and he had to have for suc-
cess in war the soldier's absolute will to command
and to obey, according to which he could not help
acting unconsciously in political matters. Lincoln
saw with anxiety this tendency in the soldier, saw
it in Grant and once at least sent him a sharp warn-
ing on this very point. The feeling of some such
peril was what caused the split of 1872 in the Re-
publican ranks, and gave to Senator Schurz the
theme of his life.
Thus the conflict over the political reconstruction
of the South drove me to a political reconstruction
of myself and of all my former transmitted pre-
conceptions of party. Of the philosophical set two
members, Brockmeyer and Woerner, were practi-
cally engaged in the politics of the time; both,
though original supporters of Lincoln, were now in
strong reaction against the existent Republican
party. "We often discussed the impending prob-
lems, which necessarily involved the fundamental
nature of the State. We studied famous writers on
THE BOOK TWINS BORN. 191
the subject reaching back to old Plato's Republic
and Aristotle's Politics; but especially we poured
over Hegel 's Philosophy of the State and freely dis-
cussed its worth and its weakness. Above all doc-
uments of the past we delved into the Constitution
of the United States, upon which Brockmeyer once
planned a great philosophic book, but it remained
like his other works and like himself, and some-
what like his city, unrealized and perhaps unreal-
izable. Still we were struck by his lightning, and
charged with his personal electricity, which made
our brains sparkle and whiz with new activity.
Thus the St. Louis Movement had its political
strain which grew out of the time's circumstances.
Well do I remember the informal meetings which
usually took place Sunday afternoons at my house
in Targee street, or rather alley, where stood what
some people called the Philosophers' Row, one of
whose dwellings Harris also occupied for several
years. The drift of the discussion was in general
concerning the relation of the Federal Government
to the Single-States which composed it, and the
means to prevent each side from devouring the
other, to which act both sides had shown a violent
appetite within less than a single decade. We all
had witnessed and most of us had fought the at-
tempt of the Single-State to destroy the Union, and
we had rejoiced in the latter 's victory. But now a
few years' turn had brought to us just the oppo-
site danger: the victorious Union, grown insolent
in its triumph, was threatening to undo the Single-
192 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
State, by which deed, if successful, it would simply
undo itself.
It was truly an anxious time for our patriotism,
and we invoked to our help especially our philos-
ophy, which meant to us not merely a soothing
consolation in life's pain, but the very instrument
of our salvation. Prominent men used to come and
take a part, not many indeed, but all of them
marked characters. Brockmeyer and Harris, the
two Judges Woerner and Jones, Principal Morgan
and myself, made the core of the group. Only one
member, as far as I know, had been in the Con-
federate army, Dr. J. H. "Watters, then a Profes-
sor in McDowell's Medical College.
But the curious coincidence emerges at the pres-
ent moment, almost fifty years later, that then our
little coterie of a half dozen or so, wrought over
and wrestled with practically the same problem
which now is challenging the whole civilized earth
with even greater intensity than ever before. Our
thought was concerning the true federation of our
relatively small States ; today the world 's thought
is concerning the true federation of the Nations of
the globe. The political theme of the St. Louis
Movement has thus become universalized by time.
Our little microcosmic discussion in a little par-
lor ran surprisingly similar to the great macro-
cosmic discussion lately held at Paris and round
the globe pertaining to the universal League ; the
one wee atom has grown to be the one world-Or-
ganism. I do not mean to say that our St. Louis
the book twins born. 193
Movement brought all this about of itself; it sim-
ply saw and grappled with what was already the
deepest trend of the age, in which we also shared.
Really the Government of the United States has
risen to be the earth 's political model ; History it-
self seems now to be moving toward or along the
lines of American History, of which, however, there
is needed a complete re-writing and spiritual re-
creation, for all our chief American historians are
still colonial in locality and in consciousness.
The result of these discussions upon myself I may
briefly chronicle for the sake of my autobiographic
Ego. The whole subject I seized upon and threshed
over to the limit of my powers. Then I began to
write it out into the essays aforesaid, which were
somewhat later printed in The Western and after-
ward gathered into a booklet. No other person has
left any record of those colloquies; here first I
elected myself by some unconscious ballotage to be
the scribe of the St. Louis Movement, which office
I am still filling. I may add that after a few years'
fierce wrestle, the problem of Reconstruction be-
gan to be practically settled (in 1876), and my
booklet fell into a kind of oblivion — it had almost
lapsed from my own life and memory — till after
several slumberous decades it suddenly wakes up
today with a new prophetic meaning.
The treatise first unfolds the theory of the State
as such, in which Hegel is mainly followed. But
Hegel's ideal was the Prussian State, at which
point I began to break away from him, and to
194 T HE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
philosophize our American political system in a
way quite different from that of the master. Espe-
cially the meaning of our Federal Constitution and
its place in Universal History was set forth with
some emphasis and with an import quite unknown
to the great German thinker. There are scattered
glimpses of the new political Order which "must
will the existence of the individual State as uni-
versal principle, must realize this principle in a
new form of government, and must define that form
of government in a new Constitution."
I need hardly say that Europe is trying to do
something of that kind just now with much ques-
tioning and somewhat of terror. But all her His-
tory, when rightly seen and overseen, shows itself
evolving toward some such federated State. And
here in this Essay rises another conception which
has followed me through life : that of the presiding
Genius of History, or of the World-Spirit, a very
old thought — I can trace it already in ancient Her-
odotus — but whose name here is taken from German
Philosophy. Yet its significance is to-day far more
commanding than ever, though little realized in
present historical literature.
2. Shakespeare. I began about this same time a
scrap heap of jottings which in the course of years
organized themselves at first into magazine articles,
and thence into a book, which is the best known
of all my writings, and on the whole the bulkiest.
Circumstances threw into my hands the High
School's instruction in Shakespeare, and therewith
THE BOOK TWINS BORN. 195
started a new and almost continuous strand of my
life's work down to the present, with intervals of
suspended interest.
There is no doubt that I was getting somewhat
tired of my excessive philosophical immersion in
Hegel, which had already lasted several years.
Philosophy had delivered to me its message, or as
much of it as I could take, for the present at least.
That another world-discipline had begun to germi-
nate underneath all my Hegel, I may have dimly
forefelt, but I certainly did not then recognize.
Still I longed for a new expression of myself and
of the universe, less abstract, more living and
concrete, that of life itself, if possible. Hence I
seized with all my might the opportunity to change
my masters and their universities, to pass from
Hegel the philosopher to Shakespeare the poet,
acknowledged to be the greatest of his kind and to
have built a world wholly of his own, which my
task was now to rebuild in myself. And some
transition of the sort was also working deeply but
secretly in the St. Louis Movement.
Still it must not be thought that I flung away
philosophy entirely and forever; I could not. On
the contrary, I took it over with me into Shakes-
peare, who also has his philosophic subtrate, as
his deepest students have always noted. I hold
that he would not be the supreme poet that he is
unless he were in his way at the same time the
supreme philosopher. Thus in my case my Hegel
196 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
was the forecast and the preparation for my
Shakespeare.
It so happened that my pupils took as their first
study Julius Ccesar, a political play, in which we
see the poet grappling with the loftiest world-
historical character of all time at one of History's
supreme nodes. Such was for me the right cue for
interpreting the whole drama, which, rippling
along so buoyantly and on its surface so easily
understood, has been so grievously misunderstood
in its depths, for it is the deepest work of Shakes-
peare, with one possible exception. The poet
probably conceived and wrote this play at the very
culmination of his genius, somewhere about his
thirty-seventh year, and hence it contains his
sublimest, his one most ideal conception and char-
acterization, that of the "World-Spirit itself, the
immortal soul of History, incarnate in a poor
mortal, who sinks to death in its conflict, and there-
fore represents the supreme tragedy of the indi-
vidual man in his earthly career.
Another personal touch which brought me at
once into the closest intimacy with Julius Ccesar
and its author is that there are no less than four
acknowledged philosophers in this play, of whom
one is a woman, Portia, wife of Brutus. For her I
have to think that Shakespeare had a tender affec-
tion, as it is the special privilege of the poet to fall
desperately in love with his own characters. Thus
Philosophy is not merely introduced into this
drama, but is domesticated and joins the Family.
THE BOOK TWINS BORN. 197
Still it must be added that all these philosophers
perish, and they alone perish of the prominent per-
sonages, so that seemingly Philosophy itself, of
Greek birth, turns tragic in old Rome according to
Shakespeare. And, indeed, to look about us just
now, has not German Philosophy been marching
toward tragedy along with its peculiarly philosophic
nation? Will it ever revive to its former life and
influence ? Or has it passed on as has the old Greek
philosophy, though still indispensable to be known
as a part or phase of the race's grand historic dis-
cipline ? The answer of centuries must be awaited.
The ordinary view of Julius Ccesar is that the
play has not been rightly named, that the hero is
Brutus. Such a conception destroys for me the
supreme purport of the work, lopping off the gran-
deur of its thought, as well as grievously misunder-
stands the poets psychology. Indeed, Brutus is rel-
atively a common-place moralizer whelmed into the
vortex of Universal History to his utter confusion.
Hence he is the prototype of the purely moralistic
mind, be it orthodox in religion or agnostic. So I
challenged in my first essay the whole trend of the
traditional Shakespearian criticism as regards this
most popular work of the poet. Moreover, Shakes-
peare, in passing from his English-historical to
Roman-historical dramas had a great personal
experience : he became himself universal, rising out
of his limited national consciousness and commun-
ing with the World's History in one of its highest
manifestations. In my humble, very different life-
198 T HE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
line I had gone through a similar experience, and
had come to know, philosophically at least, some-
what of the World-Spirit; hence I recognized it
with no small wonder and interest in its poetic
appearance.
Next, another philosophic play dropped down on
my pedagogic path, Hamlet. 'Here, then, I found
not the ancient but the modern philosopher set
forth with his unique tragedy. The resemblance
between Julius Ccesar and Hamlet has been often
noticed, and it runs very deep, starting from the
outer style and structure and reaching down to the
very soul of all these dramatic souls on the stage.
Hamlet, too, has felt the philosophic limit : ' ' There
are more things in Heaven and Earth than are
dreamt of in our (not your) philosophy." So this
foreboder glooms his dark questionings to his next
friend and fellow-student. Here I seemed to feel
Shakespeare as a profound and intense student of
philosophy, now dramatizing the results of his con-
siderable discipline. He, too, must have had his
philosophic epoch, and transcended it, having won
its culture and put it into his poetry.
I had often read these two dramas before my pres-
ent school-time, and had felt their power, especially
in their single scattered grandeur, for I had early
plucked their gorgeous lollipops for school-boys.
But now I began to recreate them through and
through, not only in feeling but also in thought, of
which I even discovered Shakespeare to be as great
a master as Hegel, if not greater, though using a
THE BOOK TWINS BORN. 199
wholly new kind of expression. Moreover, the
realm of institutions upon which the St. Louis
Movement had put so much stress in theory and
also in practice, I found permeating Shakespeare
everywhere as the basic presupposition of all his
characters and of his social world.
In like manner I continued to tackle one by one
the rest of the works of the poet, to organize them
internally, and then to unite them externally into
groups according to what seemed to me their deep-
est principle. Moreover, I kept writing out and
working over my results till I kneaded them into
the shape of essays, which were printed in St. Louis
periodicals, then blooming but now wholly de-
funct — notably The Journal of Speculative Phil-
osophy, and The Western. Also, though a full-
houred teacher in the High School, I found time to
propagate my ideas to little coteries at the Uni-
versity Club and to various literary societies else-
where in the community, thus starting uncon-
sciously the Communal University, which still is
sending forth in a very quiet unnewspapered way
its living sprouts and some happy but modest
flowerets. After the growth of years, about half a
dozen, I think, all these writings, scattered singly
and looking very lonely in the old magazines, per-
sisted in celebrating a general harvest-home, which
brought them all together into one associated work
then called The System of the Shakespearian
Drama, whose title even flung a word of defiance.
The publication of this volume, when I was
200 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
thirty-six years old, marked better than any other
incident the close of one large long Period of my
life— the first. But other and greater enterprises
were budding in the meantime. Shakespeare to my
mind could not help calling up his fellow-giants of
the World's Literature, of whom I then had begun
to see the huge outlines of three more — Homer,
Dante, Goethe. Were these Goliaths also to be
encountered by little me after my long desperate
battle with the one, probably the greatest? The
thought kept rising, but I shrank from the task ; I
felt myself unprepared for this new Gigantomachia.
I had read each of these supreme poets after the
usual fashion, and looked into not a little criticism
of them ; but all that amounted to a mere speck, for
now I was to re-live them, talk their native dialect,
rebuild their world, and, as far as possible, recreate
in myself their very consciousness. At first I
skulked out of the fight, but I could not escape the
ever-haunting idea. I must go to Europe and there
speak and hear spoken the mother-tongue of Italian
Dante and even of old Greek Homer. This, I may
premise, was one of the incentives driving me to
the European Journey which is soon to start.
These two works of mine, then, I dare baptize my
Book-twins, my first printed contribution of any
consequence to the St. Louis Movement. Both have
been somewhat prolific of their kind, having scat-
tered a considerable line of progeny along my much
bewritten orbit of books down into the present, with
still other kindred embryos struggling in my brain
THE BOOK TWINS BORN. 201
for daylight, though yet unborn and possibly un-
bearable. They both plumped forth into the black
sunshine of printer's ink and got themselves dressed
in the beautiful white rags so wonderfully trans-
figured at the paper-mill, breaking from their hum-
ble source in Philosophers' Row, where Harris once
dwelt, and Childs, and Kroeger, but now an ancient
African rookery domiciling many playful but some-
times saucy picaninnies. Still the life there was
quite plain even then ; rents unpretentious, salaries
very moderate, social standards not exacting, sym-
posiums frequent but wineless, though not always
beerless. So we indwelt our little temple of Phil-
osopholis located in a St. Louis alley, pursuing
dutifully our daily bread-winning vocation, but also
cherishing whole-heartedly our breadless Super-
vocation.
I should add by way of connection that these two
preceding books of mine arose in the height and
overflow of the German Era of St. Louis, and to
keen vision still show its traces. We all were under
the Teutonic spell, which won an earth-circling new
glamour by the sudden dazzling triumphs of the
Franco-Prussian War, whose event centered in this
same time. To German Philosophy I have already
ascribed my acquaintance with my ideal life-long
friend, the World-Spirit. And our ever-spurring
ambition to rise and to sail over the world's top
was only keeping pace with our city's Great Illu-
sion of being just about to become the terrene cen-
tral metropolis of all futurity — an access of urban
202 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
megalomania which infected and puffed up every
petty civic Ego in every little alley, especially in
that of the Philosophers, who are usually supposed
to be peculiarly liable to the disease transcendental.
Under such conditions we philosophized and in-
terpreted Literature and Life, and then taught our
spirits' winnings wherever we might catch a stray
listener. Moreover, we began to write ourselves
out into self-expression, which could not be deemed
complete till it stood forth in the world as a defiant
reality fighting its own way through the printed
page. Thus we centered round about us a consider-
able activity of thought and its applications. But
alongside, or rather underneath, this more open
philosophic endeavor was flowing a less obvious but
even more persistent and, perchance, deeper stream
of tendency, of which a few forecasting items may
be next set down for sake of the Future.
VI.
The Poetic Element.
Yes, the confession has to be made to this prosaic
time and people, that in the St. Louis Movement
lurks a poetic strain which has continued to sing
through it, often in an almost inaudible undertone,
but at times with a sudden outburst of melodious
energy, from its birth in the days of the first Phil-
osophical Society down to the present moment of
its white-haired senescence. Pure Thought, even in
those its young years, had a way of getting weary
THE POETIC ELEMENT. 203
of its own excessive purity, and of taking flight
from itself down into the more tangible, but more
earthly and concrete forms of the Imagination. On
this score also I shall briefly call the roll.
I never knew Harris to strike off a verse from
his own poetic mint, if he had any; only once he
submitted to me his English translation of an
Italian poem, which was intended as I remember,
to be sung at the old Philharmonic, and which he
for some reason wished to be fairly accurate in
meaning and meter. This he did on account of my
supposed superior knowledge of Italian, which he
had heard me jabber with peanut venders at street
corners. Still Harris read and studied the world's
great poems, especially Faust and the Divine Com-
edy, of which the latter became deeply ingrained
and intergrown with his own spirit. He had also
the curious habit of memorizing and declaiming to
his friends Bronson Alcott's transcendental poetry,
especially before his departure from St. Louis to
Concord, for which this may have been a pre-
paratory exercise. Several of our members would
poetize upon occasion chiefly for their own pas-
time. In this line the best-known and most suc-
cessful production was that of Judge J. G. Woer-
ner, who wrote a drama, first in German and then
in English, which was played on a number of
stages throughout the West. Besides this drama
two novels are to be set down to his credit. One of
our lady-teachers wrote at least one very accept-
able little lyric, from which she gathered many
204 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
flowerets of laudation. As far as I am aware, Miss
Blow never dallied with the Muse creatively, though
she was certainly well-versed in other great people's
verses, notably in those of the Literary Bibles. I
judge that she hardly dared trust herself in meter,
else she would have made her own translation of
the quite simple and rather prosaic rhymes in
Froebel 's Mother-Play Songs, when she was getting
out her new English edition of that work. But she
turned over to another hand even that not very
exacting requirement of versification.
Still we had a poet in our midst, a genuine orig-
inal elemental poet, I maintain, but whose poetic
gold remained as usual in the natural nugget, or
was strewn about at random underfoot as so many
shining sands mingled with so much dirt. Again
the unrealized, perchance the unrealizable genius of
our St. Louis Movement, Brockmeyer! Without
this poetic power he could not have barbed his
weighty philosophy with flashes of lightning which
would pierce and illumine for a moment at least the
dullest and darkest brainpan. He seemed able to
reach down to that first fountain-head where Phi-
losophy and Poetry, or the Abstract and the Con-
crete are one, and, tapping that prime creative
course, to draw off each into its own conduit of
utterance, distinct, yet mutually illustrative. Not
always could he do so by any means, but only at
his best.
Indeed, I am now inclined to think that just this
poetic element in Brockmeyer was his deepest and
THE POETIC ELEMENT. 205
most original gift — deeper and more original than
his philosophic endowment. For his philosophy
was not his own but derived, not his inner creative
self but something accepted from the outside, a very
good European affair but at bottom not ours or
his, not finally the St. Louis Movement's when this
has come to full maturity and realization. How-
ever, such a result belongs to the future. At pres-
ent I may add, that Brockmeyer, the completest in-
carnation of our whole Movement, could always be
observed passing from his abtruse thought and
speech to his vivid poetic imagery whenever he was
stirred in the depths. His conversation would flash
up at times ablaze with metaphors, so that the
mind would blink bedazzled at his fire-works of
fantasy, even when freighted with his heaviest phil-
osophemes.
More than once I have intimated that Brock-
meyer would never smelt and turn into pure coin
the crude but rich ores of his genius; rather he
would let them lie scattered around, quite as Nature
threw them out in her primordial upheavals. The
final human touch of art to the original cosmic
creation of worlds he seemed unwilling or rather
unable to give. Still I must note the exception, par-
tial though it be, for it seems to hint the deeper
and truer vein of his originality. He did actually
finish two dramas in his way, though they were
born more than thirty years apart. The first was
named A Foggij Night at Newport, a most nebulous
message, as if sent down directly from old-Norse
206 THE 8T - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
Niflheim, the primitive Teutonic fog-world of the
North. It shows, however, a goodly study and not
a little straight imitation, even in words, of those
two greatest skaldic descendants, Shakespeare and
Goethe, both of them Northern in origin and
tongue. It was written about 1860, printed, paid
for, and distributed by a few philosophic friends
who were poetic enough to hail it as the new avatar
of Poesy herself in America, a young Faust at
least. That was some four or more years before my
arrival in St. Louis, so that Brockmeyer and the
philosophers had been allowed time enough to be
cured of this first little illusion, and to get obsessed
fully of the second, the great St. Louis Illusion,
under whose spell I found them, and not long
afterwards myself. Brockmeyer then lodged some-
where on the old South Market in a single bare
attic, boarding himself and sleeping on the floor,
(so I have heard him with humor dilate). He had
been frugally pensioned with bread and roomrent
by the fore-mentioned group of friends, whose
leader was Harris, and who were themselves at
that time a set of poor vagabonds in the city, to
make the translation of Hegel's Larger Logic (the
Book of Fate,) which was also intended to be a
world-stormer. I should here add that Harris was
then a wandering teacher of Ben Pitman's short-
hand. But Brockmeyer after a time grew sick of
tracking and mapping that vast Sahara of Hege-
lian abstractions, grew so desperately image-thirsty
that he took sudden flight one day from anhydrous
THE POETIC ELEMENT. 207
Philosophy to upwelling Poetry as the green oasis
of salvation, from whose fountains everywhere be-
gan to bubble out this fantastic drama, the whim-
sicalities of which he patched together into a rather
crotchety whole. In 1866 when we were forming
the first Philosophical Society, I heard of it and
tried to drum up a copy, but could not; Brock-
meyer told me he had kept none himself, and I
thought somehow by his nose-sign that he never
wanted to hear anything more of it. Soon, how-
ever, in rummaging over an old dirty mess of sec-
ond-hand books in a book-stall, I came upon six
new copies and at once filliped down the small price
in the Civil War's paper money then still current.
I showed them to Harris who on the spot claimed
three of them as his own precious treasure; the
other two I gave away, while the third I kept for
a time but must have loaned for good, since I have
these many years moused after it in vain among
my book-refuse scattered along the path of my
travels in Chicago, in St. Louis, and even in
Cincinnati.
The inaugural of Brockmeyer as President of our
Philosophical Society, which I heard, made the an-
nouncement that he was then writing a drama
"with an American content", but he never fin-
ished it till a quarter of a century later, when he
was getting to be an old man. He read it to me
from the easy chair of his back-room, with many
side flashes of metaphorical humor, often more tell-
ing, I thought, than his text. For I have to think
208 THE 8T - LOUIS MOVEMENT—PART FIRST.
that the cream of Brockmeyer 's genius usually got
quite skimmed off when he squeezed it through his
pen-point into ink. It is too bad that he never
found, or provided for himself a human phono-
graph, like the talk-recording Eckerman, as old
Goethe did. Strange to say, this second drama
seems to have spontaneously uprisen in him as kind
of poetical relief or counterblast, while he was
making, about 1890-5, his second translation of
Hegel's Logic, (a kind of translation of a transla-
tion), reviving thus the ambition and the task of
his thirties in his grayed sixties. Again I have to
think in this case also that his larger and more
creative nature was asserting itself as the poet
against the philosopher, who was simply revamp-
ing an old transmitted doctrine of a past and alien
time, instead of creating out of himself an original
work of his own spirit and age. Still these two
dramas are his only finished first-hand products,
and seem to suggest that he might have achieved
some work massive and organic in poetry, if he had
only kept up the training of his wayward genius.
The present autobiographic Ego may be per-
mitted here to append a few brief notes upon his
own small poetic household. So I shall mention
that a stream of verses would gush up to the sur-
face of my best daytime, and insist upon some form
of expression for a spell, then it would quietly sink
away into my unvoiced underworld, like a Greek
catabothron, where it would seemingly sleep a wee
THE POETIC ELEMENT. 209
dark life of its own, not by any means dying, but
secretly dreaming. In the present period I re-
sponded to my two closest associates, Brockmeyer
and Woerner, by writing a drama also upon an
American theme. This was my first-born produc-
tion of any size or consequence, to which I gave the
quite neutral name of Clarence. The skillful ob-
server, if he takes the trouble, can discern in it
everywhere the traces of the St. Louis Movement,
to which it was my earliest independent contribu-
tion. And here I may note that Brockmeyer 's
aforesaid drama, A Foggy Night at Newport, was,
as far as my knowledge goes, the first preluding
note of our coming St. Louis Movement, the first
printed document forecasting its possible birth,
which thus had something poetical in its very
genesis. Now I believe that it was this funda-
mental imaginative power which drew me and
clasped me to Brockmeyer, who could be otherwise
very unattractive. Harris had no such ultimate
poetic element in his nature, as I construe him;
though he used imagery often with effect, it ap-
pealed rather as an outside illustrative decoration ;
he was first and last the philosopher purely, where-
in lay his power. Of these two life-friends of
mine, I have to conclude, therefore, that Brock-
meyer held me by a deeper, more innate spiritual
bond than Harris, though both I felt to be sym-
metrical and integrating halves of one common
brotherhood of spirit, whose kinship with me ran
deeper than that of blood, and was twined insepa-
210 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
rably with my immortal part, whenever I dared
think I had any.
In my own poetical history, the earliest remem-
bered composition of mine expressed a sudden spon-
taneous upgush at school, when I was some nine or
ten years old, being a perfervid boyish harangue in
verse inspired on the moment by and imitated from
Shakespeare's speeches, which I found in M'Guf-
fey's Fifth Reader. At College there was an occa-
sional versified outbreak — not many, for another
more crushing question (the national) menaced the
time and me. But when I reached St. Louis at the
close of the War, there arose a rather steady stream
of versicles for a couple of years or more, inasmuch
as the young man's emotional nature insisted upon
its God-given right of tuneful expression. At a
somewhat later time both love and sorrow burst
furiously, I may say tragically, upon me and broke
up the even course of existence, so that they could
only be placated by the corresponding utterance
in poetry, which thus had for me always a healing,
remedial, vicarious function, though upon others it
may have produced an opposite effect. So through
all this first Period of mine kept trickling at certain
intervals as far back as memory can grope drop-
lets of rhymes from my perturbed soul-world,
whose little gushes would intermit after an over-
flow, but would in time begin again. Of their
strictly poetic value I took less account, as I never
sent one of them to newspaper or magazine; but
their relieving, reconciling power became the deep-
THE POETIC ELEMENT. 211
est need of my spirit, which never failed to find
in them a self-sanative, even a self-fulfilling virtue.
Poetry in my case always paid its own bills in
advance.
It must, however, be granted that the poetic ele-
ment in the St. Louis Movement never brought forth
any great or lasting literary work; no verse or
phrase of its production is rememberable to-day,
unless dug up by a special antiquarian excavation.
Nothing of ours ever approached in universal fame
those winged words of Reavis: The Future Great
City of the World, which seemed to be flying
around the globe. But at the time this poetic ele-
ment of us performed its good part for a small
circle. Then poetry was here in deep eclipse ; the
man who dared the Muse was by the majority
deemed badly rattled, if not irresponsible outright.
At best the jingling lilt of verse was handed over
to the school-age, more or less in imitation of Long-
fellow, true poet of adolescence. Very different is
the situation to-day. Poetry is challenging the at-
tention of the world, and is performing all sorts of
new gyrations and somersaults metrical and other-
wise, having risen to rival even the novel in public
vogue. Verily every man and woman, high and
low, seem now verse-bitten; each self will be its
own poet. Thus is poetry getting truly democ-
ratized along with the rest of the world, being no
longer the aristocratic art of some solitary genius,
but the universally attuned expression of the folk
itself. So it may be said that the poetic element
212 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
of our St. Louis Movement even in its well-leveled
mediocrity, has its significance, its germinal fore-
show of the coming efflorescence, piping its small-
voiced message almost inaudible from its first mo-
ment. As for me, during a life-time I have cher-
ished it as one of my striving spirit's chief liber-
ators into the freedom of my own self-expression,
which, being fully realized, is the fulfillment of a
man 's having lived.
So it may be prognosticated that underneath all
the philosophy and the literature, and even the
psychology perhaps, of our St. Louis Movement,
lies an underworld of poetry which has never yet
been able to form itself and to push up to the light.
Let the forethoughtful reader take note.
VII.
Life's Central Node.
When I had broken away from St. Louis and
from America and was tossing toward Europe up
and down on shipboard along with the shoreless
ocean's uncertainties, I dimly felt myself making
the unique change of my life, the central transi-
tion of it from a considerable amount of the past
to a possible considerable amount of the future.
I was no longer young, nor was I exactly old, but
on the road somewhere between; the first half of
the human drama seemed over, the second half
seemed about to start playing. I had just quit
my own past, and was going toward my race's
LIFE'S CENTRAL NODE. 213
past^-a deep separation both in space and in spirit,
as it turned out. Thus I sat on deck mooning over
myself both in backlook and in forelook, having
scored six and thirty in the tale of years ; whereof
I find the record jotted down in a little diary which
still bears the spray marks of the plunging steam-
ship. Evidently I felt the presage then and there
that I was undergoing the pivotal transfer of my
career, rounding into a new stage or sweep my
life's chief node. I did not then glimpse what time
has since taught me, that this was quite an uni-
versal human experience, though it stood out the
grander always in the grander spirits of the cen-
turies.
A theory or rather an ingrown conviction of
mine has slowly matured that somewhere about the
middle years of his third decade, the man makes
the supreme orbital turn of his whole life's cycle.
He then evolves into and across his most signal and
decisive line of demarcation between what he has
been and what he is to be, even if he is always
drawing similar lines with the years. Still there
is, I believe, one such all-comprehensive land-mark
or turning-point in life. The fact is of such gen-
eral interest and, I think, of such far-reaching sig-
nificance especially in biography, that I may be
allowed to fortify the doctrine with some details.
To begin with the highest examples, Dante
clearly indicates such a change of himself in the
first line of his great poem, where he tells openly
of the strange new condition in which he found
214 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
himself "at the middle of the journey of our life,"
when he was about thirty-five years old. Even
more emphatically and directly Goethe points out
the grand climacteric of his total career, bringing
forth in him a new birth of the spirit, which took
place through his journey of Italy, starting when
he was thirty-six. Thus these two supreme poets
have told on themselves in so many words; but I
hold that even the self-secreting Shakespeare has
revealed the same leading life-line in his works, as
these move out his first stage into his second and
greatest stage, that of his mighty tragedies — which
transition must have taken place between his
thirty -fifth and fortieth years, though it cannot be
precisely dated. Even oldest Homer, whose single
personality has been doubled and even manifolded,
and whose century cannot be given with certainty,
has left us two books, which with all their objectiv-
ity are likewise autobiographical to the open-souled
reader, who will feel and also see that Homer him-
self in his spirit turned away from Greece and
went to Troy with Achilles when a younger man,
and then returned after twenty years' separation,
with old-wise Ulysses to "sunny Ithaca and pru-
dent Penelope." Thus the greatest human world-
makers, authors of our Literary Bibles, show this
distinctive crisis or turning-point both in life and
in writ.
Some celebrated people have not made the
grand passage, into this new stage, but have been
halted by death at its entrance: such we may re-
LIFE'S CENTRAL NODE. 215
gard Byron, Raphael, Shelly and I would add Mar-
garet Fuller. Our Emerson achieved, as we con-
strue him, somewhat earlier than usual, at the age
of thirty-two or thirty-three, his transit into his
characteristic period, becoming the recusant of his
age, revolutionary, transcendental. His friend
Carlyle had a similar periodic turn-over when he
passed locally from Scotland to London, and spirit-
ually from writing magazine articles to composing
Great History. And our humble unobtrusive
Johnny Appleseed upon his wandering path mani-
fests a similar essential change in his career.
In like manner the leading worthies of our St.
Louis Movement, of whom this book specially seeks
to bring four to the front, show an axial, all-deter-
mining turn in their lives. Brockmeyer had sev-
eral momentous crises, but the central one, in my
judgment, was his return about his middle thirties,
out of his Titanic estrangement in the Missouri
backwoods, to civilization and to institutional life,
whereupon among his varied achievements he
founded our St. Louis Philosophical Society, which
otherwise had never existed, and without which this
book of mine could not have been written, and
probably some others. Harris had also his nodal
separation from St. Louis, and his return to New
England, which actually took place in his forties,
though spiritually it was manifest years earlier.
In a similar way I conceive Davidson's main life-
stroke, which came about when he quit his St.
Louis schooling, more significant for him than his
216 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART FIRST.
Scotch University, and thereupon turned back
Eastward, as he circled around his thirty-fifth year.
And Miss Blow had her profound separation —
doubtless more deeply rending and painful than
either of the others, for it nearly killed her, being
a rupture from home, friends, social rank, and espe-
cially from the scene of her great personal achieve-
ment — which event occurred somewhere near her
middle thirties; so we dare vaguely guess in the
sensitive matter of a lady's age.
In fact the St. Louis Movement itself manifested
in its history this same breach or rupture, as we
have already portrayed it, in the flight of its lead-
ing early members, and their scattering, like a
flock of blackbirds shot into and flying asunder
toward all points of the compass. And it may be
here foresaid, that long afterwards there took place
a kind of return to the city, not complete certainly
but perceptible. Whereof somewhat may be told
in a later chapter.
Nor should we forget to remark a far-reaching
inference from the foregoing instances: all these
particular biographies suggest or perhaps enforce
the idea of an Universal Biography ; there are many
lives of many men of the widest diversity, but in
them all lurks the one life of the one Man, life of
Genus Homo, of the true Super-Man (not that of
Nietzsche). Emerson has now and then, but not
always glimpsed this Universal Man incarnating
himself in the myriads of individual men, and
named him the Standard Man, who is the real cen-
LIFE'S CENTRAL NODE. 217
tral creative source of interest in human biography.
And here may be permitted another brief infer-
ence : this universal principle or all-pervasive proc-
ess of every man's life may yet be unfolded as the
law of Biography itself, thus transforming the
present biographic chaos into the order and trans-
parency of a science.
Renascence
I would gladly now take my reader, if he be
willing, into my confidence and whisper to him
with some trepidation, my present object: I am
trying to periodize myself. What is that, he may
well ask. In general, it is to survey and, if pos-
sible, to define a Period of my entire life — not the
whole cycle of it but one of its great arcs. Such a
task is, in my view, fundamental for every work of
biography.
The widest, deepest break in my existence, or the
grand node of my life-work, was when I turned
away from St. Louis and started for Europe a
few days before I was thirty-seven years old. As
I look back at my deed now, through the interven-
ing trials of nearly half a century, I almost tremble
218
RENASCENCE. 219
at what I then dared, merely throwing some inquis-
itive glances into the dark chasm ahead. Of course
I did not, could not foresee what a long discipline
lay in that seemingly insignificant act, whose direct
effects were to run through a full generation of
my years. At least so I now mark out and con-
strue, from my old-age's height of retrospect, the
Middle Period of my life, which started with my
first departure from St. Louis in 1877 and lasted
till my completed return to the same place some
three decades later. Let these dates be set down
as the two temporal limits, fore and aft, which can
be made elastic according to need.
The next problem is to find some brief phrase
or even single vocable which may suggest, even if
remotely, the meaning or general purport of this
protracted and somewhat diversified Period. Can
I compass it in a passably intelligible term or fore-
word which may always be recalled when wanted,
as a kind of clew mid the tangled labyrinth of life
now to be explored, and ordered if possible ? Such
a word, after some search and repeated changes, I
have found in the term Renascence, or New Birth
which at least hints the spiritual process not only
in myself, but also in the St. Louis Movement, and,
as I believe, in the time. Thus I began to be
born again through my European Journey, and
I kept up this my Renascence till old-age started
to steal slyly over me, upon whose advance I have
placed the foregoing limit of a date which may
be only artificial and perchance temporary. Ob-
220 THE ST- LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
serve that I avoid the corresponding French term
Renaissance, which bears a different though related
significance.
Two other expressions in the preceding account
may need a brief comment. I have alluded to my
Departure from and my Return to St. Louis, which
I would again emphasize. Thus is hinted the
spatial round, or it may be the encircling orbit of
the Period sweeping through its time. Now this
Departure and Return, outward in Nature, has
also its inner counterpart in Spirit — both in me
and in the St. Louis Movement. Both of us went
away and came back. Birth is the first great sepa-
ration which ushers the individual into the light;
my Renascence was my second birth into the
world's illumination, for which I had to quit my
immediate environment till I had wrought out my
restoration. The infant coming from its immediate
sinless and sunless home into sunshine, has made
its first new Departure, typical of others in after
days, so the original human nascence becomes the
foreshow and the primal expression of all later
human Renascences.
Accordingly, this my Second Period, opens with
a great separation from my previous immediate
American life, which I had hitherto lived, umbili-
cally as it were, remaining unborn in a sense, till I
pushed out across the interjacent ocean to my re-
generating home. Even from my last-acquired St.
Louis descipline, Philosophy, I must part; I had
gotten all it would give, at least so I thought,
and even more deeply felt. The philosophical
RENASCENCE. 221
world view I had absorbed, wrought over into my
mentality, and applied to a number of intellectual
realms in my own private workshop, and especially
in my instruction at the High School. Nature,
Art, History, Institutions, yea Philosophy itself
from old Greece down to the present, I had Hegel-
ized. I felt the surfeit of abstraction and of tradi-
tion as well as the prison of my locality — of St.
Louis, yea of America. Finally the circumstances
of life had so squared themselves to my Departure
that I seemed to hear the urgent invitation of
Providence Himself: "Now is the time to go —
pack up and be off. Forward to the other side
of the World, or of the Universe, and see what is
there."
I felt it also to be a going back to my old antece-
dent pre- American self in distant lands and long-
agone cultures. Still, in a sense, I could not run
away from the St. Louis Movement, I had to take
it with me, and through it look at my fresh expe-
riences. It had become integrated with my life,
with my very consciousness.
Departure, then, is the word and the thing which
I have to stress at this point. Doubtless the term
sounds strange on its first hearing — Departure —
by which I seek to designate the break into an en-
tire new Period of my own evolution, and also of
the St. Louis Movement, in so far as the latter pro-
ceeds along my lines of activity. Moreover this
Departure from St. Louis, or separation from its
local and cultural life, continued toward thirty
222 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
years, till the Return came and with it a kind of
rejuvenescence of the old Movement. The preceding
Epoch, which shut down somewhat abruptly as I
leaped on a railroad train and crossed the Mis-
sissippi River, speeding in an unbroken time-line
for Europe, embraced my stay at St. Louis lasting
some thirteen years. But now I am off, on this
December day of 1877, having passed just beyond
the middle year of the journey of human life, as
Dante records of himself when he steps out of his
previous world over into his Inferno. So the old
Florentine poet preludes his famous Departure, as
we may call it here for the sake of a moment's
comparison, and proceeds to sing, through his three
Canticles, the marvelous experiences which befell
him after his Grand Crossing. And every man
has his Grand or Petty Crossing in life's journey;
this European trip I hold to be mine.
In the present Departure, then, I quit St. Louis,
but I take the St. Louis Movement along with me
over lands and seas, and then bring it back home
again. Hitherto I clung to the immediate locality
of the Movement, to its city and people and to its
studies ; but now the breach has come, that separa-
tion, spatial and spiritual, which seldom is wanting
to any complete human discipline.
In the larger sense the Departure was along its
entire course a Departure from Tradition, and in-
deed a new and deeper Departure therefrom. Al-
ready we have indicated that the St. Louis Move-
ment had its first push in a strong spiritual revul-
RENASCENCE. 223
sion against the four prescribed cultural elements
which it found already seeded and greening in St.
Louis. Hence arose the fifth cultural element,
home-grown, distinctive, sprung of the time and
the city's native character; this we called our own
St. Louis Movement, which never failed to assert
its prime originality. And yet it too was based
upon Tradition; it prescribed a European philos-
opher and his philosophy just to attack and sup-
plant European prescription. We followed tradi-
tional Hegel in order to become anti-traditional.
And this negative service, very necessary at the
start for clearing the way, the German thinker
performed for us, and along with it conferred other
great, though perhaps lesser benefits.
But in time the lurking contradiction strove to
work itself out, and it made itself felt at first un-
consciously by me, and, as I believe, by the Philo-
sophical Society, which began to waste away
through its own inner self-attrition and to pass
over into something else. Now it was primarily
this feeling of discord with myself and with my
accepted philosophic doctrine that drove me out of
my first exclusive cultivation of it, so that I be-
took myself to other forms of human expression,
such as art and poetry. I may add, in view of
what occurred long afterwards, and will be re-
counted in its place that I must have begun to
catch the undertone of contradiction not only in
Hegel but in all Philosophy, from old Greek Thales
down to the present. Hegel had indeed answered
224 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
the so-called antinomies of Kant, so I believed;
but he had left in his own work a yet deeper anti-
nomy, in fact the deepest of all, the one inherent in
Philosophy itself as the supreme European world-
discipline. This ultimate philosophic antinomy
was seething itself out in my laboring mind, as
thought's final self-negation, when I seized my
opportunity to run away from it in search of some
more harmonious utterance of myself and of my
time. And to-day the reflection keeps echoing
within me that Europe now is working out in the
blood of her peoples the original contradiction of
her spirit as expressed most deeply in the whole
line of her Philosophies, from Thales to Bergson.
Thus in a far-away retrospection I try to ex-
plain myself, looking through a commentary of
forty years. I was then unconscious of what was
impelling me, now I believe me conscious. So long
it has taken me to know the cause which I then
dimly felt, and which was driving me to solve the
philosophic dualism of Europe, which I had in-
herited and laboriously overwrought, and to re-
place it by a new world-discipline born of our own
country's deeds and institutions. In other words
universal Psychology was throbbing embryonically
underneath my Philosophy, but the embryo would
require many a long year before it was ready to
spring forth into the light of day!
So I in review have to think my journey
abroad was the creative urge to a new and pro-
tracted stage of my career. Meanwhile what be-
RENASCENCE. 225
came of the St. Louis Movement? I can only re-
peat that I bore it along with me, what of it was
mine ; what of it was not mine, I naturally left by
the wayside. I could not wholly escape from all
that I had been and done ; it still murmured along
within me as an underflowing current of influence
throughout this fresh voyage of discovery. But I
can truly say that Philosophy was subordinate dur-
ing these travels; my mind was turned outward,
not so much inward.
Even in my reaction against Tradition, I found
I had been all the while absorbing the traditional
culture of Europe which had come to me through
various channels from the outside, and which I
had duly appropriated as my first education at
School and College. But just this outsideness of
my spirit's most precious aliment made me feel
unfree and even unhappy, and I resolved to find
the remedy by going back to the prime cultural
source, and there observing life afresh, and, if pos-
sible, living it in its very origin. So from St.
Louis I started for the head-waters of European
civilization in old Hellas. The prescribed Greek
tongue I had learned in the school-room after the
prescribed way, but now I would seize it unpre-
scribed by drinking of it at its first throb from the
hearts of the people who still spoke it attuned to
their mother's early lisp. And I would make Cas-
talia's fount gush into spontaneous English. Thus
the mere erudite tradition of classic lore with its
dead grammar and dictionary I would re-bear to
226 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
new life from my own spirit's genesis, and en-
deavor to transfuse the same into my modern ver-
nacular for my own self-expression, as well as for
impartation to others who might be willing to lis-
ten.
But this Greek revival was only the first act of
the present Period, which was to be followed by
others in due evolution both of myself and of the
St. Louis Movement. For the Greek Renascence
in me was to rise to the European, and beyond
Europe it was to become universal. All of which
is first to be lived and achieved, and then to find
expression.
iThe interest of this deepest Departure of all my
days turns on the fact that while I was all unaware
of its meaning at the time and whither it tended,
I still was carrying out into reality the true pur-
pose of my existence. The total round of life with-
in was simply drawing one of its largest arcs with-
out. As I trod contemplatively the steamer's deck,
the first sunset on the boundless ocean, when the
ship had lost sight of land, made me feel the depth
of my present crisis, so that I jotted down: "I
have come to the end of something and now I am
beginning something else ; but what it is, I cannot
tell." So I rode over the seas peering out for that
future of me which my whole life, still implicit in
me, had to unfold to its fullness, whereof I am
here trying to give some account. For now I can
see what I was then about, inasmuch it has attained
a certain fulfilment in the deed, which is fairly
discernible and describable.
RENASCENCE. 227
What, therefore, was I seeking to accomplish
during this whole generation filled with middle
life's best? Can I summarize in a far-hintful con-
cept that long sweep of the busy years, each of
which is full of its own separate details ? As far as
I may be able to construe my own life-task, I would
recreate within myself, express in speech by voice
and print and impart to others whom I might get
to hearken and to read, the cultural evolution of
man. This considerable labor I dared tackle in my
own limited environment, and perform to the ex-
tent of my powers. The race's civilization I was to
re-live and make mine ; then I was to formulate
it anew in my own terms, whereby I might be able
to share my best with the like-minded. Or, to em-
ploy a different nomenclature for the somewhat
elusive thought, the "World-Spirit as manifested in
and over the course of human History I was to
appropriate mentally, then to express in my own
speech, that I might give away my excellence if I
had any to give.
The three portions of this life-task, or its three
duties may be briefly categorized: (1) Acquisi-
tion, or the getting to know; (2) Expression or
the forming what you know; (3) Impartation, or
the giving away what you know.
For me, as this living individual existence at a
certain place, in a limited time, and under a given
social and institutional order, the second of these
parts was and still is the most significant and im-
perative; that is, mine is the supreme need of ex-
228 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
pression. Such a part, accordingly, is that of a
mediator, a gospeller, or perchance an evangelist,
whose function is to become in a small way or
large, the voice of all time to his own time, to
unite self-expression and world-expression in the
one act of utterance.
And now with this general outlook upon what I
call my Middle Period, embracing inner develop-
ment, literary production, and active promulga-
tion, I wish to recur to the statement of it as a
continuous Renascence of myself, and along with
me of the St. Louis Movement. Neither of the
twain can escape the other, so intergrown have we
become, though I am not by any means the whole
Movement. Others, indeed many others, contrib-
uted to it their own distinct lines of achievement;
and still more may yet take the chance of adding
to it somewhat of their work, worth, and word.
But of this long and complex Period there should
be subordinate groupings or stages with their land-
ing-places as joints of the total organism. So in my
purview I think I can discern three considerable
sweeps or waves with rise and fall over this sea
of time, which reveal in outer form the inner pro-
cess going forward in the soul of the man and the
movement. That is, of the one grand Renascence
there are three lesser Renascences, which may be
measured from crest to crest, somehow as follows:
First is The Renascence torn, or The Classical
Renascence; the Epoch of the acquisition of Greek
Spirit, with its varied expression in Art, Litera-
RENASCENCE. 229
ture and Philosophy. This is the prime germinal
deed, the fruitful embryonic Renascence of all
future Renascences. Here, then, is the genetic
starting-point of the Period, which in my case con-
tinued some seven or eight years (1877 till 1884-5).
Second is the Renascence evolved and propa-
gated, or its double development. That is, it moves
along two distinct, yet parallel lines: on the one
line runs its internal growth till it embraces all
four Literary Bibles together with my expression
of them in writ and print ; on the other line runs
its external dissemination in various forms (lec-
ture, class, school, the communal institute). Now
the seed has to be sown far and wide, which calls
for a time of wandering in the propagator or mis-
sionary, along with elaboration, extension, and ex-
pression of the work. This Epoch, full of journey-
ings interspersed with a number of writings, lasted
toward a dozen years (1884-5 till 1895-6).
Third is The Psychological Renascence, or the
New Birth of the Psyche, Self, Ego, which has
hitherto secretly lurked and wrought in the fore-
going Renascence, but now becomes explicit, un-
folding itself into its own forms through its own
activity, and so making its own new science. Thus
that which created the previous Renascence is now
to create itself, or is to bring forth its own Renas-
cence, whereby it passes from appropriating or
fabricating alien forms for itself, (such as Art,
Literature, Philosophy) to producing and ordering
its own native form for itself, with all the varied
230 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
manifestations of the same — such we name The
Psychological Renascence. The course of the pres-
ent Epoch at its beginning may be dated about
1895-6, and continues for a decade and more.
So this total Renascence rounds itself out when
it returns into itself from other-creating to self-
creating. Thus too it has periodized itself in its
long evolution lasting some thirty years. The
general sweep has been in this wise : from Philos-
ophy, through the Classical world and its evolu-
tion, to Psychology. All this seems a strange de-
velopment or education of a human soul, but it is
mine, being my life's achievement, and constitut-
ing that which I truly am, my very individuality.
Of course the more significant details of this long
process are to be set forth in the account which fol-
lows. But here let us add that not only the old
Greek seed is to be re-planted, but a new kind of
seed is to be evolved; Man's Renascence has now
to take place not merely in and through its outer
expression (Art, Literature, Philosophy), but
turns to the inner creative Self, which must hence-
forth make its own expression in a new science
(Universal Psychology). Whereof the full expo-
sition lies quite a distance ahead of us.
Thus in vague foreshadowy outlines the reader
may glimpse the sweep of the present Period with
its three Chapters or Epochs. Of course my in-
separable companion in all these rounds was the
St. Louis Movement, not St. Louis herself, who
did not go along, but seemed to sink down into a
RENASCENCE. 231
strange barren lethargy during these years. As
for me in this crisis, I had to separate not only from
my urban life but from my American or Occidental
world, and flee to its opposite on the other side of
our earth-ball, that I might win my spirit's Renas-
cence, I in person beholding the Hellenic folk in
person, talking with it in its own primal spon-
taneous dialect, thereby taking up its first creative
soul into mine, whereupon I could return home
and give out whatever of worth I had brought
back, to those who might feel the same need of a
New Birth.
Nor could I stop and settle down contented with
my mere appropriation of the most beautiful and
best in the world — that were indeed the death, not
of it but of me. So I had to impart in order to be.
And not only impart through the voice but through
the pen — this being the eternal impartation. And
still further, the thing imparted and penned must
be the Eternal as adjudged by the Tribunal of the
Ages. So I chose the Literary Bibles of the Race
as the true vehicle for my own ever-renewing
Renascence as well as for that of my time.
I may here append that this cultural Renascence
(as it can be qualified) is not merely mine, but
also the world's; and the world's cultural Rena-
scence had its start in time and place as well as
mine, and the latter must be nourished from the
former. In other words, the race's civilization is
the prime genetic source of the spiritual training
of the individual. So I must be culturally re-born
232 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
from my race's first cultural fountain, which is an-
cient Hellas whose Nascence is the original well-
head of all Renascences since then — Latin, Italian,
German, French, Shakespearian, Goethean, and
perchance American. Indeed our last world-poet,
Goethe, has become conscious of this fact and has
poetically set forth his own as well as his time's
Renascence springing out of the old Hellenic spirit,
in the Second Part of his Faust — the truly proph-
etic Part of his poem, and the one yet to be real-
ized. Moreover he lived this Renascence, starting
with his Italian Journey, and evolving it after his
return and expressing it in verse and prose. And
every man, great and small, is to pass through
somewhat of the same process, if he wishes to win
an universal culture. So I from my little far-away
nest make a journey to antique Hellas for its
eternally creative Renascence.
Let me again emphasize that the significance and
the sweep of this renascent starting-point lay
wholly unconscious within me from its first germ-
ination, and that it unfolded itself according to its
own native law of growth. And remember that I
am now trying to trace its course through the
perspective of a life-time.
CHAPTER FIRST
The Classical Renascence
tFirst it was a flight on my own part to the
immediate outer locality of Rome and Greece, and
to the external sense-arts of which they were the
masters and transmitters. So I became a fugitive
from too much of philosophy, poetry, music of the
introverted North to the architecture, sculpture,
painting of the extroverted South. I had begun
to feel myself painfully but a half of our whole
Human Nature at its highest achievement ; hence
I quite instinctively made a move to complete my-
self by seeking the other moiety of me in its sunny
home by the Midland Sea. I migrated like the
fowls of the air, when my winter came upon me,
toward the summer clime both of space and of
spirit. Or from my modern one-sided Teutonic
development of more than a decade, I reacted to
the antique Mediterranean culture of Classic
times. I repeat, this break came of no conscious
intention ; it was the spontaneous thrust of the
incomplete soul struggling to make itself com-
plete ; it was the entire life of my race, born with-
in me the implicit, as it is in every man, pushing
to become the explicit and real. Thus at present I
construe to myself my instinctive drive to the cul-
tural Past of my race. \
233
234 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
This Classical Epoch, as I call it, lasted dis-
tinctively some eight years, as the dominant fac-
tor of my activity, beginning in 1877, with my first
step toward Europe across the Mississippi, and
continuing till 1884-5, when another and greater
interest subordinated but did not destroy it by
any means. During this time the Greek world was
uppermost with me in thought, instruction and
literary creation. Three different localities, each
with its task and its training, play into and
through this Epoch: Europe, St. Louis, Concord,
whereof now we are to give the account.
The St. Louis Movement had also its Classical
phasis, which differed a good deal with different
members. Brockmeyer, our President, was not
without some trace of Greek, which he picked up at
Georgetown College and Brown University, both
of which he attended as an undergraduate. But I
never saw him look at or cite a Greek text. Still
he showed a keen appreciation of Classic form, es-
pecially as revealed in the dramas of Sophocles, of
which the Antigone was his favorite. I have heard
him say, that the only true Art is the Classic, and
he belittled the distinction into Symbolic and Ro-
mantic Arts of his master Hegel. He gave me a
great surprise in his old-age when he wished me to
study with him Aristotle in Greek, saying he could
easily brush up his former knowledge of the
tongue. We never started, and in a year or two
he had passed away of himself into the Elysian
Fields, and left me behind.
THE CLASSICAL RENASCENCE. 235
Harris studied the old Greek philosophers some-
what in the original, and he would cite rather tot-
teringly now and then certain brief Greek philo-
sophic terms, like the Aristotelian Nous poieticos.
Greek poetry I do not think he cared for. But
antique Sculpture he worked at theoretically a
good deal; especially I remember his elaborate
study of the Venus of Milo with illustrative draw-
ings. In the main, however, he took his Hellenism
at second hand, namely from Hegel, who for real
mastery was one of the greatest of modern Hellen-
ists in the sphere of Aesthetics as well as in that
of pure Philosophy.
But confessedly the transcendent Grecian both
as to erudition and activity among us and in the
whole town was Thomas Davidson, our professor
of Greek in the High School, graduate of Aberdeen
University, Scotland. He would even claim upon
occasion to be a Classic Heathen in religion; I
once heard him at Rome berate modern Christian
degeneracy, as we paced the world-tragical ruins
of the Villa Hadriana. He was very learned, and
had read much of old Greek poetry, though I never
knew him to allude to the Greek historians,
Herodotus and Thucydides, who meant so much to
me. His overflowing knowledge streamed mainly
into the literary and the etymological channels at
this time. There is no doubt he stirred up a good
deal of interest in the community by his public lec-
tures and discussions on Greek topics. His dis-
course on Aristotle read at the University Club was
236 TEE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
the triumph of the season. By way of opposition
to our Hegelians, he adopted Aristotelianism, for
Davidson could not help being contradictory and
critical — delighting far more to kick in the traces
than to pull the load.
After his stay in St. Louis, Davidson went to
Greece in order to drink at the first sources of his
favorite Hellenic antiquities. "When I was at Rome
in 1878, who should appear at my quarters one day
but my old associate of the St. Louis High School,
Thomas Davidson, now in a retreat from his once
dear Hellas back to the "West. He told me much
about Athens in response to my questions, for I
had already made up my mind to go thither my-
self. I found him a good deal disillusioned in re-
gard to his former Greek ideals or idols; the old
enthusiasm was not wholly gone, but seemed de-
cidedly on the wane. He declined going with me
to the Vatican Museum for a survey of its Greek
treasures, of which he had once been the student
and the adorer, and over which I longed to hear
him expatiate with his old learned exuberance.
Davidson deserves the credit of having aroused
quite a thrill of communal interest in the Greek
classics during his stay in rather stolid unclassic
St. Louis (about eight years 1867-1875, if I re-
member the dates correctly). He excited a per-
sonal fascination in his own right, as well as won-
der at his unusual erudition. But Davidson had
no creative gift, he left no reproduction of the
Greek spirit to live after him, or of any other. "We
THE CLASSICAL RENASCENCE. 237
were all shocked by the damnatory bitterness which
saturated his essay on the Frieze of the Parthenon;
very one-sided also was his view, I thought, and he
showed himself in angry reaction against his for-
mer German tendency at St. Louis. On my travels
I once met a distinguished archeologist who had
made a special study of the ancient Greek sculptor
Phidias, and I asked him : "Have you ever crossed
the path of our friend Mr. Thomas Davidson?"
His smile soured at once into a scowl, as he hissed
out: "No, and I do not wish to see him, he has
slandered the greatest teacher of my science,"
meaning probably Overbeck of Leipzig. This hints
the chief fatality of the man, who negatives all,
and in the same act particularly himself.
Still Davidson had not a few excellent qualities,
and his career kept a strange tendency to inter-
lace with mine at certain points for many years —
his love of the Classical world being the deepest
and most enduring of our common attachments.
He will appear repeatedly with the years in the
course of the present narrative, and play his chosen
part of the advocatus diaboli, which was indeed his
office in the St. Louis Movement, of whose famous
members he was one, being also distinguished as
the most restless globe-rounder of us all.
As for me, by way of contrast with Davidson, I
can say that my visit to Greece brought no disillu-
sion, but rather increased my Classical devotion,
and certainly stimulated my creativity, whatever
that may be worth. I felt the strongest desire to
238 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
reproduce the Greek spirit in mine, and then to
make it speak my own tongue for my self-expres
sion, which might also have some meaning for
others. To discover Hellas afresh, to recreate it
in new forms, and thus to impart it, will be the
occupation of what I here call the Classical Epoch
of myself and of the St. Louis Movement, which, I
may here testify, never failed to shadow me all
through my wanderings.
Let me then emphasize that the St. Louis Move-
ment along with myself is now to have its Classical
Renascence (or Renaissance, if you prefer Ithe
French word) ; we both are to take a dip back into
the old Greek world, which always brings a new
cultural birth to the individual and his age, re-
bearing and transfiguring all the formal knowledge
and the oft-rehearsed texts which make up the
grind of the much-worn drill-mill of College and
University. We are now bound for the actual liv-
ing Hellas, unparadigmed and unmummied, for
the very center of it, for the top of Parnassus it-
self. Let the watchful reader see if we get there.
Good-bye, we are off, both of us, for the St. Louis
Movement is going along.
I
The Classical Itineeary
tAlready I have alluded to my somewhat ex-
tended European Journey as the new starting-
point of my later life. It is the overture to all of
THE CLASSICAL ITINERARY. 239
me that follows till I am played out to the last
note. Can I give this Journey in one brief con-
centrated action which will show the whole of it
in a single image beforehand for the reader ? Con-
ceive me now breaking away from St. Louis and
moving in a line of ascent up a mountain, rounding
quite this our side of the earth-ball, through many
laborious months, till I reach the top and take my
goal's prospect there at leisure; then, soulfully
satisfied, I run rapidly down the same path back
to the prime departing point, St. Louis. Such is
the long cycle or rather loup which I make in toil-
some practice, but which I now seek to compress
into one fleet-visioned snapshot of mind as a sort
of outline for the future.
Let me add that this mountain peak attained by
me was a real visible object, none other, than the
Greek Parnassus, which has upheld and still up-
holds its marvelous ideal or universal counterpart
ever floating down the ages and round the globe.
I can stoutly affirm that no such objective, when I
rode across the Mississippi bridge, lay in my
farthest-winged flight of fancy. In fact, I hardly
knew where I was till I got there, and looked
around. After some full days of delighted circum-
spection, I knew that the time was up, I had
reached the original source of what I came for.
Then I sprang down hill homeward.
Similar small turns or loups I had pre-enacted
several times on my main line of ascent. One of
240 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
these^ the most impressive to me, I may recount.
Italy I could not leave without going to the top of
Vesuvius, and looking into, perchance descending
into, its ever-menacing crater which had shortly
before had a furious eruption. Several hours it
tasked me to toil up through yielding ashes and
scoriae to the top of the steep cone, where I saw
and even fondled the monster, asleep indeed, but
still breathing heavily with occasional grunts of
fire and lava. Then I leaped down the cone in as
many minutes as previously it took me hours to go
up. So the old Roman poet sang of Avernus,
Facilis descensus.
It will be in place now, I think, to mention
briefly what was the fulfilment which I experi-
enced at the last stage of my Classical Journey.
I felt that the Parnassian life, which still actually
existed quite in its primitive simplicity, was the
original well-head, the germinal reality of the Art
and its spirit which I first glimpsed at London in
the Elgin Marbles, and tracked through France,
Italy, Greece, till here I had reached at last its
native fountain in the actual folk. On this spot,
then, I seemed to have come upon the small, but
still living cell of Classical civilization, pre-
Athenian, pre-Homeric perchance, certainly proto-
Hellenic. That antique Tradition which I had
learned at school as dead, I here found alive in its
primal, quite microscopic stage, out of which the
old Greek culture evolved and has continued down
the ages till the present moment.
THE CLASSICAL ITINERARY. 241
But along this outstretched line of travel of
many months, what was I to do? It must be ac-
knowledged that my hardest labor lay on the way,
not at the close— the getting, not the gotten. For
I had to clamber through the vast ruins of an-
tiquity scattered from one end of Europe to the
other. As I viewed the wrecks of a past civiliza-
tion, what was to be my attitude? I would re-
store them within me to their original form and
life, not only as isolated works but in their total
compass and environment ; indeed, I would try to
revivify through them the sunken social order
which produced them, resurrecting it at least in my
own spirit. For instance, when I contemplated the
huge torso of Hercules in the Vatican Museum at
Rome, the problem bade me thus: "Complete it,
reproduce it, as it once was; see the fragment of
the hero sitting there headless, armless, nearly leg-
less; be it thine to make him whole in thy soul's
sculpture. Go back and live in that old Greek
statuary's workshop, and there recreate in thine
own way his Art. But that is not all: through
this statue and its Art and the necessary presup-
positions of that Art, thou must reproduce the so-
cial structure antique, which called forth such a
work for its self-expression. In truth thou hast to
behold the entire Olympian Pantheon coming down
and taking-on their beautiful plastic shapes just
here in this Vatican Museum, in whose walls they
have been carefully imprisoned by the Pope as the
sovereign of the new order which has conquered
242 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
them. Thine it is now to be present at the resur-
rection of the Gods."
So it happens in this Classical Itinerary that I
must for a time become a ruin like the Coliseum,
like the Parthenon, yea like all Rome, like all
Athens, re-living in myself also the fates of those
ancient edifices and of their cities. Then I have in
spirit to make myself over into these old mutilated
torsos, and to re-feel the stroke of destiny which
smote them to these remnants of a once great and
beautiful completeness. Can I sense the blow
which knocked off the head of this Hercules, or the
fall which broke the arm of yon Venus ? Methinks
that I must even die with this dead world in order
to resurrect it in myself, and there possibly re-
create it in a form of my own.
For all antiquity, Greece and Rome, as well as
their greatest individuals, had a tragic outcome of
existence. We feel their doom still as we wander
through their beautiful and often colossal ruins.
"We ask what was their deed which evoked such an
awful judgment. That, too, must be fearfully wit-
nessed and profoundly realized both in heart and
in thought, as one travels through the scenes of
this Classical Journey. What is the Lacoon but
the Greek man and even his Gods, yea his very
Zeus, fated ? So I sauntered along the time-stream
of History and beheld the tragedy of tragedies,
that of a whole world and its civilization. Yet per-
chance just now a mightier world-tragedy than
that of antiquity is being enacted before our eyes —
THE CLASSICAL ITINERARY. 243
not the partial Greek or Roman one but that of
total Europe sinking under its long accrued tragic
guilt.
Nevertheless, through all this death I am going
back to life. The old chorus consisting of dance
and song and drama in one, is still leaping with
youthful freshness in Greece, though it seems al-
ready remote and somewhat artificial in early
Aeschylus and Pindar. Many a turn of the an-
cient Mythus I heard in living words still spoken
through the vales of Parnassus. Even the real
breathing model of the Faun of Praxiteles I saw
or fancied I saw standing in the Delphic sunlight.
Every statue of that artist's Faun housed up in
the galleries of to-day is said to be some copy of
the lost original; but I throbbed with joy at the
thought of looking on the original of the old sculp-
tor's original, his very model breathing still and
basking in the free mountain air of sunny Parnas-
sus. Such I acclaimed my native Dimitri, as he
stood before me mid his pasturing flock. So I
travel back in time through a ruinous, fragmentary,
scattered world to its earliest bud, which is still
alive and bursting into fresh flowerage just now
and every day. "When I realize fully this fact,
what I call my Delphic Moment, long forefelt, has
actually arrived, and my own Classical inflores-
cence has appeared and given its spiritual guerdon.
Then I turn about and face westward, whence I
came, bearing with me what spoils I have been able
to cull and to carry off in the course of my Jour-
244 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
ney, of which I may here add a few of the salient
details compiled with some care into a book show-
ing a timed succession of epistles from ancient
places. A Tour in Europe — such is the name of
the mentioned book in which I have gathered the
ripest fruits of my enterprise, after rejecting the
cruder stuff of many neetingly jotted memoranda.
Considerable heaps of the traveler's literary litter
were flung back into chaos whence they had es-
caped with the better harvest; still a few transi-
tory note-books survive awaiting their doom.
