AT LOS ANGELES
 
 THE FATHER OF FORESTRY. 
 
 A Fort Wayne, Ind., dispatch conveys the news 
 that the grave of "Johnny Appleseed/' situated just 
 north of the city limits, is to have a better mark 
 ing. This is interesting as an indication that his 
 effort in planting the Middle West in apple orchards 
 during the early part of the nineteenth century is 
 not forgotten, but that, on the contrary, the activi 
 ties of our CCC workers in planting trees are turn 
 ing attention to his strange story. 
 
 "Johnny Appleseed" was born in Boston in the 
 year of the battle of Lexington, long before any 
 body thought of planting a belt of trees from the 
 Canadian border to the Texas Panhandle. Such a 
 proposal would have been absurd when this Western 
 country was populated only by the Indians. When 
 he was old enough to travel, he moved away and 
 bought land on a hill outside of Pittsburgh, then a 
 far-Western town, but he carried with him the mem 
 ory of the apple trees of Massachusetts and the 
 first thing he did was to plant an orchard. By 
 his house passed a stream of pioneer settlers drift 
 ing down the Ohio toward the West and one day, 
 at the age of 26, he filled a leather bag with apple 
 seed and set out in the same direction. And for 
 many years he kept going, choosing a sheltered 
 slope near a new village or an isolated cabin and 
 planting his seed, moving on to other slopes and 
 cabins and returning in the autumn to Pennsyl 
 vania for more seed. He planted apple orchards in 
 Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. Dressed in cast-off 
 clothing, he faced many dangers and in payment 
 would accept only a bag of meal, a shirt or a prom 
 issory note (which he never claimed.) His real 
 name was Jonathan Chapman. 
 
 Such is the remarkable story of Johnny Apple- 
 seed, which has been frequently repeated, but may 
 bear retelling in the light of recent developments. 
 The important thing to notice is that he carried 
 out a large tree-planting project single-handed. Far 
 ahead of the government, he saw the need for more 
 trees, and while he was about it, he planted trees 
 that would supply food. In inaugurating vast 
 schemes for reforestation and drouth control, the 
 government is only following in his footsteps.
 
 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 THEOPHILUS MIDDLING. 
 
 L- e. D T- 
 
 WITH NOTES AND EXPLANATIONS OF VARIOUS 
 COMMENTATORS. 
 
 ST. LOUIS, MO.: 
 
 SIGMA PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 210 PINE ST.
 
 Copyright secured according to law by the 
 
 SIOMA PUBLISHING CO., 
 
 In the year 1894. 
 
 NIXON-JONES PRINTING COMPANT, 
 215 Pine St., St. Louis, Mo.
 
 V 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 BOOK FIRST 5-59 
 
 EDITORIAL PRELIMINARIES. 
 
 BOOK SECOND 61-152 
 
 PROFESSOR REGINALD BRAZENNOSE. 
 
 5! BOOK THIRD 153-251 
 
 en 
 
 COLONEL GODLOVE HIMMELSHIME. 
 
 2 BOOK FOURTH 252-347 
 
 s BRAZENNOSE VERSUS HIMMELSHIME. 
 
 |g BOOK FIFTH 347-411 
 
 THEODORA. 
 
 CO 
 
 401G5O
 
 BOOK FIRST. 
 
 1. 
 If without water you can swim, 
 
 Plunge upward, take to the air, 
 Open aloft your wings and skim, 
 
 The ocean is everywhere. 
 
 2. 
 " Old sower, Johnny Appleseed, 
 
 Now sow into a rhyme thy creed." 
 
 When the corn you plant, 
 
 Be not of seed too scant; 
 
 If the field you would rightly till, 
 
 Put-in four grains to the hill ; 
 
 One for the mouse and one for the crow, 
 
 One to rot and one to grow; 
 
 Then shall the tiller, 
 
 Surely see the miller. 
 
 (5)
 
 6 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 3. 
 There is a music in the time, 
 
 There is a music in the heart ; 
 The former runs into a rhyme, 
 
 Then seeks its tuneful counterpart. 
 
 4. 
 Some days it is a blessing, 
 
 Some days it is a curse ; 
 But cursing or caressing, 
 
 Straightway it turns to verse. 
 
 5. 
 
 How to get rid of evils? 
 Khymes have power to cast out devils ; 
 Many a time I would have cried, 
 Had I not versified. 
 
 6. 
 A word often longs to be mated 
 
 With the sound of jolly cris-cringle, 
 Such a word is certainly fated 
 
 To run off with a jingle. 
 
 7. 
 
 Many thine ills, but do not complain, 
 Bravely in silence bear them alone; 
 
 If thou tell them, thy neighbor will tell thee again 
 A hundred of his to one of thine own.
 
 BOOK FIHST. 
 8. 
 
 Be not too fast, 
 Else you cannot last; 
 Be not too slow, 
 Else you need not go. 
 9. 
 
 Just watch the long-eared donkey, 
 
 Of quadrupeds most spunky ! 
 He will not imitate, 
 
 You cannot make of him a monkey, 
 
 He will not train to be a flunkey, 
 
 He cares not for his state, 
 He keeps the self-same gait, 
 
 He takes no man as master, 
 However great ; 
 
 He goes not one step faster, 
 He is Fate. 
 10. 
 
 Say, what is now our barnyard lore? 
 
 It is not what it was before. 
 
 To the crowing hen 
 
 We cry amen, 
 
 At the cackling cock 
 
 We shy a rock, 
 
 And though we cluck to the little brood 
 
 That it may get its tiny food, 
 
 The smallest chick 
 
 Doth learn the biggest trick. 
 
 Hark ! they are hooting like owls, 
 
 The good old barnyard fowls.
 
 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S MHYMES. 
 
 11. 
 
 Say, why do you skip and scamper 
 In these verses with capers so jolly? "- 
 
 The wise man will use a damper 
 By wearing a mask of folly. 
 
 12. 
 A man without money 
 
 Humbly begged me for bread; 
 I gave it with butter well spread ; 
 
 In an angry splutter 
 He loudly demanded some honey 
 On top of the butter. 
 
 13. 
 
 The philosopher's stone, 
 
 Tell how can it be known? " 
 
 If the philosopher had no stone, 
 
 Poor man ! he would be left all alone ; 
 
 And if the stone had no philosopher, 
 
 Poor stone ! it would not go so very far. 
 
 14. 
 
 Let good reading 
 
 Be good heeding, 
 
 Let the best 
 
 Be thy test. 
 
 Then Appleseed's rhymes 
 Will jingle life's chimes.
 
 BOOK FIRST. 
 
 15. 
 
 Rain and sunshine together 
 Make the world's weather; 
 But men will whine 
 If they have no shine, 
 And they complain, 
 If they have no rain. 
 Yet rain and shine do never satisfy, 
 Man wants the sky. 
 
 16. 
 
 If you ever get sated, 
 You that moment are fated ; 
 But if you strive, 
 You stay alive; 
 To push over the line, 
 That is divine ; 
 Though you suffer the pain 
 Upborne on the cross, 
 The very gain 
 
 Springs out of the loss ; 
 Aye, to be fateless 
 Is to be sateless. 
 
 17. 
 
 Be not held by what thou art, 
 But by what thou art to be; 
 
 Break the limit of thy deed, 
 And reach over destiny.
 
 10 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 18. 
 
 To-day on the street I met old Nick, 
 He limped along while holding a stick; 
 " Old fellow, what is the trouble? 
 Tell me, why dost thou hobble? " 
 He answered: " Change thy sight, 
 For me I walk aright ; 
 I note thy foot it is splayed, 
 See mine it is correctly made." 
 
 19. 
 
 An indestructible unit see 
 In the minutest personality; 
 And if you see it 
 You ought to be it, 
 And if you are it, 
 Then share it, 
 For true salvation 
 Is impartation. 
 
 20. 
 Keys of all kinds he displays to the sight, 
 
 But there isn't a key-hole to fit; 
 So he has to stay out by himself all night, 
 
 In spite of his wit. 
 
 21. 
 
 I am the knower and the known, 
 Thus I get to be mine own; 
 I am the doer and the done, 
 Thus to me the world is won.
 
 BOOK FIE ST. 11 
 
 22. 
 
 Johnny, say more plainly what you seek, 
 You are not clear in what you speak." 
 Perchance to-day I do not wish you near, 
 Perchance to-day you have for me no ear, 
 Perchance to-day I ain no seer, 
 And hence to-day forthee I can't be clear. 
 Still if you would my wisdom borrow, 
 Come to me again to-morrow, 
 Then I shall be near to thee and clear, 
 And out my words will burst the sun 
 Which makes us one; 
 But now, without that light 
 Between us lies the night. 
 
 23. 
 
 Said the Lord unto Adam one day : 
 " Who I am, to thee I shall say; 
 All in one thing I behold; 
 The rest need not be told. 
 Now beware of thy fall." 
 
 Adam then answered the Lord : 
 " I too shall reply 
 
 Who am I: 
 
 It is fair to requite thy good word : 
 I am he who finds nothing in all." 
 " Just that is thy fall 
 Depart " said the Lord.
 
 12 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S MHIMES. 
 
 Thus has the editor of the present book flung 
 upon the wind of public opinion a handful of the 
 versicles of Johnny Appleseed, casting them up 
 wards like so much chaff, or bran, or other light 
 material; gladly would he observe in which direc 
 tion said wind is blowing. But it cannot be 
 pre-calculated , being both capricious and unfath 
 omable, so let it go its way, whithersoever it 
 listeth. Meanwhile these few preceding rhymes 
 may be considered as a kind of advance guard 
 sent before the main army, to serve as a pre 
 fatory example, or, perchance, as a warning of 
 what is to follow. Not selected with any special 
 care, but clutched quite at random from the 
 drawer where they lie in a fluttering mass, they 
 must, in their small, piping fashion, tell their 
 own story to the much-enduring reader. Still we 
 would hopefully think that they are the overture 
 in which one may discern certain airs hereafter to 
 be more fully set forth and joined into the uni 
 versal harmony, or, as the musical Wagnerian 
 would say, certain leading motives are here in 
 several cases heard, and suggest important ideas 
 in the coming work. A heterogeneous little col 
 lection of seeds it is, yea of apple-seeds, which 
 we hope to see burst their tiny shells, and sprout 
 forth, becoming trees which bear fruit, perchance
 
 BOOK FIRST. 13 
 
 becoming a whole orchard with diversified prod 
 ucts as well as with pleasant shades for sylvan 
 retreat and contemplation. 
 
 Great-has been the activity of our age in gather 
 ing from the four corners of the earth every kind 
 of tale, legend, proverb, ballad, which have been 
 produced by the human mind in its different 
 stages and environments. There is an impulse 
 in the time to see the total face of mankind, from 
 the beginning onward and from the savage up 
 ward. Diligent investigators have explored Ice 
 land and Zululand, the steppes of Asia and the 
 wilds of America, for a nursery song or a fairy 
 story. The result is a prodigious literature of 
 folk-lore, which bids fair in the near future to 
 reach all-embracing proportions. Civilized man 
 seems bent not only on seeing, but on passing 
 through his babyhood again, as far as his won 
 derful printing press will help him rock the 
 primitive cradle and chant his earliest lullaby. 
 Success to the work, is our sympathetic wish ; 
 and it is not by any means improbable that The- 
 ophilus Middling, editor and chief collector of 
 this book, will himself take a hand in the bus 
 iness at some future date, for there is a fascina 
 tion in scientific research which makes him wish 
 to become a cave-dweller again. 
 
 Still it has seemed strange to him, that, amid 
 all this busy stir of gathering, studying and 
 annotating remote sayings, myths, poems, and
 
 U JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 even shreds of sentences, that little or no atten 
 tion has been paid to what we have here at home 
 shooting forth under our own eyes, and vibrating 
 into our very ears. Let the friendly reader be 
 now informed that, on certain lines running zig 
 zag in various directions and raying out spasmod 
 ically from diverse centers among the people who 
 dwell in the vast tract of land known as the Mis 
 sissippi Valley, certain peculiar verses, songs, 
 stories, witticisms, apothegms, even jokes and 
 puns, have become current, which correctly or 
 incorrectly have been labeled with the name of 
 Johnny Appleseed. 
 
 It has now been several years since the present 
 editor, in his capacity of peripatetic lecturer and 
 purveyor general to literary clubs, having come 
 upon the traces of this man in various portions 
 of the country, resolved to collect his rhymes, 
 arrange, and in part annotate them, just to see 
 how they might deport themselves when brought 
 together face to face with one another, out of 
 their disconnected, flighty life between the Alle- 
 ghenies and the Rockies. They will show, if he 
 mistakes not, a certain flavor of the soil, an out 
 spoken western directness and unsophisticated 
 frankness ; they could have originated only on 
 the prairies, though they hint many ancestral 
 strands connecting them with the past. Not 
 wholly autochthonous are these verses, they do 
 not altogether owe themselves to themselves, still
 
 BOOK FIRST. 15 
 
 there is no mistaking the place or even the man 
 ner of their birth. 
 
 Thus the editor's ambition does not rise above 
 being the gatherer and, orderer of these frag 
 ments. It is not to be forgotten that several 
 great epics or the floating outlines thereof, have 
 been recovered piecemeal from the mouths of 
 the people in recent times. I hold that the well- 
 known Grimm's Tales, though taken down at 
 random from the lips of the peasantry mainly 
 and found in many different localities, show the 
 shadowy contour of a grand totality, which might 
 be called the folk-song of the Teutonic race, 
 never fixed, but continually in the process of 
 life, always made, yet always a-making too 
 an ever-living, self-regenerating song, even when 
 told in prose for want of a singer. I have also 
 thought that the ballads of the Scotch-English 
 border, had they been gathered in time and 
 rightly ordered, would hint more or less dis 
 tinctly a certain degree of completeness not only 
 in spirit but also in form, displaying the crude 
 materials of which a national epic might be con 
 structed. But the great example in this field is 
 the Kalevala, the Finnish epic, gathered from the 
 memory of the people of Finland during the 
 present century by Lonrot, who wandered from 
 place to place in the most remote districts 
 and lived with the peasants, making it his life- 
 task to listen to their songs, and write down the
 
 16 JOHNNY APPLESEED' S EHYMES. 
 
 same. Thus the marvelous fact came to light 
 that these floating fragments, picked up from so 
 many sources, had a tendency to coalesce and 
 become one poem, having been composed, not 
 by one man, but by one people, and so made to 
 bear one great national impress. More and more 
 is the truth getting to be accepted that these 
 songs of the people are the primordial gold mines 
 of all genuine poetry. 
 
 By the foregoing remarks it is not intended to 
 imply that the rhymes in this book are the direct 
 product of popular tradition. They are clearly 
 the work of an individual, not of a nation. 
 Moreover, this American people, let us confess, 
 was born in a fit of prose, its cradle song was 
 not an Iliad flashing all the hues of the imagina 
 tion, but a Declaration of Independence set down 
 in the hard categories of the understanding. 
 But deeper than the nation's is the race's stream 
 flowing through the heart of the western prairies, 
 and through the heart of Johnny Appleseed, 
 though he be intensely patriotic too. The race 
 in the man is going to have its primeval world 
 of myth and folk-lore, and it must sing though 
 in the rudest and most fragmentary fashion. 
 
 It is plain from the start that Appleseed is not 
 a precisian in the matter of rhyme and meter ; 
 he lets his Pegasus roam freely without bit or 
 bridle. What the exquisite critic would deem to 
 be discords in the jingle at the end of the line, or
 
 BOOK FIRST. 17 
 
 to be breaks in the me'asure, he often lets pass, 
 regardless of possible castigation. Verily Ap- 
 pluseed has his reward, and so has the exquisite 
 critic. Still the wandering minstrel must not be 
 thought insensible to the finish and the form of 
 his verses; he shows in more than one place a 
 certain degree of technical skill in his art where 
 it happens to coincide with his purpose. The 
 editor thinks that possibly underneath some of 
 his violations there peeps here and there a higher 
 sense of poetic right, a true obedience to the law 
 which is greater than the rule. Let the reader 
 not condemn too hastily. Still, after all allow 
 ances, we shall have to confess that Appleseed, 
 hitting right and left, seeking pithiness rather 
 than grace, giving himself up unreservedly to the 
 careenings, curvetings and friskings of his mood, 
 cannot be called an elegant author. How could 
 he write drawing-room poetry in that wandering 
 life of his, with the Promethean spark of his race 
 kindled in his soul and scintillating in his words? 
 The editor here deems it his duty to call the 
 reader's attention to a peculiar manner in Apple- 
 seed's stanzas; it is his way of employing ques 
 tion and answer. He frequently interrogates 
 himself like an oracle, and then gives a response, 
 which is also oracular at times in its covert mean 
 ing. It must be remembered that his life is 
 mainly a solitary one, so he often soliloquizes in 
 a dialogue, both of whose persons are himself. 
 
 2
 
 18 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 I would recognize in this literary procedure a 
 characteristic of the writer's philosophy, which 
 seeks to bring the grand dualism in life and in 
 the world to an harmonious unity. Delphic, 
 Orphic, enigmatic this oracular habit may seem at 
 first to the reader, full of mystification, starting 
 a possible suspicion of charlatanry ; but if he is 
 like ourselves, he will soon get used to it, and 
 simply look upon it as a poetic scheme or method 
 which is native to Appleseed. Still it is not orig 
 inal with him by any means; it can be traced 
 through modern poets back to medieval, yea to 
 Greek sages, to the sybils and prophets of hoary 
 antiquity. The oracle has not yet died out 
 among the people ; though Delphi be deserted, 
 Concord is still a temple of Phoebus Apollo, and 
 even the prairie of the West is not without its 
 prophetic shrine breaking the dead level in the 
 dim distance. Thus Appleseed gives his re 
 sponses to himself, yet for others, whereby the 
 lonely man finds companionship and imparts a 
 conversational tone to his oracular utterances. 
 
 The editor has doubtless left the impression in 
 these remarks that Appleseed is sometimes ob 
 scure ; here and there he certainly does give a deep 
 plunge into the ocean of thought, whither he can 
 not be followed without a corresponding dive on 
 the part of the reader, who may not always be 
 ready for such a sudden dip headforemost. The 
 philosopher in him frequently gets the better of the
 
 BOOK FIEST. 19 
 
 poet, and leads him off into a kind of metaphysical 
 sky-dance, where he loses his follower in a tangled 
 web of iridescent gossamers. But we ought to 
 say that Appleseed thinks that he is a transparent 
 writer to all who have any power of spiritual vis 
 ion. Evidently the charge of obscurity was often 
 made against him during his career with some 
 emphasis, for he shows a certain sensitiveness to 
 the accusation in a number of his verses. No 
 doubt it is true that much depends on the internal 
 state of the reader who may happen upon difficult 
 passages; the mind is a moody Ariel, now out- 
 winging the swiftest hurricane, now drooping 
 helpless in a calm. Let me tell my experience. 
 I have understood subtle things in Appleseed and 
 then lost them, also I have not understood at first, 
 but afterwards I have gained my grip, and won 
 dered at my former obtuseness. On the whole, 
 the more recondite sayings of Appleseed must be 
 read in a reposeful, contemplative mood, if they 
 are to reach the mark. Yet he is not always Or 
 phic; he descends to the jest, the quibble and the 
 pun; I have caught him sporting with words and 
 their jingling consonances, and showing all the 
 playfulness of a child who rattles the changes on 
 his toy bells. 
 
 Veritably ragged are the rhymes in some places, 
 showing also here and there variegated patching ; 
 even beggarly they seem in outward appearance 
 at times, yet, if I mistake not, throwing out of
 
 20 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 their eves interesting flashes, radiant as those of 
 Italian mendicants. Appleseed, in some phase of 
 himself, is reflected in all these verses, being the 
 king of itinerant minstrels, who has to be clothed 
 by the elves and fed by the ravens. Home-spun 
 he naturally wears, even on Sunday; what use 
 has he for broadcloth? His images are largely 
 drawn from country life, from agriculture, the 
 primeval occupation of the race, which has 
 stamped itself most deeply upon human speech; 
 he does not even spare the barnyard with its 
 fowls and animals. Yet withal a mystical tinge 
 runs through his humble imagery laden with deep 
 questionings about man, immortality, God, and 
 the Divine Order. 
 
 And here we may insert by the way a fugitive 
 versicle in which Appleseed, probably defending 
 himself, has distinguished between a true and a 
 false freedom in things sacred : 
 
 In God's word be free ; 
 But no blasphemy ! 
 And reverence always have, 
 Without becoming a slave.
 
 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S SONG. 
 
 I love to plant a little seed 
 
 Whose fruit I never see ; 
 Some hungry stranger it will feed, 
 
 When it becomes a tree. 
 
 I love to sing a little song 
 Whose words attune the day 
 
 And round me see the children throng 
 When I begin to play. 
 
 So I can never lonely be, 
 - Although I am alone, 
 I think the future apple-tree 
 Which helps the man unknown. 
 
 I sing my heart into the air, 
 And plant my way with seed, 
 
 The song sends music everywhere, 
 The tree will tell my deed. 
 
 (21)
 
 22 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYME S. 
 
 25. 
 
 If thou wilt help thy brother find his place 
 
 Where best may fit his deed, 
 Upon this earth thou ownest heaven's grace, 
 
 Whatever be thy creed. 
 A second Providence thyself must be, 
 
 If ever the first thou wishest to see. 
 
 26. 
 Finger from finger 
 
 Must pick out the sliver; 
 Pray let it not linger, 
 
 Each has to be giver ; 
 One hand washes the other, 
 
 Both then can get clean ; 
 But if it refuses its brother, 
 
 Both stay dirty and mean. 
 
 27. 
 
 Would you strain the soul of petty pelf? 
 Always see the other as yourself ; 
 Old you are, still you must go to school 
 Every day unto the Golden Rule. 
 
 28. 
 To whom he knows he does a wrong, 
 
 The weak man is the foe ; 
 Dragging his own ball and chain 
 
 Through the world he has to go.
 
 BOOK FIEST. S3 
 
 29. 
 
 True to yourself, to others true, 
 This world is large enough for you ; 
 No doubt it may be very small, 
 But 'tis for you to make it all. 
 
 30. 
 Mounted in front on the steed sits Pride, 
 
 Who never will recognize; 
 But Defeat leaps behind and steals, too, a ride, 
 
 Then snatches away the prize. 
 
 31. 
 In life there is a double quest, 
 
 For thee as well as for the other : 
 First seek to make thyself the best, 
 
 Then seek to make as good thy brother. 
 
 32. 
 
 On Earth the straight way 
 Leads up to Heaven's gate-way; 
 The crooked by-path does not go there, 
 But winds around and round and round to 
 nowhere. 
 
 33. 
 You seek to find the worth of this man 
 
 By gathering all of his faults ; 
 Find a greater fault than that, if you can, 
 
 And Nature revolts.
 
 24 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 34. 
 If a true man happen to wrong thee to-day, 
 
 Thy silence is the best ; 
 The debt he will to-morrow repay 
 
 With triple interest. 
 
 35. 
 
 Thy transgression may a blessing prove, 
 If it lead thee unto love ; 
 But thou wilt become a very terror, 
 If thine own error chill thy heart to error. 
 
 36. 
 When I need to be consoled, 
 
 I comfort another; 
 I can best myself uphold 
 
 Supporting my brother. 
 
 37. 
 
 If thine own fault bring thee to regard 
 Faulty ones with looks less hard, 
 Thy demon thou hast made an angel, 
 And sin itself a true evangel. 
 
 . - 38. 
 Whenever thou dost err, 
 
 Though free to roam, 
 Thou art a prisoner 
 
 In thine own home.
 
 BOOK FIRST. 25 
 
 39. 
 
 This man, he may be very small, 
 Yet in him somehow is the All; 
 
 Seek not to destroy him, 
 To smaller let greater be true, 
 
 Try the more to rightly employ him, 
 Give him the best he can do. 
 If you smite the person into the ground, 
 In the mud to-morrow you will be found. 
 
 40. 
 Thine enemy's merit 
 
 If thou wilt recognize, 
 'Tis thine to inherit, 
 
 It has become thy prize. 
 
 41. 
 Of Egoism to complain 
 
 Is often Egoism too; 
 He is so selfish, is the strain, 
 
 I grant that bitter word is true ; 
 But then to say so of him is much worse, 
 It is more selfish, brings the deeper curse. 
 
 42. 
 The one who crushes the other 
 
 Even in open fight, 
 That man will have some bother, 
 
 Whatever be his might, 
 For he has wronged his brother, 
 
 Whatever be his right.
 
 26 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 43. 
 
 It were good never to fall, 
 If that were all ; 
 It were better not to have been, 
 Then there were no sin : 
 But the best is, follow God's plan, 
 And make yourself a man. 
 
 44. 
 Angel wings let grow from thy sin, 
 
 That out of itself it may soar; 
 Unwinged it sinks down into itself 
 
 Forever the dark Nevermore. 
 
 45. 
 For the highest good 
 
 Which thou canst perform, 
 Expect not gratitude, 
 
 But rather harm. 
 Still to thyself be true, 
 
 And manfully do it, 
 
 However the world may construe it ; 
 
 Just when thou art ready to rue it, 
 The Lord will hand thee thy due. 
 
 46. 
 " Truly wouldst thou spy 
 
 The road from strife? " 
 Daily must thou die 
 To have eternal life.
 
 BOOK FIRST. 27 
 
 47. 
 For the very best deed 
 
 That Time in his course has descried, 
 The One had to bleed, 
 
 Nay, had to be crucified ; 
 Of all the great doers he is the One ; 
 He sought no return for what he had done ; 
 His life he imparted for all those who slew him, 
 If they had been grateful, it could but undo him. 
 And so ingratitude is overruled 
 For those who are well schooled. 
 
 48. 
 
 Go to school, go to school 
 Daily to the Golden Rule ; 
 Change to gold the dross of life, 
 Turn to music inner strife ; 
 Go to school, go to school 
 Daily to the Golden Rule ; 
 You're the teacher and the taught, 
 You're the seeker and the sought, 
 You're the workman and the wrought, 
 Go to school, go to school 
 Daily to the Golden Rule.
 
 28 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 In the little song preceding this batch of ver- 
 sicles, we hear perhaps the key-note of Apple- 
 seed's rather unsettled, chaotic life chaotic at 
 least in outward appearance. He has to plant 
 and sing and always be on the move; providen 
 tially diversified must be such an existence. In 
 the little bits of rhymes there is observable a 
 strong altruistic tendency, which, though it may 
 look to the welfare of others, is very needful, he 
 intimates, for his own good also. Individuality, 
 if we catch his drift, is suicidal, unless it get 
 out of itself. Through the full recognition of 
 the brother do we attain for ourselves true self 
 hood. A kind of purgatorial tinge we feel here, 
 as if the solitary wanderer had been translating 
 Dante afresh into life. Pride must be purged 
 from the soul ; above all sins Envy must be 
 deracinated with the hot pincers of contrition ; 
 Revenge must not pursue ingratitude, or other 
 wrong. 
 
 It has fallen to the lot of the editor, since he 
 has been gathering these rhymes, to read certain 
 portions of his collection to small bodies of peo 
 ple in divers places throughout the land. Much 
 interest has been aroused concerning this Johnny 
 Appleseed, who he was, whence he came, wfrat 
 he did, and whither he has vanished. Often un 
 expected information would turn up in the
 
 BOOK FIRST. 29 
 
 audience, somebody present would make a new 
 statement about him, or bring to light a new 
 fact. Once, after listening to an hour's reading, 
 a venerable clergyman came forward and said: 
 " I saw Johnny Appleseed in Ohio during my 
 youth ; I have heard him play and sing; he was 
 regarded as harmless, but not exactly in his right 
 mind." On another occasion a gentleman de 
 clared that he knew where Johnny Appleseed 
 was buried. "I can point out the exact spot 
 where he lies in an adjoining county belonging to 
 the State of Indiana." Still another person, an 
 old farmer, asserted that he could show some 
 apple trees planted by the wanderer in the valley 
 of the Illinois. As far south as Tennessee the 
 man has been traced and as far west as the Rocky 
 Mountains. An aged soldier was sure that 
 Appleseed planted peach-trees in Kentucky : 
 "I have often seen them," says he, "in my 
 marches and eaten of their fruit in the wildest 
 places, when I was ready to drop with hunger 
 and fatigue." But the most surprising state 
 ment was made by a young lady in a mysterious, 
 provoking fashion: "Johnny Appleseed," says 
 she, " is still living, and I think I know where ; 
 at least I imagine I could find him." She would 
 tell nothing further, all the urgent words and 
 blandishments of the editor could not win from 
 her the secret, if she had any secret, and was not 
 indulging in a little trick of mystification.
 
 30 JOHNNY APPLE SEED 1 S RHYMES. 
 
 * 
 
 There is no satisfactory record of the time of 
 his death or even of his birth ; it is likely, how 
 ever, that he is not yet dead, though his grave be 
 sometimes pointed out. It seems certain that he 
 was alive during the late war, in which he must 
 have participated through several campaigns. 
 There are, in fact, numerous indications that he 
 survived the great national struggle, and con 
 tinued his perambulations through the land, since 
 the careful investigator will come upon traces of 
 him which are comparatively recent. Thus he 
 seems to flit about the Mississippi Valley, defiant 
 of time and place, now here, now there, like a 
 spirit disembodied, appearing for a while, then 
 vanishing into its invisible realm. One has to 
 think of the Wandering Jew, of a being driven 
 by some supernatural necessity to roam through 
 the world, homeless, undying, compelled to show 
 himself in certain localities on certain occasions, 
 and then to resume his endless pilgrimage. 
 
 The result is that some people have thought 
 that there was no such man, calling him a fiction, 
 a myth, unnatural, impossible. Others again have 
 strangely held that there was more than one such 
 man, in order to account for his longevity and ubi 
 quity. It is highly improbable, they say, that a 
 person of that kind should have attained to so 
 great an age, and have been in so many places. 
 How easy to transfer the same name to several peo 
 ple of like character and habits ! Then example
 
 BOOK FIB ST. 31 
 
 is always contagious, especially the example of an 
 oddity; doubtless the original Johnny Appleseed 
 bore a crop of imitators ; that indeed was one of 
 the seeds which he planted. Thus argue vehe 
 mently certain friends of the editor, adducing 
 similar instances from the world's storehouse, 
 ancient Greece; there were several heroes of the 
 name of Hercules, and several of the name of 
 Theseus; also there must have been more than 
 one Helen. How else can chronology be satis 
 fied? 
 
 All heroic deeds of a certain class are ascribed 
 by the people to one hero at last, without re 
 gard to time or place ; so those illustrious Greek 
 heroes, Hercules and Theseus, dropped through 
 hundreds of years out of their dim mythical 
 world into clear historic daylight, and appeared 
 in person at the battle of Marathon, visible to all 
 Athenian eyes on that occasion. But why go so 
 far back? Was not every anecdote, every keen 
 utterance of American mother-wit during the war 
 fathered upon Abraham Lincoln, the chief hero 
 of the epoch, by the popular mind? The one 
 great individual stands for many. Father Abra 
 ham became a kind of universal man to his peo 
 ple, mythical but very real, such as his old 
 Semitic namesake was and still is to the faithful 
 Hebrews. Thus the one Johnny Appleseed will 
 get, if he has not already gotten, the credit of all 
 Appleseeds planting apple-seeds in the west.
 
 32 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 In the mind of the editor a vivid impression 
 remains of the time when he in his boyhood first 
 saw the solitary wanderer coming into the village 
 dressed in plain clothes, shod with heavy shoes, 
 leaving his long hair to the sport of the breezes. 
 The man held under his arm a bag in which was 
 contained a fiddle, with: some other articles. He 
 had the appearance of dusty travel, a kindly 
 patient gleam fell from his face. He went to 
 the Public Square, the heart of the town, and 
 there he began to play and sing. The country 
 people would gather around him and sympathet 
 ically listen, while the villagers would stop a 
 moment and then pass on to their various occu 
 pations. He never asked for money, though he 
 would take some food and clothing for his imme 
 diate necessities. He seemed to need his own 
 song; he would sing out his mood, though 
 nobody listened, and he would stop with his 
 mood whoever listened. 
 
 Never will the present editor forget when he, a 
 little urchin, Handed to the old singer an apple, 
 which the latter ate with relish, and whose seeds 
 he carefully picked out and preserved, putting 
 them into an old wallet. What will the man do 
 with them, was the query present in the mind of 
 the boy, and is probably now nagging the mind 
 of the reader. 
 
 The name evidently comes from the habit of 
 going in advance of civilization and planting
 
 BOOK FIRST. 33 
 
 apple-seeds in suitable places, so that the emi 
 grant to the west would find the fruits of long 
 ages of cultivation growing in wild localities for 
 his special use, wherever he chose to settle. 
 What Johnny Appleseed's other name was, has 
 not been handed down, nor is the case worth in 
 vestigation. Have not the people of a great 
 tract of the earth's surface named him in accord 
 with his true vocation? Truly he is their off 
 spring in the best sense, having been baptized in 
 their spirit. Nor is it certain from what part of 
 the country he originally carne ; doubtless he was 
 born east of the Alleghenies. He bears plain 
 marks of the opportunities of civilization 
 in his maxims and in his songs ; he must have 
 read a good deal at some time, indeed that bag 
 of his always contained a book along with the 
 fiddle. Glimpses of Literature, of Philosophy, 
 of History we catch from his utterances ; in some 
 way he must have been dipped into the stream 
 of the world's culture. To be sure, the poet is, 
 first of all, the child of his time, he stands in 
 some deep unconscious relation to his age, which 
 has imparted to him its most distinctive traits 
 as his birthright. These traits he shows, he 
 lives, he sings; he does not need to get them 
 from books, indeed he cannot get them from 
 that source. 
 
 3
 
 BALLAD THE WERE- WOLF. 
 
 Woe, woe the merry marriage bell ! 
 
 And woe the wedding feast ! 
 The guests are stricken in a spell, 
 
 And stiff as stone the priest. 
 The bride is sitting in the hall, 
 
 The tears are flowing free, 
 And in their fall is heard her call, 
 
 Why comes he not to me? 
 
 " Lady he shall come back no more, 
 
 Thy bridegroom though he be, 
 He turns before the household door 
 
 And seeks the forest tree ; 
 With were- wolves he is hence to roam, 
 
 A were- wolf too is he ; 
 And wouldst thou win him to thy home, 
 Then take him kisses three." 
 (34)
 
 BOOK FIRST. 35 
 
 Loud laughs the wizard of the wood 
 
 Who makes the man a beast: 
 Thy lover champs his savage food, 
 
 That is his marriage feast." 
 Into the wood sped Isabel, 
 
 Though in her wedding dress ; 
 Soon there she found wild Lionel : 
 
 O Love, just one caress. 
 
 He tore from her the wedding trail, 
 
 And tramped it with a hiss ; 
 He rent in twain the bridal veil, 
 
 But through it felt her kiss ; 
 Thereat away, away he fled, 
 
 And vanished in a brake; 
 Ghost-like as though she might be dead, 
 
 She followed still and spake. 
 
 The were-wolf clawed her lovely face, 
 
 He bit her in the breast, 
 But still her bleeding lips had grace, 
 
 They kissed their very best; 
 Then deeper in the wood he hid, 
 
 He sought a lonely cave, 
 But could not of her eye get rid, 
 
 For still she saw to save.
 
 36 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 She pushed beneath the gloomy roof 
 
 Into the deepest cover; 
 He smote her with a Devil's hoof 
 
 And still she kissed her lover; 
 In joy she sang, in p;iin he sprang, 
 
 He hath the kisses three, 
 His cry through all the forest rang: 
 
 " Give back my blow to me. 
 
 My blow give back, my body hack 
 
 Till each vile drop be shed, 
 And with this Devil's hoof strike back 
 
 Till I shall fall down dead." 
 She stroked him fair, he sloughed his skin, 
 
 His long dog-teeth turned human, 
 His thickened lip soon flattened thin, 
 
 The were-wolf shows the true man. 
 
 She struck him not, he rueful stood, 
 
 Dissolved was soon the charm, 
 Undone the wizard of the wood 
 
 Who did the mighty harm. 
 Then out the wood the very path 
 
 That led him in he took, 
 But still a guiding hand he hath 
 
 As he the wood forsook.
 
 BOOK FIRST. 37 
 
 But see the face of Isabel ! 
 
 In it begins the morn, 
 The wound upon her breast is well, 
 
 Her body is new-born ; 
 The bridal veil hath not a rent, 
 
 The wedding dress is whole, 
 Her kiss is not with blood besprent, 
 
 She too hath won her soul. 
 
 And out the wood the happy pair 
 
 Move forth into the hall, 
 The wedding guests are still all there, 
 
 The priest wakes at their call ; 
 Off flies to Hell the magic spell, 
 
 The stony shapes take breath ; 
 Hark now the merry marriage bell ! 
 
 New life begins from death. 
 
 401G5O
 
 38 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 The question with my fair readers must be: 
 Will you take the kisses three to the were-wolf, 
 in case destiny might happen to point that way? 
 Suppose you should refuse, what then? Sup 
 pose Isabel had refused, then there would have 
 been no poem by Appleseed, in her honor, and 
 she would not have " won her soul." If Christ 
 had refused to be crucified, he would not have 
 been Christ. In sacrifice lies subtly ensconced 
 the blessing ; the immolation of self is really the 
 getting of selfhood. 
 
 Thus has Appleseed thrown his altruistic spirit 
 into a mythical form, he has taken one of the 
 earliest beliefs of the human race and strangely 
 transformed it into an utterance of universal 
 religion. Here he turns to the mythus as his 
 vehicle of expression. Very old is the faith 
 and it is not yet dead on this globe of ours 
 that man can be changed, can even change 
 himself, into animal. The folk-lore of all peoples 
 has in it a deep and strong undercurrent of bestial 
 metamorphosis, which is one of the subtlest links 
 connecting humanity with the lower orders of 
 creation. May we not be permitted to think 
 that this legendary strand reaches back to the 
 primitive man, perchance to the cave-dweller, 
 when he was next-door neighbor to the bear, the
 
 BOOK FIRST. 39 
 
 wolf, the fox, the bird in the tree-top? At 
 any rate the belief that he can drop back into 
 beasthood is stronger and more general than the 
 belief that he has risen out of the same into his 
 present condition. 
 
 Especially has the notion that the human being 
 can become a wolf been current among men. 
 Aryan mythology from India in the East to the 
 American backwoods is full of tycanthropy, of 
 tales about the wolf-man, his transformation and 
 his doings. Zeus changed Lycaon into a wolf, 
 and a whole people, the Lycians, seem to have 
 been sometimes regarded as wolf-men. We 
 all know who gave suck to Romulus and thus 
 furnished mother's milk to the Romans. Teu 
 tonic fairy-lore, largely born of the forest, has 
 carried the were-wolf over oceans and across 
 continents. 
 
 Such is the mythical stream which Appleseed has 
 here tapped and has caused to spout forth, like 
 a jet from a perennial fountain, into a poem, of 
 which the reader can drink according to his thirst. 
 The frame-work of the ballad seems to be a mar 
 riage, which is stopped by the evil-minded wiz 
 ard, who sends the bridegroom as a were-wolf 
 off to the forest, whence he is to be rescued by 
 the bride and restored to the family. Not an 
 easy task for poor human-nature is that of 
 Isabel; the editor has to ask himself: Wouldst 
 thou not have struck back with that Devil's hoof,
 
 40 JOHXNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 or at least have jawed back with some ripping 
 expletives, under such heinous provocation? Do 
 thy very best, thou wouldst have passively with 
 drawn, without blow or word, and have let the 
 fellow go to the Devil. Therefore key thyself 
 up to the deed of Isabel, which was an active 
 saving of the lost one, being free of all revenge, 
 even the revenge of indifference. 
 
 The more common form of the legend is that 
 the man takes the kisses three to the wolf- woman, 
 and thereby recovers his bride or his wife. The 
 woman, too, possessed of old the power of mak 
 ing herself a beast, and if she tries right hard, she 
 probably has not yet lost the gift. But Apple- 
 seed with a curious touch of chivalry, or rather 
 with an ideal reverence for pure womanhood, 
 which he has in common with Shakespeare and 
 the poets generally, seems to hold that the female 
 sex is made of better moral stuff than the 
 male, and is the true bearer of love and charity. 
 Accordingly he changes the legend, which he 
 treats as so much plastic material, to be kneaded 
 over and transformed till it become the incarna 
 tion of his idea.
 
 50. 
 
 Shalt have to take my verse 
 
 For better or for worse. 
 He that buys a field must buy many thistles, 
 He that buys a pig must buy many bristles, 
 He that buys a cow must buy too the bones, 
 He that buys a farm has to take the stones. 
 
 51. 
 " Appleseed, we like the sound, 
 
 Give us now another round." 
 If there be an egg, there must be a shell, 
 If there be a Heaven, there must be a Hell, 
 If there be a gander, there must be a hiss, 
 If there be a lover, smack ! there goes a kiss. 
 
 52. 
 
 " Why should he who buys 
 Have a hundred eyes, 
 While he who sells have none, 
 Or keep half open only one? " 
 Friend, vision is always blinded, 
 When it is so minded. 
 
 (41)
 
 42 JOHXNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 53. 
 Underwork is sad, 
 
 Give it stress; 
 Overwork is mad, 
 
 Make it less ; 
 Work alone is glad, 
 
 It will bless ; 
 Love has time to add 
 
 A caress. 
 
 54. 
 
 Though the day be dreary, 
 Appleseed, be cheery ; 
 Though under night may be the time. 
 The sun himself shall rise within thy rhyme. 
 
 55. 
 
 The bantam is not tall, 
 And his dunghill very small, 
 But up he rears his crest 
 And crows his very best. 
 
 56. 
 ** I like a simple strain, 
 
 In which the whole is plain, 
 
 Wagging its little tail of rhyme." 
 Yes, thy life can be made very simple ; 
 Hardly more than a little red pimple 
 
 Spotting the pock-pitted skin of old Time.
 
 BOOK FIRST. 43 
 
 57. 
 
 A neat little shoe O maiden, I spy it 
 
 A pretty ankle to boot ; 
 But wag not thy tongue don't try it 
 
 Show simply thy foot. 
 
 58. 
 
 When hoots the owl, 
 When wolves howl, 
 When horses neigh, 
 I know what they say ; 
 When doves are cooing, 
 They are sweetly wooing; 
 But when the donkey blows his horn, 
 Is he laughing, or is he forlorn? 
 Is it for love, or is it for corn? 
 
 59. 
 
 Good Heavens ! what effrontery 
 To call this a free country, 
 
 What malignity ! 
 I cannot do as I please, 
 Sometimes I have to sneeze, 
 
 I spite of my dignity. 
 
 60. 
 
 The master of our little school, 
 
 I tell you what, he is no fool, 
 
 Reading, writing, arithmetic 
 
 And he leaves not out his course the stick, 
 
 For he also has to train old Nick.
 
 44 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 61. 
 
 The mask of petty humanity, 
 I see, is often urbanity ; 
 
 Shall I tear the disguise? 
 Oh no, let it stay, 
 You can find a way 
 
 To make it help your eyes. 
 
 62. 
 
 Is it not a family rare? 
 See the fowls in the barnyard there, 
 Cackling and picking and scratching, 
 Laying and setting and hatching, 
 Each is doing a share. 
 
 If life be a barnyard, the home is a dunghill, 
 From whose top chanticleer doth his lung trill ; 
 
 But if the hen crow 
 
 The cock must know, 
 How at that moment to keep his tongue still ; 
 
 Then each little chick 
 
 Must scratch and pick, 
 
 With a pee, pee, pee, 
 
 And a tee, tee, tee, 
 Seeking its food, 
 So it is good. 
 
 Hark ! the old rooster is going to preach, 
 He mounts his pulpit what will he teach? 
 
 Kickory kee ! 
 See him rear up his neck and lung fill ! 
 
 Kickory kee I 
 Now strutting alone on the top of his dunghill.
 
 BOOK FIRST. 45 
 
 63. 
 
 If you seek to betray me, 
 Just give me a may -be 
 In order to stay me ; 
 If I walk with my feet on a ball, 
 How can 1 help. getting a fall? 
 But this is not all : 
 The soul's first lapse 
 Was a Perhaps. 
 
 64. 
 
 Shun, O Appleseed, the knotty question, 
 
 If you wish for good digestion ; 
 
 The chronic askcr avoid, 
 
 And eat your oyster unannoyed." 
 
 Nay, nay, I would rather be torn-tit, 
 
 And for hunger sing a little bit. 
 
 65. 
 
 If I can ever get done 
 The half of what I've begun, 
 I shall take a whole holiday, 
 And let old Time have his way, 
 Just to see what he'll do 
 When with him I'm through. 
 
 O 
 
 66. 
 He who seeks for pleasure 
 
 Seldom finds it; 
 But if he have no leisure, 
 
 He never minds it.
 
 46 JOHNNY APPLE SEED 1 8 EHYMES. 
 
 67. 
 
 The Orient stills, 
 The Occident thrills ; 
 SoftEurus sighing droops, 
 
 And makes the man feel smallest ; 
 But the West-wind puffing whoops 
 
 And makes the man feel tallest. 
 
 68. 
 He liveth like a fish 
 
 In his theosophic sea, 
 And seemeth to have no wish 
 Even himself to be. 
 
 Not a bound 
 Not a sound 
 Anywhere around. 
 If you fling him out to shore, 
 He gasps awhile and drops, 
 But at last h'e turns and flops 
 To make a dive into the deeps once more. 
 Methinks he hath a suttee's devotion, 
 Headlong he plunges into the Indian Ocean. 
 
 69. 
 
 Wind is no balm, 
 But worse is calm. 
 
 70. 
 
 Even to the mule 
 Man can sometimes go to school, 
 If the man too be a mule.
 
 BOOR FIE ST. 47 
 
 71. 
 
 Still I find ancient Cronus 
 
 Is well mounted upon us, 
 
 And rides us to death 
 
 Unless we take breath, 
 And smite him again with Olympian thunder. 
 
 Although we can't kill him 
 
 With deeds we may fill him, 
 And so down in Tartarus dark keep him under. 
 
 72. 
 
 A little too late is much too late 
 
 Though never so little; 
 It is the very nature of Fate 
 
 To lurk in a tittle. 
 
 73. 
 
 To one thought make your life rhyme, 
 This moment is all time. 
 
 74. 
 
 Better learn wisdom from man, the sage, 
 To a deed transferring it straight from his page ; 
 But if thou wilt learn it from none but the Gods, 
 Thou wilt feel thy blood trickle down under their 
 rods. 
 
 75. 
 
 The want of wisdom man seldom feels, 
 The want of money shows out at his heels ; 
 His sense seems never to be spent, 
 Though he has to beg you for a cent.
 
 48 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 PARABLE. 
 
 I came to the house of a lofty lord, 
 Who entertained me in a noble way, 
 And after dinner he began to say: 
 ' Appleseed, I cannot trust the word 
 Of any man who lives to-day. 
 
 Right in my house I often try 
 
 And every one is sure to lie." 
 
 Whereat he sadly fetched a sigh. 
 " This is the very place I seek, 
 
 The very place for me " said I, 
 " Here shall I rest a week, 
 The truth I can now speak, 
 The truth I can now act, 
 Truth has at last become a fact." 
 
 Then to the lofty lord the Truth I told, 
 I went not at it round about, 
 
 I gave it hot, I gave it cold, 
 
 And not a tittle did withhold, 
 
 The very Devil I did score and scout 
 Until the false I put to rout. 
 The lofty lord would now and then, 
 Well-pleased, cry, Bravo and Amen, 
 
 As long as I the other man did flout ; 
 
 But when his lie I even dared to doubt, 
 
 He kicked me out.
 
 BOOK FIRST. 49 
 
 Again we have clutched a handful of Apple- 
 seed's rhymes and let them fly at the reader, who 
 is to pick them up and put them together as best 
 he may. Let him select what suits him, and pass 
 the rest on, with due exercise of patience, which 
 noble virtue the editor takes for granted that he 
 possesses in full flower. But what a various and 
 variegated company of jingles ! The jig starts 
 with an old agricultural rhyme which the farmer 
 on the prairie may be still heard to croon in pen 
 sive moments. 
 
 He that buys a field must buy many thistles, 
 
 having inherited the line from ancestral England, 
 where it has not yet disappeared. Thus docs 
 Appleseed pick up ancient trifles and give them a 
 little twist of his own. After manifold dashes 
 and splashes he leaps a whole hemisphere and 
 touches antipodes, whence we get a little whiff 
 of far-off Indian Theosophy (No. 68). Then he 
 gives us a short plunge into Greek Theogony 
 in an allusion to primeval Cronos (the Time- 
 God), derived from ancient Hesiod (No. 71). 
 Orient and Occident (No. 67) come in for a 
 short contrast in their winds, which seem to be 
 their spirits (spiritus). So we skip over the 
 terraqueous globe in little jets of Appleseed's 
 fancy, which once in a while puts on its thousand 
 
 4
 
 50 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 mile boots and darts off like the herald Mercury. 
 An ethical vein, a philosophical vein may be 
 noted ; yea, an amatory streak once or twice 
 pops up to the surface unexpectedly ; who would 
 have thought that of Johnny Appleseed? But 
 thou, O reader, must find the unity in this 
 heterogeneous string, for the editor specially dis 
 claims having any such duty; still he hopes to 
 assist thee. 
 
 Nor can we help observing at times a certain 
 keen edge to the speech which once or twice 
 approaches downright satire. The editor has to 
 confess that Appleseed appears not so angelic in 
 this series as in the preceding altruistic mood. 
 Clearly a demonic strand is in him too, and can 
 not be altogether suppressed. That all satire is 
 begotten of the devil, has been proclaimed by a 
 good authority, namely a satirist, who knew well 
 his own ancestry. Thus we catch a glimpse of 
 the obverse side of Appleseed' s character, and 
 with wonderment behold there a small society of 
 imps at their old tricks, making sarcastic mouths 
 at the world, and flinging drops of vitriol on their 
 naked victims. This little impish set, dancing 
 forth with their grimaces in unexpected places, 
 adds to the versified confusion. 
 
 It will now be manifest to the sympathetic 
 reader that not the leastof the editor's difficulties 
 has been the classification of this huge wriggling 
 mass of rhymes, each one strongly asserting its
 
 BOOK FIEST. 51 
 
 own right to be, yet somehow wound and inter 
 twined in an undissoluble knot with all the rest. 
 The matter was enough to test any man's power 
 of arrangement, not to speak of that of Theo- 
 pbilus Middling, who holds himself not specially 
 gifted in the business of organizing chaos, pri- 
 mordially God's own work. Still something had 
 to be done. How shall these beads, angular, 
 many-hued, of hardest crystal often, be perfor 
 ated and strung on a common thread, which may 
 have the merit at least of holding them together 
 externally, if no wiser principle can be found? 
 
 At first we sorted them into separate piles 
 according to any similarity or contrast which 
 might strike the fancy, and having an ancient 
 heirloom in a mahogany bureau which contained 
 some sixteen small drawers, made and fitted with 
 great precision, we emptied them of their con 
 tents, and put these verses of Apple&eed into 
 them, labeling the same with various titles, as 
 ethical, humorous, fantastic, amatory, agricult 
 ural, uncertain, etc. But we soon noticed that 
 the verses would not lie still in their drawers, they 
 insisted on being changed about ; each one when 
 .fairly placed and named, wanted to be some 
 where else and sail into the world under a differ 
 ent label. One which showed a laughing face at 
 the first reading, would insist upon being treated 
 seriously at the second, and at the third would 
 have a still different look. Thus from the six?
 
 52 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 teen drawers, as from sixteen cradles, with six 
 teen hundred babies in them, proceeded such a 
 shouting, screaming, kicking, in fine such general 
 protest and disorder that a universal nursery of 
 that kind had to be given up. 
 
 Having thus failed in giving the rhymes a 
 modern and Christian baptism, with correspond 
 ing names, we betook ourselves to antiquity and 
 Heathendom, to that old Greek world whose 
 very words carry with them an indescribable 
 charm and impart a kind of classical fragrance 
 to things which may be otherwise not so classical. 
 We seized upon the Muses nine and the Graces 
 three ; but these were not enough, so we added 
 the three Fates, making fifteen in all, with one 
 drawer left for old Comus, the clown, necessary 
 even to this dignified company of antique celes 
 tials. Carefully was each verse examined again 
 and landed into its apartment, as the ancient 
 grammarian is reported to have done with the 
 sweet verses of Sappho. But the modern editor 
 soon found that he had a very different task in 
 having to handle the defiant stanzas of Johnny 
 Appleseed. The recalcitrant thuds of feet and 
 hands and chest began to be heard louder than 
 ever, rubbing, rasping, pounding against the 
 classic incarceration. Indeed, the clear, definite, 
 plastic outlines of Hellas would not answer at all; 
 Homer's world had become Appleseed's prison; 
 the plain of Troy could not be made to hold the
 
 BOOK FIRST. 53 
 
 Mississippi Valley. Each verse writhed and 
 wriggled and at last sprawled out of its drawer 
 which it deemed confinement, thus showing the 
 character of its maker, who is inherently a limit- 
 defying genius, with demonic flashes, capable of 
 getting lurid and sulphurous under sufficient 
 provocation. 
 
 Thus the second attempt had broken down like 
 the first ; into no modern system of drawers, how 
 ever nicely adjusted and labeled, would these 
 verses of Appleseed fit; just as little would they 
 permit themselves to be thrust into some antique 
 order or measure derived from classic Hellas. 
 Freedom they were going to maintain on this 
 illimitable western prairie, in true accord with 
 environing nature and the American people. 
 But meanwhile what is a poor editor to do, who 
 sees his organizing principle, the very banner 
 under which he intended to march to victory, 
 torn to shreds and flung to the winds? In a fit 
 of despair he seizes with one hand the curling, 
 squirming mass of papers, and with the other he 
 grasps for a darning-needle a very necessary 
 article in the editor's domestic economy, and al 
 ways kept ready for use; with the aid of this 
 weapon he gets them all strung on a string at 
 last, where they can kick and squirm in full free 
 dom, until they wriggle themselves into some kind 
 of order, in the reader's mind, if not in the pres 
 ent book. For the editor maintains that there is
 
 54 JOHNN* APPLESEED^ 8 RHYMES. 
 
 an inner unity of the spirit in these verses of 
 Appleseed, despite their outward atomic, mutu 
 ally repellent appearance. 
 
 Though we often speak of these verses as 
 song, it is not intended to affirm that they must 
 all be sung. Most of them seem to suggest a 
 kind of musical recitative, which hints of song 
 by means of rhyme, rhythm and tone. Some 
 verses may be called prose without injury to 
 their character ; others again start of themselves 
 to sing, even when read, though they be not 
 always nightingales; the greater part of them, 
 however, run ziz-zagou both sides of the border, 
 and at times straddle the fence along the boundary 
 line between the prosaic and poetical kingdoms. 
 Observe the beats in the line, two, three, four 
 and more, disporting themselves in full freedom, 
 like Appleseed himself. Some lines require a 
 careful reading, to make them metrical ; some 
 probably the author alone could read, and find 
 a satisfied audience of one. 
 
