Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1870-07-11

William Everett, Esq, in his Grafton in
Boston, on the 4th inst, in speaking of
the blessing of the sea, has an eloquent
allusion TO President Lincoln. We give
the following extract:
And il is not only as medium Of COM
merce, not only to carry out its native wealth
and bring back its acquired Injuries, that the
sea and the coast are needed by great inland
country like ours. No, nor yet for that other
marvellous influence which only the sea i'm
parts from its rocks and beaches, that strange
health-giving force which comes from salt air
and salt water alone, above the purest inspira-
ton of the mountain, and the deepest rest of
the plains. There is nobler power yet
which the sea and nothing but the sea breathes
into the heart Of nation. The mountaineer
learns the austeerer virtues, which are apt to
wither at the first touch of civilization, and
the selfish independence which bids every
other nation stand off; the inhabitant of the
plains learn to accumulate wealth, with that
sort of fair weather enterprise which tends
only to foster prosperity, and ends in sluggish
content. But it is the sca-kings and their
descendants alone, who enjoy the freest liber-
ty in a genial intercourse with every land,
who tear their golden treasures from the
caves and floods of the barren main, who
make sport of dangers, and mock of diff
Guilty, whose messengers are winds, and the
flames of fire their ministers We children
of tidewater, who draw in the ocean with
every breath, can hardly appreciate what a
blessing we enjoy above those who live far
removed from it. l was told by one of our
own lamented dead, who marched with Sher-
man to the sea, that some of the western men
on arriving at the shore stopped down and
L. II
staggered them. fear physical geography
was neglected in their school. But another
western man, worth all Sherman's army put
together,-I mean President Lincoln, told
me with his own lips in 1868, that he longed
to stay while at the sea-shore for he had
never seen the sea in his life except hastily
from the windows of railroad car As he
said it, that wild, sweet, unearthly look of
melancholy that he too often wore, played
across his rugged features, softening them to
more than woman tenderness, and he seemed
to say like man who rescmhled him in moth
ing but love of liberty, and the abuse he
got for it,
~ could lie down like tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which have borne, and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep should steal on me,
And might feel In the warm air
My cheek grow cold and hear the sea
Oh, why was he not spared to us one sum
mer more, that we might show him the sea
How all our coast would have risen like one
man to greet him! How all the Lincolns in
bingham would have fought to be the first
to get him, and the last to part with him
How we should have walked his childlike
mirth to tenfold peals of laughter at the sports
and stories of the sea-shore? How the old
fishermen and sailors would have crowded
round to welcome the rugged Westerner that
was so like themselves-how we would have
laid before him all the treasures of beach and
rock, the wonders of fortress and beacon,
how we would have blown away the cares and
miseries of four wretched years with one
Whit of an incoming tide! How we would
have sent him back again to tell his own rich
valleys, where nature seems to have outdone
all her exploits of fertility, that after all there
were no hearts and hands like the coastmen's
in New England!