The aforesaid book remains, accordingly, in the
form of successive letters, into which I condensed
my capital experiences, as I journeyed along their
ascending line till they reached the apex already
described. The manuscript written on the spot
dates from first to last through the years 1877-
1879 ; the printing of it took place in 1907. Thus
the book lay hid in the author's drawer for nearly
thirty years, during the entire middle Period of
life. Finally the psychologic moment (as they
call it now) struck when it insisted on being at
least put into type, though it was never published
in the strict sense of the deed. As a legitimate
child of my brain, though long neglected, it had a
right to its inheritance of print, whereby it could
voice its thought and its heart to the reader who
might care.
This is the first and only book of mine which
took an epistolary form. On the whole I do not
like to write letters ; therein I have been a laggard
THE CLASSICAL ITINERARY. 245
all my years, belabored by many justifiable com-
plaints. But these short daily communications to
my distant friends compelled me to put together
and to condense my scattered sight-seeings and my
random note-scribblings into a compacter writ. The
result was they took a native shape which could not
be broken without losing their character. So I let
them stay in print quite as they once dashed in
wild freedom through my pen over my papery
prairie.
London was my first halting-place. It was hid
in its winter overcoat of fog, and refused to let it-
self be seen for days at a time ; so I was driven into
two large edifices where things could be observed
by gaslight. In the National Gallery I studied the
paintings, especially those of Turner. Then I
passed to the British Museum, in which was housed
Classic Art, and I soon centered upon the Elgin
Marbles. Still I worked hard at Turner, having
previously read Ruskin, with great admiration for
his style but with small respect for his thought.
The gorgeous colors of the English painter daz-
zled, and I tried to believe in him, but very fanatic-
ally I could not. Will he signify anything great
and permanent in the march of the ages? The
Oracle was silent, and I thought shook his head.
Then I turned to consult the statues of the Par-
thenon, here in a kind of exile, and I received the
oracular nod to seek their birth-place for my fu-
ture salvation. So I started with a somewhat more
conscious pace toward my Renascence.
246 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
Paris was the next stop, the gaudy urban en-
chantress of the world. Behold now the sullen fog
cleared away, and the sun laughing with his earthly
children once more. Here two centers of attrac-
tion tied me fast for five weeks. The first was
French Literature, with which the very atmosphere
of Paris seemed to be overcharged till it dripped
on the pavement. That was a new and to me a
very congenial experience. It was a city more de-
voted to self-expression than any other on the globe
probably. Still in spite of the charm of literary
Paris, I again chose Hellas as my goal, and kept
sweet converse with the sculptured antiques of the
Louvre as my most intimate companions. Victor
Hugo was still alive, but even of him I did not try
to catch a living glimpse. I wish now I had.
Rome was the third landing to which my many-
leagued boots bore me at a single stride southward
high over the white-hatted Alps down through the
genial sheen of the Italian spring. March (1878)
had just begun when the railroad train whizzed
me through a crevice in the old Roman wall past
a ruinous aqueduct, and set me down inside the
Eternal City. Properly I had now reached the
first goal of my Journey (not yet the second or
the third). The contrast with London and Paris,
which are essentially present-lived, shot at once
into my eye, which here beheld on all sides the
fragments of a foregone world. The Past was
everywhere in evidence; the very atmosphere
seemed overladen with former greatness. Rem-
THE CLASSICAL ITINERARY. 247
nants, torsos, ruins, tragedy crushed not only into
outer vision but into mind and feeling. Not the
Coliseum alone rose up a fragment, but all Rome
was a ruin often mossy-green and in places even
flowery (at that time the young Italy of Victor
Immanuel was just budding into its early spring,
having won its new-old capital). Roman Spirit
still lay here a huge torso on its seven hills like
that of Hercules; the Roman People '(Populus
Romanus) appeared yet existent in name and in
life, but was the greatest, most impressive ruin of
all Roman ruins, because a living ruin. What am
I to do with such a massive shattered world? Re-
store, recreate, and make integral this broken Past
as a true part of myself, else the present European
discipline will be for me in vain.
Thus I grapple with my desperate problem, for
I must actually be all these Roman torsos, and
likewise the one universal torso of Rome herself,
that I may live out her death and her resurrection.
Daily I sit down before her monumental works and
strive to re-create their creative spirit as well as to
become its downfall, and thus live anew and mas-
ter my own tradition as a child of my race's
civilization. Of which struggle the inquisitive
reader can consult the record in the before-men-
tioned book.
I must not, however, omit one wholly unexpected
hatch from my long Roman incubation : the Classic
verse called elegiac with its peculiar hexametral
cadence. I had never in my life tried or thought
248 TnE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOKD.
of trying such a poetical venture ; but of a sudden
one day at Rome "fleets in at my window" the
antique epigram after the model of the old Greek
Anthology. I obeyed the Muse with an incredulous
titter, thinking it only to be one of her little mo-
mentary fantasticalities, several of which she had
already served up to me passingly just in the
Eternal City. But this present mood of hers has
proved at least obdurate, possibly eternal, being
no petty Anacreontic jet, or deftly intermetered
Horation lyric, in which I had often tested myself
here on the Classic terrain. Moreover, this poetical
bent of mine has met with a decided rebuff even
from friends, who have said it was a great mis-
take, I being no poet. Still I have persisted in
giving literary form to myself in my own way, re-
fusing to be recreant to my primordial right of
self-expression, or untrue to my Super-vocation,
which awaits no vote of otheis, not even compli-
mentary. So the hexametral swing, first rollicking
in me and around me at Rome, has kept up its
rhythm in my heart and in my voice at intervals
down to the present hour in thousands of verses.
It is one form of that re-production of the antique
world which flowered along the wayside of this
Classical Itinerary.
After nearly four months, the hot weather of
Rome with its army of fleas remorseless in their
morsels of me, put me to flight toward the North
where I made the German detour of my Itinerary.
I passed through the old Teutonic heart of Father-
THE CLASSICAL ITINERARY. 249
land, and swam (on a steamboat) up and down its
main artery of song and story, the Rhine stream.
I actually saw the Lorelei and hymned its legend
after Heine, but without the old appeal ; and when
I, crooning Byron, looked up to the Drachenfels,
Nature's mad Gothicism, I shrank. Indeed I sur-
prised myself, as I recognized how complete was my
revulsion against my former German tendency in
St. Louis, whose spell had lasted toward a dozen
years. I had gone back to my earlier Romanic pre-
ference for France and Italy ; but still more deeply
I had become already intergrown with the Classic
World, and sought here just under the Northern
Star through memory to recreate it in prose and
verse. No more fairyland, no more ballads, no
more rhymes even, my delight was to hymn elegiac
stanzas with the hexametral flow right in the pres-
ence of the nixes and norns of the venerable Teu-
tonic Rhine. Not ungrateful was my deed, I hope ;
but such was now the irrespressible call to round
out the Classic arc of my life's fulfilment. So
when the first autumnal leaves had begun to twirl
down upon the causeway of "Wiesbaden, I started
off southward again for Rome, and then for Hellas.
The fact was I had already felt that I «ould not
bring to a close in Rome this Classical Itinerary.
Its edifices, its galleries, even its ruins pointed back
to a previous original source, to the higher-up
creative Hellas. So I set out once more from Rom,?.
now for the South. I caught in Naples a still liv-
ing undertone of its old Greek origin, and pon-
250 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
dered in Pompeii the appalling torso of a whole
ancient community, symbol of an entire fated
civilization. Finally I reached the templed home
of Athena, itself another antique torso, most beauti-
ful of its kind, and still seated upon its lofty Acro-
polis, though begirt now with harsh and homely
unclassical modernities. There I take lodgment
for many moons, and start to talking Greek right
in the Pnyx and the Academe still echoing with
the words of Demosthenes and Plato.
But now I find that Athens too points else-
whither, it is not my goal's last turnabout. I be-
gin to feel the old city had also its antecedent
aforetime, its original atomic life-germ. I started
from St. Louis for the head-waters of the cultural
evolution of Europe, and I must keep up the quest.
People at Athens pointed out to me on the Par-
nassus an autochthonous, pre-Athenian folk still
alive and doing their day's little task in their
primitive mountain hamlets. Thither accordingly
I take my way with a premonitory joy in my heart,
wandering quite by myself on mule-paths over
crags and dowu gulches where no wheeled vehicle
is possible.
I have already indicated the result of this my
last push for the primordial home of that Greek
tradition which had been very traditionally handed
down to me, an American youth at a Western Col-
lege, through thousands of years. The St. Louis
Movement with its anti-traditional trend had
driven me to travel backward to the earliest pre-
THE CLASSICAL ITINERARY. 251
suppositions of my culture, imposed upon me as it
was and as it had to be, from without. I was not
able to turn around till I had reached the original
source, perchance the elemental microscopic gem-
mule of Europe's civilization. I may here repeat
that when I heard the horologe of my Classical
Itinerary strike the Delphic Moment, I faced about
and sailed rapidly down the time-stream till I once
more landed at one of its far-western ports, named
St. Louis, where I now am starting over on a new
journey.
This Delphic Moment darted a sudden leave-tak-
ing sensation which insisted upon attuning itself
within me to a classic measure as I shed my last
glance over the Parnassian landscape. Conceive
me, then high up the mountain on a little perch
overlooking the Delphic vale, when the Moment
strikes me and I seize my notebook from my pocket
to scribble down these verses:
The Delphic Moment
All the year has suddenly bloomed in this day,
in this minute;
The whole world is a flower fragrantly blowing
just now.
Every rise of the Sun hath seemed in some joy
to look forward,
This is the moment it saw far in the glow of its
eye.
252 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
All the days of the year have been climbing above
to this summit,
Now each tick of the clock sadly must knell their
decline.
But thy journey of life has now reached its most
beautiful moment,
Hold it fast in thy heart — that is thy conquest
of Time.
Such was the pivotal turn of my Classical Renas-
cence with the slow journey forward, and the
swift sweep back homeward. A new curriculum
(or spiritual race-course) in the University of
Civilization it may be regarded, which is yet to be
adopted into the completed system of Higher Edu-
cation. That little Greek world has shown itself
the creative prototype of all later cultural Renas-
cences, the primogeniture of Europe's noblest sons
in Literature, Art, Science, History, Philosophy.
And to that regenerative El Dorado I took my pil-
grimage, walking through Hellas alone and afoot
(monos kai pezos, as I had often to explain to the
astonished and sometimes suspicious Greek peas-
ants). It was my second considerable soldiering
campaign, the first being that of the Civil War, in
which I as an infantryman learned how to make
long marches, to dare hunger and thirst, and in the
pinch to face fire-arms. This Classic Itinerary,
especially the last Greek stage of it, I never could
have compassed without my testful experience of
THE CLASSICAL ITINERARY. 253
military life, which was then still youthful in me,
being about fifteen years old.
When I had gotten back to London, from which
I had started many months before, I took occasion
to visit again the two great art-magnets of all Eng-
land, centering in the Turner Pictures at the Na-
tional Gallery, and in the Elgin Marbles at the
British Museum. I had first come to them from
my abstract philosophic studies eye-thirsty for the
beautiful plastic shape, and devoured both kinds in
an indiscriminate Bacchic debauch of vision. But
how do they appear to me now, after my long com-
munion with formful South, darling of the Sun?
For Italy and Greece had been to me one con-
tinuous art gallery, through which I had slowly
wandered contemplating their great works and
stilling my long-suppressed form-hunger. Again
the interrogation rises: Which of these two men
Turner or Phidias, the modern Englishman or the
old Greek, has best given us to view the Eternal?
Indeed which of the two has already outlasted the
testing blows of old Time's trip-hammer? Harris
I had heard philosophize the Turnerian iridescence,
with a wonder hopeful of knowledge, and I had
much admired Ruskin's own artistry in re-paint-
ing with words full of rainbows Turner's seduct-
ively chromatic art. Still I have to put the ulti-
mate test : Which of the two artists has the crea-
tive power to produce again and again the cultural
Renascence of the race? Just now that is what I
am hoping for in myself and also in the St. Louis
254 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
Movement. So I set out from England in my one-
sided antique glow, without seeing Shakespeare's
Stratford, home of our most eternal modern man,
greatest possibly of all our greatness. But we need
not try to anticipate the tribunal of the milleniums.
Yet alas for me ! I still am commiserating my lot on
account of my lifetime's penalty for a moment's
negligence.
II
The St. Louis Literary Classes
Now occurs the strangest, suddenest cultural up-
burst within my experience. It was the almost
universal rise of independent clubs or classes
throughout the St. Louis community for the study
of the masterpieces, chiefly literary — wholly so as
far as my horizon extended. Something incalcu-
lable still lurks in the phenomenon after more than
thirty years have passed in which it has had good
time to tell what it meant.
I had scarcely gotten home from my European
Journey and settled down to begin life anew in the
fall of 1879 when people began to come to me as
a known schoolmaster, and to ask for some kind of
instruction in what I had learned abroad. The first
gathering, as far as I now recollect took place in
the pleasant and spacious parlor of an old friend
on the South Side, a cultivated and traveled gen-
tleman who had shown a special interest in Italy.
A considerable audience we succeeded in bringing
together, to which I read and talked with some en-
THE ST. LOUIS LITERARY CLASSES. 255
thusiasm, I suppose, about scenes and glories
classical. Two results began to show themselves.
First, a book started on its evolution, as I put
together and wrote out my salient experiences in
Greece: which book not long afterward completed
itself and made its little bow to the public under
the name of A Walk in Hellas. The second result
was that a number of people then present wished
to make special studies of the classical world,
about which they had heard and even read some-
what, but knew little worth while. Whereupon
several small clubs, or rather classes (the latter
is the better name for the thing) began to nucleate
and then rapidly to put forth into button and
flower. They appealed to me for instruction, as
they imagined I knew something about what I had
just seen, at considerable expense of brawn and
brain and of shoe-leather.
Other independent centers seemed to spring up
at once in different parts of the city. People whom
I never knew appeared before me with the request
that I take the lead in their circle for the study
of Homer or Shakespeare. Astounding to me and
without parallel in my later experience was and
remains the fact that wealthy high-toned ladies
took zealous part in this movement, being eager
to go to school again and to study the prescribed
lesson at the feet of the rather mannerless school-
master. Evening classes for men occupied with
the day's business were formed; afternoon classes
for ladies of leisure were perhaps in the majority ;
256 TEE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
two-sexed classes also could not be prevented. I had
taken work again in the High School,but after little
more than a year I resigned my appointed position
to assume charge of what seemed to me a greater
call, namely to be an unappointed professor in the
new university of the rising educative institution,
perchance just the St. Louis Movement.
Tell us now — I hear myself demanding of my-
self — what were the branches taught, give us the
curriculum of your young Academe of the world's
best training? Hardly a rigidly fixed course can
be pointed out; it was to be free, self-chosen, self-
unfolding. Still I may give the general trend and
center of my prime endeavor: the revival of the
classical spirit as expressed in Greek Literature.
Homer, the fountain of Hellenic culture, and per-
haps the best and completest single utterance of
it was my chief text-book ; to this was added Greek
History, Greek Drama, Greek Art. I required
every member to read and to study the assigned
lesson in some good translation, which was usually
designated. Besides this stricter pedagogy, I
would talk, read, and lecture generally on Greece,
modern and ancient, interspersed with my fresh
personal experiences of the land and its folk. Nor
were my own metered effusions always withheld
out of modesty, for I often thought them the best
of my best, through some born infatuation for my
poetic children. The ancient tongues were not
taught by me, I refused the drill of grammar and
dictionary, and of painful syntactical construction ;
THE ST. LOUIS LITERARY CLASSES. 257
whoever wanted such training must go to the High
School and College and University, which were only
preparatory to this higher Institution. I sought
to compass in myself and to impart to my pupils
that elusive entity called the Greek Spirit, the very
soul of the antique world.
Thus a strange cultural epidemic broke out in
St. Louis and raged continuously for some years,
passing through the usual stages of growth, cul-
mination and decline. The period of this peculiar
Greek Renascence in my range lasted about six
years, say from 1879 till 1885. I of course am
speaking only for myself, and to a certain extent
for our St. Louis Movement. There were other
classes and other intellectual centers scattered
through the town. Both the Universities had their
own courses of public lectures, doubtless in re-
sponse to the general tendency. I remember at-
tending some prelections on Dante from a Catholic
viewpoint, which were held in the audience room
of the Jesuits. Some churches also had their lit-
erary appendix. Personally, however, I never had
anything to do with these side-issues; my work
was independent, self-supported and self-con-
tained, and it continued to evolve in freedom on
its own lines in the community. It was not at-
tached to any school or religious organization,
although all of its members and teachers were
professors of one thing or other, not excepting
religion. Somehow the new energy kept rising
and pushing its own way, I never started it
258 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
or even directed it after starting, as far as I am
aware. It found me at hand and eager, undoubt-
edly, but I found it too, just ready to be turned
loose into the classical garden of beautiful Ely-
sium. Thus, if we dare think Homerically, the
God within and the God without flew together and
kissed in a kind of rapture.
"What had our earlier philosophic set to do with
this fresh turn of its history? It had changed or
rather developed a good stretch out of and beyond
itself. Brockmeyer, our President, took no part
in this phasis of the work; in fact he was mostly
absent during all these epochal years, having taken
flight from the City and State to the Indians, and
quit even philosophy for a time — a deeply dis-
illusioned Missouri politician. Once he dragged
me with him down to the Indian Teritory from my
Homer classes, to help him start some sort of kin-
dergarten for red children. I was thrown with
him several days, and he drew my sympathy more
than poor untutored Loo, for in living, hapless
reality I saw before me the hero Achilles, wrath-
ful, estranged from his people, and sulking in his
tent unheroized. Without intending it, he gave me
a memorable lesson in the eternal Homer.
Harris also had abandoned the then discordant
and disenchanted St. Louis (in 1880) and had
betaken himself to aged Concord in his dear
Yankeeland. He was another instance of great
Departures of the Great from the city about
this time. Still he came back every winter and
THE ST. LOUIS LITERARY CLASSES. 259
held classes and lectures on an admirable variety
of clashing topics, some of which were Philosophy,
the Madonnas, Holy Pictures set off with a stere-
optieon, old-Norse Sagas, the Christian Trinity,
including talks on Dante and Goethe's Faust, espe-
cially the Second Part of the latter, and most
especially the Church Patres of the last Act. He
had his devoted band of followers who still upheld
his cultural headship, though he was no longer a
resident. As usual his personality was more win-
ning than his word, which was too often obscure,
rambling, and I have to think, indigested. In fact,
Harris would not, perhaps could not easily, organ-
ize his subject. Still he deserved the spiritual
hegemony which he had won by long, able, and
disinterested service.
Thus the St. Louis Movement was throbbing with
fresh energy during the present salient turn in
its career. While Harris was inclined to scatter
his efforts, I went the other way, and concentrated
chiefly upon the one theme of Greek spirit in Lit-
erature, though I too had some lateral branches.
But the prodigy of the fact which crossed me then
and still haunts me is that so many good people
of St. Louis, perhaps nearly a thousand from first
to last, should be suddenly seized with that classi-
cal spell, almost a convulsive fit of old Greek
Heathendom, against which as a deadly contagion
one worthy minister I heard of proposed a general
church quarantine.
Never since then has any such fever of learning
scourged our naturally reposeful population. And
260 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT—PART SECOND.
never before was it known, as far as I have been
able to dig in our dust-wooing ereole archives. The
quiescent volcano erupted the one time, and soon
thereafter went to sleep again in a long, long nap,
but I hope not eternal. Why just then for once
and for all? What possible cause? Did some
super-eminent Power, like the World-Spirit, prod
us afresh for its end? Hard to see any such high
intervention in the present case. Or was it a bot-
tomless popular caprice, an unfathomable sudden
fad of the folk-soul? I have tried to connect it
with the city's prevailing mood of those years,
which was that of the Great Disillusion through
the census of 1880. Or could I have been the one
wee microbe which spread that Greek contagion
through the whole community? I think I may
have been the main center round which it chiefly
gathered and hovered for a season; but then I
have never been able to start any such epidemic
since, though I have tried hard more than once
to give a fresh inoculation. I may tell of me, how-
ever, that I was then at the highest creative up-
burst of what I may call my Greek productivity in
verse and prose. Under such a spell it is possible
that I may have been somewhat more contagious
than usual in imparting my Greek enthusiasm.
But the individual impulse to recreate in fresh
forms of my own speech that subtle classical spirit
had likewise its climacteric from which it went into
decline. The red flush of my first Greek enchant-
ment began to pale, and to move into another
THE ST. LOUIS LITERARY CLASSES. 261
epoch. But for this transition the present narra-
tive is not yet ripe.
A more subtle result of these classes had started
to outline itself in my mind: the new educative
institution of the whole community, which lies
beyond all the academic forms of instruction —
High School, College, University. I did not per-
ceive at the time the full bearing of this phase of
our St. Louis Movement. But really we had broken
ground for the coming home-grown University,
quite different from the traditional one imported
from Europe. I gave it then no name, because I
was hardly conscious of its existence ; in fact, the
germ had still to unfold and to show itself per-
manent. As far as I then could tell, it might
be merely a temporary bubble of the time's caprice,
refulgent as the spectrum to-day, exploded to zero
on the morrow. Still it put an enduring stamp
upon my form of instruction, indeed it sealed my
life to its propagation. I never since that experi-
ence with communal classes and their native spirit,
was able to be a member of any academic institu-
tion in spite of some fair opportunities. I have
not been hostile ; I have co-operated dozen of times
with the scholastic tradition; but I have refused
to be subject to it, or to submerge in it my own
educative organism, small and incomplete though
this be. Thus I have evolved along with my
instruction my own instrumentalities of imparta-
tion, which, hardly more than embryonic at pres-
ent, have, I believe, a distinctive future. At a
262 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
later period when I had become more fully aware
of this secretly growing institute of universal cul-
ture, I named it the Communal University.
So much for the St. Louis Movement in its new
stage on its own native soil. But we are to witness
it making a migration out of the West to the East,
out of a young free-born State to an old colonial
State full of manifold tradition, which it has to
meet with fresh energy.
Ill
The Concord Philosophical School
Another step it was in the Great Departure of
the time, when the St. Louis Movement itself de-
parted or began to depart from St. Louis, its orig-
inal home, and to settle elsewhere in a sort of
spiritual estrangement. Our philosophic President
Brockmeyer had departed from us into a voluntary
exile among the unphilosophie savages; but he
cannot be forgotten by this history — he the massive
but increate and uncreative potentiality underly-
ing the entire St. Louis Movement. Our Secretary
Harris, the tireless propagandist, had departed
from us in the other direction, toward the highly
tutored New Englanders, whom he would still
further tutor and inoculate with the philosophic
world-view of Hegel. Here we may be allowed to
mention the third man of the original triad, none
other than private Snider who was still holding
the fort at St. Louis with the loyal assistance of
THE CONCORD PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOL. 263
other privates. But he too was getting ready to
straddle, that is, both to stay and to depart, seek-
ing if possible, to unite the two sides in some new
reconciling combination. Each of these three
diverse actions doubtless sprang from the deepest
instinct of their respective doers, and mirrored
their individual characters, re-acting on the com-
mon cause, which we still shall name the St. Louis
Movement.
Taking up now this third person and making
him the first, at least grammatically, I may an-
nounce concerning myself, with modesty I hope,
that I received not long after my return to St.
Louis an invitation to give a course of lectures on
Shakespeare at the Concord School of Philosophy
during the summer session of 1880. To me, the
St. Louis schoolmaster, with small ability for self-
pushing and seemingly smaller for any public
function, this seemed a surprising advancement.
Moreover it has remained an influential turn in
my life. How did it come about? And what is
this new School of Philosophy which has risen to
light during my absence overseas on my European
Journey ?
I think it was in September, 1879, as I was
sauntering around Lafayette Park, rather listless
and Uncertain of the future, that I saw Harris,
recognizing me, leap out of his buggy and approach
me with a hearty smile and salute, which I warmly
requited, as I had not seen him since I had come
back from abroad, for he had been out of town.
264 THE ST. LOUIS ^MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
He told me that he had been giving some lectures
at Concord, Massachusetts, during the summer,
that a School of Philosophy had been established
there to be held every summer, and that I had
been appointed one of the lecturers. He further-
more informed me that he had just given his first
course at the Orchard House, the old well-laureled
mansion of Mr. A. Bronson Alcott and daughters,
that the attendance, beyond all expectation, had
overflowed parlor and hall and even windows, and
that next year the School was to have a new com-
modious building, known as the Hillside Chapel,
the generous gift of a New York lady philan-
thropist, Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson.
It was evident that Harris felt very buoyant in
his new elevation (so he held it), and he radiated
over me and into me his glowing prospects. He
said he had calculated upon my help, and at once
asked what theme I would like to take on the
program : philosophic or literary, Hegel or Shakes-
peare? I answered that I was not in the mood for
philosophy, not even for Hegel, and that he was
well able to cover the field himself, but that I
would come to his aid in the discussions, whenever
I could serve him. "Very well," he replied, "I
shall put you down for Shakespeare; your book
has made you known ; you are recognized as" — and
so forth and so forth — all of which had better here
be expurgated. Finally looking around to see if
anybody were near, and then bowing his face close
to mine he spoke in a whisper: "When this scho-
THE CONCORD PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOL. 265
lastic year is up, I intend to resign as Superinten-
tendent of the St. Louis Public Schools, and move
permanently to Concord, where I shall occupy with
my family the Orchard House of Mr. Alcott, who
is going to live down town in the old Thoreau
residence. Just across the street from me, you
know is the home of Emerson." It was evident
that Harris smiled much elated over his establish-
ment among the eminent Concord Worthies, whose
coming successor he might with some self-appre-
ciation regard himself. Fleeting traces of this am-
bition I had long forefelt in him at St. Louis.
Still my surprise hit me hard, indeed I became
quite speechless at this strange new throw of fate 's
dice-box. Meanwhile he had turned away, and
with the parting words, "Enough for this time,
come to see me as soon as you can," he leaped into
his buggy nodding to me a flash of felicity as he
whisked around a corner. He left me quizzing:
Well what does this sudden fresh intervention of
the Powers mean again? For it was evident that
here had arrived some decisive crisis or node in
the St. Louis Movement, of which Harris had been
hitherto the most efficient and the most dis-
tinguished propagandist. And he was going to
quit his own well-tilled field, abandon the world
he had built during his whole youthful two dec-
ades of years in St. Louis. He touched now forty-
four, and had poured forth an enormous energy
in a number of directions. But is his creative
power still at high flood?
266 T H E ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
I paced the Park in slow deliberation about what
I should do with myself in the emergency. It
seemed indeed a new allotment, but also a new
opportunity, and the trend of it looked toward the
scattering of the St. Louis group and of their
Movement. The oracle appeared foretelling to us
our dispersion, or, to employ the capital term
already used, our Departure. My trip abroad lay
ensconced in the same general plan. This Concord
project signified at least a separation into two
lines, possibly a transfer from West to East. Did
Harris, who had in him ever the lurking Yankee,
intend such removal ? I did not fail to notice that
the glow of his talk with me illumined especially
the famous men of Concord headed by Emerson,
to whom he was now to be the next neighbor.
Harris had at this time the outlook upon a mod-
est but sufficient competence for the future, as I
understood from several of his allusions. He had
saved something from his salary, he received fair
royalties from his publishers, his articles and lec-
tures produced quite a little income — once and
only once, as far as I know, he took home to Con-
cord from a six weeks' course of lectures in St.
Louis some fifteen hundred dollars — which he
thought pretty good, and so did I even more em-
phatically, for it summed up considerably above
all that I could scrape together in a year through
my class-work. Moreover his living expenses
needed not to be so very high in a New England
country-town. Thus Harris was going to Concord
THE CONCORD PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOL. 267
in company with that first and best freedom, con-
dition of all other kinds of freedom, namely eco-
nomic freedom. If he chose, he was now in a con-
dition to write unremunerative books and to do
free labor in honor of his dearest Philosophy, and
for the sake of his love alone to defy the three
primordial fates of human existence — food, rai-
ment, and shelter. In other words he could now
give himself up wholly to his Super-vocation, to
which indeed he had already shown himself con-
secrated at St. Louis.
In this seemingly sudden and cardinal change,
which included vocation, career, and locality, Har-
ris had his unspoken motive deeper than the
spoken. I had noticed that underneath all his
enthusiasm for the West lay in the bottom of his
heart an exile's longing for his native New Eng-
land. Now there has come the opportunity in his
homeland for a new succession in philosophy after
Transcendentalism, whose very fortress he wished
to capture and reconstruct. Emerson, though
still alive, was mentally gone; Alcott had turned
eighty, and was creatively closed out, but he could
yet be active enough to form an excellent bridge
from the old into the present. But he, not very
long after the School had well begun, went to
pieces, still living. And Sanborn, the unparalleled
man of publicity and doubtless the School's chief
practical organizer, was even eager to start a new
order for a number of reasons, some of them with
me conjectural. In his cwvn town I once heard him
268 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
berated as the Yankee renegade for his part in
foisting the Western set of philosophers upon
Emerson's Concord. And I had kept wondering
in St. Louis why Harris should so often bring to
us the aged Alcott to say over again and again
what the repeating sayer of the said had already
better said, and why he should be so assiduous in
admiration of what, he had often already suffi-
ciently admired. He was preparing the time and
manner of his great Departure from the St. Louis
Public Schools to a new career purely philosoph-
ical. In 1879 he went to Concord and made his
opening trial ; he found the transition begging him
to seize it at the right psychologic moment. I
saw him while still in the furnace white-heat of
his first resolution. Certainly a justifiable goal
for him or any man; but will he be able to do the
deed against all the learned jealousies of Har-
vard and the other Academics elsewhere in New
England? It was Emerson's^ old fight to be fought
over again without his chances. So the question
has often come up to me, Was it the part of wis-
dom in Harris to make this change, and never to
unmake it afterward when he had found out?
He probably proposed to hitch the two horses,
Concord and St. Louis, to his philosophic chariot,
and to keep them in the race from his Eastern
home. This he succeeded in doing for a time.
Then he had here able and devoted lieutenants,
especially one cleverest woman, who would obey
him to the letter. For when Harris quit us, he
THE CONCORD PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOL. 269
easily held the cultural primacy of St. Louis, and
he knew it. He dominated more than any other
man or institution the intellectual character of our
city. Undoubtedly he had opposition, and at times
much worry even in his official administration.
Still his influence was central, and radiated
through the whole community.
As for me, my attitude was that of independent
co-operation. I followed a somewhat different line,
but in the same St. Louis Movement. I had to
develop and then to express myself in my own
right. I may say here that I also harnessed those
two steeds, St. Louis and Concord, to my little
wain not the philosophical but the literary, and kept
them prancing together for several years. But my
goal remained in the West, even when I was com-
pelled to quit St. Louis; I had no Mayflower tra-
dition to chain me to Plymouth Rock or any other
piece of stone.
Accordingly, in the summer of 1880, I again
turned my face Eastward, sped across the Missis-
sippi, over the Alleghanies, to the ancient Bay
State, and in due time stepped off the railroad
train at Concord. It was a new sensation to find
myself and the St. Louis Movement steaming across
the mountains and over the rivers toward the
Atlantic seacoast, and entering an old colonial
Commonwealth, just the most highly educated and
self-appreciative in the whole country. It was an
adventure, however, in which I was not alone.
Evening had come, I had taken my repast, and
270 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
was seated on a little veranda at the Hotel Middle-
sex, gazing toward 's Thoreau's Musketaquid, and
listening still to that famous Emersonian shot
heard round the world and also down time, when
three men came up to me in the twilight. I soon
recognized the first of them to be Harris, who in-
troduced me to the others. One of the two was
Mr. S. H. Emery, Director of the School, who, a
born New-Englander had early in life come to the
West, made his fortune in business at Quincy, 111.,
and especially had become inoculated with Hegel
through Harris's Journal of Speculative Philoso-
phy. He was still in middle life, had given up a
profitable partnership, and had settled at Concord
for the purpose of devoting himself to Philosophy,
as I then understood him, for the rest of his days.
Can he hold out ? The fact, however, of his doing
such a deed at once gave him a high standing in
my eyes. The second stranger was Mr. F. B. San-
born, officially called the Secretary, the chief jour-
nalistic spirit of the enterprise. He was tall and
spare, with keen-edged feature in the center of
which would play a little drama of winsome smiles ;
I might call them honeyed from the bee, for there
is no doubt that his mellifluous mouth concealed
a stinger which he know how to flesh upon occa-
sion. In a few days I found that out and somewhat
more. Just now he bantered me pleasantly by fling-
ing at me the name of Elpinike, the Greek maiden
of my Delphic Days, which book he had in some
way unknown to me gotten hold of, and out of
TEE CONCORD PEILOSOPEICAL SCEOOL. 271
which he had at least fished that one word for
future use, whose moment had now arrived. I want
to say that just on account of this character I
took a decided liking for Mr. Sanborn; we could
antagonize, even get a litle angry, and still remain
friends. His last letter to me I received only a
few months before his death during the past year
(1918), and it remains to me a precious heart-
stirring token. Just now I have taken his letter
out of its corner and read it anew as a memorial
of the man. He was still, though very old, on the
look-out to do a service, as usual, without request.
Though we often took a tilt at each other in the
course of the School's discussions, and once at a
private house in the town, with mutual satisfac-
tion of triumph, I think, I would plant now upon
his new-made grave in Sleepy Hollow this little
flower plucked from my own experience: Among
all the men whom I have ever seen tested he stands
first in his love of secretly extending anonymous
help to those who might, in his opinion, have need
of it, and who would never let such need be known.
The course of my Shakespeare's lectures started
and plodded along rather uneventfully, as far as I
now remember, with the usual amount of criticism
and of defence. I should conjecture fifty people
were the average of attendance; among them was
Miss Blow, whom I had not seen before, but she
soon made herself known. Indeed there was quite
a delegation from St. Louis in the audience, who
were especially friends of Harris, and in conse-
272 THE BT.LOUI^ MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
quence strong supporters of the St. Louis Move-
ment. I think Emerson appeared once to hear me,
and Mr. Aleott presided. Men of distinction
dropped in to see what was going on, since the
public press was making a great noise by extended
reports, and by comments serious and comic. One
day a stately gentleman having a look of eminence
passed the door with his lady, and took a seat
near the front row; I recall the crinkles in the
rim of his furled Panama hat, as he lifted it off
his head and laid it down beside him with judicial
dignity. When I had finished my lecture, in which
Hamlet received his tragic doom, Emery, who sat
near, leaned over to me and whispered: That is
Judge Alphonso Taft, ex-Attorney-General of the
United States. I had heard a good deal some
years before about Judge Taft of the Superior
Court when I lived at Cincinnati, though I had
never seen him ; and Harris ("William Torrey) told
me once, with the only gleam of family pride I
ever knew him to shoot, that he was related to
Mrs. Taft through the famous New England Tor-
reys. Judge Taft now. twisted a little in his seat,
and started to cross-examine me on the question
of Hamlet's madness, as was his right, when I
laid down the law, at least my law, in the case:
"Hamlet is never so mad as not to be respon-
sible; hence our poetic Judge Shakespeare con-
demns him to his tragic death at the end of the
play; and this Superior Court now sitting here
in the Concord School of Philosophy affirms the
THE CONCORD PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOL. 273
judgment of the poet." Somehow thus, not pre-
cisely perhaps, was worded the rather legalized
decision in honor of the distinguished guests. The
audience stared with vacant face-long gravity, no-
body seemed to understand the nub, being deemed
possibly some deep metaphysical subtlety, such as
is expected of philosophers. Only Mrs. Taft turned
to her husband and smiled against him (I think)
so exuberantly that she raised her fan to her lips
to check or at least to hide their perhaps too in-
formal overflow. The Judge murmured a word
which I did not then understand, but which I dare
now conjecture to have been "overruled." This
ended the discussion, when Harris ran down from
the rostrum in front of me to salute his illustrious
kinsfolk.
But the real episode of the course took place at
the last lecture, which I concluded to make prac-
tical and to apply directly to Concord. I had
found in my studies an entire group of Shakes-
peare's comedies in which there is a flight from
civilized life to the woods and to a primitive ex-
istence, whereof an example is seen in "As you
like it." Then, after due experience there is a
return of the fugitive to civilization and its insti-
tutions. Now the poet makes such flight and return
the setting of his comic action in no less than eight
plays, according to my count. Herein lay the point
of comparison: Concord in her famous individu-
als had passed through a very similar phase of
human experience, had fled in protest from the
274 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
existent social order, had remained out for a while
in the new sylvan or rural paradise, but had at
last come back in a sort of penitent disillusion.
Thus Concord had actually lived through a great
human comedy of the Shakespearian model, which
was thus verified in the town's history. Alcott had
taken his flight to Brook Farm, Thoreau to Walden,
Emerson longed to flee to Berkshire Hills, even to
Canada, as we see by his Journal, but he never
could quite break loose from his family and from
his revenues. These men were the great Concord-
ites of the past and representatives of their town
and time ; and with them were other, even if lesser,
examples of the same tendency, making a comic era
which Shakespeare had already observed more
than two centuries before, and had put into a dra-
matic structure.
The special play of Flight and Return which I
took up for local application was Love's Labour's
Lost, in which the King and his three Lords retire
from the world, and especially from the presence
of woman, for the purpose of studying philosophy,
making the court "into a little Academe," named
and patterned after the Athenian home of Plato.
Herein lay a striking similarity to the Concord
School of Philosophy, which also had its Platonic
course of lectures with devoted followers, and had
even called itself the modern Academe. But now
enters the trouble; love, the old enemy of con-
templative philosophy, appears in the persons of
four ladies who storm the whole celibate Academe
THE CONCORD PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOL. 275
and carry off the four philosophers as their cap-
tives. Such was the outcome of the Shakespearian
School of Philosophy as portrayed in the poet's
famous comedy, a far-off foreshow of our present
School, and now held up as a kind of mirror before
Concord. Three-fourths or more of the audience
were ladies, who smiled appreciation if not ap-
proval of the solution of the great master's dra-
matic collision between Love and Philosophy. And
it so happened that this was the main theme which
the jokesmith of newspaper and even of magazine
delighted to set forth in the supposed dialect of
the School, when it discussed "the Whatness of
the Howsoever", or "the Thingness of the Why",
though I never heard such talk there. One of these
squibs crossed me several times in its travels round
town, running thus: Two philosophers, a young
lady and a young gentleman (both of them not so
very young) were promenading in the Walden
woods, and had become deeply entangled in a warm
philosophic discussion, when the woman was heard
to exclaim: "Pshaw! you are no philosopher, else
you would understand the Yesness of my No!"
In a shoemaker's shop whither I had gone to get
my foot-gear cobbled, and where I heard the talk
told with new variations, I was asked by the artist
point-blank: "Were you that philosopher?
But the worst scrimmage I ever saw in the
School, with angry flashes and hot words, I hap-
pened to be the means of bringing on quite unin-
tentionally at the close of my last lecture. I was
276 THE ST- LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
talking about Thoreau's flight to Walden hardly
a mile distant from his best friend's door and from
the town itself, and I rather -made light of such a
minute separation from society. I know that I
was thinking of, but I did not mention, the far
more spacious and defiant withdrawal of Brock-
meyer to a hunter's life in the primitive forests
of "Warren County, Missouri, from which, however,
he also had to come back to civilization and earn
money for his gunpowder and some apparel, and
finally to win a wife. When I had finished, San-
born jumping up scowled at me in a sort of pale
tremble, and declared that he was there to defend
the good name of his friend Thoreau who was no
longer on this side to defend himself. Thereupon
he launched into a sharp damnatory criticism of
my whole Shakespearian course, and especially my
attempt to make fun of his townspeople. I felt
inclined merely to smile at him, for in his ire he
hardly grazed the mark ; but I noticed that Harris
began to get white about the lips, which I knew
of old to be his native war-paint; then he started
a warm defence of my views, of course without
their teaseful banter. Sanborn replied and Harris
retorted. It looked squally for a moment when
the two chief promoters of the School began to
knock their heads together in hot disputation.
Then the aged reverend form of Mr. Alcott rose
from his presidential chair, and with his calm
rather sepulchral voice and words allayed the tem-
pest, saying that he had in his life fled thrice from
THE CONCORD PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOL. 277
the established social order, and had thrice re-
turned, and that he still thought himself young
enough to play once more at least the same Shakes-
pearian Comedy of flight and return before he
passed over into Sleepy Hollow. Whereat we all
rippled into a smile at the old man's Yankee
humor and philosophic serenity, in spite of the
somewhat funereal close of his talk. The session
broke up in a love-feast ; still I rather thought that
this last speech of mine would be my last at Con-
cord.
Here I may remark concerning the conversa-
tional frequency of Sleepy Hollow in Concord, that
this beautiful cemetery seems to be inwoven into
the very life and speech of the citizenry. I never
knew an American town whose graveyard was such
a vital, intimate even artistic part of its daily
existence. Dead Concord in a way appears more
alive than living Concord. I suppose that Egypt
with its mummied cities must have been somewhat
similar, and perhaps China is, with its worship of
ancestors. At times there came over me in cer-
tain places of Concord the uncanny feeling with
which I wandered through the old Etruscan tombs
of Italy — all that is at present left of a great
people, of its glory and its civilization. Concord's
own folks are now saying, as I have been told, in
grim self-criticism, that Sleepy Hollow has become
their chief civic asset.
278 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
IV
After School
This first course of mine ended with the second
year of the Concord School which was now deemed
a success, and perhaps a permanent institute of
Philosophy in America, to be supplemented with
special application to various fields of knowledge.
Another year was enthusiastically agreed upon,
and some forecasts were given concerning its top-
ics. As for me, I had enjoyed the School's people,
who on the whole formed quite a little museum of
characters from all parts of the country, espe-
cially from New England, though the St. Louis
contingent seemed the largest, or at least the most
pronounced group in the audience, with Miss Blow
at its center. In one respect I had found myself
out: I must go back to St. Louis, at least for the
present.
A day or two after the close of the School, I
went over to the Orchard House to see how Harris
felt in his new situation, for the shock of the
change to a new vocation and to a new life must
have been somewhat volcanic. But I found him
stretched out at ease on his sofa, to which was at-
tached an apparatus, partly of his own contriv-
ance, I believe, whereby he could not only read but
also write while lying down. He took pride in
showing me the great convenience of the thing,
especially as he had a shifty knack at mechanical
tinkering amid all his philosophy. He advised me
AFTER SCHOOL. 279
to help myself to ease in a similar way when I
took pen in hand; but I had to say: "Not for me;
when I write, I cannot even sit down long, I have
to stand up and draw tense every nerve of my
body in response to the exertion of my brain;
otherwise what I scribble is utterly flabby. My
act of writing is a self-wrestling, perchance a
wrestle with the God unwilling, in which at most
I can hold out but a couple of hours or so at a time.
As you have started to attend church here in Con-
cord, which you did not in St. Louis, let me give
you a single article of my creed: to write is my
prayer. I have changed the old Saint's Latin
maxim Laborare est orare to this briefest breviary,
Scribere est orare."
Harris listened to my homily with added lan-
guor, as he was then letting himself loose from his
six weeks' strain of lecturing and other anxieties
connected with the School. He looked reminiscent
also, though he said nothing of the past. Soon,
however, he picked up the future: "When I get
a little rested I am going to finish my book on
Hegel's Logic, which I have planned these many
years, but I had not the time to write it out at
St. Louis. In order to compel myself to the task,
I have already promised it to a Chicago publisher.
This winter I shall have leisure." Thus Harris
at Concord was thinking of Hegel more intently
than ever. He said he purposed to make "that
German philosopher Hegel talk English." I said
nothing but felt the difference between his present
280 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
aim and mine.. Still I could not help wondering
at that "Book of Fate," in which he had become
so deeply entangled. Can he extricate himself by
writing? Here, however, we are able to foresay:
Not one but ten years will glide away before he
can ban that ever-threatening Tantalian Book into
print. And even then
But soon he started to talk of next year's School
which was likewise on his mind, and was not wholly
absent from mine, though I did not then know
whether I would be invited again ; I rather thought
not, after the Thoreau episode with Sanborn.
Nevertheless I had already made my plan. Harris
hinted that he would like me to give a course on
Hegel's Aesthetic, or better still, upon Hegel's
Science of Law and the State, saying in his per-
suasive tone of appreciation : "I know you have
especially studied those two subjects, have written
and lectured upon them, and moreover have
spouted (his word) them all around town in years
past, so that you can easily put your stuff to-
gether." I answered: "No, I cannot do that; I
am at present outside of Hegel and all his works,
and have been ever since my European Journey.
I live now in the Greek world, and I forecast I can
live nowhere else for some time to come, till I live
it out, teach it out, and write it out of myself.
Besides I have resolved to undertake no written
work in which my whole Self is not present ; I can
help you discuss at the School of Philosophy, but
I cannot produce on those old lines. I may get
AFTER SCHOOL. 281
back to Hegel again with the years, but not till
I have compassed my mind's most pressing charge.
And let me add, I am done with Shakespeare for
the present, though I may return to him likewise
after I have evolved some more." So I spoke in
a sort of prophetic banter, for evolution was rioting
in the air and in me personally at that time, which
had become decidedly Darwinian.
Harris shot at me through his spectacles with
his one eye, for he had but one, and exclaimed:
"Indeed!" Then he seemed to turn inwardly and
to talk with himself for about two minutes, as was
his frequent habit. The fact is he had never taken
full measure of the mental change wrought in me
by my trip abroad. But soon he was ready with
a smiling answer. "Very well; I shall suggest to
our Committee that you be invited to talk en
Greece next time." "Ye Gods," I shouted,
"that theme intoxicates me already; of course I
shall come back with all the Olympian effluences
I can command; I am going to court the Muse the
whole year for her inspiration." To speak un-
mythically, I was just then starting to write a
book (my Walk in Hellas) on the subject, and I
forethought I could test my salient chapters on
that Concord audience of philosophers.
Then I ventured to put to Harris a question
which I had often thought of asking him before,
but hardly dared: "The person who knows more
about the State and political philosophy, than any
282 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
other man within my purview is none other than
your nearest friend, our President of the old Philo-
sophical Society, Governor Brockmeyer. Both prac-
tical and theoretical knowledge he unites; he has
personal experience along with speculative study.
He is famed as the father of the present Constitu-
tion of Missouri. "Why not call him?" Harris
leaped up from his lounge and paced the floor: "It
cannot be done, it cannot be done! Yet he is the
genius of us all, and that is the fatality of our cause ;
he would be sure to spill over into some diablery, or
even profanity, which would shock all New Eng-
land. How the newspapers would gloat over such
a morsel of Concord Philosophy! As it is, they
find enough for caricature. I have told you what
I once heard him in company say in reply to Miss
Brackett — O No. ' ' I could only mumble : "I sup-
pose I shall have to agree with you ; I would simply
call our old common friend back to memory even
here in the land of the Puritans, to which that first
little seed-plume of his has been wafted. Anyhow
he has fled far off the other way, westward to the
copper-colored world down in the Indian Terri-
tory. ' ' I started for the door breathing an under-
toned laugh: "Yes, Concord has enough of the
Wild West in me if not too much, not to speak of
Brockmeyer." Harris shook my hand: "Indeed
you have made us remark you — bring with you next
time your serene Greeks balancing on their golden
mean, and possibly we shall be able to keep you."
One of those summer evenings I received an in-
AFTER SCHOOL. 283
vitation from Mrs. Lathrop (Rose Hawthorne) to
take a cup of tea under the trees of the old Haw-
thorne mansion, which she with her husband
(George Parsons Lathrop) was then occupying for
the season. Mementos of the famous novelist were
all around us, and anecdotes of the man and the
locality made the clock tick very rapidly. Mrs.
Elizabeth Thompson of New York, wealthy, philan-
thropic, embarrassed of riches, was sitting near me
at the table, and asked me now and then a ques-
tion about St. Louis which had the strange gift of
of producing such a multitude of philosophers, not
only men but women, for both sorts were in ample
evidence at Hillside Chapel. She had shown her
interest in the Concord School not only by erect-
ing the new building but by a still more heroic
test: she had attended those abstruse lectures on
philosophy, two a-day for six weeks. Rumor had
it that she purposed some permanent endowment.
At last she plumped out the question: "Why do
you not come East and stay with your friend Har-
ris and others?" The surface answer was ready:
"I am not yet philosopher enough to live without
bread." "That can be supplied in the East, too,"
was her reply. "Doubtless." I dropped, and with
it dropped the plan, if there was any, and I
dreamed that there was at the time. But she
never gave again to the School, never appeared
there again in the years afterward, as far as I
ever saw or heard. One of her last remarks to me
was : "Oh I have done so much harm with gifts of
284 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
my money." I did not tell her that she must be
very careful never to harm me in that way, and
she never did.
On a sunny afternoon of leisure, the day before
I intended to leave for St. Louis, Emery, Director
of the School, came to the Hotel and asked me
to take a final stroll with him down the Lexington
road. We happened to meet Mr. Emerson on the
way, and we spoke with him a moment about the
School, but he could not recall a single proper
name, even that of Mr. Alcott he stumbled over,
till Emery helped him out. At some question, he
exclaimed: "My reading has all gone from me,"
and he started on. I quizzed Emery: "Tell me
now, is your School to be Emerson's successor,
with Harris and Hegel at the head?" My com-
panion merely gave a little tee-hee for an answer
and branched off to another topic, saying: "You
had better make up your mind to follow your
friends and come here to live." We passed a
dwelling near the road, when he stopped and
pointed : ' ' See there ! you can buy that farm house
for less than it cost, with the land thrown in. You
see it does not pay to cultivate this meagre soil
in competition with the rich "Western prairie. I
know you have to earn your way; but you can
gain enough by your pen and by giving lessons
for your simple needs. We are going to have a
great revival of philosophy here, you ought not to
be absent. Look! standing at yonder window of
yours you could see in a single sweep of the eye
AFTER SCHOOL. 285
the houses of Emerson, of Harris (once Alcott's)
and of Hawthorne."
I gave him my answer, for the problem was not
new : ' ' My dear friend, you have not yet found
me quite, and here I may give you a little lesson
on me as subject. My field is now in the "West,
and my present passion is not philosophy, which
no longer satisfies me, though I may have nothing
as yet to take its place. I could not endure to
impart instruction for money merely and not for
myself, that is, for my ever-evolving selfhood. And
what is more crushing than the life of a scribbler
for magazines and newspapers ? I tell you, I have
to write not for my living but for my salvation.
Then I have found the town here not altogether
friendly to new-comers, being very well satisfied
with itself and its two centuries of ancestry; at
you philosophers it secretly turns up its nose, as
I have repeatedly glimpsed ; even the two of you
(Sanborn and Alcott) who have long dwelt on this
spot, are not besung heroical by Concord in my
hearing. I ponder what is going to become of the
fresh arrivals, Harris and yourself, for you both
have invested mind and money here. But tell me,
ye avenging Powers, what would be my fate on
this spot?"
I intended to heat Emery to a hot shot with
these warm words, still he kept cool in his answer :
"I know all that, and have felt it and more, but
such feeling is transitory. Then you are not going
to come back next year?" "Yes I am, I shall
286 T H E ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
stick to you, for the thing means much to me, espe-
cially if I can rise out of the prairial "West to the
mountainous East once every year, and make some
kind of synthesis of the two. And I am eager to
watch the outcome of this philosophical renascence
when transplanted from St. Louis to Concord."
Having come back to the Hotel we parted. Here
I may be permitted to say in advance that Emery
after some years will quit Concord and his new
home, will go back to the West and resume busi-
ness at Quincy. And somewhat later Harris will
leave for "Washington to take charge of his new
office.
Still another little adventure before I could get
out of town crossed my path. I was always fond
of diving into the undercurrents of subliminal Con-
cord, where I might catch what the folk was think-
ing and gossping about, and consult that truly
American oracle, called Public Opinion. Such an
oracle was quite accessible in the popular workers
of the place — the artisan, the tradesman, and the
neighboring farmer. It was soon evident that
Concord had its own peculiar town-soul different
from any other I had ever known in my experience,
and so it presented to me a new phasis of village
psychology, the true unit of all social psychology
in America. I never found a foreigner in the
place a real inhabitant, though some Irish laborers
lived in their shanties near the railroad on which
they were employed. And all the residents, at
least the ones that counted, had a long pedigree,
AFTER SCHOOL. 287
reaching back generations and traceable still in
the surrounding graveyards which thus kept up a
continuous ghostly line of memories of the past,
and created a sentiment or rather a consciousness
impossible in the new settlements of the West,
where I was reared. For instance, Reverend Peter
Bulkley was founder of Concord about two cen-
turies and a half before the School of Philosophy,
and still there was a Bulkley and a Reverend on
the ground (not merely in it) and I talked with
him (a delightful man by the way). This town
had ensconced within its small space a more unique
individuality, had made more history, had been the
home of more persons of distinction than any other
community of its size in the country. And well
did Concord know it. Hence a very pronounced
local pride, which could become in extreme cases,
arrogance. It had its good right to a super-abun-
dant share of self-esteem, and I found it could
easily be brought to assert its God-given right, as
does its typical hero, that minute-man on the bat-
tle-field near the bridge. Hence it comes that Con-
cord may well be acclaimed the most traditional
town in the United States — which fact was for me
a good experience and a new discipline.
But I started to tell my final adventure, which
took place in a barber shop, the well-known whis-
pering-gallery of the town's gossip. The razor-
master knew me for a stranger by my straw-hat,
and by my un- Yankee accent of the Buckeye-
Hoosier twang, and the rest he could guess, since
288 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
about all the strange faces and costumes then in
the streets, belonged to the philosophers, men and
especially women. With the first soap-splash of
his brush, his tongue began to lather me freely:
"Lively times down at your church, I hear; broke
up in a spat ending in a regular fisticuff; a fellow
from Missouri, a right-down border-ruffian, such
as that State sent out to Kansas several years ago,
tackled Frank Sanborn in a tiff, till it came to the
knock-down. " " Indeed ! that is news ! But which
one got licked?" asked the befoamed shavee with
an eager twitch up from his suds, whereupon he
caught the answer: "What! weren't you there?
They called each other bad names, the women ran
out screaming as the two made for each other, at
last old man Alcott rose up from his chair and
parted them, and then adjourned the School maybe
for good." The fascinated listener though under
the knife queried: "So there is to be no School
next year?" "Can't tell. But I know the things
people are buzzing round our corners: when those
borderers invade us again, we shall be on guard;
we shall have our new Penitentiary ready to give
them a free lunch over by the railroad station on
the other side of town, as a kind of makeweight
against your Hillside Chapel of philosophers."
Somehow thus, perhaps not exactly bespattered me
with his chatter the grimly humorous beard-sur-
geon as he slashed his scalpel defiantly about my
throat, but without injury.
Such was the living commentary to that ton-
BACK TO ST. L0VI8. 289
sorial work of art, with whose last touch I sprang
from the chair, threw down my dime and rushed
for my train: "Good-bye, I shall see you next
year, if they don't put me in stripes meantime."
The Concord Penitentiary alluded to in the fore-
going conversation was an actual fact, and it is still
busy in its line of work (I suppose) and full of in-
mates ; but the Hillside Chapel on the other side of
town in the Emerson quarter, has been emptied of
all its original folk for many a year, not, however
into the rival State-paid institution, even with its
free lunch and schooling, as far as I know. But
hold ! there may have been one exception among
the philosophers ! Yes, I remember — but, indul-
gent reader, you will have to wait, or turn over
several pages ahead for relief, if your curiosity
gets to hurting you.
Back to St. Louis
Thus two strands of this Classical Epoch of mine
have started at St. Louis and at Concord, and will
continue to spin themselves out for some five years
longer. So much I can foresay, looking backwards
now; but looking forwards then, when I reached
home in the fall of 1880, I could see nothing but
the blank pathless cloud of futurity, into which I
had to take a plunge for life. Only one prescribed
part I knew beforehand: I was to teach in the
High School my routine of instruction. But after
290 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
one year this remaining shred of my old vocation
was torn away ; I had quit it and still more it had
quit me; so I gave myself up wholly to the spon-
taneous promptings of the time, as they kept
knocking at my heart.
Classes increased more than ever; I soon had all
I could attend to aright, for I sought to teach
creatively ; mechanical drill was reduced to its low-
est terms. I was groping for the higher educa-
tional institute, quite beyond the traditional aca-
demic establishment though at the time I had con-
sciously no purpose of the sort. And the rage for
such instruction persisted still in the city; that
was the riddlesome event; for these classes were
not confined merely to my own field of work, but
bubbled up quite everywhere and for everything,
planned and planless, under all sorts of leaders.
This fact veritably startled outside observers who
came to the city with their fore-ordained pre-con-
ceptions of us and of themselves. Mr. John Albee,
disciple of Emerson, and literary friend of Harris
from the East, could not shake off his surprise
even after several weeks of lecturing and visiting
among us; he kept repeating to me at our last in-
terview: "it is phenomenal! I never saw the like;
everything here has smack of your St. Louis Move-
ment ; I read some of your philosophical lingo in a
leading article of yesterday's newspaper; I have
not talked with any woman here yet who has not
philosophized me beyond my depth. A day or two
ago I went with Miss Blow to one of her kinder-
BACK TO ST. LOUIS. 291
gartens to see the children play, and she so over-
whelmed me with her ponderous Hegelian nomen-
clature in explaining a little game of the babies
that I heard my brain-pan crack like a pistol shot.
How phenomenal, yes, most phenomenal."
It is not necessary to give all the variations and
the eccentricities of these studies. I have no record
even of my own circle except some memory peaks.
Enough it will be to say that the central work for
me and mine just then was Homer, who suddenly
gushes up the original well-head not only of Classi-
cal but of all European Literature. We took in-
deed other branches by the side, other poetry all
the way down to Keats. But we turned at the
main start back to the Iliad and Odyssey, the two
nourishing breasts of the beautiful young Greek
mother of our civilization. It was our first object
to become acquainted with her in her primal crea-
tive shape.
"With Homer, indeed, I had long been on good
reading terms, so I thought when I opened the
present course. Far back in my Freshman year
at College, I had pushed beyond the prescribed
four books of the Odyssey of the regular curriculum
and had read the entire original text, and dipped
also into that of the Iliad. Moreover I had never
allowed my knowledge of the Homeric dialect to
pass out of mind. Still I found now, on looking
more deeply into the poet creative, that I had never
really seen Homer. And that is not all. I went
to the vast pile of comment of every description in
292 THE ST. LOUTS MOVEMENT— PATtT SECOND.
the libraries, and thus I picked up many needful
facts about him and his world, but the poet in his
all-embracing, well-ordered wholeness I could not
find, in spite of or possibly because of the mul-
titudinous particulars. What is still more strange,
I could discover no adequate guide who could show
me how his works were built, who could lead me
into and through the architectonic of his two spa-
cious, noble edifices. So I began at this time one
of the most labyrinthine but fascinating pursuits
of my life — the quest of the architect Homer in
Homer. At first I tried to believe with German
Wolf and his disciples, whom I studied with in-
dustry in the original, that there was no inner
genetic order in the two poems, that they were a
collection of ballads more or less skillfully spliced
together. But I soon found myself in revolt against
such a view, and felt more deeply than ever their
spirit's unity. At the same time it was my ulti-
mate faith that this spirit must have its distinct
organization in the poems, and the year's search
was to uncover and to express this poetic struc-
ture.
While thus exploring the primordial organism
of Homer's poetry, and jotting my results down in
scraps, I was at the same time moulding into shape
my exploration of the primordial elements of Greek
life in their earliest germs. As already indicated,
a chief incentive to my Classical Itinerary was to
reach the first sources of Homer himself, as he
lived and spoke, in the still living and speaking. I
BACK TO ST. LOUIS. 293
wanted to get back to the very well-head of the
world-civilizing Greek Tradition, and listen to it
flowing from its original fount of the heart into
the primitive word. Then I desired to make it
talk English through the lips and the types, in re-
sponse to my own deepest need of expression and
impartation. Hence in a few months after home-
coming, I had my Delphic Days in print, whose
object is to poetize that old Greek world as still
alive in the modern. Then I started to give the
same theme a different form, that of prose, which
records my personal experiences during my travels
through rural Greece. Thus the Walk in Hellas
rapidly coalesced into its present shape, a book
which has its own independent life, but may also be
taken as a kind of living commentary on Homer.
Another cognate work I conceived at this time,
which, however, took many suns to ripen fully,
namely a life of Homer, constructed out of the
personal hints and presuppositions which lurk un-
consciously imbedded in his two poems. All these
books of mine were for me at least a resurrection
of antique Homeric life into the living present, or
a rejuvenescence of the oldest poet into youngest
America.
But the chief Homeric incident of the present
season occurred in a small class which was held in
the private parlor of a well-known lady, who had
assembled about a dozen of her acquaintances for
the purpose of taking a good long draught from
that earliest fountain of Literature, Homer's Iliad.
294 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
We had already taken one or two lessons when to
my great surprise Miss Susan E. Blow entered the
room unexpectedly, having been brought by one of
her friends who was a member. She had only
come for a single visit, as I understood the situa-
tion. I suppose that she might be deemed already
the most distinguished woman of the city, having
done a famous educational deed in the establish-
ment of the Kindergarten which had begun to
sprout and spread from St. Louis as a center over
the country, chiefly through her energy and ability,
even if it had been known elsewhere in America
before her time. But the Kindergarten, though
her main and deepest attachment, was not her sole
interest. She had studied philosophy under Har-
ris, from whom she had learned the Hegelian
thought, and she could employ its subtleties and
their peculiar technique with fluency and insight.
Theology, especially in its Calvinistic form — she
was raised a Presbyterian — I heard Harris declare
to be one of her profound attainments, though she
never presented that side to me, whom, as gossip
once whispered me, she was inclined to believe as
too Greek, if not altogether a heathen backslider.
Hence my astonishment at her sudden appearance
in a Homer class of mine.
Miss Blow may well be acclaimed the greatest
public woman that St. Louis has hitherto sent
forth; she has to her credit the largest, most en-
during work; hence her life belongs to the public.
She was not a member of our Philosophical Society,
BACK TO ST. LOUIS. 295
which did not admit ladies, at least I never saw
a woman present at any of our regular meet-
ings, though they were elsewhere and otherwise
the decided majority. That, however, counted for
little. Miss Blow was above all others, the fe-
male representative of the group by her talent, by
her knowledge, and especially by her deeds. In
fact she was at her deepest a will character rather
than speculative, and she showed herself such fin-
ally by her career, and I hold likewise by her fate.
Still she philosophized also, ardently and pro-
foundly, not, however, on independent lines, but
like the rest of us, after Hegel interpreted by
Harris.
I first heard of Miss Blow shortly after the close
of the Civil War at a dancing club composed of
young gentlemen and young ladies, of which she
and her sister were members, being especially prom-
inent as daughters of a distinguished Congressman
and Southern Unionist, Henry T. Blow. I re-
member well that by these golden youths she was
privately set down as too bookish, as displaying
quite too much erudition for a woman. The com-
plaint was interesting to me as it could not justly
be made against a single one of these young fel-
lows, nor against any other of these young ladies
as far as my information extended. Thus Miss
Blow already at the age of twenty, more or less,
had won a certain unique distinction in her own
circle, and, on account of her family's prominence,
in the community.
296 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PABT SECOND.
Another reflection of Miss Blow in her earlier
years came to me by chance in 1868, when I was
staying for the summer in South St. Louis, enjoy-
ing a little villa with my wife on the heights above
the Mississippi. In some way we happened to be-
come acquainted with a trained German pedagogue,
somewhat given to beer but of keen intelligence,
who had been a private instructor in the Blow
family at Carondelet. He repeatedly dilated upon
the surprising ability of the oldest daughter, Miss
Susie, in her study of German Literature, of which
she had read under his tuition some of the chief
authors. The time was that peculiar era of St.
Louis already set forth, when the whole city was
Teutonizing, and she evidently shared in the com-
mon trend. He, however, had his German criticism
of her educational bias, declaring that for a woman
her culture was too reflective, too philosophical,
too much inclined to the abstract and logical
rather than to the poetic and emotional. Another
fact he let drop by the way: he once happened to
meet at the house the clergyman of the family,
who had been summoned to give spiritual advice
and consolation to the daughter, who was in some
great religious crisis of life through which she was
passing with no little distress. This somewhat pri- .
vate matter is to be noticed, since it has its signifi-
cance in her public career and character, as well as
in its relation to my own future literary work.