 The cultivated metrical ear often becomes 
 crystallized in its forms, which change to fetters, 
 so that it cannot get the free measure of the old 
 popular ballad, for instance. The limits of meter 
 must alf=o be transcended by the aspiring spirit, 
 and yet verse must remain truly metrical. 
 Appleseed had clearly the power of making the 
 ordinary English Iambs and of. meting them off 
 into so many feet; probably this was just the
 
 BOOK FIRST. 55 
 
 thing which he rebelled against, whereby he 
 made even his versification a part of his liberty. 
 Yet in this domain too I find Appleseed not cut 
 ting loose from the past, but carrying it with him 
 into his broad free prairie, and giving it a little 
 push forward into the future. 
 
 The alert reader, ever flying in advance of the 
 plodding commentator, has probably asked 
 already: Is there any chronological order trace 
 able in these verses of Appleseed? Very natural 
 is the desire to witness the growth of his art and 
 work in Time, the outer garment of all inner 
 development. The same question has risen in 
 the mind of the editor, alas ! without any adequate 
 answer. Repeatedly we have thought that we 
 had a clew, but on looking for it a second time, 
 it receded into the uncertain distance and finally 
 vanished altogether. Appleseed has much to say 
 about Time, the old Cronus, begetter and swal- 
 lower of all things, even of his own children and 
 of himself too ; but no verses celebrate epochs of 
 the wanderer's life, as far as we can discover. 
 
 Still we may be permitted to hazard a conject 
 ure. These rhymes are mostly the product of 
 middle age, if we consider their general tenor ; 
 they reveal a man who has not lost wholly the 
 zest of youth, yet has the contemplative cast of 
 advancing years. Indeed Appleseed shows that 
 he still can love, yet not with that unconscious 
 resignation of the young heart to its dearest
 
 56 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 object; but with a certain reflective, even humor 
 ous tinge, which hints, not one single-souled 
 all-abso'rbing passion, but many a tender expe 
 rience scattered along life's journey. The shadow 
 of half a century at least rests upon him, and 
 from it he cannot escape even in his most buoy 
 ant moods. One may notice that shadow 
 lengthening a little perchance, suggesting that 
 the man is traveling somewhat pensively toward 
 sunset. Old in some things, young in others: 
 let us halve the two, and take the golden mean 
 of years for our hero. 
 
 It is not pretended that the present is any 
 thing like a complete collection of Appleseed's 
 rhymes. He scattered them everywhere as he 
 did his pippins. All through the people from 
 the Alleghenies to the Kockies they are strown, 
 and perhaps beyond these limits they have been 
 borne by migration, by the winds and tides of 
 the great human ocean. Daily, sometimes hourly 
 he must have thrown them off, stimulated by ex 
 ternal nature and by internal need of expression. 
 I have no doubt that much is current under other 
 names which is really his ; for whatever passes 
 through the popular heart keeps changing its 
 shape, while remaining the same in essence. 
 
 Appleseed does not seem to have committed 
 much to writing, he was essentially an impro- 
 visatore ; but this does not imply that he did not 
 reflect, did not transform his lines, always
 
 BOOK FIRST. 57 
 
 seeking to improve them. We have no doubt 
 that much will come to light hereafter which can 
 be traced to him, or to his influence, or to his 
 followers. Still as far as we know, he has 
 founded no school of poetry, and has kept 
 himself free of apprentices in verse; no guild 
 of singers looks back to him as master. A man 
 of the people, singing for the people and his 
 own heart, he cared little for personal fame; his 
 individuality, though strong, and sometimes 
 recalcitrant, had a tendency to sink itself into 
 the vast folk-sea, out of which it still flashes in 
 spite of itself, a most singular unit among the 
 indistinguishable many. 
 
 Postscript. Naturally the written text of the 
 present book had to be put into the hands of 
 a publisher for inspection. The manuscript 
 traveled the confession might as well be made 
 just here through the offices of several pub 
 lishers, by most of whom it was instantly re 
 jected, always with the statement, however, that 
 " the work was one of transcendent merit," that 
 " the rejection of it did not proceed from any 
 lack of appreciation, but from circumstances 
 over which we have no control," that "it is our 
 fervent hope that the author may continue his 
 literary career, so auspiciously begun." What 
 author, Johnny Appleseed or ourselves? The 
 stereotype form of that answer in the present
 
 58 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 case evidently needed a little revision before it 
 left the office. 
 
 But there was one publisher, who from some 
 lurking curiosity or possibly from some accident, 
 set his taster to work on the manuscript. This 
 gentleman has jotted down his observations on 
 the margin in pencil; unfortunately they are some 
 times quite illegible on account of sudden omis 
 sions, gaps and abbreviations. Still whatever 
 remarks we can decipher we shall faithfully im 
 part to the reader in these notes, that he may 
 observe all the sheen and shadow which such a 
 book casts upon the human soul, even unto the 
 penumbra and total eclipse. 
 
 The taster has jotted down the following at 
 the conclusion of the present book: *'This work 
 gives fair promise of becoming a piebald mon 
 strosity, without head or tail. What a jumble 
 of trite sentences, inharmonious rhymes and 
 mad mysticism ! Strange that such an able 
 editor should be bamboozled by this rustic non 
 sense. We note specially the lack of all dignity 
 in these verses ; could anything be more silly 
 than that cock crowing kickori-kee upon his 
 dunghill? Then there is a total want of perspi 
 cuity in many stanzas; we have grubbed into 
 number of samples and could not find even a 
 fish-worm. The whole thing defies every rule of 
 good taste recognized among elegant writers. 
 Appleseed ought to stick to his apple-seeds and
 
 BOOK FIRST. 59 
 
 leave poetry alone. The public will not touch 
 such a nondescript hybrid. The Calvinistic 
 formula can be well applied to a book of this 
 kind: it was fore-ordained from the beginning 
 of the world to be damned."
 
 BOOK SECOND. 
 
 BALLAD. 
 
 Come down to my palace of water, 
 Spake the sea-god up from his pillow, 
 
 While the beautiful youth looked seaward 
 And heard the sweet voice of the billow. 
 
 Come down to my palace of water 
 And see the old Mother of Earth, 
 
 Thou wilt look in her magical mirror 
 That first was hung up at her hearth ; 
 
 House built of the drops of the ocean, 
 And deftly inlaid with his pearls, 
 
 While o'er it wind-woven the wavelets 
 Are softly now shaking their curls. 
 
 (61)
 
 62 JOHNNY APPLE SEED 1 8 EHYMES, 
 
 With gems the ceiling is dripping, 
 
 The Nymphs work in silence for thee ; 
 
 Step into my palace of water 
 Far down, down under the sea. 
 
 The pavement is strown with my diamonds, 
 My pictures are hung in the halls, 
 
 And all the bright shells of the ocean 
 Are cunningly built in my walls. 
 
 The mermaids are merrily singing, 
 
 While the west-wind is combing their hair, 
 
 Till it runs into thousands of ringlets, 
 And the sea-boys are shouting, How fair ! 
 
 Come down to my palace of water, 
 There sits the old Mother of Earth, 
 
 One look in her magical mirror 
 
 Renews the first thrill of thy birth. 
 
 I shall give thee a beautiful mermaid 
 In folds of the sea- wave dressed, 
 
 She will hold thee in tender embraces, 
 And rock thee to sleep on her breast. 
 
 I shall give thee a billowy cradle 
 Where love will enfold thee in rest, 
 
 And lull thee in shadowy fable 
 
 That sings of the Isles of the Blest.
 
 BOOK SECOND. 63 
 
 I go, said the youth to the sea-god, 
 
 And plunged in the wild waters' motion; 
 
 He was toyed by the tide for a moment, 
 Then sank as a drop in the ocean. 
 
 He fell like a drop on the ocean, 
 
 To the bottom he sank of the waters; 
 
 But he saw her, the primeval Mother, 
 And saw too her thousands of daughters. 
 
 For one altogether the fairest 
 
 He clutched in the might of his love, 
 
 Not unwilling she fled with her wooer, 
 And swam to the worlds up above. 
 
 They swam to the sheen of the sun-god 
 Away from the Mother of Earth, 
 
 And they bore the magical mirror 
 Renewing the joy of their birth.
 
 64 JOHNNY APPLE SEED 1 8 RHYMES. 
 
 In this ballad Appleseed floats off into his 
 mythical world, and there portrays a scene the 
 original of which we have sought for in vain. 
 Believing that the poet is heir to the treasures of 
 Time, the editor would fain find the first owner 
 and transmitter of these treasures ; but the task 
 is too great for the unfilled brain of Theophilus 
 Middling. Just here what a company of Gods 
 and mermaids and sea-boys along with the old 
 Mother of Earth somewhere down in the bottom 
 of the ocean ! Greek and Teutonic mythology 
 curiously blended : possibly the whole is Apple- 
 seed's own combination, set off with gleams of 
 romantic fancy. 
 
 Another question cannot be suppressed : What 
 is the underlying significance of this little phan 
 tasmagoric parade? Something more than what 
 is said on the surface cunningly beckons from 
 beneath these aqueous images water being 
 the formable, ever-forming, never-formed. It 
 must be confessed that Appleseed has a mystical, 
 yea mystifying thread woven through his being, 
 which he sometimes lets run its own course, 
 causing no little perplexity to the reader. For 
 ourselves, we have our guess as to who was this 
 youth sinking to the bottom of the waters," 
 and we think we know the beautiful daughter 
 whom he seized there and carried upward ; but 
 we shall be silent, we might be laughed at. 
 
 It is, however, only too plain to the reader that
 
 BOOS: SECOND. 65 
 
 the present editor is sorely in need of some help 
 in making this commentary. The thing continu 
 ally grows over his head, and he gets lost in the 
 very wheat-field which he started out to reap, and 
 is unable to harvest the grain. In the deep sea of 
 the Past, into which Appleseed keeps diving, the 
 editor often cannot touch bottom, and so fails to find 
 the pearl, or perchance the beautiful daughter, who 
 dwells down there in maidenly bliss at the home 
 of her mother, the old Mother of Earth. What 
 with oriental wisdom, Greek poetry and philos 
 ophy, medieval and modern lore, each of which 
 now and then sends a little flash into Appleseed' s 
 horizon, the burden has become too heavy for 
 these editorial shoulders. 
 
 To this confession, candid enough to soften 
 the heart of the most exacting reader, it may be 
 added that the above ballad is set in an amatory 
 frame-work, which is frequently employed by 
 Appleseed. The lover, after divine intercession 
 and persuasion, seeks and obtains the object of 
 his love, she being also a divinity of some kind. 
 But why this supernatural cast given to every 
 thing? Why these sea-marvels defying the 
 canons of common experience ? Again the editor 
 runs upon his limit. Permit him to ask one more 
 question : May there not be some ideal element 
 here which the real world cannot represent? 
 But enough of this riddle; here goes another 
 handful of versicles.
 
 1. 
 
 " Often in thy rhyme 
 I cannot catch the time ; 
 
 Give me, Appleseed, the beat." 
 To the heart of truth lay thine ear, 
 Its throb underneath thou wilt hear 
 
 Hidden in melody sweet. 
 
 2. 
 
 Old Homer shows a young face to the boy, 
 And gives him in love a beautiful toy ; 
 But to the full grown man 
 He reveals God's plan. 
 
 3. 
 Seize the present occasion, 
 
 Make the poem to fit : 
 To-day is the whole of creation, 
 
 Hath the eternal in it. 
 
 4. 
 
 The world is the source, 
 
 But the world is coarse, 
 He who handles must know it; 
 
 The world to refine 
 
 To a musical line 
 Is what makes the maker a poet. 
 (66)
 
 BOOK SECOND. 67 
 
 5. 
 
 Poesy seems to have come into straits, 
 Though thousands of suitors sing at her gates ; 
 In spite of addresses which to her are paid, 
 The Muse remains still a widow or e'en an old 
 
 maid. 
 Look around ! here is one wooer now merrily 
 
 fiddling, 
 
 You listen and find he only is piddling 
 With words which he brings at last to a tingle, 
 By tying their tail-ends into a jingle. 
 But hark ! Is that the soft sound of a flute? 
 Naught but the sickliest sweetish toot ; 
 Skimmed milk, though well sugared, makes na 
 ture revolt, 
 
 Even tears, to be tears, cannot do without salt. 
 List once more! a loud note in earliest morn ! 
 'Tis the poetical huckster blowing his horn. 
 I have heard him, too, higgle-piggle in verses, 
 Till Parnassus blazed forth a volcano of curses. 
 Yes, I opine, all men must agree, 
 Poesy now has gone on a nocturnal spree, 
 And is making out of itself a charivari, 
 As if it were going the tom-tom to marry ; 
 So let us dance to the beat of the big horse- 
 fiddle, 
 And sing to the tune of hey-diddle-diddle.
 
 68 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 6. 
 I see by all that the poets have sung, 
 
 Who stand at the top, 
 That the brain must also have some dung, 
 
 To raise its crop. 
 
 7. 
 
 Why he took the pen in hand 
 One could never understand; 
 When he set himself to think, 
 He never failed to spill the ink. 
 
 8. 
 That the sense be rendered worse, 
 
 And too the nonsense ranker, 
 We rhyme now all blank verse 
 
 To make it a little blanker. 
 
 9. 
 
 " How can you so gaily bestride 
 Your goose-quill, and merrily ride 
 In your writ, like unlimited Tartar, 
 
 By the scourge of the age unsmitten ? " 
 Friend, I too on a time was a Werther, 
 By the world-pain bitten, 
 But I left him unwritten. 
 Still in these verses, despite of all grace, 
 He m:iy pop up for a moment his face ; 
 But I turn him at once to a clown, 
 And so in the end laugh him down,
 
 BOOK SECOND. 69 
 
 10. 
 Let loose the Lord into the world, 
 
 That all may find who search; 
 Too long has he been kept a thrall 
 
 Inside the high-walled church. 
 And though the priests will fight 
 To keep him in their might, 
 To secularize the Lord 
 Is now the poet's word. 
 
 11. 
 
 It is just to see the bad, 
 
 Far juster to see the good ; 
 The first alone will make us mad, 
 
 The second binds our brotherhood. 
 
 12. 
 
 The knowledge that doth come with age 
 Should turn to wisdom of the sage ; 
 The sharper for wrong becomes our sight, 
 The sharper it should become for right. 
 
 13. 
 
 You can hear men pray, " More light," 
 While the Sun is shining bright; 
 What they need is, more sight. 
 Self must be seen as the one 
 That stands in the way 
 Of the heavenly ray ; 
 Egoism shuts out the Sun.
 
 70 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 14. 
 
 " That the world I can move, 
 To the world I can prove," 
 Said Archimedes, the clever ; 
 Then as he wrought, 
 Help he besought: 
 " Add, O ye Gods, to the strength 
 Of my body, the length 
 
 Of your lever." 
 
 The earth-ball rolled through the air 
 In sudden response to his prayer. 
 
 15. 
 
 Dost thou know 
 The Earth was once below, 
 And Heaven far above 
 
 Beyond the reach of knowledge or of love ? 
 But see the turn, another path is given 
 On which we go, 
 And now we know 
 The Earth is too in heaven 
 
 And cannot move from under its celestial dome, 
 While we can run away from home. 
 
 16. 
 
 Providence is a good business man, 
 Much besought, he will not change his plan ; 
 In his store, what you pray for, 
 If you get, you must pay for.
 
 BOOK SECOND. 71 
 
 17. 
 
 The Lord once gave a toy 
 
 To man while yet a boy, 
 
 Saying, " I shall give thee a sum to do ; 
 
 Thou knowest, one and one make two ; 
 
 A deeper mathematician thou must be, 
 
 For now thou art to see 
 
 How one and one make three, 
 
 And rising out of difference 
 
 There comes a higher sense 
 
 Which brings the world to unity." 
 
 18. 
 The tower of Babel 
 
 We are building anew, 
 No longer a fable 
 It rises to view, 
 
 No longer a means to scatter the race, 
 For now it unites them into one place ; 
 And the confusion of tongues is beginning to 
 
 preach 
 The oneness of man in the oneness of speech. 
 
 19. 
 
 A little more treasure, 
 A little less pleasure, 
 
 Friend, among thy assets; 
 You cannot make a loan, 
 But you must pay your own 
 
 the Lord demands his debts.
 
 72 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 20. 
 
 You may notice that Providence 
 Is himself at times on the fence; 
 But when once he gets down, he is strong, 
 For he takes the fence, too, along; 
 If afterwards any one wishes to ride, 
 There is no fence in between to bestride. 
 
 21. 
 
 Will Providence side with the biggest gun, I 
 wonder? 
 
 Then I defy him. 
 Or will the biggest gun as Providence thunder? 
 
 Then I shall try him ; 
 
 Heard in the roar of the battle fought and won, 
 Providence himself is the big gun. 
 
 22. 
 
 Tell me the way through the wood ? 
 The way to the good end is good, 
 The way to the bad end is bad, 
 Bad way to good end is sad, 
 
 Though at times thou have to take it ; 
 Good way to bad end is mad, 
 
 My advice is, always forsake it ; 
 Now even if thou hast well understood, 
 It is left to thyself to get out of the wood.
 
 BOOK SECOND. 73 
 
 Appleseed is not without many scattered 
 glances into his vocation whose ground of being 
 he seeks to explore and to set forth in little 
 flashes of insight. Evidently he has pondered 
 a good deal over verse-making, for he devotes to 
 it a number of lines, didactic and caustic, lauda 
 tory and damnatory, in which the keen-sighted 
 reader may detect Appleseed secretly writing 
 a commentary on Appleseed, and thus delve 
 underneath these notes of Theophilus Middling, 
 who by the necessity of nature skims along the 
 surface. 
 
 In the preceding batch of rhymes it will also 
 be observed that a biblical vein has begun to 
 show itself in the chanting wanderer; he turns a 
 Semitic stream into his garden, flowing with 
 parable, apologue, proverb, legend, all of which 
 have a certain Hebrew tinge derived from Sacred 
 Writ. But it is clear that Appleseed, though 
 possessing faith and religiosity, is not denomina 
 tional; he, with that limit-transcending spirit of 
 his, cannot bear the limits of a sect; he feels the 
 incarceration and starts at once to chafing against 
 and rattling the chains till he somehow slips them 
 over his hands and is off in a trice. Hence, too, 
 a decided freedom of thought and speech in his 
 utterances about holy things ; familiar and even
 
 74 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 humorous is at times his tone toward Providence 
 and toward the Holy Books of Scripture. At 
 this point we may catch one of his winged say 
 ings, as it comes floating hitherward like a 
 butterfly on its airy flight : 
 
 I like to read in the book of the Lord 
 
 By flashes of lightning, 
 Whenever I feel the tethering word 
 
 Around me tightening. 
 
 A moment's attention we would like to call to 
 the last verse (No. 22), in which the vexed 
 ethical question concerning the relation between 
 means and end receives a rhymed statement 
 from Appleseed. This question is fundamental 
 for comprehending the great poets, especially 
 Homer and Shakespeare. Ought Penelope to 
 have deceived the suitors? Was Ulysses justi 
 fied in his craft toward Polyphemus,Circe, in fine, 
 toward the whole world? Everywhere in the 
 works of Shakespeare rises the interrogation: 
 Does the end ever justify the means? One play 
 (All's Well That Ends Well) is a kind of 
 dramatic teeter, up and down go the two sides in 
 a see-saw, and at the termination they are left 
 hanging in a dubious equilibrium. So Appleesed 
 takes his tilt at the troublesome question. 
 
 We think that we have at this juncture a piece 
 of good news to impart to the reader. At any 
 rate we must record the fact as an unusual stroke
 
 BOOK SECOND. 75 
 
 of good fortune for the editor of the present 
 volume. He had been reading in a prairie town 
 some of these rhymes of Appleseed, accompany 
 ing them here and there with a few illustrative 
 remarks, when' a gentleman in a well-worn coat, 
 with a high forehead and a somewhat weary eye, 
 pushed through the audience at the conclusion of 
 the remarks, and spoke with features lighting 
 up from a pale, ashen background: " I have 
 some of Appleseed's poems; would you like to 
 see them?" " Assuredly; that is what I am in 
 search of.'* He further stated: " I have made 
 some comments on a number of them; the entire 
 manuscript I place at your disposal." 
 
 This obliging gentleman was none other than 
 the celebrated Professor Reginald Brazennose of 
 the University of Hardscrabble, a man of pro 
 digious learning, who held the chair of Philology 
 in said institution. What obligations the editor 
 is under to the erudite professor, the rest of 
 the present book will show on many a page. 
 Inquiry was duly made about the scope and pur 
 pose of such an unusual enterprise, wherein we 
 shall let the professor speak for himself. 
 
 "I shall long keep in memory," says he, 
 "that morning when 1 went out to the college 
 campus, and there found a flock of students 
 gathered around an old man who was play 
 ing a violin and singing snatches of verses to 
 the vibration of the strings. I took him at once
 
 76 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S BHYMES. 
 
 for a crank, tramp, bummer or beggar; but I 
 soon noticed that he never asked for alms, and 
 seemed to show an inner delight in his own 
 music; in fact I came to the conclusion that he 
 was singing for himself more than for us. I 
 heard him chant one of his refrains and in an 
 instant I thought of my favorite Horace ; soon 
 after he alluded by name to Homer in one of his 
 quatrains, whereat I inferred that there must be 
 something more in the man than what appeared 
 on the surface. 
 
 ' A day or two later I found him again, and 
 recollecting my former impression, I invited him 
 to my room that he might see my library. He 
 glanced over a number of the books, I showed 
 him some rare old editions of the classics, but he 
 seemed to get a headache, he said the air of the 
 library stifled him, and forth he went. But on 
 parting I asked him to give me certain verses of 
 his which I had heard and which appeared to be 
 derived from the ancients, inasmuch as my curi 
 osity was aroused at finding traces of learning in 
 such a wandering mendicant, for such he seemed 
 in outward look. He said that he rarely or 
 never committed anything of his to writing ; it 
 came with the mood and went with the mood. 
 Still I succeeded in catching many a line on the 
 wing and set it down upon paper." 
 
 It seems that Appleseed remained in the vicin 
 ity of Hardscrabble a longer time than usual, be-
 
 BOOK SECOND. 77 
 
 ing detained by the students, some of whom were 
 strongly attached to him by his unique expe 
 riences, by his curious fragments of the world's 
 lore, and by his stray notes of song. One of 
 them afterward told the editor that the old singer 
 " had the power of giving them some relief from 
 the strait-coat of academic training, and of bring 
 ing into their lives the broad sweep of the prairie 
 and the free air of Heaven." 
 
 The Professor continued his account of his re 
 lations with Appleseed as follows : "He stayed 
 in our place several weeks, vanishing at times for 
 a day or so, but re-appearing with new vigor and 
 new verses. I kept jotting them down out of 
 curiosity, till quite a little collection, amounting 
 to three or four dozen, had grown on my hands in 
 a random sort of fashion. Reading over these 
 one day, I observed a certain connection with the 
 past ; they assumed the form of fleeting shreds 
 of old sentences which I had seen in print, and 
 which still flitted enticingly through the halls of 
 memory. I took down my volumes and began 
 to explore with some degree of thoroughness. 
 What was my surprise ! I had previously 
 noticed coincidences with this and that 
 poet of antiquity but I regarded them as 
 merely accidental ; now, however, I found a 
 chain of thoughts, images, even words running 
 back to Europe, to Greece, even to the Orient. 
 Where could the old fellow have learned all
 
 78 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 that? In what university, I wonder? I became 
 much interested in the man. I went out to 
 search for him in order to keep him with me till 
 I had extracted still larger stores of his erudi 
 tion. Alas! too late ! he had departed, and has 
 not since returned." 
 
 Thus our worthy Professor laments the loss of 
 bis opportunity, and we cannot help lamenting 
 with him. He evidently intended to make a 
 complete edition with learned annotations. Still 
 he was not daunted, with eagerness he grasps for 
 what floating gossamers he can find in the sun 
 light of Hardscrabble. Thus he continues : 
 " After the first discouragement which came 
 from the thought that the spirit had been at my 
 door and I had not recognized it, I went forth 
 and sought those students with whom Appleseed 
 had been in closest intercourse. From them I 
 obtained some copies of verses which were not 
 in my store, and gathered little bits of informa 
 tion concerning the man himself ; moreover I 
 could not help noticing what an influence he had 
 exercised upon the students, sometimes not in 
 harmony with university precedents. 
 
 ** The desire became so intense in me that, 
 during the summer vacation, I resolved to follow 
 Appleseed among the people and to pick up his 
 rhymes wherever I might find them. I often 
 crossed his track in the country, though I could 
 not follow him on account of his meandering
 
 BOOK SECOND. 79 
 
 trail, which seemed frequently to turn back upon 
 itself before taking a fresh start. After gather 
 ing a few versicles from an old farmer who had 
 heard and treasured them, I gave up the pursuit, 
 and came back to my library, which I had sorely 
 missed. Here among my books I find many 
 vestiges of this humble versifier, which seem to 
 run through the ages and connect them together. 
 Thus learning links man with his past, and uni 
 fies the products of all time." 
 
 It is manifest from these remarks that Profes 
 sor Brazennose is an enthusiastic lover of his 
 profession, and is ardent in his zeal for illus 
 trating Appleseed's life and work. He is the 
 erudite man whose delight is to gather knowl 
 edge by means of the written word transmit 
 ted from periods long since vanished. We may 
 expect, therefore, that he will bring his special 
 skill to bear upon the present commentary by 
 way of explaining obscure allusions and throwing 
 the light of his vast information upon recondite 
 passages. Already the editor feels a great 
 weight lifted from his shoulders. If he can 
 bring it about, the Professor will accompany us 
 henceforth unto the end.
 
 23. 
 
 " Scholar, tell me, what is your college? " 
 " That of matutinal knowledge; 
 
 The sunrise, if I can hold, 
 
 How can I ever grow old? " 
 
 24. 
 
 " How shall the world's youth 
 Become the man's truth?" 
 On the first of May 
 
 When the spring has begun, 
 At the peep of day 
 
 From the eye of the Sun, 
 Out on the hills 
 Whence cometh the rills, 
 Wash in the dew new-born, 
 See in the sheen of the morn, 
 When the sources of being 
 Flow into the fountains of seeing, 
 And the birth of light 
 Is the beginning of sight. 
 Then is the macrocosm overwrought 
 Into the microcosm's thought, 
 And the hapless halved soul 
 Becomes a healed whole. 
 (80)
 
 BOOK SECOND. 81 
 
 25. 
 Minerva in words of the sages I sought, 
 
 And found her there, at least so I thought ; 
 Still I know not what she had stated 
 
 In spite of my years, 
 
 Till her wisdom she illustrated 
 
 By a box on the ears. 
 
 26. 
 Myself I commanded, 
 
 But I did not obey; 
 Look ! Here I am stranded, 
 
 For how can I get now away ? 
 
 27. 
 Borrow all thou canst from the Past, 
 
 To the Future's account set it down 
 Then thy funds will certainly last 
 
 Till thou get out of town. 
 
 28. 
 If I could my own pupil be 
 
 When I once more return, 
 And teach myself the ABC, 
 
 Then might I something learn. 
 
 29. 
 Read this wisdom writ on my back with a 
 
 scourge 
 
 In red letters of blood, 
 And thou wilt know the Doctor's omnipotent 
 
 purge 
 
 Which turns evil to good. 
 6
 
 82 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S BHTMES. 
 
 30. 
 
 Of thine own prison wouldst be freed? 
 Get thee rid of thy narrow deed. 
 For the soul's fetter which is most strong, 
 Is to have done a wrong. 
 
 31. 
 
 If the sower sows his hate, 
 His harvest will be great ; 
 The very weeds no longer stop, 
 But help the crop. 
 
 32. 
 Why laughs the man beyond his measure, 
 
 So very loud, so very? 
 He is not happy in his pleasure, 
 
 He is too merry. 
 
 33. 
 The air we breathe, it will not lie, 
 
 The braying of the poet's ass, forsooth, 
 It will not turn to melody, 
 
 Or call that sound the Muses' sigh: 
 The air we breathe has in it truth. 
 
 34. 
 Thou art not yet so very old, 
 
 Yet far too old to blame ; 
 First let thy hottest word grow cold, 
 
 And then go on the same.
 
 BOOK SECOND 83 
 
 35. 
 
 He who befouls himself with ink and pen, 
 Will always have to wear the blot ; 
 No crystal stream from mountain glen 
 Will ever make him clean again, 
 E'en though his body die and rot ; 
 And so he wanders down the distant ages 
 With that ugly stain upon his pages. 
 
 36. 
 
 " The truth 1 say twice, whatever it be ; 
 He is a liar, a liar is he." 
 Sad it is for him to be so, 
 Sadder yet for thee to say so. 
 
 37. 
 
 " One hundred votes to one, just see, 
 Against thee have been thrown ; 
 Now surely thou art not thine own." 
 Nay, nay, I still belong to me, 
 And I am the majority 
 If I but stand alone. 
 
 38. 
 
 "Tell me if you can, 
 Who is the man 
 That is able to make 
 The greatest mistake ? " 
 Well the answer scan : 
 'Tis the greatest man.
 
 84 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 39. 
 To be the devil of Christendom 
 
 Satan must do as Christians do ; 
 The Jew is a Gentile in Mormondom, 
 
 If he be not a Mormon too. 
 
 40. 
 
 What is Gentile, what is Jew? 
 Seek to unknow it, if you ever knew. 
 
 41. 
 Thou must be what thou art, 
 
 Thou canst not be another, 
 But thou wilt show thy highest part 
 
 By helping thy brother be brother. 
 
 42. 
 If yourself you do not obey, 
 
 You are of rebels the first; 
 If yourself you do not command, 
 
 You are of slaves the worst. 
 
 43. 
 
 I must forgive your wrong, forget it too, 
 But the one who should not forget it, is you, 
 
 44. 
 Some think that if they decry you, 
 
 They make themselves sought; 
 But if they in blindness deny you, 
 
 They make themselves nought.
 
 BOOK SECOND. 85 
 
 45. 
 
 If it be dry to-day, 
 To-morrow will be the other way ; 
 If the season be too wet, don't fear 
 That the world is getting out of gear; 
 The account will be squared next year, 
 Or perchance year after next. 
 So hearken to the ancient text : 
 
 Be it dry or be it wet, 
 
 The weather '11 always pay its debt. 
 
 46. 
 When the wind blows out the North, 
 
 Within I seek the hearth; 
 When the wind blows out the South, 
 
 I shrivel with the drouth ; 
 When the wind blows out the East, 
 
 I feel myself the least ; 
 When the wind blows out the West, 
 
 I know I am the best. 
 Let every wind now blow, blow, blow, 
 Round all the world I go, go, go. 
 
 47. 
 
 If the Heavens fall, 
 That hurts all ; 
 If you do the right, 
 That helps them stand in might; 
 If you do the right with love, 
 The Heavens will surely stay above.
 
 86 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 48. 
 
 Yesterday is but a thought, 
 See it clear, with wisdom fraught ; 
 Up ! to-day must be a deed, 
 Fill it full of thy highest creed ; 
 Only a hope or a fear is to-morrow, 
 Now of its store but a peppercorn borrow 
 
 49. 
 If you hear 
 
 A clap of thunder 
 
 On a winter's day, 
 Do not fear 
 
 Or stop in wonder, 
 But to the rumble say 
 Summer is not far away. 
 
 50. 
 
 Still the old question 
 Causes the time's indigestion: 
 * When Adam delved and Eve span, 
 Who then was gentleman?" 
 I don't care ; 
 Leave the matter to the ancient pair. 
 
 51. 
 Tell me not that he limits hath, 
 
 Show me not his compass small, 
 I know within his narrow path 
 
 He can be all.
 
 BOOK SECOND. 87 
 
 52. 
 An old saying doth say, 
 
 He cannot command 
 Who never has learned to obey. 
 
 Let the saying stand, 
 As well it may. 
 
 But I had to travel the < fher way, 
 I never knew how to obey 
 
 Till I had learned to command. 
 Whoever unto himself is a pander, 
 Can neither soldier be nor commander. 
 
 53. 
 
 It is written plain in the Book of Fate, 
 That the Great rises up with the Great ; 
 
 And thus by its own 
 
 It always is known. 
 
 But the Great will shrivel at once to a tittle, 
 If the soul that sees it can see but the Little ; 
 
 Until by itself it be sized, 
 
 It never is recognized. 
 
 54. 
 For others to recognize you, I know, 
 
 Is your just fruition ; 
 For you to recognize others, though, 
 
 Is your best recognition.
 
 88 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 Very helpful is now the company of Professor 
 Brazennose, whose comments upon some of the 
 foregoing passages we shall cite : " When Apple- 
 seed speaks of matutinal knowledge, he shows 
 some acquaintance with the Schoolmen, whose 
 cognitio matutina plays a somewhat important 
 part in medieval philosophy, as it came from the 
 brain of Aquinas. The German mystic, Jacob 
 Boehme, weaves also a streak of morning-red 
 through the darkness of his writings. It will be 
 recollected that Faust bids the scholar to rise 
 and bathe in the rejuvenating influences of the 
 dawn. Appleseed in these two verses (Nos. 23, 
 24) touches upon an old conception, probably 
 connected with the primitive worship of the Sun, 
 which goes back to very early Aryan beliefs. 
 The mighty luminary seems to hold the life-giving 
 power, putting to sleep and waking to fresh 
 vigor all nature. Also a healing gift it possesses, 
 making whole " the halved soul," afflicted with 
 the deep dualism of existence, and cut to pieces 
 by the analytic dissecting knife of the present 
 time. In another brief lay Appleseed has ex 
 pressed his strong affinity with the Sun." 
 
 The Professor in the course of his remarks, 
 gives some explanation of other verses: "It is 
 manifest that here (No. 47) an old maxim is 
 transformed into new meaning. Fiat justitia, 
 mat coelum has always been a bulwark for a cer-
 
 BOOK SECOND. 89 
 
 tain class of minds. Hegel, however, seems not 
 to have been enamored of the maxim; he says: 
 Fiat justitia ought never to have mat coelum as 
 its consequence. In like manner Anacharsis 
 Clootz thought that liberty was so precious a 
 boon that the whole human race should be sacri 
 ficed in order to obtain it ; where, then, would be 
 liberty? And if the Heavens fell, where would 
 be justice? 
 
 " Another saying of historic significance is 
 touched upon in the delving of Adam and the 
 spinning of Eve (No. 50). It arose when the chief 
 argument for any important proposition had to 
 be derived from Scripture. A democratic or 
 even socialistic tinge we note in it ; the primitive 
 condition of man was equality in labor. Many 
 forms of the saying were current in Europe. 
 The Emperor Maximilian's jester is declared to 
 have made the German couplet, which has a simi 
 lar purport. Burke has cited the allusion to a 
 sermon by one John Ball, a priest who preached 
 from this text to Wat Tyler's rebels at Black- 
 heath. We find the same thought in a Latin 
 couplet which is supposed to belong to the 
 fourteenth century : 
 
 Cum vanga quadam tellurem foderit Adam, 
 Et Eva neusfuerat, quis generosus eratf 
 
 Distinctions of birth resting upon land have 
 been swept away in our country, but a far
 
 90 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 deeper land question has arisen, and is agitating 
 the minds of the people." 
 
 The Professor goes on to explain the signifi 
 cance of Minerva (No. 25) and other classical, 
 as well as scriptural and historical allusions, but 
 want of space compels us to leave out his 
 remarks. 
 
 55. 
 " Why in new verses dost thou repeat 
 
 What the old sa^es have said? 
 
 o 
 
 Dost thou not know thou art bringing thy meat 
 
 From the feasts of the dead? " 
 Sad friend, be glad, in reproof thou has told 
 Just my desert in renewing the old. 
 Wisdom, I find, has ever been one, 
 
 Though it may show all changes, 
 
 As round the world it ranges ; 
 
 'Tis like the ever-patient Sun, 
 
 Repeating over and over his ray, 
 
 Outpouring each moment the golden day, 
 
 Else even the wise man would wander astray, 
 
 And stumble about in the night, 
 
 For if he have no light 
 
 What is the good of his sight? 
 
 That the sun rose long ago, 
 
 I well can imagine, is so; 
 
 That he often has risen since 
 
 We have a goodly number of hints ; 
 
 But now, for thy souls's sake, pray 
 
 May be rise again in new splendor to-day.
 
 BOOS: SECOND. 91 
 
 56. 
 
 Many a woman and some few men 
 Have wished to make me over again, 
 And do aright what the Lord hath done amiss ; 
 I should be that and I should be this, 
 
 Always what 
 
 I am not 
 
 And never can be, 
 Else I were not the owner of me. 
 
 Truly it is very sad, 
 
 Whatever is of me, is bad, 
 
 Or hid under one big blot, 
 
 And all that is seen of me is the spot. 
 
 Not what I am, but what I am not, 
 
 If you are eager to seek, 
 
 Every day of the week 
 
 You may find much evil ; 
 
 Not where the Lord is, but where he is not, 
 If you carefully search, 
 Even inside of the church, 
 
 You will find the Devil. 
 
 57. 
 
 Because it fits snugly 
 The shoe is so ugly. 
 
 58. 
 
 Whether or not you have his name, 
 The man remains the same; 
 If his deeds refuse to tell him, 
 The alphabet will never spell him.
 
 92 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 59. 
 
 " If thou art the castle's warder, 
 Tell me, what here is the order? " 
 If the king gets a blow, we all get a lick ; 
 If there be no dog, the cat gets a kick ; 
 If there be no patient, the doctor gets sick; 
 But when the doctor must take his own dose, 
 The circle is full, and that is the close. 
 
 60. 
 When I turned to the Future my sight, 
 
 I was shut out by a cragged ledge ; 
 When I looked to the Present for right, 
 
 I was shut in by a jagged hedge ; 
 When I looked to the Past for a light, 
 
 Darkly I stood on a ragged edge ; 
 When I stepped without looking at all, 
 That moment began I to fall ; 
 But as I fell, to look still I tried, 
 And so I came out on the other side. 
 
 61. 
 The eye was begotten a sun-seer, 
 
 Else it could never see the light ; 
 The soul was begotten a God-seer, 
 
 Else it could never see the right.
 
 BOOK SECOND. 93 
 
 Here we see Appleseed in a certain manner 
 putting on his armor and defending himself. 
 He is aware that wisdom is as old as the world, 
 is indeed but the right knowledge of the world, 
 and cannot vary much in substance, though its 
 forms show great diversity. Originality consists 
 not in novel caprices, but in giving new life to 
 old truth. Professor Brazennose, himself a dil 
 igent student of the ancient sages, has expressed 
 strong approval of these thoughts of Appleseed 
 (No. 55). A learned man will naturally see 
 much in the lore of the Past. 
 
 If we catch the spirit of the succeeding lines(No. 
 56), there is atone of impatience in them, if not 
 of downright vexation. Some people had wished 
 to make Appleseed over again preposterous 
 thought ! Probably in pure kindness of heart they 
 desired him to be something else not this home 
 less wanderer, not this planter of seeds, not this 
 singer of versicles. But on the whole, it is bet 
 ter to take him as he is, and not as he is not. 
 
 So at this point he gets a little splenetic at some 
 good, well-wishing persons, and affirms strongly 
 his right of individuality. Had he been other 
 wise, let the sympathizing reader reflect that 
 these rhymes would never have existed. 
 
 Perhaps of all the quatrains composed by Ap-
 
 94 JOHNNY APPLE SEED 1 8 EHTMES. 
 
 pleseed the last one here (No. 61) was his favor 
 ite. It is known that he repeated it often, 
 wrought it over into diverse shapes, and even 
 would add sometimes a word of comment a 
 thing which he usually disdained. The result is 
 that more copies of this verse have reached the 
 editor than of any other. We have heard it re 
 hearsed orally, we have seen it written in various 
 localities, it has also been printed. Naturally so 
 many different means of transmission have led to 
 differences of text ; it has had the fate of the 
 manuscript of classical authors. For example 
 some copies read created instead of begotten in 
 the first line, and we have seen two instances in 
 which the sentence starts as follows : If the eye 
 had been, etc. Other small diversities of lection 
 we have found current among the people, who, 
 while preserving, change all that they touch. 
 Professor Brazennose, with the painstaking ac 
 curacy of the scholar, has noted all these various 
 readings, but we shall have to pass them by in 
 the presence of weightier matters. 
 
 As might be expected, the commentators have 
 pitched upon these four lines as a great field 
 requiring the most elaborate fertilization through 
 the manure of erudition. In the form of jottings 
 and marginal glosses we possess the remarks of 
 several anonymous interpreters who have been 
 stirred in the depths by the thought which they 
 have drawn out of this simple solitary verse.
 
 BOOK SECOND. 95 
 
 First we shall hear our own Professor Brazen- 
 nose, who appears to have felt the Platonic 
 element, which certainly tinges the lines: 
 
 " We read in the expression a distinct remi 
 niscence of the philosopher of the Academe who 
 has dwelt with so much beauty and force upon 
 the idea which always lies back of every mani 
 festation of the sensible world. Particularly a 
 passage in the Sixth Book of the Republic, which 
 speaks of vision in connection with the sun, 
 would seem to have set the thought spinning on 
 its way down Time. More especially, however, 
 do I recall the words of Plotinus, the great pillar 
 of Neoplatonism, in the Enneads (Book I. 6, c. 
 9) where he discourses of the Beautiful: " The 
 eye would never have seen the sun, unless it had 
 been born sun-seeing (S^:oe:<5V), nor would 
 the soul see the Beautiful, if it had not been 
 created beautiful." Appleseed's lines seem 
 hardly more than an adaptation of the words of 
 that mystical Egyptian, who united in himself 
 Hellenic, Jewish, and Christian lore, as well as 
 inspiration from the Sphinx, under which he 
 was born. The question rises before me, Did 
 Appleseed know Greek? 
 
 " The same thought," continues our Professor, 
 " may be traced through Latin literature, espe 
 cially in the poets of a Platonizing turn. What 
 else is the meaning of Virgil's well-known Est 
 Deus in nobis? I cannot forbear citing two
 
 96 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 lines from Manillas which show the like im 
 press : 
 
 Quis coelum possit nisi coeli munere nosse, 
 Et reperire Deum, nisi qui pars ipse Deorum 
 est? 
 
 It is the gift of heaven to be able to see 
 heaven, and only he can find God who shares in 
 God. Now the question rises, did Appleseed 
 know Latin?" 
 
 We cannot follow the Professor further in 
 tracing this "Platonic idea" down through the 
 ages. He shows it re-appearing in the grand 
 army of Platonizers everywhere and at all times, 
 a most distinguished set of men bearing the ideal 
 palladium and transmitting it to the future. 
 There is the Platonic contingent of the Christian 
 Fathers, the Platonic renascence of Florence 
 in the 15th century, of Cambridge in the 17th, 
 of Germany in the 19th; especially there is the 
 American renascence of Plato on the soil of Illi 
 nois, with headquarters at Jacksonville, under 
 the leadership of Dr. H. K. Jones, which our 
 Professor very properly wheels into line with 
 the great world-movement springing from the 
 Attic philosopher. All of these are made to 
 perform some duty by way of illustrating the 
 verse in hand. 
 
 Now the strange fact occurs that some 
 marginal comments which take a different line 
 have come by chance into the possession of the
 
 BOOK SECOND. 97 
 
 editor. They are by an anonymous hand, not 
 quite as definite as we would like them; but as 
 they are written, not by an enthusiastic Platonist, 
 but by an ardent Aristotelian, they ought not to 
 be suppressed. After an undecipherable sentence 
 which, toward the end, speaks of " the twofold- 
 ness of the Divine, its innerness in the man, and 
 its outerness in the world," our nameless 
 paragrapher jots down his words more distinctly: 
 "It is really Aristotle who starts this thought on 
 its future career, concentrating it into one pithy 
 utterance : 'H ^tfaffn; TOO op.oioo TU> ofj.otui. Here is the 
 keen sword-thrust of the Stagyrite, the most 
 penetrating as well as the most sweeping spirit 
 born in Time. ' The like is known by the like' : 
 thus the two sides of all possible knowledge are 
 presented, reaching from man up to God." 
 
 We shall omit certain violent laudations of 
 Aristotle in which the writer chooses to indulge, 
 and give one of his later remarks: " The School 
 men inherited the same thought from their 
 mighty master, and Aquinas, greatest of 
 Theologians, is full of it. Says he in his 
 ISumma: There must be a similitude of the 
 thing known in the knower as if it were a certain 
 form of himself (quasi qucedam forma ipsins). 
 So also in many other passages of his work. 
 From Aquinas the thought passes on to Dante, 
 who in a hundred places poetizes it, making it 
 the spiritual bond between himself and Beatrice, 
 
 7
 
 98 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 himself and the angels, and finally himself and 
 deity." 
 
 Thus Plato and Aristotle have shown their Hue of 
 descent in a petty versicle by Johnny Appleseed. 
 When the fact came out, the editor could not 
 conceal his astonishment, but spoke of it to a 
 friend who is learned in the great poets of the 
 world. What was his reply? "My dear sir, 
 your philosophers are not the only men who 
 have transmitted this thought to mankind ; I can 
 find it everywhere in the mighty singers of the 
 ages, who have really told it better by their 
 images than it can be expressed by the abstrac 
 tions of philosophy. From Homer to Goethe it 
 runs as a cardinal principle through all lofty 
 poetry. In the Iliad there are the two worlds, 
 upper and lower, from which flow two streams, 
 celestial and terrestrial, both of which have to 
 unite at last and become harmonious. The God 
 within the man and the God without the man are 
 the two sides which fuse and become one in the 
 Homeric hero when he beholds a divine appear 
 ance. The poet shows Ulysses seeing the God 
 dess Pallas when she is already inside his soul. 
 Achilles too must be ' a God-seer ' even in the 
 top of his wrath, ere he can see the right." 
 
 "And," continued my friend, after a little 
 silence,"! find the same idea weaving itself 
 through dozens of passages in Goethe, our last 
 world-poet, who on so many occasions shakes 
 hands across the centuries with Homer, the first
 
 BOOK SECOND. 99 
 
 world-poet. Indeed he has a little poem of four 
 lines in the rhymed Xenia, which, I should con 
 jecture, Appleseed must have known. I shall 
 cite them : 
 
 War' nicht das Auge sonnenhaft, 
 Die Sonne konnt' es nie erblicken ; 
 
 Lag' nicht in uns des Gottes eigne Kraft, 
 Wie konnt' uns Gottliches entziicken? 
 
 Goethe himself has called these lines the ' words 
 of an old mystic,' possibly alluding to Plotinus, 
 whom he is known to have read. Those two 
 beautiful words sonnenhaft in German and 
 'r^iusiftyq in Greek, seem to be born for each 
 other." The question now comes up, Did 
 Appleseed understand German? 
 
 At this point the editor will have to cut short 
 these comments which threaten a veritable deluge. 
 What would be the size of the present book, if 
 each verse were to receive as much annotation as 
 this one? The reader, however, may find some 
 satisfaction in the preceding exegesis by observ 
 ing that Appleseed, the wandering singer of the 
 Western Prairies, is connected, by instinct or by 
 learning or by both, with the stream of all cult 
 ure, philosophic and poetic ; that he is, spiritually, 
 the product of his whole race, sprung not simply 
 of his own time and his environment, but rather 
 of all times and environments. He is on a line 
 with Plato and Aristotle, with Homer and Goethe ; 
 it took them all and many more to make him.
 
 100 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 Postscript. The above had been written, and, 
 as was thought, closed forever, when the editor's 
 eye fell upon the jottings of the publisher's taster, 
 to whom allusion has already been made. The 
 desire of having the present commentary as 
 complete as possible, reflecting many, if not all 
 sides of the subject, compels the insertion of a 
 few sentences emanating from that gentleman: 
 
 "Wonderful expositors I Thus they seek to 
 expound a little verse by the crazy peripatetic, 
 Johnny Appleseed, who never read Plato and 
 Aristotle, never read anything probably of liter 
 ature, in spite of that library carried around in 
 his fiddle bag. What a forcing, straining, 
 stretching, to make something out of nothing! 
 They have blown up the petty doggerel like an 
 india-rubber balloon, pumping more and more 
 wind into it, till they have expanded it to the size 
 of a mountain inclosed in a thin, circumambient 
 film of a bubble. Draw near and touch it; behold, 
 it explodes and vanishes into air again, whence it 
 came." 
 
 Very manifestly this taster is a snorter. It is 
 interesting to see him on the rampage, when he 
 paws dirt like a mad bull and flings it upwards, 
 the most of it falling back upon his own head 
 again. Hear him roar: * Why such a desperate 
 attempt to read into the brain of a lunatic what 
 never could have come out of it? It is an open 
 question which ought to be sent first to the mad-
 
 BOOK SECOND. 101 
 
 house, Appleseed or his commentators. He 
 never thought of all these meanings which are 
 foisted upon him. What an impertinence to the 
 public to ask it to peruse such stuff! But the 
 book will never sell. To the whole business I 
 say Anathema Maranatha." 
 
 Now occurs one of those strange coinciden 
 ces which weave through human life a providen 
 tial guardianship. Appleseed had met this man 
 before he was born, and had read his writings ' 
 before they were written. The result is a num 
 ber of verses which pertain just to the subject in 
 hand, namely, the criticaster in literature. No 
 doubt there is a personal tinge to these verses; 
 Appleseed must have foreseen or forefelt the 
 roasting which he was to get from the publish 
 er's taster and from the whole species to which 
 the latter belongs. So the old fellow whips out 
 his toasting-iron and blazes away right and left, 
 striking blue sparks which leave a decided odor 
 of brimstone in the surrounding atmosphere. 
 For Appleseed, in spite of angelic characteris 
 tics, has in him a demonic element also, like 
 most mortals; he will fight, especially the battles 
 of the Lord. Hereafter we shall see him taking 
 part in the Civil War, and actually showing fire 
 arms in the front rank at Missionary Ridge, 
 where he stood on the ridge as a missionary with 
 weapons of persuasive eloquence, speaking in 
 tongues of flame.
 
 102 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 But we must no longer withhold the promised 
 verses, which, in view of the situation already 
 explained^ need no comment. 
 
 55. 
 
 " Tamer of beast and of man, 
 Tell me, I pray, if you can, 
 What never would train with the years? " 
 
 Answer : it was an ass 
 That kicked and smashed the looking-glass 
 For showing him his ears. 
 
 56. 
 Whomever the pygmy cannot take under 
 
 His own little brain-pan, 
 
 He deems an insane man, 
 
 Or, it may be, his foe, 
 
 Whom he will then overthrow 
 Just by a wee clap of the tiniest thunder. 
 
 But now only look at the apeling ! 
 What antics of pygmean pleasure, 
 
 As he whips his tape string 
 For the man he can measure I 
 
 57. 
 
 What is the oldest news? 
 It is that men abuse 
 
 What they have not to show. 
 What do they think is wise? 
 It is to criticise 
 
 Just what they do not know.
 
 BOOK SECOND 103 
 
 58. 
 
 What the critic cannot subsume, 
 Is certain to meet with his doom; 
 But his doom is certain to meet too with it, 
 And the question remains, Which is hit? 
 
 59. 
 
 " Why accuse the poet? " 
 I do not know him. 
 " Why abuse the poem? " 
 I do not know it. 
 
 60. 
 
 I think it is well for the Muses 
 A hangman to have for abuses, 
 Though I would not be it, I vow, 
 I would rather follow the plow. 
 Nor of their whipping-post for small offenders 
 Shall I ever be one of the tenders. 
 
 61. 
 
 He wore his changeful eyes upon his nose, 
 He put them on or off just as he chose ; 
 He laid them, while he read my book, away, 
 So that he saw not what the book did say ; 
 But when he wrote, he plucked them from their 
 
 socket, 
 And deftly thrust his eyesight down into his 
 
 pocket ; 
 
 And hence it came, his look 
 Was on his pocket-book.
 
 104 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 62. 
 
 " Oh, oh, the terrible fault, 
 The verses are halt, 
 And they have no salt! " 
 Then little pins 
 He sticks in their shins, 
 To see at the prick 
 If they will kick. 
 
 Of a sudden he sprawls in the dirt; 
 
 I wonder if he be hurt? 
 
 63. 
 
 When Wisdom does not know, she knows it ; 
 When she a limit hath, she knows it; 
 But Folly's foremost temptation 
 Is ignorant condemnation; 
 Whenever she denies, 
 She closes both her eyes. 
 
 64. 
 If I cannot do it, 
 
 Censures resound ; 
 If I once get through it, 
 
 Still fault is found ; 
 So let them blame and blame, 
 I am resting just the same.
 
 &OOK SECOND. 105 
 
 Thus Appleseed shows himself dominated by 
 a negative, denunciatory, somewhat spiteful imp 
 who is certainly in him and has to be cast out, 
 like any other devil, being exorcised into verses, 
 where he can still be seen sticking fast. But in 
 this matter is our benevolent wanderer and hu 
 mane planter of seed consistent? In damning 
 the critic he has had to turn critic himself, and 
 the truth is, he has rendered himself liable to his 
 own damnation. So he gets involved in his own 
 burning meshes, since it takes the demon to 
 torture the demon in any Inferno, critical or 
 theological. 
 
 Now Appleseed really knows all this, and soon 
 shakes himself free. He is also aware of the 
 unfruitfulness of negative criticism in general, 
 aware that it is self-devouring, suicidal, diabolic. 
 Hence after a hard tussle with the fiends, in 
 which he can be and must be as fiendish as they 
 are, or get whipped, he hastens back into his 
 positive mood, and sings or composes from that 
 point of view. The editor, therefore, now feels 
 it his duty to impart a few verses which show 
 not the darkened half-man, but the illumined 
 whole-man, rising out of his negative, critical, 
 sarcastic, finite vein, and exalting himself into 
 something like universal vision. May they take 
 the sulphurous taste out of the reader's mouth !
 
 65. 
 You say that in this he is zero, 
 
 But tell me, in that he is what? 
 For I have found the mightiest hero 
 
 Is nought in what he is not. 
 
 66. 
 
 Some men in passing through the infernal pit, 
 By that old Hell-dog, Cerberus, get bit, 
 When they return to earth, they snap and fight, 
 They never have recovered from the bite. 
 
 Hades here they make 
 
 For their own sake. 
 
 67. 
 
 If the devil by the tail you twitch, 
 It may be fun to see him rear and pitch ; 
 And though he claw you not into his hell, 
 Still to your hand will stick his gruesome smell. 
 
 68. 
 
 Make no reply, it will do little good; 
 Perchance your kick is just what he would. 
 If he throw the dirt, 
 It may stain your shirt ; 
 If you throw it back again, 
 Your soul will get the stain. 
 (106)
 
 BOOK SECOND. 107 
 
 One step further. Let us now behold Apple- 
 seed in a still different mood, probably a surprise 
 to some readers. In order to get him wholly 
 away from his critical bedevilment, we shall have 
 him repeat a little batch of versicles which show 
 an amatory streak in light-hearted gayety, for 
 which strange freak he seems never to have been 
 too old. Thus we shall have made the complete 
 transition from hate to love. Then, when he is 
 well loosened in mirth, we may be able to get 
 him to sing the Churn /Song, which he is usually 
 inclined to suppress. 
 