No sooner had Miss Blow entered the before-
mentioned parlor and had taken her seat beside
BACK TO ST. LOUIS. 297
her friend, than every eye in the room seemed sud-
denly pulled toward her, announcing her at once
to be the center of that company. She had a com-
pelling personality which would ray itself out into
her environment, wherein she showed herself as a
kind of sun both through her secret attraction and
her very manifest light. The lesson had already
begun and was proceeding in its usual way ; but I
know that I immediately directed my look and my
talk toward her, she became at once the queen of
that audience. Yet not by any display of jewels
and wardrobe; she was the worst dressed woman
of that well-gowned company, as I distinctly recol-
lect; her hat lay somewhat askew, her hair was
riotous and her shoes were unshined ; I thought I
noticed our elegant hostess inspect her with
glances betokening criticism. What of it? Here
was the heroine, and everybody present in spite of
a little female jealousy perhaps, acknowledged
secretly her supremacy — I the teacher being therein
foremost. She knew well her peculiar power ; when
I aimed my eye-shot at her — and I could not help
it — following it up with my words, her naturally
red face turned redder with a defiant smile, and
flashed a response which I traced thus as writ in
her features: Come on, I am ready.
Now it so happened that the lesson turned upon
that primary problem of the Iliad, the quarrel be-
tween the hero Achilles and the leader Agamem-
non. I went on to expand the thought which lay
yeasting in this vigorous, elemental poetry, and
298 THE ST- LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
which gave to it eternal life, so that we are study-
ing it today in St. Louis more than 2500 years
later and on the other side of the globe. It is the
perennial conflict between the individual of greater
talent or perchance genius and the ordinary mortal
who is the prescribed wielder of authority. Be-
hold, then, the original divinely born man without
dominion (Achilles) versus the regular ruler with
his transmitted right (Agamemnon). Such is the
collision of all ages between the individual and the
institution, between this one single great Man and
associated Man, here represented by the everlasting
Achilles and the everlasting Agamemnon. I must
have said, for it was already a sort of hobby with
me : This opening strife preluded by the old poet
is far stronger to-day than it ever was before the
walls of ancient Troy, and it is going to be yet
more intensified in the future. Hence antique
Homer never gets antiquated, but keeps growing
in significance and magnitude, when we truly come
to know him, and speak with him face to face. I
tell you that all of us, you and I too, have a more
or less vivid lightning flash of this very conflict in
our own souls just now. And this is the problem
of us all : What am I to do with my unappreciated
Self now rasping with or perchance overwhelmed
by some form of the established Order?
Landed upon this rock of utterance the lesson
closed, and the members rustled their wraps for
starting home. I could not help watching Miss
Blow during the talk, for she always commanded
BACK TO ST. LOUIS. 299
the personal attention of every eye in her own
right. If I mistake not, I saw her press her lips
more firmly together when I spoke of Authority's
wrong done to Heroship, and the danger thereof;
did she even clench her little fist a little? There
was certainly some response, the deeper cause of
which I then knew nothing about. ' Indeed when I
noted her reaction on the lesson, I naturally grew
more emphatic in speech, and laid it on harder,
with hotter illustrations. Also there ran a warm
streak of my own confession through the talk, for
I had begun to feel at the High School what I
deemed an unjust nagging of me from the powers
above, and had already started to whisper to my-
self: I too shall withdraw to my tent when the
time comes, I am myself an unheroic Achilles.
As I was passing out of the door, Miss Blow
stepped up to me, and asked: "May I join your
class in Homer?" "Certainly," said I, "glad to
have you; and next time you can speak out your
interrogation, for I saw its mark to-day dancing
all over your face." "Yes I know," she an-
swered, "my features have a bad habit of tattling
on me, especially when something touches me in-
wardly. And I could not help noting the scope
you give to Literature." Thus she parried me off
to a less internal topic, and bowed herself across
the door-sill.
After the next lesson or two Miss Blow came to
me with a new request: "I heard you speak of
Sophocles in your remarks by way of illustration;
300 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
especially you impressed me with Antigone's con-
flict. "Would you take a class comprised of my ad-
vanced Kindergartners, some ten or a dozen of
them, in that old Greek dramatist ? Come and have
dinner with me this evening, and we shall talk the
matter over." I assented, and then walked away
somewhat stunned at the three new conjunctures
which her interview brought up to my mind. First
was her invitation to dine at her supposedly ex-
clusive table; secondly, I wondered at what she
meant by choosing that Greek author Sophocles,
whom I had never taught in a class hitherto. But
the third incident turned out altogether the farth-
est-reaching in my life, for it brought me into con-
tact with Kindergartners, of whom this was my
starting experience personally, though I had often
heard of them and their distinctive work in the
city. Harris had brought about its introduction
into the Public Schools, and thus given to it the
first great center for its propagation, which was
furthered by the zeal and commanding talent of
Miss Blow. She was now in her best years, and
showed her aspiring and limit-transcending char-
acter by the fact that to her pedagogy (Froebel)
and to her philosophy (Hegel after Harris) she
had become eager to add literature as a new dis-
cipline, even if she knew many facts about it be-
fore.
At the dinner I was her only guest beside two
other members of her family. As she had traveled
a good deal in Europe, and had been at Rome, our
BACK TO ST. LOUTS. 301
talk began at once to push for that famous city of
which she showed good knowledge. But soon I was
on my Greek rambles again, in which her interest
seemed to increase to enthusiasm. Hereafter she
will react from this Greek trend, deeming it and
me "too heathenish." But at present the longing
must have come over her to know and to be her-
self somewhat of the Classical Renascence, which
differs indeed from her Calvinistic Regeneration,
though both were at bottom phases or stages of one
great world-religious experience of the race. Also
I spoke of the artistic unity and completeness of
Greek History, with its two supreme historians,
Herodotus and Thucydides. "These also we must
have in our class," she said, with a note of exultant
will-power, I thought. "But first let us take the
poets, as they are the forerunners and the prophets
of Hellas realized, ' ' was my response. ' ' Certainly ;
then to-morrow afternoon our class will start with
Sophocles in the board-room of the old Polytechnic
Building;" such was her appointment, as I passed
out the door.
This little unstylish dinner I deem worth the
words since out of it sprang a very important life-
line of mine, which interwove my brain and tongue
and heart with the Kindergarten for more than
forty years. Miss Blow held of the larger St. Louis
Movement, and she must have her picture taken
and set in its gallery, of which she was decidedly
the most prominent woman, being too the greatest
of our philosophic ladies, who were the majority.
302 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
She rose to be a distinguished public character; as
writer, as lecturer, and especially as controversial-
ist she challenged publicity, and she is of such im-
portance that she deserves to be seen in her great-
ness as well as in her limitation, for she had her
human share of both. Miss Blow, accordingly, I
commemorate as one of the four main personages
whose careers more or less mutually interlace and
unfold in the same general direction, and together
constitute the chief propelling forces of the St.
Louis Movement in its sweep toward ;its goal.
Hence she alongside the other leaders is to have her
monument erected in this book, as the author sees
her and is able to limn her character's features.
VI
Back to Concord
'Summer of 1881 it was when I again, with an
unusual uplift of spirit, turned my face from our
hot and flaccid Southern city toward breezy and
stimulating Concord with its School of Philosophy.
The year had been good to me in St. Louis, full of
surprises and fresh outlooks; it seemed one long
spring of a burgeoning young world, still to flower
and to bear fruit. I was forty years old, a slow
grower but seemingly a persistent; what I was to
do, if anything worth while, remained yet to be
done. Still I think I may look back at this year as
a starter on several new roads along which I was to
travel the rest of my days. I had tapped a youth-
BACK TO CONCORD. 303
ful life for me in old Homer, whom I had known
about, but never known, in former years. And yet
further, I had caught many a glimpse of Homer's
.supreme poetic succession down to the present, that
of the Literary Bibles, as I began to call them,
though probably I was not the first to give that
name. But the thought had come to stay by me
and unfold to its fulfillment through many a future
season. Such was the swelling germ of this year
which time will bring to full ripening. Then my
new vocation had definitely started, giving me a
moderate recompense for bread, but also economic
independence for the pursuit of my Super-voca-
tion, which I myself had to pay for as the price of
my soul's redemption. I resigned even my half-
day at the High School, the last traditional shred of
my old profession in a prescriptive institution, for
I remained a free lance all the rest of my life,
even when I taught in my own College.
During this year likewise I had been wandering
back and living over my Greek outing from Athens
to Delphi, the written notes and the ever-gushing
memories of which I had been kneading into a
series of chapters, originally lectures, which be-
came moulded to a final shape in the already named
Walk in Hellas. This book played a sort of musi-
cal undertone to my labors of the entire year — a
character which, I hope it continues to preserve
and to inspire even now amid the far-away retiring
years. The Classical Journey was still very young
in my soul, being as yet only a biennial remin-
304 TEE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
iscence in age. Somehow it seemed to strike a per-
fect chord with the Homer lessons, each not only
supporting but attuning the other. Thus I passed
a happy, and what is far more, a creative year.
But I must not forget the counterstrokes. Of
the early group of fellow-workers I stood nearly
alone; the older members of the St. Louis Philo-
sophical Society had taken flight; I have already
told of the departure of our Secretary and of our
President, the great well-known Prime-Movers.
About this time our sole clerical member, Dr. R.
A. Holland, quit us for Chicago, somewhat disil-
lusioned, I think, in accord with the city's Great
Disillusion, which was already announcing itself
in our civic spirit. He was one of our ablest, with
keen philosophic penetration; but the field of his
highest originality was, in my opinion, not the re-
flective but the imaginative, with his unique power
of metaphorical expression. That is, his gift was
the poetic, even if he did not versify. I think too
that he, more than any other member, helped make
us philosophers respectable through his social and
ministerial position, as well as through his ability.
For after all is said apologetically, the most of
us were inclined to be vagabonds, or to be re-
garded as such by the stolidly standardized
community. Dr. Holland liked Emerson, the
grand defier of tradition, and he himself often de-
fied tradition, even that of his own pulpit. Emer-
son's picture I once saw hanging in his study.
It was a daring thing in him to give a course of
BACK TO CONCORD. 3Q5
lectures on Shakespeare Sunday evenings in his
church, despite all protest, asserting that the Liter-
ary Bible (as he once told me) had also its evangel
which he was not going to neglect or abandon to
the ungodly, nor yet to the unchurchly — a lenient
hit at me, I thought. Later he threw open his
guild-room to our Literary Schools which were
held at St. Louis in conjunction with Chicago. He
also made his pilgrimage to Concord, being a warm
friend and admirer of Dr. Harris. As an Epis-
copalian clergyman and a St. Louis philosopher,
he visited the Oxford group of Hegelians, with
great mutual satisfaction, though the details he
never gave me. After a considerable detour of the
spiritual shepherd, around to Chicago and then to
New Orleans, he came back to St. Louis, where he
built a new church when his old one had burned
down. On my return to the city, which took place
a good many years later, I found him still at work
in his philosophic-poetic harness and had some pre-
cious evenings with him before he passed away.
But picking up the stitch that I let drop a page
or two since, I may begin again with the remark
that I reached Concord in good trim one summer
morning, and in the afternoon I found myself
floating down the river in a light boat, and pluck-
ing the lilies which shot up into a kind of saluting
nosegay along the rather sluggish stream. Now
and then I would surprise a muskrat taking his
meal among the bulrushes, or a mud-turtle sun-
ning himself on an old log from which he would
306 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
give a sudden flop into the water. I dreamed I
saw several of Thoreau's birds of which a little
covey took flight as I landed on Egg rock, which
seven years before I had visited in company with
Mr. Emerson and Mr. Alcott to attend a Concord
picnic. Thence I sailed down past the old battle
field and tried to catch some whiff of the once
evoked "Spirit that made those heroes dare" a cen-
tury ago and more. Thus I sought to steep my
soul in the memories of traditional Concord, which
are the town's most exhilarating atmosphere.
Again back in my hotel, I found a note on my
table inviting me to a sociable at the Old Manse,
Miss Ripley being still the hostess. With all these
ancient names and scenes buzzing through my head
I seemed to be living over a tale of long ago, not in
aged Greece, but just here in young America. Of
course I went to the party, and drank a cup of tea
in the former home of two supreme literary geniuses
of our new world, Emerson and Hawthorne. As I
went peeping through its rooms with the guests,
Tradition herself rose from every corner to salute
us. A strange blend of emotions haunted me that
night into dreamland, for I could not help feeling
some pulsations in common between Concord and
Athens.
Next morning I sauntered down the road to the
Hillside Chapel, with some forty or fifty people,
nearly all of whom were new to me and to the
School. Still I recognized a few of last year's faces.
The lecture was by Harris and contained some of
BACK TO CONCORD. 307
his heaviest philosophic cannonading for about an
hour, whereupon all the elements present, Transcen-
dental, Platonic, Hegelian, were turned loose into
a discussion, weaving a many-colored metaphysical
web of the universe in which we all were gossamered
for another hour. In the evening my talk came on,
by way of contrast, not philosophic but easily de-
scriptive, with occasional frolicksome reflections.
I took my listeners by the hand and led them from
Athens over Mount Pentelicus to Marathon, where
I made a speech in the wineshop to the assembled
Greeks. Then followed an excursion to the Mara-
thonian plain, including a brief account of the
battle there fought, with side glances at the Con-
cord fight for the sake of comparison, the one her-
alding perchance Europe's historic independence,
the other America's — at which point several tiny
hands in the audience came together with a tiny
clap, the act of some Concord ladies, I conjecture.
Such was the Greek-attuned overture of my second
course, audibly harmonious if not very boisterous.
Similarly programmed the gracious sunshiny
days of Concord's summer come and go with many
a little episode heroic for a moment perhaps, but
hardly worthy of special fame. On the whole I
believe this third year to have been the culmina-
tion of the School, its best and happiest year. I
attended three later seasons, but there never was
quite the same upspring, never the same sponta-
neous overflow of enthusiasm. The two main
threads of the School were now spun alongside of
308 THE ST. L0VT8 MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
each other by those two ardent philosophic spin-
ners, Dr. Harris and Dr. Jones, propagandists of
Hegel and of Plato respectively. Between these
two speakers, as well as between their doctrines,
there was felt to be a gently throbbing undercur-
rent of rivalry, amicable but still somewhat fric-
tional, which made perceptibly warmer the inter-
est in the cold abstractions of metaphysics. Each
leader had his followers in the audience, and both
sides kept watching intently the tournament, yet
with impartial sympathy determined to give the
palm to the best man. Of course there was no pub-
lic prize, and no open challenge, still there pulsed
a tacit emulation which at last crowned the victor
in secret eulogy. I am sure I often heard the
whispered decision in the final weeks: Dr. Harris
has taken intellectual possession of the School. This
was not merely my judgment, though it was mine
too ; it was the general concensus of the best of all
those present. It seemed to me that the last day
of the session wound up with an unspoken but dis-
tinctly felt award of victory.
Now the significant fact must not be omitted that
both these leaders were from the West philosoph-
ically, wherever might have been their respective
birthplaces. Thence both had come to the East,
to the very home-town of America's most original
thinking, now grown somewhat aged, in a kind of
hidden hope for the future of philosophic succes-
sion. Three summers the contest had already lasted,
with an increasing, even if smothered intensity ; this
BACK TO CONCORD. 309
third round of six weeks (I think) was culminant
and triumphant, if I have guaged it aright. Dr.
Jones will come once more, and perform worthy-
service in his cause, but he is soon to withdraw;
at the final sessions of the School he will be no-
ticeably absent, which must be deemed an unbal-
anced loss. And we shall see that the School itself
will begin later to pass out of Philosophy, or at
least to bolster it with another discipline.
Moreover this third year is to be the last in
which the School will know the presence of the
town's first and greatest Transcendentalist. The
following Spring (1882) Emerson passes away,
and somewhat later in the same year Alcott has a
stroke of apoplexy which he survives, though quite
broken in speech and mind. Thus the link which
connects the School with the great Past, seems
shattered. Still some members of the early Tran-
scendental movement are alive and will give occa-
sional addresses, for instance Dr. Hedge and Dr.
Bartol ; also I remember the discourses of two
ladies, Mrs. Cheney and Mrs. Howe, with their
reminiscences of the Yankee golden age and its
Worthies, especially their apotheosis of its heroine,
Margaret Fuller.
Meanwhile I continued to wander through
Greece with my hearers sitting in the Hillside
Chapel for an hour each evening. I rode over
Parnassus, the seat of the Muses, on the back of a
donkey, at which passage I looked up from my
page and dared extemporize: "Not the first time
310 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
that feat has been accomplished by a poet without
going to Greece at all — something of the sort I may
have done myself. ' ' Only two of the philosophers,
as far as I observed, tittered a little in response;
but a heavy-booted countryman, who seemed to
have just dropped in at the door from his hay-
field, gave one horse-laugh which drew the whole
audience to him away from me. I found out after-
ward that he was a neighboring farmer who had
come there for his wife, as she was a philosopher.
Nor did I fail to show to my little company the
genuine rill of Castalia at Delphi, the real thing
itself, the famed fountain of the Sisters Nine, in
which I had to confess how I saw the women of the
nearby village bending over, not as undraped God-
desses in the bath, but washing their soiled linen
and even trampling it with naked feet and shanks,
above the knees sometimes visible. Still I did not
give up the quest; I waited till the stream had
purified itself by running off, and the next day I
took my symbolic dip in that pellucid spring of
the poets, an actual palpable spring by the way-
side. <So I prattled how I laved my hands and
face in it, then thrust my head down into its little
gushes and drank of their first bubbles, and would
have laid me flat upon its kissing ripples, but I
hardly dared make myself so purely and barely
statuesque before the passing townsfolk. Still I
pulled off shoes and stockings, and piously waded
the limpid shrine of Castaly's Muse in a kind of
prayer. A fanatical, heathenish action, I know;
BACK TO CONCORD. 3H
still it made me feel happier at the time, and it
even now pleasures me in this classical reminiscence
of the far foregone.
But what means this ribboned envelope which is
put into my hand one morning? It contains an
invitation to read and talk about my Marathonian
experience next afternoon at three o'clock near the
North Bridge. Yes, yes, I shall go, I am only too
glad. At the appointed hour I stroll down the
road past the Old Manse toward the well-known
locality, and find a new audience seated in the open
under the trees which form a leafy overhead
against the summer sun. The place by the river
bank levels straight down to the Concord battle-
field, and naturally all sorts of comparisons, near
and remote, political and historical, were drawn be-
tween the Greek and the American far-trumpeted
war-overtures. "My dear lofty friend, the World-
Spirit, was present," I emphasized, "at both bat-
tles, though more than two thousand years apart.
I tell you in all faith, the Gods fought along in
each of these twin conflicts, more or less visible to
their respective worshipers, heathen and christian.
Old Herodotus records that at Marathon a new
deity appeared, called Echetlus or the worshipful
hero with the plowshare, image of the fighting far-
mer of ancient Greece slaying the invader of his
sacred soil with his native weapon. To him, in that
land of divine sculpture, many a statue rose up out
of the faith of his folk. Look yonder just across
the bridge ; can you not behold the modern Yankee
312 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
farmer Echetlus leaning on his plow at his Mara-
thon battle with his native weapon in hand ready-
to meet his approaching foe? You call him the
Minute Man ; to me he now rises up the old Greek
Echetlus resurrected, for I am still to-day at
Marathon, and I dream that you are there too."
As I stretched out arm and forefinger in the
given direction toward that sculptured Yankee
plowman with his gun, the little company, nearly
all of them Concordites, sprang to their feet and
centered more searching glances possibly than ever
before upon the most familiar figure in their town,
as if to see in him also the Marathonian hero, who
fired that strangely universal shot heard not only
round the world but down time. Thus closed the
afternoon in a kind of benediction which linked to-
gether Marathon and Concord. And as I glanced
up at the Old Manse on my way homeward, I could
not help seeing the good old Revolutionary min-
ister, Dr. Ripley, standing with uplifted hand at
his attic window from which he is said to have
watched the battle across the meadows on April
19th, 1775.
The next evening was the last talk of my course
at the Hillside Chapel, where another stimulating
co-incidence prodded me with a fresh surprise. A
new character entered my horizon unexpectedly,
so that before me in the audience were three men,
all Americans, who, independently of one another,
in wide-apart places of the country, driven by
their own spiritual needs, had found in ancient
BACK TO CONCORD. 313
Plato, especially in the form of Neo-Platonism,
their supreme truth, their satisfactory explanation
of the Universe, their divine Order. Dr. Jones of
Jacksonville, Ills., and Mr. Alcott of Concord,
Mass., both often already mentioned, held mainly
to this world- view; but they are now reinforced
by the third, Thomas M. Johnson, just arrived
from Osceola on the Osage in Missouri, most apos-
tolic and single-hearted of all modern Neo-Platon-
ists. This was to me a stunning philosophic con-
junction, to which I deemed I owed some recogni-
tion from my old Greek experience.
Accordingly in my talk I narrated to the au-
dience, but particularly to these three congenial
souls, my haunting reminiscence, doctrine dear to
the Platonist, of a former life as I ran down a lit-
tle knoll at Marathon. I could not there disen-
chant me of the impression that I was an Athenian
Hoplite or heavy-armed soldier on that battle-field
more than twenty-three centuries ago, and, reach-
ing the top of a certain hillock I felt me irresistibly
pushed to repeat my old Marathonian charge down
that slope at double-quick against the Oriental foe.
"I confess to you, my friends," I spake, turning to
the Platonic trio in succession "your Plato's idea
of pre-existence and re-incarnation became to me
an overpowering reality for about two hours, but
I was unable to bring it away with me from Mara-
thon. Still on that spot I could not help feeling
that I had been there before; the mountains, the
streams, the fields with their rainbow wavelets of
314 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
poppies rippling in the breeze were an old familiar
presence, though this was my first conscious glance
at them in this life. I seemed to be re-enacting my
ancient actions, I stooped and picked up the same
white pebble thousands of years ago, I reached and
plucked the same flower, and I drank at the same
gurgle of the rivulet. Still more deeply I felt the
Greek hate of the Orient which would enslave Hel-
las; I refused to cross in my travels the dividing
seas to Asia, but turned away with repugnance
from its people and its spirit, and then ran back
home."
I did not obtain from my Neo-Platonic friends
any response concerning my strange experience ex-
cept a smile of non-committal, as I construed it
after one questioning eye-shot. Hence I hurried
off spurring my discourse at once to Delphi, where
on a beautiful April day I climbed again the Par-
nassus and looked over the far stretches of the sil-
ver-green sparkle of the olive orchards for the last
time. There I perched myself upon a small emin-
ence and experienced what I have already called
my Delphic Moment, which gave a sort of closing
consecration to my Classical Itinerary, and under
whose urge I hymned my little versified valedictory
to Hellas, as I turned my front westward. This I
read as my final paragraph of the course, and made
it into a good-bye to Concord, when I, facing
about, again set my look toward the Mississippi.
Let the stout-hearted reader hunt up and peruse
that elegiac farewell once more on a previous page,
THE ST. LOUIS KINDERGARTEN CLASS. 315
if he thinks he can stand the shock of the sentiment
and the meter.
VII
The St. Louis Kindergarten Class
Than ever before or since, with a heart hope-
fuller and more heightened, I entered St. Louis on
my return from the East in the fall of 1881. At
once the work began, the classes increased in num-
ber and zeal, the St. Louis Movement along my
lines seemed to expand and to push ahead to a new
and higher stage of development. It is true that
the city-soul was still brooding over the Great Dis-
illusion, and was beginning to see itself falling be-
hind in the grand competitive "Western race of ma-
terial progress. Meantime my little group con-
tinued to find solace and perchance some compen-
sation in the flight back to antique Hellas, that
ideal world of long-ago, unclouded by the frowning
present. As for me, these two coming years I may
call the buoyant boyhood of my Renascence, even
if I was crossing the middle life-line into the
menacing forties.
The most important and the most lasting fact of
this season I shall pounce upon first: the Kinder-
garten Class which now started under the head-
ship of Miss Blow. I was the teacher, but she was
the ruler. The previous year, as already recounted,
she had made a small tentative beginning with
Sophocles, as if to test me and my work, about
which there was some suspicion in certain quar-
316 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
ters. She had evidently made up her mind, from
her investigation, to introduce Great Literature
studied in the way she had just seen, into her Kin-
dergarten training-school, which certainly had no
such branch in it before. I may add here that she
remained faithful to this work till her last day, re-
inforced undoubtedly by the advice and consola-
tion of Dr. Harris.
Moreover she possessed the ability and the am-
bition to make her class the central one, and her-
self the center of the movement in the city. This
she did easily; the leadership came to her by a
kind of natural selection, and she by no means
shrank from her pre-eminence. She was well aware
of her own gift, and she asserted it strenuously
after her way, as was her right. Still even in the
day of her triumph, she felt the hero's fate, per-
chance tragedy. "We have already noticed that
peculiar flash of self-revelation which she showed
by her sympathy with Achilles in his conflict with
Agamemnon. Something of the same sort occurred
in the study of Sophocles. Strangely she seemed
to prefer the poet's Ajax, ordinarily deemed one
of his inferior plays compared to Antigone and
Oedipus. The choice along with her reasons struck
me as another instance of unconscious confession.
Ajax, the strong man, heroic in his way, unappre-
ciated and dishonored by his own people, goes
crazy and commits suicide — a tragic character.
With a feeling which seemed to bubble up from
the depths she expressed her pity for the fate-
THE ST. LOUIS KINDERGARTEN CLASS. 317
stricken hero. Indeed I cannot help thinking that
with her pity was mingled a slight shiver of fear,
as if she were glimpsing a far-off cloudlet of her
own possible destiny. Be that as it may, she ap-
peared at times to illustrate in her words and even
in her looks the famous statement of Aristotle con-
cerning tragedy, whose function, he says, is to
purify through fear and pity. Some eight years
later I had to recall this singular sympathy of
Miss Blow with Ajax as prophetic of her own lot,
for she herself had then become a sick heroic char-
acter physically and mentally, even if after years
of suffering she recovered herself and completed
her task in life.
Thus Literature began to be her true self-ex-
pression, for a time at least. And her spirit went
over into her devoted followers, who also found
themselves in the characters of the old Greek
dramatist. Indeed one of these pupils exclaimed
on a time : ' ' Old Sophocles must have been a Kin-
dergartner." ''Certainly," said she, "how could
he help it?"
But her most audacious request was made to me
in the fall of 1882. It was that I should in the
forthcoming season conduct her stalwart Kinder-
gartners on a far-flung journey through the re-
mote and difficult Greek Historians, Herodotus and
Thueydides, of course in translation. That was, to
my mind the climax of her Classical adventure. No
university in the land had or dared attempt any
like historical course. Once before in a private
318 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
conversation she had hinted some such crowning
aspiration, but I deemed it a mere passing spirit
of enthusiasm. But now she makes ready to realize
what was to her a deeply cherished ambition. " It
is true that I had told her of my own studies of
these two books while still an undergraduate of
Oberlin College, which had neither of them in its
curriculum. That time saw the outbreak of the
Civil War when our nation was engaged in the
making of its greatest history. I had then studied
in the original these two historical works supreme
of their kind, seemingly in unconscious response to
the events of the day. I remembered especially
Thucydides recording the innar dissolution of the
Greek world through war and mutual antagonism,
for I was pondering over his pages just during the
secession of the Gulf States headed by South Caro-
lina. In his weighty bodeful sentences I seemed to
hear the far-off echo of our own political destiny.
Though twenty years had rolled over me since
then, I felt strongly the desire to review and re-
new this early stage of my Greek inheritance, il-
lumined by my recent experience in Greece itself.
Moreover Thucydides is as tragic as Sophocles,
both being contemporaries ; the historian tells the
same story actually which the poet tells mythically.
Thus each is a commentary on the other, while
both reveal one common underlying Hellenic con-
sciousness of the time, and its tragic outlook just
at its height.
And to-day Thucydides rises up the primordial
THE ST. LOUIS KINDERGARTEN CLASS. 319
prophet of the present European dissolution. As
little Greece went to pieces in antiquity, so Europe
seems now disintegrating, from essentially the same
ultimate cause. Here I may be allowed to say that
I felt myself often driven back to the old His-
torian during this year of 1918, as the best recorder
and reflector of the present political earthquake.
For he gives in small what is now happening in
large, scattered over vast spaces; he shows the
minute Greek germ or cellule of what is to-day the
world's monster.
This study of the Greek Historians was the cul-
mination of the Greek Renascence in St. Louis, and
I have to think, the beginning of its decline. It
started to show signs of having spent itself. Like
the Greek world of which it was the offspring, it
too was born tragic, at least in St. Louis. Our
lessons in Thucydides began to partake of the lot
of the time which the Historian delineates, and
they seemed to share actually in the fate which his
History foreshows.
But my best and most enduring acquisition dur-
ing these years I deem to be my communion with a
new spirit in human life, especially as regards edu-
cation. I came to know the Kindergartners, a
unique body of people aflame with zeal and sacri-
fice for a noble cause. I felt deeply their example
and its inspiration, since I too had my call and
my higher duty above my merely bread-winning
vocation. The best of them showed the supernal
spirit of service to an Idea which transfigured their
320 THE ^. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
lives and even their looks. Modern missionaries
they were on their own soil, wherein I responded
strongly to their unspoken but soul-compelling ap-
peal. It is true that I never became a practical
Kindergartner, I was too old, and besides I had
heard my own distinctive call. Still I, getting
gray and bald, squatted on the floor and played
with the little children ; then I would crouch down
into their wee narrow chairs at their low tables, try-
ing to be one of them in sport and spirit; or I
would join hands with them and dance around the
circle not merely for pleasure but for my spirit's
sustentation. It was a great new experience, my
dulled life's daily renewal from the fresh foun-
tains of first existence bubbling out of those young
hearts, a baptism which I, the solitary, much-in-
troverted student, sorely needed. I had already
experienced that my own children, small as they
were and fleeting, had given me a blessed discipline
just through their infancy. But now I was alone,
and deeply immersed in my studies, against whose
absorption of me I would frequently revolt and
run out to play with the little ones. That helped
to keep me human, and more of it would not have
hurt me. But thus in a measure was supplied me
the loss of my family, which had been torn from
my bosom by remorseless fate, and I was bidden
unto doing my life-task alone.
Such was the place which the Kindergarten
spirit now took in the unfolding of my career, a
place which it retained through all my active years
THE ST. LOUIS KINDERGARTEN CLASS. 321
till I had rounded life's meridian into the after-
noon of old-age. In a sense I was married to it by
a vow unspoken, yea unconscious largely, but
sealed in the soul's deepest loyalty. I believe too
that the St. Louis Kindergarten spirit was at its
highest during this its early period ; the primitive
purity of the cause had not yet been tainted by
success, by fame, by partisan and personal ambi-
tion, with its bitter antagonisms. I saw and felt
the work when it was still small, but all the more
consecrated; in that state it engrafted upon nry
very existence its abiding worth and its ideal de-
votion. To be sure certain limitations soon began
to show themselves both in the theory and in the
practice, in the work and in the workers. Even
the negative woman playing her subtle part in the
innocent paradise of the Kindergarten I thought
I glimpsed already once or twice.
Such was the fresh baptism of the spirit which
that St. Louis group of Kindergartners gave back
to me in some hidden response to my instruction.
Now the creative source of this influence always
streamed up to Miss Blow as the genius who pos-
sessed the power of infusing herself into the very
character of her pupils, and of moulding them
over into her own image. A transcendent gift was
that, yet not without its dangers, as we shall have
to note later. But at present it made her little
training-room a center of a grand Kindergarten
overflow not only into the city but into the sur-
rounding states, and it penetrated even to Canada.
322 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
Such was the beginning of her great educational
deed, which ranks with, or possibly outranks the
greatest yet done in America. This too may well
be deemed a phase or a part of the Renascence em-
braced in the St. Louis Movement.
I had many other classes about town, but hers
always took precedence, and indeed made itself the
typical one of all through her leadership, keeping
somehow its sovereign place in the heart of the
business. During a few weeks of the winter months
she would bring Harris from Concord to give lec-
tures mainly on Religion and Philosophy with oc-
casional excursions into Art and Literature. Thus
she rose to a kind of intellectual primacy in the
city, such as no man ever won in my time. For a
while she appeared to be our urban sage, more dis-
cussed, more wondered at, more influential, I think,
than any other personality in our midst. Primarily
this pre-eminence of hers sprang from her unique
talent, but it was strongly seconded by her high
social position among the old reigning families, by
her independent wealth, and especially by her
sovereign achievement in education now growing
in importance every day over the whole country.
I also think that Miss Blow during these two or
three years was at her life's culminating excel-
lence, at her very perihelion in her total career's
orbit. To my mind she never again reached the
same native illuminating height in word and deed,
though she afterwards both wrote and did a good
deal. For her later work always showed a strain
THE ST. LOUIS KINDERGARTEN CLASS. 323
of estrangement from her nature's right environ-
ment and from her best self. But at present, let it
be emphasized, she attained a unique spiritual
hegemony in the community, and her influence
kept streaming out over the entire land in new
triumphs, especially for her Kindergarten message.
To be sure, the time and the place strongly co-
operated with Miss Blow, who had the insight and
the good-fortune to launch her ship at the favoring
flood. It is my opinion that St. Louis during these
years was permeated with a deeper, more aggressive
and more wide-spread intellectual interest than it
has ever shown since. Let the reader, however,
take into account that it is an old man now speak-
ing and looking back at his somewhat distant past
through the glass of reminiscence, which has the
tendency to magnify generally, and sometimes to
distort. Still I meet on the streets of the city to-
day dozens who will stop me and spend some happy
minutes in recalling voluntarily and re-affirming
that long-gone golden age of intellectual St. Louis.
But I have to repeat that signs of a decline had
begun to peep out on various sides. This was
manifest in Miss Blow herself, who started to
show pronounced indications of a reaction, espe-
cially against my Greek Renascence, and doubtless
against me personally. Religious scruples were
rising in her mind, and she failed not to let them
express themselves in class. A spiritual crisis was
coming over her from causes which were whispered
everywhere among her friends. It was even said
324 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
that she in her doubt and tribulation had thought
of taking flight to the bosom of the old Mother
Church of Rome. Her Kindergartners, so some of
them told me, found her often in deep melancholy,
from which they could drag her only by taking her
to play with the children. Such was her supreme
relief, and it indicates the reason why she so fer-
vently embraced the Kindergarten — to escape the
dark fiends which she thought were pursuing her
and hers with some fatality — possibly the imagined
counterstroke of her genius. It was no secret that
Miss Blow's life was passed in the midst of some
long private trouble which colored her whole life,
and which haunted her after she quit St. Louis,
and was at least one cause of a protracted malady,
ever threatening death, from which, however, she
victoriously rescued herself by sheer will-power —
personally her most characteristic action, and pos-
sibly her grandest fate-coercing triumph. I was
not her confidant, still she could not help confess-
ing herself even in a brief answer before her class.
I have seen that peculiar look of destiny flush sud-
denly her face, as if it welled up from the last
depths of her experience, though she said nothing.
Still she could be merry, and I have remarked her
once or twice a little boisterous. Her conversation
at its best was tinged with a smiling streak of
humorous irony, which, however, seemed quite to
disappear in her writings.
In relation to myself, it was evident that a rift
had started and was growing in depth and inten-
THE ST. LOUIS KINDERGARTEN CLASS. 325
sity. Moreover the breach could not be healed,
since it reached down to a fundamental diversity of
character, as well as to a difference of view con-
cerning the nature of education. The disagree-
ment became pronounced when Miss Blow tried to
subject my work and myself to Dr. Harris. I
asserted very decidedly my right of independent
self-development. And I insisted that true edu-
cation ought to be based ultimately upon that same
right in every individual, which doctrine crossed
her inborn grain and possibly her secret ambition.
Harris was unfolding on his own lines at that time,
chiefly in the religious sphere; really he was
Catholicizing, wherein I could not follow him. We
were friends and both belonged to the St. Louis
Movement, which ought to be large enough, so I
thought, to contain us both in our fullest and
freest evolution. But that was just what Miss
Blow would not, indeed could not stand for ; there
must be subordination, prescription, personal dis-
cipleship. She was a will-character, and was going
to enforce her decree, especially as she now felt her-
self to be the literary dictator of our St. Louis
work. And this she was, more than any other per-
son, and by rightful pre-eminence, in my opinion.
But her very power seemed to destroy her gift of
co-operation; she could not tolerate, could not as-
sociate strong independent individualities; hence
she failed to train her pupils to self-determination,
the topmost flower of instruction. This in spite of
the fact that she was always emphasizing self-
326 THE ST.L0UI8 MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
activity, the favorite educational category of Dr.
Harris. Here too lies probably the main reason
why she succeeded better with women than with
men.
Other classes of mine over town wound up their
season's work in a satisfied frame of mind, and the
outlook bespoke promise. But the central class
ended in a distinct undertone of disharmony, and
our happy Greek Renascence threatened to close
tragically, like the Greek Drama and the Greek
History which we had just studied. How about
next season? Not a word from either side. Let
the boiling summer clarify the turbid waters, if it
can, during the intervening vacation. Soon I had
packed up and was off for Concord, where I was on
the programme for another course, dealing with
Homer and the Greek Religion. Thus I edged into
the Philosophical School one of my Literary Bibles,
the second of the sort in my courses there, to be
followed by a third — whereof a later explanation
will be due in its own good time.
VIII
Psychology Appears at Concord
By means of the first word of this caption I
would emphasize the appearance of a weighty new
fact in the School, in the time, and somewhat dimly
in myself. For my attention was now challenged
by the new Psychology to a first distinct encounter,
PSYCHOLOGY APPEARS AT CONCORD. 327
as far as I can at present remember ; both the name
and the thing swept across my mental horizon and
left their impress, which, however, is to lie dormant
yet yeasting for many years. I would have little
or nothing to say of this session of the School (in
1883) so like was it on the whole to former ones,
were it not for the course entitled Three Lectures
on Psychology, by Professor William James of
Harvard University.
Such was the subject and such was the man now
announced, both belonging to the future more than
any of us or anything of us. Professor James was
then almost unknown, though over forty years old ;
he had not yet written his books, though his name
had been appended to some magazine articles; I
had noticed especially those in the Journal of
Speculative Philosophy, though with no pronounced
attraction. Nor had I ever heard Harris speak of
James the son, though he often mentioned the
father, eminent for his advocacy of Swedenborg
and among us for his declared hostility to Hegel.
And Psychology as the new sovereign science was
then just beginning to peep out of its egg-shell
here in America, showing its early callow features
copied mainly from the class-room of the German
University where it had been hatched. To be sure,
Psychology as an old discipline tacked on to Philos-
opy was known to all readers of the great thinkers
back to Aristotle and the ancient Greeks. But this
course of lectures suggested, though it hardly pro-
claimed or revealed, the new-world birth of an old-
328 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
world science. I doubt if James himself was yet
fully aware of himself and of his theme, for he
seemed often very tentative and experimental; he
was already a pragmatist before pragmatism; he
could not help practicing his basis consciousness
before he had evolved it and formulated it into his
far-famed theory.
But how strange it all appears now, as I look
behind me through the ageing decades! Nobody
then in Concord, not a single philosopher — and we
privately talked over James and his subject a good
deal outside the public discussion — had the least
inkling of a forecast concerning the great future
import of the man and his theme. I asked Harris
about both, but policy bade him hold his tongue,
though it permitted him to give one little shake of
his head in doubt. Professor George Howison was
there, and I quizzed him: Tell me what does the
thing mean and whither? Howison, who was at
that time located in Boston, and who had looked
into the university instruction of James, so he
stated to me, unhesitatingly declared then and
there: "I cannot quite make out what James is
after, and I never found anybody at Harvard who
could." Still James had appreciators in the Con-
cord set. These, as far as my knowledge went,
were mainly lady philosophers in attendance at
the School, a little group of whom I once asked:
"How do you like James and his Psychology?"
They all expressed themselves as charmed by the
man and by his waywardness of word and of
PSYCHOLOGY APPEARS AT CONCORD. 329
thought. One of them struck off a sentence like
this : "lam enraptured with his freakish oddities,
I love to ramble after him through the fantastical
jungles of human subjectivity." I have forgotten
my answer, if I gave any ; but now I find me re-
flecting to myself: Yes, another case of like lik-
ing like.
And here let us look forward seven years from
the time of this course of lectures. In 1890 James
published his two considerable volumes under the
one title, Principles of Psychology. The work,
though of the heavy sort, had a surprisingly high-
soaring popularity in America, and its fame swept
across to England and beyond. Evidently the au-
thor had just hit the mood of the time, and had
given expression to a dawning consciousness. The
reception of the book seemed to indicate that the
new thought-era was to be psychological, and the
new world-discipline was to be Psychology. Of
course James does not directly say this, and I
doubt if he himself then discerned the full bearing
of his prophetic initiative.
On the other hand that same year (1890) saw
the appearance of a much smaller yet parallel book
by a Concord philosopher, the foremost of us all.
It was rather a modest-garbed volume, which was
named Hegel's Logic, being written by Dr. W. T.
Harris. The writer's proclaimed intention was to
popularize what has been already called the hard-
est book in the world. I had to confess to him that
his interpretation of it in English was often more
330 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
difficult for me than the original Hegel himself.
A dozen years later he told me with hesitating sigh
that he had not succeeded in his design, that his
hook had been a failure. But after two or three
melancholy reflections he brisked up and affirmed
with decision: "Now I am going to make the
whole thing over in a new edition." On this work
he was engaged when he passed away. Thus that
Hegelian Logic was to him a veritable "Book of
Fate," with which he wrestled all his mature life
till he sank down at grips with it still in his last
moments.
Meanwhile during these same dozen years let us
glance at the prodigious ascent and flight of Pro-
fessor James quite round the whole world. For
not so many months later there has arisen such a
popular demand for his work that he condenses it
into a text book (1892), which in its field practic-
ally takes possession of the higher educational in-
stitutions throughout the entire land, giving a
mighty uplift to the new Psychology, at least to
his form of it. He was now probably deemed Har-
vard's most distinguished Professor. Moreover we
read him heralded America's greatest philosopher,
not merely her greatest psychologist. And we are
surprised to learn that in his university instruc-
tion he has passed from his professorship of Psy-
chology to that of Philosophy. Indeed in the
course of his academic career he has made the
same change twice, as if he were somewhat uncer-
tain whether he were a philosopher or a psycholo-
PSYCHOLOGY APPEARS AT CONCORD. 331
gist; perchance he felt himself both somehow in-
termingled, and at times interwarring.
It would seem that the best commentary on
James' doctrine is his biography. In one friendly
account of him I find no less than ten different
changes of vocation. He appeared to be on the
hunt after a working hypothesis for himself during
his whole life, shifting about a good deal in search
of practical consequences and never quite satisfied.
Thus his biography has a pragmatic cast from
start to finish. At first he was an artist, and some-
what of this artistic vein trickles through him to
the last. Then he was a scientist of various kinds,
culminating seemingly in his study of Physiology
at Berlin (1867), and this physiological element
stayed with him as the substrate of his later work.
But soon we find him transferred in his instruc-
tion to Philosophy, from which he went over to
Psychology, and then back again to Philosophy of
which he was Professor when he retired. Now this
brief snatch of biography shows not merely James
but the time in its deepest spiritual transition,
with many an oscillation back and forth between
Philosophy and Psychology. Such repeated fluctua-
tion betokens the struggle of our western world to-
ward a new universal discipline as the successor of
Philosophy, toward a fresh interpretation of the
Universe in terms of the American institutional
consciousness. Thus James in his work and in his
life has the value of mirroring his age at an epochal
turning-point.
332 T H E ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
From these two significant contemporaneous cir-
cumstances, one is compelled to the inference that
Dr. Harris in his book was not in touch with the
trend of the time, while Prof. James had at least
tapped the fountain of the future. Whatever ex-
ceptions might be taken to the latter 's somewhat
choppy treatment of his subject, and to his short-
comings in thought, he had uttered and emphasized
that creative and prophetic word, Psychology,
which meant in its fulfilment a new-born world of
thought. I heard the word at Concord and pon-
dered and wondered, but did not then even for-
bode its full meaning for my own life, or for the
coming time.
The year during which Prof. James lectured at
Concord was the fifth of the School, whose course
then had reached its culmination. Philosophically
Harris was enthroned over all, and the Hegelians
held the citadel. Their earlier competitors, the
Platonists, were withdrawing and soon quite
dropped out of the race. Such was the general
philosophic situation when James appeared with
his Psychology, which was probably intended as a
kind of antidote. For James had already entered
the writing arena as a pronounced if not bitter
antagonist of Hegel. The preceding year (1882)
he had printed in a well-known philosophical Jour-
nal his essay called "Some Hegelisms", in which
he seeks to make an end of the German philosopher,
planting his front blow thus: "Hegel's dialectical
method I believe to be wholly abominable when
PSYCHOLOGY APPEARS AT CONCORD. 333
worked by concepts alone." Herein one may well
hear the eminent professor telling on himself, and
marking with emphasis, almost with passion, his
philosophic limitation. For that subtle dialectic
process which old Eleatic Zeno first glimpsed, which
was seized upon and exploited not a little by
Greek Plato, especially in his Parmenides, and
which Hegel sublimated into the inner driving-
wheel of his whole Logic and hence of the Uni-
verse, James confesses that he hates, and will
fling to the Furies. Doubtless he does not inti-
mately and creatively grasp it, for it is not to
be gotten by a passing ordinary act of intellec-
tion, but it must be long lived with and wrestled
with and wrought with. Here too we may note
also that dislike of all abstract thought which
winds through and bounds his whole mentality.
And yet James could not leave Philosophy alone
but always went back to it, as the very goal of his
spirit's deepest striving — to Philosophy which may
be regarded as the science of pure abstraction itself.
Is not his chief term Pragmatism an abstract con-
concept? A good deal of criticism it evoked when
it was first broached, wherein he might have seen
that it too was dialectical.
Connected with the history of the Concord
School is another utterance of James in his printed
essays. He has announced the arrival in a philo-
sophic club at Boston of two young business men
from Illinois, enthusiastic Hegelians, "who with
little or no knowledge of German had actually
334 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
possessed themselves of a manuscript translation
of the entire three volumes of the Logic made by
an extraordinary Pomeranian immigrant named
Brockmeyer." Such is the faint rather spectral
glimpse which the Harvard Professor has caught
of the strange original demiurge of the St. Louis
Movement and of its big "Book of Fate." Brock-
meyer by the way was not a Pomeranian but a
Prussian of Minden. Moreover James observes
that the said Club, of which he was a member, "had
gone over a good part of Hegel's Logic under the
self-constituted leadership" of those two green
philosophic suckers from Quincy, Illinois, who had
never been at a German University, and who could
not even read the original text of their master,
digging laboriously their knowledge of his doc-
trine up from Brockmeyer 's barbarous Teutonic-
English. It could only be deemed an act of un-
paralled presumption on the part of those insolent
"Westerners, as we may hear in an undertone out
of the epithet self-constituted, and some other
nuances of style. And all this took place in the
sacred precincts of Boston and Concord, for in the
latter place these bold Illinoisans had actually
settled down as permanent residents planting them-
selves as local pillars of the Concord School of
Philosophy.
And here I may dare propound a problem to
myself, and to my reader also, if he will not get
angry. Did you ever think, when hearing or read-
ing James, that he at times shows a streak of that
PSYCHOLOGY APPEARS AT CONCORD. 335
peculiar psychical distemper known to outsiders as
Bostonitis — not dangerous, hardly offensive, but
symptomatic of some mighty local and possibly
personal superiority ? This runs often through the
man a vein of subtle sarcastic contempt for the
rest of the world, especially for the savage West,
tincting the manner, the look, the style of the Pro-
fessor as well as the content of his utterance. All
of which, however, cannot seriously affect the
inner worth of his message.
Now I am inclined to believe that just this meet-
of James with these two fervent believers in Hegel
and their one Great Book was an important epoch
in his philosophical development. He did not say
so and probably did not think so, and might even
have resented such a statement, still he bore the
impress of this experience through life, even if
by way of opposition. For he now saw men who
had a living faith in Philosophy, and were ready
to impart it with a missionary zeal, expounding
it to him and the Club from the strange hieroglyphs
of the "three big folios" of their manuscript Bible.
Moreover he had brushed against the greatest Ger-
man world-book of Philosophy, not excepting
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, of which it is
indeed the sovereign remedial corrective, bringing
intellectual restoration after overcoming man's
ultimate denial. I dare think that Professor James
must have gotten lasting, even if unconscious value
from the scene and the man thus described by
him: "A more admirable homo unius libri than
336 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
one of them with his three big folios of Hegelian
manuscript I have never had the good fortune to
know." Doubtless this passage is tuned to an
ironical note, still the writer of it never forgot,
never could rid himself of the impressive fact
which he here witnessed at least from the outside —
the fact of the world's thought unified, inter-re-
lated, and organized into one complete system, and
of one man's unshaken belief in such a system.
That was a new strange lesson for the pragmatic
Professor, probably not obtainable at Berlin or at
Harvard. To be sure, James the pluralist, prag-
matist, theoretical opportunist, fought, ridiculed,
satirized all such systematic unity of Mind and
"World, but he must have been convinced by the
weakness of his own arguments, for he wound up
his life trying to build some such a system of his
own, which he actually calls "my system" in what
seems almost his last-voiced breath.
There is no doubt, however, that James had good
reason to be puzzled at the Concord phenomenon.
He had studied at Berlin, home of Hegel and
Hegelism, whose decadence in that city he saw to
be complete. He declares that he could find there
"but a single youthful disciple" among the vast
horde of Professors and Tutors in the great Berlin
University. For young Germany Hegel was dead
and buried out of sight; only some very old Pro-
fessors still lingered pathetically over the grave
of their once triumphant Philosophy. One of these
antediluvian Hegelians I saw at Berlin during my
PSYCHOLOGY APPEARS AT CONCORD. 337
visit there in 1878 — the aged Michelet, co-editor
of Hegel's Works. The then recent German Em-
pire he could still deduce philosophically, employ-
ing the Hegelian categories. In spite of my sym-
pathy with him and his cause, he impressed me as
reminiscence mid ruins.
But think of the young ambitious student, Wil-
liam James, returning from Germany laden with
its latest erudition; suddenly he finds that the
main article of philosophic equipment, as here
called for, has been omitted from his Berlin studies.
Just outside of Boston, in the illustrious town of
Concord a new School of Philosophy has been
started, and its strongest man is a follower of He-
gel. And what is most confounding, a fresh philo-
sophic stream appears to be setting in from the
West, that wild West of which the right hero was
supposed to be Buffalo Bill, whose big show of
savagery was trumpeted as the true university of
the backwoods. But now the most abstract of all
abstract Philosophies comes driving Bostonward
not from Berlin but from St. Louis. Can we won-
der at the perplexity, the pragmatism, and the iron-
ical pique of Professor James? That was enough
to make all New England turn pragmatist.
Still let it be strongly affirmed once more that
James brought to the fore the cardinal discipline
of the age — Psychology. Concord did not, could
not do that, Such remains his supreme achieve-
ment, and a great one it is, even if he had a final
relapse to Philosophy, rebounding between his two
338 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
antitheses again and again. Nor must we forget
the conclusion; the system-destroyer seeks by a
last effort to become the system-builder, very prop-
erly of his own fragmentary work. Pathetic is
what stands printed as his parting testamentary
utterance: "Say that I hoped by it (his last un-
finished book) to round out my system which now
is too much like an arch built only on one side."
IX
Finale at St. Louis
Shall I go or stay? Has the moment come for
me to quit St. Louis the disillusioned, and follow
my fleeing comrades? Let the reader imagine me
propounding such questions to myself as I sit
lonely in my room after my return from Concord,
about the first of September, 1883, when the season
of renewed study is soon to open for the coming
year. Before me lies a copy of Goethe's Faust,
much thumbed and bescribbled round the margins
with notes, signifying at least a considerable
amount of reading and meditation. During the
past years I never once took a class in Faust, still
I have devoted to it many odd moments and not
a few moments that were not odd, but stolen from
other less attractive duties. For somehow this
poem has recently kept overflowing me like a deluge
from unknown sources, giving me no peace till I
might be able to master it and co-ordinate it with
FINALE AT ST. LOUIS. 339
the other great poems which I have been working
at, especially Homer and Shakespeare.
Chiefly through the Concord School and its ad-
vertising power my name has been scattered very
thinly indeed over a considerable newspaper sur-
face, and some notion of my line of effort has been
planted in a few congenial minds on divers spots
east and west. The result is a number of localities
outside of St. Louis have requested my presence
for similar courses. Shall I accept ? But whenever
I think of saying Yes, as I do repeatedly, that
Faust-book lying before me seems to bristle up its
leaves like a hedgehog, and take visible human
shape, looking an emphatic if not angry No into
my very heart, and reaffirming with decision my
new task.
Still the doubt will flutter up again. There is
in the first place the economic problem, my own
little personal one and a larger, for I have to sup-
port and educate my child, now rapidly growing
into her earliest teens. Then the unimproved Real
Estate in North St. Louis, the millstone tied around
my neck by the Great Illusion some fifteen years
since, not only refuses to budge in value but keeps
sinking lower and lower, and also dragging me
down deeper into its mudhole with an ever fresh
burden of taxes, general and special. Now and
then I mount a street car for that part of town,
and take a brief look at myself reflected in my mir-
roring pond with a kind of self-pity, to which the
340 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
ripples murmur in scoffing smiles: "Are you not
yet disillusioned of the Future Great City of the
World? Well, more discipline awaits you."
The recompense, however, was not wanting.
Classes reported as usual, with one striking ex-
ception, and a modest living rose in sight, very
modest and shrinking but still adequate. So I
braced myself to the emergency. Only in one
quarter was there a gap and that was at the cen-
ter. The Kinder gartners gave no sign of resum-
ing their work under my tuition. The previous
season had ended in a discord, as the reader may
recollect, and I had come to the conclusion that
the movement in that direction had been perma-
nently blocked. For I knew Miss Blow to be in
a state of reaction against me and my tendencies;
nevertheless, though she more than any other per-
son held the intellectual leadership among the
city's best, I made up my mind to go my ways
without her assistance, and even under her frown
if need be, at least for a year. The Faust poem
would not loose its hold of me ; I had won new in-
sights, as I believed, into its structure and mean-
ing, but they were still scattered, unfinished, lying
around in my brain disorganized ; I needed a whole
season to work it over in private and in class, and
thereby make it my own, elevating it into my con-
ception of a Literary Bible. This I could best do
while teaching it; and already I had succeeded in
forming two little groups in Faust, one of men
and the other of women. Thus I had started my
FINALE AT ST. LOUIS. 341
special present task of Super-education, now more
imperious over me than ever before.
Accordingly I resolved to make this my Faust-
year (1883-4), in response to an irresistible inner
demand of my whole selfhood. I had found that
Faust's spiritual career, as set forth by the poet
passed through a great Classical Renascence, espe-
cially in the Second Part of the drama. Thus there
was revealed a bond of intimate personal expe-
rience which companioned me with the poem at the
very shrine of the spirit. To live this fact in the
form which is given it by the poet had become with
me not merely an ambition or desire, but the soul's
hallowing redemption.
And now it behooves me to take note of another
significant coincidence, external perchance, yet of
great influence over my choice. Let me state it
thus: Faust, on the whole, may well be deemed
the distinctive poem of the St. Louis Movement —
the favorite poem, more read and more bespoken
than any other. Never since then has any great
work of genius taken such deep and persistent pos-
session of the city's mind. I do not say that every
person in our midst rushed to studying Faust;
still within my range there was more discussion
of it than of any other poetic masterpiece. It
seemed for a while to express our very conscious-
ness. Let us recall that this took place during the
German Era of St. Louis, as I have labeled it in
a former chapter. The great Teutonic poem we
adopted as our own in accord with the urban char-
342 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
acter of the time, or possibly in response to the
world's chief trend, which was then German, or at
least Germanizing.
No less than four eminent and gifted expound-
ers had held classes and given lecture courses on
Faust in English during the fore-mentioned pe-
riod, each according to his viewpoint, and native
ability. Davidson fell into line, and expressed his
varying opinions upon the subject, whch were
mainly critical, though he was then not so hostile
to Goethe as he became later. He was at that time
reveling in his German ecstasy with the rest of
us, rather more raptured perhaps than the rest of
us, from which exuberance he afterward had a vio-
lent rebound to the opposite. Soldan was the leader
of coteries studying Faust which were composed
of the first ladies of the town mostly living on
Lucas Place, then aristocracy's quarter. Soldan
may have been selected by this high-toned set be-
cause he was the politest man of us all, and like-
wise well versed in the German erudition of the
subject, having been born and educated in Ger-
many. Dr. Harris, most influential of our whole
set, gave frequent talks on Faust and scattered
many allusions to the work even through his more
cryptic discourses. His influence carried the study
among the more aspiring teachers of the Public
Schools, and put stress upon its relation to phi-
losophy. The poem as a whole he did not seem
to care for or even to seek after; certain favorite
passages and incidents he would pick out and dilate
FINALE AT ST. LOUIS. 343
upon with a special relish. Thus each of these
men in his own way and sphere kept the great mas-
terpiece alive and working for years.
Still they were not the first in origination or in
originality. A course of conversations on Faust
given by Brockmeyer during the year 1864, at a
time before I knew him, is set down as the historic
starting-point of the St. Louis interest in the poem.
Harris engineered the matter and got together the
little audience. So I have heard from him the story.
Moreover he induced Brockmeyer to commit to
writing his exposition in the form of letters which
were afterwards published in the first numbers
of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, the earli-
est original writ begotten of the St. Louis Move-
ment. A couple of these Letters on Faust in manu-
script I heard the author read at the house of Har-
ris on my first visit to the philosophic group in
1865. I hardly caught their bearing at the start,
but gradually through them and the discussions
generated about them, there began to dawn upon
me the grand new field of the literary interpreta-
tion of the greatest masterpieces.
In fact, Faust was Brockmeyer 's one poem, the
only one for him and the sovereign over all others.
He would recognize Homer and Shakespeare, still
he did not know them as wholes, but merely in
salient points or episodes here and there. People
have said that he in one of his high tantrums could
look Mephistopheles better than any actor; a cer-
tain demonic impression lay in his grimace, and
344 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
roused sometimes a little tremor, especially in
women, and even antipathy. I have often tried to
identify his life with the career of Faust ; his flight
to the backwoods was his grand act of negation
by which he would do away with society and state.
In this way he had lived the poem, and so he be-
came for us its creative expositor.
Still here too he manifested that same lack of
realizing power, which has before been noted of
him ; after making a fair start he utterly refused
to complete his grandly conceived work, leaving it
a wonderfully promising but unfinished chaos.
Thus his Letters on Faust remain an unrealized
fragment, one of his numerous much-bestrown
torsos. Still they showed a marvelous gift of start-
ing a spiritual fermentation in individuals, and
even in the community; but they remained yeast,
and never became bread. Similar was the case with
his single supreme philosophic labor over Hegel's
Logic, indeed with his whole life. His genius per-
sisted in staying germinal, never unfolding into
fulfillment.
I have now to ask the question: why should St.
Louis or a goodly proportion of her thinking peo-
ple adopt this poem as a kind of spiritual breviary,
as an ideal reflector of their very soul-world, mak-
ing such a book unconsciously into a sort of Lit-
erary Bible? Let it be premised that Faust pro-
claims at the start the great negation of the age,
the denial of all truth or at least of men's ability
to know truth. The course of the poem shows a
FINALE AT ST. LOUIS. 345
human soul laboring through life's experiences
under the burden of such a denial, verily the new
Fall of Man which took place not six thousand
years ago, but just to-day and here. Goethe's
masterpiece indicates also the redemption of this
last fallen Adam, at least as conceived by the
poet. Manifestly if we cannot know the true,
or if what seems such, is only a mirage, a lie,
then we live in a world of Illusion, of Untruth,
like that of Faust, when he preaches his first
soliloquy. Now let us seize the connecting
link: St. Louis, during these her Faust-years, was
engrossed in her Great Illusion, as already nar-
rated; her fatuity was to believe in a phantasm,
a lying appearance conjured up for the time ; yet
she could not help wrestling far down in her un-
conscious depths with her own unreality, with her
negation, with her falsehood. And just that is
the grand agony of Faust, his ever-recurring inner
battle between his denial of truth and his deeper
aspiration for truth. He believed in the Illusion,
yet fought it, had to fight it unto the death. Thus
for her deepest self-expression, yea for her hope
of ultimate salvation St. Louis adopted as her own
this world-poem of Goethe, which thereby became
her truly modern and remedial literary Gospel, at
least while she lay under her illusory spell.
Here is to be added the fact that this writ
bloomed, not a native product of our city, but was
transplanted from Germany, who had begotten it
out of her deepest consciousness, and who, as we
346 THE ST. L0UI8 MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
see to-day, had her own Great Illusion, of which
she is just now being terribly disillusioned. Of all
this vast recent experience our German St. Louis
seems now but a small far-off presage. "We may
well think that time has written a vivid new com-
mentary on Faust, revealing it mightily as the
supreme poem of Negation negated, or more con-
cretely worded, of the Great Illusion disillusioned.
These four expositors of the one poem, all of
them men of mark in the community, had created
for years a Faust atmosphere, of which I took
deep inspirations, though I had never felt myself
competent to unfold a distinctive standpoint of my
own upon this subject. But some time during this
period, just when I do not know, but say about
1882-3, I felt goaded to take Faust creatively in
hand, and to re-read it with the time's stress, and
with a great fresh discontent at what I had pre-
viously accepted by way of interpretation. Espe-
cially Brockmeyer's Letters no longer satisfied me,
though they were my first germinal stimulus to a
deeper view of this work and of all Literature.
But I found that I must run new lines of organi-
zation through the whole poem, and construe its
meaning afresh, even if a number of suggestions
belonging to my old teacher I preserved and devel-
oped. Especially in my Greek journey, I had after
my mental build re-enacted the deed of Faust in
pursuit of Helen, which is the central theme of the
Second Part of the drama. Thus I saw my Rena-
scence poetized before my mind's eye, and felt an
FINALE AT ST. LOUIS. 347
epoch of my life expressed as nowhere else. Against
all critical opinion I came to prefer the Second
Part of Faust to the First Part, on account of this
personal appeal through experience.
The year's campaign had fairly begun, when one
day a missive was put into my hands with the fol-
lowing purport: "I have heard of your Faust
work. Please call at my home to talk the matter
over for a Kindergarten class." Signed by Miss
Blow. The request was a surprise, and I confess
for me a glad surprise. Of course I obeyed the
summons, the arrangement was made, and the les-
sons started. But there was not, and could not
be the same enthusiasm and mutual sympathy as
in former years. Miss Blow felt and rightly felt
that I was developing on an independent line in
the St. Louis Movement, a line quite distinct from
that of Dr. Harris, whose word was her infallible
evangel. Such a presence as mine she deemed dan-
gerous if not heretical. Now it lay in her deepest
spirit to subordinate, yea to suppress even with
some show of force individual tendencies which did
not square with her views or with those of her
sponsors, for on this side she was traditional to the
core. With all her strength, and to my mind she
was the strongest personality of us left in the city,
she had the autocratic weakness which is certain t'
show itself in due season. I could not help some-
times thinking that nature had interwoven in her
iron-willed character a strain of the Spanish in-
quisitor. In the absence of our leaders who had
348 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
taken flight, she was through her unquestioned
talent as well as her social prestige, the literary
potentate of our St. Louis Movement. Anyhow,
I was not.
Still I had my lasting reward in a fresh com-
munion with the spirit of those Kindergarten young
ladies, who were training for their tasks in life.
They brought to their calling a consecration which
no money, no salary, no fame, could possibly pro-
cure or pay for, but might destroy. In them I
could see a telling example of my own Super-voca-
tion, to my unalloyed edification and delight. So
deeply was I impressed with their missionary spirit
that I began to re-construct in consonance with
my present Classic Renascence, an old Greek leg-
end, that of Iphigenia, in order to embody their
deed and its godlikeness in a poetic form for my
own better contemplation and self-expression. This
work grew to be my Agamemnon's Daughter.
The class ran on through its season with occa-
sional little seesaws between my views and those
of Miss Blow, who sometimes showed her disre-
gard or possibly her protest by absenting herself,
which she had never done before. To be sure, by
way of excuse, reports of her private troubles
were flying in the air. Finally the last lesson
came with a kind of relief all around. She made
her appearance in her front chair of state, and the
result was the worst explosion of the year. In
the Fifth Act of the Second Part of Faust occurs
the sad episode of the aged pair, Philemon and
FINALE AT ST. LOUIS. 349
Baucis, which I interpreted as the tragedy of
Civilization whose remorseless advance assails
and often overwhelms ancient and revered land-
marks of the past, here represented by the old
hut and the old church of the old couple. Thus
the transmitted world, both secular and religious,
kept vanishing or indeed burning up to make way
for the new incoming order of the ever-evolving
Faust. Sacred Tradition may become tragic — with
which words I dared throw an eye-bolt at Miss
Blow, behind which every glance in that class fell
into line and shot to the same center. That was
the signal for the denouement — the blazing fire-
brand flung into the full-charged magazine.
For at this point Miss Blow turned on me and
broke out into decided passionate exception to what
I had said, since she grew redder and louder with
every word. She whipped the air with her pointed
index, her face almost boiled, and her voice was
at times pitched to a height which made it grate
screechy. She seemed to feel that my interpreta-
tion was a personal attack, though I said nothing
of the sort, whatever I may have looked. To be
sure she had the right to apply my general remark
to herself, if she chose; she certainly was in all
honesty a prescriptive soul and clung to tradition
as was her right; report ran that she thought of
going back to that aged, revered church which
Faust had here destroyed, and of which, she gave
a hot defence against its destroyer, and me, I sup-
pose.
350 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
I could do nothing but let the storm spend itself
without reply. When the end came I simply said :
"The lesson now closes, and with it the season,
and also myself." I went up to Miss Blow in the
presence of all, and extended my hand, which she
took with a smile, sardonic I thought. Such was
the conclusion; I never had another class under
her guidance. But the Kindergarten itself did
not and would not quit me, nor I it. In fact, its
attachment to me and my work, as well as my
attachment to it and its work had now only begun
their long mutual devotion and service running
into the decades. Still from Miss Blow and her
class this most fruitful and enduring life-line of
mine took its start.
X
Finale at Concord
Landed at Concord once more, summer of 1885,
and taken lodgment at the hotel, I slipped off to
the village barber for needed service. He recog-
nized me as I entered and stretched myself out in
his chair, and then he proceeded to welcome me
with the following salutation: "Well, at last they
have caught one of your St. Louis philosophers ; I
hear that he is working for his board over yonder
in the Penitentiary. Whose turn will it be next?"
Whereat he gave a smart chuckle, to which I re-
sponded in a brief teehee, for I knew well what
he was talking about, and indeed, since I had sized
the man before, I expected some such greeting when
FINALE AT CONCORD. 351
I stepped into his shop. I gave him a little tit-
for-tat in the remark: "Yes, I have come back
to you here to let you try your hand in catching
another sleek philosopher. ' '
The foregoing allusions pertained to an actual
new scene in the Concord drama, namely, the ap-
pearance of the villain acting his part, or if you
prefer, of the serpent sneaking into our little philo-
sophic Eden. One day a stranger entered the
School, paid his fee, and took his seat on the
wooden benches of Hillside Chapel. He made him-
self remarked as an intense listener to all the deep
discourses there given, and especially did he seem
to look up from his front seat with rapt apprecia-
tion into the face of Dr. Harris, as the latter
would elaborate his most recondite disquisitions on
Hegel's Logic. For our new-comer, the abstruser
the better, and after the lecture he would go for-
ward and ply the speaker with some telling ques-
tion about this or that doctrine of the discourse.
He also played the jolly good-fellow to members
generally at the boarding-house and the hotel.
Meanwhile he had begun to ask for money accom-
modation in personal checks of small amounts, be-
ing careful to redeem his obligation the next day
or so. Thus it went on for perhaps two weeks,
when one morning the ardent philosopher was seen
in his place no more.
"Within a few days the secret was out. He had
succeeded in utilizing the good name he had so
carefully nursed in the School, in the town, and
352 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
it seems in the adjacent country, so that he was
able to pass fraudulent paper in considerable sums
upon confiding people ; the total amounted to nearly
a thousand dollars, according to the statement of
Mr. Emery, the School's Director, in a note to me
personally. It so happened that I was not present
during this session, hence I did not know the man.
My escape was narrow, for I was gullible enough,
especially by a philosopher. Still I got a little
involved in the case through an accident. The
scoundrel had decamped for unknown parts in
good time; particularly he had left the town bank
at Concord in the lurch, and its cashier was in-
clined to fall back upon the officers of the School
as responsible, which they contested. The right
in the matter I do not know ; but the result was a
great uproar in quiet Concord, with charges and
countercharges buzzing through the air and sting-
ing everywhither at random like maddened hor-
nets, but winding up with the universal execration
of the School of Philosophy which had lured such
an infernal serpent into that innocent paradise.
Still the daring scamp who could counterfeit Phi-
losophy herself right in her sacred temple, and
coin his fraud into dollars, had to be caught and
punished; else what becomes of us and our new-
born Academe in a naughty world?
News of the catastrophe, and such it seemed to
be for a little while, had traveled to me in St.
Louis through various channels when I received
by mail from Emery a peculiar request. Our
FINALE AT CONCORD. 353
Satanic philosopher had been traced to a small
medical college at St. Louis (of which institution
by the way I had never heard), and was suspected
of playing the same trick there which he had
worked so successfully at Concord. "Will you ask
to accompany you, ' ' wrote my Concord correspond-
ent, "Madam Soso of your city, who was here at
the School last summer, that she may identify the
man at the Medical College ? ' ' Detectives were also
to be sent by the Chief of Police, whom I had to
visit for the purpose — my first errand of that kind
in my life. I did not relish the job, but concluded
I must sacrifice my little disinclination to the great
cause of Philosophy now in sore trouble. The lady
designated was a member of one of my classes,
and so I with letter in hand, went to her and told
her the new duty which Providence seemingly had
laid upon her, perchance for her greater distinc-
tion. Then came the explosion: "No, no, I can-
not; what will my husband say? I shall never
hear the last of it — was I really sitting with jail-
birds in your Concord School of Philosophy?
Never, my daughter will feel disgraced, ashamed
of her mother. ' ' I could only reply : ' ' Wait then ;
I shall explore again to-morrow."
Accordingly I went once more to consult with
the Chief of Police. I found that the suspect was
already under arrest for similar offenses in a num-
ber of places; Concord was only one and the last
of his victims. Thus our Philosophy which had
speculated so much about the Negative, was quite
354 THE 8T.L0VIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
upset by the actual incarnate appearance of that
Negative in its very home, and experienced some-
what of its doctrine as realized in a living person.
And the town barber had his justification when he
saluted the stranger before him with the riddling
query: "Are you to be the next?"
Let us now pass, after such a wayward intro-
duction, to our regular Hillside Chapel where is
to be given during the present summer (1885) a
course of lectures and discussions whose theme is
Goethe. This was the seventh annual session of
the School, which now began to show a deflection
from Philosophy to Literature. The Platonic
strand had already dropped into the background;
on the whole it had pretty well spent itself. The
Hegelian strand was still kept up, especialy by Dr.
Harris; but it too had seen its best days at Con-
cord; it was getting a little monotonous through
repetition, even if the audience changed somewhat
from year to year. I think Dr. Harris himself
showed more zest this season for Goethe than for
Hegel. He was feeling the need of making the
transition from Great Philosophy to Great Lit-
erature — a change which appeared to lie also in
the time.
Naturally I was delighted at this turn in the
tendency of the School; I flattered myself that it
seemed to be going my way of itself, without, how-
ever, renouncing wholly its original philosophic
purpose. I was overflowing with the theme, inas-
much as I had devoted myself to the study of
FINALE AT CONCORD. 355
Goethe exclusively during the past year. Espe-
cially the two masterpieces, Faust and Wilhelm
Meister I had wrought over and taught over and
I may say fought over several times, taking not
simply a cold intellectual interest in their contents,
but bringing my total selfhood of emotion, will,
and intellect to the examination of their artistic
values as well as of their spiritual problems. For
Goethe never fails to call up opposition in the
Anglo-Saxon mind. The result was a very pro-
nounced Literary School already at Concord, as
shown both by the papers read and especially by
the fruitful discussions afterward. The whole
drift of the work struck me as something new in
scope and in form. I now believe that my later
idea of a Literary School dawned upon me during
this very suggestive session. But such a School to
be intensively effective, should be limited to one
week and concentrated on the one greatest poet,
and mainly upon his greatest work.
Moreover this was my last season at Concord;
in fact, I have not seen the town since. I had
stayed there for weeks at a time during five sum-
mers, and had tried to imbibe somewhat of the
spirit of the place from various sources, humble
and high. Undoubtedly it had an inner social
sanctuary which I never reached, and which was
shut to the School. Still I caught the setting of
nature for Emerson, and had partaken somewhat
of his life's communal environment — a precious
experience of America's greatest literary man,
356 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— FART SECOND.
whom I fain would understand and commemorate.
The Concord School had devoted a session of lec-
tures to the memory of Emerson in 1884; I was
present and took part, by special request of Dr.
Harris, in the discussions, but I did not then think
myself ready to give a course upon the life and
work of the great man. My deeper spiritual inti-
macy with him was to come later and to express
itself in writ.
Probably this series of discourses on Goethe, if
not the best, is the best-known of all the labors of
the Concord School during its entire period. The
lectures had the good-luck to be printed in a book
under the editorial supervision of Mr. Sanborn.
This book is still read a little for the sake of the
names of its lecturers, most famous of whom was
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, though I cannot think her
contribution to have been the best, even if it was
so acclaimed at the time by W. D. Howells. Here
can be found Dr. Harris' larger study of Faust,
excellent in style and thought for the first portion,
not so good for the last half, to my mind. This
peculiar descent toward the close, instead of an
ascent, may be remarked in other writings of Dr.
Harris, owing, I think, to his method of composi-
tion.
Mr. Thomas Davidson, with that canny Scotch
burr of his on the tip of his tongue, was present
at this session and made himself an enlivening
center, as usual, round which revolved a number
of ladies and a couple of gentlemen. That was his
FINALE AT CONCORD. 357
habit somewhat; he did not and could not seize
the intellectual sovereignty of the School, but
formed a little coterie of his own off to one side.
I had last seen him in Rome some six years be-
fore; he was then in strong reaction against his
old St. Louis Teutonizing tendency, and he now
was in no friendly mood toward German Philos-
ophy and Literature. Over Hegel especially he
could almost fall into an access of frenzy, and he
was full of exceptions against Goethe, some of
which were certainly well taken. We often clashed
in the discussions, and we came to be regarded the
two chief pugnacities in the School; whenever he
would vent one of his polemical diatribes, a num-
ber of eyes would at once roll around toward me
with the little twinkle of a laugh as if to sing:
"Your turn now; up, sail in." This I usually did,
for he gave opportunity enough ; in fact, my opin-
ion was that he had never penetrated to the inmost
soul of the great poet, whose two masterpieces,
though he may have read them even with care, he
did not really understand, not having lived with
and wrestled with them and thus appropriated
them to himself in a spiritual conquest of assimila-
tion. He always seemed to stand outside and
above, and thence to criticize them, never getting
down inside and reproducing in his own way what
he found there. His attitude seemed to declare
that he knew them better than they did themselves.
Still genial, red-bearded, hot-headed Tom David-
son was the most interesting man present, not the
358 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
most convincing — rather the opposite. Brilliant,
learned, far-travelled, still you could not help
spotting him all over with interrogation marks.
He gaily loved paradox excessive just to see the
shock it made ; and he could riot in the exploitation
of his ingenuity and erudition, simply for his own
dear delighted self's sake. And yet he was full
of kindnesses, of good works, also of genial mildly
bibulous comradery ; in right mood, and he was pre-
eminently a man of moods, he could lift up and
lavishly praise what he had not so long since
damned to the last depths of the Inferno. I may
add here that after all our antagonisms over Faust
and everything else, he suddenly took a notion to
commend, and that with some warmth before the
whole School, my lecture on Wilhelm Meister which
I gave during that session. Very unexpected of him
was that turn — a feat never performed by him be-
fore or repeated by him afterwards, as far as my
knowledge now prompts.
A small biographic item I permit myself here
to jot down for those who may be interested, since
I have been once or twice asked about the matter
thus: "Where is that work of yours on Goethe's
Wilhelm Meister?" Never printed, never indeed
finished to suit my test of literary publication. I
had classes in that novel and gave lectures upon
it, and wrote many pages of notes with infinite
marginalia; I even put together some essays on
the subject. Still somehow it would never organize
itself into a genuine book for me, but it persisted
FINALE AT CONCORD. 359
in staying more or less frowsy, disjoined, recalci-
trant to any pervasive light-radiating order. In
other words, it would never get itself born out of
its second embryonic stage into its third organic
self-integrating form. Harris would have pub-
lished the fragments in his Journal, but such scraps
offended my sight in print, and moreover violated
my literary conscience. I was beset by some fatal
instinct which made me a writer of books, not of
magazine articles, which now hold the author's
cash-box and blow his fame's trumpet. Off and on
for a dozen years I was engaged in expounding
and otherwise belaboring this book, but it would
not come forth to any right coherence. So I now
fumble over the old yellow pile of manuscript
showing a task unfinished and unfinishable, with a
kind of jaundiced pathetic look. Let it sink into
the time-waves of oblivion, as one of my lost books.
On a fine day during this or possibly some other
summer, I felt a longing to run over to Walden and
take a boat-ride just to see if I could not catch one
of Thoreau's fishes, most eternal of the kind, except-
ing old Jonah's. I asked friend Emery to be my
companion. "We shall have to get permission from
Farmer Moore," says he; "the pond has recently
been stocked, strangers are not allowed to fish
there, but I, as a resident, can obtain a permit
from the guardian, and may take you along." So
we went to Farmer Moore, as he was familiarly
called, who was next neighbor to Alcott's Orchard
House, and whose white tidy New England grange
360 THE ST- LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
stood nearly oposite to Emerson's mansion. "Who
is this man?" asked the bluff heavy-handed soil-
tiller, as he was shoveling compost in his barnyard.
"A lecturer at our School from St. Louis." "A
philosopher, eh?" "Yes, I suppose so." "Well,
I'll give you a permit right off," whereat he
clutched a piece of scratch-paper and scribbled.
"Take it ; no danger ahead I see ; philosophers don't
catch any fish." I made answer, which, as I think
it over now, must have run thus: "Some forty
or fifty years ago you had two philosophers fishing
in Walden, named Emerson and Thoreau, both of
them once, your neighbors over younder in that
house; they caught the biggest string of fish ever
taken from this or any similar pond on this globe,
and people are eating of that catch yet; I took a
meal of it far away in St. Louis only a few weeks
ago. So I have come to the source, for I would
like to learn the same trick." "Take your per-
mit," interrupted Farmer Moore, turning away
to business; "but leave a few for us." "I am
going to bag the whole thing, if I can, and carry it
off to the West," I gasconaded after the humorous
husbandman as he disappeared through his barn-
door.
We sauntered along the path to Walden, took
a boat and I threw in my line — not a nibble. We
tried all the nooks around the edges of the pond,
then we sought its center, sounding the shallowest
and the deepest places — no luck. In my home-
creek I knew every hole where the suckers lay,
SOME RESULTS. 361
every riffle where the minnows sported, every mill-
dam where the bull-pouts nestled; but here my
boyhood's skill availed not, Emery cried, "I have
enough." I answered, "Patience is now our School
of Philosophy — once more." But blue-eyed Wal-
den looked again her silent No, and we, rejected
and dejected, soon turned homeward. As we ram-
bled through the fields we moodily philosophized:
"A prophetic day? We certainly can catch no
fish in Walden; yes, Farmer Moore was right."
XI
Some Results
The Concord School of Philosophy considered
itself, according to the statement of its leaders in
various public utterances, as an attempt to stem,
by a revival of the great idealistic thinkers of the
past, the materialism of the time. This world-
view, the materialistic, had received an enormous
impetus from the works of Spencer, Mill, Darwin,
Huxley, and had won its chief prestige and sup-
port from the recent triumphs of Natural Science,
which was in these years exulting in a sort of
universal war-dance of victory round the civilized
globe, having pushed itself not only into the Uni-
versities and Colleges of most countries, but also
into the Common Schools. Many of its contribu-
tions to education were valid and much needed ; but
as usual with novelties, it claimed too much, indeed
362 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
all, and so had to be remanded to its limits, in
which it is still alive and doing its indispensable
part. Here we may remark that Natural Science
through Physiology seemed to pass gradually over
into Psychology as the time's new educative prin-
ciple, of which transition Professor James may be
deemed the chief agent in our land, though he had
many co-workers.
Confessedly, then, the Philosophy of the Con-
cord School was derived from tradition, from
Europe, and made no claim to be a native product
of the country or of the time. Indeed it was
openly reactionary against present tendencies in
the world of thought, and proposed to flee back for
refuge from the incoming tide to systems past and
distant, if not transcended. Now this was the
point at which I was inclined to turn aside, not
so much through conscious opposition as from a
fermenting unconscious doubt concerning the
function of Philosophy itself in our new social
order. To be sure I had nothing then to put in
its stead, I only felt the void in myself without
being able to compass it or even distinctly locate
it. So I veered off into Great Literature as my
best self-expression for the time instead of Great
Philosophy, and began to interweave the Literary
Bibles into the Concord School just at the start
with my first course of lectures on Shakespeare,
followed later by the course on Homer.
Now the curious fact comes up that the School
itself started to tilt gradually in the same direc-
SOME RESULTS. 363
tion. As already recounted, it devoted in 1885 the
larger and more exuberant part of its energy and
enthusiasm to Goethe, upon whose different works
more than a dozen lecturers discoursed, bringing
renewed interest and refreshing variety into the
School. That was a great step forward, or it might
be said, aside from Philosophy, though the latter
was not by any means abandoned. And the next
year (1886) one-half the time of the School, whose
course had been limited to a fortnight, was to be
given to Dante. I was not present at Concord
during this session, but I had transplanted the
work to the "West, where I was nursing into exist-
ence a new Literary School without the specially
philosophic department. But let it be duly re-
marked that the Concord School of Philosophy in
the eight years of its active life hitherto, had
evolved, quite unintentionally I think, a line of
lecture courses or of spoken commentaries on the
four Literary Bibles, elevating them to an equality
with, if not precedence over the great philosophic
masters. Such an evolution of the School I need
hardly say, gratified me, indeed tallied with my
own personal evolution, and I took it as a sign
of the time and of myself, since it seemed to be a
pointer to my future pathway.
Thus the Concord School, starting consciously
with Philosophy had unconsciously developed its
first unsupected literary germ into a growth even
more vigorous than itself, being younger and not
so dry. iStill it must not be forgotten that another
364 TEE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
germ much smaller and more embryonic than
this literary one was planted in the Concord School
by Professor James, namely, that of Psychology.
But it did not grow perceptibly in the School's
mental soil; James never gave another course at
Concord, and nobody else on that subject, so that
his seed did not sprout there as far as I could dis-
cern. Still his work was not forgotten, though it
took longer to mature, and had to seek a different
field for its coming harvest. Hence we may set
down this to have been a chief merit of the Con-
cord School, that it attracted to itself and bore
along in its bosom three major disciplines of spirit
in three different stages of their evolution: (1)
Philosophy as evolved, (2) Literature (in its
greatest poets) as openly evolving, (3) Psychology
as still secretly germinating in embryo.
In regard to the external success of the enter-
prise, that will be viewed variously according to
the viewer's standard. It had the vitality to last
ten years, during which time some 2000 people
attended the sessions all taken together, according
to Sanborn's estimate. The regular audience ran
from forty to sixty at each meeting, though a
famous lecturer would treble these numbers. John
Fiske filled the Chapel to overflowing, and Emer-
son once compelled the managers to secure a larger
hall, though he then often enunciated indistinctly,
and his son sat at his side to help him over the
harder words, and to prompt his lapsing memory.
On the other hand I saw the number present drop
SOME RESULTS. 365
to eight for Dr. Harris on a bad night, although
he generally had the average attendance of forty
to fifty for his most abstruse philosophemes. I
believe, too, that he, of all the lecturers, had per-
sonally the most devoted band of listeners. As to
compensation in cash, mine was not enough to
pay my railroad fare; still the investment was
one of the best of my life. Of course none of us
received any adequate pay for our service, except
our audience possibly. Sanborn, the treasurer,
reports that after all the expenses for the ten years
had been met, there remained less than a dollar
in the treasury, which he pocketed, evidently with-
out much compunction, for he smilingly tells on
himself. Dr. Harris would have shown a similar
financial balance, if he had left any exhibit of his
outlay. Still every participator was gratified, I
think, by the result, and felt that his time and
money had been well spent.
As to myself, I hope that the foregoing pages,
which have already swollen to a generosity in
numbers far beyond my original frugal plan, will
reflect somewhat of the exuberant delight and
profit, which overflowed me quite unexpectedly I
may say, from the School and its varied experi-
ences, serious and humorous. It seemed to drop
into my life at an epochal turn, and it certainly
had an important part in shaping my future career.
I am not certain that I otherwise would or could
have broken away from my confining pinfold in
St. Louis, and have won a deliverance, which
366 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
meant a new expansion beyond the old limits, in-
stead of a possible shrinkage back into the trans-
mitted humdrum of a vocation with little or no
relief from its treadmill. But Concord brought
me more than one opportunity to push out else-
where, and to show myself able to break over my
local limits and to shake off their fetters. Then
by means of the School I had seen and heard and
conversed with a larger number of eminent living
men than ever before or since. Such a personal
intercourse had its special training for me who
had ever preferred to commune with the great
souls of the past through the printed page. I was
already too much inclined to flee to the companion-
ship of the makers of the Literary Bibles, shun-
ning my lesser pen-wielding contemporaries who
had still the disadvantage of being able to draw
breath. More alive to me than all living comrad-
ery was the dead. From this point of view my
personal experience now turned to a kind of
green oasis in the foregone world of disembodied
spirits.
Here again I must touch upon the fact that the
Concord School was through some cause or other
the most miraculous dispenser of reputation over
the whole country that has ever crossed my life's
orbit up to present date. Indeed, I think I dare
take oath that the only time when the crotchety God-
dess Fama ever smiled upon me her fleeting favors
was in that little Hillside Chapel. For some reason
the newspapers showed an extraordinary interest
SOME RESULTS. 367
in our philosophic experiment. Two reporters
from the great Boston dailies were usually present
at the School, and one of them at least was quite
a philosopher, who used to make little metaphys-
ical speeches, besides sending very full reports,
which were copied in part or paragraphed all over
the country. I think this publicity was mainly due
to the expert skill of Sanborn, who was a journal-
ist by profession. Of course there must have been
some real public curiosity about the matter. Then
Concord and its Worthies and its other antiquities
possessed a distinction of their own, even to the
extent of having a guide-book for visitors. But
judge of my surprise when a complimentary letter
was handed me by the mail carrier from a former
critical fellow-student at College whom I had not
heard of for twenty years, and who now was lo-
cated in the everglades of Florida, whither my
name had penetrated to him in print. And at the
hotel one day who should slip up behind me and
tap me on the shoulder but my Athenian compan-
ion, the fair youth whom I re-named Narcissus, as
he wandered with me along classic streams trying
to behold the antique nymphs but seeing only him-
self and me. I had left him behind in Hellas, I
thought, to woo the Greek tongue ; but here he sud-
denly turns up again after years, having tracked
me through some newspaper notice, and at once
we start to take another classic promenade, not now
along the waterless Ilissus but the full-flowing Mus-
ketaquid, interwreathing sighfully remembrances
368 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
of fair Praxilla, Maid of Athens, though not that
far-sung damsel of Byron.
Still the most stunning windfall of propitious
publicity overwhelmed me with a rush when one
Sunday morning I opened the Boston Herald, and
saw several columns of its large issue headed by
my name in big black letters. It was an extended
notice of myself and of the three or four books
I had then written, with a very friendly account
of my work at the Concord School. Thus I felt
myself borne along Fameward in a first trip on
a huge paper balloon inscribed with my name leg-
ible to all New England, from which authoritative
source it percolated in a few driblets to my home
in the West. But let the main result be at once
told: through invitations from sundry places, I
found myself able and willing to quit St. Louis and
to start on my coming career of dissemination.
I have already alluded to the fact that the Con-
cord School had its critics and still more decidedly
its caricaturists and satirists. Though expressly
traditional, it nevertheless offended a good many
dear New England traditions, for which offense re-
sentment could hardly help speeding its venomed
arrows. The established order in Church, School,
University, Literature was at least indirectly chal-
lenged, and failed not to hit back with its multi-
farious missiles. Then human psychology would
manifest itself practically at the effrontery of that
"Western invasion which dared foist its culture and
philosophy and literary doctrine upon their true
SOME RESULTS. 369
home-land, yea upon their very home-town in the
East. I collected quite an anthology of stinging
epithets flung sometimes at me in person, but
oftener heard 'round the hotel corridors and on the
streets, and particularly in Boston. But who would
wish to resuscitate these little biting insects after
so many years of torpor? So I sweep them out of
scrap box and brain into the fire. Sanborn at
whom chiefly they seemed to unsheathe their
weapons as the prime offender, rather enjoyed, I
think, roiling up Boston and even Concord on ac-
count old local grudges now and then audible but
quite unfathomable to the outsider.
St. Louis also did not fail to furnish keen detrac-
tors of the St. Louis Movement, for she could not
help being herself, and giving a slap to her own.
And they have not yet died out with the death of
the semi-century since its birth. The latest history
of the city, published only a few years ago, inter
sperses mid its other statistics quite an itemized
contempt, lampooning that old philosophic folly
and its gullible gudgeons. There is no question that
philosophers have from long ago been objects of
ridicule and envy, not without provocation. In an-
cient Athens we all have read how that supreme
scoffer, the comic poet Aristophanes, derided the
all-greatest Socrates and his movement, and how
his fellow-citizens compelled him, in his old age, to
drink the cup of hemlock for his last draught.
Moreover, the charge was often heard in antiquity
that the folk as a whole, especially the Athenians,
370 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
was addicted to Envy, suspecting and even aveng-
ing any excellence above its own level. Hence that
city was said to have banished its Great Men by
means of the ostracism, which, however, according
to Grote and others, may have had a different pur-
pose. In like manner, the accusation has been made
that St. Louis has shown a decided streak of that
old Athenian trait in her communal character,
being endowed with more than her share of civic
Envy (the ancient hag Invidia), and hence driv-
ing away her eminent men by a subtle but effective
ostracism.
At any rate the Philistines had their inning
against our St. Louis Movement. I received now and
then an unsigned letter which caricatured and
abused, but never threatened me with an infernal
machine. The newspapers had their little spirts
of wit usually pumped up from rather dry wells. A
long editorial in a Sunday edition of a leading daily
took the matter seriously, arguing that the study of
Homer and the old Greeks was utterly purposeless,
if not injurious, in this new time of this new world
of ours, and advising us to take up the History of
Liberty as set forth in Motley's Dutch Republic, a
book then much in vogue. The article was brought
to me and I replied, not to the newspaper, but to
the bringer, a pupil of mine: "Our old Greek
Thucydides contains all of that book of Motley's,
good as it is, and indeed all the History of Europe
up to date in its embryonic form, if you only read
him aright. And the right way is to make a new
SOME RESULTS. 371
translation of him, not merely into verbal English,
but into the whole historic evolution of Europe and
America till now."
Occasionally the philosophers would start a hum-
orous bout at burlesquing themselves in their own
ponderous nomenclature. ' We were all well aware
of the comic possibilities which lay in our speech,
in our doctrine, and also in ourselves. We had not
read the Aristophanic Clouds in vain, and we failed
not to enjoy the satirical grotesquery of Dean Swift
and Rabelais. We could caricature our own dear
Hegel in a kind of relief from the oppressive sever-
ity of his hugely organized system, and for the mo-
ment's amusement make his unwieldy gigantic
framework trip an elephant dance on a pin-point.
A favorite jest was the Hegelian definition of a hole
in your coat, as "the partial negation of the totality
of the being on-and-around-itself (des an-und-um-
sich Seyns) . ' ' This piece of badinage tricked out in
its Hegelian categories, was, if I remember correct-
ly, flung scoffingly at us in one of our meetings by
a former student of a German University, where
he had picked it up, as the final bomb demolishing
our philosopher's entire Coliseum of the Universe.
But the best known skit produced by the St.
Louis Movement in burlesquing itself was a clever
little book, which was published under the name of
" Our Odyssey Club, by Agnes Gragg." Its scene
is pictured from a Homer Class, and it satirizes ,not
in a wholly unfriendly way, the appearance, doings,
and sayings of the teacher, to whom is given the
372 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
highly Teutonized title of Professor Wolfgang. The
ladies in attendance are set off with bright touches
of satirical humor, which now and then seem sea-
soned with a little spice of feminine malice, adding
a piquant flavor to the style. And the dressing
talent of her sex there present is not wholly neg-
lected by Agnes. The content of the Homer lesson
is generally, though not always, shaded into the
mock-heroic, something which happened to old
Homer himself in the ancient parody called "The
Battle of the Frogs and Mice." The sprightly
travesty was received with a whoop of applause by
the newspaper critics, naturally of the Mephisto-
phelean strain, and I read in a Chicago Literary
Periodical a grave article which deemed the book
a timely antidote against a very dangerous epi-
demic in Literature then raging at St. Louis.
I would not omit the tender touch, since through
the litle book sweetly interweaves a little novelette
with a love intrigue whose heroine bears the name
of Rose Duane, of a very red-rosy look. She starts
with scoffing at Professor Wolfgang's views and
bemocks the man himself for his various oddities of
dress and behavior. But somewhere about the last
lesson he fortunately gets his leg broken in a rail-
road accident, whereupon the sarcastic young lady
hastens to nurse him back to health. Then we
hear the hapy end: "The Odyssey Club had done
its work. The Professor took upon himself the
vows . . . the name of the bride was Rose
Duane."
A WRITER OF BOOKS. 373
As for me, who had also led an Odyssey Club,
when I read the fascinating romance, I queried
who this Professor "Wolfgang might be, and even
more closely I interrogated my inner oracle con-
cerning the reality of the rubicund Rose Duane.
and especially of that last reported act of hers, for
these two names were not to be found on any list of
my classes, or of my acquaintances. And there the
matter hangs to-day.
XII
A Writer of Books
With this rubric I would signal to my reader the
topmost flowering of the present Epoch namely, the
books which I wrote and put into print. The high-
est point, I deem, of my self-realization was this
expression of me in the word. For therein I became
creative, to the extent of my native gift; I made
over into a new world of mine own that old Clas-
sical world which I had seen and mentally appro-
priated. Back to the head waters of my age's cul-
tural evolution I had traveled, in quest of my com-
pleted selfhood, and had given the record of my
journey. Thus I recreated after my own spirit's
ultimate form the already created forms which I
had found and assimilated.
Moreover it was ancient Hellas which gave me
my task and my opportunity. For I had, first of all,
to recover and to reproduce within myself that
primal germ of our European development; my
374 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
race 's civilization I was to make my own, going back
to its early budding in Greece, and taking it up into
myself on the spot of its origin, that I might the
better transmute its expression into my expression.
Hence this was the peculiarly Greek epoch of my
whole career; I have named it my Classical Rena-
scence, since it was my cultural New Birth through
Greece. It was a stage or term of my life 's spiritual
discipline, lasting some seven or eight years, as al-
ready stated, being supplementary to my Academic
training.
Just now there is considerable discussion con-
cerning the value of the Classics. Greek and Latin
have been stoutly assailed, being proclaimed un-
worthy of the time spent upon them in our institu-
tions of learning. Natural Science in particular
has been the chief antagonist seeking to ban or at
least to limit the ancient tongues and to put itself
in their place. The new utilitarian and vocational
trend also is trying to elbow them out of the curric-
ulum. To their defense the old scholarship has ral-
lied and has emphasized their many values, educa-
tional, literary, historical. A great modern historian
has said that ancient History is the key to all
History ; such it is, and yet more, for Greek History
taken by itself is the embryo of European History,
and also of Historiography. Still among the warm
supporters of the Classics there is a good deal of
discontent, especially with the method of teaching
them, wherein is deeply felt and loudly proclaimed
the need of a thorough-going reformation, which,
A WRITER OF BOOKS. 375
however, has not yet been very clearly formulated.
Perhaps as a result of this fresh stirring of rather
stagnant waters, we may hope for a renewal of
interest in Classical studies, and possibly a pro-
founder resurrection of the spirit of antique Hellas.
As an undergraduate I felt some such discomfort
over my Classical instruction, which was probably
that of the average American Colleges of the time.
In a number of ways I sought to remedy its defects
by outside studies of my own. Still it laid the foun-
dation upon which I could build in the future, if I
was man enough to realize myself as a man, making
actual in my own training humanity 's cultural evo-
lution. Through all that long Greco-Latin past, I
had to return upon myself, as it were, to go back
to my civilized beginning, and make it over into
mine own. That was my grand Classical quest of
my cultural reality and of man's; I had to travel
the way of the ages in order to find myself ; world-
renascence I must win and transfigure into self-
renascence.
Anything else could there be wanting after the
attainment of such a desperate quest ? For me there
persisted a lack, a gap, a part unfulfilled. Even on
the soil of Greece the Classical world was yet a tra-
dition, an echo of the long-ago, which I still heard
from without me. What is now to be done ? I must
turn to reproduce it also, create it as it once was
created in the aforetime. Hence I too, if I would
complete my past, must become a Classical world-
builder, such as was its original and originating
376 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
demiurge, whose first and best human representa-
tive was ancient Homer, through whom I might
reach back to that primal genetic act of Hellenic
spirit. So the ultimate of tradition was to create
the traditional, to make it reproduce itself in its
own primordial genesis. Such might be deemed the
highest achievement of the coming educational in-
stitution, namely the University of Man.
Now the fixity and permanent manifestation of
this new Classical course was to be found in the
printed page. Such had become the supreme func-
tion of the Writer of Books in his Classical Epoch :
he was not merely to learn, or to assimilate, or even
to reproduce old forms ; he had to create a new ex-
pression into which he must transfigure the spirit
antique, that he attain his own self-expression for
a stage of his life's total achievement.
The foregoing account has sought to indicate in
what way I endeavored to plant the seeds of a
Classical Renascence in myself first, and then in
others, as one fruition of the St. Louis Movement.
The Homeric poems were taken as the best revela-
tion as well as the earliest starting-point of the
stream of civilized time, which we were to follow
down the centuries into our own present city of St.
Louis. But the Writer of Books had as yet imper-
fectly thought out and written out, not merely his
exegesis, but, what was far more exacting, his re-
production of Homer's work and its co-ordination
with the other Literary Bibles. All that remained
for a later Epoch. Still the study of Homer con-
A WRITER OF BOOKS. 377
stituted the background and the germinal poten-
tiality of what I have named my Classical Rena-
scence, as it seemingly did in all ancient education.
Accordingly the Homeric fulfillment in my writing
had to wait for my own fuller evolution, which in
its turn will seek its completer realization through
the printed page. Whereof something more in its
place.
Now I have brought me to the point where it is
in order to tell directly, yet briefly, of the books
composed and issued by me during this Classical
Epoch. As already repeatedly stressed, it was my
time of intense and exclusive Classicism ; I properly
could not bring myself to do anything else, except
in a perfunctory way. It seemingly called up in
me a unique power of concentration on the one su-
preme object till it got itself done, persisting
through workless moods, interruptions, spells of
ill health. The visible output for the whole Epoch
was six printed books, all of them revealing my
strenuous classicality which I had to make over into
self-expression for my life's joy, as well as for my
spirit's completion, indeed I may say, for my spir-
it's salvation.
I shall try to put these six books into an order
which will suggest their movement through this
Classical Epoch of mine, from their starting into it
till their transition out of it toward another stage
of my life's fulfillment.
I. The general quest of the Greco-Roman world
or of the ancient Mediterranean civilization as the
378 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
genetic source of my mind's acquired stores I
have already indicated. I, the outsider from an-
other continent, was seeking to put inside of me
my own spiritual antecedents, and thus to awaken
my sleeping wholeness. To this preliminary pur-
suit I assign two books of travel which grew as I
journeyed toward my goal.
The first of these books bears the title of A Tour
in Europe, whose purport and place I have suffi-
ciently set forth in a former section under its own
special designation.
My second book is a Greek episode of travels be-
longing emphatically to my Classical quest at its
most intensive stretch and is called A Walk in
Hellas, which has been likewise mentioned pass-
ingly in the foregoing account. It is the concentra-
tion and final rounding-out of my Classical Jour-
ney, which in it penetrates to the original Greek
life still existent in its primitive haunts among the
dells and on the slopes of Parnassus. I may re-
mark of this book that on the whole it has been
received with greater favor by the literary guild
than any other writing of mine. This does not
mean that it ever attained any pronounced vogue
with the public. I printed it privately in 1861-2
at St. Louis, and it had a small local distribution
chiefly among friends. Generous Judge Woerner
wrote a somewhat lengthy account of it, which he
had the influence to get into a Sunday edition of
one of the city's newspapers — a feat which lay be-
yond my power. Sanborn took an interest in the
A WRITER OF BOOKS. 379
book, and without any request from me secured
for it an offer from a Boston publisher, to whom I
consigned the rest of the unbound sheets for a
trial in publication. But it persisted in being un-
saleable, and after a few years I unloaded the re-
mainder upon myself. Still most of the reviews
leaned to the side of a modified mercy, though a
few seized a good chance to set off their happiness
in abuse. The book continued to have in my hands
a hidden little undercurrent of life, which many
years later burst up to the light with a sudden
prominence, wholly unexpected by me, and never
since fully accounted for to my mind. But let that
future incident be remanded to its time.
It should be added that both these books dressed
themselves naturally in prose, which accords with
their fundamental prosaic conception. That is,
they were primarily inspired by the external scenes
and circumstances which I was passing through
and describing; the stress was upon the imme-
diately seen and experienced, even if the antique
kept playing into the narrative from the Classic
past with many a suggestion. I was the reporter
of the real life and nature before me, through
which, however, would fleet in a common harmony
an ideal life and nature imaging a former greatness,
truly a stage of the World's Civilization.
II. But along with, yea out of this essentially
receptive prosaic work would break forth a crea-
tive poetic activity, quite the reverse of the for-
mer in movement and character. Instead of ac-
380 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
cepting and recording in writ my impressions
from without I began transmuting and recreating
them into a new-made world within me, which I
projected into being through my pen. The result
was a group of three poems, which likewise move
along the line of my Classical Journey, but at-
tuned to another rhythm and mood. For I was
now to endow with a fresh existence what I had
simply received and adopted before as already ex-
istent; in other words I was to pass from prose
with its theme outwardly given and prompted, to
poetry whose theme itself was to be new-created
both in form and matter.
Prorsus Retrorsus. The first verses of this group
began to shape themselves in Rome, which old city
I tried to re-embody in fresh forms for my own self-
expression. That is, I had to make-over the trans-
mitted Rome before me into my own Rome. Such
was the work of the poet or maker. The result can
be seen in my little book called Ecce Roma (printed
as the First Part of the volume entitled Prorsus
Retrorsus, which label has been decried as a Latin
riddle more brain-befogging than even Carlyle's
famous Sartor Resartus).
When the railroad train had borne me into the
Eternal City on the Tiber, I was greeted from all
sides by the ruins of an old civilization. Un-
doubtedly there stood before my eyes many new
buildings and other modernities, for instance just
this steam car on which I wheeled hitherward ; but
the mightiest presence here still for me was the
A WRITER OF BOOKS. 381
ancient structure whose fragments lay scattered
about in every direction. These fragments I be-
gan to pick up and to reconstruct; them I would
vivify, and bring to some utterance of themselves.
Even the living Roman People of to-day seemed a
huge torso of the old Romanus Populus, whose
broken or lost members I would restore in imagina-
tion, giving to the renewed whole a present voice,
necessarily my own.
The outcome of my prolonged stay and contem-
plation was a series of some thirty-nine urban
idyls, if I dare christen them with a famous name :
or perhaps their better title would be that of
Roman Elegies, a term applied to a somewhat
similar kind of old Latin poetry. Moreover they
had often a pensive undertone elegiac in the mod-
ern sense, for they hymned echoes out of the grand
tragedy of ancient civilization which lay always in
their background. Thus I would rebuild old Rome
for myself from the pieces of its ruin, and make
each piece reflect the whole in each little elegy, in
which I too found my own Roman expression, voic-
ing a phase of my life's total experience.
On the whole these Roman Elegies of mine have
proved themselves, of all my writings perhaps, the
most remote and estranged from the popular mind.
Even trained intellects and friendly to me per-
sonally have pronounced them poetryless and pur-
poseless, unreadable in meter and meaning. Too
much foreknowledge required of ancient History
and Mythology, of Roman localities and dilapidated
382 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
buildings, of dead things generally in a dead
world — thus sings the outraged complaint. Then
that ghostly enigma staring at the reader in the
first words from a dead tongue — Prorsus Retrorsus
— stops him with a sudden shock, so that he often
cannot get a step further. So let us quit the book
now, and push ahead. Every shred of Rome pre-
supposes Greece, let us then move forward, or
backward if you choose, for both these opposite
ways are here strangely blent and lead us to the
same place. But here again that riddlesome Latin
lingo sleuths us still even in our English, for now
we are told that our forward (Prorsus) is at the
same time our backward (Retrorsus).
Epigrammatic Voyage. The considerable tran-
sition, both in space and in spirit, from Rome to
Greece, had next to be undertaken by me, realized
lifefully and then poetized. Herein the Greek
Anthology furnished both suggestion and inspira-
tion, with its rich clusters of ancient epigrams or
inscriptions written upon every conceivable little
theme. So I for the occasion became a Greek epi-
grammatist, and I turned into a versicle each pass-
ing view or impression punctuating my pathway.
The result was again a little book which I called an
Epigrammatic Voyage, meandering over sea and
land till I reached Athens. (At first printed separ-
ately, but now as the Second Part of Prorsus
Retrorsus) .
In this book it was my delight to re-live still an-
other phase of Greek life and to re-create it as a
A WRITER OF BOOKS. 383
part of my own, moulding my most modern self
into an antique poetic form, since I continued to
meter it after the hexametral elegiac. This was no
translation, but a poetic transfusion of new blood
into an ancient body through a fresh reproduc-
tion. The old epigrams of the Greek Anthology re-
veal better than any other ancient work the per-
vasive poetic spirit of all Greek existence down to
the humblest. Hence their creative fascination for
me in my Greek mood. I often interwove them into
my later talks on Greece and her art; still these
dear beautiful playthings of Hellas, so native to
me for years, I never could quite domesticate, I
have to believe, in any American heart.
But thus I had transformed myself into a bub-
bling line of versicles strung along all the way
from the Roman to the Athenian world-centers of
antiquity. A rare enjoyment it was of the deep
undertow of the old Greek life, revealing its ever-
active subliminal poetry as it shot up into its first
atoms of expression, which were gathered and
vased for a thousand years and more into the afore-
said Greek Anthology. Now this atomic Greek
life stimulated me to a new creation of itself in my
own life, when the right environment embraced me,
and I was ready to respond to its spell. Hence was
forged along with my every step this somewhat
sagging chain of separately rounded out epigrams,
two hundred or so, which interlinked for me the
Tiber and the Ilissus.
Delphic Days. When I reached Athens, I found
384 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
it too a civilized ruin, like Rome in this regard, or
it may be called a beautiful fragment of a ruined
civilization. Still this likewise I would take unto
myself and make it spiritually mine own, identify-
ing it, as far as I might, with my Classical self in
its present Renascence. So I lived in and also
loved old-new Athens for several busy months.
But the former dissatisfaction arose anew which
I had felt at Rome, whispering to me: "Here is
not thy goal; start once more for the head-waters
of this Nile-stream of antique life, still hidden to
thy look and to thy soul. Report tells thee that
thou mayst find its first fountain off yonder on the
Parnassus in the region of ancient Delphi. So set
out again, be thy journey without a comrade, go
thy ways afoot and alone."
Accordingly I pushed forward (or backward) to
Delphi with its vivid drama of Nature, visible out-
wardly as of old, and peopled with primitive Greek
characters living yet to-day and talking a kind of
Homeric dialect, and even singing many a little
epical adventure of their heroes. And so it came
about that this elemental Parnassian life I eagerly
adopted and appreciated, starting soon to re-pro-
duce it over into my inner world, and then shap-
ing outwardly in verse its many-hued transforma-
tions which at last fascicled themselves into a book-
let called Delphic Days.
Those Delphic idyls are essentially rural; they
stress the present in scenery and costume, in lan-
guage and emotion, also in man and woman. Still
A WRITER OF BOOKS. 385
they, like Delphi herself, hold within their small
bosoms a buried past which peeps out here and
there from its cover, and which can be unearthed
by a little digging. Since I was there, the ancient
Delphic temple has been excavated, and also va-
rious parts of the old town. But Delphi appeared
to me not the huge torso of some antique Hercules
like Rome, like Athens; it had still a complete,
unbroken though small life of its own, which had
maintained itself through the milleniums from twi-
lit primordial Greece, undoubtedly with many
changes. Accordingly in Delphic Days I sought to
re-animate within myself that original protoplasm
of early Hellas, and then to portray this real sur-
vival of it here on the real Parnassus. Hence it
comes that these poems are relatively easy to un-
derstand, since they have little of erudition, or of
mythology, or of ruins antique. Still some Classi-
cal knowledge is dangerously pre-supposed.
With these three poetical books was completed the
versified portion of my Greco-Roman Journey, or
the little Epic of my Classical Renascence. I may
egoistically conceive it as my little Iliad, in which
the solitary hero, this Ego, with his army of one
soldier, who was himself, pushing forth from St.
Louis across continents and sailing over oceans to
attack and capture, not the hill of old Troy, but the
very top of Mount Parnassus itself and its whole
antique life. Such a warlike expedition, however,
did not seek to burn or destroy that lofty world-
citadel of our race's civilization, but would strive
386 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
to restore, to renew, and to re-create it at least in
myself, and in any other questing self whom I
might persuade to hearken or to read my fresh
construction of it through voice or through print,
in prose or in verse. At any rate to me this poetical
foray was one continued music-festival of ancient
Classical harmonies, which found its own reward
in the spirit's deepest attunement.
But if I can summon audacity enough to keep
the Homeric simile running, which I have already
once tapped, I may add that this little Iliad was
succeeded by a little Odyssey of mine, the return
home of the Classical wanderer, if not to the shores
of small sunny Ithaca, at least to the grandiose
mud-stream of the ever-roiled Mississippi. Such
was my Ulyssean nostos, or spiritual home-coming
from my Parnassian expedition, which being in-
grown a musical part of my life, had to realize it-
self in a versified expression, that is, in another
poetical booklet.
III. This was baptized under the name of
Agamemnon's Daughter, which composition I would
like to stress as the third leading stage of this my
poetized Classical Renascence, inasmuch as the lat-
ter starts now to moving out of itself into what
comes next in my life's ever-advancing yet ever-
returning cycle. Thus the poem is essentially the
transition from the antique to the modern, which
transition pours itself into an old Greek vase of a
mythus, that of Iphigenia. The verse, the spirit,
the style breaks away from the foregoing elegiac
A WRITER OF BOOKS. 387
hexameters and strikes a new key-note in the
rhymed iambic stanza of eight lines. The music,
the inwardness, even the organization bespeak the
Romantic transforming the heart of the Classic.
Thus the poem is a continual metamorphosis of
the old into the new, to which the mind of the
reader is to keep itself always attuned.
The image of Iphigenia (Agamemnon's Daugh-
ter) followed me everywhere around through
Greece, from Athens to Delphi, from Delphi to
Mycenae, from Mycenae to Aulis, from Aulis back to
Delphi. I was conscious of her presence at my
side, but I could not yet catch her shape and ban
it into verse, though I often tried. She crossed the
ocean with me homeward ; like a ghost she haunted
me for years in St. Louis, till at last one day
through a fresh experience I grew able to clutch
the very form of her soul, which I then could re-
create for my new self-expression, as being a stage
of my own evolution just attained and crying out
to be realized.
It should be noted that I did not in this work
pick up individual impressions and occurrences
along my path and transmute them into separate
elegies or epigrams or idyls as heretofore. On the
contrary I took a connected story, that ancient
mythus of Iphigenia, and overwrought it into an
integral part of my own life's experience and ut-
terance. Still that old tale in time revealed itself
to me as a torso also, like Greece and Rome, as a
mythical fragment which I had to make whole in
388 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PAET SECOND.
my creative spirit. Hence instead of the two Iphi-
genias handed down from antiquity by Euripides,
I had to create four, or rather they all were the
one Iphigenia completing herself in her four grand
stages or crises of her spiritual evolution. To use
a former comparison, the Greek mythus of Iphi-
genia, like the torso of Hercules in the Vatican
Museum, had no head and no feet, no right begin-
ning or end, but only a lopped-off body which had
to be restored mythically before it in its wholeness
could be poetized. So I fabled an Iphigenia at
Mycenae for the overture and an Iphigenia at Del-
phi for the finale of the finished work.
Thus the eidolon of Iphigenia, that completest
Greek woman-soul, haunted me for years, fleeting
airily throughout my whole Greco-Roman Epoch,
in a kind of sub-conscious prophetic presence, which
I was at last to evoke into a conscious reality,
thereby building the bridge out of my Classical
Renascence. So I freed myself of her ghostly pur-
suit by the exorcising magic of the written word.
Not a few emotional currents out of my own experi-
ence streamed into and through this poem, where-
of I have already mentioned one, that of the Kin-
dergartners. Iphigenia 's tale became for me the
woman's world-mythus, in deep parallelism to the
man's, the Christ-tale, to which it is startlingly
similar. I ought to add that already at St. Louis
I was first introduced to Goethe's beautiful Iphi-
genia by Brockmeyer, who knew her and exalted
her with his sort of boisterous admiration. I kept
A WRITER OF BOOKS. 389
her acquaintance and took her along with me to
her old home-land in the course of my Classical
Journey, during which she unfolded for me into a
marvelously new personality, far richer and more
universal than Goethe's. (A fuller account of this
whole subject can be found in the appendix to the
second edition of my Agamemnon's Daughter) .
With this final book of the six I had rounded-
out my distinctively Classical Epoch lasting seven
years and more of exclusive and absolute devotion
to the winning of the antique world and to its ex-
pression in my own tongue. The outer spatial
flight of this Epoch may be figured as a kind of
ellipse, which, rising up from St. Louis, topped
the real Greek Parnassus, then circled back again
to its starting-point. I culled the spiritual treas-
ures possible to me along my path and strung them
on the foregoing bead-roll of six books, which ex-
press what I have labeled my Classical Renascence,
all of them being printed and distributed by my-
self, except one for a little while, as already ex-
plained. In the sense of the book-trade these works
remain unpublished to this moment. I can truly
say that I never offered them to any publisher in
manuscript ; but I have once in a while amused my-
self at getting his quick refusal of my stuff when
he found it already in type. Still he never would
confess that he was firstly, and often lastly, a
printer.
Nor were these books ever put through the maga-
zine mill and articled in small bits for the sake of
390 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
publicity, of which process so many good volumes
to-day bear the lasting marks or scars. I never
submitted the shorter poems to the editor of any
periodical, though a few times I have been asked for
a specimen, and have furnished it gladly without
price.
Nor did I ever succeed in getting the average
Profesor of Greek in College or University, whom
I would meet occasionally, to take any living part
in this my rejuvenation of Classical antiquity,
which is or ought to be a kind of re-animation of
his rather sterilized and often mummified calling.
Some verbal or metrical or exegetical or even
epexegetical stumbling block he was sure to kick
up and fall over in a learned sprawl, where he
could coil down at ease in the traditional security
of transmitted erudition. The fragments of the
Classical world seemed to be his chief knowledge
as well as his sole delight ; my plan of not only re-
storing the broken old torso of all Hellas, but of
re-modeling a new statue of her sprung of a new
conception belonging to our own age, he deemed
chimerical, when he understood it, which was not
always. I may here remark that in the somewhat
extensive discussion of Classical instruction going
on just at present, its own pedagogues are the keen-
est critics of its moribund pedagogy.
I have been often asked, and do not fail to ask my-
self, what is the value of this long moneyless and
thankless revaluation of old Classical values? I
esteem it a stage of human culture which every
A WRITER OF BOOKS. 391
succeeding stage has to regenerate in and through
itself in order to be cultural at all. And every in-
dividual man if he is to attain the full manhood of
his kind, cannot leave out its highest realization in
the course of its antecedent evolution. Through
some form of the Classical Renascence he is to
make himself complete in our Occidental world;
then, too, he may be able to impart his completeness,
when he has won it through his own creative
energy. He can give away his best only when he
owns it, and he owns it only when he has made it
himself.
My Classical Renascence as here set forth in its
various labors I deem an indispensable part of
what I have called my Super-vocation — a work to
be done for its own worth, and if need be, without-
pay or even recognition. Such a discipline has no
other end than itself; it is not merely its own ex-
cuse for being, but is its own supreme reward ; all
other human incentives, such as wealth, fame, in-
fluence, are only servants in the mansion of this one
sovereign end of our existence. These servants
are very convenient and indeed necessary up to a
certain utility; but at times they may refuse to
take their subordinate place in the economy of
life, and seek to usurp the sovereignty. Then
comes the crucial test of the man's ultimate value;
he will dare become his own servant, rather than
be the slave of his servants. Some such test I felt
now to be crushing in upon me, and producing no
little unrest, but without a serious breach in my
392 THE ST, LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
deeper resolution, whereof the future must certify-
to the fact.
This Writer of Books, therefore, found his solid
reward in the practice of his own creative energy ;
he might even call it a foretaste of his eternal hap-
piness. In this way he felt and communed with
the first sources of being ; or, to employ perchance
a more daring locution, he shared in the original
Primal Love creating the "World. At any rate he
may here repeat the sentence of faith already cited
from his private breviary: Scribers est orare.
Prayers are sometimes paid for, it is said ; but
mine were not, and all these books of mine are in
their first genesis my orisons.
And here at the close of the present Epoch I may
be permitted to turn one brief cast of my pro-
phetic search-light upon the farther future, fore-
saying that this Classic Renascence simply preludes
and prepares for another and deeper Renascence,
not only mine but time's also, namely the Self's
very Renascence in its own native form of utter-
ances. Or let it be thusly said : underneath this outer
Classical Itinerary runs an inner unconscious
Psychical Itinerary, which with the years is des-
tined to burst up to consciousness and win a new
self-expression in its own science.
But mark now the shifting of the scene, both
outer and inner. Along with the change to a new
stage of my spirit's development, is conjoined a
most surprising change to a new locality as the
right environment of my fresh task. Guess me the
name of the place.
CHAPTER SECOND
The Renascence Evolved and Propagated
Here, to my mind looking backward over life's
mountain peaks, appear in a single group or mass
the next ten or a dozen years, representing this
cardinal fact: the evolution both internal and ex-
ternal, of the foregoing Renascence, which in its
classical form could only be germinal, yet not for
me alone, but likewise for all civilization.
Now this Renascence in my special case unfolds
doubly: first, inwardly into the four Great Books
of Literature with my completed expressions of
them in the so-called commentaries ; secondly, into
their outer propagation over the country at some
favorable places for growth. Moreover I may add
that this was peculiarly my Chicago Epoch, in con-
trast to the previous one which had centered in St.
Louis.
What has been won in the foregoing Epoch at
St. Louis and Concord, is next to be scattered far
and away over all the land, to the outreach of my
ability. The propagation of our so-called Rena-
scence, or of that phase of the St. Louis Movement
which I had especially cultivated and developed,
must now be the work of a new Epoch quite dis-
tinct from the one which I had just passed
393
394 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
through. First of all, the change involves a break-
ing loose from my two chief centers hitherto, and
a dispersion of energy, both mental and physical,
in order to plant the seed-corn in as large a terri-
tory as possible.
Thus it was for me a time of wandering, and I
rambled continuously over a greater space than
ever before or afterward in my career. My jour-
neys extended from Boston, New York and Wash-
ington along the Atlantic Coast, to Omaha and
Minneapolis in the "West. Still the most of my
work lay in the two central States, Indiana and
Illinois. I can truly say that this was the busiest
portion of my entire life. It lasted some thirteen
years from 1884 till 1897, to reckon its full day
from dawn to sunset. I was forty-three years when
it started, and I kept up the campaign till I
brushed the border of old-age, and heard its warn-
ing. Moreover the Epoch itself began to wane in
strength and fervor, having delivered its message,
and also to show signs of making a transition into
a new and more advanced stage of that total life of
which it was but a part. So much for the outer
spatial dispersion of myself as well as of my teach-
ings.
Next I may tell something of the methods which
I employed in this propagation. First was the
single lecture (or Lyceum) which I always deemed
insufficient in itself, though needful as a stimulus
and as an overture to deeper and more organic
work. Hence I would try to push the interested
THE RENASCENCE EVOLVED, ETC. 395
listeners forward into the Class, which took a
course of connected lessons on a great and abiding
theme, like a Literary Bible. But the plan did
not stop with these Classes, which, after being
trained separately in a given locality, were unified
and intensified in the Literary School, which was
held eight times in Chicago alone, and several times
elsewhere. To a still higher and final stage did we
strive to carry the work, which we sought to make
complete and permanent in what at last became
known under the name of the Communal Univer-
sity.
Now these four pedagogical forms or methods
will continually recur in the course of this narra-
tive, so that it is worth while to keep them in mind
by a recapitulation: (1) the Lecture, (2) the
Class, (3) the Literary School, (4) the Communal
University. Though these separate forms were old,
they together constituted a new order, or it may be,
a new system of pedagogy, specially applicable to
social conditions, as I found them here in the "West,
but lying outside the traditional lines of education.
It was not hostile to the transmitted educational
training, but supplementary. For the human be-
ing as active citizen has still to receive his or her
best and deepest instruction after the High School,
the College, the Scholastic University, as they have
been handed down from the past. They cannot
educate for life, as they often claim, for life itself
is to be always an education, and must have in this
field its own educative institution. Indeed profes-
396 T HE ST. L0VI8 MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
sional educators themselves ought especially to be
pupils in this Higher School.
But behold the unexpected turn: amid all this
scattered propagation and far-away dispersion of
mind and body, a center insists upon creating it-
self just for the purpose of better dissemination.
This center was not St. Louis, not any city of the
Atlantic Coast, but that youngest Westerner, Chi-
cago. Unwillingly I may say, and at first uncon-
sciously I found myself driven toward the over-
mastering rival of St. Louis, whose phenomenal
rise to supremacy I had watched for many years
with no little jealousy, I must confess. I had seen
many a changeling pass from the river-town to the
lake-town with a feeling of reproof for their dis-
loyalty. And now I woke up to find myself just
such a disloyal changeling in spite of my own self-
reproach and even inner repugnance. I turned my
breast against that irresistible current surging Chi-
cago-wards, and tried to swim up stream, only to
see myself borne into the heart of the maelstrom,
which was just the swirling city itself.
Thus my Chicago time opens, which starts and
runs parallel with this Epoch of Propagation. I
soon discovered that nowhere else could such a task
be accomplished. Chicago had already become the
great center of Western distribution, both for mer-
chandise and for intelligence. The latter fact I
could not at first believe, till immediate experience
pounded it painfully into my brain. Moreover the
city itself began to offer me a new and very inter-
THE RENASCENCE EVOLVED, ETC. 397
esting problem, quite different from that of St.
Louis or of any community I had ever known be-
fore — a problem that appealed mightily to the un-
traditional motive ever propelling me from within.
So I was to receive here, too, a communal training.
'To my mind Chicago soon started to reveal itself
in three marked phases, which rounded out to-
gether one great all-overwhelming process. In the
first place, the town sped away with a furious mo-
mentum, being externally dashed forward on the
roaring stream of events, as they drove it and with
it, so that it seemed all afloat. But in the second
place the city was even more violently agitated in
and through itself, becoming a very whirlpool
of whizzing humanity, within which it was almost
dangerous to get caught. Thirdly, this rapid revo-
lution generated a kind of centrifugal energy which
hurled the city's transactions of every sort in
every direction over the land, making it the great
center of distribution, to which all products were
drawn, swallowed up for the moment, and then
regurgitated far away every-whither. No other
urban maelstrom like it on this globe is the general
verdict of travelers. It seemed to challenge com-
parison with any one of the elemental Furies of
Nature — the earthquake, the cyclone, the volcano
in eruption.
Thus the outer appearance of Chicago as well as
the inner character seemed the opposite to that of
St. Louis, whose law after 1880 was relatively re-
tardation which at times seemed to approach stag-
398 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
nation. The contrast between the two cities was
smiting, and became the literary common-place of
all recording observers, partial and impartial.
Somehow the great tide of Western migration came
pouring into and through Chicago, which repre-
sented the world afloat, she being afloat and awhirl
herself. Meanwhile the paralyzing disillusion of
St. Louis lay heavy upon her brooding spirit. So
I was compelled to re-read the old tale of two cities
not in the romance of Illusion now, but in the fact,
as this unrolled before my eyes. I took lodgment
in Chicago, but my domicile there never could get
fully anchored, the city itself being so unanchored,
as if it were a thousand floating islands on Lake
Michigan.
(Well might I ask myself : Have I any function
here in this most restless, uncertain, transitory ex-
istence? The head gets dizzy at first with merely
looking at the swirl and you begin to query, what
will become of you, with your philosophic emphasis
upon the abiding and the essential, if you once
plunge into this cyclonic ever-shifting multitude?
After some days of drifting, I concluded that my
part was to stabilize it, to steady it, to put some-
thing permanent into the evanescence before me, as
far as my bit of power would hold out. The ven-
ture began to interest me, to allure me, to absorb
me, yea to hypnotize me through its very hazard.
In this sense I became a gambler literally on Chi-
cago change or rather on Chicago changefulness.
But what capital could I get for such a specula-
THE RENASCENCE EVOLVED, ETC. 399
tion ? I had brought with me from my former ac-
quisitions the intensive study and interpretation
of the great Literary Bibles of the Race, which
have shown a more enduring power of immortality
than any other spiritual treasures of the past. I
have already mentioned my labors in the exposi-
tion, propagation, and reproduction of the four su-
preme poets — Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and
Goethe — to whom I had devoted several years at
St. Louis and at Concord. They were the ever-
lasting anchorage of all Literature, now becoming
the most transitory of sublunary things, anchorage
too of those spirits who sought for some fastness in
the fleeting panorama of this our sense-life. No
shriller, more grinding, pulverizing contradiction
could be found than that between Chicago and the
Literary Bibles, symbols respectively of the mo-
mentary and of the perennial in human achieve-
ment.
Now the fascination came strongly over me to
perform just this feat of planting the opposition
of all Time, indeed the extremes of the Universe
itself — that of eternity and that of the instant —
right in the heart of the purest manifestation of
restless fugacity on our globe. Could it be done
without money, without influence, even without
books, other than the simple text of our Literary
Bibles? For I had nothing else. Undoubtedly
there was some literature written and printed in
Chicago, yes a good deal of it, but it was almost
wholly of the. public press, and of all the ephemeral
400 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
records of the ephemeral in this inky deluge of
ours, the Chicago newspaper was then the most
ephemeral, and it still is not lacking in that quality.
Indeed it had no belief in immortality of any
sort, especially in the lettered one; and it would
jet its Mephistophelean sneer at any attempt to
introduce such a faith into Chicago's fleet modern-
ity. Eugene Field, born and reared in St. Louis,
but a fugitive (or deserter) to Chicago like my-
self, though in a very different vocation, made fun
of our Literary Schools in his journalistic Sharps
and Flats, and set all the scoffers of the town to
sniggering and mocking at us for our Chicagoless
follies. Still I must say, to the credit of "Genie"
Field, as our St. Louis printers used to call him
affectionately, when he was there a genially
crapulous reporter, that he induced his journal, the
Chicago News, to hire me to write an article on
Irving 's rendition of Faust, which was then on the
stage in Chicago. I accepted the offer for the sake of
the publicity, inasmuch as I was then having classes
in Goethe's Faust, and was working desperately to
get ready for our Literary School, or general In-
stitute of Lectures on the same subject. Field of
course never came to the classes or to the Literary
School, but he did hunt me up, and he gave me
box tickets to the theater to see the play and its
famous English actors, solacing me by the way
with some very white complimentary flimflams, tell-
ing me confidentially how much he "had profited
by reading my books. ' ' I was not cruel enough to
THE RENASCENCE EVOLVED, ETC. 401
test his knowledge of them, but I cannot think that
Field expected me to take his words at ear-value,
though I appreciated his dexterous courtesy, and
his generosity self-suggested, for I never would
have dared ask him for such a favor. In his earlier
days as a reporter, he must have often heard at
St. Louis of our Movement and of its members, and
he was probably astonished at its audacious migra-
tion to Chicago, the supposed newspaperial In-
ferno of scribbling demons, into which I now dared
venture, pen in hand.
The article was duly written and published, tak-
ing up about a column in length, as I recollect, for
I have lost or mislaid the document somewhere in
my wanderings, though I thought to preserve it as
a keepsake. It was not a good article, a kind of
abnormal hybrid, for I tried to newspaperize my
Faust work, thus producing an unnatural cross be-
tween journalism and philosophy, very unpleasing
in feat are to the parent, and probably not attract-
ive to the public. I would have rejected it, if I
had been in the judgment seat of the editor. Great
was my surprise, however, when the office sent me
a check for twenty-five dollars, which, I can still
say, as I did a few years ago, "has remained the
first, last, and only compensation in money for
any writing of mine up to this day." Undoubted-
ly some of my books have been sold, but they were
never written with a view to their saleability. But
here appeared the first and the last exception.