 69. 
 By day no sun up out of the sea, 
 
 By night no moon in the heavens above; 
 Heigh ! heigh ! nobody in love with me, 
 
 Ho ! Ho ! I with nobody in love. 
 
 70. 
 The moon, they say, is a cinder, 
 
 A dead world up there in the skies ; 
 But it becomes the tenderest tinder, 
 
 Lit by one spark from two lovers' eyes. 
 
 71. 
 
 Let. your Yes 
 Be made of strongest timber 
 
 In Love's stress ; 
 Make your No so very limber 
 
 That I guess 
 
 It means Yes.
 
 CHURN SONG. 
 
 Churn, churn, churn ! 
 A thousand charms I mutter ; 
 
 The old cow had a hollow horn, 
 And the milk will give no butter. 
 
 Churn, churn, churn I 
 So next I use hot water; 
 
 But the cream was skimmed this morn, 
 And the milk will give no butter. 
 
 Churn, churn, churn ! 
 " It is bewitched," I stutter ; 
 
 But the curse I could not turn, 
 And the milk will give no butter. 
 
 Churn, churn, churn I 
 With dash and splash and splutter ! 
 
 What is sin I have to learn, 
 When the milk will give no butter. 
 
 (108)
 
 BOOK SECOND. 109 
 
 Churn, churn, churn ! 
 
 hark, the fairies flutter! 
 But inside it still doth yearn, 
 
 For the milk will give no butter. 
 
 Churn, churn, churn ! 
 The weary word I utter; 
 
 All my hope, my love I spurn, 
 When the milk will give no butter. 
 
 Churn, churn, churn ! 
 
 1 shall no longer putter, 
 
 Let the heart within me burn, 
 Let the milk just keep its butter. 
 
 Churn, churn, churu ! 
 Behold ! at last the daughter ! 
 
 She gives her pail of cream, 
 And now has come the butter.
 
 110 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 It is emphatically the opinion of the editor that 
 a personal experience lies at the bottom of this 
 churn-song, probably a twofold experience. Is 
 it not plain that Appleseed, in the days of his 
 youth, had to do the churning for the household? 
 The song evidently springs from a reminis 
 cence of the time when he was chained to that 
 tedious duty of pumping, pumping away for 
 hours at butter-making, and the last verse 
 happily celebrates his glorious release. But 
 who except Appleseed, would have coupled but 
 ter-making with love-making? Truly the poet's 
 Pegasus is a strange steed, dashing, soaring, 
 giving unaccountable leaps through the skies 
 and landing in most unexpected places. 
 
 The editor cannot refrain from adding an illus 
 trative item from his own early life. Well does 
 he recollect when he, an impetuous boy, longing 
 to skip forth into the fields and woods, was com 
 pelled to stay at home and churn churn, 
 churn, churn a slavery not to be compared 
 with that of the negro in the South before the 
 war. The utter misery and detestability of such 
 a situation must have been keenly felt at some 
 time by Appleseed, for does not his desolation 
 speak out of his song? Still I recollect with 
 gratitude the man who brought the first dog-
 
 BOOK SECOND, 111 
 
 churn to town, most humane of mortals, and 
 broke the chains of servitude for a multitude of 
 us youngsters. My father invested in the new 
 invention, I threw in all my cash, and when the 
 new order began, I celebrated my freedom by 
 making a bonfire of the old churn. The present 
 generation of young people hardly know enough 
 of that former epoch of galling bondage, I am 
 afraid, to appreciate Appleseed's verses. Yet 
 his romantic deliverance will be joyfully hailed 
 by every sympathetic heart. 
 
 The question comes up, Who was this daugh 
 ter who brought the magic pail of cream? No 
 investigation has yet traced her or found her 
 exact name, which is probably destined to be 
 buried forever in the very bottom of the sea of 
 oblivion. But in general it may be affirmed that 
 there is often a female form flitting through, or 
 at times flirting through a number of Appleseed's 
 lays, sayings, apothegms, in a mystifying or be 
 dazzling manner some sweet maiden, pretty 
 girl, fair daughter, Helen, Suleikha, Nancy Jane, 
 or what not on the whole quite intangible, 
 slipping in, whisking out, with many feminine 
 flashes of goodness, of vanity, of true-love, of 
 coquetry. 
 
 We shall conclude with a curious remark from 
 Prof. Brazennose, leaving the same for approval 
 to the discernment of the reader. " It has been 
 shown by Comparative Philology that the word
 
 112 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 daughter means, in the earliest Aryan speech, 
 the one who milks, and it transports us back to 
 that primitive time when the household required 
 its female child to be milkmaid, who thus had to 
 bring to the primeval family its chief sustenance, 
 probably from the herds, more or less wild, of 
 wandering nomads. Appleseed, so it seems to 
 me, shows a strand connecting him with the 
 most remote Aryan antiquity, when he has 
 the daughter bring a pail of cream to release him 
 from his painful situation. So she must often 
 have done in the olden time. Truly a far-off 
 ancestral gleam , unconscious, deeply poetic, 
 lighting up the prairie." 
 
 It has, in fact, become apparent that Apple- 
 seed, the wanderer westward, is the heir of Time 
 and Time's culture; he is in the stream of the 
 world's ideas, into which he sometimes dives out 
 of sight. It is now well known that he carried a 
 book in his fiddle sack ; the printed page, usually 
 some famous song, Homeric, or Wordsworthian, 
 or Wiggles worthian, was put alongside of his 
 musical instrument. Still, how he obtained his 
 knowledge is one of the literary problems, as 
 difficult of answer as is the question about the 
 learning of Shakespeare. 
 
 But the editor feels that he must now draw 
 into the foreground another fact ; books are not
 
 BOOK SECOND. 113 
 
 the only means of bringing the man and specially 
 the poet into a deep relationship with the past ; 
 the race has made for itself a vast river under 
 ground as it were, pouring down the ages 
 through the hearts of the people, and reaching 
 back to periods immemorial, long before there 
 was any printing or even alphabet to be printed. 
 This is the River of Tradition, made up chiefly 
 of what is now called folk-lore, a vast stream of 
 legends, ballads, proverbs, sayings, rhymes, 
 fairy-tales, even humors, jokes and quibbles. To 
 this stream all true poets go and drink ; they seek 
 the primordial My thus of the People as their 
 everlasting material. Our oft-cited friend, 
 William Shakespeare, as it seems to me, draws 
 more copiously from this subterranean Kiver than 
 any other English poet. 
 
 Of these waters, more or less hidden, at least 
 not obtrusive, in these days, Johnny Appleseed 
 must have imbibed during his long perambulating 
 career, which certainly gave him a good oppor 
 tunity. He became saturated with the people's 
 utterance, he was himself the incarnation of all 
 tradition, which indeed found a new life in him. 
 To his book-lore which is so well brought out 
 by Professor Brazennose, and perhaps carried to 
 the extreme somewhat, we must add his folk-lore, 
 which must also find its commentary. 
 
 On this side, which embraces the unwritten 
 literature of his people, Appleseed was mainly 
 
 8
 
 114 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S EHJMES. 
 
 Teutonic, perhaps Aryan. An old,very old strand 
 in him seems to run back to his primeval 
 ancestry, and reflect dimly their pursuits. The 
 agricultural class is the preserver and grand de 
 pository of primitive folk-lore, derived immedi 
 ately from nature and life. Hence we may 
 account for the number of images drawn from 
 the farmer's occupation. Some of Appleseed's 
 ballads have touches in them which have been 
 transmitted by the popular song for thousands 
 of years. 
 
 Even that which is derived from books is often 
 wrought over till it becomes like the rest. There 
 is an Oriental thread in him, springing originally 
 from the Hebrew Bible; especially do we find 
 traces of a Greco-Roman element. In these 
 matters we have the valuable help of Prof. 
 Brazennose with his exhaustive research and 
 unconquerable industry; sometimes be may be 
 a little dry, he may not always seize the true 
 meaning, yet he is patient, devoted, an honest 
 worker, a genuine investigator. 
 
 It is now our intention to put together three 
 longer pieces, which have a family resemblance, 
 and which we may call ballads, all of them hav 
 ing a story or legend at the foundation, which is 
 taken from the mythical stores of the ages. Nay, 
 we shall find that Appleseed has freely employed 
 for his own use certain turns of expression, well 
 known and beloved of the people, turns often 
 repeated in their songs. In this field again we
 
 BOOK SECOND. 115 
 
 avail ourselves of the help of the Professor, who 
 has evidently been availing himself of the printed 
 folk-lore (curious contradiction !) 4 which is getting 
 so abundant in these days. 
 
 " The three following ballads," says he, " can 
 be joined together in a common principle, that of 
 the miraculous, supernatural, fantastic, which 
 overarches them all like an ethereal dome sus 
 pended from the world beyond. The great ques 
 tion rises here as elsewhere : What is the meaning 
 of this strange unreal element? Is it a play of 
 fancy, a mere caprice, or a strong, earnest at 
 tempt to seize upon and image the spiritual 
 world? Then they all seem to show in some 
 form the idea of an ascent, an evolution, an un 
 folding out of the lower into the higher, which 
 idea is the very driving-wheel of the Occident. 
 Even the plant "longs to be a man" in that 
 ballad of The Mandrake, which hints some 
 deeply hidden aspiration in the vegetable world." 
 
 " The ballad," continues the Professor, "is 
 the most popular form of all poetry ; it is, in 
 deed, the primitive material out of which a great 
 constructive genius like Homer builds his vast 
 poetic structures. A renascence of genuine song 
 usually goes back to this well-head, of which 
 fact we have an English instance in the effect 
 wrought by Percy's Reliques, and a German 
 instance in the far-reaching consequences of the 
 collection known as Des Knaben Wunderhorn. 
 But more of this hereafter."
 
 THE ELF KNIGHT. 
 
 The lily has risen to sunrise 
 
 On the breast of the beautiful river, 
 Which heaves to the flower a moment, 
 
 Then rolls on and rolls on forever. 
 
 From the hillside the tassels are waving 
 Like banners on stalks of the corn, 
 
 And beyond them the Elf-knight softly 
 Is giving a wind on his horn. 
 
 From the castle of uppermost Elfland 
 Down the mountain in music he flies, 
 
 With the pour of the happiest sunbeams 
 He secretly drops from the skies. 
 
 In her home young Margery listens, 
 The note of the horn is so near ; 
 
 " O would that the musical Elf-knight 
 Could whisper a word in mine ear." . 
 (116)
 
 BOOK SECOND. 117 
 
 The Elf-knight springs in at the window 
 Perched just on the point of her thought, 
 
 And even before she could hearken, 
 The lisp of his whisper she caught: 
 
 " I know thou always must call me 
 
 Whenever I sound on my horn, 
 And oft I have come to caress thee 
 
 In dreams at the turn of the morn. 
 
 *' But now let us go to the meadow 
 
 And wander together away, 
 To quaff the new breath of the springtime, 
 
 And gather the bloom of the May." 
 
 " But first let me ask my dear mother 
 
 Ere to the sweet flowers I stray." 
 But the Elf-knight strangely compelled her, 
 
 For her mother she cannot delay. 
 
 They slip from the hearth by the threshold, 
 
 They hasten in meadows to roam, 
 And soon from Margery's vision 
 
 Is lost the last glimpse of her home. 
 
 In the midot of the sweet talk of Elfland 
 They come to the banks of a river, 
 
 Her picture it shows to the maiden 
 As it rolls to the ocean forever.
 
 118 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 From under the flow of the water 
 The lilies shoot up to the light, 
 
 They look in the eyes of the maiden 
 And leave her not out of their sight. 
 
 " Let us wade down into the river, 
 
 No ill its crystal can hide; 
 See across it the reddest of roses, 
 
 Aye that is the beautiful side." 
 
 Unwilling she made but a motion, 
 
 She dampened the soles of her shoes ;- 
 
 " On, on, a little step further, 
 
 I know thou canst not but choose." 
 
 The lilies still rise from the water, 
 Each seems to be hanging its head, 
 
 They nod in a row on the border, 
 As the wave sweeps into their bed. 
 
 " Nay, nay, O Dearest, I must not, 
 To the stream no bottom I see." 
 
 Still she made another move forward, 
 The mad current has wetted her knee. 
 
 " Go on, go on," cries the Elf-knight, 
 " To-day I am in great haste." 
 
 She took a timid step further, 
 
 The cold of the wave smote her waist.
 
 BOOK SECOND. US 
 
 She reaches the outermost limit 
 
 Just where the last lily doth lie; 
 She sees a pale face in its petals, 
 
 She sees, too, the tear in its eye. 
 
 She turns from the torrent beyond it, 
 
 She thwarts his stormy behest, 
 The Elf-knight then suddenly pushed her, 
 
 The wave mounted up to her breast. 
 
 The Elf- knight is wrought to a frenzy, 
 
 On fire is the ball of his eye; 
 " Prepare thee to marry this river, 
 
 O maiden, here thou art to die. 
 
 " Five brides have I wed to these waters, 
 At this point their bodies have lain, 
 
 From the bed of the magical river 
 They never can rise up again." 
 
 The Elf-knight leaned over to kiss her 
 She knew his elf-eyes by the flash, 
 
 She saw five faces of water 
 
 Five bodies she saw in the splash. 
 
 Eyes stared from each billowy mirror, 
 Tongues spoke from each turbulent wave, 
 
 The faces turned up to the heavens, 
 
 And then they turned down to the grave.
 
 120 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S BHYMES. 
 
 The river ran over with devils, 
 
 With angels the river ran over, 
 But above the wild waters battle, 
 
 The words of a maiden now hover: 
 
 " The sixth you say I am chosen, 
 
 Five bodies you say you have drowned, 
 
 O bridegroom, go down to thy marriage, 
 Down, down to the nethermost ground." 
 
 She seized the fair knight of Elfland 
 
 By a shock of his beautiful curls, 
 And over the border of lilies 
 
 To the stream-bed the bridegroom she whirls. 
 
 " I bid thee go down to thy marriage, 
 Five brides for thy kisses there stay, 
 
 This day by me is appointed 
 To be thy wedding day. 
 
 " At the bottom is sitting old Nickel, 
 He will act at thy marriage as priest, 
 
 To thee he will give his best blessing, 
 And say his best grace at thy feast." 
 
 The maiden turns back through the lilies, 
 
 Which smile in a heavenly dream, 
 She culls of the flowers the fairest, 
 
 Just as she steps out of the stream.
 
 BOOK SECOND. 121 
 
 Still is heard in the folds of the meadow 
 
 The laugh of the beautiful river, 
 As it kisses the maiden's last foot-print, 
 
 Then rolls on in rapture forever. 
 
 More joyous the hillsides are flouting 
 Their streamers from stalks of the corn, 
 
 But from the uppermost castle of Elfland 
 Is silent the sound of the horn.
 
 THE WATER BALL. 
 
 Oh Indian maid in the banyan's shade, 
 Why art thou weeping, Oh Indian maid, 
 
 On the holy banks of the River? 
 I have lost what I was, an outcast I seem, 
 I can lift no longer the ball of the stream, 
 
 The ball of its sacred water. 
 
 But two days ago, on my prayer intent, 
 To the River divine, to the Ganges I went, 
 
 I went without pail, without pitcher ; 
 I touched the good stream as I stood on the land, 
 The water rolled rounded up into my hand, 
 
 I bore it away to my mother. 
 
 I bore it away, it was pure all through, 
 Its mirror laid open the Heavens to view, 
 
 The Heavens that spread out above me; 
 The translucent ball showed the holy high place, 
 It showed there too the God's very face, 
 
 As if from on high he would love me. 
 (122)
 
 BOOK SECOND. 123 
 
 Oh Ganges, Oh Ganges, a watery wall 
 Thou raisest around me when on thee I call, 
 
 And step down into thy billow ; 
 Thou buildest above me a crystalline dome, 
 I feel it my house, I feel it my home 
 
 Arched over with tints of the rainbow. 
 
 I yesterday went once more to the banks, 
 I said my prayer, I gave my thanks 
 
 To the mighty God of the River; 
 The water had sphered at my touch in the stream, 
 When a beautiful youth I saw in its gleam, 
 
 Just as he had come from the Giver. 
 
 Then out of the watery globe he stepped, 
 A carol he sang and a measure he kept, 
 
 He wooed me in shape of a lover ; 
 But then as I turned and answered his call 
 The globe of crystal I there let fall 
 
 See the phantom now over me hover ! 
 
 All broken the sphere lay strewn on the ground , 
 Its million of drops can never be found, 
 
 And I had forgotten my mother ; 
 The youth soon led me away by the hand, 
 We wandered afar from the River's strand 
 
 I cannot now think of another.
 
 124 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 To-day I hurried again to the shore, 
 
 The water would come to my touch no more 
 
 How ruffled the River resounded ! 
 It sullenly stayed in its lowliest bed, 
 If I dared but touch it, onward it fled, 
 
 To me it no longer ran rounded. 
 
 Oh dreadful and dark was Ganges' face ! 
 I prayed but he rose not up from his place, 
 
 In the love of the God to greet me ; 
 By chance a globule of water fell near, 
 It had the sad look of a drop of a tear 
 
 In sorrow divine to meet me. 
 
 Holy Ganges, if thou wilt no longer bestow 
 Thy gifts upon me, then I shall go 
 
 And seek thee down deep in thy bosom; 
 In the sacred depths of thy billowy frown, 
 In love, in love I shall cast me down 
 
 And find in thee still my ransom. 
 
 She flung her body far out in the wave 
 Herself surrendered herself to save, 
 
 The deed of one little minute; 
 Once mistress she caused the water to ball, 
 But now she is only its humblest thrall, 
 
 And rapidly sinks down in it.
 
 BOOK SECOND. 125 
 
 But list to the rush and the roar of the River ! 
 Its thousand hands reach down from the Giver, 
 
 The God will never forsake her ! 
 He comes in the brook from the lowliest fountain, 
 He comes in the cloud from the loftiest mountain, 
 
 Behold ! he is going to take her ! 
 
 Now list to the whisper and kiss of the River, 
 As it rolls its great ball to the ocean forever ! 
 
 The God with his burden is laden ; 
 He rises aloft from the murmuring tide, 
 He bears in his arms the beautiful bride 
 
 Behold I 'tis the Indian maiden.
 
 THE MANDRAKE. 
 
 mandrake, tell me who thou art? 
 A seeming plant in mien ! 
 
 And yet thou hast a feeling heart, 
 Which keeps its beat unseen. 
 
 Some man transformed thou shalt be found, 
 
 Who sank just where he stood 
 Till half of him was under ground ; 
 
 Thy sap must be his blood. 
 
 1 fear to break thy juicy stalk 
 
 Lest it should bubble red; 
 Out of thy spot thou canst not walk, 
 One step would smite thee dead. 
 
 A quiver ran up through the leaves, 
 What doth the mandrake seek? 
 
 Inside the bark it swells and heaves, 
 It seems to want to speak. 
 (126)
 
 BOOK SECOND. 127 
 
 But though no voice as yet was heard, 
 
 Quick pulses through it ran; 
 Listen ! the mandrake lisps a word : 
 
 " I long to be a man." 
 
 O human plant thou hast the rain, 
 
 The sun doth on thee shine; 
 But thou dost feel a mortal's pain, 
 
 And suffering is thine. 
 
 O mandrake, though thou be a flower, 
 
 Thou knowest how to speak; 
 If thou be pulled, thou hast the power 
 
 To give a human shriek. 
 
 Thy voice will make the blood run chill, 
 
 If we but hear thee groan; 
 Thy cry of agony doth kill, 
 
 It turns the heart to stone. 
 
 Again the stalk did pulse and throb, 
 
 To whimper it began, 
 Until a voice spake out the sob: 
 
 " I long to be a man." 
 
 Just underneath this little ground 
 
 Two legs the mandrake grows, 
 But when above it he is found, 
 
 A simple stalk he shows.
 
 128 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 This flower-man is two in one, 
 
 The first is hid in night, 
 The second shoots up to the sun; 
 
 He longs to see the light. 
 
 What he doth give unto the day 
 
 He marks in colors fair, 
 But what he seeks to hide away 
 
 He keeps below the air. 
 
 The flower bubbles while I gaze, 
 
 I try to find its plan, 
 But as I look, again it says : 
 
 "I long to be a man." 
 
 Art thou a sprite in prison here 
 
 Who seekest to be free? 
 Now to thy leaves I place mine ear, 
 
 Thy secret tell to me. 
 
 The leaflets thrill upon the stalk, 
 
 A tone out of the ground 
 Doth rise into a voice and talk : 
 
 Hark to the tiny sound: 
 
 " I have a life, a flower-life, 
 
 And still I have no peace, 
 Let no one put to me the knife, 
 
 Not thus I find release.
 
 BOOK SECOND. 129 
 
 " A soul I have within my rind, 
 
 Though of another race; 
 I feel akin to human kind, 
 
 But cannot change my place. 
 
 " Ah ! greedy men my branches pluck, 
 
 Although I shrink in pain; 
 They .say my mangled shape brings luck, 
 
 My hurt doth give them gain. 
 
 " Leave me a fixed plant to blow, 
 
 With roots beneath the loam ; 
 Leave me a struggling soul to grow 
 
 In sunlight as my home. 
 
 " In time I may step out the ground, 
 
 And walk as best I can ; 
 Among mankind I would be found ; 
 
 I long to be a man.'* 
 
 O speak once more, thou voiced mandrake, 
 
 I feel that thou art human ; 
 Give me in joy a hearty handshake, 
 
 And be to me a true man. 
 
 Fain would I shun with thee all strife, 
 Would look within thy portal 
 
 Where thou dost pass into thy life 
 Which lies outside the mortal.
 
 
 Iftfcr 
 
 ifcb 
 
 A : r : - -: -_ :': ._ -::;-- 
 
 M* pfeek tfcr forked root, 
 
 I beg tfcee mam my friemd to be, 
 
 Mr l*rr tbtrn i^ * iwc, 
 I fed & 5Tvpoth T whi tfaee, 
 
 Foci " 
 
 k sbook wiifc **m- iilj* 
 ft seemed to kacnr r pba, 
 
 * I loag to be a mam. 
 
 ; . _ r : : 
 
 ; :-_ 
 
 ItkBjb&&BT 
 
 7 - I : 
 Itefltotheev 
 
 to be a
 
 - : 
 
 T- 
 
 It dunged its 
 Asleep it fefl* adova it drooped, 
 
 Had raa aato a fittle 
 
 Attuned its pipe nto the brr, 
 They all the so^ III 
 
 the Buadnke's soft refrua; 
 
 To fall into the 
 * I loo? to be a 
 
 I left the 
 
 , above, IB kat/e, IB lone : 
 I kngto be a 
 
 "
 
 132 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 In the preceding verses Appleseed has dropped 
 the epigrammatic form, and betaken himself to 
 the ballad, the primitive poetic utterance of all 
 singing peoples. Note the two threads of which 
 it is spun, which we may call the natural and 
 supernatural, thus representing two sides of 
 man's being, the sphere of the senses and the 
 sphere beyond the senses. The mythical world 
 of elves, fairies, demons, goblins, kobolds, is 
 woven into our daily existence, and miraculously 
 determines our lives. It may be a good spirit, 
 or a bud spirit, still it is a spirit, and takes its 
 own shape, suggesting a spiritual realm which 
 hovers over and around our actions. This faith 
 of the balladist is fundamental, he is of necessity 
 a supernaturalist, and he invokes the popular 
 myth with all the weird inhabitants peopling 
 fairy-land, who are made to image the ideal, 
 transcendent, supersensible element in human 
 existence. Suddenly a far-off, unconscious, 
 shadowy world wells up into the prosaic hum 
 drum of daily life, and causes its arid fields to 
 shoot forth into a new inflorescence ; must not 
 such a world be given a visible form and order? 
 
 The general idea of The ^Elf-knight has been 
 a favorite one in all ages; it celebrates the inno 
 cent maiden in some way meeting violence,
 
 BOOK SECOND. 133 
 
 temptation, cunning, and overwhelming the evil 
 doer on his own ground. The people have thus 
 expressed their belief in the innate power of 
 purity against any demonic foe. Undoubtedly to 
 this form of the ballad there are counterparts 
 which show the maiden overcome and destroyed; 
 tragedy also has its place in the voice of the 
 human heart. But such an outcome is rare in 
 the present case, chiefly confined, it is said, to 
 a few German and Polish examples. 
 
 Here again we must appeal to the comment 
 of Professor Brazennose, whose learning in bal- 
 ladology is well known: " One of the highest 
 authorities on the subject has said that this ballad 
 in its essential features has obtained a wider cir 
 culation among men than any other composition 
 of the kind. In all Scandinavian countries, 
 Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark ; in every 
 portion of Germany, north and south, east and 
 west ; among Latin peoples, France, Italy, Spain ; 
 among Slavic peoples, Russia, Bohemia, Servia, 
 Poland, not to speak of many outlying districts, 
 as Lapland, it has been traced by the diligence 
 of investigators and expounded by the erudition of 
 scholars. Thus have all the peoples of Europe 
 united in one grand voice and sang of the heroic 
 maiden who, in spite of love, turns at the fateful 
 moment, and uttering the doom of a last judg 
 ment, settles the account forever between herself 
 and her intended betrayer. Appleseed, with his
 
 134 JOHNNY APPLE SEED 1 8 RHYMES. 
 
 optimism in general, and especially with his 
 reverence for ideal womanhood, could not help 
 joining in this mighty chorus of the nations." 
 
 " But of course," the Professor continues, 
 " the material has assumed many forms in its 
 various redactions throughout Europe, being 
 made by these changes to reflect epochs, nation 
 alities, and also individual crotchets. A few of 
 these diversities may be briefly noted. First 
 the Elf-knight is sometimes a harper who 
 charms his victim into sleep by his music ; 
 oftener, however, he becomes an ordinary knight 
 of flesh and blood, or sinks down to a common 
 deceiver. Next his motives are very different in 
 different forms of the ballad ; according to 
 circumstances he shows passion or he seeks the 
 money, the jewels, or the fine garments of the 
 maiden ; oftener he manifests mere cruelty and 
 blood-thirstiness, showing himself a sort of 
 Bluebeard. Again, the place where the deed 
 happens is variously designated as a forest, a 
 well, a sea, a river. In a few instances, the 
 maiden does not save herself through her own 
 inherent strength, but is rescued by a brother, 
 who punishes duly the false knight. Thus the 
 Original ballad-stuff undergoes many discolora- 
 tions and corruptions; the ideal element gets 
 lost, the supersensible world vanishes out of it, 
 and the whole sinks into mere prose." 
 
 At this point the Professor makes a distinction
 
 BOOK SECOND. 135 
 
 which we give to the reader: "The material of 
 the true ballad is indestructible, made by no 
 individual but by a people or perchance by 
 the whole race. But the form which it takes 
 at a given peniod varies, is the product 
 of Time and may pass away in Time 
 having received simply the impress of some 
 national, or even individual mind. Appleseed, 
 for instance, did not create his material, that 
 was given him, but he did give to it the form we 
 see here. Man does not make his gold, nature 
 furnishes it in free bounty; but he does purify 
 it and coin it and place upon it his image. Still 
 the next age or people may melt it and coin it 
 over again, stamping upon it their own emblem 
 or superscription." 
 
 It would seem that the present ballad-stuff has 
 found much greater currency in the Occident than 
 in the Orient. Indeed how can the Orient, with 
 its view of woman, celebrate such a heroine, 
 who would certainly not fit well into the poly 
 gamous life of the harem ? An occidental spirit 
 finds utterance in the ballad, whose best forms 
 show the maiden, not lost or rescued by another, 
 but rescuing herself in her own might. Still the 
 story has points in common with the biblical tale 
 of Judith and Holofernes ; indeed an eminent 
 Professor (not our Brazennose) has thought 
 the chief European phases of the ballad to be 
 derived from the Hebrew source just mentioned.
 
 136 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 But such tales grow out of the conflicts of the 
 human heart, which are present everywhere and 
 in all ages ; they spring up as naturally as the 
 plant from the soil. Independent in origin are 
 these mytEical flowers of Time, though similar ; 
 their likeness comes simply of the common 
 human likeness. The unity of the race we see 
 in this unity of its mythus. 
 
 It would be interesting if we could point out 
 the exact source whence Appleseed derived his 
 ballad. Did he hear anybody sing it in his in 
 fancy? It has English and Scotch forms, which 
 he might have heard in his rambles. Professor 
 Brazennose almost fails us at this conjuncture, 
 making simply some references to that excellent 
 work, Child's ^English and Scottish Popular 
 Ballads, in which the ballad of Lady Isabel and 
 the Elf-knight is printed in six different forms. 
 Two of these forms seem to have furnished Ap 
 pleseed with his main incidents, and even with 
 some of his expressions. "Still he has," says 
 Brazennose, " a number of things which I have 
 cot been able to trace to any previous source. 
 Perhaps the researches of some future commen 
 tator will bring to light what yet lies hidden." 
 
 At any rate the Professor has succeeded in 
 giving Appleseed a small position in the poetic 
 succession of his race, has shown him paddling 
 his own little canoe in the great stream of popu 
 lar song, which flows down to the present out of 
 the head-waters of Time.
 
 BOOK SECOND. 137 
 
 From the preceding legend of The Elf-knight, 
 which we have designated as Occidental in spirit, 
 sprung apparently of European consciousness, 
 we now turn to another which belongs emphat 
 ically to the Orient. The legend which forms 
 the mythical groundwork of The Water Ball 
 goes back to Hindostan, from which land it has 
 descended to the West. It will be seen that of 
 the two legends the one belongs to a West-Aryan 
 and the other to an East-Aryan people, in due 
 order ; thus they bring together the extreme ends 
 of the great Aryan migration, Europe and India. 
 
 Both legends treat of the maiden in her 
 supreme temptation; both show her rescued 
 through her own act. But here occurs the 
 important difference ; the one saves herself before 
 the fall through a deed of heroic self-mastery, 
 the other saves herself after the fall through 
 repentance and complete self-sacrifice. The 
 latter, therefore, touches a deeper ethical note, 
 and intimates a divine restoration after the grand 
 estrangement. Undoubtedly this idea of aliena 
 tion and return is common to the whole human 
 race ; but the Indian story gives it a peculiar 
 coloring, imparted specially by the Ganges, the 
 sacred river, which flows through the whole 
 poem. 
 
 " The legend of the Water Ball has come to 
 Europe through various channels," says our ever- 
 ready friend, Professor Brazennose, " through
 
 138 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 the stream of tradition flowing out of the Orient 
 from time immemorial, and through direct trans 
 mission by means of travelers, missionaries, 
 scholars. It appears, for instance, in Modern- 
 Greek folk-lore, and could probably be found 
 throughout Eastern Europe. But the account of 
 it which has taken strongest hold of our modern 
 Occident can be seen in Sonnerat's Travels in 
 India and China (1774 81), from which work 
 we extract the following account of the legend. 
 
 " * Mariatale was the wife Schamadagini the 
 penitent, and was the mother of Parassurama, 
 one of the incarnations of Vishnu. She was a 
 Goddess who had power over the elements, 
 but she could keep this power only so long as 
 her heart remained pure. Once, as she was 
 drawing water from a pool, and when, accord 
 ing to her custom, she had formed it into a ball 
 (she being mistress over nature), in order to 
 carry it home, she saw on the surface of the 
 water the shapes of some beautiful winged beings 
 which rose and fluttered over her head. Maria- 
 tale was entranced by their charms, and love's 
 desire slipped into her heart, whereat the ball of 
 water suddenly went asunder and ran down into 
 the pool. From this time on she could never 
 bring water home without carrying it in a vessel 
 of some kind. This fact disclosed to Schamada 
 gini that his wife was no longer pure in heart, and 
 in the first outbreak of his wrath he commanded
 
 BOOK SECOND. 139 
 
 his son to drag her to the place of execution and 
 cut off her head. The son obeyed the order, but 
 he was so afflicted over the death of his mother, 
 that the father commanded him to take the 
 severed head and join it to the body, repeating a 
 prayer which had the power of bringing back 
 life.' 
 
 "The legend goes on to tell," continues the 
 Professor, " that the son in his eagerness made 
 a mistake, he put the right head on the wrong 
 body, which belonged to a woman of the Pariah 
 caste, who had just been executed for her mis 
 deeds. Thus a horrible living mixture of the 
 highest and lowest, Brahmin and Pariah, arose, 
 having the virtues of a Goddess and the vices of 
 an outcast. But this part of the legend with its 
 gruesomeness is not used by Appleseed, who 
 evidently found it little to his taste. Still it 
 gives a suggestive picture of that strange mythi 
 cal consciousness of the Hindoo who is veritably 
 in love with fantastic horrors." 
 
 The Professor traces the legend, at it appears in 
 Sonnerat, back to the great encyclopedic epos of 
 India, the Mahabharata, from which it passed to 
 other portions of Hindoo literature. As author 
 ity in these matters, Brazennose cites the eminent 
 Sanscritist Benfey ( Orient and Occident, pas 
 sim) and then proceeds to say: 
 
 " But Sonnerat would have made a very small 
 impression, if his account had not stirred up and
 
 140 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 set to work the greatest literary genius of mod 
 ern times, Goethe, who has transformed the 
 legend and made it universal. Two of his bal 
 lads, Der Gott and die Bayedere and the Paria, 
 have employed kindred Hindoo materials, and 
 the poet has breathed into them the full spirit of 
 repentance, charity and humanity, which belongs 
 to Occident, specially to Christendom. Very 
 suggestive is it to compare the oldest form of 
 the legend in the Mahabharata with this 
 European transfiguration of it in Goethe. In 
 the ancient Indian shape it is a most barbarous, 
 desperately hideous tale, in which the father 
 Schamadagini, who is by the way a Hindoo 
 saint, full of holy penitence, makes the son 
 Parassurarna cleave the skull of his mother 
 Renuka with an axe, not from any deed of hers 
 done in the flesh, but from a passing inclination 
 which rises in her heart while bathing, at the 
 view of a beautiful lotus-crowned prince. Thus 
 does parental and marital authority image itself 
 in that Hindoo world." 
 
 Appleseed, with an Oriental strain in him, too, 
 goes back to this old Aryan myth, and works it 
 over anew in the Mississippi Valley. In Euro 
 pean Goethe the rise of the Pariah to a share in 
 Godhood, the participation of the most degraded 
 in the highest, is celebrated, the instance being 
 taken from the land of castes; thus the poet 
 reads a lesson to his Europe, with its class dis-
 
 BOOK SECOND. 141 
 
 tinctions, less rigid indeed than the Indian castes, 
 but still pretty well indurated into its social sys 
 tem. But in America, especially west of the 
 Alleghenies, there are neither the Indian castes 
 nor the European class distinctions. With this 
 change of background, the legend changes, which 
 adapts itself to the social order around it ; the 
 terrible Indian punishment of the wife falls away, 
 and the maiden, not the mother, is the central 
 female figure she who loves, errs, repents, and 
 is saved by the God and is borne above. But 
 there is no repentance of the woman, no salva 
 tion for her in the Indian legend, except by a 
 wild fantastic metamorphosis which makes her a 
 Goddess of the outcasts. 
 
 Very significant does it appear to the editor to 
 track this legend to its fountain head and to 
 watch it transferring itself from the banks of the 
 Ganges to the banks of the Mississippi, whereby 
 a dark unconscious stream, a deep subterranean 
 channel as it were, connects the two mighty 
 rivers of the Orient and the Occident, and brings 
 them into a new bond of unity. The Water Ball 
 thus has rolled half way round the globe; whither 
 tends its course? May we not prophesy that 
 it will yet return to its primitive source, and 
 in its transfigured shape, help make over that 
 Hindoo consciousness whence it originally sprang, 
 after that it is laden with all the spoils of a 
 World's journey and of Time's cycle? Many
 
 142 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 incarnations the legend will have passed through 
 in its circumnavigation of the earth, all of 
 which seem destined to find their way back to 
 their earliest home by the Ganges, after thou 
 sands of years of separation. The story, the tale, 
 the mythus wanders around the globe, seeking its 
 origin, like the fabled Sigfried; nay, like Johnny 
 Appleseed, who is also a wanderer westward, 
 along with the Sun in Heaven. A metempsy 
 chosis of the legend we thus witness, gradually 
 fulfilling its cycle, spatial, temporal, spiritual. 
 
 But the prophecy has not yet come to pass, 
 and will not, for some seons yet; therefore let us 
 turn our look backwards and regard the hemi 
 sphere already won, allowing the future to take 
 care of itself, which it will do in any case. 
 Here again, we shall have to take refuge in the 
 words of Professor Brazennose, who grows ex 
 alted at the magnificent retrospect: "Three 
 great stages we can behold in the vast periphery 
 of this legend, verily continent-encompassing: 
 namely, the Asiatic, the European, and the 
 American. The first is represented by the 
 colossal Indian epos, the Mahabharata, together 
 with its successors in Hindoo literature; the 
 second is represented by the great Goethe; the 
 third is represented by little Johnny Ap 
 pleseed with his little verses and his fiddle, 
 wandering from place to place in the Valley of 
 the Mississippi. Still the latter is, I maintain,
 
 BOOK SECOND. 143 
 
 an integral part of the grand hemispherical 
 arch bending around the globe ; he, too, is the 
 instrument of the World-spirit and participates 
 in its movement ; he is a true product of the 
 genius of Time and bears its image." 
 
 On such a lofty pedestal has our ail-too enthu 
 siastic Professor set the humble Appleseed, whom 
 the reader may now imagine touching the welkin 
 above with his head while still jigging and fid 
 dling to a circle of rustic listeners below. 
 
 Another curious bit of folk-lore which Apple- 
 seed has seized hold of and transmuted into 
 poetry, pertains to the plant known as the man 
 drake or mandragora. He regards it seemingly 
 as a kind of anthropopalhic vegetable, or man- 
 flower, endowed with human feelings and sym 
 pathies. Indeed he represents the whole 
 plant-world as possessing a sort of sensation, and 
 he ascribes to the same an obscure longing to 
 attain the human stage of development. Per 
 haps he would regard all nature, even down to 
 matter, as seeking to reach beyond itself and 
 become spirit. Strange Appleseed! the most 
 unmitigated, desperate idealist we have ever read 
 after, eternally shooting upward with his heaven- 
 scaling optimism, yet also staying below to 
 wreathe and swathe in rainbows of hope and 
 progress our muddy earth-ball.
 
 144 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S BHYMES. 
 
 It will be interesting to see how the myth- 
 making soul of the Ages has employed this rela 
 tion between plants and man, and has endeavored 
 to set forth their secret affinity. Twofold is the 
 movement thereof; the first is the descent, where 
 in the man becomes a plant, by some transforma 
 tion; the second is the ascent, wherein the plant 
 is shown at some point on the way up toward 
 man. 
 
 In the case of the descent, the great classical 
 instance is found in Virgil. Every school-boy 
 recollects the striking passage in which is told 
 how Aeneas in his wanderings came to a wood; 
 there he plucked the branch of a tree which began 
 at once to ooze blood and to talk, being the 
 transformed body of Trojan Polydorus. 
 
 From the Aeneid this incident has rolled down 
 Time like a great wave on the Ocean, repeating its 
 undulations through the works of many poets. 
 The greatest of these aftertones is found in the 
 Inferno of Dante, to whom Virgil was guide and 
 master. In a passage of tremendous mythical 
 
 J. C3 */ 
 
 power the poet sets forth the metamorphosis of 
 the self-murderer into a jagged poisonous shrub; 
 having destroyed through his own deed his animal 
 life, the guilty man-falls back into vegetable life, 
 without locomotion, yet with feeling, reason and 
 speech. Thus the ever-memorable Wood of the 
 Suicides becomes an awful fact to the reader of 
 Great Literature. Of such transformations by
 
 BOOK SECOND. 145 
 
 descent we catch two or three gleams in Apple- 
 seed's poem, which, however, is mainly occupied 
 with the idea of ascent. But to trace this even 
 slightly, a multifarious erudition is necessary; 
 hence we have now to call in our obliging friend, 
 Professor Brazennose, who takes special delight 
 in delving down into and bringing up to light 
 again the almost vanished background of the 
 Present in the Past. 
 
 ** The mandrake," remarks the Professor on a 
 stray sheet of paper, " has occupied an important 
 place in folk-lore, being connected with certain 
 primitive beliefs and rites of the people. Its 
 root is frequently, though not always, forked, 
 and thus, with a little trimming perchance, it 
 can be made to suggest the human shape, to 
 which fact it probably owes its place in prophecy, 
 magic, love, and even in physic, though it seems 
 to possess certain medicinal properties. Doubt 
 less the first syllable of the English word has 
 helped to suggest, among English-speaking 
 peoples, a connection with human beings. 
 
 " Down from the Orient to and through the 
 Occident we can follow this faith in the super 
 natural powers of the mandrake. It is men 
 tioned early in the Bible (Gen. XXX. 14), 
 where the Hebrew word, according to the best 
 commentators, means this plant, and is so trans 
 lated. It is doubtless the magical herb baaras 
 Of Josephus (Bell. Jud. B. VII, C. 6, Sec. 3;, 
 
 10
 
 146 JOHNNY APPLE SEED 1 8 RHYMES. 
 
 which had the property curing cases of demonic 
 obsession. A dog was employed to drag it out 
 by the roots in order that the deadly effects 
 of its shriek might be avoided, as it was torn 
 from its native bed in the soil, the operator mean 
 while stopping his ears with pitch or wax. Thus 
 Ulysses of old stopped the ears of his compan 
 ions that they might not hear the voice of the 
 Sirens. But the operation always meant death 
 to the dog. Shakespeare, brimming with folk 
 lore, has made Juliet cry out : 
 
 And shrieks, like mandrakes torn out of the earth, 
 That living mortals, hearing them, run mad. 
 
 "It is my opinion that this plant is the mysti 
 cal anlhropomorphos of the old Greek philoso 
 pher Pythagoras. In Roman Columella we find 
 it called semi-homo, or half-man (semi-hominis 
 vesano gramine). Grimm in his Teutonic Folk- 
 Lore says that the dog had to be black, wherein 
 we catch a glimpse of the favorite German Black 
 Poodle of many a legend, of that of Faust among 
 others. Not a single white hair was permitted, 
 the dog had to be examined as strictly 
 as the old Egyptian priests examined the 
 bull Apis in his advent to earth. Moreover the 
 deed had to be performed just before sunrise, 
 and on a Friday, at which time the devil would 
 be surely on hand and ready to help. Allied to 
 the half-man (semi-homo) is also the manikin
 
 BOOK SECOND. 147 
 
 (homunculus) famous in medieval story, and 
 wrought over with new significance by Goethe in 
 the Second Part of Faust. Perchance, too, 
 touches of that curious Teutonic sprite, the 
 gallows-manikin (Galgenmannchen) are inter 
 mingled with the legend of the mandrake. 
 
 " As to the origin of the man-plant, the 
 mythical fancy has found therein occasion for its 
 playful caprices. A common view was that it 
 came of actual human generation, a product of 
 the seed of man, wherein vice and sensuality 
 had their part. Albertus Magnus, turning aside 
 from his dry scholastic speculation, makes the 
 interesting statement that the root of the man 
 drake was more powerful in its charms if it grew 
 under the gibbet where it received the secretions 
 of the dangling criminal. Herewith we may 
 cite a sentence from Thomas Newton's Herball 
 to the Bible, which says this plant is supposed to 
 be " a creature having life, engendered under 
 the earth of the seed of some dead person put to 
 death for murder." A gruesome, uncanny 
 thought, yet truly of the people. 
 
 ** As the capstone to this marvelous vegetable 
 development we should note that the mandrake 
 has been sexed. Gerard in his Herball (1597) 
 describes the male and female. The old Greek 
 botanist Dioscorides calls the plant Circaea, from 
 Circe, the enchantress, and he speaks of its two 
 kinds, not, however, as differing in sex."
 
 148 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 Here our Professor takes an excursion to 
 Arabia and cites Avicenna and the sages of 
 Bagdad, but we shall have to cut him short. 
 We shall come nearer home and throw one more 
 glance at our Shakespeare, who had a poet's love 
 for the fabulous, the mysterious, the phastasrna- 
 goric, as well as for the hidden subtleties and 
 affinities of nature, and hence seems to have been 
 attracted by the mandrake with its circumambient 
 world of fable. Beside the passage already cited 
 from Romeo and Juliet, there is the allusion in 
 Macbeth to the " insane root which takes the 
 reason prisoner; " in Antony and Cleopatra we 
 hear the cry: "Give me to drink of man- 
 dragora ; " in Othello listen to the reverberation 
 in the mighty lines: 
 
 Not poppy nor mandragora, 
 Nor all the drowsy syrops of the world, 
 Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep 
 Which thou ownedst yesterday. 
 
 Thus we may catch in Appleseed's lines a 
 marvelous echo of primeval beliefs, heathen rites, 
 relics of fetichism, all, however, being trans 
 figured into modern life, to which they lead in the 
 process of development. In such manner poetry 
 connects to-day with the very beginning, and 
 joins, in the stream of folk-lore, the civilized 
 man with his remote spiritual ancestry, giving 
 him gleams backward through uncounted eras. 
 The vast mythical river wandering suppressed
 
 BOOK SECOND. 149 
 
 through the hearts of the people, underground, 
 as it were, for centuries, reaches the Mississippi 
 Valley and throws up a sudden jet to sunshine 
 and print in the little rhymes of Johnny Apple- 
 seed. Surely every man is the heir of his race ; 
 the faith which reared and supported our Aryan 
 forefathers in their primitive wanderings we can 
 not throw off so easily in spite of culture. It 
 remains in the dark underworld of the soul, and 
 may break forth to daylight at any moment on 
 due provocation. 
 
 Indeed I have repeatedly thought that Apple- 
 seed specially had inherited the primitive Aryan 
 spirit which drove our ancestral emigrants out of 
 the highlands of Asia toward Europe and the 
 West, and still keeps propelling their sons across 
 America to the islands of the Pacific, yea to Asia 
 itself, back toward the original starting point, 
 which these sons are destined at some time to 
 reach again. Does he not persist in wandering, 
 wandering still, in the midst of civilization and 
 a settled life? Thus he has gone on, planting, 
 singing, moving westward in the main, yet with 
 cycles of return, in order to witness what has 
 thus far been accomplished. A representative 
 Aryan I call Appleseed in these matters, reach 
 ing beyond America and the present, beyond 
 Europe and Christendom, even beyond classical 
 antiquity, into hoary nebulous Asia. Methinks 
 I see him striding gigantesque out of that dim
 
 150 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 prehistoric fog-world on his new career; he 
 reaches Hellas and Marathon, and there he fights 
 along with the Greeks the grand battle of 
 freedom against the Orient, separating from the 
 same, as a child from its mother's breast. 
 Thence he takes up his clear historic march 
 toward the Occident, in time he crosses the 
 Atlantic, and not many years ago was seen 
 passing over the Mississippi in a flat-boat. 
 
 But this is not all. Appleseed seems to have 
 pushed his origin backwards, beyond man, to a 
 winged world of which he was a feathery mem 
 ber. In the following poem he expresses some 
 remembrances not only of a pre-historic, but a 
 pre-human, yea a pre-mammalian existence. 
 Probably he intends simply to utter a deep living 
 sympathy with nature, just as previously, in the 
 legend of The Mandrake^ he endowed the vege 
 table with feeling and speech. But under any 
 circumstances we can well attribute to the poet 
 the instinct for pinions, inherited or acquired, and 
 the strong desire to fly, even when he may not 
 be able. But let us have the poem, and thus, 
 with a final whip-stitch close up and bring to an 
 end all the tortuosities of this Second Book.
 
 REMINISCENCE. 
 
 A Darwinist I am in certain things, 
 For I believe I had a pair of wings ; 
 I must have been a bird, and once could fly, 
 Flight is my lost ancestral quality; 
 Yet lost not wholly, oft I feel it still, 
 In secret working up into my will. 
 Erect I stand upon the mountain top, 
 I scarcely can my eager body stop 
 From leaping out into the air 
 And speeding o'er the valley fair 
 Unto another lofty peak 
 Which seems in love to me to speak 
 And bid me come and perch there too, 
 And from it take a higher view 
 Of all that is below, above, around, 
 From Heaven's glow down to the vale's dim 
 ground. 
 
 In my dreams 
 
 Oft it seems 
 
 That I feel the pinions growing 
 And their power of flight bestowing, 
 Urging me to spring and rise 
 Till I upward soar into the skies, 
 Flit along the atmospheric way, 
 Half in earnest, half in play, 
 Half awake and half asleep. 
 
 (150
 
 152 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 Thus from cloud to cloud I sweep 
 
 Pulling flowers, 
 
 Idle hours, 
 
 Sucking Heaven's honey to my fill, 
 For on wings I always have my will. 
 What I was, I still must be, 
 Past doth bear futurity. 
 So I find wherever I may roam, 
 Reminiscence of my former home ; 
 And whatever I may think or rhyme 
 Is but the far-off echo of another time.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 
 
 1. 
 
 Nothing is duller than wit, 
 If you have not a bit ; 
 Nothing is darker than light, 
 If you have no sight ; 
 Nothing is harder to part with, 
 If nothing you have to start with. 
 
 2. 
 
 Appleseed, another still ; 
 
 We like the rumble of your mill. 
 Than knowledge nothing is ever less known, 
 If no knowledge you have of your own ; 
 Than Heaven nothing can be less celestial 
 If no Heaven within you keeps under the bestial ; 
 Than wisdom but why take your time? 
 Fit your own case now to the rhyme. 
 
 (153)
 
 154 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 3. 
 Every man must wisdom obtain 
 
 At his own cost ; 
 The new ones have to discover again 
 
 What the old ones lost. 
 
 4. 
 
 When out of annoyance 
 You can make joyance, 
 And Fortune's back-stroke 
 You can turn to a joke, 
 And your innermost sense 
 Is one with Providence, 
 Then into the world you have put the whole 
 
 leaven, 
 Inside of it you yourself are the heaven. 
 
 5. 
 Wisdom's key in her lock thou wilt find, 
 
 Seek it not round about; 
 Let thy foresight see always behind, 
 
 And thy insight see out. 
 
 6. 
 Little wise and very learned, 
 
 Little learned and very wise, 
 Which is taken, which is spurned? 
 
 Seek them both to harmonize. 
 Nor the wisdom nor the lore 
 Put not rashly out of door ; 
 Though twofold man's wit, 
 It need not be split.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 155 
 
 7. 
 Wisdom has often a need to be jolly : 
 
 ' Tis then she delights 
 Slyly to put on the mask made of folly, 
 
 And go out of nights; 
 
 Disguised she sees all the sights 
 
 As she strays through the town 
 
 In the garb of the clown. 
 When will she come back, dost thou ask? 
 When thou canst see under her mask. 
 
 It is easy to dance to the fiddle 
 
 When Fortune has chosen to play ; 
 
 But thou must unravel her riddle, 
 When she runs with her music away. 
 
 9. 
 If you should get too wise, 
 
 That is unsound ; 
 You must folly also prize 
 
 As wisdom's bound. 
 
 10. 
 Every creature that has a nose, 
 
 Cannot help having a snivel ; 
 Every tongue that a-rattling goes, 
 
 Will sometimes run into drivel ; 
 But snivel and drivel in one breath 
 
 Put charity to death.
 
 156 ' JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 11. 
 
 To-morrow never comes this way, 
 Thou wilt never meet him ; 
 
 He hates his brother To-day, 
 And will never greet him ; 
 
 Heap his brother with gifts, I pray, 
 And thou wilt beat him. 
 
 12. 
 
 Light and warmth are twins of the Sun, 
 
 Not to be separated; 
 If thou wilt have of either the one, 
 Thou wilt find him mated. 
 The Warm and the Bright, 
 The Feeling and Sight, 
 The Head and the Heart, 
 The Whole and the Part 
 Are together created. 
 
 13. 
 
 "Knowledge is what is unknown, 
 Wisdom is never man's own." 
 In triumph so sings the denier, 
 And shows he is not a liar. 
 
 
 
 
 
 14. 
 
 " What is your price to see the show? " 
 The only fee is that you know ; 
 You cannot enter wisdom's door, 
 Unless you bring along your knower.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 157 
 
 15. 
 
 Men are ciphers if they stand alone ; 
 In themselves they are but nought, 
 Be it whether you bestow 
 Them singly, or in a row ; 
 
 Place before them but a one, 
 See, a miracle is wrought, 
 And you ask, How is it done? 
 
 Look ! the Earth is bearing men, 
 That lone one becomes a ten, 
 And the ten is now a hundred, too, 
 If we read that cipher man anew; 
 And if added to the million's store, 
 He will make the million many millions 
 more. 
 
 16. 
 
 Oracle, voice of to-morrow, 
 For me has it joy, has it sorrow? 
 
 Has it heaven or hell ? 
 Show me to-day what is in it ! 
 
 Peace ! The future itself will tell 
 Its secret at the right minute. 
 
 17. 
 
 When authority is mad, 
 Obedience is sad; 
 But when obedience is bad, 
 Authority runs mad : 
 So each begins 
 The other's sins.
 
 158 JOHNNY APPLE SEED 1 S BHYMES. 
 
 18. 
 I slapped my hand upon my thigh 
 
 As soon as I snuffed the candle, 
 "I'm burnt!" in sudden pain I had to cry, 
 
 That flame I no longer shall handle; 
 But look at my house ! now it is bright ! 
 My pain was the money that bought me the light. 
 
 19. 
 
 He is often the good and the great, 
 Whom the rascals all bitterly hate; 
 But he may be of rascals the worst, 
 Curst himself even by the accurst; 
 So, ere you love with or hate with, 
 It is better to see whom you mate with. 
 
 20. 
 Life is but a loan 
 
 Which thou must return 
 With many a groan ; 
 
 But at the end thou wilt learn, 
 If honest thy quest, 
 That this loan's interest 
 Is to its principal 
 As nought is to all, 
 As darkness to light, 
 As blindness to sight, 
 As finite to infinite, 
 As the new to the old birth, 
 As Heaven to Earth.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 159 
 
 21. 
 
 Opinion, Opinion, 
 My darling, my minion ! 
 Let me the wide world explore, 
 My Opinion I find and no more. 
 All of my treasure I freely shall spend, 
 For my Opinion, immutable friend. 
 And I shall pour out the last of my life, 
 For my love of Opinion, my dearest, my wife. 
 Friend and darling and wife how strange 
 
 O C2 
 
 That you should ask me Opinion to change. 
 
 22. 
 " Tell me, who is the best adviser? " 
 
 Find out which of two men is the wiser. 
 " But if wisdom I cannot discern? " 
 
 Then to school you must go and learn. 
 " But if in the mean time I cannot delay?" 
 
 Then you will have to be taught on the way. 
 " I never shall follow that rule." 
 
 You must be trounced into school. 
 
 23. 
 " Why this bent to doggrelize 
 
 In verses so short? " 
 Good wine is good in my, eyes, 
 
 Measured in pint or in quart. 
 Sometimes but a drop on the lip, 
 Oftener still I take a good sip, 
 Then again the whole cask I would dip.
 
 160 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 24. 
 
 When the beginner , the baby, arrives in the land, 
 It finds its cradle already at hand ; 
 When it commences to open its eyes, 
 Over its head papa's house it espies; 
 Lest its nose a tumble should threaten to harm, 
 Around its soft body it feels mama's arm ; 
 When it has need of something to wear, 
 Behold, a beautiful jacket is there. 
 W T hen it grows, that it stay no longer a dunce, 
 The school-house seems to spring up at once. 
 It appears quite into the order to fit, 
 Surely the world has been made just for it. 
 Now it must do what has already been done, 
 Win the same crown that always was won; 
 It has to know what was known long before, 
 What it has to learn, is learning's own store. 
 In being what has been, it reaches its youth, 
 And begins to defy what before was its truth. 
 The young man so bold will his own world 
 
 create, 
 
 But he finds a created old world to be his estate. 
 Still he never the one fact should fail to discern, 
 Ere he can have his estate, it anew he must earn. 
 So he builds papa's house, and finds mama too, 
 The old Adam keeps working to make himself 
 
 new.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 161 
 
 Never to be forgotten is that evening when the 
 
 \_> o 
 
 editor, having gathered together the preceding 
 bunch of versicles by Appleseed, read them to a 
 company of appreciative listeners, who responded 
 always with luminous .looks, and sometimes with 
 half-suspended words of approval. The editor 
 interspersed his reading with various questions 
 and comments ; these, however, he will compli 
 ment his constituency by omitting in the present 
 volume. It has been already duly noted that he 
 is a sort of wandering lecturer, wherein his vocation 
 has some resemblance to that of Appleseed himself. 
 It is barely possible that this community of pur 
 suits may have forged the bond of sympathy which 
 has ended in the editorship of the book now 
 organizing itself slowly out of chaos before the 
 eyes of the reader. Let it not be forgotten that 
 Theophilus Middling, too, has his call, his mes 
 sage, nay, his heaven-sent apostleship, though 
 this be but to set forth and to promote the work 
 of humble Johnny Appleseed, itinerant singer 
 and planter of fruit-trees for future generations. 
 A very pleasing impression was produced by a 
 letter which I received one day, asking me to 
 give a talk to the Hardscrabble Literary Club. 
 Of course the invitation was accepted, both on 
 its own merits and because it furnished me an 
 il
 
 162 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 other opportunity to confer with Professor Braz- 
 ennose, for whose sterling qualities of mind and 
 heart I have a strong regard, which is doubled 
 several times through our common interest in 
 Appleseed. At once I sat down and wrote him 
 a letter, apprising him of the fact that I had been 
 called by the Literary Club of his town, and that 
 I would arrive at a certain date, and that I hoped 
 to see him often and to renew the former friendly 
 intercourse with him in person. To this letter I 
 never received any reply, and the day came for 
 starting without news from the Professor. 
 
 And here I may state the situation which be 
 came apparent afterwards, and which seemed at 
 first somewhat strange: the University of Hard- 
 scrabble did not dominate the town wholly in 
 matters of culture, and specially Professor 
 Brazennose did not control the entire literary 
 element of the place. On the contrary a kind 
 of reaction had set in against academic instruc 
 tion in its very home. 
 
 It was not difficult to find the personality in 
 whom this opposition centered. The Literary 
 Club held its meeting, the lecture was given, 
 and, this done, some readings from Apple- 
 seed's verses were called for by a tall gentle 
 man present who sat on the front seat and 
 who showed an erect military bearing, with a 
 good deal of fire in his eye. That eye the editor 
 had noticed repeatedly during the evening and
 
 BOOK THIRD. 163 
 
 its occasional flashing ; in fact, the man had 
 been at least one half the audience to the lect 
 urer, though one hundred people were present. 
 He somehow had the power of drawing the 
 look like a magnet. After the meeting had 
 ended, there was a little reception, a general 
 introduction took place, and the editor first 
 became acquainted with a man to whom he is 
 under many deep obligations, Colonel Godlove 
 Himtnelshime. 
 
 One of the noticeable things was the absence 
 
 o 
 
 of such an important person as Professor Brazen- 
 nose. The editor thought of it, could not 
 understand it, imagined various causes, and 
 finally asked Colonel Himmelshime, who gave 
 a penetrating look with some red in the face, 
 and then assuming a courteous air, spoke some 
 what as follows: " Why the Professor is absent 
 I cannot tell, he rarely or never meets with the 
 Club. He is a busy man, and has, I learn, a 
 great deal of reading on his hands just now, 
 purposing to write an exhaustive monograph on 
 The Evolution of the Bookworm, with an 
 appendix containing all the bibliography, and 
 bibliophagy of the subject." 
 
 The editor confesses that he was puzzled by 
 this answer, and thought he saw a slight twist of 
 irony in the Colonel's features, which, however, 
 assumed a grave look as he continued : " There 
 is a need of institutions of learning school,
 
 164 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 college, university in order to keep and to 
 transmit what the race has won in the line of 
 knowledge. Yet just here lies the trouble : in 
 acquiring the fixed, the mind itself gets fixed ; 
 it loses its buoyant, flexible, transcendental 
 power, and drops back helplessly into its own 
 forms, from which it has to be rescued with 
 untold difficulty. Hence I have thought that the 
 University, necessary though it be, must be sup 
 plemented by something else, in order that it 
 escape from its own trammels. There must be 
 somehow a free discipline, as opposed to an 
 organized discipline ; there must be a training 
 which trains to transcend all training, which seeks 
 to liberate the spirit from every form of spirit 
 ual imprisonment." 
 
 Here was new vein, manifestly of shining gold, 
 struck in the most unexpected fashion by the 
 editor in that town of Hardscrabble, in which all 
 were searchers, workers, delvers, seeking with 
 scant luxury the treasures of the ages. The 
 Colonel observing the interest of his listener, 
 braced his features into a special look, passing 
 from the general to the particular, and lowered 
 his voice into a confidential tone: "I observed 
 that you spoke of the work of Professor 
 Brazennose and his annotations on Appleseed's 
 poems. Moreover, I saw that you were inclined 
 to follow on his lines even when you did not 
 mention him. Now I have nothing against him
 
 BOOK THIRD. 165 
 
 personally, he is a gifted man and a good fellow, 
 but really he does not penetrate to the heart of 
 Appleseed, sometimes he does not even cut 
 through the skin. I know him well, a man en 
 dowed generously by nature, but crystallized in 
 his erudition. You have read the great poets, 
 and with them is reckoned Goethe ; you must 
 know Homunculus in the Second Part of Faust, 
 the little man in the glass bottle, flashing, flitting, 
 trying to get out of his limits and to become 
 truly himself. I have always to think of him 
 when I see Professor Brazennose, who also 
 dances about and flashes, sometimes marvelously, 
 but it is always a reflected ray, though it be a 
 sparkle of a diamond. His mind is a mere pho 
 tographic stone, on which the sun of former 
 ages has printed many a beautiful scene fern, 
 tree, mountain. Still it is fixed in its petrified 
 setting, without life or movement." 
 
 At this point the Colonel, thinking that he 
 was getting a little too personal, or observing 
 that the editor received his statements without 
 taking sides, turned the conversation into a more 
 general channel: " The human mind is a form- 
 maker, but also a form-breaker, both belong to 
 it, and the truth is the union of the opposite 
 tendencies. Man, unless he casts the shell which 
 he himself deposits around himself, sinks to the 
 level of a crustacean and carries his shell about 
 on his back, visible to all seeing creatures. You
 
 166 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 have heard of the hollow brazeu bull of an 
 ancient artist, made by him for a Sicilian tyrant, 
 who could roast therein his enemies ; the maker 
 was the first man confined and burnt in his own 
 brazen shape," said the Colonel with a suspicious 
 grin which made the editor think that he was 
 punning in this ghastly fashion upon the name 
 of Professor Brazennose, and possibly hinting 
 the 1 atter's fate. 
 
 " All the organized professions," continued 
 the Colonel, '* and all institutions of every kind 
 must in their very nature show resistance to any 
 forward movement on their own lines. So the 
 public school fights the kindergarden, so the 
 doctors fought Harvey, Jenner, and Koch, so the 
 scientists were arrayed against Goethe." Here 
 the editor could not help thinking to himself 
 by way of addition : so Professor Reginald 
 Brazennose against Colonel Godlove Himmel- 
 shime. 
 
 It is clear that a decided split, or at least a 
 twofold tendency, has shown itself in the town 
 of Hardscrabble, specially in the cultivated cir 
 cles thereof. Strange, but old is the experience. 
 Such a dualism will rise in every people, in every 
 village, yes, in every man. Is it not also evi 
 dent that two leaders or banner-bearers have 
 sprung up, and are marching at the head of their 
 respective cohorts? Such was the sudden view 
 darting before the imagination of the editor,
 
 BOOK THIRD. 167 
 
 when he propounded a question to Himmel- 
 shime: 
 
 " You have spoken of the need of freeing the 
 mind from the trammels of training after it has 
 been trained at the institution of learning; I 
 would like to know if you are cognizant of 
 any means or scheme by which that may be 
 effected." 
 
 The Colonel brightened up, and then relapsed 
 into a mystifying look : " There is something at 
 work which will gradually remedy the difficulty. 
 Its power is quiet, but spontaneous ; it is under 
 the control of no board or other wooden thing; 
 it elects its own professors, not according to 
 diploma or recommendation or back-stairs influ 
 ence, they being elected by the thing to be done. 
 It is around you, I am surprised that you have 
 not seen it, do not see it now. It will swallow 
 you if you are not careful ; possibly the monster 
 has already gulped you down without your 
 knowing it." 
 
 So spake the Colonel in an occult, mystifying 
 way, and gave a little chuckle, to which the 
 editor unfortunately replied by asking if Pro 
 fessor Brazennose was one of the instructors. 
 Whereat the Colonel changed to a cloudy aspect 
 and grew positively acrid. " Brazennose indeed ! 
 Let him stick that brass nose of his, face and all, 
 into some book dead a thousand years ago, and 
 root and burrow there to his heart's satisfaction.
 
 168 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 Do you know that I think Nature had a hand in 
 giving that name to him, though it belongs to his 
 family also? You have heard of a certain old 
 Greek grammarian of Alexandria called by his 
 rivals * The Man of the Brazen Gut' (/a/Wvr^o?), 
 on account of the perdurable toughness of 
 his digestive apparatus in holding out against 
 the effects of study, the dyspepsia-maker. Or 
 possibly the appellation came from his marvelous 
 capacity for digesting such enormous loads of the 
 dry husks, bones, shells and shards of philologi 
 cal erudition, the cast-off brain refuse of former 
 ages." 
 
 Distinctly has the dualism of life appeared with 
 no little intensity in the town of Hardscrabble, 
 which has to work itself out of the same toward 
 some kind of unity mid throes of heart-wrench 
 ing struggle. The Colonel, whose face images 
 the strife, is swayed up and down by alternate 
 waves of war and peace, his soul being an ocean 
 in perpetual wrestle with its own winds and tides. 
 I take advantage of a little lull in the scowling 
 storm, and, to turn his attention away from sword 
 and battle-axe, as well as to get some in formation 
 for this work, I ask him: What do you think of 
 Johnny Appleseed? 
 
 Thereupon followed a most curious dissertation 
 of the philosophico-literary stamp, which played 
 a subtle teasing game with my mind, now rising 
 out of reach, and indeed beyond all vision, into
 
 BOOK TRIED. 169 
 
 the very empyrean of thought, then descending 
 suddenly in a sentence and flaunting sportfully 
 before my eyes within easy grasp. Still only 
 shreds could I catch and hold ; he spoke of " the 
 change which is the abiding in all change; " 
 his face turned to a huge scoff at " the self- 
 undoing lie," which is " the work of the fiend 
 who swallows himself." But the chief and ever- 
 recurring stress was laid upon " the play of the 
 negative," which, he claimed, wound through 
 all of Appleseed's poems, was indeed the very 
 heart's-blood circulating through every little 
 rhyme and giving to the same whatever of life 
 and energy it showed. 
 
 Overwhelming was the phenomenon to the 
 editor, who stood bedazzled and darkened in the 
 very excess of radiance pouring from this new 
 luminary. When the stream had ceased, Him- 
 melshime put his hand into his coat pocket and 
 drew forth a paper, saying: "There, take that 
 and peruse it ; I too, am a collector of Apple- 
 seed's rhymes, of which I give you here a few 
 samples copied down quite at random." 
 
 Of course I took the paper, and cast a thank 
 ful glance into the face of my benefactor. My 
 astonishment was great as I saw him suddenly 
 change ; his iron features, soldierly and some 
 what savage, hud melted into an eager yet kindly 
 smile, as he looked off into the audience ; even 
 his hair, stiffly erect like the bristles of a boar in
 
 1 70 JOHNNY A PPL ESEED ' 8 RHYMES. 
 
 wrath, seemed to bend over in gentleness. A 
 fairy shape, unknown to the present editor, came 
 flitting past, the eyes of Himmelshime turned 
 away, and, excusing himself with great rapidity, 
 he soon was lost in the crowd. 
 
 On returning to the inn that evening, I queried 
 about many things ; not the least puzzling was 
 that sudden evanishment of the Colonel almost 
 in the midst of a sentence. I soon took a glance 
 at the manuscript presented by my new acquaint 
 ance. A great variety of scrawls with many 
 blotches covered it over, the lines running 
 through the center, around the margin, and even 
 crosswise. At once I set to work deciphering the 
 whole and copying it into a legible hand. I 
 found a number of Appleseed's verses fringed 
 about with a strange display of metaphorical 
 pyrotechnics. All sorts of outbursts, expletives, 
 apostrophes, rhetorical 'coruscations, stunning 
 explosions, had wreathed themselves around 
 those rhymes, and in some places I could not 
 tell where Appleseed ended and Himmelshime 
 began. But what I could make out and separate 
 both of verse and prose, the measured and the 
 measureless, I have inserted in the present work. 
 
 Here follows the longest piece, which is 
 written with more than usual distinctness and 
 decision, and which Himmelshime appears to 
 emphasize strongly by putting it into the center 
 of his manuscript.
 
 25. 
 
 Without the Devil's capital, 
 What would become of us all ? 
 Sin is the grand bank 
 
 Which enriches the preacher; 
 Ignorance is the huge tank 
 
 Which gives milk to the teacher; 
 Sickness is the doctor's health, 
 
 He practices, not without cause ; 
 Wrong is the lawyer's wealth 
 
 Which he draws out of the laws ; 
 Folly is found the best heirloom of ages, 
 Without it we never had had the sages, 
 Who, to cure it, 
 Doubly assure it. 
 And the poets, though they cover him up with a 
 
 name, 
 
 Are always seeking to sing of Beelzebub's fame ; 
 They serve up a plate of the fruit that's forbid 
 den, 
 
 Though in its own flowers it deftly be hidden, 
 Man tastes, then tumbles from sweet Paradise, 
 If Adam fell not, pray, how could he rise? 
 If he were what he was, he would not be at all, 
 For Adam is Adam just through Adam's fall. 
 And so the Devil's work and word 
 Are always helping out the Lord. 
 
 (171)
 
 1 72 JOHNNY A PPLESEED ' 8 RHYMES. 
 
 It had become manifest to me that Himmel- 
 shime was the man whom I now wanted . I woke 
 early the next morning and lay in bed thinking 
 over the incidents of the previous evening ; the 
 Colonel had simply absorbed every other figure, 
 and stood in solitary majesty before me. That 
 " play of the negative " kept waltzing into and 
 out of my brain, appearing, vanishing, always 
 refusing to be caught and held fast ; other ex 
 pressions were thunderous, and had sudden 
 detonations like a Columbiad in the soul. For 
 the time being I forgot the Professor totally, I 
 was so overwhelmed by the new appearance. 
 What was to be done? Clearty I had to see 
 Himmelshime again, and, if possible, get his 
 side of things ; there could evidently be no com 
 plete commentary written on Appleseed which 
 did not include his view. He had made me feel 
 strongly my own limitation, and in my deepest 
 nature I was inspired with the resolution to over 
 come the same, to pass over the old boundary 
 into the new land. Accordingly I was soon pre 
 pared to set out for the purpose of reaching his 
 residence. 
 
 On inquiry, I found that the Colonel was 
 a well-known person in the town, having held 
 several important civil offices, and having been a
 
 BOOK THIRD. 173 
 
 soldier in the late war between the North and the 
 South. Along ray path I picked up scattered 
 bits of information about him from the mouths 
 of the people ; everybody regarded him as a man 
 outside the common strain of mortals, possessing 
 great originality spiced with many personal 
 caprices and singularities. At last I came to his 
 house, which stood in the suburbs of the town ; it 
 had one story spreading out freely over the ground, 
 but there was an observatory on top, where he 
 often stayed the whole day, reading and ponder 
 ing. An ancient negress was the sole occupant 
 besides himself ; she kept his household in a kind 
 of order not too precise; she was on the whole 
 disinclined to disturb the venerable stain on his 
 books, which were not many, but much used, 
 being world-books, such as Homer and Shake 
 speare. The Colonel received me with great 
 cordiality, we soon brushed away the cobwebs of 
 ceremony, though the other kind of cobwebs 
 remained as before, and we both took a plunge 
 together into the vast sea of his thought. 
 
 Of course the conversation sported and skipped 
 and tarried by the way according to its own law ; 
 these manifold sinuosities of talk we can not pre 
 tend to reproduce. Still it seemed always to be 
 spinning around one central point, which the 
 reader may be able to extract from the follow 
 ing: 
 
 " Can we not," says Himmelshime, " find out
 
 174 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S BHYMES. 
 
 the source of truth and of delusion too? Indeed 
 must not both have at last one source? Is there 
 any peace for the bound-leaping spirit till that 
 one source be discovered ? Affirmation and nega 
 tion must be seen in the deep abysses of the 
 soul to shoot forth from a common root ; Yes 
 and No, which are so antagonistic in the lower 
 world, became one in the upper world." 
 
 In the course of the conversation Himmelshime 
 gave the following flashes into the historic gene 
 sis of our religious consciousness: "Mightily 
 has the old battle, the Persian battle between 
 Light and Darkness, raged through the ages. 
 The struggle passed into the Semitic mind and 
 was by it spiritualized into the mutually 
 hostile powers, God and Satan, who have 
 ruled our half of the globe for thousands 
 of years in a kind of dualistic opposition. 
 For it is mainly this idea working in 
 the Semitic soul, which has produced the two 
 greatest books of the world, the so-called Bibles, 
 the Hebrew and the Mohammedan ; one of which 
 has been adopted by the Aryan race and gives to 
 the same its chief religious nourishment; the 
 other of which cannot get out of the Orient with 
 any degree of success, but remains wedged in 
 between Eastern Asia and Europe. Monotheistic 
 are both Bibles, yet with the negative dualistic 
 power secretly lurking in their deepest concep 
 tion, and with this power is the grand battle,
 
 BOOK THIRD. 175 
 
 which seeks to overcome the separation into two- 
 foldness, and to restore a cleft Godhood to 
 unity." 
 
 In the same line of thought ran a good many 
 of the Colonel's sentences, some of which the 
 editor has here thrown together, but not all of 
 them by any means. For it would be as difficult 
 to pick up the whole chain of Himmelshime's 
 talk as to handle a streak of lightning ; no human 
 organism could stand the electric shock in either 
 case. Now follow some further remarks, toned 
 down, however, by having had to pass through 
 the editorial brain. 
 
 " Every great song, every great my thus I find 
 in some way trying to unify these two antago 
 nistic energies, or seeking to show their reconcil 
 ing principle. Literature, in its noblest efforts, 
 makes the same mighty endeavor, toiling to 
 bridge over with a fair rainbow arch the black 
 yawning chasm between Hell and Heaven. Even 
 these stray fragments of Appleseed wandering 
 and singing over the prairies of the West, have 
 the same purpose, are making for the same grand 
 unity, trying to put themselves harmoniously to 
 gether into a sky-spanning structure, which is to 
 hold inwardly and image outwardly the one idea. 
 Still the hearer, or perchance the reader, has to 
 fit and mortise the many little pieces into a whole 
 as best he can. Poor Appleseed, with his strag 
 gling, struggling rhymes, is himself a picture of
 
 176 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 humanity in a small way, an atom chanting 
 atoms." 
 
 Picking up a volume from his table and then 
 throwing it down again, Himmelshime went on: 
 * Yet I observe that other more pretentious 
 books are quite as helpless, being made up of 
 a few scattered welkin shreds, faintly illumin 
 ated by sunbeams whose path they happen to 
 obstruct. Nor can I help noticing that the two 
 aforesaid Greatest Books, called Bibles by wor 
 shiping millions, are wholly fragmentary, being 
 in their best portions composed of sudden far- 
 darting gleams of radiance, of fitful flashes of 
 inspiration coming from the Sun beyond the sun, 
 and then quite ceasing for a time. What is 
 called artistic organization they have not, but 
 divinely descending insight the Infinite burst 
 ing into the finite in a twinkling, and then 
 departing beyond and over the border.'* 
 
 I recollect also one of Himraelshime's remarks 
 about our last great book-maker: "It is a sig 
 nificant fact that Goethe, the most organic 
 builder of poetry in these recent ages, as he 
 grew older, and perchance wiser, broke up his 
 classic order and become more fragmentary, 
 apparently on principle. The second part of 
 Wilhelm Meister is one of the wisest of books, 
 but it refuses to fit into any known limits of the 
 novel ; it breaks the form, wherein lies just its 
 form."
 
 26. 
 The prophet must always have a cloak, 
 
 Like good Elijah of old, 
 Which he puts on when he talks to the folk, 
 
 To cover well what he has told, 
 For the prophet's word if bare to the stroke 
 
 Of the season, might take cold. 
 
 And still we shall have to bemoan him, 
 However his word may be planned ; 
 
 For the people will certainly stone him 
 For what they do not understand. 
 
 At last they will learn 
 
 From his dying groan, 
 His sense to discern, 
 
 And make it their own. 
 
 27. 
 
 How shall I pass through the portal 
 
 Into the twilight immortal? 
 
 Be the sower and the sown, 
 Be the mower and the mown, 
 Be the reaper and the grain, 
 Be the slayer and the slain, 
 Be the one and the twain, 
 Then thou shalt live again. 
 
 12 (177)
 
 178 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 28. 
 Though the prophet in dreams the great riddle 
 
 behold, 
 
 In the Now the Future is not to be told ; 
 It has to be first transformed into act, 
 The best interpreter is the fact, 
 Then becomes humdrum 
 What was before a conundrum. 
 
 29. 
 
 Religion is called a profession, 
 The Trade looks to a confession, 
 And the Church itself is a store 
 Full of ready-made clothing; 
 But look not on it with loathing ; 
 You can be fitted what more ? 
 
 30. 
 If you spend the whole of to-morrow, 
 
 And sing your hey-day, 
 You will never be able to borrow 
 
 On God's pay-day. 
 
 31. 
 
 I would not care to have a God 
 Unless he kept for use a rod, 
 And brought it down in might, 
 To let us see the 'right; 
 It is the Godlike 
 To make the rod strike.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 179 
 
 32. 
 Poet, grasp not for the stars in thy mood, 
 
 Hang thee not on the tip of the moon, 
 If thou but reach to the heart of the good, 
 
 That of itself will flow to a tune. 
 
 33. 
 " Tell me, Confessor, what is sin? " 
 
 What you cannot get out of when you get in. 
 For if you get out of what is sin, 
 There is no need to call the Lord in. 
 
 X 
 
 34. 
 
 < 
 
 If the Lord's word be but enigmatic, 
 And man's deed follow that word, 
 
 Life will be found to be running erratic 
 Just in the ways of the Lord. 
 
 35. 
 The old word was: Divide and command ; 
 
 Soon the command sped away; 
 A new rule prevails in the land, 
 
 It reads : Unite and obey. 
 
 36. 
 
 To the eye of faith 
 Thus the Scriptures saith : 
 What Baalim foretells to-day, 
 His ass to-morrow will bray.
 
 180 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 37. 
 
 An immortality he tries to catch, 
 
 And bridle to his soul ; 
 He sits upon the very horse he seeks, 
 
 And rides around the goal. 
 
 38. 
 
 Life is the running an endless race, 
 Weary a moment we cease from the chase ; 
 Then it is thine to make Death 
 But a short pause to take breath. 
 
 39. 
 To make yourself eternal, 
 
 You sow each day the crop ; 
 To make yourself infernal, 
 
 You only have to stop. 
 
 40. 
 Appleseed, thy soul's immortality 
 
 Thou must prove this minute, 
 Else it will grow old and die, 
 
 And leave thy soul within it. 
 
 41. 
 I believe us immortal to be. 
 
 But with words I like not to truss it ; 
 Spare me an immortality 
 
 Which will make me forever discuss it.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 181 
 
 Certain common traits could not help dawn 
 ing on the editorial mind in sorting out and 
 arraying this mass of Appleseed's verses. We 
 have noticed in many, if not in nearly all, a 
 religious, or perchance ethico-religious tinge, 
 which, however, plays over into a great variety 
 of hues, shifting, yet with a permanent substrate. 
 It would seem that Appleseed has no distinct 
 creed or dogmatic code by which he swears through 
 life and death ; that is, he belongs to no special 
 sect or confession, neither Homoousian nor 
 Homoiousian. Yet every reader will feel him 
 to be deeply ethical, though perchance not 
 narrowly moral; nay he shows piety, with 
 reverence for all forms of genuine faith among 
 the children of men. A strong undercurrent of 
 Universal Religion runs through his utterances, 
 from beginning to end; one can perceive in his 
 lightest, most wanton moods, not a flaunting 
 skeptical spirit but a sportive humor which at last 
 rests on love of God and fidelity to the Divine 
 Order. Such at least is the editor's diagnosis of 
 the man, possibly a little too favorable. 
 
 Indeed we think we can trace in undogmatic 
 forms made up of parables, images, metaphors, 
 abstract reflections, and ever so sly witticisms, 
 the fundamental ideas of the Christian Faith, 
 such as Repentance, Grace, Sacrifice, Resignation,
 
 182 JOHNNY APPLESEED^ S RHYMES. 
 
 Hell and Heaven ; nay even the Trinity Appleseed 
 seems to acknowledge, but a Trinity of his own 
 conceived in his own way. At this place, how 
 ever, let us make a sudden turn, lest we strike a 
 discordant note. But we wish still to affirm with 
 emphasis that Appleseed sings in unison with 
 the soul of Christendom, slaking his thirst at the 
 inner stream of its spirit, yet apparently having 
 little to do with its organized shapes in church, 
 creed, priesthood, mass, service, hardly speak 
 ing of them, and probably paying little or no 
 attention to them in life. For which neglect the 
 organization would shake its minatory finger at 
 him, and possibly damn him, if he did not mend 
 and move along its accurately surveyed and care 
 fully constructed highway to the world beyond. 
 We have reached a point at which we shall cite 
 again the words of Himmelshime, who has thrown 
 some keen glances into this phase of Appleseed' s 
 character: " It is clear to me that our wanderer 
 did not like the fixed in anything, not at all in 
 religion. To be sure he adhered just as little to 
 the fluctuating, fleeting, unsettled. How then 
 can we grasp the innermost kernel of the man? 
 He united the two sides in some way, he harmo 
 nized the grand dualism between the changeable 
 and changeless, the negative and positive, Time 
 and Eternity. He did not in his last view hold 
 the Part against the Whole, for thus the Whole 
 gets lost. Coming to religious matters, Apple-
 
 BOOK THIRD. 183 
 
 seed probably believed that the true religion was 
 not this or that one, but all of them, the com 
 plete religious movement of the race. So Art is 
 the process of all Art, and Philosophy the pro 
 cess of all Philosophy." 
 
 It is no wonder, therefore, that we find Apple- 
 seed continually throwing fitful gleams into the 
 depths of immortality. He is no agnostic, he 
 does not dismiss the question as wholly useless, 
 as something that can never be known ; on the 
 contrary, he holds it to be the most practical of 
 problems, one which is to be solved every day of 
 human existence. Man is a compound of Death 
 and Life, of the mortal and immortal, of the 
 finite and infinite, man is in himself the eternal 
 process. But here the editor feels somewhat out 
 of his element; he is fortunate again in being 
 able to find a suitable passage from Himtnel- 
 shime's notes: "Very important is this one 
 duty with Appleseed to eternize himself. By 
 which he certainly does not mean, How to acquire 
 immortal fame, but How to live here and now a 
 life which shall be veritably undecaying, death 
 less, in spite of age and bodily decline. Not by 
 any doctrine, or dogma, or cunning theologem, 
 is the thing to be done, but by an actual life 
 with a world-view corresponding. There is only 
 one way of proving immortality that is by living 
 it, by demonstrating Eternity in Time through 
 activity. Such proof transcends ordinary logic,
 
 184 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 as Heaven is above the earth for how can you 
 prove the summum genus by some lower genus, 
 how prove by a middle term that which is beyond 
 and includes all terms, concepts, limits? The 
 proof must be ever-proving, never-ceasing, not 
 once for all ; it must be a life, and, by filling the 
 moment, transcend the same, and burst over the 
 temporal bound. 
 
 " In some such manner the poets of all times 
 have enforced the immortal principle in man. 
 Did not Dante make it the one glorious trait of 
 his teacher Brunette Latini, whom he had to put 
 into the Inferno notwithstanding, that Brunette 
 taught his pupil come Vuom s'eterna? Quite on a 
 level with the same statement runs an expression 
 in one of Goethe's rhymed Xenia, the whole of 
 which is worth setting down : 
 
 Nichts vom Verganglichen, 
 
 Wie's auch geschah ! 
 Uns zu verewigen 
 
 Bind wir ja da." 
 
 Thus hath the Colonel eased his soul upon this 
 theme, calling to witness two world-poets, whose 
 books are evidently for him a kind of religious 
 breviary. By way of contrast we here append a 
 short string of versicles by Johnny Appleseed, 
 not a world-poet, but a street-singer, who has, 
 nevertheless, a call in his own little way to set 
 the Universe to music.
 
 42. 
 
 Do you know the Sun is growing old? 
 The burnt-out candle of the Universe 
 Will be hereafter but the sombre hearse 
 
 Dragging its planets dark and dead and cold. 
 The light of Time doth also seem to age 
 As it shineth in the mind of Sage, 
 And, waning slowly, dies out from his page- 
 Oh whither, whither, then shall we run? 
 Stay: there will be another Sun. 
 
 43. 
 
 God's thought hath speed 
 
 To be the deed ; 
 When he doth speak, 
 
 All speech is fact ; 
 When the Divine doth teach, 
 
 It is itself the act. 
 
 44. 
 If a man a man defeat, 
 
 Defeater may be defeated ; 
 But when Zeus begins to cheat, 
 
 The man is forever cheated. 
 
 45. 
 
 When the Lord goes forth to dun, 
 The debt to settle is no fun; 
 For his judgment is not spoken 
 Till the bank itself is broken. 
 
 (185)
 
 186 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 46. 
 
 I wonder what is the logos? 
 A misty sea to befog us ? 
 It was the word once spoken, 
 That can never again be broken, 
 But became, in the speaking, a deed, 
 And spake not simply a creed. 
 " Let there be light," was the original word, 
 "And there was light," was the answer first 
 
 heard ; 
 
 The word the act, 
 The thought the fact. 
 
 47. 
 
 Of the Divine 
 Observe the sign: 
 It is the Godlike 
 
 Which rightly makes the rod strike, 
 And always 'tis the Godless 
 Which will have the Master rodless. 
 
 48. 
 
 Did man make God, or God make man? 
 Let him answer whoever can. 
 That some men make their God, I know, 
 He is so like them, just so so. 
 But God makes some men, that is true 
 
 And makes them out of his own hand, 
 They're so like Him in what they do, 
 
 Like Him unmeasured, high they stand 
 Until they reach beyond our human view,
 
 BOOK THIRD. 187 
 
 And overarch with heaven the land ; 
 And thus in them the diurnal 
 Doth rise unto the eternal. 
 
 49. 
 
 Two Sun worshipers once I saw, 
 They prayed the same prayer, obeyed the same 
 
 law, 
 
 In the temple they made the same genuflection, 
 And rolled up their eyes in the same high direc 
 tion; 
 
 But one of them looked on the Sun as a fire, 
 Burning up the whole world in his ire; 
 Saw all of the planets wince at his breath, 
 As he mightily shook from his fire-hair death ; 
 The glance of the great bright Sun-eye was evil, 
 And the God of the Day was destroyer, was 
 
 Devil. 
 
 The other worshiper was just the other, 
 He saw in old Sol his eternal big brother, 
 And he could not help seeing in fire the light, 
 Saw even in wrong the way of the right, 
 Found in all sour things the working of leaven, 
 And in Hell he discovered the path up to 
 
 Heaven. 
 
 Good or evil, it was his trick 
 The part of Satan to play to old Nick, 
 That he seemed to be able, just at a slight nod, 
 To make the old Fire-Fiend shift to the Light- 
 God.
 
 188 JOHNNY APPLE SEED 1 S RHYMES. 
 
 Something of the stern old Goth, at least of 
 the Gothic, lurks inHimmelshime, a dealing with 
 the mysterious and supernatural, a wrestle with 
 fiends, goblins, devils, such as we often see in 
 ancient German wood-cuts. Says he: " In this 
 group of verses, as well as in those which follow, 
 I find Appleseed trying to grasp the all-powerful 
 No of the Universe, even sporting with it in a 
 kind of elephantine dance. Herein, too, he be 
 longs to his age and his ancestry. I hold that 
 all thought, all deep-searching philosophic spec 
 ulation hovers about this ' Play of the Neg 
 ative,' lurking not only in the subtlest turns 
 of the Ego, but also in the mightiest move 
 ments of the World, being the terrific storm- 
 center of the Inferno, as well as the working 
 leaven in all Purgatorial striving and likewise 
 in Paradisaical serenity. The Negative be 
 comes a person in the Mythus, which is the 
 very word and mind of the people ; with that 
 dark personality it specially deals, calling him 
 Devil, Satan, Beelzebub, arid a hundred other 
 names, whom the religious spirit of all times 
 looks upon as its arch-enemy. Infinitely subtle, 
 penetrating, secretive, deceptive, double, yea 
 treble, and yet one in his thousand masks, how 
 shall we catch him and hold him and make him
 
 BOOK THIRD. 189 
 
 do our work? Just that has been man's prob 
 lem through all time. 
 
 Particularly, as it seems to me, has the 
 Teutonic mind had for its task this mastery of 
 the Negative with its multitudinous transforma 
 tions in thought, feeling and imagination. The 
 old Teufel, in spite of Greek and Oriental con 
 nections, is still for us a German, coming down 
 out of the somber forests of the North. But 
 above all the new Devil, the fiend of Culture, 
 called Mephistopheles, has been shaped for us 
 by a German poet, Goethe, and after him wrought 
 over and over into every form of utterance of 
 our modern life music, picture, opera, drama, 
 novel. I hold that the works of Beethoven are 
 one prodigious struggle with the Devil, showing 
 many ups and downs of the Titanic conflict in the 
 dark regions of instinct and emotion. But the 
 grand German discipline of this century isphiloso- 
 phy, and herein we note the same struggle in its 
 most intense form. Kant's battle of the anti 
 nomies is really a desperate Teutonic tussle with 
 the fiend, typical of the time in a supreme degree, 
 in which contest, however, the philosopher, if 
 not quite hurled to the earth by his diabolic 
 adversary, comes out second-best. And what 
 else is Hegel with that subtle dialectic of his, but 
 the giant holding the sinuous, slippery, infinitely 
 twisting and wriggling Serpent of old, coiled up 
 in the Ego and in the World, and dragging it out
 
 190 JOHNNY APPLE SEED" 1 S RHYMES. 
 
 of its den in the dark recesses to daylight, in 
 which he, grasping it by the neck, not only has 
 made it bite itself, like the demons in Dante, but 
 forces it actually to swallow itself then and 
 there! Nor is the battle yet over by any means. 
 Though Hegel seemed to give the last blow to 
 the old liar and sophist, making him not only eat 
 his own words, but eat himself, Schopenhauer 
 has had to have his grapple, and has been badly 
 thrown, so that he ran away in terror and gave 
 the world over to the Devil." 
 
 It is plain that Colonel Himtnelshime, soldier 
 in the Civil War of America and of his own soul, 
 is not a man to be trifled with when a furious 
 fight with demons is going on ; he gets to be quite 
 as demonic as they are, in the intensity of the 
 combat. He evidently takes delight in tracing 
 his spiritual ancestry to the Teutonic mind and 
 its products. Behold him send out some light 
 ning flashes backward upon the greatest Teuton 
 of former centuries : 
 
 ** Were I asked to select the most symbolic 
 man of the German nation, it would be Luther ; 
 and, furthermore, were I requested to select his 
 most symbolic deed, it would be his hurling of 
 the inkstand at the Devil. The greatest German 
 writers, philosophers, poets, even musicians, 
 have been doing the same ever since, repeating 
 in thousandfold shapes that famous nightscene at 
 the Wartburg, whereby the splashes of ink have
 
 BOOK THIRD. 191 
 
 miraculously turned to written thoughts, which 
 are to-day chasing the fiends all around the 
 globe. I hold that Appleseed shows his Teutonic 
 kinship and connection in these verses which 
 have often in them a sulphurous smell coming 
 from the old battle." 
 
 At this last declaration the editor expressed 
 some surprise to the Colonel, who, having 
 searched for and found a piece ot paper in his 
 desk, began to read the same, with these remarks 
 as a preface: "Here is a little squib in which 
 Appleseed has set forth the characteristic differ 
 ence between the three great European peoples, 
 French, German, and English, as regards old 
 Splay-foot. You are particularly requested to 
 notice the German words which he uses and the 
 fact which they suggest." 
 
 50. 
 
 The Frenchman gay 
 Has a charming way 
 To make the old sinner Diable 
 Sweetly rhyme with aimable. 
 But the gloomy prying German Teufel 
 Has his only counterpart in Zweifel; 
 So mated with eternal doubt 
 The Teuton has hard work to put him out. 
 But at once his case in English is evil, 
 
 For we catch his distant tempting tingle 
 
 In the diabolic little jingle 
 Which the Anglo-Saxon makes with Devil.
 
 192 JOHNNY APPLE SEED ' 8 RHYMES. 
 
 Again comes up the question concerning Apple- 
 seed's linguistic acquirements, which at one time 
 deeply interested our friend, Professor Brazen- 
 nose. But dropping this matter for the present, 
 the editor wishes to call attention to the follow 
 ing batch of rhymes, all of which he obtained 
 from Colonel Himmelshime, already arranged by 
 the latter's hand. They seem to form in the 
 main a little treatise on demonology and diablery, 
 yet with surges in other directions, critical, sar 
 castic, defiant. Still a positive tendency the 
 careful reader will note underneath all these 
 Mephistophelean fire-works, wherein Himmel 
 shime may be seen reflecting himself in Apple- 
 seed's verses. 
 
 51. 
 I hear two voices speaking in verse, 
 
 Yet out of one mouth they are sent ; 
 One is blasphemous, mingling a scoff and a curse, 
 The other sings hope and is reverent. 
 
 Still the twain will rhyme 
 
 If you give them time ; 
 
 Hark ! in the very last word of the very last line 
 The two voices embrace and in music combine ; 
 Now you may hear the ultimate cosmical chord, 
 The Devil is rhyming to the word of the Lord. 
 52. 
 
 If you would whip the Devil well, 
 
 5Tou must yourself descend to Hell ; 
 
 There is a danger, it is true, 
 
 The Devil may whip you.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 193 
 
 53. 
 
 The age's finest elegance and mode 
 Has also reached old sooty Nick's abode ; 
 Whitewashed and tapestried it is now Hades, 
 A devil's drawing-room , n't too for ladies. 
 
 54. 
 
 A dirty shirt the ape had on, 
 He deftly turned it outside in 
 And wore the filth next to his skin, 
 
 And seemed to think it was all gone. 
 
 55. 
 
 When Satan by the curse of the Lord was shent, 
 
 He deftly slipped his old integument, 
 
 And left it whole, though empty, behind 
 
 On earth, forever to frighten mankind ; 
 
 For that which is by people most apt to be 
 stuffed 
 
 Is the snake-skin which the old Serpent has 
 sloughed ; 
 
 Meanwhile the new Viper is coiled in the grass 
 at its side, 
 
 With poisonous fang it is lying in wait unespied; 
 
 But watch the Devil! how he seems to forsake 
 sin ! 
 
 He forks out his tongue and stings his old snake- 
 skin. 
 
 13
 
 194 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 56. 
 " Why does the man compassion teach? " 
 
 He uses it for pelf; 
 " Why does the man forbearance preach? " 
 
 He needs so much himself. 
 
 57. 
 ** What does the city say 
 
 To the passing brother? " 
 Get out of my way, 
 
 Time has no time to bother ; 
 Here is the kingdom of pelf, 
 Everyone is to-day for himself 
 And for none other. 
 Let the winder now wind most, 
 And the blinder now blind most, 
 And the grinder now grind most, 
 And the Devil take the hindmost. 
 
 58. 
 
 Before he honors the honest man, 
 He makes him out a rogue if he can; 
 As he himself doth wear the skin of a scamp, 
 All honest men with his own hide he will vamp. 
 
 59. 
 Stand up erect in your track, 
 
 If you stoop but once 
 
 And yield for the nonce, 
 Straightway the Devil is on your back; 
 
 And if once he bestride you, 
 
 He surely will ride you.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 195 
 
 60. 
 If the head grow colder 
 
 The warmer the affection ; 
 If the hand be bolder 
 
 The darker the direction ; 
 Then the Devil over the shoulder 
 
 Is casting his reflection. 
 
 61. 
 
 The fox, though he be fleet, 
 Bears with his speed deceit, 
 And is the more deceived; 
 In cunning he is so very cunning, 
 That in his maze he is caught while running, 
 For he thinks he is believed. 
 
 62. 
 
 I spurn one authority, 
 That is, priority. 
 Well do I know that what I have said, 
 
 Has before me been said by the ages, 
 
 Hymning their wisdom through all of the sages, 
 Who are living, though they be dead. 
 If I well understand what they say, 
 I am original even to-day ; 
 And if I well say it again, 
 
 In a new rhyme 
 
 Attuned to the time, 
 I too am one of those men.
 
 196 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 63. 
 
 " Tell me, Johnny Appleseed, how goes it? 
 Thou battered, 
 And tattered, 
 
 Surely for thee the world moves wrong." 
 " Yes, I confess, I no longer can prose it, 
 To the ideal race I belong. 
 I must be a poet, 
 Ah ! well do I know it ; 
 For what else am I fit? 
 The world I can't hit. 
 And so I let fall, though mushy the thud, 
 My rhymes, which sink out of sight in the mud. 
 You may blame if you will, 
 I shall doggrel it still." 
 
 64. 
 " In what way shall we poesy rank, 
 
 When we come to count up its treasure? " 
 Plainly when all verse is a blank, 
 
 Blank verse must be the sole measure. 
 
 65. 
 
 If too much wind your candle doth puff, 
 It blows out the light and leaves but the snuff; 
 And then each nose will be eager to tell, 
 That your light is leaving behind it a smell. 
 
 66. 
 " To be great writers, what shall we do? " 
 
 You tickle me, and I tickle you. 
 " Of Letters say then the A B C." 
 I tickle you and you tickle me.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 197 
 
 67. 
 " What is the good of these verses you strow 
 
 All over your house from bottom to top ? " 
 My house 'tis an apothecary's shop, 
 And this is my trade, for rhymes, you know, 
 Well jingled, will make the nose-bleed stop. 
 
 69. 
 
 What I as a cure for me allege, 
 For thee may set the teeth on edge ; 
 Let me swallow in faith my own antidote, 
 But thou take care, lest it stick in thy throat. 
 
 70. 
 
 *' Fiction and Truth, or Truth and Fiction, 
 Which comes first in thine own conviction? 
 Is it the soul, or is it the diction?" 
 The Truth may transfigure the Lie, 
 Then you will find the poet is nigh. 
 But the Lie may transform the Truth ; 
 Who is that? is it you, forsooth? 
 
 71. 
 Ten thousand books were born into print 
 
 This very year, it is said ; 
 The inky fount seems to run without stint 
 
 Out of everybody's head ; 
 And the stream has become so very thin, 
 That more runs out than ever runs in. 
 
 72. 
 " Let me dare in life the fashion despise 
 
 And in writ defy, too, the rule." 
 Oh, yes, you never will learn what is wise. 
 
 But first by playing the fool.
 
 198 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S BHYMES. 
 
 73. 
 The rhyme may be perfectly pure, 
 
 Purified e'en of a thought, 
 The thought may be perfectly sure, 
 
 Yet with the jargon of Babel inwrought ; 
 But when the rhyme and the thought run 
 together, 
 
 Each gets free of the other's tether. 
 
 74. 
 
 For a hiccup our fathers had an old rune, 
 Which put the whole body at once into tune ; 
 And if a headache would cause us to grumble, 
 A mystic rhyme our grandma would mumble, 
 So however keen the pain might us tingle, 
 Some chosen words she had but to jingle, 
 The cure 
 Was sure. 
 
 That medicine still I claim to be mine, 
 And its magic is chiefly contained in a line ; 
 If I begin to feel hate of the whole universe, 
 I seek to compress it within a small verse ; 
 And when mankind I am ready to damn, 
 I love it at once in a sweet epigram, 
 Where I can artfully stow it away, 
 Making it dance to my measure and play; 
 The pinchbeck of life, the dross of the time, 
 I transmute into gold by the turn of a rhyme; 
 So whatever demon the hours may bring 
 I harness in meter and force him to sing, 
 The monster that erewhile threatened to claw me, 
 I hitch in my chariot that upwards he draw me.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 199 
 
 The reader has probably felt already a certain 
 audacious warlike strain in some of the utter 
 ances of Himmelshime, who has been a soldier 
 in two Civil Wars, the one external and the 
 other internal ; the latter, by the by, is still 
 raging, with occasional short truces breaking the 
 clash of arms. The title of Colonel is not sim 
 ply ornamental ; Himmelshime led a regiment in 
 the late Rebellion, and he is still leading his 
 spirit's allies in the much longer and fiercer war 
 with the Devil. 
 
 Nothing is more natural in the soldier than 
 that he should indulge in reminiscences; the 
 happenings during years of campaigning, when 
 every day may bring forth events which make 
 the soul tense with excitement and energy, and 
 thus stimulate memory and the other powers of 
 mind and body, furnish a grand storehouse of 
 anecdote and illustration. Himmelshime is no 
 exception ; the fact that he served his country 
 as a soldier in the hour of its greatest peril, he 
 evidently regards as the chief glory of his life. 
 In the following account he informs us that 
 Appleseed, though old, also marched out with the 
 boys in blue, and was on hand and in the front 
 rank at the critical moment: 
 
 "Well do I remember the battle of Lookout 
 Mountain, for it was there that I came first to 
 know Appleseed. He was not an enlisted soldier,
 
 200 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 he was too old ; yet I noticed that when the call 
 to arms took place, he would always fall into 
 line with the boys, and take a musket which he 
 claimed as his own property. But he did not 
 drill, he shunned tactics as death, he could not be 
 brought to appear on parade ; still he never 
 failed to be on hand when the fight was likely to 
 happen, and then he knew well enough how to 
 march and muster, and follow the necessary 
 evolutions of the regiment. It was said by the 
 soldiers that he was carrying on his own war 
 with the Southern Confederacy, and was simply 
 willing to take the United States as a useful ally 
 in the enterprise. At first I was going to drive 
 the old fellow out of my regimental lines, but 
 officers and men declared him harmless and even 
 helpful, and so he stayed. 
 
 " He was tolerated especially because of his 
 services in the hospital. Beside the sick soldier 
 he would take his place, and watch the critical 
 hour of disease, administering both medicine and 
 comfort. Many a veteran will tell you to-day 
 with tears in his eyes that he owes hope and 
 possibly life to the care and consolation of 
 the aged, benevolent wanderer. But chiefly, 
 when the opportunity came, Appleseed would 
 hum a soft lay of home and of heaven 
 into the ear of the dying boy, as he 
 lay on the red field of carnage. I have 
 seen the white -bearded figure leaning over
 
 BOOK THIRD. 201 
 
 the blue uniform stained with the heart's 
 blood of its wearer, touch gently the ebbing 
 pulse and administer a cordial to call back the 
 departing soul. Then he would start a simple 
 song of home and peace attuned to the soft 
 vibration of strings, when the closed eyes would 
 open again in astonishment, as if expecting to 
 see a flight of angels and the golden gates 
 beyond. Often it was the last time, the lips 
 would quiver but remain speechless in thanks, 
 and the poor fellow would droop into sleep and 
 pass away to the music of Johnny Appleseed." 
 In another paragraph the Colonel recounts 
 with some feeling an incident of the war : " We 
 were charging up the steep at Lookout Mountain, 
 Heading, sword in hand, mounted on my battle- 
 drunk steed Rarer that animal would actually 
 get intoxicated on powder smoke; over brush 
 wood, boulders, chasms, the regiment and in 
 fact the whole line of the brigade rushed, sway 
 ing to and fro, undulating with the sides of the 
 declivity, fluttering like a long ribbon in the 
 wind. Up, up we were going, the flag rose higher 
 and higher ; if one man dropped, another took 
 his place, the waves of blue coats kept rolling 
 and surging topward, with many little quiver 
 ings and momentary retardations, yet with con 
 tinual advance. Something caught my center 
 for a minute, I rode down the line to see what 
 was the matter, but it had already surmounted
 
 202 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 the obstacle, and was plunging ahead to close 
 the ranks. There in front I beheld Appleseed, 
 with gun in hand and fiddle slung round his 
 back, for this too had to go along, but in his 
 ordinarily peaceful countenance was now kindled 
 the look of war, and his ej r e shot a demoniae 
 lightning which I have never seen in it since. 
 We were not far from the goal, I saw dart 
 through his face the gleam of victory, which 
 was enveloped in a sudden blaze from the 
 enemy's guns, followed by huge coiling clouds 
 of sulphurous smoke. I felt one side of me 
 benumbed by a quick shock, a warm stream 
 coursed down my leg and filled my boot; fire- 
 eyed Rarer, my war-horse, gave a plunge and 
 fell, throwing me over his head into a clump of 
 bushes. There I lay, and. at once the sun set 
 and darkness came over my eyes. 
 
 ** I do not know how long it was before I 
 awoke, I must have been still in my swoon, when 
 I heard the sweetest music, a song softly suppor 
 ted by an instrument, and out of the strains 
 seemed to flow a fountain of water flinging its 
 cooling spray over my feverish body and even 
 sending a jet to my parched lips. Never did any 
 music sound so sweet to me, hovering as I then 
 was on the borderland between two worlds. 
 And of all the gardens adorned with fountains 
 and channeled by little streams which I have seen 
 in my travels over the world, the garden which
 
 BOOK THIRD. 203 
 
 then rose on my imagination was the fairest and 
 most refreshing. I dreamed that I had returned 
 to Eden, and the angel was not wanting who 
 began to sing: 
 
 To-day thou canst not enter here, 
 
 Thy work is not yet done; 
 Before thou risest to this sphere, 
 
 Thy crown is to be won. 
 
 I seemed to turn around in sorrow and to be 
 retracing earthward my steps when the same 
 voice began again in strong tones of encourage 
 ment and compassion : 
 
 Go back, go back, my soldier bold, 
 
 And win thy other fight; 
 Not till thon hast in it grown old, 
 Shalt thou behold this light. 
 
 " At last I was conscious again, gradually I 
 opened my eyes and there stood Applese,ed. I 
 found myself alongside a mountain brook whose 
 waters rippled over the pebbles in soft under 
 tones almost like speech. I lay on the grass with 
 wound bandaged, while the kind old man with 
 the face of a ministering spirit kept pouring cold 
 water upon it from the stream in order to keep 
 the fever out. I have no doubt that I owe to 
 him this limb, and possibly my life. He ran the 
 risk of being killed or captured in that exposed 
 position, still he stayed at my side till surgical 
 help came, and even then he assisted in many
 
 204 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 ways. His best medicine for me was his singing, 
 the tones of his voice seemed to possess a healing 
 power over body and mind, they brought their 
 harmony into every disordered nook of existence, 
 pouring their happy concord into the soul within 
 as well as into the world without, whereby restor 
 ation, physical and moral, became a necessity." 
 
 In the preceding account, Himmelshime unfolds 
 the origin of the intimate bond which existed be 
 tween himself and Appleseed. The latter at a 
 critical moment which demanded both courage 
 and devotion, had saved the life of the Colonel, 
 according to all probability ; hence the gratitude 
 which he felt for the wandering minstrel, and 
 which was strengthened to the last foundation by 
 a deep kinship of spirit. 
 
 The story of Himmelshime, moreover, calls to 
 mind a ballad by Appleseed, which we have in 
 in our possession, and which we shall insert at 
 this point. It is derived from a pathetic incident 
 of the war, and is coupled with a spot which has 
 become sacred to the whole nation. In this class 
 of compositions Appleseed is known to have pro 
 duced much; indeed the occasions for them were 
 springing up every day in the camp, during the 
 march, and on the field of battle. But nearly 
 all have perished, as far as the editor has been 
 able to investigate. The strokes of destiny were 
 falling everywhere; what else is war? The 
 poetic nature, deeply sympathetic, responds with 
 its outcry of sorrow.
 
 ARLINGTON. 
 
 O Arlington, O Arlington, 
 
 Thou art a quiet town, . 
 An army brave lies in thy hedge, 
 
 How silent it lies down ! 
 
 Arlington, O Arlington, 
 Where is my only son? 
 
 1 come to seek my soldier boy, 
 Where is he, Arlington? 
 
 His father old, his mother true, 
 
 He left them both alone ; 
 O General, O General, 
 
 Send back my only son. 
 
 Old man, I cannot send him back, 
 If still he draw his breath ; 
 
 The soldier must to battle go, 
 He may come back with death. 
 
 (205)
 
 206 JOHNNY APPLE SEED 1 S RHYMES. 
 
 The mother cried, O Governor 
 Give me my only son; 
 
 I cannot give him unto thee, 
 But unto Arlington. 
 
 President, O President, 
 
 A maid weeps at thy door; 
 My bridegroom, O bring back to me, 
 He has been wounded sore. 
 
 1 cannot take him from the wars, 
 
 Were he my only son ; 
 To see him I would have to go 
 Myself to Arlington. 
 
 O Arlington, O Arlington 
 
 Thou art a quiet town, 
 Beside a bed within thy hedge 
 
 I would I might lie down. 
 
 Lie down to rest, lie down to rest, 
 
 Where lies my only son ; 
 'Tis there alone I find my peace 
 
 In silent Arlington. 
 
 Lie down to rest, lie down to rest, 
 Where lies my loved one ; 
 
 And thou shalt be my bridegroom still 
 In silent Arlington.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 207 
 
 Let a man spend three or four years of his 
 youthful period, or even one year, doing active 
 service in the field, and he carries the stamp with 
 him as long as he lives. Once at least he has 
 offered himself as a sacrifice for an idea; he 
 acknowledges by his act the invisible principle 
 above himself, above his physical existence, to 
 be his master. So in the military business there 
 is an ideal element in spite of its savage draw 
 backs. A training it is, other than tactical, and 
 may become in happy natures a true school of 
 the spirit. . 
 