The chief lesson of my article was given to my-
402 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
self, who then and there learned my total lack of
fitness for any form of periodiealism. The editor
probably thought so too, for he never asked me to
send him another article, though there was the
opportunity. And he was right. In fact I had
already at St. Louis had my deterrent experience
with the magazine, whereof I have given some ac-
count on a previous page. The newspaper, as the
ephemeral record of the Ephemeral, produced a
jarring discord in me who was putting all my
faith and all my heart as well as my brain, into the
propagation of the eternal record of the Eternal,
just now in ephemeral Chicago. To be sure I
never failed to read the newspaper with diligence,
for its own sake first, it being the moment's world-
bubble, and then for the sake of the reaction from
it, which always tended to give me a quick set-
back upon my own true calling.
And now let the fact be duly acknowledged that
I was not alone in attempting to fix some per-
manent literary anchorage into the tornado-whirl
of Chicago. I remember the efforts of my soldier-
friend, General N. B. Buford, who ten years before
my time had the battle-courage to organize a huge
philosophical Society, which far outstripped in
numbers our little St. Louis affair, symbolizing in-
deed the two cities. For it had three hundred mem-
bers, as he figured it, when he called me to address
it far back somewhere in the seventies. That was
my first public lecture of the kind away from home.
I supposed I would meet a dozen or two people, the
THE RENASCENCE EVOLVED, ETC. 403
usual size of our St. Louis audience. Imagine my
terror when I had to face three hundred Chicago
philosophers, twenty times as many as I was in the
habit of seeing at our meetings. Thus philosophy
herself was for a short time enormously Chicago-
ized, perhaps two-thirds of the membership being
women. The Society did not last long ; I could
hardly find a trace of it when I went back to Chi-
cago in 1884. And my good friend, the General,
had also vanished beyond. Seemingly the science of
the Eternal had become altogether transitory in
Chicago, taking the character of its environment as
the terrestrial paradise of the Ephemeral.
In this connection gratitude requires that I
should mention three faithful friends of the cause,
gentlemen of first distinction and influence in the
city. The two best-known clergymen of Chicago
and public-spirited citizens of the highest charac-
ter, Dr. David Swing, and Dr. H. W. Thomas, were
always ready to lend us aid by word and deed, and
even by lectures before our Literary Schools. They
have passed on, but Professor Lewis J. Block re-
mains, distinguished as poet, critic, and educator,
and specially gifted with profound insight into
philosophy. I never failed to gain new light and
incentive in conversing with his deeply sympathetic
personality.
In the fall of 1884 I gave my first course of talks
on Homer to a small miscellaneous audience in a
school-room of Chicago, lasting about five weeks.
At the close I was surprised to find requests for a
404 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
number of classes— all that I could attend to — in
the several Literary Bibles. These classes were
scattered over the city, and were to be held chiefly
in private parlours. What could be the source of
this sudden cultural outburst in Chicago ? I found
that most of the promoters were people who had
been either at Concord or at St. Louis — in the
latter case they were chiefly Kindergartners who
had studied with Miss Blow. I had another en-
gagement in Indiana, but I promised to return the
following year which I did with the result that
Chicago became my center of propagation for quite
twenty years.
When I came back and resumed the classes I
found an interest similar to that in St. Louis some
five years before. All over town these groups kept
springing up, and asking me for lessons in the
Literary Bibles. I was puzzled by the fact, inas-
much as Chicago acquaintances had repeatedly
warned me that no such thing as the St. Louis
Movement was possible or even advisable in their
wild and whirling town. Of course there were
some clubs which studied Browning for instance,
who was then in the acme of his vogue. To-day's
novelists also Chicago might take in small quick
doses, but I was told that it wanted "none of your
old Homer or medieval Dante." Still I found re-
sponses to these most ancient poets in most modern
Chicago, which by report would contemptuously
fling under the hoofs of its cattle and swine at the
THE RENASCENCE EVOLVED, ETC. 405
slaughter-house all such long-outlived palaeo-
graphs.
In the great migration to the West from the
East, the world was afloat with the Sun's course,
and dropped along its path a line of floating com-
munities, many of which have disappeared, while
others, the most of them, have been stabilized into
the prescribed communal life of the past. Chicago
was their best representative, and has preserved
much of their original Western character of daring
initiative, and will not settle down into quiescent
tradition, refusing to conform its activity to the
transmitted model from the East. In a sense it still
keeps on migrating, pioneering, breaking away even
from its own prescription, ever re-making itself a
new town on some new frontier. Tell me, I would
often ask of my self's own Sibyl, what has ancient
Homer to do with such a town as this Chicago?
Why dare you try to bridge over what Time and
Space, Spirit and Speech have so utterly divorced ?
The response would run : ' ' That is just Chicago in
quintessence: to dare those elemental deities of Na-
ture's separation, Space and Time, and to put
them to flight across continents. ' '
Thus I, a wee vanishing atom myself, made the
desperate plunge into the Chicago maelstrom, bear-
ing under my arm my big eternal evangel, nothing
less than the four greatest, most enduring books
written by European man. At first I startled and
shrank, still I felt the secret affinity, and so with
time I became one with my environment ; I turned
406 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— FART SECOND.
vortical like Chicago in my outer activity, while
my inner remained firmly anchored to my one
creative task.
Having taken a glimpse of external tumultuous
Chicago, I began to look underneath the surface,
and there I soon found the city-soul in a deeply re-
sponsive agitation, perchance even more perturbed
inwardly than outwardly, spiritually than bodily.
The first and best example rises now before me in
the fact that sooner or later I came upon at least a
dozen new religions, which were claiming to be
here evolved or perchance to have just dropped
from Heaven in answer to the crying prayer of
the place and the time. Certainly they were all
protests against the transmitted theology, and
waged war upon prescription. Therein they could
touch me to an harmonious thrill, even when I al-
together disagreed with their doctrines. A little
investigation, however, showed that quite all these
new religions were mainly reproductions or recru-
descences of old Oriental faiths. The Hindoo God-
consciousness showed a strange revival right in the
midst of the grand Chicago Maya; Buddhism found
followers, the new Brahminism under the name of
Brahmo-somaj had its cult, and especially Theos-
ophy reaped no small harvest after the seeding of
the famous Madam Blavatzky, whose Isis Unveiled
I once found Harris deeply pondering and propos-
ing to refute, in consequence of its ravages among
his friends, chiefly women. An American convert to
Mahommedanism came among us and preached to
THE RENASCENCE EVOLVED, ETC. 407
us like a zealous missionary to the heathen, though
he kept silent on polygamy. Marvelously success-
ful in thrift, in numbers, and in turmoil was the
revival of the old Hebrew Zion by John Alexander
Dowie, who within a block of my lodging-house,
proclaimed himself on Michigan Boulevard in
triumph the successor of Moses and David, saying
"I am a theocrat! away with your democracy!"
But altogether the most active and pervasive reli-
gious revolt went under the name of Christian
Science, avatar of the returning new Christ, now a
woman, and was often deemed Mrs. Eddy's Re-
formation of Luther's Reformation. For a while
all the Protestant Churches of the city seemed
tinged with it, like an epidemic it spread and
raged, everybody took to healing one's self and
one another. An imprudent excellent clergyman,
an acquaintance of mine, dared preach a sermon
against it, which was his last from that pulpit when
he found the bulk of his congregation preaching
back against him. The universal gift of healing
played havoc with the regular physicians ; I heard
an estimate that one-third at least of the medical
practice of Chicago had vanished. One of my
curious experiences was that some experts in the
new doctrine attended my lectures on Homer and
Shakespeare, and declared repeatedly that they
contained good Christian Science without my say-
ing it or even knowing it. This occurred so often
that I concluded there must be some common ele-
ment between us — what ? The break from too much
408 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
tradition, perchance. Let the reader be his own
oracle and give the answer.
Thus all Asia in its highest spiritual contribu-
tion to humanity, the whole Oriental mind with its
supreme gift of the great world-religions — Chris-
tian, Jewish, Mahommedan, Hindoo — seemed to
bubble up again on this side of the globe in that
huge vat of fermentation called Chicago, and
started to seething with a fresh creation of them-
selves, usually under the old Asiatic names but
sometimes not, in this newest city of the Occident.
What can it all mean? At any rate the psycholo-
gist might glimpse in the phenomenon the soul's
early starting of its last and largest return to the
Orient,, to the original home of our civilized God-
consciousness, and might mark the early chaotic
mutterings and struggles of the coming universal
religion, in this its grand Occidental dip backward
into its first creative sources. Only in Chicago has
ever been held a real Parliament of Religions, which
took place during her World's Fair, and which
still remains a striking revelation of herself in this
respect as well as a mighty prophecy, not yet ful-
filled, of what is to follow after the political Fed-
eration of the Nations.
So I flung myself with a shiver of terror, yet also
with a certain feeling of kinship, into this vortex
of Chicago life. One point of sympathy I may
here designate : All these propagandists of new
religions in one way or other, more or less pro-
foundly, sought the re-interpretation and recon-
THE RENASCENCE EVOLVED, ETC. 409
struetion of the old Religions Bibles of the Orient,
which was not dissimilar to my theme, though I
clung to the four Literary Bibles of Europe — old
and new — with fresh significances, and their final
co-ordination into one Book of the Ages.
Undoubtedly many other long inherited beliefs
and disciplines were boiling in that Chicago caul-
dron, and undergoing some kind of transformation.
Philosophy, Art, and especially Education were
subjected to the city's dissolving as well as reno-
vating process. This meant not so much the de-
struction as the re-construction and rejuvenescence
of all ancient Tradition, sacred and secular — an as-
piration which St. Louis once owned when I first
knew her, but which she had at this time quite
lost — perchance again the backstroke of her Great
Disillusion.
Very suggestive of the new social and spiritual
Apocalypse, and also deeply motived in human pro-
gress were these fresh young Chicago recurrences
of aged Asia and Europe, as if here the world had
begun over again and I were present at the new
Creation ; or at least as if History had started on
another great arc of the total cycle of man's de-
velopment. The experience of this original proto-
plasmic world-life which was then engendering at
Chicago, and in which I profoundly participated,
became for me the supreme discipline of that
greater Chicago University of Civilization, very dif-
ferent from, yet by no means so easily discernible
as the other great Chicago University (of Rocke-
410 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
feller) dedicated to the well-groomed traditions of
time-honored Learning — to all of which I for one
insisted upon paying due obeisance, though not a
one-sided devotion.
Accordingly I feel interested enough in myself
to set forth a somewhat detailed unfolding of this
present Epoch, truly the central one of my entire
life in years and also the busiest one in labors, as it
evolves its two distinctive strands, theoretical and
practical, or of inner development and outer propa-
gation, and so brings to light the two opposite ele-
ments, the concentrated and the discursive, of my
double-tracked existence.
The New Mythical Setting
Not long after I had started upon this new
Epoch of wandering and of seed-sowing, I became
dimly aware of a very subtle change which was
slowly entering and transforming my imaginative
life. For my conscious activity lay embosomed as
it were, in a penumbra of ever-flashing imagery
which would stream out from unconscious depths
and frequently, but not always, shape itself into
prose and verse. Such an elusive nebulous world of
Phantasy envelops us all, though few probably de-
velop it into an integral part of their larger exist-
ence. Now this is what I may here call life's myth-
ical setting or frame-work, which often changes
THE NEW MYTHICAL SETTING. 4H
along with the man's spiritual mutations. Such
at least was the case with me at the present time.
The reader will recollect that everywhere in the
previous Epoch my environment was Hellas, her
works and her spirit. My quest strove to assimilate
and to reproduce both in myself and in outward
forms the antique Greek world, hence that time was
especially named my Classical Renascence. I found
that on all sides the Greco-Roman life with its
civilization was enwrapped in the plastic folds of
Greek Mythology, from which evolved not only
religion, but poetry, art, even history, as we may
still observe in the respective works of Homer,
Phidias, Herodotus. Thus all Classical expression
was primarily mythical, unfolding out of that won-
derful Greek Mythus, which I tried to re-live and
to re-create for so many years. Let me instance
again the tale of Iphigenia, which traveled at my
side during my whole European journey and back
home, till I could ban it out of me into expression
and thus rid me of its haunting presence.
But now behold the unique metamorphosis in my-
self most surprising to myself! A new Mythus,
the American one, of the Western frontier, begins
to insinuate itself into and even underneath that
old Greek one, and to take its place in the back-
ground of my consciousness, being native to my
birth-soil and not transmitted from hoar antiquity.
I refused to believe my own psychology at first, and
I revolted at the change. But I could not help my-
self, a deeper and more compelling stage of my
evolution had set in, something mightier than my
412 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
conscious pleasure or purpose. The lofty Olympian
world with its Gods and Demigods was impercept-
ibly transmuted into the life and legend of the
humble vagabond, Johnny Appleseed, who now be-
came, as it were, my spirit's exemplar and my
mythical hero, at the start in spite of myself. Is
not the Christ-tale something similar in form, and
often productive of a similar transformation ?
Such, then, was the most searching and distinc-
tive prognostic of the new Epoch. But who was this
Johnny Appleseed? A wanderer and a seed-sower
through the Mississippi Valley, or a considerable
part thereof ; yet he had an idea in his head which
he carried over into life quite at the cost of life,
thus making himself the ideal of all idealists, and
reducing the three fates of existence, food raiment,
and shelter, to their lowest terms — truly a new-
world fate-compeller. He grew to be for the people
a mythical character, and so he remains to me ;
still he was an historic person with a brief
biography, to whom a monument has been erected
at Mansfield, Ohio, on which we may read the fol-
lowing inscription: "To the memory of John
Chapman, best known as Johnny Appleseed,
Pioneer Nurseryman of Richland County from 1810
to 1830."
This John Chapman was born in New England,
but as a young man migrated to the West, and the
first report of him has been transmitted that he was
seen about the year 1800 floating down the Ohio
river, in charge of two canoes lashed together and
THE NEW MYTHICAL SETTING. 413
loaded with sacks of appleseeds for the planting
of nurseries on favorable spots in advance of civili-
zation, which was now seeking a new home in the
wild North-Western Territory. Thus every hardy
pioneer, migrating with his family, would find a
young orchard already awaiting him wherever he
might settle in the wilderness. Such was apostolic
John Chapman's general idea or gospel: service
for the ever-advancing immigrant, bearer of the
oncoming civilized order. It is added that he was
a vegetarian, his chief food being the berries, nuts,
and fruits of Nature along with an occasional hand-
ful of Western cornmeal. He went bare-footed win-
ter and summer, while his clothing was of the
rudest make. (More about the historic Johnny
Appleseed in my Writer of Books, Appendix.)
Such may be deemed the primitive real kernel of
this Mythus of Migration, which wreathes around
Johnny Appleseed, and which the people them-
selves made and named — the only original Ameri-
can Mythus that I know of, with the possible ex-
ception of Uncle Remus. To be sure, the seedlings
of many other legends have been imported and even
planted in the soil here, where they have not failed
to sprout and bloom. But the story of Johnny Ap-
pleseed is autochthonous, though it may have anal-
ogues in other parts of the earth. Like that of
Hercules and of Theseus in Greek fable, it has a
unique historic personality as its creative center,
from which it continues to grow layer by layer,
each generation and often each locality adding its
414 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
legendary anecdote. So I have seen in my life-
time what may yet be called the Mythus of Abra-
ham Lincoln augmenting itself, story upon story,
till its material promises to outstrip the man's
actual biography, both in interest and magnitude.
Thus the people mythologize their true heroes,
even the American people do so, who are on the
whole not much addicted to Mythology.
The doings of Appleseed I have heard celebrated
in places where he could never have been, for the
Mythus universalizes itself over Space and Time.
The date and locality of his death have been care-
fully hunted up and specified by investigation ; yet
his grave has been pointed out to me in different
spots hundreds of miles apart, during the course
my own wanderings as lecturer also planting (if
you will so construe it) my appleseeds.
I was nine or ten years old when I first read at
home in a local book a brief account of Johnny
Appleseed, and his story never left me. In fact
it would rise to mind of its own accord, now and
then, during all my young-manhood ; but being un-
used by me either in life or in writing, it would
quietly sink back into its former subliminal depths.
I heard of the peculiarities of Johnny Appleseed
from the people of my native town in Ohio, which
was only a few miles from Mansfield, once Apple-
seed's home, and his monument's own town. It is
my opinion that the old orchard on my grand-
father 's farm originated from one of Appleseed 's
nurseries. And thus in my boyhood I ate of his
THE NEW MYTHICAL SETTING. 415
apples, the real fruit of his service. But more
deeply I partook of his ideal legend, which lay un-
consciously fermenting in me, and imparting its
education to my unrisen Self. Thus a native
Mythus was taking part in my training, and to a
small degree in that of my little community, alto-
gether in spite of ourselves, for openly we ridiculed
it while secretly we took it to our hearts, and cher-
ished it unforgotten. Indeed the ultimate function
of the Mythus in all its shapes — legend, fairy-tale,
folk-lore — is that it be educative of the people in
the people's own form, whence it unfolds into the
higher forms of poetry, art, literature, and culture
generally. I hold that the first and greatest edu-
cator of the Greek people to its transcendent gifts
and works was that unique Greek Mythology,
genetic back-ground of the Greek world, and signifi-
cant even to-day as educative. So at least I felt
when I tramped through Greece to catch it up from
its creative living well-head, and not from books,
which are necessarily desiccated, yet very neces-
sary. Not without an urgent need of the time's
training has there taken place a revival of My-
thology, and especially of Greek Mythology, v
has now become a study in many schools, and is
again being told to little children, of course with
due selection and modification and often I
production.
Thus I had my little part in a fresh lifting c £ the
race's mythical treasures, and in restoring the]
their primordial educative value. My special prae-
416 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
tical field in this business I found in the Kinder-
garten with its youngest beginners in schooling.
But I failed not to stress the Mythus which under-
lay and germinally created each of the Literary
Bibles, the supreme products of human genius. So,
for me the Mythus with its primitive form of im-
aginative expression overarched and integrated the
beginning and end of man's grand discipline of
education, from the little Kindergarten to the
loftiest Poem, supreme work of the University of
Civilization. ,
In Johnny Appleseed my wandering and dis-
semination had found and stirred the far-down ele-
mental Mythus lurking from earliest youth in my
dark underself, and now bubbling up to the light
as the vehicle of my fresh self-expression, in both
prose and verse, during the coming Epoch. As al-
ready indicated, this juvenile Mythus, so I may call
it, now springs forth full-grown after a long but
ever- fermenting subsidence, and actually tackles my
most cherished G-reek Mythus, flinging the same
underneath itself and marching triumphantly
ahead on its new career. Still we must not forget
that the old Greek world, with its vast rich experi-
ence was not destroyed or lost, but was gratefully
embraced and borne along in this young ebullient
spirit of the time and country.
In myself the change often seethed up before me
as a startling transformation. From the high aris-
tocratic antique to the humble democratic modern,
from the lofty Heroes and Demigods to lowly bare-
THE NEW MYTHICAL SETTING. 417
footed Johnny Appleseed, from the ideally beauti-
ful plastic form and classic drapery of the Greeks
to the savagely blanketed and feathered figure of
the Indians ( Appleseed 's companions often), from
the grandiose sea-swell of the Homeric hexameter
to the petty bits of the jingling doggerel — such was
at times the shivering transition, yet supernally
ordered for my completer self-hood, as I have to be-
lieve, now looking backward.
Here I may add that the Mythus of Johnny
Appleseed, as I prefer to designate it, did not cease,
with this Epoch of a dozen years, its mythical ac-
companiment to my life. Later I shall recount how
'Y; quite suddenly gushed up again from its sub-
conscious sources even in my advanced age, and in-
sisted upon a fresh renascence. Thus it attuned
all my days to an undertone of popular legend
which at due periods would break into utterance
as an insuppressible element of my total self-ex-
pression. In my youth it lay implicit, doubtless
ripening ; but in my middle life it became explicit,
openly active, quite supplanting my previous
Classicism. But behold it again now in my hoar
senescence — wait, for this is not yet past.
In the foregoing account I have tried to give a
glimpse of what was darkly and fitfully streaming
through my underworld, where the mythical ele-
ment had its sway and function, for I believe it to
have been one of my best and most congenial
teachers, holding its school in the unconscious
lower currents of my soul's deep sea. But my con-
418 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
scious, unmythical self was chiefly busy with the
Literary Bibles, which had also their mythical sub-
structure of prime significance, as I have always
tried to set forth with due emphasis. At this more
definite, better-lighted objective we may next take
a glance.
II
The Double Transfer
The present Epoch is marked at its opening by
two significant changes of locality: from St. Louis
and from Concord to Chicago. The latter city is
to show itself the new center of the Movement, as
far as this continues to run on my lines of work.
With such a double shifting of my life-scene is also
connected a fresh stage of my development.
That which I had won and wrought out to a cer-
tain completeness I was to transplant to a different
soil. For Chicago was then bursting forth in the
riotous exuberance of early gigantic youth, crude
but enormously energetic; while St. Louis seemed
to be collapsing into a premature old-age, disap-
pointed, deeply disillusioned of life already. The
difference in the mood of the two cities seemed to
suggest that between the rising and the setting
sun. Undoubtedly there was still much activity in
St. Louis, mental and commercial; but we all felt
a settled something clogging her soul, a despairful
brooding over the Great Disillusion. As for me
personally, the change meant a new freedom, a get-
ting rid of some old fetters which hampered my
THE DOUBLE TRANSFER. 419
spirit's native evolution. In the first place I wished
to take breath outside of the Hegelian atmosphere
which had become a kind of tradition, and hence
a smothering circumscription of me in St. Louis.
Then friction and possible clash with Miss Blow's
literary leadership I would avoid as something not
only unpleasant but injurious to both sides, and to
the general cause. So I left the old field to her
alone, while I turned to the cultivation of fresh
territory, which was inviting me with alluring out-
looks upon the future.
From Concord also I became totally weaned after
the session of 1885, during whose time there dawned
upon me some faint hope of transferring to the
West the Literary School, which for me had dis-
tinctly evolved out of the Philosophical School, and
gave promise of being its rightful successor. And
now dropped down upon my immature though
budding plan an auspicious conjuncture which
caused it to ripen at once. I received a letter from
a lady who had attended the Goethe School at Con-
cord in 1885, suggesting a project for a similar
course of lectures and discussions on the great Ger-
man poet in the strongly German and Germanized
city of Milwaukee.
On the moment I fell in with the proposition,
deeming it a happy omen sent of the Gods, and I
offered to do my part toward carrying it out ; but I
emphasized in my answer that there must be a
previous course of reading and study in prepara-
tion for such a considerable work. Accordingly
420 THE 'ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
arrangements were made to start some classes in
the poet's Faust, of which I was to be the in-
structor. Already I had resolved to locate in Chi-
cago, from which I could take a rapid ride to Mil-
waukee by rail at almost any hour of the day.
Thus for several months the town was not allowed
to forget the extraordinary event in prospect, since
it was trumpeted by the local press throughout
"Wisconsin.
In those days Milwaukee was already famous for
its beer, bubbling up perchance from its deep Teu-
tonic foundations, and foaming out over the spa-
cious West. I had known the city as celebrated
also for its German culture generally, since I had
heard it called "the German Athens of America"
even in jealously German St. Louis. Its recent dis-
tinction of being the Western fortress of socialism
had not at that time been won, though it was
doubtless on the way. But beer and culture, both
just now under such decided eclipse, were then
strongly in evidence, and I took pleasure in sip-
ping modestly of both, as occasion might offer. On
the whole, I never heard the German language
spoken so generally along the streets in any other
of the larger cities of America. Still my sponsors
were almost wholly Americans, whose little group
was genteelly housed in the heart of the city, which
seemed buoyantly tossing on the ripples of Lake
Michigan.
Among the pleasant memories of Milwaukee I
recall especially the extraordinary number of poets,
THE DOUBLE TRANSFER. 421
singing in English and also in German and then
in both tongues together, who appeared to spring
out of her soil everywhere at the mere sound of a
versicle. In all my travels I do not remember me
ever to have poured out so many of my own lines
on little coteries of patient listeners, from whom
usually would fly back at me a poetical tit-for-tat
in response or possibly in revenge. I certainly en-
joyed this new tournament of verse, truly a spon-
taneous eisteddfod of Wisconsin bards preluding
their strains along the shores of Lake Michigan, to
whose melodious volume I contributed especially
my classic elegiacs interspersed with memories of
the trip to Hellas. Thus quite an electric spirt
of the Greek Renascence shot up of its own vivid
accord outside of the Goethe Classes, yet in an
harmonious by-play with them, which had their
object and fulfillment in the coming Goethe School.
This finally opened August 23d, 1886, with an
address from its President, a well-known citizen of
Milwaukee, before a large and much-expecting au-
dience, and continued for one week, two lectures a
day, morning and evening, each lecture about an
hour long, followed by a general discussion. The
most distinguished man on the list of lecturers was
Dr. W. T. Harris, formerly of St. Louis, but now of
Concord. He at first rather hesitated about accept-
ing the invitation of the Committee, but I by a per-
sonal letter urged him strongly to give his powerful
aid to this new stride of our St. Louis Movement,
which was also a kind of young branching-out of
422 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
the Concord School to the West, when it seemed
drooping in the East. He had just concluded the
summer's Dante School at Concord, and felt very-
tired, as usual; but, what was unusual, he showed
no little irritation at certain things which had
taken place during that session. Still he packed up
and came, to my great relief ; for at Milwaukee the
management seemed to be lapsing toward confusion
if not failure, and the School had gone too far to
be countermanded. Harris, arriving, soon saw the
situation, and valiantly pulled himself together and
also pulled the lagging School along with himself
to a successful close. I think he never showed him-
self more masterful, especially in the discussions,
which were often better than the lectures, con-
spicuously so when he was roused to the fighting-
point. And certain occurrences at Milwaukee had
roiled him up from the bottom, not to wrath but
to supreme exertion. Hence he took possession of
the School, not the official but the intellectual, con-
trolled it, and steered it safely, I may say triumph-
antly, into port. I never saw him do so complete
a deed, even at Concord. He was not without his
ambitions, and when he looked into the face of that
large and notable audience, seven or eight times
larger than the average attendance at his own
School of Philosophy, he summoned all his reserve
power, of which he had no small store, and rose vic-
toriously equal to the occasion. As for me I was
on hand every time and spoke my part in lecture,
discussion, and even in verse, but I had emphatic
THE DOUBLE TRANSFER. 423
reasons for wishing Harris to take his place to the
fore, especially after I had prepared the ground
for the School, and in that task had harvested a
good ripe crop of disagreeable experiences of peo-
ple and of circumstances. So I had already en-
joyed honor enough for once, and very willingly al-
lowed him to take his share.
Still the supreme interest of the whole Milwaukee
affair centered for me in the phenomenal presence
of Brockmeyer, his first and last appearance at any
of our Schools either in the East or West. Great
was my surprise when I read his name as one of
the lecturers on the first program. I was not even
asked about his selection for such a place. The
management of its own accord had written to him,
obtained his consent, received the title of his sub-
ject, printed it and advertised it in large letters
when it foil under my eye. As far as publicity
could go, he was made in advance the cynosure of
the School's highest expectations, being hailed not
only the Governor, but the Philosopher Brock-
meyer.
And in fact such was his true place. I have al-
ready declared often enough that his was the
original creative spirit of the St. Louis Movement,
and I know that especially his early lectures on
Faust in St. Louis more than twenty years before,
had been the first germ of this and of all our
Goethe Schools, indeed of all our Literary Schools
both now and hereafter. To be sure, Brockmeyer
had never unfolded that germ to maturity in him-
424 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
self or in his environing constituency ; he had aban-
doned it for a far lesser worth, in my judgment, and
his small but very fecund bantling was picked up,
nursed, and developed to its complete stature by
other hands. And now after all these years he is to
visit in a strange city his own barely recognizable
child, large and robust, but hardly yet full-grown.
What will be his new attitude toward it, toward us,
and especially toward his present audience, very
different from the little knot of us who used to as-
semble about him in his little law-office, redolent
with tobacco-smoke and not wholly free of a mis-
cellaneous litter on the table and on the floor? So
I queried myself, and I may say that Harris ap-
peared more astonished and even more perplexed
than I was, and shook his head at me in a letter all
the way from Concord, though I was not to blame,
which fact he soon found out. As already stated,
he had never dared invite to the Concord School of
Philosophy the philosophic father of himself and of
the St. Louis Movement.
Let it be said, however, with emphasis that
Harris never failed to give ample credit in print
and talk to Brockmeyer's genius, and to assign him
his right place in the work. Lest the reader may
think that I stand alone in my exalted opinion of
our St. Louis philosopher, I shall cite some deliber-
ate sentences of Harris written many years after
he had quit our city: "Mr. Brockmeyer whose ac-
quaintance I had made in 1858, is, and was even at
that time, a thinker of the same order of mind as
THE DOUBLE TRANSFER. 425
Hegel, and before reading him had divined Hegel's
chief ideas" — which means the highest praise Har-
ris could give to mortal man. But philosophy was
not the thinker's only gift, as Harris indicates in
the following extract : ' ' Mr. B-ockmeyer 's deep in-
sights and his poetic power of setting them forth
with symbols and imagery, furnished me and my
friends of those early years all of our outside stim-
ulus in the study of German philosophy." That is,
our philosopher was also a poet, though not in form
realized. Still further: "He impressed us with
the practicality of philosophy. Even the hunting
of wild turkeys or squirrels was the occasion for
the use of philosophy," which thus became in his
hands "the most practical of all species of knowl-
edge. ' ' Harris goes on to say how it was applied to
pedagogy, to politics and law, also to literature and
art, of which a sample might be found in the treat-
ment of the Literary Bibles. (See Hegel's Logic
by Harris, Preface, pp. 12, 13, published in 1890.)
Personally I had seen little of Brockmeyer for a
dozen years or more, during which his political
career had budded, bloomed, and ended with a
sudden close if not collapse, of which the real causes
he never directly told me, drowning them in a dis-
illusioned silence, though he could not help letting
the bottom of his heart be seen indirectly in many
a passing stroke of disappointment. A deep poli-
tical estrangement overcame him so that he again
took flight from civilized life, for he had already
done the same once before if not twice. The date
426 THE sf - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
of this revolutionary shake-up in his career I once
heard him give with pathetic emphasis: "In 1880,
when I quit Missouri politics, I was the first public
man in the state." Thus he spoke with a note of
a great disillusion, and at the same time with a
stress of self-appreciation, in which he was never
lacking. His excuse, external I think, was that he
must now do something to make money for his fam-
ily. He became an attorney for the Gould System
of Railroads, and his chief business was to look
after the Missouri Legislature — an employment
which certainly brought him no increase of reputa-
tion, though he warmly defended himself as lobby-
ist. This side of his life was unknown to me, ex-
cept as he reported it, and it rather repelled me in
spite of the bright, humorous, fantastical descrip-
tions of his exploits as the cunning Reynard among
Missouri politicians. Still he was not shifty enough
to bring the leaders of his party to promote him to
the United States Senatorship when he had fairly
won it by his long service to party and to public,
and by his supremacy of talent. I hold that he was
correct in deeming himself then the first public man
of the state, for assuredly he had no signal com-
petition in the line of statesmanship during those
years. The first man in ability certainly, but cer-
tainly not in availability — that was his situation
everywhere, political and also philosophical, in Mis-
souri and in Milwaukee as well — the genius un-
realized, supremely endowed, yet overborne with
the fatuous gift of always undoing his own great-
THE DOUBLE TRANSFER. 427
ness often on the spot, wherein lay his ever-re-
curring set-back and self-nullification past, present,
and future.
So it comes that Brockmeyer appeared as a
philosophic representative not so much from St.
Louis as from the Indian Territory, whither he had
betaken himself in his profound alienation of spirit.
He had been living now for several years among
the American aborigenes, with occasional visits to
his St. Louis family and to the Missouri Legisla-
ture. Moreover he sought to take up into his own
the Indian consciousness itself, and to assimilate
its political and social institutions, upon whose ex-
cellences he proposed to write a philosophic treatise
of which he once read me a few fragments. Indeed
he would scatter through his talk now and then
some Creek-Indian expressions to designate certain
peculiar tribal matters or relations whose names he
claimed had no equivalent in English. For ex-
ample, I still can recall, along with his pointed
gesture and high-keyed voice, the strange word
tustanucca, so my memory spells it phonetically,
into which he poured some unique Creek (not
Greek) philosophy. He never printed, probably
never completed his book, which in such case re-
mained an unfinishable Titanic torso, like his other
works, like himself.
I was glad to see Brockmeyer come to the Mil-
waukee School, but also glad that I was not the
personal cause of his coming. I wished to watch
him tested in this new field, for I was well aware
428 TEE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
of his unexpected possibilities in general ; but now,
especially in his present aboriginal mood, I had an
uncanny presentiment that he might turn a very
unconventional somersault right in the presence of
fastidious Lady Convention herself. I immediately
called on my old friend, when I heard of his ar-
rival, at his hotel, the best then in town, the Plank-
ington — for him a somewhat aristocratic stroke at
the start. First, he refused emphatically to be en-
tertained by any citizen, as were the rest of us lec-
turers. Then he rejected rather haughtily, it
seemed to me, all remuneration for his services at
the School, and even insisted upon paying his own
hotel bill, though there was a large over-plus of
funds — a state of finance quite opposite to that of
Concord. Thus from the outset Brockmeyer ap-
peared to take a lofty position of independent
aloofness from the School's other people, myself
and Harris included. Not without purpose had he
traveled all the way from Muscogee, the Creek
Capital in the heart of the Indian Territory, back
to a civilized community with his new message.
In his attitude at Milwaukee, Brockmeyer pro-
ceeded to exemplify his flight from society by his
disregard of the usual social conventions. Almost
savagely free he vindicated himself in his new free-
dom. He delivered his address with what may be
called a backwoods informality of speech and man-
ner which stamped him at once as original, if not
aboriginal. The result was at first a shock in his
refined audience, then a subdued titter, and after-
THE DOUBLE TRANSFER. 429
wards a tidal wave of gossip through the town.
How shall we construe his conduct ? I believe that
in it lay a considerable amount of downright inten-
tion. For Brockmeyer had lived in the South, espe-
cially in Kentucky, during his younger days, and
he claimed to be an adept in all the Southern cour-
tesies when he chose. But now he did not choose,
or rather chose the opposite — why? I thought I
detected a spice of malice in his criticisms ; his old
philosophic friends had gone on without him ; Con-
cord, though Harris his nearest disciple was there
in the lead, had neglected him ; the St. Louis Move-
ment for years had forged ahead and left him out.
Chiefly, however, his political disappointment had
engendered in him a spite against civilization it-
self and its ways, and had driven him back to and
even over its frontier, where he planted himself
squarely against it in a sort of defiance. The sub-
ject of the lecture was Faust, and I thought I could
feel the deep throbs of his reaction in his present
view of his favorite poem, compared with his for-
mer conception of it twenty years ago. For now he
gave to the work of the ever-striving Faust a nega-
tive outcome, as if echoing or perchance forecasting
his own career. That shocked me more than any-
thing else he did, more than all his defiance of con-
vention ; it thrilled through me as a kind of Adam 's
fall of the man whom I loved, to whom I owed so
much, and for whom I felt the deepest gratitude.
It seemed a curious destiny that the three
pioneers who had founded and kept up the Philo-
430 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
sophical Society in St. Louis some two decades
since, had now come together in a strange city from
different parts of our broad country — Harris from
the far East, Brockmeyer from the far West, Snider
from the Midland somewhere between. Each had
undergone since then his own peculiar evolution,
which, it may be here foresaid, is by no means com-
pleted yet in any single one of the three. Each is
still to receive a considerable discipline before he
graduates from the school of life, whereof this book
seeks to be some faint record telling of that early
St. Louis trio of friendship and philosophy.
From the Milwaukee experience I drew several
conclusions for the future, which had driven them-
selves deep into the convolutions of my brain.
(1) The Literary School must go on here in the
West; it had shown its validity, at least as one of
my instruments. Even under bad handling, it had
proved that it could not only live but thrive.
(2) The management must be changed. I re-
solved that hereafter I would take the Literary
School into my own hands, especially as regards
program, lecturers, and conduct of the exercises.
Outside help I would have to seek in other mat-
ters, such as finance, attendance, halls for the lec-
tures, etc.
(3) Harris I must secure as my main prop. I
found on inquiry that he was as eager to support
me in a fresh onset as I was to get his help. He
wished in his own right to have a Western audience
in Chicago, which was hereafter to be the place
THE LITERARY BIBLES. 431
of meeting. Milwaukee, in spite of the city's loyal
and generous co-operation, had to be given up,
though the same management talked of having an-
other session the following year. Then after secur-
ing Harris I consulted the Sibyl within me concern-
ing Brockmeyer: Dare I bring the genius es-
tranged, yet once the creative spirit of our St.
Louis Movement, to Chicago, itself vortical? The
Oracle, to all my repeated entreaties persisted per-
versely dumb.
(4) The theme must be the Literary Bibles, with
concentration upon one of the four each season, till
all had been presented. And now let us scan some-
what more closely this theme, not new, but in a
wholly new situation with new outlooks, being a
sort of sacred breviary of all lettered excellence,
veritably the central Organon of all Literature.
Ill
The Literary Bibles
I do not know how many times I have used in the
preceding account the words of the above title as a
kind of preluding key-note struck in advance of
the present Epoch, of which they express the dom-
inant theme. I have already stated, and must
often repeat that this term, Literary Bibles, in my
nomenclature applies especially to the four greatest
poetical masterpieces of Europe, which we may
call after the transmitted names of their authors,
432 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe. I have also
confessed that I, through some native bent or spir-
itual need of mine own, turned away from other
great disciplines, especially from Philosophy, not
to speak of Theology, to find in these supreme books
of Literature my truest and most compelling form
of self-expression, as well as my soul-world's most
immanent evolution.
It is with some flutterings of emotion and of in-
terrogation that I now look back at the many years
of my middle life, the most active part of this ex-
istence of mine, which I devoted to the acquisition,
reproduction, and propagation of these Literary
Bibles. Was the work worth the doing? Why
spend on this far-off adventure so much of my best
hope ? But it was surely of no small human value
for me personally to become acquainted with the
choicest spirits of our race at their highest mo-
ments. Not merely the intellect's knowledge of a
book I sought, but I would live the life of its
creator as he revealed himself in his creation. I
would find the man, however subtly ensconced in
the multifarious play of his words and deeds. Hence
it came that I endeavored not only to re-live but to
compose the biography of each of these supreme
poets, well aware that his autobiography lay lurk-
ing in every true-ringing sentence which passed
through his creative soul into song. Even the sup-
posed impersonal Homer I sleuthed into and
through all his mythical masks and concealments
till I saw him face to face, heard his own private
THE LITERARY BIBLES. 433
story, and re-told it after him in a little epic of
my own called Homer in Chios.
And here I may set down another thought which
soon came to me in this quest : the unity of all four,
both the doers and their deeds. It was really but
one great book written in four parts at different
periods of the World's History. Hence I began to
feel, though at first in a dim twilight, that I must
put together, organize, and associate all four into
a new fifth book or work by their deepest spiritual
principle of unification. This principle quite un-
conscious in the poets themselves, who sprang up in
time and place separately in separative Europe,
was to become consciously expressed in accord with
this our new age and country, and particularly with
our new American institutional order. Thus our
country, realizing its deepest spirit, was to union-
ize even Europe's very diversely timed, placed, and
minded Literary Bibles. Still further, these four
Great Men might be joined together in the con-
ception of one vast personality, the race-man as
universal poet uttering himself through the ages
in these four books of the World's One Literary
Bible. Or, to vary the phrase in this struggle for
expression, the World-Spirit voices through these*
four poetic representatives one original basic Mind
with its speech, though this be divided into four
separate dialects.
Thus I would fain think that a spiritual neces-
sity of the time and locality, as well of myself, kept
urging me to re-interpret, and therein to overmake
434 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
all these scattered greatest greatnesses of the ages
into a new unified work which preserved their full
distinctive individuality, yet associated them as
one completely rounded literary entirety. In this
matter I may give a brief account of my own evo-
lution.
I. Already as an undergraduate at College I had
vaguely gotten the conception of these four great-
est poems, though without any reason for their
special pre-eminence. Still even then and there I
could hardly help hearing the consensus of the best
concerning what is best in Literature, though con-
fusedly commingled with many desultory, and also
dissenting voices. I learned Homer and his dialect
by routine in my Freshman year, but I also com-
muned very sympathetically with his spirit, which
awakened in me an antique life, and it would seem,
a germinal world for my future. I never dared let
him vanish afterwards. Into Dante I likewise
dipped, as well as into Shakespeare and Goethe.
Very nebulous then to me were these huge giants
of the past, somewhat like the Old Norse Gods of
Niflheim ; still I started to brood over their super-
manlike significance.
The second stage of my appreciation of the Liter-
ary Bibles arose with emphasis when I began to
associate with the philosophic set in St. Louis. Our
leaders were warm defenders and interrogators of
Great Books, especially since they had one of their
own, that unique Book of Hegel's Philosophy, as
their final Oracle. When it came to Literature,
THE LITERARY BIBLES. 435
Harris found his most congenial utterance in Dante,
upon whom he was destined to lecture and to write
a good deal, while Brockmeyer scouted Dante to
downright abuse, but proclaimed Goethe's Faust
as the greatest of all the world-poems. Each had
likewise his secondary preference among the four
which were frequently cited in our company and
discussed. I think I may say that I was the first
of our people who definitely put all four together
on equal terms, and called them the "World's Liter-
ary Bibles. Still I do not claim universal priority
for the act or the title ; the Literary Tribunal of the
Ages had already made the selection, though the
ultimate ground for such selection remained to be
adequately unfolded.
During my Classical Journey, I experienced the
third phase of my training in the Literary Bibles.
I would not only read each of them in the original
tongue, but I longed to speak and to hear that
tongue as it still flowed spontaneously from the
hearts of the people. So I never stopped till I
talked Italian in Dante's Florence, and till I spoke
Greek in Homer's Hellas. Great was the satisfac-
tion of listening to the very accent of a Literary
Bible, and of replying to it in the native words of
the master. Shakespeare 's English was my mother
tongue, and Goethe's German had become mine at
St. Louis by adoption. Thus I sought to recover
partially at least the original heart-beat of the sing-
ing poet, as he voiced his pristine measures of song.
"Without such preparation I could hardly have en-
436 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
tered into that first communion with these remote
spirits, which was requisite for my creative as-
similation of their works.
The fourth stage I may call that which I have
already recounted as having begun with my expo-
sitions of the Literary Bibles at St. Louis and at
Concord, after my return from abroad. That is,
I was now to put in order and to impart what I
had won through long studious endeavor and
through a continuous evolution of myself in this
special sphere. The impression would not quit me
that I must now reconstruct these books, yea re-
write them in a certain sense, if I was to receive
from them their best value, which meant also a re-
construction of myself at the same time. So these
Classes became a new education for me, or at least
a new epochal training in my whole life's educa-
tion. I was learning as much as my pupils ; indeed
I rather thought that I was my own best pupil.
II. Naturally I sought help in the works of other
expositors, which were strown in abundance all the
way down the ages. Material assistance in the line
of historical, philological and metrical explanations
was of basic importance ; but the so-called literary
criticism gave me little satisfaction, since it hardly
touched upon what I most wanted. Beautiful meta-
phors, striking passages, telling descriptions of
character and sundry other externals must indeed
be duly noted and enjoyed; but the Literary Bible
was to be seen and interpreted as a great spiritual
document in the progress of humanity, and likewise
THE LITERARY BIBLES. 437
of the individual. It was not simply exquisite
verse-making, though it should be that too and at
the topmost ; but the Literary Bible also had ulti-
mately to approve itself priestly, mediatorial, cap-
able of revealing man's universal religion to the
open-hearted reader.
Hence the question with me rose in regard to
these greatest poets, how can I pierce to the center
of their mystery of enduring greatness, commune
with that and appropriate it, yea reproduce it in
my own soul somehow, and re-utter it in my own
form ? That might be, for me, a new document in
quest of immortality. I would penetrate to the
very workshop of their genius, see it at its creative
task and then re-word in my own dialect what I
saw. Such was my function if I was ever to com-
pose a distinctive commentary upon these grand
poetic structures, which was to show them re-built
and overwrought into my own time, and its way
of thinking. They were not to be left merely with
some running glosses on the text, linguistic and
critical, but the text itself was to be rewritten and
attuned to a new style, perchance not altogether
poetic in the old sense. The Literary Bibles give
you their best when they impart to you their very
creative power to re-create in and through your own
soul-form their act of genesis. Everything else in
the way of translation, comment, or exegesis is ex-
ternal and insufficient compared to this ultimate
genetic energy of creation's own writ. The very
thought of such an attempt seems perhaps the
438 TEE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT—PART SECOND.
height of egotistical audacity, but the St. Louis
Movement with its anti-traditional spirit could not
stop to dally with modesty.
III. It may be here recorded that I never felt
the least desire to translate into our vernacular any
of these foreign-tongued grandeurs of human ut-
terance. All of them indeed I would learn to un-
derstand and to assimilate in their immediate na-
tive rapture of expression, as jetted up by their
own tongue's first gush, but to make them talk
English word for word was not my call. Of course
I employed translations in my various activities,
but I wished to reconstruct, not simply to repeat
the poet with a verbal difference. To be sure, I
would seek to know his work in itself as a whole ;
but this was not the finality of it, for it too must
be seen at last as a part of the greater whole, which
compels it to be surveyed and constituted afresh in
the light of a new literary conception.
I dared think that this was our American, or if
you will, our democratic way of approach to these
Literary Bibles, which are all of Europe, being
sprung of the European mind, and manifesting its
supreme spiritual nodes for more than twenty-five
centuries. These far-separated four world-books
we must unify in response to our own deepest in-
stitutional consciousness; that is, we must federal-
ize them out of their European disunion. This will
require, to keep up the analogy, a new constitution
of the separate poems, a new unitary ordering of
them under their higher law, which will not swal-
THE LITERARY BIBLES. 439
low up their individuality, but will preserve it all
the better through our larger poetic association.
From this angle of vision such a work may be
called the American Federal Union of the Literary
Bibles.
In another aspect we may regard a production
of the sort as having in practice a democratic pur-
pose or tendency. "We cannot absorb the vast com-
plex Literatures transmitted to us from the Past,
yet we, as their heirs, must somehow get to know
their scope, their essence, and to appropriate their
highest worth. It is impossible for us in our busy
age to read so many books ; they must be epitomized
to their most concentrated values. The tribunal
of the centuries has .made and seals with its ap-
proval the selection of the Literary Bibles, which
thus become text-books in the High School of Civili-
zation.
We might speculate over this selection and its
mystery ; I did not make it, nor any nameable per-
son of any time, nor did any age make it, however
golden. Still we all have heard the decision with
more or less distinctness ; I have already told how I
learned about it as a boy at College, though very
faintly. The first news concerning it came to me
hardly more definite than this: a little row of
books stand there on the shelf before me, which
books the best judges of the best ages decide to be
the best in all the world. Out of the vast written
chaos of the past a sifting has been secretly made
by the most capable just for our behoof. Such is
440 THE ST- LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
our first great help, quite providential; for we of
ourselves feel utterly impotent to make any Her-
culean choice of the kind. But the next help is that
we help ourselves to this noblest gift of time, and
make it our own ; for at this point Providence turns
the job over to us, insisting upon our free yet thor-
ough co-operation.
IV. A good deal of objection from time to time
was raised against my use of the word Bible in this
connection, even when limited by the adjective
Literary. Not a few religious people, and espe-
cially zealous ministers would protest that there
was but the one all-sufficient Bible, the one com-
prising the Old and New Testaments. I carefully
distinguished the Religious Bibles of the Orient
from the Secular Bibles of Europe, setting forth
their differences but insisting also upon their deeper
common spirit and function. My call, however,
was to devote myself to the latter, especially as the
former had a numerous and consecrated priest-
hood, while I in my peculiar labor, as far as I knew,
stood quite alone. I never overcame this sectarian
prejudice, as I may call it, although I gratefully
acknowledge that my warmest and most numerous
supporters belonged to the liberal orthodox type.
I never made much headway among the strait-laced
believers in the letter of Scripture, and still less
among the so-called Free Religionists — the two ex-
tremes of faith and unfaith in our time, the one
of too much tradition, and the other of too much
negation. Neither of these opposites could ever
THE LITERARY BIBLES. 441
realize any great good out of my evangel according
to the Literary Bibles.
Now these Supreme Books became to me, when
sounded to their depths, a new revelation of im-
mortality, this deepest and most abiding aspiration
of the human soul, yet the hardest to make actual
not only in life but also in expression. What is
eternal in the written word I sought to find, if pos-
sible, as the ultimate realization of what lay most
profound and compelling and eternal within me.
Then I must re-create it, re-write it, and impart it
by speech and print, up to the outreach of my very
finite power. To popularize means usually to super-
ficialize ; but these Greatest Books I dared not shal-
low out into merely ephemeral magazinism ; rather
would I try to deepen their popularity to their last
profundity, wherein lies their crowning, truly re-
demptive excellence.
V. Still it must be confessed that also these Liter-
ary Bibles were finally traditional, handed down to
us from the outside, being utterances, in form at
least, of the European mind, not directly of ours.
This, I now feel, was what kept driving me secretly
for many years to make them over into a new ex-
pression, to transform all four into another book
which I have daringly called the fifth in a previous
sentence, though it can make no claim to be actually
a Literary Bible. Rather is it a new interpretation
of the old oracles, than an oracle itself. Still the
mark of Europe's prescription is upon them and
cannot be, indeed ought not to be, obliterated.
442 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
In this respect these products of mine bear the
stamp of the St. Louis Movement, which winds
through them all, and which, in its origin, as al-
ready set forth, puts an anti-traditional impress
upon very tradition, especially in philosophy and
in literature. Nevertheless there is felt in them the
hidden push for something beyond, for a harmony
still unattained. The conscious intended scope of
them remains externally philosophical, showing
many traces of Hegel, but shot through everywhere
with upbursts from a deeper depth, which I now
recognize to be psychological. A new discipline,
unborn as yet but mentally begotten and stealthily
waxing in strength, would send many a throbbing
sign of itself to the surface in my most significant
writing. And my pupils, especially the later ones,
have often made the same observation. Only the
other day a penetrating student said to me : "Your
Shakespeare has underneath it everywhere your
Psychology." My answer followed: "When I
wrote that work, I was not conscious of any such
underlying substrate pushing up for expression ; I
had not yet evolved into Psychology. ' ' Then came
the reply : ' ' Yes, I know that ; still it is there all
the same, and to watch its first bubbles is one of
my chief interests in the perusal of your earlier
books."
So I may be permitted to say here in advance,
for the sake of the presaged interlinking future,
that within all my volumes (nine of them) on Uni-
versal Literature, is fermenting, evolving, erupting
THE LITERARY BIBLES. 443
spasmodically toward light the deeper Universal
Psychology which got definitely born into conscious
thought and expression during the last half of the
nineties, and which lies ahead of us still some ten
gravid years and more. So let my circumspect
reader fail not to take this peep forward from his
own Lookout Mountain.
IV.
The Wanderer
Thus I designate myself distinctively in my out-
ward activity during this Epoch : I was seized with
that ever-pushing passion called in old Saxon-Eng-
lish Wanderlust (word still found in to-day's Teu-
tonic) , the irresistible desire to travel, to get out of
one spot into another and then away again, to turn
up continually fresh experiences in time, place and
personality. Such an appetite is usually an asset
of the young fellow, before he settles down in life ;
he has his years of wandering outer and inner, in
which he thirsts after the globe's variety, without
much feeling for its unity. But I was crossing the
bar into middle-age when this peculiar unrest
seized me and whipped me around the country, to
my own great satisfaction. Moreover I was free
to float about, having cast off my local trammels
and refusing to bond myself to any new obligation,
which might interfere with my blissful errantry.
Prom this point of view it was my time of down-
right vagabondage, of literary hoboism, though I
444 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
always paid my scot on the railroad and at the
tavern, as well as my printer 's bills for books.
Still, on the other hand I may be permitted to
give myself a better name during this Epoch, call-
ing it the period of my long devoted apostolate, in
which I dedicated myself to the dissemination of
the gospel according to the Literary Bibles. This
was the eternal element in all my otherwise fleeting
and floating apparitions, hither and thither; I had
my evangel to impart and to set down in writ,
whereby I was always held anchored. Moreover I
clung to my local center in the main, though with
many considerable explorations, always sailing out
from and porting back to Chicago.
But my territory had its limits. Mason and
Dixon's old line was drawn against me with deci-
sion, though St. Louis originated the Movement,
and though several times I gave courses at Wash-
ington and once at Baltimore. But these are
not distinctively Southern cities. From Missouri,
outside the St. Louis district, I do not recollect of
ever having heard even a pious wish for any of my
peculiar biblical lore. To be sure, the city and the
state are on bad terms; they both have to live in
one limited household, like husband and wife,
though perpetually fussing ; they keep abusing each
other with good reason, yet are undivorcible, each
blaming the other especially for its fatal slowness
in the world's grand march westward, and for the
lost opportunity of greatness, even for the Great
Illusion — the most unhappy civic pair in the land
THE WANDERER. 445
unless it be that overfat, ever-brabbling couple
world-defamed as New York city and New York
state. But quite everywhere, town and country are
the two huge millstones which are bound to crunch
and grind together on each other, the painful grist
being civilization itself.
The Pacific coast I never reached though I had
a single chance, rather uncertain. The Atlantic
seaboard I tried at several well-peopled spots, but
I was soon made aware of what I specially lacked,
namely coloniality. Two or three winters I passed
in New York city, then and now the center of ex-
ploited literature with its three great temptations,
money, fame, influence. I saw some literary people
in their workshops, best known of whom were the
poets Stedman and Stoddard. Very kind and agree-
able personally to me were both, but their vocation
of letters with its subservience to magazinism and
newspaperism drove me to a silent oath of Never-
more. New York at that time was the hotbed of
American book-publishers and is yet ; still I dared
print a work of mine, Agamemnon's Daughter
(first edition), whose manuscript I had brought
with me, having hired my own little printer not
two blocks from Franklin Square. He did his job
very badly, and I think dishonestly, all of which
may be deemed the penalty for such a deed of local
desecration on the part of the sacrilegious West-
erner. I never submitted my manuscript to any
publisher ; I did not believe, in the first place, that
it would be accepted ; but, in the second place, I
446 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
knew that I could get rid of a small edition by my
own effort, while I was quite uncertain whether a
publisher, after being paid for his service, could
do as much if he would, or would do as much if he
could. This last alternative hints a dark suspicion
which I have heard repeatedly from authors, in one
instance from a distinguished and successful au-
thor ; but of course I have had no experience of the
kind myself, as I never took the chance of having it.
But what I do know from some little experience of
another kind is that authors as a class are prone to
be suspicious of publishers and public, and also
they fail not to be jealous of one another.
Through the kind influence of Stedman I re-
ceived a card of free entrance to the famous Cen-
tury Club, where I caught a glimpse of many dis-
tinguished New Yorkers belonging chiefly to the
learned professions. My introduction was mainly
to the literary men of the Club, whose works I had
never read, often never heard of ; this ignorance of
mine caused me embarrassment from the start, for
I did not know enough about them even to tell a
lie, and I soon observed that they expected some
kind of recognition, if not flattery. As for me, I
found the easiest way to get along was to conceal
my own authorship, which of course was a very
easy matter ; in fact, it was already concealed, with-
out further effort of mine. So I tried to watch and
to learn from my hidden nook; out of my experi-
ence I drew the conclusion again that I was an un-
fit subject for such a life, in other words that mine
THE WANDERER. 447
was a wholly tmclubbable individuality, even if it
needing clubbing badly. Some time later through
the friendly urgency of Librarian Poole, I became
a member of the Chicago Literary Club, but after
a year's trial I passed the same judgment once
more and for a finality upon myself, and withdrew
from it on quitting Chicago for another city. When
reading Walt Whitman, I always felt that I had
not the gift of comradery which he so effusively
celebrates, and hence I never could be the loving
disciple of his much-lauded message.
So it came about that the main field of my new
gospelling itinerancy lay in the states of the old
North-Western Territory long ago dedicated to
freedom by Thomas Jefferson in the ordinance of
1787 (though this historic point we now hear con-
tested) . Of course all these broad acres I was very
far from covering. In my native state, Ohio, I ap-
peared, according to present recollection, but thrice,
in the cities of Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati re-
spectively. But I never reached Oberlin, my Alma
Mater, with my evangel of the Literary Bibles, for
a good reason, I think, since these belonged not to
her accepted biblical canon. But the wanderer has
now wandered enough even for this wandering
Epoch of his; so let him just say once more that
Indiana and Illinois persisted in offering to him
year after year his main seed-fields, which he, like
his exemplar, Johnny Appleseed, often re-visited
for the purpose of reaping a small harvest as well
as putting in a new crop, never very large.
448 THE 8T - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
From this outer spatial wandering with its many
diverse occurrences during the present Epoch, let
us next turn to the center, to the wanderer in per-
son, who is again trying to express himself in liter-
ary form. That is, I, during this whole errantry,
kept taking pictures of myself as I moved about
from place to place, carrying-on my varied labors.
For I had to express myself not only in the thing
done, but also in the doing of it, as the doer; in
other words, while I wrought at and propagated
the Literary Bibles, I uttered myself as worker and
propagator in the self's own form of activity, em-
ploying my special vehicle of utterance. Accord-
ingly in this field, more or less self-revealing, I
wrote a little literature of my own, embracing three
books which I shall now join together into a com-
mon idea, with its label indicating my wanderlust
as it expresses itself in the Mythus of Johnny Ap-
pleseed.
These three books, which I thus place under one
general head bear the titles (1) Johnny Apple-
seed's Rhymes, (2) The Freehurgers, a novel, (3)
World's Fair Studies. The underlying character
of the present Epoch belongs to them all, though
in different ways. Each has its own special sub-
ject, as well as method of procedure, yet they all
in one way or other pivot on the wanderer, the mis-
sionary, who is also the self-expresser.
The name of the first book, Johnny Appleseed's
Rhymes, indicates on the surface perhaps some con-
venient reservoir into which a mass of versicles
THE WANDERER. 449
have been indiscriminately plumped, with little if
any connection. But at the start I would em-
phasize its inner order and evolution, though these
may have to be sharply looked after. For it takes,
I would believe, its art-form ultimately from the
Epoch which it mythically celebrates — rambling ex-
ternally, anchored internally. My name does not
appear on thle title-page; the subject-matter is
conceived as a considerable miscellany of prose
and verse, "edited by Theophilus Middling," who
also seems to cite certain commentators. But the
chief portion centers in the fabled rhymes of
Johnny Appleseed, as he strolled over the North-
West, scattering his fruit-bearers of the future.
As to its origin, I can truly say that the book
grew and kept growing for at least ten years, with-
out any conscious purpose of ever becoming a
book. The first fact which I now can recollect is
that little jets of rhymed versicles started to gush
up about the time I was quitting St. Louis (1874-
5) ; then the fountain would stop playing for a
season, and I would think that it had dried out
forever, when of a sudden it would begin again,
spirting its little rhyme-drops as merrily as before.
It seemed to be the successor of my Epigram-
matic Voyage, during which the world of the old
Greek Anthology took life and shape in my mind
and heart, insisting upon a fresh expression, at
least for myself. But in her present love of
Johnny Appleseed, the Muse persistently refused
to breathe a single hexameter, which measure kept
450 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
caroling her sole music during the Greek Journey.
She seemed to have fled from Parnassus, and to
have migrated with me to the Mississippi Valley,
which the new theme and the new world attuned
with the new rhythmical cadence.
At last this intermittent fountain of versicles
and ballads stayed intermitted, having apparently
exhausted itself toward the- close of the Epoch.
Accordingly, in 1894 I printed the book as it now
stands, and thus got free of its spell which has
never plagued me since. I may add here that after
a hundred or so of these wee musical atomies had
throbbed to the light in mutually recalcitrant sep-
aration, they began to get social, and to arrange
themselves in groups after some common principle
or rubric. For, as so many little isolated individ-
ualities, they appeared rather hapless and hope-
less. Then, during the last year or two before they
were born into the aforesaid print, an enevloping
world of prose started to wreathe itself around
them, and took them into its bosom. That new
setting really brought to light their hitherto con-
cealed background, out of which they had sprung.
Hence it became a kind of running commentary,
which in its turn strangely ran into the form of a
story ending in a little love-romance. Thus the
whole work grew to be a labyrinthine commingling
of a number of literary forms, making a composite
defiant of all artistic tradition. Is it a horrible
monstrosity or a newly ordered organism of writ?
I printed it myself, and did not even send review
THE WANDERER. 451
copies to the newspapers or magazines, so that any
judgment of the professional critic I have never
met with, though I think I could predict it with a
little effort.
So much for the external semblance of the book.
The content is the whole St. Louis Movement my-
thologized, with its leading personages and its es-
sential development and also its philosophy of life
cast into the frame-work of a story. The ideas of
our St. Louis time are strewn through the text,
both the rhymed and the unrhymed; but they are
made to portray the different characters who voice
them in a responsive interplay. Thus a little epic,
or drama, or even novel the work may be regarded,
though these traditional terms hardly fit the re-
fractory stuff.
Of course it is specially an eject of my own ex-
perience present and past. In fact through it ev-
erywhere courses a disguised autobiography of
the writer during this Epoch, for he has to be all
of these colliding characters and himself too.
Somewhere about four hundred verses are here
caught and worded, as they bubbled up out of the
life-stream from its various inner agitations; then
all are built into a structure which seeks to reveal
the order in this wayward spontaneity, uniting its
scattered fragments of chaos into its cosmos.
What he says of Homer, Appleseed might dare
think of himself:
Old Homer shows a young face to the boy
And gives him in love a beautiful toy;
452 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
But to the full-grown man
He reveals God's plan.
The next book on the list, The Freeburgers,
has quite a different beginning and ending, as
well as a change of manner and matter. Still
it keeps the central story of Johnny Appleseed, the
wandering minstrel and planter, as its determin-
ing factor, but he now appears, speaking, acting,
perambulating in his own person, which he did not
in the previous book. There he was the silent center,
of whom much is said and sung ; but here he is en-
dowed with his own voice, talking and versifying in
his own right. He is no longer past but present,
with his career largely behind him indeed, yet with
somewhat of life still before him.
On the other hand, the scene, the action proper
is not cotemporary, but goes back to the time of
the Civil War, of which it proposes to picture the
beginning, middle, and end. Thus I reached rear-
ward in reminiscence thirty years and more to my
youth, and set forth my experiences personal, do-
mestic, communal, and national, during that su-
preme crisis of our country's history. I had lived
through it all and taken part in it with thought,
feeling, and action; so I would now recall and ex-
press it after a generation, before the epochal oc-
currence might wane from memory. The time of it
lay before my St. Louis period, through which I
had passed on my way toward a completer expres-
sion of my life and of my environing world.
Thus I conceived what may be called a national
TEE WANDERER. 453
Novel, for everywhere through it and around it was
to weave the political trend of the country, which
turned at last upon the question of Union or Dis-
union. The medium through which the great con-
flict was portrayed and reflected, was the small com-
munity called Freeburg, a typical village of the
North-West, very familiar to me during boyhood.
For the American village was then and still is, in
my opinion, more nearly our institutional unit,
than any other communal form. It is the little liv-
ing cell which ultimately constitutes the unitary
principle of the huge social organism and its dif-
ferent members. So this village unit is rightly the
miniature mirror which images and indeed vivifies
the time's great and varied institutions.
The novel was thus planned to round itself out in
three large sweeps or parts, to each of which was
assigned a volume.
I. The Freeburgers, or Before the War.
II. Freeburg, or During the War.
III. New Freeburg, or After the War, wherein
was embraced the Nation's reconstruction with its
many ups and downs. Abraham Lincoln was to ap-
pear, specially in the middle volume. The village
had its own characters and life, but into its destiny
were woven two wanderers from the outside, the
old singer Appleseed and the philosophic pedes-
trian, both properly missionaries of the St. Louis
Movement, in its two leading phases.