 Himmelshime, as it seems to me, bears marks 
 of such a discipline resulting from his military 
 career. This has colored his whole character 
 certainly, and has probably made him the free 
 man that he is, as well as the dashing trooper 
 and independent campaigner. A transcendental 
 thread runs through all his militarism ; it is no 
 wonder, therefore, that he touches up and lov 
 ingly paints this side of Appleseed's life. Hence 
 we find him calling attention to the spiritual 
 phase of soldiering, and he celebrates some of 
 the heroes thereof with considerable fervor. A 
 few of these remarks we shall take the liberty of 
 citing.
 
 208 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 (l I have observed," says Himmelshime, " that 
 the Christian life has borrowed a number of its 
 most striking designations from military life 
 soldier of the Cross, Church militant, Salvation 
 Army with its organization from generalissimo 
 down to privates." 
 
 " It is often thought," he continues in a sort 
 of defense of the comrades of his hardships and 
 dangers, " that the soldier must have a stony 
 heart, and be only a man of blood and iron, 
 wedded to glory and to his appetites. It so 
 happens that the two most tender souls and most 
 thorough-going idealists I have ever known were 
 officers in the army, both with deep mystical 
 threads woven through their whole being and 
 tingeing all their thoughts and actions. One of 
 these was General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, a 
 writer of books, interpreter of Shakespeare's Son 
 nets and of the Bible in aRosicrucian, Hermetic 
 transcendental vein, shedding certain far-off 
 gleams upon darkness circumambient. He had to 
 write, not for fame, but to ease his heart and its 
 strong throbbings for utterance. Soldiering was a 
 duty, but he had another task also, he had dealings 
 with the Infinite Spirit. Amid drilling and the 
 transportation of troops and the clangor of arms 
 he heard the voice within, and obeyed, being 
 commanded by his superior officer ; thus he had 
 to do double work, wielding his pen and his
 
 BOOK TRIED. 209 
 
 sword in what he deemed probably one and the 
 same cause to the eye of the Eternal. 
 
 '* But the soldier whom I loved most, and 
 whose memory rises up surrounded with a sacred 
 halo, was General Napoleon Buonaparte Buford, 
 drilled by West Point but disciplined by philos 
 ophy. Not a writer of books as far as I know, but 
 seekingtolive a beautiful life, he passed his serene 
 days ; once indeed he had to write a paper for a 
 society and chose as his subject "The Philoso 
 pher's Stone," which he above all men had 
 found, I think, though he made no claim of the 
 kind. A mystic by nature, accessible through 
 instinct to all that is true and good, with courtesy, 
 chivalry, tenderness, yet with heroic courage, for 
 he would fight, by the Gods! when his turn came 
 and the time called. I saw him storming down 
 the line at luka, the hotter the battle, the hotter 
 his valor. Then again I saw him in his tent during 
 the intervals of the march and the combat ; that 
 awning of his, staked down for a day mid the 
 sycamores of primitive forest, he possessed the 
 charm to turn into a philosophic Academe with 
 its grove of Attic plane-trees. Not soon shall I 
 forget the man or the landscape or the incident, 
 as he once dismounted and sat upon a camp- 
 stool under the thick branches of a scrub-oak, 
 and began discoursing with me upon Plato's 
 Doctrine of Pre-Existence, when suddenly the 
 U
 
 210 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S EHYMES. 
 
 trumpet brayed out " Fall into ranks," and the 
 General in the midst of a sentence sprang upon 
 his horse, getting his men into line of battle to 
 meet a troop of the enemy's cavalry which was 
 bearing down upon us. 
 
 " But after the war, I often went to his 
 hospitable home in Chicago; when other matters 
 of the day were duly disposed of, we two would 
 descend into the basement, where he kept what 
 he called his " den " with his favorite books; 
 then the hours would somehow show themselves 
 fleeter-footed than I have ever known them to be 
 anywhere else. It was paradise, but it too is now 
 lost," said Himinelshime, and then seemed to 
 stop suddenly in a fit of strong emotion at the 
 memory of his departed friend. 
 
 But the Generals of the War were not all 
 Hitchcocks and Buf ords ; perhaps it is well that 
 they were not. The seven deadly sins run riot 
 among the tents, specially Envy has her sphere 
 enormously widened, often to the extent of 
 bringing intentional disaster upon the great cause, 
 in order to injure some supposed rival. The 
 tragedy of war rests not alone over the field of 
 battle with the enemy; it spreads its wings also 
 in the camp of those who ought to be friends. 
 Again by way of contrast with the two soldierly 
 characters just mentioned, we shall present an 
 other of Appleseed's ballads, in which we see a 
 different kind of officer in charge-
 
 CAPTAIN WORTHINGTON. 
 
 I see the Moon with curved blade 
 
 Run down a star on high, 
 And raise it spitted on the tip, 
 
 As she rides through the sky. 
 
 The General sat within his tent, 
 
 His rage burst in a flood, 
 He drained the wine out of the bowl 
 
 It ran as red as blood. 
 
 " O where can I a soldier find 
 To spy me out the town? " 
 
 He spilled the wine upon his beard 
 How red it trickled down I 
 
 Then spake the cunning Orderly, 
 And poured the scarlet draft, 
 
 " Send wily Captain Worthington, 
 His sword is made of craft." 
 
 (211)
 
 212 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 The General wrote in baste the word, 
 And sealed it with his hand, 
 
 " Take this to wily Worthington 
 And stay at his command." 
 
 The Captain knew the big red seal, 
 He laughed for joy outright ; 
 
 The Captain saw the letter dread, 
 The hot tears bleared his sight. 
 
 " And I am Bent to silly death ! 
 
 Who hath me done this deed? 
 Come with me, cunning Orderly, 
 
 J think thou too shalt bleed." 
 
 " O Captain, Captain, send me back, 
 
 I hear the bugle call, 
 The letter dread it smites me dead, 
 
 I hear the death shot fall." 
 
 " Nay, nay, thou too shalt go along, 
 And read this letter dread 
 
 Where it is written in thy blood, 
 I ween it should be read. 
 
 " I saw the Moon with curved blade 
 Run down a star on high, 
 
 And hold it spitted on the tip, 
 As she rode through the sky."
 
 BOOK THIRD. 213 
 
 The Captain girded on his sword 
 
 And threw the letter down ; 
 " To horse, to horse, my gallant men, 
 
 Ride with me to you town." 
 
 The General sits within his tent, 
 
 The wine is running red; 
 " I fear to-day a deadly wreck, 
 
 I see it just ahead." 
 
 The cannon boomed, the bullets sang, 
 
 The Orderly first fell : 
 " I hear my heart's blood gurgle out, 
 
 I read the letter well." 
 
 The cannon boomed, the bullets sang, 
 
 The men charged to the wall, 
 And at their head the Captain lay, 
 
 He was the last to fall. 
 
 The cannon rest, the bullets hush, 
 His eyes flash through their pain ; 
 
 " Here now I write my answer back, 
 I think 'tis written plain." 
 
 He rises on his bended knee 
 
 His bosom through is shot, 
 He writes a letter on the air, 
 
 And ends it with a dot.
 
 214 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 He writes upon the empty air, 
 
 His finger is the quill ; 
 Hot, hot the words flow from his heart, 
 
 And trickle, trickle still. 
 
 " My letter now I seal and send, 
 
 The red ink has no blot, 
 The words come straight out of my heart, 
 
 I feel them drop down hot. 
 
 " Long, long by day the bride will look 
 
 Far up the street and down, 
 Ere she will see her lover bold 
 
 Come riding into town. 
 
 " Long, long, O mother, thou wilt watch, 
 Then dream ere night be done ; 
 
 Across the sill a shadow strides, 
 It is thy spectral son." 
 
 The General sat within his tent, 
 
 The beaker by him stood, 
 He flung it down upon the ground, 
 
 The red wine bubbled blood. 
 
 He saw the Moon with curved blade 
 
 Run down a star on high, 
 And hold it spitted on the tip, 
 
 Then ride far out the skv.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 215 
 
 As the source of the preceding ballad, Apple- 
 seed evidently drew upon some incident of the 
 war, transforming the same through the intro 
 duction of a supernatural tinge, by which he has 
 colored the hard fact into a weird tale, full of 
 presentiment and terror. Himmelshime has the 
 following note upon the piece: " I think I rec 
 ognize the event and both the men, the Captain 
 and the General, though the reality has been 
 strangely transfigured, the poet having used his 
 right of weaving into the prosaic affairs of this 
 world the divine element, if not directly at least 
 indirectly, by way of suggestion, premonition, 
 dim foreshadowing through the appearances of 
 nature. Here the magic luminary, the moon, 
 flings its uncanny sheen upon the fateful deed." 
 
 With these remarks Himmelshime breaks off 
 with a sudden dash into a new topic. What have 
 we to do but to follow him in these colossal leaps 
 which he makes around the figure of Appleseed? 
 Surely he deserves consideration in his own right ; 
 the reader's interest, we hope, has been roused 
 to the extent of regarding him as a human being 
 and not simply as a commentator. Breaking 
 loose from war and its alarms, Himmelshime 
 turns to the contemplative side of Appleseed, 
 and of a sudden we are ushered into the peace
 
 216 JOHNNY APPLESEED' S RHYMES. 
 
 of philosophy. These strong contrasts lie deep 
 in the Colonel's character; his oceanic soul has 
 tides like the Bay of Fundy, the highest probably 
 and the lowest on this terraqueous globe. Let 
 us hear him: 
 
 " We have often noticed a transcendental, 
 speculative, abstractly metaphysical bent in 
 Appleseed, in spite of his images, metaphors and 
 symbolic flashes. We shall have to connect him 
 with the philosophers of the past on many lines, 
 he has inherited their certainties, their dubita- 
 tions, even their nomenclature. Have we not 
 seen him persistently grappling with the Nega 
 tive, both in the concrete and in the abstract, as 
 if he were wrestling for his life? Then again 
 he has often taken a joust with the thought of 
 The One and The All, reading into the same the 
 great interplay between the opposing forces of 
 the universe. Little spurts like the following 
 seem to hint of Plato : 
 
 Would'st thou grasp the All? 
 Thou must see it in the Small. 
 
 " But Appleseed touches upon another set of 
 philosophic terms in the lines : 
 
 When of the Infinite is your song, 
 Be sure and take the Finite along ; 
 But if the Finite you should sing, 
 See the Infinite in each little thing.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 217 
 
 *' What a link with former philosophies ! In 
 the last line we have to think of Spinoza's sub 
 specie eternitatis, one of the most fruitful phrases 
 in the whole history of thought. It is Hegel 
 who makes ' speculation itself identical with 
 experience in its totality.' Even Natural 
 Science takes the single thing for its start, yet 
 in spite of itself it seeks to get all and finally the 
 All into its circuit, reaching up toward the 
 height of that loft}' sentence of Spinoza : Quo 
 magis res singulares intelligimus, eo magis DEUM 
 intelligimus (Ethica V. Prop. 24.) 
 
 " Two great tendencies of Man and of Time 
 are the pursuit of the Finite and the Infinite. 
 Separated, . they become hostile, mutually 
 destructive. "From old India down, the Infinite 
 turns to an all-devouring maw into which the 
 Finite is swept, nay has to sweep itself, in the 
 person of the Hindoo devotee or the Christian 
 ascetic. The Finite, on the other hand, in our 
 modern materialistic time, becomes a chaos of 
 particulars, struggling, writhing, hissing, a huge 
 nest of serpents little and big, each seeking to 
 swallow the other. Very little choice lies between 
 the two abysses. 
 
 *'Thus the world has been a grand see-saw 
 between Finite and Infinite, in which both sides 
 have got the worst. Now Appleseed in the above 
 lines, if we understand him on this obscure and 
 abstruse point, hints a unity, nay a harmony in
 
 218 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 song between the two warring elements. True 
 to the principle which underlies his verses as 
 well as his life, he seizes the dualism in order to 
 set forth more fully the process of unity." 
 
 Thus far Himmelshime, who seems on the 
 present occasion to have dived further out of 
 sight than ever before, since his appearance in 
 this book. He is getting to need an interpreter 
 more than Appleseed, whom he interprets ; he 
 threatens to upset the whole commentary by 
 supplanting the hero and taking the latter's 
 place himself. Certainly not with any such inten 
 tion has he offered his assistance; but how can 
 he help being himself? The personality of the 
 man is, like the oak of the forest, by nature 
 overshadowing ; those who wish to behold their 
 own reflection must retreat from his umbrageous 
 presence. But we have let him expand in full, 
 thinking that some reader or readers ( if there 
 ever be more than one) will understand him if 
 we do not. But it is high time to look a little at 
 Appleseed again, though we have to turn away 
 from Himmelshime. 
 
 75. 
 '" What are these verses, what are they, what? 
 
 Rhyme, meaning, and measure ajar? " 
 O they are every thing but what they are not, 
 
 And they are not anything but what they are.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 219 
 
 76 
 " Tell me what is the nature of What, 
 
 And why is this riddle of Why? *' 
 All wisdom, O friend, is tied in a knot, 
 
 Else it were nothing at all to untie. 
 
 77. 
 It is, and it isn't isn't it? 
 
 Three riddlesome words to unravel. 
 He does, and he doesn't doesn't he? 
 
 Three cross ways for man to travel. 
 
 78. 
 
 An if the thinker 
 Should be but a tinker, 
 His mending of pots and pans 
 Will be but ifs and ans. 
 
 79. 
 
 If there be a What, 
 And I have it not, 
 In and out of season, 
 I try to find the reason ; 
 Always before I can my soul sing, 
 I have to see the whole thing. 
 
 80. 
 
 " Why is the sun so bright? 
 What is the eye without sight? " 
 Surely your deities 
 Are the old Whats and the Whies.
 
 220 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYME 8. 
 
 Methinks you are worse than a baby crying, 
 You tease me to death with your what-ing and 
 
 why-ing. 
 
 Within me I feel insupportable dryness 
 To still all the thirst of your Whatness and 
 
 Whyness. 
 
 81. 
 
 The soul's deep cry 
 Is What and Why ; 
 Ere it wills Not, 
 It asks you What ; 
 And ere it may deny, 
 It asks you Why. 
 
 Something lurks underneath the denial, 
 To find that out is the soul's last trial. 
 
 82. 
 
 There is a why, but what is it, say? 
 There is a what but why is it, pray? 
 There is a cause, but what is its cause? 
 I want not the law, but the law of the laws. 
 
 O Johnny Appleseed, 
 
 Thou never wilt be freed 
 
 As long as thy chief enemies 
 
 Are the ever-living Whats and Whies.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 221 
 
 " The book Why has never been printed," 
 says an old Italian proverb. Still this book is 
 continually being written in every truth-hunting 
 human soul. The choice spirits of every age have 
 been drawn by these categories which underlie all 
 questions: Why, How, Where, When, What. 
 Some less daring athletes of mind dismiss them, 
 crying out unthinkable, inexplicable, unknow 
 able ; but the great protagonists make them just 
 the true knowing and thinking. This matter, 
 however, reaches beyond the arm of the editor, 
 who is fortunate in being able to find a note of 
 Himmelshime which applies here. 
 
 " Natural Science holds to the What, and 
 abandons Cause, specially Final Cause. It was 
 Aristotle, the greatest thinker of antiquity, who 
 dug up these tap-roots of man's thinking, and 
 laid them out in sunlight, as if he were showing 
 the foundations of the universe. From him 
 they passed to the Schoolmen who had a mighty 
 and long continued wrestle with them, often end 
 ing in a doubtful victory. But in these recent 
 centuries Hegel is, of all thinkers, the most 
 desperate investigator of the fundamental cate 
 gories of thought. All his books are hardly 
 more than an ordering and marshalling of the 
 same ; his logic is the Idea as category looking
 
 222 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 at itself and examining its store of categories, 
 and determining their relations. Vast is his 
 philosophic edifice, a veritable temple of the 
 Eternal who thinks, with foundation stones rest 
 ing upon the very center of the cosmos, and 
 with pinnacle piercing all Finitude." 
 
 After giving a further historic development 
 of the categories, which we have to omit, Him- 
 melshime goes on: ** Methinks that I behold 
 Appleseed resting at midday on the roots of a 
 tree by the side of a brook which winds taciturn 
 through the Western prairie, with his fiddle-bag 
 cast to one side and his eyes gazing upon the 
 boundless stretch of green meadow before him ; 
 what is he thinking of? The immensity of the 
 nature around him throws him back upon him 
 self, he turns his glances into the depths of his 
 own being, and seeks to witness a greater 
 immensity there. In some such manner I 
 imagine, these little verses, grappling with the 
 Whats and Whies of existence, took form in his 
 mind, and possibly worded themselves on his 
 lips, in a kind of contemplative vision. True to 
 himself he is in these desperate reaches of his 
 soul; true also to the Time-Spirit (manifesting 
 itself in the great thinkers) which insists upon 
 having its periodic Olympian contest over such 
 fundamental questions. Are there not every 
 where around us signs of such a contest approach 
 ing or at hand? "
 
 BOOK THIRD. 223 
 
 In explanation of this last interrogatory of 
 Himmelshime, we cite the following from one of 
 his stray leaves: " On the whole I think it highly 
 probable that Appleseed must have been present 
 at the Concord School of Philosophy during 
 some of its sessions. That gathering, despite 
 the fun made of it, was epoch-making, and 
 ploughed a deep furrow on the time, sowing 
 therein no small harvest. I can fancy our frowsy, 
 dusty Western wanderer entering the quiet New 
 England village, to the wonder and amusement 
 of its precise, well-brushed citizens ; he winds 
 his way to the Hillside Chapel, takes his 
 seat upon a wooden bench amid a small 
 audience and there listens to words ever 
 memorable. I think I can hear in some 
 of his lines a humorous echo of that School, 
 taken up by all the newspapers of the land, 
 which had much to say of whichness and 
 whyness, and clearly expounded the yesness of 
 the No, since just that was and is still their busi 
 ness. We may, however, hear the same echo in 
 the grave words of Thomas Aquinas, running 
 down six centuries and more, when he discusses 
 The Entity and Quiddity of the Apostolic Keys. 
 For what is quiddity but whatnessof the what? " 
 
 With this conjecture of Himmelshime that 
 Appelseed paid a visit to the Concord School, the 
 editor is inclined to have nothing to do. Literary 
 coincidences do not establish a case of plagiar-
 
 224 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 ism ; one swallow does not make a spring, but 
 certainly the wish is often father to the thought. 
 Of one thing the editor feels sure: Himmelshime 
 himself went to Concord and drank of the pota 
 tions there to downright debauchery, the signs 
 of which he still carries with him. 
 
 83. 
 " Say, why so obscure the prophet's word? " 
 
 It for the present the future must borrow ; 
 In it the voice of To-day must be heard, 
 
 Yet bringing along the thought of To-morrow; 
 But when To-morrow becomes To-day, 
 What the prophet hath said, all the people will say. 
 
 84. 
 For more than a hundred years 
 
 The old Gheber had worshipped fire ; 
 He had given his prayers and tears, 
 
 Had spent all his priestly ire, 
 On those who had no fears 
 
 At the terrible name 
 
 Of the God of flame. 
 One day on a brand divine he stumbled, 
 And ere he knew it, in he had tumbled ; 
 
 But as soon as he fell 
 
 Into his own little Hell, 
 
 He would in it no more 
 
 The burning God adore.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 225 
 
 85. 
 
 The cornet is hanging over my house so near, 
 Soon it will drop on the roof, I fear ; 
 Now it is lashing the stars in the skies, 
 And its whip on the fugitive planets it plies, 
 O'er the curve of the moon it is whirling its 
 
 flail, 
 
 In the face of the sun it is switching its tail, 
 It throws the whole universe into a cholic 
 To see but the threat of its rod parabolic; 
 It has set all the lights in Heaven to bouncing, 
 Now it is the turn of the earth for a trouncing. 
 'Gainst me, I know, it has had a long spite, 
 It has shaken its scourge at me every night, 
 I cannot look out of my window to God, 
 But I see up in Heaven that damnable rod ; 
 It is raising a blow just over my head, 
 See ! it descends ! Oh me ! I am dead. 
 Come with me, good neighbor, come with me to 
 
 pray, 
 
 I feel I am at the Judgment Day. 
 But in the cool of the evening the neighbor 
 
 replied : 
 
 It is bad for thee if thou truly hast died; 
 But go with me away from thy window a mile, 
 And then let us look at the comet a while ; 
 See, no longer it hovers over thy house, 
 It runs in the sky as light as a mouse, 
 And still it remains in the very same place, 
 Just read its true course by the stars in its face ; 
 
 15
 
 226 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 No error in it thou hast the flaw, 
 Find and follow like it thy beautiful law, 
 Keep thy path, as it does, by night and by day, 
 And I promise thou never wilt be in its way. 
 But thou wilt forever collide with a comet, 
 If in terror thou triest to run away from it. 
 Help, cried the other, a sky full of snakes ! 
 Into a river of sweat my body now breaks ; 
 True, it hovers no longer over my door, 
 But 'tis pursuing me worse than before ; 
 It has quit my house to turn after me, 
 Oh how of the comet shall I get free ! 
 Now rightly I see, said the neighbor, the evil; 
 Not the comet pursues thee, 'tis the Devil. 
 
 86. 
 
 A man came into the world with a theory, 
 He always saw just what he expected to see ; 
 He wandered over the face of the earth, 
 On each spot he beheld his theory's birth ; 
 He burrowed profoundly into the ground, 
 Everywhere his theory still he found ; 
 But when far below into Hell he had wormed, 
 His theory there was not confirmed ; 
 Although he writhed and squirmed, 
 He had to go again to school, 
 Until he kenned anew the Stygian pool. 
 
 87. 
 
 We tolerate every fool in his way, 
 Though we may be unwilling to own him ; 
 But we mind so little the prophet to-day 
 That we take not the trouble to stone him.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 227 
 
 88. 
 
 A ground-hog lay within his nest, 
 Was taking there his winter's rest ; 
 He dreamed a dream what he would do 
 When snows above him melted through, 
 When early flowers would burst and peep 
 And laugh him out his wintry sleep, 
 When merry birds their love would sing 
 And greet the sun along with spring. 
 The ground-hog woke and raised his head, 
 He quit at once his gloomy bed, 
 The birds he heard, the hum of bees, 
 The rustle of the budding trees ; 
 Soon stepped he forth into the sun, 
 Which shone as it had never shone, 
 When lo ! a shadow there he sees, 
 And with himself it just agrees. 
 The fright cut straight into his soul, 
 He sneaked at once back to his hole, 
 Where he in night still hybernates, 
 And for another sort of sun awaits, 
 Which will no ground-hog's shadow throw, 
 That ground-hog never may the ground-hog 
 know. 
 
 89. 
 He quarrels with the very air 
 
 On which his words are thrown, 
 Because it will not make them fair, 
 
 But gives him back his own.
 
 228 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 90. 
 
 Let the big ocean make all the big rumpus, 
 Thou hast the ship and the sail and the compass ; 
 Wind and water may threaten disaster, 
 Over the elements thou art the master. 
 Sun and moon that rule in heaven, 
 By day and by night unto thee have been given, 
 
 Thy course to measure 
 
 And save thy ship's treasure; 
 The true polar star 
 Will shine from afar 
 
 To make thy billowy way sure. 
 
 Thy ship seems to move on an endless line 
 But it is cutting a circle over the brine ; 
 While sailing away, it is sailing back, 
 The going wake is the coming track ; 
 We look around at the haven from which we 
 departed 
 
 W r ith sorrow ; 
 
 To-morrow 
 
 With joy we enter the port whence we started. 
 Thou must grapple the wave 
 Thy treasure to win and save ; 
 Let stick in his slough the mud alligator, 
 
 And drowsily gape with pondrous saurian 
 jaw; 
 
 But thou must follow another law: 
 'Tis thine to become the world's circumnavigator.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 229 
 
 91. 
 Note the first little word of the child, 
 
 It lisps a pretty mistake. 
 Mark the youth's first action, how wild ! 
 
 He is sure an error to make. 
 Watch the first great thought of the man, 
 See how he fails in his plan! 
 However strong, he has to try twice, 
 Or perchance even thrice. 
 Age is not free of the self-same task, 
 
 Though it be a little more cunning; 
 What is the pith of it all, do you ask? 
 
 Life is an error that cleanses by running, 
 Like some mighty terrestrial river 
 
 Flowing down the mountains, 
 
 Rising up to the fountains, 
 Filling the round of the law of the Giver. 
 
 Man is not Truth at first hand 
 He must make himself true, 
 
 Else he would be unmanned, 
 Having nothing to do. 
 
 92. 
 O this eternal debit of evil, 
 
 How can it be put to account? " 
 If daily thou make the Devil, 
 
 Preach the Sermon on the Mount.
 
 230 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S BHTMES. 
 
 93. 
 
 Be like the Master, glad, 
 Shine on the good and bad ; 
 
 If I am round, 
 As a circle bear me, 
 Seek not to square me 
 
 To thy square bound ; 
 And if I already am square, 
 
 Force me not to be round, 
 You will win not a hair, 
 
 And me will confound. 
 Leave me a greenbriar, seek not my sapwood to 
 
 harden, 
 
 And let me prick out my days in my own little 
 garden. 
 
 94. 
 O peacock, old Sol is abroad with his ray, 
 
 Let thy tail to his sunshine now strut up; 
 
 peacock, the storm-cloud has put out the day, 
 
 In their case let thy feathers be shut up. 
 
 95. 
 
 1 love the babe's pretty prattle, 
 I like the child's little rattle, 
 
 I laugh at the maid's tittle-tattle, 
 
 But when prattle, tattle, and rattle get to be one, 
 
 That is the end of the fun.
 
 BOOK THIED. 231 
 
 96. 
 
 Oh for that happy time when I was most unhappy ! 
 Oh for that joyous world that took from me my 
 
 joy 5 
 
 Oh for that eye of fire whose look could freeze 
 
 my bosom ! 
 
 Oh for that life of love whose minute was a 
 death ! 
 
 97. 
 
 Before the match 
 
 Must be the catch, 
 Without the song what is the lark? 
 What is powder without the spark? 
 
 Powder without the spark 
 Is a spirit in the dark ; 
 Bring the living coal ! enough I 
 See the puff! 
 
 98. 
 
 So it is fated 
 That all things be mated ; 
 The woman and man 
 Is the world's plan, 
 By love is done 
 That two is one ; 
 Singular is the trouble 
 That each one must be double.
 
 232 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S EHYMES. 
 
 The preceding string of verses, after sending 
 shoots off in various directions, didactic, enig 
 matic, parabolic, suddenly takes an amatory turn 
 and winds up in a kind of arithmetical marriage. 
 Already we have heard an erotic note in Apple- 
 seed, though subdued; there is something within 
 him, which he is not willing to let out to full 
 sunlight, and which he keeps under with no little 
 self-suppression. But the fire is in his heart, 
 and will leap forth during unguarded moments, 
 showing a small lancet-tongue of flame, which 
 succeeds in speaking a warm word or two, and 
 in hinting many unsaid things. Then it suddenly 
 withdraws itself, flashing back into its inner 
 tenement or cardiac sheath, where doubtless 
 it continues to burn, or at least to smoke and 
 smoulder, with occasional low reverberations of 
 a volcanic underworld. Not without sympathy, 
 we hope, does the reader look upon these short, 
 quick heart-flashes of the homeless singer; some 
 profound cause they must have far down in the 
 wells of being, despite their playful, humorous, 
 even bantering exterior. I have noticed that the 
 deepest natures, those possessing true humor, 
 cover up the tragedy of life with its comedy. 
 
 But what shall we now say concerning Him- 
 melshime and his comments? A far less self- 
 suppressive character than Appleseed, more 
 eruptive, thunderous, defiant; he will certainly
 
 BOOK THIRD. 233 
 
 blurt out his heart, in spite of' the Satanic hosts 
 of mockery. A seismic temperament is his, for 
 have we not already seen that an earthquake is al 
 ways lying in wait somewhere inside his corporeal 
 periphery? It is clear that he has had his fierce 
 tussle with the Love-demon, as well as his 
 blessed consolation from the Love-god ; for only 
 too well certified is the fact that every feeling, 
 emotion, passion, Love most of all, has a double 
 set of attendants, one infernal and one celestial. 
 
 Pinned on, in a ragged, neglected fashion, to 
 the preceding collection, which is derived from 
 Himmelshime, the editor has found the following 
 biographic note of curious contents, in which we 
 imagine the reader will be interested. It is 
 plainly in the Colonel's handwriting: 
 
 " That was a great day for me when I resolved 
 to withdraw from society and from all dependence 
 on my fellow-beings, and show that I was a self- 
 sufficient man, complete in myself. I would do 
 my own work, make my own bed and bake my 
 own bread ; my meat I would win from the chase 
 and my clothing I would piece together from the 
 skins of animals. I was going to live my own 
 life, taking for company only a few world-books, 
 such as Homer and Shakespeare. So I went forth 
 into a back county of Illinois, where the native 
 forests still grew in primeval grandeur untrou 
 bled by the woodman, where men were few and 
 game was plentiful. With my own hands I built
 
 234 JOHNNY APPLESEED^S RHYMES. 
 
 me a cabin, in which I spread my couch of hairy 
 fells ; with my leaden bullet I overtook the fleet- 
 footed deer and the swift- winged turkey, with 
 whose flesh I loaded my table ; in a cleared spot 
 I planted my crop of Indian corn and potatoes. 
 More and more I kept cutting the threads which 
 continued to tie me to civilization; I found my 
 own lead in the ores of the hills, and I even 
 schemed to make my own powder, which I still 
 had to purchase from the outside. Finally I re 
 solved to immolate my dearest companions, those 
 world-books, Homer and Shakespeare, whom in a 
 mighty wrestle of the spirit, I flung into the fire 
 and saw burnt to a crisp, their leaves rising and 
 flying heavenward out of the flames. Never 
 can I forget that moment when I thought I 
 had broken the last bond which connected 
 me with my race, and had liberated myself 
 from its shackles; I was for once an independent 
 man, I had reached true individuality, and I 
 would write my own Homers and Shakespeares. 
 In my exultation I shouted Freedom , and the 
 silent woods echoed back the word. But this 
 very word, I reflected, had been transmitted to 
 me, a gift of my race ; the whole language which 
 I spoke and wrote I found not mine specially, 
 but a remote ancestral inheritance. More toil 
 and more struggle came to me; I planned how I 
 might throw off my native speech, and substi 
 tute for it a tongue of my own, a kind of per-
 
 BOOK THIRD. 235 
 
 sonal hieroglyphic, all for myself. But noting 
 the fact one day that my father begat me and 
 my mother bore me, and thus my parents had 
 given me to myself, I thought of undoing this 
 gift, and of taking me away from myself. So 
 far I had come in pursuit of my individual free 
 dom, namely, into the presence of SUICIDE, over 
 whose horrible chasm I took a peep and there 
 beheld my own Ego masked as a fiend, a very 
 devil, armed with a goad of ten thousand hissing 
 serpents, ready to catch me on his hip and fly 
 off with me into the bottom of the abyss. " Who 
 artthou?" " Him of whom thou art in pur 
 suit." " Not so, I do not want thee." Then 
 came a tussle, I broke loose from my demon 
 after no trifling battle, I began to retrace my 
 steps, I returned to my cabin and bought my 
 powder with content, obtained new copies of my 
 world-books, and started the journey of life once 
 more, mid alternations of hope and doubt, which 
 often made the forests rock with the throes of 
 inner upheaval. Thus I stood in a swaying bal 
 ance, not lost, not saved, in an oceanic swirl 
 around the point of dead calm, an incarnate 
 maelstrom with stagnation as the center. 
 
 " In such a mood the bright shape of a maiden 
 crossed my path one day, whom at once I felt to 
 be the new luminary, greater than all those of 
 heaven, sent to bring me light. Verily she was 
 an incorporate sunbeam, and out of the blue
 
 236 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 depths of her eyes came a message which I 
 recognized soon to be of the Gods. Through 
 that simple maiden I was taught the mysterious 
 power of LOVE, the first grand sacrifice of the 
 individual for another, source of all transforma 
 tion and spiritual palingenesis. In that new light 
 the earth was transfigured, fair roseate hues of 
 dawn began to take the place of night; I left 
 my cabin in the woods, and took a dwelling place 
 among men ; I joined the family, and through it 
 I came back to society, state, civilization. Still 
 I have to confess to a tendency toward solitude, 
 born of that early flight back to myself and 
 nature. Moreover Fate could not keep hands 
 off, but smote me, cutting asunder the new-born 
 tie; again I am alone, but not in the woods." 
 
 Thus Himmelshime tells of an experience long 
 past, and in a certain degree accounts for his 
 present domestic environment, with the old 
 negress as housekeeper. The editor has found 
 in his papers traces of woe, notes of deep sepa 
 ration, allusions to death's wings, troubled 
 queries concerning immortality, intense longings 
 for a vision beyond over all of which let a 
 dark veil be drawn, as over the face of a sacred 
 nun. O Himmelshime, life has given thee its 
 keenest joys, its sharpest sorrows; I fancy thy 
 furrowed iron face, seared by exposure under a 
 Southern sun, has been cut into channels by 
 fierce tempests of aforetime, perchance in part
 
 BOOK THIED. 237 
 
 by hot tears streaming from the bruised heart. 
 My feeling in perusing thy manuscripts is imaged 
 in some lines by Appleseed, which I may as well 
 insert just here: 
 
 A Vesuvius red I have found 
 In every heart somewhere ; 
 Long hid it may lie underground, 
 
 Still it is raging there. 
 Often I walk on the crust, 
 Feeling no fear or distrust, 
 But in a crevice I thrust, 
 All thoughtless, my staff, 
 See the smoke ! pif paf ! 
 With what ire 
 It takes fire. 
 
 It is highly probable that while Himmelshime 
 was deep in these solitudes and sorrows, the wan 
 dering singer came along, the gentle pain-releaser , 
 and seeing the bitter trial gave of his sympathy, 
 and brought sweet consolation by means of 
 music and song. To such effect are some hints, 
 rather obscure and fragmentary, it is true, which 
 the editor has found in these papers. Who can 
 not imagine our tender-hearted minstrel attuning 
 his instrument and his soul to lighten somebody's 
 burden? It would almost seem that Appleseed 
 again saved the life of the Colonel, as he once 
 did in the battle of Lookout Mountain, this time, 
 however, not physically but spiritually, giving 
 him new-born Hope, the spirit-lifter, and build-
 
 238 JOHNNY APPLE SEED 1 8 RHYMES. 
 
 ing for the despairing man of sorrow a rainbow 
 arch from the Now to the Beyond, from Time to 
 Eternity. 
 
 Otherwise it is difficult for us to comprehend 
 the admiration, perhaps we ought to say, the 
 deep affection which Himmelshime shows for the 
 following little ballad by Appleseed, a simple 
 foolish thing, but giving tender gleams, present 
 iments, intimations of a bond which reaches out 
 of life and joins the heart to aught over the 
 border. A note like the following means some 
 what when set down in writing by Himmelshime : 
 
 " This little song or ballad is deeply inwoven 
 into my very existence, is so bound up with my 
 heart that I have no judgment whatever of its 
 value or meaning for another human being. 
 Many years have passed since I first heard it, 
 and still it rises and floats into the horizon of my 
 soul when cloudy and black with earth's storms, 
 across which murky abyss fair Iris at once 
 throws her many-hued celestial bridge rising 
 out of bondage and finitude, and I march over 
 toward freedom and the Infinite. Well do I 
 remember the first morning it was sung to me, I 
 was in the grim clutches of Death. I was de 
 termined to follow the departed. But the song 
 expressed my longing and thus eased it ; I ob 
 tained an eternal image or symbol of deliverance, 
 and made my escape, by no means imaginary, 
 but most real."
 
 BOOK TRIED. 239 
 
 Somewhat long is the matter drawn out, but 
 let us allow Himmelshime the right of unfolding 
 himself fully, according to his own law. He 
 continues the same subject: "May we not 
 imagine a shepherd with his flock, a typical 
 character from time immemorial, standing in 
 the presence of a tempest upon his mountain be 
 side the sea, and suddenly beholding a rain-bow 
 bend from the summits above and reach over the 
 troubled waves into the distant Beyond what 
 a transformation does he undergo just then ! 
 The poor shepherd wonders; he, the finite, 
 recognizes an Infinite, his spirit stretches 
 out for the same, sweeps over its limits through 
 Wonder, and feels itself to be also that bound- 
 bursting Infinite. Yon rainbow arch finds a corres 
 pondence within, the soul itself is such a lofty- 
 reaching, heaven-tinted arch, the poor shepherd 
 himself is that span bending out of the moment 
 into the Eternal. Along with this Image always 
 comes Thought,andthere rises spontaneously with 
 in me the strangely searching definition of Hegel : 
 ' The Infinite is the union of itself and the 
 Finite.' With such a Thought in the mind and 
 with such an Image in the soul all sorrow and 
 earthly limitations begin to vanish, and Fate 
 herself, with arm uplifted to strike a blow, sinks 
 to earth conquered, and cowers down invisible 
 into her gloomy cavern." 
 
 There it goes again ! Most mystifying, unac-
 
 240 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 countable, inexpressible Hiramelshime, what kind 
 of a psychology is surging around hi thy brain, 
 unsettled as those agitated sea- waves! Just a 
 moment ago thou didst carry us off on the irides 
 cent wings of the Imagination, charming into 
 our presence fair terrestrial rainbows, but now 
 thou dost drop us at once into the most abstruse, 
 unpictured and unpicturable utterance of the 
 most recondite philosopher, flinging us on the 
 spot, as it were, into the very sun of Pure 
 Reason, where no mortal eye can see in the excess 
 of light. Whom dost thou expect to follow thee 
 in these sudden prodigious leaps across the entire 
 Solar System of the Spirit? Certainly the thing 
 is impossible for the very moderate stride of 
 Theophilus Middling. 
 
 But the editor has again allowed the gigan- 
 tesqueformof Himmelshime to monopolize the 
 whole canvas, in spite of all self-imposed rules 
 and precautions. Hard is it for us to keep the 
 man in bounds, he being inherent a limit-defy 
 ing spirit, and thus by nature kicking out of 
 the editorial traces. It is indeed high time to 
 produce the poem over which Himmelshime has 
 raised such a pother; only let not the reader be 
 disappointed if it means not so much to himself. 
 Let us add that it has already been seen in print, 
 and has gone the rounds of a small circle of 
 readers.
 
 O SHEPHERD, COME OVER TO ME. 
 
 The Shepherd came into the city, 
 And wandered up and down ; 
 
 There rang in his ear a ditty, 
 Through all the din of the town. 
 
 From the hill-tops a rainbow is bending, 
 
 It reaches far over the sea, 
 And a song I hear with the ending: 
 
 Shepherd, come over to me. 
 
 I know not what is the matter, 
 That song rushes into my head, 
 
 Its music floats over the clatter, 
 But she who once sang it has fled. 
 
 I see my old flock on the mountain, 
 
 As it grazes in pasture up high; 
 I look at her face in the fountain, 
 
 1 there see myself too, and sigh. 
 
 (241) 
 16
 
 242 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S BHl'MES. 
 
 Still the rainbow yonder is bending, 
 
 It reaches far over the sea, 
 And a song I hear with the ending : 
 
 O Shepherd, come over to me. 
 
 The dwelling is empty yonder, 
 
 And the songstress has gone far away, 
 
 And I in the world have to wander, 
 At home I no longer can stay. 
 
 I hark on my path by the hour, 
 The heart of the hills is so full, 
 
 The earth brings many a flower, 
 But none I stoop over to pull. 
 
 Still above me a rainbow is bending, 
 It reaches far over the sea, 
 
 And a song I hear with the ending : 
 O Shepherd, come over to me. 
 
 The Shepherd went out of the city, 
 Still wandering up and down; 
 
 But always he hears the same ditty 
 He heard in the din of the town. 
 
 The ditty has always the ending: 
 O Shepherd, come over to me ; 
 
 And always a rainbow is bending 
 Which reaches far over the sea.
 
 WHOSE is THE HOUSE? 
 
 1. 
 
 Whose is the House ? Whose is the House ? 
 
 Not mine, not thine, 
 It belongs to another; 
 
 We plan and we scan, 
 
 We take and we make, 
 And receive but the bother ; 
 
 We toil and we moil, 
 
 We pine and resign, 
 It is all for another ; 
 Whose is the House? Whose is the House? 
 
 2. 
 The House, it is fair, 
 
 But who is the heir? 
 Eat, drink, and be merry, 
 
 Take the meat and the bread,. 
 Take the apple and cherry, 
 Take the board and the bed, 
 Take the house overhead, 
 
 (243)
 
 244 JOHNNY APPLE SEED 1 8 RHYMES. 
 
 Take the world in the sweep of the day, 
 And now to the banquet away ! 
 
 It belongs to another, 
 The dead man was buried to-day, 
 
 To-morrow we bury his brother, 
 Whose is the House? Whose is the House? 
 
 3. 
 
 The House is well-made, 
 But the cost is it paid ? 
 
 With sore and with sorrow 
 From the book our debt we shall clear, 
 When we lie down to rest on the bier 
 
 To-day or to-morrow. 
 But who is it now coming here 
 
 From whom we no longer can borrow? 
 With muffled drum 
 The heir is come 
 
 To take back the gift of his mother ; 
 We cannot expel him, 
 So let us just tell him 
 This House is the House of another; 
 Whose is the House ? Whose is the House ? 
 
 4. 
 
 The House is not mine, 
 The House is not thine, 
 The House it belongs to another : 
 
 o * 
 
 Thou canst drink of the wine, 
 And sit under the vine,
 
 BOOK THIRD. 245 
 
 Thou canst share in the feast 
 From largest to least, 
 
 If thou wilt bring with thee thy brother; 
 The first and second long since have fled, 
 The third and fourth already are dead, 
 The owner now is breathing his last, 
 The future will be as was the past, 
 But who is yonder riding so fast? 
 As the corpse is borne out before, 
 Who is it knocking behind at the door? 
 The heir it is I the heir evermore, 
 
 But the House is not mine Whose is the 
 
 House? 
 Whose is the House ?
 
 246 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 In this last poem with its wondering, we mark 
 something of an irregular, wandering, dithyram- 
 bic vein, playing freely with metrical forms ; 
 also there is wound through its spiritual texture 
 a mystical, enigmatic, Orphic strand truly spun 
 out of Appleseed's romantic genius. Some vague, 
 unearthly longing possessed the man, he had a 
 soul full of unanswered and perhaps unanswer 
 able questions, of which we probably hear an 
 utterance in that repeated echo, Whose is the 
 House? the beginning and end of the poem, 
 possibly of the poet too. Yea, the beginning and 
 end of man, it may be, of man coming into the 
 world with a cry of interrogation, and going out 
 with a sigh of interrogation. Yet even this 
 wonder concerning the unknown is a holy feel 
 ing, a kind of adoration ; indeed ancient Aris 
 totle affirms that wonder is the starting-point of 
 all philosophy. Veritably Appleseed was a won 
 dering man as well as a wandering one ; in the 
 depths of character the two traits have a certain 
 degree of kinship, for the wonderer is naturally 
 a wanderer, that he may get to see the marvels 
 of the world. 
 
 But ere we wind up this tortuous, meandering 
 Book, we must again introduce the Colonel in a 
 final incident which is not without some dramatic
 
 BOOK THIRD. 247 
 
 vigor. As the Iliad frequently devotes a Book 
 to the grand exploits of one of its heroes, 
 Diomed, Agamemnon, Menelaus, so do we devote 
 this Third Book to Godlove Himmelshime, also 
 a hero in our eyes, yea doubly a hero, with a 
 fighting record in two wars, spiritual and tem 
 poral. 
 
 We have already noted the inborn and doubt 
 less inbred Gothicism in the character and style 
 of Himmelshime, which tendency has probably 
 come in the main from his Teutonic ancestry, 
 but has also in part been nourished by his reading 
 in Gothic literature. Germany furnishes many 
 such writers, perhaps all have a tinge of it, cul 
 minating in the author of Faust, truly sprung of 
 the soil and of the soul of the people. Still 
 further, Himmelshime's method of utterance in 
 English has been influenced by his loving perusal 
 of Thomas Carlyle's books, which are themselves 
 derived from the German fountain. Here are 
 found similar touches or splashes of strong color, 
 apostrophic outbreaks, gruesome humor, wild 
 fastastic conceptions leaping forth suddenly in 
 lurid grotesquely : surely the Scotch Goth of 
 modern times has laid his spell upon our Colonel 
 Himmelshime, as well as upon other weaker 
 spirits, those who are less able to swallow the 
 genuine Berserker fire, and so make a mess 
 of it. 
 
 At this point we have an interesting report
 
 248 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 from the publisher's taster. It seems that he, 
 feeling the pulse of the public, as was his duty 
 to his employer, and beholding in imagination 
 scorching reviews from the critics on all sides, 
 and also shocked deeply in his own literary 
 sense by these irregular and unholy streaks of 
 Carlylese, wrote to our friend concerning the 
 danger. 
 
 " I heard that Colonel Himmelshime was in 
 town recently," says the taster, in his account 
 appended in this place, " and I concluded to 
 address him a most humble, courteous note, well 
 knowing the extreme sensitiveness of authors, 
 who are inclined to regard their smallest word as 
 
 O 
 
 inspired and unalterable, and I asked him to pare 
 off a few of the worst excrescences, and to mod 
 ify here and there his extremely uncouth phrase 
 ology, out of consideration for the public as well 
 as out of regard for the English language. 
 Imagine the answer which I received from a 
 hostelry well known in our city."
 
 BOOK THIRD. 249 
 
 LIBERTY HALL, WEST SIDE, July the 4th. 
 
 DEAR SIR: I must express myself in my own 
 way, and it makes no difference who has em 
 ployed my way before me. If Thomas Carlyle 
 chose to adopt my style before I was born, go 
 and talk to him, and tell him to change and not 
 me, for he was the first transgressor on my 
 domain. As for me, however, I have no quar 
 rel with the great men who have used my 
 thoughts and even my expressions in advance of 
 me ; indeed I regard such use as a new proof of 
 their greatness. 
 
 As to the public I must declare to its face that I 
 am still and intend to remain a free man, in 
 spite of having contributed some notes to a com 
 mentary on Johnny Appleseed. On this birth 
 day of our national independence, I assert my 
 inalienable right to use the English tongue after 
 my own fashion, for my own needs, with a lib 
 erty which takes in past and future, reaching out 
 before my birth and after my death. I respect 
 language, but it shall not rule me tyrannically, 
 though backed up by all its cohorts of gramma 
 rians and all their followers. Is not this another 
 chain which the Professor has forged, and which 
 the Soldier must break ? Rex super grammati- 
 cam was a royal saying in the olden time; but in 
 the new epoch and in this free country we are 
 all kings, and must assert an equal right with 
 royalty. So in matters of style I shall burst the
 
 250 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 barriers, and if I happen to break into a road 
 which has been traveled before me, still it is 
 mine. Such is the Declaration of Independence 
 new-made and read to-day by your fellow-citizen 
 
 GODLOVE HlMMELSHIME. 
 
 Such was the Colonel's letter in reply to the 
 publisher's taster, a letter smelling of gunpow 
 der and defiance more than of sweet charity and 
 modesty, showing the soldier more than the 
 philosopher. Manifestly with him the war is not 
 yet over; that devil whom he saw in the woods, 
 and whom he called Ego, was not then wholly 
 conquered in spite the gigantic battle which there 
 took place, veritably a new contest mid the soli 
 tudes between Hercules and Cacus. Not a pru 
 dent letter the editor deems it, for is not the 
 only channel to publication now blocked up with 
 huge boulders of wrath as well as of preju 
 dice? To the editor this epistle was the source 
 of troubles unnumbered, about which let there be 
 silence. It will be sufficient to state that the 
 above letter was pinned on to the returned man 
 uscript at this point. 
 
 Still the editor, exercising all his self suppres 
 sion, cannot wholly keep to himself his pent-up 
 woes. He hastened to the city to avert the 
 threatened calamnity, he went directly to the 
 office of the irate taster and sent up his card, but 
 could not get an audience ; then he sought the
 
 BOOK THIBD. 251 
 
 publisher in person. This gentleman knew of 
 the fatal letter, and made it the ground, or at 
 least the pretext, of an immediate and uncondi 
 tional rejection of the whole book. The editor 
 tried to soothe, to placate, to apologize; but the 
 more apologetic he, the hotter the publisher. 
 Finally the latter turned away, doubtless in a fit 
 of anger, and uttered the following pronuncia- 
 mento : " We publishers are servants of the pub 
 lic, and you authors must be our slaves, or go to 
 the devil." 
 
 To which the editor could only give a calm 
 response, born of despair: " Good-bye, we are 
 going."
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 
 
 THE DEMON IN THE BOTTLE. 
 
 " What is that clinking, drinking sound 
 
 As when the beakers rattle? 
 Unbidden voices play around 
 
 What is it that they prattle? 
 It surely must be something said 
 
 By spirit tongues of air; 
 But if I start to look, 'tis fled ! 
 
 Deep silence everywhere." 
 
 The Scholar turned back to his page 
 
 Lit by the lonely lamp; 
 Upon his mind another age 
 
 Had set its golden stamp; 
 The mystic script of Hellas fair 
 
 He followed in a book, 
 And found a spirit hidden there; 
 
 Entranced it held his look. 
 (252)
 
 BOOK FOUETH. 253 
 
 But louder, louder grows the sound 
 
 Than it has been before ; 
 There is a trembling of the ground, 
 
 A flashing through the door ! 
 It makes a gurgling, struggling noise, 
 
 As if it sought to be ; 
 Hark ! it hath rounded to a voice : 
 
 " O Scholar, make me free! " 
 
 The word darts down the chimney spoken, 
 
 At once the Scholar wakes 
 Up from his book to catch the token, 
 
 While all the building quakes. 
 " I heard the word which was just said, 
 
 Yet know not what to do ; 
 O speaker, be thou quick or dead, 
 
 Now show thee to my view. 
 
 " I swear it, I shall dare to free thee, 
 
 Ere I forsake this spot ; 
 But, first, I deem that I must see thee 
 
 I seek and find thee not. 
 Out of the keyhole here behind me, 
 
 Thou deftly must have shot ; 
 Alack ! I seek and cannot find thee I 
 
 I found, and sought thee not ! "
 
 254 JOHNNY APPLE SEED* S RHYMES. 
 
 He gave but one unwilling look, 
 
 And then his glances played 
 Into new pages of his book, 
 
 O'er which his lamplight strayed; 
 The antique characters were lit 
 
 In bright Hellenic grace ; 
 The Gods, from underneath the writ, 
 
 Look straight into his face. 
 
 But list! that clinking, drinking sound 
 
 The moving in the hall ! 
 The flashing through the doors around ! 
 
 The lightning on the wall ! 
 Again the struggling tones are heard, 
 
 Like buzzings of the bee, 
 Until they gather to a word : 
 
 " O Scholar, make me free ! " 
 
 Up from a high Olympian line, 
 
 In which Great Zeus once spoke, 
 And left on speech a trance divine, 
 
 The Scholar once more woke ; 
 Impatiently he shut the book, 
 
 A little curse he dropped, 
 And to the mantel turned his look : 
 
 How suddenly he stopped !
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 255 
 
 Upon the shelf the vial stood 
 
 That sent a piercing light, 
 It had one ray as red as blood, 
 
 One ray it had of white ; 
 They flashed and flared, they wrenched and rang, 
 
 A battle he could see; 
 The light became a voice which sung : 
 
 " O Scholar, make me free! " 
 
 The light wrought in a mighty trial ; 
 
 He could not understand x 
 What labored so inside the vial; 
 
 He took it in his hand, 
 A sudden whisk he felt it give, 
 
 It squirmed and heaved and whirled, 
 It was a being that did live 
 
 Within its little world. 
 
 He raised it up and held it near, 
 
 A cloven shape it took, 
 A language he began to hear, 
 
 The vial strained and shook; 
 Hark ! firmer, firmer grows the tone, 
 
 Though struggling heavily, 
 Its muffled heart has heaved a moan : 
 
 " O Scholar, make me free.
 
 256 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES, 
 
 " I pray thee break the blood-red seal 
 
 On which is stamped the cross, 
 Whose pressure here within I feel, 
 
 For thee it is no loss ; 
 Thou wilt let out thy burning doubt, 
 
 And wonders thou shalt see; 
 O take my prison's stopper out ! 
 
 Good Scholar, make me free." 
 
 The Scholar smote the waxen sign, 
 
 He cracked the ruddy rood ; 
 A flame ran round the mark divine, 
 
 The red wax bubbled blood ; 
 The spirit rose out of the bottle, 
 
 Till all the room was filled ; 
 " Thee have I come to-night to throttle, 
 
 Here thou art to be killed." 
 
 " And who are you, that will affright 
 
 My soul with doom of evil? " 
 " I was the ancient God of Light, 
 
 But now I am the Devil." 
 The monster swelled up to a look 
 
 That was aflame with ire, 
 And that lone lamp, with pen and book, 
 
 He flung into the fire.
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 257 
 
 A crucifix, and eke a crown, 
 
 He shattered at a blow ; 
 The entire house he would tear down 
 
 And in the ocean throw. 
 But why, in wrath, yon looking-glass 
 
 Should that grim fiend assail? 
 It showed to him as he did pass, 
 
 His horn and hoof and tail. 
 
 The Scholar saw the baneful wreck 
 
 Which comes from Satan loose ; 
 He looked around to find a check 
 
 How little was the use ! 
 About him rolls the mighty clatter, 
 
 He sees his burning tomb ; 
 Hark ! now he will the Devil flatter, 
 
 If that may stay his doom. 
 
 " Bearer of Light, I hail thine art, 
 
 Which I, like thee, would know ; 
 But now reveal thy higher part 
 
 Surpassing thy great foe ; 
 Thy little world thou breakest through, 
 
 Show next what is far more ; 
 Do what a God alone can do, 
 
 Thy former bound restore. 
 
 17
 
 258 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S EHYMES. 
 
 " Bethink, thou art not yet the All, 
 
 Though great has been thy trial ; 
 Prove thou canst also be the Small, 
 
 Creep back into this vial." 
 The Devil fleered, the Devil jeered, 
 
 He blew his nose and shrunk 
 Till there a little ape appeared 
 
 Where stood his mighty trunk. 
 
 Upon the bottle's brim he tips 
 
 With diabolic grin ; 
 He stops to think, and then he slips, 
 
 Behold, he has slipped in. 
 The Scholar shouted, the Scholar flouted, 
 
 The laughter cracked his sides : 
 " Who could have thought the Devil doubted ? 
 
 See now he too backslides." 
 
 The Scholar seized in haste the stopple, 
 
 And fixed it in its place ; 
 The tumult made the chimney topple, 
 
 But still he won the race ; 
 The Fiend no longer is his own, 
 
 A prisoner lies he; 
 Again begins his ancient moan ; 
 
 " Q Scholar, make me free ! "
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 259 
 
 " Let him who hath the Devil caught 
 
 A second time, hold fast ; 
 Thy freedom must henceforth be bought, 
 
 Or this hour be my last ; 
 Thy only love is to destroy 
 
 What once the wise have built ; 
 In thy closed world be fire thy joy, 
 
 But mercy be my guilt." 
 