Thus I, too, with many another ambitious author,
meditated the great American Novel on our loftiest
454 THE ST. LOUTS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
national theme. But somehow it refused to get it-
self done. Only the first part, The Freeburgers,
could be pushed, with some self-lashing, to comple-
tion, though I made copious notes on the other two
parts, which still lie about in fragments, unrealized
and unrealizable. Finally in 1889 I printed this first
part, and so disentangled myself forever from a
task which I saw to be unfinishable.
iWhy did I break down? I was in the habit of
reading some novels, but not many; a hearty, per-
sistent novel-reader like my friend Judge Woerner
I never was, and could not be. He said of this book
of mine : ' ' Too much of your philosophy in it, too
little incident ; you have cheated me of my pleasure
and set me at hard work against my will — anathe-
ma.*' He found, however, the same fault with
Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, whereupon I replied,
with a sighful exclamation : ' ' O that my book may
be able to raise itself into the high company where
you have put it!" Time has shown, I think, that
the Novel was not the right literary form for my
conception, since afterwards my experience of the
Civil "War and of Lincoln wrought for itself a very
different garb which got itself finally done to the last
stitch. Moreover I was not yet ready for the task;
I was not old enough even at forty-seven ; I had to
have the discipline of another and new Epoch when
the same conception, after more than two decades
of additional brooding and incubation, will hatch
itself out to light and maturity.
Still the Novel remained one of my forms of
THE WANDERER. 455
self-expression, and in its own good time on due
provocation it will break out afresh and find utter-
ance. But it could never dominate me autocrati-
cally, though its personal rewards dance seductively
the greatest temptation of modern literature before
the easily bedazzled fancy of the writing-guild.
The third book above listed under the name of
World's Fair Studies, appears on the outside a sol-
itary bird of passage among my writings. Nothing
of mine hitherto or hereafter ever became quite like
it in matter or in treatment ; still it belonged to the
present Epoch. For I remained in it the wanderer,
though my field swept no longer over the broad
North-West, but shrank to the small, sharply de-
fined area of the Chicago World's Fair. Moreover,
not only the space but also the time was very lim-
ited; this Universal Exposition was doomed to last
only six months, from May till November, 1893,
though I added several months before and after.
Still within these local and temporal bounds I kept
up very actively and intensively the part of
Johnny Appleseed, tramping from spot to spot,
gathering materials, imparting what I had gotten
and put into shape, and finally printing my results
in a book.
The Chicago World's Fair fell across my path
at an opportune moment ; I was ready for it
internally and externally. I looked upon it as the
advent of a new Secular Bible, belonging to the
grand disciplinary course of the University of Civ-
ilization, in which I deemed myself not only a per-
456 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
petual student, but likewise a self-appointed ped-
agogue, hence not dismissible by any Board or other
wooden thing except myself. I marveled at the
phenomenon for a while, but I soon came to under-
stand that here was opened to me another Great
Book of the Ages, which I had to assimilate, and
organize, and express for myself and for others
like-minded. It seemed flung down before me by
the genius presiding over my life's evolution, or if
you will, by providential interposition at a turn of
human destiny, with a secret but shunless behest
to seize the unique opportunity.
Accordingly I went to work almost with violence,
visiting the presence of the Fair daily, communing
with its Spirit, for it had a distinctive Spirit of its
own in its huge organism, of which each part was
a vital member. Undoubtedly this communion taxed
me to the uttermost, so that I could hold out only
a few hours at a time, after which I drooped in
weariness and my soul became gripless. Whereupon
I would hurry back to my quiet room for rest and
sleep and recuperation, and then I would again the
next morning start forth to a fresh wrestle with
that Spirit, gigantic and also elusive, till I was
whelmed down once more into my petty finite self
of brain-fag and human limitation generally. So
the sun kept rising and setting above and around
me, granting several varying hours of daily inter-
course with the Spirit of the Fair, which I sought
to trace through all its visible component parts,
great and small. To me it became a grand incarna-
THE WANDERER. 457
tion of the Earth-Soul, both civilized and unciv-
ilized, for savage life was there too in the Midway.
It so happened at this turn of time that my long
work, already lasting more than a dozen years, on
the Literary Bibles, was practically finished, only
one of the nine volumes (The Odyssey) remained
to be printed, though that too was written. At such
a conjuncture the pages of this new World-Book
were spread out under my very eyes, pages not of
print but of actual, visible, new-created things of
a new-created world, whose meaning, however, I
felt myself irresistibly impelled to study, to inter-
pret, and to give out again in my own form. Hence
I had classes in the World's Fair, quite as in a
Literary Bible, and conducted them in view of the
object itself. How many pupils of that sort? For a
guess I may set down a hundred persons, usually
in very small groups, whom I personally led once
or oftener into the presence of the Great Spirit of
the Fair, to attend a service in his majestic temple
along the lakeside.
Little pamphlets of these excursions were printed
at the time and met with a small demand, chiefly
from my own pupils. A year and more after the
Fair (in 1895) I edited and put together my stud-
ies and printed them in the mentioned book ; these,
however, contained but a small portion of my fugi-
tive notes, which I could not take the time to or-
ganize and to ensoul, so I consecrated them to a
waste-paper grave. A good deal of collateral read-
ing was also required ; I needed for my globe-round
458 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
quest a whole Encyclopedia Brittanica, which I
bought and tried to devour. Several times I had to
stop for two or three days in order to regain my
mind's lost edge, which only the lazy turn of lei-
sure's drooling grindstone would again sharpen.
Once I thought best, about the middle of the Fair,
to run away from roaring tumultuous Chicago to
St. Louis, placid and somniferous, that I get back
my nerves and recover my power of oblivion. Un-
expectedly I found Brockmeyer at home, having re-
turned from his long exile, and burnishing up his
old philosophic ambitions with a new zeal, especially
his fateful translation of Hegel's Logic. I begged
him: "Come with me to Chicago and see the great-
est phenomenon on this globe just now, and help me
construe it — Come at once, for it will soon vanish,
while that Eternal Logic will keep eternal, being just
the Eternal in itself." But alas! I could not drag
him out of his own antiquity ; so with much regret I
had to leave him behind again, when I had regrown
my mental grasp. Accordingly I went back to my
grand opportunity, for I felt that I still had much
to master of that new World-Book which might
audaciously be titled the Collected Works of Ci v -
ilized Man, bound in one big volume, and now on
exhibition at Chicago.
But look ! In a few months that mighty apparition
of the earth 's grandeur had vanished, utterly tran-
sitory in outer material semblance, like a magic city
of dreamland. But its Idea abides and will abide,
being eternally creative, for I find it still at work
GOETHE AND DANTE. 459
more than ever, producing new structures of itself
not only here in its original home but in places far
remote from Chicago. So I yet take my delight over
that colossal manifestation of the Eternal in the
very heart of the Ephemeral, and just through the
Ephemeral.
After the "World's Fair my old wanderlust did
not cease at once, though it gave many a sign of
being on the wane. The three foregoing phases of
the wanderer in his personal activity and develop-
ment had reached their printed self-expression in
books, and with this result the Epoch had begun to
face toward its finality. The apostolate of the
Literary Bibles had not yet ended, though it too
had rounded its meridian, and was verging toward
sunset. As this biblical topic is the central, all-
pervasive one of these years, it may be allowed to
make a new shift in its panorama, as it unrolls the
varied picture-gallery of our St. Louis Movement.
Goethe and Dante
These two Literary Bibles we would now pair
together more closely, employing the names of the
authors whose greatest books are known respective-
ly as Faust and The Divine Comedy. For it is our
experience that they stand in a more immediate
relation to the St. Louis Movement, and produced
a more direct and intensive influence upon it than
460 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
the other pair, Homer and Shakespeare, the Greek
and the English Literary Bibles, of which we have
hitherto given some account. This rather unex-
pected fact is worthy of a brief consideration.
First we may set down that these two authors
with their Great Books are born of and represent
the grand dualism of the Teutonic and the Ro-
manic, which we have already noted as lying in
the background, and moving with the evolution, of
St. Louis herself. Her origin and early history
belong to France and Spain, Romanic peoples,
which were later overborne and largely submerged
by Teutonic peoples, first the Anglo-Saxon, and
then the German. When I in 1864 touched the
soil of this city and began to look about me, I felt
and saw these two racial elements, and their cul-
tural differences shading into antagonism; Goethe,
the German, and Dante the Italian were already
here in their original European pre-suppositions of
race and culture, planted as it were in the civic
folk-soul itself.
Moreover the new and last phase of the world-
old conflict between Teutonia and Roma was then
brewing in Europe, and had soon to be fought out
again in the Franco-Prussian "War. An echo of
that conflict thrilled through St. Louis, and stirred
up its double nature to a corresponding internal
struggle, which showed itself in strong feelings and
words, though not in violent deeds. The time
tallied with that of our young St. Louis Movement,
which had in it somewhat of both sides, though
OOETHE AND DANTE. 461
the preponderance was decidedly Teutonic. Hence
Goethe became for us and to a degree for the city
the Epoch's poetical expression, though Dante
failed not, and somewhat later found his devoted
band of apostles. Indeed, I think I know the
time when I saw Harris pass over from Goethe to
Dante, foreshowing a profound change in his spir-
itual evolution.
I may add here that in our philosophical group
the two leaders divided on these two world-poets.
Brockmeyer found his poetic bible in Goethe's
Faust, and really had none other; Harris took
Dante's Divine Comedy to his heart as well as to
his intellect, though he studied Faust and talked
about it and wrote upon it not a little. Once and
only once I heard these two protagonists in a hot
word-combat over their favorites. Dante in the
course of years became a kind of father-confessor
to Harris, and deeply indoctrinated him in medieval
theology, over which he specially wrought and
pondered during his leisure years at Concord. I
have often reveried that the basic spiritual traits
of these two men could be glimpsed in this choice
of theirs, since Faust is justly called the great
philosophic poem, and the Divine Comedy the
great religious poem of Europe. For underneath
all his philosophy Harris, as a right New-Eng-
lander, would reveal his religious Puritanic sub-
structure, while Brockmeyer to the last drop of
him was consciously the German philosopher (gen-
uine sample of the philosophus teutonicus), with
462 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
small claim to any form of religiosity. But un-
conscious and unrealized lay yet deeper his poetic
strain. Still the two friends co-wrought harmoni-
ously in an apostolic zeal for Hegel's philosophy,
especially for that one Book of Fate, Hegel's
Logic. It lurked in my nature to accept both
Goethe and Dante, each in his own worth, and to
seek their final co-ordination as two Great Testa-
ments in the canon of the one supreme Literary
Scripture of Mankind.
Thus it would seem that these two aforesaid
poets were genetically sprung of the same ultimate
two folk-souls from which our one city took its
dual origin. Of course, far back both were Aryans
in their Oriental primogeniture. A remote kin-
ship it surely was; still Goethe and Dante, the
Teuton and the Latin, had each his consanguine
fellowship right in our midst. Moreover this bond
of nature was reinforced in each case by educa-
tion, history, and religion. Shakespeare is un-
doubtedly our Anglo-Saxon poet, but his univer-
sality quite overarches and unifies both sides, for
I find in him the Teutonic and also the Romanic
in happy marriage, as if he felt back and repro-
duced dualized Europe's primordial Aryan unity
of origin and spirit.
Another point may be here noted : the difference
tween these two pairs of poets in personal appeal
and approachability. Homer and Shakespeare are
notoriously hard to get acquainted with ; some life-
long students of them persist in preaching that
THE WANDERER. 463
their spiritual lineaments can never be traced from
their works. That is of course a mistake. Homer
and Shakespeare tell their autobiography in what-
ever they say, and cannot shun their self-confes-
sion, though it be very elusive and hidden under
many a mask, mythic and dramatic. Indeed the
crown of their study is the winning of their per-
sonal acquaintance and intimacy. Moreover they
have left no outside literature to explain them-
selves, they live in their one great exploit of su-
preme biblical composition. On the other hand,
Goethe and Dante have told much on themselves in
writings apart from their two respective master-
pieces,; they have written not only their Literary
Bibles, but also in a way their own commentaries
on the same ; thus they are openly self-communica-
tive and autobiographical. Accordingly there is
felt a personal appeal in the first pair, a cordial in-
vitation as it were to a closer friendship, while the
second pair, Homer and Shakespeare, are far more
reserved in their self-revelation. Still they too re-
veal themselves to the persistent cultivator of their
personality, and if they did not, they would be a
zero with its empty circle.
Concerning the place of Faust in the St. Louis
Movement I have already given the main facts. It
was certainly one of our great books of discipline,
which we all worked over and over many times in
study, in conversation, and in writing. Finally its
lesson to me at least seemed to be learned, and I
dropped it for years. In 1886 I printed my own
464 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
somewhat detailed commentary upon it, making
two considerable volumes.
But now behold in my old age a sudden renewal
of that long-agone Faust, caused by the once so
modest Fatherland's desperate world-war for au-
tocratic rule and riches. How often have I re-
called in the past four years Goethe's German
Literary Bible, which seems to forecast in a new
edition the very eidolon of its own German people !
In fact the Faust Mythus was originally created
and through the centuries preserved by the Teu-
tonic folk-soul as its own right image and pro-
phecy. Have we not witnessed another contract,
now earth-embracing, of the German Faust with
Mephistopheles, the principle of inner negation and
of outer destruction? And has not that contract
in service of the Denier and the Destroyer been
signed in the blood — not simply in the blood of one
Faust but of millions? And the grand reward
offered by the diabolic Tempter — have we not read
it a hundred times — the wealth and the power of the
whole world, or its economic subjugation and its po-
litical enthrallment ? All of which has been told of
the people, by the people, to the people in that old
Faust Mythus wrought over and over in thousand-
fold forms of humble folk-tale and puppet play, up
to lofty drama and opera. Nor has the outcome been
lacking in all its sanguinary horrors ; an old Faust
book more than four centuries ago written in red
German shiveringly sums up how in the final bat-
tle Faust is torn to pieces by his own Devil: "his
GOETHE AND DANTE. 465
eyes, teeth and brains with much blood spirted
about" were found scattered on the field of con-
flict while the rest of his carcass was invisibly tossed
on a dung heap. Such was the old barbaric legend
uncannily suggestive of to-day. I have often asked
myself: "Must not Goethe's Faust be now not
only re-read but re-written, in the light of this new
world-experience — the individual Faust being up-
risen to the national Faust, with his contract still
signed in blood only yesterday on a hundred fields
of battle?"
So I seem to myself to have lived through an-
other significant stage in the Teutonic evolution of
that still creative, self-reproducing Faust Mythus,
which again comes knocking on my brain-pan for
a fresh utterance. But alas! the ever-young Muse
now flouts her aged lover, smiling him a teaseful
good-bye.
Hark ! the moment has struck twice already, ad-
monishing me to hurry on to Dante, the other
Literary Bible, the Romanic or medieval Latin
representative, who imparted for years his stern,
deep discipline to the St. Louis Movement in several
surprising ways. Let us take to mind at the start
the fundamental contrast between the other-world-
liness of Divine Comedy and the this-worldliness of
Faust. Responsibility and punishment in the fu-
ture for the deed done here and now reveal the
stress of Dante's soul, since he throws the action
of his whole poem into that retributive day (dies
ilia) over the border, while Faust in the sweep of
466 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
his negation obliterates the Begond and its Judg-
ment from his faith and life :
Das Driiben can mich wenig kiimmern.
So Dante led our St. Louis Movement down
through his justice-fraught Inferno up into his
hope-winning Mount of Purgatory, though few
were able completely to overarch even with his
guiding spirit all his celestial Paradise, especially
that final bloom of it in the White Rose of Heaven.
But the remarkable thing was the creative, or
rather recreative power which this study of Dante
inspired in our city. No other Literary Bible called
forth so much, or half so much written produc-
tivity of our own as did the present cult of the
Divine Comedy. This local literature shot up from
all directions, inside our Movement and also out-
side. Homer and Shakespeare begat practically
not a distinctive word in our St. Louis Movement,
if I may dare from excess of modesty to leave out
myself. Faiist, however, showed its reproductive
strength in us by some scattered essays of merit,
especially those of Brockmeyer and Harris. But
Dante provoked authorship everywhere around us
and from us, indicating the depth and creative
energy of his appeal in the human soul. I main-
tain that this Dantean work was not a mere in-
tellectual exercise or fashionable quirk, but a pro-
found spiritual discipline for our St. Louis Move-
ment. Accordingly I intend to give a brief sum-
GOETHE AND DANTE. 467
mary of its literary productions, though I prob-
ably do not remember them all.
I. The first person in the city, as far as my mem-
ory now can reach, to form a private class for the
study of Dante was a woman, Miss Mary E. Beedy,
a teacher of the High School. As a result of these
lessons she wrote a considerable essay, which I once
heard her read to her assembled friends in the
earlier seventies. She went to England and took
the essay along; there she showed it to one of the
Rossettis (W. M. Rossetti, I think) who, she re-
ported to St. Louis, praised especially its origi-
nality. Never printed, as far as I can now dis-
cover. A second essay by a St. Louis woman, Mrs.
Rebecca N. Hazard, containing a new theory of the
Divine Comedy, was put in type, and is still cata-
logued under the title of A View of Dante. Pro-
fessor L. F. Soldan, later Superintendent of the
St. Louis Public Schools, wrote and lectured a good
deal on Dante during this peculiarly Dantean
renascence, but I have not been able to find any of
his work in print to-day, though it may exist some-
where. All the foregoing authors stood in some
lax connection with the St. Louis Movement, though
none of them perhaps could be listed as its special
followers. Quite outside of its influence doubtless
would be placed a course of lectures on Dante from
the Catholic viewpoint at the St. Louis University
by Mr. Pallen. The same would be said of Mr.
Sheldon's Dante lectures given much later before
the Ethical Society. The last two courses are in-
468 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
teresting from the fact that they represent quite
the extreme poles of religion — each opposite being
inspired to make its own interpretation of the
Italian poem. In Italy a similar fact is observable :
the radical free-thinker and the strict churchman
mutually touch their tips through love of their
great poet, for each has claimed Dante as his own,
and each has commented upon him with partisan
unction.
The foregoing instances may be taken to indicate
something of a popular Dante vogue, which, in my
own case and seemingly in that of the public, rose
up to its height after the Faust wave had begun to
subside. But there were larger and more distin-
guished manifestations of this Dante cult in our
St. Louis Movement, of which the record has the
right never to be forgotten by our St. Louis Con-
stituency.
II. The surprising fact must now be given its
due stress that three of the ablest and most re-
nowned participants in our St. Louis Movement
became not only earnest propagators of Dante, but
devout believers, saintly in act and speech, at times
quite seraphic in look, when they discoursed on
their canonized master. His influence took the
nature of a religious conversion. They no longer
seemed to treat him as the author of one of the
great secular books of mankind, but his words be-
came a sort of sacred text, different in kind from
the other Literary Bibles. It was a psychological
phenomenon which puzzled me extremely, yea wor-
GOETHE AND DANTE. 469
ried me, and I groped in all directions, trying to
account for it, inasmuch the strange spell raged
right in the heart of our St. Louis Movement, and
seized its most prominent members. The names of
the three persons alluded to I even now write down
with a sort of bewildered gasp : Doctor W. T. Har-
ris, Professor Thomas Davidson and Miss S. E.
Blow.
The three did not form a single interbound
group of friends co-operating for a common end;
Davidson personally was rather an outsider, cer-
tainly to Miss Blow, and partially to Harris. Still
they were all touched alike with this peculiar Dan-
tean spell and showed similar symptoms quite in-
dependently of one another. Remember that this
spell lasted several years with incipience, culmina-
tion, and decline. I heard these people speak a
number of times, first in St. Louis, and then in
Chicago ; my interest, both literary and psychologi-
cal, bade me watch closely and remember. More-
over they were all greater personages than I was,
all three may be said to have won a world-fame
to which of course I could lay no claim. I shall
try to set down several matters in which their
similarity may be observed, stressing their com-
munity of Dantean spirit, though they could be
violently different in other respects.
In the first place they all wrote books on Dante,
and put the same into printed circulation so that
their writings, or some of them, are still to be found
in libraries. The work of Harris, called The Spir-
470 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
itual Sense of the Divine Comedy, stands doubtless
at the top of these productions, and has not yet
dropped into cold storage, as the trade says. There
have been several editions of it in somewhat dif-
ferent forms. Miss Blow's Book, A Study of
Dante (1886) shows her ability, but is tinged with
the peculiar re-actionary mood dominating her
when it was written, whereof enough has been told
in a former section. The Dante work of Davidson
was like the man, very multifarious, reaching all
the way from his often painfully meticulous erudi-
tion to lofty religious insight. I engaged him as
lecturer in three of our Western Dante Schools, and
had occasion to hear his best and also his worst, both
of which he never failed to serve up to us in doses,
little and large. Still he was unique in his field,
and had to be endured. His best publication on
Dante, in my judgment, was contained in his Dante
Year-Book, the Annual of the American Dante So-
ciety, the latter being one of his numerous ephem-
eral experiments. I read to-day that a good deal
of Davidson's Dante work is still in manuscript.
The three persons here mentioned struck, in my
opinion, a peculiar, even if vanishing note in Dante
Literature, which took its start from St. Louis,
though at first I heard Davidson make merry over
the Inferno "which has damned my Aristotle."
His decisive conversion to the poet seems to have
taken place during his protracted stay in Italy.
All three put far more stress upon the spiritual
element of Dante than upon the poetical, amd
GOETHE AND DANTE. 471
showed distinctly the tendency to fraternize with
his theology and even with his church. In other
words all three Catholicized through the influence
of the great Catholic poet, each in his own way.
None of them, however, went entirely over and be-
came open converts, though public rumor repeat-
edly whispered that some such occurrence was
about to happen. Several times I was greeted on
the streets with a friendly sarcastic jeer over the
outlook, and even twitted somehow thus: "Well,
I hear that your infidel philosophic set are going
to turn Catholic under the lead of Harris and Miss
Blow." I could only give a nondescript answer,
though true: "You know as much about it as I
do." Once and only once in my private room I
spoke to Harris upon the matter, I suppose with
some warmth, for I shall never forget his tone, his
look, and his words which he underbreathed : ' ' Have
patience with me." Half imploringly, almost dole-
fully he turned his demure face to mine — an atti-
tude which he never took toward me before or
since, for he was my superior in years, authority,
and distinction, and he never failed to assert his
right of primacy, which I freely acknowledged even
when I stoutly maintained my own liberty of evolu-
tion. I said to him no more on that topic, for I
felt that he was passing through some deep internal
struggle, probably religious, which had rent his
spirit in twain and weakened him to a broken man
for a time, quite incapable of any vigorous embat-
tled discussion. I never saw those meek angelic
472 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
lines, which now would stream through his brow
and over his face, in former years when he philoso-
phized with fight in his glow ; it is my theory that
Dante wrote them there, and sent him back to his
New England church when he went to Concord.
Such was the peculiar religious upburst which
Dante caused in our St. Louis Movement. I had ex-
perienced somewhat similar excitements as a stu-
dent at Oberlin where President Finney, then the
greatest living revivalist, had made revivalism a
part of our College course — doubtless the most
unique and powerful part of it, as he was the one
genius there. And back in my boyhood I had seen
Methodist camp-meetings quite uncontrollable with
wild shouts and frenzied prayers: all of which
showed strong physical reactions of the natural
man, even up to the dead eye of catalepsy.
But just think of it! Dante's poem, now more
than five hundred years old, belonging to a differ-
ent state of society and to a different faith, re-
vealed the rapturous power, not through the living
voice of some magnetic preacher, but through cold
dead type, to grip the first intellects of our philo-
sophic group and to call forth in them a real
religious revival not only of his spirit but of his
dogmatic doctrine ! I am sure I saw the mentioned
three, at different times when speaking under his
or similar inspiration, roll their eyes heavenward,'
change to a saintly tone their native voice, and
transfigure their features, so that they brought
vividly to my mind the glorified faces of Fra An-
GOETHE AND DANTE. 473
gelico's pictured Saints, up to which I once gazed
for hours in the Cathedral of Orvieto. But when
Tom Davidson, lecturing on the Paradiso, assumed
the paradisaical mien and intonation, I could not
help recalling, for the contrast grilled me some-
what, his blue strabismic Mephistophelian leer and
sneer at Christianism compared with Hellenism as
was his wont in his earlier St. Louis days. But
Davidson was honest even in his manifold muta-
bilities; he was no hypocrite, rather the contrary,
being often too imprudent in letting his ever-spout-
ing tongue pump out the bottom of his heart.
What is the cause of such an occurrence, or per-
chance dispensation? What may be the psychlogy
of the human Psyche in this episode? The answer
we shall have to wait for at present. Meanwhile I
hear from the reader another interrogation to which
a response is now due : What was your part in this
strangest phasis of the St. Louis Movement?
III. I can say at the start that I escaped from
the described contagion, if such it may be called,
though I had my own deep and lasting experience
with Dante in my distinctive way. But why should
I be immune ? That is indeed something of a prob-
lem, with different possible answers. My own view
is that Dante was for me but one book in the total
canon of the Literary Bibles, being the last one by
me biblically studied and wrought out, so that it
did not in my case usurp the place of the others.
It was for me of equal worth and authority with
the rest, all four forming together the Summa
474 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
Literaturae of Europe, the grand Literary Organon
probably of the race. But the three very capable
people above mentioned were spiritually moulded
by that one book of Dante though they read and
studied likewise Homer, Shakespeare and Goethe.
Still this was with them more, I believe, a learning
from the outside, even if deep and sympathetic.
Now they naturally were not going to acknowl-
edge any such distinction against themselves. So
they turned the tables on me, saying that I had
not religion enough to understand the supremely
religious poet. Harris gently intimated some such
notion to me ; at any rate he did not invite me to
take part in the Dante programme of the Concord
School, which task, however, I did not wish, inas-
much as I had already enough to do in preparing
for the Milwaukee enterprise of that same summer.
Moreover it was my opinion that the Concord
School of Philosophy had delivered its freshest and
best message during its past seven years of active
existence, and had begun to show signs of decline.
Be this as it may, I had conceived the ambition to
transplant it in its literary development to the
spiritual soil of the West, whence it had largely
originated.
In St. Louis, however, Miss Blow chose to enter
upon an active campaign against my supposed
religious shortcomings, and openly declared that I
could not be allowed to teach her class in Dante
the coming season. She gave out that she was going
to take it herself, and intimated that she would
GOETHE AND DANTE. 475
henceforth have charge of the other literary books
— a decision to which I felt no objection, for it
seemed to indicate a continuance of the work. So
far she was within her right, even if somewhat in-
quisitorial, which native gift she could not help
exercising. But in her reaction she intensified her
damnation almost to a curse, proclaiming to her
pupils, who had been also mine for several years,
that I had nothing more to give, being totally
drained out, exhausted to the dregs, and that she, to
employ her own contemptuous image repeated to me
by several of her friendly hearers, had squeezed
the orange dry and now proposed to fling the empty
hull into the slop-pail, which was her wont in such
cases. As I have already indicated, I had made
preparations for quitting the city anyhow, and
starting on my new limit-overleaping trial. But
why recall these past irritations? Assuredly not
to satisfy old grudges — that were both unworthy
and resultless. Miss Blow was our greatest, but
our f atef ullest woman ; both her greatness and her
fate are livingly intergrown in the St. Louis Move-
ment and cannot be left out of its history without
making it fragmentary, if not false. Not alone to-
ward me personally, but toward all who happened
to fall under her ban, did she show this fatuity of
excess, I might say now of autocracy, which was
sure to come back impartially to herself with the
all-rounding years. I repeat that in her more than
in any other person centered the literary primacy
of the city, at least as far as the St. Louis Move-
476 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
ment and all its ramifications were concerned. Dic-
tatorship, backed up by undoubted ability, lay in
her nature; a distinguished lecturer of the East
acclaimed her from the hustings the Kindergarten
Pope. I have heard her friend Harris attribute
this strain of personal arrogance to her aristocratic
Virginia ancestry, wherein he may have shown his
New England prejudice. I stayed away from St.
Louis about four years at this time; then I came
back in response to an urgent call, of course not
hers. And what a cataclysmic overturn did I wit-
ness all around me, a seeming Kindergarten Rag-
narok, amid whose ruins lay prostrate the fateful
Miss Blow ! But that is ahead of us, let us go
back.
These unfavorable opinions concerning my Dante
instruction were well dispersed through the city,
and I found them also borne outside — they were
flung into my face by a person in Chicago when I
was working up Dante there. The general sum-
mary ran that I was too much of a Heathen to
teach a Christian poet to Christians. The intention
was probably to discourage me from tackling a sub-
ject for which I was supposed to be constitutionally
unfitted. For it was known from my talks that
Dante was one of my Literary Bibles, all of which
I designed to co-ordinate, to interpret anew, and to
propagate by word, deed, and writ. Now this
critical counterblast, instead of cooling me off,
heated all the mettle in me white-hot with new
resolution and even defiance. Secretly I thought
GOETHE AND DANTE. 477
too that there might be some jealousy on the part
of those of our St. Louis Movement who had al-
ready written on Dante and so regarded me as an
intruder. Moreover my studies soon uncovered the
fact that there were rich mines still in Dante which
had never yet been uncovered in all the literature
which I could find on the subject. I explored the
accessible comments in English, German and Ital-
ian. Particularly I poured over the two most
widely read and most highly praised Dante inter-
pretations of that time written in English, those
of James Russell Lowell and of Dean Church.
Finely worded, suggestive, morally and religiously
edifying were these essays and many others after
their pattern ; the best of this sort that I ever read
came from the pen of the Italian-writing Perez,
name otherwise unknown to me but still treasured
by my grateful memory. I may here say that our
St. Louis interpreters above mentioned belonged to
the same general class: they were ethical and reli-
gious, though each took his or her own way — the
three women and the three men — more or less.
Now this aspect of Dante is not to be neglected,
and I by no means overlooked it, being the most
obvious and outwardly impressive lesson of his
book. Still there lay in him for me a deeper prob-
lem : that peculiar unearthly symbolism — not so
much the what of it, as the whence and the why of
it. How did it come to be, and how can I probe to
the source of these marvelous metamorphoses, espe-
cially of the Inferno? For that beautiful Greek
478 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
world of mine is here put through the medieval
Dantean alembic, and turns to a frightful monster.
I, just because of my previous classic proclivities,
felt the greater shock of it, and was desperately de-
termined to find the reason — the reason why that
upper serene existence of the old Gods should by
a penstroke of time be horribleized into this nether-
most Pandemonium. So I worked away till I too
along with Dante could see bright plastic forms of
Heathen Hellas transmuting themselves through a
new world-consciousness into the dark monstrous
shapes of Christian Hell. Such indeed was Dante's
deepest poetic problem and its solution, wherein is
revealed the essence of the medieval spirit. Thus
the sunny this-worldly Mythus of antique Greece
moves through Dante and his age into the brooding
other-worldly Mythus of the Apocalypse, which is
the whole storied frame-work of his poem. Like-
wise the subtle but colossal architectonic of the
Divine Comedy had never been satisfactorily
wrought out and correlated with the inner soul of
the work. Upon these pivotal facts of the poet
Dante, I put my decisive stress, not omitting text,
history, ethics, and theology, and other important
adjuncts.
But enough ! I cannot spur my egotism, great as
it may be, and also much-provoked, to write any
further praise of my Dante oblation, allowing my-
self only to say that finally — for this was the last
one finished of my biblical interpretations of Great
Literature — I printed the two volumes titled
THE SIGMA PUBLISHING COMPANY. 479
Dante's Divine Comedy, a Commentary, extending
to more than one thousand pages, in 1892-3, again
without ever asking that sovereign dispenser of all
book-pay and all book-fame, the Eastern publisher.
And let the reader now note : At the bottom of the
title page of each of these volumes stands the new
device or signal to the future : The Sigma Publish-
ing Company, St. Louis, Missouri, which little
challenge has persisted in holding its obscure but
rather defiant position down to the present date.
This fact likewise runs a small historic strand
through the St. Louis Movement, whereof next may
be jotted down a few straggling items.
VI
The Sigma Publishing Company
Accordingly my generous reader will here give
enough of his time to turn to the front page of this
book, at the foot of which he will see the above
inscription whose first appearance reaches back
more than thirty years, and has been appended to
a goodly number of volumes. The Sigma Publishing
Company has made a little life-history of its own,
whose fortunes are interwoven with the St. Louis
Movement, of which it may be deemed the business
counterpart, or perhaps the traveling salesman.
Another word for its function is self-publication;
all the books which bear its impress were written,
printed and published by the author himself; that
480 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
is, he had to be his own publisher, to win his own
audience, and to make largely his own channels of
distribution. On this side likewise his action has
been often censured as rashly unwise, as crippling
his influence and lessening his financial recompense
for his labor. But he soon found that among his
other defiances of prescribed ways, he had also to
defy the way of trade, if he would fulfill his mission
and complete his task. Commerce justly expects for
its effort an ample cash return, which soon showed
itself impossible in the present enterprise.
Moreover self-publication began to mean to me
and perhaps to others of us the crowning act of
self-expression, rounding to its last completion the
work of impartation, which refused to be handed
over to an outsider for a price. Naturally the out-
sider on his part refused his co-operation without
a price. Still to the true believer, or to the fanatic,
if you will, the thing had to be done.
Herein I deem Harris the forerunner and the
early daring protagonist, when he started the
Journal of Speculative Philosophy, in 1867, to pub-
lish his own work rejected in the East. I remember
it as one of his supreme moments when I saw him
bring down his clenched fist before a group of his
friends, affirming with vehemence : ' ' Now I am
going to start a Journal myself." That was the
primal creative act of self-publication in the St.
Louis Movement years before my first dash in the
same direction. Still the chief practical object of
the St. Louis Philosophical Society at its founda-
THE SIGMA PUBLISHING COMPANY. 481
tion was to publish its own generating book, the
masterpiece of Hegel. But it never did its real task.
And our president, Brockmeyer, could not be
brought to do the finishing deed of self-publication
— a failure not the least of his fatalities, to my
mind. I urged him often, both early and late in
life; he would promise, but he never achieved.
Herein Harris again seized the initiative and set
the example. Several of his early books were also
self-published and distributed to his constituency,
where they helped lay the foundation of his future
influence and name. t
But in this early challenge Harris did not hold
out ; for him, when he rose to be the most famous
educationist in the United States, the temptation
or the pressure became too great. Accordingly he
dropped to a writer of competing school-books for
a publisher — certainly no dishonorable employment
though a surrender of the independence of self-
publication. Then he went East and was editor of
a series of pedagogical books, to which he was re-
quired to write introductions, many of which are
excellent, better than the books themselves. But
sometimes it was perhaps otherwise, for he did not
always approve of the book, and so he had, for the
sake of the publisher, to make his introductory re-
marks, if not directly favorable, at least quite neu-
tral and shy of the main point. So I heard once
from his own lips, with a decidedly displeased twist
in his nose, whereat I must have made a wry face
in response, for he began to talk at it without my
482 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
ever saying a word, answering seemingly my facial
disapproval.
My publishing destiny turned the opposite way,
since I kept up and unified my business of self-
publication. Still my earliest book (The System of
Shakespeare, 1877) bore the imprint of a St. Louis
publishing firm (G. I. Jones & Co.) long since
vanished. But when I returned from abroad, I set
out on my distinctive career of self-publication, of
which the first book was printed in 1880 (Delphic
Days), and the last one is the present volume,
forty years later. Thus among my other wander-
ings, I have kept up this long publisher's zigzag
journey, going "alone and afoot," somewhat after
the model of my Walk in Hellas. I must add, how-
ever, that during the first ten years of this period
there were numerous variations of the publisher's
imprint on the title page; two or three editions
bore the name of an Eastern firm, but not for any
length of time; the real distribution always fell
back upon me, so that I had to take the whole bur-
den in person. Several times I put at the bottom
of the title page "privately printed" or "published
by the author", which was not a good business
method, as it led to uncertainty and confusion even
in my little public.
So after a time of fluctuation I settled definitely
and permanently upon the above designation : The
Sigma Publishing Company — an impersonal name
for publisher. The Greek word may hint somewhat
of my Classic time and its productions ; the corre-
THE SIGMA PUBLISHING COMPANY. 483
sponding English S is the first letter of Shakes-
peare and of St. Louis, and finally of Snider.
Rather whimsical is all this, but, I suppose, of no
great moment ; the true significance of the title is
that it stands for self-publication, in my case the
necessary counterpart and completion of self-
expression.
A book never was primarily a commercial bant-
ling with me, but a legitimate child of my brain, to
whom I owed a duty ; I was to endow my spiritual
offspring with the best outfit for life that I might
be able to furnish. The right of being printed and
imparted every worthy book may well claim for
its own sake, and even for the sake of its reader.
Then I found that when a conceived work had
really finished itself in my life, it must be gotten
rid of, as it were, must be disentangled from the
mind and put into the world as a real object, such
as is the book printed, bound, and sent forth to
make its own way through its own worth. The
manuscript was to me but a half reality, not yet
fully existent outside of me, and not yet possessed
of its own complete individuality. I at least was
in danger of tinkering with the mere writ seldom
to its betterment, till it was fixed in the hard metal.
To be sure I was not to print till the fruit was ripe ;
I often had to wait for years, and not a few works
never would mature for me, and so remain to this
day in their crude sere state of scribbled fragments.
Thus it resulted that each of my books became
a true incarnation of my best self at the time of
484 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
its type-set embodiment, and revealed a given
stage of my development. For its supreme object
was self-expression, even when other aims may have
played in ; first of all I was to live my own life at
its highest, and then record it for myself and for
any similar wayfarer. Hence every book of mine
is a chapter of a life-lasting autobiography of many
volumes, which now toward the close I am trying
to condense into this one volume, whereof some
readers may think there is already too much.
Here I should add that another fact of the time
may have more or less unconsciously pushed me to
self-publication, namely the steady decadence of
the book business during the whole course of my
active life. No doubt the trade in books has in-
creased enormously in bulk, but has decidedly
sunken in character. Take our own city for in-
stance. I have before stated that when I first came
to St. Louis, at the close of the Civil War, I found
three well-stocked independent bookstores in the
heart of town and quite on a par with other mer-
cantile establishments. At the present year (1919)
there is not a single fairly equipped independent
book store in the city; all are annexed and sub-
ordinate to the so-called department stores, essen-
tially the sellers of dry goods and of other passing
necessaries and conveniences of our ephemeral ex-
istence. Thus the original bookstore has lost its
freedom, its independent selfhood as an integral
part of the community, and has become a kind of
slave, subject to a purely commercial business. To
THE SIGMA PUBLISHING COMPANY. 485
me that means a sad decadence in character. Now
I am not blaming the department stores, I believe
in them and in their evolution, and in the present
case they doubtless gave a little additional life to
what was already very sick if not dying. The source
of this decline lies deeper.
Thus St. Louis with its million of people, urban
and surburban, has utterly degraded and put out
of business its former independent booksellers.
But this city stands not alone in such action; we
hear of the same thing occurring throughout the
West and even in the East. Today we read a state-
ment in a Boston Magazine that New Bedford,
Massachusetts, located in the most bookish State
of the Union, has fewer and poorer bookstores now
with 100,000 inhabitants that it had fifty years
ago with 25,000. The same fact is noted of other
cities. Thus St. Louis is perhaps only the worst
case in what seems to be a general epidemic.
Who, what is to blame? Numerous external
causes are assigned, such as the Carnegie libraries,
the Movies, the Magazines and Newspapers, the
Department Stores. But the trouble ultimately
must reach back to the shortage of brain power in
the business at its very head, for it can show no
supreme man, no great organizer, no pre-eminent
captain of the book-industry. Inferior leadership
appears stamped everywhere upon the American
book-trade.
Hence we dare the prediction that self-publica-
tion is likely to increase in the future, especially
486 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
over the West. The Eastern publisher will con-
tinue to devote himself largely to reprints, to the
vast mass of text books and school books, to en-
cyclopedias, dictionaries, compilations and series of
many kinds, in general to the printed reproduction
and distribution of past culture, out of which es-
pecially is minted good money without requiring
any great outlay of genius. But he will prudently
keep shy of the new book with a new idea which
has yet to fight its way in the world. So we prem-
ise that the author of such books will more and
more have to publish himself, or remain drowned
in his own ink-bottle. Especially is this the case if
he lives in the West outside the sphere of the
Eastern literary centralization, which seems to be-
come more tyrannical and grasping every day.
But under any circumstance I had the combative
feeling that I never would let my vocation in life,
verily my spirit's deepest development, be deter-
mined by a publisher or his taster. So one of the
persistent small undercurents flowing through the
St. Louis Movement, and helping to make it more
fertile and extended, has been this little stream
of self-publication which bears the not very lumi-
nous title of Sigma Publishing Company.
VII
Social Chicago
Now I am going to pass with some suddenness to
the reverse side of Chicago life; I might broaden
SOCIAL CHICAGO. 487
this and say, to the inverted or perverted phase
of humanity itself. For I had also my daily con-
tact with the negative element of associated man,
with the underworld of a great city, seemingly the
necessary obverse half of it, turned down, even
submerged in part. Mostly I resided in Lodging
House Quarter, home of the riff-raff generally,
who were always my next neighbors; indeed I
was myself a drop in this vast floating Niagara of
mortality which ever appeared on the rush to pitch
over and vanish in the cataract below. Still I
found my anchorage.
By way of contrast let me add that I at the same
time was living and holding converse with the
best spirits of all ages, the makers of the Literary
Bibles aforesaid — the most choice, ideal set of men
that our race has yet evolved. Such company I
never failed to have with me in my little room at
Hotel Goodenough, to whom I could flee for relief
from that maelstrom of the unchosen mass swirling
down the streets under my window. So I too had
my ideal boon companions; but I must not forget
that I likewise was associated in real life with the
best people of Chicago, for such I deemed my Kin-
dergartners and my little band of co-workers in
what they and I regarded as a great cause.
Thus after my limited way I met with and con-
joined in myself the uppermost and the nethermost
layers of mankind — the ever-warring extremes of
the vast social organism. Or I may analogize them
as the positive, and negative poles of total human
488 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
existence, which somehow I felt called or com-
pelled to take into my individual existence.
Social Chicago is the rubric which I write over
this section, since I wish now to give some inkling
of my sociological life, in contrast with my preva-
lent literary bent, as well as a glimpse of its coun-
terpart in the community. For in the realm of
sociology Chicago was as full of new experiments
as it was full of new religions, whereof a word has
been said on a former page. Indeed from this
present viewpoint Chicago itself may be looked
upon as one huge social experiment, the most preg-
nant and original that has yet been attempted on
our globe. Other cities may have vaster masses of
population, with their special problems, but none,
I believe, have the human diversity, the popular
initiative, the social originality of Chicago. Of
course I do not mean here ordinary society, made
up of pretty sportive bubbles of fashionable life,
with which I had little or nothing to do, and which
always bored me when I through some require-
ment had to be present at one of its functions.
The deeply negative phases of this social stream
which surged around me were what first compelled
attention. Those three demons in the form of
rebellious human appetites, drink, sex, hunger,
could be seen in their destructive energy on all
sides; back to them in some form the social ques-
tion always penetrates. A dozen drinking saloons
within two or three blocks of me were charged in
one year with seven murders, not to speak of rob-
SOCIAL CHICAGO. 489
berks and seductions. The drunken victim usually
from the country I have seen lying on the curb-
stone bespattered with his own blood, and rifled of
his watch and money. He thought he was equal to
the venture, went on a frolic to see the sights, and
such was the outcome of his ignorant challenge. And
so on by the thousands. Prohibition just now is seek-
ing to solve this problem, negatively I think, by the
utter annihilation of the whole drink-world and its
far-ramified organization. But much deeper and
subtler ran the cancerous filaments of the sex-life
of a great city, with its never-ending supply from
the very heart of society. One may sometimes see
the first fling of the desperate woman into this
"Witches' Cauldron of the social system. Here
comes the young girl from a suburban town, who
asks me on my evening walk the way through the
streets. A little inquiry develops the fact that she
is a fugitive from a step-mother, re-enacting a
world-old tragedy. I beg her to wait and see what
can be done by consulting her father. No, no;
she picks up her skirts and off she skips, saying in
substance that she would rather be a white slave
than the slave to that step-mother. Only one mo-
tive among millions for the vast underflow of nega-
tive womanhood in society 's whirlpool ; what is to
be done with it? Reached it can hardly be by ex-
ternal law, or only in a very limited external way ;
its hidden tentacles, often quite microscopic, coil
in the very germ of life itself.
But the most open and virulent form of the
490 THE ST- LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
social struggle lay in the furious greed-world of
Chicago, probably more bitter, more energetic, and
more pitiless here than anywhere else, though it now
belts the earth. This struggle centered then as it
still centers, in the world-feud between Capital and
Labor, so its popular terms run; the two grand
greeds — undoubtedly sprung of human needs, but
to-day degenerated largely into human greeds —
seem to be in a life-and-death battle, which, some
people think, threatens us with Armageddon. The
one side, the Capitalists, having the purse and in
the main the talents, employ brain power ; the other
side, the Laborites, having the physical preponder-
ance, tend to the use of brawn power ; thus rises the
social antimony between secret craft and open vio-
lence, which rends the social organism to-day. This
human dualism was pictured mythically long ago
by the old Greeks in the strife between crafty
Ulysses and brawny Ajax, in which contest the
latter turns tragic — a forecast often repeated and
verified in modern times. And the ancient Romans
have left their little fable on the same subject,
usually known as the strife between the Belly and
the Members, a petty squib told to the revolting
plebs of Rome by that old humorist Menenius
Agrippa, and after him redacted and amplified for
all time by William Shakespeare. But in our mod-
ern era the Belly and the Members have formed a
coalition and have a common antagonist in the
Brain, which, in its turn often plays tyrant and
even destroyer of its brother in the social organism.
SOCIAL CHICAGO. 491
Such is, then, our real Gigantomachia, the re-
volt of the suppressed nether Powers against the
upper Olympian rule of Zeus; or more prosaically
we may see here a phase of the timeless conflict be-
tween Brawn and Brain. The present domination
of the Russian Proletariat tends to turn on some
such conflict, though our information is still hazy,
and not infrequently seems doctored by the Press.
After a mild way I participated in this war of
the two opposing human Greeds which cleft the
social body like some avenging sword of Nemesis.
I attended the meetings of both sides, read their
literature, heard their orators on the street corners
and in the halls. I recollect that during this time
I grappled with Karl Marx's big yet unfinished and
unfinishable book on ' ' Capital, ' ' searching not alone
for its explicit doctrine but for its deeper spirit
both in the original German and in the English
translation. For however we may regard him, Marx
has written the Bible of theWorld's Proletariat,
which is getting to be not merely the economic but
the political problem of the age.
On the whole, I sided with both, and yet with
neither, for I thought I saw something above both,
of which they were but the present conflicting
halves. Moreover, I had neither of the two Greeds,
and in fact had neither of the two Needs which
propelled them into conflict. In general, I had my
very simple dinner paid for before it was eaten,
so that I really felt no money-hunger, and no
stomach-hunger, the two original sources of the
492 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
two warring social Greeds. But all the deeper and
more impressive and more insistent became the
lesson, which compelled me to construe for thought
and to put together in one supreme totality the
five great Social Institutions of man, in order that
I might not get lost mentally in the infinite mazes
of one anchorless Institution like the economic,
wherein I deemed lay the dilemma of Marx and his
followers. Slowly evolving out of this chaos rose
my own book on this subject, which after many
years of incubation got itself organized and
printed. Whereof later.
Thus I traversed, day in day out, Chicago 's huge
Pandemonium, whose acridly negative phases I
classify for myself under the three foregoing heads :
the drink-world, the sex-world, and the greed-
world. They all rest upon native human appe-
tites which exist originally for life-saving, yet be-
come life-destroying, if turned loose to their law-
less liberty. So in my mind's eye I saw them as
the three new Furies of Man's associated life, pur-
suing not now the individual so much as society it-
self, which seems at present to have taken the
place of the guilty Orestes in the doom of the
avenging Eumenides. •
In such manner I stood on the edge of the dark
infernal river Styx of Chicago as it poured down
through her streets, and I watched its multitudin-
ous wrecks float by without descending into the
stream myself in order to help save them as my
life's dearest task, though on occasion I would
SOCIAL CHICAGO. 493
reach out a hand to the one happening to dash up
at my feet. I was not missionary enough, not
good enough if you wish, not Christian enough as
Miss Blow might perhaps say, and as more than one
excellent church-member did tell me to my face in
a kind of unctuously savage reproach, which I
tried not to imitate. Still I had my own divinely
allotted chore running through the years, which
was to plant, up to the limit of my power, the
Eternal Word of the Literary Bibles in the over-
whelming ephemeral culture of the city, for as I
construed her, Chicago 's Brain was even in might-
ier need of salvation than her Brawn.
Still I could not live in this environment without
having my own little personal charities, at least for
my hours of recreation, if there was no better mo-
tive. Let these hundredfold petty experiences of
the passing days drop into the pool of oblivion;
but I would select three of the more important and
enduring strands of my social discipline in Chi-
cago as leaving a lasting impress upon my memory,
and as having a permanent influence upon my life
and work. These I shall entitle (1) The Greeks of
Chicago, (2) The Hull House Experiment, and
(3) The Hay market Bomb. All three had for me
a sociological character and warning which I sought
to understand, to appropriate, and to express after
my way. Hence they all have stamped an auto-
biographic mark upon the writ of this Writer of
Books.
I. The Greeks of Chicago. The name already
494 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
whispers me affectionately a deep emotional con-
nection with a former stage of my life previously
set forth as my Classical Epoch. I have sometimes
thought that I was born with an inherited need of
Greek expression ; the antique speech had found in
me a kind of re-incarnation. The very utterance
of it gave me not only delight but relief. Ever
since I had returned from my trip in Hellas I had
felt the strange longing to let a few Greek words
trickle off my tongue every day in response to some
far-away unconscious urge of my nature, possibly
of my heredity. In St. Louis I hunted around a
good deal for some stray natives of that land, and
found two or three, but they could all talk English.
The great migration from the countries around the
Egean had not yet taken place, and certainly had
not yet reached St. Louis.
It must have been my first year in Chicago
(1884-5), when, as I was taking a stroll one Sun-
day afternoon in the suburbs of the city, I noticed
two men trundling a fruit-cart and offering its con-
tents to the wayfarers. I took them to be Italians,
who had at that time a monopoly of such business
quite everywhere, and I addressed them in their
supposed mother-tongue. But they shook thleir
heads, and said they did not understand. ""Who
are you then?" "Greeks," came the reply in Eng-
lish. It was a great surprise, for I had accidently
stumbled upon two considerable facts: the begin-
ning of the large migration of the Greeks to the
United States, and the kind of occupation which
SOCIAL CHICAGO. 495
they had chosen, having already started to sup-
plant the Italians. I lost no time in flinging at
them several of my Greek vocables, whereby they
too were much astonished. Responding to my in-
quiries they gave me information concerning their
quarters, their employments, and their people. At
that time there may have been a hundred or two in
the city, but more and more kept rapidly coming,
till now their population sums up many thousands.
Everywhere around my hale old Hotel Good-
enough I found by trial the Greeks to have quietly
crept in and taken possession of the little businesses
of a crowded thoroughfare, becoming the fruiterers,
restaurateurs, barbers, candy-venders, shoe-shiners,
in general the small caterers to the vast transient
multitude surging in and through and out of the
great city's roaring streets. I noted that these
men, quite all of them young fellows, had come
from rural Greece ; not a few were Arcadian peas-
ants, and thus had been precipitated from the
most idyllic, backward country of all antiquity,
famed in old poetry for its rustic pastoral inno-
cence, into the very center of the world's mad mael-
strom, quitting their pastoral panspipe of Arcadia
for yelling and hawking peanuts and bananas to
Chicago's Pandemonium. But the most of these
Greeks still proudly called themselves Spartans,
and knew at least of their land's ancient "Worthies,
Leonidas and Lycurgus, whose names occasionally
they themselves bore, with a faint echo of hoary
greatness tinkling through thousands cf years.
496 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
Thus old Greece had in a measure followed me
across the Ocean to the West, and found me at the
very heart of all modernity, where I saluted her in
her native speech every day as I stepped across my
threshold on Wabash Avenue. The language was
still practically that of Plato and Demosthenes,
though with many new turns, meanings, and in-
flections. Also these Peloponnesian peasants spoke
their own dialect, often hard for me to understand,
though they always understood me. Well, some-
how so it was in antiquity with their Doric brogue.
But again I ordered my dinner in Greek at Chi-
cago as at Athens, and exchanged daily greetings
as I used to do in Parnassian Arachoba, when I
tarried there during my Classic Itinerary. So I
kept up a small continuous underflow of living
Hellenism far away from its home on the other
side of the earth, in some deepest need of my
spirit.
But now starts the question, what can I do, what
must I do to help these people for their own bless-
ing as well as in requital of the gift of their par-
ents? Of all the many foreigners I felt toward
them specially a certain ancestral affection and per-
chance kinship, which called up a feeling not only
of gratitude, but of duty. As far as I knew, I was
the only American then in Chicago who could con-
verse somewhat in modern Greek. This time was
about ten years before the establishment of the
University with its learned Hellenists, and before
the custom of sending our Greek professors to
SOCIAL CHICAGO. 497
Greece for the purpose of learning the modern
tongue. With my pedagogical bent I resolved to
bring them together and to train them in English.
I went to George Howland, Superintendent pf
Schools, who after his usual gruff greeting con-
sented to let me have the use of a room in the
Jones School for certain evenings. This building
was then not far from the center of the great Chi
cago rookery, in which my Greeks were packed
away, commingled in a common mess with their
bunks, bananas, and cookery. I went to these
rather dark cave-like habitations, preaching my
little gospel, and saying: No money asked, in-
struction free, no room-rent, no books required. I
succeeded in forming a class of about a dozen of
the more aspiring, and was ready to open work on
a given evening at the given place. So I dreamed
myself an antique scholarch of another Athenian
Academe, blooming anew right in the heart of mod-
ernest Chicago.
But the whole scheme flashed in the pan; I was
on hand, but not a Greek appeared. I hastened to
their quarters and found them all moodily silent,
and eyeing me with a snaky leer of suspicion. Fin-
ally I wormed out of them that they believed me to
be a secret missionary, Protestant or Roman Catho-
lic, who had been sent to undermine their Greek
Orthodox faith, and make them guilty of the awful
sin of apostasy. In vain I explained that I had no
such design, that I belonged to no church (which
fact may have shocked them still more), and I
498 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
begged them to make trial of me once or twice. I
simply wished to impart to them the first condition
of our civic life — the ability to read the daily news-
paper, and then to use the Public Library, in which
I planned to place a number of books in modern
Greek. But I saw that I could do nothing, and I
uncannily fled from the basilisk glare of that old
serpent of religious hate suddenly shot at me in
newest Chicago. I was at once classed with much-
bedamned Kalopothakes at Athens and other Greek-
American Protestant missionaries there, who were
probably the most unpopular men in all Greece, as
I found in my journeys through some of the remote
rural districts of that land. Still I kept up my
daily festival of linguistic delight in letting gush
up in conversation a few words of that old-new
Greek speech eternally expressing what is eternal,
even if it was originally heathen. I dreamed at
least that it gave me a daily sip of its own youth
and immortality.
II. The Hull House Experiment. Otherwise well
known as the Chicago Social Settlement — essen-
tially a place for mediating or at least mitigating
the furious conflict between the needy and the
greedy, raging with peculiar virulence in a great
commercial city. Or we may deem it a kind of ex-
periment station set down in the middle between
the two warring sides of that supreme social feud,
which it would somehow help assuage — the feud be-
tween Labor and Capital. I watched it with sym-
pathy at its beginning, and took a little part in it
SOCIAL CHICAGO. 499
from the inside for a testing while. In the huge
Chicago cataract of rushing humanity it might be-
come a last islet to which a few could cling before
being driven to the final plunge. The newspapers
had announced the coming project, as a sort of
Chicago duplicate of the famous Toynbee Hall in
London.
One day in January, 1889, as I remember, an in-
vitation was received by me from Mrs. Mary Wil-
marth to attend a meeting at her house on Michi-
gan Avenue for the purpose of listening to Miss
Jane Addams, who had recently arrived in the
city, and who was to set forth her new plan of
social betterment. The lady gave her talk and
others were called upon for a word or two. David-
son was there, remaining over from our Literary
School of the preceding holidays. He claimed per-
sonal knowledge of the original Toynbee plan, and
proceeded to disparage the whole design of intro-
ducing it into this country. Moreover he belittled
the co-operative life of such a Settlement as clan-
nish, in spite of his own Scotch tartan, which he
sometimes proudly wore outside and always inside,
and he declared the entire scheme "unnatural."
Thus he gave to that meeting and to the hopeful
foundress of Hull House his usual Davidsonian
kick. Yet Davidson of all men was clannish
and cliquey by nature; he seldom failed to form
his own inner set in any work for which he had
been engaged. So he had acted at Concord, and so he
treated our. Chicago Literary School, for really he
500 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
could not help it. Then what were his Glenmore
and his Farmington and his New Life? Still he
was always interesting and stimulating, though not
very convincing ; certainly he did not convince Miss
Addams, nor did he succeed in deflecting into his
course our Literary School.
After Davidson had finished, I being called on,
rose and gave a little address in emphatic approval
of the enterprise. Such was our peculiar destiny :
again we locked horns in that Chicago parlor, as
we had done some twenty and more years before
this time in the St. Louis Philosophical Society and
also in the High School. Our last tilt had taken
place in the recent Chicago Literary School over
Goethe, to which I as director had invited him as
lecturer. My argument now was that associated
work can be stronger and better than individual
effort, and I cited my own case with the Chicago
Greeks as a failure, because I did not have the
power of enlisting companions and organizing a
settlement. So I bade Miss Addams go on with her
worthy undertaking, in which I thought I saw a
need of the city and of the time.
Still I failed not to signal to her my warning. I
knew somewhat of the Hull House quarter, for I
had lived around its edges for several years, and
had brushed against its folk, most of them immi-
grants from Southern and South-Eastern Europe,
and mainly of three different confessions, very old
but very obstinate — Roman-Catholic, Greek-Catho-
lic, and Jewish. I told her that she would find
SOCIAL CHICAGO. 501
this humble and ignorant mass of humanity most
suspicious and most sensitive in regard to their
religion, over which they knew that their ancestors
had fought for many centuries. It was likely she
would be suspected of being one of those insidious
American missionaries whom they knew and dis-
liked from the old country, and who, their priest-
hood had taught them, were emissaries of the in-
fernal Serpent sent from far over the Great Sea
to rob them of their last and best hope, their faith.
She must avoid this first and deepest danger, and
make her enterprise as non-sectarian as possible.
Miss Addams rejoined that she was a Christian,
with a slight satiric thrust possibly, and that her
object was christian, though it was not denomina-
tional. I think, but am not now certain, that she
also said she was herself a good Presbyterian. But
time has shown that she really is the greatest
Quaker that America has produced, certainly not
excepting Elias Hicks, and overtopping Whittier,
if we leave out his poetry, with which Miss Addams,
as far as I know, did not try to compete.
Hull House was soon started, and I failed not to
pay an occasional visit, and once or twice talked
there to a little group about Shakespeare, for the
scheme had also its cultural appendage. It was
soon evident that the work had struck a deep note
in accord with the spirit of the time; through the
ability of Miss Addams, her Social Settlement soon
became one of Chicago's unique and much-inter-
viewed institutions, whose fame from that first
502 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
little germ had grown to be national and had even
crossed the Ocean. All that in the course of three
or four years; assuredly both her personality and
the phenomenon itself were worthy of a deeper
study than I had given them hitherto. Accordingly
in the fall of 1893 I resolved to leave my little nook
in the Goodenough Tenement, and to become a resi-
dent of Hull House itself, when I found I could,
after inquiry. I promised of course to pay my dues,
and to perform the part of the charitable work as-
signed me. I wished to live the enterprise in my
own experience from the inside of it, and to dis-
cover what it meant generally, if I could, and to
hearken what response to it my own nature might
give. Three main objects lay in my mind : first, to
find the bearing and place of such an establish-
ment in the total Social Order ; secondly to scan the
considerable number of people who had gathered
there to devote themselves to this work — my very
human fellow-residents, men and women; thirdly
and specially, to catch the spiritual outlines, if I
were able, of Miss Addams herself, the heroine of
this Hull House Iliad, who had already approved
herself the Great Soul of the enterprise, its creative
and organizing Woman-Demiurge.
The first operation in which I had a small part
was the plan to furnish to the poor people of the
district coal at cost price per ton; the male mem-
bers of the Settlement were to be the volunteer coal-
carriers. Thus, however, we, begriming ourselves
frightfully for charity, took away from a number
SOCIAL CHICAGO. 503
of other poor sooty fellows their scant means of
livelihood during the winter. I felt the counter-
stroke, when a needy darky, from whom I used to
buy baskets of coal, stopped me on the street for
alms, saying that our charitable arrangement had
stolen the bread out of his mouth. Not much time
elapsed before this benevolent enterprise had com-
pletely undone itself, causing apparently as much
poverty as it cured, and so it was dropped, letting
the poor world lapse back again under the old piti-
less law of supply and demand.
The next duty assigned me by the Settlement
was to look up those who on written request had
handed to us their names, declaring that they were
out of work and in pinching destitution. Foreign
immigrants ignorant of our tongue were quite all
of them, and, as I had some knowledge of their
dialects, I was chosen to visit them in their haunts,
thirty or perhaps forty of them at the start. The
first experience may be taken as an example : One
evening I knocked at the door where two jobless and
hungering Italians were reported to be suifering,
and I found about twenty compatriots at a long
table enjoying a bounteous meal. I stated the ob-
ject of my visit in my best Italian, and called out
the two names. In response a couple men jumped
up from the edibles and wiped on their sleeves
their well-fed chaps, affirming that they were in
great distress and even hungry for want of work
and especially for want of money. I questioned
them a little and came to the conclusion, that here
504 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
was a fine-spun Italian scheme of beggary to get
some free contributions from charity's overflowing
heart. But mine did not overflow in that way. My
parting advice to the twain was that on the morrow
they too should go to work with their companions
who had openly shown me labor's plenitude, and
earn their share of the macaroni. Next I found that
I had one Greek name on my list, so I went hunting
for him through the Hellenic colony and talking
Demosthenic Attic, but the Greeks disowned him,
saying that they had no mendicants, and would per-
mit none, nor any Black Hand. Such was the new
contrast I found between Greece and Rome in Chi-
cago. To round out this visit to the modern repre-
sentatives of the great nations of antiquity, I went
to a neat looking house where a stranded Jew had
reported himself workless. Judge my surprise when
a fine Hebrew lady, well-gowned and somewhat be-
spangled with jewels received me graciously in the
well-appointed parlor, and asked me the object of
my errand. I told her and gave her the name of the
applicant, when he himself appeared in person and
recounted his pitiful story, at the same time stating
that he was here living with a prosperous relative.
My answer was that his kin and his fellow-religion-
ists could surely do more for him than the Hull
House. So I kept up the quest, being employed in
it a number of days. At last I did find one case
deserving help — a poor French mother with two
small children was bravely facing the battle of life
under the burden of a drunken husband. At once
SOCIAL CHICAGO. 505
she got a little lift. Such was the outcome of my
first itinerary of charity under the auspices of the
Social Settlement, by whose assistance I had the
happiness to see something of those old cultural
stocks of Greece, Rome, and Judea without leaving
Chicago.
But the chief interest of Hull House for me arose
when all the residents met together once a day and
dined at a common table. Miss Addams sat at the
head; good-luck assigned me the third plate from
hers, so that I could see her and hear her in her
most spontaneous movements and sayings. Exceed-
ingly well-poised she looked as she sat there, show-
ing the mistress of the situation; to me her fea-
tures and her actions were inscribed with one dom-
inating word: Will. Not intellect so much, not
even emotion in any considerable overflow, but
resolution. I must confess that the great pacifist
impressed me as a good deal of fighter in her line.
The physical trait which still remains most deeply
graven in my memory was a peculiar hang of her
head to one side so that she seemed slightly wry-
necked. Moreover this lineament would change
more than her rather impassive face in the play of
her conversation; I noticed that it would visibly
stiffen as the argument grew tenser. I had occa-
sion more than once to see it wax in rigidity at some
unpacific utterance of mine, for instance in regard
to the punishment of individuals and of nations.
Thus it became to me the outer bodily signal of her
Will; especially it would rise to strong resistance
506 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
in defense of her doctrine of non-resistance, and in-
stantly fling at any foe the gage of war against
war.-
Some two dozen people in my time sat around
that table, and in conversation and action told on
themselves something every day, for they could not
help it nor could I. Only four or five men, young
sprigs of something or other, were present, here al-
together the weaker sex; I hope they were worthy
of greater remembrance than I can now find re-
corded in my brain concerning their wisdom. But
the women were in the decided majority as well as
considerably fuller of years, and they showed
stronger character and deeper experience of life.