 The Devil said it was so cruel, 
 
 But soon his coin he told: 
 " I'll give thee my most precious jewel, 
 
 Which turns the earth to gold ; 
 I'll give with it the fairest wife, 
 
 Whose love shall pleasure be; 
 I'll give thy joys eternal life ; 
 
 Good Scholar, make me free." 
 
 " I care not for thy shining gold, 
 
 Not much I care for life ; 
 And, since I am a Scholar cold, 
 
 Why should I take a wife? 
 A wand of pitch is all I ask, 
 
 Lit at thine own hell-fire, 
 To scorch thee withjvhen out thy flask, 
 
 Than me thou risest higher.
 
 260 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S EHYMES. 
 
 " But first my pen must be returned, 
 
 ' My house I wish it new; 
 
 The book that was by thee once burned - 
 
 Restore it, through and through. 
 Of sooty flocks, thou black bell-wether, 
 
 Hear it thy deepest dole 
 This broken crucifix put thou together 
 
 That it again be whole." 
 
 The house, the lamp, the book, the pen 
 
 See him renew each thing ; 
 He welds the cross and cries Amen ! 
 
 While hymns he starts to sing; 
 He does it all, he does it well, 
 
 Much better is that store 
 Now tempered in the fire of hell, 
 
 Than ever 'twas before. 
 
 The Devil is set free again 
 
 Yet under sharp command, 
 He still can send a red-hot rain, 
 
 If it be elsewhere planned ; 
 But from the ashes of his flame 
 
 New life begins to spring, 
 And Lucifer has won a name 
 
 In service of the King.
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 261 
 
 All have to Jaugh in every glance 
 
 To see him mending things, 
 To watch him dunce the Devil's dance, 
 
 While he new order brings; 
 He darts a scowl, he gives a howl, 
 
 Unhappy still snarls he: 
 " If I can be no longer foul 
 
 What is it to be free?" 
 
 The Scholar turns back to his book, 
 
 It is the antique writ, 
 But now it has a strange, new look, 
 
 Beneath the lamp relit; 
 The Gods still peer from out each line 
 
 And sing the olden strain, 
 Yet they have won a hope divine 
 
 The Gods are born again. 
 
 The Scholar keeps his magic wand 
 
 Tipped with infernal pitch ; 
 With that lit torch his learned hand 
 
 Burns out the Devil's itch; 
 Around the world he flaming goes, 
 
 The Liberator, he, 
 When he but hears a spirit's throes, 
 
 " O Scholar, make me free."
 
 262 JOENNT APPLE SEED'S RHYMES 
 
 Thus has the editor, at the beginning of the 
 present book, flung into the face of the even- 
 tempered reader, not a batch of rhymes flutter 
 ing and flying in every direction, but a connected 
 poem with a mythical texture, quite the longest 
 in the entire collection. It takes the form of the 
 ballad, and even reaches out with some ambition 
 toward a little epos: wherein we may see hints of 
 a new development in Appleseed's poetic career. 
 Is not the Iliad made up of the mythical treas 
 ures of oldest Hellas, songs and ballads unified 
 and transfigured into one great national deed, 
 the siege of Troy? Such epical materials does 
 the editor sometimes see, looking perchance with 
 a too-favorable eye, in these little floating shreds 
 of Appleseed's Muse an unrealized possibility. 
 
 It is to be observed that we witness here again 
 that strange, supernatural element, which often 
 givfls a medieval Gothic tinge to our singer's ver- 
 sicles, especially to his ballads. Somehow he 
 cannot quit fighting the Fiends, and, accordingly, 
 we have now another wild, fantastic account of a 
 new tussle with a demon. The scholar, student, 
 thinker, investigator is at present the central 
 character, round whom a series of marvels is made 
 to spin with a final triumph. Thus we catch, 
 the editor ventures to say, a glimpse of that dev.'l 
 who is born of all striving and advancement, a
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 263 
 
 genuine Mephistopheles. This poem was known 
 both to Brazennose and Himmelshime, hence the 
 reader is to have the advantage of hearing the 
 opinions of these two very different commenta 
 tors. 
 
 We are happy to introduce again the Professor, 
 who had almost vanished in the preceding Book, 
 in which the overwhelming, somewhat overbear 
 ing figure of the Colonel had reared itself and 
 had elbowed everybody else out of the way. 
 Even Appleseed himself, though the great orig 
 inal fiddler and singer, began to play second 
 fiddle and to hum in a subdued alto. But let us 
 listen again to the welcome voice of Brazennose : 
 
 "The conception of putting a spirit into a 
 bottle and of there letting it flash and flare and 
 make a show of some kind, goes back to the 
 Orient. Something of the sort is, I believe, 
 found in the Arabian Tales, where a genius or 
 spirit appears under such conditions. But in 
 Europe this legendary notion was seized upon and 
 unfolded at the time of the Revival of Learning, 
 when it took the form of Homunculus, the little 
 man in the glass bottle, who can be made in the 
 Laboratory by a chemical process. It is well 
 known that the legend of Homunculus was taken 
 up by Goethe, transformed and put into the 
 Second Part of Faust. 
 
 The Spirit in the Bottle appears in the form 
 of a Tale in Grimm's Mdhrchen, where the
 
 264 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 scholar is introduced studying and working 
 away with all diligence, when he hears the voice 
 begging him, " Let me out." There is no doubt 
 to my mind that Appleseed drew directly from 
 Grimm. To be sure he might have obtained his 
 incident from tradition, as the story was current 
 among the people. But the printed book of 
 Grimm, in one of its numberless editions, must 
 have come under his eye, and have called forth 
 this poetic response, which, I confess, is not 
 wholly to my taste." 
 
 Here the Professor stops short with his com 
 ment, though the editor finds in his notes many 
 references to works in which there are some 
 allusions to Homunculus and kindred legends. 
 Evidently the heart of Brazennose is not in this 
 subject, he is weak in style and thought, he 
 shows some disrelish of the whole thing. No 
 better field for the display of his multifarious 
 erudition could be found, yet he drops spade 
 and mattock, after showing us two or three old 
 roots dug out of the Past, and takes to his heels. 
 What can be the matter? 
 
 But here comes Himmelshime, with a grin 
 breaking up his iron features into a thousand 
 rippling fragments; he, the old Goth, has 
 evidently found the subject congenial. We see 
 at once that his comment, and even his hand 
 writing (for he is not present in person) show 
 his delight. Says he at the start: "On the
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 265 
 
 whole, I think this is the best of Appleseed's 
 productions. Here he has not simply wooed the 
 Muse at a distance, but she draws near and 
 actually kisses him, even promising to marry 
 him at some time in the future. Whether she 
 ever fulfilled that promise, it rests with coming 
 generations to say ; I confess I do not know. 
 But in this poem I hear distinctly the words of 
 love and betrothal." 
 
 Thus Himrnelshiine in one of his riotous, 
 metaphorical, bantering moods; surely the imp 
 has gotten out of the bottle and gone into him 
 with a kind of demonic chuckle. Listen now 
 to his interpretation of the poem: "It very 
 distinctly shows the narrowing effect, the limita 
 tion which comes from all merely academic 
 training. The study of the classics, for instance, 
 pursued in the old fashion, has a tendency to 
 throw the spirit into the bonds of erudition, to 
 break which may cost it infinite trouble. The 
 scholar in the poem is apparently studying 
 Homer, " The High Olympian line in which 
 Great Zeus once spoke," when he heard the 
 voice in the bottle calling for freedom. How 
 many Homeric commentators, great scholars 
 indeed, have I read, who are in just such a 
 bottle, small, confined, vitrified ! It is the voice 
 of a demon of course, a spirit destructive of the 
 old crystallized limits, which is appealing to the 
 student."
 
 266 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 It is at this point that Himmelshime takes up 
 the Homunculus of Goethe, and even goes back 
 and cites the old German text of Paracelsus, that 
 typical Gothic genius, who has quite fully de 
 scribed how Homunculus was to be manufac 
 tured. This passage, however, cannot possibly 
 be introduced upon these pages. A grim Teu 
 tonic humor pervades the disquisitions of the 
 Colonel, in which he claims that the author of 
 Faust intended to exhibit a genuine spiritual 
 product of the University, and that Appleseed, 
 in a somewhat different fashion, had an entity 
 of the same sort floating before his fancy in the 
 preceding poem. Moreover the Colonel has 
 already intimated in his talk, and now he sets 
 down in writing, that our friend, Professor 
 Brazennose, is a good sample of Homunculus. 
 No wonder that an unfriendly feeling exists be 
 tween the two men ; perhaps, also, here we may 
 find the cause why the Professor, stung by the 
 Colonel's taunts, has felt an inner reaction against 
 Appleseed's poem, especially with the foregoing 
 interpretation. 
 
 But the editor must at once take the opportun 
 ity to declare that he cannot accept the view of 
 Himmelshime in the present case. Such a legend 
 as the above is sure to come to the surface when 
 the ancient bounds are felt chafing the aroused 
 Human Spirit, and when the latter is getting 
 ready to take a new step in the World's History.
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 267 
 
 We find in Homunculus, in Grimm's Tale of 
 the Spirit in the Bottle, as well as in Appleseed's 
 poem different legendary shoots from one great 
 trunk, which trunk we may call the Mythus of 
 Culture. For this is unavoidable in any mighty 
 spiritual change : destruction of old and revered 
 forms and beliefs must take place, and men must 
 be shaken to the foundation. The new world 
 seems to be made by the earthquake, and the 
 new doctrine runs the eternal danger of calling 
 up the Devil. Especially the Renascence with its 
 study of antiquity, its investigation of nature, 
 its inquiring spirit, suffered a kind of relapse in 
 going forward; it actually in certain respects, 
 went back to classic Heathendom. So Apple- 
 seed's " Ancient God of Light," perchance 
 Apollo himself, becomes an evil demon in Chris 
 tendom. Dante also belonged to a period of 
 classic Revival, the negative consequence of 
 which he has intimated by the place in the 
 Inferno where he puts the polished, poetical 
 Frederick the Second of Sicily. Skepticism, the 
 collapse of the old Faith, the negative result of 
 unsettling men's minds, even by a beneficent 
 change, we may well read hintfully in this myth 
 ical utterance. Indeed what is Faust but the 
 Mythus not only of the Reformation, but of all 
 like Reformations, however needful ; they beget 
 denial, and denial unfolds into Mephistopheles. 
 The man of supreme learning and aspiration has
 
 268 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 reached the point of denying all truth ; very 
 soon appears the Devil in person, for the man is 
 ready to see him. 
 
 Such are one or two of the threads which con 
 nect Appleseed's poem with the Past, yea, with 
 the Spirit of Time, imaging the negative element 
 in all Culture, and the way of mastering the 
 same. For Appleseed seeks also to show in a 
 weird, symbolic fashion, how such a fiend is 
 mastered when once aroused. That curious 
 wand, "tipped with infernal pitch," seems to 
 be endowed with the power of destroying infer- 
 nality in general, fire somehow burning out fire. 
 In such a case, the Liberator is the Scholar, he 
 who has had his own conflict, his own experience 
 with the demon, and knows him well. But let the 
 reader tackle the matter for himself and be his 
 own Liberator, especially from the commentators, 
 who can also become fiends in their way, fiends 
 in a little glass bottle, who love to bedevil 
 the innocent reader with all sorts of delusive 
 shows. 
 
 But whatever we may say to these various 
 views concerning Appleseed's poem, it is plain 
 that between Himmelshime and Brazennose there 
 has developed a strong and deep dualism in 
 word, deed, character. Two tendencies we be 
 hold embodied in the two men; tendencies which 
 reflect themselves in everything said and done. 
 Nature and Culture, Teutonic and Latin, Roman-
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 269 
 
 tic and Classic, we may name these tendencies, 
 with partial hint of their difference; or per 
 chance, we behold the University and the World 
 manifesting the products of their respective 
 disciplines. Yet withal both men have many 
 sympathetic ties in spite of themselves; both 
 work in the literary field, both are in pursuit of 
 the same great end, both have certain tastes and 
 ideals in common; have we not seen both as 
 loving admirers and annotators of Johnny Apple- 
 seed? Some underlying bond unites them be 
 neath all diversity ; I wonder if it will ever come 
 to light and assume visible shape I 
 
 We feel ourselves justified in inserting at this 
 conjuncture one of Appleseed's quatrains in his 
 altruistic mood: 
 
 To others you their own must give, 
 
 If you would have your own ; 
 The more you keep, the more you live 
 
 In this great world alone. 
 
 In view of the conflict which has arisen 
 between our two friends, the Colonel and the 
 Professor, and which threatens to come to hard 
 words, the editor seeks to keep himself com 
 posed, and advises the reader to cultivate the 
 same frame of mind. Not only impartial must 
 be our attitude, but also intellectually charitable, 
 for this charity of the intellect is a rarer gift,
 
 270 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 and more deeply spiritual, I think, than charity 
 of the heart, though the latter also is to be 
 cherished. At least I have often seen the same 
 man very tender-hearted, but very hard-headed, 
 emptying his pockets to a beggar, but stoning 
 the prophet and even damning Johnny Apple- 
 seed. The latter, however, has written some 
 lines, doubtless born of experience in this 
 direction, in which lines I have found help, when 
 writhing under strong provocation : 
 
 Seek not to destroy any man 
 
 Because he is narrow and small ; 
 He has his place in the Plan, 
 Else he would not be at all ; 
 If he cannot abide, 
 He must himself set aside ; 
 Not from without, it is done from 
 
 within 
 
 By his own folly, weakness, or sin. 
 Then to the man's own decree, 
 It is likely the Lord will agree. 
 
 By way of contrast with the demonic ballad 
 herein before given, the editor adds the follow 
 ing four stanzas, in which the mythical form is 
 dropped, and the human imp is exposed in his 
 nakedness, being the diabolic without its legen 
 dary wrappage, yet measured and rhymed to a 
 tune.
 
 BOOK FOUETH. 271 
 
 I heard a man deriding faith, 
 
 Who lacked himself belief ; 
 I heard a man defending theft, 
 
 Because he was a thief. 
 
 I heard a man a doctrine teach, 
 
 Which is a lie well known ; 
 I heard him then a vice defend, 
 
 Because it was his own. 
 
 So when I hear a man assay 
 
 To justify abuse, 
 It is his charge against himself 
 
 For which he seeks excuse. 
 
 And when I hear a man proclaim 
 
 Some wrong to be a right, 
 Defending his own secret sin 
 
 Unvails it to the sight. 
 
 Of course I did not intend to leave Hard- 
 scrabble, without paying a visit to my friend, 
 Professor Brazennose. When I arrived, I found 
 him hard at work in his library. Various books, 
 particularly of an ancient cast, were piled up 
 around him, each apparently begging to be taken 
 up first. Certainly the old volumes showed a 
 love for the man who loved them. 
 
 The Professor's greeting was friendly, but it 
 lacked for a moment its former cordiality. I
 
 272 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 imagined he felt that I had come from the camp 
 of his enemies. But a word concerning Apple- 
 seed was enough to drive away the cloudlet. I 
 asked him whether he had found any further 
 treasure. " Yes," he replied, " I am just now 
 exploring the allusion in a certain verse of his 
 which I have come across. The lines run: 
 
 If we know ourselves aright, 
 That will certainly illumine us. 
 
 But beware ! next door to " know-thyself," 
 Lives Mr. Heautontimoroumenos. 
 
 There ! what do you make of that? " I had to 
 confess that I was graveled by the long word at 
 the end and its meaning. "Well," said the 
 Professor with a look of triumph, " it is taken 
 from Terence, the Roman poet, who wrote a play 
 by that name. It means the self-torturer, the 
 self-punisher, and was derived, as are most of 
 Terence's plays, from the Athenian comic poet, 
 Menander, who flourished about the year 300 B. 
 C. It has brought me another little surprise at 
 Appleseed's learning. 
 
 " It is a strange fact, " I replied ; " how could 
 the old fellow have gotten it in his rambles? 
 But I am interested also in the meaning of the 
 verse ; that is not so plain as it might be. I have 
 already noticed an oracular, ambiguous, mysti 
 fying strand in Appeleseed's character. Does
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 273 
 
 he not here turn against excessive self-examina 
 tion, which becomes a brooding Mr. Heauton- 
 timoroumenos?" 
 
 The Professor answered : "There is also an 
 allusion to the famous Delphic inscription Know 
 thyself, which has passed so long in Europe 
 under its Latin dress Nosceteipsum. It is clear 
 to me that Menander was opposed to this maxim, 
 for he declares in one of his fragments published 
 by Meineke (here the Professor took down his 
 Greek book) that it would be more useful for 
 thee to know others than to know thyself. One 
 of Goethe's sentences also comes to mind: 
 ' Man only knows himself in so far as he knows 
 the world, which he perceives in himself only 
 when he perceives himself in it.' Here too I may 
 join another little verse by Appleseed : 
 
 Look outside of your skin, 
 
 You will surely get sick 
 If you have the trick 
 
 Of always looking within." 
 
 " More certain does it become," I answered, 
 " that Appleseed in one way or other was inti 
 mately connected with the spirit of all ages in 
 its manifold fluctuations, and knew something of 
 the utterance of that spirit by the men who shared 
 in it and had the gift of expression. Ancient 
 Menander doubtless felt the excess which came 
 from too much thinking over the unfathomable 
 
 18
 
 274 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 Ego, represented in the Delphic saying above cited. 
 Modern Goethe, we know, often warns against 
 the same extravagance. And what else does our 
 Shakespeare in his Hamlet teach? Too much 
 reflection, too little will ; too much thought, too 
 little doing; so ancient Athens in Menander's 
 time, went down with its Delphic precept, be 
 fore the man of action, the Macedonian man." 
 "Now," I continued, "I am going to trump 
 your card, for I too have found another versicle 
 which seems to unify the two tendencies, making 
 them over into a single effort of the complete 
 mind: 
 
 ' Appleseed, thou art my friend; 
 
 Give me the right direction: ' 
 ' Make the two ways blend : 
 
 Outward be thy introspection.' ' 
 
 Now it was the turn of. the Professor to be 
 puzzled, as this twofold contrary movement of 
 mind, which is nevertheless one, lay distinctly 
 outside of his sphere. He mused for a moment, 
 looking at his book-case, and then began: 
 
 " This is a phase of Appleseed's work which 
 does not appeal to me very strongly. To my 
 thinking the outer is outer and the inner is inner, 
 and a contradiction is contradictory, not to be 
 brought into harmony by any number of intel 
 lectual screws, levers or gimcracks. But you 
 may know of a man who takes special delight
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 275 
 
 in this mystical, transcendental, hypochondriacal 
 side of Appleseed's genius, who indeed twists all 
 of his sayings and poems into this bizarre, 
 crooked, outlandish method of explanation." 
 
 Incontestably there was some heat in these 
 words. The Professor must have known of my 
 presence in town and of my little address before 
 the Hardscrabble Literary Club. He may pos 
 sibly have heard that I had had quite a long con 
 versation with Himmelshime afterwards. I had no 
 doubt about the person he was aiming at, though 
 he mentioned no name. I was ambitious to heal 
 the breach, of being a mediating spirit between 
 the two sides, especially as both seemed to be 
 united in a common study and appreciation 
 of Appleseed's verses. I therefore said in a 
 soothing tone of voice : 
 
 " I did not see you last evening, I missed 
 you." 
 
 "The truth is," he replied, " I seldom go to 
 that club, though I have the honor of being a 
 member. There is too great a tendency in it to 
 run after the vague, the indefinite, the fantastic ; 
 I want the fact, the solid fact, with its place in 
 history. If I cannot find that", I soon decamp." 
 
 There was plainly no way except to come to 
 the main point at once and speak out mutually 
 what lay in the minds of both. So I asked him, 
 " What do you think of Colonel Himmel 
 shime?"
 
 276 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S EHJMES. 
 
 " You met him last night, I am glad you did. 
 I regard him as a man of ability, well endowed 
 by nature, retaining perhaps a dash of pompos 
 ity and of imperiousness from his military 
 career. He has strange crotchets; well, every 
 man has, doubtless I have, but he is the maddest 
 idealist I ever saw. He will read only what he 
 calls Great Books; with lesser writings, such as 
 you and I might be able to produce, he will have 
 nothing to do. He has, too, a wild scheme by 
 which he thinks he will drive out all academic 
 training." 
 
 "If you will permit me, Professor," I inter 
 rupted, " I heard him say that his scheme, which 
 he did not unfold to me, was not to supplant, 
 but to supplement the University." 
 
 ** Be that as it ma} 7 ," the Professor went on, 
 " he despises learning and the halls of learning. 
 What have we all here not endured to bring the 
 light of higher education to these prairies and 
 there make it shine ! I myself have been here 
 twenty years and more, on a meager salary, 
 scarce furnishing me the bread to keep my brain 
 alive. I started instruction in the ancient 
 tongues hitherto*' unknown in this region. I 
 opened the world's treasures to the child of the 
 backwoodsman, or at least gave the key for 
 unlocking them. I shall not so easily be set 
 aside by a half-cracked vagabond." 
 
 When the explosion came, the Professor heard
 
 BOOK FOUETH. 277 
 
 the reverberation of his own high-pitched voice, 
 and at once sought to dampen its effect. For 
 Brazennose is certainly not of an ugly disposi 
 tion, in spite of a touch of irritability, which he 
 shows with most of his class. At once he began 
 correcting himself: "I have no quarrel with 
 Colonel Himmelshime, he is an able man and a 
 good fellow. But when 1 hear him on Shakes 
 peare, I often think it a great pity that the bard 
 of Avon is not living to-day, in order that he 
 might find out the meaning of what he has writ 
 ten. If he could but return to us he would 
 probably be the most surprised man on the globe 
 at his own profundity. But Himmelshime is a 
 good fellow, I like him." 
 
 At this the Professor suddenly turned toward 
 me and asked : " Did Himmelshime walk home 
 with you or go part of the way? " 
 
 " No," I answered, " I was talking with him, 
 and the conversation was growing more interesting, 
 as I thought, when he looked up and saw some 
 body pass ; at once he ceased, turned away, bade 
 me good-night, and darted into the aisle toward 
 the door, where he was soon lost amid the 
 crowd." 
 
 " Who was the person who passed? " 
 
 " I do not know." 
 
 "Was it a lady?" 
 
 " Very dreamy is the whole scene now."
 
 278 JOHNN? APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 1. 
 
 See approach the sunny fly ! 
 He has come far out the sky; 
 As he strikes his shiny wings, 
 Subtle melodies he brings ; 
 Whence he sprang, I do not know, 
 Whither going, he will show. 
 On the paper now he sits, 
 Where are spread the honeyed bits. 
 O the keenness of his pleasure ! 
 He indulges without measure. 
 But one foot is fast, he cannot fly, 
 Though he for a moment try. 
 Still he moves his tongue's wee tip, 
 And he takes another sip. 
 Mad delight, it cannot last; 
 See ! the other foot is- fast. 
 How he flaps his rainbow wings ! 
 Hark ! his very struggle sings. 
 Now he laughs a little laugh, 
 And he takes another quaff. 
 Sticky ropes have bound him tight, 
 Then he thinks to take his flight, 
 But one wing is caught outright. 
 Look ! his feet have sunken deep, 
 The other wing he cannot keep; 
 Though it flutter in a fear, 
 Down it drops into the smear ; 
 Still he takes another swallow, 
 Now he rolls down in the wallow,
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 279 
 
 Flits no longer in the sun, 
 Song is still, his piping done; 
 In a grave of sweets he lies, 
 Closed his hundred thousand eyes. 
 
 Already in the preceding book it has been 
 duly reported that Himmelshime was a collector 
 of Appleseed's rhymes, and also a commentator. 
 This information is confirmed and amplified by 
 the following note from the Colonel, which we 
 found on our table when we returned from our 
 visit to Brazennose. This visit had, we think, 
 a conciliatory effect upon the Professor, who had 
 before been visibly withdrawing from our hori 
 zon. We felt it very necessary to keep him 
 harmoniously attunded to the new work, not only 
 out of personal regard for the man, but for the 
 sake of this commentary. But let us now listen 
 to the Colonel's note, in which there is something 
 left out, at least it has not his usual directness. 
 Dropping some introductory compliments, we 
 come to the relevant part: 
 
 "Of course, I could not help noticing in our 
 various conversations, that you had become 
 deeply interested in the words and deeds of our 
 remarkable fellow-mortal, Johnny Appleseed. 
 Still further I have been led to conclude from 
 certain casual remarks, as well from the general 
 tenor of your talk, that you were making a col 
 lection, or possibly an anthology of his verses
 
 280 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 and that you intended giving them to the world. 
 I imparted to you a little hint of my own labors 
 in the same direction, but I did not then tell 
 you that I had the same purpose in mind, 
 and had already resolved to print my results in 
 due season. The object of this note is to offer 
 you the entire material which I have gathered 
 with some trouble. 1 cannot help thinking that 
 you are the proper person for editor and not my 
 self. Surely my opinion is not wrong that you 
 have purposed publication at some future time, 
 however your modesty might shrink from an open 
 avowal to that effect. 
 
 "I am eager for your success, I wish to see 
 you move by the right road, hence I take the 
 liberty of hinting an admonition. Danger lurks 
 not far away, error is lying directly in your path. 
 Under all circumstances consider me as at your 
 service. G. H." 
 
 Thus I had let the cat out of the bag, or else 
 the cat (of authorship or editorship) had given 
 such an audible mew in the bag that the Colonel 
 had heard her through the words of our conver 
 sation. Impossible is it to suppress a book or a 
 murder; the moral order of the Universe com 
 pels the guilty man to divulge his secret. But 
 the thing being out, wisdom proclaimed, make 
 the most of it. 
 
 But what means the dark allusion in the latter 
 portion of the note this suspicious hint of
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 281 
 
 " danger" and of " error ?" I could interpret 
 it in one way only. It must be another thrust 
 of the Colonel at his antagonist. Himmelshime 
 had evidently got wind of niy conferences with 
 Brazennose, and probably was informed of the 
 latter's offer of assistance. Such whiffs of small 
 talk do get noised abroad surprisingly in a small 
 town, where everybody knows everybody and 
 what everybody says and does. It was plain that 
 the Colonel was competing with the Professor 
 for a place in the new work on Appleseed. He 
 shall have his wish ; a free bed we shall give 
 him with ample space for kicking, but he must 
 not expect to be permitted to kick out his bed 
 fellow. 
 
 Such was the new situation in which there was 
 manifestly but one thing to be done: let the 
 rivalry of these two men run its course, nay, fan 
 it a little when getting faint, and let the world 
 have the profit. Himmelshime, the intuitional, 
 the inspirational ; with insight, yet not always 
 well-balanced insight; with violent, fiery out 
 breaks of volcanic fury against Zeus and the 
 present order at certain times, but in other 
 moods a most peaceable, benevolent soul full of 
 the spirit of reconciliation ; a man of few books 
 yet of much knowledge, inclined to read in one 
 the all, hence dangerous to antagonists, not free 
 of danger to himself. Then his style of speak 
 ing is noteworthy, containing a rude, elemental
 
 282 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S EHYMES. 
 
 energy of Titanic stress, full of expletives and 
 explosives, exclamations, objurgations, barbar 
 isms and sudden apostrophes, in which the 
 unexpected may break out at any moment. 
 Brazennose calls him " an auto-didact of the 
 tremendous type, self-made, furiously so." 
 Let the two now be pitted against each other. 
 
 The reader has already observed that both 
 these men quote Appleseed, according to their 
 necessities each finding easily passages which 
 are strong on his own side, quite as opposing 
 sectaries cite texts of the Bible for their respect 
 ive tenets. It seems that each reads the poet in 
 his own fashion, with his own preconceptions, 
 finds just what he wants and leaves the rest be 
 hind unseen probably, at least untaken. Mean 
 while we, holding the scales of Astrsea in this 
 and all other matters, have to affirm that Apple- 
 seed must have had both sides in him to furnish 
 both these men with their outfits. At this 
 moment, the editor, fumbling over the papers of 
 Himmelshime, comes upon a bunch of versicles 
 pinned together, which are labeled, Appleseed's 
 view of erudition, with a caustic dedication to 
 the Professor from the hand of the Colonel.
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 283 
 
 2. 
 Many a learned man has crossed my path, 
 
 And I have found him out, 
 Always concerning what he hath, 
 
 He leaves me in a doubt. 
 
 3. 
 Do we whatever we can 
 
 He is ready to damn us ; 
 It is just the learned man 
 
 Who can be the greatest ignoramus. 
 
 4. 
 On this book-shelf behold the huge stuffing 
 
 That fills up the belly of Night ! 
 It is now but a candle-snuffing 
 
 Of souls that once gave a light. 
 Yet men with their candle to-day 
 
 The burnt-out snuff will explore, 
 
 Expending of light even more 
 Than the light which has long passed away. 
 
 5. 
 Why seek in a corner obscure 
 
 For days before yesterday's day? 
 If you go out of doors, you are sure 
 
 To find now shining its ray.
 
 284 JOHNNY APPLE SEED ' 8 RHYMES. 
 
 6. 
 
 Learning alone 
 Is not meat but a bone, 
 The more you get, the less you own. 
 What I now tell, 
 If you understand it well, 
 Fling away your dry bone, 
 It is time to turn it to good ; 
 But if you cannot find 
 What I have in mind, 
 Keep your bone and gnaw at it for food. 
 
 7. 
 
 Though learning be a dry bone, 
 Still we should not call it a stone. 
 Be done with it, cast it into the earth, 
 
 And let it rot, 
 
 When it is not, 
 Behold the new birth, 
 It has come to the top 
 In a fresh crop. 
 
 Out of that which we thought to be dead, 
 We at last shall be getting some bread. 
 But as long as it seeks of itself to exist, 
 It will never be able to furnisk a grist; 
 Though erudition we strive to procure, 
 The very best use of it is for manure.
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 285 
 
 In this connection Himmelshime comes back to 
 his favorite theme, the character of a University. 
 The editor has again and again wondered why 
 the subject so often rises up in the Colonel's 
 mind. He did not obtain his training in such an 
 institution, he was never a professor, he shows a 
 kind of aversion to the halls of learning; and 
 still he cannot let go and pass on in quiet. Hear 
 him : " The truth is, a University, to attain any 
 thing like its supreme function, must somehow 
 be able to combine itself with what is opposed to 
 itself. The free limit-transcending spirit is 
 hardly nourished within the walls of the Univer 
 sity in its present shape. The new epoch- 
 making book or discovery seldom springs from 
 it directly, though it may have a certain influ 
 ence. The soul must be free of its trammels to 
 be truly creative, and not merely reproductive. 
 This liberation of the spirit, final goal of all 
 culture, is not found in the training of the 
 University, useful though it be." 
 
 Manifestly the Colonel has in mind to cor 
 rect all these defects by that new educational 
 scheme of his to which we have already heard 
 certain covert allusions. Still he does not come 
 out with it, but branches off into an illustration, 
 of which we give the reader an extract: *' I 
 think that the two conflicting sides of the human
 
 286 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S SHYMES. 
 
 mind in its eternal sweep forwards and beyond 
 were most happily represented in Jena and 
 Weimar during the time of Duke Karl August. 
 Two different places for the two different 
 souls fill the one with professors and have 
 an University, fill the other with poets and have 
 an Elysium. Let the two towns be but a few 
 miles apart, so that each may give to the other its 
 best in poetry as well as in science, in inspira 
 tion as well as in information, in the limit-trans 
 cending as well as in the limit-positing movement 
 of the spirit, both sides being presided over and 
 looked after by the most universal man of these 
 later centuries, uniting in himself most pro 
 foundly yet harmoniously, the dualism whereof 
 we are speaking I mean Goethe. Of him I 
 am now ready to say that of all mortals who have 
 wielded the pen and written their message on 
 Time's scroll to the future, he is most worthy of 
 beinor read." 
 
 O 
 
 Such is the Colonel in one of his better moods, 
 too often negative, damnatory, iconoclastic ; he is 
 more personal and so less harmonious in the fol 
 lowing paragraph, which also shows the character 
 of some of his day-dreams : "I have often in my 
 walks fancied myself a student at Jena some 
 where about the beginning of the present cen 
 tury, and have started to tramp across the 
 country to Weimar, passing and repassing from 
 one atmosphere to the other, seeking to take up
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 2-87 
 
 both into the currents of my being. Two poles 
 of an enormous magnet I have fancied lying 
 there and reaching between the two places, at 
 one end of which stood Goethe and at the other 
 Hegel, both sending shocks through me at every 
 step, that I would leap up in a thrill of ecstasy. 
 Then I have suddenly waked and found myself 
 staring at the dingy brick pile of the University 
 of Hardscrabble, out of whose front door would 
 issue a Brazennose still peering into his book, as 
 he waddled along the gravel walk with the shriv 
 eled, abstracted air of a mummy." 
 
 Such outbursts may be forgiven, but they 
 raise a query: Is there no personal feeling at 
 the bottom of these contemptuous flings? And 
 here we shall have to give a rumor which we 
 ourselves heard at Hardscrabble, asking, however, 
 the reader to note carefully that it is only a 
 rumor. It is whispered that Himmelshime was 
 once an applicant for a professorship in the Uni 
 versity and that he failed to show the technical 
 requirements for such a position. At once the 
 much coveted grapes turned sour and have re 
 mained sour to this day, only increasing in 
 acidity and acridity, so that the worthy Colonel 
 makes an awfully wry face whenever he puts ope 
 of them into his mouth. Why not throw the 
 whole bunch away? Simply because he is full 
 of human nature, which, in its demonic mood, 
 takes special delight in Haying itself, always
 
 288 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S BHTMES. 
 
 keeping near at hand the instrument of torture. 
 And here the editor has to confess his belief that 
 Himmelshime, in spite of his abilities, nay, by 
 virtue of his abilities, would not have made a 
 good professor. 
 
 This report, doubtless originating from the 
 University, makes him a disappointed profes- 
 orial candidate, who keeps munching away at 
 his bunch of sour grapes with a kind of diabolic 
 pleasure in his own self-torturings. But let the 
 editor report that this commentary is the better 
 for both these men; without the one where 
 would be our information, and without the other 
 where would be our inspiration? With Brazen- 
 nose alone the editor, along with Johnny Apple- 
 seed, would be brayed and frayed and frittered 
 to very death in the mortar of the Finite ; with 
 Himmelshime alone we would soar upward into 
 the thinnest ether of a boundless claudland, or 
 perchance sink down in the other direction, van 
 ish out of sight, and be lost forever, like rain 
 drops, in the ocean of the Infinite. Brazennose 
 and Himmelshime may the good Lord protect 
 us from each, but send us still both ! 
 
 What is the harmony born out of strife? 
 The wisdom left from the error of life? 
 The more you come to know men's limits, 
 Appreciate the more their merits.
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 289 
 
 9. 
 " Teach me how to pray." 
 
 Thou must live all in small; 
 If thy day be but a day, 
 
 Thou hast not lived at all. 
 
 10. 
 " The hundred best books " is the cry now, 
 
 For this and for that is the voice; 
 Choose one best out of the hundred, 
 
 Then thou hast all in thy choice. 
 
 Professor Brazennose, if we catch his drift, is 
 inclined to tone down the strong emphasis which 
 Hiramelshime is always placing upon Great Lit 
 erature. This, according to the latter, is at 
 bottom but one Book, written by the choicest 
 Spirits of Time at a few different epochs. Be 
 hold now the Professor sally forth in defense of 
 mediocrity, which we give as a kind of counter 
 poise to the Colonel's somewhat one-sided stress. 
 Says Brazennose : 
 
 ** Ancient Horace starts the saying that neither 
 Gods nor men can endure mediocre poetry. Yet 
 both have endured it and will continue to endure 
 it, nay men read and enjoy it. Indeed what is 
 mediocre poetry? Pollock we call mediocre, 
 compared with Homer or even with Milton ; 
 but he means more to many good people 
 than Homer or Milton. Tupper is possibly less 
 
 19
 
 290 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 than mediocre, yet he persists in living and doing 
 his work, not by any means to be despised. 
 So Appleseed with his little verses has found 
 a little corner on Parnassus ; let him cultivate 
 his patch and expand its boundaries. The great 
 majority of mankind are mediocre, and in the 
 main they like what is mediocre. They have to 
 be screwed up to the best, to Shakespeare and 
 Dante for instance, a-nd then they easily get 
 unscrewed. The popular ballad-maker is a man 
 and a brother, to whom I always give his due. 
 Not every book is for everybody and the best 
 is usually for the best." 
 
 The present editor has had a curious flash of 
 wonderment dart through his head on reading the 
 above: is the Professor really defending himself 
 in his defense of humbler verse? Himmelshime 
 once charged him with being ambitious of court 
 ing the Muse in his own right, and not through 
 Appleseed ; is this a preparation for a new poetic 
 sunrise? 
 
 In another passage of the manuscript which 
 the Professor has so kindly lent us, with full 
 permission of making extracts, we find a favorite 
 thought set forth with some suggestions and 
 questionings : 
 
 " One of the strange things about Appleseed 
 is that he seems to have been a man of no little 
 reading and erudition. I can with difficulty 
 make it consist with his manner of life and his
 
 BOOK FOUBTH. 291 
 
 free roving habits. Where did he get his books 
 in the forests and prairies of the West? How 
 did he find time for their perusal, forever going 
 and coming? I think I can observe traces of 
 Homer and Virgil in him, not to speak of other 
 classic and modern poets. Did Appleseed know 
 Greek and Latin, did he read with fluency the 
 original text? Hard to answer. I find in him 
 many indications of Time's literary heritage; he 
 must have gotten it somehow from books, from 
 a library, from contact with learned men. On 
 the whole, I am inclined to believe thut Apple- 
 seed must have known Greek, for did I not dis 
 cover in some of his verses allusions which must 
 have been suggested by the fragments of Menan- 
 der, which he could not have obtained from any 
 English translation? Yes, Appleseed, in spite of 
 his wanderings, belonged to the erudite guild, 
 whatever may be said to the contrary." 
 
 To this passage, which is evidently a challenge, 
 Himmelshime has the counterpart in his notes. 
 It is clear that the two men must have met 
 and hotly disputed over the preceding view 
 long before the editor of the present book ap 
 peared at Hardscrabble. The Literary Club 
 had been in former days the arena in which 
 these two intellectual gladiators, Himmelshime 
 and Brazennose, had measured their strength 
 and skill, with many a subtle turn of argu 
 mentation, in which satirical thrusts were not
 
 292 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 wanting. Thus we account for the following 
 exclamatory outburst of the Colonel: " O 
 Brazennose, when wilt thou get rid of thy 
 professorial pedantry ! Dost thou not know that 
 the poet, the seer is the direct heir of the ages 
 in his own right, inheriting their treasures im 
 mediately and not by way of erudition? Art 
 thou not aware that Horner is in him as in Time 
 itself, and needs but his recognizing glance to 
 spring forth and show himself in native shape, 
 speaking to him as to a brother, in the deep 
 intimacy of spiritual kinship? But thou dost 
 painfully grind away in thy academical mill at 
 grammar, scansion, and dialect, without ever 
 seeing Homer face to face or hearing one real 
 human word from his lips. I affirm that Apple- 
 seed, with that creative power of his, requires but 
 a half dozen pages, or at most but one pivotal 
 book of the Iliad, in order to reconstruct and 
 recreate the whole poem from beginning to end, 
 to behold all Troy and its war, along with Olym 
 pus and its Gods. If the translation be poor, he 
 can mend it, nay, can make it over again, know 
 ing what it must be from the whole, he being a 
 man who sees wholes and reconstitutes the parts 
 therefrom. Such is the true way of reading, 
 namely the re-creative, but of course there must 
 be something to re-create in the first place. O 
 ye fatal Brazeunoses, what is to become of the 
 Bibles of the Past, the Sacred Writ of the
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 293 
 
 Race, in your skinny dehumanized hands ! and 
 worse and worse what is to become of the 
 youth of the land, given over to the ingenious 
 torture of your instruction? 
 
 The editor would have to suppress these violent 
 expressions of the Colonel, if they went much 
 further. As it is they topple on the very brink 
 of discourtesy, and threaten to pitch over into 
 downright rudeness, which might end in a per 
 sonal encounter, should the protagonists ever 
 meet again. The reader, however, has an inter 
 est in the man, we presume, and hence we let 
 him reel off his rhapsody, which, by the way, 
 has in it a good deal of truth. Still not the 
 whole truth. At times he would drive our indus 
 trious, erudite, though somewhat plodding 
 Professor out of the world, whereby the world 
 would be so much the loser. Hard it is to keep 
 the balance between these two refractory units, 
 both being in full possession of their own indi 
 viduality along with no little self-assertion, and, 
 indeed, both being in no want of temper. 
 Capable of explosion both of them ; and why 
 not? What man is quietly going to see his life 
 lines, laid down with toil and staked off with care 
 and cherished with devotion for many years, run 
 into by an outsider and ruthlessly broken up? 
 The thing is not to be expected. The editor, 
 therefore, holding over both the scales of Astrsea, 
 who is in this delicate business our Goddess,
 
 294 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 blind, or at least blindfolded, decrees that each 
 must go his own way according to his own law, 
 being permitted courteously to invite others to 
 listen and to follow ; but that there shall be no 
 attack and ruin of the one by the other. The 
 editor wishes to keep both as friends and as com 
 mentators on Johnny Appleseed, whereby the 
 reader also will draw his share of profit, we hope. 
 
 It is worth the while to listen again to some com 
 ments by Brazennose, which are in line with the 
 subject of dispute between the two protagonists : 
 
 "I notice a certain unfortunate tendency in 
 Appleseed to underrate the erudite man of the 
 time, even to disparage him. A number of epi 
 grams cast flings upon learning and do not spare 
 the lofty vocation of its devotees. But what 
 class of men have done a nobler work in the 
 world? Who have carried the torch of knowl 
 edge into the dark places of the earth and belted 
 the globe with a line of illumination? Who 
 have written the books, taught the schools ; who 
 have been the professors at the universities? As 
 for myself, I have labored now for more than 
 twenty years at Hardscrabble. I came when it 
 was a wild, naked prairie; 1 began my instruc 
 tion in the classics with two pupils sitting on 
 stools in a log cabin ; as regards earthly compen 
 sation, I have obtained my bread and butter, or 
 rather, mere bread without any butter often, and 
 always without any honey."
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 295 
 
 Thus the Professor, who has reached an in 
 teresting degree of warmth, and sallies forth in 
 self-defeuse which has a heart in it. Who can 
 gainsay what he affirms ? Let us hear him further 
 in his present mood: "The learned are the 
 pioneers toward the unknown world, they are the 
 much-enduring heroes, like Ulysses, who also 
 went westward, seeing many new things, laying 
 down the track of civilization. There is always 
 a frontier between the known and the unknown, 
 which the hardy pioneer settles upon, and, with 
 the help of axe and plow, opens up to the light 
 of the sun and to the spirit of the age. Often 
 you can hear the blows of his axe ringing solitary 
 through the forest, he is not working so much for 
 himself as for those who are to come after him. 
 And his gun is always standing within reach to 
 maintain by his valor what he has won by his en 
 terprise." 
 
 A streak of pugnacity we may well feel in this 
 last remark, indicating that the peaceful Profes 
 sor also can mount his war-horse and wield 
 a sabre. It is, therefore, in place to bring for 
 ward the Colonel at this point, who starts off 
 mildly enough, but grows hotter as he gets into 
 business, and finally leaps upon his apostrophic 
 steed and flies off cloudward, whence he flings 
 down some streaks of lightning : 
 
 "I do not believe that Appleseed would 
 underrate knowledge, at the same time it is clear
 
 296 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S EHYMES. 
 
 from a number of his sayings that he makes 
 a sharp distinction between wisdom and knowl 
 edge. Why should he not? Has not the same 
 distinction been urged by all the sages from the 
 beginning? And despite thereof it is, in Apple- 
 seed's words, ' half the time night.' 
 
 "Since ages immemorial the fluid spirit runs 
 the danger of getting fixed in formula and dogma, 
 which have a certain degree of truth, and thus 
 it seems to lose its fundamental quality, that of 
 getting beyond itself. What the spirit has once 
 made and settled itself down into, may be excel 
 lent, may be the very best of the kind, but it is 
 surely lost if it calmly rests in any attained good 
 and ceases to rise out of itself. I have seen not 
 a few learned men in my promenades over the 
 globe, and I have read after a multitude of them ; 
 it is my emphatic experience that the whole set, 
 Pedagogues, Professors, Jurisconsults, Theolo 
 gians, Doctors of every degree, Soldiers too, are 
 apt to become ossified in their formulas, and 
 thereby are metamorphosed into a kind of 
 machine. Man is a formula-swallowing animal 
 thus the great Mirabeau looked at himself ; 
 oftener, however, the formulas swallow the 
 man. 
 
 " Alack-a-day for such a man ! He is fast in 
 the toils of knowledge, and becomes a prisoner 
 in the very house of light, instead of a free man 
 in a free world. What chains of adamant does
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 297 
 
 not learning often forge for its votaries ! In 
 deed every library is largely a curious museum 
 of such chains carefully labeled and packed 
 away with directions for use. Frequently do I 
 see with pain living men going there and putting 
 oa fetters, yea the fetters of the dead a thousand 
 years ago. They work and toil and sweat through 
 huge tomes, and get as their reward a ball and 
 chain riveted to their ankles ever afterwards a 
 hobbling, melancholy, dusty lot of specters. 
 Far better if they had been put to the plow, or 
 at once sent to the galleys, to an outer servi 
 tude in which they might have remained 
 inwardly free, and have been saved from a 
 spiritual slavery. Cleave your bonds, set fire to 
 your prison, run, or, if need be, die in your 
 tracks; I say, O Professor, swallow your 
 formulas, open your windows, and make a break 
 for freedom, though blood-hounds and devils are 
 in pursuit." 
 
 In explanation of this mad apostrophe, it 
 ought to be known that the Colonel was once a 
 prisoner in the hands of the Confederates at 
 Andersonville, whence in a mighty fit of valor, 
 though sick, half-naked and half-starved, he 
 escaped from the guards mid a volley of musket 
 ry sent after him, and got to the swamps and 
 woods where he lived on roots and acorns and 
 berries till he was picked up by some cavalry 
 scouts of the Union side. It is evident that a
 
 298 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 few throes of that ordeal darted through his soul 
 when writing the above, and started a convul 
 sion ; has not the whole something of the panting 
 breath of the prisoner escaping from death to 
 freedom ? 
 
 It is now due to Himmelshime to show him in 
 a different mood, in which he corrects his more 
 violent moments. For he is at bottom a philos 
 opher, and cannot be permanently thrown into a 
 one-sided view of things. The following may be 
 regarded as his more sober judgment: 
 
 "If man be a formula-breaking animal, 
 equally certain is it that he is also a formula-mak 
 ing animal, and he cannot in the present ordering 
 of universe, help himself. The first is quite as 
 important as the second. We sometimes feel 
 inclined to answer Mirabeau: * Thou hast 
 swallowed all formulas, hast thou? Well, just 
 that has become thy formula, namely the swal 
 lowing of formulas.' So little can man escape 
 from himself by kicking out of his own skin ; 
 could he once succeed, he would have to grow 
 another skin. Thus the process goes on ; the 
 form, the getting rid of the form, and the posit 
 ing a new form." 
 
 All of which is probably true, but we feel that 
 Himmelshime is becoming a little formal in dis 
 coursing of form ; growing apologetic, he grows 
 dull; only when he is hot in combat, do the 
 sparks fly from that sword of his, which he
 
 BOOS: FOURTH. 299 
 
 sometimes calls his tongue. To help liberate his 
 spirit, just now a little clogged, he at this point 
 calls in Appleseed, from whom he cites the fol 
 lowing lines, evidently written in defiance of 
 some prowling inquisitor or sharp-scented heresy- 
 hunter, who probably sought to imprison him or 
 his verses (the free children of his brain) in some 
 narrow dogma, poetic or theologic : 
 
 Why out of my rhymes be seeidng to shake sin, 
 
 With many a turn of the head ? 
 You keep tugging away at my snake-skin, 
 
 Which I already have shed. 
 
 What you get, is your choice, 
 
 Still you do not rejoice ; 
 
 You take what you please from my store, 
 
 Then turn and curse me the more. 
 
 I grant the food must be tough, 
 And yet it seems not enough, 
 
 You still want something to chew ; 
 Wait, another skin in time I shall slough, 
 
 I shall give you that too. 
 
 Herewith we come face to face with our singer 
 again in a new mood. It would, indeed, be 
 strange if Appleseed did not feel at times that 
 his peculiar way of existence was out of tune 
 with the age in which he lives, at least on the 
 surface. That settled, monotonous life of civi-
 
 300 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 lization with its daily routine is not his, and will 
 not appreciate him; nay, it will call him vag 
 abond, if not by a worse name. Under all cir 
 cumstances he must go his own way a free man, 
 but he must pay the penalty. A veritable nomad 
 he is, wandering over the prairie, yet in the 
 midst of a highly organized society, which must, 
 to a certain degree, disown him, feeling the con 
 tradiction between him and itself. Indeed it 
 may arrest him and send him to jail as a vagrant ; 
 once, if report be true, he had to serve a short 
 term at the public workhouse in breaking stones. 
 
 Thus he has the fate of the prophet, genius, 
 extraordinary man, who must of necessity con 
 flict with his time and suffer. Appleseed does 
 not say much, he consumes his own smoke 
 almost, letting a little puff escape now and then, 
 and wreathe skyward, showing that he, too, is 
 human. He cannot wholly conceal the fact 
 that he deems himself an unappreciated genius, 
 poor mortal ! Hence he manifests not infre 
 quently a critical tendency, in spite of his 
 thrusts at criticism ; specially he takes some 
 random shots at the literary spirit of the time, 
 and cannot help getting a little satirical. 
 
 So the editor, in spite of certain misgivings, 
 is going to let Appleseed unload himself and 
 speak out his heart in the following farrago of 
 versicles. His negative mood we consider it, not 
 always in good temper, not always in good taste
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 301 
 
 even, still he is serving the Lord by making the 
 demon scorch the demon. The reader has the 
 right, if he chooses, to take a peep behind the 
 curtain and see the entire soul of the man, though 
 it be not always dressed in its Sunday clothes. 
 The negative asserts its right in the universe ; 
 we have to take glimpses now and then of the 
 reverse side of the human picture, though we 
 ought not to dwell upon the same. So here the 
 reader may catch gleams of the moody, queru 
 lous, disagreable, nay improper Johnny Apple- 
 seed, if he wishes ; if he does not wish, assuredly 
 in these days of newspaper reading he has 
 learned to skip and skim. Let not this editorial 
 warning whet his curiosity. But if it does, and 
 if he is determined, Adam-like or perchance Eve- 
 like, to eat of the forbidden fruit just because of 
 the admonition, may he follow with sympathy, 
 if not always with approval, the manifold curvet 
 ing, careenings and sinuosities of feeling and 
 
 o * o o 
 
 experience which the following verses indicate. 
 In advance we shall place some lines by Apple- 
 seed in which he seems to glance, half apolo 
 getically, at this negative side of his Muse: 
 
 Every man has his moral night-side, 
 Hid deep in his soul from the sun ; 
 
 But the poet turns up to the light-side, 
 
 The dark threads that through him are spun. 
 
 Others sleep off their intoxication, 
 
 He writes his down, for our edification.
 
 302 JOHNNY APPLE SEED 1 8 BHTMES. 
 
 11. 
 
 In the new deluge we daily are whirled 
 
 That is for its sins overwhelming the world ; 
 
 ' Tis the deluge of print 
 
 That pours without stint 
 
 From an empty sky, 
 
 Nobody knows why. 
 
 What shall I do Oh, what shall I do? 
 
 Thou must write a book, too, 
 
 'Tis the lightest craft, if made of light wood, 
 
 For floating down stream, since Noah's flood. 
 
 12. 
 
 ** Appleseed, now tell me true, 
 
 How does my poem sound to you? " 
 Ask me not about your verse, 
 Whether it be bad or worse ; 
 I could not tell, even if I would, 
 Things always seem to me too good. 
 The test most true 
 Of yours is you ; 
 
 You must see that you the prize have won 
 Though another see not what is done. 
 And though to me your work you read 
 Cling to your own poetic creed ; 
 If you are of yourself no test, 
 Stop your scribbling that is best.
 
 BO'OK FOURTH. 303 
 
 13. 
 
 Everywhere it was shallow around me, 
 As I cast the first look 
 O'er the expanse of this book, 
 
 Thinking what I should do ; 
 But the watery element drowned me, 
 When I tried to wade through. 
 
 14. 
 
 " Woulds't thouhear the newest chimes? 
 
 Appleseed, I bring to thee my rhymes. 
 Thou always singest thine, 
 So listen now to mine. " 
 The grinding of a mill I hear 
 
 With wheel and cog and water-power; 
 A mighty rumble smites the ear; 
 
 But then I see no flour. 
 
 15. 
 
 Ah me, it saddens the thought to a tear, 
 Ten thousand poems were written this year, 
 And all of them born in a hope or a fear 
 
 Of readers that never have read. 
 Which one of the thousands will Time save? 
 
 Alas ! they already are dead, 
 Piled under a mountain-high rhyme-grave. 
 Time needs himself no longer to bother, 
 They are enough now to bury each other.
 
 304 JOHNNY APPLE SEED 1 8 BHYMES. 
 
 16. 
 
 The newspaper morn and noon and night ! 
 The newspaper never is out of your sight. 
 It says with a flourish it gives you the news, 
 But serves a repast of the whole world's stews 
 Cooked over and over, the same old ragout ; 
 Stale is the thing, though the name may be new. 
 So you go and you go 
 Through an Inferno of woe, 
 Till of the Devil's existence you have little 
 
 question 
 
 And none at all of your own indigestion. 
 In Time you cannot get rid of its wallow, 
 For Time itself the newspaper seems to swallow, 
 Who gives his time to read it no longer has Time, 
 Though he finds an eternity made out of slime. 
 So to-day the deed of old Cronus, 
 Inverted, has come down upon us ; 
 He, savage sire, made it his fun, 
 To swallow at birth each son. 
 At last comes vengeance grown, 
 His youngest babe now swallows him. 
 
 17. 
 
 Of tho new poetic school 
 Would you learn the rule, 
 So that, if you know it, 
 You too can set up for a poet? 
 Let the rhyme be well jingled 
 
 And the thought well jangled ; 
 That the ear be well tingled 
 And the brain well tangled.
 
 BOOK FOURTH, 305 
 
 18. 
 
 Forget not, the small man must grudge 
 
 What he knows can never be his ; 
 If thy work he were able to judge, 
 
 It surely were not what it is. 
 Let him show, if he chooses, the size of his 
 
 smallness, 
 And measure how short his magnificent tallness. 
 
 19. 
 
 If you lie flat on the earth, 
 As you did at your birth, 
 
 You may be saved from many a tumble ; 
 But as soon as you crawl, 
 
 You have to take with it a fall ; 
 And there follows the chance of a stumble 
 When your feet you but once set in motion; 
 But if you dare fly, 
 Like Icarus, up to the sky, 
 
 There is risk of your .dropping down into the 
 Ocean. 
 
 20. 
 " O Johnny Appleseed, 
 
 The hotter gets thy creed, 
 Thy face with bluish flame is lit, 
 Tell, what can be the cause of it? " 
 When the sinner has been freed 
 Of the due of his deed, 
 I feel myself ablaze down in the pit. 
 