Indeed I thought I could read on the faces of a
good half of them that they had gone through one
supreme trial of soul and of heart, which they had
bravely endured, but which had sent them to Hull
House for complete restoration through works of
Charity. Now I was altogether the oldest person
present, over fifty-two, getting gray and bald, bear-
ing in my wrinkles the flow of life's vicissitudes
pictured in this present book. My age could have
fathered the oldest lady at that table. Miss Ad-
dams was nearly twenty years younger than my-
self, which fact I may dare infer from the pub-
lished date of her birth in her autobiography.
The hottest argument, with the whole set against
me headed by Miss Addams, flared up concerning
corporeal punishment in the Public Schools, which
I held could not be wholly dispensed with, though
SOCIAL CHICAGO. 507
the abuse of it should be carefully guarded against.
Miss Addams turned on me a look of sour severity,
so I thought, as she propounded : ' ' Then you hold
that the child has not a moral nature. " " Most cer-
tainly it has," I replied, "and the best way to
bring that out is to let the child feel from the
start the penalty for transgression. I know it, I
have tested the principle a hundred times on my
pupils, and even on my own babes, and, I may add,
especially on myself. Furthermore I believe that
the chief discipline of the World's History is the
bringing home to the guilty nation its wrongful
deed through war. ' '
That was enough for the great pacifist, if I may
use a word more common now than it was then.
Her sideling neck stiffened stronger than I ever
saw it do before, as she uttered her new Isaian
prophecy of universal peace, which has not been
fulfilling itself in these recent years. I as an old
Union soldier could hardly confess to having done
wrong in what I deemed the best deed of my life,
nor was I yet ready to promise that I would never
do so again in response to a similar call of my
country.
Thus Hull House had given me about as much of
its experience as I could swallow for once, and I be-
gan to feel ready to quit. Still I believe in it
within its sphere, it has its place, and scatters its
blessing to many poor souls otherwise unblest. But
it is not all of the world, not indeed all of society.
Miss Addams, if I construe her word, writ, and
508 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
deed correctly, would turn the whole universe into
one vast Hull House for the grand betterment of
God's creation. With the overmastering but one-
sided zeal of the great reformer, she thinks to
transform the entire institutional order of man, as
it has evolved through the long ages, into one all-
embracing Social Settlement, of which she naturally
would have to be the head, for no man could run
it. Thus ought to be realized the grand panecea
for all war, poverty, social wrong, and the rest of
human ills. Very charitable is all this, so much so
that it leaves out justice and its institution, the
State. In fact she seemingly prefers the lame
ducks of society to its self-supporting promoters,
and in more than one passage she appears to main-
tain that they are the real source of all the great
movements of civilization past and present. And in-
deed what would this Hull House be without them,
and perchance Miss Addams herself? Now I be-
lieve in helping the lame ducks of the Social Sys-
tem, and loving them, if you can; still I have to
confess that to me a lame duck is still a lame duck,
though one of the Lord's own creatures, and not to
be neglected.
So about the holidays 1893-4, I gave up my resi-
dence in the Settlement, and went back to my little
corner in Rookery Square, carrying my valise and
also a bran-new casket of valuable experiences. A
good deal of the Russian consciousness with its anti-
institutional drive westward I had felt or rather
iorefelt in the bud, which later put forth some as-
SOCIAL CHICAGO. 509
tonishing flowers at Hull House. More than
enough of Tolstoy, and altogether too much of
Kropotkin, and others of his countrymen aflame
with the grand Slavic negation which now is burn-
ing up Russia and threatens Europe with conflagra-
tion if not America, singed me then a little in ad-
vance, and bade me hasten away. Indeed I have
sometimes thought, that Miss Addams herself, at
the deepest well-head of her spirit is more Russian
than American, which she has God's right to be,
such being her own birthright.
Still I continued to go back to Hull House now
and then, and to give little chats on literary themes,
for it had cultural sides which appealed to me
strongly. Sometimes a discussion would spring up ;
the last tilt was, as I remember, over the Haymar-
ket anarchists, whose punishment I deemed to have
already shown itself a great social blessing. But
Hull House was not of that mind, nor was Gov-
ernor Altgeld. But let this pass.
Hull House gave me an impressive living lesson
in what I may call Institutional Science, chiefly by
way of question marks. For I felt there under-
neath all its open charity the secret continual chal-
lenge of the whole established Social Order. Such
a challenge drove me to think out and finally to
write out the significance of that World of Institu-
tions in which I had to live, and which mankind
in its ages-long troubled history had evolved for
me and for itself. To be sure the subject was not
new even in my case, for I had inherited a wrestle
510 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
with the right of Institutions practically from my
College days of Oberlin and from the Civil War,
and theoretically from the Hegelian philosophic
epoch of St. Louis. But Hull House brought back
and vivified to me the problem for a renewed grap-
ple, especially in its economic aspect. Thus it wove
its strand of experience into this "Writer of Books
for some future self-expression. And very sugges-
tive of the time is the astonishing career of Miss
Addams herself, who has shown the insight and the
capacity to seize the universal psychologic conjunc-
ture to make herself a world-character, and her
work a world-cause. She, most militant pacifist and
bravest battling peace-maker rises up the female
embodiment of to-day's deepest inner, even bleed-
ing self-contradiction.
Still pacific Hull House, starting its work some
few years after furious Haymarket, where the two
hostile opposites of social Chicago clinched in down-
right warfare, and shed each other's blood, may
well seem a mediator worthily attempting to soften
if not to solve the bitter strife between Greed and
Need, or more deeply between Brain and Brawn.
In this earlier more violent and sanguinary contest
I too had my living experience for many months,
and labored to take to heart and head its lesson.
A brief note of this occurrence also cannot be left
out of the history of the present autobiographic
chameleon whose nature is to reflect in writ all the
shifting hues of its changeful environment.
III. The Haymarket Bomb. Just one little bomb,
SOCIAL CHICAGO. 511
yet most famous of all, whose explosion still keeps
echoing through Time ! I heard ominous rumblings
underneath the social fabric, when I first became
acquainted with Chicago in 1884-5. Undoubtedly
murmurs are everywhere and at all times bubbling
up out of some discontented souls; but in these
sounds of which I speak lurked a threat which al-
ways seemed to be getting louder and more menac-
ing. Accordingly I started to probe for the source,
and found what may be called a spiritual bomb-
factory, which I inspected and watched a number
of months, till finally a literal bomb exploded one
evening in the Hay market.
There was, at this time, an unrestrained propa-
gandism of violence against the existent Social
Order carried on by the spoken and written word as
well as by action in the way of strikes. As far as I
could discover, the movement was then chiefly con-
fined to one class of workmen, the German foreign-
ers, who always came to the fore as leaders. The
intellectual center was a newspaper in German, the
Arbeiter Zeitung, or the Laborers Journal, which
I read diligently for its record of daily doings as
well as for its doctrine. Its appeal was to the pre-
vailing social discontent, largely imported from
Germany, and its argument ran with manifold dis-
cordant variations : You, poor fellows, are not to
blame for your condition, but society is — rise ! Also
could be found in that sheet new interpretations
and applications of Karl Marx, author of the last
German Bible, the economic, and the grand organ-
512 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
izer of Labor 's Gigantomaehia against the so-called
Capitalistic World-Order. Of course I started at
once to search this new Scripture. Moreover there
was one strong prominent character at the center
of the agitation here in Chicago, a speaker and
writer of massive vehemence and soul-corroding bit-
terness, August Spies, chief editor of the aforesaid
newspaper, and the outstanding figure of anar-
chistic Far-West. I pondered his articles and
speeches, which reeked with hate of American so-
cial and political institutions. Especially the pop-
ular vote, or the sovereignty of the people he as-
sailed with his whole deluge of venom. Under-
neath all his negations which constituted his chief
mental outfit, I tried to dig up what he was really
after, to find his positive aim, if he had any, to
reach down to his ultimate psychology. As far as I
could make out, he still possessed the German im-
perial consciousness, perhaps more imperial he was
than the German Emperor himself; only he was
himself to be the dictator, the true Kaiser. I
thought I had noticed quite the same underlying
tendency in Marx, though the autocracy was to be
that of the Proletariat, not that of Junkerdom, of
the lowest social class, not of the supposedly high-
est. But class-rule it was, and with a vengeance,
headed by its own autocrat, who in the present
case was to be none other than Herr August Spies
himself, the panarchic hero of the anarchic uni-
verse.
Once more I began going to German beer houses,
SOCIAL CHICAGO. 513
dance halls, singing societies, which were strown
particularly along Milwaukee Avenue, where I
might commune again with the present German
spirit, and drink down its freshest outpourings
along with a glass of fluid Gambrinus, the only God
of the otherwise godless. I tried to penetrate into
the most secret organizations of this latest Teu-
tonic movement on American soil; especially I, as
pedagogue, sought to catch an inner glimpse of the
new educative institute of anarchy, known as the
Lehr-und-Wehr-Verein, but I never succeeded in
passing the suspicious guard, often composed of
mere children, who at the presence of any stranger
would run to headquarters and shout the signal : a
spy, a spy. Report further said that this institute
was composed of groups of revolutionaries banded
together for the purpose of training not only in
military drill for the coming overturn, but also in
the true doctrine of the Marxian faith. So indeed
its name hints. And everywhere in that locality I
seemed to breathe an atmosphere of suspicion,
which as I construed it, arose from some unspoken
but meditated dark deed which lurked in the soul
of that community, and which, though subtly se-
creted, gave this outer indication of what lay in-
side the heart, in spite of all its self-suppression.
A single typical experience may be set down. I had
observed furtive eye-shots darting at me with a
distrustful leer once when I was sitting at a table
on which a glass of beer foamed before me as I
picked up a newspaper ; Graef e 's hall, I think, was
514 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
the name of the place, a famous resort of anar-
chists in those days. A rather savage heavy Ger-
man moustache approached me, out of whose hid-
den depths flowed the brogued English words with
a note of authority: "What are you doing here?"
I took a sip of beer and held up before my censor
the Arbeiter Zeitung, making answer in German:
"I am reading this leading article by Spies; good
stuff, is it not ? ' ' Then I turned back to the printed
page. The man moved off foiled but still watch-
ful, whereupon I threw down the paper and quit
the place, having gotten a fair lesson in the thing I
came for.
But what a contrast between this present Chicago
German experience and that former St. Louis Ger-
man experience of twenty years since, when I be-
came Germanized for a decade or so along with
the city itself! The difference stood forth to me
very significant, perchance prophetic. I saw and
felt now negative Germany, not simply in theory,
but in practice, or at least the deeply destructive
element in German spirit. Through the articles of
Spies I seemed to hear chiefly variations on those
all-telling words of Mephistopheles, in which the
new Destroyer defines himself:
let bin der Geist der steis verneint.
But in the St. Louis time Germany was seen and
realized more in her positive character; even her
rather negative Forty-Eighters had fought vali-
antly for the Union, and thus had helped do the
SOCIAL CHICAGO. 515
great constructive deed of the age. And the pro-
nounced German strain in our St. Louis Movement
was decidedly affirmative in its studies of Philos-
ophy and Literature, represented chiefly by Hegel
and Goethe, both of whom show the Destroyer in-
deed, but show him also undone, yea self-undone.
But at Chicago I came into living contact with the
furious German world-negation, which now some
thirty years later in its own Teutonic home has
wrought itself out to an awful culminant catas-
trophe, a kind of national Ragnarok, of which I at
present deem that I felt the early possibility, and
even saw the presaging foreshow in that Haymar-
ket explosion.
It was a little before midnight May 3rd, 1886, as
I lay awake in bed, somewhat worried over the
dread social menace of the time, when I heard a
newsboy on the street cry out: "Extra! big riot!
bomb thrown ! many cops killed ! " I at once sprang
up, jumped into some clothes, and hurried to the
scene of the disaster, where I found the excitement
already simmering down and the police in control;
once or twice an ambulance dashed by, taking some
wounded man to the hospital. I walked back to my
room a mile or so distant, with no little meditation
on what seemed the new duty suddenly risen before
me. Not since the attack on Fort Sumter, twenty
years before, had I felt such a seething crisis in my-
self and in my environment. No sleep for me that
night, till I had found my resolution, and had pre-
pared to carry it out.
516 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
In the morning I hastened to a foster-brother of
mine, then a lawyer of Chicago, John S. Cooper,
who had fought through the Civil War and from
a private had risen to be a Colonel, winning great
credit for himself and bringing honor to his
friends and relatives. Patriotic soul he was, that
John Snider Cooper, named, I must add, after my
grandfather. I found him ready, and my first
words were : ' ' Cooper, we must again enlist. You,
as superior officer, must take command of the regi-
ment." "Yes," says he, "the old war feeling is
throbbing within me, something must be done at
once." A brief talk over a plan we had, when I
left to inspect further the situation. I hastened to
the central scene of action ; especially I took a sur-
vey of the locality of the Arbeiter Zeitung, where
I heard that Spies and a number of anarchists had
been arrested, without any resistance from them or
their supporters.
A little inquiry brought out another fact. I
found that many veterans had come down town
that morning with the same feeling which I had — -
perhaps 20,000 of us were then living in Chicago.
As the Civil War had been largely fought by young
men and boys, these veterans were mostly in the
middle forties at this time, well-drilled and still
ready to fall into line; experienced officers, indeed
just our own old ones, were also on the spot. Thus
a kind of standing army sprang to arms, or was
on the run to spring at the call of the moment. But
there was no need; the roused military spirit had
SOCIAL CHICAGO. 517
already done its work. I once more made the tour
of the beerhouses of the anarchistic quarter; they
had lost their loud aggressive tone, being quite re-
duced to a whisper around the tables ; to me there
seemed everywhere in that locality a cowed atmos-
phere which was oppressive. No danger of any out-
break or violence could arise from such people;
moreover their leaders were in jail, to whom the
law was now to measure out guilt and punishment.
The great trial of the anarchists started and
roused an interest all round the earth. What will
free America do with such a class of offenders?
What autocratic Russia and Germany had done,
was well known. The trial was open and not hur-
ried, though it was not allowed to lag. It lasted
some eighteen months and passed through the whole
scale of the organized Judiciary of the land, from
humblest to highest — through the City's, the
State's and the Nation's tribunals of justice, cul-
minating in the Supreme Court of the United
States. Such was the hardest blow that ever struck
anarchism, though of course it was not killed, for it
is still alive and at work to-day, being continually
imported. But in Chicago from now on the Social-
ists sharply discriminated themselves from the An-
archists, which distinction had not been clearly
drawn before in the minds of these people. Some
time after this event I heard Tommy Morgan, chief
Socialist orator of the city, declare in a speech with
emphasis: "it was wrong to throw that bomb!"
Whereupon loud applause from his socialistic au-
518 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
dience, mingled, it is true, with some hisses, to
which he replied by a still stronger iteration of his
damnatory judgment.
1S0 the Anarchists were tried, condemned and
executed — truly a world-historical act, at which in
an onlooking way I was present from start to finish,
and went through its numerous ups and downs al-
ways with some nervously responsive excitation. At
last came with a bright Sunday the funeral of
Spies and his companions, which was to be the
occasion of a public demonstration. Again I went
up Milwaukee Avenue to the place of the coffins, and
watched the processions of various German so-
cieties forming behind the hearses to the tune of
the Marseillaise. All moved orderly, solemn, taci-
turn; I marched alongside on the pavement. As
we approached the center of the city, I saw an old
grizzled soldier in Grand Army uniform leap to
the front of the whole procession, carrying and
waving an American flag, the only one in sight; I
think all banners and mottoes had been forbidden
by the police. The grand marshal rode up to the
old soldier and bade him put away his flag, where-
upon fully fifty young fellows sprang from the
sidewalks around him, shouting "Hold fast to Old
Glory, we'll protect you." It looked like a squall
at first, but the marshal seeing that resolute band
and hearing also the hand-clapping and bravos from
the pavements and from the windows of the near-
by buildings, turned his horse about, and let the
old soldier with his flag head the procession.
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 519
Such was the deepest, bloodiest, most tragical
drama in the life of social Chicago during my time
or her time up to date, revealing in its massive,
resistless, ever-advancing sweep the fatal round of
deadly social Guilt and equally deadly Retribution.
As I pondered the onward march of its varied
scenes and acts from prologue till exit, I could
not help saying to myself in accord with my liter-
ary bent: "This real dramatic cycle is as com-
plete as a Shakespearian tragedy, to whose truth
for all times and lands it bears eternal witness, and
writes me the most convincing commentary."
So from this immediate, actual, desperate life of
social Chicago written in literal blood and anguish,
I turn for relief and for hope 's renewal to the ideal
presentment of man's entire institutional order of
the ages, as revealed in the Literary Bibles, whose
spirit helps heal the riven heart to wholeness again.
And these my own Self's restoratives I now follow
up with my supreme attempt to impart their eternal
worth as well as their spiritual anchorage to clash-
ing vortical Chicago, right in the heart of her
furious maelstrom. Of which work I hope to be
able to chalk down some perceptible even if faint
outlines in what follows.
VIII
The Chicago Literaey Schools
If I can only make this section worthy of ife
theme, or equal to my conception of it, I shall not
520 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
fail still to grow in the good graces of myself de-
spite my age and other frailties. For we are now
to have not merely one but eight successive Liter-
ary Schools in Chicago, one for each year between
1887 and 1895. I may in confidence whisper to my
reader that personally I deem this the greatest
practical single achievement of my life, as I look
back at it now through the intervening and pos-
sibly magnifying lenses of three decades. Mark, I
say practical, since it was my deed not only in
plan but also in execution, though I had the most
loyal assistance of my pupils, without whom I
could have done nothing. Moreover it was the de-
cided culmination of this Epoch of the Literary
Bibles, to which I had devoted such a considerable
fragment of my terrestrial existence. I hold, too,
that our St. Louis Movement, in so far as it flowered
along my life's path, found its supreme fruitage in
these Chicago Literary Schools, even if it had to
leave its native soil to attain its last growth and
ripeness. To be sure theoretically, or in the line
of Thought, I was destined to move forward to a
new and doubtless higher fulfilment — much to my
suprise, I can say, for I considered that my Book
of Life would be closed and sealed when I had
written and printed and planted my volumes of
Commentaries, or that which was for me, in the
way of self-expression, my new Literary Bible. But
how that illusion was undermined and blown up,
is to be told as a part of my future's battle.
What, then, was this Literary School which
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 521
bulks so tyrannically huge in my retrospect and
perchance in my self-esteem? Let my reader not
be disappointed at my small description of it,
since it was only a course of ten lectures confined to
one week, but repeated year after year eight times,
beginning usually Monday evening and concluding
Saturday morning during the holidays, with an
hour's discussion after an hour's lecture — time-
limit not rigidly adhered to. The subject was al-
ways one of the four Literary Bibles illustrated by
the best expounders obtainable as our lecturers.
My idea was to focus intense concentration upon
one great theme, upon one Great Man for one brief
week, with illumination flashing upon the one cen-
ter from diverse masterful minds. My experience
of Concord had told me that the sessions lasting
several weeks were too long, the subjects too dis-
cursive, though the leading theme may have re-
mained Philosophy. Hence toward the close there
was always a letting down from the excessive ten-
sion; we fagged out and then we dragged out. It
was a prime point accordingly to keep that Chi-
cago audience keyed up while the School lasted,
but it must not last too long.
Still the chief shortcoming of the Concord pro-
gram, which I watched with no little care, sprang
from the lack of previous preparation in its stu-
dents and listeners. For instance, I felt certain that
half of the audience during the Concord Goethe
School had never read Faust, or at most only
in a very desultory way. Indeed when I lectured
522 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
on Shakespeare, using some of the incidents of
Love's Labors Lost for my purpose, I found reason
to believe that not one in four of my hearers had
ever grappled with that somewhat difficult and less
known play. And when Harris talked his unmixed
Hegel to that mixed crowd, though he tried to
popularize his ponderous nomenclature, and did to
a certain extent, I could see by the corrugated
foreheads and tensely shutting eyelids, not to men-
tion faces of relaxed despair, that quite everybody
there needed some preliminary training to the hard
language and to the still harder thought. Accord-
ingly I determined through my classes to prepare
the way for the Chicago School so that its lec-
turers would have a body of listeners who had not
only read but had studied the masterpieces which
were the subject-matter under consideration. Thus
I had actually drilled some one or two hundred
good people in the manual of the Literary Bibles,
so that they seemed to me like a company of sol-
diers ready for the onset when the hour struck.
And the hour did strike when I resolved to hold
a Literary School in Chicago during Christmas
holiday week, 1887. The subject chosen was Dante,
for a number of excellent reasons. I had my little
army sufficiently trained and well in hand; I saw
that they knew enough to make themselves not
only appreciative hearers, but even fair judges of
all that might be said. And they had at least the
Sniderian standard by which they could test all
the speakers. In fact, I wished to give them a
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 523
chance just through this School to break over the
bounds of my doctrine if they found anything bet-
ter. And a few did. I have sometimes wondered
at myself in this role of disciplinarian. Was it the
result of my being a schoolmaster? But the other
lecturers were also pedagogues by profession. Now,
as far as I know, I was the only man among them
who had been a soldier, who had drilled and com-
manded fighters in the tussle of war. That may
have impressed its lasting lesson upon me, so that
when I surveyed the mighty fortress of ignorance
and of philistinism called Chicago, I knew that I
must have a disciplined soldiery to assault even any
little outwork or bastion of it with the least hope
of success. Let the pre-cautious reader not neglect
my dates, recalling that I first appeared in Chi-
cago in 1884, and hence had been training my peo-
ple off and on for three years before the first Liter-
ary School.
1 must by no means forget to mention that the
active center of my following was composed chiefly
of Kindergartners, who had been more or less
directly connected with our St. Louis Movement
through Miss Blow. About this time we had
started a new Kindergarten College in Chicago,
which remained the inspiring sustainer as well as
the pushing financial promoter of all these eight
Literary Schools, while developing with zeal and
ability its own special work. The official heads of
this Kindergarten work were Miss Elizabeth Har-
rison and Mrs. J. N. Crouse.
524 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
The Director of the Literary Schools I titled my-
self, for I knew from experience that they had to
be directed and stabilized by a single hand not
shaky. The Milwaukee affair had vividly lessoned
me that one captain must take charge; or more
particularly stated, that I must make the program,
select the speakers, and preside over the sessions.
At the same time my trained auxiliaries must let
themselves be felt in support as the very soul of
the audience. I knew Davidson's tendency to de-
flect the established course aside to his own ends,
he being by nature a breacher and always knowing
better than the authority at the helm. His part,
however, could not be filled by any other lecturer,
and I took a kind of pleasure in trying on him my
new well-bitted bridle. Of course I did not ex-
pect at the start that the School would acquire a
momentum so imperious that it would insist on re-
peating itself eight times before stopping, or even
four times. I only wished to get through the one
time in safety.
But why choose Dante as the starter ? Foremost
rose the reason that the old Florentine poet would
furnish in advance the best material for making
the best School, and the least hazard could we dare
take at the opening plunge. Harris and Davidson,
I knew, had excellent work in manuscript on
Dante, which they could draw on, and which they
had already tested at Concord. Moreover the psy-
chological condition of the two men was not to be
neglected: both had strongly Danteized, had even
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 525
Catholicized almost to the stepping off edge, but
had refused to take the last leap. This signifies
that both looked on their favorite poet as a kind of
Bible, in fact as their one Literary Bible ; they were
not merely profound and learned expositors of the
text, but were believers with the faith and love of
disciples for their master. Such were the men I
wanted to give tone to the task. I cared not for
the usual sleek-groomed literateur who could write
upon call a well-worded essay for the magazine. A
far deeper requirement I exacted for the Literary
School, a biblical test. These two men had, each
in his own way, loved and lived Dante for years,
and showed the fact in their writ. To be sure,
from my point of view they both were a little nar-
row; they had realized only one Literary Bible,
while the consensus of the best judges of all time
had stamped upon four their canonical seal of
approval.
To these two male eminences, I wished to add
the eminent woman of our St. Louis Movement,
Miss Blow, also a strong religious Danteizer, who
had written and published her book on Italy's su-
preme poem. I sent her an urgent invitation beg-
ging her to be present, and I especially stressed the
fact that Dr. Harris, her tutelary, would be on
hand to help give character to the School. But the
reply came back to me that she was too unwell to
take the journey. I was eager to secure Miss
Blow's presence for another reason: the rank and
file of my fighting army were mainly Kindergart-
526 THE ST- LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
ners, all of them Miss Blow's pupils, or pupils of
her pupils. Hence her name was a familiar word of
magic to them, and also in her the woman-soul
would be transcendently represented on the pro-
gram. She had done the great educational deed of
the time, and she desterved all the recognition
which the School might be able to give. If I recol-
lect aright, I wrote her a second letter, asking
simply for a paper, even an old one, to be read in
her name and honor at one of the sessions. But to
this repeated request she gave no response.
I shall, however, acknowledge that I had my own
little personal satisfaction in sending this friendly
missive to Miss Blow, inviting her to take part in a
Dante School under my supervision. I thought that
it might do her some good to find out that I would
not stay in the petty pigeon-hole into which she.
during her autocracy had tried to thrust me at St.
Louis. She would also see my enthusiastic band of
soldiery largely composed of her own Kindergarten
followers. Even Dr. Harris would now do his good
share under the new Director, whom she had once
tabooed, forbidding him her Dante class. To be
sure the experience might be a little Purgatory for
that pride which I had heard her denounce as the
basic human sin, in a kind of self-confession I
thought, though fulmined with a Dantean vehe-
mence of damnation. Moreover she would see on
the program practically the whole St. Louis Move-
ment gathered up from its dispersion and trans-
ferred to Chicago, as it starts on a new stage of its
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 527
evolution in a new locality under a new helmsman.
To have seen and shared in all that, ought to have
widened her horizon a little somewhat, wherein
might have lain for her a blessing.
Thus I sought to collect the scattered members
of the former St. Louis Movement as they lay be-
strown in every direction over the land, and to
unite them in a second growth and restoration of
our cause. "We could not go back to our starting
place and try St. Louis again with any hope, for
her city-soul, quite collapsed, seemed to lie pros-
trate in a kind of benumbed mental lethargy, the
reaction, as I construe the case, from her Great
Disillusion. Still I could find here and there on
my occasional visits to the fast-ageing town, some
lingering sparks of the old fire which might, after
the smouldering years, be once more kindled into
a fresh flame of her spirit's revival. But at present
she had not recovered from that volcanic explo-
sion which, among its other effects, had torn our
St. Louis group to very tatters, and had hurled us
piecemeal to the four winds of heaven.
Let me here confess that I indulged in some quiet,
harmless self-gratulation at the fact that I stead-
fastly refused to flee backwards to earlier, less ad-
vanced forms of associated life after the St. Louis
cataclysm. Quite the opposite was the trend of my
associates. For instance, Harris betook himself to
idyllic Concord and homed there ; Davidson turned
first to small rural Farmington, and then escaped
to the remoter woody mountain of Glenmore in the
528 T HE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
Adirondacks for the purpose of forming his ideal
fellowship away from civilization ; Miss Blow cut
loose from all her St. Louis prestige, social, educa-
tional, literary, and retired to her secluded nook at
Cazenovia, New York, where she also in time will
hold sessions for her disciples; and my dear giant
Brockmeyer made the completest, most gigantically
uncivilized retreat of all, when he fled to the Red-
men of Indian Territory, going back as it were into
the very cave of primordial Polyphemus. But it
lay in me somehow to speed the other way, along
with or perchance ahead of civilization ; so I flung
myself into the Chicago maelstrom, the dizzying,
still crude human vortex in the forefront of the
World's History. That was my fascination and
remained so during many years. For the problem
to my mind ran : how can I establish a little solid
isle of eternity in this roaring, raging, ever chang-
ing time-stream, which might dash and foam about
the same in vain. As already recounted, I sought
to plant right in this topmost frothing tide of all
ephemerality the most permanent immortal thing
hitherto evolved by our race, namely its Literary
Bibles. But I needed the best help of these very
people who had run away from civilization, who
had felt its sharp backstroke and had fled from its
trying ordeal to places of safety. To use our
familiar American soldier-slang, coined and often
needed during the Civil "War, they had all ske-
daddled from that first fight, each to his own
separate cover.
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 529
Thus I rallied these fugitives, so let me call
them in my conceited simile, all of them skilled in
my work, and specially capable of performing
their new allotted task. They had been themselves
leaders, and they were still to lead, but under
orders. I may summarize the muster in the fol-
lowing soldierly nomenclature: (1) The Captain,
otherwise called the Director; (2) The subordinate
officers, that is, the lecturers; (3) The rank and
file, that is, the trained company of hearers in the
audience: (4) The objective of the campaign —
Chicago and its dependencies, or some fragment of
the same.
Under some such arrangement, destiny decreed
that we were to have eight Literary Schools in
yearly succession at Chicago, as before said. This
half-military organization showed itself strong
enough to uphold and even to propagate its form
and its matter, or the How and the "What of it-
self. Some attempts were made to change it and
to undermine it, still it held its ground, till its
task was accomplished. It remains to give some
condensed account of these separate Schools, since
each had its own outer circumstances as well as
inner character. Necessarily the manner of execu-
tion in each case would be different, and also the
success.
The reasons have already been given for making
our start with Dante. I had been tentatively whis-
pering my design perhaps a year beforehand in
order to test and to inflame if possible, the zeal of
550 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
my classes. But early in the fall before the School,
I issued the first public announcement, and let it
appear as a local item in the newspapers.
I. The Dante School. Before me lies the old pro-
gram, tattered and yellowed by age, and still it
seems to look up at me with a wrinkled twinkle of
triumph. It recalls, however, the many obstacles,
vexations, anxieties of the encounter, for even well-
wishers were everywhere nodding no with their
looks and often piteously smiling at me as a
fatuous visionary, hinting ' ' ahead of the age ; your
fine Literary Bibles will not do for this crass pork-
packing Chicago, the world's greatest business
hustler." It should be remembered in the present
connection that this was years in advance of the
Chicago "World's Fair, and long before to-day's
Chicago University had been thought of. But the
vast majority of our unintentional friends were the
scoffers headed by the newspapers, who screeched
the opposite note: "Altogether behind the times;
your old musty books of the past are not fit eveo
for the commonest Chicago wrapping-stuff. Away
with you, miserable idealist ! ' ' All the more deter-
mined charged forward our small battalion of sol-
diers, and massed themselves in military array for
the fight, just because of the opposition, which
thus had the effect of uniting more intensively our
little army for the attack.
Here the heralded program and my curious
reader may be brought face to face for a little look
at each other.
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 531
Literary School.
TEN LECTURES ON DANTE.
Will be given in the Lecture Hall of the Art Institute,
corner Van Buren St. and Michigan Ave., during
the Holidays, 1887, by Dr. W. T. Harris, of
Concord, Mass.; Prof. Thomas Davidson,
of Orange, N. J.; Prof. L. P. Soldan,
of St. Louis; Miss M. E. Beedy,
of Chicago, and Mr. D. J.
Snider, of Chicago.
Monday Evening, December 26th Mr. D. J. Snider
Dante's Place in the World's Literature
Tuesday Morning, December 27th Dr. W. T. Harris
Dante's Inferno
Tuesday Evening, December 27th
— Prof. Thomas Davidson
The Teachers of Dante
Wednesday Morning, December 28th. . .Miss M. E. Beedy
The Symbols of Punishment in Dante's Inferno
Wednesday Evening, December 28th Dr. W. T. Harris
The Mythology of Dante
Thursday Morning, December 29th
— Prof. Thomas Davidson
Virgil and Beatrice as Guides
Thursday Evening, December 29th
— Prof. Louis P. Soldan
Friday Morning, December 30th Dr. W. T. Harris
The Purgatorio and the Paradiso
Friday Evening, December 30th. .Prof. Thomas Davidson
The Vision of God — Interpretation of the Last Canto
of Paradiso
Saturday Morning, December 31st Mr. D. J. Snider
Discipline of the Purgatorio
D. J. Snider, Director of the School, Palmer House,
Chicago, Ills.
532 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
Let my circumspect reader take due note of
what is here announced. All these people set down
as lecturers were in one way or other connected
with the old St. Louis Movement, which was thus
celebrating in another city a kind of reunion or in-
deed a re-natal day of second birth, after some
twenty years of changeful destinies. Likewise we
all had been at first teachers in the Public Schools
of St. Louis ; in fact every one of us except Harris
had belonged to the High School, then the only
one in the city with a dozen to fifteen in the fac-
ulty. Uplifting days were those for our Public
School System, furnishing instruction not only to
the youth in charge, but to the grown people of
the community, indeed of the whole country. These
teachers pursued with zeal their regular vocation,
to which however, they added their cultural Super-
vocation, and through this service they were con-
secrated as members of the St. Louis Movement.
Now we are ready for the second fact indicated
in the above program, if we scrutinize it with care ;
none of these five St. Louis speakers hailed at this
time from St. Louis itself except Soldan, who had
only one lecture. Harris, Davidson, and myself
had alighted in very different spots after the St.
Louis upheaval ; Miss Beedy, a globe-rounder, mak-
ing a long detour especially through England, had
returned to America and had dropped down on
Chicago, where one day I was surprised to find her
teaching in a private school of the North Side.
Accordingly I summoned from the points of the
TEE CEICAGO LITERARY 8CE00LS. 533
compass my trained lieutenants (so I may call
them for the nonce) to help me in this fresh onset
of our Movement, which now seemed about to per-
form the as yet highest achievement of its exist-
ence.
But my difficulties lay not alone with sodden
Chicago philistinism, which was an outside obstacle
and one to be expected. Right at the start I ran
against a snag on the inside with a sudden shock.
I sent an invitation to Harris first of all, as my
right-hand man, telling him also that Davidson
was to be his fellow-lecturer. Judge my astonish-
ment when his answer showed unwillingness, hesi-
tation, though not exactly downright refusal. He
balked at co-operating again with Davidson, whose
conduct had been so disloyal during the Concord
Dante School of the previous year, in starting a
little school of his own outside the regular lecture
course at his boarding-house. There were other
complaints against him, which Harris did not ex-
pand in detail, but of which I knew vaguely by
rumor. Still I never dreamed the snarl to be so
serious, though I was aware that it lay in David-
son's original make-up of nature to play such
tricks; he could not help starting a breach against
his own employers, and forming his own coterie of
admirers in opposition.
I wrote back to Harris that he must overcome
himself and come by all means; that a great op-
portunity had dropped on us all to get a new au-
dience in Chicago, which had always seemed for
534 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
us, in our old St. Louis days, the city impossible;
that he would be welcomed by an eager and intelli-
gent band of listeners who knew of him and his
works, for I had not failed to tell them; that he
would be entertained at the house of a fine appre-
ciative lady, Mrs. J. N. Crouse, who was also deeply
interested in the Kindergarten. Moreover with
some emphasis I told him that I was Director of
the School, and would preside at every session, and
open every debate; that I believed I could keep
Davidson within limits, inasmuch as he was some-
what used to my authority, since I had been his
superior in the St. Louis High School, and had
frequently there set him to rights. I was aware
that he did not like me very well, chiefly on account
of these old memories; still I felt assured that he
would avoid a collision with me, who had invited
him and given him along with a fair recompense a
new field for propagating his ideas about his fa-
vorite book. To Harris I repeated that Davidson
filled a place in my program, and in the Dante
work generally, and also in the St. Louis Move-
ment, which could not be taken by any other per-
son. And may I breathe here an autobiographic
whisper that I took my secret pleasure in thus giv-
ing validity to a man not very congenial to me.
The happy response of Harris was his appear-
ance in person the day before the School opened.
I had a long talk with him about various subjects
of mutual interest; only once I touched upon the
Davidson matter, when he still showed the heat of
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 535
offense, but at the same time shut it off with his
strong self-suppression. Nothing further was said
on that sensitive point. I felt in his talk that he
deemed the Concord School to have done its work
and delivered its message, and that he was glad to
greet and to help its successor in the West.
A word about pay. I was determined not to be-
gin till the School could give a reasonable recom-
pense to its lecturers. Harris and Davidson com-
ing from a distance, received each one-hundred and
fifty dollars with free entertainment for their serv-
ices, and the other speakers in proportion. Cer-
tainly not a large sum for such a grade of brain-
work; still it was fair, and both expressed them-
selves as amply repaid. And I think they were.
They both gave generously of their time and men-
tality ; they had to earn a good share of their liveli-
hood, yet they also imparted their best without
price. I believe they would have come for noth-
ing, if I had asked them ; for both had along with
their moneyed vocation a moneyless Super-vocation
quite beyond all finance. But such alms from them
we could not afford to take — not I, not the School,
not Chicago. On this point likewise we were de-
termined to surpass Concord. Thus we preserved
our economic freedom, which also gave to me as
Director an added right of authority, which I felt
to be needed.
Finally the anxious moment arrived for the
opening of the School. Of course my faithful sol-
diery lined up on hand and took general charge;
536 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
the seats of the limited hall were soon all taken,
and the crowd began to overflow at the door. Peo-
ple came whom none of us knew; several intro-
duced themselves who lived at a distance out of
town. The auspicious start kept on repeating us
good luck from day to day. The previous program
of lecturers with their subjects will give some no-
tion of the sweep of the course.
Both Harris and Davidson came fully prepared,
and were at their best. They carried the audience
along with themselves, and even more, I hold, the
audience carried them along with itself through its
appreciation and enthusiasm and unity of spirit.
The discussions were fully as instructive as the lec-
tures and perhaps more animated, for all three
of us (Harris, Davidson and myself) took occasion
to speak our minds upon one another's productions
with due recognition, but with unhesitating frank-
ness. Yet everything was said and done in the hap-
piest humor. No one man took possession of the
School, as I had seen Harris do at Concord and
also at Milwaukee, and rightly too, for he was the
best. But now the School as a whole was sovereign
enough over all its parts to dominate its strongest
men, while giving to each his due of worth. The
School felt itself to be the master of itself, and
every individual present had the same feeling.
The lectures which Harris then gave are essentially
what may be still found in his book, The Spiritual
Sense of Dante's Divine Comedy. This was doubt-
less the most enduring literary product of the
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 537
School, as it remains in to-day's book-market, hav-
ing passed through several editions. Davidson has
left no such printed work ; his fatality was that he
never gathered up and organized his much-scat-
tered Dante writings. Well, could he?
But undoubtedly the weakest lecture of the
School was that of our St. Louisan, Soldan, not then
Superintendent of Schools, but Principal of the
City Normal. I had invited him because I wished
St. Louis to have at least one local representative
on our program, for sake of contrast if nothing
else. And I knew that Soldan had in former years
given some study to Dante ; in the olden time of the
St. Louis Movement I had heard him read a brief
paper on the Divine Comedy to a little group of
us, one of whom was Davidson, who then and there
made fun of it, since he had not yet experienced
his grand conversion to and through Dante. Sol-
dan arrived in the morning of the day on whose
evening he was to lecture ; he came over to the Hall
to see what was going on, and panicky became his
surprise when he caught sight of that audience. I
met him at the door, and greeted him, inviting him
to take his seat on the platform with the other lec-
turers. His ruddy complexion took a flaming
glow, his quick breath jerked quicker, and his
gray-blue eyes scintillated and bulged from their
sockets, as he exclaimed: "Well, I never expected
this!" He listened to the lecture which was by
Davidson ; very uneasy and excited I noticed him
twitching about, as he looked into that mass of up-
538 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
turned and discriminating faces, and caught their
response and felt the surge-like uplift of their
spirit. As soon as he could he slipped away with-
out hearing the discussion, and declined to be the
guest of one of our entertainers. He must have
pushed straightway for his hotel and have gone
to work with a kind of desperation. For he had
come without his manuscript and without much
preparation ; now he was to stand before that large
critical audience in competition with those emin-
ent rivals of his, Harris and Davidson, both well-
shotted to the very muzzle, and wrought up to
their highest by the School's spirit. In the even-
ing he read the hurried disjointed jottings which
he had evidently scribbled down at the hotel, and
added comments extempore to fill out the hour
allotted. Soldan came to this country from Ger-
many a young but grown man; he spoke English
with a perceptible accent at his best; on the whole
he wrote our language correctly, if not very idio-
matically. But now he was upset and flustered,
his foreign gutturals became more uncontrollable,
and he stammered and spoke thick, hesitating for
the right word; then his Germanisms in his Eng-
lish increased almost laughably with his excite-
ment, for naturally his mother-tongue rose first to
mind in his emergency. He had asked me in his
reply to my letter of invitation to wait for the
title of his subject, but he never sent it, and so the
program had to leave his theme a blank. He could
not quite push through to the close of his hour, but
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 539
gave up after some forty-five minutes or so, when
we all sprang to the discussion with a zest which I
hope relieved the speaker's embarrassment. The
fact is Soldan imagined the School to be like one
of our little St. Louis knots of philosophic duffers,
before whom he could at ease indulge in a desultory
zigzag chat — a bad mistake on his part. I pitied
him, for he was ambitious, if not a little jealous
of his two successful competitors. I resolved to
give him another chance that he might redeem
himself, for he had the ability. The next year at
Chicago we were to have Goethe ; I intended to as-
sign him a place on the program, with a gentle
hint that he must not let himself get caught again.
Something interfered with his coming, I do not
now remember what. But in the later Literary
Schools at St. Louis, I took pleasure in offering
him a part which he performed with distinction,
evidencing both thought and careful preparation.
So he showed the strength to retrieve himself com-
pletely.
The newspapers reported us fairly, with some
lapses as might be expected on such a subject.
Harris was the wise man here again, and looked
after his own report, making an abstract of his
lecture beforehand, and giving copies of it to the
reporters. The result was the press even in the
East took note of the marvelous fact that Chicago
had held a large and successful Dante School. The
tone on the whole was that of surprise and of
satirical raillery. But the New York Sun had an
540 THE 8T - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
editorial on Chicago as the reformed gambler, hav-
ing been converted from maddest stock speculation
to the penitential journey through the Inferno, thus
viewing a panorama of all its sins. Somehow thus,
as I remember, ran the tirade, touched up with
contemptuous flings at the very idea of a Literary
School in such a literal hog-pen as Chicago. At
once our local newspapers took up the challenge
and tusked back with even greater swinishness,
while defending their city as the very home of the
higher culture of which the Dante School was only
a slight manifestation. Thus our venture won
fame all over the country, and obtained in our own
city a very warm laudatory defense which we
could never get before. In this way Dame Chi-
cago showed her civic trait of upholding her own
against outside attack, though otherwise ready to
tear the same to pieces. Somebody has said that
Dame St. Louis is endowed with the opposite ten-
dency: she will help the foreign assailant calum-
nate and harass her Great Man till the latter takes
to flight. The number of her famous people whom
she has persuaded to quit her has been sometimes
regarded as her most successful achievement.
The current of the School ran strong but har-
monious, both our protagonists doing their
worthiest and keeping the peace with each other —
for me a somewhat ticklish point, in view of their
past history. At last, however, during the eighth
lecture a little clash began to start over the meaning
of a philosophic term in Aristotle — an echo of one
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 541
of their hot Concord disputes about a word. Both
had been talking paradisaically upon the poet's
Paradiso, and had specially emphasized the grand
reconciliation in Heaven between the two famous
saintly Doctors of the Church, St. Thomas and St.
Bonaventura, canonized as the Doctor Angelicus
and the Doctor Seraphicus respectively. But with
a breath suddenly the waters began to get roiled.
I could see Harris turning a little whiter in the
lip at some challenging passionate assertion of red-
faced Davidson, now getting redder, when I, as
presiding officer, rose in the minute's lull and be-
gan to fantasy: "This is the auspicious moment,
and I propose that we re-enact the upper celestial
harmony here below, and that we now turn our
School into a kind of Paradiso by celebrating a
grand reconciliation between our St. Thomas (here
I pointed at Davidson) and our St. Bonaventura
(here I pointed at Harris) ; and I further propose
that our Angelic Doctor and our Seraphic Doctor
become followers of their great prototypes in
Heaven above, and sing each other's praises now in
our little earthly Paradise down here in Chicago."
The audience tittered a brief ripple, when David-
son jumped up exclaiming, "Well turned; still I
am not worthy of being called St. Thomas in spite
of my name, but our Doctor Harris is just St. Bona-
ventura, the Seraphic Doctor."
At this happy conclusion I dismissed the meeting,
for the time was up ; in the nick I made the an-
nouncement that this evening St. Thomas, our own
542 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
new Angelic Doctor, would interpret for us that
most wonderful chapter of angelology, "the Vision
of God," in the last Canto of the Paradiso (see
program). The lecture was given, when Harris
rose and expressed the most unstinted absolute
praise for the performance I ever heard him utter.
Davidson replied in a similar vein of personal ad-
miration. We were all struck by the strange, quite
prophetic re-enactment and fulfilment of that old
saintly reconciliation, and went home wondering
in a half-startled spell. I believe that both after-
wards remained friends to life's close, with some
little tilts thrown in by the way to diversify old
Time's noiselessly monotonous footfalls.
The last lecture, which happened to be one of
mine, and the last discussion were over, and the
School felt itself somehow to have just begun. "It
cannot stop, we must have another," was the gen-
eral cry which focused into the ear of the Director.
A larger hall was also demanded. The little army,
conscious of its discipline, and having won its first
victory, declared itself not only willing but eager
for another campaign. The money and the effort
were pledged, and the spirit was at high tide. Ac-
cordingly I adjourned the audience with the words :
"Next season we shall have a Goethe School. But
remember, we must prepare for it better than ever
during the intervening year. A Literary Bible has
to be studied, taken to heart and mind, not merely
perused like the newspaper; indeed it should be
lived, if we wish to assimilate its true meaning and
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 543
worth. And now I shall give a parting compliment
to our distinguished lecturers, Dr. Harris and Prof.
Davidson, propounding to them this question :
"Will you come to us again next year? Tell us
on the spot." Both spoke up a hearty Yes, Yes,
and the first Dante School became a memory.
II. The Goethe School. I foreboded the hazard
of the enterprise, for I had already harvested a
goodly crop of experience through conducting
study-classes in the German poet. The deep-rooted
prejudice against him on the part of many culti-
vated people was well known to me personally as
well as by much printed damnation. Of the four
Literary Bibles that of Goethe was the most diffi-
cult in form, and the most questionable on account
of its content. Then it was the most recent of them
all ; Goethe himself had been dead only a little more
than fifty years when our Literary School opened.
Had there been time enough for his Last Judg-
ment ? Accordingly the problem was not yet fully
settled whether the High Literary Tribunal of the
Ages had conferred final canonization upon his
book as a Literary Bible. But I believed in him,
and our St. Louis Movement headed by Brockmeyer
had distinctively acclaimed Goethe's poetical su-
premacy. To be sure, in his cause the labor became
a kind of new apostolate, for Homer, Dante, and
Shakespeare were all accepted in the traditional
canon, but the battle for Goethe had not yet been
completely won, especially in our Anglo-Saxondom,
despite all the hot preachments of Thomas Carlyle,
544 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
who, by the way, never tackled — I doubt if he ever
fully knew — Goethe's greatest book, Faust, as a
whole with its two Parts. In fact, the Second Part
of Faust was not published (excepting the Helena
episode) till the German literary Epoch of Carlyle
was on the decided decline into a very different
stage of his life 's evolution.
So it came about that the Goethe School fur-
nished to me the peculiar fascination of helping to
establish, or, if you will, to canonize the very last
Literary Bible of the centuries far out on the Chi-
cago frontier of civilization. I would hardly have
dared the trial, if it had not been for the all-
conquering energy generated by the Dante School,
somewhat in the community but specially in my
valiant little army. So I felt the courage to give to
these soldiers their hardest task, though I was well
aware that some of our best ladies, who were also
our most active campaigners and purse-holders, did
not like Goethe, questioned his life's worth, felt
shocked at his multitudinous love-affairs, particu-
larly at his treatment of Frederika, and at his rela-
tion to Christiane. Not a few had read the life of
Goethe by Lewes, then a common but damnable
book, in which lurks the author's bent to impress
the reader how much greater Lewes is than Goethe,
and that by right Goethe the lesser ought to be the
biographer of Lewes the Hero.
Still there can be no denying that Goethe ha*
the gift of begetting an unconquerable repugnance
in certain female natures. I have had ladies quit
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 545
my Faust class in a kind of horror, declaring that
they did not wish to come into such close touch with
the very Devil — perchance with their special Devil,
Goethe's Mephistopheles, who even in dead type was
altogether too living for them, too real and, indeed,
too overpowering. They could not stand him, or
perchance withstand him, so that their only hope
was in running away from his inky presence, though
limned only in printer's lampblack. That awful
Negative, deepest world-theme of Faust, and more
real just now than ever, was not even to be looked
upon when incorporate, else like antique serpent-
haired Medusa it would turn us all to stone. My
view was that this our own Fiend must be grappled
with, for here he is, the most modern creation in
our most modern Chicago ; I held that I could often
read the latest words of Mephistopheles in to-day's
Chicago newspaper. Better get acquainted with
your own cacodemon through Goethe's transfigured
poetry, which bears in itself, if rightly understood
and assimilated, a kind of vicarious redemption
from the wiles of old Splay-foot. Such is the true
function of all Great Literature — mediatorial, re-
demptive, yea vicarious.
Chicago had the New-England conscience, insofar
as it had any at all — and there were many conscien-
tious people in that rather conscienceless commu-
nity. Now, I had not only read in books but had
seen at Concord how the New-England mind can-
not exactly stomach Goethe even when desperately
trying to swallow him. The reader may remember
546 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
we had held a Goethe School already at Concord,
not quite four years before our present one. The
recently published diary of Emerson shows the
typical and the greatest New-Englander trying his
best to overcome his disgust at Goethe, and recur-
ring to the attack again and again, incited thereto
by the repeated praises of his friend Carlyle; all
to no final victory, it would seem. Emerson felt
and rightly felt that there was something in Goethe
which he had never quite gotten, even though he
had placed the German poet among his Representa-
tive Men — again following probably Carlyle 's opin-
ion more than his own. Now the strange, riddle-
some fact turns uppermost that the deepest, most
sympathetic appreciation of Goethe in all New-
England, as far as I can find the record, was that
of a woman, Margaret Fuller, who herein consider-
ably outreached her eminent friend and sponsor,
Emerson. It still remains something of a psycho-
logical problem how this New-England woman, in
all the grandeur of her supreme defiance of furious
Puritanic tradition, could stand forth the single
challenger of her own past training, indeed of the
whole New-England consciousness. At least only
one other case of this kind, that is, of this woman-
kind, is known to me a little.
Such, then, was the prime spiritual obstacle
which the Goethe School had to meet in its own set
as well as in its communal environment, and had
to transform this alien spirit into something like a
new world-view in accord with the last supreme
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 547
world-poem. The trial had to be made, if my work
was ever to get complete, for to my mind the grand
literary biblical procession of all civilized time up
to date would be maimed and would remain quite
unfinished without its grand final rounding-up in
Goethe.
But woe is me again and still more ! "With these
inner hindrances were now conjoined two external
counterstrokes of pure ill-fortune coming from our
two protagonists, Harris and Davidson, each of
whom delivered us a slap in the face, not consciously
intended I think, but very real in its sting, and
calling our little army to start a new desperate pull
that we overcome the damage. Of this fact also let
there be a brief account.
Harris had done so well in the Dante School that
a very natural desire arose in our public to hear
him again, and to commune with his charming per-
sonality. The result was he allowed himself to be
advertised for a course of lectures on the Philosophy
of History. As soon as I heard of it, for I was out
of town when the arrangement was made, I thought
to myself : ' ' There ! Harris is again going to dare
his stars ! He will once more embroil himself in
that Hegel's Philosophy of History, especially in
the mazy Oriental portion of it, as I have seen him
do a dozen times without ever being able to dis-
entangle himself or his hearers from that Egyptian
Labyrinth." The result was Harris whizzed rap-
idly in the turn of a few months from loftiest
success down to dismalest failure. Such was his
548 THE 8T - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
fatality. I had watched him make the same rockety
rise and fall more than once in St. Louis ; he could
be the unequalest of men. In the present case he
was practically unprepared, holding in his hand
only an incongruous mass of disparate fluttering
papers of all sizes, from mere scraps to large folio
sheets, in which he would fumble and then read and
ramble about, quite as if he were talking to himself
instead of an audience of hundreds. Indeed, that
was just what he was doing : brooding over his sub-
ject and some random jottings scribbled upon it —
the first rudimentary stage of composition, not the
third and completed one, such as he gave us in his
Dante work. So I heard, for I could not be pres-
ent, his procedure described by half a dozen wit-
nesses not unfriendly to the man or his thought.
Naturally, his failure, for such it must be declared,
reacted on himself and also on our coming School.
In fact, I doubt if Harris ever regained among us
that first prestige of his won at our Dante School.
Moreover, I never thought Harris showed much
historical bent of mind, such as he had for Philos-
ophy, Pedagogics, Literature ; he held no deep inner
communion with the Spirit of History, as he did
with the Spirit of the Divine Comedy.
Davidson also delivered his counterstroke after
the peculiar Davidsonian manner. He, too, had
acquired deserved distinction from his lectures and
discussions at our Dante School. Accordingly we
sought eagerly to engage him for our coming Goethe
session. Davidson had his attraction for everybody,
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 549
I think, for me I know, and also his repulsion.
Moreover, he possessed the weird Scotch charm
which works a singular fascination upon a certain
class of minds; especially he flung his spell over
youths and women of congenial temperament. This
unique power became one of his banes as a teacher,
leading him to a distinct favoritism in the school-
room toward his own like, with unhappy conse-
quences both for order and study. These special
devotees of his he would sooner or later get together
to start them on a line of his own, usually in some
sort of opposition. For as soon as he found him-
self working in any established order or institution,
he would feel himself ill at ease and begin to plan
revolt. To me Davidson always seemed to have the
Celtic temperament, as regards his abilities as well
as his shortcomings, both very considerable ; at bot-
tom he was a Scotch Celt, in spite of his asserted
old-Norse kinship, which I have heard him proudly
read into himself and also into his name. Similar
I construe to be the case of another distinguished
Scotchman (rather than Scotsman), Thomas Car-
lyle, who was Celtic both in his power and in his
weakness, though he shunned and hated the Celt,
and acclaimed the old Scandinavian gods for his
heroes in a sort of feigned ancestral worship.
Imagine our surprise when we read one morning
in the newspapers that Mr. Thomas Davidson had
been engaged to deliver a course of lectures in Chi-
cago chiefly on Literature (as far as I now recol-
lect) , only a few weeks before the date of our Goethe
550 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
School. Moreover, it was advertised that he in-
tended to make a start in founding a great Catholic
University here in Chicago — a unique but truly
Davidsonian appendix to a lecture-course. So,
without my knowledge and escaping the close scru-
tiny of any of my band of workers, Davidson had
gotten together his little coterie of lady admirers
during our Dante School and formed his new inde-
pendent scheme of opposition which apparently was
to side-track our work and to carry off into his own
camp our supporters. His chief sponsor seems to
have been a Catholic lady, who was connected with
the city's Press and who therefore was able to give
a wide publicity to the new enterprise. Later the
report flew about that Davidson had been taken up
and specially entertained during our Dante School
with dinners and receptions, of which the rest of us
knew nothing, by a disgruntled clique of important
women who deemed themselves neglected in the
administration of the Literary Schools. I had no
knowledge of this matter, which was anyhow of
rather small significance. But that which did chal-
lenge my best guidance, and with which I did have
to deal in person, was the hot excitement and the
extreme resentment among my own people, who
proposed immediate vengeance upon what they
deemed an act of treachery right in the heat of
battle. At least he was to be dismissed in a kind
of disgrace from our program, which had been
already published and scattered broadcast.
At an indignation meeting of our leading work-
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 551
ers I appeared and advised them about as follows :
"You have just cause for your wrath, but do not let
it turn you to instruments of your own undoing.
There must be no split in our ranks before the
public. I wish you all to attend in a body Mr.
Davidson 's first lecture, paying your money ; I shall
be there to see you. It is on Savonarola — a good
lecture on a good subject, and well worth your
hearing. You need not go a second time unless
you desire. We cannot put him off the program;
there is nobody to take his place. As to his Catho-
lic University, it seems to me a joke, since Davidson
is not a Catholic ; anyhow the watchful Irish priest-
hood of the city, from the top of their hierarchy
down to its bottom, will dutifully look after that
scheme. Then you must learn to take Davidson as
he is, and utilize his good, which is not small. He
has played such pranks as this before, I doubt if
he can help it. He did the same at Concord to a
degree that once estranged Harris. It will bless
the cause and yourselves also to perform such an
act of self-denial. So go to his lecture once at least,
and greet him too in person."
When I went to the hall I found my soldierly
band seated pacifically but solidly together in a
group along with some friends whom they had per-
suaded to attend. As soon as the lecture was over
I went up and saluted Mr. Davidson, who turned
on me his peculiar strabismic cock-eye with a sort
of quizzing leer, I thought. We had furnished him
a large part of his audience that one time ; rumor
552 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
says the rest of his course was very thinly attended.
At any rate, he never tried his scheme again in
Chicago.
Thus I kept up during the whole year, which em-
braced all the time between the two Schools, the
Goethe battle, with varying results. Classes spe-
cially studying Faust, Wilhelm Meister, Elective
Affinities, I held in various localities of the city
and suburbs. Then lecture courses on Goethe for
a more general audience I undertook, animated and
loyally supported by my cohort of Kindergarten
soldiery. A program lying before me shows the
scope of these courses, announcing in its head-lines :
"Ten Lectures on Goethe will be given in the Lec-
ture Hall of the Art Institute, beginning Saturday,
October 13th, 1888, and continuing one a week for
ten weeks." The list of subjects shows the attempt
to get a view of the entire Goethe, and has in my
own development a certain biographic value, for I
had already meditated much upon his total human
achievement. So I insert it :
PROGRAMME.
Oct. 13th. Goethe's Biography.— The Poet's Life as a
Poem.
Oct. 20th. The Youth of Goethe.— The Poet as Titan,
"Prometheus," "Faust," "Mahomet," "Wer-
ther."
Oct. 27th. Goethe as Lyrical Poet. — The Song Writer
and Balladist.
Nov. 3rd. Goethe as Scientist. — Botany. "The Meta-
morphosis of Plants."
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 553
Nov. 10th. Goethe as Scientist.— To what extent the pre-
cursor of Darwin. Osteology. Theory of
Color.
Nov. 17th. Goethe in Italy.— The Classical Renascence.
Epigrams, Xenia, Elegies, Epics.
Nov. 24th. Goethe as Classical Dramatist. — "Iphigenia,"
"Tasso."
Dec. 1st. Goethe as Novelist. — "Elective Affinities,"
"Wilhelm Meister."
Dec. 8th. Goethe as Writer of the Fairy Tale.— "Das
Marchen." "The New Melusina."
Dec. 15th. Goethe as Letter Writer and Conversationist.
It may be seen from the foregoing program that
I was already making a strong effort to master
Goethe's life, that wonderfully diversified, subtly
interelated, universally productive life, probably
the most comprehensive of all lives ever lived — also
the poet's greatest poetic work. I can find no com-
plete manuscript of these lectures, only some ram-
bling, inorganic notes. And I may here add that
it took more than a quarter of a century longer
before I could fully mature and write out my com-
plete biographic conception of the poet, and print
the same under the title "Goethe's Life-Poem"
(1915). Thus my Goethe has kept at my side
through a long line of years reaching from youth
to old-age. Sometimes I dream that I am not done
with him yet, for I see him now revealing his
people's chief spiritually redemptive power from
the mighty German cataclysm of to-day.
Goethe, as our recent greatest poet, has incar-
nated the spirit 's Denier and Destroyer in the most
554 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
modern form, but has also shown him overmastered
after furious conflict and made to serve. But many
people, and, if I may hazard the word of my expe-
rience, most women do not wish to view this modern
Inferno with its highly educated Devil, but prefer
the old, more sensuous, and externally more hor-
rible Inferno of Dante. They prefer Satan to
Mephistopheles, from whom they would run away.
Very well, if that be the last of the matter ; but the
Devil has just the insidious power of flight over-
head, and can place himself right in front of the
poor, weak mortal who is fleeing from his presence.
Thus Dante has the advantage of portraying this old
traditional Hell and Heaven — the great medieval
Christian solution of the problem of antique
Heathendom and its Fall of Man. Hence Dante
transmutes the beautiful Classical world of Greece
into his Infernal monstrosities. But Goethe sets
forth our latest Hell, and also our Purgatorial trial
and redemption, in a very real, untraditional way,
and hence very shocking. But is not that just
our right medicine? Moreover, Hell and Heaven
are put under evolution — another uncomfortable
thought. And we feel that Goethe is his own In-
ferno and Purgatory, yea his own Mephistopheles,
and does not merely pass through and look on and
then describe, as does Dante, even if we know that
the latter is also a part of what he sees.
Another disappointment was the failure of the
educated German population of Chicago to give
any pronounced help, or to feel any active interest
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 555
which would further the influence of their greatest
poet, or rather their greatest modern man, in their
new American home. This made a noticeable con-
trast with St. Louis, which always had its German
contingent, not very large perhaps, in the activities
of the St. Louis Movement.
Finally, in the face of all frowns of Dame For-
tune, the Goethe School opened during the Holi-
days, 1888, at the Madison Street Theater, whose
auditorium had been hired to meet, by its larger
capacity, the grand overflowing audience, which,
however, did not come. Still it did not seriously
fall away from that of the previous Dante year.
Eight of the lectures were given by the same old
three of us (Harris, Davidson, and myself), but
there were two new ones. The first of these was our
lady representative on the program, Mrs. Caroline
K. Sherman, of Chicago, the only woman, I think
I may say, I ever personally knew who had sympa-
thetically taken up, assimilated, and actually loved
Goethe. And she was by birth a New-Englander,
and thus to me suggests in this respect Margaret
Fuller, and more remotely Varnhagen's Rahel.
Very appropriately and congenially she chose as
her theme Goethe 's Portraits of Women. Our other
lecturer was a regular University Professor, a good
man but a misfit for our work, in truth a double
misfit — we did not fit him, nor he us who were
studying Goethe as a Literary Bible, not so much
philologically, or textually, or even historically, all
of which methods have their due place in the Uni-
556 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
versity proper. It was the first and last time I
made such a selection for our Schools, since Pro-
fessor R. G. Moulton, who gave us excellent and
sympathetic help in our later courses, belonged to
the so-called University Extension Movement.
On the whole, our Goethe School had not the
success of our Dante School. Somehow outer ill-
luck was inclined to smite it vengefully; then it
had not the same inner upspring of the spirit.
Davidson was, in the main, critical of Goethe, and
never got to the soul of him, I think. Harris
worked hard in appreciation of the poet, whom he
failed not to praise and to philosophize profoundly
and even warmly. But I cannot help feeling that
far down in the secret substrate of his being lurked
still the Puritanic protest. He took his Goethe
more from Brockmeyer than from himself, quite as
Emerson adopted the poet from Carlyle. At any
rate, our two protagonists showed by no means the
same spiritual exaltation, the same devoted apostle-
ship, the same radiant love for this Literary Bible
as they did for Dante. And in the audience our
female fore-fighters embattled, fought bravely and
grimly rather than whole-heartedly, for the Teu-
tonic poet; they obeyed, like good soldiers in the
tug of onslaught, but could not be brought to charge
with the old shout of enthusiasm.
Something of the sort I had forecast, but I could
not help myself. The only man I knew to whom
Goethe was the one supreme Literary Bible was
Brockmeyer, but I dared not summon him, espe-
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 557
cially after the Milwaukee experience. There was
no foretelling what twist he might take. As it
turned out, I had trouble enough in guiding my
two forespanned careening recalcitrant steeds har-
nessed to my sun-chariot; if I had taken a third
courser and him Brockmeyer most defiant of all
defiers, and hitched him in front of the team, poor
weak Phaethon, the charioteer, would have had a
runaway which would have tumbled him and his
Goethe School and all his future Literary Schools
into the deep Icarian sea of total annihilation. As
it was, Brockmeyer came near capsizing us all into
Lake Michigan at the Milwaukee School.
So our Goethe School at last came duly to port
mid a halcyon spell without any grand overturn
in spite of some ominous moments. I doubt if I
ever felt a greater relief in my life than when I
concluded the last lecture of the course and an-
nounced from the platform: "This School is now
at an end, and we can all go home. ' '
But to my surprise, the bulk of the audience
refused to budge, and from its center rose a voice :
"What about next year? We haven't had Shakes-
peare yet." Then another voice spoke up: "We
want Homer, too; let us make the entire round of
the Literary Bibles before we disband." The re-
mark was received not only with general approval
but with a perceptible, soldierly will to push ahead
on the fighting line till the whole fortress be taken.
My little army really showed a tougher fibre than
the captain, who, however, did not fail to seal his
558 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PABT SECOND.
own work with that final appeal, exclaiming : ' ' Let
me go along — forward, then, to the next outpost."