 20
 
 306 JOHNNY APPLE SEED* 8 RHYMES. 
 
 21. 
 
 " Appleseed, we have heard thee oft as preacher, 
 Let us have a streak of thee as teacher." 
 The Lord, I hold, is a good pedagogue, 
 Though in his school he has not ceased to flog; 
 In Chicago he could not get a position 
 For the lack of all just recognition ; 
 And if he vvepe in he would soon be put out, 
 Since he would use his best birch, there is not 
 
 a doubt. 
 
 That saintly city has abolished the rod, 
 And has become more humane than its God; 
 It will follow no longer the great schoolmaster, 
 The march of its progress than his is much 
 
 faster. 
 Wait ! the child to-day may be spared a small 
 
 thwack, 
 The man will set it with interest on his back. 
 
 22. 
 
 You may keep up your flurry, 
 I am resolved not to be. in a hurry ; 
 I have gone through the past generation, 
 Taken part in its battle, 
 Heard its musketry rattle, 
 Seen its new-born nation, 
 
 And in it have lived the whole life of my race 
 From the first day of creation: 
 What more shall I reach by mending my pace?
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 307 
 
 23. 
 
 If you go too fast, 
 You will come out last ; 
 If you go too slow, 
 You need not start to go ; 
 Who, then, is the race's winner? 
 He that is least the sinner. 
 
 24. 
 The dirtiest printer's ink they fling, 
 
 And the song the critic stamps on; 
 To the Philistines David is trying to sing 
 
 Of the deed of glorious Sampson. 
 But list to the praise ! See the laureled meed 
 
 Bestowed in print on poesy pristine ! 
 For now it is small Sampson's deed, 
 
 Which is sung by the glorious Philistine. 
 
 25. 
 Again just listen 
 
 For a moment of time; 
 It is the Philistine 
 
 Who also can rhyme : 
 " The best thing about a poet 
 Is, that he never know it; 
 But if he knows it, the next best thing 
 Is, that he never begin to sing."
 
 308 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 26. 
 
 Parsimony I think I may grant it; 
 Liberality perhaps I want it ; 
 Of the two I had early to choose ; 
 So I have followed my bent, 
 Found that for which I was sent, 
 Done what I've undertaken, 
 Earth's fruit trees I've shaken, 
 And have paid with mine own all the dues. 
 
 27. 
 
 " I wish to get a higher berth, 
 Where I can show my worth ; 
 Johnny, give me now your best." 
 
 " A touch of true humanity, 
 A little less inanity, 
 A little more urbanity " 
 " Is that your puff? 
 
 I say, enough ! 
 I beg you kfcep the rest." 
 
 28. 
 The candle gives bad light, 
 
 Though many breaths puff it; 
 I look at its sad plight, 
 
 Conclude I shall snuff it. 
 I blacken my fingers with soot, 
 And blister them badly to boot. 
 But my deed 
 Is my meed.
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 309 
 
 29. 
 Is he better than his book, 
 
 Or is better his book than he? 
 If each into the other look, 
 
 The same old ground hog both will see. 
 
 30. 
 Who is the master, I pray, and who is the slave 
 
 In guard of the treasure ? 
 Is it the reason, or is it the rhyme, that can save 
 
 My poetical measure? 
 Alack, the very question 
 Disturbs my verse's digestion, 
 And if Pegasus be not deftly reined from it 
 He is quick 
 To get sick 
 And from his heavenly flight will strew but his 
 
 vomit. 
 Let not the rhyme nor the reason be slave or be 
 
 master, 
 
 If thou art eager to shun thy poetic disaster, 
 But in Apollo's high chariot yoke them together 
 That they fly up the sun's path as light as a 
 feather. 
 
 31. 
 I declare I never would stickle, 
 
 Though perchance I be firm ; 
 And I swear I am not fickle, 
 
 Though at times I must squirm.
 
 310 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S EHYMES. 
 
 32. 
 
 Shall I tell you the latest poetical news 
 How a new poet cut up his mistress, the Muse? 
 
 Gruesome and gory 
 
 Runneth the story. 
 
 Like a giant he scattered the gobbets around 
 In a disgusting chaos over the ground, 
 Till her fair body decaying, stank worse 
 Than ever it did in old Blank's blank-verse. 
 
 33. 
 
 If two rhymes be as husband and wife, 
 When they sing, let them keep out of strife ; 
 If one rhyme be love, and the other be dove, 
 
 Surely the couple belong together; 
 But if one say can't, and the other say shan't, 
 
 'Tis already a sign of foul weather ; 
 Then if he swears and she rhymes it with tears, 
 
 Great is the strain at the conjugal tether; 
 Then should they chance to get into a tiff, 
 And the man be stern and the woman be stiff, 
 Down comes the whack, 
 Each has a crick in the back, 
 The one by giving, the other by getting the blow, 
 'Tis just as bad to strike as be stricken, you 
 
 know. 
 The man is cursing, the woman is crying, of 
 
 course; 
 For the Lord's sake give the two rhymes a 
 
 divorce.
 
 BOOK FOUHTH. 311 
 
 34. 
 
 O Omar Khayam 
 Mighty to damn ! 
 Thou singest the world is a stinking fish, 
 
 Falling asunder in rot ! 
 Why serve such a poetical dish, 
 
 And rhyme what it is and what it is not? 
 Little use to damn it, 
 Still less to embalm it. 
 
 35. 
 " Appleseed, I have a doubt 
 
 Let me tell you plainly what it is about ; 
 Why those coarse, mal-odorous words which are 
 
 sung 
 
 So oft by the poets from Shakespeare down, 
 Down even to Blank." 
 " O friend, I too shall be frank; 
 Such words pass them not over thy tongue, 
 Tear off their poetical crown, 
 Put them aside from thy nose and thine eyes, 
 They are, I tell thee, but Pegasus' dung 
 Which he sometimes drops as he soars to the 
 
 skies. 
 
 Ride on the back of the steed in his flight, 
 Keep to his head directed thy sight, 
 Onward, upward, sunward away from the 
 
 night 
 
 He mounts, and will bear thee up to the light ; 
 But if under his tail thou keep prying behind, 
 The Lord only knows what thou wilt find.
 
 312 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 36. 
 
 " Your verses have an angry clatter; 
 Johnny, tell us what's the matter? " 
 Poet, it is time to close 
 Thy omnipresent nose 
 Which has in earth and heaven scented 
 
 Where is the foulest scent ; 
 Pray now be a little discontented 
 With thy discontent. 
 
 37. 
 In good humor I fain would be seen, 
 
 When I mingle among my kind ; 
 But in my body I too have a spleen, 
 
 And at times it gets into my mind ; 
 But when I begin to curse, 
 At once I put it in verse, 
 
 For always I feel much better, 
 If I can give my pen to drink, 
 And make with the flow of the ink, 
 The gall run out of me into the letter; 
 But thou, poor reader, must tell which is worse, 
 The rhyme or the curse.
 
 THE SENSITIVE PLANT. 
 
 Within a garden maidens three 
 Once met a blooming youth; 
 
 " O gardener, O gardener, 
 Tell each of us the truth." 
 
 " I cannot see into the soul, 
 
 The flower is all my art, 
 But in my garden is a plant 
 
 That looks into the heart. 
 
 " If she who touches it, is false, 
 
 It feels at once her blame; 
 If she has torn her maiden wreath, 
 
 Its leaflets droop in shame." 
 
 The first maid stormed, " It is a lie, 
 My mind you cannot daunt." 
 
 She cursed in wrath the blooming youth, 
 But would not touch the plant. 
 (313)
 
 314 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S EEJMES. 
 
 The second sighed and gently said, 
 
 " That plant I may not try ; " 
 She looked at it and turned away, 
 
 The tear dropped out her eye. 
 
 Then Mabel came and firmly said; 
 
 "I do defy the taunt ; 
 If what it says to me is vile, 
 
 ' Tis vileness in the plant." 
 
 She touched the stem, the leaves drooped down, 
 
 Two maidens shrank and stared ; 
 But Mabel stood yet more erect, 
 
 As if the world she dared. 
 
 Loud sang the blooming gardener: 
 
 " O Mabel, thou art mine, 
 The rest may pass out of the gate, 
 
 This garden is all thine. 
 
 " O speak me hope to see the bloom 
 
 Thy life long in my bovver; 
 And this shall be our paradise, 
 
 And thou its fairest flower."
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 315 
 
 The preceding collection is the result of days 
 of industrious effort at Hardscrabble on part of 
 the editor, who has had to use a good deal of 
 discretion in getting these stores from two 
 opposite, if not hostile, quarters, the Colonel and 
 the Professor. Once or twice he thought he 
 would have to give up, the counter-currents grew 
 too strong; but matters would again assume a 
 peaceful look, and the work went on. Brazen- 
 nose was often suspicious and moody, Himmel- 
 shime uproarious and explosive; but Theophilus 
 Middling, true to his name, always found the 
 middle way, and mediated the fierce dualism. 
 
 The foregoing poem, headed The Sensitive 
 Plant, I came upon in a peculiar manner, which 
 must be told. I had spent a pleasant evening 
 with the Professor in reading and expounding 
 various rhymes, wherein he was very instructive ; 
 I noticed, however, that he was at times dreamy 
 and absent-minded, though always somewhat 
 excited and elated. When it was time for me to 
 leave, he brushed together with his hands a large 
 number of scraps of writing, which were lying on 
 the table, flung them into a paper bag promis- 
 cously, and handed it to me, saying, " There, 
 that is my contribution for to-day." I thanked 
 him and bade him good-night. 
 
 When I opened the bag next morning I found
 
 316 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 a great variety of verses and comments ; but that 
 which drew my attention specially was a small 
 white envelope of finest quality, sealed but not 
 addressed. I queried a moment, then concluded 
 that it must be for me ; so I broke it open, and 
 found the preceding poem written with great care 
 and beauty upon the best letter paper. Why 
 this special honor to these verses? I turned the 
 sheet over, when a small scrap fell out containing 
 some lines which I herewith impart to the 
 reader : 
 
 Thou art the only one 
 
 Under the shining sun 
 
 Who canst rightly be double, 
 And still the heart's deep trouble 
 
 By being the only one 
 
 Under the shining sun. 
 
 On perusing it I said to myself: "Another 
 of Appleseed's amatory streaks, such as we have 
 repeatedly met with. Funny old fellow, fiddling 
 away with such a flame in his heart! " On the 
 reverse side of the same scrap, I observed an 
 obscure scrawl, which, after closely scrutinizing, 
 I made out to be the word Theodora. Deeming 
 it a mere casual scribbling of a Greek word by 
 a Greek Professor, I thought no more about it. 
 
 The next evening it was my turn to go to Him- 
 melshime's abode, as I was trying to keep the
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 317 
 
 Colonel and the Professor in a kind of equilib 
 rium of good-will toward me, by showing equal 
 favor to both. Let me repeat just here that it 
 required no little diplomacy. I found the Col 
 onel in a most hearty, rollicking mood, he bade 
 me ascend to the observatory on top of the 
 house for an evening's symposium, in sign 
 whereof a bottle of wine stood upon his table 
 already opened an article which I had never 
 before seen at his house. 
 
 He shook me by the hand, tapped me on the 
 shoulder, and began talking at once : " I have a 
 surprise for you, a new strain, which shows 
 Appleseed in one of his wild moods, such as you 
 never saw him in before." Then he read me 
 the following convivial song, and even sang it 
 boisterously mid a clanging of two wine-glasses, 
 which were not always empty and not always full. 
 I said to him, '* But I have heard this before, it is 
 not new, it is adapted from a well-known German 
 song." " So it is," replied Himmelshime, and 
 then he broke out with a stunning bass-voice into 
 the original : Der Pabst lehl herrlich in der 
 Welt. He added: " if the Professor knew of 
 these verses, he would find another argument for 
 Appleseed's erudition, since the song has not, 
 as far as I know, been translated from the Ger 
 man. But the truth is I have repeated the 
 substance of it to Appleseed frequently in hila 
 rious moments, when we were cracking a little
 
 318 JOHNNY APPLE SEED 1 8 RHYMES. 
 
 bottle together, i have found the old fellow 
 always picking up such things by the way, and 
 transforming them into his own mood, often 
 adding turns not in the original. What flashes 
 would dart out of him, when his tongue was 
 somewhat loosened 1" 
 
 Himmelshiuie, after taking another sip, went 
 on: "I think the best commentary upon the 
 song is that couplet popularly attributed to 
 Luther, when he renounced monasticism : 
 
 Wer liebt nicht Wein, Weib, und Gesang, 
 Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang. 
 
 You have seen Appleseed on a good many sides, 
 now you can witness his festive, convivial 
 element. He was no ascetic, in spite of his life 
 of self-denial. But I must read you the poem 
 again." 
 
 SONG. 
 
 The Pope he drinks the finest wine 
 
 That sparkles in a bowl, 
 There is in it a grace divine, 
 
 Aye, that would save my soul ; 
 To holy Rome some day I hope 
 
 A pilgrimage to make, 
 And there I shall become the Pope, 
 
 The wicked world forsake.
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 319 
 
 But no, the Pope I would not be, 
 
 He cannot take a wife ; 
 A maiden scarce he dares to see, 
 
 It might cut short his life, 
 By day he can do naught but groan : 
 
 Oh why am I a man ! 
 By night he has to stay alone, 
 
 In his great Vatican. 
 
 For Turkey soon I think to start, 
 
 And leave old Rome behind ; 
 There I shall play the Sultan's part, 
 
 His rule is to my mind ; 
 More than five hundred damsels fair 
 
 The Sultan has at home ; 
 
 might I fly and settle there, 
 And leave behind old Rome ! 
 
 But hold ! the Sultan has a flaw, 
 
 He dares not touch the wine ; 
 It is forbidden in his law, 
 
 That law be never mine ! 
 So I would not the Sultan be, 
 
 With all his lasses fine, 
 
 1 swear I ever shall be free 
 And drink my bowl of wine. 
 
 In Pope and Sultan both I think 
 
 I something sadly miss, 
 The one has nothing good to drink, 
 
 The other none to kiss ;
 
 320 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 Then Pope and Sultan I combine, 
 
 Their boons to me belong, 
 I take the maidens and the wine 
 
 And make them to a song. 
 
 I rove away and sing my lay, 
 
 I sing my very best, 
 Before a sunny door one day, 
 
 I stop to take a rest ; 
 The daughter comes, she is divine, 
 
 I shall not go to Rome ; 
 She reaches me a cup of wine, 
 
 And now I stay at home. 
 
 Truly a surprise, indeed something of a shock 
 did these verses occasion to the editor. Apple- 
 seed then has also a convivial strand, shows a 
 touch of the reveler, with flashes of Bacchic 
 inspiration. The editor was prepared for many 
 turns, but not for this one, in Appleseed, a most 
 peculiar, versatile genius, in appearance a wan 
 dering beggar, but hiding in his skin a most 
 diversified museum of traits. But not Bacchus 
 alone, Eros also plays in. Again a maiden 
 enters and carries off the prize, namely, the 
 minstrel himself ; in the preceding poem, The 
 Sensitive Plant, a maiden after a sharp test cap 
 tures the wily gardener. Several times already 
 has this erotic vein come to the surface in Apple- 
 seed, but now it is to be duly noted that both
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 321 
 
 the Professor and the Colonel have found their 
 favorite love-songs the one putting his into an 
 exquisite envelope, of the finest paper, the other 
 declaiming his with a kind of Bacchanalian frenzy. 
 Himmelshime has here added a word of comment : 
 " Observe that Appleseed changes wholly the 
 German original, ending his song with a sweet 
 note of true-love, and hinting the marriage tie as 
 the outcome. Thus the wild divinities, Bacchus 
 and Eros, lead the way to the altar, to a true union 
 in the Family, and Appleseed in his maddest 
 sport and revelry shows himself ethical." Thus 
 has the Colonel permitted us to take a little 
 glimpse of his own throbbing heart through his 
 defense of his friend. 
 
 Himmelshime was verily in a grotesque, madly 
 Rabelaisiain effervescence, which had at last to 
 simmer down a little out of pure exhaustion. 
 But this short lull was merely a spell of rest 
 preparatory to another surprise. Suddenly he 
 reached for a small package of tattered, flutter 
 ing shreds of papers on which I could see some 
 writing. Said he : " Now I shall probably aston 
 ish you again. I am going to show you Apple- 
 seed's complete relaxation, when he sinks down 
 not only to fun, but to a pun. Shocking, isn't it? 
 But do you know that I am inclined to delight in 
 this also and to defend the punster? Certainly 
 the greatest minds have had a fondness, perhaps 
 a weakness for this play with words (which is 
 
 21
 
 322 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 found in all tongues) seeking therein subtle rela 
 tions not simply of sound, but of spirit, and 
 sometimes pouring into the same their profound- 
 est thought. Specially the world-poets have 
 their colossal puns. Do you recollect Homer's? 
 It drops from the mouth of the wise man Ulys 
 ses, who gives himself a punning name, Nobody 
 (Ontis in Greek), whereby he deceives the 
 gigantic man of mere nature, Polyphemus. 
 This is the deepest pun ever made, being based 
 upon the doubleness inherent in the negative, 
 a phase of that " Play of the Negative," 
 about which I have discoursed to you before. 
 Then Dante (Inferno, Canto XX.} has a very 
 striking pun on the Italian word pietd, (meaning 
 both pity and piety) which cuts deep and almost 
 makes a person shiver with its audacity. But 
 our Shakespeare why prove a thing which 
 everybody knows? What a world of doubles in 
 his speech, yea trebles at times, possibly quad 
 ruples, often subtly ensconced and organically 
 bound up in thought and word, where it lies 
 beyond the ken of the reader skimming over the 
 surface ! 
 
 " So take this little batch, showing Appleseed 
 in his funning and punning, childish possibly, but 
 which no sane person ever gets over wholly, for 
 certainly the man is not whole who is limited by 
 a pun. Indeed I have thought that insanity is 
 the result of taking life's pun (manifesting itself
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 323 
 
 everywhere in the Play of the Negative) as 
 serious, as having a single meaning instead of a 
 double. Now exercise your mental agility in 
 seizing the pun not simply as one, but as two 
 in one." 
 
 Such was Himmelshime's transcendental dis 
 sertation on the pun, whereof let the ingenious 
 reader test the meaning by cooking it over in his 
 own brain-pan. Then let him seek for illustra 
 tions in the following anthology of Appleseed's 
 own. Pouring out the last drop in his bottle, in 
 fact draining it to the very dregs, the Colonel 
 handed me the package. 
 
 38. 
 
 The puny life of the puny pun 
 Bubbles over, and then it is done ; 
 The smallest drop of brain but 'tis all joy, 
 The Egoist alone it can annoy. 
 
 39. 
 
 When the trifle is the great thing to be done, 
 Let Time himself shrivel up to a pun ; 
 But take with joy its pinpoint of fun; 
 Remember, the smaller its pretension, 
 So much the greater thy condescension. 
 
 40. 
 This Miss has missed it so long, 
 
 The suitor will soon her dismiss; 
 But to dismiss her were certainly wrong, 
 
 For she would be left still amiss.
 
 324 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 41. 
 
 O man and woman, ye prove not 
 
 Just what ye do not prove; 
 Your marriage ye call a love-knot, 
 
 Because it has not love. 
 
 42. 
 
 When life runs down to a dribble, 
 The word will shrink to a quibble ; 
 The loftiest spirit has played with that toy, 
 And you should relish its wee drop of joy; 
 For in its little laughing life 
 There is no strife. 
 
 43. 
 
 Our nightingale sings us, Farewell forever I 
 Forever farewell ! what pain ! 
 
 She will never come back, Oh never, 
 Never will sing it again. 
 
 But as we hear it, ' 
 
 We grin and bear it, 
 
 Then bear and grin it, 
 
 For she will return with the spring, 
 
 And farewell again will sing, 
 
 If there is anything in it. 
 
 She already has done so twice, 
 
 For good luck she will just make it thrice, 
 
 But then it must be made even, four times, 
 
 And so on many more times, 
 
 And thus runs the tale 
 
 Of the sweet nightingale;
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 325 
 
 She will return when 'tis again spring, 
 Once more her farewell strain sing, 
 When it comes to the main thins. 
 
 44. 
 
 The Anarchist said to the Judge, 
 As he grated his teeth in a grudge: 
 " To annoy you 
 
 Is what I have taught, 
 To destroy you 
 
 Is what I have sought; 
 Do me some hope send." 
 Says the Judge : " You are caught ; 
 Your end must be a rope's end." 
 
 45. 
 
 If his whole nation 
 Be condemnation, 
 And his life's ration 
 Be vituperation, 
 Then all the man's ability 
 Will be detestability. 
 
 46. 
 The diamonds on his bosom bold 
 
 Drew there the murderer's knife; 
 The cheapest diamonds ever sold, 
 
 They cost him but his life.
 
 47. 
 
 jj aVa)0 IO 
 
 At once it tarns to me : 
 Hide also to be seen, 
 It takes what lies between : 
 What does the riddle mean ? 
 
 4*. 
 
 Let TOOT f oil j be divine, 
 
 If TOO choose to be a clown ; 
 
 Unto his fool KITMT Lear 
 
 Gave loo^ ago his jeweled crown. 
 
 49. 
 
 "Tfe true that men are rery many, 
 
 And man is Terr human ; 
 Bat of thU tangle i skein of mortals 
 
 Is woven hope which holds the true man. 
 
 50. 
 
 Shakespeare's and tfcat oared to the sun 
 Could settle dowa aod rocnp with a pan. 
 Thoa*jk be tensed the whole universe up like a 
 
 ML 
 
 He delighted as well to play with the small, 
 Ai. make tt . oain iture smile : :_: dL 
 Yet wbea the whole man becomes but a pan, 
 Taen k is time f<>r him to be done, 
 And for y oa to ram.
 
 BOOK FOUETB. 327 
 
 So much for so much, and therewith quite 
 enough ! Here we shall hare to cut the stream 
 off, the editor holding that this m m sufficiency 
 of the present phase of Appleseed. A few little 
 quibbles and squibs we shall hare to cooflgB 
 to oblivion, unless the public calls for them in a 
 future edition. But does not the reader begin to 
 feel that there was some truth in the complaint 
 of the publisher's taster against Appleseed : "He 
 has m fatal lack of dignity?" Nay, the editor 
 has to confess to bis own conscience that he has 
 concluded from the evening's performances that 
 Himmelshime himself, despite his lofty stature 
 and his grandiose military bearing at times, is not 
 altogether free of the same defect. 
 
 Midnight had passed when I arose to go. The 
 Colonel grasped me by the hand with the great- 
 eat cordiality, and bade me come the following 
 evening, as he had something else to impart. I 
 groped through the dark, silent streets of Hard- 
 scrabble to my quarters, trying in vain to bring 
 into order my dizzy, tumbling impressions. But 
 they refused to organize themselves, and the 
 next day found me still in chaos. There is some 
 secret in this whole business what is it ? What 
 lurks behind this antagonism between the Colonel 
 and the Professor ? 
 
 In the evening I was again with Himmelshime 
 according to agreement. But the change ! this 
 time it was not the hilarious, uproarious, tempest-
 
 328 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 uous ; on the contrary, it was the sarcastic, neg 
 ative, demonic; there was no bottle of wine, and 
 there was no ascent into the observatory over 
 looking all Hardscrabble and the world. He 
 spouted stinging epigrams, he defied the Univer 
 sity and belittled its training, introducing thrust 
 after thrust against our worthy Professor. A 
 formal man, he cries, without the spirit ; a mum 
 mified specimen of humanity dead and embalmed 
 thousands of years ago. 
 
 O to be breathing, breathing still, 
 
 And yet to be mummified ; 
 O to be dead, to be dead 
 
 Long before we have died. 
 
 At my suggestion that the Professor was a 
 very industrious worker, and also talked well, 
 these two good qualities turned to gall in an epi 
 gram cited from Appleseed : 
 
 He has nothing to do but to do 
 And he does it very dutifully; 
 
 He has nothing to say but to say, 
 And he says it very beautifully. 
 
 Not a rag of a virtue was left hanging upon 
 poor Brazennose, his persistency became obsti 
 nacy, and even his well-known fidelity got a slap: 
 
 The fickle-winged butterfly may be a changer, 
 From flower to flower the rapidest ranger; 
 But 'tis a fact indisputable 
 That the ass is immutable.
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 329 
 
 Thus the stream ran on, much to the wonder 
 ment of the editor. What can have happened 
 since yesterday? Certainly all this cannot be 
 simply the afterclap of one little bottle of wine? 
 At last the Colonel said : " Here I have some 
 thing longer and a little different." Then he 
 took up a manuscript and read with many an 
 innuendo and sly twinkle of the eye as well as 
 satirical twist of the lips and nose, the follow 
 ing ballad of Jamie. 
 
 JAMIE. 
 
 where art thou going, proud Jamie, 
 And why such a strut in thy stride? 
 
 1 am going to witness the wedding, 
 
 And first be to kiss the fair Bride. 
 
 Young Jamie has joined the procession, 
 
 His homage he offered in pride, 
 But he failed to catch the soft answer 
 
 That fell from the lips of the Bride. 
 
 In triumph he danced at the wedding, 
 
 Through a kingdom of guests he did glide ; 
 
 But how comes it he never saluted 
 
 The Queen of that kingdom, the Brids? 
 
 He paraded the garden of beauty, 
 
 The roses and lilies he eyed; 
 But he never was able to answer 
 
 The glance of the beautiful Bride.
 
 330 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S BHYMES. 
 
 I saw that he turned everywhere, 
 
 In each little corner he spied ; 
 But the sun at the center escaped him, 
 
 The sun of that sunlight, the Bride. 
 
 He reached to the hand of the bridegroom, 
 The bridegroom who stood at her side ; 
 
 But hers was a world far beyond him, 
 The beautiful world of the Bride. 
 
 I ran and offered to help him, 
 
 I sought his finger to guide ; 
 But ah ! he never could feel it 
 
 The throb and the thrill of the Bride. 
 
 With longing he stood in her shadow, 
 The sunlight was to him denied ; 
 
 Yet the rays fell full on the wedding 
 From the luminous face of the Bride. 
 
 He ran out the house to behold her, 
 And over the land he did ride ; 
 
 But when he returned from his journey, 
 He brought not a word from the Bride. 
 
 It was not that the Bride was unwilling, 
 Nor the bridegroom who stood at her side, 
 
 It was not that the guests were unwilling, 
 That he dwelt in the shade of the Bride.
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 331 
 
 All, all were eager to help him, 
 
 But could not, though they had died 
 
 To get him one glimpse of her beauty; 
 
 Slill he hoped for and groped for the Bride. 
 
 And ever she shone the bright lode-star 
 Of all that he sought for and tried ; 
 
 Jamie, her world is another, 
 The beautiful world of the Bride. 
 
 1 asked what the poem meant, as, even with 
 Himmelshime's gesticulations, grimaces and 
 interjections it was not altogether plain to me. 
 " That is you again," he exclaimed, '* you are 
 always asking after the inner meanings. Well, 
 to my mind no better illustration of its purport 
 could be given than just that man Brazennose. 
 Do you not see that he is seeking the hand of the 
 Bride in every possible way and cannot get her? 
 She is around him, near him, before him, yet is 
 a thousand miles distant, yes a universe away. 
 He can never get her . ' ' * * Who is the Bride her 
 name?" I asked. But Himmelshime had lapsed 
 into a kind of revery, and began talking to him 
 self, as it were, looking up to the ceiling and 
 reiterating; " He can never get her, he with all 
 his learning cannot fool Theodora." The echo 
 of this word, vibrating on the air to his ear 
 seemed to wake him out of his day-dream, and, 
 starting up, he changed color and tone, and with
 
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 i :. v -.::-.-;: ,;.; 
 
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 334 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 Now you must recollect that Appleseed knew 
 Himmelshime well, but never knew me, never 
 saw me but the one time. I think, therefore, that 
 the verse which I now read, was cut out after the 
 measure of the Colonel: 
 
 He shot off a philosopher's word 
 
 Big enough to knock down the Universe 
 
 At a little bird, 
 
 Which afterward seemed to fly no worse." 
 
 The Professor was growing more and more 
 excited, he chuckled a little at the foregoing 
 epigrams, but he was not done by any means. I 
 was of course interested ; he seemed to put him 
 self into a balance against the Colonel, as if he 
 was aware of all that the latter had told me and 
 proposed to offset the same. Old contestants, 
 they knew each other's lines, and on these lines 
 they never failed to fight their battles. 
 
 It soon became evident that the Professor was 
 preparing for a tremendous discharge from his 
 heaviest artillery. He fumbled and searched 
 among his papers till he laid hold of a long 
 sheet of paper written over on both sides, when 
 he said: "He has told you, I suppose, for he 
 tells everybody, about his going to the woods, 
 building a cabin, and living there all to himself, 
 for the sake of his freedom. Do you know the 
 real reason? He was jilted by a country girl,
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 335 
 
 and all this talk of suicide and the rest has its 
 source in that, if it be anything but buncomb. 
 He lived there on wild game, the product of his 
 rifle, did he? The fact is, he foraged the neigh 
 boring farms for corn and potatoes, and plun 
 dered hen roosts, being fond of chicken as a 
 darkey. I tell you, he ate in that solitary cabin 
 of his more tame turkeys than wild, more roast 
 pig than roast venison. How was that sort of 
 house-keeping broken up? He claims that a 
 girl came along, and did the business, he follow 
 ing her out of love; but I tell you that the 
 farmers of the neighborhood tracked him down 
 and smoked the fox out of his den. Do you know 
 that Appleseed has a ballad on this subject? 
 For Appleseed visited Reynard in his cabin, and 
 must have been aware of the circumstances. 
 Let me read the piece; it is called The Lone 
 Hunter, or The Fox Smoked out. 
 
 THE LONE HUNTER. 
 
 Oh where is the king of my brood 
 Old Strut my proud chanticleer? 
 
 On the grass is the trail of his blood, 
 And Reynard the Sly has been here. 
 
 The farmer set out for the wood, 
 His life for that fox he could give, 
 
 Who had stolen the king of his brood : 
 He swore that the thief should not live,
 
 336 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S SHTMES. 
 
 I thought I took wings of the breeze, 
 My feet on the earth were not set, 
 
 Till I entered the circle of trees 
 
 Where soon the Lone Hunter I met ; 
 
 The Lone Hunter he hunts all alone, 
 He never will go with another, 
 
 He eyes on the road every stone, 
 
 And never will trust his own brother. 
 
 The Lone Hunter he never will show 
 The pathway that leads to his home, 
 
 But around and around he must go 
 In a charm forever to roam. 
 
 Say, why so great hurry my man? 
 A fox I am trying to catch. 
 
 Then let me take part in thy plan, 
 For Reynard I am just the match. 
 
 Thou art the Lone Hunter I know, 
 Thy help can bring me no good. 
 
 I swear as that thief is my foe, 
 
 I shall slay him to-day in my wood. 
 
 First tell me the price of thy skill 
 
 To be paid at his death without fail? 
 
 When that fox thou art ready to kill, 
 I ask but the tip of his tail.
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 337 
 
 The farmer made promise to pay, 
 In his service the Hunter he took, 
 
 Who knew of the wood's darkest way, 
 Where beasts have burrow and nook. 
 
 In his footsteps through brushwood I toil, 
 And with him I wade in the brook, 
 
 And after him worm in the soil, 
 Till my body was bent to a crook. 
 
 We hunted and hunted all day, 
 Wherever a trace could be found ; 
 
 It was here that we bored in the clay, 
 It was there that we tore up the ground. 
 
 We skillfully marked every stick, 
 
 Just where he must have turned back, 
 
 In the air we snuffed every trick, 
 On the earth we smelt every track. 
 
 Alas no fox we could find ; 
 
 Oh tell me, where is the trail? 
 Just then on my Hunter behind, 
 
 I spied a wee tuft of fox-tail. 
 
 It gave but one little peep, 
 
 Like an eye from under its lid, 
 Then suddenly whisked to its keep 
 
 Where again it thought itself hid. 
 22
 
 338 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 But I grasped for that wisp of red hair, 
 And jerked it as hard as I could ; 
 
 A full game-bag came out of its lair, 
 And in it the king of my brood. 
 
 Lofie Hunter, thy price thou hast earned, 
 What I promise I pay without fail. 
 
 Then to him his own I returned 
 I gave him the tip of his tail. 
 
 I paid him in full for his trip, 
 
 Said the honest old farmer in pride ; 
 
 For along with that red little tip 
 Of his tail, I threw-in his hide. 
 
 It is needless to say that the Professor read 
 this with a keen relish manifested in sly tricks of 
 voice and little cachinnations; quite as great was 
 his delight as that of the Colonel when the latter 
 shouted and gesticulated and grimaced the ballad 
 of Jamie. Verily counterparts are the two men 
 in a number of ways ; is not each fitting himself 
 on to the other? One they are at bottom, with 
 one end ultimately, with one ideal in them, I 
 think; an unconscious unity lurks in their 
 dualism, a unity which in time must become 
 conscious, and perchance walk forth into light. 
 
 When the excitement of the Professor had 
 somewhat quieted down, and a lull came which 
 secretly called for some new subject of conversa-
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 339 
 
 tion,in the most accidental manner in the world 
 a question darted through my head, and I asked: 
 " Who is this Theodora? " At once the Profes 
 sor's agitation rose higher than ever, he stood up 
 from his chair, turned red to the tip of his nose 
 and exclaimed: "Did that miserable Himmel- 
 shime speak of her? What did he say?" Isawat 
 once that I had tapped an unseen fountain, 
 seething, dangerous, and I was frightened at the 
 rush of the underground waters. I replied 
 calmly : " I saw the word on one of the papers 
 you gave me, " and I handed it to him; but I 
 kept silent about Himmelshime, who, in one of 
 his explosions, had let out the same name. The 
 Professor took the paper, looked at it, and added 
 "O yes, I see ; .that is nothing but a casual 
 scrawl of mine." I soon noticed that he wished 
 no longer to be disturbed, I bade him good night, 
 and took my way to my lodgings. 
 
 Thus is the dualism of life working itself out 
 in the town of Hardscrabble. More strongly 
 than ever does the editor feel that there is some 
 mighty undercurrent here, towing along irresis 
 tibly both Colonel and Professor, the Lord only 
 knows whither. Something surely underlies 
 this bitter strife between learning and spirit; on 
 the surface it may seem erudition versus inspira 
 tion, but there is a deeper vein which must some 
 time break up to the sunlight. So much the 
 editor dares now prophesy.
 
 340 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 But a horrible suspicion this moment crosses 
 the editorial mind, a suspicion which literally 
 takes the breath out of him for the time being, 
 and stops the very flow of ink from his pen. It 
 is that Brazennose and Himmelshime are them 
 selves the authors of these verses, and are fight 
 ing their battle under the name of Appleseed ; 
 possibly they have conspired to employ this mask 
 in order to hoodwink the editor. Can it be an 
 other case of literary fabrication so frequent in 
 the annals of Literature? On the whole a second 
 thought gives us relief, it cannot well be so for a 
 number of reasons ; still we shall keep an eye 
 out for signs, and we advise the reader to do 
 likewise. 
 
 But the editor, before he proceeds further, must 
 declare that he emphatically disagrees with Pro 
 fessor Brazennose in the latter' s interpretation of 
 the foregoing poem, The Lone Hunter. The 
 flight of Himmelshime to the woods was certainly 
 as honest as that of the celebrated Thoreau ; and 
 his fight with the demons there, though told in 
 the Colonel's overwrought, metaphorical, sym 
 bolic vein, was a real battle with the powers of 
 darkness. The Professor evidently, in his eager 
 ness to pay back Himmelshime in the latter's own 
 coin, has allowed himself to be carried beyond 
 the bounds of literary sobriety, just as the Col 
 onel in his exposition of Jamie, exceeded the 
 same bounds. Such is the decree of the editor,
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 341 
 
 again holding aloft the scales of Astraea, the 
 divine. Meanwhile the editor must signify that 
 he has his own interpretation of The Lone Hunter. 
 In his judgment it was written in honor of the 
 Chicago police (New York would suit better, if 
 Appleseed's horizon extended east of the Alle- 
 ghenies), inasmuch as Reynard, who has stolen 
 chanticleer, has the habit of turning policeman 
 and in that capacity he succeeds in getting him 
 self sent to ferret out the thief. Then when he 
 gets fairly under way, just hear his music 
 through the woods ! He takes the lead and barks 
 louder than the whole pack of hounds together 
 pursuing the fox. Do not fail to note that 
 Appleseed, with his sense of ideal justice, gets 
 the thief caught at last, to which the reality does 
 not always correspond. 
 
 Thus the doctors will disagree, in spite of a 
 peace-making mediator, and the fierce dualism 
 seems at times to be running straight toward an 
 actual duel with fists or fire-arms. A hard time 
 the present editor is having with his geniuses, 
 Himmelshime and Bruzennose, yes and even with 
 Appleseed, the latter causing no little editorial 
 premonition in reference to the propriety of cer 
 tain utterances. All three have ability, yet 
 coupled with strong individuality, which is just 
 the trouble. It might be clipped or even shorn 
 away, but what then would be left? To keep 
 the three whole, yet keep them in bounds, and
 
 342 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S EHYMES. 
 
 not have them kick out of the limits of this book 
 and of all possible book-making has required a 
 good deal of intricate management. Think of 
 the group the Poet, the Professor and the 
 Colonel, all of them world-builders and world- 
 destroyers too, each in his own special way ; they 
 were certain to fall into collision and possible 
 chaos without some guiding hand. Not one Phae- 
 thon driving madly through the Heavens in his 
 sun-chariot, but three of them let loose together 
 and whizzing round the skies with celestial steeds 
 bitless and bridleless what is to be done to 
 avoid a grand final smash-up, fatal, if not to 
 earth and stars, at least to this book? 
 
 And now it is our intention to give a little, 
 quite insignificant fable from Appleseed, which 
 has been found in the collections of both the 
 Professor and the Colonel, with significant com 
 ments by each. Another kaleidoscopic shuffle 
 of the broken many-hued bits of glass, here 
 called versicles : let us see how the grand dual 
 ism looks in this new shifting of colors, especially 
 through the diversely magnifying lenses of our 
 two commentators: 
 
 Said the River to the Lake : 
 
 Why to-day lie half awake, 
 
 But to-morrow rise and fall and shake, 
 
 Till the whole earth doth give a quake?
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 343 
 
 Said the Lake unto the River : 
 Why do you so bubble and so quiver, 
 .Running in a little shiver 
 To-day and forever? 
 
 " Because," said the stream 
 *' I love to dance in my dream, 
 And play through my valley along 
 . And hear the bird's song." 
 
 " But," said the Lake, "in spite of my calm, 
 I often get angry and d;imn, 
 
 Ten men I drown to your one, 
 In my capacious hollow ; 
 
 Look now ! just for fun 
 You too I shall swallow." 
 
 It is curious to see how Himmelshime takes the 
 part of the swallowing Lake, and gives a char 
 acteristic twist to his view, following in full 
 freedom his symbolic bent. Says he: "Two 
 cities I know, having lived years in both; one 
 stands by a great River to the South, the other 
 by a great Lake to the North. With nearly 
 every advantage in its favor, I have seen the one 
 gradually lose the race of cityship, while the 
 other has gained it steadily, even easily. The 
 fact has often been a subject of reflection to me. 
 Cities are the grand means of what we call civili 
 zation; rivalry of cities has made history. In the
 
 344 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 olden time they would fight till one destroyed the 
 other Babylon and Nineveh, Thebes and Mem 
 phis, Athens and Sparta, Rome and Carthage, not 
 to speak of the thousands of little eddies in the great 
 historic Ocean, like that of Sybaris and Crotona, 
 for example. But in our time and country open 
 war is quite impossible, so the rival cities have to 
 struggle for supremacy, not with death-dealing 
 weapons, but with the very implements of civili- 
 ization the railroad is now the massive gun, 
 the million-pounder, which wins the battle." 
 
 Still further does the Colonel draw out the 
 distinctions which have started his fancy on a. 
 gallop: " Of the two cities Lakeside had a 
 rough incisive individuality, its people were not 
 specially courteous, not specially modest, and 
 always in a hurry to reap the harvest, not with 
 the old sickle or cradle, but with their modern 
 Briareus, the hundred-handed reaping-machine. 
 Individual gain, yes; but when they saw any 
 thing to be for the common benefit, every citizen 
 would sink himself into the Whole andfightfor his 
 community at his own expense. Self-seeking 
 and self-exploiting against other self-seekers and 
 self-exploiters, with a vengeance; but union for 
 city. Thus arose the grandest public spirit ever 
 known in the world, rivaled only by Athens at 
 the time of the Persian War. 
 
 *' On the contrary, Riverside had courtesy, hos 
 pitality, with a sort of chivalry ; personal agree-
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 345 
 
 ableness was inborn and also inbred in her people, 
 and she boasted of her modesty. But when these 
 individuals came together for any concerted 
 action, they showed their pitiful nature. Singly 
 they were lovable, collectively damnable. Envy 
 of Lakeside amounting to a complete blindness 
 ( an actual invidia ) was rooted into them, and led 
 them belittle, and finally not to see at all the very 
 thing on which their fate depended. Thus Envy, 
 turned outwards at first toward another city, could 
 not help turning inwards, and lacerating their 
 own vitals. Any man of Riverside who sought 
 to work for the general welfare and to become 
 something himself, was. at once frozen helpless 
 by indifference or pelted by detraction till he 
 sank to the mediocre level of the rest of the 
 city, or took his flight else whither, often 
 to Lakeside where he always found the field 
 open. It lies within my knowledge that even 
 the women of Riverside would squabble desper 
 ately and plot and counterplot, in order to drag 
 down some born leader who was getting a little 
 too prominent." 
 
 The editor thinks he feels some heat in these 
 words, and wonders what it is all about. Can 
 Lakeside be the Colonel's own house ia Hard- 
 scrabble lying not far from a pond of some 
 dimensions, which we recollect of seeing from his 
 observatory; and can Riverside be the University 
 whose campus slopes down to a rivulet mostly dry?
 
 346 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 The Brobdignagian humor of Himmelshirae has a 
 tendency at times to run into the gigantesque; 
 still it always has some meaning, and we seek in 
 vain for the personal ground in this allegorized 
 philippic. 
 
 Let us hear Brazennose, who will at least take 
 a different view, though the main riddle lies as 
 deeply buried as ever: " I have been in both 
 cities, and I vote for Riverside. Lakeside has 
 too much noise, too much outer activity : there 
 is a mill in the heart of it which grinds me to 
 very powder. Tremendous storms lash the lake, 
 whereas the sweet sempiternal flow (sempiternus 
 amnis) of the river soothes the nerves, gives an 
 opiate to life's pains, and transports the happy 
 man into a state of euthanasy. I must say, River 
 side always recalls my beloved Hardscrabble 
 with its reposeful, cloistered learning, fit place 
 for contemplation and divine philosophy. River 
 side I always think of as a good locality for fish 
 ing, and I love piscatorial sport." 
 
 The Professor continues in this vein for some 
 time, making beautiful idyllic citations from the 
 poets, which show both his taste and learning ; 
 but we are compelled to use the editorial shears, 
 much to our regret, upon his sweet bucolic 
 imagery. The same relentless shears, veritably 
 those of Fate, have also to be used at once upon 
 the umbilical cord of this Fourth Book, which 
 must somehow get itself born, and cease its
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 347 
 
 throes of struggle. Truly a Book of separation, 
 conflict, and spiritual warfare between the Col 
 onel and the Professor, each representing a force 
 in the universe; the two antagonists are still 
 standing in line of battle, where the editor will 
 have to let them stand for the present, till some 
 point of settlement work itself out to clearness. 
 To permit this process to take place untroubled 
 by any external agency, the editor with his spoils 
 proposes to withdraw for a time from Hard- 
 scrabble, which has become a kind of storm-, 
 center, with himself as pivot. May the sunshine 
 of peace follow his departure !
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 
 THE CAPTIVE MINSTREL. 
 
 December's blast is blowing still, 
 
 Though it be merry May ; 
 Out of the North has come a chill, 
 
 Though Spring was yesterday; 
 And now by night my neighbor stars 
 I have to see through prison bars ; 
 
 How far they seem away ! 
 
 The flowers oped their little heart 
 
 To tell their little thought ; 
 The birds began to sing their part, 
 
 And me the measure taught ; 
 Then I myself went out to sing, 
 And make the woods with music ring; 
 
 To-day it is all naught. 
 
 (348)
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 349 
 
 The scarlet bud that brightest blows 
 
 Flamed up the sky like fire, 
 I reached to pluck the red wild rose, 
 
 I reached yet higher, higher, 
 I seized my joy without a bound, 
 But when I plucked the rose, I found 
 
 I hung upon its briar. 
 
 But still my garden and my bower 
 
 I have this chilly morn, 
 The frost has given me a flower, 
 
 The purest ever born. 
 Inside the gloomy prison wall 
 I have the spring, I have it all, 
 
 And yet I am forlorn. 
 
 The ice-king makes my window pane 
 
 His mazy flower bed ; 
 A diamond soil without a stain 
 
 He on the glass has spread, 
 Transplanting all the garden fair, 
 Afresh he makes it blossom there, 
 
 Though it before was dead. 
 
 Lithe leaves of fern grow on the glass 
 
 And bow in graceful bend, 
 They nod to me in crystal mass 
 
 As though I met a friend ; 
 When they last time by me were seen, 
 They with the hope of May were green, 
 
 But hope no more they send.
 
 350 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 And in the icy garden there, 
 
 I see a pansy too; 
 But all its freaked fancies fair 
 
 Are chilled to one blank hue; 
 O pansy, pansy, to mine eye 
 A flower's corpse thou now dost lie, 
 
 A corpse I cannot woo. 
 
 On its cold stem a violet 
 
 Hangs down its modest head, 
 
 With its sweet kind it has been set 
 Into this flower bed; 
 
 violet, where is thy blue, 
 
 Where is thine eye that looks so true? 
 Thine azure love has sped. 
 
 A rose I knew this very May, 
 With love it was blood-red ; 
 
 But it is palest ice to-day, 
 Ah, it to death has bled ; 
 
 No longer can I woo the rose, 
 
 Back to bleak winter it too goes, 
 With all its passion fled. 
 
 How chilly bends this other one 
 
 Whose eye I cannot see ! 
 It greets the "yonder rising sun, 
 
 And turns its back on me, 
 
 1 cannot look into its face, 
 
 Its name in song shall have no place, 
 Let it forgotten be !
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 351 
 
 Behold again the blooming pane ! 
 
 Now blows the flower divine ; 
 In winter's snow, in summer's rain, 
 
 The sun may sink or shine, 
 That flower still is just the same ; 
 O wreathe in sweetest rhyme its name! 
 
 That flower shall be mine I 
 
 Thou art the lily, lily white, 
 
 The purest of them all, 
 Thou comest in the frosty night 
 
 When other flowers fall, 
 So pure, so clear, so free of flaw 
 Thou hast become to me the law 
 
 Inside my prison wall. 
 
 The scarlet bud, the speckled pansy, 
 
 The golden sun's bright sheen, 
 The tinted world which took my fancy 
 
 The red, the blue, the green 
 It is my gaol, it is my chain, 
 It holds me captive in my strain; 
 
 Let it no more be seen !
 
 THE MINSTREL FREED. 
 
 It was a minstrel penitent 
 Who sang his troubled lay; 
 
 In prison up and down he went 
 And looked at merry May ; 
 
 His song, erewhile a garden bright, 
 
 Had changed its color over night, 
 The price he had to pay. 
 
 Ah ! yesterday I felt I loved, 
 The world was all a flower, 
 
 To-day it hath a phantom proved, 
 The phantom of an hour; 
 
 A sudden blast of wintry birth 
 
 Turned yon bright garden of the Earth 
 Into an icy bower. 
 
 Ah I yesterday I knew no duty, 
 
 To-day I pay the cost : 
 I look into the world of beauty 
 
 Through arabesque of frost ; 
 Give me the harp and let me sing, 
 As long as I can strike the string, 
 
 I know I am not lost." 
 (352)
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 353 
 
 The minstrel tried his tuneful throat 
 And twanged the thridded string ; 
 
 Alack ! he could not fetch a note, 
 His soul refused to sing; 
 
 Upon him rests some demon's spell : 
 
 Thou must, O bard, thy fate compel 
 Just through thy suffering. 
 
 Again he tunes his rueful song, 
 
 His sigh has loosed his pain, 
 The icy shapes melt in a throng 
 
 Beneath his heart's warm strain; 
 Now forth he looks into the air, 
 How sunny is the world, how fair I 
 
 The flowers bloom again ! 
 
 And there the lily first he sees, 
 
 Well has he learned its name I 
 It waves to him upon the breeze, 
 
 He sings its purest fame ; 
 He weaves its life into his lay, 
 In frost or flower, be what it may, 
 
 It has no stain of blame. 
 
 But hark ! just then a thunderous knock 
 
 Did shake the prison door; 
 The keeper comes, the keys unlock, 
 
 The captive's time is o'er; 
 He seemeth dumb, he looks around, 
 He's lost what never can be found, 
 
 The songs he sang of yore. 
 
 23
 
 354 JOHNNY APPLE SEED 1 S RHYMES. 
 
 He never can the minstrel be 
 
 Such as he was before ; 
 When turns the prison's iron key, 
 
 The songs rush out the door; 
 He is undone when he is free, 
 The echoes of his minstrelsy 
 
 Die on the distant shore. 
 
 Significant is the fact that our minstrel, Apple- 
 seed, now sings of his captivity and of his final 
 release, giving some experience of his under the 
 image of flowers. The two poems are manifestly 
 counterparts and both were derived from Him- 
 melshime and Brazennose, each of whom inde 
 pendently of the other sent to the editor a copy. 
 This fact has gone far to allay the suspicion, 
 already getting somewhat troublesome, that the 
 Professor and Colonel were using Appleseed 
 simply as a mask for foisting upon us their own 
 verses. For Himmelshime and Brazennose, 
 though living in the same town of Hardscrabble, 
 held no literary communication with each other ; 
 each probably had his own means for getting at 
 that original fountain of poetry called Johnny 
 Appleseed. 
 
 We observe that an ideal flower floats before 
 the imagination of the poet in his bondage, till he 
 is freed, and then he sings no more. Him 
 melshime, who has a note here, gives not the 
 least clew to the poetic or psychologic change
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 355 
 
 suggested in the poem, but darts off into the 
 following passage on the need of fiction : 
 " Universal is the demand of the human soul for 
 an imaginative, mythical, fictional setting for all 
 doctrines, ideas, experiences. Not without the 
 deepest meaning is the fact that the greatest 
 books of the Race, the Bibles of Mankind, are 
 always set into a framework made of the Mythus. 
 A skillful fictitious vehicle for noble sentiments 
 carries them straight to the heart and imagina 
 tion, and the vehicle is often remembered longer 
 than the sentiments. In fact, the poetic prob 
 lem is mainly this : to find or construct a vehicle 
 of fiction which will carry truth by the shortest 
 way to the soul of man." 
 
 This is well enough, but the editor feels that 
 intolerable suspicion aforementioned rising again 
 in his inwards and leaving behind it disagreeable 
 qualms. Is not Himmelshime, in his excessive 
 love of fiction, playing one of his fictitious 
 devices upon editorial simplicity, and thereby 
 cajoling the innocent reader? In fact, is not the 
 whole solid superstructure of this book, with 
 Appleseed as the key-stone of the supporting 
 arch thereof, threatening to vanish into a mere 
 illusory cloud-picture? Perish the thought; let 
 us turn again to Himmelshime, who has some 
 words, in which he touches upon a matter near 
 his heart: 
 
 "It is plain to me," he writes in a strong
 
 356 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 bold band, " that Appleseed must have held that 
 there was something more divine in woman than 
 in man. She is the visible deity, coming here 
 below and clothing herself in flesh and blood in 
 order to bring to the poor mortal his celestial 
 portion. The poets in all ages have idealized 
 their highest vision of what is excellent under 
 the figure of a woman. Can the faithful reader 
 ever forget that little ballad of the were-wolf , 
 the man in shape of the beast, to whom the 
 bride brings the kisses three, and so restores 
 him whom she loves to the human form? It 
 has also been noted that Appleseed has changed 
 the legend, which, in its original form, makes 
 the man bring the kisses three to the were 
 wolf who is a woman. This change points to a 
 significant trait in the poet, who believes in the 
 transforming might of love, it has the creative 
 power to make the world and the man over. 
 Wonderful is that influence of the simple devoted 
 maiden ; in her unconscious glance lies a Prome 
 thean might, world-creating, soul-regenerating 
 for the one upon whom it drops with the sun 
 shine of its favor. It kindles not only the youth 
 ful heart in response, but it makes young again 
 the old. I tell you the woman has not only to 
 bear the new generation, she has to re-bear the 
 old one, when it threatens, as it often does, to 
 go back into its own chaos ; over and over again 
 must she be a mother to those already born,
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 357 
 
 mothering not only the infant orphaned of 
 parents, but the grown man orphaned of Hope. 
 
 " I give it as my emphatic opinion," he con 
 tinues, "that the great palingenesis, so much 
 spoken of by Prophets, Poets and Philosophers, 
 takes place usually through a woman, or has its 
 beginning in her secret regenerative power, 
 which comes through her love, for love is inher 
 ently creative." 
 
 O Himmelshime, thou art surely now copying 
 the text out of thine own heart; the palingenesis 
 must have already begun in thee ! On opening 
 the sheet of paper upon which the above was 
 written, a small loose scrap fell out and fluttered 
 with many a whirl to the floor, where it lay with 
 writing downwards. Picking it up and turning 
 it over, the editor found the following : 
 
 The wind is blowing from the south, 
 It leaps out of a dragon's mouth ; 
 Behold the scowling monster scours 
 
 The cloudy skies above ; 
 But now it turns to gentle showers 
 And drops below in love. 
 
 It seems proper to insert just here three little 
 quatrains which are thrown upward into the sun 
 shine at this point, like a sudden spray of water 
 from a hidden fountain, and suggest a well 
 head of harmonies unrevealed. More important
 
 358 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 than the versicles is the comment of Himmel- 
 shime, who shows signs of starting on a new 
 career. 
 
 1. 
 
 Her tears were a sunshiny shower 
 
 Which never lasted half an hour ; 
 
 But when she would not cry, 
 
 The clouds were never out the sky. 
 
 2. 
 
 I, to be possessor blest, 
 I must also be possessed ; 
 Thou, be thou the gift and the donor, 
 Then thou art mine own and mine owner. 
 
 3. 
 Soul without love 
 
 Is like incense without fire; 
 No fragrance, no clouds above, 
 
 For us to inspire. 
 