III. The Shakespeare and Homer Schools. So
we had a Shakespeare Year (1889) and after it a
Homer year (1890), each of them culminating in
its special Literary School at which during one
week ten lectures were given with supplementary
discussions by speakers of distinction. In both
cases a year's preparation was made in study
classes throughout the city for the final event,
which thus became the main lever for working up
the interest. All these Literary Schools were built
after the same general model, each of which, how-
ever had its particular variation.
Objection had been made to the two previous
Schools that Chicago was not sufficiently repre-
sented on the program, the lecturers being chiefly
of the St. Louis Movement. Also the demand was
heard that the course should be popularized, hav-
ing been hitherto darkened by the presence of too
many philosophers. Perhaps still more deeply
lurked the religious suspicions concerning the very
idea of a Literary Bible. As our next subject was
Shakespeare, a popular poet and favorite with
many divines of very different creeds, I concluded
to construct a program to meet the occasion. Ac-
cordingly we (the ladies more than I) succeeded
in getting no less than four clergymen of Chicago
as lecturers for our third Literary School, on
Shakespeare — one woman and three men. To be
sure I summoned to my aid Harris and also David-
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 559
son, but they with myself were to keep somewhat
in the background this time, ready, however, to fill
any gap in the list of speakers or to meet emer-
gencies, should they occur. For I was almost
afraid of my good-luck, when I printed on my
program the names of the three most popular and
distinguished preachers of Chicago — Drs. Swing,
Gunsaulus, and Lorimer — with the subjects of their
lectures. So was fairly met the request for more
of Chicago, more of popularity, and more of reli-
gion in our course.
Davidson again took his part of the devil's ad-
cocate, and amused us all by his' lampoons against
Shakespeare in general. But especially he grew
almost frantic in denunciation of the poet's master-
piece, Hamlet, whom he crowned with a garland of
many mal-odorous epithets. At the top of his fer-
vor he steadied his glance on me, who was presiding
as director of the School, when he proclaimed that
he was going to throw a bomb into this whole
Shakespeare propaganda, which according to his
word had turned to rancid idolatry. When he
had taken his seat, I rose and laughingly replied,
as Davidson's menace was never serious: "I hope
our friend's missile will do us no harm for his own
sake; he must have heard with all the rest of the
world what Chicago does to its bomb-throwers."
Whereat a little burst of applause ran round the
room, which I tried to suppress by a wave of the
hand; for the soul of Chicago would still start to
thrill at the memory of the deed, trial, and execu-
560 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
tion of the anarchists then some two years past in
its final act. And everybody thought of them
when even the word bomb was mentioned. "Meet-
ing now adjourned" I cried, "but let us all go up
and shake hands with that jolly good-fellow, Tom
Davidson." And I started from the platform to be ,
the first one to greet him.
Thus the old set of us stood back and listened to
what the new speakers, five of them all told, would
say to us about Shakespeare in lecture and in dis-
cussion. My single contribution on the program
was a poem in blank verse called Shakespeare at
Stratford, which sought to construe what the poet
did with himself after retiring from London to
Stratford during the .last four or five years of his
life. That poem was written thirty years ago, and
I must have read a dozen poetic performances on
the same subject in the last decade, which show a
wide divergence of conception, making Shakes-
peare on the one hand a pessimist, sensualist, gen-
eral debauchee in his life's close, or placing him, on
the other hand at the opposite extreme as an
humble penitent for his past sins, even to the ex-
tent of being received secretly into the Roman
Catholic Church by an itinerant Jesuit priest.
None of these presentments show me my Shakes-
peare, whose spirit has the power of evolving with
the years. (The poem is printed in the Appendix
to the Writer of Books.)
Our Homer year (1890) was chiefly spent in
studying the Iliad and the Odyssey, not only in
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 561
beautiful passages but specially as grand totalities
whose massive architecture had defied the years by
the thousand. "When our Literary School was get-
ting under way, I looked around for lecturers and
tested some regular Professors of Greek, but had at
last mainly to fall back again upon Harris and
Davidson as fore-fronters on the battle-line. Both
performed their tasks faithfully, but dropped
short of their best, for neither of them had taken
Homer to heart and in a manner lived him, as they
had Dante, for instance. Rev. Dr. Swing encour-
aged us with his presence, doubtless the most in-
fluential in Chicago, and in his lecture gave many
humorous touches to the old Greek poet.
Perhaps the most distinctive turn in this School
lay in the two Homeric readings of English hexa-
meters. I somehow got wind of the fact that
George Howland, Superintendent of the Public
Schools had made a new translation of Homer's
Iliad, preserving the original meter. After several
visits I succeeded in persuading him to read a
couple of extracts from his version at our School,
stressing the point before the public that Chicago
also had its own translation of Homer. Howland
gave his hexameters in a rather monotonous sing-
song, whereupon Dr. Swing arose from the au-
dience and deprecated the use of hexameters in
English verse, touching up his remarks with little
bits of his peculiar humor. Howland of course de-
fended his work, showing some warmth against his
own minister, who was Dr. Swing, and otherwise
562 THE & T - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
he was wrought to a good deal of excitement, for I
noticed his profuse perspiration. Thus flashed
into our Homer School a little blaze of that old
controversy about English hexameters, in which
not only critics but eminent poets have taken part
on both sides.
I kept rather quiet during the debate, only
throwing in a word here and there for Howland.
Still I felt deeply concerned in the argument, for I
had been guilty of many thousand hexameters (in
their elegiac form) which simply overflowed me in-
to self-expression during my Classical Journey
some ten years or so before this time. But there
was a much closer and deeper reason for my
present interest: I had spent a goodly number of
my best moments of this Homer year in elaborating
and completing a long cherished plan of mine to
versify in hexameters the entire cultural evolution
of old Homer and his environing world. Prac-
tically no facts had come down to us concerning
the life of the poet, still I had been so long and
so intimately associated with his two poems, that
I felt I knew his personality and also the lines of
his spiritual development. The outcome was a
book which I named Homer in Chios, and in which
I have the poet chant the epic of his own heroic
career, far greater in import than that of any of
his heroes. This work I would make the singing
harvest-home of all my protracted Homeric
studies.
The hour for closing the discussion had arrived
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 563
when I took the word. Dr. Swing in his clerical
way had familiarly given other speakers and my-
self the name of Brother So-and-so ; accordingly I
addressed him in reply: "Brother Swing, you
have called the hexameter unnatural in English,
yea, quite impossible. But I have found it gushing
up spontaneously, as if by some inner need of ex-
pression in a book which I daresay you have often
read with deep appreciation, namely the Psalms
of David. In fact many musical staves of that
book fall upon my ear as right hexametral rhythms,
especially on account of the sonorous dactyls in
their rolling cadences. Now I have a theory that
the very soul of David had some inborn kinship
with the hexameter's harmonies (though I do not
know his Hebrew), and that Homer and David, the
Greek and the Semite, had this peculiar melodious
gift in common, as their abodes were not so very
far apart and they might possibly have been con-
temporaries; indeed under a little stretch of con-
jecture they might have personally known each
other. Now let me tell you what I am going to do :
at the last meeting of this present School here in
Chicago I shall bring David and Homer together in
a tournament of song, during which both poets
shall chant in English hexameters the Hellenic and
the Hebrew worlds united in a kind of marriage
festival for all future time. So I hope our city's
first preacher (turning to Swing) and our city's
first teacher (turning to Howland) will be present
and say us their blessing in unison. ' '
564 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
But neither of them appeared and the School
devoted its last meting to listening to the mutual
strains of Homer and David lilted through the lips
of a Chicago rhapsode, none other than our direc-
tor himself. A distinguished Rabbi was present
and gave a sympathetic address which bore a note
of benediction to Jew, Greek and Christian, some-
what of each being there represented in our mixed
audience.
Thus terminated the first quadrennium of the
Chicago Literary Schools, to each of which was
given a year not only of intellectual study, but of
living appropriation as far as this was possible.
We had sought to realize in ourselves the cultural
epochs of our race's development through their
noblest productions. Specially our endeavor had
been to establish a little point of fixity and per-
manence in the everchanging vortical swirl of Chi-
cago life. To this end we had interpreted the
greatest books of Literature as the eternal record
of the Eternal.
Naturally before the termination of this last
School, the question often came up : Shall we now
quit for good and let the work make its own way
hereafter? The proposition was much discussed
among us, and evoked some variety of opinion.
Finally the decided majority settled down to this
view: "We must have not only one or two Schools
more, but our cause summons us to repeat the en-
tire cycle of the Four Literary Bibles. Several
reasons were given but mainly three. The zealous
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 555
learners wished to go over the whole series again
for their own behoof in a kind of review. Others
deemed the work a needful institution in Chicago
as a counterpoise to its dominant ephemeral ten-
dencies in character and in writing. Then again
the School was vindicating its right of existence
by becoming a center or propagation, since it was
being reproduced in other cities.
Thus with a genuine soldierly determination our
little army, even after this long and fairly success-
ful campaign of four years, felt that the war was
not yet fully won, and resolved to finish their work
though it took another quadrennium.
IV. The Second Cycle of Four Literary Schools.
So we start with fresh courage our new circum-
navigation of the World's Literature as revealed
supremely in its four Literary Bibles. Again we
began with Dante, seeking to repeat the triumph
of our first School, which had been our grand over-
ture four years since. But the conditions were
very different.
In the first place, Harris would not come, as-
signing as ground of refusal the press of business in
his Bureau of Education at "Washington. That
made an ominous chasm at the entrance, still we
sprang over it and pushed onward. Harris, how-
ever, repented afterwards, and actually asked to be
present at the remaining three Schols, writing me
that "he could not afford to stay away." It had
come home to him that this was the right successor
566 THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS.
of his Concord School of Philosophy, which could
not be held up even by his absence.
Then I had my little trouble over Davidson
again, this time not with him personally, but con-
cerning him with others. For he had offended my
Kindergarten supporters, the chief fighting cohort
of the cause, by his continual kicking in the traces,
by his outside attempts to deflect the School from
its purpose, and now finally by his open disparag-
ment of the Kindergarten itself and its educational
value. Decided was the protest, almost a revolt,
whereupon I argued with leaders about as follows :
"Let me make a compromise with you. I agree
that it is best not to invite Mr. Davidson after this
one time ; we have heard him upon Homer, Shakes-
peare, and Goethe, and we have found out that in
our sense he has no message to deliver us concern-
ing these great poets. Hence we may well drop
him from our future Schools. But his Dante work
is unique of its kind ; he not only reads but lives the
Italian master's book as gospel of a Bible. Such
a man we need not merely as lecturer but as per-
sonality. Moreover, despite all my urgency Harris
refuses to come, and Miss Blow is not obtainable.
Accordingly Davidson is a necessity this time more
than before. But let it be the last," I added, in
regret deeper than resentment.
So Davidson's name was placed on the program
of the Fifth Literary School of Chicago which was
held Easter week, 1892. It was his final appear-
ance among us as lecturer, indeed, I never saw him
THE CHICAGO LITERARY SCHOOLS. 567
again. He survived some eight years longer, having
established his own School during the summer
at Glenmore in the Adirondacks, whither I never
ventured. His last activity was a benevolent cul-
tural work for the young Jews of New York City —
reported to be the crowning labor of his life.
Strangely our careers, in spite of a certain mu-
tual repulsion, kept interweaving for quite twenty-
five years (from 1867 till 1892) and insisting upon
some kind of co-operation despite many a con-
trariety. I did not go to Glenmore where he was
autocrat, as I could not feel sure of him nor of my-
self. Hot moments were not wanting there with-
out me, if rumor have any veracity. But at Chi-
cago I was director and felt equal to his possible
clash. So we revolved about each other separate
yet inseparable, like two little luminaries, in St.
Louis, in Eome, in Concord, and finally in Chi-
cago.
I ought to add that underneath all these open
differences, Davidson and I were conscious of many
secret concordances. He would not dwell and wal-
low in tradition, he loved the free life of the
scholar errant, he disliked the arid ways of
academicism, he cared little for money or high liv-
ing, though he would do his part in a small
carousal; he declared once that he lived on a dol-
lar a day. Especially his knowledge and love of
the Greek world fascinated me in my earlier St.
Louis time. But when it came to his literary and
institutional negations, to his world-view generally,
568 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
and also to his temperament, we flew asunder and
then at times flew back again for a tournament.
Still Davidson evolved, as already indicated; he
had his stages of development, with the rest of us ;
I saw him in what may be called his first period at
St. Louis, then watched him pass out of it in his
flight Eastward; finally I could not help remark
him at Chicago as an ageing man who was entering
the last act of his life-drama, which, however, lies
outside of my personal knowledge.
Our greatest stroke of good fortune during this
time I deem to have been the help of Dr. David
Swing, the most winning and pre-eminent per-
sonality in the city, who always took the trouble to
give us one of his happiest lectures, as well as to
add the full weight of his name to our rather light-
ballasted argosy. More than any other man, he
held the intellectual primacy of Chicago, and in
the opinion of many observers he has had no suc-
cessor to his position. He was engaged to assist us
in giving a suitable conclusion to our last School,
but he passed away before it came off. His sad de-
parture tinged more deeply the farewell mood of
our closing session.
Necessarily there was a considerable change in
the program of lecturers, whose names and merits
in detail cannot be here recorded. One person,
however, I must single out: Mr. Hamilton W.
Mabie of the New York Outlook who assisted us not
only in the exercises of our Literary School, but
made its work known throughout the East by means
TEE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND. 569
of his influence with important people and with
the Press. Personally I owe to his memory a debt
of gratitude.
We carried through with fair success (not too
great) our Second Shakespeare School and our
Second Goethe School in due order, but they must
now be passed over, though each of them had its
own special history and character. At last was an-
nounced the Eighth Annual Literary School for
1895, the subject of which was mainly Homer,
though it was broadened so as to include all My-
thology, whose cultural aspects were then much
discussed in Chicago educational circles, especially
in the Kindergarten. I presided at the last lec-
ture, and dismissed the audience with a sort of
benediction, feeling that an old Epoch had fruited
but that underneath it a new Epoch was secretly
budding. The last leaf of all our long Literary
Bibles was turned over and the lid shut down for
the nonce, while another quite different Book
seemed to be opening at its first page. And my
little Kindergarten army still stood embattled there
before me, ready for another campaign in a fresh
and strange territory.
Winding up the account, I may here re-affirm
autobiographically that I deem this succession of
eight Literary Schools in Chicago as the greatest
and most will-powerful single practical achieve-
ment of my life. And in regard to the St. Louis
Movement on its literary side, as distinct from its
philosophical, educational and psychological ele-
570 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
ments, I deem this to have been its most fully real-
ized and successful work. And I find it yet remem-
bered in that ever-obliterating, vortical swash of a
community, since I still come upon various re-
minders of it, at times quite unexpectedly. Only a
couple of months ago (1919) as I was passing into
the Chicago Public Library, a somewhat aged gray-
framed, angelic lady-face placed itself before me,
and began to move its lips thus: ''You do not re-
call me, but I attended your Literary Schools thirty
years ago. I have off and on reviewed that time
ever since, and have spoken of it to my friends.
When are you going to have another School ? Name
the date. I would like to come again and hear you
and the rest of the lecturers with your hot discus-
sions. " " Madam, ' ' I replied, ' ' those speakers have
all passed beyond but me, who am now on another
job. Consequently the next Literary School will be
held in Heaven when I get there, if I ever do.
Still I may here give myself the pleasure of ex-
tending to you a hearty invitation to that happy
re-union, for I know you will be up there."
IX
Backflow to St. Louis
Very naturally from this active outpushing cen-
ter of disturbance at Chicago started a wave of re-
surgence toward St. Louis, a backflow we may call
BACKFLOW TO ST. LOUIS. 571
it to the original fountain head, now quiescent, but
possibly capable of another creative upburst. That
is indeed the trial now to be made.
Accordingly, before I proceed on that grand new
adventure of mine which looms up in the future
with larger proportions than even those of the
Literary Bibles in the past, I must record an event
of some significance in the history of our far-dis-
persed but still dynamic St. Louis Movement. This
was the endeavor to turn the current of these
Literary Schools from Chicago back to their primal
genetic source, which was St. Louis. Can there be
at present any such revival in the old deeply dis-
illusioned town now sunning itself reposefully on
the banks of its dreamily murmuring River ?
!No sooner had our first Chicago Dante School
passed into history, with a good deal of newspaper
hullaballoo about itself, than the echoes reached
St. Louis and woke it up to a little spirt of its an-
cient rivalry. I began to receive letters thence
from former members of my classes who proposed
to transfer the Chicago program with its leading
lecturers, bodily as it were, to their old home, and
to establish there also a Literary School, into which
St. Louis had never been quite able to evolve itself
during its previous cultural epoch. I was asked to
act as director, while some ladies of wealth and
social position guaranteed the expenses and even
the audience. The Rev. Dr. R. A. Holland was
specially active in the project, and offered the use
of a suitable hall free of charge for our meetings.
572 THE 8T - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
Under such auspices took place the first St. Louis
Literary School, with a considerable flurry of soar-
ing enthusiasms wafted aloft on new-born hopes.
The sere, battered program, before me is headed
.in heavy capital letters Dante School, which is to
be held in St. Louis at the guild-room of St.
George's Church, Chestnut and Twenty-seventh
Streets for one week, during which ten lectures will
be given by the following persons : Dr. Harris, Dr.
Holland, Prof. Soldan, Mr. Snider, and Miss Beedy.
These five speakers had all belonged, directly or in-
directly, to the old St. Louis Philosophical Society,
reaching back some twenty years. Thus it seemed
a re-union of the prime movers, and possibly a re-
vival of the locally lapsed cause. Cheery words
were spoken to that effect, and even congratula-
tions exchanged. Still it had to be confessed that
only two of these five early protagonists had re-
mained residents of the city, and not long after-
wards one of these two, Dr. Holland, also betook
himself to flight. Nevertheless the Dante School
was pronounced a fair success, at least for St.
Louis ; the survivors of the old guard were on hand
and eager for a new campaign, though all of us
were turning grey and getting furrowed by Time's
envious plow. "When the exercises were over, and
Dr. Holland had delivered the last lecture, or
rather enraptured sermon over Dante's White Rose
of Heaven, the hardy promoters, nearly all of them
ladies, met together and resolved, to repeat, with
certain omissions and additions, the Chicago pro-
BACKFLOW TO ST. LOUIS. 573
gram of the coming year. Very delightful and hope-
inspiring the scene rose before me when I saw this
spontaneous endeavor to revive our St. Louis Move-
ment, especially on its literary line, at its original
starting-point. Will now be brought about our
Movement's Grand Return, with its restoration to
the old home out of its long estrangement?
Accordingly the second St. Louis Literary School
took place, but with diminished zeal, I think ; still
it was upheld by fair attendance and adequate
finance, both due to the irresistible assault on the
rather somnolescent public by three or four of our
veteran women who seemed determined to restore
the former intellectual primacy of the city. Even
the third St. Louis Literary School was essayed,
if I remember aright, but with ever-waning inter-
est, when any further repetition of Chicago was
given up, on account of the peculiar mental lethargy
then prevailing in our community. For during
those years St. Louis appeared to be passing
through the deepest benightment of her Great Dis-
illusion, whose counterstroke had among other no-
table malign consequences shivered to fragments
and scattered to the four winds the St. Louis
Movement, which by means of the present Literary
Schools had been seeking to piece itself together
again on the home-hearth of its nativity. No —
not— at least not yet, cry the frowning Powers.
Still I must not fail to mention the last struggle,
or to speak more forthrightly the dying kick of the
old cause in the old town. Some years afterward
574 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
when the St. Louis Movement seemed to have be-
come wholly deceased again, and even to be buried
in its ancestral mausoleum, it started mysteriously
to stir once more and to show signs of another re-
surrection. Yea, it appeared to get a spectral
voice, and to call to me as if from its tomb to lead
it, evoking me (as director) to a fresh onset.
"Angels and ministers of grace," I shouted when
I heard that ghostly cadence, "how can it be that
the departed spirit of the St. Louis Movement has
arisen again here from its native soil? What new
magical power is this which in these days can raise
the dead?"
Dropping all the other miraculous accompani-
ments which to me at least appeared not a few nor
meaningless, let the kernel of reality be at once dis-
criminated and set forth. Miss Mary M'Culloch,
superintendent of the St. Louis Kindergartens had
the courage and energy to work up, of her own
initiative, another Literary School of which the
subject was again Dante, the great poet of the dis-
embodied spirit-world, who still seemed to be here
the favorite singer of the four supreme ones — an
echo probably out of former St. Louis experiences.
Indeed we sought to make the School a reuniting
and home-coming of all the old St. Louis set of
spiritual Danteizers, three of them, who had writ-
ten books on Dante, and who had not only read and
studied the divine Catholic poet, but also had un-
dergone a kind of regeneration and religious bap-
tism through his writ, of which unique conversion
BACKFLOW TO ST. LOUIS. 575
some details have been given on a former page.
Three of our most eminent people — Dr. Harris,
Prof. Davidson, and Miss Blow — partook of this
peculiar effluence, and they were all still in life at
the time of the present School, though no longer in
St. Louis. But each of them, for one reason or
other, failed to come, though I tried every art of
persuasion I could command, especially upon Har-
ris, who in has later years seemed to me to show
some strange aversion even for a short St. Louis
visit. So it came about that I was unable to set up
once more to our city's gaze these three antique
pillars of the earlier St. Louis Movement; I re-
mained the solitary standing monument of the past
getting somewhat hoary already then, as I contem-
plated my half of a century and more of fading
and falling locks. Thus I dreamed me of that old
Roman who once stood mid the ruins of Carthage
mooning pensively on himself and his city.
But let me hasten to add that this last St. Louis
Literary School, despite its belatement and other
drawbacks, was the most pronounced success of all
in numbers, in spiritedness, and in a certain pro-
clivity it showed for a wrangle, not vicious but en-
tertaining. Such, however, was the finale. Not
since then, more than a quarter of a century ago,
has there been any attempt to revive here the Lit-
erary School, as far as I am aware ; that one some-
what convulsive note was its death-rattle. The
nearest to it probably was a course of talks given
by me many years later (1908) on the Literary
576 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
Bibles to our St. Louis Communal University, last-
ing an entire season.
Thus the St. Louis Movement seemed to suffer
a complete lapse in its native city, while manifest-
ing considerable energy elsewhere. In spite of her
peculiar apathy during these years, I believe that
there was in St. Louis still vitality enough left over
from the old cause to keep alive and active the
work, if a leader had appeared and had taken hold
of it with the pristine strenuosity. But after the
departure of Miss Blow, the last one to leave, no
person stepped forward to organize and to teach
the training classes, through which the original
momentum of the work was to be maintained. Un-
doubtedly there shot up many study clubs of all
sorts during this time in the city; but they were
outside of and often away from the St. Louis
Movement. Moreover in the latter had arisen a
deep fracture which paralyzed its very soul. A
few words upon this cardinal and far-ramifying
event cannot be omitted from its history without
leaving in it a dark and profound chasm.
"When I was invited back to St. Louis in 1887-8
to give some talks after several years' absence, I
found in our own circle a state of personal rancour
and factional bitterness which simply threatened
its dissolution. The trouble centered in and around
Miss Blow along with her institution, the Kinder-
garten, which had become divided into two vio-
lently antagonistic parties, whose animosity had
infected to a degree the whole Public School Sys-
BACKFLOW TO ST. LOUIS. 577
tern — quite noticeably its Board of Directors and a
number of its leading Principals. I who bad been
absent when the epidemic broke out, happened to
drop into it just at its highest rage, and was dumb-
founded at first both by its intensity and its extent.
As quickly as possible I sought interviews with all
sides, not alone with the sets of fighting partisans,
but especially with impartial though interested and
informed onlookers. Among these the consensus of
opinion expressed itself with appreciation but with
decision that the great Kindergarten leader had
made a great mistake, apparently the mistake of
her life.
All this upheaval recalled very vividly to mind
the Homeric experience with Miss Blow once in
my classes years before, as previously recounted.
Verily I could not help thinking that I had already
forefelt some such fate lurking in her character,
when I quit St. Louis that I might avoid any com-
ing rupture inside our own circle, which even then
threatened, though perchance only in a small way.
Anyhow I at least imagined that I as a tiny individ-
ual had both fore-thought and likewise had pre-en-
acted in person this whole conflict here raging be-
fore my eyes, but at present outside of me. So I
beheld again the grand Achillean collision as an
actual contest being fought over anew in my very
presence day by day, and still driving forward in
its furious march to its last consequences. Not
the old Greek hero now, but the modern American
heroine of a great and beneficent work I witnessed
578 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
in sharpest opposition to the established authority
over her, whereupon had resulted her complete es-
trangement from her people, from her city, and
from her institution ; yea, she seemed alienated for
a time from her own epochal Great Deed.
She was reported at her home brooding over the
wrong which she deemed had been done to her per-
sonal worth, and gnashing her heart at the ingrati-
tude of those whom she had fostered and esteemed
as her dearest own. It so happened that I was hav-
ing a class in Shakespeare at the house of one of
her lady-friends, and to my surprise one day she
appeared there sitting before me. In that presence
I dared glimpse the veiled figure of an extended
hand, and even hearken a faint lisp of confession.
Still more strangely, our lesson chanced to be King
Lear and his ungrateful daughters, which life-lorn
drama seemed to hit home now as unerringly as
Homer's Epic once did. Of course the part of
that dramatic ingratitude was not neglected, to
whose stress the oracular face there, which I con-
sulted, could not help darting brief flashes of re-
sponse. But more distinctively I dwelt upon the
issue that Lear's tragic world was largely the crea-
tion of his own dictatorial spirit, that his fate and
that of his family sprang from his pride's curse of
an autocratic "Will. In that somewhat startled
class I felt the thrill of an actual present tragedy,
as its members with lengthened faces filed before
me out of the room. Then the heroine I approached
and saluted with my best, to which she courteously
BACKFLOW TO ST. LOUIS. 579
responded, shooting a sad smile through her firmly
knit features. She came again.
The strifeful situation, however, would not im-
prove, but kept haunting me with an ever-gnawing
secret worry, for I felt our whole Movement
jeoparded. Moreover I began to hear the stern
call to put some of my fine theories into practice.
For instance, in the Iliad I had emphasized as the
supreme worth of the poem for all time the hero's
reconciliation, indeed his double reconciliation,
with his own people first (the Greeks), and then
with his enemies (the Trojans). The reflection
kept nagging and whispering me : "You have been
whelmed providentially into this mad tumult of a
real Homeric wrath; can you not reconcile that,
turning the old poem into present fact, and thus
vindicating anew the truth of it, which will surely
prove your best commentary ? Exemplify in your-
self what you have taught ; realize in corresponding
action the poet's conciliating words; transfigure
the beautiful image into its very life. Then you
need not fail to consider also what is at stake in
your St. Louis Movement. ' '
Thus for days my thoughts kept prodding their
spurs into the withers of my unwilling Will, but I
Hamleted all my good resolves away, tetering be-
tween doing and undoing. Then I heard that Har-
ris was coming to town to deliver a course of lec-
tures; both on account of his conciliatory charac-
ter and his influence he seemed the right mediating
personality. Consequently, as soon as he arrived, I
580 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
went to his quarters and begged him to be the peace-
maker. To my astonishment he refused with a
vehement No; he could not think of descending
alone into such a white-hot Inferno of wrath, where-
of he had heard a good deal by letter, doubtless
from Miss Blow herself. My reply was: "But
your Dante did, and if you will, I shall go with
you and act as your Virgil, though yours must now
be the balm of the healing word." Again he de-
clined peremptorily the plan, affirming it to be
utterly useless, and even a fresh aggravation, where-
upon he turned his talk to something else. Disap-
pointed I was soon sauntering homeward some-
what reproachful of what I deemed his timidity in
a crisis.
What was to be done next? Many schemes I
maundered over, but they all pushed to one point:
I must make the trial alone, though at first I would
shrivel at the thought. Still I kept up the fire-test
of will, till I might become temper-proof. Finally
I planned that my best opportunity would be at a
conversation (on Homer by the way) which I was
to hold in a neutral parlor, where the two opposing
sides I could bring together ; then at the close they
were to greet each other with a friendly word, thus
breaking the dam and thereupon letting the water
run down hill of itself. The one party, being that
of my special friends, was eagerly ready to be per-
suaded. Then I sent a request to Miss Blow for a
personal interview, which she granted. That was
the first time I had stepped across her door-sill for
BACEFLOW TO ST. LOUIS. 53!
years, indeed since that former flight of mine from
St. Louis, and from her. I advanced toward the
center of her drawing-room where she stood in a
rather tense attitude, I thought, and I prefaced my
address with the sentence: "I am come on an em-
bassy from the heroless Greeks to their Achilles."
The allusion caused a ripple of smiling reminis-
cence to break through her fixed features, after
which auspicious little omen I opened the whole
plan of reconciliation with all the tact I owned,
doubtles not much, and pressingly invited her to
be present at my coming lesson.
Miss Blow turned her look on the floor with face-
lines relaxed and even melting for a moment; but
suddenly every muscle seemed again to brace up
and tighten, as she sent back at me with deepening
flushes a piercing glance: "No, I cannot, it would
be too trying." I dared lisp the reply, "Better
try once just the trying." With head erect she
shot me a more determined No, looking some
haughtiness, as I still throbbingly remember.
Spoken a conventional word or two at parting, I
bowed myself out of her presence, thwarted per-
sonally but in possession of her grand refusal to be
reconciled with her people, with her achievement,
with herself.
I have dwelt in some detail upon this interview
for several to me co-ercive reasons. In the first
place, as appreciative autobiographer I claim the
egotistic right of adjudging this deed of mine as
one of the best, if not the very best of my life.
582 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
I had to flagellate my recalcitrant and quailing
spirit for days before I could bring myself to the
final test. For the deed was better than I was, be-
ing on a higher level than my average self, which
also had the native bent to swoon away into those
Achillean sullens, and quit the thankless but ap-
pointed tasks of time. Whatever others might
think, I believed that Miss Blow in the primacy of
her power had shown the grand insolence and con-
sequent fatuity of success, ever the tragic thread
spun by the Fates into the heroic soul. Now her
overturn had come, certainly not through any act
of mine ; now she was down and under, and her lot
called for some reconciling voice. I heard and an-
swered at last, swallowing the mordant dose after
repeated regurgitations. I have too few best deeds
to my credit, not to write this one down with an
underscore among my life 's triumphs. Others may
make such self-conquests easily — not I.
In the second place upon this Grand Refusal (let
me capitalize for emphasis) of hers pivoted the
existence of the St. Louis Movement in its birth-
home. She, the heroine, held here both the intel-
lectual and the practical leadership, especially after
the flight of all of us retreating males. But now
she too abandons the battle-line, and lets the enemy
conquer. Thus she quits her native city, her crea-
tive work, her center of dissemination, surrender-
ing herself to her unreconciled mood. Of course,
other reasons for her withdrawal may have played
in, and these she would naturally stress to the pub-
BACKFLOW TO ST. LOUIS. 5g3
lie. At any rate with her departure the St. Louis
Movement, passed henceforth into its nethermost
local evanishment, especially after the cessation of
the little revival caused by the Literary .Schools.
Judging from her past I hold that she, and she
alone, united all the gifts needful to keep alive and
to complete the work, if she could have been re-
conciled to remain at home here on its native soil
and hers, realizing herself in the full panoply of
her will-power.
But the deepest and most enduring disruption
sprung of this her Grand Refusal (her own Dante's
gran rifiuto down in the Inferno) lay in herself,
since it nearly turned her life into a persistent
tragedy. She sank away into a long physical ill-
ness and mental subsidence, doubtless something of
a purgatorial if not infernal journey. During this
time she underwent a great spiritual change, the
special stages of which I do not know. But I ob-
served her at the entrance and again at the exit
of this strangely human eclipse of her soul's sun.
First let me explain* that I watched her in St.
Louis as she was passing into her occultation, so I
think it may for our help be metaphored. That
Grand Refusal in her case meant not merely to re-
fuse my little attempt at peace-patching, but some-
thing far larger; indeed she made it, so to speak,
universal, directing it against her very self's own
world. I thought that she seemed willing for a
while to undo her sovereign work in* the Kinder-
garten, or at least to retire and let it perish un-
584 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
mothered. The report was current that she had
aroused in the School Board, through her defiance
of its authority (Achilles again) a movement to
abolish the public Kindergarten — that which tow-
ered up her high heroic educational act, and which
was now becoming more national every day. But
authority did not proceed so far, dared not, I think,
in its own interest. So the power was not permitted
her to destroy her own Great Deed, which could no
longer be slain even by its own Great Doer, still
less by its enemies. For she had built an institu-
tion mightier than herself, and thus had performed
an action more enduring than any particular ac-
tion of hers, verily more eternal than her mere in-
dividual life. That showed her greatness, yea, her
immortal selfhood, even in spite of herself.
Such was my last glimpse of her as she vanished
into her career's eclipse, for so I construe it,
through her Grand Refusal at her life's central
node. And now for my second and more pulveriz-
ing stroke of amazement ! After long years I saw
her emerge from that dread obscuration of bodily
illness and seeming despair through one heroically
persistent, prodigious act of Will, and begin her
life over again — in many respects a new person-
ality, whom I may name the second Miss Blow. Re-
conciled afresh with her Institution and with her-
self, she sallies forth on what may be called her
second grand campaign quite different from her
first at St. Louis, and lasting many years. Behold !
Here she comes to us lecturing again with young
THE EPOCH'S CROSSING. 585
vigor — a kind of resurrection from what seemed
the grave's forewarning doom. Rather charily I
approached the old familiar semblance when I saw
her rise once at Chicago, and I greeted her to me
weird re-appearance as if she almost might be a
ghost. But one reconciliation she refused still ; she
would not come back to her home, her city, her
folk. She declined making St. Louis her second
center of propagation and turned from the West
to the East, where she stayed to the close — a mis-
take I think, but not fatal.
Still the second Miss Blow belonged to the St.
Louis Movement, indeed she, according with the
deepest strain of her character, could not help
sharing in its evolution. Again her life-stream will
persist somehow in intersecting, briefly and very
occasionally but never without a splash of energy
and combativeness, the autobiographic flow of this
book. Yes, reader, we, both you and I, may be
pretty certain of crossing her war-path again, if
we can hold out to the printed close.
X.
The Epoch's Crossing.
Already several times in the course of the fore-
going narrative, casual remarks have been dropped
along our path that the present Epoch was draw-
ing to an end. Even the loitering reader will have
observed certain prognostics of a coming change.
So here I may emphasize that the last Chicago
Literary School, in 1895, may be taken as one of
586 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
life's turning-points out of an older transcended
stage into something new. Still let not the year's
limit be too rigidly fixed; old Time cannot be held
up by a date.
Encircling this year, however, as a kind of
rounding-up era seemed to gather for a conclusion
the main achievements of an Epoch, which I have
numbered the Second or Middle one of my life's
long central Period lasting almost a generation
from young-manhood to the verge of old-age. Now
the special work of this present expiring Epoch I
may here repeat once more, has centered on the
Literary Bibles — their evolution, elaboration, and
propagation, till the final act of printing and dis-
tributing the results of the labors of this persistent
"Writer of Books. But that task also is completed,
the nine volumes of Commentaries are all written —
only one belated tome remains to be typed (the
Commentary on the Odyssey, 1897). Strangely,
too, the once unresting wanderlust seems to slow
down, though not yet extinct.
Moreover my anchorage on Chicago was visibly
loosening, doubtless in part through the feeling that
I had there done my work and delivered my mes-
sage, having sped our Movement in that city for
more than ten of my best years. Quite a long spell
was that to hold out in the Chicago vortex — so I
titill-ated myself silently in my little nook on
Rookery Square, looking backwards. That once
dreamed ambition of mine had been in a small
measure fulfilled: one tiny green islet of Eternity
right in the heart of fleetingest modern Ephem-
THE EPOCH'S CROSSING. 587
erality I had actually built, planted, and stabilized
for a decade. Now it must be left to itself, remain-
ing a stray shred of influence, or perchance only a
memory on a time, for already has arisen over me
another task pressing pitiless upon the residue of
my days.
There can be no doubt, however, that beyond
my limited range Chicago had been undergoing a
great intellectual transformation during these ten
years, as I watched her not only from the outside,
but also participated in her soul-life from within.
Already has been duly signalized her "World's Fair,
a globe-startling upburst not merely of elemental
strength, but of subtle beauty and lofty grandeur,
of which latter she had never been remotely sus-
pected. Then the new Chicago University was in
the process of being conceived and organized; it
had already risen above the horizon, just as our last
Literary School sank out of sight. Thus I dare
couple together the enormously large and the com-
paratively little in my autobiographic Ego, to which
they both made appeal, each in its own way.
The Chicago University, like every thing started
in that phenomenal town, had its unique phenome-
nal origin and character. Rockefeller's millions,
aided by the naturally purchasing spirit of the
community, had practically bought a complete
German University, somewhat as if it were a valu-
able European book or picture or piece of mer-
chandise, with its full equipment of men, material,
and libraries, then had lifted it out of its home-
soil, sailed with it "across the Atlantic, and set it
588 THE ST - LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
down here in the West along the Michigan lakeside.
A marvelous achievement, and I hold, the best
medicine for the time and the place. It was indeed
the hugest sudden dose of old-world traditionalism
that was ever administered to any mundane patient.
To me it seemed just the antidote needed to hu-
manize and to steady crude ephemeral vortical Chi-
cago — a far mightier and more drastic remedy than
my single easy homeopathic pillules of brief indi-
vidual prescription, which moreover had now ex-
hausted its service.
In this connection I may be privileged to jot
down a small personal point. The Chicago Uni-
versity, though liberal, declared itself a Baptist In-
stitution, and therein followed the religious denomi-
nation of its founder. In my classes I had several
friendly Baptist ladies, one of whom, very influen-
tial with her fellow-members, caught the ambition
of making me, without my knowledge, a Professor
in the new University. She went so far as to sound
President Harper, with neutral result, I imagine,
and then she proceeded to sound me. I had already
known two or three such opportunities in the past,
and so my answer was prompt : "No — I am unfitted
for any position of that sort. I have been a free
lance too long, with my own University, the com-
munal, fermenting in my head and in my heart.
That would not well comport with the present over-
mastering tradition which is now to be schooled
into Chicago and ought to be, very emphatically.
Well do I know myself not the man for that task,
THE EPOCH'S CROSSING. 589
however necessary. Moreover I can glimpse a big
fight developing with time inside this imported
University and inside its most aspiring Professors
concerning just this tradition and its external
authority. Much obliged, my very appreciative
friend; but permit me now to resign the position
to which I have never been elected — not by the
University regents and not by myself."
Verily the appointed Professor, who is deter-
mined to be self-determined in his academic career,
has become to-day a shrilling problem of our higher
education. From such a worried conflict I held
aloof both through temperament and conceived
duty. Besides, when I saw Prof. Richard G. Moul-
ton established in the Professorship of what he
called "Literature in English," I felt that the
Literary Bibles would have a worthy promulgator
in the Chicago University. At any rate, I realized
I was done with them, and, what was more decisive,
they were done with me.
Still, underneath all these outer conjunctures,
lay fermenting the deeper ultimate motive: my
spirit's evolution, or my Super- vocation was de-
manding a new and more adequate self-expression.
I had outgrown my long-cherished literary Orga-
non, and another more internal and intensive one
was throbbing for birth. And that completely free
utterance (my dearest libertas philosophandt) re-
quired for its play the Universe, not the university.
Accordingly another Renascence with its renewal
and re-creation starts a fresh Epoch of development.
CHAPTER THIRD.
The Psychological Renascence.
First of all, let it be said that this was a Return
locally to the old home-town after a long separa-
tion — a circling back to the original starting-point
of the St. Louis Movement. Such an outer Return
had its inner spiritual side, otherwise it would be
of very evanescent significance.
Look back from here, my forgiving reader, over
a good many leaves of this ever-lengthening book
(see page 229), and you will find a brief forecast
and ordering of the stage at which we have arrived,
and which we label anew the Pyschological Rena-
scence as distinct from that old Classical Rena-
scence, whose long discipline we have hitherto tra-
versed and transcended. You may recall the quest
as I followed backward our race's European line
of civilization till I reached what I deemed the
historic germ, or the primordial cell of our early
evolution in Parnassian Hellas. But now we are
to undertake not an outer spatial Itinerary, but an
inner selfful one, not a journey to the Castalian
spring but to the fountain-head of Mind itself, of
our very Consciousness, whose original elementary
unit or germ we are to find, to name, and to unfold
into its completely ordered System. This is still a
Renascence, but of the Self, of the Soul or Psyche,
hence is called psychological. Such is the general
590
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL RENASCENCE. 591
idea of this new transition in the Self's own evolu-
tion, which for some time had lain secretly brood-
ing in my underworld, when an incident of the
moment awakened it to daylight and sudden
activity.
One day early in 1894, as I time my memory, I
happened to pay a visit to the lady principal, Miss
Elizabeth Harrison, of our Kindergarten College,
when I found her pacing the parlor floor in some
perturbation, and repeating not so much to me as
to herself: "Our teacher of Psychology is sick in
a distant sanitarium, and cannot take his classes.
I have sought everywhere and can find no instruc-
tor. The work ought to begin at once. "Well, well,
what next?" Thereupon she stopped and looked
off into silent vacancy, as if for some unknown far-
away hand of the Invisible.
Now it so co-incided that just this subject of
Psychology had been recently knocking at my
spirit's door for a fresh renewal of ancient ties of
acquaintanceship. Some twenty-five years before
the preceding incident I was teaching the old Psy-
chology, then called Mental Philosophy, in the St.
Louis High School, and had wrought it over and
organized it pretty thoroughly according to Hegel,
who was at that time the master-mind of our St.
Louis Philosophical Society, and who had saturated
our practical pedagogy, especially through the in-
fluence of Superintendent Harris. I still could
recall the whole course and its details, as I had often
given it to classes in the High School and outside
592 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
in the Community. Moreover I had kept a pretty-
full manuscript of it in cold storage during a quar-
ter of a century, inasmuch as the European Journey
and the Literary Bibles had wholly banned it from
my active life, and even from my mind's presence.
But this Epoch, as I have already indicated, showed
numerous signs of drawing to a close, having indeed
quite spent itself. Besides I had been watching
the rise of Psychology to the fore-front of the New
Education, ever since I heard Professor James at
Concord in 1883. In fact I had unconsciously felt
its pulse-beat as the coming world-discipline. I did
not know it, but I was getting ready and even
praying silently for the new epiphany.
Now drops down upon me with a sudden impact
this unique opportunity voiced by our principal.
I deliberated for a moment; then when I heard
slowly lisp from the same lips in a kind of wavering
revery, ""We know not what to do," my decisive
answer plumped out at once: "I'll take it, I can
teach your class in Psychology." "What! you!
None of your banter, this is too serious. ' ' It must
be remembered that I was known in Chicago chiefly
for my literary work and its propagation, which
now had been going on there for about ten years.
Accordingly I gave some account of my former St.
Louis time of philosophic Psychology. Whereupon
followed the question: "When can you start?"
"To-morrow." "Come."
Such was the little punch of destiny which as it
were squeezed me into a wholly new passage of
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL RENASCENCE. 593
my life-work. There seemed to focus on that one
spot and in that one moment a triple call, as I
construe it now. First came the immediate press-
ing request of the School, which was manned, or
rather womanned, by my valiant Kindergartners,
who for a decade had fought along with me the
testful Chicago battle of the Literary Bibles. But
the second voice had also been whispering me at
intervals: ''The psychological age is dawning, up
and be a-doing!" The third summons, however,
was getting to be most insistent and personal of all :
"You must win a fresh living self-expression not
merely for your intellectual satisfaction and growth,
but for your soul's salvation. Start — start now at
the nick of golden opportunity ; your present voca-
tion has fulfilled itself — arise or be forever fallen."
That evening I retreated to my corner in Hotel
Goodenough, and began to ponder over what I had
so impulsively or only half consciously promised.
What does it all mean? But the immediate task
was urging me furiously, so I let the future slide
on and explain itself in its own way, which it always
will. I gave that first course of a few weeks, which
slowly expanded to the most intense and creative
Epoch of my life, lasting quite a dozen years. My
little psychological snow-ball, having once started
to rolling, would not stop with one round nor with
dozens of them, but kept on till it would encircle
the universe in its folds. It becomes not my plan
at present to give any account of this long desperate
adventure, with its multitudinous ups and downs,
594 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
though it be fuller of myself (that is, of my own
original selfhood) than any other portion of my
life 's errantry.
But this autobiographic Ego of mine may here
succinctly state that it now, after so hot and so
prolonged a search for the source of all Tradition,
has reached back to the primal traditional form of
its own first genesis. It has found that itself in
its very birth, is a transmitted thing, which, how-
ever, is again to originate itself; a created object
it is whose ultimate essence is to recreate its own
creation, and thus to be self-creative. Or to use
more direct speech, I, through this long searchful
process of self -voyaging and self-discovery and also
self-construction, came gradually upon the primor-
dial unit or the original germ of universal creativ-
ity, which I named The Psychosis. But this em-
bryo of the Universe, ever reproducing its own
process, evolves out of itself its own creative body,
or complete psychical organism as the all-organizer
of the world and of man as well as of itself. To
such a worker or instrument is given the name
corresponding to its character: The Psychological
Organon. Finally this all-organizer must reveal
itself in the work done, or in the All as organized,
both externally and internally. Thus unfolds The
Psychological System, embracing the World and
the Self ordered psychically or according to the
Psychosis, which is the unit of Mind, distinct from
yet creative of the unit of Matter — the atom ; and
also distinct from yet creative of the unit of Life —
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL RENASCENCE. 595
the cell. (Of this System and its various divisions
the reader will find an outline in the appendix.)
Here without delay, I must select and singly em-
phasize the pre-eminent conjuncture of this Epoch,
or rather the topmost flowering of the whole St.
Louis Movement, in so far as I had anything to do
with it. Though I deem the Chicago Literary
Schools my supreme personal achievement, a
greater deed than that was now to be done in St.
Louis, chiefly through the co-operative work of two
able and well-known teachers. Miss Amelia C.
Fruchte in 1906 was chosen President of the Peda-
gogical Society, which, from a small and seemingly
moribund club, at once increased under her inspir-
ing leadership to more than 2,000 members. For
this large body of students Miss Fruchte with her
assistants organized numerous special courses on
various subjects. The result was a unique Com-
munal University which appeared to build itself up
over night, and which may be acclaimed, I think,
the most considerable practical feat in the history
of the St. Louis Movement, of which Miss Fruchte
had long been a faithful co-worker.
IBut of these numerous courses the most distinc-
tive and tone-giving, as well as the most successful,
was that of Professor Francis E. Cook on Psychol-
ogy, or, more specially stated, on the Psychological
Organon, embracing Intellect, Will, and Feeling,
which he unfolded in three different courses during
three successive years. His regular audience for
such an abstruse and difficult subject was the larg-
596 T HE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT— PART SECOND.
est I ever saw anywhere — in St. Louis, Concord, or
Chicago. The number of his hearers often rose to
one hundred and fifty, and never fell below a hun-
dred. A dozen or so was usually our old St. Louis
philosophical quota. Professor Cook's luminous
and poetically beautiful presentation of the pro-
foundest thought made its appeal not merely to the
head, but to the heart and imagination of all his
listeners. I regard this course of his as the crown-
ing act of the long line of expositors of the St. Louis
Movement from its earliest start ; and in like man-
ner I regard Miss Fruchte's aforesaid work as the
towering single deed of organization in the whole
history of our Movement, on whose summit there
stands at this point a woman as leader.
Such is the merest mention of what is deserving
a full record, which, however, cannot now be given.
A surprisingly sudden fresh upburst of the old St.
Louis Renascence into new forms — will it hold?
Never mind that here, for we have come to the clos-
ing scene of the present ascent of life, having
reached its happiest and highest altitude, from
which we shall not now make or even contemplate
the descent, but let it hide itself in futurity.
Accordingly this book of mine insists on winding
itself up and quitting just here in a manner without
my concurrence, since I had foreplanned a different
outcome for it, and a somewhat different progress.
But matters not intended have forced themselves
into its narrative; other things blocked out in ad-
vance have been ruthlessly pitched off along the
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL RENASCENCE. 597
wayside. That is, the present book has obstinately-
persisted in writing itself after its own law more
than ever before in my history, though I had been
made aware of a similar over-ruling in previous
volumes of mine. For example, I had designed to
include in this final Epoch my full psychological
evolution, but the pen refuses, or the spirit, if you
can think so, presiding over this book dashes mas-
terfully his veto on my scheme, enjoining me "Your
psychological day is not yet sundown, you are living
it still, all harnessed and at work; it has yet to
finish and perchance to tell its own story."
Only one more paragraph, or possibly two, may
be permitted for a heart-felt obituary, as a parting
farewell breathed from the soul of the still living
and unforgetting St. Louis Movement to its first,
now old-aged founders as they vanish from the day
of life. In this same pivotal year of 1906, when
the Psychological Organon had completed itself as a
written work to face its unknown destiny of coming
time, when the new-born association of workers
headed by Miss Fruchte and Professor Cook had
leaped forth in multitudinous youthful energy, and
when the St. Louis Movement itself, after its long
Ulyssean wanderings of more than twenty years,
had gotten back to its old home by the riverside for
its life's renewal and rejuvenescence, Governor
Brockmeyer, its first President, passed away at the
rounding of his eightieth birth-day. In this same
year Doctor Harris, its first Secretary, also its
greatest educator and zealous promoter, retired from
598 THE ST. LOUIS MOVEMENT—PART SECOND.
his official position as head of the National Bureau
of Education, still aspiring though broken by ill
health, to which he succumbed not long afterwards.
Unto both their paternal spirits the St. Louis Move-
ment bids a grateful last salutation — Vale et Vive.
So let their names be again twinned together, as
at the beginning of this record so now at its close,
in the bond of ever-living affection and memory
Henry C. Brockmeyer
William T. Harris
APPENDIX— THE SYSTEM
It has been suggested that I give in a brief appendix
a general outline or conspectus of my entire System of
Psychology, in so far as it has developed up to date
(1920). It now may be said to consist directly (omit-
ting indirect writings) of twenty-two volumes, contain-
ing about 12,000 pages (small octavo). So we are here
to pass from the biographic order which has been fol-
lowed hitherto in the present book, to the systematized
survey of the whole field of Psychology in its special
divisions, of which I give in advance the following
three leading ones: (I) The Psychological Organon —
the creative universal Idea and its inner Organization;
(II) The World psychologized — the Idea realized ex-
ternally or objectively — the Macrocosm; (III) The Self
psychologized — the Idea realized internally, or in the
individual mind — the Microcosm.
Such are the three grand stages of the psychological
Norm of the Universe, or the three basic lines in the
organization of Universal Psychology. The reader may
eompare this psychological Norm with the philosophical
Norm, which usually divides itself into the triplicity
called (1) the Absolute (God) (2) the World, and (3)
Man.
It may be here repeated that the main outcome or the
fulfilment of the St. Louis Movement has been the
evolution and elaboration of this System of Universal
Psychology, whose Norm embraces in its sweep firstly
the Self as universal psychologized (Organon), secondly
the World psychologized (Sciences), thirdly the in-
dividual Self psychologized (Biography). The follow-
ing may be taken as the System's skeleton embracing
the mentioned twenty-two volumes and giving their
order and titles.
599
600 APPENDIX— THE SYSTEM.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORGANON
This sets forth the universal organizing principle, or
genetic center, of the entire System. It is not only
creative but self-creative, generating all and itself too.
We may call it Pure Psychology, the essential Psyche^
the ideal Psychosis as it is in itself and as it orders it-
self purely.
Several Organons have appeared in the history of
Philosophy. First and best known is that of the old
Greek Aristotle, his so-called Logic, mainly deductive;
then by way of reaction comes Bacon's Novum Organum,
emphatically inductive; at last appears Hegel's Logic
which is essentially an Organon of the Universe whose
principle is the Dialectic. All these are European
philosophical Organons, distinct from the present psy-
chological Organon, whose working principle is the
Psychosis. The treatment of this subject embraces the
following three volumes.
(1) Feeling, With Prolegomena. This unfolds not
merely the Feelings of the individual as such, but
shows the whole universe of God, Nature, and Man
reflecting itself in the Feelings (pages 534).
(2) The Will and Its World. The place of the Will
in the Man and in the World is set forth in its various
processes, which form the basis of individual Freedom,
of Ethics and of Institutions (pages 575).
(3) Intellect (Psychology and the Psychosis). This
is a treatise upon the self-ordering Intellect with its
three fundamental stages of Sense-perception, Repre-
sentation, and Thought. Doubtless the best book to
start with in studying the system (pages 556).
Thus at the center is placed Psychology with its
Organon, as the science which organizes all other
sciences, but must first organize itself. This starts
with the individual Self (or Ego) as the point which
both surveys everything else, and is also self-surveying,
which knows itself and through that knows the World.
APPENDIX— THE SYSTEM. 601
II
THE WORLD PSYCHOLOGIZED
The World here means all externality as distinct
from the Self, hence the objective side of existence.
The ideal Psyche is now realized; the pure Psychosis
is seen at work generating its vast multiplicity of forms
and appearances, and at the same time co-ordinating
them into an ordered totality. Specially here is un-
folded the World as Will, as Realisation; hence this is
the second stage or movement of the Universe's total
Psychosis.
The present main division of Universal Psychology
embraces the following six departments of man's ob-
jective Universe, which are also the race's great human
disciplines, beginning with the first and most external
in Nature, and rising through Art, Literature, Philos-
ophy and Institutions, to the last and highest in Univer-
sal History with its World-Spirit. In thirteen volumes,
distributed and titled as follows:
I. Psychology of Nature and Natural Science.
This starts with the purest externality of Nature (Space
and Time) and unfolds it in a psychological evolution
to its supreme manifestation in Nature's Life. The
scientific method has also (like Philosophy) sought to
determine Psychology, and is still in vogue for this pur-
pose, though apparently waning,, as it has been found
too narrow for the subject-matter. But in this field,
too, Psychology has turned the tables and has organized
Nature and Natural Science instead of being organized
by them. Two works of the present system cover the
total domain of Nature:
(1) Cosmos and Diacosmos. These two terms em-
brace what is generally included under Mechanics (with
Mathematics), Physics, and Chemistry, all of which are
seen to be psychological in their final principle. Also
602 APPENDIX— THE SYSTEM.
is unfolded the genesis of Nature as the second stage
of the total process of the Universe (pages 578).
(2) The Biocosmos, or the Life of Nature psycholog-
ically treated and embracing the science of Biology in
its widest sense. This is the third part of Nature as
conceived in the present system (pages 481).
II. Psychology of Art. (Aesthetic). Art follows
Nature and transfigures the same with a new meaning
and purpose, essentially social. Art has been philoso-
phized in Europe, according to the various philosophical
systems, idealistic and realistic, but now it is to be
psychologized into what may be called the New
Aesthetic. That is, the order and interpretation of the
Fine Arts are to be unfolded by Universal Psychology,
which puts them into their place in the cycle of man's
activities, and also gives to each of them its inner
psychical organization. Art is conceived not merely as
a revelation of man's individual life, but also of his
Bocial and institutional life, and finally of the creative
soul of the Universe itself. Two works:
(1) Architecture. The three great styles of artistic
construction are shown in their psychical evolution-
Oriental, European and Occidental (American). That
unique manifestation of recent Architecture, the High
Building, takes its place as one of the supreme forms of
this Art (pages 561).
(2) Music and the Fine Arts. The stress is upon
Music as the most psychological of all the Fine Arts
and the most modern, though it be ancient too. But
also Sculpture, Painting and the Kinetic Arts are set
forth in their ultimate psychical order and significance.
Likewise is given a survey of the total sweep of all the
Fine (or Presentative) Arts (pages 588).
III. (The Psychology of Literature, as essentially
the Representative Art (Poetry, Novel, Belles-Lettres),
is to be classed here in the System, though I shall omit
from the present survey my works on the four Literary
Bibles, as they have been already considered in their
auto-biographic relation. Moreover, they were not for
APPENDIX— THE SYSTEM. 603
me an evolution of Psychology in its explicit form, but
rather Psychology was a gradual growth out of them
and their long discipline. So their nine volumes of
Commentaries have been listed already, as they were
evolving both in me and in themselves towards Psy-
chology. The student can, however, co-ordinate them
in the total System under the foregoing head of the
Psychology of Literature).
IV. Psychology of Philosophy With the Latter's
History. The preceding branches — Nature, Art, Litera-
ture — have all been philosophized in the past according
to the various philosophical Systems of Europe. But
now all these Philosophies are to be, not refuted but
subordinated to a new and more universal World-prin-
ciple, and are to be themselves psychologized. Thus
Philosophy in its final outcome reveals itself a part or
phase of Psychology, instead of the reverse as hitherto.
For Philosophy has been generally regarded as the ulti-
mate Science, as the Science of sciences. It seeks to
grasp and formulate the first principle of the Universe,
and then to apply the same to all knowledge. In Euro-
pean thought Philosophy has had the primacy, and has
on the whole determined the sciences, but in the present
system Psychology is seen supplanting Philosophy and
determining the same in turn. That is, Philosophy it-
self is found to be at bottom psychological and must be
newly ordered accordingly.
(1) Ancient European Philosophy, which gives the
evolution of ancient Thought from Thales to Proclus,
and brings to the surface the psychological movement
underlying and controlling the philosophical (pages
730).
(2) Modern European Philosophy, which does the
same for the modern movement from Descartes, giving
a full account of Hegel, who is the last European
philosopher in the supreme sense, and who is con-
ceived as transitional to Psychology (pages 829).
604 APPENDIX— THE SYSTEM.
V. Psychology op Institutions as the Forms of
Associated Max. At present mankind's most earnest
endeavor is seeking after the ways in which human
beings can be best associated. Hence the stress of the
time is upon the meaning and value of Institutions as
the actualized Forms of Associated Man. Especially
the State and the Economic Institution are just now in a
new conflicting evolution, each in itself and with the
other. Hence the most timely study for the men of
to-day is that of Institutions, which are being assailed
in so many ways, secretly and openly. Especially with
Americans the chief problem is to become conscious of
their Institutions. Moreover the relation of Institutions
to Art and Literature is fundamental, and furnishes the
deepest content to artistic and literary works. In this
realm are two books:
(1) Social Institutions. Under this head the five
main Institutions of man — domestic, economic, political,
religious, and educational — are here put together for
the first time, being treated separately and as a whole
(pages 615).
(2) The State in which is especially considered the
American State, with the psychological exposition of
the United States Constitution (pages 561).
(3) The Educative Institution, to which belongs two
specialized books on Froebel's Kindergarten: (a) Com-
mentary on Froeoels' Mother Play Songs (pages 439)
and (6) Psychology of Froebel's Play Gifts (pages
396).
VI. Psychology of the World's History and Its
Spirit. In the last half dozen years, the World has
made more History both national and universal, than
in any whole century of its previous existence. Hence
the World's History seems to have turned a great new
Period whose creative principle, here called the World-
Spirit, is to be specially studied and unfolded. It has
long been recognized that a Universal Science is re-
quired for grasping the ultimate processes of Universal
APPENDIX— THE SYSTEM. 605
History. Hence arose the Philosophy of History, being
based more or less consciously upon some philosophical
system. But History also, as one manifestation of the
Universal Spirit, must get the final organization of its
processes from Psychology, the Universal Science. In
this field are the three following works:
(1) European History. As Europe has made a large
part of recorded History so far, the first duty is to put
in order its historic processes, and to set forth its place
in Universal History (pages 691).
(2) The Father of History. Herodotus is the most
important of all Historians, recording the first great
historic struggle of the World's History and showing
the dawn of the historic consciousness (pages 538).
(3) The American Ten Years' War (1855-1865).
Our Civil War is set forth as a stage in the evolution
of Universal History, with its underlying psychological
element (pages 527).
Next result is that this universal World's History with
its Spirit embodied in time's events now passes to the
individual Man's Spirit embodied in time's events, or
in his life. That is, World's History individualizes it-
self in Life's History, or Biography, which is the third
stage of the supreme psychological Norm already
given.
Retrospect. Thus our World-Psychology, starting
with the World's uttermost externality in Nature has
risen to its innermost creative principle in the World-
Spirit. Or more directly, I, having psychologized the
World, must next proceed to psychologize the Self as
individual; or more directly still, I must psychologize
myself as psychologist in the process of psychologizing.
Or again: I having recreated the external cosmos, now.
I must recreate myself creating it. Only when you
truly psychologize, do you become your true Self and
fulfill your highest vocation. Preliminary steps to this
height are Philosophy, Art, Literature, Science, which
must themselves be organized psychologically, that is,
through the Psychological Organon.
606 APPENDIX— THE SYSTEM.
Ill
THE SELF PSYCHOLOGIZED
The Psychological Organon, the first ideal, or ab-
stract stage of the Psychological Norm, now realizes it-
self in the concrete human career, or incarnates itself
in the individual Man and his works. The original and
originating Psychosis — Feeling, Will and Intellect— is
henceforth to be made actual in the living Person and
in his achievement. Such is the grand psychical in-
carnation of the race. If the Psychological Organon we
saw realize itself objectively in World-Psychology, now
we are to see that same creative Organon realize itself
subjectively in the Self, Ego, individual Psyche, which
is the theme of the present Self-Psychology, or
Biography. Under this head we put two divisions with
a possible glimpse of a third, all of them being stages
or phases of the one Biography.
I. Gexebal Biography. This is the common kind, in
which tbe life of the man is written by another than
himself. If we may coin a word needed for this species,
let it be called Allo-biography, that is, the other-written
Life, as distinct from the self-written Life, or Auto-
biography.
The popular reader has always shown a chief inter-
est in the individual lives of Great Men. But a science
of Biography has hardly been conceived hitherto, though
ancient Plutarch already thought that there was some
common principle in the lives of the eminent Greeks
and Romans. But Psychology, as the ultimate science
of the Self, can alone furnish the universal basis of
Biography, elevating it into a science, which Philosophy
never did, and could not.
Here are placed four books of General Biography
(Allo-biography) which belong by their treatment to
the System of Universal Psychology.
APPENDIX— THE SYSTEM. ($7
(1) Abraham Lincoln, the' Statesman, whose life is
in this work unfolded after its underlying psychological
order (pages 574).
(2) Frederick Froebel, the Educator, whose career
repeals the inner psychological process in all Biography
(pages 470).
(3) Goethe's Life-Poem — the Poet's Life as a poem
which unfolds itself psychologically through its three
supreme Periods (pages 601).
(4) Emerson's Life-Essay — which reveals psychically
the biography of himself as his own "Standard Man."
(In type but not yet published).
\ Here may be mentioned, as being in preparation,
'hakespeare's Life-Drama psychologically treated by the
utlior.
II. Auto-biography, or the self-written Life of the
vriter narrating the events of his career in his own
vay, Several works of this sort have been very famous,
or instance, Rousseau's and Goethe's Auto-biographies.
)f course they are not directly psychologized.
A distinct variety of Auto-biography is seen when it
s written by the psychologist who psychologizes his
wn particular Life as a manifestation of universal
'sychology, which indeed every man's Life must be.
Two works of Auto-biography represent this phase
. f th* System:
(1) A Writer of Books, giving the main events of
the author's life as he unfolds during his earlier Period
(pages 668).
(2) The St. Louis Movement — the present book,
showing the author evolving into his psychological
world-\iew through Philosophy and Literature. Here I
may add, as I am alive and still writing, that there is
another, but unfinished part of this Auto-biography.
'Summary. The salient character of Universal Psy-
chology may be indicated in the fact that it is neither
meta-physical nor physical in method or matter, but
purely psychological.
w
608 APPENDIX—THE SYSTEM.
Slowly the science of Psychology has been pushing td
the front as the Universal Science. But it has been
hitherto handicapped by alien methods foisted upon it;
so we have had chiefly two kinds: the old Rational
(so-called) Psychology, dominated by the metaphysical
system of some philosopher, and the more recent Phy
siological Psychology, dominated by the procedure of
Natural Science. The present system maintains a vie
opposite to, yet inclusive of both these methods. Psy
chology is proclaimed the master of the house, no
longer the subordinate; it is to organize Philosophy
and Natural Science, and not to be organized "by them.
It is the new Universal Science and openly asserts it
self as a System in spite of to-day's pragmatic preju
dice against all systems.
Here we may again emphasize that the elementary
principle everywhere pervading and originally creating
and psychically ordering all the foregoing divisions, is
the Psychosis. Such is the universal embryo with its
remoter parallel in the Atom or unit of matter, and
with its nearer parallel in the Cell or unit of Life, hot
of which however, are forms or manifestations of thi
ultimate universally genetic unit of Mind. The psychical
protoplast we may conceive it, or the embryonic arch
type of the Creator, of the Creation, and of me — th
Psychosis.
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