 These brief amatory sparks from Appleseed's 
 Muse seem specially to set on fire Himmelshime, 
 to whom we may again listen in a reverberating 
 passage: 
 
 "It is my decided opinion that Appleseed 
 during his whole life must have carried about 
 with himself an ever-living germ of love, liable 
 to shoot up and put forth flowers, manifesting 
 its variegated hues in little songs and verselets,
 
 SOOR FIFTH. 359 
 
 when some fair beaming countenance would shed 
 its sunlight upon his path. Tell me not that he 
 was an old man, do not cite me that accursed 
 Latin proverb, Turpe senis amor; age, especially a 
 poet's, is never exempt from this, the eternal fire 
 of youth. Did not Goethe, in his seventy-fifth 
 year, flame up, burn, coruscate in poetry and 
 nearly die of passion for Ulrike, a maiden of six 
 teen years ? He was not exempt, and has honestly 
 told us so, for which I in deep gratitude most 
 heartily thank him. Sad had it been for him if 
 he could not have glowed in all brilliancy even at 
 sunset; he would have been no heaven-traversing 
 luminary, if he had not shot forth beams of love 
 and light at the last moment. Think, too, of 
 that juvenile, Giovanni Bellini, aged eighty plus, 
 painting the sweetest, divinest girl-faces on his 
 Madonnas, who are still the most beautiful women 
 I could find anywhere in Venice. What had he 
 been doing the previous years of life ? Evidently 
 getting ready, letting his genius mature into true 
 youthfulness, which knows how to love and how 
 to express the same. The poet's and the paint 
 er's heart never grows old. I maintain that 
 these lines of Appleseed were not written in his 
 younger days, as some cold, unappreciative 
 apologists seem to think; he would have flung 
 them off at any time of life, with a fair appear 
 ance before him, fanning to flame that everlasting 
 fire which always lay smouldering in his bosom.
 
 360 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 Sureiy many occasions could not have been want 
 ing in his travels when fair maidenly shapes, all 
 radiance and soul, shot celestial beams across his 
 laborious path, and set on fire that marvelous 
 tinder-box of his called Imagination. Life is, 
 indeed, a series of cycles, always self-returning; 
 the years will at last bring back even the snowy- 
 headed philosopher to his starting-point, and give 
 him a fresh baptism in the warm, youth-renew 
 ing waters of the true El Dorado fountain, namely 
 Love." 
 
 So far Himmelshime, who has now exploited the 
 most surprising comment in this book. What 
 can it all mean? The editor has puzzled his 
 brains to find the secret thread, which provok- 
 ingly hides itself in the above overflow of speech. 
 It is told with so much decision, yea with so 
 much vehemence that it carries some personal 
 tinge of the writer's feeling. There is in it a 
 tone not only of self-defense, but of actual defi 
 ance, to which the gentle flashes of Appleseed 
 are as distant harmless sheet-lightning, which 
 calls for no such hot mustering and arming. 
 
 Let us declare in a whisper our conviction. 
 Himmelshime, who is no longer a young man, is 
 probably caught in the toils of the Love-God, and 
 feels called upon to defy all gossipy tongues, 
 and possibly some younger rival. The editor, 
 also alas ! not a young man, holds that no such 
 defense is needed, but Himmelshime, wincing
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 361 
 
 under some irritation, draws his old war saber 
 and marches in. 
 
 The editor, looking back at his visit to Hard- 
 scrabble, seeks to recall some indication, some 
 incident which may give a clew, but there come 
 only the faintest flashes of light. Here is one 
 query: Why did Himmelshime, in the midst of 
 the conversation after the lecture, make such a 
 sudden dart into the crowd when the fairy shape 
 flitted past us? Then again this: What is the 
 meaning of that enigmatic word Theodora, sud 
 denly exploding once from his lips, then just as 
 suddenly covered up with blushing solicitude 
 after the percussion? 
 
 Of course no satisfactory answer can be given 
 to these questions. Time alone can solve the 
 problem which is evidently fermenting in the very 
 heart of Hardscrabble. Meanwhile let us turn 
 away to Appleseed for some rest and contempla 
 tion. A little introspective nook he furnishes, 
 after his fashion, amid these seething emotions 
 and conflicting ideas, of which no human being can 
 now foretell the outcome, whether it will be 
 comic or tragic. We shall, accordingly, interpo 
 late Time with these rather soothing reflections 
 on Time, just to let the old fellow know how he 
 looks in Appleseed's versified mirror.
 
 362 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S BKYMES. 
 
 4. 
 
 Time is a snail 
 That leaves his shell behind 
 When out he creeps; 
 The Pyramid is such a shell 
 Left in the valley of the Nile : 
 The Parthenon is such a shell, 
 And e'en Greek Plato. 
 These rhymes are little shards 
 Which I, Johnny Appleseed, 
 Have nicked off the shell of the Time-snail 
 Creeping through the Mississippi Valley, 
 And have sowed them in its soil. 
 When this age is dead, 
 Perchance some of these nameless shards 
 May be picked up by the wanderer, 
 And give him a friendly twinkle as he passes. 
 
 5. 
 
 Let old Homer but chant a high word, 
 On each oaten pipe the echo is heard; 
 If Apollo one day the great riddle sings, 
 The next it is scratched on all fiddle-strings. 
 
 6. 
 " Why such labor borrow? 
 
 Why poke into the snow, 
 When it will melt to-morrow 
 
 And Earth its secret show?"
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 363 
 
 But you must know to-day, 
 
 To-morrow has been never; 
 
 Waiting till it come this way 
 
 The fool you are you stay ; 
 This moment is forever. 
 
 7. 
 
 This minute skipping off to-day so free, 
 
 Doth orb itself with all eternity. 
 
 But first it runs the cycle of an hour; 
 
 The slower hour then turns with all its power 
 
 To round its spokes into the wheel of day; 
 
 And still the day will by itself not stay, 
 
 But longs to round itself into the year 
 
 As if to free itself from its own strife ; 
 
 The year completes the cycle into life, 
 And life is but a little moment here, 
 
 Which is into the eternal cycle rounded, 
 
 And so all Time by Time itself is bounded. 
 Thou, Time, dost Time at last contain, 
 And hast by haste no more to gain. 
 
 Minute, hour, day, life I have to rhyme 
 
 Into the sweep of universal Time. 
 
 We have already dwelt upon the Teutonic 
 tendency in Himmelshime, which tendency he is 
 bent on finding in Appleseed. In this matter the 
 editor is inclined to let him run his course, that 
 we all may see where he brings up, and in what 
 condition. Still it is to be noted that his admira-
 
 364 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 tion of the old Fatherland is not indiscriminate ; 
 he has strong American lines in him, which he 
 never fails of manifesting. Listen to the follow 
 ing: 
 
 " Very significant has been the German move 
 ment toward this country since the colonial period 
 down to the present. I hold it to be an offshoot 
 of that deep Aryan instinct which always projects 
 a part of itself westward, the most aspiring part. 
 The Anglo-Saxon seems to go in advance, and to 
 furnish the political framework of the new 
 people; the German follows as colonist and 
 contributes much of the social filling-in and 
 settled character. The greatest German poet 
 and the greatest German philosopher, both speak 
 ing less than a century ago, looked upon America 
 as the land free from the fetters of the past, from 
 prescription, from pedantry, from privilege, and 
 from too much erudition." 
 
 Thus the Colonel, in the last word, could not 
 spare himself the pleasure of giving a sly cut at 
 the Professor. But who is the " greatest German 
 philosopher" alluded to in the previous para 
 graph? Manifestly Himmelshime has conferred 
 that lofty title upon Hegel, concerning whom we 
 are led for several important reasons, to insert 
 the following remarks from his pen : 
 
 " Hegel has made the mightiest, most colossal 
 organization of Thought that the world has ever 
 seen. His total philosophy is the Universe of
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 365 
 
 Mind duly examined, labeled and put in place 
 yet not as a dead result, but as a vital organism, 
 whose life is that subtle, slippery dialectic of his. 
 Overwhelming is even the appearance of the 
 colossal system, being the very militarism of the 
 spirit vast, complete, ordered to the smallest 
 details; almost crushing is the glance. I do not 
 wonder that Renan complained of a feeling of 
 tremendous depression, in even looking at it, for 
 he hardly understood it. Did he not have per 
 chance, a foretaste of Sedan, not palatable to 
 him, or to the French mind? I must declare 
 that the phenomenon is not altogether palatable 
 to me. 
 
 " Yet I maintain that Hegel by his mighty 
 organization saved Thought, saved the Teutonic 
 spirit from its own self-devouring energy, and 
 to-day he keeps it fortressed, armed, and arrayed 
 against its own devils, inner and outer. To me 
 Bismark and Moltke are the modern Hegelians, 
 not the Professors lecturing in a University, but 
 men of the deed practically carrying out in a 
 political system the vast militarism which lay in 
 the Thought of Hegel. This Thought, through 
 these two mighty Wills, has in our time been 
 transformed into reality, and only a people that 
 could think the Thought of Hegel could produce 
 or even handle a German army. I do not know 
 whether Bismark and Moltke studied the philoso 
 pher, probably not much, but I do know that the
 
 366 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 philosopher had gone in advance and had ideally 
 organized the whole Teutonic spirit, ere the sol 
 dier and the statesman came and made it real." 
 
 In such manner our mad human whirlwind, 
 Colonel Himmelshime, catches up Professor 
 Hegel, of the University of Berlin, and bears him 
 aloft to the very empyrean of praise, then wheels 
 down to earth and covers with dust our good 
 Professor Brazennose of the University of Hard- 
 scrabble. Is such treatment fair? Is it consist 
 ent? But why ask a tornado to be logical? 
 Why ask a Himmelshime to work in harness, the 
 man who of all others is a form-breaker? It 
 will be interesting now to see him in an opposite 
 sweep, for he will be sure to take a tilt at Hegel 
 ian forms, and there is ample opportunity. 
 
 No surprise, therefore, is it to us on finding 
 the following among his papers : " Militarism 
 will not do for a free country. It is true that we 
 must have order, organization, nay obedience; 
 but we cannot endure this outside pressure, this 
 crushing of body and soul into some pre-estab 
 lished system or dogma. Such cannot be our 
 finality. The spirit must be free to create limits, 
 free also to transcend them, and this freedom it 
 must make institutional. I find militarism at 
 present running through pretty much all the 
 spiritual products of Germany literature, state, 
 society, school, pedagogy. What is excellent 
 thereof, we must learn and adopt, but not the
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 367 
 
 militarism. Some have said that Germany can 
 not be free without militarism ; surely we can 
 not be free with it." 
 
 Thus the Colonel, a military man himself, a 
 ready smiter and a hot-head, turns against all 
 militarism. While he is in the mood, let us hear 
 him out: " The massive nomenclature of Hegel 
 we shall not wear, though it case us in impene 
 trable steel armor of the spirit. We may drill in 
 it for a time, as the old knights jousted in coats 
 of mail ; we shall probably have to get our last 
 discipline through such a heavy ordeal. But a 
 more pliable garment of thought we must have 
 for our free life. So America must transcend 
 Hegel, after duly studying him; we shall, how 
 ever, have to pass through him, and not around 
 him, for he stands up colossal in the middle of 
 the road of progress, the last great expression of 
 the World's Thought." 
 
 The editor will now venture to give utterance 
 to a surmise which he has been harboring for 
 some time. Himmelshime must have visited 
 the philosophers of St. Louis, and have stayed 
 there during a period of incubation. I find in 
 him words, turns of thought and expression, 
 transcendental flights, peculiar interpretations of 
 Art and Literature, which first became current 
 through what is called " the St. Louis move 
 ment." In fact I am willing to hazard the 
 conjecture that Appleseed himself in his wander-
 
 368 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 ings westward crossed the Mississippi at St. 
 Louis, probably passing over from Cahokia in a 
 flat-boat, and finally strayed, many years ago, 
 into the philosophic Academe then located on 
 Targee street, but at this moment an old rookery 
 for negroes. Another typical fact, the editor 
 had to cry out in melancholy suspiration on 
 visiting the spot recently. 
 
 Thus do we catch glimpses of Himmelshime in 
 his philosophic character; but he is not alto 
 gether a cold philosopher devoting himself to 
 Pure Reason ; he has emotions, and his philoso 
 phy thaws out, if not into tears exactly, at least 
 into a state of sentimental liquefaction ; and, 
 instead of preaching always the lofty self- 
 determination of man, he falls back for support 
 upon an external prop, which prop is supposedly 
 the weaker being of the human race. Just hear 
 him : 
 
 " I maintain that every great Idea born into 
 the world has to be nursed and cared for by a 
 woman, if it ever come to maturity. Poor, 
 naked, helpless is the new-born Idea, brought forth 
 into a cheerless, unsympathetic reality, more 
 dependent than any sucking infant; the woman 
 takes it up, adopts it as her own, giving to it her 
 mother's milk of love and appreciation, and 
 behold ! it begins to grow and kick and struggle, 
 till it can fight its own battles. Man may be 
 the father of the Idea, and usually is ; but woman
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 369 
 
 is its mother, without whose fostering care the 
 poor foundling would soon perish. Froebel 
 may have fathered the kindergarden Idea, but 
 the woman's soul, yea, a thousand woman-souls 
 have mothered it, and have reared it into the 
 greatest educational fact of the century, whereby 
 the maternal spirit is now beginning to have its 
 true place in the education of the child. Nay, 
 the most complete, self-sufficing man on this 
 earth-ball, the transcendental philosopher with 
 his Infinite, finds himself at last very finite and a 
 mere moiety of soul, until he rounds himself 
 out into spheral completeness by taking unto 
 himself another soul, which may also be in need 
 of a counterpart." 
 
 O Godlove Himmelshime, what havoc is now 
 being made in thy quiet Castle of Contemplation ! 
 Art thou still seated in thy lofty observatory 
 overlooking the world? Nay, thy philosophic 
 Academe, once so peacefully reposing in sun 
 shine on the outskirts of Hardscrabble, is the 
 seat of war and of desperate conflict ; indeed, if 
 signs fail not, it has been actually stormed, obser 
 vatory and all. So a similar fortress was once 
 taken, as thou must recollect from thy Shakes 
 peare in his Love's Labors Lost, by a beautiful 
 Princess. 
 
 Again the editor has allowed the Colonel too 
 much space in this book, but the man will some 
 how assert himself even in leaden types. Let us 
 
 24
 
 370 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 try afresh to turu the stream toward Appleseed 
 by one mighty outpour of versicles. We have 
 emptied every drawer, we have caught up every 
 flying scrap on which there was any writing, and 
 thrust it into the following batch. 
 
 So Benvenuto Cellini, in casting his statue of 
 Perseus, suddenly found himself short of metal, 
 and flung everything around him into the melting 
 pot. Here, then, goes the whole mass, writhing, 
 twisting, fiercely rebellious to any kind of co 
 operation. Let the valiant reader, Hercules-like, 
 seize hold of the many-headed Hydra, and club 
 the same into something akin to subordination. 
 
 8. 
 
 Why tell over so oft in thy lay 
 
 What the sages have told in their school? 
 Wisdom I have to tell over each day, 
 
 If I do not, I am the fool ; 
 
 And though the Sun tell over and over his light, 
 It is half the time night. 
 
 9. 
 
 The Sun is one, the Moon is two, 
 The Stars are three and many more ; 
 
 Old, old they rise, but ever new, 
 
 And shine the same they shone before.
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 371 
 
 10. 
 
 Thy sickness is thy body's sore, 
 
 Yet is thy spirit's ill ; 
 Thy fleshly pang is nothing more 
 
 Than fallen human will ; 
 Though thou be ground unto the core, 
 
 It is the mind's own mill. 
 
 11. 
 
 The oracles were but the riddles of old, 
 Which in mercy the Gods veiled over 
 That man by his deed might tear off the cover, 
 And find out the truth of what was foretold. 
 For that deed now is forged the new word 
 Fitted with wonderful wings 
 So that it flies with the speediest bird 
 Over the world and its mystery sings. 
 
 Hark ! the high strain of the heavenly riddle 
 Is now echoed below on each little fiddle. 
 
 12. 
 
 Meaning will not make it, 
 Music will not wake it, 
 
 Till meaning and music the poet fuses 
 Into the wonderful word 
 That all to himself he has heard 
 
 Dropped in love from the lips of the Muses.
 
 372 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 13. 
 
 ** Affirm, deny, and doubt 
 Which will put the Devil out? " 
 If you simply can affirm, 
 The other two will surely make you squirm ; 
 And if you ever corne to be a doubter, 
 Denial soon appears and is the stouter ; 
 And if you only can deny, 
 Your friends should bid you sad good-by. 
 But when together you can join all three, 
 Then you can get free. 
 
 14. 
 
 Some boast that they a photograph can make 
 Of what cannot be seen by sight ; 
 
 But of the world unseen thou art to take 
 A picture set in its own light. 
 
 15. 
 
 The man who puts down his life upon paper, 
 
 Black upon white 
 
 Shadow and light, 
 His scroll may serve as the taper 
 
 Thy life to illumine, 
 
 Like his, it is human.
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 373 
 
 16. 
 
 Liberty, Equality, Fraternity 
 
 I find it hard to woo the three. 
 
 All men were created equal, 
 
 Still I somehow lack the sequel; 
 
 All were born fraternal, 
 
 Still I fail of the eternal ; 
 
 All, too, were created free, 
 
 And still I have not liberty. 
 
 Fraternal, equal, free, 
 
 By birth they all belong to me ; 
 
 I hear and heed with joy the lofty aim, 
 
 And still each day I have to prove my claim. 
 
 And so, by thunder, 
 
 How can you wonder 
 
 Too much humanity 
 
 Begets profanity. 
 
 17. 
 Be not more dainty than your race, 
 
 For you cannot dismiss it ; 
 Your mother Earth has a dirty face, 
 
 Yet you will have to kiss it. 
 
 18. 
 Young America is soon known ; 
 
 For him to grow 
 
 Is much too slow ; 
 He always is already grown.
 
 374 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 19. 
 In littleness great, 
 
 In greatness how little ! 
 In lightness a weight, 
 
 How mighty a tittle ! 
 Now find but a block, 
 
 And a head you can whittle. 
 
 20. 
 Why make your explanation of it so long? 
 
 Because I do not understand it. 
 Why make your ignorance of it so strong? 
 
 Because I have damned it. 
 
 21. 
 Be not too quick to change, 
 
 Be not too slow; 
 Be not always on the run, 
 
 But always go. 
 
 22. 
 
 I have seen a man's ears again and again 
 So long as to stand in the way of his brain; 
 And a woman's nose has been turned up so high 
 That it blocked the entire path of her eye. 
 
 23. 
 
 I left the theater to-day in glee, 
 I felt that they were not playing for me.
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 375 
 
 24. 
 
 Every man has his boundary, 
 
 Inside his limit he must be found, 
 Outside it he is weak, unsound ; 
 
 The test of strength must always be 
 How strong is he within his bound. 
 
 25. 
 Thy pain is but thy body's part 
 
 Arrayed against its all ; 
 Thy sorrow is thy entire heart 
 
 Made to its half a thrall. 
 
 26. 
 No drug will reach the body's harm, 
 
 Till thou dost cleanse the whole; 
 Health thou must ever learn to farm 
 
 Out of thy entire soul. 
 
 27. 
 The poet's word is a boomerang 
 
 That always will come back, 
 It may go round his house or town, 
 
 Its kiss he feels or thwack ; 
 But it may circle all the Earth; 
 Returning to its place of birth, 
 
 It finds his empty track.
 
 376 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 In such a fashion does the very last batch of 
 Appleseed's versicles behave itself, more recalci 
 trant and self-repellent than ever, yet going off 
 the stage with a kind of premonitory sigh. Let 
 the reader be yad or thankful, according to his 
 own law of being; and then let him pass on to 
 one of Himmelshime's stray paragraphs, which 
 we have found fluttering mid these tattered frag 
 ments of scribbled paper with a kind of jubilation : 
 
 " Very fragmentary do these rhymes appear, 
 shreds caught out of a tuneful realm which is 
 still waiting to be set to harmony in a complete 
 song. Sometimes we have likened these little 
 pipings to the scattered notes of the world's 
 nightingale, Greece before Homer, when on 
 every hill and in every valley a strain unpremed 
 itated broke forth, singing the appearance of 
 some God, telling the story of some Hero, how 
 he performed with toil and woe for his people a 
 mighty deed. Numberless musical fragments 
 floating over every small Hellenic town we can 
 still imagine ourselves to hear till the grand 
 unifier, Homer, appeared and transfigured them 
 into one great national song, to which all con 
 tributed a part, and through which all became 
 one, in spirit at least. Thus was Hellas harmo 
 nized in Homer more completely than in any other 
 way; indeed the poet was greater than his people,
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 377 
 
 the Greeks, for he united them in an inner spirit^ 
 ual bond, which they were never able to realize 
 in an outer social or political organization." 
 
 In like manner, the editor has often thought, 
 the scattered notes of an epic, or the far-off 
 hintings thereof, might be found in the dis 
 jointed rhymes of Appleseed, which he possessed 
 not the ability or the inclination to put together 
 into a complete, well-ordered structure of song. 
 No organizer, no temple-builder like Homer, no 
 cathedral-builder like Dante ; he can speak to us 
 only in little lyrical outbursts, which hover about 
 us like lost wandering tones of some vast sym 
 phony, unfinished, and for him, possibly for us, 
 unfinishable. 
 
 The patriotic reader has it in his power to- 
 accept or reject the following item from Himmel- 
 shime's pen: 
 
 " Still in this scattered way of flinging about 
 his rhymed atoms, Appleseed is the child of his 
 age and gives a picture of his people, who con 
 stitute enormous masses of new spheres, volcanic, 
 amorphic, in terrific birth-pangs, trying to get 
 themselves born into order, made up as they are 
 of intensely separative, individualistic, mutually 
 repellent particles. Celestial nebulae of small 
 singularities, some of which require a telescope 
 to resolve them, when they are seen to be com 
 posed of little luminaries, each trying to shine 
 his best out of his lofty place in the firmament ;
 
 378 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 whither are these masses of heavenly star-fog 
 drifting? Our globe, at least, is going forward, 
 I affirm, and all the people on it ; this planet is a 
 car of progress, and the tendency clearly is 
 toward a cosmos some millions of years hence, if 
 the Sun does not give out in the meantime." 
 
 Thus the Colonel seems to be looking ahead 
 with hope from the lofty station of his observa 
 tory, throwing out thence far-searching glances 
 toward the starry limits of the Universe. But 
 of a sudden he reverses his telescopic look, turn 
 ing it down to the earth and the inhabitants 
 thereof, in whose spiritual center he again finds 
 woman, the eternal woman (Das Ewig-Weib- 
 liche}. Listen to his speech, throbbing (if we 
 err not) with true heart-beats of recognition : 
 
 " And not only the new-born Idea must be 
 mothered by a woman, but also the man, the father 
 thereof, in his desperate strain and stress with the 
 old, unsympathetic, or even antagonistic world. 
 I have noticed that quite all of the prophets, 
 seers, philosophers, too, as far as I have been 
 able to take a peep into their inner lives, have 
 had to be encouraged, upheld, loved by some 
 woman. Behind the curtains of existence they 
 have been ready to sink, when she has extended 
 her gentle hand and tenderly helped them out 
 to regain their spiritual birth-right. They have 
 been faint, famished, quite undone in the strug 
 gle, when she has reached her heart, and from
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 379 
 
 its sympathetic throb of recognition and love, 
 they have obtained fresh might, and have sprung 
 up like Antaeus when he touched the Earth, a 
 giant again and ready to renew the battle. 
 Every great movement, though the seed be 
 planted by a man, is tended, cherished, nurtured 
 through infancy to maturity by the aid of 
 woman. There would be no Literature, no Art, 
 very little Religion in America, were it not for 
 the support of woman ; and in the new order 
 which is coming, every part and portion, every 
 Idea will have not only its father, but also its 
 mother recognized and honored." 
 
 And now occurs one of those unaccountable 
 drops which we have already characterized with 
 due severity. Himmelshime from his celestial 
 height suddenly falls to the barnyard, citing a 
 verse by Appleseed and hanging it on just here. 
 In defiance of all true dignity it is, and of all 
 the canons of Good Taste ; shall we use our edi 
 torial shears and shear it off into the fire? No; 
 let the man have his freedom and unfold accord 
 ing to his own law. Thusly : 
 
 I like the old hen for she hatches 
 The egg that is laid in her nest ; 
 
 I like the old hen for she scratches 
 And finds for her chicks what is best ; 
 
 I like the old hen for she watches 
 The fox and the hawk and the rest ;
 
 : - - - . T _ . - . i T - 
 .-. : i : -;.-: v JL zest ; 
 
 iag and scratching. 
 ii ij. and TnitihTp 1 
 Glory be to the aid hen 
 off t-l.l men. 
 
 - - : -. - --' . : . ' - T 
 
 bv Rabelais hin 
 
 in that sort of writing. Bat let 
 the reader practice himself & little in these loag, 
 
 .:i: :- .1 ; :_ 
 
 bora, the boys 
 sets (the 
 
 ! ) which sets were in 
 
 the Uit f ight^g caek oAer. the chief object 
 
 pool on the oat- 
 t. One day I was disporting 
 my=elf Baked m the pool with two or tkree 
 
 tae wfcole force of the 
 with stkka and 
 
 et of the water , i 
 lay ooi the ^oce, and took to light toward 
 
 at a nin, and 
 to div e into a 
 
 ~- =
 
 382 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 Another diversion we shall try to make: really 
 our last attempt. The two following ballads by 
 Appleseed (which have just turned up with 
 other mislaid papers) also deal with woman, but 
 introduce the tragic side of her existence. O 
 Himmelshime ! Love too has its terrible limita 
 tions, even that of death ; the complete resigna 
 tion to its sweet ecstasy often means not life, but 
 the gloomy end thereof ; and this motherhood, 
 so nobly lauded by thee, can become the fountain 
 of all bitterness, whelming the mother herself 
 into the deepest abyss of shame and despair, even 
 unto insanity and suicide. That dualism of thine, 
 with its positive and negative poles, which thou 
 hast so frequently pointed out in things terrestrial, 
 is also subtly working in Love and Motherhood ; 
 let the man, too, beware, and hearken to these 
 deeply sympathetic heart-throbs of the singer, 
 who, for the time being, has to become tragic 
 himself in the tragedy of the unfortunates of 
 whom he sings.
 
 THE HARPER. 
 
 A harper hymns along his path, 
 
 A maiden mute he spies, 
 A gash upon her head she hath, 
 
 While inward turn her eyes, 
 As if to shun a world of wrath 
 
 And look on Paradise. 
 
 His tears through aged furrows flow, 
 
 But not a word he saith, 
 He seems to feel the very blow 
 
 Which laid her cold in death, 
 Although that maid he did not know, 
 
 He would her give his breath. 
 
 O harper, why the maid beweep? 
 
 Touch soft thy soulful lyre, 
 And soothe the throes that inthee leap, 
 
 Unto thy strings' sweet choir; 
 Now waft thy woes to sunny sleep, 
 
 And quench the inward fire. 
 
 ** To shirk my lot persuade me not : 
 
 Into the bottom of my heart 
 The bolt of fate is ever shot, 
 
 To give my harp its art ; 
 Persuade me not to shirk my lot, 
 
 My song must be my smart. 
 
 (383)
 
 feel 
 
 .. . _. .- 
 
 : -: 
 
 -. 
 
 mr 
 
 k poor 
 
 Set 
 
 k M 
 
 Eaefe Grabbed & 
 
 T<B> tfeufca ever^* WTOOS :
 
 i . L- : - - 
 
 Of 
 AL. --_- 
 
 The mil of 
 Ac whupen tJMWgh the 
 
 afls tihee, ^i ijlnaiJ. wfcr s 
 Do daaoBB a'er tkee hvper? 
 Tbe tkird rtiJM vjikes lie ahklajafg Mitt, 
 
 As c*t the 
 
 Woe to the trakor bra! 
 
 The 
 
 The l>sl stri^ ke kd 
 Ad fran k etrack a 2^ of 
 
 V .-.'_ 
 
 The ^mr w* sapped, the ^ twk fefct,
 
 JENNY. 
 
 O Jenny, O Jenny, why weep at the night? 
 
 And why wail at the light?- 
 My night is a dream of what I have done, 
 
 That flees from the sun 
 My day is a dream of what I shall do, 
 
 That, I know, will come true. 
 By night I once dreamed that I leaned on an oak, 
 
 But by day the tree broke. 
 Down, down I fell, earth dealt me a stroke, 
 
 In my fall I awoke. 
 O Jenny, O Jenny, stop seeing in night, 
 
 Stop dreaming in light. 
 But at dawn she turned to the song of the bird, 
 
 A babe crowing she heard ; 
 When over the greensward her glances would 
 
 stray, 
 
 She saw it at play. 
 O pretty baby, I wish thou wert mine, 
 
 I would make thee so fine. 
 Each morn I would bathe thy body in milk 
 
 And dress in it silk, 
 The babe softly answered: Once I was thine, . 
 
 In this hand see the sign. 
 O my sweet babe let me take thee to breast, 
 
 And rock thee to rest. 
 (386)
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 387 
 
 Since into the river by thee I was thrown 
 
 I am playing alone. 
 Come back once again and lie on my heart, 
 
 And we never shall part. 
 From my cradle of waves I cannot rise to thce, 
 
 Mother, follow thou me. 
 Swiftly out of the house and over the hedge, 
 
 Swiftly down to the ledge, 
 Whither, O woman, dost hasten so wild? 
 
 I must suckle my child. 
 To a cry in the midst of the stream she is drawn, 
 
 To her babe she is gone. 
 
 Such distant gleams do we catch from the 
 ballads of the people, which Appleseed here 
 reproduces in his own way, showing the Tragedy 
 of Love, a drama always enacting itself on the 
 stage of Human Life. But not in this somber 
 fashion is the present play going to end ; ill 
 would such a termination comport with the limit- 
 overcoming, fate-mastering spirit of the hero, 
 our wandering singer, whose supreme function it 
 is to live immortality every day. 
 
 The reader will probably have noticed that 
 since the beginning of this last Book, Brazen- 
 nose has not appeared, having been again elbowed 
 out of his place by that imposing, self-asserting 
 individuality which goes under the name of 
 Himmelshime. Not with the consent of the
 
 388 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S EHYMES. 
 
 editor, however, who has tried in every way to 
 invoke the Professor's assistance. We have 
 written a number of times to Hardscrabble, 
 importuning, soothing, complimenting him; no 
 answer. Something is wrong, a screw is loose 
 somewhere, is the editor's presentiment; the 
 matter must be investigated. 
 
 Thus another visit to Hardscrabble becomes 
 necessary, being the center of light on Johnny 
 Applesced. The Professor must be personally 
 seen and conciliated ; also the Colonel, who has 
 so valiantly borne the brunt of the battle, soldier 
 that he is, must not be neglected. The conflict 
 between the two seems to be in a state of quies 
 cence ; our stores of versifies are completely 
 exhausted ; perhaps, too, the grand final pal 
 ingenesis itself may appear there in some 
 unexpected fashion, possibly incarnate, and 
 bring our labors to their happiest conclusion. 
 
 Just as we were ready to start, with bag 
 actually in hand, here comes a letter bearing 
 the post-mark of Hardscrabble. It was speedily 
 torn open, and the contents examined with great 
 eagerness, for the hand-writing plainly declared 
 it to be from Brazennose. But what a surprise 
 when the following missive confronted the 
 Editor: 
 
 Dear Theodora : I dare hope that I may inter 
 pret the words you spoke to me yesterday in the
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 389 
 
 friendliest light, though you were, I confess, 
 somewhat ambiguous. I have already shown my 
 feelings in a hundred ways, and I have sometimes 
 thought that you sent back fair requitals. But 
 I can no longer endure the doubt, my peace is 
 gone, my days are troubled, I can read no more 
 even in my Greek books with any satisfaction. 
 The matter must be settled one way or the other. 
 Expect me to-night ; if the outlook is favorable, 
 let the front door be open and the parlor 
 windows illuminated ; if not, alas ! let the cur 
 tains be drawn and all be closed in total darkness. 
 But whatever you do, be no longer wheedled by 
 that mad philosopher on the other side of town. 
 Yours forever (I hope), R. B. 
 
 What can all this mean ? Who is dear Theo 
 dora and why thus to me? Another more care 
 ful reading of the letter shows it to be intended 
 for some woman ; there is also in it a peculiar 
 tone of supplication, modest indeed, but showing 
 strong self-suppression. Clearly the handwrit 
 ing of Brazennose, somewhat tremulous, not so 
 steady as usual, with visible marks of agitation. 
 
 Did we not find that same name, Theodora, 
 scribbled by chance on one of his papers? 
 
 Mis-sent, mis-directed, some mistake anyhow; 
 the business has gone amiss, and what is more 
 mysterious, it pertains to a miss. Can it be 
 possible that Love has entered the dusty library
 
 390 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S EHYMES. 
 
 of Brazennose too, and is playing the same havoc 
 there as in the lofty observatory? We have 
 already noted a similar tendency in Himraelshime, 
 his later comments are stamped with some airy 
 image which is stronger than he, the old veteran. 
 What can be the mutter at Hardscrabble ? Is 
 there to be a general pairing off, and settling 
 down into domestic felicity? In that case what 
 will be the effect upon this book of Appleseed's? 
 The thing cannot be allowed to proceed further 
 without a thorough investigation 
 
 Thus the editor was subjected to many gloomy 
 forebodings in reference to the future of his 
 work. Both his assistants seem to be suddenly 
 making a commentary on another theme ; his 
 right hand and his left hand threaten to stop 
 work altogether. With such thoughts the editor 
 starts at once for the railroad station, and in due 
 time steps out at Hardscrabble. 
 
 When the editor arrived at the hotel, he was 
 surprised by a card being sent up to his room, 
 with the request for his presence at once in the 
 parlor. Behold a young lady, very beautiful, 
 yet distressful somewhat; she advances and 
 speaks with a sweet grace: "You must par 
 don this boldness, it has cost me some effort, 
 but I have come to ask you, Did you receive 
 recently a peculiar letter? " 
 
 I thought the question strange, but her win- 
 nine: voice drove off all hesitation: " I confess
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 391 
 
 that I did ; but may I inquire how you come to 
 know that?" 
 
 " I imagined it somehow. Do you recognize 
 this as yours?" 
 
 Whereat she handed me a letter from Brazen- 
 nose addressed to myself, stating that he could 
 no longer co-operate with me in the work of 
 editing Appleseed's rhymes, though he hoped I 
 would continue the task. Chief reason was the 
 state of his health, and the distraction caused by 
 too many pursuits. 
 
 ** Your name then is " 
 
 ." Theodora." 
 
 " I have heard that magic name before," 
 whereat I showed her Brazennose's letter to 
 " Dear Theodora." I took my own and asked : 
 
 " And this came to you by mail? " 
 
 " Look at the envelope. I could hardly have 
 received your letters otherwise." 
 
 " True; it was stupid of me to ask you. But 
 I see, a light dawns ; Brazennose, in a fit of 
 professorial absent-mindedness, which I have 
 already observed in him once or twice, has put 
 the wrong letter into my envelope. Poor fellow ! 
 he was probably far away in Greece and Rome. 
 But he ought to have had sense enough not to 
 have gone a wool-gathering 2,000 years back 
 ward while he was occupied with writing love- 
 letters in the present. The mistake, however, 
 can easily be corrected. You and I hold the
 
 392 JOHNNY APPLESEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 secret, I shall go at once to Brazennose and 
 straighten out the whole difficulty by a little 
 explanation ; with this evidence in my hand I 
 shall bring him back to his eternal happiness, 
 which he probably thinks he has lost." 
 
 Thus spake the present editor, Theophilus 
 Middling, seeking to be a mediator for Professor 
 Brazennose and the fair Theodora, when the 
 latter, with the roses in her cheeks always grow 
 ing redder, hastily cried out: "Hold! here is 
 another letter; this one reached its true destina 
 tion. It is from Colonel Godlove Himmelshime, 
 and only too plain is his proposition." 
 
 " What can this mean? " 
 
 With still deeper crimson she said: "This 
 letter has the same object as that of Professor 
 Brazennose." 
 
 In such a fashion was the editor caught in the 
 very pinch of the dualism of Hardscrabble, and 
 dumbfounded to the last degree by the unex 
 pected clash. 
 
 After deliberating a moment, this seemed best: 
 "I must see Himmelshime at once." 
 
 Theodora now broke in, sa} T ing with a look of 
 angelic supplication: "I have a great favor to 
 ask of you. I wish to leave this town. It is a 
 torment to stay here longer. I want your help." 
 
 " What can be the matter? " 
 
 " Those two old fellows have pestered me 
 nearly to death with their attentions and their
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 393 
 
 jealousies. I grant that I have shown friendliness 
 to both, but never choice to either. The Pro 
 fessor is a nice man, and h;is been my teacher, 
 but he kills me outright with his endless talk 
 about old books, and things dead hundreds of 
 years ago. And the Colonel has nearly fright 
 ened me into fits with his tall form and bristly 
 hair suddenly uprising in a spasm, during which 
 he took a grand flight off into regions where I 
 could see only clouds. Then both torment the 
 life out of me by their sarcastic remarks about 
 each other. I do not like this everlasting con 
 tention and mutual detraction." 
 
 " So you want neither? " 
 
 " Neither" was her emphatic echo. 
 
 " Both too are somewhat advanced in life," I 
 mused aloud. 
 
 " Yes," she responded half evasively, and 
 turned her eyes down to the carpet, away from 
 my wrinkles. 
 
 " Well, what can I do for you? " 
 
 " I want you to take me away from this place, 
 and help me to get into the Kindergarten in 
 Lakeside. For some time I have had the step in 
 mind ; I believe it to be my release not only 
 from these two men, but from myself, from my 
 own narrow life." 
 
 In this manner the situation has unfolded it 
 self, astonishing, sudden, almost crushing for 
 the time being. Brazennose and Himmelshime,
 
 -.- - 
 
 
 - 
 
 7m: 
 
 I I 
 
 - :: 
 
 - 
 
 - .-
 
 396 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 " I have," she answered, " and for that reason 
 I do not wish to be seen by him again, it might 
 embarrass me." 
 
 " Well, return to this place by 3 o'clock, 
 and the train will soon be carrying us toward 
 Lakeside. Meanwhile I must go and hunt up 
 Brazennose and Himmelshime, it is probable that 
 each of them needs consolation." 
 
 The Professor's room was not far away. I 
 first hastened thither, but I soon learned that he 
 had gone off for a short vacation, though it was 
 in the middle of the term. He must have found, 
 on the fatal evening, the front door closed and 
 the window curtain drawn down, though his 
 letter did not reach Theodora till I handed it to 
 her to-day. A rapid walk soon brought me to 
 the opposite side of Hardscrabble, where I saw 
 the lofty observatory, but no Himmelshime in it 
 looking down upon the world. The old negress 
 said that he had gone out of town, and would not 
 come back for some days ; but that he had left a 
 small package for " Massa Middlins." Some 
 how I Celt but little disappointment in not seeing 
 my two friends this time, and with pleasing 
 anticipations, I returned in a brisk gait to my 
 hotel. 
 
 On my way, however, I grew so curious to see 
 the contents of the package which the old negress 
 had delivered to me that I broke it open. Be 
 hold, another little batch of versicles by Apple-
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 397 
 
 seed. They somehow keep turning up, though I 
 have removed all from my drawers, and pulled the 
 last one off the string which has the darning 
 needle. But these show a new turn ; they deal 
 almost exclusively with the caprices, frivolities, 
 and frailties of woman, and are set forth with a 
 dash of bitterness. What now about that chiv 
 alrous devotion of Appleseed, who was supposed 
 to hold that the woman was made of better clay 
 than the man? But still more stunning is the 
 case of Himmelshime after all his magniloquent 
 laudations of love and womanhood; a short time 
 ago he would have cut off his right arm rather 
 than have delivered these versicles into the hands 
 of the editor. In his conduct we catch but too 
 plainly an echo of recent events; the sweet 
 grapes of love as well as of learning, have turned 
 sour. Thus has the dualism of existence entered 
 into his very heart and is there making war, and 
 has driven him out of town. A little while ago 
 woman was the grand positive pole in the magnet 
 of the universe, now she has suddenly turned 
 negative. Similar examples can be found. Dante 
 has portrayed the purest ideal figure of woman in 
 all Literature, his Beatrice ; then he whirls about 
 and mercilessly roasts her sex in many a sulphur 
 ous passage of his poem. But let us scan (you 
 can skip them, fair reader) the versicles.
 
 The discord which the time most Tens 
 Hath also pot oat of tnr : - 
 
 C^ir Terv speech makes strife 
 Between, the man and wife, 
 Foe woman is bat man 
 
 With added wo, 
 The letters, if roa scan. 
 
 At least say so, 
 
 With strong stress upon the syllable that's first, 
 Where the meaning sounds for man the wont. 
 The poet then in Terse will try to rhyme them. 
 he will find it rery hard to chime them ; 
 Foe man will not keep time 
 
 If linked in a couplet with woman; 
 And woman with man will not rhyme, 
 
 le be made into no man. 
 And e'en if thus it stood, 
 
 rhyme is not so rery good, 
 now show the husband the way to treat 
 her, 
 
 That she be happily made to fit into the meter ; 
 For sad is the omen. 
 Which greets us, O men, 
 When we have to be changed into no-men 
 In order to be linked unto wo-men.
 
 BOOK FIFTH. : ; 1 
 
 2. 
 
 When I begin to love her, 
 
 And she will not yield, 
 Then I am in eloYer; 
 Bat when she comes over, 
 
 I start oat of the field. 
 
 3. 
 
 The woman's tempter is spite, 
 
 Her devil whispers, requite ! 
 
 Just what she avenges, she's most apt to do; 
 
 You may see her cast off her husband untrue, 
 
 Then turn and do the wrong he did, 
 
 And live herself the life forbid. 
 
 Revenge begets in her the very wrong 
 
 To punish ^hieh she is so strong. 
 
 4. 
 
 The servant-girl is at present the curse, 
 The household is growing more sad; 
 But why is the service so bad ? 
 
 Because the mistress is worse. 
 
 5. 
 
 Sweet lips whose words are honey 
 
 Mean often, more money; 
 
 Fair eyes that wet their distresses, 
 
 May be dried by new dresses ; 
 But the woman whom I would forever exalt, 
 Is she in whose tears there is the most salt.
 
 400 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 6. 
 
 We shall grant the woman to love, 
 She is an angel that draws us above; 
 We shall grant her even to hate, 
 She still is a woman at any rate ; 
 And if she have a wish to judge, 
 We shall endure it, but think, Oh fudge I 
 But when, ye Gods, she comes to vote, 
 The music will not play another note. 
 
 7. 
 
 Humble she forgives all her foes, 
 To church, too, she goes 
 And looks down her nose 
 You will find her celestial. 
 
 Proud tread on her toes, 
 Deny that she knows, 
 Dare to oppose, 
 Do as she does 
 You will find her terrestrial. 
 
 Such then was the grand explosion which blew 
 all three persons concerned in this dangerous 
 business out of Hardscrabble at a single puff 
 two men and one woman. The fair ideal is gone, 
 having escaped from both the Professor and the 
 Colonel, in spite of their eager pursuit, and is 
 going to enter a new world, in which she can 
 adequately realize herself just what every ideal
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 401 
 
 ought to do. Imagine now the editor in com 
 pany with the fair maid speeding away on the 
 railroad train ; first the dingy brick walls of the 
 University heavily drop out of view, then the 
 lofty observatory of Himmelshime's Castle 
 slowly recedes into the pure ethereal blue of the 
 skies. Not without emotion does Theodora look 
 back and watch the evanishment of the two 
 structures, then she firmly shuts the window of 
 the coach and faces forward with the train moving 
 toward Lakeside and the future. 
 
 Is there not some pre-established divine affinity 
 between those two names, Theodora and Theo- 
 philns, the God-given and the God-beloved? 
 Assuredly ; very plain is it that the names are 
 half-way entwined with each other ; but how 
 about the hearts? That is the unsolved problem 
 just rising and peeping over the horizon. But 
 let not the reader draw any hasty conclusion, or 
 think that Theodora is the absolute possession of 
 the editor. By no means ; only an external 
 hovering-over and protection, sweet indeed but 
 outside; thus the hours fly during the ride on 
 the train. When the old romance ends, possibly 
 a new one has already begun, for life is a series 
 of self-returning cycles a new romance possi 
 bly, with its ups and downs, with its sentimen 
 talities and anxieties, with its realities and 
 idealities, perchance, too, with spasmodic out 
 breaks into verse. But all such matters clearly 
 
 26
 
 402 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES, 
 
 lie beyond the scope of the present book, which 
 must at once begin to wind itself up, bidding a 
 tender farewell to lovely Theodora, as she turns 
 and steps into the door of the building where she 
 is to begin her new career. 
 
 But not just yet can this book end, not till the 
 reader has received some news from Hardscrabble 
 after the grand cataclysm. When the healer 
 Time had poured some of his balm into their 
 wounds, the editor wrote both to the Colonel and 
 the Professor, begging them still to keep up the 
 old friendship, and to continue working in the 
 cause of Johnny Appleseed. To their everlast 
 ing honor be it said that neither showed any 
 resentment, though both must have known 
 whither and under whose wing their ideal had 
 taken flight. Each sent another installment of 
 
 o 
 
 Appleseed, of which fact the following poems 
 bear sufficient witness. First let us see what 
 Himmelshime has chosen to send under the 
 circumstances.
 
 CONFESSION. 
 
 Follow it and it will flee ; 
 
 What might that shadowy spectre be? 
 
 I sought for it and did not find, 
 
 I ceased to search and had my mind ; 
 Follow it and it will flee, 
 Flee and it will follow thee. 
 
 I chased around the world for wealth, 
 
 And gave to it my time, my health; 
 
 For gold I groped in every rift, 
 
 At last I quit, it came a gift; 
 Follow it and it will flee, 
 Flee and it will follow thee. 
 
 A mighty hunt I made for pleasure, 
 I would enjoy withouten measure, 
 I ate and drank, my life enjoyed : 
 But only was the more annoyed ; 
 Follow it and it will flee, 
 Flee and it will follow thee. 
 
 I next went forth to seek for fame, 
 And wreathe a noise around my name, 
 But when I gan to get a store, 
 The greater gan to be the bore ; 
 Follow it and it will flee, 
 Flee and it will follow thee. 
 
 (403)
 
 404 JOHNNY APPLE SEED 1 8 RHYMES. 
 
 For knowledge I resolved to chase, 
 I toiled and sweat the thorny race ; 
 The more of learning down I rammed, 
 The more I felt myself bedamned; 
 Follow it and it will flee, 
 Flee and it will follow thee. 
 
 All lore I sought while still a youth, 
 To college went to get the truth ; 
 The more I studied in that school, 
 The more I grew to be a fool 
 Follow it and it will flee, 
 Flee and it will follow thee. 
 
 For fun I then conclude to live, 
 Will all my days to laughing give ; 
 However true my aim I keep, 
 Man's folly often makes me weep. 
 Follow it and it will flee, 
 Flee and it will follow thee. 
 
 The greatest good I sought for next, 
 And I obeyed the holy text ; 
 But when I tried to grasp the good, 
 It would not so be understood. 
 Follow it and it will flee, 
 Flee and it will follow thee. 
 
 At last myself I would pursue, 
 And still I had to flee me too;
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 405 
 
 But a response came to my call, 
 I faintly heard an echo fall : 
 
 Follow it and it will flee, 
 
 Flee and it will follow thee. 
 
 My shadow I would overtake, 
 Wherein I made a bad mistake ; 
 This was the strain of everything, 
 And this the song which now I sing: 
 
 Follow it and it will flee, 
 
 Flee and it will follow thee. 
 
 A rather unusual mood for Appleseed ; grim, 
 stoical, with clenched fist and grating teeth he 
 seems to be defying fate ; yet a certain sardonic 
 humor darts a streak of light through the gloom 
 of the foregoing verses. This world is verily a 
 fleeting shadow, which you cannot run down, yet 
 is always following you. Well, let it follow ; 
 only be not a ground hog to run from a shadow. 
 Now comes a verse which is written in a different 
 kind of ink, and seems to have been added later 
 to the manuscript : 
 
 For love I longed but still it fled, 
 I sighed and rhymed and wished me dead, 
 But when the maid I ceased to woo, 
 Another came, did me pursue. 
 
 Follow her, and though she flee, 
 
 Another soon will follow thee.
 
 406 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 The editor is decidedly inclined to suspect the 
 authenticity of this verse. Himmelshime himself 
 probably made it and tacked it on to the preced 
 ing stanzas, having caught the lilt and the jingle, 
 as well as the mood, which must have had some 
 correspondence with his own at the time. But 
 the editor is full of rejoicing at any rate, for it 
 is clear that Himmelshime's love is not of the 
 tragic kind ; Theodora may have shaken him up 
 badly, but has not broken his heart. " As good 
 fish still in the sea as ever were caught; " so he 
 goes off whistling a little jig; at this moment 
 we imagine him again ascending the stair to his 
 observatory, whence he is casting out far-search- 
 glances toward the Infinite. 
 
 Having thus taken our glance at the Colonel, 
 we may next turn to the Professor and scrutinize 
 his contribution. Also a poem of several verses 
 he has sent us, but in a different vein from the 
 preceding ; still they have certain points in com^ 
 mon ; two ways of taking a stroke of destiny or 
 a flea bite, we may see in them the one show 
 ing relief through a cynical humor, the other 
 through an effervescence of gayety. In fact, 
 The Butterfly and the Maiden, as its name hints, 
 is in itself a kind of double poem, having two 
 themes and changing from one to the other in 
 alternate verses. Yet one thing is at the bot 
 tom, we think; two strands braided together 
 into one cord, which still shows its doubleness.
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 407 
 
 Thus has the dualism of life (and of love) gone 
 into the very structure of the poem. Not one 
 word of exposition has Brazennose appended to 
 these verses, so that the reader will have to do 
 without the Professor's learned comment, and 
 make out of them what he can all by himself. 
 
 THE BUTTERFLY AND THE MAIDEN. 
 
 It spread its sails upon the air, 
 
 The tricksy butterfly I 
 And danced into mine eyes how fair 
 
 As it did flutter by. 
 
 A word I heard my head above, 
 There dropped a mutter sly, 
 
 I saw a lily hand of love, 
 The close-drawn shutter try. 
 
 Still in the airy blue I gaze, 
 
 A sprite slid out the sky, 
 And golden wings beat in the haze, 
 
 Wings of a butterfly. 
 
 The lily little hand above 
 
 That did the shutter try, 
 Was by it caught and pinched in love ; 
 
 O dear ! I heard her cry.
 
 408 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 The sunshine sparkled golden scales 
 That seemed to sputter nigh, 
 
 As I did nip two flapping sails 
 Sails of a butterfly. 
 
 The lily hand has reached once more, 
 
 Just then I flutter by, 
 As streams of sunbeams on me pour 
 
 That make me shut my eye. 
 
 But look ! high up the fairy ship, 
 
 The airy butterfly 
 Has spread its sails to take a trip 
 
 Into the upper sky. 
 
 I turn again to see the sun, 
 That drowned in light my eye ; 
 
 The lily hand a thread hath spun 
 To hold the shutter by. 
 
 The tricksy sprite fades into blue, 
 
 I cannot utter why, 
 Still on my thumb bright scales I view, 
 
 Scales of a butterfly. 
 
 See, through the slats white fingers peep, 
 
 That draw the shutter nigh ; 
 The lily hand I kiss and keep, 
 
 I've caught the butterfly.
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 409 
 
 When I opened the folded sheet of foolscap 
 on which the preceding poem was written, a 
 small scrap of paper flew out, fluttered and, 
 danced on the air with a number of whirls, like 
 a butterfly ; then it gave a sudden dart and hid 
 under my writing-desk, out of sight; from which 
 dark place, I, after getting down on my knees 
 and hunting for it, drew it forth to the light. I 
 found that it was a different reading of the last 
 verse, as follows,: 
 
 Ah ! through the slats white fingers gleam, 
 
 And will the shutter try; 
 That lily hand it is a dream 
 
 Where is the butterfly? 
 
 Thus indeed the poem has another ending, 
 evidently in the nature of a disillusion and a 
 vanishing into naught. The Professor, I find, 
 in the true spirit of the scholar, has scratched on 
 this scrap the words lectio altera. Not a new 
 verse appended, as in the previous case of Him- 
 melshime, but another reading of the final 
 verse: What will the critical reader say to 
 it? Suspicious; it looks as if the Professor 
 himself was the author of this second reading, 
 which changes the outcome of the whole poem.
 
 410 JOHNNY APPLE SEED'S RHYMES. 
 
 Still the editor looks upon the lines with a 
 good deal of relief, for it is manifest that in the 
 Professor's case also, love is not tragic. No 
 horrible visage of Death peers out of the above 
 poetry; on the contrary a light-hearted acceptance 
 of the inevitable is the mood, and I can see, in my 
 mind's eye, Brazennose just now digging away 
 with all diligence at his Greek books, and shed 
 ding the light thereof upon the University of 
 Hardscrabble. 
 
 In such fashion we shall have to take our final 
 glance at the Professor, the worthy man ! Much 
 help has he given us in the course of the present 
 work; without him, indeed, it could never have 
 gotten itself born mto writ and baptized in print 
 er's ink. Farewell, dear friend ! But how about 
 Appleseed, our hero? One brief appearance 
 more for him, and this tragi-comedy is ended ; 
 it is the last, very last versicle, having been sent 
 by both Brazennose and Himmelshiine along 
 with the two preceding poems, in which fact we 
 may see another point of agreement between the 
 two men. A parting shot we deem it, sent by 
 our heroic David against his old enemies, the 
 Philistines; this done, the curtain will drop. 
 
 He blames the print 
 If he cannot read, 
 
 But the print runs on 
 And pays no heed ;
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 411 
 
 He blames the water 
 If he cannot swim, 
 
 But the water rolls by 
 And blames not him ; 
 He blames the sun 
 
 If he cannot see, 
 And if he cannot understand, 
 
 Why should he not blame me?
 
 WORKS BY 
 DENTON J. SNIDER 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE 
 
 SIGMA PUBLISHING CO., 
 
 210 Pine Street, ST. LOUIS, MO. 
 10 VanBuren Street, CHICAGO, 
 
 I. Commentary on the Literary Bibles, in 10 Vols. 
 
 1. Shakespeare's Dramas, 3 vols. (new edition). 
 
 Tragedies $2.00 
 
 Comedies 2.00 
 
 Histories . . 2.00 
 
 2. Goethe's Faust. 
 
 First Part 1.25 
 
 Second Part 1.25 
 
 3. Homer's Iliad 1.25 
 
 4 Dante's Inferno . . ... . 2.00 
 
 " Purgatory and Paradise . . . 2.00 
 General Survey and Homer's Odyssey not 
 yet published. 
 
 II. Poems in 4 vols. 
 
 1. Homer in Chios . . . . . .1.00 
 
 2. Delphic Days 1.00 
 
 3. Agamemnon's Daughter . . . .1.00 
 
 4. Prorsus Retrorsus , . . . .1.00 
 III. Miscellaneous. 
 
 1. Walk in Hellas . . . . / 1.25 
 
 2. The Freeburgers a novel . . . r 1.00 
 
 3. World's Fair Studies 1.25 
 
 Published by the same firm. 
 
 Johnny Appleseed's Rhymes . . .1.25 
 
 Each volume sold separately. Sent by mail on receipt 
 of the price.
 
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 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
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